Murderes' Houses

by Jennie Melville

  Just about the time he came to Deerham Hills he had started to take an interest in real islands. He thought about them incessantly, small islands, green and remote, and large islands with waterways and towns. He started to read about them. He read all the books about islands he could lay his hands upon. Fortunately it was a subject popular with publishers. Sometimes he thought the country seemed loaded with people reading and writing about islands, and reflected sardonically that he wasn ‘t the only person looking for an escape.

  Any day now Charmian might see him go into the library opposite the police station in search of books about islands, already provided with a Deerham Hills persona and background, with a home and an occupation, but basically exactly what he had been in Manchester.

  Charmian, unaware that she could have had this direct line to him, was trying to trace him by more orthodox methods. She had tried the banks. There were live biggish banks in Deerham Hills and one smaller Savings Bank. Charmian had made short calls on each of the managers to ask, unofficially, if they, equally unofficially, could let her know if any of their accounts belonging to a woman started showing signs of unusual withdrawals.

  ‘Do you know how many current accounts we have?’ began the manager of the newest and biggest. ‘I couldn’t tell you off hand, even if I thought I should, which I don’t.’

  ‘It won’t be a current account, probably,’ interrupted Charmian. ‘This will be savings. On deposit, earning its two per cent. And it won’t be one of your big deposits. The person I’m visualising won’t have more than two or three thousand.’

  She paused for a moment, and fixed her bright hypnotic gaze on the bank manager. He was an old acquaintance of hers, and ran a youth club on which she had once been obliged to call. She thought he would remember that she had been tactful and helpful on that occasion, and that a little tact and help could now be repaid.

  ‘It’s in this woman’s interest that she should be found, remember. And fast. I’m taking you into my confidence over this. She’s in danger.’

  He shook his head slowly, but Charmian felt sure that if any information did come trickling along to him, a hint would quietly be passed her way.

  ‘Well, good-bye, and thanks,’ she said, standing up. ‘And don’t look so nervous. After all, I have a perfectly good reason for coming here. I’m a client too.’

  ‘So you are.’ He saw her to the door.

  ‘Seen much of the Foss boy lately?’ she asked as she turned to go.

  He frowned. ‘We must have a little talk about him some time.’

  Charmian nodded. ‘ I thought you had him tethered, but it looks as though not.’

  After the banks, where she admitted her chances of getting information were only fifty-fifty, she tried the hairdressers. There were only three good hairdressers in Deerham Hills, all of them owned by her clever friend Barbara Hill. Only from these three shops could you be sure of leaving prettier and more confident (as well as poorer) than when you went in.

  Baba was a little bit older than Charmian with blue and silver sun-glasses on her pert nose, and this week her hair was bronze. Winter and summer Baba wore her sun-glasses, but the shade of her hair changed weekly.

  ‘Autumn Leaf,’ she said, shaking a frond of hair at Charmian. ‘Suit you. Tone it down a bit,’ she added, eyeing Charmian’s reddish hair with slight disapproval. Baba didn’t care for any natural hair tones.

  ‘I’m interested in knowing about anyone who comes in to have a tint or dye or a new hair style,’ she began. ‘An older woman …’

  ‘We get them all the time,’ interrupted Baba. ‘But all the time.’

  ‘Let me finish. This person’ll probably be someone you wouldn’t expect to want to be made over. A woman who’s never been in before or else someone who’s always stuck to a conservative style … The change is what will be significant.’ Charmian reasoned that any woman who was sufficiently moved by a man to tap her life savings was probably also going to want to change her hair style.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if you understand women’s natures at all,’ said Baba despairingly. ‘ They all want change.’

  ‘You know what I mean, though,’ persisted Charmian. ‘So you’ll do it.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll send word along,’ agreed Baba. ‘About all three thousand of them.’ She grinned. Charmian knew that her sharp eyes would take everything in. Baba was alerted now; that was what mattered.

  Charmian went on to her office. She had a good deal of confidence in Baba’s powers of getting to know what went on in the world of women. She might pick something up.

  But it wasn’t enough. Charmian knew that what she had done this morning was really utterly trivial as the start to an investigation. The woman who was marked down for victim might never go into any bank at all and might do her own hair at home. Velia would for instance. And there were many like Velia. It was no good just going round asking questions in a quiet voice. She ought to be shouting a bill of accusation over the speaker in a radio car. Touring the town and shouting at the top of her voice. Watch out. Warning. Be on your guard. There’s a stranger coming into town.

  And, as if to a larger convulsion, she gave a preliminary shiver.

  Velia and her lodger Morgan were having a late breakfast.

  ‘I just phoned Dusty and told her I was going to be late in this morning. Dusty’s not going to like that,’ she said with quiet satisfaction. ‘But after all, well, goodness, you and I have a lot to talk over.’

  Morgan kept quiet. He habitually did so at moments of crisis, and he was experienced enough to recognise this as, if not exactly crisis, at least a turning-point. He put on a meditative air, veiled his intentions, and kept quiet.

  ‘Well, haven’t we?’ said Velia brightly.

  After such a rich dinner last night, breakfast had been a light meal. There was a pot of coffee, buttered toast and a jar of marmalade, which Velia pretended she had made, but which Morgan knew well enough had been bought in a shop. It amused him that she should think it worth while to play tricks like that on him. Most of the toast had been eaten by Velia; Morgan preferred different food.

  ‘I shouldn’t say too much about things to Dusty … or to anyone.’ He looked at her gently.

  ‘As far as Dusty’s concerned, you don’t exist,’ said Velia complacently. She was excited and happy.

  ‘Well, I won’t be here much.’ Then he added, seeing the quick frown on Velia’s face, ‘I mean as much as I can, but you know how it is … business must come first.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Velia, joining in the joke. ‘Business first. I’ve always said that, haven’t I?’

  ‘Little trouper,’ said Morgan, mechanically.

  Velia was excited and exhilarated at being able to say ‘we’ again and at feeling she was one of a pair, a proper woman.

  ‘And as for Dusty, I don’t care if I never go to work again.’

  She knew she was over-doing it, taking too much for granted, and that Morgan didn’t altogether like it, but she was above herself.

  ‘You’re making me wonder if I ought to go away again,’ said Morgan uneasily.

  ‘But you can’t,’ cried Velia in triumph. ‘You need me.’

  Morgan caught the triumph and frowned. He got out his little notebook and noted down the cost of his stay so far. He liked to keep an account of every penny spent.

  Velia tried to slip quietly and unobserved into the office, but Dusty was waiting for her, ready to pounce. It was like being pounced on by an elephant. Dusty had by no means forgiven Velia for being late to work. To use her own words: she didn’t like the way Velia was going on these days at all.

  ‘She used to be such a nice little thing when she first came to work with me,’ she had complained to her eldest sister (the one with all the children) after taking Velia’s telephone call.

  ‘That’s not so long ago.’

  ‘She’s changed; changing, anyway.’

  ‘Or perhaps you are,’ said her sister, who occasionally ou
t of sheer vindictiveness said something clever. And then, as Dusty gaped at her, ‘Perhaps you’re noticing more. Seeing things you didn’t see at first.’

  ‘I might be,’ muttered Dusty.

  ‘Widow, isn’t she?’

  ‘Widow or divorced. Little mystery there,’ said Dusty with satisfaction. ‘Husbandless, anyway.’

  Her sister shrugged: possibly she felt it was a subject on which she had already heard too much of Dusty’s views and on which no further interchange between them was possible.

  ‘And I’m almost sure she had a man there this morning,’ brooded Dusty.

  Her sister smiled, a tight, bitter, little smile.

  The memory of that smile stuck with Dusty, and she recalled it as she faced Velia now.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said Dusty to Velia. ‘I’ve been waiting to have a word with you.’

  Velia hung up her coat. ‘I thought you were busy.’

  ‘So I am. As you know. But not so busy I can’t put a friend first.’

  We just work together, Dusty, Velia wanted to say, and not for so long at that.

  ‘I’m not going to enquire into what’s none of my business, such as who was the man you had with you this morning, or why you were late, but I do think you ought to explain why you were snooping around my desk on Friday before I took sick.’

  ‘But I explained all that,’ wailed Velia. ‘That was why we had that quarrel.’

  ‘… because you’ve been behaving very oddly lately, and I feel it’s my duty to find out.’

  ‘I wasn’t snooping, I was just looking.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I said: for an elastic band.’

  ‘But we don’t either of us believe that, do we, Velia?’ said Dusty.

  There was a moment of dead silence.

  ‘I was just looking,’ said Velia weakly. I’m in an ambiguous position, she thought. Yes, I am. Just a double woman. How could she explain that to suck up information about other people was second nature to her, that it fed her own mind, and was, in any case, what she had been taught to do. Ah, but it had been easy learning.

  ‘Well, we’ll leave that,’ said Dusty. ‘I know curiosity when I see it. I’ve met that sort of thing before, although I don’t know what you could find out that way that I wouldn’t tell you, Velia.’ She had genuine dignity as she spoke.

  Ah, but not your bank balance, not what your pension is, thought Velia. Who you hate and who you love and what you had for breakfast, but not the real things.

  ‘But that isn’t everything, not by a long chalk, that isn’t what’s worrying me, but you ringing up in that hysterical way you did. Now that was odd, Velia,’ said Dusty meditatively. ‘Because you didn’t really think that I’d get sick or jump in the river because of your poking around in my desk, so you must have thought it was somehow dangerous for me to catch you.’

  ‘Oh, go on.’ Velia moved uneasily.

  ‘I declare that must have been your reasoning, what you were getting at unconsciously. I can’t explain it any other way.’

  Not so unconscious, thought Velia, for that had indeed been her deep irrational fear, alerted who knew how?

  ‘I want to make it absolutely clear that is how you must have felt,’ went on Dusty relentlessly.

  Dusty was gradually taking on a witch-like quality in Velia’s eyes. She began to believe in telepathy.

  What with you and Charmian, she thought, I must be like a window with the two of you looking through me from side to side. No, I’m not a window, I’m a room, and there’s more of me inside.

  And because she knew that she was deep, deeper than either Charmian or Dusty knew, once again she felt a little unwise moment of triumph.

  ‘I think you’re imagining a whole lot, Dusty.’

  ‘I didn’t imagine that man’s voice this morning,’ said Dusty.

  ‘My new lodger, I told you.’

  ‘Laughing,’ said Dusty.

  ‘What would you say if I told you that I was going to marry him?’ There was a long pause.

  ‘I’d say you had your own little reason for doing it,’ said Dusty. ‘Who’s deceiving who?’

  ‘You can be really nasty,’ observed Velia mildly. ‘ You’re making me out a very funny sort of person.’

  ‘We understand each other at last, Velia,’ said Dusty.

  There was another long pause.

  ‘I don’t see why you have to be so, well, vindictive towards me,’ said Velia. It was a real point, and I’m being slightly clever in making it, she decided. ‘I don’t wish you any harm.’ Nor did she. ‘I just want to be happy with my own husband.’ In the circumstances this was about the most dangerous thing she could want. Charmian would have said so.

  Charmian was preoccupied with marriage anyway. Her neighbour Coniston attracted her and for all her experiences as a policewoman she didn’t know how to handle the problem. She wanted to see him frequently and she felt obscurely that she had to take the initiative although he always welcomed her. But meetings were not so easy to arrange. She was busy; he was diffident. They were too old to hold hands at the pictures, and she was too tired at the end of her day to go for long walks. So she had got into the habit of dropping in occasionally and simply talking to him. Or sometimes they sat in silence in his sparsely-furnished sitting-room. He was interested in her work. She had been with him the night before.

  He was a quiet gentle-voiced man who looked as though he was used to an outdoor life. He smiled as he saw Charmian.

  ‘Nice hat you’re wearing.’

  Charmian felt pleased. She hardly ever wore a hat, but in an attempt to look more feminine she had bought this pink-flowered one. In the shop it had certainly suited her. Outside in the clear daylight she had been less certain. Surely pink roses were wrong on a great big girl like her?

  ‘I wasn’t sure, really, if it was the sort of hat I like.’

  ‘It’s the sort of hat men like,’ he said simply.

  ‘And I can always take it off,’ she surprised herself by saying. She was surprised because her suggestion seemed to open up so many possibilities.

  ‘Yes. Yes, you can.’ He gave her a quick look and seemed satisfied by what he saw. Perhaps a little surprised too, but gratified. All he said was: ‘You’ll have to eventually.’ She laughed, and he went on ‘Anyway, it’s better than a hat that is really an umbrella.’

  ‘This hat’s really a symbol of defiance,’ she said. ‘I’m going to wear it to my sister’s wedding.’

  ‘Don’t you approve of marriage?’

  ‘Not this one – I think she’s a fool to get married.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He seemed taken aback and a little daunted.

  ‘I don’t like the man she’s marrying.’

  ‘I don’t think you like men at all very much,’ he said, watching her with bright eyes.

  Charmian was silent. ‘I’m clumsy, I suppose.’

  ‘But you wear a nice hat.’ He smiled and came over. ‘Suppose you take it off now?’ He did so. For a moment she thought he would kiss her, but he

  did not.

  She passed a restless night dreaming of rings and fish and rivers

  that swept her away with them.

  Next morning, still brooding about all the women in Deerham Hills she had to protect and who, like Velia, did not want to be protected, Charmian by-passed her own office where she could see Grizel working at a typewriter and went straight in to see Inspector Pratt. She had made up her mind to see Morgan herself that evening and measure him up against the man she was looking for.

  ‘I got your message you wanted me.’

  ‘How are you getting on with your comedian?’ said Pratt, hiding his cough. ‘ Found him yet?’

  ‘I’ve got something. But may be only guesswork. Probably is only guesswork.’

  He stood up.

  ‘Well, worry away at this. Your friend Stanley Beadle identified the woman in the river. Or at least, he identified the clothes. She was the woman he
saw wandering up and down Riverview Drive three weeks ago. Is he reliable?’

  ‘I should think he might be about that.’ Charmian remembered Stan’s eye for detail.

  ‘He’d better be. He’d better be. But we’re no further on, are we? We know he saw her, but she didn’t tell him who she was. They hardly spoke; she just asked him where she could get a cup of tea.’ Pratt sounded cross. ‘However it puts her fairly and squarely in Deerham Hills when she was murdered. So now we’ve got a murderer in Deerham Hills. And, what’s more, we’ve had him for about three weeks without knowing anything about it.’ He sounded tired. ‘Frankly, I wouldn’t be sorry if we didn‘ t know now.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s roll her up in a bundle and put her back in the river, shall we?’

  ‘At least she’s dead,’ said Charmian, going to Pratt’s window, which commanded an even better view than hers did. ‘My problem’s out there somewhere and I can’t find him.’

  ‘It’s possible that the people up north were wrong, and he didn’t come our way,’ said Pratt.

  Charmian shook her head. ‘We can’t roll all our problems up in bundles and drop them back in the river. He’s with us all right.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Pratt. ‘ There was one other thing in what Stanley Beadle had to say: the woman was carrying a handbag – a very noticeable one in blue and grey grained plastic.’

  ‘She didn’t have one with her when she was found.’