Murderes' Houses

by Jennie Melville

  And that was why Dusty was hammering on Velia’s front door at this moment.

  ‘You won’t get an answer,’ declared the next door neighbour, appearing suddenly with only her head showing over the wall, rather like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, only without the smile.

  ‘Why won’t I get an answer?’ said Dusty, prepared, as always, to be aggressive.

  ‘Because the milkman didn’t get an answer, because the postman didn’t get an answer, and I didn’t either.’

  Looking as if she knew the answer to that one, Dusty turned back to the door and she drummed a sharp little tattoo with the knocker. After a pause she banged again.

  ‘I told you you wouldn’t get an answer.’

  ‘She’s in there,’ said Dusty in an irritable way. ‘I saw her feet.’

  ‘She is?’ Velia’s neighbour sounded genuinely surprised. ‘I’d never have believed it. Are you sure?’

  Dusty silently led the way round to the window of the front sitting-room and peered through. Yes, she could still make out what looked like Velia’s feet.

  ‘She must be ill,’ said the neighbour, looking troubled, but also interested.

  ‘Yes,’ Dusty took a deep breath. ‘We’ll have to get in … She may be lying there helpless.’

  ‘I’ve got a key.’

  ‘You have?’ Now it was Dusty’s turn to be surprised. In fact she staggered; she couldn’t imagine Velia letting anyone have a key to her house.

  ‘I kept one for the last tenant … Of course I’ve never used it while Mrs Ryman was here.’ She was full of her own virtue.

  ‘Go and get it,’ said Dusty, pressing her nose to the window again. Yes, she could see Velia at the edge of her line of vision. She was sitting in a chair.

  The two women let themselves silently into the house. The hall was quiet and empty and a little dusty. The sitting-room door was half open.

  Resolutely Dusty marched forward and pushed the door back. She didn’t enter the room.

  But even from the door it was easy enough to see.

  Velia lay back in the cheap blue armchair, her feet resting on the footstool, just as Dusty had seen through the window, but her head drooped over the side of the chair, swollen and contused with blood.

  Dusty stood rigid. Behind her the other woman screamed.

  Dusty didn’t hear her, nor did she hear her crying that she must get the police, nor notice her departure.

  She went over and stood by Velia’s chair.

  ‘Did you ring me up for help, old girl?’ she said with awkward tenderness. ‘And did I fail you? Did your old Dusty fail you?’

  Tears were rolling down her face.

  As she stood there she saw that a ball of screwed-up paper had been thrust down the side of the chair almost as if Velia had tried to hide it in the crack between chair and cushion. It was perfectly obvious, however, and, without thinking, she withdrew it, smoothed out the folds between her fingers and stared at it. She saw at once it was a letter. Her eyes ran along the lines, reading.

  She was still standing there, with a strange look on her face, when the other woman returned.

  ‘I’ve got the police. They’re coming.’

  ‘Tell them not to send that woman Daniels,’ said Dusty, still with that set look on her face.

  It so happened that on the Wednesday evening neither Charmian nor Grizel were working late in their office in Deerham Hills police station. Grizel had gone home to cook her husband’s supper and Charmian for a solitary evening, to think and be calm. She felt in need of both. While she thought, she cleaned her house and washed out some clothes. She wasn’t good at either job.

  Before parting she and Grizel had discussed the business of the Flete girl, about whom there was still no news. At any rate, she wasn’t in the river, which was what they both had feared. On the other hand, they hadn’t found her.

  ‘And after this time, that isn’t so good,’ said Grizel, puckering up her forehead.

  The search for the girl was now being conducted not only by the local police and the county force, but by the police of the two neighbouring counties and London as well. Both women knew that if they hadn’t found her the chances were that she wasn‘t alive to be found.

  Grizel shook her head. ‘ If she’s alive she must turn up somewhere. She must go into a place for food and drink.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Charmian thoughtfully. ‘She could be in hiding.’

  ‘She’s still got to eat,’ said Grizel. ‘In the end she’s going to have to come out.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Charmian. ‘But someone might be helping her … It might be worthwhile to have a look round her friends.’

  ‘You’re right. I think I’ll do just that.’ Grizel tightened up her coat (it had begun to rain, a cold fine drenching rain) and postponed for an hour the steak she was going to grill for her husband’s supper.

  While Charmian was washing her stockings and still seeking that Buddha-like calm that seemed so desirable, she heard the telephone.

  ‘No luck on the friends. It was a good idea, though.’ Grizel sounded dejected and tired. ‘Well, I’m home now and I’d like to stay there.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be a quiet night,’ said Charmian, looking out of the window and yawning. ‘But if anything does come up, it’s for me to take, not you.’

  ‘That’s right … Except I never feel off duty, do you, when there’s a case on?’

  ‘There’s always a case on,’ said Charmian, putting the receiver down. In the background of Grizel’s call she could hear a man’s voice and music; it sounded domestic and comfortable, but she was out of tune with domesticity tonight. Back to Tibet, she thought, resuming her thoughts about contemplation and the disciplined life.

  There was one other woman working in Deerham Hills with Charmian and Grizel, a very junior assistant named Sarah Reddaway. She was a nice child but lacking in confidence, and Charmian knew that if anything unusual came up Sarah would be on the line. Normally she enjoyed showing the wide-eyed Sarah the ropes, but tonight Charmian was so bone-tired that she hoped Sarah stayed dumb.

  She glanced at the clock. Almost eight o’clock. Even Sarah would be off duty in ten minutes. Deerham did not keep its women police on duty after that, although they were, of course, on call.

  It was eight-fifteen when the telephone rang.

  She counted ten before she answered the telephone, wondering which of the nasty little bundles resting partly on her shoulders it was going to be about: Mrs Chandler, Marley, or the Flete girl. Or even something she didn’t know about, something new, demanding urgent attention.

  Sarah was quite distinct, however, and seemed to have her facts, and her voice, well under control.

  ‘There’s some trace of the Flete girl up on a farm off the Moordown Road … you know? I have the exact address here. I’d go myself, but we’ve got a lost baby just been brought in and the station officer would have hysterics if I left it on him.’

  ‘Wait while I get a pad and pencil and I’ll write it all down.’

  ‘They’ve found a coat that could be hers in an old farm cottage no one uses now … it’s condemned or something.’

  ‘Cheerful.’

  ‘It’s still furnished apparently, so it’s not a bad little hide-out. If that’s what she was doing.’ Sarah sounded doubtful. One of her weaknesses as a policewoman was that she expected everyone to behave predictably, and, if possible, exactly as she, Sarah, would have behaved. When they didn’t, she was incredulous. Charmian hoped this was just due to her inexperience but feared it might be due to lack of imagination. ‘Seems unlikely to me.’

  ‘You’re not thirteen, in a bad way from shock, and possibly pregnant,’ said Charmian, as she put the receiver down.

  She got on her coat, locked up the house, and went to get her car from the garage. Next door she could see Coniston in his kitchen. She looked wistfully and drove away.

  So she was in the country, five miles from Deerham Hills, when the po
lice first got the news about Velia.

  But as it happened, her telephone did not ring and no message was sent to her.

  Grizel watched the fire turn blue and gold with flames as the logs caught.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ she said. ‘Home is best.’

  Her husband appeared at the kitchen door with an apron round his waist.

  ‘Look, I know you’re a working girl and have to get your rest, but could you tell me why every dish we have in the place is lying out there dirty for me to wash up, including three soup plates, when as far as I know we haven’t had soup since Easter?’

  ‘Oh, I used them to mix the gravy,’ said Grizel.

  ‘I didn’t get any gravy. I’m not complaining, I liked the meat fine, but there wasn’t any gravy.’

  ‘No,’ said Grizel with a frown. ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t very good gravy, even the cat wouldn’t touch it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by even the cat,’ said her husband, disappearing back to his kitchen sink. ‘That cat’s quite a gourmet. Remember he’s the cat that will only eat his herring fried in butter.’

  ‘A lovely, quiet evening,’ said Grizel, snuggling down on the old sofa. ‘ Don’t forget to make the coffee hot and strong,’ she called out to her husband.

  After a while her husband appeared with a tray of coffee; he was breathing heavily and had a long scratch down one cheek.

  ‘You’re lucky to have cream with this coffee,’ he said. ‘I had quite a struggle with the cat over it. He seemed to think it was his.’

  ‘Oh no, you were quite safe,’ said Grizel stretching out her hand for a cup. ‘He only likes cream with sugar in it.’

  ‘You should tell that to him, not me,’ said her husband, still breathing heavily and mopping up the blood on his cheek. ‘I think he got confused in there.’

  Grizel patted the cat, which had followed the tray in. It was a bold-eyed, thickly-striped tabby.

  ‘Isn’t it funny Emily Carter’s cat turning out to be a she and having a litter after all these years?’ Emily’s husband was a teacher in the same school as Grizel’s and the cat had been her gift, if gift it could be called.

  ‘Like everything connected with Emily Carter it’s larger than life and twice as fertile,’ grunted her husband. ‘Imagine a world populated by Emily Carter. She’s having quite a shot at doing it, too,’ he shuddered. ‘ How many children is it now? Eight?’

  ‘Seven,’ said Grizel, she rather admired Emily. ‘But two were twins, which wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘She seems to think it’s a race between her and the Chinese.’ He settled down on the sofa beside his wife.

  Some hours later Grizel rose to her feet and yawned. ‘It didn’t turn out to be such a quiet evening after all. Your mother phoned.’

  ‘And Emily phoned.’

  ‘And Charmian phoned,’ said Grizel.

  ‘This town is full of strong-minded women,’ said her husband. ‘And they all have our telephone number.’

  The telephone rang again. Grizel looked at it doubtfully and pouted, a trick she had learnt lately and which still wrung her husband’s heart with love. She picked it up.

  A voice spoke from it as soon as she had the receiver off. Her husband could tell at once that she was surprised. He went into the bedroom and picked up the extension.

  Inspector Pratt was speaking.

  ‘I want you to come down here right away. Mrs Velia Ryman is dead; strangled.’

  ‘But Charmian …’ began Grizel.

  ‘No, not Charmian,’ said Pratt, harshly. ‘ I don’t want Charmian. You.’

  ‘She’s out anyway,’ said Grizel. ‘ Something about the Flete girl. She telephoned.’

  Pratt did not answer.

  Grizel went into the bedroom, and started silently putting on her coat.

  ‘Well, you heard,’ she said. ‘So you know.’

  ‘I wish you’d give this job up.’ He was angry.

  ‘Pratt’s got two hysterical women witnesses on his hands and wants me … I’ll take the car.’ The car was her husband’s and she did not normally drive it.

  ‘I’ll drive you.’ He got up.

  ‘No.’ Gently Grizel pushed away from him. ‘This is business. I’ll drive myself.’

  When she came back, some two hours later, he took one look at her and silently went over, took her coat, and undid her shoes.

  ‘It’s not that I’m so tired,’ said Grizel through stiff white lips, ‘though I am. It was just so horrible.’ She shook her head. ‘Oh, it wasn’t just Velia Ryman, I’ve seen worse than that after a traffic accident, many a time, and will again … No,’ as her husband made an angry sound. ‘You mustn’t protect me too much.’

  ‘I don’t protect you at all,’ he said.

  ‘Anyway, it wasn’t that … it was the whole feeling of the house. The two other women there. And, Ted, two strange policemen came in while I was there.’

  ‘So?’ He was bringing her a hot drink.

  Grizel stared straight in front of her. They came in just before I left … Pratt must have sent for them, straight away without waiting. They were men from Central. London men. That’s not like Pratt. He’d have to get authority for it, too. And at this time of night …’ She took the cup of tea from him, but did not drink it. She sat there, still staring straight ahead. ‘Something odd is happening … I don’t understand it … Charmian?’ she said it questioningly. ‘Was it that they didn’t want her there?’ And carefully putting down her cup of tea, she burst into tears.

  After her husband had soothed her and got her to bed, he sat for a long time smoking and thinking.

  Like his wife he could see the danger signals being hoisted, and he didn’t like what he saw.

  Only Charmian remained in ignorance of what had happened, what was happening. She came home after an exhausting and probably pointless expedition. The cottage had offered little real evidence that the lost girl had ever been there. If she had been, she had now gone.

  Charmian went to bed, not happy, but relatively at peace.

  Work went on all night in Velia’s house, and down at the police station there was much coming and going. Over everything there was an air of tension and anxiety. When dawn came, a bird flying past Pratt’s window would have seen a vivid picture. By the end of the night the workers knew a good deal and guessed more about the strange life of Velia Ryman.

  Chapter Nine

  MORGAN was travelling on a bus. He was obliged to travel by bus because he had little spare money, and he was travelling by bus because he had nowhere to go. It was a paradox. He had nowhere to go (not just yet anyhow) so he was travelling round and round Deerham Hills filling in time. And yet he knew already that time was short for him, and although he was travelling round and round wasting time, he really had none to spare.

  He was Marley, Morgan, Preddle and others, many names and one body, travelling round in time and space.

  ‘And yet I always come back to one spot,’ he thought, staring at that spot which was the bus station at Deerham Hills. ‘ Marley, the Man from Mars,’ he murmured, but he checked that impulse – no need to be too loopy.

  Yet as a boy he had often imagined himself as a visitor from another planet, a man coming from outer space. Better than coming from the horrid hot womb from which he had sprung, and which, against all the evidence, he thought of as furry.

  He glanced down at his hands. He was terribly, terribly deft with them; no one ever noticed. The child in the library was an exception. In any case, only the palms and inside the arms were affected. And the lizards tattooed on the forearm certainly distracted the eye, didn’t they? He had had Velia tattooed as well, as if with his badge. The idea had once amused them both.

  But even the thought of anyone not being distracted, and seeing his hereditary ill, made his palms sweat.

  ‘Hate heredity … Hate my mother.’ He always blamed his mother, although for all he knew the defective chromosome might have come to him through his father.

&n
bsp; It didn’t even console him that he was, in a sense, a historical phenomenon, and could add his own footnote in a book on mutating genes. Siegfried had suffered in the way he did, not the romantic hero of Wagner, but the more reckless Siegfried of the Niebelungenlied.

  It was perfectly to the point however, and perhaps explained a good deal, that his mother had hated him. She thought it was as disobliging of him to turn up in the world with the skin of a lizard, as he thought it of her to have produced him. They were both a little crazed with each other.

  She became famous in her neighbourhood as the Uniform Lady. She joined anything that offered her a uniform. This obsession, common enough in men, is unusual in women. She reached her apogee during the war, in the National Fire Service, and was a bus conductress in London when she died. Perhaps her need for uniform came from a general feeling that if she couldn’t command her own body, at least she could command other people’s.

  Meanwhile her son was oppressed by a strong sense of He and They. They were powerful and He was weak. They were personified by women in uniform, by all women in authority. It was a mixed bag of emotions he had assembled. Because of his sense of weakness he had developed his own ideas about food, and the exact diet that fed the soul. His spirit needed liver and raw finely minced meat to sustain it. He never touched milk or alcohol.

  But his real starting point was his last meeting with his mother, just before she died, in Parker’s Road Hospital for Nervous Diseases.

  ‘I wonder what became of me,’ she said, staring at him.

  ‘You took yourself for a long walk and got lost,’ he answered sourly.

  ‘I don’t see how you make that out.’ It was one of her saner days.

  ‘You’d have lost yourself any day, the moment you took your uniform off.’ ‘I’m not connecting very well today,’ she said faintly, turning her

  head away.

  The next day, still possessing her bus-conductress’s uniform,

  although not actually wearing it, she died. She left her son all her

  savings, which amounted to some two hundred and fifty pounds. The idea of profiting from women came to him the day of his