Murderes' Houses

by Jennie Melville

  At this point she looked up and saw the lights of Coniston’s house and wondered if she should go over, but she did not. The attraction he had had for her seemed fainter and far away, almost as if it was something her imagination had created. Without regret she saw the lights of his house go out. She might be able to think about him later, but not now.

  The telephone rang and guessing it was either Grizel or her mother, she ignored it. The bell rang obstinately for a long time, but she simply picked up the receiver and laid it on the table. It was like a blow in the face to Grizel who was at the other end of the line and could tell what had happened.

  Charmian left the sitting-room where the telephone still lay like a watchful ear and wandered up the stairs to her bedroom where she kicked off her shoes and lay on the bed smoking. After a little while she noticed the curtains were open; she got up to shut them and looked down into the garden. The garden seemed still and peaceful. She was a little surprised to see a light in Coniston’s hut. He must be working late.

  At midnight she felt hungry and made bread and cheese and ate it standing at the kitchen table; at once she felt stronger and from then on she rallied. It had been a sharp illness, but the first stage was over.

  Steadier now, she tidied the kitchen, which she saw looked desolate with coffee stains on the table and cigarette ash on the floor and bread crumbs in the sink. She even felt strong enough to be amused that she was sweeping the floor and polishing the table at half-past-midnight. When this was done she went into her sitting-room, sat down and drew up the filing cabinet and notebooks she kept in one corner. They were a duplicate set to those she had at work and represented many hours of patient work. Some of it was her work, some of it the work of the people she used, but only Charmian collected it all. Pratt no doubt had his own way of doing things, Rupert Ascoll another, this was hers. She frowned at the memory of Ascoll, hard, clever and possibly without scruples. He had a conscience though, thought Charmian, remembering the mouth and eyes; whatever he did, he would not be allowed, to forget.

  But although she surrounded herself with the familiar apparatus of work, Charmian knew that before she could get anywhere she had to think about Velia Ryman. She had to reassess her picture of Velia.

  Velia had been cleverer than she seemed. Or was it that someone behind Velia had been cleverer? Velia was Morgan’s creature, his puppet. Unconsciously Charmian had perceived that Velia needed someone to pull her strings and had thought that she was the person to do it. Her mistake, she thought grimly, because all the time there was someone off the stage already at work.

  She knew that Morgan had killed Velia. But nothing else was clear. She could not see why he had done it, or what part Velia had played in setting the stage for her own death. If she had written the letter accusing Charmian, if it was written with her own hand, then she must have wanted to involve Charmian with a lie.

  ‘Because it was a lie,’ said Charmian aloud fiercely, as if she wanted the whole house to hear.

  There seemed, logically, to be three possible reasons why Velia could have been killed. Her murder might always have been part of the plan, part of Morgan’s reason for coming to Deerham Hills. Charmian discounted this; she thought that the messages passed through the newspaper (if indeed they had been communications between Morgan and Velia) did not bear out a deeply-laid plot to kill his wife. Velia herself had seemed to welcome his arrival.

  But Velia’s death could be the result of a sudden quarrel between the two. Charmian decided that she had no evidence one way or the other about this guess. Clearly the police didn’t have either or they wouldn’t be so quick to suspect her, she thought bitterly, seeing herself so strangely on the other side of the fence.

  Lastly, Velia might have been killed because she suddenly appeared as a liability to Morgan. There were so many ways in which she could betray him even without malice, and wasn’t it possible that Velia had come to feel a little malice?

  Somehow this last explanation seemed the most likely. When you thought, it was not only likely but inevitable. Velia had threatened Morgan, whether she had meant to or not.

  And this brought Charmian right back to the problem she had faced in the beginning: why and how had Velia written the letter about Charmian?

  It was now two-thirty in the morning and there was still no desire for sleep in Charmian. Grizel muttered restlessly as she slept; Coniston turned over in his dark bed; Dusty slept her usual heavy dreamless sleep, her hair done up in curlers and her face greasy with night cream; her nephew dreamed about the Deluge; Velia lay still on her refrigerated tray; but Charmian crouched over her card indexes.

  Grizel suddenly sat bolt upright in bed and clutched her husband’s arm. He did not wake.

  ‘I know those newspaper entries had something to do with it,’ she said.

  ‘Do with it?’ muttered her husband, still sleeping.

  ‘And I’ll find out more about them if it kills me.’

  ‘Oh, don’t die, dear,’ murmured her husband comfortably. ‘Such a long cold journey on your own.’

  Grizel stared down at him.

  Charmian heard the clock strike three. She pushed her chair back from the table and went downstairs to get some more coffee. She felt almost cheerful. She had reached a decision.

  She believed Morgan had killed Velia because she was suddenly a danger to him.

  She believed that this danger was not only to his life but also to his plans. Morgan’s plans had been based upon some woman with money in Deerham Hills. This woman still existed and was still in danger from Morgan.

  ‘It’s like I said: there has to be another woman. Somewhere in Deerham Hills is the woman that Morgan is after. I have to find her.’

  Her mind dragged up the names of the two woman she had long ago thought likely prey for Morgan. How long ago it seemed now. Dusty Butcher and Rachel Lawson.

  There was no indication that the headmistress had any connection with Morgan at all. And searching her own mind, Charmian decided that she had thought of her because she would like her to run into trouble of some sort. She had seen her sail smoothly over other people’s troubles and had thought it might not do her any harm to discover she was vulnerable.

  But Dusty was another matter. She was the right type to attract Morgan. She had a house of her own and a little money. And, most important of all, there she was in close contact with Velia.

  Dusty was all lined up for the role of victim.

  As if she knew her name had come up, Dusty woke. She felt hot and thirsty. Her few days on her sister’s cooking had also left her feeling hungry.

  Enforced austerity had sharpened her wits. She was quite sure now that she didn’t trust her sister.

  ‘I was a fool to have her back in the house,’ she told herself angrily. ‘Don’t I remember the time when we were girls and she told me she hated me? Because I interfered in her life? I ought to have known it would be the same again … She’s the sort you can’t help. Like Velia.’ And a few uncomfortable tears squeezed out of her eyes and down her nose. Dusty crying was plainer than Dusty smiling.

  ‘One thing is certain: I shall tell them to leave tomorrow. I won’t be unkind, and I won’t hurry them, but they must go.’ As soon as she thought of them gone, and her house her own again, she felt better. She turned over and tried to get back to sleep.

  But by helping Patricia she had built a pattern into her life that was not so easy to get out of. It might have reminded Morgan of a maze.

  Charmian found her head nodding over her papers. Through her fatigue she started to think again about the charge that hung over her. She remembered the other evidence against her that Ascham had mentioned – the evidence of an eye-witness. This eye-witness was certainly the woman who had been Velia’s neighbour. She could explain it all to herself, and yet she had the strange feeling that more had been going on than she knew. It all centred on Velia and Velia’s uneasy mind.

  What had been happening to Velia? Perhaps in the end that was t
he real question to be answered.

  Her muscles relaxed, her eyes closed. Charmian was asleep.

  While she slept hands tried the front door, which was safely bolted. Footsteps moved quietly round the garden to the back. A face peered in the kitchen window. Charmian had not drawn the curtains nor had she locked the window.

  A hand came through. It would have been quite easy for the arm and then the rest of the body to follow.

  But this intruder did not want to get in.

  He wanted something belonging to Charmian. Something she used often. He groped and found it: her silver pocket knife. It had belonged to Charmian’s brother who had died. She always carried it. The knife was loaded with memories and associations and also fingerprints.

  Theft was not the purpose of this intruder and the pocket knife was not taken for its value.

  The ironic thing was that the intruder was someone who in the normal run of events could have asked Charmian for it.

  It was raining hard when Charmian woke up. Some time in the small hours she must have walked upstairs, undressed and got properly into bed. She discovered to her surprise that she had even hung up her clothes, something she often didn’t get round to doing when functioning properly.

  On the table by the bed were a couple of notebooks and a pad of paper, as though she had been working. The pad had several lines of writing on it in pencil.

  ‘Nice to think I’ve got such a hard-working unconscious,’ thought Charmian. ‘I must have been working in a dream.’

  But when she looked at the pad the only word recognisable was ‘Dusty’, scrawled over and over again. It didn’t even look like her own writing.

  When she got out of bed her whole body felt stiff and sore, as if last night had been one of great physical exertion. Her mental and emotional effort seemed to have translated itself to her muscles. She dressed, restored the telephone to its receiver, which it now seemed lunacy to have removed, and went downstairs to make breakfast.

  It was now raining, as if it would never stop. Great grey clouds were piled in the sky and seemed to reach as low as the garden trees. The rain was steady and thick in a way Charmian had rarely seen before.

  The telephone rang as soon as she got to the kitchen, as if someone had been on the alert for her to be in contact with the world again.

  ‘Hello?’ It was Grizel. ‘You didn’t answer last night.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not really answering now,’ complained Grizel.

  ‘I’m speaking.’

  ‘You’re uttering, you’re not communicating.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well for the time being,’ said Charmian. ‘We’d better be out of touch for a bit, Grizel.’ She felt thirty years older than Grizel and as if she was living in another world. How could they communicate?

  ‘We’ve been out of touch for weeks now, you and I,’ said Grizel, simply. ‘ Don’t think I haven’t known it, but this isn’t the time to bring it out into the open.’

  ‘How long do you think it will be that they leave me alone?’ asked Charmian. ‘At the moment I’m here on my own, no one’s asking me questions, no one’s listening to hear what I say and taking it down in evidence against me. How long is that going to last? Ask yourself that. And then it will be dangerous to even know me. It won’t do your life any good or your husband’s either.’

  She heard Grizel draw in an audible breath.

  ‘Yes, think about that, Grizel,’ she said savagely, and put down the receiver. —You’re not a nice person now, she thought, once you wouldn’t have spoken like that. But she had known for some hours now that anger, fear and resentment dragged you down into the pit with them.

  We shall have to knock it into her,’ said Grizel’s husband, placidly continuing with his breakfast, as Grizel reported the telephone call to him. ‘I always do if I think I can help someone. If I can help them, I help them, and no nonsense about whether they want to be helped or not. But the real thing is, Grizel,’ and he put his hand gently on hers, ‘do you believe you can help her?’ And, when she was silent, ‘Make up your mind about that, and we’ll know where to go from here.’

  ‘And do you think I can?’ asked Grizel sadly.

  ‘Yes, I do. I don’t believe all this stuff about being on your own. We’re sociable animals, not hermit crabs. That’s been Charmian’s trouble all along: she thought she could live on a mountain, and still be herself.’

  ‘You always convince me,’ said Grizel with a laugh.

  ‘That’s why I married you.’

  ‘When all this is over,’ said Grizel, ‘ do you think Charmian might marry William Carter?’

  ‘No, since you ask me, I don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He doesn’t convince me,’ said her husband, ‘so I don’t see why he should her.’

  Dusty was also awake early and in a good humour. She dressed and went downstairs prepared to start a new life. She ought to be back at work today anyway.

  Her good humour was a little diminished when she saw that her eldest nephew had risen early also.

  ‘It’s raining hard,’ he observed with satisfaction.

  ‘Not going to stop either,’ said Dusty, with a casual glance out of the window.

  ‘That’s what I think.’ He whistled to himself.

  ‘Not thinking of that old ark of yours, are you?’ Dusty laughed. ‘It wouldn’t float in a puddle.’ Her hand slipped on the bread knife and blood started to pour from her thumb. ‘Here, help me, get something to tie this up with instead of standing there staring at me as if you hate me.’

  ‘I hate you, Aunty, and I have a reason to hate you.’

  ‘Oh, little boys can’t hate,’ said Dusty. ‘They’re not old enough.’

  ‘Do you think I love my mother?’ He was still staring.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you do,’ said Dusty uncertainly, not sure what trap she was walking into.

  ‘You’re right. I do love her … Think about it, Aunt. If I can love, then can’t I …’ He did not finish the sentence.

  —Tiresome, unbeatable boy, thought Dusty, sucking her thumb.

  Deerham Hills was drenched and soaking in the rain. The trees were dripping and the few remaining flowers bent beneath the steady heavy fall. Here and there a gutter was choked with leaves and small streams rose and swirled in the road so that cars slapped and splashed through them. The woods on the hill were silent except for the steady splash and splutter of the rain on their branches. At the bottom of the hill the river in which Florence Chandler had rested was already looking swollen. People crossing the bridge at Abbot’s End could stare down into its distended muddy waters and see odds and ends of rubbish floating about in it. The river seemed to be sucking away at a rubbish dump and bearing the prizes away with it.

  Grizel splashed through the rain to the bus stop to wait for her bus. All the buses passing into the town centre were crowded and she had some time to wait. She saw plenty of schoolgirls making their way to the big school and presently she saw the headmistress herself drive past in her car, in a hurry as usual. At the bus station she saw Charmian’s old enemy, Tony Foss. Once more he was getting onto a bus carrying a case. But this perpetual smell of mystery, of just what Tony Foss had in the case and where he was going, failed to interest her this morning, although she recorded it automatically. There was still no hard news of the Flete girl, who was still missing.

  Grizel was almost sure she saw Charmian’s car pass some distance away from her.

  Charmian, having sharper eyes, saw Grizel and recognised her at once even through the rain. Grizel was wearing a bright yellow raincoat and matching hat, and looked a cheerful figure. Charmian could see her wave and smile at someone. —I haven’t broken her heart anyway, she thought, and in spite of herself was able to draw some small comfort from the cheerful, normal figure of her friend.

  Charmian swung right past the town centre, past the area where the police station and the library and the bus station faced each o
ther and headed up the hill towards the hospital. She meant to see Dusty.

  The interview had to be taken carefully. She was suspended, she was no longer acting officially, and she was not sure what the legal position was in going round asking questions. But there was no sense in worrying about entering a house if they already suspected you of burning a whole street down.

  She sat in her car and looked at the outside of Dusty’s office. Velia and Dusty had worked in a little red brick annexe to the main building, separated from the other wings by a covered corridor. This isolation probably suited Dusty who liked to feel she was boss of her own territory; it suited Charmian now.

  She got out of her car and walked over to look in the window. There was one solitary figure sitting in the office, a girl with fair hair who was sitting smoking. At intervals she typed a few words. She was sitting in Dusty’s chair but she was certainly not Dusty.

  ‘My, you’re wet,’ she said as Charmian came in.

  ‘And only from my car to here, too,’ said Charmian giving herself a shake. She did not explain that she had spent several minutes at the window.

  ‘I think it’s the deluge again, don’t you?’ said the girl brightly.

  ‘Could be.’ Charmian was considering how to begin. The girl got in first.

  ‘You’re the police again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charmian. How could she deny it?

  ‘I knew your face.’ She leaned forward and put out her cigarette. ‘I’m April Miller. But I don’t know why you’ve come. I told the last lot I didn’t know anything about Mrs Ryman, and anyway she’d left work here … Old Dusty knows more, of course.’ And she laughed.

  ‘I really came to see her,’ said Charmian carefully.

  The girl shook her head. ‘ Not here. As you see. And I expected her. Rang up to say she was coming in today. But so far, no Dusty. I can bear it.’ She spread herself out at Dusty’s desk.

  ‘I think I’ll just examine the desk.’

  The girl swung round and looked at another desk by the window. ‘But the other lot went over that with a tooth-comb and anyway there wasn’t anything in it. Mrs Ryman took everything.’