Windsor Red

by Jennie Melville

  Baby had been away for about that length of time.

  ‘Might be some under the counter. When we took over the shop there was a great box of stuff we left alone.’ She bent down, ignoring her husband’s advice to ‘Leave it, Bessie’ and presently came up with a dusty box. ‘What about these?’ On the dented packet was a picture of a Turkish beauty, full length on a couch and wreathed around in clouds of smoke. ‘ Scented Dreams’, said a golden band of lettering above her head. ‘Bit stale, eh?’ Bessie blew some dust off.

  ‘Better not,’ said Charmian. ‘I’ll take a box of chocolates.’ Baby liked chocolates. ‘And an evening paper.’

  As she paid for her purchases the child woke up and gave a soft wail. ‘All right down there?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think he’s too well,’ said Bessie. ‘Just his teeth, I dare say. Our doc’s away on holiday, though.’

  At least Charmian knew the child’s sex now.

  ‘Other doctors,’ muttered the father from behind his wife.

  ‘I like our Dr Cook,’ she said firmly. ‘ Your paper,’ she said to Charmian who glanced quickly at the newspaper as she walked the few yards to the Zeppo Cocktail Bar where she had arranged to meet Baby.

  ‘A third missing infant found safe,’ she read. A third infant? Returned safely, though. It sounded like an interesting story.

  She thought about it as she waited for Baby who was late. Probably on purpose. Beryl Andrea Barker belonged to an age and a style that thought you owed it to yourself to keep people waiting.

  Baby came up behind her and placed a cool fragrant finger on Charmian’s neck. ‘Hi. Don’t jump, it’s only me.

  ‘I haven’t. And I know.’

  ‘Oh I’ve made you mad,’ said Baby with delight. She slid on to the seat opposite Charmian, looking around her with pleasure as she did so. ‘ Oh I do love this place. Just suits me. What did I do before it was invented?’ She was a slender, delicately boned woman built on a core of steel. Even Charmian, who had known her for some time, through various vicissitudes, and knew that she had been a hairdresser, respected the way she kept her appearance together. Her pale silver-blonde hair was lightly tipped with a pinky gold which made a delicate halo round her head. A light sheen on her eyelids matched the gloss on her cheeks, while her lipstick was a soft browny pink that Charmian only wished she could find for herself.

  She pushed the box of chocolates across the table. ‘ I brought you these. Tried to get you some of those cigarettes you used to smoke.’

  ‘I’ve given them up,’ said Baby virtuously. ‘You ought to know that. Bad for the skin. At my age you can’t afford to run risks. I’ll have a Zinzy-Zeppo cocktail, please. That’s my special at the moment. They put peach juice in the vodka with a little extra something they won’t tell.’

  ‘I wish I could find a lipstick that colour,’ said Charmian as she ordered the drink. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘It wouldn’t look like that on you,’ said Baby at once. ‘It’s the chemistry.’

  ‘Oh come on, Baby. I’m not made of different things.’

  ‘I don’t call myself that any more,’ said Baby, as she grabbed her drink. ‘You can call me Andrea. And you are different: more acid.’ The cocktail was pale pink with a hint of green in its depths. Baby was enjoying it in neat little sips. The liquid was disappearing quite fast, though.

  ‘Come on then, sweet-skinned, non-smoking Andrea. Work.’

  Charmian laid her notebook open on the table in front of them.

  ‘Oh dear. I hate talking about them. I feel so disloyal. Why can’t you get it all from books?’

  ‘Because that’s not what research is all about. I do use books. I work in libraries, but I need to ask you questions too.’

  ‘Promise me that it’s for the good of them all. I’ve got my loyalties and memories, don’t forget.’

  Charmian took a deep breath. ‘I promise.’ She had in front of her a list of six names:

  Rebecca Amos

  Betty Dedman

  Laraine Finch

  Elsie Hogan

  Nix Hooper

  Yvonne King.

  She studied them. ‘Really called Nix, is she?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she was christened it, but it was what she preferred.’

  ‘And you knew them all pretty well?’

  ‘Yes. And they were kind to me. I wouldn’t have got on very well inside if it hadn’t been for them. Not a girl like me.’

  ‘Call them friends, would you?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Yes,’ said Baby.

  ‘In all that lot, all of them equal, all the same? Any leader?’

  ‘No, not the same. Not all equal, though. A leader? It has to be Laraine.’

  Charmian studied the addresses. Slough, Datchet, Hounslow and Old Windsor.

  ‘Not far away, are they?’

  ‘No. Surprising, really, that we’re all so close.’

  Charmian smiled. ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

  She was late home, another meeting after Baby.

  The Yard was dark.

  There was a row of dustbins ready to be emptied. And, resting by them, a black plastic sack.

  Chapter Three

  CHARMIAN WOKE EARLY and made a large mug of coffee to take back to bed. Muff came in with her, delighted to have company at this hour in the morning. She settled down on the bed purring heavily. After a while she began to make soft but pointed suggestions about food. Charmian ignored her; she was not hungry herself. Muff turned the volume up.

  ‘No, Muff. I’ve got to drink this coffee while I think.’

  Last night, after leaving Baby, she had gone to meet her local partner, a discreetly important police officer, at his home in Old Windsor. He was to be her liaison in the district. Her base was now London, where they had met once before in Humphrey Kent’s office. Then he had seemed slightly ill at ease but here, on his own ground, he was relaxed, even cheerful.

  He had fed her on beef sandwiches and beer because that was what he was taking himself. ‘Wife’s away. Made the sandwiches myself. Mustard?’

  He had probably sent his wife off on purpose. Most policemen kept their wives out of things. There was a child, too. Charmian had seen a small bike in the hall.

  While he ate, he was reading her notes. ‘Before you go I’ll make a photocopy of all this. OK?’ Charmian nodded. He chewed on a piece of beef. ‘These women, you think your friend is telling you the truth about them?’

  ‘As she knows it.’ Charmian was cautious. In her experience, Baby always knew a bit more than she told.

  ‘This is good work.’ He rested a huge hand on her report. He was a large man with a crest of fair hair set above a square face lit by pale blue eyes: a real Saxon. He had the right name, Harold English. She could imagine him at the Battle of Hastings, wielding an axe. And dying. She wasn’t sure he liked her, but he was a man whose respect was worth having. And you’ve met them all?’

  ‘Once as a group.’ Baby had arranged a meeting in London. ‘And then watched them once.’ Without them knowing, or so she hoped. She had observed them all together in a wine bar in Eton High Street. ‘ I hope to be talking to each of them as much as I need. I have to get their confidence.’ And, of course, Baby was telling her plenty. She knew how to read between the lines with Baby. ‘ I have this picture of them. Taken when they all went on a day trip to Dieppe.’

  Harold English studied it. ‘Look ordinary enough. But they must have something special to have their records. Oh, they’re a set all right.’

  Charmian appraised the word. Yes, they were a set. You didn’t use the word gang of women much, but they could be called so. ‘I am specially interested in this one.’ She pointed at Laraine. ‘And this one.’ Nix. You had to be a someone to call yourself nothing.

  They continued talking quietly, two professionals discussing their work. Windsor had special problems, he said, with the Castle and all the tourists it attracted. But he could not accept Charmian’s view that crime was
neutral, no, there were some crimes for women and some for men. They fell into categories. Naturally.

  For instance, they had had a series of babies being taken, then returned in a few days, unharmed. Puzzling. But a woman’s crime.

  ‘Men like babies, too,’ Charmian reminded him. ‘ Probably desire them passionately sometimes, as much as women.’ There was even a movement starting, so she had heard, to research into men bearing the children, nourishing the foetus inside them through the stomach wall.

  ‘Ah,’ he looked gently triumphant. ‘But some things are special. So happens that one of the babies had a few tests done on it, because it had been sick. The doctor worked out the kid had been breast-fed. Anyway, with human milk. And that’s still something a man can’t do.’

  ‘So you look for a woman who has recently had a child. And probably lost it. Still-born or a cot death.’

  ‘Yes. Only we can’t locate such a suspect.’ He gave her a wry grin. ‘The field is empty. All such local women seem in the clear.’

  She allowed herself ten minutes in which to get round to asking about Harry and Kate; and made it in five.

  ‘Heard about it,’ he admitted. ‘Nothing to do with me, of course.’

  ‘You’re not looking for them?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Are you worried?’

  He did not ask her why the personal interest, she noticed, he knew.

  ‘I’d like to know.’ Then she said: ‘And I’d like to know if he has a record.’

  ‘Ah.’ Harold English considered, putting his hands on his knees in what she was coming to recognise as a characteristic gesture. ‘See what I can do.’

  She had got as much as she could for the moment, and because she guessed he liked pretty manners in a woman police officer, she said thank you nicely.

  Charmian lay back against her pillows, drinking her coffee while thinking about all this. About Harry who might have a record, and Kate who was a wild one, and Baby who might or might not be leading her up the garden path.

  No, she did not think so. Within the bounds of what you could expect from her then, Baby was telling the facts. Baby had changed, after all, desired now to be a respectable member of society called Beryl Andrea Barker.

  She stroked Muff’s head and the cat murmured something soft about breakfast. Charmian got up and started to dress. A day for a shirt and jeans, but the shirt could be silk and as well made as she could afford. She bought expensive shirts in a shop off Knightsbridge and washed them herself. She had come a long way from the gauche girl who had joined the Force in Deerham Hills, married, made a bit of a mistake of it, but had kept her life going.

  What a strange person I’ve turned out to be, she thought, not what I expected when I left Dundee University with a good degree and no plans for the future except success.

  She did her hair and was applying lipstick with a brush when she heard the screaming.

  She went to the window and looked down on the Yard. Anny was standing by the dustbins with the plastic sack at her feet.

  It was Anny screaming.

  She had given two sharp screams, and now was silent. But still standing there, her eyes on the sack. As Charmian looked, Jack appeared at their door and hurried over to Anny. She turned to him and buried her head in his shoulder.

  Charmian ran down the stairs and out into the yard. ‘What is it? Anny, what’s up? Why were you screaming?’

  Jack turned a puzzled face to Charmian. ‘I dunno. Can’t get her to say anything.’

  ‘The sack,’ muttered Anny, not looking up. ‘In the sack.’ Charmian walked over, dragged open the sack—it was heavier than she’d expected—and looked inside. The smell that rose up at her alerted her to what she was going to find. Flesh. Dead flesh of some sort. A butcher’s throw-outs perhaps? But they were nearly all vegetarians in the Yard. Who went to the butcher’s? Then she took in what she was really seeing. The gorge rose in her throat. ‘God!’

  She closed the sack and stepped back.

  ‘What is it?’ Jack was still holding Anny in his arms.

  ‘It’s a leg,’ said Charmian. ‘Could be two legs. Or maybe an arm and a leg. I didn’t look very closely.’ She felt sick.

  Anny spoke in tiny little gasps, as if fear was clutching at her windpipe. ‘It’s Harry. Bits of him. Kate said she’d send them.’

  Charmian could see Jerome coming towards them across the Yard, and Elspeth wheeling her bicycle round the corner.

  ‘Get Anny into the house,’ she ordered Jack. ‘And stop her talking.’

  Jerome and Elspeth reached her simultaneously. ‘What is it?’ said Jerome.

  Charmian did not answer him directly, she was occupied in stopping Elspeth looking in the sack. She thought Elspeth might be a fainter and a screamer: she felt like being one herself as she held Elspeth’s arm.

  ‘Don’t look in there. I shouldn’t if I were you.’

  But Jerome had looked already; he stood back with a grim face. ‘Go inside, Elspeth.’

  With a frightened face, Elspeth obeyed, disappearing with her bike round the side of his shop.

  ‘The police?’ he queried.

  Charmian nodded. ‘Have to be.’

  ‘You or me?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ I like this man, she thought. He accepts what has to be done without arguing. ‘You stay here.’

  Jerome nodded. ‘Give a minute to Elspeth after that, will you? She looks as if she’s had a shock.’

  Shocks all round, thought Charmian, maybe more than you know.

  She made a short call to the local station, heard an explosive sound at the other end, said: ‘ It’s not funny,’ and put the receiver down.

  Then she went to see Anny. She found her with Jack in their kitchen, where he was dabbing at her face with a towel. ‘She’s better now.’

  Anny moaned. She didn’t look better, to Charmian’s eye she looked terrible. And there was Elspeth to think about.

  ‘Who’s your doctor?’

  ‘Dr Cook, his surgery’s just around the corner in York Square. But he’s on holiday with his girlfriend,’ said Jack, still concentrating on his wife.

  ‘I don’t want to know about his sex life, he’s got a locum, hasn’t he? What’s the number?’

  Then she felt sorry for Jack, who always got the thin end, who loved his child and must feel bad, too. She touched his arm. ‘You make the call, I’ll look after Anny.’

  Jack turned a dazed stare on her, then stumbled out of the room; she guessed he would have a swift drink before calling the doctor, and for once she did not blame him.

  ‘Anny.’ She moved Anny gently to look at her. ‘Anny, don’t go shouting off about what you think is in the sack. You could be wrong.’ Anny gave a convulsive shudder. ‘ Yes, I know, but still don’t say anything. You aren’t doing any good. Let the police make their own discoveries.’ They will, she thought.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’

  ‘Gone to make a telephone call for me. Stay where you are, he’s all right. Anny … what were you doing out there? And why the hell did you look in the sack?’

  ‘Wanted to put something in the bin.’ She paused. ‘I could see … I know about shapes, I thought I saw a foot.’ She looked away. ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘You’ve got your official face on. I haven’t seen it often but I know it when I see it. Don’t be like that.’

  ‘Well, yes, I think it was a foot.’

  ‘Kate meant me to find it.’

  ‘I think you’d better stop talking like this, Anny.’ What kind of a child did Anny think she had bred? What kind of a child had she?

  Jack reappeared, amidst a strong whiff of whisky, to give a nod. ‘Doc’s on the way.’ He added briefly and quietly: ‘The police have arrived.’

  Hard on his heels hurried the doctor, a delightful young woman with a crop of red-gold curls, staggering under the weight of her bag. She was the locum, she announced breathlessly, Dr Cook was due back last night bu
t she was still here, she was going to see Mrs Elspeth Green when she had done here and what was the trouble?

  But she proved both efficient and kindly; as Charmian left, she heard her recommending bed and a rest. Probably her standard advice that Elspeth would get as well when her turn came.

  Back in her own place she picked up Muff while she stood looking out of the window. Yes, there were the police.

  She saw the small group that must include the scene of the crime officer. The man kneeling by the sack was probably the police surgeon while behind him stood a photographer. At the entrance to Wellington Yard two uniformed constables, one a woman, were stationed to keep back onlookers. The dustmen had arrived to be argued with and halted.

  It was strange to be on the outside. Yet emotionally she was involved all right. She was in an odd position, one where she could certainly pull rank to find out what was going on, but also one where she must not compromise her other work.

  Damn Kate.

  No, she must not say that, not even lightly, because Kate might be damned already.

  As she stood there, hugging a soft purring cat for comfort, she wondered that Anny had not had the worst thought of all about what was in the sack.

  In the Robertsons’ shop the news arrived with the dustmen who came in for fags and to pass on the tale. When you knew something like that, then you longed to tell.

  A rumour had already reached Bessie Robertson. ‘So not a whole dead body then?’ she said, a shade disappointed, even in her niceness.

  ‘Bits.’ The police constable had not been totally discreet since the man on the bins was a neighbour.

  ‘Could be from the hospital then.’ Bessie had a vague notion of spare limbs and organs that the surgeons had done with being put out in the rubbish. Not nice but you could understand it and best not to think about it.

  The bin man assured her that it did not work like that and that hospitals had their own ways of disposing of such oddments. He picked up his cigarettes and left. He was for foul play, he said.

  ‘What’s foul play, Mum?’ asked her middle son, Peter, as if he did not know. ‘ Is it like in football?’