Windsor Red

by Jennie Melville

  You could take it either way.

  At the door she stopped suddenly, remembering something. ‘Give me that pot of African violets. How much? Thank you.’ She had a purpose for that pot of violets.

  She carried the flowers back to Wellington Yard where she handed the roses over to Anny who was dressed now and had brushed her hair. ‘Here, take these. Put mine, which I suppose are the white ones, in water for me and I’ll collect them later.’

  Anny took them. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, it looks as though the flowers came from Kate. It’s a possibility anyway. The order came from Paris. No message but the sender’s name sounded like Roper. It’s just possible that it was Cooper. I expect it can be checked.’

  ‘It means she’s alive.’

  ‘I don’t know what it means. Not for sure. And neither do you. Don’t depend too much on it, Anny. It could be someone playing tricks.’

  Anny looked incredulous. ‘ No. Only Kate chose those roses in those colours. Has to be her. She is alive.’

  Charmian cut across the celebration. ‘Whatever you believe, you have to let the police investigating the murders know. Yes, you have to, Anny. Tom Bossey’s the man. Inspector Tom Bossey. Ask for him.’

  Carrying the pot of violets, she left.

  She walked round the back of the Yard to the side road where she always parked her car. She was always mildly surprised it was still there each morning and unvandalised. She could think of some cities where this would not happen.

  It was only a short drive to Miss Macy’s house and this time the lady was at home. Charmian could see her in her front garden where she was doing some weeding. She sat for a moment studying both the house and its owner. It was the end house in one of the neat terraces of early Victorian houses that graced Windsor. Behind a white picket fence a narrow front garden led to a green front door with a bright brass knocker. Miss Macy matched her house. Queen Alexandra had probably been alive when she was born and would certainly have approved her discreet cotton dress and dark blue gardening apron worn with a big hat. The garden looked as though it got a lot of attention.

  Charmian got out of the car, carrying her pot of violets. Her choice had been a wise one, the woman who lived in this house would appreciate violets.

  Miss Macy straightened up as Charmian walked through the gate and up the narrow path. ‘There’s no parking out there, you know. Double yellow lines. But I suppose the police can do as they like.’

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘My girls told me. We saw you in the Park.’

  Charmian was a little surprised, but not very. The observer had been the observed. It did happen. Nor was she surprised by the slight aggressiveness of the lady. She was true to her period, probably 1920s radical and long time feminist, with a small private income, and a feeling for good antiques co-existing with a feeling that you owed the world something. She would not like the police force and was probably a founder member of all societies protecting the liberty of the individual from radical childbirth to euthanasia.

  Charmian knew she would like her, respect her and find her maddening. ‘In a way they are my girls too,’ she observed mildly.

  ‘Humph,’ said Miss Macy. Charmian had never heard anyone achieve this sound before and she was momentarily diverted. Perhaps no one outside Windsor did say it any more. ‘I question that.’ And she gave Charmian a look of blue-eyed shrewdness from beneath the gardening hat. ‘Is that pot plant for me?’

  ‘Yes.’ It no longer seemed such a good idea.

  ‘A sweetener, eh? It’s root bound, any fool can see that.’ She held out a hand. ‘Give it here.’ She was tapping the base of the pot smartly as she spoke. ‘Dry as a bone. Where did you buy it? No, don’t tell me, it would only grieve me. I hate flower shops. Like keeping animals in a zoo.’

  So she was into freedom for plants as well as women and animals.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Come into the house while I water this poor creature.’ Miss Macy led the way inside.

  Her house obviously received less attention than her garden. Although probably quite clean it was not well dusted and bore witness on every side to the variety of Miss Macy’s interests. On a round library table was a quantity of children’s books, old well-used books. Next to them stood a box full of toys. A strong smell of Plasticine arose from it, taking Charmian back immediately to her own nursery school days. So children still used Plasticine, did they? There were also about a dozen paintboxes, a pile of old newspapers, and on top of it several pairs of scissors. Children always wanted scissors. There was also a First Aid box. That covered the children. An easel leaning against a wall suggested that Miss Macy also went in for a bit of sketching from nature. She had a spinning wheel and a small loom tucked into a corner. These had a faintly neglected look as if not a lot of attention had come their way lately.

  Miss Macy saw her gaze. ‘That tweed didn’t work out,’ she said. ‘Wasted that lovely wool. Hair really, from a local goat farm.’ She removed a copy or two of Country Life from a chair. ‘Sit down while I water this plant.’

  There was no obvious sign of her interest in women prisoners, but on the wall was a range of photographs of school groups and somewhere among them must be Yvonne. Charmian got up to have a look.

  ‘Interested in those groups?’ said Miss Macy as she returned, the violets now thoroughly wet, even sopping. ‘All from St Joseph’s Church of England School in Arthur Road. Still there, but you wouldn’t know it. Gone comprehensive.’ She made it sound like a disease. Perhaps it was. ‘ I taught for thirty odd years.’ She planted the bowl of flowers firmly on the table, carefully mopping up any drops of water. She respected good furniture. ‘Been out of it now for almost ten, thank goodness.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about one of your old pupils.’

  ‘I can’t betray any confidences.’

  ‘I like Yvonne myself,’ observed Charmian gently. ‘I’d like to help her. And, of course, the more I know about her the more I can help her.’

  Miss Macy sat down heavily on a chair already bearing a large tabby cat. The cat made a reproachful sound but did no more than squeeze itself into a corner of the chair. ‘Good boy,’ said his mistress, patting his head, and then to Charmian: ‘ He’s glad of a good home. One of the strays from the Park. There’s always a colony there. This is one the foxes didn’t get.’

  ‘About Yvonne?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve seen her for yourself. She was a nice, gentle child, she’s a nice gentle woman, but not very bright and without any strong moral sense, I’m afraid. And she’s very easily led.’

  ‘Not dangerous at all?’

  ‘Only to herself. You know her record and what it amounts to.’

  ‘She’s learning to read and write better. She thinks that will help.’

  ‘Thirty years too late,’ said Miss Macy. ‘But try if you like.’

  ‘She’s all right with the children, I suppose? You seem to trust her. All of them,’ she added, after a pause.

  Enthusiasm showed on Miss Macy’s face. ‘All the girls are absolutely splendid with my little protégés. It’s a sign of grace.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Oh yes, you should watch them some time. They are all so intent and careful. They have been the greatest help, a real boon. I have taken them on several outings now and they have never failed me. For women with their background that is something. Perseverance, sticking at things, is usually their greatest weakness. They can’t hold to anything.’

  Except what suits them, thought Charmian cynically.

  ‘But they have been so reliable,’ went on Miss Macy. ‘ Of course, there must be something in it for them, one knows that,’ she continued. ‘I am not foolish, too much is not to be expected from them.’

  ‘Don’t we know?’

  ‘There are contradictions. Within their own group they are capable of great constancy and loyalty.’

  ‘I had noticed.’ She
was thinking of Yvonne and Elsie, they were loyal. Baby also, in her way.

  ‘But, of course, that loyalty can be played upon.’

  ‘I had noticed that too.’ She was thinking of Laraine, a manipulator if ever she had met one.

  ‘Good.’ Miss Macy lifted the cat from behind her and placed it on the floor. Without any hesitation it leapt back to where it had been before and settled down again. ‘I don’t know what I can tell you about Yvonne. You’ve met her, what she is now, she was as a child. Mild, polite but hard to read. You couldn’t be sure what was going on behind that face. Not much, I suspect. I can’t say I have been surprised at her subsequent career, poor woman.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ She spoke with a detached sympathy that Charmian admired: she aimed for it herself. ‘She never showed much understanding of mine and thine, what she fancied she liked to have. And once someone showed her the way …’ Miss Macy shrugged.

  ‘And did someone show her the way?’

  ‘Oh yes. An older girl at school took her shoplifting. And then Yvonne took her mother. Of course they got caught. Hopeless really.’

  Yvonne’s crimes, like Yvonne herself, seemed relatively harmless and easily punished. It was a pity, though.

  Charmian expressed this view. ‘A shame her marriage did not help her.’

  ‘It did for a while. I had hopes, especially when the children were little. She was a good mother in her way. But they grew beyond her, and so did her husband, whereas Yvonne stayed where she was. Her husband gave her up in the end, although I believe he did try.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me. I haven’t got to the bottom of Yvonne, but you’ve helped.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t. Not with any of that group. But should you try? It’s like playing God.’

  ‘Unluckily, it’s my job.’ But she already knew that Miss Macy did not like policemen. It was a perfectly legitimate point of view.

  ‘Help but don’t ask them why, that’s what I do. They are coming with me and a bunch of children from St Elfrida’s Home on Ladies’ Day to see the Queen and all the Royals get out of their cars in the Great Park (I know exactly the spot to sit, under the big oak), and into the carriages for the carriage procession down the Ascot course. We shall have a picnic and enjoy it.’

  ‘When’s that?’ asked Charmian.

  ‘Next week. But the big treat comes the week after, on the Monday, a real red-letter day with the Fête on the Thames which the Queen will attend. The Eton boys will row her barge. It’s a secret about the Queen coming, but I know she’s going to be there. I shall take my little band.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘June 23,’ said Miss Macy, looking at a wall calendar.

  As Charmian left, she thought, That’s valuable.

  Miss Macy went back to her gardening. Interesting conversation, she said to herself. I suppose I told her enough and not too much.

  She’s pretty sharp, thought Charmian as she drove away. I hope I didn’t let too much out.

  Both had their reasons.

  Charmian made a swift telephone call to the special number she had been given. Harold English answered her.

  ‘I think the day is June 23,’ she said. ‘June 23.’

  Later that day, after a full session of work, seeing her supervisor, who inspected her notes and suggested she have a group meeting with her subjects, and a note from Harold English with an interesting suggestion (which she would consider), she learnt through a talk with Dolly Barstow, who seemed to have an excellent intelligence service, that the woman, the remains of whose body had been found, had had a recent abortion.

  That should help to sort things out. One by one the details were being assembled that were to establish the identities of the bodies.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AT THE END of such a day, the last thing she wanted was a talk with Jack and Anny, but it had to be, they were waiting for her at the foot of her stairs when she came home.

  ‘You’ve heard.’ With a sinking feeling she made it a statement, not a question. She was in for a long session, she recognised the signs, Jack white and aggressive, Anny tense. ‘Come in, have a drink and let me feed Muff.’

  Jack said: ‘No way is that Kate. No, that settles it to my mind. Not Kate.’

  In a remote, cold voice, Anny said: ‘As far as that goes, it could be Kate. Take no notice of Jack, he does not understand these things. And if it had been her one could see why she was in such a state before she left. But it is not Kate because she sent me flowers. She is not dead.’

  In London, where they had now arrived, Amanda Rivers’ parents had said much the same thing, and Dolly Barstow had duly reported it. They don’t think so, she said. ‘We do not believe it can be our daughter.’ Those were the exact words.

  Parents rarely know their own children, Charmian thought, or what they are capable of, and one set or the other of them here were going to be in for a surprise.

  A nasty surprise, this case was getting nastier by the day. There were three puzzles occupying her mind at the moment and elements of them seemed to seep like poison from one to the other, and the themes of death and birth and blood to transfer themselves from case to case. These cases might not be connected, but by God, they were related.

  ‘Sooner or later,’ she said to Anny, ‘it will be discovered which of these two young women had an abortion. It’ll come out.’

  ‘If either,’ said Jack.

  ‘They are the prime candidates.’

  ‘Oh you are hard,’ said Anny.

  ‘Am I?’ She was tired, not wanting to talk, but to wash and change. Also to feed Muff. Tonight she was going to have her meal with Jerome. A cassoulet, he had said. She hadn’t thought of him as a cassoulet man, he had seemed to be more a steak and onions and carrots man. But whatever the dish, she was hungry and wanted it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Anny. I’ve done the best I can. I just don’t know about Kate. It seems to go this way and then the other. On balance, I think she is alive and that the dead woman is Amanda Rivers, but until we get a certain identification we can’t be sure.’ And even then they would not know where Kate was or even if she was alive—there was more than one way of dying.

  ‘There’s the man too,’ said Jack suddenly. ‘No one says much about him, but he’s there.’

  ‘They will be working on him. Something may emerge, must do so in the end. Just hang on, be patient. I know it’s hard.’

  ‘And Kate may come back any minute,’ said Anny. ‘She may come walking down the road, surprised at everything.’

  ‘I shall have a word to say to her if she does,’ said Jack grimly. And then: ‘I wish the heads would turn up.’

  ‘That may never happen,’ said Charmian.

  ‘What?’

  She shrugged. She could think of any number of ways of disposing of heads, none of them nice to think about, but better not to tell Jack and Anny. Jack seemed to see reserve in her face.

  ‘Is that all? Anything you know but aren’t telling us?’

  Yes, one thing but she would keep it to herself. Dolly Barstow said that the police had checked the arrival of the flight on which Amanda Rivers and her companion were alleged to have come from Rhodes. It had arrived late but without incident. Everyone had hung around for a while organising taxis. There was a lot of use of the telephones. Rather sooner than most, a couple who could have been Amanda Rivers and Jim Cook had been seen getting into a car and driving off. The suggestion was that they had known their driver. None of the Heathrow taxi regulars had admitted to being the driver of that car.

  To Tom Bossey this fitted in with the idea that the dead bodies were those of the two doctors. They had got into the taxi, driven off and ended up murdered. But Dolly did not see it that way. No, she said to Charmian, you could not count on that episode meaning anything at all. To her mind, the question of the identity was still wide open. Those two could still turn up alive. She’d been in love herself and done strange things. Missing work? Yes, even
that, Dolly admitted sadly, although she wouldn’t do it now.

  Find the taxi driver, Tom Bossey ordered. Check on all recent abortions in this area and in London. It would take time.

  Time. June 23, she thought.

  ‘I’ll keep you in touch,’ she said to Anny and Jack. ‘ When I know anything positive you shall know it too. And you might do the same for me.’ But she knew she might keep things from them, might be obliged to. They should not rely on her telling the truth. Perhaps they did not, they were not naive. ‘Meanwhile, I’m going to have a hot bath.’

  ‘I suppose you think better in a bath,’ called Anny as she and Jack left.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not going to. I’m going to lie still and be mindless … And don’t let the cat out.’

  But Muff must have got out, because when Charmian hurried down the staircase on her way to Jerome’s, there she was on the middle step, opening and shutting her mouth in silent displeasure.

  ‘I’d take you with me if I could,’ Charmian picked up the soft limp bundle of fur, ‘ but you were not asked.’ She pushed Muff through her door. ‘Food is in the dish in the usual place.’

  The plants in the big pots at Jerome’s door had developed great heads of flowers and revealed themselves as a form of single geranium. The soil looked dry, though, as if a thorough watering would not come amiss.

  Jerome greeted her warmly, and there was a comfortable smell of good cooking.

  ‘Those big pots of yours are looking a bit dry,’ she said.

  He came out and gave them a look. ‘Doing nicely, aren’t they? Don’t want to give them too much water, though. Might rot the roots. Geraniums like to be dry. Dry but well nourished. I think I’ve got it just right.’ He was a gardener then, as well as nurse, cook, hairdresser and ex-policeman?

  ‘How’s the baby?’

  ‘He seems well.’ Jerome spoke with the grave pleasure he always showed when he discussed his child, as if he was talking about some splendid artefact for which he was responsible. ‘His grandmother had him all today so I could get on with the cooking. I had to fight off Elspeth who likes to feel she is the only one except me entitled to handle him, but fortunately she is still off colour so she didn’t put up much of a struggle.’