Windsor Red

by Jennie Melville

  The wheels were beginning to turn. Lists would be drawn up and worked over, checks would be made, the dull plod of police work would begin, and the sort of results you could offer to the Director of Public Prosecutions would roll in. The process had already started.

  She gave the wheel a push. ‘ On the torso case … Laraine Finch, now in custody, claims to have a name. Might be worth following up.’ The irony of it was not lost on her. Who was telling on whom?

  ‘Oh yes, her. One of that lot.’ Dolly acknowledged that which she had been carefully avoiding. ‘I expect they’ll get Delaney. Meanwhile he has got over a million to stash away somewhere. They may never get that back. Will you go on with your thesis?’

  ‘I’m going to try,’ said Charmian.

  Chapter Sixteen

  FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS , Charmian took evasive action. Wellington Yard, Windsor itself, saw little of her. She was much in London making arrangements in connection with her new job. Chief Inspector Charmian Daniels would be raised to Superintendent with every hope of going even higher. She had a meeting with her new colleagues, not one of whom, she was glad to see, had she ever known before. She might enjoy working with them.

  A pattern of life was set up that she adhered to during these days. She would return to Wellington Yard late at night, avoiding Anny and Jack and everyone in the Yard, as if she did not want to know them any more. And yet she would continue to live there if she could. In pursuance of this aim, she ordered the telephone to be put in her flat. It was installed quickly.

  Once the telephone was in and calls being received, she dodged meetings with Tom Bossey and Harold English, and refused an invitation to lunch with Lady Oriel. Humphrey she saw constantly because she had to.

  Some anonymous hand (she suspected Harold English) sent her a mass of newspaper cuttings about the Windsor Great Park affair: they were not as bad as she had feared. The Queen came out of it well, the police much less well. Charmian was not named. All the women, in spite of Laraine’s optimism, had been remanded in custody. Not dangerous but loony, seemed to be the current view, so they were to be kept inside and observed. Miss Macy had gone away to stay with friends in Scotland, she was reported to be very distressed. As well she might be, thought Charmian.

  As for the Torso Case, as the papers called the affair, she felt out of touch and was glad to be so. Temporarily anyway.

  ‘Police search beauty spots in hunt for heads,’ ran one headline on a paper caught up with the other cuttings. This item might have been put in on purpose. Harold English (if he was the sender) was by no means as straightforward a chap as he appeared to be.

  Several days passed. A great band of heat stretched over southern England. The north was cloudy, Scotland wet, but in the south the temperature rose ever higher. A storm was predicted before evening.

  In the afternoon she had an interview with her supervisor. Sitting over a cup of tea in the senior common room, deserted now for the Long Vacation, he suggested that her thesis would gain greatly in interest and depth by the chance to see her ‘ group’ through this experience. They were to be let out on bail, except for Nix who had suffered a kind of breakdown and was in hospital, but they were among those she was avoiding. But they would have to be faced eventually, she owed it to them and to herself.

  From this interview on the Tuesday, she returned not as late as usual to the Yard. The sky, heavy all day, was growing darker by the minute with uneasy flashes of lightning streaking the clouds. The Yard was still open and at work but there were lights on in the shops.

  Dolly Barstow was one of the people who had got through on the telephone, to say that in the Torso Case she thought there were going to be developments. Ring back, she said, and learn more later. But when Charmian tried, once from London in the morning and then in the afternoon from a public call box on the university campus, she got no reply.

  One more try when she got home, she thought. Muff first, then Dolly.

  She bought a rye loaf at the baker’s in Wellington Yard. The shop was empty except for a few loaves and a teabun.

  ‘I must be one of your last customers.’

  The woman behind the counter admitted to being hot and tired. ‘Been a funny day. Thunder gives me a headache, and then we’ve had the police in and out of the Yard all day, digging up some of the flagstones.’ She lowered her voice: ‘They’ve been asking us about the sacks we get some of our flour delivered in.’ She looked harassed. ‘Seems there was flour on the limbs.’

  ‘I thought I saw something as I came in. What did they get? I’ll take the teabun too.’ There was a kind of sticky teabun with sultanas made only in the Yard to which Muff was particularly partial. If it was well buttered it often kept her quiet when catfood would not.

  ‘They’ll be back, I expect.’ She sighed. ‘That’ll be another twenty-two pence.’ The woman looked up at the ceiling uneasily. ‘That’s thunder again, getting closer, too. Well, I’m just closing up now and I’ll be home with luck before the worst of the storm breaks. We’re all a bit tense here with all that’s been going on. I’m not the only one affected. Mrs Cooper looked downright ill and Jerome seemed in another world.’

  Charmian turned back to her own staircase, hoping to avoid Anny who must be on the look-out for her. But all she saw there were empty, blank windows staring back at her blindly. Glancing up at her window she saw an angry tabby face glaring out. I’ve got you a teabun, she wanted to shout, you’ll be happy with that, I have thought about you even if you don’t believe so. Muff was always convinced she was doomed to be a lost, abandoned cat. Two minutes on her own and she knew you had gone for ever.

  Charmian bumped into somebody, the bread and teabun went flying. ‘Sorry, my fault.’ She bent to pick up her purchases. ‘Hello,’ she straightened up. ‘It’s Elspeth, isn’t it?’ The woman looked flushed and unwell. ‘Are you all right? I hope I didn’t hurt you.’

  ‘No.’ Elspeth seemed on the point of tears. ‘ I’m all right.’

  ‘You don’t look it.’ This was true—there were patches and blotches on her face, one of which had already risen into a crested spot. Others seemed to be on the point of erupting.

  Elspeth turned her face away. ‘I’ve got chicken-pox.’

  Charmian stared at her, suddenly understanding the significance. ‘Oh Elspeth … It’s been you … And you caught it from the Robertson baby.’ Talk about poetic justice.

  ‘I’m not going to talk about it. You wouldn’t understand.’ But I would, thought Charmian, of course I would. ‘Jerome’s given me my cards, and Mrs Robertson has rung the police and that’s it.’

  And Elspeth put her head down, and walked out of the Yard. Probably into the waiting arms of Dolly Barstow who would be well pleased with the acumen of her deductions. She was no doubt making preparations now for taking Elspeth in, which accounted for her not answering her telephone.

  The first few heavy drops of rain were falling. Jerome had come out of his shop and was standing between his two great tubs of geraniums. He looked flushed and angry.

  ‘Silly bitch,’ he said.

  ‘I never thought of Elspeth.’

  ‘I did, but I couldn’t believe it. And now she’s brought the police down on us.’ He did not sound admiring of his ex-colleagues, but then he never had been.

  ‘They’ve been around before,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Not like this. She’s admitted that it was her dragged the sack of legs round to the Yard and dumped them. The Robertson boy finally made up his mind it was her he saw.’ There was fury in Jerome’s voice. And guess why she did it? Because “ the doctor had been so good to her”, with advice about how to get an adoption and she couldn’t bear him to be involved in anything nasty. She’d had a look inside the sacks, you see. Also she thought anything nasty for him might hold up her chances of adoption. So she hoisted the sack round here and dumped it on us.’

  He was dragging at his big pots of flowers as if venting his anger on them. Enormous raindrops were falling
now, soon the whole yard would be awash.

  ‘Leave them,’ said Charmian. She herself was getting wet. ‘The rain will do them good.’

  He muttered something hard to hear and went on pulling and shoving at the pots. He appeared angrier at Elspeth than seemed necessary, there was real fury in his face.

  ‘Here, let me help.’ It was a new side to Jerome, she had never seen him like this before.

  ‘Leave it,’ he ordered sharply.

  Thunder was rolling round the sky, the rain coming down now in a steady sheet, hitting the ground like bullets. The soil in the pot she was moving was being stirred around like porridge.

  Her foot went into a puddle, she slid forward and in steadying herself her hand plunged into the soft mud.

  Her fingers touched something under the soil. She withdrew them with a frown. Her fingers were muddy and under the nails was a line of muck, dark and thick, that smelt. It smelt sickly sweet and corrupt.

  She let the pot go. It tilted sideways and the mud shifted. She could see something brown and round, like a turnip. Only it was bigger and there was hair.

  A gleam of teeth.

  She was looking at a human head.

  ‘I told you to leave it alone,’ said Jerome.

  Charmian felt queasy, she swayed slightly. ‘Who is it?’ she might have said: Which one?

  ‘I don’t know. Not without looking.’ He put his arm round her and dragged her into the shop, slamming the door behind them.

  She leaned against it, breathing unevenly. ‘ Don’t do anything stupid.’ Shock and surprise had not had time to seep in yet, but both were there in the background all right.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not a murderer.’

  She still felt sick, but she could talk. Keep him talking, she told herself.

  ‘What’s that outside then?’

  ‘An execution. Justice. What every man’s entitled to.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A death they arranged.’

  ‘Oh come on, they were both doctors. Whose death?’

  ‘My wife’s death. Oh yes, it was their fault. I hold them responsible. She was under Dr Cook while she was pregnant. He said it was a difficult pregnancy and sent her to hospital. To the woman, that woman Rivers, she took charge. Lisa had the baby all right but afterwards she started to bleed. Then they said she must have a hysterectomy. But she died a week later anyway. She never really came round. They said it was bleeding in the brain. But I knew that wasn’t it. Just a cover-up. It was them. Their fault.’

  ‘Oh I don’t think so.’

  ‘I couldn’t prove anything, of course. You never can. I could have killed them then. But once that girl had the abortion I knew what I had to do.’

  Charmian felt chilled. Between your understanding and mine, there is a gulf, she thought. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Drove her to it, didn’t I? I was their tame taxi, they often used me. And I collected her the same day. She was as bright as could be, talking about her holiday. It meant nothing to her. That did it. I made up my mind and just waited my chance. They were as good as dead when I drove them to Heathrow.’

  ‘ “The brothers and their murdered man”,’ said Charmian.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘A poem, by John Keats. “Isabella, or The Pot of Basil.” ’ Geraniums in your case, she thought. Are you making a confession?’

  ‘Well, it’s not a dying speech. On the other hand, you’ve got no witnesses.’ Then seeing her face, he said: ‘Oh don’t worry. You won’t have to take me in. Or try to. The local lads have been snooping around the Yard. They’ve got to me somehow.’

  Laraine? thought Charmian. He had pointed the finger at her in the beginning and now she was pointing it back. But the police must have had other indications.

  ‘Pretending to have a general look round. I saw them in my car. Bound to have traces. They’ll be back.’

  ‘You didn’t kill them in the car?’

  ‘No, in the Rivers woman’s house. Took her in with her luggage, like a proper taxi man, then stabbed her in the house while he waited in the car. Then I went back and got him. Told him she’d collapsed. Which she had … I did the rest of the job there.’ He gave Charmian a quick look to see if she understood. ‘I’d brought the sacks with me from the Yard … Afterwards, I dropped the cases out at the farm. Used to play there when I was a kid.’

  The cutting up of the bodies, the disposal of the parts with the flour on them she knew about. More or less.

  ‘I left the legs outside Dr Cook’s surgery. A pointer for the lads.’ He laughed. ‘ I ought to have known the gods were against me when they fetched up here. That Elspeth.’

  ‘Why did you keep the heads?’

  ‘For myself,’ he said, and laughed again.

  Like Isabella after all, she thought. Too much grief has driven you mad.

  ‘Where’s the baby?’

  ‘With his grandmother.’ He added reluctantly, as if not wanting to admit any imperfection on his perfect child, ‘He’s got the chicken-pox. And you’d better melt away before the boys in blue arrive, so they won’t think you fancy me.’

  Charmian flushed awkwardly. There were things better left unsaid. ‘I’ll stay. More professional. And they won’t think that, because I’m going to give them a telephone call.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ He watched her go to the telephone, even listened to her words and remained calm, as if it was no longer of interest to him. He knew what lay ahead of him, none better. He had probably made an estimate of his likely sentence and understood how ex-policemen fared in gaol. But he was satisfied: justice had been done. And then they both sat down to wait. The storm was passing over, soon the skies would be clear.

  A few days later Charmian was walking down Peascod Street back from a lunch in the Castle with Lady Oriel. She knew now that she would be settled in Windsor for a few years anyway. She had taken a lease on the flat in the Yard and was sending for her own furniture. Humphrey had asked her to marry him and she had refused. So that was out of the way. For the time being. Lady Oriel said she was wise. ‘ Let him stew,’ she had said. ‘Thinks too well of himself anyway’

  ‘I’ll go on with my thesis,’ Charmian thought, pausing for another look at the antique shop. The cradle had gone. Perhaps Elspeth had bought it. Certainly it would not have been Dolly Barstow even though she had announced that she planned to marry Dr Lennard. ‘I owe them that. I want to show that there is no special sort of situation in which a woman will turn to crime where a man may not. There is no woman criminal as such, just people. Persons.’ She promised herself, I’ll go on knowing that lot if they’ll have me. Even Laraine. Perhaps most of all, Laraine. Alas for Laraine, Delaney had been caught too, having made the mistake of leaving his plane on stopover in New York from where he would eventually be extradited.

  Down the street ahead of her she saw a figure that seemed familiar. A young woman in jeans with a soft, much scuffed bag slung over one shoulder and a bouncy cheerful walk.

  She hurried forward, and tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Kate!’

  The girl swung round, frowning. Then her face cleared. ‘Godmother! How lovely. What are you doing here?’

  Looking for you, among other things, thought Charmian. But she said: ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Living in a cave with Harry. “Cave”, French, a sort of basement place he rents in the Dordogne. We had to be alone. We were working things out.’

  She saw Charmian looking at her battered luggage. ‘I don’t usually travel like this.’ She was her mother’s daughter after all, possessions had to be excellent. ‘I lent my good stuff to a friend. Girl I was at school with, she works in a hospital here. I’ll get it back.’

  If you want it, thought Charmian, and wondered if she ought to tell her about Amanda, but she decided against it. Let her find out. A shock might be good for Kate.

  ‘Your father will kill you,’ said Charmian.

  ‘But I’ve lef
t Harry. We were bad for each other. We brought out violence in each other. I might have killed him. Once I saw it clearly I just left.’ Her face was bright and self-assured. ‘It was easy.’

  There was trouble ahead for a girl like Kate, decided her godmother. We haven’t seen the last of what she can do to us.

  ‘You just have to know who you are,’ said Kate. ‘Then, like I said, it’s easy.’

  Charmian said to her: ‘How old are you, Kate?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’ A happy look came on her face. ‘Just. I had a birthday and sent you all flowers.’

  Charmian looked at her with amusement and sympathy mixed. ‘It gets harder,’ she said.

  Copyright

  First published 1988 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2015 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

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  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  ISBN–978-1-4472-9612-6 EPUB

  ISBN–978-1-4472-9609-6 HB

  ISBN–978-1-4472-9611-9 PB

  Copyright © Jennie Melville, 1988

  The right of Jennie Melville to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by her in

  accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

  ( electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)

  without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations

  and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear