Chapter Seven
Charmian knew Rob by sight and reputation anyway and was not surprised to see him answer the door to her: she had already counted him as a possible factor in her problem. Perhaps she was a little surprised to see his wild farouche appearance when he normally looked reserved and controlled, but she knew already that things must be deeply abnormal in this house.
He in his turn did not seem surprised to see Charmian but perhaps he was past showing surprise; he certainly looked as if he had, emotionally, taken a bashing.
‘You’re scared stiff, my boy,’ said Charmian to herself, but she knew also that he wasn’t scared of her, but perhaps of himself, and now she was surprised. At once she began to wonder how far, and how dangerously Robert was involved in this case. The police picture was very hazy still: they had the plot but not all the actors … they were out looking for them. They had some of the plot anyhow. Charmian herself wasn’t sure how far she went with Inspector Pratt’s picture. Robert might be playing an important part.
‘I am of the County C.I.D.,’ she said, the faint Angus brogue rising behind her precise words. ‘And may I speak to Miss Katherine Birley? She’s expecting me, I think.’
‘Well, we’ve been expecting someone anyhow,’ Robert stood aside to let her come in. ‘Is there any news?’
Charmian did not answer. Instead she walked into the hall, observing carefully. It looked much as you would expect a house from which two women had disappeared to look. It was basically tidy but someone, Robert probably, had thrown a coat over a chair with the sleeves trailing, someone else had left a coffee cup, half full of cold coffee, standing next to a potted geranium, there was a strong smell of cigarette smoke.
Kathy appeared at the end of the hall. With all her feminine dexterity she had tidied herself up rapidly and looked composed and neat. She was now certain that Robert loved her. He was worried and concerned about Janet, yes, but when everything had quietened itself down and after all she told herself ruthlessly, even Mumsy and Janet couldn’t go on upsetting everyone for ever, then they would be together. She even liked it that she had, for a little while, been a bit frightened of Robert. She knew now that he was a man, and not as easy-going as she’d sometimes suspected, no docile reward for Janet’s little pink paws.
Charmian was relieved to see someone as capable and unhysterical looking as Kathy. From the way the original message had come over the telephone she’d got the impression Miss Birley was less calm.
‘Have you got news of my sister and mother?’ said Kathy quickly. She almost welcomed Charmian’s entrance, because she thought she still had the free use of her will, she could draw back; she could still say Come or Go, and after a while Charmian would go away, and life would return to normal. Or, she thought, her heart remembering Robert, better than normal.
But Robert knew better, he knew that Charmian and the police would enter the house, invade it with their presence, turn over this, turn over that, tramp here, tramp there, stare and question.
And Charmian knew better: she knew that she was neither so harmless nor so neutral nor uninformed as she appeared to be.
You had to be very stupid or very innocent to have the courage of Kathy.
‘Yes, I think I have,’ said Charmian. ‘May I come through?’
Without waiting for an answer she went through to the sitting-room.
Kathy and Robert followed her.
‘You reported your sister and mother missing earlier this evening,’ she looked at the clock. ‘Yesterday.’
‘Yes, I did.’ Kathy too looked at the clock.
‘How long had they then been missing?’
Kathy looked worried. ‘That’s just what I don’t know. I know when I lost sight of Janet, that’s my sister, but I don’t know when Mumsy went. She was around this morning.’ And she repeated the story that the baker had told the grocer about Mumsy dying her hair.
‘It doesn’t look as if they went off together.’
‘No,’ said Kathy after a pause.
‘You were quick off the gun weren’t you, Miss Birley? I mean a few hours. It’s not very long. They might just have been out on a trip.’
‘No,’ Kathy shook her head. ‘It was all wrong. Unnatural somehow.’
Charmian was sympathetic. Sorry. She hated these interviews. Moreover it was a curious picture. Janet disappearing on the journey home, and Mrs Birley going off into the blue after a quiet domestic morning.
‘Had you any reason, Miss Birley, to think they might have gone away of their own free will? Were they in any trouble?’
‘Couldn’t you tell us what you’ve found out?’ asked Robert harshly.
Charmian looked at him.
‘Have they gone away?’ asked Kathy in a faint voice. She and Robert were standing very close together.
‘Not very far,’ said Charmian. ‘Did you own a grey car Miss Birley?’
‘Yes,’ answered Kathy and now her heart was beating fast.
‘Number PRS 15274?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I have to tell you that your sister and her mother were found lying in it late this evening. Carbon monoxide had been seeping into the car from the exhaust. It looks as though they trailed a rubber tube through and sat there until it overcame them.’
‘Are … are they …?’ began Robert. He wanted to know if they were dead.
Charmian looked at him sharply then spoke to Kathy.
‘Can you think of any reason why they should have tried to kill themselves?’ asked Charmian, and as Kathy did not answer she said gently: ‘You know we have been investigating the death of your father?’
‘Yes, I know that …’
‘Did you know the police received anonymous letters accusing your stepmother and sister of poisoning your father?’
Katherine shook her head mutely. Then she said: ‘Me too?’
‘No, not you, Miss Birley. You were not mentioned.’
‘And did they kill Dad?’
‘I don’t think so. Your father wasn’t poisoned, Miss Birley,’ said Charmian. ‘There’s no evidence in the world to suggest he was. I wonder why you thought there was?’
Kathy sighed and her shoulders sagged. ‘It was a feeling. You get a feeling. I got the feeling as though they were glad he was gone and wanted the house for themselves.’
‘Did you know your stepmother was married?’ asked Charmian gently. ‘Married again?’
Kathy looked up in surprise.
‘She was married about three weeks ago: to a Mr Charlie Fox.’
Kathy walked to a window and looked out. There was nothing to see there, the garden was dark, even the Carters across the way had gone to bed, but in any case it was filled for her by the round girlish face of Janet, whom she had hated, and the plump pretty vulgar figure of Mumsy. To her very great surprise tears filled her eyes. And once filling them she found that they would not stop. Laughing and crying she staggered back into the room. The hysteria that Charmian had expected had materialised.
Charmian dealt methodically with her, sending Robert for water and brandy, forcing Kathy to lie on the sofa, and then departed, promising to return later.
‘There’ll have to be a formal identification, won’t there?’ said Robert anxiously.
‘Later,’ said Charmian, looking at him with interest.
She went over in her mind all the things she had meant to notice and ask, all that Inspector Pratt had suggested she ask and she had asked, but she did not say anything then about the blue raincoat which was still in her possession.
The telephone rang. Robert answered it quickly, hoping that Kathy upstairs wouldn’t hear.
It was Charlie.
‘Is that you?’ said the vulgar voice. ‘Did you do it? My God, I’m going mad out here waiting …’
Wordlessly Robert put down the telephone. He wanted to shout out loud: ‘Charlie! We got our priorities wrong. We ought to have attended to this one here quicker. Fear isn’t enough.’
Kathy
called down from upstairs. ‘ Who was that?’
‘Just the police asking if the policewoman was still here,’ he called back upstairs.
Across the fence Emily Carter, roused no doubt by the lights and the car, stirred in her sleep and sat up. She looked out of the window. All the lights were blazing in the Birley house.
‘Something’s going on over there,’ she said. ‘Something’s going on.’
‘Something’s going on everywhere in the world,’ muttered her husband sleepily and turned over.
Emily put on her dressing-gown and stumped down the stairs. From the kitchen she had an even better view of the Birley house but she couldn’t see anything more except the lights, which was enough, but not quite enough to take action. Once again she returned to look at her husband, but he had curled up in the blankets and was far away in sleep. Doesn’t even know I am gone, thought Emily, half cross, half tender. She wrapped the eiderdown round him but he promptly threw it off.
She went into her son’s room, but even he, usually so avid for human company, was pink and quiet, asleep on his face with the pillow thrown out. She looked at him not grudging the daily struggle with someone who always wanted to do everything just a little bit different from the way she did. Maternally she replaced the pillow and him; with one swift movement, but still asleep, he tipped the pillow out again and lay on his face.
‘Like Father like son,’ said Emily.
She stumped down to the kitchen again and got the cat in. But he didn’t want to come in, had only been peering through the window to see what was up and fought his way to the door again. He managed to tread heavily on Emily with his powerful, sharp back paw.
Frustrated all round she put on the kettle.
‘Coffee,’ she muttered. The coffee jar was empty and moaning quietly she limped over to open a fresh tin. It was a cheap sort mixed with chicory that she only bought when she was trying to economise and the sight reminded her that she was hard up. She frowned. It wasn’t at all the sort of thing you wanted to be reminded of at 12.30 in the morning.
As she sat there, her sensitive nose – Emily did have a big nose, she knew it, she admitted it – twitched.
She could smell cooking. Cooking at this hour? She walked to the window and looked out. Once or twice in the past Mumsy had been up all night cooking a cake because that was the sort of thing Mumsy did, but even she hadn’t done much night frying.
She had other things to do with her nights, thought Emily with a grin. She remembered Mumsy in white gloves and a flower in her lapel, stepping out with a smile, and Mumsy in a strapless sun-dress, Mumsy in a little fur hat. They were happy pictures.
But at the same time she was carrying a vivid picture of Mumsy in her mind; of Mumsy, hair flying, make-up chaotic, clothes distracted. Come to think of it, this had been the last time she saw Mumsy.
Emily frowned.
Emily nudged her husband awake again. ‘ Listen, I never told you, I never told anyone, but I saw old Mrs Birley lugging something big into the car. Looked like a tent. Like they were going camping.’
‘Were they going camping? Why were they going camping?’ Her voice was rising.
Her husband stared at her, thoroughly awake now.
The first shock over, Kathy reacted practically, sensibly, to the news. She cooked a meal. That was something she had picked up from Mumsy who said: ‘ when faced with an angry frightened man (and she guessed Robert was both), feed him.’ If it came to that she was angry and frightened herself.
But cooking good meals without Mumsy was like Hamlet without the Prince. ‘It’s funny,’ thought Kathy wryly, ‘now that Mumsy’s gone, I feel more like her.’
After all, you couldn’t use a woman’s dishes, recipes, even her garlic salt, without, in a sense, becoming her.
Rob came in and looked at her silently.
‘Here you are,’ said Kathy, expertly dishing up an omelette.
‘You first,’ said Rob, slumping down and lighting a cigarette.
‘I am hungry.’ She ate in silence. Rob watched. ‘Do get down to your meal.’ He looked at her. He felt an irresistible urge to cut her down to life size.
‘Why are you so keen on feeding me?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Kathy vaguely. But perhaps deep down in her unconscious mind her furthermost thought was: ‘If he’s eating he can’t kill you,’ although on the surface she loved and trusted him as much as before. Like many people her deepest thoughts were primitive throw-backs.
But perhaps Rob also was having primitive thoughts because he continued to refuse to eat. ‘Let’s play a game – the game “ Honest Answers,” ‘ he said suddenly to Kathy.
Kathy looked up surprised: ‘If two can play that game,’ she observed.
‘Well, try.’ Robert leaned forward.
Better watch out, worried Kathy’s inward monitor.
‘Did you believe Janet and Mumsy had any reason for committing suicide? Honest now.’
‘You should know that.’
‘That’s another question. Not an answer.’
‘Well,’ said Kathy defiantly. ‘I think they did have. They had trouble. Trouble perhaps with Charlie Fox.’ … And trouble maybe with you, she added to herself.
Janet, the missing girl. Where had she gone after losing Kathy in the bus? Had she come straight back to Deerham Hills? Where had she gone?
There was a row of smart shops at the bottom of the hill, a hat shop, a dress shop and beauty parlour.
Charmian drew her car to a stop and looked at them. She felt sure that Janet was known inside those shops. She probably had her hair washed right behind that little gilded window.
As she watched the window lit up, and on an impulse Charmian got out of her car and went over and knocked on the door. Baba kept late hours.
She knew the owner of the shop, a man, Peter Sherek, and she knew Baba, the dark-eyed girl who ran it for him. Baba and Charmian had lived in the same house for a few months when they were both new to Deerham Hills. Now Baba lived in a tiny maisonette over the shop.
Baba opened the door a crack. ‘Oh, hello.’ She sounded surprised. ‘Fancy seeing you.’ She held the door open wider. ‘Come in.’ She was a gentle soul, liked by everyone. ‘ I was just experimenting with a new make-up.’ One side of her pretty face was clean and shiny, the other heavily decorated with mascara, eye-shadow, false lashes and pale lipstick. Both sides looked equally pretty.
‘Anaemic, aren’t you?’ said Charmian coming in.
‘Yes. This pale shade won’t do here,’ said Baba seriously. ‘My customers like to see their lipstick. And frankly, most of them need to.’
Charmian faced Baba. ‘I’d like to ask you a question and get no question back!’
‘Go ahead,’ said Baba, her eyes bright. She was removing her one side of cosmetics.
‘Do you know Janet Lower – the Birley stepdaughter?’
Baba nodded; she was expertly applying her own make-up now.
‘I cut her hair. No more than that. She has very pretty hair.’ She patted on some face powder. ‘I do much more for Mrs Birley. I perm her hair and cut it.’
‘And dye it?’
‘No.’ Baba looked amazed. ‘She does that herself. Always fiddling around with it. As a matter of fact, last time she was in I told her she’d have to lay off for a bit or her hair would drop out. She promised me solemnly she would.’ Baba laughed. ‘I ought to have known.’
‘Perhaps she hasn’t then,’ said Charmian, she was playing with Baba’s tray of lipsticks as she spoke.
‘She has though,’ said Baba. ‘The baker told me. It was one of our jokes. He always knew and told me!’
This was the second reference to the baker.
‘Did you see Janet Lower this afternoon,’ said Charmian. ‘Did she happen to pass this shop?’
‘I’d certainly like to know why you ask that question,’ said Baba with interest. ‘But as I promised I won’t.’
‘And I couldn’t answer if you
did,’ said Charmian. ‘Did you see her?’
‘Well, I didn’t,’ Baba answered again. ‘But in my opinion if Janet didn’t want you to see her you don’t. I consider Janet Lower an elusive character.’
‘How does she manage that?’
‘Magic,’ said Baba laughing. ‘Just magic.’
Magic, thought Charmian, justifiably irritated. This whole affair was magic.
As Charmian drove away in her car she went back in her mind to a scene six months ago, when the name Birley had first come to her knowledge.
Charmian received many strange, allusive, telephone calls, just as she had many odd visitors. It was the way she worked; through a web of connections and of informers.
It was not a popular technique with her colleagues. Sergeant Phillips, her immediate boss, was often disgusted.
‘I don’t know why you bother with that man,’ he said, listening to her on the telephone. ‘He’s dirty, he smells, and he’s a liar.’
‘He has the goods. He knows everything that goes on in the dirtier reaches of the town.’ Charmian was not smiling.
‘I still don’t see why.’
‘You know the answer. Show me a police force that uses stool pigeons and I’ll show you a police force that gets results.’
‘You’re hard.’
‘You have to be hard if you’re going to get on in this force.’ Charmian’s eyes were bright with her ambitions.
The Sergeant sighed.
‘And what did he tell you this time?’
‘He told me he’d heard a man called Birley had been murdered.’
So Charmian was not surprised when the name Birley came up again. Anonymous letters started to arrive. Letters accusing Janet and Mother Birley of poisoning old Birley. The authorship of the letters was pretty certainly in the family itself, everything pointed to it, but perhaps they were never going to be able to prove which. It must not be assumed that because Mrs Birley was chiefly accused she was not the author. Anonymous letters – even containing murder accusations – don’t operate that way.
Come Home and Be Killed Page 8