She heard a patter of feet on the garden path. She saw from the window a short stout figure in a grey check suit.
The door opened and there was that familiar husky voice.
‘Robert?’
Charlie Fox. Terror swept over her. They had come to get her.
The husky voice called out again for Robert, and added monstrously ‘Anyone home?’
She bent down towards Robert.
‘Robert, Robert, help me. You can’t let them kill me. I like you.’
But you can’t ingratiate yourself with a dead man, as Kathy suddenly discovered.
Chapter Thirteen
Charmian drove slowly back to the station. She was tired and exhausted. Behind her lay a long interview with an indomitable but difficult old lady. She had found Mrs Uprichard. It had been a puzzling and bewildering interview, but once she got her bearings what the old lady had to say was worth hearing. But she was depressed, because she thought that a plot might succeed and the wicked come out best.
She had gone home for a few hours sleep and to allay the suspicions of her landlady who thought that every woman out after midnight must be up to no good even if she was a policewoman. As Charmian drew the covers up on the bumpy bed she raised the house of her own even higher on her priority list.
She had a list, culled from Old Folk Christmas parties, food parcels, and the Health Visitor, of old folk living alone. Charmian kept information and statistics about the young and the old. They were both in a special category with her, although as she knew, only rarely did you get a septuagenarian indulging in crime. They came as a group under Charmian’s heading of ‘vulnerable to crime.’ As such they were of interest to her.
What made people specially open to violence and crime? Was not a study of the murder as relevant a part of the criminologist’s works as a study of the criminal? Charmian thought so. Vulnerability is not a crime but it might be a sin and was often due to carelessness.
But having met Mrs Uprichard, she no longer thought her vulnerable. And only technically was she living alone. A child of hers, a son or daughter, was always in attendance. Queen Victoria herself couldn’t have been stricter on this: when it was your turn to present yourself you came. Mrs Uprichard had her own punishments. She knew too much about her family and most of them nursed a secret or two they preferred left covered. But mother knew everything.
She was having her breakfast in bed when Charmian arrived. It looked a substantial breakfast of egg and bacon and toast and marmalade and good strong tea. Six newspapers surrounded her and the radio was playing. She was delighted to add a visitor to all that.
‘You only just caught me,’ she said, wiping her mouth. ‘ I’m off to stay my week with my eldest girl soon as I’ve got up and dressed. This is Glad,’ she said, nodding towards her daughter, who had brought Charmian in. ‘I shall do my week with her, then back again, then off to Maidie, my next.’
‘You don’t have to come, Mother,’ said Glad.
It was a cosy frowsty room, well lived in and strongly imprinted with the personality of its occupant. Piles of old newspapers, plants in pots, texts in frames were all round the room.
‘I suppose it’s police business you’ve come upon?’ said Mrs Uprichard. ‘Now what can it be?’ She ran over a few points in her mind. ‘Not the Fanny Jones shoplifting, I was away for that. Not the Landsdowne Road cat burglary, you got the man that did that and if you didn’t you ought to have. Not that accident outside Hilly Road School …’
Charmian mutely admitted the accuracy of the old lady’s list. She had covered all the important incidents in the last few weeks of Deerham Hills Police life.
‘Glad,’ said the old lady fiercely, ‘you’ve kept the paper from me.’
‘The doctor said,’ began Glad defensively.
‘Lies, lies. My mind’s as good as it ever was.’
Charmian coughed. ‘I simply want to ask you about something you may have seen, Mrs Uprichard. Said you did see, in fact.’ Her eyes rested on a text ‘My tongue also shall talk of righteousness all the day long. Psalms.’
‘Josephus will come,’ said the old lady suddenly.
Charmian looked surprised.
‘ “If any man have an ear, let him hear,” … that’s chapter twelve, Book of Revelations,’ she added briskly.
‘I know.’
‘You know?’ she said in a disbelieving voice.
She tried again.
‘What thou seest write in a book: unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna and unto Pergamos and unto Thyatira and unto Sardis and unto …’
‘Philadelphia and Laodices,’ put in Charmian, ‘and that’s in Revelations.’
‘She never went on like this till a month ago,’ said her daughter with slow irritation. ‘She never knew any of the Bible before that.’
‘ ’Course I did.’
‘Not more than anyone else then. Less probably. You was more keen on the News of the World and the football results.’
‘I see you are neither the youngest nor the eldest, not the most loved nor the least loved, neither Alpha nor Omega.’
Charmian understood then that the old lady was talking a kind of sense, and about herself.
‘Yes, I am the middle child of a large family. Fourth out of seven,’ she said precisely. ‘How did you know?’
‘Oh, you’ve got the self-assured look,’ said Mrs Uprichard. ‘I was one myself.’
‘Mrs Uprichard, did you travel on the long-distance bus from Lintown to Deerham Hills yesterday?’ she asked gently. Privately she was wondering what would be the value of the old thing as a witness. Mrs Uprichard took in the question.
‘Yes,’ she said alertly.
‘Do you remember anything about a young girl being missing? Lost.’ She opened her mouth to describe Janet, but before she could get going, Mrs Uprichard interrupted.
‘ ’Course I remember. She wasn’t lost.’
‘Wasn’t she?’ asked Charmian. ‘Well, did you notice anything?’
Mrs Uprichard sat in thought.
‘You mentioned something to the bus driver,’ prompted Charmian.
‘ ’Course I did,’ snapped Mrs Uprichard, ‘I know that. Just getting my facts straight in my mind. Dates as well. Important.’
Charmian waited.
‘Well,’ began Mrs Uprichard, leaning forward, and happily sure of her audience … Glad made an impatient clucking noise. ‘I saw her get on and then get off. I knew the girl of course. That is I knew her face for I saw her often and often about the town with her mother.’
‘Are you sure you saw her get off the bus? Freely? No one with her?’
‘She was on her own and she got off the bus as free as air. But I’ll tell you who wasn’t on the bus,’ she said triumphantly, ‘and that was the one who made all the fuss, the older girl, sister.’
‘Eh?’ said Charmian, completely taken by surprise. ‘Are you sure? Yesterday?’
‘Who’s talking about yesterday?’ said the old lady, with the air of one seizing the salient point. ‘ I’m talking about the day before.’
As Charmian drove away she still wondered what sort of a witness the old lady would make, and who would believe her, but for her own part she certainly did believe her.
She sighed. Ahead of her she foresaw an exhausting task of rounding up other people who had seen Janet too, getting on and off the Deerham Hills bus on the day before her sister reported her missing.
As soon as she got to her room a colleague came up to her. He had been on duty all night and was on his way home. ‘Got something for you, Pratt isn’t in yet. There’s a kid here … says he saw the grey saloon car. What’s more, seems to think he owns it …’
‘What?’ she added quickly. ‘ Where’s he from?’
‘From one of the night garages. That’s why we got him so soon.’
A boy came into the room, wearing oil-stained overalls, a bit grubby. He looked worried and puzzled. He drew his hand jerkily over his chair: the hand at least had b
een washed, it was scrubbed clean, a pink cut across the knuckles, it was a large, nervous, hardworking hand. He was only about eighteen or nineteen, if that, but on the left hand there was a plain gold wedding ring. Not an English custom. With Englishmen you can never tell, Charmian remembered a cross Frenchwoman saying. As soon as she saw the ring she knew who the boy was: name of Lambert, his father was a garage proprietor, went to Rome for a holiday and came back married, they said. Charmian knew this was not true: the girl had lived in Soho.
‘How do you come to think you own this car?’ said Charmian without preamble. ‘It’s registered as belonging to Miss Katherine Birley, and she says she owns it.’
The boy looked embarrassed. ‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said it was mine, but Angie, that’s Angeline my wife, was going on, and it is mine. In a way.’ He looked as if he wished it wasn’t.
Charmian raised her eyebrows.
‘I was keen to get a car for Angie … you don’t feel anything without a car these days, do you?’
‘You should have plenty of chances working in a garage.’
‘I only work there nights. It’s my night job.’ He seemed to have a natural talent for emphasis. ‘Daytimes at the furniture factory. ‘You don’t get the same opportunities for bargains working nights as you would day.’
Charmian raised her eyebrows a mite more: when did he get time to see his Angie?
‘Miss Kathy knew I was wanting a car. I see her on my day job, and she rang up one day and said hers was for sale and I could have it.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t have more than twenty-five pounds but she said pay that down and I could consider the car mine.’
‘You don’t know why she wanted to sell it?’
‘She’d seen one she liked better …’ Then with a rush: ‘But I don’t think that was the reason … she never had the use of the car, those other two always had. I think she’d just got mad and decided to sell. Don’t blame her. It was hers.’
Charmian nodded.
‘I was going to collect it the end of the week …’
‘Angie knew, though …?’ asked Charmian.
He nodded, ‘Couldn’t keep it from her. It was a sort of surprise, though.’
He looked almost ready to cry.
‘I suppose Miss Birley will want the car.’
‘Don’t know if I fancy it myself,’ and he shivered.
‘You saw the car?’
The boy nodded.
‘When?’
‘Night before last.’
‘In what direction was it going.’
‘Past our garage. Towards the woods.’
‘Who was driving?’
‘Woman,’ he said reluctantly.
‘Did you recognise her?’
He shook his head.
‘What age?’
‘Oh – old. Old woman.’
But what was old to Johnny Lambert?
He was still nervous.
‘Will it come to court?’
Charmian nodded.
The boy looked frightened.
‘Come on, out with it.’
‘Fact is – it was Angie that saw it. “Oh look,” she said, joking, “our car.” I just came along to tell you.’
‘She can testify,’ Charmian watched his face.’
‘Oh no, Angie can’t. She’ll never come.’
‘I’ll have to see her. You’ll have to get her!’ said Charmian.
The boy looked as if he would break his heart.
‘If she comes into court – it’ll all come out. We’re not married. She’s no passport. She’ll get sent away.’
Poor Johnny Lambert and his Angie.
He like Mrs Uprichard would be a difficult witness, but psychologically, for her at any rate, he had rounded off the picture. This was how people behaved.
Her telephone rang. It was Inspector Pratt.
‘I’m across the road.’
‘Yes?’ Charmian lifted her eyes to the silhouette of the hospital and magistrates’ court and town administration offices against the early morning sky. The sun was shining on the roof of the hospital and you could see the flowers in the windows and the bright paint.
Pratt’s voice sounded eager and energetic, sure of itself. He had got what he wanted, and they could go ahead.
‘Well, they survived,’ he said. ‘Here are the points to check. I can’t spare Thomas. And use your gumption.’
Charmian scribbled down dates and times and places. It fitted in with what she was already thinking. Now she, like Pratt, felt relief.
Emily wheeled her bike into the courtyard before the police station and marched in.
Charmian interviewed her in her office. She looked up from her telephoning and saw a wide-eyed dishevelled girl wearing a blue skirt. She knew Emily saw men in the image of their Maker.
Emily saw a woman with bright clear eyes with a shrewd stare and sensed that Charmian saw men as perpetual recidivists.
They recoiled slightly from each other as a result. It had never been to be expected that they would take to each other. Emily unconsciously emphasised her feminity, her curves: Charmian became brisker and more businesslike. (Charmian had seen Emily around the town and half envied her, half found her amusing. Emily had never noticed Charmian.)
Of the two of them though, it was Emily that looked surprised. ‘I didn’t expect to see a woman.’
‘I’m competent, Mrs Carter.’ Charmian was amused.
Emily drew a deep and calming breath and tried to present a reasonable picture of her fears and horrors to this sharp-eyed woman.
‘I’m worried about the house next door’ – and then aware this made her look the usual suspicious neighbour – which she was – she added, ‘Maybe there’s something really wrong. It’s shuttered and I can’t get in. Well, perhaps there’s nothing off in that, but it looks odd. And then Kathy’s in trouble, I know that.’
She gave a long vivid description of the shut up house, repeating herself several times, but getting across the essential wrongness of that house. There was something unnatural, troubling, she insisted, about its state that morning.
‘And then of course it’s part of the whole picture that’s been worrying me for weeks.’ She looked doubtfully at Charmian who nodded to her to go on. In truth Charmian was finding it difficult to assess Emily. Wrong-headed she might be, but sharp-eyed and observant she clearly was also. She had seen things of true importance. She would be a splendid witness with her good nature and honesty.
‘I feel sorry for Kathy, she’s stuck with this stepmother and sister. It’s her house, did you know that? But believe it or not they still live with her. Wouldn’t you think they’d move out? But no, it suits them to go on living there. Oh, they pretended to think it was what the old man wanted, that they were looking after Kathy, but it was themselves they were thinking of.’
‘They’ve been saying around the Hill, people telephoning and calling you know, that Mrs Birley and Janet have been found dead in a car in the woods.’
Charmian bent her head, acknowledging the words but hardly admitting more than that.
‘But I don’t believe that to be true. Why should they kill themselves? I tell you they like to be alive.’
‘I think it’s some plan to get the house for themselves. It’s Kathy’s you see, but the old man left it to them if she dies first. She will die first, you’ll see.’
‘And they’re not dead. They’re not dead, are they?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ said Charmian gravely, ‘they’re not dead.’
Emily had provided the motive. She had come up with the essential point that had worried her and Pratt. They knew how and they knew when and now they knew why.
Emily took a deep triumphant breath, ‘I knew it.’
Charmian stared at her thoughtfully. For too long, Emily felt. ‘Sit down,’ she said absently. And then as Emily still showed signs of bouncing around. ‘ Sit down.’ Emily sat down.
The telephone rang.
The man spea
king on the telephone to Charmian was the policeman on the beat which covered the Birley house. He had been told to keep a special eye on it. He too reported as Emily did that there was an unnatural look to it. And the baker had reported that between his arrival and the milkman’s someone had jammed the gate so that he couldn’t even get in. The milk stood on the step, so this act was recent.
‘I was asked to report anything unusual,’ he said anxiously, for to do right or wrong meant a lot to him, ‘and this seemed to me unusual.’
He was trying to get transferred from the uniformed branch to the detective branch.
‘Quite right,’ said Charmian. ‘You did quite right.’
Even Emily was pleased at the speed things moved now.
Jim Carter, baby in arms, stood at an upstairs window. ‘Look boy,’ he said, trying to distract the angry child’s attention. ‘Man coming. Nice man.’ He stopped talking and stared. ‘Maybe not such nice man,’ he said to himself. ‘ Let’s stop playing for a bit baby and let Daddy look.’
You could not tell the character of course, just from a look through the glass and at fifty yards, but there was a fierce aggressive walk to this fellow that seemed to spell trouble.
He was not hiding though, that was one thing about him, if there was going to be trouble he was going to shout about it.
Jim saw that he had a key in his hand and that he opened the front door with it. A stocky little fellow in a light suit with a grey felt hat. He stood there for one moment at the open front door, and then the door was closed.
He was in.
Jim sat down on the bed with his son on his knee. Ten years ago and another world away he had been an army man, a reluctant army man, but still a veteran sergeant. In Korea he had learnt to recognise a gun and the shape it made against the body.
And there was something else too in the fat man’s pocket; something long and thin. It could be a whip.
He knew he ought to go to Kathy’s help. He glanced down helplessly at his son. For the first time he admitted that maybe Emily had been right all along.
He stood there watching.
The policeman on the beat came back and stood there silently observing. ‘Don’t do anything,’ Charmian had said. ‘ Wait.’
Come Home and Be Killed Page 13