‘It might be.’
Charmian was pleased to see her husband walk in. ‘Asleep in the kitchen?’
She turned her head to look up at him, tall and trim in his court dress. ‘No, just thinking.’
‘Work?’
‘I do have a lot on the go at the moment,’ she admitted. ‘Here and in London.’
He understood, knowing full well all the extra and confidential duties her position as head of SRADIC brought with it. Trained to discretion himself, he never asked too many questions.
But a man did like to see his wife less worried.
He sat down at the table. There was a cold, half-drunk cup of coffee there. ‘This new murder?’
‘It does trouble me; I can’t seem to get a handle on it. Or not the right handle, anyway.’
‘You have a good team working on it?’
‘Oh yes, sure. They’ll bring in what new material they can find. Not much at the moment.’
‘I suppose if I say “early days” you’ll be irritated? No? Do you fear another murder?’
‘I don’t know. It’s so nasty, the way the bodies were cut into. And now David Darling has added his ounce or two … Just details about the knife and the wounds, but all adding to the feeling that we have a beast here, just waiting to eat someone up.’
Humphrey got up. ‘I’m going to have a drink. Want one?’
She shook her head. ‘I think I had too much whisky with Jack Headfort as it was.’
‘I was only thinking of tea,’ Humphrey observed mildly.
‘I’ll join you then.’ She looked down at the floor. ‘And Muff would like some milk.’
As he poured the tea from his mother’s silver pot, Charmian commented that there was something soothing and comforting about a cup of tea, especially when you had a cat at your feet supping milk from a saucer.
‘Cream,’ said Humphrey, ‘she prefers it.’
‘I’m worried about my future too,’ said Charmian suddenly. They had talked it all over several times; they had no secrets. ‘You haven’t heard any rumours, I suppose?’
He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t.’
Charmian took his hand. ‘Forget me. What about you?’
‘A dull evening, but I did my duty. I got stuck with a chap from Monaco. Nice fellow, but a bore. The wine is always first-class at the Castle but of course you can’t drink a lot if you’re on duty.’
‘You never do anyway,’ said Charmian fondly. Her first husband had been a toper, one of the problems of that long-dead policeman. He had been years older than Charmian and a charmer in his way.
‘I’ve had a long talk with Rosie.’
‘She was there?’
‘No, no, I went down to the Green Alley Theatre in Cheasey Wick to talk to her. She’s putting on a show there.’
‘Do they have a theatre?’
‘It’s an old music hall. We’ve put off the lunch because of Pip. She barely knew him, but she feels the Trojans are tragic and she can’t leave them to it. She’s enjoying it a bit, I think. She likes the drama. She doesn’t think I could stand stage life, I’m too much of an intellectual … But she doesn’t understand that it’s the backstage scene that attracts me – the labyrinth behind the front, the bleak corridors, the winding concrete stairs, the little dressing rooms. I fancy it; I feel like being part of the theatre that Shakespeare knew.’
The English passion for their past, thought Charmian. She was partly Scots, and they were worse.
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to help Rosie at the Green Alley, and after the first week we’ll have our lunch at the Savoy and make up my mind for me. That’s the deal.’
‘Do I have a say?’
‘Always.’
‘Right – don’t let Rosie bully you. Do what you want.’
‘Thanks for saying that. A vote of confidence.’
‘I could do with one myself.’
Humphrey came up and drew her to her feet. ‘Come on, have a cuddle.’
‘You must have had a lovely nanny,’ said Charmian with a laugh. ‘You do a gorgeous cuddle.’
‘Tomorrow is another day.’
‘Tomorrow I have to face the fact that I have two suspects – Mary March and Gina Foster; a killer who may be moving up for another kill and who may be left-handed, with, according to Dr Darling, a certain skill in cutting, but who certainly created his killing weapon. Oh yes, and there’s a missing woman who may be dead. Or, again, may be the killer.’
Chapter Nine
As Charmian left for work the next morning, after the night she had learnt from Dr David Darling that the killer might be left-handed, the dustcart rolled noisily down Maid of Honour Row. Muff watched from the top of the garden wall – she had known mice to be disturbed by the binmen as they heaved black plastic sacks of rubbish into the back of the big lorry. It was worth watching, she thought. Not all the bags were thrust into the masher that turned endlessly like the wheels of hell at the back of the van. A few, which might contain interesting or worthwhile objects, were stowed away in a drawer at the side. Muff knew this, but not everyone did.
Charmian had waved to the man collecting her sack as she drove away. They were a decent lot doing a dirty job. ‘Like me,’ she thought. ‘We both tidy up society’s filth. A man like that probably knows most of what goes on in this town,’ she reflected.
Marlborough Street was on the same circuit for the dustcart, but it was on the afternoon shift. The street was quiet, the police had moved away, all appeared normal.
Ted Farmer, foreman on this shift, the kindest of men who took every lost dog and cat to the Animals’ Shelter (including several who were not), and who was friendly to children and old ladies, was such a man who kept an eye open for pelf. He was a great, tall man with a crest of fair hair and pale blue eyes like a Viking, in whom perhaps some trace of the raider yet remained. A black sack attracted his attention.
He took his plunder from Marlborough Street back to the depot where he examined it in a discreet corner. His instinct was true. His eye had been first attracted by a pair of rolled-up jeans on the top. For a moment he laid them aside and dug in. Here among the empty tins and screwed-up paper and vegetable peelings was a bottle of red wine, a third still left, drinkable; here too were several magazines and paperbacks – might be readable. That was it.
He turned back to the jeans. Dark blue, small woman’s size, a thick leather belt with a mono-grammed buckle. Quality good. The belt could be crocodile, the buckle could be silver. Now that could be worth having. Saleable for drinking money. A Viking needed drink.
Ted held them up in front of him. It was darkish in his alcove, but he could see a spreading stain across the front and round the back.
‘Someone had an accident,’ he said aloud. He moved nearer to the light at the entrance to his cave. (Which was how he thought about it: it was an alcove in an old railway arch.)
He could see then that the stain was blood, dark dried blood.
Now was the time to think; he sat down on the floor and lit a cigarette while he debated his position. Perks were not allowed, not legally. Also, there was supposed to be a health risk, which he personally was prepared to defy. But although the boss figures certainly knew what went on, since at least one of them had come up the hard way and had been on the bins as a lad, they did not wish to know. The blind eye operated.
Still, Ted was not stupid: he knew what had happened in Marlborough Street, he knew he had to tell his boss, who would in turn tell the police.
Rolling up the bloody jeans, he went across to the office. He rapped on the door and went in. You didn’t need to wait for a call to come in: if the boss was there he would nod when he saw you. Speech was not his medium.
No one was in there, but a steaming cup of coffee suggested he would be back soon. Ted looked out of the door. Across the yard he could see Alan Hemlow abstracting a box of files.
‘You ought to lock the car, guv,’ he said as Hemlow wa
lked into the office. He got a grunt in return. He recognized what the sound meant – he had heard it before. Mind you, it served many purposes, that grunt, but this time it meant: And what the hell do you want?
For answer, he held out the jeans. ‘Found these,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Blood, that is.’
‘Where?’
‘Marlborough Street.’
There was a pause, not even a grunt. Then Hemlow said: ‘ What number?’ For him it was a long sentence.
‘The house where the girl was found dead. Across the way from the other murder.’
Hemlow nodded, a noiseless grunt this was. He took the jeans, laid them on his desk and went to the telephone, motioning to Ted to stay around. ‘Police,’ he said. Ted noticed he had dialled 999. Hardly an emergency, he thought, but a free call – you couldn’t beat Hemlow for squeezing. ‘ Got something here you ought to see. No, you send someone, we’re busy here.’
Then he sat down and drained his coffee. Ted, getting a short nod and interpreting it accurately, went across, put the kettle on and made two more mugfuls.
‘Think it means she did it then?’ Ted asked. ‘The one that lives in that house?’
Alan shrugged.
‘The police had her in, I know that.’
‘Can’t say,’ managed Alan Hemlow. As if you ever would, thought Ted. Or could. It had struck him that the guv had a hole in the throat through which words escaped.
Ted had the bad luck to be interviewed by Sergeant Billy Friner, who had met Ted before. Nothing serious, just a street fight in which Ted had been, so he claimed, an innocent victim, although others might have different views. Friner remembered him. A police car had come down to the depot, been sufficiently impressed by the bloody jeans and their provenance to make several calls back to base. Then Ted was invited, if that was the word, to come down to Cheasey, where the incident room had been set up. ‘So how did you happen to see the jeans?’ Billy Friner was as
dark as Ted was fair; he was also very young to be a CID sergeant,
and looked it. But looks lied because he was a determined
investigator with a lucid mind.
‘Just saw them as I picked up the bin.’ More or less true: they
had been on top, almost wanting to be seen.
‘So you decided to nick them?’
Ted was silent while he tried to think what to say. ‘They were
being chucked out. No harm done.’
Friner ignored this. ‘ Sure you didn’t put them in it yourself?’
Ted denied this strongly, shaking his great head.
‘We shall have to take your fingerprints,’ said Friner with sad
satisfaction.
‘Jeans like that won’t take prints.’
Friner ignored this too. ‘And we shall have to test the blood to
see if it’s human.’
It was Ted’s turn to keep silent. Personally he had no doubts.
They smelled of death, those jeans. Of whose death seemed open
question at the moment.
‘Right, well that’s all for the moment.’ It was a dismissal.
Ted’s Viking spirit stirred. He stood up. ‘I didn’t expect to get
a prize, but I did think someone would say thank you.’
Barely looking up, Friner said: ‘Thank you, Mr Farmer, the WPC
here will take you to have your prints taken. She’ll show you where
to wash.’
It was evening by then, so Chief Inspector Headfort did not hear about the bloodstained jeans until the next morning. Blood always commands respect, so he got the news as he drank his breakfast coffee. He preferred tea but his wife, still with him, said coffee, so coffee it was. He ate a slice of starch-reduced crisp-bread covered with low-sugar marmalade, having long since been divorced by his wife from his favoured meal of fried bread, fried bacon and sausage. He had to admit that his waistline had benefited.
He received the news from Sergeant Friner. ‘Might be just the thing to shift the case along,’ Friner said as he greeted Jack Headfort in the corridor.
‘We could do with something.’ In spite of team efforts, there was still no firm evidence against either Mary March or Gina Foster. Headfort was convinced March was the killer, but he had to admit that Foster had to be considered. He agreed with Charmian that she touched the case at too many points for comfort.
‘Who knows about this?’
‘Just us and the man who found them, and his boss.’
‘Tell them to keep quiet. I’m coming along to have a look at what you’ve got.’
The jeans were laid out on a table for his inspection when he arrived in the incident room.
‘Does Daniels know?’ Headfort asked as he looked down at the jeans.
‘No, I’ve left that to you.’
‘They’re a small size,’ Headfort appraised. ‘Ten, or even eight. Wouldn’t fit March. Not to wear.’
‘I never thought they were hers.’
‘No; the initial on the belt now …’ Headfort studied it carefully. ‘An A, would you say?’
Friner nodded. ‘I thought so.’
‘We shall have to get Edward Hardy to look at them, if they are his wife’s … which is what you’re thinking and so am I.’ He thought about his own wife and her clothes. Would he know a pair of her jeans? Might do, and he would recognize a belt. ‘The belt looks like silver,’ he said reflectively. ‘Yes, get the husband in. Only not until the tests on the blood types are done.’
He retired to his own corner of the incident room to pick up the telephone. ‘ Time to tell our lady boss.’
Charmian was in her office; with her was Dolly Barstow. ‘I shall have to tell Jack Headfort that David Darling suspects the killer of being left-handed and practised with a knife.’
‘March is not left-handed, I’ve already asked around. If she has a bent that way then no one’s noticed. The same with Gina Foster.’
‘Confirms what I thought. David Darling has his mad side. I think the point about the knife being specially prepared is more useful. What he says about the entry wound being the result of a dig into the flesh will help in building up the case once we know who did it.’
‘If ever.’
‘I’m not giving in on this one,’ said Charmian.
‘You don’t like March.’
‘She doesn’t like me. And I don’t know why. I know I’m not charm personified. No laughter, please.’
The telephone interrupted her. Dolly watched her face, saw the eyebrows shoot up, and recognized the strong resonant tones of Jack Headfort.
‘So?’ She listened, giving a slight nod towards Dolly, who moved up closer to listen. Then Charmian put the telephone down. ‘ How much of that did you get?’
‘I heard the word “jeans”.’
‘Bloodstained jeans – badly stained, not just from a cut finger or a nosebleed. Found in the bin in Marlborough Street, outside where Mary March lives.’
‘Whose jeans?’
‘That’s the interesting question – apart from how and why they were in the bin – too small for Mary March, probably much too small for Gina. There is a buckle with what looks like an A on it.’
‘Alice Hardy,’ said Dolly at once. ‘Her jeans. She’s dead then.’ She got up, walked to the window to look. ‘I’ve always felt she was. Otherwise where is she?’
‘Looks like it. Could be.’ Charmian was thoughtful. ‘Depends if it is her blood.’ She left her desk. ‘Come on, let’s view the jeans. The sight of them might produce some worthwhile thoughts. I’ll drive.’
It was a sunny day in Windsor but a low mist hung over Cheasey. ‘I think Cheasey suits Jack Headfort,’ Charmian said as she drove. ‘He matches it. They’re a tough, difficult lot here, impenetrable somehow, not just because they are criminalistic but because they have their own rules. Not all of them bad rules, either,’ she added, swinging past a school with an iron fence with barbed wire on top. ‘They are loyal, cunning of course, bu
t brave. Liars to a man, and the women are worse, but they stick up for each other. I like that.’
She parked the car in an empty spot which said Keep This Space Empty.
The Chief Inspector’s office was on the ground floor of the new building. He was its first inhabitant, something about which he was secretly pleased. He led them to see the jeans.
‘Samples of the blood have gone off to be tested, but I don’t know the results as yet. I’ve asked for speed.’ He watched Charmian’s face as she bent over the jeans to study them.
‘It’s a puzzle, isn’t it? If they are Alice Hardy’s jeans, then she’s probably dead, and didn’t put them in the refuse. So who did?’
‘Mary March?’
‘Outside her own door? Ted Farmer who found them says they were rolled up – easy to see. So why would she do that?’
‘Has she been asked?’
‘She’s going to be. But I wanted the blood test first.’
Charmian nodded. ‘She’ll probably say it’s part of the campaign against her.’
‘If it is Alice Hardy’s blood then the killer put them where they were found. I suppose we can hazard that guess?’
‘And it confirms Mary March’s story of harassment or worse.’
‘Unless she is the killer and she’s working a double blind. A good defence counsel could do marvels with it.’ You couldn’t give Mary March a clean slate: she was part of these murders somehow and he would like to prove it.
Charmian thought they were getting a bit beyond themselves: they were far away from having a case to go to court with. ‘The blood might have nothing to do with the case at all. What about the other people in the house?’
‘They’ve been asked. I sent Sergeant Friner along first thing, but the two deny knowing anything about the jeans. He says he believes them.’
Charmian knew Friner, knew him for a naturally sceptical soul (probably why he had become a CID sergeant so young), and she accepted that if he believed the upstairs tenants then they were telling the truth.
Dolly Barstow said firmly: ‘We need to know about the blood. It could be pig’s blood.’
Even as she spoke, the telephone rang. Headfort picked it up, then nodded at Charmian. ‘The report on the blood samples is coming over’ He listened for a few seconds longer. ‘The blood is from two people: one sample matches the first victim.’
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