Revengeful Death

by Jennie Melville

  ‘When will this happen?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Early, but not too early – we want an audience. I shall see that the press get there. TV if possible. Be ready. We’ll come to collect you.’

  ‘And what part do I play? I know we talked about it …’

  Gina sounded surprised. ‘Yourself, of course,’ I said so.

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘The same, I shall be me.’

  ‘What about the killer?’

  ‘One of the Trojans. In fact, two of them. A man and a woman. Masked, of course. That allows us freedom because we don’t as yet know the sex of the killer. And there might have been two working together’

  Mary moved uneasily in her hard chair, which was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Or was it Gina who was making her feel pain in her bones.

  ‘And the victims?’ she said. ‘ Who acts them?’

  Gina looked towards Emma. ‘ Em here will be all the victims.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘As the drama grows we may find ourselves with other victims,’ said Gina, her face serious. ‘It could be so. Someone may come up, a woman out shopping, a lorry driver, and say: Yes, a year ago, or longer, there was another death that this reminds me of.’

  All this time Emma had said nothing. ‘What do you think? Are you happy doing this?’ Mary March asked. She had the curious feeling that all the air in the room was being sucked out. It was getting colder, too.

  ‘I don’t mind what I do,’ said Emma in a soft voice. ‘I want to avenge Pip.’

  She looked as though she could do that, thought Mary with some nervousness. ‘You loved him?’

  ‘More than that: we were one person when we were together. Now I’m in half.’

  She was very young, Mary thought, to be so intense. ‘You’ll grow out of it, girl,’ she wanted to say. ‘ We’ve all felt like that in our time, but it wears off.’

  Aloud, she said: ‘What about words?’

  ‘Try to remember what you did say. Otherwise extemporize. Or mime – you’ll find it easier than you think. The Trojans will help, we’re used to creating a drama as we go. Just speak up.’

  Mary got up to look out of the window while she considered it all. There was already a strong wind blowing – tomorrow it might be a gale, and with rain. She turned back to where Gina had put a protective hand on Emma’s arm. ‘I’ll never be heard.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, I shall have one of the Trojans beside you to repeat what you say. Projecting it, you know. And I have some trumpets, they can be used.’

  ‘It will be a pantomime.’

  ‘Of course. It will be all the stronger for it.’ Again she was serious. ‘It is the nature of drama.’ Gina stood up; she looked pleased. ‘Come on, Emma. We have preparations to make.’

  Mary saw them to the door. ‘I’ll expect you tomorrow … Unless either of us is arrested.’

  ‘That, of course.’ Gina was matter-of-fact.

  At the door, Mary stopped. ‘ I don’t know what you really have in mind, but my opinion is that that girl Emma needs care and rest, not the treatment you’re giving her. I know what end-of-tether looks like – believe me, I’ve had experience. But that’s not what I want to say. I believe I’m the real victim here, that even the deaths are aimed at me.’

  Gina accepted this with a nod. ‘All right: if it’s so, then that will come out too.’

  When they had gone, Mary went to the drawer where her knife, her best knife, rested. Better be ready if the drama of denunciation did take place.

  I wonder if the police put her up to it. No, too Gothic for them. They did occasionally re-enact the scene of a murder, but not with a whole cast. Usually one girl – somehow it was always a girl – and one policewoman.

  Why wait for Gina Foster’s drama? Why not get in first with a show of her own? More than one way of shooting the cat.

  Let dusk come on: there was no moon, clouds were building up, it would be a dark night.

  She put on a grey tweed coat; the coat reached down to her ankles where it hung in folds, bordered with dark fur that smelled of some aged animal. It was an ancient garment that had belonged to a long-dead aunt, whose body shape it still echoed, so that from behind she looked like a plump old lady. She wore it as a kind of disguise. She slipped into soft shoes, ready to go out.

  Thus dressed, she went to her refrigerator to take out a squashy packet done up in two layers of plastic bags.

  A mild rain had begun to fall; not the sort of night to be out on the streets with a knife in your pocket.

  She knew, of course, where Charmian Daniels lived in Maid of Honour Row. That sort of information was easy to come by.

  There were lights on in the house and the curtains at an upper window were not drawn so that she could see a man moving around. A cat rubbed against her legs, attracted by the fur. It began to call. ‘Thinks I’m a ruddy tom-cat.’ She reached down and grabbed it. ‘Shut up cat, or I’ll cut your throat.’

  The cat struggled but purred at the same time.

  ‘Whose blood shall I paint her house with, puss? Your blood, my blood or hers?’

  The cat nuzzled against her, trying to get at her pocket. Mary stroked the cat. ‘You can smell what I’ve got here, can’t you, puss?’

  As she stood there in the darkness beneath the tree, a car drew up outside Charmian’s house and two men got out. One was Jack Headfort, she knew him; the other man had something familiar about him.

  She watched the Chief Inspector ring the bell and be admitted. Then she felt herself begin to tremble. She knew she was on the edge of tears. Why should the sight of Jack Headfort in his heavy tweed overcoat do this to her? Was it because he was such a man?

  What a time for sex to come back into her life.

  The cat struggled away and sat on the ground at her feet, calling softly. Mary reached into her pocket, took out the soft, bloody packet. ‘All right, puss, you win. You can have it. I was going to wipe it all over her front door, write her name in the blood. Not now. I’ve gone sane. You can go sane, just as you can go mad. I never knew that. Just let me cut it up for you.’ She got out her knife. ‘It’s a good piece of liver, puss. And I ought to know.’

  As the cat fell upon the liver, purring and eating at the same time with her tail lashing, a comic, happy sight, Mary began to laugh. The laughter broke something inside her. ‘I was mad, and now I am sane. This is the real world,’ she said. But there was pain as well as relief. ‘What have I been about, what have I been doing?’

  She looked from the blood on her hands to the knife. She threw the knife away from her, then bent down to pick it up, groaning as she did so. She put it back in her pocket. She could not leave the knife around. She began to shake more violently as tears forced themselves under her eyelids.

  With this new feeling of being back as a full member of the human race (which, she supposed, was what sanity was), came a terrible question. She bent down to stroke the cat, who did not stop eating but turned from purring to growling.

  ‘Am I the killer? I thought I was the victim, but perhaps that was part of my madness … Oh God, don’t let me be the killer.’

  Mary March was walking up Peascod Street before she realized where she was or how she had got there. She was passing a big butcher’s shop. No one was about, it was late in the evening for that, so her tears had gone unobserved.

  She took a deep breath. No, I cannot be the killer, because I loved the boy.

  Inside the house in Maid of Honour Row, Charmian and her husband had been surprised by the arrival of her visitors.

  ‘Sorry to break in on your evening, ma’am.’ Jack Headfort looked pleased with himself. ‘I know you’ve been in London all day.’ Busy with matters too secret to tell me, he thought with wry amusement. He had decided long ago not to mind the fact that SRADIC and Charmian Daniels moved in other worlds than his. Some of his colleagues did mind, and sometimes, let her know it, but Headfort thought that he knew where her real interests lay and t
hat it was the straight police work that had it. He hoped she was going to stay with them; he had not liked the rumours floating around.

  ‘Come into the kitchen, we’re just having coffee.’ Humphrey was standing by the solid-fuel stove looking thoughtfully at the glass coffee machine, which he hoped he now knew how to use. He nodded to Jack Headfort, whom he knew, and smiled at the other man, whom he did not.

  ‘This is Dan Pitt,’ said Headfort. ‘I knew him from Thames Valley College days.’

  Pitt looked older and more worn than Headfort.

  ‘He learned more than I did,’ Headfort went on. And he also had the good sense to take early retirement.’

  That wasn’t the all of it, Charmian guessed; more there than he’s saying.

  Dan Pitt accepted a cup of coffee. ‘I do private investigations now. You know how it goes: missing people, security checks and so on. I set up the firm myself, just me, a girl in the office with an answer-phone and a fax. Things are building up, but meanwhile I take what jobs come along.’

  ‘Sure.’ Charmian nodded. ‘Don’t we all, one way and another.’

  Headfort picked up the note of polite caution in her voice. Jack Headfort sponsors you, therefore you are welcome here, but I don’t know you and you must work your passage. She’s got her My Ladyship voice on, he told himself. He had not worked with her often enough to know if it was growing on her. He liked her, though, and respected her: she had integrity.

  ‘I think you ought to listen to what Dan has to say.’

  Her husband picked up his coffee cup and stood up. ‘I’ll go upstairs, I have some letters to write.’ His eyes met Headfort’s with some amusement, an amusement that was returned by Headfort. Thus had the gentry tactfully made an exit since the days of Victoria. Or was he thinking of a play by Somerset Maugham?

  Charmian said in an abstracted voice: ‘ You don’t need to go.’ She turned to Dan Pitt, who was pretending to drink his coffee. ‘It’s about these two murders, I suppose. That’s what you have something to tell me about? Yes, it’s written all over Jack’s face.’

  ‘Yes, it is. And it’s worried me enough to make me tell Jack here, and for Jack to bring me up to you. When I say worried, perhaps that’s not the right word; puzzled might be better.’

  Charmian waited. He would get it out eventually, if not she would take a knife to him. She stopped herself; silly joke in the circumstances, where a hand had been too ready with a knife.

  ‘A client called on me, asked me to check up, keep a watch on a woman in Windsor. He gave me the name and address: Mary March, Marlborough Street. He said he was worried about her, wanted to know what her state of mind was. No action needed on my part, just observation.’

  ‘Did he say why he wanted this?’

  ‘Cousin, he said. Family. I though it might be his ex or estranged wife.’ He added thoughtfully: ‘Changed my mind about that, though.’

  ‘What name did he give?’

  ‘Geoff Brown, a false name I thought. That didn’t matter; to be expected in this trade, and I knew I could get behind it if I had to.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘I did. When I began to get worried, concerned about the woman I was watching. Mary March was the name, and march is what she did. Always walking, as if she couldn’t rest.’ Pitt looked into the distance as if he could see Mary March still walking.

  ‘Were you there when she found the body of Peter Parker?’

  Pitt hesitated. ‘ I was down the road. Yes, I did see her go in and come out later.’

  ‘What was the time gap?’

  Slowly, he said: ‘ She was in there some time.’

  Charmian and Jack Headfort looked at each other: had she been doing the killing during that time?

  ‘Did you see anything else?’

  ‘I know what you mean … Yes, I did see the other woman come out of the house and go running down the road.’

  ‘Before March went in?’

  ‘About the same time. March saw her too …’

  So to this extent, Mary March’s testimony that she had gone in, alerted by the sight of Alice Hardy running away, and had found the dead body, was true.

  ‘Did you see anyone else?’

  Pitt shook his head.

  ‘What about the victim? Did you see him go into the house?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t there so very long. Not beforehand. But I did see the police go in.’ Pitt paused, obviously thinking out what to say next. ‘I saw her running across the road with the child in her arms … that was very troubling. It was after that I tried to talk to her. But she turned me away, said she didn’t want the press bothering her.’ Dan Pitt frowned. ‘I wasn’t sure she really believed it. I was becoming increasingly disquieted about her.’ Pitt had an occasional pedantic tone, Charmian noted, wondering if one of his careers had been teaching. ‘ So it was then that I decided to look into the background of my client.’

  ‘I see.’ And she did: Pitt was a good and experienced former policeman who had trusted his instincts, which told him there was something wrong with Mary March. As they had told her and Jack Headfort too. ‘ Pity you didn’t say before.’

  ‘I soon discovered that Geoff Brown was a successful author under the name of David Exeter. I dug a bit further when I found out that Geoff Brown was really called Richard James David Janvier Flint-King. Janvier is a Flemish name. One of his forebears. On the mother’s side.’

  Charmian looked towards Jack Headfort: ‘ What about you? Did you know this?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘There was a family chain of butcher’s shops,’ said Pitt. ‘Very prosperous when a lot of meat was eaten, but the family, which still called the chain Janvier’s, sold out when profits started to go down. The local story is that they did well enough to enjoy a private income: the man got the most but the girl got a bit. They were not liked where they lived in south London, and when the man went to prison because of the car accident … the girl had a sort of breakdown, started attacking people. She was given a short prison sentence, made trouble there. Some of her trouble may have been because of an engagement that was broken off, man cleared off when the scandal broke … Jack tells me you know about all that.’

  ‘We do, but it sounds as though you know more.’

  Pitt said: ‘The father, the grandfather too for that matter, was a bit of a bully, all seem agreed on that, and he insisted on the brother and sister working in the shop in school and college vacations. They disliked it, so the story goes, but toed the line and learned the job.’

  ‘Knives and joints and blood,’ said Headfort.

  ‘Certainly gives us a bit of background on Mary March,’ said Charmian uneasily.

  Surprisingly, Humphrey, until now discreetly silent, spoke up. ‘Even illuminates her name: when she changed it, what did she do but choose a month? March for January.’

  They looked at him. ‘Janvier … January.’

  ‘I would have seen it in a minute,’ Charmian said, defensive, as she occasionally was with her husband on matters that might be called cultural. ‘I was concentrating on other points.’

  Pitt said: ‘What happened to the child? He was actually there, he must have seen.’

  ‘He’s with his father. We’ve not been permitted to question him again,’ said Headfort. ‘The mother is still missing.’

  ‘What does the father do?’ Charmian asked.

  ‘He’s a teacher of some sort. Supply teacher, he said,’ Jack Headfort came up with. ‘Alice Hardy did something of the same when she was working. Domestic things, cookery, needlework.’

  Charmian turned to Dan Pitt. ‘ You were right to ask about the boy.’

  Jack Headfort had the manner of a dog that had just laid a rabbit at his master’s feet. ‘I knew when I brought Dan in that you would see all the implications of what he had to say.’

  Charmian moved across the kitchen. ‘More coffee, anyone?’ She filled her own cup and waved the pot at them. ‘No? It needs thinking about: I see the
picture you have in mind, Jack. There they were, brother and sister, bullied and forced to work at a job which she, at least, disliked. Then the sale of the shops, death of the father, freedom … Only the brother buys an expensive car which he can’t handle and kills a girl. Mary, dumped by her lover – that could be important, I think – has a kind of breakdown.’

  At this point Charmian stopped and looked at the room: her husband, his contribution offered and accepted, had gone back into silent abstraction (which did not mean he was not absorbing every word); Jack Headfort was looking at her with a frown, and Dan Pitt was staring out of the kitchen window.

  ‘She’s someone who feels under attack, has a kind of breakdown; she’s also someone used to knives and digging into flesh.’

  She saw Headfort wince.

  ‘She has an obsession with blood and knives,’ she turned to Dan Pitt. ‘Jack will have told you about the letters and messages she claims she gets. She says the bloody clothes and the blood on her garage door were put there to make her look guilty. Which, in a way, they have done,’ Charmian added thoughtfully. ‘You were watching her; did you see anyone delivering the letters, dropping the clothes off?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘No, never. But remember, I wasn’t around all the time. I was keeping a watch, running a check, yes, but not twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. My client wasn’t paying for that sort of surveillance.’

  ‘Charmian thinks she left it there herself Jack Headfort looked at Charmian.

  ‘No, not necessarily. The double source of the blood on the jeans worries me. If she did blot the blood up with them, she did it on purpose, and I can’t work out why.’ Charmian was still walking round the room with her coffee.

  Jack Headfort wished she would sit down; her constant movement was confusing him. ‘Or Alice Hardy did it in the course of killing the man and the girl and left them on Mary March. In which case she was probably behind the messages and the threats. And we don’t know why in that case, either.

  ‘Mary March connects it with what she says was a similar persecution where she lived in south London, and this was why she moved to Windsor and changed her name.’ Charmian ceased her walk, sat down at the table and finished her coffee. Then she said: ‘Humphrey, get us all a drink … wine or whisky, I don’t mind which. I don’t know if Mary March is living in fantasy land or not. Perhaps a drink will clear my mind.’ She watched her husband come back into the room with several bottles. ‘I wonder if it would be a good idea to get a psychologist to have a look at her?’