Death in the Garden

by Jennie Melville

  However, even this was not what he was chiefly thinking of at the moment. He was beginning to sniff out undertones in the character of Luke Tory, deceased.

  In police possession, stained with Luke’s vomit and blood, had been a newspaper. An item on page one recorded that Constable Miller had been charged, together with another man, with conspiring to commit a robbery. This may have been one of the last items read by Luke Tory before he became past reading anything.

  Well, no mystery about Detective Police Constable Edward Miller. He had been corrupt. He was an example of what was coming to be a phenomenon of the new police: an early burn-out. He had been the best cadet of his intake, he had really put his back into his work at first. Overkeen, really, was Bill Crail’s serious thought, and how different from his own colleague and working partner, WDC Elsie Lewis, who never bent her back an inch beyond what was demanded of her. But for DC Miller, in spite of exams passed and cases solved, promotion had not come quickly. Or not quickly enough. He’d been under investigation for dirty dealing for some time.

  So, no mystery about DC Miller. But a note in a diary found on him had named Luke Tory. By the side of his name a sum of money was written. There was more than one such entry.

  To Bill Crail, meditating over his beer, this suggested blackmail.

  Whether Luke Tory was collecting the blackmail, or paying it, he was not as yet sure. He inclined to the view that Tory was the blackmailer. It would explain DC Miller’s headlong flight into crime, the poor sod.

  God knows what Tory had on him or how. But blackmail provided a motive for murder, although why the powdered shells of agaric fly was used was something else again. Perhaps it was the only poison the killer could lay hands on. Motive, opportunity and means of killing were the three heads you looked for.

  Bill Crail sipped his beer. In the end he would have to share his thoughts with his superiors, would wish to do so, but for the moment they were his alone.

  He began to think about Cassie Ross who attracted him a lot.

  Kit took Edwina’s hand.

  ‘You’re in trouble, love. Let me help.’

  ‘I can hack it. I want this child.’

  ‘Of course you do. What happens next?’

  ‘I suppose the police will question us again. We’re under suspicion all right, we three.’

  ‘No, I meant about the baby.’

  ‘Oh, go to a clinic or something,’ said Edwina vaguely. ‘It’s in my diary. I have a date. I’ll get there.’

  The clinic was in Ladybird Lane, near St Thomas’ Hospital, not the smartest of areas but her doctor had booked her there. When she told her father he would no doubt suggest a private hospital somewhere. But Edwina thought that she and this child had better start as they meant to go on. They would both have to earn their own living. Besides, Ladybird Lane suited her mood at the moment.

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘Oh, tests.’ She was vague again, not really wanting to be explicit. To show the baby’s normal, but she was not going to say so.

  ‘Let me come with you.’ He hated the thought that this was Tim’s child. All the normality would have to come from Edwina, if the genes had anything to do with it. He didn’t call Tim normal.

  ‘No.’ If she took any man it would be Dougie, there was a soothing feminine side to Dougie that would fit in.

  Across the room William Crail, who had been aware of them all the time, got up and walked across. Everything about Edwina Fortune interested him at the moment. He had sensed that Edwina was the centre of that group of women. Cassie might be the most vibrant, and Alice the most talented (and the coldest) but Edwina was the one who held them together.

  He timed his move so that he just brushed past their table as they both looked up. Timing, as with an actor, is a vital part of a detective’s craft.

  ‘Miss Fortune?’

  There was a pause while Edwina looked at him, thinking what to do.

  ‘This is Sergeant Crail,’ she said.

  Kit held out a hand. ‘Kit Langley.’ He sounded cautious, yet alert. I look after Edwina, his voice was saying, so watch it.

  Crail sat down without being asked. No one expected a policeman to have good manners, so he never tried for any. He exploited this loophole in his mark’s defences whenever it suited him.

  ‘Mind if I ask you a question, Miss Fortune?’

  ‘Depends on the question.’

  ‘Do you think the telephone calls you have been getting are in any way connected with Mr Tory’s death?’

  ‘Isn’t that for you to find out?’

  ‘But what do you think?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Feelings aren’t evidence.’

  He was a new-style detective. ‘Ah, but they are.’

  Kit obscurely felt that a battle was going on between the two of them of which he was not allowed to take cognisance. He took Edwina’s hand. It felt warm and soft, not exactly responsive but not totally dead to him either.

  ‘It’s something I have to think about,’ went on Sergeant Crail. ‘We all know what’s usually behind calls like you’ve had.’

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘Yes. Sex. You don’t need me to go into it. But I have to take it into account.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because what killed Luke Tory was agaric fly, cantharides. It has a common use as an aphrodisiac.’ And it could have been sold to him by that dubious lady, Pickles Dover.

  The skin whitened under Edwina’s rouge. She was hearing a voice saying: You don’t know how to love. I have the means to bring you up to scratch. She tried to blot the voice out but these were the words it was shouting now in her ear.

  So you weren’t going to be a victim, Edwina?

  But supposing you were meant to be a victim and someone else got the dose that was meant for you and it killed him? Was that what had happened to Luke?

  There was the other thought that she was repressing.

  The idea that the poisoner had to be one of the three: Alice, Cassie or Edwina herself.

  And if she was the victim, that left only Cassie as the poisoner. Cassie, in whose home the poison had been found, was the most likely poisoner.

  Chapter Four

  The red light was winking on Edwina’s telephone answering machine. She stared at it balefully, unwilling to hear what it had to say. Almost unconsciously she had made the decision to start taking charge of her life again; she had the feeling it had got out of hand lately.

  An acid thought was floating round in her mind like an onion in vinegar.

  ‘An elderly primipara is well advised to have an alpha-fetoprotein test too.’ As well as all the other tests, they meant.

  The words echoed uneasily in her mind. I am an elderly primipara, she told herself, trying to see the joke. Primip, they call it. But she couldn’t laugh. We went wrong somewhere, Cassie, Alice and I, and I’m beginning to see it. We went to a marvellous party and we thought it would go on for ever. But we were wrong. She wondered if the other two had noticed yet or if she would have to tell them.

  Encapsulated in her memory was a little scene earlier that day. She had lied to Kit. She had been to the clinic in Ladybird Lane already.

  She had returned home alone, after the drinks in the Duke of York, refusing Kit’s invitation to a quiet dinner. He had insisted on seeing her back to the gallery where she meant to finish some work and then departed.

  ‘If you have any more nonsense telephone calls, just summon me,’ he had said as he strode away. ‘I’ll fix it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She wondered how he would do it. Break the telephone probably; Kit believed in prompt strong action.

  She could do what the police advised: have the number changed. But she did a lot of business over the telephone. It would be a nuisance. She would have to circulate all her customers and friends and the end might be the same as the beginning. If the caller wanted to find her number he would do so.

  Besides, it was a kind of defeat and she was
against that.

  Be a brave girl, Eddie, she told herself, and listen to your messages.

  The first one was Cassie sounding excited. ‘That policeman, such a thug, but …’

  Eddie turned her off and walked away.

  She had taken a step out of their golden triangle, impelled by what had happened to her earlier that day at the clinic in Ladybird Lane.

  If there had ever been any ladybirds it had been a long time ago and Victorian jerrybuilding had taken the place of the pleasure gardens where they might once have rested. The antenatal clinic was crowded but comfortable in an institutional kind of way and mercifully quiet. The line of gravid patients seemed glad to be still and to be silent.

  Edwina, unexpectedly summoned by a postcard for an appointment that day, had agreed with them. She leaned back as far as she could in her upright chair, and closed her eyes, before suddenly hearing her name called.

  ‘Mrs Fortune, please, Mrs Fortune.’

  Edwina had accepted quickly that she would be an honorary married woman at this clinic; there was no moral judgement involved, they simply preferred to call her Mrs. She could have argued, some did, she had noticed, but it made no difference, you never saw the same person twice and they all went on the way they preferred. Mrs it was.

  Edwina hauled herself up without resentment and went along the corridor. A welcome passivity had descended upon her as it sometimes did these days, alternating with periods of intense activity. A nurse had handed her a card and a loose white smock and made various straightforward suggestions about the lavatory. Edwina had decided at the beginning of her progression into childbirth that this was no time for false dignity. Or any dignity really, the word was better forgotten.

  ‘We will read your scan today,’ said the agreeable young doctor whom she had never seen before. ‘Then I suggest as an elderly primipara you have an amniocentesis.’

  ‘Elderly? Me?’

  ‘Eighteen is the ideal age for childbirth,’ said the doctor with the sincerity of the informed.

  Damn her, thought Edwina, she too was informed.

  At eighteen I was embarking on a degree, starting my career, no time for babies.… Nature and Edwina had been at odds, playing two different games but arriving at the same goal.

  She went back to her answering machine and let it speak to her again. ‘ Such a thug,’ said Cassie’s voice, ‘but he’s got something. We are going to have a meeting. Says he knows a girl from our year at university … don’t believe that for a moment. He’s got her name right, though, I’ll say that for him … Tina Andrews. Remember her? As if she’d be a friend of mine. Wonder what he really wants?’

  Tina Andrews. The girl with no head, we called her. We were too exclusive, sometimes unkind. No wonder we’ve got enemies.

  I’ve got an enemy. An enemy who loves me.

  But all three of them had telephone calls to begin with, as if the emotion that provoked the calls was summoned up by them all.

  Edwina considered this fact; that’s how it was. But now the caller, this tall strange man, is preoccupied only with me. What’s so special about me?

  There was one thing that made her different.

  ‘No, not that thing. Not the child. Nor being pregnant,’ she said aloud. ‘ That’s sick. That’s a terrible thought, somehow.’ She got up and had a drink of water. Her throat felt dry. ‘Besides, I hadn’t told anyone. It was a secret.’

  But was it? How many people did know, or could easily guess?

  ‘Probably the whole Garden.’

  Suddenly the world where her secret enemy moved, which had seemed enormous, had narrowed down into the Garden. He was there in the Garden among the people with whom she worked. Perhaps a face she knew. Perhaps even someone she counted a friend. She had only seen a tall, dark-coated figure who could be anyone.

  She could almost hear Kit saying to her, in a steadying, reasonable way, ‘You are only hypothesising that your telephone caller and the tall odd man are one and the same.’

  ‘Seems likely to me,’ she would say. ‘ I’m entitled to my feelings, like the detective said.’

  ‘Nor do you know, nor can you know yet,’ this imaginary Kit would say, ‘that this person poisoned Luke. All this is speculation and idle fears.’

  ‘I have some positive facts to go on. I have had the direct experiences,’ she was answering. ‘I have had the telephone calls, I have seen the man, or a flash of him, and I was there when Luke took the drink that killed him. We all were, all we three. The policeman, the man Crail who is now making a play for Cassie with God knows what move in mind, thinks from our trio comes either the murderer or the chosen victim.’

  Or perhaps both, said a yet deeper inner voice with the utter logic of despair.

  I am afraid of my friends now, and perhaps they are afraid of me.

  She switched on her answering machine again to take the next message it had recorded and right on cue Alice spoke.

  ‘Hello, love, how are you? Haven’t heard from you today. Give your Alice a ring when you feel like it.’

  Her voice was gentle and sweet as ever. Hateful to wonder what she was up to, but she knew Alice so well that she knew something more was coming. There was always that little husky hesitancy in her voice, almost a stutter, when she was about to manoeuvre. No one knew how to play a hand better than Alice, but to Edwina it always showed. Usually her friend’s diplomacy amused her, but not today.

  ‘Do ring, Eddie. I’d like to talk. Or come round. A drink or a little late supper? Cassie telephoned to say she’s had an invitation from the policeman.’

  I know, Edwina said to herself.

  ‘And I think she might go.’

  I’m sure she will, thought Edwina. Cassie was never one to resist a dare. Especially if she fancied the man and in this instance Edwina believed she did.

  ‘And who knows what she might say?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ And this time Edwina spoke aloud.

  As if she’d heard, Alice’s next sentence answered her: ‘And say what you like, that man is out to get a conviction. On us if necessary. I think we ought to keep them apart. If she rings you up, tell her so.’

  But here Cassie, as so often, had got in first.

  Once again Edwina switched off the machine. She just had time to hear Alice suggesting once more that she come round before she was cut off in mid-voice.

  In a little while Edwina would let Alice have her say out. No one silenced Alice for long. Besides, she needed to hear the messages that came after.

  In case one was The Voice. Better know. Well, later, she said to herself.

  But The Voice did not speak to her that evening. Instead, after a nasty pause which convinced her that it would be him because it was so reminiscent of the way he had of hanging on for a measured second before beginning to speak on a low note, it was Janine, politely informing her that the last batch of personal letters were ready for her to sign.

  Not for the first time she rejoiced that Janine had come into her life through the agency of Bee Linker. Bee worked through typists at some speed; they usually retired, hurt, by the complexity of the tapes that Bee handed over to them with their many goings-back and revisions and alterations. Janine was the latest in a long line and seemingly the one to survive. A tall, soft, gentle woman, she took the author and her eccentricities easily while still having time and energy to spare for Edwina, Cassie and Alice. She had explained to Edwina that she was building up her own typing and secretarial agency for which end she was willing to work harder than seemed reasonable. Edwina found her an agreeable, reserved lady who let you so far into her life and no further. Bee had said once that she had the look of a woman nursing a broken love affair, but perhaps Bee would think that in her trade.

  ‘Look, Bee?’ Edwina had asked.

  ‘Yes, look. I can remember how people look, you know, I have not been so long blind,’ Bee had said with dignity. ‘Besides, it’s in her voice.’

  There certainly was something in her
voice, Edwina decided now as she listened. Perhaps one always gave oneself away with the voice. Perhaps that was what attracted the unknown telephone caller to her.

  There were no other messages on her machine. For the moment she was off the hook. With a tremendous lift in her spirits she picked up the telephone and made arrangements with Alice for a working lunch tomorrow: they were both involved in a scheme to start a women’s cocktail club. Edwina thought they might get it to move.

  Alice sounded pleased to hear from her but still had that note in her voice. She was worried about something. But when pressed she said there was nothing, just nothing at all.

  ‘You got someone there with you?’ demanded Edwina, suddenly wondering. She knew Alice.

  ‘No one, no one at all.’

  When she’d put the telephone down Alice turned to Kit. ‘We ought to tell her. Really we ought.’

  ‘I wish I knew what to do.’ Not like Kit to be uncertain of himself.

  ‘She’ll find out. Bound to.’

  ‘This would be the worst time possible.’

  On her pad she wrote Tim, Luke, The Voice, as if they were one and the same problem.

  Alice reflected, ‘ Why did you tell me and not Cassie?’

  ‘Because you can keep your tongue quiet and I don’t think she can.’

  ‘I’ve trained myself. Cassie hasn’t had to. In my world you have to bow and scrape a bit. Not in hers.’

  The notion of Alice bowing and scraping was laughable, but Kit knew what she meant.

  Kit had invited himself round for a drink with Alice that evening when the sun was heavy on the pavements and the air smelt of oil and of the heavy green leaves of plane trees. Alice was pleased to see him, he was an easy inhabitant of their world, moving in it as a welcome guest. She recognised he was interested in Edwina, but she was prepared to divert some of that attention to herself if possible. No disloyalty to Edwina was intended, but just occasionally Alice felt all was fair in love and war. She obeyed certain rules and was doing so now; one rule said that Edwina had to declare, tacitly or otherwise, an intent. To Alice, Edwina had declared one by becoming pregnant by another man. While the baby lasted (Alice didn’t put it like that) Kit was hers if either of them wanted it.