Death in the Garden

by Jennie Melville

  following you.…’

  Edwina had never seen his face look so sombre, so dark. So

  frightening. Suddenly she saw him for what he was: a menacing,

  male figure.

  ‘Are you alone? Is anyone with you?’

  She retreated backwards up to her own front door. Someone

  else was coming up the stairs, hurrying.

  ‘Janine,’ she said with relief. ‘ Thank goodness you’ve come.’

  Janine was carrying a shallow tray with two copies of the

  catalogue. Over her shoulder swung her bag. She came hurrying

  up, her face absorbed, abstracted.

  Then she saw Jim Linker and Edwina confronting each other

  and she stopped in surprise.

  ‘Please, Janine.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Jim Linker put his arm out. Janine slid past and

  up towards Edwina. The two women stood together. ‘I want to

  talk to you.’

  His long legs took the last two steps in a bound.

  Edwina spun round, dragged Janine with her, and banged the

  door in his face.

  She was shivering, and for a moment it was all she could do to

  control her breathing. With a gulp, she said, ‘I’m so frightened of

  him.’

  Janine stared at her as if she could not believe what she was

  hearing. ‘Of him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Edwina took hold of Janine’s arm and drew her away from

  the door, which had gone quiet, but behind which Jim Linker must

  be standing, and into the living room. ‘ I’m so glad I’ve got you.’ ‘If you say so.’ Janine’s voice was polite but sceptical as she

  could not quite believe what she was hearing.

  Her calmness, coldness even, braced Edwina. ‘Yes, I’m being

  ridiculous. I’ve overreacted. It’s the way I am at the moment. He can’t get in.’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  Edwina listened. ‘ It’s all quiet out there, isn’t it?’ She looked at Janine. ‘But I don’t think he’s gone.’

  The front-door handle rattled as if someone, Jim Linker, was trying to get in.

  Edwina started to tremble again. ‘I must control this, but I think he’s done something terrible to me, destroyed a bit of me, I think. Eaten it away.’ In a high voice, she said, ‘ That man is eating me up.’

  She looked at Janine’s incredulous face. ‘You think I’m being hysterical?’

  Janine made a slight movement as if to speak, and then thought better of it.

  Outside there was a banging on the door. ‘Edwina, are you there? Answer me.’

  ‘Take no notice,’ said Edwina. ‘I’m going to telephone the police.’

  Janine stopped her. ‘ Not without telling me a bit.’

  ‘I think he killed Luke Tory because Luke was blackmailing Tim, and strangled Miss Dover because she knew. I’m not sure how she knew. There’s something about a photograph. Or she may have guessed some other way. She was sharp. And why was Luke blackmailing Tim? Well, I do know but I’m not sure if I want to tell you.’ Tim, poor Tim, what lies he must have told to get his foot on the legal ladder. Kit would have kept a still tongue, but somehow Luke Tory had found out. ‘ Now he has turned on me.’ She could hear Ginger’s voice telling her that Pickles thought she was it all the time; Edwina shuddered. ‘God knows what he wants of me or what he thinks I am. But it’s a kind of revenge, I believe, because of Tim. In a terrible kind of way he must have loved Tim. I don’t know how it happened or when. I don’t dare to think what the relationship was.’

  ‘You’re very unlucky,’ said Janine.

  ‘And Bee’s so good, so kind, it’s going to be terrible for her. I mean, to know he is evil.’ She shivered.

  ‘She’s tougher than she seems, is Bee. I shouldn’t worry about her.’

  ‘No, but even so.’ Edwina was remembering Bee’s voice: not so tough as all that, she thought. Who is? Love is pain. What do you do when someone you love turns into a predator?

  She had a picture of Jim Linker flinging on the robes of a king and using the wedding reception to poison Luke. Of him appropriating Tim’s clothes to make a dead man live. And strangling Pickles Dover because she had sold him the poison and recognised him. Scum, she thought. Dirty, obscene, mad.

  Outside all was quiet as if Jim Linker had gone away.

  ‘Do you think he’s gone? Or just sitting there waiting?’

  Janine shrugged. ‘ Want me to look?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I shall phone the police.’ She moved towards her desk.

  Janine gripped her wrist. ‘No. Leave it.’

  Edwina looked down at Janine’s hand and saw how large Janine’s hand was, how strong the fingers and square the nails. She tried to move her wrist free, but Janine did not let go. If anything, her grip tightened.

  In a sudden panic, Edwina pushed at Janine who staggered backwards, her shoulderbag opened and the contents spilled out on to the ground. The first thing that attracted her attention was the photograph. That photograph. She stared from it to what else had fallen out. A purse, a lipstick and a pink plastic object, gleaming, mouth-shaped, with three teeth top and bottom. An actor’s device. A shell to slip in over the natural teeth.

  The bite of the murderer without the face.

  Edwina took in what she saw with horror. Not Jim Linker, but Janine. All the things she had imagined were true, but true of Janine. Not a man hunting her, but a woman who could act the man, with cheek packs and false teeth.

  And she was shut up in the flat with her.

  She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘That photograph, it’s you.’

  ‘Yes, and Pickles knew it was me.’

  ‘Why a photograph?’

  ‘It was a frightener,’ said Janine. ‘Didn’t it frighten you?’

  Edwina did not answer; she was having trouble breathing.

  Janine bent down and picked up the mouthpiece with its teeth. Not joke teeth from Davenport’s, but old, theatrical prop teeth, such as you never saw now, from a theatrical production of the 1920s in which Janine’s father had played. Old Thespians never die. She seemed to hesitate for a moment between putting it in her mouth to grin at Edwina or into her handbag; she slipped it into her bag.

  ‘I heard you once talk about the murderer as two-headed. I’m two-faced if you like. Nina, at the Cardboard-Cut-Out Theatre, and Janine when I type. The typing bureau is how I keep going. It provides the cash. A lot of actresses have two jobs; have to have.’

  The rapid reversal of all she had been feeling made Edwina dizzy. ‘You on the phone? Yes. You used your voice very cleverly. I really thought you were a man.’

  ‘I am an actress. I have a natural low register to my voice.’

  ‘Cassie wondered. She heard something in the voice that made her wonder.’ I didn’t, she thought, I didn’t wonder enough. I believe I wanted too much to believe in the reappearance of Tim. You see what you desire to see, hear what you long for. ‘So it was you that hated me so?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I wonder you couldn’t feel it, I used to send waves of it across to you, but you never did. I must be a worse actress than I knew. I’ve hated you ever since I came to London to make contact with Tim and found you. I’ve always kept in touch. I met him first when I was teaching drama to long-stay prisoners, poor beasts. We loved each other. Don’t you believe otherwise, but they took him away from me. As you did. I always got back to him again.’ Now that she had come out into the open, her vocabulary was changing slightly, she was more of the actress and less the neat, quiet Janine. It was as if she’d come alive, and been reborn on the spot. ‘I wanted to let you learn a few things: that I was here, all the time, that I came back into his life, and that he knew it. Well, I’ve taught you. Haven’t I? Answer now. Say Yes or No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I really hated you: you and the wom
en who had buggered up Tim’s life and always would do.’

  As if she wasn’t one of them, thought Edwina. The worst probably. Would Tim have had the accident that killed him if it hadn’t been for Janine, with all her pressure?

  Suddenly she had a thought. ‘What about the whisky? Did you mean it for me? Or was it really for Luke? Or was Luke’s death an accident? It’s like a play, a drama called Who Must Die in the Garden?’.

  Janine said, ‘Did you think I meant the whisky for you and Luke got it by accident? I was the other paper-king, you know. It was so easy to dress up. Oh no. Nothing is by accident. And yet there are layers and layers to intention. It was for Luke to drink but, by God, if it had gone down your throat, I wouldn’t have minded. Yes, I admit it, when I bought that particular poison I had you at the back of my mind. You should burn with love. Then, I thought: no, Luke; him first. Let him have it.’

  Her voice fell to a whisper.

  ‘And then – I kind of fell in love with you myself.’ Her hands came and rested lightly one on either side of Edwina’s neck. She felt their pressure. ‘That was a shock to me. I always thought I was straight, and then I loved you.’ Her hands trembled.

  ‘Well, to hell with you,’ Edwina said, knocking the hands down and pushing Janine back. She fell to the ground, dragging Edwina heavily with her.

  Outside they could hear Jim Linker’s voice.

  ‘Let me in. Open that door.’

  Winded, Edwina lay there for a moment, then rolled over on her side, struggling to get her breath. ‘Coming,’ she panted. ‘Hang on.’ Inside her, a snake-like pain began below her waist and wriggled down her back.

  But Janine did not wait. She got to the door first, wrenched it open, and was past Canon Linker and pounding down the stairs before he could stop her.

  Edwina could hear her feet running. Running, running.

  ‘You should have stopped her.’ Edwina let Jim Linker hold her hand while they waited for the ambulance. ‘ She’ll kill herself.’

  ‘Oh no.’ His face was stern. ‘People like Janine don’t kill themselves. She’ll just go on running. Then, one day, she’ll stop and cry to us for help.’ From the look of him, his mercy, when she got it, would be unsentimental.

  ‘I’ve never seen you so hard.’

  ‘Not hard, no.’ His tone was matter-of-fact. Goodness, she saw, had a practicality of its own. ‘But not soft either. Come along now, my child, let’s deal with you.’

  Everyone was very kind to Edwina after her death.

  It felt like a death; she was sucked down into a vacuum like a black hole in the universe where matter is digested and spewed out in altered form. Or never seen again. But Edwina came through, after several days, having lost a good deal of blood, but as she said herself in a surprised way, ‘Still mother and child’.

  ‘She could have killed you,’ said Kit. ‘I wish I’d been there.’

  ‘Yes. It was touch and go.’ Edwina soberly assessed what had happened. ‘Not here and now, I don’t mean, but in that room.’ She gave a shudder. ‘ I’ll never live there again. She as near as nothing strangled me, I could feel it through her fingers. Oh yes, she wanted to kill me all right. She probably wanted to kill Tim, too, a lot of the time.’

  ‘She managed it.’

  ‘No.’ Edwina was decisive. ‘His death was an accident. I’ve decided, and that’s the way it’s going to be. I can live with that.’

  Her room was full of flowers, and Dougie, who in some ways knew her better than anyone, had brought her in a pile of new books and a bottle of Dior’s L’Eau Fraiche – ‘Love it myself, dear, and it’s the best, when you’re not feeling quite yourself. Sprinkle some on the pillow.’

  Kit also knew her well, and himself better, and his offering he slipped in front of her: an elegantly handwritten letter with a New York address signed Alicia Titmarsh, saying that she was coming over shortly and after all she’d heard from Kit thought she would be discussing Edwina’s handling of her next European exhibition. Also, could she paint Edwina?

  He would never tell her that Tim’s real nightmare had been that he would kill Edwina. Not Janine, but Edwina. You only kill those you really love.

  With quiet satisfaction, Edwina pocketed the letter. ‘Clever Kit.’

  ‘The old girl’s a friend of my godmother. I’ve been saving this up. Did you read my letter?’

  ‘Yes. Just before Janine— No easy answer, Kit. Not yet.’ But she held out her hand and he felt the promise in it.

  ‘I’ll be back this evening: your doctors say I can.’

  Alice and Cassie came every day, had done since the first, effortlessly establishing a domination over doctors and nursing staff so that they were always let in even if not welcomed. The three had almost, but not quite, re-established the old close triangle. Underneath it had changed and they all knew it.

  ‘Our horoscopes say up from now on,’ predicted Alice brightly; she had to get over Kit somehow, and good humour seemed the best way.

  ‘They’re letting me out on Wednesday.’ It did feel like being in prison, charming as the whole nursing staff were.

  ‘Ah yes.’ Cassie looked thoughtful. ‘In case you were worried, Bill Crail gave me some news. He said to pass it on.’

  ‘Janine?’

  ‘Yes, Canon Linker was quite right. She did stop running. The police picked her up in Southampton yesterday. She asked for both the Linkers, Jim and Bee.’

  ‘Thanks.’ So that was one more detail tidied away. One life for Janine was ending and another beginning. ‘How is Bill?’

  ‘Oh, we go on,’ said Cassie. ‘Yes, I really think we do.’

  Coming from Cassie that meant a lot.

  When they had gone, Edwina reflected on the past months in which love and death seemed to have been inextricably entwined with each other. It was good to know the nightmare of being hunted was over, not to hear the telephone in the dark. But she knew also that a figure still flitted through the landscape of her mind: a double-headed figure with Tim’s face on one side and Janine’s on the other.

  The door opened; a strong breath of ‘ Madame Rochas’ told her it was not the nurse.

  ‘Lily.’

  Lily, her streaky fair hair swinging forward, sparkling blue eyes discreetly hidden behind dark spectacles.

  ‘Your Dad’s outside. But he’s let me come in first.’

  ‘Darling Lily. Let me look at you. Are you happy? Yes, I can see you are.’

  ‘Recommend the state, love. Only pick the right person this time.’ She gave Edwina a worried look. ‘But we won’t dwell on that. I never guessed about Tim and Janine, but, of course, I knew about Luke’s little ways. He tried to blackmail me.’

  ‘What for, Lily?’ Lily lived such an open-plan life.

  ‘Only a little love affair. But he said he’d tell your Dad. Go to hell, I said, told him I’d get in first with the telling. Of course, I didn’t have to.’

  Lily was always so shrewd.

  ‘Can’t see my father minding.’

  ‘Ah well – he might have minded this – it was with a woman.’

  Edwina gave Lily a look.

  ‘For me it was a nothing. Just an experiment that didn’t work. Might have meant more to the other person.’

  The two women exchanged a glance.

  ‘I think I can make a guess.’

  Lily said, ‘All’s well that ends well.’

  For me it has not quite ended, thought Edwina, I am a beginning as well. She knew the sex of the child about to be born. ‘ I shall be a good mother, because I’ve seen how you can go wrong.’

  ‘What are you going to call the child?’ asked Lily. ‘ Do tell, Edwina.’

  ‘That’s my secret,’ said Edwina.

  Copyright

  First published 1987 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2015 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  Copyright © Jennie Melville, 1987

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