Stone Dead

by Jennie Melville

  He shook his head. ‘ No, of course not. But to tell you the truth we thought there was a body under the floorboards.’

  ‘Good heavens, I hope not,’ said Winifred, startled, ‘we should have to have all the floors up.’

  ‘That’s what it felt like to us. More than one body, maybe.’ Charley stood up. ‘I’ll get the fish for your cat … haddock do?’

  ‘One would be enough,’ said Winifred.

  While he was gone, Birdie leaned across the table, speaking in a hushed voice: ‘Do you think he meant it? About bodies under the floorboards? Our floorboards?’

  ‘Just boy talk,’ said Winifred. ‘But he means something, I’m not sure what. He is not going to say yet, though. We shall have to wait … you know Charley, he’ll come out with it in the end.’

  As they paid the bill, Charley leaned across the counter. ‘I’ll see you, Winifred. Have a talk. OK?’

  Winifred looked him straight in the eye. ‘ Yes, OK. And thank you for the fish.’

  ‘You watch that cat.’

  ‘Oh I will, Charley.’ And what you mean by that, if anything, I do not know.

  On the walk home, for Charley’s place was just around the corner, Winifred clutched the fish for Blackie, neatly wrapped in a parcel.

  ‘Do you realize that we, have never, so far, fed the cat. Not a morsel. I thought of him just as a visitor, someone else’s cat, but you I wonder. How do you suppose he manages?’

  ‘Hunts,’ said Birdie shortly. ‘See it in his eyes, he’d have me if I was small enough. Seen him thinking it.’

  ‘I suppose we could lift up a floorboard, and put the cat down and see what he came up with: a finger, a strand of hair.’

  ‘Winifred!’

  ‘Or I could get you to crawl down to look.’

  Birdie’s silence showed her outrage.

  ‘Sorry, just joking.’

  ‘You do think there’s someone under our floorboards!’

  Winifred laughed. ‘ No, Birdie, I trust not. But I would like to know what there is under there. If anything.’

  ‘Do you think Charley just wanted to frighten us? If so, I am frightened, but I was before. Who wouldn’t be when a dead body has turned up in your backyard?’

  ‘We weren’t living there,’ said Winifred. ‘No one was, the house was empty, the garden easy to get into. Oh, you can see it was a good place to put a body.’

  ‘If you knew the stone coffin was there,’ said Birdie astutely.

  ‘Yes, and I expect the police are working on it.’

  ‘Someone who grew up round here … as a boy …’ started Birdie, but she did not finish.

  ‘Played in the garden, dug around …’ said Winifred, finishing for her. ‘Yes, a boy might have found a stone coffin and said nothing. And then used it.’

  ‘I can’t believe it of Charley.’

  ‘Something is worrying him. That’s why he was needling us.’

  ‘You think so? Will he tell you? I think he wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes, and he will, but I don’t see Charley confessing to murder.’

  They walked on, silent and slightly smelling of fish.

  There was a police van outside the shop, and a uniformed officer planted at the front door. From the noise and the lights it was clear that the police were still working in the garden. Inside the van, DS Tiger Yardley was in charge. His nickname had been well earned in a series of boxing fights as a young man. He had been wiry but powerful, becoming a local hero in Cheasey. When he retired from the ring, he joined the Police Force. He was fierce on discipline but jovial and friendly to his colleagues when off duty when he might allow them to make jokes about how he had put on weight. He was unmarried, and since his father’s death, he lived alone in a small and very tidy apartment in the old family house in Cheasey which his mother had turned into three flats.

  He had rarely come the way of Dolly Barstow before, although she knew of him. For his part, he was scornful of the outfit SRADIC which Charmian Daniels headed and where Dolly Barstow now worked, regarding it as ‘not proper policing’, but he was polite now to Dolly, who was polite back. He put away the book he had been studying as he saw her approach and covered it with report papers.

  He stood in the doorway of the van, talking to her and watching the approach of Birdie and Winifred, whom he knew too, but quite fondly as ‘ those old witches’.

  ‘Like a cup of coffee, Inspector? I’ve got a brew.’

  Of course he had, Dolly thought, he’s a mite bored. She had seen him swiftly hiding his book. ‘No, thank you.’ His brews were famous and deadly strong. ‘Who have you got working on the garden?’

  ‘Most of the men have gone off for the night but three of the constables and Jamey Lily from Forensics. He came round early and stayed on.’

  ‘I must have a word with him, see what he’s got.’ Jamey was new to the Windsor outfit, having previously been with South Thames Valley Police, but he had known Windsor all his life, was indeed an old school mate of Tiger, and had a flat in the same house. Of the three apartments, Tiger’s mother had the biggest and best, Tiger had the next in size, and Jamey rented the third. Size did not matter to him, he was a lonely soul. Unlike the sergeant, to whom the human race was a necessity, almost like food, Jamey’s main interest in life was his work, and apart from that, archaeology, in which he took a genteel interest.

  ‘He’s good, Inspector.’ Jamey was the clever one. Even Tiger’s mother, no admirer of the human race, admitted as much. ‘ Very good and keen. A medical doctor as well as a forensic pathologist.’

  ‘I’ve heard that.’

  ‘You were here when the bodies were found?’

  ‘No. I came to the party. Chief Superintendent Daniels has been interested in the missing women,’ said Dolly.

  He nodded, knew all about them.

  ‘And this looks like one of the same.’

  Tiger nodded, more to himself than Dolly. The one he thought, but not the other, been here ages, that one. So there you are, Inspector Barstow.

  When she had gone, he went back to his reading.

  In addition, a small crowd of people was standing around watching what was going on. Nothing much was to be seen from the street, but they stayed watching.

  Their continued presence might have been due to the arrival of a television crew which was filming the police and interviewing people.

  Dolly Barstow got out of the police van to talk to the two women. Behind her in the van, she could hear the telephone ringing. The sergeant put out his hand to answer it, but was prevented by one of the searchers coming in with a message.

  Dolly moved away towards her friends.

  ‘Hello there. Birdie, Winifred, just to say we have established a Scene of the Crime Room in the van. There will be officers working there all night. We will try not to disturb you, but you can understand the investigation goes on.’

  She was a serious young woman, and although she had been to many parties in their house and even joined in a witchnight vigil, she was now in full professional mode.

  ‘Is Charmian here?’

  ‘No, she had to go to a meeting in London.’ Dolly did not say that a woman in Charmian’s position did not stay around an investigation.

  But Birdie said it for her: ‘ I suppose she’s too important to hang around.’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Dolly hiding a smile.

  ‘I suppose it’s all right for us to go in and go to bed,’ said Winifred, not without a certain sarcasm, as a reporter from the local television network came towards them to interview Dolly Barstow.

  Dolly refused. ‘ No, nothing to say as yet beyond what you know: two bodies have been found and are presently being examined by a police pathologist.’

  ‘Is it the case, that one of the bodies, that of a young woman, can be linked to the missing women of Windsor?’

  Dolly refused to answer.

  The young reporter was a sturdy, red-haired young man wearing jeans and a bright bl
ue T-shirt with LOVE ME decorating his chest. He and Dolly had clashed in the past.

  ‘Can you confirm that there was a guest at the party who was tried for killing two women two years ago?’

  Birdie gave a squeak. ‘Well, we didn’t know that, did we, Win, or we wouldn’t have let her in.’

  Dolly did not answer, but she shepherded the two women to the front door of their shop. ‘ Got your key ready?’

  ‘Of course.’ It was Winifred who answered.

  ‘Get as much sleep as you can. We will try not to disturb you.’ She turned to Birdie. ‘Superintendent Hallows will probably want to speak to you again tomorrow.’

  ‘I have made a statement.’

  ‘He will still want to talk to you.’

  ‘Charmian too?’

  ‘Yes, quite likely.’ She looked into Birdie’s worried face. ‘It’s all right, we will look after you, see you are safe.’

  She saw them through the door, then waited until she heard the key and chain go into operation.

  ‘Safe?’ questioned Birdie mournfully. ‘If you have to be kept safe, then it means you are not safe … at risk. That’s how they put it. I, Birdie Peacock, am at risk.’

  ‘Oh come on, dear. I’ll see you to bed.’

  ‘A man would be better.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but we haven’t got one.’

  ‘And to think that there was a woman at our party who was tried for murdering two women.’

  Well, we were promoting crime books, among others, thought Winifred. ‘May be just gossip,’ she said.

  ‘But Dolly didn’t deny it, like she could have done,’ said Birdie astutely. ‘ She knows, I’d bet on it.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be one of us, a witch,’ answered Winifred stoutly. ‘We are carefully vetted.’

  ‘Win … There’s something, I didn’t put in my statement.’

  Winifred led the way into the kitchen. ‘I’ll make you a hot drink, then you can tell me.’

  They had created a new kitchen next to the bathroom on the floor above the shop. The black cat was sitting under the table watching the two women.

  ‘The hands … the woman’s hands, I didn’t like to say because it seemed so mad. I felt sort of sick even to think it.’

  ‘Tell me, Birdie.’ Winifred put a saucepan of milk on the stove.

  ‘It was the reason I ran away from the woman in the car … because I did run. Her hands, they were big, but they didn’t look like normal hands, more like the hands of someone who had been tortured. Bruised, you know, old, old bruises that never quite went away. Used hands.’ She added: ‘But it was the nails, really, so twisted and thick and ugly. How do you get nails like that?’

  Winifred gave her friend a stern look. ‘ You are not making this up, Birdie?’

  ‘You know I never lie,’ muttered Birdie.

  ‘No, no you never lie, but you have a vivid imagination,’ Winifred said under her breath, her gaze directed to the top of the milk that was boiling over.

  ‘We were very close for a second, she clutched my wrist, I didn’t tell the police …’ She looked at the frothing milk. ‘ It’s boiling over.’

  ‘Go on about the clutching,’ commanded Winifred.

  Birdie stared into the distance. ‘I think just as I would know her again – anyway those hands – she would know me … may come for me.’ Winifred let the words float in her mind while she flavoured the milk with powdered chocolate, whisked it up, and handed the cup to Birdie with the command to drink.

  It was to be admitted that Birdie had a way with Words.

  Come for me.

  She had a knack of calling up nasty images.

  ‘Go to bed, Birdie. We’ll talk about it in the morning.’

  ‘And what about under the floorboards, do you think there is anything? … So many horrid things to think about,’ wailed Birdie.

  ‘In the morning.’ Winifred was at her most commanding. ‘We might have a look in the morning. Let the cat out of the window, he is asking to go.’

  Birdie obliged.

  The morning would not come soon enough with the strange half light coming into the bedrooms from the floodlight on the back garden where the police team was quietly carrying on its work. A yawning uniformed constable stood on guard at the back gate.

  Winifred stood looking at them from her bedroom window. How strange, she thought. The garden, so long neglected, was now getting more attention than it had had for decades.

  I suppose we are safe enough, she told herself. I must try to stop Birdie from worrying. She does imagine things so. She wondered about the floorboards but was not going to admit to worry.

  Out there were the searchers and the scientist from the forensic science lab, all in their white gloves and overalls, going over the ground, with special attention to the area around the stone tomb.

  Of course, they were safe with the police there.

  Back in the van, the sergeant at last got round to answering the phone, which rang on and off in an obstinate kind of way.

  It rang again, just as Tiger was drinking the now cold coffee. He cursed under his breath but did his duty and picked it up, preparing his excuse that he had been called out of the van.

  ‘Hello, sir.’

  ‘Not sir,’ said a loud voice. One used to being heard and listened to as much as any senior police officer.

  ‘Oh it’s you, Mum. Now, what is it you want? You know I’m at work.’

  ‘You’re never anywhere else. And you never answered the phone, is that efficient?’

  ‘I’ve had people in and out all the time.’ This was true.

  There was a snort down the telephone.

  ‘We’ve got a big case on.’

  ‘It’s the women, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s the missing women.’ No good asking her to keep it quiet, she wouldn’t, not if it didn’t suit her, and if she did, knives wouldn’t get it out of her. Anyway, the press was here, and the TV people, nothing was secret.

  ‘You’ve got one, and she’s dead.’

  ‘I can’t answer that, Mum.’

  ‘You’ve got Jamey there. He wouldn’t be there if anyone was alive.’

  ‘How do you know he’s here?’

  ‘I rang the station. And don’t say I shouldn’t have done that, I am a rate payer, I support the police, you and Jamey … tell him to move his dustbin, he hasn’t had it out to be emptied for weeks. It stinks and if you can’t smell it, I can.’

  ‘Well, it is a bit whiffy.’

  The sergeant agreed to tell Jamey, although he knew, and his mother knew, that Jamey took more notice of words from Mrs Yardley than from his old school chum, and not much notice of either when involved in work like now.

  Temporarily, Sergeant Yardley was the senior officer on site, since Dolly Barstow had disappeared, and Superintendent Hallows was presumably in bed.

  All right for them, he thought, the iron which had been in his spirit when he was a fighter surfacing again.

  Charmian Daniels, Lady whatever she was, had not put in another appearance after starting them off on this dance. He admired the lady. He had once worked in a humble capacity on the edge of that nasty case involving some wax figures. His part had been small, but he remembered the quick way she had of getting down to things. Nifty, he had thought, she knows what she’s doing. And he had ended up feeling nervous about her.

  He was tired, it had been a long night with not much action for him. One by one, the searchers, grubbing through the grass of Birdie and Winifred’s garden, were coming in with their small sack of objets trouvées which they were depositing in the Incident Room now established at the Porterhouse substation, which was the substation closest to Gallows Passage.

  The Porterhouse substation building was new, bleak and full of efficient bits of equipment that shone, flickered, sent out orders and quite often broke down. In winter it was chill, in summer it was too bright and hot. All in all, it was not a popular building, but it did have a large Incident Room.
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  ‘Collect anything of interest,’ had been Dolly Barstow’s orders, and this they had done. A mighty collection of empty bottles and used condoms. One or two odd shoes and an old pair of knickers. ‘A lot of fucking down here,’ was the judgement, ‘ and a lost foot or two. Or someone hopped home. If they had one foot.’

  Whether what was found would help solve the death of the second woman or the history of the first was unclear. You could never tell, only time would show.

  And Jamey Lily was still at work, he would be the last to leave.

  Presently, he came plodding out. He carried a big brown paper bag.

  ‘You’ve got a lot there.’

  ‘Not really, just anything in the whole tomb area that needs a second examination. Or a third or fourth. You never know what will be turned up or what will be useful. You have to try.’

  Sergeant Yardley was opening his mouth to mention the matter of the dustbin, when Jamey said:

  ‘There is something … I reckon the killer is a woman.’ ‘Why do you say that?’ ‘Keep it to yourself, but the bag used to suffocate the recent

  victim was left behind for me to examine in situ more or less before

  any valuable traces disappeared … Inside was a pair of tights, for

  a large woman. The packet was unopened. Perhaps the killer forgot

  she’d put it in the bag.’

  ‘There might be prints on it.’

  Jamey looked thoughtful. ‘Might be, not in a good state, but

  there may be.’

  He looked at his friend. ‘ Couple of women own this shop and

  garden.’

  ‘That’s right. I know them a bit; call themselves white witches.’

  ‘I shall have to get prints and body samples from them,’ said

  Jamey briskly. He looked at Yardley and gave a small nod. ‘Can’t

  rule them out.’

  He made for the door. ‘I must be off … witches, is it? There’s

  a bloody big black cat out there in the garden, I had to chase him

  off.’

  He was laughing as he made his way to his car.