A Cure for Dying

by Jennie Melville

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment, and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

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  Contents

  Jennie Melville

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Author’s Note

  Jennie Melville

  A Cure for Dying

  Jennie Melville, a pseudonym for Gwendoline Butler, was born and brought up in south London, and was one of the most universally praised of English mystery authors. She wrote over fifty novels under both names. Educated at Haberdashers, she read history at Oxford, and later married Dr Lionel Butler, Principal of Royal Holloway College. She had one daughter, who survives her.

  Gwendoline Butler’s crime novels are hugely popular in both Britain and the United States, and her many awards included the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger. She was also selected as being one of the top two hundred crime writers in the world by The Times.

  Chapter One

  The first body was already in place and waiting before Charmian Daniels, or the local police in that small but royal Berkshire town, knew anything about the case. Before there was a case to speak of.

  This first body had four legs and a tail and was quite unlike all the other bodies that were to follow. Nevertheless, it marked the beginning. It was not the worst death, nor the most violent, nor the bloodiest of those that followed, but it was the one that counted.

  Every sequence of murders has a beginning, a significant death, and for the murders that marked that royal summer, this was it.

  As Madame de Sévigné said of the lady who was reported to have walked after having had her head cut off, ‘In matters of this sort, it is the first step that counts.’ This was the first step.

  Three other steps, at least, followed. There may have been others, unknown, unburied. The bodies were never buried, that was not their point. They were for display.

  Charmian Daniels, a high-ranking woman police detective, would always wonder how much she made happen.

  When she first arrived in Windsor, a woman throwing herself into a new part of her life, taking a sabbatical year and working on a thesis in a nearby university, she had rented a flat above a friend’s. She had enjoyed it, and living close to Anny Cooper, old companion and ally from college days had been fun. Now the thesis was finished, the diploma won, and she had gone back to work as a policewoman. She could have stayed living where she was, but Anny’s marriage was breaking up noisily, and that was less fun. Better to keep a distance. And then there was the cat.

  Charmian had a lean and muscular tabby called Muff who had let her know in unmistakable ways that cats and flats are not compatible. So she had found a small Victorian house in a terrace near the railway station and was in the process of moving in. Muff liked it.

  She was enjoying a new house, a new and important job in the Metropolitan Police, a new way of life. She could live here and travel to London every day to work. There was the motorway and the railway, the travelling was simple. If she had to stay the night in London, there was the university women’s club near Piccadilly where she could have a room for the night. She was learning to make things easy for herself.

  Kate, who was Anny Cooper’s only child, and Charmian’s god-daughter was going to lodge in the house. A wayward girl, she was (for entirely personal and impractical reasons) homeless. She was glad of the room, Charmian was glad of the rent. This was the first house she had tried to own, all her other homes had been possessed in different ways, and the mortgage was formidable.

  She had been surprised at the price of a tiny period house in the town. There was something about the near presence of majesty that put a premium on property.

  ‘You can see the castle from the bedroom windows,’ the estate agent had pointed out. ‘And look at the name of the street. That’s good for a thou’ or more.’ The terrace was called Maid of Honour Row.

  ‘Sounds like a kind of cake,’ Charmian had said, as she signed the contract. But she enjoyed writing it as her address. For a woman who had been born of sound working-class stock and been educated in Dundee University, she was getting very middle class. South of England tastes, she told herself.

  The moving in was easy. Anny and Kate helped her repaint the house. Anny, an artist of distinction, could do anything with her hands, and Kate was training to be an architect. She did the hard bits, like altering the wiring and checking the plumbing.

  ‘You have got a circle of sorts in the electric wiring,’ she reported, ‘you won’t blow up.’ And there would be enough power to support without danger all the electric gadgets that came with her like the necessities of life: her computer, her printer, her video and her very very special music player that she set up herself with such loving precision that there was barely room for her bed. ‘These little Victorian houses are built better than you’d think.’

  ‘Thank you, god-daughter.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, godmother. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Like redesigning the kitchen, say. You might need me there. I’d call that sink an antique if it was any newer. As it is, I think fossil might be the better word.’

  ‘I like it,’ said Charmian, to whom her kitchen was not of great importance, and who had spent all she could afford on new curtains and broadloom for the floor.

  ‘You won’t see much of me, Char’. I won’t be in the way. I’m out most of the time.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said her mother. ‘You’ll know she’s there, I can promise.’

  Kate kissed her mother, banged Charmian affectionately on the shoulder, hoisted the huge bolster bag that was always with her over her shoulder, and prepared to depart.

  ‘Know who the kids are next door?’ she said as she left.

  ‘No.’ There had not been time to think about neighbours.

  ‘Find out. They interest me. There are four of them, and they come back at night in the same old car and looking knackered. I don’t know when they leave. I’ve never been up that early.’ Kate had been camping out in the house for a week.

  ‘All girls?’

  ‘Three girls and one chap. He’s the one I’m interested in.’

  ‘You do your own work.’

  ‘Oh I will. But you could do the background investigation. You’re the detective.’

  When Anny and Kate had both left, and Charmian was alone for the first time in her own house, she went to the bedroom window and looked out. Yes, there was the castle. You could see the top of Tom Tower, and beyond that the Royal Standard fluttering.

  She looked down into the street. There was Muff slowly crossing the road. She would have to explain to her about traffic. And there were her neighbours returning, somewhat earlier than Kate had suggested, but certainly looking tired and kind of exercised.

  Three girls, wearing jeans and sweaters, and the lad on whom Kate had her eye.

  He
was certainly attractive. Fair curly hair, a sun-tanned face, and a body that looked at once light yet muscular. He was like a sophisticated cheerful cherub. Also a lad that knew his way around. He and Kate might fight on equal weights.

  Three girls, two tall above average, and one short with light auburn hair, and the boy. These were her neighbours, a nice lot, she decided. Perhaps they were a pop group. They looked as though they worked as well as lived together.

  As they went into the house, one of the girls, the short one, bent down and patted Muff.

  Muff did not respond, such was not her way, but without doubt it registered. Muff came from a long line of cats with sound coats and good memories. A friend was a friend and not forgotten. Likewise enemies, and she had a few of those, too. Charmian had seen to her alarm that there was already definite hostility between her cat and a small dog who lived down the road.

  She returned to tidying her books and papers. She had notes to check on a case of child murder that was going up to the Crown Prosecution Service, an institution which, like most police of her generation she regarded with caution. Action would be taken there, she hoped, but with juries so difficult now, you never knew who would get away with what. Then she had to collect her own mind for a talk she had promised to give to a local self-help for women group in a club building on the Slough Road. That was a few weeks off, but she needed to think about it.

  Women and murder was her business. Murdered women, murderous women, and women innocently involved in murder, this was her work. She knew that it was against the current feminist thinking that no crime was special to women, but lately she had come to wonder.

  Her friend Anny was hostile to her work. ‘You complete an investigation, arrest someone and then that’s it. You leave someone else to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘I do my job.’

  ‘Is that all you believe in?’ Anny herself was sufficiently rich and talented to maintain high standards. Being poor on sixpence a year had never been part of her life.

  ‘I believe in evil. And so would you, Anny dear, if you’d seen what I’ve seen.’

  Their arguments usually ended this way.

  Charmian finished her work for the evening. She made a cup of coffee and took it to the window to drink. She was enjoying the pleasures of ownership.

  As she looked out she saw the group from next door leave the house. One girl, the short one who had patted Muff, got on a cycle and pedalled down the road, while the other three linked arms and strolled off in the direction of the Duke of Wellington pub on the corner. Or the Buzz Disco and Nightclub which was also in that direction. They saw her at the window and gave a friendly wave, she waved back.

  After that, Charmian got no further in knowing them. They waved when they met and she waved back.

  True to her word, Kate was not in the way. In fact, after a few days she did not appear at all, causing Charmian to wonder if she had done one of her disappearing acts. Kate was given to taking off and had done so more than once before. Very often without notice. This time, however, Kate telephoned from an airport to say she was flying to Venice to study the architecture. She had an affinity with airports that only the child of rich and self-absorbed parents could have. Sometimes they must have seemed more like home to her than her parents’ house.

  A week or so passed. Charmian did not get home every evening, but when back she was amused to see how often the same evening ritual was performed next door. Off went the three to wherever they did go, but judging by the sounds she heard as they came back it was the Duke of Wellington; and off on her bike went the other girl.

  One evening she was watering the newly planted shrubs in her front garden and keeping an eye on Muff at the same time (she too gardened in her way, but her motives were different) when the performance took place.

  The boy saw her watching as the girl on the bike sped away. Perhaps Charmian looked interested because he smiled at her.

  ‘She keeps to a routine.’

  ‘Oh yes. Old Les,’ he continued to look amused. ‘Every night she goes off to feed her horse and see her father. Or is it feed the father and see the horse? It could be either.’

  ‘Les?’

  ‘Lesley. I’m Johnny and the others are Freda and Gillian.’ No surnames were offered, but she guessed there was no blood relationship between them.

  ‘Evening, Miss Daniels,’ he gave a wave of the hand and was gone.

  So he knew her name while she did not know his, knew more about her in short than she knew about him. This was an unusual position for Charmian to be in and she thought about it with some concentration.

  She went back inside, fed the cat, washed her hair, noted without surprise that several grey hairs were appearing among the red, and decided she must find a new hairdresser.

  When she decoded this thought, which she guessed not entirely what it appeared to be on the surface, she decided it meant she was regretting the man with whom she had once been more than half in love. He had been good about hair.

  Since he had been a murderer, this regret was most unwise and must be banished.

  She picked up a letter which had come by the afternoon post and which was from a man with whom she was not in love, but who had for her some feeling (what exactly she was never quite sure, Humphrey having been professionally trained not to let his right hand know what his left hand was up to) and for whom, in a way, she had once worked, and to whom she certainly owed her promotion.

  A card fell out of the letter. A very elegant and beautiful thick creamy card, nobly embossed and engraved.

  An invitation to luncheon in a pavilion on Smith’s Field, The Great Park, and then to watch the match between this illustrious side and that distinguished team for the Duke’s Diamond Cup, sponsored by Marco Polo Industries, plc.

  In the presence of HRH, who would be handing over the cup.

  ‘Polo,’ she said to herself. ‘What do I know about polo?’

  As if he had anticipated her thoughts, Humphrey had scribbled underneath, ‘If you are going to continue to live where you do, then this is something you have to learn about.’

  And that was it. No words such as ‘It would be lovely to see you.’ Or, ‘I do hope you can come, I shall look forward to it.’

  Just a kind of royal command.

  ‘I shan’t accept.’

  Charmian threw the card to the floor. The childish gesture pleased her. Then, because it was so childish, she picked up the card and replaced it in the envelope. That was more dignified. You had to hang on to your dignity with Humphrey, and your sense of humour, or he won all down the line.

  Muff’s face was pressed against the window, demanding entrance. Since the house move she had won herself enormous freedom of movement and knew every exit and entrance to the house, roaming dangerously free and wide.

  Charmian drew the window up. She could see the tree-lined street in the moonlight. Les was just cycling up.

  There was a figure across the road under the lamplight that seemed to be trying to catch her attention. Charmian looked.

  ‘Damn it, a flasher.’

  He had placed himself with a quiet skill that suggested he knew the area, had been here before looking around. There was always any number of young people passing up and down this road at night either from the Duke of Wellington or the Buzz Disco. He would not lack for an audience.

  There were two things she could do: she could go out and make an arrest, or she could ring up the local police.

  But the man was already moving off. It was likely that he was a known figure, already observed by the local mob. They might have a record for him and an address. They could certainly start looking.

  She used the telephone.

  She knew precisely the extension to demand.

  The group of women to whom Charmian was booked to give a talk had mixed feelings about her.

  ‘We want her to speak on women and self-help in violence, whereas it seems to me she is going to talk on violent women and women who provo
ke upon themselves violence,’ said Miriam Miller who had been on the telephone to Charmian.

  ‘It’s her job, she is a police officer.’ Flora Trust was sitting at the table typing up the minutes of the last meeting. She always left them until the last minute and many a good argument as to accuracy and what had actually been said had been provoked at committee meetings on account of this habit. ‘And after all we have our Karate Club so we do tackle that side of it.’

  The two were founder-members and chairperson and secretary respectively of the Sesame Women’s Club which met once a month in Merrywick, the rich suburb on the outskirts of Eton and Windsor. The club hired a room in the Public Library in Crescent Street off the busy Slough Road. Miriam worked there as a librarian.

  ‘She’s a great draw.’ Flora went on writing as she spoke. ‘We’ve got twice the usual number of people coming, including some new faces. We are lucky to get her, she is very distinguished.’

  ‘Oh you’re such a hero-worshipper.’

  ‘And she’s a very good speaker. Anny Cooper says so. And we aren’t always so lucky. Remember the woman who couldn’t be heard beyond the front row? A real whisperer. About the most celebrated woman scientist we’ve got in the country, and no one could hear her.’

  Miriam was not mollified. ‘I hope we don’t regret it. Anny does not always give good advice. I think we would have done better to show that Chinese film again. A lot of people said they were sorry they missed it.’

  ‘They were lying. They missed it on purpose. They planned to miss it. I would have missed it myself if I wasn’t secretary. I think we’ve had enough of films about women working in factories. Especially when they are badly dubbed and you can’t see what on earth they are making in the factory.’

  ‘We could have the doctor who talks on women and madness.’

  Flora put down her pen. ‘You know what? I think we should have a talk on women and cheerfulness, women and how to enjoy yourself, women without pain.’

  ‘But that’s not what we are about,’ cried Miriam.