A Cure for Dying

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Then read the account in The Times. He is masterly.’

  ‘That’s easier to do.’

  Only half awake, Charmian heard herself say, ‘ Ulrika, I’ve been wanting to ask you …’ Wanting, but not willing to admit to it. ‘ I saw a bit of scribble, really looked nothing more, on a piece of paper under the murder victim. It was collected as part of the forensic residue. But it reminded me of something I had forgotten and I found myself saying so, as if it mattered. Just popped out, yet I hadn’t thought about it for years. Why should I have remembered? It worries me. And I don’t know why. So that worries me, too. What do you make of it?’

  ‘I’m not a magician, dear,’ said Ulrika, sounding amused. ‘It’ll have to be do-it-yourself therapy. Work on it. Think about it. Round and round, till something pops out once again. It may be important to the case. I should say it was.’

  ‘That worries me too.’

  ‘Of course it does, because then you must say: and was it important, that scribble to the killer? That’s the other question.’

  ‘I think it may have been important,’ said Charmian.

  ‘And what was it?’ asked Ulrika.

  ‘On the paper it looked like a squared-off circle, or a rough oblong, the outline not quite complete. Rough, very rough.’

  ‘And what did you call it?’

  ‘A Frisian beard. If you know what that is. It’s the name of a style of beard the early English went in for. And I’m not saying that’s what it really was, just what it reminded me of.’ She appealed to Ulrika. ‘What do you think it represents?’

  ‘Not having seen it, I can’t say, but offhand I’d say it sounded like a hole.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Charmian. ‘A hole. That is really helpful.’

  Ulrika did not laugh. ‘Holes as symbols are very important. Think about it. From a hole something is gone, something must be replaced. And perhaps that was what the murder was: a replacement.’

  Charmian got up, fed the cat, made herself some coffee. With the bitter coffee, she read The Times, turning to the Law Court reports. And yes, Brian Gaynor was brilliant, with a nasty cutting edge to his tongue in prosecution, a formidable mind.

  Then she dressed herself in the sort of clothes, neat but on the dowdy side, which might be suitable for watching a line-up of sexual offenders, one of whom might be an exhibitionist who had later tried to rape her, and then gone on to kill Irene Colman.

  It was not clear if they were looking for three men or one. But she would turn up to survey the suspects dragged in by Sergeant Wimpey.

  He met her himself, polite as ever. ‘Thanks for being so punctual.’

  ‘Least I could do. But all I’ve got to go on is his smell!’

  She let herself be led along the row of men he had got lined up for her. All of them men with a record of sexual offences.

  In the daylight of the bleak room at the back of the Alexandria Road Police Station, they looked, and smelt, so ordinary. She shook her head and came back to Wimpey.

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  He was philosophical. ‘Well, it would have been so easy if you could have said yes. And then we might have moved on to see if chummy fitted the Park killing. But I didn’t expect it. One or two bruised faces, as you saw, but nothing you took a fancy to? No.’

  He walked her to her car. ‘Got one thing to tell you, though. Our bright young police surgeon, at my suggestion, photographed and measured the slashes on the horse, as far as he could, mind you, decomposition having set in, and compared them with cuts on the girl. He detected a remarkable resemblance. Same knife, same hand. Or so he thinks.’ He gave her a straight stare. ‘Makes the position of Joanna Gaynor interesting.’

  ‘We really have to talk to her again. About her knife, if nothing else.’ The incredible, the incomprehensible, might be true. ‘Have you said anything to your boss?’

  ‘I told the Chief the way our thoughts were wandering, and he said he could not accept that nice child as a killer.’

  Chief Inspector Merry doesn’t like me, Charmian thought, and would never see things my way. And then she had to admit that all policemen hate children to be criminals of violence, it cuts into something basic about the way they regard their work.

  Moving on to another point, she added, ‘So the horse could have been a trial run?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Wimpey, with the air of one who kept his options open.

  Or something more complex and terrible, thought Charmian. The first work of a killer who was needing to kill, but struggling not to kill a human being.

  Yet it had happened.

  ‘If such a killer could kill once, then it could happen again,’ she said, following her thoughts to their logical conclusion.

  Starting from a different point, Wimpey had got there before her. ‘I reckon,’ he said, ‘ if we don’t get lucky, we will have a series.’

  ‘We should use the media to get a message out to the women in Berkshire and this part of Buckinghamshire to tell them a killer is around, and to be careful.’

  And some more than others, Charmian considered.

  Later that day, she parked her car in the garage at the back of her house and strolled back down the small side road to Maid of Honour Row. The garages had once been a kind of mews, she supposed, although the houses themselves did not look grand enough to have supported coachmen and horses.

  It was a warm, quiet evening and she strolled on, enjoying the soft scented air after a day in London. Before she realised it she was in a road of large houses, lying back behind hedges and gardens. From what she could see of them, they had a comfortably shabby air as if families had lived in them for generations.

  Ahead of her a familiar figure was strolling. She caught him up. ‘Johnny, out for a walk?’ Not her business, but the police are constitutionally curious, and just now everyone’s movements were of interest.

  He turned. ‘Hello. Yes, I’m just dropping in to see Lesley’s old man. He likes a bit of company.’

  ‘I thought she went every evening.’

  ‘Oh she does, gives him his supper, checks his freezer to see he’s got enough food for the week in it and takes away the laundry. He can’t do a lot himself, got terrible arthritis, poor old boy. But she’s a bit austere, is our Lesley, and the old chap likes a bit of male company. So I pop in now and then before she arrives. I don’t think he’s too keen on women.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Had a bit too much, probably. Or not enough of the right sort. Lesley’s mum walked out on them when Lesley was a kid, so I’m told, and I don’t think life was too jolly when she was there.’

  They had reached the entrance to a detached brick house, surrounded by a large, dejected looking garden. The front door stood wide open, a tall thin figure leaning on a walking frame was looking out.

  Johnny waved. ‘I’ve brought him today’s paper. One of the more entertaining kind. Lesley only allows him The Times and the man likes a bit of gossip occasionally. I suppose you could say I pander to his lower taste.’ Johnny gave Charmian a cheeky grin.

  ‘Does Lesley know you call?’

  ‘I think so, but we don’t talk about it.’ He turned into the garden and left her with a wave. ‘Right, I’m off. Don’t stay out too late, Miss Daniels, not too safe out for ladies these days.’

  Cheeky devil, thought Charmian. Thinks he can get away with murder. All the same, she turned back homewards. After all, the evening was closing in.

  Chapter Six

  The Sesame Club had a committee meeting the next day. Miriam Miller telephoned first Flora Trust to remind her, and then Annabel Gaynor who had only just been elected to serve as treasurer. Annabel was known to be good about managing money, and if she wasn’t, then her husband was. People quite often got elected because of their husbands although this was never openly admitted. There were five other ladies on the committee, all close friends and enemies (in the Sesame Club it often came to the same thing), but she had already been in touch with them and knew
that four would come and the other was in America with her husband, who was a banker.

  ‘Flora?’

  From the moment of silence at the other end, she deduced with long experience of the Trust household, that the telephone had been picked up by Emmy and was now being handed over to Flora. Why did Emmy lift the receiver if she didn’t mean to answer it? No answer to that one, but it was irritating.

  ‘Oh there you are, Flora. About tonight, I think you ought not to come on foot.’ The sisters usually walked the short, wooded street that led from their house to the library building.

  The district between Eton High Street and Windsor was almost a village with its own atmosphere. It even had its own name. It was called Merrywick. Merry had been the name of the farmer who had once owned all the land upon which most of it was built. He had been gone for about thirty years, but a son was an officer in the local police and the name Merrywick was a perpetual memorial. There had been quite a nice large sum of money too, but he had left all this to a lady friend that no one knew he had.

  In Merrywick a group of leafy roads with houses set well back behind hedges surrounded an open green where cricket was played in summer down to the river bank. On the other side of the green was a church, the post office and the small infants’ school. There were very few street lamps which meant that it could be dark at night, if there was no moon.

  ‘It’s not safe,’ she went on. ‘We’ve been warned. Did you see the evening paper? Take a taxi.’ Flora did not drive at night if she could avoid it.

  ‘Don’t go on, Miriam. We aren’t coming alone. We are coming with Nancy Waters and she’s bringing her dog, Bruce.’

  ‘I don’t like that dog.’

  ‘No one does. That’s the point of him.’

  Bruce, a cross between an Old English Sheepdog and a Dobermann pinscher, combined the fiercest traits of both, and was indeed an alarming creature, rightly feared by friends and enemies alike. Nancy said he had a sweet soul, but no one else saw the evidence for this.

  ‘I grant you ought to be safe enough with Bruce,’ admitted Miriam. ‘But if he’s coming to the meeting, mind you see he has a muzzle on.’

  ‘Won’t be much good to us if he can’t bite,’ said Flora briskly.

  ‘Muzzled!’ Miriam put the receiver down and then dialled the Gaynors’ house. ‘Annabel? You’re coming tonight. Don’t bring the dog.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Annabel in surprise. The Gaynor dog was a Pekinese with the aggression of a Jack Russell. He was rarely allowed out. Certainly not when Bruce was to appear.

  ‘Drive. Or come in a group. Don’t walk on your own. Not safe. I’m telling all the committee.’

  ‘I’ll drive, of course. Or my husband will bring me.’ Annabel knew he would not, of course. Too busy, but she liked to pretend.

  The usual arrangement was for the teenage daughter of a neighbour to stay with the Gaynor children when their parents were out in the evening. She was a reliable girl who took her duties seriously. Another thing Millicent took seriously was food.

  ‘I’ve left you tomato soup with Brie and chutney sandwiches.’ This was what Millicent liked best at the moment. Her tastes varied, you had to keep up with her. Annabel took pains to do so. ‘Ice-cream in the refrigerator, strawberries in the glass bowl.’

  ‘Oh thank you, Mrs Gaynor, you always leave me lovely things to eat. I’m looking forward to raspberries coming in.’

  ‘Right.’ Annabel registered that next time it had better be raspberries. ‘I’ve left Joanna chicken sandwiches.’

  Joanna tolerated Millicent without liking her; Millicent was baffled by Joanna, but tried to make good blood.

  ‘Oh, she’s eating meat again? I thought she’d gone vegetarian.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annabel briefly. ‘ White meat.’

  ‘And Mark?’

  Mark would eat anything. ‘He’s having the same as you. But no strawberries. They make him sick.’

  He would try to get some, of course. He never seemed to learn, but she could count on Millicent.

  ‘Mr Gaynor will probably be back before I am, then he will see you home.’

  ‘If it’s not dark I can see myself home, Mrs Gaynor.’

  ‘No, get him to do it.’ Partly because the girl ought to be escorted back, but even more so that Brian should not get away with doing nothing. She saw it as a kind of score.

  Her last birthday present had been a small red Fiat car. Whatever other criticism you made of Brian, and Annabel made many, she had to admit he was not mean. Although life between them was often a battle, she did admire him very much. He was so clever.

  She hurried to the garage to get the car out. There against the wall rested the children’s cycles and the lawn-mower, but no car.

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘Car been stolen?’ said Joanna’s amused voice behind her.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Now she remembered that she had taken the car to the local garage for a service and had forgotten to collect it. She looked at her watch. Too late now, the garage would have closed an hour ago. ‘I’ll have to walk, that’s all.‘ Run really, she was late already and Miriam was a stickler for starting the meeting on time. ‘Where is Millicent?’

  ‘Eating her sandwiches and counting the strawberries.’

  ‘Now, now, don’t be unkind. Go and eat yourself, love.’ She gave her daughter a peck on the cheek, her standard non kiss, meant to convey abstracted affection, and which Joanna deeply resented as being meaningless. ‘ I’ve left you a slice of chocolate cheesecake. Made today. I must rush.’

  Joanna nodded. Whatever you thought about Annabel, and Joanna thought many different things, you could not fault her cooking. She stood watching her mother hurry down the drive and disappear into the dusk.

  ‘She needs wings.’ She had a quick, satisfying picture of her mother flying away through a hole in the clouds, like a black hole. That might be the way, a good idea. Not painful in any way, of course, just gone. Thoroughly, completely gone. For a moment she contemplated life without her mother.

  The committee meeting started on time without Annabel.

  At eight o’clock on the dot, Miriam checked her watch, and looked around the table where the committee was seated. ‘She’s late, we won’t wait. Let’s have the minutes read and get going. We have a long agenda.’ There was a quiet pleasure in her voice. She liked a full agenda, it showed that the Sesame Club was important and that she, Miriam, counted for something in it.

  Two vital topics were to be discussed. First, they had before them a report by a committee member on a home for battered wives recently opened, and which they were asked to support financially. Such an enterprise was bound to provoke strong discussion. In theory, the committee was all for protecting battered wives, but in practice, as Miriam well knew, it would call into play any number of prejudices, dislike and inhibitions, not all of which the members would admit to owning although powerfully moved by them.

  In addition, they were going to discuss the idea of joining with other groups to fund a day hospice for the terminally ill. For this there was a great deal of enthusiasm, but it was a heavy responsibility and one which, once taken up, could not lightly be put down again. It was for the financial burden of this that they secretly desired Brian Gaynor’s expertise. Also that of the banker at present in New York.

  ‘Everyone has a copy of Mrs Baxter’s report on the shelter in Listow Road, I think,’ she began. ‘She reports very favourably on the place. Seems to be working well. The police and the Salvation Army say it fills a need in the district.’

  ‘She ought to know. I’d call her an expert on battering. If there was one for husbands …’

  ‘Now, now, Nancy.’

  ‘That poor husband of hers.’

  ‘I don’t know that she actually beats him,’ said Miriam uneasily.

  ‘He’s completely under her thumb, that’s why.’

  ‘Well, we must agree that Joy has written a very good report and we have to t
hank her for that. I think we should circularise the whole society and ask for responses. Shall we vote on that?’

  This done, the membership secretary reported a rise in numbers. ‘Very satisfactory. And one of our speakers, Chief Superintendent Daniels, has asked to join.’

  ‘I’m not sure we ought to have her,’ said someone. ‘ She’s only going to study us. Make a report, write a book.’ The speaker knew something of Charmian’s history.

  ‘Still, it’s flattering,’ said someone else.

  ‘We can’t refuse her,’ said a third. ‘We don’t have a blackball.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have,’ said the first speaker. She was a lady of explosive temperament in whose hand a blackball would have been like a grenade.

  The committee drew in a sharp corporate breath, preparatory to bursting into speech. A nice little argument over Charmian was about to explode.

  In the distance the big front door banged.

  ‘That must be Annabel now,’ said Miriam with relief. ‘ Shall we wait for her?’

  They sat for a minute, then another.

  ‘Must have been the caretaker leaving,’ said Flora.

  ‘She’ll be here soon,’ said Miriam.

  Charmian got home late that evening, parking her car just about the time the committee meeting was getting under way. The small terrace of houses in Maid of Honour Row had been built well before the days of motor cars, so she used the old mews behind.

  It was a calm, quiet evening, but overcast. She noticed the sweet scent from the lime trees that lined the road. This was one of her favourite summer smells for the pleasure of which she easily forgave the sticky fruits that later in the season would splash on the pavements. Tonight she could smell the scent of roses from her own front garden. She must remember to do something about them later in the year. Wasn’t there something about pruning? Either you did it in the spring, or you mustn’t do it in the spring but in the autumn. Either way it was a skill she must learn. It occurred to her that someone like Annabel Gaynor could set her right.

  It had been a good day: lunch with Humphrey at his club, surrounded by actors and lawyers, a mixture of which Humphrey was himself, now she came to think of it. She both liked him and did not trust him. But she had paid him the compliment of wearing a dress in printed indigo silk, which had been made by a famous coutureère who owed her something and who had ‘made a special price’.