She walked up the short path, fumbling in her bag for the key to the door. She paused, staring.
There was something dark on the step. No real shape. A dark furry splodge. And blood.
Oh god, Muff.
Eyes blurred, not really seeing, she knelt down by the heap of tawny brown fur and blood. The cat must have been struck by a car and crawled home to die. She must have been hit by something very heavy. The wreck of her body was total.
The head didn’t look right.
Charmian sat back on her heels and took a deep breath. Not only the head was all wrong. The tail was wrong. There was no tail.
She looked up at her sitting-room window to see Muffs face peering out at her, with her mouth opening and shutting in silent protest.
Not Muff, never Muff, not even a cat at all. A dead rabbit.
A tremor of mixed relief and disgust ran through her.
‘No, not you, Muff dear, thank goodness. Not you, so horribly dead. Someone has deposited a very dead rabbit on my doorstep.’
A flash of white underneath the animal’s head caught her attention. She touched it, drew it out, stared at it: a sheet of paper with a message on it in large, staggering letters as if the writer’s hand had trembled.
SUPPOSING IT WAS YOU NEXT TIME.
No question mark. It was more of a statement than a question.
Holding the piece of paper with care, she stepped over the rabbit to let herself into the house. Muff descended the stairs, calling loudly. Food, food, me, me, she shouted.
‘No, Muff, wait. I must make a telephone call first. Can I speak to John Wimpey? At home? May I have his number? This is Charmian Daniels.’
Her name had the desired result so that the number was produced at once.
‘John? I’ve had a little present delivered to my doorstep. And a message.’ Briefly, she told him about the rabbit. ‘Yes, I’ve left it there. I thought one of your lot ought to inspect it. And the message.’ She read it aloud to him. ‘Yes, I’d call it a threat.’ She turned the sheet of paper over, still handling it carefully because there might be fingerprints. With any luck the forensics would be able to get something from it. ‘Yes. I’ll be in, I’ll wait for you.’ She wanted to say, And be quick about it, but she restrained herself and turned to examining her clothes and the paper. There was a lot of blood about.
Blood on the paper, blood on her hand, a smear of blood on her dress.
On the other side of the page, as well as blood, there was a scrawl. That shape again. A square that was not a square, a jagged empty shape.
It felt wicked, evil. Evil was washing over her.
Annabel slid quietly into her seat at the committee table, hoping no one would notice her.
‘Annabel, you’re late. The meeting started some time ago.’
‘Yes, Miriam. I am sorry. I took the long way round because of the street lights. I didn’t want to go the dark way.’
‘I thought you were going to drive.’
‘No car.’
Flora said, ‘ What’s that on your face?’
Flustered, Annabel extracted a glass from her make-up bag and looked at herself. A long streak of mud was dashed across one cheek.
‘I fell over.’ She took a deep breath. ‘ Oh, I might as well say. I thought I was being followed. I don’t suppose I was. But I panicked.’
‘And quite right too.’ Miriam reached out to pat her friend’s arm.
Annabel’s head drooped, her small figure in the soft cotton dress seemed vulnerable and fragile.
Flora and Emmy looked at each other in sympathy and alarm, almost, but not quite holding hands for self-protection. Women had to look after themselves, they knew it in double strength. Mr Pilgrim had not been around lately, and Flora would have to admit that, although he had been a worry to her and she would like to know what he was about, she missed him now he was not there. He had held a kind of promise for the future in him.
Voices of alarm, sympathy and support rose from around the table. Annabel was a popular person. There was a general feeling that although her husband was distinguished and generous, he neglected her. The Gaynor children were looked upon with alarm as being out of control, although no one could say exactly what, if anything, they had ever done wrong. It was just a feeling of unease they engendered.
‘You’re not walking home alone,’ said Miriam in a decided voice.
‘We will see you back,’ promised Flora.
The meeting proceeded, ending by common agreement, a little earlier than usual. No one wanted to stay for coffee and cake, they preferred to get home. In little groups, they departed. Miriam with a neighbour, Flora and Emmy walking with Nancy Waters and Bruce. Annabel, refusing offers from other people with cars, chose to go with them. Bruce looked fierce enough to protect four women, nor did his looks belie him as she well knew.
The three women and the dog walked Annabel to her own gate. Brian’s car was in the drive. So he was home. Annabel felt the usual mixture of pleasure and anxiety. What mood would he be in? It counted for so much with the whole family. The happiness of the family swung with his moods. Moods he always denied having, but which were instantly perceptible to his wife and children.
‘We’ll wait till we see you go through the door,’ said Nancy, who had constituted herself as head of the party by virtue of Bruce and his powers.
‘No, don’t worry. I’ll be all right.’ You couldn’t see the front door from the gate anyway, because of the curve of the path, overshadowed by flowering bushes. She got the key to the front door out of her pocket and into her hand, ready for a quick entrance.
‘Sure?’ Nancy wanted to get home herself, while Bruce himself was straining on his lead in a way which, she knew, forboded badly at his temper. He had been known to prevent her and her husband going to bed by getting on the bed and growling at them all night. She did not want a repeat. ‘We’ll push off then.’
Flora and Emmy waved goodbye and let themselves be led away.
Annabel closed the gate and started up the path towards the lights of the house. Brian’s car loomed darkly before her, blocking some of the light. Bushes and flowering shrubs hung over the path. ‘We ought to have all this cut back,’ she thought. ‘It’s a jungle.’
She was a few yards up the path when she stopped. Beyond the bushes she sensed a presence. The feeling of being looked at, of being watched, was strong.
She felt the evil. A cloud of evil was floating over her, filling her nostrils. She could smell it.
A branch moved in the bush on her right. Annabel gave a small scream and ran towards the house.
The key turned easily, she was inside.
All seemed quiet and at peace. Thank God, no sense of evil here. The hall was softly lit, she could see through the open door into the kitchen. Down the hall she could just catch a glimpse of Brian working in an armchair, books and papers all around him. He turned a page.
Her mouth and throat felt dry and sore. She went to the kitchen sink to get a drink of water. The bowl of strawberries was still on the table, untouched. Millicent really must be giving up eating strawberries in favour of some other fruit.
She rinsed out the glass to replace it on the shelf. Brian hated a mess so that over the years, and under his influence, she had come to dislike it herself. A natural muddler, she had become tidy. What had she done to him? The bowl of strawberries went into the refrigerator to join Brian’s supper which he had obviously not eaten.
At once jealousy flooded into her soul: he had eaten in London with someone.
At the sitting-room door she stopped. ‘ Brian? I’m back. Why are you working down here and not in your study?’
‘Just felt like it. Doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘Of course not. Children all right?’
‘Asleep when I looked in on them.’
‘You didn’t eat the meal I left for you.’
‘Had something in town.’
‘With anyone special?’
‘I
was working, if you want to know. I worked as I ate. Papers I had to study.’ He was very tired, wearier inside than Annabel would accept. She didn’t know much about mental fatigue, didn’t even accept that it existed. He loved his wife, but she could never understand that after a tough day in court, all he wanted was silence, solitude, and to get ready for the next day. He saw her sceptical little smile and tried again. ‘I just ate and worked.’
She didn’t believe a word of it. All the same, it might be true. She strained to believe him. ‘Want some coffee?’
‘Don’t think so, thank you. I haven’t been sleeping well lately.’
‘It’s because you work till all hours.’
He ignored this remark, eyes turning to what he was reading. Sometimes she wished he’d go blind.
‘You saw Millicent back home?’ Her eyes were fixed on something across the room.
He jerked to attention. ‘No, I didn’t. She’d gone before I got here, leaving the kids on their own. I don’t think it’s good enough. Don’t have her again.’
Annabel said, ‘Are you sure she has gone home? That’s her bag on the floor by the window.’
‘She’s just left it behind. She’s not in the house.’
‘How do you know? Have you looked?’
‘Of course not, but she’d have appeared. Or we’d have heard her.’
Annabel moved towards the door. ‘I’m going to look.’
The boy was sound asleep with the dog on his bed. The dog raised his head when they came in, yawned and went back to sleep again. The boy did not stir.
‘That dog shouldn’t be here,’ said Brian.
‘Leave him.’ Annabel was crisp.
Joanna opened her eyes as her parents stood at the door. ‘Hello,’ she said, sleepily. The sleepiness was false, her body was tense. Wait for it, she seemed to be saying.
Annabel sat on the end of her bed and kept her voice calm. ‘Joanna, what time did Millicent go?’
‘I don’t know. I left her downstairs and went to bed to read. She’s such a bore. I must have dropped off. Docs it matter? What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. Go back to sleep again.’
Annabel pushed her husband back down the stairs before her. ‘Go and ’phone Millicent’s parents. See if she’s there.’
Reluctantly he went to the telephone. ‘I don’t want to alarm them.’
‘They’ve got to be alarmed.’
His hand on the telephone, he said, ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to look in the garden.’
Brian put the receiver down, he had caught her fear. ‘I’ll come too.’
But Annabel was ahead, running down the garden path. She stopped at the place where she had felt movement, sensed evil. She pushed through the bushes to the little grass patch beyond. A dim light from the house illuminated it.
Millicent lay on the ground, spread-eagled, arms and legs flung wide apart, tossed there like a doll thrown by a child. A tumble of clothes lay beside her.
On a branch of the scented azalea bush hung her jeans. Their legs waving in the breeze.
Here was the evil she had sensed.
Annabel turned round to see Joanna behind her, staring, eyes wide. The girl’s face looked swollen and flushed, her mouth was wide open, so wide that it looked like a black hole with a scream waiting to burst out.
Annabel’s hand came up and she slapped Joanna’s face, with a hard stinging blow.
‘Take her away,’ Annabel screamed at her husband. ‘Take her away. This is evil, evil.’
Confused, Brian found he did not know if she meant Joanna or the murdered girl.
Chapter Seven
John Wimpey looked down at the dead rabbit. ‘I have to say we are not being smart about this. Someone is running rings around us.’ He stood up, wiping his hands on a paper towel provided by Charmian from the kitchen. ‘For what it’s worth, I would say this was a bunny from the butcher’s.’
‘My impression too. Doesn’t make me like it any more.’ The sense of evil was still there.
‘Yes, I don’t blame you. Not carved up on your doorstep, but brought in ready to serve up. I suppose it’s a slightly better picture. All the same, I don’t think you’d better feed it to your cat.’
Muff, hungry spirit, was prowling around the house, looking for her supper.
‘Because in a little while you are going to have the whole CID outfit down here pretending to be SOCO’s and getting in each other’s way.’
‘Because of the paper?’
‘Because of the paper,’ said Wimpey seriously. ‘ It does tie in with the death of that girl in the Princess Louise you had already decided for yourself.’ He turned to her. ‘Let’s leave this dead animal where it is for the moment, and go inside.’
They went back into the house, where Charmian put down some food for the cat. ‘ Seems to make a definite threat to me.’
‘It does.’
‘And what I want to know is why? Why me?’ The classic question that victims probably always asked themselves if they had time to speculate, and here she was asking it. ‘Do you think it has anything to do with the flasher? Or the man who attacked me?’
‘I have news for you. We’ve picked him up. You did a better job on him than you knew. He went back to Oxford where he lives and was put into the John Radcliffe Infirmary with pneumonia.’
‘That wasn’t my fault.’
‘You helped. Anyway, when they got him out of the oxygen tent and he’d had time to think about why he’d given a false name, he’d decided to confess all. Apparently his brush with death had given him a desire to purge his soul. Plenty there to purge as it happens. A lot more assaults on his conscience than the attack on you. More than he could remember, he claimed, but he remembers you because you were the last and the most painful. For him, at least.’ Quite a number of attacks on women in a wide area south-west of London were going to be cleared up by the man’s statement.
‘So he’s out of all this?’ She waved her hand indicating everything from the murder in the Princess Louise Park to the mess on her own doorstep.
‘Yes, he was under constant inspection during that period. He could not have got out and done a murder, even if he’d had the puff to do it. I’m not saying he might not have had a try, not a nice man, and dislikes you. Said so. But he couldn’t have done it.’ Wimpey gave a tight, mirthless smile. ‘Says he’s trying to struggle against it now he is so holy, but I wouldn’t count on too much. Still he couldn’t have done this tonight, or killed the girl.’
So one man, a possible suspect, had been removed from the scene, but another, faceless personality had taken his place.
‘Perhaps he’s got a friend,’ said Charmian.
‘What horrible ideas you have. But whether he has a friend or not, you have an enemy. I don’t think you ought to stay in this house. Not now it is marked as where you live. I don’t like that. Can you go somewhere else? Friends? London?’
‘I shall certainly stay. I’m not going to be frightened out. Besides, there’s Muff.’ She looked down at the cat who was clearing her plate with the efficiency of a vacuum cleaner. ‘You can’t move a cat around like a parcel. I have good neighbours.’ She had waved to them as she had set off for work that morning. All four of them had been piling into the old car that took them back and forth to the stables. A postcard from Kate in that day’s post (she was in Padua now, looking at the Giotto frescos) had spoken of that ‘bonny boy next door’. He was bonny, they all were, healthy bright young creatures like the animals they tended.
‘Do you think they saw anything? After all, it must have taken a few minutes to put the dead rabbit on your doorstep. They’ll have to be questioned.’
‘Doubt if they were around. But I’ll ask.’ Lesley might have noticed something.
‘It’s the Bingham house, isn’t it? Where Tommy Bingham keeps his stable team. Those that don’t live with the ponies.’
‘How do you know that?’ She was surprised.
‘It’s the sort of thing I’m paid to know. Bingham’s had that house for years. This is the latest team, that’s all. Might be his last, I hear he could be giving up. Three girls and a lad, he’s got there, hasn’t he?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t think they’re locals.’
‘One of them must be. Her father lives here. Lesley something.’ She had never heard Lesley’s surname.
‘Oh yes, old Barraclough’s girl. I heard she’d got a job at Bingham’s. He was Headmaster of the local Grammar before he retired early. She’d be a cut above stable work, but I suppose she wanted to stay at home to look after Dad. The mother left them.’
Johnny certainly didn’t think the work above or below him. No class worries there. A natural bouncy born egalitarian. Lesley could be the same. ‘I think she just likes the ponies.’
‘That too.’
Behind their conversation another dialogue was going on. He thought she was more shocked by the bloody threat on her doorstep than she would admit, and he wanted to get her out of the house. He felt protective, which was amazing, really, because she was such a strong woman. But against some people, some evil, what was your defence?
Charmian was silently resisting the pressure she sensed. But she too knew that there was a killer loose who seemed to have her number. Man, woman or child? Charmian was the one who put the unspoken query into speech.
‘The question we have to ask now is: what about the child, Joanna?’
‘I knew we’d be coming to that. And the answer has to be that it is the sort of trick an adolescent might play.’
‘True enough.’
‘She might have guessed you’ve been observing her, and that could turn you into someone to attack.’
‘She’s hard to read, that child. I think it would take weeks, months possibly, really to assess her, and then it ought to be done by a professional. But what I did see was that the mother is anxious. It all adds up to a troubled family.’ She shook her head. ‘But where the trouble comes from I can’t say, whether it’s the girl, or the parents or all of them rubbing against each other. It’s been suggested to me,’ (she was careful to keep Ulrika’s name out of it), ‘that the father’s professional preoccupation with murder may come into it.’
A Cure for Dying Page 8