A Cure for Dying

by Jennie Melville

‘You there still?’

  ‘Yes. I’m just thinking. Trying to take it in.’

  ‘I’ll leave you with it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh one more thing: that rabbit of yours. It wasn’t on the way to the Castle. Well, yes it was, but not the Queen in her Castle. The Windsor Castle, the pub down by the railway.’

  A pub and not the Queen, you could laugh at that. She thought that Wimpey had guessed from the first. But another murder? So already they had a series of three.

  Your turn next, had been the menacing suggestion. For the first time, Charmian felt a sense of danger.

  Chapter Nine

  Kate exploded into Charmian’s life. Suddenly the house was full of light and movement. Not noise, Kate was not noisy, but the house seemed to vibrate to her passage. She was not untidy, her room was neat, she left the kitchen in order, the bathroom immaculate; but the very air registered she had been there. Perhaps it was her scent, a peculiarly sharp, sophisticated scent brought back from Italy, full of verbena and rose. Little snatches of it met you as you came in the door, or on the landing, or breathed at you from the chair she had been sitting in. Even Muff smelt of it after she had been stroked. Kate was out a good deal, but her presence was always there. Charmian did not know if she loved it or found it maddening. Muff, after a period of jealousy, decided for Kate, and slept on her bed, nose to nose on the pillow if she could get there, or at the foot of the bed if not.

  By breakfast time Kate, together with Merrywick, Windsor, Eton and Slough – not to mention the rest of southern England – knew what had happened in the way of murders. For the next few days it was the main subject of conversation at many breakfast tables.

  The killer now had three deaths to his credit. It had to be a man, Kate said. Mass murderers were always men. The newspapers agreed with her, the killer was definitely ‘he’. Charmian hoped this was the case. The evidence seemed to point in that direction. She herself swung this way and that, sometimes influenced by Ulrika’s neutral, open-eyed belief that anything could be possible, sometimes influenced by her own deep-seated feeling that only a male could do such things.

  If she had put this feeling into speech she would have been ashamed of it, but she never obliged herself to do so. Instead she took refuge in a kind of fatigue. It would be nice, she thought, to take things easy, not to work today, to stay in bed, if possible to sleep. Instead, each day she got herself into her clothes, put on a suitable amount of lipstick for a high-ranking police officer about whom there was a certain amount of gossip, and drove to London. She had more than one life to live.

  She knew that she had left behind her a police machine clicking itself into position to deal with an investigation that might cover several counties and more than one police force. There was a lot to be set up when this happened, and she knew it all. First a major incident room, code named Miriam with its linked computers. In theory all the forces now had compatible machines. But she knew that, in practice, there were going to be hiccups here. Not all the computers had the same language yet and could read each other. Nevertheless, the police had to act as if they could. So there would be indexers, putting statements into the computers and numbering them, then statement readers underlining all significant points. Action allocators sending out inquiry officers who would come back with statements to feed into the machine, thus to start the whole cycle off again. She wondered where her friend Wimpey would find his stake in all this. By rank and temperament she would call him a natural ‘Action allocator’. It was to be hoped that the local force had enough officers, but they would be calling on lay personnel.

  In her capacity as an acknowledged expert on women and violent crime she would be talking to Joanna and Annabel Gaynor later today. At present they were said to be ‘under sedation’, but she suspected this was part of Brian Gaynor’s protective apparatus for them. In addition, she would have to speak to Millicent’s parents to find out what her relationships were inside and outside her family, and what sort of curiosity could have prompted her to go into the garden where she met her death. That would come later. There were the other two victims also to be considered.

  Charmian knew that her position would not be easy. No one loves an expert, least of all another expert, and she suspected that Brian Gaynor would have his own specialist opinion on hand.

  Being punctilious and careful, he would no doubt name this person in advance. She knew enough about the subject by now to realise that it would have to be one of a limited number of people.

  She knew the names of most of them.

  E.J. Halliday, of the St Freda’s Hospital, West London. Brian might call him in and would not regret it: a good gentle man with great insight.

  Dr Francesca Risehanger, Department of Psychology, University of Middlesex: but she was said to be mainly interested in ethnic problems.

  Bill Sanders, formerly of Edinburgh, but now in New York: not likely to be called in, therefore.

  And the most likely of all, because she was so eminent in the field and yet so approachable, her own friend and mentor, Ulrika Seeley.

  Should I consult Ulrika? she wondered. She could alert me to any prejudices and scruples I ought to guard against in myself and in anyone I may work with. But Charmian knew from experience that she could not be too careful, and if Ulrika herself were to be called into consultation, it might be better not to talk to her.

  With the permission of the police, Brian Gaynor had moved his family that morning into a cottage in the Great Park owned by his friend Tommy Bingham. Buried in the depths of the woods, near a bridle-path leading to Ascot, it was intended to isolate them from sightseers and the press. The press would soon find out where they were, of course, but protected by the privilege of the Park, the gates, the foresters, the nearness of several royal houses, it was harder for the journalists to get at them.

  As she settled herself in her car one morning to drive in the sunlight down Maid of Honour Row, Charmian knew that she would be, as usual, acting two parts, and that as well as trying to find out what made Joanna tick, she would also be seeking to discover discreetly how much freedom to wander Joanna had and, in particular, what freedom on the nights of the murders.

  It was going to have to be a very indirect form of questioning.

  She didn’t look forward to it, she hated being two-faced, but it happened to her all the time. It was part of the job.

  About the third victim she still knew very little. Her name was Margery Fairlie; she was about thirty-five, unmarried and lived alone in a small flat above a shop in Merrywick. She had been dead some time, but exactly how long was not established. It was even possible she had been the first to be killed.

  At the corner of the road, she saw an old friend waiting by the bus stop. Beryl Andrea Barker, sometimes called Baby, although in these days of respectable hairdressing, she preferred to be called Andrea. She and Charmian had had a long and varied relationship, in the course of which Charmian had once been instrumental in putting Miss Barker in prison. But they had got over that hurdle and were now friends who gave each other cautious trust.

  Charmian drew up. ‘Want a lift?’

  Miss Barker looked around cautiously. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she began. ‘I’m not sure if I ought. Are you on business or not?’

  ‘Oh come on, get in.’ Charmian opened the door and Andrea, she was certainly all Andrea today, hopped in. ‘What was all that about? You don’t usually talk to me like that. To the shop as usual? I’m going past.’

  ‘Placed as I am,’ said Andrea, ‘as someone who has transgressed once or twice—’

  Charmian laughed. Once or twice was a euphemism for what had looked at one time like a life dedicated to crime.

  ‘And paid her debt to society,’ continued Andrea, ‘I have to be careful. People might wonder if you were picking me up. You weren’t, were you?’

  ‘Not unless you’ve done something.’

  ‘Innocence is not always a protection,’ said Andrea. ‘We both know that.’

 
; For the last five years she had been working at her old trade of hairdresser. She had now bought her own business. The money for the purchase coming from somewhere, begged, borrowed or stolen, Charmian chose not to ask. Andrea was prosperous, successful, and as Charmian detected, as restless as a cat. It was in such moods that Baby stood a strong chance of reappearing and pushing aside Andrea. Of the two persona Charmian preferred Baby as being the more straightforward. You were always catching your foot on something the Andrea person had prepared for you and falling over, whereas Baby didn’t prepare traps.

  ‘I heard that a friend of mine had got herself done in.’

  Charmian slowed the car, turned into a parking slot and stopped.

  ‘Were you waiting for me?’ It no longer looked like a chance meeting by the bus stop.

  ‘She’d dropped out a few days ago, we all wondered where she’d got to. Now we know.’

  So it was the last found body, thought Charmian. The one she so far knew least about. It looked as though she was about to learn.

  ‘You were waiting for me,’ she said answering her own question.

  ‘She was gay, poor cow,’ said Baby, making a sudden appearance.

  Charmian said nothing, but she was thinking hard.

  ‘I know you believe I am too,’ said Baby.

  ‘I’ve never said so.’

  ‘Don’t have to. Let’s say you’ve wondered. Anyway, I’m not. It’s just that when I’ve been inside that sort of person has always been very nice to me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And not for favours received, either,’ said Baby hotly. ‘They just took to me.’

  You could, Charmian admitted to herself. You just could. Beryl Andrea Barker could be very likeable.

  ‘And was she one of them, this woman who has been murdered? Did you meet her in prison?’

  Baby nodded.

  ‘What was she in for?’

  ‘Fraud. She was a clever girl.’

  Not clever enough, Charmian thought. She looked at her friend, who had that sharp, cat-is-watching-the-mouse look on her face. Charmian hated being the mouse.

  ‘Are you telling me something? That because she was gay she was killed?’

  ‘Could be.’ Baby started to move, putting her Andrea face back on again. ‘I’ve got to get to work.’

  ‘No. You’re not leaving this car without talking a bit more. Tell me everything you know about this woman, beginning with what you called her and how she came to figure in your life again.’

  ‘She was Maggie to me, but I think her real name was Margery. In prison we called her Tops, just a nickname, I don’t know why. I never used it. I’ve always thought that may have been why she liked me. I think there was some dirty joke there that I never caught on to.’ Miss Barker sounded disappointed, as if she had searched her mind to work out this joke, but had been unable to do so.

  ‘And after prison?’

  ‘I didn’t see her for a long while. Then she turned up one day looking for a job.’

  ‘Was she a hairdresser?’

  ‘No, a bookkeeper, she did the accounts. That’s how she got into trouble.’

  ‘But she still wanted that type of work. Did you give her a job?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t got one. Do my own books.’ Baby had a sort of native self-protection. No one would ever swindle her. ‘But I found her one. With the restaurant next door.’

  She stared out of the car window at the Chinese takeaway.

  ‘I don’t think they paid her much there, but it was a start.’

  ‘How did she get on to you again?’

  ‘I keep up with some of the girls,’ said Baby defensively. ‘You know that.’

  ‘You were sorry for her.’

  ‘Never.’ Baby hated to be thought soft. ‘But she had a quick tongue had Maggie, and quite a reputation. I mean she was always good to me, but I’ve known her beat someone up when it suited her. If anyone had got violent death labelled on them, then she’d be the one.’

  It altered the picture somewhat, made the victims not a random, any-woman-would-do choice, but selective. If Baby was right.

  ‘Thanks for telling me.’

  Miss Barker, all Andrea again, this face neatly fixed on for the day, got out of the car.

  ‘I hope you get him, and the sooner the better.’ She and Kate saw eye to eye on the sex of the killer. ‘I bet when you do you find some poor cow has been sheltering him all this time and thinks he’s the most lovely man living.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘But underneath she’ll know,’ said Baby, and on this matter, Charmian took her to be an expert.

  She drove off smartly; she had other work, other engagements. When she got to her London office there was a message for her.

  A telephone call, a recorded message which told her that while she ‘could not give all her time to the murders in the neighbourhood of Windsor, you are requested to assist the local force.’

  It was the formalisation of what she had already been doing and, no doubt, in accordance with the accepted practices of the machine for which she worked, it would be repeated in writing.

  What she thought at once was that it would strengthen her hand with Brian Gaynor. Her second thought was that someone had fixed it, and she wondered who?

  A telephone call soon brought enlightenment. It came through on the grey telephone on her desk, used only by certain channels. But this was, in its oblique way a personal call. She knew the voice even before he announced himself: Humphrey Kent.

  The relationship between them, although happy, was not unclouded. He had been married, Charmian had been married. Her husband was dead. About his wife there was a breath of mystery. Certainly there had been a divorce, so quiet and unobtrusive that some people still did not know it had taken place. Charmian suspected he still loved her. The story had reached her that he had discovered his wife to be a CIA agent (or it might have been a Russian spy, that was the other version) and that the divorce had taken place on this account and not due to any loss of feeling on his part or unfaithfulness on hers. Who knew? Charmian didn’t, but it added a spice of uncertainty. Spouses, she thought, should be comfortably disposed of before you embarked on anything else.

  One day she would ask him herself, but she had the uneasy feeling it was not the sort of question you put to Humphrey. Or if you did, it didn’t get answered directly. But then he never asked questions himself. Still, it was a question that ought to be asked.

  Of course, they both had means at their disposal to get the answers to any number of questions, but Charmian had never used this for her own ends. She wondered if he had to find out things about her? There were one or two episodes she kept quiet about. If he had investigated her in any but the most professional way (police officers expect to get scrutiny but there are limits) and she should discover it, then it would be over between them, and she would withdraw gently from the relationship. Or would it be so gently? Unluckily, she knew herself well enough to guess she might explode.

  ‘How’s the study of polo going?’

  ‘Not badly,’ said Charmian cautiously. ‘ It seems to play a big part in your life.’

  ‘It will in yours once you meet Tommy Bingham.’

  ‘Am I going to?’

  ‘He wants me to bring you to lunch.’

  I am to be taught a lesson, she thought. But in what?

  ‘I won’t be nasty to the Gaynors,’ she murmured. Not unless Brian Gaynor is excessively obstructive.

  ‘He didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Well, he might have done. When is the lunch?’

  ‘Sunday. Will you come?’

  ‘Of course. Work permitting.’ For both of them there was always that proviso.

  Their conversation then ceased to be personal and turned to the professional matters in which they were both involved. After this, she telephoned Wimpey to let him know what Beryl Andrea Barker had told her about Margery Fairlie, receiving back the message that he knew, it was common knowledge a
nd that he would be giving her the up-to-the-minute info’ some time today. Something to look forward to, she thought sardonically.

  When it was over, she sat back to drink some coffee. She had her own machine on a table by the window, her badge of office she called it, since lesser ranks had to share a coffee-maker in the corridor. To her mind the coffee thus produced was never quite hot enough, but the flavour was tolerable. Her office had been furnished by an unknown hand and was workmanlike without being beautiful. Serviceable was the word for it, she thought. Brown chairs and a shiny brown desk with a leather top. At least it looked like leather, but it didn’t smell like leather.

  A few touches of her own had arrived with her on the day she settled in. A small clock in a glass case that had belonged to her grandfather and still maintained good time, a green morocco blotter from Italy— a present from her mother on her first promotion years ago, and which she kept as a good-luck token— and a matching desk diary. The diary she replaced every year. She had gone to a lot of trouble to find the expensive shop in Bond Street that sold them. Her mother thought it was the old one going on and on, restoring itself as if by magic.

  Now she drew it towards her and wrote in the luncheon engagement. She would ask if she could bring Kate on Sunday. It would be a treat for Kate and interesting for her to see how Humphrey coped with her god-daughter.

  The thought was cheering, it rested at the back of her mind, making the day pass quickly. But all the time she had the interview with Joanna Gaynor ahead of her, which for some reason disturbed her. In the end she told herself this worry was because she feared she would not perform well.

  She decided to go that evening unannounced. Just turn up on the doorstep and see what happened.

  She had been given the address, and a map of the Park: Fletcher’s Cottage, Rider’s Gate, The Great Park.

  She approached her home that evening with circumspection. After all, she was under a threat of some sort, even if she was convinced she could defend herself. Perhaps all the victims had had that simple faith.

  She found the house empty, no sign of Kate. Was she off to Italy or foreign parts again, or just out for the evening?