Witching Murder Read online

  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

  Jennie Melville

  Witching Murder

  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

  When you have a cat resident in the house, sooner or later you get to know other people with cats. It is a universal truth. The royal town in Berkshire on the River Thames is particularly heavily provided with cats. Dogs are, of course, the royally established pets, but cats have crept in. There are black cats, pure white cats, black and white cats, striped cats, blotched tabby cats, ginger cats, and cats who are a mixture of all those colours. And these are only the mongrels. There are also the highborn, whose dates of birth and even conceptions are documented: Persian cats, Siamese cats, Burmese cats, Manx cats, Russian Blue cats and British Blue. Also, a new arrival, a large Maine Coon cat who thought, wrongly, that everyone loved him.

  Charmian Daniels, policewoman, owned, or was owned by, a pleasant female tabby cat called Muff. Round the corner from where she lived in Maid of Honour Row in Windsor, a neighbour called Winifred Eagle was the possessor of, or was possessed by, a sleek black cat called Benedict. Benedict is a holy and sainted name, but this Benedict was not holy and far from saintly. He held dominion over Abigail Place where Miss Eagle lived. There were only six houses in the little street, each backing on to Maid of Honour Row, each provided with a cat; but all these cats had learnt to know their place.

  Sometimes Benedict came across dead things in Miss Eagle’s garden, but he always turned aside from them, he was only interested in hunting live creatures. Benedict and Miss Eagle had lived for ten years in the house in Abigail Place before Charmian Daniels moved into Maid of Honour Row; they were old inhabitants.

  ‘She’s a policewoman, Benny, a Superintendent, I hear,’ Winifred had whispered to her black companion, as she groomed him. ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’

  Charmian had bought the house when a move from Deerham Hills together with rapid promotion gave her an important position with the Metropolitan Police in Central London, but no home. To live in Windsor, so close to London yet on the River, which she loved, and in a town so full of character, had taken her fancy. Also, she had friends who lived here, friends both in the town and in the castle precincts. She enjoyed the sociabilities of the small but happy circle in which she moved.

  She’d had a long walk from the earnest girl who had taken a good degree at a Scottish university, then joined a county police force with something of a social mission. Even in those early days, when she had worked in the town of Deerham Hills, she had never been content to simply be a police officer; she had always had ambitions. Work as a CID officer had stretched her, she had enjoyed it, known considerable success and promotion. Marriage to a man much senior to her had not dampened her ambition, and indeed her husband had encouraged her until he had been killed.

  Had it been a happy marriage? At the time she had thought so, but in retrospect she had wondered – perhaps she had been too ambitious to be a total success as a wife. Slightly gauche, desperately anxious to improve the world and herself with it, that was how she had been. Not easy.

  Bits of that old person were still embedded inside her, but success had overlaid them with sophistication. She could afford a good hairdresser now to cut her hair, which had been deep red in early youth and which still had hints of copper; she knew what sort of make-up to use, the kind of understated clothes that suited her.

  She managed a reasonable social life; she had especially decided to live in Windsor because an old college friend, Annie Cooper, had settled there, and because she had met a man, distinguished, successful, whom she had thought she could love. She still had a few reservations about Humphrey, but they were melting away.

  Winifred had not got her status quite accurate; Charmian was now a Chief Superintendent, and young to be it, although she played down her rank. She specialised in the crimes of women and also crimes against women. There is no such thing as ‘women criminals’ as a genus, Charmian accepted that view, there are simply women who happen to commit crimes, just as there are men who commit crimes. Nevertheless, there are certain crimes, such as infanticide, that more often women commit and certain crimes, such as rape, that happen more frequently to women. And sometimes, unfashionable as the thought was, Charmian did feel that there were types of woman who became criminals, and interesting types of crime they fell into. In her experience, some of the more complicated and hard to solve murders fell into such a category. Women were so inventive.

  The two cats got to know each other first, although apart from scratched noses and torn-out tufts of hair they did not confess to their meetings. But a badly chewed ear is another matter.

  The rivals had been quarrelling over a little bundle of bloody something (they could not name what it was).

  ‘Muff!’ said Charmian in dismay as she bathed the wounded tabby ear. ‘How did you come by this? No, don’t answer.’ Muff was not about to. ‘ I know who did it to you, it’s that bloody black cat.’

  Winifred denied it, of course, and Benedict, like Muff, was saying nothing. He was not built to admit much. If he was capable of saying anything then, ‘People do go on,’ he would have said.

  Charmian, a skilled reader of body language – it was her job, after all, and sometimes her very safety depended upon it – discerned it in his amber eyes.

  The little bloodied thing that the animals had been fighting over was tidied up by Miss Eagle. She did not know what it was either, but she had troubled thoughts.

  Because she knew it for a hate object.

  After that episode, Charmian kept an eye on the household and garden of Winifred, whose corner house was visible from Charmian’s back windows. She soon realised that there was a kind of cat track through her hedge into Winifred’s that was clearly used by many felines. It had a well-worn look, as if trodden by several generations of paws.

  It was possible that other animals used it too: Charmian had seen a fox looking at her over her rubbish bin one early morning. Not a cat-eating fox, she trusted, but it hadn’t appeared hungry, quite satisfied with its urban pickings.

  Winifred Eagle, her name on the electoral roll where Charmian looked it up, lived alone in
her house, but was apparently a sociable soul. Charmian observed three women visitors who came regularly as a group. Perhaps they played bridge together, or possibly it was a small Yoga class. They did not look as if they met to do embroidery together; there was a cheerful, healthy, unfashionable air to them. Perhaps a touch of eccentricity in their clothes. Sometimes they erupted from the house with bursts of loud laughter which could be heard round the corner; sometimes they came out quietly, arm in arm. She felt they had a rich and vigorous life of their own.

  The three regulars were a woman with curly red hair, one with a crop going nicely grey, and a plump attractive girl with long blonde hair, who was much the youngest and of whom the others seemed protective. A more varied cast of women came and went, but it was clear that whatever drew the group together, these four were the core.

  A well-built man, younger than the women who were all, except for the fair girl, of early middle age, occasionally seemed to join the party.

  Charmian noticed once or twice another visitor, whose face she recognised as that of a young local policewoman. This interested her.

  She would see this girl at the approaching twice-yearly meeting of the Professional Women’s Inter-Discipline Discussion Club, where doctors, lawyers, policewomen and social workers met to pool their knowledge and talk over their problems. Dolly, now a detective sergeant, usually attended.

  Charmian had time for speculation at the moment, she was enduring – enjoyment did not come into it – a short spell of leave.

  She moved her right hand experimentally. It seemed supple and agile enough but it had found out how to evade her orders. She looked at her pen but decided not to try it. Leave it, she could always dictate a letter, or pick it out on the word processor.

  A married woman crouched over the body of the woman, whom she called X or left nameless, in the kitchen of X’s house. She was happy to think of the victim as X. X marked the spot. She stretched X out, the blood from the stab wound had almost ceased to flow, but still oozed somewhat. She arranged the limbs neatly, not bothering to hide the knife, which was indeed from X’s own kitchen. She had tied the wrists loosely together. This was her own touch. How she felt about the victim. It signified submission. Victory for one woman, defeat for the other. And that was definitely how she felt.

  The woman arranged various cult objects about the body. A bunch of twigs, a little leather bag containing unseen trifles, a bundle of brown hair, and at the head a small, furry, dead body. Four black candles, two at the head of the body, two at the feet. Unlit. Then she left.

  Later that day a married man let himself into the house to which he had a key. He stood staring at what he saw. He felt sick at the sight, a great wave of nausea swept over him and he swayed where he stood. He went to the sink and vomited.

  He left X where she lay, but removed several of the objects, dropping them in the sink, and released her hands. He left the rat, which he could not bring himself to touch.

  ‘Someone else will have to report you dead, my dear,’ he said under his breath. Then he left the house and went to his car, which he had parked round the corner as he always did. Tears were rolling down his face as he drove away. He had never felt more fearful. How terrible women were both in love and in revenge.

  On the same day, but in the late afternoon, Denise Flaxon, a beauty consultant, rang the bell. She worked for Elysium Creams as a saleswoman, visiting clients in their own homes.

  She had promised to come at this time on this day, bringing with her a range of cosmetics and face treatment creams for the woman inside. She had promised Miss Vivien Charles that she would have a chance to model the cosmetics as the firm she represented was looking for a new face for a new campaign. This was not strictly true but it got Denise in and helped sales.

  No one answered the bell, so she gave the door a tentative push. It opened before her and she went in.

  The door to the kitchen was wide open. Her eyes went wide, she gave a genuine and spontaneous scream of surprise at what she saw.

  She knew at once there was something terribly terribly wrong here. She too felt sick, she could smell the vomit in the sink, saw the objects that had been dumped there, but she controlled herself.

  She did not touch the rat. There must have been a grave and rabid infection inside that rat for it to have gone so swollen and rotten so soon.

  She knew what she had to do, and reluctantly she set about doing it. She was tempted to run away, never to be seen in the neighbourhood again, but the death was a public fact that had to be acknowledged.

  She could not bring herself to touch the telephone in this house, so she went to the call box in the street outside to dial the police. She had noticed it on an earlier visit.

  ‘Dulcet Road, number six. Merrywick. You know where that is?’

  They told her to wait there, so she stood in the sun by her own car, a small Ford Fiesta, waiting. She knew how to wait.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ they said.

  ‘Wouldn’t think of it,’ she told herself.

  She was still there, patient and still, when the police car arrived.

  These first officers were two uniformed patrolmen. Denise refused to enter the house with them.

  ‘No, I’m not going in there again. You can talk to me out here or in your car.’

  The two men went into the house together. Soon, one of them emerged to make a telephone call from the car. Denise watched in silence.

  ‘The CID is coining over, it’s their pigeon. Murder all right, isn’t it?’ He was a young man, talking more than he should have done, a measure of his shock at what he had seen.

  ‘I think so,’ said Denise.

  ‘You can make your statement to the Sergeant.’

  ‘I’d like to go home.’

  ‘After that,’ he said with sympathy. ‘ We’ll give you a lift, if necessary. Nasty for you. Not what you’d be expecting.’

  ‘No,’ said Denise tersely.

  ‘Come and sit in the car.’

  But Denise preferred the fresh air. ‘I’ll sit here.’ And she sank on to the brick wall of the garden. She was not unaware that by this time several neighbours were taking a discreet interest in what was going on. She kept her eyes firmly turned away from them.

  From her perch on the wall she observed a man with a bag arrive, whom she took to be the police surgeon, and then a young woman drove up and went into the house.

  Dulcet Road, North Haw, Merrywick, was a new development, nearer Slough than Eton or Windsor, with a pleasant country air to it. Number six was a small but pretty house, one of a group designed by the architect to be a single-person dwelling, but prices had risen so fast in Merrywick lately that several young families were crammed into them.

  Detective Sergeant (CID) Dolly Barstow marched into the kitchen to take charge. She brought with her a young detective constable whom she was training in her ways.

  ‘Now then, what have you got to show me?’

  Then she took a look. ‘Ah,’ she said thoughtfully. It was a shock to her. Be a shock to anyone, what we’ve got here, she told herself. Nevertheless, for her there was an added element of surprise.

  She walked over to the body to stand staring down. She studied the tricks that had been laid out round the body. The candles were still there, the little bag of nameless objects, and the rat. The rest were in the sink, but she had not seen them yet. ‘How very nasty.’

  The police surgeon provided the unnecessary information that the victim had been stabbed, that it had not been suicide, and that the time of death was to be guessed at as about six or eight hours earlier. The pathologist would no doubt offer a more precise opinion after autopsy.

  Dolly looked at the clock. It was now four o’clock, so the woman had been killed that morning.

  ‘Round about breakfast time, then. Live alone, did she?’

  No one answered, no one had any idea. But Dolly believed it was so.

  ‘She’s wearing outdoor clothes. She must have been pl
anning to go out.’ Dolly raised her head. ‘I suppose she did live here?’

  The uniformed officer from the car found his voice. ‘The lady who found her says she was calling by appointment.’

  ‘Selling something, was she?’ Dolly had noticed the figure with its pretty pink briefcase propped up against the wall.

  ‘Face creams, Sergeant.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dolly was interested, she was having skin troubles herself. Suddenly she seemed allergic to her usual foundation lotion. She put up her hand to touch one of the rough patches on her cheeks. ‘I’ll get her statement.’ Before the Inspector comes, she thought. She was not too keen on Fred Elman, with whom she was teamed; their styles did not match.

  Dolly went outside where Denise Flaxon was still seated on the wall, looking as if someone had hit her on the head.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, you’ve had a bad shock I can see, Miss …’ Dolly hesitated.

  ‘Mrs Flaxon,’ said Denise automatically, as if she were programmed to give the right answers. ‘I’m a widow.’

  ‘Mrs Flaxon, I’m afraid I have to ask questions and get a statement. Will you come inside the house?’

  ‘No.’ Denise shook her head. ‘Not going in there.’

  ‘The car, then?’

  Denise assented to the police car. The two women sat in the back, with the sunlight falling on Mrs Flaxon’s face so that she kept putting up her hand as if to brush the light rays aside.

  ‘Would you like to move out of the sun, Mrs Flaxon?’ Dolly wanted to put the woman at her ease if she could. Elman, when he came later, would be no rest cure. Charm and ease of manner did not make up the Inspector’s style.

  ‘No, I’m all right here. Let’s get on with it.’ In the strong light the woman looked older than she had done at first glance, with lines around the eyes and mouth. She had a clear pale skin, carefully made up. Dark brown hair with pale brown eyes that looked almost grey as she moved her head to put on dark spectacles. Nose just a little too thick for sheer beauty, and the cheeks too fat, but personable.