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  Contents

  Jennie Melville

  FILOFACE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  FILOFACE

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  FILOFACE

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  FILOFACE

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jennie Melville

  Dead Set

  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.

  FILOFACE

  In the Diary on the police computer which dealt with the Farmer murder was a file called FILOFACE. This was a compilation, made up to date as necessary, which extracted all the details relevant to the character of the murderer from which the computer put together a picture. Sometimes days might pass without much addition.

  At the beginning there was little in FILOFACE except for the date of the killing and the suggestion that the killer might be local. Or someone who knew Windsor well.

  No literary skill was employed and the comments were brief.

  Later events added more material and showed that there were several things right with this picture and several wrong.

  1

  1 2 3 4 5

  Patches of oil on the stretch of grass behind the trees and bushes which circled the Crimean War Memorial. Suggest the killer might have used a car parked there, either to transport the body or to kill her in it. Faint indications of tyre marks confirm this. Traces of footsteps, possibly of victim and or killer. Overlaid by footprints of Edward Gray. Deliberately? Traces of mud and leaf mould on victim’s knees. Fell? Knelt?

  Or pushed down.

  Killer: a local man who owned and drove a car.

  Chapter One

  Early April and a cold season

  Charmian Daniels said that any case involving a child was a beast, but in this case there were sixteen, one of them seeing visions.

  All the children were at the one school, St Catherine’s, Temple Grove, Merrywick, near Windsor.

  Mary Erskine walked down the road where she lived in the famous town which nestled beneath the great castle of Windsor. She had lived here all her life, inheriting the family home. Her parents were not dead, but had removed themselves to the warmer climate of Corfu, where they cultivated their famous gardens. They came home occasionally for the winter which was apparently easier to bear in London where you expected to be cold than in Greece where you did not.

  Mary walked slowly because she was weighed down with shopping after a visit to her favourite supermarket (Bunji’s Cave, run by a charming man from Pakistan, who stocked all the rich indigestible foods she loved, but she never put on an ounce of weight), and because she was thoughtful.

  It was unusual for any inhabitant of this pleasant world to have murder on the mind, but at this moment, several people had. In fact, more than was understood or guessed at.

  ‘Oh yes,’ a fellow guest (Prudence Damiani, batting her gossip-bright eyes) had said to Mary Erskine at the last drinks party in the Castle precincts, ‘of course, Mary darling, you live in Chapel Close, that’s where the body was, isn’t it? What’s it like, having the police on the doorstep?’

  ‘The body was just around the corner, not in the road,’ Mary had explained, carefully, defensively. ‘And they haven’t been on the doorstep. Rather nice men, actually.’ Attractive in their way. Mary regarded herself as a good judge of that quality.

  The spring afternoon was wet and windy, so that Mary quickened her step, eager to get home.

  A florist’s van was delivering an arrangement of flowers at Colonel Dalrymple’s. That was interesting and the reason did not seem obvious. Jamie Dalrymple was not ill or about to be married as far as she knew and had last been seen playing polo in the Great Park, at which game he was known as a high-scoring player. Something to think about there.

  Mary knew all of the people who lived in Chapel Close, and took a kindly if dispassionate interest in their lives, she could usually guess what was going on. Sometimes before they knew themselves, she thought. As for example the way she had known before her parents that Delphine Gillot was on drugs because she had met her in the bank cashing a large (and as it turned out illegal and forged on her mother’s account) cheque. Delphine had been sent to a clinic for a cure. Not much hope there, she thought, she had been at school with Delphine, who was distantly related to her, and one way and another Delph had been hooked on something since kindergarten. Take away the drugs and she would be on something else. The Gillots were about to go on tour in a Rattigan revival: they acted. On stage and off. They were not worrying about Delphine, but Mary was, she had a strong guilt feeling to contend with there.

  There was scaffolding up at Mrs Curzon’s, the roof this time, she observed. Last time it had been the garden wall. Poor Mrs Curzon. Good job she was rich. Curzons Teas, it had been. And the odd coal-mine or two, in the days when people had owned coal-mines, now the money was comfortably invested all round the world. No, she wasn’t sorry for Mrs Curzon, it gave her something to think about, other than checking her entry in Debrett. An awful lot of scaffolding, Mary noticed, and a builder from London plus an architect, must be more than the roof, but of course houses of this age were bound to need attention. Chapel Close had been built before Queen Victoria was born and when her wicked old uncles were still shocking London society so it had seen a lot of life one way and another.

  She passed along the road with her easy, athletic tread; she was a tall girl. There was Mrs Arbuthnot, dead-heading her daffodils. Pity about the granddaughter, but babies were babies when all was said and done, and a good thing. No one bothered these days whether they were born in wedlock or out of it. Mary Erskine herself had several friends who used to be called unmarried mothers and were now called single parents. She even knew a single father and admired him for his skills. She thought Mrs Arbuthnot ought to be grateful to be a great-grandmother at her age. And in any case, hadn’t Zelia Arbuthnot herself let something out after two strong cocktails at a party in the Castle about the state of her virginity (or absence of) on her wedding night. ‘The gin talking there,’ a Canon of the Chapel had whispered in Mary’s ear with a sly eccleciastical giggle.

  A small group of children, boys and girls, wearing the wasp-coloured striped blazers of St Cath’s School, passed round the Circus on their way home and Mary waved. She knew most of them.

  It was the top class in the junior department, all six of them, going home a bit early because their class teacher was off sick. All friends, walking together. Pix, Peter Xavier Prescott, lagged behind.

  ‘He’s thinking.’ He had the reputation of being a thinker.

  ‘It’s his baby sister … He doesn’t like her very much.’

  But Pix was not thinking about his infant sister, although she was at the bottom of his darker thoughts; he was thinking about grown-ups and what liars and disappeared they were. His parents, Phyllida and Ian, were both of those things, constantly telling him slight untruths and going off without saying where. It was unsettling.

  He had spoken to his mother: ‘ Can a person split into two and be in two places at once?’

  Pix’s mother, an economist working for a top firm of bankers, had laughed, she believed in being straight with her children: ‘Oh, the doppelgänger effect? Yes, it’s an interesting idea. I shouldn’t worry, my darling, it may be just an intellectual concept. You’re not likely to come across one.’

  Pix had not been pleased. It was very nice not to be talked down to, but sometimes a chap wanted a simple, reassuring statement, such as No, dear, no one can be in two places at once.

  The whole group of them saw and gave a wave to Mary Erskine, who waved back without breaking her walk down Chapel Close.

  Sir Humphrey Kent (knighted in the last Birthday Honours List) lived in the next house Mary passed, but he was away in Washington on one of those interesting trips he was so secretive about, and his house was let. To nice tenants though, Americans, but Mary knew disappointingly little of their li
ves. They kept their house clean themselves, so they were not done for by Mrs Templeman who sped up and down the road on her cycle, doing an hour here and a half a day here and passing the gossip round with the dust. Nor did they employ Joe, the jobbing gardener who jobbed where he willed and sometimes where his employers wished he would not: he had a steady, firm hand with pruning shears and a strong desire to subdue the roses. He and Mary had had many a tussle over the bushes, not all of which she had won. So she moved her thoughts on two doors to where Una Gray lived with her husband and two dogs. No children. Pity, Mary thought. Like many unmarried people, she was in the habit of thinking of children as a cure, although all her married friends assured her it was quite otherwise.

  Trouble there, oh there was trouble.

  Mary Erskine paused at her garden in Chapel Close and looked back along the road to where she could see her neighbour slowly and greyly making for her own house. She was at the gate, but standing still and not trying to lift the hatch.

  Mary set down her heavy basket while she waited. ‘Never carry a shopping basket,’ her mother had said to her child just before fleeing the country. ‘Not what People Like Us do. You can be laden down with parcels, darling, have them dangling from your little finger – that’s rather chic, actually, dearest, but never a shopping-bag or basket.’

  Mary Erskine had long since abandoned this upper class advice, along with such motherly dictums as, ‘Always wait for the man to open the door for you.’ (Only they never did.) Or, ‘Always let the man make the first move.’ (Not likely, why be a shy virgin?) Try carrying a piece of cod for the cat on your little finger, mamma, she thought, or half a pound of soft butter. Thus déclassé but happy and perfectly adjusted to her world, Mary conducted her life according to rules which suited her.

  She tucked her shopping into the shelter of her garden hedge, praying that the local wandering cat would not steal her supper, and turned back to Una.

  I’ll talk to Oonie, Mary Erskine told herself. I’ll talk to her and make her talk back. Tell me what it’s all about. She trusts me. I think she trusts me.

  Una did trust Mary Erskine, she didn’t trust many people but she did trust her.

  Everyone liked Mary Stuart Dalmeny Erskine: the monarch and her court, the Dean and his chapter, the General and the foot-soldier, and all her neighbours, they all liked her. The very policeman on duty at the Castle knew her and liked her and that was something because although he remembered all faces, he kept emotion well out of it.

  ‘No luck, Oonie?’

  Una Gray shook her head. ‘ He wasn’t there.’ She dragged her grey raincoat round her more closely. The gate still seemed to be defeating her.

  If only Una would wear some brighter clothes sometimes, thought Mary. She’s in perpetual half-mourning. She could be so pretty, with those lovely big blue eyes, she is pretty, but she seems to have given up trying lately. You had to try, even beauties had to try.

  No wonder Teddy went away. If he had gone, she had once or twice had the unnerving feeling that he was still there, tucked away in the Gray house, not coming out. ‘Let me open the gate for you.’

  ‘I’m so cold, you see.’ Una held out her hand for sympathy. ‘My fingers won’t work.’

  She was huddled in her grey coat like a little mouse. Mrs Mouse, thought Mary, as she dealt briskly with the gate. ‘It’s not that cold.’ And not raining either, no need for the raincoat.

  ‘Come on, inside with you.’ The house was cold too. Would be, of course, didn’t look as if Una had been in it all day. Not much housework done either. A pity because she had lovely things. Mary had good pieces of furniture, pictures and china herself (all inherited) and knew quality when she saw it. ‘What have you been doing to get as cold as that?’

  ‘Waiting.’

  ‘Where this time?’

  ‘At the railway station.’

  ‘What, again? I thought you’d decided not to wait around any more.’

  ‘He said he might be there.’

  ‘Again? And you believed it? How many times has he had you waiting at the station because he might be there? Three times.’

  ‘This is the third time,’ said Una mildly. She was putting on the kettle. ‘Before that it was only twice.’

  ‘I can count. Twice was enough.’ Once would have been enough for that game. ‘Why do you go?’

  ‘I want him back.’

  ‘What’s it all about, Oonie? Tell me. There’s more than you’re saying.’

  All she knew was that Ted Gray had left his home and not come back. Husbands did not go missing in this quiet street. If the news got about, it would cause a sensation.

  Una got some cups out. ‘Tea?’ she said.

  ‘Oonie!’

  Mary had known Una Gray almost all her adult life, she had been Una Dalmeny, a kind of remote cousin of Mary’s, and she had known Ted since their marriage some six years ago. Una was a teacher in a distinguished private preparatory school and Ted was a historical researcher, checking facts for busy biographers. Ghost writing, he called it; he too taught in the school occasionally, giving talks on history to the top class. The money helped, although both of the Grays had small private incomes. Ted and Una were in their late thirties, some ten years older than Mary Dalmeny Erskine herself.

  ‘I’ve told you. Ted went off, didn’t say why, and we hadn’t quarrelled. And since then he has sent messages telling me to meet him at the station off the train from Waterloo.’

  ‘And he has never turned up. How does he send these messages? That’s something you’ve never been very clear about. And why. Come on, Oonie, there has to be a reason. Why don’t you talk about it. You can trust me.’

  ‘I do trust you. And I’ve told you, just told you.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Mary. ‘There’s got to be more.’ I could shake her, she thought.

  Both ladies lived in Chapel Close, the small half-circle of houses that nestles at the foot of the Castle Hill, looked down upon by the great Norman tower of the royal castle in Windsor. The houses curve round a grass centre which is called the Circus and in the middle of which is a bronze statue of a small Greek god holding a bow, but no arrows, he lost them some time ago, in the early nineteenth century to a group of Dr Keating’s scholars from Eton, in the old days before disciplines were tightened.

  Mary Erskine was the only one to hold the freehold of her dwelling in Chapel Close. Una Gray rented her house from the Royal Estates. It was something of a mystery how the Erskines came to have this valuable freehold, but tradition had it that long ago a royal lover and royal mistress came into it. They had had their place in the register of Royal Bastards tucked away in the royal archives. Not on the Erskine side of the family, not their style but possibly a Stuart Dalmeny daughter, they were known to be a free and easy lot. Mad, some of them.

  Mary stirred her tea. Marriage, she thought, husbands. Unpredictable. So far no one had tempted her into the state of matrimony although many had tried. She had her own hopes, however, of someone she could love; you have to try.

  I’m a romantic, she told herself, have been ever since I saw Cinderella when I was six. I’m waiting for the Transformation Scene. I’m waiting for my Prince. A duke would do. English preferably, but a French duke would be acceptable. She could think of someone, but he didn’t seem to fancy her. Work on it, Mary, she told herself, all is fair in love and war.

  She sipped her tea. Una had offered her weak Earl Grey in a porcelain cup. Just like Una to produce such a well-bred cup. Yes, she would settle for a French duke. Due et pair de France. It had a nice ring.

  She watched Una holding her cup in both hands, her face miserable. Marriage hadn’t done much for her. Rather the reverse.

  ‘He sends a postcard,’ Una said suddenly. ‘ Second-class post. Always posted in London. Can’t work out where he is from that.’

  ‘May not even be in London,’ said Mary.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘So what does he say on the card?’

  ‘Just meet me off the train. And he gives the time. Never been the same train.’

  ‘And he’s never been on it either.’