Revengeful Death Read online

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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

  Jennie Melville

  Revengeful Death

  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

  It was a hot summer, followed by an autumn of rain and then more rain in the corner of Berkshire close by the River Thames. But the sun came out again and the days became pleasant in the Great Park of Windsor, old hunting ground of the English kings, close to Windsor Castle itself. The leaves began to fall to the ground where they rested thickly beneath the great old trees. People walked their dogs around the lake while tourists plodded along admiring the flowers in the Saville Garden, and then went for tea and cakes in the small restaurant where you could also buy seeds and plants in pots.

  In nearby Windsor life was gentle, the summer rush of tourists was over and residents found, to their grateful surprise, that they could walk on the pavements again and even park their cars.

  In early October, a quiet but rough murder took place.

  It did not stay quiet, of course, in the end it became noisy and horrible. Perhaps it was always horrible. Bloody enough, certainly.

  The woman who was to find the body took a daily walk in the Great Park. On that day she had been scuffling through the leaves, head down, thinking about her errant lover. She was thinking about murder too, as it happened. She sat down on the seat by the lake and put her head on her knees while she meditated whether she should kill him or not, and if so, how? Poison, or a quick stab to the heart? She fancied the knife, for after all, had he not knifed her through the heart? But she had had enough of blood, so the knife would not do.

  There was burning, arson. A funeral pyre. And she couldn’t kill him while she still loved him, cared for him still, anyway. She would have to learn to hate him before she could kill, and by that time she probably wouldn’t want to bother. Anyway, she did not know where to find him: he had gone off, Australia, Antarctica, the moon, who knew?

  Presently, she was joined on the seat by one of those amorphous figures to be seen walking in the park: wearing a thick, quilted jacket with a sweater or two underneath, a woolly scarf at the neck, a woolly hat pulled down over the ears, jeans and boots. Sex impossible to judge. Possibly unnecessary that you should judge it.

  Always with a dog, of course.

  This one spoke. ‘Afternoon.’ A deep voice, could be a man, or a woman with a cold.

  A nod in reply. If you answered, the conversation could go on for ever.

  The dog sat down, held up one paw, then another, licked the first, then subsided. This did get a reaction. The woman might be against people at the moment (although not children) but she did like dogs.

  ‘Poor little thing, he’s exhausted. You’ve worn him out.’

  ‘It’s his job, he’s very lucky to have a job, a lot of dogs haven’t.’

  ‘What job does he have?’

  ‘He’s my walker. I wouldn’t get out without him. You ought to have one yourself. I could hire him out to you, he wouldn’t mind some extra work. Pay to be arranged, of course.’

  ‘Who would I pay?’

  ‘Me, of course.’

  Hardly seemed the way the dog would see it.

  ‘I would bank it for him.’ There was no stopping this one. ‘Like to come for a walk now?’

  ‘No.’ Better to make it brief.

  ‘House party? Ladies only?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ The idea was shocking.

  ‘Oh well, don’t be huffy. You might have said yes.’

  There had to be some way of silencing this person. Sex still in doubt, but most likely a woman. Make it heavy. ‘Have you ever been to prison?’

  ‘Only temporarily.’

  ‘It’s not a thing to make a life’s work of.’ She got up and began to walk away. This is another one I might want to kill, she thought. Slowly and painfully and with invention.

  As she looked back, she saw the worker-dog lifting himself up and trying to mate with his walker’s big black boot.

  She was unaware that someone was leaning against a tree watching her as this conversation went on. She was ignorant of the watcher and somewhat comforted by her imaginary revenge; she had always lived a good deal in her imagination and more than ever now since her move to Windsor. She got up, and head still down walked towards her car, parked under a tree. She sat in it for a minute, then she drove home to where she lived in Marlborough Street, Windsor. The watcher did not follow her but he had the number of her car.

  On the way home, she passed a tree with a large notice tacked to it. The notice was printed in red and black. She gave it a quick look.

  THE TROJAN BUS IS HERE.

  LOOK OUT FOR US.

  She was interested but puzzled. A trifle more information would be useful. Who were the Trojans? Bronze Age warriors, as she remembered, and rather unsuccessful ones at that. How had they come to give their names to a bus?

  Marlborough Street is in an old part of Windsor, a street of quiet, solemn houses, now divided into flats.

  She parked the car at the kerb, not neatly – she was not neat about her parking, and probably, she thought mournfully, she would not have been neat in the stabbing had she got round to it. She left the car, looking across the road to check if the little boy was there. Little boy lost, she called him to herself, although she knew now that his name was Ned.

  She took this checking glance automatically now since one day she had found the child, locked out, sitting on the step, in a driving wind and rain. She had hammered on the door till the mother, bleary-eyed and far from sober, had opened it.

  Ned was not there now; she looked up the street and had the idea that she saw his mother disappearing into the distance. Certainly, the figure had her uncertain, unsteady gait. She locked the car, walked towards her own home, then took a second look across the road … He wasn’t there, but the front door was swinging open. Was the child in there alone? She hesitated for a moment, then walked across.

  The big double door gave on to an inner hall. The boy and his mother lived on the ground floor.

  The door to their apartment was open too.

  Cautiously, the woman who was to find the body (she was very close to it now) moved forward. She debated what to do. Not really her business, but there was the child. She liked the boy, who seeme
d to her in need of protection.

  She pushed the door wide open, called out: ‘Anyone there?’ and getting no answer, went in.

  She could smell the gin. Her lover had been a good hand with the stuff so she knew the smell. There was an empty bottle on the floor.

  She was in the living room, which was in great disorder with chairs overturned, a small table upended, a teapot that must have been on the table smashed against the wall, and several pictures hanging at weird angles from their hooks.

  Three rugs looked as if they had been tossed around, while a larger one was rolled up like a sausage.

  Wait a bit, there was something sticking out of this sausage. Round, with hair – human and yet inhuman.

  She knelt on the floor because she could no longer stand; she felt sick and dizzy. Only a head, she said to herself, but the mouth is open, the face painted like a clown and streaked with blood. She found herself wondering what his last words had been.

  She had been walking through the park, enjoying the sun and the smells of autumn. She had not been happy but she had felt that she could endure being miserable, which had its own peculiar pleasures. She had enjoyed scuffling through the leaves like a child; she had remembered doing so on her way home from school. And all the time, this had been waiting for her.

  Ridiculously she heard herself saying to the head: Hello, I am Mary.

  Mary, the protective owner of a broken heart, which she took out for a walk every afternoon in the Great Park to brood over the wrong done to her by her ex-lover. And others. Mary is an unlucky name, she had told herself. Look at Mary, Queen of Scots, Bloody Mary Tudor and Mary Wollstonecraft, dead in childbirth. What could I be called, she had asked herself, and keep the initial? Medea? But she was a notable murderess.

  Mary gave a little shiver; better forget that name. She laughed at herself and the shivers died away, shook her hair and resolved to get on with life. She was tall, black-haired and pretty, the possessor of a small private income which she enhanced with a part-time morning job in a shop.

  I am Mary, she repeated. And who are you? Because this was not Ned’s mother, this was a man’s face. As far as she could make out, because it was strangely painted with red, blue and white stripes.

  Tentatively, she rolled back a little of the carpet which was old enough and soft enough to allow this. What she saw made her feel sick. A wave of blackness swept over her.

  She sat back on her heels and took a deep breath, she felt sicker than ever, she was not quite in this world at all, but knew what she must do. She had seen enough television to know she must telephone the police. This she did from the hall.

  Then she lay flat on the floor – she was too dizzy to sit up – and waited.

  When the police arrived, just two uniformed men, she scrambled to her feet.

  Feeling outside her body, she heard a voice, which must be her own, explaining who she was and why she was here. The number of officers in the room seemed to expand. There were so many of them, and she was sitting in a chair being given water.

  Then she heard a young policewoman say under her breath: At least it’s a nice neat job, it doesn’t smell. But Mary did not find this death neat. She could see the blood on the throat, the thick blood lower down.

  The words, which she was not meant to hear, jerked her back into where she was. She rushed at the WPC.

  ‘Forget about the smell. And it’s not bloody neat. Don’t you know the heart is gone?’

  Someone hauled her off, she didn’t know whom. But she was moving round the room, shouting.

  ‘Where is the boy?’

  Running from the room, she called out ‘Ned, Ned, where are you?’

  She looked behind the sofa and the big chairs, she went into the kitchen. A plain-clothes man laid his hand on her arm but she shook it off. ‘Where are you, Ned?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ said the CID man, ‘calm down.’ He stretched out a restraining hand. ‘Don’t touch, fingerprints …’

  But she was busy opening cupboard doors, even opening the refrigerator.

  ‘He’s not in there,’ said the man patiently.

  Not much of anything, certainly not much food. A dry old loaf, a heel of cheese and several half-emptied bottles of wine. Ned’s mother had always been a wine woman, not beer – wine if she couldn’t afford gin.

  Mary tore into the bedroom. ‘Help me look, damn you.’

  ‘He could get out if he was here.’ If he is alive, he thought, but did not say so aloud. Instead he helped her search under the bed, assisted while she tore off the bedclothes. ‘Not there,’ Mary panted. ‘He is here, he is, there’s nowhere else

  he could be.’

  ‘With his mother.’

  Mary pushed him aside. ‘I saw her running away. Alone.’

  In the bathroom, Mary stood still for a moment. There was

  another smell in here. Sourish, stale.

  She looked around the tiny room filled with the bath, the lavatory

  and the handbasin. The small cupboard, she guessed, because she

  had such a one herself, housed the hot-water tank and a shelf or

  two for clean linen.

  Mary pulled open the door and saw a small figure crammed

  into the tiny space. There was a smell of urine and vomit.

  ‘Ned,’ she said gently, ‘so there you are. Come out now, my love.’

  He stared at her, wordless.

  ‘Come on,’ she coaxed. ‘Out you come.’

  The CID man moved up behind her; she pushed him back. ‘ Get

  away, he’s frightened to death as it is.’

  She reached in and took out the small, damp, smelly figure.

  ‘Don’t worry, boy. You were frightened – anyone can be sick and

  wet themselves when they’re frightened. I’ve done it myself.’ As

  she certainly had done, and not so long ago either.

  Pushing past the policeman, who was saying something to her

  which she did not bother to hear, she advanced into the sitting

  room.

  ‘I am taking the boy home with me.’

  She averted her eyes from the action that was going on around

  the body, but she had seen it was being photographed.

  A tall man with the air of authority had arrived, and stood in

  the middle of the room.

  ‘If you want to speak to me, you can come over there. I will see

  the boy is looked after. For the moment he needs getting out of

  here.’

  She held Ned against her and shielded his face from the body

  on the floor as they passed.

  ‘Let her go, Romsey,’ said the new man, ‘ I’ll walk them across.’

  ‘Yes, sir’

  ‘I’m Chief Inspector Headfort,’ said the new man in a pleasant, deep voice as he accompanied Mary to her own house.

  ‘Mary March.’

  ‘I know.’

  It was the sort of thing he would have to know, of course, they would have checked on her. Very quick of them.

  She let him open the door for her. A corner of her mind registered that he was the sort of man she would like and trust if she ever liked and trusted a man again.

  Her house smelled warm and welcoming; there might even be some coffee left in the pot, although tea, hot and strong, was what she craved. She put Ned down on the floor where he stood looking about him, his face without expression.

  ‘He won’t be with you long, Miss March. A foster mother will turn up soon, I’ve asked for one.’

  ‘You might find his own mother.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘I saw her belting down the road before I went into the flat.’

  ‘Did you indeed?’

  Mary drew in a breath. Had she really seen her?

  ‘I think it was her.’

  ‘I have to ask this: did you recognize the dead man? Have you seen him before?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but how coul
d I know with that stuff on his face?’

  Jack Headfort acknowledged this with a nod. Then: ‘ How did you know about the heart?’

  ‘I looked,’ Mary said shortly.

  ‘I’m surprised that you could tell from a look.’

  Mary wasn’t sure she liked him as much as she had thought. ‘Is the heart there?’

  He did not answer.

  ‘Well, maybe I was mistaken. Perhaps I just imagined it. I saw a hole.’ She turned him. ‘Listen, there’s been a horrible killing across the way and I’m scared stiff, but I’m going to give the boy some clothes of some sort, and then I’ll give him something to eat.’

  ‘I’ll leave you now, Miss March … Someone will come over to be with you soon. You’ve been very brave.’ Jack Headfort strode across the road, noticing, because it was his job to notice everything, a slender, dark-haired man slowly pacing down the street.

  ‘Check up on Mary March,’ said Headfort to his sergeant when he got back to what was already being called ‘Murder House’ by the neighbours outside, and the anxious tenants of the flat above. No doubt soon the press and the TV crews would arrive. ‘See if anything is known about her.’

  ‘Is she really called Mary?’

  ‘So she says. Seems a nice young woman, but she was quick over here.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘And there was that talk about the heart.’

  ‘It wasn’t the heart, but what was it?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘The police surgeon wouldn’t commit himself. The post-mortem will tell us, and I’ve asked for that quickly.’ He went to the window, drew the blind aside and looked out. He could see that Mary’s windows were lighted. ‘Seems all right over there.’

  ‘I sent Jean Fisher across; she’s got a sharp eye, she’ll pick up anything there is. And the social services are sending a care worker around pronto.’ There had recently been a case locally where a child in trouble had been left alone for just too long. An inquiry had laid blame around so that all parties were now taking quick and positive action.

  ‘Right.’ Jack Headfort walked over to look at the dead face again. The body was about to be transferred to the mortuary of the nearby Prince Albert Hospital. The police surgeon did not have much to say but had noted that the signs suggested the man had not been long dead, an hour or so at the most. ‘ We know who lived here, Mrs Alice Hardy, but who was he?’