A New Kind of Killer, and Old Kind of 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

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jennie Melville

  A New Kind of Killer, and Old Kind of 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

  Autumn came in with gales and rain; Charmian Daniels thought it was going to be a turbulent season. But a good one. She was hopeful. In between the storms came bright sunshine and she herself was happier than she had been for years. A working wife still had problems, goodness knew she certainly had (like how to feed a husband, shop, launder and go to work, all in one day), but they were problems with a shape and a name. And when you knew the name of a problem you were halfway to solving it. You could say Oh yes, that’s my time-table trouble, and I’m writing down all my tasks and putting them in groups and arranging them alphabetically and then I’ll try and do them in half the time I usually take.

  Perhaps she was happy because so many new things were beginning for her. She had a new hair style, for a start. Bangs and curls were in, and for a girl who had kept her hair short and clipped for years she was enjoying the feel of her hair. And the look. It suited her, softened the firm line of her jaw and made her eyes look bigger. “Suits you, doesn’t it?’’ said her friend Baba, holding the hand mirror professionally behind her so she could see the back.

  “You’re a genius, Baba. I don’t know why I didn’t do it before.’’ She knew why, really. You had to be self confident to wear your hair in such profusion. Now that she had the self-confidence, of course, more was given to her. Life was like that. The curls had swirled round her head as she had kissed her husband goodbye. “How pretty you are,’’ he’d said, his eyes bright, “ and how much I shall miss you.’’ The feeling between them was stronger and yet gentler than it had ever been. Even to miss each other as much as they were going to was part of their pleasure in each other.

  She put up her hand and touched her hair and the movement awoke her love in her again and warmed her. The sun shone on her and warmed her too. In fact, come to think of it, she was too hot. She shifted restlessly in her stiff grand gown and stared about her. All around her, the rest of the audience was sweltering in its grand yet sombre academic finery.

  Charmian smiled. All this too was one of her new beginnings. She was here at the University of Midport to start a diploma in criminology. She would have one academic year here as a resident student and then go home to complete her diploma while still carrying on as a full-time woman police officer (detective branch). The first year ended in a set of exams, the second year you wrote a dissertation. Charmian had it all worked out. Even the subject for her thesis was already forming in her mind. She frowned. A New Kind of Killer, she might call it. The ominous statistics for it were already being assembled.

  Before starting on this course, Charmian had undergone an examination by a psychologist to see if she was, by her nature, suited for promotion and capable of the difficult tasks of a high-ranking policewoman. (Charmian was very ambitious.) The psychologist was, perhaps unfairly, a woman. Charmian, although handling herself well at the interview, would have preferred a man. She thought that she’d played it very well, showing the side of her she wanted to show and covering up those aspects of her character she thought less highly of.

  She smiled at the examining psychologist, a doctor named Alice Brummer, who duly noted and catalogued the nature of the smile. (Confident; nervous; not fond of women.)

  “I’m hoping to do some reading in your field at the University, doctor,’’ she said. “As it relates to criminals, young criminals in particular, and victims.’’

  “I think all criminals are young,’’ said Dr. Brummer crisply. “Emotionally retarded. Probably more significant than intellectual retardation. Victims, too.’’

  Charmian nodded; she was never quite sure whether to take the remarks Dr. Brummer made at their face value, or whether they were not meant, in some way, to test her.

  “As far as victims are concerned,’’ went on Dr. Brummer, eyes alert, “there are undoubtedly people who, owing to some build-up in their own personality, fall readily into positions of danger. Willingly, one might say. Or wantonly. But we must beware of emotion-loaded words.’’

  “Yes,’’ agreed Charmian.

  “Just as, in everyday life, if I may use that phrase, we all recognise that there are people who walk into difficult situations. Or attract relationships that on the surface at least they appear not to want.’’ Now she smiled. “ I use the word ‘ attract’advisedly. There is certainly a sexual element involved. Probably immature sexuality.’’ To make her point more clearly, in case Charmian hadn’t understood, she went on: “ Wreckers, I call such people, because in some way they seem determined to wreck themselves.’’

  “ ‘Wreck’ is an emotion-loaded word,’’ pointed out Charmian.

  “Yes. Isn’t it?’’ agreed Dr. Brummer, who could certainly be, Charmian thought, very trying.

  “What sort of situations or incidents were you thinking of?’’ asked Charmian.

  Dr. Brummer shrugged. “I detect various forms, naturally. Anonymous letters; unwelcome admirers (or are they really welcomed?); losses of personal possessions; even a long run of operations or bad accidents.’’

  “But that happens to us all,’’ protested Charmian.

  “Oh no, Sergeant,’’ smiled Dr. Brummer. “Not to all of us.’’

  Her report on Sergeant Charmian Daniels was, on the whole, a favourable one:

  “This officer is good promotion material … obviously highly ambitious, and powerfully (for the good?) motivated … Not fond of women, but regardful of them: probably a most useful combination for a woman due to command other women … From what her record tells me, however, of her past career, in which there have been periods of stress, together with my own observations, I suggest that she is unconsciously moved to get herself into certain risky situations, either out of anger or from a desire to punish herself. I went so far as to suggest this to her; she did not accept the hint. Or not consciously. Underneath, I believe, she may have done.’’

  The bustle around her broke up Charmian’s thoughts. She looked about. People w
ere beginning to stand. The procession was coming in through the big door. Excited and interested, Charmian stood too.

  If Charmian was a very new student, then the University of which she was proud to be a part was very new also. Today its first Chancellor was being installed.

  The head of the procession was reaching her. First a black-gowned figure carrying a silver tipped staff. He was the University Beadle. Then two stalwart officials in sumptuous red whom Charmian could not identify, but they were obviously very important. After them came the Lord Lieutenant of the County and then the Mayor of Midport. These dignitaries were followed by the High Sheriff, and then the members of the University Senate, looking scholarly and cheerful. Last of all came the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Midport with the very Royal Lady who was today being installed. She was wearing kingfisher blue and green with a bright sapphire bracelet and huge pearls and no nonsense about not wearing jewellery with an academic gown. She looked pleased, expectant, and very pretty. Charmian, whose own neck became flushed with excitement, saw with sympathy that a very faint flush was already rising above the pearls. “ It’s that speech,’’ she thought with sympathy. “She’s nervous too.’’

  The procession crossed the platform and slowly disposed of itself in dignified and decorous silence. Charmian, from her seat right at the back, was able to see now that many of the distinguished scholars were women. Her gaze continued along the line. “Funny,’’ she thought, studying the delicate profile of the High Sheriff outlined against the great wig. “If you didn’t know better you’d think he was a woman.’’ Then her eyes fell upon the neat ankles and tiny high heeled shoes visible beneath the High Sheriff’s splendid gown. “Why, she is a woman.’’ She felt pleased about this. “It’s a woman’s world, after all.’’ She leaned back in her seat, contented.

  Already, as she sat there, a man’s body was being wheeled from the hospital bed in which he had died towards the mortuary.

  “It should have been D. O.A.,’’ said the young doctor in charge. “He was all but dead when he got here.’’

  “I think he’d been dead a long time,’’ said the nurse to whom he spoke. She was remembering the grey drawn face, the pock-marked skin, the lost dead eyes which for one moment had looked into hers, recognising that they were both of the same species.

  “These junkies,’’ said the doctor, with a shrug.

  Charmian in her back-row seat was watching the platform.

  The ceremony (almost she used the word service, but the one institution which did not seem strongly represented was the Church) proceeded with speed. No sense, you could feel those practical, mild academics saying, in hanging about, let’s get on with it and out to the reception afterwards.

  In no time at all the procession was heading with decorous haste to the great doors beyond which the pop of champagne corks could already be heard.

  Charmian stood up. “Perhaps I’m imagining the champagne,’’ she thought. As a humble research student she was not asked to any party. She believed there was a lesser function elsewhere with tea laid on for the student body. Tea, no doubt, and those little, striped, wet-tasting sandwiches caterers are so fond of. Should she or shouldn’t she?

  Across the heads of several other people she saw the curly black head of Alda Fearon. Alda smiled and nodded. Charmian nodded back. Very well, she’d go into tea with Alda.

  “Didn’t think you’d have time,’’ she murmured to Alda as they approached each other. “Either to be here or to have tea afterwards.’’

  Alda looked cynical. “I was determined to come. I’ve contributed as much as anyone to getting this place off the ground. I’ve been here over a year, getting things ready. I wanted to look round at all the bodies assembled here and say: I’m responsible for two thirds of them having a bed to sleep in and a room to work in.’’ She added, “And I’ve done a good job on it, too.’’

  “Yes,’’ said Charmian thoughtfully. “You would.’’

  Alda was an old friend, old colleague and teacher too. In the Deerham Hills police force in which Charmian had been working, Alda had been a senior officer teaching Charmian a lot. Then Alda had been transferred. It had been a surprise to Charmian to see her installed as Lodgings Officer to the University.

  “I always think of you as one of the most conscientious people I know,’’ said Charmian.

  “Yes,’’ said Alda, equally thoughtfully. “I am. Also one of the most overworked and one of the most underpaid. And at this very moment I have a headache and want some hot tea.’’

  Their eyes met and between them lay the question Charmian was always mutely posing and Alda forever silently evading: why did you leave the police force, drop your career and take on this exacting job with so much less to offer?

  Perhaps Alda felt it was time she answered it, because she dropped her eyes and murmured: “But you know I like young people and I wanted to feel I was doing something positive. Besides,’’ she added practically, “this job has a flat provided with it. And I had Billy to think of.’’

  “Billy?’’ said Charmian hopefully. Perhaps Alda had had a husband tucked away all this time. Billy didn’t sound so husbandly, though.

  “My cat,’’ said Alda, in a demure voice.

  “I had a dog once,’’ said Charmian. “ Before I married. But somehow once I got married he seemed to wilt and fade away. I think I’d got him originally to stop me getting married and he seemed to know it once his purpose was gone.’’

  “So what did you do with him?’’

  “I gave him away to a friend who had a husband and a large family and a dog already.’’

  “And what happened?’’

  “Oh, he picked up and he’s still going strong.’’ “I hope the tea’s strong,’’ said Alda.

  The body had reached the mortuary before Charmian and Alda got to the tea party. Yet the doctor hadn’t been able to dismiss the subject from his mind.

  “Clever man he must have been once,’’ he said to the nurse.

  “Why do you say that?’’ She was surprised.

  “I’m not sure. Something about the hands; they weren’t a working man’s hands. He used his brain to live by. Do we know who he was?’’

  “No name. He was found unconscious in the park.’’

  “Well, he had it coming to him.’’

  Charmian drank her tea, which was hot and strong, and nibbled her sandwich, which she thought had anchovy in it. Anchovy gave her spots. She was standing by a window and there was a small bird perched outside. Smoothly she raised the window and slipped him the sandwich.

  “I can’t eat anchovy,’’ she said.

  “Have you still got those allergies? I thought you’d packed all that in.’’

  “It hangs around.’’

  “Enjoying being on the loose?’’ said Alda, drinking some tea.

  “I’m not loose,’’ said Charmian. “I have three classes every day and a paper to write every week. Also several hundred books and learned articles to read. And my boss thought that as I was around here being an intellectual I could do some work giving some lectures to the Policewoman Cadet training course they have here. I’ve done the first one. Just general stuff. I don’t know if I was any help to them. They seem a keen bunch. One or two of them are brighter than I am.’’

  At this, their third reunion, they were beginning to relax a little and show their teeth. Alda had allowed herself one slight criticism of Charmian’s allergies and Charmian would probably allow herself one in return.

  “And what are you setting up to do? I mean you, yourself, while you are here?’’ asked Alda, with that touch of authority she always had.

  “I have to follow the course they set me here, working on various subjects with different lecturers. I believe I’m to do a short spell with Dr. Margaret Phillips. She’s one of the police surgeons, but what I want to do on my own is a study of the new patterns of crime.’’

  “There is one?’’ asked Alda sceptically.


  “Yes, Alda, think about it,’’ said Charmian. “ Haven’t you been following what’s been happening? There’s been a tremendous increase in violent crime in the young age groups, the under twenties.’’

  “Well, I know that.’’

  “But, Alda, you see what it means. The population is growing younger all the time. And with more young men in it than young women. So there’s going to be more young criminals. What’s more there’s going to be more of them relative to the rest of the population. Give us a decade or two and the statistics say that about one man in three will have a violent act in his past.’’

  “Yes, that’s bad,’’ said Alda.

  “It’s worse than that,’’ said Charmian. “Already only four cases out of ten in every violent crime, like murder, are cleared up. That’s a bad clear-up rate,’’ she said seriously. “ What’s society going to look like if that’s the way it goes.’’

  “Well, how is it going to look?’’

  “Violent,’’ said Charmian. “ Full of young, casual violence. Why we’re going to have to recognise that we’re creating a new kind of killer. Boyish, casual, and committing murder almost without thought.’’

  “And undiscovered,’’ said Alda wryly.

  “Yes, undiscovered.’’

  “And what about women in this brave new world?’’

  “No,’’ said Charmian, “ the trends don’t affect women.’’

  “Well, up with the world of women. But they’re going to be among the victims, aren’t they.’’

  “Why yes,’’ said Charmian. “In the world of the future they stand a better than average chance of being a victim.’’

  They were both silent for a moment.

  Then Alda said: “You take it very seriously, don’t you?’’

  “Yes. Don’t you?’’

  “No. Not like you. I was serious about people. I wanted to help them. Keep them out of trouble. Dig them out when they were in it. That’s what was in it for me. I suppose I really saw myself as a sort of nanny figure. Only for adults. And mixed up ones at that.’’