Windsor Red 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.

  We publish in ebook and print-on-demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  Contents

  Jennie Melville

  Exegesis

  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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jennie Melville

  Windsor Red

  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.

  This book is affectionately set in Windsor but all else is fiction. The town, the Castle and the Great Park are there, but have never known anything like the events I describe. The Garter Procession takes place as every visitor to the town knows, and so does the changeover of the royal party from their cars to their carriages in the Great Park during Ascot week, but everything else is my invention. All the characters are totally fictitious.

  J.M.

  CHAIRMAN DANIELS SAID : ‘First of all, I want you to know that I was in earnest about the research project, that it was not a cheat, as you put it. You were unkind there, Beryl Andrea Barker. I meant it, and I will finish it. Whether I end up with a degree or not is not important to me. I want questions answered.’

  Baby said: ‘What were you looking for?’

  Charmian paid the speaker the compliment of being thoroughly serious. ‘I was looking to see if there really was a ‘feminine’ crime, and so a feminist criminology …

  ‘I was seeking something that might be important to all women. Perhaps I wasn’t up to the job. I knew the questions, but were there answers for me? I was trying to find out why some women keep on committing criminal acts. And was it anything to do with them being women?’

  ‘And did you?’

  Soberly Charmian said: ‘I discovered crime is not sexist, although lawyers and the police may be. There is no feminine crime, no feminine cause for crime, women do not turn to crime because they lack husbands or fathers. Not really. There are no essential woman criminals. There are just women who are criminals and they have their reasons.

  ‘Like men.

  ‘The causes of a woman’s crime are the same as they have always been. They are unemployed, or underemployed, or they are unhappy. Or they have ambitions.

  ‘Like men.’

  ‘We can do anything,’ said Baby, not without pride. ‘But some crimes are better than others.’

  Chapter One

  A SPLASH OF RED fell on Charmian Daniels’ white dress like a tear of blood. She looked up in surprise. But it was only a petal from her escort’s buttonhole.

  He apologised. It was the heat making the rose drop.

  ‘Look now,’ he said, pointing up the Castle hill with his programme. Here come the Guards. It’s the turn of the Blues and Royals this year. Pretty trim, aren’t they?’ He had an army background himself, among other things, and knew what to look for.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Charmian.

  As they were. Immaculate with helmets and accoutrements shining, each man booted, gloved and weaponed with elegant perfection. Close to, they did not look like toy soldiers or characters from Alice in Wonderland as she had thought they might.

  ‘Last time I saw the Blues and Royals here was when the Falklands war was on. Made you see through the show here to the professionals they are. They do the job.’ He added: ‘I went home from here and it was the day the campaign ended.’

  A small war, she thought, after Agincourt and Blenheim and Waterloo. Perhaps Waterloo was the decisive battle of modern Europe, it said ‘ No’ with force to the first European dictator.

  To the sound of cheering and the music of the military band the Queen’s procession wound its way slowly down the hill.

  ‘We don’t get the Queen Mother this year,’ he murmured. ‘Usually comes, but this year I believe she’s got another job on.’ He would know; it was his function to know.

  It was all work. Work for the Sovereign and her consort, work for the College of Heralds marching in their medieval garb and trying to look at ease, and work for the most noble Knights of the Garter themselves. A masterly spectacle for the onlookers, tourists and locals alike, but the day’s task, even if a pleasurable one, for the main actors. A distinguished sailor was getting his Garter ribbon that day. There he was, unable to hide the happy grin on his face.

  She looked up at her companion. Was he here on work at this moment? She knew the answer to that one. Work for him, work too for her in a way.

  He had dragged her here to the Garter Ceremony over her protests that it was not her sort of show, she wouldn’t enjoy it. That had been dealt with briskly: ‘Nonsense, you must come. You must see how it works.’ Then a smile. ‘Besides, I’d like to take you. And a party afterwards in the Castle. You’ll enjoy it.’

  An order, was it? Well, probably. But one she was glad now she had obeyed, because, of course, he had been right and she had enjoyed herself. Even standing for about an hour in the blazing sun for a spectacle that was gone in a matter of minutes. She made appreciative noises.

  ‘Of course, you ought to see it from the inside as well, sit out the ceremony in the Chapel,’ he murmured with the air of a connoisseur of state occasions. As, indeed, he was.

  ‘I would if someone would invite me,’ she said.

  As they made their way slowly through the crowd towards a tea-party in the house of one of the Military Knights of Windsor, a police constable gave him a respectful salute. Her companion was a high-ranking policeman. So high-ranking that he was really too grand to be her friend. If that was what he was. Their relationship was complex.

  The Military Knights of Windsor were a charitable foundation for old soldiers, founded by King Henry VIII at a time when retired military men had precious little to look forward to, however distinguished their service to their king. Originally they had been a college of pensioners living as bachelors a communal life in the care of a warden. Now, these gentlemen of long service to their Sovereign lived in their own homes with their wives. These houses, embedded in the castle buildings, were full of character. Charmian decided she could enjoy living in one herself. The room she was standing in was lined with dark oak panelling, and furnished with well polished old pieces of furniture that looked as if they had been part of the room since it was built. On the long table among the teacups and dishes of strawberries and cream stood a great silver bowl filled with roses.

  She was trying to read the inscription and the date on the side when her host handed her a cup of tea.
/>   ‘Admiring Molly’s bowl, I see.’ He was a beautifully dressed, alert old gentleman who was clearly enjoying his own party. ‘ Clever girl, my Molly.’

  ‘I was looking at it.’

  ‘Know what she got that for? Writing the best historical novel of the year for children. Earned a packet, too. Very useful. That thing over there is a gold dagger, that’s a prize too. Crime. Does the lot, my Molly.’

  Across the room Charmian saw her hostess talking to Humphrey Kent, the man who had brought her here. Molly Oriel was tall, thin, and as beautifully turned out as her husband, the proceeds of crime, doubtless. Younger than he was, but perhaps by not many years. It was easier for women, Charmian thought, if they knew how to do it and had the right hairdresser. She had been giving some thought to that subject herself lately. It had been a comfort to her to discover that she knew how to manage her appearance better than in her youth. In spite of what some women said, you felt better if you were well groomed. Ask any cat.

  Her host followed her gaze. ‘ Very decent bloke, Humphrey. Served with his father. What a tartar he was. My goodness, you had to watch out. They don’t make ’em like that any more.’

  ‘Some people say Humphrey is like his father.’ Some people in the Force where she worked, for instance. ‘He’s not that easy.’

  Sir George looked unsurprised. ‘No? Can’t afford to be, I suppose, in his job.’ He eyed Charmian with interest. ‘Known him long?’

  ‘A few years,’ Charmian admitted, not prepared to go any further.

  ‘Not in the same trade yourself? No, you couldn’t be. Too pretty.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, I never. Prettiest policeman I’ve ever met, my dear. You must come and talk to my Molly. You’re both in the same way of business, as it were. Not working today, are you, my dear?’

  ‘No. I’ve got a kind of study leave, a sabbatical term to write a thesis.’

  ‘A thesis on what?’

  ‘Recidivist women,’ returned Charmian blandly. Make what you like of that, she thought. I’ve been a policewoman for eighteen years, I’ve been promoted and moved south, I don’t discuss my job. Not even with you, my charming sir. And no, I am not pretty, but I have achieved a certain appearance.

  ‘My goodness. Are there a lot of them? Too many, I suppose. Women ought not to be in prison. Not the right place for them at all.’ In a moment he was going on to say, nor in the army, nor the police force, nor the pulpit, Charmian thought. He was building up an act of himself as the complete Victorian buffer, except that his eyes were full of humour.

  ‘I don’t like them in prison, either. Hence what I’m working on.’

  ‘Another cup of tea? There’ll be something stronger along soon.’ He picked up a dish. ‘Try a bit of my shortbread. I’m the baker. Molly makes the money but she can’t cook.’

  The ‘something stronger’ which shortly appeared in tall glasses was vintage champagne. In a lull in the conversation, Charmian took her glass to the window and looked out.

  In the golden sunlight of late afternoon the grey stones were warmed and tranquil looking. Not a castle that had ever stood siege, or had tragic memories of the slaughter of attackers and defenders imposed upon it. As far as Charmian remembered her history, Windsor Castle had never come under attack.

  Briefly, she wondered about the Civil War, but although the white shift in which Charles I had suffered execution now rested as a sacred relic in the Library of the Castle, she could not recall that he had stood to fight in Windsor.

  Still, English history was made solid in these stones. Only the name of the royal house had changed, sometimes through violence, but more often through the birth of an heiress.

  As Charmian looked out of the window, she thought: It’s a township inside a castle that I am looking at. I had not realised so many people lived here in their own community. Not just the Court with its special routines and life, but people like the Military Knights and the soldiers under the Constable of the Castle and the police and all the people who keep the whole place running. I suppose Versailles must have been like this, a world within a world.

  Humphrey Kent appeared at her elbow. ‘ Well? What do you make of it all?’

  I was just thinking that it was a world to itself. Not one I would easily learn the rules of. A long way from my women recidivists.’

  ‘You’d learn.’

  ‘Sir George says you are a very decent fellow.’

  ‘He little knows.’

  ‘I think he does; I said you were very like your father and he only laughed.’

  ‘Did he laugh? George hardly ever laughs.’

  ‘It was a silent laugh, but I could feel it. I think if he’d known me better it would have come right out.’

  ‘And you met Molly?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her hostess had extended a warm and friendly hand with a firm grip. There was a lot of power in those beautifully manicured fingers. Seen close to she was even nicer to look at although a little more wrinkled. Charmian, who had had to learn about these things once on a job, recognised that her hair had been cut by a master and that her little silk dress had a couture air. It was the buttons and the set of the neck and the sleeves that gave it away. Once you had seen a sleeve fitting in the way it should then you recognised another when you saw it. A properly cut and correctly draped sleeve is a thing of simple beauty, her mentor had said. Molly had such sleeves and they must have cost her several hundreds of pounds each. Add the skirt and the bodice (those buttons were handmade) and you were probably looking at something not far short of a thousand. Well, three cheers for kiddies and crime.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said come to dinner when we haven’t got such a crush.’

  Humphrey appeared satisfied. ‘You’ll do,’ he said.

  But in fact, her hostess had said much more to her than that, and Humphrey, who had been watching, knew it.

  Without effort Molly Oriel had extracted the information that Charmian had a sabbatical period away from work, that she was researching under the supervision of Brunel University. Which university as Lady Oriel knew was not too far away from Slough, thus Charmian had chosen to rent a furnished flat over the studio of a friend in Windsor, rather than live in Slough.

  ‘Oh, Army Cooper? Yes, Army, the one whose daughter has killed her boyfriend.’

  Charmian kept quiet for a moment, then she took a deep breath. ‘We don’t know that yet.’

  ‘He’s gone, and she said she’d do him in. I wonder where the body is?’

  ‘There may not be one. Anny doesn’t think so.’ Anny did, though, in a nightmare way.

  ‘Of course not. I’d be the same if it was my child. I’d keep a tighter grip on the girl, though, than she has. Poor Anny. But a good artist. I’ve got one of her pots. On the table by the door. All reds and golds, lovely thing. Take a look at it as you go out.’

  Charmian had such a bowl herself and knew it came from Anny’s red period when she was perfecting the lovely scarlet for which she was now famous.

  Scarlet like blood. But surely blood and violence could never come near this private enclosed world within the Castle ward?

  But there was the image. Liquid blood, dark blood, stale blood, clotted blood. Royal blood.

  Chapter Two

  CHARMIAN REFUSED AN OFFER of a lift from Humphrey, but he walked with her to the Castle gate where he said goodbye. The policeman on duty gave them a brisk salute, managing deftly to include both of them in it.

  ‘He’ll know you again.’ Humphrey spoke with satisfaction, and he bent to give her a kiss on her cheek, a chaste kiss, a public kiss.

  ‘It matters?’

  ‘Of course. This is a special place … Keep in touch.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And you have your contact.’

  ‘So I have.’

  ‘You’re in a good position to meet him on the quiet.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘I’m not sure if he’ll be a help b
ut he’ll do what he can, he’s an ex-cop and it was his tip-off in conjunction with what you had to say that started us off. He just saw a face he knew around the town all the time and wondered.’

  And had wondered enough to inform the local police. Two lines of information had crossed, thought Charmian, his and mine.

  ‘Don’t let him be a nuisance to you.’

  ‘Could he be?’

  ‘As I read him. A bit of an eccentric. Out of the Force by his own choice. Obviously always been able to turn his hand to anything. Done a fair bit of moonlighting in his time, I’d guess.’

  One of the many, Charmian thought.

  ‘Harold English will help there, a good man.’

  She was being surrounded by helpers, Charmian thought. Or hemmed in, depending how you saw it.

  ‘Sure you don’t want a lift?’

  ‘It’s so easy to walk down the hill. Nice too.’

  Besides, she wanted to think, and without his somehow disturbing presence. The bowl of Anny’s had reminded her of many things, good and bad, happy times, wretched times. Anny had given her the bowl when Charmian’s life had looked as though it was downhill all the way. At odds professionally and miserable in her private life, part of it her own fault and part outside circumstances, the bowl with its flame of colour had been Anny’s token to her that life could be good again. Some women might have offered a prayer, Anny offered a bowl. It was a valuable bowl on that account, and had come with Charmian on this sabbatical voyage together with her tabby cat called Muff, and those books from which she could not be parted. Keats’ letters, Persuasion and The Clever Woman of the Family (to her mind the best novel Charlotte M. Yonge ever wrote) were now on her bedside table in the comfortable rooms she was renting above Anny’s place.

  When Anny gave her the bowl, she was the happy one and Charmian the one to be comforted. Now their positions were reversed with Charmian busy setting herself and her life to rights and Anny in crisis. The fact that the crisis was not of Anny’s creation made it worse. As Charmian studied the case histories of some of her women prisoners, she asked herself if it ever was the woman’s fault. There was usually a man somewhere in the picture who could take some of the blame. But this was the sexist, unscientific thing one was not encouraged to say. She was studying a group of unlucky women and she could see clearly that in many cases the trouble was their relationship with a man. Sometimes a father, sometimes a husband, on occasion a brother, but that male figure was always there. Well, it was part of her thesis to prove or disprove what might only be prejudice.