Dead Again Page 10

‘But I wanted to ask if I could have a day’s leave to go to London. Just twenty-four hours or so. Something personal to sort out.’

  Sex rearing its ugly head, Charmian thought. No, delete ugly, why should not the girl have what she clearly wants. I hope it works out. She said so.

  Dolly gave her a suddenly radiant smile. ‘Well, I think it might. Thanks. And by the way, Palmer said they were sending someone to South Africa to interview the girl’s parents and get them back. Jones or Siddons is the name.’

  ‘Information I sent to them,’ said Charmian. ‘Oh, by the way, when you’re in London, you might get out of some of those high London CID men you seem to get on with so well what they know about Rhos Campbell. Yes, I know it was a long while ago and they were lads in knickerbockers, but find out what you can. Thanks.’

  They parted on reasonably good terms.

  On her way home, Charmian went to call on the witches. They irritated and amused her, but in times of stress, such as now, she found them comforting company.

  They were still sitting at their tea table, a well laden one, and at once generously offered her tea.

  ‘Birdie will make a fresh, hot pot,’ said Winifred, Birdie’s friend and manipulator, or so she seemed sometimes to Charmian.

  Birdie looked up to show a spark of that independence which flashed out at intervals to contradict all Charmian’s judgements.

  ‘The girl’s exhausted, can’t you see? Whisky is what she needs, not tea. Come to think of it, I could do with one myself. Produce it, Winifred, you’re the whisky girl.’

  ‘Right-oh,’ said Winifred, showing no anger.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ began Charmian.

  ‘Oh, fiddle,’ said Birdie, who was clearly on a high. She soon communicated why. ‘I had an éclairissement today.’

  Charmian thought about it. ‘What is that Birdie?’

  ‘It’s when the skies suddenly open and you see through them. As it were,’ she added cautiously.

  ‘So what did you see?’

  In a practical voice. Birdie said, ‘ I saw why people dye their hair.’ After a pause, she added thoughtfully, ‘Or wear a wig.’

  Charmian touched her own hair. But no, at the moment it was its natural reddish brown. Might need more help one day but not yet.

  ‘Why do they?’

  ‘To hide,’ announced Birdie, with the air of one delivering a great truth.

  The arrival of Winifred with a silver tray, several cut glass tumblers and a bottle of whisky interrupted them.

  ‘Drinkies here.’

  She, too, sounded cheerful so perhaps she had had an illumination from the heavens as well. But no, her happiness was more financial. As she raised her glass, she said, ‘ Drink to crime, witchcraft and magic … The bookshop turned in a lovely profit this month.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ complained Birdie.

  ‘You’ve got a mind above money, I manage money matters.’

  ‘And very well too,’ said Charmian politely.

  ‘You can say that with knobs on.’ Winifred when particularly buoyant was apt to go back to the idiom of her school days. She took a swig. ‘Good idea of yours, this booze. Drink up and we’ll all have another dose.’

  Charmian tried to protest, but Winifred went on. ‘I think we might go back and live over the shop again … We’ll exorcise all the ghosts.’

  There had been some terrible discoveries the year before when their shop had first been opened. It was in an old house which was built on land of even greater antiquity. In an ancient tomb in the garden had been found old bones, Roman or early British, who knows, except the archaeologists, still pondering the problem. But in with these bones a newer dead body had been found and this body had interested the police greatly.

  ‘I think the gods want us to return,’ pronounced Winifred.

  The gods usually did line up with anything Winifred wanted, Charmian had noticed.

  ‘Which particular god did you have in mind?’

  Winifred nodded her head over her whisky thoughtfully. ‘I have considered that matter, and I think Jove … It was a Roman site, after all.’

  ‘Thought to be,’ put in Birdie, coming to life. She had a taste for the early Celts.

  ‘Of course,’ said Winifred, ‘I name Jove, but all are just manifestations of the great godhead.’

  ‘I’ve never fancied Jove,’ said Birdie.

  ‘He’s also Juno,’ Winifred explained, ‘they’re all One. I’ve just explained that.’

  ‘You’d never find any of that lot in Stonehenge,’ objected Birdie. ‘Now I think the Great Lady of the Woods is the one.’

  I must ask them which god they are worshipping when they go to Sunday matins at the chapel in the Great Park. The right to attend there, where the Queen herself went, was carefully restricted and an honour. But she knew what Winifred would say: that attendance there was a social duty.

  Charmian was on her way home when she remembered that she had not asked Birdie what she meant by saying that people dyed their hair to hide.

  Hide behind it?

  When she got home, she found her husband happily cooking in the kitchen. It smelt like duck which was good as she was hungry.

  He was drinking red wine as he worked and he poured her a glass which she accepted with some doubt after Winifred’s whisky.

  ‘Humphrey, if I dyed my hair or wore a wig, what would you think?’

  ‘With dark spectacles? That you were about to rob a bank.’

  ‘Seriously, please.’

  ‘That you were going on an undercover operation. And don’t play about with that claret, it’s a good one, one of my best.’

  ‘I haven’t done undercover work for a long while.’

  He drank deeply before taking the duck out of the oven, sizzling and brown. ‘Or that you were conducting an investigation into corruption in the Met.’

  Charmian blinked. ‘You’re not supposed to know anything about that.’

  ‘I’m a good guesser.’

  Later, the duck carved and enjoyed, he said, ‘Talking of wigs, I thought I saw your protegee in Marks and Spencer today. She was buying tights.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Oh, you know, Joan Dingham, the famous killer now turned student. I knew her face, that nose, not long exactly but unusual. No beauty. Surrounded by a cohort of supporters. Friends, I suppose, or protectors. Now she was wearing a wig.’

  ‘I daresay she doesn’t wish to be recognized.’

  ‘Can’t blame her for that. If she wasn’t wearing a wig, then she’d been to the hairdressers and had one of those fly-away jobs.’

  Charmian had a sudden picture of a customer of Baby’s whom she had seen leaving with a froth of hair. Baby had been standing at the door watching and had given a shrug. ‘What she wanted. Poor girl has this big jaw and she thinks the hairdo takes the eye off it. What could?’

  So perhaps Joan Dingham felt the same way about her nose.

  The image of her husband, shopping in the big store and studying a murderer buying tights was interesting and raised a question or two.

  ‘I think Dr Harrie might have been there too, but I could have been mistaken. I thought I just got a glimpse of him in that big mirror next to the new fashions.’

  Humphrey had had a good look round, it seemed.

  ‘Do you go there often?’ she asked.

  ‘Where do you think this duck came from? And the sauce to go with it, and that salad you are eating?’

  ‘It is good.’ She chewed happily for a moment. And then said, ‘Do you often see people you know by the tights and stocking display?’

  ‘Now, now, a respectable gentleman like me can walk past the tights. All packaged anyway,’ he volunteered knowledgeably, ‘ like the bras and girdles, which are up the stairs. It’s what I call a sexually neutral shop. Not that Joan is.’ And he frowned.

  Another illuminating thought. On women, her husband’s judgement was sound.

  ‘We all go there for food, I meet
my chums there, picking over the packets of salmon. Splendid stuff. I daresay even the Queen has dined off it sometimes without knowing it, or knowing it. She’s very shrewd. And then someone like old Johnny M., that old soldier, might tell her. Get a royal chuckle and she knows he hasn’t got a bean except his pension.’ He poured her some more claret, which, with the whisky already consumed, was going to her head. ‘That’s one thing you can count on with the royals: they always know who’s got what in terms of money.’

  He’d had a fair bit of claret himself, she thought. Never mind, she liked it when he was slightly in wine. Looked upon the wine when it was red, wasn’t that what the poet said?

  ‘We could leave the washing up,’ she said.

  Chapter Six

  Over her breakfast coffee, Charmian found herself thinking about Joan Dingham. It’s time I got to see her, most of Windsor had probably sighted her by now: Humphrey has, and no doubt some of his pals while buying their salmon and chickens. Even Birdie has had a look.

  I’m sure Birdie saw her and that’s who she meant when she was talking about dyed hair and wigs. And I bet she knew exactly who she was talking about too. She’s a canny one. Birdie.

  Yes, it’s certainly time I had a look at Joanie.

  She was dressed and leaving the house when the telephone rang. Humphrey had already departed. ‘ Driving to London early to miss the traffic. Call me at the Club if you want me,’ so there was no one else to answer the phone.

  Anyway, there was something in the ring that said I am anxious, I really mean to keep on ringing.

  A weak little voice answered her.

  ‘Is that you, Baby?’ Charmian asked, although it didn’t sound like Beryl Andrea Barker, the confident and bouncy one.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Had she missed an appointment to have her own hair done? But in that case Baby would not ring up in tears, but in a blaze of irritation.

  ‘I think I’ve got a bug … Well, no, it’s nerves, really.’

  ‘Nerves, you?’ Charmian asked, amazed. Baby was pure steel inside, or so it had seemed. Or perhaps it was brass.

  ‘Oh, yes. Joanie came into the salon yesterday to get her hair fixed and I was terrified.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Baby, you know her.’

  ‘I had met her before, yes, I know that, often, but I’ve never been really close. Never had to touch her.’ There was a little shiver in her voice.

  Charmian was silent: would she like touching Joan Dingham, feel the hair and skin of a particularly noisome killer? Hard to say.

  ‘It was all right at first, I was just professional, you know.’ Baby’s voice was getting stronger already, talk, confession, was what Baby had wanted. ‘I didn’t make it obvious that I knew who she was. I thought she’d prefer it that way.’

  Charmian muttered something, her eye on her watch. Out with it, she was thinking, what’s this leading up to?

  ‘Her hair is a very bright yellow, glaring really. I thought she might want me to tone it down. Darken it a wee bit. No, it turns out she dyed it herself in prison and likes the colour she’s got. Well, all right, I thought, if you want to look like a canary, you’ve got the beak for it. She does have a big, ugly nose. She’s not pretty.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Charmian, ‘not from her photographs.’

  ‘Now, her sister is, she’s pretty. I’ve always thought that was the trouble, she hated being the plain one. Well, who wouldn’t?’ The voice was definitely in control of itself now.

  ‘You sound better.’

  ‘Yes, it’s talking to you. But I haven’t told you the worst.’

  Get on with it, please, Beryl Andrea Barker, Charmian thought.

  ‘Joan wasn’t on her own. She had her sister with her, I style Lou’s hair so I guess she recommended me. And there were two other women and a man. One of the women was police, I think. I never got introduced. It was fine at first, I offered Joan a chair in a little recess where she could be private, but no, she didn’t mind being public, must get used to it, she said. I wanted to change her style to something smooth, but no, she wanted one of those pulled out in clumps and fly-away styles … I could do it, of course, but it wasn’t going to suit her … She said it was her freedom style.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I got one of my juniors to give them all coffee. I think my staff were wondering who they were.’

  ‘You don’t think they guessed?’

  ‘They live in their own world: boyfriends, clubbing, clothes, their own hair, the latest colour of lipstick … I don’t think they know what goes on in the outside world. Don’t read, you see. No, I mustn’t be unkind, I’ve seen them reading Hello!’

  She paused and took a deep breath.

  ‘Then Di came in. You remember Diana? Diana King.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Charmian. ‘I remember Diana. How did she come to be there?’

  A sigh, as from one put-upon and oppressed, came from Baby. ‘She’s staying with me. For the moment.’

  Charmian waited. ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘I had told her not to come into the salon, that she was my guest – God help me, but business is business – and to keep away … she can be very disruptive can Diana on occasion. I don’t know how she does it, and I don’t think it’s on purpose. Or not always,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘It just happens. She’s suggested we have one last caper before she goes off.’ Baby shook her head. ‘And I think she means it.’

  ‘Goes where?’

  ‘Oh, just off.’ Baby was evasive. One did not make jokes about death.

  Charmian drew in her breath. ‘But you wouldn’t do it? There were four of you last time you really had a go.’ Nor was it a successful operation, but she had no need to say so.

  ‘No,’ said Baby slowly and, Charmian thought, doubtfully.

  ‘Don’t try anything,’ Charmian said, in warning. ‘And certainly don’t tell me if you do. I don’t want to go to prison with you.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t do it, I can see Diana is dangerous company.’

  ‘She always was,’ Charmian reminded her.

  ‘Yes, always was,’ Baby admitted. ‘More so now.’ And she shivered. Somehow the shiver came across the telephone line. ‘It was when she came in that Joan became unbearable … I mean that: I couldn’t bear being with her. I had not finished, I was just holding up the hand glass so she could see the back of her hair, and I saw her face. She was looking at Diana as she came in.’

  Looking at a reflection looking at a reflection. What do the laws of physics do to the features observed? Coarsen them? Age them? Certainly distort them. Can you believe what you see? Charmian asked herself.

  ‘I tell you: Joan was murder in a mirror.’

  ‘If looks could kill, eh?’

  ‘Don’t joke, I’m telling you, for some reason that I don’t know, she hates Diana.’

  Aware that the telephone call was a plea for reassurance, Charmian offered it. ‘Don’t worry, and thank you for telling me.’

  ‘It’s a warning.’

  ‘Yes, I got that. I am warned. You look after Diana. Where is she now?’

  ‘Still in bed.’

  ‘She ought to be safe enough there.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Beryl Andrea Barker.

  Humphrey met her at the front door. ‘What, not gone yet? I’ve been out and back again.’

  A walk was one of his pleasures, before or after a trip to London all the more essential. ‘Thinking time,’ he called it. ‘Good for the mind, the digestion and the bowels.’

  ‘Saw Birdie,’ he went on, ‘ she seems to have something on her mind. Says she’ll be coming to see you.’

  ‘It’ll have to be later.’ Enough time had been wasted already. She drove first to the SRADIC office to see what urgent paperwork had come in. Some was still delivered by the Royal Mail, some was drummed out through the fax machine. She probably hated those most. Then, these days, there was e-mail to consult. However
, her efficient secretaries had sorted it all out into urgent, less urgent and forgettable.

  She started on the forgettable because these were the easiest and allowed independent thought while dealing with them: she had long since learnt how to split her mind into two.

  So, the bigamist of Merrywick; the fraudster of Cheasey – breeding hermaphrodite bull terriers; the professional widow of Windsor whose husbands were about to be dug up. (That one might have to be regarded as urgent, depending on the forensic evidence.)

  Reading quickly, she was also thinking about herself. She was starting to feel that, instead of being, as she had hoped when she took the position, a conduit through which all important issues and cases passed, she was simply a walking register of crime, no more, no less. She had come to the conclusion that her career was a kind of lottery in which she sometimes won a prize and sometimes lost. But I’ve enjoyed it, she thought with some surprise, all these years, working my way up from humble uniformed constable, yes, I have enjoyed it.

  And, another jolt of surprise, it has brought me great happiness with Humphrey. Not my first love, but I hope my lasting one. We come different social worlds but we have melded. There was a long history behind them both. Charmian, the girl from Fife, and Humphrey, the English courtier and aristocrat.

  I have, let’s face it, been lucky.

  Top of the urgent list was certainly the death of the Siddons girl, with which she was already concerning herself, no doubt to the irritation of the local CID with whom she was working in tandem.

  Less urgent, but fascinating to her was Joan Dingham. To that file, her secretary had attached a note saying that the meeting or party was scheduled for that very morning. She was expected to attend.

  ‘And I am going. On my way now.’

  Joan Dingham was staying with her sister, Lou or Lulu Armour, who was a widow. Lou lived in a pleasant flat in a new block out towards Merrywick (there was money in the family shared now between the sisters) and Pip Dingham lived in a small house very close by.

  Coburg Court was new and made up of a central block divided into ten apartments while scattered about the grounds, as if dropped there by a master builder in the sky, were several small houses, like chalets, each with a big ground-floor room and a tiny bedroom above. Toy houses really, for one person, or two willing to live very close.