Murder Has a Pretty Face Read online

  She could feel something in a small inner breast-pocket.

  She felt carefully with her fingers, and then drew something out.

  At that moment the door-bell rang: a busy little chime which had irritated Charmian for the ten years of her marriage without her ever doing anything about it.

  Holding what she had extracted from the pocket, she went to the front door and opened it. Outside was her friend Kitty, with her infant son.

  ‘I don’t like that door-bell. I never have.’ She held the door open wider. ‘Come on in. I think I’ll move from this house.’

  ‘It is too big,’ agreed Kitty, dragging baby and push-chair into the hall and chipping Charmian’s paint as she did so. ‘I’m afraid I’ve put mud on your nice carpet.’ She looked about her in a distracted way. ‘Oh dear, quite a lot, really. It’ll dry, though. It’s clean mud. Why are you holding that photograph?’

  ‘I’ve been going through my husband’s clothes.’

  ‘At last. You’ve got round to it at last. I knew you needed me. I got that feeling,’ declared Kitty dramatically. ‘ That’s why I came.’ She paused.

  Something seemed necessary, so Charmian said it: ‘Thank you, Kitty.’

  ‘You know, when my sister said, “ Do look up my old college chum, Charmian Daniels; she works in Deerham Hills,” I nearly said, “ Not likely”. Well, Fiona is so bossy it’s a pleasure to deny her. And working on the Deerham Hills Herald was my first proper job. But when I met you I was bowled over. I thought: There’s a real woman, with a real job, and a real husband. It’s why I married Ben. He’s very real. What’s it like being a policewoman, Charmian? I never asked you before.’

  ‘Kitty, you’re talking too much.’

  ‘I know. I’m excited. I’ve just had a row with Ben. That’s why I came.’

  ‘I thought it was to help me,’ said Charmian.

  ‘That, too. What’s the photograph of?’

  Charmian held it out, and they both looked. It was the snapshot of a young man. He was smiling into the camera, screwing up his eyes faintly against the sun.

  ‘Is it your husband?’

  Charmian shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Looks like him a bit.’

  ‘Yes.’ Charmian nodded, and put the photograph down carefully on a table. ‘So it should. His son, Tom.’

  Kitty bent her head over the picture. ‘Oh, yes, of course. His first wife died, didn’t she? Good-looking boy. Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Charmian said. ‘Dead, probably. Certainly missing. His father was looking for him.’

  After a moment of shocked silence, Kitty said: ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’

  ‘It’s why he died, I think. Emotional excess, you could call it.’ Her tone was hard and dry. ‘After Tom disappeared Rupert spent all his time trying to find out what had happened. There was a body, never absolutely identified. But even after that he went on looking. He couldn’t stop. He went on and on till it killed him.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Kitty. ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I understand.’

  ‘But it doesn’t stop you minding?’

  ‘How could it?’

  ‘No, how could it? Silly question.’ Kitty gave Charmian a push. ‘I’ll make some coffee. I suppose you’ve got some. Your housekeeping!’ She had the door of the refrigerator open and was looking inside. A bottle of milk, a piece of stale cheese and one egg were all that greeted her.

  ‘It’s gone from bad to worse, I know,’ said Charmian. ‘I don’t eat here much. But there is coffee and I’ll make it myself. Your coffee shows your youth: it’s too weak.’

  ‘You’re feeling better,’ said Kitty philosophically, and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Fancy you keeping this to yourself all this time.’

  ‘I didn’t keep it to myself. Plenty of people knew. You didn’t, that’s all.’ Charmian started making the coffee. ‘It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about much.’

  Kitty watched her pour boiling water on to the coffee grounds. ‘Did you know Tom well? That’s another thing you’ve never talked about.’

  ‘He lived and worked in London. Our lives didn’t touch very often. But I knew him well enough to grieve that he’s gone.’

  She poured the coffee into cups and pushed the sugar forward.

  Kitty shook her head. ‘No sugar. I’m dieting. How did Tom disappear?’

  ‘He was working on a case. Under cover. One day he went off, saying he’d report back in two days. He never did.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’ Kitty was horrified at the story.

  ‘His father thought he could find him.’

  ‘Did he discover anything?’

  ‘I don’t think so. If he did, he never told me of it. We didn’t talk much those last weeks. When he was home he used to sit in a chair, just staring at nothing.’

  ‘I suppose he was thinking,’ said Kitty.

  Charmian wrenched herself back to the present. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Shall I tell you something I did? I am a bit ashamed of it now. Six months ago I had advertisements put in a range of newspapers – here and abroad, in the States and Australia.‘

  ‘Sort of “ Tom, come home, all is forgiven”?’ asked Kitty with interest.

  ‘Asking him to get in touch. No answer, of course. Now I feel I was a fool to do it.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you were,’ said Kitty. ‘If you hadn’t done it, you’d hate yourself.’

  ‘I hate myself anyway. Well, on and off.’ Charmian grinned, trying to take the edge off her remark, which had come out with unexpected bitterness.

  Kitty finished her coffee. ‘Come on. I’ll help you with those clothes.’ She stood up. ‘Come on.’

  ‘What about the baby?’

  ‘He can look on. Give him something to think about.’ She frowned at him. ‘He needs stimulating.’ But the baby was asleep.

  The two women worked hard and silently. Charmian took the clothes from the cupboard, and checked through them, then handed them to Kitty, who folded them and put them in the cardboard boxes.

  ‘In the end it didn’t take so long, did it?’ said Kitty, when they had finished.

  ‘A few more things in these drawers,’ said Charmian, ‘and then it really is finished. Help me carry the boxes to the car and I’ll take them to the Oxfam shop tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll do something better,’ panted Kitty, as they carried the boxes out (they were surprisingly heavy). ‘Put them in my car and I’ll take them for you.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks,’ said Charmian, and then, after a pause, ‘Do something else, will you?’

  Kitty paused at the door of her car. ‘What?’ Her eye caught something. ‘ Fancy, I’ve scraped the paint.’ The air emanating from the boxes smelt sour and heavy. She didn’t like the smell.

  ‘Take the boxes to the shop in Feverley, not in Deerham Hills.’

  ‘Of course. You don’t want to meet the clothes walking around Deerham Hills.’

  ‘I don’t want to see them again,’ said Charmian so fiercely that Kitty blinked. Her husband called it ‘ Kitty’s protective blink, when she doesn’t like what she sees’.

  ‘Clothes are quite anonymous, Charmian,’ she said gently, trying to correct the balance.

  ‘No, by God, they’re not. That’s something I’ve learnt this last year. Clothes pick up character like scent. A cupboardful of clothes like that have a life of their own. A half-life, maybe, but a long one.’

  Kitty said with conviction: ‘You should never have shut this up inside you for a whole year. Any more than you should have let those clothes stay there. And you sleeping in the same room.’

  ‘Don’t go into that,’ said Charmian harshly. ‘ The cupboards are empty now. What did you quarrel with your husband about?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Kitty was getting the baby into the car and herself in after it. Already she was planning how she would unload the car when she got home. First the baby, because those clothes had death in them if eve
r she smelled it, and then the clothes, and then she would put the car away. That was the order of priorities this time. The rest of her mind dealt with Charmian’s question. ‘Oh, it was about the woman, the woman who’s been standing about Deerham Hills, staring at other women. Remember, I phoned you about her. Ben says I’m getting too interested in her.’

  ‘Oh, her,’ said Charmian. ‘I went and looked at her myself. But she wouldn’t look at me. What that means I don’t know.’

  ‘She knew you were police, I expect.’

  ‘Oh, no, she didn’t,’ said Charmian. ‘I took care of that. Unless you think it’s a brand one can’t efface.’

  ‘You’re vicious tonight,’ said Kitty sadly. ‘That woman – you don’t think she’s dangerous?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Charmian patiently. ‘But she’ll bear watching.’

  She watched Kitty drive away, then went back into the house.

  The photograph was still looking at her from the table where she had placed it. It wouldn’t get up and walk away. Almost she wished it would: a young, intelligent, self-contained face with a quality which had always puzzled her.

  She laid a finger across the eyes, and studied the mouth and chin. No, the quality did not come from there. Then she covered the lower half of the face. Yes, it was the eyes.

  They were her husband’s eyes, young, as she had never seen them.

  Charmian put the photograph away in a drawer in the table and went into her bedroom. She closed the cupboard doors firmly on their ghosts.

  She could see her reflection in a wall mirror. ‘Ten years of my life,’ she said to her reflection. ‘And now I’m not even sure if I liked him.’

  The room was very stuffy and smelt of old clothes.

  She opened the window to let in some fresh air. The rain had stopped, and a warm sweet early-summer breeze blew into the room.

  Charmian enjoyed it for a moment. Then a breath of air that smelled like groceries floated across to her. It was still early evening and the big supermarket down in the shopping-precinct did not close until ten o’clock.

  I wonder if the woman’s still there, thought Charmian. Still standing there watching. And what exactly is she watching? And why?

  A few miles away the woman, who did not live in Deerham Hills, but on a convenient bus-route into it, was seated in the room she rented, making a display-card.

  It was a large card, on which she had stuck pieces of newspaper. She meant to wear it round her neck. She was now attaching lengths of white tape, sewing them on with large clumsy stitches, using an outsize darning-needle. She was no needlewoman.

  Her first card announced its message, unreadable, as she now decided, with underlined words on newsprint. She still continued to use pieces of newspaper, but now she wrote on them with a felt-tipped pen in red and black ink. She found this deeply satisfying. It worried her that it was still sometimes difficult to read what she wanted to say, but a cloud often descended between her and her message and made her work difficult.

  ‘I am the message, really,’ she said aloud.

  To make the display hers, indubitably hers (and so little was in this world), she wrote her name on the back of it; Glory, Gloria.

  It looked good, so she wrote a whole line of Glorias along the bottom of the card which none but she would ever see.

  Unlike her sewing, her handwriting was small and neat.

  This done, to Gloria’s satisfaction, she stumped over to the bed and lay down on it. She was worn out. Standing, and especially wearing high-heeled shoes with pointed toes (winklepickers were back in Gloria’s circle), was very hard on the legs.

  Down below, her landlady’s husband heard her progress across the floor.

  ‘She’s heavy-footed, that one,’ he commented. ‘ The whole room shakes when she moves.’

  ‘Not her fault,’ said his wife.

  ‘Is she going to get a job?’ Gloria had been living with them for over a month now, and for the first few weeks had spent her days sitting in her room, reading. She did go out occasionally, but certainly not to work. It made her landlord uneasy, especially as when she first came she had said she was a nurse. Not adding that she was an unemployed nurse.

  ‘I think she’s got one now; she’s out all day,’ said his wife uneasily.

  ‘Doing what?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She’s not a nurse,’ he said with conviction.

  ‘But she might have been one once,’ said his wife. On principle, she rarely agreed completely with her husband. In any case, she had better opportunities for observation than he and had seen a book about nursing in her lodger’s room.

  It rained again next day, which was Saturday, and it rained again on Sunday: a wet weekend. On Monday, Charmian, although by no means in a good mood, felt better able to tackle her problems. Not that they were her problems alone: they were shared by the entire police force of Deerham Hills, which was badly stretched by the rising crime-rate.

  ‘It’s a crime-wave,’ said Charmian’s immediate boss, Chief Inspector Walter Wing, a tall sweet-tempered man, who always kept his voice low. ‘Every tiresome silly little crook in town seems determined to do his thing.’

  ‘Perhaps some of them are from out of town, out of Deerham Hills,’ said Charmian. She reached out her hand for the telephone. ‘Get me the local paper,’ she said to the switchboard operator.

  ‘No, I recognise their silly little faces.’ Walter Wing stared down at the clipboard of papers he carried. ‘Jimmy Jones, Larry Bell – beauties, both of them, with long records. What are you doing with the Deerham Hills Herald? Getting yourself some publicity?’

  ‘No, putting in an advertisement,’ said Charmian, studying her nails, which were badly in need of some attention. Pale polish? she thought. Perhaps a professional job. ‘I’m selling my wardrobe.’

  Walter Wing did not answer. Charmian’s domestic arrangements puzzled him without interesting him. He did not really like working with women, but he had adapted himself to a mixed profession by ignoring anything they said which seemed to reflect their sex, although he liked them to respond to anything which reflected his.

  ‘I’m off, then,’ he said. ‘Glad the rain’s stopped, but it’s helped my roses.’ And he departed.

  ‘He always goes away when you mention anything like wardrobes,’ observed Charmian without rancour. ‘ It might be beds next.’ She was perfectly well aware how he felt.

  Her typist, Policewoman Agnes Ryan, laughed. ‘He’s not a bad sort. Always polite.’ Between the two women there was a relaxed friendly relationship which allowed of such comment on colleagues and superiors. Quite simply, they were two women who were friends. But they were careful not to let this show too much when others were present. Professional good manners demanded a certain distance then, but the underground alliance was probably felt by the men and was perhaps what prompted Walter’s instinctive feeling that it was difficult working with women. No doubt he sensed that they had ways of communicating not open to men. ‘I like him. Where’s he going? Not driving that terrible car, I hope?’

  ‘I think there’s a meeting in London,’ said Charmian. ‘I’m going to get a manicure.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Don’t you think I need one?’ And she held out her hands.

  Agnes looked at the ten fingers, immaculately clean but with torn irregular fingernails. ‘ You certainly do. But it’s not like you.’

  ‘You think I don’t care how I look?’

  ‘I know you care. But you haven’t gone in for decoration much lately.’

  ‘Now I’ve changed,’ said Charmian.

  ‘Where will you go? To your hairdresser’s?’

  ‘I do my hair at home,’ said Charmian. ‘Set it on rollers and blow-dry, you know. No, I’m going to Charm and Chic.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve been there. I’ve tried everywhere. Wasn’t bad. Run by a tall fair blonde. But I decided she wasn’t really interested in hair.’

  ‘
Perhaps she’ll do better with nails,’ said Charmian with a tiny secretive smile.

  The two women worked on in silence for a few minutes. The silence was relative, as the new police building was a noisy place. They could hear doors banging, the constant coming and going of the lift from floor to floor, and, through the open window, the steady drone of the traffic in the crowded street below.

  Papers passed backwards and forwards between the two women, typescripts were checked, notes on cases initialled and passed up for consideration to the office of Walter Wing, who, of course, was not there. He, for his part, had sent down a file of papers on the murdered man for Charmian’s consideration. Of all his colleagues, he trusted her perceptiveness most. She saw into things, he said.

  Charmian read everything in the file carefully, and the upshot of it was nothing, as Walter Wing had remarked in an attached note, written in his small neat hand. ‘May be some illumination when we get the pathologist’s detailed report,’ he said.

  Her sergeant, Adam Lily, came in and leant against the desk; he looked as though he had something to say.

  ‘Any more sightings of the woman?’ asked Charmian, raising her eyes from Walter Wing’s file.

  He didn’t ask what woman. ‘No reports,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean she isn’t there. Probably is.’

  Charmian looked at him. ‘So what is it? I can tell by your face there is something.’

  ‘It’s admiration,’ he said.

  ‘Of me?’ said Agnes hopefully from her corner.

  He ignored her. In public he always did so. ‘ There’s been a raid on another fur-shop. This time they left the poor-quality furs and took only the best. They’re learning.’

  Charmian stared at him silently. Then she raised one eyebrow.

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Sometime over the weekend. Same mode of entry. No sign of a break-in; they just unlocked the door and walked in.’

  ‘Or that’s what it looks like,’ agreed Charmian.

  ‘Think of another explanation if you can.’

  She got up. ‘ Where’s the shop? I’m coming to look for myself.’

  ‘Arden Avenue, off Hillingdon Road.’

  Charmian looked surprised. The Hillingdon Road district was in the less prosperous area of Deerham Hills, not where you’d expect to find a shop selling expensive furs.