Come Home and Be Killed Read online

  Kathy nodded, remembering the man on the telephone.

  ‘Oh, I’m not saying anything about them. Mrs Birley is good fun and Janet’s lovely to look at, but they’re bone selfish. They’d not really care about you if they were after something they wanted.’

  ‘I notice a good deal from my kitchen.’ Well, Kathy already knew that. One of the things that Mrs Birley had commented on loudest was the good view Mrs Carter had of them all. ‘If that girl don’t know the colour of my undervest it’s not for the want of looking. Every time I look up I feel her watching.’

  ‘Maybe you think I’m nosy but it’s not that really, Kathy, I’m used to observing people. It was my job once, remember.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re nosy,’ said Kathy, with perhaps unconscious emphasis.

  ‘No, but Mrs Birley does. I saw a lot of them the last few days, Kathy. She was in and out a lot. And I thought she was pretty excited. I’d say her blood pressure was up.’

  ‘She does have blood pressure,’ said Kathy mechanically. ‘ I’m always saying she ought to lead a quieter life.’

  ‘She has the look as if she was waiting for something to happen and was half frightened, half longing for it. I’ve seen people like that before an operation. And it’s not only that. I told you you don’t know half that goes on here, Kathy. It’s true. They’ve had people in and out that I swear you never knew of. Do you know a man with a bald head and a limp in the right foot and wearing a bright blue sports coat? He drives a red car.’

  Kathy shook her head, wondering if he was the man with the voice.

  ‘He’s called every day you’ve been away. Never when you’ve been there.’ – Do you suppose she has any idea of what’s been going on? she asked herself curiously – And suddenly longed to ask Jim, and there he was, back home and cross with her anyway.

  ‘I have noticed odd things lately,’ said Kathy suddenly: she had made up her mind. ‘But I didn’t let myself admit it. It has worried me. I have felt something boiling up. Janet’s been restless. I know the signs: she buys more clothes, more than she can afford. She changes her hair style, and she quarrels with Mumsy.’

  ‘Did she quarrel?’

  ‘No,’ said Kathy, puzzled. ‘She didn’t quarrel this time. So there was all this in the background. I think unconsciously I’ve known something was up.’

  Emily nodded. ‘I knew it was like that. Well then, let’s get back to what’s happened to them now.’

  ‘I suppose they could just be out on a party somewhere,’ said Kathy doubtfully. ‘But that doesn’t explain Janet this afternoon, and well … other things I’ve noticed.’ She had not told Emily quite everything. Not about the scratches on the floor or the blood or the telephone call. But suddenly everything swept over her and she started to tremble. ‘Oh Emily,’ she whispered, ‘I’m so afraid they may be in real trouble; that they might be dead.’

  Emily took a deep breath. Here it comes, she told herself, the moment for me to say what I know … What you think, Emily, said her husband’s distant voice.

  ‘I don’t think anything has happened to them,’ she said quickly but much more loudly than she had intended. ‘I don’t think there’s been any accident, I think they’ve gone off of their own accord. That they meant to; that they planned it and they did it.’

  Kathy just gaped at her, beyond speech.

  ‘I tell you I saw them,’ went on Emily, ‘carrying suitcases out to a taxi and getting in and going away.’

  ‘She must have come back,’ gasped Kathy.

  ‘She did come back. But don’t you see, they’d laid plans, they meant to go.’

  Kathy put her hands to her face. ‘I don’t understand. You mean they meant to go away without telling me, to sneak away?’

  ‘I’m telling you it’s what they have done,’ said Emily grimly.

  Kathy thought: it was possible. But what about the man on the telephone, had they lost him too?

  ‘They didn’t mean to come back?’

  ‘I don’t know, Kathy,’ said Emily, ‘I’d like to say this is the end, but I don’t know; I don’t believe it is.’ … What could they mix her up in, she was asking herself, what was it they were planning? Not a plain skip that’s for sure. ‘I think maybe you’d better come home with me,’ she added. ‘ I don’t like it here alone for you.’

  In the quiet kitchen the women faced each other, Emily sat on one side of the bright blue kitchen table and Kathy the other. By now an air of discomfort had settled over the kitchen, a slight debris of cups and saucers and spilt tea and breadcrumbs, an indication that all was not well.

  ‘You haven’t got shot of them,’ said Emily with conviction. ‘You’ll hear from them, Kathy. They’ve got something on, you can be sure of it.’ Emily’s psychic system was working overtime.

  Kathy gaped at her.

  The telephone rang.

  Kathy let it ring for a moment, unwilling to answer it in case it was the man with the coarse voice. She felt Emily’s bright eyes on her and for a second felt a stirring of Mumsy’s feelings about the girl: those eyes did see everything.

  Emily was saying: ‘That’ll be them.’

  She trotted to the telephone. It took Kathy an effort to get there first, but she did.

  She picked up the receiver and stood there, leaning against the table and breathing as if she’d run a race.

  A man spoke, but not the man.

  ‘Mrs Birley?’ said an irritable voice, going straight on without waiting for an answer; he sounded harassed as if he had a problem, or an angry wife or mother at his elbow. ‘ The Hills Car Hire Service here … Look, we had that car you ordered, the Daimler, you wanted a big one, remember, at the place you asked, at the time you asked. He says he was a second or so late so he hung on, wondering if he’d missed you. You never came.’

  ‘I heard,’ breathed Emily, ‘ I heard.’

  Kathy muttered something; what, she hardly knew.

  ‘Well, wherever they were going they never got,’ said Emily almost in triumph.

  Kathy became aware the man was still on the line patiently repeating: ‘But we’ve got the bags.’

  ‘Bags.’

  ‘You want ’ em back?’

  ‘I’d better,’ Kathy was quite recovered. ‘ Yes please.’ She had received a shock but it was taken.

  ‘I …’ began Emily.

  ‘Yes, you heard that too.’ Kathy put her hands together as if in prayer.

  Emily was methodically putting things together; coat, hat and bag.

  ‘You’re coming back with me, Kathy. I’m not leaving you here.’

  Kathy shook her head. ‘I shall stay till the bags come. I must. The driver might be able to tell me something.’

  ‘Why? I know these men at Hill’s Garage. They’re chosen for their nice faces, their good manners with a car, not for their brainpower.’ ‘And then I’ll wait half an hour and then ’ phone the police,’ said

  Kathy firmly.

  The garden gate banged. Emily’s husband appeared in the front

  door. He was no longer cross or anything but worried.

  ‘What goes on in here? What are you two girls doing?’

  Briefly Emily told him.

  He still looked worried.

  ‘Do you know there’s been a man in your front garden? Well,

  there has. I saw him prowling about. Saw quite clearly from the

  kitchen.’ Jim looked anxious.

  You would thought Kathy, half frightened, half exasperated. You

  would, you’re just as bad as Emily.

  Perhaps something of her feelings appeared in her face, for Jim

  said, ‘Better come back, Em, the baby’s crying.’

  ‘I can’t leave Kathy with a problem.’

  ‘Kathy, come too,’ he turned his face to her.

  Kathy shook her head. ‘It’s kind of you. I’ll come over later if

  I’m scared.’

  ‘You’re scared now,’ said Emily, ‘ look at you.�
��

  And it was true. Sounds in the house, sounds in the garden, were

  all loud and frightening. The house after being so still and quiet

  had come alive again. With menace.

  For a moment Kathy desperately wanted to go with Emily and

  Jim. As she watched them go out together, companionably, married,

  loving (although at this moment, quarrelling), she envied them

  desperately.

  She walked across the garden with them.

  When she got back to the house she started to tidy up the kitchen.

  She worked absently, her thoughts elsewhere – with Janet and

  Mumsy – the car, the cases – it all added up to something.

  The kitchen clock struck the hour, the whole house was quiet.

  Upstairs the blood in the bathroom, the scratches on the bedroom

  floor, the gramophone left playing, were mute testimony to a plan

  that had got under way; blueprints to a bloodier plan.

  Kathy was alone in the house.

  The proprietor of Hills Garage, Tim Gregory, looked down at the three bags deposited with him by Mrs Birley with a puzzled face. He had an uneasy feeling about these bags.

  Mrs Birley had brought them down in person yesterday morning, come lugging them in herself, having made the journey by bus. Just why she had brought them down had been a puzzle yesterday; it remained a puzzle today. She hadn’t looked quite herself either, being flushed and agitated. But she had been lucid enough about what she wanted. A car to meet her at the station tomorrow afternoon, bringing the bags with it. Time, place and date all clearly stated. Which made it all the more odd that she hadn’t turned up.

  Mrs Birley was only known to him by sight. He had always admired her as an attractive, mature woman. Moreover, she had seemed sensible and reliable as well as pretty and gay. Tim Gregory was unmarried. If she had a drawback it was in her daughters. One daughter was something no one could object to, but two, and not related to each other at that, was another thing altogether. They were said not to get on and this Tim found entirely believable! They were such different types of girls. Janet was so pretty – in an obvious sort of way maybe but surely that was the point of prettiness – to be obvious? Tim didn’t believe in flowers that blushed unseen. Unnatural and unnecessary. It didn’t seem likely that Janet did much blushing unseen or otherwise, she was extremely curt and composed. Just about the most attractive girl in town.

  But there was more to Kathy, he felt that instinctively. She was a deeper girl.

  He had met Kathy at his church. One of his churches. Put that way it sounded bad, but he was interested, not eclectic. He had started life in the low Anglican Church, and for his taste this was austere, not to say arid. He had tried Nonconformity and found a lot to appeal; he had tried both the Roman Catholic Church and the Salvation Army and been surprised to find both formidable institutions and cautious in their welcome to him. He liked a welcome – it was part of the game. Kathy had occurred a few churches back when he was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t perhaps been here before. He had noticed then what a very pretty stepmother she had.

  He had been on the point of getting an introduction to Mumsy when the rumour had gone round the town that perhaps her turnover in husbands was a little unnatural. Poison? There was nothing in it, almost certainly there was nothing in it, but you didn’t build up a business from scratch without developing a delicate protective instinct, so that although he did not believe the rumours, and as far as he knew neither did anyone else, he had stayed his hand.

  He picked up one of the cases and swung it on his finger.

  Perhaps it was just as well he had not got to know Ray Birley.

  He decided against sending the cases up now. Time was getting on.

  He was having trouble with his night assistant, young Johnny Lambert, that was a puzzle too.

  For the third time the telephone rang in that quiet but restless house.

  ‘Deerham Hills Police here,’ said an official voice. ‘With reference to the grey saloon car you reported missing.’ He said this phrase almost mysteriously.

  There was a pause.

  ‘I didn’t report any car missing,’ whispered Kathy.

  ‘It was reported here a few hours ago.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll check that.’

  The voice, official, formal, faded into the background. But the line was not dead. The voice came through again, changed, harshly, speaking quickly, as if now was the chance to speak unheard. ‘Quick, quick, urgent.’

  Now Kathy thought she recognised the voice. It was a young policeman whose mother, a corpulent forty, was one of Kathy’s treasured customers.

  ‘No, Kathy. I know you didn’t report the car missing. Are you listening? Kathy?

  ‘Kathy? Kathy, you’d better report that car missing. And fast.’

  ‘He’s only a boy,’ Kathy told herself. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He can’t be more than twenty now, he was only at school when I was fitting his mother. I remember how he used to tease us then.’

  But in her heart she admitted that even boy policemen don’t talk like that without reason; there was something up.

  Wherever they were Mumsy and Janet had indeed involved her in something; it seemed as though Emily’s prediction was right; Kathy looked across the now darkening garden to the Carter house; the lights were on in the kitchen and she could see Emily and her husband. As she looked one of them drew the kitchen curtains; thoughtfully Kathy drew hers; she knew how to take a hint.

  In twenty minutes from now, she would give herself twenty minutes to cool down, … or warm up, she thought, flexing her chill hands, she would ring up the police and report her stepmother and stepsister missing; perhaps then she would hear something more about the car.

  What had Janet and Mumsy been up to? Was there really danger for her? She agreed with Emily that they had been up to something. Debts? Robbery? How far would Janet and Mumsy go? She just didn’t know. Did they want to use her or harm her? So far she could only accuse them of using her and her house, but lately tensions had arisen; it might well be that they hated her; she sat for a moment in silence considering the possibilities of that hate. All things considered it was entirely possible that it existed.

  The house was still and quiet; it contained within it, as it had contained for some hours now, a trap which was waiting for Kathy.

  Innocently the victim sat there and a half smile even flitted across her face. She believed, she had an ace or two; she knew her own mild and dreamy appearance to be deceptive; her father, a wily north countryman with a mind of his own, whose only mistake in life, if you looked at it that way, had been to marry Mumsy, and whose good fortune it had then been, if you looked at it that way, to die, had said admiringly: ‘Aye, you’d have to be up early to beat our Kathy,’ and Kathy believed this: Janet and Mumsy were not up early enough.

  Kathy meditated; in a few more minutes she would have rung up and reported the strange half-worrying, half-frightened absence of the two women missing and the worst would be over. ‘Always remember Kathy,’ her father had said, ‘the police are there to help you.’

  Meanwhile, perhaps it wouldn’t do any harm just to check in the garage and see about the grey car. The car had been Kathy’s pride and joy but just lately it had been so messed about by Janet who couldn’t drive and would drive and took it out whenever Kathy’s back was turned that Kathy had shrugged her shoulders and written it off.

  She felt a tinge of fear as she went towards the garage. Real physical fear for Kathy, and for the first time that evening. Up till now she had felt worry, alarm, apprehension, but not fear for her own body. She got the garage key from the drawer in the kitchen table. The table drawer was in its usual muddle of bills (paid, Kathy trusted), string, broken cutlery, and odds and ends, but the key was there, just as it should be. Nothing odd there for the sharpest observer.

  Still, it was odd about Danny
’s message. He was a friend of Janet’s too, she remembered.

  The kitchen door banged about her; she turned anxiously to see that it wasn’t locked behind her. As she peered into the garden she remembered about the prowler in the garden. The bushes waved and beckoned menacingly as if there had been a concealed figure but she could see clearly enough that there was no one there. She had never more than half believed in the prowler; but it wouldn’t do to write him off entirely.

  At the garage door the moment’s prevision that is all man has left of earlier instincts that saved him from the wiles and savagery of primeval forests caused her to jerk her head upwards as she put the key in the lock.

  Too late she saw the dark shape roll over the edge of the garage, and swing down towards her. She ducked and screamed a little high lost wail.

  The force of the blow knocked Kathy to the ground, it was amazing that something so fragile and light should strike with such a blow; and as she fell her arms gripped hard at her assailant and felt, not soft clothes and yielding flesh and blood, but something hard and stiff.

  There was a rush of blood into her mouth as the blow fell upon her face and then she was lying on the earth crying and sobbing.

  But she was filled with relief; it was no human hand that had struck her; the roll of tarpaulin, kept in the garage and mysteriously now placed on the roof had been jarred forward as she dragged at the garage door and fallen upon her.

  ‘I might have been killed,’ she told herself; ‘but it would have been an accident.’ And oddly enough there was comfort in that thought.

  She touched her mouth and found it already swollen and sore, but her teeth, thank God, were all right. As she stood up slowly, pushing herself with her hand, she winced; her hand was sore, the little finger aching; she flexed it and cried out with pain; the little finger of her left hand felt broken.

  First blood had been drawn.

  Back in the kitchen Kathy remembered she had never looked to see if the grey car was in the garage. Slowly she got to her feet and went to the garage. She peered through the little window. The garage was empty. Of course it was empty. She had known it would be all the time. Thoughtfully she returned to the kitchen.