Hand of Death

by Margaret Yorke

  ‘I knew about you and Felicity,’ she said. ‘In a way, I was glad. It made me feel less guilty, because I’m not much of a wife to you now. I’d much rather it was Felicity than some little scrubber, or your secretary – someone who would laugh at me, be sneering inside if we met. I liked Felicity and she had a lot of guts. I’m so sorry, Hugo. You must be dreadfully sad.’

  He made a move towards her, but did not know what to say. Rosemary took a deep breath and continued.

  ‘I’d imagined I’d die first, and then you could marry her,’ she said.

  But until today she hadn’t really known – she’d suspected, feared, but had no proof’Oh God!’ Hugo began pacing about the room. He thumped his hand against his forehead. ‘I never meant to hurt you,’ he said.

  ‘Nor I you, my dear,’ said Rosemary sadly. ‘But we’ve each managed to hurt the other. Perhaps we should be glad, in a way.’

  ‘Why? What do you mean?’

  ‘You can only be hurt by those you have some feeling for,’ said Rosemary quietly. ‘It means the love between us isn’t quite dead.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Hugo. ‘What an idea!’

  ‘You were caught in a trap, when I fell ill,’ said Rosemary. ‘You might have left me but, being an honourable man, you didn’t.’

  ‘I never would have,’ Hugo declared. ‘You know I wouldn’t.’ In sickness and in health, he thought; to love and to cherish. He’d tried.

  ‘If you’d gone out last night, I wouldn’t have known,’ said Rosemary. ‘I went to bed early.’

  Rosemary had her own bedroom and bathroom, specially adapted for her, on the ground floor of the house. Sometimes she went to bed soon after dinner; she was often more comfortable, warm in bed with a portable television set in her room, than in her wheelchair. She could still undress herself unaided.

  ‘If you did look in before you went to bed yourself, I don’t remember,’ Rosemary said. ‘I took a pill last night and could have been asleep. I didn’t tell the sergeant that. He thinks I watched television in here. I told him what the programme was.’

  ‘I didn’t go out last night,’ said Hugo dully. ‘And, if I had, I’d never have attacked Felicity. Why should I do such a thing?’

  ‘I know. You loved her,’ said Rosemary. ‘But it may not look like that to the police, or even to our friends. We are probably in for rather a difficult time.’

  Later that day, Detective Inspector Maude issued a statement to the press about the killing. It was quite short. The dead woman was named and her age given. She had been found tied to her bed and stabbed, the victim of a sexual assault. It was a vicious crime. Various lines of inquiry were being pursued. The journalists hurried off to write their pieces and try to find photographs of the deceased.

  Police officers had already called at houses in Priory Road and the surrounding area, asking if anything suspicious, any unusual passers-by, had been seen. It would not be easy to establish the time of the attack, since the victim had not died at once. Detective Inspector Maude was inclined to believe that Hugo Morton had nothing to do with it, for he would scarcely have returned to the scene of the crime if that were so, but there were plenty of questions he wanted answers to before dismissing that idea for good.

  Morton’s fingerprints were everywhere in the house, including the bedroom. He had clearly been intimate with the dead woman. Residents from nearby houses – the neighbours on each side and two from over the road – had often seen a grey Volvo parked outside, the same one that was there when the police arrived, or its twin.

  ‘She could have become a nuisance. Threatened to tell his wife about their affair. Wanted money. Wanted to marry him. Wanted security, getting old as she was,’ hazarded Detective Sergeant Dunn. Morton had made no secret of his financial involvement with Felicity; he had explained about the Treasure Box. ‘He could be boxing clever – reasoned we’d think it wasn’t him, if he came back and found her, and if he made it look like a rape.’

  ‘Well, forensic will have something on that for us, soon,’ Maude said. Morton had made no objection to having a blood sample taken; he went so far, in fact, as to say what his blood group was and produced a blood donor’s card to prove it. However, the sample was taken all the same. Swabs from the dead woman’s body would disclose the blood group of her attacker if, like seventy-five percent of the population, he was a secretor. In the absence of a husband, Maude had to consider Morton the most likely suspect until proved otherwise. There was no sign that the house had been broken into; there was no sign of a struggle except in the bedroom. She may have known her killer and let him into the house willingly. Against this was the fact that she had been callously left to die. A killer she could name was unlikely to leave her like that, in case help, however improbably, were to arrive. He would stab her again.

  The handkerchief gagging her mouth bore no laundry mark. It was a very ordinary kind and could be bought at stores throughout the country. A great many men would be able to produce one exactly like it. Possibly, when examined, the lab would find something of interest on it, apart from the dead woman’s saliva.

  A neighbour had seen a man walking along the road the evening before. He was of average height, she thought, but had not really noticed. He wore a raincoat and a hat of some sort. She put the time at between half-past eight and nine but could not be more precise; she had gone upstairs to calm her crying baby and had walked about the room with the child in her arms, drawing back the curtain to distract the infant by giving it something to look at beyond its own room. The child was teething and would sometimes settle if put back in its cot with the street light shining through the window. The lights were on in Mrs Cartwright’s house at the time, but the Volvo, often outside, was not there. She could not say if the man had come from Number Seven. The other neighbours, behind their drawn curtains, had seen nothing.

  In the incident room at Fletcham police station the various reports were studied.

  Hugo Morton, the dead woman’s lover, was allegedly at home at the probable time of the crime, but an alibi supplied by a spouse was not reliable.

  Police Constable Rowe’s routine report of his activities when he was on patrol in the town included an investigation into the credentials of a man in a raincoat, but hatless, whom he had at first suspected of attempting to steal a car. The man had given proof of his own identity, and the car was, as he had said, his wife’s; Rowe had checked it on the computer at the time. The man, a Mr George Fortescue, had seemed distressed and had said he felt unwell. Rowe’s report included the explanation about his wife being in a local restaurant.

  A constable went to check the restaurants in the area of the market square. It was soon established that a Mr Fortescue had reserved a table for four at the Ristorante Sorrento that evening. This Mr Fortescue was a young man, a student, known by sight to the management. The older man in the group had left before the end of the meal after, Mario volunteered, what looked like an argument, but the rest of the party, the two ladies and young Mr Fortescue, had completed the evening in good spirits.

  Police Constable Rowe had spoken to Mr Fortescue at ten past eight. Once he’d checked the car, he had resumed his patrol, and later that night had noted the mini had gone from the market place. The witness who had seen a man in a raincoat near the dead woman’s house had estimated the time at between half-past eight and nine. At that hour, with little traffic about, the journey by car would have taken only minutes from the market square. Fresh inquiries as to whether a brown mini was seen in the area must be made, and any brown minis reported would be investigated.

  Officers were exploring the details of Felicity’s life, attempting to discover who were her friends and associates. They had been to the shop to look into its financial standing and had spoken to a woman who sometimes worked there. Now they must seek a connection with George Fortescue.

  And they would have to talk to him.

  14

  Ronald had a severe shock when he glanced at the front
page of the Daily Telegraph over breakfast and saw under the headline ‘WOMAN ANTIQUE DEALER FOUND DEAD’ that the victim was Felicity Cartwright. He anxiously read the brief report. The paper disclosed that she had been sexually assaulted and stabbed, and that the police were pursuing their inquiries – no more.

  It was quite difficult to eat his eggs and bacon after that.

  He took Lynn to school as usual, and for once found it hard to think of conversation; but she did not notice anything wrong, prattling on cheerfully about the play rehearsals and the O-level exams she would face next term. When he reached Crowbury, he went into the newsagent’s before opening the shop and bought more papers. Nancy permitted only the Telegraph into Number 15, Sycamore Road.

  Ronald’s hands shook as he unlocked the shop and went inside with the bundle of papers. He began reading at once, and learned that the police had been at Number Seven, Priory Street all the previous day. The body had been discovered by the dead woman’s business partner, Hugo Morton, and there was a picture of him leaving the police station. Facts about Felicity Cartwright emerged. She had moved from London to Fletcham only recently; she had been widowed years before and had had one son who had died in a road accident at the age of eighteen. A sad article had been constructed by the practised crime reporter. There were pictures of the small house in Priory Road and of the Treasure Box, and a shot of Felicity, not at all like her, taken from her passport. It was implied that the police had no lead; the theory that she had been killed by some casual intruder, a burglar surprised in the act of robbing the house, was not rejected.

  He hadn’t thought of staging a robbery, but he hadn’t intended to kill her. He’d meant to bring pleasure to himself and to punish her. Well, he’d done that, all right, though the pleasure had been slight and fleeting – better than with Valerie, but not like that first, amazing time with Dorothea Wyatt. He shut his eyes and tried to imagine it once more, but failed; his mental image became Felicity, her body white and thin, the hip bones protruding, the ribs visible. He could not superimpose Dorothea’s plumper, responsive form upon this memory.

  He’d barely touched her with the knife. How could she be dead?

  He’d thought about her yesterday, imagining her freeing herself eventually. She’d tell the police, of course, but he’d left no clues. He’d worn gloves throughout. Perhaps she had a weak heart, and that had killed her. She’d certainly been frightened, and he had enjoyed that.

  There was the handkerchief he’d used for a gag. He’d left it. He panicked, remembering. But it had been clean, spotlessly laundered by Nancy. It was an ordinary handkerchief, plain white, without an initial; he owned no other kind. There must be thousands like it in daily use.

  He grew slowly calmer. All he had to do was keep his nerve; the police would be baffled. If they were ingenious enough to discover he had taken that box to Fletcham for the dead woman after the sale nearby, he would insist that this was their only meeting, but he had better admit to going into the house while she wrote her cheque, lest his fingerprints be found. The business nature of their encounter could be proved by the passage of her cheque through his account.

  At lunchtime, when the shop was shut, he went out to the van and brought in the knife, wrapped up in a rag. It didn’t look blood-stained, but he washed it thoroughly at the sink and then took it back to the van again. He threw the rag into the dustbin in the back yard behind the shop.

  He looked at his magazines as usual that evening, after doing the books, but they failed to excite him. He needed the real thing now. When he returned them to the drawer, he put the newspapers reporting Felicity’s death under them. Then he went home to the steak pie Nancy had prepared, without calling at the Plough.

  She had heard the local radio’s report of the killing in Fletcham, and did not know what things were coming to. There were some peculiar people in the world, she said. Had Ronald met the murdered woman?

  Yes, he told her, at a sale, and had afterwards sold her a box he’d bought at it.

  ‘Dear, dear,’ said Nancy.

  When George returned from the office on Friday evening, a police car was parked outside his house.

  He ran the Rover into the garage, switched off the ignition and secured the steering lock. He locked the driver’s door when he got out of the car; the other doors were still locked, as they had been while the car was in the station yard. He took his time, closing the garage doors and locking them too; you could not be too careful, even in Crowbury.

  He could not think what the police might want with him unless to solicit funds for some charity.

  Two men in plain clothes were waiting for him as he walked towards his dark house.

  ‘Mr George Fortescue?’ asked one, and introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Dunn, based at Fletcham.

  Could this be connected with the episode two nights ago? Surely not? The matter had been concluded.

  George admitted his identity, hoping they would not keep him long; his schedule would be thrown out if they did, for the next event on it was his nightly jog.

  ‘We’d like a word with you, sir. May we go in?’ said Dunn, standing solidly before George, between him and the gate.

  George turned and put his key in the lock, fumbling a little in the gloom.

  ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘But I’m a busy man, sergeant.’

  The two men followed him in, as George put on lights, going ahead into the sitting room where he turned on an electric fire in the grate. The room was warm, the central heating timed to cut in an hour before his return.

  ‘Well?’ George took off his raincoat and laid it over a chair. He had left his tweed hat in the hall as they passed through. ‘What can I do for you, sergeant?’ he asked. ‘I can give you five minutes.’

  ‘It will take longer than that, sir,’ said Dunn. ‘Shall we sit down?’

  George wavered. To sit was to place himself at a possible psychological disadvantage. Yet to think like that was foolish; he had done no wrong. Perhaps, though, he had exceeded the speed limit driving from London to Fletcham on Wednesday evening, and been caught by an infernal machine that would record his car’s registration number as it went too fast through some electronic barrier. He had hurried, it was true, and there was that endorsement already on his licence. He began to sweat a little as he sat down in his usual chair.

  The sergeant took a seat facing him, and the other man one a little apart.

  ‘You were in the market square at Fletcham last Wednesday evening at eight-ten p.m.,’ stated Dunn. ‘You were spoken to by Constable Rowe of C division.’

  ‘I talked to a policeman, yes,’ George said. ‘I didn’t ask his name. He looked at my driving licence. Everything was quite in order. A conscientious officer,’ he added. Some flannel might get rid of this one quickly.

  Rowe’s report stated that George Fortescue was returning to the restaurant where his wife was, which he had left because he felt ill. But he hadn’t returned, according to inquiries at the Sorrento.

  ‘After this conversation with the officer, where did you go?’ Dunn wanted to know, and waited with interest for the answer.

  What could be behind all this? Had Angela done some damn fool thing on her way home, and had her number taken, George wondered. The police would not know she was not living here now; the address on her records would still be this one.

  ‘Well?’ Dunn prompted.

  George realised that if he said he had wandered about the abbey grounds until he thought the coast was clear to allow him to return to his own car and drive off, his conduct would be thought curious, to put it mildly.

  ‘I went back to the restaurant, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Which restaurant, sir?’

  ‘The Ristorante Sorrento, in Abbey Road,’ said George.

  ‘You went back there?’ Dunn gave him another chance.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how long did you remain there, Mr Fortescue?’

  ‘Till the end of the meal. Another half-hou
r or so.’ That would be about right, George thought, to allow for dessert and coffee.

  ‘I see, sir. And then?’

  ‘I came home,’ said George.

  ‘It’s forty miles, but the road is good. It would take about an hour. You’d be back when, Mr Fortescue?’

  ‘I don’t know. Between ten and half-past, I suppose,’ said George unhappily. That would be if he left, as he’d said, at nine, but in fact, he’d been very late. He’d been so upset that he hadn’t come straight back but had driven about aimlessly for some time, raging at Angela and the fates and his own misfortune. Eventually he had gone into a pub somewhere out in the wilds and had three whiskies. It had crossed his mind to go round to Daniel’s lodgings and apologise for the upset to the boy’s plans, which after all were well meant. It was Angela’s fault that the evening had gone wrong; she had behaved irresponsibly, mocking him, just as her departure had been totally irresponsible. But in the end he’d decided to leave it; the girl would be there, very likely, and it made him uncomfortable to see the blatant evidence of how they lived. Youngsters were quite without morals, it seemed to him, and shameless. Daniel got it from his mother, of course.

  But if he told this sergeant that he’d stopped for a few drinks on the way home, could they get him after the event for driving over the limit? Surely not. What could all this be about? He hadn’t had an accident on the way back; he couldn’t have hit someone, or some other car, without knowing it had happened, surely? He remembered no near miss. Could some busybody have reported seeing him driving without due care and attention? He might have been doing that, upset as he was after such an evening. He decided not to risk mentioning the pub.

  ‘Can anyone confirm what time you got home?’ asked Dunn. ‘Your wife?’ They must have travelled back together in the mini.

  ‘No—er—she’s away. We went independently to the restaurant that night,’ said George. ‘I had my own car.’