Hand of Death

by Margaret Yorke

  ‘Mr Fortescue? Why? What’s happened?’ asked the newsagent.

  ‘That murder, down in Fletcham. He did it,’ said the woman.

  ‘Mr Fortescue?’ exclaimed the newsagent and Ronald, in amazed unison.

  ‘Arrested him on Friday night,’ said the woman. ‘I heard it from Mrs Pearson, the lady as helps him.’

  This was straight from the horse’s mouth, if you like.

  ‘Mr Fortescue?’ Ronald said again, handing over his money.

  ‘Mr Fortescue,’ repeated the woman. ‘When his wife left him, I said to my Mavis, you never know with folk. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors, I said. Between husband and wife. Things you wouldn’t dream of. His wife leaving after all those years. There must have been some cause.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Ronald, accepting his change.

  ‘Mr Fortescue! Well, I never!’ said the newsagent.

  Someone else came into the shop then, and had to be told the news. Ronald left them all discussing it. He went back to the shop and read what the Sun and the Mirror had to say about it. There was little fresh detail – a man had been helping police with their inquiries but had been allowed to leave. That was what had already been said on the radio.

  Was the man the police had been questioning really Fortescue? And, if so, why? How had they come to pick on him?

  While Ronald was wondering about the police deductions, Detective Inspector Maude and his team were conferring in the incident room.

  They still waited for information from the forensic laboratory, where tests were being made on material found at the scene of Felicity Cartwright’s death. Now they had a sweater belonging to George Fortescue to match to the wool fibres found under the murdered woman’s nails. Efforts were being made to trace the make of the wool, and its outlets. The killer was a secretor, and his blood group had been established; it was the same as George Fortescue’s. He remained the prime suspect; Hugo Morton had been eliminated because his blood was of another group.

  The murderer had left no fingerprints. There were no bite marks on the body, to be matched to the mouth of a suspect. There was no sign of a forced entry into the house. There had been no robbery. The only evidence of struggle was upon the body; the face was bruised, consistent with being struck, in addition to the chafed wrists and the wound that had brought about death by penetrating the liver, causing massive internal haemorrhage. If Felicity Cartwright had been treated quickly, she might not have died. The fact that she was still alive when her killer left implied that he may not have meant to kill her; if so, he had no fear of being recognised. So he may have been disguised or masked in some way. But a telephone call, anonymously from a box, could have sent an ambulance to help her. The killer must be heartless, and Maude wanted him – but he wanted the right man. Signs led to Fortescue; they must be explored and proved, one way or the other.

  Detectives had found, under a bush when they were searching the garden for the murder weapon and for any other clues, a minute strand of fibre attached to a twig. It was so small that it had almost been missed. It was being examined and might not be connected with the crime, even if identified.

  Inquiries had been made in Pimlico, where the dead woman had lived before moving to Fletcham. Nothing very helpful had emerged so far. She had lived in a small block of flats near the Warwick Road, and had been on good but not intimate terms with most of the other tenants; their contacts had been confined to chance encounters on the stairs and the occasional residents’ meetings. Felicity Cartwright had worked in various museums and, latterly, in an antique shop not far from where she lived. Two of the tenants in her block of flats had noticed that she had one regular visitor, and identified, from a photograph, Hugo Morton.

  It seemed unlikely that her death was linked with this former life.

  ‘Our villain did this on the spur of the moment,’ said Maude. ‘He saw her enter the house alone. Fortescue fits. He was in a disturbed state that night; he had the time, and he can’t give a satisfactory account of his movements after he spoke to Constable Rowe. It needn’t have taken long. He’s a fit-looking man and she was a small woman. He’s presentable. She might have let him in, if he rang the bell with some excuse or other. He could have forced her upstairs at the point of the knife we know the killer’d got. I’d like to have kept him here longer, but we can soon pick him up again. He won’t run. We can’t charge him, on what we’ve got. We must hope for something from forensic.’

  He could have wrapped a scarf round his face to hide it, and worn a hat. The man seen walking down Priory Road had worn a hat, and one had been removed from Fortescue’s house. It might match up with the fibre found under the bush.

  A statement was prepared for the press. It said that the police were following various leads and an arrest was expected shortly.

  That should make Fortescue sweat.

  It was Mrs Simmons who, on Monday morning, told Dorothea the truth about George’s absence from home, and she had learned of it from Mrs Pearson. The news that he was missing was already spreading round the village, disseminated by her neighbours, when Mrs Pearson went to the Plough on Saturday evening to buy two bottles of stout for her husband and mentioned her anxiety.

  The saloon bar was busy, and Mrs Pearson felt important as she discussed it while drinking a small port to keep out the cold before returning to her husband’s uncertain temper, which she knew wasn’t his fault, poor soul, with his bad chest.

  ‘He may have gone to see his missus,’ said someone, for the whole village knew of Angela Fortescue’s departure.

  ‘Or off for a bit of you-know-what,’ suggested someone else.

  ‘Without his car?’ said Mrs Pearson, playing her trump. ‘There it is, as large as life, in the garage.’

  Jack Munsey, who kept whippets and walked them through the village every morning and evening, was in a corner of the bar. He sometimes saw George jogging when he was out with his dogs.

  ‘Didn’t go out running on Friday,’ he remarked, not looking up from the paper in which he was studying form. ‘Went off with the law instead.’ He’d seen the police car leaving Orchard House, and George inside. ‘Not the local law,’ he added. ‘Fletcham.’ He’d recognised Detective Sergeant Dunn in the car, with another officer; Munsey knew Dunn all too well from the time his boy was in trouble down there last year.

  But Mr Fortescue couldn’t be in any trouble. Could he?

  It took them a little time to work it out. Mrs Pearson knew that Mr Fortescue was to meet his son for dinner in Fletcham on Wednesday night; he’d left a note about it, saying he’d be late home, in case there were any telephone calls or messages for him while she was working at Orchard House. He always did that sort of thing – like an open book, he was, a very nice gentleman. Or so he’d seemed. But on Wednesday night, murder had been done in Fletcham.

  Now Mrs Simmons passed all this on to Dorothea, who was appalled. Bill had simply told her that George had been called away unexpectedly and had been out all day. It was nothing to worry about, he’d said, and Dorothea thought it might be something to do with Angela, although that didn’t explain why the Rover was in the garage.

  ‘Whoever would have thought it?’ Mrs Simmons was saying.

  ‘But it’s impossible! It’s some dreadful mistake,’ said Dorothea. No wonder Bill had been cagey. ‘Anyway, wherever he went, he’s come back.’

  ‘Mrs Pearson and I were saying you wouldn’t credit it, not someone like Mr Fortescue,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘But then, things haven’t been right for him, have they, since Mrs Fortescue went away? And he has been acting strange.’

  ‘Strange? In what way?’

  ‘Well, all that running about the roads at night. It isn’t natural,’ said Mrs Simmons.

  ‘It may not be to you or me, Mrs Simmons,’ said Dorothea. ‘Heaven forbid that we should take up jogging. But it seems to be all the rage now.’

  If Mrs Simmons’s story was correct, George had been, and might still be, in dreadfu
l trouble. He’d be needing friends.

  ‘That poor woman as was killed,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘Lived alone. It’s not safe to open your door these days. Don’t you do it, Mrs Wyatt, not unless you know who’s there.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Dorothea. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Simmons.’

  ‘It’s being said there was a woman attacked in the Tellingford area a while back,’ Mrs Simmons produced this titbit like a conjuror with his rabbit from a hat. She’d heard it from her neighbour, whose daughter worked in Tellingford town hall and was going out with a policeman from the local station. ‘Unsubstantiated,’ said Mrs Simmons carefully. ‘They didn’t believe her.’

  ‘Really? Where was it supposed to have happened?’ asked Dorothea.

  But Mrs Simmons did not know. She went off to start her vacuuming, and Dorothea, who was in her dressing gown at the kitchen table drinking coffee, poured herself another cup. There had to be some reason for the police to drop on George. She remembered the night of her dinner party, when George had turned her down, and a remark or two that Angela had made, to which she hadn’t paid much heed. Her impression was that, on the whole, George wasn’t greatly interested.

  But weren’t there men who could only get going in circumstances that would make most people shudder?

  After Mrs Simmons’s revelations, Dorothea did not wait to finish her second cup of coffee before telephoning George.

  But once again there was no reply from Orchard House. Had he gone to the office as usual? Surely Mrs Pearson was in the house and would answer the phone?

  Bill Kyle would know what was happening. He was George’s solicitor. Dorothea rang Eileen, who guardedly confirmed the news. George was a client, she added hastily, and so it was confidential, but she couldn’t help knowing what was going on.

  ‘Well, we’re all friends, aren’t we?’ said Dorothea. But what were friends? Weren’t they – the Kyles, George and Angela and herself – simply long-time acquaintances, brought together by circumstance, like the members of a family, not from choice? There wasn’t time to examine this idea. ‘Poor George! It sounds frightful.’

  ‘It’s all circumstantial,’ Eileen said, and explained what she knew, most of which she’d learned, not from Bill, but from Vivian, while they washed up after lunch the day before. Eileen had not gone with the others when they were looking for the pub. ‘Bill is worried,’ she admitted.

  ‘Has George gone to the office?’ asked Dorothea. ‘He’s not answering the phone.’

  ‘Yes. Insisted on it. Routine, he said. Maybe it’s for the best – it’ll take his mind off things.’

  They discussed it a little longer, and had just finished their talk when Mrs Simmons came to tell Dorothea that Mrs Pearson had arrived and was anxious for a word.

  Dorothea felt she could guess what it was about, and she was right.

  Mr Pearson had said that his wife was not to go cleaning for that man.

  ‘He might do me, Mrs Wyatt. That’s what Fred said,’ Mrs Pearson reported. ‘As if I’d let him. A good kick in the you-know-where and that would be the end of any nonsense.’

  Dorothea looked at Mrs Pearson, sixty and stolid, in her worn checked coat and thick stockings, her face pouched and lined, rough red hands folded round her capacious, shabby handbag.

  ‘Mr Fortescue was only answering some questions because he happened to be in Fletcham with his son at the time the woman may have been killed,’ she said, picking her words carefully. ‘He might have seen something suspicious.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Pearson, hesitating. ‘He’s always seemed a very nice gentleman,’ she volunteered. ‘Keeps everything neat.’

  ‘You’re worried about letting him down,’ said Dorothea. She glanced at Mrs Simmons who was standing by, like Justice weighing up the conversation. ‘I’m sure he’s depending on you, Mrs Pearson. He’ll be thinking you’re round there now, while he’s at the office. But, on the other hand, there’s Mr Pearson to be thought of.’ And a bad-tempered man she knew him to be, retired from the water board, where he had worked in the maintenance department, travelling the district in a little van, his own man, and now confined at home with chronic emphysema. Nevertheless, it seemed surprising that he should be able to impose his authority over this doughty woman. ‘He’ll know where you are, if you carry on without telling him?’

  ‘He’ll know I’m out, won’t he?’ said Mrs Pearson, and added, ‘The money comes in handy.’

  ‘We thought, Mrs Wyatt, if we was to say you needed a bit extra done, and Doris here was helping out,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘Fred would never know the difference.’

  The two of them had already given George the benefit of the doubt, Dorothea realised; otherwise they’d never have hatched the plot together.

  ‘Just for a bit. Till it blows over,’ urged Mrs Simmons.

  ‘Or the police catch the real murderer?’ said Dorothea. ‘Very well.’

  She was not keen on deceit, but it would be Mrs Simmons and Mrs Pearson who were practising it, not herself. She was hardly likely to meet Fred Pearson face to face and have to uphold the story.

  Mrs Pearson went off to Orchard House, and Dorothea rang George at the office and asked him to dinner that evening, which had been her original intention. George must have support, particularly if people were going to react like Fred Pearson. How long would the police take to catch the real murderer?

  He looked dreadful when he arrived that evening. He hadn’t been out jogging.

  ‘I should think not, George,’ said Dorothea. ‘You’ve been having a frightful time. You need rest.’ And it would be folly, straight away, to expose himself to possible insult in the village. People loved a scandal.

  ‘It was awful, Dorothea,’ he said. ‘All those questions. On and on. The same ones over and over again. You begin to wonder what the truth really is.’

  Dorothea poured him a stiff drink.

  ‘Get this inside you, George,’ she said. ‘You need it.’

  George felt better after a couple of whiskies. Dorothea really did know how to make one feel comfortable. She produced an excellent meal, pork chops in a tasty sauce, with a bottle of claret, and she talked brightly about a plan to visit Cyprus in the spring.

  ‘New horizons, George. That’s what I need,’ she said. Or a new man. She’d enjoyed cooking the meal this evening, even though it was only George who would share it. You needed to get outside yourself; George did, too. ‘You’d better have a holiday too, George, when all this is over,’ she advised.

  George hoped she would not propose that he should accompany her to Cyprus. He was thinking vaguely of a golfing week at St Andrews in the summer. He’d always hankered after that, but they’d gone to Cornwall every year when Daniel was young, and the last time he and Angela had been away together was for a fortnight in Tenerife, where it had rained a good deal and they had found less and less to say to one another. George preferred to forget their more intimate moments during that fortnight – the humiliation, and the shame. If the police only knew! It had been all right at first, when they were young, but gradually he’d lost interest; there were other things in life that were more pleasurable, like hitting a straight drive down the fairway or sinking a difficult putt. Or even eating this good meal, with Dorothea looking quite decorative and bent on making a fuss of him. She was a good sort and it was a rotten shame about Harry. Pity she was a bit fond of the bottle; that had only happened since Harry died. She was sloshed the other night, of course – that explained her conduct. She was lonely, he supposed, rattling about in this big house on her own. She should do more in the village – help with the old people, that sort of thing. She was really rather selfish, he decided.

  Valerie Turner heard the talk about George when she went to fetch the children from school. The other mothers, discussing it while they waited at the school gates, all knew Orchard House, and most knew George Fortescue by sight, for though Crowbury had grown in recent years, the old Edwardian house was a landmark, and George was active
in the village. His parish council activities, and his enthusiasm for keeping the village streets tidy so that Crowbury might compete for the title of best-kept village in the county, won attention through the summer; all winter he’d been seen, in the evenings, pounding round in his track suit.

  ‘Bit old for it, isn’t he? That jogging?’ one young woman remarked. Her own husband jogged, but early, before breakfast, and not far, just round their immediate area, half a mile or so. And he was only thirty. By the time you were bald and your children were at college, you should hang up your running shoes, she implied.

  Valerie, like all the rest, had seen George Fortescue about the village; he’d run the tombola at the church fête last summer and been sympathetic when Timmy had found it hard to understand the system.

  Could he have been the man who attacked her?

  He’d been allowed home. He had been taken to Fletcham police station and interrogated, then let go. On bail, said someone, but another said that wouldn’t happen in a murder case.

  Valerie was meeting Jill and Johnny Mount as well as her own two. She felt an urge to talk to someone about the news and, instead of letting the children run on from Primrose Cottage to the farm, she went with them. Pearl Mount welcomed them all into the big kitchen where she was baking, and asked them to stay to tea.

  It was easy to bring up the subject of George Fortescue, for Pearl was eager to talk about the murder. She told Valerie that she had heard from her mother about George. Her mother often made a detour past the farm on the way back from Mrs Wyatt’s; she had done so today. Pearl repeated what her mother had said.

  ‘Mrs Wyatt’s sure he can’t have done it,’ she reported. ‘But there’s no smoke without fire, is there?’

  ‘They let him go,’ said Valerie. If he’d done it, and been released, he could kill a second time. Even only rape again.

  Only rape! What a way to think about something so frightful.

  And he lived nearby. He could come again, if it had been him, that time. Could it have been? How could she tell?