Say Goodbye to the Boys

by Mari Stead Jones

  XIII

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you think? Be kind enough to give me the benefit of your powers of observation.’

  He was wearing a white linen jacket over a waistcoat and cardigan and he smelled strongly of mothballs and old dust. ‘I’d say you had this photograph when we were messing about in that tower.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. Do not presume. Observe the near professionalism of our friend Ridetski. Such gloss, such clarity. Use the magnifying glass. Observe.’ There were two other figures on either side of MT. Two darker shapes that had to be men. They came up clearly under the magnifying glass. Two headless men. Three men at a burning.

  ‘Well? Well?’ He growled impatiently. ‘Your comments, please.’

  Guess who? I thought. Had George Garston cast his photograph into a grate, as that sick man in an oven of a room had done? Idwal Morton in the back doorway, blood on his chin, trembling hands fumbling at his buttons, the brown paper curling in the smoke above the hissing fire. Three men at a burning.

  ‘Oh – Philip!’ How silently she moved. Such a big, angular heavy-footed woman. To come up the creaking staircase so lightly, make so quiet an entrance through the open door. ‘I see you’ve got it, Mr Ellyott,’ she said, and Amos and I bumped each other as we turned, and she was standing there – such a drab dress, so many wrinkles in her stockings – the broad, strong hands as if working the needles, her glasses down on her nose.

  ‘Dear lady,’ Amos said ‘Mrs Edmunds – you startled me. Do please be seated.’ He moved like an elderly waiter around her, first to draw up a chair, then to close the door.

  Laura always referred to her as Miss Lloyd – and the name of her house – always with respect. A lady. Her father a big man in shipping. A family to be classed among the gentry, Maelgwyn being short on dukes and lords and squires. Miss Lloyd Glanmorfa House for identification. Glanmorfa House – which MT had changed to the Grange. I remembered the book and the poem. Was this Edward Mortimer, honourable and sir and gent and poet, Form 1A, September 1908? ‘Who’s left to love? Only he who rages...’ The neat, rounded handwriting, a little girl’s voice at a time of sadness... I looked at her hollowed, bony face, her sparse hair and felt as if I had solved something.

  Then she spoke. ‘It was I who sent you that photograph, Mr Ellyott.’ A plain statement, delivered at speed: a driven woman.

  ‘You, madam? I don’t understand. Why to me? May I offer you a glass...’

  ‘Nothing.’ An emphatic shake of the head. ‘I sent it to you because you are my only hope. The police are persecuting my son.’ Even Amos had no immediate reply for that one. ‘They questioned him for the better part of the morning. He cannot remember, Mr Ellyott. He doesn’t know what they are talking about. Yesterday afternoon he had a breakdown. A nervous collapse. The doctor gave him a sedative. He slept. Then when I went up to see him in the evening he’d gone – out through the window; climbed down the drainpipe.’ I stared at one of Amos’s muddy pictures on the wall above her head. ‘When he came back he said he was running away! He said he’d been with you, Philip.’

  ‘That’s right, Mrs Edmunds.’

  She was surprised and grateful. Her face softened. ‘Honestly, Philip?’ She held back from touching me.

  ‘I met him on the prom. We had a walk together on the beach...’

  ‘But he said he was running away.’ She appealed to Amos. ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘In jest, surely?’

  ‘Jest, Mr Ellyott? We are all past jesting. Are you aware what they are doing to him? These continual questions, day in day out?’ She turned to me. ‘Was Emlyn with you?’

  ‘Just the two of us. Emlyn was at home.’

  ‘He’s been very good. Both of you have. You met him on the prom, honestly?’ I nodded. ‘Emlyn went with him this morning to the Police Station. That Inspector Marks! Why doesn’t he leave the boy alone?’ She sat on the edge of the chair, both feet planted firmly on the floor, and there should have been knitting needles in her hands. ‘But you boys have been through it, haven’t you? Fought for your country. Fought to free the world from tyrants.’ I looked at my shoes, embarrassed and surprised – Sylvia Edmunds waving the flag. ‘But what was he doing? Dubious business deals with the like of George Garston. Traitor is too good a word to use.’ She choked on the words and removed a handkerchief from up her sleeve and held it to her mouth.

  ‘You say you sent me this photograph?’ Amos enquired in a low voice.

  ‘I did.’ She dabbed at her upper lip. ‘It came through the post. I thought it was an advert or something and I opened it.’

  ‘Addressed to your husband? A picture of a man standing near a vehicle in flames.’

  She flared up at that. ‘His picture – stealing that money. Didn’t I tell you he was nearly bust? Well – that is where he got the money from...’

  ‘Did you show it – to Mr Edmunds?’

  She got to her feet and shook her head. ‘For some more fancy stories? More lies? The truth has got to come out. From the beginning...’

  ‘Then – can you suggest who might have sent you this photograph?’

  ‘They were all in on it,’ she said flatly. ‘A terrible war for our survival going on and they were thieving. Probably the least of their crimes. He’s afraid of it coming out. Of course he is. Prepared to sacrifice anybody to save his own skin. I’ve got my boy to protect.’

  ‘George Garston, perhaps?’ Amos suggested.

  ‘I am not prepared to speculate, Mr Ellyott. But – you’ve got to begin there. With that picture.’ In a couple of long, smooth strides she was at the door. ‘I sent it to you because you have the expertise in these matters. I have no faith whatsoever in the police.’ She pulled the door open.

  ‘Madam, please,’ Amos appealed to her.

  ‘What I am telling you is the truth. You start there. With that picture.’ She turned to face us. ‘That is what is being covered up. Good morning to you. Good morning, Philip.’ She went out, closed the door softly, and there wasn’t a sound as she descended the stairs.

  I went to the window. She had a car out there. I heard it start, a grind of gears as it pulled away but I couldn’t see it. Across the road, on the promenade, leaning against the railings, MT alone, staring out at the grey ships in the estuary.

  ‘Let us write down a few names, metaphorically speaking,’ Amos said. ‘Let us write down Mr MT Edmunds. Let us write Mr George Garston. Let us write...’ And he came up close and stared at me over his glasses, made his cigarette flip against his nose. ‘Let us write Mr Idwal Morton.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ I said.

  He cackled at me. ‘It depends on what you’re looking for, Philip. Truth is a dreadfully distasteful dish. Let us add another name. Mrs Sylvia Edmunds. Don’t make that dreadful, uncouth remark. I saw you shiver as she went out. Doesn’t she move quickly, silent as an animal? What lady would suspect another at the dead of night? A lady soured and desperate, ready to do anything to protect her offspring. A lady stunted by so much bitterness...’

  ‘You’re out of your mind. Mrs Edmunds? Knocking off all these old women? Good God – you might as well put me on your list, metaphorically speaking.’

  He went tk, tk, tk. ‘You are on it already. You and Emlyn Morton and Marshall Edmunds. But set that aside...”

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Let us consider this extraordinary visit.’ I went over to the window. Ceri Price rode past on the promenade, skirt riding high over brown legs, her dog in the bicycle basket. She looked great, and oh God, playing the field. My breath caught in my throat. ‘Philip,’ came the nagging old voice behind me. ‘The picture is important not because of what it says but because of what it implies. The first murder is the one – she fits, Philip, she fits. The others are a blind. A false trail.’ I laughed at him and he
trembled with rage. ‘Why should she kill Mrs Ridetski you ask? For Marshall’s sake – that’s why. The lady’s out for vengeance. She has been wronged.’

  ‘Oh, balls, balls, balls,’ I said.

  We were silent for a long time after that. Ever since Mrs Edmunds had gone we’d been arguing, and I realised suddenly that I didn’t want this old man to come up with a solution, and that was why I stayed while the sun broke through outside and the day brightened. I wanted a solution, of course I did, but it had to be acceptable.

  ‘What about Ridetski?’ I started up again. ‘If he isn’t in that Tower then why can’t he be knocking around the town wearing a beard, or something?’

  ‘A possibility,’ he conceded. ‘Ridetski holds everything together, doesn’t he? You have come round to it at last...’

  ‘Now – just a minute – it was all Mrs Edmunds...’

  He rose stiffly from his chair and came to join me at the window. ‘Philip – I will come clean, as they say. In a game of cards you offer one sometimes in order to make your opponent commit himself...’

  ‘Do you, really? I never knew that.’

  He grated his teeth and made his ticking noise, but controlled himself sufficiently to say, ‘It was I who sent Mrs Edmunds a photograph!’

  ‘You did? Where the hell did you get if from?’ Then I was pointing at him, saying, ‘It was you who stripped the wallpaper in Lilian’s place, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was never orthodox,’ he said defensively. ‘I must insist on your total discretion.’

  ‘You bloody old burglar! You’ve been keeping them from the police, haven’t you? Withholding evidence.’

  But he came back fighting. ‘And I had every right! After that boy scout Inspector ordered me off. Every right in the world.’ Old fox, I thought. No wonder the bloody police weren’t making any progress. ‘This may be Ellyott’s last case,’ he added, placing his hand on his heart to see if it was still pumping.

  ‘Don’t give me that! You found that picture, didn’t you? And you sent it to her in the post?’

  ‘No, no, no. You must not anticipate. Do not presume. I did not send her that photograph.’

  Senile decay, I thought. ‘Look – you just told me...’

  ‘I sent her another photograph – and she sent me this one in return.’

  I gaped at him, which was what he had wanted me to do all along. ‘So she’s got some pictures, too?’

  He eased his glasses a little further down his nose. ‘Mrs Ridetski’s rooms, you will remember, were broken into and left in some disorder on the night she died...’

  ‘Mrs Edmunds?’

  ‘Why not? The night of Mrs Ridetski’s death – might Mrs Edmunds not have gone there to talk, to persuade, to beg perhaps that the association with Marshall end? And might she not have found a door ajar, Mrs Ridetski having left in a hurry to keep a fatal appointment?’ He made his ticking noises, his sharp, youthful eyes on me all the time. ‘Mrs E goes up the stairs. Might she not have found the photograph in some drawer perhaps? A photograph like that one and its variations – other faces in view, perhaps? Stretching coincidence to its limits, might not Mrs Ridetski have been inspecting the photographs that evening, in preparation for a little blackmail herself? Who knows? Mrs E, we now know, took the photographs, searched for more and failed to find any. Home she went – and may well have sent them out appropriately.’ He did his grating laugh then. ‘Your face, Philip. My word, what naive young men came off the battlefields!’

  ‘You’re just supposing. Somebody else might have sent her the photo – and why should she want to send them out, anyway?’ I could hear the fire hissing in that kitchen in the Crescent, see the brown paper envelope curling in the heat.

  ‘What young men you are. So much experience to so little effect. Do you remember the wreath in the Tower?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘What did it say? “To a brave warrior”?’

  ‘Something like that. What’s a wreath got to do with it? We were talking about photographs.’

  ‘Would you care to look closer?’ He went over to the bureau and took the photograph out. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘come closer. You can’t possibly examine it from that distance.’ I went over to him. ‘Observe. The photograph which the lady has admitted sending to me. Now – are you observing – the quality of the picture? The technique is called montage – but the head rests uneasily on the shoulders, surely? Not quite in place?’ His finger pointed urgently. ‘What do you say? Tk, tk, tk.’

  ‘A fake?’

  ‘A not entirely successful first attempt, I deduce. Mr Ridetski at the bonfire clicked his camera, but the results were short on clarity. Help was required. A little montage in the dark room. Our friend Ridetski would not have used this one. No – I am prepared to wager that his skill improved, and that he threatened our friends with more accomplished versions; Mr MT’s head on this one, Messrs Garston and Morton on the others. Three men at a bonfire, each clutching a bag of gold. The lady decided it was time for me to see it.’ His mottled hand trembled as he opened a small drawer in the bureau and removed another photograph, no more than postcard size, blank side uppermost. ‘Now – so that you may have a complete picture! This is the one I sent to the lady, the card I preferred. I had copies made.’ He looked up at me, then examined the photograph, hiding it from me before he handed it over. ‘How long ago, Philip? Five years? Six? Perhaps more?’

  It was a sunny day. Perhaps they were out on bikes, the edge of a wheel on the grass by her leg. And the way I saw it he had a camera on a tripod and he had set the time exposure and had run back to her before the shutter opened... A tall, slim man, dark and with a thin, sensitive face. In Royal Air Force uniform, with Poland above his badge of rank. And she had removed her glasses, and the wind had swept back her hair, a blouse open at her throat, and she was looking up at him, as pretty as she would ever be, perhaps as happy. Sylvia Edmunds for sure. Andrei Ridetski it had to be.

  We walked to the King’s Arms for a beer, and the voices were saying fog, bound to be that old fog after a morning so humid broken by such a burning sun. If not tonight then tomorrow – one of them bloody fogs. I found myself listening intently, concentrating on a conversation endlessly repetitive to save myself from thinking about Sylvia Edmunds. Now and then the old man, planted on a stool, his hands on the silver knob of his stick, his chin on his hands, looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for a comment or a word of congratulation. But I said nothing. I should have left him, gone home to the cold meat Laura left on Mondays, but I wanted to be near him and couldn’t explain why... The fog; bound to cop it. I felt as if it was out there, at the mouth of the estuary, waiting.

  ‘You should ask what happens next,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you.’ Preening himself, an old cockerel perched on that stick. ‘It’s breaking now; beginning to move. Some more pressure may be necessary but she’s an intelligent woman. It shouldn’t take her long to realise it was I who sent her the photograph.’

  Sylvia Edmunds in her tall, wickerwork chair, needles stabbing in her hands. A wreath for Ridetski. Had there been one for every year? Hopeful crows flying off with them? I looked around the bar, saw it reflected in a funfair mirror, all faces distorted and talking about fog. ‘I’m going,’ I said to him. They were dying to get off the fog and on to us, anyway.

  ‘Wait, wait, I’ll come with you!’ Like a child calling after me, kicking his feet like one because he was stuck, joints locked. The regulars stared at us as I went back to straighten him, stand by until his circulation was restored. ‘Thought I was doomed to listen to this conversation for ever,’ he announced loudly as we went out.

  Once we were outside he kept on saying – ‘you must be careful what you tell Marshall – his mind clears, you know.’

  ‘Good God! You don’t think I’d tell Mas
h, do you?’

  We headed for the promenade, bickering as we went. Ceri Price went waving by on a bicycle. Oh God, problems everywhere.

  ‘All right,’ I said savagely, ‘you tell Emlyn – but neither you nor Emlyn’s going to say a word to Mash. Because you’re bloody wrong about Mrs Edmunds. There’s nothing to connect her with any murder.’

  ‘The unthinkable, Philip? You are Welsh. Emotion obscures logic. There is a background here, that’s all I am saying. Old affairs, old intrigues...’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I said, ‘my feet are boiling.’

  The sand on the dune was on fire. I waited for him and gave him my arm. I shouldn’t be here, I thought, struggling up burning sand with this old fox, my shirt sticking to my back. I should be chasing after Ceri, and to hell with the endless problems he posed. ‘You wouldn’t leave me to die in this desert, would you?’ He said. ‘A loyal young man like you.’

  ‘Just don’t give me ideas,’ I said.

  Before we came in sight of the Ariadne we heard Emlyn’s trumpet, the thump of a bass drum, and I knew that they had let Mash go. We stood panting at the top of the last rise on the dune. Emlyn was giving out with the Saints, marching around the boat, Captain X and Robert Owen and Sian Thomas in line behind him, with Mash at the rear, the drum on his chest.

  ‘I can walk by myself,’ Amos said, shrugging my arm away, and he trotted down, waving his stick and calling to them. I couldn’t help thinking that people approached Emlyn always with pleasure. Well, this old man had news to dampen any party.