This one a different death. Not simply because she was the first victim I had seen close up, but in every way. She had been dead no more than an hour; she had been left where she had been killed; a clumsier job, someone said, more signs of a struggle; her handbag was missing; and above all she was someone the others had never been – a native of the town. When I reached home at one in the morning Laura was still up, in tears. Sylvia Edmunds. Mrs MT. Miss Lloyd that was. A somebody.
The hours between had been all coming and going, uniformed and plain clothes men moving about purposefully, a photographer’s blinding flash bulb, powder for prints, specimens stored in envelopes for analysis, and I, left standing in one corner, Amos in another. Men went running through the fog to MT’s house and came back with the news that Mash was in a drugged sleep, in bed all evening. It was MT they took to the police station. No, not one of the other tenants had heard anything or seen anyone, and they had all been in because of the fog... Inspector Marks was closeted with Amos for a long time, and Amos emerged, truculent and pinch-mouthed to watch a carpet raised in his living room, a floor board prised up and a large, manilla envelope handed over. ‘I require statements as to how you came into possession of these photographs,’ the Inspector declared. ‘Now – have you any more hidden away?’
‘You find Ridetski, dead or alive,’ Amos replied. ‘You get your men working on that Tower.’ He winked at me as he followed the Inspector out, but when I helped to settle him in at a boarding house a few doors away he was in a raging temper. ‘They want to know it all.’ He kept on saying, ‘and don’t dare ask me to enter into discussion with you about it.’
These details a flickering film, out of sequence in my head, all the way home and in the kitchen over countless cups of tea with Laura, and in bed as I fought back sleep. Mr Stubbs, the office boy dashing in to say, ‘Both Garstons, sir – and the Mortons – accounting for their movements now. Squad ready to move to the Tower.’ A loop of film in a projector that showed no sign of stopping. Then sleep, and a boy at the door to our backyard, the snakes writhing in his hands.
White fog, dense as smoke, in the morning streets. A warm, very damp fog such as occurs in the tropics. Visibility no more than a few feet, so that you came upon buildings and people unexpectedly and found your way from memory. I made for Emlyn’s house. The front door was closed and locked. No one came in response to my knocking. I tried the back door and that too was locked. No lights anywhere, no sounds, an empty house. Both of them in the police station still? Or had Emlyn gone to the Grange to see Mash? I hurried, full of unease, to the Haven Hotel where Amos Ellyott had been found a night’s lodging.
‘Out,’ Miss Williams said. She was one of Laura’s friends, a nervous woman. She kept the door half open, most of her body behind it. ‘Philip – I remember when you were little. It’s worse than the old war, isn’t it?’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
She shook her narrow head. ‘He’s a very strange old man,’ she said. ‘Do you know – he was out nearly all of the night. Never said where, though. You came, didn’t you? And the police. But no sooner had you gone than he was out of the house. “If anybody wants to see me,” he said, “tell them I’m in bed!” Then out he went. It was early hours when he came back.’
‘Did he leave a message for me?’ Once again a decisive shake of the head. I felt left out, abandoned. ‘Didn’t he mention anything?’
Miss Williams’ eyes flickered nervously. ‘What’s happened in town is too much,’ she said, a break in her voice. ‘I don’t get nice people staying here any more. All he said to me was, ‘Madam – I do not wish to speak to you,’ and all I asked was about his breakfast – was it all right?’ She dabbed a finger first under one eye, then the other. ‘Too much, too much.’ I told her I’d call back later. ‘Everybody’s strange,’ she called after me, ‘Everybody gone strange.’
There were only a few customers in the Market Hall, and they had come to talk not to buy. Even Isaac Moss Cobblers had downed tools and stood there with the traders, a hammer in his hand. Grim faces, all of them. No jokes about this one, the different death.
I kept out of their way. Let Laura tell them what I had seen. I crept into the shop and waited for her, startled her when she came, her hands fluttering at her breasts. ‘Philip – you should have stopped in bed. You’ve had a shock. I heard you shouting in your sleep.’
‘Why do you call her Miss Lloyd Penmorfa Villa?’ She stared at me dumbfounded, shaking her head slowly. ‘It’s all right – just a thought I woke up with.’
‘Poor Mrs Edmunds? Well – before she married MT she was Miss Lloyd, bless her – and her father had Penmorfa Villa.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no – it was Glanmorfa House. Miss Lloyd Glanmorfa House – where Mash lives now. MT changed the name.’
She laughed and touched my arm. ‘Oh, Philip – you are in a pickle! It was Idwal Morton’s wife Ellen who used to live in Glanmorfa House! Her family had it, remember? Belongs to rich people from Liverpool. They changed the name to Blundellsands or something.
Idwal Morton turning the pages of the Tales from Shakespeare. ‘I left my memory in India,’ I said. Idwal Morton’s face in the fog.
‘You go home,’ she advised me. ‘There’s aspirins in the cupboard above the sink. You’ve had a shock.’
But I walked around the town in the fog. I sat over a cup of coffee in Bodawens, hoping that Ceri might come in. What the hell was I bothering my head about that poem for? ‘Summer has a fine warm face’. Oh, Jesus. Edward Mortimer, Sir and Honourable, Gent and Poet. A little girl with a fountain pen in her hand. Ellen Morton, dead a long time now – I couldn’t remember her maiden name – and not Miss Lloyd Penmorfa Villa. And so what? No significance there, surely? You got the houses mixed up, Philip Roberts. Drink your coffee. Come on Ceri, show up. Have another fag. Let your mind alone.
And then there was a hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you Philip Roberts?’ A tall, plump man, red hair in a crew cut. He looked like police to me. Heavy freckles on his face, wearing a grubby raincoat with damp patches on it, mud on his boots.
‘Philip Roberts,’ I agreed. There was a suggestion of freckles in his eyes. Here we go, back to the police station, I thought. Well, that was something positive, at least – and I might catch up with Emlyn and his old man there.
‘Davies, CID,’ he said. ‘Look – you know David Garston, don’t you? We’re looking for him.’
‘What’s up – is he lost?’
‘Don’t be funny, mister. He’s done a bunk. This bloody fog. You seen anything of him?’
‘I thought you had him in.’ The man sat down next to me and looked as if he was ready for a rest. ‘Has he made a run for it?’
‘I never said that...’
‘Well – have you tried his home?’ Christ, I thought, Davy Garston. And felt relieved.
‘How d’you think I got all this shit on me?’ He said, looking down at his boots.
‘Davy Garston – you want him?’
‘I don’t want him. I want to get off bloody duty, mate, and get my head down.’ He sighed heavily. ‘You’ve not seen him then?’
‘Not a sign,’ I said. ‘If I do – shall I tell him you’re looking for him?’
‘Very funny,’ he said. ‘You got funny mates as well. That old man, that Emlyn Morton – they was out there, digging in all that cowshit.’
The news floored me. ‘At Garston’s farm?’ He nodded. By God, I thought, and felt the blood pound in my head. Abandoned. Left out. Well of all the miserable bloody tricks to play. He’d picked Emlyn. ‘What were they digging for?’ I said.
He got to his feet and stretched and yawned. ‘Search me. For worms? Maybe they’re going fishing.’
‘What about Mr Morton? Is he in the police station still?’
‘Look, matey, I can’t
talk about who’s in the station and who isn’t. You’ve not seen this young Garston right? If you do – say nothin’. Just come and tell us, OK?’ My turn to nod. He went out and I felt more alone than ever.
I left the cafe and started to wander. Lights on in the houses, only a few people out and about, blinds down on many windows. Maelgwyn a secret place, like a town occupied by the enemy. Lights in every window on St John’s Street, except one house. Ceri’s. The bell under my finger rang hollow and echoing. From an upstairs window in the next house a woman I couldn’t see called out, ‘Not at home. They had to go in the middle of the night. Mrs Price’s sister Olwen took seriously ill in the port.’ I thanked her and walked back up the street, cursing the fog, sulking again, a child left out of the game. I wasn’t going to see what they were playing at out there on Garston’s farm. To hell with it. And once more that bloody poem in my head.
‘Goodness,’ Miss Phelps said. ‘Philip Roberts. One has to be careful who one opens one’s doors to.’ Another inch of door space, another part-face. ‘Philip Roberts? Are you the one who received a decoration for gallantry?’
‘That’s Emlyn Morton.’ And the door was opened wide. I nearly laughed aloud, having forgotten what a little round dumpling of a woman she was. Miss Dorothy Phelps, English Lit.
‘You were in the fifth when I retired. You joined the Navy?’
‘The army.’ She led me into her sitting room which had a second fog from cigarette smoke.
‘And it was North Africa?’
‘Burma.’ She had five wireless sets, a notebook by each one.
‘Father a butcher?’
‘Bookseller.’
She did a little dance and clapped her hands. ‘Ah. Yes. Got it! Emlyn Morton’s crowd.’ Her voice which had boomed Shakespeare, Tennyson and Keats was ragged. ‘I have been trying to forget you all. A poem you say?’ She accepted a cigarette eagerly. ‘Your interest in poetry then was minimal, surely? Sit. Cup of tea?’ By Laura’s standards the room was dirty. Miss Phelps moved a vacuum cleaner and went through into the kitchen to put the kettle on the stove. ‘Forty years I spoke,’ she went on, ‘now I listen to my wireless. Philip Roberts, Philip Roberts – so many Robertses and Joneses and Williamses. Radio Paris in ten minutes! And you want the school magazines? Astonishing.’
She went on hunting in sideboards and cupboards, treated me to a bottoms up view of a pair of blue bloomers and brown stockings, and refused all offers of help, muttering my name as she did so. She came back with a large, cardboard box, paused to light yet another cigarette before she opened it. ‘Did you say 1937?’ Yellowing, typewritten sheets in her hands, but there was no poem by Edward Mortimer in that issue.
‘Will you try 1938?’
She held up a stubby finger for silence, the cigarette smoke bringing tears. ‘Edward Mortimer. Philip, we never had an Edward Mortimer. I would have remembered that one. But we – ah, yes – we had a little joke. She smoothed down a page. ‘Yes, yes. We had a joke.’ She cleared her throat and croaked it out:
Who’s left to love?
Only he who rages –
Gone to ashes all the ages.
Summer has a fine warm face,
Winter such a cold embrace.’
And we were silent. The time for Radio Paris was long since past. She gave me a long, questioning look. ‘By Edward Mortimer. Did you know that not one member of staff, none of the children, not one parent ever asked me who Edward Mortimer was! And what does that prove? Why – that nobody ever reads school magazines.’
‘Emlyn?’ I said.
She nodded. ‘He and Marshall Edmunds came to see me – here, in this house. Mrs Edmunds, I was told – is it true?’
‘Yes.’
Another cigarette appeared in her mouth.
‘Incredible. It is many years since I saw her. I don’t get out much, you see. Never a mixer.’ She traced the words with a nicotine stained finger. ‘Children come up with a promising idea, you know – in poetry I mean. They look as if they are going to take you somewhere – then they quit. This is what has happened here. The first three lines promise something, however obscure, and then we go onto something else entirely. It has little meaning out of context. Such a private poem, wouldn’t you say? I said to him “you never wrote this, Morton” but he was a beautiful boy, you know, a charmer. Claimed Edward Mortimer was his nom de plume. I never knew if he had penned it or not. But in it went. A bit of a joke.’ Ash from her cigarette fell on the paper and she blew it away. ‘A private poem. It can mean anything you want it to. Like a prayer.’
She shivered visibly. She stared, a plump and solemn owl, questions gathering behind the cigarette smoke. ‘Why do you want to know? As a young man you did not exhibit either a great concern or feeling for poetry – although I may of course have misjudged you – now home from the war...’
‘I don’t know. It was just something that was going through my head. Look – thank you very much, Miss Phelps. I’ll be going. Sorry to put you to any trouble.’
I got to my feet and she followed me down the hallway to the door, but at a distance. I opened the door, and then she spoke, ‘His mother had died that winter. I saw it as an obscure elegy for her. Gossip said his father was having an affair at the time. Such a private poem.’
How tiny she was in the gloom of the hall, running a hand through her short grey hair. I apologised again and stepped out into the fog. She came in a rush to push the door to. ‘It’s very important, isn’t it?’ She called after me, a kind of relief in her voice.
‘No, not really,’ I replied, but it was important. I felt as if I was nearly there. I walked home slowly, and each face in the fog was Idwal Morton’s.
Laura was in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of stout. ‘What have we here,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d signed the pledge.’
She kept her face hidden. ‘No jokes required,’ she said and gulped down half a glassful. ‘The wedding will not now take place! He’s changed his mind.’
‘Well – good God – what came over him? I’ll go and sort him out for you.’
She became suddenly vicious. ‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough? All of you? All these terrible things that have happened?’ Laura in tears. ‘Like he said – as a man in business in the town he can’t afford to have his name mixed up...’
‘Can’t afford what? Does he think I’ve been murdering people?’
‘You’ve been involved – and people talk...’
‘The miserable old sod!’ How many wrong things can you say? ‘If you ask me – you’re well rid of the bloody old skinflint!’
Then she looked up, her face stiff as a mask, her voice filmed with ice. ‘Did it never strike you that I liked him?’ I had to look away, and the silence grew around us. I wanted to say I was sorry, but it was too late for that. J. Palmer Roberts’ son – your father always laughed at me.
I was still wearing my raincoat. ‘I have to go out, Laura,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’ But she made no reply.
XV
The fog had taken over space and time. No distance and limited sphere of vision, no longer a meaning to day or night. I stamped angrily through it, sometimes misjudging the corner of a building, bumping against a lamp post, colliding with a pillar box that should not have been there. Heading for nowhere and with no purpose. The ships cried out to one another in the estuary, a new urgency in their sound, a new poignancy too. And the fog was colder now and in its mass a smell of burning. It had to be opening time somewhere, please God.
I was the first customer of the evening in the King’s Arms. The barman, Matthew Hughes, said the old man and Emlyn had not put in an appearance during the afternoon opening, and hadn’t things gone chronic what with these women getting knocked off and this bloody fog putting the kibosh on everything? ‘Mrs MT, man – Christ!’ His brother had
taken six hours to cover two miles of his bread round in the old van. Out in the country, see. ‘Know that old Tower on the old coast road there? My brother seen a battalion of police out there, man. Diggin’ inside the bloody thing. Tell me what for?’ Matt’s questions were usually rhetorical, but this time he waited, eyebrows pointing, for an answer.
‘Ghosts, Matt,’ I replied, and downed my drink and headed for the door. I wanted company, but I wanted to keep on the move, too – and a little of Matt went a long way at the best of times.
Amos would be back by now, surely? I called in at the Royal on the off chance, and killed conversation dead. No old man perched on a stool there, either. I could put a name to every face around the bar, but every face belonged to a stranger, suspicious and calculating and sly.
When they started talking again they were talking for my benefit, inviting comments. George Garston’s lad gone funny while studying over there in London. Police put out a general warrant, so they had. ‘I’ve heard it’s all got to do with some photographs taken some time ago,’ someone said. It was then that I began to fear for Amos Ellyott’s safety.
Mrs Edmunds had entered Amos’s rooms in search of more examples of the art of a Polish Airman. The killer too. I shivered. And the killer would have worked it out that Amos Ellyott had not surrendered everything to the police. The old goat had never in his life made a present of secrets. He thrived on secrecy; had it on toast at every meal. The great detective: he’d played that role all around the town. Mrs Edmunds had been in possession of photographs, and had been silenced. And that made Amos the next on the list.
Say Goodbye to the Boys Page 16