‘Not before bloody time. There’s nobody I want to shoot, you understand. Except you, maybe.’
Amos did his ticking noises then slipped the gun into his pocket. He appealed to the stranger. ‘You see what I have to put up with?’ Ridetski nodded and looked hard at me across the table. And a silence fell over us. It was totally quiet except for old men’s noises – groans and sighs and creaks – coming from Amos. In the distance I thought I could hear the sirens from the ships in the estuary. The stranger kept on turning the gold ring on his finger. It was twenty minutes past seven, assuming my watch was behaving itself.
Then we heard the lift go down. ‘Ah,’ Amos said, ‘the invited.’ We listened for it to rise again, and the wheels rolled and we looked towards the door. The lift halted. Fingers scratched on wood. The door opened. Emlyn’s grinning face. ‘Second floor? Any more for the basement?’
He came into the light. He was wearing a pair of cord trousers, a white polo neck sweater under his RAF jacket which he had dyed black. ‘What’s all this, are we going to have a séance, or something? Hullo, Philip. That old bugger’s been dragging me round all day. Who’s that?’ He pointed at the stranger. ‘Is it the original Mr Ridetski in person?’ He went over to the stranger and crouched and stared. ‘Where did you dig him up from, Amos?’ he said as he straightened.
He came over to sit next to me. ‘Philip, I’ve been wallowing in bullshit all day. Smell me.’ The old man cackled softly. ‘I had to have three baths when I got home.’ He smiled broadly at each of us in turn. ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Good evening. Good evening.’ And very softly, out of the corner of his mouth, started to trumpet ‘Night and Day’.
‘Desist,’ Amos hissed at him. ‘That damn noise – he’s been making it all day.’
‘You should have asked Philip. Five o’clock this bloody morning, Philip! Can you imagine? Silly old bugger!’ The lift began to move. ‘Ah! What light from yonder window breaks, I wonder?’
‘Please be quiet,’ Amos said wearily, but Emlyn was sitting up straight and saying ‘Hark! Harken! Who can this be?’ The lift had reached the bottom. The stranger fingering his moustache. The lift began to rise, and even Emlyn was quiet until the door opened.
‘Oh, my God,’ he said, ‘father’s been at the wine cellar again!’
Idwal Morton had a foolish, lopsided, brilliantly white grin on his face, but he looked better, his great forehead glistening, his eyes bright. He closed the door behind him. The lift began to move again. ‘MT’s on his way,’ he said. He waited there in the outer darkness. ‘MT,’ he said again as the lift came up. When the door opened he nearly fell over as he bent to help MT Edmunds into the room. ‘Good old MT,’ he kept saying, ‘steady as she goes.’
They came into the light, Idwal holding on to MT’s arm and punching him gently. ‘Thank you for your message,’ MT said. ‘What a terrible fog. The worst in living memory. Did you know there’s a ship on fire in the estuary?’
‘Gentlemen,’ Amos said, ‘may I introduce an old acquaintance of yours – Mr Andrei Ridetski.’ The stranger looked uncertain, watching Amos as if he expected a signal.
MT looked at the Pole blankly. ‘A freighter on fire in the estuary,’ he said. He was wearing a black bow tie. I could see his fists clenching. ‘There must have been a collision in the fog you see. Worst fog in living memory.’
But Idwal Morton went over to the man and resting both hands on the table looked down at him and said, ‘Will you look at the way this one’s filled out, MT. By God, you bloody old crook, Andy!’
‘Please sit,’ Amos ordered.
‘Certainly,’ MT said. ‘Of course.’ He kept his head rigid and stared straight ahead.
Idwal took the chair next to him after giving him a questioning glance. And now that they were in the light and seated they slumped suddenly, MT somehow punctured, Idwal ravaged, and both of them exhausted.
‘You old piss pot,’ Emlyn said to Idwal. ‘You should be in your bed.’
‘I do not want any idiotic remarks from you two,’ Amos said, a steely note in his voice. ‘I may lose the thread. I want no distraction.’ He had a tattered bundle of notes in front of him. Most of them on the backs of envelopes. ‘May I say at the outset that I respect your decision to accept Mr Ridetski’s invitations. There should be three of you, but perhaps the third may yet change his mind. Only truth is on trial here, our purpose to make an enquiry into it, nothing more. I am pleased that you were able to greet one another without bitterness, more especially since you two gentlemen had it in mind, some years ago, to kill Mr Ridetski.’
‘The photos were fakes,’ Idwal said, his eyes shining.
‘But you did not know that then, Mr Morton. Unlike the third man.’
‘Comes up behind me, silent like a cat,’ Ridetski said suddenly. ‘One push and I’m down that lift shaft with a busted leg.’
‘If you don’t mind, Mr Ridetski,’ Amos broke in.
‘All right, all right – but I crawl away. I get a lift on a convoy out of this damn town, thank God. Too damn dangerous.’
‘Mr Ridetski, please. I am very grateful to you for coming forward – but I must ask you to wait until I ask you to speak.’ The Pole raised both hands, palms outwards, and nodded. ‘You did very well from your experiments in the dark room. A venture not without profit, although one gentleman soon refused to pay. What a greedy man you were, Ridetski. Three men...’
‘The war wasn’t going to go on forever, Mr Ellyott. War is a greedy business.’
A silence followed the Pole’s remark. Amos looked as if he had already lost the thread and was shuffling his papers. Six of us around a table, the oil lamps flickering. Idwal and MT stared fixedly ahead, the Pole with an injured look on his face, Emlyn working away at yet another trumpet break which I could not identify. A stranger coming upon us might well think that we were a secret society, or bank robbers met to divide the loot. I kept my mind on fancies in order to keep reality away.
‘To resume. Ridetski increased his demands. Two men decide on the short answer.’ I could see sweat breaking out on Idwal’s forehead. ‘Ridetski is summoned to a meeting here, in this room. Here among the bags of sugar, the tinned meats, the jars of coffee, spirits in bottles, tobacco and cigarettes by the box. The currency of war. The currency still in the piping days of peace. Ridetski arrives early, to hand over negatives he might claim now, though I would doubt it.’ The Pole raised his shoulders in a non-committal shrug. ‘But let that pass. What matters here and now is that he was standing, crouched perhaps, over the door to that lift shaft, waiting and listening. And someone...’
‘Garston it had to be,’ Ridetski broke in.
‘Someone.’ Amos raised his voice. ‘Someone kneed you in the back and sent you down the lift shaft. By some miracle, Mr Ridetski’s injuries were limited to a broken leg. But he was trapped there at the bottom of the shaft. And on the way were two men.’ Ridetski nodded sombrely. ‘A predicament indeed. Was it fear that gave you the strength to drag yourself out to the inspection pit?’
MT stood and raised a hand.
‘Sit down sir,’ Amos ordered. ‘There will be time for questions later.’ MT nodded and resumed his seat. And I knew it all then.
‘When the two gentlemen arrived there was no one here. Mr Ridetski crawled away, secured a lift out of the town...’
MT was on his feet again, ‘With the court’s permission I would like to point out...’
Once again Amos waved him down. ‘When I have done,’ he went on. ‘Mr Ridetski left in chilling circumstances. He deserted. Began a new life, leaving behind him photographs and negatives, some of which poor Mrs Edmunds was to discover and remove when she paid a visit to a hairdresser’s establishment on a fateful night.’ Amos blew his nose into his handkerchief, a sound that made echoes in the room. ‘Mrs Ridetski had left in a hurry
, her door ajar, to keep a most fearful appointment...’
Now MT was up again, standing to attention. This time the words would not come out, and all he could manage was to raise both arms to Amos, a gesture of surrender.
‘Tweedledum,’ Emlyn said softly. ‘What about Tweedledee?’ But Idwal made no move to stand. He was looking up in wonder at MT and with shaking hands tugged at his coat. MT came down heavily on his chair, his mouth moving, no sound coming out. And there was a silence that seemed to last forever.
Then Amos cleared his throat. ‘Not consistent with the facts, Mr Edmunds? No one left the town nursing a broken leg? No one pushed down a lift shaft on that night in October 1942?’ MT staring ahead again. ‘My apologies for the charade. I was at a loss, I must confess. Someone concealed a body that night. Mr Garston, Philip tells me, expected to see Ridetski tonight. I accept that. You, Mr Morton, imagined a likeness in our friend here.’ He looked at the stranger at the head of the table. ‘But you, Mr MT, knew quite well it could not possibly be Ridetksi, did you not?’ MT rose once more, Idwal staring at him aghast. Amos motioned him down with a gentle wave of his hand. ‘You, Mr MT alone.’ Why didn’t you just ask the man, I wanted to say? Why did he have to piss about like this? But he wasn’t done yet. He pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. I hated him then. It was a brass button. It did a spin on the scarred table top. It came to rest.
The silence stretched on. The whole room surely could hear the hammering of my heart. Then the man who had played Ridetski said, ‘Where do we go from here, Mr Ellyott?’ And at that moment the lift began to move and we sat in a burning silence waiting for it to rise.
It was David Garston who came out of the lift. David Garston, so pissed he fell out of the lift. ‘I’ve come to confess,’ he said, ‘actually.’
David’s legs were made of jelly. He took a couple of wobbly steps and decided that there wasn’t much point in doing that. He had a smile on his face which did not belong there, and which he found an annoyance, and could do nothing about. He stared at us through a curtain of hair, blinked rapidly and tried again, fighting to keep us in focus. We were too much for him. His head sagged. His knees gave way. He crumpled slowly and came down heavily on his bum and found the wall against his back a comfort. His feet came up briefly, came down again with a thump. And he was gone. Out for the count.
‘Oh, very well done,’ Emlyn remarked. He went over to him and examined him with interest. ‘What a lovely condition,’ he said. ‘What with shortages I didn’t think there was that much booze left in town. What, do you suppose he came to confess to?’ He lit a cigarette and had a spell of coughing and stubbed it out angrily. David Garston began to snore.
‘A good case could be made for him. He was a caller at the hairdresser’s establishment. He did not sit out the concert with his parent on the night in question. He would have access to the keys which afforded an entrance to this wretched place. And he had suffered a breakdown, I understand. Much going for him. He would know the lady’s history, have an inkling perhaps of involvement by his father in past misdemeanours. He would know that by making a telephone call in Ridetski’s voice, he would bring her here. And he could have been waiting in the darkness for her, naked.’
‘Oh, I say,’ Emlyn said softly.
‘And his motive? Threats to inform his father by that unfortunate lady? He might equally have been motivated by a desire to protect his father. Filial loyalty, perhaps? But this I would doubt. David’s relationships with his parent were not good. He does not want to be a doctor. He has suffered a nervous collapse...’
‘Especially now, eh Philip,’ Emlyn said. The two broken men sitting in front of Amos were not listening, I was certain.
‘His mind may, as they say, have snapped – and that would neatly account for later outrages. Oh, yes, he fits many parts of our puzzle. Who knows what he intended? But we do know, don’t we, that the murderer returned to this place and carried Mrs Ridetski’s body to the roof and hurled her into the night. The medical student might well know about pressure points in the neck, but physically he would be incapable, surely, of carrying an inert body up there for the final, perplexing act?’ And he turned to me. ‘Would you like to say something at this stage, Philip?’
‘What would you like me to say, Mr Ellyott?’ There was a tightening band across my stomach, a pulse beat jarring in my throat.
‘You know, don’t you?’ An ancient face that should have emerged from under a protective shell. ‘You have known for some time, I suspect. I would like you to say Emlyn, Philip.’
The silence choked me. Idwal Morton gave me one, pleading glance, and then his head went down.
‘Say Emlyn, Philip boy,’ Emlyn said softly.
‘Emlyn who pilfered the key from Garston. Emlyn who telephoned the lady, a voice out of Middle Europe saying “This is Andy”. Emlyn who waited her arrival in this room. Emlyn who returned later with Marshall Edmunds and told him to carry her up those stairs and throw her over the side.’
Two beaten men, heads lowered as if in prayer. The sound of their heavy breathing. David Garston snoring at the edge of darkness. My heart’s pounding adding to the sound.
‘Say Emlyn, Philip,’ Emlyn said.
‘A special relationship,’ Amos said. ‘Philip he admired. Marshall he controlled.’
‘We’re back to charades, Philip,’ Emlyn’s voice nagging at me. ‘Join in. Say Emlyn.’
‘Mrs Ridetski had become a rival,’ the old croaking voice went on. ‘Marshall became murderous, thinking it was Emlyn he saw leaving the lady’s house, mistaking David Garston for him.’
David Garston gave out a light, yelping snore.
‘Well – you’ve got to admit it’s an interesting proposition,’ Emlyn said, ‘considering I was blowing my lungs out at that dance at the Royal, with witnesses to prove it.’
‘Such a drunken affair,’ Amos remarked coldly. ‘With long intervals to use up the special license at the bar. He was away only a short time. She came hurrying through the streets. He stripped off and waited for the lift to rise...’
‘Oh, come on!’ Emlyn said. ‘Then back to the dance in his birthday suit?’
‘And Marshall, to seal their special relationship, had to cast her away from him forever.’ The old man’s voice cockerel high. The terrible acceptance from the two men. ‘The total irrationality of it. Inviting attention to this wretched but special place.’
‘Now look, Philip, you’d better say Emlyn because this old bugger’s getting a bit rude.’
‘Next day,’ Amos went on, ‘he was to realise what a natural suspect Marshall Edmunds made. Especially when he confessed. And so it had to become a dreadful farce. A mass-murderer has to arrive on the scene.’ An old man’s mockery in his voice. ‘Ghastly charades. Tiny, fragile women. Miss Porterhouse on the King’s lap, Miss Sweeney among the flowers, Mrs Palmerstone cast adrift. Essays in the grotesque. We were to think, of course, that there was a frenzied killer at large, but in truth one suspects, were it possible, something even more sinister. Self gratification, dare I suggest?’
‘You suggest anything you like,’ Emlyn said lightly, ‘but you’re a bit short of proof.’
Speak up, I wanted to cry out to the two bowed heads across the table. For Christ’s sake. Just one word of protest. Someone please.
‘And finally, Mrs Edmunds.’ MT shook his head, forcing himself not too look up. ‘Mrs Edmunds who linked old misdemeanours with new outrages. Fearing for her son she circulated photographs...’
‘It was for the boy!’ MT gasped out.
‘One of them she brought to me. Why to me? Emlyn wondered what I had done to make her show her hand. I informed him that I had more photographs. He never asked me where I had obtained them, but he was not long in making the connection with a length of wallpaper removed from Mrs Ridetski
’s rooms.’ He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and moved it about arrogantly but made no effort to light it. ‘Thus he came plundering to my rooms. He knew I was close. He had to find how close. And tragically Mrs Edmunds arrived at the same conclusion. Unlike Mr Garston I have no faith in locks and keys.’
‘Except that he was at the pictures with Ceri Price,’ I said.
‘Philip!’ Emlyn’s voice ringing in my ears. ‘Good old Philip! One flaw destroys it all. All these lovely theories blown to smithereens. Got you now, Sherlock!’
And still two men with heads bowed, locked in silence. Amos Ellyott stroked his nicotine stained moustache, then pulled a gold watch from the depths of his clothing and snapped it open. He gave a nod. ‘I gave you time, all of you. Emlyn, you didn’t have to come here this evening...’
‘Good story, Amos. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
A long drawn-out sigh from the old man. ‘You could have gone anywhere but you went immediately to an address I gave you.’ He waved a hand at the man who had played Ridetski. ‘This gentleman’s niece and her husband have taken a boarding house in the town. It was there that I told you I had moved the young lady and her family. A lie – as you discovered. They are elsewhere in town.’ He turned to me. ‘Emlyn left the cinema at half past eight and did not return. Miss Price, a most loyal young lady, was a long time admitting the fact. I ordered her to wait until eight this evening, then she was to inform the idiot Inspector. I needed time for men to think and make decisions.’
Say Goodbye to the Boys Page 18