Face Value (Richard and Amelia Patton)

by Roger Ormerod

  Her eyes widened, searching for a hint of humour in this remark, but I hadn’t intended any. ‘You know very well that wasn’t my husband.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t. It was Kendall. But I can understand you’d want to do what you could for your husband.’ I allowed a bit of reproach to creep into my voice. ‘I suppose you’d promised?’

  She pouted at me. ‘Don’t be so scornful about promises, Richard.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said sincerely. ‘I’m not, my dear.’

  ‘But I suppose it’s different for you,’ she shot at me.

  ‘I made promises?’

  ‘Oh, not verbally, but all the time, by implication, by gesture, by your tone of voice.’

  ‘Ah!’ I stirred. ‘Want any help there?’

  She shrugged, and changed the subject quickly. She was putting out pork chops. ‘Isn’t there anything you can do...to get them to leave me alone?’

  ‘I’m not a policeman anymore.’

  ‘You’re so cold. Why did you come, if you don’t want to talk to me?’

  ‘I’m having to get used to people not wanting to talk to me. Maybe I’ve grown just a little wary,’ I admitted.

  ‘It was the way you went about it,’ she declared. Her voice was toneless, but she was searching for reaction.

  ‘I never got a chance to explain that. But it was for you.’

  ‘Please don’t explain,’ she implored me. ‘I don’t think I could stand that. I’ve got frozen peas. How are you at peeling potatoes?’

  ‘My speciality. Every eye carefully dealt with,’ I assured her, heaving myself to my feet.

  ‘I’ve got a potato knife if you want it.’

  ‘No. I prefer an ordinary kitchen knife. Yes, that one’ll do.’ I picked up a potato and considered it carefully. ‘Donaldson’s already asked me about the gutted car, and I managed to put him off with a plausible explanation. But he hasn’t even realised the significance of the other important details.’

  ‘The last grain of truth?’ she asked, peering into the grill. ‘Well, yes. Now you come to put it like that.’

  She was suspicious of me, I could tell that. ‘What,’ she asked softly, ‘hasn’t he realised?’

  ‘The significance of the pistol with the slivers of glass in the bore, the hanging doll, and the rusted old shotgun:’

  I flicked out an eye with a dexterous movement of the wrist. She asked me, slipping the pan under the grill: ‘And can you really hope he’ll come to you and ask?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  She was unable to control the tremor in her voice. ‘But I thought that was what you wanted — for him to come crawling to you, so that you could explain the last little dribble of detail to him. Being careful not to be too condescending, of course. Then you could close it all up neatly.’ She laughed, and there was a hideous note of hysteria in it. ‘Your triumph! Patton’s last case!’

  I paused. The knife was stilled. I stared out of the window into the darkness. ‘That’s a very attractive idea, but I’m afraid it’ll have to remain a dream.’

  We were circling each other warily, the effort to maintain a casual tone putting sharp edges to it.

  ‘But you’ve already succeeded, Richard. You’ve supplied Donaldson with the truth — the details can’t really matter.’

  What a statement! Details were the picture, frame and all. ‘I’ve supplied him with a reasonably good case. Knowing him, it’ll seem to him to be the absolute truth. But it isn’t, you know. Not till every action makes sense. Will that be enough potatoes?’

  ‘It depends how hungry you are.’

  ‘Any afters?’

  She smiled. ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’ll do a couple more.’

  ‘Why are you teasing me?’ she burst out. ‘You keep suggesting that there could be more, more, more...’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve got a tidy mind. You, at least, ought to appreciate that.’

  ‘Oh I do, I do,’ she told me angrily, clattering the grill pan. She cursed softly at a splash of hot fat on her wrist.

  ‘Run it under the cold water,’ I advised solicitously, turning on the tap.

  She stood close to me, her hair falling over her eyes. I could smell her hair, and yearned to touch the soft down beneath it at the nape of her neck.

  ‘There,’ I said. ‘Is that better?’

  She dabbed her wrist dry with a towel. ‘And what is fidgeting around inside that mind of yours, Richard?’ she asked, smiling now. But her eyes were on my hands, clasping the knife, nervously fingering it.

  ‘Donaldson and Merridew seemed satisfied with the explanation I gave them. I just wish I was.’

  ‘You’re not satisfied with your own explanation?’

  ‘I put it together in a hurry. I knew the body was Kendall’s, and I thought up a theory that’d save you from arrest, however shaky the logic was. But I ask you! Your husband waiting there, in the cottage...and searching out a shotgun! Does it sound reasonable?’

  She was staring at me in exasperation. ‘But it was your theory. What’s the matter with, you, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘It was a sloppy way for your husband to go about it, that’s all. There was no guarantee that Kendall would go to the cottage, and surely no certainty of being able to find a weapon to confront him with.’

  ‘But Kendall did go to the cottage. Why argue with fact?’

  ‘Yes.’ I pointed the knife at her. ‘That fact can’t be disputed. Kendall went there — his body was found there.’

  She glanced at me, then slid it past my head. ‘Reach me that saucepan, will you?’

  I did so. She turned away from me to the cooker.

  ‘If you’d care to put out the place mats, Richard...they’re in the drawer with the cutlery.’

  I did it. The mats had dog portraits on them. I’d never owned a dog. The reaches of the moors called out for walking boots and a dog, and Amelia at my side.

  At last she spoke softly. ‘Where is all this talk getting you?’

  ‘Simplicity. Logic. And maybe the truth of something...For a moment that thought clouded everything. Then I shook my head. ‘Coral Clayton’s father took his own life, you know, because of the thoughts he couldn’t live with. I’m beginning to understand that.’

  She looked at me with distress. ‘Do you think I could help?’

  ‘Perhaps. By listening, and telling me where I’m wrong.’

  ‘Then say it, and I’ll try.’

  But then, not giving my words the attention they deserved, she returned her concentration to her two saucepans.

  ‘It’s all a matter of logical behaviour,’ I explained. ‘I can’t see your husband relying on the threat of a hanging doll, and waiting nearly a fortnight for Kendall to put in an appearance. Long before then it would’ve looked as though it wasn’t going to work.’

  ‘Does everything have to be logical?’ she asked, flicking hair out of her eyes. ‘Life’s not like that.’

  ‘Acceptable, at least. And I can’t accept that your husband would have been able to search out a shotgun, in a district he didn’t know. Do you agree?’

  ‘Oh, if you like. I don’t see what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘Only that I worked up a theory that doesn’t really work.’

  ‘Theories!’ she said scornfully.

  I stared bleakly ahead. ‘But it is logical for your husband to have taken the pistol to the cottage. After all, he went with you to Kendall’s bungalow, to help you clean it, so he had a chance of getting his hands on the pistol, before Kendall even came out of prison.’

  ‘You’re sure the pistol did go to the cottage?’

  ‘It’s got glass fragments in the bore, and that links neatly with the hole in the window pane. You do get my point, though! It’s more logical for Kendall to have gone to the cottage and waited that length of time. He’d be afraid, and hiding. It’s more logical that Kendall should be the one to be able to hunt out a shotgun, because he was born in that district. And, because he found it n
ecessary to obtain a shotgun, we can assume he didn’t find his pistol where he’d hidden it in his bungalow. Which would be logical, if it’d already been taken away from there. I can’t get round that logic.’

  ‘So why try?’ she asked, lifting out the chops with a fork. ‘Why upset yourself about it?’

  ‘Because it takes us right back to where we started, with Kendall waiting at the cottage, and your husband as the intruder. And that makes complete nonsense of the way I managed to explain the fingerprints.’

  ‘Then there doesn’t seem to be much point in talking about it,’ she said in a reasonable tone.

  ‘But perhaps there is. It was a nice twist, explaining how the body could be Kendall’s, and the fingerprints somebody else’s, but unfortunately it does require Kendall to have been the intruder. It’s much more sensible the other way round, him waiting there and scared. I mean, it’d explain the trip wires and the cans. It’d explain the revolver with the glass bits in its bore. And it’d explain how somebody could’ve got close enough to kill Kendall, because a pistol will hide in a pocket, when a shotgun can’t be hidden. In that way, a visit would appear to be friendly, so that Kendall would logically run to unlock the front door from inside, find it was wedged solid, and then fling open the window. And that explains the glass in the pistol bore, the hole in the window, and the glass fragments on the ground where we found them. Damn it, everything falls into place.’

  But it didn’t get past the big snag that the fingerprints in the cottage had not been Kendall’s. I eyed her, wondering if she’d pounce on that.

  ‘The hand could’ve been wearing a glove,’ I suggested. ‘It was cold, after all, though there hadn’t been any snow. From that moment — window wide open, the shotgun already placed where he couldn’t reach it, Kendall would’ve been helpless.’

  She put the plate in front of me. ‘I got some beer in for you, Richard. Lager. Would you like that?’

  ‘Please.’ Wondering when she’d got it.

  I watched her moving about the kitchen, opening the can and carefully pouring it into the glass. Her hands were unsteady.

  ‘Aren’t you drinking?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t like to drink alone.’

  ‘You’re my guest, Richard. Do stop criticising.’

  I raised my eyebrows, took the glass from her, and watched as she took her seat opposite me. For a couple of minutes we ate silently. I waited, wondering whether she would be able to let it alone. But no....

  ‘This is just talk, isn’t it?’ she asked, the vertical fence lines again between her eyes.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But he wasn’t shot with a pistol. And you know that the fingerprints weren’t his.’

  ‘I’ve already explained that you shouldn’t assume that the fingerprints in the cottage had to belong to the man who was found dead there.’

  She was silent. She glanced up once from her plate, but my eyes were on her, and hers were full of pain.

  ‘Then what are you getting at?’ she asked at last, a meekness in her voice.

  ‘Something I hate to think about,’ I admitted. ‘Let me come at it from another direction. I’d found the hanging doll and the rusted shotgun at Kendall’s bungalow, and I’d made my mind up what they had to mean. I didn’t like the answer very much. But then, suddenly, I came across another shocking idea. Kendall wasn’t shot with the pistol. You said that yourself. Then—why not? He was shot with a shotgun, when a pistol must have been available, purely and simply to hide his identity. Brason suggested it, but I couldn’t see it at the time, because I was surrounded by a whole cottage full of fingerprints. Yet now...as I said, it’s a fallacy to assume those fingerprints belonged to the dead man. Now d’you see what I’m getting at? If there’s to be any reliance at all on logic, then I have to come down to one really shocking fact. Kendall must have been killed with the shotgun to hide his identity, and that was done by two separate and deliberate barrels being discharged into his face. One after the other! When the first must have had him down, the second shot couldn’t have been more than cold and vicious destruction.’

  She choked, and clattered from the table, rushed to the sink, and drew herself a glass of water. I got to my feet and went to her. Her face was red, her cheeks shining. I took her elbows and led her back to the table.

  To apologise would have seemed insincere. ‘Such revolting details when you’re eating,’ I murmured.

  She gulped. Her voice was hoarse. ‘You seem to be able to pick your moments.’

  ‘Are you all right now?’

  She nodded. I resumed my seat. ‘We’ll say no more about it,’ I assured her.

  Then suddenly she flared at me. ‘To say that now! Go on with it, for God’s sake!’ Then she was more calm, controlling herself as abruptly as her anger had broken free. ‘You came here, and you were determined to say it. You seem to have forgotten I might want something from you.’

  I flinched at that, and took a sip of lager, merely to moisten my lips. I couldn’t taste it. ‘Perhaps I’m doing both at the same time,’ I suggested. ‘Let me say it?’ I watched for her nod, which was minimal. ‘All right, then. I’ll tell you about the doll and the shotgun. That couldn’t upset you.’

  She smiled weakly.

  ‘The doll, you see, had been hanged by a noose from one of Kendall’s trees. The significant thing about it was that it had a little beard. When Kendall was arrested, he had a beard, and he kept it until he went into Long Lartin. Then he shaved it off. You know that, and I know that, but the Clayton brothers didn’t know it.’

  ‘The Clayton brothers...that would be the uncles...’

  ‘Of little Coral Clayton, the girl Kendall assaulted.’ I was being cautiously delicate. ‘Yes. It was their brother who later took his own life, and Coral’s mother, Gabby Clayton, who had a nervous breakdown. So you can see, they had a score to settle with Kendall, and I can assure you it gave us a bit of a headache. But if Kendall had shown himself in this town, and was killed, then the Claytons would’ve been the first we’d go to. If there were no alibis around, then they, or one of them, would’ve been in serious trouble.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  She was very subdued, I thought, very quiet. Surely I couldn’t be wrong about her!

  ‘And Ted Clayton’s a painter and decorator, and the beard was the bristles of a paintbrush. I was round to see Ted Clayton like a shot.’

  ‘Pouncing.’

  ‘If you like. But the doll was only a warning, after all. Kendall was simply not around. No more than that. But later, after we had a body — which might or might not have been Kendall’s — a rusty old shotgun turned up. It was tied to a tree, and pointing right at a drawing in white emulsion paint on the back window. You see the emphasis there? The drawing was done with a paintbrush — Ted Clayton again. Emulsion paint — Ted Clayton. But if this was simply a threat, then in practice it proved their innocence. It’d been rigged after the murder. Who’d threaten after the event? I didn’t think either of them was clever enough to rig it as a blind. And yet...’

  I paused, gathering my thoughts.

  ‘Yes?’ She was leaning forward tensely.

  ‘Think what those two warnings said. No...shouted out. One, that they were set up by the Claytons. Two, that they proved their innocence. But there was something strange about the second warning. The rusted shotgun was from the cottage. I’d never be able to prove it, but I was certain. And the drawing on the window was too expressive — a psychological throwback to the actual murder. It was probably not even recognised by the artist as being a dead giveaway. But that was what it was. It meant that the two warnings were rigged by the murderer, and intended to prove the innocence of the Clayton brothers.’

  ‘Who’d be in danger of arrest if Kendall died?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Exactly. And everything that happened regarding the actual murder was also slanted in the direction of the Claytons’ innocence. Why was Kendall s
cared away from the bungalow to a remote cottage? Because the Claytons knew the bungalow, but had no reason to know the cottage. And what happened regarding the identification of the body?

  ‘Look at it. What we found was a body that could have been Kendall’s, or could have been your husband’s. If it had been Kendall’s, then again the Claytons might have been in danger. But we accepted that the body was your husband’s, and once again the danger to the Claytons drifted away.’ I sighed. It was almost a groan. ‘And the reason we accepted the body as your husband’s was because of the shaving-soap bowl — and because there were no hands and no face.’

  ‘Richard!’

  I set my jaw. Merridew had always flinched when I did that. She smiled encouragingly. ‘Don’t you see what I’m getting at? It was planned...planned...planned.’ I emphasised each repetition with a pound of my fist on the table. ‘Everything was to keep the Claytons in the clear, which meant the mutilation was also planned. Even if it meant it had to be done with a bloody meat axe, if that was all there was.’

  She gave a small whimper, fists tight against her teeth to control it. ‘Oh please...You don’t have to...’

  ‘I have to,’ I said savagely. ‘It’s nearly driven me insane. I couldn’t help but conclude that the shotgun was used because it happened to be there, to kill him, and then deliberately — the second shot carefully aimed — to make sure those hands and the face were smashed to a pulp.’

  ‘Stop it!’ she screamed.

  ‘And all to protect the bloody Claytons,’ I said heavily. ‘As with the car.’

  She peered at me between her fingers. ‘The car?’

  ‘It had been planned,’ I sighed, ‘some time before. But the death took place in an isolated cottage. The body could have remained undiscovered for a couple of months, three, more. That wouldn’t do. By that time the doll and gun threats — all the carefully worked out protection for the Claytons — would’ve gone stale. The police had to be alerted...to something out of the ordinary. So the car was fired. It triggered something. It got me interested, and then I couldn’t leave it alone. God help me, I couldn’t drop it, and I’ve agonised over that shotgun...’