‘I’ll make sure, Mr Hawke,’ she said, smiling as she secreted the paper under the fold of her stiff uniform. ‘It won’t be for a few days yet. The little mite is still quite weak.’
‘Thank you. And call me Johnny, please.’
She blushed a little. ‘I’m Sister McAndrew … Susan.’
I leaned forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek and she blushed even further. ‘That’s enough of that,’ she said gently, ‘or I’ll think you’re only here for ulterior motives.’
‘Absolutely.’
We both laughed and took pleasure in the moment, realizing that we were snatching a gentle, whimsical interval from the ragged, grey, dispiriting play of life.
‘I’ll be back to see Peter tomorrow.’ I gave her a wave and strolled down the bleak corridor with something approaching a warm feeling in my heart.
twenty-two
Two Telephone Calls
(1)
Sandra Moore was bored. She was often bored. There was little in life to entertain her except buying smart clothes, attending nice parties and dining in expensive restaurants. Since this awful war had started with its wretched rationing, these activities had been severely restricted. What was worse, some of her friends had deserted her, left London for the country to escape the bombing. She would have loved to go with them. She saw their desertion not as an act of cowardice and self-preservation but one of eminent sense and rationality. Oh to be holed up in some comfortable ‘funk hole’ hotel with them. But Gordon was tied to the capital with his job, one which gave him an income with which he was able to provide her with all the civilized comforts she required, indeed insisted upon, to make her life bearable.
Sandra had one great love in her life – herself. She had forsaken all other loves but herself. Gordon, whom she had relegated to the periphery of her existence, was glimpsed only as a provider. If a horse could have earned the same amount of money as Gordon – preferably more – it would have done for her just as well. Better, actually, because a horse could be stabled outside the house.
These idle thoughts strolled through Sandra’s mind as she puffed on her third cigarette of the morning. Stubbing it out half smoked, she moved to the mirror and checked her makeup. It was perfect. She forced a broad unnatural smile at herself to check the laugh lines. Not bad. She was indeed a handsome, some would say pretty woman who belied her forty-three years. Or at least she thought so.
The shrill ring of the telephone broke in upon this self-congratulatory reverie. She pursed her lips. Who could this be? Was it a summons for lunch by an old friend in town for the day or some even more exciting prospect? She hoped so.
Sandra moved elegantly to the telephone table in the hall. She did not rush. She had no intention of creating the impression that she was eager for the call – although she was. She was eager for anything that would lift her out of the mind-numbing ennui in which she was immersed.
‘Sandra Moore,’ she purred into the receiver.
‘Ah’, said the voice at the other end, ‘the wife of the whore murderer.’
This certainly wasn’t the call Sandra was hoping for. She was about to put the telephone down when the caller spoke again. ‘Don’t go, Sandra, I have important information to impart to you.’
‘Who is this?’
‘A friend.’
‘Then identify yourself.’ For one fleeting moment she wondered if it really was one of Gordon’s cronies making this tasteless call.
‘Not at the moment, Sandra,’ came the hoarse and muffled voice again. ‘But let me give you the reason for calling you. I just wanted to put you in the picture about your husband and Pammie Palmer.’
‘Pammie who?’
‘Don’t you read the newspapers, Sandra? Pammie Palmer, the whore who got herself killed in her flat in Regent’s Park mansions. Did you know that your husband was one of her customers, eh?’
Sandra was well aware that Gordon sought sexual favours elsewhere and she didn’t care as long as he didn’t seek them with her and he kept his sordid flings away from the domestic arena.
‘Do you have a point? If not I shall put the phone down.’
‘Oh, I have a point, Sandra. Very sharp and piercing is my point. Not only was your film star husband a client of the Palmer trollop but he also murdered her. He stuck a knife in her chest.’
Sandra gave a little gasp of disgust.
‘Now, Sandra, I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I want you to ask your husband about it. Don’t be bashful. Just ask him outright. “Why did you kill the Palmer whore?” I’m sure his reaction will be very interesting. Do try it out. I shall ring you again to find out what he said. Goodbye, Sandra.’
With that the line went dead.
(2)
Gordon Moore was back in his dressing-room. It was late afternoon and he had struggled through the difficult interrogation scene – so much expository dialogue – and was relieved to be away from the cameras. Since the humiliating news of his sacking he hated appearing in front of the cameras more than ever. He wasn’t sure how many people knew this was to be his last Tiger Blake picture but he was aware it wouldn’t be long before the news leaked out and then there’d be a lot of sniggering and grinning behind his back on the studio floor. He had never gone out of his way to ingratiate himself with co-stars or the technicians. They would be delighted at his downfall.
He felt sure that Norman Lee, the director, would have been informed about his dismissal, which would please the old bastard immensely. Then a thought struck him as he uncorked the gin bottle. If the bosses of Regent Films wanted to re-vamp the Tiger Blake series, probably they would be getting rid of Lee too. Moore grinned for the first time that day. He hoped they sent him packing back to Hollywood and landed him with directing The Three Stooges – the Californian equivalent of the salt mines. Frankly, Lee’s directorial techniques had not developed since the day of the silents. It’s a wonder he didn’t bring a megaphone on to the set. Moore warmed to the image of Norman Lee tearing his hair out as Larry, Mo and Curly ignored his directorial instructions.
‘Serve the bastard right,’ he observed to his reflection in the make-up mirror before downing a tumbler of gin. It burned his throat and caused him to cough a little but he kept smiling. Cheered by the thought of Lee also getting the chop, he began the tedious process of taking off his make-up. He was reluctant to remove the toupee. He had resisted having to wear one at first but now he liked it. It really did make him look younger. Perhaps he ought to investigate the use of one in real life, particularly as in a few months he’d be scrabbling around for parts. He needed to retain the image of himself as he appeared on the screen.
The phone rang. Without thinking, he snatched it up. It was Tristan. ‘Sorry to bother you, Mr Moore, but I’ve got another urgent call from Pammie Palmer’s office. They said you would be expecting it. Shall I put it through?’
The warm glow that had been starting to suffuse his body, helping him to relax, vanished at the mention of Pammie’s name.
‘Yes. Put it through,’ he said mechanically. What fresh hell was this?
At first there was a hissing silence on the line and then a voice spoke. It was the same voice as last time.
‘Mr Moore?’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want nothing, Mr Moore. The purpose of this call is to provide you with information.’ The tone was cold, precise but with an underlying threat in the delivery.
‘Well, go on then. Get it off your chest,’ snapped Moore. He had gone so far down the road of despair that he was becoming immune to new terrors.
‘I thought you should know that I felt it my duty to inform your wife that you are a whore murderer—’
‘My wife!’
‘Yes, Sandra Moore. She seemed quite shocked at the news.’
‘You bastard.’
‘Such profanity. Still what can one expect from a whore murderer?’
‘I haven’t murdered anyone. I don’t know who you are a
nd why you have got this twisted notion into your head. But I am innocent. I did not kill anyone. So you can go to the Devil.’
‘On the contrary, Mr Moore, it is you who will be going to the Devil – and quite soon.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Murder is a sin which is punishable by death. You have but a little time to place your affairs in order. Are you familiar with Deuteronomy, chapter 19, verse 21?’
Gordon Moore was now convinced he had a madman on the line and was about to put the receiver back on its cradle when the voice came again.
‘However, you are probably familiar with the phrase found at this part of the scriptures: “an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth”. In simple translation, it means a life for a life. I hope you appreciate the implication of this. I am going you kill you, Mr Moore. And soon. Goodbye.’
The line went dead and Gordon Moore found himself looking at his own horrified features staring back at him from the make-up mirror.
twenty-three
As I emerged from the hospital, I was greeted by a fine but insidious mist of rain. Pulling up my collar, I headed for home. I decided to walk and let my mind do some thinking. To be honest my head ached with ideas and thoughts that crowded the narrow passageways of my throbbing brain. I had acquired a lot of information, but yet I didn’t seem to be getting any nearer to pointing the finger at Pammie’s killer.
As I walked, I began to play the Agatha Christie game where you assemble all the known suspects in the library and assess their suitability for the role of murderer.
To begin with, there was Sam Fraser, boyfriend, pimp and the most obvious suspect, now languishing in a cell awaiting a foregone conclusion of a trial, courtesy of Inspector Knight. Of course, as a little voice whispered to me, the most obvious suspect is often the guilty one – that is why they’re the most obvious suspect. Life – and certainly crime – is rarely as complicated or convoluted as it is in the movies. But another voice told me that he just wasn’t the guy. I had no facts to back up this instinct, just my very fallible judgement of character.
Then there was the oily Leo Epstein. There was more to this fellow than met my eye. Thanks to Eve, I knew that his story about his one night of misjudged passion with Pammie was just the tip of the iceberg. So he was a liar. But then he was a solicitor and that’s what they do for a living. Like so many men, it seemed, Epstein had become besotted by the girl. But if that was the case, why on earth would he want to kill her? Did she hold some threat over him – was she blackmailing him perhaps? Or was he devastated when he found out that she gave her favours to other men for a fee?
The third occupant of my imaginary library was our film star, Gordon Moore. I just wasn’t sure about him at all. He had been in Pammie’s flat the night she was killed and Peter’s sighting of him confirmed that Moore had left with blood on his hands and in a distressed state. But was he distressed because he had found the body or because he had killed someone? He seemed to have so many demons in his life. Did he lash out at the thing that he treasured the most: a whore who made him feel loved?
Despite this promising cast, I could not help thinking that there was another shadowy figure in my library whose features I couldn’t see and whose identity was as yet a closed book to me – quite appropriate for a library I suppose. Could this be the individual who had clobbered me on the back of the head? Was he Moore’s phantom caller?
I just didn’t know. Not yet, I didn’t.
But I would.
I closed the library door and my thoughts turned to Eve. The delightful, the delovely, the enigmatic Eve. I smiled as I did so. I really liked her and I thought she liked me, or at least she was intrigued by me, which was a start. However, I was puzzled by her strange behaviour at the end of the previous evening when I had suggested that I see her home. We’d had a good night together and things had gone swimmingly until it was time to go home. Then she had grown decidedly frosty as though I had made improper advances. Was it really something that I had done or said that made her act that way or was she covering up, trying to hide the truth from me? That’s all I needed: another mystery.
As I approached Hawke Towers I was weary and longed for a cup of tea. When I got back to my office, it was already growing dark and a purple dusk was wrapping itself around the city. I found that I had a visitor waiting on my doorstep. It was Mr Palfrey. His hair was plastered down by the rain and his glasses were spotted with moisture.
‘I hope you haven’t been here long,’ I said, opening up.
He shook his head.
I threw off my hat and raincoat and switched on the lights. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea? You look rather damp.’
He shook his head again. ‘No thank you, Mr Hawke. I am here purely on a matter of business.’
‘OΚ,’ I said, sitting on the edge of my desk, dismayed that I’d have to wait for my tea. ‘I expect you want an update on how my investigations are going.’
Palfrey shook his head vigorously. ‘You are wrong in your expectations, Mr Hawke. I am here for a quite different reason.’
‘Oh?’
‘I am here to ask you to cease your investigations into Pamela’s murder. When my wife and I engaged you it was for the purpose of discovering the whereabouts of our daughter. That, in a sense, in a terrible sense, has now been achieved and although we appreciate your concerns about her death we really do not want you to carry on … stirring things up, prolonging our pain. I don’t think my wife can take much more. The police have their man and we are satisfied with their findings. You must, you must … stop it.’
He spoke with a passionate nervous urgency and delivered his thoughts as though he had been rehearsing them for some time. I wondered how much his wife agreed with him.
‘What are you frightened of, Mr Palfrey?’
‘Frightened?’ This seemed to throw him at first. He was off the script now. Then with an arching of his shoulders, he rallied to the challenge of an impromptu response. ‘I am not frightened of anything and neither is my wife. What have we cause to be frightened of anything any more? Our worst nightmare has come true. We have lost our daughter, our little girl, on whom we lavished a great deal of love and affection. Not only have we lost her but in doing so we learned that she cared nothing for us. We were not worth a second thought. We also discovered that she was a prostitute, selling her body for sex. She had become another person with another name and another morality. She had effectively erased us from her life. It is as though we never had a child. So tell me, Mr Hawke, what is there left to be frightened about? We just want it to stop. We don’t care who killed Pamela. It won’t alter facts. She’s dead and she is no longer our daughter.’
His face was suffused with anger and pain. I suppose I should have felt sorry for him but in his tunnel vision of the events he was denying playing any part in the fate of his daughter. I knew this to be wrong.
‘I can understand how you feel, but as a detective I have to follow my instincts, too. A murder has been committed and it is my belief that the police have arrested the wrong man. I cannot let the matter lie.’
‘That is your business not ours. I know that I cannot prevent you from carrying out your investigations. However, I had hoped that you might do so out of consideration for us.…’
‘I can’t, out of consideration for a murdered girl – your daughter. Whatever she was in life, she didn’t deserve to be murdered.’
‘Didn’t she? Well, whatever you do, we want no further contact with you, Mr Hawke. My wife and I are adamant about this. You are to leave us alone.’ He withdrew an envelope from his coat pocket and threw it on to my desk. ‘There’s a further twenty pounds in there to cover your fees and expenses for the last few days. It is our last payment to you. We are dispensing with your services forthwith.’
I picked up the envelope and held it out to Palfrey. ‘Really, there’s no need—’
‘For God’s sake, take it,’ he bellowed, jumping to his feet. ‘We don’t want to
be beholden to anyone. It’s our way of ending our sordid little arrangement. To draw the line under something that has blighted our lives.’
Palfrey’s behaviour could have been comic were it not for the unnerving fanatical gleam in his eyes and the bitterness that shook his frame. His whole demeanour was one of unpredictable anger.
I flapped the envelope before his face. ‘If that’s the way you want it…’ I said.
‘It is. Now it’s time I got back to my wife.’ He rose stiffly and without another word he left.
I sat for some time staring into middle distance. I had lost clients before but not like this. The Palfreys’ lives had been ruined by the discovery that their daughter was not the simple, plain girl they had believed her to be – had, in fact, tried to make her. I sensed from our first encounter that Mr Palfrey had wanted to control Pamela, to create in his eyes the ideal girl according to his standards. Any normal daughter would have rebelled against such strictures. It may well be that part of the anger he exhibited was the result of the guilt he felt. And then again, maybe not.
Well, I shrugged my weary shoulders, clients or not I still had a case to solve.
I wandered over to the gas ring and put the kettle on.
After two cups of Typhoo, three Craven As and a further ponder, I made a telephone call.
A tired voice at the other end recited the number.
‘Mrs Palfrey?’
‘Yes.’ The voice was hesitant.
‘John Hawke here.’
‘Oh, sorry Mr Hawke, I didn’t recognize your voice.’
‘That’s all right. I’ve just had a visit from your husband. He’s asked me to drop my investigations into Pamela’s death.’
There was a pause and then, ‘Yes, I thought he would. He can’t bear it any longer, you see. He feels so hurt by the whole affair. He is so used to being in charge of things, of his life, that he cannot cope when events go beyond his control. He feels lost, disorientated. He thinks that if he cuts himself off from everything, he’ll be able to manage.…’
Forests of the Night Page 13