But after all, I’d not been completely honest myself. There’d been no mention of Gartree.
I fetched out my crumpled jacket and my slacks, deciding that a slightly more sober appearance would get me further with what I wanted to do. I had a clean shirt with a collar, but no tie. All the same, the total effect wasn’t bad, though the waist of the slacks seemed a bit tight and the jacket was stretched across my chest. How long since I’d worn them? More than four years.
I had breakfast in the empty bar. Cereal, two eggs and bacon, and toast that was hot, which was more than I’d have been given at an hotel. It was served by the plump and jovial woman I’d noticed helping George the previous night. She turned out to be Mrs. George.
She said, “If you’re seeing a woman, you need that outfit pressing. If you’ll take ’em off, I’ll do it for you.”
“I don’t know who I’ll be seeing.”
“Whoever it is, you’re not going to make a good impression. No hurry, is there?”
I didn’t know, so I smiled and said, “Thanks. I’ll let you have them.”
So after breakfast I changed back into jeans and anorak, and took a stroll around the town. Through it would be a better way of putting it. There seemed to be no more than a main street, weaving and winding for no obvious reason, with cobbled side streets jutting out at random angles. On one side they were very short, seeming to peter out to nothing but scrub and shingle in a few yards. On the other they were longer, but went nowhere, lined with abrupt rows of cottages as though tossed down by a negligent builder. Behind them were hills.
The rain of the previous night still lay on the narrow pavements, though the sky was clearing. The wind was brisk. I walked past the police station, and it was some while before I realised all the shops were shut. Then I remembered it was Sunday. Only a rare pedestrian padded the streets, with a dog on a lead. The occasional car drifted through. Otherwise, there was no activity. I spotted a cafe with dim lights in its interior. It might have been open, but I suspected you’d get yesterday’s teabags.
At the far end of the town, the houses left behind, the main road turned away to the left, climbing into the hills. A minor road continued onwards. It was signposted: Port Sumbury. Port? It was then that I became aware of the seagulls. I hadn’t realised I was so close to the coast. Although the distance was marked as two miles, I set out to walk to Port Sumbury.
To my left the ground began to rise in terraces. Above me were expensive houses, well separated, smug in their elevation, with expensive cars glinting in the sunlight that was now bursting from behind a cloud. To my right the terrain was flat, with patchy woodland, sparse, with an occasional cottage set well back. The cries of the gulls were now impatient.
I rounded a bend to the right, and caught my first glimpse of the sea, grey and sombre, beyond the scrub and the vegetation. I walked on. There was another bend, this time to the left, and the sea receded. Ahead, the scrub became a patch of solid woodland, and I saw that there was activity along the edge of it. A police car and a dark van were pulled over on to the grass verge, and a section was taped off. I stopped abruptly.
This must have been where she’d died. Strangled, they’d said.
I had no wish to stand and gawp, nor even to walk past it, so I turned back sharply. A hundred yards behind me—but ahead now—there was a stretch where no cover existed on either side of the road. A man in dark clothes and a short raincoat turned at the same time, and began to walk rapidly away from me.
It wouldn’t have been surprising if Inspector Greaves had put a man on to follow me, but he wasn’t big enough to be a policeman. I’d caught a distant glimpse of his face, in that split second before he twisted on his heel, and there was something about the narrow, predatory features I thought I recognised. Now, watching his walk from behind, with that roll on the outsides of his feet and the straight, stiff back, I thought I knew that too. But for the moment I couldn’t place him.
I allowed him to gain distance, as there was no point in mounting a chase. When I got back to where the town started, I was looking for something else.
Two hundred yards beyond the junction, where the Port Sumbury road joined the main one, there was a red phone box, and further along one of those new cubicle types outside the post office. But neither held what I wanted, a phone directory.
Mrs. Rice had one. She handed me my pressed jacket and slacks, and grinned wickedly when I said put it on the bill.
“What d’you want a directory for?” she asked.
“To look up an address.”
“Whose?” She was clearly part of Sergeant Rice’s team, helping to keep a rein on my movements.
“The name is Wise,” I said. “I’m told there’s only one around here.”
“What’s this then, Ada?” asked George, coming up behind me, stripped to braces and rolled shirt sleeves and looking as though he’d been priming his pumps in the cellar. The overhang of his belly hinted he’d been testing them.
“He wants to call on the Wise family,” she explained. Turning to me, she admonished, “But it’s Sunday!”
George took a seat at one of the tables and slapped it with his palm. Obediently, I sat opposite him.
“Now what’s this, eh? The poor girl’s been dead only a couple of days. They won’t be wanting visitors, now will they?”
“Not wanting, perhaps. But I’m rather pushed for time.” But was that true? Certainly there was a sense of urgency, though I couldn’t have justified it.
He rubbed the end of his nose with his forefinger. “The police wouldn’t want you messing around there.”
“Hell, George, you know how it is. Your sister sent me here, so you must know I’m involved. And that inspector seemed mightily suspicious. I’m suspected of something, though I’m not sure what that is.”
“Not of killing her.” It was a statement, but he lifted his bushy eyebrows and turned it into a question. He had his sister’s clear grey eyes, though they’d seen about fifteen more years of the world’s failings. She’d been a last-chance baby.
“Heavens no!” I laughed, but it didn’t sound right. “I was two hundred miles away when she died.”
It was in saying this that I realised it meant nothing. I could claim I was in Killingham on Friday, but I couldn’t prove it. From Monday to Friday I’d barely put my nose into fresh air.
“You can prove it?” His question was bland. He’d been reading my expression.
“No,” I admitted. “No proof.”
I must have sounded rueful. He laughed, and reached over to slap my shoulder. He had a large and beefy hand, and there was a lot of weight behind it. I thought it could be a warning, a suggestion to behave.
“Lucy said I was to look out for you,” he told me. “Sounds like you need somebody to hold your hand. My advice is not to go and see Aubrey Wise.”
“If I don’t take it, do I get thrown out?” I’d intended to be flippant, but it came out all wrong and sounded challenging.
He got to his feet. “You going to be in for lunch?”
“It wasn’t in our arrangement. Bed and breakfast, you said.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes. There seems to be only one café in town.”
“Right. There’s no need to rush this visit of yours. Three o’clock’s about right, I’d say. So why don’t you go and wander round the town.” His voice was even. Now Lucy was clearly visible in his face, though his eyes were more penetrating. “Lucy’ll want a report. Where you are and what trouble you’re stirring up. So watch your step, laddie, she’s terrible when roused.”
He didn’t laugh until he reached the bottom of his cellar steps.
So, with no intention of following George’s instructions meekly, I nevertheless went for my second trip through the town. This time I had my own objective, as I’d now been able to set the man who’d been following me against the background where I’d met him. In Gartree. His name was Dougie French, Frenchie to the inmates. I’d encountered hi
m briefly, and afterwards steered well clear. There, if anyone wanted one, was a natural killer. He could prickle the hair on your neck at fifty feet.
The obvious assumption, therefore, was that Carl Packer, having failed to interest me in the enterprise, had resorted to Frenchie, much the more reliable prospect. There were, though, one or two snags to that theory. If Frenchie had succeeded and killed Philomena Wise, then what more did he want? Why was he still hanging around here? Only a sure knowledge of his own innocence would give him that sort of confidence. He’d be all for a quick in-and-out job, here and gone before you’d felt the pain of his passing. And pain it would be, because Frenchie was a knife man. Yet Philomena had been strangled, another pointer towards Frenchie’s innocence.
There seemed only one answer to his continuing presence in the district: it was me he was after.
I had come to this conclusion reluctantly; one cannot take pride in being a target. But it did seem that I had to see him before he saw me, because I wanted a word or two with Frenchie, and if he saw me first I wouldn’t get out more than one. My trip through the town was therefore a complex scheme of lure and trap, but it got me nowhere. I was walking out of myself the energy I’d need if I met him.
But I caught no glimpse of him, and nervously circled back to George’s place. Frenchie was naturally a night person. I decided he was no doubt sleeping the sleep of the unjust.
Lucy was there for lunch. I might have guessed—it had been set up. All right, that suited me fine. I might be able to get some information from her, and facts were something I desperately needed.
“There you are,” she said, as though locating a mislaid treasure. She was in the bar, which was packed. Where had they all come from? I certainly hadn’t seen many people on the streets. Perhaps the smuggler’s caves and passages still existed, and they emerged in George’s cellars.
“We’re using George’s snug,” she said. “We can’t talk here.”
“We’re going to talk, then?”
“I am. I don’t know about you.”
“You’re on duty?”
“Always. Why ask?”
“I might have some questions of my own,” I told her.
She eyed me quietly, rubbed her nose just like George, and said,
“All right. They might give me some answers.”
“Answers to what?”
“I shan’t know, shall I, till I hear what the questions are. It’sAda’s steak and kidney pie. Come on.”
Three
And snug it was, though lacking the joie de vivre of a medieval cell. There was one small and high window in the thick stone wall, and the clamour from the bar was muted by an oak door. Today she was wearing a dress, bright blue with a pleated skirt and a white collar. She didn’t look like a police officer, more a secretary who was entertaining a visiting executive. But she ate heartily like a policeman, with a glass of bitter in front of her. The dress made her eyes glow.
“What’s this I hear about visiting Aubrey Wise?” she asked. “Not a very good idea, is it?”
“It’s your boss who’s asked me to hang around, but I can’t just sit and twiddle my fingers. I don’t see why I shouldn’t pay a social call. After all, I’ve got a personal interest in Philomena Wise.”
“Not his Philomena, though. Somebody else’s daughter.”
I prodded out a portion of kidney and lifted it with triumph. “One of them is and one of them isn’t. You’ve got to admit there’s something very funny going on.”
“Umm!” she said, chewing, her eyes on me.
“Well, there is. My Phil came to Sumbury. There’s only one family called Wise. My Phil has gone missing.”
“You’re very possessive, aren’t you!”
“The father—this Aubrey character—identified the dead one as his daughter. Who’s to say he’s not lying?” I was reaching for anything that would make sense of it.
She put down her knife and reached for her glass. “They’ve been here a couple of years. She was known in the town. She’s always been his daughter.” She said it crisply and decisively.
“Always said she was,” I qualified.
“Stubborn, aren’t you! All right, Mr. Paul Manson, you go and see him. Don’t be surprised if you get tossed out on your ear. As you will, if you keep saying that.”
I was experienced in pointing my nose at the unknown, and trusting in a lack of aggression to carry me through. I’d faced more daunting encounters than this Aubrey person, though I must admit that a rattlesnake isn’t influenced by a friendly face.
“I’ll be careful,” I assured her gravely.
“I’m sure you will. All I’d ask you to remember is that his daughter was murdered two days ago. Strangled. You can’t intrude in their distress. If he makes one phone call to complain he’s being harassed, my chief’ll have you inside before you can snap your fingers. Right—warning over. D’you want some lemon meringue pie?”
“Love it.”
She punched a button on the wall. There was more emphasis in the gesture than there’d been in her voice.
Ada came in beaming, carrying two plates of pie. Lucy said, “Thank you, Ada. He hasn’t attacked me yet.”
“You know where the button is.” Ada nodded at me. I nodded back. I was to believe that it was for me the button waited, in case Lucy scared me too much.
“Don’t you think I ought to know more about this murder?” I asked, after Ada had gone. “If only so that I can avoid the wrong things. And why haven’t you made an arrest, anyway?”
She lit a cigarette, offering me one. I shook my head. She blew a plume of smoke at the bell-push, so thick it was a wonder it didn’t ring it. I guessed she’d been briefed as to how much she could tell me.
“Yes, I think you ought to know something about it, and for your information, we’ve had a young man in custody, for questioning, since Friday evening. In”—she glanced at her watch—“just six hours’ time we’ll have to let him go. No arrest. We can hold him so long, then he’s free, unless we charge him. Mr. Greaves doesn’t think he can, not on what we’ve got.”
“Why not?”
She sighed, then rested an elbow on the table so that she could cradle her chin in her palm and drown me with her eyes, the cigarette fuming beside her ear.
“Because once he does, he’s got to prepare his case for the public prosecutor. And he doesn’t think it can stick. Any defence lawyer out of rompers could tear it apart. The whole thing’s crazy. The young fool’s bright enough to have made it all up, but he’s also bright enough to have realised he could simply have made a bolt for it.”
“You’re ahead of me. I know nothing.”
“Perhaps it’d be best to leave it like that.”
“I’d find out. Somehow. You’d simply save me time and effort.”
She leaned back and contemplated me with her head on one side, as though searching for something that wasn’t there: an easy compliance, lack of patience or persistence, a weakness, a temerity. Apparently she saw none of these because she suddenly flickered a grin at me, quelling it at once.
“Sorry, I’m sure. You shall hear. His name’s Arthur Torrance, Art for short he tells us. Picture him.” She gazed above my head, seeing him standing up there. “Five and a half feet of street-wise layabout. No weight to him, no strength. Just his tongue. That’s his muscle. Clever-boy Torrance! He could talk his way out of a bear trap. So…if he’s so clever, why did he hang around? Why did he go running to the house, of all places, if he’d killed her?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Could I have it in sequence, please?”
She grimaced. “I keep forgetting. This Aubrey Wise you’re going to see, he lives in one of those houses on the rise along the Port Sumbury road, a quarter of a mile the other side of the woodland where she died. He’s a business consultant, which means he works away from home, with his brain, and makes flying visits to exotic places. And people visit him from afar. For the past month or two he’s had a young man
over from Australia. Your age. Better-looking, though. Anyway…this Australian was quite taken with Philomena. Wanted to marry her and take her back to the thousands of acres of sheep and the like his father owns. And that suited our Philomena. Can you see her? Twenty-two on the day she died, and never really grown up. Been playing the field, but round here there’s not much of a turn-out, and I reckon she was bored. Perhaps the wilds of Queensland or wherever it is sounded romantic. She’d have gone crazy with boredom, the silly creature.”
She didn’t seem to think much of Philomena Wise.
“But it would suit you?” I asked casually.
“What?” Then she was solemn again, considering it seriously. “Perhaps it would. Horseback all day and all that sky. I don’t think I’d be bored. No. But I’d come out in freckles.”
“Most attractive.”
“Where was I?”
“This Aussie, wanting to take her away.”
“Yes. It was about settled, and they were getting to the point of deciding whether the wedding was going to be here or there, and along comes this person, Arthur Torrance, an ex-boyfriend from years back.”
“When did he come along?”
“Tuesday.”
“The Tuesday before she died?”
“That one.” She studied me impassively, waiting for it.
“And he’d known her in her Killingham days?”
“That’s where he said he’d come from. He’s been very open about everything. Too open. He said he’d heard she was going to leave the country. So he came. He hadn’t seen her for over two years, and he came running. It’s called an abiding passion,” she informed me, nodding briefly.
“It’s called a coincidence where I come from.”
It was as though my Phil’s visit here had triggered something. But I recalled she hadn’t been happy about it, so maybe she’d expected something upsetting. Not so upsetting as murder, surely, but something.
Ada Rice brought in coffee. Lucy didn’t take her eyes from me for a second. It was becoming disconcerting, that calm and placid stare. Perhaps she had her own methods, luring me into relaxation so that I would confide more than I intended.
Farewell Gesture Page 3