Farewell Gesture

by Roger Ormerod

  “And didn’t anybody ask him,” I said, “how he suddenly heard, two hundred miles away, that his ex-girlfriend was thinking of getting married?”

  “We did. Of course. He said he’d heard it in a pub.”

  “For heaven’s sake! And you believed it?”

  “Of course not.” She pouted. “But he’s been so open and forthcoming, and there’s no reason he’d lie about that.”

  “More important things to lie about, perhaps.”

  “Plenty. This is what he’s told us. He came here, knowing that Friday was her birthday, and he could give her a present instead of sending her a card. He claims he’s always wanted to marry her, and he was going to make one last try. He used the term: shack up with her. A fat chance he’d got. At least, he managed to get her to meet him. There was going to be a party at the house later that evening, so they arranged the meeting for seven o’clock, to give her time to get back and change. I suppose she saw it as a bit of a giggle, seeing him that once, accepting his present, and dashing back to the champagne and canapes.” She wrinkled her nose. That image of Miss Wise met with her disapproval.

  I said nothing, keeping my mind open. She stared at her coffee, then she continued.

  “Seven o’clock it should’ve been, at this end of the coast road, where it branches off for Port Sumbury. He was naturally there ten minutes early. She left the house a few minutes before seven. Her mother asked her where she was going, and she just said out. She ought to have reached the meeting place by seven. There would be no point in wasting time. See him and get it over, that’d be her intention.”

  “Can I say something?”

  “You may.”

  “It’d surely be dark along there at that time.”

  “Getting dark. Sunset was about six-thirty. It was a clear evening, but there was a low mist coming in from the sea.”

  “And she walked it alone? No car?”

  “If she had a car, she didn’t use it. It’s possible she wanted him to watch her walking away into the sunset.”

  “What romantic pictures you conjure up! Why don’t you like her?”

  “I don’t know. I never met her. I’m going by what’s emerging.”

  “Ah yes. Carry on then.”

  She inclined her head in mocking thanks. “So there he was, clutching his present and waiting. He’d bought it from Trafford’s, in town here. A fawn silk scarf. Gift wrapped, with a label tied to the ribbon. Love from Art, in his own writing. But she didn’t turn up. He says. He waited. Seven-fifteen, and she still hadn’t come. He didn’t know what to do. Go to meet her…or what? He thought she couldn’t possibly have stood him up, so he hurried back towards town to the nearest phone box, about two hundred yards away. Phoned her house. Don’t ask—he knew the number. How else had he arranged the meeting? He got her mother, who said she’d left before seven, and what was this about, so he ran back to their meeting place, worried that she might’ve turned up and he’d kept her waiting. And…this is the point. He says he left her present in the phone box on the shelf, he was so agitated. And when she still wasn’t at the meeting place he ran all the way on to her house and told them. So they phoned us. The call is timed at seven thirty-five. As she must’ve gone missing somewhere between the house and the meeting place, and as there’s only one place of concealment, that patch of woodland a quarter of a mile from the house, we found her in less than half an hour. Now—and this is where it all goes wrong—he insists he left the present in the phone box, and he won’t budge. But the scarf was there, tied in a knot round her neck, and when we looked for it there was the torn wrapping, lying at the side of the road with the label still attached: Love from Art. Now tell me why he hasn’t been arrested and charged. Go on, let’s have a fresh mind on it.”

  I was intrigued that she assumed I had a mind at all, but in fact there’s nothing as good as the study of history to train you in logic. I smiled at the thought.

  “Let’s see, then. To start with, if he’d killed her…imagine he walked to meet her, and did meet her, and she tore open her present and dropped the wrapping and told him to go lose himself, and then he strangled her with it. Then there’d be no possible reason why he shouldn’t just trot off into the wide blue yonder, because he could assume nobody knew he was meeting her, and probably nobody knew he was in town except her. He could simply pick up the wrapping and walk away, after dragging her into the trees. She was dragged, I suppose?”

  She nodded. “Umm!” Her eyes were steady, an unlit cigarette in her fingers. “Dragged by her legs. Her skirt—plain black—was rucked up round her waist, the jacket, with the buttons torn off and up her shoulders. She was wearing a crew-necked jumper. Pale blue. No hair covering. And she’d not been sexually assaulted.”

  I realised she was probing for how much I might already know, how clear my picture of it might be. It was clear enough now, and into my mind shot another image. I’d been staying on an Indian reservation for a while, talking, listening, taping, and a young Navajo girl I’d known had been raped and killed. By a white man, it turned out. Things became tricky, and, as a white man they thought they could trust, I’d acted as a kind of intermediary. So I didn’t need a picture, and I’d managed to pick up quite a lot about police procedures at that time.

  “Any skin or blood behind her nails?” I asked.

  Her expression didn’t change, except for a widening of the eyes. “It’s early days, but we’ve had a verbal report from forensic. No. They found nothing.”

  “Then there’d be no marks on this young chap, Torrance. He could have been back in Killingham the next day, arranging an alibi with his mates, just in case. If he’d done it, that is. How’m I doing?”

  “Fair to middling. Carry on.”

  “Right. Next point. That was what he oughto’ve done. But just think about what he did do. If he’d killed her, he’d have been absolutely crazy to leave the wrapping, with his name on it, and then go running to the house. And if he invented the story about leaving the present in the phone box, it did nothing to help him. It’s contradictory. It makes it appear in two places at once. I suppose there was only one? They didn’t sell two fawn scarves that week, by any chance?”

  “They haven’t sold two in six months. Carry on.”

  “Is there any more?”

  “Of course there is. Mr. Greaves has taken it a lot further than that.”

  But he’d had more time. “Try this, then. If it wasn’t him, then you have to assume he’s telling the truth. Therefore, he did leave the scarf in the phone box. But she must’ve been dead before he did that—”

  “She was,” she cut in. “She was found quite quickly, so the ME got to her in good time. He says at seven, as near as damn it. So she was dead before Torrance even went to the phone box.”

  “Lovely! So she was dead. The present was in the phone box at a later time. I suppose her mother’s confirmed the time he called?”

  She gave a minimal nod. “Seven-twenty, she told us. It fits exactly with what Torrance said.”

  “It gets better and better. Even if you assume somebody could’ve been watching him, and saw him leave the scarf there, what a coincidence that it just happened to be somebody who wanted to kill her! And how the hell could anybody kill her with the scarf around twenty minutes before they could’ve got their hands on it!”

  She sat back. I thought I could see the echo of a smile. “So there you are,” she said with satisfaction. “Now you know why we haven’t charged Arthur Torrance. I hope you can see why Mr. Greaves is moving very carefully.”

  “I can. And where is this wonder boy right now?”

  “He’s in digs, with Mrs. Druggett. When we let him out, he’ll be asked not to leave the district.”

  “Like me? And with a bit of discreet surveillance, no doubt?”

  “Exactly like you.” She didn’t answer the second question.

  “You mean I’m a suspect?”

  She showed emotion, her eyes snapping. “Of course you’r
e a suspect. You come here to view a body, and then say it’s not the right one! Oh, Lordy me! D’you know anything about criminal psychology? Anything at all?”

  Only what I’d picked up inside. “It’s not my subject.”

  “Then I’ll tell you something. There’re people—ghouls—who enjoy another look at the person they’ve killed.”

  “That doesn’t sound like me,” I said mildly. My stomach had turned at the thought.

  “You say that. But d’you imagine murderers look like murderers? Evil eyes and drooling lips! Nonsense. They look ordinary. Like you. Ordinary Paul, that’s you. But to explain yourself, you produce some fantastic story about another Philomena Wise it might have been, and it’s not. So where is she, this friend of yours? Produce her. Let’s have a look at her.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “You see. I’ll bet you can’t produce an alibi for last Friday.”

  I smiled at her. “You’re right there.”

  “Then don’t look so complacent about it.”

  “I’m not really pleased about it,” I assured her. “I didn’t know I’d need one.”

  “So where were you?”

  “I was waiting in the flat at Killingham belonging to this imaginary Philomena Wise of mine.”

  “Waiting?” She eyed me with her head cocked sideways.

  “For her to phone me.”

  “Which she didn’t?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then don’t you see, you complete idiot, that if this Philomena Wise of yours is real and not imaginary, and she came to Sumbury for a specific purpose, then it could’ve been in order to kill the real Philomena. If that’s the case, then she’s landed you with no alibi, and with a perfect motive for killing her yourself. Just you think about that.”

  I thought about it. She was making huge jumps in imagination. “So if I manage to produce her as proof that she exists, you’d take that as a good indication that she’s your murderer?”

  Her eyes flickered, but she refused to back down. “Yes, yes. Something like that, anyway.”

  I smiled at her. One of us had to do it, if only to break the tension. “Then perhaps—even to prove I’ve been telling the truth—I’d better not look for her.”

  Because her solemnity was habitual, it put her in some difficulty when she really wished to look solemn. It was like trying to improve the subtlety of the Mona Lisa smile. But she managed it.

  “You’re not taking this seriously at all, are you!” She shook her head stubbornly. “No, don’t deny it. You’re treating it all as a big joke. But, Paul…” She stopped, and bit her lip. There was something she’d not intended to say.

  “Yes?”

  For a moment more she hesitated, annoyed with her own impetuosity. “All right,” she decided. “Motive. Let’s think about that.”

  “For me? You mentioned that, but I thought you’d got carried away.”

  “I never get carried away.”

  “Of course not. But I don’t see how I can have a motive for killing somebody I’d never heard of.”

  “But you had heard of her. Philomena Wise. Remember?”

  “I haven’t got a motive for killing either of them.”

  She made an annoyed little click with her tongue. I noticed that when she was angry one eyebrow went up. I hoped to be elsewhere if they both did it together. “Do you think we’re country yokels?” she demanded in a tight little voice. “Just because we’re tucked away…we can still contact the Police National Computer, the same as everybody else. We asked it if it knew you. It said it did. You are Paul Frederick Manson, aged twenty-nine. Two months ago you came out of Gartree Maximum Security Prison, having served four years of a seven-year sentence for murder. No, damn you, keep your mouth shut. You turn up here in Sumbury to identify the body of a young woman, whom you said you were involved with. She’d been strangled. On the computer print-out there are the words: manual strangulation.” She took a deep breath. The effort had brought moisture to her eyes. “Well? Anything to say?”

  “Was there evidence of manual strangulation in Miss Wise’s death?” I asked quietly. “With the hands, the fingers, I mean. The forensic lot don’t need much time to be able to tell you that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they can pick fingerprints off skin, these days.”

  “That would take longer,” she said quietly, primly. “And no, there were no signs of hands on her throat. A ligature bruise round her neck, a deeper bruise where the scarf was knotted. D’you want it all, damn you…”

  “You accused me—”

  “Not accused! Suggested. Call it what the hell you like. I can give you the scarf maker’s name and address if you insist—”

  “Now, don’t take it too far. I’ve only ever strangled one person in my life, and that was my father.” I stared down at my strangler’s hands, lying quietly in front of me on the table. My fingers were shaking.

  When I looked up she was pushing back her chair. There was anger in the gesture. Her face was stern and uninformative again, and she made her cage with her fingers, as though I might be trapped inside.

  “I’ll let my chief know what you say,” she said in a firmly controlled voice.

  “Yes.” I scrambled to my feet. “Do that. It’ll save me calling in.” This interview had saved them from fetching me in.

  She turned away, then paused. “Oh…it’s called Seagulls.”

  “What is?”

  “The house. Aubrey Wise. Watch what you say.” It was a crisp command.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly, but she was going out of the door, and my words were engulfed in the sudden surge of noise from the bar.

  Slowly I sat down again, furious that I’d betrayed myself into a flippant dismissal of my father’s death. It had been an attempt to belittle it to myself, when already the memory of my anger at that time was dying, and therefore the pain of the incident was receding to where I might not be able to retrieve it. For some reason I needed to hold on to the fury, if only to recognise its onset as a warning in the future. But—lurking there in the shadows of my mind—was the concern, the certainty, that if I’d been able to control myself he might not have died.

  I got myself to my feet, and went heavily up to my room to change into my finery for the visit, with not the slightest idea how I was going to approach it, nor what I hoped to achieve.

  At two-thirty I left The George. All I had to do was keep walking, take the minor road to Port Sumbury, and keep my eyes open for a property called Seagulls.

  But on the way I had to pass all the physical elements involved in Philomena’s death. First, the red phone booth. It was here that Arthur Torrance had hurried back to phone the house. I looked in. There was the shelf on which, he claimed, he’d left the wrapped scarf. No phone directory, but he’d already known the number. I walked on to the junction where the Port Sumbury road started, leading on from the main road, which turned inland. Here he had waited for her from ten minutes to seven until seven-fifteen, at which time he’d hurried back to phone.

  It was a logical place to arrange a meeting. There was a bus stop, with a small shelter, which would have provided cover in case it rained. It stood in stark isolation, the houses having dribbled away to nothing a hundred yards back. Beyond it was the expanse of open territory, rock-strewn and scattered with stunted trees, the sea not visible from there. It occurred to me that if he’d waited there for nearly half an hour on the evening of a weekday, he would surely have been noticed. There was a bus timetable in the shelter, so I checked that possibility, peering round and through the scratched graffiti on the plastic.

  There was no bus going through Sumbury between six and eight on weekdays. It was that sort of bus service, single-deckers covering every hamlet in the county and occasionally making a dash back to the coast. The route wound so tortuously that you could probably catch one bus, get off at Stop 9, walk a mile across country, and get the previous bus at Stop 47.

  I walked on. Arthur Torrance ha
d run this way that evening, his eyes searching for signs of her. Or so he said. The police presence was no longer at the patch of woodland, and the ribboned barriers had been removed. Their interest was now elsewhere. With me, possibly.

  A quarter of a mile further on was Seagulls, high on my left. There were gateposts, but no gates. The drive was open and bare. Perhaps nothing would grow, apart from a lawn, on the sandy soil and in the wet, salty wind. The whole frontage was a series of rock gardens, one above the other. The tarmacked drive curved away and round, but even so the grade was steep. It had me breathing heavily. At the top, where it levelled off, I stopped and looked back over a low wall. It was high and open enough for me to be able to check that I didn’t seem to have been followed, and it gave a brave and splendid view of the sea, with away to my left the harbour at Port Sumbury, nodding the naked masts of its yachts at me.

  I turned back to face the house. I had been observed arriving. The front door was open and a tall, gangling man stood waiting. So I had time for no more than a glance at the house. Business consultant, Aubrey Wise called himself. One look at his home, and it was evident that he’d managed to clutch to himself a considerable amount of wealth, so the expectation would be that he could help you to do the same.

  But this man was not Wise. He was about my own age, athletically poised, giving the impression that a wrong word would provoke attack.

  “You wanted something?” he asked in an expressionless Australian drawl. It was clear that he didn’t care what I answered.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Wise, if it’s convenient.”

  “Can’t say about that, but I’ll ask. You wanna come inside?”

  I nodded, gained access to the hall, and he left me there.

  Four

  The house was a huge shoebox with a fancy green pantile roof, its long side facing the drive and therefore the distant sea. You’d have thought they would want to take full advantage of the view. The hallway ran sideways, the complete width. You could certainly sit in there and admire the outlook, but it was impersonal, a long corridor as aseptic as a hospital, with bow windows at intervals to break up the line. Seats there were, but miserably uncomfortable, tables too, scattered with magazines of interest only to brain surgeons or computer wizards, on one of them a tossed headsquare in a Paisley pattern, blue against a background of yellow and brown.