I strolled along it, and back. Pictures broke up the blank facing wall, but they were no more than coloured shapes. The view behind me was more attractive. You could have skated along that hall, you could have practised your sprint, your long jump but not your high jump. What you couldn’t do was relax. I wished I hadn’t given up smoking.
The man who had appeared at the far end of the corridor might have been watching me for several seconds. I didn’t know he was there until he spoke, quietly, but all the same I jumped.
“What is it you want?”
His voice had a deep timbre to it, and just a touch of some guttural accent. He was as tall as me, but broader, and more secure in his knowledge of his place in life. His face was lean, but his forehead wide, packed with brains. His hair was completely white, but the moustache and the neatly trimmed beard were a ginger colour speckled with white. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and here in his own home of a Sunday afternoon, when one might expect him to relax, he was neatly dressed in a grey suit, perfectly tailored, a white shirt and a striped tie, and brown shoes of a fine hand-lasted leather.
“I’m sorry to disturb you. I know it’s not really the time—”
His gesture halted me. It rejected any condolences I might have been about to offer. There was no change in his expression. I saw no evidence of grief. Perhaps he was already reconciled to losing his daughter, perhaps not to death, but to Australia.
He reached up and touched his lips. “Please state your business.”
“It’s about your daughter.”
“Yes?” The mention of her had not affected him. “You knew her?” He’d already become used to the past tense.
“I thought I did. Not as your daughter, of course. This was in Killingham—”
“Come with me,” he commanded, swinging on his heel.
He walked away from me to the end of the corridor. We weaved a few corners and passed a large number of closed doors. He opened one of them and we entered a room. There were, I thought, two women sitting in its far shadows, side by side on a monstrous leather settee, with just the tops of their heads showing. I heard one of them whisper, “…such a shock…” and then we were through the room and out on a terrace overlooking a large pool. It wasn’t a swimming pool, but a garden pool. In a public park it would have been called a lake. The hill continued beyond, and thus above the house. A lot of earth had been dredged to form that pool. On the far side the rise, having been cut into, presented itself as a cliff surface. Down this draped trailing plants. But this was October. The world might have been searched for suitable plants to provide a backdrop of colour in the summer, but the colour had now gone, leaving a drab drape of green. Golden carp lazily drifted amongst water lilies. A frog sat on one of the leaves. It was orange, with lumps on. Probably imported. Did frogs have to go into quarantine?
This was the whole concept of the house, the southerly sun-trap. In spite of the time of the year, it was warm. And secluded. There was nobody, in any direction, who could overlook you. The impression was of self-inflicted claustrophobia. No cold breezes ventured. You were safe.
He gestured, and I took a canvas lounging chair beside an oak table. There was a jug of drinkable liquid squatting in a bowl of ice. The autumn sun slanted along the terrace. Aubrey Wise had seated himself facing me, and the Australian was sitting on the flagged edge of the pool, his feet only an inch from the water. I realised that he, too, was wearing a light suit, something in pale blue with narrow lapels, and knife-creased narrow slacks. Perhaps the formality indicated a degree of mourning. Her body was not in the house, so it was not necessary actually to wear black. Or to weep.
“Grant,” said Wise dismissively, “this man claims he knew Philomena in Killingham. Isn’t that so, Mr.…”
“Paul Manson.”
“And I am Aubrey Wise. This is Grant Felton.”
“Howdee,” he said over his shoulder, not looking round.
“It’s been more than two years since we left Killingham,” Wise commented. “Lemon juice?” His casual manner was forced.
“Thank you, I’d like that.”
He carefully poured me a tumblerful. I took it up and tasted it. There was more in it than lemon. Rum, I thought. White rum.
“I find it strange,” he went on, “that two of you from Killingham should suddenly appear, a strange person claiming to have been a boyfriend, and now you. I know she had a large number of dubious acquaintances, but I don’t recall anyone called Paul Manson.” He was being smoothly insulting.
“No.” I tried to match his casual voice. “I didn’t mean that long ago. I’ve known her in Killingham for the past few weeks, until a week ago. That’s when she came to Sumbury. Returned to it, perhaps.”
He took off his glasses, stared at them, and put them on again. Grant Felton slowly uncurled himself and got to his feet. He stood over me.
“You trying to be clever, feller?”
“Leave it, Grant,” said Wise quietly and wearily, but there was command in his voice. “I’m sure it’s only a mistake.”
“How many more of these drifters we gonna have, then?” Felton drawled in disgust. “Homing in from Killingham, wherever that God-forsaken dump is.”
“It’s two hundred miles north,” I offered amicably.
“So it is from our ranch house to the boundary fence,” he told me in contempt.
I tried to imagine a fence around a spot two hundred miles away. Pi times four hundred, give or take. Did they have a fence-run of twelve hundred miles?
“But I reckon you still get drifters?” I asked with interest.
He had the craggy good looks of a man who’s lived long in the sun. It wasn’t so much sunburn, I thought, as what was left after the sun had pared it down. He was rangy inside that suit, though with bulky shoulders. I could imagine him on a horse, his feet barely missing the ground, or upending sheep to be shorn with the ease I was using to tilt my glass.
“Let’s keep to the point,” said Wise irritably. “You say you’ve known her in the past weeks in Killingham. That is quite impossible. She has been here.”
I put down my empty glass and stared at it. “The young woman you identified as your daughter was not the Philomena Wise I knew in Killingham.”
When I looked up into his face there was a touch of colour on his cheeks, just clear of the fuzz. The hair partly covered his lips, but I could see they were compressed.
“I didn’t identify her ‘as’ my daughter, she was my daughter.”
“Let me hoof him outa here,” growled Felton. No patience, there.
“Be silent,” Wise told him, acid in his voice. The younger man’s head jerked as though he’d been slapped. “Explain yourself, Manson.”
I looked from face to face. Felton knuckled his mouth with his fist. He was aching to knuckle somebody’s and mine was forbidden. I noticed that the top joint of his left thumb was missing. Sheep shearing had its dangers, no doubt. All the same I made a mental note of it, realising that his stump would make a useful weapon in a roughhouse. It therefore seemed a good idea to smile from one face to the other, though I’m not much good at ingratiation.
“I’ve known a woman,” I explained, “in Killingham, for the past month or so. She’s called Philomena Wise. She told me she was coming to Sumbury to clear up some business. That would make it two women with that name at the same time in a small place like Sumbury.” I lifted an eyebrow at Wise. “But you say you know nothing of this?” I put a small emphasis on the word “say” in response to his earlier insult.
Business consultancy probably required a calm and analytical mind, not like, say, a public relations man, who was expected to be able to lie cheerfully and with open candour. Wise couldn’t do it. He fluffed it. He need only have made the statement, “I know nothing,” and I’d have been up against a brick wall.
Looking past my left ear, he said, “If I knew anything…” And was at once involved with his glass.
“I thought she might’ve come here,
” I said blandly.
“She did not.”
“Are you sure? If you knew her under a different name—”
“Y’ see,” cut in Felton. “He’s admitting she’s a fake.”
I grinned at him. “One of them must’ve been, sport.”
Not being able to hit a sitting man, he turned away with disgust. “Surely I’d know my own daughter,” said Wise sharply, flapping a hand to restrain Felton. His eyes tried to hold mine in challenge.
“But you haven’t asked me to describe the other one,” I pointed out quietly. “Perhaps you’d know her too.”
“I think that’s enough.” He rose to his feet. I noticed he had to support himself on the chair arms. “My daughter has been killed. We were to have had a party. Her mother is deeply distressed, and I don’t want anything more to upset her. You understand? You will leave now, please.”
I stood. There seemed to be no further I could take it. “Well, yes, I’ll go. One thing, though, that’s puzzling me…”
“Hell, go’n puzzle somewhere else,” said Felton, crackling with aggression. Perhaps, living amongst sheep, he had to remain forceful in order to show them who was boss.
“This party,” I said. “No guests? I mean, nobody seems to have been using the road.”
Wise held out his arm in an ushering gesture. I was leaving, so he could afford to be slightly more affable. “Family and close friends. It was to be an engagement party as well as her birthday.”
I moved just ahead of his hovering hand. “But she went out. Nobody wondered why, or wanted to stop her?”
“That’s enough,” he snapped, his temper going. “I will not be pestered in my own home. The police—”
“They know I’m here.”
“Then they’ll know where to come and fetch you.”
“You just let her walk off into the evening.” I persisted.
Wise tightened his lips and marched off purposefully towards the terrace windows, I reckoned on his way to a phone.
“All right,” I said quickly, not wanting to embarrass Lucy, “I’m on my way. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
We walked back through the room. One of the two women said, “…never get over it.” Both men dogged my heels. They saw me to the front door.
“A nice day for the time of the year,” I observed. The door slammed. I sauntered away down the drive.
I couldn’t claim I’d discovered anything, only that there was something to be discovered. Aubrey Wise had known, and understood, what I was talking about, and tension had crackled whenever Grant Felton had moved a muscle. Perhaps I hadn’t uncovered anything useful, but I had certainly stirred the surface of some very murky water.
I stood beside one of the gateposts, trying to decide my next move. In neither direction was there any beckoning inspiration. In view of the fact that I was already on the way, I decided to have a look at Port Sumbury, and had turned in that direction, had covered a hundred yards or so, when I heard the rasp of an abruptly accelerated engine behind me. It was the sound made by a car that has been coasted quietly down a steep drive, then suddenly been kicked into life on reaching level road. My instinct recalled incidents where pedestrians had been run down and left to die. I remembered the attitude of the brittle and horny-palmed Australian, and turned quickly, poised to leap in either direction.
But the vehicle was driving away from me rapidly, towards Sumbury. It was as though it had been waiting for me to get clear, waiting to see the direction I took. I hadn’t seen it at the house, so it must’ve been parked round the side. I would certainly have recognised it. There was no mistaking the little red Fiat two-seater. It had a distinctive inset rear window, with a black grill just behind it. This one was the same metallic red—on the brown side of red—as was my Phil’s.
It was just as inconceivable that there could be two such cars at Sumbury, as that there should be two Philomenas.
Heavens, I thought, she might well have been one of the two women seated on that settee. She could have been staying there as a guest.
I had to restrain the instinct to run back to the house, shouting my head off. But it would certainly have got me nothing but a stump of thumb in my eye. I began to walk back to Sumbury. I had to reassure myself that if it had been Phil she might not have recognised me, walking away from her in my freshly pressed jacket and slacks. I was not wholly convinced.
Apart from Phil, there were now two people I wanted to see. One was the ex-boyfriend of Philomena, Arthur Torrance. The other was Dougie French. Torrance, I thought, could wait. In any event, he was beyond my reach at the moment. But Frenchie had been watching me and following me. He demanded more immediate attention, as he presented a positive threat.
Back at The George, I found it was opening time. George was on duty behind the bar, and the usual crowd had materialised, so he was busy. I kept to my usual paltry half pint, and quietly waited until I could get a word with him.
“George,” I said, when he seemed to have a second, “where does the riff-raff go when they get tired of here?”
“Start something and I’ll show you.”
“I’m serious. You’re too classy for what I’ve got in mind.”
He considered me with high-class concern. “Don’t look for trouble, you’ve got enough already.”
“All I want to do is meet it face to face before it gets a chance to creep up on me.”
He went away and served a couple of customers, then slid back to me. “If Ada can manage on her own, I’ll come along with you,” he said quietly. “Watch your back, sort of.” There was a wistful note in his voice.
“Thanks. But I know what to look out for.”
“You’d get a lift in my car,” he offered, sliding a gin and tonic towards a demanding and strident woman. “It’s a fair walk.”
“What is?”
“The Stormy Petrel. It’s along a lane, at the other end of Port Sumbury.”
“I see what you mean.”
“It’s where the rough stuff goes. They dunk ’em in the harbour.”
I’d wasted a lot of time since I’d been out of Gartree, where round and round the yard barely opens your lungs. I hadn’t done much to work myself back into condition, and I’d been on my feet most of the day. The offer was tempting, but I didn’t want to involve George. This was me and Frenchie. Just a chat about old times and fellow villains inside, like two old soldiers talking about Dunkirk. Except that they’d been on the same side, and in Gartree nobody’s on anybody’s side but his own. Frenchie and I had survived. I had developed a thick prison skin, and I still hadn’t sloughed it off; I didn’t want George to see it if it showed itself in Frenchie’s company.
“Thanks, George,” I said. “But this is just me and an old friend. Reckon I’ll have to walk.”
“I’ll get you a sandwich if the crush eases off a bit. Half an hour, and it usually does. And I’ve got a bike I can lend you. No bicycle clips, though. And no lock and chain, either, so watch the buggers don’t pinch it.”
“You know, George,” I said, “I might just get to like it round here.”
“Hah!” he said, not smiling. “Look at that idiot, banging his glass on the counter.”
He went away. I waited for my sandwich. There was no hurry. Let Frenchie, if he was there at the Stormy Petrel, get a few down him, then perhaps his wits would be blurred when I tackled him. It would be too much to hope that his reflexes would, too.
It was Ada who eventually brought me my sandwich. I was listening to the talk around me. There was the predictable demand for an early arrest of the bastard who’d strangled the Wise girl. It was an arrest they wanted, not necessarily the correct one. Any old arrest would do.
There was still light in the sky when I set off on George’s bike. I was back to jeans and scruffy anorak; I didn’t want blood on my only jacket.
The saddle was hard and brittle with age and too low, only the front brake worked, and the chain needed oil. There were no lights, so it might
be tricky getting back.
Port Sumbury was not what I had expected from its grand name. The basin was very small, the harbour mouth all piled rocks and wooden stavings. There was a lot of mud. The tide was nearly out, leaving a skim of water on a stony and slimy base, on which yachts were perched like ducks waiting for enough water to take off. To the west, the sky was now a deep, purply-red, and lights were on in some of the yacht cabins. Beyond the tiny township I could see a hill rising, a misty grey with its back-lit sky. Alongside the harbour basin there was a car-park, set between the road and the sea, with a ticket hut crouching against a low wall, but now the parking was free because the holiday season had finished. So it was full of cars. I wondered where all the drivers had gone. Later, I found most of them in the Stormy Petrel.
I hid the bike between the hut and the wall behind it, where there was a yard of space. There was a fair-sized hotel backed against the hill and facing the car-park, and beyond the point where the road ceased to claim that distinction, a rutted lane. Along there I discovered two small souvenir shops and a row of cottages, and at the far end, when it looked as though I was about to walk straight into the sea, was the Stormy Petrel.
Now it was clear why all the cars had been left back at the car-park; you couldn’t have got a car along there. They probably had to deliver the beer by boat, and had been doing that for a couple of centuries, though at that time some of it would’ve been smuggled brandy and perhaps the odd French aristo fleeing the Revolution, and not getting any further until he’d been stripped of anything valuable.
From the pub frontage, a bare five yards wide, narrow and worn steps ran down a low cliff to the water—to the rocks now that the tide was out. There was a foot-high wall guarding it. The noise from the bar nearly pressed me over the edge.
Farewell Gesture Page 5