“I’m afraid,” he was saying as we reached the front door, “you’ll have to make allowances for my wife. It’s the shock. My wife is not herself.”
Had I not, then, met the true Mrs. Wise? “I appreciate that. Will you let Miss Mann know that I called?”
“Yes, of course, though we don’t expect her back until quite late.” He closed the door behind me.
There was no sign of Grant Felton, with whom I might have engaged in casual conversation. I walked round the side, but the garage was closed. A pity. Philomena might have confided in Felton, and with a bit of persuasion he might have been prepared to tell me her intentions.
Which left me, I realised as I sat in the car, with a day to fill in, and with no way I could see of forwarding the investigation. If that was what I was doing. Yes, I decided, it was. How the professional investigators managed to keep themselves amused, in between discovering clues, I couldn’t imagine. Watch them on the telly and they’re at it all the time, not a moment free from action, violent or amorous.
All I had was one clue. It seemed that Philomena could have confided to Dorothy more than she’d admitted. But Dorothy would not be there until late. The day drooped ahead.
It now seemed imperative to discover whether Frenchie had actually contacted Philomena and made the offer, and what she’d intended to do about it if he had. Perhaps she herself hadn’t been certain.
I drove to Port Sumbury, where all the action should have been, yachts moving in and out and sails being run up.
It was not like that. I pulled on to the parking patch. The season having finished, there was no attendant at the hut. George’s bicycle was still between the shed and the wall. I left it there. I was the only car visitor so far that day, and I had the whole car-park to myself. It was confusing. Usually the choice is made for you, the one empty slot. With all the choice in the world, I did a couple of circuits, and finally parked nose in to the far wall, got out, and had a look around.
The place had died, as though everyone had fled from a deadly plague. Too late for any holiday-makers, and the locals were skulking in their cottages. You couldn’t blame them. The clouds, racing in from the sea, were heavy and black. It was a day of gloom and despondency, when depression could easily become despair, and the sea could become inviting. I stared over the wall, and there the sea was, ten feet below me, and already tramping in to make it less. The bitter, cutting wind lashed in at my face, and the grey water was broken into white-caps far out, as the seabed shoaled. The tide was coming in fast. Spray was reaching up to me as the waves rushed in, excited to discover the stone barrier.
This was the wall by which Frenchie’s body had been found, initially by me. It might even have been where my car was now parked, though I couldn’t remember accurately. And here were the rocks, loosened from the wall by the persistent sea. But at that time it’d been dark, and many more cars had been here. It would have been easy to stalk him. No, not easy. Frenchie had possessed ears like satellite reflectors. It would, however, have been noisy with the sea. Or had it? Surely the tide had been out?
Putting my head down against the wind, I went to look at the yacht basin, which is more accurately descriptive than harbour. The vessels were stirring uneasily as the water surged in and lifted them. It would have been a fool who raised his sails that day. Nobody so much as lifted a head. I walked back, wondering whether to drive away, and wondering where to.
Art was sitting in the passenger’s seat. I unlocked the driver’s door and slid in, slamming it after me.
“I locked it,” I said, not severely, because Art provided a break in the boredom.
“I know. Wastin’ your time, weren’t you!”
“You’re in a grand mood, I can tell that. Why d’you have to inflict it on me?”
He took that to be rhetorical and didn’t reply. He was down, right down. Port Sumbury on a grey, wet morning was no place to bring a fit of the miseries.
“What shall we do,” I asked at last, “play ‘I Spy’ to raise a laugh?”
“Manson,” he told me, “I’m about fed up to the eyeballs with your funnies.”
I stared at him. His eyes were morosely ahead at the blown spume that speckled the windscreen. This wasn’t the Art I knew. Where was the sparkle, the self-approval?
“What’s got into you?”
“What you said—I bin thinkin’ about it. A trap, you called it, and you ain’t kiddin’. What’m I gonna do, Paul, for Chrissake?”
“Sit it out,” I advised, “as I told you.”
He pouted. “It’s not Filey. He’s haunting me, but he don’t scare me—just gets on my nerves. It’s Carl Packer…he scares me. Scares the pants right off me.”
Now at last he turned and faced me. There were dark shadows under his eyes, which wouldn’t settle. They flicked over my face, then away.
“Yes,” I agreed encouragingly, “that’s where your worry is. Packer. But he’s safely tucked away at the moment, and I reckon he won’t send somebody to get you. He’d have done that before now. No—he wants to keep you for himself. What’s Filey been saying to you?”
He turned back to look sightlessly out over the sea. “Not sayin’ anything. He’s just there all the time, watching me.”
I guessed that Art’s imagination might be entering into the situation. If anybody was keeping an eye on him, as was very likely, it would be a lowly detective constable, not Filey.
“He had a go at me last night,” I said. “Called me rubbish.”
But Art wasn’t going to be interested in my concerns. He hadn’t changed that much. “Go for a cup o’ coffee, an’ there he is at one of the other tables. Go for a slash, an’ there he is in the next stall. Pretends he don’t know me. It gets y’ down. I tell you, I’m thinkin’ of making a run for it.”
“I shouldn’t do that. It’s probably what he’s hoping for.”
“What else, then? What else?”
So perhaps it wasn’t his imagination. Filey, after all, would have no authority to issue orders to the force in a strange district. He would have to do his own legwork, particularly after what Greaves had said to him. I wondered why Filey hadn’t been recalled to Killingham. Was he taking a spot of leave in order to wage a personal vendetta?
“It’s a war of nerves,” I decided.
“Great. Just what I need, that is! That lump o’ granite ain’t got no nerves.”
Yes he had, I thought, he lived on his nerves. That he also chewed into other people’s was a corollary to his efforts.
“You could always put an end to it,” I suggested casually. “Go to Greaves and tell him you killed Ted Adamson.” No response. “You could do that.”
He was nodding. “Oh yeah! Sure I could.” Then he turned to face me abruptly. “Y’ know, Paul, I thought it’d all go away, in time. Kind’f fade from me mind. But it don’t. I can still see it, that big oaf…” He stopped, his eyes on mine. Then he looked down. “Can I ask y’ somethin’?”
“Ask what you like.” I was still off-hand about it, but Art was actually talking to me. For the first time. Before, it had been nothing but smart back-chat.
“About…inside. You know. Prison. D’you mind?”
I minded like hell. I smiled, because he’d thought I might. “Not at all.” He’d been inside—he ought to know.
“Kind’f, bein’ there and payin’ for what you’d done, sort of. You know.” He looked up again suddenly, his face drawn and his eyes bright. “Did it make it better?” But he hadn’t been paying in full.
Barely breathing the words, in order not to disturb the mood, I said, “Make what better, Art?”
“What y’ felt about it. What you remembered an’ thought. I mean…did it help to get it outa your mind?”
Now, as at no other time, I had to be completely honest with him. “No, Art, it didn’t. You just get more time to think about it. There was just one thing—they, the rest of the world, they reckoned I was paying a debt. Me…” I shrugged. “I came out still
believing I owed something.”
“A great help you are.”
“But now I know I was wrong. I didn’t owe anything to anybody. I was just fooling myself. All it was—I was starting again from scratch. Look at it like that.”
“Yeah. Like that. Fine.” He pouted, and stared again at the wind-screen.
“Listen,” I said, digging deeply for a cheerful voice. “There’s that place over the way. Let’s see if we can get some lunch. That’ll liven you up.”
He twisted round and eyed the hotel with contempt. “Looks too high an’ mighty to me.”
“They’ll take our money. Come on, hop out. I’ll lock your door, if you don’t want to take the trouble.”
“Yah!” he said, slamming it.
I urged him into the hotel. I didn’t tell him I’d just caught a glimpse of Filey, who’d been entering a red phone box on the corner.
What had seemed to be a salt-scarred shell from the outside turned out to be a plush Victorian hotel inside, hushed but welcoming, though it was clear that dining guests were not expected, the reception desk being dark and deserted. It was a residential hotel, at this time of the year housing only those retired and too poor to go anywhere else, but not poor enough to have to live on the streets.
I pinged the bell on the desk, and it drew forth a man, nodding and smiling.
“May we have lunch?”
He was the maître d’hôtel, the waiter, and probably the cook as well. He said, “Certainly, sir. The dining room is through there. Sit where you like.”
There were six elderly couples and two single old ladies already in occupation. We found a table. We ordered—choice of one. The food was plain but wholesome, not exactly filling, but they catered for depleted appetites. Art cheered up a little.
“I could hide out here.”
“Sure you could. A white beard and bleached hair, and fend off advances from the two old dears over there.”
He grinned. It was a welcome sight. We ate a leisurely meal, the waiter-cum-everything being as old as the residents, and left, feeling warmer if not full.
It had started to drizzle when we got outside. Then I realised it was flying sea-spray, and in fact the sea had begun to boom against the wall. The wind caught it and flung it at us. In the harbour, the yachts were moving uneasily at their moorings. We stepped out for the protection of the car.
In an anorak, and with an old peaked cap pulled low over his eyes, Detective Inspector Filey was leaning back against the boot.
“So there you are,” he said.
Fourteen
Art stopped dead. I, not having his reactions or his incentive, was half a step later. All the same, I sensed him stiffen. In the corner of my eye I saw his chin go down and dig in. I knew he’d recognised the smile of satisfaction on Filey’s face. This was the kill.
“Easy,” I said softly. “It’s all right, Art.”
He grunted. I stepped back to stand at his shoulder, in case I had to grab his arm. Behind us I heard vehicles coming to an abrupt halt, and turned. Two police cars were now parked across the car-park entrance, blocking it. From one of them stepped Inspector Greaves and Lucy Rice, from the other came two large and impressive constables in uniform.
Art panicked, and before I could grab him he’d made a break for it. I made no move to go after him, as the constables were already running beyond the two side boundary walls, covering them, their heads going lower as they ran towards the sea. There were undisciplined rocks clattering there, I could tell. They stumbled, but they covered the territory as far as they could go, and Art had no way of escape. Filey didn’t need to make a move; he scorned it. His expression was of amused contempt.
Art finished up with his back to the seaward wall. Beyond him the spray threw itself upwards unevenly. The waves were heavy against the wall. For one second he glanced over, and in that instant he was silhouetted against a backdrop of white water.
I shouted, “Art…no!”
He turned and looked at me, his eyes wild. Filey laughed.
Greaves and Lucy advanced steadily towards us, Greaves using the time to assess the situation. Lucy was wearing slacks and a loose jacket, a thin, inadequate outfit. She’d been dragged, unprepared, from the office, and already she was looking pinched with the cold. Greaves had thrown on an old donkey jacket, and was wearing trousers that were faded and blotched into decrepitude. The wind caught his sparse hair and threw it about.
I realised that Filey had forced a showdown in circumstances that made it difficult to back away and leave him to it. It was the culmination of Filey’s morning of watching and tailing. Greaves had to see it through, but he didn’t seem about to give assistance.
Ten yards away, they came to a halt. For several seconds nobody moved. Greaves then took his pipe from his pocket, and turned his back on us as he sheltered his flame-thrower inside the jacket’s flap. He emerged. Smoke was whipped away behind him.
“What’s this then?” he asked.
Filey had to raise his voice as the sea boomed behind him. He levered himself away from my car. “This not being my patch, I thought you’d better make the arrest, Inspector Greaves.” This was gravely formal for Filey, but his tone left no doubt that he wasn’t going to waste time on niceties. To give him his due, he didn’t give up easily.
Greaves puffed placidly. “Who are we charging?” He glanced round as though there was a choice. I shook my head. Not me.
“Bright-boy here, Arthur Torrance,” said Filey.
“I thought we’d cleared this away. The charge?”
“The murder by strangling of Philomena Wise.” Filey tossed his head, as though throwing out a bluff.
“It’s a lie!” Art shouted. “It’s a bloody lie. You tell ’em, Paul.” His shoulders were black with spray.
I shrugged. I’d warned him, after all. I caught Lucy’s eye. She gave a little grimace, but the devil was back in her eyes. There was no indication in her attitude that she was in a supporting role to an officer who would probably be no match for the driving impetus of Filey.
“Have you made the charge?” asked Greaves, stalling for time. The previous evening’s clash still stood between them.
“I left that for you. Come on, Greaves, it’s damned cold standing here.”
Greaves pointed the pipe stem at him. “When I’m satisfied I’ll make a move. In the meantime”—he turned fractionally so that he faced Art—“you will be silent.” There had appeared a snap in his voice. “Do you understand?”
Art shouted, “It ain’t fair! He can say anythin’, and I can’t.”
“You’ll have your say. Now, Mr. Filey, let’s hear this case of yours.”
“Oh, we are gritty!” said Filey jauntily. “I can give you the details back at your office. Charge the young devil, and we can talk there.”
Greaves thought about that. He made a great performance out of making up his mind. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Filey. When I hear a logical theory, then I’ll make a charge. As things stand, I don’t think we need to hurry things. Or make an unnecessary scene. Do you get my point?” He was being heavily patient.
For one second his eyes had slid over Art, who had the top edge of the wall digging into the small of his back. There was terror in Art’s eyes. Greaves frowned. He didn’t want a tragedy on his hands.
Filey missed the point. He said, “These big-town small-fry learn all the smart talk. You aren’t used to it. Let me tell you—”
“Can we hear your case, please, Mr. Filey. Perhaps we should go and sit in the car? He’s not going anywhere.” Greaves was quite placid, but his voice grated.
“No!” shouted Art. He saw himself deserted. For some reason he trusted Greaves, but he believed Greaves would emerge from the car grim-faced and decided, without Art having been able to offer his side of it.
Filey realised this. It didn’t suit him either. Perhaps he preferred something more theatrical. “I want him to hear this. Let him listen and know we’ve got him. Down to the fine
st detail. Let him squirm. Look at him, sweating already.” He turned to confirm this. It was sea spray that streamed down Art’s face, but Filey’s words were having their effect. “If that’s what you want, Greaves, then let him listen and take what action he likes.”
Greaves’s eyebrows had been rising steadily at this. Lucy stared with fascination at Filey, then lowered her eyes. Art was making backward flapping motions with his palms against the sea wall. I couldn’t hear the sound of them.
“Your case!” demanded Greaves, his face set.
“You know most of it.” Filey glanced at me, inviting me to share his contempt for Greaves. I stared through him. His eyes slid back to Greaves. “The young rat left Killingham to visit his old bit of tumble from the days when she lived there. She probably didn’t want him any more. Got herself six feet of moneyed Aussie, hadn’t she! Why would she give one thought to a work-shy lout from Killingham, with nothing to offer her?”
“Can we keep to the point?” asked Greaves flatly.
“Yeah!” cried Art. “Keep your opinions to yerself!” Art fighting back, that was, but he winced as he said it. This was the nudge technique, hoping for a hint of retreat.
Greaves prodded the pipe in his direction. “Be silent. I warn you. Go on, Mr. Filey, if you please.”
Filey lifted his shoulders and jerked the peak of his cap. “I know him. As thick-skinned as a buffalo, so he wasn’t going to be put off, and he headed in her direction to try his luck again. All it cost him was a cheap scarf. He got it gift-wrapped, phoned her, and made an appointment to meet her at seven at the bus stop. All right so far, Mr. Greaves?”
“I’m managing to hang on. Proceed.”
“And he says he waited there until seven-fifteen. And he says he got worried. And he says he ran back towards town and phoned her house, and heard she’d left before seven. Or so he says—”
Farewell Gesture Page 18