Farewell Gesture Read online

“You’ve got to give me time to think,” she said at last. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

  This I did. In the evening. By that time I had it planned more fully in my mind, and could give the invitation more conviction.

  “I’d need a week,” she said, breathing quickly. “I’ll have to go to Sumbury. There’s a special case I’ll have to clear up.”

  “A week.” I nodded.

  “Maybe less. You can move in here, Paul, so that I can get in touch. I’ll phone you—yes or no.”

  “Yes or no,” I agreed. I’d hoped it would simply be when.

  She went there on a Monday, the last day of September. From the window of her flat I watched her drive away in her little red Fiat two-seater. I’d moved in, as she’d suggested, to be close to a phone, but this soon proved to be an encumbrance as I couldn’t allow myself too long away from her flat. I played her records and her tapes, and had interminable hours in which to recapture mentally the trend of my research. I couldn’t wait to get back to it. If she phoned and said “no,” then I would simply give her my warning and leave.

  The snag was that I was now seeing our trip together as a joint adventure, and alone it seemed to have lost some of its attraction. I had completely lost touch with the fact that if Carl Packer wanted her dead, there had to be a damned good reason.

  In the meantime, I was trapped in her flat, apart from rapid excursions to the shops. But she didn’t phone.

  The week dragged along. I got tired of music, and left the radio on the talking programme. It was company. Saturday arrived, and by that time the announcer’s voice had become a meaningless drone. It was the mention of Sumbury that jerked me into alertness. I dived for the volume control.

  “…Sumbury in Devon, where the body of a woman has been found strangled in woodland. She has been identified as Philomena Wise. Inspector Greaves stated…”

  I heard no more. The words pounded through my head. “…has been identified as Philomena Wise.”

  Then I sat down and tried to control the impulse to run from the flat, anywhere that was away from the oppression of my feeling of responsibility. I found myself staring at the phone, willing it to ring. I told myself I was insane.

  After a while I got up from the chair and systematically walked through the flat, doing things like packing my kitbag, switching things off where necessary, walking out of the flat, closing the door quietly, and double-locking it. Then I walked steadily to the railway station and asked about trains to Sumbury. I would have one change.

  I arrived at Sumbury at 4:35 P.M. It was a dull day, with a wind bitter enough to penetrate my consciousness. I went straight to the police station. The policeman I asked for directions looked at me as though I might need his assistance to reach it. It was a quiet town, its police station small and only two storeys. There was a constable at the desk. When he realised what I wanted he phoned through, and a woman came to take me upstairs.

  The man sitting behind the desk wasn’t very responsive. A typical small-town copper, I thought, stolid and unimaginative. I should not have trusted first impressions. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Greaves, and took down my name and address. Paul Manson, of no fixed abode.

  “She’s already been identified, sir,” he said politely.

  “I’d like to see her.” To prove it…

  “What’s your interest?”

  “We were…going away together. When she got back.”

  “Indeed?”

  Now that I came to look at him, I decided he was trying to be kind, but he was decidedly uncertain about me. He was a large man with a heavy face, which kept moving around with a series of grimaces as though he was searching for an expression that fitted the circumstances. When he said, “Indeed?” the grimace happened to be one of distaste, his pouched eyes considering me morosely, his bushy eyebrows climbing almost to his hairline.

  “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t see her, is there?” I challenged him, impatient with the protocol.

  “No reason at all.” His eyes switched to the woman who’d brought me there. “Sergeant Rice will take you.” He smiled suddenly. “And bring you back, if that should be necessary.”

  I didn’t like that smile, and I was having difficulty getting out of the chair, my legs suddenly going weak.

  Sergeant Rice was a detective sergeant, apparently, as she was wearing a grey two-piece suit, skirt not slacks. She had large and compassionate eyes. I didn’t want compassion.

  “Leave your bag,” she said, walking past it on the floor in reception, and making it imperative for me to return. “My car’s round the back.”

  I slumped in the passenger’s seat, paying no attention to the small, neat town centre as we drifted through it.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “St Giles’s. She’s there.”

  “What happened? How did she die?” The words nearly choked me.

  “She was strangled with a silk scarf. It was her birthday,” she told me, her voice empty. “It was a birthday present.”

  Her birthday? A present? What the devil did she mean?

  We drove round the back of the hospital, which turned out to be a long way from the town, and parked against a shadowed, tall wall. It was now dark. A single, opal lamp jutted from the brickwork above the door. The nameplate read: PATHOLOGY.

  She led me inside. I can recall nothing but whiteness and the smell. It probably takes a strong smell to cover death. I followed her along corridors and through a door. The atmosphere was chill. Perhaps the inspector had phoned ahead, because we seemed to be expected.

  “I’ll wait outside,” she said softly, touching my shoulder when I hesitated.

  I was conducted across the room to a wall consisting of large cabinet doors with central handles. A label on the outside of one of them was neatly lettered: Philomena Wise. The drawer was slid open.

  She was covered with a sheet. I had been desperately afraid that she would be lying there naked. To have looked upon her, dead and naked, would have seemed a foul treachery. But there was the sheet.

  “Sir?” said the attendant quietly, and he drew back the top of the sheet.

  I looked down at a face. Similar features, the sharp nose and the prominent cheekbones. Dark hair, very close to the colour of my Phil’s. But this was a younger face, rounder, more softly modelled. Did they change in death? Did they become shorter? This one seemed not much more than five feet. No! No! I cried to myself.

  She was not my Philomena.

  I remember nothing more. They told me later that I fainted. If so, it was the first time in my life.

  Two

  We were back in the cubicle that Inspector Greaves called his office. Apart from a metallic taste in my mouth and the fact that I couldn’t prevent my hands from shaking, I was feeling better. She was alive, wasn’t she! I tried not to think about the woman who wasn’t.

  My sergeant had looked after me, bringing me back to consciousness on a seat in someone’s office, her serious face concerned, her gaze not leaving mine, switching from eye to eye as though to get the full perspective. She had driven me back to the station. This was necessary, in any event, if only for me to pick up my kitbag. But without hesitation she had taken me straight up to see Greaves.

  So there we were, me perched on an upright chair facing the desk, and Sergeant Rice quietly sitting a yard to one side. She was not taking notes. When I glanced at her she gave me a small encouraging nod and a thin smile. I looked back to Greaves, who was arranging his blotter to his satisfaction, and deciding what face to present. When he looked up it was clearly his patient and long-suffering expression he’d selected.

  The office was crowded, there being another man, whom I’d not seen, sitting to one side of the desk. Two beady and probing eyes homed in on me and settled on my face. As far as I could tell he did not glance away for one moment after that. The impression was of a sharp and lethal instrument pointed directly at me.

  “So,” said Inspector Greaves. “What have
we here?”

  I said nothing. It didn’t seem to deserve an answer, and in any event I didn’t know what we had. I was pleased to realise that my brain had started working again, as though the shock had flushed it clean. Everything in the room was sharp and clear, every intonation in Greaves’s voice, every expression could be examined and analysed.

  “This is Inspector Filey of Killingham,” he introduced, as though that completely explained his presence. It did not. In fact, my first impression was that he’d been contacted because the dead woman had come from there. But the dead woman had not; my Philomena Wise had. This small confusion distracted me for a moment.

  I glanced at Filey. He was a thin, aesthetic type with a wide brow tapering down to a sharp, questing chin. He was much younger than Greaves, in his mid-thirties I guessed, yet they were the same rank. But Killingham was a larger pool than Sumbury, so perhaps their fish grew bigger earlier. There was no revealing expression on his face. It had set into lines of contemptuous rejection, which was probably his professional attitude, masking the real Filey.

  Greaves got into his stride, his voice uncompromising. “You came here, demanding to see the body of Miss Philomena Wise. Now you say she’s not the person you expected to see.”

  I nodded. He still hadn’t asked me anything.

  “I don’t go much for coincidences like this, Mr. Manson. Will you explain why you expected it to be.”

  Were they always so polite? “She told me she was coming here…to Sumbury. Her name is Philomena Wise. I heard of her death on the radio. Naturally, I jumped to the conclusion—”

  “She came here from where?” he interrupted.

  “Well…from Killingham. You must know that.”

  “Must I?”

  “Why else is…” I gave Filey one of my glances. No reaction. “Why else is he here? From Killingham, you said.”

  “Do you mind if I ask the questions?”

  “Not at all, unless you’re intending to charge…” I stopped abruptly, realising with disgust that I was talking like an experienced criminal.

  He wrinkled his eyebrows. “If so, I’d warn you, but there’s no charge. I’m simply interested, put it like that. You’ll have to admit that Philomena is an unusual name.”

  “I call her Phil.”

  “And there can’t be many women around with the name of Philomena Wise. Certainly not in Sumbury. As far as I know, there’s only one family in our little town with the name Wise, and they haven’t been here for very long. And before you ask, they came here from Killingham. The Philomena Wise who now lies in the morgue is definitely their daughter, and they have no other children. Her father made the identification, though in the circumstances there could’ve been no doubt. What d’you have to say to that?”

  I thought about it. I had to hang on to the fact that my Phil was alive somewhere, and I wanted to be away from there and searching for her. There were questions urgently requiring answers.

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said carefully, staring past his left ear.

  He waited a few moments, and then went on, “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that your Philomena Wise came to Sumbury, where a young woman of the same name was already living?”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” I said.

  “I’m assuming our Philomena was alive then, when yours came. Exactly when did your Philomena come here?”

  “Monday.”

  “And ours died on Friday. I wonder where yours has got to.” I took a deep breath. “You’re suggesting there’s a connection between my Phil coming here and the other one’s death?”

  “I’m saying there must be a connection.” Still there was no emphasis in his voice.

  “You’re as good as implying my Phil killed yours.”

  “Am I?” His mouth set in a tight, straight line. “You’re jumping the gun—a whole battery of them. All I’m saying is that there has to be a connection.”

  He stared at me, daring me to take it further. I said nothing. He leaned towards Filey and whispered something. Without taking his eyes from me, Filey shrugged and gave a minimal shake of his head. Greaves turned back to me. He became jovial, like a lion contemplating his lunch.

  “You’ll be staying in town, Mr. Manson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me know where, please, and I’ll be obliged if you’ll not leave the district for a while.”

  He’d be obliged! He’d make damned-well sure. I nodded, and guessing I’d been dismissed I got to my feet. At last Filey took his eyes from me. They put their heads together. I turned and went out.

  Sergeant Rice was at my elbow going down the stairs and into the reception office. My kitbag was where I’d left it. I hoisted it on to my shoulder, and we went out to stand under the small portico. The air smelt clean and fresh. I breathed in deeply.

  “Have you got anywhere to stay?” she asked.

  “I came straight here from the railway station. I’ll find somewhere.”

  “There’s the Victoria, but it’s pricey.”

  “Not for me, then.” I smiled, going along with her.

  I realised I hadn’t been taking much notice of her. Now I saw that she was about five feet seven, a little solidly built but giving an impression of poise and competence. Her hair wasn’t quite blond and was worn short. There was very little make-up on her face. But the main impression was of solemnity and placidity. Then I saw that there was a smile after all, but only in her eyes, large grey eyes that sparked at me. I suspected that behind the facade there was a fire cracker, waiting for a stray ember.

  We moved out on to the pavement. “Have you known her for long?” she asked, apparently dismissing the question of my night’s lodging.

  “Who? Phil? Well no, not long. A fortnight or so. Why?”

  “You said you were going away together, and you didn’t mean for a holiday.” One eyebrow lifted, creating a crooked wrinkle above her nose. “Didn’t take long, did it?”

  “I’m a creature of impulse.”

  “Dangerous, that is.”

  “I’m trying to control it,” I assured her.

  She turned to look at me directly, cocking her head. “And your present impulse is to get away from here as fast as possible?”

  “On the contrary. There’re things I’ll need to find out.”

  She pouted, nodding. “Then we’ll have to keep you in order, Mr. Manson, I can see that.” Her eyes were mocking, but her mood switched abruptly. She became practical and professional, turning to point down the street.

  “You can go along from here, and you’ll go through a small square. Carry straight on. Elm Lane is on your left. Try The George. It’s only a pub, but he’s got a room or two to spare.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes. His name is George. Tell him Lucy sent you. He’s my brother.”

  “I’ll find it. Is that where you send all your down-and-outs?”

  The eyes glinted. “The inspector will want to know where you’re staying, and this saves me tracking along with you.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” I said gravely.

  “He’ll want to know more about you, I’m sure. Much more. With a bit of luck he’ll give me the job,” she confided gravely. She was too free with her confidences, throwing down her cards face upwards. But what about the joker she hadn’t revealed? I was expected to know it was there, and be cautious.

  “How d’you know I shan’t let you down and simply disappear?” I asked, really wondering, probing too.

  For a second she seemed to pout again, then I realised this was as much as I was going to get of her smile. “You’ll be at George’s when I want to contact you.” She nodded. Heaven help me if I wasn’t.

  Because she was a police officer I kept it official by holding out my hand. Quietly she took it, and we shook hands.

  I turned away, then hesitated. “How long’s he been here?” I asked. “Filey,” I amplified.

  “He came on Wednesday.”

  �
��Wednesday.” I pushed it around in my mind, but it still meant nothing.

  “On some private business of his own, it seems. Isn’t it strange? You’d almost think he was expecting something to happen.” She put her fingertips together, hanging them like a cage at her waist. She looked almost demure. I decided she’d taken a dislike to Filey.

  I went out on to the dark wet street and hunted out The George. From the water in the gutters, it must have been raining for some time. It was strange that I hadn’t noticed it. There was very little traffic around, and the streets were poorly lit. It was a little town that slept with the dusk. They retired to rear rooms to watch the telly, observing even meaner streets and darker crimes than their own.

  The George was just along the side lane called Elm, though there were no trees. It displayed a beckoning, cheerful flood of light from its tiny windows. I entered. George Rice was serving behind the bar. He noticed my kitbag when I dumped it beside me and ordered half of bitter. He didn’t say he was expecting me, but he knew who I was. Lucy had phoned in, and no doubt he would report back that I’d arrived. I drank half of my beer before I spoke to him. He told me he had a room. What he asked for it barely covered the breakfast he promised, and for a moment I felt I was cheating him by not presenting myself at anywhere near my best. But George had his instructions, and Sergeant Lucy Rice didn’t want me wandering off in search of cheaper lodgings.

  It was getting close to George’s closing time when I finished my beer. I didn’t order another, but George offered me a sandwich and I went straight up to my room. I felt exhausted. There was just time to look round the room, small, tidy, and clean—what more could anybody want?—and realise it overlooked the railway line, then I fell into the bed, and if the trains were running they sneaked past behind my dreams.

  In the morning I searched out the bathroom and cleared away the grime, and had a shave. The face that looked back at me was lean and thoughtful and a little battered, the eyes brown and the mouth not what I’d have chosen. My father’s mouth, that was. I always searched it for signs of his viciousness, but of course I never saw my face reflected back at me in anger. That morning I was angry, I decided. Phil had been far from honest with me. There was even a virtual certainty that it was not her name.