Unhappy Returns

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘We’ll have a go,’ Pollard replied. ‘Incidentally, no certificate’s been issued for the Colt. Now that you’ve had a bit longer on the job, are you able to narrow down the probable date of death at all?’

  ‘You’re all the same, you chaps, wherever you come from,’ grumbled the pathologist. ‘Land us with these foul jobs and expect the impossible. I’m sticking to what I said last night, but unofficially I’ll add a rider that the earlier date — twenty months ago — seems slightly more probable than the later one. I’ll let you have the dental details and exact measurements, and my final estimate of his age by lunchtime.’

  Pollard thanked him and went off for his vital interview with Rosemary Gillard. To his relief the ward sister was welcoming and co-operative.

  ‘Physically there’s nothing wrong with Rosemary,’ she told him over a cup of coffee in her office. ‘She’s not what I call a robust type, but normally healthy. What her psychological state is after all she’s been through, I can’t say, of course. Mr Lindsey, our senior psychiatrist, hasn’t seen her yet.’

  ‘And she hasn’t referred either to the notes or to her attempted suicide?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘Not to the notes. She asked the policewoman last night if she would get into trouble over what she did in the quarry, but didn’t follow it up. She was reassured, of course, and told not to worry about it at all.’

  ‘What do you make of her yourself?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘It’s not easy to make anything much of her at the moment,’ Sister Penrose replied frankly. ‘She’s driven right in on herself. She strikes me as intelligent, but childish for a girl of fifteen these days. The mother’s the energetic dominating sort, and the father’s inarticulate. Mind you, they’re devoted to her. This business has knocked them for six. But there’s no real contact not at present. It’s partly the generation gap, of course. She just couldn’t talk to them about those notes.’

  ‘Well, wish me luck, Sister,’ Pollard said. ‘Somehow or other I’ve got to get her to talk to me.’

  His first impression of Rosemary Gillard on this occasion was of big anxious brown eyes, too large for a pale face with finedrawn features. She was sitting up in bed in a small side ward, wearing a pink knitted jacket trimmed with bows of ribbon. The little room was gay with flowers. A bowl of fruit and a box of sweets were on her locker, and a scatter of magazines lay unread on the quilt.

  ‘Here’s such a famous visitor to see you, Rosemary,’ Sister Penrose told her. ‘Detective Superintendent Pollard from Scotland Yard. Aren’t you the lucky one?’

  Rosemary Gillard gave a forced little smile, and her eyes followed her exit uneasily. Pollard sat down in the visitor’s chair by the bed and produced a gaily wrapped parcel from his coat pocket.

  ‘I guessed you’d have lots of flowers,’ he said, ‘and I know that a good many young ladies are figure-conscious these days, so I kept off chocolates.’

  He put the parcel on the bed. Her thanks were barely audible, but on extracting bath salts elegantly packaged she coloured with pleasure. Pollard sensed that classifying her as a young lady had struck the right note. Then she abruptly put the gift down and looked at him challengingly.

  ‘Why are people sending me flowers and giving me presents? I did a dreadful wicked thing.’ Her voice quivered into silence.

  ‘No,’ Pollard replied, ‘you’ve got it wrong, Rosemary. What you did was very nearly to make a bad mistake. The flowers and presents are to tell you how glad people are that it didn’t come off. I know that I am. You see, I’ll never be able to find out who killed poor Ethel Ridd without your help.’

  She stared at him. ‘But — but it must’ve been that awful man.’

  ‘You mean the man you met on the morning of June the eleventh last year, the day old Mr Viney died?’ Pollard asked, deciding to take a chance.

  To his relief she nodded dumbly.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘what I want you to do is to think back to that morning, Rosemary, and tell me absolutely everything you can remember about the man. I mean exactly what he looked like and said to you, and where and when you met him.’

  She gave a convulsive shudder and buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, don’t make me, please don’t! I don’t want to remember him. I can’t get to sleep night-times for thinking he’ll come and get me, like he said in those notes.’

  ‘But how could he?’ Pollard asked, deliberately matter-of-fact. ‘He’s dead.’

  He saw her hands drop from her face, and a sudden transfiguring expression of relief turn to one of unwilling incredulity.

  ‘Dead? You’re sure it’s him?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Quite sure, Rosemary. After he met you he met somebody else. This person shot him, and threw him over the edge of the quarry into the water. Was he carrying a pack on his back when you met him?’

  Looking stunned, she nodded assent.

  ‘Whoever shot him left the pack on him, but took everything out and then filled it up with stones so that the body couldn’t float. Mr Sandford found it on the bottom when he rescued you yesterday. So you don’t have to think about him anymore, do you?’

  Pollard watched her trying to make some sense out of the facts he had given her.

  ‘But if he was killed the morning I saw him, who was it wrote and said he’d come and take me away if I let on?’ she burst out, gripped by her fears once again.

  ‘I’m sure you can work that one out, Rosemary,’ Pollard told her, and waited with interest.

  ‘The — the other man? The one who killed the man I saw?’

  ‘Quite right. Let’s call him X, shall we, like the number you have to find out in algebra problems? We know that the man who talked to you came down from the path along the top of the Whitehallows, and wasn’t likely to have met any Ambercombe people. X was banking on nobody having seen him, so that no awkward questions would be asked when he disappeared. We don’t know how X found out that he’d talked to you: perhaps the man mentioned it. At any rate, X decided that you’d got to be kept quiet. Now do you see how Miss Ridd comes in?’

  ‘She — she said a hiker had come into the church during the service, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. In the Consistory Court in Marchester, in front of a lot of people. So X decided that he’d got to make sure she couldn’t tell anybody any more about the man, and he made sure, that same day.’

  Better to let her work things out herself, Pollard thought, as a lengthy silence built up, and fear and unhappiness crept back into Rosemary’s face.

  ‘But you haven’t caught X,’ she said piteously at last. ‘He could still come…’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Pollard replied robustly. ‘That’s not nearly up to your usual standard, as schoolteachers say. You’ve been very quick to cotton on up to now. As soon as X knows that we know that you saw the man he killed, there won’t be any point in trying to keep you quiet about it, will there? Too late for that now: we’re closing in on him. All right? Any more questions?’

  ‘How will he find out?’ she persisted.

  Pollard smiled at her.

  ‘Downstairs,’ he said, ‘the newspaper men and chaps from broadcasting are lying in wait for me. I’ll see you get today’s Westbridge Evening News… Now then, Miss Gillard, about this help you’re going to give me. To start with, you’d been ill, hadn’t you, and that was why you were at home on a school-day?’

  In the relief of miraculous deliverance from her long nightmare Rosemary Gillard poured out her story. Yes, she had been off school all the week before with the mumps. The swelling hadn’t gone down till the Monday, and her mother thought she had better stay home one more day to make sure. It was a lovely morning, real summer, and she had gone over to a farm on the far side of Ambercombe village with a message. On her way back she saw a hiker standing by the church gate and looking up and down the road. She knew he was a hiker because of his clothes: dirty old jeans, light-coloured ones, and a shirt with big brown and white checks open at the neck. He wanted a shave
, too, and had a rucksack on his back, and dusty shoes. He had watched her coming along and spoken to her.

  ‘What did he say?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘Hiya, little English rose!’ Rosemary replied, colouring slightly with embarrassment.

  ‘Was he a foreigner, then?’

  ‘Well, he sounded just a bit like an American on the telly. Not much though — you know.’

  The man had asked her name and said it suited her, but seemed more interested in who lived at the Barton, saying it was a fine old house, and surprised to learn that it was her father’s farm. Then he’d said Ambercombe was a tiny little place and he supposed most people lived at Pyrford, the village he’d seen from the top of the hill. She had answered that they did. The shop was down there, and the inn, and there were quite a lot of houses. Realising that time was getting on, she had told him that she must go home and help her mother with the dinner, and added she hoped he would enjoy the rest of his hike. Then he had suddenly looked dreadful, and she’d felt scared.

  ‘Can you explain just how he looked dreadful?’ Pollard asked her, and learned that the man’s mouth had gone all tight, and he’d glared at her and said he was out for a lot more than a hike. She had hurried off home without looking back, but on reaching the gate of the Barton glanced quickly over her shoulder, and saw the man going away up the road. When she got into the kitchen it was twenty past eleven. She noticed the time as her mother remarked that she hadn’t hurried herself, and had better get on with the potatoes.

  Pollard sat in silent satisfaction for a few moments. Not only had he managed to handle Rosemary Gillard with a success beyond his hopes, but her description of the hiker and the timing of their encounter fitted Clara Hayball’s evidence with remarkable accuracy. Moreover the man’s interest in local residents and final remark could reasonably be taken to point to a pre-arranged interview — fixed over the telephone call from North Pyrford, probably — which was likely to be stormy. He surfaced as Rosemary rather shyly ventured a remark.

  ‘I do remember one other thing about him,’ she volunteered. ‘He’d got a book in his hand.’

  ‘What sort of book?’

  ‘Quite a small one in paper covers. I expect it was a guide book: hikers coming this way often have them — you know.’

  Pollard made a mental note that this additional piece of information could tie up with the torn scrap of a printed page found in the bush above the quarry. If it was from a local guide book, which seemed quite credible, it should be possible to check up on the book’s purchase somewhere in the district.

  ‘You’ve helped me tremendously, Rosemary,’ he told her. ‘You’re very observant and you’ve got a good memory. Let’s go on to those two notes that X wrote to keep you quiet about having seen the hiker. Were there any others?’

  Rosemary shook her head.

  ‘How soon did the first one come?’

  ‘The next morning, when I went back to school. I — I thought the man was playing a joke on me at first. Then I remembered how he’d changed all of a sudden, and I felt scared, because he’d found out all about me — about me going in the school bus, I mean.’

  ‘The school bus?’ Pollard echoed, mystified for the moment.

  ‘Yes. The note had been put in the bus. Dropped through a window, Jeff said. They don’t all shut properly — it’s an awful old boneshaker.’

  By dint of further questions Pollard managed to get the facts clear. The school bus was operated by the joint owners of the Pyrford Garage, either one of whom did the two daily runs into Westbridge in term time. When not on the road the bus stood in the layby next to the garage. On the morning of 12 June Jeff Thomas, one of the garage owners, had noticed an envelope addressed to Rosemary Gillard lying on a seat, and had handed it to her when she boarded the bus at Ambercombe. There had been a good deal of teasing on the way into Westbridge, everyone assuming that the note was from a boy…

  As he listened to Rosemary’s disjointed narrative Pollard had a clear mental picture of the lie of the land in relation to the Pyrford Garage. Just beyond it he had watched the school bus manoeuvring into the layby on the previous morning, as he and Toye had been held up in the rain on the way to North Pyrford. On the opposite side of the road into Pyrford village, and almost facing the garage was the Village Stores, with its second entrance through the yard. What could be simpler for slipping out late at night, after the garage had closed and the traffic on the main road had died down? Especially, he thought, if you had a wife like Mrs Aldridge with an unshakable determination not to be involved. He took a firm hold on his mounting sense of excitement at this pointer, and asked about the second note. This, she told him, had been put in the bus, too, and given to her on Wednesday morning. The immediate outcome of his television appeal on Tuesday evening for information about the hiker, Pollard reflected.

  After a few minutes of personal chat with Rosemary, aimed at helping her on her way back to a normal existence, he left her with a parting wave from the door. On the way through the main ward he got an interrogative glance from Sister Penrose, in attendance on something very exalted in the consultant line. He returned a discreet V-sign, and headed for the outer world and the police station. However, by the time he had given Toye the gist of Rosemary Gillard’s story, the amount of ground still to be covered, if a double murder charge was ever to be brought against Aldridge, was appearing decidedly daunting.

  ‘Let’s face it,’ he said, tilting his chair back and frowning heavily. ‘We haven’t a clue about what Aldridge was doing on the morning of June the eleventh last year, and finding out is going to be the devil. At the moment he’s got what looks like a convincing alibi for Ridd’s murder. We know absolutely nothing about any link between him and a stranger to the place with an American accent. On the other hand he’s lying about his movements after leaving the court on November the nineteenth. He was scared stiff when we talked to him. He’s a local, and would know all about Rosemary Gillard, and could easily have slipped out and dropped notes into the school bus on both occasions. Where do we go from here, for heaven’s sake? Or are we barking up the wrong tree altogether? If so, how do we find the right one? What goes on?’ he added rather irritably, aware of constant comings and goings in the corridor. ‘There seems to be a good bit of activity.’

  ‘A chap said they’d brought in a bloke wanted for selling stuff from hijacked lorries,’ Toye told him.

  As he spoke steps halted outside the door which opened to admit Inspector Frost’s head.

  ‘Glad you’re in,’ he said, entering and shutting the door behind him. ‘It mayn’t be worth anything to you, but we’ve picked up the chap from the Pyrford shop. Aldridge is the name. In with a racket selling stuff from hijacked lorries,’ he added, gratified by the effect of his news.

  Pollard brought his hand down on the table with a stifled exclamation.

  ‘Let’s have the details.’

  It appeared that the Marchester and Westbridge police had known for some time that a racket was operating in the area for the sale of goods from lorries hijacked in other parts of the country. Vans bearing fictitious names were making contact with buyers. A number of shopkeepers in a relatively small way of business were being kept under observation. Early that morning a Westbridge patrol car had intercepted a suspicious van, and brought it in with its driver on whom a list of the day’s rendezvous had been found. One of these had been for 10 a.m., at a spot described as ‘quarry on main road two miles north of Pyrford opposite field gate.’ A discreet watch had been kept by plain clothes men in unofficial cars, and just before ten the Pyrford Village Stores van had come along and turned into the quarry. The police cars had promptly driven up and blocked the exit.

  ‘Just the place for a spot of funny business,’ Frost said. ‘It’s another of these disused quarries, like the Ambercombe one, only dry. Plenty of room for several cars: I’ve seen people camping there in the summer. Aldridge started off by blustering and talking about his rights, of course. Said
he was simply picking up some lines cheap from a chap who bought up damaged stuff after warehouse fires, and had come along to save him the bother of coming on to Pyrford. Just the guff you’d expect. We took him back to his place, and there were a lot of cigarettes and tinned meat and bottles of gin and whisky he couldn’t produce invoices or receipts for. So he’s here — helping the police with their enquiries. And where we thought you people might come in was that when we brought ’em together they went for each other hell for leather. The driver chap accused Aldridge of grassing on him because of a row they’d had last Wednesday week about a case of whisky being a couple of bottles short. You weren’t satisfied about Aldridge’s account of his movements that afternoon, if I remember rightly?’

  ‘We were not. Because he was obviously lying about his return from Marchester after lunch: we’ve been wondering all along if his alibi for the Ridd murder was bustable after all. This business you’ve uncovered accounts for the lies, and also for his alarm at being questioned by us. He’s inflated with self-importance, and if it came out that he’d been dealing in stolen goods, what price his local standing — being a churchwarden and whatever?’

  ‘Like to have a word with him yourself?’ Frost suggested.

  ‘If you’re through with him for the moment, yes,’ Pollard replied unenthusiastically, getting to his feet and giving Toye a glance indicating the end of the road.

  At Frost’s order a constable posted outside a door admitted them to a small room furnished with a battered wooden table and four hard upright chairs. The walls were a stained and faded green and the window was high and inaccessible. An unshaded electric lightbulb was switched on. George Aldridge, sleek black hair disordered and shirt collar askew, was slumped at the table. A tray with an untouched cup of tea and a plate of sandwiches had been pushed aside. As Pollard and Toye came in he swung round at them like a cornered animal.