Deadly Pattern

by Douglas Clark

  ‘About the old days, mostly,’ said Masters in a kindly voice. ‘We should appreciate your co-operation.’

  She held the door open wide. ‘Come in, please. Will it take long? I was going shopping.’

  Masters stepped in, followed by Green. It was a family home. Though scrupulously clean, it was friendly, with just a hint of untidiness to suggest that happy-go-lucky people lived there. The hall was square, and large enough to take several pieces of furniture, on all of which were odd-man-out articles. On a rosewood chair with mother-of-pearl inlay and pale pink upholstery was a riding crop and one small, yellow string glove. In the umbrella stand was a broken mashie, and on the bottom step of the lovely curving staircase a heap of freshly laundered linen which Masters guessed was waiting to be carried upstairs to an airing cupboard. Under the chandelier was a mobile, obviously the work of a child who had misjudged the balance, so that it hung lop-sided and motionless. But the chandelier itself was the sort that would have graced an embassy.

  Mary Turner showed them into a sitting room on the left, at the back of the house. It had three windows, one on either side of the fireplace overlooking the garden, and a third looking out onto another small enclosure with a central pond and fountain. The carpets and curtains were good. They caressed Masters as he followed Mrs Turner in. The armchairs were the enveloping kind, big enough even for Masters, and upholstered in very pale grey and soft pink stripes separated by a gold thread.

  They sat down. Mary Turner said: ‘When you say you want to talk about the old days, what do you mean?’

  ‘I think perhaps it will become clearer as we go along.’

  She sat with her legs and feet together, her elbows on the chair arms, hands linked, her body slightly forward. Masters couldn’t decide whether her attitude denoted expectancy or despair.

  Masters said: ‘How long have you been married—to Mr Turner?’

  ‘Five months.’

  ‘You married as soon as your divorce from Mr Tring became absolute?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who got that divorce? You or your previous husband?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Did you, during the case, ask for discretion to be exercised by the court in respect of your own adultery?’

  She said, calmly: ‘As a matter of fact, I did. But what has my divorce to do with the murders you are investigating?’

  Green, too, was looking puzzled. This was not the line he had expected Masters to take. Still, Green thought, Masters always was devious, darting off down side-channels that a cop brought up to reverence the value of routine investigation would avoid like the plague.

  ‘That’s all I want to ask about that, Mrs Turner.’

  ‘Maybe it is. But why ask any of it? Five women are killed and you suddenly appear on my doorstep and start asking questions like that. It doesn’t make sense.’

  Masters said quietly: ‘It does—to me, Mrs Turner. And my advice to you is to stop being frightened. The danger’s over.’

  ‘Frightened?’

  ‘Yes. You’re covering up very well, but the worry has been there for some time now. How long? Six or seven weeks?’

  She laughed. Rather too short and too shrill a laugh to be convincing. She said: ‘What have I to be frightened of?’

  ‘Murder.’

  There was pause.

  Masters went on: ‘Was he queer as a schoolboy?’

  She said ‘Yes’ and then bit her lip, as if to recall the slip.

  ‘Right. Let’s go on from there, shall we? You knew all the five murdered women?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Please, Mrs Turner. It was simply a matter of finding out which people each one knew. You figured on all five lists.’

  ‘I can’t have done. I’ve not spoken to some of them for years.’

  ‘So I guessed. You were friends as schoolgirls and then drifted apart. Was that it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  She curled her legs up under her in the seat of the chair. ‘When we were kids—about the fifth form, we used to go around in a bit of a gang. Not like the Mods and Rockers on scooters. We did ride bikes along the Prom, but we never caused any trouble. We played tennis together, and went in the ninepennies at the cinema and . . . oh, lots of things.’

  ‘All girls?’

  ‘Six of us.’

  ‘The five who died and you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What about boys?’

  ‘That’s what we did it for, I suppose. We were always meeting the sixth formers from the boys’ grammar school. We used to congregate. Lord, how we used to play them up. We were real little devils, but when I look back on it, I can’t remember us doing very much but talk in a crowd on the Prom, or go to the bathing pool together, or something like that. When the boys were playing cricket matches we went and cheered. You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘We didn’t take our relationships with boys quite as seriously as girls do these days. We weren’t courting, you know. At sixteen these days they’re frightened of being left on the shelf. In my days we wore summer frocks and blazers, bare legs and girls’ shoes. We none of us had any money except a few bob pocket money. The boys were mostly expecting to go to university, and they didn’t work in holidays like students do now. I expect that’s why we congregated. We hadn’t much else to do. But we enjoyed ourselves, I seem to remember.’

  Masters gave her free rein. Let her gabble on to get it all out of her system. He said: ‘The other five and you were in one particular gang.’

  ‘We came from both Finstoft and Hawksfleet. It’s funny how people drift together. But some of those girls were pretty. Really pretty. These days their looks alone would have got them somewhere. I was the exception that proved the rule. I wasn’t bad looking in an impish sort of way, but I couldn’t hold a candle to Joanna and Barbara, and you’ve only got to see Sara Baker to know what her mother was like.’

  ‘We’ve seen her. She’s a striking girl. Now let’s talk about the boys.’

  ‘Well, as I told you, they were sixth formers from Finstoft grammar school. You know, it was a funny thing. That school was—and still is—a maintained school . . .’

  ‘What’s that?’ Green said.

  ‘People paid for their children to go, except for about half a dozen scholarship boys each year who got free places.’

  Green grunted. He sounded displeased. Mary Turner said: ‘You don’t approve? Well, perhaps you don’t, but I’ll tell you something about it. The boys whose parents paid—or most of them—would have passed the eleven plus. And the parents of the boys who got scholarships there would mostly have been willing to pay to get them in, because it’s such a good school. Anyhow, at the time we’re talking about, the sixth form was mostly made up of scholarship boys—the brilliant ones. The others usually left after taking their GCE, to go into their fathers’ businesses.’

  Masters said: ‘So the fifth-form girls congregated with the sixth-form boys?’

  ‘Well, it seemed natural in those days for a girl to be friendly with a boy a bit older than herself.’

  ‘I can see that. But what about the sixth-form girls?’

  ‘Oh, the ones that stayed on to the sixth were swots. Not the sort to want boy friends—or if they wanted them they didn’t get them. All glasses and fringes and Eng. Lit., you know.’

  Masters nodded. ‘He was among the boys?’

  She said, quietly: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? If he was so queer?’

  ‘I think the boys had got used to him by then. He got a scholarship at eleven and went up the school with them. By the time they reached the sixth they accepted him as just somebody who’d always been there. He went about with them. He came from a poor home, but he was clever and his parents kept him very neat and clean.’

  ‘But when he went along with his friends to join the girls?’

  ‘Girls are little cats. They sense thes
e differences. At least they do round here.’

  ‘They snubbed him?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about snubbed. He was always so serious. I know some of the girls—all of them, in fact—felt he was presuming on the friendship. As I say he was serious, and tried to get each one of us off on our own in turn.’

  ‘And the girls wouldn’t go with him?’

  ‘That wasn’t the way we normally did things.’

  ‘Come now, Mrs Turner,’ said Masters. ‘It’s not so very long ago. Even in those days youngsters used to pair off some of the time.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘I think you went out alone with him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But it was funny. I think I was the only one of the six of us he didn’t want. I told you the others were very pretty.’

  ‘I think your kindness in those days saved your life recently.’

  She sat up, startled. ‘What?’

  ‘I think you alone out of the six girls are alive today because you didn’t snub him.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Oh, yes. In spite of his queerness and poor home, you went out with him. The others turned him down. Why, do you think? Because he was a little odd? Or because of his social standing?’

  She said slowly: ‘Well, we were dreadful snobs, I remember.’

  ‘They. Not you.’

  ‘I thought he was rather a pet.’

  ‘Good for you. What happened? All you girls left school?’

  ‘The usual. As soon as we were out in the world mums and dads started match-making. One or two of the girls were married almost before they could get out of their gym knickers.’

  ‘Not to the boys they had known.’

  ‘No. To men five or six years older. Already established in family businesses. It really was sick-making. Beds ready made for virgins to be manœuvred into by their own parents, instead of being left to make their own.’

  ‘Is that what happened in your case?’

  She coloured slightly. ‘I told you I wasn’t quite as pretty as the rest of them and I was a young rip.’

  ‘I approve of that. At least you’re alive and . . .’ He looked around him. ‘. . . not doing too badly, I’d have thought.’

  She smiled for the first time. ‘I’m a happy woman. Always have been.’

  ‘Until this last month or so?’

  ‘Yes. It’s been hell.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I guessed. It seemed so obvious.’

  ‘You didn’t go to the police?’

  ‘How could I? I hadn’t guessed by the time they started disappearing. It was after all five had gone that I began to think things out. I began to wonder about myself. I was the sixth. The last. But I’d no evidence. Then the bodies started to be found. What could I do?’

  ‘Had he been in touch with you?’

  She shook her head and shuddered.

  ‘Then why did you think he was involved?’

  ‘I saw him one day when I was out walking. I knew him but couldn’t place him. It was only when I started to think back to those days that I remembered him. Then I knew. I just knew. That’s all.’ She was near to hysteria and tears.

  And with that Masters had to be satisfied. He felt it was useless to press Mary Turner further. As she had said, she had no evidence to give him. Green was entirely lost. He rose from his chair in complete bewilderment as Masters stood over her and said: ‘Don’t worry any more. And don’t talk about it to anyone, please.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Thank you, no. But why don’t you make yourself some. It’ll do you a power of good. We can let ourselves out.’

  As they walked away from the house, Green said: ‘Who the hell have you been talking about?’

  ‘You haven’t guessed?’

  ‘Guessed? All I could guess was that from your questions about her divorce you were trying to find out whether she’d been keeping her hand on her ha’penny or not.’

  ‘Quite right. She took her hand off it when she was sixteen, I suspect. She’s been taking it off at intervals ever since from the sound of things. And that, I believe, has saved her life.’

  Green pondered on this in the car. Neither spoke as Garner drove them to the Estuary. When they arrived at the hotel, Green said: ‘I could have done with that cup of tea she offered us.’

  Masters said: ‘Order some here. I’ve a phone call to make. Then I’ll join you.’

  ‘And tell me what all this is about, I hope. I’m as much in the dark as a black pig’s bottom.’

  Masters didn’t answer. He went to the reception desk. ‘Page my two sergeants, Hill and Brant, please. Ask them to report to the lounge.’

  While this was being done, Masters went into the telephone booth in the foyer. He called Bullimore and after him, Swaine. When he came out again he said to the receptionist: ‘When phone calls are made in the hotel, how are they booked?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘With S.T.D. you have to know how long and where to. How do you keep a check?’

  The girl was unhelpful. ‘Don’t ask me. I just get a chit from our exchange, and put it on the bill.’

  ‘Where is the hotel exchange?’

  Reluctantly she let him through to a small room behind the reception desk. A girl was sitting writing a letter with single earphone on and microphone unclipped and lying beside her.

  The receptionist said: ‘Rosie, here’s Detective Masters wants to know how you charge.’

  Rosie was pleased to see him. She coloured when she realized who he was. She said: ‘My Dad asked me if I’d seen you. He’d read about you in the paper. He was ever so disappointed when I said I hadn’t. But I never see anybody when I’m cooped up in here. It’s like being in prison. I can hear people ask for numbers and things . . .’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘Half of them ask me for early morning tea and papers when they should ring straight through to reception. It clutters me up, sort of.’

  Masters grinned at her, and perched on the small table where her handbag and writing pad were. He said to the receptionist: ‘Thank you very much. I mustn’t keep you from your work or the manager’ll be gunning for me. I just want a minute or two’s private chat with Rosie, here.’

  The receptionist sniffed to indicate that she wasn’t the one to stay where she wasn’t wanted and left the exchange room, closing the door with unnecessary firmness behind her. Masters said: ‘Now look here, Rosie, anything I say in here is confidential. If you utter a word outside—to anybody—there’ll be trouble.’

  Her face fell. ‘My Dad . . .’

  ‘Tell him I just came in out of interest to see how you work. Nothing more. Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s the truth anyway. Now. If I ring from my room, how do you know what charge to make on my bill?’

  ‘That’s simple. I have the code-book which tells me how much for how long at that distance, and I time you on and off with these.’ She pointed to a row of box-like stop-clocks. ‘I just multiply the number of units by the price of each unit and make out a chit for each call.’

  ‘Fine. How do you make out the chits?’

  She stared, not understanding the question.

  ‘From beginning to end. Come on, go through the drill. I pick up the phone in my room. What happens?’

  ‘Well, either the light goes up or the buzzer sounds as well as the light. I’m on the buzzer now, because there aren’t many calls in the afternoon at this time of year and so I’m not watching the board all the time. When we’re busy I am watching all the time so I switch to the lights only, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to hear myself think.’

  ‘So you hear the buzzer and the light shows you which line. What then?’

  ‘I put in the jack. Then I want the room number. If the caller doesn’t give it, I ask for it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I put it on the chit.’ She picke
d up a small pad of tear-off chits.

  ‘Then you ask for the number you are to dial?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you put it down, too?’

  ‘I’ve got to, otherwise I wouldn’t remember these all figure-codes. I jot it down.’

  ‘Good. That’s all I wanted to know. Now, what happens to the chits?’

  ‘They go to reception for putting on the bills.’

  ‘What happens to them after that?’

  ‘They come back in here for the book-keepers. I don’t have anything to do with them. They’re just kept to make up the telephone account which goes into the balance sheet. I think. But I don’t know how they do it. Add them up, I suppose.’

  ‘I think I know. The hotel doesn’t want the money it takes in for phone calls to be charged as income for tax purposes, so they have to prove that it is money collected on behalf of the G.P.O. They need your chits to support the claim. And now I need them. But I’ll speak to the manager first, so that you’ll be in the clear. Probably my sergeants will collect them shortly.’

  Masters left Rosie and made his way to the lounge. The other three were waiting for him. He said: ‘We can’t talk here, so tea first, then my room.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I don’t believe it. Not Tintern. He’s harmless,’ said Green.

  Masters said: ‘Nevertheless I’m right. Now here’s what’s got to be done. Brant, I want you to check his phone call chits. Get to know the phone numbers of each of the victims, and his room number, and go through all the exchange accounts with a fine toothcomb. Garner’s coming back to help you. He knows nothing about it yet, so grab him when he comes. I’ve spoken to the manager who will give you the chits himself. Examine them in your own room. I don’t want little Rosie and that receptionist to know more than’s necessary.’

  ‘Right, chief. Start now?’

  ‘Please. Now, Hill, your job is Tintern himself. From the moment he arrives in the pub until he’s arrested, I want him under your eye—unobtrusively. It’s five o’clock now. He must be about due, so get down there and be ready.’