Face Value (Richard and Amelia Patton)

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘On promotion?’

  He stared at the patch beyond my shoulder. ‘They’re offering him Chief Inspector.’

  I leaned forward, indicating impersonal satisfaction. ‘There now, I always complained that nobody listened to my suggestions. I flogged the point to death — this job rates the higher grade.’

  He stuck out his lower lip and rubbed it against the arms across the chair back. It remained unsaid, that the upgraded post wouldn’t have come my way. He could have explained, patiently and politely, that I’d never been too orthodox, but I can match him for politeness. I rescued him.

  ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Ah, yes. He’s just calling to have a look round, and I’d like him to see things as I want them to continue. By the book, Richard. Every current file initialled, and every possible action initiated, and that....’ He glanced at it in distaste. ‘...that IN tray empty, even if the OUT has to be overflowing. I want reports commented on, and statements countersigned, and every...every...’ He paused, running out of inspiration.

  ‘Criticism thwarted?’ I suggested. ‘I get the general idea.’

  ‘Good. Fine. Then you’ll do that?’

  ‘It will make,’ I observed, ‘a fine exercise in tapering off. I wouldn’t want to leave him any work.’

  He stood up, leaving the chair where it was. His eyes were bleak, but he played it safe. ‘Good man. I’ll leave you to it.’

  The door closed behind him. I got up and replaced Ken’s chair carefully. He’d been very delicate about it — no direct order. My hands were shaking.

  His idea of tapering off. But his life was paperwork. For me, to adopt his suggestion would be sudden death. Now. That very second. Already, it seemed, I was discounted. Richard Patton, who used to work here. That’s his desk, when he was around. Left things neat, didn’t he! What’s he doing now? God knows! Who cares?

  All my instincts rebelled against it. I had to walk away from the prospect, but training led my mind in search of a valid reason to justify it. My eyes fell on the file relating to Amelia Trowbridge. It would do, I decided, and I made a note of her address. I reached down my camel-hair coat and my soft tweed hat, and went out to tell the lady her car had been found. It was nothing too interesting, nothing that might get me involved.

  I can’t always be right, though, can I?

  3

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘how nice! I reported it a fortnight ago, and no action. Two more visits, and still no action. And now — a whole Inspector to myself.’ But there was no real sarcasm in her voice. The strain on her face told me she was forcing it.

  What do you say to five feet four inches of nervous energy? Had she been hugging the window, waiting for signs of official life? She was looking up at me with dark, almond eyes slightly mocking, tossing her head to flick a lock of auburn hair from her left cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. She’d put me on the defensive.

  Instantly her eyes were startled. ‘There’s something happened?’

  ‘Could we perhaps sit down somewhere?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Silly of me. Come through. Will you take off your coat?’

  We were in the tiny hall, the white-painted staircase rising beyond her left shoulder, me towering over her and feeling that I cramped the narrow space. The hall-stand was digging into my thigh. I wriggled out of the coat, hung it up carefully, and placed my hat on the polished surface of the cupboard, next to the phone. The house was a new property. I’d noticed its matching twin, still unfinished, on the other side of the cul-de-sac.

  As I followed her into the front room I could feel the anxiety pressing her. She’d given her age as thirty-nine, but I’d have guessed her as younger. When she turned to me she had a tentative smile on her face, and the lines from the corners of her eyes were deeply-etched, I thought from laughter, but I didn’t expect to get any confirmation. She had a wide forehead, widely-spaced eyes, and tiny vertical lines separated them like a small fence.

  Her movements were energetic. She gestured to an easy chair, but I’m old-fashioned and stood until she found a seat for herself. Impatience drew a tiny sound from her tongue as she reached round for a padded stool and plumped herself down on it. She was wearing slim slacks, and made a small play of adjusting the hang of her matching cardigan. Then she was still, her eyes on me, waiting.

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said quickly. ‘You’ve found him...’

  ‘No.’ I was gentle and casual. I sat down facing her. ‘But we’ve found the car.’

  ‘Oh.’ She brushed her fingers across the material stretched tight on her knee. ‘The car.’

  ‘Burnt out, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And he....’ She said it on an indrawn breath.

  ‘No sign of the driver. Nothing but the car.’

  She looked away from me and out of the window. At that angle I got the impression from her jaw of strength and determination. There was nothing out there but the immature garden, with a few pitiful roses thrusting through the snow. And a distant burnt-out car.

  I glanced round the room, waiting, noticing there were no ashtrays, when I was dying for a smoke. There was a vague feeling of unreality, as though I was watching myself sitting there and wondering what the devil I thought I was doing. Anybody could’ve told her about the car. But...and I brought my attention back to Mrs Trowbridge...there was no reason why anybody else should have the pleasure. She was trim and neat, in a setting that was close to repressing in its polished and pristine tidiness.

  Her eyes came back to me. She was now completely in control. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Where we found it, and I’m afraid it’s going to take a bit of trouble dragging out. At the bottom of a sloping field, nose-in to a copse...I was padding. Her eyes were intently on my face, and I sensed a small impatience. ‘The other side of town from here. Eight or ten miles, I’d reckon. Do you want to see it?’

  If she’d said yes, I’d have had to drive her there myself. I added quickly: ‘Have you got transport?’ There were buses, but they were infrequent.

  She gave a small, immensely attractive grimace, partly a smile. ‘The Cortina was mine. No, there’s nothing else.’

  I wanted to help her, though she seemed self-reliant. ‘You’ll have to let your insurers know. I’ll let you have a note of the location, and they’ll contact us.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m sure I can manage.’

  ‘I was confident you would,’ I said blandly. ‘But if you want to see it...’ I raised my eyebrows. The offer still held.

  ‘I’m sure that’s not necessary. Burnt out, you said?’

  ‘Completely gutted. I’ve seen it myself.’

  A small crack appeared in her composure. Delayed action. Suddenly she was shaking her head, now with distress in her eyes and with her lower lip caught between her teeth. ‘Oh, I don’t understand!’ she cried, annoyed with herself. ‘What could have happened?’

  ‘We’ll no doubt find out,’ I assured her emptily.

  The trouble was that I was finding I could no longer watch her closely. One thing I’d always had was an ability to switch off my own emotions and maintain an impersonal attitude of observation. But now it seemed to be an intrusion. I realised I was twisting my pipe in my fingers, embarrassed that I couldn’t offer her a reasonable explanation.

  She made a small gesture, attracting my attention. She was again in control of herself. And she, too, was embarrassed, smiling to cover it. ‘Do smoke if you want to.’

  I lifted my hand, indicating the room. ‘I thought —’

  ‘It’s all right. You did say there was no sign of...him?’

  ‘There was no indication that anybody was in the car when it was fired.’

  She was quick. ‘Was...fired? That’s a strange way of putting it.’ She cocked her head. The vertical lines were bitten deeply now.

  ‘That seems to be how it was. The car was run down the slope, and then set on fire. That’s what we believe.’

&nbs
p; ‘And that interests you?’

  ‘It’s unusual.’ I was cautious. It was not a crime.

  ‘It’s why they sent an inspector?’ She was anxious to know that.

  ‘Not really. I sent myself.’

  ‘But all the same, it’s out of the ordinary,’ she insisted. ‘I mean — why ever would anybody want to do that?’ Her eyes were wide and intelligent.

  ‘I can think of a number of reasons why anybody might, but certainly none why your husband would do it.’

  That seemed to disconcert her. I held my eyes on her now, squinting through the smoke as I got my pipe going. The mention of her husband had reminded her that it wasn’t an impersonal problem. She was abruptly so moved that she got up from the stool. There was a shelf of ornaments in an inset beside the fireplace, and she found an item she could adjust by an inch. If any prejudged image had entered my mind, she did not fit it. Most wives with missing husbands are either so quiet that they can barely offer an explanation, or so bitterly shrewish that they don’t need to. Amelia Trowbridge was neither. The reason for her husband’s sudden departure was clearly going to be complex and intriguing, and neither of these was I going to be able to handle. But, though she repressed it firmly, she was plainly crying out for help.

  ‘Tell me about him,’ I suggested softly.

  ‘What? Oh....’ She turned to face me and her eyes flickered. Then: ‘Excuse me a moment, will you?’

  She marched quickly from the room, her movements rapid and lithe, and returned in a minute carrying a glass ashtray and a packet of cigarettes, flashing me an apologetic smile.

  ‘We don’t usually smoke in this room.’ Her expression was suddenly intimate and conspiratorial, and touchingly childlike. ‘We could move elsewhere.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Very well. Your husband...’

  She placed the ashtray on the carpet between us, lit her cigarette, and tapped it in the air above it. She was nodding, believing she now understood the reason for my presence.

  ‘It’s why you had to come. An inspector — that means you think it’s serious.’

  ‘Not necessarily. I’m just interested.’

  ‘I do read books, you know.’

  ‘You shouldn’t make too much of it. There’s no suggestion of — shall we say — a crime, or even that your husband isn’t alive and well.’ I didn’t want her worrying unnecessarily. I smiled, made a fantasy of it. ‘Heavens, if we suspected anything, I’d have a partner with me, taking notes.’ Hell, I was saying all the wrong things.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Her eyes were on me, challenging. ‘I understand completely. Am I a suspect, Mr...?’ She was rushing ahead, suddenly anxious. Her imagination was intuitive.

  ‘Patton, ma’am.’ I was taking it very steadily now, very calmly. ‘And nobody’s suspecting you of anything.’ I leaned forward, taking her into my confidence, trying to give her confidence. ‘Between you and me, Mrs Trowbridge, I’ve drifted away from official procedure a little. I’m here now because I’m interested. Frankly, I don’t want to be interested. But I am. So...we try to decide what’s happened to your husband. Tell me about him. No — first of all — tell me something else. You haven’t lived here very long, have you?’

  ‘Six months,’ she said, and I was pleased to see I amused her. ‘We came here in July. My husband was made redundant, you see. We were living near Birmingham, and there seemed to be no chance, no chance at all of anything in his line.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Electronics. He worked for a firm specialising in high-quality amplifiers. You know, what they call hi-fi. He’s a circuit designer.’

  The picture was coming together. ‘I can see why you came here. But Atlas didn’t want him?’

  ‘No.’ Her lips were a bleak line.

  ‘Then perhaps it was a mistake to move before the job was confirmed,’ I said casually.

  ‘There were other reasons. I wanted to come here...’ She glanced away, gestured with the cigarette, and gave me a weak little smile. ‘But never mind that.’ It’d perhaps been a mistake to mention it at all.

  ‘But moving house is expensive.’

  ‘I have some money of my own.’

  Which explained why the Cortina had been hers. ‘But it made him even more dependent on you, perhaps?’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Oh...’ I shrugged. ‘A man, out of work, his wife with a little money, and moving into a strange district where he’d feel unfamiliar and perhaps a bit lost...’ I smiled engagingly, but it doesn’t always come out right. It bounced off her. She was expressionless.

  ‘Please explain what you mean.’

  ‘I’m trying to understand why any man should suddenly leave a wife who is so...’ How the hell could I go on with that? I knew next to nothing about her. I took a breath. ‘Mrs Trowbridge, I’ve interviewed perhaps a hundred women whose husbands have disappeared suddenly, and believe me, it’s been quite obvious why they’ve gone. The only inexplicable point was usually not that they’d gone, but that they’d stayed so long.’

  I peered cautiously at her. Her frown of concentration was not encouraging, but I could swear I detected a hint of mischief in the line of her mouth. And yes, they were lines of amusement round her eyes, after all. I went on: ‘And frankly...well, it does seem there’s no reason in this case. No obvious reason,’ I qualified, just to stop her laughing out loud at me.

  She leaned back, slapping her palms on her knees. ‘Another woman?’ she asked briskly. ‘Is that what you’re nervous of saving?’

  It hadn’t crossed my mind. I nodded solemnly.

  ‘He would have said,’ she told me calmly. ‘We always had that closeness, you see. We could tell the truth to each other, and trust...no, I’m putting this badly. Not trust blindly. Something like that — it suggests a kind of smug acceptance of each other. Don’t you think? It was not like that.’

  I wasn’t prepared for such honesty. Her eyes were remote. She looked far beyond me, into an inner awareness. Then she continued softly, as though trying to understand it herself.

  ‘It was a trust simply in the truth of each other. Yes, that’s it. Does it sound silly? We made promises, but we did it warily, and only if we knew they could be kept. He didn’t promise he wouldn’t leave me, because the possibility never arose. It wouldn’t have been possible, because he said: always. He said “always” the day before...’ She swallowed. There was a catch in her voice. ‘The day before he left me,’ she whispered. ‘The very night before, he said: “Always, Amelia, always.”’

  There was a moment when I thought she was going to break down. She stared at the palm of her left hand for several seconds, then brought it up briefly to cover her mouth. Then she gave a tiny shudder, and her shoulders straightened.

  ‘I’m not usually so stupidly sentimental,’ she apologised, trying a smile that didn’t quite succeed.

  I cleared my throat, realising rather desperately that I was becoming involved deeper than I’d intended. Just tell her about the car, I’d decided, then clear out.

  ‘If he said: always,’ I murmured encouragingly, ‘he might not have meant being with you in a physical sense, but being with you...in his thoughts.’

  She was considering me seriously, as though with a new and unveiled eye. Then she lowered her head and fumbled for another cigarette. I leaned forward quickly with my lighter, but the moment of intimacy was lost in the smoke.

  ‘Describe him for me,’ I said, leaning back, suddenly relaxed and confident.

  ‘But I did. At your police station.’

  ‘That was on paper. But now...in your own words.’

  ‘Well — a tall man. As tall as you, but not so....’ She hesitated.

  ‘Bulky?’ I grinned, and she glanced away.

  ‘If you like. Slimmer, but very strong, and very gentle. He’s a shy man, self-effacing. Perhaps that’s a weakness. I’m not sure. Often I’ve wished he was firmer and more...well...do
minating, I suppose. Quiet, restrained.’ She stopped, her eyebrows raised.

  It wasn’t what I wanted, but I wasn’t going to stop her. Was she hinting that she yearned for somebody more forceful? She’d seemed to want to impress that on me. I nodded gravely.

  ‘But you wanted a physical description,’ she declared. ‘As I said, six feet or so, with wide shoulders. A kind of broad face, kind, crinkly. He was always laughing. And blond. His hair was so light I used to tease him that he bleached it when I wasn’t looking, but....’ She stopped abruptly again.

  ‘But he’d have told you the truth?’

  ‘It was a joke,’ she told me severely. ‘A private joke.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He’s got,’ she said, ‘small hands for a man. Long legs and large feet, but small hands. He could — can manage very delicate operations with his fingers. I...I...’

  ‘And how was he dressed?’ I asked quickly. ‘When he went away.’

  ‘Oh, his working jeans and a check shirt, with a blue cardigan. Sneakers — those blue and white running-shoe things, and...and...well, nothing else, really.’

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘It wasn’t in this weather. Three weeks ago it was fine and warm. And he had the car.’

  ‘He hasn’t got the car now. And it’s this weather now.’ She looked at me as though I’d slapped her. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Nothing else?’ I waited. She said nothing. She’d stopped thinking. ‘Anything wearable in the car?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. An old anorak.’

  ‘But that still isn’t much. Did he take any shaving equipment?’

  ‘Nothing else. Nothing. And anyway, his shaver’s electric.’ ‘There are shaving points in hotels.’

  She gave a small, choked laugh. ‘Hotels? I reckoned...I did work it out.’ Her laugh had been edging near to hysteria, and now she was suppressing sobs. ‘He couldn’t have had more than twenty or thirty pounds with him. And it’s been three weeks, and where could he have gone, with no car and no money left, and not a decent coat to his back...’