Patrick answered glibly, “it’s nothing. Just a few stray thoughts.”
The next day he rang up Carla Carlson. It was Tuesday and she agreed to meet him after school at the police station. He heard her excited voice. “Is it important? Have you thought of something?”
Patrick said, “not exactly, but I want to go through your statement again. Maybe you’ll recall something you’ve missed.”
Carla’s voice came loud and clear, “At present I’m just rushing off to school. I’ll be back soon. After school, all I need is to grab a bite to eat – you know one can’t talk on an empty stomach; I simply can’t think if my stomach is growling. Then I’ll visit you at the police station. There’s no need for you to come all the way to meet me; you’re a busy man. I will do everything I can to help you.”
Carla Carlson arrived at the police station at 4:00 p.m. She seemed a bit out of breath but her eyes behind her horn-rimmed spectacles were alight with excitement. “The moment I got your phone call, I thought of going to you at once. I thought that this policeman needs my help and that I should do my duty. These murders have made life so insecure. Poor Gladys! She lost her life, through no fault of her own. She was a bright girl but she should have come to the police station first.” Patrick smiled.
She nodded her head vigorously. “It’s always better. She must have suddenly remembered something, poor girl. Do you know what she remembered, or is it a big secret?”
Patrick smiled wryly. “Well, she was killed before she could tell us anything.”
“How foolish of me. Of course, you couldn’t possibly know what she had in mind. What I’m trying to tell you is that I got real scared after Gladys’s death. What if the murderer was after my life? After all, I’m a single woman living all alone… so I thought, what is best is to remain in constant touch with the police. It makes you feel so secure.”
“Let’s get to the point. Can we go over what you said? You told me that there was a man in a green tee shirt who seemed to be walking towards Michelle’s bench. Do you remember anything else?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. I remembered it last night. I thought of calling you at once, but I thought it would be foolish to call you at that hour. You may have been out or relaxing with your wife, or simply have gone off to sleep. After all, policemen are human too. When I got up in the morning, it slipped my mind. Mornings are very hectic. There are too many things to do, the milk to be boiled, the tea to be taken. I simply cannot do without my morning cup of tea. Then I made breakfast of… what did I have? Oh yes, eggs, marmalade, and toast. Then I looked at my watch. I always wear it even if I’m sleeping. I find it helpful. I live a disciplined life, and I’m always punctual; no one can accuse me of arriving late. So when you called me, I remembered everything. I didn’t call you because I was going to meet you anyway.”
Patrick was getting irritated. He tried to get to the point, speaking rather curtly. “You said you remembered something that you forgot to tell me?”
Carla flushed. Her spectacles dropped from her nose. “I’m so sorry. I must be boring you. I have this bad habit of talking on and on.” Her face puckered, and she said rather lamely, “maybe it’s because I live alone. Anyway, as I was telling you, I saw this girl sitting on her own. A man in a green tee shirt was walking towards her. I remember you were asking whether I remembered anything else about him. Well, his face was bent down and he was wearing a brown hat with a wide brim, which cast a shadow over his face. I remember thinking, why is he wearing a hat when it’s so hot? He must be feeling frightfully uncomfortable. That was one of the reasons why I couldn’t see his face. You also asked me if he was carrying anything in his hand. Well, he did have a bag of some sort that he dropped. And I remembered another thing.” She paused.
“Yes?”
“I saw him talking to someone – it was the man who was jogging and who had his hands in his pocket. They shook hands and I think they talked for a few moments. They may have been old friends, I don’t know. After that, I didn’t see them. My mind was focused on other things and then suddenly I heard all the commotion and found out that the girl was dead.”
Patrick held up his hand. “Yes, yes, we know all that. Now think back carefully. Did you notice anything else? At that moment, it may not have registered, but you may have thought of it later?”
Carla thought for some time. “The scene is vivid in my mind. I shall remember it till the last day of my life. The girl was lying on the ground on her side. At the time we didn’t know that she’d been hit by a poisoned dart.”
“When you were all crowding around the girl, did you notice the man with the hat and the green tee shirt?”
Carla looked at him doubtfully, before shaking her head. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think he was there… I don’t think that I saw him again. I just caught a fleeting glimpse of him and that’s all, but I do remember something, now that you mention it. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the case, but I did remember thinking about it for a moment. I observed this before the death, in fact, almost as soon as I arrived in the park. A woman was strolling with a baby in a pram when she stopped to speak to a man. I caught her expression fleetingly: she seemed rather startled – almost bordering on shock – at seeing the man. They talked for a few moments and then the man turned away. From where I was sitting, I could see the man’s face, and he seemed rather disturbed. I have a rather imaginative mind and I thought that maybe they were in love once. Love affairs always interest me. I was in love once, too, but it ended unhappily. So, although I am a spinster, I do know something about love.”
“Did you see the couple or the man in the French beard after Michelle’s death?”
“No, I can’t say I did, but at the time almost all eyes were fixed on Michelle; there was no time to observe anything else. My mind, too, was concentrating on the girl. She wasn’t even batting an eyelid and I knew at once that she was dead. There was panic all around and everyone was giving suggestions about what to do. There was this little boy, too, who was boasting that he’d first noticed her body and all that stuff. I learned later that the body was discovered by a group of boys and they were rather excited about it. I think I mentioned it earlier or I may have forgotten but I tried talking to that boy. I asked him what he had seen – I always like children and have a way with them. He said that he’d seen the girl lying on the bench in an odd position. He thought it was a funny way to sleep. When they touched her, she fell on the ground. She was dead then, you see. I talked to him and asked him if he could remember anything else. He shook his head and said no, he hadn’t seen anything else. He was busy playing with his friends when he observed the girl.”
Patrick got up. He felt he’d taken as much of Carla Carlson as any man could. He said politely, “I’m leaving for some urgent work which I’ve just remembered. I’m afraid it can’t be left unattended.”
Carla got up as well and then said eagerly, “I hope what I’ve said has been helpful to you. I’m always eager to help.”
Patrick said smoothly, “yes, of course.”
Chapter 19
1
Bruce was standing at his counter at the Santiago department store. Business was flowing back, although slowly. Almost two weeks had passed since the murder and he just couldn’t get it out of his mind. He thanked God that he hadn’t been sacked. The first few days after the murder, business had dwindled to a tiny trickle – there were hardly any customers save for a few diehard ones who always came to the store. For the first few days, he thought he would go mad standing there just twiddling his thumbs, but as the days passed, customers slowly started coming back, and now at last there was something to do.
Two women came to his counter and selected two pairs of socks. He watched them go and then his eyes went involuntarily to the stairs. He thought of that fateful day again, thinking that there must have been something that he’d missed. Suddenly, an image flashed in his mind. How funny that he should remem
ber it now and not at the time the police interrogated him. The image flashed in his mind again and he thought that maybe it was nothing, maybe he was just imagining things. He didn’t want to go to the police; it would be troublesome to be questioned again. The management didn’t want the police prowling about, either – there was enough trouble already and business had been hit hard. Besides, it would be foolish to go and tell them his story. It may not have been anything, after all, but the expression he saw on a face had been rather disconcerting…
Bruce kept thinking about it. One of his colleagues, Dan, walked over to him. “You look disturbed. Is there anything bothering you?”
Bruce tried to look his normal self and said, “no, it’s nothing. Actually, I going over Alice’s murder in my mind and something came to me. It may be just a coincidence, or it may be something important, I don’t know. If I go to the police, they’ll harry me to no end and I’ll be grilled about why I didn’t open my mouth in the first place. I may even lose my job and I only got this one after a three-month layoff. I haven’t told anyone. When I think of the fate of that Gladys woman, shivers run up my spine. I don’t want to get into trouble but I can’t keep everything bottled inside me, either.”
“If it’s something important, you should talk about it to a person you trust – someone who isn’t likely to spill the beans. But my personal advice is to go to the police, and if I were you, I wouldn’t dilly-dally. Why don’t you go home and then act? Think over what I’ve said. Just take the day off. You can’t possibly keep it all under your hat and keep sitting on it. It will give you a guilt complex.”
What his colleague said made sense to Bruce. He went to Mr. Patterson and said that he was suddenly feeling dizzy and that he wanted to go home. Mr. Patterson agreed. At that moment, his phone rang: it was his son’s school asking him to pick him up.
He was feeling a bit queasy, but surely there was nothing to panic about? Dashing to his son’s school, he found that his boy was fine. As it turned out, it was nothing much – perhaps a slight case of indigestion.
Bruce stood there, chatting to his teacher. She was a young woman in her twenties with large brown eyes, and she was always friendly. He chatted with her for some time and then left with his son, reaching home not long after that.
Suddenly, he got a phone call. The voice said that it was important they meet, as the information the person had could mean life or death. He agreed at once to meet in a nearby gardening shed, which was unused. They could talk quietly. He had no reason to fear that person. It wasn’t far from his home. He decided to walk to the park where the gardening shed was, finding that there was no one about when he got there. The old shed was hardly used.
There was no one in the park, either. It was rather deserted. There was a musty smell about the shed where there were a few gardening tools, such as the water sprinkler and spade, which hadn’t been used for some time and which were gathering rust.
He felt a bit odd standing there, all alone. He thought again of speaking to the police, and how no one would know if he did it now. Taking courage in his hands, he looked at his watch. As he’d come early, there were still ten minutes left before his meeting. He decided to talk to Geoffrey, thinking that he could ask him to keep things confidential. He rang Geoffrey’s number.
At that moment, Geoffrey was at the police station, busy reading reports on the laptop. His mobile rang, and when the voice on the other end said, “hi, this is Bruce,” it took Geoffrey a couple of minutes to place him.
Then it came to him. “Yes, you’re the guy who works in the department store.”
Bruce nodded. “Yes, that’s right. You told me to call you if I remembered something. Well, it came to me in a flash. What I remembered could be very silly and nothing to do with the murder, but on the other hand, it could be important. “
Geoffrey said eagerly but impatiently, “please tell me what you saw.”
“I couldn’t think of it at the time you interrogated me, but it suddenly struck me today. That Sunday was a busy day for me. I was attending to customers but while talking to one of them I suddenly saw…”
Geoffrey heard a high-pitched scream and then the phone on the other end went dead. Geoffrey tried ringing Bruce again but there was no response. Geoffrey immediately rushed to Patrick’s room. “I’m afraid there might have been another murder.”
Patrick’s voice expressed both concern and frustration. “Where?”
Geoffrey said breathlessly, “I’m not sure. I heard a scream on the phone and I fear the worst.”
“Just give me the lowdown, will you?”
Geoffrey narrated the gist of Bruce’s call.
Patrick asked, “did he tell you where he was calling from?”
Geoffrey shook his head. “No.”
“Try to trace him immediately.”
2
Geoffrey called the store and they said that Bruce had left early, as he had complained about dizziness. They gave him Bruce’s home address, and Patrick and Geoffrey immediately rushed to Bruce’s house. It was a small, single-story house. Patrick rang the doorbell, and the door was opened by a seven-year-old child. Geoffrey asked at once, “Is your father at home? We need to speak to him.”
“No, and before you ask, I’ll tell you: my mother isn’t at home, either. She’s out working. My father brought me home from school.”
Patrick asked, “do you know where your father went? It is very important that we find him.”
Arnold – the boy – nodded. “Yes, I know. I overheard him talking on the phone: he went to meet someone in the park at the shed.”
Patrick asked urgently, “which park?”
“The park near our house, I guess. It’s not much of a park, just a bit of grass, really. My father didn’t take the car. He must have walked.”
Patrick asked, “do you know who he was talking to?”
“No.”
Geoffrey and Patrick jumped into the police car, quickly locating the park around the corner, where they both jumped out of the car and raced inside.
They found Bruce’s body on the floor of the shed – he was lying on his back with a stab wound in his stomach. They had reached the scene of the crime but it was too late.
Patrick knelt down and examined the body. “He’s dead, all right. That wound is deep.” He looked around, taking in the blood which was on the floor, in the gardening implements, on the wall… everywhere. “It was a messy murder.”
“Yes. The murderer must have killed him while I was talking to him. Whoever it was must have struck just at that very moment. It’s a pity; Bruce was obviously going to tell me something important which the murderer thought would give them away.”
Geoffrey looked around, spotting Bruce’s mobile right away. The murderer seemed to have been in a hurry and hadn’t taken it. He quickly looked at the last phone call received and then sighed. It was from a public telephone booth.
Patrick looked around. There wasn’t a single soul in sight. “The murderer seems to have gotten away, but they could have left a mark. The grass near the shed has been trampled on but there are no footprints. Let’s examine the roads leading to the park, see if we can find something.”
There was no car in sight. However, on one side of the half-brick wall along the park, there was a tell-tale mark. Patrick bent down to examine it. “This mark seems quite recent. The murderer could have parked the car here, seemingly in a hurry.. The car bumped against the wall in either parking or getting away.” He sighed. “We seemed to have missed the killer by a good ten minutes, at least, and ten minutes is more than enough time to make a getaway.”
Geoffrey asked, “so what do we do next?”
“Let’s go to Arnold’s school. Bruce went there to pick up Arnold after leaving his work… maybe we can find something there.”
Bruce’s body was handed over for post mortem and his family were informed. Soon, policemen swarmed the park. Geoffrey and Patrick drove straig
ht to Saint Mary, Arnold’s school. Classes were over, but they learned that Arnold’s teacher was Letty Woods and that she lived nearby. After they’d got her address, they drove straight to the Green Park apartments, where she lived, and rang the bell.
Letty opened the door and looked at them questioningly. Geoffrey showed them their card. She stared at them with big round eyes and said, “police? What do you want from me?”
Patrick said, “may we come in? Then we can talk.”
Letty recovered her composure. “I’m sorry, I forgot my manners, but I was taken aback completely. Please do come in.”
Patrick and Geoffrey were soon seated. Patrick gently broke the news about Bruce’s murder. Letty stared at them, shocked.
She exclaimed, “why, the man was talking to me only a few hours ago and he looked as right as rain! Poor Arnold! To lose his father at such a young age…”
Patrick nodded. “You were one of the last people to talk to him. Can you tell me what you discussed?”
“Bruce looked a bit upset. I guessed it was because I’d told him that Arnold was feeling a bit queasy.”
“When did you notice that Arnold wasn’t feeling well?”
“During the recess break I noticed that he felt like throwing up. Maybe it was because of something he ate that didn’t agree with him. I asked him to sit down and later rang up his father. He told me that he was just coming out of the store and that he would pick up his son.”
Geoffrey asked, “what did you and Bruce talk about?”
“It was always a pleasure to talk to Bruce; he was a decent man. By the time Bruce arrived, Arnold was quite OK. I told him about Arnold and he said something like, ‘thank you for caring for my son. I’ll take him home anyway.’ We stood chattering for a few minutes, talking about this and that. He looked a bit upset. At first, I thought it was because of Arnold and being disturbed at his work. I told him so and apologised, but he brushed aside my apology and said no, something else was on his mind. I couldn’t help but ask about it and he said it was probably nothing, but he thought he had seen something when Alice was murdered and that he was wondering what to do. I advised him that if it was something important, then he should go to the police. He nodded and then said it was a big relief to talk to someone. We talked a bit about Arnold and I told him that he was a bright lad. Then Bruce said that he’d better be going and that he’d take Arnold to a doctor in the evening. That’s all we talked about… and then he left.”
The Untimely Death Box Set Page 79
