Farewell Gesture

by Roger Ormerod

  “So why’re you wasting our time?” asked Filey in disgust.

  “Because I think I know what she’d decided. Something Dorothy said, though she might not have understood its significance.”

  “And you do?” Filey was back on his old form, sneering.

  “I do. Think so, I mean. Dorothy told me that Philomena left the house wearing nothing over her head. There was mist coming in from the sea, and she’d had her hair done. So Dorothy ran after her down the drive, calling her name, and taking a nylon headsquare with her.”

  “Is the man insane?” Filey asked the row of pictures above my head.

  “Lucy?” I asked.

  “What is it?”

  “You heard me, I’m sure. You’ll have it down in your little book. Is that valid?”

  “Well, yes—I’d say so.”

  “Good. Make sure that goes down. Where was I?”

  “Dorothy running down the drive,” Lucy reminded me.

  “Right. And Philomena stopped to take the headsquare from her, then walked on a few yards and dropped it. at the side of the road. Can you just see it?”

  They were staring blankly at me. In the end, Greaves muttered, “So she decided she didn’t want it. Manson, you’re reaching. Talk sense.”

  “I told you I’m beginning to understand our Miss Wise. She was a bright girl, and with a sense of fun. You’ll need to understand that this headsquare was a present from Grant Felton, part of a joke he’d thought up. The headsquare first, then show her the BMW convertible he’d got for her, the headsquare to protect her hair when she’s blinding along at ninety. She wasn’t supposed to know about the car—a surprise, that was. But you can’t tell me she didn’t know! Of course she did. She simply went along with the joke. What he’d aimed for was her disappointment over the headsquare, followed by the delight over the car. But—and Dorothy told me this—Philomena had her own bit of fun with Grant. She accepted the headsquare in a grave and stately way, instead of pouting at him.”

  “Is this getting us anywhere?” asked Greaves impatiently, while Filey bored at me with his eyes and said nothing.

  “It’s getting me somewhere. My first idea on it was that she dropped the headsquare because she was a bit disappointed. But now I see she wasn’t, because she knew about the car. So…why did she drop it like that? Because, I’m thinking now, she’d just made her decision. If it was either way, she’d still have needed the headsquare to protect her hair-do. If she was intending to return to the party, she wouldn’t want her hair in a mess. If she was intending to throw in her lot with Art, surely she’d want to look her best for him. So the dropping of the headsquare had to have an entirely special significance.

  “She walked a few yards,” I went on, trying desperately to get through to them, “then she did it like this.” I picked up my empty brandy glass and held it out, my arm extended horizontally, gripping the stem delicately between forefinger and thumb with my little finger poised in a genteel way. Then I let it fall to the carpet. “Like that,” I said. “It was a gesture of rejection. There was contempt in it. She was rejecting everything that was now behind her.”

  I stopped. Nothing. No expressions of admiration or rejection. A poised pencil and a raised face from Lucy. There was a blank lack of enthusiasm on Filey’s thin face, and bland emptiness as Greaves lit his pipe again. Then Lucy stuck her pencil between her teeth to control her tongue, and nodded, her eyes shining. To her, the gesture was complete.

  “Don’t you see!” I cried, leaning sideways to retrieve the glass. “She was, I believe, simply walking away from her family—and frankly I couldn’t see anything to hold her there—and away from Grant Felton and his bloody sheep and his car and his engagement ring. What she hoped to do then, I don’t know. She wasn’t the practical type. Maybe she was depending on Art. Maybe she hoped to help Packer to get released, and get her money. Whatever it was going to be, it was going to be with Art Torrance, so she was not about to drop him in it.

  Greaves and Filey looked at each other, nodded, and Greaves said for both of them, “Carry on.”

  “You accept, then, that she intended to throw in her lot with Art, so that he’d have no motive for killing her?”

  “We accept that.”

  “Then you’re right slap bang face to face with the fact that the fawn silk scarf was in the telephone booth after she was dead.”

  “It’s always been obvious,” said Filey heavily, “that there had to be a substitution, the scarf for something else.”

  “Something? Such as what? Not hands. That’d show very special bruises. Am I right there?”

  “Not with hands,” agreed Greaves. “But now…you’ve introduced a nylon headsquare into the picture.”

  “It couldn’t have been that. Dorothy told me that she picked it up and took it back to the house.”

  “Ye gods!” said Filey, bouncing to his feet. “Are we still going to accept what Dorothy Mann said?”

  He turned to address Greaves, and paused. A constable, uniformed but hatless, was speaking to Greaves.

  “The chief super’s arrived, sir.”

  “All right. Tell him we’re in here…”

  But the chief superintendent was already there, a bull of a man, bustling in with a heavy tread of authority, his dark and baleful eyes at once aimed at me.

  “Ah…Greaves. Getting along with it, are we? Fine, fine.”

  “We’re coping, sir.”

  “Got somebody already, I see.”

  “Mr. Manson’s helping us with our enquiries.”

  “Helping!” I heard Filey whisper in disgust. Then he turned his head and quaintly winked at me.

  “Very well,” said the chief super. “Let me know if you need my help. I’ll just pop upstairs and see what’s going on.”

  “Sergeant Forbes is in charge,” said Greaves.

  The chief super nodded, impaled me again with his eyes, then stumped out.

  This interlude had given me a short break, and at the same time convinced me that I was now in a situation in which much heavier guns than Greaves and Filey could soon be levelled at me. In half a minute that man had impressed on me his force and inflexibility. Did I say the room was cold? Suddenly, I was sweating. The chief super had been in uniform. It had resurrected the Gartree atmosphere of repression.

  Filey resumed his seat. “Well?”

  I moistened my lips. “I can’t remember what I was saying.”

  Lucy said, “Dorothy Mann told you she’d taken the headsquare back to the house. Mr. Filey questioned the truth of this.”

  I struggled to recapture the form of my thinking. “Somebody could’ve seen it, on a table in the hall. Somebody could’ve seen her, in person, in the house and around the place…”

  “You’re groping,” said Filey thinly. We were no longer progressing in a straight line. “Nobody saw anybody. They were all making themselves clean and beautiful for the party. Except for Grant Felton, and he’d shut himself in with the car.”

  “All right then.” I took a deep breath. “You’re going to argue that Dorothy picked up the headsquare and followed Philomena with it. But why should she do that? Her decision must have been instantaneous, at the moment she picked up the headsquare and held it in her hands. And all that’d happened to alter the situation was Philomena’s dropping it on the ground. But what else could it have told Dorothy? If it meant anything at all to her, that is. It was that Philomena was rejecting Felton and throwing her future into Art’s hands—that’s what. And that couldn’t have harmed Dorothy. It may have even pleased her. It’d be an end to all the trouble, because someone else would be taking over the problem.”

  “I’m not sure of that,” said Filey uncomfortably.

  “She might even have seen in it the possibility that Philomena intended to tell the truth of what happened at that warehouse…”

  “Ah!” murmured Filey.

  “…which Dorothy would see as trouble for you, Mr. Filey, and freedom for herself.” />
  “Very well.” Greaves gestured as Filey seemed about to pounce in. “But you’ve just eliminated the headsquare as a possible murder weapon.”

  “Better that way. It blurs the issue.”

  “And you hope to clarify it?”

  “I’m eliminating suspects.”

  “All you’ve got left is Frenchie—”

  “And Mr. Filey, here,” I said sharply, stubbornly.

  Filey moved. I held up a hand. “Give me a sec’, I’m still eliminating. We’re left with somebody who knew she was going to meet Art, and who was interested in hearing what she was going to say to him. That somebody might well have been waiting at that patch of woodland, in order to intercept her and ask her what that was. Right? It’s just possible.”

  I was losing their confidence. I pressed on. “But we know now that she was going to tell Art it was him and her together, and to hell with everybody else. Except perhaps Packer. If Frenchie had met her, that’s what she’d have told him—that she was going to do her best to get Packer free. So Frenchie would have no grouse. And the same goes for you, Mr. Filey—always supposing, of course, that you didn’t do any evidence rigging…” I held up my palm. “No, no. You’re the one who knows. If you didn’t rig things, then you’d have no reason to kill her. So it’s your turn. Does that clear you?”

  Filey laughed easily. He reached forward and slapped my knee. “It clears me.” The slap had been more forceful than absolutely necessary.

  “But only if you accept that I’m right about Philomena’s intentions.”

  “And he expects me to argue about it!” Filey leaned back to appeal to Greaves, who spared him a distorted grin.

  “Which means Art was telling the exact truth, his movements and the silk scarf and the telephone booth,” I said gloomily. “Somehow, you’ve got to get that scarf—”

  “Somehow,” said Filey, vastly satisfied with the situation, “you’ve got to get that scarf from A to B.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve just eliminated everybody but yourself.”

  “Have I?”

  “Everything you’ve said has been based on what you claim to be privileged information. It wouldn’t be said to us, and you know it. If it was ever said at all. You came out of Gartree, hunting for Philomena Wise. There’s only you to say there was an offer of money involved. You came to kill her. You vied with Frenchie in this, and killed him. You were also paid to kill Dorothy Mann—”

  “Now wait a minute!”

  “You’ve had your say. Now shut up. Packer believed Miss Mann primed Philomena over the evidence. She feared for her own life. Why the hell d’you think she took on Philomena’s identity? Ah! I see you’ve already thought of that—or you already knew. Aubrey Wise was paying her—yes, we’ve got to accept that. But she took it on, two people in one identity. Whoever was hunted out first, she’d be waiting. And she’d got herself an illegal weapon. And you, Paul Manson, contacted her when you’d recently come from Gartree.”

  “There was more to it—”

  “And you now base these theories of yours on what she told you! Don’t you see, you fool, she’d never have confided anything important to you.”

  “I believed what she told me.”

  “Because it’s so damned convenient for you. Oh…this lovely story of five suspects and a dropped headsquare. But no mention of the sixth suspect, I notice. That’s you, Manson.”

  “It’s not so!” I shouted.

  “You’re a liar, Manson. A proven and demonstrated strangler, who strangled again.”

  I almost choked to get it out. He was waiting, his eyes gleaming, his lips compressed into what could have been a triumphant smile. “She was not strangled with the hands, Filey.”

  “Pff!” he said, dismissing it.

  “Ask yourself why not.”

  There was a pause, into which Lucy whispered, “Slower…slower.”

  “You can’t have it both ways.” I raised my voice. “You can’t say I’m a strangler with my hands—because of my father and because of yourself—and claim that’s proof I killed Philomena, because she wasn’t strangled by two hands.”

  There was more silence. Into it, the chief superintendent’s voice rasped, “What the hell’s going on here?” He stalked into the room.

  Filey was on his feet. “Sir.”

  “If you can’t control the situation, have him back at the station, Greaves. I’m not having this sort of thing in a public place.”

  “No!” I croaked. “A minute…”

  “Everything’s under control, sir,” said Greaves, his voice neutral. “Mr. Manson was just about to clear up a few points. Weren’t you?” he asked me.

  I didn’t know what the hell I’d been about to do. Faced by three unresponsive faces, two of them openly antagonistic, I felt completely overwhelmed.

  “Come on, man,” snapped the chief super. “Get on with whatever it was. We haven’t got all night.”

  “I was going to ask Mr. Filey why he thought Miss Wise wasn’t strangled with the hands.”

  “And you know?” Filey demanded.

  Plunging in desperately I croaked, “Yes. I know.”

  Eighteen

  I had, indeed, sketched out a scenario in my mind, but it was far from being finished. I spoke directly to the chief super, because I was afraid I’d have to back-track over all the rest, just to clue him in

  “I’ve been telling Mr. Greaves and Mr. Filey that Philomena Wise…”

  “Why’re we talking about that?” he demanded. “That’s Dorothy Mann upstairs.”

  “Sir.” Greaves attracted his attention. “If we could just hear this last bit, I’ll put it all together for you later.”

  “Humph!” He clearly wasn’t happy, but I knew he saw in front of him a suspect about to crack, and he wasn’t far from wrong. And he wasn’t about to cradle me into any sort of confidence. “Then say it,” he snapped, “and let’s get on with it.”

  “Philomena Wise made a gesture, dropping a scarf in the road. It meant she’d come to a decision. That would’ve been obvious to anyone who saw it, because Dorothy’d just run after her waving the headsquare and calling her name.”

  “Does this make sense, Greaves?”

  “Yes, sir. If you’d please listen,” said Greaves, gently polite.

  I caught his eye, and went on while I had the chance. “The decision that Philomena was to be killed must have come at the moment that headsquare was dropped. So I suppose you could say it wasn’t a premeditated murder. In that event, there would be no question of wasting time hunting for a suitable weapon. There would be anger, you see, and I can tell you that a person’s natural choice is his own pair of hands. But a silk scarf was used to disguise the weapon, and quite a bit of work was involved with that—all because the obvious weapon couldn’t have been used. The question is—why wasn’t it? There’s one person who wouldn’t have dared to use his hands, because he would have left behind him a very personal mark. Grant Felton has got no more than a stump instead of a left thumb.”

  I paused, taking deep breaths, waiting for comment, but there was nothing. That was encouraging—it meant they were at least listening.

  “Go on,” said Greaves.

  “Dorothy ran down the drive calling Philomena’s name. At that time, Felton was in the garage, polishing the car. He could hardly have failed to hear. What would he do but go out on to the terraced drive to see what was going on? He would know she was intending to meet Art. She would’ve told him that much—in fact, she’d be defiant about it. So, from that terrace he would look down and see her drop the headsquare, and he would know, without any possibility of doubt, what she meant by it. She was rejecting him, and going to Art. Permanently.”

  “Does this make any sense to you, Greaves?” demanded the chief super, his patience stretched tight.

  “Very much so, sir. Indeed.”

  “Then let’s have it. Manson, is it? Hurry it up, man.”

  This, I had to guess,
was to assert his authority. I continued, but now not in so much of a hurry. He could be damned.

  “This character—Felton—he’s very much of a macho type. Thinks he’s God’s gift to womankind. He just couldn’t let her do that, not reject Grant Felton for a penniless, thieving young lout. He’d kill her first, before he let her make such a fool of him. I can see him, standing there, waiting for Dorothy to get clear, and realising he didn’t dare use his hands. But he didn’t need to. He’d got the means right there. Not the headsquare—he’d got his cleaning rags, strips torn from a sheet. He snapped one at me. Wet.” I held up my still-swollen left hand. “So he went after her with one of those, and from that moment it was all premeditated. He caught her up, and no doubt demanded to know what she thought she was going to do. She probably told him to get back to his sheep…and he strangled her with his cleaning rag.”

  I was talking myself hoarse. Filey realised, and reached down for his near-empty glass of near-flat beer, and offered it. I gulped at it.

  “And the silk scarf?” Greaves asked quietly.

  “Coming to it. Felton, as I see it, would’ve realised, then, that he’d made a bit of a mess of it. The cleaning rag, if he left it, would lead straight back to him, but at least it hadn’t made any marks peculiar to him, as his hands would. Maybe he took it away with him straightaway. In any event, he had to give a thought to Art. Such as…where exactly was he at that time? It’d be around seven o’clock. Art might’ve started to walk to meet her, and could’ve seen…well, anything. So he’d have to locate Art, and I reckon there’d already be thoughts creeping into his thick skull on how he could incriminate him. Then, if Felton hurried to the meeting place he’d see Art there. Don’t forget, he’d never met Art, but the fact that a young man was hanging around the bus stop and carrying something that was obviously a birthday present—that would identify him.”

  I paused in order to finish off Filey’s beer. This time it tasted terrible. Now it was obvious that I’d impressed them. There were no comments. They waited.

  “He saw Art dash off to the phone booth, followed him, saw him run from it—and noticed he’d left the present behind. Now…there was a decent bit of luck for Felton. He’d have dragged her body into the trees before he left her, so when he saw Art dashing off in the direction of the house, he knew Art would run straight past. So what could be easier than to leave the present beside her body! No—even better than that—open it first, to make it look as though she’d opened it herself. So he did that, and, joy upon joys, it was a silk scarf. Ideal. He could leave the wrapping, which’d even got Art’s name on the gift tag. Then all he’d got to do was tie the scarf round her neck and get back to the house as quickly as possible, nip into the garage—and wait to be fetched out by Dorothy when things began to fly apart. In fact, she locked him in, to stop him interfering.”