‘Used’ being the operative word, Penrose thought. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘One of the newspapers did some digging into Franks’s past and found out he used to work for Alfred Hitchcock.’
‘I bet Hitch was thrilled about that. It must have kept the studio lawyers busy for quite some time.’
‘It was played down very quickly, I understand. But not before the same paper had pointed out that some of the murders coincided with the release of a new Hitchcock movie and that the locations of the bodies mirrored the films’ settings: New York for
Saboteur
and
Rope
; Santa Rosa for
Shadow of a Doubt
; Vermont for
Spellbound
; Miami for
Notorious
;
Washington DC for
Strangers on a Train
‚ and so on. Hunter was very keen to stress, though, that none of that is official.’
‘So how did he explain the
Rear Window
killings?’
‘He didn’t. He denies they ever took place.’
‘What?’
‘First he just laughed, and then he got defensive about it.’
‘Another Hitchcock fan, no doubt,’ Penrose said caustically. He wasn’t surprised that Hollywood might try to cover up its links to a serial killer, but none of that explained the confession he had just read or why these materials had found their way to his desk.
‘Perhaps. Hunter wants to talk to you about it, and he’s asked me to make sure the film reels are sent to him.’
‘I think we’ll take our time over that. I haven’t even looked at them myself yet. So how does he claim that Franks was caught?’
‘According to the LAPD, the last victim was found in a cemetery in Quebec City. A vehicle seen parked outside was traced back to Franks.’
‘And is there a Quebec film?’
Devlin nodded. ‘
I Confess
. Quite appropriate, really.’ Penrose nodded thoughtfully. ‘Franks is at San Quentin, waiting for the gas chamber. The date for his execution has been set for 1 December this year. He hasn’t made any attempt to lodge an appeal.’
‘Did you ask Hunter about that confession and the murders in Portmeirion?’
‘Yes. Franks has bragged about other murders, apparently, but he hasn’t made a formal confession for anything other than what’s on the original charge sheet. I don’t think they’re bothered, sir. They can only gas him once.’
Even so, Penrose could think of one person to whom Franks’s claims would matter very much indeed. ‘I’m going to take a look at this film, but I need you to do some more digging for me. First of all, see if you can trace a woman called Gwyneth Draycott. In 1936, she was living in a house between Portmeirion and Harlech. If she’s still alive, I need to talk to her. Then get on to San Quentin and see if they’ll give you a list of people with whom Franks has communicated, either by letter or by personal visit.’
‘Right away, sir. Anything else?’
Penrose shook his head, then changed his mind. ‘Actually, there
is
one more thing: about seven years ago, a woman’s body was found in Highgate. That was before you joined us, wasn’t it?’ Devlin nodded. ‘Get the details for me. There’s a Hitchcock film set in London.’ He remembered going to see it with Josephine – something long and tedious with a courtroom scene; it was loosely based on true crimes and had reminded them both of their conversation with the director over breakfast that day in Portmeirion. ‘See if the dates coincide.’
He lowered the blinds again and sat down at his desk. The footage started abruptly with a close-up of a woman’s face. She was staring in disbelief at someone out of camera shot, her eyes darting to left and right as she tried to guess his intentions, her fear turning to horror when she realised what was about to happen. As Penrose watched, her breathing quickened in panic‚ and her mouth opened in a scream. There was a flurry of hands at her throat while she tried to prevent an unseen assailant from tying something around her neck, but he was too quick for her. She twisted her head from side to side, choking for air as the material dug into her skin and squeezed the life from her body. Her hands – well manicured and heavy with rings – continued to claw at the knot, but gradually she lost her strength‚ and the clawing became a caress, then stopped altogether. She wore a crucifix, and the cord that had been used to strangle her hung down on either side, framing the cross and mocking her faith in any sort of divine protection. For a long time, the camera lingered on her face, her eyes still and lifeless, her tongue protruding grotesquely from her mouth; eventually it panned away and the film stopped as abruptly as it had started, but not before Penrose had glimpsed the outstretched hand of another victim in the background.
Sickened by what he had seen, he had to force himself to watch the footage again and was just rewinding the reel for the fourth time when Devlin returned. ‘You were right, sir,’ he said. ‘The film was called
The Paradine Case
and it came out here around Christmas 1947. Susan Dunn’s body was found in Highgate Cemetery on the morning of 28 January by a woman walking her dog. She’d been strangled by her own stocking.’
He handed over the file. ‘She wasn’t a prostitute, though, was she?’ Penrose said, flicking through it to remind himself of the case.
‘No, a housewife. Her husband reported her missing the night before. She popped out to get him a bottle of beer and never came back. We didn’t find her killer.’
‘Perhaps we have now.’ He looked down at the image of a woman’s body slumped against a gravestone, one stocking around her neck, the other in her mouth, and thought about Branwen Erley. ‘Did the prison cooperate?’ Devlin passed him a short list of names and Penrose nodded to himself: things were beginning to make more sense.
‘And Gwyneth Draycott is still living at the same address. That’s her telephone number.’
‘Thank you.’ Penrose picked up the receiver, then thought better of it. The sort of news he had for Gwyneth Draycott needed to be delivered in person. Everything else could wait.
Penrose stayed in Shrewsbury overnight and set out early the next morning for North Wales. It was a relief to be away from London, and he was grateful for any distraction that took his mind off the sadness of the time of year and his anxiety about the future: he had never subscribed to the school of thought that welcomed retirement as an opportunity; almost everything he had wanted in life he had achieved through his work‚ and, while he knew that the decision to go now, when he would still be missed, was the correct one, there was a part of him that longed to cling to his desk until he was forcibly removed, an embarrassing relic from the old school whose only value was his longevity. He could never have admitted it to those closest to him, but he feared the type of man he might become with no real purpose to his day other than contentment.
The road stretched out ahead of him, a meandering ribbon of grey between fertile green fields, and he shook off his mood and concentrated instead on the pleasures of the journey. Even on a cloudy day like this, when a light drizzle and persistent breeze conspired to undermine all thoughts of summer, he delighted in the subtle variety of the Welsh countryside. The overcast skies could do nothing to rob the hills and valleys of their colour, and Penrose found a sparseness and simplicity in the landscape which made it welcome company.
He bypassed the Portmeirion turning and took the road to Harlech, finally making the journey he had wanted to make all those years ago. As he drove, he considered how best to approach his meeting with Gwyneth Draycott, presuming she agreed to talk to him at all. He had no intention of sharing the harsher details of Taran’s murder with her, only the name of the person responsible, and he sensed that the news would bring both comfort and pain: if Franks’s words were to be believed in their entirety, there had been a genuine affection between the two of them, something more than a distant relationship through a fractured family, and Gwyneth Draycott’s relief in knowing the truth at last was unlikely to temper her sense of betrayal.
The house was harder to find than he expected‚ and he tried two lanes down to the estuary before locating the right one. He parked the car at the side of the road and took in the reality of something he had only ever seen in miniature. It was a handsome house, one of those solid-looking Victorian structures, built to suggest a quiet but enduring status and given greater authority by its commanding position. Everything about it spoke of care and attention, and Penrose wondered if the tidiness was Gwyneth Draycott’s way of restoring some semblance of order to a life scarred by events beyond her control. If he hadn’t known what had happened here, he would have said there was an air of peace about the property, and he questioned the wisdom of what he had come to do. Was it really fair to rake over the ashes of forty years in the name of justice, or was he simply playing to Franks’s vanity? Before he had made up his mind, the decision was taken out of his hands: a woman was standing at one of the downstairs windows, looking inquisitively at his car, and Penrose had no choice but to get out and explain himself.
She opened the front door before he had a chance to knock. Her dark hair was tinged with grey‚ and she must have been in her mid-sixties, but it was only her hands and the lines on her neck that gave away her age; her face had a fresh, youthful complexion‚ and her eyes – an unusually dark shade of blue – were bright and questioning, making it easy to imagine how beautiful she had been as a young woman. Even now, she was still remarkably attractive. ‘Mrs Draycott?’ Penrose asked.
‘Who wants to know?’ Her accent was soft, her voice pleasant, but the coolness of the words was unmistakable.
‘My name is Archie Penrose. I’m with the Metropolitan Police‚ and I was staying at Portmeirion eighteen years ago when your husband died. I’ve recently been given some information which I think you should know about. It relates to him and to your son.’
‘Henry Draycott was dead to me long before he had the decency to do it properly,’ she said. ‘Whatever news you have, you’re wasting your time by bringing it here.’
‘And your son?’ She hesitated, and Penrose guessed that so many years of silence had schooled her against even daring to hope. ‘Can I come in, Mrs Draycott? Just for a moment?’
She nodded reluctantly and stood aside to allow him into the hallway. He tried to be discreet as she showed him through to the kitchen, but could not resist a lingering glance over his shoulder towards the bottom of the staircase. Gwyneth Draycott had been living in this house for nearly forty years, oblivious to the violence that had taken place there, walking innocently across that floor several times a day, and the thought horrified him. Whatever else he told her, he was determined to keep that part of the story to himself: there was no sense in turning her refuge into a house of horror; her home was probably the one thing that had kept her sane.
The kitchen smelt of tomatoes and freshly baked bread. He took the chair offered to him while she went over to the stove, resolved, it seemed, not to let him disrupt the course of her day. ‘I’m sorry to bring painful memories back after so many years,’ he began cautiously, ‘but . . .’
‘Have you found Taran?’
She asked the question without turning round, but he heard the anxiety in her voice and wished he could offer something more than just a name. ‘I’m afraid not.’ She walked across to the window‚ and Penrose gave her a moment to compose herself. ‘I’m here because of your nephew, David Franks.’ He waited in vain for a response. ‘You do remember him?’
‘Of course I remember David,’ she said, sitting down opposite him, ‘but he left here a long time ago and under terrible circumstances. His father was killed because of what happened to Taran, although I expect you know that already.’
‘Yes. Did you keep in touch with David after he left?’
‘No.’ She must have noticed the look of surprise on his face because she added‚ ‘He was upset about leaving, and Bella thought it would be best if he made a clean break.’
‘So he didn’t visit you when he came to Portmeirion in 1936?’ Penrose asked, curious that Franks should claim such affection for Gwyneth Draycott but not take a twenty-minute journey down the road to see her.
‘No.’ She flushed slightly. ‘I thought
you
were here to tell
me
something, Mr Penrose?’
It was a fair point: old habits died hard, but this was supposed to be a mission of mercy, not an interrogation. ‘This will come as a shock to you, Mrs Draycott, but David Franks is currently in America awaiting execution. He went back there to live in 1938 and was arrested earlier this year and charged with the murders of twelve women over a fourteen-year period.’ Her face was impassive, and Penrose wondered if she already knew of her nephew’s arrest. He carried on, interested to see how she would react to news which she could not have come by in any other way, and which was more personal to her. ‘I’ve been shown a document which suggests that it was David Franks and not your husband who murdered Bella Hutton and Branwen Erley in Portmeirion.’
‘What sort of document?’
‘A letter which he wrote from prison. There’s no easy way to say this, but the letter also contains a confession to Taran’s murder.’ Penrose searched in vain for the reaction he had expected, then continued gently‚ ‘I thought you had a right to know who took your son’s life after all these years. It’s also right that the people who have taken the blame for David Franks’s crimes, officially or not, should have their names cleared.’ Still she said nothing, and Penrose found himself watching the second hand of the kitchen clock complete two full circles before he spoke again. ‘Forgive me, but you don’t seem very . . .’
‘Grateful?’ It was not the word that Penrose had been about to use‚ but he realised, on reflection, that it was perhaps more honest. He had wanted to feel that he could bring comfort to a woman whose life had been so senselessly destroyed, but his motives were far from selfless: even if David Franks was made to account for Taran’s death, it did not change the fact that Penrose had walked away too easily from the murders at Portmeirion, and Gwyneth Draycott’s gratitude would never absolve him from that. ‘It’s hard for me to explain, Mr Penrose,’ she said, ‘but it’s nearly forty years since Taran died‚ and the question that haunts me is no longer who, but why. Can you answer that for me? Have you gleaned anything from this letter which might help a mother make more sense of the world?’ This time, it was Penrose’s turn to remain silent. ‘Taran was a happy, beautiful little boy who didn’t deserve the fate that God gave him. I don’t mean to be rude, but I think it would take a higher authority than yours to put that right.’
‘I’m afraid David has given no indication of where Taran’s body is,’ Penrose said quietly. ‘I could ask the American police to press him for the information if it would help you.’
‘What good would that really do? Taran suffered enough when he was alive‚ and I’d rather he was left in peace. Thank you, though. It was kind of you to take the trouble.’
The words were spoken as a dismissal and Penrose stood up to go, feeling oddly flat and thwarted. There were still so many things that he did not understand about Franks’s claims, but he reminded himself again that he was not here for his own satisfaction; Gwyneth Draycott had suffered enough, too‚ and he had no right to pry into her marriage. She was not the accused. As she walked him to the door, there was a noise from upstairs, the sound of something crashing to the floor, and she looked up, startled. ‘You don’t live alone, Mrs Draycott?’ Penrose asked.
‘No. My sister joined me here a few years ago. The house is far too big for one person. But she’s ill‚ and I must go to her, unless there’s anything else?’
‘Just one more thing: did Branwen Erley ever contact you about trying to find her mother?’
She stiffened at the reminder of her husband’s adultery. ‘No.’
‘And you didn’t have any contact with your husband during the weekend of his death?’
‘Absolutely not.’ She shut the door without any further conversation‚ and he walked over to his car. Looking back at the house, he saw her face appear briefly at one of the upstairs windows‚ and then the curtains were drawn across, an eloquent closure to his visit. The stretch of water which David Franks had described lay before him‚ and he stared at the run-down landing stage, imagining the small hands on the rope, the sound of laughter and footsteps as Taran ran up the path towards his death. He shook his head to get rid of the image and concentrated instead on the rugged dignity of the Snowdon line which dominated the horizon opposite. The morning was still sulking, stubbornly bland and grey, but, as he watched, a shaft of sunlight broke tentatively through the cloud and fell on Portmeirion; it seemed to confine itself strictly to the small cluster of buildings, a blessing for Clough’s endeavours and an invitation to lay his own ghosts, and Penrose smiled.
Half an hour later, he left his Riley in the car park, paid his five shillings at the gate and joined the throng of day visitors to the village. Walking down the driveway, he could only imagine how frustrating Clough had found the fifteen-year period of war and its aftermath which had prevented him from expanding his vision; with the restrictions now lifted, he seemed to be making up for lost time‚ and work was already well under way on the new Gate House, a Baroque-style structure designed to straddle the road on the way into the village. The familiar figure of Portmeirion’s creator – clad in waistcoat, breeches and long yellow stockings – was standing nearby, overseeing the work, and Penrose raised his hand in greeting. As he made his way round the Piazza, taking the long route down to the hotel, it occurred to him that the gradual evolution of the village had contributed much to its beauty.
From the terrace, he noticed another new addition high up to the right of the village, a round single-storey structure that peered over the clifftop like some sort of wartime lookout post. Penrose changed his mind about going to the hotel and looked instead for a route up to the building from the shoreline. He found the path eventually and climbed the rock via a series of steep steps, pausing at the top to catch his breath.
‘Great minds, Archie.’
He looked up, embarrassed to realise that Marta must have watched his entire ungainly ascent. He had not seen her since before Josephine’s death, although they had spoken often on the telephone – stilted, trivial conversations that skirted around their grief but which, in the unspoken solidarity of loss, gave each of them comfort. Her skin was pale and he could see that she had been crying. In middle age, Marta’s face had always stayed loyal to its younger beauty – a fact that had simultaneously delighted and infuriated Josephine – but today she looked tired and defeated. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised to see you,’ he said, ‘bearing in mind what the date is.’
‘I come here because I don’t know what else to do.’ It was the first time Archie had heard her acknowledge her despair so openly. He sat down next to her and took her hand. ‘I can’t forgive her for lying to me, you know. She told me it was nothing serious. She said she’d be back to normal in about a year. A nice simple treatment by tablet, she called it – all so bloody innocent.’
‘She told
herself
that, Marta.’
‘Since when has an aspirin cured cancer?’ He understood her anger too well to reason with it. ‘Then she let me go out of the country. Actually, she
encouraged
me to go. I remember her telling me that three months was nothing, when she must have known that it was far too long.’ She lit a cigarette, using the diversion to rein in her emotions. ‘I read it in the newspaper,’ she said, her voice unnaturally calm. ‘I picked up the
New York Times
, and there it was.’
‘I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you‚ but I didn’t know how to find you.’ He thought back to that cold, dreary day in February, when Josephine’s sister had telephoned him at Scotland Yard to give him the news, and the hours he had spent calling American hotels, trying to find Marta as a distraction from his own grief. ‘She was the only person who knew where you were.’