Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth Read Free

leg.’
    ‘So maybe he broke it.’
    ‘The report doesn’t say anything about a broken leg.’
    ‘Maybe it’s just a mistake in the drawing.’
    ‘Mrs Dinorwic-Jones has been teaching life study classes all her life. She wouldn’t get something like that wrong. There’s only one explanation.’
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘He did it deliberately. He took his leg out of the trousers and stuffed his hat in the trouser leg and boot, then twisted it round to face the wrong way.’
    ‘Where’s his real leg, then?’
    ‘It’s pulled back and up, inside the thigh, like actors who play Long John Silver.’
    ‘Why would he do a thing like that?’
    ‘It’s a signal. He was dying. He had just a few minutes left to live. So what does he do? He writes “Hoffmann” in his own blood. Who’s Hoffmann? Good question. My hunch is, either he recognised his assailant, who happened to be called Hoffmann, or it’s a message written to an accomplice called Hoffmann or about a subject of mutual interest to them both which is connected with someone called Hoffmann. So the accomplice reads about the murder and the word “Hoffmann” and realises that Santa has hidden something in the alley for him and has used the phoney leg routine to point to it.’ She started to gather up the sheets on the floor.
    ‘You mean, he’s hidden something in the alley?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And pointed to it with his leg?’
    ‘Phoney leg.’
    I laughed. ‘OK, we check the alley. Do we have anything else to go on? I’m not saying the phoney-leg routine isn’t promising or anything, but it would be nice if we – you know – had something else.’
    Calamity took out a notebook and flicked it open. ‘The DOA is called Absalom. Arrived in town two or three weeks ago; noone is exactly sure when. Kept himself to himself. Took a job as Father Christmas even though he was Jewish. There’s mention of a woman.’ She opened the
Cambrian News
to the scandal pages. There was a picture of a mousey-looking Welsh woman in a stovepipe hat, in her early twenties probably, beneath a lurid headline: ‘ SANTA SLASH MOLL IN STOVEPIPE HAT MOOLAH MYSTERY’.
    I skimmed the first paragraph. It was a feeble attempt to insinuate a sinister explanation of where the girl got the money for her hats.
    ‘She’s the harp player out at Kousin Kevin’s Krazy Komedy Kamp,’ explained Calamity with a slight air of hesitation.
    We swapped knowing glances. The holiday camp at Borth was not one of our favourite haunts, in contrast to most holiday camps they had a strictly enforced ‘No Dicks and Sleuths’ policy. They were good at spotting disguises, too.
    ‘We’ll take a ride out there,’ I said.
    ‘We also need to get some knitting needles.’
    ‘What for?’
    ‘Ballistics.’
    ‘Oh, of course.’
    ‘Been reading about it in the Pinkerton book. What you do is you stick the needle in the bullet holes in the wall and shine a flashlight along the line of the needle. That way you find out the trajectory, and you can work out where the firing came from.’
    ‘Is that so?’
    Calamity assumed a nonchalant air. ‘Fairly standard scene-of-crime m.o.’
    ‘I’ve never come across it before.’
    ‘If Jack Ruby’s lawyer had tried it he probably wouldn’t have fried.’
    ‘Jack Ruby didn’t go to the chair. He died in hospital while awaiting a retrial. Embolism, I think.’
    ‘Same difference.’
    ‘And he shot Lee Harvey Oswald from three feet away. You wouldn’t need to stick a knitting needle into Lee Harvey Oswald to find out where the firing came from.’
    ‘It was just a . . . a . . .’ She consulted the Pinkerton book. ‘An illustrative example.’
    ‘That’s all right, then.’
    ‘I thought we could check the alley, see if the scene-of-crime boys missed anything.’
    ‘Is that likely?’
    ‘Of course it is. They only see what they’re expecting to see, because they arrive loaded with preconceptions. You have to empty your mind of the obvious and just see