Gunner Kelly (17 page)

More silence. And then the movement of the man above, dislodging more of the surface above into the pit.

“The Poliss—” Gunner Kelly’s voice lifted out of the hole as he delivered the words to those beside him “—would you believe that, now!”

Benedikt began to believe Colonel Butler’s theories absolutely. “You are not the Police?” But then a nasty thought dissolved his satisfaction: for where was David Audley? He should have been here by now, after the roar of that maroon. But he wasn’t—and this was therefore an unforeseen circumstance, in which Gunner Kelly might decide, heart over head, to “knock ‘im on the ’ead an‘ fill in the bloody ’ole”, with no more questions asked—that might be the easiest heart-way with an intractable problem.

“Why should I be the Poliss, then?” The question came down to him challengingly, but reassuringly.

Benedikt thought quickly. “You threaten me with guns— with firearms.” Only outraged innocence presented itself as a proper reaction. “By what right? You have no right to threaten me so!”

“No right?” Kelly paused. “Rights, is it then? Well then, Mister—
Mein Herr
—you tell me by what right ye are on private property at this hour of the night, when every Christian man should be in his bed, with his loving wife beside him? Can you be telling me that, and I will be telling you about my rights in the matter then!”

Anger for anger, he was being given. And how should poor Thomas Wiesehöfer react to that? He would be frightened, decided Benedikt instantly—he would be scared halfway to death, and not less so for being innocent.

“But… but I do not know—I am lost in the darkness upon the hillside, and I saw a light—I do not know where I am!” he protested desperately. “What is this place?”

Again no answer came back directly down to him. And that might mean the beginning of doubt up above … but, for sure, Thomas Wiesehöfer in his confusion would not be computing any such blessing: rather, far more likely, fear would be sharpening his wits—

“Please—is this Duntisbury Royal?”

Again there was no immediate answer, though this time he caught the soft murmur of whispering.

“Is this Duntisbury Royal?” he repeated the question.

“Ah … now how would you be knowing that then—if you do not know where you are?”

“You know my name—you spoke my name … Please, if this is Duntisbury Royal, I wish to speak to Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith …or…to Mr—
Dr…
Dr David Audley—I am known to them, and they will speak for me.”

The sounds from above increased, and someone stepping on the edge of the pit dislodged more debris on top of Benedikt just as he opened his mouth to repeat the request.

He spluttered for a moment. “Please—I wish—”

“Shut up and listen!” The Irishman cut him off. “There’s a ladder comin‘ down to you, Mister. But you come up easy now, an’ don’t try anythin‘ … Because there’ll be a light on you, an’ there’ll be a gun on you, an‘ him as holds the light won’t be him as holds the gun—do you take my meaning?”

Benedikt took the Irishman’s meaning. “Yes.”

The ladder came down with a slither and another miniature avalanche, but this time he was ready for the debris, with eyes and mouth closed. He fumbled in the dark for it, feeling quickly for the rungs with his foot before the Irishman could change his mind.

“Easy now!” The moment he stepped off the ladder a hand grasped his arm tightly, swinging him round until he sensed that he was facing the pit again. A second later a flashlight from the other side of the pit blinded him. “Steady now!”

They weren’t taking any chances: one push and he was back in the pit. He tensed against the pressure.

Hands ran up and down him—they certainly weren’t taking any chances—practised hands, which knew where to look and how to look through questing fingertips—trained hands, which were never those of any Dorset countryman. But he should have known that even without the soft Irish voice in his ear: Gunner Kelly was British Army-trained, and the British Army had kept up its skills over the years, searching black, brown and yellow as well as white for concealed weapons.

“He’s clean.” Kelly completed his task by lifting Benedikt’s wallet, passport and spectacle-case from the inside breastpocket of the wind-cheater. “You can turn round, Herr Wiesehöfer.”

There was something odd about the man’s voice. It varied slightly, oscillating between its native Irish brogue and the classless English which had been superimposed on it over two-thirds of the man’s lifetime: it was almost like listening to two different persons—the English-Irish soldier, trained and disciplined by his masters to automatic loyalty and obedience, and the soft-voice Irish boy who had crossed the sea all those years before, following his father in that hard service which had nevertheless consumed and conquered him at the last, turning him to vengeance.

“Come on, then—follow the red light,” the voice commanded him, English-Irish.

There were two lights: one, from a powerful flashlight, transfixed him; the other, a weaker blob of red, bobbed up and down ahead of him.

“Joapey—you and Blackie cover this sector until you’re relieved. An‘ no lights, mind you!”

Growl. “What we do that for? We got the bugger, ‘aven’t us?”

“We got
this
bugger, sure. But suppose he’s just a scout—one of a matchin‘ pair of buggers?” The Irishman paused eloquently. “You get it through your head, Joapey—we’re not playin’ games on this one, like with the Squire’s keepers in the old days, an‘ you get a belt on the ear an’ a kick up the arse if you lose. This one … you get careless, you lose like the rabbit loses—you get your bloody neck stretched.”

Growl. “I knows that. But you said they warn’t comin‘ yet, an’—”

“I said I didn’t
reckon
on ‘em comin’ yet.” Curiously, the Irishmen echoed the man’s accent now, in a third voice unlike his other two. “An‘ I also said there’s nothin’ cert’n in this life ‘cept birth an’ death an‘ taxes—” the third voice graduated from scorn to gentle chiding “—man, this is your ground an’ you know it better than any stranger poachin‘ in it, but I don’t want Miss Becky pipin’ her eye for you … If you ain’t got the guts for it, then just you say so.”

Growl. “No! I never said that—now you’m puttin‘ words in my mouth what I never said!”

“A’right, then … Now, Mister—” Discipline restored, the Irishman came back to Benedikt “—let’s not keep our betters waiting.”

‘Betters’ could only mean Audley and Miss Becky, and they were infinitely preferable to a shot-gun at his back. But the light blinded him, and he was still close to the pit.

He tried to shield his eyes. “I cannot see where I am going.”

“Put the light on his feet,” snapped Kelly, and the beam instantly followed his order. In the absence of those ‘betters’ there was no question about who was in command in Duntisbury Chase.

Benedikt remembered Thomas Wiesehöfer. “Where are you taking me?”

“Just follow the red light, an‘ maybe you’ll find out.”

The red blob danced ahead like a firefly, and Benedikt stumbled after it. Captivity was a new and wholly disagreeable experience, but he must put this feeling of helpless anger out of his mind first, and at once—

A branch brushed his face, and he lifted his arm ahead of him to clear his way.
Follow the red light
—

Michael Kelly—

Michael Kelly was no simple Irish peasant—and no oafish unpromotable private soldier either, Colonel Butler was right: that handling of the recalcitrant sentry and the sure voice of command which went with it—more, those three voices which the man turned on and off at will—all of that marked him out as someone more formidable in the reckoning.

The red light and the path at his feet twisted and turned; then he caught a glimpse of other lights, pale yellow, flicking on and off through the intervening trees on his left—now ahead—now on his left again: they must be approaching the manor house—

Colonel Butler had been right, but his rightness had hitherto been no more than logic and the shrewd assessment of experience and possibilities: young Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith might have the desire for vengeance, and the will to match it, but she surely lacked the stomach for this kind of work, and the certain knowledge to make the work worthwhile—

The lights were brighter now, diffusing through the trees into light itself—

And Audley …
Dr David Audley
… he had the expertise, or the perverse trickiness, to devise such old-fashioned man-traps; but he had appeared on the scene too late to be their sole architect—

The trees ended abruptly. Simultaneously he was out of the wood and on to the well-kept lawn which ran down to the manor house, smooth springy turf underfoot, and no more trailing branches and bramble tendrils plucking at him in the dark.

And there was the manor itself, brightly lit—

He strove for a moment to hold his inner train of thought on its lines, but the impact of his first true vision of the building was too strong for him, wrenching him irresistibly off course against his will.

He knew already what it was like, with Colonel Butler’s photographs and plans etched on his memory: the solid, rectangular three-storey mansion, its incongruous towers at each corner—half house and half castle. Yet now what had seemed to him unnatural and ugly—the towers were no higher than the house, and neither towers nor house were surmounted by roofs, as would have been the case with every such still-inhabited survival in his own country—it had its own reality, dramatically illuminated by lights on the terrace below and from the crenellated parapet above against the intense blackness which framed it: Duntisbury Manor, in Duntisbury Royal, in Duntisbury Chase in the county of Dorset, was where it had been for half a thousand years or more, grown out of its own ground—
and woe betide the invader
!

“Get on with you, then!” Kelly urged him from behind.

Benedikt stood firm, scrutinising the manor in his own time. “This is Duntisbury Manor—is it?” He let Thomas Wiesehöfer speak. For, after all, poor Thomas had never seen the Manor, lacking the benefit of Colonel Butler’s researches and advice.

“And what else would it be—Buckingham Palace?” Kelly sniffed. “Did ye not see it this afternoon—or ‘twould be yesterday afternoon now—when ye were out and about, snoopin’ round the village?”

“Please?” Benedikt decided that Thomas would be unfamiliar with ‘snooping’. In their insularity, the English took it for granted that most foreigners could understand their language and were unconcerned about their own ignorance. “What is … ‘snoopin’?”

“Don’t turn round! Never mind—just get on—go on with you,” ordered Kelly.

There now! thought Benedikt, stepping forward again: Michael Kelly had recalled him to the consideration of what was important again—which was Michael Thomas Kelly himself.

There were three ingredients here, in Duntisbury Chase, which had come together like those in gunpowder to produce an explosive mixture—Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith and Dr David Audley and Gunner Kelly. And Colonel Butler had known about the first two of them, and had guessed about the third—and the Colonel had been right: there was a sulphurous smell about Gunner Kelly, he was sure of that now.

Gunner Kelly—

They were approaching the Manor. The flashlight at his feet picked out a gravel path which circled an immense ornamental pond on which the night sky was reflected like a black mirror.

Gunner Kelly
—the other two were what they were—and the path, which had been crunching under his feet, ended with a flight of steps leading him downwards, on to a wide stone-flagged terrace on which the flashlight at his back lost itself in the great pool of light which filled the south frontage of the manor: the façade, which had seemed so much longer and lower from that first view, now towered above him, with the curve of the towers on each side embracing him—

Gunner Kelly
, with his sharp words of command, and his chameleon voices, and the inner certainty of those voices matching the certainty of his searching fingertips—
Gunner Kelly
was something more than the faithful retainer the facts had made him, the Old General’s loyal servant in life and the Old General’s grand-daughter’s obedient instrument now.

He paused, as though irresolute now that he had lost the guiding light at his feet. There were French windows cut into the thickness of the ground floor, with other windows similarly pierced on each side of them betrayed by chinks of light through drawn curtains. But the true entrance was there in the angle of the south-western tower, shadowed under a twisted canopy of branches and leaves.

Benedikt’s adrenalin pumped. For Benedikt Schneider knew now that, if Miss Becky had supplied the will to this mischief, and if David Audley had fashioned the means to it, the spark must have come from outside them—the spark and the certainty—

“Go on, then!” Kelly circled to his right, carefully out of reach. “What are ye waitin‘ for?”

And Benedikt Schneider knew that Gunner Kelly was the source of that spark—that Colonel Butler had been right. But he was playing Thomas Wiesehöfer now, and poor Thomas would not know—could not know—that the postern door of Duntisbury Manor was on his left, shrouded by the famous Duntisbury Magnolia, the seeds of which dated from the days when the Elector of Hanover had ruled American colonies as King of England.

“Please?” The more he suspected Kelly, the more determined he was to play Thomas as long as possible.

The postern door saved them both from more shadow-boxing by opening with the sharp metallic
clunk
of a heavy latch and an un-oiled whinny of iron hinges.

“Michael?” The door rattled on a chain. “Have you got him?”

“Madam … safe as the Bank of England.” Where Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith’s voice had a more nervous ring to it than Benedikt remembered from their first meeting, Kelly’s was cheerfully deferential. “Out of Number Two in the spinney. And ‘tis that German gentleman from this afternoon— Herr Wiesehöfer … So Dr Audley was right, would you believe it?”

Damnation! Audley suspicious was one thing. But Audley
right
—Audley
certain
—
damnation
!