Watcher in the Shadows (10 page)

He must have discovered Fred Gorble’s establishment in his first reconnaissance of the district — for it would be an inconceivable coincidence that they already knew each other. Then he coolly rode in, weighed him up, told him a good story and arranged to stable his horse at a price which would keep Gorble’s mouth shut. The choice of a horse for transport between his base and the approaches to the Long Down was a stroke of genius. Should an unfortunate incident at the Warren be discovered before he was clear of the district, he could either canter casually past the police or, at the worst, make a highwayman’s escape across country.

“Well, now straight to the police!” said Ian briskly. “They can get on his tail and establish his identity. Where did he hire his horse? Where was he staying?”

“He hired his horse under a false name,” I answered, perhaps impatiently. “And wherever he was staying, he’s not there now. He may even be having lunch in your club today — without his prominent black eyebrows.”

“All right, Charles, all right! But how did he travel? Taxi drivers, ticket collectors, car registration numbers — that’s all daily bread and butter to the police.”

“Yes. They will trace him up to a point. But they won’t get near his identity.”

“He isn’t a superman!”

I agreed that he was not. He was just trained — and so was I —to recognize, anticipate and avoid police. I never, in old days, took a taxi anywhere near my starting point. I always gave the driver a reasonable mass destination which was close to but not my real one. I never repeated the same route. There would be no trouble in tracing the man to Euston Station, and a complete blank when he left it.

“But you can’t do nothing!” Ian exclaimed — and then, feeling that despairing cries were not strong enough, added, “You must not do nothing!”

I begged him to look at the position from my opponent’s point of view —who could not know that I had discovered the drugged dog nor that I suspected him. So the trap did not quite make sense as a trap.

“Was it one at all?” I went on. “Well, I had a friend with me whom he never saw arrive. And he had some other strongish reason — I don’t know what — to smell a rat. So for his own safety he must assume I expected him. And therefore it is dead certain he has cleared right out of the district for the moment and covered his tracks.

“But there are also some good arguments against its being a trap. The friend was with me because I don’t like being alone. The friend shouted and struggled to get out but said nothing which could definitely prove I was not quietly following my profession and watching badgers. All the time he has been here he has not seen a sign of police, in uniform or out of it. The car which passed him on the road meant no more than any other cruising police car.

“So what is his next move in this game where he cannot see the other board, but the referee has said ‘check’? He must make up his mind by what I do. It is certain that I myself know that a murderous attack was made on me, whatever excuse I may have given to my unknown friend … Consequently I must show nervousness and run. That’s the surest way of getting him to follow.”

Ian would not listen. He became more and more regimental. He insisted on telling the whole story to the police, and that I should stay with him while they made their investigations.

“I’ve been thinking all day what would have happened if I had been forced to put a charge of shot into that fellow last night,” he said. “I know he deserves it. But the police should have known exactly what we were doing.”

“And forbidden it or wrecked it.”

“That’s their funeral.”

“Mine, too, unfortunately.”

“Very well. But it’s against common sense and it’s against my —my —”

I was certain he was going to say “orders.”

” — against my principles. I cannot help you any more, Charles, unless you allow me to keep the police informed.”

I said I had told him a dozen times why I wouldn’t. Because I would not be guarded. Because I did not want him questioned, frightened off and returning months later when I was not expecting him. Because this was a private matter between me and him.

“For which you are quite likely to be publicly sentenced to death.”

That was my own business, I replied. Would he promise to leave the police out of it if I never asked anything more from him?

He agreed to that. He was very unhappy but obstinate. It was all my fault. I should have recognized that he was not the same man as in the war, and that it had become for him, as for the rest of us, a mere episode breaking the continuity of an orderly life. Both of us, as I have indicated, found the special beastliness of that episode still too much in the present. It is hard for a man of scrupulous mercy and humanity to be forced into the morals of a ruthless gangster. But he had the pattern to carry him along — a continuity of landed gentry into army and back to landed gentry. I had no pattern.

So there was nothing for it but to go on alone. Against Ian I felt not the slightest resentment. I had most unfairly dragged him into my affairs by playing upon whatever trace of romanticism remained in him; the point at which my plan was bound to appear to him sheer irresponsibility was soon reached. But I could not help feeling rejected. What I wanted was impossible — to repeat war, to know, as it were, that at least in London I was honored and trusted. And London and Ian had been the same thing.

I did not know what to do. To mark time and be careful was all I could do. I decided to return to my cottage for the night. My opponent, whatever his source of intelligence, could hardly spot the single night I had passed with Ian; but if I stayed longer he might get onto it. I did not want him to find out that I had been accompanied by such a formidable friend at the badger sett. Ian’s past was well known.

All the surroundings of Hernsholt now seemed to me puzzling and unfriendly; they refused, like so much at the heart of England, to be defined. Forest when seen from ground level. The tamest farming country when seen from the top of a tree. How was I to go to work within these subtle enclosures of life as well as fields? I admired that cruel devil who thought that burning alive was the right death for me. He was able to find his way through subtleties singlehanded and confidently, backed by his money and — of this I was now certain — an impregnable social position.

My own affinities with Jim Melton, I reflected sourly, were probably closer than with Ian and his kind — though whether that was because I had been brought up to laugh at the middle classes and their obsession with legal forms or because I was a fish out of water, I could not decide.

The thought of Jim Melton reminded me that he was better than nothing; indeed he might be better than anything. I walked over to see Ferrin and found him building a greenhouse in the garden behind his pub when he certainly ought to have been weeding his vegetables. He was that sort of gardener.

I asked him where I could find Jim Melton.

“Predestination, that’s what it is,” he answered drily. “The more I live round here, the more I’m certain nobody has any free will except me. Blowed if I don’t write to the Church Times about it one day! Jim said to me after you left that you’d be asking for him sometime soon, and if you did I was to send you round to his cottage.”

He gave me Jim’s address. It was a yellow-brick Council house on the road to Stony Stratford. I should have expected him to live in a derelict gamekeeper’s cottage in the middle of nowhere.

“Not he!” Ferrin said. “You wouldn’t catch Jim putting up with an old-fashioned place if he could work himself into a new one with the rate-payers paying half his rent for him.”

“I want an hour or two of his time. It will be expensive, I suppose?”

“That’s for Jim to say. But I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Dennim, he’s taken a liking to you.”

“I wonder why.”

“Ever seen an animal you couldn’t get on with?”

“Lots.”

“One that was free to be got on with, if you see what I mean?”

I did. It was well put. I certainly do not offend tame animals, and I have noticed — though the observation is worthless since it cannot be measured by statistics — that by wild creatures my presence, even when it is known, seems to be easily accepted. But I do not wish to sound like some dear old lady who claims that all cats love her. Why in the world shouldn’t they?

“Well, Jim —he doesn’t think,” Ferrin went on, “not what you and I would call thinking. He believes in his comfort, mind you, and when it comes to a deal he’s sharp. But he couldn’t tell you what makes him tick any more than his jackdaw could.”

The jackdaw was first with a greeting when I opened Jim Melton’s garden gate. It furiously attacked my ankles, pecked the hand I put down and then walked straight up my arm onto my shoulder.

Two small female Meltons, who were busy filling a doll’s pram with water, regarded this with interest.

“Mind yer ear, mister,” one said.

This was suspiciously like a word of command to the jackdaw, which gave me a sharp nip.

“Didn’t say no more than damn-you,” complained the other little girl, disappointed.

“What do visitors usually say?” I asked.

I was told. I wouldn’t have inquired if I could have guessed what was going to come out of those rosebud mouths.

“Thought you might be along, Perfesser,” said Jim Melton, appearing from the back of the house.

The jackdaw danced on my shoulder and repeated the expression it had just heard. The sounds were not really intelligible, though it made a fair shot at the word “bastard.”

“And if I am, what the hell’s it got to do with you?” Jim said. “You mind yer own business! Mother!”

Mrs. Melton came out of the front door. She was oddly dressed in a very dirty but quite well-fitting coat and skirt. The coat was longer than was fashionable and faintly suggested 1914. Her gray-streaked, tan-colored hair was the same shade as her face, apart from the red on her cheekbones. The coat and the coloring strongly suggested English gipsy blood.

“Can’t offer you a drink,” Jim apologized. “She won’t ‘ave a drop in the house.”

Mrs. Melton and I shook hands and exchanged smiles. The local prohibition was probably wise. Then she sorted out the Miss Meltons with some proper remarks on language before gentlemen. The water in the doll’s pram turned out to be a time-and-motion experiment; it was easier to take the bath to the puppy than the puppy, who didn’t like it, to the bath. But the pram leaked. I suggested the old fairy-tale remedy of stopping it with moss and daubing it with clay. Mrs. Melton, who was just leading up to all the usual mother’s remarks about playing with water, had from politeness to leave them unsaid.

All this seemed to have acted as sufficient introduction, so when I was alone with Jim I went straight to the point.

“Where did he hire his horse?”

“Now, that’s just what I asks after you and me had our little talk,” Jim replied, “because if I knew enough about that ‘orse to tell the old girl out Blixworth way that it was quiet and going cheap, I’d be doing a favor to you and meself.”

He gave me a horse-coper’s wink which dated from the last century and waited for questions. I said that I supposed he knew most of the livery stables within easy riding of Fred Gorble’s place.

“I do. And that’s as much as to say I know where the ‘orse didn’t come from. So I guessed where he did. Right second time! He ‘ired that ‘orse from Boscastle’s stables in Woburn.”

Jim had turned up at the stables soon after lunch.

Having a perfect excuse for inquiries, he had been able to show as much interest in the hirer as the horse.

The well-dressed stranger had given his name as Mr. fforde-Crankshaw. He had been fussy about the spelling with two little “f’s”; otherwise his manner was unassuming and natural. I thought fforde-Crankshaw was a fine invention —in character, impressive, but not too impressive.

He had hired the horse on the excuse of getting his weight down. Every morning he turned up about nine, rode off and came back before dark. As he paid well, was an experienced horseman and never brought his mount in tired, the proprietor of the livery stables was not worried and would indeed have been delighted — being short of competent staff — to let him exercise his horses free of charge.

Generally he had telephoned for a taxi and caught a ten o’clock train back to London. But on Wednesday night he had not returned till eleven, explaining that he had been dining with friends and that the horse had been well looked after. He had then taken a taxi to Watford and presumably picked up a train there.

Last night — Thursday night —after saying that he might not be back for some days, he had simply vanished while the horse was being unsaddled. The stables did not know how he had returned to London and supposed he had been given a lift by a friend.

I found nothing specially mysterious in that. It was common sense to disappear and cover his tracks when he could not tell exactly what trap he had escaped and whether it was a trap at all. I guessed that he had walked to the A 5 road and got himself home from there — though it seemed risky. That, if anywhere, was where the police block would be.

“Where’s the spade, Dad?” asked the elder daughter, interrupting us.

“Back of the shed. Under them mole traps.”

“No, ‘t ain’t. And we want to dig some clay like the gentleman told us.”

“Well, if ‘t ain’t, it’s where you blasted little darlin’s put it. Last Saturday they slings all their old dolls in a bonfire,” he went on, “and near burns up the pitchfork till their ma has to tell ‘em that girls aren’t never devils. Not in ‘ell, that is.”

Mrs. Melton called us all in to eat sausage and mash, the jackdaw on the table and helping with the mash. She asked no questions. She could mind her own business as well as her husband. They must have been certain of their daughters, too, for they did not care what was revealed in front of them.

“What we want to know now,” said Jim, “is what excuse he gave old Fred Gorble for leaving the ‘orse there all day. Him and his two little ‘f’s’! Two big uns I’d call him!”

“I’ll get that out of Fred,” Mrs. Melton remarked.

There must have been long agreement between Mr. and Mrs. Melton as to their respective spheres of operation. Her offer, without another word, seemed to open his eyes.

“Women!” he exclaimed. “Fred’s no fool, and he don’t like standing up in the box any more than anyone else. That fforde-Crankshaw, he comes ridin’ in looking as stately as a master of ‘ounds and not troublin’ his ‘ead about crime what you’d call crime. So what could he have told Fred? That he was out tom-cattin’ of course! He didn’t want anyone to know as he’d been over this way, and especially not her ‘usband. I’ll drive the missus round to Fred, and she’ll get it out of him like she said she would.”

After supper Mrs. Melton put on a formidable hat, and we went across the kitchen garden to the shed — a store or ammunition hut which Jim had picked up from the army and which now served as garage and barn. Its long axis was set obliquely to the cottage and the door faced more or less up the road.

Inside were piles of useful junk and an incredible vehicle with a shining bonnet —black, powerful, looking as if it were an amateur conversion of one of the royal landaulettes into a van.

“It’s a ‘earse,” Jim explained. “Comes a bit ‘ard on petrol. But that’s an income tax expense. I’m a farmer, see? Got more than five acres, I have, here and there.”

Mr. and Mrs. Melton got in, and the hearse burst out into the road. It was Jim’s method of entering and leaving his garage and may have accounted for the angle at which he set it. No doubt he compensated for his dislike of military service by imagining himself a cowboy in a hurry or a cavalier carrying news to the king.

I was left to entertain the Miss Meltons. A shower drove us indoors and limited the amusements I could provide. There was not a book in the house, so we turned to a paintbox. Caricatures of authority in the shape of schoolteachers and policemen were so popular that for an hour there was silence except for recommendations to make the backside bigger or the nose redder.

Our peace was broken by the jackdaw’s strident call of greeting. The bird seemed to be acting efficiently as watchdog till the new puppy grew up. One of the Miss Meltons looked out of the front window, but there was nobody about. The rain had just started to pelt down and heavy thunderclouds had brought an early dusk.

“Practicing — that’s what he’s doing,” she said, “unless someone has brought the spade back.”

“Dad’s hid it so we can’t bust it,” replied the other contemptuously. “Who’s goin’ to walk mile ‘n ‘alf to borrow a spade?”

No one. I agreed. But if somebody was already here and saw the spade, I could imagine a use for it. Impossible, however. I could not be traced to the Meltons’ cottage. The connection between myself and Jim was absolutely undiscoverable — unless the dark stranger hadn’t gone to London at all and had been hanging around Hernsholt that very day. And I knew he had not. There would have been an immediate report to Ferrin, and from Ferrin to Ian or me.

“Is there anything like a tip of loose rubbish or a sandpit near here?” I asked.

“Top of the slope behind the shed. Good sand, too. Dad’ll sell you a load if you want it.”

I got up and drew the curtains. Jackdaw’s chatter and missing spades were no evidence of anything at all. All the same, I did not intend to go out until Jim was back with us. If meanwhile somebody knocked at the door and asked for shelter from the rain — there was no earthly reason why he shouldn’t — I would have to get the children out of the room and tell him to keep his hands up while we talked.

It was nearly ten before the Meltons returned — with the same technique. I never even heard Jim change down. He reined the hearse back on its haunches with six inches between the bumpers and a wheelbarrow.

Mr. and Mrs. Melton were thoroughly relaxed by double whiskies, and cackling over their success. On arrival at Gorble’s retreat, Jim had kept firmly in his part of driver, saying that he wouldn’t come in, that his old woman wouldn’t confide in him what it was all about and he didn’t want to know either.

As soon as she was alone with Fred, Mrs. Melton told him that a lady had given her an urgent message for he-knew-who. Gorble showed no surprise, which proved that she was on the right lines. He said that the gentleman wasn’t coming back.

Mrs. Melton had then clothed herself in vague gipsy portentousness and delivered a warning that no good would come of it all. She invented a husband who was due back unexpectedly on Saturday from the Assizes. I gathered from her incoherent chuckles that he hadn’t been in the dock but was one of Her Majesty’s Judges.

This frightened Gorble into indecision. He admitted that he could pass a message, but refused. It wasn’t worth his while, he said. The gentleman had paid him well, and there was more money promised if orders were obeyed. Fred expected to receive a telephone call —he wouldn’t say where or when —and was forbidden to open his mouth at all except to give the answers to two questions: yes or no.

Eventually, to get rid of her, he told her what the two questions were. Had anybody been making inquiries? Was a certain person still living where he did?

“Ah, him at the Warren!” Mrs. Melton exclaimed.

That apparently satisfied Gorble that she knew more about the business than he did. He said he didn’t care to be hanging around Hernsholt asking silly questions, and would she get the information for him?

The pair of them waved away my thanks and apologized for stopping on the road. They reckoned I’d be glad to see them.

“We ‘aven’t give him no trouble,” protested the eldest daughter. “We’ve been ‘aving fun.”

“Aye. In the shed. I can see that,” said Jim severely. “One day you’ll get ‘urt burrowin’ in all that junk.”

“What’s the matter with the shed?” I asked.

“Knocked down a tarpaulin and bust a flowerpot.”

“Let’s go and see.”

As soon as I had Jim outside, I told him we had never been in the shed and stopped him going straight to it.

“Did you lock the door when you put the van away?”

“I did. Somebody in there, you think?”

It was most unlikely; but if the rain had driven an observer down into the shed for shelter, Jim’s sudden and dashing return would certainly have startled him. He had no time to get out of the door but he could have dived into the litter of odds and ends at the back.

“Switch the light on,” I said, “and don’t come any further. And don’t say anything which could give away what we’re doing — make out we’re looking for a handy plank.”