A Rough Shoot (10 page)

“My dear man, my wife and children have already told you that I was in bed with a touch of flu. And all yesterday I was in the office, and there are dozens of people to prove it. May I ask why you think I wasn’t, or wouldn’t it be professional?”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t know,” he answered. “I have two sets of prints, apparently yours, in wet cow dung. Now can you help me, Mr. Twaine? We know perfectly well that your life is an open book and that you don’t run secret aircraft.”

Possibly I should have helped him. On the other hand I didn’t feel like explaining to my local inspector that I had first killed, then buried, then burnt an unknown male. That kind of thing was obviously better handled, if it ever had to come out at all, on a high level, between Sandorski and his friend Roland.

“Well, but look here–how long does wet cow dung take to dry in damp weather? Surely that is a bit beyond the county police?”

“It’s beyond me, Mr. Taine,” he laughed. “But we’ve got some assistance from Scotland Yard on this case–and better still.”

I said that I didn’t know there was anything better than Scotland Yard.

He told me. After all, he was dead certain that I was innocent; and I was a respectable neighbor, entitled, after all this trouble, to a bit of thrilling and confidential gossip.

“There’s a gentleman staying with Mr. Robert Heyne-Hassingham. Catches spies, and all that. You know. Well, Mr. Taine, if you don’t mind my taking your boots away with me, I’m sure they’ll find that those prints were made on Saturday. Maybe Scotland Yard knows more about bull than cows. Ha, ha!”

“Ha, ha!” I answered dutifully.

“And meanwhile, Mr. Taine–just as a matter of form– I’m afraid I must ask you to be at home or at the office tomorrow. And I’ll bring you a statement to sign in the morning.”

When he had gone, I got Sandorski down at once from the roof.

“Peter,” I said, “there was a policeman here. It will take him twenty minutes to get back to county headquarters, and about ten minutes after that Hiart will know it was me. Now what?”

He opened a rapid fire of questions and got the position clear.

“Hiart is trying an impossible bluff,” I insisted. “I have only to produce those documents, and you to back me up.”

“Colonel, my lad, Sandorski forged them. Sandorski told you a yarn. Sandorski got you to help him land a plane. Sandorski and you murdered the man who came in it. Can you prove that isn’t true?”

“The beacons,” I said.

“My lad, they used gloves, and we were in a hurry and didn’t.”

“Lex, then.”

“Hiart thinks Lex is dead. He’ll get a shock when he finds he isn’t. But he’ll manage to have a word with him before the police.”

“But Hiart and Pink and his chaps. We heard them and saw them,” I protested.

“Indeed you did. And they nearly caught you and me in the act of landing that plane.”

“But it’s a nightmare.”

“I’ve never put the blame on the staff,” he said, “and I’m not going to start now. I’ll keep you out of it.”

I didn’t like the idea of surrender, and I told him so.

“Too many noncombatants about,” he replied, nodding his head towards the uproarious noise that was coming from the living room. “They have no business in this sort of thing.”

“I’m going to give ‘em a better world than this even if I go to gaol for it.”

“Ten minutes of your better world is up,” he said.

“I can’t help feeling Lex is the key.”

“Produce him to the police, you think?”

“It’s bound to rattle Hiart.”

“For a moment, until he can get a word with him. Then all Lex has to say is the truth–ha?–that we did receive him, and that Hiart tried to get him away.”

Sandorski shot out a hand to me for silence. His left eye sparkled with life, showing up the artificial right in fierce contrast that I had never noticed before.

“Lex!” he said. “Quick!”

He did the rope trick into the roof, with me after him.

“Lex, if we can get you away from here, where do you go?”

He used Lex’s real name, which I needn’t repeat. That gave the man confidence.

“Where I go? Why?”

“The police are on to us. But there’s still a chance of delivering your bag. Where were you to go if the plane made a forced landing?”

“Why don’t you know?” Lex replied stolidly.

“Because my orders were to take you here. But it’s bust open, my lad. It’s hot. We’ve got to get out.”

Lex thought it over and decided to trust us.

“Flat 9, 26 Fulham Park Avenue, London.”

“Who do you ask for?”

“I think empty. I have keys.”

“Get a stiff needle and black thread from your missus,” Sandorski ordered me. “And tell her to hop it now with the children.”

“What’s the idea?”

“Bolt. Skip. Now–ha? If we can get Lex to London, we’ll beat ‘em yet.”

I left Sandorski to tidy up the roof space; he hadn’t time to hide all traces of occupation, but he hoped to indicate that only one man had been there, not two.

“Go out now with the children, my darling,” I said to Cecily, “and get them that ice cream. When you come back, we shan’t be here. But Hiart will be, and the police. They are bound to find out that someone was in the roof, but say you knew nothing about it. Say I was certainly behaving oddly, but stick to your story that I never went out last night. When you took the children to the village, I said I would follow you in a minute, and we’d have a quick one at the local. Got it?”

“But where will I be able to find you?” she cried.

“Safe as can be. In the hands of the police. But I don’t want to be caught till we’ve sunk this People’s Union for good and all.”

Our parting wasn’t as sentimental as either of us would have liked, but one gets used to that in a family. The children were exasperating. They were deep in a game and decided that they didn’t want ice cream. They wouldn’t put on their coats. A hat couldn’t be found. And all the time the precious minutes were ticking away. My last view of George was of the little scamp dragging back on Cecily’s firm hand, and howling loudly.

I turned off all the lights, and went out to reconnoiter the garden and the back.

“Careful,” Sandorski suggested.

“What the hell do you think I’m going to be?”

“Right, Colonel, my lad! But I just remembered again that Hiart thinks Lex is dead. If you were too, how convenient for him! Don’t say he will. Doesn’t like violence. But it must occur to him.”

I quietly unlocked the garage door. Lex slipped in, keeping to the shadows, and lay down in the back of the car where we covered him with a rug and his splendid overcoat. Sandorski threw in the briefcase, wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, and told him what it was. At the last moment he dashed back into the house to cut the telephone wires. I jumped out too, and locked the garage, so that, if we hadn’t been watched, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that my car was out.

It was now six-fifteen, and exactly half an hour since the inspector had left. We couldn’t have more than a minute or two to get away. As a matter of course I turned to the right, up the valley, for I couldn’t go the other way in case I ran slap into the police car racing out from Dorchester; but I had barely changed up into top before Sandorski shouted:

“Stop! Damn!”

I thought he had forgotten something essential, and that we were done.

“Straight into the net! Rabbits! Attack, ha? Attack, even if you’ve got to run! Turn the car around and put out your lights, my lad.”

When I had obeyed, he explained that just as soon as the Yard man and Hiart compared those boots of mine with a plaster cast, they would be pretty sure that I and my companion, if I had one, would try to escape. Any available police would at once be ordered by telephone to keep an eye on the road we were following. The police car itself could stop the other end of the road.

I climbed up the bank to watch. I didn’t have long to wait. Indeed the lights of the cars were already in sight. There were two of them. They stopped outside my darkened house. I could hear the police hammering on the door Then they went round to the back, and the lights were switched on. The cars had left plenty of room on the road I tore past them, with the needle of the speedometer jumping from twenty to sixty. I was keeping my eyes on the road. Sandorski said that everyone was in the house or at the back, and that the only people to see us were the drivers of the police cars.

I reckoned that one of the drivers would run into the house, that somebody would then jump for the telephone and discover that the wires were cut, and that only then would one of the cars turn and give chase.

That gave me a start of at least one minute and probably three and I felt reasonably sure of holding it even against the brilliant driving of the police. I went along that road to my office, by car or bicycle, six days of the week, and I knew every twist and narrowing. I decided to stick to it, and not to jam myself in the lanes. A cross-country route might trick the pursuit for an hour or two, but in the end would only give them time to draw the cordon tighter round the district where we must be.

I did the seven miles to the outskirts of Dorchester in eight minutes, and please God I never have to do such a piece of driving again! Sandorski reported nothing in sight behind. At the bottom of the town was a fork, and there I turned sharp left, going back more or less parallel to the road I had come on, and separated from it by flat water meadows.

There I drove sedately like any family farmer returning home. I saw the lights of a fast car hurling along the road we had just left, and gambled that the police would also see my lights, and decide that it couldn’t be me. That was what happened. Sandorski reported that the police car had rushed straight on up the hill into Dorchester. There they were bound, as they thought, to have news of me. I must have been seen or stopped.

Now we sailed away northwards over the downs, passing little traffic and, thank heaven, no village bobby to notice our number. Not that he need bother with numbers. My car was a smart light gray, and horribly conspicuous at night.

When I thought we were likely to have passed out of the probable area of search, I turned into a lane and stopped. Far beyond us, of course, there would be check points or roving patrol cars to cut us off from London, but we were now between the lines with time to think.

I told Lex to come up and take a breather. He put out an unhappy and disgusting head.

“I vos ill,” he said.

“All for the cause!” exclaimed Sandorski. “Heil Hitler!”

“Why you say that?” asked Lex very seriously.

“Ask our friend here, my lad!” Sandorski said with an air of triumphant mystery.

“He is then alive?”

“Go and wash your face,” I said. “I can hear a stream down there to the right somewhere.”

I had grabbed a bottle of rum as last-minute baggage, and when Lex had gone we had a couple.

“One thing I didn’t have time to tell you,” the general remarked. “Mustn’t use our names before this chap.”

“I haven’t, I think. Nor you–except that you will call me ‘colonel.’ But that’s all right, as nobody else does.”

“We’ll make it,” he said.

“We’ll want a lot of luck. Do you realize I’ve got to stop for petrol somewhere?”

“And I’ve got to telephone.”

“What on earth for?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told me to get out of the house and bring a needle and thread.”

“That’s to sew up Lex’s briefcase,” he explained. “Must be in decent condition when he delivers it to Heyne-Hassingham.”

“Lord! Can you arrange that?”

“Yes, of course. And room wired for sound. If I ask for a chance to prove my innocence I’ll get it. Enough influence for that, ha? But nobody’s going to know me if I get arrested. Why should they? Might be guilty. I’m not trusted. I’m just a source of information.”

It was a wild scheme, but I could see that if we could deliver Lex to that flat at 26 Fulham Park Avenue it might succeed. It seemed to me, however, that our chance of ever reaching London was slim. In the course of the night the movements of my gray car were certain to be reported by some policeman. On the other hand, to judge by the newspapers, England was full of criminals regularly escaping with stolen cars. I suppose that they were prepared for the game, chose neutral body work, and had handy false number plates such as Hiart himself used.

The telephoning had to be tackled as soon as possible before the description of me and my car had been circulated too widely. It was improbable, we thought, that the police had any description of Sandorski or even his name. Hiart wouldn’t tell them, for he couldn’t be sure that Sandorski was in England at all, and he was not likely to commit himself when he didn’t know what questions he would have to meet. Though he held a possible winning hand, he must be just as alarmed as we were. It was a comforting thought. About the only one available.

Lex came back from the stream, pale and dirty, but looking slightly more like a traveling lawyer than a criminal. I drove on, steering a slow and uncertain course through the byroads. I was trying to find a safe route round Salisbury, well to the north of it.

We crossed the main road to London between Sherborne and Shaftesbury, using quite unnecessary caution. Half a mile further on, running through Hinton FitzPaine, we saw a telephone kiosk just clear of the last houses. It seemed to be as remote as any, so I drove up a stony little lane, where there was certain to be no traffic at that time of night and where we could safely wait while Sandorski went into the village.

I could not go with him. Lex was the difficulty. We couldn’t very well walk off with the brown paper parcel for which he was responsible. On the other hand, we didn’t want to leave him alone with it. So I had to stay.

“Have you got enough small change?” I yelled after the general.

He was doubtful, so I emptied my trouser pocket into his. There was a fair supply of shillings and sixpences and coppers, enough for a couple of trunk calls to London, especially as it was only eight o’clock and he would get the cheap evening tariff.

I sat there for half an hour talking to Lex. He was a lot more likable than his ideas–a solemn and mistaken crusader, but definitely a crusader. Even war and the law courts hadn’t cured him of a boyish sense of romance. He still believed that-–possibly with himself as chancellor–a despotism could be benevolent. So, I suppose, did Heyne-Hassingham, on condition that he was the despot.

When I heard Sandorski stamping up the lane, I was already beginning to get anxious. I nipped out of the car to meet him. He was quivering with nerves and temper. Even his footsteps were dancing and angry like those of a vicious horse.

“Gone to the Club!” he informed me in a sort of stifled scream.

Then he imitated the voice of the telephone operator, and I thought he would burst his arteries.

“Another one and tuppence, please. Damn their one and tuppences! Damn! Damn! Damn! Got his office building.

Six blasted minutes before some can tell me he’s out.

Cut off twice. Had to use another one and tuppence to get back. What message did he leave? At the Club. Got the bloody Club. Porter couldn’t find him. Put another sixpence in the box, please. I hadn’t got another sixpence. Colonel, I will not try again. It is the end!”

“Here, let me have a go!” I said. “I’ll come with you.”

“How do we get change?”

“At the pub, of course.”

“What about that?” He nodded towards Lex. “Or have you cut his puking, blasted throat before the hangman breaks it?”

“That governess of yours was a remarkable woman,” I said.

“– my governess!”

“I wouldn’t put it past you. Now listen, Peter–Lex is nearly asleep. Patience!”

I got him back into the car.

“We have to wait an hour,” I said to Lex. “And there’s nothing to do. So why not relax?”

I suppose the next ten minutes must have been as exasperating as any in the general’s whole life. I made him pretend to settle down to sleep. It wasn’t a very good pretense. Every muscle in his body was tight, and his occasional snorts sounded more like temper than repose. I myself kept up the air of tranquility so determinedly that I actually dozed, and was awoken by a savage dig from Sandorski.

It was a quarter to nine. Lex, bruised, worn-out and still dopy, was fast asleep. We extracted the brown paper parcel and ran down into Hinton FitzPaine.

I went into the pub and called for rum–since it was what I had been drinking–and offered a note in payment. Of course I got three half-crowns which were no good for the slots in the telephone box. I ordered another drink–for I didn’t want to ask outright for shillings and sixpences in case someone guessed I wanted them for a telephone–and in my eagerness to attract the attention of the landlord pushed further into the room.

It was the foulest piece of bad luck, equal to all that careless and insanitary cow had brought on me. I ran into the county surveyor, who was having a quick one on his way home from the inspection of some miserable local drainage scheme.

“Well, if it isn’t Roger Taine!” he roared, exploding my name from the smoke around the darts board.

I hoped the local policeman wasn’t in the bar. No one else, I thought, could know I was wanted till the morning papers. Nevertheless I watched the room rather than the surveyor, and met the fixed stare of a man sitting on the settle along the opposite wall. He composed his face, and looked away with a slight flush. He was a bad actor; but I doubt if I, in the horrified surprise of hearing my name, was any better.

My confounded friend shoved his way round the table towards me. I told him that I was in a desperate hurry, but I had to have a drink with him. I was sure that Sandorski, in his present mood of reckless impatience, would come storming into the bar if I kept him waiting long.

The man on the settle waited a minute, and then got up and passed the length of the bar, saying casually and rather loudly to the landlord that he was going to call his wife. The telephone was out of sight, on the wall of the passage that led out to the scullery and the beer barrels.

“I’m sure I know that man,” I said to the landlord.

I didn’t, of course, and didn’t want to. He was a type I don’t care for–worn and frustrated and keeping up a smart, gray mustache to compensate for his general air of genteel futility.

“Likely you would, sir. He keeps the filling station and cafe on the main road. Looks like Aladdin’s cave in the pantomime, though it wants a bit of paint and plaster, as who doesn’t? Teddy Bear’s Picnic he calls it, ‘cos ‘is name is Edward Bear. Ah, ‘e’s a one, ‘e is! Ever heard of the People’s Union?”

“Why, let me see–”

“Didn’t think you would ‘ave! But we has to hear of it. Mr. Bear is the county secretary, he is. I don’t allow no politics in ‘ere. Still, his People’s Union don’t ‘ardly count as politics. More like one of them last-day religions if you ask me.”

It wasn’t surprising that Hiart had mobilized any of his People’s Union stalwarts who might be of use. It was also possible that the police, as a matter of routine, had warned filling stations on the main road. I escaped from the pub, while the chorus of approval was going on, and found Sandorski fuming at the corner of the village street.

“I know, but listen!” I said. “I’ve been recognized. There’s a man who mustn’t see a stranger telephoning. I’m going to lead him away. I’ll give you ten minutes to finish and get back to the car. Don’t be longer.”

I poured a stream of small change into him, and hurried up the street again to the pub. I was only just in time to draw the attention of Mr. Edward Bear, who was looking for my car. I pretended not to notice him, and walked out of the village in the direction of the main road. He followed, but let the distance between us grow too far. It was a lonely road and pitch dark, and he wasn’t used to trailing murderers. Who is? I don’t think he had any enthusiasm for the job. It was a bit different from distributing pamphlets.

Where a farm track crossed the road I allowed him to lose me. He made halfhearted darts up the three possible ways I might have gone. Then he stood at the crossroads, mumbling to himself. The only words I could catch were a pathetically childish I wish I hadn’t, and later on a stern Service, Edward, service! 

This was annoying. I had given Sandorski his ten minutes, and the ten lengthened into twenty. I was far too close to the wretched man. I couldn’t move. Then it occurred to me that he wasn’t waiting in pure indecision, but for somebody’s arrival. I did not know what to do. To break cover and bolt was far too compromising.

I heard a car coming down the road. Mr. Bear stood in the shaft of light and waved. The car stopped. Inside were Hiart, Pink and a driver. Hiart got out.

‘Well, Bear?” he said in his high-pitched voice. “Well? I thought you were to wait for us at the inn. You must get used to obedience, you know. You’re working for the state now, not the party. Good practice for you!”

I didn’t wonder he had specialized in Intelligence. As an officer in command of troops, he would have been shot in the back. This was the rebuke educational. Officers will remember that they command Citizens, and will exercise Patience at All Times. I’d rather have Sandorski at his worst than be Shown Patience by Hiart.

“I followed him here,” said Bear sulkily, for he had been expecting praise.

“Here? Here?”

“Yes, here,” said Pink wearily. “He said here, and I suppose he means here.”

Mr. Bear explained rapidly what had happened. He was a tiresome little bundle of pretenses, but, if you come to think of it, he had shown a heap of guts.

“Then his car is up one of these two tracks,” said Pink.

“Oh, nonsense!” Hiart exclaimed, his voice leaping to an offensive falsetto on the first syllable. “You haven’t heard a car, Bear, have you? No! Well, if he knew he was followed by you, he’d have driven off very fast. And if he didn’t know he was followed, he’d have driven off normally. The car isn’t here at all. Flash your light on that mud, and see!”

It was no wonder that Hiart was disliked. And he was ten times more exasperating because he was always right.

“Taine is probably behind the hedge,” Pink said, “with a gun trained on you.”

Hiart jumped to the other side of the car.

“I find those remarks in poor taste, Pink,” he complained.

Fortunately Pink didn’t test his theory, for I was behind the hedge.

Hiart turned to Bear.

“What was he doing in the pub?”

“Having a drink of course,” Pink interrupted impatiently. “Why not?”

“Nonsense! Nonsense! That’s a risk Sandorski would never have allowed.”

“You’ve got Sandorski on the brain,” Pink answered. “Taine burned up Lex, and therefore he shot Riemann, and we don’t know who put him up to it because you didn’t stop to see. And I rather think Riemann is alive–unless you shot him yourself and know he isn’t.”

“Deplorable!” Hiart protested.

There was a certain smug satisfaction in his voice.

He evidently liked to be accused of daring deeds.

“Bear, since you have been here, have you heard a car leave the village?”

“No, sir.”

‘Then they are still here, and somewhere on the other side of the houses.”

They all got into the car and drove down into the village. I ran after them as close as I dared. They stopped at the pub and went inside–no doubt to find the surveyor and confirm my identity.

In that one street, it was difficult to pass the car and its driver. All I could do was to enter the inn yard, go round behind the building and come out again into the open with my back to the car. I walked unsteadily and gave a loud belch of satisfaction as if I were bound homewards from the side door. As soon as I had passed out of the range of one village light, I ran for my car.

Sandorski’s mood had changed. He was still on edge– but merely because he couldn’t think what had happened to me. Otherwise he was purring with pleasure. He had at last got hold of his friend Roland, who had promised to prepare the flat at 26 Fulham Park Avenue forthwith. Roland as yet had heard nothing of our adventures, but had warned the general, on principle, not to wreck all chances of help by getting himself and Lex arrested.

In the silence of the night I heard Hiart’s car pull away from the village pub. If I reversed down the lane I should arrive at the corner about the same time as they did. If I stayed where I was, I feared they would have a look at the tempting mouth of the lane and walk far enough up it to find us. The worn and stony surface might or might not reveal the fresh track of tires, but I had an exaggerated respect for Hiart’s hunting instinct; he would spot that lane as just the place to leave a car if you didn’t want it to be seen while you went down to the village.

So there was nothing for it but to go on up the hill, and pray that we didn’t find ourselves in a cul-de-sac. As we went I tried to tell Sandorski–without very much success– what had happened. For Lex’s benefit I called our pursuers the deviationists. At any rate I made it clear that they were not the police.

The lane was so narrow that I could drive without lights. The hedges on each side brushed the wings, and loose stones crackled and spurted under the wheels. The gradient at the worst places must have been one in four. The noise of our progress in bottom gear attracted Hiart and Pink. Sandorski reported lights behind us.

At the top was a stout five-barred gate. The general jumped out and opened it.

“Give me a rendezvous, quick!” he demanded.

“Can’t. I don’t know where we are.”

“Damn! Wanted to puncture their tires when they stopped. Pity–ha?”

It was a pity. But we might never have met again, and I didn’t know what the plan was if ever we reached London. We went on. The lane ended and we bumped over some sort of grass track. I had to use my lights. They revealed nothing but more grass and ruts.

This was not the sort of situation that suited Sandorski, for we dared not show fight. By one of his favorite rearguard actions we had everything to lose. If Lex were caught and his papers recovered, nothing could save us from the dock–though, I suppose, after months of agony for me and my family, we might have been acquitted. Still better for Hiart and Heyne-Hassingham was our death. That would be the end of any evidence of what had really happened at my shoot, and Hiart–if he arranged things to prove self-defense and could put his fingers in his ears at the critical moment–would be thanked by the police for his gallant chase.