They Never Looked Inside (27 page)
“Right,” said the Lieutenant. He surveyed the moonlit scene for a long minute and then pointed to the house on their immediate right – the middle one of the three buildings. “What about kicking off from there?”
“Just what I was going to suggest myself,” said Hazlerigg. “It will make a good starting-point and it will give us cover up to the last ten yards.”
“We’ll put the P.I.A.T. there, too,” said the Lieutenant. “Sergeant!”
Not the least surprising happening of that surprising evening was that when Hazlerigg, after a cautious approach, rang the bell of the centre house, the door was opened by a smart parlour-maid.
“Excuse me,” said the Inspector, “but is your master at home? Don’t be alarmed, miss, it’s quite all right.”
“Yessir,” said the girl faintly. Before her startled eyes the hall seemed to be filling with enormous policemen and no less enormous soldiers. “Mister Pilkington—sir. He’s in here, sir. Shall I announce you?”
“Now, don’t you bother,” said Hazlerigg. “I’ll announce myself.” Six more guardsmen arrived, carrying a P.I.A.T. projector and two Bren guns. The girl retired down the kitchen stairs to have hysterics in the basement.
Inside the room she had indicated Hazlerigg found Mr, Pilkington, a neat, bird-like man of some eighty summers. He looked up from a game of patience, which he was setting out on a small table in front of the fire, and regarded the Inspector with considerable surprise.
The question as to why so far he had shown such a lack of interest in the violent and exciting scenes being enacted around him was in part resolved. He picked up from the table an old-fashioned horn ear trumpet.
He was clearly very deaf.
“Excuse me,” bawled Hazlerigg, “but we shall have to make use of your house. Good gracious me—I didn’t realise there were quite so many of us.”
Before Mr. Pilkington’s fascinated eyes, there entered in succession Inspector Pickup, four uniformed policemen, M. Bren (a fearsome figure with two long German automatics belted outside his mackintosh), a sergeant and six guardsmen, Lieutenant Sir William Carpmael, Major McCann, Colonel Hunt and, finally, the Highgate Superintendent.
“Would you see if you can explain things to him?” said Hazlerigg optimistically to the Superintendent. “Here, for God’s sake, Inspector, take some of those constables back into the hall. I think we’ll find what we want through here.” He indicated a connecting door which evidently led to the dining room.
“Keep your heads down, now,” said the Lieutenant, “they can see you from that side of the house. Corporal, we’ll have the Piat at the middle window. Bren guns on either side. Sergeant, when I turn the light out I want you to get the rest of the men out of the two end windows and into the flower border, lying down.”
“Very good, sir.”
“We’ll give you cover if they open up, but no one’s to fire until I give the word. Carry on.”
He turned the switch and the room was plunged into darkness.
McCann, who was crouching beside M. Bren and the Inspector, viewed the last fantastic act of the night’s drama by the light of the full moon filtering in at the three long dining room windows.
How good the Guards were – always. He noticed that not one of them had said a word about the whole extraordinary business. Absolute silence, absolute discipline. The Lieutenant seemed to know his stuff too.
Outside the dining room windows was a low herbaceous hedge, and behind this there were now about a dozen guardsmen lying. Twenty yards away, through the trees, the other house stood silent and shuttered in the moonlight.
McCann was watching the Corporal, who was sitting behind the heavy anti-tank projector at the centre window. The Lieutenant was crouching at his side.
Suddenly, from inside the house they were watching, came the double crack of an automatic.
“What the blazes is that?” said Hazlerigg, quietly. “Have they started shooting each other?”
“It might be Sergeant Catlin – I’m afraid.” McCann, too, found himself whispering.
The Lieutenant seemed not to have heard the sound, or if he had, he gave no sign of it, but continued to watch the Corporal who was fiddling delicately with the sights of the projector.
“The middle of the shutters,” he said. “Aim for the join.”
The Corporal nodded.
The Lieutenant placed his fingers in his ears and everyone in the room hastily did likewise.
The noise of the detonation was curiously soft, followed almost immediately by a shattering roar as the projectile struck the shutters squarely.
The window dissolved in a cloud of yellow smoke. As it cleared, the watchers could see no window at all, but a jagged hole in the brickwork, and through the hole the leading Guardsman was climbing.
The Lieutenant was halfway across the lawn, and behind him, a smile of supreme satisfaction on his face, trotted M. Bren.
McCann got up on to his feet. He felt desperately tired but he knew there was one more job to be done. By the time he reached the house everyone else seemed to have disappeared. A long arm in battle-dress reached out and pulled him through the hole.
Somewhere on the other side of the house, a battle was going on.
McCann ignored it, turned up the stairs and reached the second floor, without meeting a soul. The long corridor was empty, too, and at the far end a square of light showed from the open door of his recent prison.
With a sudden and irrational presentiment he hurried forward. Instinct flattened him at the edge of the doorway and the bullet, fired from inside the room, buried itself in the plaster a foot in front of his nose.
Enlightenment came. “For God’s sake, sergeant,” he said, “a little discrimination please. It’s me—the Navy’s here.”
“Thank God for it,” said the voice of Sergeant Catlin faintly. “That was my last bullet.”
Downstairs the fight was over. Considering the amount of lead which had been thrown about, there was surprisingly little damage. Two of the soldiers were slightly wounded. Inspector Pickup had suffered the indignity of a neat bullet-hole through the centre of his bowler hat. Mr. Brown, the Spaniard, and two of his men, were apparently none of them hurt. They stood now in a group at the end of the drawing room whilst a young soldier with a tommy gun regarded them impassively. His last action had been against German paratroopers in the Valley of the Santerno. He found his present victims unimpressive.
Chief Inspector Hazlerigg removed a much folded paper from his pocket and addressed himself to Mr. Brown.
“I have here,” he began, “a warrant for your arrest charging you firstly with being concerned in the murder of Sergeant Pollock then attached to the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department—”
Four months had gone by.
McCann and Mrs. McCann (formerly Kitty Carter) were sitting in their private sanctum. The last customer had yielded to persuasion and gone from the saloon bar of the Leopard, and the kettle was boiling for their nightly cup of tea.
Glasgow had left a final edition of the evening paper on the table and McCann read from it the account of the double execution of Samuel Garret, alias Samuel Gilbert, alias William Brown of London, and Ramon Martinez, late of Seville.
The public had been told surprisingly little of the true circumstances and their interest tended to be statistical. As “Jack of London” remarked, in his popular and widely read column, it was almost exactly twenty years since two men had together suffered the supreme penalty of the law; by coincidence, on the former occasion also for the murder of a policeman.
“They never caught—what’sit—that kid, did they?” said Mrs. McCann as she threaded the first needle for her nightly, ever-losing battle with Major McCann’s socks. “The one who got away on his motor bicycle that night?”
“No,” said McCann. “No, they didn’t. In fact, even at the trial and afterwards, no one seemed to know his name. It really was rather odd, when you come to think of it. The police witnesses called him ‘a youth associated with the prisoners’. The gang called him ‘that kid’.”
“I don’t believe he ever had a name,” said Mrs. McCann.
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1
] N.B.-This is not, as the reader might suppose, some diabolical police ‘truth’ drug; it stands for Rum (of naval strength).
All Series titles can be read in order, or randomly as standalone novels
Inspector Hazlerigg
- Close Quarters
(1947) - They Never Looked Inside
(alt: He Didn’t Mind Danger) (1948) - The Doors Open
(1949) - Smallbone Deceased
(1950) - Death has Deep Roots
(1951) - Fear To Tread
(in part) (1953) - The Young Petrella
(included) (short stories) (1988) - The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Mysteries
(included) (short stories) (1997)
Patrick Petrella
- Blood and Judgement
(1959) - Amateur in Violence
(included) (short stories) (1973) - Petrella at Q
(short stories) (1977) - The Young Petrella
(short stories) (1988) - Roller Coaster
(1993) - The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Mysteries
(included) (short stories) (1997)
Luke Pagan
- Ring of Terror
(1995) - Into Battle
(1997) - Over and Out
(1998)
Calder & Behrens
- Game Without Rules
(short stories) (1967) - Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens
(short stories) (1982)
Non-Series
- Death in Captivity
(alt: The Danger Within) (1952) - Sky High
(alt: The Country House Burglar) (1955) - Be Shot for Sixpence
(1956) - After the Fine Weather
(1963) - The Crack in the Teacup
(1966) - The Dust and the Heat
(alt: Overdrive) (1967) - The Etruscan Net
(alt: The Family Tomb) (1969) - Stay of Execution and Other Stories
(short stories) (1971) - The Body of a Girl
(1972) - The Ninety-Second Tiger
(1973) - Flash Point
(1974) - The Night of the Twelfth
(1976) - The Empty House
(1979) - The Killing of Katie Steelstock
(alt: Death of a Favourite Girl) (1980) - The Final Throw
(alt: End Game) (1982) - The Black Seraphim
(1984) - The Long Journey Home
(1985) - Trouble
(1987) - Paint, Gold, and Blood
(1989) - Anything for a Quiet Life
(short stories) (1990) - The Queen against Karl Mullen
(1992)
Published by House of Stratus
 | After The Fine Weather When Laura Hart travels to Austria to visit her brother, vice-consul of Lienz in the Tyrol, she briefly meets an American who warns her of the mounting political tension. Neo-Nazis are stirring trouble in the province, and xenophobia is rife between the Austrians who control the area and the Italian locals. Then Laura experiences the troubles first-hand, a shocking incident that suggests Hofrat Humbold, leader of the Lienz government is using some heavy-handed tactics. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he is unwilling to let one little English girl destroy his plans for the largest Nazi move since the war, and Laura makes a dangerous enemy. |
 | Anything For A Quiet Life Jonas Pickett, lawyer and commissioner of oaths is nearing retirement, but still has lots of energy. However, he leaves the pressure of a London practice behind to set up a new modest office in a quiet seaside resort. He soon finds that he is overwhelmed with clients and some of them involve him in very odd and sometimes dangerous cases. This collection of inter-linked stories tells how these are brought to a conclusion; ranging from an incredible courtroom drama involving a gipsy queen to terrorist thugs who make their demands at gunpoint. |