Vintage Stuff (28 page)

'What on earth can I do then?' whimpered Glodstone.

The Countess hesitated. If she suggested going to the police he might just do it and she
wasn't having that. 'Isn't there any place you can hang out for a few days and nobody ever
comes?'

Glodstone tried to concentrate. 'I've got a cousin near Malvern,' he said, 'She may be away
and anyway she'd put us up.'

'Until the police came. Think, for Chrissake. Think where you wouldn't go.'

'Margate,' said Glodstone suddenly, 'I wouldn't be seen dead there.'

'Then that's where you'll go,' said the Countess, with the private thought that he probably
would be seen dead there. 'And buy a pair of dark glasses and shave your moustache. And if I were
you I'd sell treasure here to the first dealer you can find.'

'Sell the Bentley?' said Glodstone. It was the final straw. 'I couldn't do that.'

'In that case, stew in a French hoosegow for the rest of your natural. You don't seem to know
what your prospects are. Well, I'm telling you. They're zero minus forty. Permafrost all the way
to the Judgement Day. Amen.'

'Oh God. Oh God! How did this ever happen? It's too horrible to be real.'

For a moment the Countess felt a twinge of pity for him. The world was full of people like
Glodstone who played at life and only discovered reality when it kicked them in the face. 'Roast
lamb and abattoirs,' she said inconsequentially and was surprised when he picked up the
message.

'Or to the slaughter.' He paused and looked at her. 'What are you going to do?'

'Think about it. You go and fetch Butch Cassidy. On foot. If I'm not here when you get back
stay at the Marine Hotel in Margate and register as Mr Cassidy. I'll call you there.'

'Is there a Marine Hotel in Margate?'

'If there isn't, choose one with two AA stars and I'll call them all.'

Glodstone trudged disconsolately from the car park and found Peregrine eating an ice-cream and
studying some girls in bikinis with an almost healthy interest. When they returned to the car the
Countess had vanished. She was sitting in the bus station waiting for one that would take her to
Bournemouth and from there she'd catch a train to London.

'I don't trust that woman,' said Peregrine grimly.

'You'd better,' said Glodstone. 'She's all that stands between us and the reintroduction of
the guillotine.'

'I tell you the whole thing was a joke,' said the Major, 'I did not drop by parachute so I
don't know where it's buried.' He was standing by the roadside surrounded by armed gendarmes.
Nobody else thought it was a joke.

'Monsieur chooses to play games with us,' said the Commissaire. 'Ah well, we too can play
games. Back to the station.'

'Now hang on,' said the Major, 'I don't know what Glodstone's done but...'

'Glodstone? Who is this Glodstone?'

'Hasn't Slymne told you? I thought...'

'What did you think? No, I want to hear from you what this man Glodstone is.'

Major Fetherington told him. He wasn't going through Slymne's experience before he cracked and
obviously Glodstone had asked for it.

'It fits the description of the one who called himself Pringle,' said the Inspector when he
had finished, 'but he rescued Botwyk. Why should he then shoot him?'

'Who knows why the English do things? Only the good God knows that. In the meantime, put out a
full alert for him. All airports, frontier posts, everywhere.'

'Do we ask Scotland Yard?'

Commissaire Roudhon hesitated. 'I'll have to check with Paris first. And I want these two
grilled for every bit of information they've got. They must have known more about the operation
than they've admitted so far or they wouldn't be down here.'

He drove off in a hurry and the Major was shoved into the back of a van and taken back to
Boosat. For the rest of the day he sat answering questions and at the end of it no one was any
the wiser. Inspector Ficard made his report to an incredulous Commissaire.

'An adventure? The Countess wrote to him asking to be rescued? He came down in an ancient
Bentley? And they come looking for a boy called Peregrine Clyde-Browne because his father wanted
him back? What sort of madness is this?'

'It's what the other one, Slymne, told us.'

'So they had a ready-made story. We have a major political assassination to deal with and you
expect me to believe it was carried out by an English schoolteacher who...' He was interrupted by
the telephone. When he put it down Commissaire Roudhon no longer knew what to think.

'A man answering that description and driving a Bentley crossed from Cherbourg this morning.
Ticket made out in the name of Glodstone. I'll inform Paris. They can decide how to play it from
now on. I am a policeman, not a bloody politician.'

'What shall we do with these two?'

'Put them in a cell together and tape every single word they say. Better still, install a
video camera. If they pass messages I want to know. In any case, it's the sort of thing that'll
impress the Americans. They're flying ten anti-terrorist specialists in from Frankfurt, and
they're going to need some convincing.'

Slymne was still gibbering when they came for him. He was too feeble to resist and what he
said made even less sense than before but they carried him down the passage and put him in a
larger cell.

'God Almighty,' said the Major when he was led in too. 'You poor sod. What did the buggers do
to you, use electrodes on your bollocks or something?'

'Don't touch me,' squealed Slymne squinting at him.

'I don't intend to, old boy. Count me out. All I do know is that Glodstone's got something
coming to him.'

In his hotel room in Margate, Glodstone looked at himself in the mirror. Without his moustache
and wearing dark glasses he did look different. He also looked a great deal older. Not that that
would help matters in the slightest if they caught him. He'd be over eighty by the time he was
released if they ever bothered to let people out who had been partly responsible for
assassinating American political advisers. He rather doubted it. He was also extremely dubious
about having followed the Countess's advice but he'd been too exhausted and numb with terror the
day before to be able to think for himself. And Peregrine had been no help. He'd made matters
worse by wanting to lie low in a hole in a hedge like the man in Rogue Male.

'Nobody would think of looking there,' he'd said, 'and when it's all blown over...'

'It isn't going to blow over, damn you,' said Glodstone, 'and anyway we'd come out stinking
like a couple of ferrets with BO.'

'Not if we found somewhere near a stream and bought some soap. We could stock up with tins of
food and dig a really deep burrow and no one would ever know.'

'Except every farmer in the district. Anyway, cub-hunting's coming up shortly and I'm not
going to be chased across country by a pack of hounds or earthed up. Use your loaf.'

'I still don't think we should do what that woman said. She could have been lying.'

'And I suppose you think the Daily Telegraph's lying too,' said Glodstone. 'She told us it was
an international gathering and she was bloody well right.'

'Then why did she write you those letters? She asked us to '

'She didn't. Can't you see that? They were forgeries and we've been framed. And so's she.'

'I can't see why. I mean...'

'Because if we're caught and we say she wrote those letters she can't prove she didn't.'

'But you burnt them.'

Glodstone sighed, and wished to hell he hadn't. 'She didn't know that. That's how I knew she
was telling the truth. She hadn't a clue about the damned things. And if she'd been going to do
us down she'd have gone to the police when she went off to get petrol. Surely that told you
something?'

'I suppose so,' said Peregrine, only to bring up the question of the revolvers. 'The Major's
going to be jolly angry when he finds they're missing from the armoury,' he said.

Glodstone stifled the retort that what Major Fetherington felt was the least of their
problems. If the damned man hadn't trained Peregrine to be such an efficient killer they might
not have been in this terrible mess. And mess was putting it mildly. Their fingerprints were all
over the Château, the French police must be looking for an Englishman with a glass eye, and even
if they'd had the revolvers to put back the forensic experts could easily match them with the
bullet that had killed Professor Botwyk. Finally, what made it insane to imagine they could
resume their old lives or pretend they'd never been to France was what the Countess had said;
whoever had set them up would undoubtedly drop the word to the police. After all, it would pay
the bastard to. He hadn't killed anyone and they had, and it would get him off the hook. And only
the Countess could save their necks if she chose.

So Glodstone had driven to London, had changed his travellers' cheques and, leaving the
Bentley with a reputable dealer in vintage cars with orders to sell as soon as he received the
registration and licence papers, had caught the train to Margate. Peregrine had travelled in a
separate carriage and he'd found himself a room in a guest-house. Glodstone spent half an hour
changing and shaving in a public lavatory and had booked into the first Two-Star hotel to have a
spare room. He hadn't been out since. Instead, he had hung about the bar, had watched the news on
TV and had read the latest report in the papers of the terrorist attack in France. But for the
most part he had stayed in his room in an abyss of self-pity and terror. Life couldn't be like
this. He wasn't a criminal; he'd always detested murderers and terrorists; the police were always
right and they should never have stopped hanging. All that was changed and he was particularly
grateful that capital punishment had been abolished in France. He'd lost faith in the police too.
It had been all very well to talk about going outside the law but now that he was there he knew
no self-respecting policeman who would believe his story and if he did it would make not the
slightest difference. And being inside meant just that. Whatever some damn fool poet had said
about stone walls and iron bars, Glodstone knew better. They made prisons, and French ones at
that. He'd never have a chance to urge his House on at rugger or knock a ball about in the nets
again and the train-set in the basement...He'd be known as Glodstone the Murderer and go down in
the school infamy as Groxbourne's equivalent of Dr Crippen. And how Slymne would gloat...He was
just plumbing this new hell when the phone rang beside his bed.

Glodstone picked it up and listened to a now familiar voice.

'My, my, brother John, it's just taken me for ages to reach you.'

'Yes, well, the thing was...' Glodstone began before the Countess cut him short. She was
thinking about girls on switchboards.

'I'm down by the pier so meet me there in five minutes and we'll have ourselves some lunch.
Alone.'

'Yes,' said Glodstone. The phone went dead. With as much nonchalance as he could muster, he
walked downstairs and out into the sunshine. The promenade was crowded with the sort of people he
would normally have avoided at all costs, but today he was grateful for their presence. The
Countess had known what she was doing when she had picked on Margate. All the same, he approached
the pier cautiously, horribly conscious that he might be walking into a trap.

But the Countess was sitting on a bench and rose as he came up. 'Darling,' she said to his
surprise, and put her arm through his. 'Gee, it's just marvellous to see you again.'

She dragged him across the road and down a side street to a car. 'Where's Peregrine?' she
asked as they got in.

'In the amusement park probably, shooting things,' said Glodstone. 'It's called
Dreamland.'

'Appropriately,' said the Countess. 'Right, so that's where he stays temporarily while I
debrief you.'

'Debrief me?' said Glodstone, uncertain after that 'Darling' how to interpret the word.

'Like with astronauts, and guys that have been taken prisoner. Somewhere along the line
there's got to be a connection.'

'Between what?' said Glodstone more confused than ever.

'Between you and me. Mister Letter-Writer. Someone who wanted to screw us both and succeeded.
Go back over those letters again. Was there anything peculiar about them?'

'Yes,' said Glodstone vehemently, 'there bloody well was. They...'

'No, sweetheart, you're not reading me. Did you see where they were posted?'

'In France. Definitely in France and in your envelopes. The ones with the crest on the
back.'

'And in my handwriting. You said all that but how could you be so sure?'

'Because I've got your other letters to me about Anthony's allergies and whatnot. The
handwriting was identical.'

'So that puts it back in my court. Now what did they say, and I mean exactly.'

As she drove slowly out of town Glodstone went through the details of the letters and their
instructions with a total recall born of fear.

'Hotels you were booked into? Crossing via Ostend? Your whole route mapped out for you? And
you did just what they said?'

'Until we got to Ivry. There was another letter there saying we had to turn back or you were
going to die.'

'So you had to come on,' said the Countess, shaking her head sadly. 'And that was the only one
that made sense.'

'That night they tried to stop us by putting oil on the road in the forest. We could have been
killed. As it was, a man tried to hold us up '

'Stop right there. Can you describe him?'

Glodstone visualized the figure of Mr Blowther covered in oil and leaves, and found it
difficult.

'But he was English? You're sure of that?'

'I suppose he was. He certainly sounded English. And there was another one at Calais who told
the ferry people my wife had died. I don't have a wife.'

'I can believe it,' said the Countess. 'Which doesn't help any. Whoever used my notepaper and
knew my hand and posted the letters in France, booked you rooms in hotels, tried to stop you...No
way they can't be crazy. And how did they know you'd come? Come to that, why did you?'