by Mary Kelly
“Boil me! She wasn’t sitting for Olga. I expect she was out herself.”
“Yes, yes. Saturday evening—going to confession perhaps.”
“And Olga?” asked Beddoes innocently.
“Coming back from the mail box to which she’d consigned a letter to Majendie, as if you hadn’t worked that out for yourself.”
“But you’re still going after the old bird?”
“Why not?”
Beddoes picked up a paper clip and began to make a great labor of straightening it. “All right. It’s up to you, of course.”
“Thank you. There’s something I haven’t told you, but I can’t wait now to restate the case—ab ovo. What car for me at Folkestone?”
“A dark green 64 Zodiac. Usual key. Here’s the number.” Beddoes handed Brett a slip of paper with such a show of long-suffering that he could not miss. “Suppose Majendie teams up with a whole fleet?”
“I should hope to recognize some of his associates.”
“So long as you don’t try to tackle a crowd single-handed or something daft. I mean,” Beddoes went on very quickly, reddening, as if even he felt this remark to be somewhat outspoken, “they’ve got Olga to account for this time, not just a lot of china. Start poking them and anyone’d have one foot in the grave—and the other on a banana skin.”
“Such solicitude!”
Beddoes compressed a mime of nauseated repudiation into two seconds, then switched his face back to normal. “And suppose the old bird’s all right?” he asked, springing the question with all its load of doubt as if he hoped to knock Brett off balance.
“Then I shall be more relieved than you can know or imagine,” replied Brett quietly. “And now we’d better set out. Everything seems ready.”
“Meeting at Canterbury after the show, I suppose?” said Beddoes in a rather chastened voice. “I say, suppose Majendie sees you at Charing Cross?”
“You think no one but you knows how to board a train? And I’m traveling in the freight car.”
“No nice British Railways lunch?”
“I’m having that before I start.”
Beddoes glanced at the clock. “Time for soup and a spud, anyway. Considerate of those wagons to hang around like this, isn’t it? You should see what the canteen’s packed for us. Thermos of soup, cold turkey, rolls, mince pies, coffee . . .”
“Kippers and custard.”
“All right, I’m going.” Beddoes’ face brightened irrepressibly. “Remember that time Old Thing tipped the wrong thermos into his cup and poured oxtail soup on top of his milk and sugar?”
The “Man of Kent” was running into Folkestone forty minutes late. That wasn’t bad, Brett thought, considering they’d had to struggle through the fallout of a celestial pillow fight, Beddoes’ real blizzard, which had blown in from the Channel. But the journey had seemed tedious to him, cooped in the guard’s car. How did they advertise for guards, he wondered—agoraphobes only need apply? He stretched and peered through his prison window. Since Ashford there had been a respite, an insecure lull under a dark sky which threatened the approach of more than dusk. The landscape was transfigured. Its luminous desolation seemed insubstantial, almost lunar; only the hills were the wrong shape. The blanched humps of the North Downs were ribbed with shadowy patches, the caprices of wind and drifting or underlying earthworks, Roman or British. The hills reminded Brett of the malevolent whale with his wrinkles and scars and tangled irons; and for all their ghostly air, he would find them as forbidding when he was creeping up their slippery sides in a strange car to which, he was sure, no one would have had opportunity or forethought to fit chains.
The train was slackening speed. Effort was no longer to be felt, only momentum, a powerful glide, smoothly braked. The guard slid back his door and a crust of snow plopped off the roof like sugar icing from a cut cake. The wind was the knife, slicing great swathes out of Brett as he leaned out behind the guard and watched a toy station coming to meet them. There was one long narrow platform at their side, with an exit near the back of the train; it offered little cover. He was puzzled. Why such a tiny doll’s house of a place? But this was the town, not the boat station, not a terminal but a stop in a lateral line; clean and countrified, gamboge and green, like every southern station, perhaps to suggest the accessibility of sand and sea, but, in midwinter, infinitely bleak.
The train stopped. He stood back. Doors spread open like scarab wings. First out was Stephanie, golden head bare, wearing her yellow raincoat and a sling bag. Clearly she knew this journey well and had the train taped. Three steps took her from door to barrier. Her feet were nimble, but thinly shod for snow. Quick as a bird, a golden oriole, she was through the gate and gone. Where, Brett wondered, was her butter-tongued rotundity of an employer? He’d made for the dining car at Charing Cross. Was he still there, snoozing past his stop to Dover?
He appeared, clutching the little dressing case Brett had noticed earlier. He was with an elderly woman, probably no more than a friend met on the train. Brett hesitated. Should he scoot out before him? He decided he hadn’t time. Majendie was too near the barrier. He’d be seen. He could afford to wait for a minute; the train wasn’t leaving; but he wished Majendie wouldn’t stroll in such leisurely fashion toward the gate, blathering the while to his friend. Five yards, three, two. Brett counted.
He stepped down and walked along the platform, discreetly close to the office doors. He had to give the old fellow time, to allow for the prolixity of his farewells. He reached the collector and sheltered behind him, looking through the barrier. He saw Majendie’s back and the woman’s, and a well-oiled stream of taxis, their fares whisked off as swiftly as records on Kellett’s conveyor belt. There were handshakes now. The friend was going. And what was this? A taxi, Majendie was taking a taxi. Brett, confounded, caught its number as it swung away. He slipped his ticket to the collector and darted out.
His eyes, searching for a dark green Zodiac, registered a long downward slope on the right, more swooping taxis, a wall parallel with the station fence. The number suddenly leapt at him. He ran unsteadily to the snow-caked door and opened it. Majendie’s taxi was at the bottom of the hill, turning right into the town.
Brett slammed the door of the Zodiac, switched on, and pushed the starter. The engine sang out. He launched the car down the gravel-strewn slope. At the bottom he slowed, nosed out to the road, which was clear, and swung right. The wheels slithered ominously, but in a second the warning flew from his head. Majendie’s taxi had stopped at the curb, and Majendie himself was getting out. Brett passed quickly, pulled in, stopped, and twisted in his seat. Majendie had crossed the street to a bus stop. Someone moved forward, someone dressed in yellow. Stephanie. Majendie was talking to her. There was a momentary hesitation; then both of them were coming back to the taxi. Thoughtfully, Brett turned to the driver’s wheel. It seemed that Majendie had offered her a lift—all the way home? That would be generous of him. But they were coming. Brett retrieved an imaginary object from the floor, although he doubted whether they could have identified a baboon at the wheel in this rapidly worsening visibility. He switched on sidelights, and set himself to cling inconspicuously to their tail.
If the taxi driver were willing to take Majendie over the Downs, the roads couldn’t be too bad; so why didn’t Majendie want to drive himself, as he usually did? Or did he? Stephanie had said he kept his car at Folkestone station. But where were the garages? There had been not so much as a padlock, an oily rag to be seen. Because she was connected with Majendie must he distrust even her, despite her youth, her broadcasting of Majendie’s residence and other leading lines, and the entire impact of her personality? In a professional manner he hardened his heart and prepared to accept the worst, finding the process unexpectedly painful.
He followed a turn to the left between trim villas and deserted gardens, and pulled behind a parked truck as the taxi stopped some way ahead. He peeped out to look at them. Majendie was paying off the taxi; and as it moved
away, he opened the side gate of one of the neat houses and walked up the path to its garage. He was going to unlock it.
Brett wondered why the old man couldn’t have found something closer to the station. But that mattered less than that Stephanie was partially vindicated. Had she said Folkestone station or just Folkestone? He couldn’t remember. Quickly he took out his map and folded it so that the Folkestone to Canterbury area would remain face upmost. Barton, Majendie’s village, lay about a mile from A2. He found Pettinge, some three miles to the east. Was he going to take her? Would he, if he had other interests to watch this afternoon—unless she shared those interests? Brett tried again to think dispassionately along this line, but soon gave up. He did not want to accept it before facts forced him to. He would sooner discover Majendie to be as pure as the drift on a neighboring privet hedge, and himself deluded, a fool on a wild goose chase, than have Stephanie an accomplice.
They were coming out of the garage. Brett flung the map on the seat beside him and exclaimed softly. Majendie, dear old-fashioned fellow to the last, was perched at the wheel of an enormous black box that must be nearly forty years old and wanted only oak and brass and lilies to make it the complete hearse. Brett was quite sure, however, that the engine wouldn’t grumble at the hills. He gave them a fair start, then followed.
Majendie, he thought. Majendie? The doubt and uncertainty which had wreathed him from his first appearance had by no means cleared. There were the letters from Olga, for instance. Brett didn’t need to wait for a report to tell him that they were genuine. Majendie couldn’t have fabricated them overnight. He might have had them stored against such a contingency.
Brett shook his head. What was he to make of Olga’s unprecedented Saturday night excursion, if not that she was slinking out to post those letters—omitting the formality of a stamp. It was only too easy to see Majendie as the victim of circumstances. The dressing case? No more than that. Common Law for the Common Man? A legal complication arising from the course of normal business. Even Kellett’s. That record—De Reszke, indeed! How much more likely to have been some other ancient tenor. Geoffrey’s advances to Stephanie could bear the simplest, his original, interpretation. There could be an excuse for those license plates. If the trucks had really been waiting, if he had not in his suspicious way read too much into too little, why should it follow that Richborough was their destination? Suppose they never started. Beddoes might be sitting at this moment, vainly pining for liberty. Brett could well imagine his assumed spaniel eyes of reproach, if that should prove the case; not that spaniels had such cerulean eyes. On the other hand, the disappointment might be so sharp as to pierce, for once, that triple bronze of slang and twang and flippancy, and present him the cunningly sought and long despaired of prize, a piece of Beddoes’ mind.
The road out of Folkestone climbed, a long slithering climb. The old black fly crawled ahead. Did every criminal drive such a deadly respectable vehicle? Why not overtake, he thought, leave him standing, give him up, make for Richborough? But there was still the cameo, the tainted present, the affronting bribe, its very paltriness aggravating the offense, with all its contemptuous assessment of his price. Majendie, somehow, somewhere had offended in a double sense; and Brett was clinging to him for double satisfaction.
A few flakes of snow scudded horizontally across the windshield. Behind him, he could see one car catching up. A plum-red bus, white-whiskered like Father Christmas, trundled timidly downhill. Brett drove around a bend and saw why the bus had hugged the verge. On the left the land dropped as if it had been scooped away by a gigantic soup ladle. The road crept around the hillside by courtesy of the Ancients, who had cut a ledge there with their earthworks. For good measure the bend was double, lightly packed with snow.
At this place the car following elected to pass. Brett’s casual glance in the mirror sharpened as he saw the radiator nudging out behind him. He must either shoot forward on the slippery curve, blocking the road, or draw closer to the edge to give the other room. He did neither. He simply held on, trying not to think of what would happen if another bus came around the approaching bend. The car passed close, uncomfortably close, swerved back in front of him, and raced on. Uncouth maniac, Brett commented. Christmas. The party spirit. One for the road. Swilled insolence. He half-hoped the homicidal lout would skid and bucket over the side, but the lights remained on the road, which now ran straight. At least that meant Majendie couldn’t be crowded in such a nasty spot, for the funereal antiquity had reached the end of the drop. Or so he thought. Thickening snow and darkness made it increasingly hard to see Majendie’s lights.
The road ceased to rise, crossed a gently undulating plateau. Scanty habitation of shacks and bungalows clung to its lifeline. The gradients were easy, but the snow had piled deeper, and was now cascading down. In spite of this, Brett put on a spurt lest he should miss Majendie’s turn to Pettinge. He sighed. Why wind down country lanes after Majendie? Why not keep on the main road to Barton, Majendie’s own village, and watch him arrive? But then, after all, Majendie might not.
All at once he found himself isolated. A whirling blanket of snow had swallowed the lights, the road, everything. He crawled on. Majendie must also dawdle and struggle and feel a similar disquiet at the clogging around the wheels. Could even a helicopter battle through such a storm? The snow lifted freakishly, revealing a long avenue of clarity. He saw bosky country on either hand and, far in front, dim red pinpricks. That was either Majendie or the hog who had passed on the bend. How had they drawn so far ahead? Majendie had hurried, whether they were his lights or the other’s. Why? Because he had seen at Folkestone who was following him in the green Zodiac?
The snow came down again in a great white blot, Beddoes’ blizzard, full scale and in strength. Brett watched his windshield wipers slide jerkily to and fro, wondering how soon they would stop their squeaky protests and go on strike. Woods flanked the road, as he’d been able to see in that clear half-minute, so the branch to Pettinge must be near. He could no more hope to see the far side than the moon. He ground on in a gear which depressed him. But it was his low crawl which saved him from missing the almost obliterated sign: Pettinge 2.
To prospect for traffic was pointless. The snow was a ready-made shroud. He cut right across the road. The wheels slipped, and he couldn’t find the verge. Then he saw that he’d pulled into the mouth of the lane itself, straightened too quickly, and felt another skid. He didn’t like it, but he was committed; the lane was too narrow to turn in. He went on and down, through snow which flew so stiflingly against the windows that he wanted all the time to cough. The engine was sighing in a plaintive fashion. He glanced at his speed. Ten. Even that was reckless. The road dipped and turned. Or did it? He realized that he was encased. The window wipers had stuck, and the windshield had crusted in a couple of seconds. He opened the window, leaned out, and quickly withdrew. All that had gained him was blindness, suffocation, and a soaked collar. There was nothing to be done but stop, get out, and try to set the flippers to rights.
He pulled in to the left, and the car lurched and sank. He heard himself utter a muted squawk as he smacked on the brake, then the handbrake. Bog, quicksand, jelly flashed through his mind before the obvious word came. A drift. He had tipped into a drift.
He put his car into reverse, eased out the handbrake, and ground his right foot to the floor. The engine uttered a petulant whine. The wheels were spinning to no effect. He tried again, with the result, it seemed to him, that the car settled at a slightly steeper angle. He stopped and sat still for some seconds, venting his feelings in vehement monosyllabic curses. Then he scrambled over the back of the seat. He pulled his scarf from around his neck, twisted it into some sort of protection for his head and ears, and turned up the collar of his coat. Opening the rear door, he stretched out a leg to test the depth of the snow. At this point it lay only about four inches deep. He got out of the car, shut the door, and groped toward the radiator.
The car was tilted
forward and to the left. After two steps, his feet plunged into deeper snow and started to slip. He caught at the angle of windshield and hood, pulled himself up, turned his back to the driving snow so that he might breathe more easily, and wiped the cold encrustation from his eyelashes. In pulling blindly to the left he had driven into a ditch which was in any case concealed by the snow that filled it. Since he had sunk at low speed into a sort of cushion, he doubted whether the car had received more than superficial damage. But the very downy stuff which had acted as shock absorber made it impossible to pull out and at every moment was piling deeper. What was worse, the snow and the darkness made hopeless a search for wood, old bramble, anything that might be flung down to give purchase to the back wheels.
The road was lonely, unclassified. The chance of someone coming now, in either direction, was remote; their ability, in the event, to help him was not worth counting on. If he sat in the car he would soon be snowed under. There was only one thing to be done. He must walk back to A260 in the hope that traffic would still be passing along it and that someone would give him a lift.
He brought his wrist close to his eyes and looked at the pale marks of his watch. Quarter past four. He opened the rear door, leaned across the seat to get the map, and shone his flashlight on it. His heart sank. Even if he were lucky enough to pick up a lift as soon as he reached the main road and were driven quickly to Canterbury—which meant, in such weather, at an average twenty miles an hour or less—could he hope to be at Richborough in time? Six-thirty sharp, Pink had said. He doubted if he could do it.
He sat down on the edge of the seat, the map dangling from his hand, and felt himself dredged by disappointment and despair. Deprived of a car of his own, he had realized that he must abandon the chase after Majendie. Now, it seemed, he would be forced to give up not only that, but the thing from which only his obstinate determination to follow Majendie had held him.