by Mary Kelly
“You saw from the outside that the window was dark. You were startled but not alarmed. You thought, I suppose, either that the tablets had made her too drowsy to light the gas or that the first sleep hadn’t yet broken. You went upstairs, knocked, and called. There was no answer. You tried the door. It opened. You went in, struck a match, lit the gas, looked around—that must have cost you an effort! But there she was, lying peacefully in the bed. You crept across, stared for a minute, and realized that she was dead.
“The shock of that corpse was like the blast of a bomb; it blew you out of the house and down the street in a whirling panic. You didn’t know where you were going or what you were doing, only that she was dead and you were done for. You must have raced down Upper Street or the High until—what? Asthma—your breath gave out. When you had to stop, your brain calmed a little, fell into its strongest habit. You wanted to feel better; you wanted solace, oblivion. You went into the Derby Arms.
“You know, if you’d kept your head, or at least regained it, and had gone to them with the news, I think they’d have thought it a worth-while risk to notify your doctor. She was very old, quite likely to die in her sleep. With luck you’d have pulled through without an autopsy. After all, there would have been no immediate trace of motive, crude motive . . .”
Majendie stirred, as if about to say something, but he evidently thought better of it.
“Conscience, better say, awareness of guilt was your stumbling block, Ivan,” Brett said. “You knew you’d caused her death. You were sure that discovery and punishment would follow. Money, the treasures, they, the police—all irrelevant. For you, life was finished. You were as good as dead. But from force of habit you drank on. You had moments of lucidity, and in one of them you suffered a pang of regret for what you’d lost. I said you loved it unawares. How could you help yourself? It was beautiful. Oh, a toy, a glittering extravagance—some people would say its beauty was meretricious, which is all very well for those who’ve been able to pick their way through the purest art in the world. But to you, in Bright’s Row, it was pure. Ice and frost and stars! That’s what you said to the man in the pub. And he called you a bleeding poet.”
The car bumped, tipping Brett sideways. Recovering himself, he leaned his head against the back of the seat. He felt very tired. His arms were aching and powerless as ever, bound at elbow and wrist.
“No use, Ivan,” he said wearily. “You rolled out of the Derby Arms, through the dark, till you came to the canal, and like a true Russian, in you jumped. No use again; you were followed. My friend, a noble soul, a Sergeant, Jonathan Beddoes, he pulled you out in the name of humanity and the metropolitan police. But they were following you—all the evening since you left the Vanbrugh. They didn’t trust you; they wanted to see that you really went to Bright’s Row; and, if not, where. When you ran out of the house, they guessed why. One stayed, I think, to report developments. The other tagged along behind you. They had to get hold of you before you babbled. They might have shut you up in a quicker, rougher way than they did. That’s how I’ve guessed you kept to Upper Street, too bright and busy for you to come to harm. They watched you go into the Derby Arms. That’s where Beddoes came in. I think they saw and knew him, sent for reinforcements—a car, perhaps, to lurk nearby. When you came out, you lolloped along behind each other like a string of dogs, you, Beddoes, them. When you jumped, they let Beddoes rescue you; then knocked him out and took you away. And what they’ve done with you since, and why they’ve kept you, I don’t know. You certainly couldn’t tell them where to find what was lost. You didn’t know then; you don’t know now. In any case, they soon had a good idea of their own, which I believe I unwittingly suggested to them. You see, unbeknown to you, she was at work in the last couple of weeks to deprive you of the trunk. Did she sense the approach of death, without necessarily guessing that it would be unnatural? Even if that’s too fanciful, she can’t have failed to notice a change, a strain in the atmosphere. If you overacted before indifferent strangers and colleagues, how much more in that brooding presence! She decided to make haste. She summoned to Bright’s Row, on your pay day so that she could be reasonably sure that you’d stay at work, a well-known jeweler.
“Of course, she wasn’t conscious of the enormous irony of her choice.” Brett paused. “The man was also a collector, a lover of jewels, a connoisseur of Fabergé’s work. He instantly coveted, or loved, your own beloved. It was too easy for him, trusted as he was. What excuse he offered I don’t know; but he took it away with him, just that one star of the collection. Perhaps he even paid a token sum. We found no check, no cash, but it’s not impossible that she slipped out and put it in the bank. I said, you remember, that one of them probably stayed to watch the house on the night of the twenty-second. They had their reward. They saw the police cars; they saw me. They followed me onto a bus and off it, and watched me knock on the jeweler’s door. Enough. They put two and two together. They watched him. But he foxed them, almost to the end.”
“Almost? My dear fellow, if there were not this nasty doubt of living to enjoy it, I could justly correct that to entirely. In fact that would be the lesser of my corrections. I understand your suspicion, indeed the exposition of your thought was interesting, if rather in the Pharisee line . . .”
“What?”
“I mean in your attitude to the Princess. You condemn, but how would you have come through the Revolution in her place? Is it impossible to feel pity for her undoubtedly deranged mind?”
“Is it impossible to feel pity for its victim?”
“Well, well—we each defend our own generation. For I think you and Ivan Karukhin are much of an age?”
“He’s five months younger.”
Brett was aware of change. The pace of the car was slower than it had yet been, and, paradoxically, it was this slackening which told him that events were moving to a crisis. The car had reached a tiny hamlet, no more than a cluster of cottages breaking the monotony of the whitened hedges; it turned off the road into a narrow, badly-surfaced lane.
“What do you think?” whispered Majendie. “Should we make a move, an attempt to get clear? Because, you see, I’ve been following our course, and I’m afraid we’re heading for nothing but the Stour.”
To his annoyance, Brett began to tremble. He knew it was due to relief and exhaustion, but that only infuriated him the more.
“Turned north before Ash,” Majendie was going on, “never a sight of it. Now we’ve swung left. Difficult to judge speed and time, but if we’d kept on the main road through Ash we should have been at Sandwich long ago. I’m sure of that, at least. I say,” he paused, “do you see? He’s put out the lights.”
They had driven through a gap in a hedge, where a gate either stood open or was gone, and had stopped short beyond it. There was now only a low bank to their left. On the right, level whitish land stretched without a break until it melted into darkness.
“There’s the other car,” said Majendie. “Rear lights about twenty yards ahead, and there’s a man coming toward us.”
Their driver got out, leaving his door open.
“Nothing,” Brett said quickly. “Do nothing, say nothing. Leave it to me. Here they come—and won’t they be pleased!”
The door beside him opened. He saw that the second man was not Geoffrey, so it was presumably Tim. For a couple of seconds the two men gaped at the empty seat beside Ivan. Then the driver began to swear.
“Where is he?” Tim demanded, ignoring Ivan and addressing himself to Brett and Majendie.
“Slipped out,” said Brett.
“Where? When?”
“Some time ago. How should I know where?”
There was a pause.
“No guts, these people,” Tim said at length, with something of the chill of an upper civil servant condemning a lapse into humanity. He turned to the driver. “Why the devil didn’t you keep an eye on him?”
“Got them in the back of my head, have I? How could I know he was going t
o jump?”
The driver leaned forward, seized Ivan’s arm, pulled him out of the car, and shoved him into a sitting position on the running board. “Why didn’t you shout, jelly boy?” he asked, whacking the back of his hand so savagely across Ivan’s face that Brett was only just quick enough in shooting out his bound legs to break Ivan’s backward fall.
“All right, all right,” said Tim. “Don’t waste time. It can’t be helped. His loss, anyway. Come on, Bright Eyes. You’re going to change places.”
He hooked his arm under Ivan’s and pulled him to his feet. Still supporting him, Tim walked away, followed resentfully by the driver.
“A Karukhin!” Majendie sounded appalled.
Brett said nothing. He stared out of the window, trying to pierce the distance, to discover a shack, a clump of bushes, anything that might give cover. But were they, in fact, at Richborough? Majendie could be wrong; he hadn’t named a place, only the river, and the Stour marsh was wide. Brett was turning to question him when he saw something between the cars.
Three figures were coming toward them, slightly foreshortened in the snow-light, the two outside holding between them a third, much smaller, whose legs trailed like a helpless drunk’s. Who now? thought Brett. A name flashed through his head. It was absurd, impossible. He looked hard at the approaching trio. It was true.
“What is it?” Majendie asked.
“Stephanie.”
The door was pulled open. Tim came first, backward, carrying her shoulders. Duster held her feet. They set her down on the floor and left without a word.
“Mr. Majendie!” she cried. “Oh, Mr. Majendie!”
“My dear, dear girl, thank God! I thought you might be hurt—you’re not?”
“No, no, I’m just tied up. Oh, Mr. Majendie!” She burst into tears.
Brett was amazed by his detachment, so cool that it verged on boredom. He saw that he had been wrong about Stephanie; yet the understanding brought him no relief or remorse. All his anxiety, all the events of the afternoon seemed thin dreams. He heard Majendie uttering sounds such as emanate from a henhouse on a sunny afternoon, quite well calculated to soothe. Duster, having gone back to the wheel, had started the engine and was driving them slowly out to the open space on the right. From their lurching, lopsided progress Brett gathered that the snow covered only rough grassland. With an effort he brought his attention to bear on the inside of the car.
“It’s all my fault,” Stephanie said. “That man in the other car—it’s Geoffrey. He has lunch with me. I didn’t know—I told him you had a collection, that you were coming down here today. I’m sorry, really I am. I didn’t know . . .”
“Of course not, how could you?” Majendie consoled her. “Don’t worry, my dear, we’ll soon be out of all this, quite safe and sound. Look, here’s Mr. Nightingale in the corner, haven’t you seen him? Or perhaps you haven’t had time to learn his name . . .”
“You! I thought they’d left you behind,” she cried. “Oh, are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
“They didn’t tickle.”
“How odd your voice sounds.”
“Yours isn’t quite natural.”
“I can’t help it—I’m not really crying, it just keeps coming.”
“Of course, of course, we understand,” said Majendie reproachfully, as it seemed to Brett. “You’ve been magnificent. You’re sure they didn’t hurt you?”
“No, oh no. Just kept on asking and threatening—about the case, of course. I just pretended I didn’t know what they were talking about, and so there was nothing they could do. They’re raging mad, but they’re in a hurry to get somewhere. I don’t know why they’ve stopped here.”
“You see, dear fellow?” Majendie said triumphantly.
“I see,” said Brett. “They didn’t talk among themselves at all?”
“Only just now, before they brought me over. Someone’s gone . . .”
“We know.”
“Oh. And that man who hit you—it was a sort of sausage he used, did you know?”
“A sock and sand, I suppose, or rubber.”
“Well, he kept on saying he didn’t like it, but Geoffrey,” her voice quivered, “Geoffrey told him to drive further out—this car, I suppose—so that you shouldn’t see. The driver said you’d see anyway and you weren’t deaf either, but Geoffrey made him. He said to mind the ditches. That’s all. Oh, where are we?” she concluded miserably.
“Inexplicable as it seems,” said Majendie, “somewhere around Richborough, by my calculations of time, direction, and so on—hullo!”
The car had stopped. And Majendie had named the name, thought Brett. Could he, at last, fully acquit him? But that must wait. If this were Richborough, where was Kent? Where in this white wilderness could they hide themselves? Were they hiding? Someone had blundered, he thought with a shudder. He fancied them diverted by a false message, its authenticity not questioned till too late. Or was it conceivable that his plan had at the last minute been overridden, Superior Wisdom having insisted on a concentration at the point? Or had they even thought that in such weather the meeting would surely be cancelled?
The driver got out and closed his door. He was going away. Brett watched him lumbering and slipping, trying to hurry over the treacherously pitted snow.
“What now?” Majendie said quickly. “He’s left the engine running. Why?”
“Batteries? No, we’ve no lights to drain them. Ready to get away quickly perhaps. Apparently they don’t intend to leave us here. I thought they might.”
“What’s happening?” asked Stephanie.
“The driver’s gone,” Brett explained, realizing that from the floor she could see nothing. “Can you move your fingers?”
“No. They tied my hands flat out, and the strap goes over the fingers.” She sniffed.
“Something to be said for Daddy’s family saloon, isn’t there?”
“I think,” said Majendie, “I can move mine a little—right index and thumb. What do you want?”
“To shift along the seat and turn back to back, so that you can untie my hands. I think we should get out now, if we can.”
Brett worked himself along till he met Majendie.
“Awkward, dear fellow,” said he. “We can’t turn exactly back to back or we shall fall off the seat. Wait now—can I reach your hands?”
Brett felt a fingertip brush his left thumb.
“Perhaps if we leaned back,” suggested Majendie, “the angle of separation . . .”
Brett was staring out of the window. About a hundred yards away two pairs of headlights had been switched on.
“Stephanie,” he said, “did you see a third car back there?”
“Not see it, but there was a truck; they said so.”
“A truck! Only one?”
“What is it?” Majendie was asking. “Shall I go on?”
“Could I bite it?” Stephanie suggested.
“I think it’s too thick, my dear.” Majendie stopped his slow, feeble plucking. “Do you hear anything?”
The engine of the car thrummed quietly. Above it, literally above it, another and much more powerful noise was making itself heard.
“There is a railway across the marsh,” said Majendie.
Brett shook his head. “That’s not a train.”
“An airplane, perhaps. Something from Manston. I should have thought the weather too bad for them to be up. Up, did I say? He seems to be rather unusually low. Not in difficulties, I hope.”
The noise was now ear-shaking, a spattering roar, as if a titanic coffeemill were grinding coarse.
“That’s not an airplane,” Stephanie shouted, “that’s a helicopter.”
Brett heard Majendie’s excited squeaks. He didn’t listen. If Kent were there—if, if—they must start to close in now or they’d miss the best of the bunch. The helicopter could rise in a trice, leaving bystanders staring up like the apostles in a picture of the Ascension.
“Quick,” Brett breathed, “qu
ick, quick . . .”
The uproar ceased abruptly. The sound of their own engine was, in comparison, scarcely noticeable. The helicopter, gently clumsy, lowered itself into the beams of the headlights. For a moment or two it hovered and shifted sideways, rotors whirring. Then it settled. Immediately the headlights were switched off.
“Has it crashed?” Stephanie sounded frightened.
“No, landed,” said Majendie, who had abandoned his attempt to free Brett and was himself gazing out of the window. “Inconsiderate, dear fellow, eh, to turn off the lights at this point—good God! A Verey light!”
From the darkness beyond the cars a scarlet flash streaked into the air, and even as Majendie gasped, the marsh turned chalk white. In the middle of a glaring lake of artificial light the machines stood up like rocks. Between them a knot of men held the frozen poses of a tableau for a couple of seconds. Then they scattered like dropped peas, some to the cars, a couple to the helicopter.
“Police!” cried Majendie in exultation. “My dear boy!”
“Too late,” Brett said.
The helicopter blades were spinning, the engine broke into its clattering roar. Two men were barely at its side as the end-heavy creature lifted itself off the ground with a little jerk.
“Too late?” shouted Majendie.
“It’s up,” Brett bawled back. “We’re all right though.”
He looked at the helicopter. The beam of a searchlight clung to it relentlessly. He frowned. The helicopter was not rising, nor flying forward, nor hovering, but bucking about as if caught between the gears of all three motions. An abrupt leap carried it in their direction. Brett bumped back to his corner and pressed his face against the window. What else was happening he didn’t know. The helicopter was low, very low. He could only suppose that it was trying to dodge out of the searchlight. But why not get away? Registration letters . . .