by J F Straker
‘Let’s get out of this,’ he said hoarsely.
The others looked at him, aghast. ‘We can’t do that,’ Wickery exclaimed. ‘She needs a doctor...the police...’
‘Don’t be a fool, mate. She’s dead, isn’t she? What good can a doctor do? Come on! Let’s get away before someone turns up.’
‘There may be marks on the car,’ Wells objected.
‘We’ll see to that when we get back. We’ve got to paint the wing, anyway.’
Wickery shook his head. ‘We killed her,’ he said dully. Disaster had come upon them so swiftly that he felt confused and unable to grasp its full implication. But he knew that Harry’s suggestion was outrageous.
‘For God’s sake don’t stand there arguing!’ Forthright cast anxious glances up and down the road. ‘Can’t you see what the police’ll make of this? A party of drunks, they’ll say —and in a borrowed car. It’ll stink to high heaven.’
‘It was you and Dave who were drunk, not me.’
‘What the hell’s that got to do with it? We’re all in this together. And how will Doris manage, with you cooling your heels in gaol for God knows how long?’ He thought of Ma left on her own, and his anxiety deepened. ‘Come on, Bert, blast you! Hurry, man — hurry!’
Wickery stood up as the other tugged at his arm. ‘No,’ he said. It’s all wrong. We can’t do it, Harry.’
‘Wrong? Of course it’s wrong! But oh, hell! Here, Pop — you tell him. Maybe he’ll listen to you.’
The little man was as confused as Wickery, but there was in him an urgent longing to escape. He felt sick and frightened — he had never seen a corpse before. He grasped eagerly at Harry’s suggestion, not caring or even thinking about right and wrong. Anything to get away.
But because of the fear and confusion in his mind his pleading was frenzied and incoherent, and after a few moments he abandoned it in favour of more urgent methods. The dazed Wickery found himself being propelled by the other two towards the car, and he struggled to get free. He wanted to escape as urgently as did they. The thought of Doris left alone — dependent, perhaps, on her uncle was torture to him. But he could not bring himself to leave the old lady, to abandon her poor dead body so callously.
He broke away and ran back to her.
The others stood undecided. They could not go without him. And yet...
As Wickery bent to lift the body Forthright cried out in alarm. ‘Leave her alone, you fool! You’ll get blood on your clothes!’
Wickery faced them, the headlights shining full on him. He had made his decision. ‘Give me a hand, then,’ he said. ‘I want to move her on to the grass. I’m not leaving her here.’
Forthright hesitated. He knew it would be wiser not to move the body. If they were unlucky, if the accident should later be traced to them, they might then have pleaded ignorance. But there was no time for further argument. At any moment they might be discovered.
He helped Wickery to place her gently on the grass on the far side of the road, arranging the body to suggest that she had been flung there by the car. Then they left her.
Dave Chitty still lolled in the back of the Humber, asleep and snoring. Wickery drove fast to the garage. The distance was short, but during those few minutes his brain worked rapidly. In giving way to the others he had dropped no hint of his intention, which had been to telephone the police as soon as they reached the garage. But now, away from the scene of the accident and with freedom correspondingly nearer, his resolution began to weaken. There was sense in what Harry and Pop had said. No punishment, however severe, could compensate the old woman for the life they had so abruptly taken from her. And he himself had been entirely blameless. Why should he make himself responsible for the drunken behaviour of the others?
Apparently unseen, they got the car into the garage and drew the heavy doors together. ‘Lucky we’re away from the village here,’ said Forthright, kneeling to examine the front of the Humber. ‘There’s no one can say what time we got back.’
Wells joined him, but Wickery stood undecided by the office door. Suppose the old woman wasn’t dead after all? A doctor might save her if...
‘Come on, Bert, blast you!’
But she was dead. No doubt about that. And a telephone call could be traced.
He walked over to the car.
Apart from a few scratches and smears of mud on the near-side wheel and wing there were no visible traces of the accident. No marks on the bumper or the radiator, no sign of blood. But they took no chances. They put her over the pit and washed the front with petrol, hoping to remove any tiny particles of hair or cloth or blood that might be there. Then they started to clean and polish the rest of the body.
‘Damned lucky we didn’t break any glass,’ said Wells, as he gave a final rub to a headlamp. ‘When you come to think of it, it’s amazing that nothing’s bent or stove in.’
Dave Chitty woke up and said he felt sick. They got him out of the Humber, and Wells took him round to the back of the garage. He swayed as he walked.
Wickery had just started to paint the wing when there was a heavy knock on the door. He was so startled that he dropped the brush. ‘White!’ he exclaimed.
Forthright shook his head. ‘No. No car. And he wouldn’t knock, he’d use his key.’
A loud voice hailed them. ‘Hey, Pop! Harry! Open up. It’s me — Willie.’
‘Willie Trape! God!’ said Wickery.
‘Leave him to me,’ Forthright said shortly, disdainful of the other’s jittery nerves. He opened the door to admit a large and very wet policeman.
‘Evening, all. I saw the lights, so thought I’d call in to tell you the news. There’s been a nasty accident on the Tanbury road.’
‘Anyone hurt?’ asked Forthright.
The constable took off his cap and mopped his brow. ‘Old woman killed. Mrs Gooch —lives in that cottage t’other side of Witton Hall. She must have been walking home when the car hit her. Driver didn’t stop, neither; didn’t report the accident, anyways. First I heard of it was from the cyclist who found her.’
‘There’s too much of that hit-and-run business these days,’ said Forthright, showing proper concern. ‘As a matter of fact, we were in Tanbury ourselves this evening. Left there just after ten.’ He turned to the silent Wickery. ‘What time were we back here, Bert? About twenty past, wasn’t it?’
Wickery nodded. There could be no turning back now. ‘About that,’ he agreed, uncertain why Harry was lying about the time, but with no option but to trust to his handling of the affair.
‘There was no one on the road then,’ Forthright said.
‘No. She didn’t leave the Clays’ until half-past ten.’ He wandered over to the Humber, where Wickery had again started on the wing, and chuckled hugely. ‘Covering up the evidence, eh?’
Wickery managed a feeble grin. Forthright laughed. ‘Mrs Riley’s car, isn’t it?’ asked Trape.
‘Yes. She had a nasty skid last Friday ran into the back of a three-tonner. White promised to have it ready for her by tomorrow. That’s why we’re working late.’
‘What were you doing in Tanbury, then?’ asked the constable.
‘Road testing,’ Forthright explained. ‘Called in at the George for a quick one. Mr Loften was there too — left a few minutes before us.’ He decided to lead the conversation away from their visit to Tanbury. ‘Which side of the road did you find her? I mean, which way would the car have been going?’
‘Towards Tanbury, the Sergeant thinks. Though it’s odd she should have crossed the road when she didn’t have to.’
‘Any skid-marks?’
‘No. Too wet. It’s still coming down in buckets. Mr White in?’
‘Not yet. Shouldn’t be long, though.’
‘Well, tell him to keep a look-out for the car. There may be damage done to the front of it, and there’s a chance the owner might bring it in later if he’s a local chap.’
‘We’ll keep our eyes skinned,’ Forthright promised him.
&nb
sp; Wickery continued to ply his brush, wishing that the constable would leave. As Harry had said, White should be back soon. He wanted to be away from the garage before that happened.
But it was another five minutes before they got rid of Trape.
Forthright thought the interview had gone well enough; Wickery was not so sure. ‘Why did you have to tell him we’d been at the George?’ he asked.
‘In case the police heard of it from someone else. Loften, for instance. That’d look bad. And it helps to fix the time we’re supposed to have left Tanbury. They’ll ask Loften, and he’ll bear us out.’
‘But how did you know that altering the time would put us in the clear?’
‘I didn’t,’ Forthright confessed. ‘But it was around quarter to eleven when we knocked the old girl down, and it seemed unlikely she could have been on the road long before that. If we could prove we were back here by ten-twenty, and if she was known to have gone out after that — well, it was a good bet, anyway.’
‘It won’t be so good if they find out you and Dave were at the Boar’s Head.’
‘They won’t.’ Forthright was confident. ‘Dammit, why should they?’
Wells came into the garage with Chitty. The latter had sobered up considerably, but looked white and ill. He sank on to a pile of tyres and sat there with his head bowed between his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. ‘I heard Willie when he called out, but I thought I’d better keep Dave out of the way,’ said Wells, his face anxious. ‘What happened?’
Forthright told him.
‘Well, we’ve done it now,’ said Wells. ‘We can’t go back on it now. But if anything goes wrong...’
‘It won’t.’ Wickery wondered if Harry was as confident as he sounded. ‘What about Dave? Does he know?’
‘I told him out back. Shook him up bad, it did.’
‘So it ruddy well ought,’ Forthright said viciously. ‘If it hadn’t been for him we shouldn’t be in this perishing mess.’
At the sound of his name Chitty looked up. He was about to speak when the sound of tyres on the gravel outside caused all four men to turn and stare at the closed garage-doors. The car came nearer and then stopped, engine running, headlights shining through the cracks in the doors. A horn blared throatily.
‘White,’ said Forthright. As he passed Chitty on his way to open the doors he whispered fiercely, ‘Clear off as soon as he comes in. Don’t let him see you.’
Andrew White was a stocky, square-shouldered man with bushy eyebrows and a prominent, aggressive chin. His iron-grey moustache and hair, still abundant at forty-eight, gave him a military appearance which he liked to foster. So short was his neck that his head seemed to spring directly from his shoulders.
He got out of the car and walked with springing steps to where Wickery was putting the finishing touches to the wing of the Humber. ‘What the hell have you fellows been up to?’ he barked. ‘This job should have been done hours ago. I’m not paying overtime for nothing, blast you!’
‘It was that front spring held us up,’ said Forthright. ‘It didn’t fit.’
‘H’m! Had her out on the road yet? Steering okay?’
‘Yes. She’s all right, except that the brakes need relining. Mrs Riley said to leave them.’
‘The woman’s a menace,’ said White, frowning. ‘Heard about the accident tonight?’
They looked at him, wondering how he knew. ‘Willie Trape was in. He told us,’ Wells said.
‘Nasty business,’ said White. ‘Party of drunks, probably. They didn’t report it, either. That won’t do ‘em any good when the police catch up with them.’ He looked hard at Wickery. ‘Or perhaps they hope to get away with it, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Wickery’s conscience still troubled him. He wanted to forget Mrs Gooch.
White lifted the bonnet of the Humber and felt the cylinder-block. ‘How long a run did you give her?’ he asked.
‘Tanbury and back,’ said Forthright. ‘Tanbury, eh? See anything of the old woman?’
‘No. She wasn’t on the road till half-past ten, so Trape said. We were back long before then.’
‘Were you?’ There was an edge to his voice that made Wickery shiver. ‘The engine’s still hot.’ He lit a cigarette and turned to Wells. ‘Wasn’t that Chitty who left just now?’
Wells nodded.
‘Really?’ White was almost purring. ‘Most extraordinary. When Trape stopped me up the road to tell me about the accident he said he’d called in here. But there was only Forthright and Wickery here, he said; they told him you and Chitty had gone home. How do you account for that, eh?’
He barked the last word at Wells, stabbing him in the chest with a rigid forefinger. The other two stood aghast, waiting for Pop to speak. Neither could think of a sufficiently plausible answer with which to come to his aid.
‘We — we hadn’t gone home,’ Wells said at last, recovering some of his wits. ‘Dave came over queer when we got outside, so I took him round to the gents’. We were out there when Willie Trape called, and afterwards Dave thought he’d like to sit down for a bit, until he felt better.’
Andrew White looked at him admiringly.
‘Hardly the way to treat your prospective son-in-law, letting him go home alone in that condition. He is your prospective son-in-law, isn’t he?’
The little man nodded.
‘Hoping to get married soon?’
Again Wells nodded.
‘H’m! Well, I shouldn’t have thought four pound ten a week was sufficient for that. But it’s his affair, of course, not mine.’
‘Dave’s getting five pound ten a week,’ said Wells.
‘He was.’ The last word was heavily stressed. ‘But I’m afraid it’ll be four ten in the future. Business is slack; too many overheads and not enough coming in. We’ve got to cut our costs somehow.’
They looked at him in consternation. ‘You mean — you’re knocking a quid a week off his wages?’ gasped Wells. ‘Why, you —you can’t do it!’
‘Oh, yes, I can.’ White was obviously enjoying himself. ‘And not only his, either; that wouldn’t be fair. We must all do our share. Of course, officially you will continue to receive your present wages. That’s what the books will show, anyway. But unofficially —’ He paused, looking at them with a slight smile on his face. ‘Unofficially, you will each return a quid a week to me.’
‘Like hell we will!’ said Wickery. ‘Why, you —’
‘Shut up, Bert. Leave this to me,’ said Forthright. He turned to White. ‘Why do you suppose we’d be willing to do that?’ he asked.
‘Why? Well, it could be a form of insurance. One can insure against almost anything these days. Fire, burglary, unemployment even accident. Yes, I think insurance describes it well enough.’ He beamed at them maliciously.
‘That’s no answer, Mr White. Just what are you getting at?’
The smile disappeared. ‘You want it straight, eh? All right, then. You’ll be paying me to keep my mouth shut. And if you don’t like the idea of that, I’ll inform the police that it was you four drunken fools who killed that old woman tonight. Is that plain enough for you?’
‘You —you were there?’ spluttered Wells.
‘Of course I was there. My car was parked off the road, only a few yards away. You were too drunk or too frightened to notice it, I suppose.’
For some moments none of them spoke. It was Forthright who broke the silence. ‘It’s blackmail,’ he said sternly.
White laughed. ‘Your sense of values is somewhat muddled, isn’t it? Having committed manslaughter, what right have you to cavil at blackmail? You can consider yourselves damned lucky to get off so lightly, my lads. And if you don’t like it —well, just say so, that’s all.’
He opened the office door, and then paused.
‘One other thing. I’m behind with my book-keeping, Bert, and I’d like Doris to take on her old job again. She won’t want any wages, of course. A labour of love, eh? Tell her to start in the mornin
g.’
Wickery took a step forward, his fists clenched. ‘You damned well think again!’ he shouted. ‘She’s not coming.’
White glared at him. ‘It’ll be very unfortunate for you if she doesn’t,’ he said. ‘You’d better persuade her. Or would you rather I did it for you?’
Wickery would have rushed him then, but the others caught hold of his arms and held him back. ‘Knocking the swine down won’t help,’ said Forthright.
‘A very sensible remark — though crudely expressed,’ White agreed. ‘Tempers may be a little short this evening, but I shall expect more civility in the future.’ He yawned. ‘Well, now — I think that covers everything, doesn’t it? I’m for bed.’
They did not hurry as they walked down the road towards the village. They did not notice the rain. All their thoughts were on the scene just ended. But when Wells started to accuse Forthright of being responsible for their predicament Forthright cut him short.
‘All right, all right, blast you! How the hell was I to know that the swine was there? And you can shout your perishing head off, but we’d be a ruddy sight worse off in gaol. Nor I didn’t notice you were all that keen to stay and face the music. Once you’d got the idea there wasn’t no holding you.’
‘There must be something we can do,’ Wickery said desperately.
‘Nothing short of murder. But I’m sorry about Doris, mate. You got a rough deal there. She won’t like going back to the garage.’
‘She’ll hate it like hell. What the devil am I going to say to her? Tell her the truth, I suppose.’
‘Cut that out.’ Forthright was alarmed. ‘I know Doris. I wouldn’t put it past her to go to the police.’
Wickery knew that was true. With her hatred of her uncle and her passionate regard for the truth, Doris might prefer to see her husband dealt with by the law rather than knuckle under to White. I might prefer it too, he thought. I was a fool to listen to Harry; I ought to have done what I knew was right.
But he had no choice now; to confess would involve the others. ‘What about the money?’ he asked. ‘How do we explain that?’
The same problem had occurred to Wells. Even if he kept nothing back for beer and tobacco, Sarah would still have to go short on the housekeeping. It would take a damned good story to keep Sarah quiet about that.