Death and the Visiting Firemen

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Whoa, whoa.’

  The abrupt change in the rhythm. Startled glances.

  Squarely in the middle of the white road ahead the black figure, unbudging. Dressed in black from head to foot, astride the black horse, black masked: Hamyadis.

  ‘Stand and deliver.’

  The coach came to a final halt. From behind, the squeal of car brakes as the film van slewed aside to get the best view and the delegates’ coaches fanned on to the verge. But aboard the coach nobody had attention to spare for the noise from behind, only for the now silent figure ahead.

  Hamyadis sat without moving watching the highwayman’s prey, a pistol held unwaveringly trained on them.

  ‘He’s only doing it for the film people,’ said Wemyss.

  Without relaxation.

  No one else spoke.

  At last Hamyadis urged his horse forward and slowly approached the coach. Even the spectators behind were now silent.

  When he was right up to the side of the coach Hamyadis spoke for the second time.

  ‘Your money or your lives.’

  With authentic brutality.

  No one answered.

  ‘Do we throw the purses now? Is this being broadcast? Ought I to speak?’ asked Fremitt in a whisper.

  Smithers pulled his dummy purse from the deep pocket of his caped coat and offered it to Hamyadis, who took it, tossed it in the air, slipped it away and said:

  ‘Thank you, sir. And the next one.’

  All the others held out their prepared purses. Hamyadis took Schlemberger’s and Fremitt’s and put them quickly into his pocket.

  He then sat for a moment silent.

  The major dropped his outstretched arm and put his purse on the seat beside him. In an instant Hamyadis had reached forward and with a vicious jerk whipped it up.

  ‘You must pay like the rest,’ he said.

  ‘But – but … Dammit, it’s only a game. What does it matter? Cui bono?’ said the major.

  ‘Come,’ said Hamyadis, ‘you know as well as I do that the purses contain real sovereigns.’

  ‘But my dear fellow, I just got tired of holding it out. I swear …’

  ‘All right, all right, major. We’ll say no more about it.’

  Hamyadis kneed his horse violently a yard or so along the coach until he was within a few inches of Richard Wemyss.

  ‘And you needn’t think I wasn’t watching you,’ he said. ‘You know, I find it hard to decide whether it’s worse to try and slip a couple of coins out of a purse or to forget about the whole thing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Wemyss.

  ‘No? Then let’s say the highwayman asks you to put an extra – we’ll call it an extra – sovereign into the purse before you hand it over.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of stealing?’ Wemyss said.

  His blotchy face.

  ‘You heard my request,’ said Hamyadis.

  ‘Now look here …’ Wemyss began.

  But Hamyadis cut him short by flicking the purse from his hand.

  ‘We’ll discuss this afterwards,’ he said.

  He tossed the purse up into the air and let it fall into his palm. Then suddenly he gave a twist of his wrist which sent the leather purse-strings whistling through the air and into Wemyss’s face.

  They left a pair of angry red lines.

  Wemyss leapt up.

  ‘I’d sit down if I were you,’ said Hamyadis without moving.

  Wemyss looked at him. There was time to draw two deep breaths. Then he sat down.

  ‘I shan’t forget,’ he said. ‘I may be even with you sooner than you think.’

  ‘My dear chap,’ Hamyadis said.

  Suddenly the uncle, sophisticated, kindly.

  ‘My dear chap, you mustn’t mind a little horse-play. Really you mustn’t.’

  He turned and gave Daisy Miller a deep bow.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘pray keep your purse. We gentlemen of the road will never inconvenience a lady.’

  ‘I am your debtor, sir,’ Daisy replied. ‘Is there no way I can repay this kindness?’

  ‘A kiss from your lips, madam, would outweigh every purse in the country,’ Hamyadis answered.

  Daisy turned and said aside:

  ‘Thank heavens, my husband took the other road.’

  A murmur of laughter as they kissed.

  Mercury dropping down the thermometer tube.

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Kristen thrusting forward over the edge of the coach.

  Hamyadis turned to her. He reached forward and put one hand on the back of her neck. With the other he took hold of the purse she still held and wrenched it out of her grasp. Then he pulled her forward till she was nearly toppling off the coach and kissed her savagely. He jerked her back to her seat and said:

  ‘I hope it makes you happy.’

  Kristen sat without a word.

  ‘On you go, driver,’ said Hamyadis. ‘And I hope for your sake no one has been so foolish as to hide anything on the coach.’

  ‘Nothing hidden at all, Mr Highwayman,’ said Joe Dagg giving his son a poke in the ribs.

  Hamyadis turned his horse. Peter Dagg reached under his seat for the hidden pistol. All the passengers crowded to the side of the coach to watch.

  Without looking back Hamyadis urged the heavy black horse off. Peter lifted up the pistol, held it out towards the highwayman at arms length, and pulled happily at the trigger. There was a heavy explosion. Peter fell backwards. His father laughed. Hamyadis slid forward on to his horse’s neck and stayed there while the animal trotted on.

  ‘Are you all right, my boy?’ said Fremitt. ‘The noise seemed even louder to me than yesterday.’

  ‘I suppose our friend is waiting for a nice soft spot to fall,’ said Wemyss.

  ‘He managed on cobbles before,’ Daisy said.

  The black horse scrambled up a small bank. Slowly Hamyadis slipped from the saddle. The horse shook itself slightly as it noticed the absence of a rider’s weight. Hamyadis flopped to the ground and rolled on to his front.

  ‘Keep clear, keep clear, please,’ shouted a voice from behind the coach.

  The film lorry came bumping over the ground towards the prostrate figure. Technicians worked busily.

  ‘Stand back,’ called the man in charge. ‘We want a close-up.’ The lorry halted about five yards away and its camera whirred for a moment.

  ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ said the director.

  Hamyadis lay without moving.

  ‘You’d think he’d done well enough out of that bit of ham without trying it again,’ said Wemyss.

  No movement.

  ‘I think this time he may be hurt,’ said Smithers. ‘He fell very differently.’

  He climbed down and once more went across to Hamyadis. But as soon as he got within two yards of him he saw that this time it was different.

  Very different.

  There was a hole in the back of Hamyadis’s neck.

  Five

  Smithers knelt beside Hamyadis for an instant and felt for the pulse in his wrist. But without hope.

  When he got to his feet and turned to face the others, still bunched together standing on the roof of the coach, he saw that they had realized that this time it was no act.

  ‘We must have a doctor,’ Smithers said. ‘But you may as well know that there will be nothing he can do. And I suppose we will need the police.’

  ‘Are you in it this time, too?’ said Kristen.

  But Smithers had no need to contradict her.

  ‘I thought I wanted him to …’ she said.

  And crumpled into a faint.

  It was Fremitt who lifted her back on to the seat and Daisy who loosened her clothes. The others shifted about uneasily.

  ‘Back in the States …’ said Schlemberger.

  Smithers walked towards the coach. He pulled out a large white handkerchief and used it to pick up the Durs Egg pistol still lying on the coach roof where Peter had dropped it.
/>   ‘Dad,’ said Peter, ‘what has happened to Mr Hamyadis?’

  ‘He fell off, lad,’ said his father.

  ‘But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid he is dead, Peter,’ Smithers said.

  The boy looked at him.

  ‘What was it that killed him?’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need to know just for the present,’ Smithers answered.

  ‘And that means,’ said Richard Wemyss, ‘that it wasn’t an accidental fall. That pistol…’

  He pointed to the bundle in the white handkerchief that Smithers held.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Smithers.

  Wemyss looked at him.

  Smithers said nothing.

  ‘All right,’ Wemyss said, ‘but you’ll see.’

  ‘You are sure, aren’t you?’ the major asked Smithers. ‘Military man, seen something of this sort, pallida mors, you know, want me to have a look?’

  ‘This is a moment when inaction is the only action needed,’ said Smithers.

  The film man who had dismounted from his truck came across towards the coach.

  ‘I could take the vehicle back to Winchester and get you help,’ he said to Smithers. ‘Must get on to my news room, too.’

  ‘That’s a very useful offer,’ Smithers said. ‘Or the first part at least.’

  ‘I know how you feel, old boy,’ said the man, ‘but even if I never mentioned this to a soul the boys would all be here in a couple of hours.’

  ‘We shall try to be prepared,’ Smithers answered.

  ‘Then I’ll be – er – off,’ said the film man.

  He walked back to his lorry. Slowly. A glance back. Quickly. With pebbles from the road verge spurting from under the tyres he left.

  Silence. But not stillness. Shufflings: animal, tense. And as a background wasp-nest buzzings of talk from the delegates’ coaches still parked fifty yards away.

  Schlemberger consulted the watch on the inside of his wrist.

  ‘Twelve-thirteen exactly,’ he said. ‘I checked with the ship’s chronometer all the way over. Doesn’t lose a second. Guess we ought to make a note of just when it happened. The homicide squad always …’

  A pause.

  ‘But I guess this will be handled by your British police. I wonder ought I to contact the Embassy?’

  ‘You want to claim asylum, I suppose,’ said Wemyss.

  ‘Now look here …’ Schlemberger began.

  ‘Mr Schlemberger,’ Smithers interrupted.

  The senior master. In charge.

  ‘Mr Schlemberger, I think it would be best if you were to send on your fellow delegates to Basingstoke. They obviously will be able to contribute nothing when the police come, and it’s scarcely fair that they should be kept hanging about.’

  ‘That’s pretty right,’ said Schlemberger climbing down the coach side. ‘And I’d be all the better for a word with Sam Geifertz. Sam’s Vice this year.’

  He was hardly out of earshot when Wemyss said:

  ‘If he gets into one of those coaches and goes hell for leather to catch the first plane home it won’t be my responsibility.’

  ‘No,’ said Smithers, ‘it will be mine. I wish I could take them all as lightly.’

  ‘Howlong do you think it will be before they do come, the police?’ Daisy asked him.

  ‘Not much more than half an hour I should say,’ he answered. ‘That young man drove away very fast.’

  ‘He’s got to get his films developed,’ Kristen said. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t forget about the police and go as fast as he can bat to London. You’ll have the pleasure of seeing yourselves on TV tonight.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite realize the seriousness of the situation,’ the major said. ‘That young man very sensibly drove off in the direction of the nearest police station and away from London. When he comes back with the police it won’t be a question of seeing ourselves on television, but of seeing one of us in gaol. Somebody interfered with that pistol.’

  ‘I don’t think we can usefully discuss it,’ Smithers said.

  ‘Oh, come, don’t let’s pretend we aren’t all trying to work it out,’ Wemyss said. ‘That pistol was supposed to be a dummy. And it killed George Hamyadis. A thing like that doesn’t happen by mistake.’

  ‘It’s surely just possible that it could be a mistake,’ Fremitt said. ‘Perhaps the pistols were interchanged.’

  ‘No,’ said the major. ‘From my collection. I’d know it like my own brother, if I had one.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Wemyss.

  ‘Dad, does that mean I killed Mr Hamyadis?’ asked Peter Dagg.

  ‘Now, lad,’ said Joe, ‘don’t you listen to what you’re not meant to hear.’

  ‘But Dad, it does. I shot him. I killed him.’

  Tears, ugly tears, innocent tears.

  Joe Dagg put a quick arm round the boy and said:

  ‘You take no notice. It isn’t true, lad.’

  Daisy Miller left her place and stood on the seat opposite to get near him and said:

  ‘Nobody thinks you meant to do it, love. It was all an accident.’

  Major Mortens on said:

  ‘Why can’t people exercise some tact?’

  Richard Wemyss said:

  ‘I didn’t bring up the subject in the first place.’

  Kristen Kett said:

  ‘Oh lord, I feel so ill.’

  John Fremitt said:

  ‘That car has been gone at least five minutes. Or not less than four.’

  Foster P. Schlemberger, walking back to the coach unobserved, said:

  ‘I guess this is a pretty rotten business.’

  Smithers made no contribution. But he looked at each speaker in turn with angry speculation.

  Nobody after that tried conversation. Slowly Peter’s sobs ceased. He sat white-faced, pressed tightly against his father. Overhead the sun moved through the blue sky.

  The last of the delegates’ coaches roared away towards London, and the coach party was left sitting silent and alone. Driftwood.

  And at last the police. First a motor-cyclist blasting the quiet, pulling up at the sight of them with a squealing of brakes, and then sitting astride his machine looking down at them from the slight incline they had come down to meet the highwayman. Poised, ready to act, not acting.

  Soon three cars appeared over the brow of the hill behind him. He waved at them and pointed towards the stranded coach. An accusation. The cars slipped slowly down the slope, and came to a halt alongside the coach. From the first of them stepped a police inspector in uniform. He gave the coach a brief incurious glance and turned to the squad of constables tumbling out of the following cars. He gave them sharp efficient orders to cordon off the area, to photograph the body, to move on any sightseers. Each task given equal importance.

  Not until all this was settled did he approach the coach. Then he turned to the party and said:

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A nasty business this seems to be. My name is Jones, Inspector Jones, Hampshire Police. Can any of you confirm what we’ve been told?’

  ‘Have you been told it’s murder, inspector?’ said Richard Wemyss, leaping down from the top of the coach.

  ‘Murder?’ said the inspector.

  He looked hard at Wemyss, his taut white face, his trembling hands.

  ‘Yes,’ Wemyss said. ‘George Hamyadis, travel agent, nightclub impresario, crook, was shot thirty minutes ago by a pistol that until last night had its barrel blocked. Someone melted the lead and loaded the pistol with a real bullet. And if you ask me that someone is up on that coach there. Now go ahead. It shouldn’t be difficult.’

  ‘Now then, that’s a very serious accusation to make,’ said the inspector. ‘What is your name, sir?’

  But without waiting for Wemyss to answer he signalled to the motor-cyclist who still watched the scene from the road. The man kicked his machine to life and rode over the bumpy ground to
where the inspector was standing. Wemyss watched him. The inspector gave the man a brief message in an undertone and then turned to Wemyss again.

  ‘Now, sir, your name?’

  ‘Richard Wemyss.’

  ‘Address?’

  With open throttle the motor-cycle charged away up the hill in the direction of Winchester.

  ‘194 Chancery Inn, London E.C.4.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And now I don’t think there’s anything much we can do here. I’d be glad if you’d all come to Winchester.’

  The party was split up for the journey back. Joe Dagg and Peter were allowed to stay with the coach which started slowly off up the hill. Sitting beside them on the box a uniformed constable. A height of incongruity.

  The others were split up amongst the three cars, and in a few moments the body of George Hamyadis surrounded by busy policemen was all that remained of the High Flyer coach to London.

  At Winchester police station the convoy of cars drew up and the coach party, with the exception of Joe Dagg and Peter, was reassembled in the waiting room. They sat silent on the hard scrubbed bench that ran round the walls. A constable stood by the door, looking into space.

  After about twenty minutes the door opened briskly and a man in a blue suit came in.

  A nose. More than large: beaked, fleshy, quivering at the tip. The man – about forty-five, thatch of greying hair, eyes pale and speculative – stood peering in following the nose. Darting, prying, poking. Nothing missed. Number of walls: four. Colour: white. Texture: painted brick. Number of bricks: approximately two thousand five hundred.

  Number of people: seven. Average number of hairs in each head: counted.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said,’ My name is Parker. Detective Inspector Parker, Hampshire C.I.D. I have been put in charge of this business, and I’ve come to ask for your help. I’m afraid I must apologize for keeping you here. It took me a little time to drive over. But I hope I won’t have to keep you much longer.’

  ‘I guess I hope not, inspector,’ said Schlemberger. ‘I have a conference opening in London on Monday. There are a great many details to fix.’

  ‘You must be Mr Schlemberger, Foster P. Schlemberger, isn’t it?’ said the inspector. ‘We certainly appreciate your position, sir. Perhaps you would care to spare me a few minutes straight away and then you’ll be free to make any telephone calls you want.’