Death and the Visiting Firemen

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘That’s pretty handsome,’ Schlemberger said.

  He got to his feet and walked to the door. Awkwardly. And the others looked at each other briefly. Police questioning had begun.

  Nobody said anything. The constable at the door stood staring at the same patch of wall. Six minutes passed. Outside voices were heard. The door opened and another constable showed Joe Dagg and Peter in.

  ‘You got back without incident?’ said Smithers.

  ‘Nothing that you’d call incident,’ Joe said. ‘Only that copper sitting on my box looking as if he was Lord Muck. I don’t like ’em. Never did, never have, never shall. It’s the way they look at you. As if they were a house surveyor and you were a cracked wall covered up nicely with a bit of new paper.’

  The joking phrase. No joke.

  ‘Anyhow we got here. We’re taking the horses along to the farm where they were last night. So I suppose everything’s all right. More or less.’

  Then silence again. For twelve minutes. Brisk opening of door. Head of constable thrust in.

  ‘Mr Wemyss.’

  Exit young actor. Not as an actor exiting. And then there were seven.

  Wemyss was absent fourteen minutes. Next the major: absent twelve minutes. Daisy Miller: six minutes. Kristen Kett: fifteen minutes. Fremitt: eleven minutes. Joe Dagg and Peter: four minutes. And then there was one.

  Smithers followed the constable along a bare corridor. At the end there was a glass-panelled door. The constable knocked, opened it, and said Smithers’s name. He motioned him in.

  Detective Inspector Parker was sitting behind a small desk. On it lying on Smithers’s handkerchief was the pistol. In a corner a constable sat, a shorthand notebook on his knee.

  The inspector pushed a cigarette towards Smithers who refused it.

  ‘I’m sorry to have kept you till last, Mr Smithers,’ he said. ‘In some ways I ought to have seen you first. Mr Jones told me you seemed to be more or less in charge.’

  ‘No one was in charge, inspector,’ Smithers said. ‘Mr Hamyadis appeared to manage everything himself. When he – when the accident occurred, as nobody did anything I asked that young man with the film machine to go for the police. There’s nothing more to it.’

  ‘No,’ said the inspector. ‘But all the same in my experience the man who sends for the police in such circumstances is the one who’s going to be useful to you. That’s why I waited to see you last.’

  Ground bait.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s little I’ll be able to tell you,’ Smithers said. ‘I appeared to know less of Mr Hamyadis, or anything of what was going on, than anybody.’

  A wary fish.

  ‘Of what was going on,’ the inspector echoed the phrase. An invitation.

  ‘Of the arrangements for the trip,’ said Smithers.

  The inspector sat silent, unmoving except that at its tip the enormous nose quivered. Almost a tic.

  ‘Look,’ the inspector said suddenly leaning forward, ‘something was going on. Now, I know you are thinking that whatever it was, it was probably nothing to do with the death of Mr Hamyadis. And you may be right. But I’d just like to know about it all. It’ll go no further. But I’m curious. I don’t like the feeling that things are happening that I don’t know about.’

  Smithers said nothing.

  The inspector leant back in his chair.

  ‘You know what they call me,’ he said. ‘All the toughs and wide boys, all the petty criminals and police informers: they call me Nosey Parker. And it’s not just because of this.’

  He hit the nose with his index finger. A thwack.

  ‘It’s because I like to know things,’ he went on. ‘I like to know everything.’

  He paused.

  ‘Did you know’, he said, ‘that to get the best out of champagne you want to drink it from a tankard? No? Fact. I was on a case last month. Breaking and entering at a wine merchant’s. The owner told me, proved it to me. That had nothing to do with the case, but I couldn’t help asking questions, and that was one of the things I found out.’

  ‘If you want to know about coaches and coaching I’ll be glad to do my best,’ answered Smithers. ‘But really Major Mortenson is your man. My knowledge is all book stuff. He really knows about coaches.’

  ‘Does he now?’ said the inspector. ‘I wondered about that. There was that incident at the inn entrance just along the street from here.’

  ‘That was nothing to do with knowledge or lack of knowledge,’ Smithers said. ‘That was simply a question of character. The major has a streak of…’

  He stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ said Inspector Parker, Nosey Parker, ‘a streak of what would you say?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Smithers. ‘I’ve no objection to satisfying your curiosity where I can. But I won’t stoop to gossip.’

  An angry hand flicked chalk dust off an old waistcoat. Which was embroidered fancy dress.

  ‘I appreciate your point of view,’ said the inspector. ‘I admire it. But, you know, gossip isn’t quite the right word. Not any longer. We aren’t just chatting about a handful of your acquaintances: we’re looking at murder. Because there can be no mistake about it. Mr Hamyadis was shot, and there shouldn’t have been a workable weapon anywhere in sight.’

  ‘It’s not my job to teach you your business,’ said Smithers, ‘but couldn’t it have been a stray shot from some rifle range or something like that?’

  ‘There’s nothing like that for miles around,’ said Inspector Parker, ‘I checked. And it would be really too much of a coincidence that such a stray shot should hit Mr Hamyadis at the exact moment the pistol was fired from the coach.’

  ‘It was the exact moment,’ Smithers said. ‘I’ve thought about it very hard.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the inspector. ‘That’s the sort of thing I want to hear. That and other facts. Facts about any of the people who were in a position to tamper with that pistol. The barrel had been unblocked, you know.’

  ‘Everyone in the party knew the pistol was being left in the coach all night,’ said Smithers.’ There was an altercation about it, and the coach was simply in an open stable. All of us could have got at it.’

  ‘Suppose you tell me about the altercation,’ said the inspector.

  ‘I can tell you the facts of it,’ Smithers answered. ‘But you’ve no doubt got half a dozen versions of those already. If you want my impressions of how the incident showed up the characters of those involved, I’m afraid I shall have to disappoint you. Don’t think I’m unwilling to help. It’s simply that I can’t. Gossip, like anything else, improves with practice. Over the years, in common-rooms I’ve trained myself not to gossip, and that means not to register the facts on which gossip depends.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Inspector Parker, ‘over the years you’ve formed hundreds of characters. You can’t do that without observing them.’

  ‘If I’ve learnt anything,’ Smithers answered, ‘I’ve learnt not to make a fool of myself. The human boy is a very complicated mechanism, inspector. So is the human adult. In the few days I’ve seen my travelling companions I’ve observed nothing about them that I would care to put before anybody else as facts. I’m not that sort of a person. If I don’t know something for certain I don’t talk about it. I believe it’s a necessary qualification in my profession.’

  ‘I suppose I shall have to accept that,’ said the inspector. ‘I’mall too human: you’re a monk. But you may well be seeing more of your party in the next few days. I’m asking you all to stay here in Winchester and to let my men know where you are at least over the week-end. I’ve booked you back in where you slept last night. A purely voluntary exceptional arrangement. I hope you’ll agree to it. Otherwise I shall be chasing all over the country every time I want to ask a question. Now, if you get to feel certain about anything to do with your party, any little thing, I’d like to hear of it.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Smithers. ‘And can I assume from what you said that our
charade is at an end?’

  ‘It is,’ said Inspector Parker. ‘I’m afraid it would be out of the question.’

  The distance from the police station to the inn: five hundred and forty-seven yards. The time taken by Smithers to walk the distance: thirty-eight minutes. Yet he entered the inn yard walking briskly and glancing round. Nobody was in sight. He walked quickly over to the door of the stable where the coach had been kept the previous night. He tried it. It opened easily. With a brief glance inside at the gaily painted High Flyer, its journey ended, he shut the door. Then he walked out into the street and went into a small toyshop two doors away from the inn. He bought a pocket torch and went back to the inn. He moved purposefully along the corridors, putting his head round the doors of the public rooms.

  Sitting alone in an armchair in an alcove half-way up the main staircase he saw Peter Dagg, pale, smudgy-eyed, un-moving. The chair too lumpy to sit on; next to it a potted plant, dust on its faded leaves.

  ‘Ah, Peter,’ said Smithers, ‘I was looking for you.’

  The boy looked up. Wild hope.

  ‘Now,’ said Smithers, ‘have you ever had any pets?’

  ‘Pets, sir?’

  ‘Yes, rabbits, a puppy, a kitten.’

  ‘I did have a budgie once, but it died.’

  ‘Was that a long time ago?’

  ‘It was about’ – face screwed in concentration – ’about three quarters of a year ago.’

  ‘I see. And do you often think about it nowadays?’

  ‘Well, no. Though I thought about it very hard when it died.’

  ‘And what did it die of?’

  ‘It had too many worms.’

  ‘I see. So although the budgerigar died you learnt something. There was no way of bringing it back to life, but there was something to do about the way it died.’

  The boy said nothing. Thought showed itself on his face, eyes clouded, brow wrinkled.

  ‘Well,’ said Smithers, ‘what’s the answer?’

  ‘Is there something to be done about – about Mr Hamyadis, sir?’

  ‘If I was to tap at your door late tonight,’ Smithers said, ‘when all the rest had gone to bed, would you wake up?’

  ‘Yes sir, I wake quite easily when I’m not at home.’

  ‘Could you slip on some clothes and come with me to see something?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  A sparkle in the eyes. And a doubt.

  ‘But, sir, what’s it all for? Why have I got to see whatever it is, too? Wouldn’t it do if you saw it by yourself?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t, Peter,’ Smithers answered. ‘You see, only if you’re with me can anybody be sure I didn’t put the thing where I hope to find it myself. You’re very important to me.’

  ‘Couldn’t you tell me a bit what it is?’

  ‘No, Peter, that’s not my way. I don’t guess, I wait till I know.’

  Smithers walked slowly down the broad stairs and ordered a whisky before dinner. He drank it alone.

  When he came into the inn dining-room he saw that the coach party had been put at their old communal table. He had took his former place. The meal was eaten almost in silence. Afterwards the party dispersed with scarcely a word.

  In each mind a question. Who? In each mind but one.

  Moonlight with its soft shadows etching the cobbled inn yard. The hands of the stable clock, silver now on black, moving. Midnight.

  Smithers paused in his walk along an upstairs corridor and glanced quickly up and down. He tapped sharply three times on a door and waited. After four seconds it was opened and Peter put his tousled head round.

  ‘Shall I put some clothes on?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, slip on something warm,’ said Smithers, ‘and meet me where I saw you this afternoon.’

  He stood in the shadow of the potted palm. Its dry leaves rustled as his arm, back now in the worn tweed with the faint smell of chalk dust, brushed against it. When Peter came, he murmured:

  ‘Go down to the yard and wait for me just outside the door. Don’t let anybody see you.’

  At the yard door Smithers looked carefully round before speaking again.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said, ‘and watch everything I do carefully.’

  He walked quietly round the edge of the yard keeping in the shadow of the building. When he got to the stable door he paused and listened carefully. No sound. He looked slowly round the yard and up at the windows of the inn giving on to it. No movement. He signed to Peter to be quiet once more and raised the latch of the door.

  Then he heard a sound. A heavy creak from the coach inside the stable.

  Without hurry he lowered the latch silently back into place, and walked on tip-toe into the deep shadow of a water butt at the corner of the stable. Peter followed him and they stood waiting. The coach creaked again and the light pat of a pair of feet landing on the ground came clearly to their ears.

  Peter sneezed. Loudly in the still night.

  From the coach house the heavy crash of a body bumping into the High Flyer. Then a slow grating squeal.

  ‘A window,’ said Smithers. ‘Is there one in the coach house, Peter, do you remember?’

  ‘Yes there’s a little old one high up at the back.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Smithers.

  He ran as hard as he could. Weak flesh. Along the length of the stabling, round a corner, into a narrow alley between the inn and the shop next door.

  The high buildings blotted out the moonlight and it was almost impossible to see. Smithers stopped and listened for a moment. Ahead in the darkness he heard somebody running. Running away from him. He set off in pursuit, but almost at once he knew he was outpaced. His heart was pounding, his head ached, his legs rebelled.

  He stopped. Peter, panting, caught up with him, ran on.

  ‘Stop,’ shouted Smithers.

  The boy paused.

  ‘Can’t I?’ he said.

  ‘Here,’ Smithers said, ‘follow me and don’t speak.’

  He walked out into the street and stopped.

  ‘Whoever that was’, he said, ‘may well have been responsible for killing Mr Hamyadis. Did you see them at all?’

  ‘No,’ said Peter.

  One syllable. An essay.

  ‘Then let’s hope they didn’t see us.’

  ‘Mr Smithers I couldn’t help sneezing then. I didn’t know I was going to, honestly.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a good thing,’ Smithers said. ‘I’m going back to the coach now, to look round.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me what it is we’re looking for, sir?’

  ‘Can I? No, I don’t think so. Wait and see. We do at least have reason to believe there’s something there to find, don’t we?’

  ‘Gosh, yes,’ said the boy.

  Adventure. The pages of a comic paper happening.

  Again the scrutiny of the inn yard, the lifted latch. And this time, nothing, silence. Smithers and Peter slipped into the dark coach house. The odour of confined air and cutting into it a draught from the opened window. Smithers took the small torch from his pocket and cautiously flashed it round the shed. Cobwebs, dust.

  The new paint of the High Flyer gleamed in the thin ray of pallid light. Smithers hoisted himself up on to its roof and stooping to avoid the beams of the stable roof pulled Peter up beside him. At once the boy said:

  ‘Somebody’s been pulling the cushions off the back seat.’

  ‘There’s a cavity there,’ Smithers said. ‘Hold the torch.’

  He thrust his hand into a deep hole at the back of the seat, normally covered by the shiny black leather cushion. Grunting slightly with the effort he moved his outstretched fingers along the whole breadth of the coach. When he got to the far end he gave a sharp ‘Ah’ of satisfaction.

  And then heard the latch on the door of the coach house lift. Peter at once put out the torch. They stood exactly as they had been when the noise came to their ears. Statue-still. Smithers leaning forward, his hand still thrust deep into the
recess: Peter crouching, the torch pointing to the spot where Smithers would withdraw his find.

  As the door slowly opened Smithers felt the draught from the opened window gather strength. A stealthy footstep. A slight jar of the coach as it was lightly brushed against.

  Smithers felt he could hold his breath no longer. He breathed slowly and silently in through his nose. The cold night air from the window. And something else. Something new.

  Then he too sneezed.

  The cold air.

  The door was flung open and rapid running steps pounded across the cobbled yard. Smithers pushed Peter aside, scrambled anyhow off the coach, flung himself towards the open door.

  In the soft moonlight the empty inn yard. Cobbles sleeping. Smithers stood looking at the scene.

  Peter joined him.

  ‘Well,’ Smithers said, ‘did you smell it?’

  ‘Smell?’said the boy.

  ‘Yes,’ Smithers said. ‘And now I know what it was. A woman’s scent.’

  ‘Then was it Kristen Kett?’ said Peter. ‘Or Miss Miller?’

  A difference between the two names. A judgement.

  ‘I find it hard to believe it was neither of them,’ Smithers said. ‘And what did you think about the first lot of footsteps? Were they a woman’s?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I didn’t think so either. Very odd.’

  ‘And please sir, you did find something behind the coach seat, didn’t you? Can you tell me what it was now?’

  ‘Yes, it was just what I expected. Look.’

  He held his open palm out towards the boy. Plainly to be seen in the moonlight a small automatic. Clamped round the end of the barrel the awkward shape of a silencer.

  Six

  ‘A Gun,’ said the boy. ‘Was that what you expected to find all the time? Did you expect it to be where it was?’

  ‘One at a time. One at a time. I did expect to find this pistol, yes. And I guessed it must be somewhere near where it turned out to be.’

  ‘But what does it mean, sir?’

  ‘It means for one thing, my lad, that you had nothing at all to do with this business. You see, Mr Hamyadis wasn’t killed with the Durs Egg pistol. If anybody had wanted to kill him that way they would have been extremely stupid to have relied on you aiming correctly. As a matter of fact I half thought I had seen you jerk at the trigger like a nervous colt.’