Death and the Visiting Firemen

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘I think you’ll be rather safer here,’ said the inspector. ‘I have made certain arrangements. And in fact they were what I came up here to speak to you about. For the immediate future I want you all to stay in one party.’

  ‘It hasn’t occurred to you, inspector, that that may expose some of us to danger even more effectually?’ said the major. ‘I don’t care one way or the other myself, but, dammit, there are ladies in the party.’

  He looked at Daisy. Kristen smiled, faintly.

  ‘I’m well aware of the possibility that Dagg isn’t our man,’ Inspector Parker said. ‘But my first job is to find him, and for that purpose I intend to enlist your aid, all of you. If he is hiding somewhere around, there is one thing that is certain to attract his attention and very likely to make him come out into the open. Because I don’t disguise from you that he has only to lie absolutely low to elude us for some considerable time.’

  ‘I guess we’ll all be happy to cooperate, inspector,’ said Schlemberger.’ You just give us the broad outlines of this plan and you can rely on us to fix the details.’

  ‘Your part is comparatively simple,’ said Inspector Parker. ‘What I intend to do is to get the coach out again and to go for a series of rides round the town. In this sort of country Dagg is almost certain to spot it sooner or later, and it’s my guess that he won’t be able to leave the coach alone. When he moves we shall be ready for him.’

  ‘I suppose you want me to drive?’ said the major.

  ‘Please, if you would be so good,’ said the inspector. ‘I’m relying on you to see to all the technical side of the business.’

  ‘And you want us to dress up again?’ said Fremitt.

  ‘If you please.’

  ‘I take it this amounts to an order,’ Wemyss said.

  ‘Not at all. I can’t order you to do a thing like this. It’s simply a request, though I must tell you that any refusals will be noted.’

  ‘I was just asking,’ Wemyss said.

  ‘I see. Well now, major, how soon would you be able to make a start?’ ‘Today?’

  ‘As soon as it can be managed. I want to see Dagg as quickly as possible. That’s why I’m doing this instead of a full-scale search. It ought to be quicker if it comes off. What is the first moment you could be ready?’

  ‘In about an hour, I suppose,’ the major said. ‘The horses would have to be fetched.’

  The inspector looked at his watch.

  ‘It’s now 8.45,’ he said. ‘Shall we say 10 o’clock promptly in the yard here. I’ll let you have some labour if you want it, major.’

  Faded gold on faded blue, the old clock above the inn stables pointing at ten. Shadows not yet deep but dusky with the promise of heat to come. The mellow stones of the inn. The worn cobbles. A small crowd: twelve school children and two below school age, five servants from the inn, two passers-by, two police constables.

  And in the middle of the square the High Flyer coach to London, journey postponed, indefinitely.

  Major Mortenson, in full rig approved by a leading theatrical costumier as that of the proper period, sat on the box, the reins from the four matched greys held loosely. Waiting to board the vehicle the passengers. Three fewer than before.

  ‘Right you are then,’ said the major. ‘If some of you gentlemen will help the ladies up, we’ll be off. Inspector Parker asked me to start as soon as possible. He’s given me a route. We make a sort of circular tour. It should take us most of the morning. We don’t want to tire the horses.’

  They clambered up, took their places, looked at each other, looked away.

  The major gave a flick to the reins and once again the coach moved off.

  No cheers.

  Out of the narrow archway into the street. The major driving slowly, carefully.

  They headed at once for the countryside and attracted little attention. A few people stared. Sometimes children ran along beside them for a short way. Faces at windows every now and again. Dogs barking.

  No conversation among the passengers.

  After twenty minutes Smithers said:

  ‘Major, you didn’t give us details of our route. Was that by design?’

  ‘Our route’s none of my choice,’ said the major.

  ‘No, you told us: the inspector asked you to follow it. But did he say we weren’t to be told where it would take us?’

  ‘He didn’t, no.’

  ‘Come, major, sooner or later my suspicions will be confirmed. There’s nothing to be gained by not telling us all now. I’m right, am I not?’

  ‘You are. I tried to argue the point, but your policeman is nothing if not obstinate.’

  ‘What’s all this mean?’ asked Kristen. ‘There’s nothing but mysteries. Can’t someone speak out?’

  ‘It’s just that this is the way we went when the coach left the town the day George was killed, dear,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Guess it’s a police reconstruction,’ said Schlemberger. ‘Pretty smart dodge to get us all there.’

  ‘It is and it isn’t,’ the major said. ‘We go past the spot all right, but we don’t stop.’

  ‘There’s been no police car following us as far as I could see,’ said Fremitt. ‘I’ve been a little surprised at that. Perhaps we are exaggerating.’

  ‘Oh, don’t deceive yourself,’ Wemyss said. ‘They’re watching us all right. You can see the whole road easily from a few key points in this sort of country. All you need is men with field glasses and we’re covered almost as well as if there was a policeman with us.’

  They stared uneasily at the various vantage points they could find all too quickly.

  ‘What are we going to do when we reach - that is when we come to .. .?’ said Fremitt.

  ‘The place where poor George was killed,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s difficult even to think about it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t see why we’ve got to go past there at all,’ said Kristen. ‘We could go round, couldn’t we?’

  ‘Not now,’ said the major.

  ‘Well then, couldn’t we go back? Say I didn’t feel well. I don’t. I feel like hell. We’d have to turn back then.’

  ‘And go another day, I’m afraid,’ said Smithers. ‘I’ve no doubt the inspector chose this route with care, he won’t be put off all that easily. No, I recommend that we go past and behave quite naturally as we do so.’

  ‘It would be nice,’ Daisy said, ‘but we do know already where we’re going, don’t we? We won’t be able to help thinking.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Smithers said.

  No one spoke while the coach under the hot sun clopped steadily on. The countryside implacably familiar.

  ‘Very well,’ said Smithers. ‘I propose to take off this absurd hat at the brow of the incline and to keep silent until the place is out of sight.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Wemyss.

  ‘I do it as a gesture of respect to a human being suddenly done to death,’ said Smithers. ‘There is no need for you or anybody to follow my example if you prefer not to.’

  Smithers looked straight in front of him. All the others except Daisy looked down. Daisy looked round at each of them in turn.

  Nothing more was said till they crossed the brow of the gentle hill and looked once more at the place where George Hamyadis died. Smithers took off his hat. All the other men did the same. Daisy bowed her head. Kristen after giving her a quick glance from under her eyebrows followed suit.

  Two miles farther on, the major turned off the London road.

  ‘We make a wide sweep round now,’ he said, ‘and rejoin the main road just before we get back to Winchester.’

  The words were the first spoken since Smithers’s declaration. But they broke the ice. Comments were made on the countryside and the heat of the sun. The major answered a series of questions about coaching. Smithers was asked about the history of the period. Daisy told a story about the difficulties that occurred when a coach had to move across the stage in one of her musicals
.

  Uneventful.

  Only when they came to the villages was there any excitement. Then there was an onrush of children. Thin cheers. Laughter. Anxious mothers. Giggles from teenage girls. Terrified hens squawking and swerving.

  At the last village before they joined the main road again one daring boy even leapt on to the back of the coach as the major took it at a sedate pace through the scattered onlookers. Smithers, who was sitting on the back bench, turned round and told the boy to get down.

  ‘Your name Smithers?’ said the boy.

  ‘You see,’ said Kristen who overheard, ‘I knew it. They all know all about us. They’re just standing there and saying, “Look at the murderers.”’

  ‘I don’t think anyone would believe we united to kill Hamyadis,’ Smithers said. ‘And now, lad, down you jump.’

  ‘Is your name Smithers?’ said the boy.

  ‘Yes, it is, but down you get.’

  ‘This is for you,’ said the boy.

  He thrust a sheet of paper screwed up into Smithers’s hand and jumped from the coach. Smithers got to his feet and peered back, but the boy had run off between two cottages and was nowhere to be seen.

  Smithers sat down again and looked at his fellow passengers.

  None of them appeared to have noticed what the boy had done. With some difficulty Smithers unrolled the paper in the palm of his hand and glanced down at it. There were a few words laboriously written in pencil.

  ‘Dear sir. Sorry dad asked me to. He has not said anything. Must stay. Peter.’

  While the coach travelled a hundred and fifty yards Smithers sat thinking. Then he said: ‘Stop a minute, would you, major. I want to attract the attention of the police.’

  The major pulled the horses to a halt.

  ‘What’s happened?’ said Schlemberger.

  ‘I’ve had a note thrust into my hand by that boy that may have some bearing on Dagg’s whereabouts,’ Smithers said.

  He stood up and waved.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘You were given no signal for the police, I suppose, major,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t think I’m in their pay, do you?’ the major said.

  ‘No,’ Smithers said. ‘You’ve spoken too convincingly of your distrust and dislike of policemen for that. I simply wondered if they had made any arrangements to be summoned in a hurry.’

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ said the major.

  Smithers turned and looked behind him again. Inspector Parker had just come out of the last cottage in the village. Smithers waved to him.

  ‘What is it?’ the inspector said.

  Smithers handed him the note. He read it and signalled violently to someone in the cottage. A constable came running out.

  ‘I don’t know whether you saw a boy jump on the back of the coach for a few seconds,’ Smithers said. ‘He handed it to me.’

  ‘On my blind side, I take it,’ the inspector said.

  ‘If you were in that cottage it would be.’

  ‘You’d recognize the boy again?’

  ‘Almost certainly. Miss Kett saw him too. Perhaps she would.’

  ‘Ah, the obliging Miss Kett. Would you be able to identify the boy again, Miss Kett?’

  ‘Identify him? I scarcely looked at him, the damn cheeky little pest,’ said Kristen.

  ‘Did anybody else see this boy Mr Smithers says got up behind the coach?’ asked Inspector Parker.

  ‘I thought there was some excitement or other,’ Fremitt said. ‘But Smithers was between me and whatever it was.’

  ‘I see. Well, I don’t think I’ll trouble you any more about it. If the boy was here no doubt he’s run off.’

  ‘He ran very sharply between those two cottages/ said Smithers.

  A declaration of fact.

  ‘I’ll get you to describe him later and ask the local constable if he sounds familiar,’ said Inspector Parker. ‘In the meanwhile I’ll consider all the implications of this note.’

  The major flicked at the reins and the coach started off again. Smithers briefly told the story of the note. They were back at the inn in time for lunch. Not a meal missed.

  Round the table a little talk. Conversation. People asked polite meaningless questions. Remarks answered in general terms. But no one asked Smithers any questions. No one answered any of his remarks unless addressed directly. As they were finishing a message was brought from Inspector Parker. He said the afternoon coach trip was cancelled.

  Smithers left the table and went to his room. There he undressed carefully and went to bed. He set his alarm clock to wake him in time for tea.

  He did not stay long over the teacups. Again there was little said.

  When Smithers had drunk a single cup of tea he left and walked at a rapid pace down the street to the police station and asked for Inspector Parker.

  In the inspector’s small office he said:

  ‘I’ve come to do two things. First I would like to give you a description of that boy this afternoon.’

  Inspector Parker called a constable to take notes and Smithers gave a description of the boy. An extremely detailed description.

  ‘We ought to be able to recognize him if we ever come across him,’ Nosey Parker said.

  ‘I imagine he was from the village. Peter must have seen the coach, been told its probable route, and gone down to the village to see if he could get a message to me,’ said Smithers.

  ‘I had worked out that that was meant to be the pattern,’ the inspector said.

  ‘And that brings me to the second thing I came here to do,’ said Smithers.

  ‘I’d been wondering about that.’

  ‘I want to make a complaint.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘This afternoon you treated my report to you about this boy with such obvious disbelief that everyone in the party now suspects me of the murder.’ ‘I see.’

  ‘I want you to do something to rectify that.’

  ‘Mr Smithers, I don’t think I commented on your account in anything but a proper manner. Plainly, if I haven’t your confidence you can’t expect me to give you mine. If the consequences are what you say they are the remedy lies in your own hands.’

  ‘Let me get it quite clear,’ said Smithers. ‘In order to satisfy your morbid curiosity with a lot of gossip, based on the merest guesses, you are prepared as far as you dare to allow these people to believe I am a murderer.’

  ‘I won’t in any way exceed my duty.’

  ‘That goes without saying, inspector. I don’t deny your ability. I merely say you have allowed yourself to be carried away. You can’t really believe a lot of hearsay and guesswork can help you solve this problem.’

  ‘The more I know the better chance I stand.’

  ‘Not if what you know isn’t true.’

  ‘There are truths and truths. A half truth, a quarter truth may be of use to me.’ ,

  ‘But what I could tell you, and what the others must have told you, could not even be described as quarter truths. You can’t tell me you want inventions, because that is what you’ll get and have got.’

  ‘I want everything.’

  ‘Exactly. Anything anyone tells you becomes sacred in your eyes because it’s something, not even a fact, just something you can grip, to feed your curiosity. Well, you will get facts or nothing from me.’

  He walked out of the office.

  For the rest of that evening he sat in the inn lounge at some distance from his fellow coach passengers. The pages of Vol. 5 of The Decline and Fall flipped over with the regularity of a machine. One by one the others left for bed. When the last pair had gone Smithers closed his book and walked quietly out of the inn into the cobbled yard. Once more he settled himself behind the water butt near the coach house door.

  The cloudless summer sky was brilliant with stars. The moon, according to Smithers’s diary, would not appear till nineteen minutes past midnight. The hours passed. From the inn the last signs of activity died away. The air was still a
nd warm.

  At last above the roof of the main building came the soft glow of moonlight. By it Smithers consulted his watch. 12.25. The light grew brighter. At 1.3 the rim of the moon itself appeared over the roof and the velvet-shadowed yard began to divide into areas of lightness and dark.

  Smithers watched, assessing the effects of this change. The shadows now provided better concealment. To eyes used to the bright moonlight they appeared almost impenetrable. Almost, but not quite.

  Smithers peered into the densest of the black patches. And quietly straightened his back, flexed his muscles.

  A flick. Noiseless. Scarcely visible. Something passed from the big shadow to the next patch. And again.

  Smithers breathed slowly, soundlessly.

  The figure slipped from one shadow to another. Nearer. A man. But oddly shaped. Smithers peered. At last. Coaching clothes. The caped coat, with a scarf round the head. Colourless in the moonlight, anonymous. The door of the coach house creaked slowly open. Smithers leant back against the wall.

  The caped man slipped in. Smithers glanced at his watch. 1.34. He heard new faint noises. The groan of the coach bodywork. A slight ripping sound. Then silence. Smithers held his watch where the moonlight fell on it. The door of the coach house creaked again. Once, quickly, 1.40.

  For a moment the man stood in the moonlight looking at something in his hands. Dagg? Conceivably. Too short surely for Schlemberger, too heavy for Fremitt. Much too short for the major.

  Something in the tilt of the head in spite of the scarf wrapped round it.

  Wemyss.

  Eleven

  At last Wemyss moved. He turned to walk past Smithers’s hiding place and Smithers was able to see that he was holding a large white envelope.

  Smithers let him get just past. And darted. Grabbed the envelope and ran. In an instant round into the narrow passage where he had laid his ambush for Fremitt in the rain.

  The whole alley was in deep shadow. The tall buildings on either side cut out all the moonlight. Smithers loped along, his eyes fixed on the back wall of the stables. Soon he found what he was looking for. A faint gleam from the coach house window. He half crouched now as he ran holding out his arms, and almost at once he felt the dustbin he had tripped over before. He sank to the ground beside it and sat hunched over his knees. For a moment he held his breath and then forced himself to exhale slowly and silently. At the second breath he heard Wemyss. Blundering steps. Muttering. Then: