When Eight Bells Toll

by Alistair MacLean

  The strip was smooth and flat and I made good time without having to use the big rubber torch I had with me. I didn’t dare use it anyway, not so close to the castle. There was no light to be seen from there but that was no guarantee that the ungodly weren’t maintaining a sleepless watch on the battlements. If I were the ungodly, I’d have been maintaining a sleepless watch on the battlements. I stumbled over something warm and soft and alive and hit the ground hard.

  My nerves weren’t what they had been forty-eight hours ago and my reactions were comparatively fast. I had the knife in my hand and was on to him before he could get to his feet. To his four feet. He had about him the pungent aroma of a refugee from Tim Hutchinson’s flensing shed. Well might they say why stinks the goat on younger hill who seems to dote on chlorophyll. I said a few conciliatory words to our four-footed friend and it seemed to work for he kept his horns to himself. I went on my way.

  This humiliating sort of encounter, I’d noticed, never happened to the Errol Flynns of this world. Moreover, if Errol Flynn had been carrying a torch a little fall like that would not have smashed it. Had he been carrying only a candle it would still have kept burning brightly in the darkness. But not my torch. Not my rubber encased, rubber mounted bulb, plexi-glass guaranteed unbreakable torch. It was kaput. I fished out the little pencil torch and tried it inside my jacket. I could have spared myself the caution, a glow-worm would have sneered at it. I stuck it back in my pocket and kept going.

  I didn’t know how far I was from the precipitous end of the cliff and I’d no intention of finding out the hard way. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled forward, the glow-worm leading the way. I reached the cliff edge in five minutes and found what I was looking for almost at once. The deep score on the cliff edge was almost eighteen inches in width and four in depth in the centre. The mark was fresh but not too fresh. The grass had grown in again in most places. The time factor would be just about right. It was the mark that had been left by the tail fuselage of the Beech-craft plane when, with no one aboard, it had been started up, throttle opened and then the chocks removed. It hadn’t had enough speed to become airborne and had fallen over the cliff edge, ripping this score in the earth as it had gone. That was all I needed, that and the holed hull of the Oxford expedition boat and the dark circles under the blue eyes of Susan Kirkside. Here was certainty.

  I heard a slight noise behind me. A moderately fit five-year-old grabbing me by the ankles could have had me over the edge with nothing I could do to prevent it. Or maybe it was Billy the Kid back to wreak vengeance for the rude interruption of his night’s sleep. I swung round with torch and gun at the ready. It was Billy the Kid, his yellow eyes staring balefully out of the night. But his eyes belied him, he was just curious or friendly or both. I moved back slowly till I was out of butting range, patted him weakly on the head and left. At this rate I’d die of heart failure before the night was out.

  The rain had eased by this time and the wind fallen away quite a bit, but to compensate for this the mist was worse than ever. It swirled clammily around me and I couldn’t see four feet in front of my face. I wondered grimly how Hutchinson was getting on in this lot, but put him quickly out of my mind. I’d no doubt he was a damned sight better at his job than I was at mine. I kept the wind on my right cheek and continued towards the castle. Under my rubbercanvas raincoat my last suit was sodden. The Civil Service was going to be faced with a cleaner’s bill of some note.

  I nearly walked into the castle wall but saw its loom just in time. I didn’t know whether I was to the right or the left of the entrance gate on the landward side, so I felt my way cautiously to the left to find out. After about ten feet the wall fell away at right angles to another wall. That meant I’d arrived at the left or eastern side of the gate. I began to feel my way to the right.

  It was as well I had come upon the castle wall where I had done: had I arrived at the right-hand side, I’d have been upwind of the central gate and would never have smelled the tobacco smoke. It wasn’t much as tobacco went, nothing like as robust as Uncle Arthur’s cheroots and positively anæmic as compared to Tim Hutchinson’s portable poison-gas factories, but tobacco smoke for all that. Someone at the entrance gate was smoking a cigarette. It was axiomatic that sentries should never smoke cigarettes. This I could deal with. They’d never trained me on how to handle billy goats on the edge of a precipice but on this subject they had become boringly repetitive.

  I held the gun by the barrel and moved quietly forwards. He was leaning against the corner of the entrance, a hardly-seen shape, but his position outlined clearly enough by the movement of his cigarette end. I waited till he brought it to his mouth for the third time, and when it was glowing at its brightest and his night vision consequently most affected I took one step forward and brought the butt down where by extension of the curve and subsequent glow of the cigarette end the back of the head of a normal man ought to have been. Fortunately, he was a normal man.

  He fell back against me. I caught him and something jabbed painfully into my ribs. I let him finish the trip down on his own and removed this item that had become stuck in my coat. A bayonet, and, what was more, a bayonet with a very nasty point to it. Attached to the bayonet was a Lee Enfield .303. Very military. It seemed unlikely that this was just a routine precaution. Our friends were becoming worried and I had no means of knowing how much they knew or guessed. Time was running very short for them, almost as short as it was for me. In a few hours it would be dawn.

  I took the rifle and moved cautiously towards the edge of the cliff, the bayonet prodding the earth ahead of me as I went. By this time I was becoming quite adept at not falling over the edges of precipices and, besides, with a rifle and bayonet stretched out in advance you have five-feet notification of where eternity begins. I found the edge, stepped back, reversed the rifle, made two parallel scores in the sodden turf about a foot apart and eighteen inches in length, terminating on the very edge. I wiped the butt clean and placed the rifle on the ground. When the dawn came, the sentry changed and a search made, I trusted the proper conclusions would be drawn.

  I hadn’t hit him as hard as I’d thought, he was beginning to stir and moan feebly by the time I got back to him. This was all to the good, the alternative would have been to carry him and I was in no fit state to carry anyone. I stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth and the moaning stopped. Bad practice, I knew, for a gagged man with a head cold or nasal obstruction can die of suffocation in four minutes, but I hadn’t the facilities to carry out a sinus examination, and, more importantly, it was his health or mine.

  He was up on his feet in two minutes. He didn’t try to run away or offer resistance, for by this time he had his ankles on a short hobble, his hands tied securely behind his back and the barrel of an automatic pressing into the side of his neck. I told him to walk, and he walked. Two hundred yards away, at the head of the path leading down to the landing stage, I led him off to one side, tied his wrists and ankles together and left him there. He seemed to be breathing without too much difficulty.

  There were no other sentries, at least not on the main gate. I crossed the hollow square of a courtyard and came to the main door. It was closed but not locked. I passed inside and said a few hard things to myself about myself for not having searched that sentry for the torch he would almost certainly have been carrying. The window curtains must have been drawn and the darkness inside that hall was total. I didn’t much fancy moving around a Scottish baronial hall in total darkness, the risk of bringing down a suit of armour with a resounding metallic crash or impaling oneself on targes, claymores or a royal set of antlers must be high. I took out my pencil flash but the glow worm inside was breathing its last, even when hard-pressed against the face of my wrist-watch it was impossible to tell the time. It was impossible to see the wrist-watch.

  From the air, yesterday, I’d seen that the castle had been built in perfect symmetry round three sides of a hollow square. It was a reasonable assumption then
that if the main door was in the middle of the central or seaward-facing section then the main staircase would be directly opposite. It seemed likely that the middle of the hall would offer a passage unimpeded by either claymores or antlers.

  It did. The stairs were where they should have been. Ten wide shallow steps and then the stairs branched both right and left. I chose the right-hand side because above me, on that side, I could see a faint loom of light. Six steps on the second flight of stairs, another right turn, eight more steps and then I was on the landing. Twenty-four steps and never a creak. I blessed the architect who had specified marble.

  The light was much stronger now. I advanced towards its source, a door no more than an inch ajar, and applied a wary eye to the crack. All I could see was the corner of a wardrobe, a strip of carpet, the corner of the foot of a bed and, on the last, a muddy boot. A low-register cacophony of sound emerged, reminiscent of a boiler factory in the middle distance. I pushed the door and walked inside.

  I’d come to see Lord Kirkside, and whoever this was it wasn’t Lord Kirkside, for whatever Lord Kirkside was in the habit of doing I was fairly certain that he didn’t go to bed in boots, braces and cloth cap, with a bayoneted rifle lying on the blankets beside him, which was what this character had done. I couldn’t see his face, because the cloth cap reached as far as his nose. On the bedside table beside him lay a torch and a half-empty whisky bottle. No glass, but from what little I could see of him I would have judged that he was, anyhow, one of those characters whose direct and simple enjoyment of life has not been impaired by the effete conventions of modern civilisation. The faithful watchman prudently preparing himself for the rigours of the West Highland night before taking his turn at sentry-go. But he wouldn’t be making it at the appointed hour for there was no one now to call him. From the look of it, he’d be lucky to make it for lunch.

  It was just possible that he might wake himself up, those stentorian snores wouldn’t have gone unremarked in a mortuary. He had about him the look of a man who, on regaining consciousness, would find himself in need of thirst-quenching nourishment, so I unscrewed the bottle top, dropped in half a dozen of the tablets supplied by my pharmaceutical friend in Torbay, replaced the top, took the torch and left.

  Behind the next door to the left lay a bathroom. A filthy basin with, above it, a water-stained mirror, two shaving brushes covered with lather, a jar of shaving cream with the top off, two unwashed razors and, on the floor, two towels that might just possibly have been white at some distant æon in the past. The interior of the bath was immaculate. Here was where the watchman performed his rudimentary ablutions.

  The next room was a bedroom as dirty and disorderly as the watchman’s. It was a fair guess that this was the home of the man I’d left lying out among the gorse and stones on the hillside.

  I moved across to the left-hand side of the central block – Lord Kirkside would have his room somewhere in that block. He did, but he wasn’t at home. The first room beyond the sleeping warrior’s was his all right, a glance at the contents of the nearest wardrobe confirmed this. But his bed hadn’t been slept in.

  Predictably in this symmetrically designed house, the next room was a bathroom. The watchman wouldn’t have felt at all at home in here, this antiseptic cleanliness was the hall-mark of an effete aristocracy. A medicine cabinet was fixed to the wall. I took out a tin of Elastoplast and covered the face of the torch till I was left with a hole no more than the size of a sixpence. I put the tin in my pocket.

  The next door was locked but locks, in the days when the Dubh Sgeir Castle had been built, were pretty rudimentary affairs. I took from my pocket the best skeleton key in the world – an oblong of stiff celluloid. I shoved it between door and jamb at bolt level pulled the door handle back in the direction of the hinges, eased in the celluloid, released the handle, repeated the process and stood stock-still. That click might have wakened my watchman friend, it should certainly have wakened the person inside. But I heard no sound of movement.

  I opened the door a fraction of an inch and went through the stock-still standing process once more. There was a light on inside the room. I changed the torch for the gun, went on my knees, crouched low and abruptly opened the door wide. I stood up, closed and locked the door and crossed over to the bed.

  Susan Kirkside wasn’t snoring but she was just as deep in sleep as the man I’d just left. She had a blue silk band round her hair, and all of her face was visible, a sight that must have been rare indeed during her waking hours. Twenty-one, her father had said she was, but lying there asleep, smudged eyes and all, she looked no older than seventeen. A magazine had slipped from her hands to the floor. On the bedside table was a half-empty glass of water and beside that a bottle containing a commercial brand of Nembutal tablets. Oblivion appeared to be a pretty hard thing to come by in Dubh Sgeir and I’d no doubt Susan Kirkside found it more difficult than most.

  I picked up a towel from a basin in the corner of the room, removed the worst of the moisture and dirt from head and face, combed my hair into some semblance of order and gave my kindly reassuring smile a try-out in the mirror. I looked like someone from the pages of the Police Gazette.

  It took almost two minutes to shake her awake or, at least, to pull her up from the dark depths of oblivion to a state of semi-awareness. Full consciousness took another minute, and it was probably this that saved me from a screaming match, she had time to adjust herself to the slow realisation of the presence of a stranger in the middle of the night. Mind you, I had my kindly smile going full blast till my face ached, but I don’t think it helped much.

  ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ Her voice was shaking, the blue eyes, still misted with sleep, wide open and scared. ‘Don’t you touch me! Don’t you – I’ll scream for help – I’ll –’

  I took her hands just to show her that there was touching and touching. ‘I won’t touch you. Sue Kirkside. And a fat lot of good screaming for help would do around these parts. Don’t scream, there’s a good girl. In fact, don’t even talk above a whisper. I don’t think it would be very wise or safe, do you?’

  She stared at me for a few seconds, her lips moving as if she were about to speak, but the fear slowly leaving her eyes. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. ‘You’re Mr Johnson. The man from the helicopter.’

  ‘You should be more careful,’ I said reproachfully. ‘They’d have you arrested for that in the Folies-Bergère.’ Her free hand hauled the blankets up to her chin and I went on: ‘My name is Calvert. I work for the Government. I’m a friend. I think you need a friend, don’t you, Susan? You and your old man – Lord Kirkside, that is.’

  ‘What do you want?’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m here to end your troubles,’ I said. ‘I’m here to cadge an invitation to your wedding to the Honourable John Rollinson. Make it about the end of next month, will you? I’m due some leave, then.’

  ‘Go away from here.’ Her voice was low and desperate. ‘Go away from here or you’ll ruin everything. Please, please, please go away. I’m begging you, I’m begging you. Go away. If you’re a friend, go away. Please, oh please go away!’

  It seemed that she wanted me to leave. I said: ‘It appears that they have you pretty well brainwashed. If you believe their promise, you’ll believe anything in the world. They won’t let you go, they daren’t let you go, they’ll destroy every shred and trace of evidence that might ever point a finger at them. That includes anyone who has ever had anything to do with them.’

  ‘They won’t, they won’t. I was with Mr Lavorski when he promised Daddy that no one would come to any harm. He said they were businessmen, and killing was no part of business. He meant it.’

  ‘Lavorski, is it? It had to be.’ I looked at the earnest scared face. ‘He may have meant it when he said it. He wouldn’t have mentioned that they’ve murdered four people in the last three days, or that they have tried to murder me four times in the last three days.’

  ‘You’r
e lying! You’re making this up. Things like that – things like that don’t happen any more. For pity’s sake leave us alone!’

  ‘There speaks the true daughter of the old Scottish clan chieftain.’ I said roughly. ‘You’re no good to me. Where’s your father?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mr Lavorski and Captain Imrie – he’s another of them – came for him at eleven to-night. Daddy didn’t say where he was going. He tells me nothing.’ She paused and snatched her hands away. Faint red patches stained her cheeks. ‘What do you mean, I’m no good to you?’

  ‘Did he say when he would be back?’

  ‘What do you mean I’m no good to you?’

  ‘Because you’re young and not very clever and you don’t know too much about this world and you’ll believe anything a hardened criminal will tell you. But most especially because you won’t believe me. You won’t believe the one person who can save you all. You’re a stupid and pigheaded young fool, Miss Kirkside. If it wasn’t that he was jumping from the frying-pan into the fire, I’d say the Honourable Rollinson has had a lucky escape.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ It is hard for a mobile young face to be expressionless, but hers was then.

  ‘He can’t marry you when he is dead,’ I said brutally. ‘And he is going to die. He’s going to die because Sue Kirkside let him die. Because she was too blind to know truth when she saw it.’ I had what was, for me, an inspiration. I turned down my collar and pulled my scarf away. ‘Like it?’ I asked.

  She didn’t like it at all. The red faded from her cheeks. I could see myself in her dressing-table mirror and I didn’t like it either. Quinn’s handiwork was in full bloom. The kaleidoscope of colour now made a complete ring round my neck.

  ‘Quinn?’ she whispered.

  ‘You know his name. You know him?’

  ‘I know them all. Most of them, anyway. Cook said that one night, after he’d too much to drink, he’d been boasting in the kitchen about how he’d once been the strong man in a stage act. He’d an argument one night with his partner. About a woman. He killed his partner. That way.’ She had to make a physical effort to turn her eyes away from my neck. ‘I thought – I thought it was just talk.’