‘That could take all evening.’ Lady Rees re-entered the conversation but without making it plain whether she was referring to the verbosity of Glen Dogwall or the shortcomings of the KCI telephone system. She had concluded the surmise about the strip poker had been ill-judged – but not before her alter ego had perversely forced her to calculate the sum of her garments, as well as to estimate that Mrs Dogwall’s matching total probably came to one. ‘Archie, are we really not to wait for Mark?’ She had strained her neck through ninety degrees and broken into her husband’s reverie with an accusing stare as well as the staccato question.
‘He’s gone to see Small, my dear.’
‘Then let’s start the film.’
Amos, the object of this last command, prepared to obey, steeling himself to operate the 16mm projector with the studied ignorance of a householder searching for a gas leak with a lighted match.
Debby extinguished the lights and the audience was treated to its promised exhibition of The Bridge Over the River Kwai – beginning with reel two, and firmly out of focus.
It was several minutes before Amos’s tentative adjustments to most parts of the machine, ending with the lens, served to confirm the error in sequence. Since the ensuing reel change necessitated re-illumination of the whole scene, Molly Treasure was able to note that the Governor had already decided to eschew the opportunity to watch his favourite moving picture. He had left the room.
‘Ten past ten and all’s well.’ Treasure had located Small in the appointed spot – under a bread-fruit tree in the garden of Government House.
‘Nothing’s happened – but the rain’s held off at least.’ Small was bulkier but prepared in a plastic mackintosh.
‘My bit went all right,’ said Treasure cheerfully. ‘I saw O’Hara and the Joyces as arranged, and I let the story out casually during dinner. Debby nearly upset the apple cart by announcing she’d look in on Sarah later.’
‘Oh lord. Did you head her off, sir?’
‘My wife did – said Sarah’d been given a sedative and put to bed.’ Treasure settled himself on the grass beside the Chief Inspector. He looked about him. ‘Pity the night’s so dark, but you were right – this is the best vantage point.’
From where they were sitting the two men commanded a view forward both of the Governor’s residence and the guest-house. To the left they could dimly discern the main drive to the house and to the right the white surf on an open stretch of beach.
‘My lot bought it hook, line and sinker.’ Small gave a satisfied grunt. ‘Babington thought he might have some influence with Sarah – said he’d see her in the morning. McLush had that chap Brown with him – very agitated he was. He doesn’t know Sarah, but he seemed relieved I was letting him into my confidence . . .’
‘And off the hook?’
‘Something like that, yes. Asked if he could interview Sarah.’
‘Pushing his luck, wasn’t he?’
‘That’s what I thought, and said so. I told him he wasn’t to go near her without my permission and that I’d want to see him for further questioning in the morning.’ Small paused. ‘How did you explain away Mr Gore, sir?’
‘Said he was suffering delayed exhaustion, that he’d gone to bed in my dressing-room and didn’t want to be disturbed. I assume he’s in position?’
‘Since eight o’clock. I’ve got two of my sergeants down there as well. Are you still backing your hunch?’
Treasure sighed. ‘More than ever – but I hope I’m wrong. How d’you get on at the hospital?’
Small snorted with disgust. ‘While I was waiting for the almoner I could have helped myself to a boat-load of dangerous drugs. Place is wide open. They’re shorthanded, of course, but that’s no excuse for sloppy security. She had curarin – in ampoules, with none missing so far as she knew. I asked about other drugs first. She caught on pretty quickly. Asked if Mr O’Hara had done himself in with an overdose of sleeping pills.’
‘With a heart condition I suppose he might have.’ Treasure stopped short in mid-sentence. ‘Good heavens, what’s that?’ he exclaimed pointing up the hill ahead.
Small was already heaving himself to his feet. ‘That’s the tower of Buckingham House, sir. And it’s burning nicely by the look of it.’
The track-suited figure crouched in the foliage skirting the drive – on the far side from where Treasure and Small had been – came too late to see the two men pound off in the direction of the blaze.
To the new arrival the fire was almost unbelievably providential. Its attraction would surely remove the risk of any casual encounter in the garden. Sarah’s room was still some distance, and it remained to be seen whether guards were posted there – but at least the route should be clear.
The church bell began to toll – the traditional summons for members of the KCI volunteer fire brigade. Relaxed by the diversion, but no less alert, the figure darted across the drive in the direction of the guest-house.
The swimmer in the wet suit hauled himself back into the inflatable dinghy. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, gazing across the hundred yards of water to the shoreline and beyond. Contentedly he watched the flames lick the lower windows of the tower half a mile to the west of where he had moored. There was no need to use the oars again as he had done for the last part of the inward journey – in another minute or so no one would be looking out to sea. He hauled up the drag anchor and applied himself to the starter cord of the outboard motor.
Two minutes later the dinghy was moving slowly westwards, throttle well back. The occupant set a course for the end of the stone harbour breakwater. He heard the ringing of the church bell at the same moment as he sighted the MS Joseph O’Hara rounding the mole. The three men who crewed KCI’s spanking new fire launch had waited two months to prove their alacrity. Their hoses might not reach to the site of the emergency but this unproved conjecture paled beside the extent of their aspirations. With searchlight roaming and siren blaring the Joseph O’Hara was heading for a real fire at last.
The man in the dinghy swore aloud and swung the tiller to head inshore. With luck the fools wouldn’t sight him. He opened the throttle and raced for the shelter of the harbour wall. Seconds later he cursed his stupidity – and the motor he had wrecked.
The screw of the dinghy hit the coral outcrop at the exact moment the heavens were rent by the longest vein of lightning Peregrine had ever seen. He happened also to be looking out to sea from his uncomfortable sentry position behind the hole in his bathroom wall.
It was the fire launch that had first attracted Peregrine’s attention, but it was the lightning that illuminated one of the things Treasure had warned him to look for – a dinghy conceivably heading for the beach house.
Huge spots of rain began to fall as Peregrine raced out into the open. Without thinking, eagerly he waved the beam of the heavy duty torch across the surface of the sea until he picked up the dinghy. The occupant was flailing the water with oars, rowing with the tide towards the breakwater. ‘Got you,’ the junior banker said aloud – and then remembered Treasure’s injunction: under no circumstances was any intruder to be alerted until it could be established without doubt that he was aiming to break into Sarah’s room.
Even as Peregrine recalled his orders, the oarsman turned his head momentarily in the direction of the torch beam, then returned to pulling hard for the shore. Obviously he knew he had been spotted. His subsequent action would indicate his guilt or innocence, and Peregrine determined to be on hand for the revelation – difficult as it might be to ascribe criminal intent to anyone stoutly maintaining his status as a passing boatman.
He addressed a bush at the side of the house. ‘Sergeant, I’m going after that man.’ Predictably the bush made no reply. ‘Sergeant, where are you?’ Peregrine loudly harangued a whole line of bushes.
‘Here, sah.’ The sergeant appeared from a clump that had promised better protection from the rain than his original station had offered.
Peregrine thrust
the torch into the man’s hands. ‘Keep the light on the chap in the boat. He’s coming ashore. Tell the Chief Inspector where I’ve gone.’
It was barely three hundred yards along the sand to the breakwater, and while Peregrine covered the distance at speed, the alerted wet-suited figure had abandoned the dinghy, waded to the beach, and was a full minute ahead of his pursuer by the time both had gained the fiat of Rupertstown’s long quayside. At least it was clear the man was acting suspiciously. He had taken no notice of Peregrine’s bellowed order to stop. He could, of course, be deaf, careless about his property, and in a hurry to get out of the rain – but, on the whole, he seemed worth chasing.
The road to the right was alive with activity. People and vehicles were pouring along its length in the direction of the fire, undeterred by the now torrential rain. A fire-engine – with the ubiquitous Luke Murphy at the wheel – was splashing a way through the throng.
Despite the reducing visibility, Peregrine picked out the fleeing figure where he estimated it would be – half-way along the well-lit quay and very nearly abreast of the railway yard. As he set off in pursuit the man appeared to hesitate, glanced back, then darted to the right. Peregrine changed direction to take the advantage offered, but seconds later his heart fell as he discerned the man’s objective.
Standing in a siding to the nearside of the engine shed, its line of egress unobstructed, was the convent rail trolley.
The man had mounted the trolley and had started to pump its operating lever before Peregrine had covered half the distance between them. The trolley began to move away at barely walking pace. Peregrine kept on running – it was becoming a habit. He was still making better speed than the trolley, still closing fast on his quarry – when he slipped on the cobbled ground and fell on his face. He was up again quickly, shaken but unhurt – but the advantage had been lost. Despite the under-crewing, the trolley was now gliding along at better than twelve miles an hour and gaining in momentum by the second.
Wishing he had been paying more attention to Luke Murphy’s discourse the night before, Peregrine opened the steam regulator lever, wound down the brake-block handwheel at the back of the cab, and set Sir Dafydd moving briskly – towards the rear of the engine shed. Thanks to the excessive steam power released by its untutored operator, the driving wheels began slipping and the locomotive lost traction before hitting the buffers. Peregrine reapplied the brakes, shut off the steam, and racked the pivoted reversing rod into the forward position. Shortly afterwards, Sir Dafydd was making fairly smooth progress in the right direction, albeit at the speed only of a healthy carthorse, due to shortage of steam pressure and another inhibiting factor.
Peregrine had dived into the deserted engine shed in search of help. The presence of the softly hissing, gleaming Sir Dafydd had seemed heaven-sent. He regretted the precious time wasted mastering the controls – or very nearly mastering them. He had stuffed the firebox full of wood from the bunker on the left. Since the boiler gauges were meaningless to him he elected to ignore them. The pressure gauge on the cabside to the right he assumed was some kind of speedometer. Peregrine’s approach to engine-driving was enthusiastically pragmatic.
Whoever was ahead on the trolley had a three- or four-minute start, and judging by the speed the engine was making the fugitive’s lead was unlikely to be much reduced. It was some consolation that the two line-locked vehicles had to be heading for the same destination. Rain completely obscured the view through the glazed forward portholes of the cabin. Either Peregrine and whoever he was pursuing were making for the end of the line, or else Sir Dafydd would be running into the abandoned trolley without warning. Peregrine mentally prepared for either eventuality: the physical and mechanical effects would have to depend on circumstances – or fate.
Ten minutes later and some four miles along the line the exhausted occupant of the trolley braked the vehicle, dismounted, and stumbled forward to the points. He dragged at the little-used lever until in response to a superhuman effort he felt and heard the track re-lock into position. The noise of the steam-engine had grown progressively louder since he had first become aware of it some time earlier. It could only mean he was being pursued in an unexpected but unquestionably efficient way.
The remedy was a drastic one, but the man was undeterred. He propelled the trolley-car over the points and on to the Gull Rock spur. He then got down again and hurried back to the points lever. This time it was easier to operate, and in any case he wrenched it through only half its arc.
The tower of Buckingham House showed licking flames at every window through all its stages: the east wing, too, was well ablaze. Apart from a knot of frightened servants, Treasure and Small had been first on the scene and had supervised an elementary fire-fighting operation before the arrival of official forces.
The wide terrace was littered with furniture and other impedimenta hastily rescued from the west wing of the house. Treasure wondered whether the effort had been worth it since what had been spared from the maw of the widening conflagration seemed destined to be despoiled by the drenching rain.
With KCI’s land and sea-borne fire brigades now doing their best to stop the flames from spreading, Small was applying himself to the more familiar and urgent task of herding sightseers to safety.
‘When the frame of that tower’s burnt through, the whole thing will collapse,’ Treasure shouted to the Chief Inspector over the din of the activity all around them. ‘The rain should save the outbuildings, but I think the house has had it.’
The scene was hard to credit – teeming rain on the outside and the updraught from the lower openings of the tower feeding the surging inferno inside. The firemen, hampered by the elements, inadequate equipment and too little experience, were concentrating on saturating the inside of the west wing.
‘Sergeant, what are you doing here?’ Small wheeled round at the sight of a uniformed figure making uneven progress towards him over trailing hoses and furniture.
The man saluted. ‘Mr Gore, sah, he gone chasing someone cornin’ ashore like you expected. Man in a dinghy, sah. He said to tell you, sah . . .’
‘When?’
‘Five minutes, sah’ – a not strictly accurate report since the sergeant had certainly spent more than that amount of time coming the long and obstructed way in the shelter of a hooded Land-Rover instead of racing up from the beach on foot.
Treasure had heard the exchange. ‘So who’s down at the beach house?’
‘Sergeant Riley, sah, he’s still there . . .’
‘Then you get back as quick as you can move. Mr Treasure, you want to go too . . . ?’
But Treasure had not waited for Small’s question. He was already making off down the hill at the trot, uncertain that by the sergeant’s definition Peregrine was chasing the right person.
CHAPTER XX
The drenched figure in the dark track-suit moved silently to the group of shrubs closest to the beach side of the house. It was clear the place was not under observation; so Mr Mark Treasure and his Chief Inspector friend were as ingenuous as they had seemed.
The careful search for watchers in the garden had been fruitless but necessary. It had also unknowingly been conducted after all but one of the appointed sentinels had left their posts to chase fires or suspected miscreants.
If only last night had been like this one – pitch dark, with torrential rain instead of cloudless with a full moon. If the girl had been at the cabin she must have recognized who she had seen. That she had not admitted as much so far was no assurance for the future – a sense of awe and respect, even of natural fear, could wear out; it could even be worn down by interrogation methods less mild than those likely to have been used so far.
If Sarah had been given a sedative there should be no struggle – but the knife would be quicker than curarin; the gun would have been more efficient still – but noisy, and riskier since it was a registered firearm. The door to Sarah’s room was clearly visible under the porch light. It was a frame
door with four louvred panels; it would not be locked, though it might be bolted from the inside. Try the door first and if that failed go in through the window – the window that was conveniently open.
Half blinded by the torrent of rain, Peregrine had been hanging out through the left-hand side of the engine cab doing his best to see what lay ahead. He knew he must soon be approaching a set of points. To his sudden surprise and innocent, short-lived delight, he made out the branch line snaking off to Gull Rock with the trolley-car not fifty yards along it. The fugitive had obviously stopped to change the points: it was not immediately clear he had done so twice. This last realization registered with Peregrine at the moment Sir Dafydd’s front driving wheels hit the half-open points. The little engine gave a huge lurch to the right, then literally bounced back to the left. Momentum and an almost human capacity for dealing with the eccentricities of KCI’s iron road kept the more than a century old steamer on the track. After almost tipping its driver out of the cab Sir Dafydd puffed triumphantly onwards towards Mount Manitou – much to the chagrin of the watcher on the convent trolley.
It was a credit to Peregrine’s improving quality as an engineer that twice to stop Sir Dafydd and twice to change the points lost him only half a mile to the exhausted man on the trolley.
The rain now suddenly ceased – almost as abruptly as it had started. A watery moon was illuminating the way ahead. With predictable ease Sir Dafydd was closing on the little rail car. This was new territory to Peregrine but he remembered McLush’s description of how the branch line ended – and the stricture about the rotting viaduct to the island. Perhaps he should stop the engine on the mainland and continue the pursuit on foot. He was now almost on top of the trolley but despite the obvious weariness of its operator the thing was still moving faster than even the revived Peregrine could hope to run.
Treasure Up in Smoke Page 18