Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens

by Michael Gilbert

  “We’re looking for the outlet. The line of communication. For a start, we’ll have to investigate both his girlfriends.”

  “Both? I only knew about one.”

  “He’s running two at the moment. One’s called Doris. She’s the wife of an Air Force WO at Boscombe Down. The other’s Mrs. King-Bassett.”

  “Yes,” said Colonel Crofter. “The merry widow. Quite a character.”

  “You know her?”

  “I know of her,” said the colonel, with some reserve.

  “She seems to have had a succession of boyfriends in the stations round here. A Major Dunstable at Larkhill, a Captain Strong from the Defensive Weapons Establishment at Netheravon, a light-haired subaltern from the 23rd Field Regiment whom I spoke to the other day – I rather think – I’m not sure about him yet, so I won’t mention his name. And Albert Rivers.’’

  Colonel Crofter said, “H’m – ha. Yes,” turned on his stupid soldier look for a moment, thought better of it and became his normal shrewd self.

  He said, “Have you met Rivers?”

  “Not yet. Deliberately.”

  “When you’re ready to meet him I can organise it. We have a guest night every Friday. Nothing chi-chi. We’re a civilian establishment. But we observe the decencies – black tie. Why don’t you come along?”

  “When I’m ready,” said Mr. Calder, slowly, “I’d like to do just that.”

  After lunch at Mrs. Wort’s, Mr. Calder grabbed a stick and set out once again for Hurley Bottom Farm, Rasselas cantering ahead of him, tail cocked. The weather was clearer, ominously so, with the wind swinging round to the north and great cloud galleons scudding across the sky.

  As he approached the farm, Rasselas spotted a chicken and gave a short, derisive bark. The chicken squawked. A deeper, baying note answered.

  “That sounds like the opposition,” said Mr. Calder. They rounded the corner and saw the farmhouse and outbuildings. A big, rather top-heavy Alsatian gave tongue from behind the farm-house gate. Rasselas trotted up to the gate and sat down with head on one side. The Alsatian jumped up at the top bar of the gate, scrabbled at it, failed to clear it, and fell back.

  Rasselas said “Fatty”, in dog language. The Alsatian’s barking became hysterical.

  Sheila King-Bassett added her voice to the tumult. “Call that bloody dog off, or there’ll be trouble.”

  “Good evening,” said Mr. Calder.

  “I said, call that dog off.”

  “And I said, Good evening.”

  Mrs. King-Bassett looked baffled.

  “Don’t worry. They’re only exchanging compliments. Yours is saying, ‘Come through that gate and I’ll eat you.’ Mine’s saying, ‘Be your age, sonny. Don’t start something you can’t finish.’ They won’t fight.”

  “You seem damned certain about it.”

  “Open the gate and see.”

  “All right. But don’t blame me if . . . well, I’m damned. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that happen.”

  The two dogs had approached each other until their noses were almost touching. Rasselas had said something, very low down in his throat, and the Alsatian had turned away, sat down, and started to scratch himself.

  “It’s probably the first time his bluff’s been called,” said Mr. Calder.

  Mrs. King-Bassett transferred her attention abruptly from the dogs to Mr. Calder and said,’ ‘Come inside. I want to talk to you.’’

  She led the way into the front room of the farm and said, “What’s your tipple? And, incidentally, just what is your game?”

  “Whiskey,” said Mr. Calder, “and croquet.”

  Mrs. King-Bassett gave vent to a sort of unwilling half-guffaw, somewhere deep down in her throat. It was not at all unlike the noise Rasselas had made. She said, “I’ve seen you walking round a good deal with that dog of yours. And using a pair of field glasses. What are you? Some sort of security guard?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And who are you watching?”

  “This may be a bit embarrassing,” said Mr. Calder slowly. He took a pull at the whiskey. It was good whiskey. “The man I’m chiefly interested in is, I think, by way of being a friend of yours. Albert Rivers.”

  Mrs. King-Bassett spat with force and accuracy into a vase of ferns in the fireplace. “That’s what I think of Albert Rivers,” she said. “And if he was here, I’d spit in his face.”

  “What—?”

  “He’s a slimy, two-timing, parsimonious pansy and no friend of mine. If he comes near here again, Prince has orders to take the seat out of his trousers. And he will.”

  “But—”

  “Look. I don’t mind him inviting himself round here every other day. I didn’t mind him drinking all my whiskey. I could even put up with him talking a lot of scientific mish-mash. God, how he talked! Talk and drink was all he ever did. All right. But when it comes to trying to run me in double harness with a bloody airman’s wife. . .”

  “Not very tactful.”

  “And if you’re now telling me that he’s a Russian spy and you’re planning to run him in, all I can say is, bloody good show. In fact, come to think of it, I might be able to help you. Some of that stuff he told me about his work – nerve gases and all that caper. I can’t remember all the details, but I’m pretty sure it was against the Official Secrets Act. What are those bloody dogs up to now? Fighting again?”

  “I’m afraid they’re both chasing your chickens.”

  Mrs. Trumpington put her head round the door after breakfast next morning and told Mr. Behrens that his bank manager wanted him on the telephone.

  “I expect it’s your overdraft,” she said. “Mine’s quite out of hand these days.”

  Mr. Fortescue said, “There’s some news from Porton which I thought you ought to have. It came to me from the Defence Ministry this morning. They’ve had a burglary. Someone broke into Colonel Crofter’s office last night and stole a fully charged cylinder of dianthromine.”

  “Why on earth would anyone do that?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Mr. Fortescue. He sounded tetchy. “You and Calder are the men on the spot. You’d be more likely to know than I would. I think it’s time you two got together over this. You’ve been operating at different ends long enough. Get together.”

  “I’ll arrange a rendezvous,” said Mr. Behrens. “Before I ring off, could you pass on a message to Harry Sands-Douglas? The Dilly Club will be able to find him. Tell him that I think I’ve located the key to the bridge articles. The hot ones have all got a reference to ‘science’ or ‘scientists’ in the third sentence.”

  “I suppose he’ll understand what you’re talking about?”

  “He’ll understand,” said Mr. Behrens, and rang off.

  After that he did some complicated telephoning, had lunch at the Haunch of Venison, and wandered slowly back along the High Street, under the crenellated gate and into the close. Ahead of him loomed the bulk of the cathedral, like a grey whale asleep in the sun. A pair of falcons, male and female, were flirting in the air-currents round the top of the spire. Mr. Behrens entered the precincts and made his way to the seat by the west front. Mr. Calder was already there, Rasselas flat on the turf beside him.

  Mr. Behrens said, “The old man wanted me to find out how things were going at your end. He’s had no report from you for forty-eight hours.”

  “I’ve been busy. Clearing the ground. I don’t think either of Rivers’ girl friends are involved. I’m on rather good terms now with Mrs. King-Bassett.”

  “How did you fix that?”

  “I sent her an anonymous letter, giving her the ripest details of Albert’s liaisons with the airman’s wife at Boscombe Down. Then I called on her, with Rasselas. We all got on together famously.”

  “I don’t think,” said Mr. Behrens, “that he’s using either woman as a courier. In fact, I’m pretty certain that we know how he is doing it.”

  “Through the bridge columns?”

  “Yes. I had
a telephone message after lunch. There’s a positive correlation. They should have the code finally broken by this evening. I gather the old man is already thinking about how to use it. He had the idea of sending them out something pretty horrific to try out next.”

  “If the messages are going out through this bridge column, does it mean that his wife’s in it too?”

  Mr. Behrens paused for quite a time before answering this. He seemed to be wholly engrossed in watching the falcons. The male had spiralled up to a height above the female and now plummeted down in mock attack. The female side-stepped at the last moment; the male put on the brakes and volplaned down almost to the transept roof.

  “No,” said Mr. Behrens at last. “It doesn’t. For two reasons. First, because it’s Albert Rivers who writes the bridge columns. His wife has no hand in them. I’ve found that out. By itself, it’s not conclusive. But it was a remark by her, about Albert being a scientist, which put me on to the key to the cipher. If she’d been guilty she’d never have done that.”

  “It seems to me,” said Mr. Calder, “that if we pull in Albert Rivers, simply on the basis of the code messages, we may be in for rather a sticky run. Fancy trying to persuade an average jury that something a computer has worked out on the basis of a few bridge hands constitutes treason.”

  Mr. Behrens said, “I once knew a Baconian. He was convinced that all Shakespeare’s plays were full of code messages. He demonstrated to me, very cleverly, that if you applied his formula to Hamlet’s soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be’, you could produce the sentence, ‘F.B. made me for Q.E.’; which meant, needless to say, ‘Francis Bacon wrote the play for Queen Elizabeth’.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sands-Douglas applied the same formula to a later speech and produced the message, ‘Arsenal for ye cuppe.’”

  Mr. Calder laughed. Then stopped laughing and said, “I’ve got a feeling we may have to consider an alternative solution.”

  “Was that why you broke into Colonel Crofter’s office and stole the dianthromine?”

  “How do you know I stole it?”

  “It had to be either you or Rivers. You were the only two disreputable characters in the neighbourhood. He had no need to steal it. He could have got some legitimately. So it must have been you.”

  “What a horrible mind you have got,” said Mr. Calder.

  Albert Rivers leaned back in his chair in the mess ante-room, lit a cigarette which he extracted from a packet, and put the packet back in his pocket. As an afterthought, he took it out again and offered it to the two men sitting with him. Both shook their heads.

  “You’re a civilian yourself, Corker,” he said.

  “It’s Calder, actually.”

  “Calder. I beg yours. I never remember a name for five minutes. Never forget a formula, but never remember a name.”

  “Perhaps that’s because formulas are often more important.”

  Rivers squinted at Mr. Calder as though he suspected the remark of some deep double meaning, then laughed and said, “You’re damned right they are. What was I saying?”

  “You were pointing out that I was a civilian. I imagine that goes for the majority of the people here, too.” As Mr. Calder said this he looked round the room. Most of the diners had disappeared to their own quarters, but there was a hard core left. Four were playing bridge with silent concentration. Two younger men were drinking beer. A man with a beard was finishing a crossword puzzle and a large port.

  “That’s just my point. Why do we have to confuse scientific research and the paraphernalia of military life? All that nonsense after dinner. Mr. Vice, the Queen, and sitting round for half an hour in our best bibs and tuckers, drinking port, when we’d all rather be down at the local or enjoying a bit of slap and tickle in the car park.”

  “Really, Rivers,” said Colonel Crofter. “I don’t think—”

  “That’s all right, Colonel. You can’t shock old Corker. I’ve seen him sneaking off down to Hurley Bottom Farm. Lechery Lodge, we call it round here. What did you think of the merry widow, Corker?”

  Mr. Calder appeared untroubled by this revelation. He said, “I had a very interesting talk with Mrs. King-Bassett.”

  “I bet. Did she tell you she thought I was a prize bastard?”

  “Yes.”

  Albert Rivers burst into a hearty guffaw of laughter which drew glances of whole-hearted disapproval from the bridge players.

  “That’s what I like about you, Corker. You tell the truth. Waiter! What’s your tipple?”

  “Scotch and water.”

  “And you, Colonel?”

  “Nothing more for me, thank you.”

  “Oh, come along, Colonel. It won’t do you any harm. Bring us three large whiskies. In fact, it’ll save a lot of time in the long run if you bring the bottle.”

  “The bottle, sir?”

  “The bottle, Moxon. The whole bottle, and nothing but the bottle.”

  The waiter shot a sideways look at Colonel Crofter but, getting no help there, pottered off. Albert stretched himself even more comfortably in his chair and prepared to ride one of his favourite hobby-horses. “As I was saying, it always seems odd to me that we have to mix up militarism and science.”

  “This happens,” said Colonel Crofter, “to be a military establishment.”

  “Sure, Colonel. But you don’t parade your scientists in the morning.” Rivers threw his head back and roared out, “Scientists form fours. By the right. Quick march.”

  One of the bridge players said angrily, “This is impossible. We’ll have to move.” They carried the table and chairs into the next room as Moxon arrived with the whiskey.

  The two beer drinkers had left and the port drinker had fallen asleep over his crossword. Mr. Calder knew very well that if he himself made the least move to depart Colonel Crofter would take himself off as well. As long as he stayed, the colonel, as his host, had to stay too. He watched Rivers pouring out the drinks. A double for each of them, and pretty nearly half a tumbler for himself. Mr. Calder reckoned that this one would do the trick.

  “Let’s face it, Colonel,” said Rivers. “Cheers! Let’s face it. You can’t conduct scientific research by numbers. Science can’t be drilled or court-martialled.” He had added a little water and now knocked back nearly half the contents of the glass in three gulps. “Science is universal, and international.”

  “I hope you’re bearing in mind,” said Colonel Crofter, “that you’ve got to drive home tonight.”

  “I’ve got my car trained. It finds its own way home. What was I saying?”

  Mr. Calder said, “You were telling us that science was international.”

  “I wonder why I said that?”

  “At a guess, you were going to say that since science was international, it no longer observes national boundaries. That the days when nations conducted their own private, selfish scientific research were over, and that the results of one should be freely communicated to all.”

  The room was very quiet. Rivers seemed to be thinking. The cool and cautious part of his mind was fighting with the fumes of the whiskey. Colonel Crofter sat watching him, his grey eyes weary.

  Rivers said, “I don’t think I like you.”

  “That makes it mutual.”

  “You’re a crafty old bastard. You’ve been leading me on. I’m going home.”

  “It’s time we all went home,” said the colonel. They got up. Rivers seemed to be steady enough.

  “You’re not going to waste that lovely drink, surely,” said Mr. Calder.

  Rivers glared at him, picked up the glass, swallowed what was in it, and put it back where he thought the table was. It fell on the carpet, without breaking. While the colonel was picking it up, Mr. Calder moved to the door. He didn’t appear to hurry, but he wasted no time.

  He had something to do.

  Rivers’ car was parked in front of his. It was pitch dark and he had to work quickly, making no mistakes. First he took something out of his own car
; back to Rivers’ car; back to his own car; back to the front steps again.

  He was standing there, buttoning up his overcoat, when Rivers and the colonel came out. The cold night air seemed to be having less than its normal effect. Rivers was his jaunty self again. He said, “Good night, Colonel. Up guards and at ‘em, as Wellington didn’t say at the battle of Waterloo. Good night, Corker, you crafty old bastard.”

  “He’s not often as bad as this,” said the colonel apologetically.

  “Don’t apologise, it was a most enlightening evening.”

  “Do you think I ought to have let him have that last drink?”

  “He had so much alcohol in his blood-stream already that I don’t suppose it made the slightest difference.”

  “He’s got to get home.” They heard the car start. “Luckily it’s fairly straightforward.” The car started to move. “And there isn’t likely to be a lot of traffic about.”

  “One,” said Mr. Calder softly, “two, three, four.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Five, six, seven.”

  “That corner’s a nasty turn – ditch the other side.”

  “Eight, nine.”

  “Slow down, you bloody fool. He’ll never—”

  “Ten.”

  There was an appalling crash. The colonel and Mr. Calder started to run.

  “At the adjourned inquest,” said the news commentator, “on the well-known scientist and bridge player, Albert Rivers, Inspector Walsh said that, in view of the evidence that the car drove straight out into the main road without making any attempt to slow down or turn, he could only surmise that, at some stage, Rivers had completely lost consciousness. Enquiries are still proceeding. A further outbreak has been reported from the Egyptian Military Research Station at Al-Maza. Victims include the director, Professor Fawazi. Amongst other alarming symptoms, he has lost all the hair on his body, and his skin has wrinkled and turned bright yellow—”

  “For goodness sake,” said Mrs. Trumpington, “turn that thing off.”