Back in Whitchurch village Henry called at the post office and tried to phone Emmy. There was no reply. He then contacted his office and got the latest reports on his suspects. Sammy was still in his Turkish Bath. Baggot was still in his recording studio. Vere was en route for Whitchurch in his car. Annie was closeted in her bedroom at her club. Arthur Price was in his City office. The Reverend Sidney had arrived home, and had set out almost at once for a country walk. Henry found these reports a little puzzling. People were not reacting in the way he had expected. He was very thoughtful as he walked over to the inn to pick up Sergeant Reynolds.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK in the afternoon before they were all ready—Henry and Reynolds and a strong-arm squad from the local force. The Scotland Yard car, with Henry at the wheel and Reynolds beside him, led the procession; after it came two radio cars bulging with purposeful-looking officers. It was a conspicuous cavalcade, and for this reason Henry halted it in a country lane some distance from the entrance to R.A.F. Dymfield. He and Reynolds were to go ahead on foot, followed after a discreet interval by the rest of the party.
Taking no chances—for he could not be sure that nobody had arrived at Dymfield before them—Henry motioned to Reynolds to keep well in toward the hedge as they proceeded in Indian file up the lane. These precautions proved futile. As Henry edged his way toward the gate, he was greeted by a loud, cheerful young voice.
“Ah, there you are, sir!”
Feeling exceptionally foolish, Henry emerged from the hedge, followed by a sheepish Reynolds. At the open gate of the Dymfield compound stood Pilot Officer Simmonds, all smiles.
“Thought you might turn up, sir,” he announced blithely. “Lucky you got here in time. He must be almost through down there by now. Another half-hour and you’d have missed him.”
“Missed who?” asked Henry.
“Why—the flight lieutenant—didn’t get his name—who came along to the Air Ministry. And Mrs. Tibbett, of course. As soon as I saw her, I knew it would be in order. About opening up the station, I mean.”
“My wife turned up at the Air Ministry? When?”
“About one o’clock. Lunchtime. I was alone in the office.”
“And she was with a flight lieutenant?”
“That’s right. He’d served on this station during the war, he said, and he was helping you in your inquiries here. He wanted to take another look at the Operations Room.”
“And you gave him the key?”
Simmonds looked reproachful. “Oh, no, sir. That would have been against regulations. That’s why I came down here with them. I opened up the Operations Block for them, but the key’s here.” Simmonds patted his pocket smugly.
“Did you speak to my wife?”
“Not actually. The flight lieutenant had his own car, you see, and he drove her down. He said she was very tired; I saw her dozing in the back. I came down with my own transport. The flight lieutenant explained that he was going straight on to Hull after he’d finished this job. He said that Mrs. Tibbett would stay on a bit in the Operations Room after he’d gone—so many memories. Quite understandable, of course. He said you might come to collect her, but if you didn’t, I was to drive her back to town about six.” Simmonds glanced at his watch. “The flight lieutenant said he’d be about half an hour, and he’s been down there over ten minutes, so…”
Henry could hear his own breath coming fast and jerkily, like that of a man who has been running long and hard.
“Listen, Simmonds,” he said, “I’ve no time to explain, but this is deadly serious. Get in your car and drive down the lane toward Whitchurch until you meet a couple of parked police cars. Bring them back here as fast as you can, and tell them to come to the Operations Room entrance. Tell them I said so. And also tell them not to come any farther than the entrance without orders from Sergeant Reynolds or myself in person. Is that clear?”
“But, sir, I…”
“Do as you’re told,” snapped Henry. “Come along, Reynolds.”
He set off at a run down the concrete path. Simmonds stood watching him, open-mouthed. Reynolds, forgetting the deference due to a commissioned officer, shouted at him, “Get a move on, you stupid bastard!” as he ran to join Henry.
Shocked, Simmonds scuttled toward the gate.
The black iron door which led to the Operations Block was closed, and there was no sound except for the wind howling in the trees outside. Henry was uncomfortably aware that a pitched battle could be taking place in that underground fastness without so much as a murmur reaching the outside world. He took hold of the heavy bar-shaped handle and moved it down. Thank heavens for Simmonds’s strict security training, which made him retain the key, he thought. The door was closed, but it was not locked. Silently, he pushed it open.
Inside, all was quiet. The concrete steps led down into that secret little world and, at the foot of the steps, a faint light was shining from the passage that led away to the left. Somebody was in the Operations Room.
Still in the fresh air of the world above, Henry whispered to Reynolds. “You stay up here. I’m going down alone.”
“Sir…”
“Don’t argue. He’s certainly armed, and he can pick off anybody going through that door against the light. We must split up. You know your way around this place. Wait there for the others, and then bring them down.”
He did not wait to hear Reynolds’ reaction. A moment later, he was moving down the dark staircase.
On the bottom step Henry stood still. To his left the short passage that led to the Operations Room was dimly lit. He knew that the gallery would be in comparative darkness, as always, and the passage light itself would be much brighter. So that faint glow must come from the strip lights placed above the plotting table, which stood in the center of the Operations Room at a lower level than the gallery. It was not as bad as he had feared. It seemed that the intruder must be occupied at the lower level near the plotting table. With any luck, it should be possible to observe him from the dark gallery, unseen. Not daring to breathe, Henry eased himself around the corner and into the corridor.
The swinging door at the end of the passage had been propped open and Henry could look through into the darkness of the gallery. Beyond, through the sloping glass observation panel, the lights burned over the plotting table. Slowly, quietly as a cat, Henry edged his way along the passage. For the murderer—the man who was desperately trying to save himself by destroying evidence under these neon lights—Henry had little time or worry to spare. The place was surrounded; the poor devil hadn’t a chance. What mattered was that Emmy was down there—“dozing in the back of the car.” That almost certainly meant drugged.
Henry had no illusions about why she had been brought here. The murderer, all evidence safely destroyed, would leave the station. The innocent Simmonds would eventually become alarmed about Emmy and would investigate. He would find—a suicide. Beau Guest’s body had been found. He had been shot, deliberately or accidentally, by somebody else. Henry Tibbett, of all people, had made the discovery. Emmy’s dear friends had established beyond all doubt that she had been infatuated with the dead man, and that she had been the last person to see him alive—having left her duty station to meet him in what would undoubtedly appear as the most sordid of love-nests. It would be only too natural if, faced with that situation, Emmy should have taken a sentimental journey to Dymfield with an old colleague, made an excuse to stay behind—and ended her own life.
As for Lofty’s murder, hadn’t Emmy plenty of motive for that, once one assumed her guilty of Beau’s death? And how could even Henry be certain that she had stayed at home all that evening? He had watched television for two hours while she was supposed to be working in the bedroom, and she had had remarkably little to show for it. It might be crazy to suppose that she had sneaked out to Earl’s Court and killed Lofty, but it was possible. A jury might well think so. If he had been ten minutes later arriving at Dymfield this afternoon—Henry’s blo
od ran cold and he forgot to be frightened.
He had reached the door leading to the gallery, when the silence was shattered by a horrifyingly strident noise—a harsh, insistent buzzing somewhere on the gallery to the left of the door. Of course. A telephone. In a place like this, buzzers rather than bells would be used because they were less distracting. This one only sounded so shockingly loud because of the utter silence in that dead place. Henry braced himself. Discovery was inevitable now. It would be a question of fighting it out. He waited in the shadows for his enemy.
Nobody came. The telephone buzzed again. And then the truth dawned on Henry. It would be immaterial if twenty telephones buzzed or twenty clog-dancers performed on that gallery. So perfect was the soundproofing that anybody on the floor below would hear absolutely nothing. All Henry’s elaborate precautions to remain silent were a waste of time. So long as he could not be seen from below… He ran forward, careless of noise, and snatched up the phone, which was buzzing again.
“Oh, good,” said a voice. “That is the plotting table, isn’t it? Thought I might have the wrong extension. Simmonds here, sir. I thought you’d like to know that Inspector Tibbett has arrived. I do hope his wife is better; she looked very groggy as we came in, I thought. Anyhow, he’s asked me to take my car and go down to meet some police cars that are on their way, but I thought I’d better…”
“Christ Almighty!” said Henry.
“Eh? What? Who are you?”
“By the grace of God,” said Henry, “I am a wrong number. Now get going, Simmonds.”
“Oh, I say. Inspector Tibbett. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
The phone went dead. From the shadow of the gallery, Henry looked down on the floor below.
At first he thought that there was nobody there. The big table stood under lights, the blue and red arrows still marking the courses of long-departed aircraft. Outside the perimeter of light, the darkness was intense, far blacker than the dimness of the gallery above. Henry pictured the Operations Room as it must have been when in action, and decided that anybody wishing to dispose of a small object unobtrusively would certainly have done so downstairs, somewhere outside of the bright circle of light on the plotting table. And sure enough, something was moving down there in the shadows.
Henry stepped forward. Below him, in the far corner of the lower room, under the jutting gallery, he could just make out the figure of a man in uniform. His back was toward Henry, and he seemed to be working with a screwdriver on something in the wall about a foot up from the floor. Then Henry saw Emmy. She had evidently been given another dose of tranquilizer, for she lay sprawled in a chair in the shadows, for all the world as though in a deep and peaceful sleep. Henry had a moment of panic, and then reassured himself. From where he stood, he could see that she was breathing deeply and regularly.
He looked quickly around him and saw the stairs that led from the gallery down to the plotting area. The murderer had taken the elementary precaution of placing Emmy between himself and the only entrance to his rabbit burrow. She was within arm’s reach of him, and he had only to grab her to use her as a shield, and to…
Henry ran back along the passage and up the stairs into the fresh air. Reynolds stepped forward anxiously.
“Everything all right, sir?” he whispered.
“No,” said Henry. “And no need to whisper. He can’t hear.”
“You mean—he’s…?”
“He’s in a soundproof trap,” said Henry. “My wife is in there too, sleeping peacefully. Drugged.”
“There’s no sign of Simmonds or the other cars, sir.”
“No, thank God. At all costs, you’ve got to stop them coming down. Keep them up here, and whatever happens, take no action without my orders. The only way we can save my wife is to…”
“To let him get away?” Reynolds asked with badly masked disappointment.
“Of course not. He’d kill her before he went. No, my only hope is to go down and make him think I’m on my own.”
“I don’t see what good that’ll do, sir,” said Reynolds. “He’ll kill you both, like as not.” Reynolds’ square face was puckered with anxiety.
Surprisingly, Henry said, “Oh, I don’t think so. He’s a nice fellow, you know. Very nice indeed.”
And before Reynolds could reply, Henry had disappeared down the stairs again into the gloom.
The swing door that led into the lower section of the Operations Room was heavy, padded, and silent. Henry pushed it open and went in, keeping in the shadows outside the ring of light. Then the door closed behind him with a small sound, like a sigh, and the man in the corner straightened and turned in one rapid, frightened movement. Henry saw that he had a gun in his hand. He stepped forward into the light.
“It’s only me, Mr. Smith,” said Henry. “Sorry. Flight Lieutenant Smith. I’ve come to take Emmy home.”
Sammy Smith stood there, the gun trembling in his hand—a nice fellow.
Henry said, “Haven’t you done enough? You’ve had a good run for your money, after all. Twenty years.” The muffled silence in the soundproof room was almost too oppressive to bear. Henry took a step forward. “You’ve killed two men,” he said, “but each time in hot blood. I agree that there’s nothing to prevent you from shooting both Emmy and me—this moment. But I don’t believe you’d do it. Not in cold blood. Not while she was sleeping.”
Sammy Smith said, in a voice which cracked from strain, “Are you crazy? Where’s your bodyguard?”
“I sent them away.”
“You expect me to believe that? They’ll be here in ten minutes storming the place with tear gas and Tommy guns.”
“They won’t, you know,” said Henry. “They don’t possess such things. Oh, they’re up in the compound all right. I don’t deny it. But they’re under orders to do nothing—absolutely nothing—without my permission. You could walk straight out of the gate now and nobody would stop you.”
Sammy gave a curious half-smile, an echo of his old, bouncy self. “Where would I walk to, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t know,” said Henry. “That’s your problem. I can’t do everything for you,” he added, with a spurt of irritation.
Suddenly Smith laughed, a real laugh. He put the gun down on the plotting table, under the bright white lights. “How long have we got?” he asked.
“As long as you like.”
“You said I’d killed in hot blood. It’s true. I hope you believe that.”
Henry nodded. “I believe it.”
“Why don’t we sit down, old man?” Sammy sounded quite normal. He pulled forward one of the swivel chairs that the plotters had used and motioned Henry to do the same. They sat down, one at each side of the checkerboard of a table.
Sammy pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Then he pushed the pack over to Henry with one of the long rakes—like a croupier’s in a casino—which the plotters had used to push their arrows into position. He laughed.
“I wonder if your faithful but flat-footed minion is still waiting outside the Turkish Bath,” he said. “I should strip him down, if I were you, falling for the oldest trick in the business. In through the front door with a small parcel, strip off, change into uniform, out through the back door as a flight lieutenant. I was as free as air inside of fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, I’m afraid we slipped up,” said Henry. “But why don’t you start at the beginning.”
“The beginning? Where was that, I wonder? Falconfield, I suppose. I’m not trying to justify what I did to Beau. It was a dirty trick. But go back to Falconfield, and you must admit that I’d suffered enough from the pair of them—Beau and Barbara. I’m an easy-going type, Tibbett, but I never could stand being mocked, made a monkey of. You know what I mean.”
Henry nodded, but said nothing.
“Old Lofty got plastered one night and told me about being Beau’s half-brother and about their mutual and alcoholic mother. Perhaps I’d better explain.”
“No need,” s
aid Henry. “I know.”
“Good. Well, I was saving up that little tidbit of information to use when the time seemed ripe. Come to think of it, I didn’t actually make use of it for twenty years. Funny, isn’t it? No, the moment I realized I had Guest where I wanted him was when I grasped the fact that, for all his bravado, he was seriously worried about taking that Typhoon up. Well, I bided my time. Let him sweat it out—and he was as jumpy as a cat. I knew that he had to decide by five o’clock that evening, one way or the other. Up until five he could withdraw his challenge, and be made a laughing stock, but a live laughing stock. Vere would then go up on patrol in the usual way. At five, if Vere had heard nothing, he’d know the bet was going ahead, and would put Plan A into action; that is, disappear and leave the coast clear for Beau. After five it was too late to back out without getting Vere into serious trouble.
“Well, about half-past two I telephoned Beau from the Duke’s Head, where I was staying. I asked whether he was going to take the kite up. He told me frankly that he’d been having trouble with his dizzy spells and that he was going to call Vere and withdraw his challenge. He was very upset about it, and he’d asked for a posting. Well, I begged him not to do that. I told him—it was a lie, of course—that I’d had experience in flying Typhoons and that I wanted to go up in his place, for a bet. He was very dubious, but I told him to be a sport, and at last he agreed.
“I said we’d better meet somewhere quiet to fix details, and he suggested that disused air-raid shelter at five o’clock. As it happened, I got there rather early, and I saw several things which came in useful later on. Like Beau kissing Blandish in the corner when she should have been on duty, and old man Price having a petting party with a handsome young corporal behind a Nissen hut. Charming, you’ll agree. Our brave boys in blue.”
“Very human,” said Henry.
“I don’t know why everyone assumes that being human is a virtue,” said Sammy. “My behavior that night was extremely human, and look where it’s landed me. I was determined to make Guest squirm, and so I did. I met him and let him ramble on about how nobody would ever know, as he was off to Scotland next day. And then I let him have it. I told him I’d no earthly intention of taking the kite up, and that he’d bloody well have to do it because it was too late to back out. I don’t suppose anybody has ever had a more complete revenge for humiliation than I had that night.”
Johnny Under Ground Page 24