Death Drops the Pilot

by George Bellairs

  Leo turned with a scornful gesture.

  “I should ’ope not, and him nearly seventy. You’d be hard-up.”

  “Don’t talk like that about him, Leo. He never...” Littlejohn lit his pipe again.

  “But he was very friendly with you. Why was that?”

  “I suppose he took a fancy to me. It wasn’t my fault.”

  There was a coquettish look in her eye and she patted her dark hair almost instinctively.

  “Did he ever suggest you went to live with him?”

  “Yes. He asked me to come and keep house for him. He’d a spare room. I said I couldn’t. That sort of job didn’t appeal to me. Cooped up with an old man. I’m young enough yet to want younger company. Mind you, I won’t have a wrong word said about the captain. One of the best.”

  “When did you intend going back to London?”

  “When the winter came on, I guess. I couldn’t stand this place much longer. Too quiet altogether.”

  “Did you tell that to Captain Grebe?”

  “Can’t think I did. Matter of fact, I put off telling him deliberately. I knew he’d take on.”

  “You perhaps planned to leave without telling him?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Outside the sun was shining and making the sands sparkle. High clouds floated across Balbeck Bay, and far out a few sailing boats were making for home.

  A tall, angular man, carrying a string of small plaice arrived at the gate next door and entered. A man of about seventy, rather bad on his feet, and dressed in tweeds with a fishing hat.

  “Is that Dr. Horrocks?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A friend of Captain Grebe’s?”

  “Yes. He’s just come from his boat, by the look of him. Been fishin’ at the Farne Deep. He used to take the captain often enough.”

  Littlejohn turned to Lily.

  “Did you know Captain Grebe had left you all he had? House, money...the lot?”

  Lily’s eyes opened wide and a smirk slowly appeared on Leo’s ugly face. You could almost see him calculating the gains and getting ready to borrow all he could.

  “It’s not true.”

  “It is. You’ll be hearing soon from the lawyer. Now why should Captain Grebe do that?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose he’d nobody else.”

  “He’d his brother.”

  “He hated him.”

  “He told you so?”

  “Yes. His brother tried to suggest that...that between the captain and me...”

  “So I believe. Any idea why the brother settled so near the captain?”

  “Captain Grebe said he was a good-for-nothing who’d always sponged on him. He followed the captain here years ago and later borrowed from him to start the business down the road there. They never got on, but the captain always said blood was thicker than water and he couldn’t let his brother starve.”

  Littlejohn turned to Leo again.

  “What are you doing in that get-up, Leo? Sailor clothes, I mean?”

  “I can wear what I want, can’t I?”

  Lily looked distressed again.

  “Why can’t you be civil, Leo? It only leads to trouble.

  He came to see me in a light grey suit. With that on, nobody here would find him a job. It made him look as if he didn’t want work. So I bought him one more in keepin’ across at Falbright.”

  “And a bright cut I look in it, too! Talk about ‘I didn’t rear my boy to be a sailor.’ I don’t know what the boys in London would think of me now.”

  There was a pause. They could hear the waves breaking on the shingle outside. The front door was open and a fresh bracing breeze blew in and made the official notices flap on the walls.

  “What made you suddenly decide to clear out, Leo?”

  “I’m free to do as I like, ain’t I? I don’t like it here. It’s not my line of business workin’ on the waterfront in a cockeyed little port.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. But your sister was doing her best to keep you straight. What were you doing on the ferry that ran adrift after the captain had been killed on it?”

  “Look here...”

  “It was you who crossed half-drunk, then.”

  No answer.

  Littlejohn turned to Lily.

  “He was on the last ferry...the one on which Captain Grebe met his death, wasn’t he? Don’t deny it. That was why the pair of you were so anxious to get away. The reason why you, Lily, took to your heels when you saw me arrive, wasn’t it?”

  “Leo didn’t do it.”

  “Nobody says he did. But you thought perhaps he might have done it, didn’t you?”

  She looked resigned and a bit faded again. A kind of despair had taken hold of her. A weariness at always having to get Leo out of trouble and his getting into it again as fast as ever.

  “He told me he’d not done it, although he was on board when the boat ran on the sandbank. I’ve never known Leo tell me a lie.”

  “Why the hurry? Why the hasty retreat on the last ferry? Where was he going at that hour?”

  “He’d arranged for a lift on one of the fish lorries as far as Manchester and he said he’d thumb another lift to London from there. The lorry was going about midnight. We had a bit of a row about the way he was drinking at the Barlow Arms and he packed up and left for the ferry.”

  “Is that right, Leo?”

  “Are you hintin’ Lily might be a liar, becos... ?”

  “That’ll do. You sponged on your sister till you couldn’t do it any more and then you made off for London. Why were you at Freckleby, then, instead of off on the fish lorry?”

  “It ’ad gone when I got there. It took them so long to get us off the sandbank and take our names.”

  “You gave the wrong name and address, I suppose.”

  “What do you expect? I’d just done a stretch. They’d have blamed it on me.”

  “So you decided to go by train and you hid out for a bit and then telephoned Lily?”

  Silence.

  “You wanted more money to get away, so you got in touch with Lily who arranged to meet you?”

  It was Lily who answered.

  “He telephoned the next morning and I told him to stay at Freckleby till I met him and telephone me every day. I couldn’t leave till I’d drawn my pay. I needed it. Then, when you came, I thought I’d better pick up Leo and the both of us get away.”

  “Panic, Lily?”

  “Call it that if you like. But neither Leo nor me had anything to do with Captain Grebe’s dying. Why should we?”

  “Those postcards, now. Did anybody know you had a brother called Leo?”

  “A lot of the regulars at the Barlow Arms. You see, when Leo came out of...came out...I wanted a few days off to meet him and I just said to Mr. Braid I’d want them because I was going to see my brother, who was home from abroad. He said he never knew I had a brother and what was his name. I’d no more sense than to say Leo. Mr. Braid thought it a funny name for a brother of mine. He used to tease me about it before the customers. ‘How’s Leo?’ he’d say, and tell them I’d a brother with a posh name. They all got to know. . . .”

  “You see, don’t you, Lily, that these three postcards give one the idea that Leo was on his way here to settle accounts with Captain Grebe? And those accounts might have concerned you. In other words, they give the idea that Grebe had led you astray or wronged you...”

  Littlejohn turned to Leo again.

  “You’re sure you never knew Captain Grebe before you came here? It’s useless to tell me you never saw him in your life. He used to come and drink at the Barlow Arms and he was on the ferry every day. You saw him and I’m surprised you didn’t try to touch him for a loan on account of his good-feelings for Lily.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “No, sir, he didn’t. I wouldn’t let him even speak to the captain and I didn’t tell the captain Leo was my brother. I told Leo I’d never speak to him again if he tried to borrow money from Captain
Grebe.”

  “Well, I’ve only one other thing to ask you, Lily. I don’t understand Captain Grebe’s excessive fondness for you. He picked you up in Southwark, got you a job, looked after you, and left you all he had. Why? He never made any improper suggestions to you, did he?”

  “Never! He wouldn’t have done such a thing.”

  “And he wanted you to live with him and keep house.”

  “He was a lonely old man, but I just couldn’t. It wasn’t my line.”

  “Why? A better job and more security than serving at the Barlow Arms.”

  Lily was growing afraid. Her face was pale and strained and she tore at the small handkerchief she had been using.

  “How long had Captain Grebe been looking for you when he found you in Southwark, Lily?”

  Leo’s mouth opened and his puzzled eyes turned to his sister’s face.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Every year as soon as he got his leave, Captain Grebe went off, nobody knew where, seeking something, wandering about alone. Then, he found what he wanted, brought her here, died, and left her all he’d got. Did he never tell you he was your father, Lily?”

  Dead silence again. Even Leo seemed to hold his breath waiting for the answer. The waves dragged at the shingle on the beach, and in the river a tugboat hooted excitedly.

  “He never said so and I never guessed, except that he often asked about my mother and how she died and how she went on before she married. When you told me he left me his money in his will, it suddenly struck me. If it’s true, he must have sought me all over the place. I was born in Gravesend. My own father went to sea without marrying my mother because he didn’t know she was going to have a baby. Then Leo’s father, my foster father, came and my mother took him and he was good to me.”

  “What happened to him? Is he dead, too?”

  “I don’t know. He was a tugboat captain on the Thames. One day, when I was twelve, he went off to work and never came back.”

  “That was before the war?”

  “Yes. We all thought he’d somehow fallen overboard in the river but when we inquired about him, it turned out he’d given up being a pilot over twelve months before. It was all a mystery. He was presumed dead in the end.”

  “I wonder why Grebe never told you if you were his daughter. He took enough trouble to find you.”

  “Perhaps he was ashamed to tell me, considering the way he treated my mother.”

  Littlejohn stood up and knocked out his pipe in the fireplace.

  “Well, you can both go now and don’t try to get away again, because we certainly haven’t finished with either of you. You’d better go back to your job, Lily, and if Leo doesn’t want to stay at the Barlow Arms, he’d better get a room at one of the fishermen’s cottages. Have you enough money, Leo?”

  Lily was quick to his assistance.

  “I’ll look after him. He slept over the garage at the Barlow Arms. There’s a cheap room there that some of the chauffeurs use in the season.”

  “Well, get along, the pair of you. And if you try to get away, we’ll bring you back and lock you up.”

  They left with scarcely another word and as he watched them through the window, Littlejohn could see Leo rating Lily and angrily gesticulating at her, presumably because she’d not told him everything she knew.

  Dixon accompanied the two detectives to the door of the police station, from which they could see the broad stretch of sea and sands between the Hore estuary and the far end of Balbeck Bay, with the sun beginning to set across them. It was chilly and lonely and the figures still gathering bait and netting for shrimps on the tideline looked insignificant. Overhead flew a flock of wild geese, honking their way home from their feeding grounds, and along the road, dead drunk, shuffled the tramp who, earlier in the day, had tried to sell some bullrushes to Cromwell.

  “Penny the rush...” he managed to say to the party at the door of the police station, and then wobbled away to sleep off his drinks in his favourite haystack somewhere on the marsh.

  5 EVENING PATROL

  AFTER the drunken tramp had left them and vanished round the bend in the road, the trio of officers stood silently at the door of the police station, looking across the stretch of clean sand with the tide slowly coming in across it. The sun declining in the west cast a shimmering crest of gold across the waves. It was one of those moments of beauty and silence which are surrendered reluctantly.

  “I’d better be movin’ on, sir. You won’t mind if I leave you. I’ve the evenin’ patrol to do. I’d better be gettin’ out my bike.”

  Dixon had his job to do, looking after the joint parishes of Elmer’s Creek and Peshall. He seemed quite capable of the task. A hairy giant, with a heavy moustache and eyebrows. Tall, benevolent, with a copper-coloured complexion from wind, sun and sea air. His sandy hair had been bleached fair by the sunshine of his garden.

  “How far does your beat take you, Dixon?”

  “Along the road to the far edge of Peshall and then back to the Barlow Arms. Nothin’ much ever happens...but then, you never know, sir, do you?”

  “I’ll come with you, if I may. It’ll be a nice walk before dinner.”

  Dixon’s eyes opened wide. This meant a five-mile walk, instead of a steady cycle ride. All the same, he didn’t mind, provided it didn’t happen too often.

  “It’ll be a pleasure, sir.”

  “And on the way, you can tell me all about Captain Grebe, his habits and his friends.”

  “No difficulty there, sir.”

  Littlejohn was anxious to get an idea of a day in the ferrymaster’s life. In fact, of many days’ methodical routine of a bachelor, who hadn’t very much to do in his spare time.

  “And while I’m away, Cromwell, you might call on Tom Grebe, the captain’s brother, and get to know, if you can, what brought him here in the first place, his relations with the dead man, and what they thought of one another. I’ll see you at the Arms in time for dinner. Don’t drink too much dandelion and burdock.”

  Cromwell jumped at the suggestion. Sitting on a barrel, talking to Tom Grebe, with perhaps a drink of his infernal brew now and then to lubricate the interview, appealed to his sense of curiosity much more than pounding the beat with P.C. Dixon.

  “Right, sir.”

  Dixon removed the cycle clips from the bottoms of his regulation trousers and shouted indoors to his wife that he was off on his rounds.

  The road forked at the signpost about two hundred yards from the police station. Littlejohn and Dixon took to the right, navigated two hairpin bends, and found themselves in Peshall village, where the road broadened half reluctantly to accommodate two shops, a couple of cafes, and a small church with a spire. One of the shops embraced the post office and the postman was just emerging with his delivery bag.

  “Afternoon, Percy.”

  Dixon greeted his uniformed rival with unusual zest. He was proud of his distinguished companion and anxious to introduce him.

  “This is Percy Fothergill, our postman, sir. Chief Inspector Littlejohn, of Scotland Yard, here on the Captain Grebe case.”

  The postman nodded his head agreeably several times, not knowing whether or not it was quite the thing to offer a hand-shake, until Littlejohn showed the way. Even then, there was an atmosphere of reserve about the meeting. The postman was jealous of the policeman on many counts. They were rivals at all the local flower and vegetable shows and the only two men who wore official uniforms on government business in the little community.

  Furthermore, Fothergill often spoke of Dixon as a time-server. He accused the bobby of always being “after his stripes”, as though in some way the villages were suffering through Dixon’s struggles to become a sergeant. Dixon, in turn, ponderously deprecated Fothergill’s incessant efforts to get himself a little red van for deliveries, instead of his old red bike. Whichever came first, red van or stripes, would be a tremendous official feather in the cap of the lucky one of the rival pair.

 
“Good afternoon, constable. Good afternoon, sir, to you. We’re very pleased to welcome you ’ere to solve the case which our local men are quite out of their depths in.”

  Fothergill was tall and lean, dark and hairy, with a moustache larger than his rival’s, malicious little dark eyes, and a thin long nose. It was suggested in the village that he steamed open all the interesting letters. He certainly knew as much as the constable about what went on, good or bad. He had his good points, though. He was always ready to open and read the letters he delivered to the blind, the illiterate, and the busy people. He even wrote letters for those who couldn’t write.

  “Did Captain Grebe get very much mail, Fothergill?”

  The postman raised his bushy eyebrows, looked profound, and coughed.

  “My duties are, of course, confidential, sir, but...”

  He gave Dixon a searching look as though the poor sweating bobby were tempting him to break his trust.

  “But as it’s official police, I don’t mind sayin’ that a few days before his death, the captain received three queer postcards.”

  “The Chief Inspector’s got those, Percy.”

  One up to Dixon. The postman couldn’t have recoiled more from a blow across the mouth.

  “Oh, indeed.”

  The postman then gathered himself together to fire a retaliatory shot.

  “But do you know, sir, that before his death, the captain was regularly sendin’ money to a London detective agency once a month?”

  Fothergill stepped back a pace and a satisfied smirk came on his face as he threw a look at Dixon.

  “How long for?”

  “He’d been at it for two or three years on and off.”

  “How did you know it was the captain and he was sendin’ money?”

  Dixon’s eyes grew small and malicious as he shot his question. He knew how Percy knew, of course. With the help of the steaming kettle. But he wasn’t going to miss a chance like this.