Cargo of Eagles

by Margery Allingham

  ‘That’s a thing we never do, as you very well know. If loot is really what you are concerned about why not go to Luke? I thought you two were as thick as tealeaves?’

  Mr Campion did not respond. Instead he returned to the main subject.

  ‘Christoff offered fifteen thousand pounds reward for the jewellery alone. I’ve just seen it on the files.’

  ‘Mister Christoff was a multi-millionaire, a very arrogant gentleman and he was driven pretty well off his nut by the sheer cheek of the robbery,’ said Oates placidly. ‘The size of the reward was governed by his feelings not the insurance value of the goods. He told me so himself. It was nice stuff, belonged strictly speaking to his wife, and very distinctive from the photographs. There was a tiara, two bracelets, necklace, earrings and a brooch. All in a matching design of golden birds with diamond eyes and sprays. Costume jewellery, for a man in his income bracket. Its breakdown value wouldn’t have been enormous. I always thought that was why Teague went berserk. He expected something more.’

  ‘As I read it, Teague killed because he was recognised,’ objected the thin man. ‘There was an Australian deckhand on the yacht who recognised him despite his mask. He gave evidence at the trial how he spotted him as he came aboard and told the mate. The mate, poor chap, addressed Teague by name and got a silver bullet for his trouble. Isn’t that the way it went?’

  ‘Perhaps so. All the same it wasn’t a great haul and Teague is one of those larger than life characters who resent any events which don’t match up to their own idea of themselves. He got under a thousand pounds in cash from the safe, two pictures from the owner’s state room, a few valuable odds and ends and a parcel of booze still crated which must have been hell’s delight to transfer in mid-ocean.’

  He paused and lay back in the chair, his eyes half closed. ‘I’ve been sitting here and thinking about you,’ he said presently.

  ‘Oh, yes? With what in view?’

  ‘I was wondering what the devil you could be up to. I had one idea.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Campion made the request very gently but Oates had grown old enough to be openly disappointed.

  ‘I don’t want to know your blasted business,’ he said. ‘I’ve known you for close on thirty years. I’ll tell you what I thought, though. It couldn’t have been hard cash or we’d have heard all about it. But suppose some of those cases of champagne contained something equally heavy but potentially much more valuable . . . paper, for instance?’

  ‘Paper?’ His visitor might never have heard of the material.

  ‘Files,’ said the ex-A.C. firmly. ‘Their contents would be wartime secrets, long out of date by now. Scandalous international stuff, perhaps. But secrets, like H.E., keep their destructive power for longer than one would expect. I notice that they are at a premium these days. Newspapers publish extraordinary libels and pay the fines cheerfully and eminent old blokes such as me, who ought to know a darn sight better, go and write highly sensational memoirs. Cast iron evidence on one or two subjects I can think of could be well worth hawking and that might not suit . . . ?’

  He let the sentence trail away in a query and his visitor smiled at him.

  ‘It’s a great gift,’ he said admiringly. ‘Being able to romanticise one’s own past, I mean.’

  Oates ignored him. ‘It was during that spring—’46, wasn’t it?—before the Lily Marina crime that you and Elsie Corkran were closing down that extraordinary set-up you had in the mountains behind Cassis,’ he said. ‘I remember very well who your boss in London was at the time and if I know him, you must have had to keep records and documents just like any other department. Now if Christoff’s yacht happened to be refitting down the coast near Marseilles just then—and it was, you know—then it could well have been just the sort of transport to appeal to you two. There she lay, a safe conveyance belonging to a man of no official allegiance, who probably owed you a kindness. If you used her you’d be asking no favours from any other service, signing no chits, spending no money . . . am I embarrassing you?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ Mr Campion was affable. ‘The one thing I enjoy is a good spy story. Have you heard the one about the Russian, the Chinese and the American who suddenly found out they were an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman . . . ?’

  Oates waved him silent.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Forget it. I merely thought that since we are here, two old friends in Lodge, that you might care to come across. However, security was always security and I want to oblige. You asked me to give you a hand and I’ve spent the morning getting all I can for you.’

  ‘My dear chap, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Don’t you think yourself that Burrows is bound to be looking for Teague, or Teague for Burrows? They were thought to be on a barge together, weren’t they? In that last dash before Teague was picked up in Harwich?’

  ‘We really don’t know.’ Oates was shedding his years. ‘But that was what we made of it. All we are sure of is that, at a time when half the world’s shipping was looking out for her, the Lily Marina put into the Hamble River in fog and was there abandoned. That was on March 20th in misty weather with spring tides running. On the same night two of her crew of four, small villains called Goddard and Hunter, were killed outright in a crash on the Portsmouth road. They were in a stolen car and on the back seat were a couple of oil paintings. There was a case of Krug in the boot and each man had just under two hundred pounds in notes. The paintings were valuable and Christoff identified them as his. Meantime Teague and Burrows had vanished and there was no sign of them until Teague alone was picked up in a street in Harwich five days later. If there was a woman around we never found her. He had nothing incriminating on him and he wouldn’t talk. It wasn’t for want of persuading.’

  Mr Campion appeared puzzled.

  ‘I thought there was a barge in the story?’ he said. ‘The newspaper accounts at the time mention it. It was found in the estuary near the mouth of the Rattey on the east coast.’

  ‘So it was. The barge Blossom,’ Oates agreed irritatingly. ‘But there was no hard evidence to connect her with Teague. She was a Thames craft that had been on a trip to Gossingham which is not too far from the Hamble. She’d unloaded there and her master and mate were in the town. This was on the night of the 20th when the Lily Marina crept in. Either Blossom broke away, which is highly unlikely, or she was stolen. She was seen by a Coastal Command plane not far from the Owers light vessel at about seven the following morning and then lost in the mist. As you say, she turned up eventually, high on the mud in the estuary.’

  ‘And only Teague could have got her there?’

  ‘That was the professional view at the time. He was highly thought of as a sailor in those parts. Two experienced men could have done it. Also of course the place isn’t too far from Harwich where he was caught.’

  ‘Anything on board to connect her with the piracy?’

  ‘One empty champagne bottle.’ Oates was unsmiling. ‘The right year and the right brand and it hadn’t a print on it.’

  ‘What happened to Target?’

  ‘There again we never really knew.’ He shook his head over past shortcomings. ‘Some time after Teague had been sent down, Yeo got word that Burrows had been seen in Liverpool. The Lancashire police co-operated but we’d lost him. It was the time of the infamous two-way traffic with Ireland . . . rationed food coming into this country, men on the run going out of it. That damn barge gave us no end of trouble. Our men were mud-larking down there in Essex for weeks. It was a wild goose chase.’

  ‘In wild goose country by all accounts. There’s a village down there called Saltey. . . .’

  ‘You can say that again!’ Oates was suddenly wrathful. ‘Contrary hole! I shall never forget that name or the trouble our people had as long as I live. My chaps took detailed statements from every man, woman and child and got precisely nothing except colds in the head and a vague sensation of doubt. A population of smiling savages playing stupid. Teague knew
the place well before the war, probably as a smuggler of some sort, and Yeo made certain he’d gone ashore there, but either they were all lying, which isn’t impossible if you knew them, or he went the other way. The Blossom went aground on the far side of the estuary, and there is a road of sorts which he could have taken. Saltey is up to its tricks again now—did you know that?’

  Mr Campion sat up. ‘I sent a youngster down there and Lugg is about somewhere,’ he said cautiously. ‘I thought some of the brotherhood might be gathering in those parts.’

  ‘Waiting for Teague? I wonder. No, this is a native mischief—the natural evil of the locality.’ Oates was unamused. ‘It’s the element of coincidence which captures me every time,’ he confessed. ‘Coincidences aren’t natural. But how about this for a likely tale? At the back of St Botolph’s Hospital, down in Antrim Street, there’s a small café called The Swallow. The hospital staff use it, so do a group of kids and it has a second string amongst the coffee drinkers at night. I’m going to send you down there in a minute to see a young doctor whom I think you ought to look at. Actually she’s going to meet Detective Sergeant Throstle, but I’ve fixed it so that you can get in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Wait for it. She has inherited a property from a senile ex-patient of the hospital and got herself into the centre of a fine old poison pen storm. . . .’

  ‘All from Saltey?’

  ‘The house is there but the letters seem to be coming from anywhere. The hospital secretary has had three from three separate places, London and two towns in East Anglia.’

  ‘Unpleasant.’

  ‘That was my attitude. It’s the natural reaction. Throstle was very sniffy until he discovered that the whole hospital thought it was the most natural thing in the world.’

  ‘That a junior medico should inherit from a grateful inmate?’

  ‘Better than that. The old lady wasn’t her patient. She hardly knew her. The girl had only been in the ward a few times to attend to somebody else. The old thing “did but see her passing by” in fact. And no one was astonished when she left her home and its contents. What are you looking at me like that for? Remembered something?’

  ‘In a way.’ Campion was laughing. ‘At least, someone else used the phrase about a girl this afternoon. Come to think of it, it could have been the same woman . . . which is utterly absurd. What is your coincidence?’

  ‘Mine?’ Oates seemed taken aback by this welter of circumstance. ‘Oh, mine concerns Teague, which is why I’m telling you. Late last night when the waitresses at The Swallow Café were clearing up, they found a wallet containing three out of date pound notes, a few other significant items, a press cutting and so on, hidden in one of the majolica jars they keep on the ledges.

  ‘On their way home they handed it in to a police station and a bright lad there spotted what it was and reported it. Whilst I was at head office this morning positive identification came through from the prison. It was Teague’s all right. It had been given back to him along with his other personal possessions when he came out, just a week ago.’ He paused. ‘There’s no real connection, except for the bequest and the village.’

  Mr Campion blinked.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ he said. ‘None of it fits anywhere at all, does it? Is the inference that the wallet was a plant? Some sort of come hither gesture?’

  Oates shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe. Or it could have been pinched by someone in the normal way and ditched there because the hiding place happened to be convenient. Dippers often do that. The café staff don’t remember anyone remotely resembling Teague coming in and women usually recall him. These say they haven’t had anyone but their regulars for weeks. That means the hospital staff and the usual young crowd.’

  ‘Did you gather how Teague managed to fade out so effectively? No one was asked to keep an eye on him, I suppose?’

  ‘Not at all.’ The old eyes were very thoughtful. ‘There’s something not quite right about the whole business. Teague was released, as such chaps are, into the arms of the good people who give up their lives to take care of long term prisoners. Apart from sending them out on a dog lead they couldn’t be in safer hands. Teague appeared very quiet and was thought to be quite as shaken by the speed of life as any other newly released long term man. He was taken along by the social worker to one of their best addresses, in Lewisham. That means motherly lodgings where there’s a man and a wife interested and experienced. This particular couple knew what they were taking on. They’ve been doing the same for other lifers for years. It’s a better system than the routine ex-prisoners’ institute where the men are inclined to feel that they’re better off inside.’

  ‘Did he go to them without protest?’

  ‘Oh, yes. His “stunned” act was very convincing. He spent the morning sitting in the old girl’s kitchen and not talking, just reading the newspaper. Whilst she was getting the meal, her husband Tom Blower took him down to the local for a pint. Tom is an ex-constable, very steady and knowledgeable. This is his hobby and he’s a good, kindly sort of chap. They went down to the Bunch of Grapes, a biggish house in the Gresham Road. It’s quiet and almost deserted in the mornings as a rule, at any rate until the dinner hooter goes. There was only one stranger in the bar, a woman whom Blower says he thinks was on the game. She spoke to Teague but she was civil and he encouraged it, for as he says, a man has to get used to talking to a tart again some time.

  ‘Then suddenly the place filled up with a great swarm of people from some local factory, works people who use it regularly it seems. In the flurry Teague and the woman vanished. Blower thought very little of it at first but he reported it by mid-afternoon, which was lucky because Teague hasn’t been seen since. Not a word of him, until the wallet turned up here in the West End.’

  ‘It seems a trifle elaborate if it was engineered.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. It’s a romantic story book idea, I said to Throstle.’ Oates hesitated. ‘There was one item about the evidence which struck me. When Blower was describing this woman he said she was dressed up “old fashioned”. Our man took him up on that and he explained that she looked more like the 1930s than the late 60s, though she couldn’t have been more than forty years old, if that.’

  Mr Campion stared at him. ‘How disconcerting!’

  Oates laughed. ‘I thought so. I don’t know why. Is there something sinister in being out of period?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Just phoney. And that’s perfectly idiotic in the circumstances. Why dissemble? By the way, what about Teague’s background? Who wrote to him in prison? Who came to see him?’

  The old man consulted his mental notes and spoke as if he was giving formal evidence. ‘His correspondence seems to have been sparse, mostly from sailors who had wartime experiences to share. Very rarely from the same address. The officer who vetted them recently says he thinks several of them might have been from the same man using different names, but he can’t swear to it. Teague isn’t a great writer, but if a correspondent said “Charlie Brown, who’s now at such and such an address, would like to hear from you,” then Teague used his once-a-month letter to write to that man. No rule against it. But it’s suggestive. If he used a code it was of the unbreakable variety: “Remember the lark we played on old Bubblegum and the row there was about the match-sticks?” You know the sort of thing. Only the man at the receiving end can tell if it’s a joke or has a double meaning. But there was nothing to make anyone really suspicious. Of course messages can be smuggled both ways. We can’t rule that out, and it’s a possibility. As to visitors, there was a woman who was a regular at one time whom they checked on, but found nothing exceptionable, though her address changed several times. The padre thinks she may have died because the visits suddenly stopped, but he never got a murmur out of Teague. There’s nothing helpful there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Campion regretfully. ‘Now about this girl doctor. What’s the idea of my joining the tea party?’

 
The old man cocked an eyebrow at his guest. ‘You’re getting slow,’ he said. ‘I’ve told Throstle that you know more about analysing the contents of anonymous letters than any other practitioner alive. That’s harmless, plausible and possibly true. I thought if you went in under that banner you could slide into the Teague business and into Saltey without giving yourself away.’

  ‘That was very kind and civil of you.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ Oates was smiling sardonically. ‘I realise that you can’t confide in me but I happen to know that you need a bit of help just now, whatever you think you’re up to. You had a set-back today. I don’t believe you know that yet?’

  ‘Really? “Fly. All is discovered.” That sort of bad news?’ enquired Campion blandly.

  ‘Not quite. But just as I was leaving the old place this morning I heard a murmur of what you might call above stairs gossip. Today Corkran was expecting to lunch very privately, not to say magnificently, in Westminster. Did you know that?’

  ‘He’s always eating.’

  ‘Very likely. But this was unusual. When a man in Corkran’s position takes a step which is reserved for extreme emergency and risks irritating the “machine” by exercising his peculiar prerogative and going to his supreme boss direct, even a silly old copper like me knows he has something on his mind. Then when he gets fobbed off yet again with some young P.S. all gas and no authority, I’m bound to put two and two together.’ He laughed. ‘Corkran doesn’t have to “come in from the cold”. It’s gone out to meet him. That’s real news to you, isn’t it?’

  His companion did not reply but looked down his nose.

  Presently the old man snorted. ‘Damn it. You had heard. How the hell did you know?’

  ‘I have second sight,’ said Mr Campion, cheerfully. ‘I must show it to you. It’s about four inches long, virtually a telescope and . . .’

  ‘Put a sock in it,’ said Oates. ‘It’s time you learnt to be your age. And don’t play the fool in front of Throstle, either. He’s a young man and he’ll take a dislike to you. He thinks everyone older than himself is Victorian and ought to behave like it. Besides, he’s stretching a point at my request in letting you see the letters at all. Now you’d best be getting on your way. He’s a large genial looking chap, fair-haired, wears a club tie of sorts, cricket I believe, and weighs around thirteen stone. . . .’