Cargo of Eagles

by Margery Allingham

  ‘Matt Parsley’s coffin shop, what used to be. Gorn up a fair treat. Tide’s out too. They’ll have a job putting the dampers on that old box of shavings.’ He turned his head. ‘’Ere comes the engine. Reminds me of my old days in the ’eavy rescue squad. Lovely work when you could get it.’

  The clamour of the bell swept to a crescendo as the engine roared past the house and swayed gallantly on its way to the Bowl. The exciting sound continued for a few moments and then ceased in a final desultory clang. A screech of brakes was borne on the wind.

  A more discreet ringing within the house, drowned by the urgent warning on the road, suddenly became dominant and Morty made a move to the hall.

  ‘Telephone. I’ll take it. It may be for Campion.’

  Lugg had forestalled him, standing by the receiver in his best upper servant manner and speaking with an unctuous refinement which was ephemeral.

  ‘The ’Ollies ’ere. Dr Jones’ residence. Can I ’elp you? Oh . . . I get you. . . . Well, ’ang on, cock, and I’ll see what I can do for yer.’

  He placed a hand on the mouthpiece and turned to Dido who was half way down the stairs.

  ‘It’s the police, miss. Simmonds the local nark by the sound of ’im. Shall I tell ’im to bung off?’

  Dido took the instrument and waved them away. When she returned her manner was determined and professional.

  ‘A man has been hurt down at the Bowl,’ she said. ‘They think he may have broken something. I’m on my way.’

  The fire in the ugly black shed which had served so many generations of carpenters, wheelwrights, boat builders and coffin makers marked the peak of a riotous evening, in which temper and hysteria had fought mindlessly for the upper hand. With the return of the Demons in their masks the demarcation line between friend and enemy had been clearly drawn. In the saloon of the inn the invaders, arriving in a body, attempted to repeat their tactics of the morning, but on this occasion the reception committee was organised and formidable. A dozen youths waiting for trouble faced as many as were looking for it.

  After a few minutes’ uneasy silence the storm broke. A fire cracker tossed between the two sides leaped and spluttered like an animated gauntlet, an insult which called for satisfaction.

  For a moment or two a tense almost stilted formality hung over the room. When the squib had made its final kick the captain of the Saltey darts team, a bullnecked giant with red hair and a virile display of side whiskers, walked from his corner towards the masked figure whom he suspected of issuing the challenge.

  ‘I don’t think much to that,’ he observed and swung a hammer fist to the offender’s jaw.

  A police whistle blown piercingly just outside the room added its oddly appropriate note, as if the film director of a thirty year old western had taken charge and a generation reared on the tradition of such bar room battles rushed to share in the pandemonium. Behind the shouting and the breaking of glass the curious high pitched scream of youth enjoying its lack of inhibition made a background of light headed frenzy.

  The resentment of the local men against the possessive arrogance of invading strangers had reached the point of no return. Each man sought out his opposite number, happily determined to repay months of calculated insult.

  The fight in the bar itself was brief but destructive. Dixie’s first shout had brought the professional henchmen into action. They moved into the melee with the vigour of rugby forwards, seizing the brawlers without favour, and a group of four policemen who were forcing their way in found themselves presented with struggling partisans gripped from behind but still hitting and kicking at any target offered. One by one the contestants were flung into the forecourt where the fighting continued as if it had never been interrupted.

  With the doors of The Demon locked and bolted the larger arena presented greater problems to the uniformed men and the illusion of total war was increased by the clattering of football rattles and banging of squibs which were flung towards them at each attempt to break up a scuffle.

  Lesser spirits straddled their motor cycles, roaring the engines, darting venomously in and out of the groups, flashing their headlights into the eyes of all who stood or struggled in their path. Stones rattled against the wooden walls of the inn and windows splintered.

  The fire in Parsley’s coffin shop passed unremarked until it was well under way. A tongue of flame streaked out from beneath the pantiled roof and a long barn door fell outwards with a crash followed by a gust of smoke and sparks. The effect was as dramatic as a gong which ends the deciding round in a prize fight for the sudden draught gave the blaze all the force it needed to become a furnace.

  The shed stood on the landward side of the road and directly faced the sail lofts. Beyond it lay the straggling range of brick and weatherboard cottages which made up most of the Bowl. Here was the communal danger which overrode minor enmities. Police and local supporters took in the fact without hesitation and the invaders found themselves abandoned. They stood together in groups watching the new entertainment, shouting, jeering, waiting for the next mischief that offered. Excited girls twittering like early morning starlings flocked round those of their heroes who had been visibly injured, but the focus of attention was on the fire which leaped and crackled into the night sky.

  The body of a youth from Firestone named Alfie Binns had lain beside a car in the forecourt for some time before it was remarked. He lay very still, his quick shallow breath hardly moving the strands of hair which covered his mouth, and one leg was twisted unnaturally beneath him. It was Dixie, who had been organising a chain of buckets from the back of the inn where there was a working pump who found him and for a terrifying moment she wondered if he were dead. She knelt beside him feeling for a pulse and leaned back to call to the hovering figure of her husband some paces away.

  ‘He’s hurt pretty bad. Get a blanket. Get a policeman. Get a doctor. Look sharp about it—we mustn’t move him.’

  She was still beside him twenty minutes later when Dido appeared escorted by Morty.

  In the meantime the fire had reached its zenith and the brigade, arriving to discover that a single pond was their main source of water, were working desperately to keep the blaze to the doomed shed. In and out and round about the Demons danced and jeered, flinging more water on themselves than on the flames.

  The night’s mischief was suited to their mood and the excitement was more intoxicating than the little grey blue pills which purchased only evanescent thrills.

  The group around the prostrate figure watched Dr Jones warily as she made her examination. Finally she stood up, brushing her hands together.

  ‘Fractured tibia, I’m afraid. Probably caused by a kick. And he’s concussed, meaning that he’s had a nasty crack on the skull as well. We must get him away. Ambulance?’

  P.C. Simmonds smirked. ‘All arranged, miss. Should be here any minute. I phoned for it when I found I couldn’t get a doctor—I mean when Dr Thornton couldn’t . . .’ His voice trailed away and in the flickering light his face showed a brick red. ‘I mean before you came along to give a hand.’

  It was towards midnight before any member of the party could relax. The ambulance had come and gone. Parsley’s shed had subsided into smoking ruins: the revellers had lost interest and vanished into the chilly darkness.

  Dido, Dixie and Morty sat exhausted in the kitchen of The Demon which faced on to the stable yard.

  ‘It’s better here, ducks,’ their hostess explained. ‘No one to watch us for one thing and the windows are still all there.’ She dispensed whisky in generous tots. ‘What a night! Makes poor old H.O.’s book look like a kid’s fairy tale. Perhaps I could get him to add a chapter about it.’

  Morty kept a protective arm round Dido’s chair. ‘Where is he, by the way?’

  He was answered by the appearance of the poet who opened the passage door and stood beside it, his face very white beneath black smudges of soot. He was out of breath and shaking violently. He leaned for a moment against the linte
l and then collapsed on to a bench by the table. Dixie moved over to him like an anxious hen but he waved her away.

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ he said. ‘But in a state of shock. The act of burglary brings with it a sense of insult—a personal affront. I find it very disturbing.’ He looked up and spoke directly to Dido. ‘Would you agree to that, Dr Jones? It is the impact on the mind, not the deed itself which destroys the balance.’

  She nodded. ‘Certainly. The unexpected is always shocking. But you said burglary? Where?’

  ‘Right beneath your feet, madame.’

  ‘In the cellar?’ said Dixie. ‘But there’s nothing to steal. Have those wretched tearaways been . . . Oh, come on, H.O. dear. Don’t keep us waiting.’

  The poet knotted his forehead. He was very near nervous exhaustion and he ran the fingers of both hands through his coarse grey mop of hair before he answered.

  ‘The cellar. Quite senseless and wanton.’ He turned to Morty. ‘You’ve never been down to it, of course. It is damp, uncomfortable and too low to stand up in. We use it only for the draft barrels and for storing idiotic possessions which we are too idle to destroy. It has been broken into, two barrels have been emptied and a hole has been smashed in one of the walls. A silly ignorant thing to do, even for children crazed with drugs or drink.’

  Morty interrupted him. ‘I don’t get it. You said a wall had been smashed. What’s on the other side of it? A secret passage or something?’

  The old man sighed wearily. ‘It’s nothing of any significance today. It was a secret of sorts in the time of my predecessors. Beyond the wall, which is only the thickness of a brick, is another cellar which is perhaps a foot deeper. It is useless because it is inclined to flood at high tides. It may have been valuable once for hiding smuggled goods and it has a separate entrance, under this very floor, a trap door which is never used. But not even a rat could make a home there. Yet someone—someone who knew it was there—broke his way into it this very evening. A mad world, my masters.’

  Dixie, who had armed herself with a torch, bustled away to inspect the damage. When she returned her face was pink with fury.

  ‘The young brutes,’ she exploded. ‘Two whole barrels of best bitter gone to waste and a mess like you never did see. I’ll give ’em Demons. Not another single one of them sets foot in this place again. If Simmonds weren’t such a hopeless ape I’d . . .’ She paused as a new idea occurred to her. ‘It must have been done whilst we were away at the fire. That’s the first time the place has been empty for years. I left the scullery door so that the men could get to the pump.’

  Mr Campion was waiting for Dido and Morty when they returned to The Hollies. They had driven back in her tiny car past the damp skeleton of the shed, past darkened caravans and through the silent street of the Bowl where not even a cat moved.

  He came to the door at the precise moment when Morty was speculating on his chances of attempting a farewell embrace and deciding that the situation was too hackneyed to risk disaster.

  ‘Lugg is brewing cocoa,’ he remarked. ‘But perhaps some thing a little stronger is in order. I prescribe tea, myself. Very soothing after the return of the Demon to these parts. Quite a day for the memoirs.’

  They poured out their news to him in the garden room and he listened gravely.

  ‘Very interesting. Significant too, as the man said when he heard the last trump. As it happens I can add a couple of items. You didn’t, I suppose, drop into the church during the course of the evening? I know it’s supposed to be kept locked—a very wise precaution considering the state of the roof—but the vestry door at the back is remarkably insecure and no match for a man of my determination.’

  He surveyed them over his glasses before continuing. ‘No? The place has had a visitor, the same intruder, perhaps, who smashed down H. O. Wishart’s cellar wall. Almost certainly the same crowbar would be needed. Two tombs in the lady chapel have been opened very unskilfully and an engraved flagstone has been prised away from the centre aisle just below the altar steps.’

  ‘Goddam vandals,’ said Morty. ‘Not that they could do real damage there. There’s not much of interest. The Lady Margaret tomb—fourteenth century—and Jonathan Woodrose, gentlemen, seventeen hundred and two?’

  ‘As you say. And in the aisle Jeptha Kytie, vicar and benefactor, Jessica his wife, James and Enoch his sons with Jennifer Honiton, his beloved daughter, laid to rest between 1784 and 1810. By the way, there was nothing unexpected in any of the tombs, if you exclude a mummified cat, and I don’t think there has been for many years—if ever.’

  ‘An organised search, though,’ said Dido. ‘What were they looking for? Treasure?’

  Mr Campion considered. ‘You could call it that, I suppose,’ he said at last. ‘But it’s a little word I don’t care to use at the moment. Whatever it was they didn’t find it, for the simple reason that it wasn’t there. The searcher wouldn’t have gone on to the Demon if he’d found what he was looking for. We know pretty well when the cellar was raided—the fire gives the time within the hour. The church could have been desecrated any time in the last week or two as far as I can see because nobody has been there officially since Easter. The fire may have been arranged to create a diversion for the raid on the inn. Again whoever it was didn’t find what he wanted.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because,’ said Mr Campion with authority, ‘of the wanton damage to the barrels. It’s a commonplace reaction on the part of a thief if he’s disappointed. Ask any policeman. A man who gets what he wants generally removes his traces and skips away like the wind. What a pity I didn’t keep an eye on The Demon tonight. I spent far too much time observing who was helping and who was hindering the valiant men of the fire brigade.’

  He sighed and sipped his tea. ‘Oh, well; a nice long day tomorrow, mes enfants.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Morty. ‘You’re holding out on us. You said “a couple of items”. What’s the second?’

  The thin man eyed them owlishly.

  ‘The second item is a matter for me alone. It’s no real concern of yours and you will please put it in the top-secret-burn-before-reading class. An old friend of mine called Stanislaus Oates who has been helping me in my enquiries, as he would say, telephoned half an hour ago. He has located the elusive Mr James Teague.’

  16

  Twenty Years After

  THE RETIRED ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER was remarkably pleased with himself. He sat beside Mr Campion whom he had just joined as they drove sedately through the secondary streets which lie between Islington and Walston and gave directions on the route with appropriate pride.

  ‘Turn left at the next launderette opposite the Bingo Hall, then right at the Home Bonus Self Service and take the left hand fork at Honest Bob Eachways betting shop. Not your sort of area, my lad, but you’d be surprised at what goes on if you lift the lid. This is Ramsden Lane where an old woman called Mother Carey kept a snake farm. The whole house was full of ’em, cobras, pythons, boa constructors, everything you’ve ever seen in a zoo. She walked off one fine summer morning and never came back. The sanitary people got on to it in the end and they had the devil’s own job to clear the place because the creatures had got under the floor boards, into the roof and into every cupboard and wainscote. The last thing she did before she vanished was to set them free and it was six weeks before the matter was even reported.

  ‘Ron the Rajah lived two doors up, just above the Chinese Expresso. A very good forger, specialising in foreign currency and doing his business with coloured people. He did five years for his trouble and died a rich man.

  ‘The hole in the ground is where the old Imperial used to be. Almost the last of the Halls apart from Collins. They found out too late that it ought to have been preserved as a national memorial to the good old days but they kept the pub next door. That’s where we’re going.’

  ‘The Cap and Bells?’

  ‘That’s it. A Victorian masterpiece, so they say Four different bars—and a
couple of cubby holes where you poke your face through little glass windows to ask for your drink, though why that should make it respectable I don’t know. Pull up further along beside the radio shop.’

  The Private Saloon of the big red brick hostelry was a small, eminently correct cubicle, upholstered in red leather and decorated with cut glass advertisements for long forgotten brands of spirits: McNab’s Dew of Kirkcudbright and Auld Laird Malt Special.

  At this early hour on Sunday evening it was a quiet family place where elderly couples sat together gossiping placidly. Time appeared to be standing still and the newcomers were observed without comment. The sound of children drifted in from the street for the doors were open to the warm city air.

  ‘Better settle for a long one,’ muttered Oates. ‘We may have quite a wait ahead of us. This is going to cost you a packet. Time and a half and all expenses, you said.’

  ‘I feared as much,’ said his companion. ‘How many men did you have on it?’

  Oates smiled reminiscently. ‘After it occurred to you that I might still be useful,’ he said, ‘I had six—all ex-officers from Foxy Foster’s bureau. You wouldn’t know him but he used to be a Super in S Branch. Then I added two old pals from Records and a couple of women who retired years ago to get married. Quite a team if you include me as the brains of the act. You know, Albert, I’ve enjoyed this enquiry—it was quite a challenge. We old ’uns can still teach the boys a thing or two—especially when it’s a money-no-object job. You can’t ask men to comb every pub on a list of two or three hundred and not take a drink. If you do they’ll be rumbled straight away. That’s the advantage a private firm like Fosters has over the regulars.’

  ‘That, and of course brilliant direction from a real expert.’

  The old man snorted. ‘It was just putting all the available evidence together and it was precious thin on the ground let me tell you. Man of sixty odd, woman forty fivish, possibly a pro in her time, a woman who could have been dressing “old fashioned”. Apparently because of modern styles women of that class sometimes do—it puts older men at their ease, gives them confidence that they are not going to be snubbed or made to look like silly old goats. Then again, this disappearance was prearranged, very carefully planned indeed by someone who had taken a lot of trouble to think it out. I think you’ll find that our man has a well established identity—probably in the name of someone who’s dead or gone overseas, so that he has all his health cards stamped and in order. That gave us a woman with a genuine background, probably quite a respectable one, a woman who very likely owns a small car—Teague must have gone by car when he disappeared—someone who prepared the way by announcing that her brother or uncle or cousin was going to join her from up North or wherever you please, so there’s no surprise locally and very little gossip when the new lodger appears. It narrows the field quite a bit.’