Gunner Kelly

by Anthony Price

  Damnation! Audley suspicious was one thing. But Audley right—Audley certain—damnation!

  The chain rattled again, and the door opened wide.

  “Was he alone—” She stopped as she stared at him.

  “That I can’t say, Madam. Until we know how he got in … But there’s a full alert, an‘ everyone’s posted—”

  “What have you done to him?” She cut Kelly off angrily.

  “Done to him? We haven’t laid a finger on him, Madam,” protested Kelly. “Not a finger!”

  “Then why is there blood on his face?” Her voice shook.

  “Blood on his face?” Kelly paused. “Oh, sure—so he fell into Number Two, didn’t he? An‘ that’s twelve foot if it’s an inch—”

  She gestured to silence him. “Herr Wiesehöfer—are you all right?”

  Benedikt put his hand to his face. Now … if there was blood, it would have dried by now … but in this fierce light he would look worse than he felt, and that might be to his advantage.

  “Madam—” began Kelly. “Madam—”

  “Be quiet, Michael!” The strain in her voice confirmed his thought: for all that she was the mistress of Duntisbury Chase she was still only twenty years old, and blood spilt in her service was something new to her.

  “Madam!” said Kelly sharply, in his turn. “No—”

  “Hush, Michael! Herr Wiesehöfer—”

  “No, Madam—I will not hush, begging your pardon!” The sharp note vanished into the calmness of obstinacy. “We are standin‘ in the light, with all the dark hill above us—an’ I have this old itch between my shoulder-blades … So, I would most respectfully urge you to go inside—for my sake, if not for yours, if you please.”

  “Oh, Michael—” As he had spoken she had switched from Benedikt to Kelly, and then from Kelly to the great darkness out of which they had come, and then back to Kelly again “—I’m sorry! How stupid of me!” Finally she came back to Benedikt. “If you would kindly come into the house, Herr Wiesehöfer—at once.”

  Neither Benedikt nor Herr Wiesehöfer required any further order: they felt the same itch in that instant, of the crossed wires in the night-sight, telescopically enlarging each of them out of the dark, shifting from one to the other, looking for a target, making their flesh crawl: that was a memory shared by both of them from the past!

  Only at the last moment, when Miss Becky seemed to want him to enter first, did Herr Wiesehöfer assert himself, who had no reason for being frightened of such nightmares, more than he was already terrified: he must let ladies go first, or betray himself.

  “Go on, Miss Becky—lead the way!” Kelly resolved the impasse quickly. “And now you, Herr Wiesehöfer—get on with you!”

  Benedikt followed her thankfully from unsafe light to safety: stone staircase, with worn steps, on his left—arched doorway, low door closed—cellar door?—ahead … open door and passage on his right, leading into the house.

  He followed her down the passage. The house was cold now—cold because they were into the chill hours beyond midnight, and with no fires lit these thick walls had repelled the inadequate warmth of yesterday’s sunshine all too efficiently; but cold also because he was tired and frightened, Benedikt equally with Thomas.

  “Hold on, there,” commanded Kelly from behind him. “The door by you—you can see the wash-basin, and there’s a hand-towel beside it… So you just make yourself presentable for the young lady, then—okay mein Herr?”

  It wasn’t solicitude for him, thought Benedikt: the sight of blood had been questioned by Miss Becky, so that blood was better washed off, that was all.

  He moved to close the door without thinking, but Kelly kicked out with his foot to hold it open. “Uh-uh! Easy now … Just the water and the towel, where I can see you.”

  Benedikt studied himself in the small mirror above the wash-basin. He had not really bled very much—the cut was small, and not very deep—but he had spread what there had been quite artistically, to good effect.

  “Michael!”

  “Coming, Madam!” But in replying to her Kelly didn’t take his eye off his prisoner. A careful man, was Gunner Kelly. A careful man …

  He wiped his face slowly, taking his time to get his first proper view of the Irishman, and was repaid with similar scrutiny.

  “Sure, and that’s nothin‘ then, is it? I cut meself worse than that shavin’ many a morning.” Kelly shook his head. “Ye’ll not be takin‘ an honourable scar home to the Fatherland with that little scratch … if you should be so lucky, eh?”

  The man was disappointingly nondescript. With that short unstylish haircut—almost cropped brush-like, iron-grey speckled with black—and the rounded blob of a nose in an expanse of leathery skin … skin not drawn tight enough to betray any memorable bone-structure beneath … it was any face in a crowd. In fact, he had seen it before, not just in the inadequate enlargement Colonel Butler had supplied, but now—now that he saw it in that flesh—from his childhood recollections: it was any face in any crowd of British soldiers in the Rhine Army, substituting age and stone-sober suspicion for youth and beer-swilled truculence.

  Kelly pointed. “That way, straight ahead … An‘ just so we understand each other, there’s no way out of this house that’s not locked or guarded—understand?”

  Benedikt gave him Thomas Wiesehöfer’s baffled frown, but with the sinking feeling that poor Thomas was already less than a skin-deep covering, with David Audley waiting for him.

  But, to his surprise, there was only Miss Becky in the room beyond the door—a long, low-ceilinged room, bisected with a single huge beam which made him want to stoop, the girl standing alone with her back to a great empty fireplace.

  “Herr Wiesehöfer—” She looked at him, then past him. “Michael?”

  “Dr Audley not back then, Madam?” Kelly had experienced the same surprise, but without the need to conceal it.

  “He should be here very soon.” She frowned uncertainly. “You think we should wait?”

  “Not at all—‘tis no matter. We don’t need him to ask a simple question of the man.”

  The expression on Miss Becky’s face suggested that Audley was exactly what she needed most. “I don’t know, Michael. David understands this better than we do.”

  It was time for Thomas Wiesehöfer to speak: “Fräulein— Miss … Miss Maxwell-Smith—” More in bafflement than anger first, with anger in reserve: that was the right note “—Fräulein—I also do not understand this! I do not—”

  “No!” Kelly snapped into life. “No—that’s not goin‘ to be the way of it at all!”

  Benedikt turned toward him. Anger, then—?

  “With your permission, Madam—” Kelly was just too quick for him “—we should ask this … gentleman … how he came to be night-walkin‘ in the spinney when honest folk are in their beds—for a start.”

  Anger—outrage—forward, then!

  “What? W-what?” He spluttered his sudden loss of control.

  “Aye—what, indeed!” Kelly lifted a chin which was blue-grey with stubble. “What the devil were ye trespassin‘ on the lady’s land for? Answer me that now?”

  “Trespassing?” Benedikt drew himself up to his full height, remembering the beam too late, but just missing it. “I wish to speak to the Police! I demand to speak to the Police!”

  “The Police?” exclaimed Miss Becky.

  “The Police, Fräulein—yes!” It was a rotten story he had ready-prepared for them—Kelly, for one, would never believe it. But that was all he had for this moment. “Yes.”

  “Aaargh! Don’t you believe him! He tried that one on me—‘Is you the Poliss?’ he says. But I wasn’t havin‘ that one, by God!”

  “But, Michael—”

  “No, Madam! Leave this one to me.” Kelly’s voice softened, and he looked sidelong at Benedikt, half closing his eyes. “Am I the Poliss, then? No, I am not the Poliss—nor would I ever be. But I’ll tell you who I am, since ye ask.” He paused, reaching i
nside his jacket, to the waist-band. “I’m the fella with the gun, is who I am.”

  Benedikt gaped at the pistol, as much for himself as for Thomas Wiesehöfer, without need for any acting ability. With what he knew they were planning perhaps it should not surprise him so much, it was only one more straw in the wind. Yet in showing it to him now, the Irishman had proved his point dramatically, with no going back: shot-guns were no less lethal—probably more so in unskilled hands—but even in peaceful law-abiding England many thousands of ordinary citizens possessed shot-guns legitimately, especially in the country areas like this. But an automatic pistol was something altogether different.

  “God in heaven!” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Oh-aye, ‘tis one of yours, surely.” The Irishman’s voice was matter-of-fact, as though it was a screwdriver in his hand. He didn’t point the pistol, he held it diagonally across his chest, the fingers of his free hand playing imaginary stops on its frame. “A very fine weapon. But you’d be knowing that well enough, of course.”

  It was an old Luger—an old long-barrelled Luger, of the sort which had served in half the world’s armies at one time or another … and this one looked so worn that it could have served with most of them, starting even before Kelly himself was born, never mind Benedikt.

  He measured the distance between them. Four metres and a long settee, high-backed and heavy-looking: that was too far and too much for any ambitious ideas. And sixty years might have slowed the man, but not sufficiently: age did not wither well-maintained weapons—fine well-maintained weapons … not enough, anyway, for him to try his luck with an old soldier.

  “Yes.” Kelly nodded, eyeing him speculatively, almost slyly, as though he could read his prisoner’s mind. “It makes a difference, does a gun—like the Squire himself used to say, in the old days, even with our little pop-guns: ‘The gun, Michael,’ says he, ‘ ’tis the final argument of kings, which is the last argument of all‘—an’ this is a gun I have in my hand, an‘ although it’s even smaller, it will serve for you and me … an’ especially for you, because you’re the target—aye, an‘ do you know what sort of target, now?” He paused only for effect, not for a reply. “A ’Mike Target‘ is what ye are.”

  It was half in Benedikt’s mind to dismiss the man as a garrulous old fool—were not Irishmen all notoriously garrulous? But there was nothing foolish about a 9-millimetre Luger, no matter in whose hands.

  “A ‘Mike Target’,” Kelly repeated the words, savouring them. “Named after me, it was … but that’s another story … ‘Mike Target’ was a regimental target—something really worth having—twenty-four guns on one target … three batteries of eight guns, each of two troops of four guns, out of sight of one another … aaargh, but it was a sort of democratic form of gunnery, would ye know … The Germans—that’s your lot, begod, an‘ a smart lot of fellas they were—they had the best gun of the war that I saw, that we called ’the eighty-eight‘, an’ a terrible murderous weapon it was … But we had the best regiments of guns—an‘ the Squire’s the best of them, no question—for he invented ways of control and command, and different ways of applying fire … I thank my stars I was on the English side, an’ not facing regiments like his, begod!”

  Benedikt tried to make sense of what the man was driving at, but could only think irrelevantly wouldn’t Papa like to be here, instead of me, because those were his guns, those terrible murderous weapons!

  “Aaargh! No twenty-four guns have I—just this one little gun—” The Irishman caressed the Luger “—but a Mike Target ye are all the same, the best I’ve had in range for many a year!” He nodded at Benedikt, like a friendly enemy. “So I’ll not be asking you again why you were trespassin‘ on the lady’s land, for you’d only tell me black lies that you’d got all ready for me—later, maybe, but not now …”

  There was something wrong, alarm bells in his mind warned Benedikt: if Kelly no longer rated why as of the first importance, what could be coming next, instead?

  The Irishman’s free hand released the Luger barrel and plunged into his coat-pocket.

  “See here.” He brandished Thomas Wiesehöfer’s spectacle case. “And don’t say ye don’t see, for ye recognised my young mistress upon the terrace, with her under the leaves in the shadow, an‘ what’s in my hand is plain enough, as I can see plain enough for meself, surely.”

  A frisson of triumph excited Benedikt. They had been clever—how they had been so clever, he didn’t know, but they had been clever, nevertheless. Only, they had not been clever enough.

  “It is … the case for my spectacles … which you took from me—” He feigned incomprehension.

  “So it is! And thick as pebbles are your lenses—blind as a bat in sunlight, ye are, ye have said as much to the children … So how is it that ye see me now so clearly, with these in my hand, and no spectacles on your nose? Would you tell me that?”

  More incomprehension. Frown, and shake your head, Herr Wiesehöfer!

  “I do not understand.” He spread his hands. “I am wearing my contact lenses … Do you not have contact lenses in England?” He had the man now.

  “F-what?” For the first time Kelly was taken aback, and Benedikt blessed the ultimate insistence on detail—the final rule which he had obeyed automatically because it was laid down to be obeyed.

  Benedikt pointed at his eyes, confident of the tiny plain lenses which only an expert could differentiate from the real thing, and which had once helped him to accustom himself to the false ones. “I wear my spectacles … sometimes … and my lenses sometimes … If you wish to see them, I can oblige you. But… I do not understand—I do not understand anything that you are saying—or doing!” he looked at Miss Becky despairingly. “—Fräulein, if you would tell me, please, what is happening?”

  Miss Becky looked at Kelly. “Michael—?”

  Perhaps it was time for the rotten excuse at last, thought Benedikt.

  Kelly frowned at him, the lines round his mouth working deeper. “We still don’t know why he was in the spinney, Miss Becky.”

  It was time. “I was walking on the hills … I left my car at a village—I do not remember … it is Rockbourne, perhaps—or Wimbourne … or Wimbury or Rockbury, or Rockbury St Martin—I do not remember … But I walked upon the hills, and it grew dark, and I lost my way.” With the contact lenses in support, the rotten excuse wasn’t so bad: they weren’t the border police, and he wasn’t behind the line on the Other Side, after all. “I saw the light in the valley—”

  There was a dull boom—the sound of a heavy door closing somewhere within the house—the echo of which both cut him off and roused them both out of their evident embarrassment.

  Another boom, nearer now. Audley … if it was Audley, they were both glad now, he could see it in their expressions—

  But should he be glad? After believing that he was beaten, now he knew he was winning? Except that … even if Audley accepted the plain contact lenses in support of his explanation … that illegal Luger pistol tied him to the illegality of whatever they were doing, making him too hot to let loose, after all that had happened to him, in the pit and afterwards—

  The latch on the door behind Kelly snapped as sharp as a pistol-shot, so that it was a credit to the Irishman’s nerves that he didn’t move a muscle, except to drop the discredited spectacle-case quickly into his pocket, as Dr David Audley came through the doorway like the wrath of God.

  “What the hell’s happening?” Audley took in the three of them at a glance. “What’s he doing here?” The glance ranged back from Benedikt to Gunner Kelly, taking fire from what it observed. “For Christ’s sake—what’s that bloody cannon out for?”

  “Oh, David—” began Miss Becky, and then stopped.

  “We caught him in Number Two pit, in the spinney, sir. And he’s not after telling us why he was there.” Kelly swallowed. “An‘ the Police have been all round the village, the bastards—”

  “I know that.” Audley gestured dismissively. “
I stopped off at the Bells—”

  “They didn’t get anything, sir,” cut in Kelly quickly. “The till was open, an‘ the curtains closed—an’ the door locked, an‘ Davey knew the names an’ addresses of everyone that was drinkin‘ there, as was his guests after hours—we’ve taken no trouble from that, I swear.”

  “No trouble? Christ, man—the Police weren’t born yesterday! There should have been nobody there, with the ford covered—and Rachel should have been in her transparent nightgown to make them ashamed for knocking at her door.” Audley shook his head angrily. “I leave the Chase for a few hours … and every damn thing falls apart, as though I’d never been here. You’re not fit to take a punt from one side of the Cam to the other!”

  Kelly drew a breath. “But sir—”

  “Silence, Gunner Kelly!” Audley sniffed. “Small bloody wonder you couldn’t hold the stripe of a lance-bombardier from one pay day to the next—you wouldn’t have held any rank in my regiment either, that did the real work at the sharp end, where there were real Germans, by Christ!”

  “Sir!” Doubt and outrage warred in Kelly’s objection.

  “Don’t you dare sir me, with that souvenir, taken by a better man than you, in your hand! Christ, almighty! As if I didn’t know all I wanted to know about gunners—I should have my head examined … Becky now—my god-daughter, who’s no fool, so I’ve fondly believed until now, says you’re no idiot—you tell me … what’s supposed to be happening—if you can?”

  Benedikt was much reassured by this outburst of anger, in spite of appearances to the contrary. Because … if the Kom-missar in Wiesbaden had nothing to say about Gunner Kelly and Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith, it had had quite a lot to reveal about David Audley, if not who his god-daughter was; and nothing had been said about losing his cool, except for some very good reason, so there had to be a very good reason for this.

  “David—it’s exactly as Michael says: when the Police crossed the water we went on the Yellow Alert… But until we get the walkie-talkie radios we can’t reach everyone—Blackie’s collecting them tomorrow—”