The Ka of Gifford Hillary

by Dennis Wheatley

  For me it was easy to read her thoughts. It could be only a matter of time now, a few hours perhaps, a day or two at the most, before Johnny would know that she had forged the letter on which was based the accepted explanation of my death. Why, I then did not know, but for some time past there had been a coldness between them. As he bore her no love but had been so devoted to me, it seemed hardly likely that he would show her mercy and keep her secret. If he took her forgeries to the police what possible explanation could she offer to account for them? Under hours of questioning she must eventually break down, or at least be trapped into admissions which would give them a clue to the truth. They would turn the whole house upside down. There could be no hiding Evans’s death ray machine, and she must reckon on my having examined it before it was used upon me; so my finger-prints would be on it.

  Whether they would ever find out enough to link it with the crime and reconstruct the full sequence of events, it was impossible to say. But even if they could not prove her to be a murderess they would have a clear case against her as an accessory.

  That would mean a long prison sentence; years of soul-shattering confinement, revolting food, a hard bed and being herded with the most vicious and debased women in the country. Appalling thought! Could she possibly face it? And then, when she came out, her looks gone and her life ruined.

  Slowly she unscrewed the bottle top, shook a tablet into her left hand, put it in her mouth, threw back her head and swallowed it.

  As I watched her my mind was in a turmoil. Johnny and my other friends had been right in their belief that I thought it wrong to take one’s own life. My immediate instinct was to exert all my will-power in an attempt to stop her. Yet on second thoughts I checked myself. Had I the right to do so? It was her life, not mine. And, even if I possessed the power to intervene, should I be using it in her best interests. Was it not kinder to let her slip away in a drug-induced sleep, than attempt to make her face years of misery?

  Even as I hesitated she suddenly spoke aloud:

  ‘No! I’ll be damned if I do!’ And swiftly screwing on the top of the bottle she threw it back into an open drawer.

  Probably the decision had never lain with me, but now that it had, beyond question, been taken out of my hands, my mind was momentarily submerged by a wave of relief.

  Getting up from the dressing-table, she went over to her bed and lay down upon it. For a while she remained with her grey eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Then the one tablet she had swallowed began to take effect. Her long eyelashes fluttered once or twice and she fell asleep.

  The two scenes to which I had been a silent witness during the past half hour had played the very devil with my emotions and I decided that a tour of the garden would be the best thing to quieten my agitated mind; so I drifted down to it.

  The wonderful long hot spell we had had was at last breaking up. There had been several thunder-storms in the past few days and although the afternoon was fine I guessed that the chill of autumn could now be felt by living people. Insensible to it I wended my way along the familiar paths and borders, then went down to the beach, and so whiled away the best part of two hours before returning to the house.

  Ankaret had evidently been woken by Mildred’s bringing up her tea and was now sitting up in bed reading. Her absorbed expression and the crumb-covered plate on the tea-tray implied that she had temporarily shrugged off her anxieties; so reassured about her I went down to Johnny.

  I found him changing into a clean shirt and generally sprucing himself up. When he had done he checked the suitcase that held all my papers to see that both the locks on it were fast; then as he left the room he locked the door behind him and pocketed the key. I accompanied him out to the garage and into his car.

  Had anyone else shown such determination to ferret out the truth about my death, highly proper, and altruistic as their activities might be, on account of the danger into which they were bringing Ankaret I should have felt a very definite antagonism towards them. But I had no such feelings towards Johnny. Knowing that all he was doing was out of love for me, even his lying in wait for Ankaret that afternoon and high-handed treatment of her when he caught her, made no difference to my affection for him. Both of them had a bigger place in my heart than any other person in the world; so while I was infinitely more concerned about the dire peril in which Ankaret now stood I was still anxious that the rift I had unwittingly brought about in Johnny’s romance should be mended, and I wanted to learn for myself how far Sue had gone towards changing her mind.

  We reached the rendezvous outside Beaulieu well before time and Sue, having been brought up in a family that respected the clock, arrived punctually. As Johnny threw open the door of the car for her I slipped over to the back seat; but she did not get in at once, and I took the chance to have a good long look at her. Normally, of course, one rarely really studies another person’s face, because it is rude to stare, but I was able to take advantage of my invisibility.

  She was a small decidedly plump young person with a mop of thick dark short curls. Her brows were level, her eyes brown, her nose short and her mouth seductively full. I have no doubt she used similar beauty preparations to all the other girls of her class and generation, but I felt sure that the rich colouring of her lips and cheeks owed more to good red blood than make-up. No one who was not in love with her would have classed her as a beauty, but she was pretty, healthy, vivacious, and in short, as I had said to Ankaret on the last night of my life, just the sort of piece with whom a wicked old boy, given the chance, would have chosen to have a romp.

  But that thought brought back to me Ankaret’s reply. For the first time I noticed the more delicate edition of the Admiral’s ‘battleship chin’ of which she had spoken, and at the moment Sue’s brown eyes, fixed unwaveringly on Johnny’s, held more than a hint of hardness.

  While I was studying her she had said in answer to his eager greeting: ‘I must be frank with you, Johnny. This is only a—well, call it a conference if you like. I haven’t altered my opinion about Daddy’s being right, but I’ve never spent a more bloody week-end; so I know now that I’m much too fond of you to let you go without another try to see each other’s point of view. But unless you feel that we can reach some sort of compromise it’s not much good our talking.’

  ‘That’s fair enough,’ he agreed. ‘But need we start our argument here and now? Couldn’t we forget the whole thing for an hour or two while we enjoy a jolly dinner together just as we used to, then talk matters over afterwards?’

  I admired his tactics, and with very little persuasion she agreed to his suggestion. After she had settled herself in the car and Johnny had let in the clutch there fell an awkward silence between them for some moments; but she broke it by asking him about the inquest, and that set him off.

  Having brought her up to date with events at Longshot till lunch time, he added: ‘All the same it’s my belief that someone has pulled the wool over the eyes of the police, and that the verdict given by the Coroner’s court is far from being the right one.’

  ‘What leads you to suppose that?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘Because I am convinced that Giff did not commit suicide.’

  ‘As all the evidence points to his having done so, why should you believe otherwise?’

  ‘Because I know that the motive ascribed to him is a false one.’

  There was a doubt in Sue’s voice, as she said: ‘Even knowing him as intimately as you did, I don’t see how you can judge the extent to which his mind might have become unbalanced if he was suddenly given reason to believe that Ankaret had been unfaithful to him.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s just it! Pure chance put me in a position to assess just how he would react to such a situation.’ Johnny hesitated a second, then went on. ‘Listen, Sue. I’m damnably worried about this thing and want to get it off my chest, but you must not breathe a word about it to anyone, because what I am going to say is highly slanderous. And quite apart from that, should it
get about it might prejudice the case if there is one. I’ve no particular love for Ankaret, but if she is brought to trial I would hate to think that I’d helped to damn her before she even enters the court.’

  ‘You know that you can trust me, Johnny,’ Sue said quietly.

  ‘Of course I do, darling. Well, this is the gist of it. About a year ago, as I think I’ve told you, I was sent as an observer to the Army of the Rhine during a big exercise they carried out. The idea was that a certain number of R.A.F. officers like myself should get some idea of the needs and difficulties of the Army during active operations. On the Divisional Staff to which I was attached there was a Captain named Desmond Chawton; very good looking, quite a clever chap, but a bit of a play-boy. One of his friends told me that he had been to Eton and Oxford and was very well blessed with this world’s goods.

  ‘The evening after the exercise was over a few of us went out to dinner, and as the party broke up Chawton offered to run me back to the Officers’ Club. On the way we chatted of this and that, and I happened to mention that I was Giff’s nephew. At that he grinned and asked: “How is the lovely Ankaret? I used to know her well before she married. I suppose she’s still kicking up her pretty heels with some lucky devil in the South of France every winter?”

  ‘In fairness to him I should mention that this was late at night and we’d both had our fill of good liquor. All the same he had no earthly right to say such a thing, even if it were true, and very naturally I was pretty nettled at what I then believed to be a wicked slander on Giff’s wife. I said so very bluntly, and told him that he must apologise, and give me his promise that he would never say such a thing about Ankaret in the future.

  ‘At first he pretended that I had misunderstood him, and he meant no more than that Ankaret had always been a girl who enjoyed having a good time. Being a bit tight I refused to accept that, and rather pompously insisted that he should admit to having said a disgraceful thing about her quite unwarrantably.

  ‘In turn he got on his high horse and brought the car to a standstill, and said: “All right then; since you’re so set on having the truth, here it is. I didn’t seduce Ankaret, but I came in first wicket down, and I can tell you her bowling was pretty terrific even in those days. She was only just over eighteen and I was a subaltern at Aldershot. She had no proper home and used to move around from one set of relatives to another every few weeks. Between visits she used to wangle a night or two to spend with me at some unfrequented little country pub. By jove! I wish I could have that affair over again; it really was something while it lasted. But after a few months she tired of me and went off for her romps with a young intellectual in the Foreign Office. I went abroad as A.D.C. to the Governor of Cyprus soon afterwards, so I lost track of her for some years; but I met her again the winter before last in the South of France, and I know for a fact that while she was there she was sleeping most nights with a good-looking Spanish Marquis.”

  ‘“What reason have you for being so certain of that?” I asked.

  Turns out the chap had an affair with her himself, before she got married, then bumped into her in the South of France again once after and invited him to dinner, where she boasted of her string of passionate nights with a good-looking Spanish Marquis. Apparently Giff knew all of this because she damn well told him so. She said that one reason she was so happy with him was because he understood her, and made allowances for the desperate urge she felt to go off the rails now and then. And there is no earthly reason why she should have lied to me about that.’

  Johnny paused for a moment. ‘So you see the set up. Poor old Giff loved her to distraction, and it’s clear from what she said to Chawton that Giff preferred to put up with the torture of knowing that she was taking lovers on the side when she felt an urge that way rather than cut her out of his life altogether. Now do you get what I am driving at?’

  Sue nodded. ‘Yes; it could hardly be clearer. If your uncle has been playing the complaisant husband for years it’s unthinkable that on learning that she was having an affair with the Welsh Professor he would have gone beserk and beaten the poor little devil to death.’

  ‘You’ve said it, sweetie. But if Giff didn’t kill the Prof, who did? And with Giff’s alleged motive for committing suicide burst wide open, who killed him? It looks to me as if there must have been a third man, presumably another of Ankaret’s lovers, who killed them both. God alone knows what really happened, but of one thing I’m certain: Ankaret holds the key to the mystery, and I believe I’ve got hold of the means to make her talk.’

  He told Sue then how he had twice come upon Ankaret rummaging in my desk, and now had its contents locked safely away in a suit-case in his room.

  Naturally she was tremendously intrigued, and they were still absorbed in their speculations about the tragedy at Long-shot when we drew up at Buckler’s Hard.

  The double row of ancient cottages with a broad green between sloping down to a bend in the Beaulieu River makes it one of the beauty spots of South Hampshire. In the old days many fine ships were built there, some by my own forebears, and several that fought under Nelson at Trafalgar. The only big building in the hamlet, at the far end on the left-hand side, is now an hotel, and it is called The Master Builder’s, because it was once the residence of the dockyard superintendent. The little restaurant there is one of the best for many miles around, as not only is its charm preserved by old prints and ship’s furnishings, but it provides excellent cooking and a good cellar. I had enjoyed many a pleasant evening there, but now being debarred from gastronomic delights I did not accompany Johnny and Sue inside.

  Instead I drifted down to the river and surveyed with an expert’s eye the lines of the numerous fine yachts which were moored there. Then as twilight fell I returned up the slope and kept watch on the door of the inn so that I should not miss the lovers when they came out.

  In due course they emerged and, turning into the garden, walked over to a bench at its far end where they sat down. It was dark now, but I could see their faces well enough to guess that the latter part of their dinner must have been somewhat marred by thoughts of the explanation they were about to have.

  It was Sue who opened the matter by saying: ‘Well, come on; let’s get it over.’

  ‘All right,’ Johnny agreed. ‘I think the best thing would be for you to state the case you have against me.’

  Sue did so, and I thought very lucidly. ‘It’s this. According to Daddy, when you had your board meeting your uncle disclosed a lot of Top Secret information which could have come only from you. That is a Service matter so it effects me only as throwing grave doubt on your integrity. The thing that really shocked me so badly was the object with which you gave away these matters. It was to aid your uncle in a plot to bring about the disbandment of the Royal Navy, and afterwards you admitted to me yourself that you would like to see that happen.’

  ‘O.K. Let’s take first things first. I have already given you my word that I did not brief Giff on his proposal. It came to me as a bomb-shell, just as much as it did to the others. I was under the impression that when last we met you had accepted my assurance about that.’

  ‘I did; at least to the extent that you did not actually write out his proposal for him or know that he was going to make it. But he must have got his information from you. During the past year you have seen a lot of him, and must have talked to him pretty freely about what an atomic war would be like. Naturally men in your position don’t discuss such matters with every Tom, Dick and Harry, but they do among their own kind whom they regard as safe. I know that, because I’ve often heard some of our Naval friends speak of things to Daddy that they would not dream of mentioning outside a house like ours.’

  ‘To some extent you are right about that,’ Johnny admitted. ‘But talking in general terms, in the sort of circumstances you have in mind, is very different from disclosing Top Secret information. Giff never tried to pump me; such a thought would never have entered his head. And I swear by my love
for you, Sue, that he never had from me the stuff he spouted at that meeting.’

  ‘Where else could he have got it, then, seeing that these secrets are known only to a very limited number of people?’

  ‘I haven’t an idea; but it must have been from someone pretty high up, because he knew about trends of policy that have not yet even come my way.’

  ‘Very well; I’ll take your word that you didn’t brief him even unconsciously; so that disposes of that. But you backed his proposal, and made it clear to me that you are a hundred per cent in favour of this frightful idea of scrapping the Navy.’

  Johnny sighed. ‘I did, my dear; and much as I love you I can’t go back on that. I wouldn’t be honest if I even led you to believe that I am prepared to compromise about it. You see, the nation is up against it in the matter of money and the Services in the matter of men. The balance of Trade having gone against us big economies must be effected, and it is just a question of deciding which forms of sacrifice will be least prejudicial to our safety.

  ‘The number of men in the Navy today is fifty per cent greater than it was in 1936; it is the only one of the three Services which will not accept a material reduction in manpower over the next few years and the only one which is increasing rather than reducing its demands for money. The increase in man-power has no relation to the number of ships it could send to sea. On the contrary, they would look a miserable sight compared to the Fleet of the 1930’s, and, of course, the fact that two-thirds of the chaps now dressed as sailors are not sailors at all. They are either airmen or technicians, and would be of far more value if they were redeployed into only slightly different jobs with the Air Force proper.

  ‘If that could be done there would be no more building of these fantastically costly aircraft carriers, and all the smaller craft which are needed to protect them. Those in commission could be paid off and the saving would be immense.