‘Yes; that’s just what I am going to do. That’s the main reason why I telephoned for an extension of leave this morning. I meant to anyway, before I had the row with your father. I couldn’t go another night with this awful doubt hanging over me.’
‘No, Johnny! No! You mustn’t! It’s sacrilege or something. Anyhow there’s a heavy penalty for anyone caught interfering with a body that’s been buried.’
‘I won’t get caught. You needn’t worry about that.’
‘You might. And if you were I’m sure it would mean a prison sentence.’
Johnny stood up. ‘I can’t help that. I’m sorry I told you, Sue. I wouldn’t have if I weren’t half out of my mind already. But I’ll be driven right out of it if I don’t settle this thing once and for all. It’s a “must”, darling. If I don’t I’ll never have a quiet conscience again for the rest of my life.’
Sue too stood up. She had gone very pale but her voice was firm. ‘All right, then; I’ll come with you.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’
‘Why not? Be sensible. You’ll need someone to hold a torch while you unscrew the coffin lid.’
‘No I won’t. It’s not screwed down. Uncle Giff left an instruction in his will that it was not to be, and that airholes were to be bored in the coffin itself.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to do.’
‘It seems that he always had a fear that he might be buried alive. I can’t help feeling now that it may have been a premonition. It’s that idea on top of all the rest which decided me this morning that I positively must find out.’
A new look of credulity came into her eyes. ‘I believe you may be right, Johnny. Anyhow, I agree now that you must make sure. It … it’s going to be a ghastly business. But I won’t let you down. I mean I won’t faint, or anything. I’ve never fainted in my life.’
‘No, I’m sure you wouldn’t. All the same I’m not taking you with me.’
‘Yes you are.’
‘No I’m not. You were right about it being a prison job, if one is caught. Do you think I’d let you expose yourself to that?’
‘It’s all the more reason I should come. Two of us would run less risk than one. I could keep cave while you are down in the grave.’
‘Sue, I won’t have it. Nothing will induce me to let you mix yourself up in this.’
‘You can’t stop me. I’ve got my own car. I’ll catch you up before you’ve had time to get the lid off the coffin.’
That put Johnny in a fix. For another few minutes he pleaded with her to remain behind; but he could not shake her determination.
‘Very well,’ he conceded at last. ‘But on one condition. You are to remain outside the churchyard and seated at the wheel of your car. If you see anyone about to take the path through the churchyard you will sound your horn, then beat it like hell. No pulling up a hundred yards up the road to creep back and find out what has happened to me. You’ll drive straight home. Is that understood?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. I’ll agree to that.’
‘Promise? No mental reservations now. On your word of honour.’
‘You have it, Johnny.’
For a moment they eyed one another tensely, then he said: ‘We had better not park our cars close together, just in case I am surprised and have to run for it. Anyone chasing me might spot the number of yours as you drove off. You had better pull into the road-side just by the lych-gate outside the church. That’s the most likely direction from which anyone may approach. No one will be going out at this time of night; but there is just the chance that some late-comer might make his way home by the short cut across the churchyard to the village.’
‘Why not put it off till the small hours of the morning? It would be less risky then.’
Johnny drew a hand over his eyes. ‘I suppose you’re right. But I’d rather not. It’s days since I had a really long sleep, and I didn’t get a wink last night from worrying. I just couldn’t face sitting up for another three or four hours.’
‘You could have a sleep here, and I’ll wake you at, say, two o’clock.’
‘No. I’m all keyed up now. I want to get the thing done and finished with. It’s now eleven and everyone goes to bed early in these parts. Really the risk is negligible. By letting you come to keep cave for me and dispersing cars I’m only taking precautions against an outside chance. I’ll drive on round the church and up the road that leads to the village. There is a cottage opposite the other entrance to the footpath. I’ll park a little short of that and come into the churchyard that way.’
‘And afterwards?’ Sue asked.
‘As soon as I’m through I’ll drive back past you. As you see me pass, start up and follow me back here. If anything does go wrong we separate. You’ll already be on your way home, and I’ll drive straight back to Longshot; but I’ll telephone to let you know that I’m all right.’
With everything now settled, they went out to their cars. Sue’s was only an ancient run-about, so after a quick embrace he saw her into hers and gave her a few minutes’ start. I followed with him.
There was no moon and the night was dark, so favourable for this grim undertaking. As we covered the few miles at a steady pace I could hardly contain my impatience. My body had now been presumed dead for five days. Its intestines should be beginning to decompose. As the lid of the coffin was not fastened down ants might have got in and—horrible thought—be eating away the face. Anyway by this time the eyes should have sunk right back and hideous blotches have appeared on the skin. One glance at it would be enough to tell if the beliefs of the occultists were all moonshine, or if I was still tied by an invisible thread to the flesh that had been buried in the grave.
If I was, what then? But it would be time enough to wrestle with new problems when I knew. As with Johnny, the question that caused me such agitation at the moment was: what should we find there?
As we reached the valley bottom and approached the church it suddenly seemed to rear up, a black silhouette against the dark grey-black sky. Sue had drawn in her car near the lych-gate as Johnny had directed, but he did not slacken speed as we passed it. Driving on and round the corner on which the church stood he ran up the hill beyond it a few hundred yards, then drew in to the side of the road and switched off his lights.
I had listened to his plan with some anxiety, for I knew a thing that evidently he did not. The cottage opposite the entrance to the footpath was that of Cowper, the village constable. But it had been beyond my power to warn Johnny that it would be safer to go in the other way. Now, my uneasiness was increased by seeing that a light was still burning in one of the upstairs windows of the cottage, which meant that Cowper or his wife was still awake. If Cowper was there and had heard the car draw up, he might look out and, seeing that its lights had been cut off, come to investigate. The chances were against his actually catching Johnny interfering with my grave, but Johnny would have some awkward explaining to do if on returning to his car he found Cowper waiting there to serve him with a chit for having left it on the road with its lights out. I could only hope that Cowper was already in bed and would soon decide to go to sleep.
Taking a big torch from the car Johnny made his way up the last forty yards of road, turned into the churchyard and walked resolutely down its slope. Having been at my funeral he knew roughly the whereabouts of the grave, but not its exact position. It was one in a line of graves among a group of tall ancient yews, and it was so dark there that he had to put on his torch to find it. Having taken a wrong side path he had to hunt about for several minutes before he got his bearings. Then the beam of the torch fell upon the faded flowers of a wreath. Hurrying forward he found the grave and shone the torch full upon it.
In accordance with my instructions, the great stone slab that sealed the vault had not yet been replaced. It was lying tilted up on edge against another gravestone nearby. But the vault itself had not been left exposed. Presumably, to keep out the rain, or to hide the coffins in it from the
sight of the morbidly-curious, a large tarpaulin had been spread over the aperture, and was held in place by a number of loose bricks on its sides and corners.
After a glance at the floral tributes that had been set out on either side of the grave, Johnny selected a harp that had been propped up amongst them and fixed his torch into the wires to that its beam fell on the tarpaulin. Quickly now he threw aside the bricks from one side of it, then drew the free half back.
The vault had been made to hold ten coffins, but, as yet, there were only six in it; so those of my father and of myself, which lay side by side, were nearly five feet below the level of the ground. It was quite a drop, and once down there, anyone other than a fit man, like Johnny, would have found it difficult to scramble out again.
The torch was not shining directly into the grave, and it was so dark that he could not even see the coffins. With commendable prudence, instead of lowering himself then stretching out a hand for the torch, he picked it up first and flashed it downwards to see how far he had to drop.
It was at that moment, as we both stared down at the two coffins—my father’s dull and damp-stained from the years it had lain there, and mine still highly polished, its silver fittings as yet hardly tarnished—that the faint sound of footsteps made me turn and look up the path.
The perceptions of my Ka being above the physically normal, I knew that I must have heard them well before Johnny would; and my sight being better able to penetrate the darkness I saw, as he would not have been able to do, the outline of a figure coming towards us but still some distance off.
Desperately I tried to convey a warning to Johnny. In an agony of apprehension I heard the footsteps getting nearer. With all the mental strength of which I was capable I willed him to realise his danger. But my efforts were of no avail. For what seemed to me an age he continued to stand there shining his torch down into that accursed grave.
To my unutterable relief the person who was approaching kicked against a stone. Johnny heard it. In a second he had gone into action. Switching out his torch he thrust it into his coat pocket. Next moment he had pulled the nearest of the two turned-back corners of the tarpaulin back over the vault and kicked a brick on to it. In two swift strides he was across one of the banks of flowers and, kneeling down, fumbled frantically for the other corner. Ten precious seconds were lost before his fingers closed upon it in the darkness and he drew it over. Dragging a brick from beneath his right knee, he jerked it on to the corner.
But he was still kneeling there when the bulky figure of Constable Cowper emerged from behind one of the big yews. A torch flashed on and in a gruff voice the policeman demanded:
‘What are you up to here?’
I have never admired Johnny more than at that moment. Most people would have cut and run, trusting to elude the constable among the gravestones and get away in the darkness. I certainly should have. But I suppose he realised in time that his car might be found and its number be taken before he could reach it; and that it was the capacity instantly to balance risks, required for handling aircraft at near supersonic speeds, which saved him in this instance.
Coming unhurriedly to his feet he replied: ‘Can’t you see for yourself? I was praying. Who are you?’
‘I am an officer of the Hampshire County Police,’ came the prompt answer. ‘And who may you be?’
‘I’m Wing Commander Norton; Sir Gifford Hillary’s nephew.’
‘Oh!’ Cowper seemed a little taken back. Raising the beam of his torch a little he shone it on Johnny’s face. I could see that it was covered with sweat; and, seeing the grisly undertaking he had been on the point of attempting, I did not wonder. But as they were standing at opposite ends of the grave and more than ten feet apart, the policeman might not have noticed that.
Lowering the torch again, he said more amiably: ‘I recognise you now, Sir, as the Air Force gentleman who sometimes stays up at the Hall. But if I may say so, this is hardly the proper time to say a prayer at a grave-side.’
‘Why not?’ Johnny said sharply. ‘There is no law against being in a churchyard after dark. And if I had come here to pray in the daytime I’d have had to risk the unpleasantness of passers-by who know about the tragedy stopping to gape at me.’
‘There is that, Sir. And there’s nothing illegal about your being here. But there is about interfering with a grave. Very much so.’ Shining his torch down on the side of the tarpaulin from which Johnny had removed, and not had time to replace, the bricks, he went on:
‘You wouldn’t have been interfering with this one, would you, Sir?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Well, someone has. Them bricks were all on the tarpaulin to hold it down all round, as they should be, when I passed this way to my tea just before six o’clock.’
‘I’ve only been here about ten minutes, and the grave is exactly as I found it.’
‘Then someone else must have moved the bricks,’ Cowper said a shade lugubriously. ‘It was an odd notion of Sir Gifford’s, asking that the vault should be left open until a week after his burial; and not a very sensible one. Sexton Watkins is a great talker when he gets down to the local, so everyone hereabouts knows of it. And there are some strange characters about. It’s not so long ago that someone broke into a church just over the border, in Dorset, and defiled the altar. Cracked, of course; but, all the same, to my mind it’s tempting Providence to leave a grave open for longer than need be.’
Johnny gave a slightly forced laugh, ‘Well, anyway, I’m not a Satanist, Constable. You can set your mind at rest about that.’
‘I didn’t think you was, Sir.’ Cowper paused for a moment. ‘Still, I take it you’ve done what you came to do, and will be going home now?’
‘I owe a great deal to my uncle; so I intended to make a half hour’s vigil here.’
‘Just as you wish, Sir. Then I’ll stay around out of sight and see that nobody disturbs you.’
‘Thanks very much,’ Johnny replied with a heartiness he certainly could not have felt; and, as the policeman moved off into the darkness, he knelt down again.
I should like to think that he prayed for me, and it is very probable that he did. At all events with Cowper lurking somewhere on the far side of the yews, any further attempt by Johnny to get down into the vault was quite out of the question.
Some twenty minutes after Cowper had left him there came two sharp hoots on a motor horn, then the noise of a car starting up and the sound of its engine gradually fading away in the distance.
I had no doubt that it was Sue, and went forth to investigate. Her car had gone and the figure of a man was advancing up the path from the lych-gate. Cowper emerged from the shadows, and evidently knew him, as they exchanged a few words and a cheerful ‘good night’ before the late-comer went on his way.
Shortly afterwards Johnny came out from behind the yews, evidently feeling that he had spent long enough on the vigil that he had been forced to undertake in order to allay the constable’s suspicions. As he turned on to the upward path Cowper unobtrusively intercepted him, and said:
‘Would I be right, Sir, in supposing that to be your car, up by my cottage there?’
Johnny had no option but to admit it.
‘In that case, Sir,’ the policeman went on, ‘I’m afraid I must put in a report. It’s an offence, you know, to leave a car on the highway after dark without its lights on.’
‘I know,’ Johnny said wearily. ‘I’ve had an awful lot to see to these past few days; so I’m a bit tired. I switched them off without thinking what I was doing.’
‘That might happen to anyone, Sir; but I’ll have to report it just the same.’ Cowper fell into step with Johnny and they walked up the slope side by side. When they reached the car the policeman saw Johnny into it, then said:
‘Don’t you go worrying about Sir Gifford’s grave, Sir. I suffer a bit from insomnia; so I’m a great one for making night patrols. I’ll be out again at least once more tonight, and I’ll give special atten
tion to it not being further interfered with.’
That, I felt, must squash any hopes that Johnny might have entertained of returning later for another attempt to get a sight of my body without fear of interruption. In a gloomy silence, which was on my part enforced and on Johnny’s natural, we drove back to the Hall.
As soon as Johnny got in, he telephoned Sue. Although everyone had gone to bed, he kept his voice low, as he said:
‘That you, darling? … No, I didn’t manage to do all that I had hoped … Yes, I was interrupted and had a slight spot of bother. But I got out of it all right … No, don’t worry your sweet self. I’m not going back … No, I promise you. I’m dropping with fatigue, anyway. Besides, I did succeed in getting a good look at the box. If things had been as I feared I feel sure the lid would have been displaced … Yes, by what’s there trying to get out when the thing that was seen returned to it between spells of travelling. But it wasn’t. There was no sign that there had been any activity at all; so I’m satisfied now … Yes, really. And if anything happens about the other business I’ll let you know at once … Yes, I will. Thanks, darling, for your help tonight. There are darn’ few girls who would be brave enough to insist on lending a hand on a job like that. Good night, my sweet. Sleep well. Bless you.’
When he had hung up, I watched him go slowly and wearily upstairs. He had said that he was satisfied. But I wasn’t. I too had had a look down into that grave. And by concentrating I could see through the coffin lid. Hair always continues to grow after death so I had not been surprised to see a five-days’ growth of stubble on my chin. But my body had been as fresh and pink as on the night it had crumpled to the floor under the shock of Evans’s death ray.
10
Thursday 15th September
The following morning, expecting that the police would arrive at about half-past nine to continue their investigations into Ankaret’s death, I went up to make another attempt to get into touch with her while the house was still quiet.
The Ka of Gifford Hillary Page 30