The Ka of Gifford Hillary

by Dennis Wheatley

  Eddie shook his head. ‘It is not suggested that you did, Giff. The prosecution believe that you had an accomplice who came by night, bringing you food and hot drinks to warm you up.’

  I stared at him aghast. ‘You … you don’t mean they think that Johnny did that; then rescued me from my grave afterwards, knowing all the time that I was alive?’

  He nodded. ‘That is what they think. It is unbelievable that you could have remained in your grave from Tuesday midday till Saturday night withour succumbing to cold or pneumonia. For that, and other incontestable reasons, it is clear that Johnny has been lying about it being Saturday night that he rescued you. Why he should have done so, and still sticks to it, I don’t know. But it was the fact that he lied about that which first made the police suspect the whole set-up.

  ‘See how everything fits in,’ Eddie went on, in swift bitter sentences that beat like a succession of hammer blows on my brain. ‘Johnny was staying at Longshot the night of the murder. He dined with the Waldrons, but left their house earlier than he would have done owing to his having quarrelled after dinner with the Admiral. He must have arrived back at Longshot soon after you had killed Evans. Everyone knows how devoted Johnny is to you. He agreed to help you save your neck. Having plotted the business between you, he went to bed and you spent the night in the beach-house. Early in the morning you lay down at the water’s edge and went into your first self-induced coma. He comes out as arranged and finds you. He suggests to Silvers that instead of taking your body up to the Hall they should put it in the beach-house, where it will be much easier for him to visit it later without being seen and questioned. The doctors make their examination and declare you dead. An hour or two later you come out of your coma. During the afternoon you lie there dozing. At night he comes to you with food and drink. In due course he tips you off when the body-washers will be coming to prepare you for burial. You then go into another coma. Through Sunday and Monday he keeps a watchful eye on you and brings you sustenance at intervals. On Tuesday he sees you into your coffin. As one of your executors he has seen to it that the clause in your will about the air-holes and the lid not being screwed down has been faithfully observed; so he knows you will be all right for a limited period.

  ‘Why he did not get you out on Tuesday night we don’t yet know. Perhaps he got cold feet at the thought of what he had promised to do. It must have been lying there for twenty-four hours longer than you expected that turned your hair white. Anyhow, by Wednesday evening he must have known that if he left you there much longer you would be dead by morning. We know he went to the churchyard on that night because the village constable caught him there and sent him packing. He must have returned later, helped you out of your grave and taken you to Longshot. We have your own admission that, having procured clothes for you, on the Thursday he took you up to London, smuggled you into his rooms and hid you there. Why he broke prison to go down to Longshot again on Saturday night is another thing we do not know. But he could not have known then that you had already left his rooms. Probably you had told him before he left you on Thursday where he could find a wad of bearer bonds, or perhaps Ankaret’s jewels, or something else which could be turned into ready money. Anyway, who can doubt that the final stage of the plan was for him to help you get abroad so that you could make a new life for yourself under another name.

  ‘That it broke down was due in the first place to Johnny being arrested. In the second to your thirty-six hours in the tomb having proved too much for you. Your mind had become temporarily deranged. Instead of waiting where you were until he returned to you with a wallet full of bank-notes, you became obsessed by the idea that you must get Johnny cleared by Sir Charles. The fact that three days elapsed before you actually spoke to him is neither here nor there. By doing so you burst the whole outfit wide open, and put the rope round your neck.’

  ‘You are wrong!’ I cried desperately. ‘Utterly and entirely wrong. I mean about the part Johnny has played in all this. Where is he? What has happened to him?’

  Eddie spread out his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I didn’t want to add to your worries, so I’ve kept it from you as long as I could. At the request of the police, the charge against him of unlawfully interfering with a grave was held over; but bail was refused and he has since been held as a material witness in your own case. He is here in Southampton prison. This morning he was charged with being an accessory to the murder of Evans, and having entered into a conspiracy with you to defeat the ends of justice. He’s in this thing up to his neck, and I doubt if he’ll get off with less than ten years.’

  16

  1st to 9th October

  That night, when Eddie had gone, I knew the ultimate depths of despair. About my own fate I no longer cared; but the network of lies I had invented in an attempt to save myself had enmeshed the person whom, now that Ankaret was dead, I cared for more than anyone else in the world. And what a shameful return to make to poor Johnny for all the loyalty and courage he had shown in breaking one prison and risking a long sentence in another against the remote possibility that I might still be alive in my grave.

  I felt so shattered that although Eddie stayed on with me for a while I could find little to say apart from reiterating my protests that Johnny was innocent. To have jobbed backwards and admitted that it had been on Saturday night that he had rescued me would have done no good; because I should not now be believed. They had proof that he had been in the churchyard on Wednesday night, and I had built up my own version of my resurrection too securely. Besides, the basis of the case the police were bringing against him was that, as I was capable of self-inducing comas at will, he had entered into a conspiracy with me from the beginning to succour me in secret while I was presumed dead, and later to rescue me. He had rescued me, and the date on which he had done so was not an essential point in the build-up which must bring about his ruin.

  There were still a few minor discrepancies between the account Johnny had given the police and what they were able to prove; but, as Eddie gloomily pointed out, that was always so in murder trials. It was the weight of evidence which governed the verdict, and the case for the prosecution was overwhelming, both against me for murder and against Johnny for having afterwards endeavoured to prevent justice from taking its course.

  When Eddie left me I continued to rack my poor brains for a way to save Johnny, but no ray of light came to relieve a darkness in my mind which was worse than it had suffered while in the tomb; but by morning I had taken a decision. Even though it stood no chance of being believed, I would prepare another statement, in which I would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about this extraordinary series of events of which I have been the victim.

  My hand is mending well, but it will be many weeks yet before I can write with it again. In fact, I don’t suppose I ever will, as I shall before then have been tried, convicted and hanged by the neck until dead. So the prison authorities allowed me to have a tape-recording machine sent in, and for the past eight or ten days I have been dictating steadily into it. This occupation has done a lot to keep my mind off the wretched fate that awaits me; and when I am gone I intend that a copy of it shall be sent to the Society of Psychical Reseach for they, at least, should find it interesting.

  I have also been allowed to receive letters and a limited number of visitors. Many of the letters have touched me deeply. Those of Charles Toiller, Silvers, Dr. Culver, my personal secretary Jean Nicholls, and many of my employees at the works, particularly so. It is a big consolation to anyone situated like myself to know in this way that quite a lot of people will regret one’s passing, and that many little acts of kindness, long since forgotten, that one has been able to do, are remembered.

  Bill, as a material witness, has not been allowed to come to see me and his letter was typical of him. He had evidently learned from Eddie the line that my defence was to take; and, although he did not actually say it, reading between the lines I could see that he thought it a bit unspo
rting of me to try to father Evans’s murder on Ankaret. I have no doubt that had he been in my shoes he would have kept his mouth shut, and taken his medicine with a good grace. How I wished as I read it that I had done so; for then poor Johnny might have escaped being involved. But it was too late now to do anything but continue to reproach myself about that. For the rest, Bill’s letter displayed good honest affection for me, and the heart-felt hope that I would escape the worst.

  Sir Charles also wrote to me, and his letter read as follows:

  My dear Hillary,

  The unhappy situation in which you are makes me all the more sensible of the obligation I am under to you; particularly as it was my action which led to your arrest. Yet I feel sure you will not hold that against me, as it was a duty that I could not shirk, and neither of us can doubt that even had I refrained from doing as I did your state was such that you must have fallen into the hands of the police before very long.

  I would have visited you to express in person my gratitude for the warning you brought me but as I shall be called as a witness at your trial I am debarred from doing so. This letter must, therefore, serve for that and also to acquaint you with certain facts which I feel it is right that you should know.

  Your well-intentioned efforts on my behalf, disappointing as it may be for you, but happily for me, had no basis in reality. Old Maria, as I told you, has been with me for many years and, as I expected, M.I.5’s enquiries have shown her to be entirely beyond reproach. Jan Klinsky is her cousin, and he escaped from Poland only a few months ago. She had in fact told me of him, and that he had secured work on a nearby farm in order to be near her. But the welter of affairs that clutter the mind of a man in my position caused me temporarily to have forgotten his existence when you spoke of him to me.

  It was, of course, culpable of her to admit him to the house clandestinely and allow him to spy upon me; but the explanation for her doing so is quite simple. Having learned from her that the distinguished guest who dined with me the night of your visit came occasionally to my cottage, Klinsky had expressed a quite natural curiosity to see the great man at close quarters. At the first opportunity, therefore, Maria telephoned him and indulged him in his wish.

  He is however quite harmless and, in fact, such a fanatical anti-communist that he braved considerable dangers in making his escape from Poland. Moreover, fearing that he might be caught he brought with him a phial of poison, which he had determined to take rather than submit to capture. It was a small dose of this poison which you saw Maria give her cat. The animal was very old and had gone blind so she felt that the kindest thing was to make away with it. Had she mentioned the matter to me I should of course have had it put down by a vet. But the frugal mind of the continental peasant is naturally averse to seeing anyone spend a guinea unnecessarily, and Klinsky having offered to do the job for nothing Maria agreed.

  I must refer now to our long talk at Martin Emsworth’s and thank you again for the selfless and patriotic way in which you agreed to abet my private design for making the nation conscious of the necessity for a complete realignment of our armed forces.

  That events of such a tragic nature should have prevented you from carrying out the ideas which I put to you is a matter on which I will not dwell, except to offer you my deepest sympathy. However, you will, I am sure, be pleased to learn that despite the failure of our plan, factors which I could not foresee at the time have since served much the same purpose as its success would have done.

  These last few weeks matters have moved with remarkable rapidity. Early in September the public was hardly aware that any controversy existed with regard to the future of the armed forces. Now, at the end of the month, the whole question has been ventilated in the press with most satisfactory results. A special post as co-ordinating head of the Chiefs of Staff Committee is being created for Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir William Dickson, and the merging of all three Services into one Defence Force has been openly canvassed; while the Prime Minister has agreed that either myself or whoever he may appoint to succeed me as Minister of Defence, should in future exercise a much greater degree of control over the Service Ministries and the Ministry of Supply. Moreover it has been recognised that the maintenance of reserves and war potential which could not be brought into play during a five-day conflict are a waste of public money and that wherever possible they should be translated into a strong and efficient home defence emergency service. A major reorganisation of this kind is bound to take time but it can now be said with confidence that we are on the road to achieving a ‘New Look’ which will give our country a far greater measure of security.

  In conclusion please believe that my thoughts are with you in your present ordeal. The country can ill afford to lose men like yourself, and it is my most earnest hope that you will succeed in proving your innocence.

  Very sincerely yours.

  So there it was. All I had done was to raise a mare’s-nest, and my doing so had played no inconsiderable part in landing Johnny and myself behind bars. Yet, as I saw again in my mind’s eye Maria, Klinsky and the dead cat, I felt that I had had sound grounds for the conclusion I had come to, and that it would have been despicable of me to refrain from taking the action that I had. At least I had not got Sir Charles’s death upon my conscience.

  Harold also wrote to me. His was an awkward, ill-expressed letter, conveying little except the one thing he could not conceal—namely how aggrieved and uncomfortable he felt at my having placed him in such a situation. He made a half-hearted suggestion of coming to see me, but added rather pathetically that as we had never really been friends it seemed a bit late to start now.

  Personally, I felt that a meeting in such exceptional circumstances was the one thing left which might possibly have brought us together; and had he been in my shoes I should certainly have made an immediate and spontaneous attempt to prove that blood was thicker than water. But he more or less implied that it was an unpleasant duty which he would not seek to avoid if I wished him to observe it; and no good could come of our meeting in that spirit.

  I harboured no bitterness against him, but felt complete indifference, and the only effect his letter had was to remind me that, having returned from my grave, it was again in my power to make a new will. He had been ‘Sir’ Harold for nine days and soon enough now he would be Sir Harold again, and for good; but I would see to it that he never had Longshot.

  James Compton was my first visitor, and from the hour he spent with me I derived great comfort. Dear James is one of those honest God-fearing souls who prove a tower of strength to their friends when in tribulation. It was not so much anything that either of us said but the warmth of true friendship, tried and proved over many years, which radiated from him to wrap me in a temporary contentment.

  Actually we talked for most of the time about the affairs of the company. He, of course, could not know, neither could I tell him, that I had been an unseen presence at all the recent board meetings; so he gave me an account of the strife my last proposal had caused. I told him how I had obtained my information and showed him Sir Charles’s letter. In view of its contents there was now obviously no point in penalising the Company; so we decided that the E-boat contract should be accepted with apologies for our delay in giving a definite answer. Some months must elapse before even the keels could be laid down; so the contract might well be cancelled—if the ‘New Look’ included a reduction in the establishment of small fighting ships—while the Government were committed to pay no more than a few thousand compensation. That sort of thing was far from uncommon in the armaments world, and anything they had to pay us would be a flea-bite compared to the huge cost of having entirely reconditioned Vanguard before laying her up.

  James is far from being a demonstrative man but on leaving he took me by the shoulders, smiled anto my eyes and said: ‘Fear nothing, Giff! Fear nothing! I know you are innocent and so does our Lord. Have faith in Him and just keep on thinking how the boys and girls in our yard will cheer you
when you come back to us acquitted.’

  It was true enough that I was innocent. But how I wished that I had James’s simple faith to sustain me. Alas I had not, and was still uneasily endeavouring to resign myself to the worst.

  My next visitor was Sir Tuke. He was as forthright as ever but he seemed to have aged quite a lot since I had last seen him. When I told him what James and I had decided about the E-boats he waved it aside and said wearily:

  ‘Oh to hell with that; if we hadn’t taken the blasted contract some other firm would have. Anyhow, I’d rather have had to come out of retirement to fight the Russians with my naked hands than have this happen.’

  Although only a figure of speech, that told me how badly he must be feeling, and I said: ‘Your attitude was quite understandable; it was just hard luck on Johnny that I was put out of circulation before I could tell you that he had had no hand in my proposals.’

  ‘I know,’ he nodded. ‘I’d always liked him so it went against the grain to do what I did. Put it down to over-zealousness for my Service if you like, but I felt I had to. Still, that is all over now. I have made him my humble apologies—and that’s a thing I have never done in my life to anyone else. It is this new trouble which is driving me to distraction.’

  ‘Johnny is as innocent of that as he was of the other,’ I assured him.

  ‘Yes. I’ve just come from seeing him; and as both of you maintain that I naturally accept it. But what are the chances of his getting off? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘None too good, I’m afraid. I am innocent too but I’d willingly perjure myself if that would save him. The trouble is that it wouldn’t. There is nothing I can say which would clear him or even make his case better.’

  ‘So I gathered from Arnold. And he says that if the jury find Johnny guilty, he’ll get ten years. Just think of it, Gifford. Ten years!’

  I refrained from remarking that I did not expect to escape hanging, as he went on: ‘Even with good conduct he wouldn’t get out under seven; and seven for him means seven for Sue.’