Sky High

by Michael Gilbert

  ‘Yes,’ said Gattie. ‘I agree. But here’s what I can’t make out. You know as well as I do, there’s only one safe way of writing off the detonator – writing it off so that no one’s ever going to find the least little bit of it, wire or screw or brass filing – and that’s by putting it alongside the explosive. Then, when the thing goes off, it all gets blown up. Blown to smithereens, I mean, not just messed up.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Well, you see, it’s pretty clear the explosive wasn’t in the bedroom.’

  ‘I haven’t read the report properly, but I think that’s right.’

  ‘And there’s no trace in the bedroom of anything like a detonating device.’

  ‘If you’ve searched, and haven’t found anything, I’ll take that as gospel,’ said Tim.

  ‘Then how did MacMorris – who was in the bedroom – set off a lot of explosive – that was in another part of the house?’

  ‘Perhaps he went out of the bedroom.’

  ‘The General – who was doing his evening exercises in front of his window – saw MacMorris’ shadow move across the window a few seconds before the balloon went up.’

  ‘MacMorris’ shadow?’

  ‘Well – a shadow. He says it was MacMorris. No reason to suppose there was anyone else in the room.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Tim. He looked down at his watch and said, ‘I’d no idea it was so late. I shall miss that train.’

  ‘Which are you after?’

  ‘The twelve-five.’

  ‘You have cut it a bit fine. Better jump in the official wagon and I’ll run you down.’

  ‘It’s very good of you,’ said Tim. ‘I’ve simply got to catch it.’

  ‘You help us, we help you,’ said Sergeant Gattie, flashing his grin again.

  No more was said until they had sailed into the station. The sergeant was one of those competent drivers who make fast driving look safe and easy. The up-train was signalled but was not yet in sight.

  ‘About what you were saying,’ said Tim. ‘If you’re right about it – there are ways out of it, of course. Time devices and so on – but if you’re right, what’s your idea?’

  ‘Well, sir. The stuff could have gone up by itself. Especially if it was in the tank room. The heat might have done it – or some sort of vibration.’

  ‘That’s the official theory,’ said Tim.

  ‘So what?’ said Sergeant Gattie. ‘Even the official theory’s got to be right sometimes. Law of averages.’

  Chapter Six

  MARCHE MILITAIRE

  Holofernes: ‘Most military sir, Salutation.’

  ‘Poor Liz,’ said the General. ‘I hear you’ve been subjected to the third degree. I hope your conscience is clear.’

  ‘It’s not a joke,’ said Liz. ‘That Inspector’s a crook.’

  ‘Really!’

  ‘He’s got a dishonest mind. He argues a priori. He commits catachresis. He suppresses his middles.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. Personally I’ve always found him a decent enough fellow. You remember that time I lost Andy’—(Andy was an obscene bull-terrier for whom no one except the General had felt any affection at all)—’very worrying. I found him most helpful over that. How’s he been upsetting you?’

  There’s nothing I can explain, but I don’t like him. A pure case of Doctor Fell. I expect it will wear off. Have another cup of tea. What have you been doing with yourself today?’

  ‘I’ve been spending a very trying afternoon,’ said the General. ‘Having a lady weeping on my shoulder.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Liz. ‘You loved every minute of it. Look how you encourage me to weep on your shoulder.’

  ‘Ah, but you’re a dashed handsome woman,’ said the General complacently. ‘This was that silly old hen, Dolly Anglesea. She hasn’t got a single brain to rattle in her skull. Her uncle was just the same. He lost us the Bullenpore Cup in 1895. As good as gave it away. We were in the middle of the last chukka but one, with a clear lead of two goals – look here, have I told you about this before?’

  ‘What had Dolly got to say to you?’ asked Liz hastily. She did, indeed, know the story of Tommy Anglesea’s fatal blunder at Bullenpore in 1895. It had been no trivial blunder, and had not only cost his side the match but (according to Bill) had cost Tommy his Division in the 1914 war.

  ‘About her house,’ said the General.

  ‘Yes. Very upsetting.’’Can’t see why. It’s not as if she was living in it herself. And it’s fully insured. She told me so. I believe she’ll get more for it this way than she’d ever get by trying to sell it. And look at what she’s saved herself. No legal fees, no bother.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Liz. ‘It must be unsettling to have one’s house blown to pieces. Not that it’s anyone’s fault but her own. Why ever did she let a man like MacMorris into it, in the first place?’

  ‘I asked her that. Asked her what references he’d given. And, would you believe it – typical Anglesea – she’d never asked for any references.’

  ‘Never asked for references?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She must be cuckoo.’

  ‘All the Angleseas are like that. I remember her father, once, at a mess meeting—’

  ‘And yet,’ said Liz, ‘in another way, it does make sense.’ She frowned and poured some more boiling water into the heavy silver teapot. ‘The thing I could never understand was this. If MacMorris wasn’t a soldier – and I’m beginning to believe that perhaps Tim’s right about that, and he wasn’t – why should he ever have pretended to be one?’

  ‘People do that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes. But they don’t come to live in this particular neck of the woods. You know that almost every male inhabitant here is Army or ex-Army. We’re not nosey about it. We don’t go round checking up on each other. If a man says, “Oh, I was on the administrative side” or “mostly on the staff”, or something like that, we just gather he wasn’t too proud of his Army record and we leave it alone.’

  ‘Like when you ask a man where he was at school, and he says, “Oh, you won’t have heard of it, a little place in the Midlands,” so you don’t poke any further.’

  ‘Right. If he’s been in the Guards or at Eton he’ll tell you quick enough. So, admitted it was a small risk MacMorris ran. But why run it? That was the point. And the answer’s just struck me. It was his only way of getting a house in this district. He couldn’t produce any references. But he reckoned that with a woman like Dolly Anglesea all he had to do was click his heels and call himself Major and mention the old regiment a couple of times and she wouldn’t worry about references.’

  ‘Nor she did,’ said the General. ‘And if you’re right, it means something else. It means that when MacMorris moved in here – from wherever he did come from – he had some particular reason for coming to this place. There must be lots of easier places to get a home – places where you needn’t invent a phoney military past to get you in.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

  The General swivelled in his chair, focused his frosty blue eyes on Liz and said, ‘Yes. Yes. But why should it worry you?’

  ‘Who says I’m worried?’

  ‘I do,’ said the General. ‘What is it? Something that policeman said?’

  ‘Not really. I told you, I don’t like him much. But he wasn’t offensive. It’s just that you can see a mile away that he’s got an idée fixe about this thing,’

  ‘And you think it’s the wrong one.’

  ‘Yes. He’s quite sure in his own mind – oh, damn. I can’t tell you that bit, it was confidential. Anyway, he’s quite sure that MacMorris had the explosive in the house for no good reason, and it blew him up accidentally.’

  ‘Suppose he’s quite wrong about all that,’ said the General patiently. ‘Why should it worry you?’

  ‘It’s going to take a lot of explaining,’ said Liz. She poured a little of the hot water into the two Meissen china tea-cups
, twirled each one slowly round in her strong fingers, and emptied it into the big silver slop basin. Then she looked up. The General was still watching her, his eyes snapping, but his face very friendly.

  ‘When that first explosion happened – you know what I mean—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When that happened, I shut my mind to it. I thought that was the best thing to do. Naturally, people were shy of talking to me about it. I didn’t ask questions. I was sent a copy of the report of the Court of Inquiry. I tore it up. Then poor Tom Havers’ Court Martial was in all the papers. I wouldn’t read about it. So far as I was concerned, it was an accident. That was the official answer. That was the way it was going to stay. But you can’t dragoon your thoughts forever. On and off, a long time after, I did find myself wondering.’

  ‘I wondered sometimes, too,’ said the General.

  There was a moment of stillness. Then Liz said, ‘I thought I was the only person with enough private information to piece that together. Do you mean to say it had occurred to you, too – that he might have done it himself?’

  The General turned a shocked face on Liz.

  ‘Bill take his own life? What—what damnable nonsense! Who put that into your head?’

  ‘But I don’t understand. Didn’t you say that you sometimes wondered, yourself—’

  ‘Suicide? The thought never entered my head. Bill couldn’t have committed suicide. A moral impossibility. Men of thirty don’t take their own lives – unless they’re mad. And Bill wasn’t mad, I can assure you.’

  ‘Then what exactly,’ said Liz slowly, ‘did you mean?’

  ‘I was going to say that I sometimes wondered if perhaps people hadn’t accepted the accident idea too quickly. Bill, you know, was working on a job that was going to blow a lot of other people sky high – higher than a tonne or two of high explosive. There was any amount of crooked work going on in Cologne at that time. I know, because I was there. You remember I was out there on that Observation Commission – it was the sort of job they were handing out to old has-beens at that time. It wasn’t anything directly to do with me, but I couldn’t help seeing what was going on. It was the first time since Waterloo that we’d found ourselves as conquerors in a European country. And another thing. No one had worked out exactly how you put a war machine, in top gear, into reverse. I can tell you, from my own observation, that new trucks – war orders – went on being made and delivered up to 1921. Plenty of petrol. Plenty of tyres. Surplus steel. Red Cross supplies. Can you imagine the sort of opportunities a few unscrupulous men near the top could find in Germany – or in France – in 1920?’

  ‘I knew a little about that,’ said Liz. ‘Bill told me something, but not much. He said there were some high-up civilian contractors involved. He was pretty worried about it. That’s all I know.’

  ‘If he was worried, you can bet the crooks were too,’ said the General. ‘However. That’s dust and dead leaves now. We’re never likely to know the exact truth. How does it tie up with this one?’

  ‘It doesn’t, of course,’ agreed Liz, ‘There’s no logical connection of any sort. But, at the back of my silly old mind, what I feel is this. There have been two blow-ups in my life. I let the last one go. I don’t want to funk this one.’

  ‘Guilt complex. It’s psychological. I remember the first time I went out after pig. Put up a monster. Overran him on purpose. I was afraid of him, you see. I had to shoot a tiger, on foot, to get it out of my system.’

  Liz began to laugh, helplessly; and the General, after a moment, joined her.

  ‘It’s your metaphors,’ said Liz, when she had recovered. ‘So wildly inappropriate. I don’t think there’s a tiger in either of these explosions. Or a pig, for that matter. But I don’t want to let it go by default.’

  ‘What’s in your mind?’

  ‘I’d just like to find out who MacMorris was, and what he was up to.’

  ‘Hmp!’ said the General. ‘Great respect for the police. If they haven’t been able to do it, I don’t suppose—’

  ‘There are two things about that,’ said Liz. ‘The first is that the police had only just started looking into MacMorris. Luck said so. If they’ve got this idea in their heads that he’s—I mean, about his having explosive in the house—’

  ‘What was he? Burglar? Safe breaker?’

  ‘All right. I didn’t tell you. You guessed it. Yes. That’s what they think. Well, mayn’t they now never really look into him at all? There’s not much percentage in a dead burglar. And suppose the sort of burglaries they were connecting him with should happen to stop now. Then they’ll say, “We were right. Good riddance.”’

  ‘I don’t think they’re quite as easy to satisfy as that,’ said the General. ‘But go on—’

  ‘The other thing is that I’ve got a sort of idea that they’re inviting our help. I think that’s why Luck was allowed to be so indiscreet. It was obvious to me he was doing it on orders from above. I think they calculate that if you want to find out about a person it’s not a bad idea to start by enlisting the interest of his neighbours. We’re so well brought up round here that we never appear to ask any questions but somehow we manage to keep our ears flapping.’

  ‘My dear Liz! What an expression! However, I do see what you mean.’

  ‘Particularly in a place like Brimberley.’

  ‘So you suggest we start an investigation of our own. Not a criminal investigation. A sort of inquiry into MacMorris’ past.’

  ‘You’ll help?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the General. ‘I’ve never done this sort of thing before, but I’ve a feeling I shall be rather good at it. I took up golf at seventy-five.’

  ‘Bless you,’ said Liz.

  ‘I shall begin on the War Office.’ The General’s eyes positively shone at the idea of beginning on the War Office. ‘Have you got any particular ideas yourself?’

  ‘Not an idea, but a photograph.’

  ‘A photograph? Can I see it?’

  ‘I wish you could. But it’s gone. That’s one of the things that makes it so interesting.’

  She explained about the photograph.

  ‘And you’re sure it wasn’t one of Dolly’s that went with the house – like the groups?’

  ‘Tim says not. It was definitely MacMorris. About fifteen years younger. In service dress. Wasn’t service dress for officers abolished in the first year of the war?’

  ‘Officially it went out in 1940. All ranks were supposed to wear battledress. A lot of people went on wearing it, though.’

  ‘Tim says he had a feeling it was pre-war. And then that medal ribbon—’

  ‘Yes. That is odd. Doesn’t sound like a campaign ribbon. Those usually went in batches. And it looked like an M.C.?’

  ‘Tim says so.’

  ‘He ought to know. It’s not impossible. Young officers were getting M.C.’s in the thirties. Palestine, and so on. But still, MacMorris—?’

  ‘It sheds rather a surprising light on his character, if it’s true,’ said Liz.

  ‘How are you going to work this photograph – if you haven’t got it.’

  ‘Tim noticed the name and address of the photographer.’

  ‘I see. Seems a slender lead. Mayn’t be significant at all.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Liz slowly, ‘that the photograph itself is significant. But there’s one point about it you can’t argue away. Someone did take the trouble to remove it. It can’t have been blown to pieces, because it wasn’t anywhere near the heart of the explosion. And I don’t believe the police can have overlooked it. They don’t overlook things like that.’

  Then what’s your idea?’

  ‘I’ve got three ideas,’ said Liz, ‘and you shall have them in order of unlikeliness. The police may be suppressing it themselves for some reason. Someone may have got in after Tim left and removed it. Or MacMorris himself may have spotted Tim taking notice of it – he was quite a sharp person – and may have removed it from the wall and hidden or
destroyed it,’

  ‘If that’s right, he must have calculated it could lead people back to him.’

  ‘Just exactly what I was thinking,’ said Liz.

  II

  When the General reached his own house he looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly six o’clock. There were certain duties connected with this hour in his daily routine: the wireless to turn on so that clocks might be adjusted to the time signal; Sandy (Andy’s successor) to be fed; hens to be dealt with.

  He coped with all this, and poured himself out a drink, the first of the day. Then he sat down with it in the fat leather armchair in the room which was still called his study, and allowed himself the luxury of some reflection at large.

  He thought about the War Office.

  To-morrow was Saturday. Saturday morning was a good moment for an attack on the War Office. Nowadays he had noticed that most officers liked to put in a token appearance on Saturday morning, but they were more than usually free for gossip.

  There were quite a number who might be useful to him, men whose fathers or grandfathers he had known. One or two whose active careers had just overlapped his. Ceremonial duties with the Gentlemen at Arms had kept him in touch with them.

  The front door clicked.

  That would be Sue. Friday evening. She would have been out helping Mrs. Macintyre with library night at the Institute. Now she was going to cook the supper which Mrs. Bannister, the daily, had put ready.

  He wondered, and not for the first time, whether she didn’t do too much of that sort of thing. Social work, housework. All work and no play. She was only just eighteen. At eighteen, a girl ought to be out and about nearly every evening. Dances, balls, dinner parties. Simla in the nineties. Early morning rides round Jakko. His wife-to-be coming into a dance at Vice Regal Lodge on her father’s arm. Low fronts; tight sleeves; ostrich feather, bracelets winking with such tiny diamonds as an impecunious subaltern could afford. A young lady named Vivienne who, he had once fondly imagined—he coughed severely and switched his thoughts back towards the present.