Sky High

by Michael Gilbert

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Tim. ‘In a way, it is.’

  ‘Then you are doing a Secret Service job?’

  ‘I—look here’—said Tim—’you know damned well that if I was I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Sue. ‘And, as I said, I’m not really interested. But whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like work to me.’

  They moved on in silence. By the time they reached your thigh, Tim seemed to remember, the pain was so agonising that you became numbed by it.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said at last. ‘Is it that you don’t like me, or is it that you don’t like the idea that I’m not doing a proper job of work – living on my mother? Go on – say it if you think it.’

  ‘But I never said I didn’t like you,’ said Sue. ‘I’m afraid this is where we part – I’m calling on Mrs. Hitchcock. And what a warning she is against marrying a soldier. Good night.’

  III

  ‘He was what?’

  ‘An actor.’

  ‘Not a soldier?’

  ‘Only on the stage.’

  ‘Good God,’ said the General, adding, automatically, ‘Sorry, Liz.’

  ‘He wasn’t even really an actor. He did walking-on parts. His steadiest employment was in the Gilbert & Sullivan Chorus. Iolanthe.’

  ‘And which was he? A peer or a peri?’

  ‘Don’t be catty,’ said Liz, and added, ‘Te turn te tiddy turn. “A Lordly vengeance will pursue all kinds of common people who oppose our views or boldly choose to offer us offence.”’

  ‘Then what was the photograph? That wasn’t anything from Iolanthe.’

  ‘That was his big part. Lieutenant Harkness in the Ace of Clubs. Did you see it? Just before the war.’

  ‘Certainly not. Did you?’

  ‘Once – after a good dinner.’

  ‘Then you remember MacMorris?’

  ‘Not exactly. He hadn’t a very long part. He comes in at the end of the Court Martial scene and hands Major Rutland a revolver and says, “The Regiment is a bigger thing than you are, Major.’”

  ‘My God,’ said the General.

  ‘He was on the stage, in a sort of way, till the end of 1944. That’s about a year before he came here.’

  ‘Then he never fought in the war at all?’

  ‘No real reason he should,’ said Liz fairly. ‘According to this he was forty when it started.’

  ‘Impossible. That would make him well over fifty.’

  ‘Actors have their secrets—’ began Liz, and was interrupted by a bellow of laughter from the General. He rarely laughed, but when he did the effort was unstinted. He was unable to speak for a long time.

  The Regiment,’ he gasped at last, ‘is a bigger thing than you. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

  ‘It does explain quite a lot. In fact, I should say it answers all the questions except the important ones. Such as, why did he come here?

  ‘Sense of humour. Ha ha ha. Second Lieutenant Harkness. Ho ho ho.’

  ‘Improbable,’ said Liz calmly. ‘A joke’s a joke but it would wear thin after five years or so. But suppose you’re right. Suppose he retired here and called himself Major MacMorris from a misguided sense of humour. Or for no particular reason at all. People don’t have to have a reason for everything they do. Then tell me this. What did he live on?’

  ‘Live on?’

  ‘No one,’ said Liz, ‘could stand the life of an ageing third-class actor, a hanger-on of the West End stage, unless he had absolutely no other means or way of living. The only reason for persevering would be the hope of a lucky break – which would give you enough to retire on. Well, he didn’t get it.’ She looked again at the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand. ‘His parts got smaller and smaller. So small, they almost became invisible. Yet suddenly, he managed to retire. And to live down here. Not luxuriously, but well enough.’

  ‘Perhaps he did get that break. Not on the stage. Something else.’

  ‘That,’ said Liz, ‘is just what I was thinking.’

  Chapter Eight

  LIZ MARCATO: TIM RADDOLCENDO

  Costard: ‘Thou pigeon-egg of discretion.’

  “So you see,’ said Liz, ‘MacMorris wasn’t a Major. He wasn’t in the Army at all.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you mean, “Yes”?’

  ‘I meant,’ said Inspector Luck patiently, ‘that we had already ascertained that fact.’ He added, with a smile that could have meant anything, ‘We, too, have our avenues of information, though not perhaps at the same level as General Palling.’

  ‘If you’ve found that out, then I expect you know who he really was.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Play the game. I’m not going to tell it all to you for the fun of hearing you say, “As a matter of fact we knew it all the time.” Either you have found out who MacMorris was or you haven’t.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said the Inspector crossly, ‘no.’

  ‘All right, then. He was an out-of-work actor called Don Trefusis. At least, that was the name he used with the agencies and on the stage. I can’t believe it’s the name he received at the font.’

  ‘Don Trefusis.’ The Inspector made an inconspicuous note.

  ‘If you should experience any difficulty in tracing his antecedents, Bart’s Theatrical Agency in the Charing Cross Road will tell you all you want to know about him. Unless,’ she added with an ill-bred grin, ‘your union insists on you using your own avenues of information.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Inspector, ‘I’m very obliged to you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Chalk it up to me next time you catch me driving without a tail-lamp,’ said Liz. ‘The real point is, where do we go from here?’

  ‘I don’t quite—’

  ‘Lord love us. That’s only the beginning. It’s nothing at all by itself. Don’t you see the possibilities it opens up.’

  ‘Well –’ said the Inspector. He seemed to be choosing his words with more than usual care. ‘Since we know, now, that MacMorris wasn’t really a soldier, he had to have been something else. The fact that he was formerly an actor doesn’t seem, by itself, to prove anything very much.’

  ‘Mills of God,’ said Liz. ‘Of course it doesn’t. But ask yourself two questions. If he was going to play at soldiers, why come here? If you were going to pretend to be a policeman you wouldn’t go and live at Scotland Yard. Or, come to think of it, might you? Double bluff? No, I don’t think so. Too subtle, and out of character.’

  She looked inquiringly at the Inspector who opened his mouth and closed it again slowly, exactly like a fish at feeding time.

  ‘The second point is even simpler. What did he live on?’

  ‘As to that,’ began Inspector Luck judgmatically, ‘I take it—’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to suggest that he came into money.’

  The words thus neatly whisked out of his very mouth, the Inspector was forced to fall back on looking cross and inscrutable.

  ‘The poor old actor,’ said Liz, ‘who hasn’t had a part in six months. Last pair of shoes worn out staggering through the snow, from agency to agency, now staying in bed to keep warm and preserve his only suit. Enter the family lawyer. “Mr. Trefingle? Your aunt, Lady Trefingle, has died and left you a hundred thousand pounds. Here’s five hundred on account. Apply to me as soon as you want some more.” Corn. If you can believe that you can believe anything.’

  ‘I didn’t say—’

  ‘And suppose he had come into money – some real steady settled income – dividends, that sort of thing. Then tell me this. Why didn’t he have a bank account?’

  ‘How on earth,’ said the Inspector, ‘can you know that he didn’t?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know it. I haven’t been inquiring round the banks. Not that they’d have told me anything if I had. But I do happen to know that he paid all his local bills in cash. Even quite large ones. And don’t ask me how I know that. I do know it. I’ve got friends.’

  It was then that the In
spector decided to come off whatever high horse he had been riding. He said, and without too much stuffiness in his voice: ‘So what do you make of it?’

  ‘There, now,’ said Liz. ‘That’s a fair question. I’ve had longer to think about it than you so I’ll give you my idea first. I think he must have found a gimmick. That would account for the money, and it would explain why he came down here to keep an eye on it. You’ve got to nurse a gimmick, or, like the Snark, it fades away.’

  ‘A—?’

  ‘American expression. It doesn’t translate into one word in English. It means—it means some secret source which produces a steady income which you don’t have to work for. Sometimes it’s just a trick – like knowing how to make three lemons come up together on the fruit machine. But it can be even easier than that. You know something, and someone is prepared to pay you not to say it. Then it really is money for nothing. Like famous film stars, who get paid large sums for not acting.’

  ‘Then the supposition would be—that someone in this area – yes, I see. It’s a bit vague, isn’t it?’

  These things are always vague to start with. What you have to do is get busy and trace MacMorris’ friends. Who came to see him? Who did he call on, openly? Who did he visit secretly? Who knew him but pretended not to?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Inspector. He did not sound very happy about it.

  ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes. He’s been here six or seven years, you see.’

  ‘He wasn’t very social man,’ said Liz. ‘He was in the choir – and just what we’re going to do for a tenor for our Harvest Festival Anthem I don’t like to think. He played a little tennis – Lucy Mallory used to partner him. He knew General Palling, and the Vicar. He sometimes rode Bob Cleeve’s horses and he once tried to buy a car off Jim Hedges. He knew me – I wouldn’t have described him as a friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Inspector again. ‘Well, it’s been very good of you. Thank you very much.’

  ‘That sounds like a brush-off,’ said Liz. ‘Give me a straight answer to a straight question. Are you going to follow up what I’ve told you?’

  ‘I don’t think,’ said the Inspector in an exceedingly reasonable tone of voice, ‘that I’d be at liberty to discuss actual police plans with you.’

  ‘Fair enough. But I warn you. When I was a girl my headmistress wrote on my report “Has little brain, but when she does get an idea she sticks to it.” And just so that you won’t think I’m doing anything behind your back, I’m warning you. My next call this morning is on Tom Pearce.’

  When she had gone the Inspector went across to the shelf and got down his well-thumbed dictionary. First he tried the ‘G’s’; then the ‘J’s’. He didn’t have any luck in either.

  Pearce (whose Christian name was Cecil, but a fellow Devonian at Peel House had called him Tom, and the name had followed him round ever since) looked like a successful banker. He was, in cold fact, a successful Chief Constable; which is a role in which real success is a good deal harder to come by than in any bank.

  He attended to all that Liz had to say, without interrupting, coiling it all away in the orderly recesses of his mind.

  At the conclusion of it he turned his candid, grey eyes full on to her and said, ‘Tell me, Mrs. Artside, are you dissatisfied with the Inspector’s handling of this matter?’

  This was such a sharp jab below the belt that it took Liz a little time to get her breath back.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t—I mean to say, I think he’s made the right moves so far. I expect he would have found out about MacMorris’ past soon enough. I wouldn’t have got it myself without outrageous luck.’

  ‘Then—’

  ‘All the same, it’s not quite fair to ask me if I’m happy about his handling of the case. He hasn’t really started to handle it yet. And I’ve got a feeling – no more – that he’s going to backpedal on it.’

  ‘Luck doesn’t give one the impression that he’s over-flowing with mental alertness or bursting with vigour,’ agreed the Chief Constable. ‘All the same, in my view, he’s a good policeman of a rather old-fashioned sort. And I don’t think it’s fair to prejudge him.’

  ‘All right,’ said Liz. ‘Just so long as he hasn’t prejudged the case. MacMorris was a cracksman. MacMorris had cordite. MacMorris blew himself up. End of cracksman. End of case.’

  The Chief Constable opened his eyes slightly.

  ‘Did Luck tell you that? About MacMorris being a cracksman?’

  Liz hesitated.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t he supposed to?’

  ‘So long as he had every confidence in your discretion,’ said the Chief Constable with a smile that travelled almost all the way up to his eyes. ‘I don’t suppose any great harm was done.’

  II

  ‘It’s like trying to swim through a treacle pudding,’ said Liz.

  ‘Never tried it,’ said Cleeve. ‘Sounds a bit dispiriting.’

  ‘It is dispiriting. But there’s a broad distinction between being dispirited and being choked off. I refuse to be choked off.’

  ‘That’s the stuff.’

  ‘And don’t you dare blow your silly moustache at me and give me your “poor little woman” routine. Because I warn you, I’m serious.’

  ‘You’re not only serious,’ said Cleeve, blinking at her. ‘You’re terrifying.’

  ‘Then instead of trying to gammon me, just explain what it’s all about?’

  ‘Don’t want to appear obstructive. But what’s all what about?’

  ‘You know as well as I do. Why is it that everyone has made up their mind to sit heavily on this case? Why is it being played down? Even the papers are calling it an accident now. Not that anyone has troubled to explain just why a retired Major (alleged) should have enough cordite in his attic to blow his house into two bits. Maybe a public brought up on Giles and Low thinks that all retired Majors keep explosives round the house. And there’s nothing about the anonymous letter, I observe.’

  ‘The anonymous letter,’ said Cleeve. ‘Yes, it’s a real puzzler, that. I honestly think, if the truth were known, MacMorris wrote it himself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s one of the things that’s giving Tom Pearce and his boys a headache.’

  ‘All right. I accept that the police may want to keep quiet about the letter, particularly if they think it was a fake. But why are they conditioning themselves into thinking that the whole thing was an accident? And don’t tell me they aren’t. I had an hour of Luck this morning and I could hear the needle going round in the grooves. MacMorris was a burglar. MacMorris blew himself up. Good riddance.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘Do you think it was an accident?’

  The Chairman turned the light of his countenance fully upon Liz. His washed blue eyes were the colour of the clear evening sky after a blatter of rain; and just about as communicative.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I honestly don’t know. Twenty-four hours ago I should have said, “Yes.” Now I’m not sure.’

  ‘Because of what I unearthed in London?’

  ‘Partly because of that.’

  ‘Was it you who told Luck he could tell me about MacMorris’ past?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cleeve, without even blinking.

  ‘Because you guessed I’d scuttle round and find something out for you quick.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I did, too,’ said Liz.

  ‘And now I’m going to say something to you, in return,’ said Cleeve. ‘Something you’ll have to keep quite quiet about. If we can succeed in persuading everyone that the MacMorris case is closed, if people can be induced to stop thinking about it, and think, instead, about the Harvest Festival Anthem, and Guy Fawkes and their Christmas shopping, then, and only then, we may be able to do something useful.’

  ‘I don’t quite see—’

  ‘My dear Liz,’ said Cleeve gently, ‘You know this part of the world. They’re qui
te level-headed folk. But just what sort of crisis do you think we should provoke if they realised that there was someone living among them who was capable of blowing up any one of them, in their beds, to-night? Particularly as the police can’t offer much protection until they discover just who is gunning for whom and why.’

  III

  When Tim got home that night he cracked his shins on the dining-room table, which had been moved out into the hall, and, when he had edged past it and into the dining-room he found the chairs arranged in two rows and the portable harmonium blocking the sideboard, and it came to his mind that Monday was treble practice night.

  This reminded him of something else, and he went to look for his mother, who was in the kitchen, with Anna, icing cakes.

  ‘Have we found another tenor yet?’ he asked.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Liz. ‘I think we may have. Thanks to Luck.’

  ‘Luck?’

  ‘Not luck, Luck. When I saw him this morning he happened to mention that Sergeant Gattie was the absolute mainstay of their police choral society. Gattie was very modest about it when I saw him, but I really think he might do it for us.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ said Tim. ‘Singing that tenor solo was not one of the things I was looking forward to most. Come to think of it, this will be the second time Gattie has saved my bacon.’ When Liz looked inquiring, he added, ‘In Jerusalem, in 1947, he shot a gentleman in a bowler hat who was on the point of tossing a hand grenade into the back of a car I was driving. What are we doing about supper?’

  I’ll think about that when I’ve got rid of the trebles. Why don’t you go down to the church and give a hand with the flowers?’

  ‘Because I don’t know the first thing about flowers.’

  ‘I don’t imagine Sue is all that expert, either. Couldn’t you hump round the heavy lectern vases whilst she does the actual arranging?’

  ‘Why, yes. I could do that,’ said Tim. ‘Yes. I could certainly do that.’