The Crack In the Teacup

by Michael Gilbert

  The noise burst over the platform like a winter sea over the rocks. Anthony shouted to Sellinge, “That makes it a draw. A great big bloody stalemate.”

  “It’s nothing of the bloody sort,” screamed Sellinge. “You’ve forgotten Mike Viney. As Mayor-elect he’s Chairman, and that gives him a casting vote. Which he’ll bloody well use.”

  Some people were forcing their way through the crowd.

  It was Inspector Knox, with Brennan and a policeman behind him. They were making for the Chief Constable, who bent his head down to listen.

  “It’s Ashford,” said Knox. “One of the men on Andrews’ Farm spotted the Aston Martin in some bushes near Caesar’s Camp. He looked into the old spotters’ shelter and saw a man asleep on some sacks at the back. He didn’t disturb him, but telephoned us at the station. I sent a car up straight away.”

  “If you’ve got any transport here, I’d like to go up myself,” said the Chief Constable.

  “There’s another car back at the station—”

  “Quicker if you use mine,” said Anthony. “It’s parked just behind the hall. I can take all three of you.”

  Knox said, doubtfully, “You’ll have to keep your head down. His sister tells me he’s got a gun.”

  As they bumped along in the car towards Andrews’ Farm Anthony said, “Were the fingerprints Ashford’s?”

  Knox said, “Yes, both lots.”

  Nothing more was said until they drew up near the end of the lane.

  The police car was parked on the farther side of it. They saw, in the light of its headlamps, one man half-lying, half-leaning against the bank, his coat open, and another man kneeling beside him.

  Knox said, “What’s happened, Appleby?”

  Sergeant Appleby said, “We tried to rush him. He got Jack Tovey through the shoulder. It’s not too serious. Lamb is up there, watching him, now.”

  “All right,” said Knox. “You’d better stay here. I’ll go up and have a word with Lamb—”

  They heard someone shout. Then the noise of a car starting. Then the rising note of its engine as it came down the lane, straight towards them.

  “Block the end of the lane,” roared Knox. Anthony, who was standing beside his own car with Brennan, heard him and understood what he wanted, but too late. Before he could even get his own car door open the red Aston Martin had come rocketing out of the lane, tyres screaming and scuttering on the rough surface, had swung through a right-angle in a racing turn, hit Anthony’s car a raking blow and accelerated away up the road towards Barhaven. “Let’s get after him,” said the Chief Constable.

  “Not in my car,” said Anthony. “He’s burst the off-side front tyre.”

  They turned to the police car. The sergeant said, unhappily, “Lamb’s the driver. And he’s got the key with him.”

  “Quicker to telephone,” said Brennan. “There’ll be a phone in that farm. I can see the wires—”

  Knox went off at a shambling run. The others stood listening. They could hear the noise of the Aston Martin, a sudden spurt of sound as the driver changed down to swing out into the main road; then a steady, diminuendo beat.

  “He’s heading east, along the coast road,” said Anthony.

  Since it was the last night of their holiday Mr. and Mrs. Burgess took a longer after-dinner stroll than usual. They passed the end of the promenade extension, reached the spot where the inland by-pass joined the road to Splash Point and walked a quarter of a mile down along it. Here, where the road turned sharply inland again, there was a low wall of cliff, giving on to a strip of rock and shingle. It was a favourite spot for picknickers. The children would bring shrimping nets and dabble hopefully under the seaweed in the rock pools which the tide scoured out and refilled for them twice daily.

  “It’d be nice to collect a few shells for the front path,” said Mrs. Burgess.

  There were half-a-dozen tracks down the face of the bluff, easily negotiable by day.

  “No,” said Mr. Burgess. “Don’t let’s risk a sprained ankle. Not on the last day of our holiday. We’ll sit here for five minutes, and then walk back.”

  “It’s been a lovely holiday,” said Mrs. Burgess. She said this at the end of every holiday.

  “I must confess that I’m a little disappointed in Barhaven. As a town, I mean. First, one can’t forget the terrible business of James Sudderby. Then that election. It’s not what one comes to the seaside for.”

  “I was wondering. Do you think, next summer, we might try somewhere abroad?”

  “Abroad?” Mr. Burgess considered the suggestion. Abroad was not a place he approved of. The language was strange, the water suspect.

  “If we did,” said Mrs. Burgess, “we might persuade Eric to come with us. I know he does very good work with those Sunshine Boys of his, but it’s three years now since we’ve had him with us.”

  “Well—” said Mr. Burgess. And then, “Listen to that” A car was coming, very fast. “Speeding, on a road like this. Asking for trouble. Good God, the fool—”

  The red Aston Martin braked as it reached the corner. On a clear surface it might have made the turn. On loose gravel and flint it had no chance. The turn became a sideways skid. Wheels locked, the front bumper hit the white painted marker stone on the corner, the car turned on its side, hung for a second, and then somersaulted right over and landed on the rocks with a thick crunch, more horrible than anything that had gone before.

  Mrs. Burgess recovered first. She shook her husband by the arm. “We must do something. He may be hurt.” For some reason, she was whispering.

  Mr. Burgess said, sharply, “What’s that? What did you say?”

  “Oughtn’t we to go down?”

  “Damned fool. Driving like that. He hadn’t even got his headlights on. Suppose we’d been walking on the road. He could easily have hit us.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to go and see—”

  Mr. Burgess put one foot on the uprooted marker stone, and peered down. They could see the body of the driver. He had been flung clear of the car, and was lying, face downwards.

  “No, I don’t,” said Mr. Burgess, angrily.

  “Suppose he’s still alive.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Doris. Does he look as if he’s alive?”

  Mrs. Burgess shook her head. Her brief instinct of humanitarianism had evaporated. She had no desire to go down and look closely at the thing which was spread over the rocks like a star-fish.

  “Besides,” said Mr. Burgess, more rationally, “if we get mixed up in this, we shall never get home tomorrow. There’ll be an inquest, endless delays. Much better leave it.”

  Driven by the night breeze the tide was coming in fast. It splashed over the rocks, bursting into little heads of spray, lipped over the shingle, filled up the pools. As it drove in it smoothed out the footmarks, picked up the flotsam and jetsam, washed away the debris and mess of the day.

  It washed away a lot of blood, too.

  Chapter Thirty

  Afterwards

  Almost exactly a year later, Anthony said to his wife, “I heard something today which made me wonder whether what we went through last summer was really worth it.”

  “Of course it was worth it,” said Ann. “What did you hear?”

  “Sellinge and his group have signed up with Greyslates to do the western development.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Colonel Barrow.”

  “He ought to be pleased with the way things came out.”

  “I’m not sure. He’ll want to quit sooner or later. If we hadn’t stopped the eastern scheme, he could have sold the school grounds at a fat profit and made enough to retire on.”

  “You did what was right,” said Ann, “and that’s all that matters.”

  “I wish,” said Anthony, “that someone would prove to me, factually and statistically, that you improve matters by doing what’s right. We’ve made a lot of money for Sellinge and his friends, and Greyslates will reap a handsome profit. We’v
e put the Progressives into power, by the narrow margin of a casting vote, and that means that it’s a bad and ineffective Council. I’m told that Arthur Ambrose talks so much that they can never get any business done, and I don’t believe that any of the new people are in the same class as Raymond Southern. And who have we got in place of Ashford? Useless Eustace! He can’t keep law and order in the town. You can say what you like about Ashford’s morals, we didn’t have Mod-and-Rocker riots when he was in charge.”

  “You’ve got rid of Macintyre, anyway.”

  “A fat lot he cares. He got all the money he wanted. He’s suing the Gazette for libel and the Council for wrongful dismissal – and he had the nerve to ask me to act for him.”

  “The world isn’t perfect,” said Ann, “but look what you got out of it. A lot of credit, and a lot of new clients, and Dudley as a partner—and me—”

  “That’s true,” said Anthony.

  “And Gerard.”

  Gerard Brydon was lying on his back on the floor staring at the ceiling in an unfocused manner.

  “I was working out the other day,” said Anthony. “He ought to be through his Law Finals by 1990.”

  Gerard gave a thoughtful burp.

  Michael Gilbert Titles in order of first publication

  All Series titles can be read in order, or randomly as standalone novels

  Inspector Hazlerigg

  Close Quarters (1947)

  They Never Looked Inside (alt: He Didn’t Mind Danger) (1948)

  The Doors Open (1949)

  Smallbone Deceased (1950)

  Death has Deep Roots (1951)

  Fear To Tread (in part)(1953)

  The Young Petrella (included) (short stories)(1988)

  The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Mysteries (included) (short stories)(1997)

  Patrick Petrella

  Blood and Judgement (1959)

  Amateur in Violence (included) (short stories) (1973)

  Petrella at Q (short stories) (1977)

  The Young Petrella (short stories) (1988)

  Roller Coaster (1993)

  The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Mysteries (included) (short stories) (1997)

  Luke Pagan

  Ring of Terror (1995)

  Into Battle (1997)

  Over and Out (1998)

  Calder & Behrens

  Game Without Rules (short stories) (1967)

  Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens (short stories) (1982)

  Non-Series

  Death in Captivity (alt: The Danger Within) (1952)

  Sky High (alt: The Country House Burglar) (1955)

  Be Shot for Sixpence (1956)

  After the Fine Weather (1963)

  The Crack in the Teacup (1966)

  The Dust and the Heat (alt: Overdrive) (1967)

  The Etruscan Net (alt: The Family Tomb) (1969)

  Stay of Execution and Other Stories (short stories) (1971)

  The Body of a Girl (1972)

  The Ninety-Second Tiger (1973)

  Flash Point (1974)

  The Night of the Twelfth (1976)

  The Empty House (1979)

  The Killing of Katie Steelstock (alt: Death of a Favourite Girl) (1980)

  The Final Throw (alt: End Game) (1982)

  The Black Seraphim (1984)

  The Long Journey Home (1985)

  Trouble (1987)

  Paint, Gold, and Blood (1989)

  Anything for a Quiet Life (short stories) (1990)

  The Queen against Karl Mullen (1992)

  Synopses (Both Series & ‘Stand-alone’ Titles)

  Published by House of Stratus

  After The Fine Weather

  When Laura Hart travels to Austria to visit her brother, vice-consul of Lienz in the Tyrol, she briefly meets an American who warns her of the mounting political tension. Neo-Nazis are stirring trouble in the province, and xenophobia is rife between the Austrians who control the area and the Italian locals. Then Laura experiences the troubles first-hand, a shocking incident that suggests Hofrat Humbold, leader of the Lienz government is using some heavy-handed tactics. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he is unwilling to let one little English girl destroy his plans for the largest Nazi move since the war, and Laura makes a dangerous enemy.

  Anything For A Quiet Life

  Jonas Pickett, lawyer and commissioner of oaths is nearing retirement, but still has lots of energy. However, he leaves the pressure of a London practice behind to set up a new modest office in a quiet seaside resort. He soon finds that he is overwhelmed with clients and some of them involve him in very odd and sometimes dangerous cases. This collection of inter-linked stories tells how these are brought to a conclusion; ranging from an incredible courtroom drama involving a gipsy queen to terrorist thugs who make their demands at gunpoint.

  Be Shot For Sixpence

  A gripping spy thriller with a deserved reputation. Philip sees an announcement in The Times from an old school friend who has instructed the newspaper to publish only if they don’t hear from him. This sets a trail running through Europe, with much of the action taking place on the Austro-Hungarian border. The Kremlin, defectors, agitators and the People’s Court set the background to a very realistic story that could well have happened …

  The Black Seraphim

  James Scotland, a young pathologist, decides on a quiet holiday in Melchester, but amid the cathedral town’s quiet medieval atmosphere, he finds a hornet’s nest of church politics, town and country rivalries, and murder. He is called upon to investigate and finds that some very curious alliances between the church, state and business exist. With modern forensic pathology he unravels the unvarnished truth about Melchester, but not before a spot of unexpected romance intervenes.

  Blood & Judgement

  When the wife of a recently escaped prisoner is found murdered and partially buried near a reservoir, Patrick Petrella, a Metropolitan Police Inspector, is called in. Suspicion falls on the escaped convict, but what could have been his motive? Petrella meets resistance from top detectives at the Yard who would prefer to keep the inspector out of the limelight, but he is determined to solve the mystery with or without their approval.

  The Body Of A Girl

  Detective Chief Inspector Mercer is called to the scene when a skeleton of a girl is found on Westlaugh Island in the upper reaches of the River Thames. What appears to be a straightforward and routine investigation, however, leads to unexpected events and a string of unlikely characters, including a lawyer and a one armed garage proprietor. Nothing seems to fit together and it seems the sleepy town holds many secrets. The finale involves two nights of dramatic violence and it isn’t until this stage is reached that the twisted truth finally emerges.

  Close Quarters

  It has been more than a year since Cannon Whyte fell 103 feet from the cathedral gallery, yet unease still casts a shadow over the peaceful lives of the Close’s inhabitants. In an apparently separate incident, head verger Appledown is being persecuted: a spate of anonymous letters and random acts of vandalism imply that he is inefficient and immoral. But then the notes turn threatening, and when Appledown is found dead, Inspector Hazlerigg is called in. Investigations suggest that someone directly connected to the cathedral is responsible, and it is up to Hazlerigg to get to the heart of the corruption.

  The Crack In The Teacup

  Barhaven is on the south coast within commuting distance from London. It is, however, a fairly sleepy place and it seems incredulous that it could be the kind of town where the local councillors could manage to line their own pockets. However, there is something odd about the borough engineers behaviour, and it seems strange that the owner of the local amusement park is unknown, and the Town Clerk himself is acting peculiarly. Enter a young lawyer, who finds himself at the centre of a major campaign against racketeering. The public and the press become involved and it ends with a twist that is totally unexpected.

  Death Has Deep Roots

  This is a detective and trial story with a complic
ated plot that will grip the reader. Victoria Lamartine is on trial for the murder of her supposed lover, whom she is accused of having stabbed. There are only five suspects including Lamartine. But evidence that doesn’t fit the police theory of the crime has been ignored, whilst all of the damming evidence is presented in isolation. Intriguingly, whilst the murder was committed in England, all of the suspects somehow have a past connection with France and its wartime underground. However, there now appears to be links to gold smuggling and it is not immediately clear how all of the different pieces of evidence fit together. As always, Gilbert neatly takes the reader to a satisfying final twist and conclusion.

  Death In Captivity

  A suspected informer is found dead in a collapsed section of an escape tunnel being dug in a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy. So as to protect the tunnel the prisoners decide to move the body to another that has already been abandoned. But then the fascist captors declare the death to be murder and determine to investigate and execute the officer they suspect was responsible. It therefore becomes a race against time to find the true culprit and Captain Henry "Cuckoo" Goyles, a former headmaster, master tunneller and sometime amateur detective takes on the case.

  The Doors Open

  One night on a commuter train, Paddy Yeatman-Carter sees a man attempting suicide. Intervening, he prevents the man from going through with it. However, the very next day the same man is found dead, and Paddy believes the circumstances to be extremely suspicious. Roping in his friend and lawyer, Nap Rumbold, he determines to discover the truth. They become increasingly suspicious of the dead man’s employers: the Stalagmite Insurance Company, who appear to hire some very dangerous staff.

  The Dust And The Heat