Dead to the World

by Francis Durbridge

  Station Four, shadowing Jimmy Wade, reported that he had dashed out of his lodgings in Ocklynge and into a green Mini Minor which had driven up outside and stopped for only a few seconds. Station Four’s bakery van was equipped with two-way R/T, so both Wade and Antoinette were safely under control. As the reports came in, detailing the route they were taking, it became obvious where their destination lay.

  Twenty minutes later all doubt was removed.

  Hyde barked commands to the technicians in the radio room. ‘Alert Station Five! Tell them to keep a sharp look-out for the arrival of a green Mini Minor, and to contact Station Four which will arrive on her tail!’

  Ruth whispered to Holt, ‘Which is Station Five?’

  ‘My guess is Newhaven,’ came the reply.

  ‘Guess correct,’ Hyde said over his shoulder. He ordered maps of the English Channel and pored over them.

  ‘Are you going to let those two board the Sunset?’ Ruth asked in astonishment.

  ‘If that’s their plan, yes.’

  ‘And you’ll let them sail?’

  ‘Again, yes, if that seems to be their plan.’

  ‘But that’s slipping the country! Can they do that?’

  ‘It isn’t a criminal offence if their passports are in order. I want to see where they’ll go.’

  Ruth loooked at her watch. ‘How are you going to manage that? It’ll soon be dark.’

  Hyde smiled reassuringly. ‘We’ll manage – with the help of radar.’

  A telephonist called out, ‘Ballistics on the wire for you, Inspector!’

  Hyde hurried to take the call. When he returned a minute later a grim nod told Holt and Ruth all they needed to know. ‘The same calibre! – Sergeant, I want two squad cars, fully-manned and armed, immediately! We’re picking up Milton. He carries a gun and can use it effectively!’

  As he bustled from the room he patted Ruth’s shoulder. ‘Sorry, Ruth, this one’s not for unarmed civilians. You stay behind and hold the fort. We’ll be back within a quarter of an hour.’

  Ruth looked more jaded than ever.

  In the squad car en route to The Golden Peacock Hyde said pensively, ‘In a way I’m almost sorry I’ve got to arrest Milton. I’ve no choice, of course, it’s my duty to pick him up. But I’d have preferred to have him wandering around free, just to see where he’d lead us.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Holt. ‘At least we’ve got three of them tucked away on the Sunset. I wonder which is Christopher?’

  Hyde shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let’s ask Ashley Milton.’

  Unfortunately Mr Milton was not at home.

  Nobody knew, at first, how it had happened. The plain-clothes couple on duty near the bandstand swore that he had not left the restaurant by the front entrance; the man watching the back door was equally certain. A thorough search of Milton’s private apartment revealed nothing other than some hints pointing to a hasty departure.

  It was not until many vital minutes had elapsed that some muffled moans from the Ladies’ Lavatory attracted the search party’s attention.

  The door was locked and they had to break in by force. There they discovered a scarlet-faced elderly woman, bound and gagged and minus her jacket and skirt. When the mortified lady had been released and supplied with temporary covering only a very unobservant person would have failed to notice how exceptionally tall she was, for a woman.

  Just about as tall as Ashley Milton.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The twin-engined blue and white Beechcraft lifted smoothly off the runway at Orly and climbed towards low clouds. As Holt unfastened his seat-belt and glanced back, rain spattered over the passengers’ windows and obscured his brief view of the lights of Paris.

  ‘That visit was short and sweet,’ he said dryly to Inspector Hyde, who sat opposite him in the small but comfortable aircraft. ‘There was I, all set to enjoy a stag weekend in the sinful city without a bossy secretary nagging at my elbow, and then you insist on leaving almost as soon as we’ve arrived.’

  ‘You can blame Ashley Milton for that.’ Hyde rubbed his palm across sleep-starved eyes. ‘There’s nothing I would have enjoyed more than a good meal and an evening at the Lido myself. Instead of that, we’ve had a sandwich and just about worked the clock round.’

  ‘Damn Mr Milton! Who would have thought such a languid creature could have shown such a turn of speed?’

  The Inspector nodded grimly.

  Milton had indeed surprised them. By the time his escape from the restaurant in the guise of a tall and somewhat angular female had been discovered he had reached the private flying-field near Polegate and taken off in a chartered plane held at instant readiness for just such an emergency. He had thus, in a matter of minutes, succeeded in bypassing the clamp-down on all air and sea transport leaving the country which Scotland Yard had ordered.

  Interpol had picked up the trail when the plane had been spotted parked near a hangar on a field near Le Havre. The Sunset had left Newhaven and was steering a course almost due south, so it seemed likely that Le Havre was the meeting place and Hyde had made arrangements for a reception committee when the Sunset should arrive there.

  Then a storm in the Channel had sprung up. The first inkling that they were reading the minds of the enemy falsely came in the shape of a telephone call from the French Sûreté in Paris. Jules Dunant’s apartment, no great distance from the eighteenth Arrondissement where the illegal printing press had been discovered, had been broken into and set on fire. A short while later news was flashed that the Sunset, under cover of darkness and the sudden storm, had made a ninety-degree change of course and was steaming due west at full speed.

  In an atmosphere of acute concern and nervous tension Holt had studied maps of the Channel and Northern France with Hyde and other police officers.

  ‘Where the devil are they heading for? Cherbourg? The Channel Isles? St Malo? Or are they just running before the storm until the wind drops and they can turn back for Le Havre?’ Hyde was nonplussed.

  Holt had then offered a suggestion. ‘Supposing that was just a blind? From Newhaven, Le Havre and Dieppe are the standard ports to steam for – it’s too obvious. I’d say that they’re making for somewhere else, and that Ashley Milton’s in Paris. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had some unfinished business with Dunant to attend to before joining up with the Sunset. If we’re lucky, we might pick up his trail in Paris. How quickly could we be there?’

  They had flown within the hour in a police chartered Beechcraft and, on meeting the Inspector’s opposite numbers of the Sûreté, had rushed immediately to Dunant’s apartment.

  No one had actually expected to find Milton there, nor did they think he would have been kind enough to leave a visiting-card, but in a way he had done so, for the attempt to burn all evidence of the Christopher organisation in Dunant’s flat echoed the attempt to burn Vance’s body.

  Enough evidence was salvaged, in addition to that which the French police had previously amassed, to make the general pattern a lot clearer.

  Jules Dunant, the French officials explained, was a frustrated artist. His lack of recognition in the Parisian world of art had made him turn in bitterness to the lucrative field of forgery. Although his activities had been suspected for some time, the Sûreté had deliberately held back, trying to discover his outlets. It was no crime to paint copies of Old Masters; the matter became criminal only when the copies were passed off as originals and sold to gullible clients for huge sums. This was where the link across the Channel, namely Deanfriston, came in.

  Dunant had posed as manager of a large retail newsagent’s. Considerable quantities of French newspapers and magazines were despatched each week, some being sent abroad, and this had been Dunant’s source of export. The forged paintings had been smuggled out of the country, one at a time, at irregular intervals, concealed in the bulky parcels.

  Holt had spotted the connection directly. ‘Now I understand why Vance had so many French periodicals in his study, althou
gh Legere told me he couldn’t speak a word of French!’

  The explanation of the private printing press reproducing newspapers eighty years old was also forthcoming. Jules Dunant’s speciality was the period of the French Impressionists when most of the painters of that prolific school had been at the height of their powers. The alleged masterpieces were ‘found’ in attics and at remote jumble sales, and in order to make the fakes look more authentic they were generally ‘discovered’ wrapped in tattered, yellowing newspapers more than half a century old. It was a clever touch; an old frame was a useful adjunct, but the use of contemporary newspapers, suitably dusty and specially treated to give the appearance of age, showed the finesse of real genius and must often have clinched a deal.

  The significance of the signet ring and the exact identity of the head of the Christopher organisation had not yet been cleared up, but several minor pieces of the mystery now fitted into place. It had been Vance’s weighty books on the History of Art which Milton had dragged away at midnight in a sack, probably for fear that incriminating notes might have been made in the margins. At first Holt wondered how he had failed to notice their absence on the following morning, then he realised that it would have been easy for Milton to fill the empty spaces on the shelves with volumes from the various piles lying about the room, and the switch would not have been obvious. The slip of paper which had fallen from the pages of the book on Claude Monet had stemmed from Dunant’s printing press.

  The invisible-ink code on the Christopher postcard now explained itself. CP, MU(2), AR, EM, CM simply informed Vance Scranton that he could expect delivery of a Camille Pissarro, two Maurice Utrillos, an Auguste Renoir, an Edouard Manet, and a Claude Monet.

  ‘The total value of that little lot – assuming one treated them as genuine – being roughly how much, Monsieur?’ Hyde had asked one of the French experts.

  ‘Ah … it is impossible to say, Inspecteur. Perhaps one might take as a guide the price which that lovely Monet fetched in June 1965: half a million dollars.’

  Holt whistled. ‘Enough to pay for the Sunset, eh, Inspector?’

  The Beechcraft banked and made for a gap in the clouds. Below them the Channel was a savage dark green flecked with streaks of white. The small aircraft bumped uncomfortably as it descended, and through driving rain the vast port of Cherbourg began to take shape.

  ‘Do you think they’re here?’ Holt asked tensely.

  ‘It’s a fair guess. They were last sighted off Pointe de Barfleur,’ the Inspector replied. ‘If I’m wrong we’ll try the Channel Isles and St Malo. Fasten your seat-belt, Holt, we’re just about to land.’

  Hyde lowered his binoculars and turned away from the window of the French Customs Office. The innocent-looking Sunset was riding at anchor in the harbour below.

  The police, advised in advance by telephone from Paris, had alerted Customs and Port Authorities and a circle of quick-witted, flexible men now sat round the table, eagerly discussing a plan of action.

  ‘The situation is far from simple,’ Hyde was saying. ‘I have a British warrant for Ashley Milton’s arrest on a charge of murder, but Milton is no longer on British soil and I don’t even know if he’s on board the Sunset yet.’

  Holt’s suggestion was that they should wait in the Customs Office – out of sight, but with an excellent view of the boat – and keep it under observation until he arrived.

  Hyde shook his head. ‘In this appalling rain we might miss him altogether, and there’s a chance he may already be on board. I want the whole bunch of them, the entire Christopher organisation from the top man down to the lowest deckhand – with some of their forged masterpieces as well, if possible.’

  ‘You want rather a lot, Inspecteur,’ pointed out the senior French Commissar.

  ‘Oh, I’m aware of that,’ Hyde conceded. ‘But I’ve got a plan, and I think I can get what I want by the use of patience and caution. If we go marching on to the Sunset in broad daylight armed with my arrest warrant they’ll see us coming. They’d have time to destroy whatever evidence they may have on board.’

  Holt was the quickest to follow Hyde’s line of thought. ‘Are you suggesting we smuggle ourselves aboard and hope to catch them red-handed?’

  ‘More or less. But I don’t propose that we try and sneak over the side like a couple of stowaways. We must choose something simpler, something more open.’

  ‘Disguise yourselves as a couple of seamen,’ a Frenchman suggested.

  ‘Neither of us could attempt the rolling gait of a sailor and get away with it, the crew would spot us as impostors within a minute!’ Hyde said. ‘No, I have a better idea. We’ll pose as officials of the French Douane.’

  ‘French Customs officers! Splendid!’ Holt was enthusiastic and the plan met with general approval.

  Uniforms were soon provided and a genuine official named Jean Thouard was selected to pave the way.

  He was followed along the quayside by two smartly-dressed assistants; a young one with chestnut hair, short beard, and heavy spectacles, and an older man who appeared to be suffering from a severe cold, for most of his face was buried in a voluminous handkerchief. They kept their heads well down against the driving rain and all three boarded the Sunset with little ceremony. They felt the eyes of the crew searing into them and heard a certain amount of grumbling and cursing in both languages, but when Thouard requested permission to search for contraband goods no hint of resistance was met.

  Hyde was the first to catch sight of Milton as he stepped out of the chart room to greet them. Happily, the Inspector was blowing his nose with the huge handkerchief and his body blocked the view of Holt which Milton might otherwise have had.

  Customs Officer Thouard stepped forward and momentarily engaged Milton’s attention immediately. Annoyance crossed Milton’s face, but he responded in fluent French and graciously gave them the freedom of the boat. He did not accompany them himself, but assured Thouard that they would be welcome to join him for a drink in the saloon when they had completed their mission. They would find nothing naughty, he promised them.

  It was an airy performance with Milton as cool as a cucumber. He was evidently a man whose nerves thrived on moments of danger; he could scarcely have welcomed an official inspection at that time.

  Holt and the Inspector made themselves inconspicuous on the afterdeck. In answer to Holt’s raised eyebrows Hyde shook his head and whispered, ‘Not yet. Let them all gather in the saloon. We’ll mess it up if we tackle them one by one … Come on!’

  They descended a companion ladder and carried out a search of the crew’s quarters and the engine room, without success, then made their way to the passengers’ cabins. In the first one they found a woman’s comb and hairpins near the wash-basin and faint traces of lipstick on the hand-towel – it was obviously Antoinette Sheen’s.

  Before they had a chance to look further they heard Thouard complaining that the adjoining cabin was locked, and when Holt stepped out into the passageway he recognised the locked cabin as being Milton’s.

  ‘He will have to open it!’ said Thouard sharply. ‘I will go and demand the key.’

  Violence flared on the instant of the Frenchman’s departure. One of the British deckhands came clumping towards them. He passed Hyde, then without warning swung around again and snatched his cap, growling nastily, ‘I thought I wasn’t mistaken! Bless me, if it isn’t my old friend—’

  Holt’s fist felled the man like a slaughterer’s hammer.

  The Inspector acted almost as quickly. In a moment he had ripped out the leather laces from the man’s boots and tied his wrists behind his back. With equal expertise he stuffed a handkerchief in the ex-convict’s mouth and bound it with his own tie.

  ‘Quick – in here!’ Holt cried, indicating Antoinette’s cabin.

  They dragged the heavy body and bundled it unceremoniously into an empty clothes closet. Holt pocketed the key.

  ‘If he’s told his pals he thought he recognised you, then Thouard’s in
danger. I’m going up!’

  ‘Two will be better than one,’ Hyde said, sprinting after him.

  On deck they made their way cautiously, moving from cover to cover in a silence broken only by the swish of rain and the sudden blast of a powerful liner’s siren. While running feet thundered down the starboard deck and descended to the engine room Holt lay motionless behind a pile of lifebelts. The liner sounded her siren again and his gaze was attracted by the rain-blurred outline of a huge ship at the harbour mouth. The silhouette was familiar and for a second he was puzzled, then the three famous funnels told him that it was the Queen Mary; she called frequently at Cherbourg on her way to or from Southampton. He remembered that her draught was too big for her to dock at the quayside; a lighter used for transporting passengers and luggage from dockside to liner was already beating up to the mighty vessel. A thought flashed into his mind … this was how Milton and the others planned to make their escape!

  In the same instant Holt noticed the Inspector tugging at the wet cords of a tarpaulin covering a lifeboat slung on davits at the ship’s side. Hyde beckoned to him. From the lifeboat came a gentle tapping and a low moan. Both men wrenched at the cords with numb fingers, and struggled to pull the tarpaulin aside.

  There, staring up at them with large, compelling eyes, lay the trussed and gagged body of Antoinette Sheen.

  Holt unfastened the gag from her mouth. She choked and coughed for a second or two, then said quietly, ‘You look idiotic in that beard!… For heaven’s sake untie my ankles, Philip! I’ve got cramp. You’ll find Wade tied up in the other lifeboat.’

  Hyde ran to the other side of the deck and began to haul the second tarpaulin free. A dishevelled and woebegone Jimmy Wade clambered stiffly to the deck.

  ‘Time to blow the alarm, Inspector?’ Holt called.

  ‘I think so!’ Hyde pulled a whistle from his pocket. Three blasts would summon help immediately.

  But the whistle did not quite reach his lips before a staggering blow on the shoulder sent it flying from his hand. Twisting round, they found themselves surrounded by Milton, Legere, and three members of the crew armed with rifles.