by Jack Treby
Mrs Weiman stood back, numbly, watching the display of affection but unable to join in. The relief in her eyes, however, was more than adequate compensation. She clutched the coffee pot to her breast instead. The devil’s brew, more use out here than it had ever been in the dining room.
I moved across to the boy. ‘It’s all right, you’re safe now,’ I reassured him. He pulled back from the housekeeper and looked up at me. Safe. That was another lie, but a necessary one. The last thing I needed was him taking fright and running off again. The necessity of reassuring the lad also served to ground me a little and, for the time being, I was able to contain my own panic. Perhaps I did have a little of the maternal instinct in me after all. ‘Where’s Joseph?’ I asked.
Moses gave me a toothy grin. ‘He is back there.’ He gestured to the gate. ‘Up the lane. One of the policemen found us. There was a fight. Joseph was hurt.’
‘And the policeman?’
Moses grinned. ‘He is unconscious now.’
‘Did he see you?’ Mrs Weiman asked, fearfully. ‘The policeman?’ Did he know who had helped Green to escape?
‘No. But Joseph knocked him out and we used his own handcuffs to tie him up.’
‘Good for you,’ I said, ruffling the boy’s hair.
The other guests were coming back onto the terrace, staring down numbly at the bizarre scene. Handcuffs, I thought. That was a good idea. If we could tie the policemen up and dump them somewhere quiet, that would give us a bit of a breathing space; some time to work out what the hell to do next. ‘Where’s Morris?’ I called across to the assembled group. If any of us were to get out of this alive, we needed someone with half a brain.
‘I am here, Monsieur,’ the valet replied, emerging from the back hall, clutching the side of his battered bonce.
‘Are you all right?’ It was not often I saw the man out of sorts.
‘Yes, Monsieur,’ he replied, without elaboration. That was the second time this week he had been sloshed from behind. It was becoming a habit. Luckily for him, Montana’s thwack had done no serious damage, though it had floored him for a couple of minutes. Now, the valet moved down the steps towards me and took in the scene.
‘What the devil are we going to do?’ I hissed, briefly summarizing events.
Maurice took a moment to think. ‘The bags are packed, Monsieur. It might be better if we were to leave here as soon as possible.’
I nodded sadly. He was right. It was our only option. Things had gone too far now to negotiate any kind of settlement. We would have to scarper. But if we were to escape the scene completely, we would need to have a decent head start and that meant preventing anybody here from raising the alarm.
Joseph Green had popped up tentatively at the garden gate. I waved him forward. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s safe now.’ He too was covered in mud and blood. His bewildered expression matched that of my own, though with a fair degree of fear added to the mix. This time it was Moses who provided the reassurance. He disentangled himself from Greta and rushed across to the older man. If the housekeeper was effectively his mother, then Green was definitely the father figure. Poor devil. He was every bit as entangled in this affair as I was, through no fault of his own. Well, some fault, I reflected. If he hadn’t arranged to meet me like that when he was meant to be working then things might have played out a little differently. But this was no time for recriminations. The fellow looked exhausted. Even a couple of hours on the run had taken its toll. He would have to come with us, I realised abruptly, if he was to stand any chance of avoiding the noose. Green hugged the boy and the two of them stepped back towards the house.
‘Moses said you thumped one of the policemen,’ I observed.
The man nodded uneasily. ‘Yes, mister. I had no choice.’
‘He hurt you?’ The labourer had a slight limp, I noticed.
‘My leg. It is nothing.’
‘But he’s out cold? The policeman?’ That was the important point.
‘Yes, mister. I hit him quite hard. I...don’t know my own strength.’
I waved away his concern. ‘You don’t have to explain.’ That was three out of the four policemen accounted for. ‘Where is he?’
‘Just along the lane there. What happened?’ He gestured to the bodies.
‘A god awful cock up,’ I replied, as honestly as I could. ‘Have you ever handled a gun?’ I fumbled in my jacket for Montana’s revolver.
Green eyes widened in surprise as I whipped it out. ‘No, mister.’
‘Well, now’s the time to start. We need to get shot of the police.’ He regarded my hand in alarm as I proffered the weapon. ‘Sorry, bad choice of words. I mean, we need to lock them up, get them out of the way. Which one found you? Was it the sergeant, Velázquez?’
‘No, mister. I don’t know the man.’
‘Damn. So Vela...’
‘Henry, look out!’ Freddie Reeves was standing on the terrace. He pointed a finger eastward, to the far side of the house. A bright light flitted out from the pathway, by the store houses where Green had been incarcerated. There was our fourth man, I realised. Velázquez, doubtless hurrying back from the edge of the estate to investigate the sound of gunfire.
I had no time to find a defensive position. I took out the second revolver and placed my legs firmly either side of the unconscious general. I aimed the pistol down at him as Sergeant Velázquez barrelled into view. I took a deep breath and then called out, ‘Stop right there!’ as authoritatively as I could. ‘Drop your weapon!’ I added, with slightly less vigour, before the sergeant had time to take in the scene.
Joseph Green was covering him with the other revolver. He had moved closer to the house and his heavy frame was bathed in the terrace lamp light. Two against one. The boggle eyed sergeant boggled even more at the sight of the armed fugitive than he did at me, though in truth poor old Green was shaking like a leaf. He had never held a gun on anyone before. Thankfully, Velázquez proved to be an abject coward. He raised his hands without a second glance and slowly bobbed down to place his revolver on the grass in front of him. He dropped his torch, too, for good measure. The government did not pay him enough to risk his neck in this kind of stand-off. At my direction, he kicked the revolver across.
I signalled Green forward. ‘Joseph. If you wouldn’t mind?’ The labourer took a moment to gather himself and then darted over to collect the gun. Afterwards, with greater confidence, he directed the sergeant across to me.
‘On your knees,’ I said, with more authority than I felt. Green handed me the second revolver. ‘Morris?’
‘Monsieur?’ The valet stepped forward.
This was as far as my planning had come. ‘What the hell do I do now?’ I whispered, my authority abruptly deflating.
‘Keep calm, Monsieur,’ Maurice advised. He strode across to the sergeant and removed the handcuffs from the fellow’s waist. He grabbed the keys too and then pulled the policeman’s arms behind his back. The manacles were quickly clicked into position. ‘We will lock them up,’ he suggested, ‘in the outhouse over there.’ The generator room, where Moses had shoved that thick branch yesterday evening.
‘Good idea,’ I agreed. The valet moved back to me and I handed him the sergeant’s gun. ‘Can you take care of that fellow Montana clobbered? Out on the front terrace?’
‘Of course, Monsieur. I will bring him here.’
‘And Doctor Rubio, too.’ There was no telling whose side the elderly doctor would be on. The valet departed to round up the stragglers.
‘Freddie,’ I called across. ‘Would you go with Green here and get the other officer? He’s up there in the lane somewhere.’
Frederick Reeves had been observing the whole affair in some confusion. ‘You want me to...?’ Every diplomatic bone in his body was screaming out not to get involved. ‘I don’t think I should...’
‘Freddie, just help him!’ Miss Bunting snapped.
I had no time for pussyfooting around either. ‘If it helps,’ I sa
id, ‘just imagine I’m pointing a gun at you.’ I pointed a gun at him, just to emphasize the point. ‘And be quick about it, there’s a good fellow.’
Freddie rushed off to do as he was bidden, with the armed Joseph Green in tow. Moses returned to the embrace of Greta, who had stepped back onto the terrace now and was standing next to Mr and Mrs Weiman. Gunther seemed to have aged several hundred years in the last few minutes. I knew exactly how he felt.
Sergeant Velázquez was on his knees in front of me, looking across at Tejada’s unconscious body. ‘Is he dead?’ he asked me now.
‘No. He was knocked out, but he’s still alive.’
His face lit up in a cruel grin. ‘You want me to kill him?’
‘No! Lord no!’ Evidently there was no love lost between the two men. ‘If he dies, we all die.’ That probably included the sergeant too. ‘Miss Bunting! Would you mind awfully opening up the generator room for me? My hands are a bit full at the moment.’
‘Yes, of course,’ the girl agreed, tripping down the steps into the garden.
‘And we might need a bit of rope....’
Chapter Seventeen
It took about twenty minutes to get Tejada and his men tied up. The light was gone completely now so we had to borrow the policemen’s torches to help us. No-one had had time to repair the generator and the lamps from the hacienda proved rather underwhelming away from the house.
The policemen were not the only ones who needed to be locked up. There was also the overseer, Mr Langbroek. Even with that broken leg of his, he could not be left to his own devices in the living room. ‘What the bloody hell is this?’ the man muttered as Maurice prepared the stretcher.
‘Keep quiet and you won’t get hurt,’ I said, brandishing my revolver. The overseer was not about to argue with an armed man, but neither was he happy when he discovered we were going to tie him up. Doctor Rubio made a token protest on his behalf, but agreed nonetheless to give Maurice a hand transporting him across to the outhouse. Rubio was a genial old buffer but he would have to be tied up as well. I could not be certain where his loyalties lay. We had four sets of handcuffs and some hefty rope. ‘I think we can forego the gag, in your case,’ I told the doctor. The cotton bedsheets Miss Bunting had ripped up would only go so far. ‘If you give me your word you won’t try to wake the general.’
‘You have my word,’ he said.
Sergeant Velázquez was glaring at us from the far corner of the outhouse. He was the first one we had gagged. His arms had been threaded through one of the wheels of the generator – just below the splintered branch – before we had attached the handcuffs, to prevent him moving about. The general, who was still out for the count, was also tightly bound. Greta must have thumped him pretty hard that second time, though the doctor seemed to think he had suffered no permanent damage.
At last, after a quick mercy trip to the bushes for Doctor Rubio, we had the six men exactly where we wanted them, in the darkness of the generator room. I closed the door myself and locked it up, with my valet and Joseph Green standing either side of me as I did so. We had been careful to make sure we were the only ones any of them had seen brandishing weapons. That had been Maurice’s idea. Better, he said, that the three of us should be seen to be in control of the situation, with the rest of the household reluctantly doing our bidding. That way, we could minimise the repercussions for them when the police were eventually freed.
Maurice and I had had a short but intense discussion of our options. It was not just a question of fleeing the scene. As wanted men, there would be nowhere safe for us in the whole of Guatemala. Ideally, we needed to get out of the country as quickly as we could. And, if we were to save his life, we would have to take Joseph Green with us.
The labourer was astonished when we suggested the idea. ‘But this is my home,’ he protested. ‘My life. My friends. My family. I cannot leave.’
‘It’s not safe for you here,’ I told him calmly. ‘If you stay, you’ll be hanged for murder.’
Green could not deny the truth of that; but that was not the only consideration. His good name mattered to him too. ‘If I leave, people will think I am guilty.’
‘The police already think you’re guilty. Look, we don’t have time to discuss this...’
‘And the real murderer...’
‘Is probably already dead. Listen Green, I understand how difficult this is for you, but we really have no choice. If you stay, General Tejada will see you hang. Far better to come with us and live to fight another day.’
Reluctantly, the man accepted the force of the argument. Escape was the only practical option available to him.
‘That’s the spirit. Now go and get yourself cleaned up. Isabel can dig out some fresh clothes for you. We need to leave within the hour.’
I bundled him off into the house.
There were two motor-bicycles at our disposal, parked out front of the hacienda. We would only need one of them – the sidecar would provide space for an additional passenger – and I had already grabbed the keys to Mr Gonzales’ vehicle from the general’s top pocket. ‘You’ve ridden a motor-bicycle before, haven’t you?’ I asked Maurice.
‘Yes, Monsieur. As a young man.’
That was that then. We would motor down to the village and then make for British Honduras, the nearest safe haven. Unfortunately, there was no accessible road border. Transport links between the two countries were severely limited. ‘I’m afraid our only option is to head to Puerto Barrios. We’ll have to catch a boat.’
‘A boat, Monsieur?’ Maurice paled. He must have realised that would be on the cards, but he could not disguise his concern. My valet had an abject fear of the sea. I had only got him to accompany me to the Americas in the first place because I had managed to get tickets on board an airship.
‘Do you think you’ll be able to manage it?’ I asked, with some concern.
‘I do not know,’ he answered honestly.
‘Look, if there were any other way...’ I waved my hands. ‘As soon as the general is released from that shack, there’ll be no safe place for either of us in the whole of Guatemala. And there’s no other country we could get to in the time. It’ll only be a short hop. A few hours at most.’ Still the valet did not look happy. ‘Perhaps we can find you some sleeping pills, knock you out for the duration. We’ve got no other option, Morris. The general was all set to shoot me, even before that damned woman clobbered him. And it’s not as if I’ll be able to go back to the office on Monday morning. When news of all this breaks, Mr Richards will have my head on a plate. We have no choice.’
Maurice steeled himself. ‘Very well, Monsieur.’
‘You’ll do it?’
‘Yes, Monsieur.’
I slapped him on the back. ‘Good man. Oh, I meant what I said about the sleeping tablets. Better to knock you out on the boat if we can. Perhaps we can find some here before we leave.’
‘I believe there may be a bottle in the kitchen, Monsieur,’ the valet said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Madame Talbot was given some tablets last night to help her sleep.’
‘Oh, yes. I remember.’ After her husband had died. She had needed a good dose of something to knock her out. ‘Good lord.’ I blinked.
‘Monsieur?’
‘That’s it!’ The explanation suddenly dropped into my mind. ‘That’s how it was done.’ My face lit up in surprise as the details slotted into place. ‘Sleeping tablets. That’s why Catesby didn’t struggle. That’s how someone was able to slit his throat in the middle of the night without him waking up or reacting at all. He must have taken a sleeping draft. There was a glass by the bed. And every room has a jug of water.’
The valet nodded carefully. ‘That is a reasonable hypothesis, Monsieur.’
‘It’s not a hypothesis,’ I snapped. ‘It’s a cast iron certainty. But did he take it himself or was it forced upon him?’ Could one of the servants have done the deed, rather than one of the guests?
‘I do not know, Monsieur. P
erhaps we can discuss this further once we have left the hacienda? I need to check up on the motor-bicycle.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. You’re right.’ There was no time to play the detective now. We had more important things to worry about. I tossed him the keys. ‘Make sure we’ve got plenty of petrol. It’s going to be a long journey. Syphon off a bit from the other one if needs be.’
‘Of course, Monsieur.’
‘And we’ll have to nobble Tejada’s bicycle as well,’ I realised. ‘Don’t want him speeding after us.’ The general could damn well walk down to the village, when the time came. Or take a horse. He would have to go to the post office or Alberto’s bar if he wanted to alert the rest of the police force. Hoist on his own petard. Served him right for cutting the phone line to the hacienda. ‘I’d better go and have a quiet word with Miss Bunting,’ I said. ‘And then I’ll need to speak to the rest of the household...’
‘It’s never going to work,’ Freddie Reeves said, when I explained the plan to him. ‘It’s madness. Why not just head back to the capital? Hide out at the legation. You may not have diplomatic immunity, but they can’t arrest you if you’re camped out at a British consulate.’
I laughed sourly. ‘You really think the minister will protect me? When the national police force comes knocking at the door, enquiring into the death of Mrs Montana?’
His shoulders slumped. ‘No, I don’t suppose he would. But, hey look, everyone knows that was an accident.’
‘You know it was an accident and I know it was an accident. And General Tejada knows it too. But do you really think that will make any difference? The general will be gunning for me now. I have no choice. I have to get out of the country.’
‘To British Honduras?’
‘It’s the only place I can go. We’ve got the passports. All I need is a few hours grace to get to Puerto Barrios and onto a boat. That’s why we have to lock everyone up. You included.’ The house guests would be incarcerated in the servants’ cottage for the duration. ‘So nobody gets it into their heads to let the police out before tomorrow morning.’