Death and the Visiting Fireman

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘Well, you know what tricky creatures fish can be. You can’t be sure of them till they’ve taken a good hard bite.’

  ‘You will tell me when that is, won’t you?’

  ‘I will. Now then, do you want to know what used to happen in Winchester in the days before all of us were thought of?’

  ‘Is it in the coaching days ?’

  ‘It might be. It’s difficult to keep away from the thing hanging over us, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is a bit. Have I got to try?’

  ‘I think it would be best.’

  ‘All right. Dad used to tell me about the coaching days, that was why I said that. But I think he used to make some of it up.’

  ‘The best historians have the same failing.’

  ‘Do you think the ‘copter will catch him today?’

  ‘Now you’re doing it again.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Just tell me and I won’t ever ask again.’

  ‘I’ll tell you anyhow. I’m afraid it will help to catch him very soon. It’s really the best thing, you know.’

  ‘I know really, but I don’t want it to happen.’

  ‘Neither do I. And now, look at that building there.’

  Firmly history. And the boy soon lost to the world around him. A morning of history.

  History for lunch. History in spite of every remark made at the table. History for Kristen Kett, back in the blouse and skirt she had worn at breakfast, silent again, without colour, eating nothing. History for everybody.

  And all afternoon walking through the ancient streets of the town more history. Peter listened. A trance.

  But not for ever. Teatime.

  ‘And that must be all for today,’ Smithers said to Peter. ‘I don’t suppose everybody else has your insatiable thirst for knowledge.’

  ‘It was wizard, sir,’ said Peter.

  He sat in a dream still. Eyes withdrawn. Elsewhere.

  Small talk. The weather. Daisy on the pleasures of tea drinking. Placidly chatting, with anxiety under the eyes.

  And Major Mortenson. Not drinking tea. ‘Waste of time. Vita brevis.’ But there, listening.

  Wemyss. Past caring whether nervousness showed. Darting looks at anyone who spoke. Anyone but Schlemberger.

  Schlemberger not looking at Wemyss. And talking, talking, talking.

  Whaa, whaa, whaa. The remorseless voice. Whaa, whaa. Hectoring, didactic. Whaa, whaa, whaa. The unending lecture. Whaa, whaa. Never at a loss for a subject. Whaa, whaa, whaa. A pile-driver meandering.

  ‘You’re perfectly right, Miss Miller, tea is a mighty refreshing beverage. But on the other hand, major, you’re entirely correct: it’s a hell of a waste of time.’

  Whaa, whaa.

  ‘That’s the secret of the American success story. Basically, we don’t waste time.’

  Whaa, whaa.

  ‘What the old world fails to understand is that business is a philosophy, a way of life. You divide your days here into business and pleasure. We act business right through.’

  Whaa, whaa.

  ‘Look at it marriage-wise. My exes act in a thoroughly businesslike way. A contract exists between us. Each side must endeavour to see that the other honours it, and at the same time must obtain maximum advantage from its provisions. It’s a radically different approach.’

  Whaa, whaa.

  ‘That’s what made it so hard for me to get this murder affair straight at first. It was, after all, a European murder. I approached it from the wrong way, as if it had no special particularities, as an American murder in fact. So as soon as I saw it had nothing whatsoever to do with the States, I realized just who must have done it.’

  ‘And which of the people you said it was was it?’ asked Daisy.

  Schlemberger turned towards her. The rimless glasses at an angle of polite incomprehension.

  ‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘I think you must have failed to understand me. I have never hitherto accused anybody of committing this murder. I may have speculated about it aloud, as a deliberate attempt to open up the case, but that’s a very different thing. A very different thing.’

  ‘I see, said Daisy. ‘And now you’re going to tell us who really killed George.’

  Schlemberger looked slowly round the group. Listening in spite of themselves.

  ‘You should never underestimate a woman’s instinctive thought processes,’ he said. ‘Miss Kett was right when she said that Major Mortenson’s confession was not intended to shield anyone. But she drew the wrong conclusion. Major, you had no difficulty in denying you were an accomplice of Miss Miller’s.

  Can you deny that the only person you hoped to protect by your confession was yourself?’

  Eyes turn.

  The major looks straight at Schlemberger.

  ‘I have offered an explanation,’ he said.

  Bright blue eyes suddenly leaving Schlemberger to flick round the room.

  ‘Something about convincing us anyone might have committed the crime,’ Schlemberger said. ‘European stuff.’

  ‘Go on,’ said the major.

  Gaze once more steady on Schlemberger.

  ‘All right, I’ll go on. I’ll go on to deal with another aspect of the case about which, in spite of a great deal of discussion, I have heard nothing at all.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said the major, ‘why aren’t you going to the police with all this?’

  ‘I prefer to run it my own way,’ said Schlemberger. ‘The police can come in afterwards.’ ‘I see.’

  The major glanced round the room again.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps none of you remembers a curious incident that took place only a few minutes before the killing,’ Schlemberger said.

  ‘Oh, the sovereigns,’ Daisy said. ‘I thought of them the other day. I meant to ask if they really were the proper thing or not. Then as usual it passed right out of my head. Were they real, major?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ the major said. ‘I never opened the purse I was given either before Hamyadis was shot or after. I think the police took them away. I never saw them again.’

  ‘Neither did I open mine,’ Wemyss said. ‘You know I’m not sorry Hamyadis was killed. I wouldn’t necessarily give away his murderer, even if I knew him.’

  ‘You seem to forget you have a duty,’ Smithers said.

  ‘Duty,’ said Wemyss. ‘I recognize one to myself, certainly. But I don’t think one need go beyond that. Not outside the public school, anyhow.’

  ‘Now I would put it just the other way round,’ Smithers said. ‘Within the confines of a public school little harm results from any neglect of one’s duty to society. In the outside world things are different. More than one person may believe he owes no duty but to himself, and one of those people may be a murderer.’

  Wemyss said nothing. His eyes were fixed intently on Schlemberger.

  ‘But we interrupted you, Schlemberger,’ Smithers said.

  ‘So you’re not coming clean, major?’ Schlemberger said. ‘I hardly expected it. We’ll just have to go through the whole case till you see that you’re fixed once and for all. We’ll have to hammer in the points. That Hamyadis had caught you stealing money right at the start of the journey, that you knew he was waiting his time to hand you over to the cops, that the game with the sovereigns was just another bit of his cat and mouse tactics, that you made up your mind to shoot him before he spoke.’

  ‘Couldn’t those purses be found so that we would know one way or the other?’ asked the major. ‘I don’t like being called a thief.’

  ‘I guess they were taken out of the coach and got rid of,’ Schlemberger said. ‘That would have been the reason for the second raid on it that night.’

  He smiled slightly.

  ‘And all this talk about the States being the key to the problem. What hooey. A European crime. Ridiculously complex, bound up with the poverty of a decaying middle class. Literary. And, just as soon as it came up against solidly appl
ied business methods, bound to fail.’

  ‘Please,’ said Peter, ‘the purses didn’t have real money in them; I looked.’

  The major leant back in his chair. Slowly. Muscle by muscle. Then he laughed.

  ‘It doesn’t alter the case,’ shouted Schlemberger.

  The major went on laughing.

  ‘You’re sure of that, Peter?’ asked Smithers.

  ‘Yes, I’m really sure.’

  ‘Real money or false,’ Schlemberger said, ‘what counts is that Hamyadis was threatening the major by calling him a thief in that way. Can’t you see that? Who agrees with me?’

  No one spoke.

  Schlemberger walked towards the door.

  ‘I see something in your logic,’ said Smithers.

  ‘Thanks,’ Schlemberger said.

  The slam of the door.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone on at him,’ Daisy said.‘I feel sorry for him now.’

  ‘The fellow is beginning to get a nuisance,’ the major said. ‘You were quite right to try and take him down a peg.’

  ‘Anyhow, I don’t think he noticed,’ Daisy said. ‘Which is a comfort, I think.’

  ‘I wish all the same he hadn’t felt it necessary to do that,’ Fremitt said. ‘It’s upsetting. It leads one to hope too much and to fear it.’

  ‘I can’t stand it,’ Kristen said.

  Her first words.

  ‘Waiting, waiting, waiting,’ she went on. ‘Why can’t something happen?’

  ‘Come,’ Fremitt said. ‘You never know, at any moment the police may come to a decision. All we have to do is to attend to our own affairs and to wait.’

  ‘The police,’ Kristen said, ‘what are they doing? Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not really true,’ Fremitt said. ‘They’ve been out all day with the helicopter for instance. They’re still out with it now. I’ve noticed the distant sound of its engine every now and again all afternoon. Listen, you can hear it now.’

  They all listened.

  Faintly above the noise of passing cars in the street and the chatter of passers-by the steady hum of the helicopter’s engine.

  No one spoke. The hum gained slightly in volume, then receded.

  ‘You see,’ Fremitt said, ‘at work.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Kristen asked.

  ‘Not far from the town, I should think,’ Fremitt said.

  ‘Could we go and see it?’ Kristen said. ‘Anything would be better than not knowing what’s happening.’

  ‘I think there is no point in hampering the police,’ Smithers said.

  ‘Please, sir,’ said Peter, ‘what Miss Kett said is true: it’s awful just waiting.’

  ‘You want to go?’ Smithers asked him.

  ‘I do, sir. I really do.’

  ‘You know what you may see?’

  ‘I’d rather see Dad caught, sir, than not know whether he has been or not.’

  ‘All right, then. If they’re still working to the plan they were this morning we ought to be able to follow the whole thing simply by walking to the top of the hill outside. The helicopter should be working on the valley below. We’ll probably be as high as it is.’

  ‘Let’s all go,’ said Daisy. ‘We shall at least get to know something.’

  They got up to go. Fremitt darted at the hat rack in the hall and snatched his cap.

  ‘There’s a nasty chill in the wind towards evening,’ he said.

  The others waited for him on the steps of the inn. Schlemberger appeared from a dark little-used room labelled ‘Smoking’.

  ‘We’re all going to watch the helicopter,’ Daisy called. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Do they think they’re going to get Dagg?’ Schlemberger said.

  ‘That can only be a matter of time,’ said Smithers.

  ‘Guess a lot of problems will be solved when the police have a talk with him,’ Schlemberger said.

  ‘Is it Dagg again, then?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Schlemberger. He grinned.

  ‘I guess I’ve learnt my lesson,’ he said. ‘From now on I’m suspecting no one.’

  They walked quickly up the hill. The houses ended abruptly. A fence dividing country and town. After four minutes’ more brisk walk they came to the top of the hill. There was a view right across the shallow downland valley broken up here and there by clumps of trees and occasional fields surrounded by hedges.

  No one had spoken on the way up. Now Smithers said:

  ‘I think this would be the place.’

  Silence.

  The helicopter was easily visible working its way systematically over the ground in front of them. Three police cars could also be seen moving from point to point immediately below the plane. Every now and again one of them would stop and two or three blue-uniformed figures could be seen running towards a patch of thick undergrowth. After a quick search one of the men would wave an all clear to the helicopter and the force would move on to the next point.

  The evening was calm. Torpid. There was no wind to stir the trees or dispel the heat of day. A cloudless sky, pale blue, exhausted after the sun’s attack. Faint haze on the horizon, but good visibility. A bird sang briefly, drowsily. The effort of the day over. Only the helicopter buzzed like the last bee.

  They sat down along a low tussocky bank. A grandstand.

  The major fit a pipe.

  In front of them the search for Joe Dagg went on. Methodical, slow, regular. The working of some gigantic and complicated clock. A parade of figures at each quarter, and the steady whirr of the machinery.

  Once the rhythm was broken. Someone leant out of the helicopter and signalled violently to the nearest car. Two policemen ran fast to a group of three stunted trees at the corner of a field. From the distance nothing could be heard. Only the two blue figures could be seen steadily moving to their aim. Ants.

  But it was a false alarm. The first of the policeman to arrive picked up a sack from under the trees and waved it for the helicopter party to see. The plane promptly rose another twenty feet and moved off to its next section. The two policemen went back to their car, slower now.

  The major tapped his pipe against his heel. The noise was startling.

  ‘It’s still wonderfully warm,’ said Daisy.

  ‘And it’s light too,’ Schlemberger said.

  Wemyss stretched himself and lay back.

  The clockwork search. To their right the sun imperceptibly moving nearer to the horizon.

  The scutter of a match striking as the major lit another pipe.

  When the smell of the tobacco smoke had lost its freshness there was another burst of activity from the searchers. The helicopter settled even lower than usual. The pilot roared its engine in two or three quick bursts apparently to attract the attention of the cars. They in their turn speeded up. One stopped and turned in a gateway, with the screech of brakes faintly audible. The three cars began to converge.

  The point over which the helicopter hovered was a clump of fir trees crowning a small knoll. From the distance it looked as if the bare ground between the few trees could not have given any cover, but it was obvious that the helicopter party believed they had seen something worth investigating.

  There was a considerable gap of open downland between the knoll and the nearest road. Two of the police cars arrived almost simultaneously at a gate at this point. Five men leapt from the first and four from the second. All set off at once at a steady run in the direction of the trees. A faint shout came from them to the watchers on the hill. The runners spread slowly into a wide line. A sixth man from the first car unexpectedly set out after his companions.

  The helicopter still hung over the little clump of trees. A vulture.

  When the searchers were within fifty yards of the knoll and beginning to bunch together again, Schlemberger called out:

  ‘Something moving in there. I saw something move.’

  A man appeared on the edge of the trees as if he had been thrown up by the pi
ne-needle-covered earth. He began to run in the opposite direction from the police. As he did so he seemed to shed a cloud of dust.

  ‘It’s Dad,’ said Peter very quietly.

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked Smithers.

  ‘I know the way he runs.’

  ‘He seems to be outdistancing them,’ Smithers said. ‘He goes very fast for a man of his age.’

  ‘He always did begin too fast,’ said Peter. ‘He’ll have to stop soon. That’s how I beat him in races.’

  The whole party on the hilltop was standing now.

  ‘Did you say you beat him?’ asked Wemyss. ‘Then I’ll think better of offering a price.’

  ‘He seems to be making for that bit of woodland there,’ said Fremitt. ‘It looks pretty extensive. If he gets there he might succeed in hiding again.’

  ‘I hope he gets there,’ said Daisy. ‘All that many against one.’

  ‘Yet one ought to hope for his own sake that he doesn’t,’ Smithers said.

  ‘He’s gaining on them,’ said the major.

  ‘I think the ground slopes gently in his favour,’ Fremitt said. ‘The pol - the others will begin to get the benefit of it in a moment.’

  They watched in silence.

  ‘You’re right about the slope,’ Wemyss said after a while.

  ‘Look, the police are gaining on him fast now.’

  ‘Dad’s beginning to get his stitch,‘ Peter said to Smithers.

  ‘Do you want to go back to the hotel?’ Smithers said.

  ‘No. I couldn’t. Oh!’

  A cry of despair. Joe Dagg had stopped in his tracks.

  He turned and faced his pursuers. They had spread out into a ragged line, some ahead, others behind, two or three bunched together in the centre and others well away from them.

  Suddenly Joe Dagg began running again. Hard. And straight towards the line.

  ‘Look, look,’ shouted Peter. ‘There’s a gap. He’s making for it. Good old Dad.’

  The police began to close in. Sprinting. Arms working.

  For less than two minutes the result was doubtful. Then Peter said: ‘Good old Dad. Good old Dad.’

  His father had gained a good lead by the manoeuvre.

  ‘Wait a bit,’ said Schlemberger.

  They had reckoned without the policeman who left the cars after his companions. He was now running down the slope straight at Dagg.