by John Creasey
She made herself smile.
“Good morning, Priscilla. I hope your father isn’t too bad.”
“Oh, it’s a false alarm, always getting the wind up about his health,” said Priscilla off-handedly. “I—er—I went into Orme to get some medicine for him, miss, Mrs. Baddelow said I could. And I—er—looked in to see Mr. Merrow.”
Joanna felt herself stiffening.
“Oh, did you?”
“Yes, miss. He—he asked me to give you a message, miss! “Joanna’s heart leapt; and the girl went on as if she couldn’t speak slowly any longer. “Yes, miss, he wondered if you could look in and see him this morning, about half-past ten, he said he had something important he wanted to say to you.”
Joanna hated herself for colouring so furiously.
“Thank you, Priscilla. I’ll try to arrange it.”
“I know he’ll be ever so pleased, miss,” Priscilla said.
Joanna went to speak to White.
As soon as Joanna Woburn had left him, White telephoned Aylmer; he didn’t have long to wait. He didn’t have a chance to suggest that the maid’s story be checked, either; for Joanna had simply said that she was going in to see Merrow.
“Leaving here at ten o’clock,” White said. “I’ll have her followed, sir, if you’ll have everything laid on to watch her when she gets in the town among the crowd. That’s the danger spot, I’d say.”
“I’ll lay it on,” promised Aylmer. “Any bright ideas from the private dick?”
“Still asleep,” White said, and chuckled. “Got a ‘don’t disturb’ card hanging on his door, he must have been celebrating deep into the night!”
They both laughed.
“Ten o’clock,” thought Joanna. “Ten minutes—oh, what a fool I am!” She laughed at herself.
She felt a sense of gaiety, because she felt sure that George wanted to see her. Whatever he’d done in the past, whatever the truth about the women in his life, it could all be worked out; it must be.
She went out into the grounds, and strolled towards the garage.
Micky was waiting near a blind corner hidden from the road by the wall of a bridge which spanned the little stream. It was a perfect spot. He could see through a gap in a hedge all the traffic heading from Orme come into his line of vision.
He was thinking how pleased Seale had sounded on the telephone; and how pleased and relieved Greer had sounded, too.
The hand-grenades – he had two – were too heavy for his pocket. He put them on the ground, making a dent with his heel so that they couldn’t roll away. Near him, the river gurgled and the birds, no longer curious or scared, flew about as if he were part of the countryside.
The girl was to be killed first; then Mannering.
Again Mannering said wearily: “Damn!”
He caught his side against something in the wall, on the third time round. It hurt. He must have been pressing closer than he had on the first two walks. He was at a stage when the idea that he must try to get out was fading, because it was so obviously impossible. It was hot, and he was drooping already. He had not realised how badly he had been battered.
So, he damned the ‘thing’.
He went on.
He stopped, and his heart gave a curious little leap, the kind that meant that he was feeling alive again. He made his way back very carefully, until he touched the ‘thing’, which pressed into his side. He went past it, feeling it catch in his coat. He explored very cautiously with his hands, and at last stood so that he could touch the ‘thing’, which was cold, as metal would be.
It was a big nail.
He was hardly breathing when he discovered it, and when he tried to stand so that the head of the nail caught in the cord round his wrists. He tugged; and the cord slipped off. That was it, that was exactly what he wanted; friction. He worked until the cord was over the head of the nail again, then began to saw gently to and fro. The strain on his arms in the unaccustomed position brought pain and cramp sooner than he expected. The worst was just above the elbows, near the biceps. He rested, sawed, rested, sawed. He couldn’t be sure whether he was making any progress, could only hope. He wouldn’t let himself tug, until he really thought there was a hope.
He tugged, putting all his strength into the effort.
The cord held.
He sawed and rested, sawed and rested, sawed.
He tugged, and it broke.
Now, he felt almost stifled. For a few seconds he could only lean against the wall, fighting against physical weakness. It eased. He straightened up, and began to work his arms about, then to rub his wrists. He hadn’t been tied up long enough for the circulation to be seriously affected; he had pins and needles, that was all.
He worked the scarf off, and moved his mouth to ease the pain but he wasn’t thinking about pain.
Had they left him anything?
Could he get that nail out of the wall, and use it?
He groped in his pockets. Cigarettes – lighter! He was so parched that it did not even occur to him to smoke. Very funny. Cigarettes, lighter, money, but no tools. At least, he had a light. It was surprising how quickly one became used to the darkness.
He flicked the lighter.
The nail was so far inside the wall that he knew there wasn’t a ghost of a chance of levering it out; so that hope was gone. He felt his teeth clenching as he looked round as far as the light would carry. In one corner was a pile of shavings, and several old sacks. There were dozens of empty wine bottles, too, but no casks with metal hasps he might use as a tool; nothing that would help him to prise bricks away.
He looked up at the ceiling. The plaster was flaking and here and there it had come away, showing the gap between the laths which held it, and the floor boards of the old barn. The Museum; they had said that this cellar was beneath that, hadn’t they?
He saw a crack of light.
He stared, hands and teeth clenching in unison. It wasn’t imagination, there was a tiny crack of daylight where the boards didn’t join properly.
Could he make use of it?
Could he break the ceiling down more, and push one of the boards up? One board would be almost enough, two would be plenty.
He looked at his watch. It was nearly half-past eight. Joanna wouldn’t go into Orme yet, would she? Ten or eleven o’clock, more likely.
He had time.
He had to try to get up into the barn.
By standing on tiptoe, and pulling at the plaster with his fingers, he managed to get some of it down, drippings and dust fell into his eyes; they watered badly and began to smart, but he didn’t stop.
At the end of a quarter of an hour he had cleared a hole in the plaster nearly an inch square; an inch.
It would take hours to reach the boards.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Start of a Journey
Joanna pressed the self-starter. The engine turned at the first touch, whirred, and then faded out. She pressed three times before it roared as if it meant to keep going. The car was facing the drive; she had only to drive out, and go straight down, turn right into Orme Hill where she would pass the ‘Grey Mare’, three miles on across the bridge, and then she would have a straight run into Orme itself.
She tried to picture George Merrow’s face.
It wasn’t easy; somehow, the mind picture kept clouding. All she could see clearly was his twisted, almost cruel expression whenever he talked so bitterly. Cruel? She sensed that he had been desperately hurt, and knew that she owed much of her new understanding to Richardson.
Where was Richardson?
Joanna looked up at her own window, then at his. It was open a little at the top, as it had been ever since he had come here. In her line of vision was the top of the chimney stack.
She drove slowly down the drive for a while, to give the
police escort good time. She was in a desperate hurry, and yet felt that she wanted to take her time. She didn’t want to rush carelessly into the ward. She even allowed herself the fear that he did not want her to tell her why he had behaved so strangely, why he talked of love and then rebuffed her.
She wondered why Richardson hadn’t been down to breakfast, and then put thought of him out of her mind. The police-car was giving trouble. She was content to sit and wait for a few minutes, but soon grew restive; she hoped that it wouldn’t take much longer to get the police-car’s engine going.
It started.
It was twenty minutes past ten.
Mannering stared at the tiny hole in the plaster, and the crack between the boards, the only one he could see. There must be a slight fault in one of the boards, so that it had cracked. No other sliver of light appeared.
He had no tool with which to push the boards up.
He had no way of attracting attention—”
Hadn’t he?
He could start a fire, because they had left him his lighter!
The thought came storming his mind, and he thrust it away; it came again so that he had to look at it squarely. He could start a fire. He could burn the shavings and the old sacks, and possibly the wooden floor would catch. If it did, and no one realised that he was underneath –
He shut the thought out.
He considered it again.
Joanna would be going in to see Merrow. He did not doubt that Priscilla had done what her father had ordered, and that the message had been delivered. She might now be on the way. She might now be dead, but – it was only twenty minutes past nine. He still doubted whether she would start so early. He knew that he was only guessing, but he had to guess, and – he had to attract attention.
The only chance was by starting the fire.
He gathered the bottles together, laying down two rows of ten each, nine on the ten; eight on the nine. He built them up to a peak, making every move swift and decisive, now that he had taken the decision. He forgot pain, tiredness and fear. He touched the neck of a bottle and it fell, bringing others down with it. He built the pyramid up again, and when he was satisfied, rested some shavings on top of it and old sacks on that.
Would the heat of the fire make the bottles collapse?
He flicked his lighter, hesitated for a moment with the flame close to the shavings, and then slowly placed it under them. The wood flared, then died down; the lighter wick kept burning. He started again, and this time the shavings caught properly, but not fiercely. Belatedly he poked some shavings in between the plaster and the barn floor, and lit them; they burned only sluggishly.
He went round to the other side, and started the main fire there. Now flame shot upwards, hissing with the resin in the dry wood. The sacking began to smoulder, and the smell of burning became pungent.
Mannering stood watching.
Once it was burning well, it would be difficult to put out; perhaps impossible. He felt the heat, and the first promise of what it could do. A spark flew, and stung him on the back of the head. He backed away a yard. Now the shavings were burning fiercely and the sacking doing what he had meant it to – smouldering. Smoke poured up, grey and powerful-smelling, struck the top of the ceiling and hid the hole in the plaster. Then it spread out on the ceiling, and coiled down on Mannering’s head.
He lay on the floor – and started to cough.
It was very hot.
This was only a small cellar, and wouldn’t take long to fill. He had a pencil, and they’d left him his wallet; he took out a Quinns card, and wrote: “Liddicombe and man named Micky plan to hold up and kill Joanna Woburn this morning.” It was enough for the police, if, when they found him, he wasn’t able to talk. He held it lightly. Then he jerked his head up, sharply, as understanding came. He added in swift, sharp strokes: “Check death of a man named Holden, September ten years ago. Check identity of—” He dropped the card in another fit of coughing, picked it up, but couldn’t write any more. The worst part was that he could do nothing, except get as far away as possible from the burning, and watch; and choke. The bouts of coughing came more frequently, he could hardly pause between them. They hurt his head, his face and his stomach, now; he fought to keep still, but paroxysms took him and shook him.
His eyes were stinging.
The smoke was coiling and writhing, and he could only just see the glow in the middle. He didn’t know whether any was escaping through that tiny slit, but suddenly he felt that it was a waste of effort, that he had thrown his life away.
Very little would escape through that slit, so little that unless someone stepped into the barn, they probably wouldn’t see the smoke. Only the hostelry’s staff were likely to enter during the morning; most likely Liddicombe himself. Liddicombe might even make sure that no one else visited it.
The stench and the heat of burning were heavy in his nostrils. The cloying thickness of the smoke was in his mouth, his nose, in the back of his throat. His breathing came in short, sharp gusts. He didn’t know whether the smoke was getting thicker or not. His heart hammered and his head whirled, as if it wanted to keep time with the writhing smoke. He couldn’t see the glow. He was aware only of the heat, the thick air, the air which crawled into his lungs like something thick and foul, something which blocked all the air passages, and which wouldn’t let him breathe in the sweet air that they wanted.
His head was numbed, now.
His limbs felt light.
He kept coughing, and was weaker after every bout. He was conscious of the awful burden of failure; of the approach of death for himself and for Joanna Woburn.
He thought of Lorna.
It had been just a casual job; not even a commission. Jimmy Garfield hadn’t done any business with him for years. The old man had sent that SOS and Mannering had gone hurrying; if he hadn’t been suspicious about what might happen to Joanna on the road, he would have stayed completely free from trouble.
Well, he hadn’t.
He was coughing spasmodically, but it no longer hurt. Nothing hurt. He knew that he was losing consciousness, and strangely enough, it didn’t matter. Funny way to go out. All his life he had been fighting, often he had lived by violence, more often than not he had lived dangerously. It wouldn’t have been so bad had he been able to fight now. He could fight! He put the card beneath him, safe from burning, certain to be discovered.
Certain?
The smoke was filling his lungs, and suffocating him.
He coughed, drearily.
The smoke was thicker, the fire glowed very red, the heat would have been unbearable if he had been conscious; as it was, he was hardly aware of it.
He didn’t hear the crash when part of the ceiling fell in, or hear the roar of the flames as they shot up into the old barn.
It was half-past ten.
Joanna saw the smoke soon after she turned the corner from the drive. She didn’t know exactly where it was, but it seemed to be somewhere near the ‘Grey Mare’. She heard the engine of the police-car rev up, and the driver waved her down as he shot past her, to investigate. She slowed down. It could be a crashed car on fire. It could be another attack, or a form of attack.
She had to turn two corners before reaching the bend in the road which showed her exactly where the fire was. Smoke was pouring out of the Old Barn, where two or three men were standing about helplessly, two with pails of water. One man was bellowing, and a dog was barking; she knew Jeff Liddicombe’s Alsatian and recognised its deep, baying note.
The police-car had stopped, and the driver came back.
“Better wait for a bit, Miss Woburn.” He smiled. “Sorry. Fire-brigade will be here in a minute, don’t want to run into trouble with it on those bends. Safer this side of the smoke, anyhow.”
“I must get into Orme—”
“Wo
n’t keep you a minute longer than we must, miss.”
There was nothing she could say about that, she could only watch the smoke. It was getting thicker, and she thought that she saw a red glow, as if the old timbers of the barn had caught fire.
“One good thing, no one’d be in there,” the policeman said. “Only trouble will be if the wind changes. Going straight across the road at the moment, though.”
“Look!” Joanna exclaimed. “It’s getting fiercer.”
It was glowing bright red, and now they could hear the flames. The smell of smoke was wafted back. She stood by the side of the police-car, thoughts of Merrow pushed aside by the sight of the rolling smoke and glowing fire.
Liddicombe had the big dog by the leash, but was having great difficulty in holding him; for once, he couldn’t be controlled. The men with the buckets of water had given up the unequal fight, and were standing and watching.
Then the fire-bell clanged, and the red engine loomed out of the smoke. It drew to one side, and helmeted men jumped off. Joanna was fascinated by the speed with which they set to work. She saw three smash their way into the Old Barn, and others follow; none came out. Hoses was rushed to a nearby hydrant and jets of water poured on the outhouses of the ‘Grey Mare’.
Then the dog broke away from Liddicombe, and disappeared, terrified by the flames. Liddicombe stood with his hands raised heavenwards, as if in supplication.
Soon, two helmeted firemen went inside the Old Barn.
The floor had caved in, by one wall. Through the hole, the men could see what looked like the body of a man.
Ten minutes later, Joanna saw the body of a man being brought out of the barn. She went forward, trying to see who it was. Then a car pulled up at the inn for a moment, and the driver spoke to a fireman.
“That’s the Guv’nor’s car,” the police-driver exclaimed.
“You mean Superintendent Aylmer’s?”
“Yes.”
Aylmer, with a man by his side, started off again, driving as if the furies were after him. He was peering hard at Joanna and, twenty yards away, he jammed on his brakes. The car actually skidded into the hedge. Joanna turned to look at him, the policeman hurried forward, and Aylmer came running.