by Nevil Shute
I got to him as he collapsed. He turned to me with his face all puckered; for a moment I thought he was going to cry.
“I say ... that’s torn it,” he muttered.
I had one look, gripped his arm close to his side, picked him up in my arms and carried him down the steps into the saloon. The inspector stood aside to let me pass; it had all happened so quickly that I think that it was only then that he realized that Compton had been hit. As I went I remember that I saw the launch slip out from the shadows, heading towards the entrance to the Sound. The men in the motor-boat saw her too; they say that she was a large, half-decked pinnace, painted grey. There was nobody visible aboard her. She tore down the Sound at a great pace, turned northward at the entrance, and vanished into the open sea.
I carried Compton below and laid him on the settee. For a long while I laboured over cutting away his clothes with a blunt penknife. I had a very small first-aid outfit on board; the tiny phials and bandages proved miserably inadequate. I don’t think I need go into details. It was a chest and shoulder wound; with an ordinary bullet it would have been a comparatively slight affair.
One of the sailors kept his head and gave me a lot of help; for the rest, I was quite alone. The inspector, I suppose, was competent to put a broken arm into splints; wholesale surgery was evidently beyond him, and he was useless.
And so it came to an end. He died about twenty minutes later.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY TOOK ME back to Hugh Town in the motor-boat in the early dawn; we left two men in the Irene. They were to bring her round to Hugh Town later in the day, a sad, battered little vessel; in the saloon a covered figure lay upon the soaked cushions. They took me back to Hugh Town in the cold dawn; the ebb was flowing strongly against us out of Crow Sound, so that we were two hours on the way. All the way, nobody spoke a word. It was the sanest, most horrible hour of the twenty-four, the hour when nothing cloaks reality, the hour when one sees things as they really are. I don’t count myself a coward, but I have always been afraid of the dawn.
They took me straight to the police station in the little grey town and put me in a cell, not so much as a prisoner as for privacy. I sat there miserably till they brought me some breakfast, and then asked to see the inspector. He came and I had a short talk with him, a grizzled, unimaginative family man of about fifty, desperately worried and entirely at sea over the whole business. I told him about Joan, and sent him off to break the news to her at her hotel. It was impossible to keep her out of it any longer. Before he went he offered hopefully to bring me writing materials if I would like to make a statement. I said I wouldn’t.
That was all that happened till we left by the afternoon steamer for England; I slept a little, fitfully, throughout the morning. They took me aboard the boat before the crowd came and put me in a cabin below the bridge; from there I could see the Irene lying off the end of the breakwater. There were one or two ugly scars in her topsides, showing bright yellow wood. I saw nothing of Joan, though I learned afterwards that she travelled to England on the same boat.
We travelled up to London on the night train, and they lodged me in a room somewhere in Scotland Yard.
We got there about seven o’clock in the morning. I was tired and sick; a bath would have put me right, but there was no bath available. They allowed me to send out to my flat, though, to get some clean clothes, and in the meantime a barber came to shave me. I was more myself when I had shaved and changed. Then for some hours I was left to my own devices, till late in the afternoon they had me up for a sort of an examination.
They took me into a large room that was some sort of an office, of rather a menial variety. One knows the sort of place so well. The walls were distempered and peeling; the only furniture was two deal tables, ink-stained and loaded with files of dusty papers, and a few chairs. At one of the tables a sergeant was writing laboriously in a ledger, breathing heavily with the unwonted exercise. There was a large clock high up on one of the walls, stationary at eight minutes past twelve. The window was closed and dirty and there were a few dead flies lying on the sill inside — asphyxiated, I supposed.
The inspector who had arrested me was there, and two others. They opened a large ledger, and there I saw a photograph of myself, together with the Bertillion measurements that had been taken when I was in prison. They started off by taking another set of fingerprints. I was getting fed up with them already and asked them if the prints had altered much. I suppose that was a State secret, because I didn’t get an answer.
I wasn’t myself, I suppose, because quite suddenly I found myself beginning to lose my temper. I don’t know now what it was that did it; I knew at the time that I was unreasonable, that these fellows were only doing their job in the way they were accustomed to. I think it was the room that did it, that and the off-hand way in which they treated me. There wasn’t a man in the room who wouldn’t have taken my tip if he had done me a service in the street or at a railway station, but I was in Scotland Yard and arrested on a warrant. They modified their behaviour accordingly, and I found it galling. As I say, I don’t think I was myself.
They finished their measurements at last and put away the ledger. Then they made me go and stand before the table; the sergeant, still breathing heavily, put away one book and opened another, and turned to a clean page. When he was quite ready, pen in hand, one of the inspectors addressed me.
He cleared his throat. “Now, Mr Stenning,” he said weightily. “I want you—”
“Captain Stenning,” I said curtly. I was all on edge.
“I want you to tell me when you first met the deceased, Denis Compton.”
For a moment the impudence of it staggered me. He had warned me before that my statement was to be noted and filed, as though that were not sufficiently obvious. The sergeant sat gaping at me, waiting for my reply. It was like some miserable farce. I realized then to the full the gulf that lay between these fellows and myself. To them “the deceased, Denis Compton,” was a case, and nothing more.
“My barrister will tell you that in court,” I said.
The sergeant wrote it down.
“You can give us a great deal of assistance by telling us now,” he said.
“I dare say,” I answered. “I should prefer to see my solicitor first. I should like to write a note to him at once, please.”
“Time enough for that,” he said. “Now, I want you to tell me when the deceased first came on board your yacht.”
I looked at my watch; it was nearly five o’clock. “My solicitor’s office closes at six,” I said. “I want to write a note to him and have it delivered by hand at once.”
I turned to the sergeant. “Please write that down.”
“That’s enough of that,” said the inspector.
I moved towards the table. “I should like to write that note.”
He hesitated and finally agreed, as a special concession.
“May I see the warrant upon which I was arrested?” I said, pen in hand. “I haven’t seen it yet.”
After a little consultation they showed it to me. It seemed that I had forgotten to sign the clearance certificate at the aerodrome, that I hadn’t written up the machine log-book for several days, and that I hadn’t apologized to the farmer for digging a hole in his field with my aeroplane. In addition, I had failed to appear before the Finchley Police Court to answer for these offences. I must say they had been pretty quick about it all.
I wrote Burgess a short note telling him that I was in trouble and asking him to come and see me, and gave it to the inspector, who sent it off by hand.
I got up from the table. “Right you are,” I said. “Now I’m ready to answer any questions arising out of this warrant.”
The inspector coughed. “I want you to tell me when you first met the deceased, Denis Compton,” he said.
I lost my temper completely then.
“See here,” I said. “I’ve answered that question already. My counsel will tell the court all about th
at when the time comes. As for me, I’m not going to make a statement of any sort now — not one ruddy word. I don’t know under what authority you’re making this examination. It seems to me that it ought to be made before a magistrate. In any case, it’s time I came before a magistrate. I’ve been in custody now for thirty-six hours. I believe there’s an Act called Habeas Corpus that has a word or two to say on that subject. I’m not going to make a statement now, but I’ll see my solicitor as soon as he comes.”
Burgess arrived soon afterwards; they left him alone with me in my room and I told him everything. Burgess was the one link with respectability that I had at that time; he first dawned on my horizon when I came out of prison. He was a cousin of my father; I may say at once that he’s the only one of my relations that I’ve ever been glad to meet. I wasn’t long out of prison when he wrote me a pleasant little note asking me to dine with him; I went, and found him a widower, a cheerful old lad of about sixty with a shrewd judgement for alcohol. He expressed himself mildly surprised that I should have allowed myself to go to prison for being drunk in charge of a motor-car. I suppose I was bitter about it; I remember saying that it didn’t seem to matter very much whether I went or not. At all events, there and then he constituted himself my solicitor; rather than appear discourteous I let him have his way. Later I found out that he was the head of one of the most conservative firms in London. The first thing he did was to put on one of his bright lads to unravel my affairs for me. They needed it.
I set to and told him everything from the beginning, down to the time when I arrived in Scotland Yard. I’ve often wondered what he thought of it. It wasn’t quite in his usual line, for one thing. His line was litigation, land purchase, wills, death duties — the usual stock-in-trade of a respectable solicitor. I was keenly aware of this while I was telling my story; I could feel that it was rather rotten of me to drag the old man into a criminal affair of this sort. Yet he was pretty well on the spot when he came to advise me. In the very short time before he came to me he had found out that I was to be brought up to answer the aeroplane charges the next morning; he promised to send one of his bright boys to represent me. He told me that all I had to do was to sit tight and say nothing for the moment; his bright boy would get me bail. He said he would find the surety himself. As for making a statement, I should have to do that some time, but I could take my time over it. In the meantime he would find out by means of some legal backstairs intelligence department exactly what was expected of me.
Finally, he surprised me vastly by saying that no court would dare to give me anything but a nominal sentence for helping Compton to get away. He seemed to consider it rather a creditable effort — not bad, I thought, for a lawyer of his generation.
He went away, and they brought me dinner, of a sort. I had nothing to do after dinner; I sat and smoked and read the morning paper that they had given me, till it was about ten o’clock. Then there was a bit of a bustle in the corridor outside my door, and a sergeant came in and told me to follow him.
I discovered that I was to see Sir David Carter.
They led me down a series of corridors and up a flight of stairs. They halted me there before an office door while one of the sergeants tapped respectfully and went inside. I was left to cool my heels for a little. I remember thinking that Sir David Carter was a tolerably late worker, and I remember the satisfaction of feeling that at last I was to be taken before the man who counted for something in the Yard.
I was shown into the office after a few minutes — a very different sort of place from the office in which they had examined me that afternoon. The sergeant who had shown me in backed out quietly, and I was left in the office with the two strangers.
One of them was sitting behind the desk facing the door. He was a grave, white-haired man, not very old; I shouldn’t say that he was more than fifty, though he was quite white. When he spoke, he spoke very quietly, but I knew at once that he wasn’t a man that one could play monkey tricks with. I got to know him quite well before I was through, but I never revised my opinion of Sir David Carter.
He bowed to me as I entered the room.
“Good evening, Captain Stenning,” he remarked. “I am sorry that it has been necessary to disturb you at this late hour. My justification must be that I am, as you observe, working myself. As is Major Norman, Captain Stenning.” He motioned me to a chair. “Will you sit down, Captain Stenning?”
I bowed to the man who was standing by the mantelpiece. He was a man of about my own age, and with one of the keenest expressions I had ever seen on a man. I began to sort out my ideas a bit. I had thought up till then that Scotland Yard was run entirely by a collection of superannuated police constables. It seemed that I was wrong.
I sat down in the easy-chair by the desk. I noticed with some amusement that they had put me in a strong light.
Sir David didn’t waste any time on preamble. “Now, Captain Stenning,” he said, “I have asked you to come here because I want you to tell us what you know about the circumstances in which you were arrested. There is one point that I should like to make clear before you begin. That is that any statement that you may care to make to us is in no sense official. There is nobody taking down what you are saying — there is nobody within hearing but Major Norman and myself. I cannot say that nothing you may say will be used as evidence against you. I cannot say that, till I hear what your story is. At the same time, I cannot see at the moment any valid reason for bringing any charge against you other than the one upon which you were arrested — and which, I think, can be disposed of without any great difficulty.”
He paused for a moment. “Our position simply is this. A murder has been committed, a murder at which you were present, the consequences of which, I am told, you did your utmost to avert. I should be failing in my duty to the State if I were to neglect any opportunity of bringing the murderer to stand his trial. It is for that reason, Captain Stenning, that I want you to tell me what you know about this matter.”
He stopped, and I took my time before replying. He put me in rather an awkward position. I had taken it for granted that, if any action were to be taken in the matter, I should be charged in open court with having assisted in the escape of a convict from custody. In those circumstances I should have allowed myself to be guided entirely by Burgess. Now the circumstances were very different. Apparently they didn’t want to bring me into court; they wanted me to tell them all about it on my own. Well, I was willing enough to do that so long as I could avoid telling them about Joan. I didn’t know how much they knew about her; I only knew that I wanted to keep her out of it as much as possible. After all, the part that she had played wasn’t important.
I played for time. “I know very little about the true facts of this murder,” I said.
They didn’t speak, didn’t hurry me, but let me take my time. Sir David sat quietly leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped before him on the desk, meditatively staring at the ceiling. I was suddenly aware that my remark had been fatuous. I certainly knew more of the facts than they did, and it was up to me to tell them. There was no need, however, to lay stress on Joan.
“I suppose you know that I helped Compton to get away,” I said slowly. “I should do that again, of course. I was under an obligation to him.”
“In point of fact,” said Sir David Carter, without stirring or taking his eyes from the ceiling, “he saved your life.”
“Exactly,” I said. “After that, you would hardly expect me to give him up?”
“In law,” said Sir David imperturbably, “I should certainly expect you to do so.”
He reached across his desk, picked up a paper with a few pencilled notes on it, and turned to me.
“I understand that after the accident to your aeroplane, Captain Stenning, you visited the house called Six Firs at the instigation of Compton. There you had an interview with Miss Joan Stevenson, who refused to believe that her cousin was at large in the woods and regarded you as an impostor. In some way
you managed to convince her that your story was true, with the result that you visited the house with Compton late that night, where he obtained food and clothes. I understand that you then attempted — unsuccessfully — to persuade him to return to prison. You then decided to set off to lay a false trail in the hope of engaging the attention of the police for a few days while Compton made good his escape; in this you were assisted by Miss Stevenson, who visited Salcombe under the name of Miss Fellowes to prepare the yacht for you. You put to sea upon Saturday the 9th, from Salcombe. Perhaps you would take up the story from that point.”
It took me a minute or two to recover from this.
“There’s one thing I should like to add to that,” I said at last. “Mr Stevenson, Miss Stevenson’s father, had nothing to do with it at all, so far as I know. I don’t know what happened after I left. But while I was there the matter was entirely between Miss Stevenson, Compton, and myself. Neither Mr nor Mrs Stevenson knew of what was going on.”
He nodded. “That has already been made clear to us.”
I wondered who had made it clear, but refrained from asking. Whoever it was seemed to have told them all about Joan; there was now no reason for me to keep anything back. I started in and told them all I knew, from the time I left Salcombe till Compton was killed. They heard me without interruption and practically without any sign. I only caught one quick interchange of glances, when first I mentioned Mattani. It took me some time to finish my yarn, because I wanted to tell them everything, but at last I was through.
I stopped talking, and for a long time nobody said a word. Sir David sat leaning back in his chair, quite motionless, staring at the ceiling.
At last he spoke. “That account tallies very closely with the one given to us this morning by Miss Stevenson,” he observed.
I was relieved. “You have seen Miss Stevenson, then?” I said.