by T E Kinsey
Meanwhile, the older gentleman was undergoing a similar transformation. He peeled off a false beard, leaving behind just an impressive military moustache. Next came a putty nose and a set of false teeth.
‘Well, that was unexpected,’ I mouthed.
‘The film folk?’ mouthed Lady Hardcastle.
I nodded. Not quite as unexpected as all that, then.
She mouthed, ‘Check the other window,’ and pointed to the parlour window on the opposite side of the door.
I crept across and took a careful peek. The two mortuary men had manhandled Mr Cheetham’s body on to one of the cots, watched by Zelda Drayton and Aaron Orum.
As I retreated from the window, I slipped on some loose gravel.
‘What was that?’ Orum’s voice carried loud and clear through the broken panes and rotten frames.
‘Probably just a badger or sommat,’ said one of the mortuary men.
‘Check it,’ said Orum. ‘We’ve had too good a run to have it all messed up on closing night.’
I gave Lady Hardcastle one of our old signals, the one that meant ‘the game’s up, let’s get out of here’. She nodded to show that she understood, but chose not to scarper. Instead, she stood up, brushed the dust from her coat, and pulled the tiny Browning from her pocket. She stepped back a few feet from the door. I moved quickly to her side. Dr Gosling chose – wisely given his performance so far – to stand behind us.
The door opened and there stood the van driver’s mate, brandishing a short wooden club.
‘Good evening, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle cheerfully. ‘Is the master of the house at home?’
‘What? Sling your hook.’
Lady Hardcastle took a step forwards into the dim light that spilled from the open door.
‘What?’ he said again, this time slightly less sure of himself. He turned and looked over his shoulder. ‘Mr Orum,’ he called. ‘There’s . . . there’s . . . umm . . . someone at the door for you.’
Aaron Orum appeared behind him, looking none too impressed by the younger man’s efforts so far.
‘What the . . . ? Oh,’ he said, his voice trailing off. ‘You.’ Then his manner changed and he said chidingly, ‘Where are your manners, Trevor? Let Lady Hardcastle in.’
Lady Hardcastle had been holding the tiny pistol behind her back. As she stepped in front of me to accept their invitation, she slipped it discreetly back into her pocket. She turned to make sure we were following her.
I, meanwhile, kept my eyes on Orum and the mortuary man. I saw Orum bend forwards and whisper something in the other man’s ear, then step back out of sight. This didn’t look good. I tapped Lady Hardcastle on the back using another of our signals. ‘Cave! Something’s not right here.’ Her hand returned to her pocket.
They waited until we were all three through the door, and then jumped us.
Under other circumstances it wouldn’t have been a fair fight. I’d have dropped the two mortuary men and Lady Hardcastle would have pulled her gun on Orum – it would have been over in seconds. Unfortunately, we had an unfair disadvantage. We had Dr Simeon Gosling with us.
The one I now knew to be called Trevor came at me, waving the wooden club in a manner that demonstrated his inexperience and ineptitude perfectly. I felt a slight twinge of guilt at the ease with which I disarmed him and dropped him to the deck – it didn’t seem entirely fair.
I turned to see Lady Hardcastle levelling the Browning at Aaron Orum. He put his hands up and stepped back. Basil, Euphemia, and Zelda hadn’t entered the fray, but raised their hands anyway to make sure there was no misunderstanding.
Which left only the other mortuary man to be dealt with before we could go home to brandy and a warm fire. He wasn’t a powerfully built man so Dr Gosling should have him well under control. I span quickly towards the front door to check.
‘Nobody move,’ said the mortuary man, ‘or I’ll stick the good doctor with this.’ He twitched his right hand to draw our attention to the syringe it held. The needle was pointed at Dr Gosling’s neck. ‘Despite my uniform, I don’t have any medical experience myself,’ he continued, ‘but my understanding is that a large dose of potassium cyanide isn’t recommended for anyone who wants to live a long and happy life.’
Lady Hardcastle put her pistol on the ground. ‘There’s no need for that, dear,’ she said calmly. ‘You’ve harmed no one until now. You don’t want to risk a visit to the hangman. Not now you’ve come so far.’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ said a newly emboldened Aaron Orum. ‘We’ve had to listen to quite enough from you over the past week, thank you.’ He bent down to pick up the pistol. ‘Trevor? Trevor, you idiot. Get up.’
Trevor groaned and struggled to his feet.
‘Tie these three up. By the time they’re found – if they’re found – we’ll be on our way to N—’
‘Good idea, Aaron,’ said a croaky voice from the cot in the parlour. ‘Tell them where we’re going, why don’t you?’
‘Nice to have you back with us, Nolan, old pal,’ said Orum.
‘Nice to be here,’ said Cheetham, who was now sitting up. He sipped at the water that Zelda had given him. ‘Treat the ladies gently,’ he said. ‘They’re interfering busybodies but they were generous and gracious hosts. No need for rough stuff.’
Trevor looked disappointed. It has always been my experience that men really rather resent being bested by a diminutive lady’s maid – he had clearly been hoping for the chance of a little retribution.
While Orum kept us covered with the pistol, Trevor had the three of us sit on the floor where he tied our wrists and ankles with lengths of cord. Though he was a poor fighter, he seemed to be a reasonably proficient knotsmith. The skills he needed for stage fighting weren’t much use in the real world, but I presumed he had also spent some time rigging scenery in the theatre. Those skills would be useful anywhere.
Once we were secure, they ignored us while they swiftly and efficiently packed up. In less than an hour they had cleared the old cottage of every trace of their occupancy. Without another word to us, they took the lamps and left.
‘I suppose you’re used to this sort of thing,’ said Dr Gosling forlornly. ‘But I have to say that I’m really not having a lovely time.’
‘Chin up, Sim, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘We’ll be out of here in a jiffy.’
‘How?’ he asked, plainly not much cheered or convinced by her assertion. ‘That Trevor chap wasn’t messing about when he tied us up. I can barely move.’
‘Well,’ I said as I wriggled my arms into a more useful position, ‘while I grant you that Clever Trevor is well versed in the art of tying knots, bends, and hitches, he’s really not that good with prisoners.’ I wriggled my arms a bit more and was soon rewarded with the clatter of wood and steel on the stone floor. ‘He entirely failed to search us for weapons.’
I took the knife and began to shuffle towards Lady Hardcastle.
‘You told me you weren’t armed,’ she said as we sat back to back and I set to work on the cord securing her wrists.
‘That was this afternoon,’ I said. ‘Once I knew you were going about the place with a pistol in your pocket, I thought I ought to slip a sticker up my sleeve.’
‘Well done, you,’ she said. ‘And not so well done, Trevor. Ow! Steady on, there.’
‘You know how you tend to gesture with your hands while you’re talking,’ I said. ‘You’re doing it now. Sit still or you’ll get hurt.’
‘I am hurt, dear.’
‘Sit still or you’ll get hurt again, then.’
It took me another few seconds to slice through the cord, at which point she was able to take the knife and set about freeing first her own ankles, then Dr Gosling and me.
‘Is everyone fit?’ she asked as we massaged life back into our hands and feet.
‘As we’ll ever be,’ I said.
‘Then let’s get to the motor car and see if we can’t catch the blighters.’
We hurried out of t
he cottage and back through the trees.
‘They’ve got a head start again,’ said Dr Gosling after bumping into yet another tree. ‘And this time we don’t know where they’re going.’
‘Of course we do,’ she said. ‘Orum all but told us.’
‘Did he? I thought that Cheetham chap stopped him.’
‘New Jersey,’ I said.
‘You got that from “N—”?’ he said.
‘It’s the moving picture capital of the world,’ I said. ‘It’s bound to be where Cheetham wants to end up.’
‘So they’ll be driving to Liverpool?’ he said.
‘Hardly,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘They’re in a stolen mortuary van. They’ll want to get rid of that as soon as they can. They’ll have worked it so that they can ditch the van somewhere secluded, get to a railway station, and be on the last train north. Then even if anyone does find the van, they’ll have a head start – no one will know where to look, and even if they do, they’ll have no way to follow them until morning.’
‘We could wire ahead,’ said Dr Gosling. ‘The Liverpool police can round them up at the station.’
‘We should certainly do that as well,’ she said. ‘But we know how good they are at disguises – any description we send would be meaningless if they’ve had a few hours on a train to get themselves into makeup again.’
‘Then . . . ?’ said Dr Gosling.
‘The nearest station is Chipping Bevington,’ she said. ‘But they’d be recognized there. If they don’t know the area well, I’d say they’d head for Camsfield. There are enough places to stash a stolen van without making it obvious one is heading for the railway station.’
We reached Dr Gosling’s motor car just as Constable Hancock arrived on his bicycle. The steep hill had left him winded and he struggled to speak.
‘Got . . . here as . . . quick . . . as . . . I could . . . m’lady,’ he wheezed.
‘Well done, Constable,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I’m afraid our birds have flown, but we have a plan to catch them. If you could be a good chap and get back to the village as fast as you can, we’d appreciate the help of the police at Camsfield. Telephone them and tell them we need to stop a party of five men and two women – the four people who were staying at our house, Aaron Orum, and the two mortuary men. They might split up, but that’s the total we should end up with.’
The poor constable was still blowing hard, and a rivulet of sweat ran down from under his helmet and into his eye. He blinked it clear.
‘But they’re . . .’ he said, clearly puzzled.
‘Yes, we thought they were dead, too. But we have been hoodwinked. And now we need to stop them.’
‘Right you are, m’lady,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, Constable,’ she said. ‘It’s downhill all the way back.’
The thought didn’t seem to comfort him much as he wearily turned his bicycle and set off the way he had just come.
Familiarity with Lady Hardcastle’s driving style didn’t make Dr Gosling a more confident passenger. If anything, knowing what was to come, and being able to anticipate the feeling of terror and helplessness, made it worse for him. Having been tied up at gunpoint hadn’t done his nerves much good, either.
‘Are you all right there, Sim, dear?’ asked Lady Hardcastle as she took a bend slightly too quickly and scraped the side of his motor car against the hedgerow.
His reply was to open the window beside him and be violently and copiously sick down the side of the car.
‘Better out than in, dear,’ she said, and pressed on.
Once we were on the main road, the ride was a little less choppy but we had something new to be worried about.
‘We’ve not seen them yet,’ I said. ‘How confident are you that they’re going to catch their train at Camsfield?’
‘Not confident at all,’ she said. ‘They have so many options, and the chances of our picking the same station as them are tiny. And that’s if we assume that they’re sailing from Liverpool to New York. They might just as easily take a ship from Southampton. Or not travel to New York at all and start a laundry business in Coventry.’
‘But we’ll go to Camsfield anyway.’
‘Occam’s Razor,’ she said. ‘The solution with the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. We assume they want to get to New Jersey to start their life anew. We assume they want to get there as quickly as possible. We assume they don’t wish to be caught.’
‘Three very reasonable assumptions,’ I said.
‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Ships from Liverpool to New York make one stop in Ireland. Ships from Southampton sail first to Cherbourg, then to Ireland, then to New York. So Liverpool is the best choice for speed.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And, as we said in the cottage, avoiding capture means leaving as few clues as possible to their intended ultimate destination. The mortuary van is very distinctive, so ditching it near an isolated railway station is a bit of a giveaway. But if it’s found in a busy town, no one would have the first idea what their intentions were – they might have done anything next.’
‘You make a good case,’ I said.
‘It’s the best one I could come up with at short notice,’ she said. ‘But it comes with no guarantees. I could easily be so wide of the mark that poor Simeon’s motor car will be scratched and puke-stained for nothing.’
‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ said Dr Gosling weakly.
‘Just the one, dear?’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘For now,’ he said. ‘What on earth’s going on? Who are those people? Why were some of them dead for a couple of days? Why are they going to New Jersey?’
‘All in good time,’ she said. ‘All in good time. I’m going to have to explain all this to the inspector in the morning – you’ll just have to wait. I don’t want to have to do it all twi—’
‘Slow down,’ I said.
‘Not you as well?’ she said. ‘We don’t have time to slow down.’
‘Look ahead. Lights. How many vehicles do you imagine are out on the road at this time of night? If you don’t slow down, we’ll go clattering into them.’
‘Don’t we want to catch them?’ asked Dr Gosling.
‘Ultimately, yes,’ I said. ‘But we’ll stand a better chance of rounding them up if we take them by surprise at the railway station, where we’ll have a couple of burly coppers to help us. If we give ourselves away now, they’ll have time to work out a new plan.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t feel too badly, dear. She’s had a lot more experience of tactics and stratagems than you have. I’m sure she couldn’t conduct a post-mortem or diagnose a case of the galloping quinsy.’
‘I shall sit quietly while you go about your business,’ he said.
Lady Hardcastle slackened her speed and we followed the van at what we considered to be a safe distance. I confess to being ever so slightly relieved when we saw it take the turning towards Camsfield, but I kept my feelings to myself. I didn’t want to let on that I had harboured any doubts about the plan.
Lady Hardcastle felt no similar need. ‘Thank heavens for that,’ she said. ‘It seems we were right after all. Shall we continue our gamble, do you think? Shall we stop following them and just head straight for the railway station?’
‘You’ve been right so far,’ I said. ‘And I see no other reason for them being here.’
We were familiar by now with the back streets of Camsfield, having visited the town several times when Chipping Bevington was unable to meet Lady Hardcastle’s shopping needs. She turned off the main road that ran through the town and took a less direct, but more discreet, route to the railway station.
I was further relieved as we drew up outside to see that the two local policemen were waiting by the main door. Lady Hardcastle parked the motor car and approached them.
‘Good evening, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘I’m Lady Hardcastle. I asked Constable Hancock from Littleton C
otterell to call you. Our quarry will be arriving any minute so I think we might be better off concealing ourselves inside.’
‘Right you are, m’lady. Come along, Perkins.’
‘I hope it hasn’t been too awful being out here in the cold,’ she said as we went in.
‘So long as it’s not a fool’s errand, m’lady,’ said the sergeant. ‘But if you’re right, and we do end up catching a gang of murderers, I’d say it was worth any amount of discomfort.’
Dr Gosling drew breath as though he was about to set the man straight, but I shook my head. Now was not the time for a full explanation. We’d get more cooperation from the local bobbies if they thought they were helping to nab a gang of desperate villains rather than . . . My train of thought was derailed.
‘Might I have a word in private, my lady,’ I said.
‘Of course, dear.’
We stepped away from the policemen, who were chatting with a much-revived Dr Gosling.
‘It’s just,’ I said once we were alone, ‘I’m not entirely certain why we’re planning to arrest the film folk. Now that we know no one’s dead, what crime have they actually committed?’
‘There’s the burning down of the mortuary at the very least. And if I’m right, there’s conspiracy to defraud. They definitely need to be hauled before the beak.’
‘I await your explanation with interest,’ I said.
The two policemen hid themselves in the ticket office by the simple expedient of standing behind an ornamental pillar. Lady Hardcastle, Dr Gosling, and I loitered by the door that led out on to the platform, our backs to the station entrance.
Sensibly, the fugitives had split up. First to arrive were Basil Newhouse and Zelda Drayton, who were supporting a very poorly looking Nolan Cheetham between them. They approached the ticket counter, where Basil Newhouse asked for three First Class single tickets to Liverpool. Hearing his familiar voice, Lady Hardcastle and I both turned to face them. They made to leave, but the two Camsfield policemen blocked the main door.