Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

  There it was again! Something had definitely moved in the distant gap. Mr Franklin felt elation running through him as he slid away from the window, working his numbed right arm, picked up the Remington from the side-table, and slipped it into his waistband. He padded across the room in his stockinged feet, softly opened the door, and stepped on to the landing. The large windows of the upper floor were throwing moonlight across the landing and the empty, silent hall below as he turned towards the stairs and suddenly shrieked aloud for there not fifteen feet off and halfway up the stairs was Curry with his eyes glaring wildly in the moonlight and his teeth bared in a ghastly grin as his hand streaked out from beneath his coat and the Colt was whirling up to cover Mr Franklin while he gaped flat-footed with his yell echoing around him, and his numbed right hand twitching feebly at his Remington until instinct sent him diving desperately sideways drawing left-handed and the thunderous boom-boom-boom of revolver-fire reverberated through the house. Something smashed resoundingly on the wall behind his head, the Remington kicked in his fist as he sprawled against the balusters, Curry's outstretched hand was flaming at him as the shots crashed together in one great explosion, but there was no agony of slugs tearing into him and suddenly Curry was screaming, his hands flung up and his eyes staring through the wreaths of powder-smoke, his thin body twisting horribly and turning to pitch headlong down the staircase, the Colt clattering from his hand and skidding away across the polished hall floor. The frail body smashed into the newel-post and lay there grotesquely, and Mr Franklin lunged forward on his belly to the top of the stairs, firing once, twice, into the twitching form, seeing his shots strike on the white shirt-front.

  Mr Franklin scrambled up, his ears deafened by the cannonade, the stench of gunsmoke in his nostrils, and slid rather than ran down the stairs, his Remington out before him, thrust towards Curry's face. He stared at his fallen enemy, but the thin jaw was already hanging wide, a trickle of blood running from the corner, and the dark eyes already filmed in death. Suddenly the body seemed to crumple, and then it slid sideways to lie face down on the bottom step, and Mr Franklin saw the sodden bullet-holes between the shoulders, and was aware that Samson was standing opposite him, the other Remington still smoking in his hand.

  'You ... ?' His voice came out in croak.

  'I shot him behind just as you came out,' said Samson. 'And then again. You hit him yourself, I think, while he was shooting at you.' He stooped over the body and rolled it off the step on to its back in the hall. Curry's whole front was sodden with blood; Mr Franklin thought he could see it pumping out of him beneath the soaked shirt. 'Leaking like a sieve,' said Samson.

  'Christ!' said Mr Franklin. 'He was in the house! In the house! How the hell did he ... ?'

  'Study window, sir, I fancy.' Samson had recollected some of his calm; he was using the honorific again. 'I heard him in the hall, so I came out quietly into the kitchen. I listened for about five minutes - he must have been getting his bearings, for it was after that I heard him at the foot of the stairs. I took a look out, and there he was, but I couldn't get a sure shot at him, sir, because of the bannisters, you understand. So I waited, while he moved up the staircase - very quietly he did it, sir, if you'd closed your eyes you wouldn't have heard a thing - and he was just getting to a spot where I'd have been able to draw a bead on him, sir, when your door opened and you stepped out. So I didn't wait, sir I just jumped out and let him have it. For a moment I thought I was too late - you were right, sir, he's quick. Quicker than anyone I ever saw. We were all shooting at once, sir.'

  Samson's voice ran up into a breathless quaver, and he swallowed hard. For the first time Mr Franklin saw him shaken, small blame to him. He himself suddenly found his hands shaking uncontrollably. He sank into a sitting position on the stairs, and they stared at each other with the dead man between them.

  'How the devil did he make it?' wondered Mr Franklin.

  'It occurred to me that he might,' said Samson. 'You said, sir, he would try to come before you expected him. That's what he did, sir.'

  'We've got to get him out of here!' said Mr Franklin. 'My God, the mess!' Curry's body was bleeding steadily, on to the polished boards of the hall; there was blood on the carpet of the stairs, and on the newel-post, and on Samson's sleeves.

  'I'll get a blanket,' said Samson. He was back in a moment, laying a blanket on the floor and rolling the body onto it, then in turn rolling the bundle on to a tarpaulin. Then he turned abruptly to Mr Franklin.

  'We've got to make up our minds, sir,' he said.

  'What'd you mean?'

  'Well, sir ... what are we going to do with the ... the body? It depends, you see. He was an armed house-breaker; we shot him. The police would accept that, sir - it would be manslaughter, but ...'

  'But why did we pump enough lead into him to sink a ship?' said Mr Franklin. 'There's two of your shots, two of mine at least. And at least three people saw him at Oxton Hall. The police would ask a lot of questions - '

  'Exactly, sir. I just mentioned it. On the other hand,' Samson glanced at the tarpaulin-wrapped bundle, 'I doubt very much if anyone would hear the shots, sir. We're a good way from the village, and it was all indoors. Nobody knows he was here - I don't suppose anyone in England knows who - '

  'My God!' Mr Franklin came abruptly to his feet. 'I'd forgotten - I saw someone moving, out beyond the meadow. I thought it was him, but it couldn't have been! He was already in the house!'

  'An accomplice, sir?'

  'No. No. He'd be alone - I'm certain of that. But we'd better make sure.'

  He ran swiftly upstairs, and went cautiously to the window. The moon was still bright, and across the meadow, near the gap, there were a couple of dark, bulky shapes moving slowly and at random about the field. Mr Franklin heaved a deep sigh and hurried down to the hall.

  'Horses.' He shook his head. 'I forgot they were in the field - I tell you, Samson, I've been a pretty rattled man this last couple of nights. And I thought I had nerve!'

  'Nothing wrong with your nerves, sir. You were very smart when the time came.'

  'If it hadn't been for you. ..'began Mr Franklin, and stopped. 'All right, Thomas, I won't waste time over it. Thank you.'

  Samson nodded. `What I was saying, sir. If it would be inconvenient to go to the police - well, we don't need to, sir.'

  'I know. If we plant him somewhere quietly, then that's the end of it. It crossed my mind while I was still back at Oxton - assuming that he came, and I was faster than he was. I was going to put him - 'he jerked his head towards the rear of the house ' - out there somewheres.'

  'I wouldn't advise that, sir. Not on our own ground. You never know when - '

  'Well, where, then? Dammit, we can't take him far.'

  'There's the marshy ground, sir, over the other side of the road. Up towards Lye Cottage, in the thicket on the far side of old Mrs Reeve's place - away from the village. Nobody ever goes there, and if we cross the road outside our own gate and go through the spinney, we can circle round to it. There's no houses that way - '

  `But that's a good half-mile!'

  'He doesn't weigh much, sir. And there's two of us. And it'll be easy ground to dig, and to cover any traces. But the main thing is, we won't run into anyone at this time of night. We could have it done before daybreak, sir.'

  Mr Franklin looked at the bundle, and at Samson kneeling beside it, and at the blood-stained floor and carpet, and at the fading moonlight shining in from the upstairs windows. He was steady enough now, after the shattering shock of the encounter, and thinking clearly. It was the only way, of course - by no stretch of the imagination could it be officially reported to the police, and if they were going to get rid of Curry secretly, the sooner the better. Was there any virtue to waiting, and carrying him farther afield? - no, that only added to the risk, and anyway, he wanted that hateful thing out of the house as quickly as possible. Samson was watching him.

  'Right,' said Mr Franklin, 'let's go.'

  At S
amson's suggestion they bound the tarpaulin tightly with rope, and between them hefted it to the back door, carrying it slung between them. The moon was dying, and it was almost pitch-dark as they moved down the side of the house to the gate, and across the road to the empty field on the other side. Samson had picked up a couple of shovels from the stables, and they carried one apiece, trudging along the hedgerow towards the distant spinney. Every few hundred yards they changed hands, but Samson had been right - Curry was no great weight, and they were able to move quickly. They reached the spinney and skirted it to another hedge which led to the distant, marshy thicket beyond which was Lye Cottage. They were tired and sweating by the time they reached the thicket, which extended for about two hundred yards before it ended with the tall quickset hedge which marked the bottom of Mrs Reeve's jungle of a garden. They found a piece of flat, marshy ground among a tangle of rotting tree-stumps and brambles, and began to dig.

  It took them about three-quarters of an hour, during which rain began to fall, but it did not hamper their labour. They dug hard, without much precaution for silence; Lye Cottage was more than two hundred yards off, with a tangle of undergrowth between, and the nearest cottage beyond it was a good quarter of a mile away. The soil was soft and easy, and once they were past the first tangle of roots they made good progress. Mr Franklin had undone the tarpaulin, on which they piled the spoil; when they had a narrow trench between four and five feet deep they unwrapped the body from its blanket, and Mr Franklin went quickly through the pockets of jacket and coat - a few papers, which he pocketed carefully, but he left the small change, pen-knife, watch and chain, and such articles. He had no desire to rifle Kid Curry's belongings. Then they rolled the body into the hole and filled it in; the surplus soil they cast broadside into the surrounding bushes. It was growing light as they finished, and the rain was descending in torrents; neither said so, but it occurred to them both that the rain was a blessing; it would help to obscure the traces of their work, and any bloodstains they had left on their way from the house would be quickly obliterated.

  Finally, it was done. Samson quickly bundled up the tarpaulin, blanket, and ropes, Mr Franklin took the shovels, and they looked at each other, two exhausted, mud-splashed, soaking figures with the rain teeming down about them, clattering on the bushes and into the puddles around their feet, while the pale dawn began to steal through the thicket.

  `Well,' said Mr Franklin. `God rest him, I suppose.'

  'Amen,' said Samson.

  And he was gone. So far from Dodson, Missouri, so far from the Wyoming hills. No doubt, when he thought about it, the wicked little man had expected to die by violence, in the heat of a skirmish round an ambushed train, or in some frenzied shoot-out among the rearing horses outside a rifled bank, or strung up to a tree-limb by outraged citizens, or shot down in a gully by a posse commitatus, or in some brawl in alley or saloon. Never, in his wildest nightmare, could it have crossed his mind, or the minds of any of the hundreds who had feared and hunted him, that he would die by the hand of a butler in an apron in an English country house - and no one would ever know. Kid Curry was listed dead and buried at Glenwood Springs. Whatever those sturdy Norfolk ancestors of Mr Franklin's, or those sober Scottish emigrant forebears of Harvey Logan, could have foreseen, it could not have been this - two men shovelling another into the ground of Castle Lancing by night, and setting off silently in the rainy daybreak to go home. Nor would any of the Wild Bunch, or the Pinkertons, or the railroad bulls, ever have credited it. That, Mr Franklin reflected, was all in his favour.

  They came back round by the spinney, having seen no one; the road running past Lancing Manor was empty in the early daylight. They put the blanket and tarpaulin in the stables, to be burned when occasion served, and went into the house. While Samson boiled water, and set to with mop and cloths and buckets to remove the ugly, congealed pool from the polished floor, and the stains from the newel-post and skirting board, Mr Franklin went up to the landing to survey the damage. Beyond his bedroom door lay a shattered vase, and low down in the plaster of the wall two bullet-holes; there was a third in the polished planking close to the balusters, a great splintered furrow in the wood - the little bastard had got off three shots, then, as Mr Franklin dived, and they had all come within inches. Perhaps the Kid had not been the deadly shot of old; none out of three, even in that light, was poor shooting for him unless he already had one of Samson's bullets in him when he began to fire.

  He checked the Kid's Colt, lying half under the big hall rug where it had slid away after he fell. Two chambers loaded, three discharged. He broke his own Remington; four spent chambers. Two he had certainly put into Curry after his fall - Samson reckoned he had scored another hit earlier, so one had missed. He checked the wall beyond where Curry had been standing; there was one hole, neatly drilled in the panelling.

  'How many shots did you fire, Samson?'

  Samson, wringing out his cloths, said: 'Three, sir,' and picked up his Remington from the hall table to make sure. 'Yes, three. The first two hit him, sir, I'm pretty certain.'

  They found the third hole, after a brief search, in the lintel of Mr Samson's door, and on the staircase itself, one slug, battered out of shape, which had presumably passed clean through the outlaw's body.

  'We'll have to get rid of the stair carpet, sir,' said Samson. 'We'll never get the stains out. I can go into Norwich and get a matching piece of runner, and we can burn the old one. I'll plug and plaster the holes in the wall, and do a job with one of these patent fillers on the woodwork. In a day or two, no one will ever be able to guess what happened, sir. That's the floor done for now, but I'll go over it carefully again, with scrubbing brushes and polish.'

  They fell silent, thinking the same thing. It was probable that Curry's body was hidden forever, or at least for more generations than would worry either of them, and even if it was found years hence, there would be nothing to connect the skeleton with Lancing Manor. But the facts of scientific detection were well-known; bloodstains could be traced long after they had been made, and it was essential that there should be no tell-tale evidence of them on the floorboards or in the cracks between. The slugs buried in the walls and woodwork were safe enough, plaster and paint would see to that.

  But there were other scars, and they both knew it. There was a common secret now, a common guilt - so far as guilt entered into it - and they would share it to their graves. It had to be spoken about, and Mr Franklin knew it had to be done now.

  'I'm sorry, Thomas,' he said. 'You didn't deserve any of this. It wasn't fair, and I want you to know the full responsibility is mine. It was my quarrel, and whatever you did ... well, that was my deed. As far as I'm concerned, you weren't in this fight tonight; I fired all those shots, and you didn't come on the scene till it was all over. In fact, you weren't here at all. Understand? We may have acted in self-defence, but we've hidden a body, and that will make it murder, in the law's eyes, if it ever comes out. Between ourselves - he was a bad man, and he got what he deserved. I'm no saint myself, but you may take my word for it.'

  Samson laid down his cloths and dried his hands on a rough towel. 'I know that, sir. And I was here, and it happened exactly as it happened - if it should ever come out. But I think it's something that only you and I will ever know.' He picked up Curry's gun from the table and held it out, butt first. 'Do those marks mean what I think they mean, sir?'

  There were eleven neat little nicks lightly carved on the gold tracery along the edge of the pearl handle. Mr Franklin nodded. `They mean what you think,' he said.

  `Then I'll lose no sleep over it, sir,' said Samson. `You'll be disposing of the pistol, of course. I'll clean the Remingtons, and get rid of the empty cases. In the meantime, may I suggest that you get out of your wet things and have a hot bath; I'll attend to the boiler and prepare some coffee and brandy.'

  There was much more that should have been said, of course. There was the not unimportant question of whether a master and servant who had be
en party to a homicide could, in the nature of things, continue in their relationship. It was a matter which might well have taxed the professional ethics of Mr Pride, although with his profound experience of such things, he would probably have said that it depended entirely on the inclinations of the parties involved. And he might well have been right, for it did not occur to either Mr Franklin or Samson for a very long time, and by then it was no longer worth bothering about.

  Early in the year 1910 the Liberal Party won the General Election with a reduced majority, eighty labour exchanges at which unemployed workers could apply for jobs were opened, `By the light of the silvery moon' was established as the hit song of the moment, and a dead elm tree, succumbing to the January gales, fell in Lye Thicket, Castle Lancing, across the slight mound which marked the tomb of Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry. Events both momentous and trivial, and remarkable in combination only because they were the principal things that Mr Franklin was forever after to associate with his marriage, at St James's Church, Piccadilly, to Miss Elizabeth Clayton, of Oxton Hall, Norfolk. He remembered the election because he could hardly help noticing it at the time, even although, as an alien, he had no vote, and was able to preserve an amiable neutrality in the face of Colonel and Mrs Dammit when they called to enlist his aid in the Conservative interest. He did, however, contribute an article to the jumble sale which Mrs Dammit was organising to assist party funds - a very fine pearl-handled revolver with golden tracing (slightly scarred) round its butt, which raised the remarkable sum of £25 from a local sportsman, more than all the other items in the sale together. Mr Franklin presented the weapon on the kind of hare-brained impulse to which men are prone in the month before their weddings; there was nothing ghoulish about it; indeed, it seemed to him quite fitting that the gun which had earned so much hard money for Kid Curry, a private enterprise traditionalist if ever there was one, should, even at the last, be used to raise funds for the conservative cause.