Anything For a Quiet Life (16 page)

He told them about other engagements, in some of which he himself had been involved. Outside the rain poured down in a steady stream. The Admiral said, “Heavens, it’s past six. Mrs Garibaldi will think you’ve been drowned.”

The boys got up reluctantly from the sofa.

The Admiral said, “Look. If you’re bored, or it’s too wet or cold outside for sitting around, you can use this place. If I’m not here the back door key’s under a tile in the outhouse. I’ll show you where.”

When they were going they both said, “Thank you,” politely and marched off into the rain.

I hope I didn’t bore them, thought the Admiral. They certainly hadn’t bored him. He realised more strongly than ever before what he had lost by having no grandchildren of his own. Both his sons had been killed in the last war. His only daughter had married an ambitious politician who had been too busy in all-night sittings in the House to waste his time presenting her with children.

There was refreshment in children. Even his most cynical married friends admitted it. Children might be a nuisance when they were small and a problem in their teens, but there was a period between six and twelve when they were an unmixed delight. They had a sort of innocence. They might do wrong out of thoughtlessness but they would not plan it. Nor would they think wrong of anyone, until he had proved himself a brute.

The boys he had been talking to had something more. Some of the spirit of their mother who, the Admiral recollected, had been French; and more than a little of the toughness and initiative which had taken their father to the top of his profession. These were the sort of youngsters into whose hands the governance of the country would fall when the last of the present generation had passed on.

It was going to be a perilously difficult world as, one after another, the old bastions went down: religion, family life, the rule of law. Stormy seas which were going to need clear heads to chart the course and strong hands on the tiller.

The Admiral woke with a start from a daydream which had nearly turned into a nightmare. He stumped off to see what Mrs Matcham had put out for his supper.

All next day, which was a Thursday, the rain bucketed down. On Thursday night the wind swung round to the south, and by lunchtime on Friday the sun was shining strongly as though to make up for its previous lapse. The holidaymakers, especially the ones who were due to go home that weekend, crowded back on to the beaches; the housewives made a concerted rush for the shops to lay in stores for the weekend.

On the Saturday morning, after breakfast, the Admiral walked down to pass on to Jonas the latest news from the council. He said, “They had a meeting yesterday afternoon. It was a close thing. They couldn’t bring themselves to turn out the whole show, which was what Rattray proposed. Someone pointed out that if they did, they’d have to refund at least part of the licence fee which had been paid, and all the money men looked glum. The furthest they would go was to say they’d consider the matter again next year.”

At this moment the telephone rang. Jonas listened for a moment, said, “Yes, he’s here with me,” and to the Admiral, “It’s Queen. He wants to talk to you.”

The talk was one-sided. The Admiral said nothing but “I see” and “Yes”. As he replaced the receiver he said, “It’s trouble, at the council offices. He wants me to come along and pour a little oil on troubled waters.”

“What’s up? A riot?”

“Something of the sort. Are you coming?”

“Try and stop me,” said Jonas.

The streets were empty, but they could hear the swelling noise ahead of them.

“It’s the families from the new estate. It seems their wives went shopping yesterday afternoon and a lot of them left their doors on the latch. A silly thing to do, but they’d never had any trouble before and didn’t bother about locking up. When they got back they found someone had been through the unlocked houses and taken a lot of stuff. And they reckon they know where the thief came from. They’re really worked up about it. Had a meeting when the men got home last night and decided that if no one would deal with the circus they’d attend to it themselves.”

“Attend to it?”

“Bust it up.”

“Mob law. Can’t have that. What are they doing?”

“They marched down to the council office and demanded to see the town clerk.”

“Little Mr Timms. He’ll be scared stiff.”

“He was. But he managed to get the front door shut and telephoned the police.”

“So what are the crowd doing now?”

“Milling round in the street and shouting. They’ll be breaking windows soon. Queen got in the back way; with two or three members of the Watch Committee he’d collected en route. They’re in the Council Chamber, in a state of siege.”

They had reached the main street by now. It was jam-packed with people, and the blast of horns from blocked motorists was adding to the general pandemonium. Jonas had had some experience of mobs. He thought this one sounded angry, but not really dangerous yet. But the first broken window would fire the fuse. The leaders were milling round the main door. A big red-haired policeman stood stolidly outside it. A lot of the people were not really involved. They had come along to see the fun. Jonas and the Admiral pushed through them without much difficulty and reached the front of the building. Positioning himself on the top step, the Admiral bellowed in his quarterdeck voice, “Listen to me a moment. Stop shouting and listen.”

Jonas thought he was the only person who could have made them listen. The hubbub died down a bit.

“There’s no point in trying to fight the police or break down the door. What you need is a deputation. You’ve got a grievance. Right. They’ll have to listen to you. Half a dozen of you.”

“Preston and Collinson,” suggested Jonas quickly. They both happened to be his clients.

“And Mrs Garibaldi,” said the Admiral. “You’ll come? Right. We need three more volunteers.”

The idea of a deputation was gaining ground. The Admiral said to the policeman, “Let this lot in, Davey, quick, then shut the door behind us.”

They found Queen in the front hall with two more policemen. The Admiral explained his plan. Queen said, “Good idea. I’ll take you all up.”

In the Council Chamber three members of the Watch Committee were forming a protective phalanx round poor Mr Timms, who looked as though he was about to burst into tears.

“Why don’t we all sit down,” said Queen, “then we can talk things out.”

The Admiral said, “I hope one thing’s clear. We can’t have violence. It won’t do you any sort of good.”

“It won’t do them circus bastards any good either,” said Mr Baker, a large and aggressive engineer. But it seemed that he was in a minority. Tempers were cooling.

“What we’ve got to do,” said Queen, “is get the fullest and most accurate description of the things that have been taken. Mr Timms will write it all down. Suppose you start, Mrs Garibaldi.”

Mrs Garibaldi had lost a silver teapot, which had been given to her by her late husband on the twenty-fifth anniversary of their wedding and a pair of small silver candlesticks. She described them in loving detail. Her next-door neighbour, Mrs Preston, had lost two athletic cups won by her son at school. None of the losses seemed very serious but Jonas knew exactly how the people felt about them. It was not the value of the goods, but the fact of the intrusion. To have alien fingers dabbling among their private possessions was a form of rape.

When the list was complete the Superintendent said, “You’ve most of you been to the funfair and you’ve seen the people who run it and I expect you’d recognise them if you saw them again. Now think hard. Did you see any of them near your houses yesterday afternoon?”

There was a general shaking of heads.

“It’s like this,” said Mrs Preston. “As soon as the sun came out we all went down to the town to do our weekend shopping and the kids made straight for the beach.”

“Most of the afternoon,” agreed Mrs Garibaldi, “I don’t suppose there wasn’t anyone around in the estate at all.”

“Did any of you meet anyone on the road, going out or coming back?”

Heads were shaken again.

“You see how difficult that makes it for us. But what we can do and will do, is to circulate the descriptions you’ve given us as widely as possible. The teapot and the cups had engraving on them. They won’t be easy to pass . . .”

There was more discussion, but the steam was out of the meeting. Looking out of the window at the end of the hall Jonas could see that most of the crowd had drifted away, and the police had the traffic moving again.

Jonas congratulated Queen on his handling of the affair.

Queen said, “I did think it was going to be nasty, but they’re reasonable folk really. Incidentally, I’ve got on to that stall-keeper. His name’s Golding. He’s got a wife who’s as big a brute as he is by all account. And has got a bit of form.”

“Theft?”

“Assault with intent to injure. He nearly killed a man in a pub at Sidmouth. Some argument about money. He collected three months for that, and would have got more, only it was partly the other man’s fault.”

“I knew he was an ugly customer,” said the Admiral, who had been listening to this.

The twins, who had been watching the Admiral’s house, had seen him leave when he went to visit Jonas. They waited for a few minutes and then made their way round to the back, found the door key under the tile and entered quickly. They knew that Mrs Matcham had the day off on Saturday.

“No hurry,” said Colin, “we’ve bags of time.”

David said, “It’s all right if he does come back. He said we could come here whenever we wanted, didn’t he?”

Colin looked at his twin thoughtfully. Then he said, “Yes, that’s right. Let’s go in.”

They made their way upstairs. When not in use the telescope lived in a cupboard in the attic. They took it out, carried it on to the flat roof and fixed it on the permanent housing which stood there.

“Be jolly careful,” said Colin. “If you look at the sun through it, it could blind you.”

“Stale,” said David.

They positioned the telescope so that it was focused on the funfair. Then they fetched two stools from the attic, sat down behind the telescope and took it in turns to watch. The one who wasn’t watching had a notebook and a pencil.

Colin said, “If he comes back, remember that we’re birdwatching. Write some birds’ names in the book.”

“What birds?”

“Any birds,” said Colin impatiently, and resumed his inspection of the funfair. He was concentrating on the side where the stallholders’ caravans were parked and their families lived.

If the Admiral had been watching them he would have seen no reason to doubt their toughness and initiative. He might have qualified his thoughts about their innocence.

Half an hour later David said, “Got it. It’s the blue one, quite a bit separate from the others. It’s got a box of geraniums on the window ledge.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain. I saw him go in and come out again. And his wife came out. That’s the one all right.”

Colin said “Good.” They packed up the telescope, put it back in the cupboard, returned the stools to the attic, and departed as unobtrusively as they had come.

That afternoon, having nothing better to do, the Admiral again made his way down to the fairground to see if he could pick up anything which might help the wobblers on the council to make up their minds. Nine-tenths of the way there, he thought. One more good push.

Being Saturday, the place was crowded and there was a small queue filtering through the entrance. Immediately in front of him was a girl pushing a pram with a baby in it. Rather a slatternly-looking girl with a lot of make-up on her face. The baby was invisible under a pile of bedclothes. Poor mite must be suffocating, thought the Admiral, and wondered if he should say something about it, but decided that a mother, even as young as that one, probably knew what was best for her own baby.

There were quite a few policemen about, he noticed. The stallholders looked a bit edgy, but the crowd seemed reasonably good-tempered. Golding was busy at his roll-a-disc stall which had the usual crowd round it. The Admiral watched for a bit and thought that he seemed more generous in his paying-out than he had been before. Maybe he had sensed the hostility of his customers. A clever brute, thought the Admiral. In a long and active life he had met many brutes, but few of them had been clever.

A woman arrived, pushing her way through the crowd round the stall, carrying a thermos of some hot drink. She ducked under the board and took charge of the game whilst her husband refreshed himself. A big woman, with a rasping voice, she had no difficulty in keeping the game going. A fitting mate for the brute, thought the Admiral.

It was at that moment that he had a shock. He happened to be looking back at his own house, clearly in sight, perched halfway up the cliff. And as he was looking he saw a flash of light. Someone on the roof was using a mirror, slanting it into the strong sun and then turning it away again. A primitive but effective form of heliograph. The message was clear too. The Admiral had not forgotten his Morse code.

“Okay,” said the mirror and then again, “okay – okay – okay.”

“What on earth,” said the Admiral. “This wants looking into.”

He made quickly for the exit. It took him some time to get through the crowd which was coming in. The stout man in the singlet (surely it was Mr Bailey) recognised him and waved to him genially.

“Going already, Admiral,” he said. “Not spent all your money, have you?”

“Not quite,” said the Admiral shortly. He noticed another dissatisfied customer just ahead of him. The girl with the pram was leaving too.

Back at his house the mystery deepened. The key was under the tile. There was no sign of breaking in. There was no sort of disturbance and if someone had been up on the roof they had left no mark. The telescope, which was one of the most valuable things in the house, was safely stowed in the attic cupboard. The Admiral made his way down through the house, checking as he went. His orderly habits enabled him to say, with certainty, that nothing was missing.