Appleby Plays Chicken (15 page)

‘At least it’s policemen on the other side of the Loaf. I’ve glimpsed a couple of them with the naked eye. And they’re lying pretty low, I’m glad to say – just as our friend is, up there with the rifle. How many of your companions are advancing upon us?’

‘I’m trying to count. I can see Ogg. He’s got a beard. I think they’re all there. Except Ian Dancer.’

‘It would be too much to expect
him
. And your tutor?’

‘Yes, Pettifor’s there.’

‘You fill me with curiosity, David. But I think I’d better not come across and look. I fancied I saw a hint of movement on the Loaf. Is there anybody else?’

‘Yes, there’s the affluent retired clergyman – a chap called Faircloth. And Colonel Farquharson, a melancholic admirer of the young manhood of England.’ The irruption of the reading party had momentarily thrown David into one of his light-headed fits, and he was disposed to talk any nonsense that occurred to him. ‘Large-limbed Ogg – who’s in Milton, you know – is in the van. Or am I imagining the whole damned thing?’

‘Do you suppose your companions have missed you, and that this is in the nature of a rescue party?’

‘Good lord, no!’ This extravagant suggestion turned David sober again. ‘Nobody would care twopence if I didn’t turn up till midnight. This is just one of the archaeologizing jaunts that sometimes get themselves organized in the afternoon. That’s why Dr Faircloth’s there. He goes in for hut circles and burial chambers and things. He’s gesturing and pointing now. Come to think of it, he was burbling about Knack Tor this morning.’

‘I see. Well, cut down and tell them all to clear out.’

‘To clear out?’ David was surprised and even mildly offended by the brusqueness of this.

‘Certainly.’ Appleby’s tone was suddenly impatient. ‘Unless they want burial chambers laid on all round. What’s the fellow up there going to make of a mob like that? Are they in a bunch?’

‘Yes – they’re in a bunch, all right.’

‘He’ll take them for a hunt – a hunt of talented amateurs like yourself. And if something snaps in him – as is always a possibility with a fellow like this in a crisis – he’ll shoot his way through them as soon as sneeze. Your friends would be more safely employed playing chicken, any day. So go and take them out of it.’

‘Don’t be absurd, sir.’ David had never felt more insubordinate in his life. ‘They’re a perfectly able-bodied crowd.’

‘They’ve all got bodies perfectly able to stop a bullet. Go down and take them back to their cars, please. They needn’t go farther than that. There simply must be a few armed police coming along that track any time now.’

David felt there was nothing for it but to obey. He went across to Appleby, handed over the binoculars without a word, returned to the other side of the summit and lowered himself over the edge. He hadn’t gone down this way before – although it was the way he had first come up – and for some seconds he thought he wasn’t going to manage it at all. Perhaps the tea and sandwiches hadn’t quite got him back to par, or perhaps it was particularly tricky downward going anyway. He had lowered himself only a few feet when he got stuck – spread-eagled against the rock, and seemingly with nothing practicable that he could lower either hand to. Of course there must be something, since his toes had somewhere found a hold where his chest now was. He squinted sideways down; the foot of the rockface seemed suddenly very far away – and then slowly what he could glimpse of it began to sway and circle. That was what they called vertigo. He shut his eyes and remained very still. And in this immobile moment he heard a single sharp exclamation above him. It was Appleby’s voice. Appleby had sworn aloud.

And somehow David didn’t like that. He had a notion that this admirably controlled person wasn’t much given to facile oaths. ‘Is anything up?’ he shouted.

‘If you can put on a bit of speed, do.’ Appleby’s voice was quite calm. ‘He’s moving. But I’d better not move myself until I see him taking a line.’

‘Right oh, sir.’

‘And David…can you hear me still?’

‘Yes, perfectly.’

‘Tell them, if you like, about there being a body up here – and with a bullet in it. They’d better understand the situation’s serious. But keep mum on Redwine’s name, and on any talk of spy-stuff. That’s confidential between you and me, and it’s possible I may want to sit on his identity for a bit. Got that?’

‘I’ve got it.’ David discovered that during this exchange he had come all right again. His giddiness had vanished so suddenly and so entirely that he could hardly believe it had attacked him. His hands had found their hold, and first one then the other toe were competently at work. In a few moments he was at the foot of the rock, standing on turf. And he ran. It was like old times.

He wondered what on earth he was going to say. From down here Pettifor and company weren’t at the moment visible, but he knew just what direction he must take to meet them head on. In what brief but convincing formula was he going to give old Pettifor orders for a right-about-turn? How was he going to stem the amiable and loquacious Faircloth’s inquiries about his progress through the
Republic
of Plato? And what would Timothy Dumble make of him, thus careering over the moor with urgent injunctions to flee from dangers unknown? His representations simply wouldn’t make sense. And he remembered, with a sudden sinking heart, that his last appearance among his companions had been as the man who grabbed the wheel of Timothy’s car. Reason told him that that had been all right and that they knew it; that they had thought more of him at the end of that imbecile game of chicken than they had at the beginning. But something else inside him made him feel – to put it mildly – the full awkwardness of taking on once more the role of the prudent man; and of taking it on, this time, amid circumstances of the largest melodrama.

However, David continued to run. He had accepted his mission from Appleby, who was the professional in charge of the affair, and he must push it through, even if there was no comfort in it. He didn’t reflect – perhaps because he was running too hard for much reflection – that on the barest reckoning he had quite a lot to show in the way of honourable scars and warpaint. A bullet in the heel of a shoe, a grazed finger, the familiar acquaintance of a certain Sir John Appleby who knew all about top-ranking spies: it would all have added up if he’d had leisure to think of it. But his business was running over this moor; and fortunately it was something at which he possessed a modest expertness now. The boggy bits, the patches with thick bracken, the places where the tumps of turf disappeared entirely amid a proliferation of heath or heather: he knew how to look out for these and bypass them with an economical detour. If this awkward job had to be done, he could at least be sure of doing it tolerably well.

Not that his speed was first class; he was too near the end of a long day for that. And the light was no longer too good. For shooting – he thought grimly – it would still be tip-top; but in a small-scale way the ground was mottled with deep shadows which made tricky the business of placing one’s flying feet. This required nearly all his concentration. Yet he did manage to think about what was the likely situation behind him. Appleby’s exclamation had suggested some critical turn in the affair; and that must mean that the movement of the man in knickerbockers – if indeed he was the marksman – was in the direction of the track and of Pettifor’s party. He would have become aware of the police cautiously advancing on the other side of the Loaf, and he would be intent on making his escape this way. In fact he was probably somewhere on the moor behind David now. And there couldn’t be much doubt that he’d have his rifle with him still.

David had just arrived at this conclusion when he breasted a swell of the moor and found that he had reached his goal. Here they were. Or at least here, well ahead of the others, was the infant Ogg.

‘Hello, David – we didn’t expect to find you here.’ As Ogg shouted this, he gave a wave with one hand and an encouraging tug at his beard with the other.

‘Are they all following you?’ David was breathless. ‘Yes. But I came ahead. The expedition doesn’t seem a great success. Old Pettifor’s gloomy. Faircloth won’t stop talking, and I think that gets on his nerves. And Farquharson’s come too, although we didn’t really ask him. He’s awfully odd. I don’t understand him at all… Is that Knack Tor? The idea is that we’re to get to the top of it.’

‘Well, you won’t.’ Planting himself in Ogg’s path, David spoke abruptly. ‘You’re all to clear out.’

‘To clear out!’ Ogg, not unnaturally, was indignant at this brusque instruction. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I mean, for one thing, that there’s a corpse up there – with a bullet through its head.’

‘Honour bright?’ Ogg’s eyes rounded. ‘But how
horrible
. I must see that. I’m going up.’

‘You’re doing nothing of the sort. It’s X Certificate stuff, my boy, and not for general exhibition. There’s a high-up copper who says so. So right-about turn.’

This implied reflection on Ogg’s tender years was scarcely tactful, and it didn’t go down well. He could be seen to flush above – and indeed through – his beard. But now the rest of the reading party was coming up, and Ogg turned and shouted at them. ‘I say, here’s David – and he’s more badly cracked than ever! He says we can’t go on. Come and get him under control, you chaps.’

At this, numerous cries at once broke out. It did seem as if the expedition had been in rather a gloomy way, and as if its younger members were inclined to jump at any diversion.

‘Can’t go on? Poor old David! Sunstroke, I expect. Thinks he’s Horatius guarding the bridge.’

‘Or the Leech Gatherer, with an enormous amount to say.’

‘David believes he’s the Solitary.’

‘David’s convinced he’s the Female Vagrant.’

‘Resolution and Independence.’

‘Behold him single in the field.’

‘Him whom we love, our idiot boy…good old David!’

This was quite as bad as anything David had expected. It wasn’t possible to be offended, because each of the silly asses was grinning at him more affectionately than the others. As for Dr Faircloth, he positively beamed. It was evident that this orgy of Wordsworthian banter appealed to his cultivated mind. David raised both hands. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted.

And they actually shut up – perhaps more because of his look than of his voice. In the resulting silence he thought he heard men calling to each other, somewhere far behind him. It must be the police.

At this moment Pettifor came up. He and the melancholy Colonel Farquharson had been trailing behind the rest of the party. ‘Hullo, David,’ he said. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s…it’s a sort of police matter, sir.’ Pettifor at least was sensible, but David found it difficult to get launched on his facts. ‘The police are trying to round up a chap who’s got loose with a rifle, and they want us all out of the way.’

‘That’s not what he told me at all!’ Ogg broke in eagerly. ‘He was babbling about a corpse on the top of the Tor. I tell you, he’s gone right round the bend.’

David did his best to be patient. ‘There is that too – a dead man up there. He’s been shot. And there’s a policeman – an important one from Scotland Yard. His name’s Appleby.’

‘Appleby! Not Sir John Appleby?’

This – sharply and rather unexpectedly – had come from Farquharson. David nodded. ‘That’s right. Do you know him?’

‘Certainly. He’s an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, or some such nonsense. So you’re right to call him important, no doubt. But I can’t see why he should be up there with a corpse.’

‘It’s a long story.’ David could hear shouting more distinctly now, and he felt rather desperate. ‘The point is, he wants us to go back as far as the cars. His is the big car you must have seen. There should be other police pulling up there any time, in order to try and cut this chap off. It’s a matter of guns and things, and I was told to bring a message that we must all go back.’

‘Then back we’d better go.’ Timothy Dumble, who had been listening silently to all this, spoke with decision. ‘David’s been in on this, and he gives the orders, if you ask me. Don’t you agree, sir?’

Pettifor, thus appealed to in what were not particularly pupillary tones, nodded acquiescence. It was always regarded as a point in his favour that, upon appropriate occasions, he did what he was told. ‘No doubt you are right,’ he said. ‘And it’s not for an elderly civilian to demur. Faircloth, what do you say?’

Faircloth – very inappositely, as it seemed to David – produced his comfortable laugh. ‘Certainly, certainly. But I strongly suspect that we are having our legs pulled. Yes – our young friends are diverting themselves, if you ask me.’

‘But it all appears most circumstantial.’ Pettifor, leaning back on his walking stick, seemed prepared to talk at entire leisure. ‘For instance, David mentions a certain Sir John Appleby; and with Farquharson this Appleby’s name and calling at once, as they say, ring a bell. You haven’t heard of this Appleby yourself?’

Faircloth didn’t answer this. Instead, he cocked up his benign head and listened. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I think I hear something that really might be called a hue and cry? How very remarkable!’ His voice admitted a touch of alarm. ‘It will no doubt be wise that we withdraw as we are advised.’

And then Leon Kryder spoke. He too had been listening for distant sounds. ‘I don’t know about this Appleby ringing a bell,’ he said. ‘But I guess he’s blowing a whistle right now.’

There could be no doubt about the whistle. And it made David shiver – for he was reminded of the bad moment that morning when Redwine had, with a similar summons, conjured his assistant out of the moor. Well, Redwine would never blow a whistle again. And this time it was certainly the police; one blast was answering another, and there were shouts among which he thought that Appleby’s voice could be distinguished. It seemed likely that the hunt was coming this way, and that he hadn’t managed to get these chattering people away in time, after all.

The next moment, the truth of this conjecture was apparent to him. With surprising suddenness, the man in knickerbockers had appeared not a hundred yards off. He must have found a line of cover that masked the first part of his retreat from the Loaf. Perhaps he had accomplished it crawling, or on all fours. But he was on his feet and running now. And his rifle was in his hands.