Inspector West Takes Charge (22 page)

Roger said slowly: ‘Your last fire wasn’t very good.’

‘This one will be.’

Garielle said quietly: ‘What about the window, Mr West?’

‘Don’t show yourself,’ he ordered. ‘Pull the curtains back, that will attract attention.’ She obeyed, while there was another thud on the door. Garielle pulled at the heavy curtains, and they moved without trouble. The light would shine out for miles, but it might be half an hour before anyone took enough notice of it to send word to the authorities. Black-out or no black-out, the house was in comparatively empty country. There was little chance of help coming quickly enough unless the operator had acted promptly.

Garielle passed in front of the window and pulled the other curtain. Outside, it looked very dark. The light from the single electric lamp reflected on the window.

The unfamiliar voice said: ‘I mean it, West.’

Roger kept silent, and into the hush came another report, from outside. A bullet struck the window, shattering the glass. Widdison gasped, and Garielle backed away. Three reports came in quick succession; on the third a bullet smacked into the light. Darkness fell as slivers of glass were strewn about the room.

Roger stood stock still in the pitch blackness.

‘I’ll put on the desk-light,’ Garielle said. ‘They can’t hit that. Don’t move. I might knock into you.’ Roger heard her moving, heard also a movement outside the door. He fancied that he smelt petrol, but could not be sure. His mind was full of the memory of what had happened at Harrington’s flat, the horror of those few minutes were made fresh and vivid.

Garielle clicked on the desk lamp.

Its yellow glow spread about the room, but only a small circle of bright light showed, on the desk. It shone on Wade’s head and showed also the pool of blood from the wound in his shoulder. After the click of the light switch the silence was broken only by movements outside. Roger waited, tightening his hold on the envelope.

No further words came.

There was no sound inside or outside the room except the heavy breathing of the occupants. Garielle was staring at Roger, her lips parted. Roger waited for perhaps thirty seconds, then pointed a hand towards the lamp. Garielle was quick to put it out, and he crossed softly towards the door.

As Roger moved towards the door he put the envelope into the inside pocket of his coat. He had looked round the room, making sure that no one was within the line of shooting from the door. There was only one course open; he must delay the men outside from putting the threat of fire into operation.

How long would help be? An hour? Only ten minutes had gone.

He turned the key in the lock, with hardly a sound.

He gripped the handle with his right hand, the gun in his left, and, pressing tightly against the wall, opened the door a fraction. A glow of light spread into the room. He caught a glimpse of a shapeless figure carrying a bulky bundle. The bundle hid the other’s face, but also prevented him from seeing Roger. It was a sitting target. Roger fired low down and aimed for the walker’s thighs.

The bundle dropped. The man turned and fled, gasping. A heavy thud suggested a fall. Roger pushed the door to swiftly. A bullet from the other direction struck its woodwork.

‘Did you hit him?’ breathed Garielle.

‘I think so.’ Roger heard footsteps padding past the door.

He leaned against it and smiled as Garielle put the light on again. ‘I hope help won’t be too long, because –’

He stopped. From the hall there came another shout, more of surprise than pain. A door banged, a shot barked, footsteps came thundering. It sounded like a dozen men.

There was an outburst of shooting, and then a shouted order in a voice unfamiliar to both of them.

‘After him one by one, and keep your distance!’

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and heavy ones along the passage. They slowed down near the door, and Mark Lessing said: ‘Are you around, Roger?’

‘Lessing!’ exclaimed Garielle.

‘Yes, we make a team,’ Roger said. He was sweating as he opened the door. Mark and a burly man in khaki strode in, the burly man’s overcoat sleeve bearing a strip of cloth and the words:
Home Guard.

Another khaki figure passed the door, heading for the end of the passage.

‘So you did get yourself in a jam,’ said Mark. His grin disappeared as he saw Hauteby, Wade, and Lampard, and he jumped when Garielle hurried past him towards the stairs. The Home Guard officer asked: ‘What’s got into her?’

‘She’ll be all right,’ said Roger. ‘How many of the crowd have you stopped?’

‘Only two or three,’ said Mark. ‘The only one outside was the man who fired at your light. I was that side and saw it. Did I thank the fates that there were some Home Guard chaps nearby. With leadership without prejudice, or red tape.’

The big officer grinned.

‘Cut out the blarney,’ he said. ‘But what has been happening here? Have you phoned for a doctor?’

‘The phone’s cut,’ said Roger. ‘We’ll have to get to another phone, or send by road. Do any of your men know first aid?’

‘Several of them. Good God, it looks as if the invasion’s started!’

Two of his men came at the double when he called for them. Roger and Mark left the room and went towards the stairs. By one wall a huddled figure was on the ground. Near it a Home Guard stood with fixed bayonet; it was one of the oddest sights.

‘Victim one,’ said Mark. ‘It was trying to crawl away, but we intervened. There was another one at the foot of the stairs. I didn’t stop to look, but –’

He broke off.

Garielle was on her knees beside the ‘other heap’, cradling Harrington’s head in her arms. The light was too dim to show whether he was badly hurt, but as they drew nearer she said: ‘How soon can we get an ambulance? He’s broken his leg, and I think I think some ribs.’ Her voice was low-pitched. ‘Please don’t waste time.’

‘We won’t lose a second,’ Roger promised.

The Home Guard officer sent a motor-cyclist into Delaware village for a doctor, and with instructions to telephone for Tenby at Guildford. Before the doctors arrived, a dozen policemen in three cars reached Yew House. By then, too, Roger had explained, and the house had been searched. There was no one else there, except the ‘heap’, and Roger said: ‘So one of our men got away. Mark, how did you get here? What brought you?’

‘I thought you wouldn’t be able to wait for that much longer,’ said Mark. ‘I took a walk.’

Again he stopped abruptly, for he could see the ‘heap’ by the head of the stairs. It was Roger’s victim. He stank of petrol. Cushions from the lounge, also soaked in petrol, were strewn about the hall. There was no longer any doubt that the house would have been set on fire, and everyone inside burned to death.

Neither Roger nor Mark was thinking of that as they recognized Roger’s victim. It was Maisie Prendergast.

An hour or so later, the doctors and ambulances had arrived; Wade, Lampard, and Harrington had been taken to hospital with Garielle going in Harrington’s ambulance; and a nurse had come for Mrs Transom. She was in a heavy drugged sleep, after a morphine injection.

In a large woodshed, four frightened servants had been found. They said they had been held up at the point of a gun and forced to go into the shed. The same story was given by the three policemen who had been on duty about the house. All told the same version a tall, thin man, with a gun, had forced them. At least, there had been no killing for the sake of killing.

Maisie, wounded in the thigh, was on the way to Guildford also in an ambulance. She either feigned unconsciousness or was genuinely dead to the world, for she could not be made to open her eyes.

‘Delaware was pretty grim on my own, and Maisie was staying put in her bedroom,’ Mark said. ‘Claude was asleep, with the nurse in his room. A grim sight, that nurse, a raw gaunt Scot. No one would get at Claude with her in the way, I thought, and when Maisie decided to take a walk, so did I. And could she walk! She strode over the hills as if she’d been used to them all her life, and met the tall thin man not far from here. They talked as they walked. I couldn’t get near enough to hear them. They met a third man, who had orders to watch the windows of the study, and it looked like a time for reinforcements. I knew the Home Guard were staging night patrol manoeuvres, as someone rang me up to ask if Petrie would be on duty. I persuaded the large lieutenant to lend a hand. We heard the shooting from the grounds when we were half a mile away. I couldn’t get here fast enough! I came close to leaving it too late, but it looked as if numbers were called for. Could I have helped any of the others?’

‘You did just right,’ said Roger, fervently.

‘Thank the Lord for that. Well, that’s all I can tell you. Oh Maisie had a telephone call in her room. I gathered that she was going out as a result of the call. Now what about you?’

Roger said: ‘That can wait. I want to see those documents that Hauteby was so anxious that I shouldn’t see. I don’t know what’s in them, but there’s some light in the darkness. Hauteby and Transom were in a racket together. Widdison probably wasn’t. At a guess, I’d say that McFallen caught on and came to tell Transom that he wasn’t going to stand for it, Transom arranged his accident. Or whoever worked with Transom did. Hauteby came here tonight to try to get the documents, of course. I suspect that what Potter was looking for was those documents in the first place.’ He took the envelope from his pocket, turned it over, and made sure that it was blank. ‘It’s been handled too freely for me to worry about fingerprints.’

‘Open it,’
Mark urged.

Roger took out a penknife, and slit the top of the envelope.

They were in the study. Widdison, now in Guildford, had acted like a man struck dumb, neither protesting nor resisting.

Two or three policemen were in the house, and the nurse with Mrs Transom. Apart from that they were alone.

It was fitting, Roger thought, that they should be together then. He felt sure that the contents of the envelope would give them the whole case; the case Mark had believed was murder from the start and which had led to this fury of violence. It might not be over yet. There was the tall thin man who had escaped.

Was he Potter, forced to take a hand himself?

A thick wad of papers was inside the envelope.

‘Give me one half, you go through the other,’ implored Mark.

‘We’ll read them together,’ said Roger. ‘Bring that lamp nearer.’

They sat side by side at the desk, now cleaned of Wade’s blood and the fragments of glass about it. The heavy curtain hung across the windows.

Roger said: ‘A letter on Potter’s business paper, for a start. And a report of some kind attached.’

The letter was simply a covering note, saying that Gabriel Potter had pleasure in enclosing the confidential report on Harringtons Limited. It was dated eighteen months earlier.

The report, an exhaustive one, said that the principal of Harrington’s was a man of wide experience in rubber planting, smoking, and curing generally. He was also a research chemist, with several degrees. That his business was small and lacking in capital, but that his applications for financial help from the Government had been rejected, while he would disclose no inducement attractive enough to interest the private investor. Potter implied, however, that Harrington was working on a process for producing synthetic rubber. He did not disclose the name of his informant, but on the next sheet was a letter in a back-sloping handwriting, signed ‘D. Anderson’, addressed to Potter, and ‘enclosing particulars, as arranged’.

The particulars were on a single sheet of paper, containing a brief description of materials used in the process at Harrington’s factory, then a very small one.

‘He was selling out all right,’ Mark observed.

Roger nodded, and turned to the next sheet. They were in chronological order, and he imagined that they had been taken from a box in Potter’s office. As he went on through other correspondence between Potter and Anderson which proved the continual exchange of information for money, the fullness of the treachery of Harrington’s assistant grew clearer. Anderson had been no fool, and had only given Potter the information by instalments.

Potter’s letters were models of discretion, never referring to Harrington or the business, but Anderson occasionally lapsed.

Mark said slowly: ‘Anderson was putting himself in Potter’s pocket, wasn’t he? You can almost see Potter tightening his grip.’

‘I can’t feel sorry for Anderson, said Roger. He flicked over several letters with no more than a casual glance, and then saw one from Hauteby to Potter, asking for an interview. Potter had pencilled some notes on this, including the names of Transom and the Prendergasts. On a plain slip of paper, heavily underlined, was the statement:
‘Harrington and Miss Transom meet frequently,’

There followed further comments about Harrington and Garielle, records of visits from Transom without any evidence of what transpired at the meetings. Then a report, typewritten, from Potter to Transom. It gave a further opinion on Harringtons Limited and recommended that Transom put money into the company.

There were notes from a man named Conroy, Duke Conroy. Roger stopped when he came to this and looked up sharply,

‘Transom said that was Harrington’s true name,’ he said. ‘I ah, here we are!’

He had found a letter from Potter to Transom. There was no doubt, it said, that the man calling himself Harrington was actually Duke Conroy, a globe-trotter with a bad reputation, wanted for murder in Rhodesia. He, Potter, was trying to find the real Harrington, and advised Transom to treat the matter confidentially until the search was concluded. Nothing was written directly, but the inference all the time was that Transom would benefit considerably if he left the hunt for the real Harrington to Potter.

‘Transom shows up more badly as we go on,’ Mark said. ‘Potter knew there was no chance of him talking until he’d squeezed every penny of profit.’

‘I’m looking for a further mention of the Prendergasts,’ Roger said.

He had to wait, for next came a series of reports from Potter’s clerks to the solicitor. They concerned Clay and a man named Smith. Photographs of Clay and Smith appeared, and then their police records, Clay’s much blacker than Smith’s.