Bertie went up next, again with considerable agility. Then Cess with the other bag.
Joe looked at Lord Jim.
‘After you,’ he said politely.
‘Up,’ said Lord Jim, leaving Joe uncertain whether the word was directional or merely abusive. Either way, it seemed best to start the ascent
He was between the first and second floors when his foot slipped off the rung, striking the wall behind and sending him swinging sideways in a desperate effort to regain his balance.
Below, Lord Jim, taken unawares by the move, was pulled off balance and staggered sideways in the wake of the ladder.
Above, his head protruding from the darkness of the wall like a gargoyle carved by a dyspeptic mason, Cess glared furiously down, the shine of his eyes and the twist of his mouth saying all he did not dare to put into words. Behind him, immeasurably distant, was the bright smear of the Milky Way.
The sight was inspirational and with a wrench that seemed to unzip his shoulder muscles, Joe heaved himself back into the perpendicular. Lord Jim took the strain again and he was able to hang there, untroubled for a moment, regaining his breath.
Untroubled, except in his mind where a strange vision he had just experienced swirled and misted like a hot spring.
Momentarily on his sideways swing, he had been able to look down through the lighted window on the first floor. His view had been obscured by steam, the source of which seemed to be a large sunken bath. Dimly through the mist he had glimpsed seven or eight apparently naked figures grotesquely crowded together in the water. Like a rugby team after a match.
A mixed rugby team.
One woman had been drying herself by the bath’s edge. She had paused to take a drink from a handy bottle and as she did so, their gazes had locked. A look of mild surprise had flitted over her face, a hand had come out of the bath and seized her ankle, unbalancing her. And as she toppled with a Keaton-like lack of panic into the water, Joe had swung away.
Pondering these things, he resumed his ascent. Two pairs of arms reached down and dragged him violently up the last few feet, pulling him head first through the window and letting him fall uncushioned to the floor.
Dazed, he looked up. One of his helpers was, as he expected, Cess.
But the other was quite unexpected. A man he had never formally met but whose work he knew well and whose own picture had been prominent in the local press recently.
Your friendly local chemist and enthusiastic amateur photographer, Thomas Chubb.
CHAPTER IV
The room was in semi-darkness and filled with a strange chemical odour. Joe seized hold of a nearby table-leg to pull himself upright. It moved slightly under his weight and to his surprise Chubb prodded him none too gently with the gleaming toe of one of his patent leather bootees.
‘Watch it! Christ, Cess, you didn’t tell me you were going to be running a tour for the disabled as well. Don’t rock that bloody table!’
‘What’s so precious?’ mumbled Joe, standing up with the aid of an arm which he finally traced to Bertie.
‘It’s the man’s pretty pictures, ducks,’ said Bertie.
‘Dear God! Is he at that again?’ marvelled Joe. ‘It’s hardly any time since the trial.’
The naked bodies in the bath began to fall a little more clearly into perspective. But much was still very puzzling. What was Chubb up to developing films here? Surely his role at Trevigore’s party would be to show films? Dirty lot of sods they were, anyway. Christ, Lord Trevigore must be sixty-five if he was a day!
His thoughts were interrupted by Lord Jim’s arrival. He hauled the rope-ladder up after him. Chubb switched on a red dark-room light which, if anything, made the room even more sinister, and busied himself among his equipment.
‘Right, Tommy. What’s the timetable?’ said Cess very businesslike.
‘Please keep your voice down, Cess!’ said Chubb, the busy little shopkeeper very much in evidence. This impression was heightened by the white apron he was wearing, doubtless as protection.
Or perhaps he’s a mason, thought Joe. He looks the type.
But he noticed that Cess seemed ready to take instruction from Chubb and he wondered for a moment if the little pornographer could be the power he had sometimes sensed behind the throne.
‘How long will you be?’ asked Cess.
‘Fifteen minutes. Less. Give me another fifteen after I leave, then you’ll be OK.’
‘Guaranteed?’ said Bertie with resigned disbelief.
‘Oh yes,’ said Chubb. ‘I’ve been here before. Guaranteed. This is the best bit of the night. None of them’s going to miss this.’
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Joe, happy that no violent movement seemed to be expected of him for at least half-an-hour.
Chubb smiled at him as though he’d just given short change. He was clearly a man happy in his work.
‘Don’t you know? It’s a line of business I worked out myself. Very popular. It’s just an extension of your usual blue-film party. I come along with all the gear. Right? The party’s under way, everyone knows what it’s all about, you follow me? I set up the camera, one or two lights, then when things really get going I start filming.’
‘You mean while they’re …?’ said Joe, fascinated.
‘Right! It’s a good set-up here. A big room with a gallery running round three sides. I’m right over the action. Lots of lateral movement and a zoom lens. I get the lot!’
‘But that’s the Rowley Room!’ said Joe, now deeply shocked. ‘The young pretender met the fourth earl there and invited his help in 1745! A lot of the woodwork in the gallery was carved by Grinling Gibbons himself. And the balustrade at the far end was originally an altar rail in an Austrian monastery. You can’t have an orgy there!’
‘You’d be surprised where I’ve seen ’em at it!’ laughed Chubb. ‘Anyway. Eventually things cool down a bit. It’s a natural course of events. They take a rest, have a shower, refreshments are served, that kind of thing. While I shoot up here and develop the film. Then thirty or forty minutes later, we reconvene, so to speak, and I run the film through. Like I say, it’s the best bit of the night. Lots of laughs, watching themselves at it. And lots of kicks too. It sets them all off again! You can guarantee they’ll all be on the job again, twice as strong, before the film’s finished running.’
Chubb peered into one of his tubs, seemed satisfied and transferred the film it contained into the next, swishing it about energetically.
‘I thought it took hours to develop ciné film,’ said Joe.
‘It does if you do a job. But anything goes for this. Speed’s the thing. I don’t wash it properly or owt like that, just a quick hypo-bath, then out it comes.’
He suited his actions to his words and soon had a considerable length of film criss-crossing the room from one corner to another.
‘Rotten quality, but they don’t mind. Now we’ll just dry it off.’
He produced a portable hair-drier from under the table and set it blowing, directing it up and down the length of the damp film.
‘I’m not trying for any Oscars,’ he went on. ‘This’ll be destroyed before I leave here, any road. They don’t want it floating around, do they?’
‘Tell me, Mr Chubb,’ said Joe curiously. ‘Your trial. How’d you get off? You were guilty, weren’t you?’
‘As Judas bloody Iscariot,’ said Chubb with great satisfaction. ‘When you’ve got friends and neighbours…’
He tapped the side of his nose significantly.
‘Get a move on, Tommy,’ said Cess in irritation. ‘You talk too much.’
The fat little chemist relapsed into a sulky silence and Joe decided it was politic not to pursue his questioning any further.
Fifteen minutes later, Chubb was on his way.
‘Remember,’ he said as he left. ‘Another quarter of an hour. See you around! But not around here, I hope!’
‘Comedian,’ said Cess to the closed door.
The next f
ifteen minutes flew by. For Joe, at least.
‘Time,’ said Cess, frighteningly quickly. ‘Now Joe, lad, here’s your big moment. Take us to the Painted Gallery.
Twenty yards along the corridor, they passed a stairhead. From somewhere below came a burst of laughter. A wave of envy passed over Joe. Those bastards were enjoying themselves. A touch of the soft stuff. A drop of the hard stuff. Pheasant pâté, communal baths. Then a touch of the soft stuff again. And most of them would merely get an extra kick when they found the place had been robbed.
‘Not lost, are we, Joe?’ muttered Cess.
‘Oh no. No,’ replied Joe, pushing open the door at the end of the passage. And, much to his relief, he wasn’t any longer. This was familiar territory.
Two minutes later they stood at the door to the Painted Gallery.
Joe reached out to grasp the handle.
‘Hold it,’ said Lord Jim.
‘What for?’ asked Joe. But he stood stock-still as he asked. Jim did not answer but backed slowly away from the door like a courtier leaving the presence of his king.
‘Can you do it, Jim?’ asked Cess impatiently.
‘Wait a bit,’ replied Jim off-handedly.
Cess bit his lower lip, whether in annoyance at Jim’s tone or mere impatience, it was hard to tell. But once again Joe noted with unease the slight crack in the man’s hard surface.
Third Man had hung back at the end of the gallery in which they were standing. It was the gallery which Joe had wanted to get into when he was ‘casing’ the house, and the memory made him realize why they had stopped here.
This was one of the points of contact between the private apartments and the open sector of the house. The door might well be locked. Old Trevigore would hardly want his drunken guests wandering around amongst his family treasures, though a man who could arrange an orgy in the Rowley Room was capable of anything. But it must be more than just a matter of locks, which would surely present no difficulty to this crooked lot.
‘Visitors!’ hissed Third Man, moving swiftly and silently to join them.
Bertie, who had been standing by a side-door, now pushed it open and the men surged in without hesitation, carrying Joe with them. He suddenly appreciated the casually expert way in which they had deployed themselves outside. Like cavalry escorting a wagon through Indian country. He alone, like the wagon, was too cumbersome and awkward for this kind of rapid instinctive action. He only hoped that, also like the wagon, he was an object to be protected.
Footsteps approached and passed. Lord Jim was on his knees, not a very great descent, peering through the crack in the door. Joe leaned forward to look too, digging his own knees hard into Lord Jim’s back, but the little man didn’t react.
It was Jock Laidlaw outside. Joe wondered at his presence. He could not see him very happily countenancing the kind of event at present going on in the Rowley Room.
Just now, however, he was behaving very oddly, standing on a chair (Georgian, solid, heavily ornamented, a good example of William Kent’s influence) reaching up to the undistinguished gilded plasterwork which commenced some ten feet above floor level. Apparently satisfied he descended, returned the chair to its former position, carefully dusting it with his handkerchief, approached the door to the Painted Gallery, unlocked it and passed through.
It was a good five minutes before Cess gave the signal to move out. Immediately Lord Jim replaced the chair against the wall and climbed on to it. It was clear he could not reach anywhere near the point that Jock had been interested in. But he snapped his fingers, Third Man came and crouched alongside, and Jim stepped on to his back to get the extra height.
Joe winced at the sight.
‘What’s he after?’ he asked.
‘Interference switch,’ replied Bertie. ‘The full alarm-system’s on the go here; you with me? But geezers like Haggis got to go through, so there must be a point where the alarm circuit can be broken without starting the whole bleeding orchestra. Naturally they don’t put up a big notice advertising the fact!’
‘But there are plenty of other doors leading to the public rooms. How did you know the switch’d be here?’ asked Joe.
Bertie looked mildly surprised.
‘Why, that was you, Joe, old son! You told us, with all that stuff about wires and points and the control-room. He did well, didn’t he, Cess?’
‘Lucky for him,’ said Cess, unimpressed.
‘Mind you, it’s a stroke of luck your mate coming along. It’d have taken some finding, that thing, I reckon.’
They stared up at Lord Jim who was now performing a small operation on the plaster. Joe realized with a sinking heart that it would have mattered little if what had stood in his way had been an exquisite piece of woodcarving by Lobb or Davis.
‘Why doesn’t he just press the switch?’ he asked.
‘Because when he does, a little red light will flash on and off in the control-room,’ said Bertie patiently. ‘Which is all right in the case of your mate, who’s doubtless given them the word he’s coming through. All kinds of nasty things would start happening if the guy at the console couldn’t see any good reason why someone should be prowling around here. If Jim’s right about this system, based on what you told him, of course, this little cottage would be shut up tight as a tin of baked beans in no time.’
‘So what’s he doing?’ asked Joe, feeling more and more unhappy.
‘Making sure the little red light won’t work. Then he’ll press the switch.’
Thirty seconds later Jim leapt with surprising lightness to the floor.
‘Done,’ he said.
Cess, who had been examining the lock closely, though without touching it, now started probing its depths as though he were being timed. Less than a minute passed before he stood up triumphantly and pushed open the door.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Got your shopping list, Bertie? Let’s go.’
‘Hang on.’
Bertie pulled the walkie-talkie from inside his jacket and switched it on.
‘Blue blue blue,’ he said softly.
‘Yellow yellow,’ came back the tiny distant voice.
‘I’ll leave it switched on to receive,’ said Bertie replacing it in his jacket.
‘OK,’ said Cess, ‘but nothing’s going to stop us now.’
He took a deep breath and smiled brightly on them all, even Joe. His eyes were sparkling.
He’s a manic-depressive, thought Joe. Oh God. I wish I were safe in bed a hundred miles away!
‘Off you go, Joe. Show us how to get to the State Room.’
The sooner things were done now, the sooner they would be out of the house and away, thought Joe.
He stepped through into the Painted Gallery, the others following. Third Man, still rubbing his back, closed the door gently behind him. As the rectangle of friendly light narrowed and disappeared, leaving them in what at first seemed like complete darkness, Joe realized for the first time just how valuable he was. With so many huge, uncurtained windows about the place, it was dangerous to use a torch, and the starlight that filtered through the glass was just sufficient to distort rather than reveal. It would be very easy to blunder around noisily, or even get completely lost. Unless you knew your way around blindfold. That had been his claim. Now it was going to be tested.
‘Everyone ready,’ he whispered. ‘In line behind me please. Go when I tell you. And do keep in line.’
It’s like taking 4S on an expedition, he thought gleefully. Cess! Stop picking your nose. And take a hundred lines! And do stop playing with yourself, Jim. You’ll stunt your growth!
‘Off we go,’ he said.
He had to admit that though he might know the way best, the others won all ends up when it came to moving silently. 4S had never been like this. Twice he paused and looked round, assailed by a frightening conviction that he was on his own. Each time the others were there, perfectly still, waiting to discover his reasons for pausing.
By using a couple of doors not on
the sightseers’ route he brought them to the suite of State Rooms in less than a couple of minutes. In fact, Cess grunted with surprise when Joe said, ‘Here we are!’, and wasn’t satisfied till he had prowled around and checked some of the furnishings against his list.
‘Good work!’ he said finally. ‘Jim. How’re we fixed in here?’
Jim was crawling around the skirting with a pencil torch.
‘It’ll take a minute,’ he said. ‘If Joe’s right.’
‘Me?’ said Joe, frightened. ‘What’s it got to do with me?’
‘You got the info about the alarms, didn’t you?’ said Bertie reasonably.
‘What if Joe isn’t right? How long?’
‘Five to ten years,’ said Lord Jim. ‘Depending on past record.’
It was the nearest Joe had ever known Lord Jim come to a joke. Perhaps he was cracking under the strain as well.
‘That should be OK,’ said Jim standing up, having performed a small operation on the wainscot.
‘How do we know?’ asked Bertie.
For answer, Jim climbed on to an early eighteenth-century walnut cabinet, exquisitely ornamented in gesso, and with difficulty lifted from the wall a large painting of a casual gent bearing a gun almost as long as he was and a brace of hares.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Do we want this?’
Bertie peered at the list.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not here.’
‘What about you, Joe?’ demanded Cess. ‘Any good?’
‘I can’t imagine anyone really wanting it enough to buy it illegally,’ began Joe.
‘You mean no? Don’t waste bloody time. Bertie, you shout out what’s on your list, Joe, you show us where they are. Right?’
Lord Jim carefully replaced the picture on the wall and jumped down.
‘Paintings first,’ said Bertie. ‘Van Dyck. The second earl. Van Dyck. Family group. The second earl, the countess, two children. Van Dyck. Madame Anne Shattoque. Jan van Huysum. Spring Flowers. Jan van Huysum. Roses and yew leaves. Adrian Brouwer. Peasants drinking. Jordaens. Diana bathing …’
A Fairly Dangerous Thing Page 16
