The Mysterious Commission

by Michael Innes

  ‘Mr Honeybath, this has been most injudicious behaviour on your part,’ Detective Superintendent Keybird said.

  20

  ‘Ah, Mr Keybird, good morning to you.’ Honeybath, who justly felt that his behaviour, whether injudicious or not, had been marked by at least some small measure of intrepidity, found himself indisposed to accept any note of censure. Of course one might have assumed that, in the situation in which he had landed himself, the unexpected arrival of the police in a big way would be wholly grateful to him. Hadn’t he, no time ago, been wondering how to make that 999 call? There would have been nothing wholly out of the way in his now receiving Keybird and his legions with tears of joy.

  But in fact – such is the mysterious obliquity and perversity of the human heart – Honeybath’s predominant feeling was one of irritation. He had been doing very well. He had been (he fondly supposed) well ahead of the police – a whole street ahead, indeed, just as if he had been M. Poirot or Lord Peter Wimsey. But now here the police were, positively queering his pitch. It was extremely tiresome. He felt a sudden disposition to take the efficient Keybird on, as it were, the flank.

  ‘May I ask,’ he said blandly, ‘whether you have yet found my portrait?’

  ‘Found your portrait? No, I have not. But I have found you, Mr Honeybath. And I hope you’ll consider that something to be going on with.’

  ‘I’d rather you’d found the portrait, I confess. And I suppose you’ve cleaned up Imlac by now. Are you sure your men had a good rummage there?’

  ‘Imlac?’ The blank incomprehension with which Detective Superintendent Keybird repeated this word reflected an unwonted lack of wariness on his part.

  ‘Imlac House. I take it you did begin there?’

  ‘Mr Honeybath, I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Dear me!’ It didn’t escape Honeybath that he was behaving very badly. Sinon, in however distant a part of this nameless house he had been setting his booby traps, must by now be aware that there had arrived, so to speak, a Trojan Horse from quite the wrong stable. He would be changing sides again: alerting the three men whom he had spoken of as upstairs, and probably contriving to alert the Mariners as well. All these people might make a successful bolt for it while this Keybird comedy was going on. Or they might even launch some large-scale attack. But Honeybath disregarded these plain facts. The police, after all, were so numerously represented at this climactic scene that they could presumably look after themselves. ‘Dear me!’ he repeated. ‘Then I can’t understand quite why you should be here at all. It can’t simply be that you’ve been following me around?’

  ‘Do you imagine we wouldn’t be following you around? You surely can’t suppose, Mr Honeybath, that you’re as yet all that in the clear? Come, come, sir!’

  It was Honeybath’s turn to be disconcerted. There was a short silence during which he became aware that the police posse was thinning out. Upon the instructions of some subordinate commander, he supposed, they were discreetly exploring the house. The curtain might go up – although on the Lord knew what – at any moment.

  ‘Do I understand,’ Honeybath asked, ‘that you have been having me shadowed as a suspected person?’

  ‘Under observation, sir, certainly. A routine proceeding in affairs of this sort.’

  ‘A lot of good it did when they tried to murder me in that station yard.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But it wasn’t exactly protection we understood ourselves to be laying on. So our man was taken a little by surprise, I’m free to admit. But he did get the number of that Mini car. The subsequent inquiries took some time. I didn’t myself get down until midnight. But these men were posted by that time.’

  ‘And what were you waiting for then?’ It amused Honeybath to reflect that throughout his late adventure within there had been platoons of policemen lurking without. ‘A search warrant?’

  ‘Mr Honeybath, one party had attempted to murder you. Hard upon that, and most irregularly, another party had whisked you away, nobody knew where. And when we did get to know where, we found an uncommonly odd set-up. This place passes as a gentleman’s residence. It turns out to be a damned fortress.’

  ‘Quite right, Mr Keybird. It’s my own word for it. A fortress. Please go on.’

  ‘We have had your safety to consider. I decided against precipitate action – and seem to have been justified in the event.’

  ‘In fact, you waited until somebody more or less opened a door for you? Puzzling, that must have seemed.’ Honeybath was now enjoying himself. ‘A young fellow called Sinon, that was. Or I call him Sinon – you remember he turns up in the Aeneid. He’s somewhere around now, arranging what he calls trip-wires. Or he may have dropped that, and be thinking up something else. There are only three other people here in the house, by the way – that, and an elderly man and a girl in a kind of annex. But Arbuthnot’s lot will be arriving at any moment now to storm the place. It was for them that young Sinon opened the door. No doubt you can arrange to receive them in some suitable manner. Or arrange for some of your people to do so. If you take my advice, my dear Keybird, you’ll address your own mind to something else.’

  ‘To something else?’ It was now agreeably evident that Detective Superintendent Keybird had been reduced to a state of stupefaction.

  ‘Yes – because I’m sure that you want now to clear the whole matter up. You’re a busy man, I know, and like to be done with things. Would you say that you have the major criminal trials of the last twenty years fairly well in your head?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’ Keybird’s formerly alarming eyes were now fixed upon Honeybath in a kind of stony respect. ‘Will you explain yourself, please?’

  ‘By all means. But just cast your mind back for a moment to the 1950s. If possible, to October 1956. Would there have been any particularly notable criminal trial then?’

  ‘Of course there was. William Mangrove, who carried out the biggest bullion robbery ever known in England.’

  ‘Ah! Well, my dear chap, I think I may say that your William Mangrove is my Mr X.’

  ‘Absolute nonsense!’ If Keybird was outraged, he was startled as well. ‘Mangrove–’

  ‘William Mangrove. One always has to remember the brother – who founded, you’ll recall, what may be termed the Chile branch of the family.’

  ‘What the dickens do you know about those people?’

  ‘Just take it that I’ve been investigating. Of course – although I don’t myself actually see it that way – Mr X may be the brother from Valparaiso. It’s always tricky with identical twins, wouldn’t you agree? Fortunately, we have those fingerprints.’

  ‘We have what?’

  ‘Just another instance of the Honeybath service, my dear Keybird. Please step this way.’

  But at this point it must be chronicled, if with reluctance, that Charles Honeybath (eminent portrait painter turned amateur sleuth) had had his day – or, rather, his night. By the time Keybird had glanced at the two photographs and asked half a dozen questions he was again very much in command of the proceedings. And of this the first token was the immediate plunging of the house into darkness and silence.

  There wasn’t a sound. There wasn’t a sound to suggest that the three men supposed to be asleep upstairs had awakened and become conscious of anything amiss. Sinon (whose treacherous duty it had been to set some snare – at a stair-head, no doubt – which would hopefully break their necks) – Sinon (who must be alerted and alarmed) had presumably not ratted anew and warned them. Honeybath had a poor opinion of Sinon; he judged it probable that the wretched youth was merely cowering in a cupboard, or perhaps endeavouring like a rat to escape through the cellarage. As for the Mariners in their annex, they (and the respectable woman, if she lived ‘in’) seemed not to have been aroused either. Almost certainly, they couldn’t simply have got away. Since just after midnight, it seemed, every possible escape route had been sealed off. The fortress had become a baited trap – to which the entrance was still Sinon’s o
pen door.

  ‘I think you and I will make part of the outside reception committee,’ Keybird murmured to Honeybath. ‘Interesting to see your former friends arrive, wouldn’t you say?’ He could now be thought of as treating Honeybath RA as he would treat a colleague of a rank precisely equivalent to his own. ‘It’s possible, of course, that they just won’t. Young Sinon didn’t drop any hint that he had to give the green light?’

  ‘Some signal that all was in order? No, he didn’t. But I suppose it would be an obvious precaution.’

  ‘Except that almost any kind of signal would carry a slight element of risk. We’ll just move a little up the drive.’

  It was a chilly night, but Honeybath’s first thought was that it felt marvellous to be once more in open air. He realized that on several occasions he had been reckoning it quite improbable that he would ever experience anything of the kind again. The police, who in those bizarre moments of first encounter inside the house had appeared so comically obtrusive and uncatlike of tread, gave no hint of their presence without. Yet they were probably quite as numerous as they had been on the scene of the wretched Peach’s capture. This was now an undeniably comforting thought.

  Suddenly a train whistled in the night. The sound was quite far away, but it made Honeybath jump. For a moment it was almost as if the walls of Imlac House were raising themselves invisibly around him. He wondered whether he would ever again set eyes on Mr X – let alone on Mr X’s portrait. It was a weird thought that Imlac might be no more than a few miles off. Two fastnesses of robber barons at deadly enmity, no farther apart than that. It was a mediaeval notion. But then England was perhaps turning mediaeval again in certain ways…The whispering voice of Detective Superintendent Keybird broke into this philosophical reflection.

  ‘The high road’s about half a mile away. They won’t risk bringing their cars nearer than that. We may catch a glimpse of lights as they park.’ Keybird glanced at the illuminated dial of his watch. ‘But I don’t much like the look of it. They’re late.’

  ‘Unless some of them are creeping up the drive, or through the gardens, now.’

  ‘Look!’

  Far away – to Honeybath’s eye it was farther than half a mile – first one and then a second beam of light had appeared, swerved slightly, gone out.

  ‘That’s them,’ Keybird said aloud and confidently. ‘There’s been a hold-up of some sort, but in twenty minutes we’ll be having a chat with them. Time for a pipe, if you ask me. I keep mine for occasions just like this.’ He seemed to fumble in a pocket, and then to think better of it. ‘But you never know,’ he murmured, with a return to his former caution. ‘They may just possibly have a scout in the grounds already. We’ll just stay snug.’

  They stayed snug – although snug was scarcely the word for it. Honeybath, who now felt uncommonly keyed up, nerved himself for a short but shivering vigil. Five enormous minutes went by. Then suddenly behind them there was a muffled report, an odd hiss in air, and high above their heads there hung briefly in the heavens a blazing red star.

  ‘Damnation!’ Keybird had leapt into the drive, was flashing a powerful torch, and at the same time blowing furiously on a whistle. He was for all the world – Honeybath inconsequently thought – like a French gendarme, hysterically endeavouring to control the traffic. ‘We’ve underestimated your bloody Sinon, I’d say. That’s his light – and it’s not a green one. But here we are. Bundle in.’

  As if magically, a car had appeared beside them. Its dipped headlights cast a hard merciless light on the drive in front of them, and it was itself bathed in the lights of a second and seemingly identical car immediately behind it. They were very powerful-looking cars. Honeybath found himself inside the first – and this point being instantly and alarmingly in display – before he had fully understood what was happening to him.

  ‘Imlac House,’ Keybird was saying – and with his old trick of speaking to empty air.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Find it on your map. No distance from the railway-line, and on its south side.’

  ‘Located, sir.’

  ‘Then go there. And forget that book of rules. If you crack our skulls open, remember the wives and kids get the medals.’ This remark (which Honeybath interpreted as a pleasantry prescriptive upon such constabulary occasions) appeared to afford Keybird no particular relief. When he sat back, he was swearing softly.

  ‘But do you think,’ Honeybath asked, ‘that they’re at all likely to go back there?’

  ‘It’s at least a possibility.’ Keybird’s voice was grim. ‘They’ll have been thinking of it as a secure base for a little time ahead still. No notion we’ve contacted you, for example. No notion they wouldn’t be returning to it tonight with their prisoners or booty or whatever damned thing they were after in this house behind us. And their get-away set-up – the big emergency thing – will certainly be located there. Funds, and so on, waiting to be grabbed there too, likely enough. In and out of it in ten minutes will be their idea, if you ask me. Did you see anything that would serve as a runway?’

  ‘I’ve told you I saw hardly anything at all. Do you mean–’

  ‘Yes, of course. These fellows have rather a fancy for taking to the air nowadays. We’ll see.’ Keybird lowered his voice. ‘If this nursemaid in front will just push along her bloody pram,’ he added savagely.

  This sudden evidence of a certain agitation in Keybird impressed Honeybath unfavourably. The car, and the supporting car behind it, were already travelling at what he judged a madman’s pace, such as no eagerness to apprehend a bunch of crooks, however eminent, could by any means excuse. The tyres screamed at every bend. The nocturnal scene flew indistinguishably past as if gone molten under the heat of an atomic explosion. From time to time lights momentarily appeared ahead of them – only to slew violently aside as if brutally propelled into a ditch. Honeybath tried to tell himself that here was excitement at last. He found that he had abruptly lost his sense of time. It must be funk again. He recalled shamefacedly that he’d thought he’d got clear of funk.

  ‘House straight ahead, sir,’ the driver’s voice said calmly. ‘Do I–’

  ‘Go on, man!’ Keybird’s tone suggested fury held on an uncertain leash. ‘Drive right up to their damned front door.’

  21

  At least there was no difficulty in identifying the front door of Imlac House. It stood wide open, and light was blazing out of it. Indeed, the place was lit up in rather a big way; one might have supposed, if it hadn’t been so extremely improbable, that Basil Arbuthnot and his associates were giving a large party. Only one wing lay in darkness, and from its windows Honeybath was momentarily aware of a dull reddish glow. The night was over, he told himself, and here was the first reflected glint of sunrise. But this effect vanished as first the second and then a third police car drove up beside them, and the whole mansion became saturated in their headlights.

  Keybird had tumbled out of the car, and Honeybath – still very aware of his bruises – scrambled after him. The final stretch of the drive was a scattering of policemen, all baring for the house. Honeybath ran with the rest, although he felt quite certain that the assault was too late. Arbuthnot and whatever confederates he had would by now have grabbed what they required, and departed. But now, and even as this conviction came to him, there appeared, silhouetted in the front door, the figure of a woman carrying a suitcase. She paused irresolutely, and then ran down the steps and along the front of the house. It wasn’t a very bright proceeding on this last straggler’s part. But she had a fair start on the nearest constable, and was still uncaptured as she vanished round a corner of the building. Her momentary appearance had served one purpose. Honeybath now knew that here was the seat of his late adventures, without possibility of mistake. For the woman had been Sister Agnes.

  The entire body of police were now following her – this at some shouted command from Keybird himself. And in a moment Honeybath knew why. From somewhere behind the house – which was perha
ps the side on which the park lay – there had come the splutter and roar of an engine starting into life. It wasn’t the engine of a motor car. Honeybath recalled Keybird’s saying that big-time crooks of Arbuthnot’s sort had a fancy nowadays for taking to the air.

  Honeybath found himself, rather to his surprise, in the van of the pursuers. He recalled, in a confused way and as if out of somebody else’s biography, that he had been a faster sprinter than the future PM at that private school. But ahead of any of them was now a vehicle: a multi-wheeled affair of a paramilitary sort which the police had somehow conjured out of thin air. This had what might be called a young searchlight mounted on its roof; the beam from it swung wildly about as the vehicle recklessly charged down a flight of steps from a terrace and over what appeared to be a rockery. It slowed abruptly, and came to a halt. When the searchlight steadied, what it picked out was a helicopter.

  To charge down a helicopter about to rise in air would appear to be a feat of some difficulty. The running policemen did for a moment hesitate, and it looked much as if their bag would consist of Sister Agnes alone. For the door of the helicopter had been shut, and for the abandoned woman – now insensately yelling at it – it showed no disposition to open again. The engine roared and spluttered, roared once more and again spluttered rather badly. At this point the para-military vehicle (not, Honeybath thought, at Keybird’s command, but simply as developing a mind of its own) charged forward again like a bull at a matador. For this particular matador the only evasive action possible was on a perpendicular dimension. And, sure enough, as the bull hurtled forward the matador rose in air. The motion had every appearance of triumphant power. The helicopter, in fact, had vanished into the heavens with all the confidence of a briskly levitating saint.