The Beast Must Die

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘That’s a nice little rifle.’

  ‘Yup. Gave it to Phil last birthday. Said he could have a penny for every rat he shoots. He got a brace yesterday, I believe. Look here, like a go? Let’s have half a dollar on it. Whichever of us gets most rats in half a dozen shots.’

  The diverting spectacle then ensued of a murderer and his prospective victim, standing amicably side by side, taking alternate shots at a rat-infested scrap heap. I commend this scene to my colleagues in the thriller racket; it would work up very nicely into the opening chapter of a Dickson Carr; Gladys Mitchell would deal with it pleasantly, too, or Anthony Berkeley.

  George won the half-crown. Each of us got three rats, but George swore I’d only winged my last one. I didn’t bother to argue about it; what’s half a crown between friends, after all?

  The wind has dropped a bit today, but it is still good for a few first-rate squalls. I could do worse than kill George tomorrow. He generally takes the afternoon off on Saturday, and there’s no point in my putting it off. It’s an agreeable piece of irony that my connection with George will have both begun and ended with an accident.

  21 August

  YES, TODAY. GEORGE is coming out in the dinghy this afternoon. It is the end of my long journey and the beginning of his. My voice sounded quite ordinary when I asked him at breakfast to come out sailing. My hand holding the pencil now is trembling. There are white clouds forming across the sky; the leaves are playing with the sunlight boisterously. Everything should go off pat.

  End of Felix Lane’s Diary

  Part Two

  Set Piece on a River

  GEORGE RATTERY CAME back into the dining room, where the others were sitting over their coffee. He spoke to the bearded, round-faced man who was holding a lump of sugar in his spoon and watching it crumble and subside beneath the surface of the hot liquid.

  ‘Look here, Felix, I’ve got to attend to a couple of things. Will you go and get the boat ready? I’ll meet you at the landing stage in quarter of an hour’s time.’

  ‘Very well. There’s no hurry.’

  Lena Lawson said, ‘Have you made your will, George?’

  ‘That’s just what I was going to do, but I was too polite to put it like that.’

  ‘You will be careful of him, won’t you, Felix?’ said Violet Rattery.

  ‘Don’t fuss, Vi. I can look after myself. I’m not quite a babe in arms, you know.’

  ‘Anyone would think,’ said Felix Lane mildly, ‘that George and I were about to cross the Atlantic in a canoe. No, George will live to be hanged yet – as long as he does exactly what I tell him and doesn’t mutiny in mid-stream.’

  George looked sulky for a moment. His lips pouted beneath his heavy moustache. He did not relish the idea of being ordered about by anyone.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be a good little boy. I’ve no intention of getting drowned, I assure you. Never did like water, except to pour whisky into. Run along and put on your yachting cap, Felix. I’ll be with you in quarter of an hour.’

  They all rose and left the dining room. Ten minutes later, Felix Lane was hauling the dinghy round to the outside of the landing stage. With the meticulous deliberation of the expert, he lifted up the floorboards, baled out the water, and replaced them; shipped the rudder; fixed the jib and hauled on the halliard to see that it was running free, before he left the sail lying in the bows and turned to the mainsail. He bolted the boom on to the mast, hooked one end of the halliard to the strop on the yard and, standing to windward, hauled up the sail. It thrashed and flacked in the gusty wind. Smiling abstractedly, he lowered it again, then shipped the sculls and rowlocks, lowered the centre-board, fiddled for a moment with the jib sheets, and lighting a cigarette sat down to wait for George Rattery.

  Everything had been done with a leisurely, meticulous certainty. It would be fatal for anything to go wrong before the moment he was waiting for. The water clucked and sidled past the landing stage. Looking upstream, he could see the bridge and the patch of water in front of the garage dump where George must have sunk the damning evidence of the accident. Remembering that day nearly eight months ago, whose horror now fully arose from the drift of intervening days beneath which it had at times been almost submerged, his mouth tightened and the cigarette in his fingers began to tremble. He was beyond right or wrong now; they were words as empty and ineffectual as the tin can and the ice-cream carton now floating past him on the current. He had built a structure of false pretences around his real purpose; now it had begun to move, it was too late to jump out. He would be carried on towards the inevitable end as surely as that debris out there was borne by the current. To the inevitable end, one way or the other. For a moment he contemplated the possibility of the failure of his plan. He was quite fatalistic about it – like a soldier in the firing line, he could not look further ahead than the present hour; beyond that, all was unreal, drowned by the keyed-up staccato note of the moment’s excitement, the drums thudding in his heart, the wind intermittently drumming in his ears.

  His reverie was broken by the clatter of feet on the landing stage. George was looking down at him, a mountain of a man, his hands on his hips.

  ‘God! do I have to get into this? Oh well, come on, do your worst.’

  ‘No, not there. Sit on the centre thwart and keep on the windward side.’

  ‘Can’t I even sit where I want to? I always thought this was a mug’s game.’

  ‘It’s safer where I tell you – balances the boat better.’

  ‘Safer? Oh yes. OK, teacher, push off.’

  Felix Lane hoisted the jib, then the mainsail. He sat down in the stern and with two nimble movements drew the port-side jib-sheet tight and secured it by a slippery hitch; then, as he hauled on the mainsheet, the boat felt the wind and began to slide away from the landing stage. They were sailing free, the wind on the starboard beam blowing unimpeded across the water-meadows. His feet braced against the centre-board case, his hands gripping the gunwale, George Rattery watched the mill slide past. He had never seen it from this side before. Picturesque old place, he thought, but they must be running at a loss. The bubbles chucked and boiled in their wake, the water slapped hurriedly against the bows. It was peaceful, sliding along like this, watching the houses glide smoothly past as if on a moving band. George’s feeling of apprehension began to diminish. It amused him to see the way Felix was incessantly jockeying with the rope in his hand and the tiller, constantly glancing over his right shoulder, pretending it was all very difficult.

  He said, ‘Always looked upon sailing as a bit of a mystery. Can’t see there’s much in it, though.’

  ‘Oh, it looks easy enough. But wait till we –’ Felix started again. ‘You care to try your hand when we come out on the broad reach up there?’

  ‘A greenhorn like me?’ George laughed jovially. ‘Aren’t you afraid I’d upset the boat?’

  ‘You’d be all right, provided you did exactly what I told you. Look, “helm up” is this way, “helm down” the other way. Always put your helm down when you feel the boat heeling over; it brings you up into the wind, see, and spills the wind from your sails. Not too hard, though, or you’ll find yourself in stays—’

  ‘In stays! My Gawd – just like an elderly pansy!’

  ‘And when you’re in stays, the boat loses way and you’re at the mercy of any gust that strikes you broadside as you fall away from the wind again.’

  George grinned. His teeth were large and white and he looked for a moment like a continental caricature of a British statesman – a look of hungry, humourless complacence.

  ‘Well, it all seems easy as pie to me. Can’t imagine what all the fuss is about.’

  Felix felt a sudden wave of exasperation. He wanted to smack this jeering, self-satisfied hulk of a man in the face. Whenever Felix reached a certain pitch of irritability, his reaction was – not directly to attack its cause – but to take risks, if he was driving a car or sailing, which went to the very edge o
f recklessness and scared the second party out of his wits. Now glancing over his shoulder, noting a gust scurrying towards them over the water, he drew in the mainsheet. The dinghy heeled hard over as if a hand as big as a cloud were pushing against the mast. He thrust the helm hard down. A spatter of water came over the lee gunwale, as the dinghy swerved round into the wind and stood upright, shaking off the gust like a dog shaking water from its back. A startled oath had broken from George when he felt the first mad plunge and tilt of the boat. Now, Felix observed with ferocious pleasure, the big man was looking distinctly green and eyeing him with an uneasiness that had not even begun to turn into bravado.

  ‘Look here, Lane,’ George began, ‘I’d better –’

  But Felix, smiling at him innocently, his temporary irritation gone, innocently delighted by the pleasure of running his manoeuvre so fine, said:

  ‘Oh, that’s nothing. No need to get excited about it. We’ll be doing that all the time when we get out into the main reach and start tacking.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll get out and walk.’ George gave a short, uneasy laugh. The little tick, he thought, he’s trying to frighten me, I mustn’t give any signs of windup – I haven’t got the wind-up, anyway, who the hell says I have? ‘No need to get excited’? Huh.

  After a few minutes’ more sailing, they came to the lock. The garden on the right bank, in front of the lock-keeper’s house, was spilling over with flowers – dahlias, roses, hollyhocks, red linum – solid in their ranks and tossed by the exciting wind, an army in a brilliant diversity of uniforms. The lock-keeper ambled out, smoking his short clay pipe, and leant backwards, his arms outstretched against the great timber balk that opened the gates.

  ‘Morning, Mr Rattery. Don’t often see you this way. Nice day for boating.’

  They handled the dinghy into the lock. The sluices were opened, the water began to roar out, and the boat sank lower and lower till the masthead showed only a foot above the lock and they were prisoned between its green-slimed walls. Felix Lane tried to control his mounting impatience. Out there, half a mile beyond that wooden gate, lay the last lap; he wanted to get there quickly, to get it over, to prove that his calculations had been correct. In theory, it looked foolproof; but when it came to the point? Supposing, for instance, that George could really swim after all? The water thumped and bellowed through the sluices, like a herd of wild cattle thrusting their way through a gate; but for Felix it was a slow, meagre trickle – no more than the sand running out of an hourglass. Now the water in the lock must be level with the stream outside but George, blast him, was still yammering away to the lock-keeper, protracting the agony of Felix – almost, it seemed, as if he wished to postpone his own.

  Felix thought, God – how much longer? We’ll be here all day at this rate; the wind may drop before we get out into the reach. He looked up covertly at the sky. The clouds were still marching overhead, marching up from the horizon and sweeping away to the other end of the sky. he found himself minutely observing George: the black hair that sprouted on the back of his hands, the mole on his forearm, the tilt of his right elbow as he held a cigarette in front of his lips. At that moment, George had no more meaning for him emotionally than a dead body with which certain specific things had to be done. Felix’s keyed-up excitement had carried him beyond even the feeling of hatred for this man; there was no room in him for anything but the excitement, the sensation of a wildly spinning periphery and in the centre of it a deep-sleeping, unaccountable peace.

  The roar of water had died away to a sucking chuckle. The gates began to open, showing a gradually widening vista of river and sky.

  ‘You’ll catch a nice bit of breeze round the bend there,’ the lock-keeper shouted as the boat began to slide away.

  George Rattery shouted back. ‘We caught a hell of a puff on the way here. Mr Lane did his best to tip me out.’

  ‘Mr Lane’s all right, sir. Handles a boat very pretty. You’re safe enough with him.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to know that,’ said George, glancing carelessly at Felix.

  The boat slid indolently along, meek as milk; it was not easy to imagine the temperamental, vicious, hard-mouthed horse she would become when she felt the full lash of the wind. Here, she was sheltered by the high bank on the starboard beam. George lit another cigarette, cursing petulantly under his breath when the first match went out.

  He said, ‘Pretty slow, this, isn’t it?’

  Felix didn’t trouble to reply. So George, too, feels that the boat is moving too slowly, does he? Excitement again flared out in him and dropped like flags on a gusty day. The willows on the bank were trailing and streaming their hair in the wind, but here it only bathed his forehead gently. He thought of Tessa, and Martie, and without apprehension of the doubtful future. The willows, flickering their ash-blonde leaves, reminded him of Lena, but she seemed very far away from this boat that carried two men towards a crisis in whose creation her part had already been played.

  Now they were approaching the bend of the river. George from time to time had glanced at his companion and made as if to speak; but there was something in Felix’s intense absorption which penetrated even George’s insensitiveness and kept him silent. Felix had a strange unusual authority about him while he was sailing this boat. George recognised it with a vague feeling of petulance, but the conflicting emotions in his mind were soon scattered by the stress of the south-westerly wind which met them as they rounded the bend into the half-mile reach. The river in front of them was dark and troubled, its surface running with cats’ paws all the time and often more deeply scratched by the nails of an angrier squall. The wind blowing straight down this reach fought against the current, rising abrupt waves that jolted and slapped against the blunt bows of the dinghy. Felix, sitting right up on the boat’s side, his feet pressed hard against the edge of the opposite side-bench, was sailing her close-hauled on the starboard tack. The dinghy, with her vicious habit of falling away from the wind, plunged and kicked like an unbroken horse beneath him as he fought with main-sheet and tiller to keep her head into the gusts. Glancing continually over his shoulder, he measured the force and direction of each gust that came clawing its way over the water towards them. In a pause, he thought sardonically what a pity it would be if one of these squalls turned them over before the moment he was awaiting. For the present, all his energies were concentrated on preserving the life of this man whom for so many days he had been sedulously hunting down.

  Now he put up his tiller to go about. As her head struggled up into the wind, he let go the starboard jib-sheet. The wind took hold of the jib and shook it ferociously from side to side, like a dog shaking an unwieldy piece of rag. There was a wild flurry of noise and movement: the stern, skidding round, made the water seethe and little waves went knocking at the bank six feet away. As she drew away slowly on the port tack, a gust flung her over sideways, but Felix already had the helm hard down and forced her to bore into the wind, and she stood up presently and with a weary shake of the mainsail paid off on the new tack. George, leaning out desperately to windward, had felt the panicky toppling of the boat and seen the water hissing by, level with the lee gunwale. He clenched his teeth, determined not to betray his own fear again to the little, bearded man who was whistling between his teeth as he wrestled with the wind, who was master for the movement, whose neck he could break any moment like a twig.

  Felix, indeed, was so absorbed in the controlling of this unruly boat that he scarcely gave George a thought. He was vaguely aware of the delicious power he exercised over this cheap, complacent bully; he was enjoying the man’s ill-concealed fear, but only at present as a minor, accidental part of the familiar struggle against wind and wave. Another part of his mind was recording the black and white inn standing back on the far bank; the derelict, broken-backed barge that lay in front of it beside the slipway; the fishermen contemplating their floats in a mystic trance unbroken by the twistings and turnings of the dinghy that wove its criss-cross way from ban
k to bank. I could drown George now, if I wanted to, he thought, and I don’t believe one of these fishermen would notice.

  At that moment a blare of sound reached them; looking back, Felix saw nosing round the corner two motor barges, running abreast, each towing a couple of lighters behind it. He measured the distance carefully with his eye. They were a couple of hundred yards behind him, and would catch him up on his third tack from now. As they passed, he could do short tacks between the bank and the nearer string of barges, but there was a danger of being temporarily blanketed by their hulls and thus laid at the mercy of the next gust, the danger of their wash throwing him off his course, the danger of the rigid hawser that stretched between them. The alternative was to turn and run past them before the wind, and bring her round again after they had passed. His calculations were interrupted by George, who cleared his throat and said:

  ‘What do we do now? They’re getting pretty close, aren’t they?’

  ‘Oh, there’ll be plenty of room.’ Felix added mischievously, ‘Power vessels have to give way to sailing vessels, you know.’

  ‘Give way? Huh! Can’t see them giving way. Damn it, though, do they think they own the blasted river – coming along two abreast? It’s a scandal. I’ll take their numbers and make a complaint to the owners.’

  George was obviously working up for an attack of nerves which he would soon be quite unable to repress. And indeed the great motor barges bearing down on them, moustaches of foam waving up on either side of their bows, were formidable enough. But Felix calmly put about on another tack, and began crossing the river a bare seventy yards ahead of them. George was now mopping his face, shifting furtively nearer to Felix, glaring at him with the whites of his eyes showing larger. Suddenly he burst out shouting.