Death of an Airman

by Christopher St. John Sprigg

  “A smattering,” answered the other modestly. “Well, from that course I have a faint memory that after ten hours the rigor should have been still fairly well developed even if it was beginning to pass off. And I calculate it was about ten hours after the accident that you saw poor Furnace.”

  “Yes, that is so,” said the doctor stiffly. “But it varies tremendously. It was a cold and draughty hangar he was lying in, and nothing carries away bodily warmth so quickly as a draught. So it probably came on quickly, and, as you know, a quick onset means quick to go, and, of course, so many dubious constitutional factors come into play. It seemed to me perfectly possible that the rigor had come and gone before I saw him, allowing for the usual margin of error in these calculations.”

  The Bishop was silent for a moment.

  “You don’t think there’s anything fishy?” asked the doctor, a little alarmed by the other’s silence.

  “Seven hours before you saw the body I was sitting beside it. There was no sign of rigor then.”

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed the doctor, his professional calm momentarily shattered. “None? No trace? Are you sure?”

  “Quite,” answered the other quietly.

  Dr. Bastable began to fuss. “But this is serious. Furnace cannot have been dead when he was taken out of the ’plane. Concussion, I suppose, followed by a haemorrhage in the brain. He might even have been saved! Dear, dear, dear!”

  “We mustn’t jump to conclusions,” commented the Bishop quietly.

  “The police should be informed.”

  “I think that would be a great mistake,” Dr. Marriott said with quiet firmness. “After all, I may have been wrong.”

  “But you said you were sure.”

  “Errare est humanum. The man is dead, anyway. If you will be guided by me, Doctor Bastable, you will say nothing more for the moment. You saw the man’s wound. Whether it killed him instantaneously or a short time after is really a formality. Is it worth stirring up all sorts of unpleasantness? My dear Doctor, as a professional man, you must appreciate that. I see Miss Sackbut is looking round—waiting for me, evidently. I must leave you.” He gave the bewildered doctor a friendly pat on the arm. “Leave the matter in my hands. Good-bye.”

  ***

  “How terribly depressed you’re looking, Bishop!” remarked Lady Laura. He was sitting in a deck-chair mournfully studying the sky, out of which Lady Laura, a little earlier, had side-slipped in one of her usual masterful landings, to alight almost on the terrace of the hangar, whose roof she had skimmed with her wheels.

  “I believe,” said the Bishop very solemnly, “that in this life at least I shall never learn to land an aeroplane.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Several things appear to be wrong,” answered the Bishop sadly. “Miss Sackbut, who is attempting to instruct me, has explained them in great detail. She tells me I ‘glide in like a bat out of hell, check too late and too hard,’ so that I balloon up and then attempt to give an imitation of an episcopal pancake. I only grasp dimly what she means, but it has already dawned on me that the difficulty in flying is not the flying but the not-flying, so to speak. In other words, the landing.”

  “Cheer up. We all go through that stage. I doubt if Sally is the best instructor, all the same, although she was the first woman to get an instructor’s endorsement,” admitted Lady Laura, proving to be an unusual woman herself by dropping into a deck-chair with grace.

  “Really?” said the Bishop in surprise. “I thought she was a splendid pilot.”

  “She is. Probably our best woman pilot. But the best pilots are often the worst instructors. Too impatient, you know, and too much temperament. That was where Furnace was exceptional.”

  “Yes,” said the Bishop. “I’ve been thinking a good deal about Furnace lately.”

  “I have been trying to forget it!” remarked Lady Laura with a curious air of desperation. The Bishop remembered Sally Sackbut’s words to him, that Furnace was supposed to have nourished a disappointed passion for Lady Laura. The hopeless train of that lady’s admirers was a social commonplace known even to the Bishop. But Lady Laura seemed to have been peculiarly affected by Furnace’s death. He had noticed it repeatedly since the day of the accident. Had there been more in the affair on Lady Laura’s side than anyone had supposed?

  They were both silent for a minute. Sally Sackbut, in the new club machine, was practising inverted flying for a forthcoming inter-club competition. Its wheels splayed in the air, the little red and silver machine banked and rolled and span in the clear blue sky.

  “Do you think it really was an accident—that crash of Furnace’s, I mean?” said Lady Laura, without taking her eyes off the dancing ’plane.

  The Bishop studied her delicate but impassive profile.

  “What has the woman got on her mind?” he thought uneasily. Aloud he said: “There is no reason to suppose anything else, is there, Lady Laura?”

  “Yes,” answered the girl in a quiet little voice.

  “Oh!” The Bishop was too wise to attempt to force a confidence.

  Now she looked at him. “I suppose you think if I know anything I ought to tell it to the police?”

  “Not necessarily. It is a common error that a clergyman is more concerned with keeping the laws of the land than other people. He is concerned with keeping the moral law, but the two don’t always coincide. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, you know. In fact, I already know something about Major Furnace’s death which I haven’t told the police.”

  She looked at him, startled. “Oh, you know something, do you?” she said uncertainly. “So do I. But I’m not so positive about it as you are. It’s so comforting to be a clergyman. One always knows exactly what is right and wrong. I muddle them so easily.”

  The Bishop bowed his head.

  Lady Laura was turning over the miscellaneous contents of her bag. She now held a letter toward him.

  “Read it. It’s been worrying me ever since I received it. I do wish you’d tell me what I ought to do about it—if I ought to do anything, that is.”

  The letter, the Bishop noted, looking at once at the signature, was from Furnace.

  He glanced at the date. It must have been sent some weeks before the crash, as far as he could remember. Then he read the letter.

  Laura,

  I don’t know whether you meant to give me hope on the day we flew to Marazion, and I was happier than I ever was before or ever have been since. I never tried to find out afterwards, but I tell myself it was so, that I had hope.

  Laura, I’ve never tried to find out since then, not because I’m afraid to try my luck, but because I’ve been getting into an awful mess, one of those messes one drifts into like a damned helpless fool. Suddenly, two days ago, I realized what a damned awful hole I was in, and how much worse it would be if I didn’t end the whole business. You won’t know why I’m telling you this. In a few days’ time you may know. But I promise you this: I’m going to end it decently.

  George.

  The girl took the letter back from the Bishop and stuffed it roughly into her handbag. There was a sulky, angry expression on her face which might have repelled the Bishop had he been less understanding of human nature.

  “Why did he do such a silly thing? I am sure I never had the least idea he was really in love with me. Goodness, what did I say to him at Marazion? I forget. We were just playing the fool all that day. Of course, I wrote a note back, telling him that I wasn’t worth taking seriously, that he mustn’t take me seriously. And then there was the crash.”

  “Yes,” said the Bishop; “the crash, and the inquest.”

  Lady Laura continued to look sulky. “Oh, I expect you think that the reason I kept this letter back was to prevent myself being involved in the inquest and all the publicity. Naturally, I thought of that, but I really was more
concerned with preventing their returning a verdict of Suicide against George. Very wrong of me, I suppose, but I think the attitude of the law towards suicide is barbaric.”

  “I have always understood that suicide is considered noble by barbarians and that it is civilization which has condemned it,” remarked the Bishop silkily. “However, you showed me this letter to get my advice as to what to do. For the moment I should do nothing.”

  “Nothing?” asked Lady Laura in surprise. “Do you really advise that?”

  “Yes,” said the Bishop thoughtfully, “indeed I do. For the moment. Do not lose the letter, of course. In fact, better give it to me. Then I can show it to the police when and if necessary.”

  Lady Laura opened her bag again.

  “I suppose you think I’m a callous brute, not trying to stop George?”

  “In the circumstances,” said the Bishop carefully, “I doubt if your interposition would have made any difference. It is a very strange business.”

  On his part he apparently dismissed the matter and resumed his contemplation of the evoluting aeroplane.

  “Can you tell me,” he asked after a time, “why Miss Sackbut’s blood does not run into her head when she remains upside-down for such a prolonged period?”

  “It does run,” answered Lady Laura, “horribly. She’ll look like a beetroot when she comes down.”

  ***

  “I am a patient man,” said the Bishop, breathing heavily, “but if you scream ‘Back! Back! Back!’ at me again I shall say or do something which I shall subsequently repent.”

  The Bishop was sitting in the rear cockpit of the club Moth, which itself was sitting in the middle of the aerodrome. Miss Sackbut was in the front cockpit.

  “If I didn’t say it, you would fly straight into the ground,” she answered reasonably.

  “I think even that would be preferable to your wild scream, which is profoundly unsettling.”

  “I scream in order to make you realize that your movements of the control column must be coarse as the machine loses flying speed. Your elevators are losing their grip on the air.”

  “No doubt all that is true,” answered the Bishop with dignity. “It means very little to me. I am afraid I must be constitutionally incapable of flying.”

  Sally laughed. “Now then, don’t despair. Everybody makes the same mistakes. Remember, the first check is just a check. Then wait. Then back, back, back!”

  “There you go again!” said the Bishop sharply.

  “Put your finger and thumb lightly round the control column.”

  “They are.”

  “Now—back, back, back! Do you get the idea?”

  “The control column hit me in the tummy!”

  “Exactly. It should do. Now, if you want to avoid my scream, bring it back in time, just as the machine is about to sink on the ground.”

  The Bishop’s pleasant and ruddy face took on the expression of a sulky child. “I really think I would much rather do no more flying at all to-day. I get worse and worse instead of better and better.”

  Sally recognized the expression. “Well, you’ve done about twenty minutes, so perhaps you are getting tired. Taxi her back to the hangars.”

  “I don’t like taxying,” said Dr. Marriott stubbornly. “I appear to have no control whatever over the machine.”

  “One hasn’t in taxying, in aircraft like this,” answered his instructor airily, “without wheel brakes.”

  “Then how do I get to the hangar?” asked the Bishop querulously.

  “Just ooze over in the general direction of the hangar,” said Sally with a gesture. “Coarse movements of the rudder. Use the stick against the turn.”

  The Bishop succeeded in oozing in the general direction of the hangar, and accepted Miss Sackbut’s suggestion of a coffee. They drank it in the lounge. This was deserted except for a novice, a youth who was, it seemed, laboriously, and a little palely, preparing for his first cross-country flight as he bent over a table map in the corner.

  “He is flying to Marsham, ten miles away,” explained Miss Sackbut.

  “Why is he moving that piece of string round the map?” asked the Bishop curiously.

  “He is finding at what point of the compass Marsham is in relation to here.”

  “Really! And then he merely has to fly by his compass on that course and he arrives there?”

  “No,” said Miss Sackbut; “he must allow for deviation, according to a table placed on his compass.”

  “Oh!” answered the Bishop.

  “He has also to find out the wind strength and direction and work out a small vector triangle or use a little instrument which solves the problem automatically. The result will tell him the course he must steer.”

  Dr. Marriott pressed his brow. “How much more reasonable theology is! It sounds absurdly complicated. And does that bring him over Marsham aerodrome?”

  Sally shook her head. “No; because while he is up the wind will change and he will get hopelessly lost.”

  “Dear me! However will he reach Marsham?”

  “The chances are that he will not,” answered Miss Sackbut. “If he is unscrupulous, he will fly to the railway line as soon as he is out of sight and follow it to Marsham, forgetting all about his compass. However, he is young and probably scrupulous, so he will wander all over England and finally land in a ploughed field to ask the inhabitants where he is. In getting off the ploughed field again he will hit a tree, and some time later we will send out a crash tender to bring the ’plane in, if repairable, and himself, if conscious.”

  “Really!” said the Bishop. “I don’t think I shall like cross-country flying.”

  “Don’t worry,” answered the girl reassuringly. “You’ll be flying in a club machine, so I shall escort you. We take care never to damage a club machine. This bloke is flying in his own bus, so, of course, it’s all to the good if we get the job of repairing it.”

  The Bishop shook a playful forefinger. “Either you are very heartless, Miss Sackbut, or else you are a little given to exaggeration.”

  After sighing audibly and going out twice to look at the windsock, the youth left. Then Sally turned firmly to the Bishop. “I’m glad we are alone. I’ve wanted to talk to you seriously. I believe you have something on your mind. You were getting on quite nicely with your training until the last day or two, but now your mind doesn’t seem on the job.”

  Dr. Marriott felt a little defenceless before Sally’s very direct methods of approach. Even his episcopacy seemed no barrier against it.

  “There is something on my mind,” admitted the Bishop at last. “Some very fishy things have turned up about Furnace’s death, and I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I shall have to speak to the police about it. That’s not a thing I like doing.”

  “Good lord!” exclaimed Sally, genuinely shocked. “You, of all people! What on earth could you have heard? I am sure there is some mistake.”

  “I do not think so,” he answered quietly. “Lady Laura apparently had a letter from Furnace in which he told her he was going to put an end to things.”

  Sally flushed. “It’s abominable! Laura is always saying that sort of thing. I don’t believe it. Why didn’t she mention it at the inquest? It’s sheer publicity lust! I’m sure she wrote the letter herself.” Sally panted with fury.

  “I understand she kept quiet about it out of regard to Furnace’s reputation,” explained the Bishop, looking at her closely.

  “A hell of a lot she cares for anyone’s reputation! She nearly drove the poor fellow crazy and then dropped him like a hot cake. Bah!”

  “All the same, she appears to have had the letter. Here it is.”

  Sally seized it and read it through with a puzzled expression. It changed to one of concern. “The letter’s genuine enough. Poor George! I could murder Laura. I don’t b
elieve she has a vestige of a heart. Is it really necessary to drag all this up?”

  The Bishop did not answer immediately. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t think it is—not as it stands. It is not necessarily evidence that the crash was deliberate. Indeed, a suicide would be a slight matter compared with what I have discovered. The truth is, Miss Sackbut, Furnace was not dead when he was taken out of the aeroplane. He died subsequently. What that may mean, I hardly dare to think. In fact, for the moment I refuse, deliberately refuse, even to speculate.”

  Chapter V

  Discovery of a Doctor

  Inspector Creighton put his pince-nez carefully on the desk in front of him and regarded them thoughtfully for a moment. Then he picked them up and polished them with an air of fury. He was silent throughout this operation, and the Bishop watched him in equal silence. An odd policeman, reflected the Bishop. He looked just like a shopwalker. He had the same precise clothing, vaguely soothing gesture, and imitation genteel voice.

  “Really, my lord,” said the Inspector, “this is a very remarkable suggestion you make.”

  “I make no suggestion,” replied the Bishop patiently. “I am merely presenting you with two facts. As far as I can see, they can have nothing to do with each other. Or, rather, if you believe one, the other is of little importance.”

  The Inspector picked up Furnace’s letter to Lady Laura and dropped it again helplessly. “Well, look at this. As I suspected all the time, it was a case of suicide. But now, what about the rigor business? Why didn’t you tell me of it before, my lord?” he asked plaintively.

  “My observation became of no importance until I heard Bastable’s story,” explained the Bishop disingenuously. “Then it became plain that Furnace must have died very shortly before I was left alone with him. Until then, it seemed to be on the surface merely a case of rigor delayed, abnormally, but not more than might be possible. Bastable’s story gave an entirely different interpretation to it.”

  Inspector Creighton looked the Bishop straight in the eye. “You don’t put a sinister interpretation to it, do you?”