Death Drops the Pilot

by George Bellairs

  Death Drops the Pilot

  George Bellairs

  Copyright © George Bellairs 1960

  The right of George Bellairs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1960 by The Trinity Press.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  To Dorothy Quick

  Table of Contents

  1 QUEER BEHAVIOUR OF THE FALBRIGHT JENNY

  2 SEVEN LOST YEARS

  3 THREE POSTCARDS

  4 THE LONG QUEST OF JOHN GREBE

  5 EVENING PATROL

  6 SOFT DRINKS

  7 THE LAST FERRY

  8 THE END OF JUMPING JOE

  9 THE SARACEN’S HEAD AT PULLAR’S SANDS

  I0 THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T TALK

  11 THE HAPPY PRISONER

  12 THE BUSINESS OF THE EURYANTHE

  13 CHICKABIDDY

  14 A HAIRCUT AND A SHAVE

  15 EARLY IN THE MORNING

  16 OLD NEWS

  I7 THE LOST WITNESS

  18 THE JOLLY BLACKMAILER

  19 THE COWARD

  Extract from A Knife for Harry Dodd by George Bellairs

  1 QUEER BEHAVIOUR OF THE FALBRIGHT JENNY

  THE impatient clanging of a ship’s bell. Ten-thirty and the last ferry-boat was ready to leave Elmer’s Creek for Falbright just across the River Hore. If you knew the schedule of cross-river sailings, you could tell the time of day by the ferry bell, just as in the fields of France the peasants follow the passing hours by the tolling for the offices at the parish church.

  A lovely autumn day had been followed by a pitch black night. The last thin suggestion of departed daylight lingered on the horizon to the west beyond the Farne Deep and the intermittent flashes of the Farne Light.

  The Falbright Jenny stood moored at the end of the long stone jetty, two deck-lights fore and aft and a glow shining from her innards where the engineer was putting coal on the boiler fire. Shuffling, unsteady footsteps along the quay, and the last two passengers crossed the gangway. Two half-drunken seamen who had been spending the evening in the taproom of the Barlow Arms at the top of the jetty. The engineer closed the furnace door, emerged from his lair and, single-handed, hauled in the gangway. As he did so, the engine-room telegraph clanged for half-astern.

  Time to shut up shop at Elmer’s Creek. The last boat cut the village off from the rest of the world altogether until six in the morning. Unless, of course, anyone wanted to walk along the river bank to the bridge at Chyle, five miles away. A few natives and one or two modest holidaymakers remained; the rest returned to Falbright, a mile across the river estuary.

  The Falbright Jenny backed her way out of Elmer’s Creek. Her reversed engines towed her a little way upstream, then halted. After a momentary hush, the bell clanged for full-ahead and she took a straight course for the light on Falbright pier-head.

  A small steamer, built like a river tugboat, which held about two hundred passengers at a pinch. She was old and the Falbright Borough Council talked of replacing her by a motor vessel, but every year convinced themselves that she was good for another twelve months. Old John Grebe, the captain, had been piloting her for thirty years. The handyman, Joe Webb, who ran the engines and fired the boilers, made-up the crew of one.

  This night there were about forty people on board. Unusual for the time of year, with the holiday crowds gone home, but the Elmer’s Creek Methodists had been holding a Sale of Work and a contingent of Falbright Mothers’ Union had been over, headed by the parson, to help them.

  The Rev. John Thomas Jingling, B.A., was filled with a vague melancholy as he watched the lights of Elmer’s Creek recede and those of the opposite bank approach. The beauty of the night moved him deeply. The glow in the sky which came from the large town of Falbright, the lamps on the promenade looking a bit forlorn now that, the season over, they had removed the festoons of coloured lights which joined them in summer. A cluster of lighted cottages round the jetty at Elmer’s Creek. The illuminated portholes of the mail-boat from Ireland, which had arrived earlier in the evening, tied up at Falbright pier. And the buoys which indicated the Hore channel, twinkling in and out almost as far out as the Farne lighthouse which flashed in the distance.

  Sailing over the flood to the distant shore! Mr. Jingling made a mental note for next Sunday’s sermon and almost without knowing it started to hum a tune. A woman at his elbow took it up in song and soon the whole boatload, except the tipsy customers from the Barlow Arms, were chanting to the vibration of the ancient engines.

  O Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land,

  As on thy highest mount I stand,

  I look away across the sea,

  Where mansions are prepared for me,

  And view the shining glory shore...

  It was then that Mr. Jingling noticed that the Falbright Jenny was behaving queerly. She wasn’t heading for the shining glory shore at all, but out to sea in the direction of the Farne Light.

  It was with difficulty that the parson refrained from crying out aloud. Instead, and still shouting his chorus, he peered ahead at the bridge, but seeing no sign of Old John there, made for the engine-room and staggered clumsily down the short iron staircase.

  “We’re heading out to sea, Joe!”

  Joe Webb was standing at the steam-valve, his short pipe held a foot away from his mouth, which was wide open.

  “Where mansions are prepared for me...” he was yelling. He had a vague idea that a good hymn might counteract the unlucky presence of a sky pilot aboard.

  “Wot?”

  “We’re heading to sea.”

  Joe shook his head contemptuously. He’d been on the Falbright Jenny for twenty years and she’d never tried those sort of tricks.

  “You’re mistaken, Reverend. The skipper’s jest takin’ a wide sweep on account of the tide.”

  “Come and see for yourself, then. Quickly...quickly...”

  But it was too late. The Jenny had already run a course between two buoys in the twisting river channel and with a quick shudder plunged her nose into a bank of sand. And there she stuck, her engines going, her screw thrashing vainly, her passengers terrified. Joe Webb closed the steam valve and there was silence for a minute. Then pandemonium broke out.

  The engineer ran on deck and met the rushing stream of panic-stricken members of the Mothers’ Union.

  “Stop where you are...Jest where you are...You don’t want her to ‘eel over, do you? It’s all right, but stop where y’are.”

  He wobbled across the deck as fast as his large bulk would permit and up the ladder to the bridge. There was nobody there.

  “Where’s he gone?” Webb asked the binnacle light.

  But there was no answer and Webb hadn’t time to wait, for those ashore at Falbright had seen everything and men with lights were crossing the sandbanks to the Jenny. It was quite safe at low tide. She was stuck on the Elmer’s Creek side, with a narrow stretch of deep channel between her and the rescuers, who eventually brought a motor launch to take the passengers off.

  “The skipper’s disappeared...”

  If Joe Webb said it once, he said it a score of times before dawn. He shouted it to the first of the men who arrived across the bank. He said it softly to the women as they were disembarked one by one from the Jenny to the launch and thence home. He whispered it in an awful monotone to the tipsy mariners from the Barlow Arms, who said they didn’t believe him and kept shouting ‘Women and children first’.

  Then, he had to tell it to the police at one in the morning.

  They gave Webb a large cup of tea, at which he looked disgusted and sa
id he was starved through. They then added a tot of rum. Webb smiled. “It was like this...”

  Webb was a small, very fat man of a little over fifty. He had a large, round red face, too, with protruding eyes of washed-out blue. He moved and thought slowly and with difficulty.

  “It was this way...”

  Mr. Jingling had already given a coherent account of the tragic trip to the glory shore and gone home. All the police wanted was to know at what point the skipper disappeared.

  “I got his orders over the telegraph awright till he was half-over...I can tell jest where we are in the river, you know, havin’ crossed so offen.”

  The sergeant of the borough police raised his eyes as if praying for patience.

  “Do you think Old John had a stroke and fell off the bridge, like?”

  “Eh? Fell off?”

  Webb had to stop to think. He eyed his empty cup and the bottle on the desk, but nobody took the hint.

  “How old was he?”

  “Seventy...Talked of retirin’ any time.”

  “Did he have a drink at the Barlow before he came aboard for the last trip?”

  “Perhaps he did...And then, perhaps he didn’t...When we put in at Elmer’s Creek before the last trip back, the skipper took a walk up the jetty to stretch ‘is legs. He always did.”

  “Did you go, too?”

  “No. I stayed and tended the fire. It was warmer there, too. I’ve got a bit of a chill, you see, and the breeze was cold.”

  Webb eyed the bottle again, but there was no response.

  “You’re sure he came back on board?”

  Webb looked utterly disgusted.

  “Oo do you think gave orders from the bridge if he wasn’t back on board? The devil himself? The skipper rang down jest like he always did. Astern out of Elmer’s Creek till we turned in the river; then full ahead...”

  “And half speed ahead as you neared the pier on this side?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And before he could do it, he vanished, and the Jenny took the bit between her teeth and headed for open sea.”

  “That’s ’ow it seems. I can’t understand it. It beats me.”

  He pondered deeply, puffing out his cheeks like balloons.

  “Where is Old John, then?”

  “Your guess is as good as ours, Joe. Likely he had a stroke and fell overboard. The river squad are out now looking around for him.”

  Outside, the town was quiet. The Irish boat was almost in darkness, ready for the morning trip. A few fishing vessels which, that night, were off to Iceland, were casting-off. A stiff little breeze whistled round the police station from the windows of which the whole of the river and waterfront were visible. The string of flickering lights on the buoys of the channel, the swinging lamps of the docks and harbour, the deserted promenade following the course of the river until it joined the sea at Farne Point, and, across the channel, the navigation lights on the jetty at Elmer’s Creek and a solitary illuminated upper room at the Barlow Arms. Overhead a plane droned its way to Ireland.

  Joe Webb seemed disinclined to move. The room was cosy and there was a chance that they might remember to give him another tot of rum. He coughed hoarsely to remind them he wasn’t very well.

  “I’ll ’ave to rub me chest when I get in. It’s a cold night for the time of year.”

  “Try another little drop of this.”

  The sergeant poured a couple of tablespoonfuls of the liquor in a cup. Webb took it with eager fingers, frowned at the amount, swung it round in the cup, sniffed it, and threw it into his mouth. The sergeant was glad of a bit of company. With the exception of the search for John Grebe’s body, there wasn’t much doing.

  “Did you know the skipper well, Joe?”

  Webb rubbed his bristly chin and put down his cup.

  “Yes...an’ no. We’d worked together for nearly a score o’ years. But I never knew much about ’im. A close sort o’ chap.”

  “Did he come from these parts?”

  “No. Blest if I know where ’e came from. A bit of a mystery. I’ve ’eard it said he’d a master’s ticket. What ’e was doin’ on a one-eyed little tub like the Falbright Jenny God on’y knows. Time was when shippin’ was bad, when many a good captain took to a poor job. But never a one like that, with a crew of one, just pilotin’ an old ’ulk across an estuary over an’ over agen. Bitter, ’e was, too, but as far as I could see, ’e never tried to change ’is job.”

  “Bitter? What about?”

  “Life, I suppose. I’ve seen holidaymakers crossin’ the ferry try to get Old John to talk. Sort of tell ‘em old sailors’ tales. But ’e soon shut ‘em up. Proper ’aughty-like when ’e tuck that way. Might have bin the capting of the Queen Elizabeth.”

  “A man with a past, eh?”

  “Shouldn’t be surprised at that.”

  “He lived over at Elmer’s Creek, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. In the old ’arbourmaster’s house. There used ter be an ‘arbourmaster there, you know. Quite a sizeable port, it was, till it all got sanded up and Falbright grew instead. You know Old John’s cottage. On the river jest past the jetty.”

  “I know it. Did he keep house for himself?”

  “He’d a sort of housekeeper, who kept the place clean, but who didn’t live in. Mrs. Sattenstall...a widder who lives next door to ’im. Old John wouldn’t ’ave anybody livin’ in with him.”

  “And after the last ferry across, I suppose somebody rowed him back across the river.”

  “In winter season. In summer when there’s two ferries, the Falbright Belle leaves Falbright ten minutes after the Jenny’s last trip and we both get ’ome on her. Which reminds me. ’Ow am I gettin’ back to Elmer’s Creek? I’ll ’ave a job gettin’ a row over now.”

  “If you’ll wait a bit longer, the police launch’ll take you.

  “They should be in any time. They can’t go on searching all night. The tide’ll be in soon...4.27 high to-day.”

  “The Jenny’ll float off the sandbank before then. I could ’ave cried to see ’er there when we left ’er to-night. She’s not much to look at...not much of a ship, but to see ’er there, like an old duck tryin’ to swim in two inches of water...It cut me up, straight it did. I’ve been on ’er a long time.”

  “The harbour men are there now, looking after her.”

  “I ought to be with ’em, you know. Nobody knows them engines like me. Last time I went on me ’olidays and Mack Oliver took over as engineer for a week, the skipper went daft. They couldn’t run the crossin’ in the usual quarter-hour on account of not havin’ enough steam.”

  “Is that so? Don’t you worry. The old Jenny’ll be waiting for you in the morning.”

  “But wot about the skipper? That’s wot bothers me.”

  “Jefferson’ll have to pilot her across.”

  Webb looked for a place to spit.

  “Jefferson! Skipper in the children’s yachtin’ pool, that’s where ’e oughter be.”

  “He’s all right. Spent a long time on the Iceland run.”

  “Do you remember the time he ran the Belle right into the pier? Frisky little ship, the Belle. The Jenny was always stiddy...”

  The telephone rang.

  A rapid conversation from the other end, punctuated by Yes’ and ‘No’ from Sergeant Archer, a large, beefy man with a red face, slant eyes and heavy eyebrows like moustaches themselves.

  “Phew!”

  Archer laid the instrument down very gently.

  “Poor Old John!”

  Webb lumbered to his feet.

  “What for? Why poor?”

  “They’ve found him under the pier where the ebb must have carried him and the new tide must have floated him out . . .”

  “Is ’e dead?”

  Poor Webb’s protruding glaucous eyes stood out farther than ever.

  “Dead as a door nail.”

  “Wot of? Was ’e drowned?”

  “They didn’t say. They’re just bringing
the body in to the mortuary, so you’d better come down with me and identify him.”

  “Won’t somebody else do?”

  Webb was a rough man but a soft-hearted one and he didn’t like death or anything connected with it.

  “They asked if you were here and said you’d better...” “All right. Are they ‘ere now?”

  “They will be. Better be gettin’ along if you want to see Elmer’s Creek before dawn.”

  They rose, went through a little inner door at the back of the office, and down two flights of spiral stone stairs. The place smelled of damp and old stone, like descending into a tomb. Webb shivered and put up the collar of his reefer coat.

  They reached at length a small room with four receptacles like ovens let in the walls. The refrigerators of the unhappy dead who had left life suddenly or violently and waited there for the law to pass them for burial and peace. A door to the left led to the laboratory where the police surgeon worked.

  Webb gazed round with startled eyes, dubiously watching the four closed doors as though fearful that, at any moment, they might fly open and reveal their grisly contents.

  “You needn’t look so scared, Joe. There’s nothing in those things just at present...Sometimes, in the holiday season, what with road accidents and such like, we get a houseful now and then.”

  “Don’t...I can’t stand it.”

  “We’ve all got to come to it.”

  “Not now, please, sergeant. I’m not feelin’ very well.”

  Outside they heard the ambulance draw up softly with a gentle screech of brakes. Doors opened and then a procession, headed by the cheerful custodian of the morgue, who also helped the surgeon in his macabre researches. A small man, like a robin, with a bald head, prominent false teeth, a shabby grey suit, and a sloppy shirt and soft collar.

  “This way, gentlemen.”

  The guardian of the dead smiled, displaying all his dentures like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  The sheeted remains of Captain John Grebe were wheeled in on a trolley. The custodian opened one of the ovens and with delicate fingertips drew out a rubber-tyred shelf to which the body was transferred.