Death Drops the Pilot

by George Bellairs

  “I’m glad they’ve put the case in responsible hands. We simply can’t let a decent fellow like Grebe die and not find out who did it, now, can we?”

  She looked Littlejohn straight in the face and the Chief Inspector remembered the encounter between Dixon and Withers, ten minutes before. Here it had passed to a higher level, but the looks exchanged between him and Chickabiddy might have contained similar hatred for a brief second. Then they both smiled politely.

  “Call at my place for a drink, Chief Inspector. Any time. Just call. I was a friend of Captain Grebe and so was my late husband. I may be able to help you. I’ve read about some of your cases. Don’t forget. Call soon.”

  She nodded to the chauffeur who slipped the engine in gear and drove her off without another word.

  “So that’s Chickabiddy, is it, Dixon? A silly name for such a woman. More like Lady Macbeth.”

  “Beg pardon, sir.”

  “Is that the stile? Let’s get going, then.”

  From the coast road, they could see the unbroken stretch of Balbeck Bay until its line vanished into the haze far away. In the foreground, a clump of buildings which must be Pullar’s Sands.

  “That’s Pullar’s Sands, sir. There’s a few houses and a pub and shop there. When the tide’s out, you can cross the sands and get away north, but when the sea’s in, you’ve another three miles round to the bridge at Parth to go. That’s what you might call the excuse for the pub bein’ there. The Saracen’s Head.”

  Littlejohn wondered what Saracens had to do with such a forsaken spot. There was nothing much on either side of the coast road between Pullar’s Sands and Elmer’s Creek. To the west, the sea with a tideline marked by old cans, corks, seaweed, driftwood, and other junk. It was Dixon’s duty to patrol there twice a day to make sure nobody was drowned and needing removal from among the rubbish, and to see that nobody misbehaved on the foreshore. The tide was coming in and the shrimpers, cocklers and bait-diggers were retreating before it.

  On the other side of the road, flat fields protected from the high tides by a long causeway along which the highway also ran. The dykes which drained the fields formed an intricate network, emptying themselves into a main ditch which flowed to the sea. The backs of Solitude and the other buildings along the inland road were plainly visible. From where he stood Littlejohn caught the glint of the sun reflected on glass, and turning in the direction of Solitude made out Mrs. Iremonger following their course with binoculars. As soon as he turned, she withdrew from the upper window and closed the shutters.

  He felt that, somehow, Mrs. Iremonger and he had already embarked on a battle of wits about how Grebe died.

  “Here’s Jumping Joe again.”

  Dixon, his eyes shaded against the western sun, was watching a figure tottering towards them along the embankment.

  “Who?”

  “The tramp fellow who tried to sell the rushes to the sergeant a little while ago. Nobody knows what his proper name is. It’s Joe, but as for the rest...He rarely keeps to the road, crossin’ the fields and jumpin’ the ditches like a goat. That’s how he got his nickname.”

  Jumping Joe was already upon them. He was more sober than when last they saw him, and judging from the soaked state of his long shaggy hair, he’d been cooling his head somewhere.

  “Hullo, Joe. You ought to’ve had a good sleep, you know. You’d had one above the eight when we met you a little while back.”

  “My own business entirely. Drink if I want to. Can pay for all I need. Out of my way, policeman.”

  A cultivated voice, coarsened and harsh from too much drink and neglect. The sentences were clipped and the words well spoken. The man himself wore a tattered grey suit which fitted anyhow, a knotted silk scarf, a dirty cloth cap, and heavy boots without socks. His face was clean enough, but unshaven. A grey stiff beard, rough grey hair, a massive roman nose, and loose lips. The eyes were blue, round and small, with a film across them which prevented you from seeing what Joe was thinking. Nobody knew whence he came. Five years ago, he’d suddenly turned up off the ferry and settled down, sleeping in barns, cadging, selling mushrooms, cobnuts or blackberries, carried in his hat, or bull-rushes cut from the ponds.

  “I’ve plenty of money. And more where that came from. Can pay my way.”

  “Don’t overdo it, then, Joe. Don’t end up in the cells like you did last winter.”

  “Don’t care where I end up. As for overdoing it...After what I’ve seen I need somethin’ to help me forget. Ghosts on the marsh, I tell you. Ghosts. Never believed in ghosts, but this time, I’ve seen ‘em...Gospel truth. Ghosts...”

  He shambled off to the nearest pub, walking like one eager to shake off an unpleasant companion. As he went, talking and shouting, the gulls rose from the marsh and haunted him further with their sad cries.

  6 SOFT DRINKS

  “IF the shop’s shut, you’ll find him in the ’ouse at the back.”

  A passer-by, taking the air with an aged bulldog, shouted to Cromwell who was trying the door of Tom Grebe’s soft-drink brewery.

  Cromwell thanked the man and looked around. The village had grown suddenly animated, for the ferry which brought the workpeople home for the night from Falbright had just come in. Workmen, shopgirls and a few women who had been over the river to do some shopping hurried home to tea. Some who had stored cycles at the ferry-head mounted them, and pedalled furiously off into the country. Then, the boatload having dispersed, quietness fell over the place again. You could almost imagine the inhabitants seated at tables, chewing their food and taking intermittent swigs of tea.

  In its heyday, the superannuated chapel had supported a chapel-keeper who lived in a house behind, and Tom Grebe had made this into a home for himself and his wife. Cromwell ploughed an unsteady course through a small loading-yard littered with old boxes, crates, bottles, barrels and carboys to the door of Grebe’s house, an old, ivy-covered cottage, badly in need of a coat of paint, two up and two down, bath and internal sanitation included.

  Mrs. Grebe admitted Cromwell. A large, dark woman with the traces of a handsome youth still remaining.

  “Is Mr. Grebe in?”

  “Yes. What do you want? I’m his wife.”

  A surprise for Cromwell. He’d thought, somehow, that Tom was a bachelor, like his brother. But Tom had passed through a single purple patch of existence in his younger days when he’d been good-looking. He’d run away with an Italian ice-cream merchant’s wife. Agostini’s Pure Ices. His wife had not been as innocent as his ice-cream and had done most of the running after Tom. Then Mr. Agostini had obliged by dying soon after her fall from grace. Tom Grebe, who was cooling off, found himself obliged to make an honest woman of her. In recompense for his ever-growing marital disappointment, Tom had then turned religious.

  “Police. Could I have a word with your husband, please?”

  Mrs. Grebe still barred the way with her huge body. Her fine eyes opened wide.

  “It isn’t the motor lorry again?”

  Tom Grebe ran two decrepit vehicles which delivered his drinks and were always in trouble.

  “No. Just a few questions about his late brother.”

  “Oh, him. I’d forgot.”

  Mrs. Grebe thought nothing of John, who, in his lifetime, had made no bones about denouncing his brother’s folly.

  “Come in, then.”

  A small, cosy room, furnished with odds and ends and Tom Grebe doing his books at a ramshackle old desk stuffed with papers almost to collapsing. He rose, pushed his glasses up on his forehead, and eyed Cromwell up and down. He had a limpid, short-sighted look and a perpetual mirthless smile bared his dentures. This fixed porcelain grin never left his face, even when Tom Grebe wept. There was a faint smell of kippers and mothballs about the place.

  “Police.”

  “What about...John?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mrs. Grebe entered and removed a pack of cards from a small table by the window, which was screened by three lush ge
raniums. They were a rum, ill-assorted couple, the Grebes. He and his religion and she preferring to trust in fate as disclosed by a pack of cards instead of her husband’s gawd, as he called Him. And had not a tall, dark man just arrived to bear out the recent prediction? She made no effort to leave the men alone. Instead, she sat in a rocking chair, slowly heaving herself to and fro, her arms crossed on her ample bosom, her inquisitive dark eyes moving first to one and then to the other.

  Cromwell eyed Tom Grebe up and down, in turn. He had seen the photographs and the description of John Grebe on the files of the case and he was surprised how alike the brothers were. The same good height, sturdy build, shape of head and face. Only whereas John had been dark, Tom was fair—or as much as was left after time had turned his blond hair white. John had been tough, too, and Tom was soft and flabby.

  It was obvious that the business was in low water. Bills and invoices scattered about the desk as though thrust aside in despair. Making and bottling soft drinks and then distributing them in two old lorries in the district was a declining trade. Too much competition; too many large-scale opponents. Tom Grebe was on his way to the bankruptcy courts again and this time John wasn’t there to save his bacon. He was unkempt, shabby, and his shoes were down at heel. There was a bitter sneer mixed with the dental grin now and then.

  “I came to ask if you’d any helpful ideas about your brother’s murder, sir. Have you any views about who might be his enemies?”

  Grebe sniffed and two large tears gathered and rolled down his cheeks. Tom was a good weeper. He could do it at a moment’s notice. He was full of self-pity and was able to recite his misfortunes and the shabby tricks of fate in the same, solemn orderly way in which his wife recited her rosary.

  “I’ve no idea. We didn’t see much of one another. He left ’ome early in life to go to sea. He had all the luck and left me behind with the responsibilities of the family and a widowed mother. All the same, ’e was my brother and the wheel is broken at the cistern, as the Good Book says.”

  “How did you both come to live in the same place, then, after being so long apart?”

  “After all I’d done for ’im, Mr. Cromwell, in the way of supporting our widdered mother, he owed me quite a lot. I’d a bit of bad luck in a furniture business I was running near Oxford and he found me and paid what he owed me by rights and set me up in this place, which ’e bought cheap. If I’d had my choice, you’d never ’ave found me in this forsaken hole, but beggars can’t be choosers and John was set on it.”

  “He owned the property?”

  “Yes. He ought to ’ave made it over to me by rights. After all, it’s my business, isn’t it? I’ll be in the cart good and proper if he ’asn’t left it me in his will.”

  Another tear. Grebe wiped it away with the back of his hand before it reached his chin. He was feeling badly treated.

  Cromwell smiled gently at the thought of Lucy inheriting a chapel. Would she turn Grebe out when he couldn’t pay his rent? Or…and Cromwell’s imagination ran riot...or, would she start a religious sect of her own with her legacy?

  “You knew a fair amount about your brother’s comings and goings, didn’t you, sir?”

  “Of course he did!”

  Mrs. Grebe couldn’t resist interfering. She was ready for a right good gossip, a right good washing of John Grebe’s dirty linen, and she was determined to have it.

  “Your John and that chit of a woman from the Arms he brought here with him! A barmaid, and him old enough to be her father, and her grandfather, as well.”

  She had long forgotten her own affair with Tom Grebe in Agostini’s days.

  “When did he bring Lucy...or Lily, here?”

  “About six months ago. Treated her better than his own brother, spending his money on her and her playing up to him for what she could get out of ‘im. The hussy...I’ve seen her sort before.”

  Tom Grebe raised a large hand to stem the flow.

  “He knew my views in ’is lifetime and quarrelled with me about my principles. Let ’im rest in peace now... if ’e can.”

  “Did you see much of him after he left home to go to sea, sir?”

  “He wrote now an’ then. But he didn’t get ’ome much. He was on tramp ships all over the world.”

  “Yet, when you were in financial difficulties, he found you and helped you.”

  “Yes. I wrote to ’im about it and he was livin’ here at the time. He was down in Oxford next day in a rare tantrum for some reason. He paid all my debts and set me up ’ere, as I just said. What he owed me for looking after our widdered mother and other fambly responsibilities must ’ave laid ’eavy on his conscience.”

  Outside, one of the lorries was entering the yard lamely, driven by a young man with a dirty face and a shock of unruly black hair. It struck Cromwell how few fair people there were among the natives. They were like a swarthy colony of foreigners. The vehicle looked to be just managing to hang together. The driver got down and started to unload boxes of empty glass bottles and shove them in an old wooden shed.

  Mrs. Grebe watched the young man’s every movement, apparently torn between going out to help and staying to listen to the conversation. She had obviously been waiting for his return and her eyes melted and her breath came faster at the sight of him. At length, she rose and went to the door.

  “I’d better go help Len to unload. It’s a lot for one and as you’re...”

  The door closed behind her and Cromwell saw her hurry away to where the vehicle was parked and start smiling at the young driver as he heaved the boxes about. In the same shed stood a contraption which Cromwell finally made out to be a battery of captive hens, which started to cackle and flap about as the activities of the pair outside disturbed their peace.

  “How long have you lived here, Mr. Grebe?”

  Grebe’s malicious little eyes turned from the window to Cromwell.

  “Nearly ten years. Times are bad now and I’ll ’ave to be thinkin’ of retiring if my brother’s will is as I think it should be. The grass’opper’s becomin’ a burden, as the Good Book sez, and I’m not so young as I used to be.”

  Cromwell wondered what would happen when the news leaked out.

  “Do you know your brother’s friends here?”

  “Yes. Thick as thieves, he was, with that Dr. Horrocks and Captain Bacon. A proper lot of ’eavy drinkers, they were. I was surprised at our John. ’E was brought up a good Methodist. But I suppose the sea gets men they don’t care. He knew what I thought about his friends. Besides, they weren’t ’is class. More money and more expensive tastes than our John could afford.”

  “Did Captain Grebe ever tell you he was afraid of anyone? In danger in any way?”

  Tom Grebe’s eyes opened wide.

  “Why, no! Was ’e in danger?”

  “It’s evident someone owed him a grudge, or had a score to settle. As far as it’s known, it wasn’t theft.”

  “No; his watch and wallet and money were there. But his uniform cap and overcoat had gone when they found the body.”

  “Is that so?”

  Details of this hadn’t been on the file, or if they had, Cromwell had passed them over as unimportant. Cromwell made a brief note in his large black book and snapped the elastic band and put it away again.

  “Perhaps he lost his ’at when he fell overboard, Mr. Cromwell.”

  “But his coat couldn’t have fallen off, could it?”

  “It was suggested that somebody found the body, took away the hat and coat, and left it.”

  “Maybe. There was no evidence of a scuffle, as far as I can remember from the report.”

  “No. But there must have been, mustn’t there? If somebody tried to get on the bridge when the ship was in midstream, our John would have done his best to stop them. He took ’is responsibilities seriously, like a captain on a liner, Mr. Cromwell, and wouldn’t ’ave any intruders with him when ’e was navigatin’.”

  “You seem to know a lot about your brother’s habits,
sir, considering the pair of you didn’t get on very well.”

  Grebe looked at him gravely and then said with unction: “I was the older of the two of us and I kept an eye on ’im for ’is own good. I knew more than he thought.”

  “He seemed to keep an eye on you, too, sir. Didn’t he bring you here to keep you from going bankrupt?”

  Grebe rose in indignation, and raised his large paw again as if to fend off any further outrageous comment.

  “He did not, Mr. Cromwell. He did not. I’m quite capable of looking after my own business, thank you. But this brings me to the point you jest mentioned. Was our John afraid of anybody?”

  Grebe thrust his face close to Cromwell’s own. His breath smelled of flagroot, which he chewed for indigestion.

  “Maybe, he was afraid, come to think of it. The wicked flee when no man pursueth, as the Good Book sez. Not that ’e was all that wicked; jest self-ohpinionated. I wouldn’t think he’d be afraid of anybody doin’ him in. He was afraid of the fambly name being advertised in the bankruptcy courts, that’s what it was. A very commendable sentiment an’ I give ’im full marks for it. I remember it now. It all comes back. ‘What will it look like,’ he sez to me as he offers to put matters in order for me. ‘What will it look like, our fambly name in all the papers and gazettes, in disgrace?’ He owed it to me as a juty, as you might say, to keep me out of court. After all I kept our widdered mother.”

  So that was it! John Grebe didn’t want the family name in the papers. Not for the disgrace, however. That wouldn’t bother a tough nut like Old John. He didn’t want someone to see it and trace him through it. That was what it looked like, at any rate.

  “Do you think your brother was well-off financially, sir? In a position to retire comfortably, shall we say?”

  Tom Grebe licked his lips and the wooden grin returned.

  “Yes, Mr. Cromwell, I think he was. We’ll soon know when the lawyers ’ave finished their dilly-dallyin’. I’ve been over to see them twice. We ought to ’ave known long since. It’s not fair or legal, all this delay. These lawyers are a weariness of the flesh, as the Good...”