The Sleeper

by J. Robert Janes

  Was it all a lie? wondered Ashby.

  ‘I packed and left,’ said Christina. ‘I told Father I wasn’t coming back.’

  Waiting, seeing that he was not yet going to respond, she gave him another faint smile and said, ‘So it has all been for nothing, has it? Having bought this cottage for Karen, am I now to sell it, Ash, or is there not some way I can convince you I meant what I said?’

  When he came to her, he placed a hand on her shoulder and she knew she had won.

  ‘They’ll probably intern you, Christina, if there’s another war.’

  There was sadness to him, that sense of loss and yes, still a little doubt, but no longer so much. ‘Where’s Karen?’ she asked, looking up at him.

  The deliberately opened buttons of her blouse were one thing, thought Ashby, the lying yet another. ‘Why did it have to happen to us?’ he asked. ‘You weren’t a Nazi when we married.’

  Verdammt! ‘Karen, David. I’ve been so lonely I … I no longer know myself.’

  She had tried to lean into him, he backing away. ‘Karen’s being moved. I can’t say where to, not until we sort things out, but I’ll bring her to the school just as soon as we do.’

  ‘It’s this girl you’ve got looking after her, isn’t it? Karen’s let her take my place.’

  ‘No one can or ever will, and you know that. Karen still wants to see you and even that father of yours.’

  ‘But not to be with me, Ash?’ Stubbing out her cigarette, she left it lying on the bench. ‘Have I failed? Have I lost everything? Can you not forgive me?’ Catching him by the hands, she stood up and kissed him hard, his rush of breath soft against her tears as she pulled him closer and wrapped her arms about his neck. ‘Take me, Ash. Take me like you used to. Do it now!’

  Ruth Pearce saw them from the garden. They were just a blur behind the leaded glass, but was it that same blurring that made their passion appear all the more ardent and was it jealousy that made her own cheeks hot, or anger at his having been deceived by that wife of his who would have killed her had she not told her she would never get her daughter back if there was another murder?

  ‘He’s being a bloody fool, Anthony!’ she said. ‘The next thing you know, they’ll be having sex on the floor!’

  Ruth burst into tears, Pearce putting a rare arm about her as she buried her face against his chest. Later, she watched the boys at cricket and tried not to think of Ash lying in the arms of that wife of his. Dave stood like some brave old Christian forced to face the lions. Finch wound up, the boy’s form good for the Lower Fifth, the crack of bat and ball like a pistol shot, the cries, as Ash ran, like those of the Romans in the Colosseum.

  She had so wanted to tell him everything that had happened, still did, though it would hurt him, the truth about that wife of his, but would he ever forgive her for having told the woman where that daughter of his could be found in Kent?

  Finch wound up. Ash swung. Crack! and he was off again.

  ‘Marvellous, that,’ said someone. ‘Not bad for an American. Takes me back a while, let me tell you. Mrs. Pearce, isn’t it? Ah, I thought so. Masterson, Mrs. Pearce. Sir John.’

  Though he didn’t quite look it, Ruth wondered if he was a parent. ‘If it’s my husband you want, you’ll find him in his study going over the accounts with Mr. Telford, our assistant headmaster.’

  How stiff of her. ‘No, I rather thought I might have a word with Captain Ashby. They tell me he’s rather good with languages but is forced to teach mathematics, history and other things as well.’

  The lie of his wanting to poach Ash for another school was all too evident and it made her angry. ‘What, exactly, is it that you want?’ she asked.

  ‘A word, that’s all. How well do you know Captain Ashby, Mrs. Pearce?’

  ‘Are you from the police?’

  ‘Good God, no, madam. I’m just a friend.’

  ‘It’s about Karen, then, isn’t it?’

  ‘It might be.’

  Finch bowled again. Ash let that one go by, then spotted a hit to keep the boys on their toes, that Hamilton boy catching it, Ruth knowing then that Ash had put it right to him.

  ‘He’s quite a soldier, isn’t he, Mrs. Pearce?’ said Masterson.

  ‘I … I don’t know what you mean?’

  Then try this on for starters, thought Masterson. ‘Colonel Hacker asked if I’d pop in to see the captain.’

  Hacker! In tears, Ruth turned away only to turn back and ask, ‘Has something happened to Karen?’

  The cross the Pearce woman bore was clear enough, thought Masterson, but he would coldly say, ‘Not yet, but we would take it kindly if he didn’t interfere. He hasn’t any plans to, has he?’

  ‘I … I wouldn’t know. His private life is his own.’

  And her bleating it like that. ‘Met his wife, have you?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t. Why … why would I have?’

  Yielding up the bat to loud objections, Ashby gave the troops a few pointers while polishing his glasses as he left the field to stride towards them.

  ‘Vespasian couldn’t have done it better, Mrs. Pearce,’ mused Masterson, startling the woman and causing her to flee as he called out, ‘Down in your neck of the woods, Ashby. Thought I’d pop in to see how you were holding up.’

  Irritation flickered, the schoolmaster gazing after the headmaster’s wife while saying, ‘What is it that you really want, Sir John?’

  ‘The child’s now safely in Cornwall with that nanny you hired, but you’re not to interfere. You’re to stay right out of it and I wouldn’t have come all this way to warn you, had I not felt it necessary.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  Lord save us, must he be so stubborn? ‘Then pay the price. Bunny needs a clear field and can’t be worrying about loose threads. That Pearce woman was hungering to tell you something. Any idea what it was? She seemed put out that I’d come along to interrupt.’

  ‘Ask your Colonel Hacker. Ask him why he did that to her. She might have killed herself.’

  ‘But didn’t. Care to tell me about it—your side, that is? Do so while you walk me to my motor.’

  The light was lovely over Grantley’s, thought Masterson. ‘Reminds me of my old school, Ashby. Never wanted to see the place again, but must be getting on. Come, come now, what did she want to tell you?’

  ‘Probably that she’s leaving her husband at end of term. It was a marriage that could never have worked.’

  And the schoolmaster still not certain that was the reason. ‘Perhaps it’s all for the best. Staying with a relative, I suppose? These things are never easy, are they? Well, cheerio, then, Ashby. With luck it’ll soon be over.’

  8

  Cornwall was simply not being its most pleasant, felt Hilary, but of course that wasn’t the problem. It was the loneliness, the very thing she had always welcomed. After endless games of cards and double cups of cocoa, Karen had finally fallen asleep in the bed they would have to share. At 10.00 pm a steady mizzle had settled in, bringing with its dampness, the incessant pounding of the waves.

  Irritably Hilary ran her fingers though her hair. It hadn’t been an easy trip. Colonel Hacker, though he had passed by their compartment a few times, hadn’t even nodded to indicate that things were all right, nor had she been able to identify anyone else as having been with him. At Saint Erth, she and Karen had had to stand waiting like refugees on the platform, no sight of him or of anyone else come to meet them. Finding someone to drive them here hadn’t been easy or inexpensive, and maybe he had wanted this so that the sleeper would be certain to see them.

  Again the sound of the waves came. Usually April, May and June were the best of months insofar as storms went, but now …

  Seeing herself reflected in the window glass with the mizzle beading on it made her think of Pindanter. Did he really have to kill, and once hidden in t
he mine, what would he encounter? Certainly bad ground, probably water breakthrough, obviously old memories of near-disasters and disasters. Hadn’t the infrequent hand-powered fans, turned by sleepy boys, merely circulated the oxygen-depleted air and toxic fumes from the newer dynamite or older black powder? Hadn’t the night core at the Wendron Mines, a good two miles to the north of Helston, not come to grass in 1875, the men having died of asphyxiation? Hadn’t three men been killed in the Carn Brea not far to the southwest of Redruth in June 1882, the detonators and dynamite having been kept far too close to lighted candles?

  But what about the killing of that child? she asked, and finding the place in the manuscript, readily saw that the writing had been much altered, the death of that girl having come and gone at least a dozen times. A murder then, a murder now? she asked herself, the child screaming and trying to get away as Pindanter caught her by an arm, the others yelling, ‘Kill her, Pin. Bash brains in an’ leave t’ sea.’

  Tangled in kelp, her body would have been endlessly rolled back and forth, the girl now dead, then alive, then dead again, yet looking so like Karen Ashby that she had to ask, How could you have written such a thing?

  Printing HACKER on the back of the opposite page in bold black letters, she wrote DAISY under it and added a question mark simply because he had threatened Ash, had said he would as much as see him accused of the murder if he didn’t go along with MI5 and stay away.

  Rivulets like tears ran down each windowpane. Ash wouldn’t be here to help them if help should be needed. Karen would, she thought, do the right thing and come to her if called, but if she didn’t, what then?

  When a sudden rockfall was heard from directly beneath the cottage, she leapt, looked to Karen and tried to still the panic, the sound trailing away to distant rumbling that grew fainter and fainter. Certainly there had been sounds like this before, and at any time of day or night, the workings yielding to built-up stresses as timbers rotted and gave way. There had always been the creaking of those timber posts somewhere in the abandoned workings. Pindanter would have heard them snapping, too, the sudden fall of rocks and then … why, then, the utter silence that would, he hoped, signify an end to the current ‘run’ but mightn’t.

  ‘The knackers,’ Mrs. Carne at the post had said of the sounds. ‘Now you’re not to worry, miss. It’s only the little people who still work that old mine of yours.’

  Cornwall was full of such nonsense. Even so, she wished the knackers wouldn’t do it, not tonight, not with the Abwehr out there somewhere and her not knowing when they would come for Karen nor if Colonel Hacker could even stop them.

  When a scraping came, she stealthily lay down on the floor in front of the hearth to press an ear to the flagstones. Never loud, the sound seemed near enough. Pauses made her gaze into the fire. First had come the rockfall and then the scraping.

  Hearing it faintly, she listened hard. It was of iron on rock, as if someone were dragging a cold chisel along a seam. In time, though, the sound stopped, she to lie here still but gazing into the embers for answers.

  Sometimes the ‘runs’ broke right through to grass, taking whole cottages and other buildings. And yes, one could find such hollows, some quite deep, but each emphatically stating that all was not well underground.

  When hours later, and unknown to her, Hacker saw her through the mizzle and the window, she was lost to thought but standing before a fire she’d built up, and was looking curiously down at its hearthstone. There was a tumbler in one hand, a brandy bottle nearby, she taking a sip, he sucking at bloodied knuckles and gingerly flexing his left fingers. Bastard rocks had all but got the better of him. Bastard mine, the little slut had chosen. Damned dangerous, but still she didn’t know he was watching her.

  Crouching, she ran a finger along the edge of the hearthstone, was getting far too curious for her own good. Another sip was needed, and another, she taking a knife to run it round the stone.

  Hilary knew it fitted perfectly, for there wasn’t even space for the blade of the knife, the slab of stone rectangular and shoulder wide. Fossil corals were set in its grey limestone, giving delicate filigrees of silica. Strange creatures, Pindanter would have thought. And Blind William? she asked. What would he have thought of them before the loss of his sight, he having used the new dynamite for ‘shooting the rocks,’ but having also used, while fossicking the old workings, a hand-made fuse as in the old days instead of a Bickford safety so as to save on the ‘expenses’?

  Shutting her eyes, groping, she felt the stone and when, by accident, the glass of brandy toppled over, Hacker knew she was being too smart for her own good, for he had read what she had printed on the back of that page, had seen the question mark she had placed beside the name of Daisy Belamy.

  The brandy caught fire, the girl watching the flames, and when those were done, she began to get ready for bed, was still lost to that slab of stone and no doubt thinking of smugglers.

  Pulling off the bulky cable-knit pullover and still puzzled, she laid it over the back of a chair. Shirt and brassiere came next, she running hands over the marks this last had left, then slipping them over her tits while still wondering about Ashby’s barmaid, was she, or still thinking about that hearthstone?

  Unlike the barmaid, her tits were small, firm and well rounded, the nipples stiff from the damp and cold, and when she raised her arms to shrug into a nightgown, they lifted and tightened. One sleeve became caught, the nightgown still hiding her head, smothering her, blinding her, trapping her just as, when fully clothed, Daisy Belamy’s arms had been trapped, the slut trying to cry out for help when held down and asked again and again where Ashby had hidden that daughter of his.

  When the nightgown was pulled on, the girl dropped her trousers and step-ins and he had a glimpse of the rest of her, a nice little bit and tight probably, but things had gone too far with Ashby’s barmaid, who hadn’t known a blessed thing. A pity, that. The Abwehr would just have to take the rap but then this one had had to get bloody Brigadier Charles Edward Gordon involved and that one was playing games of his own, or was he? That was the rub. Sir John simply hadn’t been able to find out.

  Letting his gaze move slowly over her, Hacker felt the urge to have her under him. Once fucked, the neck would snap, the girl going limp. The Abwehr again, if necessary, and no problem.

  Returning to the hearthstone, the little bitch shut her eyes again and, down on all fours, felt for and found what she was looking for—the clay-filled holes, near each side, that when emptied would accept the ringbolts that were used to lift the stone out of the way.

  Getting to her feet, obviously excited by what she had discovered, she went over to a shelf, and cautiously reaching across the sleeping child, found the bolts and, having screwed them in, braced her feet apart and moved the stone, lifted it right out and stood there staring down into the darkness.

  Unknown to her, dead sheep, badgers, voles, mice and rats, their bloated bodies floating in the black and putrid water of the workings below the main shaft, had made the stench all but unbearable. And everywhere there had been the fuzz of decay, the timbers much broken, but there hadn’t been any bats and he had wondered at this. Hydrogen sulphide and methane could well have discouraged them. A nasty thing, old mines. He would have to destroy that scribbling of hers, but first the child and AST-X Bremen’s sleeper and all those Brigadier Charles Edward Gordon might or might not be using.

  As the last of the brigadier’s dinner guests left the house called Llynwood on that same Saturday night, Christina heard Gordon say a quiet word to the butler who would now leave the two of them alone.

  Drawing the crocheted shawl the brigadier had found for her more closely about her shoulders, she waited. The other guests, neighbouring landowners, had thought her his mistress, but had tried their best not to let on while he, in turn, had silently been amused by her predicament.

  Rejoining her, he said, ‘My dear, the gun r
oom is far more comfortable. This place always leaves me a trifle cold. These dark, panelled walls seem fit only to hang the portraits of the lesser beings Cromwell should, by rights, have beheaded.’

  ‘But were they not relations of yours?’ she asked, he having taken her by the arm.

  ‘Oh I daresay this side of the family wisely sided with the Lord Protector, intrigue and spying being both sup and soul to them and to himself.’

  ‘And your own branch of the family?’ she asked with laughter in her eyes.

  ‘Decidedly with the monarchy and forced to fend for themselves in foreign parts.’

  ‘But survivors,’ she said, and saw him grin and nod.

  Done in maroon morocco, with scattered leopard, lion and impala hides on the floor, their mounted heads looking on, the gun room was definitely a man’s room, and as his fingers touched her own, Christina paused as she took the glass he had poured. Holding a sip on the back of her tongue, she let him see what he wanted in her gaze, then swallowed and said, ‘Schloss Reinhartshausen. My compliments, Brigadier. Your cousins keep an admirable cellar.’

  ‘I’ll show it to you, if you like.’

  ‘Later, perhaps.’ And sitting on the arm of one of the club chairs, she crossed her legs. ‘A cigarette, I think. Would you?’ she asked.

  ‘Tobacco will only spoil that Riesling. Surely a wine lover such as yourself must know this.’

  Even so, he lit it and, feeling her hand close over his own, brought the flame closer to her, she blowing smoke aside but still holding onto him. ‘You are right, of course, Brigadier, but at such times, a cigarette is, I think, more necessary than the taste of a wine I could never forget.’

  ‘You’re not nervous, are you?’

  ‘Is there some reason why I should be?’

  Sitting opposite her on one of the sofas, he raised his glass to her and said, ‘How did it go with that cottage you were looking into? Wetherby, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve yet to sign the papers.’