“About a mile and you come to the drive. Then it’s half a mile farther to the house.”
Just inside the lion-topped entrance gates that said “Roking Place,” Quarles stopped the car. “From here we go on foot. I hope we are in time. Can we approach the house without being seen?”
“Yes. It’s a way we used when we were children. Along here.” They pushed along an overgrown path tangled with briars and brushwood. “There is the house.”
Through a tangle of bushes Quarles saw the front of the house. It was a Victorian Gothic monster, all spires and towers and arched doorways. In front of it stood a courtyard, and as they watched, two cars roared up into this courtyard and half a dozen men tumbled out of them.
Quarles saw Briffitt advance toward the house. Then a shot came from a first-floor window—a crack and a puff of smoke. Briffitt started back as if he had been stung by a wasp.
“He must be mad,” Quarles said. “This is senseless. He can’t possibly get away unless—did the eccentric Victorian who built this place put in any secret passages, that kind of thing?”
“I don’t think so.” She added slowly, “Of course, there is the passage that goes through the cellars and comes out by an old ruined chapel in the grounds, half a mile away. Would that be—?”
“Yes. Take me there now. Hurry! But we want to keep out of sight.”
They moved round the side of the house and then, as it seemed, away from it. Their clothes were torn by brambles. A branch that whipped back struck Quarles across the face, and when he put up his hand he felt blood.
At last, after what seemed to him half an hour but was perhaps five minutes, they came to the chapel, a narrow building with only the walls still standing; it looked as though it had been put into a machine and squashed.
“It’s along here, by the side of the chapel. There’s a big stone with a ring in it. Here it is.”
The surrounding wild grass had been cut away from the stone, which lifted easily when Quarles pulled at the ring. A flight of steps led downward into darkness.
“We go straight ahead and come out into the cellars,” Rita said. “I know the way.”
Quarles followed her along a narrow passage in which there was hardly room for him to stand upright. Cobwebs brushed their faces, but they encountered nothing worse until they opened the door that led into a cellar, full of empty wine bottles and old packing cases.
Above them was a thunderous knocking. That must be Briffitt and his men, Quarles thought, attacking the front door. But much nearer was the sound of feet coming down to the cellar, of something being dragged along.
Quarles moved behind a packing case and motioned Rita to do the same.
Now they heard a high voice speaking, a voice on the edge of hysteria. “You’re wondering why I’ve taken the trouble to keep you alive all this time, my fine fellow. It was to provide the finishing touch. But not much longer—no, it won’t be much longer. A bullet in the head, a quick and merciful end, you’ll agree. Then the body discovered in the passage leading to the chapel. And by the time they find it, Ralph the wicked brother will be a long way off where they can’t possibly catch him. Wicked, wicked Ralph.”
The voice came nearer. Quarles called out loudly, “It’s no use. Put up your hands.”
From the end of the cellar there was a spurt of flame. Quarles fired as soon as he saw the flash, and was rewarded by a howl of rage and anger. He rushed forward and grappled with an assailant who was no more than a shape in darkness, bearing him to the ground at the same moment that the door above opened and the pencil beams of half a dozen torches pierced the darkness.
“Why, it’s you, Quarles,” Briffitt’s voice said. “Have you got him? Have you got Ralph Clayton?”
Quarles straightened up, retaining his grip on the thing that now whimpered beneath him on the floor. “Ralph Clayton died in Korea, Briffitt, years ago. Here’s your murderer.”
The beams of light played now on the face of the man on the floor.
“Ronny Dobson,” Briffitt said. “But why—”
“You call him Dobson, but don’t forget that his name is really Dombos,” Quarles said. “But there’s someone else here who’s much more interesting.”
“Jimmy,” Rita Foldes said. She bent down by the figure beside Dobson, bound hand and foot and a gag in his mouth; but the torchlight showed the bright unmistakable red hair.
Quarles cut the bonds with a knife, and Jimmy Clayton groaned and stretched.
“Take them upstairs,” Briffitt said.
In the great empty drawing room upstairs, its windows looking out on the desolate courtyard and drive, Jimmy Clayton told them his story.
“I got the telephone call early on Monday morning,” he said. “Chap said he was Ralph. I suppose I should have been suspicious—the voice wasn’t much like Ralph’s really—but at the time I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Trouble was, I suppose, that I wanted to believe, and so I did. Anyway Ralph, as I thought it was, told me he was here on a mission, couldn’t explain on the telephone, had run into trouble, and needed my help. I was to meet him here on Monday evening at seven, and he’d explain. Mustn’t tell anyone, mustn’t be seen coming here. I expect you think that should have made me suspicious too, but do you know it was all so very much like Ralph. He always loved a secret.
“I knew getting out of Wimbledon after playing the Russian wouldn’t be easy, and I couldn’t resist playing a little joke on Bobo, putting the wind up him a bit.” He gave a sly, little-boy grin.
“We worked that out,” Quarles said. “Then you came down here.”
“That’s right. I took a taxi from the station to a spot on the main road, and walked up. Opened the front door, something hit me, and I went out like a light. I always thought my head was hard, but this raised a bump on it that’s still there. When I woke I was tied up in the room upstairs that we used as a playroom, wondering who’d hit me on the head and why. When Ronny came down and gave me food a couple of times I learned who, but I never did find out why.”
“If you don’t know now you never will,” Dobson said. The expression on his face was one of intense, venomous hatred.
“I don’t know about that,” Quarles said. “We may be able to help you—”
He was interrupted by a shout from Jimmy Clayton. “What day is it? Wednesday? And it’s half-past twelve. I must get to Wimbledon.” He stood up and swayed on his feet.
“You’re not fit to play tennis today,” Quarles said. “And perhaps you won’t need to. Look outside.”
They looked. “Rain,” said Jimmy Clayton ecstatically. “Beautiful, beautiful rain.”
“If it goes on raining they’ll postpone your match until tomorrow, isn’t that right? And if the weather men are right, it is going on raining. But let’s get to London.”
They drove back in a rainstorm that was blended with thunder and lightning as they approached London. They telephoned Wimbledon and discovered that the rain had washed out play for the day. Then they deposited Jimmy Clayton in a Turkish bath, which he swore would be a cure for all his troubles.
“Just stiffness and cramp,” he said. “I must say Ronny didn’t beat me up, after that one blow on the head. Can’t bear to miss that explanation, though.”
“Miss Foldes will tell you tomorrow,” Quarles said.
Later, in his office, he talked to an attentive audience composed of Rita Foldes, Mrs. Clayton, Inspector Leeds, and a subdued Mervyn Briffitt.
“I’ll tell you first of all what happened, and then how I got on to it,” Quarles said. “The whole thing was precipitated by Doctor Foldes’ discovery that Dobson, or Dombos, was the traitor on the committee who had sent some of his friends to their deaths. Foldes must have told Dobson, and insisted that he leave England. Dobson agreed, and it was arranged that Foldes should come down to the docks to make sure that he had gone.
“But Dobson had no idea of leaving England. In another country he would be penniless, and it was certain that Doctor F
oldes would spread the word that he was a traitor—though, incidentally, I doubt if Dobson regarded himself in that light, but simply as a sensible man who worked for the side that paid him best. Besides, Dobson was still in love with Rita Foldes, and didn’t want to leave her. So he met Foldes down at the docks, killed him, dragged his body into that air raid shelter. He hoped that it might not be discovered for a long time but, as we know, he was unlucky.
“Then he had a brilliant idea. Dobson hated Jimmy Clayton. There was one genuine emotion in his life, and that was love of Rita Foldes. He had been engaged to marry her, and Jimmy had taken her away.
“Dobson’s idea was this. Why not get rid of his hated rival and at the same time provide a convincing motive for Foldes’ disappearance, simply by reviving the ghost of Ralph Clayton? He did it very cleverly at times, as when he drew my attention to Ralph at the beginning of the case, and clumsily at other times, as when he sent that note to Briffitt which was meant to be from Ralph Clayton. In fact, that was more than clumsy. It was the clue which led me to Dobson.”
“I don’t see why,” Briffitt said.
“When you read the note you pointed out that it must have been written by somebody who had followed Miss Foldes, her brother, and me from my office. Now, outside my office, Miss Foldes tripped and hurt her ankle. By the time she saw Dobson after her brother’s death it was all right—she showed no sign of a limp. Dobson said that he hadn’t had a chance to see her or her brother that day. Yet he inquired tenderly about the injured ankle.
“How could he possibly have known about it—unless he was the man who followed us to your office that morning, and sent the note supposed to be from Ralph Clayton?”
“Very clever,” Briffitt said, a shade grudgingly. “I missed that.”
“You missed some other things too,” Quarles said softly. “The significance of that torn memorandum in Charles’ hand, for instance. That was the clearest possible indication that he had discovered the identity of the traitor, and had been killed because of it. Dobson realised that he had left a fragment of the memorandum in Charles’ hand and came back for it, but I had already arrived on the scene. His last effort was to stage a good finale, in which we were meant to think that Ralph Clayton had killed his brother, and then vanished. Again, he wasn’t quite successful. An ingenious, but a careless plotter.”
Quarles strolled across to the window. “The clouds are clearing. I am happy to say that Jimmy Clayton has promised me a ringside seat for his match tomorrow.”
Jimmy Clayton walked up the steps which, during the tournament, may only be used by those playing on the centre court. He entered the anteroom where Harry Parker was already sitting.
The young American smiled. “How are you, Jimmy? Fit?”
“As a fiddle,” Jimmy Clayton answered.
The swing doors opened, and they stepped out onto the centre court. Once there, once he had bowed to Princess Margaret and the Duchess of Kent in the Royal box, and waved his racket to Rita and to Francis Quarles who sat together watching him expectantly, all nervousness dropped from him. He remembered only that he was the first English tennis player in the men’s singles semifinal at Wimbledon for goodness knew how many years, and that this was the chance of his lifetime. He threw up the ball, pivoted round, swung his racket, and served.
The Drop Shot
Michael Gilbert
Michael Francis Gilbert (1912–2006) was, together with Julian Symons, the leading male British crime novelist of his generation. Like Symons, he received the CWA Diamond Dagger and was made a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, but although the two men had a long friendship, they were very different in terms of personality and as regards their approach to writing crime fiction. Gilbert fought in the Second World War and his experiences as a prisoner of war in Italy provide background material for Death in Captivity (1952), one of the finest British “impossible crime” stories of the post-war era. By the time of its appearance, Gilbert was well-established as a partner in a prestigious law firm, and had also made a name for himself as an author of considerable talent. His urbanity is reflected in the smooth, readable prose of his whodunits, thrillers, spy stories, legal mysteries, and police stories. Although perhaps less ambitious as a novelist than Symons, he demonstrated that fiction written primarily to entertain can have enduring appeal, and was equally adept at writing novels, stage plays, radio plays, and television scripts.
Gilbert had a flair for the short crime story, as this example illustrates. It originally appeared in the Evening Standard on 27 November 1950, and was eventually collected in Even Murderers Take Holidays (2007) edited by John Cooper. He played squash and, in his twenties, rugby for Salisbury. After his marriage, he enjoyed playing cricket for Luddesdown Cricket Club, and in later life became their President. He also took up archery. At home, he is remembered by his children as highly competitive on the croquet lawn.
I squeezed my way into the narrow, crowded gallery and found a vacant place next to Bill Birley.
This squash match was likely to be the decider in the County Championship.
“Six-four in the first game,” said Birley as I sat down beside him. “It’s going to be damned good.”
Birley is my solicitor—Horniman, Craine and Birley, of Lincoln’s Inn—and, believe it or not, one of my closest friends as well.
“If Cavendish wins,” I said, as I settled down to watch the game, “it’ll be a triumph of experience over youth.”
It was going to be a terrific fight.
Cavendish—you must have heard the name, he has been in the front rank of squash players for twenty years—was over forty to my knowledge; and he was playing a young pilot officer, who knew how to hit the ball very hard and who knew how to run.
He never let up on anything. But Cavendish was holding him—and doing it, chiefly by mixing good length shots with drop shots of amazing delicacy, a lot of them off the half-volley.
If you’ve never watched a squash match I’d better explain that a drop shot is one which is played very softly and as low as possible above the tell-tale. The real artist puts a bit of cut on it as well, so that it just falls to the floor and dies a natural death.
Time and again Cavendish dropped that ball dead, and time after time his opponent hurled himself across the length of the court and managed to get his racket under it.
Flesh and blood couldn’t stand too much of it. And sure enough Cavendish was drawing away. He took the first game 9—5 and the second one 9—7. The match was best out of five games, so he only wanted one more to clinch it. And on that form he didn’t look as if he was going to have much difficulty over it.
I said so to Birley.
“I’m not so sure,” said Birley. “I’ll back the airman.”
“He’s killing himself,” I said.
“He’ll survive,” said Birley. “He’s young. And he’s learning. You can get an awful lot of education, even during one game. If he’s learnt his lesson he’ll win yet.”
“It’s that drop shot,” I said.
“The way to beat a drop shot,” said Birley, “is by anticipation.”
As he said this he gave me a very odd smile I hadn’t much time to wonder about it, because the third game was starting.
But Birley was right. Under the stress of total war the Air Force was learning the hard lesson of survival.
Cavendish still managed to deceive him occasionally, but his opponent was holding his own now, and he won the next two games with a little in hand.
“Right as usual,” I said to Birley.
The players were taking the two-minute interval that the rules allow before the fifth game.
“It’s not the first time I’ve watched him play,” said Birley. “Not by a long chalk. And I’ve seen that drop shot in action before, too. In fact—look here. This fifth game is only going to be an anti-climax. The youngster’s got his measure now. Come down to the bar and let’s get a drink before the rest of the mob makes it impossible
.”
The bar was almost empty and we took our drinks and retired to the window seat with them.
“You’ve seen the end of a story up there on the court,” said Birley.
He stopped for a minute, so I said: “What sort of a story?”
“That story you often hear about,” said Birley. “The perfect murder. It happened years ago—before the war—when everyone had more money and a country house was a country house. You’ve heard of Sir Godfrey Heyward?”
“Biscuits,” I said. “Millionaire. Used to have a big place just beyond Epping.”
“That’s the chap. He was one of my clients. Nice old boy, and game for most things. He wasn’t exactly the hunting type, but he’d have a fling at anything else. Had his own squash court at Rowdens. Took to the game rather late in life.
“I shall never forget one weekend. I got down in time for tea on Saturday, and I found a lot of good-natured excitement going on, and even a few mild bets being laid over a match that was going to take place on the squash court that evening. I got most of it from Rufus Marks, the Harley Street man who was down for that weekend with his wife.
“‘They had one game this morning,’ said Rufus, ‘which the old man just won. Then they had another this afternoon—very close thing indeed. Robert just managed to win that. So they’re having a decider before dinner this evening.’ ‘Robert who?’ I asked. ‘Robert Cavendish,’ said Rufus.
“It took a few seconds for this to sink in: then I said. ‘Well, if you’ve got any loose money, put it on Cavendish.’
“‘I don’t know so much,’ said Rufus. ‘I saw this afternoon’s game. It was a very close thing.’
“‘But, good heavens,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know that Cavendish is—’ and then I stopped. It struck me that it was quite possible that no one down there except myself did know what sort of squash player Cavendish was.
“‘Is he really good?’ said Rufus.
“‘Absolutely first class,’ I said. ‘Sir Godfrey would have no chance against him if he was really trying.’
Settling Scores Page 27
