It's Murder at St. Basket's

by James Lincoln Collier

  “And David. Are you sure he’s in the stables?”

  “Poor lad. I seen ‘em carryin’ things out there—food and such like. ‘E’s there all right. And Jaggers—’e’s out there, too. Just watchin’.”

  CHAPTER 10

  WE HAD THE lights off in Margaret’s room so we could see out better, and so nobody out there could see us watching. Every once in a while one of us would go back to our room and walk back and forth, so if anyone was looking up they would think we were in there.

  “There’s definitely a light out there,” Leslie said. “You can see a crack of it by that window.”

  “I don’t see it,” Margaret said.

  “Use your eyes, Margaret,” I said. “Third window over, in the top floor.”

  The stable was made of brick and had two floors. Downstairs there were stalls where the horses had been, and little rooms like garages where they’d kept the different carriages. The hay and oats had been stored upstairs, the way they always did so they could just shove it down to the horses through a hole in the floor. But there were a couple of rooms up there, too, where the coachmen had lived in the old days. There were a couple of old carriages out there still, but mostly the place was filled with junked-up furniture and old books. For some punishment once, Shrimpton had made me and Leslie work out there on a Saturday afternoon, packing books into cardboard boxes. It wasn’t very interesting out there—just storage stuff.

  Margaret sat down on her bed. “Are you chaps really going to Paris?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There isn’t anything else to do.”

  “Where will you get the money?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure out something.”

  “I do wish you’d ring the police.”

  “Margaret, please,” Leslie said. “Can you see the bloody coppers swallowing Mrs. Rabbit’s story?”

  “Perhaps it isn’t true?”

  “That’s why I’m going out there first to find out.”

  “We’re tossing for it,” Leslie said.

  But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to do it all myself, because of David being my special friend. “We don’t have to toss, Leslie. I’ll do it.”

  “Come off it, old boy. We toss.”

  “Stop being so bloody English, Leslie,” I said. “You know you’re scared and so am I.”

  “Can’t help being English, can I?”

  “All right,” I said. I took out a penny. “Heads.” I flipped it and then when it came down I let it bounce off my hand and roll along the floor. Quickly I stamped my foot on it. Then I bent down, blocking their view. It was tails. “Heads,” I said, and scooped it up.

  “I’ll bet you cheated, Quincy.”

  “He wouldn’t cheat, Leslie,” Margaret said.

  So that was that. I went back into my room, put on my blazer so I would look like a respectable kid and tucked my passport into my back pocket. Then we searched up all the money we could find. It wasn’t much—less than forty pence altogether, which was around a dollar. We split it.

  The plan was for me to find out if David were really there. Then I’d give them a signal and slip out through the back gate onto the Heath. Leslie would sneak out the front door, and we’d go different ways up to the Belsize tube station. That way one of us was bound to get away. If Leslie didn’t see me wave after a reasonable time, he was supposed to take off on his own.

  “What’s a reasonable time?” he asked.

  “Well, if I still haven’t found out anything in an hour, I’ll come back. So if an hour goes by and you don’t hear from me, it means they’ve got me.”

  There wasn’t any trouble about getting downstairs. It was only eight o’clock, the masters were busy hitting the beer at the Mag, and the Grimes were eating dinner—or at least, that’s what they usually were doing at eight. If they heard me and came out to ask me, I’d just say I couldn’t find my muffler and was going to see if I’d left it in the yard after football. Even so, I slipped down as quietly as I could, and headed for the front door.

  I knew I couldn’t cross the backyard: Jaggers would be sure to spot me. What I figured to do was go out the front, up Tanza Road to the top, where there was a gate opening onto the Heath. Then I’d come back down along the wall from the outside. The stable being part of the wall, Jaggers would never see me if I stuck tight to the wall. Then I figured I would climb up somehow and get a look into the upstairs windows. There are a lot of trees along that part of the Heath. It wouldn’t be too hard to get a view from one.

  I got down to the bottom and tiptoed toward the door. As I went by the dining room I took a quick peek in. It was dark, and so was the kitchen. Mrs. Rabbit had locked up and gone home.

  I hit the front door, and slid it open. It made a horrible squeaking noise I’d never noticed before. I guess when all the kids were around shouting and hollering during the day you couldn’t even hear the squeak. It gave me a scare, and started my heart thumping, but I slipped through as quick as I could, darted down the front path, through the gate, and trotted up on Tanza Road to the top. Then I swung onto the Heath.

  Ahead of me was Parliament Hill, and to the right, the brick wall. There was a lot of moonlight spread over everything, so that the trees scattered around the Heath had shadows. But there were no people. I didn’t like the moonlight too well: I would rather it had been pitch dark. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that.

  I swung onto the Heath, and began moving down the wall. There were vines growing on it some places, and I had to be careful not to get tangled in them. Just up ahead I could see the top corner of the stable sort of looming up against the sky. I crept on, going slower. My heart was beating pretty fast, and I was scared.

  Finally I came to the stable. I stopped and listened. There was no sound. I tipped my head back to look up at the windows just above me. At that angle I couldn’t see anything. I would have to get back onto the Heath a bit to see, so I scurried back along the wall a little, then walked slowly out across the Heath. If Jaggers happened to be looking out at that distance I would have seemed like just any kid walking on the Heath.

  About thirty feet away from the wall there were some trees. I ducked behind one of them, and had a look at the stable. There was a light on in one of the windows, all right, but he’d got the shade pulled down. Somehow I had to climb up there and get a look around the cracks at the edges of the shade.

  The window had a small sill. If I could manage to pull myself up somehow, I figured I could hang on the sill for long enough to get a quick look into the room. I turned away from the tree, and trotted back farther into a little woods near the top of Parliament Hill. After a couple of minutes I found what I was looking for, a tree branch that had fallen down. It didn’t look terribly strong, but I leaned it up against a tree and jumped my weight against it, and it didn’t break.

  I carried it back to the tree I had been hiding behind. I took a good look at the window. I couldn’t see any shadows on it, so it didn’t seem as if anybody was looking out. I took a deep breath, and then I dashed for the wall. I stopped and listened. There was nothing but the sound of my heart thumping. I leaned the stick I’d got against the wall, and then I stepped back a few paces, ran up it, and grabbed for the window ledge. I dangled from it for a minute, listening again; but still there was no sound but my heart; so I heaved myself up, sort of like doing chin-ups. It was pretty tough, and I was scared that I was making too much noise, grunting and scraping on the bricks, but finally I got so I had my forearm on the sill, and my weight resting on it. The shade was hanging a little crooked, making a gap. I looked in.

  I couldn’t see Jaggers, but I saw David, lying flat on his back under a blanket on a kind of camp bed. He looked pale and still, and you might have thought he was dead, except that his breathing was coming hard and heavy. He was pretty sick, that was sure. I couldn’t tell if he was awake. I had a thought of tapping on the window to get his attention, so he would know we were trying to do something for him, and j
ust then the shade simply disappeared and I was staring face to face with Jaggers.

  “Quincy!” he shouted. I dropped. My feet caught in the tree branch, and I fell onto the ground. The window above slammed open. I jumped up. I knew I’d never have a chance running across the open Heath or trying to make a break for the tube station. He could run twice as fast as me; he’d catch me in a couple of minutes. I began running as hard as I could straight up the hill along the wall towards the mess of woods and brambles which surrounded the ponds. I had got about fifty feet away when I heard Jaggers’ feet hit the ground. He swore, and I knew he’d landed on the stick, too, and got tripped. Ahead of me were the woods, only twenty yards away. Gasping for breath, I charged forward, flung myself in them in the dark, just praying there weren’t rocks in there, or a lot of brambles.

  But it was just brush. I crawled forward quickly on my hands and knees, until I was about ten yards in, and then I flopped down and lay still. Behind me I could hear Jaggers’ heavy feet pounding across the Heath. I tried to make my breath quiet. Then his feet stopped pounding and he was standing at the edge of the woods. I waited. There was a click, and a flashlight went on. It swept through the woods. I lay stretched out in the bushes, freezing my body still. The flashlight swept through the woods, back and forth, like a brush putting on some kind of paint that disappeared when you took it away.

  “I know you’re in there, you bloody Yank sod,” he hissed. “And if you don’t come out when I count three, I’m going to come in there and drag you out, and then I’ll break every bone in your body.”

  I lay still. “One,” he said. “Two.”

  I didn’t move.

  “I’m not mucking about, you little sod. Three.”

  Then he took a step into the woods. But he didn’t come any farther, and I knew he wouldn’t, because he was afraid that if he began thrashing around in the bushes I’d slip out the other side under cover of his noise. He stood there, flashing the light around, and watching. Finally he backed off, and began walking down along the edge of the woods, flashing his light into it here and there. I raised up on my knees to watch him, but I didn’t move otherwise. I didn’t know for sure what he had in mind, but I figured he would pretend to circle around the woods, and then come sneaking back in hopes of catching me coming out. I watched until the flashlight disappeared, and then I lay back down again, tucking myself into the brush as much as possible, and waited, listening.

  I didn’t have long to wait. About three minutes later suddenly there was that flashlight painting the bushes again. Oh, he was pretty good, all right: he’d snuck back so quietly I hadn’t heard a sound. I just lay still. Finally he shut off the light, and turned and went back down the hill toward the stable. In the moonlight I could see him all the way until he went through the gate into St. Basket’s backyard. And then I crawled out of the brush, and dashed across the Heath, down over the dam between the ponds, across East Heath Road, and up Willow Road to Hampstead High Street and the tube station. I knew there was no use waiting for Leslie at the Belsize Station or anywhere else, either, for that matter. Once Miss Grime knew that I’d escaped, they’d lock Leslie in for sure.

  The way you go to Paris is by train. If you live in the United States the idea of going to Paris seems like a big thing, but from London it isn’t all that far. In fact, it’s about the same distance as Boston to New York, except that you’ve got to take a ferry across the English Channel, and then get another train on the other side, so naturally it takes longer—about eight or nine hours all told. I knew all about this, because when Choudhry and I had first talked about me visiting him in Paris, we’d got the schedule and everything, so I knew that the trains for Dover, where you got the ferry for Calais, France, left from Victoria Station, and it cost about five pounds, which would be twelve dollars about. My big problem was going to be raising the money.

  I took the tube to Victoria Station. The tube cost tenpence, which left me with only ninepence. That was enough for a snack, if I just had tea and a sandwich, but I knew I couldn’t spend it, because I might need it for buses or tubes. I took the Paris schedule into the waiting room and studied it. There were a lot of trains for Paris. There were even night trains, where you went to sleep on the train, and they put the train right on the ferry and you woke up the next morning in Paris.

  My watch said 9:30. There was a train leaving for Paris at ten. I decided I would go over and see how it worked. It seemed to me that there was a chance I could just sneak on, and when the conductor came for my ticket I’d say I lost it and get all upset and say my uncle was waiting for me at Dover and so forth. I figured I could get away with it. Even if they didn’t believe me, they weren’t going to put a kid off the train in the middle of nowhere.

  It seemed worth a try. I looked up the gate on the big bulletin board they have, and then I went over to it. The Paris train was standing there, and porters and things were hurrying along with carts full of luggage. Near the train there was a line of people— what the English call a queue. I sort of sidled along to get a closer look, and then I saw what the trouble was. At the entrance to each track there was a little gate, where a man stood checking tickets. I watched for a minute. He was checking them carefully, having a good look at each one. So that plan was out. I knew that if I said I’d lost my ticket, he’d send me off to some kind of Children’s Aid or the Lost and Found or something, and the next thing I knew there’d be some cop asking where I lived and all that. I sure wasn’t going to take a chance on that.

  In order to get my thoughts together, I went out of the station into the streets. It was kind of a touristy area—a lot of restaurants, and a bus station, and some airplane ticket offices, and hotels and souvenir shops. I just ambled along, trying to seem natural, looking into the shop windows; and all at once I realized that if I wanted any money, I was going to have to steal it.

  I knew I ought to be able to do it. The English were pretty trusting, so it would be easier than in America. But to tell the truth, thinking about it made me nervous. The most I’d ever stolen back in the States was a pen set worth eighty-nine cents. I’ve never stolen anything big, because I’d never done it for the money, only to do something bad. The idea of stealing stuff worth ten or twenty dollars worried me. Because, of course, I’d have to sell it to somebody, and you’d only get half price or something for anything you stole.

  It was too late to steal anything that night; the shops were mostly closed. So I went back to the waiting room in Victoria Station, and lay down on one of the benches there. I was a little worried about Jaggers. He could have called the police and given out my description, and said I was a runaway or something, but I didn’t think he would—it was too risky for them to have the police come poking around. What worried me more was that they’d take David away from St. Basket’s and hide him someplace else. Or just kill him and bury him. I just didn’t know what they were liable to do.

  I didn’t have much luck sleeping. The lights were on, and people kept coming and going, and of course there were train noises and truck noises and so forth. I’d doze off and then wake up, and doze off again. There was a drinking fountain there, and every time I woke up I’d get some water, and that usually helped me go back to sleep again.

  Finally it got to be morning. I felt sort of dirty and cramped in my muscles, but not too bad, considering. I went into the loo and washed my face and combed my hair with my fingers. When you’re shoplifting, the main thing is not to look like a juvenile delinquent, but like any ordinary kid who could buy anything in the shop if he asked his mother for it. I had a cup of tea, too. I was pretty hungry, and I would have liked to buy a bun, but I figured I’d better save my money. It’s funny how you could get to miss even that cold St. Basket’s toast. Then I went over to the tube entrance, where they had a big map of London posted on the wall.

  My plan was to head for a place called the Burlington Arcade. It’s a little covered street for pedestrians only, running off Piccadilly, which is one of London
’s big shopping streets. The stores along the Burlington Arcade are small and fancy. You can get a lot of expensive stuff there—silverware and jewelry, and expensive sweaters and so forth.

  I found it on the map. It seemed like about a half hour’s walk from Victoria Station, so I set out. I walked past Buckingham Palace, where I’d seen the changing of the guard when my parents had brought me over in August, and through the Green Park and then along Piccadilly, and suddenly I was there.

  Up till then I’d been pretty calm, but now that I had to actually do it, I began to get nervous. I turned into the arcade, and began to stroll slowly along, from time to time stopping to look in the windows, like any kid would do. There were a lot of things to choose from, all of them worth a lot of money. It was kind of nice strolling along there, clean and sort of cozy with the roof over the street, if I hadn’t been so nervous. I went up one side of the street, and then down the other; and about halfway down I saw what I wanted—a cutlery store specializing in knives and binoculars and stuff like that. They had a whole row of Swiss Army jackknives in the window, going from little two-bladers up to big fat ones that had scissors and folding spoons and stuff like that, all red with little crosses in them, which is the symbol for Switzerland. The big ones cost over five pounds. I figured I could easily sell one for a couple of pounds, which would be enough to get me as far as Dover. Once I got there I figured I’d have some chance to sneak onto the boat. Sneaking on a boat was bound to be easier than sneaking onto a train, and once you were on it, they weren’t going to stop and make you get off. The big thing was getting across the Channel. I could hitchhike to Paris if I had to.