‘Buck?’ he laughed. ‘I love it, Mr Black. You’re starting to talk like you’re out of a cheap American detective magazine. Buck, indeed!’ He stood over me, his hands on his hips.
‘Anyway, my pathetic friend, you won’t be in a position to influence anything I do, from the bottom of the ocean, will you?’
I stared up at him. ‘Haven’t you got enough money, Seagrave? Or wasn’t what your wife left you really worth murdering for, after all?’
He looked across at his brother and both laughed out loud.
‘Oh dear, oh dear, Mr Black. You’re a worse private eye than even I imagined.’ He knelt down in front of me, but too far away for me to lash out at him with my fettered feet. He went on, ‘I didn’t murder dear Deborah for her money. Least, not directly. You see, I was quite willing to let her live a while longer. After all, we made a perfect couple — in every way. Especially in and around the bedroom. Let us say —’ he pursed his lips ‘- we shared the same kind of tastes. I find lots of women aren’t quite so keen on some of my little games, you see.’ They don’t want to hang around with you. Is that it?’
He looked surprised. ‘So you did find out something, Mr Black. Congratulations. I wonder who told you that little snippet.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I snapped. ‘But very soon, Seagrave, you’ll be meeting a hangman’s noose again. But this time it’ll be you on the receiving end. Anyway, do go on. Dim detectives love to know where they went wrong.’
He uncurled from his crouch. ‘I will humour you, Mr Black. I wouldn’t have considered murdering Deborah just then, had it not been for her finding out about one of the little ladies I sometimes dally with. Saw me pick her up and take her to the hotel. Hey ho, I should have been more careful, I suppose.’ He looked down at me. ‘Like you, Mr Black. Anyway, she said she would divorce me. And she meant it. She was going to her lawyer the very next morning. Silly girl. That statement was her death warrant.’
‘So you spent the evening thinking of a way of killing your wife that would look like an accident?’
‘Not just thinking. The idea of replicating the Isadora Duncan death came quite quickly. The rest of the evening I was out in the Frazer-Nash.’
‘Feeding a red scarf into its wheels and transmission.’
‘Well, well, well, Mr Black. Full marks, for once.’
His brother suddenly interrupted. ‘That man who bought the car must have found some of the other scarf.’
‘So he must,’ Seagrave smiled. ‘Well, there we are, Mr Black. You know it all now.’
‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘We know about the actor you murdered and dropped into a Dartmoor bog, all because he was blackmailing you. But what about the poor girl from whom he learnt his blackmailing tricks — Daphne Phipps? What have you done with her?’
Seagrave looked round at his brother with a scowl. ‘Ah, I must confess. We made a little mistake there, didn’t we, dear brother?’
‘Don’t blame me, Mike —’ Massey-mouth began, but his brother persisted.
‘But I do, Tom. If you hadn’t been with me when the poor girl first came to the house, two deaths could have been avoided.’
He looked back at me.
‘Unfortunately, my brother panicked somewhat, when he heard the Phipps girl’s then totally unsupported story about our activities of some years ago. And instead of categorically denying her accusations, as I would have done had I been alone with her, he turned to me and blurted out something along the lines of “How the hell did she find out?’” He patted his brother on the shoulder.
‘It’s all right, Tom. We’ve repaired the mistake now. With the help of the English Channel.’
Turning back to me, he continued. ‘Takes after our mother, does our Tom. All emotion. She never learned to restrain her emotions. Never. Not until her dying day, poor soul.’
The brother came towards me. ‘Let’s get on with it, for Christ’s sake, Mike,’ he said, irritably. ‘Your bloody trouble is you’re never happy unless you can crow over somebody or dominate them.’
Having no other real plan, I opted for all I could think of — delay.
‘So when you’ve got rid of us, what then? You, Tom, go back to living off girls in the South of France. Why did you ever leave and come over here? Did you think you could live off your brother now that he’s got his wife’s money? Can’t see him allowing that for long.’
I saw a flash of anger flick across his face. I went on, ‘What did he say, Tom? “Get your own rich wife to murder?”’
Seagrave came across and slapped me hard across the face — twice. It was all my black eye needed, but I smiled. For it proved I had pricked a nerve of his too. I kept going.
‘You missed an opportunity whilst you were over, Tom. Did you know that? It’s you who should have been after that Susan Prendergast over at Burgh Island, not Michael here. Then you’d have your own heiress. After all, your brother doesn’t need two.’
Seagrave rocked with laughter. ‘That’s enough now, Black. I know what you’re up to. Trying to needle my brother, so you can try to set him against me, even at this eleventh hour.’
I smirked across at Tracy and shrugged. I think she got my point. For she shrugged too. Setting brother against brother hadn’t really been in our minds at all.
But I let it go and said instead, ‘Well, Seagrave, dumb detectives will try any old thing, won’t they?’
Seagrave looked down at me. ‘Not any longer, my friend. Your time is up.’
He took a sharp looking little revolver out of his pocket — it looked like a Beretta to me. Not that it mattered. Every make fires bullets. He wagged it in my direction.
‘Tom, you’d better be getting these two onto the plane. Black first. I’ll keep him covered whilst you untie him from the wall.’
Dawlish came round behind me. I tried one last ploy. ‘Don’t you see, you two? The game’s already up. Any moment now you’ll hear the ding-a-ling of police cars. Why add two more deaths to your list, when you should be making a run for it while there’s still a ha’p’orth of time?’
‘Johnny’s right,’ Tracy added in her ‘you’ve got to believe me’ voice. ‘He told me all about it whilst you two were away.’
I could feel Tom’s hands hesitate behind me. I gave a slight tug, but he obviously had not yet loosened the knots sufficiently.
‘What did he tell you?’ he asked nervously.
I decided to cut in. It would have been caddish to leave it all to Tracy.
‘About the call I put in to the police, before I left to pick up Dolly Randan.’
Seagrave gave out with a mocking laugh. ‘And what did this mythical telephone call say, pray?’
I quickly glanced across at the window. By the darkness outside, I guessed it must be at least nine thirty or so. ‘It said that if I did not report back to them by nine, they were to go to my office and consult a file of mine titled “Seagrave”.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ the man of the title snapped. ‘You’re making it all up. Anyway, your office will have been closed hours by now.’
‘My landlord, Mr Ling, lives over the premises. I told them he would let them in.’
‘Don’t believe him, Tom. Go ahead and get them both on the plane.’
But Tom’s hands didn’t move.
‘What does the file say?’ he asked, coming out in front of me.
‘Why simple,’ I smiled. ‘It details how you and your brother are responsible for three deaths and that I, and Tracy here, feel in danger of our lives too. So now you can see why I’m surprised we haven’t heard those ding-a-lings already.’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ Seagrave retorted, ‘if you expect us to believe all that boloney. Now hurry up, Tom. Get them on the plane.’
I smiled up at Dawlish. ‘You taking us on your own, Tom?’
His eyes flickered as he tried to fathom what I was getting at.
‘You’re taking a bit of a risk, aren’t you?’
‘I can mana
ge you two, no trouble,’ he affirmed and went round the back of me once more.
‘I didn’t really mean that, Tom.’
I felt him starting to loosen the rope.
‘What did you mean then?’
‘That you won’t be here when the police come. That’ll leave your precious little brother scope to explain it all away exactly as he chooses.’
‘What?’ he grunted. But Seagrave cut in, ‘Don’t be thick, Tom. He’s trying to divide us again. He means that I might blame it all on you.’ He came across and kicked my bare leg, charming fellow. ‘Now hurry up. Get them on board. You won’t be gone any time and the quicker you’re back, the better.’
I could feel that Tom had now got me untied from the wall but the Beretta was pointing straight between my eyes. I got up slowly, every joint aching. Dawlish tried to pull me over by the wrists towards his brother but my feet, being tied, wouldn’t follow.
‘You’re coming with me, Mike.’
Seagrave’s eyes flared with surprise and anger. ‘You’re kidding. Are you taking what this dummy says seriously? He’s just trying a last wild throw of the dice. That’s all.’
‘Maybe,’ he grunted, fingering his ginger moustache with a freckled hand. ‘But all the same —’
Seagrave gestured impatiently with his Beretta. ‘All the same nothing. Let’s get’ em onto the plane and stop arguing.’
Dawlish (it would confuse to now call him Seagrave) hesitated once more. ‘But supposing I have trouble getting them out when I land on the water. It would be easier with two of us.’
‘With two of us, we’d just get in each other’s way. You know how narrow those floats are. Anyway, I’ll give you this gun when you go. This should persuade them to do exactly what you say. Besides, they’ll both still be trussed like chickens. All you have got to do is release them one at a time from their seats, give their ropes a yank and they’re in the water. They will go to the bottom in no time with those concrete blocks we’ve got on the jetty.’
The pilot tried one last time. I had to marvel at his persistence. ‘But do we need to use the plane? We could take the boat. We wouldn’t trip over each other in that.’
‘And we wouldn’t get to mid-Channel and back until ruddy Christmas, either,’ Seagrave retorted. ‘Now come on, don’t be so damned foolish,’
He suddenly lashed out with an almighty punch to my stomach. As I doubled up, his colleague gave my wrists a tug and I fell to the floor. Almost immediately, I felt him start pulling my feet towards the door. I didn’t even have time to blow a kiss to Tracy, before I was outside and could both see and smell the dear old briny which they planned to be our double grave.
*
As the noise from the spray from the floats suddenly ceased, I turned my head to Tracy, who was tied securely into the seat next to mine.
‘Thank God, it’s a Fox Moth,’ I shouted above the sound of the engine.
‘Why?’ she shouted back.
I nodded towards our rear. ‘We haven’t got him in the cabin with us.’
I’d better explain to the uninitiated that in the Fox Moth, the pilot sits in an open cockpit, quite separate from the enclosed passenger cabin, which is below and forward of his elevated position.
‘So what?’ she grimaced. Tied up like this, we don’t really need privacy, do we?’
I nodded and cast my eyes down to my feet. She looked across.
‘I noticed it when they were putting me aboard.’
‘Noticed what?’
I strained and moved my bound ankles as far rear-ward as I could. To my relief, I felt the rope contact something hard.
‘The frame of my seat. It’s got a ragged weld on the tubing.’
She raised her lovely eyebrows. ‘Ragged enough?’
‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘It’s about our only chance.’
I started to move my feet up and down against the tubular bar, but, curses, the bands across my thighs holding me to the seat cushion prevented the movement being more than an inch and a half, a couple of inches at most. Then I had to stop, as the plane banked steeply to climb out of the bay. For a brief moment, I had a perfect view out of the side window of the black curving landscape and the lights from widely scattered houses twinkling in the dark. Then suddenly, in the split second before we resumed level flight, I seemed to see a mass of headlights coming down what I took to be the sea road that led down to Murder Mansion. But in a blink of an eye, the vision was gone and I was back to the painful inching of my ankle ropes up and down against the seat support.
I looked across at Tracy and saw, in the light of the moon, that she was attempting the same old trick on her own seat.
But when she caught me looking at her, she shouted, ‘Not much cop, darling. Mine feels as smooth as a baby’s bottom. How’s yours doing?’
‘Goodness knows,’ I said. ‘Let’s just hope the file in my baby’s nappy is rough enough.’
Despite my almost naked condition, I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead with the effort and the heat from the engine just ahead of us. Soon it had formed a rivulet into my black eye, and I cursed that my hands were not free to wipe my face dry.
Soon I saw in the dim light that Tracy had given up her efforts.
‘Sorry, darling,’ she mouthed. ‘Too smooth.’
I cursed the welder at Rumbold who had made her seat. Didn’t he realise that jagged welds can save lives?
My ankles now were hot with the friction of the fretted ropes and I began to wonder whether the ropes or my ankles would be the first to drop off — that is, if either did, before Massey-mouth landed us in deep water. The pain caused more rivulets to flood into my eyes and my vision became intermittently blurred. The whole agony would have been much more sustainable, if only I had a way of seeing whether my efforts were having any effect. For the friction alone told me nothing, except that I was fast losing all of the skin off my ankles.
*
It seemed an eternity before I at last felt the first strand give, but at least I now had encouragement to redouble my agonized efforts. With my eyes tightly closed against the pain and sweat, I increased the tempo of my fretting to the very maximum, short of causing a heart attack or seizure, that is. I didn’t really want to die trying not to die and the crazy thought somehow enlivened my spirits.
Tracy said nothing, knowing, I guess, I needed all my strength for action, not words. Not that I was exactly silent. The pain now was causing me to gasp and groan in roughly equal measures, but, luckily, the noise of the motor absorbed most of them.
At long last, I felt more strands go and then, as they say in penny dreadfuls, with a bound, I was free. Well, my ankles were, at least. Nothing else. I kicked my legs out in front of me and stubbed my foot on one of the concrete blocks on the floor ahead of me, that were ready and waiting to be tied to us at the last minute.
I let out with an unprintable expletive. Tracy let out with a whoop of joy.
‘Don’t celebrate yet, Tracy,’ I shouted. ‘My hands are still tied and I’m still trussed to this seat.’
The plane banked slightly and moonlight flooded into the cabin. Outside the window, the sea looked like a huge sheet of rippled glass, as the waves bounced the light from one to another.
I looked down at the ropes binding my thighs to the seat cushion. It soon became obvious that the only way I could be free of them was to wriggle my bottom as far forward on the seat as possible, in the hope that they would slide off the end and give me sufficient room to lift my legs, one at a time, out of their embrace. But there was one hell of a snag. I was also tied to the backrest, which made wriggling forward a kind of ridiculous challenge. However, Johnny Black is nothing if he is not ridiculous.
*
I suddenly heard what I had been dreading. The engine being throttled back. I gave one last desperate push down on the seat cushion, at the same time mightily heaving my body up and against the seat back, to try to slip the ropes off the base of the seat, when I heard a cra
ck like a rifle shot.
For a split second, I thought someone must have fired at me, then to my amazement, I fell backwards and slightly sideways and struck my head on the side of the cabin.
Somewhat dazed, I heard Tracy emit another whoop of joy. The next second, the whole cabin tilted downwards, as the plane began its descent.
I wriggled myself semi-upright and discovered immediately what had happened. My straining against the backrest had snapped it off where it joined the seat.
With Tracy looking on excitedly, I now wriggled backwards from the ropes across the seat and was soon free of them. I could now move about the cabin, the only restrictions being no hands and the cursed seat back still roped to me like a Sherpa’s load.
‘What about my teeth?’ Tracy shouted and gnashed them once or twice to try to show their effectiveness as rope demolishers.
I shook my head, as I suddenly realised there was only one way I could fool our executioner when he came down to the door. And that was to appear to be still tied up. Besides, I doubted if I’d have enough time to free myself, teeth or no teeth, before we landed on the water, for the angle of descent was now quite steep.
The ropes that should have been over my thighs, I could do nothing about — I just hoped the window in the door was too high for him to see down that far. I explained my plans quickly to Tracy, then sat back on the now crooked cushion, my body holding up the backrest, rather than the other way about.
In under thirty seconds, we heard the floats kick up the first spray. The plane lifted momentarily, then settled back on the water, the cacophony of metal hitting waves filling the aircraft and drowning the note of the now throttled back engine.
Before we actually came to a stop, the plane executed a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, presumably, so that the pilot could make an instant take-off into the wind directly we had been dumped overboard. I was expecting to hear the motor being cut, but, instead, we heard the slight thuds of Massey-mouth getting down from the cockpit and onto the wing outside our cabin door.
Black Eye (A Johnny Black Mystery) Page 24
