With his pencil point, Anthony marked the spots where the finger had rested. He put his head upon one side and considered. He said at last:
‘Very good—except for this one. And there’s a gap in the hedge there. And it’s through that gap that I expect Mr X—who is also L. Curtain Esquire, to come. He comes that way, you see. Or so I’ve worked it out …’
Ravenscourt laughed; a bitter sound. ‘He does does he? Well, if he comes that way, he comes—he must come—across my land. Blast him!… That’s a pill for my pride; with all my bumpkin sleuths on the job for years of hours and nothing to show for it!… Right! I won’t have a man there: I’ll move him along to here!’ Again his hand came over Anthony’s shoulder, and a finger pointed to a spot.
Anthony marked the place. ‘That’ll do well.’ He got to his feet. ‘There’s nothing more, then.’ He held out his hand. ‘And thanks for being so accommodating. I’m afraid I must seem to bounce a bit sometimes.’
Ravenscourt took the hand. ‘You’re entitled to,’ he said. He followed Anthony from the room, and through that outer room where at deal tables two bulky men in uniform dealt with pens and paper as if still these were mediums unaccustomed. At the head of the steps he stood, and watched while Anthony went down them to his car at their foot. He called, before the engine was started:
‘Where’s the starting-point?’
‘Eh?’ said Anthony.
Ravenscourt came down the steps. ‘Where do we meet tonight? I’ll have the men posted just after dark. But when do you and I start?’
Anthony grinned. ‘I’d forgotten.’ He thought for a moment. He said: ‘Meet you at the junction of the main road with the lane to the farm at seven-forty-five sharp. That do?’
‘Seven-forty-five it shall be!’ Ravenscourt said. He stood watching while the long black car edged its difficult way round the sharp bend of the little drive, nosed out, slowly, into the road and at last was gone, with a sudden change in the note of its deep-throated engine, from sight.
There was now only one digit uncancelled upon that chart of Selma Bronson’s.
III
Anthony edged the car up into the lane. A slow business without lights. He took a rug from the body and draped it over the radiator. He walked back to the mouth of the lane upon soft feet. He stood out upon the main road, dark in the black night, and whistled between his teeth. A loud whistle this was, but the blustering wind took hold of it and whirled it away until only the ghost of itself sounded around the spot of its birth.
A dark shape loomed out of the hedge and came towards him upon feet as silent as his own.
‘Gethryn?’ whispered Ravenscourt’s voice.
‘The same, y’r honour.’ Anthony’s voice was a whisper too. But it was a whisper which told of high spirits.
‘You’re late!’ hissed Ravenscourt.
‘Three minutes. Sorry! The night,’ Anthony murmured, ‘was dark and stormy: there was a woman in the street. Her heart was full of misery: her boots were full of feet!’
‘Had a drink?’ said Ravenscourt in his ear.
‘Sorry!’ said Anthony again. ‘Light hearted. On the verge of discovery … Come on, now!… Got your men there?’
They turned, shoulder to shoulder, into the lane.
‘Yes,’ Ravenscourt said. ‘Since dark.’
‘They’ll be cold,’ said Anthony.
There was no reply. They were big men, but their feet made little or no sound, even upon the wet, gravelled clay of the lane. Halfway up the lane they walked, and at a fair pace. And then Anthony halted. Guarding its beam with his hand, he flashed a torch at the right-hand hedge. The circle of white light showed a gap.
‘Through here,’ said Anthony.
And through, Ravenscourt first, they climbed.
They went on over plough-land into which their feet sunk. Anthony said, his voice still in that sub-tone which is clearer and far less carrying than any whisper:
‘Heavy going. But it’s quicker. And there’s less risk of being seen.’
Ravenscourt grunted assent.
They plodded on. Their feet sank in and out of the soft, almost marshy plough. Above their heads the cloud-wrack raced over a dead-grey, unluminous sky. To their left bulked the farmhouse. From one of its upper windows there shone a yellow light which stung the darkness.
In silence they crossed this first field and climbed a stile into the second.
‘Grass here,’ said Anthony. ‘Better going.’
Ravenscourt halted. His hand went to his pocket. ‘Have a cigarette?’ he said as Anthony turned.
Anthony’s fingers gripped his arm. ‘Don’t be an ass! The lights might show.’
Ravenscourt took his hand from his pocket.
‘Sorry!’ he said.
They walked on and up the grassy slope. In the darkness, the savage wind, now dead in their faces, tore at them and beat them and took from them their breath. They put down their heads and side by side fought on against it.
They reached the far boundary of the second field. There was no stile here, only a hedge, through which they forced as silent a way as they might …
They were in the third field. Anthony drew close to his companion. He muttered:
‘Dead quiet now!’
They went on. As if wishing, inimical, to show them to whomsoever might watch, the cloud-wrack suddenly split and the pale light of a watery moon bathed the land with a silver light. Before them, as if suddenly sprung from the wet grass which squelched beneath their feet, showed the ungainly rectangle of the cattle-shelter. It stood dark and stark and gaunt against the black and silver landscape, a monument to the vileness of Utility.
‘Drop?’ Ravenscourt’s voice was a hiss.
Anthony shook his head. ‘No use now. Bear right and come up under cover of the thing.’
They bore right. Under the shelter’s cover they came up at last to the shelter. They stood leaning against its boards …
They listened. No sound came through the racketting of the gale. They breathed deep. Anthony said:
‘He’s not come yet … There’s not a sound from your men.’
Ravenscourt nodded. ‘Wish we could smoke,’ he said. His hand went longingly to his pocket. Anthony said:
‘Let’s drop and work round to the front of this thing. We can lie low inside then. More shelter. And we’d be invisible in the shadow … OK?’
Ravenscourt nodded. He whispered:
‘You lead?’
Anthony shook his head. ‘Best if we split it. Two crawlers might be seen. One on each side probably won’t. You go right. I’ll go left … See you in Pompeii.’ He dropped to the sodden ground. He lay flat on his belly. Like a great snake he wriggled towards the left-hand end of the shelter.
After a moment Ravenscourt followed his example. There was a silence save for the wind. Any rustling of the two men’s progress was drowned; the wind was a roaring, tearing giant. Under its blasts the very structure of the shelter seemed to sag …
Anthony rounded the first corner; wriggled along the side of the shelter until the front corner was reached. The moon shone only fitfully now; the cloud-wrack was gathering again; the silver light switched on and off as if worked by a drunken stage-hand of Olympus.
Anthony pushed his head round the corner. He drew back and got to his knees, his feet. The moon vanished, and he stepped out, past the shelter’s corner, into the open. He whistled softly between his teeth. He peered into the darkness and made out a form, upright, moving towards him.
‘Ravenscourt,’ he said in a clear whisper, ‘come on, man. Inside here!’
There came a laugh. A long laugh and loud. The clouds split in the sky and the world was light.
‘You bloody fool!’ said the voice of Ravenscourt.
His hand came from his pocket. And as it came, just the fraction of a second before the noise and the small red flame which three times stabbed the moonlight night, Anthony leapt, to his right, into the black shadow of the shelter and in
that black shadow ran forward.
There was an oath. The tall figure in the moonlight swung round. Three times more, so nearly together that the noise sounded continuous, came the report of the revolver and the flash of flame … There were thuds as the bullets bored the planking of the shelter’s backboards …
And then out of the shadow, a long, lean, charging shape, came Anthony. This charge was a balanced charge. It began at the right moment and ended at the right moment. And as it ended the right fist of Anthony met the jaw of Geoffrey Ravenscourt.
The man went down. But he was tough. And in the uncertain light of Anthony’s fist had landed an inch to the left of his purpose.
From the grass Ravenscourt rose in a bound. There came a snarling noise from his throat. He hurled himself at Anthony; and as he leaped his right arm was flung upwards and back and the pale light gleamed on the butt of his pistol; it was empty now and he sought to use it as a club.
Anthony stood his ground. Anthony’s knee came up with force. There was a cry—half-groan, half-scream—from Ravenscourt and for the second time he fell. But now he did not rise. He rolled this way and that upon the grass; and when he stilled his rolling, the pain having died down, he saw that over him stood not one man but five …
The four had come out of that black shadow of the shelter’s mouth.
‘My God!’ said a voice.
And Ravenscourt knew that voice. It was the voice of Lucas; the Lucas whom he knew as Assistant Commissioner of Police; and Lucas who was at the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard; the Lucas of whom his last view had been across a dinner-table of which he himself was host …
He struggled to his knees. A hand came from somewhere and pulled from his unresisting fingers the revolver which he had not realised still to be there …
And as he got to his feet and stood, swaying a little because of the pain which still gripped him, there came another hand and laid itself on his shoulder. And a voice said words of which the only ones he properly heard were his own name and the word murder. He said, with slow, stiff lips:
‘Murder? Who?’
And the voice said: ‘Attempted murder of Anthony Ruthven Gethryn … Hold up your hands.’
He held up his hands, close together, and about his wrists slipped something cold and heavy.
The mists began to clear from his eyes. He tried to laugh. A sound came, but it was not the sound he had meant. He frowned, and thrust forward his head, peering. And he saw Anthony. He said, the words coming quicker now:
‘He’s not hurt anyhow. There’s …’
‘There’s other charges,’ said Pike at his elbow. ‘Be quiet.’
Now he recognised this voice, too. His face twisted into a ghastly smile. He said:
‘Thought you were on … on holiday!’
‘I’m not; not at the moment. Quiet!’ Pike’s voice was hard and cold.
Anthony spoke for the first time. He took the old felt hat from his head and held it up. He said:
‘Look at that!’
Through the hat’s crown was a hole, burnt and jagged at the edges.
‘First one,’ said Anthony. ‘Good shooting!’
Between his teeth, Dyson whistled. Flood grunted and looked once at the man beside Pike.
‘Come on!’ said Anthony.
‘Where?’ Lucas moved forward.
‘Back to the cars.’
‘But after that?’ Lucas was not himself. He was still dazed by the incredibility of the night’s events.
Pike came up, his prisoner beside him. It is to his credit that he said his words at Lucas. ‘Straight back to town, sir?’
Lucas shrugged; he turned to Anthony. He said:
‘It’s your show, Gethryn.’
Anthony smiled. ‘And it’s not quite over.’ He pondered. ‘Can’t go back to the pub … His own house is the nearest; and he’ll want things anyhow.’
The party began to move: Anthony first, with Lucas; and then Pike and his prisoner. Flood and Dyson, talking in whispers, brought up the rear.
IV
They were in the Tower room at Friars’, which was Ravenscourt’s house. They had been led there by an astounded manservant, who, though he had not been permitted to see the handcuffs upon his master’s wrists nor hear anything which might lead him to the truth behind this invasion, was nevertheless aware of an indefinable ‘something’ which was ‘up’.
But he led them, in obedience to his master’s growl, through the panelled hall and up the oak staircase and along to the turret-stairs in the short western wing, and up these, which were so much longer than could have seemed possible that a man was almost out of his breath at their top, and so into the Tower room.
It was a long room, and high. Its eastern wall was lined with books from ceiling to floor. Its western wall was hung with swords, and scraps of chain-mail, and an assegai or two, and a pair of beautiful curved Samurai blades. Its southern wall was all window—three windows, there were, reaching from roof almost down to floor-level. And the northern wall bore three pictures, each right in its place.
And the owner of this sat at the writing-table in the centre of the room. He rested his hands, their fingers clasped together, upon the table-top; whenever he moved them there was a little chinking sound of metal upon metal. At his shoulder stood Pike, who would not sit. Directly facing Ravenscourt, his chair, too, drawn right up to the table, was Anthony. Lucas was in an armchair to the window-side of the table, and on a couch which stood parallel with the northern wall sat Flood and Dyson, side by side like schoolboys.
Anthony was saying:
‘There’ll be other charges. The murder of Blackatter; the murder of Dollboys. And the attempted murder, by hanging, of Bronson.’ He said this quietly; his voice was level and uninterested, and very tired.
Ravenscourt looked at him from beneath drooping lids which lent to his face a new seeming; a savage and ruthless and megalomaniac look. He said:
‘You’re smart, aren’t you? Prove ’em. That’s what I say!… Where is your proof? I call your bluff! Where’s the motive? You …’
Anthony interrupted. ‘Motive?’ he said. ‘Want me to tell you … and these men here?… I’ve got to go a few years back for motive. Back to wartime. Back, to be exact, to March of 1918. In March of 1918, in a sector of the front line called after the village of Varolles, there was …’
His speech was cut short by the clatter of a heavy chair upon the wood floor. Ravenscourt had sprung to his feet. His face worked; it was a curious grey colour, in marked contrast to the pallor which had been its hue upon the way home.
‘Steady there!’ Pike put heavy hands upon the heaving shoulders.
The man collapsed into his chair again. His chin fell forward on to his breast so that the lamp-light glittered upon his tawny, cropped hair. His hands dropped back to their old place upon the table. As they fell, there was a rattling, clinking thud. He spoke without raising his face. He said, almost under his breath and yet so clearly that every man in the room heard every syllable:
‘You devil! You clever, clever devil!’ He raised his head and his eyes met Anthony’s.
There was the sound of a rustling movement from the sofa: there appeared notebooks upon the knees of Flood and Dyson.
‘You clever devil!’ said Ravenscourt again. Something, some force, seemed to have gone out of him. ‘All right!’ he said and looked across at Lucas. ‘We won’t bother any more. I did it. He’s right. I killed Blackatter and tried to get Bronson hanged for it. And I shot Dollboys and tried to make it look like suicide.’ He brought his eyes back to Anthony again; he squared his shoulders. ‘And I’d’ve got away with that if I hadn’t been rushed and forgotten the fool was left-handed.’ His voice died away.
Lucas shot a glance towards the sofa. It was answered by two reassuring nods. The confession was down, verbatim and twice for safety’s sake.
Ravenscourt spoke again. There was more life in his voice now; a note almost of anger ha
d crept into it. He looked at Anthony.
‘Flukes!’ he said. ‘All flukes … but I can’t fight ’em. When you caught me tonight I was done. But it’s fluking that’s done me.’
Anthony shook his head. ‘No. You’re wrong. Listen: I’ll tell you. We started this case at the wrong end. We had to. So I made it a stipulation that our jumping-off point should be a belief—a rooted belief—that Bronson was innocent. It worked and worked well. We soon got somewhere; soon got to the point where we realised that the fixing upon Bronson as scapegoat was not haphazard but part and parcel of a plot. A plot by X. And what could’ve been X’s motive? To rid himself of blackmail or what amounted to blackmail; that’s the only thing that ’d really fit the circumstances.fn1 But what was the blackmail about? And how was it that Bronson could be a blackmailer? Much more difficult. The answer to the first question slipped me for a long time; until, to be precise, about midnight at Brownlough’s party. The answer to “how came it that Bronson, of all men, was a blackmailer?” I reasoned was this: that he wasn’t a blackmailer in esse, but that he was in posse. He had not blackmailed and probably never would blackmail; but he could blackmail because he was, as well as Blackatter, in possession of information detrimental to the welfare—physical, mental or financial—of X. Blackatter was the perfect blackmailer—born to the game. Bronson was most definitely the reverse; but so dangerous to X was this knowledge, traded on by Blackatter but not by Bronson, that he determined to end the danger for all time by killing Blackatter and making it seem that Bronson was guilty. This aspect of the scheme was useful to me in this way: it showed that X knew that Bronson was not aware of his own knowledge. Sounds a paradox, that, but it isn’t. It means that X knew that Bronson had not yet associated his knowledge with X. And a trial for murder you haven’t done is quite enough to drive apparently extraneous matters from your head.
‘What must have happened was this: Blackatter blackmails X and tells X that there is another man—and in the district—who knows everything. X finds out, however, quite possibly through Blackatter himself, that Blackatter and this other man—Bronson—aren’t on good terms. And I should say that, right atop of X’s realisation of this comes the dawning of his plot.
The Noose Page 21
