‘Get on!’ Amberley rapped out. ‘She’s sinking fast!’
‘Good Lord!’ ejaculated the sailor, unprepared for this. ‘Sinking?’
‘Get on, damn you!’
The boat gathered speed. They could see the other clearly now; she was down by the stern, half submerged.
The racing boat bore down upon her. ‘Easy!’ Amberley ordered, and began to put the wheel over to come alongside. ‘Stop!’
The noise of the engine died, the racer glided on gently for a few feet and rocked beside the foundered boat.
The well was half full of water; Amberley had thrown his torch down to have both hands free, but the moonlight showed him all he wanted to see. Up against the side of the boat a white face was lifted just clear of the water, a scarf tied round the lower half of it.
‘My Gawd in ’eaven!’ gasped the sailor. ‘It’s a woman!’
Amberley leaned over and grasped Shirley. She was strangely heavy; bound and weighted, he guessed. He said: ‘It’s all right, my poor child, it’s all right, Shirley,’ and shot over his shoulder: ‘A knife, quickly!’
The sailor, hanging on to the boat-hook with one hand, fished a clasp-knife out of his pocket and held it out. Amberley opened it and bent over the side, feeling under the water in the well of the other boat. His hand touched something hard about Shirley’s waist; he could feel the links of an iron chain and the cord that tied them, and slashed through. In another moment he had her in his arms and had laid her down in the well of his own boat. She was deathly pale, but her eyes were wide open, fixed almost incredulously on his face. Her wrists and ankles were lashed together tightly; long shudders were running through her.
Amberley undid the scarf and took the gag out of her mouth; then he pulled the flask out of his hip pocket and put it to her blue lips, holding her against his shoulder. ‘Drink it, Shirley! Yes, I’ll undo you, but drink this first. Good girl! – Take her in to shore as quick as you can, you – what’s-your-name?’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Leave it to me,’ said the sailor. ‘If you’ll just steer her clear of this bit o’ wreckage… Thank you, Captain!’ He took the wheel over from Amberley and set the boat’s nose back to port.
Amberley knelt beside Shirley and cut the ropes that bound her. Her wrists were deeply scored by them, but a faint, indomitable smile quivered on her lips. ‘You – always – turn up,’ she said, through chattering teeth.
‘Th – thanks!’
Nineteen
The experience she had gone through and the shock of her immersion had their inevitable result on Shirley. The brandy dispelled the blue shade from her mouth, but she lay in a state of semi-consciousness while the boat made its way back to port.
There was very little that Amberley could do for her. He stripped his overcoat off and wrapped it round her, but under it her own clothes were sodden, and her flesh felt very cold. He began to rub her limbs; her eyes were closed, the dark lashes lying wet on her cheek.
The sailor offered sympathetic advice and shouted once in Amberley’s ear: ‘Who done it?’ He got no answer and bent to bellow confidentially: ‘I thought you was off your rocker.’
There was an inn on the quayside, and when the boat got back to the harbour Amberley carried Shirley there, led by the sailor. The landlady, a startling blonde of enormous proportions, came out of the bar and in spite of her appearance proved to be a capable person who took the situation in it a glance. The sailor, glad of a chance to unbosom himself, launched into a graphic description of the rescue while Amberley laid Shirley down on a horsehair sofa in the parlour.
The landlady said: ‘Good sakes alive!’ and sharply commanded Amberley to bring the young lady upstairs. She then screamed to someone apparently a mile away to take a scuttle up to the best bedroom, and waddled out, telling Amberley to follow her.
He carried Shirley upstairs and laid her, as directed, on a big mahogany bed in a bedroom smelling of must. The landlady then informed him that she didn’t want him any longer, and he retired, feeling that Shirley was in good hands.
Downstairs he found the sailor regaling the occupants of the bar with his story, which was not losing anything in the telling. He did not wish to accept the two five-pound notes that Amberley drew out of his case, but allowed himself to be overruled after a short argument. Amberley left him treating everyone to drinks in the most liberal fashion. It seemed probable that before long he and his cronies would be cast forth into the street; he hoped the sailor would not end the night in the lock-up.
The Bentley was standing where he had left it, outside the yard. He got into it and turned to drive back to the creek. It was now some time after eight o’clock and growing chilly. Amberley felt his overcoat, found it decidedly damp, and threw it onto the back seat.
He drove fast but decorously to the longshoreman’s cottage, and had barely pulled on his brakes when the door opened and the sergeant bounced out.
‘Is that you, Mr Amberley?’ he demanded. ‘Lor’ sir, I’ve been getting nervous. It’s almost an hour since you made off. Did you catch the boat? Where’ve you been, sir?’
‘In a pub,’ said Amberley, himself again.
The sergeant shrugged with his emotions. ‘In a – in a – oh, you have, have you, sir? And very nice too, I daresay.’
‘Very,’ agreed Amberley. ‘Did you get him?’
‘No,’ said the sergeant bitterly. ‘I didn’t. And why? Because this perishing fool here hadn’t thought to put any petrol in his motorboat.’ He realised suddenly that the bleak look had gone from Mr Amberley’s face. ‘Good Lord, sir, you’re never going to tell me you’ve got her?’
‘Oh yes, I’ve got her,’ Amberley replied. ‘She’s at the pub I told you about.’
‘Alive, sir?’ said the sergeant incredulously.
‘Just. I’m waiting to hear her story.’
The sergeant was moved to wring his hand. ‘Well, I don’t know when I’ve been more glad of anything, Mr Amberley. You’re a wonder, sir, that’s what you are – a blinking wonder!’
Amberley laughed. ‘Spare my blushes, Gubbins. What happened to you?’
An expression of disgust succeeded the sergeant’s cheerful grin. ‘Yes, you may well ask, sir. A motorboat waiting! Oh, it was waiting all right – bone dry! When you went off sudden-like, I got hold of this here Peabody and told him to look lively. So off we sets, the two of us, up the creek to where he said he’d got this boat moored. Well that was all right; he had. What’s more, he’d got a little rowboat all handy to get out to it. I don’t like them rickety little boats, they weren’t made for men of my size, but I knows my duty and in I got. Well, Peabody rowed out to the motorboat, and a nice work he made of it, besides passing an uncalled-for remark about fat men which I’m not accustomed to and won’t put up with. However, that’s neither here nor there. We got out to the motorboat and come up alongside. And I’m bothered if that fat-headed chump didn’t let me get into it before he remembered he hadn’t filled up with petrol. Yes, you can laugh, sir. I’ve no doubt there’s nothing you like better than clambering out of one boat into another, with the thing bobbing up and down and kind of slipping away from under your feet all on account of a born fool that can’t keep it steady for half a minute.’
‘I’m afraid Peabody has been having a little game with you, Sergeant.’
‘If I thought that,’ said the sergeant, fulminating, ‘well, I don’t hardly know what I’d do, though I’d be tempted, sir. Very tempted, I’d be. Well, he went and remembered about the petrol, like I said, and out I had to get again. I don’t know which was the worst, getting out of that little cockle-shell or getting back into it. However, I done it, and I told this Peabody to look slippy and row for that landing-stage. Which was the best I could do, sir, seeing as the motorboat was no use and I’d got to get across th
e creek somehow. I won’t repeat what that Peabody said, because it don’t bear repeating, but…’
‘I said,’ interrupted a voice with relish, ‘I said I ’adn’t been ’ired to row an ’ippo across the creek, and no more I ’ad.’
The sergeant swung round and perceived Mr Peabody in the doorway. ‘That’ll do!’ he said. ‘We don’t want you hanging about here. And let me tell you, if I have any of your impudence it’ll be the worse for you. Impeded the law, that’s what you done.’
Mr Peabody withdrew, quelled by this dark implication. The sergeant turned back to Amberley. ‘Don’t you pay any attention to him, sir.’
‘What I want to know,’ said Amberley, ‘is whether you saw anyone rowing back to that landing-stage.’
‘I’m coming to that,’ answered the sergeant. ‘I did and I didn’t, in a manner of speaking. I got this Peabody to row for the other side of the creek, but the trouble was, we was so far up the blinking thing that it took him I don’t know how long to get to the landing-stage. We’d just got in sight of it when I see a shadow climbing out of a rowboat like the one I was in and tying it up to one of the posts. Now, sir, perhaps you’re going to blame me, because I’d got my torch in my pocket and it’s a powerful one. But what I thought was: This cove hasn’t seen our boat and consequent don’t know he’s being followed. If I was to switch the torch on to him so as to try and get a look at his face, he will know and he’ll be off like a streak of lightning before I can get to land. No, I says to myself, the best thing for me to do is to keep quiet and get this chap Peabody to row for all he’s worth. Which I done, sir. But we’d no sooner reached the landing-stage when I heard a car start up somewhere behind the bungalow, and a minute later I seen the headlights going off up the road that Peabody says leads to Lowchester.’
‘I see,’ Amberley said. ‘A pity. But on the whole, Sergeant, I think you were right.’
‘I’m sure that’s a weight off my mind, sir,’ said the sergeant, relieved. ‘And if the young lady’s alive, she’ll be able to identify our man fast enough. Not but what we know who he is, eh, Mr Amberley?’
‘Do we, Sergeant?’
‘Come, come, sir!’ said the sergeant indulgently. ‘Don’t you forget what I said to you when Albert Collins was shot!’
‘No, I haven’t forgotten. Anything else?’
‘Yes, sir. One footprint, one tyreprint. And the sooner I get to the police station here the better, because we want them taken. A large footprint it is, larger than what I’d have expected.’
‘Sergeant, you’re invaluable,’ said Amberley. ‘You shall be taken to the police station at once. Hop in.’
Much gratified, the sergeant climbed into the car. ‘Well, I done all I could, and I only hope it’s going to mean an arrest.’
‘You’ll make your arrest all right,’ promised Amberley. ‘I’m not sure you don’t deserve promotion for this case. I wish I’d seen you getting into the motorboat.’
‘Yes, I’ve no doubt you do, sir. But p’r’aps instead of keeping on about me and the motorboat you’ll tell me who I been chasing all this time?’
‘But I thought you knew that,’ said Mr Amberley, raising his brows.
‘I got my doubts,’ confessed the sergeant. ‘When I said to you what I did say about that Baker – what I meant was…’
‘Don’t spoil it, Sergeant. You said he was my man.’
The sergeant said cautiously: ‘Suppose I did?’
‘You were quite right,’ said Mr Amberley. ‘He is my man.’
The sergeant swallowed hard, but recovered immediately and said brazenly: ‘That’s what I was going to say – if you hadn’t gone and interrupted me. Spotted it at once, I did.’
Mr Amberley grinned. ‘Yes? Just as you spotted the real criminal?’
‘Look here, sir!’ said the sergeant. ‘If it ain’t Baker there’s only one other man it can be, so far as I can see, and that’s Mr Fountain.’
‘At last!’ said Amberley. ‘Of course it was Fountain.’
‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ said the sergeant, ‘but why should he want to go and murder the young lady?’
‘Because she’s his cousin,’ replied Amberley.
‘Oh!’ said the sergeant. ‘Because she’s his cousin. Of course that explains everything, don’t it, sir?’
‘It ought to,’ said Amberley, ‘if you can put two and two together.’
The sergeant was still trying to work out this simple sum when the car drew up at the police station. Mr Amberley set him down there and drove on to the inn on the quay.
The golden-haired landlady greeted him with comfortable tidings: the poor young lady was nicely warmed up and drinking a cup of hot soup. He might go upstairs to see her if he liked.
Shirley, looking very slight in the landlady’s dressing gown and a great many shawls, was sitting on the floor in front of a huge fire sipping a cup of hot soup and drying her short, curly hair. She knew that decided knock and said, ‘Come in,’ rather shyly.
Mr Amberley entered and shut the door behind him. He came towards the fire and stood looking down at Shirley with the hint of a smile in his eyes. ‘Well, Miss Shirley Brown,’ he said, ‘I do find you in awkward situations, don’t I?’
She gave a small laugh but shuddered a little. ‘Please don’t!’ She glanced fleetingly up at him. ‘I must look an awful sight. Won’t you sit down? I – I haven’t thanked you yet.’
He sat down in the plush-covered armchair she had vacated. ‘Oh yes, you have! Your manners are improving a lot. You thanked me at once.’
‘Did I?’ She smiled at that. ‘I don’t remember. I – when I heard the other boat – I had a feeling it was you. Did – did your policeman tell you what had happened?’
‘Tucker? Oh no, he hadn’t any idea. I apologise for having provided you with such a useless guardian. My own intuition brought me. By the way, Bill jumped through the kitchen window. I left him with Tucker.’
‘It was nice of you to think of him,’ said Shirley, feeling shyer than ever.
‘I am nice,’ said Amberley coolly.
She laughed and coloured. ‘Yes. I – I know.’
‘I don’t want to bother you,’ he said, ‘but there’s just one thing that’s worrying me. What did you do with your half ?’
She jumped and sat staring up at him. ‘My – my half ?’
‘Don’t tell me you had it on you!’
‘No,’ she said numbly, amazed at him.
‘Well, where did you put it? Did you leave it about – as you left your gun about, by the way? Try and think; it’s important. Your would-be assassin knew that you had it. Felicity let that out, damn her. That’s why you had to be got rid of.’
‘Felicity?’ she echoed. ‘How could she possibly have known?’
‘She didn’t. But she knew my uncle had left the book in your hands the day he borrowed it from Fountain and she said so.’
She put her hand up to her head, pushing the hair off her face. ‘I can’t grasp it. I can’t make out how you knew about the book. Who can have told you?’
‘No one told me. You must give me credit for some intelligence, my dear girl. Greythorne was twice burgled for that book. I naturally assumed it was the hiding-place Collins had chosen. Only it wasn’t there. Owing to your absurd reticence I’ve been entirely at sea over that half. I only heard today that my uncle had left it behind for ten minutes at the Boar’s Head. Where was it?’
She answered like one mesmerised: ‘In the back, pushed down behind the stitching. I found it quite by chance. But it’s no good. Collins is dead, and he had the other half. It’s all useless now.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Amberley. ‘That was Collins’ half.’
‘Yes, I know, but he found Dawson’s half.’
‘I hate to contradict you,’ said Amberley, ‘but he did no such thing. I’ve got Dawson’s half.’
‘You?’ she choked. ‘You’ve got it? But – but how did you know it existed? Where did you fi
nd it?’
He smiled. ‘I took it out of a drawer in a certain tallboy. Didn’t you guess?’
She shook her head hopelessly. ‘I thought Collins had it. I never thought of you. Did you know where it was?’
‘No, but I followed you up from the hall when you first went to find it. When you were scared off by Collins, I went to investigate the drawer. Dawson’s half of the will was in it. It confirmed all my suspicions.’
‘Where were you?’ she demanded. ‘I never saw you! It seems unbelievable. I made sure Collins had got back to the tallboy before I could reach it!’
‘I was behind the long curtains in the archway. When you and Collins came along the corridor together I beat a strategic retreat into the nearest bedroom. Very simple.’
She blinked at him. ‘Was it? But how could you have known who I was? Lady Matthews hadn’t set eyes on me, so it couldn’t have been she who told you.’
He was interested at that. ‘Aunt Marion? Do you mean to tell me she knows?’ She nodded. ‘In fact, you confided in her rather than in me.’
She found herself oddly anxious to refute this accusation. ‘No, indeed I didn’t! She knew as soon as she saw me. She only told me today when I asked her to send you to see me. I’m very like my father, you know. She recognised me.’
‘Did she?’ Amberley gave a chuckle. ‘Very acute, is Aunt Marion. My suspicions were aroused by a certain portrait hanging on the corridor at the manor. A most striking resemblance. But all this isn’t telling me what I want to know: what have you done with your half ?’
‘I put it in an envelope and posted it to Lady Matthews before I went to the cottage this afternoon,’ said Shirley. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.’
‘Thank God for that!’ said Amberley. ‘It’s the only sensible thing you’ve done yet.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now, my dear, at any moment my friend Sergeant Gubbins is likely to appear, and he’ll want you to make a long statement. Before he comes I have a question to put to you. I should like a plain answer, please. Will you or will you not marry me?’
Georgette Heyer Page 23
