Watcher in the Shadows

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘Big, dark, clean-shaven.’

  ‘A foreigner?’

  ‘No. A gentleman, Isaac Purvis said.’

  On my leisurely way back to the cottage I decided that the enquirer had been someone out for an innocent walk who had asked his way earlier and been told to take the Nash road. It was far too early for the arrival of the tiger.

  What kind of man was Isaac Purvis describing? It seemed odd that one couldn’t be both a foreigner and a gentleman. I vaguely understood what he meant from continental parallels, but Aunt Georgina would have been on surer ground.

  Any of the younger generation who still used the outdated term at all would probably mean by ‘gentleman’ a person who was well-spoken and apparently well-educated. But I had a feeling that in the mouth of an old and prejudiced agricultural labourer accustomed to judge from unconscious depths of instinct and experience the word implied the manner and clothes of someone born to the ownership of land. That suggested the phrase of my Austrian friend’s letter – man with plenty of money and unlimited time at his disposal.

  On the other hand, surely my enemy could not be English? But Isaac Purvis would be unreliable on that point. He was an authority on manner, not on accent and sentence rhythm. It was most improbable that anyone in the district could guess that I myself, for example, was of foreign birth – though a careful listener with some knowledge of other languages might detect it.

  All the same, I reminded myself that any doubt was still a doubt and that it might be wise to act as if my cell had passed me a preliminary warning. I avoided the Nash road and the short track which led from it to the Warren. I went home across the fields, passing cautiously through the willow screen to my back door.

  The evening sun flooded into the kitchen through the open window. All the sounds were peaceful. Under the window the mongrel from the Long Down was snoring. Above it a bee and two bluebottles were noisily trying to get out in the one place where it was impossible. A chewed mess of brown paper and string was on the floor. The veal cutlets which I had left on the kitchen table were inside that damned dog – as for a moment I called it.

  I think I had already opened my mouth to rouse it from its stertorous slumber when I realized that its position under the window, its falling asleep instead of escaping with the loot, its continuing to sleep when I was an angry foot away from it were all wholly unnatural. I backed out through the door, remembering that the executioner of Sporn, Dickfuss, and Weber liked to be in at the death.

  The summer silence was still absolute except for the cawing of a rook. I disappeared into the willow copse, keeping the house between myself and the garden, and reached the shelter of the boundary hedge. A deep ditch, taking the water which poured off the Long Down after rain as well as the winter overflow of the spring, bounded three sides of the garden. Very slowly I followed this round to the front gate and back again, inspecting every shrub and patch of cover where a man could crouch and keep the cottage under observation. I had no intention whatever of surprising him, for I had foolishly left the pistol in my suitcase under my bed. I merely wanted to satisfy myself that he was not in the house.

  There was nothing to be gained by funking the next step. I had produced the situation I intended to produce. If I cleared out now or ran dithering to the police I should merely have a quite illusory period of peace while the big, dark, clean-shaven gentleman occupied himself with his presumably gentlemanly pursuits and waited.

  I took the carving knife from the kitchen and a rolled up rug for a shield. Then I went through those upstairs rooms with all the old technique I could remember – flinging open each door, guarding my back and letting the rug enter first. There was no doubt that on my own ground I was alone.

  Having recovered that miserable .22 I sat down in the living-room, first brushing the chair with my hand. I could very well be finished off by the schoolboy trick of a drawing-pin in my seat. But that was carrying imagination a little far. I ordered myself not to overdo precautions. Steady routines would be indispensable and sufficient – like shaking out boots in the tropics before putting them on.

  Now what exactly had happened? The first plain fact was that the tiger had decided that speed of action was safer than hanging about and giving a clue to his identity; even if I did have police protection, both they and I were likely to take things easy for the first few days. He must already have got my address through the carpenter. He’d had some stroke of luck there.

  I could not believe he had taken the risk of calling at the house.

  My return from Bletchley had been observed and my departure for the Haunch of Mutton. Having satisfied himself that the cottage was not watched, he had then walked in and poisoned the cutlets. His next move was doubtful. He might be safely on his way to London, awaiting with interest whatever the papers had to tell him, or he might be still close at hand.

  The dog was not yet dead. That had to be explained. If you could not be certain how much time you had to play with, surely you would use a fast poison? Probably he could not lay his hands on one which was quite tasteless. After all he had not the resources of a government or a terrorist gang behind him. He worked cautiously and alone for his own lonely revenge.

  I examined the cottage for any conceivable clue to his movements and from old habit looked for a microphone, though I could not imagine what use he could make of it. This led me to the discovery that the telephone had been cut outside the kitchen where it entered the house.

  That was a puzzle. Suppose I had discovered the break before I had supper? Suppose there was an arrangement with the police that they were to call at fixed hours and turn up at once if they had no reply? Both those points must have occurred to the man before he cut the telephone. My tentative answer was that the drug did not work instantaneously or imperceptibly. There was half a minute while the victim felt so queer that his one impulse was to telephone a doctor.

  The cutting of the telephone. The dog still snoring strongly. Together they answered the question of whether this dedicated executioner had returned to London. He had not. He was waiting close by. He intended – if nobody called and the coast was clear – to finish me off with a knife. And it would be in the character of the man who spent three days on Walter Dickfuss to have arranged that when I awoke I should find him sitting by my side.

  I give all this analysis of my thoughts as accurately as I can; but at the time my approach to the problem far more resembled the wordless pictures in an animal brain than the calculations of a computer. I remember balancing the automatic on my palm and chattering at the filament of sunlight reflected on the blue barrel. I remember, too, that my arm was trembling. A lack of recent practice in crawling through ditches may have accounted for that, for I still had not realized what the odds against me were.

  Indeed at this point they seemed to be strongly in my favour. I had only to lie up in a position where I could command all entrances to the kitchen in order to disable the brute. Even if the light were too poor for accuracy and I killed him, the dog would be sufficient evidence of self-defence. I was quite confident that I could detect his approach however silent and cautious. His background was certainly formidable, but presumably he had not been trained in forest fighting nor had the ears of a watcher of small mammals.

  I was already turning over in my mind possible cover and field of fire when it occurred to me that it was most unlikely he had seen me slipping through the willows and entering the house from the back. In that case, from his point of view, I had not yet come home and eaten my supper.

  Then there was nothing for it but to creep out again unnoticed and return plainly and openly by the front gate. It would be far from a pleasant walk. Still, the man could have shot me from ambush any time in the last unsuspecting twenty-four hours and had presumably refrained because he dared not risk attracting police or neighbours. It was unlikely that he would risk it now while the cutlets were waiting.

 
I put the .22 back in my pocket, slung my binoculars round my neck and entered the willow copse. On the west side of it was a tall oak, strangled by ivy which was thick enough to hold. I scrambled up and perched myself comfortably thirty feet above the ground.

  Seen from that height the character of the country changed. The apparent closing in of timber and hedges upon my cottage was a false impression. I was surrounded by miles of grassland divided into fields of five or ten acres – a fact which I knew perfectly well but did not, as it were, feel.

  I could be sure that the two angles where the track to the Warren met the Nash road were clear, but I could not see through the hedge on the far side of the road. It would be no place, however, to skulk in hiding and arouse suspicion. The upper windows of the farm they called Worralls overlooked the hedge, and the field beyond it was full of chickens now scuttering and squawking back to their houses for the night.

  Wherever the watcher might be, he could never feel secure on that side. The farms were busy and the fields too open. If he had cover to his front he had none behind him. The only place to lie up and observe comings and goings was the Long Down which, close to my cottage and at that angle, did not appear to have any cover at all. Alternatively he could well be up a tree – in which case we were staring at each other like a pair of imitative apes, and seeing nothing.

  I climbed down and made my way to Hernsholt across country. So far as the Long Down was concerned, I was in dead ground. From trees on or near the road I used the line of the hedges to protect myself. It was slow going, for I had to squeeze like a rabbit under wire and through thorn. It occurred to me that a horse was the only means of moving fast and decisively over this landscape of meadow, hedge and muddy stream.

  When I had reached the back gardens of Hernsholt I cut down into the road and started to stroll home innocently and openly. The light was fading. I tried to persuade myself that there were no holes in my reasoning. With three-quarters of a mile to go to my cottage I realized in horror that there was a large hole. The dark gentleman, wondering if he had somehow missed me, might have made a silent approach to the kitchen window and discovered the drugged dog. In that case he had nothing to lose by waiting for me in the dusk alongside the road and taking a close-range shot from either of the hedges.

  Never before had I known the madness of fear. During the war I had been afraid – sometimes reasonably, sometimes beyond reason – of arrest and execution, but I felt part of a team who were all enduring the same risk and uncertainty. I was sure of my technique. And, though I seldom saw a confederate, I was not alone.

  In this simple walk along a deserted, darkening road there was none of the high morale which comes from outwitting the enemy. Defence was so limited. I could not shoot first. I might bag the wrong man. Even if I got the right one, it could be most difficult to prove his intentions to the satisfaction of a jury, for he sounded like a man who would be above suspicion. It was quite possible that his identity could not be established at all unless he were caught on the body of his victim. The parallel with a man-eating tiger was uncomfortably close.

  The sun had set, and light was patchy. The leaves of the eastern hedge reflected the red of clouds and emphasized every block of darkness. Under the shadow of the western hedge both solid and space were dark grey. What appalled me was that there was no safety in vision. My eyes were continually attracted by the light in the west, and what was ahead of me appeared the darker. As for my ears – I once heard the click of a safety catch, dived headlong into the ditch and stayed there until I heard it again. It was a damned starling clicking its beak.

  I reminded myself again and again why I was taking this risk. Because I had to go home and turn the lights on. Because then, after giving me a chance to eat the poisoned meal, the enemy would come in expecting to find my body on the floor. Because I wanted to live my life without fear of assassination and no police could ensure it.

  All woulds. All mights. It was futile to try and guess what this sort of animal would do or where it was. Its only predictable qualities were patience and ferocity. And meanwhile the ‘is’, the here-and-now, was a panic of hedge and shadow, of colours like dried blood and arterial blood.

  Once I ran and checked myself with an effort. Once I saw a broken oak twig pointing straight at me, half drew the pistol, saw it was hopeless and put up my hands. That was the end. I swore at myself under the name of Graf Karl von Dennim. What the devil would my father have thought of me?

  I found such pride surprisingly calming. This conjuring up of an imperial and famous family, which I had never taken seriously since 1918, seemed to make sense of what Charles Dennim, zoologist, was doing. Having accepted British nationality, he owed his feudal service to the Crown. He was at the moment – besides his personal interest in the matter – engaged in avenging the death of a very humble servant of the Crown: a postman.

  This preposterous romancing, this sudden, unexpected result of the conditioning of a child who was a gallant little fellow up to the age of six, made me pay more intelligent attention to the road of shadows. It would have been pleasanter to render feudal service with a drawn sword and a few well-moustachioed retainers than to walk through grey-green darkness – the red was now low in the sky – with a toy gun which had to be kept half hidden until it was too late to draw it. But at least I could now listen to the regularity of my own lonely steps padding along the road.

  I turned at last into the track which led to the Warren and opened the front door. The .22 was in my hand now, and if he had been waiting for me he would have died first. Without turning on the lights I searched all the rooms, coming last to the kitchen. The snoring had stopped. The dog had been removed. All that remained was the torn, chewed paper on the floor together with other evidence, carefully left in place under the window, that a dog had been about. The telephone wire had been inconspicuously repaired.

  What had happened was clear. My first home-coming and stealthy departure had not been observed – for the man would never have come back to remove the dog if he knew that my suspicions had been aroused but did not know where I was. I could have gone to fetch the police. To take such a risk was not in his character.

  No. He had waited and waited for my return, crept up close to the cottage when the light began to fade, and then to his astonishment heard the snoring. He entered boldly and found – only a dog.

  So much for panic! He may never even have thought of ambushing me on my way back, for there was no telling when I would be home. I might have decided to watch badgers. I might have gone off with some casual acquaintance. And meanwhile he had to consider his own timetable and line of retreat.

  I was confident that he had gone. Still, it would have been rash to turn on the lights or to eat anything which could be quickly and easily contaminated. Vanishing into the willow copse with an unopened tin of corned beef, blankets and a ground sheet, I slept alongside a fallen branch. Soundly, too. Experience counts. No one on a moonless night can distinguish a man rolled in a dark blanket from a log.

  In the damp, sweetly scented dawn I lay there thinking it all out. The Long Down – that, of course, was where he had been hiding, with a perfect view of the track, the gate and the front door. He had no reason to spend an uncomfortable night there. He would sleep in London or wherever he was staying and return in the morning. Why shouldn’t he? Nothing was known against him. He could say good morning to me or to a policeman with every appearance of a clear conscience.

  I breakfasted on the inside of the loaf – with some hesitation, but I was too hungry to fuss – and cleaned up the cottage and myself. At nine the telephone rang. I let it ring while I did some quick thinking – for there was nobody in the world who could be calling me except Ian and my enemy. Taking cover round the corner of the kitchen, I knocked the receiver off with a long-handled feather brush. Nothing blew up, so I answered. At the other end, to my utter amazement, was Aunt Georgina.

  �
��But how in the world, dear aunt, did you know I was here?’ I asked.

  ‘And if you knew you were going to be there, my dear nephew,’ she retorted, ‘why the devil didn’t you give me your address?’

  I could tell from her voice that she had hitched up her skirt – as a man hitches his trousers before exercise – and was settling down for a long chat. It was soon plain how the dark follower had picked up my scent.

  ‘After you dropped me at Paddington Station,’ she said, ‘I suddenly remembered I ought to have packed my boots and breeches.’

  I remarked that she always looked very well in jodhpurs.

  ‘But they might have wanted me to show Nur Jehan. And I couldn’t know that they weren’t all terribly smart and county.

  ‘So I wired the admiral that I would take a later train and went home to get a proper outfit. Then someone from the Museum called up to ask for your address. Didn’t catch his name. Dr Paffletrout it sounded like. But your colleagues do have the most extraordinary names, Charles.’

  This engaged her for some while. She always found the names of international science a matter for robust comedy. When she returned to the point, it was to say that she had told Dr Pizzlefish that she hadn’t got my address, that I was travelling and would let her know it later. The carpenter, passing the telephone, had then offered the information which I had privately given him before Georgina and I left the house. There it was. Simple as all that.

  Under what observation our devoted sentry kept us I do not know. It must have been close unless he had the luck to see us drive off in a taxi while he was carrying out a routine patrol. I suspect that he then followed us to Paddington, lost touch with me when I jumped on a bus to catch my train at Euston, and trailed Georgina instead. As soon as he saw her return to the house he dashed straight for the nearest telephone box on the off chance that he might get my address.

  And now I must go back to explain the boots and breeches at the risk of resembling my dear aunt whose conversation, like that of many intelligent women, only made sense retrospectively. I mean that it appeared incoherent until it arrived at its destination – when all the rest, if you could still remember it, fell into place and was relevant.