If this fellow was of irreproachable character and standing – which was the impression he gave me – he could not be arrested, only questioned and then carefully watched while his description was circulated to German police. That was not good enough. That would not put him out of action and give me freedom from fear.
Clear evidence. A charge upon which he could be held in gaol while full investigation of him was made. Those were what I must have. And if he would kindly look back once more to see if I were coming along the road behind him, I thought I could get them.
I gave him three minutes, then climbed a gate into the road and followed. I felt pretty safe. There was no reason for him to hang about or double back. What he ought to do before giving me up altogether was to sit down in comfort by a line of firs above and to the right of the road. From there he could probably see Stoke and certainly see me, strolling innocently along right into that shot from the hedge which I had so dreaded the night before.
I did not oblige him by going all the way, but turned off to the left along a fieldpath. The country was open. If he were up among the firs he could see all my movements through his glasses – a most expensive pair which I envied – until I arrived at the patchy cover where the badger sett was.
It was a typical badger fortress, under a tangled mass of thorn and blackberry about twenty yards long, which ran at right angles to a muddy stream. If I had really been intending to study the two or three families which lived in it – there were too many runways for easy observation – I should have crossed the stream and squatted wetly among the rushes to watch them drink and possibly play. But that was an impossible place to tie out the goat for the tiger.
At the other end of this thick wall of vegetation, and a few feet away from it, was a solitary, stunted alder. I cut and twisted a few branches to form a seat in the tree. To make it perfectly clear what I was doing I sat in it and tested it. I also took out my note-book and jotted down details of badger paths and scratching trees. All the time I was careful to remain in sight of the firs on the higher ground.
But my guess that he was there proved wrong. My guess that he was watching me was right. That was typical of all our moves, his as well as mine. There were too many ‘ifs’, and each of us was inclined to mistake a queen for a pawn.
While I was working on the alder, something disturbed the birds upstream where the banks were over-grown. I paid no attention. A couple of minutes later I went round to the other side of the badger fortress, found a place where the vegetation was thin and searched the stream with my glasses. He was there all right, and he had not come down from the firs or I would have seen him. He must have been waiting for me where the road crossed the stream – an admirable place for the temporary disposal of a body. When I turned off into the footpath I had been dangerously close.
So long as he saw me, I did not care where he saw me from. I hoped that all this preparation of the tree would not puzzle him. He looked the sort of person who would recognize a badger sett – he could take it for a fox’s earth if he liked – and would realize that I meant to watch whatever was there from the alder after sunset. It was wildly improbable that he would suspect the truth: that the alder was futile for observation and that I had chosen it because I could be stalked with such ease up the blind side of the fortress.
At last I walked away downstream, leaving him to examine at leisure what I had been up to. When I was out of his sight I broke into a trot, for I had only half an hour to reach the rendezvous with Ian, whose help was essential.
I reached the bridge in time and was just about to go down to the willow snag and clear away the tail of dead water weed undulating in the slow current when I saw old Isaac Purvis leisurely scything the young nettles on the green verge of the road. His bicycle leaned against the hedge – a marvel how the old boy could cycle for miles with the scythe wrapped in sacking over his shoulder – and he appeared to have started on a job which the Rural District Council could well have left till July.
He leaned on his scythe when he saw me hesitate at the bridge, his whole attitude an invitation to join him and talk.
‘Nettles are coming on fast this year, Mr Purvis,’ I remarked.
‘Grass is what I were cutting,’ the old man answered, ‘a goodish step back, t’other side of the bridge.’
He waited with mischievous eyes to be asked why he had moved. So I did ask.
‘You go on up the road, Purvis, says Colonel Parrow, and if you sees the perfesser you give ’im this ’ere!’
He slid into my hand a sheet torn from a note-book as neatly as if he were passing a betting slip under the eye of a policeman.
I have a feeling you may want to see me today. I shall be at the bridge about half past four. There’s another report of the stranger whom Ferrin mentioned to you, and I am trying to account for him.
‘Very kind of you, Mr Purvis,’ I said.
‘It was them Boers what started it,’ he remarked obscurely. ‘Never’eard of ’em again we wouldn’t, if ’tweren’t for the Kaiser and ’Itler.’
I had to think that one out. There was a sort of mad logic in it, for British insolence and weakness in the Boer War – or so I believe myself – were both partly responsible for 1914.
‘You fought in South Africa?’ I asked.
‘Ah. Yeomanry. And me bowels never been the same since.’
I agreed that the campaign must have been frightening.
‘Went down with enteric, I did, like all me troop. And I’ll tell you what cured me though you won’t ’ardly believe it. I was ridin’ along scarcely ’oldin’ on me ’orse when one of them bloody Boers ups and shoots me through the guts. And when I gets to ’ospital I ’ear the doctor say: well, we ain’t got to bother about perforation now, ’e says, because ’e’s perforated. I didn’t rightly know what ’e meant, but I says Hallelujah for me luck and I gets well. So when Colonel says to me: it’s a question of atomy, Purvis, I says: well, they won’t get un, Colonel, not them Boers nor the Americans neither.’
It looked as if Ian had thought that a zoologist was insufficiently melodramatic for his village. If atomy was what I supposed – it seemed an excellent word – I was evidently a professor with some unspecified interest in nuclear fission.
‘What did you think of this big, dark man who wanted to know which was the Nash road?’ I asked as soon as I could get a word in.
‘A pleasant-spoken gentleman,’ said Isaac Purvis, as if that was about as far as he could safely go. ‘Put me in mind of old Worrall, ’e did.’
‘How do you mean exactly?’
‘Old Worrall who ’ad the farm opposite where you’re a-staying. I used to work for ’im as carter thirty year ago, and I can see ’im as plain as I sees you. Just as pleasant as ever, ’e was, after ’is eldest son ’ad been took to the mad ’ouse, and you’d ’ave reckoned ’e thought nothing of it. But one day ’e says to me: God Almighty is goin’ to pay me for that, Isaac.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Nothing. What was there to ’appen? ’Is eyes were what I meant. Like a widder’s eyes when the parson tells ’er that sufferin’ is good for ’er.’
That vivid phrase brought back my unreasonable sense of guilt, which had been dispersed by fear and anger. Poor devil – if he believed I was the same sort of creature as Sporn and Dickfuss he had a right to kill me. How long is it since revenge was considered a virtue in a man of honour? A mere three hundred years?
I asked Purvis if he had any reason to think that the big, dark man was a foreigner.
‘Well, all I’ve seen of ’im was three days back. I tells ’im what ’e wants to know. And when I asks ’im if ’e weren’t the new undertaker what Mrs Bunn wishes to make ’er own bargain with, ’e just says that ’e weren’t.
‘I knew as ’e weren’t. ’E was just out for a walk in a manner of speakin’. But I says to myself afterwards, I says, no
w if ’e was the kind of gentleman what ain’t in a ’urry and goes walkin’ when ’e could do it easier in ’is motor car, then ’e’d like to ’ear about Mrs Bunn making ’er own arrangements with the undertaker. So I wouldn’t say ’e ain’t a foreigner and I wouldn’t say ’e is.’
Mr Purvis was willing to discuss till five o’clock the character of Englishmen – by which he meant the inhabitants of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire. That was perhaps a long time to stand chatting in the open when I did not know where our gentleman had gone, but I did not wish to offend so useful an assistant by cutting him short.
At half past four Ian arrived. We drove off in his car. He seemed a little cold and military because he could not find a certain Jim Melton for whom he had been looking. The only time you could be sure of seeing the blasted man, I gathered, was when he was going into the Magistrates’ Court to pay a fine for some minor offence or coming out again; and then if you didn’t catch him on the court steps he vanished. An enviable gift, I thought.
Ian wanted me to go with him to Buckingham and have a leisurely dinner somewhere afterwards. When I told him to park the car by the roadside and settle down with me under a convenient haystack, he said he could not see why I found boy-scouting necessary. It was an effort to remember that he knew nothing of the last agitated twenty hours.
I gave him my story from the time I had left the Haunch of Mutton the night before. He did not interrupt. He was always a patient and practised listener, though one never knew what explosion there might be at the end.
‘But you’d got him cold!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why on earth didn’t you hold him up in his bunker or on the road?’
I reminded him that I dared not shoot. There was no evidence to connect this harmless stroller in the brown tweed suit with the dog or with any attempt on me. I might have a fearful time clearing myself if I killed him. And one of us would almost certainly be killed. The fellow was capable of being just as dangerous as any wounded tiger. Even if I could drill him through the shoulder or shoot his gun out of his hand – and I was too long out of practice to be sure of either – my .22 wouldn’t stop him.
‘You must have full police protection at once,’ Ian insisted. ‘Don’t you care whether you’re alive or not?’
‘Very much. I have a lot of work still to do on the red squirrel.’
I am told that was what I answered. It seems unlikely but possible. At that time I felt that my executioner had a good deal of perverted right on his side. The same memories which obsessed him were, after ten years, still present in my own mind too. So I was not then in love with life for its own sake. Being a healthy animal I was afraid of death. Indeed I was never far from the edge of panic. That can be taken for granted; I needn’t describe it over again. But I found it hard to give a good reason – beyond the red squirrel – why I should live.
I asked him to forget the police for the moment. What I needed was a witness, preferably him. And then I drew him the sketch map which I reproduce here:
‘The trap is timed for the very last of the light,’ I explained. ‘That is when he will come, for he can’t see to shoot later. Here is the layout:
‘I am sitting in the alder at A, pretending to watch badgers. He will not take the footpath from the Stoke-Hernsholt road because I could see him as soon as he could see me. He is assuming that I feel well hidden in this bit of country and pretty safe – but I should not be feeling so safe that I would allow an unknown person to approach me after dark.
‘He won’t come across the stream because the banks are boggy and he would make a lot of noise. So he will come down the footpath from the north. He has soft turf under foot, and he is hidden from the alder all the way. So he has only to put his hand round the edge of that patch of thick stuff where the badger sett is in order to drop me out of my tree with absolute certainty at a range of five yards. If no one pays any attention to the shot – and why should they? – he has all night at his disposal to finish me off.
‘But this is going to be the catch in it. You will work your way back into the brambles at B. It’s all dead stuff, and you can cut out a hole with a pair of garden clippers. Get your legs on soft earth down the badgers’ back door and pile their old bedding – there’s plenty of it about – underneath your body. You won’t be too uncomfortable.
‘You will see him long before I do. In fact I shall never see him at all till we’ve got him. When he raises his revolver or automatic to fire, order him to drop it and put his hands up. He won’t. I am sure of that. So you’ll have to let him have it with a twelve-bore. I’m afraid he is bound to lose a hand or a foot at that range and I’m not too sure of my law. But I take it we are only using reasonable force when the intention to murder is plain.’
Ian refused to play without the presence of the police. Naturally enough. I had no reason – beyond my own need – to expect him to have preserved a wartime mentality.
‘I’ll telephone the Chief Constable at once,’ he said. ‘He’s a personal friend. At the Shop with me.’
I replied that I had no objection provided the Chief Constable could, at such short notice, provide us with a policeman guaranteed to lie fairly motionless for four hours and not even slap at a midge for the last two of them. What he would give us would be a detective who was very good indeed at sitting in a car or standing inconspicuously on a street corner.
‘But he can trail the man,’ Ian said, ‘now that you have predicted his movements.’
I ridiculed that. ‘Good evening, sir, I am a police officer and it is my duty to inquire your business.’ ‘I am enjoying the cool of the evening officer.’ ‘Your name and address?’ ‘With great pleasure.’
‘And he will give it,’ I went on, ‘the correct address where he is staying and the false name he is staying under. But he can’t be detained. And he won’t be there in the morning. There’s not a thing the police can do until they have some evidence of a crime.’
‘They can prevent it.’
‘They can indeed. But tonight only. And two months later the detective responsible for me is bluffed by a gentleman of obvious respectability who pretends to be the Inspector of Inland Revenue or a Commissioner of Church Lands and calls at half a dozen houses before mine.’
‘What about the description? Heavy build? Thick, black eyebrows?’
‘He may not have them. I’m doubtful about the eyebrows already. As for the weight – don’t you remember Vasile Mavro and his pneumatic stomach?’
Ian smiled at last.
‘It took Vasile weeks to learn to walk as if he were really carrying that stomach,’ he said. ‘After all, this fellow hasn’t been trained by us.’
‘Hasn’t he? If he was in Buchenwald or had friends who were, it’s very likely that he was trained by us or some organization nearly as good.’
‘But then he can make rings round any county police!’ Ian exclaimed.
‘Round Special Branch, too – provided that his motive is perplexing, and that he is working alone, not for any political organization. Look at it this way! It was you who first brought up the tiger metaphor. Well, imagine he’s an experienced tiger with a taste for man! I gather that the difficulty is to make and keep contact. In fact it can’t be done without tying out a bait. That’s what I am. I have to be, because we don’t know any other which would tempt him. If you or the police refuse to let me hunt him in my own way I shall be killed in his.
‘And here’s one other point! I’d like to talk to the tiger. Suppose I am the last on the list? The murders of Sporn and Dickfuss are nothing. I’d give him a medal for them. If I think he has finished, if I can convince him who and what I really was, I may not hand him over to the police at all.’
‘You have forgotten the postman,’ Ian protested.
‘Punishing him is not going to bring the postman back to life. That could remain between the tiger and his God, so long as he doesn’t force us
to send him to hospital.’
It was this argument – the weakest of all – which, I think, persuaded Ian. He had been wavering ever since I suggested the obvious truth that we were dealing with someone who had been a colleague or ally during the war.
‘But you’re not going to sit on that nest or machan of yours if the tiger is examining it right now,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘Thorns. Didn’t you say you had considered drawing-pins?’
I assured him that was only panic. No one except a pathologist could do much damage with a surface scratch. And anyway there were no thorns on an alder so why arouse unnecessary suspicion by putting them there?
‘What time do I get into position?’
‘Let’s say he has finished going over the ground now or half an hour ago. Then he will want a meal, because he didn’t have any lunch. The sooner you are in position the better, but not later than six.’
The mention of meals at once brought out the regimental officer. Ian reproached himself for not realizing earlier that I had eaten nothing since lunch the day before – in fact I had had plenty, though in bits and pieces – and insisted on bringing back some food before he went to ground with the badgers.
Since I had to give way on the question of bringing in the police somewhere, we agreed that Ian should telephone his friend, using a vague and deprecating English manner, to the effect that it was just possible that he had come upon the trail of the parcel which blew up the postman, and that he should give a description of the suspect.
That was sound sense. If the dark gentleman, wounded or not, got away from us after showing his intention, it was a straight police job to hold him for inquiry until Ian could identify him. It was impossible to guess which way he would go, but, since his line of communication was across the Long Down, a patrol car on the far side of it had a chance of picking him up. Ian was also going to ask for police at the corner where the Stoke road entered Hernsholt. He thought he could manage all that on an old boy basis without giving too much away.
Watcher in the Shadows Page 6
