A Brace of Skeet

by Gerald Hammond

  (I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and then at the Sergeant. Earlier, Mr Gray had mentioned wives; but now he was hinting at satisfaction for all comers. Evidently out of sight was out of mind.)

  ‘I was only making conversation,’ Mrs Cowan said stiffly. His double entendre seemed to have passed her by.

  Rambo hurried to make amends. ‘We were here a week ago,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind Oliver. He doesn’t like being puzzled and he can’t understand – neither of us can – why the police were interested in our guns. They weren’t handing out any information, but as far as we know there’s been no suggestion that Herb Tullos was shot. Yet they came round with a boxful of primed cartridges. Not loaded, you understand, just with a live primer in. And they popped them off, once for each barrel, and put them in envelopes just as if they’d been found at the scene of a crime.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ Mr Aiken said.

  I brought the ladies’ food to the table and resumed my own now cold meal. The police had chosen the easiest way to obtain firing-pin impressions from the witnesses’ guns, but firing primed but unloaded cases was not going to give them impressions of the breech-faces. I wondered whether anybody had ever fooled the police by swapping firing-pins between guns. With many modern production guns, it would be too easy.

  The Sergeant, although listening with a concentration which made me think that he was memorising every word, had never lifted his eyes off his empty plate. Beatrice Hickson, when she had glanced round the table, had avoided looking in his direction. I was more than ever sure that she was the witness who had been up on the embankment on Monday night, that the Sergeant knew it and that she knew of both his knowledge and his identity. But the demure Mrs Hickson with the flashily handsome Basil Chambers, all teeth and sideburns! How could she? I reminded myself that, to judge from the freaks you see pushing prams, sexual attraction follows some surprising paths.

  Temptation was too much for me. ‘I was shooting rabbits with my uncle on Monday evening,’ I said. ‘So my alibi’s as good as anybody’s. What were you doing?’ I asked her as casually as I could manage.

  She shot me a look from under lowered eyelids, a look which the microwave oven could hardly have improved on. She knew that my question was barbed. She was not the type to make brazen admissions. On the other hand, she could guess that a blank evasion would only encourage me to probe further. ‘I watched the telly for most of the evening,’ she said slowly. ‘But, later on, I did take a walk in this direction. I heard some shots, that was all.’

  In strictly literal terms, that could have been true. ‘Any particular pattern of shots?’ I asked. The different disciplines produce quite different variations in the timing of shots. And in their loudness, because a shot fired away from the listener sounds much softer than one fired in his direction.

  She looked at me again and this time her glance was thoughtful. ‘I never thought about it before,’ she said, ‘but, yes. The pattern was . . . I think whoever it was was one man shooting Skeet.’

  ‘What fun!’ Gertrude Cowan said brightly. She had been in skittish mood ever since she had gathered that the two friends were unencumbered. ‘It’s like being a detective. Did you see anything?’

  Beatrice Hickson shook her dark head. She had admitted as much as she was prepared to admit. ‘I . . . I didn’t come all the way,’ she said.

  Whether it was said in innocence or this was another shattering double entendre I could not tell, but I saw that Sergeant Fellowes was fighting against a huge laugh which was building up inside him. I struggled to hide my own giggles.

  ‘How very disappointing,’ I said.

  Rambo at least recognised the undercurrent in the conversation. He was quick to offer a change of subject. ‘Herb Tullos was against a sell-out,’ he said. ‘I wonder how the voting would go now.’

  ‘If the offer was enough to replace the clubhouse and all the doodahs on another site,’ Mrs Cowan said, ‘plus a nice little bonus for all the members . . . well, why not? This place will be haunted. Mr Tullos was just the sort of person whose ghost would hang around and put people off.’ She paused and looked thoughtful. ‘You’d think that the police would be haunting the place too,’ she said.

  Beatrice Hickson said nothing but she flicked a glance at Sergeant Fellowes.

  *

  Mr Torrance broke into a short silence. ‘You mentioned Skeet,’ he said. ‘That sounds good. If nobody else turns up, why don’t we have a round of Skeet?’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Aiken. ‘I can’t shoot Skeet worth a damn. I’ll get some more practice at Ball-trap if that’s all right? And next time out I’ll clobber the lot of you.’

  ‘The acoustic release is hanging in the trap-house,’ I said. ‘Pay me for your birds before you go. And I want day-membership money from Mrs Hickson and bird-money all round.’

  Nobody likes parting with money, but the mood soon revived. ‘That leaves three of each,’ Rambo said. ‘Why don’t we have a team match? Ladies against gents? Or mixed doubles, three teams, each of one M and one F, twenty-five birds each? Fiver a head?’

  ‘I’m a rank beginner,’ the Sergeant said nervously. ‘I’ve never even seen Skeet, let alone shot it.’

  ‘And Miss Calder’s the pro,’ Rambo retorted. ‘We’ll team you together and credit you with three birds between you before we start. How about that?’

  There was an avaricious glint in his usually jolly eye, and but for Mr Gray’s earlier remark I would have backed off, pointing out that I was officially the steward, not the coach and definitely not the pro. But, thinking it over, I remembered that Mrs Hickson’s only proven talent was at DTL, I had only seen Mrs Cowan attempting Skeet without conspicuous success, Rambo Torrance’s Miroku was a less than perfect fit while Oliver Gray’s sidelock had fixed and rather tight chokes. And they were each stocked up with the club’s standard cartridges. These were loaded with very hard shot which in most guns could be counted on to pattern well but rather tightly. On the other hand, Skeet was my favourite discipline. I enjoyed its predictability. From every station, in calm conditions, each bird could be counted on to maintain a precise course and speed, and, given practice and good reactions, there was nothing difficult about it. The Sergeant might get by. I hesitated.

  ‘We’re game,’ Gertrude Cowan said. She looked me in the eye. ‘But perhaps a fiver’s too much for you?’

  ‘Or aren’t three birds enough?’ Oliver Gray asked.

  Beatrice Hickson smiled patronisingly. ‘I don’t think that you should be betting at your tender age,’ she said. She gave a sudden and disconcertingly loud crack of laughter.

  ‘You’re on,’ the Sergeant said firmly.

  ‘Provided,’ I put in, ‘that I get half an hour to show him the rudiments first.’

  I took the Sergeant through to the office and made him try the club’s Winchester Skeet gun for fit.

  ‘What in hell got into you?’ I asked him.

  ‘I could see that they were needling you.’

  ‘I didn’t mind. Well, not too much. I can take it. Men tend to resent girls who shoot. And women are always women.’

  He stuck out his chin. ‘Well, I didn’t like it. I’ll pay the fivers if we lose. But I don’t think we will. I’ve seen you shoot.’

  He had sounded genuinely concerned for me. For the first time in my life I could feel an exchange of sexual messages deep down at a subliminal level, and when, in checking the gun for fit, I touched his hand it was as intimate and personal as a brush of lips. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ I said lightly, ‘but you haven’t seen me shoot Skeet. Skeet can be difficult. When you go off form, you go right off. Stand still.’ The stock of the Skeet gun was slightly short for him and would have bruised his fingers, but a slip-on butt-pad out of Herbert Tullos’s cupboard gave him room and brought his eye nicely in line with the rib.

  ‘Can’t I use the gun I’ve spent all afternoon getting used to?’ he asked unhappily.

  ‘Totally unsuitable,�
� I said. ‘It would be slow to swing and shoot slightly high.’ I tapped the pair of shatterproof glasses in his breast pocket. ‘You’ll need these. In Skeet, the birds are taken close. Now, hold your horses.’ I went through to the store-room and dug out some Skeet cartridges which Mr Tullos had kept on an inconspicuous shelf. On the way out, I called at the jeep for twenty-bore Skeet cartridges of my own.

  ‘These may give us an edge,’ I said as we walked to the Skeet layouts. ‘Small shot, patterning wide. You’ll see why. If you can hit some of the singles and just one of each of the doubles, we may scrape through.’

  All signs of the recent death and police activity had been removed from the first layout. ‘Would it bug you to shoot on this one?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not a bit,’ he said. ‘Did you think I was going to trip over the memory of a body?’ His smile was slightly grim. ‘Let’s see if it bothers anyone else.’

  I was dying to ask him what the flashy Mr Chambers had said – especially about Beatrice Hickson – but I wanted his mind on his shooting. Besides, he had not proved very forthcoming with information and I was not seeking a snub. I showed him the birds and the sequence of shooting and let him try with dummy cartridges – ‘snap caps’ – in the gun. The speed of it daunted him at first, but when I let him try it for real his fast reactions came to his aid. By the time the others came out he had used up one box of cartridges and was hitting one single in three. He could make little of the doubles – which, at Skeet, are released simultaneously but in opposite directions, one high bird and one low, crossing near the centre of the semicircular layout. It was too early to expect it.

  Rambo Torrance had paired with Gertrude Cowan – and not, I thought, because he had a preference for vulgar blondes. Oliver Gray brought his shooting-stick. He was the more competent of the two men, and Beatrice Hickson, although I had only seen her performing on going-away birds, looked confident. So the better two of our opponents had ganged up on us . . .

  We tossed coins for precedence, odd team out to go first, and of course the Sergeant and I ended up with the doubtful honour. Ladies first, by general decision. I led the Sergeant to Station One, backing against the high trap-house. Rambo took the remote control release and I called for my first bird.

  I powdered the two singles and at least chipped both birds of the pair. Then I changed places with the Sergeant, who missed all four.

  ‘Remember where I told you to take them,’ I told him as gently as I could. ‘Relax. And keep your head down.’

  We moved to Station Two. Feeling irritated, because I knew that he could do better, I let one of the singles get away; he responded by breaking both of the singles.

  In English Skeet, no doubles are shot on Stations Three and Five, so when we finished on Station Seven, right where Herbert Tullos had lain, we had fired 24 shots each. I had dropped another single and one of a pair, so I stood at 21. My partner had hit 7.

  Unlike the American version, there is no Station Eight in the centre for English Skeet. Instead, the first bird to have been missed is taken again. I hit my single on Station Two and on Station One he blew his to smoke. Add our handicap of 3 and we had notched up 32; a passable score in the circumstances, but definitely beatable.

  ‘I let you down,’ he said.

  ‘Not many do better at the first attempt,’ I said. I could afford to be generous if he was going to pay up for both of us.

  We stepped well back. Rambo Torrance and Gertrude Cowan took our places. Oliver Gray moved his shooting-stick and took the remote control to do duty as trapper.

  I found myself standing with Beatrice Hickson. She was the least-known quantity. She was also the performer who would most probably determine whether we won or lost. Temptation began to rise in me like yeast. I do not usually play foul. The Skeet championship of the universe, if there is ever such a trophy, would not please my eye on my shelf if I had won it by the use of gamesmanship. But I had been manoeuvred into shooting, for money, partnered by a complete novice. Besides, her remarks were rankling.

  ‘What did you really see on Monday evening?’ I asked her.

  She raised her painted eyebrows at me. ‘Nothing. I told you. I turned back long before I reached here.’

  ‘That isn’t quite what you said.’

  ‘What did I say, then?’ She sounded amused, as if by the antics of a child.

  ‘That you “didn’t come all the way”. Rather a slur on poor Basil’s performance, don’t you think?’

  Her eyebrows came down as if they’d been shot flying and white patches appeared on her nose and cheekbones. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said. She sounded very much less amused.

  ‘I think you do,’ I said. ‘I think you came here to find out what was being said and done. You wanted to know what chance you had of the investigation rolling by without flattening you. What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What did you say your husband’s name was?’ I asked. ‘Derek, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ she said. She looked at my face. ‘Christ, I believe you would! Is this just because I said that you were still a child?’

  ‘You should have known better,’ I said, with a smile which I hoped would be taken for cynical, ‘at your age. What did you see from up there?’ I nodded my head towards the embankment, although the safety walls cut off any view of it.

  ‘I’ve already told the police. Derek was hardly down the road before there was an inspector at the door. At least they had the decency to wait until he was out of sight and to ask politely. They didn’t resort to blackmail.’

  ‘And now you can tell me.’

  She stood and seethed for a minute before deciding that whatever she said would hardly alter her situation. ‘Not a lot,’ she said. ‘A man’s figure. He was coming back from down there, somewhere around the high tower. He seemed to be in a hurry. He disappeared around here, among the Skeet layouts. After that, I was a bit preoccupied.’

  I looked round for the Sergeant, but he was busy. He was standing by himself and doing something so casually that I almost missed it. He had recovered sample cartridges and was surreptitiously marking them. ‘I bet you were,’ I said. ‘Did you see him leave?’

  ‘I heard a car drive off, that’s all.’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘Not then. Earlier, I’d noticed a pale car standing beside the steward’s old van.’

  ‘What sort of car? And what sort of pale?’

  ‘A saloon, I think. Or a hatchback. Not an estate, anyway. I couldn’t tell you anything about the colour. The light was just going.’

  ‘And the man? What did he look like?’

  She shrugged. ‘Just a man. I thought that it was the steward, Tullos or whatever his name was. He could have bought himself another car. God knows he needed it. And he could have afforded it, the bets he used to win.’

  Gertrude and Rambo were finishing their round – on 28 between them, I gathered. Oliver Gray was beckoning Mrs Hickson. But she was recovering her temper, too soon. I wondered whether I dared suggest that she and her boyfriend had bopped Mr Tullos because he had played the Peeping Tom, and decided that I did not.

  ‘How many others have you had it away with around here?’ I softly asked her retreating back. Her stride checked. Then she walked on, but stiffly. That, I thought, should do it.

  And so it proved. Mr Gray shot a 21, almost equalling my score; but Mrs Hickson was snatching at her shots and scored 9, well below her form and not much better than the Sergeant. Afterwards, she called me a little bitch under her breath as she coughed up her fiver.

  Instead of patronising the club bar, the two ageing Romeos swept the ladies off for a drink at the Country Club. I decided that I need not bother to wish them luck and an exchange of herpes. Whatever their partners might think – and Mrs Cowan was already wagging her tail – the men were too near their own doorsteps for more than an evening of flirtation.

  They had quite forgotten about Mr Aiken, who retur
ned from the Ball-trap just as the Jag vanished up the road and was none too pleased to find himself left behind.

  ‘Don’t you drive?’ I asked him.

  ‘Banned,’ he said. ‘Another six months to go. That’s why I jump at any chance of a lift.’ He handed me the acoustic release, paid for his clays and then stumped off towards the Country Club, to claim his lift home and, I hoped, to play gooseberry. I am usually tolerant and open-minded, but I was in a mood to find elderly and illicit amours distasteful.

  Sergeant Fellowes remained. He helped me to pick up the unbroken clays and disposed of such empty cartridges as were surplus to the requirements of the police laboratory while I locked up the trap-houses and other gear.

  Then there was peace. Uncle Ronnie had not cast up yet. I made up the books and then sat on the bench which was now getting the benefit of the evening sun, with the Sergeant beside me. I told him what Mrs Hickson had said.

  He seemed amused. ‘Is that why she was shooting so erratically? That’s wicked. It’s true what Kipling said about the female of the species. We knew most of that,’ he added more soberly, ‘but you’ve added a little something. The trouble is, it doesn’t make sense yet.’

  ‘What did Mr Chambers tell you?’ I asked him.

  ‘About Beatrice? He was embarrassingly explicit.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said, ‘and you know it.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I’ve told you everything and you don’t tell me a damn thing,’ I said sadly. ‘Do you think I can’t keep my mouth shut?’

  He smiled at me so that his eyes wrinkled. ‘You haven’t shown much aptitude for it so far.’

  I aimed a friendly slap at his leg. He caught my hand and held onto it. ‘Even a consultant doesn’t get the whole story. Nobody does, usually, except the Investigating Officer and his immediate team. People let things slip, sometimes. So don’t be hurt.’ He gave my hand a little shake. ‘I’ll have to go in to a briefing tomorrow. Reporting by radio is all very well . . .’

  ‘But there comes a time when you have to deliver your sample cartridges?’