Текст книги "Watcher in the Shadows "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Household

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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 favor. I had only to He 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-defense. 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 neighbors. 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, which 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 he 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. Defense 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 gray. 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 colors 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-mustachioed retainers than to walk through gray-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 homecoming 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 traveling 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 booth 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.

Two days after the death of the postman had been reported in the papers an Admiral Cunobel called at the house. He ceremoniously presented himself and his card, and regretted that Georgina was out. He had known both her and my parents in old days.

I asked him in and gave him a drink. I had not then received the pamphlet on which the Buchenwald officers’ mess was marked with a cross, and I was sure – almost – that the bomb could not have been meant for me. So I had no reason to be cautious with strangers.

I suspected that he might have something to do with the police. But it was not that at all. He was genuinely anxious about Georgina. He had lost track of her completely until he read of the zoologist and his aunt who taught riding. He had guessed – though he didn’t say so – that our simple life might be seriously disturbed by any emergency, and I think it had shocked him.

He was an arbitrary old charmer whom long years at sea had preserved from most modern thinking which was not professional. As he perched himself on the edge of my desk with a tumbler of pink gin beside him, he resembled a young tortoise eagerly exploring a new lettuce bed. The beak, the jowls and the leathery skin were unmistakable tortoise, but the sprightliness of pale blue eyes and dark blue suit suggested that he still enjoyed himself.

“As a matter of fact, we have met before,” he said.

“I ought to remember, but…”

“No, you oughtn’t! You were two weeks old! In 1912 I was Assistant Naval Attache in Vienna, and your mother was extraordinarily kind to me. Those were the days, my lad! None of this nationalism except among the lower classes! A man chose the side he would play for like a county cricketer. County of birth or county of residence—whichever he pleased —but he had to stick to it. I knew your Uncle Willi, who fought for the Tsar in the Imperial Guards, and your Uncle Fritz, who called himself a Bavarian and was killed before Verdun. And Hildegard, who married a Greek and nearly got shot by both sides for helping prisoners to escape. And your dear Aunt Georgina, who, I don’t mind telling you, would have married me if she hadn’t fallen in love with her second cousin, the English Dennim. What a horseman he was! Delightful boy, too! Good Lord, he’d be seventy-three now if he hadn’t died of wounds on the Somme!”

He went on and on, and I mentioned my surprise that he could remember all the ramifications of my family.

“Had to, my boy! Came under the head of useful information in those days. If you weren’t in the studbook yourself, the next best tiring was to know who was. I remember fretting about it with your mother. It’s all tradition, she said, and none of us can prove more than half of it. I’ll fix you up, she said – Cunobel from Cunobelinus. Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Oldest pedigree in Europe, if only you could fit a few missing pieces into the puzzle. And damned if she didn’t get Georgina to spread the rumor! God bless my soul, the Cunobels are a sound Cornish family, but small, small! But it was just like your parents. Anyone they liked had got to have everything they could give.”

I liked him very much, and we went out to lunch at his club. There, after doing me very well, he ventured onto the subject of Georgina and the bomb. It must have been a shock. Had she anywhere to go for a holiday? He owed the Dennims the happiest two years of his life. Did I think he might pick up old friendship?

I said that I was sure he might, but that Georgina could be very difficult if she suspected that anything was being arranged for her behind her back. She was extremely proud of her independence and did not care if she gave the impression of a hard woman. That made her easy to live with. She neither permitted her privacy to be invaded nor intruded upon that of anyone else.

The admiral explained that he was a bachelor – which of course made it unthinkable that Georgina should stay under his roof. I did not dare to smile. And in a way he was right. In spite of the fact that she was over sixty and he well over seventy, their vitality was such that any healthy and normal village would at once create a joyous legend about them.

No, what he had in mind was that she should stay as his guest, but with the vicar —where she would be doing him a great favor as well.

“The man’s in a mess,” he said. “He could do with some help.”

I indicated that Georgina’s general air and outspokenness might be disconcerting to a strange vicar.

“Blood and bones, boy, I didn’t mean sewing his surplices!” the admiral exclaimed. “He’s taken to horse-breeding!”

“With an eye on the 2.30?”

“No, no, no! A crazy parishioner left him his pet Arab stallion. Keeps it in the glebe meadow! Not even properly fenced! Too long a story —but the poor fellow is spending all his money on oats, and he and his daughter have to live on porridge. Well, Georgi might make some sense out of it. I’m bothered sick about the vicar, and I can’t keep an eye on everything which goes on in the village any longer.”

When I reported to Georgina in the evening that Admiral Cunobel had called on her and taken me out to lunch instead, I detected a sudden aura and fragrance of femininity. How, I don’t know. She neither fluttered nor giggled. I suspect that she immediately saw herself in a ball dress of 1912 and projected the image. She had been a very beautiful girl.

She invited the admiral to tea. This was a ceremony. Her friends and mine occasionally took a meal with us, but we had no pretensions; they ate whatever there was and drank a glass or two of wine as a symbol of hospitality. About twice a year, however, Georgi formally invited somebody to tea. She polished the silver tea service, made a number of tiny cakes and two big ones, cut paper-thin bread and butter in white and brown, and prepared every single offering proper to the tea cult of the older landed gentry. The illusion was complete. The parlormaid in dainty cap and apron so obviously brought in the silver tray and the muffins that it was an effort to remember one had not actually seen her.

By the afternoon of the tea party I had received the letter from my Austrian friend and knew what I was in for. I was most anxious to get clear of London and have room to defend myself. I was determined that the admiral’s invitation should be accepted, for I could not leave Georgina alone in the house. Quite apart from unknown risks, tarpaulins, dust and scaffolding were depressing. The minor damage done by the bomb had revealed that the Victorian woodwork of the house front was rotten and ought to be replaced.

Peregrine Cunobel’s tactful command was perfect. I could see how he had become an admiral. When the conversation had drifted away from 1912 he soon had it firmly anchored to country life and the church.

“If the parsons can’t get a living wage,” he said, “they have to do what they can – grow flowers for the market or turn the vicarage into a guest house. Mine thinks he can breed horses.”

And then he gave us an enchanting picture of the young stallion, Nur Jehan, which aroused Georgina’s curiosity and challenged it. She had gentled horses which had been stupidly or cruelly broken, but had never attempted to discipline a horse which had been brought up as a pet.

When I added that I myself had long been wanting to study a whole colony of squirrels of which I had heard, she agreed that the house would be lonely. And that was that. She accepted Cunobel’s invitation to Chipping Marton.

It was from the vicarage that she was telephoning. She hoped I would come over for the week end and stay on indefinitely if I wasn’t bored. Dear Peregrine had already written to me. I gathered from the adjective that she was enjoying herself.

Her pungent chronicle of the doings of the vicar and Nur Jehan made good listening, but I found it difficult to remain patient while keeping an eye on the two windows which commanded the telephone. She did not return to the question of why I had not given her my address – which was typical —and repeatedly wanted to know if I was all right and comfortable, which was not typical at all. I managed to avoid a definite reply to the invitation. I hoped that by the week end I should be a free man, and should have given the police the name and description of the postman’s murderer.

I felt quite certain that he would not lose all the advantages he had gained by speed. He had only failed to get me owing to the unforeseeable accident of the dog, and he could not be aware that he had aroused any suspicion whatever.

What had started as Ian’s crude goat and tiger was now beginning to have more resemblance to the German Intelligence chess, in which a player never sees his opponent’s men at all. He is told by a referee when a move is impossible and when he has taken or lost a piece. From that he must construct his own picture of the squares which are occupied and the pattern occupying them.

What was the enemy’s picture? That the police might have advised me to go into hiding, but that they were giving me as yet little or no protection on the ground. In that case the more he delayed, the more risk he was running. Today, Thursday, by nightfall he ought to be miles away from Hernsholt, unsuspected and satisfied that I was dead.

What was my picture? That he was so close on top of me that I must play for getting a look at his face without provoking an attack or alarming him. The latter was most important. I did not want him to break contact and wait weeks or months for an easier chance.

If he were on the Long Down watching the front of the house, it should be possible to see him from the upstairs windows. Presumably he was well aware of that and did not dare to scratch himself or blow a fly off his nose unless he knew where I was.

So I let him know. I took out a deck chair through the front door, went back again for a book, a table and a pile of manuscript, and settled down under cover of the shrubbery – apparently to work. I then returned to the house on my stomach by way of the ditch and the back door.

Hidden behind the bedroom curtains I searched the Long Down with my glasses. There wasn’t a sign of him. I gave him up. Perhaps I had exaggerated his energy; perhaps he had decided to be as slow and careful as in London. I took to watching a hare which was hopping along the skyline two hundred yards away.

Now, a hare only sees at the last moment what is in front of him; he can see with very little effort what is behind. So when he jinked and galloped off at an angle to his feeding course I knew the exact spot where something had frightened him. Through the glasses I picked up a shadowy black thread behind the waving grass. It was the top of the entrance to an old air-raid shelter.

I had missed it in my own explorations of the Long Down because I was mainly interested in routes. There was no urgent need to map out the points from which an attack might be made. In any case the shelter was not at all obvious. It had been sunk deep into the clay, and the curve of the roof did not show above ground. Possibly it was meant for the special security of V.I.P.s arriving at the airfield.

Whether my own particular V.I.P. was in it at the moment I could not be sure. Standing on the steps of the shelter with his eyes at ground level he could look out with little chance of being spotted by me or anyone else. It was fortunate that he did not want to be seen carrying a rifle about. Or perhaps he felt that a shot at two hundred yards was too much of a gamble.

After a while I detected movement which suggested the top of a head. I could have stalked him from behind, but I had not a scrap of evidence against him. The person in the shelter might have been a retired bishop writing a monograph on the reproduction cycle of the hare. So I wondered if he would take an opportunity to show his intentions. I worked my way back to the shrubbery and returned openly to the house with my deck chair and papers.

Fussing with notebooks and binoculars and making a show of an innocent naturalist off for a walk, I set out by the front gate, rounded the garden and skirted the edge of the Long Down close to his shelter. I was aiming for a lane running straight to the west for quarter of a mile which would allow me to see if I were followed. By the time I was approaching the end of the straight, there were two men behind me and a woman on a bicycle. One of the men was a biggish fellow and coming along at a good pace. I hoped he was the right one.

The lane brought me on to the main Aylesbury road, along which I walked for half a mile. He was still behind me, but that proved nothing. I took a turning to the right leading gently uphill to the village of Stoke. If he, too, came to Stoke it would be a strong indication that he was following me, for the route was roundabout. Whoever he was, he had come from the Long Down and the shortest way from there to Stoke was through Hernsholt.

A quick glance through the leaves of the hedgerow showed him two curves behind and coming up fast. So, on reaching Stoke, I hesitated outside the church to admire one of those squat, square towers which make the English landscape but have no other aesthetic value, and then went inside. I hoped that he would also pretend an interest in ecclesiastical architecture and that I should have a chance for a good look at him. But he was content to wait.

On my way out I stopped to chat with the first person I saw, so that I could walk through the churchyard keeping my eyes open but apparently deep in conversation. He turned out to be the gravedigger and by no means a merry one. He informed me that in the midst of life we are in death and that they ought to ‘ave cremation wherever the blue clay wasn’t no more than four feet down. Press a button, like. By the time I had recovered from the superstitions of an Austrian nursery the feet which had padded after me were strolling away from the church.

I had not thought out what was going to happen now or where I should go. Obviously he could not trail me indefinitely through a network of lanes. If he came close enough to see what turnings I took he would arouse suspicion. If I let him follow me without noticing him, so should I.

The best game for the moment seemed to be to lose him. What would he do then? Return to the Long Down presumably, or perhaps visit the cottage in my absence and attend again to the larder. In either case he would take the shortest way and, if I could get ahead of him, I should at last be able to see his face.

Thought of the larder reminded me that I was very hungry. I bought some biscuits in the village shop. When I came out he was at the other end of the street, looking at a rack of picture postcards hung up in the entrance to the post office.

As I started to walk in his direction he went on ahead, taking the road I expected. He may have intended that I should pass him. Once clear of Stoke, the road ran between high hedges and was little used, especially at lunchtime. He would not have dared to allow himself time for any luxurious revenge, but a quick killing and a getaway across the fields was easy.

Now at last my choice of open country was paying off. I vanished into the courtyard of a pub, passed through it and through the kitchen garden into a field beyond. There, under cover of a haystack, I took a quick look at the inch ordnance map. As I thought, there were no obstacles and the contours favored me. If I hurried I could get ahead of him.

I was out of breath and bleeding from barbed wire and hawthorn when I reached the road from Stoke to Hernsholt. I found as good a place as his own on the Long Down. I could watch him coming along the road until he reached a bend, and I could then slither down to the hedge and see him pass me on the other side of it at a distance of two or three yards.

I ate my biscuits in peace, for he took a long time to arrive. He may have guessed that I had gone into the pub and waited for me to come out. At last I saw him, the pair of us separated only by a thin screen of wych-elm.

The man who passed me was utterly unlike my mental picture of him. He could have taken a room opposite my house and never been suspected. Dressed as a high civil servant, with umbrella and briefcase, he might have passed with a nod through any police cordon which was guarding me. Isaac Purvis’s description of him as a gentleman was right. He belonged to what it is the fashion to call the Establishment – though I have never had a satisfactory definition of what the devil, if anything, the Establishment means.

His age was close to my own, between forty and forty-five. He wore a brown tweed suit of excellent cloth and a lighter brown cap. His hair – so far as I could see it – was dark, and graying at the temples. He was a heavy man, six feet tall and weighing all of thirteen stone, but moving lightly with a hint of well-trained muscles. For the minor details – his nose was strong and regular, his eyes brown, and he had marked, untidy black eyebrows.

I was sure I had never seen him before. I couldn’t have forgotten such a man, however emaciated, if he had been a prisoner in Buchenwald. And his nationality was, on the face of it, obviously British. But he might not be. I couldn’t say why. Manner when alone, perhaps. I wanted a little more eccentricity from him. An Englishman of that class plays with his thoughts when he is alone and only looks formal if there is someone to see him.