Why Shoot a Butler (23 page)

"I don't want to buy the car," said the sergeant. "Which way did it go?"

The youth was looking admiringly at the Bentley. His lips moved in a silent enumeration of her points, but being in awe of policemen, he dragged his gaze away from it and answered Sergeant Gubbins. "It went over the bridge, first, then I seen it turn off at the crossing."

Amberley spoke. "Who was in it?"

The youth shook his head. "I dunno, sir."

"I mean, a man, or a woman, more than one person?"

"I dunno, sir."

"It's no good talking to him, sir," said the sergeant. "I got a nephew like him. If a kangaroo happened to be driving the car he wouldn't notice. Sickening, I call it. jabber about differentials all day long that sort do, but take a bit of interest in something that don't move on wheels, oh no! Not them!"

The Bentley moved forward. "The Brighton crossing," Amberley said. "Heading south. I think — I very much think - I've got you, my friend. Sergeant, we shall have to travel rather quickly."

"Of course we haven't been, have we?" said the sergeant. He waited until the car had turned on to the secondary road leading southwards, and then seeing no immediate danger in front of them, said: "Now, sir, if you don't mind, where are we, so to speak? It seems to me you know a sight more than what I do. We're chasing a certain Vauxhall limousine which has got three quarters of an hour's start of us. I got my own idea who's in that car, but how he had the nerve to come by it I don't know. I've often noticed the quiet ones is the worst. It looks to me like a nasty case. Has he done in the young lady, sir, do you think?"

There was a moment's silence, and the car seemed to leap forward, like a horse given the spur. The sergeant, looking round at Mr. Amberley's profile, saw it so grim that he confessed later it gave him a turn.

"If he has," said Amberley in a very level voice, "if he has, he won't trouble the hangman."

This sinister pronouncement, coupled with the look on Amberley's face, led the sergeant to infer that he had discovered something interesting, though not of much value as a clue. Feeling that the occasion was one for a display of tact he made no comment on his discovery, but merely requested Mr. Amberley to go easy. "No use meeting trouble halfway, sir," he said. "If you was to go and do a murder, where'd I be?"

Amberley gave a mirthless laugh. "Making a sensational arrest, I expect."

"I'd be in a very awkward position, that's where I'd be," replied the sergeant. "If I thought you meant it I'd be obliged to take away that gun you've got sticking into my hip at this very moment."

"I'm more likely to choke the life out of the swine," Amberley said. "I don't think he's done it yet. I'm pinning my faith to that - keep a lookout for a constable. Another killing would be fatal to him. Mark Brown's death passed for an accident, but another accident would be suspicious, to say the least of it. Shirley is to disappear. No body, no conviction, Sergeant."

"I get you, sir. Taking her for a ride and bumping her off miles from Upper Nettlefold?"

"Not unless he's a fool. If he does that, and the body's found, it will be traced back to him. Miss Brown doesn't own a car. How did she get so far afield? Any jury would assume that she had been taken there by her murderer. Much too dangerous. The body must be disposed of. Put yourself in the murderer's place, Sergeant. How is that to be done?" Various gruesome visions came before the sergeant's eyes, but he thought it wiser not to advance a suggestion. A gentleman who had fallen in love with a young lady wouldn't take kindly to the thought of dismembered corpses or charred fragments. "We don't want to start talking horrors, sir," he said severely.

"I see," said Amberley. "Quicklime. No. No."

"Of course not, sir. Whoever heard of such a thing:"

"You're wrong," Amberley said. "I know you're wrong. He's heading south. The sea, Sergeant, the sea!"

The sergeant considered the suggestion and came to the conclusion it was probably correct. "Seems to me, sir, we'd better hurry up," he said gruffly. "Unless . Anyway, we've got to catch him, and that's all there is to it."

The car roared through a hamlet; the needle of the speedometer was creeping up.

"He won't have killed her yet," Amberley said. The sergeant had the impression that he was trying to reassure himself. "He daren't run the risk. Supposing he had a slight accident? Supposing he was held up, and the car was searched? If the girl's alive they can't get him for murder. He'll think of that. He's bound to think of that."

The sergeant agreed, though he felt a little dubious. In his experience murderers seldom laid such careful plans. However, the killing of Mark had certainly been very cleverly planned, so perhaps Mr. Amberley might prove to be right.

The lights of a village twinkled ahead of them; the car slowed to a more respectable pace, and the sergeant espied a constable on point duty at a crossroad in the middle of the main street.

Amberley pulled up beside him, but let the sergeant do the talking. The constable, unlike the one they had left in Upper Nettlefold, was an alert young man. Not many cars had come by him during the last hour, and he was almost sure that the only one of any size had been a Vauxhall limousine. But the number was not PV 80496.

That he could swear to. The Vauxhall he had seen bore the letters AX. He was not prepared to state the number, but he thought it began with a nine.

The sergeant looked inquiringly at Amberley. "Don't quite fit, sir."

"False number-plate. Probably no such number exists. Which way did the car go, Constable?"

"It turned off to the right, sir," replied the policeman, pointing.

"I see. Where does that lead to?"

"Well, sir, it goes to Larkhurst, but there's a good many turnings off it."

"Can you get to the coast by it?"

"No, sir, not exactly you can't. You'd have to go 'cross country a bit."

"Turning off where?"

The constable thought for a moment. "Well, if you by Six Ash Corner and Hillingdean, you'd want to turn off at the first pub you come to, past Ketley. On the hand, sir, if you didn't mind a roundabout sort of way, you could cut down to Chingham and bear on to Freshfield and Trensham, and reach the coast at Coldhaven."

Amberley. nodded. "Thanks. Did you notice whether that Vauxhall was travelling fast?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary, sir."

Amberley let in the clutch. "My compliments; you're the brightest policeman I've met during the past fortnight."

The sergeant said with a cough as the car started: "Bright for a constable, sir."

Amberley smiled, but for once in his life forbore to retort caustically. His attention was all for the tricky road he was following; the sergeant got monosyllabic answers to his questions and wisely gave up all attempt at conversation.

The trail was a difficult one, often lost. The Vauxhall had left the main roads for a network of country lanes. From time to time Amberley stopped to ask whether it had been seen. Mostly a stolid headshake answered the question, but twice he got news of the car; once from a railway officiall in charge of a level-crossing, once from a night watchman huddled over a brazier in a wooden hut beside some road repairs. The Vauxhall seemed to be heading south-west and to be maintaining a steady but not extraordinary speed. Obviously the driver was taking no risks of meeting with an accident or a hold-up; it seemed too as though he had no very great fear of being followed.

The sergeant, who, when they plunged into the second-class roads, pursuing an erratic course, privately thought there was little chance of catching a car bound for an unknown destination and bearing a false nameplate, began after a little time to realise that Amberley was pushing forward to some definite point. When they stopped at Hillingdean and the sergeant conferred with a constable on point duty there, he got out a road map and studied it intently.

The warning, sent out from Upper Nettlefold, had been received by all the southern stations but bore no fruit. No car of the stated number had anywhere been seen. Amberley cursed himself for having given the fatal number and wasted no more time in inquiring for it.

There were many circuitous byways that led to the coast, so that it was hardly surprising that the sergeant should consider the chase hopeless. For miles they had no intelligence of the Vauxhall, but Amberley never slackened speed except to read a signpost here and there, and never hesitated in his choice of direction. It became increasingly apparent to the sergeant that he had a fixed goal in his mind, for it could scarcely be due to chance that they picked the trail up again twice when it had seemed completely lost.

Once Amberley bade him take the map over a difficult piece of country and guide him to some village the sergeant had never heard of. The sergeant ventured to ask where they were going. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the roar of the engine. He saw Amberley give a shrug, and managed to catch the word, "Littlehaven." It conveyed nothing to the sergeant. As the Bentley rocked over a stretch of lane pitted with holes he said: "If you're sure where he's gone, sir, why don't you take the main road?"

"Because I'm not sure, damn you!" said Mr. Amberley. "It's the best I can do."

The sergeant relapsed into silence. Except for the discomfort of travelling at a shocking pace over bad roads he was not sure that he wasn't glad they had chosen deserted lanes. At least they ran less risk of an accident. He shuddered to think what might happen on a main road. As it was he spent most of his time clutching at the door to steady himself, and although his nerves were becoming dulled, he had several bad frights. Once when a bicyclist wobbled into the middle of the road and the Bentley's wheels tore at the loose surface as it took a sudden swerve round the unwary cyclist, he was moved to shout: "People like you, Mr. Amberley, didn't ought to be allowed anything more powerful than a Ford!"

He had thought it a still night, but the wind whistled east his ears and once nearly swept his helmet off. He jammed it on more firmly and thought Mr. Amberley must be fairly scared out of his senses to treat his car in this frightful fashion.

The moon had come up and was riding serenely overhead, occasionally obscured by a drifting cloud. The country through which they were travelling was unfamiliar to the sergeant. He retained ever afterwards the memory of untarred roads with puddles gleaming in the moonlight, of hedges flashing past, of villages where warm lamps glowed behind uncurtained windows, and of signposts stretching cracked arms to point the way to unknown hamlets; of hills up which the Bentley stormed, of sudden sickening lurches as the car took a bad corner, of the electric horn insistently blaring at slower-going vehicles, forcing them to draw in to the side; and above all of Mr. Amberley's face beside him, with the eyes never wavering from the road ahead and the mouth compressed in a hard, merciless line.

He ceased to peer nervously ahead in search of danger. Amberley never paid any attention to his warnings but drove on and on, very expertly, the sergeant had no doubt, but quite scandalously. The sergeant wondered in a detached way what his own position would be if they ran into or over something.

Hurtling along at over fifty miles an hour, and him a police officer! Nice set-out it would be if they went and killed somebody.

At the level-crossing, where they halted for the gates to be opened, they picked the trail up again, and even the battered sergeant felt that the speed had been justified when he heard that the Vauxhall had passed over no more than twenty minutes earlier.

Mr. Amberley's bleak look lightened. As he drove over the lines and changed up, he said: "I was right. We're going to shift a bit now, Sergeant."

"Well, I'll thank you to remember that this ain't Daytona Beach, sir," said the long-suffering sergeant. "Far from it. Now be careful of the bus, for Gawd's sake, Mr. Amberley!"

A country bus was grumbling along ahead, on the crown of the road. Mr. Amberley kept his hand on the hooter, but the bus meandered along unheeding. The Bentley charged past, mounting the tufty grass that bordered the lane and clearing the omnibus by inches.

The sergeant, clinging to the door, hung out to hurl invectives at the bus-driver, already out of earshot. A swerve round a bend brought him round with a bump. He mopped his face with a large handkerchief and said that what they seemed to want was a blooming tank, not a motorcar.

Chapter Eighteen

Littlehaven was a fishing village situated on the marshy alluviums where a small river emptied itself into the sea at the head of a creek, running about a mile inland. The village itself was old, with twisted streets smelling of seaweed and of tar. It had a small harbour, where the smacks rode at anchor, and over the beach were always to be found black nets, redolent of fish scales, spread out for mending. Westward along the coast, towards the mouth of the creek, a modern bungalow town had sprung up, for the place provided good boating and fishing, and in the season the sea was alive with small craft; and the one hotel, a gaunt structure towering above the one-storied houses, was so full that it could afford to charge extremely high prices for most inferior accommodation. Out of season half of it was shut up and the bungalows presented an equally deserted appearance. Most of them were owned by enterprising tradesmen who furnished them for the purpose of letting them at exorbitant rents for three months of the year and were content to allow them to stand empty for the remaining nine months.

Along the coast on the other side of the creek were a few better-built bungalows standing grandly apart. These were the privately owned houses, disdaining to rub shoulders with their humbler neighbours, even holding themselves discreetly aloof from each other. They boasted quite large gardens, and were served by a road from the town of Lowchester, some ten miles inland.

On the Littlehaven side of the creek the bungalows grew less and less pretentious till they petered outt altogether; at the creek mouth a few fishermen's cottages huddled together round a Martello tower.

When the Bentley tore through Littlehaven Mr. Amberley did not stop to inquire for the Vauxhall, but jolted over the cobbled streets till he met the coast road. This had a tarred surface, and the car, badly hampered by the cobbles, leaped forward again and ran beside a depressing asphalt sea-walk, with the beach and the moonlit sea beyond, and a row of red and white bungalows on the other side of it.

From the level-crossing onwards Amberley had met with bad luck. Once the road was up and the signals had been against him; he had lost time waiting for a horse and wagon to crawl slowly over the narrow causeway; once, in a town of some size, he had been held up at every crossing and still further detained by the efforts of a blandly unconcerned female to turn a large Humber in a narrow road. She blocked the way for several precious minutes, twice stopping her engine, and looked stonily indignant when Amberley put his thumb on his electric hooter and kept it there. The sergeant's heart jumped into his mouth when, long before the female had completed her turn, the Bentley glided forward, mounted the pavement and almost brushed past the other car still, as it were, spreadeagled across the path.

But in spite of this ruthless manoeuvre time had been lost, and glancing at his watch Amberley doubted whether he had lessened the distance between the Bentley and the Vauxhall.

The sergeant, when he saw the sea with the moonlight on the water, was moved to remark that it looked pretty. He got no answer. "Where are we going to, sir?" he inquired.

"There's a creek," Amberley replied briefly. "We're almost on to it. On the opposite side, set back about four or five hundred yards from the seacoast, there is a bungalow. That's where we're going."

"We are, are we?" said the sergeant. "I suppose we just drive across the creek. Or swim."

"We shall go across in a boat," replied Amberley.

"Well, I'd as soon have gone round by road, sir," said the sergeant. "I never was a good sailor, and I don't suppose I ever shall be. What's more, I haven't got any fancy to have you driving me about in a motorboat, and that's the truth. Besides," he added, as a thought struck him, "how are you going to come by a motorboat at this hour?"

"I've got one waiting."

The sergeant was beyond surprise. "The only wonder to me is you haven't got an aeroplane waiting," he said. "Pity you didn't think of that. How did you come to have this here boat?"

"I hired it. I've a man watching the bungalow from this side of the creek. He'll take us across. I daren't risk going round by road. Takes too long, though that's the way the Vauxhall went. There's a wooden landing-stage at the bottom of the bungalow garden."

"Know all about it, don't you, sir?"

"I ought to. I came down here this morning to investigate."

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" said the sergeant. "Whatever made you do that, sir? Did you find anything out?"

"I did. I found that a certain privately owned motorboat has been fetched from Morton's Yard, which we passed a little way back, and made fast to a mooringbuoy about a quarter of a mile up the creek. Not only has she recently been overhauled, but her tanks are full. I found that so interesting, Sergeant, that I'm paying a longshoreman who lives in one of the cottages this side of the creek to watch the boat and the bungalow and let me know what he sees."

The sergeant found that he could still feel surprise after all. He would very much have liked to ask why Mr. Amberley should suddenly dart off to Littlehaven unknown to anyone, and why the vicissitudes of a motorboat should interest him in the least, but he thought it unlikely that he would get a satisfactory answer just now. He merely said: "Well, sir, I'll say one thing for you; for one who ain't in the Force you're very thorough. Very thorough indeed, you are."

The road curved inland; the sergeant could see the sheen of water and knew that they must have reached the creek. The car was slowing down and stopped presently in front of a small cottage about five hundred yards from the coast. The sergeant, peering, could just see the dark line of the shore -on the other side of the creek, and something that might have been a house reared the night sky.

Amberley had opened the door of the car and was getting out when suddenly he checked and said sharply: "Listen!"

Through the stillness of the evening the throb of a motorboat's engines drifted over the water to their ears.

A figure came across the road towards the car and shouted to Amberley, who looked quickly round.

"Is that you, sir? Well, I never! I was just going to get off to telephone you, like you said I was to. Well, of all the coincidences!" He caught sight of the sergeant's helmet and added: 'Lumme, is that a bobby?"

"You come here and tell us what you seen, my man," commanded the sergeant sternly.

It struck him that under his tan Mr. Amberley was very pale. Amberley's eyes were fixed on the longshoreman's face. "Be quick; let me have it."

"Well, there's someone gorn off in the motorboat," said the man. "gorn off this very minute. Ah, and he 'ad something with 'im, wot he carried over 'is shoulder. Well, I thought to myself, taking your luggage with you, are you? It might ha' been a sack. Well, sir, "e come down to that there landing-stage and 'e chucks this 'ere sack, or whatnot, into the dinghy wot's been tied up to the jetty, like you saw when you was down 'ere; and 'e gets out 'is oars and off 'e rows up the creek, me follering this side unbeknownst, and 'e comes alongside 'is motorboat and gets aboard with the luggage. Well, I thought, wot might you be up to now? - me not being able to see clear-like. Then I seen wot it was 'e was so busy with. banged if 'e weren't hitching the dinghy on to the motorboat. Then 'e starts 'er up and off 'e goes, "eading for the sea, the dinghy bobbing be'ind 'im. And wot 'e wants to take it along for fair beats me."

It beat the sergeant too, but he did not say so. He was looking sympathetically at Amberley, whose hand, lying on the door of the car, had gripped till the knuckles shone white. The longshoreman's description had convinced the sergeant that Shirley Brown had been done to death already. He did not wonder that Mr. Amberley stood there as though he'd been turned to stone. He wished he could have thought of something kind to say, but only managed to murmur gruffly: "Fraid we're too late, sir."

Amberley's eyes turned towards him; behind their blankness his brain was working desperately. "The dinghy," he said. "The dinghy. That means something. God, why can't I think?" He smote his hand down on the car in an impotent gesture.

"I must say, I don't see it myself, sir," said the sergeant. "What did he want it for when he had the motorboat?"

"To come back in!" Amberley said. "What other reason? Think, man, think!"

The sergeant did his best. "I don't hardly know, sir. He wouldn't hardly send the - the body out to sea in it, would he? He'll throw… I should say, he'd be more likely to throw it over… Well, what I mean is…' He broke off in embarrassment and was startled to find Amberley staring at him with a dreadful look in his face.

"My God, no, it's not possible!" Amberley said in a queer, strained voice.

"Ullo!" said the longshoreman suddenly. "Engine's stopped."

Amberley's head jerked up. The chug of the motorboat, which had been growing fainter, had suddenly stopped altogether.

"Well 'e's a rum 'un if ever there was one!" said the longshoreman. "E can't 'ave got much beyond the mouth o' the creek. Wot's 'e want to stop for?"

Amberley gave a great start. He swung himself back into the car and switched on the engine. "Get out!" he snapped. "Get out, Sergeant. You, there - Peabody! Row the sergeant across the creek. You've got to get that man, Sergeant. Stand by that Vauxhall; he's coming back to it. God's teeth, will you get out?"

The sergeant found himself thrust into the road. The Bentley was already moving, but he ran beside it shouting: "Yes, but where are you going, sir?"

"After that motorboat," Amberley shouted back him. "She's alive, you fool!"

The next moment he was gone, leaving two amazed creatures to stare at one another.

The longshoreman spat reflectively. "E's touched. Thought so all along."

The sergeant collected his wits. "You'll soon see whether he's touched or not," he said. "Come on now; I've got to get across the creek to that landing-stage I've heard so much about. Look lively!"

Back along the shore road tore the Bentley. The needle of the speedometer crept up to fifty, to sixty, to seventy. The creek was just a mile from Littlehaven, and Amberley reached Littlehaven harbour in one minute a half and drew up beside one of the yards with a jerk that sent a shudder through the car.

There was a man in a blue jersey locking up. He looked round in mild surprise as Amberley sprang out of the car.

When it penetrated to his intelligence that the gentleman wanted to set out to sea at once in a motorboat he glanced instinctively round for protection. It seemed him that a lunatic had broken loose from some asylum.

"I'm not mad," Amberley said. "I'm acting for the police. Is there any boat here ready to start?"

One had to humour lunatics; the sailor had often heard that. "Oh yes, sir, there's a motorboat all ready," he said, edging away.

His arm was grasped urgently. "Listen to me!" Amberley said. "A man has set out in a boat from the creek. I must catch that boat. There's ten pounds for you if get me there in time."

The sailor hesitated, trying to loosen the grip on his arm. Ten pounds were ten pounds, but the gentleman was clearly insane.

"Do I look as though I were mad?" Amberley said fiercely. "Where's that fast boat you had moored here this morning?"