Copyright & Information

Sky High

(The Country House Burglar)

First published in 1955

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
0755105117	9780755105113	Print
075513205X	9780755132058	Kindle
0755132424	9780755132423	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. "The plot," wrote Keating, "is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings." It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: "I always take a latish train to work," he explained in 1980, "and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.". After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

Quote

The sweet war-man is dead and rotten: Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried: when he breathed he was a man. But I will forward with my device.

Introduction

The choir rehearses and the quiet life of Brimberly village goes on. Yet sinister undercurrents simmer beneath the surface. It starts to emerge that the respectable choir members may not have been entirely honest about their pasts. The usual peace and tranquillity of the village is threatened. The rifling of the church poor-box may not be unprecedented, but then there is an explosion . . .

Chapter One

THE CHOIR REHEARSES

‘That’s all right, Lucy. It’s a difficult word to sing. Jesus is much better, and, of course, Jesu is easiest of all, but we’ve got to take what the hymnographers give us. Let’s do it again from the beginning.’

She sat down at the bench, which protested a little under her weight, and laid her thick, wrinkled fingers on the keys of the portable harmonium. The choir once more attacked Charles Wesley’s great morning hymn.

‘That’s not bad,’ said Mrs. Artside at the finish. ‘Not bad at all. There’s no need to look quite so down in the mouth, Maurice, when you’re singing “dark and cheerless is the morn”. I’m all in favour of expression, but you needn’t act it. That covers the hymns for the next two weeks, so now—’

‘Hundred and sixty-six. Old Hundredth. You all know that. We’ll have the treble descant for verse three. “O enter then His Courts with praise.” All right, Rupert?’

Rupert Cleeve nodded sombrely. Beside the three Hedges boys, thought Mrs. Artside, he looked like a greyhound puppy in a litter of collies. Where they were slow, shaggy-brown, and already thickening out into small replicas of their huge father, Rupert was thin, pale, and a bundle of controlled nerves. Dress him in a frilly collar and a satin suit and he would take the shine out of any Hollywood Fauntleroy. Even in a plain flannel suit he looked good enough to eat.

‘Plantagenet, Llandudno and Snagge,’ said Mrs. Artside rapidly. ‘It’s no good getting ambitious if we’re to make time for an anthem. After all, it’s the first one we’ve done since the Christmas before last. Hand the sheets round would you, Tim?’

The thick young man in flannel jacket and corduroy trousers distributed the anthems and the choir, from Ellen, the youngest Hedges girl to big Jim Hedges himself, in his best black, stared with dutiful curiosity at the symbols spread out before them, symbols which their unstinting efforts had but three weeks to turn into a river of liquid harmony.

Only Major MacMorris, the Cantoris tenor, seemed unperturbed. He glanced in quick, professional manner, through the score and bent across to say something to Sue Palling, the Cantoris Alto.

Tim Artside noticed the movement but did nothing about it. There was five yards of vestry floor between them, and in church and directly under his mother’s eye was not the best place to start a fight.

‘”Come, ye thankful people, come”,’ said Mrs. Artside. ‘We can’t run to first and second trebles, so I think, on the whole, we’ll stick to first. The tenor solo – that’ll be safe enough—’

Major MacMorris exposed his white teeth in a smile. He assumed, correctly, that the compliment was being paid to him. Tim Artside chalked that one up, too.

‘I’d better do the bass voluntary – “ere the winter storms begin” – unless—’ she looked politely at Jim Hedges, who grinned and said that on the whole he thought Mrs. Artside would do it better than him.

‘I suggest we take it straight through. Start on the tenth beat – like this—’ She sketched the introduction nimbly on the harmonium, and at the appropriate moment burst out with the word ‘COME’ in her resonant bass.

‘All right – once more then – I want you all to come in this time – plenty of attack. Da dum diddy dee—dum dum—dum dum—COME—yes, what is it?’

‘I should have thought you could have lasted four pages of music without—all right, all right—we won’t argue about it. You ought to know.’

Rupert walked sedately from the vestry and closed the door behind him. All his movements were composed and unselfconsciously neat.

‘Whilst we’re waiting for Rupert we might run through the treble part. All ready? On the down beat. “Come ye thankful people come. Raise the song of Harvest Home.” Oh dear. That wasn’t very good, was it?’

‘Try it once more. Well. That’s a little better. Perhaps if the altos backed you up this time—’

‘Wouldn’t raise the price of beer,’ said Jim Hedges. He spoke with the authority of one who was not only the father of five-sixths of the trebles, but also owned and drove the only taxi in Brimberley.

‘It hasn’t got much attack,’ agreed Mrs. Artside. ‘It’ll get better with practice, I expect. Here’s Rupert, at last. Try it once more.’

It went better this time. The bass, which consisted for the most part of a repetition of the words ‘Harvest Home, Harvest Home’ was safe enough in the hands of Jim Hedges who, in forty years, had sung every part in Brimberley choir from treble and wobbling alto through green-stick tenor down to the comfortable depths of bass. Major MacMorris made child’s play of the tenor, rebelliously followed by Tim Artside, who was reliable if he had someone to help him start but had no idea of striking the initial note. Lucy Mallory and Sue Palling were, at best, moderate altos.

‘I think we shall make out,’ said Mrs. Artside at last. ‘We’ve got two more Tuesdays before the big day, and I’d like one private run with the trebles. Friday? No, that’s Institute Night. Next Monday then. It’ll save opening the church up if you can come to my house.’

On behalf of five of the trebles, Jim Hedges agreed that Monday was as good an evening as any. Rupert said he would find out.

‘Come to that I can ask your father to-night,’ said Mrs. Artside. ‘He’s driving over to collect you. Thank you, Lucy. If you’d just put the psalters back in the choir stalls. You’ll want them all on Sunday. I’ll take the anthems home with me for next Monday. Would you lock up, Tim? I’ve got to hurry back home and put the coffee on. Are you going to be in this evening? The key goes back to the Vicar. If he isn’t in you can put it through his letter box, but I think he must be in, it’s Confirmation Class.’

‘I’ve locked up this church at least twelve times,’ said Tim. ‘You go and get the coffee ready. And reverting to your last remark but three, I don’t expect I shall be joining you, but if I do I am capable of getting out another cup. And who’s taking Rupert home?’

‘He can come on the back of my motor-cycle,’ said Mrs. Artside. ‘Would you like that, Rupert?’

‘All right,’ said Rupert. Even the thought of riding pillion to Mrs. Artside did not seem to stir his remarkable soul.

Left to himself, Tim bolted the outside door of the vestry, fastened the window, and locked the anthem cupboard. He could hear the sounds of the choir dispersing; the dominant note was the squeal of the Hedges children, who seemed to recover full voice the moment they got outside the church. He grinned as he heard the eldest boy, Maurice, chanting ‘Kerr-rist, Kerr-rist, Kerr-rist’. The deep roar of his mother’s motor-cycle, rising as she changed gear for the corner, diminishing as she swung into the road, and muttering away into the distance. Heavy footsteps on the gravel – Jim Hedges, he judged – and the rattle of Lucy Mallory’s voice.

He stepped out into the body of the church, shut the heavy inner door of the vestry, and made his way slowly through the choir into the aisle. All around him, in the quiet dimness was the church smell of hassocks and coconut matting and lamp oil and holiness.

Out in the porch he could still hear voices. One was MacMorris. He would have recognised anywhere those amazingly gentlemanly cadences. The other was young Sue. She was laughing.

Tim stepped through, shut the wicket door, and turned the key. He could see Sue now, white against the dusk, perched on the railing of the porch. MacMorris was standing beside her.

‘Well, old boy,’ said MacMorris judicially, ‘why don’t we all go together.’

‘Because, old boy,’ said Tim, ‘I’ve got something I want to tell Miss Palling, and I don’t particularly want it broadcast over half of Brimberley.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be particularly offensive, or non-offensive, for that matter. It was just a thought. Are you coming, Sue?’

‘If I’m behaving like a silly little schoolboy, might I suggest that MacMorris – I beg his pardon, Major MacMorris – was behaving like a silly little grown-up.’

‘Possibly I misunderstood you. I thought he was offering to walk home in the gloaming with—’

She looked at MacMorris. There was a pause in the proceedings, broken only by Tim, who was whistling quietly through his teeth.

MacMorris seemed to appreciate that the next step was with him. He cleared his throat.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we’re both behaving stupidly.’ He turned to Sue. ‘If my offer offended you—’

‘Then I’m sorry it should have been misunderstood. Perhaps you’ll both excuse me. Good night.’

The dapper little figure swung away down the path. Tim and Sue watched in silence until the wicket gate clicked and he was gone.

‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘If we walk quickly, you’ll get your circulation back.’

‘But look here,’ said Tim. ‘What’s up? I’m sorry if that little twerp upset you, but—’

‘It’s a free country,’ said Sue. ‘You’re bigger than me. I can’t stop you using the public roads, if you feel like it.’

She set off up the path and out into the road. Tim padded along beside her. Offended dignity kept him quiet for a hundred yards; then he said again, rather feebly, ‘What’s it all about?’

‘I think,’ said Sue clearly, ‘that that was about the most oafish performance I’ve ever listened to in my life.’

‘Threatening a man who is half your size and twice your age, and then crowing like a silly little bully because he has enough gumption on you.’

‘And of all excuses for forcing a quarrel on him, you had to pick on suggesting filthy things about him, because he offered to walk home with me – which he has done umpteen times before, without your permission – seeing that he lives in Melliker Lane only two houses away from us.’

‘It was so silly it ought to have made me laugh – if it hadn’t made me sick. And now’—she swung round at the top of a dark lane leading off the main road, among the pine trees—’will you go home. I can actually see my front gate. Are you satisfied?’

‘It’s a bit dark,’ said Tim obstinately. ‘I’d better come down with you. Or are you afraid to trust me?’

‘Afraid of you?’ said Sue. She looked at him speculatively. ‘You great big war hero. I shouldn’t think that little girls are your strong point, are they? At least, I’ve never heard about it, and we hear so much about you, I feel sure anything like that would have cropped up by now. Prancing round with soot on your face – yes. Sticking knives into people, small people, I should imagine, on tonight’s form.’

‘Now you’re being silly,’ said Tim. ‘And anyway, I never stuck a knife into anyone.’

‘Wouldn’t they turn their backs on you?’ said Sue. ‘How tactless of them.’

At this point both disputants realised, with embarrassment, that they were not alone.

Standing quietly in the shadow, under one of the trees, was a tall figure in cape and helmet.

She stalked away up the road, and turned in at the white gate, visible at the far end. The gate swung shut with a click. The door opened, a light came on in the front room. Tim watched. The cloaked figure watched.

‘Afraid it is, sir,’ said Constable Queen, stepping out on to the road. He was a big, blond, red-faced, serious young man.

Tim pulled out a cigarette, lit it and, after a moment’s thought, offered one to Constable Queen, who took it, said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ in a noncommittal way, and put it away in his top pocket.

Constable Queen laughed tolerantly. ‘Dogs without licences, and bicycles without lights,’ he said. ‘That’s our main excitement. Still and all, you never know.’

‘What I’ve found about trouble,’ said Constable Queen after a pause for thought, ‘is that you never do expect it – until after it’s happened – if you see what I mean.’

The constable seemed to be in no hurry to move on. Probably he would smoke the cigarette as soon as he was alone.

Tim turned on his heel, and walked up to the corner. A right-hand turn would have taken him back along the main road, towards his mother’s house.

General Sir Hubert Palling, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., D.S.O., T.D., a member of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, Colonel Commandant of the Deeside Light Infantry, and grandfather of Sue, was over eighty, but hardly looked more than sixty. He had kept his figure and his wits and had every intention of living to ninety or beyond.

Longevity, in his view, belonged to a soldier as of right. There was no such thing as dying in middle age. You might die young, either in some operation of war or in one of those violent sports which are part of the preparation of an officer for war. Or you might survive this period of active service and still more active sport, in which case you were practically booked for a long and useful old age.

Despite the honour of knighthood and the gold braid on his ceremonial uniform, General Palling kept no car and no full-time servant, inside or outside his house. He drank little, and smoked not at all. And whilst he weeded his own flower-beds or helped with the washing-up in the evening, or walked in the rain to the bus stop, he did sometimes chuckle to himself over the comforting thought that he still had his wind and his waistline; whilst his contemporaries and his juniors, more opulent and more sedentary, had long since gone to their account – at seventy – at sixty – at fifty.

Why, good heavens, he had read in the papers of a business man of forty-five who had collapsed and died in his office, apparently as the result of walking up two flights of steps. At forty-five a man should be in the very prime of his life, ready to spend fifteen hours in the saddle and a night, in his greatcoat, under the stars.

Naturally he never voiced these opinions, even to a close friend, like Liz Artside, in whose drawing-room he was at the moment sitting. It would have sounded like complacency. But the thought was there.

Sad to say, as Mrs. Artside bustled in and out with her coffee making and the General sat perched in the wheel-back chair with padded arms beside the fire, they were bickering; about poetry.

The General could see no good thing beyond Tennyson. Mrs. Artside had more catholic tastes.

‘Did he write something called Columbus? Move the atlas and I’ll put the tray on the table beside you.’

‘Were you at Salamanca? No? We fronted there the learning of all Spain. All their cosmogonies, their astronomies. Guesswork, they guessed it; but the golden guess is morning-star to the full round of truth! Isn’t that splendid. Browning and better.’

‘Trust a woman to be wise after the event. If I’d said it was Browning you’d have gone into ecstasies.’

‘I never go into ecstasies,’ said Mrs. Artside, standing a full coffee-pot carefully down on the Benares tray. ‘I agree that it sounds a little better than his usual drip. Birds in the high hall garden when twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud crying and calling.’

‘I like that too,’ said the General loyally, ‘but this is scientific, if you follow me. “The compass, like an old friend, false at last”. That’s terrifically true. Whenever you really get lost, the first thing you begin to blame is your compass. I remember once, in South Africa, leading a column of all arms. Don’t know why I was leading it. Probably the junior officer available – he usually got told off for that sort of job. I suddenly looked at my compass and—are you worried about something?’

‘Something on your mind. I’ll tell you the rest of that story another time. It’s rather a good one. What’s up?’

One of the pleasures of talking to Liz Artside was that there was no need for suppression or reticence. He could talk to her about grown-up sons without the fearful suspicion that she was being sorry for him because he had lost both of his own. The elder had died in France, in 1917, on the eve of his 21st birthday; the younger, having lost his own wife, Sue’s mother, in an air-raid in 1940, had pulled sufficient strings to get himself sent to North Africa where he had gone to his account in the messy fighting round Medjz-el-Bab, accompanied by a satisfactory number of Germans. Sue had been six at the time.

‘That’s one of the things I’d like to know,’ said Mrs. Artside. ‘He goes up to London every day, but I’ve no more idea than the man in the moon what he does when he gets there.’

‘With a war record like his,’ he said at last, ‘I should have thought he ought to be able to step into almost any job.’

‘I mean, Hubert,’ said Mrs. Artside gently, ‘do you really mean that you think he had a good war record.’

If the General had had enough spare blood in his arteries, he would have blushed. He managed to look ruffled.

‘I must watch out for it. One of my prejudices. As you get older you collect prejudices. Like barnacles. Yes. All right. I have always been opposed to the idea of a corps d’élite. Special terms of service and special pay. That sort of thing. Of course, you can’t prevent some men being braver than others. Like dogs. It’s biological. But you don’t want to segregate the brave men and dress them up. Bad for them, and bad for the rest of the Army as well. You want to keep them in the regiment. In the Peninsula,’ (the General spoke exactly as if it had been one of his earlier campaigns), ‘we had picked men in every regiment. Light Companies, we called them – men who could be trusted out on their own to hold a strong point or make up a forlorn hope. You’d band them together, you see, for a job like that. But after it was over they went back to their regiments.’

‘Nothing against them personally. Very good chaps. It’s the idea I don’t like. The hardest job in war is done by the Infantry holding the line. No way out of it. Mud and frost and trench mortars and trench feet—’

‘Bound to have been. All wars are like that if you’re in the Infantry. That’s why I don’t think it’s right to take men out of it, and give ‘em a lot of publicity and train ‘em up for – for bag-snatching expeditions behind the lines. Just a point of view.’

‘Do you mean,’ said Mrs. Artside, ‘that you object to the idea of Special Service because it cheapens the rest of the Infantry, or because it doesn’t achieve its object or because it’s bad for the men in it.’

‘That’s what I like about you, Liz,’ said the General. ‘You’re the only woman I know who thinks like a man. First and second reasons – not the third. I don’t think it turns ‘em into crooks.’

‘Well, thank goodness for that. Have another cup of coffee. I’ll have to make some more for Bob anyway.’

‘I wasn’t sure myself. You know what Bob’s like. He usually comes to collect Rupert on choir nights, if he isn’t too busy.’

‘He’s a worker,’ said the General. ‘Always had the reputation for it. Even in his Army days. I’m only sorry he won’t be performing for us much longer.’

‘Nothing’s up. But he’s sixty-four. As soon as anyone tumbles to it – always supposing they’ve got someone capable of counting up to sixty-four – they’ll be looking round for a bright young nincompoop to take his place.’ The General paused to consider the peculiar ways of county councils, and then added, ‘extraordinary how he’s grown on everybody. You’ll hear ‘em all saying now that he’s the best bet the county’s ever had – and so he might be. But that wasn’t the tune when he was elected seven – eight – years ago.’

‘It certainly wasn’t,’ said the General. ‘”No experience”. “Brainless army has-been”. “Jobs for the boys”. So much balderdash. If anyone had taken the trouble to look up his record, they might have saved themselves blowing off a lot of hot air they had to swallow back afterwards.’

‘I don’t see that anyone could call Bob exactly inexperienced,’ agreed Mrs. Artside. ‘After all, he had a top Q job in the Rhine Army at Cologne when he was only—let me see—he can’t have been more than twenty-nine. He was sharing a house with Tom and me when—’

After a pause the General added, ‘I’d like to see some of his critics trying to do Q to an Army group.’

‘Then when he retired from the War Office – he was Deputy Chief Constable in Liverpool – and he did that security job for the Home Office in this last war.’

‘I know,’ said the General. ‘I know. But the fact is, poor old Bob looks almost too like a soldier, and that prejudices people.’

‘No doubt about it,’ said Liz, ‘his face is his misfortune. If he was brown, with a hatchet jaw – or white faced, with keen grey eyes – everyone would realise what a tremendous person he was. As it is, he blows out that silly moustache at you, gives you a popping look from his great button eyes, and says “Hrrrmph” – and how can you help thinking, blimp in person! Wasn’t that the bell? I have to answer my own door to-night. Anna’s at the cinema.’

The General sat and listened. He heard the front door open, and Mrs. Artside’s voice, and a man’s voice in reply; and something about Rupert, and ‘Sam can look after him’, and then the drawing-room door opened and Liz came back, followed by the Chairman of the county council.

‘Evening, General. It’s turned cold, hasn’t it.’ Then to Liz. ‘If the car takes Rupert home and comes back, you’ll have to put up with me for an hour. Do you think you can stand it? I’m in need of decent company. I’ve been spending the last two hours with a lot of old women who call themselves a committee. Is that for me? Thank you very much.’

Bob Cleeve accepted the armchair and the coffee cup; lowered himself into the former and lifted the latter to his lips; drank and put it down.

Chapter Two

ANDANTE

‘In theory,’ said Cleeve, ‘only policemen should be made Chief Constables. After all, they know how the British police system works. They’ve been in it since boyhood. It no longer has power to annoy them. So they’re the obvious choice.’

‘It would depend on what you meant by officers. In one sense all policemen are officers—’

‘I always call a policeman “officer” when I don’t know what else to call him,’ agreed Liz. ‘If I see he’s got three stripes, then I promote him to sergeant.’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean by an officer,’ said the General crossly.

‘In our case,’ said Cleeve, ‘no question arises. We’ve got a good one, who happens to be a policeman. I had dinner with him this evening.’

‘Tom Pearce is all right,’ agreed the General. ‘Does he run you, or do you run him?’

‘It’s a moot point,’ said Cleeve. ‘As Chairman of the county council, I’m automatically head of the Standing Joint Committee, and in theory the Standing Joint Committee superintends the county police. Actually all we do is appoint a good Chief Constable and let him rip.’

‘Yes,’ said Cleeve simply. ‘I think so. He’s unusually co-operative, I should say. And he’s not above asking for advice. When he’s got anything really in his hair he comes round to a meal and talks about it.’

Cleeve looked startled. Liz said, ‘Deduction. You told us he came to dinner with you to-night.’

‘Well, grocers who happen to be county councillors. He’s got a big shop in Bramshott. Mind you, I’ve nothing against grocers. I know some very nice ones. But this one’s a particularly—a particularly grocerish sort of grocer.’

‘He keeps a lady in a cage, most cruelly all day, and makes her count and calls her Miss, until she fades away,’ suggested Liz.

‘What? Yes, that sort of thing. Well, this one’s moving heaven and earth to get the police to divert the traffic out of the Market Square, down a side street, and back along South Street. A sort of one-way traffic system. Every time we meet he’s got a fresh reason for it. Overcrowding, parking offences, congestion of pavements. This time he’d managed to tie it up with immorality amongst shop assistants.’

‘He sounds a persistent type,’ said Liz. ‘I suppose he’s got some reason for it.’

‘Of course he’s got a reason. His shop’s in South Street. His chief rival’s in the Market Square.’

‘Why don’t you make it plain that you’ve spotted what he’s up to and tell him to go to the devil?’

‘My dear Liz! That comes of living all your life in nice clean Army circles. I’ve no doubt that Bill, rest his soul, would have upped and kicked him in the pants. But this is the age of democracy. You can’t kick grocers in the pants anymore.’

‘Of course he was. That was what made him an autocrat. Real autocrats are always reasonable.’

‘What nonsense you do talk,’ said Liz dreamily. (It was the real test, she thought. If people who had known and liked Bill talked about him she felt warm and happy. There was no twinge of the old pain. If any other sort of people discussed him, she felt edgy straight away.)

‘Crime. Violence. Read in the papers the other day, two youths, armed with knuckledusters, attacked an old lady of seventy. Robbed her of her life’s savings. Over two hundred pounds in notes. Kept them under her mattress.’

‘I hold no brief for youths with knuckledusters,’ said Liz, ‘but I can’t help feeling that some of the trouble is caused by the old ladies themselves. Why must they keep their life’s savings under their mattresses? I keep mine in the bank.’

‘I don’t agree that there’s been such an increase in crime since the war,’ said Cleeve. ‘Immediately after, perhaps. Bit of disorganisation then. But we’ve got over that. It isn’t a case of more crime. It’s different crime.’

‘No. I didn’t quite mean that. Crooks get more scientific. So do the police. That cancels itself out. I meant fashions in crime. Before the war it was all gangs. Robbery and violence and intimidation. A sort of backwash from across the Atlantic.’

‘I’m glad gangs have gone out,’ said Liz. ‘I never really cared for gangs. What is it now?’

Cleeve paused for a moment before answering, and looked unusually serious. ‘I should say,’ he said, ‘that it’s the age of the solitary criminal. The one-man army. I’m not talking about murder. Murder’s always a solitary job. I mean, real criminals. Blackmailers, burglars, forgers, receivers and larcenists of all sorts from men who blow safes to men who live on handfuls of coppers extracted from telephone boxes—’

‘I shouldn’t have thought that it was easy to break open a safe single-handed,’ said Liz.

‘That’s because you’re not an expert,’ said Cleeve with a grin. ‘Well, no. Perhaps safe-breaking isn’t a good example. Safe breakers usually work in threes. But take your country house burglar. There’s your crown prince of criminals.’

‘The trouble with you, Bob,’ said the General, ‘Is that you’re really half in sympathy with all these blackguards.’

‘Not really,’ said Cleeve seriously. ‘Most of them are sad nuisances. But just an occasional genius. Do you remember Feder? Or Barry, as he called himself. Outwardly a respectable average adjuster in the city. And no nonsense. It was a real business. If you had an average to adjust, he’d adjust it for you. Only it didn’t quite support his flat in Albany and his house near Leatherhead and his three cars and his strings of racehorses and girlfriends. Those had to be paid for out of his homework.’

‘Not very often – so far as one can judge, not more than two or three times in a year – at about eleven o’clock at night he’d leave his country house. No guests that weekend. A conveniently deaf butler and a cook who slept in the far wing. He’d roll his car quietly out of the garage and drive off fast into the night. He’d be back before morning. Old man Reynard, lolloping home to his earth, with a big grin on his face and a tuft of feathers in the corner of his mouth. And sure enough, you’d read in your paper that the country house gang – when in doubt the papers always call it a gang – had broken into the Earl of Mudshire’s residence near Sunningdale and had removed the gold plate from the dining-room, the intaglios from the Long Gallery and the Countess’ own hundred diamond matching necklace (which was of the highest sentimental value to her Ladyship) and the insurers had been informed. Only it wasn’t a gang. It was clever Mr. Feder, who was known to the county as Barry. Who had taken the trouble to teach himself – at an age when most young men are training to cut out an appendix or draw up a will – to pick a lock, dislocate a burglar alarm, silence a dog, and cut a precious stone or a throat in a neat, quiet, gentlemanly way. All his jobs were surgical operations. Long, slow, careful planning, followed by quick, ruthless execution.’

‘I should have thought,’ said Liz, ‘that when he got back to his roost with the loot his troubles were only just starting. How on earth did he turn it into cash?’

‘Well, that’s always a snag. He overcame it by patience. He concentrated on jewellery and precious metals. As I said, he could cut a diamond as well as most experts. And he made his own settings. Lovely work, some of them. But the real thing was that he was able to wait. Years, if necessary. And, of course, when he did come to dispose of anything, his position in life was a help. He wasn’t a hole-and-corner sort of person. He lived a straightforward ordinary life and had lots of rich friends. If he offered a well-known jeweller a pair of pendeloque-cut diamond earrings set in platinum filigree, the jeweller was hardly likely to approach the transaction in a suspicious frame of mind. But suppose, as a matter of precaution, he checked through his latest numbers of “Hue & Cry” and the “Pawnbrokers List.” He wasn’t going to find anything. The diamonds were probably a pair of reshaped marquise-cut stones which had been stolen three years before. And anyway, why should he be suspicious? He knew Mr. Barry well. A very nice gentleman indeed, who had bought a gold cigarette case from him only a month before.’

‘Clever that,’ said the General. ‘I suppose you’d say that his greatest risk was being seen actually on the job.’

‘A risk for him,’ said Cleeve soberly. ‘But, by the Lord, a very much greater risk for the person who happened to see him.’

‘A killer?’ A look of interest flickered into the General’s frosty eye. Killers, he understood. He had encountered a lot of them in his time, two-legged and four-legged.

‘Not by nature, perhaps,’ said Cleeve. ‘But a man like that would kill to preserve his identity. There aren’t many of them about at one time, and the police have got a short list of suspects. I don’t know just how the list is compiled, but you can take it it’s there.’

‘And you mean,’ said Liz, ‘that if some absolutely independent witness – a servant or a guest or the householder himself – happened to meet your man actually on the job, then he’d have to be killed.’

‘That’s right,’ said Cleeve. ‘Otherwise the police would be round next day to show him a bunch of photographs and – respectable Mr. Barry, businessman and churchwarden, would be marched off to the clink, and no one more surprised than the Vicar.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t tell you how Feder was caught. It was just before the war. He had broken into a house at Great Missenden – after diamonds, as usual. Only this time, for various reasons he went in whilst the family was at dinner. What he didn’t know was that the son and heir, a bright young chap aged eleven, was hiding in a cupboard in his mother’s bedroom. Why he should have been doing that, I don’t know. There’s no accounting for children. He watched Feder walk in, break open the dressing table, force the wall-safe, remove the jewel cases, and so on. Took him about twenty minutes.’

‘Not on your life. He wore gloves, but never any form of disguise. Reckoned it was safer that way. If he was seen at a distance he calculated on being mistaken for a guest or servant. It would have spoilt the effect if he’d been wearing a hood or a false beard. When Feder had finished, the boy thought he would jump out and say Boo! – just to see what happened.’