Appleby Plays Chicken (14 page)

‘Quite so. And there’s no lack of cleverness, I assure you, among the sort of people you and I are involved with at the moment.’

‘It doesn’t seem to prevent their getting killed.’

‘Very true. But I suspect the cleverest of them are alive still – and ready to give a kick when they get the chance.’

‘And you and I are going to try conclusions with them?’ David had moved to the farther side of the summit, and was peering with due caution into the late afternoon. ‘You’ve certainly cleared a ring for the job.’

‘Cleared a ring? I’m afraid not.’ Appleby was amused. ‘One doesn’t, I assure you, conduct affairs of this sort upon romantic principles. Far from it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It would be an exaggeration to say that this moor’s now an armed camp. But it’s no longer as unfrequented as it looks.’

David didn’t know whether to feel relieved or let down.

‘They must know,’ he said. ‘Presumably they don’t think in romantic terms either. They must guess that you and I aren’t, after all, out on an utterly exposed limb.’

Appleby nodded soberly. ‘That’s no doubt true. But they may feel they have a good deal at stake. At least your friend in the knickerbockers may feel that. And his nondescript assistant. Presumably you could identify either of them.’

‘I don’t know about the assistant. I haven’t much of a picture of him. But I’d certainly know the chap in knickerbockers. I had one long straight look at him – or rather two – at the pineapple nectar place. I’m a liability during the rest of his days, all right – just as I would have been with Redwine.’

David paused. ‘I suppose that means that I really am in some sort of hazard until – well, we get him. I doubt whether the nondescript assistant’s up to much. He lacked guts, I thought. But the knickerbocker chap – who seems the only other person under any threat from me – would take a stiff risk, I agree.’

‘Quite so. And when you vanished at the Point to Point he’d turn his thoughts back to Knack Tor at once. He’d know you’d be brought back – by the police. And he’d know that he himself would be, so to speak, an expected guest. But I think he’d feel it was a wonderful chance, all the same. Particularly with night coming along.’

David grinned. ‘Which is why we’ve had this leisurely chat?’

‘Just that. And I’d expect him to be on location by now. How would you approach the matter, if you were in his shoes?’

‘I’d do one of two things. Either I’d take the line masked by the Loaf – and be
on
the Loaf now. Or I’d think that too obvious and risky, and tackle the very ticklish business of finding and gaining cover on our own likely line of retreat.’

Appleby nodded. ‘I think you’re right. And it rather depends on what he feels he can do with that rifle… He never really had a chance of a fair pot at you?’

‘Not until the pineapple nectar place. And then he felt it was too risky.’

Appleby disengaged his shooting stick from its cranny in the rock. ‘It’s just possible that he may be a crack shot – which is a very different thing from being a thoroughly good one… And now, we’ve got a spot of work.’

‘Work?’

‘We’ve got to locate him, if we can. Take your clothes off.’

David stared. ‘What did you say?’

‘I asked you to take your clothes off. Sweater and shorts.’

Considerably to his own surprise, David found himself obeying this strange injunction. He wriggled out of his khaki pants and sky-blue windcheater without a notion of what his action was in aid of.

It was only when he saw Appleby stripping himself of his own tweeds that a suspicion of the truth dawned on him. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you can’t possibly do that! I can’t allow it!’

He was too late. Appleby’s head was already in the windcheater. And when he had pulled it down over himself and scrambled into the shorts, he turned to David for a moment with a look that was wholly formidable.

‘Be quiet, Henchman. This is a purely professional phase in the affair. You can’t be of the slightest help to me.’

‘You must stop!’ David was amazingly angry.

‘I won’t let you…you ought to have explained…it’s quite unfair!’ He took a step forward and made a grab at Appleby.

But Appleby simply feinted like a deft three-quarter, jumped over Redwine’s body, and in a flash was scrambling up to the rim of their rocky platform on the side facing the Loaf. And there he stood, gazing out over the moor.

A chill wind was now blowing stiffly. Even in the shallow cup of the summit it made itself felt, whipping round David’s bare thighs.

Up above, it caught at Appleby’s iron-grey hair and blew it about hisforehead. But his figure was as slim as David’s own. So the deception–

Suddenly Appleby bent at the knees, tumbled to the rock, rolled over, and came down in a crumpled heap at David’s feet.

And in the same instant David heard a sharp crack. He knew instantly that it was no tin-pot pistol that time. The rifle had really been brought into operation at last.

‘Well – we’ve located him, all right.’

David felt his inside turn queerly over. It just hadn’t occurred to him – in the split second that had passed – that Appleby wasn’t dead. But of course he wasn’t – although he sounded pretty shaken by his fall. Nobody could bring off a shot like that from the Loaf. Or not in a wind.

Appleby had scrambled to his feet and was skinning off the wind-cheater once more. ‘It’s rather nice,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But I must let you have it back, all the same.’

David found himself giving a long gasp. His eyes were fixed not on Appleby but on the rock a couple of yards from his feet. He took a step forward, stooped, and picked up something that lay there. ‘Did you feel it a close thing?’ he asked.

Appleby shook his head. ‘Dear me, no. It was silly of him to give away his position for the sake of so very slim a chance. In a wind, you know–’

‘I was thinking that myself. But I was wrong.’

David held out his closed hand, and then slowly opened it. It held a lock of iron-grey hair. ‘If you run to a personal museum,’ he said gravely, ‘you may care to add this to it.’

And suddenly he was furious again. ‘I’ll never forgive you,’ he said. ‘Never!’

‘If it’s to be an affair of honour, we can fix up a duel later on.’ Appleby had got himself into his decorous elderly trousers. ‘What are you called by your intimates?’

David glowered at him. ‘David.’

‘Well, I think I now qualify. So look sharp, David, and prepare to join the hunt. I’d hate to keep you out of that.’ He gave the quick faint smile that had first persuaded David he was all right. ‘Perhaps you’ll be in at the kill, and forgive me after all.’

David hauled up his shorts, and continued to scowl. ‘What do you mean – the hunt?’ he asked ungraciously.

‘The forces of the law should now be closing in on the Loaf. We’ll climb up and have a look. But remember your Army training, David. That rifle’s still in commission, remember. And your knickerbockered friend must be one of the best shots in England.’

Cautiously they clambered to the rim of rock again and peered over. The Loaf seemed absurdly far away. And there was no movement anywhere. ‘Isn’t it a complication?’ By asking this question, David was acknowledging that he had resumed diplomatic relations with Appleby. ‘I mean, his being a crack shot?’

‘It certainly is. And it partly explains the big risk he’s taken in the effort to get you – as he now probably believes he’s done. He reckons he can shoot himself out of any hasty trap we’ve constructed. What my local colleagues will have assembled is a dozen armed police. They’ll have heard the shot, and be spreading out on the other side of the Loaf now. They can bring up a good many more, if necessary, quite soon. And eventually, of course, we could have troops.’

‘It would be a sort of siege.’

‘Yes – and rather a cautious one. There would be no point in risking lives.’

‘I suppose not.’ David remembered Appleby in his windcheater. ‘But isn’t the chap more likely to make a break for it?’

‘He certainly is – in which case he must just be trailed until he’s exhausted.’ Appleby had got out his binoculars and was scanning the Loaf. ‘We may have an all-night show. There’s a moon.’

For David, lying beside Appleby on the rock, these words were oddly evocative. Perhaps it was because he had himself had a moonlight adventure of sorts the night before. Pictures began forming themselves in his head of extraordinary incidents to come. In order to discourage himself from this wool-gathering, he came rather hastily out with something. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said.

‘That’s always useful.’ Appleby didn’t lower his binoculars. But his tone was encouraging.

‘It’s about my man – the first man to be shot. He wasn’t shot up here at all – not, I mean, on the spot and with the little pistol. He was shot at long range from the Loaf, just as you nearly were a few minutes ago.’

‘But you say there was a pistol lying beside him – or actually in his hand – when you found him.’

‘Yes, I know. But Redwine had just climbed up and planted that, in order to make the thing look like suicide.’ David now spoke rapidly, for his theory was opening out before him. ‘You see, Redwine and the man in knickerbockers couldn’t get up here to tackle the chap, because the chap was himself armed. But they picked him off from the Loaf, and then Redwine came up and – as I say – planted the pistol, while at the same time pocketing the chap’s own gun – the gun he’d been holding them at bay with.’

‘I think I can see some of our people coming now.’ Appleby was sweeping the horizon beyond the Loaf. ‘And presumably there will be some behind us, on the track where we’ve left the car.’ He slipped the binocular strap over his head and handed the instrument to David. ‘Get over to the other side and have a look.’

David took the binoculars. ‘You don’t think much of my theory?’

‘Well, you know, if you plant a rifle bullet in a man’s head from a distance, you can scarcely hope to get away with the proposition that he’s shot himself with a small pistol.’

‘Of course not – if and when the body’s properly examined. But this body promptly disappeared.’

Appleby nodded. ‘So it did – to be replaced by another one, certainly shot at close range, and pretty certainly by the revolver we see lying there. Your theory’s a good start if I may say so, in criminal investigation, but it would be better if it gave any hint why one body has been replaced by another. That’s the crux of the matter, as it seems to me. Now, can you see anybody on that track?’

‘I can see your car – just.’ David was still focusing the binoculars. ‘And – by jove! – I can see two more. They’re just driving up.’

‘Ah – my local colleagues are out in force.’ Appleby was pleased. ‘It’s just as well. Our friend on the Loaf needs taking seriously, as we’ve seen.’

‘They’re getting out. I say!’ – David was suddenly alarmed – ‘they’ll know he’s got a rifle. But will they know he’s such a deadly shot?’

Appleby was folding his shooting stick. ‘They certainly won’t.’

‘And will these police who have just arrived beside your car even know that he’s on the Loaf?’

‘It depends whether they’ve brought walkie-talkie stuff and are in communication with the police on the other side. But you’ll tell them, David, anyway.’

‘I’ll tell them?’ David was surprised.

‘Precisely. That’s your job. You get down from the summit here on the far side, just where you originally came up. I think you can get over the rim without being commanded from the Loaf, but you’d better make that part of the operation as nippy as you can. Then you make for those chaps who’ve just arrived by the track – but on a detour that keeps Knack Tor between you and the Loaf until you’re entirely out of range, which you’d better regard as at another two hundred yards. And then you report on the situation to whoever you find in charge.’

‘I see. But I don’t know that I call that joining the hunt.’

‘Then you can call it an order instead. But I think you’ll find there’s plenty of excitement to come.’

‘What about you?’ David turned round and looked at Appleby.

‘I’ll stick here for a few minutes until you’re well off the map. Then I’ll go down the same way myself and work right round the Loaf, so as to meet the police coming up on it from the other side. They must have their warning too.’

‘I suppose they must. But how are you going to find cover?’

‘Oh, there’ll be cover all right.’ Appleby spoke briskly. ‘We’ve been rather exaggerating the nakedness of this moor.’

‘I see. Well, why shouldn’t it be me who goes in that direction?’

‘You must just regard it as another order.’ Appleby was good-humoured. ‘And I think, perhaps, I’d better have the glasses again. But just take another look at the police coming from the track, and see if you can count them.’

David did as he was told. It wasn’t easy to get a clear view, because he had to focus almost straight into a sun now low in the west. He was silent for a moment, and then asked a question. ‘Will they be the sort of police that wear helmets, or flat peaked caps?’

Appleby was puzzled. ‘Caps, I think. But can’t you make them out?’

‘They don’t seem to be wearing anything at all – on their heads, I mean. In fact’ – he hesitated – ‘…I don’t think they are policemen. I’m sure they’re not… Oh, I say!’

Appleby glanced across at him. ‘My dear man,’ he asked, ‘what’s taken you?’

‘The cars – drawn up behind yours. I recognize them. The front one’s the Heap.’

‘The
what
?’

‘It’s our name for Timothy’s tourer. And the other is Pettifor’s own, a Land Rover. It’s not the police. It’s them.’ And David laughed rather unsteadily. ‘It’s my reading party – Pettifor’s lot.’

The amusement with which Appleby received this strange intelligence struck David as a trifle forced. He had been expecting police. And when somebody important at Scotland Yard expects police it is only once in a blue moon, presumably, that police don’t turn up. To be offered a gaggle of undergraduates instead was a situation requiring the exercise of some self-control. And this must hold particularly of such a development when it occurred in the vicinity of a murderously inclined sharpshooter of exceptional skill. David was wondering whether it was up to him to apologize for this remarkable intrusion when Appleby spoke first.