Mystery Mile (28 page)

Campion wriggled towards the gap in the floor boards. It was his one hope. The pain in his shoulder was crippling him. He was terrified lest his senses should give way before it and he should faint.

In the darkness the man who a moment before had been chatting affably to him hovered, ready to kill.

Campion found the gap with his foot. Savagely he jerked himself towards it, and at the instant Barber fired. The gun had a silencer on it, but a flash of flame cut through the darkness. The place was too small for there to be a chance for the younger man to escape. The bullet entered his body.

The Oriental heard the stifled grunt of his victim as he slid helplessly through the opening on the marsh beneath.

Unaware of this second exit, he fired again, bullet after bullet.

The silencer was most effective. He had no cause to fear an alarm and he was determined to despatch his man.

When at last he paused there was an ominous silence in the hut.

‘Clever, my friend, clever to the end!' He spoke softly, but there was a peculiarly horrible satisfaction in his tone.

Still holding the gun cautiously, he drew a match-box from his pocket, his spent torch being useless. The tiny spurt of flame flickered for an instant, and went out in the draught. He moved to the edge of the gap under the bench and once more struck a match. This time the flame lasted longer.

Campion lay upon his back on the fast-reddening grass. His spectacles had fallen off and his eyes were closed, his face livid in the momentary light. Just for an instant the Turk hesitated. He had fired five times. There was one shot left in his gun. He debated if he should use it. There was no way of making sure if the man were dead unless he went out to him.

As he knelt looking down, the little green-and-gold book which he had snatched up in his first rush from the table slipped from his pocket where he had hurriedly thrust it and fell out on to the figure below.

That decided him. He clambered carefully to his feet and crossed the hut.

In the doorway he paused, feeling for the steps. He descended carefully.

Once on the grass he attempted to strike another light, but the rain which was still falling lightly rendered it impossible. He stepped out blindly to the left, unconsciously taking the shorter way round the hut. He took a step forward, then another, the short thick grass still beneath his feet.

As he took the third step a sudden sense of impending danger seized him, and he tried vainly to swing his weight back. A moment before he might have succeeded, but the turf beneath his feet was slippery.

He staggered and plunged forward over the three-foot drop of ragged earth into the stretch of slimy mud which lay beneath – that very stretch, paler and smoother-looking than the rest, which Giles had been so fearful of finding not an hour before. Unconscious of the imminent danger, he struggled to right himself, his only fear being that his alibi would be more difficult to establish now that his clothes were soaked with sea water and slime.

All round him the mud sucked and chattered to itself in its quiet guttural tongue. The rain continued to fall. He was alone between clay and sky.

He fought fiendishly to escape, realizing suddenly that the slime was past his waist. He beat out wildly with his arms and touched nothing but the foetid stuff. It reached his shoulders, and oblivious of any other danger he screamed aloud, calling
upon Campion, straining his lungs until he felt that the village must hear.

The mud gurgled and spat. Little rivulets of water burst up through it. He slipped deeper; in a moment it must reach his chin. He forced his arms down, an instinct telling him that he might so gain a moment's respite. The stuff was closing about him, sucking him gently, firmly, and with horrible slowness into its slimy breast. He dared not scream now, lest the very movement should drag him under.

It was at that second that, far below, his foot touched the hard. He stiffened all over, a new hope returning. The difficulty of breathing was intense; as if it felt itself cheated, the mud pressed him, flattened him with its enormous weight.

Still, hope was returning, a wild, reckless desire for life, whatever it might bring with it.

The rain stopped.

Cramps were racking him, but he dared not relax the muscles that alone held him above the morass.

Far over his head the clouds parted. The tail end of the storm which had passed over them had dispersed itself. It became a little lighter.

He stared ahead of him. His eyes strained out of their sockets. His face was distorted, his mouth gaping, the veins standing out in great ridges under his pallid skin.

Not a foot away from him was a thick white line, irregular, more terrible, more relentless than the mud itself, the tide.

He watched it. Every spark of life that was left in him concentrated against this last and most dreadful foe. It retreated a little way, only to rush forward again within an inch of his face, splashing him with brine.

He forced up every fighting nerve that was in him. His frenzied scream startled the wild birds, and echoed, a cry of death, into the silent rooms of the Manor itself, acres distant across the saltings, and died away hollowly in the stillness of the early morning.

The waves retreated once more, and this time returned frothing, laughing, smothering over his mouth.

‘TWO TEETH?' SAID
the man from Scotland Yard with contempt. ‘He's got seven. Three at the bottom, four at the top. Mary and I are crazy about him. You'll have to come round and see him as soon as you can get out again.'

He was sitting forward in the big chair, before one of the first of autumn's fires, in the flat at Bottle Street.

‘I'll come down next week. I'm all right now.' The slightly high-pitched voice was more hollow than it had been, but it had not lost that suggestion of exuberance which had always been its characteristic. Campion was almost completely hidden in the depths of his high-backed Toby chair. Only now and again when the firelight flickered did the other man get a glimpse of his face. It was still desperately haggard from his long illness. All Barber's bullet had pierced his lung and the mending had been slow. But his old sparkle had returned and his eyes behind his horn-rimmed spectacles were once more amused and very much alive.

His companion smiled at him. ‘You were damned lucky to come out of that as well as you did,' he said. ‘You were always lucky.'

‘I'm very grateful to the boys for getting me out of it so quietly,' murmured Campion with genuine gratitude. He sighed. ‘I was afraid I was going to get a medal.'

‘More kicks than ha'pence in our job,' said the other. ‘It's something to lay to your credit, though. There wasn't a doubt that it was the right man. We've been tracing the sources of his income among other things. Marvellous!' he remarked dreamily, leaning forward and knocking the ashes of his pipe out on the hearth.

Campion chuckled. ‘You ought to start a copybook, Stanis,'
he said. ‘But I really thought I was for it that time when I fell through the floor. I recited God Save the King, sang the old school song, muttered the family motto – “No Rubbish to be Shot Here” – and passed out. Any further developments in the Datchett case?'

‘Lugg told me I wasn't to talk shop.'

The man from Scotland Yard looked round him nervously. Lugg, in his new role as hospital attendant, was a truly terrifying personage. As he was nowhere in sight the man continued softly.

‘I wanted to tell you about that,' he said. ‘He went to pieces at his trial – I don't suppose you've seen the papers. He got the limit. I don't think there'll be any appeal either. We got all the witnesses we wanted from the Maplestone Hall affair. There was no need to go into that other business.'

Campion glanced up sharply. ‘Swithin Cush?'

The other man nodded.

‘That was interesting if you like,' he said. ‘In the house at Kensington there were masses of stuff dealing with all sorts of things. Wherever possible we bunged the papers back to the right owners and said no more about it. We're not out to stir up scandals. We got our man where we wanted him, and that was right enough. But the old man had his secret all right. The last thing you'd guess in a thousand years. He wasn't a parson.'

Campion stared at him.

‘He wasn't a parson?' he repeated blankly. ‘They've pulled your leg again, Stanis.'

‘No. It's quite true.' The other man shook his head. ‘An impersonation story fifty years old. There were two brothers – Swithin Cush just ordained, Welwyn Cush, too poor to take the ‘varsity course. Swithin died, apparently quite suddenly, from heart trouble. The two brothers were living alone together in rooms in Kensington. The dead man had just been appointed to his first curacy in a Norfolk village. The younger man had a great friend in the daughter of the house, and it was she, I fancy, who put the idea up to him. He allowed the dead man to be buried in his name, and took his job. There was only a year between the brothers, and they seem to have resembled
each other very closely. No one appears to have doubted Welwyn for a moment and the years slipped by as they do in the country. The life was congenial to him, the vicar liked him, and he was a great favourite with the parishioners. Five or six years later he was appointed to Mystery Mile, and his history there I suppose you know much better than I do. The older he got the safer he was. The only person who knew his secret was the woman in Kensington. She died only about a year or so ago. Her name was Aggie Saunders, and very much the class of person you'd imagine.' He glanced at Campion, who was sitting forward in his chair, his eyes goggling. He continued.

‘She could not resist reminding him from time to time of the power she held over him by deliberately referring to the secret in long rambling letters to him. He replied to these imploring her not to write anything so incriminating.

‘I fancy that she found that a letter on this subject invariably brought a reply from him, and therefore harped upon it shamelessly. When she felt that her time was drawing to an end she packed up all these letters of his and sent them to him, choosing, by extraordinary bad luck, the first week of Kettle's appointment as postmaster.

‘Kettle simply pinched the letters and packed them off to Datchett. From which time the poor old boy you knew as Swithin Cush couldn't have had a moment's peace. How's that?'

Campion was silent for a moment, lost in amazement. ‘Good Lord!' he said at last, and repeated softly, ‘Good Lord!'

‘Blackmail is the filthiest of all crimes,' said the man from Scotland Yard. ‘I'm glad Datchett got what was coming to him.'

Campion regarded his visitor awkwardly.

‘This raises a rather delicate question re Births, Marriages, and Deaths in Mystery Mile, doesn't it?' he said. ‘What are your people doing with the letters?'

Detective Inspector Stanislaus Oates shrugged his shoulders. He seemed almost official in his vagueness. ‘Whatever criticism anybody ever makes about Scotland Yard,' he said, ‘they can't
call us mischief makers. We protect the peace: that's our job. I don't fancy we shall go into it any further. It would make a lot of unpleasantness all round, and a scandal in the Church, which is always to be avoided. I'm not an authority on ecclesiastical law – I suppose it would be a case for the archbishop if it ever came out.'

At the words ‘ecclesiastical law' Campion pricked up his ears. For the first time he realized the meaning of the mysterious phrase in Swithin Cush's letter to Giles: ‘
In the event of any serious trouble . . . send to Alaric Watts . . . who will know the correct proceeding
.' This was the serious trouble of which the old man had been afraid.

‘Of course,' the inspector went on, ‘the authorities may decide to take the matter to the Church. I think it would only mean some sort of minor bill being passed. It's not an important thing now, but it was serious enough for him.'

Campion did not speak. He realized more than anyone how serious it had been for the old man, so beloved by his bigoted congregation.

‘I suppose you're very satisfied?' The detective inspector dismissed the subject airily. ‘Apart from your wound and the old rector's death you're not sorry it happened. If you hadn't got old Lobbett and his kids down to Mystery Mile a lot of things would never have happened.'

‘There's something in that,' said Campion, so thoughtfully that the other man glanced at him shrewdly.

‘What's worrying you?' he said.

‘I had such a nice death scene,' said Mr Campion unexpectedly. ‘I feel that the curtain's gone up and exposed me crawling off. No more fun until the next performance, Stanis, and I'm not sure I wouldn't rather be in the stalls for that.'

‘A spot of brandy'll put you right – that's nerves,' said the other cheerfully, but he had made a mistake in his diagnosis.

They chatted for some time longer, and eventually the Scotland Yard man took his leave. Campion lay back in his chair and reflected upon the tragic story of Swithin Cush.

‘As perfect a parson as ever lived,' he reflected. ‘And a damned old fraud at the same time, God bless him!'

After some time he took an envelope from his dressing-gown pocket and reopened it. Biddy's handwriting was not of the best. It might have been a schoolgirl's letter. He re-read it slowly:

Home.

Sunday.

M
Y DEAR
A
LBERT
:

Lugg tells me you're allowed out, in a really marvellous epistle which begins ‘Dear Madham' and ends ‘Well duckie, I must close now'. We're coming up to see you again on Friday. Mystery Mile looks marvellous now, all the leaves turning and apples waiting to be picked. The D'arcy Spice that St Swithin planted in the courtyard is bearing this year. They'll be just eatable when you come down, though why you ever wanted to convalesce in London I don't know.