Rogue Male (22 page)

He kept on saying: ‘What … what … what …’

He meant, I think, to ask what I was going to do to him.

‘Who am I?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Think again, Muller!’

I placed the cold flat of my knife against his naked thighs. God knows what he thought it was, or what he imagined I meant to do! He collapsed on the ground, whimpering. I wanted him to keep his clothes reasonably clean, so I picked him up by one ear, and propped him against the hawthorn alongside Quive-Smith.

‘Who am I?’ I asked again.

‘The Aldwych … the … the police wanted you.’

‘Who is the man whose clothes I am wearing?’

‘Number 43. I never met him before this job. I know him as Major Quive-Smith.’

‘Why didn’t Major Quive-Smith hand me over to the police?’

‘He said you were one of his agents and you knew too much.’

That sounded a true piece of Quive-Smith ingenuity; it explained to a simple intelligence why it was necessary to put me out of the way, and why they were working independently of the police; it also ensured the Second Murderer’s zealous co-operation.

‘What were you going to do with my body that night?’

‘I don’t know,’ he sobbed, ‘I swear I don’t know. I had orders to stay in the car every night until I heard a shot and then to join him.’

‘Where did you get the iron plate?’

‘I had it cut at Bridport on the morning when he first discovered you were here. I used to meet him outside the farm for orders.’

‘How many years have you worked in hotels?’

‘Ten years. Two as night porter.’

‘Any dependants?’

‘A wife and two tiny tots, sir,’ he said piteously.

I suspected he was lying; there was a whine in his voice. And I felt that, considering the varied human material at their disposal, his employers wouldn’t have chosen a family man for a job of indefinite duration.

‘Where does your wife think you are?’ I asked.

‘Relieving at—at Torquay.’

‘Does she believe that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She doesn’t mind getting no letters from you?’

‘No.’

‘Doesn’t it ever occur to her that you might be with another woman?’

‘No.’

‘Careful, Muller!’ I said.

I merely raised the revolver to the level of his eyes. He shrieked that he had been lying. He pawed the air with his right hand as if he could catch the bullet in its flight. The wretched fellow feared death as he would a ghost. I admit that death is a horrid visitor, but surely distinguished? Even a man going to the gallows feels that he should receive the guest with some attempt at dignity.

‘From whom do you take your orders?’ I asked.

‘The hotel manager.’

‘No one else?’

‘Nobody else, I swear!’

‘What hotel?’

He gave me the name of the hotel and its manager. I won’t repeat it here. It ought to be above suspicion, but for that reason, if no other, I have little doubt that our people suspect it. If they don’t, they have only to check which of them in the last week of October lost a night porter who never returned.

‘What crime did you commit?’ I asked.

It was obvious that they had some hold on him in order to make of him so obedient and unquestioning a tool. Night porters, in my experience, are remarkable for their brusque independence.

‘Assault,’ he muttered, evidently ashamed of himself.

‘How?’

‘She invited me to her room—at least I thought she did. I shouldn’t have done it. I know that. But I was going off duty. And then—then I went for her a bit rough-like. I thought she’d been leading me on, you see. And she screamed and the manager and her father came in. She looked a child. I thought I’d taken leave of my senses. She had just been laughing at me friendly, sir, when she came in of an evening, and I’d thought … I could have sworn that …’

‘I know what you thought,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t they charge you?’

‘For the sake of the hotel, sir. The manager hushed it up.’

‘And they didn’t sack you?’

‘No. The manager made me sign a confession and they all witnessed it.’

‘So you have done what you were told ever since?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you get another job?’

‘They wouldn’t give me any references, sir, and I don’t blame them.’

He was genuinely ashamed. He had come out of the realms of a panic-stricken imagination as soon as he was reminded of the real trouble of his everyday life. They had a double grip on the poor devil. They had not only ensured his obedience, but shattered his self-respect.

‘Don’t you see that they framed you?’ I asked.

I was sure of it. Any really competent little bitch of seventeen could have managed those enigmatic smiles and performed that disconcerting change from temptress to horrified child.

‘I’d like to believe it, sir,’ he said, shaking his head.

No wonder Quive-Smith was exasperated by him!

I myself became a human being again. Muller might, for all I knew, have been a gangster of the most savage, and therefore cowardly type. I had to break him down. It wasn’t only acting; I should have killed him without hesitation if he hadn’t proved useful. But I was almost as relieved as he when I could lay brutality aside. I told him to pull up his pants, and gave him a bit of string to hold them and a cigarette. I kept the revolver in sight, of course, just to remind him that all in the garden was not yet roses.

‘They know you at the farm?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I drove the major over there.’

‘In what capacity? His servant?’

‘Yes. He told them I was taking my own holiday on the coast.’

‘Have you been at the farm since?’

‘Once. I had lunch there the day that … that …’

‘That you buried me alive.’

‘Oh, sir! If only I had known!’ he cried. ‘I thought you were one of them—honest, I did! I didn’t care if they murdered each other. It was a case of the more the merrier, if you see what I mean.’

‘You seem to be pretty sure now that I’m not one of them,’ I said.

‘I know you’re not. A gentleman like you wouldn’t be against his own country.’

Wouldn’t he? I don’t know. I distrust patriotism; the reasonable man can find little in these days that is worth dying for. But dying against—there’s enough iniquity in Europe to carry the most urbane or decadent into battle.

However, I saw what use Muller had been to his employers. A night porter must be able to sum up his customers on mighty little evidence, especially when they arrive without any baggage. He must, for example, know the difference between a duke and stock-pusher though they speak with the same accent and the latter be much better dressed than the former.

I explained to him that he might consider himself out of danger so long as his nerve did not fail; he was going down to the farm to tell Patachon that Quive-Smith had been called back to London, to pack his things, and to take them away in the car.

Quive-Smith had almost certainly warned his hosts that he might be off any day, so the plan was not outrageously daring. Muller had the right air of authority; with the rug over his arm, he looked trained and respectable in spite of being somewhat muddy. He was dressed in such a way that he could pass for a night watchman in Chideock or a man-servant on a holiday: a stout tweed suit, an old pullover of suede, and a stiff white collar.

The chief risk was that Muller, when he found himself in the farm, would decide that his late employers were more to be feared than I. That point I put to him with the utmost frankness. I told him that if he wasn’t out of the house in a quarter of an hour I should come and fetch him and claim to be the major’s brother. I also told him that he was useful to me just so long as nobody knew the major was dead, and that the moment when his usefulness ceased, whether in ten minutes or two weeks, would be his last.

‘But if you are loyal to me for the next few days,’ I added, ‘you can forget that matter of criminal assault. I’ll give you money to go abroad and never see your late employers again. They’ll leave you in peace. You’re no further use to them, and you don’t know enough to be worth following. So there you are! Give me away, and I’ll kill you! Play straight with me, and there’s a new life open to you wherever you want to lead it!’

There were a good many holes in the argument, but he was in no state for analytical thinking. He was deeply impressed and became maudlin with relief. Quive-Smith was quite right about him; he was the perfect Second Murderer. He attached himself with dog-like simplicity and asked only to be allowed to obey.

He took the major’s head while I took his heels, and we moved cautiously down into the road that ran along the foot of the hill. There, thankfully and immediately, we dropped our white burden in the ditch. I saw the sweat burst out on the back of Muller’s thick neck as soon as he was convinced that we had not been seen.

At the five-bar gate where Patachon’s private track swung across the home paddock to the farm we stopped. I told Muller that I should wait for him there, and should enter the car when he got out to open the gate. I gave him Quive-Smith’s keys and I gave him a story to tell. The major was dining with friends in Bridport. He had learned that he had to go abroad at once. His address for forwarding letters was Barclays Bank, Cairo. I knew from a letter in his pocket that he kept an account with a branch of Barclays—and Cairo is a complicated town through which to trace a man’s passage.

‘But what will I do if they don’t believe me?’ he asked.

‘Of course they’ll believe you,’ I answered. ‘Why the devil shouldn’t they?’

I was none too sure of that, but his best chance of success was to show the utmost confidence.

I gave him a pound to tip the girl who had made the major’s bed—if there were such a girl—and another which he was to hand to Mrs Patachon for her daughter’s savings bank.

‘You know the little daughter?’ I asked.

‘Yes—Marjorie.’

‘Give Marjorie a message from Major Quive-Smith: that she must remember not to bring her queen out too soon.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘All the better. Explain to her that you don’t understand what it means. But she will, and she’ll laugh. Tell her not to bring her queen out too soon.’

It was perfectly safe advice to give a beginner at chess, and it would establish Muller’s bona fides.

I let him cross the paddock and go round the corner of the barns into the yard; then I followed to watch, so far as possible, over my fate. This time there was no need to take extreme pains to hide myself—the dogs had an excuse to bark. I squatted behind a tree whence I could see the front door.

Mrs Patachon received the caller with surprise but no hesitation. She shut the door and there was no movement for five minutes—which I spent wishing I had cut the telephone wires. Then an oil-lamp was lit in an upper room, and I saw Muller pass back and forth across the window. He came out with a suit-case in his hand, followed by Patachon with a gun-case. Marjorie with the rug, and Mrs Patachon with a packet of sandwiches. The whole party were chattering gaily—except Muller, who was far too glum—and sending messages to the major. They entered the stable to watch Muller load and start the car, and I ran back to the gate.

‘Where to, sir?’ asked Muller.

In spite of his grip on the wheel his elbows were quivering like the gills of a fish—partly from reaction and partly from fear that his usefulness had come to an end. I was sorry to appear again as a ruthless killer, but there was a risk that he might try to rush the gate.

I told him to drive to Liverpool and to go easy with the traffic laws. Southampton was too close, and London too full of eyes. We picked up Quive-Smith and put him in the back of the car, under a rug.

My plans were straightening out, I was sure that nobody would call at the farm until letters and telegrams had remained a week or more without reply; anxiety would have to be very strong before any of the major’s subordinates or superiors—if he had any superiors—ventured to intrude upon his discreet movements. When they did, and visited the lane, they could take their choice of three theories: that I had got away with Quive-Smith and Muller hard on my heels; that I had bribed the pair of them to let me go; or that they had killed me and in some way aroused the curiosity of the police.

We stopped for petrol at Bristol and Shrewsbury. On the way I wired an assortment of ironmongery to Quive-Smith, and dropped him into the Severn. I have no regrets. Reluctantly, belatedly, but finally I have taken on the mentality of war; and I risk for myself a death as violent and unpleasant as any he could wish for me.

We reached Liverpool in time for an early breakfast. The town was in its vilest mood, and I was glad that the major had dressed himself for exposure to the elements. A north-east wind gathered the soot, dust, and paper from the empty streets, iced them and flung them into the Mersey. The sullen yellow water gave a more bitter impression of cold than the blue of the Arctic. I felt greater confidence in the wretched Muller. On such a morning it was inconceivable that anyone would betray a person who intended to have him out of England before nightfall.

Putting up at a hotel, we breakfasted in our room. While Muller dropped off to sleep in front of the fire, I spent a couple of hours practising the signature on Quive-Smith’s passport. For convenience I still write of him and think of him as Quive-Smith, though there is possibly no one but myself, Saul, Muller, and a handful of people in a corner of Dorset who ever knew him by that name. The signature I practised and the identity I had taken were those of his normal British self—the nondescript company director.

This English name of his was signed in a spidery, flowing script which, with a fine nib, was not at all difficult to imitate. My forgery wouldn’t have taken in a bank manager, but it was good enough for an embarkation form or a customs declaration—especially since it would be written on cheap paper with an office pen.

The passport photograph was not very like me, but near enough. No shipping clerk would question it. The common type of Quive-Smith and myself is manifestly respectable and responsible.

I woke up Muller and offered him a drink. He turned out to be a teetotaller—another advantage, I suppose, to his employers. I took him with me to the bathroom, and while I washed off the accumulated filth of weeks (keeping the revolver handy on the soap-dish) I made him sit on the lavatory seat and read me the shipping news.