Mr. Calder raised his head. During the time he had been asleep, the wind had risen a little, and was blowing up dark clouds and sending them scudding across the face of the moon; the shadows on the bare down were horsemen, warriors with horned helmets riding horses with flying manes and tails. Rasselas was following them with his eyes, head cocked. It was as if, behind the piping of the wind, he could hear, pitched too high for human ears, the shrill note of a trumpet.
“They’re ghosts,” said Mr. Calder calmly. “They won’t hurt us.” He lay down, and was soon asleep again.
It was five o’clock, and light was coming back into the sky when he woke. It took him five minutes to dress himself and roll up his sleeping bag. His movements seemed unhurried, but he lost no time.
From the back of the car he took a Greener .25 caliber rifle, and clipped on a telescopic sight, which he took from a leather case. A handful of nickel-capped ammunition went into his jacket pocket. Tucking the rifle under his arm, he walked cautiously toward the brow of the hill. From the brow, a long thin line of trees, based in scrub, led down to the barn, whose red-brown roof could now just be seen over the convex slope of the hill.
Mr. Calder thought that the arrangement was excellent. “Made to measure,” was the expression he used. The scrub was thickest round the end tree of the windbreak, and here he propped up the rifle, and then walked the remaining distance to the wall of the barn. He noted that the distance was thirty-three yards.
In front of the barn the path, coming up from the main road, opened out into a flat space, originally a cattle yard but now missing one wall.
She’ll drive in here, thought Mr. Calder. And she’ll turn the car, ready to get away. They always do that. After a bit she’ll get out of the car and she’ll stand, watching for me to come up the road.
When he got level with the barn he saw something that was not marked on the map. It was another track which came across the down, and had been made quite recently by Army vehicles from the Gunnery School. A litter of ammunition boxes, empty cigarette cartons and a rusty brew can suggested that the Army had taken over the barn as a staging point for their manoeuvres. It was an additional fact. Something to be noted. Mr. Calder didn’t think that it affected his plans. A civilian car coming from the road would be most unlikely to take this track, a rough affair seamed with the marks of Bren carriers and light tanks.
Mr. Calder returned to the end of the trees and spent some minutes piling a few large stones and a log into a small breastwork. He picked up the rifle and set the sights carefully to thirty-five yards. Then he sat down with his back to the tree and lit a cigarette. Rasselas lay down beside him.
Mrs. Lipper arrived at ten to six.
She drove up the track from the road, and Mr. Calder was interested to see that she behaved almost exactly as he had predicted. She drove her car into the yard, switched off the engine and sat for a few minutes. Then she opened the car door and got out.
Mr. Calder snuggled down behind the barrier, moved his rifle forward a little and centered the sight on Mrs. Lipper’s left breast.
It was at this moment that he heard the truck coming. It was, he thought, a fifteen-hundredweight truck, and it was coming quite slowly along the rough track toward the barn.
Mr. Calder laid down the rifle and rose to his knees. The truck engine had stopped. From his position of vantage he could see, although Mrs. Lipper could not, a figure in battle dress getting out of the truck. It was, he thought, an officer. He was carrying a light rifle, and it was clear that he was after rabbits. Indeed, as Mr. Calder watched, the young man raised his rifle, then lowered it again.
Mr. Calder was interested, even in the middle of his extreme irritation, to see that the officer had aimed at a thicket almost directly in line with the barn.
Three minutes passed in silence. Mrs. Lipper looked twice at her watch. Mr. Calder lay down again in a firing position. He had decided to wait. It was a close decision, but he was used to making close decisions and he felt certain that this one was right.
The hidden rifle spoke; and Mr. Calder squeezed the trigger of his own. So rapid was his reaction that it sounded like a shot and an echo. In front of his eyes, Mrs. Lipper folded onto the ground. She did not fall. It was quite a different movement. It was as though a puppet master who had previously held the strings taut had let them drop and a puppet had tumbled to the ground, arms, legs and head disjointed.
A moment later the hidden rifle spoke again. Mr. Calder smiled to himself. The timing, he thought, had been perfect. He was quietly packing away the telescopic sight, dismantling the small redoubt he had created, and obliterating all signs of his presence. Five minutes later he was back in his car. He had left it facing outward and downhill, and all he had to do was take off the hand brake and start rolling down the track. This was the trickiest moment in the whole operation. It took three minutes to lift the gate, drive the car through and replace the gate. During the whole of that time, no one appeared on the road in either direction.
“And that,” said Mr. Calder, some three days later, to Mr. Fortescue, “was that.” No one seeing Mr. Fortescue a square, sagacious-looking man, would have mistaken him for anything but a bank manager, although, in fact, he had certain other, quite important, functions,
“I was sorry, in a way, to saddle the boy with it, but I hadn’t any choice.”
“He took your shot as the echo of his?”
“Apparently. Anyway, he went on shooting.”
“You contemplated that he would find the body, either then, or later.”
“Certainly.”
“And would assume that he had been responsible, accidentally, of course.”
“I think that he should receive a good deal of sympathy. He had a perfect right to shoot rabbits. The rough shooting belongs to the School of Artillery. The woman was trespassing on War Department property. Indeed, the police will be in some difficulty in concluding why she was there at all.”
“I expect they would have been,” said Mr. Fortescue, “if her body had been discovered.”
Mr. Calder looked at him.
“You mean,” he said at last, “that no one has been near the barn since it happened?”
“On the contrary. One of the troops of the Seventeenth Field Regiment, to which your intrusive subaltern belongs, visited the barn two days later. It was their gun position. The barn itself was the troop command post.”
“Either,” said Mr. Calder, “they were very unobservant soldiers, or one is driven to the conclusion that the body had been moved.”
“I was able,” said Mr. Fortescue, “through my influence with the Army, to attend the firing as an additional umpire, in uniform. I had plenty of time on my hands, and was able to make a thorough search of the area.”
“I see,” said Mr. Calder. “Yes. It opens up an interesting field of speculation, doesn’t it?”
“Very interesting,” said Mr. Fortescue. “In—er—one or two different directions.”
“Have you discovered the name of the officer who was out shooting?”
“He is a National Service boy. A Lieutenant Blaikie. He is in temporary command of C Troop of A Battery – it would normally be a captain, but they are short of officers. His colonel thinks very highly of him. He says that he is a boy of great initiative.”
“There I agree with you,” said Mr. Calder. “I wonder if the Army could find
me
a suit of battle dress.”
“I see you as a major,” said Mr. Fortescue. “With a France and Germany Star and a 1939 Defence Medal.”
“The Africa Star,” said Mr. Calder, firmly.
Approximately a week later Mr. Calder, wearing a Service dress hat half a size too large for him and a battle-dress blouse which met with some difficulty round the waist, was walking up the path which led to the barn. It was ten o’clock, dusk had just fallen, and around the farm there was a scene of considerable activity as C Troop, A Battery, of the Seventeenth Field Regiment settled down for the night.
Four guns were in position, two in front of and two behind the barn. The gun teams were digging slit trenches. Two storm lanterns hung in the barn. A sentry on the path saluted Mr. Calder, who inquired where he would find the troop commander.
“He’s got his bivvy up there, sir,” said the sentry.
Peering through the dusk Mr. Calder saw a truck parked on a flat space, beyond the barn, and enclosed by scattered bushes. Attached to the back of the truck, and forming an extension of it, was a sheet of canvas pegged down in the form of a tent. He circled the site cautiously.
It seemed to him to be just the right distance from the barn, and to have the right amount of cover. It was the place he would have chosen himself.
He edged up to the opening of the tent and peered inside. A young subaltern was seated on his bedroll examining a map. His webbing equipment was hanging on a hook on the back of the truck.
Mr. Calder stooped and entered. The young man frowned, drawing his thick eyebrows together, then recognised Mr. Calder and smiled.
“You’re one of our umpires, aren’t you, sir?” he said. “Come in.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Calder. “Can I squat on the bed-roll?”
“I expect you’ve been round the gun position, sir. I was a bit uncertain about the AA defenses myself. I’ve put the sentry on top of Slay Down. He’s a bit out of touch.”
“I must confess,” said Mr. Calder, “that I haven’t examined your dispositions. It was something rather more personal you wanted a little chat about.”
“Yes, sir?”
“When you buried her—” Mr. Calder scraped the turf with his heel “—how deep did you put her?”
There was silence in the tiny tent, lit by a single bulb from the dashboard of the truck. The two men might have been on a raft, alone, in the middle of the ocean.
The thing which occurred next did not surprise Mr. Calder. Lieutenant Blaikie’s right hand made a very slight movement outward, checked and fell to his side again.
“Four foot, into the chalk,” he said.
“How long did it take you?”
“Two hours.”
“Quick work,” said Mr. Calder. “It must have been a shock to you when a night exercise was ordered exactly on this spot, with special emphasis on the digging of slit trenches and gun pits.”
“It would have worried me more if I hadn’t been in command of the exercise,” said Lieutenant Blaikie. “I reckoned if I pitched my own tent exactly here, no one would dig a trench or a gun pit inside it. By the way, who are you?”
Mr. Calder was particularly pleased to notice that Lieutenant Blaikie’s voice was under firm control.
He told him who he was, and made a proposal to him.
“He was due out of the Army in a couple of months’ time,” said Mr. Calder to Mr. Behrens, when the latter came up for a game of backgammon. “Fortescue saw him, and thought him very promising. I was very pleased with his behaviour in the tent that night. When I sprang it on him, his first reaction was to reach for the revolver in his webbing holster. It was hanging on the back of his truck. He realised that he wouldn’t be able to get it out in time, and decided to come clean. I think that showed decision and balance, don’t you?”
“Decision and balance are
most
important,” agreed Mr. Behrens. “Your throw.”
On Friday night Colonel Geoffrey Bax went down alone for a last visit to his weekend cottage in Sussex. It was a last visit, because the cottage had been put up for sale. He was alone because his wife was escorting her mother on her summer pilgrimage to Torquay.
On Saturday morning the farmer drove up with milk and eggs, and discovered the colonel. He was seated in the chair at the head of the kitchen table, under the still burning electric light. It was a hot June morning, and the flies were already gathering round the pool of blackening blood on the table top. The gun which had killed the colonel was in his right hand.
Mr. Behrens had known Colonel Bax. He read the news in his Sunday paper, and walked up the hill to discuss it with his old friend, Mr. Calder.
“It’s in my paper too,” said Mr. Calder. “But I didn’t really know Bax. Wasn’t he working for DI5?”
“Yes. He got a job with them when he retired from the Army. It wasn’t anything hush-hush, you know. He did a lot of their positive vetting.”
“I’d rather pick oakum,” said Mr. Calder.
(Positive vetting was a palliative devised by the government in 1952 after a series of Security scandals. It meant, in practice, that any government servant who attained a certain degree of seniority had to supply the name of a referee; and it then became the duty of the positive vetter to interview the referee and inquire of him whether the officer concerned was reliable. The answer was predictable.)
“Most of those jobs went to officers who had been axed,” said Mr. Behrens. “They got quite well paid for it. Add the salary to their Service pensions and they could get by.”
Mr. Calder looked up sharply. He had known Mr. Behrens long enough to ignore the plain meaning of what he said and jump to the thought behind it.
“Do you think there was some sort of pressure on Bax?”
“It’s not impossible. The material was there. In his case it was a girl. Her parents were Poles. Geoffrey did them a good turn just after the war, and was godfather to their little daughter.”
“Daddy Longlegs,” said Mr. Calder, scratching the head of his deerhound Rasselas, who was stretched out under the breakfast table.
“It’s all very well for you to sneer,” said Mr. Behrens. “I’ve met the girl. She’s very beautiful.”
“Did Bax’s wife know about her?”
“If she had, she’d have started divorce proceedings at once. She was that sort of woman.”
“If she was that sort of woman, Bax would have been well rid of her.”
“He’d have lost his job.”
Mr. Calder, considering the matter, was inclined to agree. He knew that in certain branches of the Security Services, sexual irregularity was considered a good deal worse than crime and nearly as bad as ideological deviation.
“He could have lived on his pension.”