Be Shot For Six Pence (17 page)

If Messelen had not taken out his cigarette lighter I should now have been as dead and as cold as he was.

I leant over him, felt in his side pocket, and pulled it out. It was a heavy, chased silver lighter designed in the shape of a book.

I knew it well. I had given it to Colin Studd-Thompson on his twenty-first birthday.

I climbed stiffly out of the car and looked about me. I knew, now, roughly what I wanted. It took me ten minutes search before I located the vigneron’s hut, away to my left, down a side track. The door was on the latch, and inside were mattocks and spades. I was careful to touch nothing, and I had my handkerchief round my fingers before I would even lift the latch.

I made my way back to the car. I had noticed a pair of chamois leather driver’s gloves in the dashboard locker and I got them out and put them on. If I had been stupid so far, I must try to redeem it by extra care from now on.

There was a rug on the back seat. I folded it across my back. Then I got Messelen out, and up onto my shoulder. He was heavy, but my mountaineer’s technique helped, and I was confident that I could carry him down as far as the hut.

When I got there I laid him carefully, on the edge of the flint path.

The moon was well up now, and by its light, I looked around for the exact spot I needed. The careful vigneron fights a year-long battle, hoeing and digging and clearing the soil round the roots of his beloved vines. I wanted a place where the soil had been turned recently, but not too recently. I found the exact spot, some fifty yards down the hill and set to work.

First I spread the car rug on the path. Then, using a spade, very, very carefully, I took off the top layer of earth and piled it on the rug. Then I got busy with the mattock and hollowed out a shallow grave. It had to be shallow. The ground was too hard for deep digging. I got down about two feet.

Then I laid Messelen in his grave. Before doing it I searched his pockets but got nothing more for my pains than an automatic pistol, a door key and a handkerchief.

Then I piled back the undersoil, pressing it as flat as I could; then I added as much of the dry topsoil as would go in without leaving a hump. I slashed lightly across the whole area with the mattock. Not just the grave but a good piece around it as well. There was a bit of topsoil left over. I dragged if off down the hill in the rug and sprinkled it broadcast among the vine roots.

When I came back past the spot where I had been digging I had genuine difficulty in locating it. Only morning would show if I had made a good job, but I fancied that if no one came with too critical an eye for twenty-four hours, Messelen might sleep there undisturbed till doomsday.

When I had polished the spade and mattock and put them away and got back to the car the stars were pale and the light of morning was coming back. Also a mist was creeping up from the river.

I still had a lot to do.

First I took off the brake and started the car downhill with a push. I guided it for about twenty yards along the path. Then I went back and examined the place where it had stood.

The flinty, chalky, soil which had been such a hindrance to digging was here a godsend. There were light marks of the tyres in the dust, but nothing permanent; nothing that a single farm cart or even a stiff breeze would not wipe out. I took a particular look to see if the car had dropped oil or left any other sign of where it had stood, but I could find nothing. There were one or two footsteps, where I had got out, but I brushed these over with the folded rug.

I then set to work on the car itself. First I went over the bodywork, holding the left-hand glove in my gloved right hand and using it as a polisher. Then I shook every bit of earth off the rug and folded it back onto the seat.

The next thing was to find a way out. Forward, if possible. The car would leave marks if I turned it, and I didn’t really fancy my chances on the upper road.

I had one or two bad minutes as the path wound and twisted its leisurely way down the slope. Once I thought it was petering out altogether; then I saw the turning, and shortly after that a gate. It led me out to a farm track. The gate was not locked.

Dawn was coming upon me in great strides. I ran the car slowly along the track until I could see the farm. The track went slap through the middle of the farmyard. It was quite a big place; probably the farm which owned the vineyard.

At the very last possible moment, I cut out the engine. The gradient was steep enough to carry me through. A dog barked twice, angrily, and then, with my last remaining momentum, I had swung round the corner and was out onto the main road.

I looked at my watch. It was five past four, and here came the mist, both to help and to hinder.

I had reached that stage of fatigue when my eyes were playing tricks, and twice I braked as shadowy vehicles loomed down on me, only to fade into nothingness as I stared at them.

I got to the Marienkirche, through the ghostly streets, as the bells sounded out the half-hour. I had seen no one; nor, I think, had anyone seen me.

I parked the car as nearly as I could remember the way that Messelen had parked it, switched off, and sat for a moment to think.

There were one or two things at the back of my mind. Things that I ought to do before I went home. My mind wasn’t turning over very fast, and the bell sounding the three quarter hour brought me up with a jerk. First, it warned me that if I didn’t keep moving I should sleep; and at the same time it started a useful train of thought.

Messelen was a solitary man. It might be some time before he was missed. Therefore, and plainly, the more doubt about his movements the better.

I climbed out of the car, eased the door shut, and stole into the house. Messelen’s front door opened to the key I had taken from his pocket. I left the door on the latch, and put the key on the mantleshelf. Then I went round the bird cages, carefully lifting off the cloth squares which covered them. The birds were very quiet, and the big, yellow, cock-bird looked at me out of one eye as if he knew what I had done.

I got out the bowl of seed and piled up their dishes to overflowing and filled up their little water troughs. I reckoned they had enough to get by on for a day or two, probably longer.

Then I took out the gun Messelen had loaned me. I was pretty sure what I should find, but I examined it to make certain. The clip was all right, and the bullets in it looked genuine. I took it right out, pulled back the firing slide to eject the round in the breech, and then pulled the trigger. Nothing happened at all. I looked at it again. The spring was there, but the pin had been removed.

I polished it off carefully in my gloved hands, reloaded it, and put it back in the drawer of the table.

Then, after a final look round, I tip-toed back the way I had come, and was soon clear of the town, headed into the blessed mist.

I have no recollection of reaching the castle, but Lisa says that she was up early and saw me from her window. She says she knew from my walk that something was badly wrong and that she ran down and opened the side door for me; that I walked straight past her without a word, with a face like death, and went up to my room.

I bobbed about for a few uneasy hours on the surface of sleep and waking. I dreamed no dreams; I was not deep enough for dreams. I knew that the hours were going by, and the shadows lengthening on the wall and I heard the small sounds as evening came on and the castle woke.

It was a barking of dogs which finally pulled me back to reality. I slipped off the bed, feeling for a moment that sort of spurious lightheadedness that comes when I am really tired, and walked across to the window.

Three storeys below, Tutti and Lippi came bounding out of the postern gate and caracoled off into the woods with Trüe behind them. She was taking them for their evening outing.

I ran a basinful of cold water, pushed my face into it, and held it there until I was seeing red spots, and then pulled it out and gave it a towelling. Then I combed and brushed my hair, hard. It made me feel a little better, but not much.

When I got down Lady was waiting in the ante-room. Waiting for me, I guessed.

“How did you get along with the Major last night?” he asked.

“All right.”

“A rough party?”

God damn the man. What was he hinting at? Quite suddenly I realised that he wasn’t hinting. He knew. My first reaction was anger, followed, in a photo finish, by alarm, and then relief.

Lady stood watching me, perched on the fender, grinning all over his face like a pert young crow.

“Better come inside,” he said, “and tell poppa all about it.”

“I suppose it’s no good suggesting you mind your own damned business?”

“No good at all.”

“Who told you? Gheorge?”

“Of course Gheorge told me. It would be a funny sort of organisation here if he had not done so.”

“In spite of the fact that I only told
him
under pledge of secrecy.”

“You’re talking like a boy scout,” said Lady. “Have a cigarette. Oh, no. You don’t do you? Then just relax and reflect, how lucky it was that Gheorge
did
keep me informed.”

“It was your people who put a police cordon round the cinema?”

“Our powers are not quite as extensive as you seem to imagine, but a word in the ear of the Austrian police sometimes produces results.”

“Just what was due to happen in the cinema?”

“It’s a little difficult to predict, but I rather think that you were going to make an indecent assault on a young lady and her escort was going to hit you, and there was going to be a small, but high class fight. Messelen would have got away with a black eye and possibly a sprained wrist. But you – alas – I fear, you would not have survived.”

“The Rœhm technique,” I said. “If you plan to murder a man, be sure you take away his character first.”

“Oh, certainly. The Major was a Nazi to the boot-heels. But do not underrate him. He was a high class operator. His real name, by the way, was Felder. You remember?”

“Faintly,” I said.

“He was one of the luckier ones at Nuremberg. Not quite enough evidence for a capital sentence. He was not one of the biggest shots, you understand, but well up in the third rank.”

Memory stirred.

“He was the Hauptmann Felder who carried out the Pinzio massacre.”

“Alleged,” said Lady. “Alleged. He carried it out so thoroughly that absolutely no one was left to testify against him. With their characteristic respect for the laws of evidence, combined, no doubt, with admiration for a workmanlike job, your compatriots voted for his acquittal. The Russians would have hanged him. He received two years detention on lesser charges, after which he worked unceasingly against the British, who had saved him, and for the Russians, who would have hanged him. Not an uncommon reaction.”

“A neo-Nazi?”

“Of course. A founder member of the Werkebund.”

“He fooled me,” I said, “to the top of my bent.”

“His appearance was an asset,” agreed Lady. “The simple soldier. And indeed, I believe, in his early years he was precisely that. A simple, brave regimental officer. So was Goering.”

I wasn’t listening. I was thinking of the first time I had met him, in that clean room, full of sunshine, with the cathedral bells chiming and all the birds singing.

“What was the programme that first evening?”

“Oh, the standard technique. If you had gone inside Major Piper’s office, I do not think you would have walked out again. Messelen’s story would have been that you had got drunk, which was true.”

“Partly true.”

“And had tried to interfere between some man and girl, and the man had assaulted you. Possibly thrown you downstairs. A broken neck. What easier?”

“How very fortunate,” I said, “that Major Piper should have arrived when he did.”

“Oh, very,” said Lady. “Very.”

“And now, perhaps, you will explain two things that I find puzzling.”

“Of course.”

“Why, after all that, did you allow me to go out with Messelen last night, in complete ignorance of his real character?”

“That is only one question.”

“The second is even more curious. When you spoke, just now, of Messelen. You said: ‘He
was
a high class operator’ and later, ‘His appearance
was
an asset.’ You spoke of him in the past. Almost as if he were dead. I find that curious.”

Lady looked at me for a long moment, and I thought, for the first time in our brief acquaintance, that I could detect a hint of uncertainty in his manner.

Then he smiled, a big, simple, frank smile; frank as any expert witness under cross-examination.

“Why,” he said. “Don’t tell me I was mistaken after all. Did you not kill him?”

“Yes, I killed him,”

“You had me worried for a moment,” said Lady, relaxing. “But if that’s right, what’s the mystery?”

“The mystery,” I said, patiently, “is how you knew anything about it. You knew I was going out with Messelen, because Gheorge broke his word to me and told you. You knew about the cinema, because that’s something you arranged. But nobody on God’s earth can know what happened afterwards.”

“It would perhaps be exaggerating to say that I know.”

“Don’t fool yourself. You couldn’t even guess. It was one chance in a thousand that anything happened at all except my death.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite as high as that. After all, consider the chances. The Major was not a heavy smoker. But he was bound to take out his lighter sooner or later.”

I said stupidly: “He didn’t use it to light a cigarette. It was to look at a map.
How the hell did you know
?”

“Of course I arranged for him to have it.”

“You
what
?”

“Try not to be obtuse. I arranged for him to have the lighter. I had it given to a girl, with instructions to give it to him – not earlier than yesterday morning. The danger was that you might see it too soon.”

I could feel my anger getting hold of me. Only it was the wrong sort of anger. The cold and comfortless anger that roots in fear.