Death at the Jesus Hospital (31 page)

‘She ain’t out of the estuary yet, not proper,’ said Robbie Barton. ‘She’s got to pass Prawle Point on the other side before she’s really out in the open sea.’

The stereotype for a head porter would be a tall figure, well over six feet in height, solidly built, possibly wearing a top hat, dispensing taxis and greetings by the front door of one of London’s great hotels like the recently opened Ritz halfway
along Piccadilly. Timothy Mills, head porter of the Marine Hotel, Salcombe, was just over five feet six inches tall and as thin as a whippet. He looked defiant when Johnny Fitzgerald showed him the slip of paper from Estuary House.

‘This is your handwriting, I believe,’ said Johnny.

‘It is. I’m sorry if I’ve done the wrong thing. My wife’s been ill, so very ill, you see, and I needed the money for the doctor’s bills. You’re not going to arrest me, are you? I couldn’t bear to leave Bertha on her own.’

‘I’m not going to arrest you, Mr Mills. I’m sorry to hear about your wife. The best thing would be if you could tell us everything you did for the Estuary House people and everything you know about where they’ve gone.’

‘Well now, my main job,’ said Mills, ‘was to tell them when anybody was making inquiries about them, and
sending
notes to Nat Gibson about that boat over the way. Oh, I nearly forgot.’ Mills, having cheered up a little on hearing he was not to be arrested, looked really anxious all of a sudden. ‘I had to go into Plymouth for them shortly after they arrived.’

‘And what did you have to do in Plymouth, Mr Mills?’

‘I didn’t quite know what to make of it, actually. I had to buy a uniform for the young man.’

‘What sort of uniform?’

There was a pause and then the words were pulled out like a bad tooth. ‘A policeman’s uniform.’

‘God in heaven,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘What on earth did they want with a policeman’s uniform?’

‘Well, sir,’ said Mills, ‘there’s only the old one gone off on the boat. The young one’s still here, or if he’s not, maybe he’s going round pretending to be a police officer.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Johnny and shot off to the telegraph room to consult with Sergeant Vaughan.

Sharp Tor, Starehole Bay, Shag Rock, Pig’s Nose, Ham Stone, Gammon Head, Mew Stone, Robbie Barton called out the
names of the landmarks along the coast as they passed. There was no sign of the
William and Emma
changing over to sail yet. The coxswain told his passengers that they
probably
made better speed with the oars. The wind was rising now, changing direction, blowing hard towards the shore. The moon came out and stayed out for a couple of minutes. Powerscourt saw that the contest was deeply unfair. The odds were stacked in favour of
Morning Glory
, even with the wind against her. She was built for speed and for grace. The
William and Emma
was built to be solid, to keep afloat however bad the storms, to reach the wrecks off the Devon shore and bring the passengers and the seamen home to safety. It was a dray horse against an Olympic sprinter.

‘She’s not turning to the left or the right, Inspector, my lord. No late supper in Plymouth or Dartmouth by the look of it.’

‘My God,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’ve been a fool! Why didn’t I think of it earlier. Of course she’s going straight out to sea. Once she’s three miles from the coast she’s outside British territorial waters altogether, and outside British jurisdiction. Inspector Timpson here couldn’t arrest them even if we could catch them.’

‘Well,’ said Robbie, ‘she’s not three miles out yet. She’s got some way to go. But we’d better start praying for a miracle if we’re ever to catch up with her.’

It took Sergeant Vaughan less than half an hour to find William James Strauss, disguised as a police constable, making his way very slowly along the road from Salcombe to Kingsbridge where the railway connected you to a wider world. Lady Lucy took the young man into the Imperial Suite away from the police uniforms. Johnny Fitzgerald had been reunited with his bottle of Chateau Lafite.

‘You must be William James Strauss,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘And the older gentleman is a Mr Allen, a Wilfred Allen, is that right?’

‘People call me Jimmy,’ said the young man, speaking with a strong South African accent, ‘and the older man, as you put it, is Wilfred Allen.’

‘And there was a third person, I think, was there not? Elias Harper, if my memory serves me. What became of him?’

The young man turned pale. ‘Do I have to answer that?’

‘You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to,’ Lady Lucy replied. ‘I’m not a policeman, as you can see. Not tall enough for a start.’

Jimmy Strauss managed a ghost of a smile. ‘Can I tell you what happened? What’s been going on, I mean. I feel it’s all bottled up inside me.’

‘Of course,’ said Lady Lucy.

The flares lit up the night sky as if some celestial switch had been turned on. Half a mile away from the lifeboat, directly across the path of the
Morning Glory
, lay the nine thousand tons of HMS
Sprightly
, one of His Majesty’s destroyers based in Plymouth. There was a roar of gunfire and Powerscourt could see the splashes a couple of hundred yards to the left of the yacht.

‘
Morning Glory
!’ said a voice trained to rule the waves. ‘His Majesty’s Ship
Sprightly
, at your service. You are to turn round and return to Salcombe at once.’

The voice from the yacht did not have the same carrying power but the crew of the
William and Emma
heard the words territorial waters and three miles out mentioned at least once.

‘Did you bring a measuring tape with you,
Morning Glory
? Don’t talk to us about territorial waters,’ the voice replied. ‘Round here territorial waters are what the Royal Navy says they are. I repeat, turn around and return to Salcombe.’

This time the key word in the reply seemed to be
international
law.

‘Round here, I repeat, international laws are the same as territorial waters,
Morning Glory.
They are what the Royal Navy says they are. Turn around, I say.’

There was another complaint from the
Morning Glory.
There was a brief silence from HMS
Sprightly
. Then there was another roar of gunfire, the shells dropping this time fifty yards on either side of the yacht. Powerscourt thought the spray must have reached the boat.

‘Turn around,
Morning Glory
. If you want to see another morning, start turning about right now. Next time I’ll sink you. My boys need some shooting practice.’

Another burst of flares lit up the scene. There was another bellow from HMS
Sprightly
.

‘Salcombe Lifeboat
William and Emma
! Stay where you are! Our coxswain wants a word!’

The
Morning Glory
was turning round. And at the stern a man was climbing down the steps into the little rowing boat being towed behind her. Nat Gibson, it seemed, had had enough. The little boat set off towards the
William and Emma
. Wilfred Allen, the man come from Johannesburg to Devon, was on his own now.

‘It all started with that battle long ago,’ said Jimmy Strauss, ‘when the three of them left him for dead. A local woman found Mr Allen several days after and nursed him back to health. It took a long time. She thought her gods must have saved him from death. By the time he was well, and his eye had healed out, the other three had all gone back to England.’

‘Why did he stay in South Africa? Why didn’t he come back?’

‘His parents were dead. He told me he wanted a new start. And of course he became very rich through the gold and diamonds. He became one of the biggest traders in the world.’

‘Did he indeed. But why did he wait thirty years before taking his revenge?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘I think it had to do with his wife. She was ill for years and years with one of those wasting diseases that doesn’t actually kill you, but just leaves you weaker and weaker all the time. He would never have left her, Mr Allen. She only died last year. Three days after the funeral he saw Sir Rufus walking down the street in Johannesburg. He told me, Mr Allen, that he didn’t know he had that much rage in him. Everything about the battle, the promises beforehand that they would all look after each other, it all came back and flooded him like a tidal wave. That’s when he decided to come back and give the three of them their just deserts.’

Lady Lucy thought she would take a chance. She had no evidence at all for what she was about to say but she thought it might be the truth, or close to the truth.

‘But he didn’t actually kill any of them himself, Mr Allen, I mean. The other man did that, didn’t he? Mr Elias Harper, the man who travelled here in second class.’

‘How did you know that? Harper did the dirty work all right. Mr Allen was tucked up in Estuary House all the time.’

‘And where is Mr Harper now?’ Lady Lucy suddenly remembered the drowned man, the corpse that nobody claimed, the body never reported missing. ‘He went for a sail, didn’t he, Jimmy?’

Jimmy nodded.

‘And he didn’t come back?’

Jimmy shook his head.

Another voice boomed out across the English Channel from HMS
Sprightly
, that of Captain Fruity Worthington himself this time.

‘Francis?’

‘Fruity?’

‘How are you, my friend. Lady Lucy well I trust?’

‘Very well indeed, thank you, Fruity. Thank you so much for coming along. You’ve saved our bacon.’

‘Don’t mention it. Pity we couldn’t sink her, mind you. We’re going to hang around until
Morning Glory
’s tucked up inside that harbour. No point in taking any chances, what?’

‘Thank you again, Fruity. We must return to the harbour to talk to the fellow when he’s back in Salcombe.’

Morning Glory
was just about to go past the
William and Emma
. The vessels were less than thirty yards apart. Allen was holding some long thin object in his left hand. Nat Gibson, the hired skipper, had come aboard the lifeboat, saying he didn’t mind sailing yachts for people who might not be one hundred per cent reliable, but he was damned if he was going to be shot at by his own side.

‘
Morning Glory
!’ shouted Powerscourt as the yacht slipped past. There was a volley of oaths in reply.

‘Damn you, Powerscourt! Damn you to hell!’ Allen yelled with hatred in his voice. ‘If you’re trying to ruin me, two can play at that game!’

Powerscourt could just see Allen raise the long thin object to his shoulder and start firing a heavy rifle. It was difficult shooting in the swell but Allen was lucky. One shot hit the man sitting next to Powerscourt in the shoulder and the blood spurted out on to Powerscourt’s jacket. Another one seemed to have hit the lifeboat below the waterline as seawater was now pouring into the bottom of the boat. Soon it was over their boots and rising fast. Powerscourt left the sailors to deal with the leak. A very tall man appeared and rigged up a temporary bandage on the wounded shoulder. Powerscourt and Inspector Timpson dragged their pistols out of their pockets and began raking the
Morning Glory
with gunfire. There was a scream to tell them that one of
their bullets must have struck home. But the yacht was still under control, turning away from the
William and Emma
and heading for the Prawle Point side of the estuary. When the
Morning Glory
was out of range, Powerscourt realized that the damage to the lifeboat was far greater than he had thought.

The boat was sluggish. His knees were nearly submerged. Only four men were left at the oars. Two others were trying out various different shapes of cork plug to fill the hole where the bullet must have passed through. The rest of them were bailing desperately as fast as their arms would go. Powerscourt was told by the man next to him that the bullet had landed on the overlap between two planks and thus forced a larger hole than it would have done if it had struck in the middle of the board. Powerscourt and the Inspector pulled their shoes off and began to bail. The level still seemed to be rising.

‘Should we row, or bail, Coxswain?’ Powerscourt shouted.

‘Row!’ came the reply, as Barton manoeuvred another piece of wood, fished out of a vast locker at the stern, bent into a slight curve to fit over the plug where the bullet had passed through, on to the damaged section of the boat. Nat Gibson had taken the tiller as Powerscourt and the Inspector took their places side by side on the oars. Gibson seemed to be steering, not towards Salcombe, but towards the nearest point of land.

The
William and Emma
was making virtually no headway. Only the wind, strengthening again and blowing towards the shore, moved them along very slowly. Powerscourt wondered if for him, too, this was going to be his last case. He would die, not at the Reichenbach Falls, but here, drowned in the English Channel a couple of miles from the shore. He tried to calculate the distance to dry land and thought it might just as well be the Atlantic Ocean, he could never swim that far. He pulled at his oar, trying to capture the rhythm of the other oarsmen. He wondered about Lucy,
hearing of her husband’s death in a strange hotel on the coast of Devon, her children far away.

Inspector Miles Devereux leant back in his chair in the telegraph room at the Marine Hotel. ‘Some people in South Africa are working late on our behalf.’ He showed Sergeant Vaughan the cables piling up in front of him. ‘Johannesburg reports that he was one of the richest men in South Africa. They know from the tickets that he left the country in the middle of December bound for Southampton. They’ve even got on to his yacht club in Durban, for heaven’s sake. He was a keen yachtsman, our friend Allen. He moored a whole series of boats there, all with the same name,
Cyclops
, after the blinded giant in the
Odyssey
. The latest was
Cyclops Four
.’

‘Have they said anything about how he lost his eye at all, sir?’ Sergeant Vaughan asked.