Johnny Under Ground Read online

  “You knew he’d be killed if he went up.”

  “Oh, sure. But he wouldn’t have gone up. He’d have had to go into that Mess at Dymfield and confess that he was afraid. And by leaving it so late, he’d probably have got Vere court-martialed. And he couldn’t have breathed a word about my part in it without revealing that he’d been prepared to let me go up instead of him, a much older man, mind you, and with less flying experience. Not cricket, old man. Dear me no. That would have been the end of Beau Guest, the young chevalier, the golden boy. Do you see how perfect it was? I had him cold.”

  “So—what happened?”

  “Something I hadn’t bargained for. He said that he had something to say to me. It seems that—did Blandish ever tell you that I was Messing Officer at Dymfield?”

  “Yes, I think she did,” said Henry.

  “I was Messing Officer at Falconfield, too. A nice, cosy little job that nobody else wanted, involving the handling of quite tidy sums of money. Apparently our sharp-nosed Squadron Leader Guest had smelled a rat, even in the Falconfield days. Not that it was very serious—a few quid here and there ‘converted to my personal use,’ as the courts say. Very grave offense for an officer and a gentleman, of course. Great mistake to commission types like me—one of nature’s bums, that’s all I’ve ever pretended to be. Give Sammy the chance of a fiddle on the side, and… Anyway, Beau was senior to me at Dymfield and he’d commandeered the account books from the Mess Sergeant. Normally I got them nicely fixed up for the quarterly audit. He’d had his suspicions for some time, and he’d intended to confront me with the evidence and give me the chance to make up the money before the audit. But when I threatened to roll him in the dirt, he came right back at me. He had the books there with him, in the air-raid shelter, and he said that if I didn’t take the Tiffie up, he’d have me court-martialed. I didn’t mean to kill him when I pulled the gun on him. Only to frighten him. But he came straight for me and the bloody thing went off—and there he was, done for.

  “For a moment I didn’t know what to do. Then I had an inspiration. I hurried back to the Duke’s Head and telephoned Vere at Barbara’s flat, where I knew he’d be skulking by then. Asked him to come down to the pub. After all, the patrol wasn’t due to take off till six. I told Vere a story that wasn’t too far off the truth—that Beau had begged me to take his place in the kite, that I’d agreed to meet him at Dymfield to talk it over, but that I’d realized I couldn’t do it. That when I had finally refused, he’d gone all to pieces—and had pulled out a gun and shot himself. He was drunk, I said, just as he had been when he crashed at Falconfield. All totally untrue, of course, but Vere believed it. I emptied a whisky bottle all over the shelter, and I told Vere where the body was and that he could go and see it for himself. I don’t know whether he did or not, but he certainly had a hand in getting the entrance discreetly blocked up with rubble afterward.”

  “And what was Prendergast’s reaction?” Henry asked.

  Smith laughed, not pleasantly. “Just what I’d expected. Thought of nothing except the cow Barbara and how she’d never get over it and how she’d blame it all on him. That was just what I wanted. I pointed out that there was still time for him to take the plane up himself, head her out over the sea, and bail out. That would rate as a number one heroic suicide, and would be simple for the most sensitive widow to bear. And he agreed.” Smith leaned forward and banged the flat of his hand on the table. “He actually agreed! I’ve always said he was certifiable. There’s not much more. I said I’d go down to Operations to watch his progress. He was to sing out ‘Tally-ho!’ just as he bailed out, so that if he didn’t turn up, I’d know roughly where to look for him in order to render first aid. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t necessary, because there’s no need to tell you that I’d have done nothing of the kind.

  “After Vere had gone, I rang Annie. Just to confuse the issue, if you follow me, old man. My motto is—if there’s a guilty secret, the more people who know about it the better. I’ve always been a fair mimic, and it’s easy to fool people over the phone. Just a super-Mayfair accent and a couple of ‘my old Queen-of-the-plotters’ thrown in, and Annie believes to this moment that she spoke to Vere. I thought it was rather cunning to suggest to her that she should ring me and tell me the horrid news, which she did, bless her cotton socks. It all went off beautifully, though I say it myself.”

  “But you still had those account books,” Henry pointed out.

  “Yes, I had, hadn’t I? They’re here, if you want to see them.”

  Sammy pushed a couple of very dusty, cardboard-bound ledgers across the table.

  “You hid them here, in the Operations Room?”

  “My dear chap, what else could I do with them? I couldn’t put them into the wastepaper basket at the Duke’s Head, not with R.A.F. crests all over them. The landlord would have shot them straight back to the Mess. I couldn’t take them quietly back, because Beau had signed for them. I expected they’d be safest here—not up in the gallery, where fellows were working all the time, but down here in the darkest possible corner. Actually, I shoved them into the ventilation shaft. You’ll hardly believe it, but I unscrewed the grill, put in the books, and screwed it up again at three in the morning under the noses of three W.A.A.F. plotters. The point being, of course, that a big bomber force was coming home from a raid on Berlin and the girls were far too busy to notice anything. As for noise—this place is completely soundproof, and the plotters were wearing headphones. It’s taken me twenty minutes to get that ruddy grill off again today—rusted up.”

  “It’s a pity,” said Henry, “that you had to kill Lofty.”

  “I never meant to.”

  “Then why did you make all those elaborate preparations—fixing a trip to Paris, sending your wife ahead by train, and taking a late-night plane yourself…”

  “I wanted to speak to Lofty, make him see reason. To cover my tracks, Inspector, was an automatic gesture for a man like me. You wouldn’t understand. You haven’t lived your life on a legal knife edge.”

  “All right,” said Henry. “You fixed your alibi. What did your wife imagine you were up to? She backed up your story gallantly.”

  Smith smiled, like a wolf. “All I have to say to Marlene,” he said, “is that there’s money in it. Marlene has a sweet, trusting nature. So long as the cash is solid, she asks no questions. Didn’t bat an eyelid about mailing the letters or ringing up old Guest or even waylaying Blandish this morning and slipping the dope in her coffee. She’s a useful girl, Marlene.”

  “Let’s go back to Parker. Your pretext for visiting him was to borrow money.”

  “That’s right. I slipped a modest request for funds into that questionnaire thing—thought it would make it seem more natural when I turned up on the doorstep. Yes, Blandish made me very nervous with her talk of mysteries over Beau’s death and visiting Dymfield. What on earth gave Barbara this bloody silly idea anyway?”

  Henry smiled. “A sort of poetic justice,” he said. “You were too greedy. You shouldn’t have blackmailed her by making her think Beau might still be alive. This was her way of proving him dead.”

  Sammy sighed. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve made mistakes all along the line, I can see that. It’s funny, isn’t it? If I’d made a clean breast about Beau’s death at the time, and explained it was an accident, I’d probably have gotten away with it. But I simply couldn’t afford to have it discovered after all these years. And I knew neither Vere nor Annie would lift a finger to help me, if they had an inkling of the truth—that it wasn’t suicide, I mean. I never thought I’d live to admit that honesty is the best policy, but there may be something in it after all.

  “Anyhow, I visited old Lofty and, believe me, I tried in the nicest way to get him to drop the whole idea. But he’d had some sort of an offer from Baggot for television rights and was cock-a-hoop and absolutely adamant. When I didn’t get anywhere being nice, I happened to mention his mother—and then he got abusive. And suspicious. And
—well, to cut it short, we had a set-to and I hit him. Hard. He went out like a light, and suddenly it seemed so easy to make sure he wouldn’t wake up again. So I made him comfortable in the kitchen, sealed the place up, and switched on the gas. Then I caught the plane to Paris and met Marlene for dinner. It was most inconsiderate of you to start asking questions about a perfectly ordinary suicide. Not playing the game, it seemed to me. When it became obvious that nothing was going to stop you from going to Dymfield and digging up poor old Guest—well—I figured I’d give you a run for your money.”

  “You did that,” said Henry. “Tell me, how did you know exactly when I was going to Dymfield?”

  “Simple. You told Barbara, who told Vere, who told me. Old Vere has been in a helluva flap these last weeks. Never off the phone to me, reporting developments and asking my advice. I figured there was nothing like stirring up confusion and getting as many people as possible involved. The letters were fun to do, too. Pity I had so little time to spend on the one I sent myself. A bit skimped, I thought it.”

  “So did I,” said Henry. “And you made a bad mistake when you told Emmy that you knew Beau was due to go to Scotland the morning after he died. There was only one way you could have found that out. She put the reference in her notes. So I set this little trap for you. I didn’t count on your abducting my wife, of course.”

  “I thought I had a pretty good weapon in Blandish,” said Smith, regretfully. “I knew you wouldn’t want to see her rolled in the mud. I wouldn’t have harmed her, you know. At least, I hope I wouldn’t.”

  “You hoped you wouldn’t harm Lofty.”

  “That’s true. Yes, you were right to take no chances. Pity I bungled it. Poor old Sammy. Never could make a success of anything, not even secondhand cars. Oh, well. Funny, isn’t it? The first part, Beau, went like a dream. Second part, Lofty, more difficult. Third part, Blandish, disaster. I’d have been better to lie low and say nothing. Too late now, of course.”

  There was a long silence. Henry didn’t move.

  Then Sammy said, “‘Do not despair for Johnny Head-in-Air.’ That’s a poem. Know it? ‘He sleeps as sound as Johnny-Under-Ground.’ That was Beau, Johnny Under Ground. He slept sound, all right. ‘Fetch out no shroud for Johnny-in-the-Cloud, and keep your tears…’”

  Henry did not see him take up the gun, so quick was the movement. The shot rang deafeningly around the enclosed cave of a room, echoing and re-echoing between the padded walls. Sammy Smith had not bungled this time. He was lying slumped over the table, and the blood from the wound in his temple ran in a scarlet river across the grid reference squares, like the track of a hostile aircraft making for the coast.

  Henry stood up. Emmy was stirring, moaning in her drugged sleep.

  For a moment Henry looked down at Sammy—a pathetic, gay, amoral, criminal, kind, cruel, funny human being. A gallant pilot. A cheat. A murderer. An ordinary man. Softly Henry finished the verse which Sammy’s death had interrupted—“‘And keep your tears for him in after years…’”

  Then Henry picked Emmy up in his arms and carried her up the narrow stairway and out into the daylight.

  For more “Inspector Tibbett” and other “Vintage” titles from Felony & Mayhem Press, including the “Inspector Alleyn” series by Ngaio Marsh, please visit our website: FelonyAndMayhem.com

  All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

  JOHNNY UNDER GROUND

  A Felony & Mayhem mystery

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  First UK print edition (Collins): 1965

  First US print edition (Holt, Rinehart and Winston): 1965

  Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2018

  Copyright © The Estate of Patricia Moyes 1965

  All rights reserved

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63194-159-7

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Moyes, Patricia, author.

  Title: Johnny under ground / Patricia Moyes.

  Description: New York : Felony & Mayhem Press, 2018. | Series: A Felony & Mayhem mystery | Reprint. Originally published: “First UK edition (Collins): 1965; First US edition (Holt, Rinehart and Winston): 1965 “ -- Verso title page.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018006848| ISBN 9781631941436 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781631941597 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Tibbett, Henry (Fictitious character)--Fiction. | Tibbett, Emmy (Fictitious character)--Fiction. | Married people--Fiction. | Police spouses--Fiction. | Police--Great Britain--Fiction. | England--Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6063.O9 J6 2018 | DDC 823/.914--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006848