Johnny Under Ground Page 9

  “Alan?”

  “My late son.”

  “Oh—yes. I didn’t know his name was Alan.”

  “You didn’t? How remarkable. I understood from your letter that you had known him well.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Ah, I understand. In the Services only surnames were used.”

  “No, no. But he had a nickname.”

  “Indeed? I was not aware of that.”

  “He was called Beau,” said Emmy. “B-e-a-u—on account of his name being Guest, you see. Beau Geste.”

  The Reverend Sidney’s thin lips clamped down further in disapproval. “I dare say,” he said, “that the name also reflected his love of ostentatious living.”

  “Oh, no. It was only…”

  “We seem to be straying from the point, Mrs. Tibbett. What do you wish to ask me about Alan?”

  Emmy felt tongue-tied. Faced by this unexpected hostility, the questions she had prepared seemed inept and futile. She was still hesitating when he spoke again.

  “I suppose you know,” he said, “that by an ironic coincidence, this bungalow is only a few hundred yards from the airfield from which Alan took off on his—em—fatal flight. I try not to think about it, as it might distress me. But there it is. And another thing. Are you aware that my son’s widow, now married to a man named Prendergast, lives but a few miles away? I dare say you will want to interview her.”

  “Oh, I’ve talked to her already. You know what she’s like…”

  “I have never had the pleasure,” said the Reverend Sidney glacially, “of meeting Mrs. Prendergast. I made my views perfectly clear at the time of my son’s marriage to a painted hussy from the lower reaches of a disreputable profession. I am glad to say that she has never set foot in my house.”

  There was an agonizing pause, and then Emmy pulled herself together and said, “I’m really interested in finding out about Beau’s—that is, Alan’s—boyhood. His schooling, his early enthusiasms—you know the sort of thing I mean.”

  “I am not sure that I do, Mrs. Tibbett. His academic record was singularly undistinguished. At considerable sacrifice I sent him to an excellent public school”—and he named an establishment much patronized by the sons of the clergy. “I regret to say that he barely scraped through his School Certificate. Even so, I encouraged him to try for a decent university, but believe it or not, he flatly refused. Defied me to my face. Apart from an excessive preoccupation with personal adornment, he had only three interests at that time—playing tennis, riding motor bicycles, and flying airplanes. Naturally, I forbade the last on the grounds that it was not only dangerous but expensive. The boy got his own way, as usual, by clandestinely joining the Auxiliary Air Force, as I believe it was called. He did his flying training on weekends. He deliberately deceived me by telling me that he was visiting his mother—a thing which, in Christian charity, I felt I must allow. Of course, she was a party to the conspiracy of deceit. The whole episode was typical of them both.”

  “I understood that his mother had gone abroad, for the sake of her health…”

  “For a short time only.”

  After a pause Emmy said, “Well, his flying came in useful later on, didn’t it?”

  “Useful? You call it useful? It warped Alan’s character by turning him into a tinpot hero at the age of twenty; it then mutilated him and left him horribly scarred; and finally it killed him. A very useful accomplishment, I am sure.”

  “Useful to England,” said Emmy a little sharply.

  “Tcha!” said the Reverend Sidney. “There were plenty of young men only too eager to profit from the public acclaim given to airmen at that time. I remember once hearing a modern expression which sums it up very neatly—to climb on the band wagon is the phrase I mean. Of early American origin, I presume. Any young man of modesty and sense would have kept well clear of the Air Force.”

  “And been alive today, growing fat and middle-aged and rich,” Emmy burst out angrily. She had forgotten to be intimidated.

  “My son Alan,” said the Reverend Sidney, slowly and deliberately, “was not killed in action, you know. I find it inappropriate that he should be remembered in any heroic light.”

  “How can you hate him so much, after all these years?” cried Emmy.

  “I do not hate him. My feelings toward him have never varied. Naturally, I had affection for my own son. That did not blind me to his shortcomings, nor did his selfish and unnecessary death.” The Reverend Sidney leaned forward across the desk and addressed Emmy with some solemnity. “Mrs. Tibbett, you seem to me to be a not altogether unreasonable young woman. I beg you to remember that you were very young and doubtless impressionable when you knew Alan. I advise you most strongly to abandon this ill-judged meddling with the past. If you want to preserve your girlhood idol intact, do not start digging around his feet, lest they prove to be of clay.”

  Emmy looked at him steadily. “Thank you for your advice, Mr. Guest,” she said. “I’ll remember it. Now will you tell me one more thing. Is your—is Alan’s mother still alive?”

  The old man reacted to this remark not by a movement or change of expression but by a perceptible stiffening of his whole body. “She is,” he said.

  “May I have her address please?”

  “I do not advise you to see her. You will gain nothing.”

  “Of course, you don’t have to give me her address,” said Emmy, “but if you don’t, I can probably find it elsewhere.”

  Sidney Guest sighed. “Very well,” he said. He scribbled something on a piece of paper and passed it to Emmy.

  “Thank you,” said Emmy. She stood up. “You’ve been very kind, Mr. Guest. I won’t keep you any longer. You might like to glance at this…” She laid a copy of Lofty’s questionnaire on the desk. “Most of it refers to Service information, but we’d be grateful for any more information that you can supply. Don’t bother to post it; we’re coming down next week to look at the old base at Dymfield, so we can pick it up.”

  “I see. Which day do you expect to call here?”

  “Thursday, in the afternoon.”

  “I shall make a point of being at home.”

  The Reverend Sidney made quite a business of escorting Emmy to the door. The interview had been less unsavory than he had feared it might be. Sidney considered that Emmy was misguided in many of her opinions, but to her credit he set that she seemed to be a gentlewoman and not hysterical. She would probably listen to sense in the end.

  As for Emmy, her feelings toward the Reverend Sidney had passed from fear through active dislike to something not far from pity. She considered him harsh, intolerant, narrow-minded, and selfish; but he was also just, according to his own patriarchal standards, and completely unsentimental. More than anything, his utter solitude entitled him to pity, a solitude which was mental as well as physical. He was as frightening and as pathetic as the last of the dinosaurs, a magnificent specimen, but doomed because of his inability to adapt to changing conditions.

  All the same, Emmy was heartily glad to get away from the Calvinistic gloom of the bungalow and into a corner seat of the crowded, cheerful train as it roared and rumbled toward Liverpool Street. As she hurried down the steps of the subway, Emmy ran into a crowd of young people—the extravagantly dressed youths and girls whose more outré doings were currently causing unfavorable comment. They were noisy and they did not move out of the way to let Emmy pass. On the other hand, they had that vitality which is the essence of youth.

  Emmy remembered the Reverend Sidney’s words: “… an excessive preoccupation with personal adornment…riding motor bicycles and flying airplanes…” Emmy felt a surge of sympathy toward the long-haired young men in their black leather jackets. Twenty-five years ago they would have been fighter pilots; and had Beau been twenty years old now, he, too, would wear his hair long and ride a motorcycle at a hundred miles an hour.

  “And as for the Reverend Blooming Sidney,” thought Emmy, blowing a mental raspberry, “I don’t bel
ieve he was ever young.”

  In the District Line train she opened her bag and took out the paper which Beau’s father had given her. It bore the words, “Mrs. Guest, Sandfields Hospital, Kent.”

  When Henry got home, he was cheered to find Emmy in a gay, relaxed mood. After dinner she regaled him with a blow-by-blow account of her conversation with the Reverend Sidney. Then she said. “By the way, do you know where Sandfields is?”

  “Sandfields?”

  “Yes. Somewhere in Kent.”

  “Oh, yes. Where the loony-bin is.”

  “The what?”

  “I beg your pardon. The celebrated hospital specializing in nervous diseases. I gather they are particularly hot on alcoholism.”

  “Are they?” said Emmy very quietly.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh—nothing…”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LOFTY PARKER TELEPHONED Emmy on Saturday evening. “Things are moving,” he said with some relish.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rummy communications are arriving at my sordid abode,” said Lofty. “They have obviously been stirred up by dropping a plump Blandish into deep waters.”

  “Don’t be so beastly,” said Emmy, laughing. “What sort of rummy communications?”

  “Item one,” Lofty replied. “A pithy and well-expressed abusive letter from a Mrs. Meadowes, whom I have identified as Annie Day. What on earth did you say to her?”

  “It was what she said to me,” answered Emmy. “I’ll tell you later. Go on.”

  “Item two, a completed questionnaire from Sammy—very amusing and quite illuminating—ending up with a request of the loan of ten pounds till next Friday. Poor Sammy. If only he knew!” Lofty laughed in genuine amusement. “Item three, a letter from Vere’s solicitors.”

  “What!”

  “Oh, don’t worry; he’s not suing us. On the contrary. The firm of Pringle, Pringle, Pringle and Sprout have been instructed by Mr. Prendergast to put themselves at the service of Mrs. Prendergast, myself, and any other collaborators in our proposed work, in order to discuss fully the legal implications of the libel and other relevant laws before publication. Mr. Prendergast will be financially responsible for the consultations. He wants us to have the best legal advice, because our enterprise might, in Mr. Pringle’s delightful phrase, ‘be beset by legal pitfalls not readily obvious to the layman.’”

  “How fascinating,” said Emmy.

  “You haven’t heard the half,” Lofty went on. “I’ve kept the best one till the end.”

  “Whatever is it?”

  “A letter from Incorporated Television, Ltd., dictated by Mr. Baggot and signed in his absence by one Prunella Fotheringay. A splendid mixture of the old-pals act and careful business phraseology. The gist is that J. Baggot would like to see the manuscript, without prejudice, before anyone else gets a glimpse of it, so that if it turns out to be good television material he can buy it for much less than it’s worth before any of his competitors have a chance.”

  “He said that?”

  “Not in so many words, but it’s there in block capitals between the lines. I’m beginning to think we may need a good agent, Blandish.”

  “Oh, Lofty, I’m so glad. He sort of hinted to me at lunch, but made me promise not to tell you…”

  “A bit discourteous, I thought, not to sign the letter himself.”

  “Oh, no. He couldn’t. You see, he was off to catch a plane to Manchester immediately after our lunch yesterday. He must have nipped back to his office and dictated that letter on his way to the airport. It just shows how keen he is.”

  “Or something,” said Lofty.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is such a thing,” said Lofty, “as buying a property not for use but to keep it off the market.”

  “You mean, he might buy the rights and never use them, just to stop publication? Why on earth should he do that?”

  “Don’t ask me. The plot thickens, that’s all. How did you get on with the Reverend gentleman?”

  Emmy recounted her interview with Beau’s father.

  “A proper old bastard,” said Lofty. “I always suspected it. So I’ve got to go with you to see the old Gawd-help-us on Thursday, have I?”

  “I thought it would give you local color.”

  “Yes,” said Lofty. And he added, with a sort of relish, “I’m almost looking forward to it. Meanwhile, Emmy, when you come on Monday—oh, blast.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Front doorbell. I’m alone in the house, so I’ll have to answer it. There goes the blasted thing again. All right, all right, I’m coming. I’d better give you a ring on Monday morning. ’Bye, Blandish.”

  The telephone clicked and Lofty had gone.

  “Who was it on the phone?” Henry called from the kitchen, where he was making coffee.

  Emmy came and stood in the kitchen doorway. “Lofty,” she said. “He’s had exciting news. Jimmy Baggot may be interested in buying our book for T.V.”

  “Fame at last,” remarked Henry, pouring out his coffee.

  Emmy glanced at her watch. “It’s only nine,” she said, “and I haven’t written up my notes. Lofty’s so full of energy, he’s given me a bad conscience. I’ll go and work in the bedroom for a bit, darling. I know you want to watch that play on B.B.C. One.”

  “There’s no need to wear yourself out, you know,” said Henry. “Anyhow, have a cup of coffee to help you along.”

  When Henry came to bed a couple of hours later, Emmy was already asleep, although the bedroom light was still burning. Her notebook lay on the bed—she had apparently fallen asleep over her work. Henry picked up the open book and saw that it contained nothing new except the underlined words Interview with Rev. S. Guest. Emmy must be really exhausted, he reflected.

  When it was mentioned on the southeast news broadcast next morning that the body of a man had been found that morning in the gas-filled kitchen of a house in Earl’s Court, Emmy paid no particular attention to the item. It was not until she opened her newspaper on Monday that a small paragraph informed her that the dead man had been identified as Mr. Charles Parker, aged forty-two, unmarried, a consumer research worker who lived in the house. Foul play, the statement added, was not suspected.

  Emmy’s first reaction was misery and despair; but after a few moments of most sincere mourning, she pulled herself together and telephoned Henry at Scotland Yard.

  Henry listened attentively. Then he said, “I hadn’t heard. It’s obviously being treated as suicide. I’ll get hold of the details and ring you back. Exactly what time did you speak to him?”

  “Well—you remember, we’d just finished the washing-up when he phoned, and I suppose we spoke for about five minutes. Then he went off to answer the doorbell and I came out to the kitchen—and that was just before the T.V. play started at nine-fifteen. So call it five past nine.”

  “Maybe he did kill himself,” said Henry. “He seemed a fairly unstable sort of character.”

  “My dear Henry, he was as excited as a schoolboy last night. That letter from Jimmy Baggot meant the first chance of a real break for him, and—oh, Henry!”

  “What is it?”

  “Oughtn’t somebody to go around and see if everything’s there, the letters he told me about, I mean. If any of them are missing…”

  “Don’t worry,” said Henry. “We’ll check on everything.”

  In the middle of the afternoon Henry rang Emmy. He sounded worried. “Can you come around here to my office, darling?” he said. “Things seem to be developing.”

  “Of course I’ll come,” said Emmy. “But what…?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here.”

  There was a little group of men in Henry’s office. He introduced them to Emmy as Detective Inspector Buttery, Detective Sergeant Reynolds, Mr. Riggs from the laboratory, and Dr. Matthews. Then he sat down at his desk and said, “Well, Emmy, it looks as though your friend didn’t commit suicide
after all.”

  “That’s what I told you,” said Emmy.

  “I know,” said Henry. “And it was thanks to your hunch that we looked at things rather more closely than is usual in a straightforward suicide case. I’d better begin at the beginning. As you know, Lofty shared the ground and first floors of a converted house in Earl’s Court with a couple of his colleagues in consumer research, both of whom were away for the weekend, as usual. The upper flat, consisting of the third and fourth floors, is empty at the moment. So when Lofty said to you that he was alone in the house, it was the truth. Not another soul on the premises. The alarm was raised by one of his flat-mates, who arrived unexpectedly at half-past eleven on Sunday morning. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have been found until Monday.

  “Lofty’s friend smelled the gas as soon as he opened the front door. The kitchen door wasn’t locked, so of course he burst straight in, and found the body—destroying some valuable evidence in the process, but that can’t be helped now. Well, as I said, normally this would have been treated as a routine suicide. The windows of the kitchen had been sealed up with insulating tape, and the door, which was well-fitting, had evidently had a mat jammed up against it; but, of course, this was pushed out of the way when young Mr. Chalmers went in. The fact that the door was unlocked was not surprising, since Lofty was alone in the house and not likely to be disturbed. Sergeant Reynolds was called in and spoke to Chalmers.”

  Henry looked encouragingly at the sergeant, who took up the tale. “I didn’t see nothing suspicious about it,” he said. “Quite straightforward, it seemed to me. This Mr. Chalmers, what shared the place with Mr. Parker, told me as how the dead gentleman was highly excitable, how he drank too much and never had enough money, and how he was always behind with his rent. From what I could gather, Parker was always either on top of the world or down in the depths, just the sort of temperament for your typical suicide.”

  “Manic-depressive,” remarked Dr. Matthews sagely.