Peter Lovesey - The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

A sudden shout from the end of the room of “Blimey, the train!” returned everyone to reality except Jago. Totally absorbed in his balancing, he heard the shout, swayed alarmingly, flailed the air with his arms and crashed to the floor. This in no way interrupted the general scramble for the door. The London train was due, and nobody wanted to spend the night in Rainham. The more sober stepped over the fallen artiste. Others were less fastidious.

“They’re right,” Thackeray confirmed. “Ten-fifty. We must get to the station.”

Cribb had been silent for some time; not from rapture at Jago’s performance.

“Not us,” he muttered tersely. “Jago goes. We stay.”

Constable Jago, now sheepishly brushing mud from his Norfolk, looked up in surprise.

“We’ll see you out, lad,” Cribb continued; and then, for the benefit of the others, “Do excuse us, gentlemen. Must get our young friend onto the train.”

He pushed the puzzled Constable ahead of him to the door. Outside they could talk more freely.

“You must travel with Meanix and the London mob. Get close enough to listen to ’em. I’ve got business here with Thackeray. We’ll take the first train back in the morning. Report to the station at nine tomorrow. I expect to be there. If I’m not, tell the Inspector everything that happened. And ask him, at my request, to get a squad of picked men out to Radstock Hall.”

A minute later, still in some bewilderment, Jago was seated in the same carriage as the now intoxicated Stepney Ox, bound for London.

¦ Perhaps it appealed to Cribb’s sense of humour, forcing a man in his fifties across drenched fields in Essex, half an hour before midnight. It was possible, Thackeray speculated, that if he had gallivanted about the bar of the Fox like a penguin attempting flight, Cribb might have sent him back to a warm bed in London. He suffered because he was utterly dependable.

As though he read the Constable’s thoughts, Cribb explained, “Far better for young Jago to keep a watch on Meanix and his friends. He’s more the Corinthian than you or I. Should be up to bandying talk of milling with that contingent, and might hear a useful word or two besides. You don’t mind a spot of night duty?”

“No, Sarge,” lied Thackeray. He felt his left boot sink into a hollow. Water seeped through his sock. “But I begin to wonder whether we’re still on course. We haven’t passed so much as a shack this last half-hour, and there’s no sign of buildings ahead. I can’t say that I trusted that group in the pub. To be frank, Sarge, I can picture them back there somewhere laughing over our short cut.”

“That may be so,” conceded Cribb. “But our direction isn’t far wrong, even if the going ain’t exactly Pall Mall. We’re following the same course the Ebony and his friend took. I don’t take the word of a bunch of swivel-eyed rustics without checking for myself.”

One consolation was that the rain clouds were fast dispersing, and there were frequent short periods of moonlight. Between them huge shadows traversed the fields like black tides. The landscape was depressingly flat, relieved only by a few small silhouetted copses. Thackeray tried to put the grinning rustics out of his mind. He concentrated on planting each step on the most solid ground available.

“There’s a chimney!” announced Cribb in some triumph fifteen minutes later. “Above the cedars there. Unmistakable.”

They cut across a turnip crop, quickening their pace. As they approached the group of trees that increasingly dominated the landscape, a lane was revealed, snaking in from the right.

“There’s the approach road,” Cribb announced. “Look where it comes from. Would have added miles to our walk.”

Thackeray never openly questioned his sergeant’s infallibility. But he noted with satisfaction that Cribb’s right galosh was missing, claimed by some quagmire they had passed through.

The estate of Radstock Hall was enclosed by a six-foot wall. This the detectives surmounted with the help of an overhanging branch. Their progress was deliberate and by no means stealthy. Instinctively they felt secure from guards, dogs or other hazards the grounds might contain. The trees and scrub were dense enough, anyway, to give them cover if necessary. The house was moonlit when they reached it-an elegant Elizabethan country house in glimmering red brick. The roof, still damp from the earlier downpour, gleamed theatrically. Gaunt, well-weathered chimneys jutted against the restless sky.

They skirted the building, moving with more caution now, and keeping in the shadow of the foliage, although no lights were burning at the front. As they rounded the side of the house, Cribb stopped abruptly and said, almost aloud, “God Almighty!”

Thackeray froze. His sergeant was not given to casual blasphemy. Around the corner was something exceedingly unpleasant. A procession of headless corpses would not have provoked a more extreme outburst. But the horror confronting Thackeray when he looked was altogether different. Not a physical violation at all, but an aesthetic one. With blatant disregard to the style of the house a squat, grey, modern wing had been added to the back, as vulgar as a blowfly on a rose. What sort of people were these?

“Take it slow now,” cautioned Cribb. “We’ll get a closer look if we can.”

They were standing in a convenient plantation of rhododendrons extending around two sides of the building. To approach the new wing, they would have to break cover for forty yards and cross a kitchen garden.

“Keep to the paths,” Cribb whispered. “And watch that open window. I think there may be a lamp inside. This light’s deceptive.”

They scudded as noiselessly as two large men could across the open area and halted at the grey wall itself, to the left of the open window. Cribb was correct; both of them glimpsed a flickering paraffin lamp as they passed within view of the room. And when Thackeray’s agitated breathing subsided, they could hear a low voice, too muffled for the words to be intelligible.

“I’ll try to get closer,” Cribb breathed. “May hear something useful. You move along the wall and look in the other windows. Careful, mind.”

Thackeray tiptoed away on his mission. He could never be sure at such times whether Cribb was giving him responsibility or making certain he was out of the way. His boot caught a flowerpot, and it toppled over and rolled through an arc on the gravel path. He stiffened against the wall, cursing his clumsiness.

For two minutes Thackeray waited, thoughts racing through his brain of action to take when he was discovered. The proper course was to hold them off as conspicuously as possible, giving Cribb a chance of flight. He looked around for a weapon. There was only the flowerpot. If the Ebony came in pursuit, no flowerpot would fell him. Thackeray decided to rely on a dash for the rhododendrons.

Nothing happened, so he edged forward again, calculating each footfall like a mountaineer. There was a window a few feet ahead. He stopped, straining to hear sounds within. Nothing. He leaned forward and moved his eye to the glass. The brim of his bowler made contact, and he jerked back with a small start.

The interior was sufficiently well-lit by the moon. Thackeray was looking into a spacious room, dominated by a platform structure at the centre, a yard in height and at least twenty-four feet square, a full-scale boxing ring with posts and ropes. To the left was an area equipped for gymnastics, with ropes suspended from the ceiling, two with rings. There were parallel and horizontal bars, a high bar and a trapeze. Scattered about the floor were Indian clubs and dumbbells. He stayed at the window, making a mental inventory of every object within view. Somebody had provided handsomely for the Ebony’s training.