Peter Lovesey - The Tick of Death

The launch weaved between two hulks and made for the open river, listing precariously as Devlin swung the wheel. Rossanna helped Cribb cover the crates with a tarpaulin. A voice was appealing to them through a megaphone to declare their identity, even though it was fast becoming obvious that they were not much interested in replying. The caretakers’ isolation in their different vessels had brought an encouraging element of confusion to the scene. The coastguards, when they came from Canvey, would get half-a-dozen conflicting accounts of the raid.

Cribb joined the others in the cabin. Malone had shed most of his sodden clothes and was getting dry by shovelling coke into the boiler. ‘Once we clear the Haven we’ll have a flood tide with us,’ called Devlin. ‘No one’s going to overtake us then.’

‘They may not overtake us, Patrick,’ said Rossanna, ‘but if someone has the wit to use the telegraph, there could be a coastguard launch coming to meet us from Gravesend. If we get home tonight, it will be more than we deserve. And I do not relish telling my father that his plans were frustrated by a shameful exhibition of panic.’

‘We got some dynamite,’ said Devlin in mitigation.

‘Less than half the amount we came for.’

‘The crate was slipping,’ said Malone defensively. ‘It might have blown us all sky-high.’

‘And who was supposed to have secured it?’ Rossanna demanded in a fury. ‘Are you admitting to incompetence as well as funk? Did Mr Sargent here scream like a schoolgirl and jump into the water? No, he kept his head.’

‘Rossanna, don’t get in a wax,’ said Devlin. ‘We’ll think of something to tell your father.’

Cribb wondered what. It would be disturbingly easy for Devlin to shield Malone by blaming the newcomer for the imperfections in the expedition. He hoped he could rely on Rossanna.

When the launch headed towards the Lower Hope and began to make swifter progress, the tension aboard eased perceptibly. Malone borrowed Devlin’s coat and went forward to keep watch for any sign of a coastguard boat. Rossanna drew her shawl moodily about her and went aft.

‘Ah, that’s a fine woman,’ Devlin said to Cribb in the cordial vein of their conversation at Lillie Bridge, as if any unpleasantness between them was forgotten, ‘but she bears the devil of a lot of responsibility. It doesn’t do to cross her when she’s implementing her father’s plans. Since the accident, she and McGee have grown very close. Understandably. She was always sympathetic to the cause, but it didn’t go to anything more adventurous than joining the Ladies’ Land League until McGee practically blew his head off trying to make a clock-timed machine. It looked as though the whole campaign had foundered before it had got under way. He’s the brains, you understand. Malone and I are very minor in the organisation. Then word came from New York that we were to take our orders from Rossanna, she being able to interpret her father’s statements to us.’

‘But it isn’t always practical for McGee to be present,’ Cribb observed, ‘and who gives the orders then?’ He knew the answer, but he was interested in Devlin’s reaction to the question.

‘She’s every bit as forceful as her father,’ said Devlin. ‘I don’t know whether it’s the Irish blood or the red hair, or both, but she gets her way, Mr Sargent, she gets her way.’

‘Pardon me for smiling,’ said Cribb. ‘It’s a queer sight to an outsider-two sturdy fellows like yourself and Malone taking orders from a slip of a girl like that. I should have thought one of you might have had his hand around her waist by now. Isn’t she susceptible to manly charm?’

‘I told you,’ said Devlin. ‘She’s devoted to her father. It might be difficult for you to apprehend, but there it is. Besides, Malone and I are here to do a job. There’ll be women enough when we get home.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Cribb. ‘Believe me, I wasn’t questioning your loyalty to the cause, or your manhood. I was merely curious to know why Miss McGee has just gone forward to join Malone.’

He got his answer within seconds. It came in the form of a pistol-shot that echoed across the waters of the Lower Hope.

‘Lord! Has she gone mad?’ exclaimed Cribb. He left the cabin and ran to where she stood with smoke still rising from the revolver in her hand. Malone lay dead at her feet.

‘Get him over the side, Mr Sargent,’ she told Cribb matter-of-factly. ‘Ireland has no need of cowards.’

Cribb had never been so close to murder. Constable Bottle had died like this. Perhaps Thackeray. So incensed was he that he acted instinctively, regardless of how an agent of the crown conducted himself. He wrenched the gun from her grasp, flung it down and took her by the shoulders. ‘That was a lunatic thing to do, Miss McGee, a monstrous, callous act. I’ll not demean myself by throwing insults at a woman, but, by God, I know what you are now, and what you deserve. Get below, before I thrash you.’

‘Nobody ever spoke to me like that except my father,’ said Rossanna as she heaped devilled kidneys on to Cribb’s plate. It was 6 a.m., and he was seated at a bare wooden table in the kitchen of the dynamiters’ house. Much against his expectation, they had passed through Gravesend Reach and got back without further incident. Devlin, with the strain of the night’s doings written on his face, had gone straight to bed. Rossanna had confounded Cribb by meekly offering to cook him breakfast before they retired.

The first shock of Malone’s sudden dispatch had passed. It had been the fact of murder more than any sentiment about the hammer-thrower’s going that had prompted Cribb to react so impulsively. Malone had not been one of the most endearing representatives of his race, and it had been more fatiguing than distressing consigning him to the Thames. There had been time after that, as the launch steamed homeward, to consider how a secret agent might recover from such a lapse.

‘You were absolutely right, of course,’ Rossanna continued. ‘I should never have fired the shot. I didn’t give a thought for the dynamite on board. Ridiculous! I might have killed us all.’

‘You understood my reason for speaking to you so strongly, then?’ said Cribb, with resource.

‘Graphically, Mr Sargent. I am at a loss to understand how you exercised such restraint. I deserved nothing less than the chastisement you were ready to inflict on me.’

An exceptional development. Far from the hostile reaction he had expected, she seemed to have warmed towards him.

‘Aren’t you going to have some kidneys, Miss McGee?’

‘I wasn’t intending to-but if I might be so bold as to take one from your plate, it would give an opportunity of talking to you a little longer.’

‘Please help yourself.’

She gave a tentative smile, and forked a kidney from his plate. Then she sat opposite him, turning the fork speculatively in front of her face. ‘You were magnificent tonight, Mr Sargent. I shall be reporting favourably to my father.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Cribb.

‘Do you know what most impressed me? It was when you remained completely calm when the crate fell. Nine men out of ten in your position would have followed Malone into the river. Panic is extremely contagious.’

‘You’re right,’ said Cribb. ‘We were in more danger from ourselves at that moment than we were from the crate. Dynamite can’t be exploded by ordinary concussion, and that’s been proved. There were tests carried out some years ago in Wales-Glynrhonwy Quarry, Llanberis. Half-hundredweight crates were dropped repeatedly 130 feet on to broken shingle and none of them exploded. Then they dropped a box filled with two hundredweight of slate rubbish on to a crate of dynamite. Same result. It requires a sharp, smart blow on a thin coating of the stuff between two pieces of iron to set it off. The nitro-glycerine which it contains has no means of escape from the effect of the blow.’ His tutors at Woolwich would have been proud. Rossanna looked slightly bemused.