Death Drops the Pilot Read online

  A police Inspector joined the party, carrying a sheaf of notes in one hand and his flat cap in the other.

  “You Joseph Webb?”

  Webb nodded. He couldn’t speak. His throat was dry and constricted with a great fear.

  The Inspector gently drew back the sheet and revealed a face, peaceful in death, in spite of all that had been done to its owner.

  A long face, rugged and tanned, covered with close-clipped whiskers ending in a small torpedo beard. A mighty Roman nose, a firm jaw, and hair receding from the broad high brow and leaving a bald patch between the large well-shaped ears. They had closed the blue eyes in their deep sockets, lined with tiny wrinkles.

  “Recognize him?”

  Webb nodded and tried to speak but only made a noise which sounded like a great sob.

  “John Grebe?”

  Webb nodded again and then remembering he’d been brought up a Catholic, even if, with the years, he’d drifted away, he crossed himself awkwardly, more out of a desire to show some kind of respect for the dead than anything else.

  “Was ’e drowned?”

  “No. Stabbed in the back and probably pushed overboard.”

  Webb stiffened and then sagged like a sack of flour.

  “Come on.”

  The kindly sergeant could see he’d had enough.

  From the direction of the sea they heard the triumphant siren of the Jenny, now back in the river.

  Webb held on to the white-tiled wall for a minute and then pointed upwards as though about to ask if his old captain would now be safely in heaven.

  “Could I ’ave jest another tot o’ that rum? This ’as turned me up good an’ proper.”

  “We’ll see what we can find.”

  “Who’d ’ave wanted to do poor old Captain John in?” Webb was asking it as they corkscrewed their way slowly up the stone stairs again, back to the humdrum and routine of life in the police station.

  And the local police were still asking the same question three days later, in spite of all their inquiries, when the Chief Constable decided to call in Scotland Yard.

  2 SEVEN LOST YEARS

  THE violent application of brakes almost rolled Chief Inspector Littlejohn out of his berth in the sleeping car and he awoke to find the train slowly gliding into a station. He rose and slid down the shutter over the window.

  Tidmarsh. It was still dark and the lamps illuminated the long, deserted platforms. Littlejohn looked at his watch. Five-thirty. He’d been on the way since midnight and there was still an hour to go.

  A truck rumbled, somebody shouted incoherently, doors were slammed and a whistle blown. The London-Falbright-Belfast train slowly drew away.

  In the next compartment, Sergeant Cromwell slept and snored undisturbed by all the racket.

  Littlejohn took up the file he’d been reading when he fell asleep somewhere about Watford on the night before.

  GREBE, John. (69) Born Rosslare, 1886, English parentage.

  Went to sea at 14. Master’s Certificate, 1913.

  1914-18. Transport service in Middle East.

  1925. Arrived at Falbright and took Pilot’s Certificate for River Hore.

  1927. Master of ferry for Falbright Corporation. . . .

  He laid down the file on the blanket, took off his spectacles, and looked through the window with unseeing eyes. Transport service in the Middle East during the first World War and then...A gap of seven lost years and suddenly Captain John Grebe arrives at Falbright, a God-forsaken little port on the west coast, and lives out the rest of his existence ferrying people across an obscure river. And his record closes with a stab in the back and a sordid end in the waters he’d so often navigated.

  Outside it was growing light. By easing himself up in his berth Littlejohn could see the flat pasture lands through the window, acres and acres of them dotted with farms, some of them with the smoke of early morning rising from their chimneys, others still sleeping. The railway line, too, seemed built on ground with no gradients whatever; the train slid along at high speed with hardly any vibration.

  Then, suddenly, they ran into thin mist and from the very taste of the atmosphere on his lips, Littlejohn knew they were nearing the sea. The attendant arrived with tea.

  “Falbright in half an hour, sir.”

  He passed on to the next compartment and suddenly the snoring there ceased.

  Littlejohn sipped his tea as he shaved; then he tapped on the communicating door to the next compartment and thrust in his head. Cromwell was on the floor, his body raised on his hands and tiptoes, performing with difficulty in the narrow space, his morning exercises. He screwed round his head, smiled, and struggled to his feet.

  “I’ve had an awful night, sir.”

  “Didn’t sound like it, judging from the snores.”

  “I slept all right, but the rolling about gave me a shocking nightmare.”

  He ignored the teapot on the tray and started to make himself a drink of Strengtho from a tin he carried in his luggage, measuring two teaspoonfuls carefully, mixing it into a paste, thinning it with water from the jug. Then he drank it with apparent relish and satisfaction.

  They were now crossing a series of complicated points on the railway lines and through the window they could see the estuary of the River Hore. The tide was ebbing, leaving a thin channel straggling its way seawards between stretches of mud and wet sand. The line ran for several miles along the riverside, on which chemical works and factories making fertilizers from fish offal rose and spoiled the skyline.

  The railway threaded between trucks and wagons marshalled in extensive yards and past rows of shabby houses and small workshops. Finally, the station with its three platforms, offices, third-rate hotels, familiar posters, and knots of porters and officials waiting for the train. FALBRIGHT (MARITIME).

  Littlejohn and Cromwell gathered together their odds and ends of shaving tackle, reading matter and pyjamas and thrust them in their luggage. Cromwell rammed his belongings in the large portmanteau he always took away with him and which contained, inter alia, books on police law and procedure, toxicology and forensic medicine, handcuffs, chest-expanders, revolvers, and reserve supplies of Strengtho.

  They emerged from the train. Through a large archway at the top of the platform they could see the masts of ships and the funnel of the Irish Mail, emitting black smoke ready for the trip. A thin trickle of passengers made their way to the quayside. The smell of the sea and the faint odour of tar mingled with the aroma of coffee and the acrid fumes of burnt toast emerging from the refreshment rooms. A porter intent on cleaning the platform swept with a large brush clouds of dust in the path of the passengers.

  Three men in uniform stood at the ticket barrier: a customs officer and two police officials. One of them, wearing the uniform and insignia of a Superintendent, detached himself and approached Littlejohn. Superintendent Lecky, a man in his forties, alert, fresh-complexioned, dark eyed and wearing a small dark moustache and thick eyebrows. The other, an Inspector, followed; a tall, heavy, fair man, with a large chest and huge hands and feet. A pleasant round-faced countryman.

  Lecky singled out Littlejohn at once and advanced quickly.

  “Delighted to meet you, sir.”

  Passers-by, struggling with their luggage, turned to see what was going on. The newspapers had been full of the Elmer’s Creek affair and the editions of the evening before had hinted that Scotland Yard had been called in. The travelling crowds seemed torn between the group of policemen and the Irish Mail, which to help them make up their minds emitted three roaring blasts from her siren.

  “...We felt we needed some expert help. We’re at the end of our own resources. A boatload of women, a parson, and two drunks. You understand? We haven’t even a suspect yet.”

  Lecky seemed anxious to excuse himself from the start.

  Littlejohn smiled and handed over his bag to a waiting policeman who had been gesturing that he was there to act as porter. Satisfied, he reeled under Cromwell’s heavy
load and put the luggage in a waiting police-car.

  “I’m not here to interfere, Superintendent. You quite understand that. My colleague and I will help all we can, but the case, of course, is yours.”

  Lecky looked relieved. He’d expected someone a bit officious and overbearing from London, somebody who would make all their local men look like amateurs. He smiled and his eye followed the direction of Cromwell’s, who was trying to read the menu stuck in a brass frame at the door of the refreshment-room. It contained the noon ordinary of the day before.

  “You’ve not had breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “We’d better make that the first job, then.”

  Outside the station, the road divided. One branch led into the town; the other to the landing-stage, a huge structure of heavy old timber with several storeys, each of which came into use according to the state of the tide. At present, the Irish boat was lying low in the river. Passengers were descending to the lowest stage of the pier and filing across a rickety gangway to the ship. Another blast on the siren reminded them that the boat left in five minutes.

  Across the river they could see the jetty at Elmer’s Creek, with a cluster of houses on the riverside, the Barlow Arms towering above them and then, on the road beyond, a row of red brick boarding-houses. The early morning was dull and the waterfront chilly. Over the water a thin mist. From Elmer’s Creek the coast swept into the wide, flat, desolate expanse of Balbeck Bay.

  Fishing boats in the river, a noisy dredger busy keeping the channel clear, and across the wide expanse of sandbanks which composed the estuary of the River Hore between Farne Point at Falbright and Elmer’s Creek, men were gathering shrimps and digging for cockles.

  The police car pulled up at the Terminus Hotel, a large rambling Victorian edifice, with an expensive sun-lounge tacked on it, from which the whole of the waterfront was visible. Before the advent of sleeping cars this had been the refuge of cross-channel passengers from Ireland who didn’t care for the overnight train journey to London, or for those who, crossing from Falbright, used to arrive on the previous day to catch the morning mail. Now, its main purpose finished, the hotel was empty, forlorn and shabby and gave one the impression of having innumerable closed rooms and vast empty corridors full of old rotting furniture and smelling of damp and decay.

  They served the Scotland Yard men with a tolerable meal of bacon and eggs following heavy porridge. As they sat eating, they could see the Irish boat slowly manoeuvring her way down the channel and then, as soon as she was clear, the ferry from across the estuary put out.

  “That’s the Falbright Belle, sister ship to the Jenny on which the murder happened. We’ve laid up the Jenny for the time being, sir. We thought you might like to look over her.”

  Lecky was sitting smoking a pipe in one of the creaking basket chairs of the sun-lounge where his friends were dining. The Inspector, appropriately named Silence, had also squeezed his huge bulk in a basket chair and looked highly uncomfortable, expecting it at any minute to disintegrate.

  “Inspector Silence has been on the case and will take you round when you’re ready, gentlemen. It’s court day for me and I’ve to see to one or two cases before I’m free.”

  Silence turned to nod and smile, but the chair creaked and groaned and wiped the smile from his face, and gave him a look of intense and ridiculous anxiety.

  “Would you like to stay here whilst you’re in Falbright, Chief Inspector?”

  Littlejohn looked around at the vast empty dining room, the decrepit waiter, the ancient badly-polished sideboard.

  “Or would you prefer across the river at Elmer’s Creek? That’s where Captain Grebe, the murdered man lived, and it’s easily accessible by ferry. Or the police launch could take you to and fro. The Barlow Arms there is quite a comfortable little pub, mainly frequented by yachtsmen and sea-fishermen who come at weekends. You’d get the local colour there.”

  “Yes; good and proper.”

  Silence felt he ought to say something and his sudden ejaculation made them all turn their heads in his direction, whereat he blushed and coughed and made his chair expand and squeal again.

  The Scotland Yard officers finished their meal. Littlejohn felt happy when it was over. They kept having silences, as though the two local men were overcome and embarrassed by the reputation and urbane presence of the Chief Inspector.

  “You’ll have to take us as you find us, sir. This is a small provincial town and you two gentlemen being used to the ways of London and the up-to-date atmosphere, as you might say, will perhaps find us a bit...”

  “I was born and brought up in a small town, Superintendent. So was my colleague here. We’ll be all right and you needn’t worry about our being comfortable. We’d like to stay at the Barlow Arms. As you say, we’ll get local colour.”

  “You’d like to get over there, then?”

  “As soon as convenient.”

  Silence drove the car to the landing stage and they boarded the Falbright Belle which was there waiting, and the crew of one had just rung the bell to warn passengers that they were ready to draw in the gangway and make the trip.

  By the side of the landing stage was a small slipway, and there the Jenny had been hauled high and dry on the last high tide, her rusty keel showing, her sides barnacled, her propeller raised in the thin air.

  “That’s the Jenny,” said Silence as he shepherded his charges on board the Belle. He looked very self important and gave the skipper, standing on the bridge, a sideways glance to see if he had noticed the two VIPs now gracing the ferry.

  “Hullo, Alf.”

  The captain shouted down at Inspector Silence in a voice like a megaphone. “Still huntin’?”

  Silence gave the ferrymaster a sickly grin and indicating his companions with a large thumb, said out of the corner of his mouth in what he thought was sotto voce, “Scotland Yard.”

  The name of that famous place floated across the water almost to the opposite bank of the river. Two small boys, four members of a girls’ school off on a natural history lesson in charge of a mistress, two workmen crossing to build a bungalow on the marsh, passers-by in boats, all raised their heads and gazed in awe at the massive, pleasant figure of Chief Inspector Littlejohn and the man by his side, Cromwell, now struggling to keep on his bowler hat in the teeth of the stiff river wind. One of the schoolboys, after a consultation with his companions, crossed to Littlejohn and secured three copies of his autograph.

  The engine-room telegraph clanged loudly and, although the skipper might just as well have shouted his orders over the rail to the fireman-engineer below, he manipulated the brass handles in various directions on the dial as if he were handling a huge liner.

  Half-astern.

  They backed out into the river.

  Looking up river, Littlejohn could follow the thin channel to where it turned and seemed to vanish among green fields. A vast tract of flat country stretched as far as the eye could see, broken only in the foreground by the factories along the river bank which he and his colleague had passed in the train. Down river, the estuary, with the stream winding among jutting sandbanks and then spreading itself across the Farne Deep, with the Farne Light, a squat erection on steel feet, straddling the water two miles out at sea. The channel was full of small craft, private launches, sailing boats, fishing smacks, and two or three trawlers returning from the fishing grounds. In the far distance, larger vessels passed on the skyline, the trade route between the larger northern and southern ports.

  It took about a quarter of an hour and Littlejohn wandered about the deck smoking his pipe, until, finally, the skipper invited him to the bridge. There was hardly room for two, but the skipper didn’t take up much of it. A thin, lanky man with half-closed blue eyes, a large straggling moustache, and a broken nose. He swung the wheel casually, describing a wide arc to keep in deep water and then running parallel to the opposite shore for a stretch until he drew level with the jetty at Elmer’s Creek; then he turned sharp
ly and drew alongside.

  “Bit of a bobby-dazzler about Old John,” he said, as the crew cast out the gangway and made the boat fast. “I’ve known ’im ever since he came here. I was a nipper in those days. Always a bit of a mystery, but I never thought...”

  He shook his head and spat over the side.

  “I hear he did good work in the Middle East in the First World War.”

  The skipper took out a short pipe and filled it with tobacco which he carried loose in his jacket pocket.

  “So I heard. He’d never talk much himself, but I did hear once that he lost two ships troopin’ in the Mediterranean in those days. Gallipoli, or somewhere.”

  Littlejohn paused and tapped his own pipe out against his heel.

  “Can you remember who told you, captain?”

  “Can’t say I can. We meet such a lot of people on these boats, ’specially in the holiday season. If I do remember, I’ll let you know. You’ll be here for some time, I expect?”

  “Yes. We’re staying at the Barlow Arms. Call in for a drink with us some time. Do you live this side?”

  “No. I’m a Falbright man meself. But I’ll call one night after the last ferry and have a yarn.”

  “How long do you stay here between trips?”

  “All depends. Winter schedule, which came on at the beginning of this month, we have quarter of an hour’s stop. Summer, it’s less.”

  “All the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see from the report that Old John went off his ship the night he died, took a walk along the jetty, and then came back just before the ferry sailed.”

  “That’s right, I believe.”

  “He’d have time to get home and back?”

  “Just about. His cottage is at the top there. The one with the white gate. Whitewashed walls. See it?”

  “Yes. He was buried yesterday?”

  “Yes. In the cemetery here. A big turn-up. He wasn’t what you’d call popular, but ’ighly respected.”

  “Well. We’ll be seeing you then, skipper.”

  Inspector Silence gave the bags to a lounger on the jetty, who shouldered Cromwell’s with a sigh and a heave and shuffled off to the hotel. The trio followed slowly. A man passed carrying a large conger-eel.