The Satan Bug Part 5

He hesitated, then said, "I'd swear to it. And both my mates on duty saw him also. You can check with them."

We checked, then left to return to the administrative block. I said, "Did you really think Baxter stayed behind last night?"

"No," Hardanger admitted. "He left all right-and came back with his pliers. Either alone or with someone else. Which on the face of it, would appear to make Baxter a bad 'un. But it seems that an even badder 'un disposed of him. When thieves fall out, perhaps."

"You thought the signature genuine?"

"As genuine as any signature can ever be. No one ever signs his signature the same way twice. I think I'll get on to the General in London straight away. An all-out check on Baxter might turn up something very interesting. Especially past contacts."

"You'll be wasting your time. From the point of view of security Baxter was sitting in the hottest seat in Europe- boss of number one lab in Mordon Every step he's taken from the day he learnt to walk, every word he's said since, every person he's met-they would have checked and re-checked a hundred times. Baxter's clean. He's just too big a fish to get through the security mesh."

"So were a number of other characters who are now either in jail or Moscow," Hardanger said grimly. "I'm phoning London now. Then checking with Wylie to see if they've turned up anything on that Bedford that was used as a getaway car. Then I'm going to see how Martin and the fingerprint boys are gettin on. Coming?"

"No. I'd like to check with the internal guards who were on duty last night and mooch around on my own a little."

He shrugged. "I've no jurisdiction over you, Cavell. But if anything turns up-you'll let me know?" he added suspiciously.

"Think I'm crazy? With a guy walking around with the Satan Bug in his vest pocket do you think I'm going to start a one-man war?"

He nodded, still a little suspiciously, and left me. I spent the next hour checking with the six internal guards who had been on duty before midnight the previous night and learnt what I had expected to learn-nothing. All of them were well-known to me, which was probably the real reason why Hardanger had wanted me down in Mordon, and all of them had been on duty in Mordon for at least three years. All of their stories tallied and none of it helped at all. With two guards I made a minute check of all windows and the entire roof area of "E" block and I was just wasting my time.

No one had seen Clandon from the time he left Lieutenant Wilkinson at the gatehouse, just after 11 p.m., till his body had been found. Normally, no one would have expected to see him, for after making his rounds Clandon retired for the night to the little concrete cottage he had to himself less than a hundred yards from "E" block. This cottage faced on the long gla.s.s corridor of the block, where, as a security precaution, the lights burned night and day. It was no great trick to guess that Clandon had seen something suspicious in "E" Block and gone to investigate. No other reason could have accounted for his presence outside number one laboratory.

I made my way to the gatehouse and asked for the register book showing the names and nature of business of all those who had checked in and out of Mordon the previous day. There were several hundred of those altogether, but all but a very few of them were staff regularly employed there. Groups of special visitors to Mordon were not infrequent: visiting scientists from the Commonwealth and Nato countries or an occasional small group of MP's who were given to asking awkward questions in the Commons and were brought down to Mordon to see for themselves the sterling work being carried out there on the health front against anthrax, polio, Asian flu and other diseases: such groups were shown exactly what the Mordon authorities wanted them to be shown and usually came away no wiser than they had arrived. But, on that previous day, there had been no such groups of visitors: there had been fourteen callers altogether, all of them concerned with the delivery of various supplies. I copied down their names and the reasons for their visits, and left.

I phoned the local car-hire firm, asked for the indefinite hire of one of their cars and that it should be brought and left at the gates of Mordon. Another call to Alfringham, this time to the Waggoner's Rest, and I was lucky enough to get a room. The last call was to London, to Mary. I told her to pack a suitcase for me and one for herself and bring them both down to the Waggoner's Rest. There was a train from Paddington that would get her down by half-past six.

I left the gatehouse and went for a walk through the grounds. The air was cold and a chill October wind blowing, but I didn't walk briskly. I paced slowly up and down beside the inner fence, head bowed, gazing down at my feet most of the time. Cavell lost in thought, or so I hoped any onlooker would think. I spent the better part of an hour there, paralleling the same quarter mile of fence all the time and at last I found what I was looking for. Or so I thought. Next circuit round I stopped to tie my shoe-lace and then there was no more doubt in my mind.

Hardanger was still in the administrative block when I found him. He and Inspector Martin were poring over freshly developed batches of photographic prints. Hardanger looked up and grunted, "How's it going?"

"It's not. Any progress with you?"

"No prints on Clandon's wallet, cigarette case or books of matches-except his own, of course. Nothing of any interest on the doors. We've found the Bedford van-rather, Inspector Wylie's men have found a a Bedford van. Reported missing this afternoon by a chap called Hendry, an Alfringham carrier with three of those vans. Found less than an hour ago by a motor-cycle cop in the Hailem Woods. Sent my men across there to try it for prints." Bedford van. Reported missing this afternoon by a chap called Hendry, an Alfringham carrier with three of those vans. Found less than an hour ago by a motor-cycle cop in the Hailem Woods. Sent my men across there to try it for prints."

"It's as good a way of wasting time as any."

"Maybe. Do you know the Hailem Woods?"

I nodded, "Half-way between here and Alfringham there's a 'B' road forks off to the north. About a mile and a half along that road. There may have been woods there once, but they've gone now. You wouldn't find a couple of dozen trees in the entire area now-outside gardens, that is. Residential, what's called a good neighbourhood. This fellow Hendry-a check been made?"

"Yes. Nothing there. One of those solid citizens, not only the backbone of England but a personal friend of Inspector Wylie's. They play darts for the same pub team. That," Hardanger said heavily, "puts him beyond the range of all suspicion."

"You're getting bitter." I nodded at the prints. "From number one lab, I take it. A first-cla.s.s job. I wonder which of the prints belongs to the man who stays nearest to the spot where the Bedford was found."

He gave me an up-from-under glance. "As obvious as that, is it?"

"Isn't it? It would seem to leave him pretty well out. Dumping the evidence on your own door-step is as good a way as any of putting the noose round your own neck."

"Unless that's the way we're intended to think. Fellow called Chessingham. Know him?"

"Research chemist. I know him."

"Would you vouch for him?"

"In this business I wouldn't vouch for St. Peter. But I'd wager a month's pay he's clear."

"I wouldn't. We're checking his story and we'll see."

"Well see. How many of the prints have you identified?"

"Fifteen sets altogether, as far as we can make out, but we've been able to trace only thirteen."

I thought for a minute, then nodded. "That would be about right. Dr. Baxter, Dr. Gregori, Dr. MacDonald, Dr. Hartnell, Chessingham. Then the four technicians in that lab -Verity, Heath, Robinson and Marsh. Nine. Clandon. One of the night guards. And, of course, Cliveden and Weybridge. Running a check on them?"

"What do you think?" Hardanger said testily.

"Including Cliveden and Weybridge?"

"Cliveden and Weybridge!" Hardanger stared at me and Martin backed him up with another stare. "Are you serious, Cavell?"

"With someone running around with the Satan Bug in his pants pockets I don't think it's the time for being facetious, Hardanger. n.o.body-n.o.body-is in the clear." He gave me a long hard look but I ignored it and went on, "About those two sets of unidentified prints--"

"We'll print every man in Mordon till we get them," Hardanger said grimly.

"You don't have to. Almost certainly they belong to a couple of men called Bryson and Chipperfield. I know them both."

"Explain yourself."

"They're the two men in charge of running Alfringhain Farm-the place that supplies all the animals for the experiments carried out here. They're usually up here with a fresh supply of animals every week or so-the turnover in live-stock is pretty heavy. They were here yesterday. I checked on the register book. Making a delivery to the animal room in number one laboratory."

"You say you know them. What are they like?"

"Young. Steady, hard-working, very reliable. Live in adjacent cottages on the farm. Married to a couple of very nice girls. They have a kid apiece, a boy and a girl about six years old. Not the type, any of them, to get mixed up in anything wrong."

"You guarantee them?"

"You heard what I said about St. Peter. I guarantee nothing and n.o.body. They'll have to be checked. I'll go if you like. After all, I have the advantage of knowing them."

"You will?" Hardanger let me have his close look again. "Like to take Inspector Martin with you?"

"All one to me," I a.s.sured him. It wasn't, but I'd manners.

"Then in that case it's not necessary," Hardanger said. There were times, I thought, when Hardanger could be downright unpleasant. "Report back anything you find. I'll lay on a car for you."

"I already have one. Car-hire firm."

He frowned. "That was unnecessary. Plenty of police and army cars available. You know that."

"I'm a private citizen now. I prefer private transport."

I found the car at the gate. Like so many rental machines it was a great deal older than its actual age. But at least it rolled and took the weight off my feet I was glad to take the weight off my feet. My left leg hurt, quite badly, as it always did when I had to walk around for any length of time. Two eminent London surgeons had more than once pointed out to me the advantage of having my left foot removed and sworn that they could replace it with an artificial one not only indistinguishable from the genuine article but guaranteed pain-free. They had been quite enthusiastic about it but it wasn't their foot and I preferred to hang on to it as long as possible.

I drove to Alfringham, spent five minutes mere talking to the manager of the local dance-hall, and reached Alfringham Farm just as dusk was falling. I turned in through the gates, stopped the car outside the first of the two cottages, got out and rang the bell. After the third attempt I gave it up and drove to the second cottage. I'd get an answer there. Lights were burning behind the windows. I leaned on the bell and after some seconds the door opened. I blinked in the sudden wash of light, then recognised the man before me.

"Bryson," I said. "How are you? Sorry to burst in like this but I'm afraid I've a very good reason."

"Mr. Cavelll" Unmistakable surprise in his voice, all the more p.r.o.nounced in the sudden conversational hush from the room behind him. "Didn't expect to see you again so soon. Thought you'd left these parts, I did. How are you, sir?"

"I'd like a few words with you. And with Chipperfield. But he's not at home."

"He's here. With his missus. Turn about in each other's house for our Sat.u.r.day night get together." He hesitated, exactly as I would have done if I'd settled down with some friends for a quiet drink and a stranger broke in. "Delighted to have you join us, sir."

"I'll keep you only a few minutes." I followed Bryson into the brightly lit living-room beyond. A log fire burnt cheerfully in the fireplace and around it were a couple of small settees and a high chair or two. In the centre was a low table with some bottles and gla.s.ses. A comfortable, homely scene.

A man and two women rose as Bryson closed the door behind me. I knew all three-Chipperfield, a tall blond man, the outward ant.i.thesis in every way of the short stocky Bryson, and the two men's wives, blonde and dark to match their husbands, but otherwise was a strong similarity-small, neat and pretty with identical hazel eyes. The similarity was hardly surprising-Mrs. Bryson and Mrs. Chipperfield were sisters.

After a couple of minutes, during which civilities had been exchanged and I'd been offered a drink and accepted for my sore leg's sake, Bryson said, "How can we help you, Mr. Cavell?"

"We're trying to clear up a mystery about Dr. Baxter," I said quietly. "You might be able to help. I don't know."

"Dr. Baxter? In number one lab?" Bryson glanced at his brother-in-law. "Ted and me-we saw him only yesterday. Quite a chat with him, we had. Nothing wrong with him, sir, I hope?"

"He was murdered last night," I said.

Mrs. Bryson clapped her hands to her mouth and choked off a scream. Her sister made some sort of unidentifiable noise and said, "No, oh no!" But I wasn't watching them, I was watching Bryson and Chipperfield, and I didn't have to be a detective to see that the news came as a complete shock and surprise to both of them.

I went on, "He was killed last night, before midnight, In his lab. Someone threw a deadly virus poison over him and he must have died in minutes. And in great agony. Then that someone found Mr. Candon waiting outside the lab and disposed of him also-by cyanide poisoning."

Mrs. Bryson rose to her feet, her face paper-white, her sister's arms around her, blindly threw her cigarette into the fireplace and left the room. I could hear the sound of someone being sick in the bathroom.

"Dr. Baxter and Mr. Clandon dead? Murdered?" Bryson's face was almost as pale as his wife's had been. "I don t believe it." I looked at his face again. He believed it all right. He listened to the sounds coming from the bathroom and then said with as much angry reproach as his shaken state would allow, "You might have told us private, like Mr. Cavell. Without the girls being here, I mean."

"I'm sorry." I tried to look sorry. "I'm not myself, Candon was my best friend."

"You did it on purpose," Chipperfield said tightly. He was normally a likeable and affable young man, but there was nothing affable about him right then. He said shrewdly, "You wanted to see how we all took it. You wanted to know if we we had anything to do with it. Isn't that it, Mr. Cavell?" had anything to do with it. Isn't that it, Mr. Cavell?"

"Between eleven o'clock and midnight last night," I said precisely, "you and your brother-in-law here were up for exactly five dances at the Friday night hop in Alfringham. You've been going there practically every Friday night for years. I could even tell you the names of the dances, but I won't bother. The point is that neither of you-nor your wives-left the hall for an instant during that hour. Afterwards you went straight into your Land-Rover and arrived back here shortly after twelve-twenty. We have established beyond all doubt that both murders took place between 11.15 and 11.45 p.m. So let's have no more of your silly accusations, Chipperfield. There can be no shadow of suspicion about you two. If there was, you'd be in a police cell, not seeing me here drinking your whisky. Speaking of whisky--"

"Sorry, Mr. Cavell. d.a.m.ned silly of me. Saying what I did, I mean." Chipperfield's relief showed in his face as he rose to his feet and poured more whisky into my gla.s.s. Some of it spilled on to the carpet, but he didn't seem to notice.

"But if you know we've nothing to do with it, what can we do to help?"

"You can tell me everything that happened when you were in 'E' block yesterday," I said. "Everything. What you did, what you saw, what Dr. Baxter said to you and you to him. Don't miss out a thing, the tiniest detail."

So they told me, taking it in turns, and I sat there looking at them with unwavering attention and not bothering to listen to a word they said. As they talked, the two women came in, Mrs. Bryson giving me a pale, shame-faced half-smile, but I didn't notice it, I was too busy doing my close listening act. As soon as the first decent opportunity came I finished my whisky, rose and made to leave. Mrs. Bryson said something apologetic about her silliness, I said something suitably apologetic in return and Bryson said, "Sorry we haven't been able to be of any real help, Mr. Cavell."

"You have helped," I said. "Police work is largely confined to the confirming and eliminating of possibilities. You've eliminated more than you would think. I'm sorry I caused such an upset, I realise this must be quite a shock to both your families, being so closely a.s.sociated with Mordon. Speaking of families, where are the kids to-night?"

"Not here, thank goodness," Mr. Chipperfield said. "With their grandmother in Kent-the October holidays, you know, and they always go there then."

"Best place for them, right now." I agreed. I made my apologies again, cut the leave-taking short and left.

It was quite dark outside now. I made my way back down to the hired car, climbed in, drove out through the farm gates and turned left for the town of Alfringham. Four hundred yards beyond the gates I pulled into a convenient lay-by switched off engine and lights.

My leg was aching badly, now, and it took me almost fifteen minutes to get back to Bryson's cottage. The living-room curtains were drawn, but carelessly. I could see all I wanted to, without trouble. Mrs. Bryson was sitting on a settee, sobbing bitterly, with her husband's free arm round her: the other held a tumbler of whisky and the tumbler was more than half full. Chipperfield, a similar gla.s.s in his band, was staring into the fire, his face dark and sombre. Mrs. Chipperfield, on the settee, was facing me. I couldn't see her face, only the fair hair shining in the lamplight as she bent over something held in her hand. I couldn't see what it was but I didn't have to. I could guess with the certainty of complete knowledge. I walked quietly away and took my time in making my way back to the car. I still had twenty-five minutes before the London train was due in Alfringham. The train-and Mary.

Mary Cavell was all my life. Two months, only, I'd been married to her, but I knew it would be that way till the end of my days. All my life. An easy thing for any man to say, easy and trite and meaningless and perhaps a little cheap. Until you saw her, that was. Then you would believe anything.

She was small and blonde and beautiful, with amazing green eyes. But it wasn't that that made her special, you could reach out your arms in the streets of London in the evening rush hour and pick up half a dozen girls without really trying, all of them small and blonde and beautiful. Nor was it just the infectious happiness that left no one untouched, her irrepressible gaiety, her obvious delight in a life that she lived with the intensity of a tropical hummingbird. There was something else. There was a shining quality about her, in her face, in her eyes, in her voice, in everything she said and did, that made her the only person I'd ever known who'd never had an enemy, male or female. There is only one word to describe this quality-the old-fashioned and much maligned term "goodness." She hated do-gooders, those she called the goody-goodies, but her own goodness surrounded her like a tangible, and visible magnetic field. A magnetic field that automatically drew to her more waifs and strays, more people broken in mind and body than a normal person would encounter in a dozen lifetimes. An old man dozing away his last days in the thin autumn sunshine on a park bench, a bird with a broken wing-they all came alike to Mary. Broken wings were her speciality, and I was only now beginning to realise that for every wing we saw her mend there was another the world knew nothing about. And, to make her perfect, she had the one drawback which kept her from being inhumanly perfect- she had an explosive temper that could erupt in a most spectacular fashion and to the accompaniment of the most shockingly appropriate language: but only when she saw the bird with the broken wing-or the person responsible for breaking it.

She was my wife and I still wondered why she married me. She could have chosen almost any man she'd ever known, but she'd chosen me. I think it was because I had a broken wing. The German tank-track that had crushed my leg in the mud at Caen, the gas-sh.e.l.l that had scarred one whole side of my face-Adonis would never have claimed it for his own, anyway-beyond hope of plastic surgery and left me with a left eye that could just barely tell the difference between night and day, that made me a bird with a broken wing.

The train came in and I saw her jumping down lightly from a compartment about twenty yards away, followed by a burly middle-aged character with a bowler hat and umbrella, carrying her suitcase, the dead image of the big city tyc.o.o.n who spends his business hours grinding in the faces of the poor and evicting widows and orphans. I'd never seen him before and I was certain neither had Mary. She just had the effect on people: the most unlikely citizens fought each other for the privilege of helping her and the tyc.o.o.n looked quite a fighter.

She came running down the platform to meet me and I braced myself for the shock of impact. There was nothing inhibited about Mary's greetings and although I still wasn't reconciled to the raised eyebrows of astonished fellow-travellers I was getting, accustomed to them. I'd last seen her only this morning but I might have been a long lost loved one coming home for the first time after a generation in the Australian outback. I was setting her down on terra firma as the tyc.o.o.n came up, dumped the cases, beamed at Mary, tipped his bowler, turned away, still beaming at her, and tripped over a railway barrow. When he'd got up and dusted himself he was still beaming. He tipped his bowler again and disappeared.

"You want to be careful how you smile at your boyfriends," I said severely. "Want me to spend the rest of my life working to pay off claims for damages against you? That oppressor of the working cla.s.s that just pa.s.sed by-he'd have me wearing the same suit for the rest of my life."

"He was a very nice man indeed." She looked up at me, suddenly not smiling. "Pierre Cavell, you're tired, worried stiff and your leg is hurting."

"Cavell's face is a mask," I said. "Impossible to tell his feelings and thoughts-inscrutable, they call it. Ask anyone."

"And you've been drinking whisky." you've been drinking whisky."

"It was the long separation that drove me to it." I led the way to the car. "We're staying at the Waggoner's Rest."

"It sounds wonderful. Thatched roofs, oak beams, the inglenooks by the blazing fire." She shivered. "It is is cold. I can't get there fast enough." cold. I can't get there fast enough."

We got there in three minutes. I parted the car outside a modernistic confection in gleaming gla.s.s and chrome. Mary looked at it, then at me and said, "This is the Waggoner's Rest?"

"You can see what the neon sign says. Outdoor sanitation and boll-weevils in the bed-posts have gone out of fashion. And they'll have central heating."

The manager, at the moment doubling as receptionist, would have felt more at home in an eighteenth-century "Waggoner's Rest." Red-faced, shirt-sleeved and smelling powerfully of the breweries. He scowled at me, smiled at Mary and summoned a ten-year-old boy, presumably his son, who showed us to our room. It was clean enough and s.p.a.cious enough and overlooked a back courtyard decked out in a poor imitation of a continental beer garden. More important, one of the windows overlooked the porchway leading into the court.

The door closed behind the boy and Mary came up to me. "How is that stupid leg of yours, Pierre? Honestly?"

"It's not so good." I'd given up trying to tell lies about myself to Mary, as far as I was concerned she was a human lie-detector. "It'll ease up. It always does."

"That arm-chair," she ordered. "And the stool, so. You're not using that leg again to-night."

"I'm afraid I'll have to. Quite a bit. d.a.m.n' nuisance, but it can't be helped."

"It can be helped," she insisted. "You don't have to do everything yourself. There are plenty of men--"