Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran: The Belchester Chronicles Book 4 Page 14

  Her book was really hotting up now; the author was racking up the tension. She must get more out from the library by this writer. The storyline was absolutely riveting.

  The next sensation of which she was aware was of a hand gently shaking her shoulder, and she opened her eyes to see Beauchamp sitting on the chaise longue beside her. ‘I thought I’d better wake you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been sitting here for fifteen minutes, but you were well away.’

  ‘I wasn’t sleeping,’ she objected.

  ‘I’m afraid you were, and you were snoring as well,’ he countered.

  ‘Absolute nonsense,’ she refuted.

  ‘True. Completely true.’ Enid’s voice came from behind her, over by the window. She had forgotten that these two would be keeping a double watch together.

  They were really into their card games, and the time simply flew by for them, a table lamp giving enough light for them to see by. At a quarter-to-six, well after the appointed time for their relief, Beauchamp made a short trip to Hugo’s room to find that his alarm clock had indeed, rung, but he had slept right through its urgent summons and was still peacefully sleeping like a baby.

  With infinite mercy, and respect for the man’s age, the manservant crept his way out again, and he and Enid had another hour of card games. The man would be very apologetic when he awoke to find he had missed his stint on guard duty, but at his age, the sleep would do him much more good.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tuesday

  The next morning, Beauchamp was almost jumping with excitement, and could hardly contain himself. He was acting like a child waiting for permission to open his Christmas presents.

  ‘Whatever is the matter with you? Do you need to go to the little boys’ room?’ Lady Amanda asked. She was feeling rather grumpy, having done her guard duty the night before, when Hugo had been left to sleep through his, and the thief had failed to show at all, after all their plotting and effort.

  ‘I’ve just remembered something my mother told me that was before my time, but may explain a lot of things that have happened lately,’ he told her, almost hopping up and down. ‘And we can investigate after breakfast.’

  ‘Investigate what?’ she asked, now intrigued.

  ‘Spill the beans, old man,’ instructed Hugo, glad to have someone to take the heat away from his dereliction of duty.

  ‘This all happened before the war,’ he began. ‘Your father was always a – how can I put it without sounding really insulting – shall we say that he was a less than honest man?’

  ‘I think that’s fair,’ agreed Lady A.

  ‘And he definitely saw the approach of war as a retail opportunity, albeit a black-market one. Before hostilities broke out, he brought a team of labourers down from London and had them dig out the floor of one of the stables, explaining that he wanted somewhere to store his valuables from the house, should there be air raids in the area, because of the harbour nearby.

  ‘They knew no better, not being local, excavated it, then built a substantial cellar for him. He fed them and provided them with beer to keep them from going into the town and talking about what they were doing, even though it sounded innocent enough.

  ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and he knew that it could be his undoing if anyone in Belchester found out what he was up to. They could put two and two together as well as anyone else, and they knew his character.

  ‘When war broke out and there were shortages, that cellar was full of black market gear, as well as illegally distilled spirits and weapons. Your father had a really black heart.’

  ‘Huh!’ retorted Lady Amanda. ‘That’s the pot calling the kettle black.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but that stables cellar is probably still there, and I’d put my shirt on the premise that the whole lot of the stolen items are now stored, away from open sight, there. This Jemmy must somehow have gleaned information from one of the original labourers – maybe he’s a son or grandson of one of them. I can’t think of any other way he might have found out,’ declared the manservant.

  ‘I’d bet my blouse that Evergreen knew about it. He’s been here since the Ark.’

  ‘He was probably in on it,’ suggested Beauchamp, getting even more excited. ‘That’s why he kept the others on despite their decrepitude. He could get away with a lot more with those three around than with someone more alert.’

  ‘That must have been why he was killed,’ interjected Hugo.

  ‘I’m going outside for a fag,’ said Enid.

  When they reached the stable block, Beauchamp was not sure which stable the cellar had been situated in, and there were quite a lot of them. A closer inspection confirmed that, while there were now no horses in residence, nobody had cleared out all the old straw and quite a lot of ‘do-dos’ from when they were used. The floors were invisible.

  ‘We’ll need to split up and use brooms,’ declared Beauchamp, turning on his heel and marching back towards the house. They’d need to uncover quite a lot of floor before they were able to judge whether there was a trapdoor or not. Who was to say that the man would put such an entrance right in the middle of the floor? It was much more likely to be tucked away in a corner, where there was little light.

  ‘We’re going to have to sweep them out completely,’ he told the other three. ‘If I know the old master, the trapdoor won’t be where we expect it to be; it’ll have been placed with great cunning.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish my father had been just a little bit thicker, and this is one of them,’ moaned Lady A, accepting her broom gloomily. ‘When I went upstairs last night I thought we’d have our criminal behind bars by this morning. Now I’m not so sure we’ll ever catch him.’

  ‘I reckon we’ve got more chance than old Misery-Chops,’ prophesied Enid, lighting a new cigarette from the butt of her old one.

  ‘Come on, chop chop. Get a move on or we’ll be here all day,’ Beauchamp chided them, setting to work himself, and raising a great cloud of dust from the ancient straw, which made everybody sneeze. ‘Come with me, Enid. I do believe we’re going to need some buckets of water to dampen this lot down.

  The job still wasn’t easy, even without the clouds of dust, and the two older members of the clearing crew needed to take frequent rests as their arthritic joints protested at such abuse.

  ‘This is damned hard work,’ protested Lady A.

  ‘I’ve never done manual labour before,’ complained Hugo.

  ‘Well, this sort of job is hardly in my contract, and you don’t even officially employ Enid yet,’ Beauchamp reminded his employer.

  At this reminder of her non-paid status, Enid downed her broom and took out her golden cardboard carton. ‘If I’m not being paid, then you can hardly tell me off for slacking,’ she said, a hint of mutiny in her voice.

  ‘Enid, I do wish you’d give up that filthy habit. It makes you less than civil. In fact, sometimes, you’re downright rude. This isn’t the Enid Tweedie I’ve known and been friends with for donkey’s years,’ chastened Lady Amanda.

  ‘I’ll stop before the wedding,’ she agreed, blushing slightly as the truth of this accusation hit home.

  ‘Good. Bring the date forward if necessary. When is it to be, anyway?’

  ‘The first Saturday in April. We’ll need to get the dresses sorted out soon.’

  ‘Oh, joy,’ replied Lady A, who loved the honesty of a dress fitting the way she loved being prodded with red-hot pokers. ‘I’ll look forward to that, then.’

  ‘Here we are,’ called out Beauchamp, the ring of success in his voice. ‘Right over here in this corner. I’ve found the ring and cleared the outline of the trapdoor. We should be able to open up and take a look down. Damn it! I didn’t bring any torches with me. Will you get some Enid, and I’ll get a spade.’

  ‘What on earth do you need a spade for? The cellar’s already been dug,’ enquired Hugo.

  ‘Because the trapdoor’s probably firmly stuck down with old manure, and I’ll no doubt need a spade t
o prise it open, after all this time.’

  ‘Good thinking, my man.’

  The ring was detachable, and Beauchamp could only think that it had been left in place either by accident or through arrogance. A lot depended on when it had last been opened.

  It would appear that it had been used recently, as all the detritus round the edges of the trapdoor was loose, as if it had been sprinkled there to deceive, and the door itself opened easily without need of any use of the spade. The ladder beyond it had also been replaced with an aluminium one. Obviously the old wooden one had rotted into disuse over the decades.

  ‘He’s been here all right,’ confirmed Beauchamp, descending and lighting one of the torches that Enid had fetched. As he swung the light around, he whistled and announced, ‘It looks like it’s all here, and so is Evergreen. What are we planning to do next? We had it all before, but lost it.’

  ‘We’ll have to take it all back to the house and lock it away. Or shall we just call the police?’ Lady Amanda was having visions of them going backwards and forwards with wheelbarrows for hour upon hour.

  ‘I think we ought to call the police. Inspector Moody would be exceedingly upset if we moved anything. We may obliterate fingerprints and destroy evidence,’ added Beauchamp.

  ‘Yes, it would be a bore, and quite a lot more hard work, if we moved it all,’ said Hugo, whose eyes might need glasses for his newspaper, but were as sharp as needles when it came to sub-text.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ Beauchamp had come to a decision. ‘I’ll take away the ladder and also remove the ring which pulls the trapdoor open. Then, if chummy returns,’ – this still made Hugo turn his head, thinking he was being addressed – ‘he’ll not only know he’s been rumbled, but will want to get the stuff away as quickly as possible.

  ‘Well, that won’t actually be a quick job, given the problem of the missing ring, then the missing ladder. We should have the boys in blue long before he’s finished, and the cuffs clapped on him.’ The manservant had it all worked out.

  Unfortunately for him, Detective Inspector Moody was not feeling in a co-operative mood today. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Beecham. The last time you called me out, not only was it in the middle of the night, but it was also on a wild goose chase. If you think I’m coming out to that ruddy mausoleum again so quickly, you’ve got another think coming.

  ‘If you want to entice me through those gates again, you’ll have to have Jimmy the Jemmy Aldridge already caught and tied up. Not until then will I set foot on that woman’s property again,’ and he hung up.

  The line went dead, leaving Beauchamp completely nonplussed, having been unable even to mention the status of the recently deceased Evergreen. Did the inspector mean what he’d said, or was he merely being facetious? The only thing to do was to take him at his word, and now he’d have to formulate a plan and go and apprise the other three of the new situation.

  ‘That’s exactly what he said,’ he finished after his brief telling of the story.

  ‘Bloody, bare-faced cheek of the man!’ Lady Amanda was letting herself down while totally sober, today.

  ‘But I’ve had time to think,’ her manservant continued. ‘I’m going to suggest that we start to remove the loot, starting with the stuff which can’t be seen from the ladder, so it won’t be visually missed, if he arrives while we’re doing it.’

  ‘But he’ll see us.’ This was the ever-cautious Hugo.

  ‘Nonsense. There are plenty of old crates and boxes down here. There’s lots of stuff we could hide in or behind.’

  ‘If one is spry enough to move at that speed.’ Hugo was still not convinced.

  ‘There’s no mains electricity down here. If you just froze, as you did as a child in musical statues, he simply wouldn’t notice you, because you wouldn’t be moving, and it’s terribly gloomy down here.’

  ‘But he’ll have a torch.’

  ‘Hugo, shut up! There are four of us. We’ve at least got a chance of ambushing and overpowering him.’ Lady Amanda stepped in on Beauchamp’s side to counteract her friend’s negativity.

  ‘What are you, a man or a mouse?’ she asked.

  And, although it was obviously a rhetorical question, he answered, ‘Squeak!’

  ‘Right, this is the end stable. If I open the boot room door, which is the one closest to the stable block for obvious reasons, we can take the stuff in through there, spending as little time out in open view as possible, so as not to be seen. We can take it through to a main room that locks, from there.’ Beauchamp was in his element.

  ‘We shall, in the meantime, need a bucket and some rope, so that things can be pulled up through the trapdoor. Then we’ll need a couple of wheelbarrows to transport the stuff across to the house. It would be impossible – and disastrous with some stuff so fragile – to even attempt to do it by hand. Also, it would take too long.’

  ‘Who’s doing what, then?’ Lady A wanted to get down to brass tacks, and just hoped he didn’t expect her to lug wheelbarrows back and forth, to and from the house. She considered herself much too delicate a flower for that sort of activity. The sweeping had been bad enough, in her opinion

  ‘Hugo, I want you on bucket-loading duty down in the cellar.’

  ‘Nice one, Beechy, old thing,’ replied Hugo, uncharacteristically informally. He must have been very pleased with the task allotted to him.

  ‘That’s a bit of a cushy number, isn’t it?’ barked Lady A in annoyance.

  ‘You, your ladyship, I want on bucket-hauling duty at the top, then tipping into wheelbarrow duty.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ That didn’t sound too tough, although most of the stuff was a lot too delicate to be tipped, and would have to be carefully placed by hand.

  ‘Enid and I will deal with the wheelbarrows. I shall wheel over to the house, where Enid will swap an empty barrow for a full one, then place the stuff in a room indoors. We’ll be like a very posh chain gang, but without the actual chains.’

  It was as Enid was placing her latest barrow-load of treasures and Beauchamp was just about to emerge from the boot room door, that he saw a figure insinuate itself very furtively through the stable door. Dear God! Was Jimmy the Jemmy back and about to burst in on Lady Amanda and Hugo?

  He’d know there was someone down there, he now realised, simply because the trapdoor was open. With all speed, he rushed into the house to summon Enid, as an extra pair of hands against this devious and violent criminal.

  Manda and Hugo were suddenly aware of shuffling noises above their heads, and dived down behind a small wall of discarded crates, which were probably waiting fruitlessly for another load of illegal booze that would now never arrive. Sure enough, they could hear the sound of somebody descending the ladder and making as little noise as possible.

  Hugo began to shake, his knees visibly knocking. Lady Amanda signalled to him, in mime, that she was preparing to pounce on him – quite a sight. He nodded reluctantly, hoping that with the two of them, neither of whom was a lightweight, they could maybe knock him off balance. If they then shouted, they might be able to attract the attention of Beauchamp.

  Beauchamp and Enid were, however, preparing to follow their quarry down the ladder. When the man got to the bottom, they shouted to him as they began to descend, and momentarily distracted him.

  This was enough to give Lady A the signal that she had just struck lucky, and she launched herself from her hiding place, yelling as she pounced. Hugo followed suit, and all three figures landed on the floor in a heap, giving Beauchamp and Enid sufficient time to reach them, and help hold down their captive.

  ‘Take off your trouser belt, please Mr Hugo,’ asked Beauchamp, not forgetting his manners in the excitement of the moment.

  ‘Why?’ Hugo was being dense; something at which he was a past master.

  ‘Do you have any handcuffs about your person, sir?’ asked the manservant.

  There was silence for a few seconds, then, ‘Oh! I see what you mean.’

 
Beauchamp used both his and Hugo’s belts to secure Aldridge’s wrists and ankles, while the combined weight of Lady A and Hugo held him firmly in place, face down, on the cellar floor. Finally, when he was unable to move a limb they flipped him on to his back.

  ‘Good God! Turn him back again,’ exclaimed Lady Amanda, and the other three echoed her.

  ‘I shall have to telephone Detective Inspector Moody again and tell him that we have complied with his conditions,’ said Beauchamp, heading for the ladder. ‘I won’t be able to get a signal down here.’

  ‘What conditions?’ his employer asked, in total ignorance of what Moody had said earlier.

  ‘I’ll tell you later, your ladyship. If you’re going to have a conniption, I feel it will be more comfortable for you to do so in the house. Don’t worry, I won’t say a word,’ and with this apparently cryptic sentence, he disappeared.

  ‘Beauchamp! Hey, Beauchamp! Come back here this instant!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  At the police station, Inspector Moody was beginning to feel a little jittery about his dismissal of Beauchamp’s information. Maybe he ought to have taken him seriously. The man would hardly phone him to tell him ‘porky pies’. There must be something in what he said.

  It was just about impossible that the whole thing might be a fabrication. He really ought to go out there and take a look – just to be on the safe side. It was better to be safe than sorry, after all.

  He was just about to call Glenister, when the phone on his desk shrilled. It was that man again. ‘You’ve what?’ asked the detective in disbelief. ‘Don’t let him out of your sight and, I’ll be right out there.

  ‘Glenister! Here! Now! That batty old cow and her cronies have only gone and caught our man. And they’ve recovered all the stolen goods and found the body, to boot. Get Spouph! We need to get over there half an hour ago.’

  ‘Spouph’s not here.’

  ‘Why not? Where is he, then?’