The Shadow in the North Read online

  As simple as that!

  She closed the book, feeling more satisfied than she'd felt for months. Miss Walsh, she thought, you'll get your money back now. . . As she left the building and turned down into Chancery Lane, she found herself smiling.

  She didn't notice the young man in the bowler hat, who'd been sitting at the desk nearest the door, and who folded his papers quietly as she passed. She didn't notice him get up and follow her out; didn't notice as he wandered down Fleet Street behind her and into the Strand; didn't notice as he came into the tea-shop at the corner of Villiers Street where she had lunch. He sat in the window and had a cup of tea and a bun and read his newspaper, and then he followed her out, but still she didn't notice.

  He took care that she wouldn't. He was dressed inconspicuously, and he was good at his job. And one bowler hat is very like another. In any case, she was thinking of Frederick.

  At that moment, Frederick was in Thurlby, where the firing range was. It stood on the Solway Firth and, as far as he was concerned, the Solway Firth could keep it; it was a grim, flat, desolate place, with nothing but a dreary village and a railway line leading along the shore for miles before vanishing behind a tall fence and a locked gate. Notices warned of extreme danger, and the wind came off the sand dunes laden with gritty salt. There was nothing to be seen there.

  He decided to travel on to Netherbrigg, the little town over the Scottish border where Jessie Saxon had said Mackinnon had been staying. Lord Wytham's estate was only a few miles away, on the English side, but there wasn't, he thought, much chance of finding anything out there. He took a room at the King's Head in the High Street at Netherbrigg and asked the landlord where visiting theatrical folk usually put up. Did they stay at the King's Head?

  "Not here," said the proprietor firmly. "I wouldnae take their money. Godless mummers."

  However, he gave Frederick a list of lodging-houses, and after lunch Frederick set out to visit them. The sun had come out, though a cold wind was blowing, and the place looked like any little market town. The music-hall itself wasn't open at the moment; Frederick was surprised that the place was big enough to support one at all.

  A dozen addresses and no map make for a good deal of walking, even in a small town, and it was late in the afternoon when he found what he was looking for. It was his ninth call; a house in Dornock Street, a shabby place with a grim, grey chapel in the middle of it. The landlady's name was Mrs Geary, and yes, she did take boarders.

  "Theatrical people, Mrs Geary?"

  "Sometimes, aye. I'm no fussy."

  "Do you remember a man called Alistair Mackinnon?"

  A flicker of recognition, and a smile. She wasn't a bad sort. "Aye," she said. "The wizard."

  "That's the feller. I'm a friend of his, you see, and - may I come in for a minute?"

  She stepped aside and let him through into the hall. It was a neat place, smelling of polish, with half a dozen theatrical photographs on the walls.

  "Very kind of you," he said. "This is an awkward business. Mackinnon's in a spot of trouble, and I've come up here to see if I can help him."

  "Doesn't surprise me," she said dryly.

  "Oh? Has he been in trouble before?"

  "If ye could call it that."

  "What sort of trouble?" Frederick said.

  "Ah, well, that'd be telling, wouldn't it?"

  He took a deep breath.

  "Mrs Geary, Mackinnon's in danger. I'm a detective, and I've got to find out what's threatening him so I can help - but I can't ask him directly, because he's vanished. Let's take one thing at a time. Do you know a Mrs Budd?"

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Aye," she said.

  "Did she ever stay here?"

  She nodded.

  "With Mackinnon?"

  "Aye."

  "Were they - forgive me, but I must ask - were they lovers?"

  A flicker of grim amusement crossed her face. "Not in this house," she said decisively.

  "A man called Axel Bellmann - have you come across that name?"

  She shook her head.

  "Or Lord Wytham. Do you know of any connection with him?"

  "Ah," she said. "So that's it."

  "What? You do know something, then. Mrs Geary, this is a serious business. Nellie Budd was attacked the other day and left unconscious; there might be murder involved. You must tell me what you know. What's the connection between Lord Wytham and Alistair Mackinnon? Is he Lord Wytham's son, as he claims to be?"

  Now she smiled. "His son? There's a thought. All right, Mr Whatever, I'll tell ye. And it couldn't happen in England, either. Come in the parlour."

  She led him through into a pretty little room with more theatrical portraits and a tall piano. Despite her dry manner, she seemed to be a popular landlady, to judge by the number of affectionate inscriptions on the photographs. He had time to examine them while she went to get some tea, and looked in vain for a picture of Mackinnon.

  "Well then," she said when she came back, nudging the door shut with her heel. "I thought it would come out eventually. I didn't imagine there'd be murder mixed up in it - that's a nasty shock. Ye'll have tea?"

  "Thank you," he said. She was going to tell it her own way, he thought, and he might as well let her. And then she surprised him.

  "Ye'll know about the other fellow?" she said.

  "Which other fellow?"

  "He came up here a while back; oh, some time now. Asking the same questions. A wee man with gold-rimmed spectacles."

  "Not Windlesham?"

  "That was his name," she said.

  Bellmann's man. . . So whatever he'd found out might be the reason for Bellmann's pursuit of Mackinnon.

  "And did you tell him what he wanted to know?"

  "I am not in the habit of concealing the truth," she said austerely, handing him a cup of tea. "If I havenae mentioned him before, it's because I havenae been asked. I spread no tales, either, mister."

  "No, of course not. I didn't mean to imply that you did," he said, trying to keep his patience. "But this man's connected with the people who are after Mackinnon - and who attacked Nellie Budd. I've got to find out why."

  "Well now," she said. "The beginning of it all was with poor Nellie Budd. I hope she's not badly hurt."

  "Well, she is badly hurt as a matter of fact; they might have fractured her skull. Please, Mrs Geary. What happened?"

  "Nellie asked me to find lodgings for Mackinnon, and sign a statement for a lawyer, saying which date he'd come to stay here. And I had to certify that he'd spent each night in the house. Nellie paid his rent, ye know. He had no engagement at the time. Three weeks he stayed here, and never strayed once. Twenty-one days, ye see. That's the law."

  She was enjoying this, but Frederick was not.

  "Twenty-one days?" he said as patiently as he could.

  "Twenty-one days' proven residence in Scotland. It never used to be necessary in the old days. But they changed the law twenty years ago, and the hotel trade's prospered this side of the border, so I can't complain."

  "Please, Mrs Geary - what are you talking about? Why should he have to prove he'd spent twenty-one days in Scotland?"

  "Och, it's quite simple. If ye've done that, ye can get married by simple declaration in front of two witnesses. So that's what he did, ye see."

  "I don't see - quite. Who did he marry? Not Nellie Budd?"

  She laughed.

  "Don't be daft," she said. "Wytham's girl, that's who. Lady Mary. He married her."

  Chapter Sixteen

  CRAFTSMANSHIP

  Mr Brown, the bowler-hatted craftsman, was used to waiting. He had waited all Thursday and all Friday morning, and he was prepared to wait all week if necessary. His visit to the Patent Library in Sally's wake was interesting, because it showed him that she did occasionally go out without that dog.

  But there was precious little opportunity for his sort of craftsmanship on the crowded pavements of Fleet Street or the Strand. He watched her from behind his newspaper
as they sat in the little tea-shop in Villiers Street, and wondered if his chance would come when she was alone, or whether he'd have to take on the dog as well.

  She was pretty, he'd thought. Pretty in a strange way, half English: the blonde hair, the trim figure, the neat, practical clothes - and half not: the dark brown eyes, the air of decision and intelligence and boldness. The Americans had girls like this. It wasn't a type the English produced naturally. All the more reason for him to go to America. All the more reason to kill her, and earn the money.

  Pity, though.

  For the rest of the day he stayed with her, taking a cab to follow the omnibus she took to Islington, waiting till she came out of her house with the dog, wandering at a discreet distance behind her as she roamed. When the chance arose, he slipped into a shop doorway and changed his bowler hat for the flat cap he carried in his leather bag, or reversed his cloak to show a different coloured tweed. She didn't notice. She seemed to be drifting along at random, with that great, patient brute padding happily at her side.

  She'd led him to the new Embankment, where he'd had to wait while she watched the workmen erecting that preposterous obelisk they'd just brought over from Egypt. She was happily calculating angles and heights and breaking-strains, and admiring the capable, unfussy way the engineers were working; Mr Brown was watching the dog.

  Then she'd wandered up towards Chancery Lane again, and spent half an hour in a tea-shop - too small to follow her into, this time; he had to drift up and down the pavement opposite, watching the reflection in shop windows. A waitress brought tea for her and a saucer of water for the dog. She seemed to be writing something: a letter? In fact, she was listing all the implications and consequences she could imagine of Bellmann's taking out a patent for someone else's invention. She realized that she needed to talk to Mr Temple again, and that she wanted to talk to Frederick.

  When she came out, she didn't see the anonymous figure in the grey tweed, though she passed within two feet of him. He went on following - along Holborn, and up through Bloomsbury, past the British Museum, and into a street where she lingered for a few minutes across the road from a photographer's shop, looking at the window display, perhaps. Then, as darkness was falling, he'd walked behind her through the quiet streets to her home in Islington.

  The dog.

  He was afraid of it, no question about that. A colossal brute, with a mouth that could enclose your head, and a tongue that would lap up your entrails. . .

  Being a professional, he accepted fear as a warning, and weighed his chances all the more carefully. It was no good just being quick and accurate - he'd have to be damn near invulnerable. And as for craftsmanship, it was wasted on animals. The knife for the girl; but for the dog, a gun.

  He didn't carry a gun, but he knew where to get one quickly. An hour after Sally had returned, Mr Brown was stationed in the dark little garden beneath the plane trees in the centre of the square. She'd be out later. Dogs need what is politely called exercise before being shut in for the night.

  It would be an interesting technical problem, managing the knife and the gun so quickly one after the other. But there was a skill he'd find a ready market for in America. . .

  He settled down to wait.

  At half-past eleven the sound of a door opening broke the silence of the square. A light rain had fallen earlier, but it hadn't lasted long. Everything was wet and cold and still.

  The warm yellow of the doorway against the darkness of the house front showed him the silhouette of the girl and the dog, and for a moment another female figure behind them. Then the door was shut, and with light footsteps, she came out on to the pavement.

  She came, as he'd guessed, towards the little garden at the centre of the square, but turned away at the railing, despite the open gate, and walked slowly around the edge. A cab turned into the square at the same time, and crawled to a halt outside a house on the opposite side. Mr Brown kept still, and never let her out of his sight while he listened to the cab-driver and his passenger arguing over the fare.

  The girl and the dog wandered along slowly, she apparently lost in thought, he casting this way and that, sniffing, lifting his head and shaking it so that the chain jingled.

  Finally, and not without audible curses, the cab-driver gathered his reins once more and his horse moved on. The quiet one-two-three-four clatter of its hooves and the iron trundle of the wheels lasted a long time before they were lost in the general blur of sound from the busier streets beyond the square.

  And still the girl walked on. . . She'd almost completed the circuit of the square. Earlier in the evening, and unobtrusively, Mr Brown had explored the houses around the edge, and the streets between them, in order to be sure of a way out. He knew that opposite her now there was a narrow close - an alley, almost - between two of the tall, severely handsome old brick houses.

  He saw her look across at it, and step into the road. Surely she wouldn't go down there - it was perfect, even better than the darkness under the trees. . .

  But she did, hesitating a moment and then letting the great dog pad ahead of her into the alley. And now Mr Brown moved. He took the pistol in his left hand, the knife in his right, concealing them under the thickness of his cloak, and came silently out of the trees and crossed the road. Without a glance to either side, he slipped into the alley and listened.

  Silence. They hadn't heard him.

  He could see them ahead, against the dim light coming from the other end. The alley was narrow and the dog was ahead of her: very well.

  Knife first.

  He pushed the cloak back, freeing both his arms. Then he sprang forward, thumb on the blade, and was on them before they had time to turn.

  She heard him at the last moment, and twisted aside, but he struck and hit home. She gasped as if all the air had been punched out of her lungs, and fell at once.

  Change hands. Quick! The knife was stuck!

  He slapped the gun into his right hand and tugged the knife free from her with his left, and then the dog - an explosion of snarling - jaws, teeth, whirling movement -

  It slammed into him as he fired. They fell together, and he jammed the barrel into its hot, black side and fired again, the shots like cannon fire in the tiny alley -

  It had him by the left arm and its teeth crushed flesh and bone - he fired again, twice more, but he hadn't bargained for the weight of it, the way it shook him against the wall like a rat. Two more shots, right into it; into its very heart; he heard his arm snap - it could kill a horse, a bull, this terrible strength, it was awesome -

  He dropped the gun and snatched the knife from the nerveless fingers of his left hand.

  Where was he, for God's sake? Upside down?

  Tossed from side to side - it was like a hurricane - he'd fired into its body, time and time again; and still it came on—

  He drove the knife up into it, again, again, again, grating on bone and slippery with blood; it made no difference, the dog wasn't feeling it. Its teeth were still gripping his arm - it felt as if they'd met in the centre of it! The pain - the fear - he drove the knife up again, again, again, driving, thrusting, hacking - no craftsmanship now, this was panic. The snarling and the thrashing worsened, and he felt dizzy with weakness and still he stabbed, driving the knife in - throat, belly, back, chest, head - and then it let go.

  Blood - so much blood.

  His arm screamed. It hung down uselessly by his side.

  And then with a surge like a wave of sea the dog was at his throat, tearing -

  Something spilled. A terrible gush, spilling out.

  A weakness came over the dog. Its jaws loosened and it trembled, and the snarling diminished to a sigh, and it stood away and shook itself, almost in puzzlement. Drops flew from it. And it sank to a sitting position and then slumped clumsily forward.

  Mr Brown dropped the knife and dragged the cloak, soaked with blood, up to his throat. He was lying against the wall with his legs under the body of the dog, and the life was g
ushing out of him.

  But he'd done it. He might not survive the dog, but the girl was dead. He reached out dimly and his hand met her hair, wet on the stone beside him.

  Then a voice spoke from the entrance of the alley.

  "Chaka?" it said.

  He twisted and got to his knees in a moment of final terror. She was there, holding a lantern. Bareheaded - blonde - that face, that lovely horrified face, those eyes!

  It wasn't possible -

  He looked down and snatched aside the cloak that hid the dead girl's face.

  A huge birthmark spread across it from jaw to forehead.

  The wrong girl - and he - his craftsmanship -

  He bowed his head, and fell forward into everlasting horror.

  Sally rushed in and flung herself down in the narrow space beside the girl, setting the lantern on the cobbles by her head.

  "Isabel -" she said. "Isabel -"

  She laid her hands on the other girl's cheek; and saw her eyelids flutter, and then open wide. She looked crazed, like someone waking from a nightmare.

  "Sally," she whispered.

  "Did he--" Sally began.

  "He stabbed me - but it didn't - the knife caught in - in my stays - oh, how silly - I fainted - but Chaka -"

  Sally felt as if some god had struck her a great blow over the heart.

  She caught up the lantern again. Its quivering light danced over the body of the man, over the streams of blood on the stones; and lit the dark head and dim eyes of the dog.

  "Chaka," she said aloud, with all her love in the shaking of her voice.

  And the dog heard, at the edge of death, and lifted his head to her and thumped his tail on the ground, once, twice, thrice, before his great strength left him. She threw herself full length and held his head and kissed it again and again, sobbing, her tears mingling with his blood as she cried his name.

  He tried to answer, but his throat was mute. Darkness was everywhere. Sally was with him. It was safe. He died.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE REMOVAL VAN

  The ordinary kind of time stopped then, and for half the night another kind took over: a phantasmagoric shadow-show filled with police and onlookers and a doctor for Isabel (cut along her ribs) and then a man with a cart summoned grumbling to take Chaka away. But Sally wouldn't allow that; she paid him instead to take the body into her landlord's garden, and gave him half a crown for a tarpaulin to cover it with. Chaka would be buried where she chose.