Death and the Visiting Fireman Read online

  DEATH AND THE VISITING FIREMEN

  H.R.F. KEATING

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  One

  ‘Well,’ said the young man who looked like an actor, ‘what do you think of the boss? Pretty shady, eh?’

  The actor, if such an actor could be an actor, was handsome. Regular features, dark curly hair, a long face well set off by the absurd high white collar. And with something unmistakable about him.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Smithers, ‘where were you?’

  A faint flush on the smooth cheek.

  ‘I was at Harrow actually.’

  Smithers patted a little nod of acknowledgement at him. A kind little nod. He had won.

  That was why no Darlborough boy could touch him. Never mind the baldness, the stoop, the tired gait, the easily imitable flick of the hand at the ever-present layer of chalk on his waistcoat, the old clothes.

  Now the whole party sat in silence, greyly waiting. Jerked into activity at an hour only bearable approached from long wakefulness.

  At last the actor, too young to know he was defeated, laid a long delicate green-gloved hand on the little black rail behind Smithers.

  ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘he isn’t quite the thing, is he?’

  He looked pointedly at the enormous mass of the man sitting above them. The heavy figure strained and stretched at the seams of the bold yellow coat. Above the caped collar, one, two, three, the sharp horizontal lines of the folds in the flesh. The skin mottled.

  ‘I do not wish to be unfriendly when we are to see so much of each other in the next few days,’ Smithers said, ‘but I really cannot discuss my host with a fellow guest in these terms.’

  ‘Guest?’

  The young man laughed. With a trickle of hysteria.

  An intrusion of something private on what was still a public occasion, however odd. Each one of the party reacted.

  First. The girl sitting opposite the actor. The mass of unvarying blonde hair, the emphatic figure, the slash of deep red lipstick.

  ‘It’s so horrid, so early. Nobody wants to talk to me.’ She looked at the actor: somebody.

  Second. Sharing the seat with her, but at the other end of it, the very other end, the man of sixty with the eager glance which years of sudden doubts had failed to repress. With a shy smile, quickly effaced, then replaced.

  ‘It’s years since I was up so early. This is what they call between the white and the rose. So I believe.’

  Third. On the far side of the actor from Smithers. Altogether unconscious that the first hard streaks of day exposed the crows’ feet and the wrinkles, the woman asserting her claim still to be in the thirties. Never quite over into the trough of forty. And earning her right: with élan.

  ‘It’s wonderful to see it all. The new day. I like it. Only where’s the sun? Oughtn’t there to be some sun?’

  Now Smithers.

  ‘No, we get the day first, that’s the white. Then later comes the sun, the rose.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I wondered what it meant. But I thought it was one of those things that everybody else understands.’

  ‘But tell me,’ Smithers said, ‘don’t I know you? Aren’t you Daisy Miller, of the old Drury Lane days? My name’s Smithers.’

  ‘Old days it is, I’m afraid, Mr Smithers, but they were good old days all the same.’

  ‘It certainly seems a long time since “Only A Rose” and we seem to have come a long way.’

  Smithers looked at the ugly dockside. At their vehicle, beautiful and completely incongruous. He looked at his fellow passengers.

  ‘You don’t want to start thinking, dear,’ said Daisy Miller. ‘Not these days.Too many things happen which no amount of thinking can alter. And after all, this is exciting too, in its way.’

  Scarcely a move of the head from Smithers, but a bow.

  He turned and leaned over towards the man with the quick shy smile.

  ‘There didn’t seem to be time for introductions,’ he said. ‘My name is Smithers. I teach history at Darlborough.’

  ‘I’m Fremitt.’

  Again the quick deprecatory grin.

  ‘I’m in fire prevention.’

  ‘You must be the president,’ said Smithers. ‘Our host told me you would be here.’

  ‘Well, yes, I am president. But only this year, of course.’

  ‘All this’ – Smithers gestured – ‘must be a heavy responsibility.’

  ‘It is. It is.’

  The jump of assent. Then the curb: a request for a minute written in the proper form, due consideration, the safer course.

  Smithers allowed Fremitt his silence and leant back again on the precarious seat.

  A faint sunlight came through the mists. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. Then abruptly above them the fat man jerked himself round and looked down.

  ‘Where the devil is the major?’ he said.’ I told him to meet us at four. It’s nearly five now and there’s no sign of him.’

  ‘I don’t see why he’s allowed to be late when you made me get up,’ said the girl.

  And at the hint of the shared bed, too plainly hinted, the actor glinted anger. Before the control clamped.

  ‘I told you last night,’ said the fat man.

  With distaste.

  ‘I told you last night, the boat’s due already. We’ve got to be there. That’s what you don’t understand. You’ve got to do things the right way. Every time. It’s the secret of success. It’s simple enough, but they won’t do it. And they come unstuck.’

  ‘If the boat’s due, why hasn’t it come?’ said the girl. ‘I can’t see any bloody boat.’

  ‘I don’t know why it hasn’t come. Someone’s made a mistake. It’ll lose them money in the end, always does. And now leave me alone. I’m going to have a nap.’

  The girl flounced round.

  ‘Richard.’

  Her voice a coo, but importunate.

  ‘Yes?’

  The actor acknowledged no debt. No overt debt.

  ‘Richie, talk to me.’

  ‘There isn’t a great deal to talk about at this time of the morning.’

  ‘But, Richie –’

  With a lunge the fat man stood up and swung round. The crazy vehicle shook. Hands instinctively clutched the slight rails.

  He leant down over the girl, slowly clenching his right fist.

  Below him the girl’s face was upturned. Fear, and something else.

  ‘What did you call him?’ the fat man said.

  ‘Call him?’

  ‘Yes, you stupid creature. What name was that? I thought you told me he was called Charles.’

  ‘Charles?’

  ‘Yes. Charles. Charles. Your brother Charles. What’s his full name? Not Charles Kett, I suppose.’

  ‘My brother?’

  Her laugh was forced. But a touch of defiance in her bearing, a sign of a game being played, and perhaps won.

  ‘Oh, Charles couldn’t come. He got flu. There wasn’t time to tell you last night.’

  The game almost certainly won.

  ‘Everything was so rushed,’ she went on. ‘This isn’t Charles. This is a – This is just a friend. It’s Richard Wemyss. Surely you know Richie?’

  ‘No.’

  The heavy face comp
letely blank.

  ‘How silly. I thought you did. Well, this is him. Richie. Richard Wemyss, the actor, Richie this is Mr George Hamyadis.’

  ‘I haven’t ever seen him in anything.’

  ‘Well, he’s had rather bad luck. Haven’t you Richie? He ought to have been in the West End only he was let down. He’s done films though, those advertising ones.’

  ‘I see. And you brought him along instead of your brother.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly what I did. Charles got flu ever so suddenly. So I thought of Richard. Wasn’t I clever?’

  ‘I suppose you promised him money? My money.’

  ‘Naturally, he can’t afford to do it for love.’

  ‘Not for love?’

  A pounce. And a smile stamped on the heavily jowled face.

  ‘No,’ the girl answered. ‘Not for love.’

  On the black rail Wemyss’s green-gloved hand clenched tightly.

  ‘All right then. Not for love. For money.’

  A shake of the enormous frame.

  ‘I’m sorry for all this,’ he said. ‘But I can’t stand anyone altering my arrangements. I don’t make them for fun.’

  He turned and slumped in his seat. Below him eyes sought boots. Footwear became an absorbing interest, a spotted flycatcher out of season, a page of an illuminated psalter, a chart of shallows.

  The mists parting. The sun hinting at warmth. A long silence for minds quietly to flex again.

  Now. From behind the distant banks of mist, still too thick to allow anything to be seen, the long sobbing note of a ship’s foghorn.

  Again the fat man got up.

  ‘Where the hell has the major got to?’ he asked. ‘The boat will be here at any moment. What’s happened to him?’

  No answer. The fat man looked at the party, up and down, one by one.

  ‘Kristen,’ he said, playing the patience game, ‘you look about as old-fashioned as a jet bomber. Can’t you do something about it?’

  ‘I can’t help looking up to date. You like it all right as a rule.’

  ‘Listen. I shaved my beard off because I didn’t think it looked right with these clothes. I’ve had that beard ever since I left home for America. Thirty or forty years. But if the thing was to be done right it had to go. So it went. Don’t you realize this is something big? Look at Daisy, there’s nothing wrong with her.’

  ‘She finds it easy,’ the girl said. ‘But I’m just what they call contemporary. I can’t help it.’

  Daisy Miller. More than this needed to hurt.

  ‘I always say it’s a pity none of you young things get much chance of costume work, there’s nothing like it for teaching you how to act.’

  ‘Oh, I can act all right. But I’m damned if I can look like an old-fashioned picture book. Can you imagine it: Kristen Kett as Little Miss Muffet? You’ll just have to take plain sex and like it.’

  ‘I’ll grant you that,’ said the fat man.

  Out of the mist the huge bulk of the liner. Tugs weaving in front of her. Ducks in a pond chasing crusts.

  ‘Mr Dagg,’ said the boss.

  Not a word all the long morning wait. The silent figure of the driver, reins on knees, whip held upright and unmoving, an eye only for the four matched greys below him, with their occasional snorts in the chill morning air and stamps on the stones of the quay.

  ‘Mr Dagg, we’ll move off as soon as she ties up. We can’t wait for the major all day. I spoke to the ship on the radio telephone yesterday. Most of them should be up by now and waiting to see us.’

  ‘Ay, ay, Air Marshal.’

  A cockney voice. Independence, eccentricity, the world seen through self-made spectacles.

  Past the mist curtain the liner presented itself quickly. Its decks well lined with people.

  ‘And is every one of them a fireman?’ asked Daisy Miller.

  ‘Not exactly a fireman, if I may say so.’

  Fremitt, quickly pedantic, as quickly polite. He flickered the shy smile towards her, was silent, saw more was needed.

  ‘They are in point of fact’, he said, ‘members of the American Institute for the Investigation of Incendiarism – er – Incorporated. That is what we should call, perhaps, fire prevention officers. Of various standings, and many, I believe, with their wives.’

  ‘You must think me awfully silly,’ said Daisy. ‘And now I realize that you must be the one I’ve heard about, the President of the British Institution for the Investigation of Incorporation. But I haven’t got it right.’

  ‘As a matter of fact we call ourselves the Fire Prevention Society. But it comes to the same thing, almost exactly.’

  ‘And much easier to remember.’

  From Fremitt a blush, come and gone.

  ‘No sign of the major?’

  The hammering voice from above them on the box seat next to the driver.

  ‘All right. I’ll have a word with him later. We’ll go forward now, Mr Dagg, if you please. Look your best everybody.

  Remember this is for most of them their first glimpse of the real Britain.’

  Smithers’s face a blank. Held blank.

  More orders.

  ‘Forward on to the open space. Then stop and blow that horn thing. Off we go.’

  ‘Generally called the yard-o-tin, Air Marshal.’

  Now an advance.

  With a creaking lunge the long-preserved stage coach, the High Flyer, moves off behind the matched greys. Hands clutch for the slight rail bright in fresh black paint. And relax again when the motion shows itself as lolloping, easy, confident.

  From Richard Wemyss: the tall green hat raised in a gesture of greeting. But five-eighths of an inch too high.

  From Daisy Miller: gay frothy bonnet inclined for homage Not twelve degrees: not ten. The exact eleven.

  From Kristen Kett: an appraising stare. Greedy.

  From Smithers: a half shrug.

  From Fremitt: a wave stopped, begun again, stopped.

  Above on the box. From Joe Dagg: a reverie of skill. From the boss, from George Hamyadis, night club impresario, travel agent, business man, business unspecified: impassivity, the poker player.

  Then the horn call.

  Cheers from the crowd at the side of the liner. Three imitations from excited members of the Institute for the Investigation of Incendiarism. Two very inaccurate, one passable.

  And a long anti-climax. Occasional efforts to renew the cheering from the liner. Richard Wemyss raised his hat slightly once.

  ‘Why can’t they let down the gangplanks?’ said Hamyadis. ‘They’re behind schedule. It won’t get them anywhere.’

  ‘Shall I give them another one, Air Marshal?’ said Dagg.

  ‘Why does he keep calling him Air Marshal?’ Wemyss asked.

  Loudly, but not too loud. A barn-door cock, with discretion.

  ‘Perhaps he was one in his native country,’ said Daisy Miller.

  Not with belief, with optimism.

  ‘And where is his native country?’ Wemyss said. The hot pursuit of easy game.

  ‘Richie,’ said Kristen Kett. ‘And I did so want you two to like each other.’

  The insistence on the exact untruth.

  ‘Is there such a country as the Levant?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘The Levant is more of a geographical term than a country, if you’ll forgive an old schoolmaster,’ said Smithers.

  ‘Oh, I see. Like trade winds.’

  Then nothing. The fizz slowly declining to the single bubble wavering its way to the surface.

  Full daylight. Aboard the ship conference delegates appearing and reappearing. Complete lack of purposeful activity. The sun already warm. The horses in front of the coach restive. Their sharp smell pervasively present to all the passengers. And time passing.

  ‘Ah, there you all are.’

  From the range of muddled buildings behind them an unexpected voice. They turned. Coming towards the coach a man in the late sixties, tall, upright, thin; straggling ind
eterminate grey moustache and hair; bright blue eyes beneath heavy eyebrows; dressed in the early nineteenth-century costume they were all wearing; carrying a Gladstone bag.

  ‘Why weren’t you here on time, major?’ said Hamyadis.

  ‘Awfully sorry, my dear chap, thought I could get a better connexion, found my Bradshaw was out of date. Hope I haven’t been a nuisance.’

  But before the excuse a pause. A moment to quell anger.

  The major walked rapidly towards them. Then stopped.

  For two and a quarter seconds the man a waxwork. Time enough for an uneasiness. Something not as expected.

  ‘But, good heavens,’ the major said looking up at Hamyadis, ‘you’ve shaved off your beard.’

  ‘Some of us are prepared to go to a hell of a lot of trouble for this business,’ said Hamyadis.

  From the major no reply. No soft answer turning away wrath. Instead complete indecision. A problem from the blue being wrenched into focus. Then at last:

  ‘Well, as I say, I hope I haven’t been a nuisance. Late on parade. Doesn’t do – I know it doesn’t do. But always doing it. Semper eadem.’

  He stopped beside the coach.

  ‘May I introduce myself? Major J. G. Mortenson, Indian Army retired. Like to amuse myself with coaches when I get the chance. Down here as what you might call an expert, hired expert. Anything I can tell anybody, nothing give me greater pleasure.’

  Smithers took on himself the reply.

  ‘I’m sure we’re all very pleased to know you, major. We sadly lack information. Let me introduce you to our party as far as I am able. I suppose you know none of us. Let me see now. Miss Miller, Miss Daisy Miller, the musical comedy singer, you must know her by repute.’

  Quickly to his hat went the major’s hand, the stiff sharp, military salute. From Daisy the open smile with the hint of nostalgia.

  ‘Miss Kett, Miss Kristen Kett. In her sphere doubtless as distinguished, or as likely to be. A film actress.’

  Again the salute. Received with a smile. A claim stated.

  ‘Then there’s Mr Fremitt, Mr John Fremitt, I believe, president of the Fire Prevention Society. He is here to extend an official British welcome to our American guests.’

  Fremitt’s sunlight gleam smile. The major’s inclination of the head.

  ‘And lastly, Mr Wemyss, Mr Richard Wemyss, also of the acting profession.’