Mr. Botten was like a prosecuting counsel with a shifty witness.
“You say that this man could not have followed you from town because he was unlike any of the passengers who left the train with you at Britsea?”
“Yes.”
“You base this assumption or conviction merely on the difference in dress?”
“Isn’t that enough? The man was tall; there was only one tall man at the station, and he was wearing a hat and some kind of overcoat. He was in the middle of a group round the exit gate. I remember him because of his height. My recollection is that all the men from the train wore hats and coats. It was fairly chilly with the wind coming across the river flats.”
“And the man in the garbage tip was in sweater and slacks?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that he might have taken off his hat and coat to deceive you?”
Andrew laughed. “Still on the old cloak-and-dagger stuff, Charley! Aren’t you forgetting the false beard and the dark glasses? Are you sure, Ruth, the fellow didn’t have a black patch over one eye?”
“I’m fairly sure he didn’t leave the garbage tip,” she said.
Mr. Botten was still suspicious. “He could have watched you from the hollow. He wouldn’t have had to leave the tip.” He turned to Andrew. “I wouldn’t go down there tomorrow if I were you. I think you ought to leave it all to me.”
“Leave it all…!” Andrew began indignantly and then swallowed his indignation. “We’re ahead of the enemy, we’re ahead of the police, and I’m not going to wait till they catch up with us. All this stuff about being followed is just nonsense. Why, the other night I believed I was being shadowed by the man you’ve just had as a dinner guest! Every time I notice a fellow in the street I think he’s on my trail. Ruth’s right. It’s all imagination. I’m even beginning to have doubts about that Brussels business.”
“And possibly there was no Kusitch,” Charley suggested. “All right. I wash my hands of you.” He grinned. “When you get the yawl in order, you may take me for a sail. My own opinion is that it was never brought back to England, but that’s just, as I say, an opinion. It might be as well, though, if it were at the bottom of the sea.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know.” Charley shrugged. “Put it down to a hunch. I don’t like trouble. I never did. If the yawl’s gone, there’s no more harm in it. If it’s tied up by that old windmill, heaven knows what sort of mess is going to come out of it.”
“What could come out of it?” Mr. Botten considered the question for a moment. About to reply, he hesitated and spread his hands helplessly. He said: “I learned to suppress ideas about second sight during the war. If you want to call in a crystal-gazer, don’t mind me. But there’s one bit of advice I can give you without a crystal ball. Keep a sharp lookout when you’re on the road tomorrow. If you’re followed by a car, don’t go anywhere near Groper’s Wade. Just take a joy ride into the country and come back to town.”
Andrew left Ruth at the door of the house in Palgrave Street. She said her knee felt better and she didn’t need any help up the stairs. She had been silent and thoughtful in the taxi from Charley Botten’s. On the doorstep she was practical.
“I shouldn’t keep the cab waiting,” she said. “I’ll be ready at one o’clock. Good night.”
On the way home and afterwards Charley’s final piece of advice recurred to him. He believed it was pointless, yet it continued to worry him. How could the enemy, not knowing his plans, have a car ready to follow him? Charley, of course, had intended no more than a cautionary hint, and, as a precaution, he would take the hint. He would keep a sharp lookout.
Eleven
No car followed them. He glanced frequently at the driving mirror of the small car he had hired, and Ruth kept a sharp lookout through the rear window. Passing through the outer suburbs, they had had some suspicion of a Citroen saloon, but this was resolved at a main road junction, and, when they ran out into the country and sped along a flat stretch, they became certain that, for the moment at any rate, their movements were not supervised.
The sky was overcast and there were omens of heavy weather far out in the estuary. The prophets had modified the threat of showers with a promise of bright intervals, but so far there had been neither showers nor bright intervals. Not a day for a joy ride. The sea, when they saw it across a tumble of dunes, was wan and melancholy under the dour spread of cloud, yet Andrew had not felt so happy in a long time, and Ruth seemed astonishingly carefree. Could he ever have thought her smug? Of course not. She was direct, friendly, gay. Andrew was happy to be beside her. He was happy to be driving a car in England again, and it mattered not at all that this particular England was a dreary area of sand and coarse grass and mud flats, of bleak bungalows and bleaker colonies of cylindrical oil tanks. It might have been the loveliest stretch of lakeland in sunshine or some glowing corner of the summery Chilterns. He had not been so happy since his return from Greece.
Not even the slough of Groper’s Wade under a drizzle of rain could dampen his spirits. He saw its dreariness, the wide misty sweep of marsh that ran into the green-grey distance so that you could not tell where the sedge left off and the sea began. From the slight rise above Britsea Halt, the pools that dotted the waterlogged smudge were like filmed eyes turned blindly to the sky. But these things could not affect him. He was detached from all dreariness by a singular enchantment. He had only to turn his head to see the warm loveliness of the girl beside him.
He turned and saw her frowning.
“It’s a horrible place,” she said, and grimaced, shuddering.
“Your wounds must be troubling you.” He laughed. “It’s just a place. Nothing to worry us, anyway. We can be back at that nice cottage for afternoon tea.”
The nice cottage was miles behind them, in another world. The road across Groper’s Wade was defined by water-filled ruts that reflected the dull light in the overcast. There was no trace of the windmill ahead; only a featureless haze. Slush spouted from the wheels of a truck filled with junk for the rubbish tip. Andrew drew level and shouted to the driver, who brought his vehicle to a stop at the turn into the dump.
“How’s the road across the marsh?” Andrew asked. “Is it safe?”
“Aye!” The reply rasped through the sound of the truck’s revving engine. “Safe enough if you stick to it.” The man grinned broadly. “Don’t try any short cuts.”
He was quite incurious. He let in his clutch and swung his load of junk into a sharp turn. Another man was standing in the entry to the tip, waving the driver to come on.
“Identify either of them?” Andrew asked Ruth.
She shook her head. “Neither is like the man I saw, but what does it matter?”
“Just wondering.” He was still quite happy about it, but the marsh, now that they were actually upon it, started a germ of uneasiness in his mind. The panic of Ruth on her first visit was easy to understand. The place was fertile ground for any seed of fear. It might even generate fear.
Ruth pointed to the side of the track. “That’s where I fell down,” she said. He stopped the car and got out.
He asked: “Is that the bunch of reeds where the bird was?”
“Yes.”
He was cautious, crossing the spongy ground on the edge of the road. Even after the rain there might be footprints. A man crouching would drive his heels or toes deeply into the turf, and it was not likely they would be soon eliminated. The ground wasn’t that spongy.
“What are you looking for?” the girl asked. “You don’t think a wild bird would have stayed in among those reeds with a man hiding alongside?”
“It was just an idea,” he said. “The bird might have been flushed from another clump. In the twilight you might not have seen clearly.”
She shivered but made no other reply.
The drizzle had stopped, but the sky looked as watery as the earth and the sea. Far away you could just make out the shaft of the windmill and the roof of the adjacent cottage.