Night of Error. Desmond Bagley
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at him in astonishment and choked back the questions that were on the tip of my tongue. I invited him inside and did a bit of fast thinking as I poured him a cup of coffee. Geordie and Campbell had as much at stake in this as I had, and besides I wanted witnesses when I questioned Kane. I decided to play it softly, though I could hardly bear to speak to him without losing my control.
I made myself smile pleasantly at him. ’Had enough of England, Mr Kane?’
‘It ’ud be a nice country if it wasn’t for your bleeding weather. We could do with some of this rain back in Queensland, my word.’
‘But you’ve enjoyed your stay?’
‘I’ve had a bonzer time,’ he said. ‘But my stay’s over, Mr Trevelyan. I got to gambling again. I’ll never learn.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.
He looked at me hopefully. ‘Mr Trevelyan, you said you might be able to arrange a passage for me. I wondered …’
‘Do you have to get back to the Pacific immediately?’
For some reason that didn’t please him. ‘Not specially, no. But I’ve got no boodle. If I had some cash or a job I’d like to stay around a bit. I thought maybe you could …’
I said, ‘I have a friend who has a yacht which he’s fitting out. He and I hope to get in some sailing together, and I think he needs crew. How would that suit you?’
He took the bait eagerly. ‘That ’ud be just fine, Mr Trevelyan!’
I put an opened writing pad in front of him, trying to hold back my own eagerness. ‘Write down the name of wherever you’re staying so that I can get the owner to contact you,’ I said. ‘He’ll want to interview you but I’ll make it all right with him. And I’ll let you have something ahead of your pay, to cover your rooming costs. How’s that?’
He wrote an address down. ‘I’ll do that. Thanks a whole lot, Mr Trevelyan.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said generously. ‘You’ve earned it.’
I gave him a head start and then left for the court hearing. The encounter had been good for me, giving me something else to think about and making a vital connection in my story for Campbell. I had no time to tell Geordie about it, however, but savoured telling him afterwards.
The inquest was simple and straightforward. A doctor gave evidence of death, then I went on the stand, followed immediately by Geordie. We stuck to straight facts and didn’t elaborate but I noticed that Geordie kept his bandaged finger prominently in view of the coroner. My neighbour spoke and then the police had their turn.
As Geordie was giving evidence I glanced round the courtroom and saw Campbell sitting at the back. He nodded to me, then turned his attention to the proceedings.
The Inspector made an appearance and confirmed that he had found a gun, a Beretta automatic pistol, hanging from the right-hand coat pocket of the deceased. The foresight was caught in the torn lining. I felt a lot better after this because it had been one of the points I had made myself. I looked the coroner straight in the eye and he didn’t avoid my glance – a good sign. The lack of identity of the dead man was briefly discussed.
There was a surprise witness, at least to me – old Jarvis appeared to give expert testimony. He told the coroner what manganese nodules were and even produced one to show what the things looked like. The coroner prodded him a bit about their value and Jarvis responded in his downright, damn-your-eyes way. But that was just for the record.
Then suddenly it was over. The coroner took little time to decide that death was due to justifiable manslaughter. He wound everything up with a pontifical speech to the effect that while an Englishman’s home may be his castle, no man had the right to take the law into his own hands and that if a little more care had been taken, in his opinion, a death could have been averted. However what was done was done, and Mr Michael Trevelyan was free to leave the court without a stain on his character.
We all stood up when he swept out and there was a general drift to the doors. An official elbowed his way up to me and gave me a note. It was brief and to the point. ‘See you at the Dorchester. Campbell.’
I passed it to Geordie as he reached me to slap me heavily on the back. ‘I hope this means what I think it means,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a lot to tell you.’
We drifted out with the crowd and were eventually deposited on the pavement. A lot of people I didn’t know congratulated me on killing a man and getting away with it, some reporters had a lot of questions to ask, and at last I caught sight of the man I was looking for. I ran to catch up with him, Geordie behind me. It was Professor Jarvis.
He saw me coming, waved his stick and waited for me to join him.
‘Well, that went off all right, my boy,’ he said.
‘You did your bit – thank you.’
‘Damned fools,’ he grumbled. ‘Everyone knows that those nodules are basically worthless – not an economic proposition at all.’
‘I wondered if you had a moment to talk to me – here, rather than at the Institute,’ I asked him. There seemed to be no difficulty and we sat down on the low stone wall outside the courthouse, enjoying the thin watery sunshine.
‘I have nothing to tell you, young man,’ the Professor said. ‘I made a few enquiries about that chap, Norgaard, but there’s nothing doing. The feller seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.’
‘When was the last you heard of him?’
‘About six, seven months ago – when he was with your brother. They were fossicking about in the islands round Tahiti.’
‘When did Norgaard start working with Mark?’ I asked.
‘Now let me see. It must have been nearly two years ago, after Mark left that Canadian firm he was working for. Yes, that was it – after he had to leave the IGY project he went to Canada and was with that chap Campbell for over two years, then he left to join up with Norgaard. What they were doing I don’t know; they didn’t publish anything.’
His grasp of events was remarkable, I thought, and then seized on something he had said. ‘What do you mean – had to leave the IGY?’
Jarvis actually looked embarrassed. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have said that,’ he mumbled.
‘I’d like to know. It can’t hurt Mark now.’
‘It’s bad form. De mortuis – and all that, don’t you know.’
‘Out with it,’ I said. ‘After all, it’s all in the family.’
Jarvis regarded the tip of his highly polished shoe. ‘Well, I never did get to the bottom of it – it was hushed up, you know – but apparently Mark fudged some of his results.’
‘Faked his figures?’
‘That’s right. It was found out by sheer chance. Of course he had to leave. But we – the IGY agreed not to make any more of it, so he was able to get the job in Canada, after he resigned.’
‘So that’s why he left before it was over. I wondered about that. What was he working on at the time?’
Jarvis shrugged. ‘I don’t recall, but it certainly had to do with the underwater surveys. Manganese nodules, perhaps?’ Not too shrewd a guess, all things considered; but I didn’t like it. He went on, ‘I never did like your brother. I never trusted him and the fact that he cooked his books didn’t surprise me a bit.’
I said, ‘That’s all right – lots of people didn’t like Mark. I wasn’t too keen on him myself. And it wasn’t the first time he rigged his results. He did the same at school.’ And at university. Not to mention his personal life.
Jarvis