Blott on the Landscape

Chapter 17

As dusk fell over the Cleene Gorge Blott left the Lodge with a spade. He had had his supper, sausages and mashed potatoes, and was comfortably full. Above all he was happy. As he followed the park wall round to the west and found the exact spot where he had climbed over as a prisoner of war he was boyishly excited. There had been a piece of iron fencing which he had propped against the wall to give himself a leg-up. It was still there, rusting in a patch of stinging-nettles. Blott dragged it out and leant it against the wall and climbed up. The barbed-wire had gone but as he straddled the top of the wall and dropped down on the other side he had the same feeling of freedom he had experienced night after night over thirty years before. Not that he had disliked life in the camp. He had felt freer then than at any time before. To sneak out at night and roam the woods on his own was to escape from the orphanage in Dresden and all the petty restrictions of his dreadful childhood. It had been to cock a snook at authority and to be himself.

And so it was now as he pushed through the bracken and began to climb through the trees. He was doing the forbidden thing again and he exulted in it. Half a mile up the hillside he came to a clearing. You turned left here. Blott turned left, following the old instinct as surely as if there had been a path there, and came out into the setting sunlight behind a mound of stones that had once been a cottage. Here he turned up the hill again until he found the tree he was looking for. It was a large old oak. Blott went round the trunk and found the slash he had made in the bark. He walked away from the tree, counting his paces. Then he took off his jacket and began to dig. It took him an hour to get down to the cache but it was there exactly where he had recalled. He pulled out a box and prised the lid open with a hammer. Inside caked in grease and wrapped in oilskin was a two-inch mortar. He dragged out another box. Mortar bombs. Finally he found what he was looking for. The long box and the four cases of armour-piercing rockets. He sat down on the box and wondered what to do next. Now that he came to think about it, all he needed were the rockets. All he had to do was to tie a piece of string to the fin and drop it from a height on to the safe. That would do the trick just as well as firing the rocket at the safe.

Still, he had come so far, he might as well take the PIAT home with him and clean it up. It would make an interesting souvenir. Blott put the mortar back with the cases of bombs, and covered them with earth. Then he went back down the hill with the long box. It was very heavy and he had to stop fairly frequently to rest. By the time he got back to the Lodge it was dark. He humped the box up to his room and went back for the rockets. He didn’t take those up to his room but left them in the grass outside. He didn’t feel like sleeping beside some rockets that were thirty years old.

In the morning he was up early and busy in the Gorge. He fetched the safe down on a wheelbarrow and stood it upright at the bottom of the cliff. Then he took a long piece of twine and tied it to the knob of the combination lock before going back up the cliff with it and attaching it to an overhanging branch so that it ran in a straight line some fifty feet down to the safe. Finally he fetched two of the finned projectiles and tied a short length of string to the fin of the first. At the other end of the string he tied a small ring, undid the twine and fitted the ring over it and tied it back on to the branch. Then he lay down at the top of the cliff and removed the cap from the detonator on the nose of the rocket. Blott peered over the edge. There was the safe directly below. He held the PIAT bomb out and let go and watched as it plummeted down the twine. The next moment there was a flash and a roar. Blott shut his eyes and pulled his head back and as he did so something hurtled past him into the air above. He looked up. The fin of the rocket reached its peak, curved over and fell into the road behind him. Blott got up and went down to the safe. The bomb had missed the combination lock but it had done its job. A small hole the size of a pencil was blown in the front of the safe and the door was loose.

Lady Maud was having breakfast when the blast came. For a moment she thought Blott was out shooting rabbits but there had been a concussion and an echo about the explosion that had suggested something more powerful than a shotgun. She went outside and saw Blott coming down the cliff path on the other side of the river. Of course, the safe. He had sworn he would blow it open and that’s what he had done. She ran across the lawn and through the pinetum and over the footbridge.

Blott was bending over the safe when she came up.

“Have you done it?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s open,” said Blott, “but there’s nothing much in it.” Lady Maud could see that. The safe was much smaller inside than she had expected and it appeared to be filled with burnt, charred and torn fragments of paper. She reached in and picked one out. It was a portion of what had once been a photograph. She held it up and looked at it. It appeared to be the legs of a naked man. She reached in and took out another piece, this time an arm, a bare arm and what looked like a woman’s breast. She peered into the safe again but apart from the shreds of photographs there was nothing inside.

“I’ll go and get an envelope,” Lady Maud said. “Don’t touch anything until I get back.” She Walked off thoughtfully towards the Hall while Blott went back to the top of the cliff and collected the unused PIAT bomb. At least he knew now that they worked. “Might come in handy,” he said to himself and took it back to the Lodge.

An hour later the safe was buried under some bushes at the base of the cliff and Blott had gone back to the kitchen garden. In the study Lady Maud sat at the desk and examined the fragments of photographs, trying to sort out which portion of anatomy fitted the next. It was a difficult task and an un-edifying one. The photographs were too charred and torn to be reassembled properly and besides the force of the explosion had decapitated the participants in what even on this slender evidence appeared to be a series of extremely unnatural acts. And slender was the word. Certainly in the case of the man. That ruled out Sir Giles. It was a pity. She could have done with some photographic proof of his obscene habits. She picked up another fragment and was about to look for the appropriate place in the jigsaw puzzle where it would fit when she suddenly realized where she had seen those slender legs and pale feet. Of course. Twinkling across the marble floor of the hall. She looked again at the portion of leg, at the arm. She was certain now. Dundridge. Dundridge engaged in… It was unthinkable. She was just trying to work out what this extraordinary idea implied when the front doorbell rang. She went out and opened the door. It was the manager of the high-security fencing company.

“Ah, good,” said Lady Maud. “Now then, to business. I’ll show you exactly what I want.” They went inside to the billiard room and Lady Maud unrolled a map of the estate, “I am opening a wildlife park,” she explained. “I want a fence extending the entire perimeter of the park. It must be absolutely secure and proof against any sort of animal.”

“But I understood…” the manager began.

“Never mind what you understood,” said Lady Maud. “Just understand that I am opening a wildlife park in three weeks’ time.”

“In three weeks? That’s out of the question.”

Lady Maud rolled up the map. “In that case I shall employ someone else,” she said. “Some enterprising firm that can erect a suitable fence…”

“You won’t get any firm to do it in three weeks,” said the manager. “Not unless you pay a fortune.”

“I am prepared to pay a fortune,” said Lady Maud.

The manager looked at her and rubbed his jaw. “Three weeks?” he said.

“Three weeks,” said Lady Maud.

The manager took out a notebook and made some calculations. “This is simply a rough estimate,” he said finally, “but I would say somewhere in the region of twenty-five thousand pounds.”

“Say thirty and be done with it,” said Lady Maud. “Thirty thousand pounds for the fence to be completed in three weeks from today with a bonus of one thousand a day for every day under three weeks and a penalty clause of two thousand pounds for every day after three weeks.”

The manager gaped at her. “I suppose you know what you’re doing,” he muttered.

“I know precisely what I’m doing, thank you very much,” said Lady Maud. “What is more you will work day and night. You will bring your materials in at night. I don’t want any lorries coming here during the day and you will house your men here. I will provide accommodation. You will see to their bedding and their food. This whole operation must be done in the strictest secrecy.”

“If you don’t mind,” said the manager and sat down in a chair. Lady Maud sat down opposite him.

“Well?”

“I don’t know,” said the manager. “It can be done…”

“It will be,” Lady Maud assured him. “Either by you or someone else.”

“You realize that if we were to finish the job in a fortnight the cost would have risen to thirty-seven thousand pounds.”

“And I should be delighted. And if you can finish in a week I shall be happy to pay forty-two thousand pounds,” she said. “Are we agreed?” The manager nodded. “Right, in that case I shall make out a cheque to you for ten thousand now and two post-dated cheques for the same amount. I trust that will be a sufficient earnest of my good faith.” She went through to the study and wrote out the cheques. “I shall expect the arrival of materials tonight and work to begin at once. You can bring the contract tomorrow for me to sign.”

The manager went out and got into his car in a state of shock. “Mad as a March bloody hare,” he muttered as he drove down the drive.

Behind him Lady Maud went back to the study and sat down. It was costing more than she had anticipated but it was worth every penny. And then there was the price of the animals. Lions didn’t come cheap. Nor did a rhinoceros. And finally there was the puzzle of the photographs. What were obscene pictures of Mr Dundridge doing in Giles’ safe? She got up and went out into the garden and walked up and down the path by the wall of the kitchen garden. And suddenly it dawned on her. It explained everything and in particular why Dundridge had changed his mind about the tunnel. The wretched little man had been blackmailed. Well, two could play at that game. By God they could. She went through the door into the kitchen garden.

“Has my husband ever put through a call to a woman in London?” she asked Blott.

“His secretary,” said Blott. Lady Maud shook her head. Sir Giles’ secretary wasn’t the sort of woman who would take kindly to the suggestion that she should tie her employer to a bed and beat him and in any case she was happily married.

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“Has he ever mentioned a woman in any of his conversations on the phone?”

Blott tried to remember. “No, I don’t think so.”

“In that case, Blott,” she said, “you and I are going to London tomorrow.”

Blott gazed at her in astonishment. “To London?” He had never been to London.

“To London. We shall be away for a few days.”

“But what shall I wear?” said Blott.

“A suit of course.”

“I haven’t got one,” said Blott.

“Well then,” said Lady Maud, “we had better go into Worford and get you one. And while we’re about it we’ll get a camera as well. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

She went back into the house and put the photographs into an envelope and hid it behind a set of Jorrocks on the bookshelf. It might be worth paying Mr Dundridge a visit while she was in Worford.