By Stealth

6

`Have you by any chance seen a Land-Rover, Pete?' Tweed asked as he drove the Escort close to Prevent. `Really I should have warned you.'

`No need,' replied Nield, sitting in the back of the car. `Harry spotted it parked back in the undergrowth as we arrived. It left almost as soon as we'd driven past it. Sorry we couldn't get here earlier. Monica had trouble contacting us.'

`When did you get here?' Paula asked as she sat next to Tweed.

`Ten o'clock this morning. We did a recce of the house and immediately discovered the break-in. We didn't go inside,' he continued in his laconic way. 'Waited outside in case the intruders appeared. No such luck. I then drove to tell you at Passford House. Called you from a phone box. You were all out.'

Tweed nodded, slowed down. He turned off the road and parked his car where Newman had waited by the copse the previous evening. Leaving the car, he hurried and the other two had trouble keeping up with him as he went up the drive. Harry Butler stepped out from behind a bank of straggled shrubbery.

`No one around,' he reported.

A man of few words, Butler was more heavily built than Nield. Clean shaven, he was dressed in denims and a windcheater, which contrasted with Nield's business suit.

`How do you know Andover has gone?' Tweed asked, his voice quiet.

`No car in the garage – an outbuilding, but there's oil traces on the concrete floor, shelves of equipment for maintaining a car.'

`He could be still inside, couldn't he?'

`Not unless he'd dead. I stood by the smashed front door and called out for him at the top of my voice. No reply. Let me show you.'

`First I think we should check the grounds at the back of the house. They're pretty extensive – Andover was out there last night, walking like a zombie.'

`Already checked,' Butler replied tersely. 'No one.' `Have you informed the police, Harry?'

`No. I thought you ought to be told first.'

`You were right, let's explore…'

The break-in had been conducted without finesse. Once again the front door was open. Butler pointed out where it had been jemmied open, breaking off a large section of the door-frame.

`That's a taste of what you'll see,' he warned.

With Paula by his side, Tweed followed Butler inside and across the spacious hall. Pete Nield had stayed outside as lookout. Tweed made for the study. The door was open and inside was a scene of carnage. The glass fronts of the bookcases had been smashed, the doors wrenched open. All the books had been hauled out and scattered over the floor.

`It's like this upstairs,' Butler commented. 'In the bedrooms mattresses slashed open, carpets ripped up, eiderdowns torn.'

`Which makes me wonder if they found what they were looking for despite their ravages,' Tweed mused.

He stood in the middle of the room. Drawers had been pulled out of Andover's desk, lay on the floor with their contents tipped out. Even the curtains had been pulled down, lay in heaps on the floor.

`We'll never know what they were searching for,' Paula remarked, picking her way among the wreckage. 'What is it?' she asked.

Tweed stood quite still, hands inside his trench coat, thinking of Andover. His eyes fell on an old bound book lying with its spine broken. He stooped, picked it up. Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. He flipped through the pages, stopped at a page where the corner had been turned down. He showed it to Paula.

`I wonder?'

`Sorry, am I being thick? I've never read him.'

`You should. He was a genius. See the title of the story where the page has been folded in at the top?'

– The Purloined Letter". It doesn't mean a thing to me.'

`It wouldn't – since you haven't read it. Andover is a clever man. Maybe he's left me a signal.'

`What signal..'

But Tweed was walking over to the large old-fashioned mantelpiece above a pile of logs laid in the fireplace. The only items on the ledge were a Victorian clock which had stopped at five to twelve and two candlesticks. Perched alongside the clock against the wall was a brown envelope familiar to all – On Her Majesty's Service. A communication from the tax authorities.

He picked up the envelope, and concealed behind it, propped against the peeling plaster, was another envelope. It was made of good-quality paper, was addressed to Sir Gerald Andover, and carried a Belgian stamp.

`Surely they couldn't have wrecked the house looking for that?' Paula. protested.

`Depends on what's inside…'

Tweed pulled out two folded sheets and again the paper was high quality and thick. He read both pages rapidly. When he turned to Paula his expression was troubled.

`This is a very revealing letter from Gaston Delvaux of Liege.'

`I've heard that name before. Can't quite place it.'

Delvaux is an armaments manufacturer and one of the world's greatest experts on advanced developments in his field. Not just tanks and guns, but aircraft and ships. Note the last item.'

`You mean he might know something about that ghost ship I swear I saw just before Harvey died?'

`I didn't say that. Delvaux was also a member of INCOMSIN, the International Committee of Strategic Insight I told you about.'

`The think-tank of brain-boxes on likely global developments.'

`And Delvaux, like Andover, is another brain-box. I've met him several times when invited to sit in on one of their secret meetings.'

`What does the letter say?'

`We can talk about that later,' Tweed replied, pocketing the letter. 'It probably means a trip to Belgium soon. And I've little doubt this is what the marauders were looking for.'

`But how on earth did you know where to look?'

Poe's story. It is – briefly – about an important letter which vanishes from a room. They search everywhere and then leave, as I recall – perhaps not too accurately. The main point is the letter was hidden in an obvious place – perched on the mantelpiece inside an envelope. It was so clearly on view no one thought to look there. Hence Andover turning down the page of that story. My guess is the book was on his desk for me to see. Now, before we leave, phone the police anonymously from a call box. We have a grisly task, if we can manage it.'

`Brace yourself, Harry,' Tweed warned in the kitchen as he stopped to raise the lid of the chest freezer.

`Enough to put you off your lunch,' the phlegmatic Butler commented.

`I'm just relieved it's still here,' Tweed responded, staring down at the severed arm preserved in its plastic container filled with ice. 'I don't know how we're going to solve this problem. I'd like to have the limb transported to London for examination by my pet pathologist, Dr Rabin. But we can't just take it there by car like that.'

`Yes, we can,' Butler assured him. 'Not knowing how long we'd be out here, I brought a very large cool bag full of food. It's inside my Ford Cortina. Give me five minutes…'

It was a long speech for Butler. He disappeared and came back quickly, holding an outsize cool bag.

`Should fit in here. May I?'

Paula had perched herself on a stool as far away from the freezer as possible. She wasn't squeamish, but staring at the severed arm with its bloodstained bandage over the elbow wasn't her idea of duty when it wasn't necessary.

Butler had unzipped the long cool bag. Wearing gloves, he lifted the container out and it fitted easily into the bag. He zipped it up, closed the lid of the freezer, looked at Tweed who was scribbling on the back of one of his cards. He handed it to Butler.

`There's the address. Dr Rabin will be expecting you. I'll call him while you're driving back.'

`I'm on my way…'

Paula waited until they were alone. Then she asked the question which had been puzzling her.

`Why a pathologist? And a top one?'

`Because,' Tweed explained, 'although I know very little about medical matters, it seemed to me it would need a very good surgeon to have amputated that arm so neatly. If I can find the bastard who performed that foul act I'll be close to who is behind all this.'

Paula nodded as they prepared to leave. Tweed rarely used strong language: it showed the suppressed rage he was feeling at this brutal act. She didn't look back as they left the ravaged house. Pete Nield appeared out of nowhere, gave a little salute.

`All clear. Not a single car has passed in either direction. Harry is en route to London and I buried the food in a gulley. What's the form now?'

`We need to find out what's happened to Andover. First priority. No point in continuing your vigil here. So we get moving. Back to Passford House for starters…'

The first thing they saw when they arrived back at the hotel car park was Newman's Mercedes parked in splendid isolation. The next thing they saw was Newman standing up from the far side, holding a polishing cloth.

He strolled over, listened while Tweed gave him a resume of what had happened.

Did you find out from Watford if either Burgoyne or Fanshawe own a boat?' he concluded.

`Of course. I was a reporter at one time. I drove friend Walford to a pub, bought him a couple of Scotches. He became quite garrulous. The Brig., as he called him, has a luxury motor yacht based at a place called Buckler's Hard..

`I know that,' Tweed told him.

`Let me go on. Willie Fanshawe has a motor yacht too but his is berthed at Lymington. They all seem to be mad on the sea. Sir Gerald Andover has his own motor yacht, the Seahorse III-'

`That's important,' Tweed interjected. 'Based where?'

Lymington. Do let me finish. Andover has left these shores. Walford saw him aboard the Seahorse III sailing downriver and into the Solent early this morning. Just after daybreak.'

`Wish we knew where he'd gone,' Tweed said half to himself.

`I do,' Newman went on. 'He informed Walford he was cruising round the Isle of Wight and down to Devon for a few days. Odd thing, Walford said never before had Andover bothered to let him know where he was going. He described Andover as being very secretive about his sailing trips.'

`Which means,' Tweed said grimly, 'that the one place he isn't going to is Devon. Now, he's being ultra- secretive. We have to track him down later.'

`The coastguard?' Newman suggested.

`No good. Andover is clever. My guess is by now he's well out at sea, whatever his ultimate destination is.'

`So it's checkmate,' Paula commented. 'What do we do now? Go back to London?'

`Not yet. I want to scour this part of the world. I feel sure there's something strange happening – on top of what we found at Andover's home.'

Tweed stood staring across the frosted lawn which had a creme-de-menthe colour. Even at that hour the temperature was close to zero. Knowing him, the others kept quiet. Tweed's mind was racing, examining what they had uncovered, trying to see, dimly, some sort of pattern.

`I've no idea what's going on,' he admitted eventually. `The alleged kidnapping of Irene is a sinister mystery. And the presence of three old China hands so close together is more than pure chance. Paula said something recently which was significant. The trouble is I can't recall what it was.' He straightened up. 'What we need is even more data-'

`One other thing Walford told me which has just come back,' Newman interjected. 'He wasn't too accurate last night. This morning he told me the three boats which disappeared at the beginning of the year vanished somewhere near the mouth of the Beaulieu River. One of them was Benton. Wasn't that the chap who was a friend of Andover?'

`Yes,' agreed Tweed. 'And what you've just told us links up with the account of the barman at the Ship Inn. We'll take a look at Buckler's Hard and Moor's Landing after an early lunch. Check the map for me, Paula. How close to the Solent is this model village the barman described?'

He paced slowly back and forth while Paula studied the Ordnance Survey map she'd extracted from the Escort. Tweed was disturbed. The whole area seemed so peaceful and yet they'd discovered that severed arm in the house of a broken man.

`Moor's Landing is about a mile from the Solent,' Paula reported.

`So it's close to where those three boats vanished at the mouth of the Beaulieu River. Yes, I think it may well repay a visit…'

With Paula navigating, they took the same route to reach Buckler's Hard they had followed the previous evening. Newman was driving them in the Mercedes with Paula beside him and Tweed alone in the back.

Some distance behind them, on Tweed's instructions, Pete Nield followed them as though they were strangers. They were approaching the entrances to Prevent, Leopard's Leap, and The Last Haven when Tweed spoke for the first time.

`Bob, I want you to slow down now. Crawl at twenty miles an hour.'

`If I must,' Newman protested, 'but the Merc. will be rarin' to go.'

`Why, if I may ask?' queried Paula.

`You just did,' Tweed replied, and lapsed into silence.

As they crawled past the entrances Tweed glanced sideways. Just an empty drive at Andover's place. In the morning he'd called the police anonymously about the break-in. The house was as invisible as before. The wrought-iron gates to Leopard's Leap were again open. And once more no sign of life.

Paula stiffened as she saw the pile of bricks and the small concrete mixer on the grass verge. It reminded her of their experience the previous evening when they had almost been killed.

Tweed glanced down the open gravel drive to Fanshawe's Swedish-style house. The net curtains across the windows gave it an even more uninhabited look. He waited a minute before he spoke again.

`Could you pull in at the side of the road? I want a word with Pete and there's no one about..

Nield, driving his Ford Sierra, appeared a few minutes later. Tweed was waiting for him outside the car and gestured for him to stop. Nield jumped out swiftly, leaving his engine running.

`Trouble?'

`Not yet.' Tweed smiled. 'Pete, a mile or two back a lane leads off to the left going back the way we've come. That's where Paula and I had our little encounter with the mobile concrete mixer. It's the only turn-off for miles. I'd like you to go back and drive down that lane to see what – if anything – is happening. I think you studied the map route to Buckler's Hard with Paula. Drive back here as fast as you can later and try to catch us up.'

`All clear. And I'm carrying that route in my head. See you soon…'

Before Tweed had closed the door of the Mercedes Nield had turned round over spare ground and was speeding back. Tweed settled himself again.

`Are both of you armed? I should have checked earlier.'

`I'm carrying my. 38 Smith amp; Wesson Special in a hip holster,' Newman replied as he drove on, accelerating.

`And I have my Browning in my shoulder-bag,' Paula reassured Tweed. 'Pete has a Walther. Are you worried this could be a risky trip? This is the New Forest.'

`And we were nearly murdered yesterday evening…'