Classic crime fiction from the 1960s set around a Thames mooring.
'Compton has been one of Britain's most original and consistent novelists since the late Sixties, but he has never received the attention he deserves...Compton's prose is fine-tuned, his human insights sharp, and his narrative pace filled with the weird synchronicities and dissonances of how violent things usually happen' INDEPENDENT
Release date:
March 29, 2022
Publisher:
Orion
Print pages:
208
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THE tide had just begun to ebb, and far upriver a tug hooted. Somewhere down the moorings a gangway creaked. The rigging on the boats that had rigging slatted gently where it had not been tied down with pyjama cord. These sounds, and the close lapping of water, distilled all the romance and grubby loneliness of the night river. Rats hurried in and out of the slippery bank. A few lights showed from portholes where the residents of the mooring were preparing to go to bed, or already in bed, or reading, or in at least one case making love.
From where Sherry Baird was hanging all this was laid out below her. A dozen or so boats in varying stages of decay strung out along a scrubbily wooded section of the Thames just above Chiswick Bridge. A winter’s night, intensely dark. The trees were leafless and dirty, layers of soot not only on them but also on the boats so that their decks were greasy, their coach-roofs streaked, their deck-lights heavily obscured. From October to March dirt was something the boat-dwellers gave up fighting. Not that Sherry Baird minded a bit of dirt. She had reached the stage where one doesn’t really mind anything. She was dead.
For the same reason Sherry Baird was totally uninterested in the boat from whose gaff she had been hanged. The Emily Jarret deserved her interest, and without regret she gave it none. The Emily Jarret was a Thames sailing barge, a big, black, blunt craft re-rigged with a gaff mainsail. A cement barge during its working life, the Emily Jarret had won a barge race in 1908. Now it was a houseboat, owned by a clerk in the Richmond Inland Revenue Office who rightly thought it a very fine and daring thing to possess a crumbling piece of history. Desmond Barker had only dared two things in his whole life – one was the Emily Jarret and the other was to get with child a young woman in the office of the Richmond Inland Revenue, Joyce had miscarried in the third month, but nevertheless Desmond had done the as near right as possible thing by her and they had lived together on the Emily Jarret ever since. They could not marry, for Joyce was already the wife, albeit estranged, of a Catholic insurance agent in Blackheath. Desmond loved her as deeply as he was able. It had leaked out around the moorings that they were not married, but then in these days who was?
Sherry Baird revolved slowly on the end of her rope. Her head was on one side and tipped forward as if she were comically standing very straight and trying to see her own toes over the admirable promontories of her bust. She turned slowly, panning in the darkness the length of the upstream end of the moorings, round to the distant opposite bank, and round further to the two yellow discs of light in the hull of her downstream neighbour. The two port-holes were in the saloon amidships, so apparently the people on board the Iolanthe were still up and about. As indifferent as ever, she continued to turn, the new rope above her stretching and softening in the damp night air. She faced the trees on the high scraggy bank, and then upstream again.
The tug hooted once more, nearer, coming down fast on the ebbing tide.
On board the Iolanthe Ben Anderson and Lucy Rogers had been having a quietly domestic evening. Listening to Beethoven and pretending they were married. Lucy leaned back on the sofa and yawned. She stretched till her bones popped and blood vessels danced in front of her eyes. Then she turned off the wireless. Sometimes the B.B.C. let the applause after concerts go on unnecessarily long, she thought.
Ben looked up from the proofs he was correcting. ‘I’ll be done in a minute, love,’ he said.
She got up from the sofa and stretched again. In the Iolanthe’s saloon there was height enough to stretch or even swing a cat-o’-nine-tails. She was an ex-motor fishing vessel, high out of the water and broad and sturdy. The other boats on Bryant’s Moorings tended to be meaner in regard to headroom. Lucy walked aft into the galley, and put on a saucepan of milk for some cocoa. She and Ben hadn’t been together for very long, and domesticity still intrigued her. She played house in the neat little galley, drying up the few things left on the stainless steel draining board while she waited for the milk to heat. The toylike exactness of it all was fascinating. Cups fitted into metal clips, even the cutlery drawer was tailored to the cutlery so that nothing would rattle in a high sea. For the last ten years Lucy had put up with a succession of variously scrofulous rented rooms, so that for the moment the pernickettiness with which Ben liked things done was a pleasant change. With admirable self-knowledge she recognised that this state might well not last. Which was one of the reasons why she was doubtful about marrying him.
The milk boiled, and she poured some of it into the lumpy brown paste she had mixed in a mug. It still delighted her how all the lumps disappeared. She filled two mugs with the cocoa and carried them through into the saloon.
‘Soothe away his life with cocoa,’ she said, paraphrasing the advertisement.
‘Eh? You mean with poisoned cocoa? I’m sure it’s been done.’
Ben moved his knees to let her get nearer the stove, and the pile of corrected pages slipped on to the floor, fanning themselves out over a surprisingly large area. He had been checking the chapter where his murderer was laying the third red herring. Now that Lucy had lost his place for him he hoped that at least she’d pick the pages up again. Instead she sat on them firmly, leaned against him, and handed him up his mug.
‘Are there really no new ways left?’ she said.
He was grumpy at her lack of consideration.
‘Of course there are,’ he said shortly.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I thought the method didn’t matter nowadays. I thought it was the psychological insight that mattered.’
‘That’s all very well for the people who can manage it. Personally I think there’s never any harm in a crafty new method. It can cover up a host of imperfections.’
Ben sipped his cocoa, found it too hot. As a matter of fact he had thought up a new method he was really rather proud of.
‘Didn’t I tell you? I’ve got radioactive milk in this latest. It’s a good thing to keep up with the times. I mean, what pathologist in his right mind would ever think of going over a corpse with a Geiger counter?’
She sat still, looking into the stove, watching the purple flames.
‘I’m calling it The Last Green Bottle,’ he added. There was a pause.
‘I do love you,’ she said.
‘I love you, too.’ Ben stared at the back of her head.
‘You’re not mocking me by any chance, are you?’
‘As long as the book sells I wouldn’t dream of mocking it. One has to be realistic.’
I needed that, he thought. After all these years writing crime novels I might be in danger of taking them or myself too seriously. I’ll never be allowed to do that with her around. … The partnership was working out. She was exactly what he needed. If only she could decide that he was exactly what she needed, too, they’d get married. They’d have children.
‘If it sells well enough we’ll be able to get ourselves a decent car,’ he said. ‘That wretched old Morgan’s on her last legs.’
Selling the Alfa Romeo to buy the boat had been a hard decision. Without Lucy to think of he’d never have done it. An ancient Morgan three-wheeler was a poor substitute for Italianate style and grace. Besides, at thirty-five one was getting a bit staid and rheumaticky for racketting around in a high-powered hatstand.
‘A three- or four-year-old Jensen wouldn’t be half bad,’ he said. ‘I bet you’d never have looked at me twice if I hadn’t had the Alfa.’
‘It wasn’t only the Alfa, you know, love.’
‘In my opinion,’ said Ben Anderson, ‘there is no substitute for a passion wagon whatsoever.’
To be honest, when they had first met just before that Speech Day week-end down in Felton Hadfield* Lucy had been the dead loss sort of woman to whom a car was merely a car. A decent method of getting from A to B with as little noise and fuss as possible.
At the time Ben had forgiven her because he realised that the death of her cousin had been rather on her mind. And other things. But that was six months ago, and she’d been learning ever since.
She pulled herself together.
‘A car with plenty of poke,’ she said, doing her best. ‘And a close ratio box for crafty cog-swapping.’
She meant well and he ruffled her hair.
‘We’re going to be all right,’ he said. ‘When we’re married we’ll up anchor and take this tub off on a honeymoon.’
‘A honeymoon? What have the last six months been then, for goodness’ sake?’
‘It’ll be different when we’re married. You’ll see.’
‘Would that be a promise, or only a pious hope?’
She leaned back and looked up at him, her head in his lap. But suddenly he wasn’t attending to her. He seemed to be listening to something else.
‘Anyway, it’s nearly December,’ she said peevishly. ‘Where could we go in this boat that would be nice when we got there?’
‘Sounds like a winch. Probably on the boat next door. One of those big winches for getting the sail up and down.’
‘But what would little Dizzy Barker be working his winch for at this time of night?’
‘How should I know?’
‘You think you ought to go and see?’
‘It’s none of my business.’
Clack tick, clack tick, clack tick. …
‘Perhaps he’s taken one of his mooring ropes along to it. Perhaps he’s afraid of being washed away on the tide. Anyway, it’s none of my business.’
The noise stopped. In the silence a train rattled distantly over the iron spans of Barnes Bridge. Lucy got up and started collecting Ben’s papers.
‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘It’s getting late. Let’s go to bed.’
Although not really interested, both she and Ben moved about quietly for the next few minutes, listening for further noises. The silence was complete, so complete that it hummed in their ears. Ben had found his place in his proofs and put them away in a drawer. Then he riddled the stove and made it up, both of them resenting the clatter. They hung around, waiting for they didn’t know what.
The saloon was large, the full width of the ship, painted white with mahogany doors and a mahogany lining to what had been the hatch coaming. The floor was the original bottom of the hold, and a carpet covered the rough boards, wearing already on the ridges of the uneven surface. Apart from a brass ship’s clock the furnishings were strictly non-nautical. Both Ben and Lucy had agreed to avoid the ship’s-wheel table lamps and seascape calendars that so many of the boats on the moorings ran to. They saw this as a snobbery and didn’t care.
Ben stood for a moment before turning out the lights. He distinctly heard voices. So did Lucy.
‘There’s a light on the Emily Jarret now,’ she said.
‘That’s interesting,’ Ben said. ‘I wonder why there wasn’t a light when he started operations.’
‘He might have had a torch. We’d never have noticed a torch.’
The voices rose. They were clearly Desmond and Joyce. They sounded in distress.
‘I really think we ought to go and see if we can help,’ Lucy said. ‘Heaven knows what mayn’t be going on.’
‘The tackle on that ship is pretty rotten. If something goes she’ll be grinding us to pieces in no time. I’d better go and rig some fenders, if nothing else.’
He found his rubber flashlight and they went up on deck. The sky was faintly orange from the zinc oxide street lamps on the South Circular, but close in under the bank where the boats were moored everything was in total darkness. Dim light came up through a skylight on the Emily Jarret and a torch was flicking hysterically about on the coach-roof. Ben called across.
‘Can we help?’
There was a pause, and the torch stopped flicking.
‘Anderson?’ Desmond Barker had a way of addressing men by their surnames. He brought it back with him from the office. ‘Anderson – is that you?’
‘Of course it is. I asked if I could help.’
‘Oh – please, please, yes.’ This was Joyce. ‘Something’s happened. Please come round. Something dreadful’s happened.’
‘Is your gangplank all right? I mean, can I get round?’
‘Of course the gangplank’s all right. Why shouldn’t it be?’
Then it’s not their moorings that they’re worried about, thought Ben. He was relieved. No matter how slowly it moved, the eighty-foot bulk of the Emily Jarret would make a considerable mess if it once started drifting. He crossed on to the bank. A concrete path with steps led up between the trees to the service road beyond. He went up it with Lucy close behind. Then along the pot-holed road and down again at the next flight of steps. His torch passed quickly over a rusty anchor upended in the earth with a sign EMILY JARRET wired on to it. As they crossed the gangplank on to the sailing barge they heard the winch again.
‘What on earth are they doing?’ Ben said.
‘I’m letting down the rope from the gaff.’ Desmond had. . .
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