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  Copyright & Information

  Be Shot For Sixpence

  First published in 1956

  © Estate of Michael Gilbert; House of Stratus 1956-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755105125 9780755105120 Print

  0755131762 9780755131761 Kindle

  0755132130 9780755132133 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

  After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

  HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. “The plot,” wrote Keating, “is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings.” It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

  Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: “I always take a latish train to work,” he explained in 1980, “and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.”. After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

  Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

  Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

  Dedication

  CHRISTOPHER

  who has not yet

  been liquidated by the Queen’s enemies

  Part I

  SHUFFLE, CUT AND DEAL

  “Oh! who would fight and march and countermarch,

  Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field

  And shovell’d up into some bloody trench

  Where no one knows? but let me live my life.

  Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk.

  Perch’d like a crow upon a three-legged stool.

  Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints

  Are full of chalk? but let me live my life.

  Oh! who would love? I woo’d a woman once

  But she was sharper than the Eastern wind

  And all my heart turned from her, as a thorn

  Turns from the sea; but let me live my life.”

  Tennyson. Audley Court

  Chapter I

  THE RESULT OF TAKING A FIRST CLASS TICKET

  I dislike good-byes.

  Why should a man invoke the Deity because he is moving his unimportant self from one place to another ?

  My cousin Michael, who is used to my habits, takes no offence if I fail to do the conventional thing and I can still enjoy a very occasional week-end with him in his converted rectory in Kent. He is the mildest of men and makes his living by writing thrillers. It is a pleasure to see him at work, seated in what was once the rector’s study, gleaming kindly through his horn-rimmed spectacles at the hollyhocks and lupins which frame the croquet lawn.

  Michael has a wife, a small, resolute, woman with the spirit of a grenadier and four fat daughters. I have none of these things. That is why I can only visit him very occasionally, for I am sure to come away disliking myself.

  I got up at six o’clock. One of the fat daughters was singing a hymn but otherwise the house was quiet. I made myself some tea and started on the five mile walk to the station through the Kent countryside. The countryside was wide awake; it is only authors and business men who can afford to waste in bed the lovely hours between sunrise and breakfast time.

  It took me a little under sixty minutes to reach the station and I was in plenty of time for the eight-three. This, I can only suppose, was the business train. When I got into the first class carriage (a non-smoker; I have not that particular vice myself and see no reason why I should tolerate it in others) it was empty. But as we stopped at station after little station it filled up, and I realised that I was in an exclusive sort of club. In fact, I am not sure that I had not stolen the oldest member’s seat. The other members were very upset about it.

  They settled down after a bit, and took up the conversation, where they had left it off when they got to Victoria the morning before. Being unable to join in I contented myself with studying their faces. There were superficial differences but really they were the same face. The dropped and multiplied chins, the pursed mouths, the eyes which tried to look worldly but succeeded only in looking greedy and frightened. Little, tired eyes of men who spent their working days sitting in swivel chairs in over-heated offices thinking about money. I should have been hard put to it to say which of them I fancied least.

  The svelte man in the corner with white hair, pince-nez glasses and an authoritative manner of speaking which he must have picked up from years of laying down the law to people who depended on him for their daily bread. Or the fat man with the pink tip of his nose – a tiny, unheeded, warning light showing what would happen to him if he persisted in absorbing more carbohydrates than his body could burn; or the military type, with field officer moustache and a velvet coat collar who was repeating, with the tired ferocity of a bilious tiger that all strikers were Communists and all Communists ought to be shot down. Not sh
ot; shot down. Apparently an important distinction.

  “I was lunching with Herbert the other day,” said the white haired man, “and he told me, but you’d better not pass it on,”— (since I didn’t belong to the Club I was presumably supposed to be deaf as well)—”that the Government are contemplating – definitely contemplating – legislation in the next session.”

  “How do you stop strikes by legislation?” asked the military type.

  “Quite simple. By restoring the full legal effect of the contract of service between employer and employee. Then any strike becomes a breach of contract, and the strikers become liable in damages. The damages would have to be paid out of union funds, which would soon be exhausted. No union funds, no strike pay. No strike pay, no strike.”

  The fat man said that it sounded all right but he didn’t mind betting that the Government didn’t do it.

  “They must do it,” said the white haired dictator. “Do you know how much my firm lost in the last strike?”

  No one knew, so he told them.

  A thin man, who had not spoken up till now, said that he saw from his paper that radioactive fish were being caught in the Pacific.

  They worried about radioactive fish until the train got to Victoria.

  I walked from Victoria Station to Penny’s flat in Paulton’s Square. (And if you think that Penny is a silly woman’s-magazine sort of name I entirely agree with you. And it is remarkably appropriate to this particular bearer of it.)

  It was well past nine when I got there and the City boys were streaming out in their bowler hats and striped trousers with all the cares of the world in their brief-cases; but not much sign of life from Penny’s flat. I picked up the paper and milk and opened the door with my key and went in.

  All the washing up which had accumulated since Friday evening was piled neatly in the kitchen. She was a methodical slut. I contemplated for a moment washing it up myself, but refrained. She would only look at me out of her melting eyes and say, “Oh darling, how sweet of you.”

  I went into the bedroom. She was lying on her side with one pillow in the small of her back and the other under her shoulder and enough of her left breast showing to emphasise the relationship between us. The female breast is not, in itself, in my opinion an attractive sight, least of all at nine o’clock in the morning.

  I removed two pairs of stockings from the low chair by the electric fire and sat down.

  “Did you have a lovely, lovely week-end?”

  “Lovely, lovely.”

  “All those sweet children. It makes me maternal to think of them. Oughtn’t we to start one.”

  “Right now, do you mean?”

  “Well, no. But soon. Then you’d have to make an honest woman of me.”

  “I have never been able to see where honesty comes into that particular transaction.”

  “Darling, you sound grumpy.”

  “I am grumpy.”

  “Liver?”

  “My liver is in perfect order. It just so happens that I travelled up in the train with a carriage full of people, and I started by thinking how terrible they were, and suddenly I wondered if that was what I was going to look like myself in ten years’ time.”

  “Were they bloody?”

  “Beyond description.” I thought for a moment to get them straight in my own mind. “They had neither the disciplined carefulness of professional men nor the undisciplined carelessness of artists. They were foaled by Money out of Timidity. They looked like burst brown paper bags.”

  “It was your own fault. You should have travelled third class and enjoyed yourself. And for goodness sake stop exaggerating. There’s nothing wrong with business men. They were probably quite nice when you got to know them.”

  “Kind to their families, church wardens and pillars of the local Conservative party.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with people like that? Your father’s a church warden and a J.P.”

  “What’s my father got to do with it?”

  “Look, Philip.” She sat up in bed and I knew she was going to say something tricky. “I saw your father on Saturday—”

  “You what!”

  “Don’t be angry before I’ve told you. He asked to see me. I didn’t see why not. I think he’s very nice.”

  “For God’s sake—”

  “He wasn’t shocked, or anything like that.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  I found I was starting to shout, and took a hold of myself.

  “What exactly are you trying to do? First you talk of children, and then you rush off to see my family. What are you? An aspiring young bride?”

  “Don’t be horrid.”

  “I told you not to see my father.”

  “He knew all about us.”

  “He knows all about myxomatosis. But he doesn’t want diseased rabbit served up for breakfast.”

  “Darling. What a horrible thing to say.”

  “The facts are clear enough anyway. You gave me a promise and you’ve broken it.”

  I got up and pulled out my suitcase from behind the wardrobe.

  I have very little use for material possessions. I keep a few spare clothes, things like my dinner jacket and my climbing kit, at the Club and I have odd garments and changes of linen scattered about in the houses of friends and relations; never more than will go in a single suitcase. Possessions attach you. Get rid of them and you take a step towards non-attachment.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Packing. Where did I leave my hairbrushes?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away.”

  Penny sat up in bed abruptly.

  “I believe you’re serious,” she said.

  “Did I leave them in the bathroom? Of course I’m serious.”

  They were in the bathroom. Also a dirty shirt and some soiled collars and handkerchiefs that I made into a bundle. The Club would be able to get them washed for me.

  When I got back Penny was up. She had put on her dressing gown and, first reaction of women to a crisis, had very rapidly but skilfully made up her face.

  “Got them,” I said. There was just room in the suitcase for everything.

  “Darling,” she said, and there was an infinite tenderness in her voice. “I’ve just realised what’s happening. I’m dreaming all this, and in a minute I’m going to wake up.”

  “You’ll wake up,” I agreed.

  “But—”

  “The rent’s paid to the end of the month. Not that it matters. You’ve got as much money as I have. This is the end of the instalment, Penny. I said if ever you tried to bring my family into this I’d leave you. You have and I am.”

  “Is it possible that you’re being a little bit of a prig?”

  “Quite possible,” I said.

  “Then you’re really going? For ever?”

  “For ever,” I said. “And ever.”

  “You’re not even going to kiss me?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said, “without prejudice.”

  Two minutes later I was in the street. I got breakfast at a coffee stall and walked to my Club.

  “You can have your usual room in the annexe,” the Secretary said. “Things are a bit easier now, but if you can give me any idea how long you’re likely to want it?”

  “A fortnight at the outside,” I said.

  I should be able to make any arrangements in that time.

  At eleven o’clock I rang up the office.

  Douglas answered the telephone himself. He seemed cheerful.

  “I’ve just seen Carnwath,” he said, “and we’ve landed the hedge-trimming contract. Six machines, six crews, and one maintenance crew and one stores lorry. The whole outfit to be ready in three months’ time.”

  “That’s good isn’t it,” I said.

  “We’ll show thirty per cent clear of all overheads.”

  “That on top of the Belsize contract makes it look like a record year.”

  “Our only
enemy,” said Douglas, “is going to be the tax collector.” But he said it cheerfully. Douglas is an accountant and enjoys fighting the tax collector. They speak the same language. I don’t think we ever do anything actually dishonest, but we seem to pay away less of our profits to the Revenue than any other company I’ve ever heard of.

  “I don’t think I shall turn up today.”

  “That’s all right,” said Douglas. “Everything’s under control. Why don’t you help yourself to a holiday.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  That was the trouble. Everything was under control. I don’t want you to get this wrong. Douglas plays absolutely fair with me. He works a twelve-hour day to my six-hour one, and we share every penny of the profits equally. My share brings me more money than I really know how to spend. But the fun has gone out of it.

  When I formed the company, just after the War, it was really something. It was based on an idea I’d had that practically no one in the post-war world was going to be able to afford a gardener; or not enough gardeners for the garden they had to keep up. Acres of beds unweeded and lawns going back to rank grass, miles of hedges sprouting and un-trimmed.

  We started by getting a licence for the sale in this country of a cheap American motor-mower. Then we got hold of the first really good automatic mower and weeder. It’s a Dutch machine; they built it for their tulip beds, and we adapted it and got a licence to manufacture it here.

  Boy, did our troubles start then! With the mower we had only been middle-men. That’s easy. You can be a middle-man with one room, one typist, and a lot of nerve. But as soon as we started to manufacture we needed real money. That meant going to the City; and it meant debentures and preference shares and unsecured loans and arrangements of all sorts. And that’s where I brought Douglas in. I’d met him in the War and I knew he was a teetotaller and a chartered accountant. My impression was that he was an able chap; and I was right.