A Hole in the Ground Read online

  Bello:

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  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

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  Contents

  Andrew Garve

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  PART TWO

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Andrew Garve

  A Hole in the Ground

  Andrew Garve

  Andrew Garve is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908–2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942–5, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

  After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

  Andrew Garve was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Sharp on the stroke of seven the Member of Parliament for the West Cumbrian Division drove his dusty station wagon into the Memorial Square at Blean for the “Mass Labour Rally” that was to wind up his August campaign. Already there was a fair amount of activity. Several dozen men and women—the stalwarts who formed the hard core of the Party’s active workers and could be relied upon to turn up at every meeting—were chatting and laughing around Adam Johnson, the full-time agent. Close by, two youths were erecting a portable platform bearing the red-lettered inscription “West Cumbrian Divisional Labour Party.” On the fringes of the open space stood a few individuals who were probably going to attend the meeting but preferred to keep in the background until the proceedings started. Farther off still there were coy indications of a wider public—heads at open windows, loungers at corners and loiterers without any apparent destination. Among all these a young girl threaded her way distributing leaflets.

  “Looks fairly promising,” Laurence Quilter commented to his wife.

  “Not too bad,” she agreed.

  Although Julie Quilter had been married to an M. P. for seven years, she could never get very excited about the party political struggle. It had been the man, not the politician, who had swept her off her feet almost at their first encounter, and she had often thought since that if he’d been a Flat-Earther instead off a Socialist she’d probably have married him just the same. Of course, his sheer fervour had infected her to begin with and for a while she’d found the partisan battle stimulating and they’d had lots of fun. Now she did gracefully what was required of her as a politician’s wife because Laurence expected it and she would never have let him down. Secretly she nursed what to any politician is the worst of all heresies—that it didn’t much matter which side got in!

  Quilter leaned across to turn the door handle for her and as he followed her out a pleased and smiling expression began to settle on his face. He was good-looking in a rather boyish way and appeared much younger than his thirty-nine years. A lithe, vigorous walk, a slim figure, unruly brown hair and heavy horn-rimmed glasses increased the suggestion of an eager undergraduate.

  As they crossed the Square together there was a stir of welcome among the group of supporters by the platform. Adam Johnson swivelled round on his one leg with a practised shove from his crutch and stumped towards them. He was a white-haired, rubicund man of sixty with a rugged face, an open candid expression and the inner guile of a lifetime spent in professional politics.

  “Evening, Laurence! Evening, Mrs. Quilter!” Johnson shook hands with them, though the three had met every night that week in similar circumstances. “Well, what do you think of it?” He eyed the square with the satisfaction of a man whose labours were about to be rewarded. “Not too bad for Blean, eh?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” said Quilter, and both men smiled at the understatement. The fact was that they had held some heart-breaking meetings on this square in days gone by—nothing but noisy children and dogs and stony adult indifference. In those days Blean had been less a town than a strip of coast dotted with cheap bungalows, their inhabitants dull and self-centred and lacking any vestige of corporate spirit. The place had had no focal point, no community of interest, and Quilter had found it politically inaccessible. However, all that was changed, now. A huge plutonium-producing plant—the largest source of atom-bomb material, it was said, between America and the Iron Curtain—had been built beside the little river Blea, and now every house in Blean and almost every thought was dominated by the pale pink chimneys that towered five hundred feet into the sky. In the past few months workers had come crowding in from Birmingham and London as production swelled, occupying the great new prefab estate that made the original bungalows seem no more than a suburban fringe. And politically the place had come to life.

  “We’re expecting quite a big contingent from the plant,” Johnson said, following the direction of Quilter’s gaze. “Should be here any minute now. And the whole town’s been well billed. With luck, we’ll make fifty new members to-night.”

  “Good work, Adam.” Quilter patted the agent’s shoulder and began to circulate among his supporters, greeting each by name and chatting in an easy, natural manner. Johnson, leaning on his crutch, looked on approvingly. He knew that organisations could be made or marred at such moments; a hint of condescension or too much heartiness from a Member could be as fatal as aloofness. There wasn’t any danger of that here, though. Quilter had just the right touch—he appeared genuinely interested in people and knew how to inspire them with his own keenness. He was an agent’s dream!

  Julie, too, was mixing in her more personal, discriminating way. One of the compensations of her public life was that she had come to know and like many of these devoted people and rightly counted them her friends. It wasn’t difficult for Julie to make friends, for she had a naturally happy disposition and a most attractive appearance. Her sepia eyes were usually bright with laughter and her lively features had a piquant, elfin quality that was matched by her smallness and lightness of movement. This evening she seemed a little subdued, but her manner had an
added sweetness. Several mothers of large families thought what a pity it was that the Quilters had no children.

  With the arrival of the Member, the atmosphere in the square had become expectant and the crowd was visibly swelling. A bus deposited the first batch of workers from the plant and a party of miners from Coalhaven in the north of the constituency added to the solid nucleus by the platform. There were many more townsfolk about now, too, and the pavements were becoming well-lined. The local constable wheeled his bicycle on to the square and took up an unobtrusive position against a tree.

  “If you’re ready, Laurence, we’ll make a start,” Johnson called. Quilter nodded and moved towards, the platform. “Right, up you go, Joe.”

  A heavy, balding man climbed carefully on to the stand. Joe Halliday had been for forty years the signalman, porter and general factotum at various stations on a branch line near Blean, an unexacting job leaving him with a good deal of surplus energy which he had devoted unsparingly to the Labour cause. A slow-witted man, he might normally have expected to live out his political life doing the most menial, of party chores, but it so happened that he had a voice of loud-hailer strength which in the general view ideally fitted him for open-air chairmanship. To-night as always he had prepared his introductory remarks with laborious care and now proceeded to unload them with the stolidity of a town crier. Even when some misguided wit called out, “Speak up, Joe!” and a gust of laughter swept the square, he paused only long enough to dab his moist face and then resumed his discourse without a smile.

  Quilter stood close beside him, following his banal words with every appearance of interest and backing him up from time to time with an earnest “Hear, hear!” Inwardly, he wished that Joe would cut it short. The foghorn voice might be all right in theory but in practice it seemed to keep the crowd at a distance. Quilter felt keyed up and impatient to get started himself. Although he had been in public life for fifteen years and had made more speeches than he could remember, he always felt acutely nervous just before he was called upon. His irritation increased as Joe shouted, “Finally, my friends …” for the third time and embarked on yet another peroration. One or two people on the outskirts were starting to drift away and Quilter longed to tug at his jacket. Johnson, too, was beginning to get restless when the welcome-words came at last—” And now, my friends, it gives me much pleasure to ask our Member to address us.”

  Quilter helped the chairman down, murmuring congratulations, and mounted the stand to solid applause from the hard core and some good-natured booing from the middle distance. Once up, he seemed in no hurry to begin. He took off his coat and gave it to Joe to hold and then he leaned nonchalantly over the front of the platform. “Suppose you all come a little nearer,” he said in a conversational tone, beckoning the audience towards him with both hands. Almost unconsciously they closed in, forming a corporate whole with himself as the focal point. “That’s much better. Well, now, as you know the Government’s been having a rather difficult time with its small majority …”

  It didn’t take him long to capture their interest. He began telling them the inside story of the session, explaining the issues in homely terms, drawing lively little word pictures of members who had taken part in the debates, salting his account with amusing episodes. He was completely in command and obviously enjoying himself. Every now and again, as he found some happy phrase, he would look down and catch Julie’s eye and smile. His manner was intimate, as though he were chatting over a glass of beer, yet confident and authoritative, too. Occasionally he slipped in phrases like, “… so I asked the Prime Minister about it and he told me …” People liked that sort of thing—it was almost as good as hearing someone talk who had had dinner with Clark Gable. Politics without tears!

  As the crowd continued to grow, Johnson mentally rubbed his hands. Laurence was doing well to-night, better than ever. A first-class speaker, full of charm and personality. A first-class Member, altogether. Mature, now—very different from the too-clever, verbally violent young man who had somehow managed to snatch the seat in 1935 and had become the “Baby” of the House at twenty-three. In those days Johnson hadn’t expected him to last, but he’d survived two elections and was better-liked now than ever. Of course, he had all the advantages—the prestige of belonging to a famous local family, the kudos of going against that family’s political traditions, great wealth, good looks, an attractive wife—those things all counted. But he’d earned his popularity, too—he’d never spared himself and he’d always had the interests of the constituency at heart. Even so, it would be a near thing next time. The Government had lost ground, there was no denying that, and it was just a question whether the influx of new workers into the district would make up for it. Perhaps an early canvass would be a good idea …

  Julie, also, was thinking about Laurence. “Now that he had got into his stride she had moved away to the edge of the crowd and was watching him appraisingly from a distance. There was no doubt, she thought, that he was wonderfully effective on a platform. He responded to the limelight—and he was at his best in the limelight. At least—she wanted to be fair—it showed up one of his best facets and threw all the contradictions of his complex character into shadow. On the platform he always appeared as she had first seen him—as a man of conviction and integrity and vision, with the fire and intelligence to communicate his message to others. Yet she sometimes wondered. After all these years she still wasn’t sure what kept him in politics—whether it was high principle and the desire to serve, or ambition, or vanity, or just the usual mixture.

  She strolled away out of earshot of the too-familiar speech and made a circuit of the square. She felt restless this evening. Presently she stopped by a seat, smiling at a burly, heavily-moustached man who was wearing a ginger sports jacket and flannel trousers as though he wasn’t really comfortable in them. “Hello, Mr. Barratt,” she said.

  “Evening, Mrs. Quilter.” The man’s rather stem features relaxed in an answering smile and he moved along the seat. “How about resting your feet?”

  “Thank you,” said Julie. She liked Barratt. He was a sergeant at the police station in the square and was usually to be seen behind the counter taking particulars of lost dogs and handbags. It was actually a handbag that had brought them together. Off-duty, he was a Labour supporter in a discreet way and a great admirer of Laurence Quilter.

  “Quite a good meeting,” he said, motioning towards the crowd. For a policeman he sounded almost wistful.

  “Not bad, is it? We’ve been hard at it all week, you know. Mr. Johnson thinks we’re going to have a very close fight, next time.”

  “Does he?” Barratt stroked his moustache judicially. “Can’t say I agree with him. Mr. Quilter’s done well—he’ll get back. That’s what all the chaps in the Force think, anyway, and they keep their ears open.”

  “You’re most encouraging.”

  “Well, Mr. Quilter’s very highly thought of, particularly just now. Fine gesture of his, handing over the Hall and all that property to the Trust! Not many would have done it.”

  “Perhaps not. But I’m sure he’ll get a lot of pleasure from seeing the place put to a good use.”

  Barratt nodded. “I dare say. Still, it must have been a wrench.” Suddenly he broke into a chuckle. “I reckon old Lady Quilter would just about turn in her grave if she knew of it. She was a tartar! I remember going up there as a young constable to get some papers signed—she was a magistrate, of course …”

  The sergeant, who was inclined to be terse behind his desk, became quite expansive. His reminiscences were so amusing that Julie would have much preferred to stay and listen, but her sense of duty told her that she’d been away from the meeting long enough and presently she bade him good-bye and rejoined the crowd.

  The atmosphere had changed during her absence. Laurence was no longer describing and expounding—he’d become thrusting and aggressive and was attacking the record of the opposition with vigour. Julie knew that the climax was now impend
ing. He recalled the situation in the thirties when the Tories had ruled—the long and deep depression, longer and deeper on this coast than almost anywhere; the endless dole queues, the heartbreak of idleness, the hungry children, the sense of desolation. His voice took on a note of passion, of quivering sincerity—it was as though the real stuff of him could no longer be contained. His face glowed, his eyes burned, and the words that poured from him had the eloquence of poetry. There was a moment of spellbound silence in the square.

  Julie, too, was moved in spite of herself. It was always the same, she found—she would watch him for some time, admiring his technique and his patter, appreciating his knowledge and wit, but feeling completely detached herself. Then he would suddenly bare his soul—or seem to—and she would become an ardent girl again, stirred to the depths, ready to follow him in any crusade.

  He was finishing now, for he was too good an artist to blur his exit line. As he got down from the platform, his face rigid with emotion, there was a burst of applause such as Blean had rarely heard. Joe Halliday climbed up to make a few announcements and the edges of the crowd thinned a little as someone began to take up a collection. Then questions were invited.

  Quilter returned to the stand with the assurance of one well-practised in the cut-and-thrust of question-time. He expected an onslaught from the Tories, but to-night it was the Communists who proved most persistent and awkward. There was usually a sprinkling of them at his meetings and their attitude to him was bitter, perhaps because in his political adolescence he had been well-disposed towards them, and they now regarded him as a bit of a renegade. One of the most troublesome was a man who didn’t look at all like the popular idea of a Communist—though, as Quilter knew, it was impossible to tell from appearances where a man’s loyalties lay. He was a quiet, well-educated man of about thirty who always put his questions with a slightly lop-sided smile and went on smiling disconcertingly while they were being answered. At earlier meetings he had pursued Quilter with faintly insolent, faintly derisive queries about his family estates and the ethics of being a wealthy socialist. Since Quilter’s arrangement with the Lakeland Trust, however, he’d had to change his ground, and for some time he’d been plugging away about the atomic plant. The Communists could do nothing effective to hold up production there, beyond fomenting an occasional strike, but at least they could spread alarm and despondency about the plant’s safety. Quilter had already done his bit in helping to dispose of the rumours after a short briefing by the Minister of Supply. The air of Blean, he had explained, was quite harmless, since the factory chimneys had been built specially high in order to disperse the dust. The sea was quite safe for bathing, because the effluent was carried away in pipes a couple of miles long and there was a routine check on the water at every tide. Nor was there the least chance that all the men in the district would become sterile!