Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers!

Ellis Peters

Description

A hitchhiker is caught in a murderous web

His whole life, William Banks has been trying to escape his mother, who wants desperately for him to become a lawyer. Banks wants to paint, and when he gets the opportunity to attend art school in the next county, he jumps at the chance. It’s only forty miles, but it’s a start. Getting to class, however, will be a deadly proposition.
 
On his way there, Banks is picked up by Alf, a down-on-his-luck crook who has dreamed up a plan involving a fire, a burned body, and a dead hitchhiker. By all rights, Banks shouldn’t live to see morning, but a stroke of luck—and a very helpful village girl—help him escape death without his ever knowing he was in danger. Caught up in a bizarre case of missing identity, Banks must think quickly to save his own life—once he finally realizes someone is trying to kill him.
 

Sujets

• England
• Détective
• Mystery
• Crime fiction
• Humor

Informations

• Publié par: Open Road Media
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781480443853
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers!
Ellis Peters

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
CHAPTER ONE
Well, for Petesakes, protested Alf afterwards in indignant self-justification, how was I supposed to know? There was I, more than an hour behind time already, and no sign of that cagey bastard Boycott, and with what I had on board, I wasn t aiming to hang around much longer, even if I d still believed he intended showing up, and by then I was damned certain he didn t. Gawd knows what put him off, I reckon his thumbs had started pricking. I had to move off, didn t I? And then there was this kid, standing on the edge of the run-on, pointing his thumb down the motorway, solemn as an owl, with this suitcase in his other hand, and his feet at ten to two, so clean and green I d swear he d never even hitched a lift before. In a grey suit and collar and tie, short back and sides, the lot! I tell you, if there d been two of him I should have taken him for a Mormon on his missionary year, nobody else goes around looking like a tailor s dummy these days-come to think of it, tailor s dummies don t look like that any more, either-only Mormons. But those boys hunt in pairs, and anyhow, they don t hitch lifts. So I thought well, if you need me, boy, maybe you re what I need, too. And I slid the old van up alongside, and I said: How far you going, kid? and he said: As far as Braybourne, with luck, sir! That did it! Anybody as polite and simple as he looked and sounded was my luck. I said hop in, so am I. And he hopped.
Well, damn it, he looked like the answer to prayer, the spot I was in, and he came out with his life-story so pat on the way down, you wouldn t believe. He was a gift from heaven!
How was I to know he had a nose like Sexton Blake s bloodhound, and a squad of guardian angels tougher n a Rugby scrum?
William Anthony Patrick Banks was twenty years old, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.
She was, admittedly, a very active and well-heeled widow, full of good works and a prop of many committees, but she still had time to keep a close eye and a loving hand on Willie, whose life from infancy, through school and into his late father s partner s business, had been planned for him without overmuch consultation of his wishes. His trouble was that he was of a sunny, guileless and contented disposition, not at all given to raising objections, and by the time he realised that he was in danger of being stuck in that office for life, and ending up a solicitor and a partner in his turn, it was almost too late to break out of the shell. Moreover, he was so well-brought-up, so amiable and so genuinely fond of his mother that almost all the courses open to more ruthless young men were impossible to him. He couldn t just say that he d discovered he didn t want to be a solicitor-she would have taken it as a wounding insult to his father s profession. He couldn t state tersely that he had to get away from her shadow and stand on his own feet-she would then have made it impossible for him to do any such thing by being heart-broken and forgiving. Forgiving, that is, with the implied suggestion that she was about to smile and wave him away bravely and with her blessing, and go into a mortal decline as soon as he was out of her sight, of course without a word of complaint. Nor could he simply vanish without trace-she would have had the entire police force of the county out looking for him.
So he went about it in his own fashion. Anything his father had done was admirable and worthy in his mother s eyes, and to quit his father s profession in order to pursue his father s hobby would not be an offence. She had several of William Moncrieff Banks s execrable water-colours and one very odd oil framed about the house, and rated them as the offspring of a great lost talent. Willie took to oils, and began to produce canvases certainly no more alarming than his father s, but a good deal more highly-coloured, and in an abstract style which allowed remarkable rapidity of execution, and sometimes achieved, as a result, fresh and clean colour effects. Occasionally he even liked the results, to his own astonishment, and that made it all the more convincing when he suddenly confided to her that painting was what he wanted, and must have if he was to be happy, and that with her permission he proposed to start learning his business properly, and wanted to enroll in a good School of Art.
He had London in mind, but she, once she had digested the idea of parting with him at all, quickly cut down on the distance. There was a palatial new art school in the next county, where one thriving market town and four or five outlying villages were halfway through the painful process of being transformed into a new town. Willie closed with the suggestion thankfully. Forty miles was a start. You can always add another forty to the first instalment, after a cautious interval.
He wrote off, early in the year, for a prospectus of the courses offered by the New Braybourne School of Art, and his mother accepted this as evidence that he had actually enrolled. He hadn t. But he let her have a hand in finding him respectable lodgings in a house approved by the school itself, and that satisfied her. After Easter she saw him off by the bus, he having declined further fuss or a taxi, and for all her reluctance to let go of him at all, was able to reassure herself that she had merely let him out on a long leash, which could be wound in at any time she pleased. She thought, of course, that he had boarded the evening train south, and would go straight to his landlady s house and his chosen class.
Willie, on the other hand, foresaw that for a time he was going to need all his savings, and with railway fares as high as they were, and the service station on the motorway only a few hundred yards from the bus route, saw no reason to spend good money on a more formal method of travel.
Which is how he came to be standing on the edge of the run-on, pointing his thumb down the motorway, clean and green in his grey suit, with his feet at ten to two, when Alf Jarrett gave up waiting for his defecting passenger, and came driving along past the service buildings and the petrol pumps and the coach park, did a double-take at this improbable bourgeois apparition, and pulled up beside him.
How far are you going, kid? he said, leaning out.
He was not a big man, but compact and broad, with a weathered, froggy face under a peaked cap, and a bent nose that gave him a droll and slightly surprised look. He could have been an experienced groom, or a fairly prosperous scrap-dealer, or a small farmer. At any rate, he appeared friendly and well-disposed, which was the main thing. And since he was obviously Willie s elder by at least fifteen years, Willie addressed him according to custom: As far as Braybourne, with luck, sir!
Hop in, said Alf, so am I.
Willie hopped.
By the time they were halfway down the forty-mile run, cruising along steadily but fast in the centre lane, Willie had confided a good part of his life-story. He was not generally given to this exercise, but pick-ups like this, in common with train journeys, lend themselves to confidences which need never produce any echoes, since the parties are unlikely ever to meet again. And the large, misshapen brown ear cocked towards him seemed to attract conversation.
So your Ma thinks you re going to this art school, said Alf, shaking his head over the deception, but grinning without noticeable disapproval, and you ain t intending any such thing. Well, I won t say but what mothers can be a bit of a problem when they ve only got one. And you won t be that far away. If you re going to stay in Braybourne?
Oh, yes, said Willie. I couldn t just ditch her and go off into the blue. I ll be close by if she gets desperate. But art was just one way out. It isn t my forte.
What do you fancy, then?
Oh, I ll just get a job, practically any job, I haven t thought yet. Not in an office, if I can help it.
You ve got nothing fixed up yet, then? Got to have a look round first, I suppose.
That s it exactly, said Willie.
You got somewhere to stay in town? It ll be past eleven, time we get in. But maybe you got friends there?
Alf had round, earnest eyes that showed a gleam of white all round the iris when passing lights spilled into the van.
No, I don t know the place at all, but I ve got a room waiting for me. With a Mrs Dutton who takes in art school students. I thought I d better let my mother in on that part of it. You know how they are about who s going to cook and manage for you, and what sort of household are you going into! Booking with an approved house seemed to be an insurance.
Yeah, keep her happy, eh? Where is this place? I m on the late side, myself, and my missus will be waiting and worrying, but maybe we can see you right.
Do you know New Braybourne well?
Nobody knows New Braybourne well, said Alf feelingly. Used to be a nice market town with a real centre and good shops, and a clutch of villages round it, not the best farm-land ever, but not bad, neither. Now it s halfway from somewhere to nowhere, with a whacking great new road system that uses up half the available ground, and umpteen schools, about as pricey as Buckingham Palace, only gimcrack, and two estates of rabbit-hutches and a couple of tower blocks, and a few oddball private blocks of flats in among the rest. But mostly traffic islands. At traffic islands those boys are real good! What s this address of yours? I might know it if it s an old un.
Dutton, 35, Rainbow Road, Norden Common, said Willie obligingly.
Alf whistled. Norden, that s one of the old villages they ve taken in. It s a good way out. I doubt the buses will be running, time we get in. She expecting you tonight?
It s sort of le