A Rough Shoot by Geoffrey Household

Cavalry–that would frighten him, ha? Second sight, but a bloody pansy–” and he went into details.
    “But you grant him a flair?”
    “Cleverest man in Europe, when he isn’t too scared to think.”
    “Right! Now, suppose he went over the ground in daylight, there must have been plenty of evidence for a trained eye. I don’t believe I ever picked up the empty cartridge. And when he’d pulled himself together, he might remember the difference of sound between a gun and a rifle. Damn it, he’s a soldier, and he must have heard plenty of both, even if he doesn’t like ‘em! And wouldn’t he check up where you were at the time? It’s a fair old puzzle, but he ought to know the death or disappearance of Riemann had nothing to do with the airstrip.”
    “Hiart, ha?” he answered, as if the man’s reactions were not to be judged by ordinary standards. “You or a poacher at eighty yards? It might occur to him. But he wouldn’t rule out straight revenge on Riemann. And I don’t think they’ll use the airstrip.”
    “Then why have they put back the supports for the beacon?”
    “How do you know they ever took ‘em away?”
    “Because they’d have taken a horrid risk if they didn’t and because I’ve seen the four holes where the spikes were before. That’s what Pink and your S.S. man were doing just before they nearly caught me–pulling up the supports and hiding them somewhere.”
    He snorted agreement.
    “Who’s employing Hiart?” he asked.
    I gave him a picture of Heyne-Hassingham and a lecture on the People’s Union, bringing in the earnest statistician as an example. It all fitted–an organization at bottom hysterical, but in practice efficient, impudent and with an appeal to the ruthless idealist.
    “The rest, during the week, is up to you, General,” I said, “because I have to earn my living. What we want to know is when those beacons go into position. And I’ll tell you what time to watch. Not in daylight because there are too many people about. Not at night because they won’t want to show a lot of artificial light. But at dusk, after the farm laborers have gone home. And I think they’ll also want to be sure that I am in my office and not taking an afternoon off.”
    “And what then?”
    “We go to the police, I suppose.”
    “Any evidence?”
    “The beacons.”
    “Colonel, my lad,” he smiled, “just work it out! What will the police do? Send up a couple of constables to check your story. Somebody will see ‘em or hear ‘em, and that’s the end of the airstrip.
    “What’s the next move, ha? Anonymous information to the police that Colonel Taine may be using his shoot as a little private Garden of Remembrance. With all the details. You try and deny ‘em. Especially if they say you bumped him off on the nineteenth, when the motorcycle was found, not the eighteenth. Where’s your alibi? What’s your story? People’s Union? You must be a political maniac. Heyne-Hassingham and Hiart? Above suspicion! Where did you put that body, by the way?”
    “Where it will take a lot of finding,” I answered sulkily.
    “Think so? I’ve had some experience. So has Scotland Yard. I’ll tell you the alternatives. Under the manure heap in the barn. In the middle of a bush–but unless you were in a tearing hurry, we’ll rule that out. Any heap of stones. Or the pit where the dead sheep are. Ha? Ha, pokerface? Now, you leave it all to me.”
    Sandorski pointed out that for a job of this kind–and he said he had organized enough of them to know–an aircraft had to have a fairly respectable base and a reason for leaving it. Therefore it would take off in daylight. Therefore it would arrive before midnight. And if it were going to land within five hundred yards of a road, the organizers must be sure of a dark night with no moon. That gave Wednesday, Thursday or Friday as the most likely dates. He didn’t think they would risk leaving the beacons in position; they would bring them out