The Trouble With Harry Read Free

and walked away, not troubling about his special steps, but only eager to get into the woods and home.

BODY IN THE BRACKEN
    The new captain sat on the lowest bough of an oak tree, one short leg dangling one side and one dangling on the other. He gripped a point-two-two rifle in his arms and a pipe of unknown calibre between his teeth. A short, plump little man with a mop of black, wiry hair and a brown, creased, clean-shaven face. A nautical figure with the innocent eyes of a baby. A man to inspire protection in a woman, trust in a child, fear in a coward and apprehension in a man of business. A man who knew the world without having seen more than the results of it in riverside taverns – for the new captain was neither new nor,strictly speaking, a captain. The new captain was Mr Albert Wiles, retired lighterman of the Thames barges. He was not a charlatan or a pretender, either, for the title by which he was known in Sparrowswick was not self-sought. He had been made a captain by Mr Mark Douglas, property-owner, landlord and despoiler of things beautiful. Albert Wiles had been made a captain because Sparrowswick had to have one. There always had been a captain in one of the little bungalows and there always would be. Moreover, the bungalow set aside for men of the sea was a little ship from ship. It rocked on unsafe stilts amongst the waves of shrubbery and instead of windows it had portholes. What was more, it was called ‘The Ship’. In such a bungalow it stood to reason there had to be a seafarer. A man come from the lonely, watery places of the world. A wanderer. A bringer of salt and flapping canvas; a captain.
    So it was only natural that when Albert Wiles had answered the advertisement regarding the tenancy of a bungalow on Sparrowswick Heath, wearing a rugged, peaked cap and smelling of deep water, Mr Mark Douglas had immediately mentally pigeon-holed himinto the captain’s bungalow. And it was only natural that since the previous captain – also a man of dubious rank – had obeyed a second childhood urge and run back to sea, Captain Wiles should be called the new captain by all the people of the estate.
    Captain Wiles then, sat on the lowermost bough of an oak tree on Sparrowswick Heath in the hot afternoon sunshine. He sat puffing at his pipe, perspiring and looking for rabbits. He was not a good huntsman in the true sense of the word, for although he had a good aim and had killed more rats than anyone else between Battersea and Woolwich, he was not at all certain what a live rabbit looked like. Nor what a pheasant looked like, or a hare. The only game with which he was acquainted hung on hooks around the front of The Fisheries near the Blackwall Tunnel, and to imagine those stiff, stuffy-looking objects leaping around in this strange and wonderful land was almost impossible. Nevertheless, Captain Wiles had taken three shots at moving objects that
might
have been rabbits or pheasants or something; and soon he was going to wander amongst the bracken and look for the results.
    Meanwhile, it was pleasant to sit and watch and wait. It was pleasant to listen to the drone of bees amongst the heather, and the cheep of some bird above his head that sounded as though it had finished its dinner and was scraping a fork against an empty plate. It was pleasant to be alive in such a wild, rugged, yet cosy world. Pleasant to have it to yourself. The bungalow was quiet enough, but up here you were above quietness. Up here you were knocking on the pearly gates and hoping they wouldn’t hear you. Captain Wiles let his eyes scan the tops of the bracken and he nodded, satisfied that he had that part of the heath to himself.
    The captain had not forgotten the first time he went shooting. That had been a few days after he had moved in. He had come up here amongst the bracken and shot at what he had supposed to be a walking pheasant. But it had turned out to be a crawling Freddy Grayson. Mr Grayson had come to him that evening