The Trouble With Harry Read Free Page A

with a holed cap in his hand and wrath in his eye. He had told Captain Wiles a few things about dangerous shooting that he didn’t know. He had told Captain Wiles a great many things blunt and to thepoint, finishing up with some advice about sticking to a pair of oars. The captain had vowed that never again would he go shooting amongst small boys. And so he was glad that, on this afternoon, the heath was deserted.
    At last, long after the echoes of the last shot had gone over the hills, Captain Wiles swung himself agilely from the branch to the ground. He dusted the bark rust from his flannel trousers and set out along the path to inspect his killings.
    The first thing he found was a white paper bag with a sticky aniseed ball in one corner and a neat point-two-two hole in the other.
    He grunted and walked on.
    He recollected that his second shot had been at something that moved near a big clump of broom. In his mind he had an exact photograph of where the moving object had been and where his shot had gone. Sure enough, in the exact spot, half-hidden by the gorse, he found a warm but dead hedgehog. Snuffling against the hedgehog were two baby hedgehogs. Two small, brown, prickly things too young to see clearly and making tiny squeaking noises like real babies.
    The captain stood looking down at them. His brown face was touched with dismay. His heart, which had gloated over the death of a multitude of rats, wept for this dead mother, for these orphan children. For a moment he looked at the gun he carried, in a manner which made its destruction seem eminent. But then he sighed and passed on to the site of his third target.
    Once again his sharp, innocent eyes led him straight to the spot. And this time his findings left him weak and shaken. He staggered back against a young ash tree that bent under his weight.
    ‘Great Gordon Bennett!’
    The dead man lay just as young Abie had seen him. The face, the moustache, the wavy hair, the blood. Everything.
    ‘Christ Almighty!’ said Captain Wiles. ‘I’ve done him in!’
    He looked frantically around him and all he could see were the trees. And from every tree dangled a noosed rope. Every tree, even to the furthest horizon, had become a gallows in his eyes. His mother had always said he would hang sooner or later, and it was later. Just as he had got through his life nicely. Justwhen he was looking forward to a quiet retirement. The times he had kept his temper and avoided brawls! The hundreds of times he had wanted to kill Tiger Wray – and had desisted simply because of wanting to live to prove his mother wrong and to enjoy the simplicity of the English countryside. And now this harmless pot at a rabbit and he was a murderer. A killer. He groaned. It wasn’t a bad shot, but by cripes! he’d done it now. He was in for it.
    ‘What the hell was you doing laying here?’ the captain asked the corpse. He groaned again.
    He felt for the pulse of the dead man, more as a last politeness than anything. Then he ran his fingers through the pockets. He found an empty envelope addressed to ‘Mr Harry Worp, Eighty-seven, Eastfield, Fulham’.
    ‘Well,’ said the captain philosophically, ‘you’re a long way from home, cock. And you’ll never get back. Phone the police, Albert.’ This last remark was addressed to himself. Having heard it, he got to his feet and began to walk towards the woods and home. But even as he walked his mind was searching for an easy way out and he found it.
    He stopped walking suddenly and turned to survey the glorious vista of greenery. He could barely see above the bracken and it all seemed more of a jungle to him than it would have done to a taller man.
    ‘All this jungle,’ he said, ‘and one little body …’
    He retraced his footsteps and stood a moment looking down at the corpse. The man was large, but the grass was silky through long drought. The captain regarded the shrubbery in the vicinity, looking for a place that would hide a body, not only