pointed forward. Remember what the bastard did to Isabel.”
“Time!” called the referee.
Jago toppled to scratch where the Ebony waited to commence round seven.
¦Sergeant Cribb sat in the semi-darkness of the Tunbridge Wells police van with Thackeray and the three young men in cricket flannels. It was being driven at high speed along the road to Groombridge. Conversation at that level of vibration was difficult, but instructions had to be given.
“The driver should take us as close as possible-up to the ropes if he can. Then it’s the men in the ring I want, and the attendants. Never mind the rest. Bundle them in here as soon as you’ve got the bracelets on ’em. Then we’re driving back to Tunbridge Wells. And, Thackeray-”
“Yes, Sarge?”
“I want nothing said about us being at Radstock Hall this morning, or what we found there.”
Thackeray nodded sullenly. Cribb might have spared him that small humiliation in front of the local constables. The Sergeant was singularly uneasy, and he could understand why, but there ought to be some measure of confidence between them by now. Cribb hadn’t intimated even vaguely who it was he expected to charge with Mrs. Vibart’s murder.
“What about Jago, Sarge?”
“Jago? What about him?”
“He’ll be there in the ring, Sarge. Do we arrest him?”
“Of course we do! He’s prize fighting, ain’t he?”
Barely two-thirds of the way through, and he was so sore about the knuckles that every punch connecting with the Ebony brought more agony than it inflicted. Both fists were grotesquely swollen; they had an independent weight, like iron gloves. But they were flabby as joints of beef, and almost as raw. Their cutting edge had been blunted in the first quarter of an hour, turned to pulp in the next. And champions endured four hours of this!
The Ebony, for his part, had kept the fight alive by attacking the body, once the face was too lavishly ornamented with cuts and swellings. Two or three times he had allowed Jago to bring him to grass with a wrestler’s hold; once, for self-esteem, he tossed Jago heels over head against a side stake, and the crowd surged forward from the outer ring to see the damage. By good fortune it was minimal, and in the next round Jago had upset the backers by rocking the Ebony against his own corner post and bringing a trickle of blood from his ear.
Now, though, there was a change in Morgan’s tactics.
The lethal knuckles, rested by several rounds of obscure grappling, resumed the orthodox pose, taunting the victim in cobralike darting movements. The urgency directing them was inescapable. Jago waited, Argus-eyed. With eighteen rounds gone, the real fight was just beginning.
¦ “What have you stopped for now, Constable?” barked Cribb from inside the police van. The vehicle was quite stationary; the occupants, dressed as they were, might have been sitting in any pavilion waiting for a shower to pass.
“Crossroads, Sergeant. I don’t know whether to go on to Withyham or take the left turn into Ashdown Forest.”
“Look at the tracks, man, the tracks! We’re following a thousand or more blasted men and wagons. If you can’t see which route they took, you’d better come down and give the reins to me.”
The reassuring clatter of hooves began again.
“A thousand!” exclaimed the wicketkeeper, sweeping around for support. “How can we possibly take on a thousand roughs dressed like this?”
Cribb gave him a withering look. “You should know. Stand right up to ’em-and if you miss a catch, you’re for it.”
“How’s that, sir?” murmured Thackeray.
“Finish him!” screamed the crowd.
“He’s going! He’s going!”
“Look out! The blues!”
Jago sagged on the ropes, unable to visualize anything but general areas of light and shade. Mechanically his head continued to dodge and sway. Hands stilled his pawing fists.
“Told you I knew when to intervene,” said the voice of Sergeant Cribb.
CHAPTER 16
Cribb’s first order on arrival at Tunbridge Wells police station was for the Ebony and Jago, still linked by handcuffs, to be separated and helped away to be cleaned up and examined by a doctor. The others who had been detained, D’Estin and Vibart (the Ebony’s attendants having vanished into the crowd), were taken to the inspector’s office for questioning. Cribb took the chair. Its owner had dismissed himself for a rest after the earlier excitement.
“Now, Mr. D’Estin. You say you want to tell me something important. Damned if I could hear anything in that confounded van with the two fist fighters groaning every time we went over a bump.”
“It’s of the greatest importance, Sergeant. I want to report a murder.”
“Murder? What do you mean?”
Thackeray, seated between D’Estin and Vibart, remembered the strategy and tried to look as shocked as Cribb.
“It happened in Essex-at Radstock Hall, Rainham-late last night. Mrs. Vibart, this man’s sister-in-law, was stabbed in her bed. Morgan, the black, is responsible. I was his trainer at Radstock Hall.”
“Really? My information was that he spent the last week in London, taking his breathings with a man named Beckett.”
“Quite true,” confirmed D’Estin. “He deserted us a week ago.”
“How could he have killed Mrs. Vibart last night, then?”
“Ah, he came to Rainham with Beckett and another man to settle the arrangements for the fight. Mrs. Vibart left the party early to conclude the business with Beckett-he had brought the battle money, you see. The course of the fight was prearranged and had to be paid for. Beckett soon returned, but Morgan had also quit the room and he was absent for half an hour or more. He said he was intending to collect some personal articles, and when he returned, he was carrying a bundle, it was true, but it now occurs to me- and to others, I think-that the bundle could have contained the dagger that killed Mrs. Vibart, and some bloodstained clothing as well.”
Thackeray listened with increasing interest. This was new information; he had dismissed the Ebony from all his speculations because he believed he was in London the previous evening.
“Why should he have wanted to kill her?” asked Cribb.
“Theft. Beckett had just paid her five hundred pounds.
Morgan openly despised her anyway. He simply went to her room, stabbed her, and took the money. We found her this morning. The safe in the room was open, and empty. It was obvious who had done it.”
“If it was obvious,” said Cribb, “how did Morgan expect to get away with it?”
D’Estin slowly shook his head. “He’s not as simpleminded as you might think, Sergeant. He reasoned that we were all too implicated in this illegal fist fighting to inform the police. But he reckoned without the Englishman’s inborn sense of integrity. I’m sure that I speak for Vibart here when I say that whatever inconveniences we face over this fist-fighting nonsense, we know where our duty lies.”
“If that were true, sir,” commented Cribb, “you’d have reported all this to the Rainham police first thing this morning. Now, Mr. Vibart. You’ve heard what’s been said. Are you prepared to confirm that to the best of your knowledge it is true?”
Vibart, still spotted with Jago’s blood, nodded his head.
“It appears to be the only reasonable explanation.”
“Very well,” said Cribb. “Then, seeing that we’re all upright Englishmen, we’d better call Morgan in and put
