The Frog In The Moonflower: (Writing as Ivor Drummond)

By Roger Longrigg

The ‘ALA’ is blamed for a series of savage attacks; on a pheasant shoot, a hunt and a party of young beaglers. Meanwhile, in Geneva, the Societé Internationale pour le Préservation de l’Héritage de la Nature seeks to protect and preserve every species. Sandro, the Italian Count who is one of Lady Jennifer Norrington’s companions, has an aunt who is deeply interested in its work. But it is on safari in East Africa that this story of multiple murder, terror and suspense concludes. The climax is as surprising as it is satisfying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Stratus
• Release date: Sep 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9780755135059

Roger Longrigg

Roger Longrigg was a British author of unusual versatility who wrote both novels and non-fiction, along with plays and screenplays for television, under both his own name and eight other pseudonyms. Born in Edinburgh into a military family, he was at first schooled in the Middle East, but returned to England as a youth and later read history at Magdalen College, Oxford. His early career took him into advertising, but after the publication of two comic novels took up writing full time in 1959. He completed fifty five books, many under his own name, but also Scottish historical fiction as Laura Black; thrillers as Ivor Drummond (for which his chief character, Lady Jennifer Norrington was named by HRF Keating in 'The Times' as the 'True heir of James Bond'); black comedies as Domini Taylor; Frank Parish (which titles feature the adventures of Dan Mallett, a poacher who lives on the edges of legality) - and famously Rosalind Erskine - a name with which he hoaxed all for several years, and who appeared to write a disguised biography of what life was like in a girls boarding school where the classmates ran a brothel for boys from a nearby school. Erskine's 'The Passion Flower Hotel' became a bestseller and was later filmed. Roger Longrigg's work in television included 'Mother Love', a BBC mini-series starring Diana Rigg and David McCallum, and episodes of 'Crown Court' and 'Dial M for Murder'. He died in 2000, aged 70 and was survived by his wife, the novelist Jane Chichester, and three daughters.

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Prologue

The grass crunched underfoot, starched with hoar-frost. It was still white where the sun had not reached it. The brown leaves which clung to the beech-trees were etched with random white patterns. The lower twigs of oaks and ashes and thorn-trees formed a white filigree against the darkness of the wood, and the delicate curve of the branches of a larch were touched with white. High, where the sun had struck, frost had turned to water; big silver drops strung the topmost twigs like diamonds. They gathered and fell, nudging the lower beech-leaves as though a flock of tiny birds was busy among them.

The day was windless. After a cold night the sky was clear and blue. The pale sun rose in the south-east and filled the little valley with an illusion of warmth.

It was very quiet. This was a countryside of downland, of big estates, extensive woods, broad hedges, thousand-acre farms. The nearest busy road was five miles away, the nearest railway ten. One or two blackbirds chuckled in the wood. A flock of long-tailed tits scuttled through the highest branches of a hazel, circling and swinging, piping to each other. Robins ticked like mechanical toys and lapwings cried from a nearby meadow.

The valley was a neat, straight groove between slow hills. The hills seemed to show differences of soil, for the one behind, over which the sun had risen, was covered with a scrub of birch and gorse and bracken, while the one in front carried a big and ancient growth of hardwood trees. The valley ended in a little stony cliff, festooned with brambles. The ugly, untidy brambles had been transformed by the frost into a delicate Oriental tracery. A heavy clump of Ponticum rhododendrons grew unexpectedly on top of the little cliff.

At the other end of the valley a five-barred gate stood open on to a lane. The Land-Rovers were parked in the lane. One or two wives of exceptional loyalty waited by the Land-Rovers.

The guns were spaced almost in a straight line the length of the valley. The pheasants would rocket out of the big wood into the eye of the sun. Experience told that they would come highest and fastest and in greatest numbers at the far end, near the little cliff. There, consequently, Lord Candover had stationed the best shots and the most senior guests. The Lord Lieutenant. Admiral Cordle. Old Mrs Pendlebury, the daughter and granddaughter and widow of celebrated shots and herself a formidable slayer of birds.

The beaters could now be heard through the still air, far away on the other side of the wood. One of the dogs began to whimper with excitement. It was a young lemon-yellow labrador. The old keeper who held it had been carved out of a misshapen chunk of cracked and antique oak.

The big dark wood which clad the gently rising ground in front of the guns was full of birds. A few of these were wild. Far more had been reared with anxious love by the keepers, in little chicken-wire houses behind the stables. Until the shooting season began they were quite tame: would stalk complacently through grass and undergrowth, when they heard a keeper, for their handout of mixed corn. The woods were strictly preserved. Picnickers were chased out. A ceaseless war was waged on vermin, and the rides through the wood were dotted with ‘gamekeepers’ larders’ – grisly little gibbets, with the dangling, cautionary corpses of stoats and weasels and carrion crows.

The beaters were getting nearer. Tock-tock-tock, they hit the trees with their walking-sticks and called and whistled. All the birds in the wood were being gradually shepherded to this sudden clean edge, this killing-ground. They would rocket over the nearest treetops, high and fast against the pale bright sky. Stubby wings, giving acceleration and steep climb. Long tails streaming behind. Cocks and hens today – shoot everything. Shoot them in the beak, not the trousers – no one wants roast pheasant full of chunks of lead.

Tock-tock-tock. Mumbles and whistles. Near.

A sudden, electrifying series of explosions as the heavy birds burst out of the dense undergrowth. Their powerful short wings whirred them into their rocketing climb. The guns at the far end of the valley went off in a ragged volley.

Another, totally foreign noise punctuated the big crack of twelve-bore shotguns. A rapid, percussive thudding.

All along the little valley there was unthinkable nightmare.

Bodies lay, still or twitching. Men screamed. A man raised his gun towards the cliff but he spun round and fell backwards before he could fire. The machine-guns were firing in long bursts of ten or a dozen rounds. The bullets lashed into the hard ground. A dog screamed and twitched. A ricochet sang off a stone. One or two men were running from the merciless and unending stream of bullets. They fell.

Five men walked briskly away over the hard ground. The leading pair carried something between them which was awkward and heavy – a long object in a bag of canvas and webbing. The next pair had an identical burden. The fifth man carried two metal boxes which had been heavy and were now light. They walked fast but with no trace of panic. They walked along the dry bed of a stream, between dense hedges of thorn and hazel and bramble. They were inconspicuously dressed, neither smart nor shabby. Four wore caps, the fifth a brown felt hat. All wore gloves.

The last man stopped, turned, and listened. He heard blackbirds and robins and piping tits and the cry of the lapwings in the meadow. There were distant shouts and the hysterical scream of a woman. The man was tall. His face was deeply sun-tanned. He was burly and broad-chested; he might be running a little to fat. His movements were awkward. He looked a man who would stumble going upstairs, who would knock over glasses and break the points of pencils. There was nothing brutal about his face. His mouth curved like that of a pretty girl of an old-fashioned kind. He had an expression of quiet gratification, of goodwill and benevolence.

He turned and trotted after his companions. He trotted clumsily. His coat flapped and his knees hit the metal boxes he was carrying.

They left the stream-bed and crossed a small wood to a cart-track. A Land-Rover was parked off the track. They lifted the guns and ammunition boxes into the back. Three men got into the back. The big man with the hat got in beside the driver. The Land-Rover moved away. It was neither very new nor very old. Its number-plates, front and rear, were encrusted with frozen mud. It went along the track to a lane, and along the lane to a road, and along the road to a bigger road with heavy traffic. It was swallowed up by cars and trucks and towns.

Eight people were killed and six badly wounded. The Lord Lieutenant and the Admiral, nearest the firing-point, were riddled with bullets. One of the Land-Rovers was hit and one of the women was hit in the leg and the shoulder.

Six dogs were killed.

The police investigation started at once and went on for a long time.

Neither the one survivor of the shooting-party, nor the women in the lane, nor the beaters, could provide any information of the slightest value.

The gunners had been in the rhododendrons at the top of the little cliff. They might have been scented by the gun-dogs in the valley: but the dogs were surrounded by men, and were there not to start game but only to retrieve, and were either on leads or obediently sitting until after the drive. No beaters or keepers had been anywhere near the place that day; they had kept well away so as not to disturb the pheasants in the wood.

From their position the gunners had a perfect enfilade of all the valley to the lane. Their empty shell-cases littered the hard black earth under the rhododendrons. They left nothing else behind. They had not smoked. There were no fingerprints on the shell-cases; there was nothing else that could be fingerprinted.

It was reasonably obvious that they had left by way of the stream-bed and the wood. A trace of oil showed where their vehicle had stood. The ground was too hard to show useful footprints or wheel-tracks.

The bullets could have been fired from at least five makes of automatic weapon, both submachine-guns and bipod-mounted medium machine-guns. They could have been stolen from many armies, or bought legally in a number of countries.

Nobody in the area could remember seeing any strangers. Many people had seen many Land-Rovers.

There was no obvious motive for the murder of any of the people in the shooting-party. Still less the keepers. Still less the dogs. The affair received enormous publicity because of its scale, its apparent pointlessness, and the eminence of the dead. There was much speculation about it, public and private. To an immense and unhelpful file the police added a number of crackpot explanations, accusations, and confessions.

A card, two inches by three, lay on the ground by the body of the Lord Lieutenant. It was trodden under a hummock by an hysterical schoolboy who was one of the beaters. It was not found. It would not have been understood. The rain came and pulped it. While it was legible it bore the one word:

ALA

‘I’m sorry about the dogs,’ said a man in a cap.

‘You’re wrong,’ said the plump man with the curved and girlish mouth. ‘Those dogs are bred and trained for that one purpose.’

‘But they can’t help it. They’re not guilty.’

‘You could say the same of the men. You could say they’re so much the product of tradition and environment that they’re not guilty either. But we know they are. Men and dogs both.’

The Master of the Catherwick was finishing his breakfast in the ugly brick house behind the kennels.

He was a middle-aged Irishman, a bachelor, rich. He lived for fox-hunting. He hunted hounds himself. It cost him a lot of money. The Catherwick thought they were lucky to have him, and they were right. The saturnine Colonel who wrote little pieces about the hunt for Horse and Hound had said the previous week: ‘A kill after a seven-mile point over open country ended yet another rattling fine day in the best November’s hunting any of us can remember.’

The Master speared a kidney with a heavily crested silver fork. He munched it and looked out of the window at the weather.

It was perfect.

The wind had swung right round to the south-west during the week. A little rain had come and gone. All the frost had disappeared and the bone was out of the ground. A very slight breeze twitched at the cotoneaster outside the dining-room window. The sun gleamed palely between slow-moving clouds.

Saturday, and the certainty of a big field. A lawn meet on the edge of their best country, where the big pastures of Catherwick Vale undulated towards Warwickshire.

The Master ate his last kidney, spread a piece of toast with Cooper’s Oxford, and gave himself some more coffee.

A groom, half-dressed like the Master in hunting-boots and breeches, came in with the post.

‘The scent’ll be like bloody Dior. They saw a big dogfox in Ramplin’s Wood and Mister Copp, he lost his pedigree bantam hens. Where will you draw first, sir?’

‘We’ll see. We want to get rid of all the cars before we get to Ramplin’s. How’s the mare?’

‘She reckons it’s a great day for hunting.’

The Master’s mail was mostly hunt business. Circulars from feed-merchants and makers of worming-powder and veterinary vitamin pills. British Horse Society, Hunter Improvement Society, the point-to-point, the puppies, the wire fund. A few complaints from farmers. Not many. Not nearly as many as there used to be, before he got some of his field disciplined. Before he and the secretary had taken to giving and drinking great quantities of whisky with farmers all over the county. And before he had paid out of his own pocket more bills for hedges and winter wheat than even the Treasurer knew about.

The last envelope was a little cheap brown one, with a typed address. It looked like a bill from a plumber, or a complaint from a farmer who ran to a once-a-week secretary. Either way it was a bore, especially on a perfect morning.

He said: ‘The hell with it. It can wait.’

Then, because he was conscientious, he slit the envelope open with the point of a fruit-knife. There was a single card inside.

Before he had time to draw it out there was a flurry of hoof-beats on the paved yard outside the window. The mare, in a halter, was popping up and down excitedly. Her ears were pricked and there was no vice in her eye, but she knew she was going hunting and the tiny groom was having a job holding her.

The Master laughed, dropped the envelope, and walked out into the yard.

‘Silly old girl can’t wait,’ panted the groom.

‘Don’t blame her on a day like this. I think we’ll hack her to the meet to take the edge off.’

Two hours later, mounted, he was drinking sloe-gin on the acre of gravel in front of an absurd Victorian castle. The hunt’s host, and his daughters and servants, bustled to and fro among the horses with trays of drinks and plates of sandwiches.

It was a big field. All the regulars were out, from the loyal but critical contingent of old ladies in old top hats, to farmers’ children in tweed coats on undipped Welsh ponies with luxuriant winter wool.

The Master made a point of saying hullo to the children. He or his successor would be settling disputes with these boys.

‘Morning, Master,’ they piped in a variety of accents.

Anyone who thought hunting was snobbish, thought the Master, never went hunting.

Hounds poured like a liver-and-white waterfall out of the back of their trailer. They sniffed and whimpered, and begged shamelessly for sandwiches, and fawned round the legs of the Whipper-in’s horse.

Hundreds of people had come on foot, and cars jammed the nearby lanes. They wouldn’t be around long. Horseboxes were still arriving. Jittery, trace-clipped hunters stepped delicately down their ramps on to the gravel. Tighten the girth, up, have a drink.

Plenty of visitors. The secretary’s cap jingled and rustled.

They moved off a little late, at a quarter to twelve. They drew the bracken enclosure at the edge of the park, then the belt of trees in the valley. They moved up the far side towards Ramplin’s Wood.

Half a dozen people were posted round the wood and hounds went in with glee.

They found immediately.

‘He’ll go down an’ over the road—’

But he ran in an unexpected direction, along the straight side of a twenty-acre field.

‘Did you see him?’

‘Nobody saw him.’

But hounds were sure of their fox. They streamed, shrill with certainty, along the hedge and through a gap at the corner. Then straight across country, across the middle of another huge flat field.

Every hound was on the same line. They were giving tongue like champions and running hard. There was no trace of a check. The scent was breast-high and brand-new.

The second field was almost triangular. It was bounded on the left by a metalled road with an untidy avenue of elms, and on the right by a stream with treacherous banks and a hint of wire.

The pack made straight for the apex, where the top of the triangle had been lopped off. It was thirty yards of neat cut-and-laid thorn fence – a natural hunt jump.

A Land-Rover was parked in the road hard by the fence. They were lucky. By chance – by most unusual chance – they would see a big, beautifully mounted field, in full cry, yards away, taking an excellent jump.

Hounds streamed through and over the fence, like a river demanding passage. They set off baying across plough.

The riders had let their horses out on the long flat run to the fence. This was superb – the essence of hunting – the dog-pack going like bombs over resilient turf.

Six horses rose to the fence at the same moment. The Master was on the right, nearest his hounds.

All six seemed to lose all control as they landed – to check and tip and crash on to their heads, to knuckle over or somersault on to their riders.

Thirty horses were close behind, all at full gallop. None checked. None could have been stopped. They jumped into the invisible trap beyond the fence. They jumped into each other and on to the fallen horses.

Riders farther back managed to rein in. They stared in unbelieving horror. Horses and riders were rolling in a nightmare shambles. Horses kicked. Women screamed.

A third of a ton of thoroughbred landed backwards on top of the Master. The pommel smashed his chest in. Heads and legs and spines of humans and horses were kicked or crushed.

Nobody saw the Land-Rover drive away.

It drove away gently. There were three men in the back, drab but not shabby, in caps. Beside the driver sat a big man, almost portly, in a mackintosh and a brown felt hat. He looked quietly happy. There was a small, proud smile on his cupid’s-bow mouth. When he took off his hat to scratch the top of his head with