Free Sky High by Michael Gilbert

may be right,’ said Tim. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never did any real fighting. I was just a bag-snatching cut-throat. Ask the General.’

 
III
     
    Rupert Cleeve sat on the piano stool in the small drawing-room and kicked his heels against the mahogany of that long-suffering piece of furniture.
    Then he rotated solemnly, until the stool was as high as it could be made to go, reversed direction, and came down again to keyboard level. Then he looked at the clock on the mantelshelf, shut the lid of the piano with a bang, and walked across to the window.
    The cook’s cat, a large, dangerous animal, was squatting on the flat top of the ashlar wall that ran, knee high, round the sun garden. He was not easy to see, because he was so arranged that the dapple of evening light through the hedge blended confusingly with his tortoise-shell camouflage.
    He was waiting for birds.
    Rupert went up to his bedroom and pulled the bottom long drawer of his chest of drawers right out. Behind it, held in clips to the woodwork of the chest, and invisible whilst the drawer was in position, were a number of implements. One of them was a powerful looking catapult of thick rubber on a steel frame.
    He took this out, and pocketed two marbles from a box beside his bed.
    Then he shut everything up and went downstairs again. All his movements were neat and self-contained. He lived comfortably in the fifth dimension which a lonely child inhabits.
    Back in the small drawing-room he went over to the window and eased it very carefully open.
    It was a tricky shot. Rupert considered it with gravity. Safer to aim low, perhaps, and trust a ricochet off the coping.
    He stretched the elastic, held his breath, and let go. There was a twang, a ‘tock’ of marble on stone, and a sharp oath from the cook’s cat as it disappeared into the shrubbery.
    When Rupert had retrieved the marble and put everything away neatly, he went to look for his father. He found him in the breakfast-room, struggling with a report on juvenile delinquency.
    ‘Who got blown up last night?’ he asked.
    Cleeve looked up vaguely. Statistics. Trends. Home influence. Graphical reproduction of repeated offences.
    ‘Who got what?’
    ‘Blown up.’
    ‘Major MacMorris.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Rupert.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It’s pretty obvious who did it, I should think.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘It’s that Bramshott Choir. They’re trying to bitch up our Anthem.’
    ‘Who taught you that disgusting expression?’
    ‘It’s not disgusting,’ said Rupert. ‘It simply means—’
    ‘That’ll do. And it’s time you went to bed.’
    It was time he went to boarding school, too. Time. Time. Time.
    The Chairman returned to his report.

 
     
Chapter Five
FIRST INTERVAL: TRIO (MA NON LEGATO)
     
    Berowne:
    ‘A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound
    When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.’
     
    ‘We’ll give you all the help we can, of course,’ said Tim. That’s why we’ve come along. The only thing is, I’ve simply got to be in London by one o’clock.’
    ‘I quite appreciate that, sir,’ said Inspector Luck. He had hair that had once been auburn and plentiful but was now a sparse ginger, and a face like a tired fox. ‘It’s very good of you and Mrs. Artside to come along at all. Mind that step. That’s right. I’d better go first and see if the door’s open.’
    He led the way out of the back door of Bramshott police station, and into a sort of large shed at the back. Battered furniture was piled round the walls. On trestle tables, under the long skylight, a jumble of smaller objects had been sorted out. An elderly police sergeant was making entries in a book.
    ‘It’s everything we could find,’ said Luck. ‘There’s probably a good deal more, under the rubble, but we shan’t get it until the demolition team has finished.’
    ‘It doesn’t look much for the contents of a fully-furnished house,’ said Liz.
    ‘As a matter of fact it wasn’t all that fully