BIGGLES - AIR DETECTIVE

 

by Captain W. E. Johns

 

 

THE CASE OF THE MURDERED APPRENTICE  (Pages 65 - 80)

 

Biggles tells Air Commodore Raymond that he is thinking of asking for more men and machines.  When asked why he says "It rests on the fact that the preoccupation of almost everyone today is how to get more spending money with the least possible effort.  Some people are still prepared to get it honestly or not at all, but there's an increasing number who are determined to get it, anyway".  Raymond says that he has come to discuss a matter with Biggles.  Yesterday, an aircraft apprentice named Edmund Teale caught a train to Buckbury and arrived at 10.50 pm.  Having missed the last bus he set off to walk to his home some four miles away via a short cut across some fields.  At dawn today his dead body was found on a sandbank off the Dutch coast.  He had been shot in the heart by a bullet fired from a Luger pistol.  Biggles agrees to take the case.  "Believe you me, I shall try very hard to find the skunk who shot an unarmed boy.  If I do find him we'll see what happens when he meets someone who also carries a pistol".  Biggles deduces a number of things from the circumstances.  Clearly the body could only have got where it was in the time available by an aircraft and the boy was shot for a reason.  It follows the aircraft was nearby and probably close to the path if it was seen by the boy in the dark.  By looking at the six-inch Ordnance Survey map of the district, Biggles finds a big field on the estate of Larford Hall.  Enquiries reveal that the person who lives there is a Dutch lady called Mrs. Vanester who has is a high-class milliner (a person who sells hats) and trades under the name 'Madame Karena', with a shop in Bond Street.  Biggles knows that hats often have feathers, expensive feathers and goes down to see her shop.  An expensive hat in the window is priced at fifty guineas.  Ginger is astonished that such bits of fluff such as feathers can be so expensive.  Biggles tells him "Those bits of fluff, as you call them are worth considerably more than their weight in gold."  The birds are protected by law and if you kill a Bird of Paradise you face a fine of £200 or up to two years imprisonment, but all that has done is push the prices for feathers up sky high.  Meanwhile, Algy has been photographing the area of Larford Hall and after examining the photograph, Biggles, Ginger and Bertie go to examine the ground.  At the village post office in Buckbury, Biggles speaks to the post-master and discovers that Mrs. Vanester usually writes to a Rudolf Lurgens in Holland and sometimes cables him and signs the cable 'Karena'.  Biggles has a cable sent to Lurgens signed Karena.  Biggles instructs the post-master to block all calls to Larford Hall until further notice.  Walking down the path that Teale went before he met his fate, Biggles comes to the field where he suspects an aircraft might have landed.  There is a fence topped with barbed wire and a sign saying "Beware of the bull".  "Such signs can be an old trick to discourage trespassers".  Finding a section of wire that had been bent, Biggles believes this is where Teale climbed over.  Bertie finds his haversack nearby.  Climbing over and examining the field, Biggles finds the case of the cartridge that killed Teale.  Biggles and Ginger go to see Mrs. Vanester whilst Bertie is left to ensure that if a machine lands, it doesn't get off again.  At 10.00 pm Biggles calls on Mrs. Vanester and asks who Mr. Lurgens is and why did he land in her field.  Lurgens is her brother and Biggles soon sees the feathers that she had been bought.  A plane lands and a man arrives.  Biggles cable asked him to come over urgently.  Biggles arrests him for the murder of Hubert Teale.  He pulls a gun and shoots at Biggles but Biggles shoots him.  "Like a coat slipping from a peg, he crumpled in a heap on the floor".  Biggles has been shot in the side, a flesh wound that put him in hospital for a week.  Lurgens was not killed by Biggles, the bullet was successfully removed but after making a desperate attempt to escape from hospital he tore the stitches in his wound which caused complications, for which he died a fortnight later.  The feathers turned out to only be a sideline.  Big stocks of contraband goods were found at Larford Hall.  "Mrs. Vanester was deported as an undesirable alien".