BIGGLES INVESTIGATES

and other stories of the Air Police

‘Nowadays a copper is expected to know everything*,’ complains Biggles, who refuses to consider himself a walking encyclopedia on the erring ways of the modern criminal. He prefers to trust his intuition – call it experience if you like – and this ability plus a little luck stand him in good stead when faced with the eight diverse cases in this book’ (* This is in fact a misquote of a line from the end of the second story, “A Ring of Roses”. The actual line is “Which all goes to show that today a copper is expected to know everything”.)

by Captain W. E. Johns

First published October 1964

FRONTISPIECE ILLUSTRATION – Between Pages 2 and 3 – (The only illustration in the book is the frontispiece by Stead. This was the last frontispiece in the Hodder/Brock Biggles books as the next book, “Biggles Looks Back”, didn’t feature one, presumably to save on costs and keep the price of the book down)

TITLE PAGE – Page 3

CONTENTS – Page 5 (NB – As far as I am aware these eight stories were never published anywhere else other than in this book. Certainly, I have not yet found details of them being published elsewhere, but it is possible that they were published elsewhere and I have just not yet found out where).

I. BIGGLES INVESTIGATES (Pages 7 – 28)

“Air Commodore Raymond, Chief of the Air Police Section at Scotland Yard, looked up from his desk as, after a tap on the door, Biggles walked in. “You sent for me, sir,” said Biggles. Raymond tells Biggles “There’s an aircraft lying on its back in a field near the (fictional) village of Upgates in Wiltshire” adding “I’d like you to go and have a look at it. You’ll find it on a farm called Fennels”. The aircraft is foreign, “A Spaniard”. It’s a Spanish Air Force job with military markings and the pilot can’t be found. The crash was found by the pilot of a Fleet Air Arm helicopter on an early morning cross-country training flight. It was on the land of a sheep farmer named Diverton. Biggles returns to the office where Bertie is alone on duty. Biggles tells Bertie about the crash and asks if he feels like coming with him. Ginger will be in soon and he can “hold the fort while we’re away”. Less than two hours later the Air Police Auster lands in a field by the crash. Biggles “made himself known to the constable, who must have had a sense of humour, for he remarked: “This is a queer bird, sir. Never saw one with feathers this colour before”. “By ‘feathers’ he must have meant the red and yellow Spanish military ring markings”. Biggles inspects the aircraft. Bertie thinks it is a Hispano D.I. Biggles agrees saying its classified; It’s an advanced trainer with a range of over eight hundred miles so it could have got there from Spain. The front safety belt is hanging loose whereas the passenger one is secured tightly over the seat showing it had not been used. Biggles lies flat on his back to get below the cockpit and examine it. He finds nothing, not even a map and remarks that it is odd. Biggles wonders how the plane has ended up on its back. “Only by being brought to a sudden stop would it do that”. The brakes are not jammed, Biggles spins a wheel to prove it. “This machine stopped with a jolt, yet there’s practically no damage, I don’t understand it”. “While speaking Biggles had gone to the front of the aircraft and was examining closely the undercarriage struts which, of course, were pointing to the sky”. (“Biggles examined closely the undercarriage struts (page 11)” – is the somewhat surreal frontispiece illustration. Behind Biggles is a huge illustration of the red and yellow roundels of the Spanish plane, which is obviously not part of the actual scene illustrated). “I’ll tell you something,” he said quietly. The man responsible for this knew something about war flying”. Biggles asks Bertie to help him find a hole in the ground. “The sort of hole that would be made by a stake having been driven well in”. Bertie finds a hole about three inches in diameter. Walking across the field, in less than five minutes they find an identical hole. Biggles says “Hello, here come the R A F boys to take over. I shall have to ask them to leave the crash as it is for the time being. There’s some evidence on it. It’s time we had a word with Mr. Diverton”. They go to the farm, making their way through the thorny shrubs and Biggles examines the loose turf on the way. Biggles opens a barn and amongst the farm implements, he sees coils of sheep wire. They see a baker’s van deliver to the farm and Biggles has a word with the driver, asking how often he delivers there. The answer is three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. They knock at the door of the house. “It was opened by a dark-eyed, low-browed woman of middle age, dressed entirely in black, who, when she was younger, must have been strikingly handsome. Biggles raised his hat. “Buenos dias,” he said politely. “Buen –” The woman broke off abruptly. “What did you say?” “I said good morning,” answered Biggles pleasantly. They establish that Mr. Diverton is out and this is Mrs. Diverton. “Is there another man in the house who might answer one or two questions?” (No doubt this would be considered a rather strange sexist question nowadays – why can’t Mrs. Diverton answer the questions?). As the answer is no, Biggles says he will call back later. He tells Bertie that Mrs. Diverton is Spanish, “so ruling out coincidence I’m pretty sure she’s the hook-up with the plane”. “How do you know she is Spanish?” asks Bertie. “In the first place she looked it, every inch of her. I must admit I wasn’t prepared for that. On the spur of the moment I tricked her into admitting it. As you must have noticed I said good morning in Spanish, and she, from sheer force of habit, started to answer in the same language. Then she thought better of it and switched to English. But it was too late. She had told me all I wanted to know. She knew what I said. She has something to hide or she would have been delighted to have a chance to air her mother tongue”. Biggles also notes that the bread delivery of five loaves is more than two people can eat in less than two days, so there must be someone else in the house. A police car comes down the lane with the District Inspector and a constable at the wheel. Biggles raises his hand to stop the car and introduces himself. “I happen to be an aviation specialist”. Biggles tells the inspector the crash wasn’t an accident. It was “Murder – or possibly manslaughter”. They discuss the case and Biggles says “Please understand that I’m not trying to take this out of your hands. What I suggest is, I’ll show you one or two things which, as a pilot myself, I’ve noticed. Then we’ll see Diverton together. Of course, if you’d prefer to act on your own –” “No – no. You’re the expert. I’m always willing to take advice from someone who knows the job” says the inspector. Biggles sends Bertie off with the constable in the car to go to the post office to find out if any letters bearing foreign stamps have been delivered to Fennels farm recently.

They walk briskly to the aircraft. Biggles says “To start with, you can take it from me as an experienced pilot that only one thing could cause a plane, coming in to land, to turn turtle the way this one did; and that was an obstruction fouling the undercarriage, bringing it to a dead stop”. “It isn’t here now. The man who put it up removed it after it had served its purpose”. Biggles shows the inspector one of the holes in the ground and as they go through the gorse he points at some loose turves where the ground has been disturbed. “If you dig there you might find something interesting”. He then goes to the barn and shows the wire. “Make a note of that wire, it could be an important piece of evidence”. The police car comes back. Biggles says “Let’s hear what Sergeant Lissie has to report”. Bertie says “You were right. There have been several letters with foreign stamps. Last week there was a telegram”. “From Spain?” asks Biggles. “Correct” says Bertie, adding “Diverton is here”. He has seen a man putting a car in the shed as they got back. They go back to the farm and knock the door. “It was opened instantly, as if someone had been watching, by a well-built, keen-eyed, clean-shaven man who was getting on in years”. The man asks if they are making inquiries about the plane crash and invites them in. Diverton says the crash must have happened last night as he walked across the field to tend to a sick ewe about eleven o’clock, and it wasn’t there then. He said the first he knew about it was when the Fleet Air Arm ambulance unit arrived. He never saw a pilot. Biggles asks if he served in the R F C or R A F during the wars and the answer is he did. Biggles guesses he was in the Special Air Service and he is right. Biggles says that he would know why the machine in his field crashed. “If you served in the S A S you must have heard about fields being trapped to trip up machines putting down spies. It’s a fear that hangs over every pilot engaged in special missions. I know. I speak from experience”. (Biggles has dropped off and collected spies in the past. For example, see the chapter “Special Mission” from “Biggles Learns to Fly”). “The usual trap was a wire stretched tightly across a field. The inevitable result for an aircraft running into it at speed was a somersault”. Diverton asks Biggles if he is suggesting that’s what happened. “I’m not suggesting. I’m saying so, definitely. Can you think of anyone who would set such a trap, and why?” Diverton replies “No. I can’t help you there”. Biggles advised Diverton to answer his questions. “I shall get the answers sooner or later, if not now”. He asks if his wife is from Spain and she is. Biggles asks who else is living in the house and he is told that his wife’s brother is staying for a little while. Biggles asks if he has been in correspondence with someone in Spain and when that is accepted, he says “As the result of that correspondence you knew the plane that crashed here was coming. Am I right?” There is no answer. Biggles continues relentlessly. “Oh, come on, Diverton, out with it. I’ve seen the abrasions on the undercarriage struts. I’ve seen the stake holes. The wire is in your barn. Why not tell us the whole truth? As a pilot yourself I’m sure you wouldn’t deliberately crash an aircraft without a good reason. Why did you do it. Would you rather we dug up what you buried in the gorse bushes? Was it the body of the pilot? Diverton nodded. “I didn’t reckon on an old hand like you coming along to investigate. All right. I’ll tell you everything”. Diverton explains that his brother-in-law came as a political refugee from “the present regime” in Spain (General Franco was in power in Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975). He and others had plotted to overthrow the government. The plot was betrayed and most of the conspirators were caught and shot. Carlos, the brother got away. “But they were determined to get him. You know how it is with dictators. Fortunately Carlos still had friends in Spain, some in high places. Through them he was kept informed of what was happening. Through them we learned that government agents had discovered Carlos was living here with his sister”. An agent was detailed to kill Carlos before he could apply for political asylum. They were told the property had been photographed from the air and the big field was a ready-made landing ground. By planting a bomb, an agent might have killed all three of them. The wire was rigged up at sundown and taken down at dawn. The agent came, ran into the trap and was killed on landing. His neck was broken. Diverton and Carlos went out early and buried him. “I’m not going to pretend I shed any tears. He came to commit cold-blooded murder” says Diverton. The dead pilot was buried in the gorse. They intended to burn the plane, but at the crack of dawn a “Fleet Air Arm chopper” flew over and it was spotted. They took everything out of the cockpit and did away with them. “That’s the truth, and the whole truth. Right or wrong. I still believe that if that damned (It is unusual for Johns to use this minor swear word as such words from his early Biggles RFC stories – originally written for adults – were removed from the stories when they were republished for children in the 1950s) helicopter hadn’t come over we might have got away with it”. Biggles agreed. Diverton asks them not to send Carlos back to Spain as it would mean certain death for him. Biggles and Bertie leave everything in the hands of the inspector, who decides not to arrest Diverton but accepts Diverton’s word that none of them will leave the farm until they hear from him again.

After some delay, in which more than one British Government department had to be consulted, no action was taken again Diverton, his wife, or brother-in-law who, in the meantime, had applied for political asylum in Britain. There was never any question of murder and manslaughter was ruled out “on the grounds that what Diverton had done was justifiable self-protection”. “With which decision Biggles was in full agreement”.