Bodies from the Library 3

by Tony Medawar

  But such a view was contrary to Prentisse’s meticulous mind. He was also a man of impulses and curious obstinacies. That was why he suddenly made up his mind that the right thing to do would be to visit a detective agency and check up that chapter in the light of such new impressions as he might form. But the resolve brought also an annoyance.

  There was the chance that his guesses in that chapter had been reasonably correct and that the chapter would not have to be re-written. But whether that were so or not, time would be wasted and just when he was fired with the urge to finish the book. To ignore the letter seemed sheer carelessness. That letter from the policeman might start a spate of inquiries into local colour. Heaven knew what people and professions would be writing to the Press about the gross errors they had unearthed. He could almost see one such letter—

  Dear Sir,

  Referring to the matter of local colour, I was very amused to find in a novel by Lutley Prentisse entitled ‘Tingling Symbols’ a statement that …

  In any case that morning he was unable to settle down to work and just before noon he went along to his club. He ran into George Foster and they lunched together.

  ‘Was that Peter Claire I saw getting into a taxi just as I came in?’ Prentisse happened to ask.

  ‘That’s right,’ George said. ‘I was talking to him just before. He’s going down to Cambridge tomorrow to play for the Pilgrims against the Wanderers. A two-day match. Did you want to see him?’

  ‘Well, in a way—yes. I wanted him to give me an introduction to his brother. He’s a Chief Constable, as you probably know, and I hoped he might give me some local colour and save some rather tiresome inquiries.’

  George Foster was probably the only man to whom he would have told that morning’s worries. George didn’t seem at all unhappy about it.

  ‘I don’t think a Chief Constable would help very much,’ he said. ‘Why not go to the fountainhead? I know a really good firm of private detectives who did an excellent job for a friend of mine. You go along and see them. Just make up some yarn or other. Just a simple job that won’t cost very much. That ought to give you the whole bag of tricks.’

  Foster happened to remember the name of the firm and the approximate address, and that Friday afternoon Prentisse made a bold decision and went to Took Street. The taxi driver happened to know the number and on a door on the first floor Prentisse found what he wanted.

  PERRING AND HOLT

  PRIVATE INQUIRY AGENTS

  He knocked, and the door was opened with instant and agreeable promptitude by a receptionist.

  ‘Can I see one of the principals, please?’ he asked.

  ‘Take a seat, sir, please,’ the young lady replied. ‘I think Mr Holt is free. Have you a card?’

  A couple of minutes and he was in Holt’s room. It was a smallish office crammed with filing cabinets and reference books. There was the usual flat-topped desk and swivel chair. Holt, a dapper-looking youngish man, rose and held out a hand.

  ‘How d’you do, Mr Prentisse. Take a seat, will you? Cigarette? … And what precisely may we do for you?’

  ‘Well, er—’

  Holt smiled reassuringly. ‘Secrets are safe with us, sir. We’re used to handling affairs of the utmost delicacy, and in the strictest of confidence. You can rely on us implicitly.’

  Prentisse had to think quickly. The thoughts he had had were now in thin air. It would be crude to admit that he was in that room solely for the purpose of picking brains. When he did speak it was only to make time.

  ‘It’s a fairly trivial matter,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter to us, sir,’ Holt assured him. ‘Whatever the work, we can undertake it. And in strict confidence.’

  His manner was suave and impressive. Prentisse thought of the use he had made in his novel of an imaginary detective agency and decided on something along the same lines.

  ‘Well’—there was still a certain diffidence in his manner—‘I take it you’re prepared to keep people under observation? Not necessarily to do with divorce, of course.’

  ‘Most certainly.’ He drew a pad towards him, and the pen was poised. ‘Name, sir?’ he inquired.

  ‘Lutley Prentisse.’

  Holt smiled. ‘Not your name, sir,’ he said. ‘The name of the person it will be our task to watch.’

  Prentisse smiled too, but not at that mistake he had made. An idea had come to him, and wrapped up in it were all the elements of the ludicrous.

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. The name is Peter Claire.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Three, Oudenarde Mansions, Kensington.’

  ‘And what exactly do you want, sir—and when?’

  ‘Just a report in confidence, by Monday, of what he does from now until then. You can manage that?’

  ‘Most decidedly. Where do you wish the report delivered?’

  ‘Five B, Porter Street, Mornington Crescent. About noon, if you can manage it.’

  That was virtually all. As he walked down the stairs Prentisse was both gratified and mildly amused. He had been in the office of a detective agency and what he had seen and heard would involve only minor alterations in the carefully written chapter.

  As to the amusement, it would certainly be uproariously funny if Peter, during his stay in Cambridge, discovered that a private detective was on his heels. And then suddenly he halted, and frowned. Annoying, too. The least thing he could do was to get hold of Peter and warn him. A knowledge of what was going to happen would make the joke the property of Peter as well as of himself.

  From his flat he rang Oudenarde Mansions. Claire’s man, Daniels, answered the telephone. Mr Prentisse was just a few minutes too late. Mr Claire had just left by taxi. Yes, Daniels was certain he had gone to Cambridge. He’d definitely taken his golf bag and a weekend suitcase.

  ‘You know the hotel he’ll be staying at?’ Prentisse asked.

  ‘I don’t, sir,’ Daniels said. ‘All I know is that he’ll be back early on Monday.’

  So that was that—though Prentisse was still glad he’d hit on Claire as a stalking-horse for Holt’s detective. A less intimate friend of the family would be highly indignant when he learned what had been going on. And Claire would learn, though now he must wait until Monday. So Prentisse sat down at the typewriter and wrote for Claire’s exclusive enlightenment an account of the whole thing.

  … And that’s how it happened. It will be extremely amusing if you chance to spot the sleuth. In any case I’ll send you the report, innocuous though it will be. Until Monday then.

  Yours as ever,

  Lutley.

  P.S. Why not have dinner with us on Monday? I’m expecting Dorothy back from Carnford. Her sister’s much better.

  He went out at once and mailed the letter and as he walked back to the apartment he wondered if Peter’s reactions would be altogether what he himself had expected. Not that Peter hadn’t a sense of humour in a rather hearty way.

  That evening he worked hard at the detective agency chapter and rewrote where the afternoon’s call on Holt seemed to require it. By Saturday he had the chapter well in hand and that afternoon he treated himself to a matinee.

  In the evening he dined at his club and then went back to his apartment and outlined the final chapter of his novel. On the Sunday morning he went to the Hampstead house. Dorothy had everything arranged. Lunt, butler and general man, was there, as were the cook and the maid. It was from the house that he rang Carnford Hall.

  Phipps, the butler, answered. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but Mrs Prentisse isn’t back yet from church. She should be in at any moment. Yes, sir, the mistress is practically herself again. The doctor’s very pleased. Just a moment, sir. I think I hear Mrs Prentisse now.’

  A minute later Dorothy Prentisse was on the line.

  ‘That you, darling? How sweet of you to ring! Yes, I’ll be back early in the morning. I’m glad you found everything as it should be. But you shouldn’t have asked Peter to dinner. Well, I’d been looking forw
ard to us having our evening together alone … A special reason? Well, we might find some special excuse and put him off. He won’t mind … Till tomorrow then, darling. ’Bye.’

  Bright and early on Monday Holt himself arrived at the Porter Street apartment. He was like a man who had been given a job to do, and knew that he had done it well. From an unsealed envelope he produced several closely typed sheets.

  Prentisse gave them a glance, tried to look impressed, and asked how much. Holt’s account was for just over eighteen pounds and Prentisse wrote him a cheque.

  It was a lot of money, Prentisse thought ruefully, for the view of an office and a few minutes with Holt. It rather looked, in fact, as if Peter would have the laugh. Which reminded him. Peter would be at Oudenarde Mansions and he’d better be rung up at once. And then Prentisse couldn’t help wondering just how that sleuth of Holt’s had got to work and he took the typed sheets from the envelope and began casually to read.

  The party was picked up almost on arrival and followed to Liverpool Street Station where he took the train for Wenton Junction. He was met by a small black sedan driven by a lady and the car was followed to Justin Friars, six miles away, where it entered the grounds of a smallish country house known as Friars House. Phillipson followed me and he and I shared the supervision from then on.

  Prentisse stopped reading. He had wondered why Peter had not gone to Cambridge and he smiled to himself as he knew why. After all, Friars House was Peter’s, and Justin Friars was only some twenty miles from Cambridge. He knew it well enough. He had been there once or twice when he and Dorothy had been staying at Carnford Hall. It wasn’t more than a ten-minute run in a car. As for the woman, she was probably Peter’s married sister. Or wasn’t she still in India? Maybe she and her husband were home on leave. Curiosity made him read on.

  There seemed to be no servants whatever in the house but observation was difficult. The couple did not appear until about eight-thirty that evening when they walked round the lawns and the borders and back through the long walk to the house. The woman was tallish, fair and about thirty by all appearances. Once or twice the couple were seen to embrace during their tour of the garden.

  Prentisse was horrified. The woman was definitely not Peter’s sister and who she might be he had no idea. What he did know was that in beginning a joke he had committed an enormity. He had intruded unwarrantably into another man’s private life and the fact that it had been done under a lamentable misapprehension would not make it appear the less reprehensible. His face was flushed as he realised what he must at once do.

  He rang Oudenarde Mansions and it was Daniels who answered.

  ‘Sorry, sir, but the master’s just gone away.’

  ‘Away? What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said, sir. He got back at about eleven o’clock and almost at once he ordered me to pack his bags for the South of France. He didn’t know how long he’d be away.’

  ‘Good Heavens! Any idea why he went off like that?’

  ‘No idea at all, sir,’ Daniels replied.

  ‘Very extraordinary!’ Prentisse said. ‘There should have been a letter for him from me asking him to dinner tonight. Did he read it? It was on pale blue paper.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I remember it. He read it as soon as he came in.’

  ‘Very extraordinary!’ Prentisse said again. ‘Let me know as soon as you hear anything from him.’

  ‘I will, sir,’ Daniels promised.

  Prentisse hung up. He was angry and he was worried. What on earth could have possessed Claire to have made him go off like that? If it was that letter, then he surely should have had sense enough to know that his secrets were implicitly safe.

  He picked it up and once more began reading.

  A light went on in a bedroom at about ten o’clock and we brought a ladder from the garden and placed it near the open window when the lights went out. We had to act with enormous care but hearing was perfect. There were the following scraps of conversation.

  (1) ‘Are you sure Phipps can be trusted?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said, ‘I’ll square it with him on Sunday morning again. I’ll have to be there in any case when he’—name not identified—‘rings. He’ll be sure to ring about noon.’

  (2) ‘Darling, we’ll have to be most careful from now on. You really mustn’t go making faces at me behind his back.’ He is apparently the unidentified name of 1.

  ‘It’s all rather funny in a way,’ Claire said. ‘He’s not a bad old stick, really. I don’t think we’ll be running any risk.’

  Something had already stood still with Lutley Prentisse. He read the rest of those sheets and as if his eyes no longer saw any words. When he laid the last sheet down he stood for a moment, hand gripping the table and his face a queer grey.

  At first his movements seemed rational. He took the tube to Hampstead and made his way to his house and spoke rationally enough to the staff. Mrs Prentisse had gone out for a moment, he was told, but should be back practically at once. He went out himself and at a music shop bought a gut ’cello string. When he came back, Mrs Prentisse was there.

  Five minutes later Lunt brought in tea. He found Mrs Prentisse lying dead on the carpet and Prentisse sitting writing at that Queen Anne bureau. Lunt, white-faced and aghast, could get no answer from him. So he ran out to the road and got a message to the police. When they came it was still as if Prentisse did not hear. He let them take him by the arm and lead him away. The sergeant had a look at that paper on which he had been writing.

  ‘Heavenly days, have a look at this, Inspector! What do you suppose it means?’

  The inspector had a look. It didn’t mean anything to him either. It was just a phrase, written over and over again.

  ‘To the Editor of The Times, Dear Sir.’

  CHRISTOPHER BUSH

  Charles Christmas Bush was born on Christmas Day 1888 at Home Cottage in Hockham, a village in Norfolk in the east of England. Christmas Bush, as he was known as a child, was of Quaker descent and his family had lived in the area for over 400 years. He was educated in the village school and, in 1899, won a three-year scholarship to Thetford Grammar, where he gained distinctions in Religious Knowledge, English and Geography while winning prizes for English and German. In 1902 he won a further two-year scholarship and in 1903 his Form Prize. Outside school, Bush was a competent sportsman, playing competitive draughts and opening for the village cricket team; he also sang with his friend Ernest Hensley at the Primitive Methodist Chapel alongside his sister Hilda and her friend Ella Pinner, whom Bush would eventually marry.

  In 1904, despite his Quaker upbringing, Bush secured a temporary position as assistant master at a Catholic school in North Worcestershire. In 1905, he returned to Norfolk to be an assistant master at Swaffham Boys’ School and he became a published author when ‘Life in the Black Country’ appeared in the Norwich Mercury. He resumed singing at chapel and also played cricket, opening for ‘Swaffham Singles’ and, lower down the order, for ‘Great Hockham Reading Room’ a team that included his brothers in conviction, the two Ernests. Later that year, Bush matriculated as an undergraduate at King’s College, London, where he studied modern languages, and on graduating he returned to teaching, this time at a school in Wood Green, North London. Around this time Bush also married Ella Pinner, although what happened next is unclear. Curtis Evans, the authority on Bush and other Golden Age writers, has determined that while the two remained married until Ella’s death in the late 1960s, they do not appear ever to have lived together. Evans has also established that when Bush returned from four years’ military service during the First World War, including a year in Egypt, he returned to Wood Green School and fathered a child by a teaching colleague, Winifred Chart. Their son, born out of wedlock in 1920 and largely unacknowledged, would grow up to become the composer Geoffrey Bush, co-author with Edmund Crispin of the excellent puzzle short story ‘Who Killed Baker?’

  Romantic entanglements aside, teaching had always been Bush’s ambi
tion. However, he did not find it fulfilling and in the mid-1920s, as the result of a bet, he wrote a novel which much to his delight was accepted and published. Set in 1919, The Plumley Inheritance (1926) concerns a treasure hunt and a mysterious murder, which prove to be connected. While not uncriticised by contemporary reviewers—‘Mr Bush has two strings to his bow, and the story might have been a better one if he had restricted himself to one’—the book sold well. It was followed by The Perfect Murder Case (1929), whose manuscript the publisher required Bush to halve in length, and then two titles in 1930: Dead Man Twice in the summer and Murder at Fenwold for Christmas. Buoyant, Bush decided in 1931 to become a full-time writer and he eventually produced over seventy books, including some sixty novels as Christopher Bush. These feature several recurring characters, including Major Ludovic Travers who appears in all of them, and have been reprinted by Dean Street Press. Many of the best are set in English villages but Travers also solves crimes in France in The Case of the Three Strange Faces (1933), The Case of the Flying Ass (1939) and The Case of the Climbing Rat (1940). Bush also wrote four excellent Second World War mysteries, including three—The Case of the Murdered Major (1941), The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942) and The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942)—that were partly inspired by his time at C19, a D-Day marshalling camp on Southampton Common in Hampshire, and also his service with the Home Guard, which Curtis Evans has established included serving as an officer at Pennylands prisoner of war camp in Ayrshire.

  Writing success brought wealth and, in the early 1930s, Bush fulfilled a promise to his mother by buying the cottage where he had been born. He added two wings transforming it into Home Hall, which is now a boutique hotel. He also bought ‘Horsepen’, a fifteenth-century house in the village of Beckley in East Sussex, where he would live with his partner Marjorie Barclay for around twenty years.