Bodies from the Library 3

by Tony Medawar

  ‘I shall have to verify your story,’ he went on, as he gagged the pale and trembling Jones. ‘Tell me if I hurt you, as the dentist always says when one can’t speak.’

  He marched his captive into the bedroom.

  ‘Up on the bed, please, and we’ll tie up your legs and make a job of it.’

  Venables returned to the house ‘phone. ‘Is there a Captain Mainwaring waiting down there? There is? Please ask him to come to Room 28.’

  ‘I’ve got the fellow, Mainwaring,’ he told that airman. ‘Just have a squint at him, will you? He calls himself Jones, but if that’s a Welsh accent he’s got, I’m a Dutchman.’

  ‘Muller, the little swine!’ exclaimed Mainwaring, as Venables ripped off the prisoner’s gag. ‘Our saccharine-smuggling friend. He’s German, not Welsh.’

  ‘German South African, I fancy. Had he a pal?’

  ‘Yes, a yellow-faced bloke with a glass eye.’

  ‘He’ll be one of the two whose names I have here, so thoughtfully provided by our friend. What an unpleasant green colour Jones has gone! I fancy he guesses the charge is murder.’

  Venables went back to the sitting-room and called up the Yard.

  ‘Hello, Bernard! I say, I’ve worked out the Garnett business! Listen. Garnett got in with some German South Africans over here. They were smuggling saccharine. When it got too hot for them, they had the bright idea of smuggling diamonds from Bechuanaland. No, not I.D.B.[2], but a similar kind of thing. They had a real brainwave. They reckoned no one would suspect a record-breaking flier of smuggling, even if he forced-landed in the diamond area.

  ‘An accomplice in Lichtenberg, who is running a garage there, rushed up to Garnett with the diamonds concealed in an oil can. The oil and the diamonds were poured into Garnett’s plane, perhaps under the nose of a policeman! Mainwaring says the diamonds would have to be done up in some sort of bag so as not to get into the oil filter.

  ‘Well, it was arranged for Garnett to meet Muller secretly at Croydon and to hand over the diamonds directly he’d passed Customs. But Muller wasn’t going to split the proceeds four ways. He wasn’t going to take the risk either of Garnett’s having a fit of conscience and giving the show away, so he shot him directly he’d got the diamonds out of the tank, wiped the revolver, put it in the corpse’s hand and beat it.

  ‘When he got home, all he had to do was clean the diamonds in petrol, shove his oil-stained clothes out of sight and wait for the coroner’s verdict.

  ‘What proof have I? Only the diamonds and the oil-stained clothes and the owner of the fingerprints neatly trussed up next door, and the names and addresses of the accessories before and after, and a confession of smuggling all written out in murderer’s own hand, and a witness ready to swear Muller was a notorious smuggler who’d been seen talking to Garnett. That’s all I’ve got, Bernard!’

  Venables replaced the ’phone. The smile faded off his face; the light of battle shone in his eyes. He picked up the ’phone again.

  ‘Central 99000. Mercury News Editor, please. Venables speaking, and oh, boy, have I got a story!’

  CHRISTOPHER ST JOHN SPRIGG

  Born in England in 1907, Christopher St John Sprigg was educated at a school in West London, now known as St Benedict’s. Aged fifteen, he left school to work on the Yorkshire Observer, where his father was literary editor, before joining a specialist aviation publisher, which had been founded by his brother Theodore.

  Other than journalism, Sprigg’s first published work was a poem, ‘Once I Did Think’, which appeared in March 1927 in The Dial, an American literary magazine; it was the only example of his poetry published in his lifetime. Around this time Sprigg also decided to try his hand at detective fiction. The first of eight crime novels was the surprisingly gruesome Crime in Kensington (1933) in which amateur detective Charles Venables investigates the murder and dismemberment of the owner of a small hotel. Another, Fatality in Fleet Street (1933), deals with the killing of an anti-Soviet newspaper proprietor, while Death of a Queen (1935) concerns a Ruritanian case of regicide. Sprigg also wrote various non-fiction titles such as The Airship (1931), British Airways (1933) and Great Flights (1935) as well as an instruction manual for pilots, Fly with Me (1933), one of two books he co-authored with Captain Duncan Davis, director of the Brooklands School where Sprigg had himself learned to fly.

  In 1934, Sprigg discovered Marxism and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. According to his brother it was to protect his reputation as a writer of thrillers that he did this under a pseudonym, ‘Christopher Caudwell’, taken from their mother’s maiden name. As Caudwell, Sprigg wrote widely on the application of Marxist principles to a range of subjects including literature and philosophy, and he became involved in campaigning and fundraising for the Party, moving to Poplar in the East End of London.

  In June 1936, Sprigg was one of a group of men arrested for disrupting a demonstration by Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists; he was found guilty and fined for assaulting a police officer. On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Sprigg’s branch of the Party raised funds for an ambulance, which Sprigg then drove to Spain where he enlisted in the British battalion of the International Brigade. On 12 February 1937 Sprigg died in the battle of Jarama near Madrid ‘when he stayed behind with his machine gun’ to cover his battalion’s withdrawal.

  Sprigg’s final detective mystery, Six Queer Things (1937), was published posthumously and his many essays were collected in volumes including Studies in a Dying Culture (1938) and The Crisis in Physics (1939), a collection compiled by Professor Hyman Levy, a communist academic. As an indication of how highly Caudwell was regarded by many of his contemporaries, not long after his death the writers J. B. Priestley, Ethel Mannin and Storm Jameson, together with the poet W. H. Auden and several Labour Party politicians, established a memorial fund for the purchase of an ambulance.

  ‘The Case of the Unlucky Airman’ was first published in Everywoman’s Magazine in September 1935.

  THE RIDDLE OF THE BLACK SPADE

  Stuart Palmer

  Uninvited and unannounced, a determined feminine figure marched into the sacrosanct precincts of the New York Homicide Bureau, with an afternoon paper under one arm.

  Inspector Oscar Piper looked up from the little mountain of official memoranda which covered his scarred oak desk, and leaned back wearily in his chair. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ was his greeting.

  But Miss Withers was undaunted. ‘Busy or not busy, Oscar Piper, you ought to be out on Long Island this afternoon instead of sitting here befouling the air with cigar smoke.’

  She opened the paper with a snap. A two-column headline topped a box in the middle of page one, evidently the result of a last-minute change in make-up.

  ‘“STATESMAN DIES IN FREAK ACCIDENT”,’ she read. Then—‘“David E. Farling, former state senator and present Manhattan attorney, was struck by a golf ball and instantly killed at about ten o’clock this morning. The accident happened at the small public course known as Meadowland, located near Forestlawn in Queensborough.

  ‘“Farling was discovered by fellow golfers lying face down near a large pool which forms one of the water hazards of the course. Beside him lay the golf ball which had struck his skull with a terrific impact, although the person who inadvertently drove it has not yet been identified …”!’

  ‘Yes, Hildegarde,’ the Inspector broke in testily. ‘I know all that.’

  ‘Well, do you know this?’ she continued caustically. ‘The newspaper story goes on to remark that while there have been records of six or seven such accidents every year in the New York area, this is the first time that it resulted in a fatality!’ She tossed the paper to him. ‘Now do you see what I’m talking about? Do you?’

  ‘There has to be a first time for everything,’ Piper reminded her. ‘But if it makes you any happier, Hildegarde, you might as well know that I sent one of our best men out to help the Queensborough boys on the case. Dave Farling is too prominent a man
to pass over easily, and there are too many people whose toes he has stepped on. But all the same—’

  ‘All the same, you don’t believe this could be murder?’ Miss Withers sniffed. ‘There’s something fishy about this business, Oscar. Just because it happened out in the bright October sunshine instead of in a locked room, and just because the weapon was a golf ball instead of a pistol, you leap to conclusions.’

  She drew a long breath. ‘Oscar, who was the person who found Farling’s body?’

  ‘Person? There was a whole raft of ‘em. He was playing with Sam Firth, his partner, John T. Sullivan, ‘the golden-tongued orator’, and his son, young Ronald Farling. They missed Farling when he didn’t show up at the green, and after waiting for him a while to give him time to find a lost ball or get out of a sand trap, they started back to look for him. They got the Swiss who runs the place to help, and the whole party found Farling lying face down in the mud at the edge of the pool.’

  ‘Giving each other a perfect alibi, or something,’ put in Miss Withers. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s all I know, so far,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m only a cop, not a crystal-gazer.’

  Miss Withers stood up. ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go out there.’

  ‘Donovan knows his business,’ opposed the Inspector. ‘And the precinct boys out in Queens aren’t likely to welcome too much meddling. Besides, there’s no use to try to make anything except a freak accident out of this case unless—’

  His telephone shrilled, and he barked an answer. ‘Well, Donovan? What? Listen, is the body still there? Well, leave it. Hang on to the guy—wait for me at the course.’

  He put down the phone, and his voice was full of amazement. ‘Hildegarde, you’re right. It’s murder—and they’ve nabbed the dead man’s son!’

  She went through the door ahead of him, jamming her Queen Maryish hat a bit lower on her head. The thrill of the chase widened her nostrils, but as they sped through Manhattan’s traffic in a long black squad car, heading toward the Queensboro Bridge, she grasped the Inspector’s arm and shook her head.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she announced. ‘I don’t believe it was the son that did it.’

  ‘Such things have happened, and worse,’ Piper reminded her. ‘And don’t think that Donovan doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he’s made a pinch he’s sure of his ground.’

  Miss Withers had a retort ready, but the sudden screaming of the siren drowned her out. They cut through red light after red light, raced over the bridge, and then on a long straightaway past mile upon mile of used-car lots, garages, hot-dog stands, grocery stores … far into the vastness of Queens, which enjoys the reputation of being the largest and most unlovely borough of New York.

  The day had been warm for October, but now as the sun set behind the towers of Manhattan to the westward, a chill wind began to sweep down from the Sound. Miss Withers could not help shivering as the fast car swung off the boulevard and shot south over a narrow macadam road. There was a faded sign: ‘Meadowland Golf Club—Greens Fee 50c’ …

  On the right they could see a rolling green expanse of what had once been a succulent cow pasture. Now it bore signs of a sketchy landscaping and here and there a rain-streaked flag fluttered over a clipped green square of grass.

  Far ahead of them they saw a small white building surrounded by autos, but at that moment their precipitous course was interrupted by a blue-clad figure which stepped out into the road ahead of them, waving its arms.

  Brakes screamed. ‘The Sergeant says I was to tell you that if you cut across the fence right here you’ll find him where the body is …’

  ‘Okay,’ said Piper. He helped Miss Withers out of the car, which was simple, and over the barbed wire fence, which was fraught with difficulty and peril.

  ‘Right straight toward the trees,’ their guide advised. They went onward over a little hill, and came down upon another fairway. Ahead of them, from the depths of a narrow ravine which cut across the open fairway in a wide diagonal, rose the tops of a cluster of elms. But there was no sign of human presence.

  ‘Under the trees, Inspector,’ their guide insisted.

  They came suddenly above the ravine, looking down upon a wide, leaf-choked pool near the elms. Smaller trees and bushes filled the canyon-like cut at the left, but ahead of them it lay open around the pool. Here were gathered an official little circle around a body which still lay face downward near the water’s edge.

  Photographers were taking their last shots in the fading light. Sergeant Donovan, red-faced and perspiring, came up the slope to greet his chief.

  ‘Open and shut,’ he announced. ‘I washed it up pronto, Inspector. But you may as well have a look around.’ He noticed Miss Withers, and greeted her without enthusiasm. ‘Afternoon, ma’am.’

  ‘Open and shut,’ she repeated blankly. ‘Hmmmm.’

  They looked at the body—a sprawled, plumpish man of fifty dressed in plus-fours and bright yellow sweater and stockings, and with a small circular indentation in the back of the skull. Then a tarpaulin was drawn over the grim exhibit.

  ‘Right here was where they found the golf ball that did it,’ the Sergeant was saying. ‘About two feet from the corpse.’

  From his pocket he took a wadded handkerchief, in the centre of which reposed a bright new golf ball, bearing on one side a tiny trademark consisting of a black spade—and on the other a dull reddish smear. ‘Exhibit A, Inspector!’

  Piper nodded. ‘Seems to be clear enough. We may as well go on to the clubhouse, eh, Hildegarde?’

  Miss Withers had discovered a dead branch nearby, with which she was poking dubiously at the deep leaf-choked pool. Its murky waters were reflecting the last glow of the sunset.

  ‘But we’ve found the body, Hildegarde!’ he said jokingly. ‘Or do you think the murderer is lurking under water?’

  She sniffed, and tossed aside the branch.

  It was a good stiff walk back to the clubhouse, a small building of rattletrap structure. In the rear was a three-room apartment sacred to the gnarled Swiss who leased the land and operated the course. In the front was an office furnished with a cash register, a counter displaying sun hats, golf balls, patent tees and the like, and a screened porch boasting half a dozen tables with chairs and a dispensing machine for soda pop.

  It was on this porch that young Ronald Farling waited, with a plainclothes detective on either side and a burly captain in charge. That worthy hurried down to meet the Inspector on the lawn.

  ‘Greetings.’ said Piper. ‘Miss Withers—Captain Mike Platt, Queens Division. Congratulations, Captain.’

  The captain grinned. ‘Glad you agree that we’ve broken the case so early, sir. Just the same, I kept the young rat here so you could talk to him on the ground, so to speak …’

  ‘Give us the picture, quick,’ ordered Piper.

  ‘Well,’ said Platt slowly, ‘it’s not a nice picture at all. Farling and his son Ronald, together with Mister Sullivan and Mister Firth all came out early this morning for a round of golf. They often come to this little course because it’s never crowded and because it’s ten miles closer to the city than the nearest full-size course.

  ‘Or so they say. We got statements from Firth and Sullivan and let them go. It seems that on the seventh tee each one of the four drove his ball into trouble—except for young Farling, who’s an expert. He drove right over the tops of those elm trees, almost to the green. Sullivan landed in the woods at the left, Firth saw his ball roll into the rough ground near the hill, and Dave Farling topped his a measly twenty feet or so.

  ‘The others left him there and went on, for he was an unlucky golfer usually. From there to the green, where they knock the ball into the little hole, Inspector, each man was separate and busy with his own affairs. But though nobody saw him—excepting the murderer—Dave Farling must have knocked his second shot into the pool. And while he was down trying to find his ball, somebody knocked a ball into the back of his head, smashing h
is skull …’

  Miss Withers could see on the porch the drawn, handsome face of young Ronald Farling, between the two cops. ‘Somebody, you say, but—’

  ‘But how do we know it was him?’ Platt laughed. ‘Because he had a whale of a fight with his father yesterday in the office, over something his father wouldn’t let him do. “Not while I live!” said the old man. Firth, the partner, overheard it. And he told us. Moreover, the young lad is what they call a “scratch” golfer. He likes to give exhibitions of driving a ball off a watch, or taking what they call a mashie and chipping balls twenty feet into a tin pail. He’s probably one of the few men in these parts who could be perfectly sure of hitting just what he aimed at!’

  The captain was beaming. ‘Well, when Farling didn’t show up at the green, the others figured he was looking for a lost ball. But then he didn’t come and he kept a didn’t coming, as the saying goes, and finally the three of them started back. They saw old Chris Thorr on the other fairway raking away at the autumn leaves, and called him to help. So the four of them came over the edge of the gully and saw Farling lying there, dead as a herring.’

  ‘And the boy admits the crime?’ asked Miss Withers.

  Platt shook his head. ‘Not him. He’s a smooth one. But we’ll make him talk before he sleeps or—’

  ‘All right, Captain,’ said Piper quickly. ‘Medical examiner gone?’

  Platt nodded. ‘Doc Farnsworth it was—and he didn’t like the looks of things. It was him refused us a certificate of death by misadventure. Wouldn’t give his final opinion until the autopsy. But Donovan and I figured we didn’t need to wait for that before getting young Farling safe behind bars.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Piper. ‘Let’s have a look at the lad.’

  They went up the steps and through a screen door. The young man was very pale, and seemed chilled through in his light blue sports shirt and dark flannels. He leaped to his feet impulsively.