‘I believe he does,’ answered the Inspector.
‘I’m glad of that,’ said David. ‘He’ll build his dream boat with it.’
‘And most likely take her out to sea and drown himself.’
They all laughed.
Man Overboard
Edmund Crispin
Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921–78), like J. I. M. Stewart, used his real name for his ‘serious’ work and a pseudonym for his detective fiction and for his work as an influential anthologist of science fiction. Montgomery was a successful composer, who wrote concert music and film soundtracks; the latter include the music for six Carry On films, the thriller Eyewitness, and The Brides of Fu Manchu. Today he is remembered principally for his detective stories written under the name Edmund Crispin. David Whittle’s biography, Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books, was published in 2007.
The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944) introduced the Oxford don and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen, who appeared in all nine of Crispin’s novels and the overwhelming majority of his short detective stories. A sparkling blend of wit and ingenuity became Crispin’s hallmark. His third novel, The Moving Toyshop (1946), benefits from an especially intriguing puzzle and the entertainment value of Crispin’s mysteries was consistently high. Poor health and alcoholism meant that after 1951 he published only one further novel, and he died at the age of fifty-six, but his books have enjoyed continuing popularity over the years. ‘Man Overboard’ was first published in the Evening Standard in 1954 and subsequently included in the posthumous collection Fen Country (1979).
‘Blackmailers?’ Detective Inspector Humbleby finished his coffee and began groping in his pocket for a cheroot.
‘Well, yes, one does of course come across them from time to time. And although you may be surprised to hear this, in my experience they’re generally rather nicer than any other kind of crook.
‘Writers of fiction get very heated and indignant about blackmail. Yet, by and large, it’s always seemed to me personally to be one of the least odious and most socially useful of crimes. To be a blackmailer’s victim you do almost invariably have to be guilty of something or other. I mean that, unlike coshing and larceny and embezzlement and so forth, blackmail has a—a punitive function—
‘Naturally, I’m not claiming that it ought to be encouraged.’ Having at last disinterred his cheroot, Humbleby proceeded to light it. ‘At the Yard, we have plenty of occasions for thinking that we’re being deprived of evidence against a suspect in order that someone else may use it for private profit.
‘On the other hand, a blackmailer can acquire such evidence more easily than we can—not having Judges’ Rules to hamper him—and like Socrates in the syllogism, he’s mortal. The death of a known blackmailer is a great event for us, I can tell you. It’s astonishing the number of “Unsolved” files that can be tidied up by a quick run through the deceased’s papers. Sometimes even murders—Saul Colonna, for instance; we’d never have hanged him if a blackmailer hadn’t ferreted out an incriminating letter and then got himself run over by a bus.’
‘Two Armagnacs, please,’ Gervase Fen said to the club waiter. ‘Colonna? The name’s vaguely familiar, but I can’t remember any details.’
‘It was interesting,’ said Humbleby, ‘because the incriminating letter didn’t on the surface look incriminating at all… There were these two brothers, you see, Americans, Saul and Harry Colonna. They came over here—their first visit to England—early in April of 1951, Saul to work in the office of the London correspondent of a Chicago paper, Harry to write a novel.
‘New country—fresh beginning. But they’d hardly had a chance to unpack before Harry succumbed at long last to the cumulative effects of his daily bottle of Bourbon. With the result that his first few weeks among the Limeys were spent at a sanatorium in South Wales—Carmarthenshire, to be exact: no alcohol, no tobacco, lots of milk to drink, regular brisk walks in the surrounding countryside—you know the sort of thing.
‘Harry didn’t like that very much. His brisk walks tended to be in the direction of pubs. But at the same time he did acquire an awe, amounting almost to positive fear, of the formidable old doctor who ran the place. So that when at last he decided that he couldn’t stand the régime any longer, he felt constrained to arrange for a rather more than ordinarily unobtrusive departure, such as wouldn’t involve him in having to face a lot of reproaches for his failure to stay the course. Quite simply, abandoning his belongings, he went out for one of his walks and failed to return.
‘That was on the afternoon of 7 May. About mid-day next day, both brothers arrived by car at Brixham in Devon, where they took rooms at the Bolton Hotel; for after only a month’s journalism Saul had been sacked, and so had been free to respond to Harry’s SOS from the sanatorium, and to assist in his flight. Once in Brixham, they proceeded to enjoy themselves. Among other things, they bought, actually bought, a small Bermudan sloop. And did quite a lot of sailing in it…
‘Then, on the evening of the 12th, having ignored numerous warnings from the weather-wise, they got themselves swept out into mid-Channel by a gale. And in the turmoil of wind and darkness Harry was knocked overboard by the boom and drowned.
‘That, at least, was Saul’s account of the matter, when the Dartmouth lifeboat picked him up; and it was a credible story enough. Even the subsequent discovery that Harry’s life had been well insured, and that Saul was the beneficiary, failed to shake it. If a crime had been committed, it was undetectable, the police found—with the inevitable result that in due course the insurance companies had to pay up. As to the body, what was left of that came up in a trawl about the beginning of September, near Start Point. By then there wasn’t much chance of diagnosing the cause of death. But the teeth identified it as Harry Colonna beyond any reasonable doubt…
‘So that without Laking, that would have been the end of that.
‘Barney Laking was clever. He was a professional, of course. Though he’d been inside several times, he always went straight back to blackmail as soon as he’d done his term… So you can imagine that when a number 88 ran over him, in Whitehall, we lost no time at all getting to his house. And that was where, among a lot of other very interesting stuff, we found the letter—the letter.
‘To start with, we couldn’t make anything of it at all. Even after we’d linked the “Harry” of the signature with Harry Colonna, it was still a long while before we could make out what Barney had wanted with the thing. However, we did see the light eventually… Wait and I’ll do you a copy.’
And Humbleby produced a notebook and began to write. ‘I looked at that letter so hard and so often,’ he murmured, ‘that it’s engraved on my heart…’
‘Envelope with it?’ Fen asked.
‘No, no envelope. Incidentally, for the record, our handwriting people were unanimous that Harry Colonna had written it—that it wasn’t a forgery, I mean—and also that nothing in it had subsequently been added or erased or altered… There.’
And Humbleby tore the sheet out and handed it to Fen, who read:
You-Know-Where, 6.5.51
Dear Saul,
I’m just about fed with this dump: time I moved. When you get this, drop everything and bring the car to a little place five or six miles from here called Llanegwad (County Carmarthen). There’s a beer-house called the Rose, where I risked a small drink this morning: from 6 on I’ll be in it: Private Bar (so-called). Seriously, if I don’t move around a bit I’ll go nuts. This is urgent.
Harry.
‘M’m,’ said Fen. ‘Yes. I notice one thing.’
‘Actually, there are two things to notice.’
‘Are there? All right. But finish the story first.’
‘The rest’s short if not sweet,’ said Humbleby. ‘We had Saul along and confronted him with the letter, and of course he said exactly what you’d expect—that this was the SOS Harry
had sent him from the sanatorium, properly dated and with the distance from Llanegwad correct and so on and so forth. So then we arrested him.’
‘For murder?’
‘Not to start with, no. Just for conspiracy to defraud the insurance companies.’
‘I see… Part of it is simple, of course,’ said Fen, who was still examining Humbleby’s scrawl. ‘When an American uses “6.5.51”, in writing to another American, he means not the 6th of May but the 5th of June… On the other hand, Saul and Harry, having settled in England, may have decided that it would save confusion if they used the English system of dating all the time.’
‘Which is just what Saul—when we pointed the problem out to him—told us they had decided to do.’ Humbleby shook his head sadly. ‘Not that it helped the poor chap.’
Fen considered the letter again. And then suddenly he chuckled.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that 6 May 1951, was a Sunday?’
‘Bull’s eye. It was. Sunday in Wales. No pubs open for Harry to have even the smallest of small drinks at. Therefore, Harry was using the American system of dating, and his letter was written on 5 June, four weeks after he was supposed to have been swept overboard into the Channel. Insurance fraud.’
‘And Harry getting restive in his hideout near the sanatorium, and Saul suddenly thinking how nice it would be not to have to share the insurance money…’
‘So back to Brixham, unobtrusively, by night, and out to sea again in the sloop. And that time,’ Humbleby concluded, ‘Harry really did go overboard.’
‘And you have found enough evidence for a murder charge?’
‘As soon as we stopped worrying about 12 May, and started concentrating on the period after 5 June, we most certainly did. Mind you, it could have been difficult. But luckily Saul had had the cabin of the sloop revarnished at the end of May, and we found human blood on top of the new varnish—not much, after all that time, but enough to establish that it belonged to Harry’s rather unusual group and sub-groups. Taken with the other things, that convinced the jury all right. And they hanged him…
‘But you see now why I’m sometimes inclined to say a kind word for people like Barney Laking. Because really, you know, the credit in the Colonna case was all his.
‘Even if I’d possessed that letter at the outset, I could quite easily have missed its significance. I only worked hard on it because it had come from Barney’s collection, and I knew he didn’t accumulate other people’s correspondence just for fun.
‘But he had no such inducement, bless him. With him it was just a consummate natural talent for smelling out even the most—the most deodorised of rats. What a detective the man would have made… Do you know, they gave me a full month’s leave at the end of that case, as a reward for handling it so brilliantly? And it was all thanks to Barney…’
And Humbleby reached for his glass. ‘No, Gervase, I don’t care what novelists say. I like blackmailers. Salt of the earth. Here’s to them.’
The Queer Fish
Kem Bennett
Kem Bennett (1919–1986) is possibly the least celebrated of all the authors whose work appears in this volume, although in his day he achieved a measure of success. I confess that I’d never heard of him until Jamie Sturgeon drew my attention to this story, which first appeared in Argosy in 1955, and pointed out that it uses a trick subsequently employed, in a slightly different way, in a novel by Andrew Garve. Bennett’s full name was Kemys Deverell Bennett, and he came from St Ives. He wrote a handful of novels, not all of them criminous, and his interest in maritime matters is reflected in several of his publications, including a book called Look at Rescue at Sea.
‘The Queer Fish’ was filmed in 1956 as Doublecross; Bennett worked on the screenplay, and a strong cast included Donald Houston, Fay Compton, Anton Diffring, William Hartnell and (long before that more famous film about sailing misadventure, Jaws) the young Robert Shaw. A handful of his other scripts were televised during the 1950s, and he also wrote the screenplay for the film Timebomb, a.k.a. Terror on a Train, which starred Glenn Ford, and concerns a plan to blow up a train loaded with sea mines.
At five-thirty the buzzer went and Albert Pascoe stopped shovelling china clay in the hold of the Danish freighter Langeland. At five-thirty-five, in company with fifty other dockers, and with a quarter-litre of smuggled aquavit in a tomato-ketchup bottle in his pocket, Albert walked past the policeman on duty at the dock gates. Then, and then only, did he permit himself to let go a breath of gusty relief which shifted a cloud of white dust from the hairs of his stubby moustache.
The ferry was waiting. Albert went aboard, a short, stiff man in middle age, filled with good nature, argument, and Cornish independence. When they were halfway across the estuary, Harry Sims, the ferryman, came up. ‘Evening, Albert.’
‘Evening, Harry.’
‘They’m running, boy.’
Albert blinked at the ferryman. ‘They be?’ He went to the side and stared down into the clear water, thinking of great silver fish. A moment later he thought of his fine net, hanging in the woodshed behind his cottage, and of his boat, moored half a mile upstream. Then, sourly, he remembered Herbert Whiteway, the water-bailiff, and spat his disgust overboard.
The law said that the salmon had to be left in peace to finish their journey to the spawning-grounds at the head of the Fowey River. The law enforced its opinion with the threat of a fifty-pound fine. Albert winced; then spat again, in disgust and for the more practical reason that he needed to rid his throat of a layer of china clay.
The ferry came to a stop at the slip below Pendennick, whose single street plunged like a madman’s ski-jump. Albert paid his fare—a penny—and started to clump slowly up the hill to the top, where lay his cottage and where the rolling Cornish farmland started, with its fat cattle, gull-dotted ploughland, and sleek hawks sitting on the telegraph posts. Presently he pushed open the door of his whitewashed cottage. Children fluttered into movement like a flock of starlings and he patted heads absentmindedly. At the stove, Alice turned from frying chipped potatoes. She looked down at him. ‘You’re back then.’
‘Arrh,’ Albert said, smiling sheepishly. For fifteen years his beloved wife had been making him feel sheepish. He no longer minded, for it had become a habit, like having children, drinking beer, smuggling aquavit, poaching salmon, and keeping his nose clean. ‘What’s for tea?’ he asked.
‘Nice bit of pollack and chips.’
He nodded, without vast enthusiasm. ‘Salmon are running.’
Alice turned. Six feet two. Built like an oak tree. ‘Let ’em run,’ she said. ‘You leave your net be, d’you hear?’
‘Yes, my dear,’ Albert said, then added with grievance in his voice, ‘Who said aught about the net? Never crossed my mind.’
Alice grunted. ‘Go and get washed. Tea’s nearly ready.’
Shortly after seven that evening, Albert shut the door of his cottage behind him and started downhill towards The Lugger. As he walked he leaned slightly backwards to compensate for the gradient and brought his best drinking-boots down hard, so that the nails would bite. He had the ketchup bottle in his pocket and at the back of his mouth there lingered the regurgitant sweetness of well-fried potatoes. He was content.
There were six other customers in the public bar of The Lugger—three regulars, two strangers, and Herbert Whiteway, the water-bailiff. Albert ignored Whiteway; he was not yet in the mood to start pulling his leg, which was all the man was good for. Instead, from his favourite seat on a high-backed oak settle by the fire, he surveyed the strangers. There had been a fat new car outside, he remembered. They must belong to it.
They had white faces and soft hands and their clothes were uncomfortably new. They were restless and when they spoke they did so in undertones. They were drinking brandy, which was unheard of in The Lugger, and they didn’t even look as if they were enjoying it. City fello
ws. No concern of his—not until April, anyway. In April Albert would cease to be a docker and become a boatman instead. Then strangers would have some interest for him, if they wished to go out fishing or take a trip to Polperro or Mevagissey; now they had none.
He dismissed the two men from his thoughts as if they had already returned to London, or Mars, or wherever it was that they followed their mysterious livelihood.
Presently he took the ketchup bottle out of his pocket and stared at it. Unscrewed the top. Sniffed. He put the neck to his lips and tilted his head back. A fire started behind his uvula. Albert happily let it burn for a few seconds, then reached for the pint of bitter beer on the table in front of him. He quenched the fire. Vapours wreathed round the back of his palate. Arrh!
From across the room, Herbert Whiteway was watching, envy in his small eyes. Albert beamed at him. ‘Physic,’ he said. ‘Doctor give it me for me guts. Proper tasty, ’tis.’
The bar shook with laughter. Only Herbert Whiteway did not laugh. Even the strangers smiled palely. Albert took out his pipe. He took a rope of twist from a tin in his pocket and cut slivers from it which he started to roll between the palms of his small, hard hands. Then he said conversationally, ‘Harry Sims told me they was running, Herbert.’
Whiteway said, ‘So they may be.’
‘’Tis early for they.’ No reply. Albert took a pull at his beer and lit his pipe. ‘If you ask me,’ he said blandly, ‘they’m not Cornish fish at all, boy.’
The bar was suddenly silent. It was the old joke; the good joke; the joke that never failed.
Whiteway fell for it, as usual. ‘Gerraway!’ he said. ‘Talk sense, man.’
‘They’m Canadian steelheads.’ Albert’s voice was pontifical, the voice of a man pronouncing dogma. ‘They’m Canadians driven over by the porps, and as such they can be fished.’
Whiteway said nastily, ‘If I catch you fishing them before February month I’ll have you up before the Bench, all the same. Fifty pound or three months it’ll cost you—unless you can get the fish to show a Canadian passport, ha ha!’
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