Murder at the Manor

by Martin Edwards

  Apart from that one lecture, however, and the supper party after it, he had been seen nowhere else save in his own closely guarded suite in his hotel.

  How Mrs Molesworth got herself invited to the supper party, and how, once there, she persuaded the sage to consent to visit Molesworth Court, is one of those minor miracles which do sometimes occur. Her enemies made many unworthy conjectures, but, since the university professors in charge of the proceedings on that occasion were not likely to have been corrupted by money or love, it is probable that Mrs Molesworth moved the mountain by faith in herself alone.

  The guest chamber prepared for Dr Koo Fin was the third room in the west wing. This architectural monstrosity contained four bedrooms, each furnished with french windows leading on to the same balcony.

  Young Petterboy occupied the room at the end of the row. It was one of the best in the house, as a matter of fact, but had no bathroom attached, since this had been converted by Mrs Molesworth, who had the second chamber, into a gigantic clothes press. After all, as she said, it was her own house.

  Dr Koo Fin arrived on the Saturday by train, like a lesser person. He shook hands with Mrs Molesworth and Christopher and young Petterboy and the Feisons as if he actually shared their own intelligence, and smiled at them all in his bland, utterly-too Chinese way.

  From the first he was a tremendous success. He ate little, drank less, spoke not at all, but he nodded appreciatively at young Petterboy’s halting Chinese, and grunted once or twice most charmingly when someone inadvertently addressed him in English. Altogether he was Mrs Molesworth’s conception of a perfect guest.

  On the Sunday morning Mrs Molesworth actually received a compliment from him, and saw herself in a giddy flash the most talked-of woman in the cocktail parties of the coming week.

  The charming incident occurred just before lunch. The sage rose abruptly from his chair on the lawn, and as the whole house party watched him with awe, anxious not to miss a single recountable incident, he stalked boldly across the nearest flower bed, trampling violas and London Pride with the true dreamer’s magnificent disregard for physical obstacles, and, plucking the head off a huge rose from Christopher’s favourite standard, trampled back with it in triumph and laid it in Mrs Molesworth’s lap.

  Then, as she sat in ecstasy, he returned quietly to his seat and considered her affably. For the first time in her life Mrs Molesworth was really thrilled. She told a number of people so afterwards.

  However, on the Sunday night there were burglars. It was sickeningly awkward. Mrs Molesworth had a diamond star, two sets of ear-rings, a bracelet and five rings, all set in platinum, and she kept them in a wall safe under a picture in her bedroom. On the Sunday night, after the rose incident, she gave up the self-effacement programme and came down to dinner in full war paint. The Molesworths always dressed on Sunday and she certainly looked devastatingly feminine, all blue mist and diamonds.

  It was the more successful evening of the two. The sage revealed an engaging talent for making card houses, and he also played five-finger exercises on the piano. The great simplicity of the man was never better displayed. Finally, dazed, honoured and happy, the house party went to bed.

  Mrs Molesworth removed her jewellery and placed it in the safe, but unfortunately did not lock it at once. Instead, she discovered that she had dropped an ear-ring, and went down to look for it in the drawing-room. When at last she returned without it the safe was empty. It really was devastatingly awkward, and the resourceful Christopher, hastily summoned from his room in the main wing, confessed himself in a quandary.

  The servants, discreetly roused, whispered that they had heard nothing and gave unimpeachable alibis. There remained the guests. Mrs Molesworth wept. For such a thing to happen at any time was terrible enough, but for it to occur on such an occasion was more than she could bear. One thing she and Christopher agreed: the sage must never guess…must never dream…

  There remained the Feisons and the unfortunate young Petterboy. The Feisons were ruled out almost at once. From the fact that the window catch in Mrs Molesworth’s room was burst, it was fairly obvious that the thief had entered from the balcony; therefore, had either of the Feisons passed that way from their rooms they would have had to pass the sage, who slept with his window wide. So there was only young Petterboy. It seemed fairly obvious.

  Finally, after a great deal of consultation, Christopher went to speak to him as man to man, and came back fifteen minutes later hot and uncommunicative.

  Mrs Molesworth dried her eyes, put on her newest negligée, and, sweeping aside her fears and her husband’s objections, went in to speak to young Petterboy like a mother. Poor young Petterboy gave up laughing at her after ten minutes, suddenly got angry, and demanded that the sage too should be asked if he had ‘heard anything’. Then he forgot himself completely, and vulgarly suggested sending for the police.

  Mrs Molesworth nearly lost her head, recovered herself in time, apologised by innuendo, and crept back disconsolately to Christopher and bed.

  The night passed most wretchedly.

  In the morning poor young Petterboy cornered his hostess and repeated his requests of the night before. But the sage was departing by the 11.12 and Mrs Molesworth was driving with him to the station. In that moment of her triumph the diamonds seemed relatively unimportant to Elvira Molesworth, who had inherited the Cribbage fortune a year before. Indeed, she kissed poor young Petterboy and said it really didn’t matter, and hadn’t they had a wonderful, wonderful week-end? And that he must come down again some time soon.

  The Feisons said good-bye to the sage, and as Mrs Molesworth was going with him, made their adieux to her as well. As the formalities had been accomplished there seemed no point in staying, and Christopher saw them off in their car, with poor young Petterboy leading the way in his.

  As he was standing on the lawn waving somewhat perfunctorily to the departing cars, the post arrived. One letter for his wife bore the crest of the Doctor’s hotel, and Christopher, with one of those intuitions which made him such a successful husband, tore it open.

  It was quite short, but in the circumstances, wonderfully enlightening:

  ‘Dear Madam,

  In going through Dr Koo Fin’s memoranda, I find to my horror that he promised to visit you this week-end. I know you will forgive Dr Koo Fin when you hear that he never takes part in social occasions. As you know, his arduous work occupies his entire time. I know it is inexcusable of me not to have let you know before now, but it is only a moment since I discovered that the Doctor had made the engagement.

  I do hope his absence has not put you to any inconvenience, and that you will pardon this atrocious slip.

  I have the honour to remain, Madam,

  Yours most apologetically

  Lo Pei Fu

  Secretary.

  P.S. The Doctor should have written himself, but, as you know, his English is not good. He begs to be reminded to you and hopes for your forgiveness.

  As Christopher raised his eyes from the note his wife returned. She stopped the car in the drive and came running across the lawn towards him.

  ‘Darling, wasn’t it wonderful?’ she said, throwing herself into his arms with an abandonment she did not often display to him.

  ‘What’s in the post?’ she went on, disengaging herself.

  Christopher slipped the letter he had been reading into his pocket with unobtrusive skill.

  ‘Nothing, my dear,’ he said gallantly. ‘Nothing at all.’ He was amazingly fond of his wife.

  Mrs Molesworth wrinkled her white forehead.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘now about my jewellery. Wasn’t it too odious for such a thing to happen when that dear, sweet old man was here: what shall we do?’

  Christopher drew her arm through his own. ‘I think, my dear,’ he said firmly, ‘you’d better leave all that to me. We mustn’t have a scan
dal.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Molesworth, her eyes growing round with alarm. ‘Oh, no; that would spoil everything.’

  In a first class compartment on the London train the elderly Chinese turned over the miscellaneous collection of jewellery which lay in a large silk handkerchief on his knee. His smile was child-like, bland and faintly wondering. After a while he folded the handkerchief over its treasure and placed the package in his breast pocket.

  Then he leaned back against the upholstery and looked out of the window. The green undulating landscape was pleasant. The fields were neat and well tilled. The sky was blue, the sunlight beautiful. It was a lovely land.

  He sighed and marvelled in his heart that it could be the home of a race of cultivated barbarians to whom, providing that height, weight and age were relatively the same, all Chinese actually did look alike.

  The Murder at the Towers

  E. V. Knox

  Edmund George Valpy Knox (1881–1971), also known as “Evoe”, or E. V. Knox, came from a gifted family. His brother, Monsignor Ronald Knox, was a leading light of detective fiction in the Golden Age; as well as writing novels and short stories, Ronald was an accomplished exponent of the Sherlockian pastiche, and famously devised “the Detective’s Decalogue”, ten mostly tongue-in-cheek “commandments” for writers of detective stories. Their sister Winifred Peck also wrote a couple of crime novels. Evoe was best known as a poet and humorist and was editor of Punch from 1932 to 1949.

  Neither Evoe nor Ronald took crime fiction too seriously; for them, detective stories were a form of game-playing. This story wittily employs the country house setting for a display of detective work by one of those “gifted amateurs” who so often appear in Golden Age fiction. In classic whodunits, victims were often unpleasant characters who supplied plentiful motives for murder, and it is clear from the outset that the victim here is no exception.

  ***

  I

  Mr. Ponderby-Wilkins was a man so rich, so ugly, so cross, and so old, that even the stupidest reader could not expect him to survive any longer than Chapter I. Vulpine in his secretiveness, he was porcine in his habits, saturnine in his appearance, and ovine in his unconsciousness of doom. He was the kind of man who might easily perish as early as paragraph two.

  Little surprise, therefore, was shown by Police-Inspector Blowhard of Nettleby Parva when a message reached him on the telephone:

  “You are wanted immediately at the Towers. Mr. Ponderby-Wilkins has been found dead.”

  The inspector was met at the gate by the deceased’s secretary, whom he knew and suspected on the spot.

  “Where did it happen, Mr. Porlock?” he asked. “The lake, the pigeon-loft, or the shrubbery?”

  “The shrubbery,” answered Porlock quietly, and led the way to the scene.

  Mr. Ponderby-Wilkins was suspended by means of an enormous woollen muffler to the bough of a tree, which the police-officer’s swift eye noticed at once to be a sycamore.

  “How long has that sycamore tree been in the shrubbery?” he inquired suspiciously.

  “I don’t know,” answered Porlock, “and I don’t care.”

  “Tell me precisely what happened,” went on the inspector.

  “Four of us were playing tennis, when a ball was hit out into the bushes. On going to look for it at the end of the set, I found Mr. Wilkins as you see him, and called the attention of the other players to the circumstances at once. Here they all are.”

  And pushing aside the boughs of a laurel, he showed the police-officer two young women and a young man. They were standing quietly in the middle of the tennis-court, holding their tennis-racquets soberly in their hands.

  “Do you corroborate Mr. Porlock’s account of the affair?” inquired Blowhard.

  “We do,” they answered quietly in one breath.

  “Hum!” mused the inspector, stroking his chin. “By the way,” he continued, “I wonder whether life is extinct?”

  He went and looked at the body. It was.

  “A glance showed us that life was extinct when we found it,” said the four, speaking together, “and we thought it better to go on playing tennis as reverently as possible until you arrived.”

  “Quite right,” said Blowhard. “I shall now examine the whole household viva voce. Kindly summon them to the drawing-room.”

  They went together into the large, white-fronted mansion, and soon the notes of a gong, reverberating through the house and all over the grounds, had summoned the whole house-party, including the servants, to the Louis-Seize salon overlooking the tennis lawn. The gathering consisted, as the inspector had foreseen, of the usual types involved in a country house murder, namely, a frightened stepsister of the deceased, a young and beautiful niece, a major, a doctor, a chaperon, a friend, Mr. Porlock himself, an old butler with a beard, a middle-aged gardener with whiskers, an Irish cook, and two servants who had only come to the place the week before. Every one of them had a bitter grudge against the deceased. He had been about to dismiss his secretary, had threatened to disinherit his niece, sworn repeatedly at his stepsister, thrown a port decanter at the butler’s head, insulted the guests by leaving Bradshaws in their bedrooms, pulled up the gardener’s antirrhinums, called the cook a good-for-nothing, and terrified the housemaids by making noises at them on the stairs. In addition, he had twice informed the major that his regiment had run away at Balaclava, and had put a toad in the doctor’s bed.

  Blowhard felt instinctively that this was a case for Bletherby Marge, the famous amateur, and sent him a telegram at once. Then he ordered the body to be removed, walked round the grounds, ate a few strawberries, and went home.

  II

  Bletherby Marge was a man of wide culture and sympathy. In appearance he was fat, red-faced, smiling, and had untidy hair. He looked stupid, and wore spats. In fact, whatever the inexperienced reader supposes to be the ordinary appearance of a detective, to look like that was the very reverse of Bletherby Marge. He was sometimes mistaken for a business man, more often for a billiard-marker or a baboon. But whenever Scotland Yard was unable to deal with a murder case—that is to say, whenever a murder case happened at a country house—Bletherby Marge was called in. The death of an old, rich, and disagreeable man was like a clarion call to him. He packed his pyjamas, his tooth-brush, and a volume of Who’s Who, and took the earliest train.

  As soon as he had seen the familiar newsbill:

  HOST OF COUNTRY HOUSE-PARTY

  INEXPLICABLY SLAIN

  he had expected his summons to The Towers. Telegraphing to the coroner’s jury to return an open verdict at Nettleby Parva, he finished off the case of the Duke of St. Neots, fragments of whom had mysteriously been discovered in a chaff-cutting machine, and made all haste to the scene of the new affair. It was his forty-ninth mystery, and in every previous affair he had triumphantly slain his man. A small silver gallows had been presented to him by Scotland Yard as a token of esteem.

  “We are in deep waters, Blowhard—very deep,” he said, as he closely scrutinized the comforter which had been wrapped round Mr. Ponderby-Wilkins’s throat. “Just tell me once more about these alibis.”

  “Every one of them is perfect,” answered the police inspector, “so far as I can see. The butler, the cook, and the two housemaids were all together playing poker in the pantry. Miss Brown, the deceased’s stepsister, was giving instructions to the gardener, and the doctor was with her, carrying her trowel and her pruning scissors. The chaperon and the friend were playing tennis with Mr. Porlock and the major, and the niece was rowing herself about on the lake, picking waterlilies.”

  A gleam came into Bletherby Marge’s eyes.

  “Alone?” he queried.

  “Alone. But you forget that the lake is in full view of the tenniscourt. It almost seems as if it must have been constructed that way on purpose,” added the inspector rather crossly. “This
girl was seen the whole time during which the murder must have occurred, either by one pair of players or the other.”

  “Tut, tut,” said Bletherby Marge. “Now take me to the scene of the crime.”

  Arrived at the sycamore tree, he studied the bark with a microscope, and the ground underneath. This was covered with dead leaves. There was no sign of a struggle.

  “Show me exactly how the body was hanging,” he said to Blowhard.

  Police-Inspector Blowhard tied the two ends of the comforter to the bough and wrapped the loop several times round Bletherby Marge’s neck, supporting him, as he did so, by the feet.

  “Don’t let go,” said Bletherby Marge.

  “I won’t,” said Blowhard, who was used to the great detective’s methods in reconstructing a crime.

  “Have you photographed the tree from every angle?” went on Bletherby.

  “Yes.”

  “Were there any finger-prints on it?”

  “No,” replied Blowhard. “Nothing but leaves.”

  Then together they wandered round the grounds, eating fruit and discussing possible motives for the murder. No will had been discovered.

  From time to time one or other of the house-party would flit by them, humming a song, intent on a game of tennis, or a bathe in the lake. Now and then a face would look haggard or strained, at other times the same face would be merry and wreathed with smiles.

  “Do you feel baffled?” asked Blowhard.

  Bletherby Marge made no reply.

  III

  The house-party were having a motor picnic at Dead Man’s Wood, ten miles from the The Towers. The festivity had been proposed by Bletherby Marge, who was more and more endearing himself, by his jokes and wide knowledge of the world, to his fellow-guests. Many of them had already begun to feel that a house-party without a detective in it must be regarded as a literary failure.

  “Bless my soul!” said Marge suddenly, when the revelry was at its height, turning to Blowhard, who was out of breath, for he had been carrying the champagne across a ploughed field. “I ask you all to excuse me for a moment. I have forgotten my pipe.”