Death of a Commuter

by Bruce, Leo

  Carolus, who knew only too well what ‘a word’ might portend, said, “Certainly, headmaster. How about a drink?”

  “It is barely five o’clock,” said Mr. Gorringer. “But at your hospitable fireside who is to say no? Yes, a suspicion of whisky. I thank you. I came to ask if you have any special plans for the holidays?”

  “Nothing fixed.”

  “My wife and I will make our customary sojourn in Ostende, of course, with occasional visits to the interesting old town of Bruges. But if you are remaining here I thought you might be attracted by the idea of a private pupil. With remuneration, I need hardly say.”

  “Not Priggley?”

  “Your conjecture is correct. Rupert Priggley, a most difficult boy as I need scarcely remind you, has been left on our hands for the vacation. His father is once again in the salubrious American resort of Reno. His mother is on one of the Balearic Islands …”

  “Ibiza, for certain.”

  “Again you are correct. They both have their private preoccupations.”

  “Is that what you call them?”

  “Let us not make mountains out of molehills. Some little matter of a divorce, I believe.”

  “The fourth. Yes. And the odious boy?”

  “I will not conceal from you that I did my utmost to persuade him that he would be in a sane and suitable atmosphere with Hollingbourne who is taking his children to Eastbourne for a fortnight. But no. The young man in that impertinent way he has replied that it must be you or no one. It appears that he once had some experience with Hollingbourne’s family which has prejudiced him.”

  “I know. Rounders on the sands. But I can’t take him, headmaster. The responsibility is too great. Last time he produced a young woman whom he described as a piece of homework.”

  To the amazement of Carolus the headmaster thrust out his lips and made a man-of-the-world sound.

  “Well, Deene, we were all boys once,” he said. “I am particularly anxious that he should not be at a loose end in the town. It is apt to make people think that we do not have enough discipline over our pupils. He is a wayward boy, as you know.”

  “Wayward, you call it? He’s a monster.”

  Carolus had not noticed that Mrs. Stick had entered behind him. He had often wondered at her weakness for the unspeakable Priggley.

  “If you was thinking of me and Stick, sir,” she said to Carolus, “I’m sure we could manage nicely. I’ve never known the young gentleman be any trouble to anyone. He’s always behaved like a perfect gentleman.”

  “If that’s your idea of a perfect gentleman I thank God I’m imperfect, Mrs. Stick,” said Carolus harshly.

  “I see I have our excellent Mrs. Stick on my side!” beamed Mr. Gorringer. “I may send Priggley round in the morning, then, Deene?”

  “It’s a disgraceful imposition,” moaned Carolus.

  “And I hope you have a very happy vacation,” the headmaster added as he rose to go.

  Ten minutes later there was a ring at the front door and Priggley himself entered.

  “Aren’t you ever going to be too old for The Queen’s School?” asked Carolus miserably.

  “I don’t see why, sir. Billy Bunter was fifty-seven years at school.”

  “Oh, shut up. And leave that decanter alone. You’re not getting whisky in this house.”

  “Not a teeny?”

  “Not even what the headmaster calls a suspicion.”

  “Well, sir, what’s on the tapis? Got a nice little crime up your sleeve for us?”

  “There is a little matter I’m thinking of investigating,” admitted Carolus.

  “Goody. How many murders so far?”

  “None, according to the coroner’s verdict.”

  “That means we’re right in,” said Priggley who had managed to help himself to Carolus’s Highland Malt.” Well, here’s to it!” he added, raising his glass.

  Chapter Three

  DURING THE LONG DRIVE TO BRENSTEAD NEXT MORNING RUPERT Priggley was fairly subdued. Beyond offering to drive the Bentley two or three times, offering Carolus a box of Montecristo cigars which his father had smuggled in on his last visit and unwisely left at home, and suggesting various stops for what he described as nips, top-ups or quickies, he did not interfere with Carolus’s thoughts. They reached the famous Dormitory town, ‘the most remarkable display of domestic architecture in England since the war,’ it had been called, at about noon.

  “God, how grim can they get?” asked Priggley.

  It was at once obvious from the houses built that income brackets and status symbols had not been forgotten by the planners. There were houses with fair-sized gardens and garages and young trees yearning to shield them from view, small houses in long well-disciplined rows with small gardens and garages and, in the majority, houses without garages and gardens intended only for vegetables. There had been self-conscious attempts to avoid monotony so that some roads of houses curved gently, others were straight, some had rustic fences, some brick walls, some houses had little porches over their front doors, some were without. All was carefully graded according to income.

  In the centre of the town were blocks of flats, each having its status. From one with a porter in uniform and a marble entry hall down to what were once called tenement buildings, they were carefully graded. Under them were shops which varied only in the goods they sold—size and window-space being identical.

  It was all bright with pink bricks, lively paintwork, little squares of garden, scraps of modern statuary, a children’s playground or two, several cinemas and a number of cafes. There were schools in allotted numbers and the original parish church of the village of Brenstead had been augmented with a thing that looked like a vast tortoise carrying a cross.

  “Yes. It wouldn’t be my choice of a place to live in,” admitted Carolus, “but I can’t see why life should be any less interesting here than elsewhere. Rows of identical houses don’t make their inhabitants identical, as the Victorians found. Let’s take a look at what is surely called ‘the old part of the town’. Felix Parador had the original manor house.”

  They found a notice ‘Manor Lane’ at the corner of a street of large villas set back from the road. On the same corner was a cottage, probably the original lodge-keeper’s cottage of a large estate. They turned up this road and went for several hundred yards between gardens before they saw a small Georgian house on the right with ‘The Old Manor’ on its gate.

  “That’s all I want to see,” said Carolus. “Let’s find The Royal Oak.”

  This had once been a modest inn, built at the same time as the manor house in the same direct four-square style of Georgian architecture, but it had been enlarged into a vast splaying hybrid building with a vivid sign in front of it, window-boxes now full of wallflowers and forget-me-nots, all with an appearance of self-conscious cheerfulness. Why didn’t they buy an old coach and horses and drive the thing up to the doors every half-hour? Carolus wondered. Or at least get a man to lean against the wall smoking a churchwarden pipe? Or play a record of the merry laughter of serving wenches coming from the back yard?

  “Frankly,” said Priggley, “it makes me sick.”

  They found the bar which was exactly what they expected, electric lights in quaint old lanterns, chromes and horse-brasses, barrel-top seats and a man in an Old Etonian tie behind it.

  “Ice?” said the man when he had poured Carolus’s Scotch.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I always ask,” said the man in a voice which might have been polished up on a grindstone. “Never drink without it myself. Learnt that in the Andaman Islands. Chief Security Officer there for a couple of years at the end of the war. Nehru asked me to take it on after Independence but I had to refuse. They wanted me in Japan.”

  Rupert appeared to be lost in wonder for he had not been prepared for this.

  “You like running this pub?” asked Carolus, trying to bring the conversation a little nearer home.

  “So so. My name’s Gray-Som
erset, by the way.”

  “Deene,” said Carolus.

  “Yes, so so. I have my off days. The place is ghastly, of course. But I scarcely see it. Reminds me of Madegescar. Never left one’s shack. I was out there crocodile hunting. Paying game that. Used to bring in ten or a dozen skins a day. Ever done any?”

  “No,” said Carolus. “You don’t like Brenstead? Or is it the people?”

  Gray-Somerset smiled indulgently.

  “Well, they’re obviously not my sort…”

  “No?”

  “Well, obviously not.”

  “You mean they don’t come in here?”

  “Oh, I can’t complain of the business. Nor can the brewers. An uncle of mine has some shares in this outfit. Lord Plumstead, as a matter of fact. No, business is all right. I meant the people.”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, I mean the type. Obviously not me.”

  “Cliquish?”

  “It’s not so much that. I mean there’s no one here, when you come to think of it. Not a soul.”

  Carolus persisted in misunderstanding.

  “Yes. You are a bit quiet today,” he said looking round him. “Perhaps it’s the result of the inquest you had the other day.”

  Gray-Somerset looked superior.

  “S’metter of fact,” he said, “we’ve been rather busier since then. Better sort of local people.”

  “Oh. There are grades?”

  “Certainly. Man named Thriver, for instance …”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Solicitor. Big practice in Pell Mell. Came in on the very night Parador killed himself. Never been in before but comes quite often now.”

  “The very night, eh?” said Carolus, acting dumb. “Strange that What time?”

  “Just before closing time.”

  “Perhaps he was Parador’s solicitor?”

  “He was. But what’s that to do with his coming in here?”

  “See your point,” said Carolus. “Would you put him in Grade One?”

  “Definitely,” said Gray-Somerset. “Better type than most of them. His brother and I did the Schönspitz together. Hell of a climb that was.”

  “Who else of that grade comes in?”

  Gray-Somerset remained quite serious.

  “Man called Dogman. Useful character if you’re a betting man. I don’t follow the gees as I used to. Never go for long chances, anyway. No, a gran at evens is my form and only now and again.”

  “Dogman lives here?”

  “Yes. Just round the corner in Manor Lane. Most of the better types live up there. He was in that night, too. Telling me about some shooting he’d done. Got a panther it seems. Took him upstairs and showed him my skins. Three tigers. I was only in Assam three weeks.”

  “I suppose he stayed till closing-time, too?”

  “No. S’metter of feet he didn’t Went off about nine-thirty. I noticed because I went out to see if the sign was on. That halfwit Hopelady told me it was out. His idea of a joke, I suppose. I saw Dogman drive away.”

  “Towards his home?”

  “No. Opposite direction. On the Great Ring road.”

  It did not seem to occur to Mr. Gray-Somerset to ask Carolus why he should be interested enough to ask questions about the movements of certain people on a certain night. He was too obsessed with his own affairs.

  “It was a pitch black night, I remember. Not a sign of a moon…”

  “Been there, too?” asked Carolus.

  “S’funny you should ask that. The Americans wanted me at Cape Kennedy some years ago. They knew my parachute record.”

  “I think I’ll have another Scotch,” said Carolus. “You wouldn’t have a couple of vacant rooms for a few nights, would you?”

  “Perhaps you’d ask the booking-clerk in the hall, would you? I try not to interfere with his arrangements.”

  “What about some lunch?” asked Carolus.

  “The head-waiter will tell you about that. He was the steward on a yacht I had once. Took her round the Horn in ’62.”

  Carolus was amused to notice that Priggley did not think the Munchausen character of Mr. Gray-Somerset was worth commenting on. His manner said all too clearly that he had known this sort of thing before.

  Just then there was a disturbance from behind the partition which separated them from the private bar. Voices were raised in astonishment and one voice, that of an old man, could be heard giving an explanation.

  Mr. Gray-Somerset, who could see what was going on, interpreted to Carolus.

  “One of our local characters, an old man named Gobler, seems to have been badly smashed up. Go through and hear about it if you’re interested.”

  In the public bar Carolus found a group round an ancient character whose head was bandaged. He was sitting leaning on a heavy stick.

  “Yes, the doctor said I wasn’t to drink anything, but I thought to myself, one pint wouldn’t do any harm so I came round here.”

  No one else seemed to catch the delicate nuances in this appeal and Carolus quietly responded to it, placing a glass mug before Mr. Gobler.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said casually, and continued his narrative. “Must have been about eight o’clock,” he said. “I was on my way round here at the time.”

  “Thought it was funny your not coming in last night,” said someone.

  “How could I? It was all I could manage to get back home and send my daughter for the doctor. You try being knocked over by a car and see how you like it.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “Down the bottom of Manor Lane as they call it now.” He turned to Carolus. “Used to be the entrance to the Park,” he explained. “They’ve turned it into a road now. Where all the big houses are. Coming from my place I had to cross the end of it, if you see what I mean. It takes me quite a bit of time to go that distance.”

  “He’s not very sure on his pins, the old chap,” explained the man next to Carolus, sotto voce.

  “I must have been about half-way across when I see this car coming full at me out of the Lane.”

  “What kind of car?”

  Gobler stopped his narrative and looked up shrewdly at his interrogator.

  “You ask me what kind of a car? There’s a bloody silly question for you. How am I to know what kind of a car it was? All I see was the lights coming at me.”

  “But didn’t it stop afterwards?”

  “If you’ll wait a minute I’ll tell you what it did. Here’s your good health, sir.” Mr. Gobler paused to drink and lowered the level of his beer by some two inches. “As I was saying, I see these lights coming at me. So what did I do?”

  “Got out of the way pretty bloody quick, if you had any sense,” said one of the audience.

  “You can talk,” allowed Gobler. “It’s easy to say that. But how could I? I can’t stump along any quicker than I do. I tried to go one way and the car seemed to swerve as though it had only just seen me and I found myself flat on my back. Just as though someone had given me a hell of a kick up the arse, if you’ll excuse the expression.”

  “What about the car then?”

  “It seemed to slow up a bit and I started giving ’em hell. ‘You lousy bastard!’ I shouted out. ‘What you think you’re up to?’ At that he just drives on fast as he could.”

  “Must have known you were all right from you swearing like that.”

  “But I wasn’t all right. The back of my head was bursting open. I could feel the blood down my neck. It took me I don’t know how long to get to my feet. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to walk again.”

  There were two replies to this from the audience, neither of them very sympathetic.

  “Well, you couldn’t walk much before, could you?”

  “You got here all right this morning.”

  Gobler ignored this.

  “You should have heard what the doctor said. I’ve got a contusion, he told my daughter. It’s the next best thing to a concussion as far as I can mak
e out. What do you say about that?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if there was anything wrong with you. Still, the bloke in the car ought to have stopped.”

  “ ’Course he ought.”

  “It’s not right. Who d’you think it was, Gobler?”

  “I haven’t any idea. He didn’t stop for me to ask.”

  “Looks like it was someone belonging to the place. Coming out of Manor Lane at eight o’clock in the evening.”

  “Is Manor Lane a cul-de-sac?” asked Carolus.

  “It doesn’t lead to anywhere,” he was told. “There’s a couple of houses beyond the Manor and that’s all.”

  “Could have been someone who’d been calling on one of the houses in the Lane. Sure it wasn’t a delivery van, Gobler?”

  “No. It wasn’t a van. I could see that.”

  “What colour was it?”

  “That’s what the policeman asked me. Came round this morning. I said to him, ‘how d’you expect me to say what colour it was? I was flat out on my back at the time.’ He started to get on his high horse then. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘you tell me what colour it was. You’re the police, aren’t you?’ D’you know what he said then? I should have noticed the number! Did you ever hear anything so bloody silly in your life?”

  The recital was interrupted by the entrance from the saloon bar of a sturdy intelligent-looking man in his forties. It soon became apparent that this was a doctor.

  “Come on, Gobler,” he said in a friendly way. “I’m going to give you a lift home. I told you to lie up for a few days.”

  “I was just telling them what you said, doctor. I’ve got contusion.”

  “You’ll have worse than that if you go running about the place. Now come on, you old sinner.”

  While Gobler was finishing his pint, Carolus asked the doctor if his name was Sporlott and hearing that it was told him who he was.

  “Oh, yes. Magnus Parador phoned me. Like to come in for a drink this evening? About nine?”

  “Thanks.”

  Carolus and Priggley reached the dining-room just in time.

  “Another ten minutes and you’d have had it,” said a very superior head-waiter regretfully.