Settling Scores

by Martin Edwards

  There was certainly plenty of evidence.

  Country house cricket is in danger of becoming extinct, so I had gladly accepted Noxon’s invitation. Not that I am a star performer. A country house cricket eleven usually consists of three or four good players, a couple of promising youngsters, three or four people who were once cricketers, and a couple who never were and never would be. I came into the third category, but young Faulkner was emphatically in the first. He was a fast bowler of class, and only the accident of birth in a Minor County had kept him from the public eye. He had played plenty of games for the M.C.C., and had done well; though at Lord’s they whispered stories of his queer temper.

  Papa Pontivy, once a famous French spy catcher, went down to Malmeston with me. He was not in the least interested in cricket, and within an hour had shocked the company by calling the umpire a referee, and by a comment that Faulkner must be a good bowler, since he hit the bat every time.

  This was during a practice game. Over tea, Noxon talked over his strategy for the first match. Faulkner would be his shock bowler: there was a slow left-hander for the other end. After that, he had as changes a selection of has-beens and would-bes.

  I am not quite certain how the words “body line” came into the conversation. The phrase was always more dramatic than accurate, but since the unfortunate controversy in Australia it has been dropped—the phrase only, not the method of attack. Many bowlers, when they talk of “leg theory” and “pad play”, are really discussing Larwood’s method.

  Pontivy pricked up his ears when “body line” was mentioned, and a dozen people tried to explain it to him, quite unsuccessfully.

  “You may see a bit of it on Wednesday, M. Pontivy,” said young Faulkner—rather grimly, I thought. “We’re playing Malmeston—and Torris will be there.”

  I knew that there was bad blood between him and Torris. I confess that I never liked Torris myself. He assiduously cultivated a local reputation as a cricketer, and actually he knew the rules—and dodges—of the game backwards. As captain of the Malmeston Cricket Club he was successful, but very unpopular with his opponents; not because of his success, but because he was no sportsman—he never took a risk, and would insist always on his pound of flesh. There was a famous occasion years ago when Malmeston were facing a score of 260, and had nine men out for 85—and then Torris claimed bad light, and got it.

  He used to make a lot of runs, but was not a pretty bat. I never saw a man use his pads more, not even in professional cricket before the new rule. He never played an innings without at least three l.b.w. appeals. He survived all but the last, and unkind rumour said quite a lot about umpires. A country house party is not unlike a school in its atmosphere, and schoolboys’ opinions on visiting umpires are notorious. The Malmeston regular umpire was one of Torris’s own servants—half the team depended on him for a livelihood, for that matter. It was noted, so exasperated bowlers declared, that Torris was never l.b.w. unless the opponents’ umpire had to give the decision, and Torris was always careful when facing his end.

  There had been a scene between Faulkner and Torris the previous season, I remembered: Faulkner could stand punishment, but Torris’s pad play made him wild. He promptly packed his leg-field, and served up some real body-line stuff! It wasn’t dangerous, for Faulkner was accurate, but it got Torris rattled. And at last he appealed to the umpire!

  Unfortunately for him, the umpire wasn’t his own man, but a retired Indian officer, Colonel Coffin.

  “What?” barked Coffin. “Appeal disallowed! This is cricket, sir, not a test match!”

  Old Coffin’s unconsciously-coined epigram became almost a classic, and unkind people used to whisper “This is cricket, not a test match!” when they wanted to get Torris wild. Strangely enough, Faulkner himself got unexpectedly ratty when the incident was mentioned. Although he had scored, he hated Torris the more.

  But although we all agreed with Faulkner, we tried to calm him down.

  “I don’t care what you say,” Faulkner almost shouted, “but if he tries that pad-stuff, then I give him leg-theory.”

  “Oh, cut it out, old chap,” Taunton protested—another Grade I player. “It’ll kill cricket.”

  “Never heard of in my time,” old Knight put in—a grand old tryer, still good for five or six on a perfect wicket. “In my day we used to play the game.”

  “Play the game!” Faulkner howled. “But Torris…”

  “Torris doesn’t know how to play the game—never did.” This from Bingham, the local doctor. I didn’t like him: a good cricketer, but utterly selfish—played for himself first and his side second. When he wasn’t batting, he always wanted to bowl. He fancied himself as a fast bowler, but was very erratic—not in the same class as Faulkner. “Nevertheless, I should go steady on the body-line and bumper business, Faulkner. Torris isn’t so young as he was, you know—can’t get out of the way.”

  “He’s quick enough to stick his pads in front,” Faulkner retorted. And he went off into a long defence of body-line—all the old arguments dragged out again, till we were sick of it. I have only mentioned the discussion at length because it was such vital evidence against Faulkner.

  Bingham continued to advise caution. I doubted if he were thinking of Torris’s welfare! He wasn’t Torris’s doctor: on the contrary, he disliked him as freely as anybody. Only last winter, so old Knight told me, there had been ugly rumours about Torris and Bingham’s wife. Evidently the potential scandal had blown over, for there had been no divorce.

  We were to play Malmeston the following Wednesday. Noxon, our host, had fixed up the match in spite of the universal dislike of Torris, for Malmeston were a good side, and had a fine pitch in the middle of a glorious old village green. Noxon had fixed up a full week’s cricket for his house party, which was to be assisted by one or two local residents like Bingham. I was quite pleased with my own moderate performances, but Pontivy would have been bored to exasperation but for the lucky accident that the Chief Constable of the county was among the guests. The two men talked shop very contentedly throughout the games.

  The house party arrived a few minutes late at Malmeston, but Bingham was already there to represent us: I noticed Torris out in the middle of the green, inspecting the wicket. He won the toss and decided to bat.

  I would have witnessed the affair at Malmeston in any case, but chance gave me a front seat for the drama. Early in Malmeston’s innings our wicket-keeper knocked up his right thumb rather badly, and had to take off the gloves. Noxon, our skipper, handed them to me.

  “Slip the pads on, will you, Newman?” he said.

  “But, damn it, Noxon,” I protested, “I haven’t kept wicket for twenty years!”

  “No, but you used to. Stop ’em—that’ll do. We don’t expect fancy work.”

  Faulkner was bowling well, getting real pace out of the hard pitch. But I could see that Torris was getting on his nerves. So well positioned behind the stumps, I could now appreciate the irritation of Torris’s pad play. Twice Faulkner broke through his guard, and once appealed confidently for l.b.w. But Torris’s man was at the other end. I saw Faulkner bite his lip, and guessed what was coming.

  I wondered if Noxon would interfere, but Faulkner was his star player, and he himself no more than a keen rabbit. Faulkner set his field deliberately—five men on the leg side. I was a bit anxious—for myself: body-line bowling is no picnic for the wicket-keeper. Torris looked round at the new field in some anxiety—pad-players aren’t too fond of being hit.

  He certainly got what was coming for him. Faulkner’s second ball caught him a nasty blow just below the heart. Play was held up for a minute, and I saw Dr. Bingham look meaningly at Faulkner. But Faulkner was past looks, and had no mercy. Torris stopped the fifth ball of the over on the point of his knee, and almost jumped clear of the ground at its sudden sting—a fast ball on the knee can be very painful. He swung his leg to ease it, and took his stance for the final ball.

  It was never played. Just as
Faulkner began his long run, I noticed that Torris shuddered; a few seconds later—just as Faulkner delivered the ball—the bat fell from Torris’s hands. The ball crashed into the undefended wicket; I saw Torris staggering forward, clutching at his chest; a moment later he sank helplessly to the ground.

  I ran to his side, and fumbled with my clumsy gloves as he writhed on the crease, his hands pressed towards his heart. But now Dr. Bingham, from mid-off, was kneeling beside Torris. He called out to Knight to bring his bag from his car, and then forced a few drops of red liquid down Torris’s throat. At this stage I noticed that Pontivy was on the field, bending over Torris.

  “I fear that he is dead,” the old man said quietly to the doctor.

  “I’m afraid so,” Bingham agreed.

  The match was of course abandoned at once. I was more than concerned. Sergeant Wilkins, the local policeman, was in the Malmeston team, and I saw him talking to the Chief Constable.

  I pulled Noxon on one side. The old chap was naturally tremendously upset. We knew that Torris’s death was an accident—Faulkner had never meant to kill him. But that is merely the difference between manslaughter and murder. I did wonder, in fact, if a charge of murder might not be preferred. Manslaughter depends upon involuntary and unplanned conditions, accidents through negligence, and the like. But Faulkner, days before, had planned to bowl body-line at Torris; the fact that the bowling overreached his anticipations was no defence. Noxon thought that manslaughter was quite bad enough! He paralleled the case of a boxer who kills an opponent by a blow which might be classed as unfair. We were unhappy enough, in either case; the idea of giving evidence against Faulkner was not very comfortable!

  There was a long wait for an ambulance to take away the body. I heard the Chief Constable ask Bingham to undertake the autopsy, as the usual police surgeon was on annual summer leave. Then he went up to Faulkner.

  “I’m sorry, Faulkner,” he said, “but from what I hear I shall have to ask you to come along. I’m afraid you’ll have to face a charge of manslaughter—no, don’t talk now: you’re not charged yet. We’ll get hold of your solicitor at once. I suggest that Noxon comes with you to arrange for bail.”

  Faulkner, pale and subdued, acquiesced in silence, and the little party drove off. Half an hour later the ambulance arrived, and Bingham went with the body. It was indicative of the atmosphere of unrest that even Bingham, accustomed to death, had not taken off Torris’s pads—these outsize pads which had been the direct cause of the tragedy! I noticed this: so did Pontivy.

  “Get those pads off!” he whispered. It was his tone of voice which gave me the first hint of untoward events.

  I got into the ambulance and took off Torris’s pads and batting gloves, dropping them in a corner of our dressing-room.

  “Let the others go!” said Pontivy, softly.

  Already players were drifting away. Sergeant Wilkins had taken the names and addresses of those on the field, and had warned me—as the nearest spectator—that I would be needed at the inquest.

  “It is not going to be the inquest which the worthy sergeant expects,” said Pontivy.

  “Look here, Papa, what are you getting at?” I asked.

  “You know as much as I do—you saw the man die.”

  “But…”

  “How did he die?”

  “He got a blow over the heart.”

  “Yes, but that did not kill him. He died after a blow on the knee.”

  “Maybe delayed action,” I suggested.

  “I repeat, you saw the man die, and should know better. The man was poisoned!”

  “What?”

  “Once I caught a German spy,” said Papa Pontivy. “He knew that he could not escape, and that I had no mercy. So he swallowed a little phial of poison, and died. I do not forget it, or what he looked like. This man, I say, died the same way.”

  “But he didn’t swallow anything!”

  “No. But there are other methods of poisoning a man.”

  “Just a minute, Papa. Bingham saw him die, too, and he’s a doctor.”

  “A country doctor, in a respectable district. I wonder if he has ever seen a man die of poison?”

  “Well, he’ll find out!”

  “Yes. And in the meantime the murderer will have perfected his alibi.”

  “But—no one was near Torris!”

  “His pads were near him. Always look at the obvious, my dear Newman, and don’t bother about this circuitous moves of the detective story. The man died after a blow on the knee—that is a fact. The doctor will presumably examine the knee. We will examine the pads. His left knee, was it not?”

  Pontivy examined the pad with minute care, while I ensured that he was undisturbed. Five minutes later he called over to me.

  “Look! These pads are stiffened with cane. A splinter of cane has been bent back—my guess is that it has been impregnated with poison. A devilish scheme! And it worked!”

  “So the murderer is someone who knew that Torris was likely to be hit on the pads!”

  “Yes—though that appears to be common knowledge—do not touch that splinter!” he cried.

  “I wasn’t going to! But the bang over the heart…”

  “An accident—quite fortuitous.”

  “Well, what are you going to do? Wait for the result of the autopsy?”

  “No. I am quite certain what that will be. But if the murderer is clever, he must return to remove this splinter. We will wait, too—and watch.”

  The pavilion was the usual village hut, with two dressing-rooms under a common roof. I noticed that the rafters supported an accumulation of old nets and other impedimenta. We climbed up to a good vantage point.

  Two of the home team came in to collect their kit. Then a long silence. Half an hour must have passed. Then I felt a light tap from Pontivy.

  A man had entered the home dressing-room. We could not see him, but heard him turning over the cricket gear. Of course, he would expect to find Torris’s pads there. Now he came into our room, and I saw a look of relief on his face as he saw Torris’s large-sized pads on the floor.

  “I told you that I knew what the result of the autopsy would be,” Pontivy whispered, very faintly. “Heart failure—not poison!”

  Dr. Bingham! I saw him pick up the left pad, and press with a tiny pair of scissors at the inside of the knee-cap. Bingham? Of course; I ought to have suspected him earlier. Swiftly my mind ran the gamut of detection. Motive? The scandal about Torris and his wife. Opportunity? The knowledge that Faulkner would bowl body-line. The early arrival at the ground, while Torris was out on the pitch. The opportunity as a doctor to procure poisons, and the knowledge to use them.

  Of course, it must be Bingham. Was the absence of the police surgeon fortuitous? No, the crime had been fitted to the period. Yes, and his character fitted the crime, too—that selfish nature would see another man suffer in his place. Only if another were condemned would his own security be complete.

  “Life is a collection of trifles, Dr. Bingham,” said Pontivy from the rafters. “If only you could have removed the pads yourself, at the mortuary…”

  I saw terror in Bingham’s eyes. As I dropped to the ground beside him, I thought that he was preparing to fight. Then he accepted the inevitable, and jabbed his hand sharply against the protruding splinter of Torris’s pads.

  ‌The Wimbledon Mystery

  ‌Julian Symons

  Julian Symons (1912–1994) was an eminent crime writer and critic of the genre as well as being a biographer, poet, editor, and social and military historian. His early detective novels were relatively orthodox, but he soon became dissatisfied with the conventions of the classic form and began in the early 1950s to develop the British psychological crime novel. He admired the books of Patricia Highsmith, and although his fiction never quite matched the brilliance of her very finest work, he received the Gold Dagger for The Colour of Murder (1957) and an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for The Progress of a Crime (1960). In 1990 he
received the CWA Diamond Dagger in recognition of his outstanding career in the genre. He wrote an influential history of the genre, Bloody Murder (aka Mortal Consequences; three editions) and took particular pride in serving as President of the Detection Club from 1976–85.

  Symons was not himself a sportsman, but he enjoyed watching football, tennis, and in particular cricket. Sport occasionally featured in his prolific output of short stories, many of which were written in the 1950s and originally published in the Evening Standard. Examples include “Test Match Murder” and “The Grand National Case”, as well as this story, known both as “The Wimbledon Mystery” and “Centre Court Mystery”. It was included in Murder! Murder! (1961), a collection of Quarles’s cases; the detective appeared in many short stories but never in a novel.

  Young Jimmy Clayton, his red hair brilliant in the sunshine, a small brown zipper bag in his hand, jumped out of a car and pushed his way through a crowd of autograph seekers into the entrance hall of the All England Lawn Tennis Club.

  There a tall, thin, tense-looking man hurried up to him. This was Bobo Williams, coach to a generation of British tennis players, among whom Jimmy Clayton was one of the few bright stars.

  “Where have you been, Jimmy? We’ve been searching all over for you. Do you know Parker’s two sets up on Van Damm, and you’re on after them.”

  Jimmy flashed him a beaming smile. “And here I am.”

  “Really, this is no way to prepare—but I won’t say anything more now. After you’ve beaten Gladkov, young man, you and I are going to have a talk.”