by Tony Medawar
In making this acquaintance with his victim Julian was favoured by fortune. Rejecting his usual method of approach to a stranger (an offer to sell him some shares in an oil-well in British Columbia) he was presenting himself at the Hall as the special representative of a paper interested in eastern affairs, when he heard a cry for help from a little coppice which bordered the drive.
Sir George, it seemed, had tripped over a root and sprained his ankle. With the utmost good will Julian carried him up to the house.
When he left an hour later it was with a promise to drop in on a bed-ridden Sir George the next day and play a game of chess with him.
Julian was no great chess-player, but he was sufficiently intimate with the pieces to give Sir George the constant pleasure of beating him.
Between games he learned all he could of his host’s habits and the family’s dispositions. There seemed to him to be several admirable candidates for chief suspect, particularly a younger brother of sinister aspect called Eustace, who had convinced himself that he was to be the principal legatee.
Any morbid expectations you may now have of a detailed assessment of the murder of Sir George Corphew will not be satisfied. It is enough to say that it involved the conventional blunt instrument, and took place at a time when some at least of the family would not be likely to have an alibi.
Julian was not at this time an experienced murderer, and he would have been the first to admit that he had been a little careless about footprints, finger-prints and cigarette ash. But as he would never be associated with the murder, this did not matter.
All went as he had anticipated. A London solicitor had produced a will in which all the family was heavily involved and the inspector had busied himself with their alibis, making it clear that he regarded each one with the liveliest suspicion.
Moreover, Uncle Marius was delighted to pursue his own line of investigation which, after hovering for a moment round the Vicar, was now rapidly leading to a denunciation of an under-gardener called Spratt.
‘Don’t put anything on paper,’ said Julian kindly. ‘It might be dangerous. Ring up the Inspector, and ask him to come in and see you tonight. Then you can tell him all about it.’
‘That’s a good idea, my boy,’ said Marius. ‘That’s what I’ll do.’
But, as it happened, the Inspector was already on his way. A local solicitor had turned up with a new will, made only a few days before. ‘In return for his kindness in playing chess with an old man,’ as he put it, Sir George had made Julian Crayne his sole legatee.
Very unfair.
A. A. MILNE
Alan Alexander Milne was born in 1882. While he is best known for his stories for children about a certain teddy bear, A. A. Milne also wrote a number of detective stories and one novel, which in its day was something of a sensation.
A. A. Milne began his career writing for the school magazine at Westminster and he went on to edit Granta at Cambridge. In his twenties, despite his parents’ hopes that he would join the Civil Service or become a teacher, he joined the staff of the satirical magazine Punch. During the First World War, Milne served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment until he was invalided out after being injured in the battle of the Somme. After recuperating, he joined Military Intelligence in which capacity his role consisted mainly of writing propaganda articles until he was discharged in 1919.
This was around the beginning of what was to become the ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction and, in addition to writing a number of successful comedy plays, Milne fulfilled what he called his ‘passion’ for the genre and wrote a detective story himself. The result, first serialised in the Daily News, was The Red House Mystery, in which an amateur sleuth investigates a mysterious shooting. The novel was widely praised and it was heralded by one eminent critic, with a slight qualification, as ‘the most vivacious detective story, I think, that I have ever read’.
Despite—or perhaps because of—the tremendous artistic and commercial success of his first attempt, Milne did not write another novel-length mystery. He did however write some criminous plays, including The Fourth Wall, in which a pair of ‘bright young things’ prove that an apparent suicide is murder. The play was first produced in 1928, by which time Milne had become internationally famous for Winnie-the-Pooh, a volume of short stories first published in book form in 1926. Winnie-the-Pooh was followed by The House at Pooh Corner and both books feature a small boy called Christopher Robin, named for Milne’s son who had been born in 1920.
Milne continued to write plays, including an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and essays on war and pacifism. However, his wider writing remained very much in the shadow of Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, whose popularity grated on Milne much as Sherlock Holmes eventually became a curse for Conan Doyle. During the Second World War, Milne served as a Captain in the Home Guard, but in 1952 a stroke effectively brought his writing career to an end, and he died in 1956.
One of only a small number of short detective stories by Milne, ‘Bread upon the Waters’ was first published in the London Evening Standard on 10 April 1950.
THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED THUMB
Anthony Berkeley
I
To smack the face of one’s employer’s husband, even under the severest provocation, cannot be considered good policy for a nursery-governess. Exactly three hours after neatly imprinting a small red splodge on M. Duchateau’s sallow cheek, Veronica Steyning found herself stepping into a taxi in front of the trim Duchateau villa on the outskirts of Nice, with her trunk on the roof and a month’s salary in her purse.
And did she return sorrowing to England, to seek humbly for a respectable post in Sutton or Surbiton? She did not. She took the next train to Monte Carlo, which in all her two years’ guardianship over the stout but virtuous Duchateau offspring she had never yet visited, and spent the whole month’s salary and the salary of more than one month before it, in buying all the clothes which she had always longed for and never before had the courage to acquire. It is very soothing at times to be utterly, violently and improvidently mad.
Not, however, that Veronica was quite so mad as she pretended to herself. She had saved money during those two years and she knew quite well that she could afford a holiday before beginning to look out for another post. But at twenty-two one must pretend to oneself to be rather mad sometimes.
Seated on a bench overlooking the blue sea in the Casino gardens two days later, Veronica was finding that life, for once in a while, was good. She was wearing some of the new clothes and that helped life to be good. Veronica was still wondering at the strange feeling of positively enjoying life, when she became aware of a large black shadow between herself and the sun. She looked up.
The shadow belonged to a tall young man, with a tanned, lean face and remarkably blue eyes, who was coughing in a deprecatory sort of way. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘but did you know you’d dropped this?’
Veronica pounced gladly on the handkerchief that he was offering her. She had bought some handkerchiefs only yesterday and they had been regrettably expensive. She felt most grateful to the tall young man for retrieving this one and thanked him warmly. So warmly, it seemed, that the young man appeared to consider her tone an invitation to sit down on the bench beside her, which he promptly did.
Veronica, who had been a little taken aback, smiled at herself. This after all was Monte Carlo, where acquaintances were as easily made as forgotten. Besides, she had been a little lonely these last two days. Half-an-hour’s chat would not come at all amiss.
To her surprise she found herself, long before the half-hour was up, giving the young man, who had introduced himself by now under the name of Geoffrey Grant, a vivid account of her ejectment from the Duchateau villa. It wasn’t a good story and Veronica realised now that she had been spoiling for an audience to hear it. She made the most of it.
Mr Grant seemed much impressed by the recital. The more so, it appeared, because Mr Gr
ant himself had done almost exactly the same thing. Only a few days ago Mr Grant had been secretary to a highly unpleasant millionaire. The millionaire had been even more unpleasant than usual and Mr Grant with manly dignity had told him a few facts which somebody ought to have told him years ago and then rapidly followed them with his resignation before the millionaire could recover enough breath to dismiss him. And then, instead of returning humbly to England to seek another post, just like Veronica, Mr Grant had taken a room at an expensive hotel and proceeded to take a holiday worth having.
‘This,’ said Veronica solemnly, ‘is fate.’
‘It is,’ agreed young Mr Grant, no less solemnly.
Veronica, who a few minutes ago had looked on this encounter as a chance affair with no sequel once the two of them had said good morning and parted, began to wonder. One might not believe in fate, but one cannot fail to recognise coincidence.
‘Have you been to the Casino yet?’ asked Mr Grant. ‘No? Then we go there tonight.’
Veronica nodded her agreement. It seemed the least one could do, to celebrate such an admirable coincidence.
She opened her bag to stow away the handkerchief which all this time she had been holding in her hand and from the inside another handkerchief innocently confronted her.
‘Hullo! This isn’t my handkerchief after all.’
Mr Grant looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Isn’t it? Are—are you sure you didn’t have two? Lots of people do, you know.’
‘Where did you find it?’ Veronica asked severely.
‘Well, if you must know,’ said Mr Grant with reluctance, ‘on the beach at Cannes yesterday afternoon. Were you in Cannes yesterday afternoon?’ he added hopefully.
Veronica smiled. ‘I don’t think I ought to come to the Casino with you tonight.’
‘But you will,’ said Mr Grant with confidence.
Mr Grant’s confidence was justified; Veronica did go to the Casino with him that evening, but Mr Grant did not know how near she came during the afternoon to not going. It was only her sense of humour, which told her that a young man who would go so far as to buy a handkerchief in order to scrape an acquaintance really deserved to have his enterprise rewarded, that brought her to the meeting place.
The Casino, with its rococo magnificence, had not attracted Veronica; the gaming-rooms themselves definitely disappointed her. The highly-coloured fiction that has made a legend of this rather dreary spot, raises one’s expectations altogether too high. Veronica had to admit that the throng around her differed in no particular, except in its cosmopolitan composition, from the sort of audience one might expect to see at a smart Wagner concert in Brighton.
She explored the place under Mr Grant’s guidance, watched the play for a time at one or two tables, not at all sure who was winning and who losing, risked a few ten-franc throws herself without any sensational result, sat on a settee and drank some coffee and then professed herself ready to go. They separated in the vestibule to go to their respective cloakrooms, and met again on the steps outside. Mr Grant proposed a stroll through the gardens before he took her back to her hotel, and Veronica agreed.
When they had reached the sea-front Mr Grant, looking slightly triumphant, asked her if she had missed anything.
‘No,’ said Veronica, puzzled.
With the air of a conjurer producing the rabbit from the top-hat Mr Grant drew a small black and silver moiré bag from his pocket. ‘Then what about this?’ he asked. ‘You left it on the settee.’
Veronica looked at it in bewilderment. ‘That isn’t my bag. I’ve got mine here, under my cloak.’
II
It was Geoffrey Grant’s turn to look bewildered.
‘Not your bag? But …’
‘Here’s mine, look,’ said Veronica. ‘Why, how extraordinary! They’re almost the same, aren’t they?’
Geoffrey Grant took the bag she was holding out to him and compared the two. Except for some small differences in the filigree work they were identical.
‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘whose is this one?’
‘It must belong to that woman who was sitting on my left. Do you remember? A handsome, Spanish-looking person in a black velvet frock and a little hat with ospreys. Her husband came up to her, or some man, and she went off with him. I expect she’s still in the Casino. You ought to take this back there at once, Mr Grant. I’ll stay here.’
The Casino was only a couple of minutes away, but in a hurried inspection of the crowd round the tables Geoffrey could not see the Spanish-looking lady in black velvet or her escort, whose face he only dimly remembered. Leaving the bag at the bureau, with an explanation of how it had come into his possession, he hurried back to Veronica.
She greeted him with an exclamation of relief. ‘Oh, Mr Grant, thank goodness you’re back. I don’t much like being here alone. I’ve had an adventure.’
‘An adventure?’ Geoffrey echoed, leaning his elbows on the stone balustrade beside her.
‘Yes. What do you think? A man came up to me just after you’d gone and said, most politely, that he feared there’d been a mistake over my handbag, and would I kindly give him the one that had been inadvertently taken by my—by you,’ Veronica corrected herself hastily. ‘I said you’d gone back to the Casino with it and he faded away.’
‘Quick work,’ Geoffrey commented in surprise. ‘The husband, I suppose?’
‘No, that’s the funny thing. It wasn’t the husband.’
‘That’s odd. And in any case, how on earth did he know that we’d come here?’
‘That’s just what I wondered. And, Mr Grant!’
‘Hullo?’
‘He was quite polite, and all that, but somehow—I don’t know—he frightened me. He made me positively shiver, just like the snake-house in the zoo.’ She looked at him with a face that still retained traces of fright.
If Geoffrey was impressed, he took care not to show it. ‘Nerves!’ he said robustly. ‘Nerves and Monte Carlo combined. What a ridiculous fuss about a simple matter of two handbags. What does a handbag contain? What does your handbag contain? A handkerchief, a lip-stick and a powder puff. What you need, young woman, is a cup of strong coffee. Come along.’
Veronica let him lead the way. Her recent encounter had shaken her even more than she had admitted. As Geoffrey Grant said, it was absurd to imagine that the man had really set much store on the restitution of an insignificant handbag and even more absurd to feel that there had been an undercurrent of purposeful menace beneath his perfectly courteous manner. Of course it was nerves. A good cup of black coffee and perhaps a sip of brandy would set all that right in a moment. For the first time in her life Veronica felt she really needed such a stimulant if she were not to faint or do something else equally ridiculous.
Seated a minute or two later at a small open-air table before the café which borders the famous open space in front of the Casino, Veronica felt some compunction as she observed the care with which Geoffrey was ordering the very best brandy that the place could supply.
‘Are you sure you can afford it?’ she asked frankly, when the waiter had gone.
Geoffrey looked a little surprised. ‘Why not?’
‘I should hate to think I’d cut short your holiday by a day for the sake of a glass of brandy,’ Veronica smiled. ‘Your own glass, I mean. Of course, I shall pay you for mine.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the kind.’
‘Indeed I shall,’ Veronica said firmly. ‘We’re both in the same boat, so we’ll pull equally at the oars. Otherwise I shall feel I can’t go out with you again.’
‘Independent sort of girl, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Geoffrey smiled. ‘I like independence. Very well, you shall pay. I suppose,’ he added, with a casual air, ‘if I were a bloated millionaire myself instead of only the ex-secretary of one, you wouldn’t be with me now?’
‘No,’ said Veronica without hesitation. ‘And I should have been very much annoyed about your trick w
ith the handkerchief, Mr Grant. But being in the same boat does make a difference. I don’t know why, but it does.’
‘Kindred spirits,’ suggested Mr Grant.
‘Something like that, perhaps,’ admitted Veronica.
The arrival of the waiter put a stop to any possible development of this theme. While he was serving them Veronica let her eyes roam over the brilliantly lighted scene and the other small tables around them. Suddenly she uttered a low exclamation.
Geoffrey looked up. ‘What is it?’
‘Don’t look round now, but that Spanish woman is here, a few tables away behind your left shoulder. I’m quite sure she wasn’t there when we sat down. I noticed those tables as we came over.’
‘Curious coincidence,’ Geoffrey said lightly. ‘Well, we haven’t got her bag, so we can’t help her.’
Veronica sipped her coffee. She had not mentioned it to Geoffrey, but it had seemed to her that the Spanish woman had been watching them intently. She was looking away now, but only after she had caught Veronica’s eye. Nerves again, Veronica told herself impatiently, and set herself to be interested only in Geoffrey’s conversation.
She was interested and it was not long before she forgot the Spanish woman and her strange friend; Geoffrey could be very charming when he liked and he was obviously liking now. When the two got up to go, nearly an hour later, their friendship had made a considerable stride. Christian names had been exchanged and Veronica was already beginning to feel that for the rest of her stay Monte Carlo would be a still more pleasant place for her.
But the incident of the bag had not passed quite from her mind. As Geofirey was seeing her back to her hotel she stopped once and looked back. Geoffrey asked her what was the matter.
‘It’s silly of me,’ Veronica said, with a rather nervous little laugh, ‘but I had an idea that we were being followed.’
