Corpse At The Carnival (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series)

by George Bellairs

  'Hello, hello. . . . Here we are again! Good old Sea Vista. You leavin' to queue for the first boat out? Bit early, aren't you? All the same, it's as well to get it over.'

  He wouldn't shut up, and looked like being the life and soul of next week's party.

  'Hear there's been a spot of trouble. Old man lodging here, died in the carnival. . . . How's old Trimble?'

  'Dead,' said Littlejohn. 'They're burying him today.'

  It seemed a damned shame to greet the fellow thus, but he wouldn't stop talking. He crumpled up.

  'Wot!'

  'It's all right. The place is in good hands. They're carrying on. . . . Mind if we take your taxi ?'

  They heaved out his suitcase and went back to the police-station in his hired car. Then, home.

  They drove slowly, along the old road which wound its way between sod hedges golden with gorse, past white farms just awakening, through wooded valleys alive with early birdsong, and skirted Castletown, still sleeping under the shadow of its granite castle. Grenaby. The little signpost pointing in the direction of the brown southern hills and the wild rising roads to the Round Table, with the hidden village nestling sheltered in the middle of the wilderness in a clump of great old trees.

  Littlejohn couldn't help thinking of Uncle Fred, the man who thought he'd found peace, when all the time he'd touched off a series of dramatic events which ended in wholesale tragedy.

  There was a smell of ham and eggs on the air around the parsonage when they arrived. During the day, as the boats and planes took away departing holidaymakers and as quickly brought in eager replacements, Littlejohn and the Archdeacon sat on the garden bench, beside the large century-old fuchsia and shaded by old trees, and slept the hours away, making up for a lost night's sleep. Thus Mrs Littlejohn found them when she arrived with Meg, the dog, on an unexpectedly early plane. The bobtail's soft nose thrust between his hands awoke Littlejohn to a new day and the beginnings of his real holiday.

  Dear Reader,

  My name is Tim Binding. I am a novelist, but I want to tell you about George Bellairs, the forgotten hero of crime writing

  George Bellairs was bank manager and he wrote over fifty novels in his spare time. Most of them were published by the Thriller Book Club run by Christina Foyle, manager of the world famous Foyle’s bookshop, and who became a friend. His books are set at a time when the real-life British Scotland Yard would send their most brilliant of sleuths out to the rest of the country to solve their most insolvable of murders. Bellairs’ hero, gruff, pipe-smoking Inspector Littlejohn appears in all of them.

  Many of Bellairs’ books are set in the Isle of Man – where he retired. Some take place in the South of France. All the others are set in an England that now lives in the memory, a world of tight-knit communities, peopled by solicitors and magistrates, farmers and postmen and shopkeepers, with pubs and haberdasheries and the big house up the road - but though the world might have moved on, what drove them to murder, drives murder now: jealousies and greed, scandal and fear still abound, as they always have.

  So, if you liked this one, dip into the world of George Bellairs. In the coming months and years there’ll be plenty of books to choose from. Why don’t you join me, and sign up to the George Bellairs mailing list?

  •First thing you’ll get is a free book.

  •Then, from time to time I’ll send you publishing information.

  •In the New Year I plan to visit the George Bellairs’ archive. Who knows what I’ll find there. Letters, unpublished work? I’ll let you know.

  So join me in forming a George Bellairs community, you can sign up here: http://eepurl.com/ba6DNn

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Tim Binding