by Howard Mason
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THE RED BISHOP, by Howard Mason
Copyright © 1953 by M.S. Mill Co. Inc.
PROLOGUE
From the front page of the Daily Pictorial, in the weeks March 10th-20th:
(i) Saturday:
BIRTHDAY BRINGS DEATH
Recluse Peer Explorer-Heir on Safari
Viscount Stonybridge of Stour, 84-year-old recluse of Stony Castle, Stour, Warwickshire, made his once-a-year trip to London yesterday to celebrate his birthday quietly at the Athenaeum Club.
During dinner, he was overcome by a stroke. He died soon afterwards.
Wealthy Lord Stonybridge—his father, the sixth Viscount, left 750,000—lived on a modest scale in one wing of 150-year-old Stony Castle. He had few friends, saw almost nobody in the last years of his life.
Lord Stonybridge, a lonely man, had no children. The new Viscount is his great-nephew, Major Oliver Scrivener, great-grandson of the sixth Viscount. He is exploring in Central Africa, does not yet know of his great-uncle’s death.
New heir: Capt. Charles Scrivener, 32-year-old racing-journalist, of Chelsea. He is the new Viscount’s cousin.
(ii) Monday:
PEER’S HEIR FINDS DYING MAN IN FLAT
Flood Street Mystery
Racing-columnist Charles Scrivener, 32, cousin and heir of Viscount Stonybridge of Stour, late last night returned to his flat in Flood Street, Chelsea, to find an unknown man slumped in a chair in his sitting-room. Half an hour later, the man died.
“I have never seen the man before,” tall, fair Capt. Scrivener told our correspondent. “It was a shock. I cannot say more at this stage.”
The police, called in by Capt. Scrivener, are trying to identify the man, who is described as tall—six feet—thin, aged between 65 and 70, grey-haired, blue-eyed, and in very poor physical condition at the time of his death. The cause of death has not yet been ascertained.
Capt. Scrivener became heir to the eighth Viscount Stonybridge last week when his great-uncle, the seventh Viscount, died aged 84.
(iii) Tuesday:
FLOOD STREET DEATH: MYSTERY DEEPENS
Unknown Man Left Red Bishop
The unknown man found dying in the flat of Capt. Charles Scrivener, heir to Lord Stonybridge, on Sunday, left a chess-piece—a red bishop—on Capt. Scrivener’s mantelpiece before slumping into a chair to die, it was disclosed to-day.
It is now revealed that the six-foot Mystery Man died of pneumonia, accelerated by insufficient nourishment and lack of care.
Tall, fair, good-looking Capt. Scrivener told our correspondent to-day: “The red bishop, which is about four inches high, and of an unusual design, was on my mantelpiece.”
Fingerprints on its base were those of the dead man, says Inspector C. P. Churt, in charge of investigations.
Capt. Scrivener’s valet, black-eyed, twinkling Mr. Norton Chalmers,” said to-day: “I had inadvertently left the front door of the flat unlocked on the Sunday evening, when I went to meet a friend at a nearby public-house.”
In a friendly chat with our correspondent over a glass of beer, red-haired Mr. Chalmers, known familiarly as “Nobby,” continued…
(The remainder of Tuesday’s item is of little interest and has been excised.)
(iv) Friday:
“RED BISHOP” INQUEST
Mystery Man Spoke “I Have No Name”
New Disclosures
At the inquest on the “Red Bishop” Mystery Man today, Capt. Charles Scrivener revealed that the man made an attempt to speak before he died.
Answering the Coroner, Mr. C. Evans, Capt. Scrivener said:
“I asked the man his name. His breathing was bad, and he spoke with difficulty. He replied: ‘I have no name.’”
Coroner: “Did you question him further?”
Capt. S.: “I asked where he came from.”
Coroner: “What was his reply?”
Capt. S.: “‘Where I come from is a prison.’”
Coroner: “Is that the exact phrasing?”
Capt. S.: “Yes, sir.”
Coroner: “Very curious.”
Later, asked about the dead man’s voice, Capt. Scrivener
replied:
“It was educated, with careful enunciation. I thought English might not be his native tongue, though there was no recognizable accent.”
Coroner: “And he did not speak again?”
Capt. S.: “No, sir.”
Police evidence, given by Inspector C. P. Churt, revealed that the man would not be identified with any known escaped prisoner from jails in England or the Continent.
Coroner: “This odd remark of his is evidently to be understood metaphorically?”
Insp. C.: “Evidently, sir.”
Coroner: “And you have not succeeded in identifying him?”
Insp. C.: “No, sir.”
Verdict: Death from natural causes. The Mystery Man will be given a parish burial.
(v) Saturday:
Oxford Wins!
Boat-Race Sensation!
(“Red Bishop” Case: No further developments expected)
PART ONE
Charles Scrivener’s Story
CHAPTER I
When my great-uncle George Albert Bernard Scrivener, seventh Viscount Stonybridge of Stour, died suddenly in the Athenaeum Club on his eighty-fourth birthday, I didn’t shed a great many tears.
I had never met the old man, and knew little about him except that he had a reputation for meanness, which may or may not have been justified, but which arose presumably from the fact that although he was known to be as rich as Croesus, he lived on a scale that was meagre even by the standards of post-war aristocracy; in fact, he was known among his small club acquaintance as “Stingy Stony.”
That I had never met him was not very surprising, because great-uncle George was a man of recluse-like habit, and lived in the utmost seclusion at Stony Castle, devoting himself to the cultivation of the rarer kinds of orchid and to the care of the remarkable gardens of Stour. He emerged from his estate once a year only, in order to attend the annual meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society and to celebrate his birthday with a solitary dinner at the Athenaeum Club. Since the Royal Horticultural Society was not rigidly conservative in its choice of date, Lord Stonybridge’s birthday was deemed to be, like Easter, a movable feast.
Moreover, ours is not a clannish family, and my own branch of it has been in disgrace ever since my grandfather married a Gaiety Girl before getting himself killed in the Boer War. As a matter of fact I believe my cousin Oliver’s branch was disgraced, too, only in their case it was a little milliner; and there was also great-uncle John, who did something nameless and had to be sent to Ceylon. Since then all the Scriveners seem to have led blameless lives, but far apart.
Since Stony had never married, his heir was my cousin Oliver, who spent most of his time exploring in Central Africa, was a healthy thirty-five, and had married a prolific girl who, though so far prodigal only of daughters, would undoubtedly produce any number of male heirs, given time.
At the time of Stony’s death, I was involved in an unfortunate business which readers of the Daily Pictorial will remember as “The Red Bishop Case.” This affair was taking up a good deal of my time and attention, and gave me a brief but rather tiresome notoriety; so that, what with one thing and another, I had scarcely taken in the fact that Stony was dead.
It was therefore with a sense of disbelief that I was awakened one morning, a few days after the “Red Bishop” inquest, by my man Nobby, who threw back the curtains with a hideous rattle, banged down the window, and announced:
“Wake up, cock, you’re a peer of the realm.”
I stared at the terrier-like figure who surveyed me from the foot of the bed. He had a tray balanced precariously on one hand, and his red hair stood up on end in a sort of brush, like undergrowth which has been carelessly scythed down. His bright black eyes were fixed upon my face in an expression of momentous expectancy.
I snorted and turned over firmly in bed.
“No, honest,” said Nobby. “Look here.”
He slapped down The Times and began to pour me some tea.
Propping myself on a rather threadbare elbow, I examined the page he had folded. It was true enough. My cousin Oliver had been killed in a shooting accident two days before Stony’s death, and I, Charles Scrivener, was now Viscount Stonybridge of Stour.
As I digested this attractive piece of news, Nobby set a cup down beside me, poured himself some tea from my pot, and sat down heavily on the end of the bed. I ignored this piece of lèse-majesté and opened my letters.
The first was from the late Lord Stonybridge’s solicitors, informing me of Oliver’s death and congratulating me on my inheritance. It requested me to call at my convenience, and added a note of warning to the effect that I must not entertain great expectations of my great-uncle’s estate.
The second, third, and fourth, respectively, were Final Demand notices, in red, from my tailor, my landlord, and the telephone manager for the Chelsea district.
The fifth and last was from the manager of my bank, reminding me that my account was considerably overdrawn, and asking me in terms of polite periphrasis what I was going to do about it.
So there I was, a peer of the realm, without so much to my name as the price of a bus-fare to the House of Lords.
I picked up The Times again and began to study the list of yesterday’s Lincoln winners.
* * * *
Nobody knew what Stony had done with his money. His solicitor, Mr. Walter Mott, of Mott, Babington and Pettigrew, expended some forty-five minutes and a great deal of tact in making this blunt truth plain.
I went straight round to see him that morning. He began by running through a good deal of Stonybridge family history, and since he was inclined to be wordy and since I wasn’t really interested in anything except hard figures, which he took a long time in reaching, I sat listening with half an ear and looked him over. I collect solicitors, having had quite a lot to do with them in my time, one way and another, and this looked a nice, prosperous specimen; a big pear-shaped man with a broad stomach, on which a half-hunter rose and fell with a gentle motion as he breathed in and out. There was a flower in his buttonhole, I noticed, and he wore neat black-buttoned boots. I completed my survey just as he came to Stony’s will, and I sat up then and gave him my full attention.
The will, it appeared, was a simple one; after a few small bequests to servants, Stony’s entire private fortune was to go along with the entailed estate to the heir to the title. I cheered up on hearing this, because I knew that the entail itself wasn’t very opulent, and when Mott had warned me not to expect too much, I’d had an awful foreboding that Stony might have left his own private fortune to the Royal Horticultural Society, or some equally deserving but eccentrically chosen beneficiary.
But my gratification was short-lived; it appeared that there wasn’t any private fortune, after all; or nothing to speak of.
“As you know,” said Mott, “the late Lord Stonybridge inherited a considerable sum from his father—”
“How considerable?”
“Ah—something over three-quarters of a million pounds.”
The Pictorial had got it right, then. But I might have known it was too good to be true. I said:
“Don’t tell me he’s spent it.”
“Ah—that does appear to be the position.”
I hadn’t meant it seriously, but evidently it was no joke. “You may not be aware,” Mott pursued, “that Lord Stonybridge didn’t obtain the free use of the capital until 1929, when he was sixty. Until that date, it was held for him in the form of a trust, of which this firm were the trustees.”
“In other words, he must have got rid of it all in the last twenty years or so?”
“That appears to be the position, yes.”
“How much is there left?”
“A matter of ten thousand pounds. Before tax, that is. Of course, there are still a number of points to be tidied up, but that does appear to be th
e position.”
If he said it again, I’d scream. I did a bit of rapid arithmetic. Ten thousand. Less death duties. Say three or four hundred a year. It was better than a flick in the face from a horse’s tail, I thought, but it wasn’t the same as three-quarters of a million.
I said: “What on earth did he do with it? He lived like a hermit, didn’t he?”
“I believe that is so, yes.”
“Gardening may be an expensive hobby, but it can’t be as expensive as that.”
“I entirely agree with you.”
We didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I said: “Surely there’s some record? What about the bank’s records?”
“They indicate only that the money was withdrawn, in several installments, over the years 1937 and 1938; he appears to have sold out his investments as he went along. There is no indication, naturally, of the purpose to which he intended to put it.”
This narrowed the field down a bit, anyway. Not that it mattered much, since the money was gone, but I couldn’t help being curious. I said: “What about Stony’s own papers? Isn’t there anything there?”
Mott fingered his watch-chain with an apologetic air. “I have explored all the avenues, Lord Stonybridge. You may rest assured that I have done that. I have been down to Stour, I have searched his papers; I have questioned—discreetly of course—here, questioned there. You might almost say that I have left no stone unturned. Naturally I wished to be in a position to—ah—satisfy the beneficiary; yourself, that is. But I fear that is all I am able to tell you.”
I digested this for a moment. Then I said: “Have you got any personal ideas about what he did with it?”
“It’s possible, of course, that he was attempting in some way to circumvent the death duty, which would have been considerable on such an inheritance.”
“If he was salting it away to avoid death duties, surely he’d have let his heir know what he’d done with it? There’d be no point otherwise. Anyway, he didn’t even know for certain who his heir would be, at that stage. Why go to all that trouble? It wasn’t as though he had a son.”
“That is true.” Mott pondered. “He may have wished to donate a generous sum to some worthy charity, anonymously, you know; it is frequently done. Then again, he may have—ah—gambled with it unwisely. I mean on the Stock Exchange, of course,” he added hastily, “not on—horse-races or anything of that kind.” He gazed at me anxiously as the hideous interpretation of his words occurred to him. I told him that I was a racing-journalist by profession, and that it was immaterial to me whether my great-uncle chose to lose his money on the Stock Exchange or on one of the less respectable games of chance. The only distressing point, it seemed to me, was that he had lost it.
