Death in Albert Park

by Bruce, Leo

“Somewhere round four in the morning.”

  “At what time did you report it to the police?”

  “Five hours later.”

  “What did you do during those five hours?”

  “Slept.”

  “Knowing a man was lying dead in Albert Park lodge?”

  “There was nothing to be done about it.”

  “Though you believed him to have been murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “I find your conduct in many respects reprehensible. You appear to have regarded the tragic deaths of three innocent women an occasion for the exercise of your hobby. If you have not impeded the police in the exercise of their duties you have certainly done nothing to assist them. And when you came on the dead body of John Slatter, instead of immediately reporting it you callously went off to bed. It may be that you will have to answer for this in another court and I shall certainly see that the relevant documents are sent to the public prosecutor’s office.”

  A solicitor representing the dead man’s family wanted to know what made Carolus think Slatter had been murdered and Carolus referred him to evidence already given that an autopsy had revealed morphine. There was no morphine in tablets of the kind Slatter was presumed to have swallowed. This had already emerged during the hearing of expert evidence and made very little impression now.

  The Inquest continued and eventually an open verdict was recorded.

  But the evening papers went to town on the Coroner’s remarks to Carolus. “Schoolmaster Reprimanded,” they halloo’d. “Papers Sent to Public Prosecutor.” “Deene Believes Slatter Murdered.” “ ‘Callous’ Behaviour of Criminologist.”

  Carolus decided to escape at once from Albert Park and drove to Crabtree Avenue to collect his belongings from number 32. A group at the gate made him change his mind and he drove on, turning along Cromarty Avenue and down Oaktree Avenue he reached Blackheath and made for Newminster.

  Here, he knew, a no less awkward situation awaited him. Mr. Gorringer was a regular reader of the evening papers and although none of them had actually mentioned the school’s name he would regard this as ‘smirched’ by the inclusion, in a most unfavourable light, of his history master. Then Mrs. Stick, who had so often threatened to leave Carolus when he had become involved in what she called his nasty cases, might really make good her threats. Her sister in Batter-sea, respectably married to someone ‘in the Undertaking’, whose disapproval Mrs. Stick feared above everything, might already have read and telephoned. Altogether it was an unhappy prospect.

  But Carolus was less seriously depressed by this, than by the belief that he had failed to prevent the death of Slatter and that even now he was leaving Albert Park with his hard-gained theory about all these murders unrevealed. If he was right, he was leaving a murderer free, and one who had proved that he would stop at nothing.

  Moreover he was leaving the people in the suburb behind him further disquieted. Several of them had trusted him with information and assistance in order that he might relieve their anxieties by identifying the murderer. Miss Cratchley, with whom he had talked on the phone, was bitterly disappointed in him. The relatives and friends of the dead women had seemed to have confidence in him and in some sense he had failed them.

  His best hope was to formulate his case and somehow persuade the police to consider it, if they had not already come to similar conclusions. Only if they would do this could the matter be cleared up. He had not the power or the facilities for following the various clues which were in their hands—he was, he felt wretchedly, no more than a theoritician while they looked for hard proof. The raincoat, the knife, the cloth cap, the muffler and the spectacles, these were what could hang someone or send him to Broadmoor. Carolus could only suggest a line of enquiry. But he believed he was right and determined to set out his case as convincingly as possible. After that, it would be up to Dyke.

  He was putting the car in the garage at Newminster when he saw his least favourite pupil awaiting him.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, sir, you’ve done it now,” said Priggley. “ ‘Schoolmaster Reprimanded’. I suppose it had to come. But you’ve certainly raised hell this time.”

  “Take yourself off, will you?”

  “You see what comes of sending me away? You’re simply not to be trusted with a murder, sir. I suppose while this character Slatter was being poisoned you were off on one of your wild chases in that rattler of yours. Collecting vital evidence, or something equally corny.”

  Carolus walked past him but Priggley followed.

  “You simply can’t go on like this, you know. It’s too late for you now to be one of those steely-nerved, hard-faced tough boys who face danger every time they go near a case and leap about like crickets among the corpses. You can’t do Raymond Chandler stuff. But what about Maigret? Your whole style’s lacking in finish, sir. All you do is interview the dullest people and absorb the atmosphere, or something. It’s too much.”

  Carolus was nearly home.

  “Oh, I’ve no doubt you know who the murderer is. You’ll pull that name out of the bag all right. I give you that. But it’s not enough, sir. We want surprises, escapes, dangers all along the line.”

  “Who are ‘we’?”

  “I should have said your fans until a short time ago. But they’re falling off. You’ve disappointed them. The most you ever achieve in the way of sensation is a comfortably fast run in a car.”

  Carolus prepared to enter his home and close the front door on this odious boy.

  “Anyway you’ve had it this time. Gorringer’s blowing his top. As for Mrs. Stick—you wait till you see Mrs. Stick. Even my merry humour couldn’t draw a smile from her. She has got to Speak, she says. She has let it go too long. She might have known it would come to this. She was only saying to Stick. One way and another, sir, you’re in for a very difficult day or two. Perhaps you had forgotten that the summer term, so called, starts tomorrow? Your colleagues will welcome you to the common-room, no doubt, after seeing that you have been publicly reprimanded. ‘Papers Sent to Public Prosecutor’. Gorringer will love that. But sir, why didn’t you keep me with you?”

  “I ought to have. You might have been murdered.”

  “I could have saved you from the wildest of your gaffes. Why on earth didn’t you report the thing when you found it? You had only to go to a telephone.”

  “That didn’t matter. What matters is that the murderer is still at large.”

  “ ‘At large’. How Valentine Vox can you get? And which murderer, anyway?”

  “There’s only one,” said Carolus as though to himself.

  “And you know him?”

  “I know who it is.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “No, but the police could.”

  “Can you persuade them to?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “Oh God! One of those interminable statements of yours, full of deduction and elegant phraseology. Why can’t you catch one murderer at least on the job. Or chase him through the slums of Manchester or something? You need action to re-establish what reputation you once had.”

  “It’s not my line, I’m afraid, Priggley. Now run along, will you?”

  “You’d better let me come in and face Mrs. Stick with you. I have more influence with her than you.”

  “Oh very well,” said Carolus wearily and entered his house.

  Eighteen

  MRS. STICK ominously said nothing while she brought in the decanter and siphon and set them beside Carolus. There was perhaps a hostile flash in her steel-rimmed glasses and her thin lips were compressed to a faint pink line. At first it seemed that she would leave the room with her store of outrage, but at the door she turned.

  “It’s no good, sir. I shall have to Speak. I’ve seen what it says in the papers, and there’s nothing for it but to give you a month’s notice for me and Stick.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Stick. I thought you were both quite happy here.”

  “So we
was until you started larking about with murderers until we never knew from one day to another if you’d get your throat cut or what raggle-raggle would be coming to the house.”

  “Do you mean me, Mrs. Stick?” asked Priggley innocently.

  Mrs. Stick never took her eyes from Carolus and answered as though he had asked the question.

  “No, sir, I don’t mean the young gentleman as you very well know. Though what his father and mother would say to see him traipsing round after murderers I don’t know. I mean policemen and poisoners and I don’t know what ruffians who say they want to give you information so that my heart jumps into my mouth every time I hear a ring at the door. It’s not to be borne, it isn’t really and I said to Stick today, we shall have to Go, I said.”

  “You can’t do that, Mrs. Stick,” said Rupert Priggley. “Who’s going to make a game pie for us like you do?”

  “That I don’t know. Though I say it, there’s not many can turn out a patty derjib yer like I can, but you ought to have thought about that before. Now with the Judge telling you he’s going to send you to prison …”

  “Coroner, Mrs. Stick, and his threat was quite empty.”

  “That’s not what the papers say and your picture all over the Evening Sentinel. What my sister’s going to think I don’t know, married as she is to a most respectable party in the Undertaking.”

  “I should have thought she was accustomed to mortality,” said Carolus, making a retort he had longed for years to pronounce.

  “That’s as may be,” said Mrs. Stick darkly. “But think of the Disgrace! It’s bad enough your being mixed up in all those horrors without you being stood up in court and reprimanded and I don’t know what. What the headmaster’s going to say I can’t bear to think. He’s not going to let you go on teaching young boys like that if they send you to prison.”

  “It would be difficult,” admitted Carolus. “But I think you’re taking rather a gloomy view, Mrs. Stick. These things soon blow over.”

  “Not with me, they don’t. I was only saying to Stick, this is the end, I said. We can’t go on working for a gentleman who’s liable to be arrested any minute and even if he’s not is disgraced in the papers. Flesh and blood won’t stand it, sir.”

  Was that a tear behind the flashing spectacles?

  “Well, Mrs. Stick, you must do as you think right.”

  “It’s not so much that,” admitted Mrs. Stick. “It’s all the Talk. I don’t hardly dare put my head out of the door with what they’re saying. As for Stick…”

  “Yes, what about Stick?” asked Carolus who secretly believed he had an ally, if not a very powerful one, in Stick.

  “He doesn’t like leaving his garden after he’s made it what it is, but there you are. I told him the other day, how d’you know you’re not going to find a corpse when you’re digging out there one of these fine days, I asked him. There’s corpses enough in all conscience. It’s a shame for him to have to give it up when he’s so proud of it, but this time there’s no two ways about it. Not after you being had up in court for interfering, sir. So I must ask you to take a month’s notice and that’s it.”

  There was a break in her voice in the last sentence and she closed the door silently behind her.

  But the greatest ordeal for Carolus came next day when the Queen’s School, Newminster, had assembled for the new term. At first it was difficult to predict just what the attitude of Mr. Gorringer, the headmaster, might be. He accepted the cheerful greeting of Carolus after morning prayers with a silent and severe inclination of his head. Two periods of teaching were safely negotiated and the eleven o’clock Break had begun before there was any demonstration.

  Carolus was the first in the Common-Room and seized the Times crossword with avidity before Hollingbourne could ravish its virginity by the dubious solution of two clues. But when the rest of the staff had gathered there was an unprecedented interruption. The school porter appeared.

  Muggeridge was a disgruntled individual who for many years had resented the headmaster’s orders that he should wear a uniform consisting of a frock coat and gold-braided top-hat.

  “These niceties of appearance,” Mr. Gorringer explained, “help to keep a certain dignity for this ancient foundation.”

  “There’s not much dignity when my topper goes for a Burton,” grumbled Muggeridge.

  But the uniform remained and now appeared in the doorway of the Common-Room.

  “He wants you,” said Muggeridge. The three words were adequate. The headmaster wanted Carolus.

  “Don’t ask me what for,” went on Muggeridge. “He’s got one of his high and mighty fits on. I could tell as soon as I heard the way he rang that blasted bell. I was just having my tea when it started.”

  Carolus regretfully abandoned his crossword which was taken up by Hollingbourne.

  Muggeridge’s tale continued as he followed Carolus down the passage.

  “I found him sitting up there like a heathen idol. ‘I want to speak to Mr. Deene’, he says. ‘Well can’t you speak to him,’ I asked him, ‘without me running about all the morning? I was just having my tea,’ I said. He puts on his grand manner and says ‘Kindly summon Mr. Deene, Muggeridge, and make no further comment’. So there you are. I don’t know.”

  It was obvious to Carolus, too, that the headmaster was enjoying one of his ‘high and mighty fits’. He was writing at his large desk when Carolus entered and beyond indicating a chair with the end of his fountain pen, showed no sign of awareness of Carolus’s arrival. There was a long silence broken by Mr. Gorringer clearing his throat with a mighty rumble. At last he put down his pen and looked up.

  “Now, Deene,” he said, and paused again.

  “What I am about to say to you is in the highest degree painful to me. For many years now we have been colleagues, and, so far as it is allowable between a headmaster and one of his senior assistants, friends. I have never belittled, nay, I have frequently applauded, your unique abilities as a teacher of history, and I do so again. But I should be failing in my duty to the Governors of the Queen’s School, to the parents who entrust their sons to our care, to the old boys, to the staff and not least to our pupils if I did not—with the deepest regret, mark you—ask you to resign your post here.”

  “Certainly, headmaster. On what grounds?”

  “Grounds, Mr. Deene? In the circumstances I should scarcely have thought you would wish me to particularise. Let the words of the Coroner be sufficient. I have nothing to add to them. That an assistant of mine should have laid himself open to public reprimand in a matter so alien to his rightful profession, that he should actually be threatened with prosecution over his conduct is … seems to me … I am sorry. I find it too painful to talk about. I am outraged, Mr. Deene. I can use no other word.”

  “Yes. I see you are. But don’t you think the relatives of the three murdered women feel outraged too, headmaster?”

  “The feelings of these unfortunate people, much though I sympathize with them, are no possible concern of ours in this quiet backwater of learning. And may I ask what you have done to relieve them? As I understand the matter the identity of their murderer is not yet entirely removed from the realms of speculation,”

  “That’s so.”

  “Had you gone quietly to this unhappy suburb and by dint of your undoubted though misdirected talents been of some assistance to the police investigating, had you as in other cases, anonymously indicated a possible solution to a difficult problem, I might have found some answer to the Governors. I might have assisted you to ride the storm of opprobrium which you have raised. But you have not done so.”

  “I know who is the murderer, if that’s what you mean,” said Carolus quietly.

  For a moment Mr. Gorringer pretended to ignore this, though his great red ears with their hairy orifices, almost flapped as he heard the words.

  “You know, Deene,” he said, relaxing a little. “How very painful all this is to me. You say you know who is the guilty party?”
>
  “Yes.”

  “In all three of these … hm … assassinations?”

  “In all four.”

  “It is actually the same man—or woman?”

  “It is.”

  “Have you given this information to the authorities?”

  “Not yet. I can’t prove my case. The police will have to do that.”

  “But you have a case, Deene?”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  “And you intend to state it?”

  “If I can get Dyke, the Detective Superintendent investigating, to listen.”

  “I see. It does not unhappily alter the position vis-avis the Governors of this school, but it relieves my private feelings somewhat. I have told you before, Deene, that under this academic gown there beats a very human heart, and it was partly the feeling that you had failed in this case which disturbed me. I cannot yet withdraw my request for your resignation. That, alas, is out of my hands. Sir Boxley Withers, our most respected Chairman, was on the telephone to me this morning.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I am bound to say he was temperate, most temperate, in his disapproval. He even showed a certain levity in his approach. But I can read between the lines and it has come to my ears that others of the Board feel strongly. If events should conspire to justify your conduct, Deene, it might be possible to persuade the Board to take a more lenient view. But for the moment I must insist on your resignation.”

  “I’ll send it you in writing,” said Carolus cheerfully.

  “In the meantime, if as I suspect you intend to formulate your arguments, to state your case, as it were, I will take the bold step of asking Sir Boxley to be present. It might—who knows?—soften the blow this has been to him, and all of us.”

  “I don’t mind old Withers being there. He’s not without intelligence. But the man I have to get is Dyke.”

  “And when, may I ask, do you intend to expatiate?”

  “I need some days to work on my notes.”

  “I appreciate that. I must remind you, too, that another term has begun and we must not neglect our pedagogic duties,” said Mr. Gorringer blandly.