Such Is Death

by Leo Bruce

  That morning he took up his position at the large writing-table in his study and rang for the school porter, a disgruntled man named Muggeridge who resented the headmaster’s insistence on a uniform which included a gold-braided silk hat.

  He was a long time in answering the bell and when he came he said, “Yes?” in an aggrieved voice.

  Mr Gorringer cleared his throat.

  “Muggeridge,” he said sternly, “I regret that I must again call attention to your mode of address. ‘Yes, sir’, or ‘Good morning, sir’, would become you better than a mere off-hand ‘yes’.”

  “It’s the Break,” explained Muggeridge. “I was just having a cup of tea.”

  “I have no objection to that,” conceded Mr Gorringer grandly. “However, to the matter in hand. Will you kindly ask Mr Deene to come here? It is urgent.”

  “If I can find him, I will. He sometimes nips home in the Break.”

  “That will do, thank you, Muggeridge.”

  Muggeridge went over to the masters’ common room.

  “He wants you,” he told Carolus with an exasperated sigh. “Sitting up there at his table like an assize judge. ‘It’s urgent’, he said, though he only had to wait five minutes until after Break. I don’t know.”

  But the headmaster, when Carolus entered, was loftily bland.

  “Ah Deene,” he said, “take a seat, pray. There is a small matter on which I wanted a Word with you.”

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “By all means.” There was a long pause and a loud rumble while Mr Gorringer cleared his throat. “A little bird has whispered in my ear,” he said and Carolus had a vision of a large vulture on the headmaster’s shoulder, “that you are thinking of becoming embroiled in the investigation of a most sordid crime at Selby-on-Sea.”

  Hollingbourne, thought Carolus.

  “I am thinking of spending Christmas there.”

  “Then rumour has not lied. I felt it my duty to point out to you that Selby-on-Sea is not a hundred miles from Newminster.”

  “No. It’s twenty-two.”

  “And that we have more than one connection with the town. Apart from the danger of press publicity there may be a great deal of unwelcome talk if it becomes known that the senior history master of this school has become involved in anything so unpleasant as this. I gather that the murdered man was a wastrel, if no worse.”

  “He was the uncle of an old boy and of a boy now in Hollingbourne’s house.”

  Mr Gorringer’s protuberant eyes had a startled expression.

  “You alarm me. Which boys?”

  “Dalbinney P.W. and Dalbinney P. J.”

  “Dalbinney? I can scarcely credit it. I thought they came of an excellent family.”

  “It may be excellent but the whole lot of them are under suspicion. Including Dalbinney P. W., now a man of twenty and quite capable of wielding a coal-hammer.”

  “A coal-hammer? This is indeed a squalid story. You are serious in telling me that a one-time pupil of ours is in the shadow of suspicion? And his uncle the victim of a brutal crime?”

  “Why not? ‘Death lays his icy hand on kings.’”

  “This is a most regrettable business.”

  “He may not have done it, of course. Dalbinney P. W. I mean. He’s only one of a number of suspects.”

  “You speak lightly, Deene. If you had the fair name of the school at heart you would take a more sober view. And you are actually considering a visit to this small seaside town?”

  “The Dalbinneys’ mother has asked me to investigate.”

  “More and more unfortunate. One of our most respected parents. I trust you will refuse?”

  “I stuck out for a thumping big fee.”

  “I find that painful if not vulgar. I had no idea you charged money for your services. I supposed they were in the nature of a hobby.”

  “They are, often. But after what I’ve heard of this Mrs Dalbinney I’ve decided to make her and her family pay through the nose.”

  “Really, Deene. Your idiom is scarcely suited to an interview with your headmaster when in his official capacity.”

  “Anyway, I don’t think you need feel much alarm on my account. My name won’t be involved. If the school does come into it, it will be because of young Dalbinney.”

  “When do you intend to go?”

  “As soon as we break up. On the 20th in fact.”

  “In view of Mrs Dalbinney’s request I do not feel I should dissuade you as I had intended to do. I can only ask you to observe the greatest discretion. A coal-hammer, you say?”

  “That was the weapon, apparently. The man was drunk, though, or something very like it.”

  Mr Gorringer gave a rather theatrical groan.

  “I trust your first act will be to clear young Dalbinney from all suspicion. It is quite impossible that an old boy of the Queen’s School, Newminster, should have killed his uncle with a coal-hammer.”

  “Nothing’s impossible in crime, headmaster.”

  Carolus left Mr Gorringer at his desk, a somewhat baffled man, and hurried across to his classroom.

  6

  IT was with rather boyish exhilaration that Carolus drove his Bentley Continental towards Selby-on-Sea on the morning of December 20th. The term had finished with the school concert but he had escaped Mr Gorringer’s annual dinner party for the staff. It was a crisp morning with pale sunlight thawing the frost on the bare hedges and he felt in splendid health and spirits.

  He was going to an investigation which promised to be one of the most interesting he had known. All the circumstances suggested an intricate, teasing problem and a collection of odd human beings such as he liked to meet in the course of his enquiries. Moreover he would live with the crime, as it were, remaining in the town in which it had taken place, among the people involved in it. He felt like a schoolboy leaving for his first holiday abroad, knowing that everything he saw and heard would be of stirring interest to him.

  Also, John Moore was in charge of police enquiries and though he would make no concessions or treat Carolus in any way but as an inquisitive member of the public, he would not impede Carolus and would always be ready to hear anything he might have to say.

  There was, Carolus reflected, something very strange about this crime, something he could only sense which seemed to demand imagination and bold thinking. It was a premeditated murder, skilfully planned and executed. Yet there was no sign of anyone with a motive strong enough to inspire that kind of planning and execution and, on the face of it, the members of Rafter’s family,

  the only people known to have a motive at all, sounded unlikely. John Moore could obviously do nothing but work on the supposition that one of them, man or woman, was responsible, at least until he discovered in Rafter’s past an indication that the truth might lie elsewhere. Yet Carolus had a sort of instinct that this line of enquiry would lead to very little. Dangerous, he would have agreed, to have premature instincts of the kind before he had even met the people involved, but already he caught a whiff of something abnormal and hellish, something quite unconnected with the blunt straightforward murder of a man whose arrival from the past would bring un-happiness and financial loss to a number of respectable people. He had no idea what this something might be, but he did not think much of John Moore’s makeshift beginnings of a theory.

  Not that he would dismiss it so soon. He would meet this family and conscientiously consider each of them as the potential murderer, as he was bound to do. He would meet the other people seen on the promenade that night and everyone else who was in any way, however remotely, connected with the crime. Yet, he felt, his enquiries for a long time would be in the nature of almost aimless circling on the outer perimeter of the truth. Something would come from them, some hint be dropped, some fact emerge which might send him in an entirely different direction. That so often happened. He would be questioning A about B when A would say something apparently irrelevant which suddenly involved C. Or it would be through following hi
s suspicions of D that he would come on the trail of E. At all events it was all very exciting and provocative and he would settle down to a busy stay in the town.

  He found the Queen Victoria hotel near the station and it conformed well to John Moore’s description ‘old-fashioned commercial’. Its grey façade, square and ugly, promised large rooms and high ceilings and great golden letters ran across it proclaiming it to be ‘family and commercial’. The proprietor, whose name was Rugley, lived with his wife on the premises and had done so for more than thirty years. He saw no reason to make changes in the hotel which had always given him a comfortable living and he was deaf to talk of what a gold mine it would be if he would instal central heating and strip lighting, knock down a number of walls, build a modern kitchen, engage a skilled cook, and put television in every bedroom.

  “When we first came here,” he told Carolus, “it was just the same, only in those days they wanted me to put in an American cocktail bar and have the radio in all the bedrooms. They were only fashions, gone out years ago, same as their fads today will go. We keep on as we’ve always done except that I put running water in the bedrooms before the war to save the girls running round with jugs of hot water. Otherwise we don’t change. I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

  When Carolus looked round his large heavily curtained bedroom with its mighty mahogany bed and worn Axminster carpet, he was content. It must have been in rooms like this that he and many of his generation were born and he felt as though he were returning home. His room was number 3, he noticed before he came down to the bar.

  This was crowded with men, mostly middle-aged business types.

  “It’s the Rotary today,” explained the barmaid who served him, a short brisk woman known as Doris. “We get them once a month. They’ll all be going in for lunch in a minute.”

  She said this in a confidential tone as though she thought Carolus was eagerly waiting for a chance to converse with her, and when, as she predicted, ‘the Rotary’ trooped out she leaned over the bar.

  “I saw you were booking in,” she said. “I thought to myself, well that’s a funny thing, the last gentleman we had come here on his own was the poor fellow who was murdered. You’ve read all about that, I suppose.”

  “Yes. I’ve read something of it.”

  “We had him in here, you know,” went on Doris proudly. “Yes, he stayed all the evening drinking doubles. Didn’t he, Vivienne?”

  “Mmmm,” said Vivienne.

  “He wasn’t drunk, mind you. We wouldn’t have served him if he had of been. But he wasn’t sober, either. You should have seen the way he walked out of here. As though he was holding on to a rail, he went. Then no sooner had he got down to the shelter than this murderer knocked him on the head with a coal-hammer. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?”

  “Yes,” said Carolus. “Had you ever seen him before?”

  “Me? Him? Never in my life. I said to Vivienne—didn’t I, Vivienne?—I’ve never seen him before. It wasn’t a face you’d forget, either. Staring eyes, he had, like I don’t know what. Seemed to drill right into you. And he was talking all this about having been presumed dead and coming back to life though some wouldn’t like it. Enough to give you the creeps. Which room have you got?”

  “Number three.”

  “I thought so. That’s the room he had, only Mr Rugley doesn’t like it being talked about. You don’t need to worry because it’s all been done out since. The police came and took away what little he had and it’s been cleaned nicely. It’s nothing to upset you now.”

  “It doesn’t,” said Carolus. “After all, he wasn’t murdered there, was he?”

  “Oh, what a thing to say! Of course he wasn’t. I’m surprised at you saying a thing like that. D’you hear what he says, Vivienne? He says, ‘he wasn’t murdered there, was he?’‘

  “Mmmm,” said Viviennne with a remote demure smile.

  “Thank goodness he wasn’t,” went on Doris. “We’ve had enough of it as it is with the police here every five minutes asking questions. I told them the last time, I said, perhaps you think one of us done it? They didn’t like that. Well, it’s silly, I think. If they can’t find out who it was, what’s the good of asking me what time he went to the telephone? I said to them, what do you think I am? An alarm clock? I can’t tell you what time it was. It was after seven, I do know that.”

  “You’re not really sure whether he did telephone, I suppose?”

  “He went in the box all right because George saw him. That’s the porter. Whether he got through or not I don’t know. Only it seems funny if he didn’t, otherwise who was to know he was going to that shelter? It’s not everyone would go there on a night like that with an icy wind nearly cutting you in half every time you looked out.”

  “So you think he arranged to meet the murderer there?”

  “That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it? Though who’s to say now? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the truth about it. It’s a funny business all round. Of course, it quite upset me’n Vivienne at the time. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Anybody being murdered like that. But I don’t think much more about it. One of the papers was going to put my picture in, only it never cane to anything. Still, it’s an experience. All in a life, as you might say.”

  “Did this man seem nervous?”

  “No, it wasn’t that. He didn’t seem as though he was expecting it to happen, if that’s what you mean. He kept filling up with another double Scotch till I wondered where it would stop, but you couldn’t say he was jumpy or afraid of anything. He didn’t take much notice of the other customers, either. I was surprised, really, when I heard about it after. Well, it wasn’t what you’d expect, was it? But I said at once to Vivienne that there was something very funny about him. Those eyes! I shall never forget them. And the way he talked about coming to life again. We both thought it was funny, didn’t we, Vivienne?”

  “Mmmm,” said Vivienne whose glance was fixed on faraway things in the ceiling.

  “It’s not every day you get anything like that,” Doris went on. “I sometimes wonder what it will be next.”

  “I suppose,” Carolus said, as though it was of no great concern to him but he wished to make conversation, “I suppose you didn’t notice whether any of your other customers had their eyes on him at all?”

  “It’s funny you should ask that,” said Doris. “Because I said to Vivienne afterwards, I said, Mr Lobbin seemed quite taken up with that fellow, I said. He could scarcely take his eyes off him. He’s ever such a nice man, Mr Lobbin. Has the paper shop a few doors away. I’ve never heard him say an unkind word. What it was about this other fellow I don’t know but he stood there watching him for a long while.”

  “Did he say anything to you about him?”

  “Yes. Asked me his name. And when George had looked it up in the book I told him, but he didn’t make any remark.”

  “Anyone else interested?”

  “Not that I was aware of. This fellow didn’t do anything to call attention to himself, really. There may have been others who noticed him. I couldn’t say. But Mr Lobbin certainly did.”

  “No one followed him out? Rafter, I mean?”

  “You want to know a lot, don’t you?” said Doris good-humouredly.

  “Yes, I do,” said Carolus at once, deciding that frankness with Doris would pay. “I’ve been employed to investigate this murder.”

  “Detective, you mean?”

  “An interested party.”

  Doris nodded. “I see. Well it is interesting when anything like that’s happened. No, I don’t think anyone followed him out, particularly. Only I noticed Mr and Mrs Bullamy, who were sitting over there, went out soon after. I noticed it because they never go before closing-time. I said to Mr Bullamy, are you going? I said, and he said, yes, he said, we’ve got to feed the baby. He was only joking, because they’ve got no children. They’re only staying in the town, not residents, but they come in every night, regular as clockwork, and stay
till we close. You ought to see her! She’s quite a nice party but she looks more than half like a man. He’s smaller than she is. They’ve got a little money, I should say, though they don’t throw it about. You’ll see them tonight if you’re here.”

  “Where are they staying?”

  “Oh right up the other end of the town.”

  “When did Lobbin leave the bar that evening?”

  “Oh, not till we were just going to close at ten o’clock. That’s about usual for him. You see his wife has all the say. He seems scared of her though he’s a big fellow. It’s a shame, really. She’s one of those that never stop. Nag, nag, nag. He’s a quiet peaceable sort of man. That very evening he was telling me they’d had a real up-and-downer and he’d come out to get away from it for a few minutes. I said I didn’t wonder. I know what she is. A proper tartar. Still, there you are. It takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it?”

  “I gather the murdered man’s family lives in Selby. Do you know any of them?”

  “Only by sight, really. I’d never heard of them before this happened. Vivienne knows Mrs Dalbinney, don’t you, Vivienne?”

  “Mmmm,” Vivienne assented and added, “she lives in the block of flats where my husband works.”

  After that somewhat surprising confession her attention went back to the distances.

  “Yes,” enlarged Doris, “Vivienne’s husband is the night porter at Prince Albert Mansions, so they’re both on at night, which suits them very nicely. This Mrs Dalbinney has a big flat on the first floor, very posh Vivienne says it is. She’s Separated, you see. When I heard she was the sister of this fellow who’d been murdered I couldn’t help laughing. It seemed funny because he was half down-and-out-looking, as you might say, and from what Vivienne says she’s very high and mighty. Oh, very high and mighty she is, Vivienne says. Her sister’s not, though. That’s the unmarried one, Miss Emma Rafter. She’s started coming in here—Vivienne serves her, don’t you Vivienne? There’s nothing stuck-up about her. It’s more horses and that. She looks that sort, too. Always with a big Boxer dog.”