The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack
Page 1
The Dead Shall Be Raised
*****
The Murder of a Quack
George Bellairs
With an Introduction by Martin Edwards
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright
The Dead Shall Be Raised was originally published in 1942 by John Gifford Ltd
The Murder of a Quack was originally published in 1943 by John Gifford Ltd
Copyright © 2016 George Bellairs
Introduction copyright © 2016 Martin Edwards
Published by Poisoned Pen Press in association with the British Library
First U.S. Edition 2017
E-book Edition 2017
ISBN: 9781464207378 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
The Dead Shall Be Raised*****The Murder of a Quack
Copyright
Contents
Introduction
The Dead Shall Be Raised
Dedication
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
The Murder of a Quack
Epigraph
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
More from this Author
Contact Us
Introduction
The Dead Shall Be Raised is, in more ways than one, a story about a cold case. The year is 1940, and it is chilly and Christmas. Carols are sung in Hatterworth, a small Pennine town, as Scotland Yard’s Thomas Littlejohn is reunited with his convalescent wife for a short period of leave. But soon the festivities are interrupted by news of the discovery of human remains, buried long ago on nearby moorland. The dead man is quickly identified as Enoch Sykes, who went missing in 1917. Littlejohn is happy to be pressed into service as the police investigation causes skeletons to rattle in several of Hatterworth’s cupboards.
The wartime background gives the book at least as much flavour as the seasonal touches. Members of the Home Guard—Dad’s Army—are responsible for the gruesome find on Milestone Moor, having discovered Sykes’ skeleton while digging a trench. The dead man was suspected of having murdered his workmate and former friend Jerry Trickett and of having fled from justice during the confusion of the First World War. Now the police have a double murder on their hands, and Littlejohn and his new colleagues need to explore feuds and betrayals of long ago in order to uncover the truth about the crimes. When a key witness is murdered, it becomes apparent that a killer continues to stalk Hatterworth.
The story moves at a brisk pace, while benefiting from George Bellairs’ characteristic quiet wit. The small town and the bleak moors are well rendered, and it seems likely that Hatterworth is a fictionalised version of Saddleworth, not far from where the author grew up. In a tragic and macabre twist, more than twenty years after this book was written, Saddleworth Moor became the scene of a gruesome search for human remains in real life, when it emerged that victims of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, were buried there.
The Dead Shall Be Raised, which is also sometimes called Murder Will Speak, first appeared in 1942.The second short novel in this book, The Murder of a Quack, was published the following year. Again, Bellairs wastes little time in plunging his readers into the action: P.C. Mellalieu discovers the corpse of Nathaniel Wall in the first chapter. The dead man, who was in his seventies, has been murdered in an odd fashion; someone half-strangled him, but he died as a result of being hanged from a contrivance of ropes and pulleys that he used in his work. Wall was a “bonesetter,” a skilled homeopath who had built up a good practice in the village of Stalden, provoking the enmity of a qualified doctor called Keating, who regarded him as a quack, but could not match his popularity with patients.
The local constabulary promptly calls in the Yard, and Littlejohn takes over the investigation. The dead man’s estate passes to his nephew, a qualified doctor, who appears to have a cast-iron alibi. There seems to be no compelling reason why anyone would want to kill Wall, but Littlejohn is intrigued by a collection of press cuttings in the dead man’s possession which relate to criminal cases of the past. Might they suggest a motive for murder?
Littlejohn is a diligent detective, of whom his creator once said: “He had no brilliant accomplishments and no influential pals…the marvellous powers of Sherlock Holmes and the techniques of Dr. Thorndyke were denied to him.” His strengths are “sheer patience and tenacity of purpose.” These qualities, so valuable in real-life police work, do not necessarily make for breathless excitement, but Littlejohn is a genial fellow, with whom readers can empathise.
The murder mystery plots are competently put together, but Bellairs was not aiming to write complex puzzles of the kind so fashionable during the Golden Age of Murder between the two world wars. At a time of national crisis, he concentrated on producing mysteries that would distract his readers from the horrors of the war; his books are as notable for their humour and humanity as they are for their plots. In both these stories, his harshest words are reserved for people who exploit others. His brisk characterisations suggest an astute observer of human nature. Probably this came from experience gained in his day job, as a bank manager.
Bellairs’ real name was Harold Blundell (1902–1982). He was born in Heywood, just across the county border from Saddleworth, which was part of the West Riding of Yorkshire prior to local government reorganisation in the seventies. He started work in a bank at the age of fifteen, and remained with the same employer until retiring forty-five years later. His literary career lasted nearly four decades, and throughout that time he stayed with the same publisher. Such loyalty tells us something about the personality of a modest, decent man whose affability and sense of humour are mirrored in Littlejohn. Writing was for him an enjoyable sideline; he was not as ambitious in his work as, say, Dorothy L. Sayers or Anthony Berkeley, two Golden Age superstars wh
o had run out of steam as novelists by the time Bellairs started writing. Bellairs may have lacked their flair, but he had greater staying power, and Berkeley (who reinvented himself as a crime reviewer) became both a fan and a friend.
After his retirement, Harold Blundell and his wife Gwladys moved to the Isle of Man, and his love of the island is apparent in various novels that he set there. He continued to write Littlejohn novels for the rest of his life. Rather poignantly, the title of his last book was An Old Man Dies; it was published shortly before his death, one day short of his eightieth birthday.
With the methodical habits of a good bank manager, he kept detailed records of his work as a writer, including correspondence, contracts, and press cuttings. Happily for researchers into the genre, Gwladys presented his archive to the John Rylands Library, a neo-Gothic architectural masterpiece in Deansgate, Manchester, which now forms part of the University of Manchester Library. The material in the archive gives a fascinating insight into the career of a “mid-list” writer of the mid-twentieth century, an author who was never a bestseller, but who for half a lifetime worked hard to entertain his readers.
—Martin Edwards
www.martinedwardsbooks.com
The Dead Shall Be Raised
Dedication
For Gwlad
with Love
Chapter I
The Singing Policeman
When the day’s work was done, o’er a pint of home brew,
He would sing by the hearth the old songs that he knew.
—Ammon Wrigley
On Christmas Eve 1940, Detective-Inspector Littlejohn, of Scotland Yard, stepped from the well-lighted London to Manchester train into the Stygian darkness of the blacked-out platform of Stockport. Passengers and ticket collectors climbed furtively in and out of the train, anxious to keep all its light bottled-up within it. Dim forms, like the shades of the underworld, fumbled about the station. Piles of boxes, mail-bags, platform-trucks and the hundred and one benches, baskets, lamps, cans, brushes and the like which clutter up such places strove like living things to make progress a vast and ghastly obstacle race. The detective, after extricating himself from a pile of parcels, destined to arrive at their goals well after Christmas, dropped his bag and waited for something to turn up in the shape of a railway official, from whom he might take his bearings. At length, a peaked-cap silhouetted itself against a thin streak of light emanating from a luggage van.
“Porter, where can I find the train for Waterfold?” asked Littlejohn.
“I’m a Salvation Army man, but I think I can tell you,” came a pleasant reply from the night. A firm grip was taken on his arm and he was piloted to a shadowy train, waiting, without lights, in a nearby bay.
“This is the train. I’ve just come in by it. It leaves in half an hour,” said his guide and with a cheery good night, left him to his own devices.
Littlejohn stumbled into a carriage, groped for the rack, tested its capacity by gently swinging on it, and slung his suitcase upwards. Then, he slumped on a hard seat, sucked the dying embers of his pipe into activity again and settled to wait patiently for something to happen.
No-one but his wife could have persuaded Littlejohn to make such a trip on Christmas Eve. One November night, he had arrived home to find all the windows of his Hampstead flat smashed and the roof blown-in. Far worse, his wife, Letty, was a casualty at the local hospital. Luckily, the worst that German frightfulness had done to her was to cause superficial cuts and slight concussion, but the detective, tied as he was to duty owing to the stress of official work, did not feel happy until he had packed her off to a quiet area. He had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to visit an old friend of her schooldays, whose cottage, high on the Pennine backbone which separates Lancashire from Yorkshire, afforded not only quiet nights but strong moorland air, a tonic for overwrought nerves. So, to Hatterworth, the village, or town, or whatever it was that held his wife, Littlejohn went to spend Christmas. He had ten days’ well-earned and long postponed leave on his hands and until he stepped into the inky depression of Stockport, he had been as high-spirited as a boy on vacation.
The jolt of an engine being violently connected with the train shook Littlejohn out of his reverie. A streak of light from a passing goods-train illuminated the compartment for a moment and it was then that the Inspector perceived that he was not alone. Another dark figure was sitting huddled in the opposite corner, apparently asleep. Littlejohn was not in the habit of inflicting his company and talk on strangers, but from sheer desolation he addressed his fellow-traveller.
“Am I right for Waterfold in this train?”
No answer.
Asleep, thought Littlejohn, and yet he had the vague feeling that he was not right. Somehow, he felt that the eyes of the stranger were open in the dark. Be damned to you then, old curmudgeon, muttered the detective inwardly. His own voice had sounded eerie and hollow in the strange atmosphere of the black carriage. He felt quite detached from the living world, the thousands of people all around him in the town below, people making merry for the season as best they could under the circumstances, in their isolated, well-illuminated little communities, each shut-off from the other by the pitch-darkness of the black-out night. By some strange association of ideas, Littlejohn recalled reciting at a Christmas party when a boy, some lines very apt under the present conditions. In spite of all the years between, he remembered them pat, and glowed with pleasure in doing so.
O solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.
The irony of it tickled Littlejohn’s fancy. He even chuckled and felt better for it. Let’s see… what else?
I am out of humanity’s reach,
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech;
I start at the sound of my own.
“Was you sayin’ somethin’?” came a thin, old voice from the corner.
Littlejohn started. He wondered if in his enthusiasm he had been declaiming aloud.
“If you were, yo’ll have to speak up. You see, ah’m a bit deaf,” went on the voice.
“Oh! I’d just been asking you if I was right for Waterfold in this train.”
“Eh? You’ll ’ave to speak up.”
Littlejohn repeated his query, fortissimo.
“Oh aye, ye’r all reet for Waterfold. Ah say, ye’r all reet. Ah’m goin’ to th’ station beyond that, so ah’ll tell you when we’re theer. Ah say, ah’ll tell you when we’re theer.”
The stranger kept repeating himself, as though proud of his utterance and taking relish in quoting his statements over and over again.
With a jolt, the train started. They bumped over points, halted for signals, stopped at what seemed to be an unending succession of stations. The harsh clanking and snorting of the engine indicated a continuous gradient.
“Don’t they light these trains?” bawled Littlejohn.
“You needn’t shout so loud, mesther. Ah can ’ear you all right now that train’s started. Funny, isn’t it? When there’s a row goin’ on, ah can ’ear what folk says to me.”
Littlejohn agreed that it was very funny indeed.
“They don’t light these trains, because they’ve forgot there is a railway to Waterfold and sich like places. An’ judging from th’ lights they’ve put in some o’ the local carriages round Oldham way, they might as well save theirselves th’ trouble wi’ these. Noborry can see their way into ’em, let alone read or see chap’s face next to you. Where you come frum, mesther?”
“London.”
“Oh, aye. Bin havin’ a rough packet there with bombin’ ’aven’t yer, mesther? We’ve had our share ’ere, too, though. A redler blitz we ’ad one night about ten days ago. Two land-mines, we ’ad! They fell on
th’ moors just a mile or two out o’ th’ town, but they give us a rare shakin’ up, I’ll tell you.” And he repeated himself several times with obvious pleasure.
The stranger suddenly retired within himself, either sleeping or meditating on his recent news, leaving Littlejohn to his thoughts. “You change to the Waterfold train at Stockport,” Mrs. Littlejohn had written, “and from Waterfold there’s a ’bus to Hatterworth. They only run once every hour and I hope your train’s in time, because you’ve only a margin of ten minutes. The distance by ’bus is seven miles, right into the hill country.”
The train stopped and started again with monotonous jolts and tugs. Station after station. Sometimes there would be the sound of lonely footsteps on a platform; at others, utter stillness and silence, as though men had scornfully packed-up and gone home, leaving the forlorn train to fend for itself. Now and then, a gloomy signal cabin seemed to sail past the window, or a green or red signal light. Not a sign of habitation on either side of the line, which apparently ran through a succession of tunnels, making mighty yawning sounds, or deep cuttings which flung back the rattle of the train, the clank of the engine and the rhythmic clicking of the wheels on the rails. At one station, Littlejohn lowered the window and looked out. A vociferous porter was incoherently yelling the name of the mysterious place to nobody in particular. “Iggle-oop, Iggle-oop,” he screamed, and then, “Faraway!” Whereat the train crawled off.
The night was bright with stars and the air was cold and as invigorating as wine.
“Poot up th’ window, if you doan’t mind, mesther,” said the shadow in the corner, suddenly stung to life by a draught of fresh air. “Ah’m bad on my chest and it’s cowd enough in ’ere, without lettin’ any more of it in.”
No faces or knowledge of what was going on. Only voices and noises. Depressed, miserable, Littlejohn wondered if the journey would last for ever.
“Waterfold next stop, mesther.” Blessed relief! The train slowed down, braked hard, and seemed to totter into the station. Littlejohn bade his companion good night and a Merry Christmas and received a thrice-repeated reply.