FLOWERING DEATH
Angus MacVicar
© Angus MacVicar 1937
Angus MacVicar has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1937 by Stanley Paul & Co., Ltd.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
To
F. A. COWLING
For Encouragement and Courtesy
Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
PART I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
PART II
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
INTERLUDE
CHAPTER XVI
PART III
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
PART IV
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
I HAVE been asked by the convincing number of loyal readers to forsake, for the time being, my stories of romantic adventure, and to give them a detective story, the scene of which (“for heaven’s sake!”) is far removed from “the rugged West Coast of Scotland.” And the type of detective story they require has been defined clearly by my friends.
They want an original plot. They want straightforward detection. They want to be given a chance, by means of concrete clues supplied within the action, to spot the criminal before the denouement arrives. And above all they want thrills.
Good Lord!
Never mind. Like a dour Hebridean ancestor of my own who once placed twenty-seven three-foot barrels in a row and attempted, without a pause, to jump out of one barrel into another from end to end of the line, I have put myself resolutely to the task. I have tried to be Dorothy Sayers, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ellery Queen and Bruce Graeme rolled into one. My readers, however, will have to bear with me in the result, for I am afraid that it does not fully reward their kind estimate of my versatility ...
(Chorus of Publisher, Agent and Reviewers — Hear! Hear!)
*
Now then, while my publisher, agent and reviewers are out of breath after the vehemence of their cries, I mean to get a word in about this book.
I discovered the idea on which the plot is based in a number of newspapers published during the second week of January last year. I quote one of the fullest references, that given in the Sunday Mail (Glasgow), dated January 5th, 1936. Here it is:
FLOWERS GROW ON MAN’S FEET: WEIRD MALADY BAFFLES DOCTORS
London specialists in obscure tropical diseases are to investigate the case of a Naval officer who has been invalided home from the East suffering from a weird malady.
This affliction causes little yellow flowers to grow on one of his feet.
On the voyage home from Bombay the foot was constantly treated by the ship’s doctor, and although the doctor removed seven of the tiny flowers on one occasion, new shoots continued to appear.
Other cases suffering from a similar complaint are reported from the Persian Gulf, and the doctors out there are baffled. One theory is that the flowers feed on the victim’s blood.
Sir E. Denison Ross, Director of the London School of Oriental Languages, who is a leading authority on Persia and has travelled extensively in the East, told a Sunday Mail reporter last night that he had never heard of such a case.
“In my travels,” he said, “I have, of course, come across stories of weird and wonderful medical happenings, notably among the Buddhists, but this case of flowers growing on the feet is really astonishing.”
A member of the medical staff of the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases also expressed surprise. He did not know of a comparable case. “It may be,” he said, “that the flowers are a form of fungus. Fungus infections of the feet are quite common in the tropics. As a general rule they are very resistant to treatment.”
*
I wish to acknowledge with gratitude, too, the help of a professional friend who has “vetted” all the medical allusions in the story.
*
As far as the bare bones of detection are concerned, I may state, for the benefit of my conservative readers, that the tale opens with a man found dead in his library.
(Chorus of Publisher, Agent and Reviewers, having regained breath — What!)
I was afraid so. Still, the library in question — floor, walls, its furniture — was covered with flowers, which surely makes a difference. Furthermore, the conservative reader ought, by a close study of the text, to have identified “Black and White” at the end of Chapter XVI.
*
And as for the thrills — (Publisher, solo — Gag him!) Well, here it is — “Flowering Death.” I hope you enjoy it. I have tried, at least, to write what has been asked for; but possibly, as my ancestor did, I’ve got stuck at the twenty-fifth barrel.
ANGUS MACVICAR.
Southend,
Argyll, 1937.
PART I
CHAPTER I
Tuesday
“PUT me through to New Scotland Yard ... Yes, Whitehall, one two one two ... oh, do please hurry!”
Though there was tragedy in her hazel eyes Joan Nevinson was lovely. She stood by the telephone in the hall, slim and straight, a white polo-necked jumper and grey flannel skirt accentuating the beauty of her taut figure. And, despite the paleness of her cheeks in the cold light of a summer dawn, the oval perfection of her face, the warm curve of her lips and the fine clean-cut lines of her chin could not be denied.
Awaiting an answer to the urgent call which she had made, her horrified glance rested more than once on the half open door of the library. One slender, ringless hand gripped the receiver until the knuckles gleamed white.
Suddenly she started.
“Information room? Yes, I’ll wait till you put me through ... Yes ... Inspector McGonagle? Oh, something dreadful — I’m sorry ... My name is Joan Nevinson. Speaking from Arundel House in Park Square ... Yes, near Piccadilly. My guardian, Dr. Abraham McIntee, has been killed — shot ... Yes, I believe so. Seale, the butler, heard a noise, found the thing, roused me ... It’s so strange. The poor old man is lying covered with flowers ... What? No. Dr. Fayne, my guardian’s partner, has examined the — the body. He lives here ... I haven’t touched anything ... Yes, I’ll tell the doctor to be careful. ... I’m afraid so, Inspector. I — I’m sure it’s not suicide ... In half an hour: thank you, Inspector.”
She laid down the receiver and, for a moment, rested her shoulder against one side of the call-box. Then, as if summoning up every vestige of courage, she set her chin firmly beneath the trembling mouth and moved slowly across the dim hall towards the drawing-room. A hand on the door-knob, she turned quickly at a sibilant sound behind her.
“Oh, Seale! You shouldn’t sigh like that. My — my nerves are in shreds. What do you want?”
The tall, lean butler with the cadaverous face and rather kindly eyes looked down at his mistress as if in pity. His clean shaven, wrinkled cheeks were like parchment in the brightening morning.
“I wondered if you and the young gentlemen would like a cup of coffee, Miss Joan. I’ve asked the housekeeper to prepare a brew.”
“Yes ... Do bring some, Seale. And biscuits. Oh, and when the police arrive show th
em into the drawing-room. You have whisky for them?”
“I have, Miss Joan. Everything is prepared. And I think I have succeeded in calming the — er — the other servants.”
“Good. Thank you, Seale. Breakfast will be at eight as usual — in two hours’ time.”
Joan pushed open the door of the drawing-room, her mind in a whirl of doubt and suspicion. She was, however, determined to be calm; for there was need of calm in the household that day, and she was its mistress.
The electric light was still burning in the apartment and the blinds were drawn. The atmosphere was usual in a room which has not been aired since its occupation on the previous night. It was stale and flat. The silver and grey colour-scheme looked drab. Flowers in the vases on the side-tables drooped for want of fresh air and sunlight.
At her entrance two young men rose from the armchairs by the dead fire.
“Dr. Fayne,” she said, turning to the thinner and darker of the pair, “won’t you pull up the blinds and put out the light? The daylight is quite strong now, even in the hall.”
Kenneth Fayne bowed with a humility suggestive of the Orient, and the dark eyes, set in a sallow face beneath jet-black hair, glowed suddenly as their glance rested on the girl. He moved to perform Joan’s bidding with supple grace.
His companion, perhaps a slightly younger man, took her hands between big, capable fingers. Mervyn Lancaster’s appearance was in striking contrast with that of the doctor. He was fair and his cheeks were smoothly ruddy, save for a short scar on his left cheek which, he had explained, was the result of a stone-throwing episode in his boyhood.
A nephew of the dead man, he had come to reside in Arundel House shortly after Dr. McIntee’s retiral from active practice a year previously, and had continued to pursue his profession as a successful actor with one of the best known Shakesperian companies in London, the Elizabethan Players. He was strongly built and his clear blue eyes usually held a twinkle. This morning, however, they were deeply earnest; and their owner’s impulsive sympathy with the girl seemed to be held in check by an effort.
“My dear,” he murmured, “I can’t say how sorry I am.”
Joan loosed her fingers a little abruptly ... She could not have explained the action. It may have been that she considered the light in Mervyn Lancaster’s eyes out of place at such a time; or it may have been the outcome of fear lest the silent rivalry between the two young men for her favours — a rivalry which, without the slightest encouragement on her part, she had observed growing within the last few weeks — might now come to a crisis.
She turned to Dr. Fayne, who had been eyeing the onesided love scene with the hint of a sneer, his slim body rigid as a wand.
“My guardian ... I mean — you’re certain?”
The dark skinned medical man, composing his features as she wheeled round, nodded gravely.
“I’m afraid so, Miss Nevinson. Dr. McIntee is dead. The body, however, was still warm ten minutes ago.”
“Who — who could have done it?”
“I noticed,” returned Dr. Fayne, “that one of the windows looking out on to the Square was open from the bottom.”
“I shouldn’t have thought that my guardian had an enemy in the world.”
Mervyn Lancaster looked at the toes of his shoes.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “He had many years in India, and — well, one often hears of strange enmities contracted there; though, as a matter of fact, during the two seasons I spent in Bombay I found the natives deuced decent to deal with ... And Dr. McIntee has certainly been rather moody and reserved since his retiral.”
Joan nodded.
“I had an idea,” she mused, “that something was worrying him in the past few months ... Oh, Seale. The coffee. Thanks so much.”
The trio had scarcely savoured the brew, however, when there was an insistent ring on the door bell. Detective-Inspector McGonagle was ushered into the drawing-room, accompanied by a dapper youth with curly fair hair. The latter was introduced as Detective-Sergeant Spring.
*
A heavy constraint was felt in the apartment — a constraint which is invariably felt by ordinary, law-abiding individuals who suddenly find themselves under scrutiny by the police. No group of criminals ever acts so suspiciously as a group of innocent people suddenly confronted by detectives.
There was nothing harsh or cruel, however, about Inspector McGonagle and his companion. The Irish policeman was big and broad. He had large flat feet and his protruding, rather guileless eyes were a fitting complement to a genial manner. About fifty years of age, he could have been the father of the rosy cheeked Spring.
Diffidently the inspector asked to be shown the library.
“And please stay here, Miss Nevinson,” he said in his soft brogue. “Dr. Fayne and Mr. Lancaster will accompany us.”
“Very well, Inspector.”
While Joan sat sipping liquid which she did not taste, the four men made their way to the library; and as Dr. Fayne bowed him into the book-lined place Inspector McGonagle, in spite of his varied experience of crime, was shocked at the bizarre scene which opened out before his eyes. And Sergeant Spring’s ruddy cheeks became drawn and somewhat pinched.
The room, in its usual condition, must have been the typical library of a wealthy household in the West End. Unit bookcases were ranged along two walls, containing both modern volumes and valuable old books. A big walnut roll-top desk took up a corner near the fireplace, while the pipe-rack and newspaper stand were placed by a well-used armchair. This chair, in common with other pieces of furniture in the room, was upholstered in grey hide, and its deep, cushioned appearance suggested its owner to have been a lover of comfort. An ormolu clock stood on the wide mantelpiece, flanked by books carelessly thrown down and several pipe-cleaners.
Now, however, the room was adorned like a florist’s. Roses — red and white and yellow — hollyhocks, cornflowers, lilies and gladioli were strewn on the floor, while desk, bookcases, chairs and tables, even the pictures hanging on the sober grey walls, were aflame with flowers. Their mingled perfume lay heavily on the air, making the inspector splutter and cough at his first entrance. He had a moment’s doubt as to his wakefulness.
Sergeant Spring, who was a young man with dramatic sense, remembered the scene in Romeo and Juliet in which the tragic heroine goes to her death. Juliet’s death-scene had a flower motive. So had the death-scene of Dr. Abraham McIntee. The youthful policeman saw, in imagination, glaring headlines in the newspapers. He had an early intuition that this was going to be a celebrated mystery.
The blooms were most thickly strewn at a point on the floor in front of the wide grate. There the red roses and yellow lilies were heaped in a flat pyramid, and the vivid contrast of their colours was dazzling. And from beneath this riotous mass of reds and yellows and greens there protruded a bare, skinny arm and a pyjama-clad leg.
In one unhurried glance McGonagle noted, too, the overturned wooden chair, from which the victim had apparently sprawled forward to the floor, dead, the drawn green blinds and the blazing electric chandelier. He saw how one blind flapped softly in the summer breeze.
“Begorra!” he muttered. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life ... It’s a nightmare.”
Then, with Spring kneeling deferentially beside him, he examined the flower-covered body, moving the fresh blooms to one side as he did so. Little examination was necessary, however, as far as he was concerned as a detective; for the cause of the tragedy was abundantly clear.
Dr. Abraham McIntee, he found, had been shot through the back at short range, probably with a revolver bullet. The tall, white-bearded, thin old man must have died instantly.
The policeman looked up at Dr. Fayne.
“How long d’ye think he’s been dead, then?”
“In my opinion not more than an hour, Inspector.”
“And do you say that, indeed? ... D’ye mind if I bring in our official man to make a complete examination?”
“It doesn’t matter what I mind, does it? You’ll bring in your medical adviser at any rate.”
The inspector tried to be conciliatory.
“Sure, Dr. Fayne, that’s true enough. But I never like to sound too officious, begorra ... Spring, will you phone up Dr. Allenson? And ask our cameraman to come round at once. I’ll make a search myself for the weapon and fingerprints, though I doubt there will be nothing much except expensive flowers to be found in this room ... Dr. Fayne, Mr. Lancaster — will you leave us now, if you please? I shall be ready for your statements in about an hour. Please tell Miss Nevinson to have the servants ready ... Wait, gentlemen! Wait! Now what the devil is this?”
On their way to the door Kenneth Fayne and Mervyn Lancaster stopped abruptly, and wheeled round to stare. Inspector McGonagle had suddenly picked up what at first appeared to be one of the myriad blooms which lay about the dead man. But as the policeman separated it from the profusion of flowers, the object resolved itself into a queer fungoid thing, not unlike a miniature toadstool. Its colour, however, was faintly pink, resembling the colour of healthy human flesh. At its root there could be observed tiny specks of a ruby red fluid.
The big Irishman glanced at Dr. Fayne and, taking a couple of deliberate strides, held the object close to the eyes of the dark young man.
“Blood, eh?”
“Let me touch the — the growth,” suggested the doctor with a puzzled frown. “It’s rather — peculiar.”
Mervyn Lancaster sidled closer to Dr. Fayne as the latter turned the object over between finger and thumb, and peered at the inspector’s find. Sergeant Spring, arrested in his passage to the hall, scratched his fair, curly head.
“Well?” McGonagle was becoming a little impatient with the doctor’s long silence and with the inscrutable expression which had fixed itself on his face. “What’s the verdict?”
Dr. Fayne shook his head. His bearing was immobile as that of an Oriental; but his dark eyes glowed.
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