by Richard Hull
So there it all was. Mr. Hoopington had had his suspicions all the time, but he found them difficult to prove. He says that one of the things that made him convinced that it wasn’t Mr. Latimer was that everybody said that Mr. Latimer was so lazy and stupid and feeble. He didn’t think he would have had the brains, still less the courage—as a matter of fact he said ‘the guts’—to carry all that out. And then again the hitting as he was dying didn’t seem the sort of thing that Mr. Spencer would have done. Which of course is quite true.
So he thought that the best thing was to give Mr. Barraclough plenty of rope—well, perhaps under the circumstances that isn’t quite a nice phrase to use, but you know what I mean. Well, anyhow, that is why he talked to him for so long and why he let him give such a lot of evidence at the Coroner’s inquest, and of course Mr. Hoopington was right. Because in the end Mr. Barraclough over-acted. He kept on pressing his pet theory too hard and forcing the facts to fit it, and there were several little slips, and they all helped.
But it was only that very morning that Mr. Hoopington had got enough evidence to get a warrant and charge him or whatever you do.
Somehow—I don’t know how—he had succeeded in tracing the envelope on the balcony and connecting it with him. Well, of course, that was final. It just shows, doesn’t it? That it isn’t easy to plan a murder and put it on to other people, and I must say I am glad to think that that’s true.
Naturally Mr. Hoopington didn’t tell us all this then, but he said some of it, just enough for us to know what was going to happen, and then we heard Mr. Barraclough come back into the next room and sit down heavily, as if all the heart had gone out of him.
“All to no purpose! All to no purpose!” we heard him say.
With that, Inspector Hoopington walked straight in and said:
“What was to no purpose?” and I couldn’t help it, I followed in afterwards, though Percy did try to stop me.
“Ah, so that woman is to be in at the kill too! You–––” and then he called me names that I could not demean myself by repeating. Well, I couldn’t write them down anyhow.
But meanwhile Mr. Hoopington arrested him and cautioned him as to what he said. Mr. Barraclough seemed to take no notice.
“Well, anyhow,” he said, “let me have the pleasure of sacking these incompetent married nincompoops.”
Well, I don’t know whatever came over Percy, but he suddenly said:
“I shouldn’t do that. Somebody’s got to run this business while you’re away.”
“And you think you’d like to take it over from me, because you know as well as I do I am not coming back; so you hope you can get it for nothing! Well, you’re welcome!”
For a moment I thought how lovely it would be. Percy would have been so good and I could have helped him no end! But then I heard Mr. Barraclough’s voice go on with a harsh laugh.
“You’re welcome, because there isn’t any business. Directly I telephoned Tonescu this morning, he knew the game was up. He’s just put in his pocket all the money from the sales—I should think it was a good deal—and gone off with it, heaven alone knows where—and we’re left to pay all the advertising contracts which we have placed. So you’re welcome to the business—if you pay its liabilities!”
Well, after that there was a silence.
Then Mr. Barraclough gave a nasty laugh. “Even the cheque I gave to that woman Higgins won’t be met—and that’s a good thing!”
Then he said: “Ah, I see Miss Wyndham—or should I say Mrs. Thomas? —has stolen my manuscript. Well, she always was an eavesdropping little–––”
I don’t know what he was going to say, but at that moment Percy hit him hard in the mouth, and quite right too.
He reeled back and then turned to Mr. Hoopington.
“Well, if my staff, my late staff, are going to insult me, it is time to hand myself over to your care. Now that NeO-aD has gone smash, I don’t mind. There’s nothing left in life worth living for. Get on with it. I'll tell it you all, but for heaven’s sake keep that goggle-eyed, rabbit-toothed woman away from me.”
Well, that was the last I ever saw of him, and I really don’t see why he wanted to be rude. Except of course that I saw him at the trial, and then I could scarcely bring myself to look at him. There wasn’t hardly any evidence to give, and he pleaded guilty and wouldn’t cross-question anyone. I must say I was rather disappointed. I thought I was going to be the centre of quite a lot of sensation and people would see how well I had done to find him out, and I was quite terrified at the idea of being cross-examined by one of those clever lawyers, though I am sure that my truth and honesty would always have prevailed.
However, there it was. He didn’t appeal and there was very little fuss about it at all, and nobody has heard of me or poor Percy, and it has been so difficult to find work, especially for me.
Chapter Four
Perhaps I ought just to explain as a footnote how I came to have the papers he wrote, and why I have ended it.
You see, as he pleaded guilty, they were never read out, and so they weren’t part of the evidence, but when they were likely to be wanted, I got Mr. Hoopington to let me do some work for him by typing out what Mr. Spencer wrote, and as for the rest, in the end I got him to let me keep it. I believe it isn’t quite the right thing to do, but still, it is all over and forgotten now, and of course I’ve changed the names and no one would ever know.
But as for finishing it, that really was Mr. Hoopington’s idea too. You see, we being so hard up, I wanted something to do, so he said: “Well, why not take the story and finish it. It will give you something to do, and some day you may be able to publish it, and you might make some money that way. Though not much, I know what these publishers are!”
Well, it was ever so kind of him. But then he always has been kind to us ever since. We call him Uncle George now, and my eldest little boy’s been named after him—Percy Hoopington his Christian names are. So that’s how I came to take up a literary career, and while murder may not be easy, I must say I think writing is. You just go straight on.
I’m beginning to simply adore it.
The Case of the Famished Parson
George Bellairs
The Tower Room
WEDNESDAY, September 4th. The Cape Mervin Hotel was as quiet as the grave. Everybody was “in” and the night-porter was reading in his cubby-hole under the stairs.
A little hunchbacked fellow was Fennick, with long arms, spindleshanks accentuated by tight, narrow-fitting trousers—somebody’s cast-offs—and big feet. Some disease had robbed him of all his hair. He didn’t need to shave and when he showed himself in public, he wore a wig. The latter was now lying on a chair, as though Fennick had scalped himself for relief.
The plainwood table was littered with papers and periodicals left behind by guests and rescued by the porter from the salvage dump. He spent a lot of his time reading and never remembered what he had read.
Two or three dailies, some illustrated weeklies of the cheaper variety, and a copy of Old Moore’s Almanac. A sporting paper and a partly completed football pool form. . . .
Fennick was reading “What the Stars have in Store.” He was breathing hard and one side of his face was contorted with concentration. He gathered that the omens were favourable. Venus and Jupiter in good aspect. Success in love affairs and a promising career. . . . He felt better for it.
Outside the tide was out. The boats in the river were aground. The light in the tower at the end of the break-water changed from white to red and back at minute intervals. The wind blew up the gravel drive leading from the quayside to the hotel and tossed bits of paper and dead leaves about. Down below on the road to the breakwater you could see the coke glowing in a brazier and the silhouette of a watchman’s cabin nearby.
The clock on the Jubilee Tower on the promenade across the river struck midnight. At this signal the grandfather clocks in the public rooms and hall began to chime all at once in appalling discord, like a peal
of bells being ‘fired.’ The owner of the hotel was keen on antiques and bric-a-brac and meticulously oiled and regulated all his clocks himself.
Then, in mockery of the ponderous timepieces, a clock somewhere else cuckooed a dozen times. The under-manager, who had a sense of humour, kept it in his office, set to operate just after the heavy ones. Most people laughed at it. So far, the proprietor hadn’t seen the point.
Fennick stirred himself, blinked his hairless eyelids, laid aside the oracle, stroked his naked head as though soothing it after absorbing so much of the future, and rose to lock the main door. Then he entered the bar.
The barmaid and cocktail-shaker had been gone almost an hour. Used glasses stood around waiting to be washed first thing in the morning. The night-porter took a tankard from a hook and emptied all the dregs from the glasses into it. Beer, stout, gin, whisky, vermouth. . . . A good pint of it. . . . One hand behind his back, he drank without stopping, his prominent Adam’s-apple and dewlaps agitating, until it was all gone. Then he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, sighed with satisfaction, selected and lighted the largest cigarette-end from one of the many ash-trays scattered about and went off to his next job.
It was the rule that Fennick collected all shoes, chalked their room-numbers on their soles and carried them to the basement for cleaning. But he had ways of his own. He took a large newspaper and his box of cleaning materials and silently dealt with the footwear, one by one, as it stood outside the doors of the bedrooms, spreading the paper to protect the carpet.
Fennick started for the first floor. Rooms 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, with the best views over the river and bay. His gait was jaunty, for he had had a few beers before finally fuddling himself with the dregs from the bar. He hummed a tune to himself.
Don’t send my boy to prizzen,
It’s the first crime wot he’s done.…
He tottered up the main staircase with his cleaning-box and stopped at the first door.
Number I was a single room. Once it had been double, but the need for more bathrooms had split it in two. Outside, on the mat, a pair of substantial handmade black shoes. Fennick glided his two brushes and polishing-cloth over them with hasty approval. They belonged to Judge Tennant, of the High Court. He came every year at this time for a fishing holiday. He tipped meticulously. Neither too much not too little. Yet you didn’t mind. You felt justice had been done when you got it.
Fennick had been sitting on his haunches. Now and then he cocked an ear to make sure that nobody was stirring. He moved like a crab to Number 2 gently dragging his tackle along with him.
This was the best room, with a private bath. Let to a millionaire, they said. It was a double, and in the register the occupants had gone down as Mr. and Mrs. Cuhady. All the staff, from the head waiter down to the handyman who raked the gravel round the hotel and washed down the cars, knew it was a lie. The head waiter was an expert on that sort of thing. With thirty years’ experience in a dining-room you can soon size-up a situation.
That was how they knew about the honeymoon couple in Number 3, too. Outside their door was a pair of new men’s brogues and some new brown suede ladies’ shoes. “The Bride’s travelling costume consisted of … with brown suede shoes….” Fennick knew all about it from reading his papers in the small hours.
There were five pairs of women’s shoes outside Number 2. Brown leather, blue suede, black and red tops, light patent leather, and a pair with silk uppers. All expensive ones.
Five pairs in a day! Fennick snarled and showed a nasty gap where he had lost four teeth. Just like her! He cleaned the brown, the black-and-red and the patent uppers with the same brushes for spite. The blue suede he ignored altogether. And he spat contemptuously on the silk ones and wiped them with a dirty cloth.
Mr. Cuhady seemed to have forgotten his shoes altogether. That was a great relief! He was very particular about them. Lovely hand-made ones and the colour of old mahogany. And you had to do them properly, or he played merry hell. Mr. Cuhady had blood-pressure and “Mrs.” Cuhady didn’t seem to be doing it any good. The magnate was snoring his head off. There was no other sound in Number 2. Fennick bet himself that his partner was noiselessly rifling Cuhady’s pocket-book….
He crawled along and dealt with the honeymoon shoes. They weren’t too good. Probably they’d saved-up hard to have their first nights together at a posh hotel and would remember it all their lives. “Remember the Cape Mervin … ?” Fennick, sentimental under his mixed load of drinks, spat on all four soles for good luck…. He crept on.
Two pairs of brogues this time. Male and female. Good ones, too, and well cared for. Fennick handled them both with reverence. A right good job. For he had read a lot in his papers about one of the occupants of Room 4. An illustrated weekly had even interviewed him at Scotland Yard and printed his picture.
On the other side of the door were two beds, separated by a table on which stood a reading-lamp, a travelling-clock and two empty milk glasses. In one bed a good-looking, middle-aged woman was sitting-up, with a dressing-gown round her shoulders, reading a book about George Sand.
In the other a man was sleeping on his back. On his nose a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles; on the eiderdown a thriller had fallen from his limp hand. He wore striped silk pyjamas and his mouth was slightly open.
The woman rose, removed the man’s glasses and book, drew the bedclothes over his arms, kissed him lightly on his thinning hair, and then climbed back into bed and resumed her reading. Inspector Littlejohn slept on….
Fennick had reached the last room of the block. Number 5 was the tower room. The front of the Cape Mervin Hotel was like a castle. A wing, a tower, the main block, a second tower, and then another wing. Number 5 was in the left-hand tower. And it was occupied at the time by the Bishop of Greyle and his wife.
As a rule there were two pairs here, too. Heavy, brown serviceable shoes for Mrs. Bishop; boots, dusty, with solid, heavy soles and curled-up toes, for His Lordship. Tonight there was only one pair. Mrs. Greyle’s. Nobody properly knew the bishop’s surname. He signed everything “J. C. Greyle” and they didn’t like to ask his real name. Somebody thought it was Macintosh.
Fennick was so immersed in his speculations that he didn’t see the door open. Suddenly looking up he found Mrs. Greyle standing there in a blue dressing-gown staring down at him.
The night-porter hastily placed his hand flat on the top of his head to cover his nakedness, for he’d forgotten his wig. He felt to have a substantial thatch of hair now, however, and every hair of his head seemed to rise.
“Have you seen my husband?” said Mrs. Greyle, or Macintosh, or whatever it was. “He went out at eleven and hasn’t returned.”
Fennick writhed from his haunches to his knees and then to his feet, like a prizefighter who has been down.
“No, mum … I don’t usually do the boots this way, but I’m so late, see?”
“Wherever can he be … ? So unusual….”
She had a net over her grey hair. Her face was white and drawn. It must have been a very pretty face years ago…. Her hands trembled as she clutched her gown to her.
“Anything I can do, mum?”
“I can’t see that there is. I don’t know where he’s gone. The telephone in our room rang at a quarter to eleven and he just said he had to go out and wouldn’t be long. He didn’t explain….”
“Oh, he’ll be turnin’ up. P’raps visitin’ the sick, mum.”
Fennick was eager to be off. The manager’s quarters were just above and if he got roused and found out Fennick’s little cleaning dodge, it would be, as the porter inwardly told himself, Napooh!
It was no different the following morning, when the hotel woke up. The bishop was still missing.
At nine o’clock things began to happen.
First, the millionaire sent for the manager and raised the roof.
His shoes were dirty. Last night he’d put them out as usual to be cleaned. This morning he had found them, not only uncleaned, b
ut twice as dirty as he’d left them. In fact, muddy right up to the laces. He demanded an immediate personal interview with the proprietor. Somebody was going to get fired for it….
“Mrs.” Cuhady, who liked to see other people being bullied and pushed around, watched with growing pride and satisfaction the magnate’s mounting blood-pressure…
At nine-fifteen they took the bishop’s corpse to the town morgue in the ambulance. He had been found at the bottom of Bolter’s Hole, with the tide lapping round his emaciated body and his head bashed in.
The first that most of the guests knew of something unusual was the appearance of the proprietor in the dining-room just after nine. This was extraordinary, for Mr. Allain was a lazy man with a reputation for staying in bed until after ten.
Mr. Allain, a tall fat man and usually imperturbable, appeared unshaven and looking distracted. After a few words with the head waiter, who pointed out a man eating an omelette at a table near the window, he waddled across the room.
They only got bacon once a week at the Cape Mervin and Littlejohn was tackling an omelette without enthusiasm. His wife was reading a letter from her sister at Melton Mowbray who had just had another child.
Mr. Allain whispered to Littlejohn. All eyes in the room turned in their direction. Littlejohn emptied his mouth and could be seen mildly arguing. In response, Mr. Allain, who was half French, clasped his hands in entreaty. So, Littlejohn, after a word to his wife, left the room with the proprietor….
“Something must have happened,” said the guests one to another.
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