by Michael Sims
Ernest Bramah
(1868–1942)
Ernest Bramah is remembered nowadays for two characters he created. The first appeared in his 1900 book The Wallet of Kai Lung. Kai Lung is an itinerant Chinese storyteller whose flowery, elegant style represents not exactly a Western parody but at least a Western stylization of formal Chinese mannerisms when speaking English. Bramah had never been to China and the stories are fanciful fables, featuring many colorful characters such as gentlemanly highwaymen, as well as occasional appearances by dragons or ghosts. Certainly the stories can be criticized as imperial British condescension, but Bramah played the language for laughs, not mockery. “It has been said,” Kai Lung remarks, “there are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice on a dark night.” The stories are sprinkled with epigrams that are about as authentic as the Polish proverbs on the old detective TV series Banacek, but then realism was never Bramah’s goal.
Bramah’s second memorable character was Max Carrados, the protagonist of the following story. Carrados is in the fortunate position of having inherited great wealth from an American relative, so he is free to amuse himself as he wishes. He is a renowned numismatist, and his first case, “The Coin of Dionysus,” revolves around this field. Blinded in a horseback-riding incident twelve years before the series begins, Carrados has developed the kind of hyperacute senses that would later be further exaggerated in the blind superhero Daredevil. Nor did Bramah keep other elements of the Carrados stories confined to realism. “The Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage” involves an elaborate murder plot worthy of a James Bond movie in its reckless disregard for plausibility, despite the tragic tone. The Carrados stories were gathered into the collection Max Carrados, published by Methuen & Company in 1914; “The Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage” appears late in the book. A second collection, The Eyes of Max Carrados, appeared nine years later.
Bramah was acclaimed for the level of his work in many categories. His 1907 dystopian science fiction novel, What Might Have Been (also published as The Secret of the League), helped prepare the way for 1984, as George Orwell himself pointed out. In creating Max Carrados, Bramah was merely exaggerating the kind of almost superhuman skills attributed to historical and contemporary figures whom he admired. One of the most renowned blind people in English history was John Fielding, brother of novelist Henry Fielding. Henry, as noted in the introduction, was also a magistrate and founder of the Bow Street Runners. John Fielding famously could identify many people (including, it was said, hundreds of criminals) by their voice alone, after only one meeting. He helped found the idea of a criminal records department in police offices by printing a police gazette featuring descriptions of known criminals. Fielding was a worthy example for Bramah to follow.
The Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage
Max,” said Mr. Carlyle, when Parkinson had closed the door behind him, “this is Lieutenant Hollyer, whom you consented to see.”
“To hear,” corrected Carrados, smiling straight into the healthy and rather embarrassed face of the stranger before him. “Mr. Hollyer knows of my disability?”
“Mr. Carlyle told me,” said the young man, “but, as a matter of fact, I had heard of you before, Mr. Carrados, from one of our men. It was in connection with the foundering of the Ivan Saratov.”
Carrados wagged his head in good-humoured resignation.
“And the owners were sworn to inviolable secrecy!” he exclaimed. “Well, it is inevitable, I suppose. Not another scuttling case, Mr. Hollyer?”
“No, mine is quite a private matter,” replied the lieutenant. “My sister, Mrs. Creake—but Mr. Carlyle would tell you better than I can. He knows all about it.”
“No, no; Carlyle is a professional. Let me have it in the rough, Mr. Hollyer. My ears are my eyes, you know.”
“Very well, sir. I can tell you what there is to tell, right enough, but I feel that when all’s said and done it must sound very little to another, although it seems important to me.”
“We have occasionally found trifles of significance ourselves,” said Carrados encouragingly. “Don’t let that deter you.”
This was the essence of Lieutenant Hollyer’s narrative:
“I have a sister, Millicent, who is married to a man called Creake. She is about twenty-eight now and he is at least fifteen years older. Neither my mother (who has since died) nor I cared very much about Creake. We had nothing particular against him, except, perhaps, the moderate disparity of age, but none of us appeared to have anything in common. He was a dark, taciturn man, and his moody silence froze up conversation. As a result, of course, we didn’t see much of each other.”
“This, you must understand, was four or five years ago, Max,” interposed Mr. Carlyle officiously.
Carrados maintained an uncompromising silence. Mr. Carlyle blew his nose and contrived to impart a hurt significance into the operation. Then Lieutenant Hollyer continued:
“Millicent married Creake after a very short engagement. It was a frightfully subdued wedding—more like a funeral to me. The man professed to have no relations and apparently he had scarcely any friends or business acquaintances. He was an agent for something or other and had an office off Holborn. I suppose he made a living out of it then, although we knew practically nothing of his private affairs, but I gather that it has been going down since, and I suspect that for the past few years they have been getting along almost entirely on Millicent’s little income. You would like the particulars of that?”
“Please,” assented Carrados.
“When our father died about seven years ago, he left three thousand pounds. It was invested in Canadian stock and brought in a little over a hundred a year. By his will my mother was to have the income of that for life and on her death it was to pass to Millicent, subject to the payment of a lump sum of five hundred pounds to me. But my father privately suggested to me that if I should have no particular use for the money at the time, he would propose my letting Millicent have the income of it until I did want it, as she would not be particularly well off. You see, Mr. Carrados, a great deal more had been spent on my education and advancement than on her; I had my pay, and, of course, I could look out for myself better than a girl could.”
“Quite so,” agreed Carrados.
“Therefore I did nothing about that,” continued the lieutenant. “Three years ago I was over again but I did not see much of them. They were living in lodgings. That was the only time since the marriage that I have seen them until last week. In the meanwhile our mother had died and Millicent had been receiving her income. She wrote me several letters at the time. Otherwise we did not correspond much, but about a year ago she sent me their new address—Brookbend Cottage, Mulling Common—a house that they had taken. When I got two months’ leave I invited myself there as a matter of course, fully expecting to stay most of my time with them, but I made an excuse to get away after a week. The place was dismal and unendurable, the whole life and atmosphere indescribably depressing.” He looked round with an instinct of caution, leaned forward earnestly, and dropped his voice. “Mr. Carrados, it is my absolute conviction that Creake is only waiting for a favourable opportunity to murder Millicent.”
“Go on,” said Carrados quietly. “A week of the depressing surroundings of Brookbend Cottage would not alone convince you of that, Mr. Hollyer.”
“I am not so sure,” declared Hollyer doubtfully. “There was a feeling of suspicion and—before me—polite hatred that would have gone a good way towards it. All the same there was something more definite. Millicent told me this the day after I went there. There is no doubt that a few months ago Creake deliberately planned to poison her with some weed-killer. She told me the circumstances in a rather distressed moment, but afterwards she refused to speak of it again—even weakly denied it—and, as a matter of fact, it was with the greatest of difficulty that I could get her at any time
to talk about her husband or his affairs. The gist of it was that she had the strongest suspicion that Creake doctored a bottle of stout which he expected she would drink for her supper when she was alone. The weed-killer, properly labelled, but also in a beer bottle, was kept with other miscellaneous liquids in the same cupboard as the beer but on a high shelf. When he found that it had miscarried he poured away the mixture, washed out the bottle and put in the dregs from another. There is no doubt in my mind that if he had come back and found Millicent dead or dying he would have contrived it to appear that she had made a mistake in the dark and drunk some of the poison before she found out.”
“Yes,” assented Carrados. “The open way; the safe way.”
“You must understand that they live in a very small style, Mr. Carrados, and Millicent is almost entirely in the man’s power. The only servant they have is a woman who comes in for a few hours every day. The house is lonely and secluded. Creake is sometimes away for days and nights at a time, and Millicent, either through pride or indifference, seems to have dropped off all her old friends and to have made no others. He might poison her, bury the body in the garden, and be a thousand miles away before anyone began even to inquire about her. What am I to do, Mr. Carrados?”
“He is less likely to try poison than some other means now,” pondered Carrados. “That having failed, his wife will always be on her guard. He may know, or at least suspect, that others know. No … The common-sense precaution would be for your sister to leave the man, Mr. Hollyer. She will not?”
“No,” admitted Hollyer, “she will not. I at once urged that.” The young man struggled with some hesitation for a moment and then blurted out: “The fact is, Mr. Carrados, I don’t understand Millicent. She is not the girl she was. She hates Creake and treats him with a silent contempt that eats into their lives like acid, and yet she is so jealous of him that she will let nothing short of death part them. It is a horrible life they lead. I stood it for a week and I must say, much as I dislike my brother-in-law, that he has something to put up with. If only he got into a passion like a man and killed her it wouldn’t be altogether incomprehensible.”
“That does not concern us,” said Carrados. “In a game of this kind one has to take sides and we have taken ours. It remains for us to see that our side wins. You mentioned jealousy, Mr. Hollyer. Have you any idea whether Mrs. Creake has real ground for it?”
“I should have told you that,” replied Lieutenant Hollyer. “I happened to strike up with a newspaper man whose office is in the same block as Creake’s. When I mentioned the name he grinned. ‘Creake,’ he said, ‘oh, he’s the man with the romantic typist, isn’t he?’ ‘Well, he’s my brother-in-law,’ I replied. ‘What about the typist?’ Then the chap shut up like a knife. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know he was married. I don’t want to get mixed up in anything of that sort. I only said that he had a typist. Well, what of that? So have we; so has everyone.’ There was nothing more to be got out of him, but the remark and the grin meant—well, about as usual, Mr. Carrados.”
Carrados turned to his friend. “I suppose you know all about the typist by now, Louis?”
“We have had her under efficient observation, Max,” replied Mr. Carlyle with severe dignity.
“Is she unmarried?”
“Yes; so far as ordinary repute goes, she is.”
“That is all that is essential for the moment. Mr. Hollyer opens up three excellent reasons why this man might wish to dispose of his wife. If we accept the suggestion of poisoning—though we have only a jealous woman’s suspicion for it—we add to the wish the determination. Well, we will go forward on that. Have you got a photograph of Mr. Creake?”
The lieutenant took out his pocket-book. “Mr. Carlyle asked me for one. Here is the best I could get.”
Carrados rang the bell. “This, Parkinson,” he said, when the man appeared, “is a photograph of a Mr. ——What first name, by the way?”
“Austin,” put in Hollyer, who was following everything with a boyish mixture of excitement and subdued importance.
“—of a Mr. Austin Creake. I may require you to recognize him.” Parkinson glanced at the print and returned it to his master’s hand. “May I inquire if it is a recent photograph of the gentleman, sir?” he asked.
“About six years ago,” said the lieutenant, taking in this new actor in the drama with frank curiosity. “But he is very little changed.”
“Thank you, sir. I will endeavour to remember Mr. Creake, sir.” Lieutenant Hollyer stood up as Parkinson left the room. The interview seemed to be at an end. “Oh, there’s one other matter,” he remarked. “I am afraid that I did rather an unfortunate thing while I was at Brookbend. It seemed to me that as all Millicent’s money would probably pass into Creake’s hands sooner or later I might as well have my five hundred pounds, if only to help her with afterwards. So I broached the subject and said that I should like to have it now as I had an opportunity for investing.”
“And you think?”
“It may possibly influence Creake to act sooner than he otherwise might have done. He may have got possession of the principal even and find it very awkward to replace it.”
“So much the better. If your sister is going to be murdered it may as well be done next week as next year so far as I am concerned. Excuse my brutality, Mr. Hollyer, but this is simply a case to me and I regard it strategically. Now Mr. Carlyle’s organization can look after Mrs. Creake for a few weeks, but it cannot look after her for ever. By increasing the immediate risk we diminish the permanent risk.”
“I see,” agreed Hollyer. “I’m awfully uneasy but I’m entirely in your hands.”
“Then we will give Mr. Creake every inducement and every opportunity to get to work. Where are you staying now?”
“Just now with some friends at St. Albans.”
“That is too far.” The inscrutable eyes retained their tranquil depth but a new quality of quickening interest in the voice made Mr. Carlyle forget the weight and burden of his ruffled dignity. “Give me a few minutes, please. The cigarettes are behind you, Mr. Hollyer.” The blind man walked to the window and seemed to look out over the cypress-shaded lawn. The lieutenant lit a cigarette and Mr. Carlyle picked up Punch. Then Carrados turned round again.
“You are prepared to put your own arrangements aside?” he demanded of his visitor.
“Certainly.”
“Very well. I want you to go down now—straight from here—to Brookbend Cottage. Tell your sister that your leave is unexpectedly cut short and that you sail to-morrow.”
“The Martian?”
“No, no; the Martian doesn’t sail. Look up the movements on your way there and pick out a boat that does. Say you are transferred. Add that you expect to be away only two or three months and that you really want the five hundred pounds by the time of your return. Don’t stay in the house long, please.”
“I understand, sir.”
“St. Albans is too far. Make your excuse and get away from there to-day. Put up somewhere in town, where you will be in reach of the telephone. Let Mr. Carlyle and myself know where you are. Keep out of Creake’s way. I don’t want actually to tie you down to the house, but we may require your services. We will let you know at the first sign of anything doing and if there is nothing to be done we must release you.”
“I don’t mind that. Is there nothing more that I can do now?”
“Nothing. In going to Mr. Carlyle you have done the best thing possible; you have put your sister into the care of the shrewdest man in London.” Whereat the object of this quite unexpected eulogy found himself becoming covered with modest confusion.
“Well, Max?” remarked Mr. Carlyle tentatively when they were alone.
“Well, Louis?”
“Of course it wasn’t worth while rubbing it in before young Hollyer, but, as a matter of fact, every single man carries the life of any other man—only one, mind you—in his hands, do what you will.”
“Provided h
e doesn’t bungle,” acquiesced Carrados.
“Quite so.”
“And also that he is absolutely reckless of the consequences.”
“Of course.”
“Two rather large provisos. Creake is obviously susceptible to both. Have you seen him?”
“No. As I told you, I put a man on to report his habits in town. Then, two days ago, as the case seemed to promise some interest—for he certainly is deeply involved with the typist, Max, and the thing might take a sensational turn at any time—I went down to Mulling Common myself. Although the house is lonely it is on the electric tram route. You know the sort of market garden rurality that about a dozen miles out of London offers—alternate bricks and cabbages. It was easy enough to get to know about Creake locally. He mixes with no one there, goes into town at irregular times but generally every day, and is reputed to be devilish hard to get money out of. Finally I made the acquaintance of an old fellow who used to do a day’s gardening at Brookbend occasionally. He has a cottage and a garden of his own with a green house, and the business cost me the price of a pound of tomatoes.”
“Was it—a profitable investment?”
“As tomatoes, yes; as information, no. The old fellow had the fatal disadvantage from our point of view of labouring under a grievance. A few weeks ago Creake told him that he would not require him again as he was going to do his own gardening in future.”
“That is something, Louis.”
“If only Creake was going to poison his wife with hyoscyamine and bury her, instead of blowing her up with a dynamite cartridge and claiming that it came in among the coal.”
“True, true. Still—”
“However, the chatty old soul had a simple explanation for everything that Creake did. Creake was mad. He had even seen him flying a kite in his garden where it was found to get wrecked among the trees. A lad of ten would have known better, he declared. And certainly the kite did get wrecked, for I saw it hanging over the road myself. But that a sane man should spend his time ‘playing with a toy’ was beyond him.”
