Surfeit of Suspects

by George Bellairs

  Originally published in 1964 by John Gifford, London

  Copyright © 1964 by George Bellairs

  Introduction Copyright © 2019 by Martin Edwards

  Front cover image © National Railway Museum/Pictoral Collection/Science & Society Picture Library

  First U.S. Edition 2019

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the British Library.

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bellairs, George, 1902-1985, author. | Edwards, Martin, writer of introduction.

  Title: Surfeit of suspects / George Bellairs ; with an introduction by Martin Edwards.

  Description: Naperville, IL : Poisoned Pen Press, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019018760| ISBN 9781464211737 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780712364843 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PR6003.E4465 S87 2019 | DDC 823/.914--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018760

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Back Cover

  Introduction

  Surfeit of Suspects begins with a bang. Literally: in the first paragraph, ‘a terrific explosion’ destroys the premises of the Excelsior Joinery Company. In the third, it emerges that three people have been killed in the blast. George Bellairs’ novels are sometimes described as low-key, but such an opening to a story is as dramatic as any thrill-seeker could wish for.

  The dead men are three of the five directors of the company, and it quickly becomes apparent that the explosion was no accident. Did someone target the directors—or one of them—or was the aim to destroy a business which was already in financial jeopardy? Or was there a subtler motive? It’s a case for Scotland Yard, in the shape of Superintendent Tom Littlejohn and his trusty sidekick, Inspector Cromwell.

  The scene of the crime is in Evingden, in Surrey. Not so long ago, it was a small, sleepy place where everybody knew everybody else; now, it’s growing rapidly. Littlejohn finds himself confronted with intrigue aplenty, including a recent abortive attempt to rob a bank, and the clues include scrawled notes on a piece of paper that one of the deceased was clutching in his hand. All is ultimately revealed when Littlejohn assembles the suspects in a solicitor’s office. Financial shenanigans play a part in the storyline, and George Bellairs clearly drew on his personal knowledge of business life in constructing the plot.

  George Bellairs was a pseudonym. The author’s real name was Harold Blundell (1902–82), and although he was himself a bank manager, he found time to write no fewer than fifty-eight Bellairs novels from 1941 onwards. R. F. Stewart, who wrote an entertaining article about Bellairs in the fanzine CADS, speculated that his forename was a hat-tip to French crime writer Georges Simenon. Simenon’s series detective Jules Maigret is, like Bellairs’ detective Littlejohn, a humane, uxorious man with a fondness for smoking a pipe, rather than a cerebral reasoning machine; however, the similarities can’t be pressed too far, and Freeman Wills Crofts’ meticulous Inspector Joseph French perhaps bears a closer resemblance to Littlejohn. In any event, the author said that the pen-name was based on the initials of his wife, Gwladys Blundell.

  The publishing business was very different in Bellairs’ time, although some things don’t change. He was modestly —very modestly—remunerated for his efforts, but at least he had the satisfaction of remaining in print (in hardback; few of his novels made it into paperback editions) for almost forty years. Today, authors may, if they are lucky, benefit from much greater investment and (sometimes) marketing, but if their books fail to earn an adequate return, they are soon likely to find themselves dropped from their publisher’s list, a fate which, in the UK, never befell Bellairs. Because he was able to live on his earnings from Martins Bank, he enjoyed the luxury of writing to amuse himself, while giving occasional talks about his work and writing newspaper articles to earn pocket money. His lifestyle seems to have been agreeable, and on his retirement, he and Gwladys moved to the Isle of Man, a place they loved and which served as the setting for many of his stories.

  After 1952, his books ceased to be published in the U.S.; reading tastes there had changed, and more highly charged stories from newcomers such as Ross Macdonald and Patricia Highsmith had come into vogue. Compensation came from across the Channel, as Littlejohn found particular favour with French readers; the books were often retitled to include the detective’s surname, rather in the fashion of the Maigret stories. Bellairs was published in other European countries, and also in Mexico and South America. He reckoned that of his readers ‘over 50 percent are old ladies who like murder and more murder, but jib at extreme violence on the part of the police’, and he took care not to antagonise them. Settings mattered to him, and (like John Bude, another author whose books appear in the British Library’s Crime Classics series) he made a virtue of writing mysteries—Death in High Provence is an example—based in appealing locations.

  R. F. Stewart rightly emphasises Bellairs’ other strengths, namely humour and concise characterisation: ‘The humour is of the quiet, wry variety. The characterisation is not by way of slow development but in thumbnail sketches… we are given amusing little pen-pictures of people whom Littlejohn meets in the course of his enquiries and whom we suspect Bellairs of having actually met in the course of his life. Policemen, clerics, and solicitors are among his favourites for poking fun at, but especially bank managers, on whom Bellairs was by definition an authority.’ In this novel, one of the key characters is a hapless bank manager who rejoices in the name George Frederick Handel Roper.

  The book was published during the Swinging Sixties, though—despite fleeting reference to teddy-boys and pop singers—you might be forgiven for not guessing it from the text. P. D. James and Ruth Rendell had just arrived on the scene, and the nature of crime fiction in Britain was evolving, as it had done in the U.S. Even in 1964, Surfeit of Suspects must have seemed a little old-fashioned to many of the library users who constituted Bellairs’ principal readership. But there is comfort and pleasure to be had in the familiar, and more than half a century after its original appearance, this novel remains an amiable read, light entertainment which gives us a glimpse of a long-vanished world, a world that was already vanishing even as Bellairs wrote about it.

  —Martin Edwards

  martinedwardsbooks.com

  One

  Sky High

  At eight o’clock in the evening on the 8th of November, there was a terrific explosion in Green Lane, Evingde
n. It smashed all the windows of two rows of terraced cottages in the vicinity and the front of a corner shop completely collapsed and strewed sweets and provisions all over the pavement. When the startled tenants of the damaged houses rushed outside, they found the offices of the Excelsior Joinery Company reduced to a mass of rubble.

  It was some time before the bewildered occupants of Green Lane thought of sending for the police. They didn’t quite realise what had happened. They were suffering from concussion and it took them a little while to get over it. They thought of bombs, fireworks, gas-mains, and gunpowder. Even those trained in civil defence had to shake off the nightmare and made a late start in functioning.

  Meanwhile, the wrecked building, illuminated by a broken gas-main which had become ignited and spread a yellow hissing glow over the ruins, continued to disintegrate, shedding loose bricks, plaster, and timber which soon started to burn. Someone telephoned for the fire brigade and the police and only then did one of the lookers-on suddenly proclaim in a shrill voice that there was a body in the debris. Three men with more initiative and guts than the rest rushed to recover it before the flames spread. Instead of returning with a single corpse, the rescuers emerged with one apiece.

  ‘They’ve all had it,’ said a man called Prime, who was the Johnny-know-all of Green Lane. And this time he was right.

  Normally, Green Lane was a quiet street on the edge of the town. It had been green once, but now trees and other vegetation which struggled to appear in the summer time were quickly coated with the white dust of passing traffic or with soot poured down from the numerous chimneys of the vicinity. On one side of the street which joined together the two main thoroughfares like the bar across a letter H, were two blocks of terraced houses and the large factory of the Excelsior Joinery Company. On the other side, the huge timber-yard of the company, and its registered office stood on an island site. For a couple of hours after the explosion the local fire brigade was kept on its toes preventing the flames from spreading from the office to the timber-yard.

  Sergeant Jeal and two of his men didn’t need to ask where the fire was. As they left the police-station they could see the glow of it in the sky and found themselves borne along by the stream of townspeople turning out to see what was happening. As a rule Green Lane was silent after dark, shadowy and haunted-looking under its gas lamps. Sergeant Jeal now found it packed from end to end with a motley crowd, faces like masks under the glow of the fire and almost talking in whispers because the news of the deaths had got around.

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’ said Jeal as he and his retinue shouldered their way through the mob.

  The sight of the helmets brought the ubiquitous Mr. Prime in their direction right away. He was overflowing with information. He told of the explosion, volunteered his opinion as to how it had occurred—faulty gas-main, that’s wot it was’—and offered to conduct the police to where the bodies had been placed.

  ‘Funny thing, the explosion doesn’t seem to have been wot killed ’em. Either the ceilin’ fell-in on ’em, or else they was brained by failin’ bricks and timber… They look quite peaceful…’

  ‘Who are they?’

  Mr. Prime, a little thin sallow man with a pair of imitation tortoiseshell spectacles held together by cotton wound around the nosepiece, had to shout to make himself heard above the noise of the crowd and the firemen.

  ‘John Willie Dodd, Dick Fallows, and John Robert Piper. They were directors of the Excelsior and must ’ave been havin’ a meetin’ in the office. Lucky the other two directors weren’t there. Tom Hoop, the chairman’s in bed with ’flu, and Fred Hoop hadn’t turned up at the meetin’…’

  Mr. Prime turned to look at the fire again and shook his head.

  ‘The Hoops’ll be sorry they stopped the fire from gettin’ at the timber…’

  Sergeant Jeal who’d only been half listening to the spate of information suddenly turned on Prime.

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’

  Mr. Prime shouted louder than ever.

  ‘The ’oops’ll be sorry the timber-yard’s not goin’ up in smoke, too. The Excelsior’s as good as bust… Bankrupt, if you know wot I mean…’

  ‘I know what you mean, but…’

  Sergeant Jeal turned to address Mr. Prime again and discovered he’d vanished. In the ebb and flow of the struggling crowd, he’d been caught-up and carried off by a current, like a poor swimmer going out with the tide.

  Sergeant Jeal found himself at a bit of a loss. The first thing he felt he ought to do was to clear away the milling crowds, but he’d only two bobbies to fall back on and it was quite beyond their capacity. A huge, red-faced man, he felt he could have disposed of the mob by instalments, two or three at a time, but there were nearly two hundred of them at a guess… Jeal sighed with relief when he saw the hat of Inspector Tattersall approaching him, like a cork floating across the sea of heads. It was a rather rakish cloth hat, with a feather in the band.

  Tattersall had been off duty and had just been enjoying a Western with his wife in the local cinema, when he had received a message, superimposed on the screen across the Great Salt Desert (wherever that might be!) over which the sheriff was shambling with a captured outlaw.

  If Inspector Tattersall is in the audience will he report at the box office. Thank you.

  It looked as if the thirst-racked man wearing a tin star needed a bit of official help.

  ‘Don’t forget to put your scarf on,’ said Mrs. Tattersall and settled down to watch the film through on her own.

  Tattersall was wearing his scarf when he arrived on the scene. It was beginning to rain. It seemed to cheer him up. He was a tall, thin man, with a long face and a heavy nose. An imperturbable sort, he’d not even complained about being called from the pictures, although he hadn’t thought it a bit funny when some of the audience began to laugh and cheer at the announcement. He looked hard at Jeal’s deadpan face.

  ‘Good evening, Jeal.’

  Jeal swallowed heavily and the strap under his chin rose and fell. ‘Good evening, sir.’

  He said it in an apologetic voice and added ‘I’m sorry,’ for he knew Tattersall’s weakness for Wild West films.

  ‘Sorry for what? You didn’t start the fire, did you?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s more than a fire. There’s three dead men in it, as well.’

  It sounded like the film Tattersall had just left. Three dead men in Boot Hill, instead of in the timber-yard gatehouse.

  ‘How far have you gone?’

  ‘I’ve not even seen the bodies yet, sir. We’ve only just arrived ourselves, and this mob…’

  ‘The rain’ll soon shift ’em. Tell them to make way.’

  The morale of the crowd was already faltering under the growing weight of rain, which competed with the firemen in putting out the blaze. The police found the passage to the gatehouse easy now.

  It was a two-storeyed wooden building with a tin roof and a weighing machine outside the door. Illuminated by a single bare electric bulb and covered by one huge tarpaulin sheet were the three bodies, guarded by the gateman who was smoking thick-twist. The small room was full of acrid tobacco smoke.

  The man put down his pipe and drew back the sheet. He had a hook where his left hand should be. Tattersall regarded the three victims without a word, after removing the famous hat. Someone had straightened them out and laid them in an orderly row. All seemed to have died in the same way. A falling beam or bricks must have smashed in their heads, which were not a pretty sight. Tattersall pursed his lips. He’d been through some nasty scenes in the war, but violent death always turned him up a bit.

  ‘Cover them up again…’

  The gatekeeper hooked back the tarpaulin and stood eagerly waiting for the oracle to speak. Jeal stood behind Tattersall breathing heavily and his two attendant coppers brought up the rear, standing to attention.

  ‘
Well, lads, don’t stand there on parade. One of you go and bring the chief fire officer to me. I suppose he’s with the brigade by now…’

  Garnett, the head of the fire brigade, had been in the cinema as well, but had made a hell-for-leather exit when he heard the clanging fire engine, its noise drowning the shots of a gunfight, passing the door.

  A constable hurried out.

  ‘You better ring Dr. Stephens, Jeal. Tell him to hurry. We’ve three bodies here for him. And then, telephone the station, advise that there’s been a fatal fire in Green Lane, and get them to ring the forensic people and ask them to come here as soon as they can. Say there’s been an explosion and three deaths and we’re eager to know what it’s all about.’

  The remaining bobby, a young chap not long in the force, was beginning to think he’d been forgotten.

  ‘Constable Forrest, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Well, until the sergeant returns, you’re in charge of the scene of the fire. The rain and the brigade will soon have the thing under control and then the snoopers will be around seeing what they can find and carry off. You’re to see they’re kept away.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  As Forrest went out he passed Garnett on his way in. A stocky man with a grim craggy face which had been blackened by smoke and burnt wood.

  ‘Enjoy the pictures, Garnett?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I knew when the missus wanted to go there’d be a fire as soon as we got settled. Were you there?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll have to ask my wife to tell me how it ended. This is a mess, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s an old building and the wood’s as dry as a bone. As soon as the flame spouted from the gas-fire, the whole lot went up like a rocket.’

  ‘There was an explosion first?’

  ‘You’re tellin’ me. It blew all the windows out in the houses opposite.’

  ‘Gas?’

  ‘No. There were only two gas-fires in the building, fed by a narrow inlet from the street main. It was something worse. To my way of thinking there must have been some powerful explosive in the office that went off. What it was doing there I can’t think. You don’t use stuff like blasting powder for joinery work.’