Such Is Death (6 page)

But Mrs Dalbinney was not to be deterred.

“I've come to see you about this terrible murder,” she stated firmly.

For a moment Carolus thought the tray would be dropped. But Mrs Stick, with an air meant to indicate that the show must go on, managed to put it down on the appointed table. Her lips were tight as she left the room.

“It isn't that we feel any anxiety in the matter,” said Mrs Dalbinney. “But it is highly unpleasant to have the police asking questions about one's movements at certain times. When I mentioned to my brothers and sisters what my son had told me about your successful intervention in several of such cases, we decided to enlist your aid. I may say that we are all in agreement about this. We want the sordid affair disposed of to relieve us of any further embarrassment.”

“You can scarcely blame the police for questioning you,” Carolus pointed out. “After all no one except his family could have wished this man out of the way. The police, quite rightly, have first to look for a motive.”

“Oh, I don't blame them, Mr Deene. Not in the least. They have their duty. But to a family like
ours
it is very distressing and humiliating. You see we had
no
idea this unhappy brother was still alive. We had long since cast him out of our memories. And for him to be murdered on our very doorsteps was …”

“Inconsiderate?” suggested Carolus.

“If you put it like that. At all events we would like you to discover who murdered him.”

Carol us considered. Then, remembering Holling-bourne's comment, for the first time in his life as an investigator he made an extraordinary statement.

“I'm afraid my fees are rather large,” he said.

This took Mrs Dalbinney by surprise.

“I see. Of course. We shall be delighted. But I understood from my son that it was a hobby of yours.”

“It is. But in this case I shall charge heavily.”

Mrs Dalbinney's shoulders rose and fell in a discreet shrug.

“Of course if you need the money,” she said.

“I don't. In fact when I get it I shall drive to the gates of Wormwood Scrubs prison and divide it, with no questions asked, between the men being released that morning.”

“You put us in a difficult position. I am sure I speak for my family when I say we should not wish to help so unworthy, so ignoble a cause.”

“Think so? Poor devils have had the world against them, whatever they've done.”

“Your ideas of humanitarianism are curious and sentimental,” pronounced Mrs Dalbinney. “But we want you to act for us.”

“Then I will. I'll come to Selby-on-Sea on December the 20th, the day after the end of term.”

“Won't that be too late?”

“For what?”

“No. I see. Of course not. We have nothing to fear. You will be with us for the holiday, then?”

“Yes. I'm sure you're all hoping for a white Christmas.”

“You say most unaccountable things, Mr Deene. It cannot be much of a Christmas for us.”

She rose and Carolus was surprised to find that she had not the stately figure one would have expected from her manner. She was in fact short and dumpy.

When she had gone Carolus waited rather apprehensively for Mrs Stick to come for the tea-tray. This, he
considered, might really be the last straw and she would do what she had so often threatened—give notice.

But no. She looked fierce but said nothing. Was she at last becoming resigned?

Certainly, as he discovered next day, the headmaster of the Queen's School, Newminster, was becoming nothing of the sort.

Mr Gorringer, a large and important-looking man with a pair of huge crimson ears whose hairy cavities were marvellously attuned to passing rumour, had more than once found the peace of what he called the academic backwater of his school threatened by Carolus Deene. He considered that the incursions of his senior history master into the world of criminal investigation might bring ‘unwelcome publicity in their train' and had tried with ponderous persuasiveness to divert the interests of Carolus.

That morning he took up his position at the large writing-table in his study and rang for the school porter, a disgruntled man named Muggeridge who resented the headmaster's insistence on a uniform which included a gold-braided silk hat.

He was a long time in answering the bell and when he came he said, “Yes?” in an aggrieved voice.

Mr Gorringer cleared his throat.

“Muggeridge,” he said sternly, “I regret that I must again call attention to your mode of address. ‘Yes,
sir',
or ‘Good morning, sir', would become you better than a mere off-hand ‘yes'.”

“It's the Break,” explained Muggeridge. “I was just having a cup of tea.”

“I have no objection to that,” conceded Mr Gorringer grandly. “However, to the matter in hand. Will you kindly ask Mr Deene to come here? It is urgent.”

“If I can find him, I will. He sometimes nips home in the Break.”

“That will do, thank you, Muggeridge.”

Muggeridge went over to the masters' common room.

“He wants you,” he told Carolus with an exasperated
sigh. “Sitting up there at his table like an assize judge. ‘It's urgent', he said, though he only had to wait five minutes until after Break. I don't know.”

But the headmaster, when Carolus entered, was loftily bland.

“Ah Deene,” he said, “take a seat, pray. There is a small matter on which I wanted a Word with you.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“By all means.” There was a long pause and a loud rumble while Mr Gorringer cleared his throat. “A little bird has whispered in my ear,” he said and Carolus had a vision of a large vulture on the headmaster's shoulder, “that you are thinking of becoming embroiled in the investigation of a most sordid crime at Selby-on-Sea.”

Hollingbourne, thought Carolus.

“I am thinking of spending Christmas there.”

“Then rumour has not lied. I felt it my duty to point out to you that Selby-on-Sea is not a hundred miles from Newminster.”

“No. It's twenty-two.”

“And that we have more than one connection with the town. Apart from the danger of press publicity there may be a great deal of unwelcome talk if it becomes known that the senior history master of this school has become involved in anything so unpleasant as this. I gather that the murdered man was a wastrel, if no worse.”

“He was the uncle of an old boy and of a boy now in Hollingbourne's house.”

Mr Gorringer's protuberant eyes had a startled expression.

“You alarm me. Which boys?”

“Dalbinney P.W. and Dalbinney P. J.”

“Dalbinney? I can scarcely credit it. I thought they came of an excellent family.”

“It may be excellent but the whole lot of them are under suspicion. Including Dalbinney P. W., now a man of twenty and quite capable of wielding a coal-hammer.”

“A coal-hammer? This is indeed a squalid story. You
are serious in telling me that a one-time pupil of ours is in the shadow of suspicion? And his uncle the victim of a brutal crime?”

“Why not? ‘Death lays his icy hand on kings.'”

“This is a most regrettable business.”

“He may not have done it, of course. Dalbinney P. W. I mean. He's only one of a number of suspects.”

“You speak lightly, Deene. If you had the fair name of the school at heart you would take a more sober view. And you are actually considering a visit to this small seaside town?”

“The Dalbinneys' mother has asked me to investigate.”

“More and more unfortunate. One of our most respected parents. I trust you will refuse?”

“I stuck out for a thumping big fee.”

“I find that painful if not vulgar. I had no idea you charged money for your services. I supposed they were in the nature of a hobby.”

“They are, often. But after what I've heard of this Mrs Dalbinney I've decided to make her and her family pay through the nose.”

“Really, Deene. Your idiom is scarcely suited to an interview with your headmaster when in his official capacity.”

“Anyway, I don't think you need feel much alarm on my account. My name won't be involved. If the school does come into it, it will be because of young Dalbinney.”

“When do you intend to go?”

“As soon as we break up. On the 20th in fact.”

“In view of Mrs Dalbinney's request I do not feel I should dissuade you as I had intended to do. I can only ask you to observe the greatest discretion. A coal-hammer, you say?”

“That was the weapon, apparently. The man was drunk, though, or something very like it.”

Mr Gorringer gave a rather theatrical groan.

“I trust your first act will be to clear young Dalbinney from all suspicion. It is quite impossible that an old boy
of the Queen's School, Newminster, should have killed his uncle with a coal-hammer.”

“Nothing's impossible in crime, headmaster.”

Carolus left Mr Gorringer at his desk, a somewhat baffled man, and hurried across to his classroom.

I
T
was with rather boyish exhilaration that Carolus drove his Bentley Continental towards Selby-on-Sea on the morning of December 20th. The term had finished with the school concert but he had escaped Mr Gorringer's annual dinner party for the staff. It was a crisp morning with pale sunlight thawing the frost on the bare hedges and he felt in splendid health and spirits.

He was going to an investigation which promised to be one of the most interesting he had known. All the circumstances suggested an intricate, teasing problem and a collection of odd human beings such as he liked to meet in the course of his enquiries. Moreover he would live with the crime, as it were, remaining in the town in which it had taken place, among the people involved in it. He felt like a schoolboy leaving for his first holiday abroad, knowing that everything he saw and heard would be of stirring interest to him.

Also, John Moore was in charge of police enquiries and though he would make no concessions or treat Carolus in any way but as an inquisitive member of the public, he would not impede Carolus and would always be ready to hear anything he might have to say.

There was, Carolus reflected, something very strange about this crime, something he could only sense which seemed to demand imagination and bold thinking. It was a premeditated murder, skilfully planned and executed. Yet there was no sign of anyone with a motive strong enough to inspire that kind of planning and execution and, on the face of it, the members of Rafter's family,
the only people known to have a motive at all, sounded unlikely. John Moore could obviously do nothing but work on the supposition that one of them, man or woman, was responsible, at least until he discovered in Rafter's past an indication that the truth might lie elsewhere. Yet Carolus had a sort of instinct that this line of enquiry would lead to very little. Dangerous, he would have agreed, to have premature instincts of the kind before he had even met the people involved, but already he caught a whiff of something abnormal and hellish, something quite unconnected with the blunt straightforward murder of a man whose arrival from the past would bring un-happiness and financial loss to a number of respectable people. He had no idea what this something might be, but he did not think much of John Moore's makeshift beginnings of a theory.

Not that he would dismiss it so soon. He would meet this family and conscientiously consider each of them as the potential murderer, as he was bound to do. He would meet the other people seen on the promenade that night and everyone else who was in any way, however remotely, connected with the crime. Yet, he felt, his enquiries for a long time would be in the nature of almost aimless circling on the outer perimeter of the truth. Something would come from them, some hint be dropped, some fact emerge which might send him in an entirely different direction. That so often happened. He would be questioning A about B when A would say something apparently irrelevant which suddenly involved C. Or it would be through following his suspicions of D that he would come on the trail of E. At all events it was all very exciting and provocative and he would settle down to a busy stay in the town.

He found the Queen Victoria hotel near the station and it conformed well to John Moore's description ‘old-fashioned commercial'. Its grey façade, square and ugly, promised large rooms and high ceilings and great golden letters ran across it proclaiming it to be ‘family and commercial'. The proprietor, whose name was Rugley,
lived with his wife on the premises and had done so for more than thirty years. He saw no reason to make changes in the hotel which had always given him a comfortable living and he was deaf to talk of what a gold mine it would be if he would instal central heating and strip lighting, knock down a number of walls, build a modern kitchen, engage a skilled cook, and put television in every bedroom.

“When we first came here,” he told Carolus, “it was just the same, only in those days they wanted me to put in an American cocktail bar and have the radio in all the bedrooms. They were only fashions, gone out years ago, same as their fads today will go. We keep on as we've always done except that I put running water in the bedrooms before the war to save the girls running round with jugs of hot water. Otherwise we don't change. I hope you'll be comfortable.”

When Carolus looked round his large heavily curtained bedroom with its mighty mahogany bed and worn Axminster carpet, he was content. It must have been in rooms like this that he and many of his generation were born and he felt as though he were returning home. His room was number 3, he noticed before he came down to the bar.

This was crowded with men, mostly middle-aged business types.

“It's the Rotary today,” explained the barmaid who served him, a short brisk woman known as Doris. “We get them once a month. They'll all be going in for lunch in a minute.”