A Third Class Murder: a cozy 1930s mystery set in an English village

by Hugh Morrison

  ‘American, you mean?’

  ‘American looking, Inspector. Blonde hair of the very lightest shade, and wearing a close fitting costume. I did not hear her speak, so could detect no accent. I have certainly never seen such a woman our little village before.’

  ‘I see,’ replied Ludd. ‘And you didn’t see her, or anyone else other than the man on the track, get on or off the train at any other time?’

  Shaw paused, lost in thought for a moment. ‘I must correct you, Inspector,’ said Shaw. ‘I did not see the man I described physically descend from the train. I heard a door slam and looked out to see him on the track, but did not actually see him get off’.

  Ludd smiled. ‘You’ll make a good witness in court, sir, if it comes to that. I can tell you’re observant’.

  ‘A clergyman is trained to discern a certain pattern in what one might call the tapestry of life, Inspector. Observation of spiritual detail can often translate into observation of material detail.’

  ‘You’ve lost me now,’ said Ludd.

  ‘My apologies, Inspector. I have a bad habit of philosophical musings, for which my wife often admonishes me.’

  At the word ‘wife’, Ludd’s expression became more intense. ‘Did you know the deceased, sir?’

  ‘Mr Cokeley was a fairly regular attender at All Saints, Inspector, but I did not know him particularly well.’

  ‘A devout sort of man, was he?’

  Shaw paused. ‘As Queen Elizabeth the First said, Inspector, “I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls”’.

  Ludd frowned. ‘You’ve lost me again, sir. What I mean is, how can I put this to a man of the cloth…was, did he get on well with his wife, or was he the sort of man to play away from home?’

  Shaw smiled at the euphemism. ‘Inspector, I was a military chaplain in France for most of the war. I think I have probably seen, or at least heard described in the most graphic terms, every sin of which man is capable. If you are asking me if Mr Cokeley was an adulterer, truthfully I do not know. Why, may I ask, is it relevant?’

  ‘At this stage I don’t know if it’s relevant sir, I’m just following a line of enquiry.’

  ‘Of course, it is not for me to pry,’ said Shaw apologetically. ‘For all you know, I myself could be the guilty party, perhaps climbing into the next compartment when the train was stopped.’

  Ludd sighed. ‘This country has changed a lot since the war, but the day I start suspecting vicars are clambering around trains to stab their parishioners to death is the day I hang up my truncheon and retire.’

  ‘Thank you for your confidence,’ replied Shaw. ‘All I can say is that Mr Cokeley and his wife were known to argue from time to time. In fact I am sorry to say Mr Cokeley was unpopular with a number of people in the village.’

  ‘Unpopular enough to be murdered by one of them?’

  ‘Perhaps, but it is also possible that it was a simple case of robbery with violence. You will know, of course, that Mr Cokeley was robbed on the same train some years ago.’

  Ludd cleared his throat. ‘Yes, I’ve got someone looking into that. It’s the most likely explanation. Possibly even the same perpetrator.’

  Ludd put away his notebook. ‘Yes, well you’ve been very helpful Mr Shaw. I’d better speak to the other passengers now. Who’s the old fellow who was in the compartment next to you?’

  ‘Albert Goggins. Another of my parishioners.’

  ‘Know him well?’

  ‘Not particularly; I see him infrequently at church but that is all.’

  ‘Would he have any reason to want Cokeley dead?’

  Shaw paused for a moment before speaking. ‘It seems unlikely, but I did overhear a rather a heated argument between them this morning.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Mr Cokeley is an antiques dealer, and was offering what Mr Goggins believed to be too low a price for some articles he wished to sell. There was also bad blood between them as Cokeley was Goggins’ landlord and was attempting to evict him.’

  ‘I see. And those other two on the train. Shifty looking types, that look like brush salesmen. Know them?’

  ‘Some sort of land agents, I believe. I have not met them before today’.

  Just then a police constable looked into the guard’s van, touching the brim of his helmet in a salute to the Inspector.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt sir, only the police doctor would like a word with you.’

  Ludd approached the door and turned to Shaw. ‘That will be all, I think, sir. Let me know if you remember anything else, won’t you?’

  ‘There is one thing, Inspector,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It occurs to me that somebody ought to inform Mrs Cokeley as soon as possible of her husband’s death. As her parish priest, I feel it would better be me rather than an anonymous police officer.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Ludd. ‘You’re probably right. Seeing as you know her. Let me speak to the doctor and then I’ll arrange a car to drive you over.’

  The two men stepped out of the guard’s van onto the platform in time to see Cokeley’s body, covered with a white sheet, being carried away on a stretcher by two constables. The police doctor, a balding man in a dishevelled tweed suit, stepped forward, holding an object wrapped in a large handkerchief.

  ‘Good afternoon, Inspector Ludd. I think you ought to have a look at this.’

  Ludd nodded, saying only ‘doctor’ in greeting.

  The doctor opened the handkerchief to show the bloodstained bayonet that had ended Cokeley’s life. He held the weapon up to the light gingerly using a corner of the handkerchief.

  ‘I thought it best to extract it prior to the removal of the corpse. There’s an inscription on it.’

  Ludd squinted at the small letters engraved along the glistening blade. Before he read out the inscription, Shaw suddenly realised that he had seen the weapon before.

  Ludd read the words out slowly. ‘”To Colour Sergeant Albert Goggins, Royal Suffolk Regiment, in grateful memory of his service. From His Pals. May 1900.”’

  Shaw looked at Goggins, who was watching the proceedings from a few feet away. The colour had drained from his face and his jaw had slackened.

  ‘Well, Colour Sergeant Goggins,’ said Ludd firmly. ‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do’.

  Chapter Five

  F ollowing a brief detour for Shaw to deliver a hurriedly written note to the Rector of Great Netley excusing his absence from the luncheon meeting, the black Wolseley Hornet police car sped along the road to Lower Addenham.

  Shaw, alone in the back of the vehicle, looked at the flat black surface of the cap of the driver in front of him, and pondered the revelation of the inscribed bayonet.

  It implicated Goggins, of course, who clearly disliked Cokeley; but sufficiently so to murder him? And if he had, how had he, an almost elderly man clearly not in the best physical condition, managed to enter a railway compartment without a corridor on a fast moving train, and then return to his place, without being seen? It was fantastical.

  If that were possible, thought Shaw, it was also possible for me to do it. He realised that Goggins’ box of antiques had been in his care for a period of time, perhaps making him a suspect.

  He realised he was lucky to have the trust of the Inspector so soon in the investigation, and thought of Goggins, travelling in less salubrious transport, presumably to a cell in Midchester police station.

  Shaw felt the car slowing down as it neared Lower Addenham; he looked out to see a young man trudging along the side of the road with his hands in his pockets, with a worried look on his face. Shaw realised it was the same young man he had seen cycling past the vicarage in the morning; what was his name? He wracked his brains but could not recall it.

  The police car stopped in the little square in the centre of Lower Addenham, and the driver turned round briefly to face Shaw.

  ‘Is this the place, sir?’

  ‘Yes, thank you constable,’ said t
he clergyman. ‘This will do.’

  Shaw stepped out of the car, which sped away in the direction of Great Netley, presumably required for the myriad duties surrounding the murder investigation. He looked at the front of Cokeley’s shop, with its drawn blinds and ‘CLOSED’ sign on the door.

  Shaw remembered it was early closing day; he tried the handle but the door was locked so he knocked tentatively, then with greater force when no reply came. He was anxious to break the news to Mrs Cokeley before she heard it from some neighbour, or worse, read about in the evening newspapers.

  He heard the rattle of a sash window being raised and the sound of dance music from a wireless drifting out.

  A woman shouted from the window. ‘Can’t you read? We’re closed.’

  Shaw looked up to see Mrs Cokeley leaning out of the window, her bright blonde hair almost transparent in the sunshine. ‘Oh, it’s you, vicar,’ she said. ‘If it’s about the church flower rota, I’ve told them I can’t do this week.’

  ‘No it’s not about that, Mrs Cokeley’, said Shaw. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Alright then, I’ll come down,’ she replied, sounding slightly put out. ‘Only I can’t spare too long, mind, because Tommy Handley’s on the Light Programme.’

  A few minutes later, Mrs Cokeley was seated at her floral sofa in the little upstairs sitting room, dabbing the tears away from her heavily made-up eyes with a small lace handkerchief. She then blew her nose noisily.

  ‘I just can’t believe it, vicar. My Charlie, dead…murdered! I mean, who would do such a thing?’

  Mrs Cokeley’s apparent grief was somewhat at odds, thought Shaw, with the jolly dance-band music coming from the large wireless set in the corner.

  ‘Who indeed?’ answered Shaw. ‘Rest assured the police are doing all they can to catch the person who did this.’

  ‘Well I hope they do catch him!’ exclaimed Mrs Cokeley angrily. ‘I suppose whoever it was took his money as well.’

  Mrs Cokeley must have noticed Shaw’s slightly raised eyebrow, as she then added ‘I mean…well, I’m a widow now, aren’t I? I’ll have to watch every penny from now on. I’ve got no children and well, that life insurance policy he had isn’t likely to keep me very well’.

  ‘Have faith, Mrs Cokeley,’ said Shaw. ‘After all, you have a business which brings in money, which is something to be thankful for.’

  ‘This place?’ said Mrs Cokeley with a bitter laugh. ‘We don’t make much here, a couple of pounds a week at best, and I’m not taking up shop work at my time of life. There’s barely enough to cover Miss Ellis’s wages.’

  ‘Miss Ellis?’

  ‘The shop assistant. And she’s not much help. She asked to go home early today even before Charlie closed up, said her mother was ill and she had to look after her. I had to close the whole place because I wasn’t going to miss Billy Cotton, well I can’t hear the wireless down here in the shop and I shouldn’t have to move it, should I?’

  ‘Er, quite, Mrs Cokeley,’ said Shaw, standing up. ‘I shall not intrude any longer. Rest assured I will do everything in my power to help you. I will call again regarding funeral arrangements. Perhaps, before I go…a moment of prayer?’

  ‘That’s very kind but I don’t think I’ve got time, vicar,’ said Mrs Cokely, glancing down at her open copy of Radio Times and popping a chocolate in her mouth. ‘Henry Hall’s on in a minute’.

  The news of the murder created a sensation in Lower Addenham that evening, unlike anything since the outbreak of war on that hot August day in 1914, when straw-hatted men had pushed and shoved each other at the railway station, desperate to secure the late editions of the newspapers. Now, as then, the rumours spread like a forest fire as neighbour spoke gossip unto neighbour.

  Nobody could remember the last time there had been a murder in the village; in the public houses the white-haired oracles were consulted; some thought it had been in ‘78, others claimed it was still further back, in ‘54.

  One wizened sage, very deaf, was confused and believed that war had broken out again. ‘Is it the Huns or the Frogs this time?’ he enquired, and was puzzled by the roar of laughter this produced in his fellow drinkers.

  Speculation on the morals of Mr Cokeley and Mr Goggins was rife; an enterprising small businessman acquainted with the racing fraternity even opened a book on the matter, with highly favourable odds on Goggins’ guilt.

  In the more genteel parlours and comfortable drawing rooms of the village, there were whispers of such sins as adultery and tax evasion in the Cokeley household, and of murderous desire for revenge by Mr Goggins, brought on by some ancient feud between the two men over the love of a young woman in the reign of Queen Victoria.

  The crime happened too late for the local newspapers, but those with wireless sets heard a brief mention of the incident on the BBC’s nine o’clock new bulletin, and they were thrilled to hear the name of their little village announced to the nation. Finally the last lights were extinguished, and the villagers went to sleep, eager with anticipation of the morning newspapers.

  The following day, the weather was bright and sunny again but this time, Shaw sat at the breakfast table devoid of the previous day’s feeling of contentment. After a troubled night he had risen earlier than usual, hoping that breakfast would make him feel better.

  Was it contentment he had felt yesterday, or complacency? he wondered. A text sprang into his mind: What was it? Revelations? No, Thessalonians, chapter five, verse two. ‘For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.’ One must always be ready for the unexpected, he thought, even for such things as a murdering thief in a railway carriage.

  ‘Come back, Lucian dear,’ said his wife with a smile, as she poured him a cup of English Breakfast tea. ‘You’re lost in thought again. Is it this awful business about poor Mr Cokeley?’

  Shaw raised his cup and saucer to drink his tea, with a distracted expression.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marion, you were saying?’

  ‘The murder. It’s perfectly ghastly. I’ve been reading all about it in the Gazette.’ She pointed to the regional daily newspaper propped up on the table, the front page of which featured a grainy photograph of Cokeley accompanied by the headline: Grisly Murder of Antiques Dealer.

  ‘It says here he was stabbed fifteen times,’ said Mrs Shaw, taking another bite of her toast and marmalade, ‘and that the railway compartment was quite dripping with blood.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Shaw in an annoyed tone. ‘I do wish these muckrakers would stop making things up.’

  He turned to his own newspaper, the Church Times, and tried to read a rather less sensational article on the use of the Eastward Position during Holy Communion.

  After a few minutes he could no longer concentrate and put the newspaper down, turning to his wife to muse aloud.

  ‘I feel I ought to help in some way.’

  ‘With what, dear?’

  ‘With the investigation.’

  ‘But you’re not a policeman, dear.’

  ‘No, but I am the vicar of this parish and therefore have a responsibility for the well-being of its inhabitants, particularly Mr Goggins.’

  Mrs Shaw smiled. ‘You are a very diligent parson, dear. How did Chaucer put it?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Oh yes. “A good man was ther of religioun”. But that doesn’t make you a detective.’

  ‘I do not intend to be one, my dear. But I may be able to provide some assistance to the police, that they otherwise would not have.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘I can, perhaps, use my position to glean information that they are not privy to.’

  Mrs Shaw finished the last of her toast. ‘You’re being obtuse again, dear. Anyway, you said you’re going to meet the organist today about the repairs to the pipes, so you won’t have time to be an amateur sleuth.’

  ‘I’m going out for a walk instead,’ said Shaw, amused by the puzzled expression on his wife’s face.

  At the
sound of the word ‘walk’, Fraser jumped up from under the table and looked up at his master with an adoring expression.

  ‘Come along, Fraser,’ said Shaw. ‘I will drop in on Laithwaite on the way. He can tend to the problems of the organ. It will be good practice for him.’

  As Shaw stood in the hallway putting the lead on Fraser, his wife looked at him with mock annoyance.

  ‘I say, you’re not going to become like one of those Victorian clerics, are you? Getting their poor curates to do everything while you go off collecting butterflies or something?’

  ‘Certainly not, my dear,’ said Shaw, putting on his hat. ‘I intend to collect something - or someone - far more important than a butterfly.’

  Mrs Shaw shook her head in disbelief as she watched her husband stride down the garden path, flourishing his walking stick, while Fraser trotted along at his heel, his little white tail wagging furiously.

  Shaw walked along the dirt road that led from Lower Addenham to Great Netley, which ran parallel for most of the way with the little branch railway line.

  After a couple of miles he noticed several police constables, walking slowly along the line towards him; they carried long staves and were prodding the undergrowth by the side of the track.

  He heard one of the men call out. ‘Keep going lads, we’re about halfway there now. Let me know the moment you see anything.’

  Shaw, unnoticed by the constables, continued with his walk. Fraser, despite his short legs, seemed never to tire on long walks and maintained his enthusiasm throughout.

  A mile or so further on, Shaw saw the red and white painted signal arm by the side of the track, outlined starkly against the sky. He paused; there were faint tracks of what was perhaps a motorcycle or bicycle on the dirt road, visible for just a few feet before they faded into the mud.

  The grass and weeds between the road and the railway track seemed to have been disturbed in a line; this must have been the point where the unidentified man ran from the railway to the road.