Keep It Quiet

by Richard Hull

  Keep It Quiet

  Richard Hull

  About the Author

  Richard Hull was born Richard Henry Sampson in London on 6 September 1896 to Nina Hull and S.A. Sampson, and attended Rugby School, Warwickshire. When the First World War broke out, his uncle helped him secure a commission in the Queen Victoria’s Rifles. At the end of the war, after three years in France, he returned to England and worked as an accountant.

  His first book The Murder of My Aunt, written under the pseudonym Richard Hull, was published in 1934. The novel, set in Dysserth, Welshpool, is known for its humour, narrative charm and unexpected twists. Hull moved into full-time writing in 1934 and wrote a further fourteen novels over the span of his career.

  During the Second World War, he became an auditor with the Admiralty in London, a position he retained for eighteen years until he retired in 1958. While he stopped writing detective fiction after 1953, Hull continued to take an interest in the affairs for the Detection Club, assisting Agatha Christie with her duties as President. He died in 1973.

  Also By Richard Hull

  The Murder of My Aunt

  Keep It Quiet

  Murder Isn’t Easy

  The Ghost It Was

  The Murderers of Monty

  Excellent Intentions/Beyond Reasonable Doubt

  And Death Came Too

  My Own Murderer

  The Unfortunate Murderer

  Left Handed Death

  Last First

  Until She Was Dead

  A Matter of Nerves

  Invitation to an Inquest

  The Martineau Murders

  Keep It Quiet

  Richard Hull

  This edition published in 2018 by Ipso Books

  Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  Originally published in Great Britain in 1935 by Faber and Faber

  55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS

  Copyright © Richard Hull, 1935

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  1

  Essence Of Vanilla

  In a way it was all Benson’s fault; or perhaps it was Mrs Benson’s. It might even have been possible for those who must strive to trace things back to their primary origins to have blamed Benson’s doctor for prescribing perchloride of mercury for a carbuncle – but that would be going too far.

  Mrs Benson had taken the prescription straight round to the nearest chemist, and brought back one of those green bottles of distinctive shape, marked ‘Poison’ in enormous letters. But that had been her first mistake. She ought to have bought two bottles, one to use at home, and one for her husband to take down to the Club. He could easily have found an interval during which he was not cooking the members’ meals, when he could have rubbed on some of it.

  But then, when the first application did seem to bring some relief, Benson had insisted. Half of it must be put in another bottle for him to take to his work with him, and Mrs Benson had not got another bottle marked ‘Poison’. She was not going to risk parting with the beautifully labelled bottle, not with the children about, and so she made her second mistake. She made a feeble little joke; she put it in a bottled labelled ‘Essence of Vanilla.’

  ‘Because, Herbert,’ she had said, ‘though I don’t agree with you myself, I know what your opinion of vanilla is. Next door to poison, you call it.’

  Herbert Benson had smiled. He was proud of his knowledge of cooking, proud of his job of being chef to the Club. He believed that it was pretty generally recognised that the Whitehall had the best cooking of any club in London. Of course it had no such reputation, but the delusion made life more pleasant, not only for Benson, but, by a process of self-deception, for many of the members.

  The smile had broadened into a chuckle.

  ‘Quite right, old girl. To my mind, vanilla really is poison. You can spoil the taste of anything with it, even my iced soufflés.’ A slight frown had crossed his jolly red face. ‘And there is to be a soufflé tonight – soufflé glacé praliné – you know, flavoured with bits of browned almond. Grand it is, really a work of art. All the same, if that old brute Morrison is dining at the Club tonight, it’s ten to one he’ll send down a message to say he wants vanilla instead.’

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ Mrs Benson comforted him, ‘he’s only one, and I’m sure the others must appreciate all the trouble you take.’

  Benson had kissed her and trotted off to the Club to spend a happy but extremely busy day.

  It was not till nearly lunch time that the expected annoyance occurred. It was Morrison’s habit to arrive at the Whitehall at a quarter past one. How he spent his morning no one quite knew. He had of course retired from business years ago; so long that even what that business was had been forgotten. He was just a retired nuisance who sat in the Whitehall and grumbled all day about the food, about the members, about the furniture, about the temperature of the rooms and, when all other grievances were absent, about the committee. If by any chance he could find nothing more to say on any of those subjects, he turned his attention to Ford, the secretary. He was very expert at knowing just what criticisms hurt Ford most. It has never been decided whether he excelled most in the devastatingly irritating matter of his complaints, or in the superbly vexatious moments at which he chose to utter them.

  From lunch time till late in the evening he was almost sure to be found in the Club, sarcastically abusing every detail, and egging on the other members to complain. Nothing would have induced him to spend his time anywhere else or to belong to any other club. In the Whitehall he knew that he could upset the nerves of every waiter or page-boy in five minutes. There he could manage to be important, not only in his own eyes, simply from being a nuisance. The strange thing was that the other members did not wholly dislike him. They recognised that he did at any rate keep the Club up to the mark for their benefit.

  Arriving therefore on this particular day, he screwed his eyeglass in his eye and studied the menu; then with the air of a bored martyr, he beckoned to a passing page.

  ‘Boy! Present Mr Morrison’s compliments to the chef and tell him that as – Boy! You’re not listening!’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I’m–’ The unfortunate youth shifted from one foot to the other.

  ‘Never mind what you’re doing. Present–’

  A rasping voice cut in.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but that boy was about to take me up in the lift.’

  Morrison turned and found himself confronted by his bête noire. He was not alone in disliking Pargiter – nearly every member of the Whitehall did – but he had a special reason for his hatred. Pargiter was the only member who in any way equalled him in the art of being a nuisance, and between the two had grown up a deadly rivalry as to which of them should have his idiosyncrasies more carefully fostered. Not, of course, that either of them put it, even to himself, so clumsily as that. Each expressed it by saying of the other that he apparently thought he owned the Club.

  But between them there was a subtle difference; for while Morrison exerted his influence by baiting the staff, and especially the secretary, Pargiter’s strategy was indirect. He irritated the other members, and while always keeping in the right and never allowing anyone to complain of his activities, managed every day to make someone uncomfortable.

  With a mutual sigh of joy, therefore, they b
oth saw the unfortunate Ford coming towards them, as innocent a fly as ever walked into a spider’s web.

  ‘Isn’t it possible–’ both of them began in accidental unison.

  Mr Pargiter bowed ironically to Mr Morrison. Mr Morrison adjusted his eyeglass and, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, stared through Mr Pargiter. Both waited for the other to begin, and then both once more ejaculated ‘Isn’t it–’ at the same time.

  Mr Pargiter gave way. His complaint, he thought, would be more effective if placed second.

  ‘Isn’t it possible to send a message by a page-boy without finding he is wanted to work the lift? Can we not afford to keep an approximately adequate staff of at any rate partially trained boys?’

  ‘Whom did you want to send a message to, sir?’ Ford asked. He always believed in calling angry members ‘sir’.

  ‘Oh, my message, of course, was of no importance. Merely to the chef.’

  ‘Perhaps I could help you by seeing the chef myself, while the boy takes Mr Pargiter up in the lift.’

  It was Ford’s invariable rule to try to do everything everybody wanted him to do. He hoped it would smooth things over and make life easier. Actually it merely resulted in his having frequently promised two different people contradictory requests, but Ford was an incurable optimist. He even thought that Pargiter would be satisfied if he was merely carried without fuss to whatever floor he wanted to go to.

  ‘Very well, then, I shall leave you, sir, to be attended to by the secretary himself. I should like to mention that I was about to ask whether it was not possible to arrange for the lift boy to be allowed to try to carry out his duties without the interference of the members.’ Mr Pargiter was at his most suave.

  The boy in question rather spoilt the effect by causing the end of the sentence to be delivered to the space in between the ground and first floors.

  Once more Ford turned to the impossible task of satisfying Morrison. On the whole he was glad that he had intercepted the message before it reached Benson. The chef was getting just a little touchy, and soufflé glacé praliné was a particularly tender spot. If he had received the request, just as it was uttered, that, since the iced soufflé had been flavoured with something uneatable consistently for the last six months, on this occasion a small portion might be set aside for Mr Morrison flavoured with vanilla, there was no knowing how he would have taken it – especially as it was vanilla, and especially in the middle of lunch time.

  If Ford had tried less hard to do everything that everybody wanted him to do, he would probably have been more efficient, and if he had not attempted to be so tactful, he might have succeeded in satisfying somebody occasionally. As it was, even Benson saw through his attempts to convey Morrison’s message diplomatically, and with a savage bang moved the vanilla essence bottle to another part of the shelf. Morrison’s special portion of iced soufflé should reek of vanilla that evening, even though it did mean a special piece of work for himself.

  2

  The Wrong Bottle?

  To anyone not knowing the object of his existence, Mr Pargiter’s conduct that evening, after dinner, must have seemed inexplicable. He had already fallen over a chair twice and kicked a coal-scuttle. As Hughes, the waiter on the library floor of the Club, brought him his coffee he saw him throw four pennies, one after another, with a crash on to the table by his side until they almost spun, then pick up the evening paper and turn the pages over with an exaggerated and almost deliberate rustle. It is quite remarkable how much noise can be made by slapping a paper with the back of the hand.

  Hughes, however, was not in the least puzzled. He knew Pargiter’s technique perfectly well. There was another member in the room asleep, and that was a thing Pargiter could not bear. The fellow actually seemed to be sleeping soundly and, what was worse, comfortably. Hughes could imagine exactly what would happen next. First the coffee pot, then the milk jug, then the sugar bowl would be raised and put down heavily on the tray, and since the Club used, no one knew why, the most awful metal trays, a good deal of noise would be made.

  Then the lid of the coffee pot would be taken up and rattled against the side. You can get quite a large volume of sound out of earthenware without breaking it. If still the member did not wake up, Pargiter would be reduced to (a) dropping the spoon on the tray, (b) crunching the candy sugar. He had once been known to send the tray flying, but since this had involved his paying for a new cup and saucer, Hughes did not believe the performance would be repeated.

  He wondered what he had done in the end this time. Whatever it was, he was sure Pargiter must have been furious, especially as Hughes could now see that the sleeping member was Morrison – with whom he had heard that Pargiter had been quarrelling earlier in the day. Anyhow, to whatever tricks Pargiter had been reduced, he had failed. Looking in later, Hughes saw that where there had been two figures in the library, there was now only one. Morrison was still sleeping soundly in an alcove half surrounded by books. So soundly, that his eyeglass had dropped out of his eye. In a short while, Hughes thought, he would wake up and complain that the coffee was always lukewarm nowadays.

  He wondered whether he had better risk making so much noise that Morrison would be bound to wake up, but if Pargiter had failed, Hughes thought that he had very little chance of succeeding. At that moment the house telephone bell in his service pantry began to ring violently. Ford’s voice sounded agitated.

  And indeed it might well be.

  Dinner over, Ford had slipped up to the bedroom he had in the Club. Here he could sit in an easy-chair and forget all about the members, all their complaints and worries and all the contradictory promises he had made. To be a secretary of any club, you need a hide impervious to complaints, and an ability to oppose an interminable defence of passive resistance to all those suggestions which are daily offered to you, which sound so logical and right, and which are, in fact, so hopelessly impractical. Poor Ford, pleasant, agreeable, but weak as ditch water, would never be a really good club secretary. He would never be hardened to the necessary degree of callousness. Nature had made him a big, healthy man, but forgotten to supply an adequate backbone.

  He pulled gently at his sandy moustache and settled down to read The Three Musketeers, in a vain attempt to leave the world of the Whitehall Club. Usually it was easy, but today, somehow, everything had gone wrong. Somehow, none of his assistants seemed to be quite up to the mark, and there had been so many small failures at which even less cantankerous people than Morrison might justly cavil.

  He found himself vaguely considering the possibility of d’Artagnan taking over his job and in some marvellous way putting everything right and sending all tiresome people about their business. Just as he was regretting the absence from modern life of duelling, there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ he murmured wearily. Now even his own room was not to be regarded as a sanctuary!

  To his surprise he saw Benson in the doorway, his russet face grey with anxiety. But if it was a surprise that Benson should be there at all, his first remark made the secretary gasp.

  ‘Is Mr Morrison all right, sir?’

  ‘Mr Morrison?’ Now why should anyone in the world, and most of all why should Benson, worry about Morrison?

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Even in his agitation, Benson could guess why the secretary was so startled. ‘I know, sir, it does seem odd, my worrying about him. But it’s like this, sir ...’

  Fairly quickly and, on the whole, quite clearly, he explained about his carbuncle, the perchloride of mercury, and the essence of vanilla.

  ‘And then, sir, when you spoke to me about Mr Morrison wanting vanilla specially, it seemed like fate, sir. And so I put the vanilla bottle out carefully, and then, I don’t know how it was, sir, but I got a bit confused, I suppose, about it, and – and I don’t know, sir, but I think I must have used the wrong bottle. And so, I just want to be sure he is all right, because if he isn’t – mind you, sir, I’m not sure it was the wrong bottle.’

 
With his usual optimism Ford assured him at once that he was quite certain it was the right one.

  ‘Now you just go down and fetch both the bottles and bring them up here. It will make assurance doubly sure.’

  In moments of crisis Ford always fell back on proverbs or quotations of dubious relevance.

  While Benson went off on the errand, Ford began to use the house telephone. It was typical that he had no idea what part of the club Morrison was in the habit of using after dinner, and that he asked first in all the wrong places. By the time that Benson returned, he had worked himself up into a state of agitation, and had only just found out that Morrison was in the library.

  He looked at the two bottles sadly, and murmured something about locking the stable door by way of making Benson really comfortable.

  The chef put them down on a table.

  ‘That’s the one I used this evening, sir. The one on the left.’ He stooped down. ‘You can tell which is which because this one, the one I didn’t use, has got a bit torn off the corner of the label. Wish I’d noticed that before.’

  Ford hardly heard him as he hurried off to the library, leaving Benson to wait anxiously.

  3

  The Doctor Ex Machina

  The Whitehall Club possessed in fact two libraries. In the larger, smoking was not allowed, and the temperature was kept just above freezing point by one small fire struggling manfully with a series of complicated draughts, largely due to the fact that the windows reached to the floor and led on to a stone balcony surrounded by an old rusty iron railing. It was said that from this balcony one of the finest long-distance views of London could be got. But then who wanted to look for miles over roofs? No amount of distance can lend enchantment to a chimney pot.