Our Jubilee is Death

by Leo Bruce

  AT the end of the Summer term, Carolus Deene, amateur detective cum history master of Queen’s School, Newminster, is summoned to Suffolk to investigate the circumstances attending the discovery of the body of Mrs Lillianne Bomberger, a writer of detective fiction. The body had been buried in the sand in an upright position with only the head protruding; at least one tide had been over it. Before Carolus Deene’s investigations are complete his interest begins to flag, but two further bodies appear on the scene, stimulating the schoolmaster detective to pursue this “beastly case” with renewed acumen to its ultimate and bitter conclusion.

  By the same Author

  ‘Sergeant Beef’ Novels:

  CASE FOR THREE DETECTIVES

  CASE WITHOUT A CORPSE

  CASE WITH NO CONCLUSION

  CASE WITH FOUR CLOWNS

  CASE WITH ROPES AND RINGS

  CASE FOR SERGEANT BEEF

  ‘Carolus Deene’ Novels:

  COLD BLOOD

  AT DEATH’S DOOR

  DEATH OF COLD

  DEAD FOR A DUCAT

  DEAD MAN’S SHOES

  A LOUSE FOR THE HANGMAN

  COPYRIGHT © BY LEO BRUCE 1959

  FIRST PUBLISHED 1959

  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR PETER DAVIES LIMITED

  BY RICHARD CLAY AND COMPANY, LIMITED

  BUNGAY, SUFFOLK

  Certainly there is no happiness within this circle; …

  the first day of our Jubilee is death.

  SIR THOMAS BROWNE

  1

  Blessington-on-Sea.

  July 22nd.

  DEAR CAROLUS,

  A slightly unpleasant thing has happened here, and I think the sooner you come down the better for everybody’s sake.

  I went out for a walk on the sands before breakfast, which one would have thought was an ordinary sort of thing to do at a seaside town. I took Penny and Priss with me because you know how they adore a run, and Penny’s been getting rather fat lately, which is most unsightly in a Pekingese. It was last Thursday and really a gorgeous morning with sunlight and a nice breeze.

  The tide was going down and I seemed to be the first person to go below the high-water mark, which I always think is thrilling, because you never know what may have been washed up, and I once found a packing-case full of oranges, and although they were no good it was rather exciting.

  Well, I was walking along thinking that really one can have quite a good holiday in England in spite of everything people say, when Penny and Priss began to get into a state of wild excitement over something they’d found. It looked from the distance like a rock with a bit of sea-weed on it.

  When I got there I saw it was Mrs Bomberger. I mean, her head. Or rather, as I found out later, she was all there, but only her head was stuck out of the sand.

  At first I thought (of course I see now I must have been crazy) she was taking a sand-bath or something. She had that awful sort of gracious, condescending smile on her face.

  “Good morning, Mrs Bomberger,” I said, grabbing Penny and Priss. Then I realized that she was as dead as mutton and that at least one tide had been over her, and her eyes were like oysters.

  I suppose I ought to have become hysterical if I was a nice natural girl; but, do you know, I didn’t feel a bit like that. I had a little trouble getting the dogs away, but I managed it in the end. I left her exactly where she was and went to phone the police. I only hoped no one shortsighted would come along and trip over her or think she was a ball or anything.

  I had the most absurd conversation with somebody at the Police Station, but then, as you know, I’m hopeless at making people understand what I mean, and I don’t think the Desk Sergeant was very bright. I’ll try to reproduce it for you.

  “Oh, this is Fay Deene,” I said, and a voice said—“Oo?”

  “Well, my name doesn’t matter, only it’s about Mrs Bomberger …”

  “Oo?”

  “Lillianne Bomberger, you know. The writer of detective novels. You must know her name.”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, she’s on the beach. I mean, her head’s sticking out of the sand. I’m afraid of someone tripping over it.”

  “Is this a joke?” asked the voice.

  “Well, you may think so,” I said, getting rather peeved. “But I shouldn’t imagine that she does … did…. She had no sense of humour, you know. She’s dead as a doornail.”

  “Now just keep calm, Miss, and let’s get this straight…”

  “I’m perfectly calm,” I shouted. “If you want to know, I’m remarkably calm. I’d like to see you as calm as I am if you were having a walk before breakfast and found yourself saying good-morning to a woman who’d been dead for twenty-four hours.”

  “How do you know she had?”

  That was too much.

  “I don’t know. At least I don’t know how many hours. But the tide’s been over her and her eyes look like oysters that are going off. As a matter of fact it’s a wonder she’s got any eyes left, with all the shrimps and things.”

  “Exactly where is the cadaver, Miss?”

  “In the sand, if it’s anywhere. I mean anywhere with the head because it’s only the head that’s sticking out. It looks like a production of Salome.”

  “But where in the sand? What part of the beach?”

  “Oh, I see. Well, it would be about opposite her house. The Trumbles.”

  “Ah. And where may you be found, Miss?”

  “At the Seaview Hotel. My name’s Fay Deene.”

  “You didn’t in any way touch the … er … lady?”

  “Touch her? I always said I wouldn’t touch Lillianne Bomberger with a barge-pole when she was alive. I certainly don’t want to touch her dead. Not even my dogs wanted that. A sniff was quite enough for them.”

  “Thank you, Miss. There will be someone round to see you later.”

  Since then, my dear Carolus, life just hasn’t been worth living. She’d been murdered, of course—well, someone was bound to do it sooner or later. The police have done nothing but question everybody, and her two poor nieces will have breakdowns very soon. You can imagine what I’m like when I’m being interrogated. I get in the most frightful muddle and contradict myself, and they begin to look at me.

  So, as you’ll be Breaking Up in a day or two why not come down and get us all out of the mess? Gracie and Babs Stayer, her nieces, will be delighted. Besides, it’s quite amusing, isn’t it? that she spent her life creating situations like this and now one has caught up with her. That should appeal to your cold-blooded sense of humour.

  Let me know what you’re going to do, but, if you can, come and be helpful. We should all be delighted.

  Your affectionate cousin,

  Fay.

  Carolus Deene read this letter over breakfast, then walked across to the school at which he was Senior History Master—the Queen’s School, Newminster, a small but proud institution whose headmaster attended the Public Schools Headmasters’ Conference every year and so secured its status.

  Carolus, a spare, athletic man in his early forties, was more popular among his pupils than in the Common Room. His large private income and casual manner both irritated his colleagues, who acknowledged him to be, however, a clever teacher and a conscientious one. The boys found him somewhat eccentric, but they knew that he had brought fame to the school by a book in which he had applied the principles of modern detection to some of the unsolved crimes of the far past, Who Killed William Rufus? And Other Mysteries of History. They also approved of his clothes, his record of a Half Blue for boxing and his Bentley Continental motor-car.

  He was considering the letter from his cousin as he entered the school gates. He had read in the newspapers of the mysterious d
eath of Lillianne Bomberger, the enormously successful writer of crime stories, but he had not considered investigating it. He was fond of Fay, whose fiance had been a fellow-officer of his during the war and was killed at Arnhem. He had made no plans for the coming holidays, but could not bring himself to feel much interest in the fate of Mrs Bomberger. The macabre little picture which emerged from his cousin’s letter failed to arouse the curiosity he liked to feel before involving himself in the investigation of a crime.

  He might, in fact, have written a refusal to Fay if it had not been for Mr Gorringer, the Headmaster of the Queen’s School, a large and ponderous man whose elephantine ears were delicately attuned to every passing rumour. Mr Gorringer appreciated the talents of Carolus as a brilliant teacher, but lived in dread of his bringing notoriety to the school by his passionate interest in crime and the investigations he too readily undertook.

  Particularly as school holidays approached Mr Gorringer scanned the popular Press for news of unsolved crimes, unexplained corpses, unarrested murderers, seeing in each a possible attraction for Carolus, and so a potential danger to the school’s good name. Two days earlier he had read of the curious situation in which the corpse of Mrs Bomberger had been found and, as he confided to his wife, he trembled.

  “I fear, my dear, that it will prove irresistible to Deene. A writer of detective novels up to her neck in the sand of a seaside town! Murdered without a doubt, and partially interred in this extraordinary way! It would seem to have everything that appeals to Deene’s perverted curiosity. I fear me the school’s name will once again be dragged into headlines. I assure you, I tremble at the prospect.”

  Carolus, who knew Gorringer and found him, in spite of his pomposity, a rather likeable man, could never resist the temptation to provoke him to take up a manner which in another profession would have brought him a bishopric.

  When that morning he saw the headmaster bearing down on him, he guessed what he must expect.

  “Ah, Deene,” said Mr Gorringer. “So another term draws to its close. Not a day too soon, I feel. Though we can congratulate ourselves on our prowess in the cricket field.”

  “Going abroad, headmaster?”

  “Ostende, Deene. Ostende, as is our custom, with days spent in Bruges, of course. No doubt you will go farther afield?”

  “I have not really decided.”

  “You surely don’t think of staying in England, Deene? I should have thought that with your resources you might have sampled the Bahamas, say, or South Africa?”

  “No. I don’t think I shall go abroad. Some little seaside town, perhaps.”

  “Let me recommend the Cornish Riviera. A pleasant climate and visitors of an altogether superior stamp, I believe.”

  “No. I don’t think I shall go so far. Some quiet little place on the East coast.”

  “Ah. But I see you have something in mind. I trust, my dear Deene, that you were not considering anywhere like Blessington-on-Sea ?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Near Laymouth, I believe.”

  “What’s its attraction, headmaster?”

  “For me, none, I may say. I can imagine nothing more commonplace and disagreeable after a term’s hard work. But I rather feared that recent events in that town might have roused your unfortunate predilection for criminology.”

  “Why? Has there been a good murder there?”

  “A good murder? Surely you speak in paradoxes. But you cannot be unaware that a lady novelist of some fame has recently met her death there in unusual circumstances.”

  “Sounds interesting. Who was she?”

  “My dear Deene, the very last thing I wish to do is to arouse in you any interest in something which I consider both repugnant and for a member of my staff highly inadvisable of approach.”

  “But you do arouse my interest. I was hoping for something of the sort to turn up.”

  Mr Gorringer stopped in the centre of the quadrangle and faced his Senior History Master.

  “Deene, I must make myself clear once and for all. While, of course, I have no authority in matters relating to the private lives of my staff and have never sought to intrude into them, I must say with emphasis that I cannot allow the fair name of the Queen’s School, Newminster, to be besmirched by newspaper accounts of your activities. I should certainly never have mentioned this matter had I not reason to fear that you might be already committed.”

  “I’m not. But who was she?”

  “I prefer to say no more. You know my views. I will not have our reputation as a quiet and industrious seat of learning endangered by these criminological antics of yours. I have spoken.”

  “All right, headmaster. If I do run into a case I’ll promise you that my part in it won’t become public.”

  “You do something to allay my fears. But I do indeed wish that you would find other channels for your remarkable abilities. Now I must have a word with our Music Master, whom I see approaching. Ah, Tubley …”

  Carolus went on to his classroom and faced his most difficult collection of boys, the Junior Sixth. He decided to plunge straight into the last years of Abraham Lincoln.

  He found as usual an attentive audience for the first twenty minutes of the period. Lincoln’s loss of popularity because of the privations and unnecessary sufferings of the Federal Army in 1864, the saving of his prestige and leadership by Sheridan’s victory at Shenandoah, his second term as President and his plans for assisting reconstruction in the Southern States, all seemed to interest at least those in the front two rows, and even the habitual yawners at the back were not noticeably listless.

  But when Carolus came to the final scene the attention of the class grew positively fervent.

  “An American actor named John Wilkes Booth, twenty-six years old, was responsible for Lincoln’s death. He was the son of an English actor who is said to have rivalled Edmund Kean. His elder brother, Edwin Thomas Booth, was the greatest Hamlet of his day and Lincoln’s assassin had acted with him. On the night of April 14th, 1865, when Lincoln was watching a play from a box in Ford’s Theatre, John Wilkes Booth crept into the box behind him and shot him through the head. He then produced an enormous knife, leapt upon the stage and escaped from the theatre. Twelve days later he was found hidden in a barn and shot.”

  A studious, harmless-looking boy called Simmons, who was often deputed to draw Carolus from discussion of ancient history to contemporary crime, asked a question.

  “Why the knife, sir?”

  Carolus was on his guard.

  “I do not see that it has much to do with the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, Simmons, and that is what concerns us now.”

  “But surely, sir, the murder of a President …”

  “He was shot. Through the head from behind.”

  “How do we know it was Booth? The box was presumably in darkness. Suppose someone had paid this wretched man to leap about with a knife as soon as he heard a pistol-shot? He was unbalanced, anyway. What proof is there that he committed the murder?”

  “History …” began Carolus, but he was interrupted by an odiously sophisticated boy called Rupert Priggley.

  “Simmons has surely got a point there, sir. It’s no more improbable than some of your solutions of modern mysteries.”

  “I think we will return to the question of Secession.”

  “Booth was never tried, was he, sir? We don’t even know who else may have been in the conspiracy.”

  “There is no reason to think that anyone was. Booth was a fanatic, if not more. It is an accepted fact that he acted on his own initiative.”

  “And you are talking of ‘an accepted fact’, sir! I suppose it is an ‘accepted fact’ that Mrs Bomberger was murdered by one individual and planted in the sand like a cactus?” suggested Rupert Priggley.

  “Nothing of the sort,” said Carolus warmly, falling headlong into the trap. “Mrs Bomberger was a heavy woman …”

  “But she used a bath-chair. One man could ha
ve wheeled her down there, dead or alive.”

  “We do not even know what caused her death.”

  “No, but you soon will, won’t you, sir? You can’t wait to get down to Blessington-on-Sea. Anyone could see that you’re all steamed up and rarin’ to go.”

  “I’ve no plans at all for these holidays.”

  “Perhaps you’re thinking of joining the headmaster at Ostende, with days in Bruges?”

  “Don’t be disrespectful, Priggley. After Lincon’s death …”

  “There seems to be a delicious collection of suspects chez Lillianne Bomberger. Not the most popular of women, one gathers. And who was Bomberger? Or who is he?”

  “I haven’t the smallest idea.”

  “Oh, come on, sir. Don’t be naif. We’ve listened like owls to all that hu-ha about Abolitionists. Give us the dirt now. Who bumped off Lillianne Bomberger?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t studied the case.”

  “You think more than one person is involved?”

  “I don’t know. Now will you all write a brief note on the Emancipation Proclamation? No. We will have silence, please, Priggley. And don’t sigh in that offensive way.”

  Rupert Priggley obediently picked up pen and paper.

  “Do you know, sir,” he said as he began to write, “you’re becoming more like Mr Hollingbourne every day? ‘We will have silence, please.’ Anyone would think you were a schoolmaster.”

  2

  BEFORE answering his cousin’s letter Carolus decided to find out a little more of Lillianne Bomberger than had appeared in the Press, and with this object he called on her publishers, Messrs. Stump and Agincourt, whose offices were discreetly situated in Mount Street. He slightly knew one of the partners, William Agincourt, and asked for him.

  He was shown into a waiting-room dominated by a large photograph of a larger woman signed To my dear Barabbas, Recognizantly Lillianne Bomberger. He saw the great pumpkin face and full lips, the monumental hair-do, the seemingly inflated bust and the rapacious eyes of the novelist. She was dressed in something that the late Queen Mary might have worn for her Diamond Jubilee, and afloat in the air behind her, apparently, the photographer had artfully caught the vague shapes and titles of her books.