Our Jubilee is Death

by Leo Bruce

  Mr Agincourt was a stocky, nondescript man, known as the lesser of the two partners in intelligence, personality and capital. He dealt with sales and production, leaving more delicate questions to his famous partner George Stump.

  “Morning, Mr Deene,” he said when Carolus sat in his Louis Seize office. “Come to offer us a book, I hope? We ought to have had your Rufus, and I told George Stump so at the time. Still, I suppose we owe it to you we’ve got your boss’s book.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Oh. Didn’t you know? The Wayward Mortar-board or Thirty Tears on the Slopes of Parnassus by Hugh Gorringer, Headmaster of the Queen’s School, Newminster. Due in the spring. Illustrated. Twenty-five bob.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Read it? No. I shouldn’t think that’s possible, but we’ll sell it all right.”

  “It was not what I came to see you about.”

  “No? Well, what can I do for you? I’ve got a spare hour.”

  “What did you know of Lillianne Bomberger?”

  “Good heavens, Mr Deene! I said an hour, not a lifetime. It would take me from now till Christmas to tell you the half of it. Why? Are you interested in doing the official biography? George Stump wants to find someone.

  “No. I’m afraid not. You’d better get hold of Hector Bolitho or someone who is accustomed to dealing with Royalty. I just want a few facts. Where did she come from?”

  “Forest Hill. Small sweet-and-tobacco shop.”

  “Really. How did she do it?”

  “I’ll tell you. Sheer hard work and ambition. She never had any looks, any charm, any talent or any money. But she had determination. She won a scholarship to a Grammar School as a girl. Started writing before she was twenty. Never published anything, but went on and on. Reckoned to send out so many manuscripts a week whatever happened. It doesn’t matter whether you can write or not when you’re like that. Sooner or later you get there.”

  “And Bomberger?”

  “That was her big mistake. He was a little, inflammable gasbag of a man who told her he was going to set the Thames on fire, and she believed him. Her name was Lily Cribb before she married, and she’d have done better to keep it. But no, out she came with Lillianne Bomberger, and just at that time she sold a serial to a woman’s paper and used the name. She’s been stuck with it ever since.”

  “What happened to Bomberger?”

  “He got five years for diamond-smuggling. But that was after she’d been using the name for a year or two, so she couldn’t change it. He came out a long time ago, but I don’t know whether she ever saw him.”

  “Who are these nieces who lived with her?”

  “They’re the daughters of one of her sisters. It was a big family. Decent, respectable people who still live in South East London and wouldn’t admit to being tied up with Lillianne Bomberger. But there’s a son of one of her brothers whom she set up as a farmer. Somewhere near her home at Blessington-on-Sea.”

  “That’s a fairly imposing sort of house, I take it?”

  “Ghastly. George Stump is down there now. It was just outside the little town, the only house in a bay of its own. She bought the land right to the foreshore and would like to have bought that, too. The house was built by one of the tobacco barons, a mock-Gothic affair, not enormously large, but very comfortable. Panelling everywhere. It always seemed to me as though that tobacco man wanted to live inside one of his own cigar-boxes. But it was an easy house to run. She hated having servants. The nieces and the secretary and a char did everything.”

  “I understand she was a semi-invalid?”

  “She posed as one. Had herself pulled about in a bath-chair and all that. I don’t think there was much wrong with her health. I think she used hypochondria as a means of dominating the lives of the wretched people round her.”

  “She doesn’t sound very amiable.”

  “She was a bitch, Mr Deene. The bitch of all time, if you want it straight. An egotist on a scale you can scarcely believe. Folie de grandeur, and with it a morbid selfishness and pettiness which were quite terrifying to see. The only surprising thing about her murder is that it did not happen years ago.”

  “Tell me about her success.”

  “That was phenomenal, of course. I’ll be frank and admit that she has made this firm. Made it. She started with light sentimental novels in the style of Ethel Dell, but got nowhere with them. You have to be sincere for that job. All the successful ones believe in their books as though they were George Eliot. Doesn’t matter what tripe it is, it won’t get across if they don’t believe in it. She didn’t. Then she began trying to imitate Mrs Agatha Christie. That didn’t work either because Agatha Christie is inimitable. Haven’t enough tried? She may have a formula, but gosh! she knows how to work it. Lillianne didn’t. But she couldn’t be put off. She was forty now, and hadn’t had a sniff of success. Then do you know what she did? Combined the two forms of imitation. Wrote a sentimental love-story with wilting heroine and strong, silent men in the Dell manner and popped a murder mystery right in the first chapter. Remember her first? Blood on the Rose? We took it, and its success nearly broke us. We hadn’t the capital to print what we needed. Fortunately George Stump got some for us and saved the situation. The book sold a hundred thousand at seven-and-six—pre-war, of course. The play ran a year here and nearly two in New York. The film rights brought her a fortune, and it was before Income Tax made such things almost worthless. She never looked back.”

  “But did she look forward? Did she break new ground?”

  “Never, of course. She wrote the same book over and over again to the end. We’ve got her latest in the office now—The Flower of Death. But don’t think we’ve not earned it. We’ve had her for twenty-three years, and it’s been like a prison sentence. She was the most insufferable human being of this century. Or any other, I sometimes think. I wish you had known her.”

  “I wish that, too. I’m going down to Blessington-on-Sea tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I see. Going to solve the mystery, are you?”

  “A little criminological vacation, I prefer to say. I might ask a few questions.”

  “So far as I’m concerned, whoever did for her was a public benefactor.”

  “Oh no,” said Carolus sharply. “No murderer is that.”

  Bill Agincourt looked quite serious.

  “Suppose someone had succeeded in murdering Hitler?” he challenged.

  Carolus smiled.

  “I must fall back on words. That would have been political assassination. This was for private, probably selfish, motives. Moreover, you did not mean what you said, I hope. Would you have murdered her?”

  “No. Perhaps not. But I could have been tempted to.”

  “I think you’re talking somewhat loosely. But then I’m rather a prig on the subject. I don’t like murder anywhere by anyone for any motive at all, Agincourt. It’s monstrously presumptuous, for one thing. It’s assuming the prerogative of God, if you want a noisy phrase. However, we can agree that Lillianne Bomberger was a woman who provoked the worst instincts in everyone about her. Did no one like her?”

  “The Secretary, perhaps. Alice Pink. Though even in her devotion there seemed to be a kind of hatred. I don’t know. You must see for yourself.”

  “I know what you mean about the Secretary. It is possible to hate someone so much that it becomes a kind of love. But apart from that had she many acquaintances?”

  “Oh yes. She used to appear at literary functions occasionally looking delighted with herself, like a great dairy cow who had beaten the milk-yielding records. She had a few hangers-on. Then down at Blessington-on-Sea she liked to pose as Charity. She headed every subscription list in the town. But friends—not one.”

  “That certainly suggests a wide field. I’m very grateful to you, Agincourt, for giving me so much information.”

  “George Stump will tell you more. He’s still down at Blessington. He went to try to conciliate Bomberger who was throwing
a fit of temperament and threatening to leave us. You know George? He’s a character. You’ll like him. He expects to be down there another week or two, clearing up. He’s an executor, you see.”

  Back in his little house at Newminster, Carolus smoked thoughtfully over a whisky-and-soda, then began to act. He dictated a telegram to his cousin. One of his few extravagances was the sending of unnecessarily long and verbose telegrams, and he seemed to enjoy dictating this one.

  Decided to come down and try to save you from probably imminent arrest due to your habits of vagueness and prevarication. Stop. Please obtain authority from heirs for me to investigate. Stop. Book me accommodation but shall look for furnished house for possible further stay. What were you doing at Blessington, anyway? Carolus.

  Then Carolus rang for his housekeeper. She was a small, severe, efficient woman who was apt to regard Carolus as a small boy who had to be kept out of temptation’s way. She had a particular horror of crime and claimed that her husband shared it.

  “Oh, Mrs Stick,” began Carolus ingratiatingly, “I was thinking of going down to the seaside for a month or two.”

  “I’m sure a real holiday would do you good, sir,” said Mrs Stick guardedly.

  “I thought perhaps I might find a furnished flat or something down there because I hear that seaside places are far from full this year. If I can find one, would you and Stick like to close up here and come down for a time?”

  “I’m sure we should be very pleased to, sir. I was only saying to Stick, it’s a long time since we’ve been down to the sea.”

  “Good. Then I’ll do my best to find something.”

  Suddenly Mrs Stick looked at Carolus more narrowly.

  “Where did you say it was, sir?”

  “I didn’t, Mrs Stick. I haven’t quite decided. I thought perhaps …” Carolus knew that he was overdoing his casualness … “I thought possibly somewhere like Blessington-on-Sea.”

  Mrs Stick turned red.

  “I knew as much,” she said. “I don’t read the daily paper for nothing. I told Stick this morning, ten to one you’d start poking about in what didn’t concern you with this lady novelist buried alive and that. It’ll mean all sorts of people coming to the house, I said, and us not knowing from day to day whether you wouldn’t be poisoned. No, sir, neither me nor Stick couldn’t possibly see our way to coming down to a place where we might be murdered in our beds any night.”

  “Come now, Mrs Stick, the murder took place well out of the town, you know. It’s a nice little place, and with this lovely summer weather …”

  “I’m not saying we shouldn’t have liked a sniff of sea air, sir, and Stick dearly loves a bit of shrimping, but we can’t have ourselves mixed up in murders and that, as well you know. I only wish you would find something nicer to interest yourself in, sir. It seems wrong, all those horrible goings-on, and you risking life and limb to find out who’s done it.”

  “I feel sure you wouldn’t be involved, Mrs Stick.”

  A great indecision seemed to be going on in the small woman’s mind.

  “Of course, if I could feel sure of that … but then there are the people coming to call on you and I not knowing whether they’re what you call suspects or not…. I’m not denying the sea-water isn’t a wonderful thing for Stick’s rheumatism, but I should never have a moment’s peace wondering whether we weren’t going to be knocked up in the middle of the night.”

  “I think you might chance that, Mrs Stick. You would enjoy the change.”

  “Well … I suppose what is to be is to be. When were you thinking of going, sir?”

  “Tomorrow. As soon as I find a place for us all I will wire you.”

  “Then Stick better start packing at once. Oh, one of the young gentlemen was round this afternoon, sir.”

  ‘One of the young gentlemen’ meant, from Mrs Stick, one of Carolus’s pupils from the Queen’s School, Newminster. She regarded most of them with scarcely less hostility and suspicion than she felt for suspects in her employer’s cases.

  “Which one?” asked Carolus sharply.

  “You might guess which one, sir. That one with the airs and graces as if he was a grown-up man.”

  “Not Priggley?” asked Carolus desperately.

  “That’s his name, sir.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Asking this, that and the other question about your movements. I gave him questions. ‘What’s it to do with you what Mr Deene may choose to do?’ I said. ‘You go off and mind your lessons.’ But he only grinned. ‘Don’t be stuffy, Mrs Stick,’ he said, and before I knew where I was I found myself smiling. He’s a cheeky young thing, but he has got a sort of way with him. I said to Stick afterwards …”

  “But what questions was he asking?” demanded Carolus anxiously.

  “Oh, whether you were thinking of going to Blessington, and that.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him?”

  “I wasn’t to know, was I, sir? It was only Stick reading in the paper that made me think of it.”

  “But did you tell Priggley that you had thought of it, Mrs Stick?” insisted Carolus severely.

  Mrs Stick in turn became more her usual disapproving self.

  “You’ve only yourself to blame, sir, if those who know your ways and what you get up to can guess which way the cat will jump.”

  “You mean, the abominable Priggley may follow me down to Blessington?”

  “No, sir. By what he said he will be there before you. He was leaving this afternoon. In anticipation, he said.”

  Carolus actually and noisily groaned.

  3

  FAY DEENE, the cousin who had written to Carolus, was a woman of thirty-five, a competent actress who had never been a publicized star, but was rarely out of work. Hers was a face which made people exclaim, “Oh yes, I’ve seen her quite often. What was it she was in?” She had been in so many West End productions and so many English films that it was difficult not to recognize her but hard to recall her in any one part.

  She had played a secretary, a favourite sister, a friend’s wife, a devoted nurse, a good sort, a beloved niece, a dress-designer, a lady doctor, a famous hostess and a confidential barmaid, all with grace and confidence, and her more outre parts had been those of a games mistress, a poison-pen specialist and a prostitute.

  She had a private income, but its proportions had been greatly exaggerated in stage circles, where most sums of money are spoken of as enormous or infinitesmal. She could afford to refuse the work she did not want, but she could not afford to be temperamental once she had accepted it. She was a good-looking woman who dressed a little too simply to be smart. She had a jolly laugh and, as already indicated, a vague but voluble way of talking.

  “Oh, Carolus,” she said when he had found her at her hotel, “this is splendid. My dear, I’m so tired of practically being called a murderess, and the Stayer girls are desperate. Of course you’ll clear it up in a moment. Can you imagine, though, just the head with that look of inane grandeur? Was she meant to be buried deeper, do you think?”

  “Where am I staying?”

  “Oh, at the Hydro. It’s supposed to be the best, but they’re all hell. I came down to stay with Bomberger, believe it or not. I was in her last play, and she wanted me in her next one. I spent two nights in the house, then fled. It was like Napoleon at St Helena. A sort of sham Court. Revolting. I came here, and used to go out to Trumbles (that’s the name of her house) when she wanted to discuss The Broken Rosary, her next play.”

  “You had no open quarrel with her?”

  “Heaps. But who hadn’t? You should have seen her. She really did bestride her narrow world like a Colossus, and those unhappy people round her peeped about under her huge legs or whatever it was. Only, of course, she was a Colossus of mediocrity.”

  “Why did they stay with her? Those round her, I mean.”

  “Partly because they had nowhere else to go, I think, and partly because she mesmerized them like a cobra or wha
tever you call it. They resented everything, but they never seemed to think of rebellion. It made me rather sick. Even Babs …”

  “That’s the younger niece?”

  “Yes, and the brighter one of the two. Even she seemed to have thrown in the sponge. When she first went to live with Lillianne she was a nice cheerful girl from South East London—just what you would think from her name. But the Bomberger had broken her. She’d become sullen and unintelligent, though not quite as much a nervous wreck as her sister Gracie.”

  “What about the nephew?”

  “Ron Cribb. His was the worst case of all, in a way. He’s married to a woman called Gloria, a handsome blonde who gave him hell if he ever threatened to escape the Bomberger. Lillianne had bought him his farm, you see, and kept the ownership of it while letting him farm it. She had it all tied up so that she could turn him off at a minute’s notice, and of course she took full advantage of that. Rather than keep a car herself she had bought one ostensibly for him, but actually to use him as a chauffeur. I once heard him plead that he simply couldn’t take her out next day because he had to attend a farm sale a few miles away. It was at lunch and Lillianne blinked twice, very slowly, keeping her lids down for about two seconds each time, then said, ‘Of course, Ron, I know the farm needs attention sometimes, indeed I often wonder that you have so much time to go up to London and so on. What I find difficult to understand is that it should need attention at the one time when I feel I might be a little better for a drive. As you are perfectly aware, I no longer look for any pleasure in life but a temporary easement of pain…. Nor do I expect the smallest consideration or gratitude from any of you. I have learnt better. But when, for once, I give you an opportunity at least to behave with common humanity …’

  “ ‘All right, Aunt Lillianne. I’ll miss the sale.’

  “ ‘Isn’t that rather a grudging and ungracious way to talk? It is not as though I often look for some benefit from the car I purchased. No one could be less exigent than I am. It seems to me that on one of the very rare occasions that I ask you to drive me, you might at least affect some willingness, for the sake of good manners if nothing else.’ And so on. In the end the wretched young man had to plead with her to go with him. You see what I mean about a cobra? Or is it a boa-constrictor?”