Our Jubilee is Death

by Leo Bruce

  “I do indeed.”

  “His wife didn’t have to suffer all that, and as a matter of fact Gloria seemed almost to enjoy playing up to the Bomberger. She was not one of the household, and I think Lillianne treated her a little better than the rest, even holding her up as a model to Gracie and Babs. ‘It sometimes seems to me that Gloria is the only one of you who understands what it is to be in perpetual pain. Perhaps she has a less selfish disposition than my own relatives, or perhaps more imagination. At least she does not exhibit the heartless obsession with her own affairs which my nieces have.’ But then she was beastly, they once told me, when Gloria was going to have her baby. ‘I do not expect your generation to realize their responsibilities,’ she said, ‘but I would have thought you might have considered before starting a family at my expense. You must know that Ron has nothing whatever of his own and may lose the farm if I am not satisfied with him.’ Gloria swallowed that at the time, and little Geoff is two years old now, so she may have forgotten it. She never stood up to Lillianne, but seemed able to live with less friction than the rest, perhaps because she was not so much at Trumbles. She let her husband suffer it all, and if he threatened to kick she gave him worse than he got from Lillianne. My dear, do you know what she was wearing? The lot. A Hartnell gown with a pile of the awful jewellery she went in for. Incredible, isn’t it?”

  “No. That’s not incredible. Tell me about the Secretary.”

  “Alice Pink. She’s a bit of a mystery. I’m not good at that sort of woman. Secretive and sour and servile. She is supposed to have had the worst time of them all. I’ve even heard that Lillianne used to hit her. She’s a yellowish, scraggy woman with apparently no relative or friend in the world, and she has been with Lillianne for more than ten years. She scarcely spoke when I was there, but rushed about doing housework in a harassed way as though every second she was expecting to hear Lillianne’s bell. You could understand that because the blasted thing sounded often enough and Pink would leap like a gazelle for the stairs. Can’t think why she stayed. No money or promise of money could have made it worth while. Perhaps she was a little mad.”

  “How did Lillianne Bomberger treat her in public?”

  “Oh, with that awful sort of condescending pseudo-graciousness that she had for everyone except her family. ‘Miss Pink, I know you won’t mind my mentioning it’, sort of thing.”

  “Mentioning what?”

  “Something horribly personal, usually. ‘But I fear that my headache will get worse unless you can control that sniffing.’ Or, ‘Miss Pink, I hate to have to point out that my writing-table—on which, after all, everyone of us has to depend for our existence—is in chaos this morning. Nothing less than chaos. If you could manage to give less time and attention to your own concerns and spare a little thought for me it would make things less impossible. Thank you.’ And poor Alice Pink would fly about like an agitated ant.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Graveston, the odd man who wheeled her chair. He, apparently, had no sense of humour at all. A lugubrious character who walked about like someone in a funeral procession. It was hard to know what he thought of her.”

  “What made him stay?”

  “Either she overpaid him or she was blackmailing him. I suppose he, like all of them, had what they call Hopes. She was supposed to be a sick woman, though I believe she would have lived to a hundred if she had not been done in. She had presumably promised them all something. The gardener I can understand because he loved his work, had a cottage of his own and did not get much interference. Then there was Mrs Plum, who came in daily. She was all right because the Bomberger never spoke to her, but said everything through Miss Pink or one of the nieces, and they could tone it down. ‘Tell that woman that my head is bursting this morning and the noise she is making is torture to me. I quite realize that you all wish to keep her services while they save you from doing the least little thing about the house, but the point is coming at which I shall be able to endure no more. Listen to that! It’s as though you needed a herd of elephant to save you trouble.’ Then one of them would appeal to Mrs Plum, who was a good sort and did what she was asked for their sake.”

  “That was all?”

  “There was her doctor. Her line with him was the martyred saint. ‘Oh, I know you have other patients to consider, Dr Flitcher. My ailments are not the only ones you treat. But if you could have called yesterday you would have seen, I think, what suffering can mean. I don’t complain. I don’t expect to be believed. But perhaps now you are here you could do something to relieve this agonizing pain in my right shoulder.’ That sort of thing.”

  “You certainly give me a very good idea of Mrs Bomberger, Fay. Anyone else?”

  “Do you know George Stump, her publisher?”

  “No. I know his partner.”

  “George is known in the trade as ‘Gobbler’ Stump, but whether that refers to his appearance or his habits I don’t know. Could be either. He made a fortune out of Lillianne —but at what cost! You’ll meet him, because he is still down here. He’s not a lovable man, but I suppose publishers rarely are. He’s greedy and aggressive, but I don’t see how he could have murdered her. In fact, that’s the difficulty with them all. I can see why they should want to murder Lillianne, I can see how they could have, but I can’t somehow believe it of any of them.”

  “That’s always the difficulty, my dear Fay. One never can believe it of anyone.”

  “They’re all people like everyone else, if you know what I mean. They have their little eccentricities; but murder! It’s just incredible.”

  “I know. It has a way of being. Now I think I’d better go and find my hotel.”

  “I’ll come with you and see you installed.”

  They drove along the front. It was not many years since Blessington-on-Sea had been no more than a fishing village with cornfields spreading almost to the churchyard. Now it was a watering-place, not large but, like most towns of its kind, pretentious. There was the Grand Euterpean Concert Hall, the Royal Parade with its monstrous bandstand, the Thespis Repertory Theatre and three cinemas whose plastered concrete took imposing shapes among the shops and houses.

  Most garish and showy of all was the Royal Hydro, in which Fay had booked a room for Carolus.

  “Well, two rooms, really. I thought you might as well have what they call ‘the suite’ because I suppose you’ll be interviewing people half the time. It is ‘sumptuously furnished’ and ‘commands an unbroken view of the sea’.”

  “Sounds hell.”

  “It’s the very place from which to investigate the death of Lillianne Bomberger.”

  The hotel was everything Fay claimed for it. The Sun Lounge was floral and glassy, but there was no sun. The Reading Room was full of deep chairs, but there was nothing to read. The Restaurant was a shimmer of starched cloth and silver, but the food was uneatable. The whole place was luxurious in appearance, but the service was a disgrace.

  A girl who looked like a graduate and spoke like a bored and weary waitress received Carolus at the desk.

  “Deene?” she said. “Ey’ll see. No, we’ve nothing in that neem.”

  “But I came here yesterday and booked it,” said Fay.

  “Who did you speak to?”

  “I saw some young female with glasses.”

  “Oh well, if you saw her, anything ken have heppened. Did she give you a number?”

  “No. She said ‘the suite’.”

  “Oh, the suite. Whey didn’t you say so? Thet’s rate. The suite’s booked in the neem of Deene. I thought you meant an ordinary room.”

  She turned over pages while Carolus waited for his key.

  “It surprises me, reelly, that she remembered to write it down,” went on the young woman in a fatigued voice. “She never does. Ey’ll see if Ey ken get someone to take your beggage, only they’re all Off now.”

  She began to press bell-buttons.

  “Ey was afreed not,” she said, when no one appe
ared. “It’s their tea-tame. They’re supposed to leave someone On, but there you are. Ey’ll send it up presently if you lake.”

  Carolus and Fay made for the lift.

  “Weet a minute,” called the young woman. “Here’s Fred.” She indicated a ginger-headed man with a grim, unsmiling face. “Oh, Fred, teek this gent’s begs up, will you? The suite, et ees.”

  Fred seemed to think the matter over, then laboriously picked up some of Carolus’s luggage.

  “I should think Lillianne Bomberger would have loved this place,” said Carolus to Fay.

  The young woman overheard him.

  “Es a metter of feet she deed,” she admitted. “She keem here quate often. She was here hewing tea on her lest efternoon, as a metter of feet.”

  “Really? Alone?”

  “No. With the young man who used to drave her.”

  “You say, to tea?”

  “Yase. We do a fave-shilling tea in the Spanish Patio every day. Phil Phillips and his Phillipines. It’s very popular. Mrs Bomberger frequently keem.”

  “My God!” said Carolus.

  “Ey noticed her thet lest efternoon,” went on the young woman. “Ey thought she looked very tired and put out about something. But Ey may have been misteeken. Here’s your key.”

  “Thank you.”

  But another shock awaited Carolus. When he eventually discovered ‘the suite’—Fred not having bothered to wait to show it him—he found the door of the sitting-room open. He went in to see, stretched in the deepest arm-chair with a cigarette and a book, the neatly-dressed figure of Rupert Priggley. The boy rose to his feet.

  “Don’t say it, sir,” he commanded.

  “What?” asked Carolus, taken off his guard.

  “Don’t say ‘What are you doing here, Priggley?’ Yes, I see you were just going to. I’m waiting for you, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Really, you do make one obvious, sir. To begin working on the Bomberger case, naturally. Or have you come here for the ‘sumptuous furniture’ and ‘unbroken view of the sea’?”

  “I take it you’re with your parents?”

  “Parents? You know Mummy’s having a brand-new divorce. Far the most exciting yet, she says. Daddy’s still with that dreary model of his. He’s a monogamous type, really. So I’ve been told to take myself off on the motorbike to a good hotel by the sea somewhere. How could there be a better one than this, in the circumstances? Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  Carolus did so.

  “I saw you in The Flying Horse,” said Rupert. “I thought you were terrific. I never knew you were Carolus’s cousin.”

  “So there can be something you don’t know?” asked Carolus, but realized that it would do little to repress Priggley.

  4

  BEFORE seeing anyone connected with the case Carolus obtained and studied a full account of the inquest. From this he learnt a number of interesting and one or two rather startling facts.

  The medical evidence had caused something of a sensation. It appeared that Lillianne Bomberger had taken, shortly before her immersion, a sufficient number of sleeping-pills to cause her death, and that although the tide had gone over her the evidence of this remained. Death was believed to have occurred at approximately two to three o’clock in the morning, and low tide had been at two. She had probably been buried in the sand between three and four o’clock, as the tide was coming in, and Fay Deene had discovered her at half-past eight next morning. She was certainly dead before being buried in the sand.

  She was dressed, as Fay said, in an elaborate gown which she had not worn during the previous evening. Some jewellery was on her, but none that was kept in the private safe in her bedroom.

  The members of her household were broadly in agreement in their evidence. Mrs Bomberger had been in a good mood at dinner that night. She had not drunk more than usual with the meal, but after it had swallowed two glasses of a sweet South African wine, which she very much liked. There had been a game of bridge. She went to bed early—shortly before ten, said some; soon after, said others—and no one had seen her again.

  The sleeping-pills had been prescribed for her by Dr Flitcher. Babs Stayer, who usually went up with her aunt when the latter went to bed, explained that Mrs Bomberger was inclined to be secretive about these pills, though she had allowed Babs to have the prescription made up. Babs explained that this was the second box of them and that the earlier one Mrs Bomberger had finished over a long period, never taking them unless she found it necessary. The present box she had put in the cupboard beside her bed and it had not been opened till that night. In the morning six of the pills were missing. Babs agreed that her aunt knew that she should take no more than one at a time. Dr Flitcher explained that three would be dangerous and six, to a woman of Mrs Bomberger’s plethoric constitution, almost certainly fatal.

  Asked whether it was possible that Mrs Bomberger could have dressed herself and walked to the sands alone, the family agreed that while nothing about her made this absolutely impossible it was so unlikely as almost to be ruled out. It was true that she was lazy and selfish and liked to be driven about in the car or wheeled in the bath-chair, but she was not, in fact, incapable of walking, and as for dressing herself, she did that every day, disliking the assistance of anyone. But it was incredible to them all that she should actually have gone down to the beach in the small hours unaided.

  Her absence from the house had not been discovered when the police brought the news of the finding of her body. It was her strict rule that no one should disturb her till she rang, and this was sometimes as late as eleven o’clock. When, however, the police came to the house the room was entered and it was found that the bed appeared to have been slept in, for some time at least.

  A rather odd fact which was revealed was that Ron Cribb and his wife were staying in the house that night by Mrs Bomberger’s special request. It appeared that on certain occasions she had attacks of nervousness and insisted that there should be a man in the house. Graveston slept in a room beyond the kitchen which had been a housekeeper’s sitting-room when a large staff was kept, but this did not satisfy Mrs Bomberger. She would ring up the unfortunate Ron Cribb and Gloria and they would have to leave their baby son Geoffrey with the wife of the farm foreman and come over to Trumbles. This had happened on that Wednesday.

  So that, in addition to the dead woman, in the house that night were Ron and Gloria Cribb, Gracie and Babs Stayer, Alice Pink and Graveston. None of them heard anything unusual in the night. None of them, according to their evidence, noticed or guessed or suspected anything amiss until the police arrived with the news of finding Mrs Bomberger’s body.

  The verdict was an open one, and the Press had rather laboured the irony of this, a creator of murder mysteries whose own death was one.

  Carolus digested this information, then, eluding Priggley, called for Fay and asked her to accompany him in a walk along the sands.

  “I want to see more or less where you found her,” he explained.

  It was a warm early evening, and the beach of the town, though not crowded, was well sprinkled with holiday-makers. A cliff rose to the north of this beach, and they rounded this to come into a small separate bay. There were also plenty of people here. One group of trees which seemed to be protecting a house was visible from this beach, but no building was in sight.

  “You see? That’s Trumbles, her house, and she owns most of the land down to the beach, but not of course the foreshore. So far the town’s development schemes have passed her by, but sooner or later all this bay will be taken in to Blessington-on-Sea, I should think. Meanwhile, she can prevent any building here, even of a kiosk or cafe, so that this beach is used by parties who mean to picnic on the sands more than anything.”

  “And at night it would be deserted?”

  “Oh quite, I should think. I told you, when I came along here that morning, it was half-past eight and I was the first person to tread the sand since the tide went down.
The only-sound I remember was the seagulls. They screamed away like mad. You might almost have thought they knew what had happened.”

  “You saw no one?”

  “Not a soul. I hurried back to the parade and rushed for a telephone booth. I passed no one in Trumbles Bay, but on the town beach the holiday-makers were beginning to appear.”

  They were almost midway between the two cliffs which marked off Trumbles Bay like boundary posts.

  “It’s easy to get up to the house from here?” asked Carolus.

  “Oh quite. Nothing to stop you so long as you’ve a key of the lower gate, and everyone had that.”

  “When you stayed there I suppose you came down to swim from there?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long did it take to reach the water from the front door?”

  “It took me the hell of a long time because I loathe cold water. But the distance isn’t more than half a mile.”

  “Now, where was the body?”

  “My dear Carolus, I didn’t raise a concrete pillar on the spot. I can’t tell you to within a yard. But I should say somewhere round about here.”

  “Which way was the head facing?”

  “Inland. She might have been looking at the house.”

  “There was nothing near it? That you noticed, anyway?”

  “Nothing at all. Just the head out of the sand. The sand was perfectly smooth except where the dogs had disturbed it.”

  Carolus remained there for a few minutes, then started walking slowly in the direction of the house.

  “I see there’s a stretch of sand which remains above high-water mark.”

  “Yes.”

  “You did not cross it that morning?”

  “No. I came round the headland and went back the same way. I did not come up to the house. But in any case I wouldn’t have seen anything, if you’re thinking of tracks. That dry sand is trodden all day.”