Our Jubilee is Death

by Leo Bruce

  “When publication date approached she asked me to come down to Blessington and talk things over. What else could I do?”

  “You could have gone abroad.”

  “I honestly thought she wanted to make it up. And there’s no doubt about it, she did sell. So I came down. I found not only that she hadn’t relented, but that she was going to try to get her past books away from us, too. I didn’t see how she could because I’d kept them all in print. But you never know what lawyers can do with contracts. We fought like a cat and dog for two or three consecutive days. She started calling me Mr Stump, though I’d been George to her for years. ‘Mr Stump,’ she would say, looking down her nose in that self-satisfied way that made you want to strangle her …”

  “Did it?”

  George Stump pulled himself up.

  “You know what I mean. ‘Mr Stump, I do not expect gratitude. I do not expect you to remember that your firm would have been bankrupt years ago but for me. I do not ask for special consideration. I only wish to have the courtesy which any novice being published by you might expect. You say that you will not give a publication party for the book at Kew, and raise ridiculous objections like the unwillingness of the authorities of the Royal Botanical Gardens to close their gates to the public for the occasion. Have you asked them, Mr Stump, before dismissing my modest suggestion?’ And so on. I thought I should go off my rocker.

  “Then a funny thing happened. Peter Davies turned her down. Said he wouldn’t have her at any price. I heard this from the Secretary Alice Pink. Lillianne Bomberger became a half-starved tigress. She almost flew at me when I saw her next day. She did not tell me why, but she was no longer even a moderately sane woman. So I took advantage of it and told her that we should publish The Flower of Death just as we liked and when we liked and did not want any more novels from her. That was about three days before her death. I was sorry for the people round her, then.”

  “But you stayed here?”

  “Yes. I’ve told you things almost like this had happened before. I believed she’d come round.”

  “You went to see her?”

  “Certainly not. I waited.”

  “You didn’t go to see her on her last evening alive?”

  “Oh, that. Yes, but I never saw her. I went up there at about a quarter to ten, when I thought she might be a bit mellow. Pink came to the door and said she had orders not to let me in.”

  “Which route did you take to Trumbles?”

  “I went by taxi. The inland road.”

  “And back the same way?”

  “No. I’d dismissed the taxi. I had to walk back. Why? You surely don’t suspect me of having anything to do with her death?”

  “Which way did you walk back?”

  “Along the sands.”

  “Did you meet anyone from the house?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone you knew by sight?”

  “No.”

  “What time did you get back to your hotel?”

  “Must have been around eleven.”

  “Anyone see you come in?”

  “I don’t remember. Don’t think so.”

  “Tell me, Mr Stump, can you remember any story by Mrs Bomberger which had any incidents or situations at all similar to those of her death?”

  “Oh yes. There’s an obvious one. The book was published eight years ago. Not one of her best, but its sales were well up to standard. It was called Life Has Death for Neighbour”

  “What was the situation?”

  “Some children are playing on the rocks by the seaside and, looking into a deep rock-pool, they see a beautiful girl in it.”

  “Doesn’t sound very similar.”

  “Ah, but it turns out that the girl was drowned. She had been thrown there, weighted down by a large slab of concrete.”

  “Who had done it?”

  “Her husband, I think. Yes, her husband. The girl was a great heiress and her husband was a rotter who had been in gaol and she disowned him completely. He murdered her out of revenge.”

  “I understand that Lillianne Bomberger’s husband has been in gaol.”

  “Yes.”

  “Has she ever seen him since?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He is alive, I suppose?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a subject she would never discuss.”

  “You are one of her executors? Is there any mention of Bomberger in her Will?”

  “Yes. There is a sum of money for him ‘if alive’.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “No. But I’d like to ask you a few questions, Deene. What do you think about this business? I mean if the woman died of an overdose of sleeping-pills why was she taken out and buried in the sand?”

  “To answer that I should have to be quite sure she did die of an overdose. I don’t know whether those performing the autopsy can be quite certain of that. After all, she had been in the water for some hours.”

  “You mean you think she may have been alive when she was buried? Why was there no sign of a struggle, then? No bruises or anything?”

  “She might have been unconscious, mightn’t she?”

  “I suppose so. It’s pretty ghastly, isn’t it?”

  “Murder is, Mr Stump. Whether it’s a crude job with a hatchet or a subtle poisoning.”

  “Have you got as far as suspecting anyone yet?”

  “I can’t answer that question. But I would like to say this. If you have any influence with those people out at Trumbles try to get them to tell the truth. To the police or to me.”

  “I don’t think I have much. But I’ll try.”

  George Stump rose to leave.

  “I shall be down here for a few days longer if there’s anything more I can tell you.”

  After he had gone Carolus remained alone for nearly an hour. The case, in spite of all the obstruction made to his enquiries, was beginning very slightly to clear.

  His afternoon post brought him a long envelope marked Private and Confidential, and he opened it to find the report he was awaiting on the Cribb family. He was not surprised to learn that there was a record of hereditary lunacy. Lillianne’s grandfather had been certified and her sister, the mother of Gracie and Babs Stayer, had died in a mental home.

  He impatiently stuffed this document into his pocket and went out to his car. He did not call for Fay or Priggley but drove alone to Trumbles.

  Miss Pink opened the door.

  “Good afternoon,” said Carolus. “It was you I hoped to see, Miss Pink.”

  “Me? Oh! I don’t think …”

  “Could I see you alone for a moment? I have something for you.”

  He showed her the packet he had taken from Poxton on the previous night.

  At first he thought she was going to faint, and caught her arm. But she rallied.

  “Come in here,” she said, and led him to a small sitting-room just inside the front door.

  “Why did you allow yourself to be blackmailed?”

  “The unpleasantness …” tried Miss Pink.

  “What unpleasantness? There couldn’t be any more. You’d had everything from police enquiries to newspaper reports.”

  “It all seemed … he said he could make it unpleasant …”

  “Why? What did he know?”

  “Please don’t question me, Mr Deene. I’m far from well.”

  “He must have known something that you wanted to keep hidden. What was it?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Do the police know about these?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Oh dear, I don’t know what to say…. It’s all so … How did you get these? Is he angry?”

  “Never mind. Now for God’s sake, woman, speak the truth. You wouldn’t have got together five hundred pounds and handed it over to that wretched man unless you had something serious to hide. What was it?”

  “Didn’t he tell you?” In her desperation Alice Pink had prodded the weakest point of Carolu
s.

  “I want to hear from you.”

  “Then he didn’t tell you! Don’t question me any more, Mr Deene. There is nothing to tell you.” A sort of faded triumph crept into her voice. “Nothing at all.”

  Carolus knew that for the moment at least he was beaten.

  “There is one other thing,” he said quietly. “Did you ever meet Mrs Bomberger’s husband?”

  Alice Pink took a moment to focus.

  “No. I never actually met him.”

  “Do you know whether he’s alive?”

  “Oh yes, I think so. Mrs Bomberger wrote to him some time ago.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She did not dictate the letter. She wrote it herself and addressed the envelope.”

  “But you saw it?”

  “Well, quite by chance. I was looking for her spectacles….”

  “What was the address?”

  “I don’t know exactly. The letter was addressed to Otto Bomberger in Brighton.”

  “That is the only time?”

  “Yes. But I have fancied—I don’t know why; perhaps it was something Mrs Bomberger said—that he had cropped up again lately. And a few days before her death—that is nothing but conjecture, Mr Deene—she instructed me to draw five hundred pounds from her bank in one pound notes.”

  “You have no idea what her purpose was?”

  “None.”

  “What became of them?”

  Miss Pink was silent.

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? You used them to square this miserable blackmailer. Well, that’s nothing to do with me. I’m only interested in murder.”

  Carolus looked sadly at the frightened and fussy creature, but decided that it was useless to persuade her again to tell him the truth.

  12

  Two days later, as Carolus was passing down Sandringham Terrace, the door of Number Thirty-Seven opened and he saw Mrs Plum beckoning to him vigorously.

  “Come in quick and shut the door before anyone sees you, though goodness knows there’s enough peeping and prying in this street. I once told her, where you’re living, that she needn’t think I couldn’t see her behind the lace curtains. Well, I thought it would come. They give me my cards this morning. Don’t want me up there any more. And I don’t wonder at it, with what’s going on.”

  She paused for breath and Carolus waited patiently.

  “Come in the front room a minute, where no one’s going to hear, because if anyone was to get to know some of the things I’ve seen I wouldn’t answer for it. It’s like the haunted house in the fairground, you never know what you’re going to come on next, and I’m glad to have got away alive because it was turning me into nothing but a mass of nerves. Time and time I’ve said I didn’t mean to go back and I wish I hadn’t months ago so’s I wouldn’t have heard all I have. Sometimes when I walked out of that gate my legs were wobbling like jellies and I didn’t know how I should ever get to the bus-stop.”

  “What particular thing …”

  “Particular thing? It was no good being particular with murders going on and them having the hystericals and that. But these last two days it has been that Pink. Do you know what she did yesterday? It gives me the shudders when I think about it. She tried to do for herself.”

  “Suicide, you mean?”

  Mrs Plum gave her violent mandarin nod.

  “That’s what it was, unless I’m very much mistaken. She was upset all the morning and I could see she’d been crying, her eyes were that red and swollen. I thought, and well she might cry; so might anyone if they lived in that place and knew what she knows with people being murdered and buried and that. She’s been upset for a long time, but yesterday morning it came to a pitch. Then no sooner was dinner over—and I don’t believe she ate a thing—she went up to her room and was on the typewriter for a bit, because I could hear her when I went past to the linen cupboard.

  “Then she came down with her hat on and marched into the room where Gracie and Babs were. ‘I’m going to end it,’ she said. ‘Now. This afternoon.’ ‘Don’t be silly, Alice,’ said one of them. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ ‘It’s not. It’s not. I tell you he knows.’ ‘Keep calm now,’ said Babs. ‘It’s never as bad as it seems. You weren’t to know.’ ‘I didn’t know!’ So they went on, she saying she was going to end it all and they telling her to keep quiet. After that she flung out of the house.

  “Well, I thought, that’ll be a nice thing if she goes and does for herself and we have two corpses on our hands. It sent cold shivers up and down my spine to think of it. I thought I should go off into convulsions. But no, an hour later she was back, looking quite different. Cool as a cucumber, she was, as though she’d forgotten all her troubles. Yes, I thought, you can look as though you hadn’t a care in the world, but what about the murder that’s still hanging over us like a nightmare? But I didn’t say anything—well, it wasn’t my place to. I was pleased to see the poor thing look a little better.

  “She went upstairs to her room, and in a few minutes she was tearing down again shouting out as though there was someone after her with a carving-knife. It turned me to a lump of ice to hear her; I really thought the end of the world had come. ‘Where’s my letter?’ she says to me. ‘What letter, Miss Pink?’ I asked, because I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘The letter I left on the typewriter,’ she said, and her eyes were wild like anybody who’s escaped from a lunatic asylum. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen any letter nor yet been into your room nor touched your typewriter. And may I drop dead if I’d do any such thing.’ ‘Then who has?’ she asks. ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve got my work to think of without trapezing about looking for letters.’ ‘Someone has!’ she said, and went off to find Gracie and Babs. Nice thing, wasn’t it? I suppose what she’d done was to type out farewell for ever, then think better of it and come back to find someone had took her dying words off the typewriter for a joke, as you might say.

  “I only heard one bit more before I came away yesterday—that was when the door was open for a minute while they was having tea. I just caught Miss Pink say something like: ‘I shall. I shall. I’ve been foolish. Whatever happens can’t be worse than this.’ I may not have it quite right, but that’s what it sounded like. But I didn’t like it. It made me feel a bit squeamy. Seemed as though I’d gone hollow inside. Then there was the other thing.”

  This time Carolus felt a question might help.

  “What other thing?”

  “Well, about that Graveston. The way he speaks to them all. Good as you are, if you know what I mean. No ‘Miss’ and ‘Ma’am’ or anything—talking to all three of them and Ron Cribb and his wife as though they were old friends. I heard him say to Gracie, ‘What you better do is to tell her …’ and so on. It sounded so funny in that deep voice of his. It was almost as though it was his house now and Gracie and them no more than what they always was. It upset me, really it did. I thought, whatever does this mean, because whatever it is it’s not right for him to be talking like that. He’s never done it before, ever since I’ve worked there, anyway. Gave me a nasty taste, like something that’s Gone Off. But there you are. It was only part of all the rest, and I’ll be thankful not to tread the threshold of that house ever again. It was bad enough when Mrs Bomberger was alive and she and that Mr Stump shouting at one another like two mad bulls.”

  “Really?”

  “He was the only one who seemed able to stand up to her —well, towards the end he did; in the old days he was worse than any of them, running round trying to please her. It was as though he saw it coming. The last few times he was there he got quite uppish and answered her back as good as she gave. She turned round to him one day and said, ‘You’ll never get another book of mine, Mr Stump.’ So he turned round and said, ‘I wouldn’t take another if you offered it me.’ At that she turned round to him white as a sheet and said, ‘You insulting little stationer,’ she said. I remember the v
ery words, because I wondered whatever she meant. He turned round quietly when she said that and told her, ‘I should be proud to be a stationer even if it was true,’ he said; ‘what I should be ashamed to have done is to have spent my whole life feebly imitating better writers.’ Then I thought she really would go up in a sheet of flames. She turned round and shouted, ‘Get out of my house! Get out, and don’t ever try to return!’ It was enough to make anyone feel bad, those two shouting at one another all the insults they could think of, though after that Mr Stump did go off and we had a few minutes’ peace and quiet.”

  “It’s very kind of you to trouble to tell me all that, Mrs Plum.”

  “Oh, I had to. I couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about it. I thought, if I don’t tell someone this I shall turn into I don’t know what. I mean it’s enough to give anyone the jim-jams when you come to think of it. D’you think that Alice Pink will have another go at doing for herself?”

  “I think the situation is very dangerous.”

  “And you’re right! I don’t know whatever made me take it in the first place. Oh, and Mr Primmley’s got something he wants to tell you. He’s the gardener up there. He’s married to my husband’s cousin and got ever such a bonny little girl.”

  “How can I get hold of him?”

  “Well, without you go up there and see him at his cottage, I don’t know. I tell you what though: he’s on the Gardeners’ and Allotment-Holders’ Committee, and they meet every Thursday at the Feathers, so you could see him tonight if you was to go down there about eight. He doesn’t seem much bothered by what’s gone on up at the house, I must say, but then he always kept himself to himself. You tell him I told you to ask for him, and he’ll tell you what he told me he wanted to tell you.”