Settling Scores

by Martin Edwards

  “Look here,” the colonel broke out irritably at last, “what the devil’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s all wrong,” muttered Lowe, shaking his head.

  “What is?” demanded his host.

  “This Claymore business.”

  “Oh, you think so?” grunted Grayling.

  “I’m sure of it,” declared Lowe.

  “And I suppose, as usual, you want to put it right,” said the colonel. “Well, I’m hanged if I can see how you’re going to set about it.”

  Lowe smiled wryly.

  “Neither can I,” he confessed. “But you must admit that it doesn’t make sense. If Claymore wanted to kill Stanwood, why—unless he was crazy—did he do it in such a way that he was bound to be suspected?”

  “Probably did it in a fit of temper,” Grayling replied. “I don’t see there’s anything in that.”

  “And also in that same fit of temper, I suppose he put that red golf ball beside his body,” said the dramatist, “in case the evidence against him wasn’t sufficient?”

  “I’ll admit it is peculiar…” began the colonel.

  “It’s more than peculiar,” broke in Lowe impatiently. “It’s inexplicable. How…” He stopped suddenly and stared at Grayling. “If only it hadn’t been red,” he muttered, “there might be an explanation for its presence.”

  “You mean,” put in Grayling, “that if it had been an ordinary ball it might have been the one Claymore was playing with?”

  “No,” answered the detective to his surprise, and his tone was a little abrupt, “I mean if it had been an ordinary ball it might have been planted by the real murderer to clinch the case against Claymore.”

  He got up abruptly and began to pace the room.

  “But Claymore kept his golf balls locked up in the clubhouse locker,” protested the colonel. “Nobody could have…”

  “The lock is a simple one,” interrupted Lowe. “It wouldn’t be difficult to find a key to fit it. That’s not the snag. The snag is why was a red golf ball taken when there were lots of white ones to choose from?”

  “Aren’t you rather taking it for granted that your idea’s the right one?” growled Grayling.

  “No!” retorted Lowe. “I’m trying to base a theory on the supposition that I’m right.”

  He lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this business, Grayling,” he went on. “You’ve lived in this neighbourhood for years. Tell me everything you know about Stanwood and the people who may have, even remotely, come in contact with him.”

  The colonel sighed resignedly. He usually slept during the afternoon, but he relinquished a habit of years with a good grace—and it must be admitted that he was interested. By tea-time Trevor Lowe knew as much about the people of the district as Grayling himself, and that was great deal for the colonel was notoriously inquisitive. After tea the dramatist announced his intention of going to London.

  “I’ll be back sometime tomorrow, I expect,” he said, and took his departure, leaving Grayling’s curiosity concerning this sudden decision unappeased.

  He did not come back on the following day, and it was not until the Friday morning that the colonel heard anything more from him. A telegram arrived which caused him much thought.

  “Returning seven-thirty tonight,” it ran. “Invite following people to dinner. Got to the bottom of it.”

  Grayling looked at the four names and went to interview his housekeeper.

  Trevor Lowe arrived a little before seven-thirty. He had driven down from town and was in the best of spirits.

  “Give me a glass of sherry and don’t ask questions,” he said, when the colonel demanded to know what it was all about. “You’ll know everything in good time. Are all those people coming?”

  “Yes,” growled Grayling. “And you’ll have to make peace with my housekeeper. She thinks I’ve gone mad!”

  By the time Lowe had washed the first of the guests had arrived in the person of Inspector Bream, and the dramatist found him sipping sherry in the colonel’s small drawing room. The other three came almost together. Helen Morgan looked a little pale, but otherwise there was no sign of the trouble she was experiencing.

  “I understand that it is at your request, Mr. Lowe, that Grayling has invited us here this evening,” said Dr. Faversham, as he shook hands.

  Lowe nodded, and Milton looked at him curiously.

  “Is it permissible to ask why?” he inquired with a smile.

  “You will see if you wait,” replied the dramatist, and at that moment dinner was announced. Throughout the meal Lowe kept up a string of anecdote and light conversation, and it was not until coffee had been served that he consented to appease the rising curiosity of the people round the table.

  “I know you are all wondering why I asked Grayling to invite you here this evening,” he began. “Well, the explanation is a simple one. I wanted to tell you the true story of Stanwood’s murder.”

  Helen Morgan gave a little gasp, and Lowe looked round at the expectant faces.

  “I may as well begin by saying that I never believed that Jack Claymore had anything to do with the crime,” he went on. “There was one thing, in my opinion, that definitely pointed to this belief, and that was the finding of the red golf ball beside the body. I could not account for its presence, except by one supposition: that it had been put there by the real murderer to throw suspicion on Claymore. But there was an obstacle in the way of this theory. If this was what had been done, why had the red golf ball been chosen when a white one would have been so much more convincing?

  “For a long time I puzzled over the solution to this, and then, considering all the circumstances, I hit on what I believed was the only plausible one. I will come to it later, I was determined to get to the truth of the matter, and it struck me that a great deal might be learned if more was known of Stanwood’s past. I went up to London and had an interview with Detective Inspector Shadgold of Scotland Yard. On my suggestion he sent through to Inspector Bream and asked for a set of the dead man’s finger-prints. When the special messenger brought them back we quickly learned whom Stanwood had been and why there was so much mystery surrounding his past.

  “His real name had been Felton and he had served a sentence of seven years for blackmail. The date he had been released and the date when he first appeared in this neighbourhood corresponded almost exactly.”

  He took a sip of coffee and continued:

  “This information was most helpful, for it suggested a possible motive for Stanwood’s murder. A man who has blackmailed once will do so again. I remembered the thousand pounds in cash, with which he had opened his banking account, and the further five hundred, also in cash, paid in recently. Had he been blackmailing somebody in this district, and was this somebody responsible for his death? It seemed likely, and the next question was who?

  “It occurred to me that Stanwood must have had some good reason for coming to live in a small village like Glen Hill, and that probably this reason was because, on coming out of prison, he had marked down a profitable victim to provide him with an income.

  “Colonel Grayling, at my request, had given me short histories of the principal people in the neighbourhood. With the assistance of Inspector Shadgold I checked up on these, and discovered there was one person whose past contained an episode that might have been profitable to a blackmailer—if he held proof of what had only been a rumour. I came back to Glen Hill this morning and saw Inspector Bream.”

  Grayling grunted and Lowe smiled.

  “I laid before him everything I had discovered, and offered my theory for the presence of the red golf ball.

  “He was interested, and arranged that I should have an interview with Claymore. After a great deal of trouble I persuaded Claymore to tell me the reason for his quarrel with Stanwood, and it confirmed the fact that the man was a habitual blackmailer.

  “He had fallen in love with Miss Morgan,” Lowe glanc
ed apologetically at the girl, “and having discovered a youthful escapade of Claymore’s—I’m not going to say what it was, it has nothing to do with the murder—he threatened to make it public unless Claymore broke off his engagement and gave Stanwood a free hand. Claymore refused to give this as a reason for his quarrel thinking it would only tell against him.”

  “But who killed Stanwood?” asked Milton impatiently, as the dramatist paused.

  “I’m coming to that now,” said Lowe quietly. “The person who killed Stanwood is the person whom Stanwood had it in his power to hang, and the person from whom he had obtained one thousand five hundred pounds—the person who, in the concealment of that clump of trees, was a witness between the quarrel of Claymore and Stanwood, and decided to take advantage of it and rid himself of that menace to his safety—the person who struck Stanwood a heavy blow behind the ear with his walking stick, and to make doubly sure that suspicion should fall on Claymore, went to the clubhouse, unlocked Claymore’s locker with one of his own keys—the lock is so simple that almost any key will open it—and taking the red golf ball went back and put it beside the body. And that was the great mistake. If he had taken a white ball instead of a red one…”

  “Why didn’t he?” demanded Grayling.

  “He thought he had taken a white ball.”

  “But—I don’t understand…” Helen Morgan’s voice was puzzled.

  “He couldn’t tell the difference,” emphasised the dramatist. “White and red looked the same to him. He was colour blind!”

  There was a gasp from Grayling.

  “Begad!” he breathed. “Then it was…”

  “Dr. Faversham,” snapped Trevor Lowe, and the jovial-faced doctor, grey-white, sprang to his feet. “He had a practice in the Midlands—where Stanwood came from—and one of his patients died, after leaving him all her money. There were rumours but no proof… Stop him!”

  Faversham’s hand had gone to his mouth.

  Bream sprang forward, but he was too late! Stanwood’s murderer was dead before his sagging body reached the floor.

  ‌The Boat Race Murder

  ‌David Winser

  David Michael de Reuda Winser was born in Plymouth in 1915. His mother died in childbirth, while his father, a submarine commander, was at sea, so he was raised by his grandparents. He was educated at Winchester College, where he showed skill as a marksman as well as becoming a capable oarsman. He earned a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and rowed in the Blue boat in 1935 and the following two years. Quite apart from his sporting prowess, he was a fine poet, and in 1936 his poem “Rain” won the prestigious Newdigate Prize; an earlier winner had been Oscar Wilde, while many years later the prize would go to P. M. Hubbard, who was to become a notable writer of crime and thriller fiction.

  Winser studied medicine at Yale University before returning to England to become a doctor. He published five novels, as well as this short story, which benefits from his first-hand experience of rowing in the Boat Race, and was included in Ellery Queen’s anthology Sporting Blood in 1942. During the war he served as a medical officer, and was awarded the Military Cross. In the Battle of Walcheren in the Netherlands in 1944, he was killed by a mortar bomb while tending to a wounded colleague. He was only twenty-nine years old.

  For the three weeks before the Boat Race the Oxford crew generally lives at Ranelagh. This costs quite a penny, though it is conveniently close to the boat houses, but the question of money doesn’t much worry the rowing authorities. The reason for this is that rowing, like every other Oxford sport, is more or less entirely supported by the gate receipts of the Rugger club. So there we lived, in Edwardian comfort, and played croquet on the immaculate croquet lawns in the special croquet goloshes they give you and admired the birds and the ruins. They also fed us remarkably well considering we were in training.

  All kinds of things occurred. There was one peacock, an amorous bird, which had a crush on the president, who rowed two. It used to come and display its tail in front of him and wait for him to submit. He never did, though.

  But at Ranelagh, in spite of the way they’d sometimes put our names in the papers, we led a completely reporterless life, if that’s the word I want. We didn’t like the sort of stories that got told about rowing, such as the one which held that the crew that won after Barnes all died in the next five years (they’re actually mostly alive still). So what with the O.U.B.C. and Ranelagh, and the fact that all the rowing reporters were friends of ours and of rowing, you didn’t hear much. But, now, I think this story needs telling. In fact I more or less have to tell it.

  You must try and picture a fizz night at Ranelagh. Someone, the coach or some other old Blue, has suddenly produced a dozen bottles of champagne and the coach has said that the crew’s been going so well that it damn well deserves the filthy stuff. Actually, as he and everyone else knows, the main purpose of fizz is to stop the crew getting stale. But the tradition’s always the same: it’s supposed to be a reward for hard work. On this particular night the coach and an old Blue between them had produced two dozen bottles, because the second crew, the Isis, was coming over to dinner from Richmond.

  Perhaps you can imagine the rest already. Solly Johnstone leaning back in his chair and laughing so hard at his own jokes that everyone else is laughing. Once I saw the president try to stop him making jokes because it was hurting him terribly to go on laughing so hard, but Solly didn’t stop. And then, after dinner, two crews milling about in the big games room, the president taking cine-camera pictures with an enormous searchlight affair, the Isis crew taking on the varsity at billiards and ping-pong, Ronnie playing the piano and someone singing, the gramophone playing “The Donkey Serenade,” Solly still making his incredible jokes, and somewhere over in the corner Melvin Green talking about rowing to Dr. Jeffreys, who coached the crew for the first part of training. The noise, and the general tohu-bohu, as Solly said, were both considerable.

  I was watching this with a benevolent and yet slightly mildewed eye, because I had a feeling that I didn’t deserve to be quite as cheerful as the rest of them. I was the cox, and furthermore I had had some very bad news. And again, when people like Jon Peters and Harry Whitteredge were slightly out of control, their fourteen stone made walking dangerous for coxes. No one who saw them that night would have credited them with the dignity, the dignity which only their genius stopped short of ponderousness, with which they sent that boat along in the race. They looked about as dignified as a bull on skates. But I happened to know that they were going to get as bad a shock as I had, nearly as bad a shock as Jim Matthews. Jim Matthews was the stroke, and he was going to find himself out of the crew.

  Now this may not sound especially serious. Jim Matthews never had the reputation of Brocklebank, or Lawrie, or Sutcliffe, or Bryan Hodgson. You didn’t read in the papers that he was going to pull off the race all by himself. And in a way he wasn’t. But I heard a conversation once between Jon and Harry, who were wonderful oarsmen in their day, and it was rather significant.

  “That fellow Matthews,” Jon said, or words to this effect, “doesn’t look much, and he doesn’t do much, and doesn’t talk much. Also I don’t like him particularly. But I’m damned if there’s anyone else who gives me time to come forward.”

  “The trouble with us, Jon,” Harry said, “is that we need such a hell of a lot of time.”

  “Yes, but Jim gives it to us. If we have Jim we’ll win this race.”

  “Don’t you think we will anyway?”

  “Not without Jim.”

  “I know. Nor do I.”

  I don’t suppose it matters much to you who wins the Boat Race. But, for the purposes of this story, to get the record straight, you have to realise that ten or eleven men think of practically nothing else, for twelve whole weeks of training, than getting into the crew and seeing Oxford win. It becomes an obsession, a continual idea at the back of one’s mind. Jon had a baby car, and once, when the crew was travelling by car from Oxford to He
nley, Jon and Harry took an omen. If they could pass and touch with their hands every other O.U.B.C. car, Oxford would win the Boat Race. So, at considerable risk to their lives (and Oxford wouldn’t have won without them), they touched every car. It was that sort of thing every day. And now the coaches were going to drop Jim Matthews, and those two wouldn’t have time to come forward. When that happened all their dignity and poise over the stretcher went with the wind and they became more of a hindrance than a help, charging backwards and forwards in the boat. So, not for you or Oxford perhaps, but for those men who rowed in the crew, Jim’s going was a real tragedy. Everyone knew that once they’d put in Davis, the dark-haired short-built Isis stroke, they’d leave him there. And Davis, who had plenty of guts and rowed as hard as he could, was hopelessly short in the water. There’d be hell to pay.

  As for Jim, I knew a bit how he felt. I’d been in and out of the crew myself, because the Isis cox was at least as good as I was and knew the river even better. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised at anything Jim had done. But, as soon as the coaches told him, he’d frozen up completely. He hadn’t said anything to them, which was stupid of him. They hadn’t wanted to make the change; his own carelessness, which we knew was designed to save himself for one of those terrific races he’d row, looked sloppy. The coaches were worried, and the rowing correspondents started saying Oxford was stale. Hence the fizz, and hence Davis.

  And all Jim said, in front of the coaches, he said to me. “Come on, Peter,” he said. “I’m going to scare the Alacrity bird.”