Settling Scores

by Martin Edwards

  When it all came out at the trial there was no doubt the murder had been planned.

  Mind you, it turned out that tongues had begun to wag as soon as young Smith and his sister had been appointed as deputy superintendents at our Public Baths, especially as old Ford, the Baths Superintendent, had had no say in the appointments. The girl was to take over the ticket office—adults ninepence, children under fifteen fourpence—and the young chap acted as instructor, mopper-up, and assistant chucker-out of louts.

  Both were good swimmers, especially the lad, and he made no bones about telling the Baths Committee that he was only going to stay until he had mastered the job. He wanted a Baths of his own. This was none too satisfactory from our point of view, but you’ve got to take what you can get in these days, especially as the pay isn’t any too good, and the brother and sister seemed a well-spoken young couple and the lad’s qualifications were first class.

  The couple had been appointed in April, and in the following September the Swimming Club held its annual gala. The men and women members held their club practices on different days of the week, but joined forces for the gala and finished up with a mixed team race—two men and two girls on each side. This was the high spot of the evening.

  Well, the first I knew of anything being wrong was when my chauffeur came into the Mayor’s Parlour and held out an envelope.

  “Found on the floor of the interior compartment of the mayoral car, Mr. Mayor, sir, when I was cleaning her for tonight’s do.”

  Tonight’s do happened to be a parent-teacher gathering at the local grammar school, and I was not looking forward to it much. There is something about those BA and MA hoods and gowns that makes me feel I left school at the age of twelve unable to read and write. Besides, the chairman of the parents happened to be the man who thought he ought to have been mayor that year.

  Putting aside these thoughts, I opened the envelope.

  “You ought to keep your eyes and ears open,” the letter read, “but I suppose you can’t swim. Don’t you know what’s going on under your silly old beak? I suppose you take your something bath at home, if any.”

  It was unsigned, of course. I’m not proud. I showed it to the chauffeur. After all, we had gone to the same primary school.

  “What do you make of it?” I asked. To my surprise he looked rather uncomfortable.

  “There’s been rumours, Mr. Mayor, sir.”

  “What about? Me?”

  “No, about the public baths, sir. Bit of a scandal, it seems.”

  “There’s always some rumour about the public baths, and had been ever since we allowed mixed bathing.”

  “That’s not it this time, Mr. Mayor, sir. This isn’t general, it’s particular.”

  “Well, get on with it. What do you know?” The mayor’s chauffeur, hanging about for hours and hours during every municipal function is the repository of most of the gossip that’s going, as well I knew. “Come on, Henry, let’s have it.”

  “Well, Ted, as man to man I don’t exactly know anything, but I can tell you what’s going about. There’s a sort of fussation about young Bob Smith at the baths.”

  “But why? The attendance has bucked up no end since he came, and he’s taken over the coaching for the swimming club and made a good job of it, so I hear. Doesn’t he behave himself with the ladies?”

  “It’s with one particular lady, Ted—his sister. It’s said she’s not his sister and she isn’t his wife, neither.”

  “Oh, good heavens. Even if the fellow’s a Mormon it doesn’t make any difference to his job. It’s the usual old pussies making the usual mischief.”

  “Some councillors didn’t ought to have wives,” said Henry. “But, all the same, you know, Ted, there’s no smoke without fire.”

  “Now what do you mean by that?”

  “I heard it put about as the chairman of the Baths Committee would like to get rid of poor old Ford and give the job to Smith and his sister so as to keep them here.”

  Well, the Splash Night came, and Henry drove me and the mayoress to the baths. There was the usual bouquet for her and the usual interval speech for me so that the swimmers could get a breather while I was making it, and then came the high spots—the diving competition and the mixed team race.

  It was during the latter, when every eye was fixed on the swimmers and you couldn’t hear a thing except the din, that a shot was fired and the chairman of the Baths Committee fell dead into the water.

  Perhaps I ought to explain the geography of our swimming bath. You enter the building by turnstile and then there are two ways in. Either you charge in at the first doors and find a dressing box—that’s the procedure if you’ve come for a swim—or else you walk along a corridor behind the men’s side of the bath and come to the slipper baths, where you get the soap and water caper if you haven’t a bathroom at home.

  You also come to some swing doors which open on to the deep end of the swimming bath almost opposite the diving boards.

  Through this door the murderer had come, and had picked off the victim, who was standing on the opposite side of the bath helping to judge the team race. A child of ten couldn’t have missed.

  The only clue, if you can call it that, was the Baths Superintendent’s overcoat, hat and gloves which the police found, together with the revolver, chucked down in the passage outside, which at that time must have been empty, for everyone was watching the race.

  There were no prints on the gun, of course, because of the gloves, and the whole thing turned on a question of motive. Two people only were involved, it seemed, and their motives were completely dissimilar. It appeared for a time as though the only person who could have given a casting vote was the man lying dead in the parish mortuary, to which he had been taken after young Smith had dived in and fished him out of the water.

  What it came to was this: either old Ford, the baths superintendent, had shot to save his job, or young Smith had fired to try to keep himself out of prison, for the couple turned out not only to be married but to be bigamously married. But nobody seemed to know whether the dead councillor had known this.

  However, the police arrested Smith on the bigamy charge and then went on investigating the murder. I went into a huddle with them, with the Baths Committee and with the full Council, but nobody seemed able to help.

  The chief trouble was that nobody had been able to give a description of the murderer owing to the interest that was taken in the team race, and the overcoat and hat were not in themselves enough to incriminate Ford, as his house adjoined the Baths and had been left unlocked as it always was unless he went into the town.

  To cut the cackle, young Smith was hanged. The police were able to prove that nobody left the Baths directly after the shot was fired, and that nobody except the officials had used the corridor which was reserved on gala nights for them and for some of the swimmers who were using the slipper baths as dressing-rooms, and these swimmers and officials were all on the Bath level at the time.

  Smith had put on the overcoat over bathing trunks, done the deed, flung off coat, hat and gloves and tossed down the revolver.

  Then all he had to do was to dash to the rescue of the body just to emphasise the way he was dressed or undressed, if you prefer it. When the police charged him he confessed, and admitted that the dead councillor had known of the bigamous marriage and was threatening to expose him.

  Who worked it all out and presented his conclusions to the police? I did.

  ‌The Case of the Man in the Squared Circle

  ‌Ernest Dudley

  When Ernest Dudley died at the ripe old age of 97, he was described in Marcelle Bernstein’s obituary in the Guardian as “an actor, a novelist with three books filmed, a radio and television scriptwriter and presenter, a journalist, a screenwriter, playwright, jazz critic, dancer, songwriter, artist and one of the world’s oldest marathon runners”. Dudley claimed that marathon running helped him to combat depression and he was still running around Regent’s Park in the ye
ar before his death. Dudley (1908–2006) was born Vivian Ernest Coltman Allen in Wolverhampton and gravitated towards journalism once a career in acting failed to bring him stardom. His interest in boxing, evident in this story, led him to cover the sport for the People. In the late 1940s he started to write crime fiction, and he became a founder member of the Crime Writers’ Association in 1953.

  His most popular character was Doctor Morelle, who first appeared in the radio show Monday Night at Eight. Morelle was, according to Bernstein, “conceived in a Bristol cellar during an air raid… [and] based on film actor and director Erich von Stroheim, whom Ernest had met briefly in Paris in the 1930s. With his secretary Miss Frayle—a part written specially for [Dudley’s wife] Jane—Dr. Morelle featured in novels, short stories, a film—The Case of the Missing Heiress (1949), a play and three radio serials”. This story is taken from Meet Doctor Morelle Again (1944), the second collection of chapters from the doctor’s case-book.

  Despite her timorous and sensitive temperament, Miss Frayle, on the whole, enjoyed working for Doctor Morelle. At least her duties had the advantage of constant change and variety, and they took her into strange and fascinating places. Through the Doctor she had met many interesting people. At the same time there was a great deal of routine matter to which she had to attend, and she could evince very little interest in these mundane tasks. It afforded her infinitesimal solace that sociology and psychological research was, to the Doctor, more interesting than the most thrilling encounters with murderers, malcontents, blackmailers, and poison-pen writers—that sordid gentry of avarice-ridden social misfits who flit like murky shadows across the life of anyone engaged in crime detection.

  She realised full well that the mysteries of the subconscious, to Doctor Morelle, were more breath-takingly exciting than the most complex real-life “who-done-it.” That the most glamorous and colourful crook interested him less than the retrogressive stages of dementia praecox. By bitter experience she knew that when the Doctor was engaged in such theoretical research, his preoccupation with the subject would enable him to work untiringly until the small hours of the morning, completely unmindful of the fact that she did not share such interest to that extent. Such things were beyond her mental powers, and when she made foolish mistakes in her note-taking, he would become loquaciously condemnatory of her limited intelligence.

  It was with a heart-felt groan, therefore, that Miss Frayle greeted Doctor Morelle’s announcement one morning that they would be devoting the next two weeks to intensive research activities.

  She tried to hide her boredom by assuming what she hoped was a “poker-face.” This did not, however, escape his lynx-like observation.

  “Your features possess the fixity of expression of the manic depressive,” he snapped. “Am I to assume you do not relish the prospect of our research work?”

  “Oh, I dare say it’ll be a nice change,” she said absently, and resigned herself to days of searching for references in thick, verbose volumes; and the inscribing of the Doctor’s endless notes. Actually she need have had no fears of ennui, because the research work was fated to be, for Miss Frayle, the most interesting sequence of duties she had ever undertaken.

  “I am writing a thesis,” the Doctor continued, pacing the study with long raking strides, “and the title is: ‘Hedonism and the Masses’.”*

  * Subsequently read to the New World Association, London, and reported in The Times, but not yet published.

  Miss Frayle looked up brightly. “Hedonism? Let me see, Doctor—isn’t that the pursuit of pleasure?”

  “Correct, Miss Frayle.” He gave a half-derisive smile. “A subject, I presume, well within your limited sphere! This is not a task which I personally relish, however. Nevertheless, the scientist must, for the sake of humanity, forget his own squeamishness. I regret deeply that our research work will take us into numerous sordid places—”

  “What places, for instance?”

  “To the kinema, no doubt—” He gave the word its abstruse Greek pronunciation. “To the theatre, and even to the subterranean establishments where moronic people congregate nocturnally.”

  “You mean night clubs?” and it was all she could do to prevent herself clapping her hands in excitement. “Now I’ll be able to wear my evening frock.”

  Surprisingly he inclined his head in agreement.

  “Throughout these researches it will indubitably assist me if you display your normal reactions towards these various entertainments,” he said weightily. “Since you, my dear Miss Frayle, are typical of the more cretinous section of the public, your reactions will, I imagine, be representative of the masses. For once, therefore, I shall strive not to curb your indiscriminate enthusiasms.”

  “It’s going to be thrilling,” she enthused. “It’ll take me out of myself.”

  Her observation prompted him to write one word on his notepad: “Escapism.”

  The Doctor’s coldly analytical and often sweepingly denunciatory criticisms of entertainments which are meant to be accepted only superficially afforded considerable amusement to Miss Frayle in the next few days. She had accompanied him to a mammoth Hollywood film, packed with drama, romance, song, and technicolour. On their return the Doctor had dictated:

  “The kinema is patently the refuge of the physically lonely and the spiritually lost. The relaxation which the masses apparently attain by sitting in a darkened interior would indicate that they are seeking subconsciously to return to the pre-natal state.”

  After he had accompanied Miss Frayle to the first night of a society comedy, he dictated:

  “The appeal of the theatre would appear to be purely exhibitionistic—both on the part of the players, who cavort and display themselves in a hysterically inspired manner—and on the part of the audience who draw attention to themselves by arriving tardily for the performance, and who preen themselves in a vulgar finery during the intermissions when the illuminations are increased apparently with the sole object that the patrons may exhibit themselves with greater abandon in the confidence that they can be observed.”

  Of night clubs and people who sleep during the day and play at night, he observed sententiously:

  “Garish establishments exist where neurotic persons may set the wheels of evolution turning backwards. These people perform licentious gyrations to cacophonies which have primeval rhythm. Such people, no doubt, through childhood traumas, have cause to fear the world of daylight. Psychologically they are retrograding to the Dark Age.”

  Indeed, when the maître of an expensive night club had obsequiously bowed Doctor Morelle and Miss Frayle to a table on the edge of the narrow dance floor, Miss Frayle could scarcely believe she was not dreaming. While the Doctor toyed distastefully with a shrivelled Lobster Neuborg, she observed him closely. With rude directness he was watching one group of merry-makers after another, as though he was seeking to read their thoughts. Some solitary and peroxided females quite reasonably imagined his interest to be other than academic—and Miss Frayle shuddered as she saw girls ogling him shamelessly. A dance-hostess had even sidled up to their table quite brazenly and, at his request, the creature had actually joined them—though she had quickly left when she realised the Doctor was more interested in her subconscious maladjustments than her physical charms!

  Next day, however, it was with regret that Miss Frayle heard the Doctor state that the research was almost concluded.

  “To complete my thesis,” he announced, flicking the ash off his Le Sphinx, “it only remains for us to visit a display of fisticuffs.”

  “Oh, a boxing match!” she translated.

  “Precisely, my dear Miss Frayle.” A thin smile quirked his lips. “I relish this task more than the others. Pugilism can be a manly art for the participants, though the appeal for the onlookers must, for the most part, be grossly sadistic or, in your language, Miss Frayle, the delight in the infliction of pain.”

  She reached for the telephone. “Would you like me to book ringside seats for some m
atch?” she asked helpfully.

  “That will not be necessary.” He pulled an envelope from his wallet. “Fortuitously, an acquaintance of mine, Mr. William Royston, who is a coach at the Fencing Club which I attend, has procured me the means of admission to an arena by the name of Ringland. Mr. Royston appeared anxious for me to attend this display, since his young son is one of the leading participants.”

  As they set out to Ringland on the following Saturday night, Miss Frayle took a note-book and pencil, so that she could write down any notes which the Doctor would suggest as he observed different details. On the other evenings of the week (the Doctor had discovered) the great barn of a place was given over to popular dances, concerts, political meetings and so forth; Saturdays were the only days devoted to the science and noble art of professional pugilism.

  Such apparently was the lure of the roped arena, so strong a hold did our modern gladiators have upon the hearts and pockets of the public, that on “fight night” all roads seemed to lead to the large, unhandsome building where programmes always promised action and thrills, and prices were cheap.

  On Saturday night Ringland was sure to be jammed. Packed to suffocation with noisy, enthusiastic “fans,” and a good time was had by all, with the possible exception—or so the Doctor deduced—of those performers in the ring unfortunate enough to catch a heavy beating from their opponents.

  Though even they might be seen again in the same ring upon some subsequent occasion, gamely taking another mauling, or this time, perhaps, handing one out to the other fellow.

  Of the thousands who packed the hall, Doctor Morelle was the only one who wasn’t tensed eagerly for the fights. Through lowered eyelids he peered across the smoke-filled auditorium with less interest than if he were observing bacteria through a microscope. Occasionally he bent to one side or the other to eavesdrop on the conversation of others. This was purely in the interests of scientific research. The Doctor listened, analytically, to two evident sports fans who were talking enthusiastically on his right.