The Case of the Four Friends

by J. C. Masterman

  Brendel’s smile broadened, and he chuckled aloud. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, ‘the Brigadier Gerard could be a bore when he started to talk about his hotel; but it has always been my belief that knowledge of any kind is useful, and that chances of acquiring it should never be wasted. It is true that I had spent a long half-hour the day before listening to him talking about his burglar alarm, and letting him demonstrate to me exactly how it worked. It was, so he assured me, the greatest and most perfect system of alarms yet produced by man. For my sins I was told every detail about it – how it was infallible if any room was entered illicitly from outside; how it set bells ringing in every part of the hotel; and even at the lodge at the end of the drive. Good heavens, I thought the Brigadier would never stop talking about it, but I did listen, and I did learn exactly how it was all managed and how it all worked. But for my part I have not the blind faith in such systems that some have. It may be that Gradon climbing in through the window would have set it off – that is a probability – but it is a certainty that Ernst Brendel ran very quickly – or quickly for his years – from Bannister’s bedroom and that he had sufficient technical knowledge to start the alarm ringing all over the hotel, without going farther than a lobby off the main hall.’

  Brendel turned to the General. ‘Does that satisfy you? I admit that my pre-construction of the crime was imperfect and incomplete, but I do maintain that it was sufficiently accurate to enable me to prevent the crime or to make the planned murder impossible. Yes, it was I who started the alarm, and it was I, and not just chance, who prevented murder from being done.’

  ‘In which enterprise you would have failed,’ remarked Prendergast, ‘if my candidate, the blackmailer, had slipped his poisoned pills into the jug a little earlier. I still think that my guess was the right one, and that I deserve the General’s half-crown.’

  ‘I admire your legal tenacity – even in a hopeless cause,’ said the General; ‘but in fact surely my killer with his cosh got nearer to murder still.’

  Gresham spoke with a chuckle. ‘I’m not pressing the claims of my man,’ he said, ‘though I could point out that he did at least stab a pillow three times by way of practice. But you know,’ he went on unexpectedly, ‘what I like most about Victorian novels is that tidying up chapter at the end. It pleases my sense of order that all the eligible bachelors are neatly paired off with the available spinsters, that the villain dies in penury at Boulogne, whilst all the virtuous characters flourish like green bay trees. And especially I like the “flashon” or whatever it should be called, when the numerous and rosy-cheeked children gather round their honest parents and are told selected passages from the romance of their earlier lives. It’s all so comforting. Tell us, Brendel, what happened to the four friends.’

  Brendel laughed. ‘I mustn’t say too much or you will penetrate their anonymity, but I think you can be satisfied. From the fact that Sandham, Sandham and Bovis is still a highly respected and prosperous firm I deduce that, freed from the fear of blackmail, Charles Sandham found the money to keep Toby Barrick from a crash. They are still partners. Piers Gradon started soon afterwards for a tour round the world, from which again I deduce that he swallowed his indignation against his uncle sufficiently well to sting him for a considerable sum of money. It must be great fun to be in the position to blackmail a blackmailer. And Bannister – he’s still a respected financier, whose ready sympathy and reliability are known to all – but I fancy that he has abandoned blackmail, even as a side-line.’

  ‘And Dahlia Constant?’

  ‘Really, Gresham, you are incurably romantic. She is happily married, but not to one of the four friends. That must really answer all your questions.’

  Gresham shook his head. ‘One more, please. You said that one of the four was a St Thomas’s man. It’s the favourite and cherished belief of every tutor that he can foresee the future of each of his pupils. I’d dearly like to know what was thought here of the friend who came in his youth to St Thomas’s. Which of them was it?’

  ‘No,’ said Brendel, ‘there I must draw the line. But cannot you find the answer yourself if you give yourself up to the problem? It will be a pretty exercise in detection for you, and add interest to your next few Gaudies. Let me commend to you the process of elimination, or even an adaptation of my Blackwood method.’

  ***

  The General had left for North Oxford, and Brendel had gone to bed, but Prendergast and Gresham still lingered in the Common Room.

  ‘There’s nothing so hard as to make up your mind to go to bed late at night – except of course to decide to get up early in the morning,’ said Prendergast.

  ‘Yes, particularly when your mind isn’t satisfied,’ replied Gresham.

  ‘Not satisfied? Oh, I see what you mean. You don’t believe in Brendel’s tale after all. I’m bound to say I share your doubts. It was probably the ingenious improvisation of a storyteller.’

  ‘No, no,’ Gresham protested. ‘I don’t mean that at all. Brendel is a thoroughly honest person, and I’m entirely satisfied that the story is true in its main features – allowing, of course, for a little permissible elaboration and adaptation. But it does worry me to think that you and I, who are intelligent men, should have been incapable of finding the correct, and indeed obvious answer to the puzzle.’

  ‘I disagree altogether. Why, I myself indicated the man who was the most likely murderer and who would have committed a murder but for the merest accident.’

  Gresham shook his head firmly. ‘This is the point,’ he said; ‘the essence of the story is that each of the four friends contemplated killing one of the others, and each had his own victim. There was, so to speak, a complete ring, or if you prefer it so, a circle with the ends joined up. Now Brendel took immense pains to explain to us that each man had motive for murder and that each was in his own way equally deserving both of our reprobation and, in some small measure, of our sympathy, or at least our understanding. Yes – he did all that very well, though he was stretched a bit to make a case for his blackmailer. Very well then, it’s as clear as can be. Every canon of art, every feeling of equity, should have suggested to us that it would be intolerable if one alone committed the crime, or if one alone was murdered and the rest survived. We were asses not to see that all must be treated alike, and therefore that each attempt would fail.’

  ‘If you consider it simply as a story there is something in what you say,’ admitted Prendergast; ‘there’s a sort of deadly symmetry about the whole affair which appeals to me.’

  ‘There was of course one other solution which would have been equally satisfactory.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

  Gresham looked a little quizzically at Prendergast. ‘Really you lawyers are sometimes curiously obtuse; I should have thought that you would have jumped at once to that one. But let me explain. Isn’t it clear that both art and justice can only be satisfied if all the four friends meet the same fate? So then the conclusion is obvious – all must survive or all must perish.’ He chuckled. ‘I’ll tell you how I might have finished the story, had I been telling it. It would go like this. I start from the time, about four in the morning, wasn’t it? when Gradon climbs up to Barrick’s room. Till that moment the tale runs as Brendel told it; once he has climbed into the room all is changed, for Barrick is then in bed. There is an altercation and a struggle, and Gradon strikes his rival on the head. Whether he knows that he has killed him I cannot tell, but he is more intoxicated than he realizes and I imagine that he does not know himself. With some difficulty he climbs out and down again and returns to his room. There he drains his glass and flings himself into bed. In a short time he is dead, for during his absence Bannister has made his visit and placed the poison in the drink. Almost immediately on Bannister’s return to his own room Sandham knocks and enters. Bannister curtly refuses his appeal, Sandham loses his head and shoots Bannister. He then shoots himself. There’s the synopsis of my version of the story, and all the four friend
s are destroyed. What, as the intoxicated man said in the story, what could be fairer than that?’

  ‘I take off my hat to you and your imagination,’ said Prendergast, ‘but I note that you’ve blown all the claims of pre-detection sky high.’

  ‘Not in the least. All Brendel’s pre-detection was first-rate and fully justified itself; he made just one small error.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘You remember that he was convinced that he would have ten minutes or so to play with after Sandham left his room because Sandham would never have resorted to violence until he had made his “last-act” speeches. In all ordinary circumstances Brendel would have been right, but not in this. Bannister had just put the pills in his nephew’s drink, and murder, even to the most cold-blooded and steel-nerved of men, must be unsettling. I surmise that he lost his balance for a moment and refused even to listen to Sandham’s plea, and that the latter, in his turn, lost his head and fired before he realized what he was doing. Having shot Bannister he turned his revolver on himself. What else could he do?’

  Prendergast burst into a roar of laughter. ‘Famous,’ he said, ‘I am almost convinced, and what a grand scene you have prepared! The “Case of the Four Friends” becomes the “Case of the Four Corpses” and if there are four corpses there will be four inquests. The Magnifico, I seem to remember, always did things in style. I wonder how these inquests would go? Old-fashioned detection might come into its own again with four corpses to work on.’

  ‘Well, Sandham and Bannister would give no difficulty. It would be clear enough that Sandham had shot his friend and then committed suicide, but Barrick might be more difficult. He would clearly have been murdered, but the only possible suspect – Gradon – would be dead too. I rather fancy that Barrick would be found to have been murdered “by some person or persons unknown”.’

  ‘I agree, and we’re left with Gradon. I’m pretty sure that they’d go wrong with him, for what sort of clue would there be to guide them? As a guess, I should make it suicide whilst “the balance of his mind was disturbed”.’

  Gresham nodded. ‘Yes, I think it would work out somewhat like that. A neat and equitable conclusion for the case of the four corpses, but what are you laughing at?’

  ‘A thought which I find highly diverting. Have you realized the uncomfortable position of friend Brendel? He is, if I may put it so, the surviving friend of all four corpses – he would presumably give evidence at all four inquests, and, unfortunate fellow, he would have to explain to a coroner’s jury why he followed Sandham down the passage at four in the morning. Four violent deaths and a foreign lawyer connected in some mysterious way with them all! If that didn’t cause suspicion, what would? I should suppose that, even if he escaped a prosecution, he’d be cured of predetection for the rest of his life. Have you carried your imaginary ending of the tale as far as my four inquests?’

  Gresham smiled. ‘No, I’m for bed; we must call a halt at some point or other. But I wonder whether your pupils and mine spend as much time as we do in the idle exercise of the imagination?’

  ‘I hope that the answer to that question is “yours do and mine don’t”, but I fear that it, too, is a matter for speculation,’ replied Prendergast as he switched off the last of the Common Room lights.

  INTRODUCTION

  Introduction

  It is not necessary to be a cynic to believe that a politician can get away with almost anything. A change of front or a change of friends; the abandonment of a creed or the sacrifice of a principle – all such things seem to pass into oblivion with a celerity that, in retrospect, is disturbing if not frightening to the observer. Think, for example, of the elder Pitt. How did he contrive to pass from opposition to support of the government in 1746, when, having failed, in the language of that day, to ‘storm the closet’, he reversed his tactics and accepted subordinate office – and yet managed, in the language of today, to get away with it? Lord Waldegrave, that astute observer, gives half, and only half, the explanation – ‘He could change sides, whenever he found it necessary, and could deny his own words with an unembarrassed countenance.’ But it was more than that, and Horace Walpole, I fancy, gives the right clue. ‘Where he chiefly shone was in exposing his own conduct: having waded through the most notorious apostasy in politics, he treated it with an impudent confidence that made all reflections upon him poor and spiritless when worded by any other man.’

  How simple, how shrewd, how effective! When Pitt, in burning phrase, had castigated his own behaviour no one was going to gain much from repeating the same criticisms in less pungent words. If small and trumpery may be compared to great and important things, is there not here a lesson for the author? Write a book and then cut it to pieces; or, in other words, point out the worst of your sins of omission and commission, and don’t wait for the critic or reviewer to perform the office for you. If your accusations are forthright and well-founded, you will not need others to do the task over again, and you will surely act as a sort of lightning conductor to avert from yourself the flashes of criticism which you might otherwise expect to strike your head. If a writer reviews his own book – and is sufficiently critical or even savage – he may expect to escape some of the criticism of others. For my part, then, I am a staunch believer in the truth of the profound, but usually misquoted, French aphorism – Qui s’accuse, s’excuse.

  Qui s’accuse, s’excuse. What a lesson is here for authors! Why should the writer not step in quickly before the candid friend or the perspicacious critic and expose the shortcomings of his own book? And how agreeably easy it is to review a book of one’s own! There is a pleasant dream, or day-dream, which must have come to many cricketers. You are batting – preferably at Lord’s or the Oval, and fifty or a hundred runs are needed quickly if the match is to be won before the close of play. You are nervous – and that is an advantage, for you never play your best unless you are nervous – and you’re terribly keen to get away to a good start, for that is everything. So in a kind of turmoil of apprehension and ambition you await your first ball. Then comes the blissful moment, for you realize that the bowler, poor helpless wight, is yourself, and that, instead of facing Lock or Laker, you will only have to bat to your own bowling. Ah, you say, how well I know it! That ball when the fingers are wound round with every indication of a deadly delivery! A ball that has taken many wickets in its time, but the cooperation of the batsman has been the solid foundation of its success. Will the ball turn sharply from leg and lift a little at the same time, or will it be so over-spun that it comes back a little from the off? In fact, as you very well know, the ball will do just exactly nothing, but come along at an even and agreeable pace – a half-volley on the off stump, asking to be hit for six with ease and nonchalance over the bowler’s head. There are few aesthetic pleasures comparable with that of batting to your own bowling.

  Why not derive the same sort of satisfaction by reviewing one’s own book? You can not only point out all the obvious criticisms, but you can also answer them. You are at the same time counsel both for the prosecution and for the defence, or perhaps even you are the judge. The dream scene changes, but changes only so little. In some odd way we seem to have strayed into a trial all complete with judge and jury. We sit in court and the prosecuting counsel rises slowly to his feet. ‘This, My Lord,’ he says, ‘is a very bad book, and it is my painful task, without undue prolixity, to expose its manifest faults and absurdities. In the first place what does the book, which lies before you, as exhibit one, profess to be?’

  Bother! In the inconsequent manner of dreams – and daydreams – the picture will change continually. Is this Trial by Jury, and will the jurymen burst into song? Or is it Alice in Wonderland, and is the Queen of Hearts calling out, ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards’? And what part am I, the writer, playing? Am I really briefed for the prosecution or shall I, because I cannot help myself, spring forward to lead the defence?

  For the moment I feel myself to be the former. ‘My Lord,�
�� I am saying, ‘this is a bad book, and a bad book for more reasons than one. In the first place it promises to be a detective story, but it is nothing of the sort. The essence of a detective story is that there should be a crime, the author of which has to be discovered; the intellectual powers of the reader are exercised to note the clues provided and rightly to guess the identity of the criminal. I quote, My Lord, from the introduction to Many a Slip, by Mr Freeman Wills Crofts. “The volume”, says the eminent author, “is really a series of mental exercises for the reader. In each case the murderer makes a slip which gives the game away to the investigator.” And quoting once more from the same source, “In the game with the reader, he wins if he spots these (the clues) before they are revealed, and (so to speak) I do if he doesn’t.” Here, my Lord, is the essence of the detective story, described in the words of a master of the craft. The work from which I have quoted is one of high authority of which your Lordship will have cognizance, and which has, no doubt, often been quoted before in this court. The miserable book with which we are concerned cannot claim the title of a detective story, for indeed there is no full-blooded crime and no detection in it whatever. We are fobbed off instead with interminable and, I venture to suggest, unprofitable conversations. If then this book is put forward as a detective story the author is, in my submission, guilty of a reprehensible deception.