The Crimson Rambler

by John Russell Fearn

  “Inner tubes,” Blair repeated. “Then that accounts for the burned rubber in the cellar grate?”

  “It does, yes—but let me go on. Just prior to 7:30 he fastened the rope about him, using his makeshift goloshes again for a firm foot grip, and swung from window to window. He opened the window easily enough, having steady support from the rope. In any case, he had rehearsed the task several times In order to make his test shots with the rifle. And on the occasion of the murder he had the rifle with him, of course. The previous weekend, he now confesses, he lowered the electrolier three links, so the thing was all set. He put in the rifle, levered it to the T mark, and fired. He then pulled the electrolier up again to the normal link and left the way he had come, snapping the catch in place with string.

  “So he returned to his bedroom—some little time after 7:30, and knowing Andrews would be punctual, he knew he had been in the bedroom in the interval and seen him asleep. Naturally he—Crespin—closed his bedroom window.”

  Blair had started to speak, but Gosssage checked him.

  “I know what’s bothering you. Harry, and I’ll clear it up in a minute. Getting back into his room Crespin simply pulled one end of the rope, and being double it came down from the chimney breast. He put it out of sight somewhere, and at a guess—which he hadn’t admitted—I’d say he wound it round his body where the police couldn’t find it. At the first chance he returned it to his car. Being plump, the extra size of the rope, not too thick but very strong, would not be noticed. He rid himself of the gun by the method we worked out and returned the drum to Sheila’s room when he saw Preston take Mrs. Darnworth downstairs. That was only the work of a moment—but Louise, who had stayed behind to do something for Mrs. Darnworth, saw him entering Sheila’s room with the wire drum. She withdrew quickly, and not suspecting anything then, said nothing about it—until the wire reappeared yesterday morning: then last night she told me what she had seen.”

  “All right, sir, but how was Crespin seen and heard asleep and yet doing all this at the same time?”

  “The answer was in the ashes of the cellar grate. You suspected a piano record for the self-playing repeater gramophone. I did at first—then I thought of a different type of record. An effects record, such as those which are used for crowds clapping or people sneezing and things like that.”

  “My hat,” Blair muttered. “I’m beginning to get it!”

  “In this case, as the catalogue number has proved, the record was of ‘Man Snoring.’ That gramophone was in the bed, the clothes supported away from the sound box and all the time Crespin was away it was giving repeated snores. At one winding, as you said, that gramophone runs for twelve minutes, and even more time could be gained by running the record at half speed. That would just have the effect of making the snores deeper. It lasted long enough for Crespin’s purpose anyway. All he had to do was make a rough outline of his body in the bed, cover it up to the top of the head, and Andrews, seeing the hair and hearing the snores would not try to wake up the ‘sleeper’ when he had been told not to. And the bedclothes were so fixed that the ‘face’ was buried—”

  “The hair, sir—”

  “The hairs in the ash which nobody could identify as anybody’s in the house were of course from a wig. Well, once his job was done, Crespin, I hazarded, would smash the record in bits and carry it in his pocket with the inner tube ‘goloshes’ and wig. At the first chance he burned them in the cellar grate, but bits remained to fit into the puzzle.”

  “How did you get on the track of a gramophone record, sir?”

  “Chiefly the fact that the gramophone was there at all. He had made it clear that radio was his vocation and avocation. Why, then, I asked myself, should there be such interest in a gramophone? He never played a record all the time we were there, so I thought maybe there was another reason for the gramophone.”

  “That’s clear enough,” Blair admitted. “And of course he would know that the furniture in the study was never moved—a prime factor if his scheme was to succeed—and, come to think of it, a radio engineer would be able to get the copper to make that false rosette in the electrolier.”

  “Right,” Gossage agreed.

  “You speak pretty confidently, sir, about him using his tow rope for the window-to-window act. How do you know?”

  “Proof,” Gossage grinned. “And I don’t mean his confession either. I contrived a breakdown yesterday with Bride’s car simply by using the starter until the battery went flat. I sent for Crespin—knowing that Bride would have gone to meet Elaine—and had him tow me in. While pretending to fool with the knot, I cut some fibre from it. In the forensic department they match exactly with those taken from the chimney.”

  “That about seals it,” Blair admitted. “But why didn’t you use Crespin’s car in the first place? Or didn’t you have the chance?”

  “Oh, yes, I had the chance. It occurred to me though that the tow rope would be locked in the back of the car—and, as I found when Crespin arrived, it was. I would have had to ask him for the key and that might have aroused his suspicions.”

  Blair said: “He did all that in the boxroom without noise, I take it?”

  “Crespin thought that part out with ingenuity. He knew Sheila played the piano for an hour each evening, and he admitted to us that he had seen Preston on the landing many an evening listening to Sheila’s playing. He relied on Preston being so busy listening to the strains from below that the few slight boxroom sounds would escape notice—that, and the thick door and walls. The guess was right.”

  The chief inspector put his pipe on the desk and reflected.

  “I think,” he said, “I first settled my mind on Crespin when I heard that of all the people in the manor after the murder he was the only one who looked ‘grim,’ to quote Craddock.”

  “And the motive?”

  “Money,” Gossage said, “It peeped out in a dozen places, and it seemed at its most pointed when Mrs. Darnworth told me that Sheila’s wish was to share the money between herself, Elaine, Crespin, and her mother. Then there was Crespin’s own declaration that he wanted a chain of radio stores. There were other pointers, too, which escape me now but which confirmed his one obsession—money and progress. Further revelation came when he revealed that only he knew Sheila would benefit from the will—apart from the girl herself knowing, of course. Then it was I began to see light. Ignoring the proviso he had evidently planned from that moment to get rid of the old man and, when Sheila inherited the money, use most of it for his own advancement. She was just the type to hand it over without a murmur.”

  “Nice chap,” Blair commented sourly.

  “He gave Sheila the copper wire months ahead when the plan first matured in his mind, and as good as told her where to put it against the time when he would need it. Then gradually, each weekend he says, he worked out the plan to perfection. His mending of the radio was quite genuine, to give an excuse for going to bed—but he had fixed the radio on his last, visit so it would conk out.”

  “How do you think he got the rifle in the house, sir?”

  “Golf bag, I’d say. Cover it up nicely. To make sure of his motive I had the assistant commissioner check up on his business activities and it seems he was up to his ears on debt with his notions for chain stores. Sheila’s money could have saved him.

  “His plan wasn’t so original, either,” Gossage added, getting to his feet. “For that matter, Harry, crimes of a mechanical nature rarely are. As we know from records, most murders are planned on the lines of something gone before. They are imitative. In this case Sheila had the method in her novel. Though she said she had not allowed Crespin to see the manuscript, she did say that she had ‘tossed out an idea or two’ concerning it. I’ll gamble he got his ideas from that. Unconsciously Sheila had modelled her plot round some familiar point in the manor and it suited Crespin’s purpose to the ground.”

  There was silence in the office overlooking the Embnkment. Gossage strolled to the window, hands
in pockets.

  “That’s that, Harry,” he said, shrugging. “What the Darnworths will do now with Crespin out of the way, I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. The worse part is behind us—bar inquest and trial. And ahead of me, I hope, is a weekend in the garden with its clean earth instead of the ruthless machinations of a murderer’s mind.”

  INTRODUCING FEARN’S DETECTIVE FICTION

  BY PHILIP HARBOTTLE

  Born in Worsley, England, in 1908, JOHN RUSSELL FEARN began his career as a fiction writer by writing science fiction novels for the then-leading American pulp magazine Amazing Stories. His first two novels, THE INTELLIGENCE GIGANTIC and LINERS OF TIME, had been serialized in the magazine in 1933 and 1935 respectively. Both these early classics were restored to print a few years ago by Wildside Press.

  After his debut in Amazing Stories, Fearn had continued to write magazine science fiction, but by 1937 the market had expanded—and changed. Amazing Stories had been overtaken by Astounding Stories as the leading sf magazine, and had been joined by Thrilling Wonder Stories. The magazine field was in a state of continuing flux.

  Fearn became a leading contributor to all three magazines, but had discovered that in order to continue to sell to constantly changing markets, he needed to be able to change his style, and to be versatile. With the encouragement of his American agent, Julius Schwartz, Fearn created several pseudonyms, which greatly facilitated his experimenting with different styles, and increased his sales chances.

  Then in July 1937, Fearn wrote to his friend Walter Gillings (editor of Britain’s first sf magazine Tales of Wonder, to which Fearn was also a contributor) to reveal that he was planning to switch from science fiction to the wider detective story market:

  “I’m turning my scientific angles to account in the production of a scientific detective for England. A book, by the way. Be two years in the making, I expect. Chief guy is a scientist, and solves all kinds of things that puzzle Scotland Yard. I’m trying to get out of the rut of Frenchman, Chinamen and what-have-you with this yarn. Guy will be something like Nero Wolfe, only he drinks tea, not beer.”

  In 1938, Fearn successfully introduced detective and mystery elements into science fiction, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Thornton Ayre’. The new technique (which Fearn called ‘webwork’) involved connecting seemingly unrelated elements together to unravel a complex mystery. The method was already known in the detective field, the leading exponent being U.S. writer Harry Stephen Keeler.

  By 1939, Fearn was expressing to friends his liking for crime mysteries, in preference to sf writing, but commercial exigencies dictated that, as a full-time writer, he had to continue to concentrate on science fiction during the early years of the war.

  However, the American sf magazine market continued to expand, and so Fearn—as a full-time professional writer with a widowed mother to support—was obliged to continue writing mainly science fiction, with only occasional forays into detective and crime short stories for the American pulp magazine Thrilling Mystery Stories (the best of which are to be found in another Wildside title, LIQUID DEATH AND OTHER STORIES). Fearn’s proposed book for English publishers, featuring his tea-drinking scientist detective, remained unwritten.

  In November 1939, Fearn sent a letter to one of his regular correspondents, tyro-author (and cinema buff) William F. Temple, in which he referred to Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer’s acceptance of his story, “The Man Who Saw Two Worlds.” Fearn wrote:

  “In this I introduce Brutus Lloyd, the first genuine criminologist who dabbles in scientific riddles, who is conceited, masterful and breezy. Palmer seems to like him immensely and requires more. I called him Alka Lloyd, but Palmer refused to be sold on it! The story is actually Wells’ “The Plattner Story” brought bang up to date, and Lloyd is based on Ernest Truex in the film Ambush (starring Lloyd Nolan).”

  Brutus Lloyd was popular with Amazing Stories readers, and so two further novelettes were published over the next couple of years. But by the mid 1940s, Fearn was beginning to raise his sights from the US pulp magazines, and he began to move into new book-length markets in England.

  Since Fearn was well-known as a science fiction author, he was obliged to adopt pseudonyms for his detective fiction, writing hardcover novels as ‘John Slate’ and ‘Hugo Blayn.’

  As John Slate, he created the brilliant female detective “Black Maria,” who debuted in BLACK MARIA. M.A. (1944) and as Hugo Blayn he created “Dr. Carruthers” whose first adventure, FLASHPOINT appeared in 1950. All of their books have been reprinted in the UK in recent years, and a few of them were also issued by Wildside Press, most notably FLASHPOINT.

  This was one of Fearn’s best-written, and most carefully plotted novels, and the character of Dr. Carruthers is brilliantly realized. This is not so surprising when one realizes that the book is one he had been working on for several years: Carruthers is, in fact, the very same character that Fearn had first conceived back in 1937, and who had been first developed as Brutus Lloyd.

  Writing an introduction to OTHER EYES WATCHING, a science fiction novel published in England by Pendulum Publications in 1946 (reprinted from the U.S. pulp Startling Stories) Fearn revealed that his favourite mystery and detective writer was John Dickson Carr, famous as the master the ‘locked room’ mystery.

  Fearn’s own detective novels are classics of the ‘locked room’ and ‘impossible crime’ genres, but because they were written under pseudonyms, he did not achieve in England the recognition in the detective field that he deserved.

  Fearn decided to try writing mysteries for the Toronto Star Weekly under his own name. He knew he faced terrific competition in this genre: regular contributors included Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner, Philip MacDonald, Ellery Queen, and Roy Vickers.

  During the war, Fearn had worked for three years as a cinema projectionist in his home town of Blackpool, and he continued to be an avid filmgoer. He had seen the many great ‘film noir’ crime thrillers that Hollywood produced in the 1940s, with their atmosphere of menace and mystery. So he felt equal to the task.

  His first ‘impossible crime’ novel for the Star Weekly was WITHIN THAT ROOM! (1946) published under his own name. However, so great was the success of his science fiction character “The Golden Amazon” in the same magazine, that Fearn again switched to pseudonyms for his next detective novels there, writing as ‘Thornton Ayre’ and ‘Frank Russell’.

  Over the next ten years, Fearn’s Star Weekly detective novels included WITHIN THAT ROOM! (1946), THE CRIMSON RAMBLER (1947; as Thornton Ayre), SHATTERING GLASS (1947), and THE FOURTH DOOR (1948) both as by Frank Russell, and under his own name ROBBERY WITHOUT VIOLENCE (1957) this latter novel having a distinctly science fictional flavour.

  Up until 1955, Fearn’s Toronto Star Weekly novels were also reprinted in various American newspapers near to the Canadian border, in the New York and Maine areas, including The Bangor News (later as Bangor Sunday Commercial), Newark Sunday Star Ledger, and Long Island Sunday Press. In recent years, all of Fearn’s Star Weekly mysteries have been reprinted in England and elsewhere, but no American book editions have ever been published. Until now!

  Borgo Books will be reprinting all of Fearn’s Star Weekly mysteries, along with several of his best detective novels, including some posthumous works. This ambitious programme is being launched here with THE CRIMSON RAMBLER, written in the vein of John Dickson Carr.

  No discerning collector of locked room and ‘impossible crime’ stories can afford to miss them!

 

 

 
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