Dead Man’s Shoes

by Bruce, Leo

  Pressmen were no less pertinacious. A dozen at least were on board and no one, passenger or crew, evaded them entirely. Cameras clicked and shorthand notes were made, drinks were stood and stories elicited.

  Before any of the passengers could leave, each was questioned not only about the events of last night but of the whole voyage, and before long the sorry story of Larkin’s abominable rudeness and brutishness and the reactions of those on board filled pages of police notebooks.

  Then the officers and crew were closely questioned, and Gunner’s statement alone ran to half a dozen pages.

  “Do you know what I think?” Gunner asked the cook afterwards. “I think they think it was murder.”

  The cook, a beefy and cross-eyed cockney, said, “Go on. Do you really?”

  “The way they asked about things.”

  “D’you think it could of been?”

  “I’d like to have done him myself; I know that.”

  “Perhaps someone did. Shoved him over the side, I mean.”

  “He’d have raised hell. With that voice? I don’t see how it could have been.”

  “Unless he was unconscious at the time.”

  “Then how’s anyone to drag him out on deck and get him over the rail? He was a big man.”

  “What about if there was two of them?”

  “Ah,” said Gunner thoughtfully.

  At last, the passengers, having given particulars of their addresses, were allowed to go ashore and the ship began to be itself again. The police left after warning Captain Bidlake that they would probably return tomorrow. The finger-print experts and photographers took their gear ashore. The pressmen asked their last questions, poured out their heartiest ‘old man’ to this or that victim, and ran to their telephones. The Customs men departed and the owners’ agent, after shaking his head sadly over what he called ‘these unfortunate circumstances’, left Captain Bidlake in peace.

  Just as he was feeling relieved at finding his ship uninfested with officials and visitors of every sort, Bidlake was called below to the saloon. A gentleman, it appeared, had come aboard and wanted particularly to speak to him. Suspecting that the Press had returned, Bidlake hesitated, but eventually went below.

  “I hope you remember me,” said the visitor. “My name’s Lance Willick and I travelled on your ship about a year ago.”

  “Oh yes. I remember you, Mr Willick.”

  “I came down today to see Wilbury Larkin, but I’ve heard, of course, what has happened.”

  “Most unfortunate.”

  “You know that he was suspected of killing my uncle?”

  “Yes. I hadn’t realized the connection though, Mr Willick. I remember you coming home with us from Tangier last year, but the name never linked up. I’m sorry to hear about your uncle.”

  “Damned shame. He was a grand old boy.”

  “Do you think it was this Larkin who murdered him?”

  “Well, I didn’t, but it does begin to look like it, doesn’t it? If it was suicide, that is.”

  “Larkin, you mean? What else could it have been, Mr Willick?”

  “It could have been murder.”

  It was the first time that the Captain had heard the word in connection with the events of last night and he did not like it.

  “I hardly think so. There are too many practical considerations which make it virtually impossible.”

  ‘I hope you’re right. If the police take that view it will be fairly clear that Larkin murdered my uncle and that at least will be one thing cleared up. I’m anxious to get back to Tangier. I live there, you may remember, and have only just come across to settle up matters connected with my uncle’s estate.”

  “Did you know Larkin well, Mr Willick?”

  “I was probably the only person who did know him well. Why?”

  “He behaved in such an extraordinary way on this ship. Offended all the passengers.”

  “He was like that. Took a delight in being rude. I expect you found his voice rather trying, too. Most people did.”

  “Very trying. What we could not understand was that he had a reputation of being a recluse in Tangier. On board he was just the opposite. Insulting though he was to the other passengers he would never leave them alone.”

  “Coming out of his shell, I suppose.”

  Lance Willick stood up. He was a spare man with greying hair brushed straight back. He was clean-shaven and rather elegantly dressed.

  “Nice to have seen you again, Captain Bidlake. I wish it was in happier circumstances. I expect you’ve had hell today from police and the Press. Don’t I know it? I’ve had a fortnight of it now, since my uncle Gregory was murdered.”

  He shook hands and left the Captain, who saw him go down the gangway and with an easy walk make his way towards the dock gates.

  “I hope that’s the last of them,” Bidlake told Appleyard.

  “We’ll make it. I wouldn’t have let him on board if I’d seen him coming. I told the quartermaster not to let any more up the gangway, but that chap travelled with us last year, you remember, so he’s known on board. But we’ll have no one else. The ship’s been like a bedlam this afternoon.”

  The passengers went their ways. For Jerry Butt and Ronald Ferry the annual party was over and they must return to something like sobriety and their wives tonight. They had ‘one last one’ at a pub near the docks which went on till closing time. They then shared a taxi as far as Bays-water, where Butt alighted uncertainly while Ferry drove on to West Kensington. On Monday they would both return to the office and work for forty-eight weeks till it was time for another month’s bat.

  Gerard Prosper went first to his club to collect his mail.

  “Had a good holiday?” he was asked by a fellow-member.

  “Very, thanks.”

  “Nice trip home?”

  “Quiet,” said Prosper and walked on. He would have to answer a little more fully when it was known that he had come home as a fellow-passenger of Larkin, the murder suspect who had apparently committed suicide, but for the moment that would do.

  Kutz went ashore that evening. A friend and compatriot of his came on board to find him and they went to the tenement block near the docks in which their respective wives had flats. The four of them ate together that evening, but it did not seem a very festive meal.

  “What sort of a trip did you have?” asked Kutz’s English wife when she had brought him the strong black coffee which she knew he liked.

  “All right,” said Kutz.

  “No trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “You know what I mean. There’s usually something. The crew or the weather or that.”

  “No. Not trouble. A passenger was lost overboard last night.”

  “There! Well! Who was it?”

  To the surprise of his attentive audience a slow smile spread over Kutz’s face.

  “A man called Larkin,” he said.

  Mrs Roper was the last passenger to leave the ship and she went, like Prosper, to her club, the Badmington Ladies’ Club. She threw a few bass greetings to her friends, ordered a Guinness and asked for a telephone directory. It took her some time to find the number she wanted, but she had it at last.

  “Mr Deene, please,” she said when she got through, and after a few moments, “Carolus?”

  Anyone lingering near the box could have heard her splendid voice as she continued heartily:

  “Name’s Kate Roper. Remember me? Was Fitchley when we met. Got married. What do you mean, you don’t believe it? A parson. Little pet. Yes, very happy. No, he doesn’t call me Bugs. Had to drop the name when I left the Service. That’s not what I rang you up about. Something in your line. Just done a trip on a ship called the Saragossa. Yes. Character called Larkin on board. Suspect in the Willick murder case. Lost overboard last night. Yes, Larkin. Thought it would interest you.” She gave him her telephone number. “Call me when you’ve got a minute,” she said. “Staying here a few days. Tell you one or two things if you w
ant. Frightful character. Yes, Larkin. Why should it interest you? Because I don’t believe it was suicide. What? No. Murder. Cheer-o.”

  4

  THE COUNTRY town of Newminster is entitled to be called a city and municipal and parliamentary borough. It is on the river Middler and is thirty-six miles from London. It is a pleasant place with many historical buildings, the remains of a Norman castle and an ancient school.

  This—the Queen’s School, Newminster—ranks proudly if somewhat obscurely as a public school. It has a hundred and sixty-odd day-boys, three dozen boarders and a staff of eighteen. But its distinction in recent years is to have on its staff as Senior History Master a certain Carolus Deene.

  Carolus Deene has become doubly celebrated. He made his first reputation by applying the methods of modern detection to the classic murder cases of the past in a brilliant book called Who Killed William Rufus? And Other Mysteries of History. For this his large private income allowed him to use all the paraphernalia of detection—microscope, camera, chemical analysis and so on—while he could employ several keen researchers to ferret out details he required.

  But it was when he began to apply his talents to contemporary crime and solved a number of baffling murder cases that he entered the world of headlines. This was very far from gaining him approval from the headmaster of the Queen’s School, a large and rather pompous man named Gorringer who wanted, he said, none of this kind of notoriety for his school.

  “I have no objection, my dear Deene,” he expatiated, “to your giving the benefit of your expert advice to the police if they are in need of it, a contingency which I beg leave to doubt. But that should be done with as much anonymity as possible. It ill befits the Senior History Master of the Queen’s School Newminster to appear in sensation-seeking newspapers as a private detective or anything of that sort.”

  However, the summer term had passed without any anxiety for Mr Gorringer and the school was to break up tomorrow without having had its reputation imperilled by Carolus Deene’s liking for criminology. Mr Gorringer felt relief at this, tempered by his doubts about the coming holidays. He knew, from past experience, that Carolus was apt to find scope for his talents out of term time as well as while he should have been improving the discipline of his classes, which the headmaster considered lamentable.

  On the last afternoon of term, which was also the day on which the Saragossa docked in London, Mr Gorringer saw Carolus entering the school gates and decided that in a tactful and amicable way he should discover what were the history master’s plans for the holidays.

  Carolus had nothing of the pedagogue about him. He was in his early forties, a slim, dapper man, who was considered by the rest of the staff to be far too dressy and casual. He had been in a parachute regiment during the war, but gave the impression of being rather too precious for this or for the half blue he had gained for boxing. Mr Gorringer knew his value as a teacher with a gift for interesting his pupils, but sometimes rather resented his off-hand manner.

  “Ah, Deene,” he said now as they met. “So we wind up another term. You have doubtless made your holiday plans?”

  “Nothing definite yet. I never decide till the last moment.”

  “That would not do for me, I fear. Much of the pleasure is in anticipation.”

  “But you always go to Ostend, don’t you?”

  “Ostend and Bruges. They suit Mrs Gorringer admirably. We like a quiet and uneventful holiday.”

  The headmaster glanced suspiciously at Carolus as he emphasized the word.

  “Not much chance of that for me,” said Carolus. “Something always seems to happen.”

  “Is it not that you seek it, my dear Deene? I suppose we could all find excitements if we looked for them. Your predilection for the more puzzling forms of crime surely leads you into these deep waters.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Had you, I wonder, anything in prospect just now?” Mr Gorringer sounded anxious.

  “I’m not committed to anything. There have been some nice little jobs done lately.”

  “I trust, my dear Deene, that you haven’t it in mind to embroil yourself in another of these cases which bring their measure of unwelcome publicity to the school? You know my feelings in that. I have no wish to intrude into your private affairs or to attempt to influence your conduct, but we cannot allow the fair name of the Queen’s School to be bandied about in sensational newspapers.”

  “No need for it at all. I never mention the school.”

  “Unhappily, however, the school’s fame goes ahead of you. However, I am sure you will remember, if you should involve yourself again, that discretion is the word. Now what have you this afternoon? Ah yes, the Junior Sixth. They achieved a fair standard in the examinations, I trust?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “How about the boy Priggley? A difficult young man, I always feel.”

  “He did quite well.”

  “An unfortunate home life, of course.”

  “No home life at all. His mother’s marrying again—the third time. His father has taken an artist’s model to Italy.”

  “Dear, dear. One can scarcely wonder that the boy is in need of guidance.”

  “Guidance? He needs the birch and a couple of years on Dartmoor. But he’s not unintelligent.”

  “Precocious, I fear, and, as you say, lacking discipline. If I should not see you again I trust you have a pleasant holiday. And remember—discretion, my dear Deene, for all our sakes. I must have a word with Tubley,” he added hastily as he moved away. “Ah, Tubley!” Carolus heard him call to the music master.

  Carolus went into his classroom and faced the Junior Sixth, a class which consisted of most of the former Senior Fifth with a few youths who had failed to gain admittance to the school’s top class, the Senior Sixth. Among the promoted ones were Rupert Priggley, that odiously sophisticated boy, and Simmons, an earnest child who wore glasses which gave him an unnaturally studious appearance. He was usually deputed by the rest of the class to distract Carolus from history and lead him into the more interesting bypaths of contemporary criminology.

  “I’m just going to run over these examination results,” said Carolus, “and give you back your papers. Most of you did quite well, but you nearly all fell down on that question about Marat and the Girondists. You seem to have been interested only in Marat’s murder by Charlotte Corday.”

  “I suppose it was Charlotte Corday, sir?” asked Simmons.

  “Have you any reason to doubt it?”

  “No, sir. Only it sometimes seems in cases of that sort that someone’s guilt is rather taken for granted. Were there any witnesses?”

  “It’s a point I’ve never questioned. The girl admitted her guilt. She had made the journey to Paris specially to assassinate …”

  “Yes, sir. But does that prove it? I mean, Wilbury Larkin had made the journey from Tangier to Barton Abbess, but you can’t be sure he murdered Gregory Willick. Or can you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Carolus. “We were discussing Marat.”

  “You were,” intervened Rupert Priggley. “Simmons was talking about the Willick murder. Far more appropriate for the last lesson of term. I suppose it was Larkin?”

  “What was?” asked Carolus defensively.

  “Oh come now, sir. It’s really no use giving us injured innocence. You can’t pretend you haven’t followed the case.”

  “I’ve certainly formed no opinion about it.”

  “Perhaps you’re going to spend your holiday at Barton Abbess?”

  “It’s a very pleasant part of the country.”

  “I knew it. You’ve been holding out on us. Come clean now, sir. Who murdered Willick?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. But it does happen that his land agent, a man named Packinlay, was at school with me and has invited me down for a few days.”

  “But he’s a suspect too, I take it?”

  “There’s no reason why he shouldn’
t be. The fact that he has asked me down does not exclude him, of course. It was, after all, the guilty man in the Oldhaven case who asked me to investigate.”

  “But have you seen the evening papers, sir? Larkin has been lost overboard from a ship coming home from Tangier. He and Willick’s nephew both lived there, I gather. Does that mean you’ll be trotting off to Tangier?”

  “Impossible to say. I haven’t begun to consider the case yet. I’ve been too busy with your examination papers. They are, as I say, not altogether worthless….”

  “But what about Larkin? Was that murder or suicide?”

  “How can one possibly form an opinion after reading only newspaper accounts? I doubt if the police have made up their minds yet.”

  “But don’t you want to know, sir? Don’t you think this case is your cup of tea?”

  “Well, I must admit I’m thinking of staying with my old friend Gilbert Packinlay and his charming wife.”

  “Frankly, sir, I don’t believe you know either of them. They’ve called you in professionally.”

  “I told you I was at school with Packinlay.”

  “But have you seen him since?”

  “We will now consider these examination papers.” And in spite of a few more attempts to divert him, Carolus did so until the end of the period.

  That evening as he was glancing at the evening paper, with his usual whisky-and-soda sundowner beside him, Mrs Stick, his housekeeper, announced Rupert Priggley.

  “Can’t I escape from you even in my own home?” Carolus greeted him. “I suffer from your insufferable pre-cociousness and conceit all day. I don’t want my home disturbed with them.”

  “Not conceit, sir. It’s a pathological failure to integrate. A neurotic trait which comes from lack of parental control.”

  “The hell it is! What do you want?”

  “Just that. Parental control.”

  “Why come to me?”

  “Because you can give it. I’ve discovered all about myself. I have suffered emotional deprivation during the growth process. I’m psychologically maladjusted. I’m a mixed-up kid.”