by Tony Medawar
‘Did you take a dislike to him?’ Archie asked with interest.
‘I suppose you didn’t notice that the thumb of his left hand was twisted,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I think he’s safer with us.’ He picked the unconscious man up, slung him over his shoulder and carried him into the porch.
Considering the lateness of the hour, their ring was answered surprisingly soon and it was in a surprisingly short time afterwards that they were sitting in the Hon. Robert Carruthers’ study, with the Hon. Robert himself, in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, listening carefully to their story. He was a slight, clean-shaven man, between forty and fifty, with a quiet manner and if he had felt any surprise at being called out of bed at such an hour he did not show it.
Geoffrey began the story, Veronica contributed her own part and Archie helped both of them.
‘Um!’ commented the Hon. Robert, when the story had been brought to a rather uneasy conclusion.
‘Dash it all, Bobbie,’ Archie said indignantly, ‘you might say something more than “um!” There may be nothing in all this for you, but let me tell you that it’s been quite hectic for us.’
The other smiled. ‘Sorry, Archie; I was thinking. And I’ll tell you at once that there’s quite a lot in it for me. It’s your remark about the man’s thumb being twisted inwards which settles that. We’ve been after that man for a long time and if this document gives us one certain piece of information, you three have done a big piece of work. I’ll get it decoded at once (we know their code, luckily), and let you know.’ He picked up the paper and went out of the room.
‘We’re heroes,’ said Archie fatuously to Geoffrey.
‘And I’m a heroine,’ asserted Veronica.
‘You are,’ said Geoffrey, with such warmth that for the second time that evening Veronica blushed: and Veronica did not blush easily.
Within a few minutes the Hon. Robert was back. He smiled at them happily. ‘You’ve done it,’ he said.
‘Oh, we knew that,’ said Archie. ‘But what is it we’ve done?’
‘That,’ the Hon. Robert continued to smile, ‘is precisely what I can’t tell you.’
The three cries of protest which met his words, induced him to modify them to some extent.
‘Well, it’s a state secret and it involves two other powers, but I can tell you this. The man who represented himself to you as the lady’s lover is known to our lot as the Man with the Twisted Thumb. He can disguise a lot, you see, but he can’t disguise that. He’s probably the most efficient international spy in existence. No one knows what his real country is, but he acknowledges none, except the one who will pay him highest. He used to work for us at one time; he sold us and went over to someone else; then he sold them and is working now for a third party and specifically against us.’
‘And that’s why you came here three months ago and took this villa?’ Archie cried.
‘That’s why I came here three months ago. And for three months I’ve been trying to lay my hands on this fellow. But he lies very low. I knew at once that this paper of yours must be of the highest importance to have brought him out of his hiding-place.’
‘But what about the other two—the lady and Fritz?’
‘We knew all about the lady, but Fritz is a new one to us. The lady, you see, acts as a link between our man and his organisation. We knew that. But at the same time we’d never been able to trace her contact with him. There was another link between the lady and the leader and that link must have been Fritz.’
‘Who at present is probably still lying in the bushes in those gardens,’ said Geoffrey.
‘And can go on lying there. We can’t touch him or the lady but the joke is that we found out some time ago that the other man, the big noise, is wanted in France for a political crime committed years ago. France seems to have forgotten all about it, but it would be very much to France’s interest to have him under lock and key for a few years. He’s safe enough here in Monaco, but if only we could get him over the French border we could have him locked up at once. It’s a pity,’ added the Hon. Robert regretfully, ‘that you couldn’t somehow have inveigled him along with you. We can put a spoke in his wheel all right, through the information in that paper, but I would have liked the man himself.’
‘You’ve got him,’ Geoffrey grinned. ‘I forgot to tell you that bit. He’s dumped in your hall at this moment and he won’t come round for at least a couple of hours.’
The Hon. Robert jumped up and things began to happen quickly. Looking extremely happy, the Hon. Robert announced that he was going to put the man into his car and drive him over the French border immediately and, almost before they knew what had happened, the others found themselves bundled out of the house and sent on their ways. ‘You’ll pick up a taxi somewhere,’ he said kindly.
‘Curse him,’ said Archie feelingly. ‘I’m not so sure. And you’re too tired to walk, Miss Steyning.’
‘I’m not tired a bit. And please call me “Veronica”, won’t you? I feel I’ve known you for simply ages.’
‘I should love to. And it certainly is time for a few introductions. You and Geoffrey haven’t really been introduced yet, for instance, have you?’ Archie said, disregarding the latter’s warning scowls. ‘I’ll do it now. Sir Geoffrey Grant, Miss Steyning.’
Veronica opened her eyes. ‘Sir Geoffrey Grant?’
‘Sir Geoffrey Grant,’ Archie repeated maliciously. ‘He may have an explanation or two to make. I should ask him.’
‘Taxi!’ exclaimed Geoffrey. ‘Hi—taxi.’ A belated taxi was going rapidly past, but on Geoffrey’s shout it stopped. He put Veronica inside, climbed in himself and shut the door.
‘Here,’ said Archie indignantly, ‘what about me?’
Geoffrey leaned out as the taxi started.
‘You’ll walk,’ he said firmly.
ANTHONY BERKELEY
Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893–1971) was a versatile author who wrote in a range of genres under several names. The importance of his contribution to the Golden Age of detective fiction cannot be overestimated, whether for the way in which he played with the accepted ‘rules’ of the genre or for the way he spearheaded the shift away from the who and the how of puzzle plots and on to the why of the modern psychological crime stories.
Cox began his writing career with short pieces of light fiction for Punch and other magazines before turning his hand to comic thrillers, including Cicely Disappears, published in 1927 under the title The Wintringham Mystery as a newspaper serial under his own name. ‘The Man with the Twisted Thumb’ belongs to this early phase of his writing, even though it wasn’t published until 1933, eight years after his first detective story, The Layton Court Mystery. This and his second were published anonymously but the third, The Wychford Poisoning Case (1926), appeared as by Anthony Berkeley, which Cox used for the remainder of his detective fiction. As Berkeley, Cox often showed contempt for his readers and he was in many ways a hack, openly admitting that his main incentive in writing was because it paid well. His best work, arguably, are the ten novels featuring Roger Sheringham, an amateur investigator who works sometimes with—and sometimes against—Scotland Yard. Sheringham has much in common with Cox. Both went up to Oxford and served in the First World War. Both became best-selling writers and both disparage their own fiction while being intolerant of others’ criticism. Against this background, Cox’s comment that Sheringham was ‘founded on an offensive person I once knew’ is likely to have been an example of the writer’s often-noted peculiar sense of humour; another is the fact that he dedicated one of the Sheringham novels to himself and two novels of uxoricide to his first and second wives.
The best known of Cox’s detective stories is The Poisoned Chocolates Case, based—like several others—on a real-life crime, in this case the attempted poisoning of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1922. This is investigated by Sheringham and other members of ‘The Crimes Circle’ whose members suggest solutions that one by one are discounted. While the gr
oup was probably based on the Crimes Club, which focused on the analysis of historic crimes, it inspired Cox to create the Detection Club, a dining club for writers of crime and detective stories crime writers. Over the years, Cox would collaborate with Club members on fundraising ventures including an anthology of true crime and four round-robin mysteries. This and the fact that he founded the Club in the first place might suggest that Cox was a clubbable, convivial man, but this is contradicted by his contemporaries’ recollections of him and his habit of basing his fictional victims and murderers on school friends and literary acquaintances, which in recent years has led to some unconvincing speculations about his true motives.
When Cox tired of playing with the detective story, he decided to take a new direction, and as Francis Iles wrote two powerful psychological mysteries—Malice Aforethought and Before the Fact—as well as a third less successful novel, before abandoning writing altogether. From the mid-1940s, other than a few propaganda stories featuring Sheringham, some other short fiction, a few radio plays and two collections of limericks, he focused not on writing crime fiction but reviewing it, which he did up until shortly before his death in 1971.
‘The Man with the Twisted Thumb’ was first published as a twelve-part serial between January and December 1933 in Home and Country, the journal of the Women’s Institute, where it was discovered by the Cox scholar Arthur Robinson.
THE RUM PUNCH
Christianna Brand
MONDAY
Inside the house, the telephone rang. Sergeant Troot locked the garage door on the battered little car in its undercoat of reddish-brown, and ran in through the kitchen. Small hands clutched at his trouser legs. ‘Daddy, Daddy, don’t let it be the Inspector, saying you can’t come on our holidays …’ The car was a secret; he had bought it second hand and smuggled it in—it was to be painted bright yellow, all ready to go off to the seaside on Saturday.
But it wasn’t Inspector Port on the ’phone, it was Mrs Waite.
‘Oh, Sergeant, we’re in such a muddle over the parking arrangements for our party tonight!’
Sergeant Troot rather liked Mrs Waite. She was a pretty woman, young to have a twenty-year old daughter. And an evening at the Hall would mean a nice fat tip towards the seaside holiday. ‘I’ll come along and do point duty for you, Ma’am.’
‘You’re an angel!’ He could picture her blue eyes smiling as she rang off.
The two little girls were horrified. ‘But, Daddy, suppose you’re not back in time for Saturday?’
‘Saturday?’ he said. ‘Don’t be funny! The party won’t last four days, you silly little clots.’
But that, alas, was where Sergeant Troot was wrong.
The housekeeper met him when he went up that evening to get things sorted out in advance. She was a faded little woman with a faded manner. He went back to the kitchen when he had arranged matters to his satisfaction and kindly helped her to sample her iced rum punch. This fortunately was to his satisfaction also. He made civil conversation. ‘How are you liking it here, Mrs Bee?’
Mrs Bee thought it was lovely—a bit countrified for her taste, she was used to the town; but lovely. And Mrs Waite was a lovely lady. And Mr Waite was a lovely, lovely gentleman. ‘All these snobby friends of hers say she married beneath her, but I can’t see it.’
‘Her first husband was a “Sir”,’ said Sergeant Troot, doubtfully. ‘Or so they say; she didn’t come to live here till after he died. Sir George Something. Research chemist. And very rich.’
‘And very old,’ said Mrs Bee tartly. She seemed to take it as a personal affront that Mrs Waite’s snob friends considered her to have married beneath her.
Mrs Waite came into the kitchen in a flurry of charm, blonde hair fluffed out into the fashionable haystack. ‘Oh, Sergeant—bless you for coming!’ Her husband followed her—a dark, handsome man with a florid face; and yet, it was true, with something just faintly servile in his manner. And Miss Gina in a white and silver dress. Sergeant Troot saved it all up to tell to his Mary tomorrow. ‘Hallo, Sarge,’ said Gina. She’d known him since she was a kid. All the same, she didn’t look too happy—indeed it seemed to him that they all looked rather strained. Just being rich—that isn’t happiness, he thought to himself a bit smugly. Sergeant Troot needn’t bother; he would never be rich.
He stood at the gate, big, broad-shouldered, beaming, ushering in the cars with practised ease. Timmy Jones hopped out of his Bentley and gave him a great whack on the back. He too had known Troot most of his life. He dived into a pocket. ‘Get your Mary to buy the kids some buckets and spades or something.’ Just like Timmy to remember that a seaside holiday was coming.
And here was Mr Butler—who, like Timmy Jones, was in love with Gina. Not such a good car; and not such a nice fellow either—rather smooth, with a dark, sallow, handsome face—Sergeant Troot always had an uneasy feeling that he ought to recognise him, that he’d seen him somewhere else. The village intended Gina to marry Timmy Jones; but it was said that her stepfather was all for this Butler—a ‘business associate’, though he seemed very young for anything so high-sounding.
The party had begun at nine. By ten the flow of cars slackened to a trickle and Gina came to the front door and beckoned. ‘Sarge, Mummy wants you. Mrs Bee seems to have quite lost her head and everything’s chaos, and now Papa wants to burst into speeches.’ She called her stepfather Papa. ‘You couldn’t be an angel and come and buttle for us?’
Sergeant Troot was quite ready to forsake being an angel in a teetotal field and come and be an angel behind a bowl of punch. With much merriment they squeezed him into a white waiter’s jacket. Mrs Bee was darting about, hen-headed, behind the trestle tables forming the bar in the great hall. She gave the punch a stir that sent it merrily swirling round in its bowl, poured out a last glassful for a clamouring guest and thankfully handed over the big silver ladle to the Sergeant. ‘One for Mr Waite. Is that a clean glass, sir?’
‘It’s the one I’ve been using,’ said Mr Waite, holding the glass across the bar to be filled by Sergeant Troot. ‘I’ve hung on to it all the time—can’t stand getting mixed up with other people’s.’ He refused a plate of tit-bits. ‘No, thanks, I never touch those things.’ Glass in hand, he walked across to the high marble fireplace, pausing on the way to take a big gulp of the punch. He said to his wife, who stood a little apart: ‘Are we ready?’
‘I don’t think they are,’ confided Mrs Bee to the sergeant, muttering. ‘Been arguing all day. He wants to announce Miss Gina’s engagement—or anyway, force it a bit, say how much he hopes it’ll come off.’
‘Oh, lor’,’ said Sergeant Troot, disgusted. ‘What price poor young Timmy? She was all for him till this Butler came along.’
‘She’s young,’ said Mrs Bee, shrugging. ‘Got her head turned, I daresay; he fell for her the minute he set eyes on her. But she’d better have stuck to Mr Jones. This one’s got no money.’
Timmy and Dal Butler, with Gina, had joined the little group at the fireplace. Sergeant Troot heard a voice say, ‘Cigarette, sir?’ and caught a glimpse of a man’s hand proffering a case. Mr Waite said, ‘Thanks.’ As he lit up, he embarked upon his little speech, raising his voice. ‘Ladies and gentlemen—please charge your glasses and we’ll drink a couple of toasts together.’ His voice changed. He had taken a drag on his cigarette and he glanced at the tip of it and tossed it into the fire. ‘What have you been doing to this fag—doping it?’
Sergeant Troot gallantly filled up a glass for Mrs Bee who accepted it genteelly; and topped up his own, looking out over the big room filled with chattering guests, hoarding it all up to describe to Mary and the kids. Mr Waite said again: ‘Ladies and gentlemen—my family and I drink first to: Our Guests!’
Am I a guest or the family? thought Sergeant Troot. He decided to his own satisfaction that he was both and got ready to drink all the toasts on either side. ‘The Guests!’ He raised his glass to his lips.
It never got there. Gina cried out sudden
ly, shrilly: ‘Dad!’ and then, again, ‘Daddy!’ and screamed once and went off into peals of hysterical laughter that ended in a storm of tears. Across the room, Troot saw the startled turn of Mr Waite’s head towards his step-daughter. He, who was generally so florid, looked now very pale; his eyes were glassy. He seemed to be about to say something but no words came and he put his hand to his throat. Sergeant Troot forced a way through the guests towards him.
Mrs Waite had Gina by the hands, trying to calm her, Dal Butler stared, open-mouthed, Timmy was pressing forward, crying, ‘Ginny, darling, what’s the matter?’ Mr Waite had sat down. He was paler than ever, sweat stood out on his forehead. The sergeant changed tack and went over to him. ‘Are you ill, sir?’
He seemed again to be trying to speak, tearing at his collar as though to get breath. Sergeant Troot got down on his knees in front of him, pulled the tie loose, wrestled to undo a stud. Mr Waite’s hands were clamped to the arms of the chair, his mouth opened and closed, he tried to speak but seemed powerless to get out a word. Yet his eyes were intelligent, thought still flowed, it was only his tongue that would not obey him. Sweat trickled down his face, he licked dry lips, his hands began to drum on the arms of his chair, dreadfully trembling. Sergeant Troot knelt there before him, helpless. What am I supposed to do? Should I move him, lie him down, leave him as he is?—whatever I decide is sure to be wrong. He called, ‘Is there a doctor here?’ but no one came forward. Into his mind came the thought, The chap’s going to die, there’ll be an inquest, fuss, enquiries, I’ll never get through with it in time to take the kids away … He slapped the thought back as unworthy at such a moment and got up uncertainly to his feet. ‘Keep back, please. I think Mr Waite must have had a heart-attack.’