by Tony Medawar
She turned to the little man. ‘Mr Madan?’ she enquired.
‘Well, what do you want?’ he muttered.
‘It was delightful to see you run downstairs. When I saw you last you were quite a cripple.’
‘You made a mistake. You never saw me before. I don’t know you.’
‘How horrid of you to forget! I am Victoria Pumphrey. When I saw you last you were Mr Madan’s valet. Sant, isn’t it? Yes, Sant.’ She ceased to smile. She looked from the pallid little man to the crimson Price. ‘What have you two creatures done with Oliver Madan?’
‘It’s all a mistake, Ma’am,’ said Price eagerly. ‘I swear it is. Of course this isn’t Mr Madan. Mr Madan’s not at home.’
‘I believe you,’ Victoria said.
The Australian, hot and singed and smoky, strode out with the invincible grin on his smudged face. ‘All clear,’ he said. ‘That was neat work, sister. You sure got to see him.’
‘This is Mr Oliver Madan, is it?’
‘Why, yes. That’s old man Oliver all right. How goes it, Uncle? Found you could skip when you got warm?’
‘This creature is Oliver Madan’s valet,’ Victoria said.
‘The hell he is! He’s the only Oliver Madan here. Say, what have you boys been giving me? Where’s my uncle? What have you done with my uncle?’
‘Your uncle!’ Price snarled.
‘Ain’t you been standing in with us?’ the valet cried. ‘You know you have, ever since you came.’
‘I thought so.’ Victoria turned away to her chauffeur, her ecstatically interested chauffeur. ‘Police is what I want—the nearest policeman.’
‘That’s right, Miss!’ He jumped into the car and pressed the starter.
‘Here, Miss Pumphrey. don’t you do that!’ The little man caught at her. ‘We have done nothing wrong, I swear we haven’t. The old man died natural, quite natural. I have only been acting for him.’
‘Where did he die? When?’
‘In Droitwich, it was. Three years ago. I’ll tell you—’
‘You can tell the police,’ said Victoria, and got into her car.
‘You win, sister,’ the Australian said, and kissed a black hand to her.
When a village policeman had understood enough of the story to be persuaded to come to Babraham Hoo, no one remained there but an hysterical maid and a prostrate cook, who complained that their wages had not been paid.
Miss Pumphrey went back to London by the next train.
Mr Wilson Ellis was at home. Mr Wilson Ellis, in evening dress, is the exquisite, ideal butler. He wished to know if Miss Pumphrey had dined. He could hardly bear it when she said she didn’t know. He said vain things about soup and cutlets.
‘You may give me,’ said Victoria, ‘one cheap American cigarette.’ She laid herself on a couch in his little Empire drawing-room and sighed satisfaction and smoke. Ellis was afraid she had had a distressing time. ‘My dear man! The time of my life.’ Ellis hoped that everything was all right. ‘You’re all right. You and your nice boy. He’s the heir of all the Madans, safe enough.’
Ellis was heard to murmur: ‘Thank God!’ Then he asked if she was quite sure.
Victoria laughed. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve backed a winner. I suppose you always do.’
‘I’ve been very fortunate,’ Ellis murmured. ‘Then this Australian, Ma’am, you’re sure he is an impostor?’
‘Oh, the Australian is an extra turn. He wasn’t in the programme. I always thought that. Didn’t you?’ It was obvious that Ellis did not.
‘Oliver was the mystery. Would Oliver let a young nephew come and live with him, genuine or spurious? I think not! Why did he? I went after Oliver. And he was invisible. Very interesting and suggestive. Do you know his man?’
Ellis gasped a little. ‘That would be Price, Ma’am? Not to say know him. He is not well liked.’
‘You surprise me. What about Sant?’
‘Sant is dead. He died three years ago.’ Ellis shook his head. ‘I don’t want to say anything unkind, but Sant wasn’t straight. He did what he liked with Mr Madan.’
‘Poor old thing,’ Victoria sighed. ‘Well, I was saying I went to Babraham Hoo and Mr Oliver Madan wouldn’t see me. He was too ill. But I got him downstairs today. I had to set fire to the house to do it. No wonder he didn’t want to show! He wasn’t Oliver Madan. He was Sant.’ Ellis made vague noises. ‘Don’t you see? It wasn’t Sant who died three years ago: it was Oliver Madan. These two beauties, Sant and Price, they had him sick in a strange place. They called him Sant and buried him as Sant, and Sant lived on as Oliver Madan and drew the income. He never had to appear. The old man had been an invalid and a hermit for umpteen years. Only a matter of forging his signature. It was too easy—till the Australian blew in and spoilt it. I don’t know whether he got wind of something queer or whether he was just trying his luck. He is a dashing rascal, worth ten of Sant and Price. He must have seen through them quickly enough. They say he’s been standing in with them. I dare say he bluffed them out of a good share of the swag. I hope he did.’
‘Well, upon my word!’ said Ellis. ‘But this must have been very unpleasant and dangerous for you, Ma’am. I am extremely sorry. I had no idea. I—’
‘My dear man, I loved it!’
‘God bless my soul!’ said Ellis. ‘Pray, Ma’am, where are they now?’
‘Bolted. I told the county police, of course. They’re about as quick as a glacier. You’d better take your solicitor to Scotland Yard in the morning. I’ll go too. Then we’ll call on Priddle, Finch and Pollexfen and make them sit up. Little Mr Pollexfen won’t like it at all. You’ll prove Oliver Madan’s death and your nice boy will come into the estates. But I don’t think I shall be going back to Priddle, Finch and Pollexfen.’
‘No, Ma’am?’ said Ellis, a little short of breath. ‘I—I am sure I hope not. Something more becoming. If I could be of any assistance, I’m sure I—I should be proud.’
‘You can. I shall set up on my own. The Hon. Victoria Pumphrey: Friend of the Family: relations discovered or destroyed; domestic quarrels made or settled; family skeletons a speciality.’
For this is how Miss Pumphrey entered upon the profession of which she is the most distinguished practitioner.
H. C. BAILEY
Henry Christopher Bailey (1878–1961) created one of the most popular detectives in Britain in the 1920s, Reginald Fortune, referred to by his friends as ‘Reggie’ and by others as ‘Mr Fortune’. Between 1919 and 1948, Reggie appeared in nine novels and over eighty carefully plotted long short stories that are peppered with humour and full of originality. Fortune is a gentleman detective, a surgeon who acts as a medical consultant to Scotland Yard in the shape of, for the most part, the Honourable Stanley Lomas, chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, and Superintendent Bell. While the stories have become damaged by the detective’s mannerisms, as well as by some regrettable racist and anti-Semitic references, Fortune is a likeable, well-rounded character and his cases tackle themes that rarely occurred in crime fiction of the period. As well as Fortune, Bailey created Joshua Clunk, a Dickensian lawyer, who has a cameo in one of Mr Fortune’s novels, while Fortune plays a minor role in two of Clunk’s cases. And, less unusually than might be thought would be the case for detective fiction of the Golden Age, both Clunk and Fortune are prepared to take the law into their own hands.
After graduating from Oxford in 1901 with a first-class honours degree in ‘Greats’, Bailey became a journalist, joining the Daily Telegraph where he stayed for over forty years fulfilling a variety of roles including drama critic, crime journalist, war correspondent and editorial writer. While at University Bailey had begun writing well-regarded historical novels, often set in the Middle Ages and sometimes with criminous elements, but in the late 1910s he turned to detective fiction. While Bailey continued to write historical fiction until the 1930s when his thirtieth book, Mr Cardonnel, appeared, he is best known for his richly atmospheric and entertaining detective
stories in which Fortune—or Clunk—unravels a crime, and sometimes a conspiracy, from apparently insignificant clues.
Though they do not always conform fully to the ‘rules’ of fair play, Bailey’s detective stories explore psychology and detection, unusual for the genre, and they often probe themes that are considerably darker than those investigated by Fortune and Clunk’s contemporaries, for example corruption among politicians and the police, child abuse and miscarriages of justice. Such originality won Bailey the admiration of his peers as well as readers. Despite—or perhaps because of—his career, working for the most conservative of Britain’s newspapers, Bailey also used detective fiction gently to satirise class-consciousness and other ‘traditional’ values, thereby mildly lampooning precisely the kind of person who might be thought to read the Daily Telegraph.
‘Victoria Pumphrey’ was first published in Holly Leaves, the Christmas number of the Illustrated London News in December 1939.
THE STARTING-HANDLE MURDER
Roy Vickers
When a man of high intelligence steps outside the law, he pits his cunning against that of the police and the Public Prosecutor. Like the fox, who, we are told, understands the technique of hunting, he runs with discrimination and often gets away.
But the simile breaks down on the Department of Dead Ends—unless you can think of some fussy old gentleman who sets out with the vague intention of following the hounds on foot and accidentally stumbles headlong over the fox.
The Department, one must admit, was not animated by a sporting spirit. Its purpose was to catch the law-breaker not by a keen duel of wits, but—just anyhow. It is possible to contend that all its successes were flukes. And so, by all the rules of detective work, they were. But if the Department had not logic, it had a sort of philosophy—that a law-breaker will walk into prison if you open enough doors for him.
It cared nothing for psychology nor the criminal mentality. This blindness was partly responsible for its success in the Hartways murder. For the murderer had no criminal mentality. The Department of Dead Ends caught him because he was a gentleman. Not a gentleman crook—but a gentleman in the rather formidable Edwardian sense of the word, meaning a man of more or less aristocratic lineage who might work but was not compelled to do so, who was eligible for any of the best clubs, and whose manners and morality were strictly within the code of his own class.
Except, of course, for the murder.
Lionel Anstruther Tracington Cornboise was not quite the typical young man of the period. He was intended for the Diplomatic Service, but while at Oxford was offered a probationary commission in the Guards, and accepted. One of his brother subalterns was young Hartways (the man he subsequently murdered), an old school friend, whose first name also happened to be Lionel. But there does not seem to have been any confusion—because at home, at school, and subsequently in the Army, and even eventually by his wife, Hartways was always called ‘Balmy’.
Throughout his boyhood Hartways had a slightly eccentric manner and a penchant for practical jokes at which he would laugh inordinately. In the light of subsequent events it may be regretted that the eccentricity was so mild that it rather endeared him to people and earned him the affectionate prefix. For no one guessed the real trouble until it was too late.
As small boys they had joined in energetically despising Hilda Cressnal, the daughter of a retired Indian Colonel who sat for the Borough. They were severally guilty of tweaking her fiery red plaits. As hobbledehoys they had blushed about her. In junior subaltern days she was writing innocent little notes to both of them in the dainty-genteel style of the period. Each of them had a fairly substantial income, and it was understood that they were friendly rivals.
Motor-cars were coming into general use, though they were still frowned upon in the mess, because it was commonly believed that they would put an end to hunting. Hartways was the first of the mess to buy one. This gave him the advantage of being able to ignore train services. The indirect result was that when they were all twenty-four Hilda accepted him.
Cornboise was best man. If he suffered he did not show it—for at this stage all young officers owed something of their mental make-up to Mr Kipling. Moreover, this was the heyday of the strong, silent man.
For the next year Lionel Cornboise was an occasional guest at Hartways Manor—‘a ring-fence, deer-park’ place on the South Downs. Hilda played the game, so Comboise had no idea that there was anything wrong. In fact, the first suspicion came to him when he and Balmy were in barracks.
Since his marriage, Balmy had been rather progressively living up to his nickname. With that nickname he was a licensed wag. But there were limits to the licence. There was a practical joke played on the juniors that came under the head of ‘tagging’ and got into the papers. There was no court-martial, but the adjutant gave a pretty stiff warning and, in effect, withdrew the licence.
For three months Balmy Hartways simmered down. Then, just at the beginning of the London season, he broke out again. On a guest night. The incident was not talked about, and it will be sufficient to say that the Colonel saw him that night and on the next day Balmy Hartways sent in his papers.
Within a week Cornboise was dining with the Hartways at their house in Bruton Street. Balmy Hartways referred openly to the fact that the Colonel had told him what to do—he made a good story out of it.
In those days the ladies withdrew, even if there was only one of them, and left the gentlemen, if not to their port, at least to their brandy liqueurs. Pretty soon Balmy asked Lionel to go up to the drawing-room, saying he would join him presently. Afterwards Lionel guessed that Hilda had demanded the arrangement, and it struck him as a little pathetic that Balmy should have agreed.
The scene that follows reads like the rough notes of a play by Mr Sutro. Measured in years, it is such a short time ago. If Balmy were alive at this moment he would hardly admit that he was elderly. But the key to the social relationships of this period has been trampled in the mud of the Great War, and cannot be found even in the memory of the middle-aged survivors.
‘Let me give you some coffee, Lionel. I have no doubt Balmy will join us in a minute.’
‘Thanks, Hilda! If you will allow me to say it, you are not looking quite your normal self.’
At this point, we imagine, Hilda ‘shrugged her shapely shoulders’. As a matter of fact, they really were shapely, as was the rest of her. There is a published photograph headed ‘A Gibson Girl in Society’, and Hilda had the same high coiffure, wide eyes, retroussé nose, prominent chin, narrow waist of the type popularised by Mr Charles Dana Gibson.
‘Oh, it’s nothing, Lionel! Please don’t speak of it.’ With the words, I am afraid, was a brave little laugh.
‘There isn’t much a fellow can say.’ The brave little laugh was making Lionel’s voice unsteady. ‘At your wedding, Hilda, I made a bit of a speech. I felt rather a fool making it. But I happened to mean what I said.’
‘You said you were Balmy’s friend—and my friend, if I would let you be … Oh, Lionel, I want to tell you everything, but I don’t know how to begin … Those silly little jokes. He plays them at home—constantly. Not so much here, but at Hartways. It’s—awful. He gets moods—and then he’s awful, like another person. When he’s not playing the jokes he’s his old charming self. He’s never cruel to me—at least, he never means to be. But, apart from me, he does all sorts of things. He has bought Lord Doucester’s yacht. It costs seven thousand a year to keep it up, and, as you know, we have barely ten. I believe—I believe he’ll get into debt.’
‘Good God!’ said Lionel, and did nothing. There was, of course, nothing that he could do. But he did not accept their invitation for the yacht that August.
In September rumours about the Hartways reached him. Later he received two extremely cheery invitations from Balmy, but was able to plead duty as an excuse for both. He felt that he dared not face Hilda’s tragic eyes, because he knew that the Hartways were ‘dropping out’.
&n
bsp; We know at least what he meant by that. Those were the days of ‘Society’, when phrases like ‘a leading hostess’ and ‘a well-known clubman’ had real meaning. This Society may have been easier for a rich man to enter than in the Victorian days. But for some lost reason those that were in seem to have attached far more importance to their position than in any previous period of history. If you were in, you spoke of a friend who had dropped out much as nowadays you might speak of a friend who had been sent to Devil’s Island. It was as if they regarded the society of non-fashionable doctors, lawyers, business men and the like—in short, the whole middle-class, cultured or otherwise—as being uncivilised and intolerable.
Cornboise was worried, too, about their financial position. He knew that the yacht had been offered for sale at a very considerable loss. There was a tale, too, about a very surprising deal at Christie’s by which Hartways had bought a diamond necklace and two Old Masters.
In February came another invitation from Balmy, and by the next post a letter from Hilda begging him to accept. He went down the following week, but before he left Town he heard that Balmy was doing funny things on horseback. There was, in fact, a sort of horseback series of practical jokes.
He had ridden upstairs in his house—which, after all, did not matter very much. But there was a nasty little incident with the local innkeeper’s daughter. Passing her on the road in the middle of the afternoon, he had leant down, tossed her across the saddle and galloped into the village, where he had set her down by the inn. He had kissed her once on the cheek as part of the programme, but it was not an amorous exploit. It was just a silly practical joke, like the one that had ended his career in the Guards. But no one took it as a joke except Balmy. The girl had prosecuted him. The Bench had given him a month, and he was out on bail pending an appeal to Quarter Sessions.
When Cornboise arrived there were half a dozen other men guests—very queer birds. One, called Beeding, was a jockey who had been warned off the Turf. They behaved quite decently and were positively deferential to Lionel. But the topics that interested them eluded him. Balmy liked them immensely, and Cornboise wondered what Hilda thought about it.