Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries

by Martin Edwards

  The arrival of the inspector cut short the flow.

  In the car the two men exchanged results, and the inspector reported at once that no razor was to be found.

  ‘That’s what she went back to the beach for,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘To take him the razor. You see, Manders being in the field above, Barton couldn’t get back to his tent.—Sir!’ exclaimed the inspector, aghast at his own perspicuity. ‘Were they lovers, her and Barton? Is that why Barton killed Hutton?’ His face fell. ‘Oh, but she said they’d only met once.’ He sighed, and then brightened up again. ‘That’s what she said. But suppose they’d been lovers before? They both come from London, you see. What do you think, sir?’

  Roger smiled. ‘What do I think? I think you had better find out whether Hutton was insured. That’s a more likely line of enquiry.’

  ‘Insured, eh?’ The inspector whistled. ‘You mean, Barton was hard up, and she promised him a share of the insurance money—? Pretty quick work, with a comparative stranger.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Roger persisted, ‘if Hutton hadn’t been insured, I’m pretty certain there’d have been no murder.’

  ***

  At the police station the superintendent was still waiting for them. On hearing their news he actually summoned the chief constable from his sacred golf-course.

  With professional gallantry the latter first swallowed his own words and then showed himself in such an amenable state of mind that Roger was able without difficulty to obtain permission on two points: that for the moment Mrs Hutton would be kept in her state of happy ignorance, and that the London police should be asked to bring down on Monday morning Hutton’s partner, now in custody, to answer a few questions which Roger promised should be of the first importance in solving the case.

  ‘But what about Barton, sir?’ the superintendent wanted to know. ‘We must put out an enquiry for him.’

  ‘Well, make it a confidential one, to the police only,’ Roger conceded. ‘The great thing is that Mrs Hutton must not be alarmed.’

  For the rest of the weekend he refused to say a further word about the case, to the disappointment of his host.

  The inquest had been fixed for Monday morning, but in view of the new developments only formal evidence of identification was taken and Mrs Hutton was the sole witness called, the coroner then adjourning the enquiry for three weeks. After the proceedings Mrs Hutton was invited to the police station to answer a few questions.

  ‘What are you going to ask her?’ Roger inquired of the superintendent, as they walked together from the schoolroom which had formed the Coroner’s Court. The chief constable had not attended the inquest.

  ‘Oh, just a few questions which she may find some difficulty in answering, Mr Sheringham.’

  ‘Are you going to tell her that you know it’s murder?’

  ‘No, no. Not yet, sir. That would never do. We don’t want to put the two of them on their guard.’

  Mrs Hutton seemed nervous. She denied that she knew anything about the warrant issued for her husband’s arrest, about his share-pushing activities, or about his insurance arrangements; she admitted having visited the beach in the afternoon of Friday, but strongly denied she had met any man there, or even seen one; she denied with equal vehemence that she had known Barton in London, or had ever had any conversation with him alone; she knew nothing about any missing razor of her husband’s. But much of her denying lacked conviction, and her hesitations and evasions were obvious. Then she suddenly went hysterical, demanded to know why all these questions were being asked of her, and announced that she would answer no more. The chief constable sent her under the care of a sergeant into another room to recover.

  ‘Pity, sir,’ remarked the superintendent drily. ‘She’d have spilled the beans in another minute.’

  ‘Must play a game by its rules,’ pointed out the chief constable. ‘Well, Sheringham, what about her? She’s in it, eh?’

  ‘Oh, she’s in it all right,’ Roger agreed. ‘Has that partner of Hutton’s arrived, by the way?’

  ‘Field? Yes. They’ve put him in one of the cells.’

  Roger thought for a minute. ‘Can we have Mrs Hutton back in about ten minutes? I should like to ask her just one question myself. In the meantime—’ He scribbled something on a piece of paper which he gave to the superintendent.

  The latter read it, raised his eyebrows, scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders, and then nodded; after which he rose and went out of the room. The chief constable, in confabulation with Inspector Clarke on the other side of the room, had noticed nothing. A minute later the superintendent slipped into his chair again.

  The ten minutes passed slowly. At the end of them Mrs Hutton was brought back. She looked pale, but more composed and even defiant.

  Roger leaned towards her.

  ‘Mrs Hutton, you have identified the body you saw in the mortuary as that of your husband. Did you know that he had been brutally murdered?’

  There was a moment’s pandemonium. Mrs Hutton shrieked, the police officials gave utterance to indignant protests.

  Roger waved the latter aside. ‘It’s part of my case,’ he explained, ‘that Mrs Hutton knows nothing of the murder.’

  ‘I don’t, I don’t,’ screamed the obviously distraught woman. ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘It is true.’ Roger went to the door and beckoned. A constable brought in a small man with a sharp, rat-like face.

  Roger looked at him. ‘You’re Field? Well?’

  ‘That’s not Eddie Hutton, that stiff,’ affirmed the ratlike stranger. ‘Never seen him before in my puff.’

  Roger signed to the constable to take him away.

  ‘Well, Mrs Hutton?’ he said.

  This time the beans were were well and truly spilled.

  ***

  ‘I don’t believe Hutton came down here intending murder,’ Roger said, when the sobbing woman had been removed again. ‘But the chance meeting with Barton was too much for him. He certainly had murder in his mind when he left his lodgings on Friday morning, with the razor to cut off Barton’s moustache all ready in his pocket. (He ought to have shaved the chin too, by the way; that was what first made me smell a rat.) It was easy to deceive his wife into believing that both of them had got into difficulties in the water, and Barton had been accidentally drowned. Then he sprang the news of Field’s arrest on her and the warrant for his own, and pointed out that this was his one chance if she would identify the body as his. He taught her the description of Barton, and she learned it by heart. There wasn’t much risk, you see, in a place where he was a complete stranger; and as you know, it very nearly came off. Really, almost the only risk Hutton ran was in going up to Barton’s tent to get that blue suit. It was clever, and so simple. The life insurance Mrs Hutton was to claim may not be huge, but it would be a nice sum to begin—’

  The telephone-bell cut him short.

  The superintendent listened, expressed his satisfaction, and hung up. ‘They’ve got Hutton,’ he announced. ‘Just where she said he’d be. She gave him away properly, I’ll say.’

  ‘We caught her at the right moment,’ Roger commented. ‘Half an hour later, when the reaction set in, she might not have been so ready to give him away. By the way, what are you going to do with her?’

  ‘Do with her? Why, we shall—’

  ‘Exactly. What can you do? You can have her up for perjury, or conspiracy, or obstructing the police, but if she pleads coercion she’ll certainly get off. Why not let her go?’

  The chief constable snorted indignantly. The woman had led them all down the garden path, and it had taken a confounded amateur to—

  ‘Let her go,’ repeated Roger.

  They let her go.

  Holiday Task

  Leo Bruce

  Leo Bruce was the pen name of Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903–1979), a gifted journalist
, biographer and broadcaster whose career was blighted when, in 1953, he was sent to prison for six months. He was convicted of indecency offences at the height of a crackdown on homosexuality. He made his home in Tangier for the next fifteen years before returning to his native Britain after the law had been liberalised.

  Bruce’s first detective novel, the much-praised Case for Three Detectives (1936), introduced Sergeant Beef. A longer series, featuring amateur sleuth Carolus Deene, began in the mid-Fifties and continued until 1974, which saw the publication of Death of a Bovver Boy. Although, as that title suggests, Bruce tried to move with the times, in spirit his work belonged to the Golden Age of detective fiction.

  ***

  Sitting on the rocks under some of the highest cliffs on the coast of Normandy I watched Sergeant Beef deliberately enjoying his holiday. With a floppy canvas hat on his head and trousers rolled up to the knee, he was prawning.

  The sun was high when Beef proposed that we should go up the cliff path for a drink and I readily agreed. We were crossing the beach when to my surprise he hailed one of three men approaching us.

  ‘It’s old Léotard,’ he said aside to me. ‘One of the best detectives in the Sûrété. I worked with him on the Mr G. case. Hullo, Leo!’

  ‘It is my friend Beef!’ he said in English, and a string of introductions followed.

  Beef, redundant as ever, had to explain that he was on holiday, and Léotard said that he wished he were. He was very much on a job.

  ‘Body washed up?’ Beef grinned.

  ‘No, no,’ said the Frenchman with a half smile. ‘Not washed up. Cast down.’

  ‘What, off the cliff?’

  ‘You come and see if you like,’ Léotard invited, and we all moved off in the direction in which the Frenchman had been going when Beef hailed him.

  Léotard explained a little as we went. That morning some boys had reported the wreckage of a car at the foot of the tall cliff known as the White Bear, and a policeman had gone down to investigate.

  He had found that ‘wreckage’ was a mild word to use for the shattered bits of metal which were all that remained of a Renault car. He had also found a corpse.

  ‘Identified yet?’ asked Beef.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Léotard. ‘It hid the body of a M. Henri Poinsteau, the newly appointed governor of the largest prison in Normandy, and reputed to be the most detested man in the French prison service.’

  ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Beef.

  ‘Not “ah,” my dear friend. There is no “ah” that we can find. The car was Poinsteau’s. It had been driven at speed straight over the cliff edge—a case of suicide.’

  ‘Daresay you’re right,’ conceded Beef. ‘It’s not the way I’d choose, though. You know his reason for it, I suppose?’

  ‘Not yet. The case was only reported this morning. I arrived an hour ago. The body, or what was left of it, was, of course, photographed, measurements taken of its situation and drawings made before it was removed.’

  We were approaching a tangle of metal and upholstery which had once been a car.

  ‘We must see what we can now,’ said Léotard, ‘for in another hour the tide will be in.’

  The third man began taking finger-prints, and Léotard himself examined the beach near by. Beef scarcely glanced at the wreckage or the beach but kept gazing up at the cliff-head above us. He was the first to speak.

  ‘I don’t believe this was suicide,’ he announced.

  ‘We shall see,’ snapped Léotard.

  During the next few days Sergeant Beef continued to spend his mornings prawning and to eat gargantuan meals at our little hotel. But in the evenings he and Léotard seemed to enjoy talking shop, and I listened.

  If Beef was right in his almost psychic dismissal of the suicide theory and consequent belief that Poinsteau had been murdered, then, admitted Léotard, it would not be hard to find motives. In the criminal world he had countless bitter enemies, men who had suffered from his savagery and sadism.

  But beyond this admission Léotard would not go. He could see nothing connected with the death which could be called evidence of murder.

  The finger-prints found on the steering wheel were Poinsteau’s and the car expert believed that the engine was running when the car hit the ground. It seemed certain that Poinsteau had driven himself over the edge of the cliff.

  But why? Nothing that Léotard could learn about the dead man gave any indication of this. He was a bachelor who lived alone; his financial affairs were in order and he appeared to enjoy his position. Besides, he had just been appointed to one of the most important posts in the service.

  ‘He only moved in on the day before the body was found,’ explained Léotard. ‘He had spent the afternoon in supervising the arrangement of his furniture which had just arrived from his last quarters. He had some fine furniture, large Empire pieces, and they suited the new house admirably.

  ‘He had arrived at the prison in his car at lunch time and all the afternoon he had been with the moving men, while his car had been in the garage which adjoins his house. Later that evening he must have decided to go for a drive, for when one of his assistants came to his house he found that Poinsteau was not at home, and the garage empty.’

  Beef nodded.

  ‘You have one advantage,’ he told Léotard. ‘Its happening in a prison makes it easy for you to check up times, and so on. The gatekeeper must have seen him go out. What time was it?’

  Léotard frowned.

  ‘Now we come to a rather funny thing,’ he said. ‘The gatekeeper swears he never did come out. He was on duty from twelve noon till midnight. He remembers Poinsteau arriving in his car, but he is quite certain that he had not left when he went off duty.

  ‘The man who took his place says the same. Poinsteau’s was the only car in the prison premises, and it did not pass the gate that evening.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Beef. ‘What other ways out are there?’

  ‘None,’ said Léotard. ‘Of that you can be certain. There is no other exit from the jail.’

  ‘Then,’ I put in, ‘if Poinsteau was murdered it must have been a widespread plot in which one of the gatekeepers was involved. Perhaps his murderers came from the inside, drove him to the cliff’s edge in his own car and pushed him over.’

  ‘Or murdered him first,’ suggested Léotard, ‘and merely set the engine running with a corpse at the wheel. The injuries were such that no one could possibly tell if he had been killed by a blow on the head, for instance.

  ‘But the trouble with that theory is that the two gatekeepers are most reliable men who seem to be speaking the truth. His subordinates in the service for the most part respected Poinsteau. It was the prisoners who hated him.’

  It amused me to notice how absorbed Beef had become in this case.

  He seemed able to think and talk of little else but the rival theories of suicide and murder, weighing the points in favour of each. So far as Léotard’s investigations went, there was no motive for suicide, for it had been found that the dead man had no money worries and the most persistent inquiries could not bring to light any private intrigue or complication.

  On the other hand, for murder there were plenty of motives, and suspects as well. The chief obstacle to the murder theory was the fact that Poinsteau must have somehow driven through the gates himself, or have left his car outside the prison earlier in the day—at all events made a voluntary exit.

  Unless the gatekeepers were involved it seemed impossible that the murderers, however many or however powerful they may have been, should have spirited the governor and his car from a closely guarded prison.

  Then, a few days before our holiday would end, Léotard made an exciting discovery. Two men who had served long sentences under Poinsteau had arrived in the nearest large town a fortnight before the governor’s death and left on the morning after it. Léotar
d had a dossier for each of them and they were certainly well qualified as suspects. The elder one, known as The Ace, had been sentenced for manslaughter and the younger for robbery with violence.

  They were both sworn enemies of Poinsteau and the younger brother of The Ace was doing a sentence of three years’ hard labour in the jail to which Poinsteau had been appointed and would have come under his authority that day.

  Besides, the movements of the two men had been secretive during their time in the town and too many curious people were eager to swear that they had never left a certain dockland cafe on the night of Poinsteau’s disappearance.

  ‘But how can I arrest them?’ demanded Léotard. ‘Nothing to connect them with the crime.’

  Next morning I again accompanied Beef on his prawning expedition. Beef had just lowered all his nets when I heard him shouting excitedly.

  ‘What was it that Greek said?’ he yelled.

  ‘Which Greek?’

  ‘The one that jumped out of his bath because he’d just thought of what he ought to have seen years before.’

  ‘Eureka,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, that’s me. Come on!’

  I knew him in this mood and meekly watched and followed while he threw his prawns back into the sea, left his nets at a café near the cliff-head, and without waiting to change his highly informal clothes sat himself in the only car in the village which was for hire and told me to get the driver to take him to Rennes.

  When we approached the city I asked where he wanted to go. He consulted his notes and mispronounced the name of a firm of removal and storage contractors. I gave it to the driver and after some dangerous swerves through the streets we drew up at an office door.

  ‘You wait here,’ Beef said, ‘unless they don’t talk English, in which case I’ll call you.’

  It seemed that there were no language difficulties, for Beef was absent some twenty minutes. When he joined me to drive home, I tackled him.