by Bruce, Leo
Carolus Deene, history-schoolmaster detective nonpareil, sums up towards the end of his latest case:
“Just once or twice in a generation there is born a murderer, a murderer by vocation, and the startling thing is that he is virtually unrecognizable. He is not a schizophrenic—his mind is far from split, on the contrary he might be called single-minded. Sometimes he begins his career quite young, sometimes he waits till he is past middle age, but most often he achieves his masterpieces when in the prime of life. In this case we had such a murderer, one who simply was not interested in personal ties, who was as cold-blooded as a fish in Arctic waters, cruel, ruthless and utterly resolute, and yet who had the faculty possessed by such murderers of appearing a normal, even an amiable person.
“This is no impulsive killing, no crime of passion, not even a murder for greed, as it turned out Here were the actions of someone whom the psychiatrist would call stark raving mad, and whom I consider to be that rara avis a murderer born, a murderer by natural talent, a murderer who would stop at nothing.”
By the same Author
‘Sergeant Beef’ Novels:
CASE FOR THREE DETECTIVES
CASE WITHOUT A CORPSE
CASE WITH NO CONCLUSION
CASE WITH FOUR CLOWNS
CASE WITH ROPES AND RINGS
CASE FOR SERGEANT BEEF
‘Carolus Deene’ Novels:
COLD BLOOD
AT DEATH’S DOOR
DEATH OF COLD
DEAD FOR A DUCAT
DEAD MAN’S SHOES
A LOUSE FOR THE HANGMAN
OUR JUBILEE IS DEATH
JACK ON THE GALLOWS TREE
FURIOUS OLD WOMEN
A BONE AND A HANK OF HAIR
Published in 1986 by
Academy Chicago Publishers
425 North Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
Copyright © Leo Bruce 1961
Printed and bound in the USA
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without the express written
permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Bruce, Leo 1903-1980.
Die all, die merrily.
I. Title.
PR6005.R673D5 1987 823’.912 86-32269
ISBN 0-89733-254-7
ISBN 0-89733-253-9 (pbk.)
Come, let us take a muster speedily:
Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.
Henry IV, Part One, IV, 1.
1
MR GORRINGER leant back in his chair and brought the tips of his fingers together.
“Murder, eh?” he said, with an air of experience.
“That’s what it sounds like. He described exactly how he had done it. By strangulation. Lady Drumbone thinks …”
“Ah!” Mr Gorringer seemed galvanized by the name. “Your mission is from Lady Drumbone, then? ”
“In a sense, yes. There is certain evidence which Lady Drumbone considers should not be made public.”
“She was ever a law unto herself,” reflected Mr Gorringer.
He knew—and who does not?—something of the rise to fame of that remarkable woman whose personality dwarfed those of other female politicians as Buckingham Palace, by its ornate amplitude, dwarfs the dull houses in its region. Though elected a few years after Lady Astor, she soon asked funnier questions than that lady, and her baroque appearance, her monumental bust, her rich contralto voice and her discovery of curious and unpopular causes to espouse, made the credulity and faux pas of Mrs Braddock, Dr Summerskill and Mrs Castle seem like the mild idiosyncrasies of a trio of Sunday school teachers.
She it was who had invited Colonel Grivas to London, speaking of this “brave Christian friend of democracy’. She who had told General Franco that it was her nightly prayer that he would recover Gibraltar. She was disappointed in Israel when its abuse of England ceased, but quickly found a friend in Colonel Nasser, with whom she was photographed during the Suez affair. She distrusted the Russians, she said, since Stalin’s death, but wrote from Peking her famous article “Will China Liberate All Asia?” The details she published of torture camps manned by British sadists in Africa, Mauritius, Cyprus, Malta, Honduras, Guiana, Borneo, Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands and Bermuda had won her an honoured place in the literature of flagellation and her ‘demands for enquiries’ into the conduct of administrators topped the record by several dozen.
She belonged to no party—any such limitation would ‘shackle’ her, she said, but when she rose in the Commons to ask why several thousand persons had last week been beaten to death by British troops in Zanzibar, her adherents among the pressmen rejoiced. When her rich voice promised, in view of the unsatisfactory nature of the answer, to raise the matter on the adjournment, yawns may have been suppressed but pencils flew.
“So Lady Drumbone has sent you to me,” reflected Mr Gorringer complacently.
“Yes. She thought it would be wise to ask Carolus Deene to investigate. He has a reputation for being discreet.”
“Just so, just so,” said Mr Gorringer.
As headmaster of the Queen’s School, Newminster, and so employer of Carolus Deene, who was his Senior History Master, he appreciated the correctness of the approach. Carolus Deene might have achieved a certain fame for solving mysteries which had baffled others, but he remained, and had told the headmaster that he intended to remain, a member of the school staff.
Mr Gorringer, a large and important-looking person with protuberant eyes and immense bristly ears, considered gravely. Seeing him hesitate, his visitor, a plump man of resolute appearance called Alan Bourne, continued on prepared lines.
“Lady Drumbone is aware of your Work,” he said.
Mr Gorringer beamed.
“You mean my little Wayward Mortarboard?”1
Mr Bourne was puzzled.
“Your work here,” he explained. “Lady Drumbone is interested in education.”
“Ah, yes. Quite. Exactly. I see. I’m delighted. To be sure.”
“She is shortly asking a number of questions in the House about the public schools which she considers degrading, demoralizing, a hotbed of vice, the canker of modern decadence, a forcing-ground for bullies and petty tyrants. In a series of articles which she will be writing at the same time for the Daily Horror and the Sunday Amorial she is prepared to omit any direct attack on this school, though she has heard its punitive system described as mediaeval. Always providing you arrange this little matter for her by sending this man Deene to investigate.”
There was an interruption while Mr Gorringer cleared his throat.
“I scarcely know what to say,” he admitted. “It is true that neither our Governing Body nor I would seek public criticism of the kind you mention. On the other hand the holidays have just begun and I have no jurisdiction over my staff. I should like Lady Drumbone to realize that. If Deene wishes to investigate he will do so. There is little I can say to persuade him.”
“Choosy, is he? ”
“Since you use that curious piece of vernacular, yes, Deene is extremely choosy. I doubt whether he will undertake an investigation in which some evidence is being withheld. I can but try to prevail on him.”
“Remembering that Lady Drumbone will thereupon forget this school’s tradition of brutal punishments. You have, I understand, an eighteenth-century caning-block.”
“It is kept as a curiosity,” gasped Mr Gorringer.
“It would make a splendid illustration for Lady Drum-bone’s new series of articles. She will have finished with the thumb-screws of Kenya next week, then she has only a small matter of ‘A Blackguardly Battalion Commander’ to deal with before she starts on the school
s. You see my point? ”
“Indeed I …”
“So can we get Mr Deene at once? ”
Mr Gorringer retained his dignity.
“I will send the school porter across to his house,” he said, ringing a bell.
When Muggeridge the porter appeared he seemed disgruntled.
“I thought the holidays had begun,” he said.
Mr Gorringer rose to this.
“They have, Muggeridge,” he said airily. “That is why I want you to go round to Mr Deene’s private house and ask him if he would be so good as to come across for a minute.”
“It’s the other side of the High Street,” said Mugger-ridge. “Sunday afternoon, too.”
“Just tell him we await him, please. At his earliest convenience.”
“Well, I don’t know,” sighed Muggeridge and withdrew.
“You are, perhaps, related to Lady Drumbone?” suggested Mr Gorringer chattily.
“I’m her nephew. The dead man was my cousin.”
“I see. She is a very remarkable woman.”
“She’s … yes, very remarkable.”
“Accustomed to getting her own way, I make no doubt? ”
“Never fails.”
“Perhaps she should have come in person.”
“Oh, she will if I can’t fix it. No doubt of that.”
“Dear me. Yes. We must do our utmost to prevail upon Deene.”
But when Carolus came he was not alone. Rupert Priggley, his most precocious pupil, entered behind him.
“I must apologize for this,” said Carolus. “Priggley has planted himself on me for the holidays again. I don’t seem able to do anything about it.”
After introducing Mr Bourne, the headmaster turned to Priggley.
“Why are you not with your parents?” he asked.
“Well, you know what it is, sir. Mummy daren’t leave her millionaire at large for a moment and the old man’s chasing something new. One of these perspiring weirdies who secretly longs for a wash and a hair-do. It’s too dreary.”
“So Mr Deene is to coach you? ”
“That’s the idea, yes, sir.”
“You would have been better with Mr Hollingbourne. He has children of your own age.”
“Don’t I know it? They’re at Frinton. Rounders on the beach.”
Mr Gorringer turned to Carolus.
“You are wondering, perhaps, why I have ventured to invade your holiday-time, my dear Deene. You know me well enough, I think, to realize that I should not do so except in a matter I thought likely to be of close personal interest to you. Too jealously I guard my own privacy in the vacation not to respect that of my staff. No later than next Friday Mrs Gorringer and I set out for our annual retreat in Ostend where I stay strictly incognito at our beloved Pension Le Balmoral, from which we spend days in Bruges, I need scarcely say. No, I should not have invited you here, Deene, unless I had something that would appeal to your insatiable curiosity. That something is no less than … Murder! ”
‘Which one?” asked Carolus. “Not that case at New Cross? ”
“So far from being the sordid affair you mention, of which I have been unable to avoid details in my newspaper, this concerns someone whose name is a household word … Lady Drumbone! ”
“Got her at last, have they? ”
“I should have explained to you that Mr Bourne is Lady Drumbone’s nephew. His cousin has been found dead.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Mr Bourne.
“I had no intention of it. How did your cousin die?”
“There is little doubt that he shot himself. A revolver was beside him and he had been shot through the head from just below the chin.”
“Same old routine,” said Carolus. “I suppose the only fingerprints on the pistol were his? ”
“It would appear so, for the police seem satisfied that it was suicide.”
“But you are not? ”
“Oh, yes. I’m pretty sure it was suicide. But for that there has to be a motive, surely. A man needs as much reason for killing himself as for killing anyone else. Perhaps more.”
“And your cousin had none? ”
“At first it seemed not. He was fit, cheerful and had what are called excellent prospects.”
“Meaning that when your aunt died he would inherit? ”
“Partly that. He would share the estate with me and my brother and sister and my wife and children and several other people and nobody knows quite what there may be to share. My aunt certainly gave no information. But his own prospects were good enongh.”
“Then where does the motive come in? ”
“That’s what we want you to find out. In my cousin’s room was a tape-recorder, and after his death we found on it a complete recording of his last moments ending with the shot. He sat down quietly, confessed to strangling a woman, then shot himself.”
“What woman? ”
“We don’t know. There has been nothing yet reported in the district. Interest you? ”
“No,” said Carolus. “It’s not my line of country at all. I don’t like your aunt, or what, for want of a better word, I will call her opinions.”
“Besides,” put in Rupert Priggley, “How corny can you get? Tape-recorders! Rich aunts and nephews! ”
“Silence, Priggley,” said Mr Gorringer, then turning to Carolus: “I think you underrate the possibilities, Deene. Here you have, instead of a murderer to be traced, a murder! A situation surely unique.”
“It has probably been done,” said Carolus flatly.
“Ad nauseam” added Priggley.
“I cannot claim to be versed in the by-ways of criminology,” admitted the headmaster. “I can only say that the situation is refreshingly new to me. I should have thought you would find it most attractive.”
“Who found the recording? ”
“I did,” said Mr Bourne. “I also found the body. Early this morning. I went to my cousin’s flat …”
“Why?”
Bourne looked at him, then said slowly: “I’ll explain that later. Fortunately I found the recording before I had phoned the police.”
“So they haven’t heard it? ”
“No. That’s why I’ve come to you. My aunt doesn’t want the existence of that recording to be known.”
“The first thing I should do would be to hand it over to the investigating detective.”
Mr Bourne smiled.
“You could tell my aunt that.”
“I could. But I shan’t be meeting her. No, it’s not my tea. Evidence suppressed and whatnot. Go back and tell your aunt not to be a fool.”
“But, Deene,” said Mr Gorringer, “if you feel so strongly …”
“I don’t. I’m keeping clear of the thing. New Cross is more attractive than this. By the way, Mr Bourne, you say you found your cousin’s body. How did you get into his home? ”
Bourne did not hesitate.
“I came from his wife,” he said. “She had left him. She gave me her key of the flat.”
“How long since she had left him? ”
“Nearly two weeks, this time. They had quarrelled before.”
“You told me your cousin had no known motive for shooting himself. What about that for one? ”
“You ask a lot of questions for a man who isn’t inter ested. But I’ll tell you that Richard Hoysden would never have killed himself for Pippa’s sake. They quarrelled too often for that.”
“You believe he killed someone? ”
“Yes.”
“A woman? ”
“Yes.”
“And shot himself in remorse? ”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God,” said Priggley. “We’ll have an Indian poison unknown to science in a minute.”
Ignoring this, Carolus asked Alan Bourne what made him so sure.
“I’ve heard that recording,” he said. “I think if you had troubled to hear it you’d be a little less sceptical about the whole thing. It may be, as your young friend s
ays, corny, but it’s also extremely unpleasant to hear the voice of a man who is lying dead in front of you. Especially when that voice is giving exact and highly unpleasant details of how he has recently strangled someone.”
“Details, you say. But he does not mention her identity.”
“No. Unless you can read more into it than I can.”
“No doubt it’s your cousin’s voice?”
“Oh, none whatever. I could swear to that.”
Mr Gorringer looked from one to the other.
“Why is your aunt trying to be secretive about this, Mr Bourne? ”
Again Bourne gave his dry little smile.
“She has her enemies,” he said.
“I won’t talk about understatement,” said Carolus. “Let me just say that I know what you mean.”
“It’s bad enough for her to have a suicide for a nephew. She might never live down a murderer.”
“Yet she has known a good many, by repute, at least,” reflected Carolus. “All those shocking assassins in the British army in Cyprus—remember?—who wandered from village to village slaying women and children. Don’t you recall her questions in the House about that? And the ’hired thugs in British uniform’ as she called them who wanted to introduce gas-chambers into Nyasaland? I remember her article well. What about the British Butchers in Bermuda? The Carnage in the Cocos Islands? She has a wide experience of bloodshed.”
“But not …” postulated Mr Gorringer. “Not on her own doorstep, Deene. Lady Drumbone is naturally anxious not to feed the gutter-press with sensation.”
“Is she? Perhaps I have misjudged her. Suppose, then, Mr Bourne, I should discover the facts of the murder. What would be your aunt’s reaction to that? Would the murdered woman be yet another ‘victim of military brutality’?”
“I don’t know,” said Bourne.
“Suppose the victim has already been found? We are rarely without an unclaimed corpse or two in the country. Suppose, moreover, that some innocent person with circumstantial evidence against him is suspected of the crime? What then? ”
“I don’t think my aunt has thought of that.”
“Surely, Deene,” said Mr Gorringer, unable to keep triumph from his voice, “this is the very crux of the thing? The most compelling reason why you should investigate? You, and you alone, might be the means of saving an innocent person from punishment, even death. Does not that drive you to take up the … er … microscope? ”