The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Old generals are the cause of military disasters,” said Kasavian, drumming long fingers on the window pane. “The elderly are weak precisely because they live in the past.” He released a long, desperate sigh. “However, in this situation I see no other recourse than to put them on the case.”

  So it was that the Home Office called Arthur Bryant of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, and Bryant visited a crime scene in King’s Cross, and then called his partner, John May, with instructions to meet him at 10:15 a.m. beside a bus stop in Marble Arch. It was a muggy wet morning, and May resented being summoned from his bed.

  “Ah, there you are.” The elderly detective hailed his partner with a wild whip of his walking stick, and nearly pruned a passing tourist. Bryant had misbuttoned his shapeless brown cardigan and dragged his moth-eaten Harris tweed coat over the top of it. He looked more like a tramp than a detective. “I got here early and had a potter through Hyde Park.”

  “You had your mobile with you?” asked May, surprised. Arthur was three years his senior, but two decades behind the rest of the world when it came to technology.

  “I did have, yes,” Bryant admitted, tugging his battered brown trilby further onto his head. “Here’s our bus.” He indicated the open-topped Routemaster that was just pulling up.

  May was suspicious. “Then where is it now?”

  “I think I dropped it in the Princess Diana Memorial Drain. Don’t worry, it’ll just keep going round. I’ll get it when I come back. You’re probably wondering what this is all about.”

  “And why we’re boarding a sightseeing bus, yes,” said May, helping his partner inside the idling vehicle. The portly driver stared at them through his windscreen.

  “There was a rather sad little murder in King’s Cross during the night. A 54-year-old cleaning lady named Joan March was strangled to death in her third floor flat in Hastings Street. The HO felt the case warranted our involvement.”

  “But this bus doesn’t go anywhere near King’s Cross.” May checked the route, noting that it tacked through central London in a loop.

  “Oh, we’re not going to the murder site. I’ve already been there.” Bryant seated himself on the arrow-patterned seat at the front of the bus, next to a gingery young man who was standing in the aisle with a microphone. His badge read; Hi! I’m Martin! “I wanted you here so that we could apprehend the murderer.”

  The Routemaster pulled away from the stop at Speaker’s Corner, heading into Oxford Street. “My Uncle Jack used to get up on his soapbox over there, just after the war,” said Bryant, tapping the rain-spattered window. “Less passion, less protein, ban licentious theatre, shoot the Welsh; he’d rant about anything so long as it involved getting rid of something. I suppose the preachers of Speaker’s Corner still do.”

  “Now, does anyone know the name of the bi-i-i-g department store on our right?” Martin the tour guide was as wide-eyed as a first-time father, and as patronizing. There were no takers. “Anyone?”

  Bryant raised his hand. “Selfridges, opened in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge. He coined the phrase ‘The customer is always right’, and was the first salesman to put products out on display.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” said Martin.

  “But I do,” Bryant countered.

  “We’re catching a murderer on a bus?” asked May in disbelief.

  “We are now heading toward Oxford Circus, which was once described by Noel Coward as the Hub of the Universe,” announced the tour guide.

  “This boy’s a dunderhead.” Bryant jerked a wrinkled thumb at Martin, who overheard him. “That was John Wyndham’s reference to Piccadilly Circus.” Bryant had recently given up working as a London guide in his spare time, after picking too many arguments with the tourists. He forgot most things, but never the facts he had painstakingly gathered about his city.

  “I don’t understand,” May persisted. “Why did we get the case?” Bryant and May’s division, the Peculiar Crimes Unit, only handled investigations the Home Office found detrimental to government policy. Arthur loved working with his partner John May, and revelled in the fact that they performed a service no one else in the city could offer. No one had their arcane depth of knowledge, or was able to use it in the cause of crime prevention. Across the decades they had closed the cases few could understand, let alone solve.

  “There are three oddities.” Bryant ticked his fingers. “One, after strangling Mrs March, the murderer ordered two pizzas, calmly eating both of them. B, he slept overnight in the apartment. And three, his victim killed someone after he left.”

  May considered the matter as the bus turned into Regent Street. “I’m sorry, Arthur, you’ve utterly lost me.”

  “Do try to pay attention. The murderer left the flat at 6:15 this morning, not realizing that his victim was still alive. Mrs March struggled to the window to raise the alarm, but the effort of opening it was too much for her. She lost consciousness and fell out into the street, landing on a gentleman called Sir Ian Lowry—”

  “The MOD bigwig?”

  “The very same, who was apparently just leaving a call-girl’s flat, where he had presumably stayed the night. Mrs March broke her neck and his leg. And that’s why the HO called us in. Obviously, it’s a serious security breach, because Sir Ian is privy to all kinds of military secrets. The call-girl has already been brought in, and all that’s left is the apprehension of her killer.”

  “So I’m here to help you identify him,” said May, still a little confused.

  “Oh, I know who the murderer is.” Bryant cheerily flashed his oversized false teeth. “You were complaining about getting old the other day, so I thought this would be a chance for you to test your fading faculties.”

  The Routemaster stopped outside Hamley’s toy store to allow a single Japanese tourist on board. There were eight passengers seated downstairs. The heavily falling rain prevented anyone from sitting on the open deck. It was now 10:44am.

  “You already know the murderer’s identity?”

  “Better than that”, said Bryant smugly. “I can tell you the precise time he’ll be arrested.” He checked his ancient Timex. “At 11:26 a.m.”

  “Are you saying we’re looking for somebody on board this bus?”

  “That’s the general idea, yes.”

  The tour guide was attempting to deliver a potted history of the Haymarket, and was not happy about being distracted. “There are seats further back,” he said pointedly.

  “I’m quite happy here,” Bryant insisted, withdrawing his pipe from his top pocket and absently striking a match to it. A middle-aged woman in a red baseball cap, a glittery tank-top and shorts reacted with horror behind him. “That’s disgusting,” she complained. “It’s illegal to smoke in public in my country.”

  “But not to dress like an enormous toddler, Madam, which I find curious,” Bryant turned back to his partner. “So take a look around you, and tell me who you suspect. Give me the benefit of your observational skills.”

  The ancient bus was now chuntering toward the rainswept plain of Trafalgar Square.

  “On your left, Nelson’s Column, finished in 1843, with four bronze panels at the base depicting his naval victories,” said the guide.

  “His left arm was struck by lightning in the 1880s, and he’s only just getting it X-rayed this year,” said Bryant. “That’s the National Health Service for you.”

  “So you know exactly where the murderer will get on this bus, how long he’ll stay on and where he’ll get off?” asked May.

  “Indeed I do.” Bryant could be supremely annoying when he was holding privileged information.

  At 11:02 a.m., the bus stopped near the corner of Craig’s Court. “Pall Mall derives its name from a 17th-century mallet and ball game played here by, er, members of royalty,” Martin the guide stated with a hint of uncertainty.

  “Everyone knows that,” said Bryant, fidgetting in his seat. “Tell them something new. Alleys of shops are called malls because they’re
shaped like the game’s playing sites. Did you know that Pall Mall is only worth £140 on the Monopoly board?”

  “I don’t think he cares for your interruptions,” whispered May. “You’re unsettling him.”

  “Some people deserve to be unsettled,” Bryant replied. “When a man is tired of London he should clear off. Oh dear, he’s wearing a clip-on tie.” Coming from a man as sartorially challenged as Bryant, this was a bit rich.

  When the bus stopped halfway along Whitehall, May surveyed the new arrivals. One of them was a murderer, but which? There were now eleven passengers on the lower deck; four Americans, two Chinese, one Japanese and two couples of indeterminate origin. No singles. He decided that the murderer had yet to put in an appearance.

  “Was this woman, Mrs March, in her own flat?” he asked.

  “Correct.”

  May thought of the call-girl living on the ground floor. “Did she look after the other girls? Was her murderer a client?”

  “No, she had nothing to do with them.” Bryant sat back, pretending to listen to the tour guide’s inaccurate description of the Cabinet War Rooms.

  “But her killer left behind a clue to his identity.”

  “It was something he took with him that gave me the clue.”

  The bus continued along Whitehall, picking up three more passengers, and headed up toward Parliament Square. May eyed the newcomers with suspicion. A German couple – he overheard their conversation – and a fiftyish man with unmistakably Russian features and anxious, flitting eyes. May studied his shabby jacket, twisted T-shirt and unshaven chin. A sad little murder, Bryant had said. This man had dressed in a hurry, without stopping to shave, and looked around every time the bus came to a halt. But if he was a killer, why would he make his escape aboard a tour bus, on a trip that ended back where it began?

  “Who can tell me the name of this building?” asked Martin the guide.

  “Houses of Parliament,” the assembly muttered faintly, as if being asked to recite a prayer in church.

  “Now, many people think Big Ben is the name of the tower . . .”

  “Dear God no,” Bryant sighed loudly. “Can’t he come up with anything more original than that?”

  Martin shot him a filthy look. “But it is actually the name of the single bell housed inside . . .”

  “Absolute rubbish.” Bryant thumped the guide on the arm with his stick. “There are five bells in St Stephen’s Tower, young man. The other four play the Westminster Quarters, variations of ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ from Handel’s Messiah.”

  “Look, who’s giving this bloody tour?” The guide’s cheeks were turning as red as his hair.

  “It could be him,” said May, pointing to the Russian. “The killer has to be alone, and he’s the only one.”

  “I’ll take over if you like,” Bryant snapped back at the guide. “I’d do a better job.”

  “But Arthur, how could you know when he was due on the bus? That just leaves . . .”

  “Listen, mate, I don’t have to put up with this. My shift ends here, anyway.” As the bus stopped on the corner of the square, Martin threw down his microphone and tapped on the glass, signalling to the driver.

  As he made his way along the aisle, May said, “The guide, it’s the guide, and he’s getting away!”

  Bryant did not move a muscle as a moon-faced young woman with a colourless ponytail took over from the departing Martin. “Hello, my name is Debbie, and I’ll be your guide on the second half of this tour,” she told them all. The bus pulled out into traffic and made its way around the square.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” asked May with growing incredulity.

  Bryant pulled back his sleeve and held up his watch so that his partner could read it. 11:19 a.m. There was still another seven minutes to go.

  “Who can tell me the name of this building?” said Debbie, pointing to Westminster Abbey and cupping her hand around her ear.

  “Is there some special nursery school where they’re trained to speak in this fashion, I wonder?” said Bryant. The bus headed back onto Victoria Embankment.

  “Where does the tour go from here?” asked May.

  “Around Covent Garden, where Debbie will probably regale us with a re-enactment of My Fair Lady, then back toward Oxford Street,” said Bryant.

  “You said it was something he took with him that gave you a clue,” May repeated.

  Bryant rested his chin on his knuckle and regarded the distant stippled thread of the Thames. “She’ll ask them to name the river next,” he muttered.

  “He was so unfazed by the thought of murdering Mrs March that he stayed all night . . .”

  “I wonder if anyone knows where the lion on Westminster Bridge comes from,” asked Debbie.

  “Because he was used to her . . .” said May, following the thought.

  “Good Lord, an intelligent question,” Bryant beamed delightedly at the new guide.

  “It stood on the parapet of the Lion Brewery until 1966, near Hungerford Bridge . . .” said Debbie.

  “Because he was married to her . . .” said May.

  “Yet we have come to regard it as a symbol of London . . .”

  “And he stuck to his routine, getting up the next morning . . .”

  “So when we photograph the lion beside Big Ben, we recreate the traditional link between members of Parliament – and alcohol.” Debbie flourished a smile.

  “Oh, bravo!” said Bryant. “I like her!”

  “And he came to work just as he always did, driving a bus,” said May as then truth dawned. “His jacket, cap and badge were missing from the flat.”

  Bryant rose unsteadily to his feet and pressed the stop bell. “I’m sorry, Debbie,” he apologized, “but I’m afraid the tour terminates here.”

  May looked out of the window. The bus-stop faced New Scotland Yard. It was exactly 11:26 a.m.

  “He won’t run off,” said Bryant. “He wants to be taken in for the murder of his wife. I imagine she never stopped nagging him about his weight.”

  The Japanese tourist took a very nice photograph of the detectives arresting their man.