The Measure of Malice

by Martin Edwards

  The pen had been set at eight o’clock that morning, and filled rather clumsily, for the deep purple oily ink had overflowed and run vertically down the chart. The time was now seven o’clock, and the pen pointed correctly between the six and eight o’clock lines. The graph it had drawn ran horizontally for an eighth of an inch, from eight to ten. After that time it sloped steeply downwards, indicating rapidly falling pressure.

  “And after breakfast?” Purley asked. “You saw Mrs. Briston again?”

  “I didn’t see her,” Briston replied. “I called through the door and told her I was going, and she answered me. Then I jumped on my bicycle and rode to the station to catch the 8.50 to Mawnchester.”

  “Was Mrs. Briston expecting anyone to call here during your absence?”

  Briston shook his head. “Not that I know of. The postman must have called, for I met him on the road as I was riding to the station. I called out to ask him if he had anything for me, and he said only a parcel for my wife.”

  “Was that garden chair standing by the water-butt when you left home?”

  “I don’t think so. If it was, I didn’t put it there. At this time of year it’s kept folded up in the verandah. I sometimes use it to stand on and look into the butt to see how much water there is. But this morning the butt was empty. During the dry spell we had last week we used all the water for the plants in the greenhouse. It would have taken three or four hours to fill even with the heavy rain today.”

  “Did you put this bottle of whisky on the table here?”

  “No, I found it there when I came home. Latterly my wife had taken to drinking rather more than I liked to see. I didn’t clear away my breakfast things before I left this morning. My wife must have done that, and got her own lunch later on.”

  “You went to Mawnchester by the 8.50. What time did you come back?”

  “By the train that gets to Faythorpe at 4.45. The ticket collector will remember that—we had some conversation. I had taken a cheap day ticket, but it wasn’t available for return as early as the 4.45, and I had to pay the full fare. I lunched with my brother in Mawnchester, and saw several other people there.”

  There came a loud knock. Purley opened the door, to find the divisional surgeon. “This way, Doctor,” he said, leading him round the bungalow to the verandah. “What can you tell me?” he asked.

  “Not very much more than you can see for yourself,” said the doctor. “She’s been dead some hours. Death was due to drowning. There’s a pretty severe contusion on the top of the head. It wouldn’t have been fatal, for the skull isn’t fractured. But you’ll want to account for it, I expect.”

  “Have a look inside the butt,” said Purley. “You see that broken ridge-tile?”

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, I see it. You found her head downwards in the butt, you say? If, when she dived in, her head had struck the tile, the contusion would be accounted for.”

  Another loud knock brought Purley once more to the front door. This time it was a couple of ambulance men with a stretcher. The body was carried to the ambulance, which set off for the mortuary, the doctor following in his car. Purley returned to the dining-room, to find Briston looking utterly dejected and exhausted. Purley feared he might have a second suicide on his hands. “I don’t think you ought to stop here all alone, Mr. Briston,” he suggested.

  “Oh, I shall be all right,” Briston replied drearily. “I’ll go along to the kiosk by-and-by and ring up my brother. If he can’t come here he’ll let me go to him, I daresay.”

  Purley went back to Faythorpe. Accident, murder, or suicide? The only way she could have fallen headlong into the butt by accident was if she had been clambering about on the roof; such behaviour might surely be ruled out. Murder? By whom? Her husband’s alibi seemed perfectly good, though of course it would have to be checked. And there was this finally convincing point. Nobody, certainly not her puny little husband, could, with the help only of the garden chair, have lifted a struggling victim above his shoulders and plunged her head downwards into the butt.

  Suicide, then. Everything pointed to that. The depression from which Shirley Briston had been suffering. And possibly the whisky to supply Dutch courage. It had started to rain about half-past nine that morning, and had never ceased all day. Three or four hours, Briston had said. The butt would have been full by the time she might be expected to have had her lunch. She had taken out the garden chair, climbed on to it, and dived into the butt.

  Verification of Briston’s alibi followed naturally. The ticket collector remembered him perfectly well. “I couldn’t say what train he went by in the morning, for I wasn’t on duty then,” he told Purley. “But he came off the 4.45 and gave up the return half of a cheap day to Mawnchester. I told him that was no good, as cheap tickets are only available by trains leaving Mawnchester after six. So he paid me the difference, and I gave him a receipt for it.”

  Purley ran the postman to earth in the bar of the Red Admiral. “This morning’s delivery?” he replied to Purley’s question. “Yes, I do recollect seeing Mr. Briston while I was on my way to Cadford. He was riding his bike towards the town here, and as he passed he called out and asked me if I had anything for him. I told him that all there was for Holly Bungalow was a parcel for Mrs. Briston.”

  “You delivered the parcel, I suppose?” Purley remarked. “Did you see anyone at the bungalow?”

  “Why, yes,” the postman replied. “The parcel was too big to go through the letter-box, so I knocked on the door. After a bit Mrs. Briston opened it and took in the parcel. She wasn’t what you might call properly dressed, but had a sort of wrap round her.”

  “Can you tell me what time this was?”

  “It must have been round about half-past eight when I spoke to Mr. Briston. And maybe five minutes later when I got to the bungalow.”

  All that remained was a final word with the doctor. There was just one possibility. Briston had arrived at Faythorpe station at 4.45. He should have reached home by 5.15. It had been after six when Purley had first seen the body in the butt. Only the faintest possibility, of course.

  The doctor was at home when Purley called, and frowned irritably at his question. “How the dickens can I tell to a split second? I’m ready to testify on oath that death was due to drowning. But I’m not prepared to say exactly when it took place. When a body has been in water for any length of time, that’s impossible. My opinion is that the woman died not later than midday or thereabouts.”

  So that settled it. Mrs. Briston had been seen alive after her husband left the house that morning. The medical evidence showed that she must have been dead before his return that evening. Clearly, then, a case of suicide.

  Next morning, Purley went to Holly Bungalow fairly early. The door was opened by a man who bore some resemblance to Henry Briston, though he was taller and not so plump. “Do you want to see my brother?” he asked. “I am Edward Briston, from Mawnchester. Henry rang me up last night and told me what had happened, and I came over at once. He’s had a very bad night, and I told him he’d better stay in bed for a bit.”

  “I won’t disturb him,” Purley replied. “I only looked in to see he was all right. You saw your brother in Mawnchester yesterday, didn’t you, Mr. Briston?”

  “Yes, he lunched with me, and we spent the afternoon together in my office, till he left to catch his train.”

  Purley nodded. “Have you any, personal knowledge of your sister-in-law’s state of mind recently?”

  Edward Briston glanced over his shoulder, led the way into the dining-room and shut the door. “It was to talk about Shirley that Henry came to see me yesterday,” he said in a hushed voice. “He told me she was terribly depressed. Just as if she had something on her mind that she wouldn’t tell him about.

  “I’m going to tell you something, Inspector, that I didn’t tell Henry, and never shall, now. One day last week I saw Shirley in Mawnc
hester. She was with a man I didn’t know, and they seemed to be getting on remarkably well together. I know she saw me, but the couple hurried away together in the opposite direction. It’s my belief the poor woman had got herself into a situation from which she could see only one way of escape.”

  That might be the case, Purley thought. Glancing round the room, he caught sight of the barograph. After that flat step, an eighth of an inch wide, the purple line traced by the pen had fallen steadily till about midnight. Then it had become horizontal, and was now beginning to rise. Fine weather might be expected. The prosperous appearance of the room prompted Purley’s next question. “Your brother is in comfortable circumstances?”

  “Well, yes,” Edward Briston replied. “Henry hasn’t much of his own, but Shirley had considerable means. She was a widow when he married her, and her first husband had left her quite well off.”

  Henry Briston’s alibi was complete. There could be no doubt now that his wife had committed suicide, and Edward Briston’s guess might explain why. Purley went back to the police station, and caught sight of the barograph in the window next door.

  He looked at the instrument more closely. It was very similar to the one at Holly Bungalow; the only difference that Purley could see was the chart on the drum, which ran from Sunday to Saturday. A new chart had been fitted at ten o’clock the previous Sunday, for that was where the purple graph began. For the greater part of Sunday it ran almost horizontally. Then, late that evening, it began to decline. By the early hours of Monday morning, this decline had become a steep slope. As with the instrument at Holly Bungalow, this fall had continued till about midnight.

  The queer thing about this graph was that it showed no horizontal step between eight and ten on Monday morning. Briston’s barograph must be out of order. But it couldn’t be, for in every other respect the two purple lines were exactly similar.

  Purley went into the police station. A discrepancy only an eighth of an inch long in the graphs could be of no importance. And then the only possible explanation revealed itself to him.

  His thoughts began to race. There was no confirmation of Henry Briston having left Faythorpe by the 8.50. He had certainly been seen by the postman riding in the direction of the station about 8.30. But he might have turned back when the postman had passed the bungalow on his way to Cadford. A later train would have given him plenty of time to meet his brother for lunch in Mawnchester.

  Back to the bungalow, to find his wife dressed and having breakfast. Perhaps he had contrived to meet the postman. He could easily have ordered something to be sent her by post. That contusion the doctor had found. The kitchen poker! A blow, not enough to kill her, but to knock her out.

  But it would manifestly have been beyond Briston’s power to lift even an inert body over the edge of the butt. No, it wouldn’t do. By jove, yes, it would! It hadn’t begun to rain till 9.30, and before then the butt had been empty. Briston had tipped the butt over on its side. Easy enough, for it was of thin sheet metal, and comparatively light when empty.

  First the broken tile, to explain the contusion that must be found. Then the unconscious woman, dragged through the French window of the dining-room and thrust head first into the butt. An effort, and the butt with its contents was upended in place. Perhaps the rainwater was already beginning to trickle into it from the spout. Then to set the scene, so as to suggest that the victim had been alive at a much later hour. To clear away the breakfast, and to lay the appearance of lunch, with that significant whisky bottle.

  In his preoccupation with the crime, he had forgotten to change the barograph chart. It was by then ten o’clock. He put on a new chart, and set the pen on the eight o’clock line, to suggest the time of his action. Then he turned the drum till the pen rested on the ten o’clock line. He was bound to do that, otherwise it might be noticed later that the instrument was two hours slow. That was the only possible explanation of the purple line being horizontal for that vital eighth of an inch.

  The motive might be deduced from Edward Briston’s revelation. The only evidence for Shirley Briston’s depressed state was her husband’s. She hadn’t been depressed, but determined. She had told him she was going to leave him. And if she did that her money would go with her.

  It was beyond any doubt that the barograph had been set not at eight, but at ten. If it could be proved that Henry Briston had set it, his alibi was destroyed. He must have been in a state of great agitation. He had clumsily overfilled the pen, so that the ink had run down the chart. Might he not in his agitation have got some of it on his fingers? That oily purple fluid was not a true ink, but a dye, defying soap and water.

  Purley drove again to Holly Bungalow. This time Henry Briston himself opened the door. “Hold out your hands, Mr. Briston,” said the Inspector sternly.

  “My hands?” Briston replied. He held them out tremblingly, palms downwards. Purley seized the right hand and turned it over. There on the inner side of forefinger and thumb were two faint purple stains. “You will come with me in my car,” said Purley sternly. “And I must caution you—”

  Blood Sport

  Edmund Crispin

  Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921–1978) was a composer of light music responsible for the soundtracks of films such as Raising the Wind, Eyewitness and The Brides of Fu Manchu, to say nothing of four of the Doctor comedy films and half a dozen Carry On movies. Despite his success in this field, he was—and remains—better known for witty and ingenious detective stories written under the pen-name Edmund Crispin. Educated at St John’s College, Oxford, Crispin made his series detective, Gervase Fen, an Oxford academic, an English professor at St Christopher’s College, which Crispin located next to St John’s. Between 1944 and 1951, Fen appeared in eight highly diverting novels. Thereafter, Crispin only managed to publish one more novel, the rather underwhelming The Glimpses of the Moon, which after a long gestation period finally appeared in 1977. He did, however, produce a long sequence of short stories, most of which are included in the collections Beware of the Trains (1953) and Fen Country (1979).

  Most of Crispin’s short stories were written for the Evening Standard, and accordingly subject to severe constraints of space. As a result, the plots tend to pivot on a single trick; as David Whittle says in his 2007 biography, Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: a Life in Music and Books: “He usually concentrates on apparently small details, such as the position of a bolt on a door, the difference between the speed of sound and light, or the condition of a typewriter ribbon. Fen also likes to show that things are not always what they seem.” This story, first published in the Evening Standard in 1954, turns on a point of ballistics, and is unusual in giving centre stage to DI Humbleby, who usually plays second fiddle to Fen.

  * * *

  “I’VE heard from the ballistics people,” said Superintendent MacCutcheon, “and they tell me there’s no doubt whatever that the bullet was fired from Ellingham’s gun. Is that what you yourself were expecting?”

  “Oh, yes.” At the other side of the desk, in the first-floor office at New Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Humbleby nodded soberly. “Yes, I was expecting that all right,” he said. “Taken together with the rest of the evidence, it makes a pretty good case.”

  “And your own report?”

  Humbleby handed over a sheaf of typescript. “No verdict?” queried MacCutcheon, who had turned immediately to the final page.

  “Certainly there’s a verdict.” Humbleby paused. “Implicit, I mean,” he added. “You’ll see.”

  “Nice of you,” said MacCutcheon. “Nice of you DIs to try and keep my tottering intellect alive with little games. Well, I’ll buy it. Smoke if you care to.” And he settled down to read, while Humbleby, leaning back in his chair and lighting a cheroot, reconsidered the salient features of his visit to Harringford the previous day…

  He had arrived there by train, with Detective Sergeant Pinder in tow, shortly befo
re midday; and they had gone at once to the police station. Inspector Bentinck, who received them, proved to be a bony, discontented-looking man of fifty or thereabouts.

  “Between ourselves,” he said, as he led them to his office, “our County CID are a fairly feeble lot at the moment, so I’m glad the CC had the sense to call you people in straightaway. And of course, having a ruddy lord involved… You knew that, did you?”

  “It’s about the only thing I do know,” said Humbleby.

  “I’ve got his gun here.” They had reached the office, and Bentinck was unlocking a cupboard, from which presently he produced a 360 sporting rifle. Two slats of wood were tied to either side of the breech, and there was a loop of string for carrying the weapon.

  “Not been tested for prints yet,” said Humbleby intelligently; and Bentinck shook his head.

  “Not been touched since I confiscated it yesterday morning. But in any case I shouldn’t think you’ll get any prints off it except his—Lord Ellingham’s, I mean. He’d cleaned it, you see, by the time I caught up with him.”

  “Well, well, we can try,” said Humbleby. “Pinder’s brought all his paraphernalia with him. See what you can get, please,” he added to the sergeant. “And meanwhile”—to Bentinck—“let’s have the whole story from the beginning.”

  So Pinder went away to insufflate and photograph the rifle, and Bentinck talked. “Ellingham’s one of what they call the backwoods peers,” he said. “He’s got a big estate about five miles from here, but I shouldn’t think there’s much left in the family coffers, because he lives in the lodge, not in the manor-house—that’s shut up. He’s about fifty, not married, lives alone.

  “Well now, like everyone else, Ellingham’s had his servant problems, and just recently—for the last year or so, that is—the only person he’s been able to get to look after him has been this girl.”