Hobby of Murder

‘What you need, Andrew, is a hobby,’ Peter Dilly said.

He was the nephew of Andrew Basnett, retired professor of Botany from one of London University’s many colleges. They were having lunch together in a small restaurant in Charlotte Street. Peter was thirty-five, a small man who in a neat, small way was good-looking. He had fair, straight hair which he had a habit of thrusting back from his forehead with one of his small, fine hands, but which instantly tumbled forward again, almost into his grey eyes. His pale face was deceptively expressionless, but lit up very charmingly when he smiled.

‘I’ve never had a hobby in my life,’ his uncle replied, ‘unless you count collecting stamps when I was ten years old. It’s true I wanted to collect birds’ eggs too. I liked climbing trees. But my parents wouldn’t allow it. They said it was cruel.’

Andrew was in his mid-seventies. He was a tall man, and if he had taken the trouble to stand erect would have been even taller than he looked, but in the last few years he had allowed himself to stoop increasingly. He was of spare build, with bony features in a narrow, thin face, short grey hair and grey eyes under eyebrows that were still black. Under his sharp chin the skin was sagging. However, his long sight was still good and he needed glasses only for reading. He had just put them on to read the menu and had ordered an avocado vinaigrette and goulash. Peter had ordered the same and the wine, a bottle of Côtes du Rhône.

‘But you had a hobby for years,’ Peter said. ‘That life of Robert Hooke that you were writing and which nobody thought you’d ever finish. You really shouldn’t have
finished it. It gave you a nice undemanding occupation in which you were really interested. Now you’ve nothing to do and I understand that you’re finding life rather boring.

‘But I got a contract for the book,’ Andrew said, ‘and half the advance paid on signing it. I had to finish it to earn that.’

‘I doubt if authors are always so scrupulous,’ Peter said. He was an author himself who had written ten highly successful science fiction novels. Before he had discovered that he had the ability to do this he had been a teacher on a very small salary. Now he was a fairly rich man who spent most of his time in a small villa that he had recently bought in Monte Carlo. His visits to London were rare and brief, but he was fond of Andrew and always managed to see him two or three times while he was there.

‘Well, my editor gave me lunch a couple of times, to keep me moving,’ Andrew said. ‘And I never had any doubt myself that I’d finish the book in the end, though it’s true I was a little afraid of doing it. But not to have had that in view would have seemed too futile.’

They were talking about the book that Andrew had started writing soon after his retirement, a life of Robert Hooke, the noted seventeenth-century natural philosopher and architect, celebrated for pioneering microscopical work in a variety of fields. Andrew had actually begun work on this before retiring, soon after his wife Nell had died of cancer and he had felt a desperate need to fill his lonely evenings. But it was not until after the trip that he had made round the world after retiring that he had let the book become very nearly a full-time occupation. And now it was out of his hands. He had been told that he would be receiving proofs in the next few weeks, though publication was still a long way off, but there was something intimidatingly final about the thought that soon he would be seeing his work in print.

He sipped some sherry.

‘I’m thinking of writing a life of Malpighi,’ he said.

‘Who’s he—another seventeenth-century botanist?’ Peter asked.

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact.’

‘No, don’t do that. Do something quite different. If you don’t, you’ll simply feel you’re repeating yourself.’

‘But I really don’t know what to do,’ Andrew said. ‘I’m not interested in collecting things. I’m not clever with my hands. I can’t paint or draw. Photography has never much attracted me. I might try writing a murder story perhaps, but I’ve had one or two brushes with the real thing, and that’s rather put me off. I shouldn’t even care for golf.’

‘Well, come and stay with me in Monte Carlo and see if that doesn’t give you some ideas,’ Peter suggested. ‘You might find that you enjoy a little quiet gambling.’

Andrew shook his head.

‘Whenever I’ve gambled I’ve invariably lost. It doesn’t whet the appetite. But thank you for the invitation, I’d like to come sometime. Meantime, as it happens, I’m going to stay with some old friends for a week or two in the country. The Davidges. Did you ever meet them? Ian Davidge was my accountant for years. He handled the mysteries of my income tax for me and kept me out of trouble, then slowly we somehow got to know one another apart from all that and became very good friends. He’s retired too now and lives in a village near Rockford in Berkshire.’

‘And has he got a hobby?’

‘Well, there’s his garden, of course, and I’ve an idea he’s taken to bird-watching. Very interesting, I expect, but not much use if you live in St John’s Wood.’

For over twenty years now Andrew had lived in a flat in St John’s Wood. He and Nell had moved into it and for the two or three years before the dread disease had struck her, they had lived very happily there, and since then
Andrew had never thought of moving from it. Besides being comfortable and easily managed, it held a few memories of her, things that she had chosen for it, arrangements that she had made, and it happened to be in a very convenient part of London.

Peter knew how Andrew felt about the place, but all the same he said, ‘Have you never thought of moving into the country yourself. Andrew? If you don’t any longer need to spend half your time in libraries doing research, mightn’t you find it easier to develop a few hobbies in some nice cheerful village, even perhaps the despised golf? I think you ought to consider it.’

Andrew shook his head.

‘In my view London’s the best place for the old, and I’ll probably stick to Malpighi.’

Peter nodded with a little grin.

‘Of course, I knew you’d say that.’

All the same, Andrew was looking forward to his visit to the Davidges, in their house in the village of Lower Milfrey near the town of Rockford. Early September was a pleasant time for it, he thought, not likely to be too hot or too cold. At his age, extremes of temperature were always disagreeable, but he was safe from both in September.

When the time came he set off by an early afternoon train from Paddington to Rockford, where Ian Davidge met him. Ian was sixty, a man of medium height and robust build, with a round head set on a thick neck and a round, cheerful face. He had a short nose, large dark eyes that were observant and shrewd and a wide mouth that smiled easily to show teeth that were still his own. The little hair that he had left was dark. He was wearing a dark blue knitted pullover, light grey slacks and sandals. Seeing Andrew getting out of the train, he came loping along to help him with his suitcase.

‘Your train’s dead on time,’ he observed. ‘Very remarkable these days. Did you have a good journey?’

‘Since it was only fifty minutes, I don’t see that it would have mattered if it had been very bad,’ Andrew said. ‘How are you? You look very well.’

Ian had the sort of tan that comes from spending a lot of time out of doors rather than from sunbathing, and which gave him a look of sturdy health.