Silent Nights (26 page)

“They had all heard him, and they all looked. There was bright moonlight outside, and the letters traced on the grimy pane stood out clearly.

“Otto.

“Well, it seems that then Otto started edging away, and Sir Charles made a grab at him, and they fought, and presently a wallop from Sir Charles sent Otto clean through the tell-tale window, and Sir Charles scrambled after him, and they went on fighting outside, trampling the glass to smithereens, until Wilburn and company joined in and put a stop to it. Incidentally, Wilburn says that Otto's going through the window looked
contrived
to him—a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence; though of course, so many people
saw
the name written there that it remains perfectly good evidence in spite of having been destroyed.”

“Motive?” Fen asked.

“Good enough. Jane Welsh was wanting to marry Otto—had fallen quite dementedly in love with him, in fact—and her father didn't approve; partly on the grounds that Otto was a German, and partly because he thought the boy wanted Jane's prospective inheritance rather than Jane herself. To clinch it, moreover, there was the fact that Otto had been in the Luftwaffe and that Jane's mother had been killed in 1941 in an air-raid. Jane being only eighteen years of age—and the attitude of magistrates, if appealed to, being in the circumstances at best problematical—it looked as if that was one marriage that would definitely not take place. So the killing of Sir Lucas had, from Otto's point of view, a double advantage: it made Jane rich, and it removed the obstacle to the marriage.”

“Jane's prospective guardian not being against it.”

“Jane's prospective guardian being an uncle she could twist round her little finger.…But here's the point.” Humbleby leaned forward earnestly. “Here is the point: windows nailed shut; no secret doors—emphatically none; chimney too narrow to admit a baby; and in the dust on the hall floor, only one set of footprints, made unquestionably by Sir Lucas himself.…If you're thinking that Otto might have walked in and out on top of those prints, as that page-boy we've been hearing so much about recently did with King Wenceslaus, then you're wrong. Otto's feet are much too large, for one thing, and the prints hadn't been disturbed, for another: so that's out. But then, how on earth did he manage it? There's no furniture in that hall whatever—nothing he could have used to crawl across, nothing he could have swung himself from. It's a long, bare box, that's all; and the distance between the door and the circular room (in which room, by the way, the dust on the floor was all messed up by the rescue-party) is miles too far for anyone to have jumped it. Nor was the weapon the sort of thing that could possibly have been fired from a bow or an air-gun or a blow-pipe, or any nonsense of that sort; nor was it sharp enough or heavy enough to have penetrated as deeply as it did if it had been
thrown
. So ghosts apart, what
is
the explanation? Can you see one?”

Fen made no immediate reply. Throughout this narrative he had remained standing, draped against the mantelpiece. Now he moved, collecting Humbleby's empty glass and his own and carrying them across to the decanter; and it was only after they were refilled that he spoke.

“Supposing,” he said, “that Otto had crossed the entrance hall on a tricycle—”

“A tricycle!” Humbleby was dumbfounded. “A—”

“A tricycle, yes,” Fen reiterated firmly. “Or supposing, again, that he had laid down a carpet, unrolling it in front of him as he entered and rolling it up again after him when he left.…”

“But the dust!” wailed Humbleby. “Have I really not made it clear to you that apart from the footprints the dust on the floor was undisturbed? Tricycles, carpets.…”

“A section of the floor at least,” Fen pointed out, “was trampled on by the rescue-party.”

“Oh, that.…Yes, but that didn't happen until after Wilburn had examined the floor.”

“Examined it in detail?”

“Yes. At that stage they still didn't realize anything was wrong; and when Wilburn led them in they were giggling behind him while he did a sort of parody of detective work, throwing the beam of his torch over every inch of the floor in a pretended search for bloodstains.”

“It doesn't,” said Fen puritanically, “sound the sort of performance which would amuse me very much.”

“I dare say not. Anyway, the point about it is that Wilburn's ready to swear that the dust was completely unmarked and undisturbed except for the footprints.…I wish he weren't ready to swear that,” Humbleby added dolefully, “because that's what's holding me up. But I can't budge him.”

“You oughtn't to be trying to budge him, anyway,” retorted Fen, whose mood of self-righteousness appeared to be growing on him. “It's unethical. What about blood, now?”

“Blood? There was practically none of it. You don't get any bleeding to speak of from that narrow type of wound.”

“Ah. Just one more question, then; and if the answer's what I expect, I shall be able to tell you how Otto worked it.”

“If by any remote chance,” said Humblebly suspiciously, “it's
stilts
that you have in mind—”

“My dear Humbleby, don't be so peurile.”

Humbleby contained himself with an effort. “Well?” he said.

“The name on the window.” Fen spoke almost dreamily. “Was it written in
capital
letters?”

Whatever Humbleby had been expecting, it was clearly not this. “Yes,” he answered. “But—”

“Wait.” Fen drained his glass. “Wait while I make a telephone call.”

He went. All at once restless, Humbleby got to his feet, lit a cheroot, and began pacing the room. Presently he discovered an elastic-driven aeroplane abandoned behind an armchair, wound it up and launched it. It caught Fen a glancing blow on the temple as he reappeared in the doorway, and thence flew on into the hall, where it struck and smashed a vase. “Oh, I say, I'm sorry,” said Humbleby feebly. Fen said nothing.

But after about half a minute, when he had simmered down a bit: “Locked rooms,” he remarked sourly. “Locked rooms.…I'll tell you what it is, Humbleby: you've been reading too much fiction; you've got locked rooms on the brain.”

Humbleby thought it politic to be meek. “Yes,” he said.

“Gideon Fell once gave a very brilliant lecture on The Locked-Room Problem, in connection with that business of the Hollow Man; but there was one category he didn't include.”

“Well?”

Fen massaged his forehead resentfully. “He didn't include the locked-room mystery which
isn't
a locked-room mystery: like this one. So that the explanation of how Otto got into and out of that circular room is simple: he didn't get into or out of it at all.”

Humbleby gaped. “But Sir Lucas can't have been knifed before he
entered
the circular room. Sir Charles said—”

“Ah yes. Sir Charles saw him go in—or so he asserts. And—”

“Stop a bit.” Humbleby was much perturbed. “I can see what you're getting at, but there are serious objections to it.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for one thing, Sir Lucas
named
his murderer.”

“A murderer who struck at him
from behind
.…Oh, I've no doubt Sir Lucas acted in good faith: Otto, you see, would be the only member of the house party whom Sir Lucas
knew
to have a
motive
. In actual fact, Sir Charles had one too—as I've just discovered. But Sir Lucas wasn't aware of that; and in any case, he very particularly didn't want Otto to marry his daughter after his death, so that the risk of doing an ex-Luftwaffe man an injustice was a risk he was prepared to take.…Next objection?”

“The name on the window. If, as Sir Lucas said, his
very first
action on recovering consciousness was to denounce his attacker, then he'd surely, since he was capable of entering the pavilion after being knifed, have been capable of writing the name on the
outside
of the window, which would be nearest, and which was just as grimy as the inside. That objection's based, of course, on your assumption that he was struck before he ever entered the pavilion.”

“I expect he did just that—wrote the name on the outside of the window, I mean.”

“But the people who saw it were on the
inside
. Inside a bank, for instance, haven't you ever noticed how the bank's name—”

“The name Otto,” Fen interposed, “is a palindrome. That's to say, it reads the same backwards as forwards. What's more, the capital letters used in it are symmetrical—not like B or P or R or S, but like A or H or M. So write it on the outside of a window, and it will look exactly the same from the inside.”

“My God, yes.” Humbleby was sobered. “I never thought of that. And the fact that the name was on the
outside
would be fatal to Sir Charles, after his assertion that he'd seen Sir Lucas enter the pavilion unharmed, so I suppose that the ‘contriving' Wilburn noticed in the fight was Sir Charles' not Otto's: he'd realize that the name
must
be on the outside—Sir Lucas having said that the writing of it was the very first thing he did—and he'd see the need to destroy the window before anyone could investigate closely.…Wait, though: couldn't Sir Lucas have entered the pavilion as Sir Charles said, and later emerged again, and—”

“One set of footprints,” Fen pointed out, “on the hall floor. Not three.”

Humbleby nodded. “I've been a fool about this. Locked rooms, as you said, on the brain. But what
was
Sir Charles' motive—the motive Sir Lucas didn't know about?”

“Belchester,” said Fen. “Belchester Cathedral. As you know, it was bombed during the war, and a new one's going to be built. Well, I've just rung up the Dean, who's an acquaintance of mine, to ask about the choice of architect; and he says that it was a toss-up between Sir Charles' design and Sir Lucas', and that Sir Lucas' won. The two men were notified by post, and it seems likely that Sir Charles' notification arrived on the morning of Christmas Eve. Sir Lucas' did too, in all probability; but Sir Lucas' was sent to his home, and even forwarded it can't, in the rush of Christmas postal traffic, have reached him at Rydalls before he was killed. So only Sir Charles
knew
; and since with Sir Lucas dead Sir Charles' design would have been accepted.…” Fen shrugged. “Was it money, I wonder? Or was it just the blow to his professional pride? Well, well. Let's have another drink before you telephone. In the hangman's shed it will all come to the same thing.”

Beef for Christmas

Leo Bruce

Leo Bruce was a pen-name used by Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903–1979) when writing detective fiction. Croft-Cooke led such a fascinating life that he compiled no fewer than twenty-seven volumes of autobiography, yet he mentioned his crime writing
alter ego
in passing in just two of those books. It was not mentioned at all in his obituary in
The Times
. Golden Age authors were often modest (or embarrassed) about their forays into detection, yet at this distance of time, their detective stories often hold up much better than their more “worthy” work.

Bruce created two major series characters. Sergeant Beef was an engaging vulgarian with a passion for playing darts; he is frequently, but unwisely, underestimated by criminals, and his relationship with his “Watson”, the prim narrator Lionel Townsend, is splendidly done. Beef was, however, later dropped in favour of Carolus Deene, a schoolmaster and amateur detective.
Murder in Miniature
, an excellent volume edited by Barry Pike, appeared to be a comprehensive gathering of all Bruce's short detective stories. However, American researcher Curtis Evans subsequently unearthed this story, which first appeared in the
Tatler and Bystander
in 1957, and commented: “It would grace any anthology of British detective stories.” I agree.

***

“Doing anything for Christmas?”

The question which was put to me by my old friend Sergeant Beef was altogether too casual. He had, I guessed, what he would call “something up his sleeve”.

“Yes, I'm booked up,” I lied. I was determined to draw him out.

“Pity,” said Beef and took a pull from the pint glass beside him. “I shall have to get someone else to come down with me. There might be a story to write.”

“Come down?” I repeated rather irritably. “Come down where?”

“Natchett,” said Beef shortly. “Near Braxham. Near where I was stationed before I retired from the force.”

It was not many years, I reflected, since Beef had been a country policeman and I considered that he owed his present eminence as a private detective to his Boswell, myself. I was not pleased at his speaking of someone else writing him up.

“What's the case?” I asked as casually as I could.

“You're booked up,” sulked Beef. “It can't interest you.” Then he gave his good-natured grin and added—“Still, I don't mind telling you what it is.”

I looked at his raw red face and straggling ginger moustache and wondered for the hundredth time how anyone as ingenuous as Beef could match his wits against the subtle brains of clever criminals and defeat them. Sometimes he was almost boyish.

“Ever heard of a man called Merton Watlow? You haven't? Well, you might not have. He's one of the richest men in the country. Or rather he was.”

“Taxation?” I asked, ready to sympathize.

“Not so much that as just hard spending of his capital. Surprising what you can do in that line today. Time was when a millionaire couldn't make himself much poorer. This Merton Watlow says he can't take it with you and he's making it fly like fury. He spends a couple of Prime Ministers' salaries on keeping up his home at Natchett, and he's got other places. If you have an indoor staff of eight and half a dozen gardeners nowadays, you can only do it on capital.”

“Well?” I asked impatiently.

“His family don't like it,” said Beef. “Natural enough, I suppose. They want a bit left for them. They mean to live a lot longer than one another. Who doesn't? They think the old man ought to live on his interest for their benefit, and they've told him so. That only makes him worse. It's become a sort of race. You should see the pictures he buys.”

“How do you know this?”

“He has consulted me,” said Beef rather grandly. “He's been getting anonymous letters lately threatening to do for him if he doesn't stop spending like this. They only make him worse. But he wants me to find out about them.”

“I see. But why Christmas?”

“Because he always invites his relatives at Christmas. Gets a kick out of bringing them down to Natchett Grange and letting them see him spend a hundred or two on a Christmas party. The very presents he gives them turn sour when they think what they must have cost him. Silly things, he chooses, hell of a price and no use for them. I shouldn't be surprised if one of them really did for him one day. They certainly hate him enough.”

“Isn't he afraid of that?”

“Not likely. He's a big man, powerful, active and tough. He's sixty but as fit as a flea and been around the world a dozen times. He doesn't seem afraid of anything.”

“Then what does he want us for?”

“Me, he wants. He hasn't said anything about you. He wants me to find out who's threatening him. Just to satisfy his curiosity, he says. He tells me it's no more than a joke to him, but his secretary, a man called Philip Meece, has nearly been driven out of his mind by it. So I'm going to spend Christmas at Natchett.”

“I'll come with you,” I said.

Beef nodded without answering, but his grin told me that he regarded this as surrender. As I recall now that Christmas at Natchett with its one horrible moment and its whole bizarre meaning, I am not sure that he was not right.

***

“He's sending a car for us,” Beef said on December 23, the day were due at Natchett, and I soon found that it was an understatement. A Rolls Royce drew up at the door of Beef's modest house in Lilac Crescent, and I was startled to see not only a chauffeur in uniform, but beside him that anachronistic figure, a footman, dressed in similar clothes. He came to the door, took our bags and opened the door for us. We started on our slow way out of town.

But it was when we came to Natchett Grange that I began to have a sense of unreality. Could there be such houses in England in these mid-century years? It was a clear day and we saw at once the great grounds and gardens planned by some modern Capability Brown, the conservatories looming up like those in Kew Gardens and the stables and dairy all manned and busy. The estate would have been ducal in the last century; today it was almost incredible.

Rumbold, the butler, opened the front door, a tall man as aloof and unsmiling as a statue. He shewed us to the library and I had time to see that Merton Watlow was a bibliophile and to guess that his collection was beyond price.

“Wonder if he's read all these,” said Beef, chuckling crudely.

Before I answered a small pale man in his forties came in.

“My name's Meece,” he said when he had greeted us. “I'm Merton Watlow's secretary. He'll be down in a minute.”

I was about to start some general conversation in a normal polite way when Beef with his usual lack of
savoir faire
came out with a clumsy question.

“Now what's all this about anonymous letters?” he asked.

“Oh that,” said Philip Meece indifferently. “You must ask Mr Watlow about that. Not my pigeon.”

“Seen any of them?” persisted Beef.

“Mr Watlow likes to open his own correspondence. He only shows me what he wants me to deal with.”

***

The door opened. It was not the spendthrift millionaire who entered but a large handsome woman rather lavishly dressed and wearing several pieces of jewellery. I did not know enough of such things to be able to say whether they were genuine.

“My wife,” said Philip Meece unexpectedly. “Sergeant Beef and Mr Towser.”

“Townsend,” I corrected rather crossly as I bowed to Mrs Meece. After all, my name should have been as well known as Beef's.

I could hear Beef breathing heavily as was his wont in the presence of women of this kind—fine dignified women who awed him.

This time I was determined to to lead the conversation into pleasant and conventional channels.

“We've had a delightful drive down,” I began. “The countryside.…”

But I could say no more for we all turned to face Merton Watlow. He was, as Beef said, a large man and the years had done little to reduce the solid weight of his shoulders. He gave an impression of forcefulness of both character and physique. I suppose he would be called a handsome man though I found his taurine strength and imperious manner a little overwhelming.

He gave me the merest suggestion of a nod and at once began to talk to Beef whom he treated in a man-to-man way.

“You'll meet them all at dinner tonight,” he said. “There are six whom I've thought it worth while to invite. I want this ridiculous business cleared up by Boxing Day.”

“We'll see what we can do,” said Beef in his most phlegmatic manner. I wished he would shew more alertness and more appreciation of the privilege of being chosen by Merton Watlow for this task.

***

It was at this point that I felt bound to remonstrate secretly with Beef for he was staring at Freda Meece and particularly, I seemed to notice, at her jewellery in a way that must have been embarrassing for her. I drew him aside as though to ask for a light.

“Beef,” I whispered. “Don't stare.”

He ignored me and turned again to Watlow.

“First of all I want to see some of these anonymous letters. Nasty things, I always say. I remember in one village.…”

“I'm afraid you won't be able to see them. I've never bothered to keep one.”

“Silly of you, that was. We could have got handwriting experts on to it.”

“They were typewritten.”

“Better still. You'd be surprised how easy it is to say what comes from what typewriter. However, if they're gone they're gone and that's all there is to it. Now who have we got?”

“My guests, you mean? I am a bachelor, as you know, so my kindred consists of the families of my brother and sister, both of whom are dead. First there is the nephew, Major Alec Watlow.”

To my embarrassment Beef here produced his bulky black notebook and began slowly to write with a stump of pencil.

“There is Alec's wife Prudence, a rather anaemic woman I find, and in contrast a noisy athletic daughter called Mollie.”

“Ah,” said Beef.

“There is my sister's daughter with her husband, a Doctor Siddley, and their son Egbert, whom I regard as being practically feeble-minded though his parents do not share the opinion. That is all.”

I was relieved to see that Beef's arduous note-taking was finished, but his next question turned me cold.

“They all hope to come into a bit if they live longer than you, I take it? That's if there's anything left, of course.”

Merton Watlow did not seem to take this amiss, indeed he smiled faintly as he said, “That is so.”

“One other point,” said Beef. “What about the staff?” His voice dropped to a hoarse but perfectly audible whisper as he indicated Philip and Freda Meece across the room. “These, for instance?”

Watlow hesitated.

“I suppose you must consider everyone as possible, though I must say in this case I find it rather absurd. Philip has been with me for ten years, Rumbold a little more and most of the servants for some considerable time. It is up to you to include them or not.”

Beef put his notebook away.

“Leave it to me,” he said.

In a way he was justified in this. He did find a solution to the whole thing which, I am now convinced, was the right one. But it did not save a human life.

***

Dinner that night was a preposterous affair.

“My cook has a collection of old menus,” explained Merton Watlow, “and he has discovered one of just sixty-three years ago, that is of the year in which I was born. It is the dinner offered by Queen Victoria to her guests at Osborne on December 19, 1894. He has insisted on reproducing it. I think you will see that our Victorian forebears enjoyed their food in quantity.”

How right he was! That interminable meal returns to me in nightmares. There were six courses and for most dishes there was an alternative scarcely less satisfying. We were handed cards on which the original menu was reproduced. POTAGE, I read without apprehension at first,
à la Tête de Veau Clair
or
à la Colbert
. Phew, I thought, and found as an ENTREE,
les Pain de Faisans à la Milanaise
. Then there was that course which has long vanished, the RELEVE. It was in English, but none the less menacing for that—Roast Beef, Yorkshire Pudding. The ROTI was
Dindi à la Chipota
or Chine of Pork. ENTREMETS were four—
Les Asperges à la Sauce
, Mince Pies, Plum Pudding,
La Gelée d'Oranges à l'Anglaise
.

But Merton Watlow did not finish with his relatives there. As though to give his gastronomic teasing of them an extra sting there was added the extraordinary heading SIDE TABLE. Under it were offered Baron of Beef, Wild Boar's Head, Game Pie, Brawn, Woodcock Pie and
Terrine de Foie Gras
.

Only two persons of those at the long table viewed this monstrous catalogue with anything but repressed horror: they were Beef and Mollie Watlow, the hoydenish daughter of the millionaire's nephew, Major Alec. His wife, described by Watlow as anaemic, now looked positively seasick. Of the others at the table, the Major, a stiff muscular man with clipped hair and speech, masticated in silent disapproval while Dr Siddley, a gaunt but garrulous man, sat talking studiously of any subject but food. His son Egbert, a flaccid giant, seemed only half aware of what was taking place. His mother, thickset and hairy, reminded me of the old saying, “If looks could kill” as she stared at Merton Watlow. The Meeces also dined with us and I noticed that Freda Meece no longer wore diamonds.

“Shouldn't have thought it was possible to lay hands on grub like this,” remarked Beef, earning curious glances from more refined guests. “Not in England today.”

He was speaking across Prudence Watlow to his host.

“Oh yes,” said Merton Watlow. “You can get anything if you're prepared to spend the money.”