The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (30 page)

“Did she tell you how Maureen met her end?” asked Vereker with suppressed excitement.

“Yes. On that Sunday night before the cruise the Colvins went out to dinner and there were only three people left at Firle House: Beryl Mesado, her sister Amy, or Maureen as she preferred to call herself, and Renée Gautier. Renée laid the table for the two ladies' supper and said she would turn in. Something or other made her change her mind—it might have been one of my serials in a Sunday paper. In any case she sat down in the kitchen and began to read. About an hour later Beryl and her sister came downstairs and made their way to the refrigerator. Renée knew the refrigerator was the show piece for guests looking over the house, especially the women, and paid no heed to the business. From the kitchen, however, she could hear every word that was spoken, and as she sat reading with her ears unconsciously at the half-cock the refrigerator door suddenly slammed violently and she heard Beryl Mesado exclaim viciously, ‘That'll cool down your passions, you dirty sewer rat!' There followed the sound of Mrs. Mesado's footsteps hurrying back as fast as she could to the dining-room, and as she sat listening there came the dull thud, thud, thud of fists beating frantically on the refrigerator door.”

At this point in his story Ricardo paused in thought.

“That would make a stunning chapter for a serial…” he began, but was cut short by Vereker telling him to proceed.

“The letter then gives an amazing account of how bitterly Renée herself had hated Maureen O'Connor, and the reason why. She describes in vivid language how she went to the refrigerator door and gloated over the cries from within, which she could hear faintly, though they must have been piercing shrieks of agony. At short intervals throughout this ghastly script there runs Beryl Mesado's pregnant phrase, ‘That'll cool down your passions, you dirty sewer rat!' It is repeated
ad nauseam
, a morbid chorus and a vivid gauge of the intensity of Renée's hatred. You see, Maureen was Dias's mistress, and she had taunted Renée that she was only a poor, disappointed lover and would never be any more than that. This had so nettled Renée that she had done everything in her power, even surrendered herself to Dias to win his love. This was her hour! Revenge had come at last. She could easily have freed Maureen, but she wanted her to die and stood with her ear to the door and heard the frantic pummelling of the prisoner's bloody fists grow weaker and weaker till at last they ceased. She then remarks that her legs were aching with the fatigue of standing listening to her rival's agony and that she began to feel hungry. After eating a slice of brown bread and butter she went to bed and slept soundly till three o'clock in the morning. To cut a long story short, at three o'clock Renée, bitten by curiosity, came down to the refrigerator to see how the captive was faring. All was silent, so she opened the door and stepped in. Maureen was lying on the floor of the chamber, her face deathly white and her evening frock all stained with the blood that had flowed from her smashed knuckles. She was still alive. Renée even then could easily have saved her life, but she had no intention of doing so. She was going to destroy any chance of her returning to Dias's arms, but a streak of pity entered her hard heart. She decided that she should die in a painless sleep. She made a cup of tea, put in the contents of a phial of nembutol and handed it to the woman to drink. Maureen, half dazed, managed to get the stuff down her throat, and not long after sank into a deep sleep. Confident that she had made death absolutely certain, Renée was just going to leave Maureen when Beryl Mesado appeared on the scene with Colvin and his wife. By this time Maureen was apparently beyond recovery…”

“Thanks very much, Ricky. I think we know the fest of the story,” said Vereker, and gave him a précis of events as they had happened.

“Well, Heather, what do you think of it all?” asked Vereker, turning triumphantly to the inspector.

“Not half bad for an amateur. In the Polo Ground Mystery I scored one over you, but I'll give you best this time. You deserve it because it has been a most complicated case. This beer...”

“What happened to Renée Gautier after she received Dias's letter at Barcelona and wrote to you confessing that she had murdered Maureen O'Connor?” asked Vereker suddenly of Manuel.

“I wondered if you two fellows would let me finish my story after you had grown weary of patting one another on the back. Well, the whole business so preyed on Renée's mind that in a fit of terrible depression she took her own life. She shot herself the day before we touched at Ceuta on our way home. You should have heard Captain Partridge's language! He said it was the last pleasure cruise he'd ever skipper. What with a sudden death, a suicide, a baby swallowing its dummy and Lady Hildenborough asking him to sew a button on her boots, old Partridge's cup of bitterness was filled to overflowing. But if you don't mind I really must keep my appointment with Judy. I shall be ten minutes late if I rush off now. I'll see you to-morrow, Algernon. Lunch with me at Jacques' at one o'clock. If there's anything more you want to know I shall be in a happier frame of mind to talk. I also want you to come and help me to choose a ring.”

“Help you to pay for it, you mean,” remarked Vereker as the gay Ricardo vanished out of the door of the flat. Turning to Inspector Heather he asked, “Well, old friend, and what's the next step? Of the four conspirators two have committed suicide. They were both equally culpable of murder, though Gautier was the actual culprit. One is in a mental home, in danger of becoming a lunatic, and poor Colvin is at Firle House, a worn and sick man.”

“I think the best thing to do is to leave the matter as it stands, Mr. Vereker. Besides, there's this mysterious strangling case in Maida Vale that needs all my attention. If you've got the time why not come and do some real detective work?”

“No thanks, Heather. I'm going down to Firle House to see Colvin and put him wise as to the truth about Maureen O'Connor's death. Then I'll have a good month or so of painting on the Downs as soon as the weather turns warmer.”

“Very good, Mr. Vereker, and while you're down there you might find out which pub in Sussex keeps the best beer. The Downs may be able to whisper...”

Heather left the sentence unfinished in order to drain his pewter tankard.

THE END

Robin Forsythe was born Robert Forsythe in 1879. His place of birth was Sialkot, in modern day Pakistan. His mother died when a younger brother was born two years later, and ‘Robin' was brought up by an ayah until he was six, when he returned to the United Kingdom, and went to school in Glasgow and Northern Ireland. In his teens he had short stories and poetry published and went to London wanting to be a writer.

He married in 1909 and had a son the following year, later working as a clerk at Somerset House in London when he was arrested for theft and fraud in 1928. Sentenced to fifteen months, he began to write his first detective novel in prison.

On his release in 1929 Robin Forsythe published his debut,
Missing or Murdered
. It introduced Anthony ‘Algernon' Vereker, an eccentric artist with an extraordinary flair for detective work. It was followed by four more detective novels in the Vereker series, ending with
The Spirit Murder Mystery
in 1936. All the novels are characterized by the sharp plotting and witty dialogue which epitomize the more effervescent side of golden age crime fiction.

Robin Forsythe died in 1937.

Missing or Murdered

The Polo Ground Mystery

The Ginger Cat Mystery

The Spirit Murder Mystery

The body of John Cornell the well-known London Merchant and banker, was exhumed early this morning with great secrecy, following representations made to the Home Office.

Everyone was astonished when the beautiful Josephine Rivron rejected the young, popular and handsome Frank Cornell, and married his elderly, wealthy father John instead. When John fell ill and died shortly after marrying, there were suspicions that the cause wasn't pneumonia, but a nasty case of poisoning. Then Frank Cornell too was dead – shot through the head, the weapon vanished. This time no one had any doubt it was murder.

Amateur sleuth Algernon Vereker is drawn to the case by a recurring bout of his “old detective fever”. He packs his Colt automatic and joins Inspector Heather down at Marston Manor to investigate.
The Ginger Cat Mystery
(1935 – titled 
Murder at Marston Manor
 in the USA) is a classic country house whodunit stuffed with suspects, clues, red herrings and dark deeds. Not to mention the eponymous feline, whose tell-tale fur might just help to hang a murderer. This new edition, the first in over seventy years, features an introduction by Curtis Evans.

‘Mr Forsythe has contrived an ingenious tale.'
The Times

The little village of Marston-le-Willows in West Suffolk had suddenly become known to the inhabitants of Great Britain, or more precisely to all those who read a daily or a Sunday newspaper. A startling chain of events had caused this forced emergence of Marston-le-Willows from its pastoral seclusion, its almost mediaeval English passivity and quietude into the hustle and noise of twentieth-century publicity. That chain of events had culminated in a mysterious murder and apparently there are few people who are not immediately interested in a mysterious murder. It is said that even such exalted personages as prime ministers, chancellors of the exchequer, law lords, headmasters of famous schools and secretly a bishop or two are addicted to the reading of fictional murders as an invigorating relaxation from the terrible strain of their stupendous mental activities. Whatever may be the truth in such matters, there's no denying the fact that a murder made Marston-le-Willows notorious very much as a murder made the village of Babbacombe notorious—one could almost say historical. It might have been happier to achieve fame like Giggleswick through an eclipse of the sun rather than through the extinction of a human life, but that was not decreed by the Fates. This fortuitous notoriety, however, had very little effect on the slow, even tenor of life in Marston. John Rash, the baker, round-faced, perennially cheerful and addicted temperately to his pint of beer at fixed intervals during the day, baked in his usual efficient manner in his old brick oven and could be seen daily rocking along in his high-wheeled pony trap on a wider round of his own while his boy delivered his bread in a narrower circle by means of “push-bike” and basket. Walter Gammer, the butcher, financially a shade more prosperous, distributed his meat as punctually as ever by means of a small car, not only to Marston inhabitants but to all the scattered cottages and houses which stud the tortuous Suffolk roads for miles around the village. William Hunnibell, the newsagent, dropped his newspapers in farmhouse porches or thrust them through open cottage windows every morning, and if by any chance he saw a housewife, tried to persuade her to buy apples, pears, ice cream, tomatoes, herrings, kippers or haddocks which he brought along in his little governess cart as an extension of his commercial activities when the seasons and supplies permitted. Edgar Dobley, the carpenter and wheelwright, with that sharper intelligence which seems to distinguish his calling in a village, built his barrows, constructed his wagons, made and painted his ladders at a shilling a stave in his shop redolent of clean wood and resounding to the blows of a hammer or the tearing rip of a saw. The farmers were busy with their sugar beet, their wheat, barley, beans, their turkeys, fowls, cattle and black-faced Suffolk sheep. The sails of the windmills of the district still revolved as they had in the remote past, grinding corn now raised more generously under the fostering warmth of a wheat subsidy. The village boys, care-free and unconcerned, played football on the village green, using the village's two pumps as goal-posts at one end of the field and their discarded coats at the other. But tongues wagged more vigorously in Marston, if tongues can ever be said to wag to the slow, high-pitched, singing Suffolk dialect. They wagged, too, in a way peculiar to the rural areas of the county. A topic is broached, an idea is born and communicated and further conversation consists of a repetition of that idea. Behind this repetition, however, may lurk a significant intonation, an almost imperceptible but informative wink, a slow, cautious, illuminating smile, for your countryman is naturally guarded in his speech in a village where gossip can easily be brought home to its source and the network of relationship is embarrassingly involved and comprehensive. There is, moreover, an inborn desire to live at peace which seems a reflection of the gentle lines of the landscape, of low horizons blurred by the hazy blue of distant woods, of the wide contented skies.

The cause of the trouble that burst so unexpectedly on Marston-le-Willows had its source in Marston Manor. Some years previously, old Squire Chevington had died. His estate, which had been held by the Chevington family for centuries, had been broken up and sold and the family seat of Marston Manor had been bought by a Mr. John Cornell. John Cornell, though a Suffolk-born man, had gone up to London in his teens to fill a very minor post in the offices of the well-known firm of Ince and Colt, general merchants, merchant bankers and bill discounters of Mincing Lane. Slowly but steadily he worked his way up to the position of senior partner and at the age of sixty retired with a considerable fortune to spend the remainder of his days in the peace and seclusion of his own county. His rise to affluence had been the outcome rather of bucolic shrewdness, unwavering pertinacity and relentless thrift than of any gift of financial brilliance, and perhaps this is an indirect compliment in days when financial brilliance frequently connotes a questionable rapidity in the acquisition of wealth. Those who knew him and liked his rather simple and frank nature, wondered at times how he had attained his fortune and position and generally agreed that his success was in a great measure due to the tact, lively wit and business acumen of his wife, Clara. Three years prior to her husband's retirement Clara Cornell died, leaving her own modest fortune to her son Frank, the sole offspring of her marriage, who was then twenty-one years old and intended for the Bar. On the death of his wife an extraordinary change came over John Cornell. He appeared all at once to renew his youth and pass once more through a romantic phase characteristic of adolescence. Formerly very austere and old-fashioned in his garb, wearing clothes almost as a uniform emphasizing the seriousness, the conservatism, the stability of his business, he now began to indulge in brighter materials and a livelier cut. His sombre neckwear burst into striped and chromatic gaiety; his gloves tripped lightly from brown or dark grey to chamois; his prim white handkerchiefs lapsed into the voluptuousness of spotted foulards. Even when playing his very occasional game of golf he had always worn grey flannels and a Harris jacket of particularly subdued colour. These he now discarded for snuff-coloured plus-fours, a jumper of conspicuous design and vivid hue and startled his older friends by wearing a yellow beret cocked at a ludicrously pert angle on his large and shining bald head. Previously always parsimonious, he now began to spend almost lavishly. Though he had seldom frequented places of amusement and then only with an air of boredom, as if he were fulfilling a necessary but uncongenial social duty to please his wife, he now appeared regularly at the opera in spite of the fact that he secretly thought most operas artificial foreign rubbish. He became a stalwart first-nighter at theatres and was frequently seen at a fashionable night club dancing and deporting himself with the zest and agility of a man of half his age. When he travelled he now travelled by air; he rented a costly villa on the Riviera during the season, bought a sumptuous houseboat on the upper reaches of the Thames and, having sold his old moderate-priced saloon car, acquired a luxury liner of the road. The houseboat, the name of which he had altered from “Mayfly” to “Mayfly But Can't,” soon became the week-end resort of a crowd of young and fashionable people, friends of his son, who all treated him with that affectionate tolerance which youth now grants to moneyed age and experience. John Cornell soon became generally popular and, though he made his son Frank the excuse for this bright rejuvenescence (the jolly-pal rather than pompous-father attitude), it was abundantly clear to all that the hearty old man was thoroughly enjoying himself and having what is colloquially termed “a high old time.” His frozen sedateness seemed to have thawed miraculously in the autumn sunshine of his years and with the sudden realization that he was no longer attached to the dominant personality of his shrewish wife. There was nothing vicious about this late burgeoning of John Cornell; it was the expression of a healthy virility still capable of a whole-hearted pleasure in living. Its true significance, however, was disclosed by its culmination in a second marriage.