Skelton's Guide to Blazing Corpses, page 1
SKELTON’S GUIDE TO
BLAZING CORPSES
David Stafford
In memory of
Marc Beeby
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
Monday, 10th November 1930
Tuesday, 11th November 1930
Wednesday, 12th November 1930
Monday, 17th November, 1930
Tuesday, 18th November 1930
Tuesday, 18th November 1930, afternoon
Wednesday, 19th November 1930
Thursday, 20th November 1930
Friday, 21st November 1930
Saturday, 22nd November 1930
Sunday, 23rd November 1930
Monday, 24th November 1930
Tuesday, 25th November 1930
Wednesday, 26th November 1930
Thursday, 27th November 1930
Friday, 28th November 1930
Sunday, 30th November 1930
Monday, 1st December 1930
Tuesday, 2nd December 1930
Wednesday, 3rd December 1930
Thursday, 4th December 1930
Friday, 5th December 1930
Saturday, 6th December 1930
Monday, 8th December 1930
Saturday, 13th December 1930
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BY DAVID STAFFORD
COPYRIGHT
PROLOGUE
Guy Fawkes’ Night,
Wednesday, 5th November 1930
When the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, the news was spread around the country by beacon fires blazing on prominent hilltops. Dunworth Beacon, just outside Great Dunworth, boasted the biggest and brightest of all the fires. That’s what Mr Glazier said, anyway, and because he was Chairman of the Parish Council, and because nobody else had ever bothered to give the matter much thought, it was generally accepted as true.
To commemorate the event, every year on 29th June Mr Glazier lit the fire again, bright enough to be seen from Biggleswade in the east and Clophill in the west. He also lit fires to celebrate the King’s birthday, the birth of a royal baby, Empire Day, Trafalgar Day, Christmas, New Year, Easter and the birthday of William Pitt the Elder who, he claimed, spuriously, had some connection with the village.
Mr Glazier liked fires. And he didn’t think any fire was complete without fireworks. He made these himself to his own recipes. They banged more loudly, flew higher and whizzed more fiercely than anything you could buy in the shops.
Guy Fawkes Night, 5th November, was always his greatest triumph. For weeks he would have the lads of the village carrying fissionable materials up the hill, where they would be scientifically arranged with reference to draught, ashfall and pyrolysis. The lads did as they were told because Mr Glazier was such a commanding presence. Some of the younger ones found him terrifying. A head taller than anybody they’d ever seen; he wore spectacles with one lens made of black metal instead of glass and extending down towards his mouth to conceal an empty eye socket and unsightly scarring. His left hand was a hook, which he used with great speed and dexterity, manipulating a log, for instance, then smacking the point of the hook into it to hoist it into the air, shaking it off, catching it and twisting it into its required position.
The injuries had been sustained during the war, in which he had served gleefully in the Royal Engineers, blowing up bridges, buildings, tanks, hills and forests, and generally having a fine old time.
But tonight, Guy Fawkes Night, though the bonfire had been built higher than ever before and though he had devised many new fireworks that, he hoped, would be heard in several counties and possibly cause light structural damage to nearby property, a gloom had descended. It was raining. The fire was soaked and there was a grave danger that his rockets and Roman candles would all end up damp squibs.
Nevertheless, at 7.30 he decided for the sake of tradition to brave the weather and light the damn thing anyway – give the villagers something cheery to see out of their windows. So, in sturdy boots, trench coat and sou’wester, a gallon can of petrol in his hand, a second gallon dangling from his hook, he made the ascent of Dunmore Beacon.
He removed some of the outer material so as to gain access to the inside of the fire, where the petrol would be most effective at drying out the whole. It caught with an audible ‘whoosh’. So entranced was he by the movement and growth of the flames that it was several minutes before he noticed that it had stopped raining. The sky was clear, and there were people, with electric torches and hurricane lanterns, braving the mud and coming up the hill. They’d expect a show.
George Sonning was the first to arrive.
‘I didn’t bring the fireworks, George,’ Mr Glazier said. ‘Thought it’d be too wet. I should pop back and get them, I suppose. Tell everybody there will be a short delay, would you?’
Geoffrey Spencer had finished his homework by half past six. His dad had looked it over and criticised him for underlining freehand rather than doing it properly with a ruler.
‘Nobody underlines with a ruler. Not even the teachers.’
‘It doesn’t matter what other people do, though, does it? If they want to produce sloppy work, that’s up to them. But at Carter and Royal’s we always use rulers.’ Carter and Royal’s was the insurance company where Dad worked.
It soured the atmosphere in the house already slightly soured by the fact that it was far too wet for any bonfires or fireworks. Mrs Spencer tried to ease the tension, but mostly they ate their baked potatoes and sausages in silence.
After supper, though, Geoffrey saw that the rain had stopped, and Mr Glazier had lit the fire after all.
‘Shall we go up and have a look?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘No, it’ll be muddy.’
Geoffrey watched the blaze from the window.
‘I think I might go up,’ he said. He was nearly sixteen. ‘I’ll put my wellies on.’
Mum looked at Dad, who rolled his eyes. It was up to her.
‘All right, then. But be back by ten. Keep your scarf wrapped round your mouth so you don’t breathe in the smoke. And don’t get too close. You know what happened to Jeremy Fleming.’
Every bonfire night the name of Jeremy Fleming – Three Fingers Fleming – was invoked as a reminder of what happens to those who use Catherine wheels incautiously.
On the corner of Keeper’s Lane, Geoffrey ran into Jeannie Crowson. This was all right. He’d had his eye on Jeannie Crowson ever since the cricket match when she’d helped with the teas and said his face looked very brown against the white of his shirt.
Both of them had electric torches, but halfway up Keeper’s Lane, Jeannie’s torch flickered and died, so Geoffrey pretended his had bust, too. Then he made ghost noises and Jeannie pretended she was scared, so he put his arm round her, and she didn’t seem to mind that at all.
Just ahead of them, around a bend in the lane, there was a whooshing sound and a great sheet of flame shot into the sky.
‘Blimey, that’s a big ’un,’ Geoffrey said. ‘What is it? Roman Candle?’
They ran towards it.
‘Somebody’s done their bonfire in the middle of the road,’ Jeannie said. But even before she’d finished speaking they could see it wasn’t a bonfire. Somebody had set a car alight.
‘I bet it’s them kids from Clophill,’ Geoffrey said, trying not to sound scared. He was petrified of the kids from Clophill. Beyond the flames, they could see somebody running away. ‘I wouldn’t get too close if I were you, Jeannie. It might explode or something.’
But in fact, after the initial whoosh, the flames seemed to have died down.
Jeannie screamed. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘There’s somebody in it.’
Geoffrey moved closer. There was a figure, almost unrecognisable as human, behind the wheel. The skin had already blackened.
Once, Geoffrey’s dad had burnt a pile of leaves. He didn’t know there were frogs hiding in it. As the frogs burnt, their legs had slowly extended and stiffened. The driver’s arms were doing the same, moving slowly upwards, away from the wheel.
Jeannie, hovering now near the edge of the flames, stuck out an arm to see how close she could get, then pulled it back fast and edged away.
‘We should try and get him out, Geoffrey. He might still be alive.’ This was a stupid thing to say, and she knew it. ‘Or get some water, pull him out with a stick.’
‘We can’t do nothing,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I’m going up The Bell to get help.’
Rather than trying to get round the car, he climbed over the fence and took a straight line to the pub, stumbling across a ploughed field, with Jeannie following. He tripped and hit his head on something hard but got straight back up and kept running.
The rain started again.
On Stubbs Lane, they could see a group of blokes running towards the pub to get out of the rain. A couple of them had already noticed the light of the flames over the hedgerows.
Geoffrey shouted, ‘There’s a car on fire up Keeper’s and there’s somebody in it.’
A couple of the blokes ran into the pub to raise the alarm. There was confusion among the others because some of them had lights and some of them didn’t, and some went the Stubbs Lane way, and some came over the gate into the field and went that way.
Geoffrey bent over, breathing heavily.
Jeannie came up behind him and put her
‘You all right?’ she asked.
‘I hurt myself a bit,’ he said.
Jeannie helped him into the pub and sat him down.
‘You’re bleeding on your head,’ she said.
She took her hankie out, spat on it, and dabbed at the blood, then held the hankie tight against the cut to stop the bleeding, keeping the other arm tight round his shoulder.
Geoffrey put both his arms round her waist and held on tight.
They’d seen the face. That was the trouble. It was grinning and there were flames coming out the top of the head.
Monday, 10th November 1930
Arthur Skelton, barrister-at-law, 39-years-old, pebble-glasses, face like a pantomime horse, wing-collar, grey homburg, thick overcoat against the chill, woollen scarf his mum in Leeds had knitted wrapped three times around his neck, gave some thought to the stone pier at the bottom of the steps outside Marylebone Police Court. He knew that sitting on cold stone was supposed to give you piles. Then there was the actual act of sitting down and getting up again to consider. He was six foot three, most of it spidery leg, and had been born with a displaced hip which still gave him trouble.
On the other hand, he needed somewhere to smoke and brood for a few minutes, so, throwing caution to the winds, he sat down, filled his pipe and read the advertisements on the passing buses.
Dewar’s Whisky. Aaah, Bisto. Player’s Weights. Daily Graphic for the BEST pictures.
He was fed up.
Usually, winning a case would be cause for at least a bit of a spring in the step and a glow to the complexion, but the morning’s proceedings had left a nasty taste.
On the previous Saturday, Giles Gordon Ewers, 19, a student up at Oxford, having just scored the winning try in a college rugby match, was driving back to London in his AC two-seater. Drink had been taken. Feeling boisterous, he had dangled a walking stick, the sort with a duck’s-head handle, out of the side of the car, in the manner of a polo mallet, and knocked down a lamp and the guard rails around some roadworks.
Two cyclists on a tandem, riding close behind, unable to stop, had collided with the guard rails and overturned. One of them sustained a head injury that left him momentarily unconscious, the other a leg injury, which had required twelve stitches.
Mr Ewers, though clearly aware of the accident, failed to stop and instead accelerated away.
All of this was observed by a motorcyclist who, having ascertained that other passers-by were attending to the injured cyclists, had given chase. Further along the road he stopped a police constable, who had jumped on the pillion. After giving chase for a couple of miles or so, they caught up with Mr Ewers, who stopped when ordered to by the constable and allowed himself to be taken into custody. He had spent the rest of the weekend in a police cell.
On the Sunday morning, the boy’s father, General Sir James Ewers, had disturbed the leisurely breakfast being enjoyed by his solicitor, Aubrey Duncan, and insisted he get the best barrister available down to the police court first thing on Monday to make sure the boy was released, ideally with an apology from the police for making such a ‘fuss’ about a ‘boyish prank’.
Since the General, a litigious man, was one of the solicitor’s more lucrative clients, Duncan had disturbed the leisurely lunch of Arthur Skelton. And since Skelton and Duncan had worked together on many cases in the past, and since Skelton’s chambers were practically next door to Duncan’s offices, and since the fee being offered was breathtaking, arrangements were made.
A weekend in police custody usually left people looking seedy and unwashed. Giles Ewers seemed shiny, well-breakfasted and smiling.
‘Lord bless us,’ Ewer said, adopting the fake cockney accent favoured by bright young things, ‘The guvnor’s sent a proper brief. What’s it going to be? Five quid and a wigging from the beak followed by a worse wigging from the guvnor?’
Young people of a certain class, Skelton had come to realise, had too often had their understanding of criminal law guided by the works of Mr P. G. Wodehouse, whose hero, Bertie Wooster, often told tales of having to pay a fiver to a magistrate for knocking off a policeman’s helmet on New Year’s Eve, or getting a ‘wigging’ from some dowager aunt for burgling her house.
He glanced at the charge sheet that had been handed to him on his way in. There were several.
‘I’m afraid the first charge alone,’ he said, ‘that of dangerous driving, could attract a two-year sentence.’
The boy smiled, ‘But surely …?’ He leant slightly to one side, as if the thought of prison had literally sent him off balance. ‘You haven’t got a cigarette, have you? I ran out.’ He held up his empty cigarette case and let one of the sides flap down.
‘Pipe man, I’m afraid.’
‘Could you perhaps send one of the chaps out to get some?’
‘Court ushers are not employed to run errands for the accused.’
The boy sat up and sulked.
‘Shall we get on with it?’ Skelton said. ‘Now, first of all I would advise against pleading guilty. Given the nature and number of the charges, the magistrates would have little option other than to send you to prison. You have already admitted to taking drink after the rugby match.’
‘Yes, but, only a couple of pints.’
‘Mild?’
‘Bitter.’
‘And in your experience, after a couple of pints, are you a competent driver?’
‘Sharp as a knife.’
‘But on this occasion, you seem to have driven erratically, not to say recklessly.’
The boy was silent.
‘Do you have a mechanic who takes care of your car?’
‘The guvnor’s chauffeur usually has a look at it when I’m in town.’
‘And is it in generally good condition, brakes, steering, tyres and so on?’
‘He said it was making a bit of a racket, but I said I like it like that.’
‘A problem with the silencer, perhaps?’
‘She’s a rust bucket, but I do love the old dear.’
Skelton remembered a case from a couple of years earlier – not one of his – in which the defence had claimed that the driver appeared to be drunk but was actually suffering from inhalation of fumes, which were escaping into the car from a defective exhaust. There was obviously no time to get expert testimony and mechanical inspections before the trial today, but it might be enough to secure an adjournment. It was something, anyway.
He told the boy how to behave himself in court. Head down, look ashamed, no smiling, speak when you’re spoken to, answer the questions with one-word answers if possible. Then he provided him with pen and paper and dictated a letter he could send to the couple on the tandem, expressing his heartfelt apologies and offering them, by way of compensation, twenty-five pounds to cover repairs to the bicycle and medical expenses. This meant that in court, to further demonstrate the boy’s contrition, Skelton could say, without perjuring himself, ‘Mr Ewers has already written to …’
On the way into the court, he saw Charlie Perry, one of the ushers, and stopped for a word.
‘What happened about Fulham?’ Skelton asked. The last time they’d spoken, some weeks earlier, Charlie had told him that his son, Bert, had been invited to try out for the Fulham boys’ team.
‘He’s played, three games,’ Charlie said. ‘Hasn’t exactly shone in any of them but he keeps his end up and they haven’t sacked him yet.’
‘You get down to see him?’
‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away, Mr Skelton,’ Charlie said. ‘You doing the Ewers boy?’
Skelton nodded glumly.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’ve got much to worry about. Mr Mariner served under the General at Cambrai.’ Mariner was the Chairman of the Magistrates.
Skelton sighed. To claim that the link would compromise Mariner’s eligibility to have anything to do with the case was, he knew, pointless. Half a million men served under General Ewers at Cambrai. The fact that Mariner – a senior officer, no doubt – would most likely have messed with him, passed him the port and met his good lady wife, would be considered irrelevant. And besides, whenever a representative of the wealthy and privileged classes came to court it was inevitable that the accused and whoever was on the bench, if they didn’t have a school, college, regiment or club in common, would be married to each other’s cousins, would have met weekending at Binkie and Gloria Shoebridge’s, or would have attended their respective daughters’ coming-out balls.
