Bodies from the Library 4, page 1
part #4 of Bodies from the Library Series
BODIES FROM THE LIBRARY 4
Forgotten stories of mystery and suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of the Golden Age
Selected and introduced by
Tony Medawar
Copyright
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
This eBook edition 2021
Selection, introduction and notes © Tony Medawar 2021
For copyright acknowledgments, see the ‘Acknowledgements’ section at the end of this eBook
Jacket design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Jacket illustrations: Shutterstock.com
These stories were mostly written in the first half of the twentieth century and
characters sometimes use offensive language or otherwise are described or behave
in ways that reflect the prejudices and insensitivities of the period.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
These stories are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008380977
eBook Edition © September 2021 ISBN: 9780008380984
Version: 2021-07-07
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
CHILD’S PLAY
Edmund Crispin
THIEVES FALL IN
Anthony Gilbert
RIGOR MORTIS
Leo Bruce
THE ONLY HUSBAND
H. C. Bailey
THE POLICE ARE BAFFLED
Alec Waugh
SHADOWED SUNLIGHT
Christianna Brand
THE CASE OF BELLA GARSINGTON
Gladys Mitchell
THE POST-CHAISE MURDER
Richard Keverne
BOOTS
Ngaio Marsh
FIGURES DON’T DIE
T. S. Stribling
PASSENGERS
Ethel Lina White
SIX MYSTERIES IN SEARCH OF SIX AUTHORS:
AFTER YOU, LADY
Peter Cheyney
TOO EASY
Herbert Adams
RIDDLE OF AN UMBRELLA
J. Jefferson Farjeon
TWO WHITE MICE UNDER A RIDING WHIP
E. C. R. Lorac
SIGNALS
Alice Campbell
A PRESENT FROM THE EMPIRE
G. D. H. & M. Cole
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
Also available
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
‘Why do we read crime stories? Short answer: for fun.’
H. R. F. Keating
Welcome to the fourth volume in the series Bodies from the Library, in which once again we bring into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown.
Among the stories that appear in this volume for the first time are unpublished mysteries by Edmund Crispin, Ngaio Marsh and Leo Bruce, previously unseen pieces written for radio by Gladys Mitchell and H. C. Bailey (featuring Reggie Fortune), and a complete short novel by Christianna Brand.
Mysteries have been around for centuries—one can even be found in the biblical Book of Daniel—but they exploded in popularity in the late nineteenth century with the emergence of the ‘great detective’. Foremost among these are of course the omniscient Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, the self-styled ‘greatest detective in the world’, but detectives come in all shapes and sizes. As also do crime stories.
There are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits, including locked-room puzzles in which a crime is committed in circumstances that suggest it could not have happened—but it did. There are detective stories without detectives and crimes without arrestable criminals; and there are cases where, as in a closed-circle crime, there is a strictly limited choice of suspects. Fictional crimes and criminals can be found anywhere—from an isolated mountain village to a Caribbean island, from just about anywhere on earth to the moon and beyond.
Countless volumes of such stories have been published, some collected by author, others with a (sometimes tenuous) theme. But there remain stories and plays that for one reason or another have never been collected. Stories that may have appeared in a newspaper or magazine and been forgotten. Or been collected in an anthology that has long been out of print. Or that were absorbed, unpublished, into an author’s archive when they died. Or ephemeral works—plays not aired, staged or screened for decades …
Which is where Bodies from the Library comes in.
Tony Medawar
April 2021
CHILD’S PLAY
Edmund Crispin
‘And of course,’ said Mrs Snyder, ‘you’ll have to make allowances for Pamela at first. It’s only a month, you see, since her parents were killed, and naturally the poor child is still very distressed. We must do all we can to make her happy here.’
Judith Carnegie nodded and said appropriate things. Inwardly she was striving to analyse the slight distaste which Mrs Snyder inspired in her. The small, hard eyes suggested a vein of rapacity; and the mouth, though large, was not generous. But to judge people physiognomically, Judith told herself, was a folly from which she ought to be exempt. It would be nearer the truth, perhaps, to say that she mistrusted the curious undertone of triumph in Mrs Snyder’s voice. The mere getting of a governess, even in these awkward times, was surely not sufficient to account for that …
‘Eve and Tony and Camilla are our own children, you understand,’ Mrs Snyder was saying. ‘They’re scarcely saints—I’m not one of those mothers who imagine their children can do no wrong—but I think you’ll like them.’
‘I’m sure—’
‘And I think they’ll like you.’ The large mouth smiled, but without warmth or humour. ‘Oh, there’s just one other thing.’
‘Yes, Mrs Snyder?’
‘You must deal with them in your own my—I shan’t interfere—but I’d rather there were no corporal punishment. Some children it doesn’t harm—I doubt if it would harm little Pamela, for instance—but my own three loves are very sensitive, even Camilla, and I think that striking a sensitive child may do a lot of damage; psychologically, I mean. I’m sure you won’t mind my mentioning it.’
Judith assented readily enough. She had a real affection for children, and detested the thought of their being hurt. At the same time, she noted the invitation to discriminate between Pamela and the others, and made a firm inward vow to ignore it—even, if it came to that, to fight against it.
‘Very well, then.’ Mrs Snyder pressed a bell beside her chair. ‘It’s getting late, and I expect you’d like to see your room and settle in. I hope you’ll be comfortable. You must let me know if there’s anything you want, or any way in which I can help you … Goodnight, Miss Carnegie. I have every confidence in you.’
Which was very gratifying, Judith reflected as soon as the maid had shown her to her bedroom and left her alone there: but unluckily the feeling was not mutual. Unpacking, she tried to reason away her dangerous initial prejudice. Mrs Snyder had been very courteous and considerate, after all, and Judith was aware that even at twenty-nine she was still prone to the over-ready intolerance of youth … Still, a faint aversion remained, and Judith could only hope that time would erase it. In the meantime, it didn’t matter. The children were what mattered.
At the end of the following day she was able to sum up her first impressions of them.
Pamela Catesby she had liked at once. This thin, black-clad, fair-haired child, small for her ten years, was going to need all the sympathy and understanding of which Judith was capable. She was timid, quiet and cruelly racked with homesickness. Judith’s heart went out to her, but she was shrewd enough not to be too demonstrative too quickly. There would be plenty of time for that; for the present, it was better to treat her in a kindly but still business-like way, making no overt distinction between her and the others.
And then, the Snyder children …
Camilla, the oldest, was fifteen—a boisterous, tomboyish creature with an untidy mop of mouse-coloured hair; talkative and unquenchably energetic, but not over-endowed intellectually.
‘Miss Carnegie, why does everyone have to spell everything the same way? After all, you said yourself that Shakespeare—’
‘If you don’t spell properly, my dear girl, people will think you’re either ill-educated or a crank. And they’ll treat you accordingly, which won’t be pleasant. Now, once again, how many ells in “always”?’
‘Two, Miss Carnegie—oh, no, one, I mean.’
If Camilla had the energy, Tony certainly had the looks. He was an extraordinarily handsome boy of thirteen, with that bold, sharply chiselled beauty of lip and eye which hints at insolence. Clever too—precociously so—though only in flashes. Judith saw at once that his besetting vice was idleness. And unlike Camilla he was taciturn, sometimes almost to the point of rudeness. Tony would require patient and careful handling.
And lastly, Eve …
Judith realized with something of a shock that she disliked Eve. At twelve, Eve was lean, dark, plain, and a practised hypocrite.
‘Oh, yes, Miss Carnegie, I quite understand now. You make it all so clear.’
But premeditated sycophancy, though displeasing, was by no means the chief count in Judith’s reluctant indictment of Eve. Judith was remembering what she had seen in the play-room that morning.
Eve had been alone in there. It chanced that Judith was wearing rubber-soled brogues, and so Eve did not hear her when she entered in search of a book she had left there.
On the window-sill lay a small green caterpillar, and Eve was holding a lighted match to it. It curled and rolled and twisted in a mute frenzy of pain; and Eve was watching it with a little bubble of saliva at the corner of her mouth.
In three strides Judith was across the room. She struck the match from Eve’s hand, brushed the caterpillar on to the floor, and trod on it.
‘Eve!’ she exclaimed. ‘How could you?’
The girl’s face was flushed; she licked her lips. ‘Oh … Miss Carnegie, I’m so sorry … You see, someone told me they didn’t feel fire, so I was just trying. I’m so sorry, Miss Carnegie.’
‘You were being abominably cruel, Eve. Never do anything like that again.’
And so later, alone in her bedroom, Judith found herself half involuntarily re-enacting the whole repulsive little scene. Of course, she was probably over-estimating its importance. Curiosity, in children, tends to engulf consideration. Children are often cruel. They don’t realize they’re being cruel, and they don’t mean to be …
But Eve had meant to be cruel. And she had been enjoying it.
The Snyders’ house was comparatively isolated in a fold of the Downs. A quarter of a mile away there was a larger place, its chimneys just discernible through rifts in the trees of a park, and a mile further on lay Silchurch, an undistinguished country town where the shopping was done and where Mr Snyder practised as a solicitor. These were the nearest neighbours. But Judith, bred in a country rectory, had no sense of loneliness. She loved the small coppices and shaven slopes of the Downs, and although her afternoon’s freedom each week enabled her to get comfortably to London and back, she felt no particular desire to make use of the opportunity. In the first weeks, too, the children preoccupied her almost exclusively.
In general, she found that her first impressions of them had been just; and she worked, as hard and as tactfully as she knew how, to encourage what was good in them and to root out what was bad. Rather to her surprise, Mrs Snyder’s promise held: she did not interfere. And as to her husband, he was seldom seen. At his first meeting with Judith he had mumbled something conventional and evasive, and had seemed glad to get away. Judith judged that he disliked responsibility, and that in consequence his wife dominated him.
The parents, then, kept themselves to themselves; and Judith’s chief confidant was the cook-housekeeper, Mrs Fley—a plump, comfortable, untidy woman of middle age, much of whose time was occupied in disentangling the muddles created by Mrs Snyder’s managerial incompetence. She was able to enlighten Judith on the subject of Pamela’s status in the household.
‘Why, Miss, the Catesbys were killed in one of them airplane crashes. And Mrs Snyder was a cousin of his, so they’d left orders Pamela was to come here if anything was to happen to them.’
‘And were Mr and Mrs Snyder glad to have her?’ The question crystallized a doubt which had haunted Judith’s mind ever since her arrival.
‘Glad, Miss?’ Mrs Fley sniffed. ‘That’s putting it mildly. The Catesbys were well-to-do folk, and I’ve heard tell they left the master a thousand pound a year for looking after the poor mite. And—well!—it’s not likely they’ll be spending all that money on the child.’
‘Oh, but surely, Mrs Fley—’
‘I know just what you’re going to say, Miss, and I’m sure it’s a credit to you to be always thinking the best of others.’ Mrs Fley nodded her approbation of this judgment while Judith reflected rather morosely on its falsity. ‘But I stick to my point: that money came only just in the nick of time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Fley cryptically. ‘Well, Miss, perhaps I ought to be keeping what I know to myself—but it’s like this: things weren’t going too well with the master before Pamela came here.’ She gestured broadly. ‘Why, surely you’ll have noticed all the repairs and such? And the new furnishings and fittings? There wouldn’t have been any of them, Miss, not without that airplane crash. Nor you wouldn’t be here, either.’
So that explains it, Judith thought: that explains why I sensed an undertone of triumph when I came here. Well, Pamela might have had a worse home; she was not stinted in anything, nor—in spite of the vague implicit threat which had troubled Judith at her first interview with Mrs Snyder—was she treated differently from the others. Judith was about to say as much when a new thought occurred to her.
‘That house in the park, Mrs Fley—the one nearest to here—’
‘Holygate Manor, Miss? My, that’s where the Catesbys used to live.’
Judith nodded. ‘I see. Yes, that accounts for it. You know I always leave the children entirely to their own devices after tea each day? Well, I’ve several times seen Pamela walking over in that direction, and I’ve wondered if it was the house she we going to.’
‘And isn’t it natural, Miss Carnegie?’ said Mrs Fley. ‘Of course, the Manor’s shut up now, and up for sale (though there’s precious few could afford to live there these days); but I dare say the poor young thing likes to walk a bit in the grounds and the gardens—and who’s to blame her?’
‘Yes, of course. But still, Mrs Fley, I’m rather sorry the place is so close. I can’t in charity stop Pamela going there, but it isn’t good for her to brood. It’d be far better if she could make a complete break with the past.’
‘Ah, you’re right there, Miss,’ said Mrs Fley. ‘Poor mite! It’s like as if she was stunned, isn’t it? And she still seems as put about as when she first came here.’
And that, Judith realized as she left the kitchen, was one of the things which had been subconsciously worrying her. Of course, Pamela had been an only child, and the shock of suddenly losing both parents must have been very great; moreover, her visits to Holygate Manor were obviously keeping the wound raw and painful. But children are resilient creatures, and it seemed to Judith ominous that she had never once seen Pamela smile.
That afternoon—it was a day of wind and warmth—Judith borrowed Mrs Fley’s bicycle to go shopping in Silchurch. Autumn (which seemed to come early that year) was already gilding and stripping the trees; shaggy chrysanthemums reigned unchallenged in the gardens; cloud scurried in curling white shreds across the sky. And Judith, returning, met Pamela walking away from the Snyder house, small and alone against the vacant and restless landscape, like a painter’s allegory of solitude. On an impulse Judith dismounted.
‘Hello,’ she said, smiling. ‘Are you on the way to Holygate Manor?’
Pamela looked away at the hedge, but not before Judith had glimpsed the defensive glaze which came into her eyes. ‘Yes, Miss Carnegie.’
‘That’s where you used to live, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Miss Carnegie.’
‘I’ve often wanted to look at it properly. May I come with you?’
‘I—I suppose so.’
It was a deliberately grudging permission, but Judith chose to ignore the hint. She chattered lightly about the Silchurch shops as they walked together, and presently, along a side road whose hedges were sprinkled with snowberries, they came to wrought-iron gates standing sentinel to a short, straight avenue of limes. Judith halted and drew a deep breath.
‘But it’s beautiful!’ she exclaimed.
Her admiration was spontaneous and deeply felt. The house at the end of the avenue, sheltered by trees, framed by flower-beds and lawns, had all the grace and nobility of eighteenth-century architecture at its best. But she could see the beginnings of neglect: the hedges needed trimming; a hinge had come off one of the shutters and had not been replaced; the paths were unswept. There was no sign, as yet, of actual decay, but there was evidence here, none the less, of a counterpoint to the renewal of the Snyder house. To Pamela, who would certainly notice the little things, the condition of her former home, watched and studied day after day, must seem like the progressive and mortal emaciation, on a sick-bed, of someone deeply loved.
