Bodies from the Library 2, page 28
part #2 of Bodies from the Library Series
‘But I thought you was going to get married, dearie,’ said Mrs Banks, and Peggy sobbed. ‘So I was, and my Bob’s ever so keen, but I’m the only relation auntie’s got, and I don’t see how I can leave her.’
‘Well, that wants thinking about,’ said Banks weightily. ‘A chance is a chance and a girl oughtn’t to turn her back on a good husband if so be one offers. Your auntie now—’
‘Be quiet, Banks,’ retorted his wife. ‘Miss Tiler’s quite right to think of her auntie—not that we wouldn’t keep an eye on her, us having been neighbours nearly 12 years. I’d always pop in and welcome, and I’d sleep in any time she’s feeling poorly.
‘Now say if we settle it like this, dearie. You stay on another week, and if she don’t seem no worse, you go back home and get busy with your trousseau and that, and if so be it’s necessary, Banks’ll drop you a line and tell you how auntie is. You just trust us to keep an eye on her, see?’
‘Thanks ever so! That’d be a great weight off my mind,’ said Peggy Tiler. ‘Auntie’d be that cross if she knew I’d worried you, her being too independent to tell anyone she’s poorly, but I just couldn’t go away without saying something—and she goes that blue in the face sometimes, I’m real frightened.’
‘I’m very glad you’ve told us, miss,’ said the irrepressible Banks. ‘As Mother says, we’ll keep an eye on Miss Walton. Been friends and neighbours all these years. Couldn’t do less.’
‘And she’s fond of you,’ declared Peggy.
‘And us of her,’ said Mrs Banks. ‘Now you rely on us, dearie, and though Banks didn’t put it very well, chance is a great thing, so don’t you go and miss yours. Never keep a young man waiting when ’e’s ready with the wedding ring.’
‘She’s a smart piece, and I’ve no doubt she’s snappy at demonstrating those electric gadgets,’ said Banks later when Peggy had gone. ‘But I wish ’er joy o’ that Bob Hewson of hers. And that reminds me: Didn’t Miss Walton promise to leave you her silver tea service and that gold watch of her dad’s?’
‘What a thing to say,’ protested Mrs Banks. ‘I’m ashamed of you—not but what she did promise, us having been neighbours so long, and her not too partial to that Peggy.’
‘I wonder if the old lady put it down on paper,’ ruminated Banks. ‘When you nursed her over that bronchitis, she did mention a legacy. Be a pity if ’er wishes wasn’t carried out.’
‘There is that,’ agreed Mrs Banks, ‘but we can’t do nothing about it, so it’s no use worrying.’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said Mr Banks thoughtfully. ‘I might put in a word, tactful like. I know what. I’ll tell her I’m making a will meself, and ask her if she’d oblige by being a witness to same. That’ll sort of break the ice. And you can say as ’ow it’s everybody’s bounden duty to make a proper will. So’s to save all the nasty backbiting and unpleasantness you get after the funeral.’
‘Now you stop it, Banks,’ said his wife severely. ‘If you so much as mentions the word funeral to Miss Walton, you’ll put your foot in it proper. Why, with a heart like that she might pop off any minute if you upsets her, and what about a legacy then? I can see that Peggy Tiler showing respect to the dead by carrying out her auntie’s sacred wishes, I don’t think. If ever there was a Miss Grab-all, it’s that Peggy!’
‘A-rr-r, didn’t I always tell you there was more in it than met the eye when Miss T. came over all attentive to auntie?’ said Banks. ‘And there must be a nice little bit in the bank, too, for Miss Walton’s lived very lady-like and comfortable all these years. Tell you what, Maggie, you make an ’abit of goin’ in there last thing of an evening, just to see Miss Walton’s comfortable and that, and I’ll offer to fix that sink of ’ers she’s ’ad trouble with, and maybe do that bit o’ wiring so’s she can ’ave the electric over ’er sink same’s she been wanting. A little bit of neighbourly attention to lead up to me just mentioning about ’er will, see?’
‘Maybe I do,’ said Mrs Banks, ‘but just you be careful. The trouble with you is that you thinks you’re clever, and I ’appen to know you ain’t, so don’t go trying your tact stuff on with the old lady, or maybe you’ll upset the blooming apple-cart.’
‘Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but is there a party named Hewson here? Bob Hewson’s the name.’
Miss Walton was turning out her kitchen, busy with pail and scrubbing brush; overhead the new electric light (fixed by Mr Banks) shone brightly, and Miss Walton turned quite proudly to the back door where the strange gentleman had just knocked and put his head in at the half-open door.
He had spoken politely, and Miss Walton replied cheerfully: ‘I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong house. I’m the only person here. My niece has been staying with me, but she’s just this moment leaving.’
‘Sorry to have bothered you, ma’am, and thank you,’ replied the other. He was a well set-up young fellow, and Miss Walton added, ‘Try next door. Mr Banks knows everybody about here.’
He went away, murmuring thanks, and a moment later Peggy Tiler’s shrill voice called: ‘Auntie. Auntie. Be an angel and wait at the front door to watch for my taxi. I’ve brought my suitcase down, and the taxi’s ordered, and now I’ve got a run in my stocking. I must mend it, or it’ll run right down. If the taxi comes, tell him to put my case inside. I won’t be a brace of shakes.’
Obligingly, Miss Walton went to the front door, thinking how nice it would be to have the house to herself again. Peggy meant well, but was always fussing over something.
Glancing down the little alley-way which separated her house from the Banks’s, Miss Walton saw that her gentlemanly visitor was chatting to Mr Banks at the yard gate. A moment later Peggy came flying to the front door.
‘Thanks a lot, Auntie, I’ve fixed it. You just go and carry on with your old scrubbing, but don’t work too hard. I’ll come and say goodbye when the taxi’s come.’
‘All right, dear. I’ll just finish scrubbing that dresser,’ said Miss Walton.
Mr Banks and his visitor saw the taxi arrive and heard Peggy yell loudly, ‘Auntie, darling, I’m going now.’
She dashed into the house, leaving the front door open, and they heard her call: ‘Auntie, I’m just off,’ and a moment later her voice broke into a shrill scream of terror.
‘Cripes! What on earth?’ yelled Mr Banks, as his visitor leapt over the little fence and landed in Miss Walton’s yard. Peggy still wailed loudly, ‘Auntie! Auntie!’ and Mr Banks was in the next door kitchen in ‘two shakes of a duck’s tail,’ as he said afterwards.
Poor Miss Walton lay on the floor, her pail overturned beside her, floods of soapy water running around the flagstones. The visitor was bending over Miss Walton, and Peggy was wailing: ‘She’s fainted. It’s her heart. Oo, I knew all that scrubbing was too much for her.’
‘Better have a light on,’ said Mr Banks. ‘Heck, the bulb’s gone phut, just when it’s wanted, too.’
The visitor jumped to his feet and astonished Mr Banks by blowing a police whistle. ‘Yelling won’t help, Miss,’ he said sharply to Peggy. ‘You go and sit in the parlour and keep quiet.’
Another tall man appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Surgeon—and make it snappy,’ ordered the first man, and then a uniformed constable arrived. ‘Take this lady into the parlour and stay there with her,’ snapped the original visitor.
Well, I never did!’ exclaimed Mr Banks. ‘Is she very bad?’
‘She’s dead,’ replied the other.
‘I was afraid of this,’ said Mr Banks, ‘her heart was weak.’
‘It was, was it?’ rejoined the other. ‘I’m a CID man. You can just stay where you are until I’m ready to talk to you.’
He looked round the kitchen at the overturned pail and the rubber kneeling mat just beside it, and scratched his head thoughtfully. Then he glanced at the new electric fitment overhead.
‘Who fixed that up?’ he demanded.
‘I did,’ said Mr Banks, ‘and a good workman-like job it is too. Wires properly insulated, bakelite fittings all in order, so don’t you go looking down your nose at me. Nothing wrong with it, except the bulb’s gone.
‘And why’s it gone?’ demanded the CID man. ‘It was all right when I was here five minutes ago. Where’s the main fuse box?’
Banks indicated the fuse box with a gesture of his thumb, and the CID man opened it.
‘Main fuse gone,’ he said. ‘Now you just stay where you are and don’t make trouble. There’s some reason why that fuse went.’
‘I’m not making any trouble. If you think my wiring’s at fault I’ll trouble you to call in the borough electricians,’ said Mr Banks with dignity.
The CID man lifted the bucket thoughtfully and set it on the rubber kneeling mat. It was very thick rubber.
‘A-rr-r … see what you’re getting at,’ said Banks. ‘That’s insulated, that is. Try the dustbin, mister. You’ve got something there. And kindly remember I was talking to you next door when this ’ere occurred.’
The CID man went and rummaged in the ashes in the dustbin and returned shortly with a length of flex, fitted at one end with an adapter for plugging into the bulb socket.
The other end of the flex was untwisted into its two separate wires, one wire being stripped of its insulated covering for several inches. Both wires were still dripping with soapy water.
‘The wickedness of it!’ exclaimed Mr Banks. ‘You see what she did?’
‘You be quiet,’ said the CID man. ‘It’s fingerprints that will settle this job. There wasn’t time to wipe them off.’
Both the electric bulb and the adapter on the flex showed Peggy Tiler’s fingerprints.
Without assistance from Mr Banks, the CID man re-assembled the contraption with which Peggy had killed her aunt. She had connected her flex by means of its adapter to the bulb socket.
The bared half of the flex wire was run into the bucket of water, the other half was balanced over the edge of the bucket, hanging clear, but in such a manner that it would have slipped into the water when the short-sighted Miss Walton plunged her hand into the bucket. The result was to make a complete circuit and thus bring about a lethal electric shock.
Although the bucket had stood upon the rubber mat to insulate it, Miss Walton, standing upon the damp flagstones of the kitchen floor, had earthed the apparatus when she touched the bucket.
When he was allowed to go home, Mr Banks gave a graphic account of the affair to his wife.
‘The CID man was after Bob Hewson. Peggy’s chap. He’s a con man, and due for a stretch. The detective noticed at once the light ’ad failed, and ’e looked a bit old-fashioned at me … Poor old lady, if she ’adn’t been so short-sighted she might’ve spotted them wires.’
‘And think of Peggy getting ’er auntie out of the kitchen so’s she could fix that up! I never did!’ said Mrs Banks. ‘Did Miss Walton ever make that will, Banks?’
‘No she didn’t. I suppose it’ll all go to the Crown now,’ said Banks sadly. ‘No other relatives. That’s another chance lost.’
‘Chance lost, indeed!’ said Mrs Banks. ‘I reckon you ’ad a lucky chance yourself, that CID man being with you the identical moment it ’appened.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Mr Banks. ‘I always said chance is a great thing.’
E. C. R. LORAC
Edith Caroline Rivett was born in Hendon, North London, in 1894. As well as two novels under her own name, she wrote over 70 book-length detective mysteries under two pen names: ‘E. C. R. Lorac’, who was assumed by many contemporary critics to be a man, and the less ambiguous ‘Carol Carnac’.
Carol Rivett was largely brought up in St John’s Wood, also in North London, and she attended the prestigious South Hampstead High School, one of Britain’s leading girls’ schools. After leaving, she became an art student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, specialising in design, embroidery and calligraphy. She quickly gained employment as a school arts mistress, which she remained for many years, and she also supplemented her income by selling her own work and accepting private commissions. Rivett’s work as a letterer was widely admired, and for eleven years she also worked on an illuminated book recording the benefactions made to the Abbey since the time of Edward the Confessor. However, Rivett’s most significant artistic work, at least as far as readers of this volume are concerned, will be the logo she designed for the Detection Club, the dining club for mystery writers established in the late 1920s.
In the 1930s and 40s, Carol Rivett lived in South Devon where she was the arts mistress at a girls’ boarding school, Blatchington Court, and she was very active in community affairs, raising funds for charities such as the Red Cross and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital by, for example, sitting on a local Brains Trust alongside the Dowager Countess of Devon and other local luminaries. After the war Rivett moved to Aughton, a small village in Lunesdale, Lancashire, where she lived for many years with her sister Gladys. She continued to play a role in public life, for example opening exhibitions of the work of local artists, presenting prizes at local schools, and giving talks on the detective novel, as she did in 1953 as part of an exhibition mounted by the National Book League to mark Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.
While Carol Rivett wrote some short stories in the 1920s, it was not until the comparatively late age of 36 that she attempted a novel, a detective story published in 1931 under the title Murder on the Burrows and credited to ‘E. C. R. Lorac’, the initials being of course her own and the surname an inversion of the name Carol. More than 40 more titles would follow and in 1936, in a similar approach to that taken by her contemporary Cecil Street, Rivett began a second series of novels, this time writing as Carol Carnac, the surname drawing on a remote but illustrious branch of her father’s family. Rivett’s two strands of books are pretty much indistinguishable in style, and while it is sometimes suggested that the Carnac books are all set in the North of England and the Loracs in the South, that is not the case. Generally, her plots are not particularly complex or challenging but they hold interest for their originality, and though some of her characters can be rather bland, others—particularly victims and murderers—are more memorable. Almost all of her books have an extremely strong sense of place, especially those with a rural setting. This was doubtless because Rivett set them in places she knew well—several early titles take place in London, especially St John’s Wood and Regent’s Park, including the political mystery The Organ Speaks, while others such as Fire in the Thatch are located in Devon, where Rivett lived in the 1930s. Several of her later books are set in Lancashire’s Lune Valley and the surrounding areas, where Rivett lived after the Second World War; these include Rigging the Evidence (1955), which features a manhunt in Swaledale, and the highly regarded late novel The Double Turn (1956), which deals with the investigation of the death of the eccentric housekeeper of an aged and unfashionable artist.
As ‘E. C. R. Lorac’, Rivett’s main character was Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, a sound—if stolid—police officer who enjoys nothing better than a walk in the countryside. Like Rivett, ‘Mac’ prefers the single life and in around 30 novels he investigates with the help of Detective Inspector Reeves. As well as the novels and short stories in which Mac appears—the finest of which, arguably, are the serial murders story Policemen in the Precinct (1949) and the political mystery Crime Counter Crime (1936)—there is a single radio play, Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble, in which Mac investigates death on a farm, apparently the result of natural causes. Most of the Carnac books also centre on two policemen, Inspector Julian Rivers and his sidekick Inspector Lancing, who are similarly methodical in their investigations.
Under her own name, Rivett wrote two ‘straight’ novels which have well-drawn characters and an undertow of humour. In the first, Outer Circle (1939), a seventeen year old girl—alone in the world—has an illegitimate child after a passionate love affair with a self-centred pianist whom she met in the Outer Circle, a road encircling Regents Park near Rivett’s childhood home; in the second, Time Remembered (1940), a widow and her impetuous young niece have various adventures and eventually find happiness.
Carol Rivett remained active until her death in 1958. Although she is not seriously considered to be one of the true greats of the Golden Age, her work remains very popular. Her books have been difficult to obtain for many years but happily they are gradually becoming available again with reprints by the British Library and others.
‘Chance is a Great Thing’ was published in London’s Evening Standard on 8 August 1950.
THE MENTAL BROADCAST
Clayton Rawson
I leaned across the magic shop counter and watched The Great Merlini put a drop of machine oil in the hinge of a Talking Skull.
‘Jim Thompson,’ I said, ‘is gathering contributions for a book of tricks. He wants one from you.’
The skull in Merlini’s hands wagged its jaw experimentally and Merlini threw his voice. The skull said, ‘We just put the finishing touches on a new illusion—Sawing an Elephant in Two. Would he like that?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said sceptically. ‘His readers might have difficulty getting such a big saw. Besides, he wants something impromptu and spectacular.’
‘Particular, isn’t he?’ Merlini handed me a deck of cards. ‘Here, look at this deck and make sure the cards are all different.’
I did. They were. I said, ‘Okay.’
‘Good. Take the deck into the next room, select and remember one card and bury it in the deck. Like this.’ He demonstrated. ‘Hold the deck face down, pull a group of cards at random from the middle of the deck, look at the card on the face of the group, drop them all on the deck and square it up. Then come back.’
This method of selection sounded familiar except that instead of trying to glimpse the top card as I always did, Merlini made it quite obvious that he had not seen any card. I scowled, went into the next room and did as directed.
