Cold, Lone and Still

12: Europa and the Bull

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Sandy had been back for less than a week when we had a prospective client. He was a surprise item if ever there were such a thing, but before he presented himself we had another visitor. This was young Trickett. News of his arrival reached us by way of the usual channels. Briggs, our office boy, reported to Polly, the senior typist of what she proudly called her ‘pool’ — herself and two youngsters fresh from commercial college — that: ‘There’s a young guy in horn-rims and a dirty sweater wants to see Mr Melrose.’

Polly translated this to Elsa as: ‘There’s a kind of poet-type in jeans and a roll-neck pullover. He is asking for Mr Melrose. Says his name is Trickett.’

From Elsa came the amendment: ‘A rather dingy literary llama — see Hilaire Belloc — wants an interview, Comrie. I don’t remember anybody on the books named Lucius Trickett, so he can’t be one of ours. Will you see him?’ (All this lovely informality would have gone, I knew, if we had taken Hera into partnership.)

‘Trickett? Oh, yes, I know him. Send him in,’ I said.

‘That’s the student bloke, isn’t it?’ said Sandy. ‘I’ll leave him to you.’ He went to his own office, taking Elsa with him, and Trickett came in.

‘Awfully sorry to bother you in business hours,’ he said, ‘but it seemed better than calling at your flat. I say, you know, it’s getting a bit much, you know.’

‘Bingley?’ Iasked.

‘Yes, indeed. Won’t let us alone, you know. Now we’ve done the geology of The Way, we’ve got stacks of notes to collate and specimens to label before term starts, and it’s nothing but interruptions and all this endless questioning and going over the old ground time and time again. He has even got the Glasgow police to chase up Perth. I had a letter this morning. As for poor old Bull, they absolutely hound him. What’s to be done, Melrose?’

‘Goodness knows.’

‘And a fat lot of help that is! Sorry! Not your fault, I know, but it really is too sickening. We’ve nowhere to get together except at the hall of residence and there our work is continually interrupted by this snooping copper.’

‘The get-together,’ I said, ‘does it include Coral and Patsy?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Are they residents, then?’

‘Of course not. It’s the men’s hall, but we need the two girls because of working on the West Highland project. The warden is in residence now, of course, and he shoos the girls out every day as soon as we’ve all had tea.’

‘He wasn’t in residence at the time of the party, though.’

‘No, he was still on vacation, but he’s been in the house ever since.’

‘The hall, during term, was only for men,’ I said, ‘so the women at the party would not have known about that passage to the cloakroom.’

‘Naturally not. We had permission for them to use the warden’s own accommodation on the first floor. Patsy and Coral had been briefed beforehand and were to tell the other women — Jane Minch and Miss Camden and Tansy and Rhoda and the girls in the orchestra, you know — where to go if they wanted to powder up.’

‘I don’t know why,’ I said, ‘but it had not occurred to me that the hall was unknown territory to the women students. One takes so much for granted in these days of girls invading boys’ public schools and infiltrating men’s colleges at the universities.’

‘I hardly think there are unisex dormitories, though,’ said Lucius Trickett. ‘Anyway, you have it right with regard to our present predicament. Except for Patsy and Coral, the women had never been on the premises before. There is a strict rule against parties at the halls of residence. The dances are always held at the poly itself. That’s why everything is so sickening, because I had a hell of a job to get the warden to agree to the Highland Way party and now, although it was no fault of mine, I feel I’ve let him down. If the party had been only for poly people, he would never have given permission, but it was for the Highland lot and now an outsider has to go and get himself murdered. It really is too bad.’

I sympathised, but could offer no help. I had learned something, however, which had changed my views more than a little. Had it not been for the corpse in the ruins on Rannoch Moor, I would have thought that the stab in the back which had killed poor Carbridge was more of a woman’s than a man’s crime, but even though the Rannoch murder was known to have been committed by a man, that man was an habitual criminal and, to such, the ordinary rules of fair play do not apply. More than once, when I thought about the poly murder — and it was seldom out of my mind — I had considered the possibility of its having been committed by a woman. Now, however, Trickett appeared to have made that idea improbable. It seemed that only the men would have known where that dark passage was. The women concerned were likely to have been ignorant of the layout of the building.

I re-visualised what I myself knew of it. We had been admitted at the front door by Trickett himself and had been led straight past the main staircase to the common-room where the orchestra, consisting of several young men and three girls, was already assembled. We had been greeted by Patsy in all the erotic splendour of her Turkish get-up. The room had three doors, the one by which we had entered, the one I had opened to get out and smoke my cigarette and by which Coral and Freddie had brought in the relays of food, and a third door which I had been told led only to a small wing which housed the sick-bay and which was always kept locked unless one of the students was ill.

Bull, it was clear, had been stationed where I saw him so that he could answer any telephone calls, since the telephone would hardly have been audible anywhere else with so much noise going on in the common-room. There was bound to be a telephone in the warden’s quarters, I assumed, but, at the time, the warden was not in residence.

So much for Bull’s having been stationed where I found him and for Trickett’s having opened the front door to the guests. It followed that the only woman who might know of the passage in which I had stumbled upon the body was Coral, who would have passed Bull’s end of the passage when she and Freddie were rushing down Bull’s corridor with the trays of food. It was in the highest degree unlikely, however, that she had enquired where the little passage led or even noticed it particularly, and equally unlikely that Freddie would have mentioned it to her considering that it led straight to the men’s cloakroom.

I thought of the electric lightbulb which was missing. Bull had put off replacing it because to put in another one meant going and getting a ladder. I did not know where the ladder was kept, but I assumed that Detective-Inspector Bingley had long ago dealt with this point. Bull had been lax, of course, but that, in itself, was not a criminal offence.

Bull himself was certainly too short to have been able to remove or replace the bulb without a ladder, but he had been seated on an ordinary kitchen chair, so I wondered why it had not occurred to him to use that to stand on.

I considered the other men. Todd and Trickett were both tall enough to have reached the bulb without the aid of a ladder, and, although they both topped me, I too was tall enough to have reached it, and so, come to that, was Carbridge himself, who was just about my own height. The puzzle which nobody had solved was how and why Carbridge had been in the house before the party was due to begin. He was not an ex-poly man, so would not have known automatically of the basement entrance left open for the students. I wondered who had put him wise or had brought him there so early.

I wondered how much strength it took to plunge a knife into a man’s heart. Todd, I assumed, would have had no difficulty and, although Trickett was a string-bean of a fellow, he was wiry and tough and might have put on a lot of muscle by dint of his delving and chipping on the tour in Scotland. This might even apply to the female geologists, too. They had appeared to be working even harder than the men when Hera and I saw them at it.

There remained Andrew Perth, but by that time there was little doubt that Bingley and the Glasgow police could account for his movements during the period under review. There was the question of alibis for the rest of us. On the day of the party, provided that the doctors had estimated the time of death more or less correctly, Hera and I were able to provide alibis for one another irrespective of shop girls, cinema attendants and all the rest of it, so long as the police were prepared to take the word of an engaged couple. All the same, I still hoped that nobody had mentioned to Bingley the punch-up I had had with Carbridge at Crianlarich.

It was at this point in my meditations that our unexpected client arrived and was announced by the hierarchy in ascending order of importance thus:

Briggs to Polly: ‘Little old geezer stinking of mothballs in his best suit wants to see Mr Melrose.’

Polly to Elsa: ‘Something off the shop floor called Bull is asking for Mr Melrose and won’t be happy till he gets him.’

Elsa to me: ‘There’s a Mr Bull, Comrie. Seems harmless, but may have a bomb concealed on his person.’

Trickett: ‘Oh, well, I’ll be going. Do what you can for Bull, won’t you?’)

Me: ‘Show the visitor in. Goodbye, then, Lucius.’

Elsa (when Trickett had gone): ‘I don’t know where you pick them up, but it’s your choice.’

Our visitor was Bull. He was impressed by his reception, it appeared, but slightly morose about it.

‘It’s as bad as tryin’ to get into Buck’nam Palace without an invite,’ he said, ‘though that’s been done, too, I berlieve.’

‘I know. Never mind. Take a seat. Any news?’

‘Not of the kind you means. That dick is still measurin’ out my footprints, so to say. I can’t get him off my back no-how. But that’s not what I come about.’

‘I can’t give you a job here, I’m afraid.’

‘You can and you can’t. Any road, young Trickett said come to you, so I’ve come.’

‘Trickett? So that’s what he came about! Say on!’

‘I wants to write me life story.’

‘That sounds a tall order.’

‘So it would be if I was to do your actual writin’, but that ’ud be beyond me. I’ve forgot most of the schoolin’ I ever had. So I goes to the Citizens’ Advice, see, and puts it to ’em and there was a young feller there seemed interested and he says, quite serious-like, “What you need is a ghost,” he says. I thinks he’s havin’ me on, but no.’

‘No, he wasn’t having you on,’ I agreed. ‘It’s often done. One party supplies the information and the other party — usually a trained journalist —writes it up and takes a share of the proceeds or else is paid for his work by the principal in the undertaking.’

‘Right. So, not knowin’ no one, I asks young Trickett and he advises me to come to you to see what chance I got and to pave the way, like.’

‘Not a lot of chance of publication, I’m afraid,’ I said regretfully. ‘You see, Bull, autobiographies and biographies have to be about well-known people whom other people are interested in.’

‘Wouldn’t they be interested in a hangman’s deperty assistant? There’s plenty in favour of bringin’ back the rope, you know.’

‘But you can’t mean —’

‘Oh, yes, and better nor that. Went back to me real name, of course, when I took the job at the hall of residence. The warden knows me personal history, but nobody else. Lost me position, you see, never mind why; it will all be in the book. I didn’t fancy comin’ down to bein’ a screw at Parkhurst or Dartmoor or wherever it would have been. Me life wouldn’t have been worth a dog-biscuit among a buggerin’ lot of bloody murderers, specially with a name like mine.’

‘You astound me, Bull, you really do! The only thing is that I’m pretty sure it’s been done already, you know — this autobiography of a public executioner.’

‘Oo by?’

‘I couldn’t say off-hand.’

‘So nor couldn’t nobody else, then, could ’em? Look, supposin’ as how whoever it is and me gets the book wrote up and put in typin’, what’s the chance you’ll take it on and see it through for us?’

‘It would depend entirely upon how good a book it was, and I warn you that our standards are high. We’re not in the market for duds. We have our reputation to consider. Look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If I can find you a reputable “ghost”, I’ll let you know; and if we recommend a ghost-writer, it will be a good one. I would have to arrange a meeting, though, to make sure that the journalist is willing to take the job on. I’ve got somebody in mind, as a matter of fact, but I’m not sure that yours is a job which would appeal to a woman.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Thanks, Mr Melrose. Be seein’ you. Thought you might be interested.’

‘All right, Bull. I’ll look into it. By the way, what makes you think that, when hanging was done away with, they would make you a screw at one of HM prisons?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? I’d given good service, hadn’t I? Got testimonials, haven’t I, for all they’re writ in a foreign langwidge.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought you were tall enough to take a job as a prison warder. You weren’t tall enough to put that electric light bulb back without a ladder, were you?’

I could see he thought the reference to the past was rather tactless. As soon as he had gone, I called in Sandy and Elsa. When Elsa had finished laughing, she said, ‘Why don’t you kill two birds with one stone?’

‘As how?’

‘Stick him on to Dame Beatrice’s granddaughter and so get your psychiatrist interested in Carbridge’s murder from a personal standpoint. We’ve got Miss Lestrange’s name on our books. She has published a couple of novels, but they didn’t do much good, so she trained as a journalist and works on her local paper. Now and again she gets a piece accepted by the Sunday papers and women’s mags, and she does quite a bit of ghosting. She is down under the Stone House address, but that is given merely to inspire confidence and impress Sally’s clients. I don’t suppose Dame Beatrice has anything to do with it except to give permission for her address to be used. I expect her secretary is told to re-address any letters which come for the granddaughter and send them on. It’s just a family thing. Blood is thicker than water, after all.’

‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘the connection with Dame Beatrice makes my job easier in a way. I shall ring up and ask where I can get in touch with Sally Lestrange and explain why I want to see her. Of course there isn’t the slightest chance that we shall sponsor Bull’s book and attempt to wish it on to a publisher.’

‘Why not?’ said Elsa. ‘Mycroft and Holmes might take it if it’s any good at all. They specialise in that sort of thing.’

‘Anyway, I’ll ring up and find out what’s doing,’ I said. ‘Obviously the Stone House is only an accommodation address, as you say. I suppose Miss Lestrange’s own isn’t very impressive.’

I rang up at four. As the song says, everything stops for tea. Laura answered, so I told her why I was calling the Stone House and asked where I could get in touch with Miss Sally Lestrange.

‘Hang on a minute,’ she said. The next voice was that of Dame Beatrice, so I explained myself again to her.

‘How enterprising people are!’ she said. ‘A hangman’s assistant, you say. I wish you would come and see me, Mr Melrose, before you tackle Sally. To quote Oberon — unless Shakespeare was making it all up — “this falls out better than I could devise”. When may we expect you?’

‘Whenever is convenient to you.’

‘Come to lunch tomorrow, then.’

‘Thank you very much.’

So, once again, I found myself at the Stone House. Before lunch, Laura gave me Miss Lestrange’s address and after lunch we sat in the garden in upholstered cane chairs — deck chairs are one of my abominations — and talked about Bull and the death of Carbridge.

I referred to the complaints of Trickett and Bull that they were still being harassed by Bingley and I also mentioned that, if Carbridge had been dead for at least four hours when the police surgeon first looked at the body, he must have been on the premises at four in the afternoon or earlier. ‘And I can’t think why,’ I said.

‘I wonder how long the students took in the preparation of their party,’ said Laura. ‘An hour, two hours, three?’

‘Not more than two at the very outside, I should say. It wasn’t like Christmas, for example. I mean, there were no decorations to put up, no elaborate cooking to be done. So far as I could see, the food was nothing but hamburgers, cocktail sausages, potato crisps and salted peanuts. There was nothing which could not be handed round more or less on the spot. There were mugs and glasses set out, but that could have been done in less than ten minutes and all the drinks were in bottles, so there was no preparation needed there.’

‘In any case, as one of the invited guests, Mr Carbridge would hardly have been asked for help in getting the party ready,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘I still don’t know how he found out how to oil into the place without anybody else’s knowledge. I suppose he may have heard the students mention the back entrance at one of the youth hostels and simply stored up the information. He could even have arranged to meet one of the students there, but it would need to be early on, because later the other students would be getting the party ready.’

‘You mean cherchez la femme, then,’ said Laura.

‘But les femmes knew nothing about the geography of the hall of residence. It’s a pad for men students,’ I said. Laura laughed and said that she had been a student, too, in her time. ‘Not that we went in for present-day capers,’ she added, ‘but there was a men’s college not so far from ours and bets of various kinds were offered and, from time to time, accepted. Besides, if Carbridge wanted to meet one of the girls and couldn’t meet her at his digs for some reason, what was to prevent him from sending her a note and suggesting they met at the back door of the hall and he would take her in with him?’

‘I think it must have been the other way round, if it happened at all,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I think your reconstruction is unarguable, but, as you have indicated, the women students probably knew more about the men’s hall of residence than the authorities may have thought suitable. Therefore it is more likely that the assignation was made by the girl than by Mr Carbridge. Had it been suggested by him, she might or might not have agreed to it.’

‘She wouldn’t, if we’re talking about Patsy Carlow,’ I put in. ‘Todd was interested in her, too, or so I was told, and anybody who could have Todd wasn’t very likely to bother about an ass like Carbridge. I even had to keep an eye on Todd and Hera, if you want to know.’

‘The plot thickens,’ said Laura. ‘Suppose Patsy makes the ploy, Carbridge is flattered and goes blithely to his doom?’

‘Oh, no, of course he — I mean, I’m sure Patsy didn’t do anything of the sort,’ I said. ‘Why should she? Carbridge was pretty frightful in a back-slapping, “old boy, old boy” sort of way, and a bit of a nuisance to women, perhaps, but he was utterly harmless, I’m sure. If he was lured into that house and murdered, it had nothing to do with young Patsy Carlow. She is as silly as a wench can be, but —’

‘Then you mean somebody sent Carbridge a note in her name,’ said Laura, ‘and he fell into the trap.’

‘Dear me!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘No wonder Sally’s novels had so little success with the public! Her plots must have been singularly inadequate. Let us hope the story told by the hangman’s hanger-on will prove more profitable to her.’

‘Is there any chance that this Bull’s reminiscences will get published?’ asked Laura. I replied that I would have no idea until I had read them, but that our secretary, a knowledgeable young woman, thought there might be a hope.

‘It depends upon what Miss Lestrange can do with the material and, of course, how much of it the old chap can supply,’ I said. ‘People who don’t know the ropes have no idea how much and what kind of information is needed to make a full-length book. Personally, knowing what I do about Bull, I doubt very much whether Miss Lestrange will find the job worth her while. All the famous murderers have been done to death — well, I don’t quite mean that. I mean, they’ve been written up and their crimes dissected and their trials analysed and goodness knows what-all. I can’t imagine that Bull will have anything fresh to say and, in any case, he was hardly a principal figure, I gather.’

‘I don’t know how they could ever find anybody willing to hang another person,’ said Laura, ‘but I believe I would have hated even more to be the judge who had to pass sentence, than I would to be the hangman.’

‘Both are in the hands of a higher power, to wit, the jury,’ I said. ‘It is the twelve good persons and true with whom the verdict of innocent or guilty rests. The judge merely passes sentence and the hangman merely used to carry it out. Personally I would rather be hanged than serve a life sentence. I’m very sure of that.’

‘You say that now, but only because you are in no danger of either,’ said Laura. ‘You might feel differently if you were in the condemned cell.’

‘The trouble with juries,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘is that they have no conception of what really constitutes evidence. If they had, I, for one, should not be with you today.’

I stared at her, but she cackled, so I concluded that she had not meant what her sinister hint implied. Anyway, I had found out what I wanted to know. Because of the connection Sally had formed with my agency, Dame Beatrice was prepared to take an active part in solving the mystery of Carbridge’s death.