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 ADRIAN
EDMONDSON
BERSERKER!
For Ella, Beattie and Freya
‘That’s our story and we’re stuck with it’
Stan Laurel, Sons of the Desert, 1933
Contents

Introduction

PART 1
What’s in a name?
It’s all a bit woolly
A boy named Sue
Is that a Viking surname?

PART 2
The making of a berserker
A cataclysm
‘The rules!’ shouted Ralph, ‘you’re breaking the rules’
Don’t give them time to think
The slippery slope
Sixty-six of the best

PART 3
Finding things funny
Slapstick
Army, art, German or droogs?
Violence as comedy
The first frying pan
Too silly
Rude word, next question
Running away

PART 4
International rock god
A musical background
To love and be loved in return
Val Doonican – comic nexus
Are you ready to rock?
Money
That’ll be the day

PART 5
Manchester (before it was cool)
A fork in the road
Creativity
A bit nuts
A grebo on the bus
A new way of thinking
A double act

PART 6
The accidental comedian
The accidental comedian
The funniest thing I ever saw
Sturgeon’s Law
Guerrillas of new wave humour
Viva la revolución!
PART 7
We’re on the telly!
The Comic Strip Presents . . .
Learning on the job
Wish you were here
Another double act
The Young Ones
Cult hero
Dear boy, why not try acting?

PART 8
The life and death of a double act
Getting to the bottom of it
The Starcraft years
The Jacobite Rebellion
The end of the road

PART 9
International rock god pt 2
Some bad news
The third reunion
A mandolin

PART 10
Where’s the berserker?
Cold turkey
Brave (and rather confusing) new world

PART 11
Endings
A different kind of father
Checking out early
Dad
The People’s Poet
Le Venerable
How many fingers?

Acknowledgements
Picture acknowledgements
Plate section
Introduction

Somewhere in the blood-filled soft tissue of my hippocampus – a

part of the brain that looks like a rather stringy chicken fillet in the
shape of a seahorse – a mass of neurons and synapses have
apparently been sorting out my experiences and stashing them away
in various bits of my brain since the day I was born.
I never studied biology and can only imagine these neurons and
synapses as being like the Numskulls in The Beezer – little men who
are looking out through my eyeballs and working me from within. My
Numskulls are in constant despair at the antics of their simple-
minded ‘man’: ‘He’s not going to eat the entire packet of biscuits,
surely?’ ‘Why does he waste so much time playing fantasy football?’
‘Good Lord, he’s moving on to spirits now!’ They work twenty-four
hours a day trying to keep me on the straight and narrow, and lurch
from crisis to crisis, getting tired and making mistakes. Some
memories get stashed away in the wrong place or get stuffed in so
hard that they get squashed out of shape.
Taking into account that everyone’s head is full of Numskulls, each
fighting a constant battle to get their man or woman to breathe, to
eat, or to have an opinion about whether that was definitely offside
or not, it’s easy to see how haphazard the memory system might be.
There’s a one-act play by Tom Stoppard I love, called After
Magritte, in which a woman is certain she’s just seen a man in a
West Bromwich Albion shirt, with shaving foam around his chin and
a football under his arm, running down the street; her husband
swears it was a man wearing pyjamas, with a white beard, carrying
a tortoise; while her mother says it was a minstrel wearing striped
prison clothes, sporting a surgical mask and carrying a lute.
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 At least they can all agree they’ve seen something. Something
happened.
The something in question in this book is my life. Which I’m pretty
sure has happened – not all of it, but quite a lot of it. Many people
have been party to bits of it but I doubt they could all agree on what
they’ve seen.
Years ago the Wikipedia entry on me used to say that I was born
in Bolton, that I’d smash up the piano in any club I went to, and that
whilst I was a student at Manchester I shacked up with Viv
Albertine, the guitarist from The Slits. Well, I was born in Bradford,
I’ve never attacked a piano – I love pianos and wish them no harm –
and I’ve never even met Viv Albertine, much though I would’ve
loved to have shacked up with her in the mid-seventies.
Back then I tried to edit the page but the Wikipedia moderators –
self-appointed guardians of the truth – always took my corrections
down. I sent a message saying I actually was Adrian Edmondson.
Oh, how they scoffed. They said it was obvious from what I’d written
that I knew absolutely nothing about him, and they blocked me from
editing the page thereafter.
Of course, on one level they might be right – do I really know
anything about myself? Really? Deep down? What would my
psychiatrist say?
I know I’m not the bloke on the Wikipedia page, which, amongst
the strange emphasis and vague biographical errors, is mainly a list
of programmes I’ve been in. The list is more or less accurate, but
I’m not a list of programmes.
I’m not The Young Ones – I mean of course I was in it, I was
bloody good in it actually, but making the two series of The Young
Ones took up precisely fourteen weeks of my life. Or to put it
another way – less than one half of one per cent of my life.
So far.
In 2016 I adapted William Leith’s book Bits of Me Are Falling Apart
into a one-man play. It took six weeks to do the adaptation, four
weeks to rehearse it, and it played for a further four weeks at the
Soho Theatre, a small London venue, to a total of around 2,500
people. It took up the same amount of my life as The Young Ones.
I’m not expecting you to think it’s as noteworthy, but the Numskulls
in my head have given it exactly the same amount of space.
I know one thing for sure, this is not the most linear
autobiography you’ll ever read. It doesn’t start at the beginning and
plod resolutely through to the end. My memory isn’t linear – it flits
about from one subject to another, back and forth through the
years. So this book is not particularly coherent, but then neither is
my life. It’s all about the tangents.
It’s also littered with references to songs that were at some point
number one in the charts. Whenever I hear a song it gives me more
context about the time I first heard it than any potted history might
do – I can see the colour and the shape of cars, the way people
dressed and behaved, and I can feel how people were thinking at
the time. So every song title in this book is like one of Proust’s
madeleines to me – it takes me straight back to where I was and
what it felt like. I hope they help you in the same way. Or at least
bring you joy.
I hope this book is about more than just me, I think it might be
about you too, because most of us have lived through the same era.
I hope it makes you laugh occasionally, I hope you enjoy the
diversions into history, cooking and pop music, because it’s basically
everything I know about being a human being born in Britain in the
mid twentieth century.

My memory is like a misprinted dot-to-dot puzzle – some of the dots

are missing but my brain fills them in for me. Which sounds
imprecise, but I know that what I remember is true to me. This is
how it felt to me. I have lived my life thinking all of the following to
be the truth, which in some way makes it the truth.
On the other hand I often forget my own children’s names, and
can never remember where I left the bloody keys – so good luck,
and caveat emptor.
 My daughter Freya says she’s always loved this photo of me
because I look like a Danish philosopher. If only. I discuss my
frustrated claims of Viking ancestry later in the book, and only have
a puny degree in drama not philosophy, but you learn the odd thing
by simply hanging around for sixty-six years. So perhaps there is
some philosophy in here too. And I like the Danes.
 Part 1
What’s in a name?
It’s all a bit woolly

The first problem with pinning down who I really am is that no one
even knows my name. No one knows what to call me. Even me.
On first meeting people always say, ‘Do we call you Ade or Adrian?’
and I usually reply, ‘Whatever you can manage’, because in truth I
can’t stomach either.
How did this come to pass?
I arrive into this world ‘quite quickly’ at the bottom of the stairs in
a modest, pebble-dashed semi in an area of Bradford called Wrose.
It’s now BD2, but I’m born two years before postcodes were
invented – which is probably why the ambulance can’t find us, and
why my dad ends up delivering me.
This happens on 24 January 1957 when Guy Mitchell is
toppermost of the poppermost with ‘Singing the Blues’.
This isn’t a conscious memory of course, and Guy isn’t at the
birth, even though his face suggests otherwise. Is that joy? Or
horror? Or a clever mix of the two? One disguising the other?
Everything’s fine. This is normal. I still love you. Aggghh! The horror!
The horror! Hide it for ever! Never speak of it!
It could be the very same expression on Dad’s face, because he
has no training, no aptitude and apparently no stomach for it, but
it’s an emergency and he’s the only one there, apart from my mum,
obviously. And I survive.
 The wool rug at the bottom of the stairs doesn’t.
My family history is very woolly. It’s precise, but it’s precisely
about wool.
At the time I arrive Bradford is struggling with a decline in
fortunes. My earliest memories of the city are of all the buildings
being jet black – a thick residue of filth and soot that had built up
from all the coke and coal that was burned to keep the machines
going in the mills.
Back in 1841 two-thirds of the UK’s wool production was
processed in Bradford, and the population doubled in a decade. By
1900 there were 350 mills – scouring, carding, gilling, combing,
drafting, spinning and twisting to produce yarn and fabric. It was
boom time, and despite the amount of muck and grime being
chucked out by all those chimneys there was a lot of civic pride in all
that industry. To compete with the town halls of neighbouring Leeds
and Halifax, Bradford built a town hall with a clock tower based on
the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and boasted of the city being built
on seven hills – ‘just like Rome’.
While Manchester was nicknamed ‘Cottonopolis’, Bradford became
‘the Wool Capital of the World’. Not quite as snazzy, but no less true.
Worsted – a superior yarn made using only the longest fibres, very
popular for making suits – became a speciality of the city and some
people tried to adopt the name ‘Worstedopolis’, which sounds like a
bad review for a Greek restaurant on TripAdvisor, and thankfully it
didn’t catch on.
This constant desire to make a name for itself, to be better than
Leeds and Halifax, to be on a par with Manchester, or even Florence
and Rome, has the whiff of an inferiority complex. Can a city have a
collective consciousness? All my immediate forebears were born in
Bradford, and while I don’t think they felt inferior exactly, they
certainly seemed to ‘know their place’. I was brought up to think that
other people probably knew better than me. I’ve always struggled
with the idea that I’m not good enough.
My mum is called Dorothy and her maiden name is Sturgeon, a
name that comes originally from Suffolk, which was once a great
sheep-rearing county. It seems the Sturgeons must have followed
the sheep to Bradford because they ended up in the Wool Capital of
the World by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Her dad, George Sturgeon, worked on the shop floor of the dark
satanic mills and died of a heart attack three years short of his
retirement, and a year before I was born.
Her mum was Doris (Grandma Sturgeon), though her maiden
name was Luscombe – a name that comes originally from Devon,
where I now live in a bizarre case of reverse migration. There were,
and still are, a lot of sheep in Devon – I’ve raised a few myself – but
the Luscombes too followed the sheep, and the work, to Bradford.
Doris worked in a weaving mill until she got married when she was
apparently sacked for . . . getting married. She took up moaning as
a full-time occupation. And cheating at canasta with a young boy,
namely me. If she were alive today I could happily tell her that you
don’t have to shout ‘I’m in Meredith’ when you produce your first
meld, that putting the first red three on the table doesn’t entitle you
to all the red threes as they appear, and that you can’t play the
game with just two people anyway.
My dad was Fred Edmondson. That was his full name. Not
Frederick, not Alfred, not Manfred. And no middle name. No
nonsense. Just Fred. He’s one of the very few of my extended family
not to be born in Bradford. Oh yes – this is the fruity part of the plot
– he was a foreigner, born in Liversedge, a full seven and a half
miles from the centre of Bradford. Virtually . . . Dewsbury.
Dad’s dad was Redvers Edmondson (Grandad Ed) – named after
the great general of the Zulu and Boer Wars, and heroic winner of
the Victoria Cross, Redvers Buller. Grandad was a market trader. And
no, he didn’t wear a pinstripe suit and a bowler hat and gamble with
people’s pensions, he worked in actual markets, with his hands, on
actual market stalls, selling, you’ve guessed it, wool.
He was married to Ruth (Grandma Ed), who died in the summer of
1977 when ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer was top of the charts.
Nothing could be less like Grandma Ed than ‘I Feel Love’. I never
hear her say anything nice about anyone. She is dismissive of
everyone and everything. In the 1960s Billy Smart’s Circus is on the
telly every Easter. We’ll sit there watching some trapeze artist shoot
through a hoop of fire and land on an elephant’s back, all whilst
juggling actual lions, and Grandma Ed (a short dumpy woman with
thick ankles – she looks like the grandma in the Giles cartoons) will
say: ‘Oh, I could do that with a bit of practice.’
They’re very big in the church, Grandma and Grandad Ed. Which
might explain the lack of love and compassion. Except it isn’t the
church, it’s the mission. The Sunbridge Road Mission. I haven’t set
foot in it since the late sixties but at that time it was an evangelical
Methodist enclave that, if it were in another country, might be called
fundamentalist.
The Bible is everything. It’s God’s word or nothing. Except the
rude bits, obviously. Not the bit in Genesis when Lot’s daughters get
him drunk and have sex with him; or the bit in Deuteronomy about
not being allowed to go to church if you’ve damaged your testicles;
or the bit in Judges when a woman gets gang raped, dies, and is cut
into twelve pieces which are sent to the twelve tribes of Israel.
Mention them and you’re in trouble. And it’s surprisingly easy to get
into trouble when this stern Methodist God is watching you.
One Sunday, Grandad, who’s one of the ‘elders’, gets me and my
cousin Kevin out in the corridor for some misdemeanour – perhaps
we’ve been smiling – and bangs our heads together so hard that half
of Kevin’s front tooth breaks off and lodges itself in my forehead. I
can still feel the dent. Kevin has a lifetime of dental problems. Praise
the Lord.
It’s a tough religion to go with the tough life of working in a tough
industry in a tough city in tough times. And it’s all in decline!
Even Dad’s faith is in decline. When I get to the age of seven Dad
stops going to the Mission.
‘Hurrah,’ I think, ‘that’s surely the end of it for me, as well? No
more sitting in that fusty room with the other bored kids taking it in
turn to read the Bible aloud.’
But no. Every Sunday my sister and I are now picked up by
Grandma and Grandad Ed and are dragged along – on our own – to
have all the joy sucked out of us. Our parents and our two younger
brothers are allowed to stay at home and hang on to their joy.
Despite asking for an explanation for this over the years none has
ever been forthcoming.
It must have been a moment of high rebellion on Dad’s part, and
I’m rather proud of him – though it seems odd he then couldn’t
accept the rebellious streak in me further on down the line. His mum
was the sternest woman I ever knew, and standing up to her must
have taken some bottle. Although there was obviously some form of
negotiation which must have gone along the lines of:

Grandma Ed: There is only one true path to salvation.

Fred: I can no longer see the path, Mother.
Grandma Ed: Then you are lost to me but I will take your first- and second-
born children, that they may become truly miserable, like me.

Grandma Ed must be aware that there’s a world beyond the

Mission because she’s a cousin of Thora Hird, the famous actress –
one of Alan Bennett’s muses.
Well that’s where you got the acting bug from then – it’s in the
blood!
But no, we never see Thora or any of that side of the family. Partly
because they’re from Lancashire, anathema to Yorkshire folk, but
mostly because of Thora’s decision to become an actress. The Bible
bashers on our side of the Pennines think it’s tantamount to
becoming a prostitute. There’s a rift. They don’t speak. Neither do
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they turn the other cheek. Or love their neighbour as they love
themselves.
‘Ooooh, I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feeeeeel
love.’
Although Thora very definitely wins the argument in my view. First
by appearing in the TV show Hallelujah!, a sitcom about the
Salvation Army, set in the fictional town of Brigthorpe which looks
suspiciously like Bradford, and which incidentally features the
fantastic Patsy Rowlands, who goes on to play Mrs Potato,
Spudgun’s mum in Bottom.
And second by going on to present Songs of Praise and beating
them at their own game.
I eventually meet Thora at some awards do in the nineties,
mention our family connection, and she gives me the oddest look
before simply saying, ‘Oh.’

But back to the wool industry before it dies out completely.

How does this relate to your name? You were right about
tangents.
It’s coming, I promise you.
Uncle Douglas also works on the markets, driving out before the
crack of dawn to set up his stall in South Elmsall, Scunthorpe or
Doncaster. He’s also – well guessed again – selling wool. I
sometimes go with him and help set up the stall, but my main job is
to wander around the market and keep a steady eye on how much
his rivals are selling for, so that he can adjust his prices accordingly.
There’s a bloke on a neighbouring stall selling crockery, he’s brilliant
at the patter and can display an entire dinner service along one
outstretched arm. I want to push him over at the moment of
greatest peril but never summon up the nerve.
And Uncle Colin, well he’s a step up – he works for a wool-
importing business. He goes around the world, looking at sheep.
When he comes back he has a slide show and we all go round to his
house and look at the sheep he’s looked at. Please don’t judge us
too harshly – remember, we’d only recently gone from two to three
channels on the telly.
 But of course there isn’t room for everyone in the wool business,
especially as it’s in steep decline. So rather like those aristocratic
families where the eldest inherits, the next becomes a priest, the
third a soldier and so on, my family diversifies. Dad becomes a
teacher, my uncle Tom becomes a missionary in the Cameroons (I’m
not making this up), and my uncle David becomes an air traffic
controller at Yeadon airport. Now called Leeds-Bradford airport.
Because it’s neither in Leeds nor Bradford. It’s in Yeadon.
But they all do time on the wool stalls at some point in their lives.
So the bulk of my family history is tied to wool and wool
production in a grimy, industrial, northern town; they don’t mind
getting their hands dirty, they get stuck in, and they have no-
nonsense names to match – Fred, Douglas, George, Colin – unless
they happen to be named after a Victoria Cross winner, like Redvers.
And amidst all that northernness, grit, and war heroics, my parents
decide to give me a girl’s name: Adrian.
I told you we’d get there!
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was a difficult business with all this fog about.”
He turned to introduce his companion.
“This is Inspector Flamborough, doctor. He's in charge of the
case. I'm merely here as an onlooker. I've given him the facts, so far
as I know them from you; but I expect that he may wish further
information if you have any.”
At Sir Clinton's words, the mouth under Inspector Flamborough's
tooth-brush moustache curved in a smile, half-friendly and half-
inscrutable. Simultaneously, he seemed to be establishing good
relations with the doctor and appreciating some obscure joke in the
Chief Constable's remarks.
“It's very lucky you're a medical man, sir. Death's all in the day's
work with you and me; neither of us is likely to be put off our
balance by it. Most witnesses in cases of this sort get so confused by
the shock that it's difficult to squeeze any clear story out of them. A
doctor's different.”
Dr. Ringwood was not particularly susceptible to flattery, but he
recognised that the Inspector probably was voicing his real
sentiments. All three of them were experts in death, and among
them there was no need to waste time in polite lamentations. None
of them had ever set eyes on the victim before that night, and there
was no object in becoming sentimental over him.
“Sit down, doctor,” Sir Clinton broke in, after a glance at the
medical man's face. “You look as if you were about tired out. This
'flu epidemic must be taking it out of you.”
Dr. Ringwood did not wait to be asked twice. Sir Clinton followed
his example, but the Inspector, pulling a notebook from his pocket,
prepared to open his investigation.
“Let's see, now, doctor,” he began pleasantly. “I'd like to start
from the beginning. You might tell us just how you happened to
come into the business; and if you can give us some definite times,
it'll be a great help.”
Dr. Ringwood nodded, but seemed to hesitate for a moment
before replying:
“I think I could give you it clearest if I were sure of one thing
first. I believe that's the body of young Hassendean who lived in this
house, but I haven't examined it closely—didn't wish to disturb it in
any way before you turned up. If it is young Hassendean's body,
then I can fit some other things into my evidence. Perhaps you'll
have a look for yourselves and see if you can identify him.”
The Inspector exchanged a glance with his superior.
“Just as you please, sir,” he answered.
He crossed the room, knelt beside the chesterfield, and began to
search the pockets in the body's clothes. The first two yielded
nothing in the way of identification, but from one of the pockets of
the evening waistcoat the Inspector fished out a small card.
“Season ticket for the Alhambra,” he reported, after glancing over
it. “You're right, doctor. The signature's here: Ronald Hassendean.”
“I was pretty sure of it,” Dr. Ringwood answered. “But I like to be
certain.”
The Inspector rose to his feet and came back to the hearthrug.
“Now, perhaps, sir, you'll tell us the story in your own way. Only
let's have it clear. I mean, tell us what you saw yourself and let's
know when you're bringing anything else in.”
Dr. Ringwood had a clear mind and could put his facts together in
proper order. In spite of his physical weariness, he was able to take
each incident of the evening in its proper turn and make it fit neatly
into its place in his narrative. When he had finished, he had brought
the story up to the point when the police arrived. As he closed his
tale, the Inspector shut his notebook with a nod of approval.
“There's a lot of useful information there, doctor. We're lucky in
having your help. Some of what you've told us would have cost a lot
of bother to fish out of different people.”
Sir Clinton rose to his feet with a gesture which invited the doctor
to remain in his chair.
“Of course, doctor,” he pointed out, “a good deal of your story is
like What the Soldier Said—it isn't first-hand evidence. We'll have to
get it for ourselves, again, from the people who gave it to you: Dr.
Markfield and this maid next door. That's only routine; and doesn't
imply that we disbelieve it in the slightest, naturally.”
Dr. Ringwood agreed with a faint smile.
 “I prefer getting a patient's symptoms at first-hand myself,” he
said. “Things do get distorted a bit in the re-telling. And some of
what I gave you is quite possibly just gossip. I thought you ought to
hear it; but most certainly I don't guarantee its accuracy.”
The Inspector beamed his approval of the doctor's views.
“And now, sir,” he said, glancing at Sir Clinton, “I think I'd better
go over the ground here and see if there's anything worth picking
up.”
He suited the action to the word, and began a systematic search
of the room, commenting aloud from time to time for his
companions’ benefit.
“There's no pistol here, unless it's hidden away somewhere,” he
reported after a while. “The murderer must have taken it away with
him.”
Sir Clinton's face took on a quizzical expression.
“Just one suggestion, Inspector. Let's keep the facts and the
inferences in separate boxes, if you please. What we really do know
is that you haven't found any pistol up to the present.”
Flamborough's grin showed that the Chief Constable's shot had
gone home without wounding his feelings.
“Very good, sir. ‘Pistol or pistols, not found.’ I'll note that down.”
He went down on hands and knees to examine the carpet.
“Here's something fresh, sir,” he announced. “The carpet's so
dark that I didn't notice it before. The pattern concealed it, too. But
here it is, all right.”
He drew his fore-finger over the fabric at a spot near the door,
and then held it for their inspection, stained with an ominous red.
“A blood-spot, and a fair-sized one, too! There may be more of
them about.”
“Yes,” said Sir Clinton mildly. “I noticed some on the hall-carpet
as I came in. There's a trail of them from the front door into this
room. Perhaps you didn't see them; they're not conspicuous.”
The Inspector looked a trifle crestfallen.
“I know you've a sharp eye, sir. I didn't spot them myself.”
“Suppose we finish up this room before going elsewhere. All the
windows are fast, are they?” the Chief Constable asked.
 Flamborough examined them and reported that all the catches
were on. Then he gazed up and down the room inquisitively.
“Looking for bullet-holes?” Sir Clinton questioned. “Quite right.
But you won't find any.”
“I like to be certain about things, sir.”
“So do I, Inspector. So does Dr. Ringwood, if you remember.
Well, you can be certain of one thing. If two shots had been fired in
here this evening, and if all the windows had been left closed as
they are now, then I'd have smelt the tang of the powder in the air
when we came in. I didn't. Ergo, no shots were fired in this room.
Whence it follows that it's no use hunting for bullet-holes. Does that
chain of reasoning satisfy you, Inspector?”
Flamborough made a gesture of vexation.
“That's true enough,” he confessed. “I ought to have thought of
it.”
“I think we've got the main points, now, so far as this room itself
goes,” Sir Clinton observed, without paying any heed to the
Inspector's annoyance. “Would you mind examining the body, doctor,
just to confirm your view that he was shot in the lung?”
Dr. Ringwood assented and, crossing over, he subjected young
Hassendean's body to a careful scrutiny. A few minutes sufficed to
prove that the only wounds were those in the chest; and when the
doctor had satisfied himself that his earlier diagnosis was correct, he
turned to the Chief Constable.
“There's no certainty without a P.M., of course, but from the way
the bullets have gone in, it's pretty obvious that the shots took effect
on the left lung. There's very little external bleeding, apparently; and
that rather looks as if one of the intercostal arteries may be involved.
He must have bled a lot internally, I suspect. Probably the P.M. will
confirm that.”
Sir Clinton accepted the verdict without demur.
“And what do you make out of things, Inspector?” he demanded,
turning to Flamborough.
“Well, sir, with these small-calibre pistols, it's difficult to give
more than a guess. So far as I can see, it looks as if the pistol had
been quite close-up when it was fired. I think I can see something
that looks like scorching or discoloration on his dress shirt round
about the wound, though the blood makes it hard to be sure. That's
really as far as I'd like to go until I've had a better chance of
examining the thing.”
Sir Clinton turned back to the doctor.
“I suppose a wound in the lung may produce death at almost any
length of time after the shot's actually fired. I mean that a man may
live for quite a long while even with a wound like this and might be
able to move about to some extent after being shot?”
Dr. Ringwood had no hesitation in agreeing with this.
“He might have lived for an hour or two—even for days. Or else,
of course, he might have collapsed almost at once. You never can
tell what will happen in lung wounds.”
Sir Clinton seemed to give this a certain consideration. Then he
moved towards the door.
“We'll take up the blood-trail now. You'd better switch off the
light and lock the door, Inspector. We don't want anyone blundering
in here and getting a fright by any mischance.”
They went out into the hall, where Sir Clinton drew the attention
of the Inspector to the traces of blood which he had noticed on the
carpet.
“Now we'd better have a look at that car outside,” he suggested.
As they descended the steps from the front door, the Inspector
took a flash-lamp from his pocket and switched it on. Its rays merely
served to light up the fog; and it was not until they came almost to
the side of the car that they could see much. The Inspector bent
across, rubbed his finger over the driving-seat, and then examined
his hand in the light of the lamp.
“Some more blood there, sir,” he reported.
He cleaned away the marks on his finger-tip and proceeded to
explore the other seats in the same manner. The results were
negative. Apart from one or two spots on the running-board at the
driving-seat door, the car seemed otherwise clean. Inspector
Flamborough straightened himself up and turned to Sir Clinton.
“It seems that he must have driven the car back himself, sir. If
someone else had done the driving, the blood would have been on
some of the other seats instead of this one.”
Sir Clinton acquiesced with a gesture.
“I suppose that's possible, doctor? A wound in the lung wouldn't
incapacitate him completely?”
Dr. Ringwood shook his head.
“It would depend entirely on the sort of wound it was. I see
nothing against it, prima facie. Driving a car isn't really much strain
on the body muscles.”
Sir Clinton ran his eye over the lines of the car in the light of the
side-lamps.
“It's an Austin, so he'd be able to get the engine going with the
self-starter, probably, even on a night like this. He wouldn't need to
crank up the car. There would be no exertion on his part.”
The Inspector had been examining the ground.
“It's frozen fairly hard,” he reported. “There's no hope of tracing
the car's track on a night like this, even if one could have done that
through all the marks of the town traffic. That's a blank end.”
“You may as well take the number, Inspector. It's just possible
that some constable may have noticed it, though the chances are
about a thousand to one against that, on a night of this sort.”
Flamborough went round to the rear number-plate and jotted
down the figures in his pocket-book, repeating them aloud as he did
so:
“GX.6061.”
He came round the car again and subjected the whole interior to
a minute scrutiny under the light of his flashlamp.
“Here's a girl's handkerchief lying on the floor,” he said, as he
peered down at the place beside the driver. Then, holding it in the
light from the side-lamp, he turned it over and reported.
“It's got ‘Y.S.’ embroidered in one corner. That would be for
Yvonne Silverdale, I suppose. It doesn't take us much further. Except
that it proves this was the car she went off in with young
Hassendean, and I expect we could have got better proof of that
elsewhere.”
“Nothing else you can find?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“No, sir.”
 Before the Chief Constable could say anything further, two figures
loomed up through the fog and a startled exclamation in a female
voice reached the group around the car. Sir Clinton caught Dr.
Ringwood's arm and whispered hurriedly in his ear:
“The maids coming back to the house. Spin them a yarn that
young Hassendean's met with an accident and been brought home.
Tell them who you are. We don't want to have them in hysterics.”
Dr. Ringwood moved towards the dim figures in the fog.
“I'm Dr. Ringwood,” he explained. “I suppose you're the maids,
aren't you? You must go in very quietly. Young Mr. Hassendean's had
a bad accident and mustn't be disturbed. He's in the room to the
right as you go in at the door, so don't make a fuss in the house.
You'd better get off to bed.”
There was a sound of rapid whispering and then one of the
maids enquired:
“Was it a motor accident, sir?”
Dr. Ringwood, anxious not to commit himself to details, made a
gesture to the window behind him.
“Don't make a row, please. Mr. Hassendean mustn't be disturbed
in any way. Get off to bed as soon as you can, and keep quiet. By
the way, when do you expect the rest of the family home?”
“They've gone out to play bridge, sir,” answered the maid who
had spoken before. “Usually they get home about half-past eleven.”
“Good. I shall have to wait for them.”
The bolder of the two maids had advanced as he was speaking,
and now she stared suspiciously at him in the dim light from the car
lamps.
“Excuse me, sir,” she ventured. “How do I know that it's all
right?”
“You mean I might be a burglar, I suppose?” Dr. Ringwood
answered patiently. “Well, here's Inspector Flamborough. He's surely
protection enough for you.”
The maid examined Flamborough with relief.
“Oh, that's all right, sir. I saw Inspector Flamborough once at the
police sports. That's him, right enough. I'm sorry to have been a bit
suspicious, sir——”
 “Quite right,” Dr. Ringwood reassured her. “Now, just get off to
bed, will you. We've got the patient to think about.”
“Is it a bad accident, sir?”
“Very serious, perhaps. Talking won't mend it, anyhow.”
Dr. Ringwood's temper was becoming slightly frayed by the
maid's persistence. However, she took the hint and retired with her
companion into the house. Inspector Flamborough made a gesture
which arrested them at the door.
“By the way, when did young Mr. Hassendean leave the house to-
night?” he demanded.
“I couldn't say, sir. We left ourselves at seven o’clock. Mr.
Hassendean and Miss Hassendean were just going out then—they
were dining out. And Mr. Ronald was dressing, I think. He was going
out to dinner, too.”
Flamborough dismissed them, and they vanished into the hall. Sir
Clinton gave them a reasonable time to get out of the way before
making any further move. The Inspector occupied himself with
writing a note in his pocket-book.
“I think we may as well go into the house again,” the Chief
Constable suggested. “Just fasten that front door after us, Inspector,
if you please. We may as well have some warning when the family
turns up.”
He led the way up the steps, entered the hall, and, after opening
one or two doors at random, selected the drawing-room of the
house, in which a banked-up fire was burning.
“We may as well wait here. It's to be hoped they won't be long,
now. Sit down, doctor.”
Then, noticing the expression on Dr. Ringwood's face, he
continued:
“I'm sorry to detain you, doctor; but now we've got you, I think
we'll have to keep you until the Hassendeans come in. One never
knows what may turn up. They may have something to tell us which
might need medical checking and you've been too much of a gift
from the gods to part with so long as there's a chance of our
utilising you.”
 Dr. Ringwood tried to make his acquiescence a cheerful one,
though he was thinking regretfully of his bed.
“It's all in the day's work,” he said. “I'm only a bit worried about
that case of scarlet next door. I'll have to look in there before I go.”
“So shall we,” Sir Clinton explained. “Once we've got all the
evidence from the family, we'll need to ring up and get the body
taken off to the mortuary. You say we can telephone from the house
next door?”
“Yes. I had to go there to ring you up myself. The Hassendeans
have no 'phone.”
“We'll go round with you then. . . . H'm! There's the door-bell,
Inspector. You'd better attend to it. Bring them in here, please.”
Flamborough hurried out of the room; they heard some muffled
talk broken by ejaculations of surprise and horror; and then the
Inspector ushered Mr. and Miss Hassendean into the drawing-room.
Dr. Ringwood was unfavourably impressed at the first glance. Mr.
Hassendean was a red-faced, white-haired man of about seventy,
with a feebly blustering manner. His sister, some five years younger,
aped the air and dress of women twenty years her junior.
“What this? What's this, eh?” Mr. Hassendean demanded as he
came into the room. “God bless my soul! My nephew shot? What
does it mean, eh?”
“That's what we should like to know, sir,” Inspector
Flamborough's quiet voice cut into the frothing torrent of the old
man's eloquence. “We're depending on you to throw some light on
the affair.”
“On me?” Mr. Hassendean's voice seemed to strain itself in the
vain attempt to express his feelings at the Inspector's suggestion.
“I'm not a policeman, my good fellow; I'm a retired drysalter. God
bless me! Do I look like Sherlock Holmes?”
He paused, apparently unable to find words for a moment.
“Now, look here, my good man,” he went on, “I come home and
I find you occupying my house, and you tell me that my young
nephew has been shot. He's a good-for-nothing cub, I admit; but
that's beside the point. I want to know who's to blame for it. That's
a simple enough question, surely. And instead of answering it, you
have the nerve to ask me to do your work for you! What do we pay
police rates for, tell me that! And who are these men in my drawing-
room? How did they come here?”
“This is Sir Clinton Driffield; this is Dr. Ringwood,” the Inspector
answered smoothly, taking no notice of Mr. Hassendean's other
remarks.
“Ah! I've heard of you, Sir Clinton,” Mr. Hassendean
acknowledged, less ungraciously. “Well, what about it?”
“We've met under rather unfortunate conditions, Mr.
Hassendean,” Sir Clinton admitted soothingly, “but they're none of
our choosing, you know. I quite understand your feelings; it must be
a bad shock to come home to an affair like this. But I hope you'll see
your way to give us any information you have—anything that will
assist us to get on the track of the person who shot your nephew.
We really depend on you to help us at once, for every hour lost may
make it more difficult to lay our hands on the criminal. Without
knowing it, you may have the key to the thing in your hands.”
More by his manner than by his words, the Chief Constable had
succeeded in pacifying the old man.
“Well, if it's put like that, I don't mind,” he conceded, with a slight
lessening in the asperity of his tone. “Ask your questions and I'll see
what I can do for you.”
Dr. Ringwood, watching the change in the situation, reflected
sardonically to himself that a title had its uses when one came to
deal with a snob.
“That old bounder was rude to the Inspector on principle; but
when Sir Clinton Driffield asks precisely the same question, he's
quite amenable,” he thought to himself. “What a type!”
The Chief Constable, when he began his interrogatory, was
careful not to betray that he already had some information.
“Perhaps we'd better begin at the beginning, Mr. Hassendean,” he
suggested, with the air of one consulting a valued collaborator.
“Could you throw any light on your nephew's arrangements for this
evening? Did he mean to stay in the house, or had he any outside
engagement that you knew about?”
 “He told me he was going out to dinner with that hussy next
door.”
Sir Clinton's smile further disarmed old Hassendean.
“I'm afraid you'll need to be more definite. There are so many
hussies nowadays.”
“You're right there, sir! You're right there. I agree with you. I'm
speaking of the French one next door, her name's Silverdale. My
nephew was always hanging round her skirts, sir. I warned him
against her, often enough.”
“I always knew something would happen!” Miss Hassendean
declared with the air of a justified Cassandra. “And now it has
happened.”
Sir Clinton returned to the main track.
“Have you any idea if he meant to spend the evening next door?”
Miss Hassendean interrupted before her brother could reply.
“He mentioned to me that he was going with her to the Alhambra
to dance. I remember that, because he actually asked me where I
was going myself to-night, which was unusual interest on his part.”
“Scattering his money, of course!” her brother rapped out angrily.
“He had money to scatter, then?” Sir Clinton asked casually. “He
must have been lucky for his age.”
For some reason, this reflection seemed to stir a grievance in the
old man's mind.
“Yes, he had about £500 a year of his own. A very comfortable
income for a single young man. And I had to sit, sir, as his trustee;
pay over the money quarterly to him; and see it wasted in buying
jewellery and whatnot for that wench next door. I'm not a rich man,
sir; and I give you my word I could have spent it better myself. But
I'd no control over him, none whatever. I had to stand by and see all
that good money flung into the gutter.”
Dr. Ringwood turned aside to hide his smile at this revelation of
the drysalter's soul.
“By the way, who gets that money now?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“I do, sir. And I hope I'll put it to better use.”
Sir Clinton nodded in response to this sentiment, and seemed to
ponder before he asked his next question.
 “I suppose you can't think of anyone who might have had a
grudge against him?”
The old man's glance showed some suspicion at the question;
but his sister seemed to have less compunction, for she answered
instead.
“I warned Ronald again and again that he was playing with fire.
Mr. Silverdale never took any open offence, but . . .”
She left her sentence unfinished. Sir Clinton seemed less
impressed than she had expected. He made no comment on her
statement.
“Then I take it, Mr. Hassendean, that you can throw no light on
the affair, beyond what you have told us?”
The old man seemed to think that he had given quite enough
information, for he merely answered with a non-committal gesture.
“I must thank you for your assistance,” Sir Clinton pursued. “You
understand, of course, that there are one or two formalities which
need to be gone through. The body will have to be removed for a
post mortem examination, I'm afraid; and Inspector Flamborough
will need to go through your nephew's papers to see if anything in
them throws light on this affair. He can do that now, if you have no
objections.”
Old Hassendean seemed rather taken back by this.
“Is that necessary?”
“I'm afraid so.”
The old man's face bore all the marks of uneasiness at this
decision.
“I'd rather avoid it if possible,” he grumbled. “It's not for use in
Court, is it? I shouldn't like that, not by any means. To tell you the
truth, sir,” he continued in a burst of frankness, “we didn't get on
well, he and I; and it's quite on the cards that he may have said—
written, I mean—a lot of things about me that I shouldn't care to
have printed in the newspapers. He was a miserable young creature,
and I never concealed my opinion about him. Under his father's will,
he had to live in my house till he was twenty-five, and a pretty life
he led me, sir. I suspect that he may have slandered me in that diary
he used to keep.”
 “You'd better make a note about that diary, Inspector,” Sir Clinton
suggested in a tone which seemed to indicate that Flamborough
must be discreet. “You needn't trouble yourself too much about it,
Mr. Hassendean. Nothing in it will come out in public unless it bears
directly on this case; I can assure you of that.”
The drysalter recognised that this was final; but he could hardly
be described as giving in with a good grace.
“Have it your own way,” he grunted crossly.
Sir Clinton ignored this recrudescence of temper.
“I'll leave the Inspector to see to things,” he explained. “I'll go
with Dr. Ringwood, Inspector, and do the telephoning. You'd better
stay here, of course, until someone relieves you. You'll find plenty to
do, I expect.”
He bade good-night to his involuntary host and hostess and,
followed by the doctor, left the house.
 Chapter IV.
The Crime at Heatherfield
“That's a fine old turkey-cock,” Dr. Ringwood commented, as he
and Sir Clinton groped their way down the drive towards the gate of
Ivy Lodge.
The Chief Constable smiled covertly at the aptness of the
description.
“He certainly did gobble a bit at the start,” he admitted. “But that
type generally stops gobbling if you treat it properly. I shouldn't care
to live with him long, though. A streak of the domestic tyrant in him
somewhere, I'm afraid.”
Dr. Ringwood laughed curtly.
“It must have been a pretty household,” he affirmed. “You didn't
get much valuable information out of him, in spite of all his self-
importance and fuss.”
“A character-sketch or two. Things like that are always useful
when one drops like a bolt from the blue into some little circle, as we
have to do in cases of this sort. I suppose it's the same in your own
line when you see a patient for the first time: he may be merely a
hypochondriac or he may be out of sorts. You've nothing to go on in
the way of past experience of him. We're in a worse state, if
anything, because you can't have a chat with a dead man and find
out what sort of person he was. It's simply a case of collecting other
people's impressions of him in a hurry and discarding about half that
you hear, on the ground of prejudice.”
“At least you'll get his own impressions this time, if it's true that
he kept a diary,” the doctor pointed out.
“It depends on the diary,” Sir Clinton amended. “But I confess to
some hopes.”
 As they drew near the door of Heatherfield, Dr. Ringwood's
thoughts reverted to the state of things in the house. Glancing up at
the front, his eye was caught by a lighted window which had been
dark on his previous visit.
“That looks like a bedroom up there with the light on,” he pointed
out to his companion. “It wasn't lit up last time I was here. Perhaps
Silverdale or his wife has come home.”
A shapeless shadow swept momentarily across the curtains of
the lighted room as they watched.
“That's a relief to my mind,” the doctor confessed. “I didn't quite
like leaving that maid alone with my patient. One never can tell what
may happen in a fever case.”
As they were ascending the steps, a further thought struck him.
“Do you want to be advertised here—your name, I mean?”
“I think not, at present, so long as I can telephone without being
overheard.”
“Very well. I'll fix it,” Dr. Ringwood agreed, as he put his finger on
the bell-push.
Much to his surprise, his ring brought no one to the door.
“That woman must be deaf, surely,” he said, as he pressed the
button a second time. “She came quick enough the last time I was
here. I hope nothing's gone wrong.”
Sir Clinton waited until the prolonged peal of the bell ended when
the doctor took his finger away, then he bent down to the slit of the
letter-box and listened intently.
“I could swear I heard someone moving about, just then,” he
said, as he rose to his full height again. “There must be someone on
the premises to account for the shadow we saw at the window. This
looks a bit rum, doctor. Ring again, will you?”
Dr. Ringwood obeyed. They could hear the trilling of a heavy
gong somewhere in the back of the house.
“That ought to wake anyone up, surely,” he said with a nervous
tinge in his voice. “This is my second experience of the sort this
evening. I don't much care about it.”
They waited for a minute, but no one came to the door.
 “It's not strictly legal,” Sir Clinton said at last, “but we've got to
get inside somehow. I think we'll make your patient an excuse, if the
worst comes to the worst. Just wait here a moment and I'll see what
can be done.”
He went down the steps and disappeared in the fog. Dr.
Ringwood waited for a minute or two, and then steps sounded in the
hall behind the door. Sir Clinton opened it and motioned him to come
in.
“The place seems to be empty,” he said hurriedly. “Stay here and
see that no one passes you. I want to go round the ground floor first
of all.”
He moved from door to door in the hall, switching on the lights
and swiftly inspecting each room as he came to it.
“Nothing here,” he reported, and then made his way into the
kitchen premises.
Dr. Ringwood heard his steps retreating; then, after a short
interval, there came the sound of a door closing and the shooting of
a bolt. It was not long before Sir Clinton reappeared.
“Somebody's been on the premises,” he said curtly. “That must
have been the sound I heard. The back door was open.”
Dr. Ringwood felt himself at a loss amid the complexities of his
adventures.
“I hope that confounded maid hasn't got the wind up and cleared
out,” he exclaimed, his responsibility for his patient coming foremost
in the confusion of the situation.
“No use thinking of chasing anyone through this fog,” Sir Clinton
confessed, betraying in his turn his own professional bias. “Whoever
it was has got clean away. Let's go upstairs and have a look round,
doctor.”
Leading the way, he snapped down the switch at the foot of the
stair-case; but to Dr. Ringwood's surprise, no light appeared above.
Sir Clinton pulled a flash-lamp from his pocket and hurried towards
the next flat; as he rounded the turn of the stair, he gave a muffled
exclamation. At the same moment, a high-pitched voice higher up in
the house broke into a torrent of aimless talk.
 “That girl's a bit delirious,” Dr. Ringwood diagnosed, as he heard
the sound; and he quickened his ascent. But as he reached a little
landing and could see ahead of him, he was brought up sharply by
the sight which met his eyes. Sir Clinton was bending with his flash-
lamp over a huddled mass which lay on the floor at the head of the
flight, and a glance showed the doctor that it was the body of the
maid who had admitted him to the house on his earlier visit.
“Come here, doctor, and see if anything can be done for her,” Sir
Clinton's voice broke in on his surprise.
He leaped up the intervening steps and stooped in his turn over
the body, while Sir Clinton made way for him and kept the flash-
lamp playing on the face. Down the well of the stairs came the voice
of the delirious patient, sunk now to a querulous drone.
The briefest examination showed that the victim was beyond
help.
“We might try artificial respiration, but it would really be simply
time lost. She's been strangled pretty efficiently.”
Sir Clinton's face had grown dark as he bent over the body, but
his voice betrayed nothing of his feelings.
“Then you'd better go up and look after that girl upstairs, doctor.
She's evidently in a bad way. I'll attend to things here.”
Dr. Ringwood mechanically switched on the light of the next flight
in the stairs and then experienced a sort of subconscious surprise to
find it in action.
“I thought the fuse had gone,” he explained involuntarily, as he
hurried up the stairs.
Left to himself, Sir Clinton turned his flash-lamp upwards on to
the functionless electric light bracket above the landing and saw, as
he had expected, that the bulb had been removed from the socket.
A very short search revealed the lamp itself lying on the carpet. The
Chief Constable picked it up gingerly and examined it minutely with
his pocket-light; but his scrutiny merely proved that the glass was
unmarked by any recent finger-prints. He put it carefully aside,
entered the lighted bedroom, and secured a fresh bulb from one of
the lamp-sockets there.
 With this he returned to the landing and glanced round in search
of something on which to stand, so that he could put the new bulb
in the empty socket. The only available piece of furniture was a
small table untidily covered with a cloth, which stood in one corner
of the landing. Sir Clinton stepped across to it and inspected it
minutely.
“Somebody's been standing on that,” he noted. “But the traces
are just about nil. The cloth's thick enough to have saved the table-
top from any marks of his boot-nails.”
Leaving the table untouched, he re-entered the room he had
already visited and secured another small table, by means of which
he was able to climb up and fix the new bulb in the empty socket
over the landing. It refused to light, however, and he had to go to
the foot of the stairs and reverse the switch before the current came
on.
Shutting off his flash-lamp, Sir Clinton returned to the landing
and bent once more over the body. The cause of death was perfectly
apparent: a cord with a rough wooden handle at each end had been
slipped round the woman's throat and had been used as a
tourniquet on her neck. The deep biting of the cord into the flesh
indicated with sufficient plainness the brutality of the killer. Sir
Clinton did not prolong his examination, and when he had finished,
he drew out his pocket-handkerchief and covered the distorted face
of the body. As he did so, Dr. Ringwood descended the stairs behind
him.
“I'll need to telephone for the hospital van,” he said. “It's out of
the question to leave that girl here in the state she's in.”
Sir Clinton nodded his agreement. Then a thought seemed to
strike him.
“Quite off her rocker, I suppose?” he demanded. “Or did she
understand you when you spoke to her?”
“Delirious. She didn't even seem to recognise me,” Dr. Ringwood
explained shortly.
Then the reason for the Chief Constable's questions seemed to
occur to him.
 “You mean she might be able to give evidence? It's out of the
question. She's got a very bad attack. She won't remember
anything, even if she's seen something or heard sounds. You'd get
nothing out of her.”
Sir Clinton showed no particular disappointment.
“I hardly expected much.”
Dr. Ringwood continued his way down stairs and made his way to
the telephone. When he had sent his message, he walked up again
to the first floor. A light was on in one of the rooms, and he pushed
open the door and entered, to find Sir Clinton kneeling on the floor
in front of an antique chest of drawers.
A glance round the room showed the doctor that it belonged to
Mrs. Silverdale. Through the half-open door of a wardrobe he caught
sight of some dresses; the dressing-table was littered with feminine
knick-knacks, among which was a powder-puff which the owner had
not replaced in its box; a dressing-jacket hung on a chair close to
the single bed. The whole room betrayed its constant use by some
woman who was prepared to spend time on her toilette.
“Found anything further?” Dr. Ringwood inquired as Sir Clinton
glanced up from his task.
“Nothing except this.”
The Chief Constable indicated the lowest drawer in front of him.
“Somebody's broken the lock and gone inside in a hurry. The
drawer's been shoved home anyhow and left projecting a bit. It
caught my eye when I came in.”
He pulled the drawer open as he spoke, and Dr. Ringwood moved
across and looked down into it over the Chief Constable's shoulder. A
number of jewel-boxes lay in one corner, and Sir Clinton turned his
attention to these in the first place. He opened them, one after
another, and found the contents of most of them in place. One or
two rings, and a couple of small articles seemed to be missing.
“Quite likely these are things she's wearing to-night,” he
explained, replacing the leather cases in the drawer as he spoke.
“We'll try again.”
The next thing which came to his hand was a packet of
photographs of various people. Among them was one of young
Hassendean, but it seemed to have no special value for Mrs.
Silverdale, since it had been carelessly thrust in among the rest of
the packet.
“Nothing particularly helpful there, it seems,” was Sir Clinton's
opinion.
He turned next to several old dance-programmes which had been
preserved with some care. Lifting them in turn and holding them so
that the doctor could see them, the Chief Constable glanced at the
scribbled names of the various partners.
“One gentleman seems to have been modest, anyhow,” he
pointed out. “No initials, even—just an asterisk on the line.”
He flipped the programmes over rapidly.
“Mr. Asterisk seems to be a favourite, doctor. He occurs pretty
often at each dance.”
“Her dancing-partner, probably,” Dr. Ringwood surmised. “Young
Hassendean, most likely, I should think.”
Sir Clinton put down the programmes and searched again in the
drawer. His hand fell on a battered notebook.
“Part of a diary she seems to have kept while she was in a
convent. . . . H'm! Just a school-girl's production,” he turned over a
few pages, reading as he went, “and not altogether a nice school-
girl,” he concluded, after he had paused at one entry. “There's
nothing to be got out of that just now. I suppose it may be useful
later on, in certain circumstances.”
He laid the little book down again and turned once more to the
drawer.
“That seems to be the lot. One thing's pretty clear. The person
who broke that lock wasn't a common burglar, for he'd have
pouched the trinkets. The bother is that we ought to find out what
this search was for; and since the thing has probably been removed,
it leaves one with a fairly wide field for guessing. Let's have another
look round.”
Suddenly he bent forward and picked up a tiny object from the
bottom of the drawer. As he lifted it, Dr. Ringwood could see that it
was a scrap of paper; and when it was turned over he recognised it
as a fragment torn from the corner of an envelope with part of the
stamp still adhering to it.
“H'm! Suggestive rather than conclusive,” was Sir Clinton's
verdict. “My first guess would be that this has been torn off a
roughly-opened letter. So there must have been letters in this drawer
at one time or another. But whether our murderous friend was after
a packet of letters or not, one can't say definitely.”
He stood up and moved under the electric light in order to
examine the fragment closely.
“It's got the local post-mark on it. I can see the VEN. The date's
1925, but the month part has been torn.”
He showed the scrap to Dr. Ringwood and then placed it carefully
in his note-case.
“I hate jumping to conclusions, doctor; but it certainly does look
as if someone had broken in here to get hold of letters. And they
must have been pretty important letters if it was worth while to go
the length of casual murder to secure them.”
Dr. Ringwood nodded.
“He must have been a pretty hard case to murder a defenceless
woman.”
Sir Clinton's face showed a faint trace of a smile.
“There are two sexes, doctor.”
“What do you mean? . . . Oh, of course. I said ‘he must,’ and you
think it might have been a woman?”
“I don't think so; but I hate to prejudge the case, you know. All
that one can really say is that someone came here and killed that
unfortunate woman. The rest's simply conjecture and may be right
or wrong. It's easy enough to make up a story to fit the facts.”
Dr. Ringwood walked across to the nearest chair and sat down.
“My brain's too fagged to produce anything of the sort, I'm
afraid,” he admitted, “but I'd like to hear anything that would explain
the damned business.”
Sir Clinton closed the drawer gently and turned round to face the
doctor.
“Oh, it's easy enough,” he said, “whether it's the true solution or
not's quite another question. You came here about twenty past ten,
were let in by the maid, saw your patient, listened to what the maid
had to tell you—lucky for us you took that precaution or we'd have
missed all that evidence, since she can't tell us now—and left this
house at twenty-five to eleven. We came back again, just an hour
later. The business was done in between those times, obviously.”
“Not much theory there,” the doctor pointed out.
“I'm simply trying it over in my mind,” Sir Clinton explained, “and
it's just as well to have the time-limits clear to start with. Now we go
on. Some time after you had got clear away from here, the murderer
comes along. Let's call that person X, just to avoid all prejudice
about age or sex. Now X has thought out this murder beforehand,
but not very long beforehand.”
“How do you make that out?” Dr. Ringwood demanded.
“Because the two bits of wood which form the handles of the
tourniquet are simply pieces cut off a tree, and freshly cut, by the
look of the ends. X must have had possession of these before
coming into the house—hence premeditation. But if it had been a
case of long premeditation, X would have had something better in
the way of handles. I certainly wouldn't have risked landing on a
convenient branch at the last moment if I'd been doing the job
myself; and X, I may say, strikes me as a remarkably cool,
competent person, as you'll see.”
“Go on,” the doctor said, making no attempt to conceal his
interest.
“Our friend X probably had the cord in his or her pocket and had
constructed the rough tourniquet while coming along the road. Our
friend X was wearing gloves, I may say.”
“How do you know that?” Ringwood asked.
“You'll see later. Now X went up to the front door and rang the
bell. The maid came along, recognised X. . . .”
“How do you know that?” Ringwood repeated.
“I don't know it. I’m just giving you the hypothesis you asked for.
I don't say it's correct. To continue: this person X inquired if
Silverdale (or Mrs. Silverdale, perhaps) was at home. Naturally the
maid said no. Most likely she told X that her companion had
scarlatina. Then X decided to leave a note, and was invited into the
house to write it. It was a long note, apparently; and the maid was
told to go to the kitchen and wait till X had finished. So off she
went.”
“Well?”
“X had no intention of putting pen to paper, of course. As soon as
the maid was out of the way, X slipped upstairs and switched on the
light in this room.”
“I'd forgotten it was the light in this window that we saw from
the outside,” Dr. Ringwood interrupted. “Go on.”
“Then, very quietly, by shifting the table on the landing under the
electric light, X removed the bulb that lighted the stair. One can
reach it by standing on that table. Then X shifted the table back to
its place. There were no finger-prints on the bulb—ergo, X must
have been wearing gloves, as I told you.”
“You seem to have got a lot of details,” the doctor admitted. “But
why all this manœuvring?”
“You'll see immediately. I think I said already that whoever did
the business was a very cool and competent person. When all was
ready, X attracted the maid's attention in some way. She came to the
foot of the stairs, suspecting nothing, but probably wondering what
X was doing, wandering about the house. It's quite likely that X
made the sick girl upstairs the pretext for calling and wandering out
of bounds. Anyhow, the maid came to the foot of the stairs and
moved the switch of the landing light. Nothing happened, of course,
since the bulb had been removed. She tried the switch backwards
and forwards once or twice most likely, and then she would conclude
that the lamp was broken or the fuse gone. Probably she saw the
reflection of the light from the room-door. In any case, she came
quite unsuspiciously up the stair.”
Sir Clinton paused, as though to allow the doctor to raise
objections; but none came, so he continued:
“Meanwhile X had taken up a position opposite the door of the
room, at the foot of the second flight of stairs. If you remember, a
person crouching there in semi-darkness would be concealed from
anyone mounting the first flight. The tourniquet was ready, of
course.”
 Dr. Ringwood shuddered slightly. Apparently he found Sir
Clinton's picture a vivid one, in spite of the casual tone in which it
had been drawn.
“The girl came up, quite unsuspicious,” Sir Clinton continued.
“She knew X; it wasn't a question of a street-loafer or anything of
that sort. An attack would be the last thing to cross her mind. And
then, in an instant, the attack fell. Probably she turned to go into the
lighted room, thinking that X was there; and then the noose would
be round her neck, a knee would be in her back and . . .”
With a grim movement, Sir Clinton completed his narrative of the
murder more effectively than words could have done.
“That left X a clear field. The girl upstairs was light-headed and
couldn't serve as a witness. X daren't go near her for fear of
catching scarlatina—and that would have been a fatal business, for
naturally we shall keep our eye on all fresh scarlet cases for the next
week or so. It's on the cards that her scarlatina has saved her life.”
Dr. Ringwood's face showed his appreciation of this point.
“And then?” he pressed Sir Clinton.
“The rest's obvious. X came in here, hunting for something which
we haven't identified. Whatever it was, it was in this drawer and X
knew where it was. Nothing else has been disturbed except slightly
—possibly in a hunt for the key of the drawer in case it had been left
lying around loose. Not finding the key, X broke open the drawer and
then we evidently arrived. That must have been a nasty moment up
here. I don't envy friend X's sensations when we rang the front door
bell. But a cool head pulls one through difficulties of that sort. While
we were standing unsuspiciously on the front door steps, X slipped
down stairs, out of the back door, and into the safety of the fog-
screen.”
The Chief Constable rose to his feet as he concluded.
“Then that's what happened, you think?” Doctor Ringwood
asked.
“That's what may have happened,” Sir Clinton replied cautiously.
“Some parts of it certainly are correct, since there's sound evidence
to support them. The rest's no more than guess-work. Now I must
go to the 'phone.”
 As the Chief Constable left the room, the sick girl upstairs
whimpered faintly, and Dr. Ringwood got out of his chair with a yawn
which he could not suppress. He paused on the threshold and looked
out across the body to the spot at the turn of the stair. Sir Clinton's
word-picture of the murderer crouching there in ambush with his
tourniquet had been a little too vivid for the doctor's imagination.
 Chapter V.
The Bungalow Tragedy
In the course of his career, Sir Clinton Driffield had found it
important to devote some attention to his outward appearance; but
his object in doing so had been different from that of most men, for
he aimed at making himself as inconspicuous as possible. To look
well-dressed, but not too smart; to seem intelligent without
betraying his special acuteness; to be able to meet people without
arousing any speculations about himself in their minds; above all, to
eliminate the slightest suggestion of officialism from his manner:
these had been the objects of no little study on his part. In the days
when he had held junior posts, this protective mimicry of the
average man had served his purposes excellently, and he still
cultivated it even though its main purpose had gone.
Seated at his office desk, with its wire baskets holding packets of
neatly-docketed papers, he would have passed as a junior director in
some big business firm. Only a certain tiredness about his eyes
hinted at the sleepless night he had spent at Heatherfield and Ivy
Lodge, and when he began to open his letters, even this symptom
seemed to fade out.
As he picked up the envelopes before him, his eye was caught by
the brown cover of a telegram, and he opened it first. He glanced
over the wording and his eyebrows lifted slightly. Then, putting
down the document, he picked up his desk-telephone and spoke to
one of his subordinates.
“Has Inspector Flamborough come in?”
“Yes, sir. He's here just now.”
“Send him along to me, please.”
 Replacing the telephone on its bracket, Sir Clinton picked up the
telegram once more and seemed to reconsider its wording. He
looked up as someone knocked on the door and entered the room.
“Morning, Inspector. You're looking a bit tired. I suppose you've
fixed up all last night's business?”
“Yes, sir. Both bodies are in the mortuary; the doctor's been
warned about the P.M.’s; the coroner's been informed about the
inquests. And I've got young Hassendean's papers all collected. I
haven't had time to do more than glance through them yet, sir.”
Sir Clinton gave a nod of approval and flipped the telegram
across his desk.
“Sit down and have a look at that, Inspector. You can add it to
your collection.”
Flamborough secured the slip of paper and glanced over it as he
pulled a chair towards the desk.
“ ‘Chief Constable, Westerhaven. Try hassendean bungalow
lizardbridge road justice.’ H'm! Handed in at the G.P.O. at 8.5 a.m.
this morning. Seems to err a bit on the side of conciseness. He could
have had three more words for his bob, and they wouldn't have
come amiss. Who sent it, sir?”
“A member of the Order of the Helpful Hand, perhaps. I found it
on my desk when I came in a few minutes ago. Now you know as
much about it as I do, Inspector.”
“One of these amateur sleuths, you think, sir?” asked the
Inspector, and the sub-acid tinge in his tone betrayed his opinion of
uninvited assistants. “I had about my fill of that lot when we were
handling that Laxfield affair last year.”
He paused for a moment, and then continued:
“He's been pretty sharp with his help. It's handed in at 8.5 a.m.
and the only thing published about the affair is a stop-press note
shoved into the Herald. I bought a copy as I came along the road.
Candidly, sir, it looks to me like a leg-pull.”
He glanced over the telegram disparagingly.
“What does he mean by ‘Lizardbridge road justice’? There's no
J.P. living on the Lizardbridge Road; and even if there were, the
thing doesn't make sense to me.”
 “I think ‘justice’ is the signature, Inspector—what one might term
his nom-de-kid, if one leaned towards slang, which of course you
never do.”
The Inspector grinned. His unofficial language differed
considerably from his official vocabulary, and Sir Clinton knew it.
“Justice? I like that!” Flamborough ejaculated contemptuously, as
he put the telegram down on the desk.
“It looks rather as though he wanted somebody's blood,” Sir
Clinton answered carelessly. “But all the same, Inspector, we can't
afford to put it into the waste-paper basket. We're very short of
anything you could call a real clue in both these cases last night,
remember. It won't do to neglect this, even if it does turn out to be a
mare's nest.”
Inspector Flamborough shrugged his shoulders almost
imperceptibly, as though to indicate that the decision was none of
his.
“I'll send a man down to the G.P.O. to make inquiries at once, sir,
if you think it necessary. At that time in the morning there can't have
been many wires handed in and we ought to be able to get some
description of the sender.”
“Possibly,” was as far as Sir Clinton seemed inclined to go. “Send
off your man, Inspector. And while he's away, please find out
something about this Hassendean Bungalow, as our friend calls it.
It's bound to be known to the Post Office people, and you'd better
get on the local P.O. which sends out letters to it. The man who
delivers the post there will be able to tell you something about it.
Get the 'phone to work at once. If it's a hoax, we may as well know
that at the earliest moment.”
“Very well, sir,” said the Inspector, recognising that it was useless
to convert Sir Clinton to his own view.
He picked up the telegram, put it in his pocket, and left the
room.
When the Inspector had gone, Sir Clinton ran rapidly through his
letters, and then turned to the documents in the wire baskets. He
had the knack of working his mind by compartments when he chose,
and it was not until Flamborough returned with his report that the
Chief Constable gave any further thought to the Hassendean case.
He knew that the Inspector could be trusted to get the last tittle of
useful information when he had been ordered to do so.
“The Hassendeans have a bungalow on the Lizardbridge Road,
sir,” Flamborough confessed when he came back once more. “I got
the local postman to the 'phone and he gave me as much as one
could expect. Old Hassendean built the thing as a spec., hoping to
get a good price for it. Ran it up just after the war. But it cost too
much, and he's been left with it on his hands. It's just off the road,
on the hill about half-way between here and the new place they've
been building lately, that farm affair.”
“Oh, there?” Sir Clinton answered. “I think I know the place. I've
driven past it often: a brown-tiled roof and a lot of wood on the
front of the house.”
“That's it, sir. The postman described it to me.”
“Anything more about it?”
“It's empty most of the year, sir. The Hassendeans use it as a
kind of summer place—shift up there in the late spring, usually, the
postman said. It overlooks the sea and stands high, you remember.
Plenty of fresh air. But it's shut up just now, sir. They came back to
town over two months ago—middle of September or thereabouts.”
Sir Clinton seemed to wake up suddenly.
“That fails to stir you, Inspector? Strange! Now it interests me
devilishly, I can assure you. We'll run up there now in my car.”
The Inspector was obviously disconcerted by this sudden desire
for travel.
“It's hardly worth your while to go all that way, sir,” he protested.
“I can easily go out myself if you think it necessary.”
Sir Clinton signed a couple of documents before replying. Then
he rose from his chair.
“I don't mind saying, Inspector, that two murders within three
hours is too high an average for my taste when they happen in my
district. It's a case of all hands to the pumps, now, until we manage
to get on the track. I'm not taking the thing out of your hands. It's
simply going on the basis that two heads are better than one. We've
got to get to the bottom of the business as quick as we can.”
 “I quite understand, sir,” Flamborough acknowledged without
pique. “There's no grudge in the matter. I'm only afraid that this
business is a practical joke and you'll be wasting your time.”
Sir Clinton dissented from the last statement with a movement of
his hand.
“By the way,” he added, “we ought to take a doctor with us. If
there's anything in the thing at all, I've a feeling that Mr. Justice
hasn't disturbed us for a trifle. Let's see. Dr. Steel will have his hands
full with things just now; we'll need to get someone else. That
Ringwood man has his wits about him, from what I saw of him. Ring
him up, Inspector, and ask him if he can spare the time. Tell him
what it's about, and if he's the sportsman I take him for, he'll come if
he can manage it. Tell him we'll call for him in ten minutes and bring
him home again as quick as we can. And get them to bring my car
round now.”
Twenty minutes later, as they passed up an avenue, Sir Clinton
turned to Dr. Ringwood:
“Recognise it, doctor?”
Dr. Ringwood shook his head.
“Never seen it before to my knowledge.”
“You were here last night, though. Look, there's Ivy Lodge.”
“So I see by the name on the gate-post. But remember it's the
first time I've seen the house itself. The fog hid everything last
night.”
Sir Clinton swung the car to the left at the end of the avenue.
“We shan't be long now. It's a straight road out from here to the
place we're bound for.”
As they reached the outskirts of Westerhaven, Sir Clinton
increased his speed, and in a very short time Dr. Ringwood found
himself approaching a long low bungalow which faced the sea-view
at a little distance from the road. It had been built in the shelter of a
plantation, the trees of which dominated it on one side; and the
garden was dotted with clumps of quick-growing shrubs which
helped to give it the appearance of maturity.
Inspector Flamborough stepped down from the back seat of the
car as Sir Clinton drew up.