Anthony Berkeley – The Silk Stocking Murders (страница 2)

In all, three novels were published as by Francis Iles, with the third—As for the Woman (1939)—less successful than it might have been had it been presented as non-genre fiction, perhaps under yet another pseudonym. While a fourth ‘Francis Iles’ title was planned and even announced, Berkeley had published his last novel.

A few short stories appeared from time to time and, in the late 1950s, he completed two volumes of limericks, which were published under his own name. Berkeley also wrote some radio plays for the BBC, including one that, though credited to Anthony Berkeley, included two songs ‘by Anthony B. Cox’—and was introduced on its original broadcast by none other than Francis Iles!

In all, Anthony Berkeley published 24 books in a little over 14 years. He was also a prolific contributor to periodicals under his various names, authoring over 300 stories, sketches and articles; and he also reviewed crime fiction and other books up until shortly before his death in 1971.

To Agatha Christie, Berkeley was ‘Detection and crime at its wittiest—all his stories are amusing, intriguing and he is a master of the final twist, the surprise denouement.’ Dorothy L. Sayers also admired Berkeley and has Harriet Vane, in the Lord Peter Wimsey novel Have His Carcase (1932), describe the ‘twistiness’ of what she calls the Roger Sheringham method—‘You prove elaborately and in detail that A did the murder; then you give the story one final shake, twist it round a fresh corner, and find that the real murderer is B.’ The last word can be left to the mystery novelist Christianna Brand, a friend and near neighbour of Berkeley’s in London, who when reminiscing about the early years of the Detection Club commented: ‘Sometimes I have thought he was really the cleverest of all of us.’

TONY MEDAWAR

September 2016

CHAPTER I

A LETTER FOR MR SHERINGHAM

ROGER SHERINGHAM halted before the little box just inside the entrance of The Daily Courier’s enormous building behind Fleet Street. Its occupant, alert for unauthorised intruders endeavouring to slip past him, nodded kindly.

‘Only one for you this morning, sir,’ he said, and produced a letter.

With another nod, which he strove to make as condescending as the porter’s (and failed), Roger passed into the lift and was hoisted smoothly into the upper regions. The letter in his hand, he made his way through mazy, stone-floored passages into the dark little room set apart for his own use. Roger Sheringham, whose real business in life was that of a best-selling novelist, had stipulated when he consented to join The Daily Courier as criminological expert and purveyor of chattily-written articles on murder, upon a room of his own. He only used it twice a week, but he had carried his point. That is what comes of being a personal friend of an editor.

Bestowing his consciously dilapidated hat in a corner, he threw his newspaper on the desk and slit open the letter.

Roger always enjoyed this twice-weekly moment. In spite of his long acquaintance with them, ranging over nearly ten years, he was still able to experience a faint thrill on receiving letters from complete strangers. Praise of his work arriving out of the unknown delighted him; abuse filled him with combative joy. He always answered each one with individual care. It would have warmed the hearts of those of his correspondents who prefaced their letters with diffident apologies for addressing him (and nine out of ten of them did so), to see the welcome their efforts received. All authors are like this—and all authors are careful to tell their friends what a nuisance it is having to waste so much time in answering the letters of strangers, and how they wish people wouldn’t do it. All authors, in fact, are—But that is enough about authors.

It goes without saying that since he had joined The Daily Courier Roger’s weekly bag of strangers had increased very considerably. It was therefore not without a certain disappointment that he had received this solitary specimen from the porter’s hands this morning. A little resentful, he drew it from its envelope. As he read, his resentment disappeared. A little pucker appeared between his eyebrows. The letter was an unusual one, decidedly.

It ran as follows:

The Vicarage,

Little Mitcham, Dorset.

DEAR SIR,—You will, I hope, pardon my presumption in writing to you at all, but I trust that you will accept the excuse that my need is urgent. I have read your very interesting articles in The Daily Courier and, studying them between the lines, feel that you are a man who will not resent my present action, even though it may transfer a measure of responsibility to you which might seem irksome. I would have come up to London to see you in person, but that the expense of such a journey is, to one in my position, almost prohibitive.

Briefly, then, I am a widower, of eight years’ standing, with five daughters. The eldest, Anne, has taken upon her shoulders the duties of my dear wife, who died when Anne was sixteen; and she was, till ten months ago, ably seconded by the sister next to her in age, Janet. I need hardly explain to you that, on the stipend of a country parson, it has not been an easy task to feed, clothe and educate five growing girls. Janet, therefore, who, I may add, has always been considered the beauty of the family, decided ten months ago to seek her fortune elsewhere. We did our best to dissuade her, but she is a high-spirited girl and, having made up her mind, refused to alter it. She also pointed out that not only would there be one less mouth to feed, but, should she be able to obtain employment of even a moderately lucrative nature, she would be able to make a modest, but undoubtedly helpful, contribution towards the household expenses.

Janet did carry out her intention and left us, going, presumably, to London. I write ‘presumably’ because she refused most firmly to give us her address, saying that not until she was securely established in her new life, whatever that should be, would she allow us even to communicate with her, in case we might persuade her, in the event of her not meeting with initial success, to give up and come home again. She did however write to us occasionally herself, and the postmark was always London, though the postal district varied with almost every letter. From these letters we gathered that, though remaining confident and cheerful, she had not yet succeeded in obtaining a post of the kind she desired. She had, however, she told us, found employment sufficiently remunerative to allow her to keep herself in comparative comfort, though she never mentioned the precise nature of the work in which she was engaged.

She had been in the habit of writing to us about once a week or so, but six weeks ago her letters ceased and we have not heard a word from her since. It may be that there is no cause for alarm, but alarm I do feel nevertheless. Janet is an affectionate girl and a good daughter, and I cannot believe that, knowing the distress it would cause us, she would willingly have omitted to let us hear from her in this way. I cannot help feeling that either her letters have been going astray or else the poor girl has met with an accident of some sort.

My reasons, sir, for troubling you with all this are as follows. I am perhaps an old-fashioned man, but I do not care to approach the police in the matter and have Janet traced when probably there is no more the matter than an old man’s foolish fancies; and I am quite sure that, assuming these fancies to have no foundation, Janet would much resent the police poking their noses into her affairs. On the other hand, if there has been an accident, the fact is almost certain to be known at the offices of a paper such as The Daily Courier. I have therefore determined, after considerable reflection, to trespass upon your kindness, on which of course I have no claim at all, to the extent of asking you to make discreet enquiries of such of your colleagues as might be expected to know, and acquaint me with the result. In this way recourse to the police may still be avoided, and news given me of my poor girl without unpleasant publicity or officialism.

If you prefer to have nothing to do with my request, I beg of you to let me know and I will put the matter to the police at once. If, on the other hand, you are so kind as to humour an old man, any words of gratitude on my part become almost superfluous.—Yours truly,

A. E. MANNERS.

P.S.—I enclose a snapshot of Janet taken two years ago, the only one we have.

‘The poor old bird!’ Roger commented mentally, as he reached the end of this lengthy letter, written in a small, crabbed handwriting which was not too easy to decipher. ‘But I wonder whether he realises that there are about eight thousand accidents in the streets of London every twelve months? This is going to be a pretty difficult little job.’ He looked inside the envelope again and drew out the snapshot.

Amateur snapshots have a humorous name, but they are seldom really as bad as reputed. This one was a fair average specimen, and showed four girls sitting on a sea-shore, their ages apparently ranging from ten to something over twenty. Under one of them was written, in the same crabbed handwriting, the word ‘Janet’. Roger studied her. She was pretty, evidently, and in spite of the fact that her face was covered with a very cheerful smile, Roger thought that he could recognise her from the picture should he ever be fortunate enough to find her.