The Lake District Murder (British Library Crime Classics) Read online

  This edition published in 2014 by

  The British Library

  96 Euston Road

  London NW1 2DB

  Originally published in London in 1935 by Skeffington & Son

  Introduction © Martin Edwards 2014

  Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library

  ISBN 978 0 7123 6316 7

  Typeset by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER

  I. THE BODY IN THE CAR

  II. MEREDITH GETS GOING

  III. THE PUZZLE OF THE HOSE-PIPE

  IV. CLUE AT THE BANK?

  V. MOTIVE?

  VI. SENSATIONAL VERDICT

  VII. THE PARKED PETROL LORRY

  VIII. PRINCE AND BETTLE EXPLAIN

  IX. INVESTIGATIONS AT THE LOTHWAITE

  X. DISCOVERIES AT THE DEPOT

  XI. PROBLEM NUMBER TWO

  XII. FRAUD?

  XIII. MEREDITH SETS HIS SCHEME IN MOTION

  XIV. THE QUART IN THE PINT POT!

  XV. THE INSPECTOR OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

  XVI. THE BEE’S HEAD BREWERY

  XVII. THE MUSLIN BAG

  XVIII. MEREDITH GOES TO EARTH

  XIX. PIPES

  XX. “THE ADMIRAL”

  XXI. RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CRIME

  XXII. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

  XXIII. THE LAST ROUND-UP

  INTRODUCTION

  MARTIN EDWARDS

  John Bude was quick to follow up his enjoyable debut mystery novel, The Cornish Coast Murder. In the very same year, 1935, Skeffington also published The Lake District Murder. The titles of his first two books indicate that Bude had hit on the idea of setting stories in attractive areas of Britain, in the hope that the background would appeal to readers as well as the murder mystery plots. This is a shrewd marketing ploy, but has no chance of success if the author lacks a genuine feel for the location. Fortunately, Bude not only knew but clearly loved his Lake District.

  The story opens one March evening, with a farmer finding a man’s body in a car outside the Derwent garage on an isolated road in the Northern Lakes. The macabre discovery is reported to Inspector Meredith, and at first glance, the evidence at the crime scene suggests that Jack Clayton has committed suicide. The seasoned mystery fan does not, of course, need to rely on the giveaway clue in the book’s title to realise that all is not as it seems. It soon emerges that Clayton had no reason to do away with himself. He had been in good spirits, and was engaged to be married to an attractive and likeable young woman called Lily Reade. When Meredith discovers that Clayton was planning to move abroad, and that he had much more money in his bank account than would be generated by a half-share in the profits of a wayside garage, the plot begins to thicken. But if Clayton has been murdered, what could be the motive?

  In his first novel, Bude had counterpointed the police investigation with some amateur sleuthing, but here the focus is from start to finish on Meredith’s patient and relentless quest to uncover the truth: ‘Whatever faults may be attributed to the British police force by the American or continental critics, a lack of thoroughness is not one of them’.

  The emphasis is not on whodunit, but on how to prove it. Today, because of the phenomenal success of Agatha Christie, there is a widespread assumption that Thirties detective fiction was invariably set in country houses or picturesque villages like Jane Marple’s St Mary Mead. In fact, crime novelists of the time adopted a range of approaches, and Bude’s method here is firmly in the school of Freeman Wills Crofts.

  Crofts (1879–1957) was, at the height of his fame, regarded by many as Christie’s equal or superior, and T. S. Eliot, a detective-story fan and occasional critic, was among those who extolled his virtues. Starting with the hugely popular and highly influential The Cask in 1920, Crofts specialised in meticulous accounts of painstaking police work, in which the plot often pivoted on the detective’s attempts to destroy an apparently unbreakable alibi. The care which Crofts lavished on story construction impressed readers and fellow authors alike, and he had a number of notable disciples, including Henry Wade and G. D. H. Cole. Here, John Bude produces a book of which Crofts would have been proud.

  Meredith is neither an eccentric genius nor any sort of maverick. He is tactful and a team player, an ordinary, hard-working professional, with a long-suffering wife and eager teenage son. After the inquest on Clayton records a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown, piece by piece, Meredith puts together a case against the guilty. The clues are slight, but prove significant – pleasingly, they even include an Adolf Hitler-style moustache.

  Despite using the Lake District as a ‘hook’ to attract interest, Bude wisely avoids falling into the trap of turning the book into a travelogue. We see the Lake District where people live and work, rather than the tourist trap. Bude’s Lakeland is an often sombre place of quiet pubs and lonely filling stations, with towns and villages inhabited by affable bank managers, burly tanker drivers, and women who ‘shopped, cooked, cleaned, darned, mended, washed, and ironed, and all for a matter of ten shillings a week’.

  Instead of more familiar spots such as Ambleside and Windermere, Bude’s storyline features relatively unglamorous coastal towns such as Whitehaven and Maryport, and is all the more credible because of it. This book may be a product of the Golden Age of detective fiction, but it is a world away from the unreality of bodies in the library and cunningly contrived killings in transcontinental trains. Meredith earns a well-deserved promotion at the end of the book, and he proceeded to appear in most of Bude’s murder stories, which numbered thirty in all by the time of his death in 1957.

  Three years after The Lake District Murder was published, Muna Lee and Maurice Guinness – who, under the pen-name Newton Gayle, wrote a quintet of acclaimed detective novels in a short-lived burst of creative energy – produced Sinister Crag, a climbing mystery set among the Lakeland fells. But theirs is essentially the perspective of outsiders; Bude’s book conveys a broader and perhaps more authentic picture of life – and death – in this beautiful part of the world.

  Bude, whose real name was Ernest Carpenter Elmore, was born in Kent in 1901, and his literary career began with a couple of weird and fantastic tales, The Steel Grubs appearing in 1928 and The Siren Song two years later. Although he is now best known for his crime novels, he worked in the theatre as a producer and director, and in 1953 he became one of the founding members of the Crime Writers’ Association. The British Library editions of his first two novels, both rare and sought after by collectors, bring him at last to the attention of a new generation of readers. Those who like a soundly crafted and unpretentious mystery will surely agree that John Bude deserves to be better known.

  THE LAKE DISTRICT MURDER

  CHAPTER I

  THE BODY IN THE CAR

  WHEN the northbound road leaves Keswick, it skirts the head of Derwentwater, curves into the picturesque village of Portinscale and then runs more or less straight up a broad and level valley until it arrives at the little, mountain-shadowed hamlet of Braithwaite. There is a fair amount of traffic up this valley, particularly in the summer; tourists wending their way into the Buttermere valley are bound to take this road, for the very simple reason that there’s no other road to take. It also links up the inland Cumbrian towns with the coastal towns of Whitehaven, Workington and Maryport.

  About half-way between Portinscale and Braithwaite, on a very bleak and uninhabited stretch of road, stands a newish stone-and-cement garage on the rim of a spacio
us meadow. There are a few petrol pumps between the road and a broad concrete draw-in, where cars can fill up without checking the main traffic. The garage itself is a plain, rectangular building with a flat roof, on one side of which is a brick lean-to with a corrugated iron roof. About ten paces from the Braithwaite side of the garage there is a small, stone, slate-roofed cottage. It is not flush with the road, but set back about fifty feet or more, fronted with an unkempt garden which boasts a few wind-stunted crab-apple trees. Altogether this small desolate group of buildings is not exactly prepossessing. One feels that only the necessity of earning a livelihood would drive a man to dwell in such a spot.

  One wet and windy night, toward the end of March, a dilapidated T-model Ford was rattling through the deserted street of Portinscale. At the wheel sat a red-faced, bluff-looking farmer of about sixty. He was returning from a Farmers’ Union dinner in Keswick. He felt pleased and at peace with the world, for he had that inside him which sufficed to keep out the cold, and the engine of the Ford, for all its years, was running as smooth as silk. Another twenty minutes, he reckoned, would see him in Braithwaite, roasting his toes at a roaring fire, with a “night-cap” at his elbow to round off a very convivial evening.

  But it is precisely at those moments when the glass seems to be “set fair” that Fate invariably decides to take a hand.

  And Fate had decided that Farmer Perryman was to make a late night of it.

  He had, in fact, only just cleared the last outlying cottages of the village when the Ford engine broke into a series of spluttering coughs and finally petered out. Drawing into the side of the road, Luke, cursing under his breath, buttoned up the collar of his coat, pulled an electric-torch out of his pocket and proceeded to investigate the trouble. He didn’t have to look far. His first diagnosis proved correct. He was out of petrol.

  Luckily Luke knew every inch of the route and, although he could not actually see it, he knew that the Derwent garage lay just round a slight bend about a quarter of a mile up the road. Realizing that there was nothing else to be done, since he carried no spare can, he shoved his head down into the wind and rain and trudged off surlily in the direction of Braithwaite.

  Soon the row of lighted petrol pumps hove in sight and in a few minutes Luke Perryman drew abreast of the garage. Although a light was burning in the main shed, the place seemed curiously deserted. Nor did Luke’s raucous demands for service do anything to disturb this illusion. Noticing a push-bell, obviously connected with the cottage, he pressed it and waited. But again without result. He was just on the point of investigating a light which he had noticed burning in the window of the cottage, when he stopped dead and listened. Faintly above the bluster of the wind he heard the sound of a car engine. At first he thought it must be a car approaching up the road, but suddenly he realized that the sound was coming from the lean-to shed on the Portinscale side of the garage.

  Luke was puzzled. There was evidently no light burning in the shed, for although the doors were closed it would have been natural for a glimmer of light to show through the cracks. His first thought was that either young Clayton or his partner, Higgins, had started a car, been called away on another job, and forgotten to return and switch off the engine.

  He tried the handle of the doors, therefore, and finding them unlocked, opened them and shone his torch into the interior. His first impression was of an acrid and obnoxious odour cooped up in the sealed shed. An odour which made him catch his breath and cough. Then, as the air freshened, the circle of light from his torch travelled slowly over the back of the car and came to rest on a figure, seated, facing away from him, at the driving-wheel. Something about the set of the man’s shoulders convinced him that it was Clayton.

  He called out, therefore: “Hi, Clayton! I couldn’t make anybody hear. I’ve run short of petrol and have had to leave my car way back up the road.”

  But to his profound surprise the man made no answer. A trifle alarmed, Luke thrust his way round to the front of the car and flung the light of his torch full on to the face of the immobile figure. Then he had the shock of his life. The man had no face! Where his face should have been was a sort of inhuman, uniform blank!

  It took old Perryman some few seconds to right this illusion and when he did he was horrified. Although somewhat slow of mind, he realized, at once, that he was face to face with tragedy and, what was more, tragedy in its starkest and most nerve-racking guise!

  The man’s head was hooded in an oil-grimed mackintosh, which had been gathered in round the neck with a piece of twine. From the back Luke had mistaken this cowl for an ordinary leather driving-helmet. Frightened, bewildered, wasting no time on speculation, he laid his torch on the front seat and shot out a pair of shaking hands. Clumsily he undid the twine and drew aside the hood. Then, with an exclamation of horror, he started back and stared at the terrible apparition which confronted him. It was Clayton all right! Clayton with a fearfully distorted, blue-lipped, sightless face! He felt his heart. There was no movement! The man’s hand was cold!

  In the stress of the moment he had not fully realized what it was which had slipped from under the mackintosh when he had loosened the twine. He had heard something thump on to the upholstery of the other front seat. Now he took a quick look and, in a flash, he knew why Clayton was dead.

  Hastily closing the doors, he remained undecided for a moment, unable to make up his mind whether it was worthwhile finding out if the cottage was really deserted. Then convinced that his violent rings on the service bell would have brought somebody forward if indeed there was anybody there, he lumbered back into the main garage, found a can of petrol and set off at a smart trot toward his car. In less than five minutes he was speeding as fast as the T-model would allow in the direction of the Keswick police station.

  It was striking ten as the Ford drew up outside the station. As luck would have it, Inspector Meredith was still in the building. Arrears of routine work had kept him working late. When the constable showed the farmer into the office, Meredith looked up and grinned.

  “Good heavens, sir,” he said in his pleasingly resonant voice, “you haven’t come here to tell me your car’s been stolen, surely? You won’t get me to believe that!”

  Old Luke, who was sadly out of breath and shaken by his discovery, dropped into a chair. His first words took the smile off the Inspector’s face.

  “I wish it was that. But it’s something serious, Inspector. It’s young Clayton out at the Derwent garage.”

  “Well?”

  “Suicide, I reckon.”

  “Suicide, eh!” The Inspector was already reaching for his cap.

  “Your car’s outside, Mr. Perryman?”

  Luke nodded.

  “Then perhaps you’ll give me details on the way over.”

  As they passed through the outer office, Meredith turned to the constable. “Phone Doctor Burney, Railton, and ask him to meet me at the Derwent garage on the Braithwaite road as soon as possible. Then get out the combination and join us there.”

  As the old Ford rattled off again through the rain-wet streets, Meredith gathered in the details of Luke Perryman’s discovery. When the old man had finished his recital the Inspector grunted:

  “Not a very pleasant wind-up to your evening, Mr. Perryman? Looks like a late night for me, too. Do you know anything about this young chap?”

  Old Luke considered a moment.

  “Well, I do, and then again, I don’t. I’ve heard he’s engaged to Tom Reade’s eldest daughter. He’s the Braithwaite storekeeper, as you may know. But beyond a few words with Clayton in a business sort of way, I can’t rightly say I know him.”

  “The girl lives at the shop, I suppose?”

  “Ay.”

  “And what about this partner of Clayton’s? Know anything about him?”

  Luke shook his head and then declared: “Though from all accounts it’s Clayton who’s got the business head. I’ve heard—mind you, I don’t know—that Higgins is a bit too fond of lifting
his elbow.”

  Meredith registered this piece of information. Wasn’t it possible that Higgins was drinking away the profits of the concern? It might turn out to be the reason for Clayton’s suicide.

  He had no more time for theorizing, however, for with a wild screeching of brakes the old Ford drew up on the concrete beside the petrol pumps. Immediately Meredith sprang out, whilst Luke shut off the engine of the car. Faintly above the wind the Inspector heard the sound which had previously drawn the farmer to the tragic spot. Striding over to the shed, he opened the double doors and flashed his lamp into the interior.

  “No switch in here?” he asked.

  Luke confessed that he had been so upset by his discovery that he hadn’t troubled to look. Meredith, however, soon found what he was looking for just inside the door. The next instant the shed was flooded with electric light.

  “You didn’t move the body, I take it?”

  “No. Just the mackintosh that was over the poor fellow’s head and the bit of string tied round his neck. You see, Inspector, I wasn’t sure at first that he was dead.”

  “Well, that’s all right.”

  Meredith leaned over the dash-board and switched off the engine.

  “Now, then—let’s see exactly how he did it.”

  A brief examination soon made this clear. The fish-tail end of the silencer had been removed from the exhaust-pipe at the rear of the car. Over the end of this pipe had been fitted a length of ordinary, flexible garden-hose. This in turn led over the back-seat of the car, an old open tourer, and thus up under the mackintosh which Clayton had tied over his head. It was the end of this hose which had fallen on to the front seat when the farmer had removed the mackintosh.

  “Neat!” was Meredith’s blunt comment when he had completed his examination. Then: “Hullo! Who’s this?” he added, as a car swung off the road and drew up behind the Ford.

  A brisk, well-set-up young man in a belted overcoat crossed into the radius of the light.