The Body in the Dumb River Read online

  Copyright © 1961, 2020 by George Bellairs

  Introduction copyright © 2020 by Martin Edwards

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover images © NRM/Pictorial Collection/Science & Society Picture Library

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the British Library

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  sourcebooks.com

  Originally published in 1961 in the United Kingdom by John Gifford.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  1: The Body in the Dumb River

  2: Martha Gomm

  3: Wife and Family

  4: Father

  5: Family Council

  6: Ticket to Norwich

  7: Swept from Her Feet

  8: Talk of Divorce

  9: Barbara, Irene, and Chris

  10: The Empty Room

  11: Poste Restante

  12: The Funeral

  13: The Witness

  14: Fracas on Sunday Night

  15: Family Differences

  16: The New Master

  Back Cover

  Introduction

  The Body in the Dumb River, also published under the title Murder Masquerade, first appeared in 1961, twenty years after its author’s first novel. At that point in his career, George Bellairs had established a solid reputation as a crime writer, and would soon be able to retire from his day job as a Mancunian bank manager to the Isle of Man, where he happily concentrated on his fiction.

  The story is very much in the traditional vein. Bellairs’s series detective, Tom Littlejohn (by this stage elevated to the rank of Superintendent), is visiting the fen country of East Anglia when he is asked to take a hand in a murder investigation. It soon emerges that the deceased, Jim Lane, was leading a double life. His real name was James Teasdale, and he had a wife and family back in Yorkshire whom he’d kept in the dark about his working on a fairground, and about the woman he lived with, Martha Gomm. Littlejohn’s enquiries lead him to Yorkshire, and he sets about unravelling the mystery of Teasdale’s fate with his customary blend of shrewdness and compassion.

  George Bellairs was the pen name of Harold Blundell (1902–82), who combined a long career in provincial banking with an equally hard-working life as author of no fewer than fifty-eight detective novels. His debut, Littlejohn on Leave, is now exceptionally rare; it was written to while away the time while Blundell was serving as an air-raid warden, having been excused military service because he was blind in one eye.

  Bellairs was evidently a man to whom loyalty came as second nature. He started working for Martins Bank at the age of fifteen, and remained with the same institution until he retired, having reached the position of head office manager in Manchester, in 1962; seven years later, Martins was taken over by Barclays. Similarly, he stayed with the same publishers (John Gifford, and their alter ego the Thriller Book Club) all his life, although as the late R.F. Stewart explained in a witty article, “The Very Faithful Servant” (CADS 24, November 1994), the unattractive payment terms he received meant he was never in a position to give up the day job prematurely.

  Stewart’s essay remains to this day the most entertaining survey of Bellairs’s life and work. He mentions, for instance, that in 1945 Bellairs gave a talk about crime fiction to his local Rotary Club in Rochdale, arguing that detective stories flourished in democracies but not dictatorships—only for one of his superiors at the bank to write a condescending note saying: “I have read with great interest the cutting from the Rochdale Observer… You produced a very interesting point of view and, while I hope and believe I am a good democrat, I must say that seven-eighths of the crime fiction I have come across is as unwelcome to me as the dictators.”

  Undeterred, Bellairs continued to give talks, as well as writing a regular travel column for the Manchester Guardian. For Martins Bank Magazine, he contributed a characteristically lighthearted article, “Sherlock Holmes and the Bankers,” to celebrate the great detective’s alleged hundredth birthday in 1954. He argued that Lloyds Bank, which took over Cox & Co. in 1923, “also presumably absorbed as well” Dr Watson’s battered tin dispatch-box containing all his records of Sherlock’s cases; he concluded with an appeal to Lloyds to “investigate the case of the missing records and let us know the truth about them without delay.” In addition to his literary and banking work, Bellairs was also a diligent committee man, not least on behalf of the Manchester Royal Infirmary. His efforts on behalf of local causes, coupled with his crime writing, led to Manchester University conferring an honorary M.A. upon him in 1959.

  In the following year, Bellairs consulted his friend Francis Iles (who had reviewed several of his books with considerable generosity) about his publishing contracts. Iles was a pen name of Anthony Berkeley Cox, who as Anthony Berkeley had been a highly successful Golden Age detective novelist, whose successes included The Poisoned Chocolates Case, also an entry in the British Library’s Crime Classics series. Under the Iles name, he was a pioneer of the psychological crime novel with an ironic twist, but he had given up writing fiction to focus on reviewing. A man of strong opinions, he was appalled by the way Bellairs was being treated, and advised him to re-negotiate his terms with John Gifford, saying: “Oh, my poor fellow!… This is an utterly iniquitous contract. In fact it’s the worst I’ve ever seen.”

  Bellairs was evidently as meek and mild-mannered as Berkeley’s character Ambrose Chitterwick, but he duly raised the matter with his publishers, only to be rebuffed (“this would be contrary to general practice and a precedent fraught with danger”) and told, implausibly, that they had never even heard of the Society of Authors. This brutal response seems to have been enough to intimidate him into acquiescence; perhaps he lacked the self-confidence to take up Iles’s robust advice to try his luck elsewhere. Stewart, having examined Bellairs’s archive, which is held at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, concluded that the author’s net income from hardback publications in the UK was negligible, although he did sell in the USA until the early fifties, and overseas, especially in France: “the money from his books was a bonus, and he was honest enough to admit it. He was an amateur enjoying a paying hobby.”

  This is a fair summary, and by no means an ignoble epitaph. Yet one should not underestimate the achievement of publishing so many books over a period of about four decades. Bellairs may not belong in the front rank of crime novelists, but his books offer unpretentious entertainment, and that has enduring worth. So much so, in fact, that following the British Library’s republication of three of Bellairs’s early mysteries in the Crime Classics series, sales were extremely healthy and the response from readers and reviewers highly enthusiastic. And the welcome result is a continuation of the George Bellairs revival with
the reprinting of this title and also of Surfeit of Suspects.

  Martin Edwards

  martinedwardsbooks.com

  1

  The Body in the Dumb River

  ‘Are you awake, Littlejohn?’

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  The first knock had roused him, but Littlejohn hadn’t quite remembered where he was and answered in the brusque tone of one dragged from a comfortable night’s sleep. Then his mind clicked broad awake and he realised that he was the guest of the Chief Constable of Fenshire.

  ‘Is that you, Sir Humphrey?’

  ‘Yes. Mind if I come in?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  It had been one of those cases where Scotland Yard had co-operated at the London end of a forgery affair which had started in Ely, and Littlejohn had been at the Fenshire police headquarters helping to tidy up matters for the next assize. It had rained without cease for a week before his arrival and it had continued through the whole visit.

  The Chief Constable, a charming man, had invited Littlejohn to dine at his home and after doing him the full honours of his table and his cellar, had insisted on his staying the night, as the rain was still coming down in torrents.

  Littlejohn’s host, a tall, military type, now stood at his bedside, very apologetic and very worried-looking.

  ‘Sorry to spoil our hospitality in this way, Superintendent, but I know you wouldn’t like me to leave you in bed when we’ve a murder on our hands.’

  He was wearing gumboots and a raincoat and said he hadn’t yet been to bed.

  Littlejohn glanced at his watch on the bedside table.

  Three o’clock. Outside he could hear the steady beat of the rain on the trees and the lawn, now strewn with the dead leaves of late October.

  ‘Just as I was about to turn in, news arrived that the River Lark had burst its banks between Ely and Feltwell and flooded the village of Tylecote. We’ve been arranging the rescue teams and relief work and now, right in the middle of it all, a showman has been found stabbed in the back. If this downpour continues, we’ll be extended to the full here, with very little time even for a murder case. I hope you don’t mind if I ask Scotland Yard to lend you to us for a day or two.’

  ‘I don’t mind a bit, sir. When you telephone them, please ask them to send my colleague Sergeant Cromwell down, too…’

  He hastily dressed himself and, as he did so, the Chief Constable filled in some details.

  ‘Since before records were kept, there’s been an annual hiring-fair at Tylecote-in-the-Fen, between Ely and Feltwell. Once, it was the occasion for recruiting farm labourers; now it’s degenerated into a spree of roundabouts, sideshows, coconuts, and shooting-ranges. It’s due to be held in a couple of days. This year, it will be a complete washout; the showground’s a bog already.’

  The pair of them made for the dining-room where coffee was ready.

  ‘The murdered man, James Lane, ran a sideshow at the fair. He’s been a regular attender for several years, they tell me. A harmless little fellow by all accounts. His body was found sprawling across a broken tree trunk which the floods had brought down and got jammed at Tylecote Bridge. They say it looks as if someone had thrown him in the Dumb River after he died, hoping to get rid of him. The flood water must have dislodged the body and brought it to light before the murderer intended.’

  ‘The Dumb River…?’

  ‘I suppose it got the name because, in quiet times, it flows without a sound. Tonight it’s making noise enough. It’s really a drain these days, constructed more than a century ago by deepening and widening an existing brook. Normally, it would be a good place for getting rid of a corpse. The water’s dark and muddy-looking and there’s little flow in it. Cast a dead body among the reeds and mud there and it might never be found.’

  ‘I’m ready, sir.’

  ‘We’ve about twelve miles to go.’

  As they made their way, the whole countryside seemed alive. Lights dotted the farmland of the fens like a swarm of fireflies. Houses all lit up, car headlamps and torches shining everywhere. Now and then a car or a lorry swished past, casting feathers of water on either side. Sometimes a shadowy figure, leaning forward against the wind. All in a hurry. No time to stop and greet anyone or indulge in futile talk about the weather. Everything available was converging on the distressed areas.

  The wipers of the Chief Constable’s car flashed to and fro, and here and there, where the road ran beside the river, they could see the tormented water tearing along, bearing on its way anything loose it could pick up. The sky was obscured by low clouds, the air was damp and cold, and the beams of the headlights illuminated the rain, pelting down in slanting shafts like the hatching of an engraving.

  Tylecote was little more than a hamlet standing by the bridge where the Dumb River joined the Lark. There were a few houses scattered about, most of them showing lights, a shop, a pub, and a church with a massive tower tucked among some trees.

  ‘The body’s at the Blandish Arms, and here we are.’

  A low, rambling building with outhouses and illuminated in almost every room. A few cars spread about the roadside, and an ambulance. A squad of policemen and firemen standing around drinking tea. They all straightened and some of them saluted when the two men entered.

  The landlord was limping here and there, anxiously doing his best to provide hospitality. It was an out-of-date place, with two public rooms, the larger of them stone-floored and sanded. A bar, leather-upholstered benches, and small tables scattered about. The usual pumps and bottles on the counter, a dartboard in one corner, advertisements for beer tacked on the walls, and a large old-fashioned grate with a dying fire shedding its ashes over the hearth.

  A tall, burly countryman in the uniform of a police inspector met the newcomers at the door.

  ‘This is Inspector Diss, Littlejohn.’

  ‘We were together this afternoon, sir. I didn’t expect we’d meet again at this hour on a night like this, Diss.’

  ‘I’ve arranged with Scotland Yard for the Superintendent to stay with us till the murder case is solved.’

  ‘Delighted to hear it, sir. We’ll need all the men we can get. The river’s over its banks by nearly four inches in Hook’s Hollow just down the road, and if this rain keeps up, we’ll have to start thinking about evacuating the ground floors of some of the cottages. You remember what happened last time…’

  There was a stir of curiosity and satisfaction among the onlookers. Scotland Yard’s on the job, so we’re all right! One or two of them introduced themselves to Littlejohn, wrung his hand, and thanked him profusely. He might have solved the crime already!

  The limping landlord was still bustling about. He, too, shook hands with Littlejohn as though he’d known him all his life.

  ‘The body’s in the brewhouse. We don’t brew there now. So, it’s all right, isn’t it? The doctors are there, too.’

  Men in waders kept wobbling in, drinking hot tea, and then vanishing in the dark. There seemed to be some schedule about the rescue work, but Littlejohn couldn’t make out the pattern of it.

  ‘Like to see the body?’

  The landlord, a little bald man with a club-foot and in his shirt-sleeves, was disappointed. This chap didn’t seem interested. He thought famous detectives always saw the body right away. Littlejohn was busy talking to the two men who found it, as if that would do any good.

  Two labourers, answering a civil defence call, had seen the body first.

  ‘As we passed the old ford, near where the Dumb River joins the Lark, we see this tree-trunk catched up among a lot o’ rubbish the water was bringin’ down. Didn’t we, Joel?’

  Joel, a simple-Simon of a fellow, who seemed as dumb as the river, smiled and exposed a gap where some teeth had once been. He nodded.

  ‘Ar.’

  His companion was different. He had a h
atchet face, dark gipsy eyes bright with curiosity and excitement, and he wore three days’ growth of swarthy whiskers.

  ‘Just as we passed it, the dead man’s head sort of appeared round the tree-trunk, peepin’ at us, like. Like a turnip, it looked. Matter o’ fact, I sez to Joel, that’s a funny turnip, that is. And then we see what it was. Gave us both a proper turn. Didn’t it, Joel?’

  Joel looked proud of the turn and nodded joyfully.

  ‘Ar.’

  ‘So you got down and pulled the body out, Trimmer?’

  ‘We did that. He might not ’a been dead, you see, sir. But he was. Not that we knew that he’d been murdered till we got here at the Arms and Clifton spotted it right away.’

  The Chief Constable glanced around the room.

  ‘Where is Clifton?’

  Clifton was the village bobby, now, to his great delight, living with his wife and four children in a new police house.

  ‘He’s gone off to bring his grandmother to the police station. She lives in Hook’s Hollow, sir, and there’s four inches of water in her livin’-room. She’s turned ninety and Clifton said…’

  ‘What about the body, sir? Forgotten it?’

  The landlord was getting peevish about the neglect of his exhibit.

  ‘Yes, the body. Where is it?’

  ‘I said in the brewhouse, sir, and we don’t brew there any more, since the brewery took us over.’

  ‘Lead the way, then, Goodchild.’

  Diss, who joined them, offered Littlejohn a cigarette with a smile.

  ‘I always like a smoke when I’ve to inspect anything in the morgue.’

  He took one himself from a tin in his pocket.

  ‘My home-made ones are far better and I keep ’em in a separate tin. I can’t offer you one, sir, because I’ve licked ’em to make them stick.’

  The brewhouse was a square stone appendage and there were lights on inside. The landlord pompously led the way, but when he saw what was going on, he hurried back to the bar and consumed a large brandy.