The Case of the Demented Spiv (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 17

  “Listen, Littlejohn. No use beating about the bush. We’ve only met casually before, and all I know of you is through the newspapers and from what I hear of you.”

  “The same applies to me, sir.”

  The Minister raised his eyebrows in surprise for a minute and then smiled.

  “We understand one another, then. I want your help, and I couldn’t very well ask you over to the Ministry. All the world knows what goes on there, and this is personal and private. Your wife was good enough to telephone Scotland Yard to enquire about you and they said you’d left. So I waited.”

  He puffed his pipe and turned his head to see how Littlejohn was taking it.

  “I’ve not put in an official request about you. The Commissioner, however, knows I’m calling and what it’s about. But you are quite free to say yes or no after I’ve told you my story.”

  Littlejohn refilled the glasses.

  “Your very good health.”

  “And yours, sir.”

  “It’s very difficult to begin.”

  Littlejohn felt a bit surprised. Lovell’s reputation as a parliamentarian and politician was high and he had a name for quick thinking. A former barrister in the Northern Circuit, he had been born within twenty miles of Littlejohn’s native town, and had risen rapidly after his election to parliament.

  “Did you ever hear of my brother, Christopher?”

  Who hadn’t? The death of Christopher Lovell and his wife in a motor accident during holidays in the south of France had been one of the sensations of the year. It had happened in February and had cut short a distinguished career in the Foreign Office.

  “Yes. I read about his untimely death in the newspapers.”

  Lovell nodded his head.

  “That’s why I’ve called to see you. I’m not satisfied about the way my brother and his wife died.”

  There was a pause and complete silence, punctuated by the snores of the dog. Lovell’s eyes were fixed on the picture over the fireplace, as though he’d forgotten what he’d been talking about.

  “You think there was foul play, sir?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Did you follow the affair in the papers?”

  “Superficially, that’s all.”

  Lovell rose and paced the rug uneasily.

  “I’m so afraid of starting a mare’s nest, Littlejohn. It might be that Chris and his wife just met their deaths through speeding along dangerous roads. In such an event, it would only be wasting your good time asking you to look into it. I can only, therefore, leave the decision to you. He was my only brother and we were very close. There were only three years between us in ages and I was the elder.”

  He paused, obviously trying to keep sentiment out of it and seeking words to express his thoughts reasonably.

  “Candidly, I don’t like it at all. The accident occurred at St. Marcellin. . . . The Commissioner tells me you know Provence.”

  “I was there with a friend, an Inspector in the Sûreté at Nice, studying the Dominici affair last autumn.”

  “Ah. . . . Then you may know the place. It’s a village between Aix-en-Provence and Manosque, just off the main road, near the southern tip of the Forest of Cadarache. The nearest town, Manosque, is twenty miles away. Know it?”

  “Not exactly, but I visited the neighbourhood. We spent a night in Manosque.”

  Already Littlejohn felt a vague sense of uneasiness. He and his colleague, Dorange, of Nice, had made their unofficial tour of those parts, and they were decidedly grim. The natives, a secret and clannish lot, had proved most unhelpful. How another unofficial enquiry, this time on his own, would fare, he’d no idea, but he could guess.

  “I see you’re already vaguely aware of what you’re up against, Littlejohn. I’ve tried it myself, without success.”

  “You’ve been there already, sir?”

  “To bring home my brother’s and his wife’s bodies. In the brief time at my disposal I tried to get precise details of how it occurred. Nobody seemed to know. It was like beating my head against a stone wall. You have methods of your own, and a professional knows what to look for and how to do it. I’m no good as an amateur detective.”

  Littlejohn could well understand it. He still remembered the hard eyes, the secret exchange of queer looks between one man and another, the dreadful feeling of being an utter stranger among strange folk. . . . He caressed the soft ears of his dog and thought it nice to be home among his own people, people he understood.

  “Why do you think there was foul play?”

  The Minister sat down again and stretched his legs and re-lit his pipe.

  “The place, to begin with. Chris used to visit the identical village before the war. He began his career in the army and was a military attaché at the British Embassy in Paris. Whilst there, he made a bosom friend of the Marquis de St. Marcellin, and spent a lot of time at his château. St. Marcellin was in the French army and they’d much in common. Whilst staying with him one time at the château, Chris met Elise de Barge, who later became his wife.”

  “And the Marquis is still at St. Marcellin?”

  “No. He died just before the war. A shooting accident. Chris was there at the time and it upset him frightfully. So much so, that he never went again. He and Elise were married in Paris, he came home shortly afterwards, the war broke out, and that ended Chris’s relations with the St. Marcellin family. Then, they both met their death in the very village. . . . I don’t know what they were doing there or why they went.”

  “Do the family still occupy the château?”

  “Arnaud de St. Marcellin succeeded his brother, Bernard, after the accident. I met Arnaud when I was there. A very decent chap and frightfully cut-up about it all. He couldn’t help.”

  Lovell was on his feet again, pacing the room nervously.

  “There was a proper official enquiry into Chris’s accident and it was found to be due to a skid on a greasy road. The police were quite satisfied. The car hit a tree at high speed. There were no witnesses, but all the experts concurred. They seemed quite surprised that I should continue asking questions.”

  “They would be!”

  “I see you know all about those parts and the French officials. It was a complete dead end.”

  Lovell continued his pacing, smoking a cigarette now, seeking words to express his feelings.

  “I’m a lawyer, Littlejohn, and used to evidence. On the face of it, the thing was obvious. A plain, straightforward accident. I ought to accept it as such. All my training says it’s logical to do so and reasonable to accept the verdict.”

  He threw out his arms in almost a gesture of despair.

  “I’ve never believed in the supernatural, or whatever you like to call it. Two and two make four to a lawyer like me. But the thought of Chris won’t let me rest. I can’t sleep for it. I want to know. Did he die with his wife, both of them smashed to pieces in a fast car, or did somebody kill them both?”

  He poured himself another glass of sherry and drank it off without even asking Littlejohn or looking for the Chief Inspector’s glass.

  “What were they doing at St. Marcellin at all, and why, of all places in the world, should they die there?”

  “Did your brother’s wife come from those parts?”

  “No. She came of a family at Cap Ferrat, near Nice, and they still live there. She happened to be a guest of the St. Marcellins at the time Chris met her.”

  “Do you know anything of her background, sir?”

  “I met her people at the time of the accident. Her father is a retired banker and she was their only child. They were at the wedding, too, but never visited England. Very nice people indeed.”

  “And after Bernard’s death and his own marriage to Elise, your brother never visited his old haunts again?”

  “No. They went to stay with the de Barges at Cap Ferrat regularly, but they always went by air to Nice until this year. Then they decided to take the car and go through High Provence and return by the R
hône Valley.”

  Dusk had fallen and the two men in the firelight could hardly see one another. Littlejohn didn’t want to put on the lights; the dimness of the room was conducive to conversation.

  “Did you go through your brother’s papers after his death?”

  “Yes.”

  “You found no hint or reason for their breaking the journey at St. Marcellin?”

  “No. Nor did I find any diary or record of his connections with the Marquis in times past.”

  “It might appear that your brother wished to forget them?”

  There was a significant pause.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you think it strange that your brother, after the death of his friend, Bernard, and his marriage, should suddenly shun St. Marcellin and his friend’s family? It looks as if they and the place had become distasteful to him. For example, did his wife break some previous romance when she met your brother?”

  There was another silence, as though the Minister had either fallen asleep in the twilight or else had been struck by some truth too dreadful to comment upon. The dog snored softly, now and then crying in joy at her dreams, and the electric clock hummed like a fly exploring the room.

  “I never thought of that. And I was never aware that any such thing occurred. They were a happy couple . . . very happy. And yet . . .”

  Lovell paused as though exploring in the archives of memory for some record, some sign which might give him a clue about his brother’s thoughts and habits before he died.

  “Come to think of it, something must have happened before he left St. Marcellin for the last time. He was always a bit of a harum-scarum in his youth and rather wild as a young man. His escapades were almost legendary in his days at Cambridge, and even in the army. . . . I thought when he met and married Elise that he had simply settled down. He was fond of women before he married and his name was coupled with quite a few. Just wild oats . . . nothing more. He calmed down after he married. But looking back . . .”

  Again a pause, with the hiss of the gas fire and the regular breathing of the dog alone disturbing it.

  “Looking back, there did seem to be a kind of sadness in him, as though he’d suddenly become disillusioned. You’d find him thinking about something else as you talked, and he wasn’t listening to you at all. And his wife, if she was there, would gently touch the back of his hand and give him a kind of secret smile, as though she knew what held him and wanted him to know she was with him and understood.”

  The Minister struck a match and held it to his cold pipe, puffing softly, his cheeks moving like a pair of bellows.

  “You’re a good listener, Littlejohn, and thanks for your patience and for sparing me the time to tell you all about it. It’s most unusual for me to grow imaginative or sentimental. I think we’d perhaps better have the light on. This firelight and the half-darkness around make me almost feel that Chris is here listening to us.”

  Littlejohn switched on the table-lamp at his elbow. The spell was broken. There were the old familiar pieces of furniture, the Toulouse-Lautrec on the wall, the portrait of Letty, his wife, on the mantelpiece, and an unframed snapshot of himself tucked behind the clock. It showed him smiling and walking along the promenade at Cannes, dressed in flannels and an open-necked shirt. A tout had photographed him on his way to see a dead body, and his wife said it was the best and happiest photograph he’d ever had taken.

  “So you see what I’m asking of you?”

  Littlejohn awoke from his own reveries with a jerk.

  “If you’ll undertake it, I’d like you to go to St. Marcellin, find out what you can, and try to put my mind at rest. If you return and say you’re as much in the dark as I am, I’ll let it go at that. We’ll at least have tried and my conscience will be easier. If you find it was an accident pure and simple, that will close the affair. If on the other hand . . .”

  Littlejohn looked up.

  “Yes?”

  “If it proves not to be an accident, I shall have to see about re-opening the case with the information you provide.”

  “Haven’t you pursued it further through the Foreign Office and the embassy, sir?”

  “I have. But what can they do? The French police are fully satisfied. We can’t send anybody official to re-open the matter in the face of official reports that it was accidental. I can’t just go and say to the Foreign Office, I’ve got a presentiment that there’s something fishy about the whole business. After all, I’ve my reputation for levelheadedness to maintain. No, this has to be done privately and the Commissioner has gone very far in agreeing to release you for a week or two to look into it for me. As I said, he told me it would all depend on your views. What do you say?”

  Littlejohn knocked out his pipe and slowly refilled it.

  “I’ll be quite candid, sir. I don’t look forward to such an investigation with any pleasure at all. I know that part of the South and I don’t fancy conducting an enquiry there, especially as it’s to be unofficial. In other words, I’m going purely as a civilian holiday-maker and while I’m there I shall have to undertake what amounts to a full-blown case from scratch.”

  The Minister rose and took up his hat and gloves.

  “That’s it, Littlejohn. I’m sorry I’ve taken your time. Your own views are exactly those of the Foreign Secretary and the Commissioner at Scotland Yard. It seems I’ll have to let the matter drop and ease my conscience as best I can.”

  He held out his hand in farewell. Littlejohn ignored it.

  “But, sir, the thought that an Englishman and his wife, alone save for each other, in that part of the world, might have been murdered and the matter hushed up, also gives me a conscience. You see, last year, I was unofficially involved in the Dominici affair. Nobody will ever know the truth about that. Now, you suspect a repetition. . . . I can’t let it pass. I’ve got to go, now.”

  The Minister’s handshake was not of farewell this time, but of emotional thanks.

  “I’ll not forget this, Littlejohn.”

  “You must not say that. I’m anxious to get to the truth now, just as much as you are. I’d like to take my colleague, Cromwell, as I don’t fancy that neighbourhood on my own. Too overwhelming without good company. But two of us would look too much like policemen. I’d better take my wife, sir.”

  Half an hour later his wife, returning, found him packing his bag and both their passports were on the table.

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  George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902-1985). He was, by day, a Manchester bank manager with close connections to the University of Manchester. He is often referred to as the English Simenon, as his detective stories combine wicked crimes and classic police procedurals, set in small British communities.

  He was born in Lancashire and married Gladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. He was a Francophile which explains why many of his titles took place in France. Bellairs travelled there many times, and often wrote articles for English newspapers and magazines, with news and views from France.

  After retiring from business, he moved with Gladys to Colby on the Isle of Man, where they had many friends and family. Some of his detective novels are set on the Isle of Man and his surviving notebooks attest to a keen interest in the history, geography and folklore of the island. In 1941 he wrote his first mystery story during spare moments at his air raid warden’s post. Throughout the 1950s he contributed a regular column to the Manchester Guardian under the pseudonym
George Bellairs, and worked as a freelance writer for other newspapers both local and national.

  Blundell’s first mystery, Littlejohn on Leave (1941) introduced his series detective, Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. His books are strong in characters and small communities – set in the 1940s to ‘70s. The books have strong plots, and are full of scandal and intrigue. His series character started as Inspector and later became Superintendent Thomas Littlejohn. Littlejohn, reminiscent of Inspector Maigret, is injected with humour, intelligence and compassion.

  He died on the Isle of Man in April 1982 just before his eightieth birthday after a protracted illness.

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  ALSO BY GEORGE BELLAIRS

  The Case of the Famished Parson

  The Case of the Demented Spiv

  Corpses in Enderby

  Death in High Provence

  Death Sends for the Doctor

  Murder Makes Mistakes

  Bones in the Wilderness

  Toll the Bell for Murder

  Death in the Fearful Night

  Death in the Wasteland

  Death of a Shadow

  Intruder in the Dark

  Death in Desolation

  The Night They Killed Joss Varran

  This edition published in 2016 by Ipso Books

  Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA

  Copyright © George Bellairs, 1949

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