Our Jubilee is Death (2 page)

“I'm not. But who was she?”

“I prefer to say no more. You know my views. I will not have our reputation as a quiet and industrious seat of learning endangered by these criminological antics of yours. I have spoken.”

“All right, headmaster. If I do run into a case I'll promise you that my part in it won't become public.”

“You do something to allay my fears. But I do indeed wish that you would find other channels for your remarkable abilities. Now I must have a word with our Music Master, whom I see approaching. Ah, Tubley …”

Carolus went on to his classroom and faced his most difficult collection of boys, the Junior Sixth. He decided to plunge straight into the last years of Abraham Lincoln.

He found as usual an attentive audience for the first twenty minutes of the period. Lincoln's loss of popularity because of the privations and unnecessary sufferings of the Federal Army in 1864, the saving of his prestige and leadership by Sheridan's victory at Shenandoah, his second term as President and his plans for assisting reconstruction in the Southern States, all seemed to interest at least those in the front two rows, and even the habitual yawners at the back were not noticeably listless.

But when Carolus came to the final scene the attention of the class grew positively fervent.

“An American actor named John Wilkes Booth, twenty-six years old, was responsible for Lincoln's death. He was the son of an English actor who is said to have rivalled Edmund Kean. His elder brother, Edwin Thomas Booth, was the greatest Hamlet of his day and Lincoln's assassin had acted with him. On the night of April 14th, 1865, when Lincoln was watching a play from a box in Ford's Theatre, John Wilkes Booth crept into the box behind him
and shot him through the head. He then produced an enormous knife, leapt upon the stage and escaped from the theatre. Twelve days later he was found hidden in a barn and shot.”

A studious, harmless-looking boy called Simmons, who was often deputed to draw Carolus from discussion of ancient history to contemporary crime, asked a question.

“Why the knife, sir?”

Carolus was on his guard.

“I do not see that it has much to do with the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, Simmons, and that is what concerns us now.”

“But surely, sir, the murder of a President …”

“He was shot. Through the head from behind.”

“How do we know it was Booth? The box was presumably in darkness. Suppose someone had paid this wretched man to leap about with a knife as soon as he heard a pistol-shot? He was unbalanced, anyway. What proof is there that he committed the murder?”

“History …” began Carolus, but he was interrupted by an odiously sophisticated boy called Rupert Priggley.

“Simmons has surely got a point there, sir. It's no more improbable than some of your solutions of modern mysteries.”

“I think we will return to the question of Secession.”

“Booth was never tried, was he, sir? We don't even know who else may have been in the conspiracy.”

“There is no reason to think that anyone was. Booth was a fanatic, if not more. It is an accepted fact that he acted on his own initiative.”

“And
you
are talking of ‘an accepted fact', sir! I suppose it is an ‘accepted fact' that Mrs Bomberger was murdered by one individual and planted in the sand like a cactus?” suggested Rupert Priggley.

“Nothing of the sort,” said Carolus warmly, falling headlong into the trap. “Mrs Bomberger was a heavy woman …”

“But she used a bath-chair. One man could have wheeled her down there, dead or alive.”

“We do not even know what caused her death.”

“No, but you soon will, won't you, sir? You can't wait to get down to Blessington-on-Sea. Anyone could see that you're all steamed up and rarin' to go.”

“I've no plans at all for these holidays.”

“Perhaps you're thinking of joining the headmaster at Ostende, with days in Bruges?”

“Don't be disrespectful, Priggley. After Lincon's death …”

“There seems to be a delicious collection of suspects
chez
Lillianne Bomberger. Not the most popular of women, one gathers. And who was Bomberger? Or who is he?”

“I haven't the smallest idea.”

“Oh, come on, sir. Don't be naif. We've listened like owls to all that hu-ha about Abolitionists. Give us the dirt now. Who bumped off Lillianne Bomberger?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I haven't studied the case.”

“You think more than one person is involved?”

“I don't know. Now will you all write a brief note on the Emancipation Proclamation? No. We will have silence, please, Priggley. And don't sigh in that offensive way.”

Rupert Priggley obediently picked up pen and paper.

“Do you know, sir,” he said as he began to write, “you're becoming more like Mr Hollingbourne every day? ‘We will have silence, please.' Anyone would think you were a schoolmaster.”

B
EFORE
answering his cousin's letter Carolus decided to find out a little more of Lillianne Bomberger than had appeared in the Press, and with this object he called on her publishers, Messrs. Stump and Agincourt, whose offices were discreetly situated in Mount Street. He slightly knew one of the partners, William Agincourt, and asked for him.

He was shown into a waiting-room dominated by a large photograph of a larger woman signed
To my dear Barabbas, Recognizantly Lillianne Bomberger.
He saw the great pumpkin face and full lips, the monumental hair-do, the seemingly inflated bust and the rapacious eyes of the novelist. She was dressed in something that the late Queen Mary might have worn for her Diamond Jubilee, and afloat in the air behind her, apparently, the photographer had artfully caught the vague shapes and titles of her books.

Mr Agincourt was a stocky, nondescript man, known as the lesser of the two partners in intelligence, personality and capital. He dealt with sales and production, leaving more delicate questions to his famous partner George Stump.

“Morning, Mr Deene,” he said when Carolus sat in his Louis Seize office. “Come to offer us a book, I hope? We ought to have had your
Rufus,
and I told George Stump so at the time. Still, I suppose we owe it to you we've got your boss's book.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh. Didn't you know?
The Wayward Mortar-board or Thirty Tears on the Slopes of Parnassus
by Hugh Gorringer, Headmaster of the Queen's School, Newminster. Due in the spring. Illustrated. Twenty-five bob.”

“Have you read it?”

“Read it? No. I shouldn't think that's possible, but we'll sell it all right.”

“It was not what I came to see you about.”

“No? Well, what can I do for you? I've got a spare hour.”

“What did you know of Lillianne Bomberger?”

“Good heavens, Mr Deene! I said an hour, not a lifetime. It would take me from now till Christmas to tell you the half of it. Why? Are you interested in doing the official biography? George Stump wants to find someone.

“No. I'm afraid not. You'd better get hold of Hector Bolitho or someone who is accustomed to dealing with Royalty. I just want a few facts. Where did she come from?”

“Forest Hill. Small sweet-and-tobacco shop.”

“Really. How did she do it?”

“I'll tell you. Sheer hard work and ambition. She never had any looks, any charm, any talent or any money. But she had determination. She won a scholarship to a Grammar School as a girl. Started writing before she was twenty. Never published anything, but went on and on. Reckoned to send out so many manuscripts a week whatever happened. It doesn't matter whether you can write or not when you're like that. Sooner or later you get there.”

“And Bomberger?”

“That was her big mistake. He was a little, inflammable gasbag of a man who told her he was going to set the Thames on fire, and she believed him. Her name was Lily Cribb before she married, and she'd have done better to keep it. But no, out she came with Lillianne Bomberger, and just at that time she sold a serial to a woman's paper and used the name. She's been stuck with it ever since.”

“What happened to Bomberger?”

“He got five years for diamond-smuggling. But that was after she'd been using the name for a year or two, so she
couldn't change it. He came out a long time ago, but I don't know whether she ever saw him.”

“Who are these nieces who lived with her?”

“They're the daughters of one of her sisters. It was a big family. Decent, respectable people who still live in South East London and wouldn't admit to being tied up with Lillianne Bomberger. But there's a son of one of her brothers whom she set up as a farmer. Somewhere near her home at Blessington-on-Sea.”

“That's a fairly imposing sort of house, I take it?”

“Ghastly. George Stump is down there now. It was just outside the little town, the only house in a bay of its own. She bought the land right to the foreshore and would like to have bought that, too. The house was built by one of the tobacco barons, a mock-Gothic affair, not enormously large, but very comfortable. Panelling everywhere. It always seemed to me as though that tobacco man wanted to live inside one of his own cigar-boxes. But it was an easy house to run. She hated having servants. The nieces and the secretary and a char did everything.”

“I understand she was a semi-invalid?”

“She posed as one. Had herself pulled about in a bath-chair and all that. I don't think there was much wrong with her health. I think she used hypochondria as a means of dominating the lives of the wretched people round her.”

“She doesn't sound very amiable.”

“She was a bitch, Mr Deene. The bitch of all time, if you want it straight. An egotist on a scale you can scarcely believe.
Folie de grandeur,
and with it a morbid selfishness and pettiness which were quite terrifying to see. The only surprising thing about her murder is that it did not happen years ago.”

“Tell me about her success.”

“That was phenomenal, of course. I'll be frank and admit that she has made this firm. Made it. She started with light sentimental novels in the style of Ethel Dell, but got nowhere with them. You have to be sincere for that job. All
the successful ones believe in their books as though they were George Eliot. Doesn't matter what tripe it is, it won't get across if they don't believe in it. She didn't. Then she began trying to imitate Mrs Agatha Christie. That didn't work either because Agatha Christie is inimitable. Haven't enough tried? She may have a formula, but gosh! she knows how to work it. Lillianne didn't. But she couldn't be put off. She was forty now, and hadn't had a sniff of success. Then do you know what she did? Combined the two forms of imitation. Wrote a sentimental love-story with wilting heroine and strong, silent men in the Dell manner and popped a murder mystery right in the first chapter. Remember her first?
Blood on the Rose?
We took it, and its success nearly broke us. We hadn't the capital to print what we needed. Fortunately George Stump got some for us and saved the situation. The book sold a hundred thousand at seven-and-six—pre-war, of course. The play ran a year here and nearly two in New York. The film rights brought her a fortune, and it was before Income Tax made such things almost worthless. She never looked back.”

“But did she look forward? Did she break new ground?”

“Never, of course. She wrote the same book over and over again to the end. We've got her latest in the office now—
The Flower of Death.
But don't think we've not earned it. We've had her for twenty-three years, and it's been like a prison sentence. She was the most insufferable human being of this century. Or any other, I sometimes think. I wish you had known her.”

“I wish that, too. I'm going down to Blessington-on-Sea tomorrow.”

“Oh, I see. Going to solve the mystery, are you?”

“A little criminological vacation, I prefer to say. I might ask a few questions.”

“So far as I'm concerned, whoever did for her was a public benefactor.”

“Oh no,” said Carolus sharply. “No murderer is that.”

Bill Agincourt looked quite serious.

“Suppose someone had succeeded in murdering Hitler?” he challenged.

Carolus smiled.

“I must fall back on words. That would have been political assassination. This was for private, probably selfish, motives. Moreover, you did not mean what you said, I hope. Would you have murdered her?”

“No. Perhaps not. But I could have been tempted to.”

“I think you're talking somewhat loosely. But then I'm rather a prig on the subject. I don't like murder anywhere by anyone for any motive at all, Agincourt. It's monstrously presumptuous, for one thing. It's assuming the prerogative of God, if you want a noisy phrase. However, we can agree that Lillianne Bomberger was a woman who provoked the worst instincts in everyone about her. Did
no
one like her?”

“The Secretary, perhaps. Alice Pink. Though even in her devotion there seemed to be a kind of hatred. I don't know. You must see for yourself.”

“I know what you mean about the Secretary. It is possible to hate someone so much that it becomes a kind of love. But apart from that had she many acquaintances?”

“Oh yes. She used to appear at literary functions occasionally looking delighted with herself, like a great dairy cow who had beaten the milk-yielding records. She had a few hangers-on. Then down at Blessington-on-Sea she liked to pose as Charity. She headed every subscription list in the town. But friends—not one.”

“That certainly suggests a wide field. I'm very grateful to you, Agincourt, for giving me so much information.”

“George Stump will tell you more. He's still down at Blessington. He went to try to conciliate Bomberger who was throwing a fit of temperament and threatening to leave us. You know George? He's a character. You'll like him. He expects to be down there another week or two, clearing up. He's an executor, you see.”