The Crime at Black Dudley
By Margery Allingham.
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To
“The Gang”
The Crime at Black Dudley
I
Candlelight
The view from the narrow window was dreary and inexpressibly lonely. Miles of neglected parkland stretched in an unbroken plain to the horizon and the sea beyond. On all sides it was the same.
The grey-green stretches were hayed once a year, perhaps, but otherwise uncropped save by the herd of heavy-shouldered black cattle who wandered about them, their huge forms immense and grotesque in the fast-thickening twilight.
In the centre of this desolation, standing in a thousand acres of its own land, was the mansion, Black Dudley; a great grey building, bare and ugly as a fortress. No creepers hid its nakedness, and the long narrow windows were dark-curtained and uninviting.
The man in the old-fashioned bedroom turned away from the window and went on with his dressing.
“Gloomy old place,” he remarked to his reflection in the mirror. “Thank God it’s not mine.”
He tweaked his black tie deftly as he spoke, and stood back to survey the effect.
George Abbershaw, although his appearance did not indicate it, was a minor celebrity.
He was a smallish man, chubby and solemn, with a choirboy expression and a head of ridiculous bright-red curls which gave him a somewhat fantastic appearance. He was fastidiously tidy in his dress and there was an air of precision in everything he did or said which betrayed an amazingly orderly mind. Apart from this, however, there was nothing about him to suggest that he was particularly distinguished or even mildly interesting, yet in a small and exclusive circle of learned men Dr. George Abbershaw was an important person.
His book on pathology, treated with special reference to fatal wounds and the means of ascertaining their probable causes, was a standard work, and in view of his many services to the police in the past his name was well known and his opinion respected at the Yard.
At the moment he was on holiday, and the unusual care which he took over his toilet suggested that he had not come down to Black Dudley solely for the sake of recuperating in the Suffolk air.
Much to his own secret surprise and perplexity, he had fallen in love.
He recognized the symptoms at once and made no attempt at self-deception, but with his usual methodical thoroughness set himself to remove the disturbing emotion by one or other of the only two methods known to mankind—disillusionment or marriage. For that reason, therefore, when Wyatt Petrie had begged him to join a weekend party at his uncle’s house in the country, he had been persuaded to accept by the promise that Margaret Oliphant should also be of the party.
Wyatt had managed it, and she was in the house.
George Abbershaw sighed, and let his thoughts run on idly about his young host. A queer chap, Wyatt: Oxford turned out a lot of interesting young men with bees in their bonnets. Wyatt was a good lad, one of the best. He was profoundly grateful to Wyatt. Good Lord, what a profile she had, and there was brain there too, not empty prettiness. If only … ! He pulled himself together and mentally rebuked himself.
This problem must be attacked like any other, decently and in order.
He must talk to her; get to know her better, find out what she liked, what she thought about. With his mind still on these things the booming of the dinner gong surprised him, and he hurried down the low-stepped Tudor staircase as nearly flurried as he had ever been in his life.
However bleak and forbidding
