Situation Tragedy

resort to the phrase (for once used in a literal sense) ‘a matter of life and death’, before he achieved grudging consent. ‘But I’m going out at eight,’ said Stanley Harvey, ‘so you’ll have to be through by then.’

And no, there was no possibility of Charles borrowing any of the books.

When he opened the front door, Stanley Harvey lived up to the impression of his voice and cottage. He was a dapper little man in his early sixties, with a white goatee beard. A tweed Norfolk jacket and a Meerschaum pipe gave a Sherlockian image, which was reinforced by prints on the walls, models and memorabilia of the great detective.

Stanley Harvey seemed unimpressed by Charles Paris. ‘This is really extremely inconvenient. I hope you meant what you said about it being important.’

‘You must believe me. It is. It’s far too complicated to explain but it is important.’

Stanley Harvey sniffed. ‘I rang Gregory Watts and he confirmed that he had given you my number. Can’t be too careful. The collection is pretty valuable and I can’t let just anyone in.’

The emphasis, and the look that accompanied it, suggested he suspected Charles might be just anyone and still contemplated refusing admission. ‘Gregory Watts said you were an R. Q. Wilberforce collector.’

‘Hardly. I’ve only got one of the books. Death Takes A Short Cut.’

Stanley Harvey gave a superior smile. ‘Oh, I’ve got that, of course. I’ve got five of them, and there only ever were the six.’

‘First editions?’ Charles felt he had to ask, only to give Stanley Harvey the satisfaction of saying a supercilious ‘Of course.’

It had been a good question, because now Stanley Harvey’s desire to show off his collection was greater than his distrust of his visitor. ‘Come through,’ he said curtly.

They went to the back of the cottage and through a passage to what appeared to be a modern extension. As they walked, Stanley Harvey continued to parade his knowledge. ‘Of course, the reason R. Q. Wilberforces are so rare is that so few were printed.’

‘Oh?’ said Charles humbly.

‘Yes, he never really caught on as an author. He was too larky and the plotting was too slack, I believe. He had the books printed at his own expense.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’ Stanley Harvey had perked up now he saw what a humble student he had to lecture. Yes, he must have been a schoolteacher, he obviously enjoyed pontificating so much. A schoolteacher who had come into money.

Quite a lot of money, Charles reckoned when they went into the library. It was a purpose-built circular room. Packed bookshelves rose to the ceiling, alternating with tall windows protected with metal grids. All their books, arranged with the pernickety neatness that characterised their owner, were hard-backs of this century.

Charles made suitably appreciative noises.

‘Yes, not bad,’ said Stanley Harvey smugly. ‘One of the largest private collections in the world, so I believe.’

‘Of what?’ Charles couldn’t resist saying.

‘Detective fiction. All first editions of course. I have my own private cataloguing system.’

Yes, you would.

‘Conan Doyles along there — complete set of English and American firsts. Agatha Christie, the same. Raymond Chandler. . Dorothy Sayers, of course. Simenons in the original, English editions and some selected translations and — ’

‘What about R. Q. Wilberforces?’ asked Charles. It was twenty past six, the eight o’clock curfew was approaching fast, and he felt a desperate urgency to find out if he was on to something or just caught up in an elaborate fantasy.

‘Yes,’ said Stanley Harvey, with a moue of annoyance. ‘Of course. Right, if that’s all you’re interested in, over here.’

He moved across the room and pointed to a row of matching blue spines. ‘Here we are. R. Q. Wilberforce. The only one I haven’t been able to track down yet is Death Takes A Back Seat. But here we have Death Takes A Tumble, Death Takes The Wrong Turning, Death Takes A Drive, Death Takes A Stand and Death Takes A Short Cut. I also have some manuscripts and drafts of stuff that was never published, if that’s of interest.’ He gestured towards a rank of metal filing cabinets.

‘Did you collect them all one at a time?’

‘No, not the R. Q. Wilberforces, actually. I do with most of the stuff, get it from publishers or through dealers, but in fact I got all this lot together. Just after the war I wrote to R. Q. Wilberforce and asked if he’d got any material he wanted to get rid of. To my surprise he sent me the lot. With a very strange letter. Said that he had been going to throw it all away, said that the War had changed everything, that there was no time for frivolity any more, that life had been shown up in its true colours and it was a tragic business. He said that R. Q. Wilberforce was dead and he never wanted to hear anything about him again. The letter was very odd, sounded a bit unbalanced.’

‘Did he sign his own name?’

‘He signed R. Q. Wilberforce, I don’t know whether that was his name or not. I’ve got the letter filed if — ’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Stanley Harvey smiled a self-satisfied smile. ‘So I got a nice little haul there for nothing. Shows what a letter arriving at the right time can do. Always worth writing a lot of letters if you’re building up a collection.’

‘Yes.’ Charles looked at his watch. Half-past six. And he looked at the thickness of the five blue books on the shelf. ‘Look, perhaps you could save me a bit of time. All I need to find out is about the deaths in the books. Perhaps you can remember something of the plots.’

Stanley Harvey looked at him in amazement and stroked his little beard. ‘Good Lord, no. I only collect this stuff, I don’t read it.’

Stanley Harvey perched watchfully at his desk in the middle of the library while Charles did his research. The circular room strengthened the impression of a spider at the centre of his web, as did the little man’s suspicious eyes. He clearly expected Charles to try to leave with an illicit Margery Allingham under his jacket.

But once he got into the books, Charles was too intrigued to be inhibited by any hostile spectator. He read with fascination as the pattern he had suspected unfolded in all its lunacy.

He soon realised that he wouldn’t have to read all the text. The relevant bits were not hard to find.

He opened each book and checked the date to confirm their sequence. There was a dedication in each one, too. In the first, Death Takes A Tumble, it read ‘To Darling Hilary’, and in the subsequent ones, ‘To Hilary again, with all my love’. That introduced a new element. Barton and Aurelia’s had always been hailed as the great example of a show business marriage that remained faithful, and yet who was this Hilary to whom he had dedicated five books? Charles knew he would have to find that out.

But for the moment he was more concerned with the deaths. They were easily found. Barton Rivers, in the guise of R. Q. Wilberforce, wrote his books to an unerring formula. In Chapter One, Maltravers Ratcliffe would return to his wife, Eithne, from some gallant exploit, arid they would decide to go away somewhere to escape all thoughts of crime. In Chapter Two they would arrive at their destination, and, on the last page of the chapter, someone would die. Maybe this total predictability was one of the reasons why R. Q. Wilberforce couldn’t find a publisher and had to produce the books himself.

The murders made fascinating reading. In Death Takes A Tumble, the victim apparently fell from a fire escape on the tower of a baronial castle. In Death Takes A Wrong Turning a rock, cunningly placed round a hairpin bend in the Dolomites, caused a young playboy to drive his Hispano-Suiza to destruction down the face of a cliff. In Death Takes A Drive the victim was run down by a Bentley that didn’t stop (thus causing, because of the make of car, suspicion to fall on the spotless Maltravers Ratcliffe). And in Death Takes a Stand a young man in a stately home was killed by the apparently accidental fall of a heavy wall-mounted light-stand.

In each book the manner of the death was, either punningly or directly, suggested in the title.