Death in the dark, p.1
Death in the Dark, page 1
Moray Dalton
Death in the Dark
“The truth can’t hurt anyone,” she said rather faintly.
He did not speak for a minute. Then he said without looking at her. “Not if he’s innocent.”
David Merle, a young circus acrobat, is arrested and convicted of the murder in London of wealthy eccentric Joshua Fallowes. Only his sister, Judy, and their aunt really believe in his innocence, although kindly Ben Levy stands by Judy (with whom he is rather smitten).
Things are looking bad for David until his sister gets a note from thirteen-year-old Toby (last seen in The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman). He has discovered some points of interest concerning the case, and this information sends Judy off to Sard Manor, a run-down country mansion complete with a privately-run zoo. She sets to work, sleuthing as an undercover housemaid. Fortunately Judy has a loyal friend in Toby, who comes furnished with a heroic Scotland Yard stepfather—none other than Inspector Collier. She’ll need all the help she can get, when the potential antagonists include not only the denizens of the Manor, but the beasts which lurk without.
Death in the Dark was first published in 1938. This new edition includes an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
Contents
Cover
Title Page/About the Book
Contents
Introduction by Curtis Evans
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
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About the Author
Titles by Moray Dalton
Copyright
THE WAY OF THE WICKED
Moray Dalton’s Death in the Dark (1938)
The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble. (PROVERBS 4:19)
Readers who have followed Moray Dalton’s Inspector Hugh Collier’s investigative saga up to this point will have noted the passionate concern of Hugh Collier, the author’s surrogate, with achieving justice for the pale and downtrodden, the weak and the weary (to borrow from the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s 1987 anthem of empathy, “On the Turning Away”). A favored plot device of the author is to have some innocent ground under the heels of wicked schemers, set up for a murder s/he did not commit, swiftly tried and convicted and sentenced to death (in that bygone era of righteous certitude). All seems lost, until Hugh Collier comes on the scene and with his unfailing empathy, doggedness and discernment finds the true path which others missed and sends the malefactors stumbling over their own schemes to their own well-merited dooms.
This formula unfurls at full force in Death in the Dark, Moray Dalton’s seventh Hugh Collier mystery. David Merle, a young circus acrobat, ingenuously falls into the pit dug for him by schemers and is arrested and convicted of the murder in London of wealthy circus-loving eccentric Joshua Fallowes. Only his sister, Judy Merle, another circus acrobat (with their brother and his wife composing the Flying Merles), and his aunt really believe in him, although kindly Ben Levy, stage manager at the Palace where the Merles had been performing until David’s arrest for the murder, stands by Judy, with whom he is rather smitten. Things looks dark for David until Judy gets a note, addressed from The Haven, Myrtle Road, Quinton Park, N., from a certain thirteen-year-old boy named Toby, who is none other than our Toby Fleming from The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman, now Hugh Collier’s stepson after Hugh’s marriage to Toby’s mother Sandra. Toby, who saw the Flying Merles perform and was rather smitten with Judy (“I caught the rose you threw,” he divulges in the note. “It fell to pieces, but I’ve got the stalk.”), reveals that he has managed to discover some points of interest concerning the case. This information sends Judy off to Somerset (a favored Dalton stomping ground) to Sard Manor, a run-down country mansion complete with a privately-run zoo, where in the guise of a housemaid she intrepidly does some investigating of her own. What that daring young veteran of the flying trapeze finds there might save David, if she only lives to tell about it! Fortunately Judy has a loyal friend in Toby, who comes equipped with a heroic Scotland Yard stepfather.
Moray Dalton’s exceptional sympathy—by Golden Age mystery standards--with many of the “others” in British mystery—the working class, Jews, blacks, unpopular nationalities of the moment—is strongly apparent in Death in the Dark. At one point in the novel David’s and Judy’s hairdresser aunt—nicknamed Auntie Apples on account of her having sent comestibles and other treats during the Great War, in “stubborn disregard of the obloquy attaching to the wives of enemy aliens,” to her interned German husband Sturmer (who nevertheless died from influenza in an internment camp)—observes the admittedly unprepossessing Ben Levy’s interest in her niece, notes his “nice manners” and thinks to herself: “There’s something about Jews. . . . They’re civilized. And they say they make very good husbands.” Perhaps such sentiments will strike some today as patronizing, but we must recall that just three years before the publication of Dalton’s novel, the German Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws, which among other things prohibited marriage and sexual relationships between Jews and those of “German blood.” To embrace Christian-Jewish intermarriage was no small thing not only in the Golden Age detective novel, but in the world at large.
Setting politics aside, the zoo at Sard Hall plays rather an interesting and unique role at the denouement of Death in the Dark, one that as far as I know is original for its time. Sard Hall might remind readers today of the great country estate of Longleat with its vaunted Safari Park, which inspired Peter Dickinson’s 1969 CWA Gold Dagger winning detective novel A Pride of Heroes; yet a more pertinent contemporary example from the author’s day is the Chester Zoo, developed by George Mottershead beginning in 1931 around the country house Oakfield Manor at Upton-by-Chester. The story of Mottershead’s founding of the zoo was dramatized in 2014 in a six-part BBC television series. No murders were involved to my knowledge!
Curtis Evans
CHAPTER I
THE TRAP
David had scribbled a note to his wife while the Flying Merles were waiting for their call. “Take care of yourself, old girl, and don’t worry about money. I’ve had a stroke of luck and will be able to send you enough for everything next week.” He stuck on the stamp and slipped the envelope into a pocket of his shabby brown overcoat just before he ran on to the stage.
The Merles’s act on the flying trapeze was a family affair. The real work was done by Reuben and David and their sister Judith. Reuben’s wife, Lil, a platinum blonde, had been assisting a conjurer when Reuben met her. Her job now was to stand at the foot of the ladder, smiling at the audience and passing up the paper rings and the coloured balls and finally the sack in which David made his much advertised leap blindfold into space. Her smile had been more than usually perfunctory to-night for the audience was scanty and unenthusiastic. She grumbled to Judith, whose dressing-room she shared with the Sisters Dainty and the wife of the saxophone player. They had the grimy little room to themselves, for their fellow artistes had preceded them.
“A bum place this. What a life! Hi, that’s my lipstick!”
“Sorry!” Judith had wiped the paint off her face in a hurry and was scrambling into her clothes while Lil, still half naked, was examining her own reflection in the mirror.
“I need some exercise,” she explained; “a brisk walk, and I forgot to ask David to wait for me.”
“Walking? A night like this? You’re balmy!”
Judith glanced down at her sister-in-law’s opulent white shoulders.
“Can’t afford to get fat in our profession.”
She dragged her beret over her tangled brown curls, picked up her bag, and hurried off. But she was too late to catch David. The stage door keeper told her he had passed out some minutes earlier. It was a horrible night, icy cold and clammy with fog drifting into the lower part of the town from the river. Judith shivered, wishing she could afford a thicker coat, and decided to go straight back to their lodgings, fill her hot water bottle, and read the book she had got from the twopenny library in bed. It seemed the most sensible thing to do, but she was oddly depressed; David might, she thought, have waited for her. They had always been pals, but of course he thought more of his wife now. Daisy was expecting a baby and had gone home to her mother for the time being. Later, when she recalled that evening, it sickened her to realise how different everything might have been if David had not been so anxious to get across the square before the pillar box was cleared to post his nightly letter to his wife. He had been just in time on Monday and on Tuesday. On Wednesday he had been detained for a minute and the postman had been away on his bicycle. Daisy must not be disappointed twice. And so, on this Thursday night he had slipped out as quickly as he could. The letter was safely posted and he was turning away when a man’s voice bade him good evening.
The owner of the voice was
“One of the Flying Merles, I think?” he said as he fell into step with the young acrobat. “A very good turn. I wonder if you would care to come along to my place for a bit of supper?”
David normally would have declined such an invitation from a complete stranger, but, as it happened, he had heard something of his would-be host only the previous week from a ventriloquist who had been in the same bill as the Merles at the Brighton Hippodrome.
“If you’re going to Holton look out for an old chap who goes regularly to the Palace Monday evenings and sometimes again if there’s a turn he fancies. He might ask you home to supper. He’s eccentric but harmless. No funny business. And you’ll get a good blow out and a first class cigar. He’s bats. No servants living in though he’s got a big house and plenty of money. I was there once. The grub’s good, believe me.”
“You’ll come?” The old man laid a gloved hand on David’s threadbare coat-sleeve. His voice was curiously uncertain, with an underlying note of urgency that was not altogether reassuring. For an instant David wavered. He had meant to accept this invitation if the chance came his way. Even if this queer old gentleman was not as harmless as the ventriloquist had pronounced him, he had every confidence in his ability to take care of himself. On the other hand there was something about his ill-concealed eagerness which had a chilling effect on his interlocutor.
“Thanks, very much,” said David, after that momentary hesitation, but he was glad when the gloved hand dropped from his arm.
“Splendid. This way, this way, my dear lad. My name—perhaps you have heard it—is Joshua Fallowes. But we won’t talk, eh, till we get inside. This raw night air—it affects my lungs.”
It was certainly not a night to linger out of doors. The streets were deserted, the street lamps shone dimly through the fog which seemed to be getting thicker. Mr. Fallowes led the way uphill out of the shopping centre into a quiet residential district where the roads were lined with trees and the houses were detached and screened from one another and from passers-by by dense shrubberies. A gate swung to behind them and they passed up a winding gravel drive.
“Here we are!” The old man bent, fumbling clumsily with his gloved hands for the keyhole.
A glimmer of light showed through the fanlight over the door, but the rest of the house seemed to be in darkness. Mr. Fallowes paused when they had crossed the threshold, and he had closed the door after them, and appeared to be listening. A grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs ticked steadily, but there was no other sound.
“This way,” he said fussily. “I won’t ask you to take off your overcoat. I’ve no fire in the dining-room, and it’s cold.” He led the way into a room on the right of the front door and switched on the shaded lamp hanging over the table. “Sit down and help yourself.”
David was young and healthy, and for some time past he had been trying to cut down his expenses, saving all he could to send to Daisy. Moreover landladies who let rooms to theatricals on a second rate circuit are seldom good cooks. He forgot his instinctive distrust of his host as he saw the cold roast chicken, the galantine, the meat patties and the apricot tart, and only remembered that it was weeks since he had eaten a really appetising meal.
“Do you really mean that? Thanks awfully.”
Mr. Fallowes took the chair at the other end of the table and looked on benevolently.
“Can’t I cut some for you, sir? Aren’t you eating anything?”
“No. Not to-night. I have to be careful of my digestion.”
Urged on by his host David had two helpings of chicken and salad.
“Might I have some water to drink, sir? Maybe I can fetch some. There isn’t any on the table.”
Mr. Fallowes’ swathed and mummy-like figure was shaken with good humoured laughter. “Water? Oh, dear me, that would be very dull. You’ll find a bottle of claret on the sideboard. Fill your glass. It won’t hurt you. Plenty of cups there, eh?”
The big mahogany sideboard was laden with silver. David was impressed by the glittering mass of metal.
“Did you win all these, sir?”
“Some of them. The rest is family stuff. Which of those would you say was the heaviest? Pick them up and weigh them in your hands. That big fellow with the scroll handles. Lighter than you thought, eh? Well, come back and finish your supper.”
David obeyed. His boyish face was rather flushed. He was unused to wine, and it had been a large glass. He cut himself a generous slice of fruit tart, but the edge of his hunger was blunted and he began to look about him as he ate.
He saw a typical Victorian dining-room, grown a trifle dingy and threadbare with the passing of the years, with its framed engravings after Landseer on the walls, and its funereal mantelpiece of black marble supporting a pair of bronze gladiators. A dreadful room, as he felt instinctively, implying as it did the arrested mental development of its occupant, who, in sixty years, had not attempted to make any change in it.
“You’ve finished? You’ll find cigarettes in a box on the sideboard. Now suppose you tell me all about yourself, eh? The story of your life.”
David smiled. “That would be a poor return for your hospitality.”
He fancied he had seen Mr. Fallowes glance at the clock.
“I don’t want to bore you, sir—outstay my welcome. Perhaps I ought to be getting along.”
“No, no. I’ve been looking forward to a chat. You must not go yet,” said Mr. Fallowes firmly. “Gratify an old man’s curiosity. You’re English, aren’t you? I thought so. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two. Reuben is a year older, and Judy—that’s my sister—is nineteen.”
Once started David was not unwilling to talk about himself. He felt good after a hearty meal and the wine had loosened his tongue. His parents had been acrobats. They had been killed in a railway accident over in the States, and the three children had been brought up by their aunt. “She’s a wardrobe dealer. You know, an old clothes woman. She went in for that after her husband died. She had a shed behind her shop fitted up for us to practise in and she put us through it. She did her best for us. No lovey dovey stuff, and if we tried to dodge the work she’d give us what for. But it was the best way. I can see that now.”
David was not a skilled narrator and he was getting very sleepy. He was inclined to wander from the point and to repeat himself, but his audience of one was not disposed to be critical. Perhaps actually he was not listening very closely. His eyes, bright and restless behind the tinted glasses, glanced now and again to the clock. Presently he leaned forward, stopping David in the middle of a sentence.
“I have to thank you, my dear boy, for humouring a lonely old man, but I must not keep you out too long. I wonder if you would do me a favour before you go. It’s nothing very difficult. The window in my bedroom upstairs has got stuck and I haven’t the necessary strength to force it up. Would you do it for me? It won’t take a minute. Thank you so much.”
“I’ll be pleased to—” said David, but the old gentleman had checked himself and turned back to take something, a bulky envelope, from a drawer of the old-fashioned bureau standing between the sideboard and the fireplace.
“Just one moment,” he said cheerfully, “I was nearly forgetting. Don’t open this until you get back. Just a few little booklets. A little good advice. You may find them helpful. Young men have many temptations. Read them over at your leisure.” He thrust the envelope into David’s rather reluctant hand. David remembered now that his acquaintance had said something, grinning, about a parcel of tracts, the pill in Mr. Fallowes’ jam. Well, why not? The poor old chap meant well, and he was not obliged to read them. He accepted the proffered literature with a mumbled “Thank you, sir,” pushed the envelope into one of his overcoat pockets, and forgot it.
“And now for this tiresome window of mine.” Mr. Fallowes led the way through the cold, dimly lit hall and up the stairs to the first floor landing, opened the door that faced them and stood aside to allow David to pass in before him. The room was pitch dark and David waited for the light to be turned on.
