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CHAPTER 1
Booked for Murder
I DON'T know what came over me. It wasn't as if there were not enough books in the house to begin with. There were books on the floor, books on all the tables, books on the beds — and in the beds if one wasn't careful. Only that morning I had removed three volumes of Curtis from my room. How they came to be there I would not know. There seems to be a plot between the old man, Professor John Stubbs, and his housekeeper, Mrs. Farley, to dump anything they like in my room. So far as I am concerned this is fine. I like books. I like mess. But I have books enough and mess enough of my own.
Anyhow I had gone out with the intention of buying a book. It wasn't that I wanted any book. I had made up my mind. I wanted to read Louis Trenchard More's life of my famous namesake, Robert Boyle, the father of chemistry and uncle of the Earl of Cork.
I went to Zwemmer's Charing Cross Road. I found the book had been published in America and was out of stock, so I crawled up Gower Street, to see if there was an odd copy left in H. K. Lewis's. There wasn't.
Having made up my mind that I wanted the life of Robert Boyle I started going round all the bookshops I could find. This was fine, but I kept on running into other books I wanted. I spent the devil of a lot of money. I said to myself that it didn't really matter very much if I failed to get the Life of Boyle, I had gathered enough to keep me reading for at least a fortnight.
The old man had resigned himself to the thought that I was to take a fortnight's holiday. In three days I was going to the Scilly Isles to lie in the sun and enjoy a bit of quiet life, well out of reach of letters and telegrams. I had warned the old man that I would reply to neither. So far as he and the rest of the world were concerned I was going into retreat. I wished to be thought of as dead or hibernating for a fortnight.
The Professor had grumbled a bit when he realised that I actually meant to go away. I think he thought that I had been bluffing. But he had no legitimate cause for discontent. I was due for a holiday and he knew it.
The trouble with bookshops is that they are as bad as pubs. You start with one and then you drift to another, and before you know where you are you are on a gigantic book-binge. My brief case was full to bursting and I had bundles of books under both arms. I was bowed down by the weight of them.
I made up my mind that I would visit one more shop before I went home. There was a curious little shop in a side-street off the Tottenham Court Road, off the wrong side — towards Charlotte Street and the dismal bohemia, not towards the University and the eager students. I could never remember the name of the proprietor, but he sometimes had nice books which were not commonly in demand and his prices were always reasonable.
Sometimes I had bought books there so cheaply that I wondered what on earth the old fellow lived upon. He could not make a profit out of the shop. As a rule when I went there I was the only customer in the shop, so it didn't look as though business flourished.
I retraced my steps up the Charing Cross Road, having dumped my purchases in David Low's bookshop in Cecil Court.
I entered the little shop. It was piled to the ceiling with books. It reminded me faintly of the Professor's house in that the bookshelves had long before given up the effort to contain all the books. The only difference was that here the books were covered with dust while at home the indefatigable Mrs. Farley managed to keep the dust at bay by some magical means known only to herself.
I didn't see the proprietor when I entered the shop, but there was nothing unusual in that. He was probably in his back-room making up accounts or brewing himself a cup of tea on the rusty old gas-ring which I knew was there. I glanced towards the door. It was closed. I supposed he must be dealing with some business, so I decided to take myself on a voyage of discovery among the masses of books.
There was no denying it. The place was dusty. I got filthy, but I made some rather nice finds. Books which I had hoped to obtain sometime kept on peering out at me as I disturbed the cobwebs and the grey brown London dust. I found a nice copy of the first collected edition of the works of Sir Thomas Browne and a copy of Erasmus Darwin's Phytologia or the Philosophy of Agriculture, with a presentation inscription to that amiable bore, William Hayley. I laid these aside and went on with my quest.
I suppose I spent about an hour and a half nosing among the piles of ancient calf-bound books. Some of those I laid aside would need some attention from the binder, but the prices scribbled upon the fly-leaves were so ridiculously small that I could not resist them.
The dust I raised in my hunt was so thick that I sneezed and coughed a good deal.
I suppose that must have been the reason that I did not notice an alien smell until I was looking through the books just beside the entrance to the private room, where the old man kept his treasures and his desk.
Once I did notice it, I paid little attention to it for a few minutes. There was no reason why I should. It was only the smell of ordinary household gas and I suppose I had a subconscious memory of that rusty old gas-ring and the smell it distilled in the room.
I was looking at a copy of William Derham's Physico-Theology, 1713. It needed repairing, but the price was reasonable considering that it was a presentation copy from the author and that he had filled the endpapers with additional notes in a neat crabbed hand before giving it to his friend, Benjamin Lane, whoever he might be. I placed it on my pile, which had begun to assume pyramidical proportions.
As I turned round it struck me that the smell was stronger than it should have been. I walked up to the door of the back room and tried the handle. It turned all right but the door refused to open. I gave it a heave, but it still seemed to be stuck. I wondered whether the proprietor would be annoyed with me for intruding upon his privacy.
I was just about to kick at the lock, for I was beginning to feel rather worried, when I noticed that the door was fastened shut with a bolt at the top.
That was the solution. The old man had gone out and had forgotten to turn off the gas or to lock up the shop. He had, however, remembered to bolt the back room where he kept his money in a drawer of the desk, but hadn't realised that anyone could walk in and take it by merely unbolting the door.
I wondered what I should do. I decided that I would be doing no harm by going into the room and turning off the gas. The old proprietor would remember my face and not suspect me of burglarous intentions if he came in and found me engaged in breaking into his private room.
I slid the bolt back and opened the door. The gust of gas that caught me in the face drove me backwards. I went to the door of the shop and took a deep breath of fresh air. I turned round and advanced boldly into the back-room, with my mind set on the gas ring. I reached it in a couple of strides and grabbed the turn-cock. It wouldn't turn.
I was so intent on my struggle with the little bit of dull and tarnished brass that it wasn't until I had practically exhausted my breath that I looked at the rest of the room. When I did I damned nearly gasped. The room was not as I had expected, unoccupied. Not only was the old proprietor lying on the floor, but there was another man with him. I stooped down and grabbed them by their coat-collars and started to drag them out of the room. The proprietor was light enough, but the other man was a bit heavier. However I made it. I knocked down one of the tall piles of dusty volumes as I heaved them into the outer shop.
I managed to get them near the door. I took a deep breath of good clean air, for my lungs were nearly bursting and I had a tight band of metal frozen across my skull. I turned to deal with the two men I had pulled out of the room.
It was obvious that I could not hope to give artificial respiration to both of them. On second thoughts it seemed unlikely that any artificial respiration would be of use. Their faces were suffused to the colour of well-boiled lobsters.
All the same, it was up to me to do my best. I looked out of the shop again. There was no one in sight. I didn't know what to do. Then I remembered that, down one side of the shop, there ran an alley, with its mouth in Charlotte Street. The Charlotte Street end being wider than that in Wesley Street, a thoughtful post-office had erected a public telephone. I ran down the alley.
I got hold of the police and told them what had happened as quickly as possible. I suppose that by the time I had finished talking an ambulance was ready to set out. I rang off.
Of course it was none of my business, but I thought I had better do something more about it. I rang up Scotland Yard and asked if Chief Inspector Reginald E. Bishop was available. He was.
"I say, Bishop," I said, "I seem to have stumbled into a bit more death."
His voice was weary as he answered me, "You would. What is it this time?"
I told him.
"It seems queer to me that the room should be bolted on the outside and the men inside be sitting there inhaling gas, doesn't it? So far as I could see they had made no efforts to get out, but were lying quite quietly on the floor."
"Yes, Boyle," he said listlessly, "I'm afraid I'll need to look into it. Tell the Divisional Inspector what you've told me and that you've been in communication with me. Stay there till I arrive if you can."
He rung off and I wandered back towards the shop. As I arrived at the narrow-end of the alley I heard the clang of an ambulance bell.
There was no doubt about it. Both men were dead. Very dead. I had a better chance to look at them before they were taken away. The old proprietor whose name, it turned out was Allan Leslie, was a small, grey-haired man. In life his cheeks had been as rosy as a Cox's Orange Pippin. I had sometimes wondered how he had managed to look so healthy shut in the dust and mould of nearly a hundred thousand books.
The other man was not tall, but rather broad. Papers in his pocket gave his name as Cecil Baird. His clothes were in rather better condition than those of old Leslie, who did not seem to have been aware that the ends of his trousers had become frayed or that his elbows shewed grimy patches of lining. Baird seemed to have been a man of some substance. Among the contents of his pockets were a gold watch and a gold propelling pencil. His well-filled pocket-book was made of pigskin with gold corners. His dark hair had been receding from the crown of his head.
A small crowd had gathered from nowhere and was standing around the ambulance as the stretcher-bearers carried the bodies out, covered with blankets. A smart-looking youngish man came into the shop. He conversed quietly with the constable who had taken charge.
While they were talking I suddenly realised that there was something strange. It was as if a clock had suddenly stopped. I listened for a moment to see if I could identify the feeling that I had. Then I realised what it was. The gas had ceased. All the time I had been aware of the faint hissing in the background. I had explained to the constable my inability to turn off the turn-cock but he did not seem to pay much attention to my remarks. He had made no effort to turn off the gas himself. Now it had stopped of its own accord.
I was angry with myself. Why the hell I hadn't been content to go home with the books I'd left at Low's I did not know. It was as bad as dipsomania this book-buying, and its results were even more startling. It looked to me as though I had landed myself in the devil of a mess. Just when I was going on holiday, too. The old man would chortle like hell and try and make it an excuse for me to postpone my holiday, but I was damned if I would.
I knew I hadn't the hope of an ice-cream in hell of keeping him away from this. He would be in it up to the neck. I knew he would get into trouble. But it was none of my business. He could get himself into trouble and out again without my help. After all he had been doing it for years before I became his assistant, so it wouldn't be a bad thing for the Professor to have to do without me once again.
The Divisional Inspector, for so the young man proved to be, came across and introduced himself to me.
"My name is Potter," he said, "Mr — er ..."
"Boyle," I supplied obligingly, "Max Boyle."
"I believe that you discovered this distressing affair, and that it was you who telephoned for the ambulance? Now I would like to hear from you exactly what happened? Don't hurry yourself, but try to tell it in your own words as simply and directly as possible."
I told him. He walked into the inside room, which was beginning to clear, took a look at the gas-ring and then came back again. He looked puzzled.
"You say, Mr. Boyle," he asked, "that the room was bolted on the outside? Yes? That's very odd, isn't it?"
I agreed that it was indeed very odd.
"It's a great pity, of course, Mr. Boyle, that you had to interfere with the things inside the room. Not that I'm blaming you, mind, but it would perhaps have given us a lead if things had been left as you found them. Oh, I know you only thought that old Leslie had gone out and the flame on the gas had been extinguished by accident, and then, when you saw the bodies, you did what anyone would have done. I'd have tried to do it myself. All the same it is a pity, a very great pity."
A figure like a large and well-fed Persian cat suddenly materialised in the door of the shop. It was Chief Inspector Bishop. Beneath a black homburg his eyes looked weary. He would have scowled at me but that it would have required too much energy.
"Hullo, Max," he said slowly, "I see you're in trouble again. If I had my way both you and the Professor would be serving life sentences. That would be the only way to keep you out of mischief. Though," his voice was tired, "I suppose that even on Dartmoor the Professor would find some trouble to run into."
I was mad.
"Look here, Sir," I said, "Do you think I go around inviting people to die off more or less on my doorstep? Do you think I like being mixed up with murder? I like a quiet life as well as you do. I am a botanist and not a blinking detective. I was quietly buying books and this happens to me. I want to go away on holiday and I get tied up."
If I had been any angrier I would have had apoplexy.
CHAPTER 2
Death by Gas
MY TEMPER rose like boiling milk in a saucepan. I spluttered with indignation. The Bishop smiled at me. It was obvious I could not get under his skin. He seemed to have suffered everything before and was consequently imperturbable. Rage as I might he just looked bored.
I had just about worked my temper out when I heard a familiar noise outside in Wesley Street. It was the Professor swearing at his car. This was indeed the end. I'd had enough. I wanted to go away and die.
The old man entered the shop. He was wearing an immense moth-eaten sombrero stuck on the top of his head. It was rather too small for him. He had once told me that it had been left behind by a plant-physiologist from the Middle West, who had visited him to discuss some problems of rust-resistant wheat and who had succumbed to the brandy and long hours of talk. The man had gone away with a head like a steeple and had felt he couldn't reach the top of it, so he had left the hat behind. Professor Stubbs fancied himself in this hat. His grey hair sprouted around the edge of it. His steel-rimmed glasses were perched on the end of his nose, blunt as the end of his thumb. He beamed at us and peered out between the top of his glasses and his bushy eyebrows. He was as amiable as Napoleon brandy. I glowered at him.
"'Ullo, Max," he boomed cheerfully, "Endin' more bodies for me to play wi,' eh? That's the boy."
"How the hell, why the likewise did you get here or are you here?" I howled in a muddled way.
He pursed his lips and tried to look mysterious, but saw that I was really annoyed.
"Oh," his voice was as airy as Hyde Park, "the Chief Inspector who always has me best interests at heart, rang me up an' told me that ye'd been gettin' into a bit o' trouble, so I came rushin' along as fast as I could to get ye out o' it. I got a kindly character. That's me trouble. I can't let me assistant get into trouble wi' out tryin' to help him out o' it."
I looked at the Chief Inspector. His face betrayed that the old man was telling the truth. I could cheerfully have tied the two of them together in a sack and drowned them in the Serpentine.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Bodies in a Bookshop"
by .
Copyright © 1946 R. T. Campbell.
Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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