The Threefold Cord Read online

  Francis Vivian

  The Threefold Cord

  “Death has no manners as a general rule. In this instance he was a reformed character, and knocked twice before entering.”

  Inspector Gordon Knollis heads from Scotland Yard to the village of Bowland, investigating what initially appears a trivial mystery. Mrs. Frederick Manchester’s life centres on her husband and her two pets. Entering her boudoir after breakfast on Sunday morning, she finds her budgerigar lying dead, its neck broken, a blue silken cord tied loosely round it. On the Monday, in the cactus house, she finds her cat lying amongst the plants. A blue silken cord is looped round its neck—which is broken.

  But Knollis soon sees the case as far from trivial, an opinion confirmed when the partly-decapitated body of Fred Manchester is found in the Green Alley early on the Tuesday evening—with a blue silken cord crushed into his outside breast-pocket.

  Knollis goes to work in his own determined way. There are many difficulties, and many setbacks, but he presses on in spite of them all, eventually solving the grim joke that lies behind the mystery of the three cords.

  The Threefold Cord was originally published in 1947. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  “Francis Vivian skips all tedious preliminaries and is commendably quick off the mark; we meet his characters with lively pleasure.” Observer

  “Mr. Vivian neatly fits everything in its place.” Times Literary Supplement

  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

  About the Author

  Titles by Francis Vivian

  The Ninth Enemy – Title Page

  The Ninth Enemy – Chapter One

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Shortly before his death in 1951, American agriculturalist and scholar Everett Franklin Phillips, then Professor Emeritus of Apiculture (beekeeping) at Cornell University, wrote British newspaperman Arthur Ernest Ashley (1906-1979), author of detective novels under the pseudonym Francis Vivian, requesting a copy of his beekeeping mystery The Singing Masons, the sixth Inspector Gordon Knollis investigation, which had been published the previous year in the United Kingdom. The eminent professor wanted the book for Cornell’s Everett F. Phillips Beekeeping Collection, “one of the largest and most complete apiculture libraries in the world” (currently in the process of digitization at Cornell’s The Hive and the Honeybee website). Sixteen years later Ernest Ashely, or Francis Vivian as I shall henceforward name him, to an American fan requesting an autograph (“Why anyone in the United States, where I am not known,” he self-deprecatingly observed, “should want my autograph I cannot imagine, but I am flattered by your request and return your card, duly signed.”) declared that fulfilling Professor Phillip’s donation request was his “greatest satisfaction as a writer.” With ghoulish relish he added, “I believe there was some objection by the Librarian, but the good doctor insisted, and so in it went! It was probably destroyed after Dr. Phillips died. Stung to death.”

  After investigation I have found no indication that the August 1951 death of Professor Phillips, who was 73 years old at the time, was due to anything other than natural causes. One assumes that what would have been the painfully ironic demise of the American nation’s most distinguished apiculturist from bee stings would have merited some mention in his death notices. Yet Francis Vivian’s fabulistic claim otherwise provides us with a glimpse of that mordant sense of humor and storytelling relish which glint throughout the eighteen mystery novels Vivian published between 1937 and 1959.

  Ten of these mysteries were tales of the ingenious sleuthing exploits of series detective Inspector Gordon Knollis, head of the Burnham C.I.D. in the first novel in the series and a Scotland Yard detective in the rest. (Knollis returns to Burnham in later novels.) The debut Inspector Knollis mystery, The Death of Mr. Lomas, which was published in 1941, is actually the seventh Francis Vivian detective novel. However, after the Second World War, when the author belatedly returned to his vocation of mystery writing, all of the remaining detective novels he published, with two exceptions, chronicle the criminal cases of the keen and clever Knollis. These other Inspector Knollis tales are: Sable Messenger (1947), The Threefold Cord (1947), The Ninth Enemy (1948), The Laughing Dog (1949), The Singing Masons (1950), The Elusive Bowman (1951), The Sleeping Island (1951), The Ladies of Locksley (1953) and Darkling Death (1956). (Inspector Knollis also is passingly mentioned in Francis Vivian’s final mystery, published in 1959, Dead Opposite the Church.) By the late Forties and early Fifties, when Hodder & Stoughton, one of England’s most important purveyors of crime and mystery fiction, was publishing the Francis Vivian novels, the Inspector Knollis mysteries had achieved wide popularity in the UK, where “according to the booksellers and librarians,” the author’s newspaper colleague John Hall later recalled in the Guardian (possibly with some exaggeration), “Francis Vivian was neck and neck with Ngaio Marsh in second place after Agatha Christie.” (Hardcover sales and penny library rentals must be meant here, as with one exception--a paperback original--Francis Vivian, in great contrast with Crime Queens Marsh and Christie, both mainstays of Penguin Books in the UK, was never published in softcover.)

  John Hall asserted that in Francis Vivian’s native coal and iron county of Nottinghamshire, where Vivian from the 1940s through the 1960s was an assistant editor and “colour man” (writer of local color stories) on the Nottingham, or Notts, Free Press, the detective novelist “through a large stretch of the coalfield is reckoned the best local author after Byron and D. H. Lawrence.” Hall added that “People who wouldn’t know Alan Sillitoe from George Eliot will stop Ernest in the street and tell him they solved his last detective story.” Somewhat ironically, given this assertion, Vivian in his capacity as a founding member of the Nottingham Writers Club awarded first prize in a 1950 Nottingham writing competition to no other than 22-year-old local aspirant Alan Sillitoe, future “angry young man” author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959). In his 1995 autobiography Sillitoe recollected that Vivian, “a crime novelist who earned his living by writing . . . gave [my story] first prize, telling me it was so well written and original that nothing further need be done, and that I should try to get it published.” This was “The General’s Dilemma,” which Sillitoe later expanded into his second novel, The General (1960).

  While never himself an angry young man (he was, rather, a “ragged-trousered” philosopher), Francis Vivian came from fairly humble origins in life and well knew how to wield both the hammer and the pen. Born on March 23, 1906, Vivian was one of two children of Arthur Ernest Ashley, Sr., a photographer and picture framer in East Retford, Nottinghamshire, and Elizabeth Hallam. His elder brother, Hallam Ashley (1900-1987), moved to Norwich and became a freelance photographer. Today he is known for his photographs, taken from the 1940s through the 1960s, chronicling rural labor in East Anglia (many of which were collected in the 2010 book Traditional Crafts and Industries in East Anglia: The Photographs of Hallam Ashley). For his part, Francis Vivian started working at age 15 a
s a gas meter emptier, then labored for 11 years as a housepainter and decorator before successfully establishing himself in 1932 as a writer of short fiction for newspapers and general magazines. In 1937, he published his first detective novel, Death at the Salutation. Three years later, he wed schoolteacher Dorothy Wallwork, with whom he had one daughter.

  After the Second World War Francis Vivian’s work with the Notts Free Press consumed much of his time, yet he was still able for the next half-dozen years to publish annually a detective novel (or two), as well as to give popular lectures on a plethora of intriguing subjects, including, naturally enough, crime, but also fiction writing (he published two guidebooks on that subject), psychic forces (he believed himself to be psychic), black magic, Greek civilization, drama, psychology and beekeeping. The latter occupation he himself took up as a hobby, following in the path of Sherlock Holmes. Vivian’s fascination with such esoterica invariably found its way into his detective novels, much to the delight of his loyal readership.

  As a detective novelist, John Hall recalled, Francis Vivian “took great pride in the fact that the reader could always arrive at a correct solution from the given data. His Inspector never picked up an undisclosed clue which, it was later revealed, held the solution to the mystery all along.” Vivian died on April 2, 1979, at the respectable if not quite venerable age of 73, just like Professor Everett Franklin Phillips. To my knowledge the late mystery writer had not been stung to death by bees.

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER I

  THE MYSTERY AT BOWLAND

  Four miles from the city of Trentingham lies the village of Bowland. Its seven hundred inhabitants are variously happy, unhappy, or merely insentient, living their lives in accordance with laws of which most of them are unaware, puzzling over effects without reaching back to the causes—unless it should be some unusual and startling manifestation rare to their general experience. Such an event was the violent death of Mr. Frederick David Manchester, who was found half-decapitated in the grounds of his own house, and following as it did on two other peculiar events in the same house it set tongues wagging freely in the Social Service Institute and the bar-parlour of the Anchor Inn. It was these first two events which brought Inspector Gordon Knollis from New Scotland Yard to Bowland.

  “Go down to Trentingham,” said Superintendent Hatch, “and report to Colonel Mowbray. He is the Chief Constable in case you don’t know. Something screwy has been happening in a potty little village in his diocese, and although he gives no clue as to its nature, I’m willing to bet that it amounts to no more than the chalking of rude words on a garden gate. You see, I know old Mowbray. He’s a member of the old school, and possesses a very rigid mind. A crime to him is not necessarily an offence to be found in the statutes, but some offence against his own code. However, let me have a report as soon as you can, because I’m not wasting you down there if I can help it. I don’t want to send you at all, but Mowbray has influence in the right quarters, and, in diplomatic language, it is politic to acquiesce. Oh, and be nice to him, no matter how you may feel—there’s a Chief Inspectorship going begging in case you are interested.”

  So Gordon Knollis collected his luggage and his Sergeant Ellis, and set forth to St. Pancras. Later that same day they were shown into the Chief Constable’s office in the Guildhall at Trentingham, where the three gentlemen took stock of each other as they mouthed the conventional introductions and greetings.

  Colonel Mowbray saw before him a lean man with a long nose and steady grey eyes which peered keenly through slits in his sharp features. He may have been capable of smiling, but there was no proof of it at the moment. If ever a man looked like a detective, this was he. A child of twelve could not have made a wrong guess at his probable profession. There was an attitude of reserve about him, and he had the bearing of a gentleman; looking intelligent without being highbrow, inquisitive without being vulgarly curious, and firm without any of the pugnacity of a bully. Above all, he gave the impression of being efficient.

  Beside him was a stocky little fellow with pleasing features which bore traces of the quizzical humour of the Cockney. There were creases at the corners of his eyes, and lurking humour in his lips. He had heavy black eyebrows, a thick and bristly moustache, and thick curly hair which was well-oiled and still refused to take its brushing lying down. He held himself respectfully, and yet there was no servility in his attitude. Here was the British workman in essence; he knew his job, knew that he knew it, and would defer to no one who could not surpass him in skill.

  Knollis, for his part, saw a tall and aristocratic man in check tweeds who wore a monocle in his right eye, a man whose chin was clean-shaven and held just a trifle too high; a man whose gaze wandered over him almost impertinently; a man whose military moustaches were those of a martinet of the old school; a man who obviously took upon himself the role of the centurion of old and would not brook either argument or disobeyal of his orders. He took the monocle from his eye and screwed it back again—it appeared to have a clockwise thread. He then grunted, herrummed, and glanced again at Knollis’s card.

  “Inspector Gordon Knollis. Pleased to meet, you, Inspector. First trip to Trentingham?”

  “I’ve been through the city on several occasions, sir,” Knollis replied, “but I cannot say that I know it very well.”

  Colonel Mowbray grunted. “Pretty fine place, Trentingham. Hope you like it—if you get time to see any of it.”

  “I liked what little I saw as we came from the station,” said Knollis.

  The Chief Constable’s chin went a shade higher. He twiddled with his monocle and looked out through the window. “No mean city, Inspector.”

  “You have a job for me, sir?” asked Knollis, anxious to steer the conversation into less unbusinesslike channels.

  The Chief Constable opened his mouth, stared at the opposite wall, and spoke a few seconds later. “Ah-h, yes. Infernal nuisance, but Fred Manchester has influence and I dare not turn down his request for an investigation—especially as he asked the Lord-Lieutenant at the same time!”

  Knollis raised an eyebrow. The name struck a chord.

  “Fred Manchester, sir? The furniture magnate?”

  The Chief Constable nodded despondently. “The same. You know of him, Inspector?”

  Knollis nodded grimly. “In my early years, while still pounding a beat in Burnham, my wife and I bought a suite from him. Ever since I have hoped to meet him and express my opinions about the sideboard, the back panels of which bear the Oriental legend: Orange Pekoe.

  “That is Manchester all over,” sympathised the Chief Constable. “Thus far, you are prepared. I’ll tell you the rest about him—assuming and hoping that you never fell foul of his fouler methods. He started in Trentingham some twenty-five years ago, as a journeyman furniture-maker with Ponsonby. Ten years later he found financial backing and opened up on his own account. Five years later he had four shops in the city, and to-day—”

  “Manchester is everywhere!” quoted Knollis.

  “You can’t get away from his damned advertising, can you?” said the Chief Constable. “Three hundred branches in England alone. In all truth, Manchester is everywhere. He has made a fortune, and it was only the legislation with regard to hire purchase that prevented him from making two or three more fortunes.”

  Knollis raised his eyebrows in silent enquiry.

  “Oh, nobody likes the fellow,” said the Chief Constable. “He is endured because he has money, and can be milked of it providing he thinks he is creating an impression. He pushed the Lord-Lieutenant into pushing me into pushing the Yard to send you down. That is Manchester all over; a pusher, with cash instead of steam for the motive power.”

  He inched the cigarette box across the table and indicated that Knollis and Ellis were to help themselves.

  “Yes, he’s a dirty dog all right. His old method of making money was to sell a complete home to a working family for about fifteen bob to a quid a week. Came bad times, and hire pay
ments fell into arrears. There was no mercy from Manchester! Oh dear, no! His van called at the house, and collected the whole home. The account was closed. The furniture was tickled-up and repolished, and resold on the same terms, as new stuff.”

  “And now?” Knollis murmured politely, as if he was totally ignorant of the laws which he helped to uphold.

  “He has to leave behind such of the furniture as squares with the amounts paid by the purchaser, hiree, or what have you. He is, thank God, tied down!”

  “And his present trouble, sir?”

  The Chief Constable coughed. “I—er—hate to tell you, Inspector.”

  “I take it that it is a very trivial matter?”

  The Chief Constable made a rude noise not at all consonant with the dignity of his position.

  “May I ask why the Trentingham C.I.D. is not dealing with the matter, sir?”

  The Chief Constable sniffed. “You may, and I must answer the question. Manchester said, in so many words, that my staff were not competent. He was the great I-Am. He could pay for the best, and he was goin’ to have the best. Well, he’s getting it, and he’s going to pay for it. Regard that as a compliment,” he added, throwing the line away.

  Knollis permitted himself the trace of a smile. “He is one of the new aristocracy, sir?”

  The Chief Constable gazed on him with affection. “Ah, I see you are a man of discrimination, Inspector!”

  “We must discriminate in our profession, sir. The human race is made up of all kinds of people.”

  “True enough,” the Chief Constable said regretfully. “Anyway, I’ve booked two rooms for you at the Crown. I chose it because it has a good table and a most excellent bar. You’ll find me there most evenings. Your luggage will be sent round to you.”

  “But the job, the assignment?” persisted Knollis. The Chief Constable glanced up in a guilty manner, and twined the telephone flex round his fingers. “Ah yes, the job.”