Darkling Death: An Inspector Knollis Mystery (The Inspector Knollis Mysteries Book 10) Read online

  Francis Vivian

  Darkling Death

  Grayson tipped back his head, and stared at the ceiling. Herby was certainly not liked, but who on earth, apart from himself, hated him sufficiently to think of murder?

  As he waits for the Norfolk-bound train to steam from its London terminus, Brother Ignatius experiences a strange premonition. Quite suddenly he knows that a man on the platform will shortly come to join him in his compartment and that their lives will become inextricably linked. Together they travel to Norfolk, and within hours the stranger comes under suspicion of murder.

  Superintendent Knollis arrives from Scotland Yard to investigate. Knollis soon finds that local loyalties are strewing his path with thorns and that, under the seal of Confession, Brother Ignatius cannot tell all he knows. It is a problem that calls for psychological as well as deductive reasoning—and Inspector Knollis, supported by the trusty Sergeant Ellis, is on the case!

  Darkling Death was originally published in 1956. 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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Titles by Francis Vivian

  The Death of Mr. Lomas – Title Page

  The Death of Mr. Lomas – Prologue

  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 as a gas meter emptier, then labored for 11 years as a housepainter and d
ecorator 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

  I

  Enigmatic Journey

  Brother Ignatius was always too early for appointments, meals, and trains, so that he was sitting in the east-bound train at Liverpool Street a full twenty minutes before it was due to leave for East Anglia, and the engine-driver, or perhaps it was the fireman, was amusing himself, or so it seemed to the little priest, by letting off steam every few minutes, to the apparent amusement of a youngish man, probably no more than thirty, who stood on the platform with a rucksack at his feet, a much-travelled Burberry over his left shoulder, and a pipe and box of matches which he was trying to bring together into effective use against the strong draught that was whipping down the length of the platform.

  So that he should not be tempted to make private guesses about the man’s profession and business, for such vulgarity was forbidden to him by the rules of his order, the little priest opened his valise, took out a well-used and heavy volume, and plunged into what was perhaps his thirteenth excursion into Lahsen’s theory of recurring lives, a modification of the eternal recurrence philosophy previously taught by Peter Damian Ouspensky. His eyes refused to remain focused on the print, for his mind was not fully with Lahsen this morning. His thoughts tended to scatter instead of canalise, and he was uncomfortably aware of an inner restlessness and unease that on previous occasions had preceded events far different from those that generally made up the come-day go-day routine of his existence.

  He knew something was going to happen, something intimately connected with the humorous-eyed and lightly-moustached man on the platform, and that he himself would be inextricably bound up in it.

  Why this was so, he could not have explained. Perhaps both Lahsen and Ouspensky were correct, and we did, each of us, continue to live the same life over and over again.

  It was a heinous theory, the invention of a mind more horrible than that of Torquemada, and yet had the saving grace of presenting a way out, the possibility of intervention by a neutral observer which could change the course of the repetitive concatenation of lives upon the upward-swirling spiral of eternity.

  Brother Ignatius stirred in sympathy with the rising tide of activity on the platform. Porters with trollies were moving into life, although seemingly reluctantly. Passengers were crowding up and down the platform, peering through windows, and passing on to peer through others, as if looking for a compartment in which some previous and unlucky passenger had left a full luncheon basket, or a five-pound note.

  The tweed-clad man grasped his rucksack and swung it and himself into the compartment. The rucksack went up to the rack with a practised swing, and the Burberry followed it. The man himself sank down into the corner opposite Brother Ignatius, and gave a friendly smile. “If no one else gets in we’re all right.”

  “No one else will get in,” said Brother Ignatius, and immediately wondered why he had said that. Judging by the state of the platform there was every possibility that the compartment would be filled before the guard signalled off the train.

  But the doors were slammed with professional vigour, a whistle was blown, and the early morning train to the eastern counties drew out of the station.

  “So we really have it to ourselves!”

  Brother Ignatius nodded. “You still have me, and you so obviously wanted solitude.”

  “You don’t disturb me—thanks. You aren’t that kind of man.”

  “I trust not. My name, by the way, is Ignatius—Brother Ignatius. I am a priest, a Nestorian priest.”

  “I’m known as Failure,” said the tweedy man. He struck a match and made a further abortive attempt to light the tobacco. “You don’t mind if I smoke, Brother?” he asked, with a second match poised over the bowl of his pipe.

  “On the contrary. I smoke myself. I think I will indulge myself.”

  He fidgeted a tin cigarette box from the pocket of his cassock, chose a cigarette with great care, and accepted Failure’s offer of a light. He sat back with the cigarette held between his thumb and finger as if it was a stick of chalk with which he was about to draw on a blackboard.

  “You are known as Failure,” he said flatly.

  “My baptismal name is Brandreth Grayson. Failure is only my abysmal name among my friends and relatives.”

  Brother Ignatius eased the elastic-sided black boots from his feet, and slid forward to rest the heels of his chequered socks on the edge of the opposite seat. They only just reached.

  “You are going to Wingford Manor?” he said.

  Grayson raised one eyebrow, and ran a hand through his short-cut curly brown hair. “Now how the devil did you guess that—if you’ll pardon my mention of the name of your traditional enemy.”

  Brother Ignatius chuckled. “But for your Satanic friend I should be unemployed—and whoever heard of a priest on the dole? For the rest, I somewhat infrequently visit a member of my flock who lives in Wingford village. A goodly old soul, but I fear a born gossip. Old Mrs. Walters. She lives not far from the Barley Mow, and behind the church. The Barley Mow is where you have stayed on Saturday nights for the past three weeks, is it not?”

  Grayson stretched long legs across the compartment and put feet, socks, boots and all on the middle of the seat, sending up a small puff of grey dust.

  “Then you know the rest of the story, Brother?”

  “From Mrs. Walters, and the London papers. I probably know more than you would prefer the rest of the world to know.”

  Grayson puffed steadily at his pipe for a time.

  “I see you have Lahsen there. I’d recognise him a mile away. You must have had a fair experience of all sides of life, so what do you think of him?”

  Brother Ignatius blew a mouthful of smoke down his nose. “Lahsen says much about many things, as did Ouspensky and Georgi Gurdjieff before him, if it comes to that. I suggest that the recent events in your life have bent your thoughts towards one especial aspect of Lahsen’s philosophy. You mean, of course, what do I think of his theory of recurring lives?”

  “Just that,” Grayson replied shortly.

  “Truthfully, I find myself in a dilemma,” said Brother Ignatius. “In effect he teaches what Ouspensky taught, that we live our life—not lives—over and over again, and that it never varies. And yet the daring suggestion is added that it is possible to escape from this spiral of continual experience, that it is possible for one to be freed from this squirrel’s cage by the intervention of some independent observer of the events of one’s life.”

  “It’s a form of soteria, of salvation,” said Grayson. “And your dilemma, Brother?”

 
“I am supposed to refrain from intervening in the life of anyone unless specifically requested to do so.”

  The little priest sighed. “I have sometimes failed.”

  “If you saw a man plunging from a bridge into a river—committing suicide?”

  “It is his own life, and he is solely responsible for what he does with it.”

  The little priest spoke as if reciting from a rule book. It was fairly obvious to Grayson that he did not believe what he was saying.

  Grayson eyed him thoughtfully for a few moments. “And yet I’ve heard your name mentioned in murder cases, coupled with the name of that fellow from the Yard.”

  “Gordon Knollis.”

  “Knollis,” said Grayson.

  “Coupled would hardly be the word my friend Gordon would like you to use. I am his antithesis. He works on his cases to seek out the guilty . . .”

  “And you?”

  “To protect the innocent.”

  “But hang it . . . !” protested Grayson.

  Brother Ignatius shook his head. “They are not the same thing at all, Mr. Grayson. Now if I had your permission to discuss your recent misfortunes . . .”

  Grayson gave a wry grin. “Everybody else seems to have had a go at them, so I don’t see why you should hesitate.”

  “Two years ago you went into partnership with Graham Dickinson. You had a more than fairish reputation as a writer of novels of detection—irrespective of the opinion of your relatives, and were well known for countryside stories written under a nom de plume. Dickinson was—and still is—a more than fairish satirist, essayist, and reviewer. He conceived the idea of a monthly magazine that should do something to bring town and country together. Between you, you were to take the town to the countryman, and the country to the townsman.

  “Eighteen months ago you published the first number. It was good, very good, and I hope you will not think my praise to be in any way patronising. Nevertheless, the seeds of its own destruction were born with it. Your styles were so different! Dickinson’s slick and sophisticated satirical sketches. Your own steady, and to the townman, plodding manner. It was like expecting a race horse and—and—”