Death Among the Sunbathers

  E.R. PUNSHON

  Death Among The Sunbathers

  The body of a brilliant woman journalist is recovered from the wreck of a burning car. It is soon discovered that the smash did not kill her; she was dead already, shot by a Browning automatic that was found near by. Superintendent Mitchell, with the help of Owen, a young University graduate turned policeman, follows the enigmatic clues backwards and forwards between a furrier, a picture dealer, and the establishment of a fanatical sunbathing enthusiast.

  Then dramatically the story begins to repeat itself, as the persistently recurring figure of an old lag who calls himself ‘Bobs-the-boy’ carries another body out into the night.

  Death Among The Sunbathers is the second of E.R. Punshon’s acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1934 and part of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels.

  Introduction

  “It’s a place for them sun bathers,” Ashton explained. “Sit out there on the lawn without any clothes on, they do, and if there ain’t any sun, there’s rays instead. A fair scandal I call it.”

  Death Among The Sunbathers

  Various British naturist, or nudist, organizations, such as the Sunbathing Society, the Sunshine League and the Sun Ray Club, began forming in Britain during the Twenties. In 1927, one sunbathing enthusiast, a Captain H.H. Vincent, was arrested and fined for indecent exposure after he arrayed himself, in an Edenic eruption of enthusiasm, bare-chested in Hyde Park. A man’s exposing the upper part of his body in such a location was “likely to shock persons of ordinary sensibility,” concluded the censorious sentencing magistrate. Undaunted as well as unclothed, naturist groups carried on their activities in private; and by the 1930s, according to Philip Carr-Gomm’s A Brief History of Nakedness (2010), “nudism had reached the height of its popularity in Britain,” drawing emphatic vocal support from such reliable controversialists as Havelock Ellis and George Bernard Shaw. In 1933, as the Nazis banned nudism in Germany, George Bernard Shaw in England’s Sun Bathing Review called on individuals to rid themselves “of every scrap of clothing that can be dispensed with.”

  With Death Among The Sunbathers (1934), E. R. Punshon clearly was taking timely advantage of a fad that had attained newspaper notoriety in the western world. Nor was he the only Thirties mystery author to do so. Ellery Queen’s The Egyptian Cross Mystery, which partly concerns the activities of an American nudist colony, actually preceded Death Among The Sunbathers into print by a couple of years, while Traill Williamson’s The Nudist Murder (1937) and Gladys Mitchell’s Printer’s Error (1939) followed not long afterward. Although naturism is not involved in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise, which slightly preceded into print Death Among The Sunbathers, there is a certain similarity as well between these two novels, which I will leave discerning readers to discover for themselves. One may reasonably assume, I believe, that Punshon closely read Sayers’s detective novels, the Crime Queen in 1933 having done much to boost Punshon’s own career as a writer of detective fiction with her rave review of Information Received. (See the introduction to Information Received.)

  In Death Among The Sunbathers young Constable Bobby Own and his mentor, Superintendent Mitchell, confront another murder, this time that of Jo Frankland, a prominent woman journalist. When Frankland is pulled dead from a burning wrecked car, it is quickly discovered that her death was due not to crash injuries but rather a bullet fired out of a Browning automatic. Shortly before her death Frankland had visited Leadeane Grange, a property owned by a naturist group, the Society of Sun Believers. (Originally, notes Punshon wryly, the group was known as the Society of Sun Worshippers, “but the last word had been altered on the representation of some of the local clergy, who feared misunderstanding.”) Was Frankland simply seeking material at Leadeane Grange for another colorful nudism story, or was she after something else? Superintendent Mitchell and Inspector Ferris are tasked with discovering the truth behind Frankland’s brutal slaying. Constable Bobby Owen is less in evidence in this novel than he was in Information Received, though we do see a great deal of “Bobs-the-Boy,” a pugnacious old lag with a mysterious agenda of his own.

  E. R. Punshon received some contemporary criticism from reviewers for incorporating thriller elements into Death Among The Sunbathers. The novel was deemed something less than a simon-pure detective story and, unlike Information Received, it was never published in the United States. Yet this was not the first time Punshon had merged two strains of mystery in his detective novels.

  In Punshon’s earlier Inspector Carter and Sergeant Bell series, two of the five novels—The Unexpected Legacy (1929) and The Cottage Murder (1931)—are distinctly thrillerish. The boundaries between thrillers and true detective fiction became more firmly delineated in the 1930s, after rules distinguishing the two forms of mystery were promulgated by such authorities as Father Ronald Knox, S.S. Van Dine and Britain’s Detection Club. Among other things, true detective novels were expected to refrain from reliance on such thriller devices as untraceable poisons, supernatural manifestations, fantastic pseudo-scientific gadgetry, twins, gangs and criminal masterminds. I leave it for readers to see for themselves just what ostensibly extraneous thriller matter finds its way into Death Among The Sunbathers. For the rest of the 1930s Punshon generally would be scrupulous in abiding by these distinctions. Most modern readers, I presume, will concern themselves with such aesthetic deviations less than some of Punshon’s more absolutist contemporaries did.

  With justice having triumphed in Death Among The Sunbathers due to the good offices of the law, Superintendent Mitchell informs Constable Owen at the conclusion of the novel that a copper’s job is never done. “There’ll be a little job waiting for you on the east coast,” Mitchell tells Bobby. “There’s something on there apparently that’s worrying the local people because they can’t make out what it is. So they’ve asked us to send down a youngster able to show at a country house as an ordinary guest and warranted not to give himself away by eating peas with a knife or putting his feet on the dinner table or doing anything else natural and friendly and sociable. Also required to be good-looking, smart, and intelligent. Think you fit the bill?”

  “Yes, sir,” answers Bobby, evidently having shed some of his modesty in Death Among The Sunbathers. The exciting events he experiences at the east coast country house are detailed in the next E. R. Punshon detective novel, Crossword Mystery.

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Burning Motor-Car

  A slight defect had developed. Nothing of much importance, but it needed attention, and since just here the road was dangerously narrow, since also close behind was the sharp bend they had just come round, and as, moreover, darkness was now beginning to set in, Constable Jacks, the careful driver Superintendent Mitchell always chose when he was available, decided to take precautions. Near to them was a large, imposing-looking house with a wide drive sweeping up to it, and prudently Jacks backed their car a yard or two up this drive, of which the gate fortunately hung wide open. In that way the rather narrow road itself would be left free, and if any car did happen to round the sharp bend in it at the speed at which cars do occasionally take sharp bends, there would be no risk of any accident occurring. Satisfied with the precaution thus taken, Jacks alighted, got out his tools, and set to work.

  Mitchell descended, too, to stretch his legs, as he said. He was a big, generally slow-moving man, with a pale, flat face, small, sandy moustache, deep-set grey eyes, and loose, loquacious lips that at sudden, unexpected moments could set in thin and rigid lines. His companion, Inspector Ferris, followed, a big, bluff, hearty, smiling man, whose chief merit as a detective was not so much any special subtlety of mind or in
sight into things, but a devastating, almost awe-inspiring patience that permitted him to sit and wait for hours, and to be, to all appearance, as fresh and alert at the end of the vigil as at its beginning. He and Mitchell had been on a visit to Lord Carripore, chairman of Universal Assurances, a company somewhat badly hit by a recent series of big fires, including one on a transatlantic steamer, that Lord Carripore had personally declared to the Home Secretary could not possibly be accounted for by natural causes. As his lordship was suffering from a bad attack of sciatica, probably a result of sun-bathing, to which he was a recent and enthusiastic convert – though that that was the cause he would not have admitted for one moment – Mitchell and Ferris had been detailed to visit him at his country house. But the interview had proved of small interest. Lord Carripore appeared to have little to say, except that it was all most suspicious, and that his company had been hit to the tune of a quarter of a million, so that the annual dividend would probably have to be reduced, and the shareholders wouldn’t like that, might even hint at making changes in the directorate. As, moreover, this prospect, or the sciatica, or both together, had affected his lordship’s temper to a most unfortunate degree, the two police officers had been glad to take their leave as soon as they decently could.

  ‘Of course, any assistance we can give, you can depend on,’ Mitchell assured him as they were going; ‘any information we can be supplied with, we will follow up instantly.’

  ‘I thought it was the business of the police to get information, not to wait to have it given them,’ snarled Lord Carripore, wincing at a fresh twinge of his sciatica.

  ‘But we can’t get it unless someone gives it us, can we?’ Mitchell protested mildly. ‘Information received is what we always need before we can take action.’

  Therewith he and Ferris took their departure, leaving Lord Carripore writhing with mingled sciatica and temper, and determined as soon as he was well enough to ask the Home Secretary to dinner for the sole purpose of telling him exactly what he thought of Scotland Yard.

  Unaware, however, of this determination, Mitchell and Ferris had already forgotten all about his lordship and his more than somewhat vague complaints and doubts and suspicions. It was another subject they were debating, and, as he followed Mitchell from the car, Ferris was saying,

  ‘Well, sir, of course, it’s for you to say, but Owen’s young, very little experience. I would much rather have a more experienced man for the job myself.’

  ‘Owen’s young all right,’ Mitchell admitted, ‘though you and I were both the same age once.’

  ‘Not long since he was transferred from the uniform branch,’ Ferris persisted.

  ‘Earned it,’ said Mitchell; ‘he was quite useful in that case of the murder of Sir Christopher Clarke.’

  ‘Happened to be on the spot,’ commented Ferris, still unsatisfied; ‘never struck me as having any more brains than the next man – or much initiative.’

  ‘Educated instead,’ explained Mitchell, ‘and education just naturally chokes initiative. He’s ’Varsity and public school, you know, and you can’t expect to have an education like that and initiative as well.’

  ‘Don’t hold with it,’ grumbled Ferris, ‘not with all these B.A.s and M.A.s and A.S.S.s crowding into the force – changes its whole tone.’

  ‘It’s a changing world,’ Mitchell pointed out, ‘and mass production of criminals has got to be met by mass production of police from ’Varsities. As for brains, well, I’m not saying I’ve noticed Owen has any more than the usual ration, and it’s just as well. Too many brains is a fatal thing for any man in any line of life, though, the Lord be praised, few suffer from it. But Owen has got a kind of natural-born knack of being on the spot when he’s wanted, and a detective on the spot is worth two–’

  He paused, for they could both hear a car approaching at what was evidently a very high rate of speed. A moment later it rocketed round the bend in the roadway they themselves had just passed. It must have been going sixty or seventy miles an hour. Had Constable Jacks not adopted his precaution of backing their car a yard or two off the roadway up this carriage drive, a collision could hardly have been averted. For an instant as it flew by it showed clear in the strong light of their headlamps. They had a momentary vision of a woman at the steering-wheel, her face half hidden by one of the flat, fashionable hats of the day, worn tilted so much to one side that to the uninstructed male eye it seemed such hats could only stick on by the aid of a miracle – or of glue – and by the high fox-fur collar of her coat.

  It was the merest glimpse they had as the car shot by and Jacks stopped his work to stand up and shake a disapproving head at it.

  ‘Asking for trouble,’ he said, ‘going round a corner like that at such a speed – want talking to.’

  ‘Girl driving,’ remarked Ferris, rather as if that explained all.

  ‘Hope her life’s insured,’ commented Jacks. ‘She was doing all of sixty m.p.h. – those little Bayard Sevens can travel all right.’

  ‘Alone, wasn’t she?’ asked Mitchell. ‘If she breaks her neck, as she probably will, she’ll break it alone, that’s one thing. I’m glad I wasn’t in that car though – what’s that?’

  They had all heard the same sound, dull, strange, and ominous, distinct in the evening quiet, where the echo of the roaring progress of the little Bayard Seven seemed still to be hanging in the air, and to it they all gave instinctively the same interpretation. Then, as they looked, they saw a sudden crimson glow develop, shining red through the trees that lined the road, and across the hedges of the fields. None of them said a word. Jacks left his tools lying there, scattered by the roadside, and leaped into the driver’s seat. Mitchell, quick enough at need, was already in his place, already had in his hands the chemical fire extinguisher. Ferris, a trifle less quick and active, tumbled after him. Jacks shot the car into the road, sent it flying along to where the crimson glow shone before them.

  They came thundering at speed to where the road crossed by a bridge, a deep railway cutting. Their headlights showed them, half-way across, the railing that ran along the side of the bridge smashed clean away. Someone at a distance was running and shouting. Jacks brought the car to a standstill with a fierce grinding of tyres and brakes. Mitchell leaped out and was through the broken railing in a flash and down the steep side of the cutting to where across the rails a shapeless heap of wreckage smoked and burned. Somehow he arrived on his feet, still carrying the chemical extinguisher unharmed in his hands. Ferris, less fortunate, arrived on his back, head foremost. Jacks came last, more cautiously. He had taken time to bring the car close to the gap in the railing so that the light from its headlamps might illumine the scene. The fire was blazing furiously, but it had not yet obtained complete control, for all this had happened in two or three minutes and the chemical extinguisher was efficient. The flames spluttered, died down, smouldered a little. Presently, remained only a few tiny tongues of fire the three men beat out without difficulty. The car, or rather what was left of it, was lying on its side. Within, they could see a dark, motionless, huddled form that told them tragedy was there.

  ‘Lend a hand here,’ Mitchell grunted to the others, and added, for the wrecked car was lying right across the lines, ‘Hope a train doesn’t come along.’

  The door of the car had jammed, but they managed to force it open. With some difficulty, and at the cost of a badly bruised hand for Ferris, they were able to disentangle a body from the wreckage. They laid the broken form on the grass at the foot of the steep embankment.

  ‘Past help,’ Ferris said, ‘must have been killed on the spot.’

  Mitchell had taken an electric torch from his pocket. With it in his hand he knelt down by the body.

  ‘A woman,’ he said. ‘Young, too, poor thing.’ And then the next moment: ‘Good God,’ he said below his breath. ‘Ferris, Ferris.’

  Ferris turned abruptly, startled.

  ‘Sir!’ he said.

  ‘She was alive,’ Mitchell half whisp
ered, moved beyond his wont. ‘I’ll swear she was... just for a moment.... I saw her look at me... as if she wanted... something she wanted to say... then she was gone.’

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’ Ferris asked, more than a little incredulously. ‘After a fall like that... it must have killed her on the spot... going over that embankment at sixty miles an hour... and if it didn’t, then the fire would have, for it was all round her.’

  ‘I saw her look at me,’ Mitchell repeated, his voice not quite steady now, for though his profession had habituated him to scenes of terror and of grief, yet something in that momentary dying look had touched him to the quick, had seemed to convey to him some message he was but half conscious of. ‘Young, too,’ he said again.

  ‘What I can’t make out,’ observed Jacks, ‘is how it happened – a perfectly good straight road, night quite clear, no sign of any obstruction anywhere. Of course the steering might have gone wrong.’

  ‘Bear looking into,’ agreed Mitchell.

  A voice from above asked what had happened, and then a man came scrambling down the steep embankment side. Mitchell became the brisk executive. The newcomer described himself as the landlord of a small public house, the George and Dragon, on the road just the other side of the bridge. His establishment did not boast a phone, but there was a call box close by. Mitchell sent Jacks to report to headquarters, to ask for more help, to summon the nearest doctor, to warn the railway people that the line was blocked, for the debris of the car, and part of the railing from the bridge it had carried down with it, lay right across the line. The landlord of the George and Dragon, who gave his name as Ashton, was set to work, too, while Mitchell and Ferris made as careful an examination as was possible of the half-burnt wreckage. But it was Ashton who called their attention to the smashed fragments of a bottle in what once had been the dicky of the car.

  ‘Whisky, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘There’s been whisky there all right – what about that?’