A Classic English Crime by Tim Heald

Author:Tim Heald [Heald, Tim]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

HRF Keating, President of the Detection Club, is best known for his ingenious and inventive ‘Inspector Ghote’ novels. He is also a respected reviewer and critic, ex-Chairman of the Society of Authors, and editor of Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime.

EXPERTS FOR THE PROSECUTION

TIM HEALD

It was a golden day in a golden age. Golden lads and lasses had just breakfasted on golden toast, a little blackened at the edge in some cases, spread with golden shred or golden syrup. Now they tripped merrily to a schoolhouse of golden Cotswold stone burnished by a golden English sun in a bright blue heaven inhabited by a golden English God.

All was right with the world.

Up to a point.

Sergeant Bramble had just returned from the Manor House upon his bicycle. The sergeant was stout and pink and, after the exertion of a mile-long bicycle ride, seemed stouter and pinker than usual.

‘Well I’ll be jiggered!’ he exclaimed to himself as he bent to unfasten his clips, ‘I’ll be jiggered and no mistake.’

And so saying he went into the tiny village police station with its distinctive blue lamp and the lettering chiselled into the stone above the doorway which said ‘King’s Magnum Parva Police Station.’ A handwritten note stuffed into the bootscraper said Two pints today, please.’

Inside he filled a kettle and lit the gas-ring. The Daily Express had arrived in his absence and its front page confirmed what he had already heard from Mrs. Pettifer up at the Manor.

‘Baronet vanishes,’ it screamed. Good headlines did scream at you in those days. ‘Baronet vanishes! Clubs abandoned at 15th green. “Seemed perfectly normal to me,” says Major.’

Sergeant Bramble turned his attention to the kettle. When it had boiled, whistling with a tinny Woolworth sibillance, he warmed the pot-bellied black teapot, spooned in two piles of thick tarry Indian leaves, left them awhile as he had a scratch of the back, then poured the dark brown liquid into a plain white cup, with saucer, added milk from a bottle plus two sweetening spoonfuls of caster sugar. Only then did he return to the newspaper.

Routine in his life was everything and he would be jiggered if anything—even the abduction of Squire Blacker—would interfere with it. The article was by Percy Hoskins, the greatest crime reporter of his or any other age, Percy who walked with Commissioners of Police and thieves and villains, who drank champagne at the Caprice, had an apartment in Park lane, was an intimate of Lord Beaverbrook, yet kept the common touch. Sergeant Bramble allowed himself the luxury of a fleeting smile. Perhaps, who knows, the great Hoskins might yet grace King’s Magnum Parva with his presence.

Sergeant Bramble drank some tea and wondered where Constable Quince had got to. Constable Quince was new to the job and, in Bramble’s estimation, unsuited for it. He seemed to think that a policeman’s lot should be to deal in drama. He wanted excitement. He aspired to The Flying Squad.’ He talked, misty eyed, of The Yard.’ He wanted to be a detective.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.