The Colour of Murder Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright & Information

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Note

  Introduction

  Part One

  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

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Two

  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

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Symons' Series Bibliography

  Inspector Bland Titles

  Inspector Crambo Titles

  Joan Kahn-Harper Titles

  Sheridan Haynes

  Standalone Novels

  Non-Fiction

  Synopses of Symons' Titles

  Copyright & Information

  The Colour Of Murder

  First published in 1957

  © Estate of Julian Symons; House of Stratus 1957-2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Julian Symons to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN EAN Edition

  1842329197 9781842329191 Print

  0755142055 9780755142057 Kindle

  0755142179 9780755142170 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Julian Symons was born in 1912 in London. He was the younger brother, and later biographer, of the writer A.J.A. Symons.

  Aged twenty five, he founded a poetry magazine which he edited for a short time, before turning to crime writing. This was not to be his only interest, however, as in his eighty-two years he produced an enormously varied body of work. Social and military history, biography and criticism were all subjects he touched upon with remarkable success, and held a distinguished reputation in each field. Nonetheless, it is primarily for his crime writing that he is remembered. His novels were consistently highly individual and expertly crafted, raising him above other crime writers of his day.

  Symons commenced World War II as a recognised conscientious objector, but nevertheless ended up serving in the Royal Armoured Corps from 1942 until 1944, when he was invalided out. A period as an advertising copywriter followed, but was soon abandoned in favour of full time writing. Many prizes came his way as a result, including two Edgar Awards and in 1982 he received the accolade of being named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America – an honour accorded to only three other English writers before him: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and Daphne Du Maurier. Symons then succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain’s Detection Club, a position he held from 1976 to 1985, and in 1990 he was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers for his lifetime’s achievement in crime fiction.

  He published over thirty crime novels and story collections between 1945 and 1994; with the works combining different elements of the classic detective story and modern crime novel, but with a clear leaning toward the latter, especially situations where ordinary people get drawn into extraordinary series of events – a trait he shared with Eric Ambler. He also wrote two modern-day Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In A Three Pipe Problem the detective was ‘...a television actor, Sheridan Hayes, who wears the mask of Sherlock Holmes and assumes his character’. Several of Julian Symons' works have been filmed for television.

  Julian Symons died in 1994.

  Dedication

  For Michael Evelyn

  with much gratitude for his patient

  guidance through the legal maze

  Note

  The benzidine test for blood described in the second half of this book is a real test, and there is some dispute about its value, on the lines that I have suggested. No reference to any real murder case is intended, however, and all the characters in the story are imaginary.

  JS

  Introduction

  The French call a typewriter une machine á ècrire. It is a description that could well be applied to Julian Symons, except the writing he produced had nothing about it smelling of the mechanical. The greater part of his life was devoted to putting pen to paper. Appearing in 1938, his first book was a volume of poetry, Confusions About X. In 1996, after his death, there came his final crime novel, A Sort of Virtue (written even though he knew he was under sentence from an inoperable cancer) beautifully embodying the painful come-by lesson that it is possible to achieve at least a degree of good in life.

  His crime fiction put him most noticeably into the public eye, but he wrote in many forms: biographies, a memorable piece of autobiography (Notes from Another Country), poetry, social history, literary criticism coupled with year-on-year reviewing and two volumes of military history, and one string thread runs through it all. Everywhere there is a hatred of hypocrisy, hatred even when it aroused the delighted fascination with which he chronicled the siren schemes of that notorious jingoist swindler, Horatio Bottomley, both in his biography of the man and fictionally in The Paper Chase and The Killing of Francie Lake.

  That hatred, however, was not a spew but a well-spring. It lay behind what he wrote and gave it force, yet it was always tempered by a need to speak the truth. Whether he was writing about people as fiction or as fact, if he had a low opinion of them he simply told the truth as he saw it, no more and no less.

  This adherence to truth fills his novels with images of the mask. Often it is the mask of hypocrisy. When, as in Death’s Darkest Face or Something Like a Love Affair, he chose to use a plot of dazzling legerdemain, the masks of cunning are startlingly ripped away.

  The masks he ripped off most effectively were perhaps
those which people put on their true faces when sex was in the air or under the exterior. ‘Lift the stone, and sex crawls out from under,’ says a character in that relentless hunt for truth, The Progress of a Crime, a book that achieved the rare feat for a British author, winning Symons the US Edgar Allen Poe Award.

  Julian was indeed something of a pioneer in the fifties and sixties bringing into the almost sexless world of the detective story the truths of sexual situations. ‘To exclude realism of description and language from the crime novel’ he writes in Critical Occasions, ‘is almost to prevent its practitioners from attempting any serious work.’ And then the need to unmask deep-hidden secrecies of every sort was almost as necessary at the end of his crime-writing life as it had been at the beginning. Not for nothing was his last book subtitled A Political Thriller.

  H R F Keating

  London, 2001

  Part One

  Before

  Chapter One

  John Wilkins’ Statement to Dr Max Andreadis, consulting psychiatrist

  It all began one day in April when I went round to change a library book. At least, that is the time when it seemed to me to begin, though I know you people trace things a lot farther back, and I’d like to say that I don’t believe in all that. Whatever a man does, he’s got to take responsibility for his own actions, that’s what I believe. I don’t see how the world can run any other way. I have to say that, even though I know it may be against me.

  When I got home from work that evening May had one of her migraine headaches. She was lying down in the bedroom with the curtains drawn, said she’d had nothing to eat all day, but the first thing she asked me was to change her library book. That seems queer, doesn’t it, when she didn’t want to read, but it was just like May. You see, the library book was due back that day, and if we hadn’t returned it there would have been a twopenny fine. May never forgot things like that. She was – is, I ought to say, but life with her seems so far away – a good housewife, looking after the pennies.

  I ate my supper, corned beef and potato salad and part of a tin of fruit, went to the library, handed over the book. The girl who took it was new, a pretty dark girl, rather plump, and she smiled at me. It isn’t very often that women smile at me, you know. I’m not attractive to women. Not that there’s anything wrong with my looks, mother always said I was good-looking when I was a boy, and at school I used to get on pretty well with girls. But since I’ve been about twenty-one I’ve noticed that most girls don’t want to talk to me for long. It’s not bad breath or BO or anything like that, it’s – well, I’m nervous with women, talk too fast when I’m with them, and get excited. I can’t get nearer than that to what it is.

  Anyway, this girl smiled at me, and I asked her if she was new, and she said she was. Then, when I was looking at the books, she came out wheeling a trolley with the books on it that had just come back, and I spoke to her, asked if they had any books by Moira Mauleverer, that was the slushy romantic novelist May particularly liked. She smiled again.

  “I’m not sure, Mr Wilkins. Do you read Moira Mauleverer?”

  “Oh no,” I said, and then I went on, “They’re for my sister. She’s an invalid, you know, confined to the house, and she reads that kind of book. I like Somerset Maugham myself.”

  “He’s a fine author.”

  “He’s a man of the world. Very sophisticated.”

  “Yes. Will you excuse me a moment?” She put the books from the trolley up on the shelves and I noticed that she had very pretty finger-nails. Then a couple of minutes later she came back to me. “Has your sister read this one? It’s new, we haven’t put it on the shelves yet.” She held out the book in its glossy jacket, Princess Make Believe by Moira Mauleverer. As I took it our hands touched, and I felt a kind of thrill go up my arm.

  Then I began to thank her and perhaps I went on too long because she began to seem a little embarrassed and said she must go back to the issuing counter now. So I took the book and went home. That was the first time I met Sheila, and that very first time I told her a lie, saying that May was an invalid and pretending that she was my sister instead of my wife. I don’t know now why I did it.

  Chapter Two

  The next day May was better, up in the morning to get breakfast, and pleased about the book. She said she would be well enough to go to work – she had a part-time job at a local stationer’s shop – and I went off feeling more cheerful than usual. We were going round to see mother that evening, we always went there on Wednesdays, and I arranged that we would meet there.

  At work, though, things didn’t go smoothly that day. You know my job, assistant manager of the Complaints Department in Palings, the big Oxford Street store. It’s an important position, you know, I carry a great deal of responsibility, although the pay isn’t very high, five hundred and fifty a year. That morning the manager of the department, my immediate superior, Mr Gimball, called me in.

  “How are you this morning, Mr Wilkins?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, sir,” I said heartily.

  “No more of those blackouts, I hope.”

  “Not a trace.” I’d had two or three blackouts during the past year. I mean by blackouts that I’d gone out for lunch, had a couple of drinks, and apparently not returned in the afternoon. I was never quite sure that Mr Gimball believed my explanation that I didn’t know what had happened, although it was perfectly true. The last blackout had been just before Christmas, and after it Mr Gimball had suggested that I should take a couple of days off.

  “You aren’t feeling the strain of overwork or anything like that?”

  I thought about the way the girl in the library had smiled at me, and laughed confidently. “Oh no, Mr Gimball.”

  “Then how do you explain these?” He pushed three letters across the desk at me, and I read them. They were complaints letters, one about a pair of stockings, another about a pullover, and the third a complaint from a woman that one of the assistants in the soda fountain had insulted her. Mr Gimball tapped this letter. “A week old. We’ve had another letter from her today threatening to take legal action against the firm.”

  “This is the first I’ve seen of these letters, Mr Gimball.”

  “They all have our date stamp of receipt. They have been on your desk since they came in.”

  “Oh no.” I simply had to say it. “That’s not true.”

  “Are you calling me a liar, Mr Wilkins?” I always thought of Mr Gimball as a frosty man – his hair was like frosty powder, little gleams of frosty light twinkled off his spectacles, he always wore a gleaming pearl tie-pin. I suddenly realised that today he was even frostier than usual.

  “Of course not, sir. I only mean that I know I should have seen these letters if they’d been on my desk. You know I’ve always adhered faithfully to the Gimball system. We Turn Complaints to Compliments, I never forget that.” That was one of Mr Gimball’s slogans, and it was stuck up all round the department.

  “I’m glad of that. So you’ve never seen these letters before.”

  Something about the way he spoke made me say, “Not to the best of my knowledge.”

  He lifted his telephone and asked for Miss Murchison. She was a long-nosed, red-eyed girl who looked after the filing, and I knew she didn’t like me. When she came in he asked, “Where did you find these letters, Miss Murchison?”

  “On Mr Wilkins’ desk, sir, under a lot of other papers. I mentioned them to him, sir, two days ago. He said not to bother him now, he was too busy.” I stared at her, astonished. Her hangdog look, the way she mumbled her words, convinced me that she was speaking the truth. Yet I could remember nothing about it. Or could I? Distantly, somewhere in the haze of memory, I seemed to recall Miss Murchison speaking words like these. Then why had I paid no attention to them, what had I been doing? I thought about this, and suddenly became aware that Gimball was talking to me and that Miss Murchison had gone.

  “What were you doing that was of greater importance than our proper business of tu
rning complaints to compliments, Mr Wilkins?”

  “It is true that we’ve been very busy lately–”

  “You informed me five minutes ago, however, that you were not overworked.”

  I felt sweat on the palms of my hands. I knew I was gabbling. “I know, but we are sometimes very busy, you know yourself these things go in waves. You know I wouldn’t let a thing like this slip by unless there were exceptional circumstances. I frankly don’t recall Miss Murchison speaking to me about this, although I accept that she did. If you’ll let me have that letter from the lady who’s written twice –”

  “I have already replied to it. The letter was brought to me only because it was a second communication and the first had not been answered. I am wondering how many other cases of delay have occurred which have not been drawn to my attention.”

  “None at all,” I said eagerly. “I’m sure of that.”

  “What I can’t understand, Mr Wilkins, is how you came to overlook these. That is really incomprehensible to me.”

  He seemed to expect an answer. “I shall see it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Perhaps a transfer to another department –”

  “I hope you won’t think that necessary, Mr Gimball.” This was really a threat. Transfer to another department meant that I should be downgraded to some kind of clerk’s job. I thought that would be the end of it, but he talked for another ten minutes before he let me go.

  I went back and dictated letters at once, sending a pair of new stockings to the woman, and asking the man to return his pullover. I looked at everything else on my desk and dealt with all the items that had any urgency at all about them. I went through the rest of the day in a kind of daze.