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  Streamin’ across Dredcrumble Moor o’ nights,

  Howlin’ and scratchin’ at the trees. ’Twas awful!”

  “Oh, bosh!” says Crumb. “It’s all an old wives’ tale!

  “It’s daft.”

  “It’s daft.”

  “It’s daft.”

  “It’s even dafter

  Than poor Tom Spratt. Hey, Tom?”

  Tom smiles and slobbers.

  10.

  THE CLUE IN THE BOG

  Dredcrumble Moor! Isn’t that where

  Young Brian Jumpers wandered off

  Without a word? Where Nellie Clough

  Took the shortcut to the fair

  And disappeared? Where Lady Breedlove

  Vanished with her chestnut mare?

  Rain freezes on the heather. Fog

  Closes like a glove. Police

  Shine their torches. The C.I.D.’s

  Billingsgate stares at the bog.

  The severed hand he thinks he sees

  Is just a glove caught on a log.

  Beneath it is a torn snapshot,

  Poorly focused, of a man

  In trilby hat, dark glasses, raincoat.

  Billingsgate hands round the snap

  Later in the Bell and Anchor:

  “Any of you lot know this chap?”

  They all deny it in the boozer.

  Raincoat, glasses, trilby hat . . .

  Doesn’t that description fit

  The body found up at the manor?

  Wait a tick! This chap was at

  The bookstall reading Chips and Whizzer. . . .

  What a bloody awful case.

  Billingsgate picks at his mutton,

  Wishes he could find Bygraves,

  Wishes he were home at Luton.

  Now he gets some dreadful news:

  Lady Madrigal du Bois

  Collapsed at noon playing badminton.

  11.

  ABOUT TOM SPRATT

  We wish that he would stop at home

  Instead of wandering the streets

  Accosting everyone he meets

  And babbling nonsense, but that’s Tom.

  He’s always setting off alarms

  And getting out the fire brigade,

  Or pouring ale on someone’s head

  Down at the Bell or Chairman’s Arms.

  Because he lolls and lollygags,

  Because he drops his trousers down,

  Because he wears his shirts backwards,

  No one suspects he killed the dogs—

  And yet, who knows what passions seethe

  In Tom Spratt’s breast for Madrigal

  (Engaged to Whipsnade, secretly

  In love with Geoffrey Smythe-Montcrieff,

  That huntsman with his pack of hounds,

  Who rides in pinks and sounds his horn).

  Tom hunkers down on frosty moms

  In thickets while they do their rounds,

  Thinking his evil, evil thoughts,

  Rolling his eyeballs back to whites.

  He haunts Dredcrumble Moor o’ nights

  And plots, and plots, and plots, and plots—

  He’ll fall into the lake and drown,

  Or be sucked down by quicksand, that’s

  The way it ends with idiots.

  There’s one of them in every town.

  12.

  THE SAD (BUT REALISTIC) TALE OF BRIAN JUMPERS

  Little Brian Jumpers, the main waif in

  Little Puddley, pale and sad and sickly,

  Little threadbare jacket out at elbow,

  Face all tear-streaked, socks around his ankles,

  Worked all day at shining shoes and sweeping

  Chimneys, blacking things that needed blacking:

  Bottles, tar pits, coal cellars, macadam.

  Little Brian Jumpers did the awful

  Jobs nobody wanted—scrubbing gravestones,

  Cleaning loos—all that was wretched, nasty,

  Only asking for his tiny pittance.

  (No one paid him in the decimal system,

  Only in old currency like shillings,

  Sixpence, tuppence, bobs, and ha’pennies,

  He was saving for his operation.)

  Little Brian Jumpers had a boxful

  Of treasures found down wells or up in chimneys,

  Letters rescued from some burning embers,

  Jar of marmalade, a broken locket,

  Bloodstained glove he’d found by an old gravestone—

  Little Brian knew his solemn duty

  Was to take this lot to the police.

  Brian walked all night across the moor, but . . .

  Little Brian Jumpers never made it.

  13.

  THE BUDGIE CLUE

  Down on the badminton court

  They are reviving Madrigal.

  Miss Ivers is hysterical;

  Whipsnade rubs her ankles while

  Snively makes her drink some port.

  (Poor Madrigal. It’s rather vile

  To have one’s life hang by a thread,

  To have to check the post for bombs,

  To keep a pistol by one’s bed,

  To keep jumping at every sound,

  To keep back from the cliff’s sheer edge

  To keep from getting shoved or drowned.)

  Billingsgate is in the kitchen

  With Demelda Sly, the cook:

  “What did your mistress have for luncheon?”

  “Beef, olives, and spotted dick

  For afters.” “Did she ever mention

  Anyone about who looked

  Anyway the least suspicious?”

  “Just Miss Crumb brought up the post,

  And Keepyhole brought round the roast,

  And Tom Spratt popped up in the bushes,

  And Mr. Plum, who happened past—

  He’s a salesman, selling budgies.”

  The kettle whistles on the hob.

  “Mr. Plum? And who is he?”

  “Don’t rightly know; he wore a trilby

  Hat and raincoat. Quite the nob

  Was Mr. Plum. I made some tea

  And bought a budgie for ten bob.”

  A clue. The caged budgerigar

  Puts Billingsgate in mind of—what?

  Badminton birds! A poisoned dart

  Stuck in the feathers! Fiendish plot!

  Where’s Bygraves? wonders Billingsgate.

  I’ll get the truth out of this lot!

  Meanwhile, Ivers, Whipsnade, Snively

  Have been joined by Keepyhole,

  Miss Crumb, Tom Spratt and Blind Willie,

  And the regulars from the Bell.

  Is one of them our “Mr. Plum”?

  They all look off. It’s hard to tell.

  Whipsnade shouts: “Enough’s enough!”

  (What’s wrong with Whipsnade?) “We’ve our rights!

  You London chaps have cut up rough!

  I’ll have your badge! And Bygraves, what’s

  He bloody up to?” Billingsgate,

  Sick of Whipsnade, says, “Get stuffed.”

  14.

  AT THE COBWEB TEAROOMS

  Fiona Rugg and Millie Scroggs

  Stop for their elevenses

  In the Cobweb Tearooms, run

  By Mrs. Kingston-Biggs, poor thing,

  Whom fortune forced into the trade,

  Who once kept servants by the score—

  But that’s another story. Now

  She serves up set teas and gâteaux.

  You’d never know that Rugg and Scroggs,

  So friendly-like they seem, quite loathe

  One another. Both of them are

  In love with Quickly, the chauffeur,

  Who’s made rash promises to both.

  But worse to come: Fiona’s sure

  That Millie found her locket lying

  By the broken statue of Eros.

  And Millie knows Fiona has

  The nega
tives of dirty pictures

  Whipsnade took in surgery

  That day she weakened, Dreadful man!

  You can’t trust no one nowadays!

  To think he’s got the sauce to marry

  Lady Madrigal du Bois!

  Millie searches out the pills

  She stole from Whipsnade’s shelf, and when

  Fiona leaves to freshen up,

  She drops them in Fiona’s cup.

  That should take care of you, my girl!

  Fiona’s back and watching; while

  Millie chats with Kingston-Biggs,

  Fiona sprinkles something vile

  On Millie’s chocolate gâteaux.

  An hour later, feeling sickly,

  Each is sure she’ll be the one

  To scarper off and marry Quickly.

  15.

  IN SURGERY

  Whipsnade puts the poison up,

  Draws the curtains, wipes the knife,

  Burns some papers in his safe.

  Whipsnade: such a decent chap!

  Who would think his plans were for

  Getting rid of Smythe-Montcrieff?

  Now he leaves and locks the door,

  Throws the scalpel and the gun

  In the stream by the Old Mill.

  Nothing’s left now to be done:

  Madrigal has signed her will.

  Whipsnade starts. The curtains billow.

  What gloved hand lay on the sill?

  (This is just one more subplot

  To confuse the reader, who’s

  Not the fool some think he is.

  Whipsnade is that handsome, silky-

  Talking, hero-type that’s flat

  Out for jewels, or sex, or money.

  It was Whipsnade drugged her cocoa,

  Cut her reins. But we knew that.)

  16.

  AT THE POST OFFICE STORES

  Miss Crumb, startled by the bell,

  Stuffs the bloodstained glove

  Dug up from Major Snively’s roses

  In the mail receptacle.

  Who is this stranger in the raincoat,

  Dark glasses, and trilby hat?

  Is he the salesman from Godalming?

  The road-works man from Aldershot?

  Marmaduke, her ginger cat,

  A red bandanna round its neck,

  Claws the mahogany countertop,

  Flings itself upon the floor,

  Sniffs the mail receptacle,

  Roots through letters, cards, and parcels,

  Finds the glove and drags it over

  To the stranger in the balaclava.

  Marmaduke

  Is a nasty bit of work.

  17.

  LADY WHITSUN DIED

  Lady Whitsun died

  Holding a carte-de-visite

  Of a man in a landscape. Was it

  Truly him in the mist

  Where hounds had raised a scent

  By Snuffling Copse? Just

  As he looked in this picture, dressed

  In a raincoat and trilby hat,

  Handsome, his face in shadow,

  Behind him, the long meadow.

  Why had he come back now,

  After she thought him dead?

  How could she face it, how

  Explain to police the spreading

  Stain on the Axminster carpet?

  Or what’s in the potting shed?

  Lady Whitsun died

  Over her pot of tea

  And biscuits and Banbury

  Tarts and cyanide.

  Wearing her blue peignoir

  And clutching to her breast some gray

  Letters, ribbon-tied,

  Lady Whitsun died.

  Weeping, she downed the lot;

  The cup, the biscuit unbitten

  Dropped from her hand to the floor.

  Fog slipped under her door

  Like the letter she never got:

  Thin, gray, cold, unwritten.

  The Middle

  18.

  MURDERACROSTIC

  What’s happened to the Puddley pack?

  How could it be they’ve disappeared

  And not a horn to call them back

  Through copse and comb? It’s as we’ve feared:

  Something’s afoot. No one will shout

  A view hallo, the whip’s cap up—

  Luther, Lisper, Lark, and Luv,

  Lurcher leading, steady at banks,

  Throwing tongue near Snuffling Copse,

  Hounds that used to feather out

  Into coverts, rolling up

  Scent like reels of silk. Now there’s

  Nothing but silence. Hunter, horn

  Over a fly country have flown.

  Where has it gone, the best of the fun?

  19.

  MURDERCONCRETE

  20.

  MURDERANAPHORA

  The spectre walks Dredcrumble Moor;

  The spectre drifts above the bog;

  The spectre floats like frost smoke where

  The spectre merges with the fog.

  The spectre wanders Crackclaw Heath;

  The spectre troubles Fretfall Close;

  The spectre moans. What awful death

  The spectre suffered, no one knows.

  The spectre glides through rain and rime;

  The spectre follows kings and fools;

  The spectre comes to all in time.

  The spectre! How you dread to see

  The spectre here, and in dark pools

  The spectre mirrored endlessly.

  21.

  MURDERSONNET

  There’s something funny in the potting shed

  Besides the smell of damp earth and dead roses—

  The windows locked, the door warped shut—it poses

  A question of what happened here. What bled

  This trail from floor to sill to flower bed?

  What scarred the footpath here? What left these traces

  Of something dragged across the shasta daisies?

  This shrubbery disturbed? These lupins dead?

  Old Trev (the gardener), they say, went mad

  From witnessing too many wills. He hides

  Behind the peonies and stares in windows.

  And where’s Lord Whitsun? Something here betides

  An ominous outcome—all those petunias

  Trampled, and this dreadnought in the zinnias.

  22.

  MURDERPANTOUM

  Down the wrong paths to the wrong answers lie

  Clues that are planted to mislead the eye.

  On Spectre Hill, a coach is passing by.

  It will stop in your courtyard presently.

  Clues that are planted to mislead the eye:

  The gun, the knife, the bloodstain on the floor.

  It will stop in your courtyard presently,

  The driver will step down and try your door.

  The gun, the knife, the bloodstain on the floor,

  They are not what they seem to be at first.

  The driver will step down and try your door.

  As in an ending cleverly reversed,

  They are not what they seem to be at first.

  In silence sometimes lies the only hope.

  As in an ending cleverly reversed,

  Beware. Be still. Be patient. Let him grope.

  In silence sometimes lies the only hope.

  Some say there is an answer in the sky.

  Beware. Be still. Be patient. Let him grope

  Down the wrong paths to the wrong answers. Lie.

  The End

  23.

  WHY DON’T WE KILL THEM OFF AND BE DONE WITH IT?

  Bobby and Bunch

  (The Honorable Smeel-Carruthers twins,

  And staples of the Puddley social scene)

  Are always turning up at lunch,

  Or at hunt breakfasts wearing hacking jackets,

  Or suddenly appearing on

 
; The terrace swinging tennis racquets.

  Bobby and Bunch

  (Brother and sister—they’ve the same

  Blue eyes and flaxen hair and ruddy cheeks)

  Say things like “Topping game!”

  Or “Stone the crows!” or “Sticky wicket!” or

  “I say, you are a brick!”

  Or else, “We’re off to London Wednesday week.”

  They drink a lot of sherry, tie their sweaters

  Around their necks and drive an open car.

  And when it rains they stay at Stubbings

  (The family seat), or else go slumming

  Down at the Bell. One never finds them far

  From moneyed uncles, cream teas, and croquet.

  Their hobby is brass rubbings.

  No matter what

  Garrotings, knifings, poisonings, or heads

  Stashed in hat boxes under beds

  Turn up, or torsos tossed in trunks,

  Walks running red with blood, air thick with menace—

  Bobby and Bunch

  Will unaccountably be playing tennis.

  Why must it be these two who find

  Lady Whitsun dead? Poor Billingsgate

  Is stuck with them: “Now, Mr. Smeel-Carruthers,

  And Miss—you didn’t touch

  Anything, did you?” “Heavens, no!”

  Says Bunch. “At least not much,”

  Says Bobby, “nothing but the letters—

  “We tossed those in the grate. And scrubbed the stain

  Out of the Axminster. And then the cup—

  You know—the tea things needed washing up

  Straightaway. I had some port and read

  A bit whilst Bunch was in the potting shed.”

  “The potting shed!”

  (Poor Billingsgate.) “What were you doing there?”

  “Just having a look round. There’s heaps

  Of arsenic and prussic acid, blood

  Splashed all about. And then the gardener—”

  “Gardener?” “Yes. Dressed in a queer old coat

  And balaclava. Well, he’s not our sort

  At all. Oh, Bobby, Bobby!

  Lord Whitsun’s got a smashing tennis court!”

  24.

  INTIMATIONS

  Rain. Wind. Fog

  Like gas above the ground

  In Spoorscar Cemetery,

  Where the heaped headstones