Such Is Death by Leo Bruce

so far to a ‘suspect’, yet on the face of it he could not take the supposition very seriously. True, Lobbin had known Ernest on the Burma Road, knew of his treachery and had perhaps suffered from it. True, he had seen him in this bar on the night of the murder, as Doris said ‘could scarcely take his eyes off him’ and so probably recognized him. True he was on the promenade shortly before the murder. But to argue from these that he had gone down there, found Rafter and murdered him, seemed to Carolus far-fetched. Besides, what about the coal-hammer? Did he customarily walk about with a coal-hammer concealed on his person in case he should meet a man who had behaved badly as a fellow-prisoner of war nearly twenty years earlier? There had not been much time, one would think, between Lobbin’s leaving the Queen Victoria at ten o’clock and his being seen near the Palatine Cinema also at ‘about ten o’clock’. At all events there had scarcely been time for him to walk to his home, provide himself with the coal-hammer, and reach the promenade.
    The more Carolus thought about it, the more it seemed to him that all his vague suppositions were misdirected. The Rafter family, the people recognized by the policeman on the promenade, were all he had at present to consider as suspects but he could not make himself take their so-called motive seriously.
    When a few minutes later a man and woman entered the bar, whom he recognized at once from Moore’s description as Mr and Mrs Bullamy, he felt even more that he was among improbabilities. Mr Bullamy was a jolly little man and his wife looked like a female impersonator. Mr Bullamy made a joke with Doris and his wife laughedwhole-heartedly at it. They both drank Guinness and seemed to enjoy it. What in the world could there be to connect such a commonplace couple with a brutal and cowardly crime except that by chance they had walked along the promenade on a night which was, admittedly, one of blustering wind, shortly before a man was murdered there?
    He noticed, however, that they greeted Lobbin at once and the three sat down together. Mr Bullamy ceased to joke and chuckle and listened gravely to something Lobbin was explaining. Mrs Bullamy became rather tense. But then, Carolus reflected, they had all three recently been questioned by the police and had in common the anxiety and disquiet which such questioning might rouse in even the most innocent persons.
    On the whole he felt he had done enough for today. Tomorrow he would start from quite a different angle and leave both the family and this pub for a time while he saw one or two even less involved people whose names had been connected with the thing. But he knew he was floundering about in the dark.

9
    N EXT morning Carolus went by appointment to call on the Reverend Theo Morsell at the Vicarage of St Giles’s. He found this to be a stucco villa on the outskirts of the town.
    Mr Morsell was a vigorous-looking man in his early forties whose hair was thinning fast and whose eyes had a hungry look, as though they were spying out occasions for exercising his bounding energies. He had an embarrassingly warm and boisterous manner, called Carolus ‘old man’ or ‘old chap’ and seemed accustomed to being popular, uncontradicted and admired.
    It very soon became apparent that, so far from thinking that Carolus had approached him as someone who mightbe considered a suspect, he assumed that he was being consulted for his sagacity and experience.
    â€œI’m a bit of a sleuth myself,” he said in a hearty way as he lit a large pipe. “Always interested in this sort of problem. In my job I have to know something about human nature at its best and sometimes at its worst. So I’ve made a bit of a study of crime and criminals. It has enabled me to lend a hand here and there, too. I’m delighted to say that at least five of my regular congregation have done time and two