Death of His Uncle

B. Kitchin

Description

Malcolm Warren, a young English stockbroker, is asked by a friend, Dick Findlay, to look into the disappearance of Findlay's uncle.

Sujets

• Traditional
• Detective
• Mystery
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 28 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636333
• Langue: English

Extrait

Death of His Uncle
by C. H. B. Kitchin
Subjects: Fiction -- Mystery / Detective

First published in 1939
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Death of His Uncle




C. H. B. Kitchin

1. Thursday, June 10th
Had it not been for my inability to mash potatoes on Thursday,June 10th, I think it quite possible that I might never haveembarked on this third case of mine.
I had intended to dine alone in my flat that evening, but througha muddle on my part, my housekeeper failed to come in and cookmy dinner, and I was faced unexpectedly with the task of preparingmy own meal or going to my club or a restaurant. My firstimpulse was to go out, but a visit to my larderette, which waswell stocked, made me feel ashamed. I reminded myself of friendswho could preside gracefully over a four-course dinner party,cooked and served by themselves. I had long toyed with the ideaof learning a little cookery, and this evening seemed designed formy first attempt. I found two cutlets, some bread, some butter, apot of cream, a tin of peas and some potatoes. The crockery andcutlery were clean, and waiting for me. I hadn’t even to wash upafterwards. Mrs. Rhodes would do that when she came the nextday.
It was the sight of the pot of cream which decided me. Whynot mash myself some potatoes, using cream in a way whichwould astonish Mrs. Rhodes?
I set to work with a cookery book open on the small kitchentable. First soak the potatoes. I did. Then peel them. This tookme a long time. They were full of distasteful impurities which Ichipped out extravagantly. Boil the potatoes. I boiled them. Meanwhilethe cutlets were in the oven taking their chance. Next mashthe potatoes vigorously, till a creamy consistency is reached. Imashed for a few minutes, with little result. Then I poured insome cream. Perhaps, I thought, the cream would soften themand do my mashing for me. It didn’t. Instead, there was a dubioussmell, and, on opening the oven, found that my cutlets were notall they should be. I took them out for an airing, and mashedagain, with growing despair, until the telephone bell rang. ‘Ifonly,’ I thought, ‘it could be someone who would ask me outto dinner!’
It was.
‘Can I speak to Mr. Malcolm Warren, please?’
‘Yes. Speaking. Who is that?’
‘This is Dick Findlay. Don’t you recognise me?’
‘Oh, Dick! This is a surprise.’
‘I rang up your office this afternoon, about five, but they saidyou had left.’
‘Yes, I went to get my hair cut.’
‘Oh, you needn’t excuse yourself. Stockbrokers have their haircut every day.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m telephoning from a call-box off Piccadilly. I was hoping toget hold of you to come and dine to-night, if you’ve nothingbetter to do.’
I reflected hurriedly. I was never very eager to dine tête-à-tête with Dick Findlay. He was excellent as a fourth at bridge, or as astop-gap invitee for a theatre party, when someone has let youdown, but alone, unleavened by company, he was apt to betedious. No, ‘tedious’ is quite the wrong word. I really meantthat when I was alone with him I felt I was playing a permanentsecond fiddle. Just that touch of the bully about him, despite allhis charm, whimsicality, wit and fitful generosity.
All this flashed through my head, while he said persuasively:
‘ Aux Trois Pommes. ’
The Trois Pommes is a restaurant, which gives one the verybest French food. Perfect food, perfect wine, perfect service, anagreeable décor and no band. Set against this my messy mashedpotatoes.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘As soon as you can get round. Don’t bother to make yourselfsmart. I’ll go round myself at once, and drink a cocktail till youarrive. Don’t be long.’
I said I should be with him in twenty minutes, and he rang off.
I had first met Dick Findlay at Oxford. A year my junior, hemade a reputation for brilliance almost in his first term. Heexcelled, superficially, at everything. He was a scholar, but borehis scholarship lightly, even contemptuously. He was said to bea fine tennis player, and when he first came up, he played for hiscollege at football. He joined the O.U.D.S., and was given somegood parts in their plays. He could outdo the aesthetes at theirown game, burnt incense in his room, had bowls filled withoranges (for decorative purposes only) and collected AubreyBeardsley’s drawings. And all the time, you felt he had his eye ona sports car or a private aeroplane. A dazzling creature—apparentlywithout a background. One hardly heard of his publicschool. He had a father who lived vaguely abroad. How unlikeme, I felt, with my background of a Somersetshire vicarage, myamiable step-father, my dear domesticated mother, my two sisters,my circle of uncles, aunts and cousins, from which it seemedimpossible that I should ever emancipate myself.
I wonder if Oxford still breeds these versatile butterflies.Probably not. Nowadays, the young are so serious. They seem tothink it a sin to be comfortable, either physically or mentally. Aself-tormenting impulse. Is it because they were all born duringthe war?
I think I have made it plain that I really never liked Dick verymuch. Jealousy, on my part, no doubt. He achieved the limelighttoo easily, and all the time I had the feeling that he was a second-rateperson with a second-rate brain. And I had a specific grudgeagainst him, which I may as well disclose, even if it shows thepettiness of my own character.
During my undergraduate days, I had one humble parlourtrick. I could improvise on the piano in the styles of the greatcomposers. I was pedantic in my method and heavy in my touch,but my musical friends—those who were really musical and notonly interested in light luncheon music—seemed to enjoy mylittle performances, and gave them perhaps too much encouragement.‘This,’ I would say, after suitable pressure, ‘is a BeethovenAir with Variations. This is a César Franck Choral Prelude. Thisis a Brahms Intermezzo’; and though I must admit that one day,when my hostess had asked me to ‘try some Bach,’ an American,perhaps misunderstanding the situation, said, ‘Waal, if that’sBach, it’s the poorest Bach I’ve ever heard,’ I usually had a mildsuccess and was asked to play again.
Dick also played the piano. He had a velvety touch, a sense ofsyncopation, knowledge of half-a-dozen modern harmonies andconsiderable technique, provided he was allowed to bring it outin little bursts. The first time I heard him was after I had heldthe stage for twenty minutes with a free fugue in Beethoven’slast manner. He was gracefully reluctant to go to the piano, andurged that his music was lamentably low-brow and that hecouldn’t stand comparison with a serious performer. Eventually,of course, he allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat down.
‘I should like,’ he said, ‘if I may, to parody Warren parodyingBeethoven.’ And he did, introducing deliberately one or two grossmistakes such as I was only too prone to make, and later someingenious little runs, which, though they were not Beethoven,were obviously beyond the scope of my fingers. Then suddenlyhe turned the whole piece into a sophisticated jazz. A triumph—buttoo much at my expense.
Of course we came to terms. I couldn’t afford not to come toterms with him. He knew far too many of my friends, about whomhe said witty things to me, just as he said witty things about meto them—things that were often a little too true to be funny.He would also disarm criticism by saying witty things abouthimself. He used people as stepping-stones, and seemed to go fromstrength to strength, though he was too wise to injure thosewhom he had out-distanced. To do him justice, I don’t think hewished to injure anyone. He simply liked being liked, and, ifpossible, admired. It may have come home to him as a shock,after a time, that people found it easier to admire him than tolike him.
Then when he was talked of as a possible President of theUnion, came eclipse—or, at any rate, decline. His mysteriousfather, who lived abroad, died suddenly, leaving, it was said,nothing but debts. Dick had accumulated debts of his own, too.In desperation, he had to turn to his father’s brother—‘a pawkylittle widower’—who lived in ‘some ghastly suburb.’ We weren’teven told which suburb. Uncle Hamilton—I learnt his name later—playedup well. He offered Dick a home in the ‘ghastly suburb,’and sufficient money to take his degree, living the while inmoderate, if unostentatious, comfort. There were relatives, too,on Dick’s mother’s side—the two sides of the family had alwaysdisliked one another—who offered him a job in their factorywhen he should have finished with Oxford. He was readingscience—I suppose the idea had been that he would go to thefactory sooner or later, and apparently the factory had a scientificside. Dick said, contemptuously, that his mother’s family madechemical fertilisers—he used another word for them—amongstother things.
So Dick’s life suddenly became earnest, and play had to yieldto work. He took the change fairly well, outwardly, though hewas never quite the same after it. ‘Well, well,’ he once said tome, ‘all this posing is all right when you’re twenty, but thereisn’t much to be said for it when you’re twenty-one.’ ‘Did youpose?’ I asked him. ‘My dear fellow,’ he answered, ‘what do youthink? Of course I posed, and did it very well.’
I asked him if he hadn’t always intended to go into the factory,and he said it was there as a last resort, if nothing better turnedup. He had hoped to have a year or two in which to look round,perhaps to take up free-lance journalism, or write a successfulplay. Now there was the factory and nothing but the factory.He must make