TP Fielden - Resort to Murder - A must-read vintage crime mystery

‘But why were the body markers so far away from the railway embankment?’ Valentine was suddenly more interested in this conversation than he was in the girls who were parading up and down the pool edge. ‘She couldn’t have fallen, or been pushed, that far away from the railway line.’

‘There you have it—’ Miss Dimont smiled and, lifting her dark glasses, turned to face the trainee reporter ‘—in a nutshell. A mystery death. Needs looking into, wouldn’t you say?’

Valentine Waterford smiled back. He had no idea what a time he was in for.

FOUR

Perched high on the cliffs at the tip of the estuary, Ransome’s Retreat boasted the most beautiful gardens in the west of England, its terraces tumbling over the rocks into apparent infinity and its borders filled with a dazzling year-round display.

Palm trees wafted. Magnolias, a century old, lined the paths between terraces and from the branches above hung heavy Angel’s Trumpets. The glasshouses were filled with ripening peaches and pineapples, and the newly shaved lawns gave off a honeyed scent which made visitors feel they had arrived at the gates of Eden.

‘Some more tea, Mr Larsson?’ ‘I’m exhausted.’

‘No more visitors today, sir,’ the manservant said soothingly. ‘All gone now.’

‘Just too tiring,’ complained the old man. ‘Debilitating. And such a bore.’

The world-famous inventor of Larsson’s Life Rejuvenator looked as if he could use a touch of his own medicine. Though the contraption had made him a rich man, keeping it before the public eye these days sapped his energy. His hand fluttered slightly as he reached for the teacup.

There was a time, before the War, when his factory could not make enough of them. The little leather-covered boxes containing a complex electrical device had been shipped all over the world. Larsson’s clients included royalty, film stars, cabinet ministers, and a wide range of society figures, especially ladies of a certain age. It was guaranteed to put a spring back in everyone’s step.

Post-war, however, when most people felt lucky just to be alive, there seemed to be less of a thirst to have one’s life rejuvenated – maybe just waking up and finding one was breathing was enough. And certainly, in these straitened times, even the rich were finding better things to do with their money.

‘No more phone calls, Lamb,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take a nap.’ Bengt Larsson – Ben to that small circle who called themselves his friends – was rich. Very. But his estate in Argentina bled money, the Cote d’Azur mansion similarly, and his two private airplanes – one in Deauville, one in Devon – cost a packet to keep going. Fame is a furnace which needs constant stoking.

Fame can also be a fickle friend: left half-hidden among the pillows on the terrace bench the great man had just vacated was a crumpled copy of the Daily Herald the dutiful Lamb had tried his best to hide at breakfast. Larsson’s face, still handsome after all these years, stared out from a page whose headline screamed:

THE LARSSON LEGACY:

DEATH, DEPRESSION, DEGRADATION

– this is what you can expect

when you buy his famous Rejuvenator

This morning the Daily Herald exposes the truth behind the world-famous Larsson Life Rejuvenator, which has made its Swedish-born inventor one of the country’s richest men.An investigation by this newspaper proves beyond all doubt that Bengt Larsson’s promises that your life will be healthier, longer and livelier by the use of his machine are false.The inventor, who started his career in a chemist’s shop in Hull, has made repeated promises about the efficacy of the Rejuvenator. It has been endorsed by actors, radio stars and other famous figures, but a laboratory trial conducted by the (turn to p.5)

From the sun-dappled lawns blackbirds collected their worms and flew up into the eucalyptus trees to nourish their young, oblivious to the crisis unfolding beneath. The manservant Lamb collected the tea things and moved indoors out of the hot sun. Calm, of a sort, descended.

In the garden room Pernilla Larsson was writing a letter. Or, more exactly, not writing a letter. This latest press attack on her husband was not only bad for business, it unsettled life at Ransome’s Retreat. And though as the inventor’s fourth wife, she had brought a new stability to his restless life, Larsson was an unpredictable man given to violent mood swings and she could never be sure where things would go with him. It made concentrating very difficult.

‘Lamb.’

‘Yes, madam?’

‘Have you given my husband his sedative?’

‘In the second cup, madam.’ Mistress and servant looked steadily at each other.

‘Ask Gus to come in.’

‘Very well, m’m.’

Just then an array of ancient clocks positioned across the ground floor of the ancient house raggedly signalled their agreement that it was four o’clock, and a confident-looking young man entered with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

‘What worries me,’ he said, ‘is not the Herald . It’s those idiots at the Doctors’ Medical Journal . They’re determined to get him.’

‘They’ve always hated him. Ever since he published A New Electronic Theory of Life .’

‘Quacks,’ uttered Gus Wetherby with a sneer. ‘Just because they’ve got medical qualifications they think they know everything. There are people on that journal who are out to get him, no matter what. Medics! Wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t behind this latest press attack.’

Pernilla Larsson took off her glasses and looked at her son. ‘There are a lot of people,’ she said slowly, ‘who might be behind this latest attack. People have turned against Ben, they really have.’

‘Not altogether – we still have the daily visitors. The pilgrims to the shrine.’

‘I wish he hadn’t started that movement. It’s an embarrassment in the present circumstances – it was supposed to be about health and vitality, but they turned it into a religion! It’s one thing to say your invention can extend human life, quite another to allow people to believe there’s something mystical attached to it.’

‘They’re nuts. They think his book is the Bible.’

Wetherby picked up a biscuit off the tea tray. ‘That was all before the War,’ he went on. ‘People looking for something that couldn’t be found. Hoping to contact loved ones, trying to make sense of that lost generation after the First War. People who didn’t believe in spiritualism and Ouija boards and all that junk, but were looking for something …’

‘That couldn’t be found,’ said Pernilla, completing his sentence. The two often thought as one, it was uncanny.

‘So where are we?’ she said, collecting her thoughts. ‘Are the specifications right?’

‘I had them checked. We can go ahead.’

‘There’s just the matter of convincing Ben.’

The conspirators paused. ‘Look,’ said Gus, ‘even Ben knows the game’s up. Once upon a time people believed the Rejuvenator really did what it’s supposed to do but …’

‘You know he won’t accept criticism,’ warned Pernilla. ‘And he can’t accept the idea of change.’

‘That’s the problem, he’s a one-trick pony. All that publicity at the beginning – “Hope for the Aged – Electricity to Make Old Folk Young” – that kind of thing, it went to his head. And all he’d invented was a dolled-up and very expensive box of tricks, something that you plugged yourself into when you felt low which delivered a weak electric current and made you think you felt better.’

‘Don’t be disloyal!’ snapped Pernilla, though her response seemed automatic rather than anything else. ‘HE believed in it, THEY believed in it, therefore we must believe in it too.’ She paused for a moment, pulled in two directions. ‘Though I must confess the letters which are rolling in these days – people don’t want to believe any more. They want their money back.’