Death in Albert Park Read Online Free Page B

thought which argued that the third would be attempted fourteen days after the death ofjoyce. Others sought some connection with the moon. One newspaper published a picture of a butcher’s knife with a caption asking the public to report the discovery of such a weapon or anything connected with it. Various names were attached to the murderer, the most popular being the simplest—the Stabber. Letters in the more serious newspapers began to appear, not signed as in the last century
Vox Populi
or
Pro Bono Publico
but bearing the names of several quite eminent people. Questions were asked in the House calculated to embarrass the Home Secretary—what steps was he taking to protect, and so on, and the Home Secretary stated that he did not think it wise to discuss his Security measures but would be glad to give the Leader of the Opposition the fullest details in a private interview.
    The case, in fact, fell somewhere between a Scandal and a Sensation and its many side-issues received publicity. Mr. Turnwright explained why he would not join the Vigilantes (“Don’t believe in that sort of thing myself”) and Mrs. Whitehill once again described Joyce Ribbing’s departure from the Bridge party.
    But there is a limit to the possibilities of daily reporting on one theme and after ten days had passed there was a lull in the affairs of Crabtree Avenue until, on the morning of the fourteenth day, readers were faced with the question “Will He Strike Again?” together with details of some of the precautions taken to prevent any fresh outrage. On the fifteenth, when no new crime was reported, it was surmised that policevigilance, together with the combined action of householders, had prevented the Stabber from carrying out yet another murder.
    It was at this point, when public interest seemed for the moment to have evaporated, that Carolus Deene began to interest himself in the case from a distance of sixty miles.
    Perhaps some special concern came from the fact that he was, like Hester Starkey, a member of a school staff, being Senior History Master at the Queen’s School, Newminster, a small but ancient institution in a Cathedral city.
    He was by no means a conventional schoolmaster. His father had left him a rich man and although not greatly interested in wealth he had found, like so many of his kind, that it accumulated rather than grew less. Leaving his affairs to a firm of stockbrokers in which a boyhood friend was partner he had the responsibility of increasing riches forced on him. He was generous to others and allowed himself his fads, including a Bentley Continental and a small Queen Anne house with a charming walled garden near the cathedral.
    His girl wife had been killed in an air raid and since his own release, Carolus had been looked after by a middle-aged couple named Stick, Mrs. Stick being that phenomenon among Englishwomen of her class, an inspired and imaginative cook. The years had passed pleasantly in Newminster for Carolus, who had returned to teaching after the war rather than face the boredom of idleness, enjoyed his work at the school and enjoyed his own well-ordered private life.
    The Queen’s School, Newminster, is, as its pupils find themselves under the necessity rather often of explaining, a public school. A minor, a small, a lesser-knownone, they concede, but still in the required category. Its buildings are old, picturesque and very unhygienic, and one of its classrooms is a showpiece untouched from the Elizabethan age in which the school was founded.
    Some years before this time the school had been given a little reflected fame, for Carolus Deene published a a successful book and did not scorn to print under his name ‘Senior History Master at the Queen’s School, Newminster’. The book was called
Who Killed William Rufus? And Other Mysteries of History,
and in it Deene most ingeniously applied the methods of a modern detective to some of the more