A Capital Crime

"I recounted the tale of a brief incident that occurred while I was on a walking holiday in the West country with a donkey called Apuleius," said William Blackstone Wildman, as I was setting up my tape recorder. "That was only a minor case considering what was to happen only a week or so later on that same journey."

"Please continue," I said. "Don't mind my fiddling with this damned machine. The fire is lit, the port is poured, and my curiosity is whetted."

"You will know that during the winter of 1896-97 the schemes of three very nasty villains were the bane of scores of London householders. They were known as the Halfsister brothers. I did my best to thwart them, and I can immodestly boast that my work was effective. But at a great toll to my physical reserves."

The old man stopped to drink while I turned on the machine. "So in March I cut myself free from all entanglements and set off west. My only worry, as I traversed the Cornish peninsula with my asinine companion, was that my absence from London would encourage the arch-criminals to resume their activities. I could only hope the information I had entrusted to Scotland Yard would be a sufficient deterrent." He paused, shaking his head sadly at some memory.

"Well, please refresh our glasses, then we can get on with my narrative." The old man downed his drink with a slurp, made a toothless smacking noise, and held out his glass.
[You can hear a lot of clunking noises and abrupt cut-offs in the voices on the original tapes, also glass clinking and liquid glugging. --G.S.]
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My intention was to proceed to Land's End and the Lizard; there was no cause, however, to hurry to that goal. So it was that one warm spring evening Apuleius and I found ourselves alone on the beach of a secluded cove near St. Ives. Carrie's Hole. A remote spot far from signs of humanity (save for the sound of somebody out shooting rooks on the moors). A man I met by chance in a public house had recommended it to me as a beauty spot with romantic associations -- wreckers, smugglers, and lovers leaping.

Apuleius was romping about on the strand, kicking up protoplasmic froth from the thrusting pseudopods of the incoming tide. He seemed to be doing it deliberately: perhaps memories of a youth spent carrying children to and fro, and relieving the tedium by stamping on jellyfish, flashed out in that dark little mind.

I wandered over to the shade of the western horn of the cove, a curving cliff of black granite that ran out to a point in the water where breakers were crashing in fountains of white foam. Just below the high tide line somebody had built a small sand castle, the outworks of which were already being undermined by the waves. I was drawn to it out of curiosity -- and, I must admit, a destructive urge.

"Good evening."

The sound of that disembodied voice made me jerk as though feeling the prick of a Halfsister knife on my neck. I looked round, but could see nobody.

"I am down here. In the castle."

I could see him now, sticking up out of the inner bailey. That is to say, his head was -- the rest of his body was buried under the castle.

"Ha, ha," I laughed. "You seem to have got yourself into a sticky situation. The tide will be attacking your stronghold in a few minutes."

"Yes. Sad, isn't it? All the works of man are nothing in the face of tide and time. My name is Humphrey Dumfries. I am sorry I'm unable to shake your hand, but I'm incapable of moving under all this wet sand. A gentleman should always shake the hand of the man who saves his life."

"Pshaw! I waive the formality, sir. I am William Blackstone Wildman. And I had better get a move on to rescue you from the tide and from the immoderate laughter I am having difficulty suppressing. Forgive me, Mr Humphrey Dum...dum..." It was too much, Winston.

Amid spasmodic convulsions I walked over to the rocks where I had espied a child's spade. The sun was beginning to sink below the tip of the horn; but the light flashed on the spade like the glint of red fire on Siegfried's sword.

A few minutes later, Mr Humphrey Dumfries was standing beside me brushing the damp sand from the striped bathing costume that covered most of his rotund form. Water gurgled in the great pit from which he had emerged, and through several breaches in the walls of the castle. Apuleius stood by watching with placid interest.

"Well-timed, sir. Here is my hand, Mr Wildman, wasn't it?"

"Yes," I said, grasping his gritty fingers. "How did you come to find yourself in such a pickle?"

"I have no idea. I went for a bathe. I slept on the sand. I awoke in the beleagured fortress. There you were -- not that I'm accusing you, my dear fellow. Indeed I am not."

I waived comment. "I have discovered," he went on, touching his forehead, "that I have an awful headache and a lump that is not a normal feature of my cranium. A mystery, indeed."

"In short, somebody tried to murder you. Quite a novel modus operandi, to be sure, but effective. This whets my interest."

"Without a doubt. But I should have thought for the purpose a harder blow on the head would have been sufficiently capital. Ha, ha, haw."

"A capital pun, sir."

"Yes, oh yes, ha, haw, HAW! Come, sir. I am a publican by trade, if not by original profession." He slapped me on the back with great force and beckoned me to follow him. I loaded Apuleius -- sand all over everything -- and followed Dumfries out of the cove.

"I run my own hostelry, Mr Wildman. As you seem to be on holiday, perhaps you would accept my 'umble 'ospitality for a day or so?"

"Delighted." I added hopefully, "And it might be that I can solve your mystery."

"Ah, yes. I know you now. You are that detective fellow."

"The same."

"In that case, let us indeed see what you can discover." Some distance inland, we had turned to the right down a long lane into a small coombe. Now we entered the yard of the Tristram of Lyonesse (the sign of the knight and lioness). A bony rustic type led Apuleius away to the stable.

"In my time," Dumphries continued after we had finished our long tramp, "before the burden of the world oppressed me overmuch, I was something in your line myself. Even now, among other things, I am a special constable."

"Yes, I remember. You used to undertake the security of trans-shipments of valuables, public and private."

"You are diplomatic, Mr Wildman. If you know that you must also recall the circumstances of my retirement; the Transvaal Bullion theft of '93."

"Not your fault. You did better than anybody else could have done -- that was Caligula Halfsister's first major crime. Peter Brown he was called then."

"I lost my reputation, notwithstanding. But one must not lose one's sense of honour. Here comes my wife, Iseult."

"Ah, hence the Tristram of Lyonesse."

Introductions were made. Mrs Dumfries was one of the most beautiful women I have ever met -- and one of the stupidest. She had an eerie sort of beauty: like a cedar tree, two-dimensional in effect, if you catch my meaning. This lovely elf-queen smiled at me vaguely, turned up her countenance to the sky, and stood swaying with her alabaster hand negligently resting on her husband's fat shoulder (still clothed in the bathing dress). Her expression was beatific.

Sounds of asisine protest came from the stable. Two screeching brats, one male, one female, obviously twins, came running out.

"Father, Father!" they cried. "He kicked us. The beast kicked us. They never do that!"

"Your shrieks," said Mrs Dumfries, "are piercing." (As was her strident voice -- illusions of perfection vanished.)

The fat man bellowed. "Tristram, Iseult! You heard your mother. Be silent, or I shall cut out your tongues. Begone."

"Them was pullin' ass's ears," said the rustic type.

I turned to Dumfries. "Never mind. No harm done. -- Oh, before I go in, I had better try and shake the sand from my clothes. I'm afraid I lack a proper change of dress."

He said it did not matter in the least, and invited me into the inn for supper. There was one other guest that dropped in briefly, a poet from London, who looked like a cross between Oscar Wilde and a gorilla, but he soon departed. Later, over some home-made cider, we spent the evening in his public lounge. He would not let me talk about the attempt on his life; I felt curiously put off, as though it were all a fantasy of the Emperor's clothes sort where one is under a strange compulsion not to comment on the absurd events taking place. Everything, including one's own deeds and motives, seems predestined, inevitable, and inescapable, in spite of all wishes and doubts.

Much later in the evening, in the midst of a discussion along the lines of 'the exquisite tartness and intoxicating clarity of the fermented juices expressed from the succulent pomes of the West Country orchards varies in proportion to the inclemency of the weather in the district in which they have undergone augmentation from dainty blossom to bulbous rotundity...' (Dumfries expounding on hard cider) -- there was an interruption.

"Excuse me, sir. Is your name William Blackstone Wildman?"

"At your service." The interruptor was a stout man in green tweeds and baggy knee breeches, known, I believe, as plus-fours (heaven knows why). He gestured to two huge constables carrying truncheons like Orion's club.

"I am Chief Constable Sir George Polperro-Fanshaw. I have a warrant for your arrest on suspicion in the felonious death of a man and I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence against you."

I turned to Dumfries. "Sir, this is nonsense. I am your guest and know no-one in these parts." He shrugged his shoulders. His wife made swooning gestures. To Sir George: "What do you mean, killed a man. Killed whom? When? Where?"

"We believe the victim to be one Caligula Halfsister, gentleman of the metropolis. We found him buried in the sand, face smashed in, down Carrie's Hole way. I have witnesses."

He summoned two men, one of the constables and a short clerkish fellow whom I recognized as the stranger who had urged me the previous day to visit the cove. He gave his name as Jason Spindrip, a private enquiry agent, from Whitechapel, London. The latter's statement asserted that he had been hired by a Mr Montague, of Montague, Montague and Ague, Solicitors, to follow me in the interests of their client, Caligula Halfsister, who was on holiday in the area. I had been persecuting Mr Halfsister with false allegations that were extremely annoying to the gentleman, indeed threatening. But now he was dead, foully murdered on the strand by his false accuser, and Jason Spindrip, private detective, found it incumbent on himself to avenge his sullied honour, and his client.

I stood on my dignity, and made to reply to his ridiculous allegations.

"We found the body when the tide went out," said Sir George. "Constable Oxbutt, here, corroborates Mr Spindrip. They both of them saw you bury it on the beach, and as material proof we have found dried sand caked on your clothes, and an abandoned shovel in the cove."

"The evidence is circumstantial," I replied -- the constable was making notes of my words. "Perhaps I was seen digging on the beach, but there is a reasonable explanation. Mr Dumfries will tell you."

Humphrey Dumfries spoke out blandly, "I have no idea what you mean, Mr Wildman. I was not in the cove today, and I never saw you before I met you on the road at sunset."

"You were buried under a sand castle. Look, there is sand in your hair yet."

"And why not?" he chuckled. "I went bathing this afternoon at the Whispering Dunes. Imprisoned in a sand castle indeed!"

A hearty laugh. I turned to the constable and asked him what lies he had to tell. I was trapped in the absurdity like the child who could not say with credit that the emperor was naked.

"Ar! None. No loys a tall." (Henceforth, let the reader supply the rustic diphthongs: for the sound 'eye' substitute something like 'uee', for 'ow', 'ayoo' -- the printed result would hinder comprehension, being as Boeoetian to the eye as Balkan to the ear.) "Mr Spindrip warned me about you. For three days I been keeping an eye on Mr Halfsister, sort of an unofficial bodyguard, like, unbeknownst to him. Mr H has rented the farm other side of the cove from here. Mr S was following you, disguised as a farmer out shootin' rooks, and today we both ends up at Carrie's Hole. 'Quick', says Mr S, 'trouble's afoot. We mun stop it.' We runs acrosst the fields to the cliff and look down into the cove. I sees you diggin' hole in the sand, and the body behind you all asprawl. I reconnized you on account of your ass."

Dumfries guffawed.

"Why didn't you arrest me on the spot if the event indeed happened?"

"I wanted to. I swear it. But Mr S said no, fetch help. You was dangerous. I pointed out he had a gun, but 'e says no, I ain't takin' no chances. So we runs off to fetch Harry and Bill and Sir George. We had you, anyways."

"Then you never saw me put the body in the hole?"

"Nah, didn't need to -- ha! Cause we found it there later, and I can make a deducing like any big city detection fellow." (Sir George seemed a little uncomfortable listening to the dereliction revealed by his constable but made no comment.) "But when we got back, tide was in and we had to wait a woil till we could dig up the corpus derelicti. Spooking thing, all by lamplight."

"Oh, how dreadful!" said Mrs Dumfries.

I rounded on Spindrip. "You are a prime mover in this plot, vile accomplice as you are to this vile gang. You duped Oxbutt into keeping Halfsister in sight. You signalled to another conspirator, Dumfries here, when I was approaching, probably by gunshot, and he was quickly interred in a prepared hole by his yokel retainer." (I was thinking very fast, Winston, but felt I had jumped to the truth.)

"Hold up," said Sir George. "You have lost me. Shall I recapitulate, as I understand it, what you are suggesting?"

Dumfries chuckled. "By all means do, Sir George. I am rather confused."

"Right. As opposed to the straightforward tale my witnesses have put forward, you suggest that there is a conspiracy against you, made up of three, four, how many persons? That one chap kept behind you all day and signalled to his friends in the cove when you were still some distance away -- to set up a ridiculous charade about trapping Mr Dumfries in the sand so that you could be seen digging from the cliffs by my constable, who was likewise set up."

"In short, yes. Spindrip yesterday encountered me in St Ives and informed me of Carrie's Hole in such terms that anybody knowing my inclinations would know was an irresistable lure to me. What time I went to the cove made no difference, so long as those waiting for the action to commence had warning of my coming."

"I see," he said skeptically. "Now when the signal was heard, Caligula Halfsister calmly proceeded to the cove, with Oxbutt in his tracks -- to where he knew he was to be killed. Yet another absurdity. And who, then, played your part at the actual murder? Where does Dumfries fit into the scene at all? He was seen by nobody but yourself if you are telling the truth."

"It was Caligula Halfsister who disguised himself as me, and what your constable saw actually occurred after the little comedy enacted by Dumfries and myself, and we had already departed. Where the body was buried was probably farther up the beach because the tide was already at the sand castle. But there will be no sign of that. Halfsister is not dead at all, but the prime mover in this business."

"And the donkey? And the identity of the victim?"

"Ah! No doubt Dumfries has his own donkey in the barn -- we should go look, if it hasn't been removed to a hiding place. The victim could be anybody -- the Halfsisters have many enemies and this could have been killing two birds with one stone. Your real corpse is a poor unknown who now lies in the morgue with his face mutilated beyond recognition."

"I don't understand a word of it," whined Mrs Dumfries. "Is that nice Mr Halfsister dead?"

"He is, my dear," said Mr Dumfries. "I shouldn't call Mr Halfsister 'nice', but neither is his murderer. I think, in fact, that you have heard enough and should retire to bed."

"Oh, no, Humphrey. I wish to understand."

"Beg pardon, Madam," said Sir George, "I agree with your husband. We have all heard enough nonsense for tonight. You, Mr Wildman, have told me the most fantastic and absurd tale I've ever heard. The case against you is odd enough, but your explanation... Why the very thought of Mr Dumfries buried in a sand castle is enough to make one doubt one's sanity. It is patently --"

"Oh, but he was, he was. And we built it!"

It was the twins. In their nightgowns they danced into the room. Tristram said, "Father's head was stickin' up out of the sand." Iseult said, "He looked ever so peculiar, and very angry to see us." Tristram said, "He couldn't move, so we built a castle round him." Iseult said, "And the wicked man with the donkey laughed and laughed."

"Enough, enough, children," said Dumfries, raising his hands. "You put all our heads in a spin with your little tales. Ha, ha, Sir George, is it not a never-ending source of amusement, the imaginings of wee children? Admit it now, my darlings," he said with frightening unctuousness, "you never saw your papa buried in the sand, you never built a sand castle around him. You listened to us at the door, and made up a nasty fib, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU!"

The poor children cowered, and piped meekly together: "Yes, Father."

"I protest," I said, "this scarifying of small children. Tell me, Tristram, or Iseult, was I the man who laughed at your father's plight?"

"Go to bed," said Dumfries.

"No, wait," Sir George said. "Answer the question."

They looked from Sir George to their father and again at Sir George. Something about him seemed to reassure them -- or perhaps frightened them more than their father did. "Oh, no," the girl said to me, "you look like him, but you're not the same. And it was our donkey there, not yours."

I turned to Sir George in triumph. Dumfries was very pale in the face, and perspiring, as with a whimper, Mrs Dumfries gathered up the twins in her arms and ran out of the room -- perhaps she feared the wrath of her husband against them.

"Ah, hmmmm, ahum." Sir George cleared his throat.

"They're lying," Spindrip shouted. "Wildman's fable is nonsense. Sly stab at turning the tables on justice and right."

"Is it indeed?" I said. "Do you know, Sir George, what the flaw in Halfsister's crazed plot is? It is too fanciful, too elaborate -- and he has made the fatal error of using too many accomplices, even disregarding the accidental intrusion of the twins. If you'll excuse my metaphor, it is like employing a firing squad to kill a fly. You can take me away to your gaol now, Sir George: in short, but not for long, I am your willing prisoner."

"There was certainly much left to chance. How could he be sure you would act as you did?"

"He couldn't," Dumfries said. "The theory is absurd."

"Too right, it is," from Spindrip.

"Is it?" I replied. "We -- Caligula and I -- have had six months to become intimately acquainted with the workings of each other's minds. Faced with certain allurements, derived from a knowledge of my habits and inclinations, I am rather predictable in my reactions -- like my donkey Apuleius. Which is to say I can be a colossal ass at times. But Caligula does not know his own weaknesses. Things do not work out just because you have planned them. He is a fool, and beneath contempt."

Dumfries had been leaning over during my speech. Suddenly he straightened up, with a gun in his hand now revealed. "That will do, Wildman. I am inclined to think I could have brazened it out, but I'm tired of playing games. All of you please to move against the wall. Slowly, now! In a line."

We cooperated. "I am not going to let you come with me, Spindrip. I'm weary of your obsequiousness, and your activities as toady to that monster Caligula Halfsister. When I am gone, you may talk to Sir George all you wish -- try to save yourself from your part in this charade -- if you can. Which I doubt."

"What is the meaning of this?" said Sir George.

"Don't you know? Wildman is perfectly right about Caligula's conspiracy, but does not realize how I turned it to my advantage. Who is the victim? Well, it was to be our friend the poet, who has long since fled the neighborhood. It was HE who took your place, Wildman. When Halfsister took him from where he had been hidden in the rocks (and I had earlier unbound him), then prepared to bash him over the head, he fought back and the tables were turned. A quick change of clothes, and the body was dragged out into the sight of constable Oxbutt. The worm turns! Caligula Halfsister is truly dead and was buried until you dug him up again, sadly to say. He died because he was the cause of my ruin. Do you think the occasional sops he threw to me as his agent in the West Country could make up for that?"

Spindrip lunged forward. "You devil. You sneaking..." He did not survive to finish his complaint. Dumfries shot him through the heart.

Dumfries went on calmly (although he wiped his brow with a handkerchief and kept breathing deeply during his monologue). "Another death. With hostile witnesses. I shall have to cut my confession short, gentlemen. Do you hear the coach? That is Nero Halfsister, come to take me and my family to safety. Do you think I did this deed solely for revenge? There is no love lost between the brothers, and I will be well provided for for my role in these events. You will be tied up, but not too tightly. I bid you farewell, gentlemen."

From the William Blackstone Wildman Collection by Grobius Shortling

[This Wildman story has a fanciful and far-fetched plot, but that goes along with everything I have heard about dealings with the Halfsister brothers. They were as mad in their way as Wildman. How could any moron have expected this intrigue to work? --Grobius]

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