The Mathematics of Murder
by Michael Gilbert
Legal settings often enter into Michael Gilbert’s crime fiction, and it is a profession the author, himself a London solicitor, knows well. Mr. Gilbert was a writer, however, long before he became a lawyer. His first book was completed in 1930 (though not published until much later) and he was one of the founding members of the Crime Writers Association of Britain. His new story for us introduces a senior managing clerk to a firm of London solicitors who seems to know, or be able to figure out, just about anything...
Friday, March 18th, was a date Hugo Bracknell was destined to remember. Having missed by two minutes the fast 6:30 train from Liverpool Street to Colchester, he had been forced to take, instead, the 6:55 train on the Braintree line. Anxious study of the timetable had shown him that it would, if it ran to time, reach Witham at 7:55. The snag was that it seemed to be a commuter special, stopping no fewer than nine times before it reached Shenfield; discharging at each of these stops a number of businessmen on the way back to their residences at Chadwell Heath, Gidea Park, Brentwood, and other portions of the suburban sprawl which separated East London from Essex.
After Shenfield it seemed to get a move on, stopping only at Ingatestone, Chelmsford, and Hatfield Peverel before reaching Witham.
It was important that it should run to time. He had been invited to spend the weekend with his aunt. She was a formidable old lady who liked to dine promptly at eight. If the train dallied, or there was any difficulty over picking up a taxi at the station, he was going to keep her from her grub. Unthinkable.
“Then don’t think about it,” he said. “Either you make it or you don’t. So stop worrying.”
His thoughts reverted to personal matters; and there was much to think about.
For he had reached a milestone.
After leaving Oxford he had been allowed two years to widen his horizons, to enlarge his knowledge of human nature, to improve his mind; in fact, to enjoy himself, before plunging into the job for which he had been destined from birth.
He was now, and had been for the past ten days, articled to his father, Bob Bracknell, who, with Francis Fearne, constituted the partnership of Fearne and Bracknell, solicitors, in Little Bethel, an odd backwater near the northern end of Tower Bridge, flanked by the offices and warehouse of Ridolfi Brothers on one side and on the other by the Roaring Forties public house. When spoken of in the City — and for a small firm they were spoken of a good deal — they were naturally referred to as Fern and Bracken and strangers sometimes wrote to them under this name. It made no difference. The postmen all knew them.
Ingatestone was briefly stopped at, and left behind them. Three stations to go. Still only 7:45. Relax. Plenty of time.
Fearne and Bracknell was not a big firm. Far from it. But they had that mysterious, indefinable, unchallengeable something. Reputation. People said of them, “Fern and Bracken. Very practical firm, that. Get on with the job, you know. No highfalutin law about them, but sound. Break the law? Of course not. They’re not sharp. Just reliable.”
Hugo sometimes wondered how much of this reputation stemmed from their senior managing clerk, Horace Piggin. He had met Mr. Piggin on many occasions when visiting the office in his school days and had sat kicking his heels in the waiting room whilst his father dealt with some long-winded client. Mr. Piggin had put himself out to entertain the boy.
He remembered one conversation which had taken place when he was in his last year at Rugby. Mr. Piggin had set the ball rolling by asking him why he had decided to take up law. With a brashness which made him blush when he thought about it, he had said, “Oh, I knew Dad would give me my articles here. And after all, being a solicitor isn’t difficult. Look at some of the types you see doing it.”
Mr. Piggin had agreed with him, gravely.
“Of course, I don’t mean you, Piggy. And I don’t mean this firm. We’re different. I mean the stooges in Lincoln’s Inn and Bedford Row who read it all up in books and copy it out.”
“That’s one fault,” Mr. Piggin had agreed, “that you’ll not find in this firm. We have hardly a law book in the place.”
“But surely, Piggy, you must want to look things up sometimes.”
To which Mr. Piggin’s memorable reply had been, “If reference to the authorities is required, I trot along to the public library, scribble down the information, and trot back with it.”
The thought of Mr. Piggin trotting up Tower Bridge Road with his white hair streaming in the wind had enchanted Hugo.
Chelmsford. A rather larger place. Might that mean a longer stop? But no. Quite a few men got off the now nearly empty train, but there were no passengers waiting to get on. Hatfield Peverel next. No one got off, no one got on. Excellent. Minutes were important.
It occurred to Hugo, who was in the rear coach, that he could save a little time on arrival at Witham if he moved up to a point nearer the centre. There was no difficulty about this. The train consisted of twelve coaches in three blocks of four, and it was possible to move from one block to the other. He passed two men, one at either end of the first carriage. The next two were empty. In the fourth carriage there were a woman with a dog and a man and a girl who were sitting close together and getting on with some very private business. Hugo skirted them and passed through the cubicle which joined the rear four carriages to the central four.
Again an empty carriage. In the next, there was one man slouched in his seat and blocking the door in the centre of the carriage that Hugo had been planning to use. As the train jerked to a stop, the man rolled over and lay across the two seats, staring up at the roof with a puzzled look on his face, and Hugo saw the narrow wound in the back of his neck with the dark blood oozing out of it.
It was instinct that led his hand to the handle of the door. Must have help. Must have air. Get the door open. He stumbled onto the platform and stood holding on desperately to the handle.
The guard shouted, “Stand away,” an order which Hugo was unable and unwilling to obey. A louder shout brought out the station master, peremptory and indignant at the sight of a young man, apparently drunk, holding himself up by the door handle.
By this time the guard had come up. Hugo used his free hand to wave towards the interior of the carriage.
After that, things happened slowly.
First the arrival of a local constable. Then a more senior policeman. Then the business of evacuating the few remaining passengers and shunting the train onto a lay-by. Then the arrival of photographers and a police surgeon and a string of questions which Hugo answered as best he could while trying to control his rebellious stomach. Finally the body was moved and Hugo, his identity established and checked, was at last allowed to take possession of the taxi he had secured and to depart and endeavour to placate his aunt.
He was able in the circumstances to excuse himself from carrying out his projected weekend visit; but he further disrupted his aunt’s domestic arrangements by asking to be called at six-thirty. He reached his office at nine o’clock. Fearne and Bracknell — old-fashioned in this as in everything else — worked on Saturday mornings and he arrived, as planned, before either of the partners put in an appearance and made his way straight to the sanctum of their managing clerk. It was Mr. Piggin’s advice and support that he wanted.
“So you are the young man,” said Mr. Piggin, “described, but tactfully unnamed, whose exploits I have been reading about in the morning papers.”