Give a Corpse a Bad Name

GIVE A CORPSE
A BAD NAME

Elizabeth Ferrars was one of the most distinguished crime writers of her generation. She was described by
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
as ‘The writer who may be the closest of all to Christie in style, plotting and general milieu'. Born in 1907 in Rangoon, Burma, the author grew up in Hampshire, England, before studying journalism in London. Her first crime novel,
Give a Corpse a Bad Name
, was published in 1940. During her career, she wrote more than seventy novels and became immensely popular in America, where she was published as E.X. Ferrars. In 1953, she became a founding member of the British Crime Writers' Association and, in the early 1980s, was awarded its Silver Dagger for a lifetime's achievement. She died in 1995.

This edition published 2010 by

The Langtail Press

www.langtailpress.com

Give a Corpse a Bad Name © 1940 Peter Mactaggart

ISBN 978-1-78002-027-3

GIVE A CORPSE
A BAD NAME

At six-thirty on a Tuesday evening near the beginning of January Anna Milne was heard by her parlourmaid to say: ‘Damn the man, he's late!'

At six-forty-five the girl, returning from the errand that had taken her past the open door of the drawing-room, overheard the words: ‘To hell with him, I can't wait!'

Three minutes later she saw Mrs Milne come out of the drawing-room, pick up the fur coat that had been thrown down on a chair, put it on over the white skirt and knitted jumper she was wearing, pick up the badminton racket leaning against the chair, and go out by the front door.

At six-fifty the lights of Mrs Milne's Bentley flickered past the windows of the house. The parlour-maid, returning to the kitchen, told the cook what she had heard.

Until past seven o'clock they discussed the language often used by Mrs Milne. They disapproved of it.

At twenty minutes after midnight a white-faced woman in a fur coat walked into the police station in the village of Chovey.

She entered and crossed so swiftly to where the constable on duty was re-reading the racing news in the local evening paper that although he recognized her he had no time to rise to his feet.

She grasped the edge of the desk before him, put her face close to his, and said: ‘Smell my breath. Am I drunk?'

Startled, the constable sniffed.

‘One beer,' she said, ‘more than an hour ago.'

‘Yes, ma'am, that seems about right.'

‘Then for God's sake,' she said, dropping into the nearest chair, ‘get me a drink. I need one.'

The constable got it.

‘There's a nasty mess up the road,' said Mrs Milne. ‘I've run over a man and killed him. You'd better come along.'

Mrs Milne was a widow in her early forties. Five years ago she and her daughter Daphne had come to live in Chovey. She was of medium height, lightly and strongly built, with dark hair and dark eyes, deep-set, and strongly defined features. Her coat was of mink—expensive.

The police whisky steadied her nerves and brought a spot of red to each of her cheek-bones.

To Sergeant Eggbear, summoned by Constable Leat, she gave the details of the accident.

‘It's between the two bridges on the Purbrook road—you know where I mean? Those two hump-backed bridges. He was lying across the road—dead drunk, I suppose. I didn't knock him down. I never saw anything. I was a bit dazzled by a car that passed the other way and didn't dip its lights. I'd drawn in to the side to let it pass just before the first of the bridges, then when it had come over and gone by I went over myself, and about half-way between the bridges I felt a jolt …'

‘I been expectin' somethin' o' the sort ever since I come here,' said the sergeant.

‘Aye, they'm dangerous, they bridges,' said Leat, ‘and yet 'tis the first accident us've 'ad there.'

‘Could you say just about what time it happened, ma'am?' said the sergeant.

Anna Milne rubbed a knuckle against her forehead in a nervous gesture. There was a blankness in her eyes almost as if she had not comprehended the question. She answered jerkily, ‘About midnight, was it?'

‘ 'Twas twelve-thirty when the lady come into the station,' said Leat.

‘About midnight,' Mrs Milne repeated. She had a quiet but rather rough voice. ‘Yes, something like that. I'd been in Purbrook, playing badminton at the Red Dragon, and I gave some people a lift home. Miss Willis—d'you know her? She lives a little way down the main Plymouth road. I took her home. But I dropped Major Maxwell first. His car was out of order and I'd picked him up earlier and promised to drive him home again. I dropped him at the crossroads and then turned down to the left to drop Miss Willis—'

‘Then you turned back and come back to the crossroads?' said the sergeant.

‘Yes, and came on home. It must have been about midnight that it happened.'

‘And you say that you didn't see the—um, man?' said the sergeant.

‘No,' said Mrs Milne.

‘Not even a dark shape like, lying in the road?'

‘No!' she repeated vehemently, ‘I saw nothing—nothing at all! I only felt …'

‘There, there, ma'am,' said the sergeant automatically, and licked the tip of his pencil. ‘If you would just describe what you did on realizing that a tragedy had taken place …'

An odd, brilliant smile tightened the slack muscles of her face. ‘A tragedy, sergeant? You're jumping to conclusions. I haven't told you who the man is.'

The sergeant's gaze jerked up from his note-book. ‘I understood, from the way you began your story, ma'am, that you didn't know yourself.'

‘I don't,' said Anna Milne.

‘Then—'

‘So perhaps it's not a tragedy after all. You can't tell, can you? Perhaps I've killed someone who needed killing, or someone who'll be happier dead. Perhaps I haven't robbed any home of a breadwinner, or any woman of her lover, or even posterity of a remarkable genius, or—'

‘Here, ma'am,' said Leat, ‘have another drop of this.'

‘Thank you,' said Anna Milne.

There was a silence while she gulped down the whisky and, for a moment, sat breathing fast, her eyes looking glassily past the sergeant at a calendar on the wall. Then she asked if she might smoke. Before she received any answer she had stuck a cigarette in her mouth. But her lighter, as she flicked at the little wheel, sparked only faintly and did not catch alight. Holding it in one hand she took the cigarette from her lips and said in an even tone: ‘Once when I was broke I went round betting half a crown with anyone who'd take it on that their lighter wouldn't work the first time. I made twenty-seven and six the first week and lived on it for a fortnight. You understand, sergeant, this is absolutely the first time a thing like this has happened to me. I've run over a dog, and I've wrung the necks of a good many chickens in cold blood, but this is positively my first experience of killing a man.'

‘Maybe you didn't kill'n, ma'am,' said the sergeant.

‘What?' she said. ‘D'you think he could have been dead already? Will you be able to tell?'

‘Maybe he ain't dead.'

Mrs Milne jumped to her feet. ‘You think I'd let you sit here wasting time if—?'

‘That's all right, ma'am,' said the sergeant, ‘I sent the ambulance around first thing. But I thought it'd give you a little time to recover yourself if I questioned you here before we set off for the scene of the accident.'

‘I'm a fool,' said Mrs Milne dryly. She sat down. ‘But he's dead all right. I know the dead when I meet them.'

‘Perhaps if you would just tell me what happened …'

She lit her cigarette and took one or two puffs, calmly. ‘I pulled up, of course. I got up and went round to the back of the car to see what had happened. It was quite obvious. Both my off-wheels had gone over his head.'

‘Had you a torch?' asked the sergeant.

‘No. And I didn't back my car either to get its headlights on to the thing. But there was a bit of a glow from the rear lamp and the night's quite clear. Stars, you know—very beautiful.'

‘I suppose there was no one about who might have witnessed it?'

‘Not one damned soul.'

The sergeant frowned. But Mrs Milne's gaze was back on the calendar. It told her that this was the fifth of January, or rather, since midnight had already passed, that yesterday had been the fifth of January.

‘That car,' said the sergeant, ‘that didn't dip its lights. What about that?'

She answered, turning tired eyes towards him again: ‘It was out of sight before I'd even pulled up. It was some sort of a low sports car—I didn't notice it much.'

‘And nobody else?'

‘No one but me and my victim, sergeant. I took him by the heels and pulled him in to the side of the road. After all, I thought, there's no need for anyone else to run over him.'

‘And you didn't recognize him as anyone local?'

‘I did not. But I admit I left a more careful examination of his face to more competent people. It's a rough road and he was lying face downwards—there wasn't much face left.' Throwing her half-smoked cigarette at the stove, she added: ‘He'd a brown tweed suit and his shoes needed soling.'

The sergeant rose. ‘Then if that's all, us'll be gettin' along. You'd better come, ma'am, but you won't have to look at'n again if us can help it.'

Mrs Milne uncrossed her legs and planted her two feet firmly on the floor. ‘I won't drive my car out there again,' she said, ‘for any policeman with the whole dignity of the law behind him.'

‘That's all right, ma'am,' said Eggbear patiently. ‘Constable Leat will drive. Come on, Cecil.'

The night, as Mrs Milne had said, was clear and starry. It was frosty, too. Chovey's main street was empty, the street lamps shining on sleeping windows lidded with blinds. Chovey's shops were small; they left no lighted display for the unlikely latecomer. At the end of the street where hedges replaced cottages the road was deserted, a faint silvering of frost glinting on its surface in the beam of the headlights.

The car travelled on.

It passed the entrance to Mrs Milne's house, lying on the right. Farther on, Chovey Place, the big house of the neighbourhood, showed at intervals between gaps in the high hedge, its dark mass pricked with a few spots of light. A rabbit scuttled across the road ahead of the car.

The ambulance and the doctor had arrived before the police. Leat stopped the car at the nearer of the two bridges and he and the sergeant got out. The sergeant turned to tell Mrs Milne that perhaps she would not be needed, then he started down the road. Mrs Milne leant back in the car, shut her eyes, but immediately opened them again and, with nervous carelessness, lit herself another cigarette. The sergeant, glancing back over his shoulder, caught sight of the flare of the lighter inside the car, and the blur of a pale face above it.

‘Twenty-seven and six,' he observed, ‘and lived on it for a fortnight. Guess how much that fur coat her's wearing must have cost her.'

‘Strikes me,' said the constable, ‘us 'ere in Chovey don't know such a great amount about that lady.'

They crossed the bridge and turned, with the road, to the right, losing sight of the car.

This bridge was set at the first turn and the other bridge at the second of a sharp S-bend. Probably it was because the spot was so obviously dangerous that no accident had happened here before. Both bridges, built over streams that came together in the meadows to the right, were so narrow that only one car at a time could cross over, and so steeply humped that up to the moment when a car reached the middle, it was driving blind. Both bridges had low brick walls on either side of them. Between them the road was raised above the meadows with fences along each side. The ambulance was drawn up about half-way between the bridges, its lights turned on a figure that lay in the shallow ditch.

The doctor and two other men were standing beside it.

‘Well, doctor, is he dead?' said Eggbear as he came up.

The doctor, a short man with heavy shoulders and a sallow, loose-skinned face, turned and nodded. He took his hands out of his pockets, blew on them, rubbed them together, stuck them into his pockets again and called it confounded weather.

‘Tight?' said Eggbear.

‘ 'Spect so.'

‘Then that lets the lady out.'

‘Which lady?'

‘Mrs Milne of The Laurels. 'Twas her car done him in.'

‘Was it, indeed!' Dr Sanders uttered a sound from within his upturned coat-collar that might have been a chuckle.

‘Somethin' funny?' said the sergeant. He had approached the body and was stooping over it.