Dusty Death Read online

  Dusty Death

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  A Brief Introduction

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Copyright

  Dusty Death

  Clifton Robbins

  A Brief Introduction

  Little is known about the crime writer Clifton Robbins. An internet search will throw up a list of books he wrote and a scant biography. Deeper research offers a tiny bit more, but not much.

  He was born in London in 1890, was educated in Cambridge, and worked as a journalist before turning his hand to crime writing. His first novel, Dusty Death, was published in 1931 and introduced the world to barrister-turned-detective Clay Harrison and his able assistant, Henry. Harrison’s penchant for a nice cup of tea and a fine cigar sees him through a series of cases involving murder, kidnapping, jewellery heists, drug smuggling and a ruthless female arch-enemy.

  Robbins wrote five Clay Harrison novels, as well as two featuring the armchair detective, George Staveley. There are also two standalone novels, a mystery entitled Murder at 25, and a curious novel about an anti-smoking campaigner, The Devil’s Beacon.

  Robbins’ final published novel was the George Staveley mystery, Death Forms Threes, in 1940. Quite why he stopped writing then is unclear, although the Second World War may have been an influencing factor. His books have never been reprinted, and only a couple of contemporary reviews have survived, so it is possible that his work was not hugely popular during his lifetime.

  There are records of a Clifton Robbins who died in 1944, and of another who died in Cambridge in 1964. The latter left no children and his estate was handled by his cousins. Years of research have failed to track down any surviving relatives and we welcome any information readers may have about Clifton Robbins or his family. We can be contacted at [email protected].

  Chapter I

  Mrs Humbleby’s Lodger

  “Drugs?”

  “Yes, pounds of them. Enough to kill hundreds, sir.”

  Clay Harrison leant back in his chair and looked at the middle-aged woman opposite to him. The room where they sat was the usual type to be found in any of the chambers of the Inns of Court, not over-comfortable and yet with a pleasant quality of “home” to it. “I am not an office,” it whispered to you with pride. “I have been lived in too long for that. People work in offices, men live in chambers—and love them, too.”

  It would not be fair to specify the exact spot in London where these chambers are to be found. Clay Harrison’s reputation had grown to such a degree that his name painted in however small letters on the doorway may reduce him to the unpleasant state of living dangerously. One never knew, he would say, so much so that, although one could be morally certain that he always rented the same chambers, one could not guess it from the continual change in the name of the occupant on the door. Suppose you had been given exact directions as to finding these very chambers and supposing you found, instead of Clay Harrison on the wall, the remarkable legend, “Small Game Protection Society”—as you would certainly have done a week ago although it may have been altered since—you would either have accused your friends of wickedly deceiving you or have decided that Clay Harrison had moved.

  Supposing again, however, that you did the unobvious thing—a difficult though occasionally an expedient way of conducting your affairs—and knocked on the door, it would have been opened by a somewhat nondescript-looking clerk, answering to the name of Henry, who would have stared blankly at you when you mentioned the name of Clay Harrison.

  With the hint—merely by-the-by—that he regarded you as mentally unbalanced, he would certainly have shut the door again.

  Thereupon, if you were an average person—which it would be best to be in the circumstances—you would have retired down the stairs, muttering vague compliments concerning your friends and pitying the poor “small game” if left to the mediocre mercies of the said Henry. For which state of mind you would be entirely wrong because if Clay Harrison was to be found anywhere in London—sometimes a difficult proposition—it was at that spot, possibly busy behind Henry’s protecting back at the moment you called. As to Henry you will hear more of him as matters progress.

  Henry did not always treat callers like that. He knew pretty well what to do with most of them. There was no password to get to Clay Harrison, Henry’s judgment was the latchkey. A caller out of idle curiosity—like yourself—would be spotted at once and treated in a suitable manner. Henry had tried to make it more artistic and essayed being angry with callers, telling them that it was a perfect nuisance the way they came to the wrong doors, the third time he and the “Society” had been disturbed that afternoon, and there is no telling how far his imagination might have carried him but Harrison stopped it by saying, “No frills.” Henry quite approved and discontinued the practice. Had Henry not approved it is possible that he would have used his own judgment in this matter too.

  But when it came to a character whom Henry appraised as of interested to Harrison, he behaved in a very different matter. Mrs Humbleby, who was in Harrison’s room at the moment, was of this class. Henry knew at once that Humbleby meant business—from his point of view—and so he invited her in quite pleasantly, made a soothing, if obvious, jest about the name on the door, and had suggested, in the shortest space of time, that he was her long lost son, best friend, spiritual adviser, and anything else rolled into one. Fortunately Harrison was in his chambers at the time and, after Henry had learned all he personally wished to know about her business, he showed her in to his chief.

  Mrs. Humbleby was fairly typical of her profession. A genuine, honest soul of the middle middle-class, a widow to her fingertips. She had been left with no money some years before, a small family and a largish, though rather tumbledown house, in a decaying—if not already decayed—southern London suburb. She had immediately turned to and looked for “paying guests”. These had luckily been forthcoming and Mrs. Humbleby had made them so comfortable that it had been a stock saying with her that only “love or death” had deprived her of a lodger, or was likely to.

  Love had often done this, for even the most comfortable lodger eventually tries his matrimonial fortune, so Mrs Humbleby thought, at any rate, but the second partner of her rivals had asserted himself for the first time that morning and for this very reason she was sitting opposite Clay Harrison.

  “Holt Road, you said, I think, Mrs. Humbleby?” said Clay Harrison.

  “Yes, sir, 53 is the number, 53, Holt Road, S.W. There’s a number after that too but I can never remember it. The Post Office tries to make things too difficult, to my way of thinking.”

  “And how long had he been staying with you?”

  “Well, this was his third night, sir. Most unfortunate and very hard on me, I think. Gets a place a bad name and then that’s the end. You see, I don’t usually hang up the ‘Apartments’ card. A bit low, to my way of thinking. Recommendation for letting rooms is my rule. But there it was, the room had been empty for weeks and no likelihood that I could see of another boarder. A room doesn’t eat or drink anything, you may well say, but it should be earning—earning all
the time, that’s its duty. I was putting away the tablecloth in the sideboard drawer and I saw the ‘Apartments’ card staring me in the face. Tempting, you will admit, and I say to myself, ‘Why not?’ Why not, Mr. Harrison?”

  “Why not, Mrs. Humbleby?”

  “I’m glad you agree with me, sir. So I take it out and put it in the window and, almost like a miracle, an angel walking from heaven or something like that, there is a knock on the door. My breath came and went, sir. I could hardly go and open it. Providence, I said, but I wasn’t right, was I? There he stood on the doorstep.”

  “Who, Mrs. Humbleby?”

  “The dead man, sir, standing on the doorstep. As alive as you like then. Nice spoken, he was, very nice spoken. Gentleman, I should say. Bit of a queer way of speaking but he didn’t seem a foreigner. I never have foreigners for lodgers, Mr. Harrison, never. Funny, I know nothing against them but something says to me ‘Keep clear of foreigners’ and that is what I have always done. Now I come to think of it, if he was a foreigner that would explain it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Explain what?” asked Harrison.

  “His dying in my house like that—a kind of judgment on me for breaking my rules. But then Smith doesn’t sound a bit like a foreigner.”

  “John Smith, you said?”

  “Yes, John Smith, a good, honest, English name. He raised his hat—most polite he was, and said he had seen me putting the card in the window just as he was wandering about looking for a room. I was a bit suspicious. It seemed too easy for me but he said he had just come back from abroad and once lived in the south of London so what more natural than he should look for a room there. Then he said he only wanted it for a month at longest, possibly a fortnight only, and he asked my terms. I looked doubtful and he said he would pay a fortnight’s rent on the spot. Well, I thought, there can be no harm in it and so I raised my terms a bit. A fortnight isn’t like a year, is it, sir, business is business!”

  “That’s true, Mrs. Humbleby.”

  “He brought out the money on the spot and paid me, so what could I do? I couldn’t even say I hadn’t a room vacant for he had just seen me putting the card in the window. And so in he came with his suitcase and overcoat and that’s all.”

  “And that happened three days ago. September 14th to be correct?”

  “Quite right, sir.”

  “And what next?”

  “Well then he stays out most of the day but comes in regularly for evening food. We all have it together, you know. Then he says he is fond of the pictures. I must say that made me like him much more for I’m rather partial myself. He says he will be coming in late, after them, and if I go to bed early I might give him the front-door key. No harm in that, I’m sure?”

  “No, I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Well, I didn’t hear him come in that night—the night before last—and I won’t say I heard him come in last night because I didn’t. But I woke up when he was in, which is a curious thing for me for I sleep like a top, year in and year out, and I thought to myself—and I know you’ll believe me, Mr. Harrison, and not think I’m making it up afterwards or being a ‘know-all’ or something like that—there’s something queer happening. You know the feeling you get in the night, something queer and you can’t guess what it is. Then I thought I heard him moving about the room, my room is next to his, but it didn’t sound like a man, you won’t laugh, will you, Mr. Harrison?”

  “Of course not, Mrs. Humbleby.”

  “Well, just for a moment I thought he had brought a woman home with him. Of course that’s the sort of thing I couldn’t tolerate in my house but he didn’t seem that sort of man. The last thing one would expect of him and yet, still waters, you know, and he had been living abroad. But you do get curious ideas in the night and, as everything was all quiet again, I shook myself. Then I told myself not to be a fool and went to sleep again.”

  “And then?”

  “Next morning I took him a cup of tea. He said he liked a cup of tea in bed. He hadn’t had a real cup of tea in bed for years. He didn’t answer my knock so I walked in. He was lying rather uncomfortable-looking but that didn’t make me suspicious and I thought to myself ‘you’re having a heavy sleep, my man.’ There was no sign of a woman, I knew there would not be. And then I saw his eyes were wide open and staring. So I rushed to Mr. Hillman, the gentleman who sent me to you, sir, and he came in and said he thought there was something terribly wrong about it all. So he fetched a doctor.”

  “And the doctor said drugs?”

  “Yes, sir, pounds of them. Mr. Smith had been dead some time and the doctor found some tablets in a bottle on a table by the side of the bed.”

  “Anything else, Mrs. Humbleby?”

  “Well, sir, I hardly like to mention it but you want me to tell you everything, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I didn’t notice it at the time. That is to say, I did notice it but didn’t think I’d noticed it. You know what I mean?”

  “I think I do.”

  “I was a bit flustered, as you might say, when I thought something dreadful might have happened to Mr. Smith and so I seemed to see nothing and yet afterwards when I thought of how he looked. Well, sir, his hair didn’t seem quite right.”

  “This time I don’t quite understand, Mrs. Humbleby.”

  “Well, sir, you will excuse me, but it was all crooked somehow, not natural-looking, you know.”

  “You mean he was wearing a wig?”

  “Good lord, sir, that’s exactly what I do mean, only I never thought of it before. Of course it was, that’s what it was. It must have got pushed a bit. It was a good wig, then, sir, because I never noticed it before, and one does notice them, doesn’t one?”

  “You are a very observant woman, Mrs. Humbleby,” said Harrison. “Now try and remember, was there anything else?”

  “You are very kind to say so, sir,” replied Mrs. Humbleby, beaming. “Let me think. Yes, one thing more but I don’t think it matters. Mr. Smith’s window was wide open but it was the wrong way.”

  “Again I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Well, sir, the other mornings the top half was wide open—Mr. Smith seemed very fond of fresh air—while this morning it was the bottom half.”

  “Excellent, Mrs. Humbleby, you have noticed some very important things. Anything else?”

  “No, I really think that’s everything, Mr. Harrison.”

  “Then just one other thing, Mrs. Humbleby. Why did this Mr Hillman—that was the name I think you said—send you to me?”

  “Well, sir, Mr. Hillman is one of my boarders and he’s a solicitor’s clerk, too. Very superior, sir. I have always got on well with solicitor’s clerks. I had one before him but he got married. So polite and good-tempered. Yes, nothing but good has come from solicitor’s clerks.”

  “Very possibly, Mrs. Humbleby, but why me?”

  “Well, Mr. Hillman, when he thinks Mr. Smith was a foreigner—and there was a bit of paper with the names of foreign places on it—said that he knew of a man who was very good at these foreign affairs. A barrister, he said, who didn’t do much in court but what he didn’t know about foreigners wasn’t worth anybody’s troubling about. That’s you, sir, and so Mr. Hillman said though he didn’t think there would be any fuss, it all looked simple enough, I might take it from him that even in law cases the simple things sometimes turned out much more difficult than you expected and so he said go to Mr. Clay Harrison and ‘safety first’.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, Mrs. Humbleby,” answered Harrison, rising from his chair. “And I must say that Mr. Hillman puts things admirably. This may be a very simple case of suicide. I have little doubt it is, but I appreciate your coming here and I shall call on you at 53 Holt Road, later in the day.”

  Mrs. Humbleby beamed again. In her own way she understood men and she knew that she had made a fast friend already of Clay Harrison just as she seemed to have done with the acute Mr. Hillman, but, as t
he door closed and Henry showed her, chatting cheerfully, out of the chambers, Harrison, with all his philosophy, psychology, knowledge of modern languages and everything else, could not quite understand the transparent ease with which it had been done.

  Chapter II

  Susceptible Henry

  Late the same evening, Harrison was back in his chambers with Henry fluttering around him like an extremely anxious hen.

  “Why don’t you go home, Henry?” said Harrison, stretching himself lazily in the arm-chair by his desk and lighting a cigar.

  “You’ll want a cup of tea, sir,” said Henry, unmoving. “The kettle’s on.”

  “Henry, you make work for yourself,” was the reply. “You know I can’t refuse tea and I shall want more than one. I think I shall write a book on temptations, Henry. Some people have the most terrific temptations, a million pounds, another man’s wife, whereas others may have the most shocking spiritual conflicts over somebody else’s box of matches, or, shall we say, a cup of tea?”

  “You’re always suggesting books, sir, but you never write them.”

  “A sluggish nature, Henry. I suppose that’s the tea, too.”

  Henry disappeared, making disapproving noises, while Harrison seemed to be entirely absorbed in the perfectly sensuous delight of his cigar. Others might have said they were absorbed in thought but Harrison was more honest with himself than that. He was just letting himself go mentally and drifting along with no apparent aim but hoping that the aim—in particular that affecting John Smith—would evolve of its own accord.

  When the tea arrived and was duly poured, Harrison again made the same suggestion regarding Henry’s departure but this time Henry was even more resolute. Harrison would want to talk about Mrs. Humbleby’s lodger, that was certain, it would do him good to clear his mind to Henry by talking, that was certain, too, he always said it did. Henry wanted to go home, it was his right to go home, but he knew the consequences if he did not stay, and, martyr-like, he was going to stay and listen.