Too Many Cousins Read online

  England, toward the close of the Second World War. Six cousins, descendants of the wealthy Victorian merchant Rutland Shearsby, are all healthy and in their prime, survivors of the worst war in history. Then one of them, an army captain in London, abruptly steps into the path of a speeding van and meets instant death. A few months later, his cousin, a writer, is found in a remote country lane, his head smashed against a stone wall. And a few days afterward, another cousin, a rural schoolteacher, is discovered in her cottage, poisoned to death. Of the six, now only three remain.

  A bizarre confluence of accidents? Or has there been foul play? Parmiter, an eccentric obituarist in possession of some disturbing facts about the deaths, attempts to persuade Harvey Tuke, the most venerated man in the public prosecutors office, to look into this abrupt rise in one family’s mortality rate. Tuke remains skeptical — until he runs into a fourth Shearsby cousin, panic-stricken and convinced that someone has been trying to kill her.

  Thus begins one of the most extraordinary cases in modern British detective fiction. Caught in a mind-boggling maze, Tuke —a Mephistopheles look-alike on the side of the law — unearths some curious facts about a very strange family; a bitter conflict over an unconventional legacy; a Victorian skeleton in the family closet; a short story entitled “Too Many Cousins”—inexplicably withdrawn from publication — that reportedly predicted the precipitous decline in the family population; and Uncle Martin, a black sheep who refuses to remain dead.

  Along a trail laid with suspense and more surprises than a conjurer’s act, the author, a noted historian of his day and master of a captivatingly witty style, provides us with a fascinating picture of bomb-shattered London and the effects of war and profound social change on an England in transition. With something for everyone, this devilish tale, one of the most charming and challenging detective stories of postwar England — or any time — will keep you guessing until the last page.

  Contents

  Part One: Simple Arithmetic Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Part Two: Combinations and Permutations Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Part Three: Undistributed Factors Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Part Four: Result Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  To

  GEOFFREY EDWARDS

  WITHOUT WHOSE CONNIVANCE

  THIS BOOK COULD NOT HAVE

  BEEN WRITTEN WHEN IT WAS

  This Dover edition, first published in 1985, is an un-

  abridged and slightly corrected republication of the work first published by MacDonald & Co., London, 1946.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Browne, Douglas G. (Douglas Gordon), 1884—

  Too many cousins.

  Reprint. Originally published: London : MacDonald, 1946.

  I. Title.

  PR6003.R49T6 1985 823’.914 84-18864

  ISBN 0-486-24774-0 (pbk.)

  PART ONE:

  SIMPLE ARITHMETIC

  CHAPTER I

  HARVEY TUKE’S opponent accomplished a neat follow-through cannon and grounded his cue.

  “That takes me out, I think,” he said.

  “It has been a good game,” Mr. Tuke said, glancing at the scoreboard, which showed less than a dozen points between winner and loser. “We’ll drink to it in that Amontillado, if they have any left. I haven’t been here for a month.”

  “No, we don’t often see you,” his companion rejoined, as he slid his cue into its case.

  “I’m a domesticated man,” said Mr. Tuke, who affirmed with some truth that he only visited his clubs from a sense of duty. At the Sheridan he was at least able to combine business with pleasure, for here he met the entertaining and unorthodox—painters, writers, musicians, actors, creators all of one sort or another. Harvey himself qualified for election to a society which required of its members some proof of intelligence because in a small way he too was a creator. His rather odd hobby (for a lawyer) was the campaigns of Napoleon, and by-products of the book he hoped to complete one day on the penultimate campaign of 1814 appeared from time to time in that hardy monthly The Midlothian Magazine.

  He understood that his present companion, whose name was Parmiter, had something to do with the press. Beyond this he knew nothing about him. A common passion for billiards—almost the only game which Mr. Tuke recognised —had brought them together. Parmiter was a very tall man, an inch or two taller than Harvey himself, so that he stooped a little to talk to the latter as they walked together down the wide corridor from the Sheridan’s billiard-room to the lounge. He was considerably the older of the two, a man probably approaching sixty, with a lined, cynical face, touched with melancholy in repose, heavy-lidded sunken eyes, and an untidy thatch of grey hair. A straggling grey moustache failed to hide a mouth that could be sour or humorous according to his rapid changes of mood.

  In the lounge, when the loser had ordered drinks—the Amontillado was still to be had—Panniter took up the topic interrupted by their departure from the billiard-room.

  “Unlike you,” he remarked, “I am here every day. Most of the day, sometimes. Grist to my mill, you know—in a prospective sense.”

  “What exactly does your mill grind?” Harvey inquired.

  “I am an obituarist.”

  Mr. Tuke’s black brows went up a trifle. “Indeed? I don’t think I have met one before. That is what I like about this club. One is always encountering something new. Do you find your rather macabre occupation interesting?”

  Parmiter’s lined face became animated. “Absorbing,” he said. “There is endless fascination in the study of humanity from the angle of the epitaph. The contrast between the apparent and the real. I watch some pompous old humbug, for instance, and reflect that in a few years I may be dismissing him in a subtly contemptuous paragraph.”

  Mr. Tuke looked at him with sardonic amusement.

  “I always thought,” he remarked, “that this post mortem publicity was hedged about with conventions.”

  “There can be art even in an obituary notice,” Parmiter replied with one of his cynical smiles.

  Mr. Tuke shook his head. “You fill me with misgivings. Here you sit, among your prospective victims, waiting your opportunity to damn us with faint praise when we can no longer retaliate.”

  “Oh, not all of you,” Parmiter said. “I try to be fair. I may say, indeed, that I have done something to establish or restore a number of reputations. And others can stand on their own legs. Yours for example.”

  “I breathe again.”

  “You might be surprised, Tuke, to learn how much I know about you. Of course, since I am much the older, I shall, I hope, never be in a position to employ my knowledge in your case. And I can hardly pass my material on to a successor. After my death, my files will be destroyed.”

  “Files?” Mr. Tuke commented. “Of course, I suppose you will have acquired a good deal of data. But I thought the newspapers themselves collected that sort of thing.” Panniter shrugged contemptuously. He seemed to be studying his companion.

  “Every newspaper has i
ts morgue,” he said. “But I am the expert they call in to fill in the gaps. But besides that, I have built up for myself a unique position. I supply the press with information about persons of whom it has never heard, or has overlooked, or has not considered of sufficient importance to merit a niche in the morgue.”

  “How have you yourself acquired this mass of miscellaneous knowledge?” Harvey inquired.

  “By assiduous study of the newspapers themselves. I subscribe to almost every sheet published in this country, and, in normal times, to many from abroad. I have filing cabinets full of cuttings, and a system of cross references by which I can turn up any name I want in a few minutes. My memory, I may say, as the result of years of practice, is quite remarkable—if I have ever filed a name I never forget it. Then I have correspondents all over the country, who do any necessary research work, and I undertake quite a lot myself when I am really interested.”

  “Not only a system, but an organisation as well. And you talk as though you often were interested.”

  The obituarist uncrossed his long legs and leaned forward, the light of enthusiasm in his rather lacklustre eyes.

  “My dear fellow,” he said, “it is an absorbing pursuit, as I told you. I do it now for the love of it. Only a hundredth part of the information I unearth can ever be used. But it is often a romance in itself. You read of some death, it reminds you of another, you search back in the files, you add item to item—a bit about this, a bit about that, an advertisement, a will, perhaps—and gradually the whole history of a family is built up like a mosaic over several generations. And very queer reading such histories can be, I assure you, when put together in this way . . . ” Parmiter paused, his eyes under their heavy lids again studying Mr. Tuke’s saturnine features. “I am often tempted,” he went on, “to follow up some of my clues. But I am not an inquiry agent, in the accepted sense. On the other hand, you know, Tuke, you could do with someone like me at the P.P’s office. Or at Scotland Yard. Not that I am for hire. It is merely my hobby, as well as my work. But I am convinced of this—there are crimes and plots that have never been suspected concealed in obituary columns.”

  “The idea has not altogether escaped us,” Mr. Tuke said. “There is a branch of G.I. which studies the newspapers.” The other made an impatient gesture. “Oh, I know, I know. But not even Scotland Yard has my system or my memory.” He looked with an abstracted air at the pipe he had been holding for some time. It had long since gone out. Laying it on a table beside him, he gave Harvey one of his half-veiled looks. “I’ll give you an example of the sort of case I have in mind,” he said. “It was only two days ago that a new development caused me to consider it in earnest, and it may, after all, have a perfectly innocent construction. But it will illustrate my argument.”

  “I should like to hear it,” Harvey said. “Have a cigar.” Parmiter accepted a Larranaga rather absently, and lighted it with a carelessness that made its donor wince. He appeared to be thoroughly in the grip of his hobby. The pair were sitting in a quiet corner of the lounge, which at seven o’clock in the evening was sparsely occupied. Behind them the August sunshine of double summer time poured slantingly through the tall windows overlooking the Mall.

  “Two days ago,” said Parmiter, “I read in a Surrey paper, published weekly in Guildford, the announcement of the death, ‘accidentally’, of Blanche Porteous, who was described as the widow of Cyril Porteous and the daughter of Rutland Shearsby. In the body of the paper was a brief account of the inquest held three days after the fatality. This occurred, by the way, on Bank Holiday Sunday. Mrs. Porteous, who was a teacher of elementary chemistry at a girls’ school—Guildford is full of schools—had somehow swallowed a dose of sodium nitrite at her home, where she had some chemicals. The verdict at the inquiry was ‘accidental death’.”

  The obituarist remembered his cigar, drew on it violently, and had a fit of coughing. Mr. Tuke decided that never again would he offer good tobacco to a man so obviously unfitted, to appreciate it.

  “No effort of memory,” Parmiter went on when he had recovered, “was required to make me take notice here. Only a week ago I filed the report of an inquest on another Shearsby.”

  “Not Raymond Shearsby, by any chance?” Harvey inquired.

  Parmiter gave him a quick glance. His brows drew together.

  “You knew him?”

  “No. But I know his short stories, and very good they are. I am sorry to hear you refer to him in the past tense.”

  Parmiter blew a gusty cloud of smoke. “Yes, it was Raymond Shearsby who died just over a week ago. On the 28th of July. I know his work too. Indeed, when I read of his death I wrote a short appreciation which appeared in one or two London papers.”

  “I must have missed it,” Harvey said. “Was he an old man?”

  “Only thirty-four.”

  “What did he die of?”

  “Another accident. It was reported in a Hertfordshire paper. He fell into a stream and was drowned. Apparently he stunned himself in falling. At least, that was the theory advanced at the inquest.”

  “You think he was a relative of this Mrs. Porteous?”

  “He was not her brother,” Parmiter said. “ The Authors’ Tear Book gives his father’s name as Geoffrey. But Shearsby is an uncommon name. There is not one in the current London Telephone Directory. It would seem likely that the two were related. Now it is not remarkable,” Parmiter went on, “to learn of the deaths, even the accidental deaths, of two persons bearing the same name within a week. One is constantly meeting coincidences of that kind. But the ratio of improbability is compound. When I find three people, sharing the same name, all in the prime of life, dying of accidents inside a few months, I begin to wonder.”

  “Being inveterately and by training suspicious,” Mr. Tuke agreed, “I should do likewise. I take it you have another dead Shearsby up your sleeve?”

  “Not a Shearsby patronymically, but I think one may presume one of the family. At least the odds must be greatly in favour of it. As soon as I read of Raymond Shearsby’s death, I recalled this previous case. Again, it was no feat of memory, for it occurred as recently as March. A Captain Dresser, whose Christian names were Sydney Shearsby, was killed in a traffic accident in the black-out, here in London.”

  “You are too modest,” Mr. Tuke commented. “I suppose you deal with several hundred surnames alone every week, but you remember Christian names as well, and associate them with their appropriate patronymics.”

  “Oh, it is a matter of practice making perfect,” Parmiter said again. “My cross-reference system does the rest.”

  “You say these three people were in the prime of life?”

  “Raymond, as I said, was thirty-four. Mrs. Porteous was the same age, and Captain Dresser a year younger.”

  “It certainly suggests that they were cousins.”

  “That is what I think,” Parmiter said.

  He paused, and looked at his fellow member. There was something of expectancy in his look. Mr. Tuke returned it with one of faintly amused curiosity.

  “From what you tell me of your methods,” he remarked, “I presume you will follow this up, for your private satisfaction?”

  The obituarist shrugged. “A visit to Somerset House would settle the question of relationship. If it should turn out that these unfortunate people are in fact cousins, further inquiries as to other relatives, and any Shearsby wills, might prove instructive.” He shrugged again, watching Mr. Tuke with the same look of expectancy. “I am very busy just now,” he said.

  “Oh, come,” said Harvey. “You disappoint me. After all you have said, I could have betted you would want to wring the last drop out of an affair like this.”

  Parmiter drew in his violent way on his cigar. He took it from his mouth and frowned at it, as though wondering what it was. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. Then he looked up with a little smile, and said abruptly:

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Tuke, this accident of mee
ting you here, with this puzzle fresh in my mind, has put an idea into my head. You will agree that these three deaths suggest some curious speculations?”

  Mr. Tuke considered this. “Yes,” he said, “I would go as far as that. I think I implied as much before.”

  “Do you feel sufficiently interested to take the matter further yourself?”

  “I? This sort of thing is not my business. If there is anything in it, it is a police matter.”

  Parmiter’s smile broadened. “Oh, I know your reputation.”

  “If you mean what I suppose you mean,” Harvey said a trifle stiffly, “you exaggerate. Anyway, the discovery— if it is a discovery—is yours. As a law-abiding citizen, it is for you to take it further.”

  “Which I am doing,” Parmiter rejoined lightly. “You are not merely an officer of the court, you are an official of a department concerned with crime. For all I care, let sleeping dogs lie. Or,” he added, “let the dead bury their dead. Well, think it over, Tuke.”

  CHAPTER II

  IF Mr. Tuke had not happened to meet Cecile Boulanger so soon after that game of billiards at the Sheridan, his reactions to the tale of fatalities in the Shearsby family would perhaps have been limited (in Parmiter’s own phrase) to a few curious speculations. And if that talk with the obituarist had not happened to take place shortly before Harvey met Mile Boulanger, her own story would scarcely have influenced him as it did. For while, in his capacity of the most senior of the Senior Legal Assistants to the Director of Public Prosecutions, he might emit blasting criticisms of the police, no one knew better than he how painstaking and reliable were their routine methods—though he drew a distinction here between the Metropolitan force and certain of the provincial constabularies. But on the whole, if, after investigation, the police decided that an accident was an accident, and nothing more, then an accident it most probably was. Two, or even three, such mishaps in one family within a short space of time did not affect the argument. Coincidences, in police work, called for stringent inquiry; but genuine ones cropped up almost every day, as they crop up almost every day in everyday life, of which, after all, if regrettably, police work is no more or less than a part.