The Best of British Crime omnibus Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

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  www.panmacmillan.com/bello

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  Contents

  Introduction

  Martin Edwards

  MURDER IN MOSCOW

  Andrew Garve

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  PRESCRIPTION FOR MURDER

  David Williams

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epigraph

  A GAME OF MURDER

  Francis Durbridge

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Crime List

  Synopsis

  Andrew Garve, David Williams, Francis Durbridge

  Bello: Best of British Crime

  Bello:

  The Best of British Crime

  Andrew Garve

  MURDER IN MOSCOW

  David Williams

  PRESCRIPTION

  FOR MURDER

  Francis Durbridge

  A GAME OF MURDER

  Introduction

  The popularity of crime fiction is enduring, but as the years pass, countless different writers and their mystery novels flit in and out of fashion. For every Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, whose detectives have become immortal, there are many hundreds of good writers, commercially successful and critically acclaimed in their day, whose names are now as forgotten as the characters they created. Once an author ceases to produce new novels for the shops and libraries, they soon blip off the radar screen, and their books start becoming hard to find. This is inevitable, but it is also a pity, since readers of succeeding generations miss out on a great deal of pleasurable entertainment.

  Thankfully, things are changing – and changing fast. Novels that have long been unobtainable (except, perhaps, to collectors with deep pockets) are now being discussed, read and enjoyed by crime fans who are more than happy to look beyond contemporary fiction. There are three key reasons for this, and they spring from modern technological advance. First, the internet and social networking have connected enthusiasts across the globe, and as they have shared their passions for writers of the past, the clamour for the reappearance of out-of-print titles has begun to be heard. Second, technical progress in printing has enabled books to be produced “on demand”, so that publishers no longer need to be confident of the saleability of a large print run before making an old book available again in hard copy format. And third, digital publishing has made ebooks instantly available at modest cost – a breakthrough that has appealed as much to older readers who may recall enjoying “forgotten books” as to their children or grand-children, who have never heard of some of the one-time household names.

  This omnibus volume brings together novels by three accomplished – yet very varied – practitioners. Of the trio, Francis Durbridge (1912–1998) was certainly a household name in his day. He was perhaps unique among crime writers in that although he wrote plenty of novels, some of them in collaboration with others, he earned greater fame from his work on radio, TV and stage. Leading contemporary crime writer Christopher Fowler has called him “first of the popular multimedia writers”. At the tender age of 25, the young Yorkshireman, not long graduated from Birmingham University, created the detective novelist and gentlemanly sleuth, Paul Temple. Send for Paul Temple was an instant hit, and Temple’s adventures, first on radio and then on television, spanned more than 30 years. The stories were later turned into books, but for Durbridge, the spoken word usually came first. A master of the cliff-hanger, he wrote some of the most popular crime serials ever seen on British television, and Francis Durbridge Presents .… achieved audience ratings that modern screenplay writers would kill for. It is easy to under-estimate the skill needed to keep viewers hooked as Durbridge did, but it is significant that a writer as gifted as Alan Bleasdale struggled to pull off the trick when he paid homage to Durbridge by writing a new version of the classic mystery Melissa more than 30 years after the original was screened. In his later years, Durbridge concentrated increasingly on work for the theatre, which suited his emphasis on dialogue rather than description. A Game of Murder, like some of his other novels, began life as a highly successful six-part TV screenplay starring Sixties heartthrob Gerald Harper as Bob Kerry. The story was first screened in 1966; the book came out nine years later, and shows the author’s flair for springing one surprise after another. Durbridge’s characteristic blend of pace and vivid action was a recipe for success in its day – and it still is.

  Paul Winterton, whose most successful crime novels appeared under the pen-name Andrew Garve (he also wrote as Roger Bax and Paul Somers), was born in 1908. His father was briefly a Labour MP, and Winterton was something of a radical. Intrigued by Soviet Russia, he visited the country, and published A Student in Russia in 1931. He became a journalist, first with The Economist and then for many years with The News Chronicle, for whom he spent a spell as a foreign correspondent, reporting the Second World War from Moscow. A visit to Palestine gave him the idea for his first crime novel, Death Beneath Jerusalem, published under the Bax pseudonym, in 1938. The first Garve novel appeared in 1950, and a year later, Murder in Moscow made effective use of Winterton’s inside knowledge of that historic and fascinating city and the Soviet way of life. Two years after that, Winterton became a foundermember, and first joint secretary, of the Crime Writers’ Association. His writing displayed exceptional variety, both in terms of plots and setting, although small boat sailing, one of his great interests, recurred in several of the books. Some of them were filmed. Came The Dawn, a Bax novel, was filmed in 1953 as Never Let Me Go, with Clark Gable and Gene Tierney in the lead roles. A Touch of Larceny (1959), boasting an excellent cast led by James Mason and George Sanders, was based on The Megstone Plot published three years earlier; it crops up regularly on
TV schedules to this day. Winterton’s last book appeared in 1978, and by the time of his death, just before his 93rdbirthday, his books had vanished from the shelves. But as Murder in Moscow shows, he wrote well and with real authority.

  David Williams (1926–2003) was a Welshman who came to crime writing much later in life than either Durbridge or Winterton. Like Durbridge, but unlike Winterton, he was essentially an establishment figure. His university studies at Oxford were interrupted by the war, and he served as an officer in the Royal Navy for three years before becoming a copywriter and pursuing a highly successful career in advertising. At the age of 51, he suffered a stroke at a time when he was not only chairman of one of the country’s leading agencies, but also writing at weekends and hard at work on his third novel. Completing that book took another couple of years, and at that point, he decided to forsake the stresses of life in the fast lane of business for the calmer existence of a purveyor of fictional – and highly civilised – murder. He duly forged a notable second career, producing, in all, 23 novels as well as a string of posthumously collected short stories. His principal series featured Mark Treasure, who, along with Emma Lathen’s John Putnam Thatcher, must be one of crime fiction’s very few likeable bankers. Prescription for Murder, which utilises his knowledge of the world of commerce, is a typically urbane story; the puzzle is neatly plotted, although Williams claimed he rarely knew the identity of his killer until the penultimate chapter. Two of his books were shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger, awarded to the best novel of the year, and all his work is marked by good humour and charm.

  The welcome publication of this omnibus revives a trio of the lively mystery novels that have lurked in publisher’s archives for years, waiting to be rediscovered. Thanks to the enterprise of Bello, a whole host of lost gems are now being brought back to the surface. And as an ever-widening range of crime novels becomes available, it is safe to say that crime fans really never have had it so good.

  Martin Edwards

  Martin Edwards

  Martin Edwards is an award-winning crime writer whose fifth Lake District Mystery is The Hanging Wood. He has written eight novels about Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin, which are now available as ebooks. He won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2008, has edited 20 anthologies, and published eight non-fiction books.

  Visit www.martinedwardsbooks.com and www.doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot. com

  MURDER IN

  MOSCOW

  Andrew Garve

  Andrew Garve

  Andrew Garve is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908–2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

  After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

  Paul Winterton was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.

  Chapter One

  There’s something about the very thought of Moscow that makes my skin prickle. It’s very little to do with politics; it’s a personal and professional thing. All the frustration and bitterness and fascination of the years I spent in that city during the war – and, indeed, earlier – come rushing back at me, as overwhelming as a tidal bore. So that when my editor asked me, at the beginning of 1951, if I would be willing to return there for a short time and collect material on some of the changes that had taken place, I was temporarily knocked off balance. In the end, of course, curiosity won – that, and a sentimental urge to revisit the source of so many vivid and poignant memories. I said I’d go.

  The main hurdle to be taken was the visa. Since the war the U.S.S.R had been particularly sticky about letting in people who knew the country, unless they were likely to prove useful spokesmen in the outside world afterwards. Even then, the mesh was fine. However, the Russians are incalculable people, and to my surprise my permit came through in less than a month. I took my old sheepskin shuba out of the trunk which it practically filled, and reminiscently caressed its stiff folds. Moth-balls rattled to the floor as I drew from one of the pockets the caracal hat with the earflaps which had been singed on an underground stove near Stalingrad when the temperature outside had been thirty-seven below. I couldn’t help feeling excited.

  By the middle of February I was away. I flew first to Berlin, where there was a little office business to transact with Barnes, our resident correspondent. By the time that was finished, a wave of blizzards had begun to sweep across Eastern Europe and the Met. Forecasts were hopeless. I soon got tired of making abortive trips to the airport and decided to go on by train. This was the signal for Barnes to throw a tremendous party ‘in my memory’ – he seemed to think that war was inevitable and that the balloon was likely to go up at any moment. Those of the party who were capable of it came to see me on to the train, where I settled down in a wagon-lit of ancient vintage to sleep off the effects of Barnes’s hospitality.

  The train got stuck in a drift for five hours somewhere west of Poznan, but otherwise the first part of the journey was uneventful. The carriage was warm, the food in the dining-car was passable, and I had plenty to read. There was a mere handful of passengers to be examined at the Oder frontier and the Poles didn’t seem very interested in my luggage. We made good progress after that, with no more drifts. At about eleven on the following morning we rumbled into Warsaw – and that was where the fun began.

  Even before the train stopped it was apparent that something out of the ordinary was afoot. A brass band was playing Auld Lang Syne very loudly and inaccurately, and a substantial part of Warsaw’s population, including regiments of children, seemed to have been marshalled on to the bleak, wind-swept platform. They stood in orderly files behind a screen of security police, stamping their feet to keep warm, and holding aloft red banners inscribed with such slogans as ‘The Peoples’ Democracies Strive for Peace’ and ‘Ban the Atom Bomb!’ At the point where the sleeping-car had come to a halt, a space had been cleared. In this privileged arena stood a nonchalant group of about half a dozen Red Army officers, squat, short-necked figures in heavy grey overcoats. A little removed from them, a much larger group of civilian and military Poles conversed with eight people whose bizarre winter clothes and outlandish collection of hats stamped them unmistakably as foreigners. There was a good deal of noisy laughter and back-slapping, and from this air of exaggerated bonhomie I judged that an important delegation was being seen off to Moscow. It was only when I went to the carriage door and heard the booming tones of the delegation’s leader that I realised what I’d run into. Once heard, that rich, round voice was unforgettable. This must be the Rev Andrew Mullett’s ‘peace’ delegation from England – one of the most publicised of the many ‘representative’ delegations that were beating up support for Russia’s international politics at that time.

  I went back to my compartment rather gloomily, wiped the steamed-up window, and settled down to watch the show. I’d never met Mullett personally, unless you can call covering one of his big post-war meetings an encounter, but I knew plenty about him by reputation. Everybody did – he’d taken good care of that. He’d started off, to the best of my recollection, as an elementary school-teacher somewhere in south-east London, and he’d had a spell as a lay-preacher before becoming a minister of one of the Free Churches. I suppose he’d always been fond of the sound of his own voic
e, particularly in places where people couldn’t answer back. It had struck me at that meeting in the Albert Hall that his manner had perfectly combined the didacticism of the pedagogue with the professional unctuousness of the divine. His interest in Russia dated back to the late ‘twenties. He had got the idea then that the Soviet Union was the one country in the world where the Sermon on the Mount was being translated into practice, and he’d plugged that line ever since and made a lot of other people believe it too.

  I didn’t know who the other delegates were, and anyway, out there on the platform in their concealing fur and sheepskin they were practically indistinguishable from each other. Two of the eight looked as though they might have been women and one of the women, who was wearing a bright imitation leopard-skin coat, looked as though she might have partaken too freely of Polish hospitality. Unless that jig she was doing was to keep her toes warm!

  After a while there was a tactful toot from the engine, and the Red Army officers boarded the train. There was a great deal of handshaking on the platform, and porters hurriedly finished stowing luggage under the supervision of a little Pole with a red rosette in the lapel of his overcoat. Someone planted a microphone in front of Mullett and he delivered a last-minute message in English to his uncomprehending but enthusiastic audience. As soon as he’d finished, the band struck up Auld Lang Syne once more in a different key and Mullett began to shepherd his flock into the coach. I heard the little Pole apologising because there wasn’t a separate compartment for each delegate – the result, I gathered, of the Red Army’s unexpected incursion. Mullett said it didn’t matter in the least and that he’d arrange everything, and for the next few minutes he fussed up and down the corridor as though he were allocating seats in the Kingdom of Heaven. Presently the engine gave another toot; there was a burst of cheering from the platform, the woman in the leopard skin shrieked. ‘Good-bye, tovarich,’ from the door, the little Pole stood back with a rather weary smile, and we drew slowly out of the station to a crescendo of brass.