The Case of the Impossible Suicides
JOHN GRANT
So what exactly is all this about, er… What did you say your name was?” Sir Basil Derringpole puckered his lips as if the very words of the English language were distasteful to him.
“Chaveney,” I said, “Jack Chaveney. I married your niece last year.”
“Ah, yes.” He dabbed fastidiously at those lips with a spotlessly white handkerchief. “A lovely wedding. Quite lovely.”
He hadn’t in fact been there, instead sending us a matching set of black Bakelite ashtrays that Cynthia had incorporated into the rockery she was building.
“I’ve been researching—” I started.
“You’re the scribbler, aren’tcha, young man?”
“I write detective stories for a living, yes. You may have read some of them.”
“Doubt it. Dashed foolish, detective stories. Nothing like the real thing.”
I looked at him dourly, ruefully conceding that, if anyone was qualified to make this judgment, it was Cynthia’s Uncle Basil. He was employed by some mysterious department of the Home Office to do work about which he wasn’t allowed to talk. In his spare time, of which it seemed he had a plethora, he assisted the police in some of their most intractable criminal investigations. The Case of the Supernumerary Widow. The Incident of the Dog’s Ball. The Horrific Affair of the One-Eyed Basilisk. Great titles for novels I’d never write. All of these investigations and more had made the front pages of our lower-browed press, and even some of the higher-browed papers had on occasion deigned to pay heed. Not that Sir Basil’s name was ever mentioned publicly in connection with such sensational matters, of course. But his superiors knew, and his family knew, and even I, as the most recent addition to the family bar the newborn Earl of Crumford, knew.
. . .
