Perkins' Profession: Huntley-in-the-Bog Mysteries, #1

By James Court

Brian Perkins chose the job of teaplanter when he could not find a role working with elephants. But his expectation of travelling to exotic locations was to be dissapointed, and then the bodies began to be found.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Court
• Release date: Aug 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393026297

James Court

James was brought up in Hove, Sussex, on the slopes of the South Downs, but with some of his childhood time spent in rural Huntingdonshire. From an early age he wrote fiction, including co-writing a well received comic pantomime for the local YMCA in his teens. James is best known for his humorous novels. Especially his series of four volumes describing life in Peckham, South London, in the 1960s. The Peckham Novels are set in a factory, staffed by idiots and run by an incompetent boss, until the beautiful Tracey Mulligan takes a hand in its management. They are quirky, comedic and highly improbable. One reviewer described them as ‘The Carry On’ team meet Tom Sharpe’. Book 1 - Strudwick's Successor Book 2 - Mulligan's Revenge Book 3 - Paint the Town Red Book 4 - Farewell to Peckham Also set in the late sixties is The Parsonage Plots, another comedic novel set around a number of idiosyncratic allotment plot holders. Set in Bournemouth in the 1960s, Percy’s Predicament tells the tale of lost love, and crime in the world of accountancy. But not everybody is what they claim to be, and bets on the colour of hippy’s nail varnish are an established office pastime. Moving back in time to 1955, Publican’s Progress is a Wodehouse style humorous murder mystery set in rural Dorset. The main character is a young man who has always wanted to run a pub. But, like the wishes granted by fairies to greedy children, when he does get offered a tenancy he quickly finds that having your wish come true does not always end happily, and life can get very complicated. Then the body count starts to rise... James’s humorous rural romantic two part novel, The Whitedown Chronicles, which is set in post-war Kent, describes an isolated community as it struggles to put tragedy behind it. James is a member of a group of writers who collectively form the INCA Project. The project is a set of like-minded authors who aspire to meet a simple criterion as set down by the late Oscar Wilde, who said, and I paraphrase here, "There are no such things as bad books. They are well written or badly written, that is all."

Book preview

Edition Number: 1

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters and locations are the subject of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locations or objects, existing or existed is purely coincidental.

It is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the writer’s prior consent, electronically or in any form of binding or cover other than the form in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Replication or distribution of any part is strictly prohibited without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Copyright © 2020

All rights reserved.

ISBN:9781393026297

DEDICATION

To Sophie.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With grateful thanks to my new proof-reader Juliette.

CONTENTS

Perkins' Profession

1   BOYHOOD DREAMS...............................................................1

2   Starting Out on Life’s Adventure............................................12

3   Gaining Gainful Employment...............................................19

4   Full Steam Ahead.............................................................30

5   Dreams Come True?.........................................................34

6   Unexpected Company.......................................................47

7   In the Dead of Night.........................................................56

8   Night Guard..................................................................66

9   Discrete Enquiries............................................................74

10   Further Enquiries.............................................................80

11   Custody or Custard?.........................................................92

12   Corpus Interruptus..........................................................96

13   Slow Progress................................................................102

14   Shore Leave..................................................................107

15   French Leave?................................................................116

16   Urban Progress...............................................................121

17   My Pretty Island Home.....................................................130

18   No Usual Suspects...........................................................133

19   Official Approval?...........................................................139

20   A Good Night Out..........................................................142

21   Old Acquaintances..........................................................156

22   The Season of Good Cheer.................................................163

23   Home for Christmas........................................................166

24   Deeds Past and Present......................................................178

25   New Year, New Life.........................................................187

26   Loose Ends...................................................................196

27   Two for Tea?.................................................................212

Boyhood Dreams

Ever since his parents had taken young Brian Perkins to the circus as a fifth birthday treat he had wanted a pet elephant. It became an obsession that took over his life, as the pictures covering the walls of his bedroom could readily testify. Quite where a five year old thought he could keep such a pet in a fourth floor flat overlooking Boscombe Pier was never established. Nevertheless his parents refusal to indulge his request was the cause of many arguments, and much resentment as the boy persisted to badger them for the impractical companion.

As time went by Brian’s behaviour was the cause of much concern to his family and friends. He negotiated with his younger sister, Cynthia, to swap his beloved teddy bear for her well chewed, threadbare, blue elephant. He badgered the local public library to procure books on Hindi in the belief that it was the only language that a mahout would consider addressing his beast in, and, using his own interpretation of that Indian language, practised commanding his threadbare blue toy to carry out the intricate tasks of a working elephant.

Brian was suspended from school for persistently arriving dressed in a turban and loincloth rather than the regulation school uniform. His argument that the garments were in the school colours failed to impress the authorities, and led to numerous interviews with child psychologists and remedial educational experts. It was only on one frosty January morning that the elephant lover realised the impracticality of such a mode of dress in an English winter, and reluctantly reverted to clothing that kept the snow and cold winds away from those parts of his body that a loincloth failed to protect.

At the age of ten Brian attempted to run away from home to join the circus. It was a doomed escapade from the start, and five days later his worried father was summoned to the Metropolitan Police’s West End Central Police Station to collect his son. Brian had been found wandering around Piccadilly Circus, asking all who would stop long enough to listen where the elephants were housed.

Mr Perkins found his son broken of spirit, for, having stowed away on a fish lorry bound for Covent Garden, he had spent four days walking from Ludgate Circus to Oxford Circus, and all the many other similar named junctions in the centre of the Metropolis without discovering a circus tent, let alone an elephant. At one point he had his hopes raised by learning of the existence of a district named the Elephant and Castle, but a wet afternoon spent at the southern end of the Northern Tube Line revealed neither castles nor elephants in that neighbourhood.

BY THE TIME THAT BRIAN was twelve years old his obsession had been tempered by reality, and, in the absence of an elephant of his own, he settled to see as many of the beasts owned by others as he could. He gained employment as a paper-boy, and spent all his wages and pocket money on visiting the nearest zoo.

On these trips he would arrive as soon as the place opened for business, and hurry to the elephant enclosure. There he would stand all day, watching the beasts and making notes in a small pocket book, until ushered out at closing time. Over the years he became familiar with the keepers, who eventually let him perform little tasks in the enclosure. Although little might not be the right word for the tasks since they generally involved the use of a broom, a large shovel and a wheelbarrow.

As time passed the elephant keepers realised the value of an unpaid labourer, and granted Brian a free pass to the zoo, together with a peg in their hut to hang a set of brown overalls above a pair of Wellington boots. Relieved of the cost of admission, Brian became an even more frequent attendee, and saved his money to purchase a bicycle.

Brian’s friends had long ago decided that he should be called Jumbo, despite his lean wiry build, and in recent years he began to introduce himself as Jumbo Perkins.

Morning young Jumbo, called old Charlie, the head keeper, as he saw the boy striding towards him one morning. Come and give me a hand here.

Jumbo hurried to the gate that let the animals out to give rides to the public, and into the enclosure. It was a warm day, and Charlie was filling the concrete depression in the enclosure that served as a bath for his charges. He motioned to Jumbo to pick up a broom that lay beside him.

My niece, Eleanor, is coming in this afternoon, declared Charlie, as he watched Jumbo sweeping the leaves and other debris into a heap. She’s staying with us while her mum is in hospital. One of those women’s jobs you know.

Jumbo did not know, but driven by a squeamishness about all things medical, and female anatomy in particular, he decided not to seek a more detailed description of the woman’s illness.

And that is how Jumbo met Eleanor Green, or Nellie as he came to call her. They were instant friends, she with her links to the head elephant keeper, and he with his passion for the beasts. The more sarcastic of his friends suggested that Jumbo had finally got his own elephant, for Nellie was a big girl, with a liking for cream cakes and pork pies. But she was fond of dumb animals, and had a kindly nature.

Her friends, who Jumbo was occasionally introduced to, unanimously agreed that Nellie had at last got a dumb animal of her own to care for.

In time they became inseparable, and Jumbo spent less and less time with his other friends. Through the ensuing years they devoted as much time to each other as the fifteen miles that separated their homes permitted. Initially this was confined to weekends, with Saturdays spent together at the zoo, followed by the evening at the cinema. On alternate Sundays Jumbo would cycle over to Wareham after lunch for a walk with Nellie around the town walls or along the river, and an evening at her parents’ home listening to the wireless. On the remaining Sundays Nellie would take a train to Boscombe to see him.

Jumbo had hopes of a job in the zoo once he left school, and perhaps to swap his cycle for a moped once in regular employment.

During the week in which Jumbo was sitting his school RSA exams, the zoo announced that it was to close, to become a housing estate. Jumbo was devastated, for he had thought of nothing else except becoming a junior elephant keeper for several years. He wondered what other job he might seek out. It has to be said that, despite becoming adept in the use of a shovel and broom, Jumbo possessed few other skills to bring to the jobs market. For he had neglected his studies in all subjects that did not relate to his love of elephants.

Post war Britain was a place of high employment as factories turned out goods for export and consumer spending fuelled a multitude of jobs in the building and service industries. Jumbo tried a number of such positions, but rarely lasted the full probationary period in any of them.

As an office junior in an estate agency, he was sacked for pointing out rising damp to one potential buyer, and woodworm holes to another. As a locker attendant in the local swimming baths he was dismissed for leaving windows open overnight, resulting in the life guard arrived one stormy morning to find the pool inhabited by gulls and ducks.

In the Co-op bakery he lasted a fortnight before it was discovered he was forgetting to add the currants to the mix for the hot cross buns. And as a bricklayer’s assistant he was let go after a full concrete mixer set solid because he unplugged it to boil a kettle for tea, and then forgot about it.

By the time he was nineteen years old Jumbo was a familiar face at the Labour Exchange, and the staff vied to prove their worth by attempting to find him gainful employment that matched his abilities. One dreary Monday morning, while waiting his turn to be interviewed after his most recent dismissal for putting petrol in a diesel truck at the Shell garage, he scanned the boards of jobs available. Finding nothing suitable there he idly picked up the Bournemouth Echo, and glanced through the situations vacant page in the vain hope of finding something that demanded his particular skill set. There was nothing that interested him, so he moved on to the personal advertisements in the hope of a little amusement from the plaintive and cryptic messages there.

Suddenly he stiffened his grip on the paper, and stared at the column, as a particular advertisement caught his attention.

"Wanted. Young married couple to manage a newly developing tea plantation. Experience not necessary, but must be flexible and willing to work with minimum supervision in isolated country. Transport and accommodation provided.

Apply Col MacVoy, box BE487."

Jumbo surreptitiously tore a half page from the paper, and tucked it in his jacket pocket. A tea plantation! India, Celon, wild elephants to contend with. He could hardly contain his excitement, and was barely aware when his number was called for interview. The clerk who interviewed him made a half-hearted attempt to find some form of work for Jumbo, but knew in his heart that it was a futile exercise.

On the way home Jumbo reasoned that since the advertisement was misplaced there would be few applicants. That night he sat down and composed two letters. The first was to Col MacVoy expressing his interest in the job, and the second was to Nellie. His letter to Nellie told of the advertisement, and his intention to apply for the position. He speculated whether the plantation was in India or Celon. He pointed out that the post required a couple, and, in a postscript, asked her to marry him so that he would qualify.

Although it was close to midnight when he finally licked the flaps on the two envelopes and pressed them closed, he hurried out to post them. Only when he was on his way back home from the postbox did he realise he had signed the letter to MacVoy as Jumbo Perkins instead of Brian Perkins.

Three days later Jumbo waited anxiously behind the letterbox, and grabbed the post before the postman had let go of it. He scanned the three envelopes, but only one was for him; a lilac coloured, heavily scented one. He dropped the other two on the hall table, and hurried to his bedroom. There he carefully closed the door, sat on his bed and ripped open the envelope.

"My Darling Jumbo,

Of course I’ll marry you. Your news about the job you hope for is wonderful. But are you sure that the plantation is in India or Celon? I’ve spoken to Uncle Charlie, who says that many such plantations are in Kenya, or even Uganda. But the location does not matter, for we would be together, and I am sure that with my guidance we will make a good job of it.

I’ll see you on Saturday morning. Come to our house early, for I think Dad wants a word with you before he goes on late shift.

All my love,

Nellie  xxxxx"

Jumbo frowned. He doubted that African elephant handlers would know the seventy-two phrases in Hindi that he had learned over the years. And from what he knew of their elephants, they were larger and more troublesome to the farming population that their Indian cousins. But the observation detracted little from his excitement at the prospect of sharing a neat little wooden bungalow, surrounded by acres of tea bushes, with his beloved, as he supervised the native workforce. He read the letter again, and lingered over the symbols of affection printed after her name.

However, that phrase about her guidance bothered him a little. He prided himself on making his own decisions, and as a married couple he expected to take on the role of provider and protector, with all that implied. Also he wondered what words her father wished to have with him. She gave no clue as to if it related to his proposal, nor did she say if she had disclosed his intentions to her parents.

By Saturday morning Jumbo had still not got a reply from Col MacVoy, and as he pushed his bicycle out into the street he wondered if he had been presumptuous in proposing marriage to Nellie. Perhaps he should have made the offer provisional on him getting the job. He was not looking forward to his interview with Nellie’s father, for during the week he had come to realise that it would probably touch on his future prospects, and his ability to support Nellie in a manner to which she had become accustomed. Such support, in her father’s eyes, would probably expect suitable accommodation within walking distance of a bakery and a pie shop, and sufficient funds to purchase adequate provisions from both. He doubted that the average Indian tea plantation had access to many pie shops.

As he cycled along Jumbo prepared, and rehearsed aloud, a number of arguments to support his suitability as a husband for Nellie. It was fortunate that the fifteen miles to Wareham was a long ride, for he made numerous amendments to his statement about his prospects along the way, to the amusement and bemusement of other road users. He had Nellie’s little brick terraced house in sight before he was satisfied that he had refined a blend of truth and optimism to a point where it would satisfy a future father-in-law.

Jumbo was surprised by the warmth of the greeting he received from Nellie’s parents. Whilst his prospects were at best tenuous, they had the merit of taking the girl off her parents’ hands: a prospect that they had held out little hope of. The couple had no illusions about alternative marriage opportunities for their daughter, for she had never had any other admirers. Jumbo, despite his dismal employment history, had the twin virtues of not drinking strong liquor nor swearing: virtues that were rare in the average male in the social class to which Nellie Green belonged. Her father was confident that the prospective addition to their family would do his best to make his daughter happy, even if that best fell far short of what an ideal husband might provide.

Nellie’s father was a train driver, and, now that Jumbo was to become family, he suggested that he might be able to secure his future son-in-law a job of footplate fireman on the railway. Despite a general lack of marketable skills, Jumbo did have a proven ability to handle a shovel, and together with keeping an eye on the boiler water level that was the bulk of the job of the fireman on a steam locomotive. Jumbo readily agreed, although he was hoping that it would be a short term employment until he and his bride left to start an exciting new life in a warmer climate.

Once she managed to prise Jumbo free from her father’s company, Nellie took her newly acquired fiancé on a tour of a few friends who lived locally, announcing their betrothal to all and sundry along the way. It crossed Jumbo’s mind that, having secured a proposal of marriage, Nellie was quickly making it as public as possible: as an assurance against him reneging on his commitment should the hoped for job not materialise.

After a long day, during the evening of which Nellie had presented him with a written down plan of actions which started with the purchase of a ring, and ended four pages later at the altar of the local church, he prepared to go home. Before leaving her Jumbo invited Nellie to visit his home the next day, but asked her to keep their proposed marriage a secret from his parents until he got a reply from Col MacVoy. For if the venture came to nothing then perhaps they should delay their wedding whilst saving to put together their first home.

Nellie was not wholeheartedly in favour of this late proviso to his proposal, but in her heart she knew it made sense. Neither of them had much money in the Post Office, and currently Jumbo was unemployed. Her own job in the jam factory would not support an out of work husband, although they would never starve provided they confined their diet to bread spread with jam bought at a staff discount.

It was very late when Jumbo eventually mounted his bicycle to ride home. It was a hard ride into a brisk headwind, but Jumbo was lost in his thoughts, and had ridden a mile past his home before he realised where he was. As he stopped and turned, he sniffed the cool night air and reflected on his position. He did not feel quite as joyous as he thought he should have been under the circumstances.

IT WAS THE FRIDAY OF the following week before Jumbo received a reply from Col. MacVoy, together with yet another letter from Nellie. It had been an anxious week for Jumbo, with several letters exchanged between himself and Nellie. Each incoming missive from his betrothed had been more specific than the last about how she envisaged their future life to be conducted. Jumbo, his vocabulary built on the contents of natural history books, and little else, took some time to understand some of Nellie’s formally expressed expectations regarding his future conduct in the period until they were married.

He wondered what the phrase ‘moderate prenuptial conjugal privileges’ meant, but did not feel confident to ask either of his parents for an explanation. Neither did he understand the habit that Nellie now adopted of printing, in bold block capitals across the flap of the envelope, the letters ‘S W A L K’.

Having digested Nellie’s latest declaration of her devotion to him, Jumbo turned his attention to the small brown envelope in his hand. It was similar to those in which he regularly received a final week’s wages, and a form P45. The address was hand-written and the Dorset postmark was unfamiliar to him. He opened it carefully, and eased out the tightly folded sheet of lined paper that was squeezed inside. It was written in a rather spidery hand, and took some time to decipher.

"My Dear Jumbo,

Thank you for your reply. I had no idea that my advertisement would appeal to someone of your reputation. Congratulations on your marriage.

Please telephone me to arrange a formal interview. Some time late next week would suit me best.

Kindest regards,

Tiger MacVoy

Lt. Col. (retired) 5th Bengal Lancers"

Jumbo stared at the letter for some time after he had read it. Clearly the man was confusing him with somebody he knew. He glanced at the address in the John Bull stamped letterhead: Full Bore Cottage, Huntley Magna, Dorset. The very name conjured up visions of big game hunts and bearers feverishly reloading heavy weapons whilst angry bull elephants bore down upon them.

He’d never heard of Huntley Magna, although a village called Huntley-in-the-Bog had been in the newspapers a year or so ago. Something about a woman’s head being found on the beach. And a year before that there was that case of dead publicans and smuggling. But the letter did give him some clues, without actually spelling out what he wanted to know. ‘5th Bengal Lancers’, and Tiger MacVoy. He was pretty sure there were no tigers in Africa. Obviously the plantation must be in India.

Jumbo went back to the kitchen, where his mother was clearing the breakfast table. Perhaps it was time he told her he had got engaged to Nellie, to gently get her used to the idea that her son would soon be leaving home.

Mum, have you got a minute? I need to talk to you.

Mrs Perkins wheeled round, and put on a sympathetic face. She had been expecting Jumbo to speak to her about something for some time. Lately he had been distant and secretive. Anxiously waiting by the front door for the postman each day, and not telling her about whatever was in the lilac