He Shot to Kill: A Golden Age Mystery

By Peter Drax

His arms were hanging down, but his face was turned upwards. For the first time Johnny saw a dead man.

Colonel Meroy is a prosperous pillar of the landed gentry. But his neighbours would be shocked to learn he’d started out as a London pickpocket, and still earns his income from a career in smoothly organized robbery. Now he

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781911579588

Peter Drax

Eric Elrington Addis, aka 'Peter Drax', was born in Edinburgh in 1899, the youngest child of a retired Indian civil servant and the daughter of an officer in the British Indian Army. Drax attended Edinburgh University, and served in the Royal Navy, retiring in 1929. In the 1930s he began practising as a barrister, but, recalled to the Navy upon the outbreak of the Second World War, he served on HMS Warspite and was mentioned in dispatches. When Drax was killed in 1941 he left a wife and two children. Between 1936 and 1939, Drax published six crime novels: Murder by Chance (1936), He Shot to Kill (1936), Murder by Proxy (1937), Death by Two Hands (1937), Tune to a Corpse (1938) and High Seas Murder (1939). A further novel, Sing a Song of Murder, unfinished by Drax on his death, was completed by his wife, Hazel Iris (Wilson) Addis, and published in 1944.

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Introduction

Eric Elrington Addis, aka Peter Drax, one of the major between-the-wars exponents and practitioners of realism in the British crime novel, was born near the end of the Victorian era in Edinburgh, Scotland on 19 May 1899, the youngest child of David Foulis Addis, a retired Indian civil servant, and Emily Malcolm, daughter of an officer in the British Indian Army. Drax died during the Second World War on 31 August 1941, having been mortally wounded in a German air raid on the British Royal Navy base at Alexandria, Egypt, officially known as HMS Nile. During his brief life of 42 years, Drax between the short span from 1936 to 1939 published six crime novels: Murder by Chance (1936), He Shot to Kill (1936), Murder by Proxy (1937), Death by Two Hands (1937), Tune to a Corpse (1938) and High Seas Murder (1939). An additional crime novel, Sing a Song of Murder, having been left unfinished by Drax at his death in 1941 and completed by his novelist wife, was published in 1944. Together the Peter Drax novels constitute one of the most important bodies of realistic crime fiction published in the 1930s, part of the period commonly dubbed the Golden Age of detective fiction. Rather than the artificial and outsize master sleuths and super crooks found in so many classic mysteries from this era, Drax’s novels concern, as publicity material for the books put it, police who are not endowed with supernatural powers and crooks who are also human. In doing so they offered crime fiction fans from those years some of the period’s most compelling reading. The reissuing of these gripping tales of criminal mayhem and murder, unaccountably out-of-print for more than seven decades, by Dean Street Press marks a signal event in recent mystery publishing history.

Peter Drax’s career background gave the future crime writer constant exposure to the often grim rigors of life, experience which he most effectively incorporated into his fiction. A graduate of Edinburgh Academy, the teenaged Drax served during the First World War as a Midshipman on HMS Dreadnought and Marlborough. (Two of his three brothers died in the war, the elder, David Malcolm Addis, at Ypres, where his body was never found.) After the signing of the armistice and his graduation from the Royal Naval College, Drax remained in the Navy for nearly a decade, retiring in 1929 with the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, in which capacity he supervised training with the New Zealand Navy, residing with his English wife, Hazel Iris (Wilson) Addis, daughter of an electrical engineer, in Auckland. In the 1930s he returned with Hazel to England and began practicing as a barrister, specializing, predictably enough, in the division of Admiralty, as well as that of Divorce. Recalled to the Navy upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Drax served as Commander (second-in-command) on HMS Warspite and was mentioned in dispatches at the Second Battle of Narvik, a naval affray which took place during the 1940 Norwegian campaign. At his death in Egypt in 1941 Drax left behind Hazel--herself an accomplished writer, under the pen name Hazel Adair, of so-called middlebrow women’s fiction--and two children, including Jeremy Cecil Addis, the late editor and founder of Books Ireland.

Commuting to his London office daily in the 1930s on the 9.16, Drax’s hobby became, according to his own account, the reading and dissecting of thrillers, ubiquitous in station book stalls. Concluding that the vast majority of them were lamentably unlikely affairs, Drax set out over six months to spin his own tale, inspired by the desire to tell a story that was credible. (More prosaically the neophyte author also wanted to show his wife, who had recently published her first novel, Wanted a Son, that he too could publish a novel.) The result was Murder by Chance, the first of the author’s seven crime novels. In the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s, recalled Raymond Chandler in his essay The Simple Art of Murder (originally published in 1944), the celebrated American crime writer Dashiell Hammett had given murder back to the kind of people who commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish. Drax’s debut crime novel, which followed on the heels of Hammett’s books, made something of a similar impression in the United Kingdom, with mystery writer and founding Detection Club member Milward Kennedy in the Sunday Times pronouncing the novel a thriller of great merit that was extremely convincing and the influential Observer crime fiction critic Torquemada avowing, "I have not for a good many months enjoyed a thriller as much as I have enjoyed Murder by Chance."

What so impressed these and other critics about Murder by Chance and Drax’s successive novels was their simultaneous plausibility and readability, a combination seen as a tough feat to pull off in an era of colorful though not always entirely credible crime writers like S. S. Van Dine, Edgar Wallace and John Dickson Carr. Certainly in the 1930s the crime novelists Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Anthony Berkeley, among others (including Milward Kennedy himself), had elevated the presence of psychological realism in the crime novel; yet the criminal milieus that these authors presented to readers were mostly resolutely occupied by the respectable middle and upper classes. Drax offered British readers what was then an especially bracing change of atmosphere (one wherein mean streets replaced country mansions and quips were exchanged for coshes, if you will)—as indicated in this resoundingly positive Milward Kennedy review of Drax’s fifth crime novel, Tune to a Corpse (1938):

I have the highest opinion of Peter Drax’s murder stories….Mainly his picture is of low life in London, where crime and poverty meet and merge. He draws characters who shift uneasily from shabby to disreputable associations….and he can win our sudden liking, almost our respect, for creatures in whom little virtue is to be found. To show how a drab crime was committed and then to show the slow detection of the truth, and to keep the reader absorbed all the time—this is a real achievement. The secret of Peter Drax’s success is his ability to make the circumstances as plausible as the characters are real….

Two of Peter Drax’s crime novels, the superb Death by Two Hands and Tune to a Corpse, were published in the United States, under the titles, respectively, Crime within Crime and Crime to Music, to very strong notices. The Saturday Review of Literature, for example, pronounced of Crime within Crime that as a straightforward eventful yarn of little people in [the] grip of tragic destiny it’s brilliantly done and of Crime to Music that London underworld life is described with color and realism. The steps in the weakling killer’s descent to Avernus [see Virgil] are thrillingly traced. That the country which gave the world Dashiell Hammett could be so impressed with the crime fiction of Peter Drax surely is strong recommendation indeed. Today seedily realistic urban British crime fiction of the 1930s is perhaps most strongly associated with two authors who dabbled in crime fiction: Graham Greene (Brighton Rock, 1938, and others) and Gerald Kersh (Night and the City, 1938). If not belonging on quite that exalted level, the novels of Peter Drax nevertheless grace this gritty roster, one that forever changed the face of British crime fiction.

Curtis Evans

Chapter One

I

Colonel Meroy adjusted his tie with care. It matched his well-cut double-breasted suit, and he looked at his reflection in the glass with pride. He was a big man, a little over six feet, broad in proportion and, now that he had passed the fifty mark, inclined to put on weight. An upright carriage, which accorded well with his clipped moustache and grizzled hair, concealed the fact from all save his tailor and his valet. The latter handed him his watch, keys, wallet, and small change.

Going to be a real scorcher, sir. Seems a pity you’ve got to go up to London.

It’s a damn’ shame. The garden’s looking all right, but why the devil will that gardener always put geraniums in that centre bed? He knows I hate ’em. The valet refrained from taking sides on this controversial topic.

Will you be back for lunch, sir?

I doubt it. Why?

Mr. Lakin’s giving a tennis-party this afternoon, sir. Mr. John told me to remind you.

The Colonel frowned. If there was any man whom he ever bothered to hate it was Ben Lakin.

I don’t know when I’ll be back. But, anyway, you needn’t put out my flannels. I may drop in after tea, but that’ll be all.

The frown which had gathered on the Colonel’s face faded when he stepped out on to the lawn which ran down to the river. He even forgot the geraniums and turned his steps to the brick-paved rose garden, where he picked a young bud of Angèle Pernet and put it in his buttonhole.

Colonel Meroy had chosen well when he had bought Grove House, and he surveyed its ivied front and mellowed bricks with satisfaction tinged with pride. There weren’t many men who could boast of achievements such as his. At ten years old he had been a penniless orphan. At eighteen he had become one of the finest exponents of the dipper’s art that London had ever seen. Watches—they were worn with chains in those days—seemed to find their way by magic into his hands.

It’s sweet to watch that kid work, he had overheard a man say one day, and he had flushed with pride at the words. Not that he hadn’t had some near things; times when he thought he must be caught, but luck had been with him and he had never experienced that sinking, sick feeling in his stomach when a policeman says, I want you. They’d wanted him all right, but somehow their desire had never been fulfilled, and with the passing years the Colonel had learned that in the thieving game there was no safety in numbers. For years he had worked a lone hand, but advancing age had caused him to change his methods and make use of two or three picked men.

A gong sounded in the house, and the Colonel entered the breakfast-room through french windows. As he did so the inner door opened and a young man came in.

’Morning, Dad. ‘

’Morning, Johnny.

Why the smart suit, Dad? Not going to Town, are you? Saturday morning and all. I thought you were going to have a clear week-end.

The Colonel ran through his letters and, selecting one, handed it over to his son.

Bank manager is getting restive. Overdraft of three hundred pounds, which means I’ve got to get busy. This place simply eats money.

Johnny helped himself to bacon and eggs, and after a few minutes said quietly:

I say, Dad, isn’t it about time you took me into your—er—business? I’ve finished with Cambridge and I’m getting bored stiff with everlasting tennis-parties and mucking about on the river.

The Colonel smiled.

I wondered when you’d say that, Johnny. I mean to give you a chance to pull off something big one of these days, but not this time. Bert Winnick has been working on this particular job for the last three months and he’s got it all fixed up. I couldn’t put someone else in his place now. He’d never forgive me. Johnny handed back the bank chit.

It’s come at rather a good time, this job.

Yes; as a matter of fact I had hopes I could have pulled it off a week ago, but better late than never. Are you going to the Lakins’ do this afternoon?

Yes, I suppose so. Will you be home in time?

I hope not. I can’t stand that man, and I rather wish you’d keep out of it, Johnny.

Johnny looked rueful.

You’re forgetting Mary, Dad. I promised her I’d go. The Colonel rose and walked over to the french windows. He was clearly upset and worried.

There’s nothing in that, is there? he asked after a short pause. I mean, you’re not engaged or anything?

Johnny blushed.

There never can be, he said. I wouldn’t ask her unless . . .

Unless you decided to go straight?

There was more than a hint of bitterness in the Colonel’s tone.

Well, why don’t you? I won’t stop you. You’ve had a good education, and if I’m lucky I may be able to give you some sort of an allowance.

Oh, I’ve been over all that in my own mind a hundred times, Dad. Sometimes I thought I could manage to settle down to a straight job, but I was only kidding myself. I’ve given up the idea, and the sooner you give me a chance the better. Mary’s a hell of a lot too good for me.

That’s so much poppycock, Johnny. Why, that father of hers is . . . Well, I suppose I shouldn’t say anything against him, but I assure you he’s not such a white-souled angel as he tries to make out.

The Colonel carried his last cup of coffee out on to the loggia and lit a cigar. This business of Johnny and Mary seemed to be coming to a head, and it was troubling him. Johnny could say what he liked, but he, the Colonel, would bet a fiver that there would be an engagement within a month if something wasn’t done about it.

He rang a bell, and a few minutes later his valet appeared.

Oh, Sims, get the Chrysler out and warm her up. I’ll drive myself.

By the time the cigar was half smoked the Colonel had recovered his customary complacency. Sims brought his hat and stick.

The car is ready, sir. ·

The Colonel slumped into the driving-seat and let in the clutch. It was a curious side of his character that, while in the village of Weyfleet, where he posed as a respectable householder, he viewed the local police with benevolent appreciation. In London it was different, and a constable of the Metropolitan force always occasioned him a feeling of vague uneasiness. For London was his battleground and the police his antagonists. Today as he drove down the Victoria Embankment he shivered as he passed New Scotland Yard. For years he had been so successful in the battle of wits that it would not have been surprising if he had shown a certain scorn for the C.I.D. But he was much too wise a bird to underestimate the forces arrayed against him. Safety first was his motto, and he never took a chance if it could be avoided, nor did he allow one of his men to do so.

The Colonel’s chief assistant was one Bert Winnick, a true cockney. He was the only man he knew, so the Colonel swore, who could be relied upon to carry out his orders accurately and intelligently. The two had met by chance five years before. Bert was a van-boy then and the Colonel had noticed him sitting on the tailboard of his van munching a sandwich. It was instinct, the Colonel said, which had impelled him to stop and talk to the boy; and almost before he knew what he was saying he had asked Bert if he wanted a job at twenty-five shillings a week.

The amount of the proposed wage caused the sandwich to be lowered.

Not ’arf I don’t, Bert managed to utter through a mouthful of bread and jam.

All right. Start tomorrow.

The Colonel scribbled a line on a scrap of paper.

And come to this address.

Have to give notice first, Bert replied. Can’t manage it afore the end of the week.

I’ll give you five bob if you come tomorrow. The Colonel tempted, but Bert was obdurate, and with that the Colonel had had to be content. It was this queer streak of loyalty which, in the course of time, had so endeared Bert to his new employer. Of other principles he had none, and the only crime he had not committed, apart from murder, was that of being found out.

The Colonel drove his car up Farringdon Road and garaged it in a builder’s yard. Then he unlocked a door in a high brick wall and came out on a paved walk before one of the few houses in the City of London which had escaped destruction in the Great Fire. Beyond the walk was a plot of grass, green and well tended, surrounding a pink chestnut tree which quite overshadowed the little half-timbered house with the lattice-paned casement windows and the red-tiled roof. The Colonel let himself in at the front door and went into the living-room. Blackened oak beams ran the length of the room on the white plastered ceiling. At the far end was a wide brick fire-place with inglenooks and high-backed settles. Uncertain footsteps sounded on the wooden staircase, and a door by the fire-place opened to reveal a little old woman bent almost double and clad in a tight-fitting black dress. She bobbed a curtsey, and her wrinkled old face lit up with a smile.

It’s good to see you, sir. But on a Saturday! I wasn’t expectin’ you’d be here, but Bert said as you would, so I’ve got some lunch all ready.

Bert? Is he here?

Round at the back, sir. I’ll tell him you’ve come. Mrs. Winnick began to retreat to the door and then hesitated. He’s me only child, sir, you know that?

Of course. The Colonel smiled. And you’ve brought him up the right way. But what’s worrying you?

Well, sir, he was saying you’ve a big job on the river. He says if it comes off it’ll be the biggest thing he’s ever handled. I don’t know what it is but I’m nervous about it, sir. Last night I dreamed there was a man killed, and Bert—

Colonel Meroy rose and put his hands on the old woman’s shoulders.

You know me, Mrs. Winnick. We’ve been friends for more than five years now. You’ve trusted me all that time to look after Bert and keep him out of trouble, haven’t you?

The old woman nodded dumbly. There were tears in her eyes.

No one has ever got hurt through any of my jobs, the Colonel continued. None of my men carry a gun and neither do the police, so what is there to bother about? You run along and see about lunch and send Bert in to me.

A moment later the door was flung open and Bert entered the room. He was a good-looking young man, smartly dressed in a serge suit. He had clear blue eyes which betokened anything but what he was—an experienced criminal.

The Colonel signed to him to take a chair and held out his cigarette-case.

Have you got everything fixed up? he asked, and Bert nodded as he blew out a cloud of blue smoke.

What’s the matter with your mother? She tells me she’s been having unpleasant dreams, but it isn’t like her to be superstitious or believe in that sort of nonsense.

She hasn’t had no dreams, sir, replied Bert quickly. She’s heard something, but she didn’t like to tell you straight out.

Well, suppose you tell me?

It’s the Luvello crowd, sir. They’ve fixed to do a job on the river tonight. My ma knows an old woman who keeps a shop in Channel Row on the south side. That’s how she got the information.

I don’t get you. What has the shop in Channel Row got to do with the Luvellos?

They use it, sir. They’ve got a room on the first floor where they lie up sometimes and have meetings. They’re a tough crowd, and that’s what’s made my ma so upset. Ernie Stanelli is one of their lot, and they say he carries a gun.

The Colonel laughed and lit a fresh cigar.

It doesn’t seem to me to be anything to get windy about. The river’s big enough, and it’ll be your business to keep clear of them. Tell the Sailor to have the boat fuelled up and ready at Battick’s Stairs at half past eleven tonight. Have you fixed up with Spike?

Yes, he’s O.K.

Then that’ll be all right. There’s nothing more we’ve got to fix. The Colonel rubbed his chin and, rising, paced up and down the long room. Your mother’s quite sure about it being the Luvello crowd?

Yes, sir. Why?

I used to know a man of that name once. He died on the Moor in the middle of a fifteen years’ stretch. He’d have been luckier if he’d conked out the day he went there. He was a dangerous man. I wonder who is at the head of his crowd these days?

Ernie Stanelli is in with them, but there’s another who does the arranging.

The Colonel glanced at the loud-ticking grandfather clock in the corner.

Half past eleven. Bert, you’ve got just twelve hours to find out what job it is the Luvello gang are going to pull.

Bert grinned.

I’ll do my best, boss, he replied. But I thought you said something about the river being big enough for all of us.

I know, I know, but it’s this gun business I don’t like. Once get mixed up in a shooting and you never know when the trouble will end. I’d call the whole show off if I could, but I can’t afford to, and that’s the truth of the matter.

II

Bert Winnick left the Colonel to his lunch and, with a word of farewell to his mother, went to a certain club situated in a street at the back of Covent Garden Market. Boxes, paper, and dead flowers littered the pavement, and as he threaded his way past barrows and greengrocers’ carts, his brain was working. He had seen Ernie Stanelli once, but he was not quite sure if he would recognize the man again. The door of Harper’s Club was wedged between two shops. There were two rooms in the club; one large, dreary, and only used for an occasional whist-drive or dance; the other was furnished with a bar across one corner, a couple of pin-tables, and half a dozen glass-topped tables. A fruit-machine was temporarily concealed behind an old screen. It was a slack time of day, and Charlie was engaged in mustering his array of bottles and glasses.

Afternoon, Bert. It’s a long time since I’ve seen you round here. What have you been doing with yourself?

Oh, this and that, Charlie. How’s trade?

Rotten. When this place was started two months ago I thought I was on a good wicket. A couple of thick ’uns a week and two per cent on the gross, but the place has been fair mucked up. We’ve had two scraps in one week, and you know what that means. The slops, as sure as eggs is eggs, and before we know where we are we’ll all be in the street.

I’m sorry to hear that, Charlie. Have a spot with me. What do you say to a gin and It?

Charlie’s hands felt their way to the bottles by instinct.

Here’s good health and damnation to that little blighter. He’s been the cause of all the trouble.

Who is that? Bert asked as he sipped his drink, at the same time keeping a wary eye on the door.

Stanelli, of course.

What’s he like?

You’ll see him afore long. He’ll be in here in about half an hour, talking nineteen to the dozen and acting as if he owned the place.

Charlie, is there any place I could hide in here?

Hide! What for, Bert? You’re not scared of little Ernie, are you? A sock in the jaw would settle his hash, and you’re the boy that could give it him.

I’m not mixing in any trouble, Charlie, believe me. All I want is to hear Ernie gassing to his pals without him knowing I’m listening.

The barman finished off his drink and rinsed out the glass.

What about behind that screen? There’s a fruit-machine there, but it’s busted and no one’ll go near it. But for God’s sake keep quiet. If Ernie falls to it that I let you hide there I’ll get the sack.

O.K., Charlie. I won’t let you down.

A door slammed down on the street level. Charlie listened for a moment to a man’s voice.

That’s him, Bert. Beat it.

Little Ernie Stanelli swaggered into the bar. Behind him followed a couple of satellites whose entire vocabulary seemed to be limited to Yes, that’s right, bo, and You’ve said it.

Ernie Stanelli was a small, swarthy individual, as bumptious and self-assertive as only a small man can be. Before he had finished his first drink he had told Charlie that the place was lousy and what was certain to win the two-thirty. Then, having, as he imagined, impressed the barman sufficiently with his own importance, he took his two companions over to a table in a corner of the room not a foot away from the screen behind which Bert was hiding. Ernie took out a piece of paper from his pocket-book and spread it out on the table.

You see, that’s the lay-out, and all we’ve got to do is—Why, here’s the boss himself!

Tony Luvello was slightly built and dressed in a pin-stripe suit which fitted him a little too well. He was wearing a black felt hat pulled down over his eyes. At the sight of Ernie Stanelli with the paper spread out before him he crossed the room in one panther-like bound.

You always were a damn’ fool, Ernie. Shooting off your mouth in a joint like this! Suppose someone was listening, eh?

Stanelli stuffed the paper in his pocket and stared at Tony truculently.

What’s biting you, boss? Who the hell’s going to hear anything, where we are sitting?

Tony hooked his foot round the screen, which fell with a crash, causing Charlie to