Dr. Priestley Investigates

By John Rhode and Curtis Evans

Was it a tragic drunk-driving accident, or something more twisted? “You can never go far wrong with a Dr. Priestley story.” —The New York Times
 
Superintendent King has concluded that the drunk driver with a dead body in his car was only guilty of manslaughter, not intentional murder. But Dr. Lancelot Priestley thinks there’s more to the story—especially considering that the victim’s estate, Pinehurst, has been plagued by burglaries of late.
 
As he applies his usual scientific rigor to the case, Priestley will be drawn into not one crime but many—and some of them date back years—in this classic British mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504072786

John Rhode

John Rhode was born Cecil John Charles Street in 1884. He was the author of 140 novels under the names John Rhode, Miles Burton, and Cecil Wade before his death in 1964.

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Introduction

by Curtis Evans

During the Golden Age of detective fiction, which spanned the years between the first and second world wars, England’s Maj. Cecil John Charles Street was one of the best-known and most accomplished writers of classical, puzzle-oriented mystery tales. Under his most famous pseudonym, the punning John Rhode, John Street was especially admired for his fiendishly clever, yet scientifically rigorous murder methods.

If Major Street’s drinking buddy and fellow detective novelist, the ingenious American expatriate John Dickson Carr, was the Golden Age’s lord of the locked room mystery, Street himself was vintage mystery’s master of murder means. The murder plots Street intricately devised in his John Rhode tales typically revolve around diabolically deadly applications of science and engineering; they are in the impeccable manner of his lauded predecessor R. Austin Freeman, creator of the greatest rival of Sherlock Holmes, medical jurist Dr. John Thorndyke.

For Golden Age readers interested in credible scientific detection of material facts, Street’s John Rhode was, along with Anglo-Irish railroad engineer Freeman Wills Crofts and Scottish chemist Alfred Walter Stewart (aka J. J. Connington), the preeminent mystery author of his generation. Golden Age crime writer and critic E. R. Punshon tellingly dubbed John Rhode Public Brain Tester No. 1.

The man who became John Rhode was born in Gibraltar on May 3, 1884, the son of Gen. John Alfred Street, a veteran of the First Opium and Crimean Wars who for five years in the 1870s had commanded British forces in Ceylon, and the general’s much younger second wife, Caroline Maria Bill, a daughter of wealthy landed gentleman, Charles Horsfall Bill. Young John’s father enjoyed but a brief retirement in England, passing away somewhat suddenly at his residence Uplands in Woking, Surrey, in 1889, when John was only five. Caroline Street thereupon relocated with John to live with her father at nearby Firlands, a home comfortably staffed with seven domestics.

For a time John Street followed in his distinguished late father’s martial footsteps, graduating from Wellington College (originally founded to educate sons of deceased army officers) and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and receiving a commission from the Royal Artillery in 1903. However, at twenty-two he transferred from the regular army into the special reserves three years later. That same year Street wed twenty-four-year-old Hyacinth Maud Kirwan, a daughter of a major in the Royal Artillery.

Although possessed of ample private means, Street—who since adolescence had been fascinated with mechanics and applied science (on his father’s side of the family he descended from Rev. John Jardine, a noted figure in the Scottish Enlightenment)—spent the years before the outbreak of the First World War as chief engineer of the Lyme Regis Electric Light & Power Company.

After killing shots were fired at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and the great nations of Europe went to war in August, England called John Street back into military service. Perhaps for Street public conflict provided relief from private sorrows. Performing with bravery and distinction on the western front as a forward observation officer in the Royal Garrison Artillery, special reserve, Captain Street was wounded three times and received the Military Cross. From April to November 1918, Street, having been promoted to the rank of major, headed the MI7b, a branch of British Military Intelligence devoted to the production of press propaganda and the study of foreign presses. He later served as an information officer at the headquarters of the British administration in Ireland, Dublin Castle, between 1919 and 1921, where he controversially became what one Irish authority has called the senior British propagandist in Dublin Castle during the Black and Tan War [or Irish War of Independence].

During the Great War, Street revealed a literary bent in 1916 publishing two well-received volumes of memoirs of his frontline experiences in the conflict, With the Guns and The Making of a Gunner, which he followed with a semi-autobiographical war novel in 1917, The Worldly Hope. After returning to England in 1921, Street began publishing books on contemporary European politics, reflecting his recent immersion in intelligence work. (Today he might have become a frequent guest on 24/7 cable news programs and even, heaven forbid, a serial tweeter.)

1924 presaged a pivotal shift in Street’s writing career when he published, in addition to the political treatises East of Prague and The Treachery of France, two crime thrillers, A. S. F. and The Double Florin, the latter under the pseudonym John Rhode, an obvious play on his own surname.

With the emergence of his first Dr. Lancelot Priestley detective novel, The Paddington Mystery, the following year, Street firmly established his career as a mystery writer. Over the next thirty-five years he would produce, primarily under his two major pseudonyms, John Rhode and Miles Burton, over 140 mystery novels (mostly classical tales of detection), an average rate of four a year, making him one of the most prolific pure detective fiction writers in the history of the genre.

Priestley, the series detective in most of the seventy-seven John Rhode novels, is an acerbic and disputatious scientist (a mathematician in the earliest novels) with a penchant, not unknown in learned gentlemen in detective fiction of his day, for amateur crime investigation. Likely, Street derived his greatest detective’s surname, in a nod to the Age of Enlightenment, from eighteenth-century English chemist and natural philosopher Joseph Priestley, author of The History and Present State of Electricity (1767).

In the earlier Priestley novels the elderly doctor is ambulatory and gets out to inspect crime scenes himself, along with his loyal secretary, Harold Merefield (who is also Priestley’s son-in-law, having married the widowed scientist’s flippant flapper daughter, April, who then promptly vanished from the books). Later on in the series, however, Priestley becomes almost entirely a classic armchair sleuth, a thinking machine brilliantly elucidating the complex criminal problems brought before him by his attendant policemen: Inspector (later Superintendent) Hanslet and, as the series progresses, Hanslet’s younger, posher, college-educated underling, James Jimmy Waghorn, who over the course of the series falls in love, marries, and becomes a superintendent himself.

Two other characters who appear multiple times in the John Rhode novels are eminent pathologist Sir Alured Faversham and Dr. Mortimer Oldland, the latter of whom eventually comes to serve, along with a now-retired Hanslet, as a participant in Priestley’s weekly post-prandial ratiocinative round tables. During these, the trio of inquisitive old men, with Harold and Jimmy in devoted attendance, analyze Waghorn’s latest murder investigations (if deemed sufficiently intriguing). Invariably the dogged Priestly sagely guides Waghorn to the criminal culprit, after having chided him for having fallen yet again for the fatal allure of conjecture.

After the Great War, Major Street found happiness with another, more congenial woman in his life: Eileen Annette Waller, a daughter of a prominent native Irish electrical and civil engineer. John and Eileen enjoyed a peripatetic life together, residing snugly in a series of villages in southern and central England and taking leisurely cruises in the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean Seas. The couple, who married after Maud Street’s demise in 1949, remained together until John’s own death at the age of eighty on December 8, 1964. England’s grand old man of mystery remained remarkably productive until near the end of his life, publishing his last Priestley detective novel in 1961, just three years before his passing. Indeed, so immense was John Street’s plotting capacity that he once drolly invited mystery writer Christianna Brand, a brilliant younger comember of the Detection Club who confessed to him that she was suffering from writer’s block: My dear, come down to my place—I’ve got rows and rows of my books, look though them and use one of my plots, you’re most welcome. Unquestionably the good major had murderous imagination to spare.

Chapter 1

The Drunken Motorist

West Street, Lenhaven, although it is the main, in fact the only direct, approach to that important seaport from the westward, is a singularly uninviting thoroughfare. On your right, as you enter the town, are first the gasworks, a hideous collection of gasometers and retort-houses, and then a series of wharves, all separated from the road by tall and grimy walls. Behind the gas-works and the wharves are the lower reaches of the River Drew, which form one of the branches of the harbour. On the left of the road stand row after row of mean and dingy houses, their uninspiring fronts broken now and again by a public-house or a fried fish bar.

At the end of West Street you turn unexpectedly into the old Market Place, of which the inhabitants of Lenhaven are particularly proud. Just before you reach it, however, you will probably notice the police station, an imposing brick building standing on the left, almost at the end of West Street. The police of Lenhaven are under the charge of Superintendent King, a man universally popular in the district. Even the more disorderly elements of the population have usually a good word for him.

One foggy evening in November, Constables Wallis and Sanders, inwardly cursing the policeman’s lot, set out from the police station. It was their turn to carry out the patrol which, starting at half-past ten, traversed the outskirts of the town. West Street was deserted. The public-houses closed at ten, and there was nothing to keep the inhabitants of the quarter in the street. Those who were not already indoors had probably gone to the cinema in the Market Place, and would not be out for some time yet. Besides, the evening was not such as to encourage loitering out of doors. For hours it had been raining steadily and persistently, and now the rain had given place to a most unpleasant drizzling fog, rolling up, wave after wave, from the sea. The policemen bent their heads, and marched steadily forward into the teeth of it.

They were not more than a couple of hundred yards from the station, when the diffused glare of a pair of powerful headlights loomed through the fog ahead of them. A car approached them rapidly, and as it did so, both noticed simultaneously that it was steering a very erratic course. It would swerve towards one side of the road, then, when its front wheels were almost touching the pavement, it would take a sudden turn, as though to charge the walls of the wharves. And, as it drew nearer, Wallis and Sanders could hear proceeding from it a raucous voice raised in ribald song.

"Drunk, and driving to the public danger, commented Wallis philosophically. He stepped out into the roadway, followed by Sanders, and both men drew out their torches, directing them in the eyes of the driver of the advancing car. He came on recklessly, only drawing up with a sound of skidding wheels when he was almost on top of Wallis, who leapt out of the way and jumped on to the footboard. The voice ceased singing as the car came to a standstill, and took on an injured and plaintive note. Here, what the hell—!" it said.

The lighting of West Street is notoriously bad; indeed, the correspondence column of the Lenhaven Gazette is periodically filled with complaints on the subject. But, with the help of their torches, the two policemen could see that the car was a rakish-looking two-seater, with a sports body. The front seats were enclosed by a hood and side curtains, and their only occupant was the driver, a young man muffled up in a heavy leather coat. From the sunken dickey protruded what seemed the head and shoulders of a man, completely covered by a rug.

Here, I want a word with you, said Constable Wallis severely from his position on the driving board. What do you mean by driving into the town like that, and trying to run me down when I signalled to you to stop?

’Salright, Robert, replied the young man flippantly. Didn’t know you were s’close. Dirty night, what? He suddenly swayed in his seat, and recovering himself with difficulty, sank comfortably into the corner of the car, his eyes closed. A strong odour of alcohol filled the enclosed space under the hood.

This chap’s not fit to drive another yard, said Wallis to his companion. We’ll have to take him to the station, but we can’t leave the car standing here all night. Tell you what we’ll do, we’ll run him, car and all, into the yard. Slip along back and open the gates. I think I can manage to drive this bus as far as that.

Best thing we can do, agreed Sanders. He went off, and Wallis opened the door on the off side. He half lifted, half pushed the unresisting form of the driver from the wheel, and took his place in the driving-seat. With commendably little grating of gears he got the car into first speed, and very cautiously drove it along the road and into the yard of the police station, the gates of which Sanders held open for him.

Then, having stopped the engine, he turned to the young man beside him, and laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder. Drat me if the blighter hasn’t gone to sleep! he exclaimed. Here, mate, bear us a hand.

With some difficulty the two men lifted the young man out of the car, and set him on his feet, each holding him by one arm. Under their none too gentle handling he woke up, and looked stupidly about him. Lemme go! he exclaimed, struggling feebly. ’Mallright. Bit sleepy, thassall.

You’d better pull yourself together, and come along with us, replied Wallis sternly. Now then, quick march!

They led him into the presence of the sergeant on duty, who sat at his desk studying the racing columns of an evening paper. He looked up at their entrance and put his paper aside. Hullo, Wallis, what have you got there? he said.

Don’t know, Sergeant, replied Wallis. He’s a stranger, I think. We picked him up in West Street, driving a car about all over the road. He proceeded to give evidence in detail which the sergeant jotted down on a form in front of him.

Now then! exclaimed the sergeant sharply, as Wallis concluded. What have you got to say for yourself? What’s your name?

The prisoner, throughout these proceedings, had remained supported by the constables, swaying gently, his eyes closed. As he showed no sign of answering the sergeant’s questions, Wallis shook him roughly. At this he opened his eyes, and fixed them on the sergeant with an engaging smile. Suppose you haven’t got a drink handy, have you, old bean? he said, in a voice of surprising clarity. Then with a sigh of contentment, he closed his eyes again.

The sergeant snorted angrily. Too far gone to know what he’s talking about, he remarked. It’s no good charging him while he’s in this state. Take him away to Number Five, and let him sleep it off a bit. I’ll ring up the doctor and get him to come and have a look at him, though it’s a pretty clear case without that. Look in his pockets, Wallis, and see if you can find his driving licence. You, Sanders, run outside and get the particulars of the car. Didn’t you say he had a passenger? Fetch him in, and we’ll see if we can get anything out of him. Not that it isn’t likely that he’s as drunk as this chap.

The two men went off, carrying their prisoner between them. In a couple of minutes Wallis returned. Here’s his licence, Sergeant, he said, laying it on the desk.

The sergeant picked it up and opened it. Thomas Clement Awdrey, he read. Address, 24 Coral Terrace, Moorcaster? That’s up in the Midlands somewhere. He turned over the leaves of the licence. Hullo, three endorsements already! he exclaimed. Two for exceeding the speed limit, one driving to the common danger. This’ll finish it, the magistrates will send him to quod for certain, and serve him right. Hullo, what’s up, Sanders?

The usually impassive Sanders had burst unceremoniously into the room, his face white and his eyes staring, as though he had received a violent shock. You’d better come out and have a look at that car for yourself, Sergeant! he exclaimed.

Why, what’s up with it? asked the sergeant. Why didn’t you bring in that passenger, as I told you?

Because the man’s dead, replied Sanders tersely.

Dead? What are you talking about? demanded the sergeant, springing to his feet. Dead drunk, most likely! Here, come on, let’s look at the chap. Lucky I rang up for the doctor just now, he’ll have two cases on his hands.

Followed by Wallis and Sanders, the sergeant hurried out through the door which led into the yard. The car was standing under a powerful electric lamp, and every detail was visible in the hard white glare. Sanders had removed the rug from the figure in the dickey, revealing the form of an elderly man, with hair and beard already turning white. His eyes were set in a fixed stare, and his mouth hung open, with the tongue slightly protruding. A single glance was sufficient to convince the sergeant that Sanders had not been mistaken. The man was obviously stone dead.

The sergeant whistled a few bars of a popular tune. Picked up rather more than you expected, didn’t you, Wallis? he said. I reckon the Super had better have a look at this. As it happens, he’s in his room now, talking to that big pot from the Yard who came down this evening. Slip along and fetch him, Wallis.

Very good, Sergeant, replied Wallis. He re-entered the police station, and went along the corridor until he reached Superintendent King’s room. Here he knocked at the door, and was bidden to come in.

Within the room were two men, sitting in chairs drawn up near the fire. One was Superintendent King, big and burly, and looking, despite his uniform, more like a prosperous farmer than a superintendent of police. The other man, who was dressed in plain clothes, and had a tall soldierly air, was Chief Inspector Hanslet, one of the leading men of Scotland Yard.

Wallis stood just inside the doorway. Please, sir, the sergeant would like to see you in the yard for a moment, he said awkwardly, with a side glance at the figure of the stranger.

All right, Wallis, I’ll come along, replied King. Why, what’s up with you, man? You look as if you’d seen a ghost. Out with it, you needn’t have any secrets from the Chief Inspector. You couldn’t keep them long, anyhow, however hard you were to try.

Well, sir, said Wallis, confused by the presence of so high a dignitary. It’s like this, sir. I’ve just run a chap in for being drunk in charge of a car, and it turns out that he was carrying a dead man as passenger, sir.

Upon my word, Wallis, that sounds a queer story! exclaimed King, rising to his feet. You’ll excuse me, sir, I know—

Of course, replied Hanslet without hesitation. If you won’t think I’m butting in, I’d like to come and have a look at this with you. Purely as a disinterested spectator, of course. You can introduce me as Mr. Hanslet, a friend of yours.

King grinned. You’re too well known for that little dodge to wash, sir, he replied. But you know very well that I’d like nothing better than for you to come along. Although there’s probably quite a simple explanation, the thing sounds odd as Wallis puts it.

Hanslet and King followed Wallis out into the yard, and joined the group around the car, Hanslet remaining in the background, more interested at the moment in observing the actions of the police than in the matter itself. He congratulated himself upon the excellent opportunity the incident gave him of observing the methods of the country police when confronted by an emergency. He knew from experience that when a crime had been committed, its detection depended very largely upon the action taken within the first few hours after its discovery, and for this Scotland Yard had usually to depend upon the police on the spot. Now he could judge how they were likely to proceed.

Superintendent King was an old acquaintance, though the two had rarely met in recent years. He heard of him recently, however, in connection with the Tollard Ridge murders, and he knew him to be a thoroughly capable man. Hanslet himself was engaged at the moment upon a highly delicate case, and had reason to expect that some of the men whom Scotland Yard were watching would shortly endeavour to escape from England. Careful instructions had been issued to the police at all ports, and Hanslet, remembering his old friendship for King, had decided to come down and see him in person. Hence his presence in the Superintendent’s office that evening.

King, after acknowledging the salutes of his subordinates, had walked up to the car, and stood for several seconds staring into the dead man’s face. I don’t want anything disturbed until Dr. Lansford comes along, he said. You’ve sent for him, I suppose, Sergeant?

Yes, sir, replied the sergeant. I asked him to come along and look at the driver of the car. He said he’d be here very shortly, sir.

Good! commented King. Any idea who this unfortunate man is? I don’t want to search his pockets yet.

I fancied I’d seen him before as soon as I looked at him, sir, the sergeant replied. I can’t exactly place him, though.

I think I can, remarked King reflectively. However, we can settle that in a few minutes. Meanwhile, tell me how you found him.

The sergeant turned to Wallis, who told his story in formal sentences. Sanders and the sergeant added their versions. King listened in silence, until they had finished. Get on to the police at Moorcaster, and find out what they know about this man Awdrey, he said. Judging by what you tell me of his licence, they ought to know a good deal. Then put out a call to all the stations round, and ask if anybody noticed this car driving through. Somebody may have noticed the passenger with the rug over his head, it’s just possible. He paused as he heard the sound of a car drawing up. That’ll be Dr. Lansford, I expect, he continued. Ask him to come out here at once, will you? He can look at the driver later.

In a few moments Dr. Lansford appeared and shook hands with the Superintendent. Nothing better to do than drag me out on a night like this to smell a drunken man’s breath? he asked jovially. Where is the chap? I’ll soon put him through his paces.

Something else has turned up since we ’phoned you, Doctor, King replied gravely. Look at this!

The doctor approached the car curiously, and then started forward with a sudden exclamation. Why, good Lord, that’s old Mr. Coningsworth, of Pinehurst, out on the Marydrew road! he exclaimed in a horror-stricken voice. And the poor old chap’s dead, too. How did it happen?

Yes, it’s Coningsworth all right, replied King. I was pretty sure of him as soon as I saw him. As to how it happened, that’s what we want you to tell us, Doctor.

Well, I can’t tell you much while he’s jammed in there, remarked Dr. Lansford. Lift these suit-cases out, one of you. All right, I’ve got hold of him, he won’t fall over. Now then, two of you ought to be able to lift him out. Steady now, I don’t want the body disturbed more than I can help. Carefully does it. Right, carry him inside and lay him on a table somewhere.

Wallis and Sanders disappeared into the station, carrying their gruesome burden and followed by the sergeant and Dr. Lansford. King turned to Hanslet, with a puzzled expression on his face. Queer looking business, he said. That old chap lived about five miles from here, in rather a lonely spot, and was never known to go outside his own grounds. How he got into this car is a mystery, and the devil of it is that we shan’t know the truth till this fellow Awdrey sobers up, even if we do then. Well, perhaps the car will tell us something, but I doubt it.

He set to work to examine the car, both inside and out, very thoroughly. Hanslet lighted a cigarette and stood watching him, deep in thought. His curiosity was aroused, and he would like to have asked questions, but for a strong aversion to appearing as though he wished to interfere. The face of the dead man intrigued him. It was not a pleasant face, but it was strong and determined, the face of a man who has lived a hard life and won through by sheer ruthlessness. He felt that the owner of such a face should have distinguished himself in some walk of life or other. But, though Hanslet’s trained memory was extraordinarily retentive of names, he could not associate the name of Coningsworth with any prominent personage.

King finished his examination of the car, and joined Hanslet where he stood. I can’t see anything out of the ordinary, he said. There’s only one thing, the off front mudguard is badly bent, and it must have happened this very evening; the mud has not even covered the places where the paint is cracked. From what Wallis told us of Awdrey’s driving, one could have suspected something of the kind. Shall we go inside? It’s distinctly chilly out here, and there’s nothing more to be seen.

They returned to the Superintendent’s room, where they were very shortly joined by Dr. Lansford. It didn’t take me long to find out the cause of poor old Coningsworth’s death, he said, as he entered the room. His ribs are all crushed in, and I don’t suppose, when I carry out a postmortem, that I shall find a single vital organ that isn’t pierced. As to how the injuries were caused, I’m not going to express an opinion. That’s your job, Superintendent. But it might be worth your while to look at this. It may help you to form an idea.

He held up a light grey rainproof as he spoke. I took this off the dead man, he continued. I had to, to get at him properly. Now look! He slipped the coat on, and buttoned it up. Right across the front of it, clearly imprinted in black, was the mark of a motor tire, each detail of the pattern being clearly distinguishable.

By jove, run over! exclaimed the Superintendent. I suppose that is what you mean, isn’t it, Doctor?

The injuries, taken in conjunction with this mark across the chest, certainly conform to such a theory, replied Dr. Lansford cautiously. He turned round. Look at the back of the coat. It’s covered with mud, as you, see.

Knocked on to his back, and then the wheel of the car passed over his chest, remarked King. How long has he been dead, Doctor?

Dr. Lansford sighed wearily. I knew that question was coming, he said. When will you sleuths realize that it’s one that is almost impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy? At a guess, I should say about a couple of hours, but I’m not going to swear to any exact moment in court, mind.

King glanced at the clock. It’s a quarter to twelve now, he said. In your opinion, Mr. Coningsworth was killed at about a quarter to ten?

Somewhere round about ten, I should think, replied the doctor cautiously.

Wallis and Sanders found him in the car about halfpast, or a little after, commented King. How the deuce did he get there, I’d like to know? Have you had a look at that chap Awdrey yet, Doctor?

No, I’m just going to, replied Dr. Lansford. I thought you’d like to hear about Coningsworth first. Here, you’ll want this coat, I expect.

He took it off and left the room. King turned to Hanslet. I think I’ll go and have another look at that car, he said.

Hanslet smiled. The working of the Superintendent’s mind was transparent. The two went into the yard once more, and King leant down and examined the off front wheel of the car. It corresponded exactly to the pattern on the raincoat.

The coroner will bring in a verdict of manslaughter, I’ll bet you what you like, he said, as he straightened himself. "But what old Coningsworth was doing on the road at that time of