Death in Albert Park

By the Same Author:

“SERGEANT BEEF” NOVELS:

Case for Three Detectives

Case without a Corpse

Case with No Conclusion

Case with Four Clowns

Case with Ropes and Rings

Case for Sergeant Beef

Cold Blood

“CAROLUS DEENE” NOVELS:

At Death's Door

Death of Cold

Death for a Ducat

Dead Man's Shoes

A Louse for the Hangman

Our Jubilee is Death

Jack on the Gallows Tree

Furious Old Women

A Bone and a Hank of Hair

Die All, Die Merrily

Nothing Like Blood

Such is Death

CAROLUS DEENE “DEATH” NOVELS:

Death at Hallows End

Death on the Black Sands

Death at St. Asprey's School

Death of a Commuter

Death on Romney Marsh

Death with Blue Ribbon

Copyright© 1964 Leo Bruce

All rights reserved.

Printed and bound in the USA.

First American Paperback Edition 1983

Second printing 1988

Published by

Academy Chicago Publishers

425 North Michigan Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60611

By arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons.

No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without the express
written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bruce, Leo, 1903-1980.

Death in Albert Park.

I. Title.

PR6005.R673D4 1979 823'.912 83-3748

ISBN 0-89733-073-0

T
HE
first was Hester Starkey.

She knew as soon as she began descending Crabtree Avenue that someone was following her. She did not at first feel any threat in this, though she did not want to look round in case it might be Grace Buller.

Hester was forty-nine years old, a small neat person who was reputed to be something of a martinet at St. Olave's Ladies' College. Senior English mistress, and second in seniority only to Miss Cratchley, the head, she was one of those resolute women who seem to have no difficulty in making up their minds and sticking to their decisions. She would have been pretty but for her thin lips and pallor—the grey eyes were cool and attractive.

She had been kept late that evening by a series of small accidents and just as she was preparing to leave at a quarter past seven, Grace Buller, the games mistress, had started one of her interminable wordy quarrels. Hester had listened impatiently and without ceding a point had eventually left Grace sulky but
silenced. Hester passed through the school gates at a few minutes to eight o'clock.

She hated this suburb of Albert Park. “Pretentious!” she had said a score of times looking at the solid Victorian houses. It lay in the remote South East of London, surrounded by Forest Hill, Crystal Palace, Dulwich and Lewisham, a place of grey bricks and houses with gloomy basements built for the prosperous middle classes of the 1880's. Though threatened by the approach of vast blocks of flats it had so far kept its hideous character because no district railway served its commuters. The park from which it took its name was a green patch of twelve acres where trees dripped on the asphalt paths and a few torn shrubs, intended to flower, had a dank and cheerless existence. This park had been opened by the Prince Consort—one of his last public acts—when the area was still almost rural, but had been quickly surrounded by streets of grey houses.

The park was locked at night, to Hester Starkey's annoyance for this meant an extra quarter of a mile on her way home. She lived with her brother at Blackheath and went by bus from the corner of Inverness Road, a long street of semi-detached houses running from the foot of Crabtree Avenue towards Lewisham. St. Olave's was a day-school and several of the staff had cars but Hester, who had never learned to drive, disliked the thought of being instructed and coming to school with an L plate on her car. She was not an L plate person, she once admitted, and the remark was remembered in the Common Room.

That evening, Thursday, February 8, was dark and chilly but there was no fog or snow or driving rain, such as she had known too often on her walks to the bus. The street lamps were infrequent in Crabtree
Avenue and she always hurried down its long decline, not because she was afraid but because she found it depressing. People, once home in an area like this, seemed not to like coming out again and the streets were deserted.

The school was darkened when she left it. A man and wife lived there as caretakers at night but no one else remained on the premises. Grace Buller had probably gone down to the gym for her bag (which, someone observed, looked more like a postman's sack than a handbag) and would come out on her motor-scooter in a moment. Unless it would not start again, in which case Grace would overtake Hester with those great strides of hers and clump along beside her to the bus.

No. The footsteps following Hester were not Grace's. They were light speedy footsteps—a man's. Hester braced herself to turn and see who had followed her for two hundred yards now, neither falling behind nor passing her, but keeping a steady two yards or so behind. At the next lamp-post she
would
turn and face this unpleasant pursuer once and for all.

But at the next lamp-post she did not turn. The end of the street was in sight and she decided to hurry on. After all, whoever it was had not molested her yet, why should he do so now? She would get to the corner of Inverness Road where people were passing and face him there. Give him a piece of her mind, too. It could not be a coincidence. The distance was too carefully kept for that. If he meant to snatch her bag he would find she had a firm grip on it and anyway she had only about three pounds with her. If he had any … other intentions she could look after herself. She greatly disliked the idea of screaming, causing a commotion, being in a street scene, but she would certainly scream if he
attempted anything. There were lights on in nearly all the houses of Crabtree Avenue and it would only be a few moments before people came.

But in one house, which she was now approaching, there were no lights for it was empty. She had noticed it before and wondered vaguely how a house could stand empty, even in this district. Perhaps someone had recently died there.

It was in the front garden of this house that Hester Starkey's body was found next morning. She had been killed by a single downward stroke of some sharp weapon, a butcher's knife, probably, which had entered at the left shoulder and penetrated straight to the heart. It was a powerful but deft blow made by someone who had probably studied the matter. It had certainly been struck from behind and death had been almost instantaneous.

It was a particularly shocking murder and the Press gave it prominence. As far as could be seen there was no reasonable motive. When the body was found it had been in no way interfered with and Hester's bag still contained her purse, her keys, her cheque book, while on her wrist was a rather valuable watch. The murderer had simply stabbed her, dragged or carried her into the garden of the empty house, laid her under the hedge there and left her.

She was not a popular woman, at school or at home, but murders are not committed from mere dislike. No one could seriously suppose that poor Grace Buller, for instance, who was known to have rather emotional rows with Hester, would follow her from the school and stab her with a butcher's knife out of sheer exasperation.

The only person at all close to her was her brother, Eamon Starkey, but not the slightest suspicion could
attach to him, for quite apart from the lack of any possible motive he, an actor, had been on the stage of a small experimental theatre in North-West London that evening and had stayed the night at the flat of a friend in Hampstead as he often did when he was working.

Detective Superintendent Stephen Dyke was rather surprisingly put in charge of the case, a man usually working on even more publicized crimes. It was felt to be a sign that this inexplicable murder of a schoolmistress in a suburb might have greater significance than at first appeared. Dyke was a big man, physically and in his profession, ruthless but efficient. His round, seemingly boneless face with the quick hard eyes staring out from above puffy cheeks was familiar to readers of several newspapers for he was reputed to have brought about more hangings than any other CID man.

He looked for a lead to come in one of two possible ways. Or perhaps, as so often happened, out of the blue. The first of those ways was from enquiries on the spot, from some circumstance connected with the physical act of murder or some clue to be picked up in the area. The second was from Hester Starkey's life, or someone connected with it.

He was a thorough man and left nothing to chance. The most minute examination was made of the scene of the murder. It was assumed that Hester had been stabbed as she walked down the pavement. The murderer probably knew the district well and had chosen this spot in front of an empty house, afterwards using its garden for a temporary place of concealment for the body. He did not seem to have acted precipitately, laying the body in a position where it was invisible from the road or from the windows of the houses adjoining the empty one (number 46).