Murder on Paradise Island Read online

  Robin Forsythe

  Murder on Paradise Island

  “Take my advice; from to-day keep your own counsel. Listen to everything, disclose nothing. Avoid being alone. Come to me if you’re in doubt about anything or feel you scent danger. I can assure you we both live in danger.”

  GEOFFREY MAYNE is in need of some serious r’n’r after studying intensively for his bar exams in London. A luxurious Pacific island cruise seems just the ticket, especially when one of his fellow passengers is the attractive young Freda Shannon.

  But after a terrible storm and shipwreck, Geoffrey and Freda find themselves in a small party of survivors, marooned on a remote South Sea island. The castaways resolve to make the best of what may be a long wait on the deserted isle. But is it really deserted? A gunshot is heard … and then one of their party is found, slain. Is a shadowy denizen intent on murdering the interlopers, or is the hidden truth more diabolical still?

  Murder on Paradise Island was first published in 1937. This new edition includes an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  ‘Mr. Forsythe belongs to the new school of detective story writers which might be called the brilliant flippant school.’ J.B. PRIESTLEY

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Contents

  Introduction by Curtis Evans

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Also by Robin Forsythe

  Missing or Murdered – Title Page

  Missing or Murdered – Chapter One

  Copyright

  Robin Forsythe (1879-1937)

  Crime in Fact and Fiction

  Ingenious criminal schemes were the stock in trade of those ever-so-bright men and women who devised the baffling puzzles found in between-the-wars detective fiction. Yet although scores of Golden Age mystery writers strove mightily to commit brilliant crimes on paper, presumably few of them ever attempted to commit them in fact. One author of classic crime fiction who actually carried out a crafty real-life crime was Robin Forsythe. Before commencing in 1929 his successful series of Algernon Vereker detective novels, now reprinted in attractive new editions by the enterprising Dean Street Press, Forsythe served in the 1920s as the mastermind behind England’s Somerset House stamp trafficking scandal.

  Robin Forsythe was born Robert Forsythe—he later found it prudent to slightly alter his Christian name—in Sialkot, Punjab (then part of British India, today part of Pakistan) on 10 May 1879, the eldest son of distinguished British cavalryman John “Jock” Forsythe and his wife Caroline. Born in 1838 to modestly circumstanced parents in the Scottish village of Carmunnock, outside Glasgow, John Forsythe in 1858 enlisted as a private in the Ninth Queen’s Royal Lancers and was sent to India, then in the final throes of a bloody rebellion. Like the fictional Dr. John H. Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame, Forsythe saw major martial action in Afghanistan two decades later during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), in his case at the December 1879 siege of the Sherpur Cantonment, just outside Kabul, and the Battle of Kandahar on 1 September 1880, for which service he received the War Medal with two Clasps and the Bronze Star. During the conflict Forsythe was appointed Quartermaster of the Ninth Lancers, in which capacity he served in Afghanistan, India, England and Ireland until his retirement from the British army in 1893, four years after having been made an Honorary Captain. The old solider was later warmly commended, in a 1904 history of the Ninth Lancers, for his “unbroken record of faithful, unfailing and devoted service.” His son Robin’s departure from government service a quarter-century later would be rather less harmonious.

  A year after John Forsythe’s return to India from Afghanistan in 1880, his wife Caroline died in Ambala after having given birth to Robin’s younger brother, Gilbert (“Gill”), and the two little boys were raised by an Indian ayah, or nanny. The family returned to England in 1885, when Robin was six years old, crossing over to Ireland five years later, when the Ninth Lancers were stationed at the Curragh Army Camp. On Captain Forsythe’s retirement from the Lancers in 1893, he and his two sons settled in Scotland at his old home village, Carmunnock. Originally intended for the legal profession, Robin instead entered the civil service, although like E.R. Punshon, another clerk turned classic mystery writer recently reprinted by Dean Street Press, he dreamt of earning his bread through his pen by another, more imaginative, means: creative writing. As a young man Robin published poetry and short stories in newspapers and periodicals, yet not until after his release from prison in 1929 at the age of fifty would he finally realize his youthful hope of making his living as a fiction writer.

  For the next several years Robin worked in Glasgow as an Inland Revenue Assistant of Excise. In 1909 he married Kate Margaret Havord, daughter of a guide roller in a Glasgow iron and steel mill, and by 1911 the couple resided, along with their one-year-old son John, in Godstone, Surrey, twenty miles from London, where Robin was employed as a Third Class Clerk in the Principal Probate Registry at Somerset House. Young John remained the Robin and Kate’s only child when the couple separated a decade later. What problems led to the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage is not known, but Kate’s daughter-in-law later characterized Kate as “very greedy” and speculated that her exactions upon her husband might have made “life difficult for Robin and given him a reason for his illegal acts.”

  Six years after his separation from Kate, Robin conceived and carried out, with the help of three additional Somerset House clerks, a fraudulent enterprise resembling something out of the imaginative crime fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, Golden Age thriller writer Edgar Wallace and post Golden Age lawyer-turned-author Michael Gilbert. Over a year-and-a-half period, the Somerset House conspirators removed high value judicature stamps from documents deposited with the Board of Inland Revenue, using acids to obliterate cancellation marks, and sold the stamps at half-cost to three solicitor’s clerks, the latter of whom pocketed the difference in prices. Robin and his co-conspirators at Somerset House divided among themselves the proceeds from the illicit sales of the stamps, which totaled over 50,000 pounds (or roughly $75,000 US dollars) in modern value. Unhappily for the seven schemers, however, a government auditor became suspicious of nefarious activity at Somerset House, resulting in a 1927 undercover Scotland Yard investigation that, coupled with an intensive police laboratory examination of hundreds of suspect documents, fully exposed both the crime and its culprits.

  Robin Forsythe and his co-conspirators were promptly arrested and at London’s Old Bailey on 7 February 1928, the Common Serjeant--elderly Sir Henry Dickens, K.C., last surviving child of the great Victorian author Charles Dickens--passed sentence on the seven men, all of whom had plead guilty and thrown themselves on the mercy of the court. Sir Henry sentenced Robin to a term of fifteen months imprisonment, castigating him as a calculating rogue, according to the Glasgow Herald, the newspaper in which Robin had published his poetry as a young man, back when the world had seemed full of promise:

  It is an astounding position to find in an office like that of Somerset House that the Canker of dishonesty had bitten deep….You are the prime mover of this, and obviously you started it. For a year and a half you have continued it, and you have undoubtedly raised an atmosphere and influenced other people in that office.

  Likely one of the “astounding” aspects of this case in the eyes of eminent pillars of society like Dickens was that Robin Fo
rsythe and his criminal cohort to a man had appeared to be, before the fraud was exposed, quite upright individuals. With one exception Robin’s co-conspirators were a generation younger than their ringleader and had done their duty, as the saying goes, in the Great War. One man had been a decorated lance corporal in the late affray, while another had served as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery and a third had piloted biplanes as a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps. The affair disturbingly demonstrated to all and sundry that, just like in Golden Age crime fiction, people who seemed above suspicion could fall surprisingly hard for the glittering lure of ill-gotten gain.

  Crime fiction offered the imaginative Robin Forsythe not only a means of livelihood after he was released in from prison in 1929, unemployed and seemingly unemployable, but also, one might surmise, a source of emotional solace and escape. Dorothy L. Sayers once explained that from the character of her privileged aristocratic amateur detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, she had devised and derived, at difficult times in her life, considerable vicarious satisfaction:

  When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room, I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare, I presented him with a Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence, and when I felt dull I let him drive it.

  Between 1929 and 1937 Robin published eight successful crime novels, five of which were part of the Algernon Vereker mystery series for which the author was best known: Missing or Murdered (1929), The Polo Ground Mystery (1932), The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933), The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935) and The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936). The three remaining novels—The Hounds of Justice (1930), The Poison Duel (1934, under the pseudonym Peter Dingwall) and Murder on Paradise Island (1937)—were non-series works.

  Like the other Robin Forsythe detective novels detailing the criminal investigations of Algernon Vereker, gentleman artist and amateur sleuth, Missing or Murdered was issued in England by The Bodley Head, publisher in the Twenties of mysteries by Agatha Christie and Annie Haynes, the latter another able writer revived by Dean Street Press. Christie had left The Bodley Head in 1926 and Annie Haynes had passed away early in 1929, leaving the publisher in need of promising new authors. Additionally, the American company Appleton-Century published two of the Algernon Vereker novels, The Pleasure Cruise Mystery and The Ginger Cat Mystery, in the United States (the latter book under the title Murder at Marston Manor) as part of its short-lived but memorably titled Tired Business Man’s Library of adventure, detective and mystery novels, which were designed “to afford relaxation and entertainment” to industrious American escape fiction addicts during their off hours. Forsythe’s fiction also enjoyed some success in France, where his first three detective novels were published, under the titles La Disparition de Lord Bygrave (The Disappearance of Lord Bygrave), La Passion de Sadie Maberley (The Passion of Sadie Maberley) and Coups de feu a l’aube (Gunshots at Dawn).

  The Robin Forsythe mystery fiction drew favorable comment for their vivacity and ingenuity from such luminaries as Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams and J.B. Priestley, the latter acutely observing that “Mr. Forsythe belongs to the new school of detective story writers which might be called the brilliant flippant school.” Sayers pronounced of Forsythe’s The Ginger Cat Mystery that “[t]he story is lively and the plot interesting,” while Charles Williams, author and editor of Oxford University Press, heaped praise upon The Polo Ground Mystery as “a good story of one bullet, two wounds, two shots, and one dead man and three pistols before the end….It is really a maze, and the characters are not merely automata.”

  This second act in the career of Robin Forsythe proved sadly short-lived, however, for in 1937 the author passed away from kidney disease, still estranged from his wife and son, at the age of 57. In his later years he resided--along with his Irish Setter Terry, the “dear pal” to whom he dedicated The Ginger Cat Mystery--at a cottage in the village of Hartest, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. In addition to writing, Robin enjoyed gardening and dabbling in art, having become an able chalk sketch artist and water colorist. He also toured on ocean liners (under the name “Robin Forsythe”), thereby gaining experience that would serve him well in his novel The Pleasure Cruise Mystery. This book Robin dedicated to “Beatrice,” while Missing or Murdered was dedicated to “Elizabeth” and The Spirit Murder Mystery to “Jean.” Did Robin find solace as well in human companionship during his later years? Currently we can only speculate, but classic British crime fans who peruse the mysteries of Robin Forsythe should derive pleasure from spending time in the clever company of Algernon Vereker as he hunts down fictional malefactors—thus proving that, while crime may not pay, it most definitely can entertain.

  Curtis Evans

  Chapter I

  Geoffrey Mayne had passed his final Bar examination and, being physically run down, had caught influenza. Pneumonia had supervened and he had very nearly lost his life. In speaking of it subsequently he always called this misadventure “a narrow squeak.” There was something about the words “I nearly died” which made them unutterable, something tragic, and by his social code the cothurn must never be assumed by the first person singular. After the narrow squeak (it alternated with “snuffing out” for the sake of variety) there followed a period of convalescence, and then Aunt Emily intermeddled. Aunt Emily said that he must take a sea voyage; a sea voyage would give him a complete change of air and scenery and put him on his feet. She would defray all expenses. As Aunt Emily had often hinted that she had made Geoffrey heir to her considerable fortune, he felt it was diplomatic to acquiesce. Not that he wanted to embark on a sea voyage; the sea had always seemed to him an obstacle to unbroken land transport rather than a source of joy. A month or two in the country near a good golf course would have been more to his taste, but Aunt Emily was, in sporting parlance, “not to be denied.” Naturally inclined to have her own way, her possession of wealth had made her the autocrat of her family. They all jocularly called her “the Begum,” and as she was very generous with people who fell in with her caprices, she exercised an influence that was very satisfactory to her sense of her own importance and not too irksome to them.

  At first Geoffrey was inclined to jib against this prescribed method of setting him on his feet. He was the only member of the family who on occasion emphatically refused to be dictated to by Aunt Emily. Contrarily enough, she admired him for this independence; it showed he had a mind of his own. He was the only person Aunt Emily allowed to have a mind of his own. Subsequently Geoffrey agreed to her suggestion of a sea voyage, and after much consultation of cruise advertisements, Aunt Emily settled on what she deemed the ideal holiday for her nephew.

  “Italy, Egypt, the Holy Land and Syria!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “I don’t think you can better that, Geoffrey.”

  “Good Lord, Aunt, I don’t want to visit the Holy Land!” demurred Geoffrey.

  Aunt Emily ignored the remark.

  “In Italy you will learn all about Art, the Renaissance and all that sort of thing. I can assure you their macaroni dishes are very palatable and there’s the Duce.” (Her pronunciation suggested the devil.) “In Egypt,” she continued, “there are, of course, the Pyramids and mummies and pap… pap… what do they call that stuff the ancients used for notepaper? I can never remember, but it doesn’t matter. The Holy Land naturally interests everyone of the Christian faith. It is very dear to all of us. I’m very sorry I’ve never visited it. But when you’re there you mustn’t forget to bathe in the Dead Sea because it’s quite impossible to sink in it. England ought to be surrounded by the Dead Sea; it would wipe out the annual crop of bathing fatalities. And then there’s Syria…” Aunt Emily faded out weakly on Syria, because she could remember nothing distinctive about it at the moment.

  “No, Aunt,” said Geoffrey stubbornly when his relative had finished speaking, “I’m not greatly interested in Italian Art. There’s enough of it i
n the National Gallery to last me a lifetime.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” remarked Aunt Emily, and after some reflection added, “and to tell the truth, some of it’s quite improper. I certainly don’t admire that famous picture with a naked lady on a bull, called the rape of somebody. And that other one in which a stoutish young woman is squirting stars into the Milky Way is positively indecent… and quite impossible.”

  “I detest macaroni,” continued Geoffrey heedlessly. “As for mummies, there’s the British Museum. Now, Aunt, I’ve got a folder here advertising a cruise to the Isles of the Pacific. If I’ve got to go on a sea voyage, that’s the one I’m going to choose.”

  Aunt Emily took the folder that Geoffrey handed to her and began to read aloud in snatches: “Coral shores fringed by the foam of sapphire seas… Gems of the ocean shrouded in an atmosphere of romance”… “Dolce far niente”… “A sensual paradise”… “Dusky maidens and naked warriors”… “H’m!”

  Aunt Emily came to a halt over the last-mentioned allurements of Pacific Isles. “I fail to see anything interesting in dusky maidens and naked warriors, Geoffrey,” she remarked severely. “They’re simply ignorant savages. Warriors, too, should either wear armour or decent uniforms like our guardsmen. I think a busby or bearskin, or whatever you call it, would make an excellent protection against their horrid wooden clubs… I suggested the Italy, Egypt, Holy Land and Syria cruise because I thought it would be educative as well as healthful. You’d acquire culture and polish.”

  “That’s quite old fashioned, Aunt; veneer is hopelessly out of date,” replied Geoffrey with a quiet air of superiority which he knew was very effective with his relative. “As you know, I’m not going to follow the law as a profession. I’m not cut out for it. There are two courses open to me. Either I must advertise that I’m a University graduate with great organising ability and would accept a position of trust, preferably as secretary to a millionaire, with little to do and a magnificent salary, or I must try and earn my living by writing. When I look at them dispassionately, both courses seem difficult, but the second doesn’t appear altogether impossible. That’s one of the chief reasons why I’ve chosen the Pacific Islands cruise; it’ll give me a foolproof background for a novel.”