ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Dublin in 1923, Patricia (“Penny”) Packenham-Walsh was just 16 when WWII came calling, but she lied about her age and joined the WAAF (the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), eventually becoming a flight officer and an expert in radar. Based on that expertise, she was named technical advisor to a film that Sir Peter Ustinov was making about the discovery of radar, and went on to act as his personal assistant for eight years, followed by five years in the editorial department of British Vogue.
When she was in her late 30s, while recuperating from a skiing accident, she scribbled out her first novel, Dead Men Don’t Ski, and a new career was born. Dead Men featured Inspector Henry Tibbett of Scotland Yard, equipped with both a bloodhound’s nose for crime and an easy-going wife; the two of them are both a formidable sleuthing team and an image of happy, productive marriage, and it’s that double picture that makes the Tibbett series so deeply satisfying. While the Tibbett books were written in the second half of the 20th century, there is something both timeless and classic about them; they feel of a piece with the Golden Age of British Detective Fiction.
Patricia Moyes died in 2000. The New York Times once famously noted that, as a writer, she “made drug dealing look like bad manners rather than bad morals.” That comment may once have been rather snarky, but as we are increasingly forced to acknowledge the foulness that can arise from unchecked bad manners, Inspector Henry Tibbett—a man of unflinching good manners, among other estimable traits—becomes a hero we can all get behind.
CHAPTER ONE
IT IS OFTEN INTERESTING, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark—and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.
For instance, it is virtually certain that if Emmy Tibbett had not broken her shoulder strap in a small, smoky restaurant just off King’s Road, Chelsea, one spring evening, the Berrybridge murderer would have got clean away. For if Emmy had not snapped that slender pink ribbon, she would never have spoken to Rosemary Benson in the ladies’ room, and accepted the loan of a safety pin; the friendship between the Bensons and the Tibbetts would never have sprung up; and Henry and Emmy Tibbett would never have found themselves, some months later, crammed first into new, tight, unyielding blue jeans and subsequently into an overloaded station wagon, en route for a fortnight’s sailing holiday at Berrybridge Haven with the Bensons.
Henry felt miserably conspicuous in the teen-age uniform upon which Rosemary and Alastair had insisted. It was hardly fitting, he thought, as he regarded himself morosely in the mirror, for a Chief Inspector of the C.I.D. to inflict himself upon the world in such a rakish outfit. It was not as though he had the brawny, swashbuckling physique which he associated with the lordly ocean-racing characters whose pictures he had often secretly admired in glossy magazines: he could not pretend that his unremarkable, middle-aged figure lent itself to the casual heartiness of navy denim; while his pale face, with its mild blue eyes and sandy eyebrows, looked little short of ludicrous emerging from the white turtleneck of an enormous fisherman’s sweater. However, these reflections did not trouble Henry for long, because he was one of those rare people who have no objection to making fools of themselves in a good cause.
Emmy, on the other hand, looked marvellously right in her sailing clothes. Admittedly, her plumpish, fortyish hips looked plumper still in jeans, but her short, curly black hair and strong, merry face gave her the air of one whose natural element is the sea, whose natural line of vision the horizon. Unlike Henry, she looked supremely comfortable.
This enviable state she shared with their hosts. When the slightly battered station wagon drew up in the narrow street outside the Tibbetts’ Chelsea flat, Henry was amazed to observe from his window the transformation which had taken place in the Bensons. Rosemary—tall, blonde and willowy—had always displayed an exquisite flair for simple, elegant clothes. Henry had seen heads turn as she walked into a Mayfair restaurant in a straight black sheath of a dress, shimmering with an extravagance of pale blue and green beads at the neck, which echoed the magnificently artificial splendour of her eyelids. Now he saw a disarmingly gawky schoolgirl, her face free of make-up and scrubbed like an apple, in well-worn jeans faded to threadbare grey and a shapeless canvas overblouse which had once been orange, but which seemed to be encrusted with salt. Alastair, dark and impeccable in the City, was tousle-headed and entirely happy. He gave the impression of a man who has lost his razor, and doesn’t care.
Henry and Emmy settled themselves on the back seat, disposing round their feet two bulging picnic-baskets and a huge flask of Chianti. The space behind them was crammed with bright red blankets, two green sleeping bags (“You’re lucky,” Rosemary remarked, “they no longer smell. Just back from the cleaners”), an outboard motor and a reeking two-gallon tin of paraffin.
Conscientious office-workers who had stayed until seven o’clock to finish up Friday’s backlog of work glanced briefly and disinterestedly at the bizarre equipage as it sped through fast-emptying City streets. Soon London was left behind, as the white ribbon of Eastern Avenue unwound ahead of the car. The flat, fertile fields of Essex flashed past: the ancient garrison town of Colchester faded into the deepening dusk.
“We’ll have a good hour in the Bush before closing time,” said Alastair, with deep content.
Berrybridge Haven is, to its devotees, a closely guarded secret about which they cannot resist telling their friends. Inevitably, their eulogies have reached the ears of sharp-witted journalists, who descend on the place every so often, and come out a few days later with a lyrical piece devoted to “this unspoilt corner of the East Coast.” Fortunately, in spite of their efforts, Berrybridge had contrived to remain just that. This happy fact is due in part to its distance from London—just far enough to discourage casual sightseers—but mainly to the relentless attitude of the public transport authorities, who have contrived to make the place virtually inaccessible except by car. Anybody who has ever tried to reach Berrybridge Haven from Liverpool Street Station will endorse this. Connecting trains (you change three times) are carefully timed to miss each other by one minute. The bus that is advertised turns out to run on alternate Sundays only, and the whereabouts of the bus stop is a closely guarded secret. The intrepid traveller who manages to get farther than Ipswich in the course of a week-end does so only at the price of such anguish and frustration that he resolves never to go near the godforsaken place again, which affords no little satisfaction to the local inhabitants.
It would be flattering to call Berrybridge a village. A huddle of cottages, a tiny grey church, a couple of shops selling everything from butter to rope, two boatyards and a pub are all it has to offer. Of these buildings, the pub is by far the largest. Nevertheless, Berrybridge has a spirit of civic pride which might be the envy of a great industrial city. It elects (unofficially) its own mayor every year, and his inauguration is an occasion of much merriment, solemnity and ritual consumption of beer at The Berry Bush. You are now entering the Borough of Berrybridge Haven proclaims a notice, shakily inscribed in
white paint on an ancient, black-tarred board, as you drive down the twisting lane from the main Ipswich road: and another sign, affixed to two planks placed haphazardly across a stream, informs the visitor that This Bridge was erected for the convenience of the citizens of Berrybridge Haven and formally opened by the Mayor, His Honourable Ephraim Sykes. This, adds the notice, darkly, is OUR bridge. The visitor may be tempted to wonder why the builders of this particular bridge should be so sensitive to the threat of competition. There is no other bridge.