The Methods of Sergeant Cluff Read online

  The Methods of Sergeant Cluff

  Gil North

  With an Introduction

  by Martin Edwards

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 Gil North Limited

  Introduction copyright © 2016 Martin Edwards

  Originally published in 1961 by Chapman & Hall Ltd

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press in association with the British Library

  First E-book Edition 2016

  ISBN: 9781464206689 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Contents

  The Methods of Sergeant Cluff

  Copyright

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Introduction

  After battling for justice, at great personal risk, in his first recorded case, Sergeant Caleb Cluff made a swift return to duty in The Methods of Sergeant Cluff. The story opens one wet and windy night, with the discovery of a young woman’s corpse lying face down on the cobblestones of a passageway in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw. The deceased is Jane Trundle, an attractive girl who worked as an assistant in a chemist’s shop. She yearned for the good life, and Cluff finds more money in her handbag than she would have earned in wages.

  There are echoes of Sherlock Holmes (“You know my methods, Watson”) in the title, and in an exchange in the first chapter between Cluff and Superintendent Patterson, but Cluff is very much his own man. Little that goes on in and around the mean streets of Gunnarshaw escapes him. He is scornful of detectives who rely solely on supposed facts: “More than facts were in question here, the intangible, invisible passions of human beings.” Understanding those passions leads him gradually towards the truth about Jane’s murder.

  In his own distinctive way, the Sergeant shares several characteristics with fiction’s more celebrated detectives. He is, for instance, a rather dour loner:

  “I’m not married,” Cluff said. “I’ve no children of my own.”

  “You’re lucky. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  Cluff neither agreed nor disagreed.

  He is also a maverick who is the despair of his superior, the hapless Inspector Mole. Superintendent Patterson has more faith in him, but this is frequently tested, as when Cluff insists that one suspect “knows something”. When Patterson asks what evidence he has, Cluff simply retorts, “It’s true all the same.”

  Yet he gets results, and is admired because of it, as a conversation between two fellow residents of Gunnarshaw illustrates:

  “It doesn’t pay to tangle with Cluff.”

  “You wait,” the stall-holder prophesied. “Caleb’ll show him.”

  In the fullness of time, the stall-holder is proved right, although another killing has by then taken place. The mood throughout is downbeat, rather in keeping with the climate of Gunnarshaw—a town modelled on Skipton, “the gateway to the Dales”, where Cluff’s creator was born and bred.

  Gil North was the name under which Geoffrey Horne (1916–1988) wrote a dozen crime novels, eleven of which recorded Cluff’s cases. The Cluff series appeared between 1960 and 1972, and a stand-alone called A Corpse for Kofi Katt was published in 1978. Horne, who started writing after retiring from the Colonial Service, began by publishing several books under his own name, including a thriller, The Portuguese Diamonds, which appeared in 1961. This was shortly before Cluff’s popularity led to his unexpectedly hi-jacking his creator’s career.

  Before long, Cluff made the transition from printed page to small screen. When North was first approached by the BBC with a view to adapting his own work, he was less than enthusiastic, and declined to attend a meeting in London (a place he said he hated). Undeterred, eager television executives travelled to the north of England in the hope of persuading him to write a script. Cluff duly appeared as the protagonist in an episode of the superb television anthology series Detective. The programme was introduced by Rupert Davies, the actor who had shot to fame as a result of playing Inspector Maigret, the detective hero of novels by Georges Simenon which were a significant influence on the Cluff books.

  “The Drawing” was broadcast on 16 April 1964, with a theme tune composed by John Addison, later well known for his film scores. Leslie Sands played the Sergeant, a perfect piece of casting. Sands, the son of a Bradford mill-worker, had previously written crime thrillers for the stage, and had also acted in and written scripts for Z Cars. He made the part his own, and the success of the show promptly led to the commissioning of a spin-off series, Cluff.

  Leslie Sands took great pains over choosing his props—tweed suit, pipe, chestnut walking stick, together with a specially made tweed hat. The series featured Eric Barker as Inspector Mole as well as a host of equally well-known television actors of the 1960s such as Glynn Edwards, Rodney Bewes and James Bolam. A second series, this time comprising thirteen episodes, began in the spring of 1965. Michael Bates took over as Mole, and cast members included Leonard Rossiter, Derek Fowlds and Diana Coupland. Leslie Sands’ wife Pauline Williams played Mrs Mole in several episodes. In all, twenty fifty-minute stories were broadcast. Although the first series has been lost to posterity, as the result of the BBC’s short-sighted policy of wiping tapes, the second series survives in the BBC archives. It has never been made commercially available on DVD.

  Each episode was scripted by Gil North. His son Josh recalls that “he liked to be in charge of things”, perhaps a legacy of his time as an administrator in Africa, and this was a good way of ensuring that the integrity of his detective’s character was not compromised. Intriguingly, each of the television stories was a fresh one; they were not based on the plots of the novels. Yet this industrious author produced thirteen scripts for the second series in the space of a mere six months; ideas about plots came easily to him, he told a local journalist, although he felt that punitive rates of income tax deterred successful writers from being highly productive.

  Cluff was filmed in and around Skipton, where North had grown up, and where his widow Betty and Josh still live; his daughter Sarah lives in Australia, with her two sons, two daughters, and two grandsons. At its height, Cluff regularly attracted twelve million viewers, an extraordinarily high figure by modern standards. One fan who became a cartoonist for the Northern Echo in the nineties adopted the alias “Cluff” as a small tribute to a show that, even then, was largely forgotten.

  But the Cluff books deserve to be remembered. Their uncompromisingly laconic style was not to everyone’s taste. The distinguished novelist and critic for The Times, H.R.F. Keating, had reservations about it. Yet Keating acknowledged that North was “showing us a uni
que regional voice, and asserting its merits”. To this day, his books remain short, snappy, and very readable.

  Martin Edwards

  www.martinedwardsbooks.com

  Chapter I

  The constable watched him swing across the deserted High Street, from the corner by the church. Modern lighting bathed the macadam in an eerie blue. The front of his Burberry was dark with wet. Water matted the grouse feather in his sodden, tweed hat. His thick trousers, heavy with rain, hung shapeless below the hem of his coat. The tip of his stout stick kept time with the solid tread of his mud-spattered boots. The big collie at his heels stayed close, tongue lolling, tense.

  The constable stepped out of the shadows.

  “Sergeant,” the constable said, showing no surprise to see Cluff on foot. “Round there,” he added, pointing. “I think they’d given you up.”

  Cluff nodded, without stopping. The clock in the church tower began to chime, four strokes for each quarter, eleven longer ones, deeper in tone and more widely spaced, for the hour.

  He turned off the High Street into a narrow roadway, little more than a passage, by the side windows of a Victorian Town Hall. The doors of the public conveniences to his right were closed, the signs above them unlit. Wind funnelled from the moors, moaning. Rain dripped disconsolately from crumbling cornices.

  A gas-lamp, on a bracket fixed to the wall at the corner beyond the conveniences, flickered uncertainly. He rounded the corner, under the lamp, into a cobbled area walled on three sides. The explosion of a flash-bulb made him blink. He halted, the dog’s muzzle cold against the fingers of his free hand. The headlights of a police car, its engine cut, blazed on men milling restlessly.

  Inspector Mole, neatly uniformed, detached himself from a group of lesser officers. The dog retreated, growling. Mole remembered the Sergeant’s recent experiences and the Sergeant’s present standing with his superiors. The Inspector gritted his teeth, biting back the sarcasm with which he usually greeted Cluff’s dog.

  Mole mustered a smile. Envious and insincere, he remarked, “We thought you weren’t coming, Caleb. It’s more than an hour since I rang you.” He stifled an exclamation of annoyance at Cluff’s lack of excuses. He said, “I couldn’t help it. I got on to Patterson at County H.Q. He wanted you to know.”

  Cluff told him, “We arranged it like that before I went on leave.”

  The Sergeant stalked forward, past the photographer already dismantling his tripod, policemen moving to let him through.

  “What’s the use of a single C.I.D. man in a division this size?” Mole asked. “Do they think crimes are going to happen one at a time?”

  “You’ve been busy,” Cluff said.

  “Someone has to be,” Mole answered, unable to suppress his feelings, throwing a glance over his shoulder to ascertain the present whereabouts of the dog. The dog growled again.

  Cluff, without looking round, ordered, “Sit, Clive!” Clive sank to his haunches, lips withdrawn from pointed, white teeth, ripples of excitement flowing under the loose skin on his back.

  A little, dapper man, brisk, straightened and rubbed his palms together busily. She lay face down on the stones, her arms flung out, her legs splayed, her thighs bared in her fall. Cluff looked at her head. A transparent, plastic hood, tied under her chin, draped her shoulders.

  “Well?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” the surgeon replied.

  A dark patch marred the brightness of her hair, spun-gold in the car lights. Dark threads patterned an ivory nape and lost identity in the rain on the cobbles.

  The surgeon demanded irritably, “What’s going on in Gunnarshaw? What have they been getting away with all these years?”

  Cluff, his belly large, bent with difficulty. He rolled the girl over. Mole, taking a handbag from one of the attendant constables, held it out and said, “We found this.” The Sergeant, his eyes fixed on the girl’s face, ignored him.

  “You don’t need me,” the surgeon interrupted. “I can’t do any more here.”

  “How long ago?” Cluff said.

  “On a night like this!” the surgeon exclaimed. “In this cold! With this rain! I’m not a witch-doctor. Wait for the post-mortem.”

  “She’s—” Mole started to say, opening the handbag.

  “I know who she is,” Cluff stopped him.

  Mole pushed the envelope he was pulling out back into the bag. “Of course,” he said bitterly. “I was forgetting. You were born and bred in these parts. You know everybody.” He watched the movement of Cluff’s eyes. He went on, “There wasn’t anything else. I’ve been over the place with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “If you’re looking for a blunt instrument,” the surgeon broke in, a little spitefully, “you’ve got quite a choice.” The surgeon buttoned his raincoat: “You might intend to stay here all night. I don’t.”

  “Clive!” Cluff called. He opened the rear door of the police car and got inside after the dog. A driver came to life amongst the spectators and moved hurriedly for his seat. Cluff, peering out, informed no one in particular, “You can take her away. Let her parents know.”

  Mole spoke to a constable, taking the envelope from the bag a second time and holding it while the constable copied down the address. The Inspector climbed into the car, ostentatiously choosing his place next to the driver, making it silently clear that he preferred to be as far away from the dog as possible.

  At the police-station Constable Barker, on the desk, rose to his feet when they entered. Barker snapped his fingers at Clive. “Good dog,” he said. Clive’s tail wagged. Clive crossed obediently to Barker and allowed the constable to scratch him on the head.

  Barker, young and eager, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment, murmured, “I’m glad to see you, Sergeant. I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “He’s in my office,” Mole interrupted, opening a door and leading the way.

  A youth about eighteen years old, his face dead-white, his limbs trembling, huddled small on an upright chair. Occasionally a more violent twitching afflicted his body. His wide-open eyes stared into infinity and he gulped frequently as if fighting nausea.

  Mole settled himself behind a desk. He stabbed a finger in the youth’s direction. He explained, “He found her.”

  Cluff put a hand on the youth’s shoulder and the youth cringed. “I’m sorry, Jim,” Cluff said. “Can you tell me about it?”

  The youth swallowed hard, his lips dry. Cluff wandered to a window. He lifted the blind at one edge and looked at the rain-swept night.

  “It’s late,” Cluff added.

  Mole coughed.

  “Was Molly with you?” Cluff said.

  Jim’s words cleared the obstruction of his parched throat. They tumbled over each other: “We weren’t supposed to be there. I said we were going to the pictures.”

  “It’ll have to come out now.”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Jim pleaded.

  “It was the only thing you could do.”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Jim asked, reading his answer in the eloquence of Cluff’s broad back. “You’ll keep Molly out of it?”

  “As much as I can.”

  “I came out of the lavatory,” Jim said. “I was waiting for Molly. Someone ran out of that yard behind.”

  “A man?”

  “It’s dark there, Mr. Cluff. That lamp at the corner doesn’t give much light. It was raining too. I wasn’t taking much notice.”

  “Think, Jim.”

  Jim said, “I suppose it must have been a man. I’d have noticed a woman’s legs, whiter—”

  Cluff turned from the window: “What sort of man?”

  “‘What sort of man?’” Jim echoed.

  Mole picked up a pencil and began to tap on the desk-top. He thought, “What can you expect from them?” disgusted with the people of Gunnarshaw.
>
  “A big man? A little man?”

  Jim hesitated: “Not big.”

  “He saw you?”

  The youth considered: “He ran away. By the Town Hall. Into the darkness—”

  “Towards the car park?”

  “That’s why I went—round the corner. At first I couldn’t see anything. Then I heard Molly—”

  The Sergeant opened the door. He shouted, “Barker!” Barker stopped fondling Clive.

  Cluff said, “Get the driver to run Jim home.”

  They heard the car drive away. Mole put his pencil down: “Was that all?”

  Cluff looked at him.

  Mole said, “It’s up to you, Caleb. There’s not much chance for the uniformed branch when you’re about.” He paused and went on, in a sharper tone, “It shouldn’t be difficult, not in a town this size, where everyone knows what there is to know about everybody else.” He climbed to his feet: “My wife’ll be waiting up. I’d better be moving.”

  Cluff stayed put. Mole shifted from foot to foot. He forced another cough. He commented loudly, “It’s after midnight.” The handbag lay on the desk. He offered it to Cluff: “You’ll want this.”

  Mole asked, “You’ll take the car when it gets back?”

  The Sergeant walked into the outer office, clutching the handbag.

  Cluff turned for a second door, leading into his own room. The door closed. Although not in the habit of familiarity with inferiors, Mole couldn’t prevent himself from informing Barker, “He’s no different. You wouldn’t accuse him of charging at a job like a bull at a barn-door.”

  “He gets there just the same,” Barker retorted, rousing an anger in Mole that expressed itself in the violent slamming of the door to the street.

  Clive stood by Barker’s desk. Barker fidgeted, uneasy at the dog’s stillness. The ticking of the clock on the wall filled the room. The sashes in the windows rattled. Flurries of rain attacked the window panes.

  Barker went suddenly to the frosted glass panel behind which Cluff had disappeared. He tapped with his knuckles. He found the knob and twisted it.