Buried for Pleasure
As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse - discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best.In the sleepy English village of Sanford Angelorum, professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen is taking a break from his books to run for Parliament. At first glance, the village he's come to canvass appears perfectly peaceful, but Fen soon discovers that appearances can be deceptive: someone in the village has discovered a dark secret and is using it for blackmail. Anyone who comes close to uncovering the blackmailer's identity is swiftly dispatched.As the joys of politics wear off, Fen sets his mind to the mystery but finds himself caught up in a tangled tale of eccentric psychiatrists, escaped lunatics, beautiful women and lost heirs.Erudite, eccentric and entirely delightful – Before Morse, Oxford’s murders were solved by Gervase Fen, the most unpredictable detective in classic crime fiction.
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COLLINS CRIME CLUB
an imprint of HarperCollâinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1948
Copyright © Rights Limited 1948
Cover layout design © HarperCollâinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Edmund Crispin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it
are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive,
non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled,
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now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008228064
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008228071
Version: 2018-01-02
For Peter Oldham
Table of Contents
âSanford Angelorum all change,â said the station-master. âSanford Angelorum, all change.â
After a momentâs thought: âTerminus,â he added, and retired from the scene through a door marked PRIVATE.
Gervase Fen, dozing alone in a narrow, stuffy compartment whose cushions, when stirred, emitted a haze of black dust, woke and roused himself.
He peered out of the window into the summer twilight. A stunted, uneven platform offered itself to his inspection, its further margins cluttered with weed-like growths which a charitable man might have interpreted as attempts at horticulture. An empty chocolate-machine lay rusting and overturned, like a casualty in some robot war. Near it was a packing-case from which the head of a small chicken protruded, uttering low, indignant squawks. But there was no trace of human kind, and beyond the station lay nothing more companionable than an apparently limitless expanse of fields and woods, bluish in the gathering dusk.
This panorama displeased Fen; he thought it blank and unenlivening. There was, however, nothing to be done about it except repine. He repined briefly and then extracted himself and his luggage from the compartment. It seemed at first that he was the only passenger to alight here, but a moment later he found that this was not so, for a fair-haired, neatly-dressed girl of about twenty emerged from another compartment, glanced uncertainly about her, and then made for the exit, where she dropped a square of green pasteboard into a tin labelled TICKETS and disappeared. Leaving his luggage where it lay on the platform, Fen followed.
But the station-yard â an ill-defined patch of gravel â was empty of conveyances; and except for the retreating footsteps of the girl, who had vanished from sight round a bend in the station approach, a disheartening quietude prevailed. Fen went back to the platform and sought out the station-masterâs room, where he found the station-master sitting at a table and sombrely contemplating a small, unopened bottle of beer. He looked up resignedly at the interruption.
âIs there any chance of my getting a taxi?â Fen asked.
âWhere are you for, sir?â
âSanford Angelorum village. The Fish Inn.â
âWell, you might be lucky,â the station-master admitted. âIâll see what I can do.â
He went to a telephone and discoursed into it. Fen watched from the doorway. Behind him, the train on which he had arrived gave a weak, asthmatic whistle, and began to back away. Presently it had disappeared, empty, in the direction whence it came.
The station-master finished his conversation and lumbered back to his chair.
âThatâll be all right, sir,â he said; and his tone was slightly complacent, as of a midwife relating the successful issue of a troublesome confinement. âCarâll be here in ten minutes.â
Fen thanked him, gave him a shilling, and left him still staring at the beer. It occurred to Fen that perhaps he had taken the pledge and was brooding nostalgically over forbidden delights.
The chicken had got its head out of a particularly narrow aperture of the packing-case and was unable to get it in again; it was bewilderingly eyeing a newish election poster, with an unprepossessing photograph, which said: âA Vote for Strode is a Vote for Prosperity.â The train had passed beyond earshot; a colony of rooks was flying home for the night, dark blurs against a grey sky; flickering indistinctly, a bat pursued its evening meal up and down the line. Fen sat down on a suitcase and waited. He had finished one cigarette, and was on the point of lighting another, when the sound of a car-engine stirred him into activity. He returned, burdened with cases, to the station-yard.
