A Bullet for Rhino by Clifford Witting

A Bullet for Rhino by Clifford Witting

 

published 1950

 

When I first became aware of the works of Clifford Witting a few years ago I heard good things about this one but couldn’t get hold of a copy by any means. So I’m delighted that Galileo Press has brough it back into print, and it was a really enjoyable read.

It has classic GA elements, and is very well-constructed.

Mereworth is a very recognisable type of minor public school in the Home Counties, and is having a reunion of Old Boys, complete with a cricket match and an evening entertainment. There are two very important participants: DI Harry Charlton, regular Witting sleuth, who is staying with an old schoolfriend, Sir James Hollander, for the weekend so they can attend together. And ‘Rhino’ Garstang, a frightful man: school bully, now a famous explorer and soldier, but still extremely badly-behaved in all kinds of ways. Colonial to the core.

It is perfectly obvious that he is going to be murdered during the weekend, and Witting does a good job of keeping up the tension of exactly when this will happen, as well of course as we consider who might be the guilty party.

My previous reading of Witting meant I wasn’t surprised that the murder happens very late in the book – he likes to work up to things in unusual and elaborate ways. Here he is busy establishing just how many people have cause to hate Rhino: including two young couples who may have their romances blasted away. There are a lot of guns featuring in this quiet small town.

Rhino, though hideous, becomes a very real character: huge, solid red-faced, immoveable, certain he is right, and not one to be put off by others’ hatred or threats. ‘Chutney and high blood pressure’ is one description of him.

It is claimed that his father ‘died raving in Calcutta through trying to quench an unquenchable thirst with eau-de-cologne.’ As is often the case in these books, there is leaning on heredity: a nice boy shouldn’t be marrying a girl with such a grandfather.

This all leads to plenty of bad feeling leading up to the murder:

‘What’s happening out there? Not another row?’

‘Gale warning’ said David. ‘Cones have been hoisted at Cromarty.’

There is a long detailed description of the cricket game, the match of the year, where the Old Boys play the current First XI (so with some father and son opponents). I can’t ever get interested in that, but I thought it was fair enough to feature it, and I had that nice top picture. It’s one of John Verney’s magazine covers from 1948, so spot on for era, and I explain about the pictures here:

Midsummer Murder by Cecil M Wills

(Confusingly, Witting wrote a book called Midsummer Murder in 1937, this is different author)

Everyone is in a very bad mood:

‘Where is that nice Mr – what was his name?’

‘If you mean Mr Longdon’, Margot answered crisply, ‘he’s over on the cricket field with Eric Randall.’ [These two Old Boys are fighting for her hand]

‘What are they doing dear?’

‘Swapping stamps,’ said Margot.

Which made me laugh a lot.

There were plenty of safeguarding issues in the way the school and the event were run, frankly, but the major victim was Rhino, who was really no loss.

Other old-fashioned ideas included this: ‘If you really loved him as a woman should love a man, you’d sacrifice everything to stop him going to his death.’ (This is because a 19yo girl thinks she’d like to see something of the world before settling down).

And then, there were aspects of the final discussion that left me extremely po-faced, something I have commented on before. Here is my patent #spoilernotspoiler system – if you are interested in what I am talking about, there is a similar situation in this book. I had good reasons to suspect a certain person, as it turned out.

Clothes aren’t very much of a Witting thing, though there is a lot about handbags (as this early cover shows).

‘She wore a loosely fitting beltless summer coat of dark blue silk  and shoes with 2 inch heels and she held under her arm a small handbag of black leather… ‘

(The picture is from much later but did have the feel of the summer coat)

Altogether a most enjoyable book, and a school setting always welcome.

And, btw, if you Google this book you will get a lot more information than you want about actual bullets to kill actual rhinos, which is slightly depressing.

Cheering schoolboys in Australia

Cheering schoolboys | Creator: Unidentified. Location: Queen… | Flickr

 

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