A Bullet for Rhino

Inspector Harry Charlton #9

by Clifford Witting

Detective Inspector Harry Charlton finds himself invited to a reunion at Mereworth School at which a particularly unpleasant, but very famous and accomplished old boy, Colonel Bernard Garstang -VC, DSO and MC... aka 'Rhino' will be present. The Colonel is attending this event in order to persuade his daughter Diana and his ex-wife Muriel that Diana should accompany him to live in Port Douglas, Nigeria. He is both inebriated and armed... But also there is Gordon Hollander, who is much enamoured of Diana, and is far from keen on allowing her to be taken off anywhere. Gordon's father, Sir James, also doesn't want Rhino in the family given what he knows about him from school days... and Mark Longdon seems to have an excess of secrets that Rhino is willing to divulge. So, as the title suggests, it doesn't look good for the Colonel. Witting has woven these relationships into a hilarious fabric that wraps around the reunion, the centrepiece of which is the cricket match between Mereworth 1st XI and the Old Merrovians XI. While it is quite apparent that many people wanted Rhino dead, it is not at all apparent whom it was that finished him off. The author is at his best in creating a cast of extremely colourful characters while adhering to a gripping tale of detection. Clifford Witting's writing is drawing in more fans as each reissue comes out and this book will certainly not disappoint.

Genres: Mystery

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1950

About the author

Clifford Witting (1907-68) was an English writer who was educated at Eltham College, London, between 1916 and 1924.

During World War II he served as a bombardier in the Royal Artillery, 1942-44, and as a Warrant Officer in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, 1944-46.

He married Ellen Marjorie Steward in 1934 and they had one daughter. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a clerk in Lloyds bank from 1924 to 1942. He was Honorary Editor of The Old Elthamian magazine, London. from 1947 up to his death.

His first novel 'Murder in Blue' was published in 1937 and his series characters were Sergeant (later Inspector) Peter Bradford and Inspector Harry Charlton. Unusually, he didn’t join The Detection Club until 1958 by which time he had written 12 detective novels.

In their 'A Catalogue of Crime', Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor stated, 'Witting started feebly, improved to a point of high competence, and has since shown a marked capacity for character and situation, with uneven success in keeping up the detective interest.'

On the gadetection website it reports, 'Why is Witting so obscure? His detection is genuinely engrossing, and his style is witty, if occasionally facetious. He could do setting very well—Army life in Subject: Murder. His books have the genuine whodunit pull. He can brilliantly misdirect the reader (Midsummer Murder) or invent a genuinely clever and simple murder method (Dead on Time).

'He experimented with form: the surprise victim (whowillbedunin?) of Measure for Murder, or, weak as it is otherwise is, the riff on the inverted detective story in Michaelmas Goose. In short, he always has something to offer the reader, and found original ideas within the conventions of the formal detective story.

'And yet he’s barely known—no entry in 20th Crime and Mystery Writers, and only a passing reference in the Oxford guide. Only treated in detail in Cooper and Pike, and in Barzun.'

Reviews

[Gerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colonel Bernard ("Rhino") Garstang, VC,DSO, MC, was probably the most eminent of Old Mereworthians but he was such a grumpy individual that no-one particularly cared for him. And without giving anything away (vide the title) he eventually copped a bullet and was killed.

Most of the action takes place at Mereworth School on the most prestigious day of the School year, Old Boys' Day. All the prominent Old Boys are present and eleven of them are to play in the annual cricket match, Old Boys versus the current Mereworth First Eleven.

But even before we get to the cricket action, there are worrying undertones off the field with tensions rising between various individuals. Fortunately Inspector Harry Charlton, himself an Old Mereworthian, is present so when a suspicious parcel is received by one of the Old Boys he is on hand to assist the local police force in their investigations.

Whole families are at the event and there are family tensions as well with relationships between male and female members being the root cause of the potential trouble. "Rhino", living apart from his England-based wife in Nigeria is involved and takes a moralistic view which does not endear him to many.

So, just after the exciting cricket match ends in a narrow victory for the School, it perhaps comes as no surprise when "Rhino" meets his end. Present at the incident was a certain Mark Longdon and, among a number of others, he becomes the prime suspect.

Fortunately, Charlton, who overall takes a back seat in the investigation because he is ostensibly on vacation, realises that Longdon is not the killer and he tips off one of the police underlings, Sergeant Briggs. Briggs, without giving away his source, informs his superiors and, after extensive interviews and further investigation, Longdon is eventually released. Meanwhile the murder takes a most unexpected turn and, when one has just got used to that complete surprise, there is yet another turn that throws the whole episode into even more surprising territory.

Clifford Witting handles the relationships admirably, captures the setting and the period well and has the reader totally confused with the exciting and surprising ending. A really worthwhile read.

[Calum Reed · Rating 2 out of 5]

C:

The characterisation is good but it's 150 pages before the murder takes place and it severely compromises Charlton as a sleuth.

Not a fan.

[MS M ADAMS · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was not my favourite Inspector Charlton book

The plot and the unravelling of it was just as good as usual but there was a too long description of a cricket match,a game I have no understanding of and I am not convinced it was necessary to the storyline!

[Lizzie Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 1950, A Bullet for Rhino features a regular in Witting’s novels, Detective Inspector Harry Charlton, but he does not lead the investigation officially. He has been invited to a reunion at Mereworth School. Also present is Colonel Bernard Garstang VC, DSO, MC, a renowned but distinctly unappealing old boy who goes under the moniker of ‘Rhino’. He gained this name ‘not just because he was large and solid with a big head, but also because of his tendency to charge into everything, physically and mentally.’ His service record was similarly exuberant, and at the time the story starts he has returned to England from his posting as a district officer in Port Douglas, Nigeria, to persuade his daughter (an only child who lives with his estranged wife) to accompany him back to act as his hostess now that he has been offered the Residency.

Garstang is painted in a very unpleasant light. When he worked in South America he was known locally as el Chancho Colerado (‘the red pig’) and ‘was the most detested European within a hundred miles’. In Nigeria he treated the natives ‘like dirt and they hated his guts’. Charlton calls him ‘the black man’s burden’, and at another point says, ‘it’s no good appealing to Rhino’s finer feelings, because he hasn’t any’. As if all this were not bad enough, Garstang has ‘always been far too fond of the bottle’ and is remembered from some years ago as having ‘a very ruddy complexion and a thick neck of the same colour’. He has a hot and easily roused temper. It is not surprising, then, that he becomes a victim of murder, as the novel’s title makes clear.

Yet Garstang does not meet his end until well through the story. Until that point, we are treated to the lives of the supporting cast and relationships between individuals. If Diana Garstang is to go to Nigeria with her father, her devoted admirer Gordon Hollander is determined to go with her, even though he has a medical condition that could prove fatal in such a climate. Gordon’s sister Margot falls in with Mark Longdon, an apparently unsympathetic figure whose past gradually catches up with him. Sir James Hollander, father to Gordon and Margot, doesn’t want Gordon to go to Nigeria or Margot to consort with Longdon. Garstang’s wife, Muriel (Sir James calls her ‘a bit neurotic’) also doesn’t want Diana to go to Nigeria. There are enough people who would be happy if Garstang were out of the way.

Indeed, an attempt is made on Garstang’s life earlier in the novel. A package is left at his hotel which he suspects is a bomb. This brings in Detective-inspector Paul Le Maire of the Special Branch. He appears foppish but is no fool, and his insolent whimsy when dealing with his local superiors adds much to the book. Realising that Garstang is in danger (one or two suspicious people have also been seen around the hotel), he assigns a detective to shadow him. When, despite this protection, Garstang finally meets his maker, it appears to be an open and shut case. We should know better. The local chief inspector, Prout, is summoned. He is ‘a tall, striking figure in his uniform and peaked cap, out of which formal attire he was seldom seen’; indeed, he is rumoured to sleep in it. He is also puritanical, in contrast to Le Maire. There are tensions between the detectives. When the pompous Prout announces he has solved the case (a suicide proves convenient), he says to Charlton ‘the country copper is not always such a damned fool as the C.I.D. would like to make out.’ Yet it is left to Charlton at the very end to reveal the real murderer after his shadowing of the case. Prout never knows the truth.

This is a very enjoyable tale, typical of its time, with the boys at the school adding much to the ambience. Witting writes in a pleasantly entertaining and wry style (‘Very good, sir,’ says one of the junior officers when dismissed from his presence by Prout, ‘his tone robbing the words of every vestige of docile acquiescence’). I am happy to recommend it.
-------
Reviewer: David Whittle
For Lizzie Sirett (Mystery People Group)

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ninth of the Inspector Harry Charlton novels has as its murder-setting the Old Boys’ Day at Mereworth, a public school in the picturesque Surrey countryside with all that it implies by way of cricket matches, concerts , teas and dances, not to speak of long-held memories both happy and otherwise.

Colonel Bernard Garstang, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., “star” of the OBs,and the “Rhino” of the title, is about as obnoxious as they come with a gloriously blundering post-war career in Palestine and West Africa. That the only people-apart from his daughter-who seem to like him unreservedly,is a bunch of naive adolescent boys, speaks volumes.

However, not until late on in the novel does the titular bullet blow out his brains at a point at which the maximum number of suspects is to be found in and around the locus delicti. Policemen abound, including the local CID and Special Branch, but it is the technically uninvolved and sidelined Charlton who finds the solution.

This is a difficult novel to assess. The structure is interesting with more than 60% going by before the murder.Interesting too is the technique of recounting events then going back and looking at them from a different point of view . There are lots of characters, there is information about most of them but there are few clues. Although Charlton is made to appear incidental or even superfluous, the alert reader will realise that he is present at vital moments and is able to connect what he observes and hears.

This is one of the few novels I have read where the author deliberately deflects attention away from the key detective in order to mislead readers. We are so intent on keeping up with CI Prout and DI Le Maire that, like the murderer, we forget that Charlton has knowledge of,and has been present at, some vital moments.

Yet despite the manifest strengths of structure and characterisation there is a problem and a serious weakness as far as the denouement is concerned. The detection element is quite curtailed as the murder occurs so late on, while suspects are too plentiful on or near the scene. So widely is suspicion scattered around that the sceptical reader may feel that Witting had not fully worked out his solution until late in the writing.So sudden is the answer which Charlton presents to the investigators via a third party that the wary reader smells a rat.Sudden too is the realisation that Charlton has not played fair…with anyone.

The detective novelist who depicts a monster as murder victim may arouse sympathy for the murderer and therein create a moral dilemma. Witting goes beyond that,and, certainly for me, leaves a situation where not only is there no justice for the victim but also additional consequences including the death of someone who is blameless. This is not, then,a “classic GAD” novel in which a world temporarily out-of-kilter is set to rights but one in which an individual imposes their own definition of what is right and just -in much the way that any murderer does.

Amoral and subversive perhaps- but ultimately,from my standpoint, unsatisfying and disquieting.

3.75 stars.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

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