‘A Bullet For Rhino’ by Clifford Witting

Published by Galileo Publishers,
25 April 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-915530-27-1 (PB)

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.
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Reviewer: David Whittle

Clifford Witting (1907-1968) was born in Lewisham, England. He 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.

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the East Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.