The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “In other words, Staff might have done it.”

  “Anybody might,” he said. “Brende, for instance, when he was supposed to be relieving nature. Or even your pal Collect.”

  “Yes,” I said, “or even Flick. What he was carrying mightn’t have been a couple of stamp albums but the preparations, so to speak, for the crime.”

  Chapter XI

  I woke at my usual hour of seven the following morning, verified the fact from my watch, and wondered why Feeder was not bringing tea, for outside I had heard the steps and voices of batmen. Ten minutes passed and then I decided to investigate, so I put on a dressing-gown and looked out of the door Staff’s batman told me he hadn’t seen Feeder at all that morning, and another batman who came up confirmed that Feeder had not been near the cookhouse. But he said he’d try to find him, so I fetched my own hot water and got on with my shaving.

  Another ten minutes and the helpful batman was coming in with a cup of tea, and obviously bursting with news.

  “I got this made fresh for you, sir,”—and in the same breath—“they say Feeder was out of camp all night.”

  I didn’t say anything except to thank him for the tea, but I was furious with Feeder, to whom I’d tried to be friendly and decent. Like master, like man, I thought, and always making enemies and trouble. Confined to camp for breaking regulations, and now breaking the same regulation again, and in the most flagrant form. When he did turn up I made up my mind that I’d tell him that as far as I was concerned he could henceforth go to the devil and at his own pace.

  Just as I had finished dressing there was a tap at the door and Ferris came in. He also was all excitement. “Have you heard about Feeder, sir? Brende’s just told me.”

  “I’ve heard,” I said. “What’s happened to him, do you think?”

  “Happened?”

  It was my turn to stare. “Well, where is he? I thought you were telling me he’d been out of camp all night.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said, and scowled. “My God, he’s a dirty double-crosser!”

  “What is this?” I said. “Why’s he a double-crosser?”

  “That’s what I came to tell you,” he said. “Last night he asked to speak to Brende, so Brende says, and he told him he’d been lying about Mortar not having explosives. He said Mortar had that Blacker bomb in his room and he told lies about it because he didn’t want Mortar to be badly thought of.”

  “Oh, my hat!” I said, fingers already at my horn-rims. “That’s thrown a spanner into the works. It definitely makes the whole thing out to be an accident.”

  “He’s a liar and a double-crosser,” Ferris told me vehemently. “He’s either been got at or he’s spinning that yarn to save his own skin in some way. I ask you, sir; why should Mortar have had that bomb in his room? And if he had, was he the sort to blow himself up?”

  “He was pretty tight,” I said. “And you’ll remember he did say he had something to do before he went to bed.”

  “I know what he meant,” Ferris said, with something like contempt. “He meant—well, after all he’d been drinking, he must have wanted to get rid of some of it.”

  “But you’d locked the room up,” I said. “How could he have got out to the lavatory?”

  “I didn’t think of that till later on,” he said. “While we were walking across to the Mess I remembered it, and that’s one reason why I said I’d go back and see if he’d turned his light off.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but there’s Brende going by now.”

  Brende was making for the Adjutant’s office, to make a report on Feeder. I told him to stand fast till I’d fetched Wharton. George was absolutely flabbergasted by the news, and no wonder, for every theory was knocked cockeyed.

  “Tell me just what happened,” he said to Brende.

  “Well, sir, I was just coming across the parade ground, not too far from the Home Guard N.A.A.F.I., when Feeder comes up and asks if he can have a word with me—”

  “What time was it exactly?”

  “Exactly?” He frowned. “About eighteen hours fifteen, I should say, sir. I know it was getting a bit darkish. Then he said he had to own up he’d given wrong evidence to the Colonel and Major Travers, sir, and how Captain Mortar did have some explosives in his room that night. He even said it was that Blacker bomb that we couldn’t find.”

  Wharton grunted. “And what did you say?”

  “I told him he’d better make an official report, and if he didn’t, then I would. I ought to have said, sir, that he spoke to me confidentially like. I also warned him that he’d be lucky if he wasn’t for the high jump.”

  “Then no wonder he bolted,” Wharton said, and gave another grunt or two. “Was he stone sober?”

  “Absolutely, sir, and very respectful, so to speak.”

  “He certainly went off immediately afterwards,” I said. “It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes later when I was looking for him and was told he’d gone out of his hut with his greatcoat on.”

  Wharton said he would make the necessary report to Harness, and Brende needn’t stay. Harness was furious with Feeder, and then was wondering if the Colonel could deal with him or if he should be handed over to the civil power.

  “Oh, no,” Wharton said. “We don’t want any outside meddling. I’ll see that he makes a statement on oath, and then the sooner we get rid of him the better. Mind if I use your telephone? What time was there a train for town last night?”

  Harness, who knew the local service by heart, said there was one at twenty hours. It was a slow to the junction and there made a connection which brought one into London in the very early morning hours. Wharton rang Peakridge Station and asked if a man of Feeder’s unmistakable description had boarded the train. Peakridge said the men who might know were now off duty, but they’d send a reply at the earliest moment.

  “He might have jumped a lorry,” Harness said. “There’s no end of traffic through Peakridge at night.” Wharton said he’d be getting along to breakfast, and might the report be brought as soon as it came.

  I was going too, when Harness stopped me. “I’ve managed to get all the forms for officers who’ve returned them before. I wondered if you’d like to have a look at them, sir.”

  “After breakfast, I think. If you don’t make a move you’ll be getting none yourself.”

  He posted a telephone orderly with instructions and then we strolled across to the dining-hut together.

  “What was Captain Mortar’s record?” I asked him. “As long as your arm,” he said. “Wherever there was a scrap anywhere, that fellow seems to have gone. No doubt about it, sir, he wasn’t far out when he said he was a fighter. Why, he was wounded at least four or five times. Those Mexicans thought a lot of him. They gave him three or four decorations. Of course he couldn’t wear them—not over here.”

  “I expect a good few Mexicans wouldn’t have minded giving him some decorations of another kind,” I said, thinking of that pitch-dark night when he’d blown up that house on the canal, and sent it and a good few rebels soaring sky-high.

  After breakfast I hurried to overtake Wharton.

  “Looks as if I’ll have to alter my time-table this morning,” he said. “Would you mind seeing if there’s anything through from Peakridge yet?”

  I said I’d see to it. I added, only too obviously, that Feeder’s confession had altered the whole complexion of the case.

  “Don’t I know it?” he told me, not as disgruntled as he might have been.

  “There is an alternative,” I told him consolingly. “Brende may be telling lies for his own reasons.”

  Wharton halted in his tracks. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that. You see what it implies?”

  “Only that Brende possibly got Feeder to go away because he had some evidence, not yet disclosed, which Brende didn’t want disclosed.”

  “There’s more in it than that,” he said, and was scowling away as we moved on again. “Brende must h
ave known that a man as conspicuous as Feeder couldn’t get clear away. Wherever Feeder is, we’ll have our hands on him within forty-eight hours, or my name’s Robinson. No,” he went on, with a shake of the head, “there’s something I don’t like the look of in the least. If you ask me, there’s more unlikely things than that we’ll never clap eyes on Feeder again.”

  He waved his hand impatiently and I duly sheered off to Harness’s office, and I was thinking that what George had said was contradictory. Then I saw what he meant. If Brende was lying, then Feeder was dead. We might clap eyes on Feeder again but he’d be no good as a witness, and it was a thought that made me go hot and cold all over. Somehow I wished I’d never suggested that alternative to Wharton.

  “Nothing through from Peakridge yet,” Harness told me. He was getting into his Sam Browne prior to the inspection of markers before the eight-hours thirty parade. “If you like to wait, sir, you can be having a look at those officers’ records.”

  There was no mistaking the pale blue forms on his table, so I began to run an eye over them as soon as he’d gone. Staff’s happened to be on top. That was of no particular interest to me, and I was just about to place it at the bottom of the pile when something caught my eye. Colonel Staff—our Staff’s father—was described as a director of Staff and Blackett, quarry owners, of Fenderby, Yorkshire. Staff’s private address was Fenderby, Yorkshire.

  Now I happened to have heard of Staff and Blackett before, and in connection with a sister of mine who had been making extensive alterations to her garden before the war, and needed a very large quantity of crazy paving and other stone work. She had been recommended to try that firm as being one of the largest in the country. And why, you may ask, did the name interest me? Well, because blasting would always be going on at the quarries, and quarries, mark you, near Staff’s home. And yet he had assured Wharton that he knew nothing whatever about explosives except what he’d picked up at the week’s rehearsals at the school!

  I passed on to the next form, which was Flick’s. His father was dead, but his mother, I was interested to note, lived at a place called Rathgore, which is in Wicklow, which is Eire, and Flick had been born there. I also noted that Flick was a Territorial officer who had joined up just before the outbreak of war. His civil life job was described as being a film company executive, which seemed to me to cover a rather large tract of ground.

  Then the telephone bell went and the orderly-room sergeant was handing me the receiver. Peakridge was reporting that no man of Feeder’s description had taken the train from Peakridge. According to them there wasn’t a shadow of doubt about it. I asked if the station was well blacked-out, and when they said indignantly that it was, asked why Feeder couldn’t have jumped the train unnoticed. They said he’d have been spotted on the train, where his ticket would have been examined. I let it go at that, but thought, as I later told Wharton, that there were seats to hide under and lavatories in which to conceal oneself.

  What I did then was to ask the sergeant to get R.T.O. at the London terminus, to find out if Feeder had reached town, for however well he might have dodged the authorities on the journey, he’d have had his work more than cut out to get clear of the train and station under the eyes of red caps and other emissaries of the R.T.O. Then I thought I’d better report to Wharton.

  Wharton was good enough to say I’d done the right thing. Then he was looking highly gratified at what I told him about Staff.

  “Everything hasn’t altered as much as you’d think,” he said “Even if Feeder did tell us lies, and Mortar had that bomb in his room, there’d still be the possibility that somebody else set it off.”

  He pursed his lips in thought and then announced that he’d go to the Colonel’s room and use the ’phone from there. He’d get in touch with the police at Fenderby and have inquiries made to find out just how much Staff knew about explosives and letting off charges by remote control.

  While he was gone I sat in his chair, stoked my pipe, and tried to do some thinking for myself. Somehow my thoughts never got far away from the events of the evening when Mortar was killed. Something suddenly occurred to me, so I went to Harness’s office again. He was back from parade and soon found me the reports on the last Course which had been rendered by the various lecturers and instructors. What I wanted were those returned by Ferris and Mortar, and as soon as I saw them, I knew my suspicions confirmed. Mortar’s work at which he had ostensibly been too busy to attend dinner, had all been done by Ferris, though Mortar had appended a rather shaky signature.

  That gave me a bird’s-eye view of that Saturday after-noon. Mortar had been as good as tight when he got back from Peakridge. Ferris had shrewdly made him come to his—Ferris’s—room, and to work like everybody else at those reports. But he had been useless and Ferris had made him get on the bed and sleep, and had then worked like a nigger at both sets of reports. His hurried writing on his own reports showed that. Then when Mortar had ultimately woke up he had still not been in good enough shape to be seen at dinner. The scrawled signature proved that clearly enough. Finally, Ferris, hoping some good from the hair of the dog that had bitten him, let him go to the Mess, from which my help had been needed to dislodge him.

  Wharton had made his telephone call one of urgent priority, and was back in his room sooner than I had expected. Then it appeared that his thoughts must have been running in much the same direction as my own, for he had sent for Ferris, who happened to be free. When Ferris came it was to corroborate everything, and to add something mightily important.

  Mortar had slept on Ferris’s bed till about eighteen hours. Then he had insisted on having a drink. Ferris refused. Then Mortar said his bladder was bursting and he was going outside.

  “I told him to get to hell outside then,” Ferris said. “I was fed up with him, and that’s the truth. I got on with my job, and then I thought he was the devil of a time, so I went to explore. I found him in the Mess—with Flick.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I thought they weren’t on speaking terms?”

  Ferris shrugged his shoulders. “I gathered there’d been some sort of reconciliation, but I was damn’ fed up and I got him away. I was furious with Flick, too, though I didn’t say anything. You see, they were drinking Guinness.”

  “Good Lord!” I said. “And he’d originally got tight on whisky?”

  “That’s it,” Ferris said. “The worst thing he could drink was Guinness after whisky. It’s as bad as giving a man knockout drops.”

  “Did it knock him out?” Wharton asked.

  “Not as luck would have it,” Ferris said. “I arrived just in time. Mortar was as sick as a cat in my room. I made him lie down again, and he did. Then I thought I’d let him have just one nightcap, and that was when I couldn’t get him out of the bar again and came in to get you to help me, Major.”

  I clicked my tongue. “You certainly had a hell of a day. But who told you I was in the writing-room? Shorty?”

  “That’s right, sir. He gave me the tip when Mortar was trying to make him have a drink.”

  That was virtually all that Ferris had to tell us, and when he’d gone, I was asked to get hold of Shorty. I found him cleaning up the Mess, and when we got to Wharton’s room the orderly-room sergeant was there. He had brought a message from the R.T.O. at terminus that nobody of Feeder’s description had got off the train from Derby.

  “I don’t like the look of things a bit,” Wharton told me, while Shorty waited outside. “You’d have thought that if Feeder went anywhere, it’d have been to London. Mind you, he may have had relations elsewhere. He may have taken a different train from the junction, if he ever got as far.”

  He frowned in thought for a bit, then said he’d get a description issued throughout the country. Within a few hours every cop in England would be on the look-out for him. Then he was asking me, or rather directing me, to bring in Shorty.

  Shorty was a little, snub-nosed, good-humoured fellow, by name, Tom Smith, and he was a first-class witn
ess. You could tell that by the cheerful way he listened to Wharton’s admonitions on secrecy, and the veiled threats.

  Yes, he said, Captain Mortar had come hurriedly into the Mess and had asked for a double whisky. Just then Mr. Flick came in, but at the sight of Mortar had turned back. Mortar hailed him affectionately, so we gathered. He even got Flick by the arm and literally dragged him to the bar.

  “What was Captain Mortar’s condition like?” Wharton asked.

  Shorty said he was all right. He’d obviously had a few, but he was all right. “He said to Mr. Flick, sir, that he liked him and he liked all the Irish.”

  “Just a minute,” Wharton interposed again. “Can you remember the exact words that were used.”

  “I’m not getting nobody into trouble, am I, sir?”

  “Of course you’re not,” Wharton snapped at him.

  Shorty grinned, then licked his lips and thought back. A moment or two and he said that what Captain Mortar had said was that he’d killed the Irish and fought alongside the Irish, and they were all good chaps. “Good chaps, them was the exact words he used, sir,” he concluded.

  “And then?” Wharton asked.

  “Mr. Flick said he would have a drink, sir, and said his was a Guinness, and Captain Mortar said to make it two Guinnesses. Then Mr. Flick said, would Captain Mortar have another, and they had two more. Then Mr. Ferris came in, sir, and he looked at me as if he’d like to slosh me one, sir, and that’s all there was to it.” He gave me a look and then added: “Except later on when you came in, sir.”

  “What were he and Ferris drinking, then?” Wharton asked me.

  “Now I come to think of it, I believe it was Guinness,” I said.