The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

“It was Guinness, sir,” Shorty said. “Captain Mortar wanted a double whisky, but Mr. Ferris says to him, ‘No, you don’t. You had Guinness last,’ he says, ‘and you stick to it!’”

  “That was wise,” Wharton said, and then with a peer at Shorty over his spectacle tops. “Didn’t you think so?”

  “Me, sir?” Shorty said, and then grinned. “I reckon it was, sir. He didn’t want to go mixing up his drinks again.”

  “He had the one Guinness and then he didn’t want to go. Wasn’t that it?”

  “That’s right, sir,” Shorty said. “Mr. Ferris could do anything with him usually, if you know what I mean, sir. Just quiet-like, you know, sir.”

  “Used to talk to him like a father.”

  “That’s it, sir.”

  “Anything else did he and Mr. Flick talk about earlier in the evening before Mr. Ferris got there?” Shorty licked his lips in thought, made as if to speak, then shook his head.

  “Come on,” said Wharton jocularly. “Everything’s in confidence here. What else were they talking about besides the Irish?”

  “Honestly, sir, I don’t know,” Shorty said. “You see it wasn’t my place to stay at the bar if I wasn’t actually serving a drink. If I did hear anything, sir, I wasn’t supposed to take notice, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, but what did you hear?”

  “Not nothing, sir, not really proper. It was something to do with a lady, and that’s all I know, sir. Soon as they began talking I went round behind.”

  Wharton nodded. “I know. Into that cubby-hole of yours. And you didn’t hear anything else?”

  “No, sir. Mr. Ferris come in almost at once.”

  “Well, you’ve been a good witness,” Wharton said, and glanced at me for confirmation. Then his eyes narrowed and the gratified smile left Shorty’s face. “One single word from you about what’s been talked about in this room, and God help you. You get that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right. You can go.”

  Then at the door he was halted. “A chap with your responsibilities ought to be a lance-corporal at least.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Shorty promptly.

  “You’ve got sense, too,” Wharton added. “For instance, if any officers of the staff happen to be talking at the bar about anything—well, interesting; anything to do with what we’ve been talking about this morning, you’d keep it in your mind and let me know?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Shorty, again promptly, but with wariness in his eyes.

  “I knew it,” Wharton said, and nodded again for him to go.

  “That was flagrant blackmail,” I told George. “You’ve no power to get him a stripe.”

  “Haven’t I?” he told me belligerently. “If I thought it necessary I’d have made him up to full sergeant, and before this day’s out.”

  “Very good, sir,” I said. “But if you’re chucking out promotions why shouldn’t I come in? I could do with colonel’s pay and allowances.”

  “You always would have your little joke,” he told me, and was replacing his notebook as he got to his feet. “Looks as if I’ll be tied down to the telephone for an hour or two.”

  “The police at Penderby are handling the staff inquiry?”

  I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Later on I’m going to see your pal Store and find out if he’s shy of a cordite cartridge for a Blacker bomb.”

  I had forgotten about that cartridge that had been found among the debris beneath Staff’s floor, but I did suddenly think of something else.

  “Suppose Feeder’s retractation was genuine, George. Who else but Ferris and Feeder knew that Mortar had the bomb in his room?”

  “Why should Ferris know?”

  “I told you he was friendly with Feeder.”

  “That proves nothing,” he said. “There must have been plenty of things these three didn’t have in common.” He paused in the act of replacing his spectacles in their battered case. “And now let me put something up to you. You didn’t see why somebody should try to wipe out both Mortar and Staff, for one was a Mortarite, as you call them, and the other an anti-Mortarite. Isn’t that so?”

  “I did put up that argument,” I admitted.

  “Well, let me put something up to you. In my humble way,” he added, and I knew I was in for something unexpected. “Is it unreasonable to suppose that that bomb went off right against the partition wall?”

  “It isn’t,” I said. “For one thing we know—unless Flick stole them—that Ferris’s stamp albums were blown to smithereens.”

  “Very well then,” he said, replacing his glasses with an air of finality. “The intention was to kill both Ferris and Mortar. Ferris’s bed was alongside Mortar’s in the next room.”

  I was polishing my glasses and Wharton was regarding me quizzically as I thought that out.

  “It’s good logic,” I said at last. “But why was Staff kept in his room all night by that note?”

  “Maybe the note was a fake after all,” he said. “It existed only in Staff’s imagination. Everything’s much clearer if we assume that Staff set off the bomb.”

  “Yes, but just one minute,” I said. “Neither Ferris nor Mortar would be expected to be in their beds at so ungodly an hour as nine o’clock. They were both night birds. The Mess has to be closed at twenty-two thirty, but they were usually in there till then. Then why set off the bomb to kill one, when it was intended to kill two?”

  “Simple,” he said. “Whoever had that bomb ready to set off saw what he thought was Mortar and Ferris entering Mortar’s room soon after nine o’clock. He daren’t show himself for a good look, and that’s why he didn’t see you. By the time he’d got ready to do the job, Ferris had gone, and as he was naturally keeping himself concealed, he didn’t see him—and you—go.”

  Before I had time to ask for further enlightenment, or show a few of the holes with which that theory was riddled like a colander, he was on the move. Feeder’s description had to be circulated, for one thing, and there were the Big Bugs to ring up.

  “Just when I wanted a few minutes to get a few ideas together, too,” he said rather plaintively. “This time next week I’m supposed to be giving a lecture and I haven’t got a word down on paper.”

  “Anyone so fertile in ideas as you, George, oughtn’t to need any paper,” I told him. “And why worry about fiddling while Rome’s burning?”

  I heard his chuckle, but once more I was talking to his back. What I really knew was that the talk about that Security lecture was some sort of red herring. George had got an idea, and if so, he was already engaged in heavy camouflage work. When I next heard about it, it would be when the idea was solid fact. Even that careful selection of Staff as the principal suspect might be all eye-wash too, and indeed it probably was. Why, for instance, should the hidden watcher have mistaken three people for two? Both Ferris and I were assisting Mortar to his room, and I am a taller, and presumably more conspicuous sight than Ferris.

  Then I suddenly thought of something. Perhaps Wharton had been mercifully sparing me when he made the suggestion. Perhaps the watcher had seen three people. Among the three were Ferris and Mortar—the two he wanted. I might be there, but I didn’t count. But for having left the room with Ferris, I might have been added to the holocaust too!

  In other words, the problem now was to find a murderer who was little inclined to hold his hand for my sake. Someone who had little use for me, in fact, and there I could begin with Collect. But I didn’t go any further. To be frank, it was rather devastating to the self-esteem of one who had regarded himself as a reasonably good mixer, to have to work out a list of possibles who had found him so much a bore as to be worth no consideration in the matter of a Blacker bomb.

  Chapter XII

  At fourteen hours that afternoon I was due for my second lecture, and as one of the abominated kind of A.C.I.s had come in, with no end of deletions and amendments, I was not at all sorry to leave Wharton to his own devices, crafty a
nd otherwise. I also wrote a couple of letters in the writing-room of the Mess, and then, with half an hour to go before lunch, thought I would rest my brain by switching to the Times crossword.

  So I drew up a comfortable chair to the electric fire, got out my special pencil with the pessimist’s rubber at one end, and reached for the paper. Then I saw that Staff, as sometimes happened, had been before me and had filled in half a dozen clues. That rather put me off my stroke, for I am selfish enough to like a virgin page. In a minute or two I was laying the paper aside and my thoughts were back on the case.

  I am not going to give you a long, logical disquisition. For one thing I found myself unable to use much logic at all. All, indeed, that I could arrive at was a series of questions, and here they are as I finished writing them in my private notebook just as the lunch bugle went.

  1. Where is Feeder?

  2. Did he bolt out of fear of punishment for giving false evidence, or was he the killer?

  3. Did Brende make up the Feeder story?

  4. Where did the Mills come from that nearly got Ferris?

  5. If from Store’s magazine, has Store managed to replace it?

  6. Is he also short of a cordite cartridge?

  7. Since the cordite cartridge found beneath Staff’s floor was a live one, and therefore unconnected with the setting off of the Blacker bomb, what was its significance?

  8. Why was Collect looking for that bomb?

  9. What was Flick carrying that night?

  10. Why was Nurse Wilton hot and bothered?

  11. Did Brende keep Ferris from the burning room for fear Ferris should see something? And if so, what?

  I might have found a few more questions to add, but those are enough to be going on with, and I was cocksure enough to tell myself that their answers would be more than enough to clear up the case. I didn’t think about them after lunch because I had to have another quick look through my amended lecture. Then as I made my way to the lecture-room just ahead of the parade, Harness hailed me. All he wanted to know was, if I intended opening a private account in Peakridge as some of the other officers were doing.

  Out of that a sudden idea came to me, but I had to approach him warily.

  “Well, it’ll be good to see one’s name on a Pay List again,” I said. “Only a day or two now.”

  “I hope they’ll be prompt,” he said. “They sometimes aren’t in a new camp.”

  “It’s costing the very devil of a lot to run this show, you know,” I said. “Even the officers’ pay and allowances must come to a tidy penny every month. And most of us married too. But wait a minute, though. Staff isn’t married, or Ferris, or Flick—or Compress.”

  “Hold hard, sir,” he said. “Mr. Flick’s married. I ought to know. I sent his details to Pay Office.”

  “Foolish of me,” I said. “Somehow I got the idea he wasn’t the married kind.”

  He laughed. “He isn’t so old as you and me. He doesn’t show it yet.”

  “There’s plenty of time,” I said, and then remarked that if it weren’t October I should have said we were in for snow. Then we went our respective ways, and I had to forget all about Flick, for when men are as keen as our Home Guard men, it is hard enough to give a lecture at any time, let alone be ready with answers to the questions that follow. But that afternoon lecture was my worst, for a hungry morning made men eat everything in sight, and my experience of the first Course had warned me that they might be somewhat somnolent unless my lecture was sufficiently enlivening to keep them awake. The hard seats wouldn’t be enough to do that, for if you have imagined them as hard, then you’ve wasted your sympathy. Each, in fact, was provided with an additional seat of very thick Sorbo rubber, which made them even more conducive to sleep.

  However, we got through it, and then as I at last emerged from the lecture-room I saw George coming across the parade ground, and headed him off.

  “Everything been going all right?” I asked him.

  “Can’t grumble,” he told me, “The Sapper’s report’s come in, by the way. No doubt about it being a Blacker bomb.”

  “And where’re you bound for now?”

  The post office, he said, to try to check up on registered letters. I remembered that my two letters were in my tunic pocket, so there was an excuse to accompany him. As a matter of fact everything turned out too easy. In the camp post office they kept a record of registered letters and parcels, so there was nothing to do but look through the list. The system was that all such registered mails were sent in a special bag to Peakridge, who did the official stamping and then returned the receipt to the camp, where it was later handed to the sender. In any case the camp list did not include the name of a single officer of the staff.

  “That’s that,” I said to George when we came out.

  He halted a moment, looked up at the sky, then gave a preliminary grunt.

  “Feel like a bit of fresh air? I thought I might as well run down to Peakridge.”

  “A walk might do us both good,” I said.

  “Walk, my foot!” he said, or words to that effect, and went off to order the car.

  It was a bitter cold day with a gusty wind from the north-east, and I remember that when we passed a haystack on the right of the road, the wind was playing Old Harry with the thatch. As we drew into the town—I was driving, by the way—I saw what looked like a drill hall, and on it some notices relating to the local Home Guard. I drew the car up at the side of the road. George was asking what the idea was.

  Just as I finished telling him, I had a bit of luck, for behind that drill hall I caught sight of a man digging the garden. Something in his face seemed familiar, and men with short clipped beards are getting none too common. Out of the car I got, George at my heels, and through the gate and along the grass path. The man straightened his back from the digging, had a look at me and then smiled.

  “Hallo, sir. Having a holiday?”

  “I thought I recognised you,” I said. “You’re the platoon sergeant who attended our first course from Peakridge, aren’t you?”

  I remembered him because he had buttonholed me with a question that had taken some answering. At once he began scraping the soil off his boots.

  “Like to see our drill hall, sir?”

  I said we would, and introduced Wharton. When we had seen what there was to see and learned something of the local training, Ponter—that was his name—asked if anything had ever been discovered about that Mills that had almost scuppered Mr. Ferris. I said the culprit had never owned up.

  “It’s a funny thing, you know, sir,” he said, “but when we had a check up of our Millses the other day we found we were one short. I wangled it on the books, but it’s lucky the Company Commander didn’t know.” Then he explained why. “Everyone here got to know about that affair at the school and as I was the one to go to it from here, they might have thought I was the one who’d been up to monkey tricks.”

  “I can assure you that none of us ever thought such a thing,” I said. “Where is your magazine, by the way?”

  “It’s only just been laid down that we’ve got to have a special magazine,” he said. “Till they build it, we’re making do with the old one. On top of the garage there.”

  It was always kept locked, he said, and being slap up against his house, was little likely to be burgled. I didn’t say so, but I thought his missus must sleep uneasily at night if enemy planes were over. What I did say was that Store would give him a few tips on the running of magazines.

  “He came along one evening and helped us no end,” he said.

  “When was that?”

  “When I was on the Course,” he said. “He and I walked down one evening. He showed our chaps how to keep the Millses oiled and made us keep the Molotoffs up the garden.” He smiled. “Gave us a rare nice talk, he did.”

  We pottered round for a few minutes longer, then said good-bye. When we were in the car again I couldn’t help feeling gratified.

  “There was a stro
ke of luck, George. The first thing we’ve really been sure of in this inquiry. Now we know where that Mills came from that was meant to get Ferris.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” George said. “All we know is that Store lost one from the magazine and took steps to replace it. Who took it from Store? Tell me that.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t taken,” I said. “Maybe Store obliged a pal—Brende, for instance.”

  “Much more likely that Store had it taken when his back was turned. Didn’t you prove it could be done?”

  “Sorry, George,” I said ironically. “I was only doing my best. All the same I hardly think that would explain the startled look Store gave me when I produced those two bombs from my pockets.”

  “Of course it would,” he said. “He wondered if you’d rumbled him, didn’t he? Thought you might have got wind about his coming along here and lifting one of Ponter’s bombs to make good the deficiency. You’d better hurry up, by the way. I might have to be a long while in that post office.”

  We were to be much longer than he thought. The post-master was fetched and Wharton presented his credentials and asked to be shown a record of all registered packages and letters. The postmaster seemed a bit reluctant, but at last produced it. We had a good look through, but found nothing of any use. Wharton tried another tack. Flick was most carefully described, and the date of dispatch was limited to the Saturday of the explosion, and the following Monday.

  The assistant who had been on duty on the Saturday was now off duty. Later she might have to be fetched, Wharton said, but in the meanwhile he would like to interrogate the one who had been on duty on the Monday. She seemed a bright sort of person, but could only shake her head at Wharton’s description of Flick.

  “You see, we have such a lot of troops about here,” she said, and looked at the postmaster for confirmation. “There’s the Brigade just outside the town and men always on leave. You see so many it’s hard to remember any particular one.”

  “Were you on duty on the Monday at about half-past two?” I asked, for I had suddenly remembered something. When I had the car drawn up at the florist’s where I was collecting the wreaths, Feeder had got out of the lorry too. When I was coming out of the florist’s I had seen him coming out of the post office, which was only two doors away. Her face lighted up when I described Feeder. Not only was he the kind of person one would never be likely to forget but it also appeared he was a garrulous soul and he had told her he was going to his Captain’s funeral. He was still giving her an account of Mortar’s life and adventures when his parcel was stamped and she had had to get rid of him tactfully because of a waiting customer.