The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Get the car, will you? You’ll find it round by the main gate. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  It wasn’t as quick as that, but in less than five minutes we were on our way to Peakridge, and George at last was spilling all the beans.

  “I had my eye on Master Ferris from the first,” he began.

  “George,” I cut in. “I’m only too anxious to hear your story, but if anybody else made that opening statement I’d call him a liar.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Whenever we begin a case and you start telling me that So-and-so couldn’t possibly have done something, he’s the one I look out for.”

  “You’re quibbling,” I said. “You had inside information before you got down here at all. You knew Ferris beforehand.”

  “No I didn’t,” he said. “I knew no more than I told you. You drive this car and let me do the talking.”

  So I kept my mouth shut and he got going. In Ireland, he said, they knew all about that attack of many years before, when a rebel headquarters had been blown up, though they didn’t know the name of the Black and Tan officer who had done it even if they suspected that his detachment had been operating from as far afield as Mallanaghar. What mattered was that the house blown up was a place known as Kildurin Lodge, and it had been officially occupied at the time by a Hernando Ferrova and his wife and two young children. Ferrova was a Spanish engineer who was engaged on irrigation work for the Government. His other son, Manuel, happened to be staying with nearby friends at the time. Ferrova’s wife was English, though of Irish extraction, and the whole family perished in the explosion, together with all the Republicans who had made the Lodge their headquarters.

  Manuel went to Liverpool to live with his mother’s only sister. When she died he went to his father’s people in Spain. Later he returned to England and did journalistic work, and also became naturalised. That was his history as far as it could be traced, except, of course, that he had done exceptionally well in the war in Spain, and that after that war the War Office had thought him a useful man to employ. Ferrova changed his name to Ferris, and was apparently willing enough. Probably his aunt had impressed that tragedy of his youth on his mind, but if he had been brought up by her to make revenge his life’s ambition, then that ambition must have dulled, for it is hard work maintaining a hatred for a man whose very name you do not know and who might have been dead for years.

  “He doubtless still had it in mind though,” Wharton said. “You remember how he always laid his hatred of Germans against the door of what they’d done to Spain, not what’d they done to England. You told me you found that curious. Well, perhaps he hated the English far less than he did the Germans, and that was why he was willing to show the English how to kill Germans.

  “Then he came down here and found out that Mortar was the one who had wiped out his family. I’d say he made himself even more friendly with Mortar and Feeder, and got the whole story out of them, and when he was plumb sure, he made up his mind to get rid of them. He was going to blow Mortar to hell, just as his own father had been killed. I’d say that Northover affair was his first attempt. Brende swore it was his gun, you remember, and Ferris heard Mortar’s boast about throwing away a Mills. When that attempt failed, Ferris covered it up with an attempt on himself. He lifted a Mills from the magazine and fixed the booby-trap overnight. He knew where the string was and you bet he had his eyes on it while he walked and talked.”

  “I ought to have known that,” I had to cut in. “That explanation he gave for the Mills was far too pat. And it was amazing he should throw himself on the ground just at the right fraction of a second.

  “Even when I’d worked all that out on my way back from Ireland,” George went on, “I still knew I hadn’t much of a case, though I had a first-class motive. Everything was deduction and there wasn’t a vast amount of circumstantial evidence, even including the fact that Store had missed a Mills. Still, I told the Powers-that-Be just how things were and how I thought it best to lay a trap for Ferris. They gave me a free hand at once.

  “Then after I’d left them I got some more news. He must have made up his mind to kill Mortar on the Saturday, and not before. It was Mortar’s birthday and Ferris saw how he could make everything fit in, especially if Feeder were out of the way and Mortar were really tight. On the Saturday, then, he had the bomb ready, and he removed his stamps; but he couldn’t send them away till the Monday because he daren’t run the risk of posting in camp, and he couldn’t get away to Peakridge. So he got Feeder to post the parcel for him on the Monday. Feeder, like Mortar, was absolutely under his thumb, and he told them to keep it all very secret. The parcel was actually sent to a friend of Ferris’s, now in the Service. This friend has a safe deposit box in town and Ferris asked him to put the parcel in it for him.

  “Ferris got Staff to keep in his room partly to incriminate him and also to know just where he was at the vital time. He also had lifted a cordite cartridge which he chucked in the ruins the next morning to bring Staff still more in. He also threw suspicion on Flick, whom you saw carrying something past the hut that night.

  “As for Feeder, his number was up as soon as you offered to take him on as batman. Ferris didn’t dare have him in your company, where he might spill the beans about that Irish affair. Feeder was money for jam. He wasn’t too strong on brains, as you know, and all Ferris had to do was make out he knew who’d killed Mortar, and he could get Feeder to do anything to wipe the killer out. So Ferris got him to lift a gun and spin that yarn to Brende about Mortar having the bomb in his room. Perhaps Ferris hoped we’d abandon the inquiry when Feeder’s yarn to Brende made the whole thing out as an accident. Then he got Feeder to meet him at the stack, and that was that, except that he slipped up on too many things.”

  That was all at the moment, for we were coming into Peakridge. At the police station George nipped out and I parked the car. When I walked in there was no sign of him, but they put me in a room with a fire and I had a half-hour to wait. When he found me he said everything was done and we might as well be getting back.

  “How was Ferris?” I asked him.

  “Not in very good shape,” he said. “Brende gave him a hell of a wallop on the skull with that Indian club. His leg’s pretty bad, too, where the blast caught it.”

  I began putting on my British warm again. “It’s funny about Ferris, George? I still can’t think for the life of me how he managed to kill Mortar without giving the show away to me. It couldn’t have been a time bomb, for I’d have heard the clock or the mechanism ticking. If it’d been a booby-trap, there’d have been a risk of my moving about in Mortar’s room and setting it off. And Ferris was as natural as you and I are at this moment.”

  “You mean to say you don’t know how it was done?” he said, peering at me from under his shaggy eyebrows.

  “I’ve just told you so.”

  He chuckled. “So the Old Gent’s one up on you, is he?”

  Then he was making free use of the telephone that stood on the side table. It connected apparently with the main office, for he was asking to be put on to the school.

  “Yes,” he said. “Ask for Quartermaster-Sergeant Store. Say it’s urgent.”

  Then he was telling me to get the car round to the front. It was a palpable excuse to get me out of the room so that I should not hear what he was concocting with Store, not that I minded about that. So I went out to the car, and then as my hand fell on the ice-cold metal of the door handle, something flashed into my mind—that nightmare that had kept me awake for best part of a night. The Yard expert had reported that at the time of the explosion Mortar had been on his back!

  As I waited in the car for George I began to put things together. It was a quarter of an hour’s wait and long before it was over I thought I knew just how Mortar had been killed. The devilish ingenuity of it was making me wince and I was glad when George at last appeared. He was so obviously pleased with himself at what he had been arranging with Store
that not for the world would I have spoiled his fun. When he told me to drive slowly I knew that something was being prepared against my return, and I was also remembering something about which I as yet knew little.

  “What was the trap you laid for Ferris?” I asked.

  “Oh, that,” said George. “The first thing was to connect up with Store by telephone so that Store couldn’t have been seen reporting anything to me or Harness. Later on I had to take Brende into my confidence and arrange for him to place a picked lot of men. I got Flick and Staff out of the way with a job of work in the stores, and I induced the Colonel and Collect to attend Compress’s lecture. Nurse Wilton would be there in any case. Then I got the camp Quartermaster to make me that metal black-out arrangement. At a suitable time I sent for Ferris, and I don’t mind telling you I had my gun handy while he was in the room. As soon as he came in I drew the black-out curtains, and rather carelessly, so as to impress on his mind that there was nothing between us and the outside air but a sheet of glass and a bit of thin, black material. I sat with my back to the window and said I was sorry to trouble him; in fact I wouldn’t keep him at all, but there was an official communication I’d like him to read in his own room. He took the envelope, gave me a queer look, and out he went.

  “When he read that communication he had a shock. I talked a lot of balderdash about friendship, and my young nephew and so on, and said nobody knew a word but myself, and I shouldn’t spill the beans till after dinner that night. Then I told him more or less what I’d discovered, and that gave him two choices—to bolt or to wipe me out before I told what I knew. He did what I expected, that is, he tried to get me.

  “No sooner did he leave my room than I slipped the metal sheet under the curtain. The corner was purposely cut off so that anyone could just see in from outside. Then I rigged up a tunic with an arm nicely visible from outside. When Store rang me up to say that Ferris had been to the magazine and gone again in a hurry after being in the neighbourhood of the Millses I slipped into your room, coming round the back way.

  “You know what happened. Ferris slipped on a mask—the one he’d probably made for attacking Collect and keeping his mouth shut—and moved out to reconnoitre. A quick peep showed me still at my table, so he stepped back, pulled out the pin, let the lever go and waited two seconds before smashing the bomb through the window. That required some nerve, and he had it. What he didn’t know was that the metal sheet made the bomb come back at him. It didn’t kill him but it made his leg a nasty mess. Even so he tried to bolt, but unluckily for him he ran slap into Brende with that Indian club.”

  That was Wharton’s story, and it may have read a bit academic, for I haven’t told it in his own words. You have also had to imagine the derisive chuckles, the triumphant snortings, and the calculated deprecations. There was more such to follow when we got out of the car and he announced meekly—and as I had anticipated—that there was something he wanted in my room. He wouldn’t keep me a minute, he said, for he had endless telephoning to do. He wouldn’t even be able to get along to dinner but would have something sent to his room. He kept prattling on till we were at the hut and it was too late for me to do any talking or even interpose a question. Store was waiting there.

  “There you are then, Store,” he said mildly. “Come along in, will you? Major Travers wants us to show him something.”

  I realised that I must have left the door unlocked. Store switched on the light and I simulated an enormous surprise.

  “What the devil’s been happening to my room?”

  “Just rigging it up like Captain Mortar’s room was that night,” Store told me, with a look at Wharton as if to put the blame on him.

  It was a good imitation at least. The camp bed was by the partition, the chair just inside the door and my trunk near the end of the bed. Probably there were wires artistically hidden, but I daren’t look for fear of giving the game away.

  “Remember to keep your mouth shut about this,” Wharton said, and wagged a monitory finger at Store. “Now this is what happened. You and Ferris left Mortar on that chair. What he was going to do ultimately was to get into bed, and the time-interval gave Ferris time to get away, and you with him. He didn’t want anything to happen to you because you were the sole support of his alibi. Right, then. Mortar did get into bed, and we know by some of the fibres that were in his remains that he must have stripped at once and put on his pyjamas. You get on the bed yourself and lie down just as he did.”

  “No booby-traps?” I felt compelled to say.

  He snorted contemptuously, so I made no more ado but went through the motions of getting into bed, just as I was. I pulled down the blankets, sat down gingerly and then shot out my whole length. The bed creaked and sagged, and at once there was a pop?

  “Good Lord!” I said, as I hopped out. “What was that?”

  George was chuckling away and digging Store in the ribs. “You ought to thank heaven it wasn’t a Mills,” he told me. “Remember asking Store to make you a gadget like the one he showed us? This is it. He had it all ready.” The gadget was simplicity itself; just a piece of rounded wood like a piece of broomstick, stuck in a tin which exactly fitted it. At its bottom was metal to which wires were soldered, and they were connected with a baby detonator. When Mortar was blown up similar wires had been connected to the detonator of the Blacker bomb. At the bottom of the tin were more wires connected with the power-plug of the electric stove, and all one had to do was leave a good space between the bottom of the wooden stick and the bottom of the tin, and everything was perfectly safe. Ferris put the whole contraption under Mortar’s bed, with the top of the stick—which might be called the plunger—in actual contact with the wire mattress of the camp bed, so that everything was held in place.

  When Mortar got into bed, then you can see what happened. The wire mattress would creak and sag, and when his full weight was on it, it would press down the plunger and make contact. Off would go the bomb, and, since the home-made plunger was set close up against the bomb, it would be blown to powder and never a trace of it would ever be found.

  I pretended to be suitably overcome at the discovery, and Store was thanked and departed with his contraption, Wharton asking him to have it handy in case he wanted to borrow it again.

  “That was a hellish cold-blooded business, George,” I couldn’t help saying.

  “He was a hellish cold-blooded chap,” Wharton said. “Everything he did was sheer devilish calculation. If he hadn’t killed Feeder, or if he’d sacrificed his precious stamps, we’d never have found him out.” He shook his head. “He was like Hitler and the Dictators. Couldn’t afford to be static. Mind you, I believe he intended to kill both Mortar and Feeder in any case. Both had been concerned in killing his own parents, and Feeder was due to be polished off even before you offered to take him on as batman. Then there was Collect to be wiped out because he knew too much, and then I had to be wiped out. You’d have been too, if I hadn’t warned you.”

  “Maybe I would,” I said. “But I think Ferris spared me because I was such an obvious fool. I honestly was a fool,” I went on. “I ought to have seen a dozen things that I missed. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, except perhaps this. Even my brains aren’t what they were. When you spend your time trying to keep up with Army Council amendments and deletions, you suffer from chronic thinkers’ cramp. Those three lectures of mine are pretty hard work.

  “What’s up now?” I asked, for he was staring.

  “I just remembered,” he said. “That lecture of mine.”

  “Yes,” I said, with as much regret as I could summon. “In the morning I suppose you’ll be away and gone. That lecture was down for the afternoon.”

  “Oh?” he said, and glared at me. “Why should I be away and gone? I’m down for the lecture, aren’t I?”

  “George,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re going to waste the taxpayers’ money again? Flying about all over the place in aeroplanes, and now clinging on here and taking a
holiday and making out it’s to do with a lecture.”

  He chuckled, and then his face straightened and he was giving me another stare. “What do you mean, keeping me here talking? Haven’t I got enough work to do to keep me up half the night.”

  Muttering to himself he went off. I reorganised the room to my liking, and before I had half finished the job I could think of several things to which I should like to find answers. But the answers were not to come till the morning.

  Epilogue

  In the morning George was closeted with the Colonel before breakfast and he didn’t come in for his meal till I had almost finished mine. After breakfast Harness sent round a chit to be signed by all officers of the staff, as well as Brende and Store: the Colonel’s compliments and he would be glad if all the undermentioned would make it convenient to attend Captain Wharton’s lecture at fifteen hours.

  Now I knew that George had an exceedingly agile mind, yet I was very much alarmed. Everything in the Army had altered since his day. I had read scores of secret and other documents on Security, as well as A.C.I.s, none of which had been or were now available for him; how on earth he was going to deliver a lecture on Security fairly beat me. If I had to give one myself I calculated I should need all the documents and a week’s research.

  At what I thought might be a suitable time I went to his room, and there he was, undoubtedly preparing his lecture. He looked, in fact, rather like a backward urchin making his first attempt at a subtraction sum, except that he wasn’t actually licking his pencil. “Anything I can do to help, George?” I said.

  I had never seen him look so exasperated.

  “Anyone’d think there wasn’t a war till this one. What do you know about Security in any case?”

  “All right, George,” I said. “I’ll go quietly—if you’ll tell me just one thing. Why did you take Maisie to the cinema that night? You needn’t glare and you needn’t deny it,” I went on. “Why did you take her to the pictures?”