Then he pretended he’d just remembered. “Oh, that,” he said. “Just thought I’d let her know Flick was married, so as to see how she took it.”
“I see,” I said. “And you tried to pump her afterwards. You took advantage of her indignation.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “I didn’t get anything out of her, if that’s what you want to know.”
“Well, you’ve queered Flick’s pitch,” I said, recalling the brief scene at the hospital corner. “I don’t think he’ll be taking her out to the long grass any more. You’re sure I can’t help you, George?”
He gave me such a look that I left him hurriedly. In the Mess Shorty made me some coffee; while I was drinking it, who should come in but Collect, all dressed up. Out went his hand.
“Here you are then,” he said. “I was looking for you to say good-bye. Just off to the War Office.”
I shook hands and wished him the best of luck. As I came out with him, on a very sudden impulse I asked him a question.
“Tell me something, Collect, will you, and in the strictest confidence. You saw Ferris looking for that bomb, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, looking rather surprised.
“I saw you looking for it,” I told him. “Ever since then I’ve wondered why.”
He smiled a bit sheepishly, and was still hesitating. “Well,” he said. “I hardly expect you will believe me, but this is why. Everybody said it was dangerous to look for it, so I thought it might be a feather in my cap if I located it. I was getting a bit tired of hearing about fighting soldiers so I wanted to show them what an old veteran could do.”
“Splendid,” I said. “I wish to heaven you had found it.”
Off he went to the waiting car and somehow I was feeling far more kindly disposed towards him, and not because he was leaving us. Part was due to a species of shame at my having doubted his word about that attack, and I actually found myself wishing that the War House would find him a snug appointment among the elect, where camouflage was a thing one read about and the presence of a Blacker bomb would have caused a panic. Not a bad sort in his way, old Collect.
There was still another question to be answered, and that answer came towards the end of the morning. Everybody was on the ranges, and when I looked in the lecture-room nobody was there but Flick, tinkering with the cinema projector. He came over to me at once.
“Is it true now, Major,” he said, “what everyone’s saying, that Ferris bumped off Mortar?”
I frowned heavily and mentioned something about confidential information.
“Ah, now, Major,” he told me cajolingly. “You know I’d never be after telling a word.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I’ll swop information with you, for I’ll never be after telling a word either, bedad. You tell me first what it was that you were carrying that Saturday night when you left Maisie Wilton and came round by the end of the hut.”
He stared. “Carrying something?”
“Yes,” I said. “Ferris and I saw you. He tried to make out it was his two books of stamps you’d lifted from his room.”
“Did he,” he said. “The dirty unmentionable.”
He scowled ferociously, shaking his head again. “I’ll tell you what it was I was carrying,” he said, and picked up two of the Sorbo seats. “Keep that to yourself, Major, or I’m ruined entirely.” Then he winked. “The country round here is a bit hard on the backside.”
I smiled, for I knew why Maisie Wilton had been so hot and bothered when I asked what Flick had been carrying. “I see. One for you and one for the lady. Sure you took two and not one?”
“Sure it was two,” he said, putting them back on their chairs. But he said nothing about hoping there’d only be one some other time. I told him just a little about Ferris and left him with his eyes popping. As I made my way across the parade ground, I couldn’t help thinking that Flick, too, was not such a bad chap after all. Besides, wasn’t he, with myself, the sole remaining representative of the Not-so-Regulars?
Well, fifteen hours came at last and there was a full gathering, with the Colonel occupying the front pew, and I at his elbow. Wharton was absolutely in his element. Flick had done something to the lights that made them more concentrated on the platform, and much as I feared for the up-to-dateness and even usefulness of George’s matter, I knew that he knew that he was having the chance of his life.
When he did get on his pins, he swindled all of us, as I might have known he would have done. He had donned his antiquated glasses, and he peered at us from over their tops. A pin could have been heard to fall.
“I regret to say, gentlemen, that I have been called away by the War Office on another appointment, and so this will be my first and last lecture. Under the circumstances I thought it best not to deliver one of those official talks I had prepared, all dry as dust and up-to-date, so perhaps you’ll forgive me if I try to be interesting instead.”
And straightaway he was back at the days when he was an Intelligence Officer on the Western Front. I heard for the umpteenth time the story of the German spy, but the audience lapped it up, as I did the first time I heard it. There were the other spy stories and even glimpses of the Special Branch, and altogether his lecture was a riot. The Colonel told me afterwards that Wharton was just the man the school needed, and I heard Staff say languidly to Flick; “Well, he mayn’t be orthodox, but he can certainly spin a damn’ good yarn.”
At the very end George conformed to precedent and asked his audience if there were any questions. I had a perfect snorter on the tip of my tongue, and one that would have tied even him in the very devil of a knot. But I didn’t ask it. I even joined vociferously in the final applause. After all we democrats have to stand by each other.
About The Author
Christopher Bush was born Charlie Christmas Bush in Norfolk in 1885. His father was a farm labourer and his mother a milliner. In the early years of his childhood he lived with his aunt and uncle in London before returning to Norfolk aged seven, later winning a scholarship to Thetford Grammar School.
As an adult, Bush worked as a schoolmaster for 27 years, pausing only to fight in World War One, until retiring aged 46 in 1931 to be a full-time novelist. His first novel featuring the eccentric Ludovic Travers was published in 1926, and was followed by 62 additional Travers mysteries. These are all to be republished by Dean Street Press.
Christopher Bush fought again in World War Two, and was elected a member of the prestigious Detection Club. He died in 1973.
By Christopher Bush
and available from Dean Street Press
The Plumley Inheritance
The Perfect Murder Case
Dead Man Twice
Murder at Fenwold
Dancing Death
Dead Man’s Music
Cut Throat
The Case of the Unfortunate Village
The Case of the April Fools
The Case of the Three Strange Faces
The Case of the 100% Alibis
The Case of the Dead Shepherd
The Case of the Chinese Gong
The Case of the Monday Murders
The Case of the Bonfire Body
The Case of the Missing Minutes
The Case of the Hanging Rope
The Case of the Tudor Queen
The Case of the Leaning Man
The Case of the Green Felt Hat
The Case of the Flying Donkey
The Case of the Climbing Rat
The Case of the Murdered Major
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel
The Case of the Fighting Soldier
The Case of the Magic Mirror
The Case of the Running Mouse
The Case of the Platinum Blonde
The Case of the Corporal’s Leave
The Case of the Missing Men
Christopher Bush
The Case of the Magic Mirror
“Good God!” I was staring like a lunatic. “Murdered, y
ou say? When?”
“Less than half an hour ago, sir.”
TRAVERS: “I don’t know why I should call this case that of the Magic Mirror for there’s nothing in it reminiscent of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” even if the mirror did do a certain amount of magical revelation.
“As a matter of fact the title is my obstinate own. In the first place, of the many murder cases with which I have been officially connected, this one which I am about to relate was easily the most unusual. On the face of it one could at first hardly call it a case at all, for its solution presented no difficulties. Then curious doubts arose, and the obvious was far from what it seemed, and finally the whole thing seemed incapable of any solution at all. Then when the solution did come, it was so absurdly simple that one doubted one’s sanity for not having seen it from the very first.”
The Case of the Magic Mirror was originally published in 1943. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
I
THE MUSIC GOES ROUND
CHAPTER I
CHELMSFORD ASSIZES
I don’t know why I should call this case that of the Magic Mirror for there’s nothing in it reminiscent of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” even if the mirror did do a certain amount of magical revelation. I suppose I might have called the book anything: “The Case of the Engine-driver’s Nephew,” for instance, since Harper’s uncle was an engine-driver.
As a matter of fact the title is my obstinate own, and I’m unconcerned as to whether or not you find it apposite. This book, you see, is my own peculiar property in various unusual ways. In the first place, of the many murder cases with which I have been officially connected, this one which I am about to relate was easily the most unusual. On the face of it one could at first hardly call it a case at all, for its solution presented no difficulties. Then curious doubts arose, and the obvious was far from what it seemed, and finally the whole thing seemed incapable of any solution at all. Then when the solution did come, it was so absurdly simple that one doubted one’s sanity for not having seen it from the very first.
Now if you are a connoisseur in murder stories you will say that there is nothing unusual in all I have said, since I have merely repeated the pattern of every intriguing case. If you do say that, then I must try to give additional proof of my statements, and the easiest way is to issue a challenge. This is it. In the following paragraph is the germ of that simple solution; enough material, in fact, to allow you to solve the whole thing well before the last page and to prove yourself more agile in deduction than those of us whose professional job it was to do the solving. Here is the paragraph, then, and remember, one paragraph only.
This is the year 1943, and this book will deal with events that took place mainly in 1939. In the spring of 1942 I had an accident at the Camp where I hold a War Office appointment of sorts—nothing very serious beyond a lump of shrapnel from a premature bomb, but there had to be an operation and then two months’ convalescence. To pass the time I thought I would do some writing, and it was this particular case about which I at last made up my mind to write, and for this main reason. In spite of the war and various financial shocks I am lucky enough to be still very far from destitute, but nevertheless I am a cantankerous person in many ways where money is concerned. I hate seeing good money go down the drain, and more than once I had thought ruefully of the perfectly good money I had spent over the solving of that case. That is why I had quite a thrill when I decided to write this book and get some at least of the money back.
So much for that, except that it involves some new explanation. Since you have probably studied that last paragraph with a certain care you will wonder why I hesitated about writing the book. There are various reasons, and none redound to my credit. For the first time in any murder case I had to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, which meant that I had to double-cross George Wharton. I had to submit to blackmail, and I persisted in being a moral coward. In fact, in the hackneyed words of the poet, I knew what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. The more I became involved, the harder it was to disentangle myself, and from certain dry comments which my wife occasionally lets fall, I doubt if I have wholly disentangled myself even at this date. All of which goes to prove what I said at the beginning, that the case was the most unusual in my reasonably large experience, and I will further add that I hope to heaven it will be a long time before I get myself involved in one that even remotely resembles it.
One last thing that made me decide to write this book, or rather seemed to set me free to write it, was that when I was tottering on the verge of decision I saw in a casualty list from Libya that Frank Tarling was missing, believed killed. Not that there is anything that redounds to Frank’s discredit. Far from it, for he was as good a man at his job as I am ever likely to see.
The story really begins before my marriage, but that piece of hectic revelation had better be deferred till Charlotte appears in person. The vital beginning was in the autumn of 1937, at Chelmsford Assizes, with Sivley’s scream from the dock when he heard his sentence. Before he was hustled below he got out no more than two or three sentences, but they were enough to set the murder train in motion.
I was at the Assizes and with George Wharton—Superintendent Wharton of Scotland Yard, where both awe and affection have nicknamed him the Old General. George figures very largely in this story, so in case you do not know him, here is a brief description. About his outward appearance everything is contradictory, and no man could look less like one of what is popularly known as the Big Four. He is tall and burly, but disguises that with something of a stoop. His huge walrus moustache and his antiquated spectacles give him the look of a harassed paterfamilias, or a hawker of vacuum cleaners with whom trade could not conceivably be worse. All that is part of his technique, for his back can be ramrod straight when wrath or indignation or excitement makes him forget the pose, and since he can read the smallest print with the best of us, the spectacles are donned for his own obscure and deceptive purposes.
For George is a showman who is the master of his art. His sleeves are crammed with innumerable tricks and his personality vivid with innumerable disguises to be assumed on each apt occasion.
George was going to Chelmsford Assizes to hold a special watching brief; not that the Jupiter Case, as the public knew it, was any new development in crime. It was merely a slightly new twist to a very old trick—that of swindling the bookies by faking the times of telegrams. George told me that he was going and I suddenly decided to go too, though that was on the last day of a trial that had lasted three days. He called for me at my flat in St. Martin’s Chambers and it was in my car that we drove.
“Why exactly did you want to come along to-day?” George asked mildly, and then with a sarcastic pursing of his lips: “Wanted a little cheap excitement—eh? Been reading the popular papers.”
“Maybe, George,” I said. “But there’s a lot more in it than that.”
As he badgered me I told him some of the reasons, and they were all connected with only one of the four accused—Rupert Craigne, or “Jupiter” Craigne, as he was nicknamed after the smashing success of Trouble on Olympus. But two things I did not tell George—the main reason why I was going and the reason why I had not been present on the previous two days.
“Craigne and I were at school together,” I began.
“You were!” said George incredulously. “What was he like there? As full of swank and conceit?”
“Not excessively,” I said. “He was extraordinarily clever in a meretricious kind of way, and I never quite trusted him. He was erratic and very much out for self. Even in those days he hogged the limelight. Not that he had any need to, for he was a born actor.”
I told George how Rupert Craigne and I had met frequently after the war, and how I had put a considerable sum into one of his early shows, and had done well out of it. I had had the chance of putting money into Trouble on Olympus but had not
taken it.
“Not like you, missing a chance like that?” George said. “You’d have made a packet. That play ran two years, didn’t it?”
“It did,” I said, “but I’m not sorry. You see, I didn’t like the way Craigne was shaping, even then. His mannerisms happened to fit that play and his Jupiter, of course, was really superb. but he’d begun to live far above his means and he’d got in with the wrong set. If he made a penny out of Trouble on Olympus, he made a clear fifteen thousand pounds. Not bad money for two years, and yet you know, as I know, that he was always hard up.”
“Well, it’s all over with him now,” was George’s opinion.
“I read the accounts in the Press, but what’s your personal view of his defence? You were there, and you know how differently things read in print.”
“Pitiful,” George said. “And despicable. Tried to make out he was the tool of others, and, above all, of Sivley. Said he didn’t know the scheme was other than genuine. And that for a man who kept a racehorse or two.”
“What an attraction the turf has,” I couldn’t help saying. “As soon as a certain class of people make money, they get hold of a horse or two and before they know it they’re in it up to the neck. Nineteen times out of twenty they burn their fingers good and proper.”
“Flashy,” George said. “That’s them, and that’s Craigne all over. Spending money like water. The best of everything for himself and his pals. Two thousand guineas for a colt that was knocked down last March for a couple of hundred. All his bets in hundreds, so I’m told. Only one good thing about him, so they say. He didn’t run any women. Stuck to his wife, though they say she’s left him. Handsome woman. She was in court yesterday. Someone pointed her out to me.”
I hope I didn’t blush, but I did change the conversation.
“By the way, what’s your special interest in this affair, George?”
The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 24
