But I wasn’t giving myself a headache over that. I was congratulating myself on having got out of an awkward fix. I might not be clean out but at least I had gained time, and I was sufficiently sure of my mental dexterity to have no qualms about justifying myself when the showdown came that evening.
And there was no denying the fact that I had been undeservedly lucky. First, Galley had been too busy to ask me to give an account of everything that had happened on my arrival at the house and when he had had the time, then Chevalle had turned up. He had been busy too, and then, just when I had sensed that he was about to ask me for a statement, I had taken the wind out of his sails by that hocus-pocus about Temple and Miss Smith.
Not that Chevalle had a monopoly of bewilderments. There were the devil of a lot of things I couldn’t understand. Take the time of the murder, for an example. Maddon struck me as one who’d sit up late and rise very late. Mrs. Beaney, for instance, came to clean up in the afternoons. Yet he had been up and fully dressed—not too meticulously I admit—at well before six o’clock that morning. Admitted that the absence of dirty china showed that he had had no morning meal. But what of the lady? She must have been up even earlier, for she had had to come from somewhere.
Then suddenly I stopped in my tracks. Wouldn’t it fit the case better to assume that the lady had arrived the previous night? That Maddon might or might not have met Porle at eleven o’clock as the notice on the door had insisted, did not much affect things, for the lady might have been in bed and asleep by then. But in the morning she might have had to be up and away, and Maddon had got up too, intending to get breakfast. Maybe some of those cigarettes had been smoked the previous night.
I liked that theory, even if it did conflict with something which you may have spotted for yourself. But it wasn’t an urgent theory needing immediate testing. Bernard Temple and Pyramid Porle were far more urgent, and strangely enough it was Porle who intrigued me most. He had been far too good a prophet for my liking. It takes a hell of a lot of knowledge, and inside knowledge at that, to predict the night a man’s soul may be violently required of him.
It was well after eleven o’clock, but I knew I’d have ample time to get back for a one-o’clock lunch. I stepped out, nevertheless, along that path to the village, and as I walked I noticed how easy it was to conceal one’s movements. The tall, sheltering hedges of hop gardens were often on both sides of me, and the hedges of fields and meadows were interspersed with oaks, and tall enough for concealment if one cared to stoop. The path went uphill and down and twisted round, but the last two hundred yards were straighter and more level, and I kept my eyes about me as I neared Temple’s garden. But he wasn’t there and I knocked at the front door. The chances, I thought, were well against his being in, but almost at once I heard a movement inside the house.
It was he who opened the door, and he stared at me for a moment, trying evidently to place me. The previous evening I had been reasonably well dressed and had worn a rather chic grey hat, but in a second he had spotted me and was giving that dental smile and bowing slightly from the waist up.
“Major Travers, isn’t it?”
“Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Temple,” I said, “but I rather wanted to ask you something about war savings generally. My sister didn’t know, but I thought you would.”
“Come in, sir. Come in.” He was ushering me with waving hands into a cosy little room on my right. Through a door on the left I caught sight of an elderly woman peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.
“Sit down, sir. Sit down. Sorry I can’t offer you a drink. Unless it’s not too early for whisky?”
“It is too early,” I said. “Even if it weren’t I’d never drink a man’s liquor in war-time. By the way, I caught sight of you this morning, but I was too late to catch you up.”
“Of me?” he said. “But I haven’t been out of the house this morning. Where did you think you saw me?”
“Coming by the garden gate of Ringlands,” I said. “Sorry, I must have been mistaken. A pretty fool I’d have looked if I’d gone chasing some stranger.”
He forced a chuckle at that and I weighed in with some footling question about interest on Defence Bonds and whether it could be left at compound interest in Treasury Bonds and with no payment of income tax. Very patiently he showed me the various fallacies in that unhappy idea.
“Well, I’m much obliged to you,” I said.
“You’re not going already,” he protested. “It’s so rarely I get visitors.” Then he added quickly that he meant interesting ones.
“I’m afraid you can’t put me into that category,” I said. “Oh, by the way, have you heard the news? They tell me there’s been a murder in the village!”
“A murder!” His surprise was superb. “You’re surely not serious.”
“Indeed I am,” I said. “You can take it from me that it’s true. A man named Maddon, who lives at Five Oaks.”
“Maddon!” He stared, then shook his head. “Who should have wanted to kill Maddon?” Then he fairly whipped round on me. “Do they know who did it?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” I said. “But you knew him of course.” He darted me a quick look, so I added that I meant in his official capacity of war-savings secretary.
“Not a pleasant man,” he said, and shook his head again. “I’m afraid he wasn’t popular.”
“A good customer of yours, was he?”
“Another collector was concerned with that,” he said. “I don’t think, though, that he ever subscribed. In fact, I remember he boasted to me not long ago that he’d never bought a certificate.”
“Well,” I said, getting to my feet and introducing some comic relief, “it’s a damn nice reception you’ve given a stranger. Staging a murder as soon as he gets here.”
He gave a beautiful dental smile at that and then I came to the opening for which I’d been ready as soon as I stepped inside that room. Before I’d knocked I’d wondered both what and how much to say, but the patience cards laid out on the folding table by the window had given me an idea. And, without any boasting, I knew Temple would be putty in my hands, for he was the fawning, ingratiating sort; itching to climb from one society stratum to another and always on the look-out to insinuate himself into this and that. There had been something revealing and almost pathetic in the way he had let slip that he rarely had interesting visitors. Helen, for all her lack of snobbery, is very much the grande dame, and maybe he thought I might be worth cultivating too.
“You’re a patience fiend, are you?” I said as I looked across at the table.
“I find it a great solace at times,” he said and gave me an apologetic look.
“I play a lot, too,” I told him, and then appeared to remember something. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I could have made a fortune out of cards. Oh, no,” I said. “Not the gambling. That’s a mug’s game. By telling fortunes!”
“Really?” he said.
By now I was fingering the cards and idly manipulating them into a pack.
“If it interests you,” I said, “and if you promise to keep it to yourself, I’ll try it on you.”
I could almost hear the thoughts whirl in his brain. And then he knew it was absurd to have any suspicions of me, and he was smiling deprecatingly.
“I’m afraid I shouldn’t be a very interesting subject.”
“You never know,” I said. “Got a sheet of writing-paper handy?”
He fetched one at once. Then I got him to shuffle the cards while I turned my back. Then I told him to lay them out in three different-sized heaps.
“What’s your age, by the way?” I said. “Strictly in confidence.”
“Forty-eight,” he said.
“Then no heap is to contain more than twenty-four cards,” I said, for hocus-pocus like that is always convincing. “And remember the number in each heap because I’m going to jot them down and make a preliminary calculation.”
That was all done and I put the paper in my pocket
and approached the table. He drew a chair forward for me and I sat down. First, to make the mumbo-jumbo still impressive, I took the third card all the way down from each heap and discarded the rest. Those third cards I laid out on the table in a square of four cards each way.
“This is most extraordinary,” I began. “I ought to have explained that I can’t tell about the past or the future, only the immediate present, so to speak. What’s happened today, for instance.”
There I picked up a card and laid it aside. “Have you come into a nice little sum of money to-day? Not a lot, perhaps. A hundred or so?”
I looked up at him and he was scared stiff.
“Mind you,” I said, and was looking down again. “I can’t always be right. Perhaps I picked out a false third card, but that’s what these cards tell me.”
“As a matter of fact I did have some money come this morning,” he said, and his voice had hardly a tremor. But he was aware of what tremor there was, for he began a noisy clearing of his throat. I was picking up another card.
“Also to-day you’ve had a tremendous surprise,” I went on, and as if to myself. “What the cards actually say is that you’ve lost a dangerous enemy and are likely to have made a friend. And another interesting thing,” I said as I picked out another card. Then I shook my head. “But I think that must be wrong. It says you met a certain lady for the first time. The contact is very close. Very close indeed. In fact,” I went on, and laying two other cards on top of it, “I’d even go so far as to say that I’ve never seen a closer contact. It’s as if this lady were almost part of yourself. Your wife, for instance.” Then I gave an elaborate shrug of the shoulders and pushed the remaining cards to a heap.
“I’m afraid you’ll regard me as a bit of a boaster. If you haven’t been out of the house this morning, then I’m all wrong, or the cards are. Perhaps I picked them out wrongly after all.”
I had blethered on to give him time to recover himself, and when I got to my feet I was smiling apologetically as I met his look.
“It was really very good, in a way,” he said, and his voice was none too steady. “The letter this morning did tell me that an uncle of mine had died, and he and I weren’t on the best of terms.”
“Good Lord!” I said, glancing at my wrist-watch. “I’m afraid I must fly. Got another call to pay before lunch.”
He was uncommonly quiet as he showed me out. He did put out a dampish hand and hope we’d see more of each other.
“Most certainly we will,” I said. “Do you know Chevalle, by the way? A very clever fellow, I believe. I only asked because I’m dining with him to-night.”
Then before he could get a word in, I smiled, nodded, and moved off. And I’d left him with the devil of a lot to think about, particularly that wholly unnecessary and clumsy reference to Chevalle. And I’d by no means finished with Bernard Temple. After lunch, though he didn’t know it, he was due for an even bigger shock.
I looked back as I neared Lane End, for I was rather expecting Temple to be watching me, but there was no window that looked my way, and in any case I decided it might complicate things even more to my advantage if he knew what that second call of mine was. But once in the short lane I was out of sight, for the hedges were tall. Smoke was coming from the house-chimney, and I guessed Pyramid Porle would be in.
But he wasn’t. The plump woman who answered my knock, and was wiping wet hands on her apron, said he had gone out and she didn’t know when he’d be back. I said I wouldn’t leave a message for he’d know who I was.
As I came to the end of the short lane again I thought of something highly important, and as I’d seen a telephone kiosk outside the post office I thought I’d telephone from there. But when I reached it, who should be inside it but Porle. He had his back to me, so I hurried past, and I’m positive he didn’t see me. Then I had a beer at the Wheatsheaf and a pipe and a sit dawn. There were only two people there, and the landlord told me that everybody was busy turning hay after the storm. When I reached home, Helen said I looked as if the walk had done me good.
While she and Annie were busy putting on the meal I rang up Five Oaks. Chevalle answered.
“Still there then?” I said. “Any developments?”
“Not worth talking about,” he said. “What about you?”
“Not bad,” I said. “I think you can count on Temple’s coming to see you either this afternoon or evening. All the same, I’d have him watched.”
“It’s done already,” he told me. “You yourself left his place half an hour ago.”
“Good,” I said, and had to chuckle. “But one thing. Gross interference on my part, but have you sent Maddon’s prints to the Yard?”
There was a silence, and I knew he hadn’t.
“Thanks for the tip,” he said. “I own I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Good,” I said again, and: “Be seeing you round about seven to-night.”
That afternoon Helen apologised at having to go to Porthaven to change her library books and do some special shopping. In the apology was an invitation, but I said I’d defer Porthaven till my pins were more used to pavements. That afternoon, with the house virtually my own, I looked up Temple’s number and then rang. It was a direct call that couldn’t be traced.
Between my teeth was a handkerchief and a stout fastener gripped my nostrils, and altogether my voice was like nothing on earth, unless it revealed an even more startling ancestry than the precious, eunuch tones of Temple himself.
“Mr. Temple?” I said.
“Yes,” he said unctuously. “Who’s speaking?”
“You wouldn’t know me,” I said, “but you did me a good turn the other day and I want to do you one. The police know all about your friend Miss Smith.”
Then I rang off. But that afternoon I read my book with an eye on the front gate, for if by a miracle Temple associated me with that anonymous call, and plucked up courage to pay me a visit, then I was going to do a disappearing act. But it was an enjoyable afternoon, and I did more than one chuckle when I thought of the letter I’d write that night to George Wharton.
CHAPTER V
BASSETTS
Just before I was ready to set off for Bassetts, Helen said there was something she ought to tell me, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was. It wasn’t anything to do with the murder, for we’d exhausted that subject long ago. And she’d told me, in strict confidence, one very interesting thing. Temple had said Maddon had boasted of never having bought a certificate. I didn’t tell Helen that, but when I was fishing for information about Maddon she did let fall that he was an excellent subscriber and bought a complete Savings Certificate from Mrs. Chevalle every week. How to reconcile those two statements I didn’t know, but I did intend at some fortuitous moment to question Temple again.
“It will do you all the good in the world,” Helen said, referring to the fact that I was dining out. “Fortunately she”—that was Mrs. Chevalle—“won’t be there. They’re on speaking terms and no more, and that kind of thing is so awkward.”
We were walking down the path to the front gate then, and all at once she gave an exclamation.
“I know what I wanted to tell you. That man Porle. He’s gone away.”
I nearly said, “My God, no!” What I did say was, “How do you know?”
She said he was on the Porthaven bus that she’d taken. At Porthaven she had gone right on to the terminus but Porle had got off at the railway station and had had two bags and a trunk, the latter in the boot of the bus.
“He’s probably gone off on a holiday,” I said, as if only mildly interested. “When he comes back I’ll have to return his book.”
But the news was highly disturbing and I quickened my pace as I walked. There was a back path through the woods which I could have taken, and though I didn’t know then that it wasn’t a short cut, I wished I’d taken it, for it seemed imperative that Chevalle should have had that news at once. I should have said, too, that I pride myse
lf on punctuality, and so by the time I was walking up the short drive to the pleasant-looking modern house, I must have been a good five minutes early. Then a voice hailed me.
“Hallo!”
“Hallo!” I said, and had a look round. Then a little girl emerged from the shrubbery by the drive. She looked a delightful little soul, and remarkably pretty. Her fair hair was trimmed level across her forehead and it gave her an old-fashioned look.
“I’ve been playing hide-and-seek,” she announced.
“Good,” I said. “But not by yourself?”
“Oh, yes,” she told me. “It’s very nice playing by yourself. Then you can’t be caught.”
I laughed. “There is that in it. Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Have you come to see my daddy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then you will have to wait,” she told me. “There’s a man with him. They’re in the study.”
“Then I’ll have to talk to you instead,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Clarice Chevalle,” she said. The words were pronounced very solemnly and distinctly.
“That’s a lovely name,” I told her. “I wish I had a name as nice as that.”
She laughed at that. When she had looked so solemn I could see her father in her. Then a voice was calling from the house.
“Clarice! Where are you, darling?”
We had been moving towards the house, and almost at once a girl appeared in the front porch. She too had fair hair, and she might have been the mother of the child, so strong was the resemblance. Hers was a placid face and the eyes gentle and friendly.
“Major Travers?” she said and smiled gravely at me when I nodded. “I’m Mary Carter. Major Chevalle told me to tell you how frightfully sorry he was, but he’s engaged for a few minutes. Will you come in or would you like to look round the garden?”
The Case of the Platinum Blonde: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 6
