The Case of the Platinum Blonde: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Perhaps I would like to hear it,” he said. “It ought to be interesting.”

  “It is,” I said. “And how would you like it told? Hypothetically? Or as a fact?”

  “Just as you wish,” he said.

  “Then we’ll have it told as if it were fact,” I said. “Mind if I consult a note or two I’ve made? And then we’ll be off.”

  “Two solutions,” I began, “and to two murders. One solution we have already, and it may be the only one that’s ever made public. Maddon murdered, and your wife dead. Santon killed both. He admitted it and it’s a cast-iron solution.

  “Now for my own ideas, and they involve a discarding of that accepted solution. My solution is that Santon really killed neither. It was you who killed both.”

  His eyes narrowed and his whole body was suddenly rigid. Then at last he forced a laugh.

  “I’m to take this seriously?”

  “But certainly!”

  “Then pardon one little objection. What about Santon’s confession?”

  “Pure poppycock,” I said. “Heroics, my dear fellow. What the hell did Santon care? He was taking a header into eternity, and he wanted to do it like a little gentleman. He cleared your wife’s name of Maddon’s murder and made himself out the teeniest bit of a martyr.”

  “But why should he take the header if he wasn’t guilty!”

  “Because he shot your wife.”

  “But you said I shot her!”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “What I said was that you killed her.”

  “It’s beyond me,” he said, and threw up his hands.

  “Then let me get on with my story,” I said. “Maybe I can make it a bit more clear. And I’ll begin with your wife.

  “With regard to her, you were in a dilemma. If you gave her reasons for divorce, then you were in a jam, for public scandal might force you to resign. And she wouldn’t give you good reasons, for that would have given you the custody of the child. You could have got over the difficulty by having her watched, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do that. You told me a home truth or two about myself, and now here’s one about you. You’re stiff-necked with pride about your job and your personal honour. You wouldn’t descend to anything so low as having a man on your wife’s tail when she took her so-called holidays, even if you suspected her and Santon—which you admitted you did. Then at last you found a solution which satisfied those damn silly scruples. You strained at a gnat, but in the end you were prepared to swallow a camel.

  “This was your brain-wave. You had to kill Maddon, and we’ll go into that more fully later. Then you saw you could kill two birds with the one shot. You knew your wife would be away on a holiday. Why not kill Maddon then, and implicate her? Put her in a position where she’d have to prove an alibi or be arrested. You knew she’d weaken and prove the alibi. In short, she’d make a confession of adultery. You could divorce her, pose as the injured party, and have the custody of the child. Then you could marry Mary. All that without in the least imperilling your public position.

  “And that’s what you did—at least according to my solution. And now another home truth. You may be a damn good Chief Constable, but you’re the hell of a bad conspirator. Look at the mistakes you made. You went out that morning on your bicycle. You’d begun that habit earlier, and after you’d planned to kill Maddon. Don’t tell me you cycle up these blasted precipices in Sussex just to save Government petrol! And, of course, a bicycle has no number plate. Even Galley, by the way, seemed surprised your going to Bycliffe on your bicycle.

  “But about that morning. You came to Five Oaks, ostensibly from Bycliffe. But you’d never been there. There wasn’t a drop of rain near Bycliffe that morning. You’d been in the wood all the time—except when you slipped out along the lane to the farm to ’phone Porthaven—and watching the house. I rather think you knew Temple came regularly at that day and time, and you knew he’d raise the hue and cry, and you could contrive to be on the spot. After he’d gone you did the ’phoning, and no wonder you were puzzled about Miss Smith.

  “That was one slip. The next was putting scent on that chair and too much of it. Scent doesn’t linger heavily like that and it doesn’t communicate itself even to a chair on which a person has sat. Good enough to convince Galley, of course. You couldn’t make it too strong for him. It didn’t matter about me at first, and when you’d read Wharton’s letter of introduction, it was too late. That is if you believed his adulations. You probably didn’t.

  “But the worst slip up was when you said there were three cigarette stubs with lipstick on them. You’d put them there and so you knew there were three. You didn’t know I’d pocketed one. When you suspected that later, it was all to the good. You knew I was an amateur detective, after all, and that if I could meet your wife I’d identify that stub. And another slip in the same context. When you put the stubs in the ash-tray you forgot to put in a corresponding amount of ash.

  “You were too pat at finding clues. You were on the hairs like a shot. You found the hair-pin, and you thought of the back way out and found the heel marks. Lecoq wasn’t in it with you. You left an amateur like me simply staggered.

  “But after reading Wharton’s letter you found me a god-send. You knew your wife was coming home that evening, though you pretended she wasn’t, so with a courtesy that was so overwhelming you asked me to come to supper. How exasperated you were when she came back! How artistically you were startled when I sniffed at the way she was scented! In fact, my dear Chevalle, and if I’d been the world’s prize jackass, I was shown the very woman who’d murdered Maddon. Then, later that evening, you asked me a question about her cigarette. Just to make sure I hadn’t missed the point. You knew, of course, she’d be in no real danger. Still, there we are, and if I hadn’t entered the case at all, you’d have done precisely the same things with Galley, till even he couldn’t miss the fact that it was your wife who had been in Maddon’s room.”

  I was expecting him to cut in there, and he did.

  “How do you reconcile that with what you said about my killing her?” Then he gave a little laugh. “I’m taking you seriously, you see.”

  “Reconcile it? Easily enough. You didn’t know that you were going to drive your wife into a position where she’d be, not just desperate, but too desperate. Or where Santon would be too desperate, and have to kill her. But you killed her really. You laid a mine which you thought wouldn’t go off. Santon wasn’t to know that.”

  “Very ingenious,” he said. “But carry on.”

  “But your biggest slip,” I said, “was the way you handled the Maddon murder while it was in your hands. You took good care he should be buried before you called in the Yard. That was so that they wouldn’t get his prints. Oh, yes,” I said, as he started to speak, “I know you sent his prints to the Yard. Or rather, you didn’t. I don’t know whose you sent, but they weren’t Maddon’s.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This, and it’s something of which you yourself apparently were aware. Maddon did four years for embezzlement. Therefore the Yard had his prints. You see,” I said, “I happen to know who Maddon was. We’ll call him Mortheimer if you like. Wharton knows too, but he doesn’t see any connection between Mortheimer and you. I just tell you that to relieve any later anxiety.”

  “And what connection is there?”

  “All in good time,” I said. “Let’s finish with the prints. Wharton didn’t rumble that bit about the prints, when he found out who Maddon was. It was on Monday morning and we were rather rushed. But if you want further reassuring, I’ll tell you this. If Wharton does ask himself why the Yard hadn’t Maddon’s prints—and if he does that then he’ll know the answer—then my idea is that he’ll do nothing. He wants this case left just as it is—as you do. Perhaps as I do too. He’ll keep his mouth shut, and if only because his failure to grasp things earlier would be a reflection on his own competence.”

  “All this, of course, being pure assumption?”

&nb
sp; “Exactly,” I said. “A hypothetical solution, if it were fact. But let’s get to Maddon.

  “You knew your wife had a gun. You had a key to her room and you gave that away when you unlocked it for Wharton. You took that gun. You made an appointment with Maddon for some very convincing reason, for the early hour of five-thirty. Nobody would be about then even in the woods. Maybe you told him you and he were going somewhere. It’s immaterial in any case. But you shot him, and you spread clues all over the place. You hunted the house for the material which he’d used for blackmailing purposes and probably you found it. One bit you didn’t find, and I’ll show you that later. Then you went home and had breakfast and then set out on your bicycle ostensibly for Bycliffe. Before your wife returned you put the gun back, and probably the very moment before breakfast. When Wharton had her scared, she threw the gun in the pond by the roadside just past your house. So much for the gun. And one thing I’ll give you credit for. That outburst to me and Wharton about her not having killed Maddon was perfectly genuine. You knew your wife didn’t kill Maddon. And another thing. Since you knew who killed Maddon, you had the shock of your life when you read Santon’s confession. You shook like a man who’s just gone down with fever.”

  “Well, that’s mighty interesting,” he said. “I wish to God I had your brains.”

  “You mean you’d use them to better purpose?”

  “Maybe yes,” he said. “But to go back to where you left off. I think I can throw a spanner into the works. Why should a man like Maddon be blackmailing me?”

  Then I knew I had come to what might be the biggest bluff of my highly bogus career. Frankly I’d expected him to cave in long before, but he had the nerve or the devil, and he wasn’t dying game. He wasn’t looking like dying at all.

  “Blackmail was a strong word, perhaps,” I said, and to gain time while I brought up my mobile artillery. “He didn’t milk you for much, at least so I think. He had at least two other customers beside yourself, and he just asked you all for a nice little regular subscription. He didn’t over-do things. That was part of his ironical makeup.

  “But about reasons,” I said, and took that photograph from my inside pocket. It was in a special envelope, and I could show the actual picture without revealing that the bottom had been cut off. “Mortheimer happened to know that your real name was Murphy.”

  That hit him where it hurt. He was staggering, so to speak, even if he was still far from out.

  “Afraid I don’t follow you.”

  “Son of Murphy the celebrated poisoner,” I said. “Mortheimer was responsible for sending you and your sister to Canada. It was only yesterday, by the way, that I spotted the resemblance between her and your daughter. Maybe the sister’s dead. I don’t know. In Canada your name was legally changed, but he was one of the few people who knew. Probably the only one in England. This photograph of you and your sister was sent to him later. In gratitude maybe, by the relatives or friends who adopted you. Sent from Windsor. Not Windsor, England, but Windsor, Ontario.”

  I took a quick look at him. Now he was on his way out, but, by God! he was not without a last flicker of fight.

  “Most ingenious. Wharton has seen it?—that photograph?”

  “He has,” I said, “and he saw no possible connection between it and you. Set your mind at rest about that. The boy might have been anybody. Just a grim little fellow looking for the bird to pop out of the camera. I didn’t see any resemblance to you either, even when the facts demanded it. Then I saw you on the tennis court that morning. Your face was set and hard. You were looking for a bird to pop out of the devil’s camera and you wondered what bird it would be.

  “Mind you,” I said, when I’d waited a moment for him to speak. “I’m not blaming you for killing Maddon. Blackmailers are like black-beetles. The only thing to do is tread on them. Crush ’em flat out. But unhappily the Law doesn’t see it that way. It has its own way of dealing with them, and the victim of blackmail knows that way to be dangerous as well as tedious. And Maddon was specially in need of being eliminated. You had come over with the Canadians in the last war, and you fought with them, and fought damn well. You still have traces of the accent, by the way. Then you stayed on here and made a career for yourself. That career would have been smashed if anybody had ever had an inkling you were the son of the notorious Murphy. There was even more to it than that. Murphy died insane, in Broadmoor. Yet you had taken the risk of marrying and having a child. How would the revelation that you were Murphy’s son affect that child?”

  I didn’t look at him, but I could see his face and almost hear his thoughts. I shall always remember that moment and how incredibly lovely that evening was. The air was luminous and still, and full of the intangible beauty of scented dewy flowers. Incredibly quiet too, with faint rustic sounds that broke no silence, but somehow made a strange accentuation.

  “A hundred other things I could say,” I went slowly on. “Why you sent Santon to telephone the doctor and Wharton, instead of doing it yourself. Probably you suspected he’d murdered her and you may even have wanted him out of the way so that you could look for the speaker he’d used and the wires connecting it with the car battery. But even if you did find all that out, you kept it to yourself. The last thing you wanted was more inquiry. Lots more I could tell you besides that. Little revelations here and inconsistencies there; looks on people’s faces, and gestures. Things that go to make a background.”

  I was shaking my head as I got to my feet, for there seemed no more to say. He sat on for a moment or two, and he was game to the last.

  “And suppose—purely suppose—that there’s even the least bit of truth in anything you’ve said. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing—yet. I’ve got to think. After that I may still do nothing. But don’t mistake me, Chevalle,” I said, and forced him to meet my eyes. “I’m not posing as a little god on a tinsel Olympus. I’m not directing the Fates. I’m trying to reconcile myself and my conscience. Propitiate that conscience, if you like. If I do feel that I’ve simply got to make something of it public, then I promise you this. I’ll let you know just how much, and at least forty-eight hours beforehand.”

  “Thanks,” he said simply, and it didn’t seem to occur to him that at last in that one word he’d given himself completely away.

  He got to his feet and stood for a moment with eyes un-seeing across the garden.

  “Well, I’d better be getting back home,” he said and was smiling gravely. “I promised my small daughter I’d say good-night. A bit late now though. I expect she’ll be asleep.”

  His hand moved towards me, and then he drew it back.

  “I’ll say good-bye to you too—if you feel like it.”

  “Why not?” I told him gravely. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’d shaken hands with a murderer.”

  That was cruel and I could have bitten out my tongue for saying it. But he took it well.

  “Are you all that sure?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Dead sure. Dead plumb sure.”

  EPILOGUE

  I had been dictating from an easy chair, and when I had spoken that last phrase I relaxed. My long legs went out straight, my eyes closed and my head went snugly to the back of the chair.

  Miss X., my stenographer, had done a fine job, I thought. Neat work, hitting that machine as fast as I could dictate, and still with time to suggest a word when I was at a loss! I’d had her at intervals for years, and quite a good critic she’d always been. Constructive too. A bit romantic, perhaps, but you can’t have everything. I wondered just what she’d think of this particular book.

  I opened my eyes to see her watching me. The blunt end of the pencil was tapping her teeth and the look was one of expectancy.

  “Well?”

  “Ready,” she said.

  “Ready for what?”

  “Ready to go on.”

  My smile was definitely condescending. “There isn’t any going on. The book’s finish
ed.”

  “Oh,” she said blankly, and then flushed. Then as if I might have been joking—“You really mean it?”

  “I most certainly mean it,” I told her with a touch of the frigid. Then I got to my feet to show I meant it. “Any complaints?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s your book,” she told me.

  “Out with it,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, I don’t think you ought to leave things like that,” she said, and quite definitely. “You ought to let the reader know that you’re not proposing to say anything about Major Chevalle. Then he can marry Mary Carter. That’s what most readers will want.”

  “Really?” My smile was even more condescending. “And if I decide to do just the opposite? To blow the gaff about Major Chevalle?”

  “But you couldn’t,” she said. “Why, you told him in so many words that you could have killed a man like Maddon yourself!”

  “You listen to me, young lady,” I said. “This is a book, not real life.”

  “Well?”

  “Well this. It’s a weakness of yours to identify yourself with the characters in a book.”

  “But they’re just not characters in a book. After all, you go to the country for a holiday and you meet people, you like them or dislike them, and you’re interested. Typing this book has been like a holiday, in a way. I’ve got to know everybody. They are real people and I could find my way about that village in the dark.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said, dryly. “But the real test of a book is this. Not a happy ending, but whether when you put a book down you say to yourself, or not: ‘That was a damn fine book.’ Later on, of course, you may realise all the hocus-pocus, the coincidences and the manipulation, but it’ll be too late then. You’ll still think of it as a damn good book. Or, of course, the other way round.”

  “Very well,” she said, but still quite unconvinced. “But there is something else.”