“I’ve heard nothing about a manuscript.”
“I think you’ll find there isn’t any. Parrys say they put the case to France for a new book—The Fight for the Championship, and he suggested to them that if he did it, it’d be called My Fight for the Championship. You see the subtle difference? Also we agree that Hayles’s first story hung on to France’s skirts. The second one—I really wish you could have read it!—is exceedingly informative. It tries to be independent of boxing, or shall we say, France. It’s dedicated to ‘Dorothy,’ by the way. What you and I got out of it was that it must have showed Hayles he wasn’t the last word in mystery stories. It sold badly. We agreed, therefore, that it gave Hayles one motive for wishing France out of the way.”
Franklin smiled. “I rather fancy those were your conclusions. Still, I don’t mind your roping me in—as it’s confidential!”
Travers looked rather hurt at that. Then he fished a paper from his pocket and passed it over.
“There are the summarised motives I think Hayles had. What do you think of ’em?”
1. Dislike of France’s attitude towards Dorothy Claire.
2. Dislike of patronising attitude of France and Claire towards himself.
3. Recognition of his inferiority as an author and the hope of recovering that position by being, on his death, the chief authority on France—the greatest phenomenon British boxing had ever known. He could write two or three books that would be bound to sell.
4. Generally a hysterical desire for the limelight—a position he was never allowed to occupy.
“I’d like to make a copy of that,” said Franklin, and went back to the desk. Then came various disjointed comments. “As you say, they don’t help with a jury.… And it wouldn’t get Dorothy Claire for him… unless of course he intended to polish him off afterwards! … And what about his losing a good job when France died?”
Travers explained that latter objection. “His mother’s very frail and he’ll get a good bit when she dies. Also she’d look after him if he hadn’t a bean. And the new books on France’d help.”
He waited for Franklin to resume his chair.
“What I wanted to put up to you was this—to do with that second book, with the hopelessly misleading title of The Fighting Chance. I’ve been told you can see an author in his books—see him infallibly, that is. I’ve been told so about myself, though as an author I’ve been inclined to resent it—rather foolishly perhaps. Then what exactly do we see in this shocker of Hayles, the one he wrote independent of France? I’ll tell you. All the preposterous and creaking machinery from every shocker ever written! All the cliché and outworn flourishes! We get rooms that descend bodily, sliding panels, a vanishing corpse, dope dealers, an opium den, a mysterious poison, a Chinese villain, and a heroine—black-haired, by the way—who’s abducted and rescued. The Chinaman turns out to be a detective in disguise, and the hero’s a quiet little chap who might be Hayles himself. And there’s yards more of it. It’s as full of lumber as a tenth-rate antique shop. Now then; what’s all that suggest to you?”
Franklin frowned, then owned up. “Not a damn!”
Travers seemed perfectly reconciled to the comment. “Well, perhaps you’re right!”
“Yes, but what was your own idea, Ludo?”
“A foolish one… that depended on your answer. Let’s leave it alone for a bit and give it time to settle down. If I can put it more clearly, I’ll do so—later.”
Try as he might, Franklin couldn’t budge him from the decision. As Travers had put it, the merit of the theory lay in its easy comprehension. Franklin made up his mind to get it out of him by less obvious methods.
“How’d you get on with Claire—at the funeral?”
“Oh—er—had a reasonably dismal morning. Crowds af people, celebrities by the score and photographers by the hundred. Then we went on to Claire’s place—”
“Marfleet Parva?”
“That’s the place—and had lunch there. I went over his garages and repair shops—extraordinarily up-to-date places. I tried one of his supercharged Bentleys on the track. He’s got a couple of those, by the way, and he’s having a new Mercedes over almost at once. I rather gathered he does a lot of his own tinkering and experimenting, and so on. He’s got one frightfully ingenious idea for lagging the exhaust as a foot-warmer for passengers—quite a new dodge.”
“What’s lagging?”
“Covering a tube with asbestos cement to prevent local loss of heat. He lags the tube on one side—the bottom—and allows radiation at the top which acts as a foot warmer. I’ll tell you about that later. Then on Saturday he’s due at Brooklands for an attack on the world’s 200-kilometre record, if the weather’s all it should be.”
“But isn’t that rather callous, after France’s death?”
“Oh, I don’t think so! It’s a long-standing engagement, as it were. These things have to be planned months ahead. However, I was going to tell you about that footwarmer—”
On the subject of cars, Travers was likely to be too communicative. Franklin cut in with a hasty question.
“Tell me, Ludo; what’s your idea about Claire himself?”
Travers hesitated somewhat. “That’s a bit difficult. You see, I’m rather prejudiced. I’ve known him for some time, and we’ve got things—and acquaintances—in common. On the whole I should say… I don’t like him at all. Tremendous admiration for his skill and so on, but… well, there you are. I just don’t like him. And, of course, I’m a much older man than he is.”
“Find out anything interesting about him?”
“I did rather—at least I pretty well bludgeoned it out of him by alluding to his heirs in a rather blatant way. He mentioned, as between the two of us, that he was hoping to have a son, and all that, to carry on things. Most unusual I thought it—I mean for him to refer to it. I felt a bit of a fool, but he seemed quite bucked about it; sort of assumed entire credit!”
Franklin laughed. “And why shouldn’t he!… And so you don’t think very much of him. What would you say his real character is?”
Travers smiled. “That’s a tall order. If I were making a rapid pot-pourri, I should say he’s got too much money; has an exaggerated idea of his personal caste; is drawlingly polite to his equals and as drawlingly rude to his inferiors. He has the meretricious polish of his particular breed, only he remains quite obviously a merely magnificent specimen of an animal.… I should say he’d prefer the furtive in direct attack—paradoxical, but I mean that he lacks moral courage. He’s not generous minded.… In other words—since I can read you as easily as a Bovril advertisement—I should say he funked tackling France direct; employed Usher, as we know, instead, and if he’d made up his mind to do so, would have doped France’s whisky with a perfectly good conscience!”
Franklin roared with laughter. “Good for you, Ludo! And that’s Claire, is it?… And what about his wife?”
“She was in to lunch. Naturally she hadn’t the least idea I knew anything about the case; all the same, judging from what you told me, I should say she’d sobered down enormously. She was watching him with big, spaniel eyes.”
“Claire still behaving like a pig?”
Travers shook his head. “I wouldn’t go so far as that. Of course, we know he’s been pretty rotten about things. All I could feel was that he’d given her the hell of a thin time, and was being frigidly polite in that infuriating way such people have.”
Franklin nodded. “And going back to that matter of Claire and the whisky. Was that your big idea?”
“You’re trying to worm that book business out of me? Well, I’ll have another shot.… If you know a man thoroughly, say by personal acquaintance or by reading his books, couldn’t you try to work out for yourself how he’d commit a murder? Take that little, snivelling Hayles, for instance… or Claire. Take you or me, driven to committing murder. Since you lured me into crime, I’ve sat dozens of times wondering how I could kill a man and get away with it, and every time i
t had to be a series of steps, perfectly timed and involving no physical courage. Take yourself; you’d do something physical. I know you would—it’s in you!”
“I don’t know so much about that,” smiled Franklin. “However, where’s it all lead?”
“To this. I’ve been trying to put myself into the skin and mind of Hayles; from what you’ve told me, from what I know, and from what I’ve got out of his books. I ventured yesterday to make one experiment and it turned out rather well, thanks to a lot of luck. I told you about the man in the taxi and how I thought it was Hayles. I remembered the number of the taxi because I couldn’t very well forget it—3003. I’m now prepared to swear the man was Hayles—though he wore glasses.”
Franklin looked up. “I say, that’s good! Wharton’ll be pleased to know that’s definite.”
“Well, it is,” went on Travers. “I rooted out the driver and recalled the occasion. He said a gentleman—an American—hired his taxi and drew it up short of France’s car with instructions that the car was to be followed discreetly. The excuse was that he—Hayles, shall we say?—was France’s private detective. There was a lot more to it, but there you are. Hayles was tracking down Claire in the best, Haylesian, detective fashion. As a matter of fact it appears to have been a perfectly harmless dinner engagement, since they went to the Cholmondely.”
Franklin was disappointed. “Yes, that’s all right, but how’s it help?”
Travers made an unusual sort of grimace. “Help?… Well, it sort of gives one encouragement! You’ll find that taxi incident, or something very much like it, in The Fighting Chance, for one thing. But what I want to get out of it is something that isn’t in the books. Something he might have used, if he wrote another!” Then the glasses came in for a really magnificent polish. “I want you to send a man to Dijon—if you’ve got a suitable one—at my expense.”
“Dijon! That’s where Hayles may be!”
“Yes, I know. Only I don’t want him to be there.” Franklin couldn’t see it. “But you didn’t know anything about Dijon till I told you last night!”
“Oh, yes I did. I had an idea of the sort so I ventured to ring up Mrs. Hayles—on your behalf of course—to ask about his holidays. I’ve got the address where he stayed—74, rue Prieur. I’m sorry about that, but I knew you wouldn’t mind. The thing is, have you got a good man—tactful and a good French scholar?”
“I’ve got the man all right. What d’you want him for?”
“I want him to catch this afternoon’s train to Paris; fly from there to Dijon—I’ve got the times all worked out—and call at the place in the rue Prieur and ask if Hayles has written there recently and if so, about what. Hayles is to be announced as dead; drowned if you like. As soon as anything’s known, whether favourable or not, your man’s to wire you—or me—and then get back here at the double. If the wire’s what I hope it is, then I’ll tell you all about it, and the Government, or Durangos, can pay expenses. If it’s a wash-out, then I’ll apologise and pay up… and shut up.”
* * * * *
Two things of consequence arose out of that conversation, and later that afternoon, something really thrilling was to happen. First of all, Franklin went off at once to give instructions to his agent, then sat thinking things over in his office; trying, in fact, to get against Hayles something of the nature Wharton had suggested and far more definite than the ingenious and rather amusing theories which Travers had propounded.
Then the first, faint idea. Was there, after all, anything in them? Those ideas about Hayles’s tortuous ingenuity, for instance? What about Dyerson’s opinion that Hayles had written—with laborious and elaborate precautions—those anonymous threats? Wouldn’t that be, according to Travers, the very kind of thing he’d do?
Just then Cresswold came into the room with some papers, and as he went out Franklin had a further idea—Hayles, if it had been Hayles, and his glasses and his American accent, calling at the Air Ministry in his anxiety about the weather and then successfully pulling the legs of Cresswold and his brother with fantastic tales about an aeroplane dash for America! The thing was, had that fog really been so desperately important for Hayles, assuming he’d played that part in the tragedy which Wharton’s hypothesis had assigned to him? With that house screened from the road, and its private back entry, was fog absolutely necessary for escaping observation? Franklin couldn’t quite see it. The fog admittedly made assurance doubly sure, but that was hardly the point.
Then another idea which seemed to show that Travers and his theories were scarcely as nonsensical as they first appeared. Hayles might have done all that business with Cresswold’s brother. It was in the best detective vein. There was a certain real-life kick to it. It satisfied in a small way that desire of Hayles to do something, and to do it in that furtive way that seemed characteristic. The times for the Friday afternoon fitted in as far as was known. The pseudo-American had presumably left the Air Ministry building well before five. Hayles had rung up Durango House about that meeting at St. John’s Wood at about ten past five, presumably from the box opposite France’s house, and had then entered the house surreptitiously before the arrival of France and Mrs. Claire.
All that produced the course of action which would have saved time at the beginning. From a drawer he took a couple of those enlargements—pictures of Hayles from Two Years in the Ring—profile and full face. With a piece of charcoal he added the glasses and then chalked a film over the eyes. Then he pushed the bell for Cresswold.
* * * * *
How Travers actually spent his evening was to be told later by himself. His idea, originating in the smoke-room of the Scriveners’ Club between tea and dinner, was merely the remembrance that in that very room a few days ago he had heard Hayles prevaricating about his presence in the Hampstead Road. The thought produced another—then a third; then he suddenly hoisted himself out of the chair. A quarter of an hour later he was strolling along the Hampstead Road with an eye on the windows.
As for the third episode, it deserves a chapter to itself.
CHAPTER XXII
WELCOME WANDERER
Norris was out and Franklin had just come in. At the moment he was talking nothings to Wharton and watching his workmanlike attack on a late tea. Then the front-door bell rang and various things happened simultaneously. Wharton, with an instinctive curiosity, opened the lounge door, still grasping the remnant of buttered toast, and peeped out; Usher appeared from nowhere, and the sound of a key was heard in the lock. Then came Usher’s exclamation.
“Mr. Hayles, sir! Excuse me, sir, but you gave me quite a shock!”
Wharton shot the toast into his mouth, waited the necessary second to give a final gulp and wipe his lips, waved frantically for Franklin to get into the cloakroom, then went to greet the wanderer; his expression a mixture of intense gratification, concern and disarming friendliness. He thrust out a welcoming hand.
“Well, Mr. Hayles! This is a pleasure! What on earth have you been doing with yourself? You’ve had us all scared to death!”
Hayles, looking more fragile than ever, gave a tremulous smile. Wharton flashed a look at him; clothes clean and hat new; his face shaved, pale and purple-patched under the eyes. But the eyes themselves were clearer than they’d been on that Sunday evening, and the voice was more alert. In some ways it was a new Hayles who began the explanation of his absence.
“I’m sorry about that. I’m afraid I’ve had—er—rather a thin time. All that worry—”
Wharton made a hasty gesture of comprehension. “I’m sure you have. Enough to worry anybody! But what about some tea? You look cold.”
Hayles began slowly taking off his gloves. “It is… rather cold.”
Wharton turned to Usher. “Get Mr. Hayles some tea and toast… straight away… in the lounge!” He helped Hayles off with his overcoat and led him away. “Come along into the warm and tell me all about it.”
That seemed a very difficult thing for Hayles to do. His manner immediately beca
me exceedingly nervous and the account itself elusive and vague.
“I’m afraid I—er—can’t tell you very much. You see, I—er—sort of remember hearing a voice—I think it was Mr. Franklin’s—and then I think I went to Chingford; at least I know now I must have done that because I just rang them up and they say I sold them my car. And then I think I must have gone straight down to Ripley and then after that… well, it’s all a sort of dream and I was wandering about.”
“You lost your memory!” put in Wharton heartily. “That’s what you did!” He leaned forward inquiringly. “And where were you when you began to… remember things?”
Hayles’s face lit up. “Do you know, it was most extraordinary! I was actually at St. John’s Wood Station! I must have got out of a train because I was half way up the stairs when I sort of stopped short—and then I began to remember. Then I got a paper and found it was Thursday!”
Wharton nodded knowingly. “Just as we thought.… Of course you’ve seen your mother?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve just come from there—I mean I was there and I went out for a stroll to try to remember things… and that’s why they’ve just started coming back.”
“Hm!” went on Wharton. “However, I’m glad you’ve seen your mother. She was very worried—and no wonder.” A nod from which he seemed to derive intense satisfaction. “And how are you feeling now? Fit enough to give us a little help?”
Hayles smiled bravely. “Oh, I think so! I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep it up—but I’ll do my best.”
Usher, who must have sacrificed his own toast, came in with the tray. Wharton mumbled an apology and went out to the drawing-room; scribbled a hasty note and left it where the valet couldn’t fail to find it. When he came back he gazed round approvingly and helped himself to another cup.
“This looks more comfortable! And now let’s hear the wanderer’s adventures! You haven’t any idea what led you, when you lost your memory, to do what you did?”
Dead Man Twice Page 23
