Just before three, Franklin came breezing in. “Hallo! Where’d you get to this morning? Hunted all over the place for you.”
“Sorry!” said Travers, with his most disarming smile. “Unpardonably rude of me, but I had to go out—privately—and I couldn’t very well let you know.”
Franklin, apparently on pretty good terms with himself, took it very well. “That’s all right. Only you’re a damn nice detective! You sweat blood and hunt round and when the rabbit bolts out of the box—”
“Bolts! Who’s bolted?”
“Nobody! Merely a figure of speech.” He drew himself up a chair. “Get ready to be thrilled! It’s the most ridiculously easy thing you ever saw—if Wharton’s got it right… and I think he has.”
“I expect it’s right enough,” said Travers.
Franklin looked at him. Some strangeness of expression on the other’s face prompted his own sharp question.
“What d’you know about it? You’ve seen Wharton?” Travers shook his head. “No!… I’ve seen nobody… and heard nothing.” He waved his hand towards the far door. “Have a look in my bedroom… and tell me if I’m right!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE MAN WHO KNEW
Franklin had one look at the bathroom door, then came back.
“How on earth did you find that out?”
“Don’t know,” said Travers. “It just… sort of came!”
Franklin was still puzzled. “Damned if I know how you did it! It took Wharton and Norris best part of yesterday.”
“It took me more than that,” said Travers. “Even then I think there’s a good deal left out.”
“Yes, but how’d you do it, Ludo?”
“By exhaustion—elimination, if you like—as you fellows did. Claire must have done something—but he wasn’t there to do it. Therefore he did it without being there—by some simple mechanical device.”
“I know. But what about details?”
“Those came last night, after Wharton had made one or two remarks which weren’t nearly so casual as he’d meant them to be.” He glanced at Franklin. “You’d really like to hear how I fitted it all in?”
“I certainly should!” He laughed. “It’d be damn funny if old George had got something wrong after all!”
“I’m more likely to be the one who’s wrong.” He went over to the bureau and came back with a bundle of notes. “Here’s my material—what I remembered of the accounts you gave me from time to time, and what little I managed to glean for myself. And here’s the diagram I made last night before I tried it out.”
Franklin had a look at it. “It’s practically the same.”
“As for details,” went on Travers, pushing his long legs towards the fire and leaning almost out of sight in the backward depths of the chair, “we might take Hayles first. You probably won’t agree with me when I say that I don’t really consider Hayles a murderer. What I mean is that you wouldn’t put a first-class burglar in the same category as an inferior pickpocket. However, all that melodramatic machinery was his; the faked burglary, the anonymous threats, the confession, and everything as we imagined it—only he got Somers instead. Hayles seems to me rather like a—er—creeping sort of thing; something you ought to put your foot on and crush. Still, there we are. The rest is Claire’s; working independently of Hayles, of course, and thanks to the fog or because things in the mind of both men had got to an unbearable climax, working at the same time and in the same place.
“Usher gave Claire the idea through the knot-hole. Claire had got tired of France. He was naturally selfish and now he was furiously jealous. Think of what Usher must have told him in at least one of his reports—that France meant business! His immense dignity and beefy importance had a tremendous shock. You can imagine him—smooth and sleek—not man enough to tackle France chin to chin; hunching those slab shoulders of his and scowling it all out. He’s a long way from a fool, and he’s got a certain inventive talent, as I saw when I was down at his place.
“Very well then. He went round on the Friday—or maybe earlier—when he had the chance to go to the cloak-room—and that wouldn’t be very difficult. I should say he had the pistol and he had in his hand a lump of softish putty. Into this he squeezed the knot from the door, and so got an impression of it. All he had to do then was to put the barrel of the pistol into the mould in the putty and fill in with asbestos cement. The pistol was then embedded in what might be called ‘an asbestos knot.’
“He knew, moreover, that France was to be alone in the house on the Saturday; he knew it before Usher rang him up on the Friday evening. Also he took good care to let everybody know that, fog or no fog, he’d be away himself over the Saturday night. Before ever he knew a word about what his wife and France had planned, he’d therefore intended to kill France in any case.
“Usher’s message meant little modification of plans—except that Claire made one big mistake. He thought the arrangements made by France and his wife were final—but they weren’t. France rang up Mrs. Claire and what he said made all the difference. France should have been killed before Mrs. Claire got to the house. Claire expected she’d knock at the door, get no reply, then go away in a huff. Even if she had a key and went in and found France’s body, he knew she daren’t say a word.
“However, what Claire did was this. As soon as France left on the Saturday evening, he nipped in. He had plenty of time before going to the club to meet Utley. Palmer and I worked it all out and found he needn’t have been in the house more than ten minutes all told. He slipped the pistol, with its asbestos cement end, into the knot-hole, which it fitted to a hair’s breadth. Most important that, for fear of a blowback. Then all he had to do was to lash the pistol to the coat-hook by its magazine or stock or both. Through the swivel on the handle he attacked a piece of stout thread—black of course—to the trigger at one end and to the lever handle of the door at the other. The asbestos knot had already been well blacked so as to be invisible. Then he probably had a rehearsal to see it went all right; covered the whole thing with a coat and a hat on the coat-hook, locked the door and left the cloak-room by way of the lounge. Next he slipped upstairs and deposited those hairs he’d got from the maid’s bedroom.
“What happened, of course, was that France—not alone as Claire expected-having been rung up by Claire to go to the cloak-room for something urgent—that can be worked out later—went straight to the cloak-room door. His hand went out to the handle and, as the door was locked, his body followed. The knothole was the height of his head—Claire knew that through his own height and Usher’s—and as soon as he depressed that lever handle the merest fraction of an inch, he was dead!
“Now what about risks? In the first place, suppose the preparations had been discovered by France—gadget didn’t work, or something. France wouldn’t be sure it was Claire, but under the circumstances he’d have a thundering good idea. In any case you can bet he wouldn’t have gone to the police. If he tackled Claire direct, he hadn’t much of a leg to stand on—on the face of it. Also Claire might have said the whole thing was a joke—that the pistol wouldn’t kill a man in any case. Hadn’t they all laughed about it when discussing what sort of gun would drop a man in his tracks? In any case, you can bet your life there’d have been no scandal. In other words, it looked for Claire like ‘heads I win; tails you lose.’
“Again, suppose the body was discovered by an outsider—police or who you like. Do you think they’d start looking under coats and hats in the cloak-room? Not they! They’d look for the man who bolted after firing the shot. Even if they did look round, what might they have seen? If they had eyes like gimlets, they might have seen a piece of black thread hanging from the handle lever inside the cloak-room. There wouldn’t be any mark on the door—burning or anything like that—the asbestos lagging made that all right. The pistol shot out of a kind of second tube. The only thing unusual was the hole in the munting on the drawing-room side where the bullet came through, but that was above the level o
f the eyes of an ordinary man and it was all black.
“Of course Claire made a slip about Usher. If he’d had any sense, he’d have seen Hanson and Maude and got him away at once. The trouble was that Claire imagined himself of such importance that the law would only approach him with considerable circumspection. Remember Mrs. Claire’s similar attitude towards Wharton? Curious how people like that imagine themselves as immeasurably out of the reach of the law. Even Lecoq, you remember, couldn’t bring himself to think that a Duke had committed a crime!
“However, Claire was fairly lucky. His wife kept her mouth shut—if she hadn’t, there might have been complications. Then on the Sunday, all he had to do was to face the suicide, dismantle his apparatus and—voilà! Placing the body with that bowl of roses as a background might have been a sardonic sort of gesture. Probably, too, he rumpled the cushions, and of course he had to fetch the hat and coat. He must have felt pleased. France had committed suicide. If that didn’t seem likely, or if Mrs. Claire said anything, then he’d been killed by the woman who’d left those hairs in the room.… I think that’s everything. Does it agree with Wharton’s version?”
“Almost word for word—except that he didn’t think of the black thread. He thought it was silk. Still, that’s nothing. What gets me is why Claire should have been such a fool as to cut off his nose to spite his face. He’d have made a fortune over France’s American trip!”
Travers shook his head. “What did he want with more money? He’s rolling in it. It was his personal dignity that counted—nothing else.” He got up and sauntered over to the window and looked out at the mists that hung over Covent Garden. “After all details don’t matter—not a hoot either way. The telephone message doesn’t matter; black thread or silk, asbestos cement or asbestos tape; nothing matters… except whether he did it nor not.… Er—what’s Wharton going to do?”
Franklin wasted a shrug and a shake of the head on Travers’ back. “Do! He can do nothing for the moment. There aren’t any marks on the coat-hook, or if there were, Claire got them off. And he replaced the knot with seccotine, as we know. All George can do is to have a microscopical examination made for the asbestos cement—traces of course.” He leaned forward and lighted his pipe. “Between you and me, Wharton’s going to have the hell of a time fastening anything on to Claire. The beauty of it is he doesn’t know it!”
Travers looked round quickly. “What do you mean exactly?”
“Well, he didn’t say anything, but I think he thinks he’s got a brain wave. You know that chuckle of his? He gave me a special one as I came away.”
“What about Hayles?”
“He hasn’t decided… but I’ll lay two to one he nabs him to-night—after he’s had a word with Claire.”
“What’s he seeing Claire for? To spring the mine? Sort of show him how it was done?”
Franklin shook his head. “I can’t say. All I know is the General’s got something up his sleeve… and he’s going to see Claire… this evening.”
“And what’s your own opinion.”
“Mine?” He shrugged his shoulders again. “I don’t know. Claire’ll probably get away with it. He’d never be such a fool as to own up.”
Travers sat down again. He leaned forward in the chair, fingering his glasses and staring into the fire with a fixity of gaze that was almost mesmeric. Neither he nor Franklin said a word for a good few moments, then Travers broke the silence.
“There is a way to find out if he did it or not… or there could have been a way.”
Franklin looked up. “How?”
Travers shook his head slowly. “It’s difficult to say.” He fumbled again with his glasses, then put them on. Then he got to his feet and strolled quietly to the window. “Suppose… merely suppose . somebody who knew Claire had got wind of all this murder business and how it was done. This morning Claire was making an attack on the two-hundred kilometre record at Brooklands—smashing round and round at about two miles or so a minute. Suppose this chap merely hands Claire a copy of that diagram there on the table… with two requests—to look at it… and then destroy it. You can imagine Claire—I can—running those greyish-green eyes of his over it, giving it a bored sort of recognition, then shrugging his shoulders and lighting a cigarette with it. I can see his eyes narrowing—that horrible trick he has—as the chap moves away.”
Travers turned round.
“If Claire didn’t do it, then he’ll go to Wharton… of his own accord, because he’ll have nothing to fear. If he did do it, Wharton may never know… and the papers may tell him so… this afternoon.”
“Good God! You don’t mean—”
“I mean nothing,” said Travers quietly. “Who am I to be any man’s executioner?” He came back to the fire. “Er—will you—would you mind going to see if you can get a paper?”
Franklin hopped up like a shot. On the corner of Chandos Street, the newsboys were calling excitedly Franklin shoved out his penny and grabbed the paper almost before the boy had picked it out; then stood there—hatless, rigid—staring at the headlines and the photograph that looked at him.
TRAGEDY AT BROOKLANDS
FAMOUS RACING SPORTSMAN KILLED
CAR TURNS TURTLE
He took a deep breath, then bolted off with the paper. Outside the main entrance he stopped again and glanced at the letterpress—twenty lines or so of news and the rest a mixture of conjecture and biographical write-up.
“A terrible tragedy occurred to-day at Brooklands, involving the death of one of the best known of English racing motorists—Peter Claire, as he was affectionately known to every habitué of the world’s racing tracks.
“Mr. Claire set out this morning in his well-known Bentley, to beat the world’s 200-kilometre record, at present held by the Comte de Rigainville.
“Just after the start at 11.0 a.m. the attempt was temporarily abandoned, but shortly afterwards Mr. Claire made a fresh start in another Bentley, and at a hundred kilometres was very slightly inside record, which was flagged as he passed the timing box.
“On the very next circuit, immediately after passing under the members’ bridge, the car was seen to be out of control and mounted the embankment by the railway bridge, crashing into the arches. Help was immediately at hand but the car was a mass of flames. The body of the unfortunate driver was lying clear, and it is presumed that he fell as the car turned turtle. His neck was broken and death must have been instantaneous.
“All that can be conjectured at the moment is that a speed wobble…”
Franklin didn’t wait to read the rest. Upstairs, in the semi-twilight, Travers was still sitting where he had left him, looking into the fire. He turned his head as Franklin entered.
“It’s all over!” said Franklin quietly. His car mounted the embankment.
Travers said nothing.
“Looks as if he turned it deliberately towards that banking.… His neck was broken, They say he was dead before he knew it.”
Travers still sat there, elbow on the arm of his chair and hand shielding his face, and Franklin could guess what he was thinking. He sat quietly himself for a moment or two, then had an idea.
“Wharton’ll never guess anything. He’ll think… whoever flagged Claire did it for him to change his car.” Then another idea. “And when you come to think of it, Ludo, it’s the very devil! Just what Wharton said. Dorothy Claire stamped her foot and said she would go to a night club—and three men are dead… and another’s due for it. And she’ll go scot free! She’s done nothing—oh, no!”
Travers shook his head slowly. “I don’t know… She’ll pay. At least they always do… in the long run. Mrs. Hayles will have to pay. The other’ll pay too. Don’t you think she’ll remember for the rest of her life? Won’t that be punishment enough?”
Franklin said nothing.
“I think it will,” Travers continued quietly. “If Wharton had had Claire hanged by the neck till he was dead, that wouldn’t have brought France back to life… or poor So
mers either. But it might have marked the woman down for life… and not the woman only.”
“You mean… Claire’s child?”
“What else? Why should that child grow up knowing his father was hanged by the neck?”
Franklin thought for a moment, then looked up quickly. “Tell me, Ludo! Is that why… you—”
Travers leaned back and switched on the light. He looked at Franklin and gave a queer sort of smile.
“Don’t ask me.… What is it they call it? Conspiring to defeat the ends of justice, or some such formula.”
“Justice be damned!” was Franklin’s contemptuous comment. Then he lugged out his pouch. “Try a fill of this, Ludo. It’s something new.” Then, as Travers took the pouch and felt the contents with his long fingers, he got up and pushed the bell.
“And what about Wharton’s stand-by?—a nice cup of tea!”
THE END
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.
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