The Case of the Murdered Major: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  The fact is that two things made Travers think Dowling’s story at least worthy of serious investigation. One was the very earnestness with which that serious-minded young officer had expressed his own belief, and the other reason was Travers himself; that last a case of wishful thinking, to use the overworked phrase. For years Travers had been associated with Scotland Yard, where his life was the unravelling of mysteries. Moreover, a mystery would gnaw at him like an aching tooth, and until the mystery was solved, the tooth continued to ache. But the war changed the whole current of his life. For months his existence had been the routine and humdrum, enlivened only by irritations and new worries. No wonder, then, that when Dowling came along with a really first-class puzzle, Travers leapt at it.

  There was one thing for which Travers had been famous at the Yard, that given a problem he would in the wink of an eye find a feasible solution. He was, in fact, a notorious theorist. His late colleague, Superintendent George (“General”) Wharton was to remark later on to a critic, that much as he had himself laughed at Travers’s theorising, he was nevertheless all for it. Travers, said George, had the Nelson touch. He laid his ship alongside, and be damned to any hammering. “Whereas you other fellows,” said George, “are like those ruddy Italian admirals. You lie doggo and hope for something to happen, and you wonder why it doesn’t—till it happens to yourselves.”

  But in the case of Dowling’s supposed experiences, Travers had no immediate theory. What he did have was a kind of basis on which, with just a little more evidence, he would be able to build one. That basis was in itself none too solid, emanating as it did of the vague idea that the principal reason for Lading’s mission was contact with people outside the camp. An extra prisoner could only have come in from outside. As to how he had got in—well, sufficient unto the mystery was the fact that it looked like one.

  Before taking Dowling along to see the Commandant, Travers was careful to caution him as to what he said, and he rehearsed the evidence.

  “I considered you’d been slack,” he said, “and I told you so. If you tell the Commandant your story as you told it to me, I won’t guarantee your being in his camp much longer. For your own sake you’d better leave the Commandant to find out for himself—as I did—where you went wrong.”

  Stirrop heard Dowling’s story with only a few interruptions but the impatience grew towards the end. Then he exploded.

  “Good God, man, what the hell yarn’s this! It’s damn-silly.” And then he cast a baleful eye on his Adjutant. “Either you’re right or Captain Travers is wrong. Were there seventy-three prisoners?”

  “The escort officer brought seventy-three,” Travers said. “I counted them myself, and he received my receipt for seventy-three bodies. They were twice counted afterwards and found correct.”

  ‘“There you are, then!” He waved a contemptuous hand towards Dowling, and at the same moment thought of something. “You don’t believe it yourself, do you?”

  Dowling blinked for a moment, then said that he did. He would be prepared to state before any Court of Inquiry that there had been seventy-four prisoners in the rooms on three specific occasions.

  That was the confession Stirrop had been waiting for. Once more he cast a suspicious eye up at his Adjutant.

  “Then why wasn’t I at once informed about it?”

  He lay back in his chair, pausing for a reply. It came.

  “You were informed, sir,” Travers said quietly. “You were rung at Garrison and you weren’t there. That was at twenty minutes to nine last night, and they said you hadn’t been there.”

  “What!” Before Travers’s steady look, his eye fell. “Who said so? The fellow must have been a bloody fool.” Then the hand was waved once more. “Still, that’s not the point. You don’t believe this cock and bull yarn, do you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I, sir?" Travers asked him. “After what Mr. Dowling has said, if I didn’t think his story worth investigation, I might just as well—to put it frankly—call him a liar.”

  “Never heard such bloody silly nonsense in my life.” The hand was waved with even more contempt. “I’ll take my own count at midday, then we shall see.”

  “May I ask you something, sir?” said Dowling.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, sir, if there is anything fishy, it would be far more likely to take place at the night count. It was dark at both the other times.”

  Stirrop scowled, then with some taciturnity agreed.

  “Very well, then; I’ll take the night count. Let Mr. Pewter know.”

  Dowling saluted and disappeared. Stirrop’s last rumbles died away.

  “I’d rather not be disturbed this morning unless there’s anything urgent.” he told Travers. “I’d better get on with that infernal Army Form. What was the name of it?”

  “B.199A.”

  “Lot of damn-nonsense. . . . Where is the bloody thing? . . . Now who the hell’s been and moved that? . . . Damn it. I had it here a second ago. Would you believe it!”

  “Is this it, sir?” asked Travers, retrieving it from under an issue of Midland Command Orders.

  Travers fairly shuddered as the bitter wind met him outside, and he was glad to get back to the warmth of his own room. Ramble came in almost at once.

  “Captain Friedemann wants to make a complaint to the Commandant, sir. He says everybody’s cold.”

  “Cold be damned!” said Travers indignantly. “They’ve got their official issue of blankets, and they’re sleeping in a heated building. What about the troops? Wouldn’t they be glad to change places?”

  “I quite agree, sir,” Ramble said, “and so does Mafferty. The blanket issue is laid down, and we’ve issued, and that’s for an unheated building.”

  “Tell Friedemann he can’t see the Commandant,” Travers said. “He’s busy and doesn’t want to be disturbed. And, by the way, he’s taking the last count himself to-night. For your own sake, you and I had better have a rehearsal. I’ll come up to your room.”

  Ramble had heard about the extra prisoner, and he was only too ready.

  “What you’d better do is this,” Travers told him. “First make dead sure who’s in hospital. Say there are five—that leaves sixty-eight. The ten officers you can’t go wrong with—that leaves fifty-eight, Make sure how those fifty-eight ought to be distributed in each room, and the very first room you come to where there’s an extra man, stop at once and put the whole room under guard.”

  “That’s it, sir,” Ramble said, and then frowned. “If only the Commandant will agree.”

  Travers grunted. “If he’s only half as much method as I give him credit for, he can’t go to work any other way.”

  Winter looked up as Travers came through.

  “What’s all the excitement this morning?”

  Travers told him about Dowling’s strange experiences.

  “If the Commandant hears that he’ll properly twist Dowling’s tail for him,” Winter said. “What on earth was the young fool up to?” Then he smiled. “I say, you’re not pulling my leg?”

  “I certainly am not,” Travers said.

  “But surely you don’t credit it yourself?”

  Travers shrugged his shoulders.

  “Why, the whole thing’s lunacy,” went on Winter.

  “I know,” Travers told him blandly. “If there weren’t a little lunacy in the world it’d be a dull place. Haven’t you ever behaved like a lunatic?”

  It was Winter’s turn to do the shoulder shrugging. Truth in tell, there had been times when he had half-suspected the eccentric Travers of something which, if not actual lunacy was as near to it as made no odds.

  “By the way,” said Travers, “the Commandant is now closeted with his B.199A. I thought I’d let you know. Once he’s finished it, he’ll be pestering the file out of us for our own.”

  “I’ll have a go at mine to-night,” Winter said. “To-morrow night you and I might get down to those cards.’

  Pewter came in to ask about th
e midday count.

  “Take it yourself instead of the night one,” Travers told him. “And you’d better see Mr. Ramble and give him my compliments and say will he accompany you round and work out what he and I were talking over. He’ll know what you mean.”

  Wednesday was a heavy day for returns and Travers settled down to work in the office. At a quarter-past twelve Pewter came specially to report. The count had been absolutely correct.

  In Mess that lunch-time the mystery, or the absence of it, was the main topic. Travers feared the Commandant would change his mind about taking the night count, but he needn’t have worried. Stirrop was only too anxious to be in the limelight at least to the extent of being the one who rang down the final curtain. Then there would really be something to report to Garrison.

  “I took the count myself, sir. A regular cock and bull story, sir. Nothing in it at all.”

  At eighteen-fifteen hours that night there was in the camp a certain subdued excitement Winter was busy over his B.199A, but Travers, who was working overtime, thought it would be as well to go across to the building and be handy in case he should be wanted.

  It was the custom for all the lights but one in the hall to be turned out as soon as the prisoners had moved out of their rooms, and the side doors were locked against them. Travers stood there in the gloom, listening to the sound of the feet of Stirrop and Ramble as they went along the corridors. Soon he pricked his ears. Stirrop’s voice came quick and angry. Travers cocked an attentive ear and heard a quick patter of steps, and he knew that must be Stirrop, already in a rage and strutting off to another room. Then the feet died away. Now the count of one side had ended add the two would be going round the back corridor to begin the other side.

  The steps were heard again. Slowly they came nearer, and then at last the count was completed, but at once there was a roar from Stirrop.

  “I tell you it’s damn’ ridiculous! You’ve got the figures wrong.”

  “You were doing the count, sir,” came Ramble’s quiet reminder.

  “Dammit, man, don’t argue. Come on. Let’s do it again, and this time make sure you really have looked the door.”

  “I was sure I locked ’em last time, sir.”

  But Stirrop was already making a furious way across the hall, with Ramble at his heels. Travers stayed put and unseen. Stirrop passed through the other side door, ready to begin the count again. Once more there were the footsteps, the closing of doors, the gradual receding, the sounds again, and the last room. Then came a triumphant voice.

  “I knew you were wrong. There we are. The count’s right!”

  It was at that very moment that there was the roar of a shot. It echoed in the corridor, and startled Travers out of his wits. There was a bellow from Stirrop, the side door opened and he appeared, like a man seeking sudden cover.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “A shot, sir,” said Ramble, none too calmly. “And pardon me, sir, look at your British warm.”

  It was ten seconds perhaps since the echoing roar of that shot had startled Travers, and he was not even aware that he had moved till he found himself near the two at the door. Then Ramble was darting out to the corridor, and there was a buzz of talk coming from the prisoners’ rooms.

  “What happened, sir?”

  “Happened?” said Stirrop, a bit white about the gills. “Happened? Look at this. Some bastard tried to shoot me!”

  A clean hole was drilled through the shoulder of his British warm within six inches of his neck. Travers was horrified.

  “Who on earth could have done it! It couldn’t have been an outside sentry letting off a round. Which way did the shot come from, sir?”

  Ramble came quickly through the door.

  “Nobody out there, sir. All the rooms locked tight.”

  Stirrop came to himself, with half a dozen orders at once.

  “Get hold of Byron and have every spare man turned out. We’ll search every room. Have sentries posted at the head of the stairs and send someone to fetch my revolver.”

  The main door opened and Mafferty came in. Winter was at his heels. That halted the proceedings for they had to be told. Stirrop resumed his orders. Travers ventured to make a suggestion.

  “Don’t you think it would be better, sir, if you didn’t search the rooms? If any of those fellows have a gun, you bet your life it’s where we shan’t find it now, so wouldn’t it be better to have a surprise search?”

  Stirrop had never been so moderate or amenable. It was is if that sudden shot and his narrow escape had sobered and scared at the same time. He agreed it would be better. He then admitted that he’d definitely counted seventy-four prisoners at the first attempt, and he was equally sure there’s been only seventy-three at the second.

  “It’s preposterous,” he said. “The doors were locked, so how could anybody get out? Where could they get a gun from?”

  “May I say something, sir?” put in Winter, and then turned to Mafferty. “Were you in the store just now, Mafferty?”

  “No, sir,” Mafferty said. “I was coming from the Sergeants’ Mess and heard the shot. That’s why I came in, to see what it was.”

  “Well, I think someone was in the store,” Winter said. “I heard something there as I came by the window.”

  “Good God, man, why the hell didn’t you say so before! Come on!”

  Off went Stirrop and the rest at his heels. The main store lay at the end of the corridor nearest the front door, and in a minute he was rattling its door as if to pull off the handle.

  “Open it, Mafferty!”

  Mafferty unlocked the door, switched on the lights, and the Commandant peered gingerly in. The whole party crowded after him and a search was made. Travers gave a holler and held up his hand to keep people back.

  “Someone’s been in, sir. Here’s some snow.”

  It was at the far end of the room: a dirty patch as if a foot had skidded, and the tiniest bit of unmelted snow remained.

  “Well, I’m damned,” said Stirrop, and looked round flabbergasted. “Would you believe it! How the devil could anyone have got in here?”

  Then he suddenly made a dive for the windows. But there had been no tampering there. The vicious covering of wire was intact, and each sill had dust that was undisturbed.

  “It beats me,” he said. “This is something I never thought I’d come up against. Mafferty, to-morrow morning have everything checked and see if anything’s missing. You come with me, Captain Travers, and we’ll arrange about that search. You’d better fetch Captain Byron.”

  “One thing ought to be done, sir,” said Travers. “The bullet that missed you went somewhere. It might to be found so that we can find out its calibre.”

  “I’ll see to that,” Winter said.

  “I’ll lend you a hand, sir,” Ramble told him.

  Later that night Travers managed to have a word with Ramble. The bullet had not been found, but another search by daylight ought to produce it. Captain Winter had found a mark on the wall where it had evidently ricocheted off.”

  “About that extra prisoner,” Travers said. “The Commandant’s now of the opinion that there has been some dirty work. But tell me. Did you do the first count the way we worked out?”

  Ramble shook his head annoyedly.

  “He wouldn’t listen to me, sir. When I began to suggest it he shut me up. You could have heard him at the far end of the building. He said he knew how to count.”

  “And did you spot the discrepancy yourself?”

  “I think I did, sir,” Ramble said. “That room where the second lot of passengers are. When we first went there, there were fourteen and there ought to have been thirteen. When we came out I made specially sure the door was locked again, and when we came back the second time there was only thirteen there.”

  “My hat!” said Travers. “Did you mention it to the Commandant?”

  Ramble sniffed.

  “Not me, sir. He’d told me he was doing that count—not me,
so I left him to find out things for himself. I did intend mentioning it to you, sir.”

  But Travers was frowning away in thought.

  “What on earth is going on, Ramble? Wait a minute, though. Somebody in that room has managed to make a key that unlocks the door. You didn’t bolt it as you do at night?”

  “I’m sorry to say I didn’t, sir. I merely made sure the key had turned.”

  “Well, someone slipped out when you were along the other corridor, and he nipped into the store. How he got a key for that beats me, unless we’ve got a super-cracksman on the spot.”

  “You can do a lot with a bit of bent wire,” remarked Ramble.

  “I suppose you can. And what I think is that you or the Commandant must have left in the corridor some snow off your boots. This chap stepped on it so that some adhered. That’s the only possible solution. He simply couldn’t have been outside himself.”

  “Makes you feel all uncomfortable,” Ramble said. “It’s like something going on you can’t get at the bottom of.” He smiled dryly, “The funny thing is, sir, I was a yard behind the Commandant and about a foot to one side, or, whoever it was, might have got me. I felt the bullet whistle by.”

  “There’s to be a surprise search at fifteen hours to-morrow,” Travers told him. “I don’t place many hopes on it, but there we are. I won’t say I’ve persuaded him, but the Commandant’s decided to keep the whole thing dark, and make no official report for the present.”

  And that was all for the night. Mafferty and Ramble did, however, add their own particular postscripts over a final glass of beer.