The Case of the Murdered Major: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “But I thought I’d explained the regulations to you? When either prisoners or internees are in camp, nobody’s allowed in except on lawful business or with special sanction.”

  “Yes, but my dear fellow, I have a pass. And Major Stirrop”—he broke off with a little titter that somehow made Travers’s hackles rise—“the late Major Stirrop, I should say, told me it didn’t matter.”

  “I see,” said Travers slowly. “Well, I don’t want to be officious, but at the moment I’m Commandant of this Camp, and I’m seeing regulations are carried out. Mr. Ramble, you’ll accompany Captain Tester at once to Main Guard and see him through the gate.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “But, my dear fellow, have a heart. How on earth am I to get home? And what harm am I possibly doing? It isn’t as if I’m a pukka civilian.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you are,” Travers told him curtly. “I’m dealing with regulations as laid down. You of all people ought to recognise the fact.”

  “Sorry.” He shook an apologetic head, then looked up with a smile. “No bones broken?”

  Travers’s smile was grim. “Not at present. By the way I’ll tell the doctor you’ve decided to walk home. You thought the exercise would do you good.”

  Before Travers could leave, Winter came in, and he was scowling.

  “Wasn’t that Tester? What on earth is he doing here?”

  “Come for a joy-ride,” Travers said. “He’s evidently a pal of the doc’s. You’ve no particular use for him, have you?”

  “Lounge lizards are not in my line,” Winter said. “But what I came to report was that Colonel Caithby’s coming at once. Yes, and that there’s nothing missing from my room as far as I can judge. Things have been disturbed, though. Anything else I can do?”

  “I don’t know that there is,” Travers said.

  “Then I’ll go back and finish those cursed cards. No use turning in. I know I’d never damn-well sleep. No more news of any sort?”

  “Nothing at all,” Travers said. “But what I would do if I were you, is have a good stiff tot. You’re looking a bit under the weather.”

  “I’ll finish those cards first,” Winter told him, “and have a nip of some sort before I turn in.”

  The body had been stripped and Dulling was at work when Travers went in. The doctor looked round at once, and was about to speak when Travers got his word in first.

  “Pardon a personal question, doc., but how did young Tester come to be in your car to-night?”

  “As a matter of fact,” the doctor said, “I was almost at the gate here when I saw him on the side of the road, going towards Shoreleigh. I almost ran over him, in fact. I said, ‘If you like to wait for me I’ll give you a lift.”’

  “You knew he shouldn’t have come inside the camp?”

  “I didn’t. Besides, I knew he had a pass.”

  Travers explained. The doctor apologised profusely. Always, he said, he seemed to be putting his foot in it.

  “Well, he’s decided to walk home after all,” Travers said. “A friend of yours, is he?”

  “Well, I know him. My wife and I met him at Mrs. Martelli’s. You know—wife of the Italian consul. She’s English. Went to the same school as my wife.”

  “Really?” said Travers politely. “Curious how many of these foreigners marry English girls. But about—that. Found anything out?”

  “That’s just what I was going to mention,” Dulling said. “Do you think I might have another opinion? The S.M.O., if you could get hold of him for me.”

  Outside, Timers saw the lights of an incoming car, and guessed it was Colonel Caithby. A Mess Orderly was sent with an urgent chit to Winter to ring the Senior Medical Officer, and Travers went towards the car.

  Travers always thought Colonel Caithby the most picturesque figure he had ever seen. “The Artist’s Delight” was his private nickname, for nothing more colourful had ever gone on two legs. His frame was lean, his shoulders slightly stooping, his nose hawk-like and predatory. Against the deep tan of his face his brushed-up moustache was like snow, and the whole blended amazingly with the worn khaki, the red tabs, the triple row of ribbons, and the gleam of the belt and buttons. If ever a man looked a soldier, it was Caithby.

  “Evening, Travers,” he said quietly. “Bad news—eh?”

  Travers told him the gist of what had happened, with everything that mattered kept back.

  “What was it? His heart?”

  “I wouldn’t like to express an opinion, sir,” hedged Travers. “Would you care to see where he was found?”

  “By all means,” the Colonel said. “Through these gates, is it? Oh, yes, I remember.”

  The stick guard was sent to a distance, and Travers removed the sacking wrapper.

  “That was a most ingenious precaution,” the Colonel said. “I used to be a police-wallah myself. And this is where he lay. Bit off the beaten track, isn’t it? Whose footprints are those? And what’s that second depression?”

  Travers did more explaining, but what he could not explain was where Stirrop’s own footprints were and why he should have arrived at that spot at all.

  “Unless he was carried here, sir,” he said tentatively.

  “What’s that? Carried here?”

  He grunted to himself and began flashing the torch that Travers had handed him. Travers let out the least bit more—about the hat. The Colonel stood for a full minute before he spoke.

  “Let’s work back a bit. I take it he’d have come out of the building and not round it. Mind if I use the torch?”

  The two went back to that monstrosity of an entrance, Caithby flashing the torch on the snow, but there was never the mark of a foot.

  “If I may point it out, sir, we’ve been in the deep shadow all the time,” Travers said.

  “I’d noticed that,” Caithby said. “But where’s the nearest sentry?”

  “Along the east side there,” Travers said. “We can see him if we go along that path to the wire.”

  “And all the front of the building is not under any observation?”

  “No, sir,” Travers admitted. “I won’t say that it doesn’t look risky, but it isn’t, really. It’s virtually impossible to get out of the building, and the sentries at the sides do get a diagonal view of the front wire, though they can’t see the actual front of the building itself.”

  “Well, security’s your funeral,” he was told. “But it’s curious. Let’s suppose someone did put the body there. In the first place, the body, as you say, wasn’t dead, because the two depressions show that he rolled over. Still, leaving that out, someone put the body there, as I said. Then that someone knew the sentries couldn’t see. Therefore, if there was any fishy work, it was done by someone inside the camp.’

  Travers could feel those quizzical eyes peering at him interrogatively in the dark.

  “Well, sir,” he said, “don’t think me rude, but we could have arrived at that in any case. If there’s been dirty work, it must have been done by someone inside for the plain reason that this camp’s a watertight compartment. As far as human beings are concerned, it hasn’t got an outside.”

  “Good!” chuckled the Colonel. “Fools rush in where adjutants know how to tread.” Then the chuckle went. “Do you think we might have a look at the body?”

  The lights of yet another car could be seen. It was the S.M.O., and the three went towards the Mess together. Inside Stamp’s room the doctor was waiting anxiously.

  “Why exactly did you want a second opinion?” the Colonel asked him.

  The doctor said there was the question of a post-mortem, for one thing, and, for another, there was the matter of the slight issue of blood from the mouth and nose and ears. The S.M.O. pricked up his ears at that and had a good look at the corpse. There was some whispering between him and Dulling, and confirmatory nods. The S.M.O. made the announcement.

  “It looks like a fracture of the base of the skull, sir.”

  The Colonel raised hi
s eyebrows.

  “Any contusions?”

  “Nothing that I can see,” the S.M.O. said. “Of course, sir, he needn’t have been struck by anything. A man can fracture his skull by falling from too great a height and lighting on his feet. The spinal column’s jarred clean up against the skull.”

  “Of course. I’d not thought of that. And what do you propose?”

  “We must have a P.M. Any objections to getting him away?”

  Travers said he would ring for an ambulance. A slight hesitation and he ventured to ask the Colonel if he would he so good as to come across to the office too.

  “It’s getting rather late,” the Colonel said when they were outside. “Was there anything in particular you wanted?”

  “Only to show you the cap, sir.”

  “Any blood on it?”

  “Not that I noticed, sir.”

  The Colonel nodded. He would be along in the morning, he said. If the P.M report came through it was to be ’phoned to him at once.

  “One thing I ought to do,” he said, “and I’d like your consent. Things have got to a certain extent out of your and my hands. The Brigadier ought to be told of that visit of yours this afternoon. Don’t you agree?”

  Travers agreed. Then before he left, the Colonel said it was a matter for Headquarters to communicate with Mrs. Stirrop. The funeral arrangements he would let Travers know about later. As for what both he and Travers suspected, nothing whatever must be said.

  So an orderly was sent with yet another chit for Winter, and Travers went back to Stirrop’s room.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d better go through the contents of the pockets and make a list, then everything can go in the ambulance.”

  While the two were making yet another examination, he began jotting down his list which the S.M.O. would sign. Even the pocket-book held nothing of interest, hut there was a folded sheet of paper in the tunic breast-pocket which made him frown. Stirrop had evidently been making notes, but to what they referred Travers could not even hazard a guess:

  Ring W.O. and see if Harry Cross still B.C. . . . Get ’phone num . . . (Garrison?) Weinholst, and what about beard? Mention Trav.? Two birds one stone. After to-night.

  There were doodling marks scrawled round those curious words as if Stirrop had written them with much thought. The paper was clean and the folds not too tight, so apparently the notes had been written that same day. As for what Travers could deduce, B.C. was Border Command and Trav. was himself.

  That first interpretation was why the paper found its way into Travers’s own pocket. Only one other thing of consequence was to happen that night. He sent for Ramble and saw him in the open, out of all earshot.

  “Mafferty back?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ramble said. “He hadn’t been near the Green Man, but when I got back I looked in his room and he was curled up in his bunk.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Just before half-past eight, sir. He’d come through the gate at just before eight.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “No, sir. If he was asleep, all the better, I thought.”

  Travers nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. But when he wakes in the morning, you tell him what’s happened. See how he takes it.”

  “Yes, sir.” He fidgeted for a moment, then shook his head. “But he had nothing to do with it, sir.”

  “To do with what?”

  “Well, sir, killing the Commandant.”

  “Who said he’d been killed?”

  Ramble fidgeted again, then said it was all over the camp.

  ”Another case of wishful thinking,” Travers told him. “Whatever the camp says, you say nothing. You and I—and Mafferty—may have an awful lot of that to do in the next few days.”

  “A lot of what, sir?”

  “Saying nothing,” repeated Travers, and left it at that.

  CHAPTER X

  TRAVERS ON THE CARPET

  Sniffy came in much earlier with tea the following morning, and announced that Dr. Dulling would like to see Captain Travers.

  “Come in!” hollered Travers, and reached for his glasses.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” Dulling said, “but I had to come this way to see a patient, so I thought I’d drop in with that P.M. report.”

  “More snow, then,” Travers said, noticing the white on overcoat and hat.

  “Wicked weather,” Dulling said. “And now about this report. The S.M.O. sent it straight through to Headquarters, by the way, so you needn’t worry about that.” He gave a queer, interrogatory look. “It’s an uncommon report. I don’t know what you’ll think of it.”

  Now if Dulling had been George Wharton, Travers would have said: “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, George. I’ll write down what I think on this sheet of paper and give it you, then you shall tell me. And I’ll bet you a new hat we don’t vary very much.” But Dulling was not George Wharton, and this was not civilian life, and Travers had never been less inclined to give away what he knew.

  “It was a fracture at the base of the skull all right,” Dulling said, “and it wasn’t caused by dropping on his feet from too great a height. He was struck on the head with tremendous force. There weren’t any abrasions, so it must have been something that expanded.”

  “Like the old-fashioned dollop of sand in the corner of a nice little sack.”

  “That’s it. Good old sandbagging like we used to read about when we were boys.”

  Sniffy came in with a cup of hot tea for him, and the stove was lighted. Travers said he might as well sit down.

  “I’m not stopping,”’ Dulling said hurriedly. “As soon as I’ve drunk this tea I’m off.”

  “If you should happen to see Ramble when you go out, you might ask him to come to me,” Travers said. “It isn’t all that important, so don’t send a message or anything.”

  Then, having brought in so tactfully the mention of Ramble, he could proceed.

  “By the way, Ramble was tremendously bucked when you told him those German words and phrases the other day. He fancies himself no end.”

  Dulling coloured to the very roots of his hair.

  “You don’t think it was indiscreet of me?”

  “Why should it have been?”

  “Well, after what I told you. I mean, about our family history. But, you see, it was like this. I knew I’d have to be about a great deal among the prisoners, at sick parades, and so on, so I bought one of those little books—How to Speak German—and swotted up what I thought might be useful.”

  “And a very sensible thing to do,” commented Travers.

  But when the doctor had gone he was not so sure. The excuse had been an admirable one, but there were other things to consider. And on the spur of the moment he made a couple of entries in his private notebook:

  Re D. Find out—

  (a) What is the condition of his practice.

  (b) How he came to get this job.

  Everybody was in Mess, except Dowling, which was a rare enough happening. There was a relief in the atmosphere, tempered with a diplomatic gravity, for while people’s tongues were loosed, voices were suitably hushed.

  “Are you going to make an announcement in camp this morning?” Winter asked. “If so, will you want me?”

  “I think I’ll drift across after sick parade,” Travers said. “Friedemann can act as interpreter.”

  “What about a new Commandant? Will they be sending one down or will you carry on?”

  “Thy servant is as a dead dog,” said Travers. “I mean, in the eyes of the War House. But you bet your life they’ll do whatever’s the most awkward.”

  “The War House always runs true to form,” Byron said. “Any news, by the way? I thought I saw Dulling.”

  Travers thought it discreet to say at least something. Stirrop, he let out, had been the victim of an extremely nasty accident, though whether that accident was of his own causing or someone else’s design was not to be discussed.


  Long before his usual time he was in his office. Stirrop’s cap was transferred to an attaché case, then he switched the ’phone through to the Commandant’s office and went there to ring up the War House in privacy. The case was locked up in the Commandant’s safe.

  He was lucky in his telephoning. Not only did he get W.O. in a very few minutes, but he was put through to his own department where, more amazing still, was someone who knew what he was talking about. Travers, helped by the immunity of distance, and taking a firm line, said that of course he could carry on. As he pointed out, he knew every working of the camp, and new blood would only be a hindrance. No, he did not even want an adjutant at the moment. If he might be permitted to ring up again in a day or two, then perhaps the situation might be reviewed. In the meanwhile he could give an assurance that everything was, and would be, well in hand.

  Travers replaced the receiver with an enormous satisfaction. Unless some other meddling department threw a spanner into the works, the camp would have rest for many days. Then, as a reminder that rest was a very relative term, the ’phone went. It was Miss Dance, asking if she should open the correspondence. Travers told her he would be along at once.

  She greeted him in a monstrously little voice. Her eyes were red too, but Travers made no comment on the sadness of things. Miss Dance, but for the smell, would have been fully capable of seeking the melancholy aid of an onion.

  “Work will go on just as usual,” Travers told her. “I shall work here, but if there are any interviews I shall have them in the Commandant’s office.”

  “But isn’t it dreadful, though?”

  “Yes,” Travers said. “And when did you first hear of it?”

  “Just before I came,” she told him. “That’s why I was so upset.”

  “And who told you?”

  She flushed slightly. “Well, it was Captain Tester—really.”

  Travers wondered what the “really” implied, but thought best to leave it at that.