The Case of the Murdered Major: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  It was easy work making that move of the prisoners. The upstairs rooms were always ready for reception, so that all a man had to do was to take his personal belongings, and be transferred with his room en bloc. Then the doors on the landings of the twin stairways were locked, and there was everything as it was before. Latrine buckets were handy, so that no man could make an excuse to go outside, and for once each individual room would be its own recreation-room.

  By a quarter past ten the move was completed and the R.E. men got to work. Bedding had been placed to one side, and now the floor-boards were prised up and the joists exposed. The job was far easier than might have been expected, for the boards had luckily been laid north and south, and since a tunnel would run east or west, it was plain that it must have been begun on the side of a room nearest an outer wall, in order to save excavation. It was easy too for the engineers to tell whether boards had been tampered with at all, and so less trouble was taken with a room whose floor had obviously never been disturbed since the day it was laid.

  “Whoever laid these floors made a rotten bad job of it,” the Sapper sergeant told Travers and Wharton. “It’s a wonder the place hasn’t had dry-rot.”

  For years, it appeared, the correct and only safe method had been to set the joists in concrete and to proof both joists and setting with tar. But the floors in that old hospital had the original earth immediately below the joists, so that all that had saved the floors from dry-rot were the air bricks which allowed some small circulation. If bricks had got choked, which one or two of them were, air could never have circulated and a fetid damp would have attacked the joists.

  The first excitement came at that room where Lading had reported the beginnings of a tunnel, for it was plain from the start that here the boards had been removed. The corner of the room, under the six-foot length of a prisoner’s bed-boards and palliasse, had been chosen for the entrance. But, to the vast disappointment of all concerned, no entrance remained. When its excavators had somehow got word that everything was known, they had decided to fill it in.

  And there a problem met them. The earth already taken out had been spread round the other joints till they were packed. The sergeant proved that by showing where the earth had marked the joists. But quite a lot of the tunnel must also have been completed, for not only had all that earth been put back in the hole, but more earth had been excavated round the joists. And even then the hole had not been quite filled, for there remained the deficiency caused by the earth which prisoners had transferred from the room in their pockets and disposed of in the exercise yards.

  Still, there it was. The tunnel had been abandoned, and filled in sufficiently for the floor not to sound too hollow to an inquiring tread. And after that there was no other excitement at all, but only one false alarm. In the last room but one, boards had definitely been prised up and a site tested, but for some reason the attempt at escape had been either postponed or abandoned too.

  “Well, that’s good enough for me,” Wharton told Travers and Winter. “I told you I had an idea another tunnel was in the wind and I was right.”

  “How did you know?” Winter asked.

  “Ah!” said Wharton, with a roguish wag of the head, “that would be telling.”

  Travers was fetched by a runner, as being wanted urgently on the ’phone. It was Intelligence, with a brief, important instruction. Major Carterson had left for Shoreleigh, and would be there at thirteen-thirty hours. Could he be met, and if necessary accommodated for the night? And about the prisoner Beckner. Was there any more information? There wasn’t. Well, Major Carterson would be going into the matter on arrival.

  It was lucky for Travers and all concerned that he mentioned no word to a soul until a few minutes later he ran into Wharton. Wharton pursed out his lips beneath the huge moustache, frowned heavily, then led Travers mysteriously aside.

  “Now look here. For once I want you to do just as I say. A whole lot may depend on it. First, unless it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t want you to let that Major Carterson enter the camp. I don’t want him even to be mentioned. That’s even more important.”

  “"What am I to do then? Meet him at the station?”

  “That’s it,” Wharton said. “And take me with you. Work it like that. Join me in the Mess in a quarter of an hour’s time and ask Byron to lend you his car for an urgent job. I’ll ask if you’re going down town. You’ll say you are—some of the way—and I’ll scrounge a lift.”

  Travers went back to his office to spend that quarter of an hour with profit, and there a remarkably strange thing happened. If he had been less busy that morning he must have noticed something peculiar about Bertha Dance. More than once she had gone through all the preliminaries of making a confession, but the absorption of Travers in something else had been a deterrent. But during his last absence she had evidently screwed her courage to the desperate sticking point.

  “Captain Travers,” she said, “I wanted to ask your advice about something.” She gave an incipient titter. “It’s something personal—really.”

  “Always pleased to oblige,” said Travers flippantly.

  “It’s about. . . . Well, what would you do when anyone’s jealous?”

  “Depends on the person, and the extent of the jealousy,” he told her warily. His fingers went to his glasses. “Would it make it easier if I suggested that you wanted to ask my advice about you and Captain Tester?”

  “Well, yes,” she said, and tittered slightly again. “He was ever so jealous. Of Major Stirrop, it was, and I kept telling him there was nothing in it. I know I went out once or twice with him, but it was only friendliness and he wouldn’t see it—Captain Tester wouldn’t, I mean.”

  The nervousness had gone and she was away at full swing.

  “When I had to come to the camp on the night he was—I mean, on the night Major Stirrop died, he was watching me and he—”

  “Just a minute. Just a minute!” interrupted Travers. “Just why did you come to the camp, and why haven’t I heard about it?”

  “Because I didn’t really come,” she said patiently. “You see, it was like this. I’d left my bag in the drawer by mistake, and I didn’t remember it till I was nearly home. Then I wanted something out of it, so I came right back to the camp and got them to ring from the guard. I thought the runner would bring the bag to me at the gate—see? Then I wouldn’t have to come in. Only I couldn’t make anyone hear. The ’phone must have gone wrong, and so I thought it didn’t matter after all. Then when I got a little way back along the road, I saw Captain Tester, and I knew he’d been following me. I actually taxed him with it, and he couldn’t deny it. We had a fine old row and I nearly gave him his ring back, and then I wouldn’t let him come home with me, and when I left him he was walking back towards the camp.”

  Travers nodded judicially.

  “Well, it appears to me that unless you’re having an affair with somebody else, young lady, your jealousy troubles solved themselves when Major Stirrop died.”

  “Oh, but he never has forgiven me. Or I haven’t forgiven him, rather. I hate to be pried on. So would anybody.”

  “At what time was it when you got to the camp?”

  “About half-past eight, I think. You see, I didn’t pay much attention to the time.” She got to her feet and began collecting her things. “Don’t let’s talk about it any more. And thanks ever so much for being so helpful. Would you mind if I went early to-day?”

  “If you mean now—why not?” smiled Travers.

  A glance at his watch showed he had still five minutes in hand. At once he was ringing the guard orderly-room, and asking for their sergeant-major. Who was in charge of Main Guard on the night Major Stirrop died? Last Thursday night, to be precise.

  A minute, and the sergeant’s name was given.

  “Is he available?” Travers asked. “If so, I want to see him. Not here—make that clear. Tell him to be waiting inside the guard hut at main gate in ten minutes’ time.”

  T
he main scheme worked. Just before thirteen hours Travers was driving Byron’s car through the main gate. Just beyond it, under cover of the wall, he called to the sentry to send that sergeant of the guard.

  “You were on duty the night Major Stirrop died?” Travers asked him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then listen to me. Anything I say to you now is to be forgotten. If ever I learn that a word’s got out about any question I ask you, you’re for it. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then at what time on that Thursday night did Miss Dance come here and ask to use the ’phone to call up any office?”

  The sergeant stared.

  “She didn’t come—not here, sir.”

  “You’re dead sure? What about when you were absent on guard-mounting?”

  “I wasn’t, sir. Corporal Westley mounted both guards and I took over at midnight.”

  “You were in the hut from say, nineteen hours till twenty-one hours?”

  “Yes, sir. Never left it. I was in the room where the ’phone is, sir, reading a book in front of the stove.”

  “Good enough,” said Travers, and nodded approvingly. “That’s all then, Sergeant, except to forget you’ve been talking to me.”

  “What was all that about?” asked Wharton as soon as Travers moved the car on. Travers told him. Wharton fairly beamed.

  “What made you think her yarn was fishy?”

  “The fact that she made me Aunt Daisy of Flossie’s Weekly,” said Travers. “That young woman’s quite capable of handling all the intricacies of love. And I wondered if a woman would ever leave a bag behind, and not rumble it in the first minute. Also, if Bertha got as far as the gate, after having walked a mile on a filthy night, why didn’t she walk a couple of hundred yards farther when she found the ’phone out of order? And, above all, when she mentioned the name of Captain Tester, why didn’t she do what she’s always done—blush!”

  “I get you,” Wharton said. “The yarn was ready beforehand. But there’s some truth in it. The ’phone was out of order at the time she states.”

  His hand went out.

  “Slow down here, will you? Pull up against the kerb.”

  He got out and looked round, then got in again.

  “Would you mind taking that road over there? I know a way that’s a bit of a short cut.”

  “You seem to have learned a lot,” Travers told him, and moved the car on again. “What’s the idea? Want to avoid seeing somebody in town?”

  “More or less,” said Wharton, and then seemed highly amused at something. “Ten minutes ago I couldn’t have said what I’m going to say now—which is this. Unless I’m vastly mistaken, by about ten o’clock to-morrow morning we’re going to have the hell of a lot of fun.”

  Major Carterson was a man of middle age, quiet and unassuming, but it was soon clear that he knew his job. Travers was not to worry, he said, about night accommodation, because he hoped to return to town by the 16.15. He had not had lunch on the train, so the three adjourned to the Station Hotel and talked shop over a square meal.

  He was worried about Lading, that was clear too, but he smiled at the way Winter had managed to smuggle him out of camp.

  “He’s got an absolute flair for this kind of work,” Carterson said. “In some ways he’s the most promising lad we ever had. Utterly reckless and yet never makes a mistake.”

  “Well, I’m perfectly convinced he’ll turn up,” Travers said. “And my own private idea is, he’s still somewhere in this town.”

  Wharton said nothing, and Travers wondered why, for if there was one thing of which he was convinced, it was that the rendezvous that night at the Crown and Anchor was with Lading himself.

  “I suppose it’s silly to worry about him,” Carterson agreed, “especially since we had to wash our hands of him, so to speak. He told you, didn’t he, just what his job was?”

  He went on to amplify. The Union Government knew that one particularly important agent had been smuggled into Southern Rhodesia, and that his job was to unify the whole Nazi movement in Southern Africa. It was suspected that he had two other highly placed Reich agents with him, and Intelligence were reasonably satisfied that Scribbnitz and Stein were those two. The other was probably in camp under a false name. Forged documents were easy enough to manufacture.

  That man, Carterson said, was probably a prisoner named Hauffner—Karl Hauffner—as Intelligence had just heard through a Cape Town cable, and he wanted to take Hauffner back with him that afternoon, Friedemann too, just in case he could be induced to squeal.

  That other business of sabotage in Shoreleigh had been suggested by Lading himself, which was probably why he was still in the town.

  “My own idea is this,” Carterson went on. “I think he wanted that tunnel to be completed. He may even have acted as agent provocateur, and started it. Then he’d have sent the tip outside to let the prisoners escape, and find out where they made contacts. Still, it’s too late to worry about that now. I expect he found a short cut with the same ends in view, which is why he’s still out on his own.”

  Travers rang the camp and asked Winter to make arrangements for transport and escort. There was the R.T.O. to see about a private compartment, and Liverpool Street to be warned at the other end. It was half an hour later when Travers got back to the hotel, and there were Wharton and Carterson still in the most earnest conversation. Wharton was reinforcing some argument with lifted linger and wagging head, and Carterson was frowning away and nodding.

  “Well, everything’s arranged,” Travers reported. “Your two birds will be here well in time, Major. And now where do we go?”

  “I don’t think I ought to keep either of you,” Carterson said. “I’ll be watching at the station ready to take the two birds over.”

  “Then if you’re sure, I’ll push off,” Travers said. “You ready, George?”

  “I’m staying on,” Wharton said. “No use going back now and coming all this way again later on. You get along home. Captain Byron may be wanting his car.”

  Travers had to laugh.

  “Any other orders?”

  “Just my little joke,” Wharton said. “And if you really want to know, the Major and I were talking about a chap known as Weinholst. The Major thinks he once heard of him.” He waved a cheery hand of dismissal. “See you later then. Don’t sit up. I may be late.”

  But he was not late. That night the three guard officers were all in the Mess, with Winter tackling arrears in his office, but there was that rare event—a four at bridge. Pewter had to knock off while he took the count, and the game had hardly been started again when Wharton looked into the room. Then he came inside.

  “The gamblers’ den,” he remarked facetiously.

  “More like the gabblers’ den,” said Byron dryly. “There’s more argument and inquests than anything else.”

  “Good. Very good,” said Wharton, “What about a drink?”

  “You have this with me,” Byron said.

  The accounts were settled, the cards laid by, and the five gathered round the fire. Winter came in and joined the circle. Wharton gave no sign to Travers of what had transpired that night, but he was as usual the life and soul of the party. It was well after ten o’clock when he remarked that he liked the company but not their hours.

  Travers went with him. In the dark, Wharton’s hand felt for Travers’s sleeve, and Travers was gently drawn into his own room, and the light was not switched on. Wharton’s voice came in a whisper.

  “A good interview tonight. Tomorrow things ought to get going.”

  “You think you’ve found something?” Travers whispered back.

  “I know it,” Wharton said. “I’ve got all the pieces but one, and I may have that before to-morrow’s out. You got a revolver here? If so, let me have it, and some ammunition.”

  Travers handed the gun over, and said it was fully loaded. Wharton peeped from the door, and then without another word was gone. Travers’s finger
s went instinctively to his glasses, then fell bewilderedly.

  PART IV

  WHARTON KNOWS

  CHAPTER XVI

  INTRUSION OF A BRASS HAT

  Travers had a bad night. It was a very long time before he fell asleep at all, for he lay listening for the sound of Wharton’s gun. Whenever he woke up he was listening again, and once he gently opened the door and looked out into the silence of the camp. Then as he lay waiting for sleep again, he was trying to make coherence out of the happenings of the last two days, and wondering what lay behind Wharton’s secretiveness and even his overnight confidence, and wondering above all what the coming day would have in store. Wharton had promised action before eleven o’clock, but Travers could even add the fear that in the morning Wharton might not be alive. Never before had he known him use a gun.

  When Sniffy came in with early tea, Travers was in a heavy sleep, and it took him longer than ever to get his bearings.

  “Is Superintendent Wharton about?” he said.

  ”I don’t think he’s up, sir,” Sniffy said. “I heard him and Timms talking as I went past.”

  No sooner was Travers dressed than he was along at Wharton’s room. The old General was shaving, and before Travers’s lips could frame the first word, his finger was at his own lips, and he was making frantic signals for silence. Then he began the greetings.

  “Hallo! What gets you up so early?”

  “Guilty conscience,” said Travers, taking the cue.

  “The cold, more likely,” said Wharton, getting on with the last stages of shaving. “Never knew such cold.’

  From the weather he switched to Travers’s private affairs: the last time he had seen Bernice in town, how that Travers was surely well overdue for leave, news about old friends at the Yard, and so to the progress of the war. When his tie was adjusted and he had given a final brush to hair and moustache, he said he had to slip across to the building, and he’d be seeing Travers at breakfast.