by Howard Mason
“Just the one bishop? Not the set?”
“Just the bishop.”
He raised his head and peered at me. He reminded me of an old tortoise.
“Well, I can’t say it’s worth a great deal. It’s a German piece, you know. Bavarian, sixteenth century. But an unusual design, distinctly unusual. Chipped, too; d’you see?” He pointed out a tiny flaw in the ivory. “Still, worth something, you know; don’t know how much; if you had the whole set, now, thirty-two pieces and in perfect condition, why, then you’d be talking; then I might be able to offer you, say, seventy or eighty pounds for the set. But I can’t put a value on a single piece, really not.”
“It’s of no value by itself?”
He shook his head. “Only as a curiosity, perhaps. It is an unusual design. Of course, if you wished to dispose of it, I might be able to offer you, say, two or three pounds.…
I looked up sharply. But behind the tortoise spectacles his little eyes regarded me guilelessly, full of innocence. Maybe I was developing a suspicious nature, but this was the third offer I’d had for the bishop within two days. I said:
“I thought you said it was worthless by itself?”
He was unperturbed. “I never turn down an odd figure. They come in handy for harlequin sets, you know; one gets something for them; not much, but they do sell.”
I relaxed a bit then, and told him I didn’t want to dispose of it at present. I took another look round his curious shop, let him try to sell me a couple of sets of chessmen without success, and coughed up half a guinea for a slim volume on the subject of antique chessmen, which, he said, he had written himself. Glancing at it on my way out, I decided that he’d probably paid for publication himself, too, and I regretted my half-guinea.
After that I got into the car again, filled her up with petrol, and drove up to Warwickshire.
When I passed through the village of Stour and drew in at the gates of Stony Castle in that car, I half expected to see the ancestral tenantry waiting at the lodge gate to cheer as I went by. Nothing like that happened, though. A small, dirty boy was swinging on the lodge gates, gnawing at a toffee-apple. When I asked him to open them for me, he considered me thoughtfully for several moments, wiped his arm across his face, put the toffee-apple carefully into his pocket, and obliged. I gave him sixpence, and drove on.
I had never seen Stony Castle before, and when I turned a bend in the drive and saw it ahead of me, I was taken aback. It was the biggest building I had ever seen. It was very solid and grim in outline, and not particularly attractive as castles go. It had been built in the early nineteenth century by the fourth Viscount, Stony’s grandfather, and apart from its size, and its extraordinary gardens, which I had yet to see, there seemed to be little to recommend it.
I parked the car in the drive and rang the bell. It was answered by an elderly, shuffly woman, with wispy hair and a Warwick accent, who informed me that she was the caretaker, that her name was Mrs. Hilly, and that she had been Stony’s cook until he died.
I allowed her to show me over the house. A great part of it had not been lived in for fifty years or so, and was sparsely furnished and rather damp. There seemed to be little of outstanding interest in the building, and nothing that I had any desire to keep. After the first hour, the tour became tedious, and I was relieved when we reached the kitchens and Mrs. Hilly offered me a share of her lunch.
Over the meal, I sounded her on the subject of Stony. She had only been with him for three years, it appeared, but she was able to add a little to what I already knew of Stony’s way of life.
I had known that he was a keen gardener; I had not realized how fanatical a one. The old man had occupied his entire time with his gardens, planning and re-ordering when he was not working till all hours out of doors, and as far as she knew, he had done nothing else for the last thirty years or so, ever since he returned to Stour from the war in 1919. It was his war service, I gathered, which was responsible for his secluded existence, shell-shock and a spell as a prisoner-of-war having left him with a legacy of nervous ill-health, to which his gardening provided both mental and physical relief. When I saw the gardens, I was not surprised at his enthusiasm. They were astonishing.
They had been laid out (I learned from the old gardener who had been Stony’s sole assistant) by Stony’s grandfather, a nineteenth century eccentric from whom Stony had inherited his passion for gardening. This Stonybridge had been in the diplomatic service, and on his retirement he had found an ingenious way of combining his interests.
He had started with a bare field, lying squarely among the surrounding parkland and woodland. Upon it he had carved out one enormous flower-bed, in the shape of the map of Europe, from Spain to the Ural Mountains, from Finland to the Caucasus. In full summer, the great bed was an exquisitely coloured map. A blaze of blue flowers, delphinium, scabious, lupin, covered the two small beds cut in the shape of the British Isles; the Austrian Empire sprawled across the Continent in a pink haze of pyrethrum; Italy was a shining white appendage, rich with phlox and stocks and shasta daisies; Spain was a splash of sunflowers, and other yellows; the great mass of Russia was laid out in purple flowering shrubs. Every little Balkan state, as it lay at the time, every island in the Greek Archipelago, stood out in its own colour against the grass. The flowers were carefully planned to succeed each other in their colours throughout the summer, so that the map would retain its glory from June to September.
The whole thing was designed to be seen, at its best, from the observation room at the top of the south tower of the castle, which commanded an almost aerial view of the bed. Here, in the little circular study, Stony’s ancestor had conducted his campaigns, surrounded by gardening catalogues, coloured chalks, the latest despatches from Carlton House Terrace, and The Times supplementary map of Europe. “George,” I could hear him saying to one of his bevy of gardeners, “George, the Polish corridor needs weeding,” or, “Italy is late this year,” or perhaps, as he laid down his Morning Post, “Ned, Bosnia is finished with. Take out those geranium grandiflorum and order another three dozen pink pyrethrum.” It must have been an absorbing hobby.
Stony, like his father before him, had carried on the work of conservation and change, managing somehow, and in view of his wealth incomprehensibly, with his one gardener. He must, I thought, have had a busy season’s transplanting after the Versailles Peace Treaty. He had begun (the gardener told me) after the war by entirely replanting Soviet Russia with scarlet windflowers. It was small wonder that he practically never emerged from the grounds of his estate. As though the map were not enough, he had filled in his spare time with the cultivation of rare orchids in his greenhouses.
Now, as I stood on the terrace at the south end of the castle, there was not much colour to be seen in the giant beds, and since Stony’s death the weeds had begun to take control. But in high summer it must have been a remarkable sight.
Dismissing from my mind a disquieting vision of the garden’s future, in which I saw my grandsons uprooting yearly more and more blue delphiniums and ordering more and more scarlet windflowers, I turned and moved regretfully into the house.
The caretaker had set out some tea for me in Stony’s library. I wandered round the shelves, glancing at his books. They were an odd collection; about half of them were devoted to gardening, with a number on tropical plants and their cultivation, and the other half seemed to be books about polar exploration, highly technical-looking works on the Arctic. I remembered having heard that he had been, in his youth, a member of some of the early polar expeditions. There didn’t seem to be any books that I wanted to keep, so I left the shelves and moved to the tea-tray.
The caretaker returned at that point, carrying a small black tin box full of papers, which she said she had found while cleaning out the tower room.
“Mr. Mott took all the things from his desk, sir,” she said. “He asked if there was any other papers, but
I hadn’t found this, not till this morning.”
“Thanks. I’d better take it.”
She left the thing with me, and I poured myself some tea and began to flip through the box’s contents.
It seemed to contain nothing but bulb catalogues. There were hundreds of them, going back in date for a good many years, with an occasional seed catalogue for variety. There were also a few old letters and a crumpled bill or two, but there didn’t seem to be anything of any importance, and I was just about to pack the thing up again when I came on a letter which struck me.
It was written in a spiky, sloping Continental hand, on thin crackly white paper, and was headed:
Anhalt für Geisteskranken
Bad Godesberg
Rhein Provinz.
The date at the top told me that, unlike the rest of the letters, it had been written only a few weeks before Stony’s death.
I drank another cup of tea and started to read.
Dear Lord of Stonybridge!
I am for many years having in my care one Johann Braun, of whom the true name and origin is unknown. This Braun has disappeared three weeks ago from Godesberg, and we are not able to trace him anywhere. Braun was sometimes speaking your name, and this is the reason why I write to you: I am thinking he may have pay you a visit.
This I think because in the weeks before he escaped, he would speak your name and say that he must finish the game of chess which once he started to play with you. This seemed to trouble his mind, and he would say many times “I am in check, I am in check,” and then say your name again and ask to finish this game.
Perhaps this name will not be known to you, if so accept my apologies for disturbing you. The man is over 6 feet tall, very slim and grey-hair, blue eyes, age about 65, speaks good Englisch. If you have hear anything of this Braun, you will be very amiable to inform me thereof.
Accept my good wishes!
from H. K. Ulbrecht, Warden
At the foot of the page there was a circular stamp in purple ink. It had been unevenly pressed down, and was not very clear, but the words round the edge could just be made out. They went:
Godesberg Geisteskrankenanhalt
Schloss Meiningen
Bad Godesberg.
I thought I knew what Geisteskrankenanhalt meant, but I went to the bookshelves and found a German dictionary, just to make sure. I turned to the g’s and read:
Geisteskrankenanhalt, s.f., —e. Asylum for the insane.
* * * *
It didn’t take me long to go through the rest of the box. There was nothing else of interest, and when I had finished I put the warden’s letter into my wallet, gave the caretaker a tip, got into the car, and drove rapidly back to London.
The first thing I did was to ring up Churt. I got through to New Scotland Yard and asked for his extension.
A woman’s voice answered me. It was rather pleasing.
I said: “Is Inspector Churt there?”
“Inspector Churt is out, sir. Can I take a message?”
I thought for a moment. “No, never mind.” Then I added: “Are you his secretary?”
The voice became prim. “This is Constable Perkins. Who is calling, please?”
I said: “Lord Stonybridge, but it doesn’t matter,” and was about to put the receiver down, when I heard, at the other end of the wire, a familiar snapping sound, as of a smallish, harassed dog barking. It was Churt, making an entrance. I could hear him telling Perkins to make some tea. After a moment, the voice came snapping into my ear.
“Churt here.”
I said: “Tell her to make it strong.”
“What?”
“I’ve got some news for you.” I told him about Johann Braun, deceased, of Godesberg Asylum, Rhine Province. He didn’t seem very interested.
“But it’s our Loved One.”
“Well, perhaps it is.”
“Perhaps, nothing, of course it is. You slipped up, didn’t you?”
“How d’you mean?”
“What about all your lists of missing persons?”
“They didn’t include any German lunatics,” said Churt, disgruntled. “It can’t have been reported.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” I asked expectantly.
“Do? Nothing,” snapped the voice. “He’s buried now, isn’t he?”
“So what?”
“So we don’t want an exhumation order, that’s what.”
“Would you have to dig him up?”
“Of course. For identification. There’d be another inquest, your warden would be informed that his lost sheep was dead of natural causes, and Herr Braun would be popped back into the ground for the second time. Where would it get us?”
I said: “You mean you’re going to do nothing about it?”
“Maybe you’d like Lord Stonybridge exhumed as well,” said Churt crossly.
“It mightn’t be a bad idea.”
Churt sounded exasperated. “You know as well as I do that he died of—”
“—Heart failure,” I said. “I know. Don’t we all?”
“Anyway, do me a favour and forget Braun, will you?”
“All right.”
“Thanks.” He rang off.
The next thing I did was to ring Walter Mott. When he answered, I said:
“Do you happen to know if my great-uncle was a keen chess-player?”
“Chess?” There was a surprised pause. “I really can’t say. I never—ah—heard him mention the game. But I couldn’t tell you for certain. You might try—” he mentioned the name of an elderly peer, a club acquaintance of Stony’s, who was his fellow-executor.
“Have you got his number?”
He gave it to me. I considered telling him about the warden’s letter, but I remembered just in time that I had promised Churt I’d keep quiet about it. It would make things awkward for Churt if it leaked out. I thanked the solicitor, rang off, and dialed the number he had given me.
A butler’s voice answered me. I gave my name and asked for the Earl of St. Pancras.
“I’m afraid he’s not at home, my lord. You might try his club.” He produced the number.
I sighed, and tried the club. This time I was lucky. I got on to him as he was finishing his dinner. I had met the old boy once or twice, and we disposed of the courtesies at some length. Then I asked him if he knew whether Stony played chess.
“Chess?” came the old man’s voice. “Happen to know for a fact that he didn’t.”
After a pause, I said: “You’re certain of that?”
“Yes, yes. Once tried to get him to learn, but he wouldn’t have it.”
I digested this.
“And he didn’t have any special interest in antique chessmen, or old carving, anything of the sort?”
“No, no; nothin’ of the kind. Just gardening, you know, orchids, maps, and all that. Never heard him talk about chess.”
I thanked him. He asked me when I intended to take my seat.
“What?” I said.
“When are you goin’ to join us at the House, my dear fellow?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. I said: “I’m afraid I haven’t made any plans yet.”
“Well, plenty of time. Sponsor you if you like.”
“Very good of you, sir.”
“Not at all.”
I replaced the receiver thoughtfully. Then I drew out the warden’s letter and began to study it again. “He would speak your name and say that he must finish the game of chess which once he started to play with you…he would say many times ‘I am in check’…” Well, the man Braun had been insane. Maybe he had got the name wrong; or maybe the warden had got it wrong. There must be plenty of names which sound like Stonybridge.
But then why had Braun chosen to come and die
in my flat?
After a while I went to the desk and got out a sheet of air-mail paper. I wrote to Herr Ulbrecht, Warden, explaining that my great-uncle was dead, and asking him to tell me anything he could about Johann Braun. I didn’t tell him the man was dead, but said I thought that I might have received a visit from him. I went out and posted it. After that there seemed to be nothing to do but wait for his reply. Or so I thought.
CHAPTER III
The next day, I had to go up to Newmarket. The flatracing season was starting, and I had to do some general articles, telling my readers the most scientific way of losing their money. I gave one or two trainers an expensive lunch, which I put down carefully on my expense account. After that I left Nobby up there, nosing around the stables, and drove back to London.
It was late when I got back to Flood Street, and I put the car away, climbed the stairs to my flat and let myself in.
I had a feeling about it, even before I switched on the light. Someone had been there.
The lamp flooded the room with light. There was chaos everywhere.
Books had been pulled out of the bookcase and lay scattered on the floor. The drawers of my desk were open and spilling, papers everywhere in a turmoil; one of the drawers, a locked one, had been forced. In the bedroom, it was the same. Bedclothes ripped from the bed, chest of drawers ransacked; my visitors had, as Mr. Mott would say, left no stone unturned.
I came back to the sitting-room and stood blankly among the litter. I looked around me. Nothing of any value had been taken, as far as I could see. My gold cigarette box, a pair of silver candlesticks—there wasn’t much, and it was all there still.
I felt in my pocket, and took out the small hard object which had been pressing against my side for the last two days. I unwrapped it. The little red bishop lay in his nest of tissue-paper and winked at me.
I went to the telephone and got on to Inspector Churt. The brisk clipped voice answered me. “Churt here.”
“Stonybridge speaking. I’ve been burgled.”
“What?”
“I said I’ve been burgled.”
There was a pause.
