The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  “No; I have never told her. I hardly know why; perhaps it was because I wanted to make certain for myself first; also I was afraid, when this work of mine started, that she might be questioned, and reveal something. I am a covetous man, Stonybridge, though you may not think so; I wanted to make quite sure that my rather valuable information didn’t fall into the wrong hands.” He was talking half to himself, musing; I was becoming very curious. “I didn’t learn of it myself until a year ago,” he went on. “It was when we were restoring part of Burg Endert after the big fire. That was when I found out about Curtius—you remember the portrait on the stairs?”

  I nodded again; I had often studied Curtius, and those familiar painted chessmen. I had liked the picture.

  Suddenly Joseph picked up the bishop which he had been toying with; a red one. He held it in front of him, observing it, and said: “This is the key, Stonybridge, this little bishop.” He held it up. “Do you see his sly face? Look at his crooked smile: he knows, he won’t tell; you can trust him.” He laughed. “I have become very fond of this little bishop, Stonybridge. He grows on you. He is different, you know, from the others in the set; had you noticed?”

  I hadn’t noticed; and I had no time to notice it now, because there came a rattle of keys at the cell door. Two of the guards had come to take Joseph away.

  He looked up at them, and said calmly: “I suppose you would not allow me to finish my game?”

  “No time for that,” said the guard.

  “A pity. My king is in check.” He pushed his chair back from the table; he still held the bishop, and for a moment I thought he was going to hold it out for me to take. Then, as though changing his mind, he slipped it into his pocket. “Too late,” he said. “I’ll keep him now, to bring me luck. But if ever you get back, Stonybridge, you might look for the schoolmaster’s letter in the globe.” They had him at the door now; he said, smiling: “I feel lucky to-day. Perhaps one day we’ll have an opportunity to finish our game.”

  I saw one of the guards turn to the other and raise his eyebrows, with a slight shrug; and I knew that the game would never be finished.

  They took him away then. He was an admirable man, the Graf Joseph, and I imagine that he died well.

  * * * *

  (Here Stony broke off for the second time, to take his nap; and I considered telling him what I knew of Johann Braun, of Godesberg Asylum. But there didn’t seem to be much point in distressing him unnecessarily, and I decided to let the Graf Joseph sleep in peace in his anonymous pauper’s grave. When I heard the rest of the story, I was glad I hadn’t told him.)

  * * * *

  As for me (he went on), after a day or two I was moved from the cell at Cologne, and taken, eventually, back to the military prison from which, so many months before, I had escaped. The authorities had abandoned their view of me as an important figure in possession of secrets of state, and, back in my camp, I was treated like any other officer.

  The first person I saw, when I entered the mess-hut on the day of my return, was my brother John.

  He had been taken prisoner only a few months after my escape, of which he had learned from some of my fellow-inmates. He had been wounded, and though his wound was healed, he was still suffering from shell-shock, which had left him nervy, depressed, and slightly deaf. His depression had been added to by the fact that he had received news of the death of his wife in Ceylon, while he was a prisoner; and he was therefore doubly glad of my arrival, for I was able to help a little to relieve the tedium of prison-life, which gave him too much time to think of his troubles. We had plenty to talk about, between us.

  I don’t know exactly when it was that the idea came to us of sending John home to Stour in my place.

  It was some time towards the end of the year, which was 1917. We thought the war was going on for a good many years more. And we knew that after the war we would both have to go back: John to his empty home in Ceylon, I to the gloomy barrack of Stour. It was not a pleasing prospect. Not for us the pleasant dreams of home and future which kept up the spirits of our companions; only a return to a manner of life which had, for me at least, become completely meaningless.

  Perhaps I ought to tell you a little more about Sarah. You will have already guessed that she became my wife.

  At the time I first knew her, during those months of hiding, she was a girl of twenty-three. She was the first woman who had ever meant anything to me; and since she was in love with her husband, if she was aware of my feelings, she never showed it.

  Now that Joseph was dead, my one idea was to make my way back to Cochem as soon as I could and look after her. I never allowed myself to have any doubts about her. I knew, with what I thought was a deep instinct, but which was probably simple arrogance, that she would marry me. I didn’t know whether she would want to come back to England, to Stour, with me; but the truth was that, with or without Sarah, I didn’t want to go back myself.

  I wanted to go back and stay at Burg Endert where I had spent those happy, dangerous months. And I wanted to find out the secret of Curtius, seventh Count of Cochem.

  Perhaps you will have gathered by now that I am a man of singular perseverance in my ideas, once they have taken hold of me. I see you smile; perhaps I over-estimate myself. It is true that my perseverance in fourteen years of dreary guardianship of Stour is not a thing of which I am proud. But in that case circumstances, in the form of nine thousand pounds a year, were too much for me.

  I was still up against circumstance, but this time a war, a woman, and an unsolved mystery had combined to strengthen my resolve. This time, I would shake the dust of Stour from my feet once and for all.

  Or so I told myself, and John, as we hibernated through that long winter. The trouble was that in shaking off the dust of Stour I would shake off my only financial resources. And I wanted money, not only for myself, but for Sarah; as Joseph had said, the State would have little concern for the wife of a dead spy, and all his own resources would almost certainly have been impounded.

  It was John who first made the actual suggestion. We had been speaking of the gardens of Stour; and we talked, idly enough, of the great changes that would have to be made in the garden, once the peace treaties, if they ever came, designed the new face of Europe. It would, we imagined, be a herculean task.

  John said: “I wish I could go back and do it.”

  I said: “Why not?”

  He said: “I think I will.”

  Then he said: “You don’t want to go back, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Need you?”

  We stared at each other.

  And so the idea was born.

  Of course it wasn’t really serious at first. During those long months of imprisonment, we found some amusement in working out the details of a wonderful plan to effect a switch of identities. We worked it out rather as though it were a plot for one of those plays in which the real Duke turns up at the end of the second act; you know the kind of thing; usually he proves his identity with a birthmark, and everybody turns out to be twins.

  Unfortunately we had none of those conveniences to help us with our own plot. We used to derive considerable entertainment from fantastic ideas of disguises, and forgeries, and so on, and evoked the picture of John calling on the Vicar of Stour in a false beard and horn-rimmed spectacles.

  But none of our plans could get us over our two main difficulties. The first was the Vicar, who had always signed my annual affidavit to the Trustees. He had known me since I was a child, and would call on me from time to time, ostensibly to enquire after my spiritual welfare and satisfy himself that I was indeed in residence, but mainly in order to ask for a contribution to the Church Roof Fund, in whose cause he was indefatigable. There was of course nothing binding me to obtain the affidavit from him, for any responsible person who knew me, such as the local J.P. or doctor, would have served my turn; but to ch
ange now, after all those years, would seem odd and invite comment, and the Vicar therefore constituted a problem.

  The second difficulty was Burnley and his fellow-trustee.

  It was true that during the years I spent at Stour before the war, I hardly saw either of them, simply sending in my annual affidavit, and receiving my annual income. Once the thing had become a routine, I used only to pay an occasional visit to them when in London, to discuss some investment or other business which could as easily have been conducted by letter.

  But it was almost certain that when I returned from the war, they would want to see me to discuss the business arising from my long absence. And however alike John and I had been thought to be in our extreme youth by doting relatives, there was no doubt that now, in our middle years, we could hardly hope to be taken for each other. True, we were of the same build, and height; we both had our mother’s family nose; our voices were not dissimilar; but, in addition to all the little dissimilarities of feature, and John’s darker complexion, burnt by twenty-five years of Indian sun, we had naturally all those differing expressions, differing manners of raising an eyebrow, of laughing, or speaking, that are so much more revealing than the actual lines of a face. Only a very short-sighted man would ever have taken John for me in broad daylight, if he had known me at all well.

  These were our stumbling-blocks. As for the servants at Stour, these consisted now of our old nurse, who was nearly seventy, and a butler who was nearly as old, both of whom had always sympathized with John and me in our battles against our father, and who could, we thought, be relied on to help us in this last battle against a dead man’s obstinacy. These two had, with the aid of daily girls from the village, looked after the castle throughout the war, in my absence. The daily girls were always changing, and could be changed again (not that I had ever been on intimate terms with any of them; that was a hobby of my father’s, which I had not inherited).

  I had never had many close friends in England; my one crony with whom I had made many of my polar trips had been killed in the war, and there was no one else whom I had any particular desire to see again. As for my acquaintances in Stour itself, these were few and unloved. Nevertheless, if our plan were to bear fruit, John would have to live almost the life of a recluse; he could hardly invite my neighbours to tea.

  I was thinking about this latter problem, one day when John and I were indulging our fancies in the usual way. I said:

  “It’s no good, John. The village people. You’d be bound to be seen.”

  John said: “Would I? You know I’m not social, George. I’m deaf as a post, now, and I’ve not much use for people. I’m used to a solitary life.”

  I said: “Yes, but you can’t incarcerate yourself completely at Stour. Why, man, I tried it myself, and it nearly drove me mad.”

  “You were a young man then; and besides, you are not me.” He told me then that he wanted nothing more than a quiet home in which he could devote himself to the cultivation of tropical flowers and to the replanning of the Stonybridge Garden of Europe. “Even if I simply accepted your offer of a home there with you, George, I still shouldn’t ask any more. Why should I want to go and take tea with the local spinsters, or sherry with the curate? Damned nuisance, country neighbours, if you ask me. They want to take cuttings from your plants, and they call on you after luncheon. No, I should take a firm line right away; tell ’em I’m an invalid, that I’m deaf, that the war has left my nerves in a bearish state; it’s true, damn it. Plenty of breathing-space within our own Stony walls. All I want, George, is a few hundreds a year and my own greenhouse. And if I can help you, into the bargain, then I shall be satisfied.”

  It was then, I think, that I first realized John meant it seriously; and that I meant it seriously, too.

  And so, we planned, and waited.

  We had plenty of time for it, and nothing else to do. This time we got down to it in earnest. And we found a way, as we thought, out of our two major difficulties, and indeed out of any others that might arise.

  I would go back to England myself, and stay for six months to a year, as it should prove necessary. I would visit Burnley and settle my business; I would call on any old acquaintances who might wish to look me up after the war; I would arrange the Stour servant problem satisfactorily; I would make it known in the village that the war had left me invalidish and that I intended to retire to a secluded life, taking no part in village activities. To make things doubly safe for John, I would go back as a man considerably changed by the war: I should feign a little deafness, darken my skin with a stain, perhaps, copy as best I could John’s manner of speaking and moving; and take to wearing rimless spectacles, which are infinitely more misleading than the horn-rimmed variety more commonly adopted, one is led to believe, in these cases. These things would not substantially alter my identity, but they would prepare the way for a somewhat changed appearance in Lord Stonybridge. The point was, of course, that while John could hardly be expected to disguise himself as me for the rest of his life, it was a simpler matter for me to make a fair shot at an imitation of John for six months; after which everything would be ready for him to step into my place. Since John himself had been absent from England for more than twenty-five years, there was no danger of him being recognized for himself.

  As for the second of our major problems, the Vicar of Stour, I must confess that we were never very happy about the method we finally hit upon. This was as follows: during my stay at Stour, I should suggest tactfully to the old man—he was a contemporary of my father’s—that he was getting a bit too far on in years to wish to be bothered with this annual chore, and I should then make arrangements to have the same task performed by some other local dignitary, choosing one whom I had never met. When I had selected him, John would be brought privily down to Stour, and it would be John who would meet and arrange things with the man I had chosen. This would be, so to speak, a trial run for him; a little prologue to his long playing of the part of Lord Stonybridge.

  There remained only the problem of what should become of Captain the Hon. John Scrivener, M.C., when John had abandoned him to take up his new identity. Clearly he would have to die; otherwise we might become involved in all kinds of inheritance problems. (With John “dead,” there was no difficulty about the inheritance; neither of us had sons, and the title would go, on the death of Lord Stonybridge, to Oliver’s boy. If ever Sarah should bear me a son, it would be no sorrow to me to see him lose the title; he would have my money, which would be far more useful to him than Stony Castle or a handle to his name. And as it turned out, she bore me only Sophia; and a very charming girl she’s turned out, too, as I see you’ve noticed, young pup, having eyes in your head. Where was I?)

  Yes, John had to die; and it was his own suggestion that he should commit suicide. I should say, appear to commit suicide. It was perhaps a rather drastic solution, but the idea appealed to John; he said it had dramatic possibilities. Indeed the whole scheme had given the fellow a new lease on life; it quite bucked him up; he used to spend hours happily tracing his new signature over and over again below mine, until he had the hand to his satisfaction. The truth is that we had both come to look upon the whole enterprise as a kind of glorious revenge against our father. We sat in that prison-hut spinning our plot in the same spirit of vengeful cunning with which, thirty years before, as schoolboys, we had sat in the summer-house at Stour, plotting to outwit some new and outrageous disciplinary measure of our father’s. It was childish, perhaps; but it was agreeable. You didn’t know my father.

  Well, John was to die; and the moment he was to choose would be the day, if it ever came, of our release from prison by the victorious Allies. In the first confusion of liberation, he would stage his suicide, leaving a note which would convey something of the state of deep nervous depression in which his war experiences and the death of his wife had left him, and his inability to face repatriation. He would disappear; and since there wou
ld be no body, there would be no inquest. He would, in time, be presumed dead.

  Such was the plan we concocted; and if you think it was an odd thing to do, well, three years in a German prison-camp does breed odd things. It suited us both, and gave us each what he wanted: money to live comfortably, each in the place he chose, and the satisfaction of having at last escaped from the wreck which our father had very nearly succeeded in making of our lives. (Perhaps I exaggerate: I admit that in my own case, Stour on ten thousand a year might be considered a very luxurious wreck. I was, shall we say rather, becalmed; expensively becalmed. As for John—well, if you would like to go and plant tea, you’re welcome; by all means go and plant it. John had had enough.)

  Yes, I suppose I could have abandoned my heritage and set out to earn a living; but what would have been the fate of a man of my age—which was bordering on fifty—cast into that post-war world with neither training nor experience of any kind? And then, the thought of allowing all that money to go to the Royal Horticultural Society was, in spite of my respect for that admirable body, a painful one.

  We knew what we were doing all right; so you needn’t look at me like that, young man. You can’t teach your great-uncle to suck eggs.

  * * * *

  Well, we did it. And some things were made easier for us than we had imagined. When I got back to Stour, and wrote to Burnley, I found that his fellow-trustee had died during the war, and he himself had now retired from the business. The firm had been taken over by a new partnership, under the name of Babington and Pettigrew. Under the terms of my father’s will, the trusteeship had now descended to them.

  When Burnley wrote to this effect, I immediately invited Babington and Pettigrew to come down to Stour and make my acquaintance. Or rather, the acquaintance of John. (This was to forestall any offer on Burnley’s part to effect a meeting between us all so that he could introduce us. The offer duly came, but I indicated that I was very busy at Stour and would prefer to meet them there, while promising a visit to Burnley himself, for a chat, later on. This I duly accomplished in my own person.)