The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  It was an uneasy thought, and one that could be the product only of a mind as suspicious as my own. But just after half-past five I went across to the barn. Five o’clock was the official closing time, but I found Daine in his room. He had been talking to the dictaphone, but said he had just finished for the night.

  “Something very private I’d like to talk over with you,” I said. “We can’t be overheard here?”

  Confidences were nothing to Daine. In his time he must have had many a peep at family skeletons, but he did give me a quick, enquiring look. As I said before, I’m always a bit uneasy in the presence of a Daine wearing glasses. They give me the idea that he can read not only my thoughts but what lies behind them.

  “It’s nothing about books,” I said, and then began telling the story.

  “A second letter, was there?” he said. I passed it to him, and he was shaking his head as he handed it back.

  “Sorry to interrupt you. Do carry on.”

  I told him of the original arrangement made with Martin, and how it had fallen through, and Constance’s suggestion about himself.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he told me with a brusque finality. “I gave Constance my advice, and I still adhere to it.”

  “That settles that, then,” I said. “But, strictly between ourselves, will you answer a plain question? Could Chaice be guilty of doing what the letters accuse him of?”

  “Could he?” he said sharply. Then he hesitated, and began fidgeting. “Do you know, I’m not so sure.”

  “You believe he’s mentally unstable?”

  “Damned if I know,” he said. “I own there are times when I think he’s absolutely mad. Not mad enough to lock up, of course. In fact, mad is rather too strong a word.”

  “Another question, then. Assume he is doing this liquid-squirting. Why is he doing it?”

  “God knows, my dear fellow. Exhibitionism run mad; that’s all I can suggest.”

  “He couldn’t be doing it so as to incorporate it, or something like it, in a book?”

  His mouth gaped at that.

  “He couldn’t be such a bloody fool as that! If he were found out he wouldn’t get away with it as he did over that typewriter business.” He shook his head and frowned as he rubbed his chin. “I wonder.” Then he shook his head again. “I can’t think he’s as mad as that. Mind you, if he is and he’s caught, then it’s the end of him. His sales would flop—just like that.”

  The gesture was expressive enough. I added something.

  “Wouldn’t it cost you a packet too?”

  “Well, yes. I suppose it would. Not that I’m thinking overmuch about that. It’s the scandal and the family that I’m more concerned about.” He clicked his tongue annoyedly. “It puts me in a hell of a quandary.”

  “Well, I leave it to you,” I said. “I go away tomorrow, and after that it’s no pigeon of mine. If you like to come with me, I’m prepared to keep an eye on him tonight, if he goes out. Whatever happens, I shall have an easy mind.”

  He took off his glasses and blinked for a moment or two.

  “I don’t like it, Travers. There’s something just a bit underhand about it.”

  He hooked on the glasses again and got to his feet.

  “Dammit, you’ve got me in a hell of a fix. If I refuse, then I’m in bad with Constance—if I know her.”

  He began prowling about the room, and then suddenly whipped round.

  “I’ll do it on one condition. I’ll go with you tonight, if Chaice goes out, but understand this. Whatever happens, Chaice is to be shown those letters tomorrow morning. There may be a hell of a row, but that’s the only decent way of settling things. If Constance doesn’t agree, then I wash my hands of the whole matter.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” I said. “Perhaps I’d better see Constance again.”

  He gave a pretty grim smile.

  “I’ll see Constance. You’ve had quite enough bother as it is. That young woman can do with a little straight talking to.”

  We left it that he was to report at my bedroom just before dinner. Everything was arranged, he told me then. Constance had had to agree. Then we fixed up about ourselves, and by that time we were a bit late. I thought it best that he should go down first, so as to avoid any suspicion of a palaver.

  Two minutes later I went down. Or rather I got to the head of the main landing, when I saw a maid approaching from the direction of the servants’ staircase with a large tray. A sudden suspicion seized me, and I managed to meet her as she turned right into that other short wing where Martin had his room.

  “Somebody ill?” I asked her with an amiable kind of talk-making.

  “Only Mr. Martin, sir,” she told me, and smiled unconcernedly. “He often has his dinner up here.”

  It seemed a pretty useful dinner too, and, for a man prostrate with a headache, a perfectly staggering one. In fact I decided that Martin’s headaches were a fake. For some reason of her own, and of his too maybe, Constance wanted not only myself to be out of the house that night, but she wanted Daine absent as well. When I knew that I almost decided to change our plans—to take Daine into my confidence and get either him or myself left unsuspected in the house while the other followed Chaice. Then I shrugged my shoulders and let things go. Maybe all Constance wanted was to have the coast thoroughly clear for something special in the petting line between Lang and herself. And then the whole thing struck me as so cheap and sordid that I cursed myself for a fool for letting myself be drawn into it at all.

  There was nothing unusual during dinner, unless that with the presence of Kitty it was quite a merry meal. Both Constance and Daine had themselves well under control, but Lang seemed to me to be definitely nervous. Then, as soon as the meal was over, Daine excused himself as having work to do, and the rest of us went into the drawing-room for coffee. There was a fire in the grate, and very cheerful it looked. Harris said there had been one or two heavy showers, and it was a dark, unpleasant night.

  Kitty said she’d run up and see how Martin’s headache was. She was down almost at once, and reporting that she hadn’t disturbed him as he was asleep. Richard was sitting in his corner near the door, so I had a word or two with him and then made an unobtrusive exit. The front door closed gently behind me, and I tiptoed to the grass and towards the front gates. Across the road Daine was waiting, and he had my waterproof and hat.

  “I suppose there’s no other way he might use?” I asked Daine.

  “I don’t think he’d use any other way tonight,” he told me. “Between ourselves, I rather think we’re on a fool’s errand. He didn’t say a word at dinner about going out.”

  We stood there in the lee of the hedge with our eyes on the entrance gates. At first I could see no more than a few yards, and then the clouds must have lifted, or else my eyes were more accustomed to the dark, for I could just discern the gates themselves. A pedestrian came by and I watched him till he disappeared, and that was a good thirty or forty yards on. And then, with a suddenness that was startling, there was Chaice. Though he was only a sort of greyness that moved, I could clearly make out his Bohemian hat and the dark flowing cape.

  He moved off to the left along the gravelled path. At our side of the road there was no path and the grass of the verge made our movements soundless, and Daine, in addition, was wearing rubber-soled shoes. Then Daine whispered to me to move on where I was, and he himself moved across the road.

  On went Chaice. He crossed the road where it cut the avenue in two, and then in a few moments he was turning sharp left, or so it seemed to me. I nipped across to Daine’s side.

  “Isn’t it near here where you take the bus for the town?” I was whispering. “What shall we do if he takes it?”

  There was no reply, but he was nudging me and moving cautiously on, and then, just faintly in the greyness ahead of me, I saw Chaice again. Now we were on the hard pavement, and when we stopped I could hear Chaice’s steps ahead. Daine’s feet made no sound and I was trying awkwardly to
tiptoe. I noticed, too, that we were in a street of quite nice houses, if one judged their size and that of their gardens by the distance they lay apart. And then suddenly there was the sound of a gate, and Chaice had disappeared.

  “What’s happened?” I was whispering.

  “Don’t know,” Daine whispered back. “Unless he’s going to somebody’s house.”

  He moved cautiously on with me at his heels. We heard the sound of a door-knocker, and when Daine drew me to a halt in the shadow of a garden shrubbery I could see Chaice standing at the door of a house. Then the door opened and he disappeared. There was the sound of the door as it closed again.

  “What now?”

  “Damned if I know,” Daine whispered back. “Might as well wait for a bit and see what happens. Or shouldn’t we?”

  “We might give him a quarter of an hour,” I said, and then I thought of something else. “What road are we in, do you know?”

  “I believe it’s the road just back of the house”—Lovelands he meant. “Why?”

  “Is there another way out?”

  “My God, yes,” he said, and clicked his tongue. “If Chaice is up to mischief, that’s just the cunning trick he’d think out.”

  He clicked his tongue again and then had an idea.

  “You get inside and step into this shrubbery. I’ll nip along to the back door.”

  We opened the gate quietly and I nipped into the shrubbery about a third of the way along its thirty-yard length. Daine moved on, his rubber-soled shoes soundless on the gravel of the drive. I could just see him as he went by what seemed a lean-to garage, and then he was out of sight. I drew back farther into the shrubbery. A strong scent as of honeysuckle was somewhere near me, and as I disturbed a bough raindrops went down my neck. A minute or two and the honeysuckle was over-poweringly strong, and in that rain-sodden air it had a sweetness that was almost too sickly. Then, as I moved my hand to guard my neck from the wet again, I somehow discovered that there was no honeysuckle after all. It was a tall weigela bush among whose low straggling branches I had forced my way, and one of those slender branches that lay by my neck was heavy with its second bloom.

  “You there, Travers?” came an urgent whisper.

  I revealed myself.

  “He’s still there,” whispered Daine. “I listened at the kitchen door and I could still hear voices.”

  “You get back and keep an eye on that door,” I told him. “I’ll stay here. Whichever way he goes out, the one who sees him follows him.”

  “What about the other?”

  “If he hears steps he can follow on behind,” I said, and we left it at that. Daine disappeared again and I wriggled back among the weigela.

  I must have stood there for a quarter of an hour before anything happened. Indeed I knew that the agreed quarter of an hour was up and I was wondering if Daine would come back and say we might as well go home, and that was something which I somehow didn’t want. And then all at once I heard Chaice’s voice at that barely visible door. There was just the sound of it, and as if he had said a good night, and there was the quick flash of light from a door quickly opened and as quickly shut. I heard his foot on the gravel and once more I drew back. My heart began to pound as I waited.

  The steps ceased, and I didn’t know why. Then something black was going by me a few yards away and I knew Chaice had taken a short cut across the grass of the lawn. He was opening the gate and turning right, and then his steps were on the pavement. Along that shrubbery ran a grass verge, and my feet were soundless as I made for the gate. As I went through I could just see Chaice ahead. He seemed in even more of a hurry, and with his short steps he was getting over the ground at a pace as good as my best. So I gave up the attempts at tiptoeing and strode on. If Chaice halted or turned back, then, I told myself, I would cross the road.

  And just then something peculiar happened again. Chaice stopped, and before I could make a move he was entering another gate. I could just faintly hear his steps on the gravel of a new drive, and when I drew cautiously up I could just discern him before he disappeared in the darkness that was the deep shadow of yet another lean-to garage.

  I waited for a good ten minutes, and then was telling myself that this was the very devil. What on earth was Chaice up to, with this round of evening calls? And then I had an idea. Chaice must have discovered that he was being followed, and he was amusing himself by leading his tracker a pretty lively dance. In the same moment I realised that the house where he now was had also a front and back way out. In other words, he might have used that house as a convenience and have gone straight through to whatever road it was that lay behind.

  “To hell with it!” I told myself angrily, and whipped round on my heels. As near as I could judge, I was two houses from the original one, and when I got there I knew I was right, for I had left the gate open. Now I went along the clipped grass by the shrubbery till it ended by the garage.

  “Daine! . . . You there, Daine?”

  In a moment or two I saw him coming.

  “Better not talk here,” I whispered, and moved on to the road. I crossed it, he at my heels.

  “Might as well get back home,” I told him, and I didn’t even trouble to lower my voice.

  “What’s happened, then?”

  When he knew, he cussed a bit. In fact we both cussed a bit. Then he was saying that he’d heard never a thing away at the back of the house, and he was wondering why Chaice had gone to the house at all.

  “I think we’d better get home as soon as we can,” I said. “We’ll look a couple of pretty fools if he really was wise to us. We’d better think up some yarn to satisfy him.”

  “He may not be home,” he said. “He may have dodged us and gone down town after all.”

  “To blazes then!” I said annoyedly. “Let’s get back home and forget the whole thing. We might go to the barn first. Then it won’t be a lie to say we’ve been there.”

  “Wait a moment,” he suddenly said, and drew me to a halt. “This doesn’t seem right. I think we must have taken the wrong turn when we crossed the road.”

  I had been too busy talking, and in any case I might as well have been in Philadelphia for all I knew of my surroundings. But then we heard steps, and it was laughable how we drew back and cowered, as if the steps were those of Chaice. But it was a stranger, and he told us we’d taken the wrong road for Lovelands. What we’d better do was go back a hundred yards and then turn sharp left.

  Three minutes later we knew where we were, and after that it was easy going to the house.

  “Shall we go to the barn or just not give a damn for anybody?” I asked Daine.

  “Damn the barn,” he told me peevishly. “Let’s go straight to the house. My feet are wet, and I’m not getting pneumonia for Chaice or anybody.”

  We were about twenty yards from the front door when it suddenly opened and a dazzling beam of light ran across to the lawn.

  Harris was at the door, and I remembered I was thinking, most inanely, that he must have heard us coming.

  “What the devil’s he doing with that light showing?” growled Daine, and at that moment Harris caught sight of us. He made a step or two towards us, then stopped.

  “Mr. Daine, sir. Is that you, sir?”

  “Yes,” called Daine, and then we had come up. “What’s the matter, Harris? . . . What the devil’s the matter?”

  I can’t describe old Harris. He was gesturing and making unintelligible noises, and then he somehow blurted out that it was Mr. Chaice. Lang appeared in the hall as we went through the door, and he looked scared to death.

  “In there!” was all he could say, and he was pointing.

  Daine gave him a kind of glare and went through the open door of Chaice’s room. Then he drew back.

  It is strange how little things stand out in one’s mind in moments of danger or crisis—little things that have apparently no real significance. I know that I was most aware of Lang, and how he closed the front door and switched of
f the hall light. It was as if he wanted a spotlight focused on that open door at which Daine now stood.

  I looked over Daine’s shoulder. Beyond us Chaice was lying, head against the desk, and by him an overturned vase of roses. As I pushed Daine gently aside and took a step nearer I saw a something round Chaice’s neck—the cord with which he had been strangled.

  PART II

  CHAPTER VI

  G. H. PRESTON

  Before I resume I should like to make perfectly clear what things I omitted, by accident or design, to tell Inspector Goodman. I didn’t mention the intrigue between Constance Chaice and Lang because there was just an element of doubt, and by that I mean that when I came to think the matter over I was not dead certain that it was Constance’s voice that I heard. That it could have been any other woman’s seemed impossible, but what I decided was to prove or disprove the matter by making certain unobtrusive investigations of my own.

  Naturally, too, I didn’t give Goodman a complete character study of Chaice. All I told him was sufficient to justify the fact that Daine and I had thought it desirable to check up on his movements. I saw no reason to tell him about Martin’s manuscript or that I suspected the genuineness of the headache, for if he was worth his salt he’d find out that latter for himself. I was glad, too, that he seemed to take it as a natural thing that we should have come to suspect Chaice of the liquid-squirting. Obviously he thought Chaice capable of pretty nearly anything, for it wasn’t hard to deduce from certain of his remarks that he’d been involved in the enquiries into that typewriter business, and was still pretty sore at the trick Chaice had played.

  I had stopped dead short when I came to the moment of seeing the cord round the neck of Austin Chaice. It seemed a logical place at which to stop, for, except in the things I had just been relating, I was not concerned with the murder except as a kind of Peeping Tom who had had a look at the body. And Goodman had interviewed Harris and Lang overnight. The interviews had taken so long—for there had been all the fingerprint and photographic routine beforehand—that Daine and I had gone to bed. We were both half asleep as we waited by the embers of the drawing-room fire, and we hoped rather guiltily that we should have an undisturbed night. I had slept like a log and had not woke till seven o’clock. Then I had come down early and had had the breakfast table to myself, except for the occasional potterings of old Harris, who entered every now and again and peered round like someone gone weak in his wits. Then Daine had come in, and just as we were wondering if and when Goodman would be seeing us, in came Sergeant Smith with the request that I’d see the Inspector for a minute or two.