“You mean?”
“Only this,” said Daine and shrugged his shoulders. “If I told you about little family squabbles, you might magnify them into something serious. I’d rather you got such information from somebody else—not that I want to seem rude.”
“I understand, sir,” Goodman told him. “No need to trouble you any longer, I think. And if there’s anything I should want, I’ll know where to come.”
Daine shot him a look at that ambiguous remark, gave me something of the same look too, and then moved off towards the house.
“Think I’ll go back and get the car,” Goodman told me. “Mind if I come?” I said. “Rather awkward spending one’s time in the house. Intruding on people’s grief and all that.”
“Mr. Daine didn’t seem any too grieved,” he remarked as he held back the fence door for me to go through.
“If it comes to that, neither do I,” I told him bluntly. “In our job, speaking well of the dead doesn’t get one very far. Chaice was an irritable and an irritating man. Even when he had his genial moments you suspected they were unreal. And Daine was his agent. He couldn’t dodge him or get away from him.”
“I rather gathered a lot of that from your statement,” he said as I got in the car.
He had to watch for traffic at the road junctions, so I kept my mouth shut. It was as we neared Lovelands that I again mentioned my going back to town that night.
“I’d rather you didn’t, sir,” he said. “My Chief will be back early this evening, and I know he’d like to see you.”
“Very good of him,” I said, and didn’t mean it as ironically as it sounded.
“He’s in town on one of those periodic conferences,” he went on. “You know this morning when you thought I was going to ring the Yard? I was actually ringing the Chief.”
“Good,” I said. “A pretty piece of deduction wasted.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, and grinned. “I thought the Chief might as well do the enquiring as he was on the spot. And something else he’s doing, sir, between you and me. Seeing the solicitor about the will.”
I’d forgotten all about that. Goodman was a much smarter man than I’d been prepared to believe.
“That’s a good move,” I said. “But what about fingerprints? Did you find any anywhere?”
“Never a one,” he said. “Not even on the cord that strangled him.”
“Medical report all in order?”
“Absolutely. He’d been dead about a quarter of an hour when he was found. And he’d had a blow on the skull that stunned him first.”
“No sign of the weapon?”
He shook his head.
“Anything missing from his pockets?”
“Possibly some papers from his wallet. And his keys.”
“His keys,” I said, and then suddenly I had to smile. We were standing then outside the car which he’d parked by the garage, and he spotted the smile.
“Something funny about the keys?”
“No,” I said. “Only about you and me. You’re making me stay on here because you might want me to lend a hand, of sorts. Yet you’re not telling me a damn thing except what I get out of you with a pair of forceps.”
“Oh no, sir,” he said, and shook his head. “After all, I’ve answered every question you put to me.” He grinned again. “Unless you’d like me to make a statement.”
“I was just pulling your leg,” I told him. “But what’s the programme now?”
“Seeing Mrs. Chaice,” he said. “She wasn’t quite ready for me before. And I’ve got to interview the rest of the family.” Then he thought of something else. “And I’ll send a man along to wait for that Mr. Preston.”
“Well, I’ll be around somewhere if you should happen to want me,” I said, and we went our separate ways. I didn’t like the idea of going into the house, so I went back towards the garage. Richard wasn’t in his workshop, but he’d evidently been there, for a glue-pot was boiling on a little primus stove.
I strolled in to wait. The bench was thick with shavings, and some planed lengths of wood were standing as if ready to be glued. Shavings always fascinated me as a boy. I still love their resinous smell, and as I stood there with my back against the bench my fingers were feeling the crispness of the shavings that lay heaped by my elbow. Then suddenly I was aware that I was fingering something that wasn’t a stout shaving, and as I looked at it I saw it was a piece of cord. I pulled at it and there seemed to be yards of it. Something about it seemed vaguely familiar, and then all at once I knew it was just that sort of cord that had been drawn tight round Austin Chaice’s neck.
CHAPTER VII
TALKING IT OVER
There was no concealment about that cord: it was only that the accumulated shavings had covered it. It was in a neat coil too, and there was just a possibility, it seemed to me, that one might be able to check if a length had been cut off. Whoever had bought it—and that in all probability would be Richard Chaice—would know the original length and the amounts which might have been subsequently and legitimately used.
I was wondering about that and thinking that Richard was a long time coming back to his boiling glue-pot. I thought I’d like to have a look at that jacked-up Rolls, so I went through. At least I went to the door and was about to go through when I saw Richard. He was sideways to me and he neither saw me nor heard me, for my feet had made no sound on the shavings that strewed the floor. What he was doing was just nothing. He stood there, eyes on the wall ahead, hands tightly together against the pit of his stomach, and altogether absolutely motionless. As I watched him I saw his lips move once or twice, and he nodded to himself. It was as if he was debating some urgent problem, and then, after a minute or two, it began to be something quite different and rather uncanny. Even when I had first met him I had noticed his fits of mental abstraction, but this was something different and prolonged. In another minute, I could stand it no longer. I backed to the workshop, made a bit of a din, coughed loudly, and suddenly there he was at the door. He gave his usual friendly smile at the sight of me.
“I think the water in your glue is boiling away,” I told him.
He had a look at it.
“Very strange,” he said mildly. “The stove hasn’t been alight a minute.”
It was no business of mine to tell him otherwise, even if he now seemed his normal, gentle self. As he put in more water from a bottle standing on the bench, I asked him if he often had visitors. He smiled.
“A workshop to a man is like a kitchen to a woman, Mr. Travers,” he said. “Everyone comes in here. And they like to do little jobs. A bit of planing, perhaps, or sharpening a chisel.”
“What about finding me a job?” I said.
“Well, you might hold these boards for me,” he said. “Then we needn’t use the big cramp.”
So I began holding boards while he glued and fixed the mortices, and all the time I was keeping him busy with talk. I said it had been a bad business about his brother, and all he could say was that he still couldn’t believe it was true. He added that Austin had been the best brother in the world.
“He had his faults, Mr. Travers, I won’t deny that, and if I said otherwise I shouldn’t be speaking the truth.” Then as suddenly he changed the subject. “Let me see, sir. You’re going away today, I believe.”
I said that had been the arrangement.
“You’ve enjoyed your little stay with us?”
A queer look had accompanied the question. I said I certainly had enjoyed my stay, until the events of the previous night.
“We’re not everybody’s company,” he said. “Everything isn’t always as it should be. I could have made mischief myself if I’d liked to speak. Now perhaps I wish I had.”
There seemed to me to be only one meaning to be attached to that, and I was wondering how to put a question. I couldn’t very well ask if he meant that he knew who had done the killing, and then it struck me that he might have been referring to that intrigue between Co
nstance and Lang.
“But Kitty’s a good girl,” he was saying.
“A charming girl,” I added, and waited.
“Martin’s a good boy too,” he said. “Queer sometimes, but a good boy at heart.”
“And how do you get on with Constance?”
It was a tricky question. He stood for a second or two, the glue-brush unmoving in his hand, and then, when I was wondering if he were going off into one of those fits of abstraction, he was nodding his head.
“I’m not much of an ornament these days, Mr. Travers. Young people have young ideas—ideas that would have shocked our fathers and mothers.”
I was doing some quick thinking about how to make use of that obvious opening, when there were steps outside and in came Harris with a tray. The old boy was looking more himself.
“Your lunch, Mr. Richard,” he said, and set it down on an upturned nail keg.
“Thank you, Harris,” Richard told him mildly. “We’ve just about finished.”
I could see Harris regarding the job with a professional eye, so I asked him if ever he tried his hand.
“In a way, yes, sir,” he told me judicially. “I often spend an hour here with Mr. Richard. I find a little manual work a great comfort, sir.”
I didn’t ask what miseries needed comfort, for I was realising that I was late for lunch. Harris said it didn’t matter. Lunch was a very scratch meal that day. That Inspector Goodman had been interviewing various members of the family. Indeed, Mr. Martin was still in the master’s room with him then.
“Do you mind if I ask you a very confidential question?” I said when we were out of earshot of the workshop. “Mr. Richard: does he suffer from . . . ?” I had to think for a moment. “I hardly know how to put it. It’s not exactly amnesia. Fits of abstraction, shall we say? Even hallucinations?”
Harris stopped in the lee of that shrubbery that shielded us from both workshop and house.
“You’re quite right, sir,” he told me. “The master didn’t like it referred to, sir. He was very fond of Mr. Richard, sir, as Mr. Richard was of him.”
“I noticed that,” I said.
“Madame didn’t like it at all, sir. It made it awkward when there were guests present. All I mean, speaking quite respectfully, sir, is that that was her attitude.”
“But he only seems to have those fits when he is alone.”
“I agree, sir. In company—even with myself, if I may say so—he behaves as normally as you or me, sir, if you’ll pardon the liberty. Sometimes, sir, he can make a very shrewd remark.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And what caused the trouble?”
“The trouble, sir? Ah, I see what you mean. It was the death of his wife, sir.”
“Of course,” I said. “That bombing—”
“Pardon me, sir—but no,” he said. “I think the master would have approved of you knowing, sir, and that’s why I tell you. His wife died in Canada, sir, just after war broke out. The master persuaded him to come home and he found him a nice little place in London. Then there was the bombing, sir. Mr. Richard had severe shock and it left him with the idea that his wife had been killed in the bombing. That’s why the master brought him down here.”
“A pretty tragic story,” I said as we moved on again. Then I heard the wireless as we neared the kitchen, and the sound of the pips that preceded the one o’clock news. When I came down from my room, where I had had a quick wash and brush-up, Goodman was in the hall, looking at that showcase of crime souvenirs.
“It’s unlocked,” I said, “if you should want to handle anything.”
He gave a bit of a start, for my steps had been unheard on the thick carpet of the stairs.
“Heaven forbid,” he told me hastily. “A pretty gruesome collection, don’t you think?”
“I knew a man who collected matchboxes,” I told him. “Had lunch yet, by the way?”
He said he’d be having some sandwiches later, and Harris was bringing coffee. But first of all he was completing his interviews by seeing Richard Chaice. I drew him quietly outside and mentioned the cord.
“Thanks for the tip,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
I told him to go carefully and explained in confidence why. Then I went on to the dining-room.
“Good morning,” I said, and with what I hoped was just the right amount of cheerfulness.
Kitty smiled a good morning. Martin was looking on good terms with himself. Lang murmured something inaudible. He wasn’t looking at all happy.
“You don’t think we’re wrong, eating like this?” Kitty said.
“Of course you’ve got to eat,” I told her severely. “Morbidity is silly.”
“Just what I was telling her,” Martin said.
“How are you this morning, Martin?” I asked him.
“Much better,” he said, but was putting on an expression decidedly lugubrious.
“Not such a bad turn as usual.”
He gave me a quick look at that and then agreed that perhaps it hadn’t been such a bad turn. Then he gave me a real facer.
“What train are you going by, sir?”
It had sounded to me as if he’d be damn glad to see the back of me, but I explained how Goodman thought it necessary for me to hang on—perhaps even for the night.
“I liked that Inspector,” Kitty said. “Go on telling us what he was like with you, Martin.”
So that was the conversation I had interrupted. Martin wasn’t too keen on its resumption.
“There isn’t anything to tell,” he said. “I did put him in his place, though, when he started enquiring into my movements. I told him that if he was hinting that I had parricidal tendencies, I’d rather he said so straight out.”
“What nerve!” said Kitty. “But you hadn’t any movements. You were in bed!”
For some reason or other—and it was one at which I could make a shrewd guess—he looked a bit nonplussed.
“No need to tell me what I know already,” he told her stiffly.
“Nothing to get huffy about,” she retorted. “I’m only trying to protect your own interests.”
“I’m quite capable of protecting my own, thank you. And better, perhaps, than some other people will be able to look after theirs.”
The remark seemed directed at Lang, for his face flushed and he was nervously wiping his lips with his napkin.
“What a horrible thing to say!”
“If you don’t like the truth, of course—”
I cut in there.
“How’s Constance this morning, Kitty?”
“Much better,” she told me. “She hopes to come down for tea.”
“A dreadful shock,” I said. “And a bad business all round.” There was a silence then and I was the one who broke it. “How’s all this going to affect you?” I asked Lang.
“He’s going to be a frightfully important person,” broke in Kitty. “He’s got to finish Daddy’s two books.”
“Really?” I said politely.
“That’s only Mr. Daine’s idea,” Lang told me diffidently. “He’s to be the literary executor, you know.”
“And a very good choice too,” I said. “And you too. You’re the very man for the job.”
He blushed a bit and gave a tentative smile. I said it was quite exciting. Rather like Edward German taking over from Sullivan, and Quiller-Couch from Stevenson.
“Let’s hope Orford makes a better hand at it than that bloke—I forget his name—made of the Unfinished Symphony,” was Martin’s highly superior comment.
“Don’t be so priggish, Martin,” flashed Kitty. “Of course Orford will make a good job of it.”
“Priggishness, my dear, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder,” he told her with a sweet acidity, and then he was turning to me. “Have you by any chance finished with that manuscript of mine, sir?”
“To tell you the truth, this wretched business quite put me off it,” I said.
“That’s all right sir,” h
e told me. “It will be published now in any case.”
“You’ve found a publisher?”
“Ways and means,” he said vaguely, and there, if I’d only known it, was the solution of a good deal of mystery.
“I think that’s a horrid thing to say, with Daddy lying . . . Well, it’s horrid, anyhow.”
“You’re implying what?”
“I’m not implying anything,” she flashed back at him. “I’m pointing out that everyone knows that you’d have to have it published at your own expense, and now you’re just boasting that you’ll have the money.”
“And what if I’m not paying for it?”
“Of course you are!”
“Very well,” he said, and gave a shrug of his shoulders. “I’m open to bet you that the book’s published within the next six months, and it doesn’t cost me a penny. And I get a good royalty rate.”
“It would be ghoulish to bet about that.”
“Oh, my God!” he groaned. Then he gave me a look that invited sympathy. Then he slapped his unfolded napkin on the table and stalked from the room.
“You must excuse his frightful manners,” Kitty told me. “The exit wasn’t so frightfully effective after all. He’d already finished his meal.”
“Don’t you think you were just a bit of a nag?” I pointed out.
“He just gets my goat,” she said.
“But you were, you know.”
That was Lang. Kitty looked as if she couldn’t believe her ears.
“You say that! After my sticking up for you!”
“Go on,” I said. “You’ve finished your meal, so why don’t you stalk from the room.”
She laughed at that.
“As a matter of fact, I was just going,” she said. And go she did, though the look she gave Lang was a venomous one. In a couple of minutes Lang mumbled an apology and went out too, and I finished my lunch alone.
I lighted my pipe and made my way upstairs for no particular reason. Martin, I saw, had helped himself to the manuscript, and when I came down again he was in the hall.
The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 10
