“And the manual doesn’t.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Mr. Chaice wrote odd chapters as they occurred to him, irrespective of whether they made a sequence or not.”
He saw I wasn’t following any too well, and at once he was bringing out a paper from a filing cabinet.
“This is the complete outline of the book,” he said, “as Mr. Chaice finally drafted it. I don’t say it wouldn’t have been further modified. For instance, we’ve already incorporated the information you gave Mr. Chaice. I’d just completed that on the day he was . . . the day he died.”
This was the outline he showed me:
PART I
General Information
(Poe, Gaboriau, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle)
New Scotland Yard
Method of Detection
(a) Inductive
(b) Deductive
(c) Scientific
Toxicology and Medical Jurisprudence
The Psychological Element
The Taking of Statements
Court Procedure
PART II
On Writing Generally Murder as a Fine Art
Suspense and Atmosphere
The Amateur Detective
Red Herrings
On Playing Fair
(a) Gadgets
(b) Clues
(c) Padding
Final Remarks
He had been watching me critically while I read, and as soon as I’d finished he was pointing something out.
“I think I made what may sound like a mistake,” he said. “This is the draft of both the editions, English and American. The same framework for both, if you follow me. But the American edition won’t have purely English chapters, like the ones on Scotland Yard and Court Procedure, and other details have to be modified. Mr. Chaice got in touch with an American official some months ago and he’s already got all the material. But the English book is virtually finished.”
“What a stickler he was for accuracy!” I said. “I’ll bet that he interviewed American detectives over here on service.”
“To tell the truth, he did, sir. But the best way, don’t you think?”
“Undoubtedly,” I said. “But did I gather that the English version is practically finished? If so, I was merely going to suggest that you let me see the proofs when they come out.”
“I’ll make a note of it at once,” he told me, and while he was doing so I asked what parts weren’t actually completed.
“This one here, on the scientific method,” he said, “and this one in Part II on the amateur detective.”
“The scientific method ought to be easy,” I pointed out. “There are no end of books one can consult.”
“I don’t know, sir,” he said, and did a bit of frowning. “Will you keep it to yourself if I tell you something?”
“Most certainly.”
“Well, it’s rather hard to put into words,” he said, “but there were some things about which Mr. Chaice would be extraordinarily secretive. I’d no idea what I was going to type till he gave me the rough manuscript or began dictating.”
“Just what sort of things?”
“Well, this scientific method, for instance. I said what you just said, that there were reference books, and he rather snapped my head off. He said he was going to try certain things out at first hand. And the same with that chapter on the amateur detective.” He paused for a moment. “I’ve wondered if he wasn’t making some experiments on his own.”
“What sort of experiments?” I persisted.
“I can’t say, sir. Doing things at first hand, perhaps. Trying out theories personally.”
“Like that famous typewriter business?”
“Well, yes, perhaps,” he said, and actually flushed as if the episode had been a personal discredit. “He had very strong view of his own. Perhaps too strong. Remember that letter he wrote to The Times about a month ago about the use of disguise, after someone had said it was a very out-of-date method of—well, detection.”
“I think I do remember it,” I said. “But Chaice, if you ask me, was what they call an incurable romantic. He loved all that Gaboriau stuff. He saw himself as Lecoq . . .”
My voice rather trailed off there. I had been leaving the room and he had followed me courteously to the door, and just then there was the sound of a car. The door opened and in came Kitty and Daine. Both were looking tired.
“Hallo, Orford,” she said, and gave him a wan smile.
“Hallo, Kitty.”
I don’t know if he smiled back, for at the moment she was smiling at me.
“A trying day you must have had,” I told her.
“Just one of those things,” she said. “But I’m dying for a cup of tea.”
“Abominable food in town nowadays,” Daine said. “I think I’d like some tea too.”
“I’ll see to it,” Lang said, and was making a move at once. The three of us went up the stairs together. Kitty turned off into Constance’s room, and Daine and I went on.
“Nothing happening here, I suppose,” he asked me.
I told him about the arrival of Wharton, and we chatted while he had a wash. We were in his room, which was why I didn’t hear the arrival of the second car, but as we went by Constance’s door I heard voices, and I could have sworn that one of them was Wharton’s. Then I saw Harris downstairs and he told me that Wharton and Goodman had arrived, and that Wharton had requested an interview with Mrs. Chaice. Constance had raised no objections, and after a minute or two she had rung down that she was ready.
Goodman was in Chaice’s room. He had been setting things in motion to try to discover how Richard Chaice had got away from Lovelands with two suitcases—the same routine, in fact, that had been used in the case of the disappearing Preston. After we’d guessed at the questions Wharton was asking Constance Chaice, and why, Harris came in to say that tea was ready in the drawing-room and Mr. Wharton was there.
We found him installed on a large settee between Kitty and Lang. When he so pleased he could exhibit the most ingratiating of manners, and now he was obviously very much at home, though the least bit subdued, as befitted the occasion. He had managed, too, to spring the bombshell of Richard’s disappearance on Kitty and Daine, and that was the topic of conversation as Goodman and I came in.
“The poor darling,” Kitty said. “I’m sure he must be having one of those fits of his. Surely something can be done about him! Can’t you do something, Orford?”
Wharton gently cleared his throat and relieved Lang of embarrassment.
“We’ll find him, Miss Chaice. Don’t you worry. Now I remember . . .” He was off on a quite interesting, if probably imaginative, case of amnesia he’d once been concerned with, and was contriving to make quite a good meal at the same time. Then he was asking Daine about books in wartime, and when at last he got reluctantly to his feet and said he’d have to be on the move, it was as if the room was losing a dear old family friend.
“I think your Mr. Wharton’s an old dear,” Kitty confided in me as he and Goodman went out. “And you really think he’ll find Uncle Richard?”
“If he said so, you bet he will,” I told her, and she gave me the most charming of smiles by way of thanks.
Wharton had turned off as if by chance to Chaice’s room. I followed him there, and at once he was closing the door behind the three of us. A pause to wipe the last crumbs from his forest of moustache, and then he was giving a sigh.
“Well, I think that’s all the preliminaries. I’ve seen everybody and everything. Now we’d better get to work.”
He waved a hand aimlessly towards a couple of chairs, took the only easy one for himself and got out his notebook. Then he took his antiquated spectacles out of his case, made play with an accurate adjustment, and peered over their tops at the book.
“Those letters that were sent to the Yard,” he said. “Never a print that’s known to us.”
Goodman gave a little grunt. I merely waited. George was
staging some dramatic disclosure or else—in his own familiar phrase—my name was Robinson.
“In other words, this G. H. Preston isn’t known to us,” he went on. “If either of you can tell me, therefore, why he was so careful to avoid leaving fingerprints, I’ll be delighted.”
A somewhat whimsical look had accompanied the question. I said I had no idea. Goodman said nothing.
“So much for Preston,” George said, “though I’ll return to him later. But about that gun that Martin Chaice was shot with. The bullet came from it all right, so the medical evidence says. The only thing that’s wrong is the gun itself.”
He was now peering round at both of us. I thought it my duty to buy it.
“What was wrong with it?”
“The prints,” he told us. “A beautiful lot of prints, and in the right places. Round the barrel and round the stock and a fingermark on the trigger. Unfortunately they weren’t made by Martin Chaice.”
I stared, so did Goodman.
“They were superimposed after death,” Wharton went on, and his voice fell with a plummy kind of unction. “They were the marks someone thought might be the right kinds.”
“They were faked?” asked Goodman.
“What else am I trying to tell you?” Wharton told him, and with a gentle patience. “To put it in plain English, Martin Chaice didn’t commit suicide even if we find some way that gun might have been kept in place while he pulled the string. If you want me to put it even more simply, then Martin Chaice was murdered.”
CHAPTER XII
LANG UNDER FIRE
We must have argued about the killing of Martin Chaice for best part of half an hour; the same old arguments, and round and round and back again in the same old way. Then Goodman came out with a perfectly new theory.
Imagine someone—Lang, for instance—wanting to work out something in connection with a detective novel; something that necessitated the use of that gun and a suicide. Well, he fastened the string and took the gun up to Martin’s room, and asked if Martin would assist him in a little experiment. But in the course of that experiment the gun went off accidentally. The door was shut and no one heard the noise. Lang, or whoever it was, listened and then wiped off all the prints and then faked Martin’s prints and put him in the chair as if he’d been writing, and then slipped downstairs.
“Sounds reasonable,” Wharton said. “Depends on several things we shall have to prove sooner or later, so we might as well prove them now. If you’ll get the gun out of the car, Goodman, I’ll see Miss Chaice and get her to co-operate.”
Inside ten minutes everything had been arranged. Kitty was to be in her room with the door slightly ajar as it had been at the moment she had heard the shot. I was to be at my bedroom door waiting for an imaginary Daine to emerge from the lavatory. Goodman was to be in the hall, and Wharton was to fire one of the two rounds into an old blanket, and he was giving none of us any idea how long we might have to wait.
I did just hear that shot when it finally went off, but I had to confess that I shouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been keyed up to listen. Goodman said much the same thing. Kitty said she had heard it exactly as she had heard it that vital afternoon. It was more like a crack than a shot.
Wharton was questioning her in her room, for the sight of Martin’s room might have been too much of an upset. As it was, she was showing no distress at all. Wharton had a way with women, and he had somehow contrived to make the whole thing not only impersonal but interesting. When he came to his next questions he was on much thinner ice.
“From the time you heard that crack, Miss Chaice, till the time you actually were in the room—how long was it, do you think?”
“About a minute or two.”
“Why are you so sure?” Wharton wanted to know.
“Well, I sort of went on with what I was doing, and then I began to wonder what it had been. Then I thought I’d have a look.”
Wharton took out his watch.
“Just stand where you did that afternoon,” he told her. “When I say ‘Go!’ that’s the shot. You move off when you think you moved off.”
The interval turned out to be about one minute only. Wharton had another question ready.
“Now the window, Miss Chaice. You’re dead sure it was shut?”
“Quite sure,” she said.
Wharton nodded. “Only one more question then, and I want you to think very carefully. Did you or did you not see the gun that fired the shot?”
“I did,” she said, and Wharton looked disappointed. “I can’t think how, but I do remember seeing a gun.” She shook her head. “I can’t explain what it was like, really. It was all sort of vague. I remember Mr. Daine. Just sort of seeing him before I fainted clean away. And I remember the gun.”
“You remember where it was?”
“I don’t,” she said, and shook her head again. “I know that when I came round again on the bed there, the first thing I remembered was Mr. Daine, and then something about a gun.” She bit her lip and frowned, then shook her head quickly again. “No, I can’t remember. I know I saw a gun and that’s all.”
“Well, we’re very grateful to you,” Wharton told her. “I’ve a daughter of my own, and I know what you’ve gone through. Take my advice now and have a real good rest.”
“But I have to go back on Friday,” she reminded him.
“Oh, no,” Wharton told her. “No going back on Friday for you. You let me have the telephone number of your commanding officer and I’ll get it fixed up.”
He gave her a smile and a pat on the shoulder and out he went. We followed him down the stairs and into Chaice’s room, where once more he locked the door behind us.
“Well, that’s another theory gone,” he told us.
“Why, sir?” ventured Goodman.
“Why?” Wharton treated him to one of his most ferocious glares. “Under a minute between the time the shot was fired and she was in the room. Could the prints have been faked in that time? Would anybody have had the nerve to try?”
“He had to have the nerve,” I said boldly. “The proof of the pudding’s in the eating. The gun was faked, and it was faked after the shot and not before.”
“Leave it,” he said, and waved an impatient hand. Then he was whipping round on us. “Have it your own way. Lang is the favourite for that theory of yours, Goodman. Very well then: we’ll have Lang in here.” Then he stopped Goodman at the door. “Wait a minute, though. There’re several things I’d like to ask that gentleman. Better jot them down.”
He made a quick note or two, and then from a capacious inner pocket produced The Frozen Alibi. A grimace at it, and he replaced it in his pocket and gave Goodman a sign to go ahead.
Lang’s manner was always on the diffident side, and he showed no perturbation even at what I might call the magisterial appearance of the room. I had had to bring a chair from the hall and Wharton had moved the window table. On it was his notebook and a sheet of paper or two, and he had covered The Frozen Alibi with a newspaper. He had also donned those spectacles of his, and one day, I was telling myself, I’d really make sure if they were anything but the perfectly plain glass I’d long suspected them to be.
“Come in, Mr. Lang,” said Wharton genially. “Take a seat there, if you don’t mind.”
He waited till the three of us were seated, then his look became official.
“I take it your job has made you familiar with the rules of evidence as approved by His Majesty’s Judges of the King’s Bench Division, and in particular Number One.” Without waiting for a reply he began to recite. “‘When a police officer is endeavouring to discover the author of a crime, there is no objection to his putting questions in respect thereof to any person or persons whether suspected or not, from whom he thinks useful information may be obtained.’”
He took a look over his glasses to assure himself that Lang had been duly impressed, and then permitted himself a slight smile. “You must decide for yourself under which category
you come.”
Lang licked his lips and tried an answering smile.
“And so to business,” went on Wharton. “You’re here to help us and we’re here to help you. And first of all, something that may be related to the murder of Mr. Chaice on the Monday night. Your own relations with Mr. Chaice were always friendly?”
“Well, yes,” Lang said, and snapped his eyes a bit. “I liked working for him. And I believe he was satisfied with me.”
“Just as I imagined,” Wharton told him, and looked round at Goodman and myself for confirmation. “But your own movements that night; say between nine and ten?”
“I really can’t say now,” Lang said, and just a bit anxiously. “I think I was just sort of pottering around.”
“You saw nothing suspicious?”
“Nothing at all,” Lang said firmly.
Wharton nodded and made a tick on his notes as if that item was disposed of.
“Now we come to yesterday afternoon,” he went on. “You didn’t hear the shot that killed Martin Chaice?”
“I hadn’t the faintest idea there’d been a shot at all,” Lang said, and far more animatedly. “I was absolutely engrossed in my work.”
I cut in with the statement that I’d seen Lang within five minutes of the firing of the shot, and he’d been so busy that he hadn’t heard me tap at the door.
I’d expected a glare but merely got a nod.
“So I believe,” Wharton said, and consulted his notes. “In fact, Mr. Lang, would I be right in saying you didn’t see Martin Chaice at all that morning? He had lunch in his room, I’m told.”
“I did see him once,” Lang said. “Not long after twelve.”
“Indeed?”
“I’d just gone out for a breather. I often do, you know.”
“Yes, yes,” said Wharton impatiently.
“Well, I took a short stroll round by the annexe and back. That’s what I usually do. That’s when I saw Martin.”
The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 17
