“You spoke to him?”
“I didn’t actually. He came out of the garage just as I was coming round by the barn, so he was ahead of me. He went straight back to the house.”
“You don’t happen to know why he’d been to the garage?”
“I don’t. I know he was carrying a piece of wood.”
“Wood!” Wharton could not help staring. “What sort of wood?”
“I really can’t say. A piece of planed wood, about this length. And about this thick. He was carrying it in his hand.”
“About a foot long and an inch and a half square,” said Wharton, making an entry in his book. “Not that it’s likely to be important.” He completed the note and then looked up. “You didn’t go into the garage yourself?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I know that Mr. Daine came out just as I passed.”
Wharton sat back in his chair. I knew what he was wondering—if that piece of wood was a gadget for holding the rifle in place. Then he made a sign to Goodman who was nearest the door, and Goodman left the room.
“And that was the last time you saw Martin Chaice alive?” Wharton asked Lang.
“Yes, it was.”
Wharton pursed his lips and made play with consulting his notebook.
“I suppose, by the way, that if you’d been in any difficulty about a book, you wouldn’t have asked Martin Chaice for any help?”
“I don’t think that would have been any use, sir,” Lang told him with the suspicion of a smile.
Wharton put the imaginary case of someone doing a stunt with a gun. “Might such a person have asked Martin to assist?”
“I doubt it,” Lang said. “I don’t think Martin had any use for guns of any kind.”
“A bit of a pacifist, was he?”
“Not really. After all, he had tried to get into one of the Services. I think he just didn’t like guns.”
“Or detective novels?”
Lang smiled naturally for the first time.
“He certainly didn’t. When we talked shop it used to drive him positively frantic.”
There was a tap at the door and in came Goodman with Daine. Wharton was all apologies and Daine wasn’t taking them too graciously. Wharton explained about the wood and wondered if he’d heard any talk about it between Martin and his Uncle Richard.
“I didn’t,” Daine said tersely. “Whatever they’d been talking about, they’d finished when I got there. Martin hung around for a minute, and that’s the last I saw of him.”
“Did you actually see the piece of wood he was carrying?”
“I may have done,” Daine admitted. “Wait a minute,” and he frowned in thought. “No. I believe he did have a piece of wood, but that’s all I can say.”
“And you didn’t hear even the tail-end of any conversation?”
“Yes, I think so,” Daine said. “At least I mentioned the matter to Richard when Martin had gone. He’d been asking his uncle whether or not it was David who said all flesh was grass.” Wharton stared. I ventured to explain.
“That poem he was writing,” I said. “Requiem, he called it, on the theme that all flesh is grass.”
“So that was it,” said Wharton, and the smile was that of the lion who had missed his first snap at the plump Christian. “And would you mind telling us what you were seeing Richard Chaice about yourself? Just for the records,” he added quickly.
“Not at all,” Daine told him calmly. “That damned wireless my staff uses is a hell of a sight too loud. I’ve asked them to turn it lower, if they must use it, and they say something’s gone wrong and they can’t turn it lower. That’s what I saw Richard about.”
“And he fixed it?”
“That same afternoon.”
“Well, that’s all perfectly clear,” Wharton said, and turned to us for confirmation. “We’re very grateful, Mr. Daine, and very sorry to have had to trouble you.”
“That’s all right,” said Daine, but he was still in a bit of a huff. Perhaps the sciatica helped to make him irritable, for he was limping a bit as he went out.
Wharton let out a deep breath, then fiddled with his notes again. Lang, I suspected, was now about to be put through it, and I wasn’t far wrong.
“Now I have to come to a far more personal matter,” Wharton began again, and gave Lang a look that was distinctly grim. “I have here the report of a conversation that took place at Mr. Chaice’s dinner table. A discussion or argument might be a better description. In the course of that argument Mr. Chaice virtually accused you of breaking a contract and—something which we have to consider seriously—of having definite reasons for—shall we say?—wishing him dead.”
Lang’s face went the colour of a tomato. Then he was giving me a reproachful look. I cut in quickly.
“You should know how things are in a murder case, Lang. Everything has to be reported, whether it has a bearing on the case or not. And if you are innocent, then what have you got to worry about?”
“Exactly,” said Wharton pontifically, but the look over the spectacle tops was suspicious enough nevertheless.
“I am innocent,” Lang said, rather feebly. “I didn’t break any contract.”
“But you wrote a book?”
“Yes, but in my own time. I actually wrote it when I was on holiday last year.”
“This book?” The rabbit came from the hat, but Wharton had got the trick badly mistimed.
“Yes,” said Lang, and moistened his lips as he glanced at the jacket.
“Would you mind my seeing a copy of your contract with Mr. Chaice?”
“There isn’t a copy.”
“You mean?”
“Well, it was only a verbal contract.”
“Really?” There was scepticism in the tone. “And supposing we accept that statement, why should Mr. Chaice have accused you of breaking it? Breaking the implied clause, that is, that all your time was to be given to him.”
“But there wasn’t such a clause,” insisted Lang, and now he was getting still more red in the face. “There was nothing mentioned between me and Mr. Chaice about his having the sole use of my time. That was implied, I admit, but never to the extent that I couldn’t do what I liked with my leisure.” He shook his head and then thought of something else. “Mind you, I did think Mr. Chaice wouldn’t like me to publish under my own name, and that’s why I chose a pseudonym.”
“But one he could easily see through,” I suggested.
“That was the idea,” he said. “It was a sort of challenge. Well, not a challenge exactly. It seemed to me to put everything right.”
“And he did find out about that book?”
“Well, I thought he had found out when he mentioned it that night in the argument. Now I’m not so sure. I think he may have been guessing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, he never mentioned it to me again. He didn’t say, ‘I saw an advertisement of that book of yours’, or anything.” Wharton gave a grunt or two and referred to his notes again. “Excuse me harping on that agreement, but just how did you come to work for Mr. Chaice? Tell us all about it, and about yourself.”
That proved rather heavy going for Lang, though I had far more respect for him when Wharton had finally winkled the information out of him. Lang had left Cambridge after the death of his father. He had then stayed at home with his mother and had written a couple of detective novels. He had also got a commission in the Territorials, and on the outbreak of war he was called up. In the November he was in France, and on a patrol he was shot through the belly. The following March he was invalided out, but he went on with his writing. Then his mother died, and about the same time his agent heard somehow from Daine that Chaice was looking for a secretary with special qualifications. The agent must have taken action, because Chaice himself wrote. Terms were discussed at the first appointment and Lang was duly engaged. He admitted that he had expected to gain more out of the job than the salary. The experience was unique, and he had intended to ke
ep the job only till he felt himself qualified to return to his old job with very real hopes of success.
“That seems very fair and reasonable,” Wharton said largely. “We can take it, I think, that Mr. Chaice was talking very much with his tongue in his cheek when he made the writing of that book a reason for murder.”
“That was his way,” Lang said. “He loved saying things that disturbed people. In fact, he had a strong sadistic strain, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean all right,” Wharton told him enigmatically, and was once more making play with fingering his notes.
“You got on very well with everybody here?” was his next question.
For some reason or other Lang’s face flushed again.
“Well, I hope so,” he told Wharton diffidently.
“You got on well with Mrs. Chaice?”
“I think so. She was always quite nice.”
“But not too nice?”
Lang shot a look at him.
“Which brings me to another matter,” Wharton went on. “I have here certain information about the Friday night preceding the murder. Where were you that night, Mr. Lang? Say from a quarter-past nine till a quarter to ten.”
Lang had been hit clean in the wind. Then he was stammering that the question was hardly fair.
“And why not?” asked Wharton belligerently.
“Well, it’s a long time ago. I can’t be expected to remember everything I did on every night.”
“Ah well,” said Wharton with a sigh. “We must try to fix that night in your memory. The Friday night, I said. The night that Mr. Travers arrived, which might have helped you to recall it.”
“I remember now.”
“Capital!” said Wharton. “If that’s so, you may remember that at about a quarter-past nine you were on the veranda of the summerhouse, making love to a certain lady.”
He gave a kind of avuncular peer over his spectacle tops, and waited.
“And suppose I deny that,” blurted out Lang.
“Entirely a matter of opinion,” said Wharton imperturbably. “You might, of course, be asked the same question in a public court, and on oath.”
Lang shook his head and said nothing.
“You won’t tell us who the lady was?”
“I deny I was with a lady at all.”
“Then you were on that veranda.”
Lang had been too late for that trap, but the shake of his head showed he wasn’t falling into any more.
“She was a lady who took a considerable interest in your affairs,” went on Wharton. He, too, had a sadistic vein, and I always hated him when he baited a witness as he was now about to bait Lang. “She was doubtless very concerned to hear that Mr. Chaice knew about your meeting her. What were the exact words? ‘He knows. I tell you he knows.’”
“It wasn’t that at all,” blurted Lang again. “It wasn’t about any meeting. It was about him knowing about the book.”
“Truth will out,” said Wharton with a look at Goodman and myself. “And so you were on the veranda of the summerhouse with a lady! And you still won’t tell us who the lady was?” Lang sat grim and immovable. Wharton sighed.
“Like me to tell you all about it?”
I rather stared and so did Goodman. Lang made no sign. “These are the facts,” said Wharton, taking off his spectacles and wagging them at Lang. “Miss Chaice—perhaps I’d better call her Kitty—rang her father that afternoon and said a friend was bringing her home and she wouldn’t be in till about ten o’clock, which was when she did actually arrive. But meanwhile she’d arranged with you—the friend being non-existent—to come to Beechingford by a train which would get her to the summerhouse about an hour before that. There she met you, and later she went to the house as if she’d just arrived. A deception, but perhaps pardonable. Am I right?”
“Well, yes,” said Lang, though he couldn’t meet Wharton’s eyes.
“You see the folly of not telling the truth and the whole truth?” Wharton asked him mildly. Then he leaned forward, and the tone was almost a snarl. “What else is there you’re keeping to yourself?”
“Nothing. Nothing,” Lang told him. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
I saw a peculiar expression come over Wharton’s face, and I guessed he was about to change his tactics. When he spoke next his tone was even conciliatory.
“Mr. Chaice would have objected to your marrying his daughter?”
“I don’t know,” Lang said, and moistened his lips.
“But you both suspected the fact?”
“Well, perhaps we did.”
“He might have forbidden Kitty to marry you?”
“We wouldn’t have changed our minds if he had,” Lang told him stoutly. “We both had money put by. I could have made a decent living somehow.”
“Then why didn’t you broach the matter to him?”
“We were going to,” Lang said, and then shook his head. “If you want the whole truth, we decided on that Friday night to tell him about it before Kitty—Miss Chaice—went back from leave.”
Wharton got to his feet.
“Well, I may be satisfied and I may not,” he said. Then his tone took on a positive unction. “Between ourselves, I think you’re very fortunate. I have a daughter of my own and perhaps I’ve got a sentimental streak. But some people in my position wouldn’t look at it that way. They’d say that you only exchanged one motive for another.”
He left it at that, and for the very good reason that he’d already driven a wagon and horses through that first rule on the taking of evidence. Then he was looking round at Goodman and me.
“Meanwhile are there any other questions?”
Meanwhile was the operative word as far as Lang was concerned, and a nasty one at that. I tried to put the wretched Lang at ease.
“There is one thing I’m sure Mr. Lang could be very helpful over. Did you know, Lang, that Mr. Chaice was intending to write a play?”
His surprise seemed genuine enough.
“He even boasted to me,” I went on, “that it’d be on in town before Christmas. Mr. Polegate, he was calling it. Know anything at all about it?”
“Not a thing.”
“You never saw any rough draft or anything?”
“Never.”
“Then one other question,” I said. “Can you give any reason why Mr. Chaice used to go to that summerhouse and why he put it out of bounds for everyone else?”
“I can only give you the reason he gave me,” he said, “and that was that he found it what he called sympathetic. He got ideas when he was there and he could think things out.”
“You know the interior of that summerhouse?”
“Very well indeed.”
“Then do you really think anyone could get ideas there better than one could get them, say, in a room like this?”
“I don’t,” he said. “But no one can judge about a matter like that. Some places are definitely sympathetic and some aren’t. I’ve experienced that for myself.”
“You actually saw him go there?” asked Goodman.
“Several times,” Lang told him. “Generally of a morning, soon after breakfast. He’d take paper with him.”
“Why didn’t he keep paper there?” asked Wharton.
Lang couldn’t say, but he supposed Chaice would have kept paper there if he’d wished to.
“And how long did he usually stay there?” I asked.
“It varied,” Lang said. “Sometimes as long as an hour. I couldn’t always tell, though. I mean, I had my own work to get on with, and Mr. Chaice didn’t always come back to the workshop. He might have come back here.”
That seemed to be all the questions.
“Thanks for what you’ve told us, Mr. Lang,” Wharton said. “I may have to see you again. Unless there’s anything else you’d like to tell us now.”
Lang said there wasn’t, and then he sidled out. I gave the high sign that I had to go to the cloakroom and I overtook Lang in
the hall. I wasn’t being specious. It was just that I reckoned myself as good a judge of character as Wharton, and I was pretty sure Lang had had nothing to do with either of the murders.
“Sorry you had such a rough time, Lang,” I told him. “But I shouldn’t worry about Superintendent Wharton if I were you. His bark is very much worse than his bite.”
“Thanks,” he said, and just the least bit frigidly.
“And if I were you, I’d tell Kitty all about it,” I said. “Two heads are better than one, even if they’re sheeps’ heads, as my old nurse used to say.”
“I think I will,” he said, unbending a little.
“And tell me, just between ourselves, and now it’s all over,” I added, “did you get any good material out of that interview?” He said he had, and even managed a smile.
I got back to Chaice’s room to be greeted by the most ferocious glare that Wharton had ever given me.
“An intrigue with Mrs. Chaice!” he told me scathingly. “Where were your eyes?”
“Even I can’t see in the dark,” I told him.
“I’m not talking about the dark, I’m talking about this afternoon. That couple making eyes at each other under your very nose and you couldn’t see it.”
“Well, you saw it, George, and everything’s fine,” I said, for I was damned if I was going to let him stage a curtain and take half a dozen bows in front of Goodman. “And very good work too. And now what?”
He muttered a few inaudibilities and then rounded on me again. Did I imagine Lang was in the clear?
“I don’t see that he had a motive, if that’s what you mean,” I said.
“Well, I do,” he said. “For all we know he may have mentioned Chaice’s daughter to Chaice himself, and been told where he got off. And not only that. Once Chaice was dead he could marry the daughter, and there’d be a nice little wedding present of seven thousand five hundred.”
“All right,” I said obstinately. “He killed Chaice. And what about Martin?”
“There was no hocus-pocus about that shot,” he said, and I didn’t see any connection with my question. “The shot that Kitty heard was the shot that killed him. The medical evidence proves it and so does everything else. Lang is the only one who could have got clear if she’d caught him in Martin’s room. He could have told her he’d heard the shot and had come up to investigate. And she’d have believed him. Or if he told her to, she’d have kept her mouth shut about him.”
The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 18
