Printer's Error

by Gladys Mitchell

  “The first was pre-arranged, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. We had come to some arrangement about—”

  “About—?”

  “It was about Kurt Senss. He is a very interfering sort of man, and he’s fond of Geoffrey—of my husband. He feels grateful to him because Geoffrey took him on when he first escaped from Germany. He’d had a bad time—his brother was killed—committed suicide, the Nazis said, of course—in a concentration camp. The family weren’t even allowed to open the coffin when the authorities brought it to the house. Kurt managed to get away, but he was weeks in hiding—half-starved and with no prospects—it was like heaven to him, he said, when Geoffrey offered him a job. Of course it hasn’t done the printing press any harm, and in any case Geoffrey can afford it. The press is really only a hobby, you know. That’s why he runs it to death, and is never at home. Well, Kurt found out about Fortinbras and me, and said that, customer or no customer, he should tell Geoffrey all about Fortinbras unless we pledged ourselves to stop it. So we arranged to meet at a time when there wasn’t the faintest chance of Geoffrey’s being at home (I knew he had a luncheon engagement in Falshanger with some of the local councillors), so I fixed that time, and asked Fortinbras to meet me—I’d have the car, and we’d drive out into the country and—well, and say good-bye.”

  “And it took you from one o’clock until about ten at night to say good-bye?”

  “Oh, no, of course it didn’t. Fortinbras left me at three, and I drove home.”

  “Where were you when he left you?”

  “In Oxford. He went home by train.”

  “A two hours’ journey. Not more. He took his time about it!”

  “I don’t know anything at all about that. Really, really, I don’t.”

  Bassin believed her.

  “Then, his second visit to your home?”

  “Yes, well, Geoffrey was there as well, and so was Kurt. He often brought Kurt home to dinner and sometimes Kurt stayed the night. We were in the drawing-room, when there came a banging at those French doors, and Geoffrey went across to open them, and Kurt took out the revolver he always carries, but it was only Fortinbras. He tumbled into the room and said, half crying: ‘They’ve done for her! They’ve done for Myra, the brutes!’ Kurt and Geoffrey got him into a chair and gave him a drink, and got out of him all that he could tell them. It wasn’t much, and what it was you know. It was in the papers.”

  “And then?”

  “Geoffrey said he’d go back with him, but Fortinbras declared he couldn’t go back. ‘They’ll get me, too,’ he said. And, of course,” she added, breaking off and giving Bassin a terrified glance, “they did get him, didn’t they?”

  “Presumably. But whom did he mean?”

  “The people who wrote the threatening letters. He had told us all about those, and when he left—to go back home, after all, we thought, of course—he begged me to tell Geoffrey not to publish the book.”

  “What book?” asked Bassin startled.

  “The book that Geoffrey and Kurt Senss were printing and publishing. I don’t know what it was called. I was saying good-bye to him, and Geoffrey had gone to see about the car to take him home, because he’d walked all the way to our house, and Kurt had gone to see about his own car, because he wasn’t staying, and so for a few minutes we were left alone. I asked him why he didn’t tell Geoffrey himself, and he said—he was always rather ‘little-boy’ in some ways—that he didn’t want Geoffrey to think he was afraid.”

  “Mrs. Saxant, this may be extremely important. I represent Mr. Carn’s interests, remember, as well as the arrested man Mabb. Are you seriously informing me that Mr. Carn asked you to suggest to your husband not to print that book?”

  “Yes. He asked me to do it, in this room. Why is it so important?”

  “The police have decided to pin the affair on Mabb, but there are indications that the real point at issue is this book. I’ll call on your husband at the works. Thank you so much, Mrs. Saxant. It is good of you to have listened to me. I’m really tremendously grateful. Did you give your husband Carn’s message, by the way?”

  “Well, it was awkward. Fortinbras made me promise that I wouldn’t say the message came from him. I was to give it as though it was my own idea. Then, he wouldn’t wait for the car. Of course, I know the reason now. He didn’t intend to go back to the House by the Brook. He kissed me good-bye and ran out at the French doors again, and then Geoffrey came back to say the car was ready, and Kurt came in to say good-bye, and they were both so astonished to find him gone. And then, later on, I forgot, I was so worried and frightened, and then, when we learned that he was dead—”

  “I think,” said Bassin, as the car turned a corner into the village street, “that we should go directly to the House by the Brook, and ask permission to interview some of the servants.”

  So George garaged the car, and Carey, Bassin and Mrs. Bradley walked beside the brook to Carn’s house. Carn’s brother received them with courtesy, listened gravely to Bassin’s request, and then placed the dining-room at their disposal.

  “Who does he think we are?” whispered Carey to his aunt. “Doesn’t he know we’ve got no official status?”

  “But we have. Justus represents the family solicitors, dear child. Whom are we going to interview, Justus?”

  “The girl who admitted me to the house on the afternoon of Mrs. Carn’s death.”

  The girl began to cry as soon as her late mistress’s name was mentioned.

  “Come, come,” said Bassin, “you remember me, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t want to answer no more questions. I want to forget it,” said the girl.

  “But we are not the police. I know they came and bothered you. Don’t you remember how glad you were to see me, that other time when I came?”

  “Yes, but, then, I never knowed what trouble you was going to bring. ’Twasn’t till missus give you that there black box and all them silly, stupid old letters that anything dreadful did happen.”

  Before Bassin could reply, Mrs. Bradley, who had been scribbling hastily in her note-book, fixed her black eyes on the girl and demanded suddenly:

  “Why did Mrs. Carn send for Mr. Bassin? Do you know?”

  “Yes, we all knowed that. It was so she could give him the box and the letters. Cook listened outside the door.”

  “Very helpful of Cook. Go away, and send her in.”

  “You’d best not bustle Cook. She’ll give in her notice,” said the girl, speaking resentfully.

  Cook proved to be the level-headed, kindly servant who, alone of all the crew of them, had made any attempt to stay with and help her stricken mistress. This fact Bassin conveyed to Mrs. Bradley as soon as the woman came in.

  “Ah, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Cook, did you ever meet a young workman called Jonathan Mabb?”

  “What, him they arrested for killing the master, madam? No, that I never did, and neither did he kill him.”

  “Why do you assert that quite so positively?”

  “Master’s death and missus’s death was all on account of them letters. I had one, and Lily had one, and Tom Tilly—though why they should bother with him!—he had one and all. Some rubbishy stuff they was. I took no truck with them.”

  “About Mr. Carn’s book, were they not?”

  “Mine weren’t. I’ve got a copy of it.”

  “Oh? I thought Mrs. Carn made a point of securing all the letters herself?”

  “Ah, later on. But nobody’s got the right to interfere with correspondence, and if a letter’s addressed to me, to me it’s addressed, says I. I could show the copy, so be you shouldn’t believe me.”

  “I’d like to see it, Cook.”

  Cook went away, and returned very promptly indeed with a black book labelled Recipes.

  “And recipes is what it don’t contain,” she observed with the zest of the diplomat, “but, just so as pokenoses, of which there’s plenty about, shan’t ferret with my private concerns, not to mention
them girls.”

  She opened the book, secured the pages with two elastic bands so that on no account could the reader, without removing the bands, see anything which was written on other pages, and planted the book on the table squarely in front of Mrs. Bradley.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, noting that the letter stated, tersely, that Carn was to die, but that nobody else was to be harmed, “I should very much like to take a copy of this, if I may.”

  “And welcome, provided I sign it,” responded the cook. So Mrs. Bradley copied the letter very neatly and beautifully in longhand script, and the cook methodically and painstakingly added what she described as “me usual signature, as on Post Office Bank Book.”

  “Bit of a character,” said Bassin, who had regarded these proceedings with great interest. “What is her object, I wonder, in insisting upon adding her signature to your copy? I suppose she has some idea that you won’t be likely to alter the wording, or something, if she’s signed it. These people have extremely confused ideas.”

  Mrs. Bradley poked him in the ribs and cackled.

  The cook, who had left them in order to put away her book, returned at this point, and Mrs. Bradley asked her to give them, so far as she could, a complete account of Mr. and Mrs. Carn’s movements on the day of Mrs. Carn’s death.

  “Well,” said the cook, “beginning with breakfast, there was omelettes, often a cause of friction, but seldom I’m glad to say, ’ere. Breakfast over, missus tells the master she’s sent for Mr. Bassin—that’s this gentleman here, and I hope he’ll excuse me for making free with his name—and master said it was a pity, he thought, but still she must do as she liked, but for his part he rather thought it would all blow over. ‘Should all be allowed to,’ was his words, spoke very hang-dog, it seemed to me, the walls being thin.”

  “And you understood, from this conversation, that they were referring to those anonymous letters, I suppose?”

  “Not by a long chalk, no, although it turned out to be so.”

  “Oh? What did you think they meant?”

  “Well, when there’s been goings on, and the family lawyer gets sent for, what does it sound like but divorce.”

  “Divorce?”

  “Well, there was him and Mrs. Mention-no-names up the Ridge dilly-dallying enough to make you sick of the Babylonians, and missus, poor soul, knowing all about it, and hoping and hoping for the best, and making excuses for him, till I suppose she got fair sick of it in the end, and sent (as I thought) for the lawyer, to get her a decent settlement. But it wasn’t that at all, it turned out, although that’s funny, too, because he sounded kind of what I call hang-dog, and he’d been all of a to-do about the letters.”

  “But are you sure,” said Bassin, “that Mrs. Carn knew about her husband and Mrs. Saxant?”

  “Of course she knew, although I don’t think for long, poor soul. I know when she knew, what’s more. It was when that long-faced German, Mr. Saxant’s friend, came here to tea one afternoon. I bet he told her. Radiant as a rose she was when he came, and when he went she said—I heard her myself—hanging about to get orders how many covers to lay for dinner, there being nobody in this house you can trust on a message: ‘Oh, dear, Mr. Senss!’ she says. ‘I’m sorry to hear you say that. I never dreamt—of course, one does hear things,’ she said, ‘but—oh, dear, I wish you hadn’t told me. I shan’t sleep a wink,’ she says. ‘It’s horrible! I never would have believed it, although one knows what men can be like,’ she says, nearly crying, and no wonder, poor soul. Well I remember my—”

  “Cook,” said Bassin, breaking in again, “when I visited the house, did you hear Ethel let me in?”

  “Yes, sir, I did, the stairs to the kitchen being where they are.”

  “Can you remember what she said? I’ve been trying to convey to Mrs. Bradley the extreme urgency of her remarks, but I find I can’t quite recollect them.”

  “She said, as near as I remember: ‘Oh, sir, we are so pleased to see you! Excuse me; I’ll run and tell them.’”

  “Ah, I remember now,” said Bassin. “Those were her very words.”

  “I can usually remember words, like,” the cook responded. “Verbal memory, they call it. I depend on it quite a lot; you’d be surprised.”

  “Really? Well, now, this very important day. Breakfast over, what was the next move?”

  “Master went to the library, as usual, missus finished the orders and then went into the morning-room and wrote letters. Lunch was to be at one, when out bounces master, at barely ten to, and says: ‘Damn it, damn it, I shall be late for that damned, confounded lecture’—although, as my witness is above, not a word had been said about having lunch put early, as it could have been, easy enough, if only folks would make up their mind when they want it, and, anyway, when Ethel came to serve, there was only missus to serve to, and her looking flushed and flustered, but getting over it soon, so Ethel says, just like the lady she was—real gentry, not like master—and then the next thing worth mentioning, Mr. Bassin, he came, didn’t you? Then we see him leave the house, but noted he never took the briefcase he had had in his hand to come with, so thought he was coming back, and then the hullabaloo, and missus there lying on the floor. Such an upset after that, and Mr. Bassin coming back again, and taking all on himself in a way that was a comfort to one and all, I’m sure, sir, and then, of course, master crawling home in the evening and not here to breakfast in the morning.”

  “Oh? Then you don’t know at what time your master left the house, never to return to it again?”

  “No idea, none of us haven’t. He came, and he stared, like somebody insane, when the doctor told him what had happened. Then he sat down, and put his head in his hands, just like I said at the inquest, and goodness me, that was a day, that was, and me never liking to be public, and then him and the doctor had some whisky, and the doctor broke it to him as he’d have to talk to the police first thing in the morning—as had been waiting and waiting all afternoon and evening, I might tell you, eating and drinking round the kitchen—to get a statement from him, and then the doctor, he left, and the girls, that had had hysterics, was all for packing their boxes and going too, because they said in the night we’d all be murdered, but there wasn’t no trains, and no one to carry their suitcases, so we all lumped in together with the rolling-pins and the fire-irons and a few texts Gertie had, being religious, and saw the night out together, although I’ll swear I never slept a wink.

  “But where master got to was a licker. He came back, and he went away again, and that’s all I can tell you—or anybody else, for that matter. Found him dead it surprised me. My private idea was he was to blame for missus, him being so lah-di-dah about the lunch, it sounded like nerves to me. But it seems it couldn’t have been.”

  “When did you first discover that he was missing?”

  “At breakfast, the morning after. It’s nobody’s job to call him. He just gets up. When he wasn’t down to about his usual time we says to ourselves he was overcome, and hadn’t been able to sleep all night, and perhaps had dropped off in the morning, you know the way you do. But when it came twelve o’clock I says to Ethel: ‘I reckon somebody ought to peep in,’ I says, ‘and see if he’s quite all right. He might have a brain fever, or anything else,’ I said, ‘on top of a shock like that.’”

  “You didn’t think, at that time, then, that Mr. Carn had murdered Mrs. Carn, did you?” Bassin enquired.

  “I don’t know what I thought. I don’t know as I thought. It was afterwards things come home, as you might say. Well, of course, he wasn’t in his bed, and his bed had not been slept in. After that it was nothing but p’lice, p’lice, p’lice. The fair sight of a blue uniform makes me feel ill these days.”

  “A vivid narration,” said Mrs. Bradley, as they were driving home.

  “Did you notice that the words Mrs. Carn addressed to Kurt Senss would have done equally well if he’d been telling some of the horrors of Nazi persecution?” asked Bassin.

  “Yes, th
at came out very clearly. But the ‘hang-dog’ remarks of Mr. Carn about things being allowed to blow over must, I think, have referred to himself and Mrs. Saxant.”

  “What interested me,” said Carey, “was the point made by the servant girl, that the trouble seemed to break loose after the appearance of Bassin. I thought that was rather significant.”

  “It was very significant indeed,” said Mrs. Bradley, “because the whole evidence, taken together, points clearly to Carn’s guilt.”

  “So the police were right after all,” said Carey. “Pretty good.”

  “They are usually right,” said Bassin. “But now, you see, we get Carn’s death mucking things up.”

  “Yes, and Carn’s death is mysterious, fantastic, and incredible,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and brings us back to a further consideration of the letters and the corrected proofs, I feel.”

  “What about going to Saxant at the printing works tomorrow morning, and demanding a copy of the book?”

  “We could try. Mr. Bassin is the one of us from whom the demand could reasonably come.”

  “I’d like to see how Senss reacts to the information that the incendiary was the little German,” said Carey.

  “I don’t suppose the information would be news to him, and I doubt whether we shall find Mr. Senss at the printing press. Mr. Saxant, too, may be absent. We shall see.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Bassin, smiling, “we are seeing the countryside from a very fine car, and are meeting a lot of nice people.”

  “The cook was a gem,” said Carey. “Good face, too. I must paint her when all this is settled.”

  Among the nice people they were meeting they did not, next morning, number Geoffrey Saxant or Kurt Senss. The office boy, not chewing gum for the excellent although simple reason that he had at that moment parked it on the back of his neck underneath his soft collar, admitted them, but could offer no information as to when they might expect to be able to interview either of the partners. The fire, Mrs. Bradley observed, had done surprisingly little damage to the premises.