Printer's Error

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I want you, child, to put through a telephone call to Mr. Senss at the printing press to find out whether he is there. Say that a bearded man shot at you this morning, and that you think it’s Carn, and that the police want somebody to identify him. That should give him the impression that Carn, and not Simplon, has been arrested.”

  “I see. We just want to know that he hasn’t already hopped it.”

  He returned with the news that Mr. Senss was in his office, was very busy, and was not at all sure that he could identify Mr. Carn, as he had not met him often and thought most Englishmen, in any case, looked alike.

  “Here, he’s hedging,” said Bassin, at the end of this report of the conversation. “Bad sign, isn’t it? I say, I suppose we’re on the right track, and that Simplon hasn’t been leading us up the garden?”

  “I think we are on the right track, but I do wish we could discover where Mr. Carn is. You see, there are the suspicious movements of the man who climbed out of the window—”

  “I say, he couldn’t have been bearded then, could he?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, those women who swore it was Mabb—oh, no, of course! They did see Mabb, but wouldn’t swear to the time. They never saw Carn—if Carn it was—at all. That was the racket, wasn’t it?”

  Mrs. Bradley got through to the police and then rang up her son.

  “Good gracious, Mother!” said Ferdinand Lestrange. “You haven’t got on to the origin of that Damn and Blast code of the Nazis’, have you? They’ve been trying to check up on that for months. A village that isn’t on the map? Really!”

  He rang off before Mrs. Bradley could reply, but when she told Bassin of the question he remarked: “D. and B. Damn and Blast. So it is dirty work at the crossroads! Hats off to you, although, of course, the whole credit is due to Carey and myself.”

  He grinned at Mrs. Bradley, and then added: “And if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Carn we shouldn’t have tumbled to any of it. She was the original Damn and Blast merchant, always mixing up the two letters. In fact, you know, if she hadn’t typed Tom Bowling as Tom Dowling, and that with a small initial letter, I doubt whether any of the Donner-Bonner business would have struck us. It was purely a printer’s error, the only one that got past Senss’s eagle eye, and that’s what’s cooked their goose for them. I bet if he hadn’t been going to doctor up and collar the book, he’d have spotted the mistake directly.”

  “Not necessarily, child. Foreigners know lots about our language, but probably very little about our national songs. To Mr. Senss ‘Tom Dowling’ was as good as ‘Tom Bowling,’ I’ve no doubt. But, as you say, Mrs. Carn has had her revenge.”

  • CHAPTER 14 •

  The Margin of Error

  “‘Grammercy,’ said the lady, ‘I ask the head of this false knight Abellius, the most outrageous murderer that liveth.’”

  •1•

  “Now, don’t, please, either of you, be tedious,” said Carey. “I simply want the plain facts.”

  He and Bassin, Jenny, Mrs. Bradley, Jonathan Mabb—enjoying a short weekend—and Carey’s young son, the baby Timothy, were all on the pig farm looking at the pigs.

  “Well, as soon as the inspector got on to the idea that it was Senss he was checking up on, things began to move. To begin with, the office boy, under persuasion—” began Bassin.

  “From you?”

  “Well, I did happen to know, from you and Mrs. Bradley, that he’d had a good shot at burning out the printing press, didn’t I?”

  “Go on.”

  “Yes, well, the boy swore Senss was out on the afternoon when Mrs. Carn was murdered, and it turns out that it was a most unusual thing for him to be out in the afternoon at all. Saxant was extremely happy-go-lucky—worked like a coxswainless four when he was interested and in the mood, otherwise gave the press a complete miss for whole days at a time. But Senss, on this Intelligence stuff, put in a good eight-hour day always, and mostly was there when the office boy went home.”

  “What about the car?”

  “Funny thing about that. It was a hired one. He hired it without the beard on, and took it back with, thus confusing the owner considerably. Still, although the police found out all right that the car had been hired on that day, they couldn’t get much out of it, because it was hired in the name of Simplon. Simplon, tackled, admitted to having been out in a car that day, but said it was his own. And this has been corroborated by a couple of Boys Scouts, who noticed it particularly because it was lettered ‘HOT.’”

  “But what I can’t make out is how on earth anybody but Carn could have hit upon that five minutes when Mrs. Carn was alone, in order to kill her, grab the cash-box, and run to where he had a car waiting.”

  “But that means you’re assuming that Senss killed Mrs. Carn, and, if he did, and Carn didn’t, it makes it look an unpremeditated sort of business, whereas it couldn’t have been anything of the kind.”

  “Why not?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “Now don’t you start,” grinned Bassin. “I thought we had decided that the murder of the tramp and the death of Mrs. Carn were, so to speak, all of a piece. The stealing of the cash-box had to appear to be the motive for the murder. Allowing for the fact that I know you’re pulling my leg, how about it?”

  “I admit that the stealing of the cash-box had to be made to appear as the motive for the murder of Mrs. Carn,” Mrs. Bradley agreed. “Nevertheless, I think that the murder of Mrs. Carn by her husband was not only unpremeditated, but accidental. It was not Mr. Senss, with and without false beard, who hired the car in the name of Simplon and had it waiting at the church. It was—as we decided a long time ago—Mr. Carn. But he had it there, not to help him escape the consequences of murder, but to get away quickly to the country where lay the murdered body of the tramp, so that he could prove, as it were, his own death.

  “After he had left Mrs. Saxant, he went to his own house, watched Bassin leave, and then saw Senss, his associate in getting vital information from England to the Nazi Government, break in by way of the French doors. Carn, I believe, dashed after him, and snatched the cash-box, intending to strike Senss with it. Instead, he struck Mrs. Carn, and her death was the result of accident, although Senss intended murder.

  “Knowing that his object was achieved, Senss immediately made off.”

  “But in which direction?” demanded Bassin.

  “Obviously, towards the village—towards the horse-trough end of the footpath. Then he escaped across fields, otherwise you would have seen him.”

  “How do you know that the man who bribed the girl was Carn, and not Senss?” asked Carey.

  “Don’t worry Aunt Adela!” said Jenny. “This is really terribly exciting. Why do you want to interrupt?”

  Mrs. Bradley grinned amiably.

  “I think the child would have remarked upon Mr. Senss’s voice. As it was, she merely said that the man reminded her of Santa Claus. Mr. Senss has a pronounced German accent, which he cannot disguise. Children are very quick to notice peculiarities of speech. I feel sure that in the talk I had with her she would have mentioned it.”

  “If we could only find Carn,” said Bassin gloomily, “we could have him identified. The police are certain to have got Senss by now, I should think.”

  “Yes, they’ve got him,” Mrs. Bradley admitted.

  “Then the tramp was murdered by Carn because he was afraid of Senss?”

  “Not in the way you mean. He was afraid of Senss for the reason that you would have been afraid of any—” Her voice trailed off. “No, no. Not if the medical evidence is right, and the tramp was killed before the death of Mrs. Carn,” she observed.

  “Could the medical evidence be wrong?” enquired Carey suddenly.

  “Taken in conjunction with the threatening letters, which I am positive no one but Mr. Carn could possibly have written, no, it could not,” said Mrs. Bradley, coming to a definite decision. “It means that Carn and Senss must have had a quarrel, and that Carn
was afraid of Senss, and wanted Senss to be able to assume his death. So he paved the way with the letters—that much we agreed upon before—and—”

  “I’ve got it, I think,” said Jenny. “Don’t you think that the quarrel between Mr. Senss and Mr. Carn was over Mrs. Carn?”

  All her hearers but one gaped, guffawed, or grinned. Her husband even went so far as to tap his forehead significantly.

  “Go on, child,” said Mrs. Bradley gently.

  Pausing only long enough to thrust out her tongue at her husband. Jenny continued:

  “Don’t you think that Mr. Senss might have been awfully worried when he saw Mr. Carn’s corrected typescript? I mean, if they’d both spent months and months—”

  “Years, more probably,” interpolated Mrs. Bradley.

  “—collecting up all that information for Mr. Carn to put into a book which they had to camouflage somehow, because everybody would know he’d been working on a book all that time—”

  “Good Lord!” said Carey. “So that accounts for the hundred presentation copies, none of which we were allowed to look at. Of course, they are not quite like the uncorrected proof, and that’s not like the copy or copies that are going across to this non-existent village on the Saar!”

  “Yes, the hundred copies were camouflage, and Mr. Geoffrey Saxant, you remember, wasn’t anxious to print them. It was Mr. Senss who urged him to consent. Go on, Jenny, my dear.”

  “Well, Mr. Senss didn’t like the b. and d. alterations all over the typescript—because he was a very nervous, sensitive kind of man—just the type, really, for a spy—and he asked Mr. Carn what about it, and probably taxed him with having let his wife into official Nazi secrets which she had no right to know. Of course, she didn’t know the secrets really. She was just a natural, psychological b. and d. mixer.”

  “I see it now,” said Bassin. “So Carn then realised that not only his wife (for whom he didn’t care all that much, as it happened) but he himself was in danger, and, knowing something about the Nazis and their methods, he thought he’d better make some sort of disappearance. Is that it?”

  “Yes, I believe so. The most convincing disappearance is death; and here comes a curious point, solved for me by Noel Wells, who, as he himself is almost the first to admit, does usually, although accidentally, hit the nail on the head. I think that the first feelings and attitude of Mr. Carn towards the tramp were kindliness and the desire to assist an unfortunate man. Kindliness and hospitality, as Justus has impressed on me, are noticeable qualities in Mr. Carn.

  “Then came the temptation. The tramp was not only in his power, but he was even rather like him in appearance. The man was a vagrant, and, possibly (Carn would persuade himself), useless and worthless—a parasite, in fact. A man who, whatever was done for him and to assist him, would never stand on his feet. Why not make use of him?”

  “Yes, but why the hand and the ears?” asked Carey. “That’s the weirdest part.”

  “I don’t altogether agree. Mr. Carn had little sense of horror, if I may so express my meaning. We can tell that from his books. He probably thought that to send Mrs. Saxant a pair of ears which had never been pierced for ear-rings would be the safest message he could send to tell her that he was still alive. It did not occur to him that the hideous sight would so much upset her that she wouldn’t trouble to see whose ears they were, or, rather, whether they were Mr. Carn’s ears or those of somebody else.”

  “Well, but the hand?”

  “Some queer idea of making sure that the tramp was identified as Mr. Carn himself. He knew that the loss of the right hand was part of the punishment for wilful murder in the fifteenth century, and he assumed, correctly as it happened, that others would know it too. He cut off the hand after he had accidentally killed his wife, and as he assumed that her death would be traced to him, or that Mr. Senss would report on it to the police, he decided to indict himself (as it were) of her murder. Very, very interesting indeed.”

  She ruminated.

  “Go on, love. Tell us all about the code itself,” said Carey. “Does, or does not, the corrected proof in the cash-box come into it at all?”

  “Oh, yes, I think it does, although, of course, Mr. Carn’s reason for making off with the box after he had killed his wife was an instinctive reaction not to leave behind him the weapon of offence. Incidentally, nothing could have been proved from the condition of the cash-box (except that it had been used to kill that poor woman) since Mr. Carn’s fingerprints would have been all over it, for legitimate reasons, anyhow. But people rarely think clearly in moments of panic.”

  “But it was because I had been sent for that Mrs. Carn died,” said Bassin soberly. “I mean, Carn must have let out that I was coming, and then, I suppose, Senss turned nasty.”

  “It is much more likely that Mr. Carn let it out to Mrs. Saxant, and so it got round to Mr. Senss,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “I don’t suppose Carn realised that Senss was also in love with her,” said Carey. “But let’s hear more about the code.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Bradley, seating herself on one of the deck-chairs which Mrs. Ditch and Our Walt had brought from the house, “the alterations in the book, so that any extra code material could be inserted—we have to remember that they were gaining information whenever they could—did not appear on either the corrected or the uncorrected proof, except, by accident, the word ‘Bonner’ in place of the word ‘Donner.’ That word only appeared once, in front of the German for ‘in April.’ This mistake was an oversight on the part of Mr. Senss. Whether it was or (as is far more likely) was not a part of a code message, the fact remains that it probably didn’t matter in the slightest. Anybody who knew even the rudiments of German would take it for a printer’s error (as indeed it was) and take for granted it was a misprint for the phrase ‘thunder in April,’ which is a possible thing, and would cause no particular comment. But Senss, of course, had given himself away by referring to Simplon as Bonner, and that was why he became so very worried when he saw the mistake on the proof. ‘Bonner,’ I think, is the keyword of their code.

  “Have you read Sigmund Freud’s Psychopathology and Everyday Life? A fascinating study. The explanation of this curious lapse on Senss’s part is contained in it.”

  Carey and Jenny both said that they had read the book. Jonathan Mabb, who was following all the explanations very carefully, admitted to having picked up the sixpenny edition on a bookstall, but explained that he had not had time to read it yet.

  “How does it affect Senss?” asked Carey.

  “In this way. Mr. Senss knew that Justus had encountered Mr. Simplon on the landing, and, for some reason, he was irritated, that is to say, the balance of his mind was slightly disturbed, by the incident. He did not want casual visitors meeting Mr. Simplon outside his office. Mr. Simplon, you see, had practically signed his own death-warrant by trying to put Mr. Senss right about the names of Saar villages.”

  “In this startled frame of mind he is caught out, quite simply, by his subconscious mind, which, at no bidding from him, does its best to minimise the awkwardness of the situation,” said Jenny intelligently. “Mr. Senss, I mean.”

  “And, in the usual crackpot way of the subconscious, goes and puts its foot in it,” said Carey, giving his wife a sharp slap. “So much I perceive and understand, O Theophilus, but—”

  “But I don’t,” said Jenny, returning the buffet with interest, whilst Timothy whacked his father’s leg with considerable enthusiasm. “Do, both of you, be quiet, and let Aunt Adela finish what she’s saying.”

  “You interrupted her,” said Carey. “And, anyway, I can finish it myself. Why shouldn’t I show off, too? Listen to your husband. The subconscious, anxious to repair the bloomer, thinks it will give its unfortunate possessor a break, so it reminds him of his student days at the German university of Bonn, where he was young, carefree, and happy, and didn’t have any Simplons and things on his conscience.”

  “Yes, but why should it choose Bo
nn? Just because the keyword, a thing always on his mind, happened to be Bonner, I suppose,” said Bassin, anxious to help.

  “Plus the fact that it disliked the name Simplon for some reason which the conscious mind of Senss has probably forgotten,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Yes, I expect the chap had his pocket picked going through the Simplon tunnel, and his subconscious, afraid of reminding him of the fact by letting him say the name ‘Simplon,’ chose Bonn, with the best of intentions but the most horribly awkward result,” said Carey, with a certain amount of flippancy, but possibly correctly, his aunt said afterwards.

  “I should think so, if it meant poor Justus being shot at simply because he’d heard the name Bonner,” said Jenny, going off the point in a refreshing and characteristic way.

  “Anyway, the police have bottled Senss up all right,” said Bassin, with satisfaction. “But I do wish to goodness we could get hold of Carn.”

  “If the police can’t, we can’t,” said Carey. “It’s no joke trying to get out of the country when they’re after you, though, all the same. He’s somewhere in England still.”

  “Well, we’ve had some fun,” remarked Bassin.

  “Not much fun, that I can see, in people being murdered,” said Jenny, restraining Timothy, who was trying to ride on a pig.

  •2•

  The exhibition of Surrealist art, which a fascinated Mrs. Bradley and a bewildered and slightly disconcerted Bassin had already visited, was greeted by Carey with a flow of loud and ribald comment which his wife, who had accompanied the party to London, leaving Timothy in charge of Mrs. Ditch, did her best to stem and control.

  “Dear child,” said his aunt affectionately, as they paused before an exhibit entitled “Calving Cow” which consisted of several empty tins which had once contained soup, a pot of geraniums, a hen, modelled in clay and painted bright pink, standing on its head in more clay (kept wet by a filthy-looking piece of horse-blanket which protruded with obvious intent from the mackintosh covering), a baby’s feeding-bottle with one end stuck in a football bladder, and various scattered objects, among which a complete set of Halma, one large dark red egg painted on ship’s canvas, a set of fire-irons, and an old fashioned pair of corsets immediately met the eye.