The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Mine are pretty good,” he said. “What I saw was that Flick was carrying something under his arm. I won’t pretend I know what it was because I didn’t know then and I don’t now. All I’ve done since is put two and two together.”

  Staff was the next one in, and he repeated the story he’d told on the Saturday night, adding that he remembered now that he put the anonymous note on the top of his chest of drawers with a tobacco tin on top.

  “Who did you think wrote the note?” Wharton asked.

  “I thought it was Flick perhaps, or Ferris.” He smiled apologetically at me. “Ferris wasn’t a bad sort when he was out of Mortar’s company. I don’t mean he wasn’t decent then, because he was. I mean he never egged Mortar on, or was offensive.”

  “Have you spoken to either of them about the note?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “And to Brende, and Compress. Nobody knows a thing about it. My idea is that Mortar wrote it himself as part of the rag, so that he could say he’d scared me into staying in my room.”

  “You say you questioned Flick about the note,” I said. “Was it the same night?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said. “I wanted to question him, but I knew he was busy at the cinema.”

  “You didn’t think of looking in his room in case he might be there?”

  He smiled. “He wasn’t there, sir. I mean, you can hear old Flick barging round like an elephant. I always know when he’s in his room.”

  “And what about Captain Mortar’s room that night?” Wharton said. “Did you hear anybody in there?”

  “Nothing at all, sir. I did think I heard somebody once, so I put my ear to the partition and listened. Not snooping, sir, but because I wanted to know what he might be up to. When I listened I couldn’t hear a thing.”

  “Well, you certainly had a lucky escape yourself,” Wharton said. “That explosion might have made a nasty mess of you.” Then he was peering over his spectacle tops. “You’re a bit of an expert on explosives, I take it?”

  “I, sir?” He smiled. “I don’t know a thing—except what one picks up in the ordinary way. They didn’t do that sort of stuff at Sandhurst in my time.”

  Out went Staff, and it was Wharton’s turn to do some head-shaking. “That young feller gets my goat,” he said, and almost despondently. “Talks like one of those B.B.C. tenors. And takes himself a damn-sight too seriously.”

  “One very interesting fact is beginning to emerge, George,” I said. “It’s a problem that may have to be decided and very soon. Was that note a fake? I mean, did it exist only in Staff’s prepared story? If it didn’t, then why was Staff kept in his room that night?”

  “Do you think I haven’t thought of all that?” he growled at me. “The idea was to kill two birds with one stone. But for the grace of God—and assuming all the time that the note wasn’t a fake, of course—Staff should have been blown up too.”

  “And Ferris, if it comes to that. A regular holocaust, George.”

  “Why not?” he said pugnaciously.

  “Well, for this reason, for one thing. It makes things too easy. All we’d have to find would be someone who hated all three sufficiently to try to murder them. But that doesn’t make sense. I told you that this place was divided into two camps—the Regular and Not-so-Regular, or the Mortarites and anti-Mortarites. Very well then. While I can imagine someone trying to wipe out the whole of the Mortarites—Mortar and Ferris—at one swoop, why include an anti-Mortarite like Staff?”

  “We’re not here to theorise,” George told me impatiently. “We want to get this preliminary investigation over. Take a look out and see if Flick’s handy.”

  Flick was handy. In fact he was talking earnestly to Staff at the south end of the hut. I called to him and when he came in he apologised for being late.

  “That’s all right,” Wharton said. “Sit down there and make yourself at home. Smoke if you want to.”

  The usual assurance about secrecy, a few deft blandishments about the cinema, and he was putting his first question.

  “You were at the cinema all Saturday night, I believe?” The reply came pat. “As a matter of fact I wasn’t. I didn’t feel any too good, so I left a man of mine to carry on.” He smiled at Wharton’s look. “I know I look as if I never had an illness in my life, but honestly I do get some queer spells. Sort of singing in the ears and giddiness.”

  Wharton nodded sympathetically, and then inquired about the cure.

  “The only thing to do is to get out in the fresh air,” Flick said. “That’s what I actually did. I just took a quiet stroll along the Peakridge road. When I got back, I had a wee crack with a feller I met and then I was just in time to hear the explosion. As a matter of fact it was myself who warned the fire squad.”

  “Good work,” said Wharton, and then was pursing his lips. “Still, we’d rather hoped that you’d been in your room some part of the night, then you might have heard or seen something. You might have seen Captain Mortar, for instance, or someone going into his room.”

  “Sorry I can’t help you there,” he said, and that was virtually all.

  When he’d gone I told George there was a suggestion I’d like to make, even at the risk of being ticked off. It was this. If Flick had really stolen those stamps, then he’d have sent them away at once, as far too dangerous stuff to keep in his own room. In that case the camp post office might be induced to disclose the fact that Flick had sent away a parcel on the Monday or even the Sunday morning.

  “I was thinking that myself,” George said. “It’s a ticklish business but I’ll try it.”

  Brende was next on the list, but when I looked outside there was no sign of him. Wharton fumed a bit, then impatiently had a look for himself. I heard voices as he came back, and whom should he be bringing in but Nurse Wilton.

  It was George’s boast that women were his most successful witnesses. I don’t know if he had that inscrutable quality known as IT, or its even later variety known, I believe, as OOMPH, but he certainly had something to justify the claim. I have tackled women witnesses, using every art of deference, courtesy, and even flattery, and have got nowhere. George has taken over and, with what I regard as wheedlings, displays of forlornness and longings to be mothered, has had the same witnesses eating out of his hand.

  He was beaming as he came in. “Do you know we’d absolutely forgotten you?” he was saying to Nurse and looking accusingly at me. “Mind you, I did say to Major Travers that you might give us some help, but he rather pooh-poohed the idea.”

  She had given me a charming smile when she came in, and now she seemed rather amused. She had a round face with the most delightful dimples, by the way, and her smile had always struck me as roguish and provocative.

  “I think Major Travers is a woman-hater,” she said.

  “Merely uxorious,” I said as I made a cushion for her chair out of one of George’s blankets. “Will you have a cigarette?”

  “Will I not?” she said, and when it was alight, settled her elbows comfortably on the table. “Now, what do you want me to tell you?”

  Wharton grimaced, then scratched his head. “To tell the truth, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t tell me you inveigled me in here under false pretences?”

  Wharton chuckled, then was peering at me over his spectacle tops.

  “What was it we wanted to ask Nurse Wilton?”

  “Only if she saw Captain Mortar on the Saturday night,” I said. “Or perhaps if she saw anybody go into his room.”

  She was shaking her head at once. All days were alike to her, just as they were alike to the Course. She had had dinner in her room, then dressed the hand of a man who’d cut himself opening a tin. Then she had read a book for a bit, after which she had taken a very short walk along the Peakridge road. As she was entering the camp again she was overtaken by Flick, and she had hardly got back to her room when the explosion occurred.

  “Flick saw you as far as here, didn’t he?” I said. “I only mention the f
act because I saw him going back to the lecture-room at about that time.”

  I think I have indicated that she had all the aplomb in the world, but that apparently innocent remark of mine made quite a different look flash across her face. My own idea was that she wanted to deny the fact, and then was suddenly seeing no harm in admitting it.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I didn’t want him to come, but he insisted on seeing me to the door.”

  I tried to look roguish too. “What was it he was carrying when I saw him? It wasn’t a baby was it?”

  A slight flush ran across her face; there was not a shadow of doubt about that. It couldn’t have been outraged modesty at the mention of babies, and she was flicking off her cigarette-ash to gain time.

  “I don’t remember him carrying anything,” she said. “Why did you ask?”

  “For no reason at all,” I said, “except that I’m a grossly curious person.”

  There was a tap at the door and Brende peeped in. Nurse Wilton rose at once and said she would really have to be going. Wharton ushered her out and was saying he was intending to see more of her. I could hear him telling her he was a lonely old fogey, and then the voices died away. I asked Brende if he’d be so good as to wait just a minute, and I heard Wharton saying the same thing as he came back.

  “What’d you think of her?” he fired at me as soon as he got in.

  “I told you about her and Flick,” I said. “I think Flick took her for a walk that night. That Peakridge road yarn was all bunkum.”

  He nodded in agreement. “Why was she all hot and bothered when you mentioned Flick carrying something?”

  “You spotted that, did you?” I asked.

  He snorted. “What d’you think I’m here for? And let me tell you something else. When Flick went out of here he went straight to her room. He sheered off when he saw me and that’s why I got her to come here. When I went back just now he was still hanging around. I’ll lay a fiver they’re comparing notes.”

  “Well, they may be trying to conceal the Saturday night walk,” I said, “and if so they’re taking it mighty seriously. What I’d like to know is, what Flick was actually carrying when he left her. It couldn’t have been the two albums of stamps. She wouldn’t have been hot and bothered about them because she wouldn’t have known what they were, even if he’d been fool enough to let her see them.”

  Wharton said there was no use in theorising and we’d better see Brende. His manner with him was purely business-like. What did he think the explosion was when he heard it.

  Brende said he was absolutely flabbergasted. If the sound had come from the opposite direction he would have thought the magazine had gone up.

  Brende said he and Store had spent the evening in the sergeants’ mess, listening to the Saturday night music-hall show, but at the actual moment of the explosion he was outside, having gone to the lavatories. When he’d recovered from his first bewilderment he had run towards the hut, then had seen the flames and had run back to warn the fire picket. Mr. Flick was already doing it.

  “Where did he come from?” I asked, as if I hadn’t known.

  “I saw him run out of the lecture-room, sir,” Brende said.

  That was all the information we got from him. Wharton thanked him profusely and said he would probably have another private lesson on explosives at some convenient time, and then out he went.

  “His evidence was straightforward enough,” Wharton said. “He didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable to me. That bit about Flick darting out of the cinema fits in. He’d have gone to the cinema to see how things had been getting on while he was away.”

  “And to ask if anybody had been making inquiries, so that he could have an excuse ready to explain his absence,” I said.

  Wharton glanced at his watch and said we’d just have time to see Feeder. I went out to find him, but he was not in my room. Another batman told me he’d seen him leave the room an hour or so previously, and he hadn’t seen him since. Wharton was very annoyed.

  “It’s no use getting annoyed with me, George,” I said. “Feeder made a start with me only this morning, so perhaps he hasn’t got used to my ways. But I distinctly impressed on him that he was to be handy at midday.”

  “Well, we’ll give him a minute or two,” he said, “and then if he doesn’t turn up I’ll see him to-night.”

  I remembered then what Feeder had told me the previous afternoon on the way back from the funeral, that he might have various private affairs of his own.

  “Should he be taken seriously?” I asked. “And Ferris too for that matter. Is it only hot air, that threat about taking the law into their own hands?”

  “There’ll be none of that while I’m on the spot,” Wharton said grimly. “The first crack out of Feeder and I’ll pop him in clink, if there’s a clink here. Have another look outside, will you?”

  I had a look and Feeder wasn’t there. George gathered up his notes and said he’d spend the next half-hour collating them. I ventured on one suggestion, and it was hardly that.

  “What strikes me about all this business, George, is the dirty, underhand nature of everything. No real killing, like stabbing or shooting, but dirty little tricks. The Northover affair and the Mills bomb, for instance, and the way Mortar was got rid of.”

  “Well, and what’s the inference?” he rapped at me. “Let me enlarge on it a bit first,” I said. “It’s all been cowardly and sneaking. Something has been done in each of the three cases, and all the one who did it had to do was to lay the trap and then keep out of the way. It’s as if he didn’t have the guts to witness the actual killing. It’s like a poison case where the poisoner plants his stuff, and after that what happens seems something wholly impersonal.”

  “Well?” he said impatiently.

  “Well, this then,” I told him. “Anybody, particularly a woman, can be immediately a suspect in a poisoning case. These three events have been of the same cowardly type as a poison murder. What I claim is that anybody might have been responsible therefore, even people who give the impression of being remote from murder types or likely to have a murder mentality. Just a minute,” I said, for he was about to burst in impatiently. “Let me instance Collect. Who in his senses would suspect him of murder? Yet I say he’s capable of the kind of thing I’ve been mentioning, and I did see him looking for that Blacker bomb.”

  “Now you’re getting somewhere,” Wharton was gracious enough to say. “It’s an idea and it’s worth thinking about.”

  He was already settling down to that collating of his notes, so I left him. That afternoon he was spending at the ranges, where there was to be an exhibition of flame-throwers, fougasse, and mines, and I knew he was looking forward to it. But I had told him that the real treat was to come on the Friday, when there was to be an entirely new demonstration. It had been ready for incorporation in the syllabus, but up to now the Air Force had not been able to co-operate. On the Friday, however, two dive-bombers were coming. Their pilots would report on camouflage and concealment, for one thing, but the principal object of the demonstration was for the Home Guard to experience the thrill of being dive-bombed, if only with flour bags, and to practise the rapid sighting and firing of machine-guns and even the Northover in defence and attack.

  I was to be busy myself that afternoon in a different way. I was due for a lecture when the Course returned from the ranges, and the trying thing about my lectures was that they had constantly to be brought up to date, which made a considerable amount of preliminary work. Once a week at least some new A.C.I. would reach me and throw a spanner into the old works, and there would be those specially infuriating ones that consisted wholly of corrections and deletions to those that had gone before. Still, one ought, I suppose, to cultivate an attitude of philosophical resignation. After all, if it weren’t for corrections and deletions, quite a few decrepit old gentlemen at the War House would be out of a job.

  I did have a scout round for Feeder after dinner, but none of the batmen sa
id they had seen him. After my lecture, which ended at eighteen hours, I had a wash and clean up and then went round to general staff quarters, where a man said he had seen him go out a few minutes before, and wearing his greatcoat. Dusk was well in the sky by then so I didn’t trouble to institute a search. What I did make up my mind to do was to have a heart to heart talk and a very definite understanding with Feeder in the morning.

  I went to George’s room to make a report, but he wasn’t there. As I came by the south end of the hut I heard his voice inside the Colonel’s room, and as I was entering my own room I saw him come out. There was no need to call him, for he had been coming in search of me in any case.

  “Just been buttering the old boy up,” he said, and gave a chuckle. “We’re getting as snug as two bugs in a rug.”

  He gave a conspiratorial look round, then his voice lowered.

  “I got an idea. I think I know how Mortar might have been blown up.”

  My fingers were already at my horn-rims, and if I had known I was going to spoil his show I’d never have spoken.

  “You mean, by remote control?”

  He glared, then looked infinitely hurt. Then he bucked up.

  “Depends what you mean by remote control.”

  “Sorry, George,” I said. “You tell me all about it.”

  “Well electrical contact,” he said, in the off-hand manner of one who conceals the fact that he is only partly informed. “You operate one of those plunger things. Just press it down and the bomb goes off when the contact is made. You can be at any distance you like, provided you have a long enough wire or cable.”

  I nodded.

  “You see the beauty of it?” he was going on. “The bomb is prepared and the wires are connected to the power-point of the electric fire. Of course it’s a kind of booby-trap, really. Whoever’s going to set it off has just to make certain that Mortar’s in his room, then down goes the plunger and up goes Mortar.”

  Then he was heaving a sigh. “The trouble is, it doesn’t make things easier for us. It’s no use trying to make sure where everybody actually was that night, and eliminating those that weren’t alone at the time. There’s more to it than that. A man might have been sitting in his own room and have pressed down the plunger from there. The wires would be blown sky-high and there wouldn’t be a trace. If there was any slack wire left he could pull it in.”