The Case of the Platinum Blonde: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  With my right hand I drew aside the thick holly leaves and had a look at the man as he neared me, and I saw him as clearly as if he had been sitting for his portrait. He was a big man but flabby-looking, and with shoulders somewhat hunched. As for his face, it was remarkably like Churchill’s, but a roguish, impish Churchill, and with cheeks even fatter and far more richly red. He wore no hat, and his thin, white hair straggled across his bald skull and over his ears, and on his face was a look of blandest satisfaction.

  The very moment he was out of sight in the bend of the path I took a chance and sprinted for that back door. As I neared it I saw that the notice, if an announcement of a sale, was a most unusual one, for it was hand-printed and there seemed very few words on it. Then when I got to it I saw it was a piece of white cardboard, evidently cut from a box, and the four corners were held down by tin-tacks. As for what was printed on it, here it is, and you can judge if I was staggered.

  WOE TO THEM THAT DEVOUR WIDOWS’ HOUSES AND REGARD NOT THE FATHER-LESS AND THE ORPHAN!

  THE DAY OF VENGEANCE IS AT HAND. THUS SAITH THE LORD.

  TO-MORROW MAY BE TOO LATE! REMEMBER—THIS NIGHT SHALL THY SOUL BE REQUIRED OF THEE.

  So much for the large print. Then in smaller print below came the following

  ABSOLUTELY FINAL WARNING!

  TO-NIGHT, 11.00 P.M., SAME PLACE.

  Frankly all I could do was to gape. Then I had an idea, and on an old envelope-back took a hasty copy of the words. Then as I glanced up I saw that the house had a telephone, for the wire was connected to the back of the kitchen chimney. At the same moment I heard the sound of an approaching lorry, and again I was in a fright, thinking that the man would be away before I could question him. Then I saw the lorry go by on the road which I had forgotten, and it was a military one and full of men.

  I sprinted back along the path to where the three paths met, and there was my man making for the village. Something must have delayed him for he was only about fifty yards away, so at once I put my best foot forward and in under five minutes I had overhauled him. The path was wide and there was ample room for us to proceed abreast.

  “Still no storm?” I remarked pleasantly. That the man was either a crank or a lunatic was very evident and it was policy to humour him.

  He had given me a quick look as I came up, but now his smile was quite genial. What to say of his manner I hardly know, and you must judge it for yourself, but it had a rich urbanity and a certain dignified subservience, as of an old family butler.

  “Still no storm, sir,” was his echoed and rather pontifical reply. “You are taking your evening exercise?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I only arrived this evening and my sister, Mrs. Thornley—perhaps you know her—told me this was a most attractive walk.”

  “Mrs. Thornley—yes,” he said. “A most charming lady, sir. You’ll pardon me, sir, but you have the look of an Army officer. Would it be impertinent to ask if you are on leave?”

  I told him my circumstances and he was most interested. What comments he made gave no signs of lunacy, far from it. But the mentally unstable are queer people at times, with the instabilities matters of mere moments in days or even months.

  “I take it you have travelled considerably, sir,” he remarked, and that deferential way of addressing me, I should say, struck me as simply a kind of old-fashioned courtesy; and his somewhat spacious gestures and perfect control of the conversation showed that he had his own well-founded opinion of himself.

  I begged the question for a moment while I handed him one of my cards. He halted, produced pince-nez from his waistcoat pocket and then read aloud.

  “Major L. Travers. The L. is for?”

  “Ludovic.”

  “A fine old name, sir,” he told me majestically, and pocketed both card and pince-nez. “German in origin undoubtedly. And with an historical military significance. But about your travels, sir. You have seen the world?”

  Luckily for me we came to a row of craters where a stick of bombs had fallen some fifty yards from the path, and that gave me time to ease off the question and think of an answer. Then I said I’d travelled very little except in Europe and the Middle East.

  “Egypt, sir?”

  “Egypt I know very well,” I said.

  “Ah!” he said, and his fat face beamed. “There was a time, sir, when I could have gone to Egypt but I deferred the moment and then it was too late. The Pyramids, sir? You have been over them?”

  “No more than the usual tourist does,” I admitted. But now I thought I knew the particular kind of crank he was—a believer in certain prophetic qualities inherent in the Great Pyramid.

  “After this war, sir, I hope to visit them myself,” he said, and in a queerly matter-of-fact way. “I have certain projects in hand which ought to materialise.”

  A storm-cloud had been coming over at a good pace and just then there were a few great drops of rain. In the far distance was a rumble of thunder.

  “Looks as if we shall have to run for it,” I said, and we quickened our pace. Luckily we were now no more than a couple of hundred yards from the village stile, and as we came by it I saw Bernard Temple in the garden of Rose Cottage hastily dismantling a garden hammock. A second later, as we were almost at the stile, my friend grasped my arm. He nodded back.

  “That man, sir.” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “A scoundrel, sir. And a friend of scoundrels. Be on your guard, sir. Be on your guard.”

  “I will,” I said. “And thanks for the tip.”

  As he mounted the stile the rain fell in earnest. We sprinted the few yards to his lodgings, a cottage called Lane End, which was at the end of a little pightle. There was a rose-covered porch, and there we stood and panted for a minute.

  “We were just in time, sir,” my friend said and opened the front door. “But only a storm. Perhaps you will honour me by waiting in my room till it is over.”

  Just inside the door were stairs and he led the way up to a large bed-sitting-room. Below us I could hear a woman busy with pots and pans in the kitchen.

  “You have a lovely view here,” I said, for the room faced south.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Things might be worse. The woman of the house is an excellent cook and I have a modicum of peace and quiet.”

  “You’re an astronomer too,” I said, pointing to the telescope that stood on a table by the window. On that table I saw, too, various books and pamphlets. There was Ezekiel or The True Witness, The Great Pyramid and Its Message for Today, and what looked like a weekly—Daydawn, the Journal of the Sons of Light. They were all the titles I could read, for he was telling me about his own special attitude towards the stars. I won’t bother you with the ten minutes’ discourse, but the gist of it was that the stars were our companions in space and friends for millenniums of years. From one’s friends one learns much of one’s self and by long watching and meditating one can achieve a sort of yogi state and be an apt vessel for revelation.

  I said it was a sound enough argument, and asked what he’d received in the way of revelation.

  “Ah!” he said, and on his face was part wiliness and part pride. “Believe it or not, my dear sir, but it was the stars that brought me here.”

  “And those projects you said you had on hand; do the stars promise success for them?”

  He made as if to answer, then thought better of it. He merely shook his head and gave a dry smile in which was something of the same wiliness.

  “Never count your chickens, sir, before they are hatched. Nevertheless I have hopes. Great hopes.”

  The sun was suddenly flooding the room and I said I would have to be going. Then he gave me that book on the Great Pyramid and told me he was sure it would be of interest. I could return it at my leisure.

  “Or Mrs. Thornley might bring it,” he added. “She calls for war savings, you know.” He shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid I have hitherto been a poor subscriber. In the near future, sir, I hope to astonish her.”

&
nbsp; At the foot of the stairs he shook hands with me warmly. “Porle is the name, sir,” and he spelt it for me. “Augustus Porle. My compliments, sir, to your sister. And I trust you and I will meet again, if not here, on our walks.”

  As I made my way back to Ringlands I could congratulate myself on the discovery of one of the finest specimens of my career. A crank he might be, but a many-sided one and gifted with a singular clarity of exposition, even if his fundamentals had been somewhat cock-eyed. A man of some past affluence I gathered too, and certainly of some education. What he was up to with Maddon was beyond my powers of guessing. The only thing that was certain was that he knew Maddon’s habit of taking an evening stroll or else he would not have tacked up that notice so brazenly.

  One thing that did puzzle me was the use of Biblical phraseology in that notice. And, above all, what a colossal anti-climax had been that reminder at the end about a final warning and a meeting at eleven o’clock that night. If I hadn’t felt damnably tired I’d have stayed up that night and tracked him down to the meeting-place, for the whole thing was profoundly intriguing to one as curious as myself, with whom any unsolved mystery, however trivial, will gnaw away like an unfilled tooth.

  Mind you, I could find theories enough for everything. Porle suffered from a persecution complex, for instance, as witness his remarks—gratifying though they had been to me—about Bernard Temple’s being a dangerous man, and consorting with rascals. Perhaps Maddon had found him trespassing and had been high-handed. Maybe Maddon owed him money for something, and he was out to recover it in his own way. From what I had seen of Maddon he was in for a remarkably long quest. Or maybe the stars were behind it all.

  “Enjoyed your walk?” Helen asked.

  “I’ve rarely enjoyed one more,” I told her. “I met that man Maddon near Five Oaks, by the way. He looks quite a superior kind of person.”

  “The village doesn’t like him a great deal,” she said. “I think he likes keeping himself to himself and he has rather a caustic tongue.”

  “He does everything for himself?”

  “I think so,” she said. “There is a woman, I believe, who comes in to clean up in the afternoons. Mrs. Chevalle would know. He’s on her beat.”

  Then I told her about meeting Porle, with not a word, of course, about that notice tacked on Maddon’s door. She laughed as soon as I mentioned his name.

  “He’s a perfectly dear old soul,” she said. “The most delightful manners. Like someone out of Our Village.”

  “A bit of a crank, isn’t he?”

  Her eyes opened wide. “Whatever made you think that?”

  “What made you think he wasn’t?” I countered.

  “He never struck me as anything like it,” she said. “Just old-fashioned. And very learned, so Mrs. Bray says. She’s the widow where he lodges. I expect she means studious.”

  “He sent you his compliments,” I said, “And he admitted he was a poor subscriber.”

  She laughed again. “It’s just too funny. Every week he gives me a shilling. Has it all ready. Then about a fortnight ago he told me, most secretly, that he was going to astonish me in the near future.”

  “When did he mean? At your Wings for Victory week?”

  “Oh, we’ve had that,” she said. “I think he’s expecting a windfall.”

  It was then about nine o’clock and I was made to drink a cup of hot milk and eat a slab of fruit cake which she had achieved by hoarding the butter rations.

  “I thought it would be nice for you to meet Commander Santon,” she told me, “so while you were out I slipped along to Little Foxes. But he wasn’t in. Tom Dewball—that’s his man—said he was away on some war savings conference or other at Southampton, but he’d be back tomorrow. You’ll like Commander Santon. He’s an awfully good sort.”

  “Married, is he?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “His wife’s frightfully well off. I don’t think he has anything besides his pension. Awfully hard luck about his wife. When he was serving out East she went out there to do nursing. Most capable she is, so everyone says. Now, of course, she’s got to stay there.”

  “That reminds me,” I said. “I must write a note to Bernice so that I can post it in the morning.”

  My wife is also nursing, but up in Yorkshire, and as her leave is scanty it was useless for me to go up there too. But we were hoping to have seven days together at the middle of July. I got the letter finished just before ten, and then Helen was wanting to know if I felt like bed. I said I certainly did. That pleased her, for she and Annie always turned in at ten so as not to have to put up the black-out. “You’ll do all the locking-up?” I asked.

  She said she would, and most carefully. During the last week or two there’d been no less than five burglaries in the district. People said it was the troops, for there are bad eggs in most batches. Whoever it was had only taken small things but valuable—old silver, bric-a-brac and miniatures, for instance. Helen was kind enough to add also, that it was good to have a man in the house, and rather spoilt it by adding further, “since there wasn’t a dog.”

  I took much longer than I’d anticipated to get off to sleep, and I only did so when I’d thought up a plan to get Maddon’s finger-prints for Wharton. What I would do in the morning would be to go that way again, and wearing gloves and carrying a stick. I’d call on Maddon and be very surprised to find he lived there, and then I’d show him a hand-drawn map and ask him if such and such a path would bring me out where. On that sheet of paper I’d have his prints.

  After breakfast, then, I drew my rough map from Helen’s large-scale one, being careful to wear gloves and to omit a certain field-path. Then I announced that the doctor had told me to take a two-mile walk every morning and gradually increase the distance, so I proposed to do again the walk I had done the previous night. Helen said if I was coming by the stores, would I hand in a list of things she was getting with my ration card.

  It was getting on the way for half-past nine when I set out, and as soon as I glanced up at the sky I didn’t like the look of things a bit. White fluffy clouds were floating across a greyey-black sky to the west of Porthaven, and before I’d gone a couple of hundred yards I heard the distant rumble of thunder. Just as I thought of turning back to fetch a raincoat I thought it might be better not to have one. If there was to be a storm it certainly would not break before I got to Five Oaks, and if the rain came down then, and while I was talking to Maddon, he couldn’t very well do anything but ask me to step indoors till it was over. An admirable opportunity, so it seemed to me, of seeing him at close quarters.

  Quite near the path when I reached the first woods, an old man was splitting chestnut lengths for fencing.

  “We’re going to get the storm?” I asked him.

  He told me that the storms nearly always went up the Channel, catching Porthaven and giving it a good soaking but rarely giving Cleavesham more than a splash. Which was a pity, he said, for his onions could do with a thorough soaker.

  The storm was certainly getting much nearer, so I mended my pace. When I drew near the house I wondered if I ought to go to the front door, much as I should have liked to inspect the back and find out what had happened to Porle’s notice. Curiosity got the better of me and I took the twisted path to the back door. The notice, I was not surprised to see, had gone, and it had been wrenched away as if in a rage, for two of the cardboard corners were still there. I also noticed quite an array of tintacks. That notice certainly wasn’t the first that Porle had fastened to that back door.

  I lifted my hand to knock, but just as my knuckles met the wood I saw that the door was just ajar. That put me in a quandary, but curiosity got the better of me again and I opened the door and put my head inside.

  “Anybody there?”

  I listened. My call reverberated through an empty house, so I called again for luck.

  “Anybody at home?”

  There was never a sound, so I had a quick look round the kitchen. It was stone-flo
ored and scrupulously clean but I couldn’t see beyond it, for the door to the room beyond was closed, though only with an old-fashioned wooden snack fastened with a string. So I put the door back as near to ajar as I had found it and then made my way to the front of the house. Maybe Maddon was working in the garden and had not heard my call, but when I had spent five minutes looking round and had found no trace of him, I knew my walk had been wasted.

  A curiosity positively shameless got the better of me before I left, for as I came to the front path the window caught my eye and I thought I’d take a peep at the contents of the rooms. The first I looked at was a dining-room, sparsely furnished, but I couldn’t see a lot, for the lattice panes were too dusty. The other room looked more interesting. The first thing I noticed, for it was placed quite near the window where the light would fall across the left shoulder of a user, was a roll-top desk. It was open and looked most damnably untidy, with papers strewn over its flap. Maybe some were on the floor too, and as I looked down I saw something that made my eyes pop out of my head.

  Another moment and I was fairly sprinting for that back door again.

  CHAPTER III

  A GRAND-STAND VIEW

  As I moved off I felt a spatter of rain, and by the time I had reached the back door the downpour had begun in earnest. So fast had I sprinted that when I got in the kitchen I felt a bit faint, and as soon as I was in that living-room I had to hold myself steady for a minute, for my head was swimming and my legs decidedly tottery.

  Suddenly I smelt something. I sniffed, and there was no mistaking what it was—a perfume of some sort and rather subtle, like the distant scent from a bed of stocks or pinks. But there were no flowers in the room and the two windows were closed, and then as I moved forward the scent became stronger. It was so strong, in fact, that I located it. Some-one—a woman probably—had been sitting in a winged easy chair on the near side of the fireplace. I felt the cushion, but it had no suspicion of warmth but when I sniffed close against the arms and back the scent was there all right.