The Case of the Running Mouse: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  When I laid the paper aside I found myself polishing my glasses. It seemed to me a certainty that that head was Georgina Morbent’s, and as my mind flashed back to all I knew and had been told, something like horror came over me. A head, I told myself, but no limbs; though doubtless they’d be found later. There were a dozen things I wanted to know. How had the severing been done, for instance; how long had the woman been dead, and what was the clue that the police had found?

  I got to my feet. With my pull at the Yard it shouldn’t be too difficult to find those things out and even to get a look at the head itself. Then I sat down again. At all costs I must keep myself clear of what had happened. If the head was Georgina Morbent’s, then before I knew it I might find myself somehow involved, and there might be the very devil of a lot of things I’d find it uncommonly hard to explain. But though I changed my mind about going to the Yard, I couldn’t settle to anything. That visit to Hyde Park wouldn’t be politic either, and my morning generally had been knocked cock-eyed.

  Then it struck me that that discovery might be having an even more terrific effect on READY, and that he wouldn’t wait for a communication with me in the next day’s Telegraph but might even risk a telephone call to my flat. So out I went in search of a taxi.

  I had been back about ten minutes, mooning restlessly about, when the telephone went. My heart began to race as I grabbed the receiver. But it was only Hamson.

  “Pretty ghastly news,” he began. “I suppose you’ve seen it?”

  I preferred to lie doggo and asked what news. He told me.

  “How’re you sure it’s Georgina?” I asked.

  “Barbara’s identified her,” he said. “The poor girl’s absolutely prostrate. I’ve just left her now.”

  “Horrible,” I said. “Do tell her how desperately sorry I am.”

  That was about all, but it left me more restless than ever. It took the appetite from my lunch and I made up my mind to go to a show and get my mind off things. Let READY telephone if he wished, but I shouldn’t be there. Maybe he’d open out a bit in the morning’s Telegraph.

  I found a show I rather wanted to see, and then just as I was going out, the telephone went again.

  “Hallo, hallo,” a voice said impatiently.

  Only two words, but I knew that voice at once. It was George Wharton’s!

  Part Two

  THE OLD MASTER

  CHAPTER X

  A SLIPPERY TRACK

  Do you know George Wharton? If not, and you meet him, let me give you a word of warning. What you will see will be a tall, heavily built man, with a slight stoop and a huge walrus moustache. If he dons his antiquated spectacles and peers benignly at you over their tops, you will know him for a kind father and a perfect husband. Something wistful in his eyes may tell you that he is probably henpecked by a wife who doesn’t understand him. Subsequently you may describe him—women often do—as an old dear. That impression of yours may explain why I call him an old humbug and it may account for that other ‘old’ in the Yard’s nickname of the Old General.

  What of the real George? Well, there isn’t one, for George is always playing a part and revelling in it. Like Voltaire’s Frenchman, he can’t even stir his tea without a stratagem. Did you ever see one of those music-hall magicians who can produce for you out of a miniature bar contraption with one tap any drink you call for, from milk to absinthe? Well, George is rather like that. He can turn on his tap and produce anything, from crocodile tears to the pure milk of human kindness. He does everything with such gusto and a perfection of showmanship—at least, that is his own private opinion. His speciousness would swindle Uriah Heep, his wheedling would have been the envy of the sirens, his tenacity would make Bruce’s spider seem a yellow quitter, and his wrath would make Hitler’s mouthings sound like a B.B.C. poetry reading. Some of that explains the ‘General’ in the nickname.

  I have long seen through his little tricks, however; the way he keeps pieces of information and discoveries to himself, and then produces results which are expected to astound you, just as if you didn’t know that up his sleeve he had kept not only the ace of trumps but a couple of pairs of spare packs as well. There’s the way he’ll invite and even beg me to theorise, and then ridicule my efforts. Then, when later I analyse results, I find it is one of my derided theories that he has worked on, but craftily altered and manipulated to look like some inspiration of his own.

  The devil of a man to work with, you might say. But don’t you believe it. Working with George may be exasperating at times, but it’s very good fun. Like being at a theatre, except that George wants to play all the parts. But don’t imagine he’s any kind of a buffoon. Ripe and fruity, yes; but a man doesn’t become a Superintendent at the Yard except by hard work and merit. At a necessary moment George can lose his stoop and draw himself up with a dignity that somehow reminds you of the awful majesty of the Law, its long traditions, its incorruptibility, and its remorselessness of patience. I laugh at him, but when I expose his weaknesses, it is because I don’t want you to miss the best part of him. But there’s no man for whom I have a greater regard, respect, and admiration. As for my wife, she loves him. She once remarked that she’d love to have him stuffed.

  It was just half-past two that afternoon when, with an outward imperturbability, I entered George’s room at the Yard. Never had his smile been more endearing or his handshake so hearty.

  “Well, well,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “And you, George,” I said.

  I should tell you that over the telephone he’d said he’d heard I’d been asking after him, but he’d been away on a job and had only just got back. He’d also got out of me that I had ten days more of my leave, and that I wasn’t doing anything in particular. Then having fixed a place and time he’d rung off.

  “So you’re just on the look-out for something to do,” he said. “Not that I’ve got anything much.”

  “A pity,” I said, and smiled cynically.

  “Yes,” he said piously, and then I knew something was coming, for he was taking his antiquated spectacles out of their still more antiquated case, and adjusting them well down his nose in the most convenient place for peering over their tops.

  “The fact is,” he said, with a mildness that was meant to be deceptive, “I happened to hear you were in town in a rather different way.” Then he was peering at me. “What I might call a remarkable way.” He shook his head regretfully. “A way I’d never have thought of.”

  “Damn you for an old humbug,” I burst out at him. “Why the hell can’t you say what you mean!”

  “There you are!” He threw up his hands in simulated grief. “There was a time when you talked like a gentleman.” He shook his head again. “I’m afraid the Army’s done you no good. In fact I’m sure it hasn’t.”

  “And why?” I asked amusedly.

  “Well,”—he spread his palms again—“the way you lose control of yourself. And frequenting gaming houses. I ask you.”

  I cursed Brontway under my breath for the double-crosser he’d doubtless been.

  “Oh, that,” I said, and still amusedly. “I’m afraid you’ve got me pretty badly wrong.”

  “I hope I have,” he told me unctuously.

  “Blast you, George, will you listen,” I told him exasperatedly. “If it’s my morals you’re worried about, you might at least hear my side of the story before crediting other people’s. I could tell you a thing or two, too.”

  “Oh?” he said, and shot me another look over the tops of his spectacles.

  “Yes,” I said. “What I gather is that you’re in charge of that severed head business, and you’ve discovered the trail leads back to a Peter Worrack who committed suicide. When you dug into that you came across my name. Sorry, you were horrified to come across my name.”

  That caught him in the wind. “I don’t know about that,” was all he could say.

  “Well, it’s my guess and I’ll bet you a new hat it isn�
�t very far out,” I said.

  Then I told him my story, and he actually swallowed it. I’d happened to run across Worrack, etc., etc.; the same tale, in fact, that I’d told Brontway, with a trimming or two in George’s special line. I told him that I knew Barbara Grays through that hospital committee, but so little that I’d forgotten all about her when I met her again. I added that Worrack had hinted that he was worried about the sister’s long absence without a word to a soul. As for that gambling den, I told him that it was a highly respectable place.

  “You were all breaking the law, weren’t you?” he snorted at me.

  “No doubt,” I said. “You’re not a Galahad yourself, if it comes to that. What about that ticket you had for the last Irish sweep? However,” I went on, “I’m the last one to cast a stone. All I will say is, the next time you want to call me into your study like a ruddy headmaster, make sure of your facts.”

  “There you go again,” he said, and raised his hands as if appealing to high heaven. “Can’t you take a joke. Anybody but you’d have known I was pulling your leg.”

  “Splendid,” I said. “That’s what I’m doing. Pulling your leg. Now, what about your telling me a few things. How far have you got?”

  “Nowhere at all yet,” he said, and then as a sop to me: “That’s why I could have leapt into the air when I heard about you from that chap Brontway.”

  “I’d have liked to see you,” I told him. “But what have you done?”

  “Well, I saw that head, and what was found with it. I can’t show it to you because it’s being gone into.” He went over to the side table. “But here’s the brown paper it was wrapped in, and the string that tied it.”

  “No blood,” I said. “Was the head cut off after death?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and a good bit after death—so I’m told. But here’s the funny thing. The paper was double, the same as it is now, but between the folds was this.”

  What he gave me was one of those invitations to the club. That one was made out to Mrs. Georgina Morbent, and the date was the 10th January.

  “Pretty much of a gift, wasn’t it?” I asked. “It told you who she was, and it led you straight to Worrack.”

  “Right enough,” he said. “What I’ve been wondering, though, is why the information was given. Talk about a gold salver?”

  He had been peering at me over the spectacle tops again; an obvious invitation to theorising.

  “Surely someone wanted you to go straight to Worrack.”

  “Yes,” he said craftily. “But when? Before Worrack died, or after?”

  “I get you, George,” I said admiringly. “You think the head ought to have been discovered before, and it ought to have led to Worrack. If it was a plant, then someone was trying to frame Worrack. If it wasn’t, then Worrack was just too careless.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said. “The head was put somewhere and nobody found it, as they ought to have done. So it was shifted to where it was bound to be found.”

  “Then the one who shifted it must have known that Worrack was dead,” I pointed out. “What was the point in casting suspicion on a dead man?”

  “That’s one of the things we’ve got to find out.” He began putting his spectacles away, their purpose having been accomplished. “After that I had the sister identify the head. A nice woman, that Mrs. Grays, even if she is mixed up with that set.” He had been about to say “gambling set” but remembered in time.

  “What did she tell you about the sister’s absence?” I asked.

  It appeared she had told George that same tale as had been told to Brontway. George appeared to be believing it, and I didn’t disillusion him. She had naturally mentioned the Irish visit, so George had got hold of O’Clauty, who was crossing at once.

  “He won’t be here till to-morrow afternoon,” he said. “Then we’ll see him.”

  You’ll appreciate the dilemma I was in. There were so many things I wanted to know and yet each question I put had to be most carefully worded for fear I should make a slip. The track wasn’t a slippery one, it was just sheer smooth ice. But I saw no harm in asking why he wanted to see O’Clauty, and why a telephone conversation wouldn’t have done as well.

  “How do we know he’s telling the truth?” he asked me.

  “He says she never went to Ireland, so the sister told me, but there’s only his word for it. Oh, no,” he said, and shook his head reprovingly. “Short cuts don’t pay. I’d like to run my eye over this O’Clauty. For all we know, he may be a bit of a surprise.”

  I could have added that O’Clauty was going to produce rather more than a surprise if he told George about Richmond.

  “Have you got any suggestions?” George was going on.

  “I don’t know that I have,” I said, and was doing some more quick thinking. “What does strike me is this. If this Mrs. Morbent did go off with another man, then why did he murder her?”

  “Just a minute,” George cut in. “Isn’t that getting on a bit too far? The fact that there’s a severed head doesn’t prove she was murdered. She may have died on this man’s hands, so to speak. For some reason—if he was a married man, for instance, or had to avoid scandal—he had to dispose of the body.”

  “A good job, was it? I mean the cutting?”

  “Fair,” George said. “It wasn’t done by an expert. But to get back to that theory of yours. What’s wrong with this? Worrack found out about that man and her, and it was he who did her in.”

  “As good as any other theory,” I told him guardedly. “Also it gives a stronger motive for Worrack’s suicide. But let’s assume she was murdered, and that the other man did it. Why did he do it?”

  “To get himself out of an awkward hole,” he suggested, but as if he didn’t believe it himself.

  “Maybe,” I said, and then popped in with some of the things I was itching for him to get at. “But suppose he’d intended to do away with her from the first, and he thought it worth while for other reasons. What jewellery did she have on her, for instance? A wealthy woman, going off with a man, should have taken a pretty valuable lot. And money? What about that? In fact—though heaven forbid I should teach you your job—I’d ask the sister about the jewellery and see her bank manager about the money.”

  “As a matter of fact,” he began, and I knew from his honeyed tone that he was going to do a bit of showing off, “I did ask the sister about jewellery, and she gave me a likely list. It’s being circulated to all pawnshops and jewellers straightaway.”

  I went hot and cold all over, wondering if my friend at Cowan & Cleet’s would come forward with information.

  “What you don’t know, probably, is that this Mrs. Morbent did start off for Ireland,” George told me. “Worrack saw her off, and the date was the 13th of January. Now you know why I want to see O’Clauty. Worrack would have been the man to know what jewellery she was wearing.”

  “He wouldn’t have known what she was carrying in her bag,” I said. “But what about her will? Got the details yet?”

  “Yes and no,” he said, and I gathered he’d extracted something from Barbara Grays. George would always boast that women witnesses were putty in his hands. “What I was thinking was that I’d see the solicitors now. I’ve got the address and her bank too. I wondered if you’d like to see the bank manager for me.”

  “Certainly, if it’s any help,” I said. “When do I go? Now?”

  “No time like the present,” he told me briskly. “Here’s the address. I’ll ring up to say you’re coming.”

  In less than twenty minutes I was in the manager’s office, and we were telling each other what a horrible business the death of Georgina Morbent was.

  “A charming woman, Mr. Travers,” he told me. “Of strong opinions, mind you, but always charming.”

  “That makes us both all the more eager to see justice done,” I said portentously.

  “Indeed it does,” he said. “Of course, everything’s strictly in confidence.”
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br />   I said that naturally it was, and with that he began to unloosen. On the 11th January Mrs. Morbent had called at the bank, and she had done two significant things. She had cashed a cheque on self for three hundred pounds, and had taken it all, except fifty, in one-pound notes. Then she had asked for her pass-book and had waited till it was made absolutely up to date.

  Now, when I used the word “significant” I meant to me and not necessarily to him.

  “A large amount for her to draw out?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “But I think it was unusual for her to draw it in one-pound notes.”

  “She kept a large balance?”

  “Roughly about five thousand,” he said. “Not a lot for a woman in her position. The cheques for her trainer, a man named O’Clauty, were often rather large, particularly in the summer, when there was no racing.”

  “How did she find racing? A ruinous business?”

  He smiled amusedly. “The scale she raced on wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference whatever happened. She was a very wealthy woman. But as a matter of fact she lost very little. O’Clauty is a very shrewd man, so I’m told.”

  “Well, you’re a busy man,” I said, “and so am I. I can’t see her pass-book or the cancelled cheques to January the 11th, but I can see a statement, and that amounts to the same thing.”

  He rang through for it to be made up and then I asked another question.

  “Did she keep her jewels with you?”

  He said they were in the strong room. Mrs. Morbent had kept them there for a year or two, since during the blitz in fact. If necessary he could give me a list.

  “It’s another kind of list I want,” I said. “The list of that wasn’t in the strong room.”

  He did a bit of thinking. She was not a woman who relied on things like jewellery for her charm, he said, and she rarely wore anything. A wedding ring? No. But the last few months she had worn a beautiful square-cut emerald ring. She had shown it to him and he had admired it. Then he remembered the platinum cigarette-case, solid and valuable, and lastly the platinum and jewelled wrist-watch, quite a simple affair, but in perfect taste like all her things, and certainly very valuable too.