The Case of the Running Mouse: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  The statement came in and we had a look at it together. It covered a period of four months, and most of the payees were easy to check up on. Rent of flat, for instance; O’Clauty’s account, cheques on self, payments to dressmakers and hairdressers, and small cheques to Worrack. One or two cheques looked like payments to casual firms and didn’t need checking. One to a Madame Montrose for instance, for eleven guineas and one to a W. M. Chataway, for five guineas. The first might have been a modiste, and who the other was he had no idea. In any case the amounts were so small as not to be worth worrying about.

  As for the credit side, there were dividends, cheques drawn by Worrack, and at least three from a firm of bookmakers. They also needed no explanation, so I put the statement in my wallet and rose as if to go.

  “A highly confidential piece of information,” I said, lowering my voice. “We couldn’t help wondering about blackmail. I’m glad to see that nothing in the statement suggests it.”

  He smiled rather grimly. “She wasn’t the sort who’d have stood for that sort of thing. I pity the man who tried to blackmail her.” Then he was looking a bit aghast.

  “Not that I’m suggesting anything of the sort, of course. I couldn’t conceive of her doing anything that would lay her open to blackmail.”

  “I know,” I said, “But we have to look at things from all angles.”

  Another twenty minutes and I was back in George’s room. I didn’t expect him there, but it appeared that, unknown to me, he’d already rung the solicitors and had merely had to call round for a copy of the will and to put any questions arising therefrom. It was like him to want to know what I’d found out before telling me what had happened to him.

  When I told him about the jewellery, I found the three articles tallied with what he’d wormed out of Barbara Grays, and I ought to have been exasperated when I discovered also that the three articles were those about which enquiries were being made. But I wasn’t. I was only scared stiff when I thought again about my pawnbroker friend.

  “Doesn’t it look to you as if Worrack gave her that ring?”

  “Quite possibly,” he said, and pursed his lips. “If he did, where does it get us?” he asked, and gave me a glare.

  “I’m only trying to be helpful,” I told him amiably. “But what about this? She took out her pass-book so that she could destroy the cancelled cheques. There was a payment—or payments—she didn’t want traced, if anything happened to her. But not being too knowledgeable, she forgot that a statement would give the show away.”

  “Has it given it away?”

  “Don’t be so damn superior,” I told him. “It has given her away. It’s told us that she drew two hundred and fifty pounds in one-pound notes. What woman’s going to be bothered with a wad like that? What she was going to do was pay them over to someone who didn’t want the payment traced, as fivers and tenners could have been.”

  “Blackmail?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. If so, as I pointed out, then it was a first payment. He said the sister ought to have noticed some change in her, and it was a pity she couldn’t be questioned, but she’d had a kind of breakdown from shock.

  “What did you find out?” I asked.

  It turned out to be little more than I knew already, except for one quite dramatic thing. A week before that supposed trip to Ireland she’d changed her will. It had been a rush affair and she’d made a significant remark to the lawyers, that there were more unlikely things than that she’d be changing it again in a few weeks. At the same time, she’d had the property conveyances rushed through for Worrack.

  The will itself was very short and simple, and at her own insistence. Twenty thousand to Worrack, five hundred and the flat to George and the same to Lulu, the balance to Barbara Grays, and the two horses to O’Clauty, with a special condition that Amber King was not to be sold unless he’d won either the Cheltenham Gold Cup or the Grand National.

  “What do you make of it all?” George wanted to know.

  “That obviously she knew she was soon going to be in a dangerous spot,” I said. “That she was likely to die, in fact. Also that she had, say, a fifty-fifty chance, and if she was lucky she might be changing the will again.”

  “Just as I read it,” he said. “It puts us up a bigger gum-tree than ever.”

  I threw in my old theory of a possible hasty marriage, and how she’d repented when she met Worrack, and how it was the blackmailer she was going to meet.

  “Anything’s worth trying,” he said. “But two-fifty’s not much of a blackmail payment.”

  “Some people would think it so,” I said.

  He said he’d get Somerset House to work and that’d settle the marriage business.

  “And what now?” I asked hopefully.

  Nothing, he said, for the moment. He had notes to write up, and a man or two to see. What I might like to do, however, was to turn up at the club that night. Nine o’clock sharp.

  “What’s happening?” I asked. “The club’s closed down, isn’t it?”

  “Opening for one night only,” he told me with a chuckle. “The old gent”—that was the complacently disparaging way he would sometimes allude to himself—“had a brainwave. I saw Conroy, that manager chap, and he gave me the list of those who used the place most. I went over it and picked out a few. A half-dozen or so, and they’ve been asked to turn up to-night.”

  “What’s the idea?” I asked. “A reconstruction?”

  “All in good time,” he told me exasperatingly. Then in his mildest tone. “As a matter of fact that’s where I’m off to as soon as I’ve written those notes. I don’t suppose you’d like to come along?”

  “Since you ask me so earnestly, I don’t think I would,” I told him cynically, and picked up my hat. “In any case I’d rather get home before the black-out.”

  “Well, see you at nine,” he said, and held out his hand. A huge and yet flabby sort of hand it was, and I’d never seen him looking so much like a church deacon.

  CHAPTER XI

  WHARTON AT WORK

  I arrived at the front entrance of the club on the stroke of nine. Another man came up at the same time, the prosperous-looking gent who’d given Barbara Grays that Stock Exchange tip, though I didn’t recognise him till George Conroy had let us in.

  “What’s on, George?” he was asking at once.

  “Just a special night, sir,” George told him. “A few things to clear up.”

  “What’s the idea?” he demanded of me when George had left us at the head of the stairs.

  I shrugged my shoulders. He gave me a suspicious look, remembering, no doubt, how helpful I’d been to Brontway, so there wasn’t any more conversation. Inside the main room there seemed to be about eight people, and I recognised them all. Lulu, Hamson, Molde and Scylla I’d expected to see, and Jean perhaps, who was standing forlornly by the closed bar. There was also a lean man, a theatre magnate I learned later, and a jovial-faced little man who was something in the City. The roulette table was bare, but the green shaded lights were on above it, and chairs had been placed. The rest of the room was as I had seen it last.

  Naturally, there was an air of restraint. Hamson gave me a nod and remarked helpfully that he saw they’d dragged me in too. Lulu gave me a wan smile, and Scylla a decidedly nervous one. Molde, who’d been standing by her chair, made for me and was wanting to know what it was all about. Before I could do more than shrug my shoulders, Wharton was making a dramatic entry, with George, from Worrack’s office.

  “Ladies and gentlemen”—up went his hand—“I must introduce myself. Superintendent Wharton of the Criminal Investigation Department.” His features softened in a smile that I can only call roguish. “But don’t let that alarm you. Whatever may have gone on in this room, there aren’t going to be any prosecutions. I give you my word on that. No!”—and he struck an attitude that was perfect Mark Anthony. “What I’ve asked you here for is to see if any of you can throw any light on that terrible affair of Mrs. Morbent.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know that I shall have your co-operation.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t applaud. Perhaps I was wondering what the swindle was going to be, and in half a minute I knew—at least some of it. George Wharton explained that he was going to put two questions to us and they would be answered in strict confidence. To ensure that, the answers would be written down on sheets of paper that would be handed round, and with the same kind of pencil. The statements would be unsigned and then they would be folded and collected. Just like a ballot, and just as secret, he said. What he was interested in was the answers, not the writers.

  George got us seated round the roulette table, and then Wharton handed out the sheets of paper and the pencils.

  “Now ladies, and gentlemen, please write a figure in the top left-hand corner, and opposite it put your answer. If you haven’t anything to write simply leave the space blank. You are all ready? Then the question’s this, preceded by a statement. It’s no secret that the late Mrs. Morbent was a very close friend of the late Mr. Worrack. Shall we imagine, for the purpose of this test, that she was engaged to him? Very well. Here’s the question I’d like you to answer. Do any of you know of any other man in Mrs. Morbent’s life within the last month, shall we say? That’s all, ladies and gentlemen, and I leave it to you to know what kind of man I mean.”

  We looked furtively at each other and then some of us began to write. In under two minutes Wharton was ready for his second question. It was an easy one. Was there anything—anything under the sun—that any of us knew or could remember, that might throw any light whatever on the murder of Mrs. Morbent. You will notice that he made no bones about the word murder.

  I was pretending to write, but now and again having a surreptitious look round. The two women seemed to be taking things very seriously. Molde was biting the end of his pencil. Hamson caught my eye and gave a quick shrug of the shoulders. Jean was looking puzzled and kept looking round, but there was nobody who was taking it as any kind of joke. The business was too grim for that, and Wharton was towering above us like an usher.

  “Don’t be afraid of putting down anything that mayn’t seem very important,” he reminded us. “I’ll be the judge of that. And don’t forget that everything’s strictly confidential.”

  Nobody seemed to have anything else to write, so he told us to fold our papers up; then he collected them himself and deposited them in a large envelope. Then he whispered to George, who had not been asked to write, by the way, and after that he made his final announcement.

  “That’s all, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m very grateful for the trouble you’ve taken. If anything should subsequently occur to any of you, I rely on you to communicate with Scotland Yard. Every confidence will be respected.”

  It was not till the room had cleared, except for George and Jean, that he and I went to the office.

  “Now we’ll see what we’ve got,” he said, and shot the papers out on the table. “You hold them to the light and you’ll see a number in one corner.”

  “What’s that for?” I wanted to know.

  “Did you notice how you were sitting?” he said, and when I said I didn’t: “A pretty nice detective you are! In alphabetical order, that’s how you were sitting.”

  “Rather sharp practice, wasn’t it?” I told him.

  “Why should it be?” He glared. “Everything’s in confidence, isn’t it?”

  “More or less,” I said, and got on with the job, which was to call out the number on the paper—previously written in invisible ink—to George who then told me the writer’s name, I wrote that on the paper under the number.

  “We’ve got all their prints,” he told me when I’d finished. “They might come in handy some time. Now let’s check up what’s been written.”

  Most of the remarks were negative, such as: “Regret I can’t find anything to say.” Of the positive ones, three only looked at all promising.

  PARSONS (the lean man). “Why were all sorts of yarns told us when we asked after Mrs. Morbent? Someone must have known she wasn’t absent in what I might call a regular way. We all thought very highly of her and that’s why we asked.”

  Wharton and I agreed that there was nothing to follow up in that. The question involved far too many theories.

  That either Worrack or Barbara Grays had been concerned with her death, for instance, or if there was any truth in the views they’d expressed that at any moment they’d always expected Georgina to turn up out of the blue or send news of herself.

  SCYLLA. “Why did Mrs. Morbent come so rarely to the club when everyone knew it was really hers? Was she having an affair with another man when she knew P. W. was safely parked here?”

  “What’s your opinion of that?” George asked me.

  “A bit of feline playfulness,” I said. “If Worrack was manager, then she was letting him get on with the job.”

  He made a note in his book and then we had a look at the third communication.

  LULU. “Isn’t it a fact that the sisters had at least one bad quarrel and so violent that Mrs. Morbent was ill after it? Ada Grant, the maid, might tell you a thing or two, and why was she dismissed?”

  “That’s very definitely cattish,” I remarked.

  “All the better,” George told me with a chuckle. “I like to see them with their claws out and spitting. That’s when you hear things. But what sort of a maid does she mean?”

  I said I thought a personal maid. Then I let out a bit more.

  “Don’t let him know the source of your information,” I said, “but that chap Hamson might tell you something about all that. He is supposed to be friendly—very friendly indeed—with Mrs. Grays.”

  “Yes,” he said. “George told me all that.”

  Then he was putting the papers away, and the envelope in his overcoat pocket. From his manner I thought something must be in the wind, and it was. He opened the door and called to George to ‘bring him along’.

  ‘Him’ was Jean. Wharton nodded amiably at him, said he was sorry he’d had to waste an evening, and then was asking for his full name. Jean, who had looked decidedly nervous, told him with all the aplomb in the world that the name was Jean Carpentier.

  “You are French?” Wharton asked. With the same deceptive gentleness.

  Jean shot me a look, and then remarked that he was a citizen of the world.

  “Capital!” said George. “I’m a bit of a cosmopolitan myself. You speak pretty good French?”

  “Naturellement, m’sieu.”

  Wharton, who speaks better French than any Englishman I know, burst suddenly out into a literal torrent. I’m not too bad myself, but I didn’t catch even the drift of a quarter of it. I did catch a couple of phrases that were indelicate, to say the least of them, and concerned with the pulling of people’s legs.

  “What do you say to that?” Wharton asked him when the half-minute oration was over.

  Jean said nothing. He was looking like a deflated blimp. Even his moustache had wilted.

  “Show me your identity card,” Wharton said, and still quite amiably.

  “I have not him with me,” Jean said, and shrugged his shoulders in regret.

  “I don’t know that it matters,” Wharton told him, and now his eyes were beginning to narrow. He frowned and rapped his skull with his knuckles. “Let me see if I can remember. John Carpenter’s your name. You were what they call a stooge to Carl Pellet, the French comedian, and you worked the Continental halls with him, and here too. Then the French authorities collared him for drug peddling, and you were out of a job. But you found one. In—let me see—in 1937 you got two years for trafficking in drugs and procuring. I hope that’s right?”

  Mild though the words were, the look was now a glare. Jean had shrivelled to nothing, and with a contemptuous gesture Wharton turned away. Then he was shooting me a quick look as if to see how I’d taken the exhibition.

  “You’ve got his address?” he asked George. George said he had it.

  “
Then clear out!” Wharton suddenly roared at the barman. “And if I want you, see you come at the double.”

  Jean fairly scrambled out of the door.

  “A nice sort of character to employ,” Wharton told George.

  “We didn’t know all that, sir,” Conroy said. “Fairly kidded us, he did. He was straight enough with us, sir.” Then he was adding lamely that all that parley-vooing had gone down very well.

  “It probably did,” Wharton told him curtly. Then he gave one of his special glares. “Any dope peddling going on here?”

  “Here, sir?” George looked positively horrified. “Never, sir. I’d swear to that on my dying bed. Anything of that sort, sir, the guvnor’d have jumped on with both feet.”

  Wharton gave a grunt. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he said. “Better try over the reconstruction. I don’t want to be here all night.”

  I was booked for the reconstruction, which followed the same lines as that which I’d demonstrated with Brontway. It didn’t take long, with only the two of us to act and Wharton to look on. All the time I was wondering just why Wharton was considering it necessary, now the verdict of suicide had been brought in. I was wondering other things, and you may have been wondering about them too. Why had Hamson written nothing positive on his paper, for instance, when there was so much that he knew? Probably he knew very much more than he had imparted to me. Was he trying to keep absolutely clear of things, and himself out of danger? Or was it out of some mistaken idea of loyalty to myself?

  And Molde, why had he written nothing positive either? Never a word about seeing Georgina Morbent at Euston that late afternoon; and if that wasn’t important, what was? He couldn’t be keeping quiet out of any loyalty to myself. I doubted if Molde had any loyalties at all except to himself, and any to spare, maybe, to Scylla.