The Case of the Running Mouse: A Ludovic Travers Mystery
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Wharton expressed himself as satisfied, and said he’d be going. Conroy was given effusive thanks, though doubtless in his mind there would long remain the vision of Wharton’s less unctuous moments. In a couple of minutes Wharton and I were groping our way in the black-out. He had said he’d walk to my place and take the Tube from nearby, and at the first opportunity I asked my first question, with a little bit of sugar on the pill. George always had a sweet tooth.
“What a memory you’ve got, George! If I’d had one as good I’d have been a millionaire by now.”
He chuckled. “Or been in jail. But he was easy meat, Jean Carpentier!” He snorted. “Who could forget a face like that.”
“Why that reconstruction business?” I asked. “Don’t you think that inquest verdict on Worrack was correct?”
“Why shouldn’t I see things for myself?” he fired at me, and I knew the answer was an evasive one. A grunt or two and he was grudgingly adding more. “Besides, that duropine stuff is pretty tricky. All those variable action poisons are.” Another grunt. “Does that get you anywhere?”
It didn’t, though obviously it should have done. But George wraps things up pretty shrewdly when he has a mind, and before I could comment he was shifting ground.
“A fi’pun note to a pinch of horse-dung there was peddling going on in that place.”
“Then it wasn’t to Worrack’s knowledge,” I said. “Conroy was right. He would have been furious. Say and think what you like, but he kept that place clean.”
“That’s all you know.”
“Have it your own way,” I told him. “But let’s come out in the open. Assume Worrack was murdered—poisoned in fact. You think Carpenter found the stuff that did it?”
“Possibly,” he said, and I was thinking of the night when Jean had given the high sign that sent Scylla to Worrack’s office. “That is, if I thought anything of the kind.”
I let out a sigh. “Why were you so keen on getting people’s prints?” I said. “Were there any on the brown paper the head was in?”
“Devil a one,” he said. “But that isn’t to say prints won’t turn up somewhere later on.”
“Why was the head put where it could be found?” I went on. “That’s something that interests me. Will the rest of the body be found in various pieces too?”
“Very interesting, that head,” he said. “You mean to say you haven’t any ideas?”
“Plenty,” I told him. “It needed only the head to identify her, for instance. Also, finding the head meant telling the world she was dead, and without telling what she had died of. Therefore we can presume she died of something that affected the rest of the body.”
“Not bad,” he said. “In fact, it’s pretty good. It’ll sound even more good if the rest of the body doesn’t turn up.”
“A man’s job very definitely, don’t you think?”
“If you mean the cutting up, then I do,” he said. “But that isn’t to say a woman wasn’t concerned in what happened before.”
That was fair enough, and then we came to the fork where he would turn right for the Tube station. I put my last question.
“Come clean out of your shell, George, and give me a straight answer to a straight question. Do you or do you not think the two deaths are connected?”
He grunted and I could almost feel his brain hedging. “Don’t you think so?”
“I do,” I said. “You and I have seen the long arm of coincidence stretch pretty far, but I don’t think there’s any stretching this time. Bluntly, I think you’re up to the neck in two murders.”
“The more the easier,” he told me grimly, and came to a halt. “Isn’t this my way?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Keep straight on and you can’t miss it.”
Out went his hand. George loved a ceremonial parting. “Well, thanks for what you’ve done. I’ll be ringing you in the morning about eight.”
“I’ll be listening,” I told him.
He came nearer and his voice lowered dramatically. “You said something about the head telling the world she was dead.”
“I did.”
“Very interesting,” he said. “When she was dead the sister could inherit, and not before. And the gentleman friend. Lucky for him too, if he marries her.”
I imagine he nodded a last good-night, but I didn’t see it, for he moved off before I could say a word.
The next morning I was dressed before half-past seven, and I went down at once to see Frank, all agog to read what there was for me in the Personal Column of the Telegraph. There was nothing at all!
I ordered a service breakfast through Frank, and then knew I had been a bit impatient. Why should I worry if my correspondent was taking his time? In a way, it made things easier for working with George Wharton. So long as I respected all confidences, I could actually give George an occasionally prod and turn his interests in the directions I wanted them.
Just as I was finishing my breakfast he rang up.
“I think I’ve located that maid, Ada What’s-her-name,” he said. “It means going out to Bedford so I may be a bit late back. What about you meeting O’Clauty and taking him to my office?”
“And questioning him?”
“What else did you think I meant?” he growled at me.
That was all, and it suited my book very well. In fact I hoped George would be so late back that all the pow-wow with O’Clauty would be over. As things turned out, the wish came almost true.
I didn’t have any difficulty in spotting O’Clauty as he came through the barrier, even if he wasn’t wearing breeches and leggings, and chewing a straw. In the taxi we told each other what a terrible affair it was, and then he told me about himself. I shall make no attempt to imitate his accent, rich and fascinating though it was, and he was what I’d call a Whartonian personality too, all showmanship and blether.
He had been head lad to the trainer of Colonel Amber’s horses, he told me, and had known the sisters since they were knee-high to a bee. The Colonel had left him a legacy, and as the trainer had died at the same time, he had taken over the stable and had moved to Ireland. Leppers were his speciality, he said, and many’s the tip he might be able to give me if I was a racing man.
He said he’d had a wee bite on the train, but a drink would do neither of us any harm; so I stopped the taxi just short of the Embankment and we got out and had one. Mine was a beer and his a double Scotch. No soda, he said, and when I was passing him the water he was taking just a quick gulp and a swallow, and that was the last of the whisky.
“Nothing like a wee nip or two to put life into you,” he said, so I had his glass recharged and hastily gulped down my beer, Then we walked the rest of the way, with him telling me the beginnings of his story. He had received a private letter from Mrs. Morbent, asking him to come to London and meet her at that Richmond hotel, and the letter warned him not to breathe a word to a soul about the visit. He hadn’t got the letter on him, he said, but when he got back he would send it, if he could find it.
“Mind ye,” he said, “if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have run to the police that fast that you’d never have seen the whisk of my tail.”
After he’d seen her at Richmond, that was, and it was as we were entering Wharton’s room that he was telling me that. By the time I’d got someone in to take down a formal statement, Wharton appeared. You’d have thought O’Clauty was his long-lost brother by the way he grasped his hand. But the smile went off his face when he heard about Richmond.
“What did she have to say to you?” he asked.
This is a summary, and put in a better order than that in which O’Clauty told it. She explained the confidential letter by saying that she was having a holiday on her own, and didn’t want to be disturbed by anybody or anything, and that holiday might last a few weeks. Then she said she’d got him over to go into the programmes of the two horses. O’Clauty outlined them and she agreed, though she did suggest one change.
“A rare
knowledge she had,” he said with a quick side-ways nod of appreciation.
That took some time, and when it was over she told him again that if anything happened to her the horses would be his, subject to conditions. He laughed at her.
“Away with you now,” he told her. “It’s an old man like me who should be after talking like that. And if it’s them bombs you’re thinking about, sure there’s nothing to stop you coming over to Dublin for a wee while.”
She smiled and shook her head as if she knew better, and that was all, for O’Clauty left immediately afterwards. When Wharton asked if he’d stayed on for a day or two, he gave quite a detailed account of his movements before he left for home.
“It’s a terrible business,” Wharton said. “All I can say is that it’s done you a bit of good.”
“Good, are you saying?” burst out O’Clauty. “Here’s my hand and the whole arm of me, and I’d cut it off myself if she was alive again.”
He began talking about the two girls, and how he had mounted them on their first ponies, and Wharton was asking him about Mrs. Grays. O’Clauty praised her to the skies, but it was clear that there had been no one in his eyes like Georgina. She was free and outspoken, he said, and the devil of a one for a bit of mischief or adventure, and one gathered that in those things the elder sister was lacking.
Just when it seemed that Wharton had finished with him O’Clauty remembered one vital thing. Miss Georgina had reminded him as he was leaving that the visit was strictly confidential, and then a brilliant piece of intuition by Wharton brought to light a tragic error. What she said to him was that if anybody rang him up or wrote—to Dublin, that is, where they’d think she was—he was to say she was there and staying with friends. What he got into his head was that she’d said he was to say she wasn’t there. In fact, as he confessed, he wasn’t paying too much attention to those last words of hers.
On his way to town he did begin to think and he realised he hadn’t got her orders clear. There was something about not actually being in Dublin but staying with friends, and he made up his mind that he would ring the Richmond hotel and get her to explain it all again. Unfortunately he met some friends and it was late that night when he did ring up, only to find she’d left the hotel. The next morning he rang up her flat and she wasn’t there. Then, on thinking things over, he decided that what she’d meant was for him to say she wasn’t in Ireland. In any case, he didn’t think it important on account of the whims she had and the pranks she played, and the foolish way she’d been talking about dying before himself.
“A bad business, as you say,” Wharton told him. “Supposing she did tell you to say she was in Dublin or near it, then the truth might have come out sooner. Not that you’ve anything to reproach yourself with.”
O’Clauty was a bit cheered at that and Wharton asked him, as one sportsman to another, if those two horses of hers had any class. O’Clauty rose in their defence. Amber Prince was as good a lepper as a man would want in his stables, and worth twelve hundred if a penny. But Amber King, there was the grand horse for you! Miss Georgina had laughed at three thousand for him. After the war he’d be brought over to England and the Cheltenham Gold Cup was as good as his. But not a word about that to a soul.
“Well, we’re most grateful to you,” Wharton said when the enquiry was at last over. “Whenever we want you I suppose you’ll be only too glad to come over?”
O’Clauty hedged. He was a busy man, but he’d do what he could.
“That’s the worst of you citizens of the Free State,” Wharton said with an ersatz chuckle. “We’ve practically got to get an extradition order if you cut up rough.” He turned to me. “Rather lucky for us that Mrs. Morbent was English, and the will’s English, so to speak.”
O’Clauty gave me a deliberate wink. He knew well enough the force of the threat that Wharton was suavely hinting at. But the devil of a bit it troubled him. O’Clauty probably had up his sleeve just as many packs as George, and probably better marked.
“What do you think of him?” George asked me.
“His story sounded genuine enough,” I said. “He’s a crafty one undoubtedly, and smooth-tongued, but I think he was telling the truth. He’s told us plenty. You’ve only to get to work at that Richmond hotel to find out where she went.”
“To try to find out, that’s what you mean,” he told me with one of his glares. “But a funny business all round. Wonder why she was so secretive? Had all her plans laid too.”
“How did you get on with that maid?” I asked him.
He snorted contemptuously.
“A morning as good as wasted.” He lugged out his notebook. “She entered Mrs. Grays’ service as personal maid two years ago. Says there weren’t any rows between the sisters, except one.” He had put on his spectacles and was peering at me over their tops. “That was about a week—couldn’t get it any closer—before Georgina went away. Georgina called at the sister’s flat—nothing unusual in that—but this maid heard their voices raised. I think she tried to listen at the door. In any case Mrs. Grays came rushing out of the room and the maid was at the door. Says she happened to be going past. Mrs. Morbent had been taken ill, and Mrs. Grays was rushing to the bathroom for sal volatile. She sent the maid back to the bedroom with a flea in her ear and when Mrs. Morbent left, which was in about half an hour, she accused the maid of listening at keyholes and sacked her on the spot.”
“She paid her?”
“Oh, yes. Quite generously, so the maid said.” He peered at me again. “What do you make of it?”
“Was there a quarrel?”
“According to her—yes. The voices were raised. That was the significant thing.”
“Well, where’s it get us?” I asked him.
“Don’t know yet,” he said. Off went his glasses and his tone had a honeyed mildness. “That Mrs. Grays is better, they tell me. What about you calling on her this afternoon?”
CHAPTER XII
TOUGH GOING
When I tapped at the door it was the voice of Barbara Grays that told me to enter. She was obviously waiting for me, for I had rung her up and made the appointment. Two differences struck me at once. Now she didn’t look in the least dowdy or slovenly, in fact the simple dark green frock she wore made her look, to a man’s eye, both neatly and uncommonly well dressed. But her face was much paler than when I had seen it last, and there were dark rings beneath her eyes. There was a glint of red in her lightish brown hair, and I hadn’t noticed that when her hat was on.
“You’re sure you’re better?” I asked solicitously.
“Very much better,” she told me. Her voice, though subdued, still had that clear hard quality, and it reminded me of something of which I had then no time to think.
“And you can stand talking about . . . well, unpleasant things?”
She gave me a quick look. “If they’re necessary,” she said, and with the same quietness.
I began by alluding to what I’d said over the telephone, and the reason for calling myself Blunt.
“I’d forgotten that hospital committee we’d worked on,” I said. “Most regrettable of me. I believe you know my wife too.”
She said she knew Bernice well. I said that she’d probably let on at some time about my occasional working with New Scotland Yard. She said Bernice might have done so, but she didn’t remember it.
Then she was putting a question of her own. “Is it right that you’re now in the Army again?”
I explained all that, and my leave, and how the police, for reasons of their own, had called me in. In a very unofficial way, I hastened to add. She asked if that wasn’t unusual, and it struck me that she was rather too anxious to unravel the position. Another thing was striking me, too, that while she hadn’t asked me, then or over the telephone, just why I was calling on her, she would very much like to know.
Well, we cleared up all that, though there still seemed to be questions that she would have wished to ask. Then I got down to business.
“By all means let it be confidential,” she said, and then, with a little frown. “But aren’t you being rather mysterious? I mean, what have I to fear from the police?”
I told her, and in a couple of minutes she was nervously moistening her lips. I gave her a picture of the Law—impersonal, implacable, and untiring, working mole-like and bringing to light things that were buried deep. Already they’d had O’Clauty over and interviewed him, and it was something in the trainer’s favour that at the mention of his name her strained expression relaxed and she smiled.
“In the eyes of the police everybody’s suspect,” I said. “Two people have died and the Law won’t rest till it knows just how and why. Putting it bluntly, you’re a suspect.”
“That’s an insult,” she said, and drew herself up.
“Not to the police,” I told her patiently. “Everyone with the faintest possible motive is a suspect. In their eyes the fact that you inherit a very large sum of money is a good and sufficient motive.”
Her lips had clamped tightly down and she was shaking her head. “Then I’ve nothing to say,” she told me, and the lips clamped to again.
“To them, perhaps no,” I said. “But to me, perhaps yes, considering we’ve agreed that I’m here to help you. Take that maid of yours—Ada—whom you dismissed. She’s been questioned too.”
Her eyes opened wide and I could see she was scared. “But what could she possibly tell them?”
I gave her the gist of the maid’s story and how it lent colour to a theory that the sisters had been on bad terms.