The Case of the Corporal's Leave: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Well, we’re more than grateful to you,” Wharton said. “Now do something else for me. Write down all you’ve told me. Add any other times that goods train had to stop because of signals, shall we say. Keep a copy yourself and let me and Inspector Carrow each have one. And keep it all under your hat. Not a word to a soul.”

  “A lot of use telling him that,” George told me when he’d gone. “One good thing though. The papers won’t be allowed to print a thing.”

  “A fine specimen of bureaucrat,” I said. “And you always talking about democracy.”

  But George was beckoning to the young man in the spectacles and the three of us converged on the truck front.

  “Mr. Mavin, isn’t it?” George said, and held out his hand.

  I was having a good inspection of Mavin. He looked as if the Services had turned him down on account of physique, but he had quite a pleasant baritone voice, if a bit precious. He looked at close quarters much older than I had thought at first, and was, in fact, just thirty. Very definitely Oxford was my opinion.

  “How’d you get here, Mr. Mavin?” Wharton asked after he’d shaken hands and introduced me.

  “A car fetched me,” Mavin said.

  “Then you might as well come back with us,” Wharton told him. “We ought to be off in a minute or two.”

  Carrow had just finished noting down the contents of a small wallet, and in a couple of minutes everything was in a linen bag.

  “You might as well get him away now,” Wharton told the doctor. “Let me have a full report as soon as you can. At Pangley for the next hour or two and then at the Yard.”

  Wharton and Mavin set off together. Carrow’s two men carried the body on a stretcher and I brought up the rear with the inspector himself. It was he who asked me if I had been doing anything on the case and I gave him a carefully edited outline.

  “What did your people get out of that Miss Chaddon?” I asked him.

  I gathered that his information was highly edited too, though he did mention the telephone call that had made Pelle take a later train.

  “Did you think she knew whom that call was from?” I asked him bluntly.

  “Why?” he asked me quickly. “Did you think she knew—”

  “I hoped she knew,” I told him, and then changed the subject. “Did you get anything important out of Mavin?”

  “Not a thing,” he said. “Except that he knew that Miss Chaddon.”

  “Did he indeed!” I said, and wished I’d kept my mouth shut. “But what’s he do for a living usually.”

  “An author, so he told me.”

  “Don’t remember his name,” I said, and by then we were getting near the yard gate again.

  “Pangley Station,” Wharton told the driver and was motioning Mavin to get in behind with himself. I sat alongside the driver, but I could hear each word that was said.

  “How’d you come to get this job with Sir William?” was Wharton’s first question.

  “He knew my people,” Mavin said, “and me too— indirectly. His son and I were at Winchester together.”

  The same old racket, I was thinking, not that a secretaryship with Sir William was a plum of the literary market.

  “Chiefly about India, this autobiography?”

  “Yes,” Mavin said, and rather diffidently.

  “You know the country?”

  “In a way—yes,” Mavin said. “I was born there.”

  “Must have been an interesting job,” Wharton said, and I was prepared to hear him say unblushingly he was a literary man himself. “And what was Sir William like to work with? Everything’s in the strictest confidence, by the way.”

  “I suppose he was about the same as most,” Mavin said philosophically. “A bit peppery now and again.”

  “I can guess,” said Wharton with a world of sympathy. “A bit trying at times. And what’s your own particular line? Novels, or what?”

  So Wharton knew Mavin was an author. I thought, and I wondered what else he knew that he hadn’t seen fit to hand over.

  “I’ve tried several things,” Mavin said, and evidently wanted it left at that.

  “Who are your publishers, Mr. Mavin?” I leaned back and asked, if only to tell Wharton I was still there.

  “I’ve had several in my time,” he told me, and again was disinclined to say more.

  “And who are you with now?”

  At the moment, he said, he wasn’t with anybody, by which I gathered he had no contract. That job with Sir William had taken all his time.

  “How long have you had it?” asked Wharton.

  Mavin thought for a moment and then said it was just over a year. That struck me as the devil of a while for a full-time secretary to spend in compiling a book like that. But by then we were passing the first pink bungalows on the outskirts of Pangley and the night was practically on us. Soon we were crawling through darkened streets and at last up a slight incline. A train roared above us as we went under an archway, and there we were at Pangley Station.

  Chapter V

  CALL IT A DAY

  Wharton hustled the two of us out and then looked at his watch.

  “Just on time,” he said, and I expected him to add that the Old Gent had been smarter than we’d suspected. Then he produced a torch.

  “What are your eyes like, Mr. Mavin?”

  “Not too good in the dark,” Mavin said.

  “Then you’d better keep close to me,” Wharton told him. “You’ve got to show us the way to the house.”

  He told the driver to bring the car on about twenty yards behind us. When he halted, the car was to halt. I was wondering why we were still waiting and in a matter of seconds I knew why. It was the four-fifty from town that had just come in, and now people were pouring out of the door beyond which we stood. Hundreds there seemed to be, though probably no more than scores, and only when they had thinned did Wharton make a move. His torch flickered across the hard gravel of the station yard and Mavin and I were at his heels.

  On our left ran the railway and a goods train chugged by quite close to us. On the right was a bank that ran upwards to some woods. Then about a hundred yards on we came to a fork. Wharton halted and listened. Most of the crowd had moved down to the left and one could hear their feet and their voices. To the right was scarcely a sound.

  “The buses are just down there,” Mavin said, indicating the left. “We go this way.”

  Now we were in a widish lane with no more than fourteen feet of metalling. At each side were wide grass verges whose edges were churned to deep furrows by traffic. The hedges were tall and unkempt, and then suddenly the hedge on the right was trimmed, and there was a large double villa. Again Wharton halted and listened and this time there was never a sound ahead of us.

  A hundred yards on and we came to another fork. The left was a main continuation, Mavin said, and ultimately came out south of Sevenoaks. Our way was to the right, and this time we were in a lane as rustic as you’d hope to find. There was a scant twelve foot of metalling and the wide verges were grooved and muddy where passing vehicles had churned them up.

  “Why’s there all this traffic here?” asked Wharton.

  “There’s a military depot about five miles on,” Mavin said. “A lot of searchlight and gun posts all round too.”

  The lane narrowed erratically and curved to the right. A hundred and fifty yards from the last fork was a cottage, and on our left. Wharton sprayed light over its neat gate and along its brick path to the front door.

  “Who lives there?” he whispered to Mavin.

  “Sutton,” whispered Mavin back. “He’s the gardener and handyman.”

  Wharton sniffed. In the air was a heavy autumnal kind of smell compounded of damp soil and rotting leaves. Dew was dripping from the branches that overhung the narrow track. Wharton gave a grunt that might have meant anything and then moved on again, and all the time his torch was on the grass verges. Another hundred yards on, and again on our left, was a white gate. Wharton’
s torch showed the name—‘Kalpoor’.

  “Here we are then,” he said. “How long would it have taken us if we’d come straight here?”

  “Sir William said he once did it in four minutes,” Mavin said, and in his tone was a faint scepticism.

  “You think he trotted,” was Wharton’s comment.

  “Well, I usually do it in just under six minutes,” Mavin said, and Wharton seemed satisfied enough.

  Mavin pushed the gate open and we waited till the car came through. A narrowish drive of some fifty yards turned left to the front of a Victorian, red-brick house, with twin bay windows and a small pillared porch. Mavin’s key opened the door and he switched on the hall light.

  “What exactly did you wish to see?” he asked Wharton.

  “Sir William’s room, I think. The one where he worked.”

  Mavin opened a door on our left, switched on the light and ushered us in. A cheerful fire was burning in the grate of an ornate fireplace. Plenty of books were in various cases, and portraits, doubtless ancestral, were on the walls. There was a mahogany desk at which Sir William himself worked and a side-table, filing cabinet by its side, which Mavin always used. On another table was the telephone. The brown hide chairs looked comfortable and nicely worn, and in the air was the faint smell of cigar smoke. Wharton had a sniff at it and then deposited his linen bag on the open flap of the desk.

  “Snug little place,” he said, and was taking off his overcoat. Then he took out his notebook and flicked over the leaves. Mavin stood by aimlessly, pork-pie hat in hand.

  “Hm!” went Wharton, and began adjusting his antiquated spectacles. “Your household staff here is a cook-housekeeper and one other maid.”

  “There used to be two maids,” Mavin said. “One got called up and we haven’t been able to replace her. Sutton has to help, of course.”

  “And he was in his cottage last night from five o’clock onwards,” Wharton said, eyes on the notebook.

  “I believe so,” Mavin said. “I mean, I believe he told the police so.” He seemed a bit out of his depth for next he was stammering that he didn’t mean that Sutton had told an untruth. It was only that he hadn’t been present when Sutton was questioned.

  “Exactly,” said Wharton graciously. “And the two women were in the kitchen all the time, or as near as makes no difference.”

  He closed the book, satisfied doubtless with the impression of omniscience. Then he peered mildly at Mavin over his spectacle tops.

  “And where were you from five-twenty onwards?”

  “I?” asked Mavin, a bit taken aback. He smiled lamely. “Well, actually I was here. I always waited for Sir William here. He’d told me over the ‘phone that he’d be in by the five-twenty.”

  “And when he didn’t turn up?”

  Mavin shrugged his shoulders.

  “I rang for the kitchen and countermanded tea, and then I went up to my own room. I knew I had half an hour before the next train in.”

  “And when he didn’t come?”

  “Well, I began to panic a bit. Because of Mr. Kenray coming, if you follow what I mean.” Wharton was saying nothing and he went stammeringly on. “What I mean is it wasn’t till he didn’t come by the seven-twenty that I was really alarmed. You see, we should have been having dinner by then. And then Mr. Kenray came and finally I rang the local police.”

  “That’s clear enough,” was Wharton’s comment on that spasmodic story. “But that autobiography you were working at. Could I have a look at it?”

  Mavin seemed delighted. About five-sixths was finished, save for a final review, and from a drawer of his filing cabinet he produced the roughly bound chapters.

  “It was going to end where he left India,” Mavin explained. “He had the tentative idea of doing a second volume later.”

  “Well, if you leave it here we won’t keep you any longer,” Wharton said. “You’ll be handy if we want you?”

  “In my room,” Mavin told him. “There’s the bell if you want me. But may I get you both some tea?”

  Wharton began some hypocritical blether about not troubling anybody and I said bluntly that tea would be very nice. As soon as Mavin had gone I gave George a high-sign and went over to the telephone. It was still well short of six o’clock and I hoped I should be able to catch a man who’d been my own literary agent. While I was waiting for the number, Mavin looked in to say that tea was just coming, and then seeing me at the telephone he oozed off again and I heard him going up the stairs.

  Just as the elderly maid brought in the tray, my inquiries were over. I hung up for a few minutes and by the time we’d polished off what was on the tray, I was rung up with the answers. Mavin, as an author, amounted to nothing, I reported to George.

  “The fact that he didn’t make money out of books doesn’t prove he was on the rocks,” was George’s comment. “I’d say that he had private means.”

  “Then income tax has hit him hard,” I said. “The proof is that he took this footling job.”

  “Why rush ahead?” George told me impatiently and illogically. I merely wanted reasons why Mavin should nip out of the house and crack Sir William on the skull and then nip back again. Mavin had said that he couldn’t see very well in the dark, but he had walked close to me through the darkness on the way to the house and even when George’s torch wasn’t in action he did well enough, never once stumbling against me or setting a foot wrong.

  “There you go,” said George when I told him that. “We don’t even know that Sir William got off that train.” He gave me a glare and one of his best snorts. “Come on. Let’s have a look at what was in his pockets.”

  There were the usual oddments and a quantity of loose change, but in his wallet were two fivers and some smaller notes.

  “It definitely wasn’t a snatch affair then,” Wharton said. “Whoever did him in was after that attaché-case or else they’d have cleaned out his pockets.”

  There were various papers in the wallet too. One was a newspaper-cutting. I turned it over to see what paper it was from and there was the name and date in ink.

  Daily Clarion. Dec. 4th.

  The cutting itself was from the gossip column.

  At the Universities Club I ran into my old friend Sir William Pelle, now extremely busy, he tells me, at the gifts branch of the Indian Famine Relief Fund. Sir William, who is also managing to snatch time for the completion of an autobiography that should be of absorbing interest to all Anglo-Indians, is very satisfied with the result of the appeal so far, though more gifts of jewellery would be welcomed. Bill (‘Skittles’) Pelle, Sir William’s only son, whom many will remember as the holder of the mile record at Oxford, is connected with the Administrative Staff. But he still finds time for sport in those rare leaves which fall to the lot of our over-worked administrators, and only recently sent home a fine tiger skin. Sir William tells me that the bullet that settled the account of that particular tiger was clean through the centre of the forehead.

  I was smiling rather wryly as I handed that cutting over to George.

  “Someone else he’s been blethering to,” he said, and referred to the late Sir William. He clicked his tongue annoyedly. “If everybody in that Club of his didn’t know about that attaché-case, then my name’s Robinson. And what was amusing you about it?” he said, and referring this time to the cutting.

  “The world in general,” I said. “The sorrows of overworked administrators and how busy poor Sir William must have been.”

  Wharton gave another grunt and then was asking if there was anything else. All I could find was a half-sheet of notepaper on which was written something that struck me as a family motto. The handwriting turned out to be Sir William’s and the whole thing was like this:

  Par moy ton aide

  (B.M. or K?)

  And cts.

  The last note about cts. was not in ink like the rest but in pencil, and seemed to have been added later. It was so badly written that Wharton said it wasn’t cts. He said it wa
s etc. and I didn’t argue the point, though why anyone should write down what was equivalent to “And etcetera,” was beyond me.

  Wharton said he had nothing else in mind and we’d better have that secretary down and then be getting back to town. We agreed on a question or two and the bell was pushed.

  “Ah! come in, Mr. Mavin,” Wharton said in his best avuncular manner. “We’re just off but we thought we’d like a word or two first.”

  That was the cue for me. I handed him the Par moy ton aide paper, just to put him at ease, and asked if it conveyed anything to him.

  “Sir William asked me about it,” he said. “Several days ago it would be.”

  “Then it couldn’t be his family motto.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, and smiled primly. “That was Fide non armis.”

  “By loyalty and not by weapons,” I translated freely for George’s benefit. “And he asked you about it, did he?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I’ve never seen this paper before. He merely wrote the words down for me. He seemed very bucked at remembering them.”

  There was something definitely puckish and certainly very human about Mavin as he made that small revelation. I was actually beginning to like him.

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “Oh, just that it was Middle French. Then he asked how I translated it and I said, ‘I will be your help.’ He said that wasn’t literal enough. His own idea was, ‘Through me your help’.”

  That seemed to be that, and Wharton chipped in. Over his face came that Atlas look, the one where he carries the world, troubles and all, on stooping shoulders. Sir William’s death was a bad business, he said, and a mighty serious one. Murder always was, but in this case there were wheels within wheels, though he was careful not to add what wheels they were. Then came the old formulae about the law holding everyone in suspicion till satisfied of innocence, and how that was no slur on character but something actually to be welcomed by the innocents themselves.