“There’s a lot in that,” I said. “But you didn’t hear a sound yourself that night?”
“Never a sound, sir,” he told me. “I had my tea just after five and then I was too busy.”
He told me how and why he was busy. He was a corporal in a local platoon of the Home Guards, and a new edict had gone forth from their Powers-that-Be that every N.C.O. now had to pass an examination, or rather a series of examinations in order to retain his stripes. Sutton had had the wind up and that was why he was devoting that evening to concentrated study of various notes. As for his opinion of the edict, it was definitely blasphemous. It was all a racket, he said. Those higher up trying to make out the Home Guard was still essential, so as to cling to cushy jobs and uniforms and comic ranks.
A word of sympathy from me and I went on to the house. Inside, three minutes I was speaking to Doris Chaddon.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, and then, before I could speak again, “Isn’t it dreadful about Sir William! Is it true what they say about him having been murdered?”
“Sh!” I went warningly. “Mustn’t talk about things like that over the ‘phone. But what about that lunch? You’re free?”
There was doubt, coyness and then a touch of the flirtatious. Then she suggested the Hanover, in Arundel Street. That sounded all right to me. I didn’t know it and so was hardly likely to be seen by an awkward friend.
“One sharp then, at Swan and Edgar’s Corner,” I said, and just to give her something to think over: “I may be able to save you a whole lot of bother.”
Then I rang off. By the time I had rejoined Wharton and his merry men, the maid from the house was chasing me with a message, that Wharton was wanted on the ‘phone. It turned out to be the Big Bugs, though from what habitat George didn’t say. But he had to be in town that afternoon, a fact that suited my book particularly well. By half-past eleven the search had been completed to his satisfaction and an hour later I was dollying myself up in the flat. Only a darker suit and a black tie. I hoped that would make me look rather grim.
Doris wasn’t dressed to kill but she did look the sort with whom in my younger days I’d have been proud to be seen. But something was on her mind and as soon as we were seated she was firing her question.
“What did you mean by saying you were going to spare me a lot of bother?”
“Oh, that,” I said airily. “Just a figure of speech. Sort of ground bait.”
“Oh,” she said, but relievedly. “But why are you wearing a black tie?”
“Well, someone’s dead, isn’t he?”
“You mean Sir William?”
“Sh!” I went, and, “What is this? A lunch or a memorial service?”
We chatted away after that, if always on the fringe of things and, on her part, calculatingly, as if she was working out just to what that lunch was likely to lead.
“You are married, aren’t you?” she asked me suddenly.
“Well, yes,” I said, and hoped the tone conveyed the overworked if always tragic fact that my wife didn’t understand me.
“And do you dance?”
“Well, yes,” I said, and that time truthfully. My dancing is that of an apprentice fakir doing his first try-out on red-hot coals. “Which reminds me. You know Roger Mavin, don’t you?”
“Poor Roger,” she said. “Rather a good dancer, though.”
She’d first met him, she said, at Marion Blaketon’s. I frowned.
“Would that be Sir Herbert’s daughter?”
It wasn’t, and for the good reason that as far as I knew there wasn’t a Sir Herbert Blaketon.
“Oh, no,” she said. “She’s an awfully good sort. Doing no end of work too. Has a topping flat just off Lancaster Gate.”
“That costs her a packet,” I said, but the economics of it didn’t seem to interest her. And the waiter was presenting me with the bill and telling me we could certainly have coffee in the lounge. I suggested she might want to powder her nose and after that we’d meet for coffee.
I went straight to the lounge and by the time she’d reappeared, had decided on direct action. And as it was to have an important bearing on that theory of mine, here is the theory for what it is worth.
Pelle had originally intended to go to Pangley by his usual train and his whole morning and afternoon had been planned accordingly. Then he had received a telephone call as a result of which he had changed the time of his train. Why the call should have at first annoyed him was easy to see, for an acceptance of something inherent in the call would mean his taking a later train. Then he realized that what he was being asked to do was ample compensation for the loss of the early train, and his annoyance went.
What it was that the caller asked him to do didn’t so much matter. What it did apparently ask was that he should go somewhere, and probably to meet the caller. But to trace that caller was impossible, since the call was a local one. And yet it seemed to me most urgent that the caller should be traced, and this is why. Might not the object of the caller have been to make him miss the first train and travel by the second? The first train should get him home before the black-out, and an attack and the snatching of the bag would be impossible. By the second train he would get off at Pangley in the dark.
Vital considerations, I think, and having vital implications. That caller must have known about the jewellery and the attaché-case. But—and there was my point of attack —that call was not made till the very last moment, and the caller had to be sure that Sir William would be in the office to receive it. How could he be sure of that? Well, by ringing up earlier and asking if he was in or when he would be in. If he had been out when that exploratory call came, then Doris Chaddon would have taken it, and she could provide information about the caller. But I personally didn’t think the exploratory call had been explicit, so to speak, for if so, Doris would have told me that when Sir William was out someone had rung him up, and she’d reported the fact to him when he came in. She hadn’t given me that idea at all, and what I had concluded therefore was that someone known both to herself and Sir William had rung her on some private business, but had prefaced it with the casual remark that Sir William wasn’t in.
“Oh, no,” Doris would have said. “He won’t be in for another ten minutes at the earliest.” And then the gossip could have proceeded in peace, with the caller knowing just when to ring Sir William later.
How it would all work out I didn’t know, but as soon as we were settled comfortably to our coffee I began putting on a Wharton act.
“About what you asked me this morning, and Somebody being murdered,” I asked. “I’m afraid you’re right.”
“No!” she said, wide-eyed, and then was looking guiltily round to see if she’d been overheard.
“And that attaché-case is gone.”
“But how awful!” she said. “Whatever’s going to be done about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I do know this. The police will probably give you a pretty thin time.”
“Me?” Her eyes were popping again.
“That’s right,” I said. “I managed to get a private tip. That’s what I meant when I rang you this morning. What I’m trying to do is head them off.”
“I don’t care what they do,” she said with a pout, and drew herself up.
I disillusioned her in double time. The police were of the opinion that she was the only one who knew about the attaché-case, and therefore she must have given the information directly or indirectly to the murderer.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “And what about Roger Mavin? He knew all about it.”
“And you haven’t spoken to a soul?”
“Not a soul,” she said. “Only Roger, of course. We were sort of privileged, and even then we only said what a risk he was taking.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can,” I said, and suddenly decided to take a short cut. “But there’s one other thing. Didn’t you have a telephone call yourself that afternoon?”
“I?” She frown
ed. “Yes, I did.”
“Nothing important?”
“Not really. If you must know, it was Marion Blaketon, asking me to a private supper and dance at her place on Saturday.”
“Sir William wasn’t there at the time?”
“He wasn’t,” she said decisively. “I told her he was round at the bank.”
“I don’t quite get all this,” I said. “Why should you tell her that?”
“It’s funny, really,” she said. “They hate each other like poison.”
“They know each other?”
She gave me the first suspicious look.
“I thought you said you knew everything.”
“And so I do,” I said. “Or rather, the police do. But I didn’t know that this Miss Blaketon and Sir William knew each other.”
“Mrs. Blaketon,” she told me. “She was Lady Pelle’s younger sister. She’s a widow and she’s really uncommonly nice.”
“Now I’m getting the hang of it,” I said. “But why the bad blood?”
She made a moue.
“Well, look at Sir William. A perfect old frump.”
“And she isn’t.”
She laughed.
“I’ll say she isn’t!”
“And Sir William disapproved.”
“You bet he did,” she said, “though it wasn’t any business of his. Besides, Marion’s an awful good sort. She really runs that Prisoners’ Institute Business. They do no end of good.”
“I think I’ve heard of that somewhere,” I said. “Isn’t it called the Prisoners’ Reformation Society.”
“Of course!” she said. “I’m perfectly dreadful at remembering names.”
“Then it all adds up to this,” I said. “Mrs. Blaketon rang you, and she could talk more naturally if Sir William wasn’t there. You said he wasn’t, and that’s that.” I clicked my tongue. “If you ask my opinion, the police have found a mare’s nest and I shall make it my business to tell them so.”
“That’s awfully good of you,” she said, and was glancing at her wrist-watch. “I must simply fly. I’ve been away from the office for over two hours!”
The supplementary bill had been paid and I walked with her to Leicester Square.
“I wouldn’t worry Mrs. Blaketon with any of this,” I said. “It’s all too footling. I suppose you’ve known her a pretty long while, by the way.”
“I haven’t really,” she said. “Only about a month or so. But we’ve seen an awful lot of each other since. I simply love her place. And she’s such an awful good sort!”
“Good,” I said. “I must try and meet her myself some time.”
You might not credit it but I was feeling as if I’d been playing chess for an hour and a half, and concentrated stuff at that, so at the Square corner I had a cold wash in the lavatory and then rang George from the kiosk above. He wasn’t in, but they said he was due at any moment.
I strolled quietly to the Yard and by the time I got to his room, he was there. Before he could ask, like a mother of some errant offspring, what I’d been up to, I cut in first.
“George,” I said. “I think I’m on to something big.”
“Oh?” he said, and with that note of hostility that is always his opening gambit.
I took off my overcoat with some deliberation and drew in a chair.
“You follow this carefully,” I said, and gave him the arguments that had led to my questioning of Doris Chaddon. When he heard the outcome, his eyes fairly bulged.
“Sounds good to me,” he said. “Looks as if we’ve got something there,” and I hope you noticed the ‘we’. “That Blaketon woman’s in it up to the neck, or my name’s Robinson.”
“It might have been a coincidence,” I said, “but that word ‘prisoners’ sounded a good omen.”
“What prisoners?”
“I forgot to tell you,” I said, “but this Marion Blaketon is running a Prisoners’ Reformation Society.”
“What!” He fairly hollered the word, and then was pushing a bell and grabbing the inside ‘phone. An Inspector Somebody whom he wanted seemed to be away, but he was making do with a Sergeant Somebody-Else. The ‘phone was replaced and he leaned back.
“Prider’s a good man,” he said. “He knows all about this Reformation Society. They’ve been a bit quiet recently.”
He wouldn’t tell me any more till Sergeant Prider came in. Under his arm was a file of papers through which Wharton had a quick glance.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Wharton told him, and peered at him over his spectacle tops. “Things have been quiet with our old friend Mrs. Blaketon.”
“They have that, sir,” Prider told him, and grinned. Then he cast a look at me as if he would have liked to add, “Has this gentleman come with some new evidence?”
“This is Mr. Travers,” Wharton said, catching the look.
“I’ve heard about you, sir, but haven’t met you,” Prider told me, and we solemnly shook hands.
“We’ve quite a nice little dossier about Mrs. Blaketon,” Wharton was saying. “Daughter of Sir Leyland Frame. Born in 1894. Married in 1923 a South African, a Colonel Blaketon, who turned out to be a crook. Nothing known of him since but supposed to have died while prospecting in West Africa. She’s thought to have lived with Nevermind-Who, the diamond magnate, till 1936, and then she turned up over here, and with funds. Then she started the Prisoners’ Reformation Society—”
“You’ll pardon me, sir, but she didn’t actually start it,” Prider said. “She took it over when it was in a moribund condition”—damned good that!—“and made a go of it.”
“She made more than a go of it,” Wharton said grimly as he closed the dossier. “What I should say is that we thought so, even if we couldn’t prove it. Tell Mr. Travers about that trap you set.”
It was plain that Wharton himself had only a rough knowledge of the facts, for he listened with as much interest as I did. Those facts were that the police had reason for suspecting that the Prisoners’ Reformation Society—which meant Marion Blaketon—had other activities than those which appeared on its pamphlets of appeal and its records of service. Ostensibly it was out to aid men released from penal servitude and to help them to go straight.
“That’s all very well, sir,” Prider said, “but just consider this. A man’s had a stretch for robbery in a big way and he hasn’t disclosed the whereabouts of the swag. This Society gets hold of him when he comes out and gains his confidence. You see now, sir?”
“I think I do,” I said. “The Blaketon woman could put him in touch with a fence or even do business direct.”
“That’s it, sir. And that’s what we had reason to suspect was actually done in one case. So, to cut a long story short, sir, we tried laying a trap. We fixed it so that her typist left her and then worked things with her agency so we could plant a woman of our own. You know her, sir,” he said to Wharton. “Bertha Howard.”
“A first-class woman too,” said Wharton.
“Yes,” said Prider and sighed. “Only she just didn’t happen to be good enough, or else the other one was a bit too fly. She was there for a fortnight and hadn’t discovered a thing, and then she was sacked. Bertha told us she was sure Mrs. Blaketon had rumbled her, and she couldn’t spot why.”
“Bad luck,” I said. “And the Blaketon woman’s given no cause for suspicion since?”
“Plenty of suspicion,” Prider said wryly. “But nothing you could get down to. What we did in that abortive attempt, as you might say, was to make her more careful. At least, that’s my idea.” He looked hopefully at Wharton. “Something new turned up, sir?”
“Well, yes and no,” said Wharton. “Just a gleam of something and that’s as far as we can go.”
“Nothing for me, sir?” He was looking like a dog begging to be taken for a walk.
“Not at the moment,” Wharton told him, and gave him a pat on the back. “But you’ll get the hooks on her before long, or my name’s Robinson. And if anything does turn up, you ne
edn’t worry about not being told.”
The door closed on Prider and George was telling me that there were wheels within wheels.
“Funny how things go round in circles,” he said. “You’ve only got to wait and the conveyor belt comes past.” His sigh had in it a tremendous regret. “I never handled that business Prider was telling us about. My idea was that it was bungled. Still, that’s over and done with. Undoubtedly she was warier than ever, and there’s the lesson for us. We can’t afford to bungle anything. I’ll let you see what we know about her and then we can work out our line of approach.”
George had obviously skimmed extracts from the dossier when he read it to me, and I said I’d like more inside dope on Marion Blaketon. What we gathered was this. Her family had never approved of Colonel Blaketon, as he had called himself, and the wedding had been an elopement, with the bride cut off without a shilling. Hence the hostility between her and Pelle whatever the reasons she had told the gullible Doris and, indeed, the whole of the Blaketon circle. As to the funds with which she had arrived in London in 1936, they weren’t guessed to be sufficient to support her way of living, and beyond £200 a year from the Society she had no ascertainable income.
“Look at this,” George said, and handed me what I might call one of the Society’s prospectuses. It had a list of patrons and patronesses as long as my arm.
“Every one of ’em that I know is a crank,” George said. “Then there’re the subscribers we never hear about. Even if their subscriptions were acknowledged, that isn’t to say they appeared on the balance sheet except as part of a general lump sum.”
“Sounds a good racket,” I said.
“One of the best,” He shrugged his shoulders. “I believe an attempt was made to catch her by means of a subscription, but either that was bungled too, or they had no luck. More might have been done but then the war came and we were up to our eyes. Not that we’ve lost sight of things. It’s only that there’ve been bigger fish to fry and fewer hands to do the frying.”
“And on the opposite side of the account,” I said. “What’s the record of achievement, as Prider might say?”
The Case of the Corporal's Leave: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 8