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

by Christopher Bush

  “Then that autobiography business is all wasted,” I said. “There was only one bird—the jewellery.”

  “Now, now, now,” he told me. “No need to rush things. Even if it wasn’t intended to do more than knock him out, there might be something in it after all. Why shouldn’t it have been a kind of warning. You know the sort of thing. She rings the old boy when he’s recovered and says, ‘Sorry to hear you’ve been hurt. It just shows you, doesn’t it,’ or words to that effect. Telling him in so many words what’s coming to him if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut.” That seemed to me about the most preposterous thing in theories I’d ever heard, but before I could say a word, George was off again.

  “Wait a minute, though. How do we know she was interested in that autobiography?”

  “We don’t,” I said. “Mavin’s the one who can give us the answer to that.” Then I remembered something. “Did he give you that confession you asked him to write?”

  “Nothing in it much about Mrs. B.,” he said. “Only that he went to one or two shows at her place.”

  “What sort of shows?”

  “Parties, if you like. Dancing to a gramophone, and a little friendly roulette. Nothing we could pull her in for.” Then he was suddenly pulling out his notebook and he was nodding to himself as he stowed it away again.

  “Look here. No time like the present. There’s a train from Charing Cross at ten to six, that’s in six minutes’ time. You can just make it.”

  He was bustling me off and out, and so much in a hurry that he didn’t bother about his change. As his hand took my arm his voice was a wheedle.

  “This is just the sort of job you can do a hundred times better than me. You go and have a chat with Mavin.”

  “But suppose he isn’t in?”

  “He is in,” he told me. “I had to ring him this afternoon about something and he told me he was going to be in. You nip off now and catch that train and I’ll get hold of him and tell him you’re coming. I expect he’ll find you a bit of dinner.”

  The clutch on my arm had gone, and when I looked round in the dark, he had gone too.

  I made that train with half a minute to spare, and no more. Perhaps it was a good thing that I was so rushed, for if not I might have attached myself to Kenray.

  You know that kind of subdued light in a blacked-out railway terminus, and how when compartment doors are opened a sort of neon lighting from the blue shades just shows up the occupants and gives their faces a greenish pallor. Just as I was passing a door it opened and I saw Kenray, but the door closed quickly again. He hadn’t seen me for his eyes were on an evening paper, and I took a compartment a door or two on where another open door revealed a seat.

  The train was packed by the time we left London Bridge, but a man had got out and left me his evening paper, so I read that till we got to Hurstham. My compartment half emptied then and I took a look out to see Kenray’s back. But I didn’t see him at all, and I knew that he must have nipped out of his compartment quickly and was well along the platform before mine had emptied. By the time we had moved on, most of the Hurstham travellers had disappeared down the stairs, and I settled to my paper again. In any case it had been no more than the idlest curiosity on my part and I thought no more about Kenray. That was, till I got out at Pangley.

  Most of my fellow passengers got out there and I made my way along the platform in the midst of the swirl. With my vantage of height I could see right ahead of me to the dimness of the far stairs, but what I was suddenly startled to see, and only a few yards ahead of me, was the back of Kenray.

  You know how in a startling moment you can think of the most footling things. I thought that Kenray must have overshot his station, and then I knew he hadn’t. Then I told myself he might have, and that he was going down the stairs to change back to the up platform. But when we reached the foot of the stairs he turned right, and by the time I’d handed in my ticket he was out of sight.

  There seemed the very devil of a crowd in front of me, but I quickened my steps and just as we came to the first fork I caught sight of him again. But he didn’t take the left-hand to the town. He took the right-hand and at once I lost him in the dark. And then it suddenly struck me that he must have some appointment or other at Kalpoor. Something he had to see Mavin about and in connection with that jewellery.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to holler. The words shaped themselves in my mind.

  “Hallo, there, Kenray? What on earth are you doing here?”

  But I didn’t holler. I don’t know why to this day, unless it was that I suddenly wondered why he had said nothing to Wharton and me about having an appointment at Pangley. At that moment too, I was walking on the grass verge and I remember I halted for a moment and heard his steps ahead on the hard road. Then I moved on, and still on the verge, and it was like that that we passed the double villa and came to the second fork.

  I halted and listened again. He was going to Kalpoor, for again he went right, and once more I followed noiselessly on the verge. Then I halted again and that time I didn’t hear his steps. So he was walking on the verge too, I thought, and then all at once I saw the flicker of a torch. It flashed across the verge ahead of me by a good thirty yards, and disappeared and then flashed again. I listened for a sound of him and then I heard the most peculiar noise like the snapping of twigs. I remember I thought that he must have stepped on a fallen rotten branch, so I moved on again. And now I knew that he must really be going to Kalpoor, so I quickened my own steps. Before I was at the white gate I should have caught up with him, and yet I hadn’t. Strange, I thought, and halted just before the gate in case he was ahead of me. But there was never a sound on the gravelled drive.

  I was now more used to the darkness and I stepped back to the verge and listened again. Never a sound of him and never a flash from that torch of his. Then I went through the gate and stood for a good couple of minutes just inside, and listened again. Against the velvety dark of the sky I saw the darker shape that would be Sutton’s cottage, but of the movement of a torch there was never a sign, and of Kenray never a sound. And then I had another idea. Maybe Kenray was going farther along, and at the spot where he had disappeared there was a stile and a field-path which he knew for a short cut. And yet, whom should he be going to see in that open country that lay beyond Kalpoor? And a strange thing that he should come, and designedly, so near to the house while his business lay elsewhere.

  And then I shrugged my shoulders. The whole thing was beyond me. And yet it was queer, I kept saying as I moved towards the house. One might almost go so far as to say it was secretive, but just as I thought that I almost came a purler on the lawn edge, and I switched my thoughts back to the drive. Mavin must have been listening for me, for when I reached the door he was there.

  Chapter IX

  CONCERNING A MANUSCRIPT

  I had intended to think out, on my way from Pangley station, the questions I ought to put to Mavin, but that queer business of Kenray had given me no chance. All the same, I didn’t see why I should have to spend more than half an hour in the house, but when I gave Mavin a hint to that effect he was quite upset. He had had dinner advanced, he said, and it would be on the table in a matter of minutes.

  I had a clean-up in the downstair cloakroom and as we left it Mavin said there was a rather fine tiger-skin I might like to see, and switched on the drawing-room light. I said it looked a fine one to me and added that I’d seen a reference to it in a gossip paragraph in one of the newspapers. He’d seen that paragraph too, he said. Sir William had shown it to him.

  “What was that son of his like?” I asked.

  He hesitated.

  “Strictly between ourselves,” I added quickly.

  “Well, he was fairly popular,” he said, and it seemed to me that ‘fairly’ was the operative word. Then he remembered something and was finding for me a page of Society News with a picture of Bill (‘Skittles’) Pelle, with the usual ‘friend’, at Newmarket races.

  �
��When was this taken?” I asked.

  “Last summer,” he said. “He was home on special leave.”

  “Ah, well,” I said, thinking of our overworked administrators, and just then the front door bell rang. I moved on to the study and left Mavin to deal with it himself. And the voice that I heard at the door was Kenray’s.

  I guessed that the two would come to the study and something told me to make a quick exit. Luckily the door led to the dining-room and from that was another to the hall. I circled round and by the time I was in the cloak-room again, Mavin and Kenray had disappeared. Then I moved quietly across the hall rugs and listened at the study door. The voices were only a murmur so I nipped back to the cloak-room again.

  A minute or two went by and then a maid came to the hall and sounded the gong. I was in a bit of a fluster and wondering if Kenray would have been persuaded to stay for the meal. But he hadn’t. Another couple of minutes and he and Mavin appeared in the hall. Kenray was saying he wouldn’t have to trouble Mavin again and Mavin was saying it had been no trouble at all. Then there was a farewell handshake and Kenray saying he had a torch and could see his way quite well. But what had interested me more was the sight of Kenray’s shoes as viewed through the crack of my door. To me they looked as if he’d been ploughing through mud and had afterwards tried to clean them with handfuls of grass.

  It’s funny, as I said, how things will come to you. All at once I was laughing to myself at the mystery I’d made out of nothing. Kenray had had business with Mavin, and probably about the jewellery. Just short of the house he’d had a pain in his belly and had nipped through the hedge to relieve himself. It was true the operation had taken him ten good minutes, but there was everything plain as a pikestaff.

  “I wondered where you’d gone,” said Mavin as I suddenly appeared.

  “You didn’t mention to Kenray that I was here?”

  “Should I have done?” he asked guilelessly, and I made some lame reply. Then as we went through to our meal he was telling me that Kenray had the idea that Sir William had made some private notes about the jewellery, and he had called personally for them to save time, if, of course, Mavin knew where they were. Mavin knew nothing about any notes, and that’s all there had been to it. Then I was wondering to myself why Kenray should suddenly be wanting notes about the jewellery when he had told Wharton and myself a couple of hours previously that he had no intention of carrying on with the job. Then finally I could shrug my shoulders at the whole thing. Kenray, like anyone else, was at liberty to change his mind, and maybe he had yielded to persuasion after Wharton and I had left him.

  I’m not going to drag you through all that meal and conversation. What matters is the information I gathered, and here it is in the summarized form in which I wrote a brief report for Wharton.

  Marion Blaketon had apparently used Doris Chaddon for making contact with Mavin, and at their very first meeting she had told him—roguishly, I gathered—that she was in Sir William’s opinion a bold, bad lot, and that he’d be furious if he knew that Mavin had attended one of her parties. Mavin had taken the hint and Sir William had remained in ignorance of the fact that his sister-in-law and Mavin were acquainted. I gathered too that Mrs. Blaketon had taken the same line with Doris Chaddon.

  And Marion Blaketon had very definitely questioned Mavin about the autobiography, if in the same arch way. “I’ll wager Sir William has had some pretty nasty things to say about me,” and so on. Mavin assured her that there was no reference to her whatever, unless it was to “an unfortunate family matter,” which had been referred to in the vaguest of terms. Then she had confided in the strictest secrecy that she had married the man of her choice, so to speak, against the express wishes of her family, and that was the molehill out of which she thought Sir William might have made a mountain.

  But something that was much more startling to me emerged from that conversation. About a week previous, Mavin had been on the far lawn one afternoon with Sutton when he saw Mrs. Blaketon pass the house. He had thought of calling to her and asking her to tea, and then remembered with almost a cold sweat that if the servants or Sutton happened to mention the visitor to Sir William, there might be the devil to pay.

  Two days later—the last occasion in fact on which Mavin had seen Mrs. Blaketon—he asked if it were she who had gone by. She didn’t deny it. She had friends at Bewford, two miles farther on, she said, and as it was a fine afternoon and the office had seemed oppressive for once, she had decided to pay a country call. She loved walking, she said, and in her younger days a twenty-mile tramp had been nothing.

  “Did you believe that?” I asked Mavin quizzically.

  “Well,” he said, “I did, perhaps. I did think she was taking advantage of having friends there to have a look at this house. I’m not talking scandal, of course,” he added diffidently. “I meant that she might be interested to see just where he was living.”

  I agreed, though with reservations of my own. To me it seemed glaringly patent that she had been making a reconnaissance of the road from the station. Melodramatic it might sound, but if she had passed the tip to some thug or other that a certain man with a valuable attach£-case might be going that way some dark night, then she would have added further details and suggestions.

  One or two other oddments emerged from that evening’s talk, and all to fit snugly into the mosaic of that case. Mavin was quite frank about himself, for instance. The war had hit him very hard. His private income of best part of six hundred a year net had been principally in foreign securities, and the war reduced that income to under a hundred. That was why he had been glad enough of that badly paid job at Kalpoor. And he owned frankly that Wharton had been right to regard him as a suspect.

  I asked him what Sir William had been intending to do with the jewellery that night at Kalpoor.

  “There’s a safe,” he said. “It’s up in his bedroom if you’d care to see it. That’s where he was proposing to keep it and he was taking it back to the bank next day.”

  I went up to have a look. It wasn’t a bad little safe, though a modern cracksman would have made short work of it, and I told Mavin so. Then something else emerged that seemed to me to show an amazing remissness on Mavin’s part.

  “That’s funny,” he said, “but I thought I heard a strange noise that night. I couldn’t sleep very well, you see, wondering about Sir William. I came downstairs and had a look round, but I couldn’t see anything.” He smiled sheepishly. “To tell you how muddled I was, I switched on the light in the drawing-room and had it on for quite a few minutes till I remembered it wasn’t blacked out.”

  “Let’s get this clear,” I said. “You thought there might have been a burglar.”

  “Well, yes. I did.”

  “And was there any trace of one?”

  “I really don’t know,” he said. “Yesterday I did notice that someone might have been trying to force the catch of the french window in the drawing-room.”

  “My hat!” I said. “I wish to heaven you’d mentioned this before. Let’s go in with your torch and have a look.”

  To my mind there wasn’t any doubt about an attempt at a forced entry. Mavin was most apologetic. Burglaries and burglars’ methods weren’t in his line, he said, and he’d been worried to death about things in general. Also it hadn’t struck him that an abortive attempt could be of interest.

  “As soon as I’m gone,” I said, “and that will be in a very few minutes, ring up your local police and have them send a man round at once. For all we know that window may be covered with prints.”

  I said he was to ring the Yard and have the result passed on to Wharton as soon as the local men had finished. After that I prepared to go, and it was while we were in the hall that I thought of something else.

  “One very tiny thing has been worrying me,” I said. “It just shows a tidy sort of brain that simply can’t stand loose ends. About that par moy ton aide business. You remember Sir William asked you what you made of it. Now that’s
rather puzzled me. Surely his own French was first class? His people had lived in Paris for years.”

  “His French was first class,” he said. “It was the medieval flavour of that particular phrase that might have puzzled him; at least, that’s what I think. After all, heaps of well-educated Frenchmen would be very much at sea with even late middle French, just as Englishmen would be with anything between Chaucer and Spenser.”

  That seemed to me an admirable and satisfying answer and I gave it no more thought. What I did think mostly about on my walk back to the station was that attempt at burglary, for there I did seem to see the Blaketon hand. And there again it was complicated and confusing. She doubtless had a burglar up her sleeve, but why have him run the risks of burglary by night when all he had to do was collar the jewellery on Sir William’s walk from the station to Kalpoor. That was utterly beyond me and I decided to pass it on to Wharton.

  After that I switched my thoughts to Pelle. The more one learned about him, the less likeable he seemed to be. Nobody, as far as I could think back, had volunteered much in his favour, and as for that son of his, Mavin, who had known him from their school days, had implied that there wasn’t a lot to be said for him either. In the Society News picture he had looked to me a well-fed, beefy sort whose weight might reasonably have been employed against the Burmese Japs. Not that he had anything to do with the case in hand, but thinking of him made me suddenly think of something else, and it was as if a dozen ideas had coalesced into one.

  What about that crook husband of Marion Blaketon? Was he dead or still flourishing somewhere under an assumed name? In less than no time I was weaving quite a thrilling story round Colonel Blaketon. Suppose he had turned up in England and run his wife to earth. A demand for funds, perhaps, and a hint of blackmail, and she getting rid of him by giving a free hand in the matter of Pelle. Or had she double-crossed him? Had one man collar the jewellery, or done that job herself, and let Blaketon make, later on that night, the abortive attempt at burglary. A fascinating series of ideas, I thought, and yet something told me that it might be as well not to put any of them up to Wharton.