Dead Man Twice

by Christopher Bush

  Where The Death of Cosmo Revere/Murder in Fenwold concerns an independent investigation into a country house slaying made by the lanky and bespectacled Ludovic “Ludo” Travers, author of the bestselling The Economics of a Spendthrift, and his ex-CID friend and colleague John Franklin, both of whom are affiliated with the renowned inquiry, advertising and publicity firm of Durangos Limited, in Dead Man Twice Travers and Franklin reunite with the Scotland Yard team from The Perfect Murder Case--Superintendent George “the General” Wharton, “blinking and wiping the moisture off his heavy moustache and looking more like a steady-going old paterfamilias than ever” (though those old duffer looks are mightily deceptive), and his attendants Inspector Norris and Doctor Menzies—to solve the bizarre problem of the twin demises of a butler and his master, boxing champion Michael France. Butlers normally were not bumped off in Golden Age detective fiction, particularly in the lead murder, if you will, although in 1933 Georgette Heyer did just that in her mystery Why Shoot a Butler? and in 1941 Miles Burton (Cecil John Charles Street) used the murder of a butler to lead his readers Up the Garden Path. Christopher Bush anticipated both authors in this respect with Dead Man Twice. “Even in these democratic days it is hardly the thing for a butler, as in Dead Man Twice, to be lying poisoned on top of his master’s own confession of suicide, the master at the same time lying shot in the room overhead,” complained the distinguished crime fiction reviewer, author and editor Charles Williams, his tongue firmly in cheek. “Servants ought not to get above themselves like that.” Similarly, members of the boxing profession made unusual murder fare in mysteries, though Philip Macdonald slew a pugilist three years after the publication of Dead Man Twice in Death on My Left.

  We learn in Dead Man Twice that Superintendent Wharton has “intense admiration” and respect for the immensely talented dilettante Travers, but, although Wharton allows in on his murder investigation both Travers and Franklin (the latter of whom had already been investigating the matter of Michael France’s receipt of certain threatening letters), the superintendent has no intention of losing control of it to a bright amateur and his private detective friend. Wharton is in fact, one of the better realized policemen in Golden Age detective fiction--smart, capable and realistically portrayed, in contrast with the broadly-drawn bumblers of the period. In Dead Man Twice Wharton needs all his capacities, as well as those of Travers and Franklin, in dealing with one of the thorniest murder problems Christopher Bush ever set down on paper. (Diagrams and floorplans are included to aid readers intent on solving the problem for themeslves.) At just whose hands “gentleman boxer” Michael France (“He was at one of the big public schools, sir,” explains Travers’s man Palmer, who, unlike his master, is rather a fan of fisticuffs. “Eton, I believe—and at Cambridge, sir, and then went in for boxing as a profession….his uncle I think it was, lost all his money in that big smash….”) and his butler, Soames, met their respective deaths in France’s townhouse in St. John’s Wood is a question that implicates the boxer’s friend and factotum, thriller writer Kenneth Hayles (“definitely the best public school type”); Peter Claire, the well-heeled, aristocratic racing motorist and chief backer of France (“Did you hear how he spoke? ‘Evenin’, Wharton.” As if I was a bloody footman!”); Claire’s “remarkably attractive” and “sporting” wife, Dorothy (“She was Dorothy Pleasance, you know—one of the Berkshire Pleasances. Lord Faxton’s her uncle….”); an enigmatical valet named Usher; and the unknown blonde who left stray hairs behind her on Michael France’s settee. (States Wharton bluntly of Michael France’s florid bedroom, “It’s the show room of a super-brothel.”)

  At one point in the novel, Ludo Travers--a fan of mystery fiction, but only the quality stuff, don’t you know—vigorously denounces one of Kenneth Hayle’s hackneyed thrillers as a hodgepodge of “All the preposterous and creaking machinery from every shocker ever written! All the clichés and outworn flourishes! We get rooms that descend bodily, sliding panels, a vanishing corpse, dope dealers, an opium den, a mysterious poison, a Chinese villain, and a heroine…who’s abducted and rescued. The Chinaman turns out to be a detective in disguise….”

  Travers’s amusing anti-thriller diatribe reflected the then-ascendant credo in British mystery of the true detective fiction writer, as embodied in Ronald Knox’s recent Detective Fiction Decalogue (which, among other things, frowned on secret passages and included an absolute prohibition on “Chinamen”) and the oath of the Detection Club, an organization formed at the beginning of 1930 whose membership included such accomplished authors of true detective fiction as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, E.C. Bentley and Freeman Wills Crofts. Christopher Bush would join their distinguished company seven years later, but with Dead Man Twice following fast upon the heels of The Perfect Murder Case (and, in America, The Death of Cosmo Revere), the schoolmaster turned detective novelist had already proven himself an exceptionally distinguished practitioner of a most difficult craft.

  CHAPTER I

  THE MAN WHO TOLD A LIE

  It is easy, as Wharton told Franklin when he wished to rap him over the knuckles, to be wise after the event. In spite of that truism, there had to be arguments and the consequent differences of opinion, and in those Franklin and Wharton for once in their lives were of the same mind. As they put it, those events that preceded the tragedy of No. 23, Regent View, had precious little bearing on its elucidation. That would have been merely a question of time. Patient inquiry would have led them to the end of the same road and with the same certainty.

  Ludovic Travers thought differently—a rather strange point of view for one who was never in the case except at third hand, whatever part he may have taken in the elucidation. According to him, those preliminary events revealed subtleties of motive and conduct that no inquiry could either have revealed or appreciated, especially considering the nice restrictions placed nowadays on the taking of evidence, and, at the other end of the scale, the loquacious pitfalls of coroners’ courts.

  As for the remaining interested party—Chief Inspector Norris—he was already immersed to the neck in another job, and being a person who derived little satisfaction from argumentative inquests, thought a lot and said little, leaving events and outcome to settle the matter for themselves.

  * * * * *

  As Ludovic Travers wandered along the Hampstead Road, he wondered why on earth a fellow like Churton—French Correspondent of the Financial Adviser—should have chosen that particular district for the flat which he so rarely had the opportunity of occupying; quite a long way from Fleet Street really, and yet not so far as to escape noise or claim any compensatory amenities. As a matter of fact there was nothing wrong at all with Churton’s pied-à-terre; it was Travers himself who was disgruntled.

  When in his capacity of financial adviser to Durangos Limited, he had heard Churton was in town and had rung him about those Moroccan concessions, he had been only too delighted to accept the other’s invitation to come along to the flat and talk the whole thing out over a cup of tea. “Hundred and thirty-seven, Hampstead Road,” came Churton’s voice airily over the phone. “You can’t miss it. Over Scarlett’s the photographer’s—you know, chap who does all the actresses!”

  So far so good. Then Travers forgot where the numbers commenced and having tramped all the way along Tottenham Court Road, found himself with a goodish stretch of crowded pavement still to negotiate. A quarter of a mile of that produced no sign whatever of a photographer’s or any shop of the name of Scarlett. On the way back he did what he should have done at the outset—looked for the numbers above the side doors of shops; even then No. 137, when he found it, wasn’t a shop at all but one of those mushroom Schools of Languages that appear from time to time, students and all complete.

  Travers polished his glasses and had a good look at the notices that occupied the centre of the plate-glass window—

  THE MAESTRO SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES

  (As advertised)

  FRENCH. GERMAN. ITAL
IAN. SPANISH.

  RUSSIAN. TURKISH.

  DIRECT METHOD

  PROFICIENCY GUARANTEED IN TWELVE

  LESSONS.

  and flanking these, matter much more insinuating—posters of a too obvious Englishman, gesturing before a whiskered and as obviously delighted foreigner, with the explanatory slogan

  “Why shouldn’t he be you?”

  and secondly an alert young man, exuding vitality in the presence of a managing director who was saying—

  “Mr. Maestro, we have decided to make you our foreign correspondent at £800 a year!”

  and, of course, the slogan repeated. Travers winced as if in pain, rubbed his glasses again and opened the side door. At the top of the stairs was a corridor with more doors; on the first—MAESTRO SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES—and below, in unmistakable figures, No. 157.

  Thereupon Travers cursed the insufficient light, his own eyesight and everything else that seemed relevant. Outside on the pavement again he set off with a warier eye on the fanlights, and it was then that the peculiar event occurred.

  Imagine its taking place in a matter of seconds—a man whom he was sure he knew, coming along on the window side of the pavement; the definite recognition of the slight figure with its short, almost mincing steps; the lighting of his own features into the first wrinklings of a smile; then as he drew abreast, the “Hallo, Hayles! What are you…” and finally the inexplicable thing—the overwhelming certainty that the other had recognised his name, and yet the quick turn away to the windows; then a rapid step or two and the man was lost among the crowd!

  Travers peered after him, wondering what had happened and, as he suddenly realised, looking very much of a fool. Had he been cut dead? and if so, why? Or had it been a mistake and wasn’t the fellow Hayles after all? But it couldn’t have been a mistake; there was no possibility of error about a chap like Hayles with his mournful face and its thin line of moustache that began at the nostrils and wisped its way to the drooping corners of the mouth. Travers shook his head perplexedly, shrugged his shoulders and moved on.

  Above a side door was what really looked like 137 and he went gingerly up the dim stairs. As he stumbled at the top a door in front of him was opened and Churton came out.

  “Hallo, Travers! That you?”

  “It’s me all right!” said Travers and dusted his knees ruefully. “You’ve certainly got up in the world since I saw you last.”

  The other laughed. “Come along in! It’s a weird neighbourhood, but I’ve got an affection for it. My old rooms used to be here when I was a student.”

  “And what’s happened to Scarlett’s?” asked Travers as the other drew back for him to enter.

  “I say, I’m awfully sorry about that. I rang you up to warn you but you’d already gone. I knew Scarlett’s were leaving for new quarters—Bond Street, I believe—but I didn’t know they were going to-day. Let me take your coat.…”

  * * * * *

  Two hours later as Travers descended the ill-lighted stairs, he suddenly recalled that inexplicable affair of Hayles and, thinking the matter over, was inclined to put it down either to absent-mindedness or some sudden idiosyncrasy. Further thought made him moreover of the opinion that Hayles knew he was going to be recognised and to avoid it, had chosen an adroit turn of the head rather than the more usual look that goes right on into space. Kenneth Hayles, wasn’t it? He’d run across him first at the Scriveners’ Club—new member wandering round like the proverbial lost soul—and had promptly acted the paternal ancient and got him settled. And he’d seen him since—heaps of times—and spoken to him; rather decent sort of chap, nicely mannered, well-bred and all that. Rather on the shy side, perhaps, and not a bad thing either nowadays. And what exactly had he written? Shockers of some sort, wasn’t it? Then that avoidance of recognition might have meant that he was none too anxious to be seen on his way to the purlieus of Soho in search of local colour! Travers smiled, then a dawdling taxi caught his eye and by the time he’d got in, the whole incident had left his mind.

  Probably too he’d have forgotten it completely if something else hadn’t turned up in the very same context. After dinner that night at the Scriveners’, he strolled into the reading room to look at the latest prices. There’d be no more than a couple of other members in at the time, both buried in saddle-bags and backs towards him, and in a matter of seconds his own back was to the light and his head among the financial pages. A few minutes later, he was vaguely aware that one occupant of the room was leaving it, and a few moments later was unmistakably aware that a newcomer was about to enter. Feet padded along the corridor and the door was jerked open. Travers, squinting over the top of his Evening Record recognised Ballard of the Messenger.

  “Hallo Hayles! They told me I’d find you here.” He lowered his voice at the sight of Travers legs. “I’ve been chasing you all the afternoon and evening.”

  “Sorry! Why didn’t you ring me up?”

  “I did! I rang up about half-past four and they said you’d gone out.”

  “Gone out!” The voice was incredulous. “You sure you’re right about the time?”

  “Dead certain. About half-past four. I said, ‘Is that twenty-three, Regent View?’ and the old boy—”

  “Somers?”

  “That’s it. He said, ‘Yes,’ and I said could I speak to you and he told me to hang on a minute and then he came back and said you’d just gone out.”

  “Funny! He must have made a mistake. I’ve been in the whole damn day till an hour ago.” He changed the subject, rather abruptly it seemed to Travers. “Something urgent you wanted?”

  The conversation became a murmur, with one word alone that was continually audible—a word that sounded like “Fransse.” Travers, between the upper millstone of polite disregard and the lower of what had become perfectly natural curiosity, found concentration impossible and quietly sidled from the room. Ten minutes later he was picking up his own papers in his rooms at St. Martin’s chambers. On the front page of the Evening Record, in splash headlines only previously missed because he had begun at the other end of the paper, was something that seemed to be of considerable importance.

  BRITAIN TO REGAIN HEAVY-WEIGHT TITLE?

  FRANCE TO MEET FERRONI IN NEW YORK.

  SPECIAL INTERVIEW

  then a big centre-page picture and three columns of letter-press. He gave his glasses a preliminary clean, had another look, then smiled. That word “Fransse” that he’d heard at the club was apparently a man’s name—the Michael France of the picture. But what did it all mean? Travers, completely out of his depth, settled into his chair and waded meticulously through the lot.

  What he gathered was that Al Shepherd, described as the greatest promoter America had ever known, had by cable obtained the agreement of Michael France, described as the idol of the British public, whether boxing or not, to terms offered by him for a meeting with Toni Ferroni, described as the Cleveland Cyclone; that the contest would be recognised by the British and American Commissions as being for the heavyweight championship of the world and that the articles of the fight would be signed in London within a week. Everything seemed colossal—dollars in hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands more for cinema rights; even the men themselves—six foot five of Ferroni and two inches less of the other man. Then if the papers were to be believed, for a matter of two months the whole world would be in a state approaching frenzy. Already that afternoon the audience at the Paliceum, where France was doing a show, had risen and cheered for five solid minutes when the news had been specially flashed on the screen.

  Travers let the paper fall to his knees and thought things over. Michael France. Now what did he know about Michael France? Then it trickled slowly back—pictures in the papers, news items on the screen, casual remarks and chatter at the club. And what else? Travers shook his head.

  If you knew Ludovic Travers or could have followed his self-examination as he sat there looking into the fire, you would have been certain that whatever hi
s attitude there was nothing superior or highbrow about it. If anything there was a considerable amount of condemnation. The event, for instance, was an important one, or a paper like the Record would never have rushed into splash headlines and superlatives; moreover, if the male population of two continents was already in a state of excitement, how was it that he himself was unaware of the events leading to it, and so remote from the feelings of the man in the street? The name, as far as he was concerned, was merely a name; casually registered in the background of his mind. For that, however, there was some excuse. The sporting pages had no interest for him whatever, except perhaps occasional events at Brooklands—and of course the Derby or something like a Schneider Trophy which one couldn’t very well avoid. Then he smiled to himself and pushed the bell.

  Palmer came in, or rather glided in, with his patriarchal, silver hair and impeccable manner.

  “Oh, sit down, Palmer, will you,” said Travers. “You seen the papers to-night?”

  Palmer balanced himself respectfully on the very edge of the saddle-bag. “Well sir, I have… and I haven’t.”

  “I see.” He passed over the three papers. “What’s all this excitement about boxing? Who’s this Michael France exactly?”

  “France? Oh, you mean France, sir.”

  “I see. Sort of rhymes with—er—romance.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t mean of course to correct you, sir—but—well, he’s a gentleman boxer, sir.”