Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery

by E. C. R. Lorac

  Nobody spoke, and in the silence came a loud bang on the studio door. Neil Folliner cried out “God, what’s that?” and Rosanne jumped as though she had been stung.

  “The representative of the law again,” said Delaunier.

  II

  It was the Special Constable who had knocked, banging on the studio door in a manner calculated to assert his own importance. Delaunier had suggested that they should leave him to cool his heels out in the fog, but Bruce Manaton had shaken his head and gone to the door. Rosanne turned away from the look on Neil Folliner’s face, a look of desperate appeal which haunted her for long afterwards.

  When the door opened, the big man blustered into the studio, and his eyes rested on the Canadian with satisfaction and relief.

  “Ah… I had my doubts about the wisdom of leaving the fellow here, but I see that all is well. The regular force will be here shortly, and they will relieve you of his presence.” He looked around condescendingly.

  “Even among such Bohemians as yourselves, it must be unusual to have an—er—murderer thrust into the company.”

  “Look here, Mr. Special Constable,” said Bruce Manaton, “you may be within your rights in making an arrest, and even in throwing your weight about while doing it, but you are neither judge nor jury. I’ve no data to go upon: for all I know you may be the murderer yourself, but I warn you of this. If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, out of that door you go, and in the fog you stay, so far as I am concerned.”

  The big man’s face flushed a heavier red. “You dare to threaten me?” he demanded pompously.

  “I’m not threatening you: I’m telling you just where you get off,” replied Manaton. “This is my home, and if you can’t behave like a decent human being, I won’t tolerate you in it. Any flat-footed constable off the beat could teach you manners.”

  “Thank you for that, chum.”

  The Tommy spoke with a simple sincerity which relieved the tension of the situation, and Ian Mackellon found himself able to chuckle.

  “The whole situation is outside my experience,” he said, “but a glass of beer won’t do anybody any harm. What about it?”

  He turned to the Tommy, who responded with a faint grin, which gradually lightened his troubled face.

  “You folks are white all through. You’ve been decent to me, by gum you have!” he said, as he took the glass Mackellon held out to him, and raised it to Rosanne. “Lady, here’s all the best—and thank you!”

  The Special Constable raised his pompous voice. “This is quite out of order: this man is under arrest, and I—”

  Rosanne’s quiet voice intervened: “Why behave like a Prussian bully? He may be under arrest, but nothing has been proved against him. In any case, he’s hurt. Let him have his drink in peace.”

  The big man flushed a deep angry red, and Manaton cut in,

  “You’re one of the blokes who brags about Empire, I haven’t a doubt, and you expect young chaps like this one to come from overseas and do your dirty fighting for you, but you can’t even give him the benefit of the doubt when you find him in a mess. As I reminded you before, you’re neither jury nor judge.”

  “You fail to realise the situation; you are behaving in a manner totally irresponsible,” boomed the Special, and then another loud knock came at the door.

  “That’ll be the professional cops,” said Delaunier. “Give me the pro. every time. Amateur performers always give me the pip.”

  A sergeant and a police constable came in when the door was opened to them, and blinked a little when they first came into the radius of bright light. The Special began pouring out a flood of description, but the sergeant cut him short:

  “Very good—but we’d better have your statement taken at the station. There’s a van outside—you can take your prisoner along and charge him before the inspector. We have to investigate in the house adjoining. I take it you sent someone in there to stand by?”

  The Special shook his head. “No. I had no one to send. These people here… I didn’t quite… er…”

  “He probably thought we were all in it,” said Delaunier, and Manaton grinned.

  “That’s about it, officer. The gentleman disapproves of us.”

  The sergeant disregarded both speakers completely, and turned to Folliner. “Now then, boy. You’ve got to come along. You’ve been cautioned, I take it? Hullo—damaged, are you? Can you walk?”

  “More or less.” Folliner took a tentative step forward, but it was obvious that he could only stand on his undamaged leg. The sergeant said,

  “All right. You’ll have to hop. Give him an arm, Macey, and we’ll see him into the van.”

  The sergeant and constable supporting him on either side, Folliner hopped across the studio floor, calling over his shoulder to Rosanne:

  “Good-bye, lady, and thank you.”

  “Good-bye, good luck,” responded Rosanne, and Delaunier said to the Special:

  “Decent fellows, our regular police. Does one good to see them, what?”

  The Special turned to the door, exasperation in every line of his large but rather foolish face, and he followed the sergeant and his charge into the fog.

  “Oughtn’t you to stay and keep an eye on us? We’re fishy, you know,” called Delaunier after him.

  Cavenish said good-temperedly, “Don’t bait him, Delaunier. After all, he had a difficult job to do.”

  “Nasty bit of work,” replied the actor. “Is this the curtain, think you? I’m beginning to feel hungry now the show’s over. What about that stew?”

  “It’s stone cold,” said Rosanne, and Mackellon put in:

  “If you’d said curtain-raiser instead of curtain you’d have been nearer the truth, Delaunier. We shall have Scotland Yard here before the evening’s out, to ask what we all know about it.”

  “Damn-all,” replied Delaunier. “We were all of us in here together—”

  “I wasn’t,” said Rosanne. Her words were cut short by another bang on the door.

  “Oh, lord, more of them,” groaned Bruce, and opened the door to the sergeant.

  “Sorry to interrupt the party, sir,” said the latter, civil and cheerful. “This investigation will be taken over by the C.I.D. One of the Chief Inspectors will be coming along, and he’ll want statements from all of you. I thought I’d better warn you in case anyone was thinking of going home. You’re not all residents here, I take it?”

  “Two residents only—myself and my sister,” replied Bruce Manaton. “Mr. Cavenish, Mr. Delaunier, Mr. Mackellon—meet the arm of the law proper. Do you want their addresses?”

  “No. Not at the moment. I want to get busy in the house adjoining. In case there’s any misapprehension, and the visitors get tired of the party, I’ve a man outside just to see that nobody leaves before he’s said his bit.”

  “Right oh, sergeant! You’ll find us all waiting for you. We didn’t care for your friend in the Specials overmuch.”

  “I don’t think he cared for you overmuch, either,” responded the sergeant with a grin as he went out again.

  “Nice chap, that,” said Delaunier. “Now what about that stew?”

  III

  No one save Delaunier was interested in the stew. Manaton said again:

  “Why didn’t we hear the shot? That young chap said his uncle had been shot. Queer we didn’t hear it.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” replied Delaunier. “Do you remember you stepped back and side-stepped into that stool there, and made a racket upsetting it. Didn’t you say something about ‘What the hell was that’?”

  Manaton pondered: “Yes. That’s true,” he responded. “There was a thud or a bang of sorts. I thought Rosanne had come a mucker in the kitchen.”

  “Yes. A thud: that just about describes it,” said Delaunier. “Isn’t it true that fog deadens sound?” />
  “That’s an old wives’ tale,” said Cavenish. “Sound travels in a fog as it does in a clear atmosphere. The thing which I find interesting is one’s capacity for forgetting—or not registering. When you said that none of us heard the shot, I agreed with you. I didn’t remember hearing anything. Now you mention that Manaton dropped something, I do remember having heard something outside. It was just before you took my knight’s pawn, Mackellon.”

  “Was it? Perhaps you’re right. I’d been working at that pawn for half an hour. It was your only hope, but you shouldn’t have moved the bishop… Yes. Now I come to think of it, there was a noise of some kind.”

  Cavenish turned to Rosanne. “Didn’t you hear anything, Miss Manaton?”

  Rosanne was sitting with her chin in her hands, her elbows on the table, staring downwards.

  “No. I heard nothing,” she replied.

  Bruce turned to her abruptly. “Weren’t you in here?” he asked. “You wandered in and out, you know. I believe I cursed you, because the light from the kitchen shone across.”

  “What time was it when you heard the noise?” she enquired.

  “Lord knows. I don’t,” replied Bruce. Delaunier leant forward.

  “It was just before nine. I looked at my watch because I generally listen-in to the nine o’clock news, and one gets a sort of time-sense. I remember wondering why you two don’t get a wireless set.”

  “Then I wasn’t indoors at all. I went outside just before nine to look at the black-out.”

  “Oh, hell, what did you do that for… These ruddy police are certain to make a huroosh if you tell them that,” said Bruce impatiently. “Much better say you were in here with us. You probably were. You’ve no idea of time, Rosanne.”

  “I tell you I wasn’t in here, Bruce. The last time I came in here was just before Mrs. Tubbs looked in. She had been in to see if Mr. Folliner was all right. He’s had ’flu, or something.” She broke off, and sat staring down at the table, her finger tracing patterns on the cloth. “Rather queer: she put his door key down on the kitchen table and forgot it. It’s there now.”

  “Good God!” exclaimed Delaunier. “Folliner’s door key on your kitchen table. I don’t like that…”

  Manaton got up and made a move towards the kitchen door, and Rosanne demanded sharply,

  “What are you going to do, Bruce?”

  “Do? Chuck that key into the dug-out,” he responded, and Cavenish said quietly,

  “That’s no good, Manaton. The minute you begin to tamper with evidence you ask for trouble. The only thing to do is to tell the truth.”

  “I tell you I don’t like the truth in this instance,” said Manaton. “It’s all very well for you—and for Delaunier and me, so far as our own selves are concerned. We were all in here, within sight of each other, the whole evening. Rosanne wasn’t in here. She was by herself in the kitchen, or else outside… looking at the black-out, and that damned key was on the kitchen table.” He turned again to Rosanne, his voice gentle again: “Look here Rosa, don’t be obstinate. You can save a whale of a lot of trouble by saying that you were in here with us from the very moment Mrs. Tubbs left. There are four of us here to uphold you.” He turned to the others. “What about it, you fellows? Aren’t all of you prepared to swear that Rosanne was in here, with us, all the time?”

  Delaunier’s deep voice answered instantly: “Of course. Count me in, Manaton.”

  After a moment Mackellon said slowly:

  “All right…at least, I suppose so.”

  Manaton turned to Cavenish. “And you…?”

  “No. Sorry, but I can’t do it. I won’t do it, because I know it’s a fool’s game to lie to the police,” said Cavenish, his face furrowed with perplexity. He went on:

  “I know that Rosanne had nothing to do with all this. So do you. The idea’s preposterous. To try to protect her with a lie is not only a mistake in policy, it’s unworthy. And I tell you this,” he went on with earnest conviction. “Once the police find out—as they would find out—that we were lying, then Rosanne would be in very real danger.”

  “That’s perfectly true,” agreed Mackellon.

  Delaunier cut in contemptuously, “How could they find out?”

  Mackellon replied: “It’s one of the most difficult things in the world for even two people to carry through a successful lie in the face of skilled interrogation: for four people, it’s practically impossible. Assume that we are asked detailed questions about what happened this evening. We shan’t be present when the others are being interrogated: we shall have no clue to what they say unless everybody sticks to the truth. If we disagree on small points—as to where Miss Manaton sat, if she moved, if she spoke—and we should inevitably disagree, because we haven’t time to make up and memorise a story—then the fat is in the fire…”

  “Oh, rot!” said Delaunier indignantly. He got up and moved a chair forward. “Say that Rosanne sat here, and just watched the chess players.”

  “Very well,” replied Mackellon. “In that case, you can no longer swear that I was sitting at the table playing chess, nor can I swear that you were on the model’s platform, because Miss Manaton would have screened our view of each other. It’s only a small point, but it shows how tampering with evidence breaks down.”

  Rosanne’s voice cut in, clear and scornful:

  “Thank you all very much for your good intentions and excellent arguments. Both are unnecessary. I am not going to say I was in here when I was not. I’m going to say just exactly what I did and exactly where I was. If any of you try to make up stories to help me, you’ll only get in a mess. You four were all in here—and you can say so. I was not in here—and I shall say so.”

  “You’re perfectly right, Miss Manaton, and I admire you for it,” said Cavenish quietly.

  Bruce Manaton turned on him furiously.

  “Damn you for a poor cur!” he cried. “You run after Rosanne, and yet you haven’t the guts to tell a lie for her.”

  “I pay her a better compliment in knowing that it is unnecessary to tell lies for her,” replied Cavenish quietly.

  Just as he had finished speaking a knock sounded again on the studio door. Delaunier got up, and stood superb in his Cardinal’s scarlet.

  “That appears to be that,” he said softly. “Every man for the truth—and the devil take the hindmost.”

  Chapter Three

  I

  When Chief Inspector Macdonald first entered the Manatons’ studio he received the impression of having stepped on to a stage during an interval in an operatic rehearsal. (Peter Vernon, the journalist, who had a sense of detail, later asked Macdonald “Which opera, Jock?” and the C.I.D. man replied, “An opera which has never been written, with music by Berlioz, libretto by Spender or Auden, decor by Picasso, and choreography by Nijinski.” “Give me a seat for the first night,” grinned Vernon.)

  The fog from without had seeped into the great barn-like structure: it was made visible by the powerful lights which still shone in two groups: one directed on to the now empty model’s platform, illuminating the big white canvas with its masterly charcoal drawing—the Cardinal’s figure blocked in in harsh unerring black lines. The painter’s blue coat was flung down on the floor: the broad-brimmed Cardinal’s hat was hung rakishly on the top of the Spanish chair. A lay figure sprawled in the shadow behind the easel—a picture for Picasso. In the middle of the studio the fog wraiths wavered in the shadows. Closer to Macdonald, and on his right, was a group centring around Delaunier. The latter, poised as though to take a curtain, magnificent in his scarlet, held a freshly-filled glass of beer in his hand. Bruce Manaton, who had admitted Macdonald, sat on the arm of a chair, clad in a blue pull-over and grey slacks: Mackellon and Cavenish were on either side of the chess table. Rosanne leaned against the supper table, her long-limbed slimness outlined before the gay coloured checks of a peasant-weave
table cloth. Delaunier raised his glass.

  “Scotland Yard, salut!”

  “Thanks very much,” said Macdonald. “I begin to understand why a gentleman in the Specials felt that this evening’s experiences were a bit overwhelming.”

  “We didn’t like him,” said Delaunier gravely, “but we have nothing but praise for the deportment and behaviour of his professional colleagues, the genuine Bobby of London’s greatness.”

  “That’s all very satisfactory,” said Macdonald urbanely.

  Bruce Manaton spoke next: “We’re not mad and we’re not entirely mountebanks,” he said. “If you treat us reasonably we respond. May I perform the introductions. My own name is Bruce Manaton. I am co-tenant of this studio with my sister, Rosanne. This is André Delaunier, whom you may have seen in the dramatised version of ‘Richelieu.’ This is Robert Cavenish—he does something at the Home Office. This is Ian Mackellon, a chemist in government employment. I believe he concocts poison gases, but he hasn’t the wits to disperse fogs.”

  Macdonald bowed gravely to each person in turn, and then said: “I am sorry that a pleasant evening should have been spoiled by the activities of my department. I admire good portraits and I enjoy playing chess. However, my job demands that I ask each of you, separately, for your account of this evening’s experiences.”

  “Just what we had assumed,” said Manaton, “though we could give you the sum total of our experiences very briefly and unanimously in chorus or antiphon, as you prefer. I am sorry we can’t offer you much in the way of a private sitting-room. There is the studio, with an open gallery above. There is also a combination kitchen-bathroom. If you wish to talk to us separately, I suggest that you take the studio, and we use the kitchen as waiting room.”

  “Thanks very much,” said Macdonald. “You’re being very helpful.”

  Mackellon chuckled. “He’s really hoping to get the inquisition over quickly, Chief Inspector. He wants to get on with his work.”