Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “That’s all right, old man—makes sense, and all that, but you can’t always measure folk up with common sense and common humanity. You’ve got to admit human nature does go off the rails sometime. It’s worth while bearing in mind that Mrs. Tubbs could have done the job, and that Mrs. Tubbs was almighty thick with Miss Manaton. She—Mrs. T.—took a parcel into the studio kitchen when she paid her call there. Herrings. I know, because I saw them. There might have been other herrings, too, but if so, I didn’t spot them, and I tell you I put in a bit of work in that kitchen during the night.”

  “Somehow I think Jenkins is going to be right over this,” said Macdonald. “Quite apart from the fact that Mrs. Tubbs seems to be one of the decentest souls God ever made, I think Jenkins scores over his other points. Let’s take the next possibility—Verraby. The assumption concerning him is that he got to the house five minutes before Neil Folliner did, shot the old man after first knocking him over the head, and seized the contents of the cash-box. When he heard Neil Folliner shouting downstairs he must have been fairly staggered. Presumably he hid behind the bedroom door, inside the room, and waited for eventualities.”

  “That sounds improbable to me, Chief,” said Jenkins. “Wouldn’t Verraby have got outside the room, and then waited?”

  “One would have thought so, but if he had done so, the light from the bedroom would have reflected on to the wall outside, and down the stairs, and Neil Folliner, being in the dark, would have seen the light. He didn’t. He said expressly ‘the stairs were dark, but I saw the light under the door.’”

  “Let’s try again,” said Jenkins. “I like to get my assumptions to square with common sense. I can’t see Verraby waiting, with the light on, like that. He couldn’t have known it was Neil Folliner coming upstairs: it might have been anybody. I’d have guessed that Verraby had got outside the bedroom before Neil Folliner got into the hall, and that Verraby hid behind a door somewhere on the landing, and then stepped in and did his stuff.”

  “All right. That’s reasonable enough,” said Macdonald. “In either case, Verraby would have had the loot in his pocket. He hadn’t a chance of hiding it in this house, or if so, we haven’t found it.”

  “He’d got it in his pocket,” said Reeves with conviction. “That’s why he left Neil Folliner in the studio and went out to telephone himself instead of sending Manaton or one of the others. Verraby may have got a fair nerve, but not quite enough nerve to risk chatting to the local Super with a great bundle of stolen notes in his pocket. Someone might have asked ‘What’s that in your pocket, mate?’”

  Jenkins chuckled. “Yes, I pass that. I wondered all along why Verraby went and did that telephoning himself. Of course, it’d have been his only chance to hide the loot. Reeves is right in saying Verraby wouldn’t have wanted to go into the charge room with the loot in his pocket.”

  “Very good. Then can either of you suggest where Verraby cached it? Remember he didn’t waste any time over getting to the telephone box, or getting back to the studio after he’d ’phoned. In fact he did it as quickly as it could be done. Now in the good old days he could have come prepared with a couple of big envelopes and slipped the stuff into the pillar post—that trick’s often been played—but it won’t work now. The post-box was cleared at 5.30 p.m., and it wasn’t cleared again until 8.30 a.m. next morning, and Mr. Verraby did not slip any interesting documents into any post-box he passed last night.”

  Jenkins cogitated. “Yes, it’s a pretty problem… Where the devil could he have hidden the stuff on a black foggy night? There aren’t hidey-holes ready made in the street. Letter-box of an empty house?”

  “I thought of that. I’ve had Bolter and Willing investigating every empty house he could have passed in the time. No sign of anything, and the ground was soft enough and wet enough to show footprints. Remember, when Verraby got back to the studio, having wasted no time on his errand, he stayed there until the local men turned up, and then he went direct to the station in the van. From the station he went straight home—I know that, too. If he’d hidden the stuff, he’d have had no chance to recover it. It wasn’t on him when he was at the station—the Super saw to that. Very civil and efficient, that Super. I thought you’d like to know your psychological guesses on that score were correct.”

  Jenkins chuckled, but Reeves sat with a frown of concentration on his face, his angular chin resting on his clenched fists.

  “Neil Folliner hadn’t got the stuff on him, and if he’d thrown it away we’d have found it by now—that’s why you had the dug-out pumped dry, wasn’t it? Verraby hadn’t got the stuff on him. Jenkins says Mrs. Tubbs didn’t take it, anyway, it’s not in her house. You know, in this story, all paths lead to the studio. They were all in the studio at one time or another. What d’you bet the loot’s there, too? Have either of the Manatons been out to-day?”

  “Neither of them,” replied Macdonald.

  “Good. None of the three who left last night took anything away with them. We saw to that. Seems to me it’s a case for a fine-tooth comb at the studio.”

  “No harm in that,” said Jenkins. “Very annoying for the tenants, of course, but they’ll just have to put up with it.”

  Reeves was still staring into space.

  “A penny?” enquired Macdonald, and the younger man laughed.

  “I might ask you the same, Chief. I reckon you’ve got a few ideas of your own you’re hatching out, but I’d rather be left to tumble to them my own way. When you put me on to that idea of the last tenant at the studio—the nasty bit of work named Stort—I sort of felt that you believed the cast wasn’t complete in this act—not all the actors present, as it were.”

  Jenkins chuckled, a deep cheerful sound. “You and your psychic bids,” he laughed, “always going a bit ahead of the evidence. You’ve found traces of three different persons who were in this house some time yesterday evening. Are you looking for traces of a fourth?”

  “I’ve looked all right,” replied Macdonald, “but I haven’t found any. It’s worth while remembering this, though. The traces of footmarks which we’ve got were made by men with heavy footgear, and the soles of their boots—or shoes—were wet and black, with that adhesive sort of sooty moisture you always get in a London fog. It’s quite possible that someone with dry shoes could have walked upstairs and left no sign of their passing.”

  Jenkins readjusted his glasses. “I reckon the most useful thing I can do is to get on with my secretarial work,” he chuckled. “There’s fifty years accumulation to be gone through in this cupboard. The top strata are all what I call impersonal documents—records of business transactions. The old chap didn’t seem to have had any human contacts for years, but as we work through, I’ve an idea we shall get to letters which may tell us a bit about him. Cheer up, Reeves! I may have a whole batch of dramatis personæ for you to add to your list of invisible entrants. This is the sort of case which suits a man of my weight. Just sit and work the thing out on paper evidence. I’ll leave the wall-climbing and that to you—the monkey work, so to speak.”

  Macdonald put in a question here. “According to your present researches, would you have expected to find a considerable sum of money somewhere on these premises?”

  Jenkins nodded. “Yes, Chief. During the past ten years the old chap realised property and investments to the tune of several thousand pounds. He’s kept copies of most of his transactions—and I tell you it’s no joke trying to decipher his writing and make sense out of it. There’s no evidence as to what he did with the money: so far as I can see he didn’t invest it, he didn’t buy anything, and I can’t believe he gave it away. His only outgoings were rates and taxes. I shall have to have the Inland Revenue people along some time, he had some lively correspondence with them. I’ll try to get some sort of statement out by to-morrow, but so far as I can see at the moment deceased had several thousand pounds—somewhere.”

  “In his ca
sh-box,” murmured Reeves.

  III

  “I’d like to give this house the once-over again while it’s still daylight,” said Reeves, as he and Macdonald left Jenkins to his secretarial work.

  “Right. We’ll go over it together. It’ll be an exhilarating experience for you,” said Macdonald. “Upstairs to begin with.”

  Reeves glanced at once at the treads of the stairs before he mounted them: there were footmarks showing in the sooty dust which lay thickly on the bare boards, but these footmarks were all close to the hand-rail side. Macdonald said:

  “Yes, the dust has its uses. Those footmarks are ours. No one else has been up these stairs for weeks, probably months. The dust is lying like a pall everywhere, and every footstep shows.”

  There were four rooms—two front and two back—on the second floor, and a ladder led up to the loft above, in the roof.

  “No object in climbing that,” said Macdonald. “The loft is bare except for a couple of broken chairs, and some cracked china. I’ve had the tanks emptied—nothing but soot.”

  They glanced in at each of the small bedrooms: all four were empty, their walls mildewed and damp-stained, doors and wainscot cracked and peeling. Reeves went to one of the back windows and looked down at the studio roof—sheets of corrugated iron much in need of painting. There had apparently once been a pole for a flag on the gable end of the studio, close to a disused chimney pot. The pole lay forlornly on the iron roof, and loops of the cord still festooned the gable and hung flapping a yard or two down the wall, tapping miserably in the wind. It was a forlorn and melancholy prospect of an ugly and neglected structure. Beyond Reeves could see into the garden of Sedgemoor Avenue, where Miss Stanton was still busy with her rake.

  On the first floor there were also four rooms—two large bedrooms with small dressing-rooms opening out of them, and in addition was an antique bathroom and lavatory. The only furnished room was Mr. Folliner’s bedroom.

  “The old man sold everything except the contents of his own bedroom and such junk as even the rag and bone men wouldn’t give him a penny for,” said Macdonald. “Any broken sticks of furniture or packing cases or anything else which would burn he used for his fire. Not much chance for anyone to hide anything here in a hurry There’s the chimneys, and under the floor-boards—we’ve drawn a blank everywhere.”

  On the ground floor, in the hall, there was one relic left, a much battered grandfather clock. It had evidently been through a minor earthquake, for its face was broken, its panels cracked, and its door missing. Reeves glanced inside the case: the pendulum had dropped off, the weights and chains were missing.

  “Sold the weights and chains and was in process of burning the case,” said Reeves. “Any of the works left?”

  “Yes, but they’re rusted into a solid whole—even the junk man wouldn’t fancy them—and old Folliner was no believer in giving things for salvage,” said Macdonald. “There’s nothing hidden among said works.”

  They went through the ground floor rooms and cupboards, noted that coal was now dumped in what had once been a cloak room, and that every electric fitting had been cut away from its flex. The big room which had once been the drawing-room of the house, with long windows overlooking the one-time garden, had once been a beautiful room. Now its grimy walls were defaced with smears of paint, smudged over underlying frescoes.

  “Hullo,” said Reeves. “This is the room Mr. Stort’s lady friend must have inhabited. Did he decorate it for her, and if so, what?”

  He walked up to the wall and tried to make out the nature of the painting underneath. Macdonald said:

  “There were a series of portraits on the wall, apparently, some painted, some in charcoal—and somebody has painted them out. I must ask Mrs. Tubbs if she knows anything about it.”

  Reeves continued to stare. “Damned funny…” he said slowly. “Did the lady friend get tired of the decoration… or did old Folliner disapprove of it?”

  “It’s the only room in the house which holds anything of interest,” said Macdonald, “but there isn’t anywhere to hide anything. Come and see the kitchens, and you’ll know what the ‘servant-gal’ of fifty years ago had to endure.”

  A staircase with stone treads led down to the dank and dreadful basement. There was a big, dark kitchen, with a stone floor, mouldy and beetle infested. A huge rusty range took up one side, and a dresser the other. The window was heavily barred, and dingy evergreen shrubs pressed their leaves against the cobwebbed glass. The grate of the range was full of burnt fragments, mostly burnt paper. Macdonald chuckled as he saw Reeves look eagerly at the black remains.

  “I don’t think that any of that is the sort of ash bank-notes would leave,” he said. “In any case it’s not fresh ash. It’s weeks old, at least. I’m getting one of our fellows to come and sort it out and get it analysed. If I try to move any of it, it will disintegrate.”

  Reeves moved towards the grate, his keen nose twitching a little, and he took out his torch and turned a beam of light on to the ashes.

  “What do you make of it?” he asked, and Macdonald replied:

  “So far as I can see without touching it it’s the remains, amongst other things, of a stout canvas. Perhaps the ‘lady friend’ used her protector’s surplus works of art to heat up the bath water. So far as I can see, this range is the only method of heating the water for the outsize antique upstairs.”

  “Blimey!” said Reeves. “Well, it’s a fair sized Chamber of Horrors this kitchen is.”

  “Come and see the scullery, it’s much worse, and there’s a coal cellar and other delights, all with several steps leading down to them—and remember the food and the china had all to be carried up those twisting stone stairs to the dining-room,” said Macdonald. “The young servant gal of the early nineteen-hundreds got paid £12 a year for the privilege of working in a house like this.”

  “And they say the Victorian era was the golden age of prosperity and happiness,” said Reeves, as he poked his enquiring nose into the “coal cellar and other delights.” “One thing I’ll say about the different tenants who dossed down in this abode of bliss, they didn’t leave much junk behind them.”

  “Swept, if not garnished,” murmured Macdonald. “One benefit this war has conferred on suffering humanity—it has liquidated the junk of a century. There is hardly any trifle so trifling that it is beneath contempt from a junk merchant’s point of view: papers, rags, bottles, bones, boxes… what’s the immortal tag—‘puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billets-doux…’”

  “How long ago do you reckon it is since this door was opened?” asked Reeves, studying the back door, which boasted two powerful bolts, a heavy chain and an outsize in door-keys.

  “Judging from the ivy on the outside, not for two growing seasons at least,” said Macdonald. “Whoever came into this house entered by the front door and went out by the same way.”

  “In other words, possessed a latch-key,” said Reeves.

  “Not necessarily,” replied Macdonald. “They might have been admitted by another party, or found the front door open. Well, having seen the complete exhibition—one period residence, mainly unfurnished—would you like to hazard a guess at the present whereabouts of Mr. Folliner’s fortune?”

  Reeves turned and studied Macdonald’s non-committal countenance.

  “I’ve made my guess,” he replied. “Meantime, I’d like to get busy on Mr. Stort. I want to know why his lady friend mucked up those wall paintings.”

  “All right. Get on with it, and report if you want any help. Where do you think of starting?”

  “With the holy terror in Sedgemoor Avenue—the lady with the rake. Christmas rose you said that thing was? Always believe in showing an intelligent interest.”

  “Very sound, but don’t overdo it. Gardeners love answering questions. Good hunting!”

  Chapter Nine

  I


  When Reeves had left him, Macdonald did a little quick thinking regarding his own time-table, and came to the conclusion he had an hour or two to spare which he could devote to the matter of Listelle. Reeves was on the same trail, though Stort was his immediate quarry. Macdonald thought that there might be a chance—admittedly a remote chance—that if Stort and Listelle had come back to the neighbourhood of the studio, the latter might have paid a visit to his old haunt at the Green Dragon. It had happened more than once in Macdonald’s experience that a “wanted” man, suspected of having returned to his own neighbourhood, had dropped in for a drink at a familiar pub. The temptation to do so seemed irresistible in certain cases, as though the old habit of “dropping in for another” had overcome caution. Enquiries had already been made at The Spotted Dog, nearer at hand, but without result.

  The middle of the afternoon is not a good time for approaching a public-house with the idea of acquiring information, but Macdonald, having made his way to the High Street and found the little alleyway where the Green Dragon was situated, went to the side door of the house and rang the bell. The door was opened by a stout, cheery-faced, grey-haired lady, dressed in a “period” gown of black satin, her vast bosom embellished with gold chains, locket and a huge cameo brooch. Her grey hair was dressed over pads and secured by diamond-studded combs, and her whole appearance was perfect in its consistency. She was a picture of the early nineteen-hundreds, and Macdonald liked her at sight. Before he could speak, she addressed him reproachfully.

  “Nothing doing, dearie. I’ve told you so before. It’s no manner of use you coming worrying me. You’ve got to take your turn in hours like all the rest.”

  “Quite right, but I haven’t come to worry you about that,” said Macdonald cheerfully, and she replied,

  “Lor’! You’re not the boy I took you for. They’re always on to me. Silly, I call it, and it does get my goat when they come worrying at the side door. You’ll get me into trouble, I tell ’em—it’s an old joke, but none the worse for that. Now what is it you want, dearie?”