Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery

by E. C. R. Lorac

  Mackellon nodded. “Yes, I follow that idea all right; though I should never have tumbled to it because the weights of the grandfather clock were missing.”

  “Neither did I, not in that way,” replied Macdonald. “Detection isn’t based on brilliant flashes of intuition—at least, mine isn’t. It’s based on a reconstruction of possibilities. If you assume that somebody has hidden something, the only thing to do is to consider every conceivable hiding place at their disposal, as though one had to hide the object oneself. Well, that clears the ground a little. Now I’m going back to the beginning, to the studio party. Bearing in mind that the latch-key could have been obtained by any member of that party on previous occasions, and that a postcard had been mentioned, the next problem was which member or members of that party could have done the dirty work. Of course there was Miss Manaton, but if she had been guilty I don’t think she would have stated that she had been outside. It wasn’t necessary for her to say so. There was no other evidence to show that she had been outside. She could have said ‘I was in the kitchen all the time, except when I was in the studio,’ and there would have been no means of disproving that statement. No. If the studio party were involved, I thought it much more probable that something much more subtle had been evolved. The situation appealed to me. Here were four men, all of them stating that they had been in the studio from 7.30 onwards in each other’s company. Now the very fact that two of those men were reliable conscientious citizens made me more than ever inquisitive. It seemed so plain that the chess players had been imported to give a feeling of confidence to the investigator: they were unimpeachable. It was a clever idea.”

  Mackellon wriggled.

  “Confound you, don’t rub it in,” he protested. “I’ve admitted that we were mugs—just plain mugs, done by a confidence trick.”

  Macdonald chuckled. “I enquired into your bona fides later, that I admit, but the situation as I saw it was this. The two of you had been playing chess. Neither of you could have left the chess-board without it being obvious to your partner, to the painter, and to the sitter. Four men conspiring together?—and four ill-assorted men at that? I thought not. Next, could the painter have absented himself for ten minutes without the chess players noticing? Again, I thought not. Bruce Manaton stood in front of that canvas, occasionally moving back to get a fresh focus, occasionally speaking to his model. He was directly in Mackellon’s line of vision. He must have been there all the time. Finally, there was Delaunier.”

  “And we assured you that Delaunier was in here the whole time,” said Cavenish.

  “No. As a matter of fact, you were both very conscientious in your evidence,” said Macdonald. “You did not pretend that you had had your eyes on Delaunier all the time: you said—and I realised that it was true—that you had been concentrating on your game. Delaunier is a chess player himself: he had played with both of you. He knew that you were players who concentrated on your game—and I know that a good game of chess can absorb the attention of the players utterly. Delaunier counted on this fact. He knew that you took no notice of him when he moved in the intervals of his posing: he also knew that you would be vaguely aware of the Cardinal’s scarlet figure sitting in that chair. Delaunier took a risk—and it came off. Once, during that sitting, he got up to stretch, moved behind the easel as though to examine the drawing, took off his scarlet robe and with Manaton’s help slipped it on the lay figure. In another moment that scarlet-clad lay figure was safely in the Spanish chair, the Cardinal’s hat upon its head. The risk had been justified: the two chess players had their eyes glued to their board, their minds intent on their game to the exclusion of all else. Probably the two players made a conscious effort to ignore the movements of the painter and his model: they were aware of the scarlet-clad figure, of the painter’s occasional comment; the sitting went on, the chess game went on. Within ten minutes—at the outside—Delaunier was back in his place. He must have felt very satisfied. He had planned carefully, and his plan had worked.”

  Cavenish sighed, but Mackellon said: “Of course I ought to kick myself round and round the room. This trick was played under our very noses, and we never tumbled to it. We just played chess.”

  Macdonald replied: “You’ve got to remember that Delaunier counted upon the qualities he knew in you two men. He knew you concentrated on your game. It was as though he knew that whatever you did, you would do it thoroughly. He chose for his witnesses two men of acknowledged integrity, thoughtful, hard-working fellows, whose habit was to concentrate on one thing at a time. You must admit that it was clever of him.”

  “Oh, clever—yes,” said Mackellon. “It’s the sort of cleverness I shall never forget.”

  “Don’t let it embitter you,” said Macdonald, “and while we are here, let us re-enact the game. Reeves is here to pose in the Cardinal’s scarlet. I will be the painter. Will you and Cavenish try to continue your game? Black to move and mate in four moves. I know that it’s impossible for you to lose yourselves in the game as you did that night, but you can keep your eyes on the board, and Cavenish can do his best to avoid being beaten in four moves. Will you try it?”

  “We will,” said Mackellon. “Check to your king, Cavenish.”

  II

  A scarlet-clad figure sat again in the high-backed chair. Macdonald stood at the easel. “Chin up: to the right a little,” he said.

  The Cardinal got up. “A rest, my friend,” he proclaimed. He moved behind the easel. Mackellon, his eyes on the board, murmured “check.” Cavenish moved his hand to interpose his knight between his king and the attacking bishop, and then hesitated. A scarlet blur moved across the platform and became part of the pattern—easel, tall chair, posing figure. The “painter” said “Further round—head up… right.”

  “Check,” murmured Mackellon again, sweeping away the knight. There was a dead silence. The “painter” stood at his easel. Mackellon bent forward over the board with a gleam in his hazel eyes, and Cavenish pondered with upraised hand as though he were in the presence of a miraculous apparition. Then, abruptly, he seized his one remaining piece, a bishop, moved it diagonally right up the board and took Mackellon’s attacking queen.

  “Damn!” said the latter abruptly. “I’m not thinking of what I’m doing. It’s…”

  “Gentlemen,” said Macdonald, “will you kindly give me your attention now.”

  Cavenish chuckled. “You’ve saved my game, Chief Inspector. For the one and only time in our acquaintance I’ve caught Mackellon napping.”

  “And what about my demonstration?” asked Macdonald.

  Ian Mackellon laughed as he looked round. Reeves was sitting in the Cardinal’s chair again, and the lay figure was on the floor behind the easel.

  “Yes,” said Mackellon. “You win, Chief Inspector. Even under those conditions I did not realise the imposture. I was aware of the movement, but it didn’t convey anything to me. So easily can one be fooled.”

  III

  Macdonald sat again beside the chess-board.

  “So you see it was quite possible, given those particular conditions. I pondered over it for a long time, and I tried to fit other pieces into the jig-saw assuming that Delaunier was the real culprit, with Bruce Manaton as accessory. There were the smeared-out portraits on the walls of number 25: These had undoubtedly been painted by Stort, the previous tenant of this studio. It seemed to me that one of those pictures might well have been a portrait of Delaunier or of Manaton, and that they had been obliterated to avoid the police seeing them and drawing conclusions from them.”

  Mackellon gave an exclamation: “But Delaunier knew Stort. I heard him say so long ago when I first knew him. I reminded him—Delaunier—of that fact when he came to see Cavenish the other evening.”

  “Did you?” said Macdonald. “You couldn’t have guessed what would be the results of that reminder. Delaunier knew, in his own heart, that Stort was a danger to him. It
was through Stort that Delaunier knew of old Folliner’s habit of counting his treasure when he was safe in bed. Your mention of Stort brought that danger closer. As soon as he had left you that evening Delaunier went and found Stort at his favourite pub, stood him enough drinks to make him half-drunk, and then went back with him to Harrow on the Metropolitan Railway. They were in an empty compartment, and when the train stopped outside the station, Delaunier opened the carriage door on the wrong side of the train, and Stort stepped out, or was pushed out, on to the live rail.”

  “Oh Lord!” said Mackellon softly. “One should never say anything…”

  “It’s not human nature not to say anything,” said Macdonald. “Don’t worry over that, it would have happened, in all probability, without your prompting. Incidentally, I wasted valuable time over tracing Listelle, only to learn later he had been killed in an air raid. I was having Delaunier watched, though he didn’t know it. He came straight back here: he probably realised that things were going awry—and the rest followed.”

  Cavenish sat looking down at the chess men. “I suppose Delaunier—and Manaton—planned it just for the money, the miser’s hoard,” he said.

  “Yes, in the main, though there’s more to it than that,” said Macdonald. “When Jenkins had finished going through old Folliner’s papers, he found records of Albert Folliner’s marriage in 1893. His wife left him not much more than a year later, taking her infant son with her. We have evidence from an old retired chemist nearby that Folliner’s son came to see his father when the son was about twenty years of age, and there are letters to the father from the son, asking for financial assistance, at the same period. The son was on the stage—and the name he had taken was André Delaunier.”

  “Full circle,” said Cavenish. “It’s a ghastly story, but one finds it difficult to be sorry for either of them, the father or the son.”

  “The actual relationship has nothing to do with the actual detection,” said Macdonald. “It was discovered after things had come to a head. The most interesting thing in the detecting part was working out the possibility of the studio party—the actual relevance of the evidence given by trustworthy witnesses. Bruce Manaton had been a drug-addict at one time, the associate of other degenerates. His sister saved him from going under completely, and tried to pull him up and keep him going, but he was an embittered and disappointed man. Delaunier was also unsuccessful in his profession, and he made one last desperate throw to try to obtain his father’s wealth. He worked out the scheme, and Manaton was accessory. Delaunier had a key of the house: he went in, shot the old man, seized the contents of the cash-box, put them in a waterproof case, fastened it to the cord and let the previously arranged weights do the job of hauling the bundle into safe-keeping in the chimney. Then he came in here, resumed his scarlet trappings and his pose—and you continued to play chess.”

  “What about the sound of the shot?” asked Mackellon.

  Macdonald laughed. “I don’t know. I never believed that anyone in here noticed it. I know that there were fog signals being let off that night at the entrance to the tunnels. Considering that old Folliner’s room was both shuttered and curtained, I think it probable that the shot was no more noticeable than the fog signals. Delaunier’s insistence on having heard it was pre-arranged and over-acted. It drew attention to himself by insisting that he was on the stage, so to speak—in here—when the shot was heard.” Macdonald paused, and then added: “I’m not giving evidence here, and my opinion is worth no more than any other witnesses. I think it probable that Rosanne Manaton heard the shot when she was outside: she may even have heard Delaunier pass her in the dark. That was why she ran away—to avoid giving evidence. She knew that if Delaunier was involved, her brother was involved, too. When she left here that evening, she went into hiding with a friend out at Great Missenden. Fortunately her evidence isn’t necessary: Delaunier has provided enough evidence and to spare. He killed Bruce Manaton before my eyes.”

  “Thank God he did,” said Cavenish slowly. “One day Rosanne will be able to put all this horror behind her.”

  There was silence, and then Mackellon asked suddenly:

  “Did you suspect us—Cavenish and myself—of being in the plot?”

  “No, never,” replied Macdonald. “I was quite sure all the time that Delaunier had chosen you for a part, and he made no mistake in choosing his players. You were two incorruptible witnesses. With you giving evidence, he felt absolutely safe.”

  “Two honest mugs,” said Mackellon sadly, and Macdonald rose to his feet and laughed a little.

  “Have it your own way. If I’m not dreaming, your king is in check to your opponent’s bishop.” He turned to Cavenish.

  “Good luck!—and happy days in future.”

  “Thank you, very much indeed,” replied Cavenish.

  And on that note of gratitude from the older of his “incorruptible witnesses,” Macdonald left the studio.

  The end

  If you’ve enjoyed Checkmate to Murder, you won’t want to miss Fell Murder: A Lancashire Mystery, another British Library Crime Classic by E. C. R. Lorac.

  Available now from Poisoned Pen Press!