The Case of the Magic Mirror: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “But why?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what you’re paying to find out.”

  I glanced up at the clock. My dinner hour had long since gone, so I rang for Palmer to fetch us two of the service meals and some more beer. We went on talking till the meal was ready, and we talked all the way through it.

  “Would you let me take a liberty?” he asked, “You’re an older man than I, Mr. Travers, and you’re an older hand at this game than I am. But your official cases aren’t concerned with yourself, if I may say so. If you sum my job up, it’s to protect your interests.”

  “Granted.”

  “Then I think that Charlotte Craigne’s the most important factor. It’s her side that’s dangerous. That’s why I’d like you to fall in with every suggestion she makes to you, provided, of course, it doesn’t compromise you in any way.”

  “I get you,” I said. “Every new suggestion she makes will be part of the main scheme. A new clue to what her real object is. I use my own wits and I also report to you.”

  “That’s great.” he said, and grinned. “You and I are going to enjoy all this, Mr. Travers.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I told him fervently.

  Then he asked what kind of reports I’d like—detailed, or just the hard facts. I said I’d like them detailed. Two heads were always better than one and, though I very much doubted it, there was just the chance that I might read into his reports some vital clue that had been missed.

  “You’re dead right, Mr. Travers,” he said. “Also, I take it you’d like two sets of reports: one for your private eye and the other to send on to the lady.”

  “A capital idea,” I said. “Her report can be as bare as you like and it needn’t necessarily be true.”

  “I’m going to enjoy this case,” he told me with another grin.

  “What’s more,” I said, “I’m taking good care of it she doesn’t come into contact with you. I’m going to do a bit of useful lying for once. What we’re handling, at least from my point of view, isn’t dynamite; it’s fulminate of mercury. One scratch and up she goes.”

  Well, we concocted a kind of code. Tarling was to be alluded to as Harold, for instance, and Passman was to be The Professor. I was to be Uncle Tom, but all those aliases were only for Charlotte’s reports, as mine were unlikely to fall into the wrong hands. After that we went to the garage in Long Acre where I kept my car. Charlotte, or Rupert, or both, would make no bones about watching my flat, so if it was urgently necessary, Tarling and I would meet at the garage. Charlie Cross, the manager, was there, and he said it’d be okay by him, and for me to receive letters care of his office. When I asked if I might use the telephone he told me to go ahead.

  “You stand by and listen,” I told Tarling. “The lady mayn’t be at home and on the other hand she may.”

  She was at home, and apparently alone, for she talked freely.

  “I’ve got your man for you, Lotta,” I said. “Oh, yes, he’s absolutely first-class, and incredibly discreet . . . No, I think it best for all concerned if you don’t see him. You know what we agreed and we can’t have him confused with two sets of instructions. What’s he like? My dear, you couldn’t miss him. The sort of sleuth you see on the films. About forty-five, hatchet-faced, piercing eyes—absolutely Sherlocky, in fact. And if you see him sleuthing about, for the love of heaven don’t recognise him.”

  “Something I’ve thought of, darling,” she said, and I was motioning to Tarling to get his ear up close.

  “I think you should run down to Brazenoak and see Joe. We’re going back together to-morrow evening. Have you a good excuse or shall we compose one now?”

  “I’ll find an excuse,” I said. “Leave that to me, and if I do turn up, don’t for the love of heaven fail to look surprised. But that isn’t the point. Why should I have to see Joe?”

  “My dear, what a question. Surely if you talk to him. . . . Don’t be silly, darling. I know you can’t mention certain matters. But you’re so frightfully clever that he’s bound to give himself away over something or other. . . . Oh, about lunch-time, I think. There’s a cricket week at Trimport, and he’ll love to spend his afternoons there.”

  That was the gist of the conversation. When I hung up I asked Tarling what impressions he’d had of her.

  “She sounds a mighty attractive dame to me, Mr. Travers;” he said, and, curiously enough, he said it soberly. “But that Trimport she was talking about. I only got back from the States in the fall, so I’m rather rusty about things. Isn’t it that swagger bathing resort in Suffolk?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “It’s the haunt of the theatrical and stockbroking fraternities. The men are down principally at week-ends and holidays. They’re the kind you meet in the compartment of a golf train. As for the women, you’ll hear more ‘Darlings!’ on Trimport beach to the acre than in any other square mile in the country.”

  “You don’t like the set.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I hate snobbism and cheap display and loud women and complacent men. Perhaps that makes me a snob too. But there’s something you might like. What about a rough map of the country down there? You can make a better map of your own later on.”

  He said that’d be the very thing, so I drew it on a piece of Charlie’s notepaper.

  “Gadsford’s where the swindle was worked,” I said, “and where Craigne had a country cottage. He also used to have a house at Trimport, in his affluent days. The distances are in miles, but the roads aren’t main ones. They’re only minor roads or lanes for the most part. Chelmsford, as you know, is in Essex, farther south. The trial was held there and not at, say, Ipswich, because the Assizes there happened to fit in.”

  There was just time for a quick one in the private bar of the Golden Eagle, in Mattley Street. He insisted on standing the drinks, which wouldn’t appear on the expense account, and we drank to the success of the enterprise.

  When we said a final good-night I was calling him Frank.

  CHAPTER IV

  PASSMAN AT HOME

  The following day was a Sunday, and as I had been working very heavily for some days compiling a financial report for a certain corporation, I decided to take things easy. But though I lolled over newspapers and crosswords, the day was about as uneasy mentally as it possibly could be, for at intervals I would keep thinking of that conclusion at which Frank and myself had both confidently arrived, that Charlotte and Rupert were working on a co-ordinated plan, and that I was to play a considerable, though as yet wholly undisclosed part in their scheme.

  It is not a comfortable feeling to know that two people of the Craigne sort are working behind your back.

  Then there was Bernice. I claim no special marital virtues but I would have fought like a tiger if her peace of mind was to be threatened, and Charlotte’s threat was directed against us both. Above all I writhed when I thought of the sheer insolence of the blackmailing business, and the flippant coolness with which Charlotte had broached it.

  That was why I was quite a different man when I started off for Brazenoak early the next morning, for I was doing something at last, and the day might bring all sorts of disclosures and reliefs. I drove to Ipswich first, by the way, and saw a man whom I need not necessarily have seen, but that call gave me a good excuse for calling on Joe Passman. So well did I time things that the clock on the stable tower of the manor was striking twelve as I parked the car in the shade of the trees.

  Brazenoak Manor was a sprawling timbered house that had once been surrounded by a moat. Some of this had been reopened for a lily-pond and the rest narrowed to a trickle of water between deep sloping banks that in spring were smothered with polyanthuses, and now were gay with blue and yellow irises. Fine elms bordered the quarter of a mile of drive, and the beauty of the place could make a stranger gasp at any season of the year.

  In the old Colonel’s time the gardens, had had the beauty of untidiness, but Joe’s money had been lavishly poured and whenever a weed now d
ared to appear, one of a dozen gardeners would pounce on it. Matthews, who had been butler in the old days, seemed glad to see me, and while we were having a word or two, Joe appeared. Stick a thimble on the stalk end of a fat pear and two short matches in its base and you have his figure. When I first knew him, in his climbing days, he wore a goatee, but for some years he had been clean-shaven. I don’t know why he was always so respectful to me, for he had never made any money out of me and was unlikely to, but I was always respectful to him because he loved respect for one thing, but principally because he had once represented big interests of which I might at any time wish to make use.

  “Ah, Mr. Travers,” he said heartily, and was coming on with outstretched hand. “How are you, sir.”

  “Very well, Mr. Passman,” I said, and took the soft, clammy hand. “You’re looking uncommonly well too.”

  “Joe’s good for a few years yet,” he told me with a chuckle. “But come along in, sir. Have, some sherry. I’ve got some fine stuff. Hollis’s best. Matthews! Matthews! Where the devil’s the man got to. You’ll stay to lunch, Mr. Travers? Duck and green peas, and a drop of good stuff.”

  Little boastings like that were Joe’s speciality, amusing but making him in a way rather likeable, that is if you knew what lay behind them. There was in them always the perpetual wonder that he, who had left school at ten to work as an errand boy, should not only own the best but have had the discrimination to buy it. I should tell you, too, that though most of his business interests had been in the North, he was a Londoner by birth, and his accent was cockney-cum-Yorkshire.

  We went to his study, where he always spent his mornings reading the financial papers and writing his own letters. It was a corner room with french windows opening south and east, and had the most glorious view across the valley. I had a sherry and it was as good as Joe had claimed. Then I broached my business. Was he inclined to part with certain shares he held? A friend of mine wanted them for sentimental reasons, but none had come on the market. Joe found me a paragraph in that morning’s Financial Times referring hopefully to those same shares, and I felt a bit of a fool, for I still don’t think he believed me when I assured him I’d had no time to read the papers. However, he said he’d think the matter over and let me know.

  Lunch was at one, and as it was five minutes to, Joe escorted me to a new downstair cloak-room he’d had installed. The way was along a short corridor and I particularly want you to get the lie of it into your head. Imagine it as a rake with three teeth. One tooth emerged from the study. Half-way along, a tooth went backwards to kitchens and servants’ quarters, and at the far end the third tooth entered the dining-room. The new cloak-room lay half-way along the first two teeth I have mentioned, and the corridor was lighted by windows at each end, though the light on a dull day would have been pretty dim.

  No sooner had I stepped into the corridor than among the sporting and other prints on the walls I noticed the most perfect Adam mirror I’ve ever seen. It was a handy size, and quality was in every inch of it. I was attracted by it not only because I am a collector in a small way but because Bernice had been looking for a period mirror, and I had promised to keep my eyes open.

  Now collectors are cunning people, and I was dealing with a remarkably astute individual, so I pretended to be interested in a print.

  “Rather nice, this,” I said, and polished my horn-rims for a closer look.

  Joe peered at it. “What’s it worth?”

  “A ten-pun note,” I said, and then appeared suddenly to become aware of the mirror. “That’s a nice little mirror. My wife could do with one like that. She wanted to buy one the other day.”

  “What’s it worth?” fired Joe again.

  “A fiver,” I said, and shrugged my shoulders.

  “Make it ten and it’s yours,” Joe snapped at once.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I’ll think it over.” Then I was moving on, for though that mirror was worth forty guineas, I knew Joe was a man of his word. At any time I could have it for ten pounds, and some day I certainly would have it, and before Bernice returned. Meanwhile it should be an excellent excuse for another visit.

  While we were having a wash I put a question as off-handedly as I could.

  “How’s that extraordinary stepson of yours these days? He hasn’t pestered you at all?”

  “He’s a bloody scoundrel!” Joe told me, and glared. Then he was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Travers, but I can’t bear to hear that blackguard’s name mentioned. What do you think of him?”

  “As little as I can,” I said, trying to make a joke. “I wouldn’t let him get on your nerves. He isn’t worth it.”

  “Let him get in my way and I’ll crush him like that.” He closed the fingers of his threatening fist. Then his voice lowered. “You know Charlotte? My stepdaughter?”

  “I do know her,” I said. “My wife knows her better. How’s she taking all these antics of his?”

  “On the whole, very well,” he said. “She’s got sense, that girl. But he’s a cunning scoundrel, Mr. Travers. And a plausible one.”

  Charlotte was already in the dining-room. When I appeared she showed a superb surprise.

  “Well, if it isn’t Ludovic Travers! It must be years since I saw you.”

  “Unhappily, yes,” I said gallantly.

  “Mr. Travers will sit there, Matthews,” she said. “I like people to be opposite me when I talk.”

  “What’s that smell?” Joe said, and sniffed. “It’s those damn pinks again. Makes the place smell like a pickle factory. Close that damn door, Matthews.”

  Charlotte and I prattled through most of that meal. Joe was what I’d call an attentive eater, and rarely made a remark, though I do remember that when we were wading into duckling and green peas, he remarked with a wink: “Not bad stuff, this—eh?”

  “Isn’t he quaint?” Charlotte said, and when Joe bridled, leaned across and patted his cheek endearingly. “Joe’s a darling, and he’s going to be the sole comfort of my old age. Aren’t you, precious?”

  “Damnation,” said Joe angrily. “I wish you wouldn’t call me Joe in public. No respect nowadays, Mr. Travers. It’s bad in front of the servants.”

  “You and I have got used to that sort of thing, Mr. Passman,” I said tactfully. “All standards are different from what they were in our young days.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  “Now, darling, get on with your lunch,” Charlotte told him maternally, and then to me: “Talking of servants, you’d never guess who’s Joe’s new chauffeur.”

  Joe froze stiff, knife and fork in the air, but before he could speak she was going on.

  “So generous of him, and such a kind heart. It’s Harper, who was in that dreadful business with poor Rupert.”

  There was such a husky sadness in her voice that Joe stared, open-mouthed. He scowled, shook his head, and the fork went to his mouth.

  “What if I do choose to be generous? Whose business is it but mine?”

  “Nobody’s, of course, darling.” She patted his cheek again. “But it’s very awkward for me. Here am I, trying so hard to forget poor Rupert, and remembering him every time I see Harper.”

  Joe growled an inaudible something. But there was no indication so far as I could see during that meal that he was afraid of her in the way she had suggested at the restaurant that night. His only fear, and the chief bond of his attachment, was that she represented a class into which he had once hoped to insinuate himself. She gave a distinction to that highly expensive establishment, and she was value for money. Also I do think Joe, in some curious way, had a furtive but very considerable affection for her.

  After the meal she disappeared, but she had warned me that Joe always took a brief nap after lunch, and that at two-thirty the Rolls was ordered for Trimport. Joe told me he loved watching cricket, though the Trimport week would be gutless stuff compared with the Yorkshire League games he had generally contrived to watch on a Saturday afternoon. Charlotte wasn�
��t accompanying him and he asked me to make a day of it and come back with him for dinner. I pleaded pressure of work, and in any case I wouldn’t keep him from his nap. He walked with me to where I had left my car and we had a very friendly parting. I couldn’t help smiling at his final remark.

  “You oughtn’t to drive a car and smoke a cigar like that. Three and six apiece they cost me.”

  “And worth every inch of it,” I told him as I waved a cheery hand in farewell, and he called after me that he might change his mind about those shares after all.

  I drove slowly along the drive, drawing on the last third of Joe’s magnificent cigar and craning my neck to see the last of the gardens. As I turned into the leafy lane there was a sudden flash of colour and there was Charlotte coming from the shadow of the trees to the edge of the grass verge. As I slowed down she was opening the door, and in a moment was seated alongside me.

  “Am I not a lovely surprise for you, darling?” she asked me with a gay impudence.

  “Both lovely and a surprise,” I told her flatteringly. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you looking better. That frock thing suits you.”

  For once she said nothing, at least about that. What she did tell me was to drive a couple of hundred yards on to where I could draw under some trees, though in any case she’d have to hurry back and see Joe off to Trimport. Then she was asking me anxiously if I’d learned anything. I said I’d picked up one or two things, but I’d rather not mention them till I saw just where they led. I did say that Joe was very bitter against Rupert and she had better be careful if she was double-crossing him and seeing Rupert secretly.

  “My dear, as if I should!” she said indignantly. “All the same I did manage to get in touch with him yesterday. I can’t tell you how, but I did. The poor darling’s simply in despair. What do you think? Joe’s made him an offer of a lump sum if he’ll give me grounds for divorce! Poor Rupert was practically in tears. He actually said it might be better if he dropped out.” She smiled. “I cheered him up. I mean, I hope I did. Poor darling, he was so dreadfully down. And, you see, I could only hint at a big surprise. And it will be a big surprise, won’t it, darling?”