The Case of the Magic Mirror: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Carry on,” I told him.

  “She’s capable of double-crossing anybody, even her husband?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Then all this talk of sticking to him through thick and thin may be only ballyhoo?”

  “It may.”

  “And you wouldn’t regard him as being an asset to her?”

  “Well,” I said, “I hardly know how to answer that one. Taking everything into account I’d say that while his death wouldn’t be necessarily a happy release, it has certain elements of relief.”

  He grinned. “Mr. Travers, you should have been a lawyer. But I think I can confirm what you’ve just said. If I’m still here next week I think she’ll be making eyes at me. When I saw her yesterday morning she was quite flirtatious. You could almost say she knew she’d soon be a widow, but I’ll come to that later.”

  “Watch your step,” I told him. “You—young, wealthy, Hollywood influence.”

  “She may have to do the watching,” he told me enigmatically. “But here’s the theory. Sorry to’ve been so long-winded. But why shouldn’t she have been in touch with Sivley? She might have fixed him financially. She might have arranged with Rogerley—she knew Rogerley well enough in the old racing days—to help Sivley’s get-away. When you come to think of it,” he went on, “she hasn’t done so badly out of what’s happened to-day. She’s got rid of a lunatic husband and she’ll get some of Passman’s money.”

  “It’s a hell of a theory,” I said and shook my head. “I’m not cribbing at it. What I mean is, there’s a hell of a lot in it. And you say she gave you the impression yesterday of knowing something was going to happen?”

  “She sure did. When I got back here I kept saying to myself: ‘What the devil’s that woman got on her mind?’”

  “Well, chew on it a bit,” I said. “If you get any further and you think there’s any way to get proofs, then you can act without any further reference to me.”

  I had got up to go, but he followed me to the door, hand on knob. “Just one other thing, Mr. Travers. If my theory’s correct, then we get an explanation of one thing that’s puzzled us both—what her idea was in dragging you into all this.”

  “And what was it?” I cut in at once.

  “To get you ultimately to be on the spot when her husband was killed. To prove she could have had nothing to do with it, or with killing Passman. To be able to faint and act the distracted wife, so that you’d be in a position to testify if she ever needed your testimony.”

  I had to give a sideways nod, and then was polishing my glasses. “I don’t know that you’re not right. There may be gaps in the whole theory but there’s a devil of a lot of sound spots.”

  We more or less left things at that. I paid my bill and he saw me into the car and I said that on the Monday I might be down again. I added speciously that I was in need of a few days’ rest.

  It was not till an hour later that I remembered something that Wharton’s arrival and Frank’s theory had made me forget—that I’d intended to go to the Manor and hear what it was that Matthews had so secretively wanted to tell me.

  I slept till late on the Sunday morning for I had reached home in the early hours, and dog-tired. From the first moment of waking I had a curious revulsion of feeling. On the Saturday I had been too close to the actual murders. In seeing the corpses, you might say, I had forgotten the men, but now I couldn’t help thinking of both Rupert Craigne and Joe Passman as I’d known them.

  For Joe I had always had a sneaking regard, and even his little weaknesses were amiable. Rupert I recalled with less kindly feelings. There was nothing about Rupert Craigne of which I could think with anything even remotely resembling a chuckle. One thing only I recalled, and there the laugh was against him. He was junior to me at Halstead and I heard the story second-hand. In a German lesson was a fellow called Greenhill, who was a deadly shot with a pellet of chewed blotting-paper propelled with the tongue from a rolled paper. He plugged one at the back of Rupert’s neck but at that very second Rupert had one of his twitching fits and caught the pellet in his open mouth. In a moment he was spluttering, to the vast annoyance of the master, who promptly gave him a slab of Goethe to commit to memory. It was curious that in a subsequent lesson Greenhill, who had flourished unsuspected for months, should have been caught out by the same master, who was both bat-eyed and deaf, and it was always suspected that Rupert had ratted. There in embryo, was the man who had ratted on Sivley.

  A strange world, I thought, that Rupert, Frank, and myself should all three have been at Halstead, and what divergent ways we had trodden. Then in the midst of those philosophic musings. Palmer brought in the papers. My own two were too heavy to give the goriest details about the murders, so I borrowed Palmer’s couple of papers, for he is always partial to the what-the-butler saw type of Sunday reading.

  About the actual murders there was nothing that I didn’t know. But there was news about Sivley besides his photograph. The police had traced him to Ipswich and from there he had been seen proceeding in the direction of Trimport, the road to which branches off from the Felixstowe Road. It was supposed that he had lain doggo at Trimport till the morning of the murder.

  Two things struck me at once, and to one I have already referred. Why did Sivley lie doggo at Trimport when nobody, not even Charlotte Craigne, knew that Rupert would be at Trimport till the Saturday! The answer seemed a startling confirmation of Frank Tarling’s theory. Charlotte had been in touch with Sivley, and in closer touch with Rupert than she had made out. She had doubled-crossed Rupert and had dropped a hint to Sivley. It needn’t have been anything so fantastic as an injunction to murder and the means with which to commit it. All it need have been was something like this. “I’m sure, if you see Mr. Craigne personally, Sivley, he can clear everything up satisfactorily and remove any misunderstandings. I don’t want it known, but I may say in strict confidence that he’ll be at Trimport on Saturday morning.”

  I had a twinge of conscience when I worked that out, because I knew it was my duty to mention it at least to Wharton. But how could I mention that without revealing much of the murky past and the real reason for insinuating myself into the Craigne affairs? As for the second thing that puzzled me about Sivley, it was this. What of the weapon—almost certainly a rifle—which he had used at Trimport? Even the smallest rifle, unless it is stripped, is an awkward thing to carry about. And, as I worked it out, Sivley didn’t carry it off with him. He had abandoned it and set off at once on his motorbike to finish the job, and Passman. And for Joe he had used a different weapon and one easy to carry. Then why had not the police found the rifle where Sivley had abandoned it? This was something I could ask Wharton. Even if the police had found the rifle and were keeping it dark for inscrutable reasons, Wharton might tell me what those reasons were.

  I settled down to work that day and by evening realised that if I put in as good a day on Monday, the job would be over. There was nothing on the wireless about the twin murders, so I rang up Frank at Brazenoak.

  “Anything new your end?” I asked him.

  “Nothing much,” he said. “I’m pretty friendly with your pal W, if that interests you, but I daren’t try picking his brains.”

  “You saw the papers, about Sivley at Trimport?”

  “On the way to Trimport,” he corrected me. “Smith had that before the police did. Smith has the trail to within five miles of Trimport, and he can’t pick it up. Neither can the police.”

  “Be a good fellow,” I said, “and type a brief report for Queenie. We must justify your existence. Tell her what’s been about Sivley, add any old yarn for overweight, and get it posted at Ipswich or near. And for God’s sake don’t sign it with the wrong name.”

  He said he’d get it done at once and posted before midnight. I said I’d be down for lunch on the Tuesday unless anything unforeseen happened.

  So much for the Sunday. There was nothing in the morning papers about Sivley’s movements, and so Wharton’
s prophecy of a Sunday arrest had been too optimistic. I wondered if he’d as yet thought of the Rogerley end, for there was no mention of Rogerley in the papers either, not that there was any reason why there should have been. The evening papers had nothing new, unless one counts as new the fact that Rupert Craigne’s body had not yet been recovered.

  By dinner-time my job was finished and I could lie back with a sigh of relief. After the meal I thought it might be as well if I rang Charlotte.

  “Darling, I expected you down.” That was her gambit and it was an aggressive one.

  “Just couldn’t find time,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, though. But understand this,” I went on in a bellicose tone, “if my job hadn’t been finished, I shouldn’t have been down then.”

  That somewhat cheap and cowardly defiance was effective, for her tone altered at once.

  “But darling, I thought we understood that; I mean, about your work. But you must lunch with me here.”

  “Sorry, but I shan’t be down in time.”

  “Then you’ll miss poor Joe’s funeral,” she told me accusingly.

  “The papers said it was on Wednesday!” I said, suspecting some new trap.

  “That was all eye wash, darling, just to keep the curiosity-mongers away. It will actually be a very simple service. Poor darling, he wished to be buried in the grounds here.”

  “Well, I’ll see you to-morrow sometime,” I concluded. She must have heard the finality in my voice for she was cutting in at once.

  “Don’t hang up, darling. I’ve heaps of things to tell you yet. About Harold. I had a report by the evening post. My dear, he’s most thrillingly clever, but I’ve decided to change my mind after all. I think I’ll drop the whole thing.”

  “Sack him, in other words, and pay him off.”

  “Crude, darling, but that’s what I mean. Thank him most frightfully, of course. And the other thing, darling. It’s simply too mysterious. Matthews has gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Darling, how obtuse you are sometimes! Gone. Disappeared. Simply walked out of the house.”

  “Good Lord!” I said.

  “So you see, darling, I was right when I said you should have been here all the time in case anything happened.”

  “Have you mentioned it to the police?” I asked.

  “I’m sick to death of the police,” she said peevishly. “The whole house has been overrun with police. Litters of them, my dear, like ferrets. But really, darling, Matthews isn’t a case for the police. But I’ll explain when I see you.”

  That was that and quite enough it was. That there was something uncommonly fishy about the disappearance of Matthews I felt in my bones from the first words she had said, and perhaps the reason why I felt that shiver of suspicion was because of yet another suspicion, and one far more vital.

  Charlotte had called off her private tec., and after receiving a report that he was hot on the trail of Sivley. That could mean only one thing, that the last thing she wanted was to have Sivley caught. And if that wasn’t further confirmation of Frank’s startling theory, then, to use his own words, I was no more than a crooner—and my worst enemy would hardly call me that.

  CHAPTER VIII

  CONFIRMATIONS

  I drove straight to the manor and timed my arrival for three o’clock. By then, I thought, any funeral guests would have departed and on the other hand it would be too early for me to be asked to tea. There were no signs of the police and a couple of gardeners were going over the side verges of the drive with a motor mower.

  A parlourmaid admitted me, and she said she thought Mrs. Craigne was in the gardens. I said I’d find her, and then Mrs. Day happened to appear and I asked her about Matthews.

  “It’s a mystery, sir, and none of us can understand it,” she said.

  “Anything strange about him on the Sunday, before he left?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t himself all the afternoon and evening,” she said, and seeing a certain look come over my face; “No, it wasn’t the master, sir, though I must say he got really worried when we had the news about Mr. Craigne.”

  “What was Matthews like? Just uneasy?”

  “As though he had something on his mind,” she said mysteriously. “Like a cat on hot bricks, as they say. It was just as if he couldn’t rest or settle to anything. Gave us all the miserables, he did. But there you are, sir; he wasn’t the sort you could say anything to.”

  “Has he any relatives?”

  “Only a sister”, she said. “She’s a widow and has a little shop at Bury St. Edmunds. A fancy shop it is, right against the Abbey.”

  Through the hall window I caught sight of Charlotte coming towards the house, so I went to meet her. There were cushions on one of the stone seats in the rose garden, so we sat there. At once I was asking about Matthews. From what Mrs. Day had told me I was more than ever sure that what he had meant to tell me was something not only secret but damnably important.

  “My dear, isn’t it too mysterious for words!” Charlotte said. She was still in decorous black, though the dress had certain frilly features that were not too funereal. Then she was taking a note from the black and white bag she’d been carrying under her arm. “I actually found this stuck in the mirror of my dressing-table.”

  MISS CHARLOTTE MADAM,

  “I regret I must go away for a few days on urgent private business, and I’m very sorry I could not let you know as I have only just realised that I must go at once. A friend is waiting for me and I cannot find you to let you know. I take the liberty of leaving this. Mrs. Day knows what to do and it will be as if I am having my holiday.

  “Yours respectfully,

  “WM. MATTHEWS.”

  “It reads just like old Matthews,” I said. “But how’s it come to be typed?”

  “There’s a portable in the study we all use,” she said. “It’s used for all sorts of things. Typing menus and so on. But the signature’s his. I know it by various notices he puts up in the servants’ hall, about alterations in meal-times and so on, or visitors, or special orders. And I know why he typed it. He was so upset generally that he couldn’t trust himself to write. Mrs. Day says he gave them all the willies.”

  “What’d he take with him?”

  “Darling, are you conducting an inquiry?”

  I stared. “But I thought you wanted me to help you?”

  “Perhaps I did—then. Now I think it was just ridiculous of me to worry, I expect he’ll be writing in a day or two.”

  “Why couldn’t he find you on Saturday night?” I persisted.

  “Well, my dear, for one thing I was closeted in the study with a perfect darling of a policeman. Warburton, or some name like that. Then the Venter person wanted a statement from me, as if I were in a police court. After that I literally hid myself in the lower terrace garden and I didn’t emerge till long after dark. It was lovely there in the cool.” She took a cigarette from her case and leaned forward for my lighter. “Then I went up to bed and there was the note. Nobody knew a thing, except Angela—she’s the younger parlourmaid—who said she saw him going across the back lawn and making for the drive. Oh, and carrying a small bag and wearing a raincoat. That was about nine or half-past.”

  Then she was getting up and saying I must see poor Joe’s grave. It was under the cypresses in the lower garden, overlooking the valley, but while we were walking there I wasn’t thinking about Joe. It was Matthews who worried me. About the whole business there was something remarkably curious, and it seemed to me that I was to blame. If I’d seen Matthews that evening when he was so anxious to speak to me, then whatever had happened wouldn’t have happened. That’s how vaguely I felt about things, though one fact did give colour to my fears. Charlotte had talked too much to me about Matthews. She’d tried to explain things, or explain them away, and yet there never was a person more utterly contemptuous of reasons.

  I don’t think I’d have trusted myself as to what I might have said or done if she’d struck a wrong n
ote while we were standing by Joe’s grave. By luck she selected the right mood and she manipulated it well.

  “A lovely spot, isn’t it. Anybody could lie quietly here.”

  It was a lovely spot, not only for the beauty that lay around it, for the open valley to the south was lovelier still with the green of trees and the snug red of a farm or two and the haze of distant blue among the far elms.

  “There’s to be a stone surround, and flowers,” she was going on. “Heaps of daffodils in the spring. Poor Joe was very fond of daffodils.”

  The poor Joe grated after what I knew, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask what she’d made out of the murder. Then I put it a different way.

  “What relatives are there?”

  There were two nephews, she said; sons of Joe’s only and younger sister. He had helped with their education when the parents were killed in an air raid in the last war, and now they were in Ceylon.

  “Passman’s Celebrated Tea,” she said with a suspicion of a sneer. “Surely, darling, you’ve seen it advertised. Well, they’re in charge of it. Quite worthy people. One of them was here about two years ago. On leave I suppose you’d call it.”

  “One of them gets this place?”

  “The elder,” she said. “And quite right too, I suppose, even if it was ours for hundreds of years.”

  “And you?” I asked, as we turned back to the house.

  “I get fifty thousand cash, darling, and free of tax. And my pick of the cars. And I must tell you this. An annuity of a thousand a year provided I don’t cohabit with Rupert. Poor Joe! He couldn’t possibly have foreseen . . .” She hesitated as if that train of thought might involve her in difficulties, then went off at right angles. “What a queer word—cohabit. I suppose you and I actually cohabited, darling? I forgot to say that of course there’s heaps of charitable bequests.”

  “And so you’re a wealthy woman,” I said with as near to a sneer is I dared venture.