The Case of the Magic Mirror: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Oh, but I’ve learned my lesson, darling. I’ve changed my mind about everything. I’m not staying here, though of course I could for quite a time. The executors were charming about that. No,” she said, all at once the woman of affairs, “I shall go to town and live very quietly and then I shall be going to Hollywood with that delightful Mr. Franks. I think he’s quite taken with me, darling.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. She was bending artistically over a rose, and the pose would have enchanted Marcus Stone.

  “That will be in the autumn?” I asked ironically.

  “The fall, darling. That’s the expression. I never could quite understand what falls. Perhaps it’s the leaves. But I shall be coming back here every now and again. I promised I’d keep an eye on the house, and, of course, there’s Joe’s grave. And poor Rupert’s body may be found in spite of what they say.”

  “What about our boy? Taking him with you?”

  I just had to say that. At the startled look that she flashed at me, I repented of it, but in a second she’d recovered her poise.

  “How sweet of you, darling, to ask that! And too paternal!” A dreamy look round and then she was shaking her head. “Fond as I really am of him, I couldn’t take him with me. The resemblance is too startling.”

  “I thought it was I he resembled.”

  “He does, darling. It’s a kind of shot-silk effect. At one moment he’s the very image of you, and then it’s me. In the photograph it’s you he resembled, darling.” A sigh. “Poor Bernice! Wouldn’t it have been too devastating a shock. But here we are, darling. Just in time for tea.”

  “I really won’t stay,” I said. “Haven’t booked a room yet, and heaps of things to do. When do you go to town, by the way?”

  “Probably to-morrow, darling. Not later than the day after.”

  She insisted on putting a carnation in a lapel of my coat. I didn’t catch her last words as I drove off, but I think they were something solicitous for my welfare at the Oak. I remember that as soon as I was through the gates I ripped out that damned carnation and threw it to blazes. That eased my mind a bit. I could even smile as I substituted her shoulders for the carnation, and I was shaking the innards out of her, or gripping her down on my knee and the same fingers tingling from the welting I’d given to her flaunting backside.

  As I entered the front door of the Oak I caught sight of Wharton. His antiquated spectacles were perched on his nose and with the bundle of letters he was carrying to the outside letter-box he looked just like a commercial traveller who has succeeded in making up his week-end accounts. I booked my room and waited for him in the lobby.

  “You here again?” was his greeting.

  I told him I’d promised Mrs. Craigne to run down in case she needed any help, which she now didn’t. I also said that since I was in Brazenoak I was going to have a few days’ holiday.

  “I’m due back to-night,” George said. “One little job to do and I’ll probably push off at once.”

  “Have tea with me,” I said, and promptly gave Mrs. Porter the order. “And where’s Mr. Franks?” I said. “He might like to join us.”

  “He’s gone into Ipswich with his car,” she said. “There’s a picture on that he wanted to see. He said he’d be back to dinner, though.”

  “I told him he ought to have dinner at the White Horse,” George cut in. “A bit of Dickens atmosphere for him to take home with him.”

  George and I had tea out of doors in the pleasant shade of a pollarded elm, and the time for wasps, thank heaven, hadn’t yet come. He was quite genial, even if things hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped. Nothing whatever had been found among Joe’s papers to connect him with the swindle, and there were no mysterious counterfoils of cheques.

  “How did you get on with Mrs. Craigne?” I asked.

  “Very well indeed” George said, with heavy emphasis on each word. “I think you must have your knife into her, the way you spoke of her.”

  “Perhaps I was a bit livery,” I told him amusedly.

  “I found her what I’d call a real nice lady,” George went on. “There’s always something in the top-notchers that the parvenus can’t get.”

  “What about Sivley?” I said. “The time-table’s gone a bit wrong, hasn’t it?”

  “There may be some news soon,” he told me oracularly, and from what followed that remark I knew Frank had put him on to the Salisbury trail. “Did you know that Rogerley has been down here? Actually staying here in this very pub!”

  “No!”

  “I give you my word it’s true”, George said. “And he left on the Saturday just before I got here. Not that there was anything in that,” he added rather apologetically.

  “Good watercress this,” I said, as George reached for the last of the sandwiches.

  “They feed you well here.” The thought put him in an even better humour. “An old friend of ours is due here at five. Like to be there when I ask him a few questions?”

  “An old friend?” I asked puzzledly.

  “Harper,” he said, and I realised with something of a shock that the ex-boxer had been very much of a forgotten man.

  George hadn’t forgotten him, for he told me things that I didn’t know. For instance, when Joe first employed him, Harper was to sleep above the main garage and have his meals in the house, but Matthews and Mrs. Day organised a staff protest and Joe had to give way. Harper still slept above the cottage but got his meals at the second pub, the Lapwings. A curious name for a pub, but lapwings figured in the arms of the Vallants family.

  “He’s coming here at five because this pub won’t be open and he won’t attract attention,” George explained. “There isn’t much to ask him, but it might be as well if I had a witness.”

  Harper turned up on time. George solicitously met him in the lobby and conducted him upstairs. Harper looked even burlier, perhaps because he was not in his dark livery, and he also looked decidedly uncomfortable. He cast an uneasy look at me, for George didn’t trouble to introduce me, and for all he knew I might have been what George would call one of the Big Bugs.

  Harper was duly seated. George was at the table, and he produced those spectacles of his and carefully adjusted them. A glance at some papers and he was peering over the spectacles, and his voice was mild.

  “We shan’t keep you more than a few minutes, Mr. Harper. Just one or two little things to clear up. Everything in strict confidence of course, and”—the most benign of smiles—“no raking up the past, as they say.”

  Harper ventured on a smile.

  “The man Rogerley was staying here last week,” George began. “Did you see him at all?”

  “No, sir.” The answer was like a shot out of a gun. “Didn’t see him, sir, or speak to him.”

  “And Sivley. Did you speak to him?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t want to have no truck with either of them.”

  “Sivley didn’t interest you.”

  That wasn’t quite Harper’s language, and he cocked a questioning ear.

  “The less you had to do with him, the better,” Wharton translated.

  “That’s right, sir. It was him who got me in wrong.” He gave a quick reminiscent shake of the head. “To tell the truth, sir, I daren’t trust myself with him, and that’s a fact.”

  “The truth’s an excellent thing,” Wharton pronounced. “But just one other question. Why exactly did the late Mr. Passman take you into his service?”

  George’s brow furrowed as he peered again from over the tops of the spectacles. Harper’s answer again came like a flash.

  “I reckon he had a kind heart, sir. He told me he’d seen some of my fights and he’d won money over me. A rare generous gentleman, he was, sir.”

  George shook a sorrowful head. “You know, Mr. Harper, if you hadn’t referred so admirably to the value of truth, I’d be inclined to call you, in blunt terms, a pretty good liar.”

  Harper’s mouth gaped. Then he made as if to get to his feet. “If I was you I
wouldn’t do that, sir. No one ever called me a liar and got away with it.”

  Wharton grunted. Then he turned to me.

  “A pity, don’t you think, that Jimmy Speer didn’t call Harper a liar in the ring?”

  Harper collapsed as if punctured. George had alluded to Harper’s last fight when Speer dropped him in the fourth round.

  “But talking of liars,” George went on, his eyes on Harper again. “You went to see old Mrs. Sivley and were most anxious to know when her son would be back.”

  “She’s an old liar,” Harper burst out. “I did go round, I admit that now, but to see her about something else.” I could see from his face that he’d thought of something. “The fact of the matter is, sir, that I’m none too comfortable where I am now, and if Sivley had gone for good, then I thought she might take me in. She’s a good cook, they reckon. Then while I was there I just happened to ask after Sivley. Just manners, that’s all.”

  “Ah, well,” said George with a sigh. “I suppose there’s nothing else we want to ask Mr. Harper, is there?”

  He winked at me—the eye that was blind for Harper. I had to guess what he wanted me to do, and to this day I don’t know if I guessed right.

  “Not unless he’d care to tell us the present whereabouts of Sivley,” I said.

  Once more George was peering inquiringly at Harper. Harper was spreading his palms.

  “How should I know where he is, sir? I know no more’n Adam.”

  “But if you did, then you’d tell all you knew?”

  “I would that, sir. All he’s done is to do me out of a good job.”

  That was news to me.

  “Yes,” Wharton said reminiscently. “Mrs. Craigne told me she wasn’t keeping you on.”

  “She’s a—witch!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Wharton looked horrified.

  “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean that. It just sort of slipped out.”

  “You’d better keep a watch over your tongue, my man,” Wharton told him severely, and when Wharton liked to be severe he could make a man cower. “You can go now. I’ve finished with you,”

  Then, as Harper reached the door: “If anything should occur to you in the course of the next day or two, you can tell it to this gentleman here. But see it’s the truth. Good afternoon to you!”

  “So he’s lost his man,” I said as soon as he’d gone.

  “He’s got another,” Wharton said contemptuously. “At the Lapwings. Handy man, and they’re thinking of making his training quarters there if the Board allow him to have another fight.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Well, time I was going. I’m not like some people I know. Hogging the road at sixty miles an hour.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I told him. “I’m a thoughtful driver too. I’d hate to crawl at thirty and hold up traffic.”

  I saw him off. His last words were to be sure I remembered him to that Mr. Franks, and I was to remind him that if he was in town he would redeem that offer to show him round the Yard. If George had had the least idea of the circumstances in which he was to meet Frank Tarling in town, he’d have foamed at the mouth, fallen in a fit, and the feet of the young men would have carried him out. Isn’t that some sort of quotation, and to do with Ananias, you may ask? Well, if there’s a better Ananias than George, I’ve still to meet him, though I hope his end won’t be the same.

  It was at about half-past six when Frank came back, and Smith was with him. I gave him Wharton’s messages.

  “Gosh!” he said. “If that guy ever finds out!”

  “Has Wharton seen Smith?” I asked.

  “Never clapped an eye on him. Why’d you ask?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “And what about a tonic out here in the shade?”

  We had a couple of drinks apiece, and I told him what little I’d learned from Wharton. It was in Harper that he was most interested.

  “I think I know why Passman engaged Harper,” he said, and when I wanted to know the answer, he said if I waived my rights as employer, he’d rather keep it to himself for a bit, and test it out further.

  We ordered dinner upstairs in my room to give it a kind of christening. Smith was there, ostensibly waiting at table. It was a job he did remarkably well. Frank made him tell me the last trace he picked up of Sivley.

  “I don’t know if you know that country, sir,” Smith said, “but it’s all woods and ups and downs, just like this. About five miles from Trimport it flattens out and there’s an old brickfield or two. Outcrop of London clay, I reckon. That’s where I picked up an old fellow who told me he was coming home that night when Sivley bought the motor-bike, and as he passed a certain spot right against a side lane, he saw Sivley sitting on the bank and the bike leaning against a tree. It was dusk but the old man was sure it was Sivley. He gave him a good-night and Sivley just grunted something. The old boy’s theory was that he was waiting for the dark so as to lie rough. There was a haystack in the field opposite. He says he looked at the stack and he saw where someone had slept there. That was the next day.”

  “The last of Sivley and the last of us,” grinned Frank. “Seems I was right about Othello’s occupation.”

  “Oh, no, you weren’t,” I said, and told him about Matthews. As for the note that Matthews had left, he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with it, at least as I described it.

  “Why do you think it unusual, Mr. Travers?”

  “The whole thing’s unusual,” I said. “For one thing, I think Matthews would have said something to Mrs. Day. For another I don’t think he’d have gone before Passman’s funeral, with all the work it must have made. Then there was the hush-hush something he wanted to tell me last Saturday night”.

  “You think the letter ought to have been in his own handwriting?”

  “If you mean it was unusual for the letter to be typed, then let’s be fair,” I said. “Granted that Queenie might have typed it and forged the signature, it still remains that Matthews’s hands were very shaky that night. I doubt if he could have written a legible letter.”

  “The signature was legible?”

  “Now you’ve got me,” I admitted. “To the best of my recollection, it was just about and no more. But the main thing as far as we’re concerned is this. Why did he go? In the morning you and I are going to Bury St. Edmunds to see his sister, but I’m open to bet anything up to a fiver that she knows nothing about him.”

  “You think he knew something?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think your theory is working out right every time anything happens. I think he’d seen Queenie and Sivley, or even overheard them. Now he’s in hiding so that he can’t be questioned by the police till everything’s over. Then he’ll pop out again. And some other things that help your theory,” I went on. “Queenie’s changed her mind twice. She sacked you because presumably she doesn’t want Sivley found. I saw her this afternoon and she’s changed her mind about staying in Brazenoak, and that, mind you, after flagrantly forcing me to come here. She says she’s going to town, and only coming down here occasionally. Who wants to be in town, in this sweltering heat?”

  “I get you,” Frank said. “London’s the best place in the country to hide in. Sivley’s there and they’ll get in touch with each other.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “And let me tell you this. I was never so furious with that woman as I was this afternoon. If she’s guilty of what you and I think she is, then I’ll get her if it’s the last thing I do. I don’t give a damn for what harm she does to me.”

  There was approval in his nod.

  “She’s going to town to-morrow,” I went on. “Smith will follow her there and from then on she’ll be left neither by day or night. I don’t care how many men you have to have or what it costs me. She’s got to be watched.”

  “I’ll fix it,” Frank said. “And what about her bill to date?”

  “There’s no question of her bill,” I said, getting everything off my chest. “Everything to date is
to go to her account. If she thinks it steep, then what’s her fifty thousand for?”

  “I think you’re right, Mr. Travers,” Frank said. “Even that Austrian end was her fault, so to speak. By the way, we ought to be getting some news from there pretty soon. But we’ve a job for Smith. What about me?”

  “Two jobs for you. You’ll be here most of the time, and you’ll occasionally go to town. Here you’ll keep an eye on Harper, Rogerley—if he comes down again—and Queenie when she comes down. You’ll also let me know the minute Matthews appears again. If you can pick up anything else, all to the good. To-morrow you’ll see Queenie. Arrange to meet her in town. String her along on that Hollywood business. Get pretty close to her. By the way, she let fall that you’re pretty close now.”

  He grinned, but rather wryly. “If I weren’t engaged to a damn fine girl, I’d be sleeping with that dame inside a week.”

  “Don’t have any scruples as far as I’m concerned,” I told him.

  He grinned again, and without reservations. “Boy, oh boy, am I going to enjoy this job!”

  “Maybe you will and maybe you won’t,” I said. “It’s Queenie who may decide all that. But I’ll be keeping in touch with her in a minor way myself. All of us can compare notes at frequent intervals.”

  “What about reports from Smith? You want them regular too?”

  “I don’t want any report at all unless it’s about something really worth while,” I said. “You know what I mean, Smith?”

  Smith gave me a nod, and if one of his eyelids didn’t flicker then I’m a torch singer.

  CHAPTER IX

  END OF A PHASE

  The morning dawned clear and by nine o’clock, which was the time at which I had breakfast, the sun was comfortably warm. By midday it would almost certainly be tremendously hot, and Porter, the landlord, said there’d probably be thunder.

  “If you don’t feel like going to Bury, I can slip over myself,” Frank told me.

  “I’ve come down here for a holiday,” I said, “and a holiday I’m going to have. And we’ll go in my car, which’ll be so much petrol off the bill.”