“I couldn’t understand your references to C. C. . . . Don’t tell me that you and she were once more friendly than you made out!”
The exclamation mark, of course, was to show that while such a thing might have been possible, it was—in her wifely eyes—far from probable. I struck while the iron was hot and wrote a return letter. There was a brief report of the sensational happenings, news of which had not yet reached her in the Continental editions, and then I added my own postscript:
With regard to your postscript, I was just thinking how funny life is. Since our marriage I’ve been what one calls so much of an old stager that when you mentioned Charlotte to me that morning I didn’t think of her as a possible part of my bachelor days. By the way, she’s going to America; another case of The Ghost Goes West.
When I’d posted the letter I was feeling on quite good terms with myself. One more postscript, I told myself, and Bernice would know quite enough of one episode of my past. Perhaps I had been right after all in not making a clean breast of things at the beginning, for that might have spoilt Bernice’s holiday. Truth without tears, I told myself, and I recalled an old saying of my nurse: “A penny a time, Master Ludo, the same as they pay for pianos.”
Half an hour later I was even more on good terms with myself. The time had passed quickly enough, and I had no idea how late it was. It was actually just past seven o’clock, which was dinner-time, so after a quick freshen up I looked round for Frank. I ran him to earth in Mrs. Porter’s room where he was at the telephone. He made frantic signs for me to keep away.
I was half-way through the meal when he appeared.
“Not even a half-bottle?” he said, eyebrows raising.
I looked up at him.
“Don’t be a piker,” he said. “I’ve got something for you to celebrate.”
“The news first and the bottle later,” I told him as he sat down. “What is it? Mrs. D. let out something?”
“Mrs D.? Chicken-feed,” he said contemptuously. “Preliminary report from our man in Austria. The firm just telephoned me a résumé. Thought you’d like to have it before the full report.”
“And it’s good”
“Good?” He grinned. “Listen to this. The de Karnoviks, or whatever they call themselves, have left Austria altogether, that Hasserbruch place included. She was English and he was an Anglophile, and apparently they bolted from the Gestapo. Living in Dalmatia now, but that didn’t worry our man. He scouted round and found two of the old family servants, still living near Hasserbruch. They remembered Queenie perfectly. What’s more, the woman swore by all that’s holy that Queenie was no more in the family way than she was. She said she ought to know, because her daughter acted as Queenie’s maid, and so she’d seen her in her bath.”
I let out a breath. I couldn’t make any comment. I just smiled inanely and shook my head.
“What’s more,” Frank went on, “our man got the statement sworn out before a notary, and he’s getting the still more important one from the daughter, who’s now in service in Vienna. If that hasn’t cooked Queenie’s goose, then I’m a eunuch.”
“Great news,” I said. “I don’t know whether to feel pleased or to be blazing mad with that bloody Craigne woman. But we’ve still got to pick up her trail after she got back to England.”
He tapped his skull and gave me an even more expansive grin.
“Listen to this for service. Mrs. Day and I had a real good crack this afternoon. By the way, it was about eleven o’clock when Queenie marched downstairs with Matthews’s note. But about the other thing. There were me and Mrs. D. sitting in the study as snug as two bugs in a rug and she telling me all the family history. Then I remembered that little bit about Queenie’s return. She remembered it all right. Queenie brought Matthews a beer mug as a present and Mrs. D. an embroidered tea-cloth or something.”
He consulted his note-book. “Know any people called Scott-Fenley, or anything like it?”
“Scott-Fennerley?”
“That’s probably it,” he said. “I daren’t ask her to repeat the name and I only guessed it was double-barrelled. Bet those were the people Queenie went with after she got back from Hasserbruch. They have a big yacht apparently, and Queenie and Mrs. Scott-what’s-her-name picked it up at Marseilles. Queenie came back six weeks later.”
“The Scott-Fennerleys are the big coal people,” I said. “She’s a fast mover, like Queenie.”
“Well, you bet your life Queenie wasn’t confined on board that yacht,” Frank said. “That’s as sure as that I’m sitting here without a drink.”
“Well, you’ve earned your bottle,” I said, and looked round for Mrs. Porter. Then I changed my mind.
“Damned if I’ll buy you a drink,” I said.
“You won’t!”
“No,” I said. “But next Saturday you can take Queenie to the Ritz after all.”
II
—AND AROUND—
CHAPTER X
SHORT INTERVAL
When I look back I see that that evening was a very definite end to that part of this story in which the initiative lay in the enemy’s hands. Thereafter it passed to us, though not immediately, for we had to wait till he made a false move, or perhaps I should have said she. Also there were one or two things to clear up, and they too had a bearing on what was to happen.
Frank came into my bedroom the following morning and found me sitting up and emptying the teapot. By the way, I’d bought a bottle after all, and after that we had thought it as well to patronise the Lapwings, and it was natural that I should wake with a considerable thirst.
“Still thinking of going back to-day?” he wanted to know.
“Either just before lunch or just after,” I said. “And did we say farewell last night, or did I dream it?”
“Better draw a veil,” he said. “But I’m just off to Ipswich to pick up the Matthews trail.”
“Then you’d better put on one of your false moustaches,” I told him. “Ipswich isn’t too far away and you’re a public character.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m the original rubber-faced man. If Barnum were still alive I’d be making a fortune.” He held out his head. “Good-bye, sir. As soon as there’s anything to ring up about, I’ll let you have it.”
Before I could ask what was the idea of the sir business, he had gone. As I began dressing I heard his car move off, and as I followed it in my mind I suddenly thought of something. You know how it is when you get good news, and overnight at that. In the morning you wonder if it is so good after all. So when I suddenly thought of May Bullen, I knew I might do worse than pay her a call, for she might reinforce what Frank had picked up from Mrs. Day about Charlotte’s movements after that Austrian trip.
I kept on after breakfast, working out all the questions, and then I heard a car drive up. In a couple of minutes Venter was making for me.
“Hallo, Inspector,” I said genially. “How are you?”
“Not too bad, sir,” he told me gloomily. “Sorry to worry you, but I wondered if you could give me some information.”
“I can try,” I said, and was wondering what the devil he wanted to know.
“It’s about Matthews, that butler up at the Manor,” he said. “I got a statement from him and thought he was our star witness. Then it turned out that he wasn’t the one who last saw Mr. Passman alive. It was one of the maids. He rang for her because he found some dust on something.”
“Funny,” I said, playing for time. “I mean that his last act should have been to worry about a bit of dust.”
“Then this Matthews disappears,” he went on, ignoring my philosophising, “and there’re one or two things I want to ask him. The coroner was very decent about it, but I want him. I wondered if you had any ideas.”
“But, my dear fellow,” I protested, “why should I have any ideas? I wasn’t here for the inquest. Besides, it was all cut and dried, they tell me. Only one possible verdict.”
“It isn’t exactly that,
” he said, and apparently hardly knew where to go on. “I wondered if you had any ideas, as I said. Where he might have gone and why. I’ve been on the telephone to Mrs. Craigne again and she can’t help. She’s as mystified as everybody else. So’s everybody at the Manor.”
Well, I thought it best to tell him that I knew. Mrs. Craigne had mentioned the mystification to me, and as I had happened to be in Bury I’d called on the sister.
“I’ve been there myself,” he said, “and she told me you’d inquired. That’s what made me wonder if you knew anything. Now I see it doesn’t help,” he went on regretfully.
“All I can suggest is that you try the Isle of Wight place where he often took his holidays,” I said. “But if you’re going to ask me why he should decide at that of all moments to take French leave and go for his holiday, all I can say is I haven’t a notion.” Then a happy theory presented itself. “Unless, of course, he had brainstorm. He’s not so young and the day’s happenings might have thrown him off his balance.”
That cheered him up. He thanked me profusely and off he went, and I was hoping to heaven that Frank would have sufficiently rubber a face to leave behind in Ipswich no possible connection with the wealthy American of the Oak. Change of accent wouldn’t be enough, and if Venter found that some unauthorised person had been making inquiries, there’d be a tremendous flutter among the official dovecotes. Frank could always swing clear, but what if anything were traced to me?
The thought made me uneasy, so I got out my car at once and drove the few hundred yards to Pennygate Farm. A worn brick path led to the front door, and as I looked round I saw a movement among some red-currant bushes. Then the picker straightened herself and I guessed she was May Widger.
“Good morning,” I said, and made my way across the ruins of what had been a bed of spring cabbage.
“Good morning,” she said. “Did you want to buy some currants?”
She was a very fine figure of a woman. A few years before, when she was more in the bud stage, she must have been a real beauty, but now she was the least bit blown. There was no wonder, I thought, that Widger had married her, offspring and all.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just came along for a little gossip, but you’re busy. I’ll come some other time.”
She looked puzzled as well she might.
“Mr. Franks, the American gentleman who’s been staying at the Oak, happened to mention you,” I said. “Then I remembered you and I wondered if you remembered me. Also I saw some people the other day who were asking after you. The Scott-Fennerleys.”
She set down her basket and came out from the bushes, and she was smiling.
“Really, sir? And how is Mrs. Scott-Fennerley?”
“Very well indeed,” I said. “You’re looking well too. I never actually saw you but I used to hear Mrs. Craigne mention you in the old days.”
Suddenly her face flushed. A look that might have been called brazen came over it, but I knew afterwards that it had been a kind of heroic facing up to the fact that there were things that I must know.
“Excuse me, sir, but are you Mr. Travers?”
I nodded and smiled.
“I ought to have guessed you were,” she said, and looked away.
“Well, it’s nice to have found you looking so well,” I said. “I’ll tell Mrs. Scott-Fennerley about you. By the way, there’s something I’m wondering. Mr. Franks and I were having an argument the other night. You remember Mrs. Craigne coming back from a visit to Austria. The last one she made, not long before her marriage?”
She remembered.
“Well,” I said, “she went off again almost at once, and with the Scott-Fennerleys. A cruise in the Mediterranean, I think it was.”
At once she was confirming the whole thing. Her face coloured again as she said she wasn’t in Mrs. Craigne’s service at the time, but in Brazenoak, where she always had all the Manor news. I beamed and said that confirmation would cost Mr. Franks a half-crown. Then she was referring to the tragedies connected with the Manor, and I couldn’t help noticing that she touched very lightly on the Rupert Craigne side, and she didn’t mention Sivley. I didn’t either, for I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and I somehow felt I was being a pretty considerable sort of swine as it was.
I did ask for her husband, and she said I’d passed him on the field by the pond. He was just clearing up the last of the hay, but the season hadn’t been any too good. We smiled at each other like old friends as we shook hands. My smile was partly for myself, for it was good to know that Charlotte was now where I wanted her, even if it was hard to see for the moment just what use I could make of the initiative which now seemed to be mine.
I slowed down the car as I came to the pond field. A man and a boy were carting rakings to top the stack in the field corner, and I guessed that the man who was raking down the stack was Widger. He, too, was a fine figure, tall and with powerful shoulders, and his arms and face were burned near black by the sun. He didn’t notice me, and I shouldn’t have spoken if he had, for I had more than an idea that May would not mention my visit. What I did think of was what he had been supposed to say about Sivley, that if he turned up in Brazenoak he’d run him out. Hot air, perhaps, and yet who knew? Perhaps Sivley had left Brazenoak because Widger had threatened him. Perhaps Sivley had told himself that since he now had no home at all, he might as well fulfil his own boast and do in Craigne and Passman, and then do in himself.
For I was now of the strong opinion that Sivley had done himself in. The papers had no news of him, beyond the usual foolish rumours that he had been seen in places whose remoteness one from another made them cancel themselves out. And if he were alive, I thought to myself, remembering those shoulders and arms of Widger, then it was probably a long way from Brazenoak that Sivley was in hiding.
The morning was still young and so I decided not to stay on for lunch but to get back to town straight away, though what I should do there I had no idea. Spend a bit of time at the club again, perhaps, or watch some cricket and tennis, and I might put in a week-end with my sister. But things didn’t quite work out that way. Those were the restless days when Hitler was trying on Poland the same technique that had engulfed the Czechs. Every morning was producing a new crisis, and I for one found it impossible to settle to anything. But I did have the case to think about when I could get my mind off Hitler.
The evening after my return Frank rang up the flat. I was out but he left a message with Palmer, that he’d be seeing me at the garage at nine o’clock on what he was pleased facetiously, or diplomatically, to call St. Ritz’s Eve, which was of course the Friday. Meanwhile there was still nothing in the papers about Sivley, except an occasional mention that he was still at large. And there was nothing from Frank about Matthews. That was the really puzzling thing.
And it was the first thing Frank mentioned that Friday night. Matthews had definitely not been on that Ipswich bus; he had not taken the train from the nearest station—and he had not hired a car from any nearby village.
“Queenie must have had him in the car with her that time when Harper saw her,” he said. “She’s parked him somewhere safe.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in Brazenoak itself,” I said, and a good many days were to pass before I knew how near the truth I had been.
“Talking of Harper,” Frank said, “he and I are buddies. If I stay on, he’s going to give me lessons in boxing. And, boy, does he love Queenie!”
“We’ve got an asset in Harper if we know how to use him,” I said, and again I didn’t know how near I was to the truth.
“Oh, and another curious thing,” Frank was going on. “I dropped into the private bar the other night for my usual friendly one, and Widger was there with several of the village big shots. You remember Widger? Husband of May Bullen that was. Well, they were having an argument about Sivley and I chipped in to keep the game going. Widger was saying nothing and looking as if he was the real wise guy if only he took the trouble to open his
mouth. We went on arguing and I said Sivley might still be in Brazenoak. One man said the police were watching his mother’s cottage day and night. Either that or something else was too much for Widger and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. ‘He ain’t in this village,’ he said. ‘How do you know?’ I came at him. ‘A lot’d like to know that,’ he said. He’s a surly devil, by the way. ‘A lot’d like to know that, but you can take it from me he’ll never be seen in Brazenoak again. Nor yet anywhere else.’ I stared and we all stared. Then he finished his beer, said good night and out he went. I asked the company what he’d meant and they said—I haven’t quite got the dialect—that they reckoned he’d just been a talkin’. And what do you make of that?”
“Damn little,” I said. “If he’d been talking about Matthews I’d have been more interested.”
His face fell.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go and get a drink. And tell me the latest about Queenie.”
He said she was living just the quiet life she’d announced, and that was a fact we both found highly significant.
“All she’s been doing is making the rounds of the stores,” Frank said. “When I got in touch with Smith this evening he told me he’d seen more knicks and camisoles this week than’d stock Solomon’s harem.”
“I reckon Joe’s turning in his grave,” I said. Then I thought I’d tell him about the mirror, and over our second round of drinks I let him know the dirty trick Queenie had played.
“If she’s got the mirror in the new flat, I might be able to do something,” he said. “We’ve someone planted there who can give her rooms the once-over.”
“I’ll drift round some of the nearby antique shops to-morrow. I want something to do. This case is working out all wrong,” I said. “Here’s me spending my capital for you to have a damn good time, and I’ve nothing to do to pass the time away.”
He grinned. “Well, Queenie’s bill will reach you to-morrow morning. There’ll be a job for you, inspecting the items. But don’t forward it on to her before Monday. I want her to have a good time to-morrow. Poor soul, she needs some sympathy.”
The Case of the Magic Mirror: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 13