Vallance seemed to be really aware of Travers for the first time. He and Wharton spoke together. “Why?”
“Well, it looks as if they changed clothes to add to the difficulty of identification. They put on him the trousers with their own braces, but the trouser legs looked too long, so they shortened the braces. If you look at the braces you’ll see where they were habitually worn—and you’ll see that the place to which they’re adjusted now, is a perfectly new one.”
They had a look. Wharton made his a thorough inspection, then started turning out pockets. He found nothing but some loose change and a soiled handkerchief—unmarked.
“I think Mr. Travers is right,” he said. “You see the implication, doctor?”
“I don’t know that I do.”
“Well, this fellow’s own suit was made in the district, where we might have identified it by means of material. The suit—this suit—that was substituted for it, is of the usual blue serge. Probably also it was made miles away.” He gave Travers a shrewd look. “Some people might imply from that that this fellow is a local inhabitant, and the one who did him in wasn’t. However . . . Cut him down, doctor, will you? I’ll give you a hand to get him downstairs.”
Travers stood watching as they got the light burden through the door and down the steps. Then he moistened his lips and polished his glasses again. Rather sheepishly and like a hybrid of stork and sparrow, he moved round the room, craning his neck to the rafters or peering with head on one side at what turned out to be nothing in particular. And when he’d gone all round, there seemed one thing, and one thing only, that he was fairly certain of. But for obviously recent footprints, the floor of that attic was so clean that it must have been swept with meticulous care. On the window sill, where the prints of the kitten’s feet were plainly to be seen, the dust was moderately thick; the floor hardly dirtied the fingers. All that seemed to have escaped the sweeping were two tiny pieces of paper which the brush had passed over; faintly yellow in colour and coarse in texture like wallpaper.
He made his way downstairs, then out by the back door, where a constable in uniform stood on duty. A few feet across a roughly cindered path was a shed, bare of everything except coal dust. In the corner, under the grate of the old-fashioned copper, lay the ash of the last fire. He squatted down and stirred it gently, then opened the tiny, iron door. Nothing but the last ash—paper ash—and never a piece of paper, even charred, to be seen.
Outside again, he noticed the wooden garage with its padlocked door. Behind that was the garden, soggy and dismal; with rotting cabbages and bare stalks and scattered fruit trees like so many gaudy scarecrows. He glanced down at his muddy boots, then made his way round to the front, where a couple of plain-clothes men were waiting for something to happen. Absent-mindedly he found himself at the foot of the stairs, wiping his feet on a white, goat’s-hair rug. Back at the door he used the fibre mat, then listened as voices came from the living-room. He tapped at the door and entered. On the table lay the body of the dead man, stripped to the waist.
“It certainly looks like it,” Vallance was saying.
“Looks like what?” smiled Travers.
Wharton explained. “The doc, here, thinks this chap’s body’s under-nourished. Half-starved if you like.”
“Why not?” asked Travers flippantly. “If he’s had flu, he wouldn’t be so frightfully peckish.” Perhaps the smile was to show he wasn’t to be taken too seriously.
Wharton grunted. “May be something in that. However . . . we’ll know a damn sight more when they’ve had a look inside him.”
Travers winced.
“Er—what’s your idea about all this business, Mr. Travers?” broke in Vallance. One imagined that Wharton, behind his back, had given the doctor a perfectly staggering idea of the amateur’s virtues and eccentricities.
Travers hesitated. “Well, I don’t know that I have any ideas . . . practical ones. General, of course . . . and philosophical. . . . Even poetical!”
Wharton gave the doctor a look. “Poetical! What do you mean, ‘poetical’?”
Travers smiled. “Sorry to be obscure. To tell you the truth, it was a quotation that came into my head . . . rather apposite in a way . . . I mean, it seemed so to me—
“When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
“And that means what?”
Travers fumbled for his glasses. “If you promise not to laugh at me, I’ll tell you. If we want to find a word to describe this murder—assuming it is a murder—we’ve got to use that fine old veteran ‘unusual.’ When the rank and file of us are murdered, how’s it done? Well, people are discovered with bullets in ’em, or poisoned, or bashed about the skull—where they live or near it. But here’s a man who’s been killed with extraordinary care. His murder’s an attempt at a work of art. His body’s been brought into what strikes me as a wholly new atmosphere. His facial appearance has been deliberately altered. Why? Exactly how was it so important that he shouldn’t be known? But for chance, his body shouldn’t have been discovered for weeks, when it might have been unrecognisable. In spite of that they took no chances. There was all this elaboration of disguise. Why? Who was he? A Cabinet Minister or a bishop? Why all this machinery? This—er—manipulation of place and circumstance?” Wharton felt in his pocket and found his pipe. “That’s sensible enough—but we’ll soon find out who he is, through the usual channels. As soon as our people get here we’re going to reconstruct his face—put on whiskers, glasses and so on—then we’ll let the press have photos; plenty of ’em.”
Travers nodded. “That’s a good idea!” He glanced across at the figure on the table. “I wonder what he did look like.” He stood there frowning for some seconds, then suddenly looked up. “Just a moment! I’ve thought of something!”
When he came back he was holding the goatskin rug—and smiling rather shamefacedly. “Got any scissors, George?”
“Some here!” said Vallance.
Wharton gave the rug a wry look. “What’s the idea?”
Travers explained. “This hair’s almost the spit of his own—I mean, near enough in colour and so on. Couldn’t we reconstruct his face now? Just show the hair on the forehead? Beard and so on?”
Vallance hailed the idea. “Better have some water to make the hair stick.”
In less than ten minutes he was drawing back to survey his handiwork. Wharton stood by the body, puffing away at his pipe. Vallance seemed satisfied.
“I should say that is what he was like—near enough. Face wants colouring up. I’ll put my glasses on him.”
The General gave his usual grunt. “Draw that rug up to his chin so he’ll look less of a guy.” Vallance pottered around. Wharton nodded away.
“Rather a fine-looking old boy . . . if that’s what he really was like.” He grunted again. “Nobody I know.” Then over his shoulder: “Come and have a look at him, Mr. Travers. You’ve a wider range than I have.”
Travers, who having set the work going had retired to the lattice window, sauntered over, feeling for his handkerchief. He gave his glasses a rapid polish, then peered down. . . .
“Oh-h-h-h . . .”
Wharton gripped his arm. “What’s up?”
Travers turned his head aside. And he was pretty badly upset. It took him a good few moments to find an answer.
“It’s all right . . . the face is. That’s what he looked like . . . nearly. I mean . . . I know who he is!”
Wharton’s eyes bulged.
“I mean . . . I don’t know—er—that is . . .”
Wharton’s voice altered. “I say . . . Sit down a bit . . . That’s it!”
Vallance, who’d been fluttering round, had a look at him, then slipped out for a glass of water.
“I’m all right,” said Travers. “Bit of a shock . . . that’s all.” He smiled. “So frightfully unexpected!” He moistened his lips again. “I’ll tell you just what I know of him.”
Published by Dean Street Press 2017
Copyright © 1931 Christopher Bush
Introduction copyright © 2017 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
The right of Christopher Bush to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by his estate in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1931 by William Heinemann
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911579 74 8
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
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