The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but you’re wanted on the telephone.”

  “The hell I am,” I said peevishly. “Who is it, Harris?”

  “Inspector Goodman, sir.”

  “I’ll be right down,” I said, and got into a dressing-gown. My wrist-watch said it was a quarter-past six.

  “Travers here,” I said into the receiver.

  “This is Goodman, sir. About our friend Preston. He hasn’t been home all night.”

  “The devil he hasn’t!” I said. “What are you doing about it?”

  “Going along now to have a look inside. I wondered if you’d like to join us. In, say, half an hour’s time.”

  As a matter of fact I was there before Goodman arrived.

  CHAPTER IX

  MORE ABOUT PRESTON

  Goodman had routed out a member of the staff of Morlands, the agents, and now had a key to No. 6. We went in by the front door. There was quite a decent entrance hall with a cloakroom and lavatory to the far right. Doors opened to a lounge on the right, a dining-room on the left and a kitchen and scullery in the rear. Wide stairs led upwards to a landing. The first thing we noticed was that no clothes whatever were hanging on the hooks in the cloakroom.

  We had merely peeped into the downstairs rooms and Goodman suggested we should go upstairs and have a look at the bedrooms. There were four of them, and a bathroom with separate lavatory. Only one room appeared to have been used. The double bed had not been made, and though there wasn’t a window open, the room hadn’t the smell one associates with a bedroom that has been consistently used. But we found the door ajar and Goodman thought enough air would have circulated to offset the closed windows. But the main thing we noticed at once was that drawers were left open in a couple of chests. What was more, the chests were absolutely empty, and so was the wardrobe. From a general air of untidiness it was plain that the exit had been a hurried one.

  “Looks as if we’re on to something at last,” Goodman said. “A thousand to one he’s bolted.”

  The other bedrooms had never been used and the furniture was covered with dust-sheets. In the bathroom was nothing but a dirty towel, still slightly damp. The toilet roll in the lavatory had been very little used, but the seat was free from dust.

  “It’s been a long while since a woman did any cleaning up here,” Goodman said, and I agreed. Someone had gone round with a duster and had given what my old nurse used to call ‘a lick and a promise’. Things like chairs, hand rails, picture rails and the pictures themselves had good coatings of dust.

  Goodman called up Sergeant Smith and set him to work on fingerprints, and we made our way downstairs. The kitchen was fairly clean, but with plenty of dust in the less visible places. A couple of cups and saucers and one plate had been washed and stood on a drying-rack. In the pantry was never a sign of food except an opened tin of coffee and a couple of tins—one opened—of household milk.

  “He must have had all his meals out,” I said rather obviously. “Just had a cup of coffee of a morning before going out.”

  “It’s the feeling of bareness that gets me,” Goodman said, and frowned as if he didn’t understand it. “It doesn’t give you the idea of a house that’s been lived in.”

  “You’re a married man and Preston was a bachelor,” I said. “You expect home comforts. All he wanted obviously was a place to sleep in.”

  “But he might have had a woman to keep the place a bit more clean.”

  “Women are hard to come by,” I pointed out. “I’ll bet every available woman in Beechingford is working at that factory.”

  “Well, let’s have a look at the lounge and see if he put his feet on the mantelpiece,” Goodman said, and in we went.

  There was a distinct smell of tobacco and there was ash on the carpet, and those were the only signs that the room had ever been used. Goodman drew the black-out curtains, and at once we could see the dust in odd corners. With his gloved hands Goodman was opening the top of an unlocked desk that stood by the window. It was empty, with not even a scrap of paper or a stub pencil. Then we did find something—four letters on the mantelpiece behind one of those bronze equestrian ornaments that flanked an old-fashioned marble clock.

  “Here’s one thing he’s missed,” Goodman said, and spread out the letters so that we could see the envelopes. All were addressed to G. H. Preston, Esq. But nothing could have been more uninteresting than the contents. The first we looked at was from the Electric Light Company and giving terms for hire of electric kettles; the second from a firm in town in reply to enquiries that had evidently been made about greenhouse glass, and the third was from a Beechingford firm of stationers saying that they had heard from their agents and could entertain no more subscriptions, on account of rationing, to the Philatelist.

  “Collected stamps, did he?” was Goodman’s comment. “That is the first what you might call human thing about him discovered.”

  The last letter was a winner. Whom should it be from but Chaice himself!

  My dear Preston,

  I do not know of any woman who’d be likely to come in and clean your house.

  As I informed you recently, I have nothing to do with your house, and if you will take all your worries to the right people—the agents—it will save you trouble and me further pestering. I am a busy man, and the sooner you appreciate the fact, the better for both of us.

  Yours faithfully,

  AUSTIN CHAICE.

  “Very interesting,” said Goodman.

  “Looks as if you were right,” I said, “and he been pestering Chaice about the house after all.”

  “Don’t know yet,” he said. “One thing these letters will give us, though.”

  He called up the stairs to Smith.

  “Any luck up there?”

  “Nothing at all, sir.”

  “Well, come down and have a shot at some letters.”

  Smith came down and began testing them for prints.

  “You mean to say there wasn’t anything on the door-handles or anywhere,” Goodman interrupted him.

  “Everything was wiped clean,” Smith said. “Someone had been round with a duster.”

  “All to the good,” I said. “When we do get a print, the Yard ought to be able to tell us a few interesting things about G. H. Preston.”

  Smith tried a couple of letters and envelopes and soon had a fine collection of prints. Chaice’s was probably one of them, and from a corner of the letter he had signed. Goodman said he’d check it up at the mortuary.

  “Won’t the Yard have a job sorting these out, sir?” Smith said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’ll be the typists’ prints, perhaps the sorters’ and the postman’s, and the people who signed the letters, like Mr. Chaice.”

  Goodman sighed heavily.

  “It doesn’t matter if there’re a hundred different prints. Either the Yard’s got them or it hasn’t. If it’s got one of them, and it’s a man’s print, it’s a thousand to one it’s Preston’s.”

  Smith smiled sheepishly, and then there was a knock at the front door. Goodman looked at me, and then we moved off together.

  “You Inspector Goodman?” asked the man who’d knocked. He looked like a professional man, and from his dark clothes and neat leather portfolio was probably on his way to catch a train to town.

  “I’m Pymme, from No. 5,” he said. “My wife told me you’d been enquiring there about this house and the other night.”

  “Come in, Mr. Pymme,” Goodman said, but Pymme said he hadn’t a minute to spare. Besides, what he wanted to say wouldn’t take a minute. But he did step into the hall.

  “A rumour’s got round about burglars,” he said, “and what with that and my wife telling me, Inspector, about your call, I thought I’d mention something that happened on Monday night. We’ve got a puppy for my little girl and I’m training him to use a cinder patch near the top of my back garden. I’d just taken him up and was waiting for him to be clean when I sa
w someone go running past my back gate.”

  “I see,” said Goodman gravely. “But, pardon the question, Mr. Pymme, why did you sound surprised at anybody running?”

  “You know that road?” asked Pymme. “It’s never been made up and it’s all potholes and puddles—or was. Whoever this fellow was, he must have been in the devil of a hurry.”

  “Did you actually see him?”

  “Well, I saw what you might call the back of him as he went by. And I distinctly heard him pant.”

  “I don’t suppose you could tell us where he went to?”

  “I couldn’t,” Pymme said. “He seemed to come and go, just like that, if you know what I mean.”

  “You didn’t hear his footsteps receding?”

  “That lane isn’t like a hard road,” Pymme pointed out. “You wouldn’t hear steps.”

  “And the time, Mr. Pymme?”

  “Now that I can give you,” Pymme said. “It would be about five or ten past nine. I always take the dog out then.”

  He was already moving towards the door. Goodman thanked him and said he wouldn’t detain him, but if anything else cropped up he’d be glad to hear it.

  “Can we fit it in anywhere?” he asked me.

  I said I didn’t see how. After all, anybody might have been running along that lane, and for anything. A man late for an appointment, for instance.

  We had a look in the scullery and opened a cupboard or two, and by that time Smith had gone over all the letters. Goodman told him to take the car and ask the Chief to get into touch with the Yard and have the letters sent up by motor-bike. Then he told him to wait a minute.

  “At what time did Preston bolt?” he was asking me. “Heaven knows,” I said. “There was nobody watching this house till yesterday morning. Any time, therefore, after Chaice left the house on the Monday night and the time you put a man on watch.”

  “And how did he go?” He answered his own question. “The first bus leaves the corner here at six o’clock in the morning. The last at ten-thirty at night. Or he might have had a taxi.”

  “Or a pal might have met him with a car,” I said.

  “For God’s sake don’t make it more difficult,” he told me with a grimace. “But you get to work, Smith, as soon as you’ve seen the Chief. See the bus people and the taxi services. You’ve got that description of Preston that Mr. Lang gave us at Lovelands.”

  “What about the railway station?”

  “Fine!” said Goodman. “That’ll be a short cut. Put on every man you’ve got.”

  “What now?” I asked when Smith had gone.

  “The summerhouse,” he said, but still seemed reluctant to go. He stood looking round and sniffing, and then gave a bit of a grin when he caught my eye.

  “I can’t make out the atmosphere of this house,” he said. “There seems something wrong about it somewhere.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it’s what you said about me being a married man.”

  “But we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Most decidedly, we are. Preston took care not to leave any prints, and he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been scared of his prints being found. And he wouldn’t have been scared if the Yard hadn’t his prints.”

  The relief had arrived for the man who’d been on duty all night. Goodman told him to carry on downstairs trying to find prints, and then we left. Just short of the front gate Goodman turned back.

  “Let’s have another look at the back garden. I’ve been wondering why Preston made enquiries about glass.”

  I’d remembered that there was a tiny greenhouse at the far end of the garden, and when we had a look at it we found quite a few panes missing.

  “Probably blast,” Goodman said. “We had a bomb or two about a quarter of a mile away. And now we’ve got so far we might as well use this back gate.”

  The lane was as Pymme had described it, though the puddles had mostly dried up. It wasn’t a bad morning and it looked as if it might be a better. I was feeling most damnably hungry, and the sight of Lovelands as we came through that smashed-in door made me hungrier still.

  “How are we going to get in?” Goodman said, surveying the summerhouse door.

  I said it wouldn’t take five minutes to fetch Richard Chaice, but it took longer, for I finally ran him to earth at the green-houses. He said he’d fitted that Yale lock but he hadn’t a spare key. Austin had taken the two keys. The best way to get in would be to break a pane of glass and move a window catch. I asked him to go and supervise, and to tell Inspector Goodman I would be there in a couple of ticks.

  I don’t think I’ve ever gulped down a breakfast so quickly. Luckily it was well after nine o’clock and I had the wolfed meal to myself. From the time Harris set the hot dish before me till I was out of the house again was under ten minutes. But it shows the kind of detective I am, with my stomach well before duty. And it would have served me right if Goodman had gone.

  As a matter of fact he was already waiting to go. The forcing of a catch hadn’t taken two minutes, and there’d been nothing to see inside the summerhouse. But he did ask me if I’d like to look in.

  It was a fine large summerhouse with a match-board lining. There was a tiny hall with hooks for garments, and a couple of doors that opened left and right to two quite large rooms. That on the left was a ladies’ dressing-room with a lavatory. The men’s room had a few chairs of the tea-room, hard-backed type and a table. The other room had a carpet that almost covered the floor, and it had four wicker easy chairs. There was a better-class table under the back window and on it stood a Victorian dressing-mirror. On the walls were few photographs of nothing in particular.

  “No sign of the intruder?” I asked Goodman.

  “Not that I can see,” he said, “but I’ll have it gone over for prints.”

  “What can he have been looking for?” I said. “Or if he found it, what the devil could it have been?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “The whole set-up’s perfectly innocuous. Just a couple of dressing-rooms.”

  I had a look at that mirror at which many ladies must have powdered their noses, and then I saw a something on the floor. I picked it up, and it was a stoutish stick of rouge.

  “One pre-war relic,” I said.

  He smiled. “Rather hard to come by now, so my missus tells me.”

  “It might be Kitty’s,” I said, and slipped it into my inside fob pocket. “If it isn’t, she might be glad of it.”

  “Easy to see you’re not too much of a married man,” he told me with a grin. “Women are rather particular about lipstick. Depends on the clothes they’re wearing and the colour of their hair.”

  There wasn’t anything else to see, so he closed the door again and we stood for a moment on the veranda looking towards the house. Just as I was going to put my usual, “What’s next?” I remembered something.

  “That ‘P’ of the anonymous letters; do you think it might stand for Preston?”

  “Don’t know,” he said, “but it’s an idea. Chaice had choked him off, so he thought he’d be a bit spiteful. But how does it help?”

  “It doesn’t,” I said, “except that someone had to write those letters. By the way, what are your people doing about that liquid-squirting?”

  “We have patrols out at night,” he said. “What we want is a man with his hands in his overcoat pockets. The stuff’s probably squirted from a syringe through a slit in the pocket. Hardly the sort of thing you’d think a man like Chaice would have done. It doesn’t seem quite in line with what I’ve heard of him.” He sighed. “Still, there’s no accounting for that kind of sex brainstorm. All sorts of men of his age make fools of themselves.”

  I was thinking that any man who had Constance wouldn’t need to get any sex brainstorms, but I didn’t put the thought into words. Then he was asking me if I felt like a job of work. What about seeing the house agents and whatever man of theirs had interviewed Preston, and so getting a more complete description? Since he was an important
witness, the B.B.C. might broadcast it. I said if he’d stroll as far as the house, I’d tell them I’d be out for lunch, and then we could take a bus together.

  As a matter of fact we got a ride down. Goodman hadn’t told me, and there was no reason why he should, that the inquest on Austin Chaice was at eleven o’clock. Lang was attending to give evidence about finding the body, and Martin to make formal identification, and the two had ordered a taxi which we shared. The whole proceedings, Goodman said, would not take more than a quarter of an hour, and there would be an indefinite adjournment. He warned Lang and Martin that there’d be sure to be a good attendance of the Press, but he’d take steps to keep them out of the way of questioning.

  “When’s your father’s funeral?” I asked Martin. It was a purely family affair and I hadn’t liked to make enquiries.

  “He’s being cremated,” he said. “On Friday. Daine is settling details today. Constance wanted to avoid any fuss.”

  He seemed very subdued that morning; possibly, I thought maliciously, because he was egg-bound with a poem. Lang was his usual reticent self, but just a bit on edge, and he owned that he wasn’t anticipating that inquest with anything but alarm. Perhaps he had something very much on his conscience. A man whose trade was murder and corpses should have welcomed a little gratuitous local colour. Still, as George Wharton once remarked to me, many a lusty baritone who bellowed ‘King of the Deep am I’ would be horrified at the thought of diving off Southend Pier.

  I’d arranged with Goodman that we’d have a late and quick lunch at the Wheatsheaf. I had that description of Preston ready for him, and I surprised him by saying that in addition to getting details from Morland’s man I’d also nipped back to Harcourt Avenue and No. 5 and had got more information from Mrs. Pymme.

  This was our final draft of the broadcast message.

  In connection with the death of Mr. Austin Chaice, the police are anxious to interview a George Herbert Preston, recently of 6, Harcourt Avenue, Beechingford. He is about sixty-five years of age, five feet six in height, stoutish of build, of florid complexion, with a slightly hooked nose, and with a shortish, straggly black beard. Hair dark and grey at temples. He may also be wearing tortoise-shell rimmed glasses. Speaks as if suffering from catarrh and has a slightly foreign accent. Last seen wearing a bowler hat, muffler, dark clothes and black overcoat. Any information about this man should be communicated to either the Chief Constable, telephone Beechingford 321, or to New Scotland Yard, telephone Whitehall 1212.