“The first part—yes,” I said. “The second part—decidedly no. Kitty Chaice wouldn’t keep her mouth shut to conceal a thing like that.”
“What about that piece of wood, sir, that he got from his uncle?” asked Goodman, a bit worried, I think, at those minor squabbles between George and myself. “Where does it fit in?”
“Don’t know,” George said. “It’s nowhere in the room, so the murderer may have taken it away with him.” He pursed his lips reflectively and then added that there wasn’t any proof that the piece of wood had ever been in the bedroom at all.
“Even if it was,” he said, “and if it was some sort of gadget for holding the gun, that doesn’t affect things. Martin never handled that gun unless the murderer wiped off the prints and then put his dead fingers round the gun to fake others, and that’s damn nonsense.”
“The sooner we get our hands on Richard Chaice, the better,” Goodman remarked feelingly.
“Which reminds me,” I said, and told Wharton about the ration book. Wharton said he’d go and see Mrs. Edwards for himself, and he’d be back in a couple of minutes.
The door closed on him. Goodman lighted a cigarette and I filled my pipe.
“Having a good time?” I asked him.
“You can’t very well be dull when he’s around,” he told me with a nod in the direction Wharton had gone.
CHAPTER XIII
THINGS HAPPEN
Wharton was on the job early the following morning, and the rendezvous was in Martin’s room. Wharton was in none too good a humour. For some reason or other, as he was to tell me later, he had expected the Beechingford Case to be an easy one, and now that things were turning out to be far more complicated than he had imagined, he was getting a bit impatient. That Goodman had no news whatever of either Preston or Richard Chaice was an added irritation. People didn’t vanish into thin air, was Wharton’s trite rejoinder when Goodman said his men were doing all they could.
We met in Martin’s room, as I said, and the first thing Wharton wanted was a time check. I had to be Martin and Wharton was the murderer, with Goodman holding the stop-watch. Wharton went through the motions of firing the rifle through the slit of the partly opened door, and at once I had to pull him up.
“When we made that test with Kitty, the rifle was fired inside the room. Surely if it was fired outside the room the sound would have been much louder?”
George claimed, pigheadedly, I thought, that there’d have been no real difference. We could have fired much farther through the door, and Martin, engrossed in his writing, would never have noticed. In any case he didn’t propose to make any new test with Kitty. Only one of those foreign shells was left, and it had to be kept in reserve.
So we began all over again. The shot was presumably fired and Wharton nipped in. He’d explained that his hands were gloved, and when he’d closed the door and stuck the handy chair against it, he began pressing my fingers round parts of the gun. Then the gun was placed where we found it, the chair was removed from the door and, after he’d given a quick listen, he was announcing that he’d nipped out, and how long had the whole thing taken?
“Just about a minute, sir,” Goodman said.
“Good enough,” said Wharton. “That puts Lang back on the spot. Any questions?”
“You didn’t move the chair in which I was sitting,” I said. “You ought to have hoisted it and me round so that I almost faced the door. Otherwise the shot would have entered the right side of the head and not the left.”
“Why not the other way about?” he told me. “Why shouldn’t he have been sitting facing the door, and then the murderer moved the chair more round to the window?”
“But if the murdered man faced the door, then surely he’d have noticed the barrel of that rifle being insinuated through the opening?”
George said it was immaterial. Then I asked why he had put the chair against the door.
“Why?” he said, and glared. “So that no one could get in, of course. If someone had come to the door, they’d have found they couldn’t get in. Supposing—and it’s a hundred to one against it—they’d have asked Martin what the noise was, he could have given a rough imitation of Martin’s voice. Simply blurted, ‘Nothing,’ or something like that. If they merely tried the door and then went away, then he could have slipped out.”
I could have accused George of extemporising, but it wouldn’t have been worth while.
“There we are then,” he said, “if there are no more questions. That minute fits in with what we learned from Miss Chaice. And it was at least three minutes before you checked up on Lang.”
There was no comment and he went on as if talking to himself.
“There can’t be any other answer. From what you’ve told me about Richard Chaice, he isn’t the man, and he didn’t have a motive. Mrs. Chaice is out of it. That’s why I saw that Mrs. Edwards about the ration book. I thought it might be a good opportunity to go into Mrs. Chaice’s alibi.”
“Just what motive had Lang for killing Martin?” I had to ask.
“What motive? The best of all motives. Martin saw him kill Chaice. Well, not kill him, perhaps, but bringing the body into that room.”
That sounded reasonable; far more so than the premises on which it had been built.
“And Martin had begun to blackmail him,” I said, and then had an idea. “I think I see how he could have done it. If Daine hadn’t ostensibly swallowed that yarn about Chaice wanting Martin’s poems published, then Martin would have forced Lang to swear he’d actually heard Chaice promise to have them published.”
George was pleased at that. He’d have Lang on the carpet again, he said. Not too soon. Let him have a day or so’s rope. Make him think he was in the clear, and then spring the trap. And meanwhile some further evidence might crop up.
I wasn’t feeling any too happy. Why I had had to go and present Wharton with that blackmail theory, I didn’t know, and after my overnight assurance to Lang that he would have no more worries. And I still refused to believe that Lang could really have killed either Chaice or Martin. If I was wrong, then, as I told myself, I’d have to revise all my ideas on character and personality.
“Where next then, George?” was what I said.
“Harcourt Avenue,” he told us. “I had an idea last night and I’d like to work it out.”
We traipsed all over No. 6 from bedrooms to scullery and so to the dining-room. There George delivered himself of something that was most unusual for him.
“I don’t know what you two are like,” he said, “but when I’m in this house I feel I’ve got something on the tip of my tongue, if you know what I mean. Just the least little bit of luck and we’d know all this Preston business like a flash. And we’d be cursing ourselves because we hadn’t seen it before.”
Goodman and I nodded solemnly.
“Now the point I was coming to,” George went on. “Preston made a good job of removing from this house everything that might have told us what sort of a man he really was: his business or occupation, for instance, and what friends he had, or relations, and where he came from. You agree?”
We duly agreed.
“Then answer me this,” George said. “If he took incredible pains to remove all his fingerprints, why did he? There’s no record of him at the Yard?”
“But he spoke with a suspicion of a foreign accent,” I said. “Maybe Paris or America had his prints.”
“That’s an idea,” he said. “We might do worse than try New York. But wait a minute. Which of the prints we’ve got are those of Preston? The envelope prints are no use. They’ve been handled by all sorts of people. And there weren’t any prints on the actual letters except Chaice’s on the letter he wrote.”
“What it amounts to, sir, is that Preston either removed all his own prints from the letters or else took care to handle them with gloves on,” Goodman said.
“That’s it,” Wharton said. “But there’s something far more important to it than that. E
very personal trace of Preston has been eliminated from this house. You agree? And extraordinary pains were taken to do it. You agree again?”
We agreed.
“Then answer me this,” said Wharton, and not without a note of triumph. “Why were those letters left behind if it wasn’t deliberately?”
That was a first-rate piece of deduction, and I said so.
“Right,” said George, and was producing those letters from his wallet. “Let’s try to find out why he didn’t take the letters away.”
We had a real good look at them, and various questions arose. Goodman said he had made enquiries from the electric light people and they had not filed Preston’s letter to them because he had since written to say he didn’t want to hire an electric kettle after all. As for the letter to the glass people, it might perhaps be in their files, though heaven knows who might have handled it. About the letter to the local stationers ordering the Philatelist, Goodman said the stationers hadn’t kept it, since no business had arisen.
“Where exactly is their shop?” asked Wharton. “What I mean is, why should he write a letter when he was in town every day?”
Goodman said the shop was not in the main street. It was true it was the best stationers in the town, but it lay beyond the route Preston would have taken to the station.
“That leaves us with Chaice’s letter,” George said. “Did anybody ask Lang if Preston’s letter had been filed?”
I said I had enquired in a roundabout way and Goodman added that he’d put the question to Lang direct, and Lang had had no knowledge of any letter from or to Preston.
We talked a bit more and then that line of enquiry petered out.
“And yet I never felt more in my life that something’s staring us in the face with regard to these letters,” George said scowlingly as he put them back in his wallet. “And this house too. There’s something right under our eyes if only we could see it.”
Then suddenly, as a sort of obstinate challenge to circumstances, he said he’d stay on in the house for a bit. Goodman might get back to the town and see how the Richard Chaice enquiry was getting on.
“Two people disappear and into thin air,” Wharton said exasperatedly. “It can’t happen, I tell you. It just can’t happen.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“You hang around Lovelands and keep your eyes and ears open,” George said. “Unless anything turns up, I’ll be along there this afternoon.”
I was pretty sure nothing would turn up, which shows how far I was to be wrong. But it wasn’t a morning for optimisms. It wasn’t a morning at all, if it comes to that, for it wasn’t far off lunch-time. And it was raining as if we were in for a solid week of wet. A cold remorseless rain it was, that made one want to blaspheme the weather, and Beechingford, and everything connected with the Case. Lunch wasn’t any too cheerful either. Kitty and Lang were out, so the parlourmaid told me. It was she who saw to my lunch, and I couldn’t help wondering if Harris was avoiding me. It was even the parlourmaid who brought me, with my coffee, the message that Mrs. Chaice would like to see me in a few minutes if I could spare the time.
I’d expected to find a Constance limp and wan, but found nothing of the kind. It was true she was what one might call reclining on the chesterfield beneath the window, but she was fully dressed and she greeted me with the cheerfullest of smiles.
“Darling! How nice to see you again!”
I reciprocated, as they say in the best circles; and, after all, it didn’t cost me anything.
“So glad all this tiresome business is nearly over,” she said.
I pretended to realise that I hadn’t seen her since Martin’s death.
“Wasn’t it dreadful?” she said, and tried to shudder. “But it had to come. A very neurotic type, don’t you think? You never know what they’re going to do.”
“Aren’t you taking it very much for granted that he committed suicide?” I said.
“But what else could it have been?”
“It could have been murder.” I pointed out gently.
“Nonsense!” She gave her little gurgle of a laugh. “You’re trying to frighten me. How could it have been anything else but suicide?” She added a “Poor Martin!” maybe by way of epitaph, and that was that. At least, it was where I preferred to leave it.
“You seemed to be about the only real companion he had,” I remarked.
“Sheer pity, my dear,” she told me. “He and Austin didn’t get on very well together.” She sighed. “Poor Austin. He had got most frightfully difficult.”
Her forehead puckered.
“Strictly between ourselves, I’m sure there must have been insanity somewhere in the family. Look at Richard.”
“Yes,” I said lamely. “You knew he’d left Lovelands, by the way?”
“Harris told me,” she said. “We think he’s probably gone back to some friends in town. He’ll be writing when he wants money or something.”
“Now, now,” I said reprovingly. “That wasn’t a nice thing to say.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t,” she said. “Forgive me, darling, and don’t let’s talk about it any more. Let’s talk about ourselves.” Then, with a kind of wide-eyed simplicity, “When are you going back to town?”
That was a facer. Somehow, too, I was realising that here was the one question for which I had been invited to that room.
“Anxious to get rid of me?” I asked flippantly.
“Of course not! Only it’s this way, darling. I simply must get away from everything; if not, I’ll go positively batty and shriek.”
“A holiday might do you good,” I ventured.
She patted my hand.
“Darling, I knew you’d understand. And it was perfectly adorable of you to stay on and be a . . . what was it we called it? Being . . .”
“A cushion.”
She laughed. “That’s it. A cushion. But, darling, you don’t have to go on being a cushion.” Then she paused. “Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“I don’t know how to put it,” she said frowningly. “But you’ll understand what I mean. It’s so awkward having the police and people all over the house. Harris was quite in a state about it. Everybody in the kitchen’s on edge too. And you simply can’t get servants these days.”
“What you’d like me to do is hurry the police up and get them out of the house.”
“In a way, yes. And why should they be in the house, darling? But perhaps they won’t be, after you’ve gone back to town.”
“When are you proposing to go for your holiday?” I asked bluntly.
“On Monday, darling. Not a holiday really. Just a few days in town.”
I thought quickly. Two more clear days in which quite a lot of things might happen.
“What about my going to town with you? I could see you across London, and so on.”
“Darling, how sweet of you!” But there’d been disappointment all the same. She’d expected me to go before the Monday.
“See you about the details later,” I said. “Meanwhile, if it would help things in the kitchen, I can go to the Flagon.”
“Darling, I wouldn’t dream of it!” And, in almost the same breath, “Do they make one really comfortable at the Flagon?”
“Very comfortable indeed,” I said, and quickly. “See you at dinner tonight?”
“Perhaps,” she told me archly, and with that I made my exit.
And I had plenty to think about as I made my way down the stairs. I recalled a previous visit to Constance’s room, and how I’d been sure that she’d had ideas about Austin’s murder. Now she was anxious for the police enquiry to end, and, above all, to get me out of the house. And I was damned if I was going to be winkled out of the house. She was the hostess and might ask me point-blank to leave, and then I’d certainly have to go. But I wouldn’t go unless. I’d just blandly ignore that afternoon’s conversation and cling on to my last two or three days. And I’d cling on longer than that if I hadn’t
found out just why she was so anxious for me to go.
I’d got to the point of wondering who it was that she wanted to shield from the police enquiry, and if that someone was herself, when I heard a car draw up outside. I supposed it was Wharton or Goodman, but it wasn’t. It was Kitty and Lang.
They were laughing away and talking as they came into the hall. But there was a silence at the sight of me. Lang said he’d just nip into the workshop. Kitty gave me a smile, but it wasn’t her usual one. I wondered if Lang had been giving a bad report about me, and then I decided her sudden seriousness was only a reaction. After all, I might have thought the gaiety unwarranted in view of what had happened.
“Haven’t I got to congratulate you, young lady?” I said, and held out my hand.
She blushed delightfully and couldn’t get a word.
“I think you’ll make an excellent couple,” I said. “Let me know when the real day arrives.”
“It won’t be for a long while yet,” she told me. “Unless I volunteer for overseas.”
“Well, you must let me know,” I said. “Had a good time down town?”
“Not really good,” she said. “Had my hair done and had lunch down town. A dreadful lunch.”
“That reminds me,” I said, and felt in my pocket. “Make-up easily obtainable these days?”
“Heavens, no!” she said. “It’s frightful stuff and awfully hard to get.”
“Then here’s a present for you,” I said. “Something I found. Pretty massive too.”
I handed her the lipstick I’d found in the summerhouse. She took a look at it, squinted at it and then laughed.
“But this isn’t lipstick. It’s a grease-paint!”
“Good heavens!” I said. “Shows what I know about lipstick. But are you sure?”
“But look,” she said, and showed me the writing on the blue paper binding round the bottom. “It’s Leichner’s. They’re quite the best people. Look—Carmine No. 2. Besides, it’s a much fatter stick than lipstick.”
The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 19