“But Kitty’s scream made things easier. You nipped along while I was still in extremis in the lavatory, and there was Kitty in a faint. She went off just as you got in, and, strangely enough, she remembers your taking out the gun. I know that was bluff in a way, but that must have been what had happened.
“Then you turned the chair and Martin in it so as to face the wrong way for a shot through the window, and you hastily pressed his fingers round the gun and placed that too, and you fastened the catch of the window. When I got there you were trying to bring Kitty round. And that’s about all,’’ I said. “Except perhaps one thing I forgot to mention: that you took Chaice’s keys. They admitted you to the summerhouse, and they might have opened a safe in which Chaice kept his accounts or something that connected him too closely with G. H. Preston. You had your own key, of course, to Number 6. After we were all asleep that night it was easy for you to slip out of the house and go back to Number 6 and do a bit of tidying up. And you left the letters where they’d be found.”
I took a deep breath and put the notes back in my pocket.
“There we are then, Daine. That’s the outline of my proposed plot. What’s your opinion?”
He slowly got to his feet, knocked out his pipe, and then his hands thrust deep into his pockets. I thought he had put them there so that I shouldn’t see them trembling, but I was wrong. But I didn’t like his look, and I drew back in my chair.
“Wharton and Goodman are in town, you said?”
His voice was shaking.
“That’s right,” I said.
“You haven’t told them this ridiculous story?”
“You’re not calling this book of mine ridiculous?” I protested.
His eyes narrowed.
“Travers, you’ve always been just a bit too clever or else not quite clever enough.”
“Admitted,” I said. “And what about it?”
A hand came out of a pocket and then I saw the gun. It was a heavy Webley, and it looked to me like a young cannon. And yet it somehow didn’t frighten me. It was a curiously impersonal sort of gun—at least at that first moment.
“Give me those notes, will you?”
“But why?”
“Give me those notes!”
“Very well,” I said. “If you feel that way about it.”
He rammed them into his pocket and then told me to get to my feet.
“Now put your hands up and turn round!”
“This is damn preposterous.”
“Do as I tell you,” he said, and then I felt that gun in my back. That was when I was scared. It isn’t pleasant to feel potential death against your spine.
“I don’t think I’d do anything foolish with that gun,” I told him. “You know Sergeant Smith?”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s the sergeant who first came here with Goodman,” I said, and was trying to squint over my shoulder. “He’s the fastest thing at shorthand that ever was.”
“Yes?” The gun was firm as ever at my back.
“Well, if you look at that telephone you’ll see it isn’t connected. It’s acting as a receiver for Sergeant Smith who’s in the workshop taking down every word that’s said in this room. So even if you dodge the rope for Chaice and Martin, you won’t dodge it for killing me.”
“Blast you, Travers!”
I don’t know if it was fury or panic or hate that brought those words. In fact I only just heard the words, and I heard nothing else. For while he was spluttering them he must have struck my skull with the butt of that Webley. I faintly remember a terrific sear of pain and then I went down like a poleaxed bullock. One other thing I do faintly remember as I was in that infinitesimal part of a second before the passing out: that I’d been a fool and a coward to have mentioned Smith.
When I came to I was lying on my back on the floor of that room. A cushion had been placed under my head and somebody had been slopping water over me. When I moved, my head felt as if someone had been at it with an axe. Wharton was looking down at me, face all concern.
“How are you now? Feeling all right?”
“Parts of me,” I said, and began hoisting myself up. Then the head began to swim.
“The doctor ought to be here at any minute.”
“I’m all right,” I said testily. “I don’t want any doctor.”
“Take it steady,” he admonished me. “You’re damn lucky to be alive. But why the devil didn’t you let Smith know he had that gun?”
“Blast you, don’t make me talk,” I said. “It hurts my head.”
I blinked for a minute, decided my glasses were all right, then said I’d mentioned the gun as soon as I could. Then I had a sudden alarm.
“He didn’t get Smith, did he?”
“Not he,” Wharton said. “Goodman collared him as soon as he was out of that door. Tried to shoot himself, but only Goodman through the shoulder. Nothing very serious. Then I chipped in.”
It hurt my head, but I had to smile at that. George chipping in with his fourteen stone.
“Well, that’s that,” I said, and George began helping me to a chair. “But what about Constance?”
“Nothing doing yet,” he told me cautiously. “We’ll wait to see if Daine blows the gaff.”
Then he asked what about a drink, and a stiff one. I didn’t object. Then, as I leaned forward and gingerly felt my head, Lang looked round the door.
“May I come in, sir?”
“Why not?” I told him.
He smiled a bit sheepishly, and then was asking me if it was true about Daine.
“If you mean, did he do the murders—yes.”
“My God. You just can’t believe it,” he said. “Not that I ever liked him very much.”
He shook his head, and the mere sight of a shaking head made me wince.
“Puts me in a spot, though,” he went on. “If there’s no literary executor, then I’m out of work.”
“You should worry,” I told him. “I’ll bet you a pound to a penny you’re offered the job. If you think you can do it.”
“You bet I can do it,” he said, and then he hesitated. “Perhaps, sir, you’d help me out some time, with advice and all that.”
I was wishing he’d either go away or shut up. At that moment I had no use for anybody, for my head had begun to ache like hell.
“Advice?” I said, and grunted, but he still didn’t seem inclined to go.
“Some advice I might give you,” I said. “You’re getting married, aren’t you?”
“Well, I hope so, sir.”
“Then buy yourself a house that’s number six in the road.”
I think he thought I’d suddenly gone barmy. Perhaps his question was designed to humour me.
“Number six, sir? Why? Is it supposed to be lucky?”
“You’ll never know how lucky it’s been for you,” I told him, and then, thank heaven, Wharton came in with that drink.
THE END
About The Author
Christopher Bush was born Charlie Christmas Bush in Norfolk in 1885. His father was a farm labourer and his mother a milliner. In the early years of his childhood he lived with his aunt and uncle in London before returning to Norfolk aged seven, later winning a scholarship to Thetford Grammar School.
As an adult, Bush worked as a schoolmaster for 27 years, pausing only to fight in World War One, until retiring aged 46 in 1931 to be a full-time novelist. His first novel featuring the eccentric Ludovic Travers was published in 1926, and was followed by 62 additional Travers mysteries. These are all to be republished by Dean Street Press.
Christopher Bush fought again in World War Two, and was elected a member of the prestigious Detection Club. He died in 1973.
By Christopher Bush
and available from Dean Street Press
The Plumley Inheritance
The Perfect Murder Case
Dead Man Twice
Murder at Fenwold
Dancing Death
Dead Man’s
Music
Cut Throat
The Case of the Unfortunate Village
The Case of the April Fools
The Case of the Three Strange Faces
The Case of the 100% Alibis
The Case of the Dead Shepherd
The Case of the Chinese Gong
The Case of the Monday Murders
The Case of the Bonfire Body
The Case of the Missing Minutes
The Case of the Hanging Rope
The Case of the Tudor Queen
The Case of the Leaning Man
The Case of the Green Felt Hat
The Case of the Flying Donkey
The Case of the Climbing Rat
The Case of the Murdered Major
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel
The Case of the Fighting Soldier
The Case of the Magic Mirror
The Case of the Running Mouse
The Case of the Platinum Blonde
The Case of the Corporal’s Leave
The Case of the Missing Men
Christopher Bush
The Case of the Flying Donkey
As Travers’s finger touched the dead hand, he felt the warmth, and wondered if the man were still alive. Then he saw the knife that stuck sideways in the ribs.
It was three years after Ludovic Travers had acquired a painting by the famous contemporary French artist, Henri Larne, that a mysterious art dealer named Braque turned up, showed great interest in the picture, and invited Travers to visit him in Paris. But all Travers saw of Braque in Paris was his dead body: a knife–almost warm from the murderer’s hand—was stuck in his ribs.
Travers and his old friend Inspector Gallois soon found some very pertinent questions to answer. What was Braque’s “gold mine”? Why had he been so interested in paintings by Larne? What were his relations with Pierre Larne, and with Elise, the model? But not until Travers suddenly realised the significance of the flying donkey was the murderer’s astonishing identity revealed.
The Case of the Flying Donkey was originally published in 1939. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
CHAPTER I
MYSTERY OF A PICTURE DEALER
When Ludovic Travers came to look back upon the events that preceded the affair that was given the name of The Case of the Flying Donkey, they had an air of hurry and unreality, like events in a dream that arbitrarily change from place to place, with new characters and designs.
It was queer, when he came to look back at things, that he should, for instance, have ever purchased a picture by Henri Larne at all, even though the purchase had been an uncommonly lucky one. It was about three years before his marriage, when he had happened to be in Paris, that he had heard of Larne as a new, tremendous figure in French art; but the strangest thing of all was that the one who recommended to him the acquiring of some small work by the new genius was no other than his old friend Inspector Gallois of the Sûreté Générale.
Whenever Travers recalled Laurin Gallois, it was with a smile that had in it a kindly humour and a considerable affection. Gallois—lean, mournful, with the face of a dreamer and the long, sensitive fingers of a violinist virtuoso—would always protest with much shrugging of shoulders and a spreading of palms, that he had been ill-cast as an inspector of police when at heart he was really an artist.
It was on the advice of Gallois, then, that Travers made an appointment to see the famous painter at his studio, the Villa Claire, 40 rue Colignot. Henri Larne himself was a surprise. He was an older man than Travers expected—about forty, in fact—and looking as much unlike a painter as one could conceive. Then it turned out that his mother had been Irish, which accounted for his perfect English, and possibly—as Travers, the ready theorist, assumed— for his delightful charm of manner and his unconventionality.
Larne had few things on view, but Travers stayed for half an hour, talking about everything but art, which, for a painter, was also a queer enough thing. Out of the friendliness that immediately arose came a change in the nature of Travers’s purchase, for whereas he had intended to try to obtain some quite minor work at a modest price, Larne himself expressed the wish that he should take a much more important piece—the picture which Travers immediately christened Pot au Feu. And Travers did buy it. Though he had no need to worry over money, he had intended to spend no more than fifty pounds. Now he had spent three hundred guineas, and he knew he had a bargain. And he knew, if pleasantly vaguely, something else: that in selling him that picture at so reasonable a price, Larne was giving a tangible expression of genuine friendship. It was not a large picture—roughly twenty inches by fourteen—but Gallois was ecstatic when he first cast eyes on it in Travers’s room at the hotel. Those sad, soulful eyes lighted up and he raised hands to heaven.
“There,” he said to Travers, “you have not a picture, my friend, but the—what you call?—the soul of France.”
He said a whole lot more, and Travers was in agreement. The plate of steaming soup on that rough unpainted table was indeed somehow a whole nation, and what that nation was, what it felt and what it thought. In Victorian eyes the picture might be crude in colour, hopeless in drawing and childishly naive, and yet that table with its homely meal of soup and bread and wine was infinitely more than a mere still-life. In it one saw the kitchens of all peasant France, and the peasantry which are France: a peasantry of simplicity, patience, carefulness and homely dignity.
That picture was hung in Travers’s study in the roomy flat at St. Martin’s Chambers. When the Traverses returned from their honeymoon, Travers rather forgot the picture in the excitement of home-coming, and it was somewhat by chance that Bernice cast eyes on it. Travers caught her surveying it with an expression of very pained surprise. When he asked what she thought of it, he gathered that she thought it the kind of thing one would hand cheerfully to a rag-and-bone man in exchange for a pot-plant. Thereafter the picture remained in Travers’s den, and the price he had paid for it remained one of the secrets of his married life.
Then the day arrived when Travers could afford to refer openly to his bargain. He opened his paper one February morning to see that the Tate Gallery was about to place on special and immediate exhibition a still-life by Henri Larne which had been bequeathed to it by the late Lord Draigne. Later that morning, when he was working in his den, he passed the paper to Bernice, finger on that announcement. Bernice failed to understand. Travers tactfully explained, and tried not to be triumphant.
“Then it’s a valuable picture,” Bernice said, bending on the Pot au Feu a much more friendly gaze.
“I don’t think it would be dear at five hundred guineas,” he told her. “The time should come when it’s worth very much more.”
“But, darling!”
“Well?”
“Isn’t it wrong of us to have such a valuable picture here? Couldn’t anyone steal it?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “Larne isn’t well enough known to the picture thieves. Also, I don’t think more than two or three people know that I own it.”
Bernice was peering carefully at the picture again, and pointing to a tiny painted something in the bottom right-hand corner.
“What is that queer-looking thing? It’s almost like an animal.”
“It is an animal,” he said. “It’s also the painter’s signature, so to speak.”
Bernice failed to follow.
“You remember Whistler’s butterfly signature,” he said. “Well, Larne puts what you might call a painted jackass to everything he paints, which, by the way, is very little.”
“Yes, but why a donkey?”
“Larne,” he said. “I know the pronunciation isn’t the same, but think of your French.”
She stared for a moment, then smiled.
“But, of course. L’âne is French for donkey. A funny name for anyone to have, don’t you think?”
He smiled. “Perhaps it is. Still, we have people called Bull and Bullock, and Mu
tton, and Fox. Heaps of others, I expect, if we began to think of them.”
But Bernice was looking at that tiny painted donkey again.
“What’s that funny thing over its back?”
Travers polished his huge horn-rims, then took a quite unnecessary look for himself.
“It’s a wing,” he said. “It’s what you might call a flying donkey. Its legs are stretched out to give the impression of flight.”
“Yes, but why should it be flying?”
He shook his head. “I don’t really know. Between ourselves, I rather think it’s some expression of Gallic wit. It’s a kind of ironical allusion to Pegasus, the flying horse. Sort of putting one’s finger to one’s nose.”
Bernice nodded. “I see. Laughing at convention. But it’s very crudely painted, don’t you think?”
“Heaps of people don’t take the trouble to write their signatures distinctly,” he said. “But this isn’t what you might call a picture of a flying donkey. It’s just quick strokes with a brush to give a rough representation.”
So much for the very preliminaries. A day or so later, however, Travers went to the Tate to inspect the Larne that was on exhibition, and he was there a minute or two after the Gallery opened, with a view to having the picture to himself. It was for the Van Gogh room that he made, but just as he was in the act of entering, he saw he was not the first of the morning’s visitors to be interested in the new acquisition. There stood the picture on an easel in the middle of the room, but bending down before it in the closest of examinations was a man in dark clothes.
The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 23