Printer's Error

by Gladys Mitchell

  Half-way down, however, it occurred to him that if the unknown happened to be armed with a revolver, the situation might become very awkward, so he began to climb back again to warn his aunt of what he intended to do, and to advise her to take cover.

  “If he had a revolver,” whispered Mrs. Bradley, “he would have come up here when he had his suspicions before.”

  Carey thought this good reasoning, and had repeated his downward climb and reached the ground level when the light in the room was switched on, and he saw a huge grotesque shadow on the blind, which had been drawn across the window. So his idea was of no use at all, he thought disgustedly. Suddenly his attention was attracted by some peculiarity in the shadow, which appeared to be standing in a ruminating attitude. It seemed to be talking to itself, he thought at first. There was a steady motion of jaw and chin, presented profile-wise to his gaze, which indicated conversation, and yet, unless the words were a monotonous repetition of one another, surely there was something altogether too rhythmic for the recognised intricacies of speech in that steady movement. Then it came to him that the man was not talking but chewing.

  “Good heavens!” thought Carey, memory flashing back. “It’s that confounded office boy come back to loot the place after hours in search of spare cash or something.”

  He banged on the window. The chewing silhouette gave a startled leap. There was another crash, followed by two duller ones indicative of the slamming of doors. In a moment Mrs. Bradley was beside her nephew.

  “You’ve got rid of him, then?” she said.

  “I know who he is,” said Carey. “He’s the office boy here, who chews gum. He was chewing it in there. I got him silhouetted against the blind.”

  “But has it not occurred to you, dear child, that the office boy may not be the only person in the world who chews gum?”

  “Yes, that’s true, but I’d pretty well swear to the profile. It was a very good shadowgraph of him, as shadows go. I don’t think there’s very much doubt. Besides, he’s sure to have left some fingerprints about.”

  “Yes, but it might be difficult for us, as law-breakers ourselves, to convince the police of the advisability of obtaining the young man’s fingerprints for purposes of comparison, dear child.”

  “Um, that’s true, but I dare say we could explain.”

  “Another point is that the young man probably would find no difficulty in proving that, as office boy, his duties bring him occasionally into this room, and that if his fingerprints are found on any objects in here, there is a legitimate reason for their being there.”

  “Oh, lor! I have mucked it,” said Carey. “We ought to have gone down the stairs and caught him red-handed.”

  “I can see grave objections to that. He does not know, as things stand, what persons have been in the house with him tonight, and that, if my theory (at present, I ought to tell you, unsupported by even the shadow of a fact)—”

  “Good. Those are the theories I like.”

  “If my theory is correct, it will be just as well, for us, that our identity was not disclosed.”

  “Oh, you mean, he didn’t come to pilfer the office cash?”

  “I think he came on the same errand as our own, child.”

  “To find Carn’s book?”

  “Precisely. And from that I deduce that Mr. Carn’s book has been particularly carefully hidden.”

  “Afraid of sabotage, perhaps. I should think most Jews would want to bum the place down if they knew what was in that book.”

  “At any rate, it seems as though the office staff do not know where the copies are kept.”

  “It may be only the corrected proof, you know. We don’t know that the printing has been done.”

  “I should imagine it has been, though. Didn’t you tell me that a copy had been promised to Mr. Bassin this week? Or last week, was it? And business at this time of year is always slack.”

  “Yes, he did promise him one, and it’s quite true that printing presses, even large commercial concerns, often are slack in the summer, just before the autumn season of novels commences. They get a rash of work a little later. I should think Senss meant to give him one, though, unless the cancellation makes a difference. Of course, we could go and see Saxant.”

  “Let us go to his house tomorrow and pump him. Meanwhile, as it seems most unlikely that our friend of the chewing gum proposes to return, let us ascend in order to inspect this room which, at present, is barred from our notice,” said Mrs. Bradley, leading the way.

  They climbed the fire-escape again, re-entered Senss’s office, and, from it, descended the stairs. The room in which the search had been prosecuted was the scene of much disorder, and on the desk was a bottle of purple ink which had been righted, but which showed evidence of having been upset, and this apart from the stains on desk and floor where the fluid had been hastily mopped up with the blotting paper which was discovered by Carey in the waste-paper basket.

  “Ah!” said Mrs. Bradley. As though he had done it to oblige them, the searcher had inked his thumb and then had dabbed it down, an unconsciously rendered signature, on the edge of a sheet of slightly absorbent duplicating paper, which was lying on the blotting-pad on the desk. As though he had not removed all the ink at the first application, he had dabbed again and yet again, so that, although the first print was heavily inked and rather blurred, the second was clear and almost perfect, and even the third had characteristics from which the identity of the owner could in all probability be traced.

  “There will be people able to declare that this ink had not been spilled when the office was locked up for the night,” Mrs. Bradley observed, “and even if a charwoman usually comes in later to tidy up, which, from the condition of the waste-paper basket, empty except for this piece of inky blotting-paper, seems likely, a comparison of her thumb-print with these on the typing paper would prove that she was not the person with the inky thumb.”

  “Besides, she’d have chucked away the blotting-paper, wouldn’t she?”

  “Yes, she would, if she were there to clear up and clean. We will take charge of this piece of duplicating paper, therefore.”

  She took out her note-book, and carefully placed the folded sheet inside it.

  “Now, I suppose, we had better get on with our search,” suggested Carey. “If it’s very much use, that is.”

  “I am convinced that it is of no use whatever, dear child. Nevertheless, for our own peace of mind, we will go on.”

  They found nothing which offered even the slightest clue to the whereabouts of the printed copies (if these were in existence) or of the corrected proofs.

  “Awkward,” said Carey, preparing to abandon the search. “I expect the proofs are in the office safe. Wish I knew how to bust it.”

  “An irregular and dangerous proceeding, child, even if we had the means, I fear.”

  “Yes. But there’s no doubt at all, Aunt Adela, that the clue lies somewhere in that corrected copy of Carn’s book.”

  “I hope,” said his aunt, “that Mr. Bassin will let me have the uncorrected proofs to study.”

  “Of course he will. Bassin and I have been over them until we know them by heart, but apart from what are obviously printer’s errors, the ‘b’s and ‘d’s, for example—”

  “Those are more probably author’s errors, dear child. Moreover, there is one which has peculiar significance.”

  “You mean that ‘Donner’ and ‘Bonner’ one. I’ve thought that over to the point of migraine, but still can’t see where it fits. No, we must have the corrected proofs! That was what the murderer of Mrs. Carn was after. That’s where the importance of the thing lies. Anyway, love, let’s go. I’m becoming nervous.”

  “Not so, dear child. We are going to spend the night here.”

  “Says you!”

  “Visualise the way back to the road, child.”

  “You don’t mean—”

  “I only know that whilst you were toying lovingly with the office safe I went to the
window which looks on to the alley, and saw somebody in the act of covering a dark lantern. I propose that we go upstairs again, where Mr. Senss has a couple of easy chairs, and make ourselves as comfortable as we can for the night. Who, do you suppose, comes first to the offices in the morning?”

  “The office boy, I take it.”

  “Yes, I should think so. Mr. Saxant, we know, does not put in an appearance until eleven, and presumably Mr. Senss is not very much earlier. Let us watch for the arrival of this office boy.”

  “Blackmail him into silence by a whispered word that we have his thumb-print and know that he was in the office last night—”

  “I don’t think so, child. We don’t want to advertise the fact of our own invasion of the office. This boy is not working alone.”

  “Oh… Well, what then?”

  “I anticipate that the person or persons with the dark lantern will not wait in the alley after daylight. Our best plan, I think, will be to escape from the back of the house, having turned the key on the youth so that he cannot follow us.”

  “But I don’t know what the back of the house is like.”

  “No. But the dawn will disclose all that. Probably it opens on to a paddock.”

  “More likely on to some righteous citizen’s back garden.”

  “Well, we must hope for the best. Luckily we are on foot, and have no need to go round to the end of the alley for a car or motor cycle.” She led the way upstairs. “Shall we toss for beds, dear child?”

  Their night’s rest, however, did not remain undisturbed. They had been lying back in their arm-chairs for about an hour and a half when both sat up and began to sniff the air.

  “Something burning,” muttered Carey. Mrs. Bradley, more prompt to action than her nephew, went over to the office telephone and gave the alarm. Then they crept down the fire-escape again, and felt their way cautiously round an angle of the building. The back of the house, it appeared, opened on to a small square plot of ground surrounded by a wall. Suddenly on this wall appeared a dark silhouette. Carey, with a beserk cry, leapt forward and seized the climber, presumably by the leg. Mrs. Bradley hastened to his assistance, but, with a yell and a German expletive, the climber tumbled towards Carey, who bore him to the ground, where they kicked and threshed about until Carey announced that he had got him, and asked what they were going to do with him.

  “It’s—”

  A noise of bell-ringing cut him short. The fire brigade had arrived. Mrs. Bradley jerked her nephew by the shoulder, and darted at the wall like the lizard she so much resembled. Her nephew gave her a hoist and then scrambled after her. They dropped to the ground on the other side and found themselves in the grounds of the Methodist chapel. Their first intimation of this was when Carey stumbled down a couple of steps, which led to the furnace room, underneath the building.

  “Stay there,” hissed Mrs. Bradley, “and get down.”

  She joined him, and they crouched together on the steps. There was no sign of the man that Carey had just released, but plenty of evidence that the fire brigade was active. The fire itself had taken hold. The air was thick with smoke, and tongues of flame were shooting out of windows.

  “Good-bye to those proofs,” muttered Carey.

  “If they’re in that house,” said his aunt. “Let us sneak round this building, whatever it is, and get back on the road.”

  “It must be the Methodist chapel,” said Carey, getting up. “This way, then. Heavens! It’s as black as pitch.”

  The way, although dark, was straightforward enough, however. The gates which led on to the road were shut and padlocked, but fortunately were surmountable. It was not long before they were out on the public highway and on their way back to the inn.

  “Who was the man?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “The German who calls himself Simplon.”

  “And whose name in Germany is Bonner, if Mr. Senss’s slip of the tongue when he was talking to Mr. Bassin was correctly rendered by the young man. And the mistake on the uncorrected proof has a certain significance, therefore. And this Mr. Bonner is suspected by Mr. Senss of being a Nazi agent.”

  “I suppose he set fire to the place and was making his escape.”

  “Possibly he was the employer of the chewing gum office boy.”

  “The boy reported that he couldn’t lay hands on the proofs—”

  “And that somebody else was about the place, probably searching for them, too—”

  “I say, though,” said Carey, “it’s all a bit odd, you know, isn’t it?”

  “In what particular way?”

  “Well, if Bonner really is a Nazi agent, why should he care two hoots about an anti-Jewish book? You’d think, if anything, he’d welcome it.”

  “Don’t obscure the argument, child. Besides, we don’t know yet that Mr. Simplon-Bonner started the fire. We don’t know that the office boy is in his pay. We have no proof, even, that he is a Nazi agent.”

  “No,” said Carey doubtfully, “but I think Senss knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Did Mr. Bonner see you clearly, do you think, when you were fighting?”

  “Absolutely certain not to have done, and yet—a funny thing—he seemed to recognise me, because he suddenly growled: “So, it’s you again, is it?” I suppose he must have recognised me, somehow, as the bloke who nearly walked underneath his car. Remember?”

  “A pity. I had hoped we might have come and gone tonight without anyone being privy to the fact that we were not safely in our beds at the inn.”

  “Never mind. He knows there’s something fishy about me, but he isn’t wise to you yet. That’s the great thing. Only I thought I couldn’t just let him drop out of our lives over that wall without finding out who he was. Still, the whole thing becomes fairly rummy, you must confess.”

  “It has its points of interest,” Mrs. Bradley agreed. “By the way, child, when the fire engine cut our conversation short, you were about to give me the man’s name, were you not?”

  “Yes, and, like a fool, I was going to tell you he was Bonner.”

  “Yes, I was afraid you were going to say that. I don’t know that it would be a good plan to let him know that you have heard any other name for him than Simplon. I’m getting old, and I expect, confidently I may say, to die before you do, but if—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Simplon it is, until the end of the chapter. Not that I see him as a murderer. You know, I think the police are wrong to have taken hold of the Carn end of the thing to unravel the mystery. The thing obviously begins with Mrs. Carn. I do think they should persevere with that enquiry, don’t you?”

  “If we knew all, we should probably find that they are persevering with it, child. Their trouble is to find a motive for Mrs. Carn’s death.”

  “The possession of the proofs and the letters, I should say.”

  “On the other hand, the original theory of the police, that Carn himself killed his wife, still has something to recommend it, I do not doubt.”

  “But they were a devoted couple. Everybody says so.”

  “Yes, so I understand. I still think that we should ask the printers for a copy of the book.”

  “I’m not sure. Suppose we tackle Saxant and he simply refuses to give us one? You suggested it yourself, if you remember. What shall you do if he turns funny on you?”

  “He will have to give some reason, I imagine. He is not like our Mr. Simplon, who is capable, presumably of giving an unqualified refusal.”

  “You’re right, but I expect he’ll say that only the hundred copies Carn ordered have been printed. Or else he’ll say that now they’ve received this letter forbidding them to issue the copies, he can’t very well see his way to—etc.—until the experts have made up their minds whether Carn’s signature is genuine.”

  “I still think that we should ask, however, child.”

  “Yes. We’ll go to Saxant, preferably at his house.”

  The back way into the inn, through the kitchens and up the servant
s’ staircase, was accessible, and they found no difficulty in getting back to their rooms. Carey pulled off his clothes and fell into bed, there to sleep until the servant woke him in the morning with early tea. Mrs. Bradley got into bed, propped herself up with pillows, switched on her bed-head light, and picked up a book. It was deliberately chosen, and she read it with some care, and made hieroglyphics, in her own peculiar shorthand, in a small leather-covered note-book. Her choice of reading was the story of William Prynne, of which she had spoken to Carey. Prynne, the Puritan, had criticised Laud, the Archbishop. Prynne had lost his ears, his money, and his liberty. He had also been branded on the cheek for a seditious libeller. Carn, the novelist and essayist, had criticised the Jews. Carn had lost his life, his ears, and his right hand.

  There remained the, so far, unaccountable facts that the ears had been sent to Mrs. Saxant, who could have had nothing whatever to do with the printing of Carn’s book, and that the right hand of the corpse had been cut off at another printing works.

  “Odd,” said Mrs. Bradley to herself, as these thoughts came into her head. She put down the book, her note-book, and pencil, and switched off the light. But she did not go to sleep. She pondered the problem for another hour and a half—in fact, until the dawn broke. Then she slept for two hours, and had been out for a walk by the time that Carey joined her at breakfast.

  “I don’t now see any connection with Prynne,” she said.

  “Must be, love. The ears.”

  “Done to shock Mrs. Saxant, that was all.”

  “Somehow I don’t think that’s all of it.”

  “Well, why the hand, then, child?”

  “Ah, there you have me, of course. Punishment for treason, at one time.”

  “Yes, in the fifteenth century.”

  “Carn wasn’t a German, I suppose?”

  “We could find out, of course.”

  “I mean, this anti-Jew stuff would almost argue that he was. In which case, treason—see what I mean, old soul?”