The Case of the Corporal's Leave: A Ludovic Travers Mystery
Christopher Bush
The Case of the Corporal’s Leave
It wasn’t I who discovered the body. I want to make that perfectly clear, if only for the benefit of a couple of club acquaintances of mine.
Ludovic Travers, special investigator for Scotland Yard, commits murder? No—but at the end of this novel you will understand why he might claim to have done so.
Sir William Pelle has become a missing person, and Superintendent Wharton of the Yard is prioritizing his recovery. But when Pelle is found murdered, there are serious questions to answer. Was the well-to-do jewellery-handler the victim of a well-planned robbery? And why was the corpse partly covered in sugar?
Several of the enigmatic figures formerly surrounding the deceased are going to repay close scrutiny; as is the importance of the army corporal who keeps weaving in and out of the story. It will take all Travers’s customary acuity to bring the case to a successful conclusion—and eventually to explain his assertion of committing murder himself.
The Case of the Corporal’s Leave was originally published in 1945. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
TO
AUDREY GRAY
A SMALL GESTURE TO SUPPLEMENT
MUCH GRATITUDE
Contents
Cover
Title Page/About the Book
Dedication
Contents
Introduction by Curtis Evans
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
About the Author
Titles by Christopher Bush
The Case of the Missing Men – Title Page
The Case of the Missing Men – Chapter One
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
Winding down the War and Taking a New Turn
Christopher Bush’s Ludovic Travers Mysteries, 1943 to 1946
Having sent his series sleuth Ludovic “Ludo” Travers, in the third and fourth years of the Second World War, around England to meet murder at a variety of newly-created army installations—a prisoner-of-war camp (The Case of the Murdered Major, 1941), a guard base (The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel, 1942) and an instructor school (The Case of the Fighting Soldier, 1942)--Christopher Bush finally released Travers from military engagements in The Case of the Magic Mirror (1943), a unique retrospective affair which takes place before the outbreak of the Second World War. In the remaining four Travers wartime mysteries--The Case of the Running Mouse (1944), The Case of the Platinum Blonde (1944), The Case of the Corporal’s Leave (1945) and The Case of the Missing Men (1946)--Bush frees his sleuth to investigate private criminal problems. Although the war is mentioned in these novels, it plays far less of a role in events, doubtlessly giving contemporary readers a sense that the world conflagration which at one point had threatened to consume the British Empire was winding down for good. Yet even without the “novelty” of the war as a major plot element, these Christopher Bush mysteries offer readers some of the most intriguing conundrums in the Ludo Travers detection canon.
Curtis Evans
Chapter I
FRANCIS KENRAY
It wasn’t I who discovered the body. I want to make that perfectly clear, if only for the benefit of a couple of club acquaintances of mine.
In the course of an argument one of them flippantly remarked that I was scared of going out in the black-out for fear I should trip over a corpse. His pal added a bit of facetiousness to the effect that nowadays whenever I spat I spat blood. Perhaps I took both them and myself a bit too seriously when I expostulated that in the course of fifteen years’ association with the Yard, and wholly on cases to do with murder, I’d discovered only two corpses of my very own, and that seemed a mighty poor record. I also added that I didn’t spit.
But I think those two fellows were taking themselves a bit seriously too. Nothing is easier, as I know to my cost, than to start some argumentative hare and in a matter of moments to be defending that utterly imaginative animal as if it had been for years a cherished household pet. So I wonder now just what they would have thought if I had told them in all seriousness that not only had I discovered two corpses, but had also provided one of my own: that, in fact, I had committed what was tantamount to murder. What I do know is that they’d never have believed me. And yet I did commit that murder, though it will not be till this particular story’s almost over that you learn how and why.
The body, as I have said, was not discovered by me, nor by the Yard if it comes to that. It was found by a man named Grampy who works for the Ministry of Supply, and I hasten to spike the guns of my facetious friend by adding that I don’t mean the Ministry for supplying Corpses to the Yard. But my association with the affair which I arbitrarily christen the Case of the Corporal’s Leave, began before there was a corpse at all.
The last thing I want to do is to be long-winded, but I think there are things you should know about the whole set-up, including myself. I was invalided out of the Army in the autumn of 1943 and was at once at a loose end, with my wife still doing nursing service up North and all the time in the world on my hands. Then George Wharton— Superintendent Wharton to you—stepped fortuitously in. I’d been associated with George for fifteen years, as I’ve already said, and now he was proposing that instead of being a haphazard sort of specialist consultant—gross flattery that on his part—I should do a whole-time job. The Yard was desperately short of men and had in addition a hundred new responsibilities, so there’d be plenty to keep me occupied. He added several more blandishments, though I was far too gratified to let him know that I regarded them as such. Then with an air of sacrifice and reluctance I accepted the offer. The terms were pretty generous, though that was no great gratification, except that I could confidentially tell myself with a burst of adulation that the Powers-that-Be—as George cryptically alludes to them— wouldn’t pay good money if they didn’t want me pretty badly. And the work sounded interesting enough: Special Branch jobs principally, and likely to take me all over the country. A Yard car at my disposal too, and petrol in reason. By the time I’d had the job for a couple of months I was hoping it might be a permanency. Not that I didn’t work. In some ways I’d never worked so hard in my life.
On that morning of early January 1944 I went to the Yard to report on an assignment I’d been given in Wales, and it was about nine o’clock when I walked into George’s room. He was in one of his heavy, preoccupied moods, and I didn’t know then what was on his mind. But I mention the matter of moods because George is a man of many, and very few of them are governed by circumstance. A Superintendent of his versatility and standing is concerned with every stratum of society, and it is his boast that he can be all things to all men. A great character actor was certainly lost when George threw in his lot with the Law, and even to-day, if he went on the halls, I think he’d bring down the house. George, as a hawker of vacuum cleaners, or the man who calls for the Prudential, would be in the same class as Will Fyffe. But if I’ve given the impression that George is a mountebank, let me hasten to qualify and deny. No man can be more magisterial and dignified when he has that mind, and as for his general compet
ence, no man gets as high in the Yard hierarchy without unquestionable reason.
George often impresses on me in my moments of mistrust or dubiety that my great asset is that nobody could look less like a detective. I suppose he is right though I never feel particularly cheered by the reminder. I am six-foot three, if you’d like to know, and thin as a rake, and the tooth-brush moustache I’ve clung to as a relic of Army life, is counter-balanced by horn-rimmed spectacles, and the whole effect, I’m told, is that of a Professor whom someone has been trying to turn into a Commando. But George ought to know, for no man looks less like a sleuth than himself. He may be bulky and over six-foot, but the hunched effect he can give to his shoulders puts him out of the police category in the twinkling of an eye. Then there is his vast walrus moustache which he wipes on occasions with spacious sweeps of a voluminous red handkerchief. There are his antiquated spectacles which he speciously dons to give the appearance of a very human, and probably henpecked, family man, and over the tops of which he peers with looks that vary from mild surprise or mental pain to something like a leer or squint. Then there is his repertoire of tricks, used as circumstances seem to warrant: wheedlings, pained expostulations, outbursts of wrath, blandness, self-deprecations and every brand of humbug and camouflage. And all are accompanied by what he deems suitable gestures and noises: chucklings, indignant snorts and contemptuous pursings of the lips. And from my point of view, since I’ve known George intimately for fifteen years, the amusing thing is that he still brings that extensive repertoire of humbug to bear on me, who can read him like the largest-sized print. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fond of George, for life is rarely dull when he’s anywhere around. And don’t forget that the George I’ve described is the one seen through my eyes. The Yard thinks sufficient of him to have nicknamed him with both admiration and endearment “The Old General”, and what the criminal classes think of him could be expressed only in a language so lurid that no publisher would allow its printing.
But George was inclined to be dull that morning, with never a quip or one of his elephantine attempts at leg-pulling. In a quarter of an hour he had vetted my report and was graciously pleased to say it hadn’t been a bad job, and then he pushed back his chair and pulled out his pipe.
“Something on your mind, George?” I said. “Or aren’t you feeling too fit?”
He began an indignant snort, then transferred it elsewhere.
“Ought to have been at Chelmsford this morning,” he said “and here I am, cooped up and waiting for a telephone message.”
“Anything important?”
He gave a real snort at that.
“Only someone missing. A hell of a thing for me to have to occupy my mind on.” He spread his palms indignantly. “As if people weren’t missing every day! There’s the proper machinery, isn’t there? That’s what I told that bloke at the India Office. He’s missing, I said, and the machinery’s been set going. We couldn’t do any more if it was the Prime Minister.”
“The India Office?” I asked with polite surprise, and just at that moment the buzzer went. George swooped.
“Who?” he asked snappily. “Who?”
“Oh,” he said, and his voice became milder. “About that, is he? . . . I see. A Mr. Francis Kenray. . . . Right-ho. Send him up.”
“You’d better nip in there,” he told me, and nodded to the door that led to the tiny lavatory. “This ought to be interesting. To do with that missing Big Bug I was telling you about.”
I grabbed my overcoat, hat and gloves and nipped into that lavatory and I slipped the catch. Standing on the seat you can see through the fanlight and every word in George’s room can be heard. George’s reference to a Big Bug was interesting enough. Phrases like that are part of his stock-in-trade of camouflage. The Big Bugs, he will say with an air of contempt, or the Powers-that-Be, or One of the Nobs, and yet there is no bigger snob alive than George. Any old school tie will send him all of a dither, except thank heaven, my own.
The man who was shown into his room was just above medium height and strongly built. His age was the middle fifties and the first impression I gathered was of ease of bearing. Francis Kenray was definitely not rattled, and indeed he looked like a man whose quiet poise it would be hard to upset. But for his rather untidy moustache I should have guessed him to be a lawyer, and though his voice had no particular quality, it was as quiet and unperturbed as his bearing.
“Mr. Francis Kenray?” asked Wharton, putting on a pose that I might call mildly magisterial.
“That’s right,” Kenray said. “You’re Superintendent Wharton?”
“At your service, sir,” Wharton told him unctuously. “Take a seat, Mr. Kenray, and let’s hear what’s worrying you.”
“It’s about Sir William Pelle,” Kenray began, after a pause. “I believe you know something about it already.”
“Well, maybe,” said Wharton non-committally. I could imagine the smile that accompanied the next remark. “All the same, sir, I’d rather like to hear it all again. From your own angle, if you follow me.”
“Well, there’s nothing much to say, really,” began Kenray. While he was speaking it struck me how absolutely motionless he sat, as if afraid even to make a gesture, like a Scotsman at Christie’s.
“I should have met Sir William at his place last night and most unaccountably he didn’t turn up. His secretary got in touch with the local police and I believe they got in touch with you. Then this morning I rang the secretary and gathered there was no news so I thought I’d better come here personally and—”
“Exactly, exactly,” said Wharton. “And now do me a favour, Mr. Kenray. Suppose I know never a thing about all this. Start at the very beginning. Who is Sir William Pelle? Where does he live? Why did you have to see him? You get the idea?”
Wharton leaned back and Kenray evidently had the idea for he began in the right place. Sir William Pelle was a retired Indian Civil Servant who had a house at Pangley. I’m disguising the names of all the places involved and for very excellent reasons, as you may see. Pangley is exactly half an hour from Charing Cross by fast train. Kenray himself was living at Hurstham, on the same line, and seven minutes short of Pangley. The so-called fast trains from Charing Cross make only three stops before Pangley: at Waterloo, London Bridge and then Hurstham. Both Pangley and Hurstham are large residential suburbs with old, substantial houses and big areas of new property built between the wars.
“It was to do with that Bengal famine appeal,” Kenray said. “Various items of jewellery kept coming in: some valuable and some not so valuable. Sir William took over the secretaryship of the gift side of the appeal and opened a little office in Cunningham Street, just off the Haymarket.”
“I know it,” Wharton told him.
“No. 7, it is,” Kenray went on, and then for the first time he seemed to pause as if at a loss. It was a moment or two before he went on, and either some trick of the light deceived me or I caught a quick, dry smile.
“If you’ll pardon my saying so, Superintendent, Sir William was a very self-willed, opinionated man. He used to deposit the jewellery by dribs and drabs, as they say, at his town bank, and last night he was collecting it and taking it down to Pangley.”
“How much? I mean, what was it worth?”
“I can’t say.” He permitted himself the faintest gesture: just the least shrug of the shoulders. “Probably thirty thousand pounds. Maybe twice that. I couldn’t say. But it would all go in a small attaché-case.”
“Jewellery is making big money at the moment,” Wharton remarked.
“Very big,” Kenray told him. “But what you want to know is where I come in. I’m an antique dealer. My main shop and office is in Lower Regent Street and I’ve also a little place in Hatton Garden. Jewellery’s my particular line.” Again he permitted himself a gesture; this time another shrug of the shoulders and a deprecatory smile. “When I was a younger man I wrote a book about it. That’s why Sir William called me in, or was advised to call me in.
I do a lot of work for Christie’s and Sotheby’s, by the way. And that’s why I was supposed to go on to his place at Pangley last night—to inspect the whole collection of jewellery, and give a rough valuation and advise as to sale. Eight o’clock I was supposed to be there—”
“Just a minute,” broke in Wharton. “Why couldn’t you have seen the jewellery at Sir William Pelle’s office in Cunningham Street?”
“Exactly,” said Kenray. “I told Sir William that. I said it would save time and trouble, and I was a busy man. But no. It had to be at his place and at eight o’clock.”
“He didn’t even ask you to dinner?” asked Wharton with an attempt at humour.
“As a matter of fact he didn’t,” Kenray said. “And another thing. I was absolutely horrified when I heard he was taking all that stuff down in an attaché-case, and I told him so.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Good gad, sir, we’re living in England, aren’t we? And what do you think I am? A child or something?’”
“Pure Poona, eh?”
“Well, Sir William was rather like that,” Kenray said mildly enough. “A little man, and very fiery and peppery. Livery, perhaps I should have said.”
“But it wasn’t your headache?”
“It certainly wasn’t,” Kenray said. “I told him it was his affair and I’d be seeing him at about eight o’clock. And I did. That is, I went to the house and found the whole place in a hubbub. Sir William hadn’t arrived. He’d said he was coming on the usual four-five from town and then at about three-thirty or so he rang up to say he’d be taking the four-fifty. But he didn’t come on it, and he hadn’t arrived when I got there. I waited till ten o’clock and then the secretary and I went to the railway station—only five minutes’ walk—and saw the stationmaster and the ticket collector. Nobody remembered Sir William getting off a train. In fact, they said if he had got off he wouldn’t have been noticed. The collector didn’t know him and if he had he’d never have noticed him except by accident. People just come surging out of the doors by those early evening trains. Swarm out by the hundred.”