The Case of the Missing Men: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Read online

  “I doubt if I can manage—”

  “But, darling, you must.” A little throaty laugh. “Do you know, I’d actually forgotten why I really rang you up. It was for Austin, to say there’ll be a taxi for you at the station if you give the time of the train.”

  “I thought perhaps the 2.30 at Beechingford, on Friday.”

  “Lovely,” she said. “Simply lovely.” Another little silence and then her voice changed again. It was sort of hushed and confidential. “You there, darling?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is desperately secret. Something I want you to do for me.”

  “Yes?”

  “But I can’t tell you now. It’s simply desperately secret. Something I’m frightened about. Really frightened.”

  What to say I didn’t know, so I cleared my throat. Constance wasn’t the frightened sort. Then in a flash I wondered if she had landed herself in a mess with some man and Austin was threatening a divorce.

  “Anything I can do . . . of course,” I said sheepishly.

  “I knew I could rely on you, darling.” The voice fairly throbbed with gratitude.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “See you on Friday, then.”

  That seemed to be all. At any rate I rang off before I was quite aware of it. But the following morning there was a strange sequel. Chaice rang me, and the message—taken by arrangement with the hall porter—was to the effect that he’d be glad to know the time of my train so that he could send a taxi to meet me.

  In other words, Constance was up to her old games again. She had not rung me to give me Chaice’s message, nor had she told Chaice the time of my train. She had rung me purely and simply to ask my help in whatever muddle, matrimonial or otherwise, it was in which she was finding herself. And that, as Shakespeare says, craved wary walking.

  That early Friday afternoon found me in the train, a copy of Kensington Gore in my pocket for a quick review and a whiling away of those eighteen, mostly suburban, miles. One thing I had not done. I had not mentioned to my wife that I was spending a day or two at Beechingford. Women, even in my limited judgment, can put the queerest constructions on the most trivial events, and Constance’s name had long been taboo. In fact I told myself that I should be back in town on the Tuesday morning at the latest, and there would be no need to mention the weekend at all. That was how I worked things guilefully out. Just how far I was wrong you will very shortly see.

  CHAPTER II

  OVERTURE

  As the train drew near Beechingford I began thinking about Constance Chaice, and recalling that melodramatic hush in her voice and the talk about being frightened. What it all meant I still couldn’t guess, though inclined to adhere to my original suspicion of a man and a divorce both in the offing. Perhaps her vague hints had included the unspoken warning that I should find her and Chaice on pretty bad terms, and that was something which I didn’t find it pleasant to contemplate, for I could see myself in a position that would be remarkably uncomfortable. There would be frigidities, and myself used as a vehicle through which the hostile pair would talk at each other, and altogether it would be a strained and trying business.

  Even when I got out of the train I was still thinking about the possibly unpleasant ménage in which I was about to spend the weekend, and so occupied was I with my thoughts that I stared rather blankly at a chauffeur who asked me if I was Mr. Travers. He was a driver for a private hire service in the town, and the car awaiting me was quite a roomy and comfortable one.

  There are two things about myself which I ought at once to make clear. One is that I am possessed of an insatiable curiosity, which means that I like to know what makes the wheels go round, and the whys and wherefores of this and that. The other thing, which follows as a kind of corollary, is that I take an inordinate interest in my fellow men. I like their company, to hear them talk, to know what they think and like and dislike. And all that irrespective of that particularly snobbish and British word class. I have no use for the strong silent men, and in my town club there is rarely an interesting specimen. A railway carriage, a bus or a pub have been my happiest hunting-grounds. That explains why, when the driver opened the door, I said I preferred to sit in front, and after that we were chatting away all the mile and a half from the station to Lovelands.

  I had not been in Beechingford for years, but the town seemed to me to have changed very little. There were distant factory chimneys which I didn’t recall, and the driver told me that the factory was an enormous place built since the war began. Hundreds of women and girls were employed there, and housed in a large camp south of the town. In the long High Street I also noticed a new and palatial cinema.

  “There’s a regular sensation on here at the moment,” the driver told me.

  “You mean a special picture at the cinema?”

  “Well, someone might go and make a picture of it,” he said, and began to explain. What he had meant was that the town was in the throes of a sensation. At nights the streets swarmed with the workers off duty, and the cinemas were crowded too. But some maniac or pervert was taking advantage of the crowds to squirt filthy liquid over women’s clothes. When the cinemas were emptying was his favourite time. That would be at about nine o’clock when it was comfortably dark overhead and the black-out was in full swing.

  “How long has it been going on?” I asked him.

  “About a week, sir.”

  “And the police haven’t discovered anything?”

  “They will do soon,” he told me confidently. “They’ve got a rare smart Inspector here, sir. Goodman, his name is. If he can’t catch ’em, nobody can.”

  We were then out of the town and heading west in quite open country.

  “Curious that this land between the town and Mr. Chaice’s place hasn’t been built over?” I said.

  “Mr. Chaice can thank himself for that,” he told me. “He picked up all this land during the slump, and then, just before the war, he sold it to the council. Some say there’s going to be a park and a posh housing estate.”

  Then almost at once he was pointing out Chaice’s house to me, and I saw its roof through a gap in the elms. Still a nice place, he said it was, though not kept up so well as it was before the war. But Mr. Chaice was like everybody else—he couldn’t get labour. But it seemed well-kept enough for me.

  The summer of 1944, you may remember, consisted of three separate weeks—Whitsuntide week, August Bank Holiday week and the second week in September, and the rest is best forgotten. This was the last brief spell, and maybe the perfect weather and the loveliness of the rare sun had something to do with my optimistic appraisal, for to me the hundred yards of drive looked spotless, the flower-beds along the house were immaculate and gay, and the lawns had those streaks of varied green that showed a recent mowing. But there was no time to peep around, for at the front door was Chaice himself. And as I caught sight of him, there came into my mind the most incongruous of thoughts, or rather remembrances—that before he had taken up writing he had been an actor.

  Perhaps the thought wasn’t so incongruous after all. What gave rise to it—and it wasn’t hard to trace the origins-—was the wonder what his face would be like. I had known him with a sweeping moustache and small imperial, and later clean-shaven with sideburns that grew level with the middle of his ears. Now I saw that he was absolutely clean-shaven, and that gave the face a new and unexpected look.

  Chaice was over fifty but possessed of the gift of perennial youth. But for a little aristocratic greying by the ears, his hair was dark and dense, though he was now wearing it inordinately short, and there was never a sign of baldness. In height he was just under the average and slimly built. Or maybe his bones had never had the time to acquire much of a covering, for of all men I have known he was most entitled to the epithet mercurial, with his perpetual and irritating restlessness, his amplitude of gesture and his impatience of quiet ease.

  I could see, too, that he was wearing a perfectly normal lounge suit. He had had
, as I knew, his velvet coat period, with sweeping bow necktie and Bohemian wide-brimmed hat. And there had been a corduroy trouser period with flaming red tie. Then had come a time when he was partial to outrageous checks.

  “My dear Travers, what a pleasure!”

  His hand had reached for mine as soon as I had manipulated my length out of the door. There was an unctuousness to make one wince. His little eyes were almost puckered with the pain of the exquisite pleasure, and his thin mobile lips, usually ironic and drooping, were stretched to a smile.

  “Very nice to see you again,” I said, and, “You’re looking very well. Not a day older.”

  His hand still held mine and his other hand was patting it in a sort of Chadband approval.

  “The driver,” I said, and my hand escaped to my trouser pocket.

  “But, no,” he told me, almost horrified. “Everything’s been settled.” But he smiled not without disapproval when I passed over a tip. In the hall I noticed a large showcase filled with objects I couldn’t identify, and then I noticed his old butler with my bag.

  “You’d like to see your room straightaway?” Chaice asked me.

  I said perhaps I would, and followed the butler up the stairs. We went along a wide corridor to the left and then turned sharp right, and there was my room in the wing. Quite a charming room with a fine view of the annexe.

  “Harris, isn’t it?” I said.

  He seemed pleased that I should remember him. I told him, too, that he was looking well, though I might have added that he was looking more than his seventy years.

  “The labour problem worrying you here?” I asked him.

  The old boy was very depressed. His one footman had long since gone and had been followed by a procession of incompetent parlourmaids. At the moment they were lucky to have one or two old servants of the family, and a working housekeeper. As for the gardens, where there used to be three men and a boy, now there was only the old head gardener and one old man.

  “Mr. Richard is a great help, of course, sir.”

  “Mr. Richard?” I said, and he explained. Richard Chaice was Austin’s elder brother, who, I now remember, had been very much of a rolling stone. Soon after the war he came home from Canada and had since been living at Lovelands. I didn’t see at the time what Harris was driving at when he had said he was a help, and I didn’t like to seem too inquisitive.

  Harris showed me my way about. The room had its basin with hot and cold water, and close to it was the lavatory and a bathroom. The one other bedroom in that stumpy wing was Daine’s and farther from the main building than my own. Then when Harris left I had a quick clean up and another look out of my bedroom window. The thatch of the old barn annexe was a silvery blue against the hazy blue of the elms. To the right, beyond the mellowed wall, was the kitchen garden and the white of greenhouse roofs. In the air was the lovely whirr of a lawn-mower, and even the bedrooms had the faint pervasiveness of garden scents and the musky smell of roses.

  I made my way downstairs to the hall, and that showcase caught my eye again, if only because of its ugliness and incongruity. As I took a look Chaice came out of the room which I afterwards knew as his private sanctum.

  “I thought I heard you,” he said, and was at once explaining the contents of the showcase. It was a collection of what I might call criminal oddments, and heavens knows how he had acquired it. There were articles that had been the personal property of this murderer and that, and, in one or two cases, things closely connected with the same crimes. There was a sawn-off shotgun and various knives and what can be lumped together as blunt instruments. Plenty of guns and automatics, and a small rifle or two. There was even a cigarette-end—the last that a certain murderer had smoked the morning of his execution.

  “Not everybody’s taste, of course,” he told me, prompted maybe by the look on my face when he explained that last object. “But it all makes for atmosphere, my dear chap. And what should we do without atmosphere?”

  I lamely echoed a what, and then he was saying that tea would be on in another half-hour, and why shouldn’t we take a look round outside. So we went out, and through the french window of that sanctum of his. It was a cosy room with plenty of books, even if reference ones. A vase of roses filled the room with scent, and altogether it was a room that I envied him. If a man couldn’t work there, as I told him, he couldn’t work at all. He surprised me by saying that most of his work was done elsewhere, and at once, in that volatile way of his, he was turning back and, arm in mine, was leading me through the hall and opening the door of another room. It, too, faced south, but was much larger.

  At a table under the larger window a man was typing, and he got to his feet as we entered.

  “This is Mr. Travers, Lang,” Chaice said.

  Chaice’s secretary looked about thirty. He was tall, rather sinewy in build and with fair hair brushed back from his high forehead. He had an attractive smile and I liked the look of him.

  An old buffer like myself appreciates good manners, and as soon as we said the ‘How d’you do’s’ he was moving a chair up for me and asking if I would sit down.

  “Can’t stay now,” Chaice told him brusquely. “I just wanted Travers to see the workshop.”

  “And a very nice workshop it is,” I said, and it undoubtedly was. It was a combination of efficiency and comfort, and Chaice hadn’t spared money on it. There were even two dictaphones, and two fine typewriters besides the one that Lang had been using. The filing cabinets and stationery cupboards were expensive-looking too.

  “See you some time later.” I smiled at Lang as Chaice drew me out again. This time we went through the hall and out by the open front door. As soon as we got outside I said I’d been too rushed to enquire about everybody. How was Constance, for instance.

  “She’s always fit,” he told me. “Been looking forward to seeing you, though.”

  We had stepped on the grass and that was why we heard the steps on the gravel behind us. Constance was at the front door, and when I turned my head she was waving. We halted till she caught us up.

  “How are you, Ludo?” she said. “So lovely to see you again.”

  Her hand was delightfully cool and the smile frankly welcoming. When I met her eyes there was nothing in them to remind me of that brief telephone conversation of a few evenings before.

  “You’re looking amazingly well,” I said, and she was. And I might have added that she was looking uncommonly handsome. She seemed in some curious way to have grown since I had seen her last, and she was half a head taller than Chaice. The very simplicity of her dress was a work of art, for the Worcester green skirt and the yellowish jumper went admirably with the reddish gold of her hair.

  “Do you think she’s been well treated?” asked Chaice uxoriously as he squeezed her arm.

  “That’s not for me to say,” I told him, and the reason why I made a remark so fatuous was that I was thinking of something quite different—the quick drawing back of her arm when Chaice’s hand went out to it and the flash of something almost like repulsiveness that was momentarily seen on her face.

  “We thought of taking a quick stroll round the gardens,” Chaice told her. Perhaps I had imagined what I thought I had seen, for he at any rate had noticed nothing. His look had nothing but a pride of possession.

  “Far too hot,” she told him, and drew a step or two back. “You two darlings run along.”

  We—that really means Chaice—watched her till she was back at the porch. Tea was in half an hour, she called to us, and then, with a wave, she disappeared inside. Chaice let out a kind of sigh.

  “One of the best,” he told me, and was taking my arm again. “Makes all the difference in a house like this. Gets on well with the children too.”

  “How are they?” I said, and perhaps to change the subject, for his praise of Constance had struck me as rather oddly expressed.

  “Kitty’s coming home tonight,” he said. “Seven day’s leave. She’s an A.T., you know. And enjoying every
minute of it.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’ve never met your daughter. And the boy? Martin?”

  “Still at home,” he told me, and I couldn’t miss the frown. “Turned down for the Services and . . . Still, you’ll be seeing him.”

  We were now at the swimming-pool and he changed the subject so abruptly that I could do no more than wonder. Martin had apparently turned out as oddly as his youth had promised. Chaice did add that nowadays one saw little of and knew still less about one’s children.

  “For myself, I’m up to the eyes in work. Books are selling pretty well too, in spite of paper shortage.”

  “You’ve plenty on hand?”

  “Too much,” he said.

  “But that secretary of yours must be a great help.”

  “Orford’s all right,” he said patronisingly. “But you know how it is. Put my brain into his fingers and then we might get somewhere.”

  Orford Lang, I had said to myself. The name recalled something, and then I remembered.

  “Orford Lang. Wasn’t there a chap who wrote detective novels under that name?”

  “That’s the one,” he said. “Never got anywhere with them.” The curl of his lip wasn’t pleasant. “You know how it is. Twelve or fourteen hundred sales and the cheapest rate. The poor devil would have starved on it.”

  “He had no private income?”

  “Devil a bit,” he said. “Lucky for him I saw he had something in him, so I offered him his present job. Had him for three years now. Three hundred a year and his keep, and that’s twice what he ever made out of that pen of his.”

  There were steps and a sound like wheezing nearby, and we turned to see Harris at hand.

  “Sorry to trouble you, sir,” he said, and wheezed for breath again, “but you’re wanted on the telephone.”

  “Damn the telephone!” Chaice told him exasperatedly. “Who is it now?”

  “Miss Kitty, sir.”