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

  “You and I have got to settle about terms,” Chaice said as soon as he’d gone. “Whatever you suggest will suit me.”

  I said I’d rather leave things. A token payment perhaps for the use of Kensington Gore and the rest would be a pleasure. He wouldn’t have it, but I insisted too, and with that impasse we got to our feet.

  “Always have a swim about this time,” he told me apologetically. “Constance likes it. And what about you? Harris can find you a costume.”

  I said I’d look on. I was the world’s worst swimmer and I’d rather watch the experts. So he went upstairs and I wandered round to the pool, and I was wondering just what he had meant by the phrase ‘Constance likes it’. Did Constance like the swimming or for him to take a regular part in it? The latter I decided. In spite of his little rebellions, she had him well under her thumb. That was why he had tackled the question of his brother and son behind her back, so to speak, and had eased his mind on me.

  A chair or two was on the concrete surround of the pool, so I took one and had a look at Constance. She hadn’t seen me approach, for she was doing one of those crawl things that need a head beneath the water. When she did see me she was all heartiness. I was lazy and frowsty and heaven knows what, and why didn’t I come in. But Lang appeared then and she turned her attention to him, daring him to dive in from the top of the platform. He was sheepishly protesting, and then Chaice appeared. He was a man after my own heart: stepping gingerly in the shallow end, summoning a slow courage and then dipping below for quick dampener, and then shivering again, after which he did a breast stroke monotonously and resisted all Constance’s efforts to get him on the diving-board. Then I noticed someone standing by my chair.

  “Martin, isn’t it?” I said as I got to my feet.

  “How d’you do, sir,” he said, and held out his hand. It was a flabby hand, and but for the fact that its owner, standing there in a bathing costume, couldn’t have been any other than Martin Chaice, I should certainly never have recognised him. He had shot up since I last saw him to five foot ten, and he was pretty heavy too, and altogether about as little like Austin Chaice’s son as I could have imagined. His face looked none too healthy.

  “A long while since we’ve met,” I said amiably, and, as he was evidently hunting for words, “Let me see. How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-four,” he said.

  “You’ve been down some time?” From Oxford, I meant.

  “About a year, sir.”

  “Good,” I said, for want of something better. I thought he was cold, for every now and again he gave a little shiver, and then I saw it was some kind of nervous twitching.

  “You and I will have to have a yarn some time,” I said.

  “I’d love to,” he told me.

  There was an awkward silence, and then I said he’d better go in. There wouldn’t be much more sun.

  “I think I will,” he said. He hesitated a moment as if there was something else he wanted to say, then he gave a little nod and made for the far, deep end of the pool. I noticed that he didn’t look at his father. Still a bit self-centred, I told myself. He hadn’t even troubled to ask me about Jack—the young nephew whom he used to accompany to town.

  The pond was now divided into three distinct parts. Near me was Chaice splashing about, full of sound and fury that signified nothing, for he was never in water more than four feet deep. In the middle of the pool Orford Lang was cruising about gracefully and aimlessly, varying a breast with a side stroke. At the deep end were Martin and Constance, and I had heard her “Why, hal-lo, darling!” when he swam towards her.

  Chaice had had enough and came shivering out. He gave me a grin that might have meant anything, stuck his feet in the plimsolls, grabbed a bathrobe and shuffled off. Two minutes later Lang came out and the process was repeated.

  “You ought to have come in, sir,” he told me. “The water’s perfect.”

  “Maybe next time,” I told him, and continued watching the two at the far end. Constance was sticking it out as most women can in water, and Martin was keeping near her. All the time they seemed to be talking, and so quietly that no word reached me; it was, in fact, as if they spoke out of the corners of their mouths. Somehow I knew they were talking about me.

  Dinner, usually at seven, was a quarter of an hour later on Fridays on account of Daine’s late working. Even then he only just made it in time. Our bedrooms, as I said, were in that comparatively stumpy left wing, and by a curious arrangement of adaptation faced each other, though not opposite. On my left was the bathroom and on his left the lavatory. I preferred my room because it looked out over the gardens, whereas his had as its principal view the back quarters of the house and that kind of no-man’s-land that lay between those back quarters and the kitchen gardens. I chatted with him that evening while he finished his dressing, which was merely a changing into a darker suit.

  In the dining-room I was on Constance’s right, with Martin facing me. At the other end, Austin Chaice had Daine on his right, with Richard facing him, and Lang sat between Daine and Martin. I mention all that because when a certain argument started I was in a position to see the faces of both Daine and Lang. I admit that our various positions were proper and apt, and yet I couldn’t help thinking, as I took my seat, that I was to be the victim of some plan of campaign hatched between Constance and Martin in the swimming-pool.

  It was a good meal, but I am not going to trouble you with details. Other things are far more important. Richard Chaice, for instance. He, too, had changed into a dark suit, and with his badger hair neatly parted he had an air of distinction. Even in his working clothes he had had a natural dignity, and now the forlornness had given place to a quietness and yet an ease of manner. More than once I was to hear his voice at that end of the long table, and I couldn’t help noticing that he was never interrupted, even by Austin. Perhaps that gentle voice of his had a kind of authority against Austin’s rather strident cackle and Daine’s frequent high-pitched laugh. As for Lang, he spoke rarely, though his attention seemed always to be on that talk at the far end.

  I have said the table was a long one. It could have seated twelve in reasonable comfort, and yet when Martin came to the question of that manuscript of his, his voice lowered almost to inaudibility, and Constance’s throaty drawl was lowered too. Martin was almost obsequious during the opening stages of that meal. He remembered to ask about Jack, and though Oxford himself, spoke well of Cambridge for my sake. Lang looked round and smiled appreciatively at that. He also had been at Cambridge, though he had had to come down before the end of his third year. The death of his father, Martin told me sotto voce, and the family affairs rather badly involved.

  “Ludo wants to see your manuscript, darling,” Constance said.

  “That’s awfully decent of you, sir,” chipped in Martin. After that swim his eyes didn’t look so puffy and his skin was a better colour.

  “Not at all,” I said, and, “Mind you, I’m no authority.”

  Then I tried an explanation—and hoped to God it was being as humorous as I intended—of how the position in which I found myself was a highly invidious one. I instanced a hoary old favourite of mine—Gil Bias—and what it had cost him when he had accepted the Archbishop of Salamanca’s invitation to discuss certain sermons. That was when the noise at the other end of the table became only too noticeable.

  “Oh, my God!” groaned Martin. “They’re discussing the detective novel again.”

  “Sometimes it drives one frantic at meals,” whispered Constance, and then the noise drowned her voice. Austin was fairly bellowing that he never made a statement of that kind—what kind I had no idea—without being able to prove it. I saw a way of escape.

  “This sounds too good to miss,” I imparted to my end of the table, and then, to Austin, “What’s your proposition?”

  “Only an old one cropped up again,” Daine said. “Austin’s claiming that he could write a detective novel round any single person with whom he comes in
to contact.”

  Lang was leaning sideways to listen. Richard was smiling to himself and shaking his head, as if he had been in opposition to the motion.

  “Well, let’s hear the proof,” I suggested.

  “Dammit, how can there be proof?” Austin asked exasperatedlv. “Quote me persons and I’ll try to give instances.” He mumbled something annoyedly to himself and added that that was fair enough.

  “What about those of us round this table?” I put in fatuously. It was amazing how quickly he took me up.

  “Good,” he told me, and spread his palms and then rubbed his hands together. “Since Cuthbert is the principal objector, I’ll start with him.”

  He smiled ironically. “Rather like robbing a blind man of a penny. It’s so obvious. All we have is the swindling agent who has to kill a client who’s got wise to him.”

  “Damnation, Austin!” exploded Daine, and I thought for a moment he was going to push his chair back and get to his feet. His face was flushed and then as quickly he was smiling sheepishly. “What I mean is . . . Well, dammit, isn’t anything sacred to you detective authors?”

  “You should know,” Austin told him blandly. “You yourself read personally all my stuff, and heaven knows how many others.”

  “But surely!” put in Lang. “Surely there couldn’t be any such thing as a swindling agent. I mean, a client can check up on sales with his publisher.”

  “But wasn’t there a recent case of an agent swindling his clients?” put in Richard mildly. “I seem to remember reading something about it.”

  “I’m sorry—yes,” admitted Lang, and on Austin’s face the irony became gloating. “All the same, the clients must have been the most utter fools, and incredibly careless. As I said, they’d only to check up with their publishers.”

  “Well, there we are,” Austin told everybody blandly. “It seems there are swindling agents and there are fools. If that doesn’t prove my proposition, what does?”

  “There is still one thing you’ve omitted,” Richard said in the same gentle voice.

  “And what’s that?” snapped his brother.

  “Your ability to write the story,” Richard told him, and we all had to laugh.

  I was recognising that the meal was near its end, but I wanted to spin things out for a minute or two longer.

  “And, of course,” I said, “one swallow doesn’t make a summer.”

  “You mean, another instance?” Austin said. “Well, I was coming to that. We’ll take Orford here. Again a very simple instance, provided, of course”—he smiled graciously there at Richard—“that I could write the story when I’d found the plot. But about Orford. He’s under contract to me for his whole time. But he thinks he’ll double-cross me and make a little on the sly, so he writes a book under another name. I find out and . . .” A spreading of his palms and a shrug of the shoulders added the rest.

  “But, I say, sir,” Lang protested, his face a violent red.

  “You must learn to take your medicine, my boy,” Austin told him with a sneering tone and a patronising gesture. “Anybody else open for comment?”

  But Constance was getting to her feet and we all rose. She was mentioning Kitty and how there ought to be a hot meal ready by half-past nine. Harris came in and Austin mentioned the same thing. Daine was taking my arm and whispering that coffee was always in the drawing-room.

  It was cosy there with the black-out curtains drawn. Richard seemed to have a favourite remote corner, and settled at once to a book. When I blatantly went over to him he showed me the title—The Greenhouse. It seemed to be partly a manual on how to build greenhouses of various kinds, and he told me that he was planning an overhaul of the Lovelands houses.

  Austin gulped down his coffee, refused a second cup and told me, for all to hear, that he would look through the notes Lang had made on Kensington Gore, and so save my time in the morning. The coffee tray was taken away and Constance said she would have to see about Trixie. When she had gone and only we five men were there, Lang cleared his throat.

  “I think we missed a great chance of getting one back on Mr. Chaice.”

  “How was that?” asked Daine rather sharply.

  “Well, we—I mean I, could have challenged him about himself.” He was getting a bit flustered and involved. “I mean, we could have told him that we could have written a detective story about him.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” groaned Martin.

  “And how?” asked Daine.

  “Well, take that summerhouse which we used to use and which he put out of bounds about a month ago. Couldn’t an author make that seem rather fishy?”

  “Yes, but how?” persisted Daine.

  “Well, nobody is allowed to go there but Mr. Chaice, and he keeps the key. And he does go there. He says he gets a special kind of inspiration there. It sort of clarifies his ideas. I mean, couldn’t an author make something fishy out of that? After all, ideas aren’t the slave of locality.”

  He evidently thought that quite a good phrase. Daine promptly pricked the bubble.

  “Footling, my dear fellow. Footling!” he told Lang bluntly. “Ideas are always the slave of locality, whatever that may mean.”

  Then, rather rudely, I thought, he was asking me if we might have a preliminary chat about our own affairs, and we moved to a settee beneath the large window. Lang, looking mightily self-conscious, sidled from the room. Martin lingered only a minute or two and then followed him.

  Daine and I began our chat and then I had to go out to the cloakroom lavatory. When I was coming out and had switched off the light I seemed to hear whisperings in the darkness of the corridor beyond. For some reason or other I stood stock still. Constance’s voice just reached me.

  “I think at least you ought to watch him, darling. It may be only an excuse.”

  “But I can’t watch him every night,” came Martin’s annoyed protest.

  “But it isn’t every night, darling.” The voice was a coaxing one. “It will only be tonight and tomorrow. After that we’ll arrange.”

  “Very well then,” Martin told her ungraciously. “But it’s frightfully boring for me.”

  “But not if anything happens. . . .”

  That had been louder and I realised that Martin was coming my way. In a flash I was back in the cloakroom, but he went straight by. Of Constance there was no sound, but I waited for a couple of minutes and then made a furtive way out.

  Three other things happened that night, and they won’t take long in the telling. The first was after I’d finished my talk with Daine, which was just before nine o’clock. Then he said he had to look in at his office and I said I’d like to stroll outside and clear my lungs.

  It was a warm fine night, but very dark. I stepped on to the lawn and breathed deeply for a bit, and then—probably with what Lang had been saying in my mind—I began dodging the elms and strolling towards where I judged that summerhouse would be. On the grass my feet made never a sound, and it was rather eerie walking. Naturally I didn’t strike the summerhouse at first shot. I went far too much to the left, and so I began working back. Whether or not I actually got to the summerhouse I cannot say, but I guessed afterwards that it was from the veranda that the voices came.

  “But he knows! I’m sure he knows.” That was Lang’s voice.

  Another voice gave a “Sh!” That voice itself was no more than a dawdling murmur, but it was easy to recognise it as Constance’s. It went on for a good half-minute, and then at last there were barely recognisable words.

  “But, darling, there’s nobody but you, and never will be.”

  There was a sound as of an embrace. I didn’t stand on the order of my going, but took a few backward steps and then risked life and limb among the elms till I was back at the house. There was a light from beneath Chaice’s door when I entered the hall. As I set foot on the stairs Martin came forward out of the darkness.

  “Pardon me, sir, but the manuscript you said you’d be good enough to look at.” His
voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  “Good,” I said, and never meant anything less. A nod and a smile and I went on upstairs. In my room I had a cold splash and then I did a bit of thinking. But there wasn’t much needed. Everything was far too plain. A horrible situation, one might grant, and yet, as I said, only too plain. Martin, in fact, was watching the light beneath his father’s door. Keeping tag on Austin Chaice, in so many words, while Lang and Constance had their tête-à-tête in the darkness of the summerhouse veranda.

  I chewed upon that for a bit and tried to fit it in with that telephone conversation I’d had with Constance, and her mention of fright, and finally I decided to wait for events.

  It was then twenty minutes to ten, so I thought I had better put in an appearance in the drawing-room again. As I came to the head of the stairs the front door burst open, and a voice was calling “Hallo! Where’s everybody?”

  It was Kitty Chaice, and I’d forgotten all about her. But in a minute the hall was full of people. I heard Constance’s “Dar-ling!” Chaice’s door opened and he came beaming out. I heard an “Uncle Richard!” as Dickie appeared, and then Martin trailed in from somewhere. There were embraces and chattering and laughing, and I kept well back on the landing.

  “You must be simply starved, darling,” Constance was saying.

  “What about your friend?” Chaice was asking. “Won’t she come in too?”

  “Far too anxious to get home, Daddy,” Kitty told him. “She just set me down and then shot off.”

  She picked up her bag, but Harris pounced on it. I went back to my room and waited for five minutes before coming down. The party was now assembled in the drawing-room, and I was at once introduced.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been so immediately taken by a girl as I was by Kitty Chaice. She was charming, every inch of her. And about as unlike her brother as could be. Doubtless she took after her mother, for she had fair hair, and she had a young, abounding vitality. You couldn’t call her beautiful, but she had an attractive personality and a freshness and a love of life that were both enchanting.