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

  “Didn’t you use to take Martin out?” she asked me.

  I admitted it.

  “I used to be frightfully jealous,” she told me.

  “But now you’ve changed your mind.”

  She gave me a smile and a quick humorous appraisal.

  “Perhaps I haven’t,” she said. “Do you like the pictures?”

  “If that’s an invitation to take you some time, then I do,” I told her, and then Constance had to come fussing in and saying dinner was waiting for her, and getting cold.

  I stayed on for a few minutes and then began saying good-nights and leaving apologies, for I was suddenly feeling dog-tired. But as I got into bed I made up my mind to do a little more hard thinking about the events of that night, and yet before my head had hardly nestled into the pillow I was sound asleep. It was not till I woke towards dawn that I remembered I hadn’t even looked at Martin Chaice’s manuscript.

  CHAPTER IV

  CLIMAX

  It was seven o’clock and I was wide awake, so I switched on the bedside lamp and reached for that manuscript. But I didn’t open it, for suddenly I remembered something which seemed far more important—the question of whether Constance was intending to involve me in that triangle of herself, her husband and Orford Lang. I tried to recall the exact words I had heard from the darkness of the summerhouse veranda.

  “But he knows. I’m sure he knows.”

  Those had been the words, and therefore Chaice was wise to what was going on. That was why Constance had told me over the telephone that she was badly frightened. But was it? Wasn’t there something wrong with that argument? The words that Lang had used and the tone in which they were uttered seemed to prove beyond doubt that he had only just made the discovery that Chaice knew of the intrigue! It was true that I had not heard Constance’s reply. All that I had heard, except the final assertion that it was with Lang alone that she was in love, were whispers and murmurings, whereas if the news was really new to her it should have come as a terrific shock. Maybe, then, I told myself, it had been news to Lang but not to herself, and that brought me back to where I started—that Constance was frightened because her husband knew, and I had been intended somehow to become involved. And then I told myself that I was damned if I’d become involved. Constance might be cunning in her own tortuous ways, but if she involved me in any domestic mess, then the fault would be my own.

  Then I thought of something else. If Chaice knew what was going on, then either he was a magnificent actor or else his conduct had been the very opposite of what ought to have been the reactions of any husband. Little things had shown me that Constance was getting very tired of Chaice and she was in the mood to snatch at any prospect of change. But Chaice hadn’t shown that he was tired of her. Far from it. He couldn’t change his make-up, of course. He was an egoist and splenetic and devilish hard to live with, and yet behind the little snaps of temper and the unavoidable tiffs there was on his part an uxoriousness and a fatuousness that could make one wince.

  In other words, Chaice, by every sign that I had observed, was very much in love with his wife, and so much so that he had been blind to her own dislike of himself. And yet that was the man who, according to Lang, was aware of his wife’s intrigue! It just didn’t hold water. However good an actor Chaice might be—and I admitted that for a few years he had been on the stage—he could never have repressed his feelings sufficiently to have condoned his wife’s duplicity, even for the sake of some elaborate counter-scheme of his own.

  The very word scheme brought something else to my mind. At dinner the previous night Chaice had taken Lang as a hypothetical case to prove a theory, the hypothesis being that Lang had broken a contract and would therefore have a motive to kill the man who’d found out. But why shouldn’t Chaice—if aware of the intrigue between Lang and his wife—have made the hypothesis a love affair between the pair? Wouldn’t that have been the very kind of delicious irony that would have appealed to one like Austin Chaice?

  I gave my glasses a polish, shrugged my shoulders and then consigned the whole business to blazes. Why should I worry my wits over a situation that was definitely not going to involve myself personally, and as a sign of that Pilate-like washing of the hands I opened the manuscript.

  C O N S U M M A T I O N

  P O E M S

  by

  MARTIN FERRABY CHAICE

  Not an unattractive title, I thought, though I had still to learn that the poems were a consummation of what. Then I turned a leaf and began the first poem. To my slight annoyance it was vers libre, so I read the one opposite, or rather began it, for it was extraordinarily obscure. I left that one and tried the next—a longer effort that occupied two pages of the manuscript.

  A quarter of an hour later I was closing that manuscript with a curious kind of furtiveness which had nevertheless two recognisable origins. One was a distaste of its contents and the other, closely allied, an awareness of the embarrassing position I was about to be in when Martin Chaice asked me, and probably all dewy-eyed, what I thought of it.

  Mind you, I’m not bigoted about modern painting, music or verse. Critics, especially the only partly informed like myself, have made such fools of themselves in the past that it behoves us to choose our words. When I’m asked what I think of this and that, and it’s something utterly incomprehensible to me or even loathsome, I merely admit that it’s a bit beyond me and perhaps I’m too old-fashioned. If pestered further I may instance what the critics thought of Galileo and Wagner and Keats and Whistler. But when Martin Chaice asked for my views on that manuscript I could hardly take that line. What I had read was the most extraordinary collection of bilge that had ever spoilt paper. Not as incomprehensible as Joyce or Gertrude Stein perhaps, but even more infuriating, because it had lines and even stanzas that seemed to have some sense in them if only one had a few months’ leisure to ferret it out.

  Just then I thought I heard a noise in the corridor outside. But it was not coming from the bathroom, so I hastily got into a dressing-gown and tried the bathroom door. Half an hour later I was ready to go downstairs, and I could hear Daine stirring in his room. It was still short of nine o’clock, but the front door was open, and when I took a look out the air was fine and it looked like being a marvellous day.

  Chaice and Kitty were at breakfast in the dining-room. “Hallo, young lady,” I said. “Why aren’t you celebrating leave by having breakfast in bed?”

  “Leave’s far too precious to waste in bed,” she told me. “And I’m like daddy. He simply has to get up early.”

  Chaice wanted to know how I had slept, and I told him.

  “The air here’s wonderful,” he said, and as if he generated it personally. “London’s all very well for people like Constance. Give me a place like this.”

  I agreed politely, and then asked what had happened to everybody.

  “Constance always has breakfast in bed,” Kitty told me. “So does Martin, sometimes.”

  “And your Uncle Richard?”

  She smiled. “He’s up at dawn. Probably built half a greenhouse by now. Don’t you think he’s a darling?”

  I said I did, and then Martin came in. At least he just looked in and as quickly disappeared. He was obviously avoiding a meal with his father, for Kitty flushed slightly and Chaice scowled.

  “And what’s your work in the A.T.S.?” I asked Kitty. I liked her even better in the jumper and skirt than I had in the uniform.

  We were talking about General Duties, which seemed to be her line, and how she was hoping for a job as technical officer, when Daine came in. Then we talked about the capture of the Flying Bomb sites and wondered if we’d get any more missiles. Then Chaice left with the reminder to me that we were to get down to business when I was ready. No hurry, though. There’d be any correspondence to go through first.

  “What about Lang?” I asked Kitty.

  “He’d finished just before you came in,” she told me, and at that moment in came Martin. At least h
e sidled in, giving me and Daine a subdued good morning as he made for the sideboard. But nothing there seemed to have suited his appetite, for he came back empty-handed and toyed with toast and marmalade. Kitty was eating a terrific breakfast, and I didn’t feel like being left ultimately alone with Daine and the owner of that manuscript, so I brought my own meal to a quick conclusion, said I’d be seeing everybody later, and then made my way upstairs. Ten minutes later, when I was just going downstairs, Martin came up and we met on the landing.

  “Did you sleep well, sir?” he enquired politely.

  “Superbly, thanks,” I said. “Just had time for a dip into your manuscript and no more.”

  “You . . . er . . .?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “That sort of stuff wants really serious consideration. Nothing worse than snap judgments.”

  I gave him a smile and a pat on the shoulder. As I went on my way downstairs I thought my evasion had been masterly. Then, with far less elation, I realised that it was only a temporary one.

  And there, at half-past nine in the morning, the whole of the Saturday can be virtually dismissed. I spent most of the morning with Chaice and Lang, and after lunch a brief talk with Daine settled the matter of my reprints. At about three o’clock we all—except Martin—went to the swimming-pool. There we had tea, and after that Constance and Kitty went in again while the men smoked and gossiped. By six o’clock a party of us—Constance, Kitty, Lang and myself—went by taxi to the cinema, where there was quite a good show. I noticed nothing untoward between Lang and Constance, though having no eyes in the dark. I had wished to take the party out to dinner but was told that Beechingford was impossible for a meal, so we took the bus as far as it went and finally got in well after nine o’clock. Daine and Richard were still at their cold supper. They said they had waited for us and then thought they had better begin.

  “Where’s Austin?” asked Constance.

  Daine shrugged his shoulders. All he knew was that he had had supper and had gone out. And that was all for the day, except perhaps that since we’d been to the cinema there was a discussion on that liquid-squirting about which my driver had told me the previous day. Constance said it was a horrible thing to talk about, and when Daine persisted she reprimanded him, and unnecessarily sharply.

  “Cuthbert, please! I’d rather you talked about something else.”

  “Not like you to be squeamish,” he told her mildly, but the conversation was changed nevertheless, and Constance tried to be specially gracious. Then, just after ten o’clock, Chaice came in. He looked a bit tired and said he’d been taking a walk. Lastly Martin appeared. I was watching him closely. Constance caught his eye and he distinctly shook his head.

  The Sunday was very much a day of rest. Breakfast was later and then everybody lounged about to read the Sunday papers till after midday, when some of us had a swim. I spent that hour with Richard in his workshop, and he was telling me some of his experiences in South America, the States and Canada. He was a first-class storyteller in his quiet way, and it was my fault that we were both late for lunch. Constance frowned at the sawdust on his trousers and I realised that there was some on mine.

  After lunch Chaice disappeared, but I spent an hour with Lang, and we settled all our business. The rest of the day was spent round the pool. I’d expected another cold supper, but there was a normal dinner. Chaice and Daine excused themselves after it, and when they’d left the drawing-room Constance did an extraordinary thing.

  “What are you doing, Martin?” she asked him.

  “A spot of reading, perhaps,” he told her.

  “I think I’ll read too,” she said, and then, unmistakably directly to Kitty and Lang: “Why don’t you two go out for some fresh air? It’s a lovely night.”

  Kitty blushed to the eyes.

  “It might be a good idea,” Lang said, and afterwards I knew he was part of the plan. “I mean, if Kitty’d like to go.”

  “Do you both good,” said Richard from his corner. We’d forgotten all about him, and for some queer reason his sudden intervention made us laugh.

  “Right-ho then,” said Kitty, and, with a last expression of freewill: “Only I do hate being ordered around.”

  Well, she and Lang went out and we heard them laughing in the hall, and then the door closed on them. Martin began looking up from his book as if he were trying to mesmerise his uncle into leaving the room. Richard must have sensed something, for after a few minutes he said he was feeling a bit sleepy and with our permission he’d be getting off to bed.

  The door closed behind him. I felt at once a strange difference in the room. It was a kind of hostility, and then I knew that that was absurd. What I didn’t know was that the second act was about to begin, and the second act, according to my vague ideas of drama, was the one that brought the climax.

  The two looked at each other as if asking which was to begin. Constance moistened her lips and fidgeted with her fingers.

  “You show the letters,” she told Martin, and, to me: “We’d like you to see them, Ludo.”

  I raised polite enquiring eyebrows.

  “This is the first one, sir,” Martin said, and produced it from his pocket. It was in an envelope that bore the Beechingford postmark, and the date, as a moment’s reflection told me, was the day before that evening when Constance had rung me in town. This was the letter:

  Beechingford.

  Dear Mrs. Chaice,

  I write to you as a friend, to beg you most sincerely to watch your husband’s movements. The activities he is engaged in will otherwise bring disgrace on yourself and every member of your family. As a test of my sincerity find out when he is absent from the house after dark and if that night there was a recurrence of the liquid-squirting, as it is called, that has been disgracing the name of the town.

  P.

  So flabbergasted was I that for a moment or two I lost all power of thought. Then I found myself polishing my glasses, and Martin retrieving the letter where it had slithered to the floor.

  “Do you mind if I have another look?” I said.

  I read the letter again and had another good look at it. The writing was extremely neat and upright. Every letter was so carefully shaped, with a hint of thick down strokes and thin upward ones, that I knew it for a perfect disguise, and far ahead of the hackneyed method of writing in crude block capitals. But it argued a person of some taste and culture.

  “Did I gather there were more letters?” I said.

  “Only one,” Martin told me as he passed it.

  It bore the same bare Beechingford heading, and again no date. The writing was the same meticulous kind.

  Dear Mrs. Chaice,

  I now have irrefutable proof that your husband is primarily if not wholly responsible for the outrages. Unless something can be done, and very quickly, I shall have to take action myself. Perhaps you had better burn this letter. If your husband knew of it, there might be danger to yourself.

  P.

  I gave a Whartonian grunt and handed the letter back. When I looked up it was to find the eyes of the two embarrassingly fixed on mine.

  “Any idea who wrote the letters?” I asked.

  “None whatever,” Constance said, and gave a kind of shudder.

  “You have plenty of friends in town?”

  “Quite a lot. Not in the town perhaps, but near it.”

  “There is an idea, sir,” Martin cut in. “Something that happened between the two letters. A man came to see father one morning when he was out. Lang saw him instead, and this fellow was most damnably angry about something. He said he insisted on seeing father, and if not it’d be the worse for him. Lang got rid of him.”

  “Did he give a name or address?”

  “That’s what I was coming to, sir. When Lang first saw him he gave the name of Preston. Naturally Lang didn’t ask him for an address, and after that he got so angry and abusive that there wasn’t a chance, as it were, to ask for his address.”

  “Preston,” I said.
“You think he was the P. of the letters?”

  “Well, sir, it’s an idea.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “And what was this man like?”

  “Shortish and stout. He had what Lang called a choked sort of voice and a faint foreign accent.”

  “Anybody you’ve ever run across?” I asked Constance.

  “Never,” she told me emphatically. “I know nobody like that.”

  “Anything else about him?” I asked Martin.

  “Well, he looked a bit of a crank. I know it was a wet day, but he had on a muffler and overcoat. He had weak eyes, because he screwed them up when he took off his glasses. Oh yes, and he had an untidy sort of black beard.”

  “Any suspicion of disguise?”

  “Not the least, sir—I mean, according to Lang. And, by the way, this is highly confidential. Lang never should have mentioned it.”

  “Did Lang mention your father’s reactions when he was told about this man Preston’s call?”

  “He said father laughed like blazes. All he said was, ‘Oh, him!’—just like that.”

  “In other words, he knew this Preston.”

  “Well, sir, it certainly looks like it.”

  “I see,” I said, and began giving my glasses another polish. A minute of that and I knew the line I would take.

  “My own opinion is this,” I said, “and I’m taking it that you want an opinion. I think this first letter should have been shown to your husband with no reservations. That would have been the honourable thing. Mind you,” I added hurriedly, “I can see you were in a bit of a dilemma. I think P. knew you would be in that dilemma, and that’s why the second letter distinctly warned you against it. That, by the way, is something that needs careful thought.

  “But we’ll leave that for a moment,” I went on. “The really vital thing is this. You must—both of you—have believed the allegations in the letters. Do you mind telling me frankly why?” Constance took charge, leaning forward, and her husky voice even more husky with a passionate intensity.