The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 9

  “Naturally I couldn’t do a thing about it,” Cross said. “They were on the public highway. What do you think they were up to?”

  “Lord knows!” I said, and before I could advance a theory his voice was coming in again, and most impressively.

  “I think it’s Benison’s idea, to do with training his gang. Also, do you think there’s any connection with a certain affair?”

  I didn’t gather what he meant: then I tumbled to it.

  “You mean a certain crack on the skull,” I said. “I certainly do. But not a hint to a soul. If those gentry are spying round the Hall at nights, we and your people will lay a nice little trap. Get ’em off the main road in a Government prohibited area, and we’ve got them where we want them.”

  “That’ll be great,” he said. “How is the head, by the way?”

  “Heaps better.”

  “Good,” he said. “Hope you have a fine night’s rest. Good night then, sir.”

  “And to you, Cross,” I said. “And I’m extraordinarily grateful to you.”

  Then I was suddenly feeling very sleepy, so off I went to my bed. By manipulation of the mirror I saw that the skin of my skull was unbroken and the swelling too had much gone down. When I woke at dawn, after a somewhat restless night, I was feeling fairly well in myself, except for a slight headache, and a couple of aspirins had eased that inside an hour. Then, with a restless fit on me, I got up. An early cup of tea was going in the cook-house, where they were pretty surprised to see me at that hour, and then I amused myself by getting out the preliminaries for that report to Command.

  What was lucky about that was that I jotted down all times while they were fresh in my mind. At about twenty-three-thirty I had faintly heard a plane, and that was when the first parachutists had been seen. Cross’s men had then been inside the park and approaching from two different directions so as to make a feint, if necessary, while the main attempt at penetration was made by way of the back. My crack on the skull was within ten minutes of that—though that was not going into the report to Command—and at about one hour or so I had come round and heard the crash of the plane our fighters had shot down.

  Well, all these preliminaries have taken a long time, but I can honestly say that now you know as much as I do about every happening that has the least possible bearing on the extraordinary outrage that took place that night, unknown to myself, and on the tragedy that followed still later. You, perhaps, are in a much stronger position than myself, since you have more to suspect and something definite for which to look. To me, things were just happenings; queer happenings, I admit, but then I am always looking for queer happenings and imagining mysteries where there are none.

  What I will say is this, and in some measure of self-defence. My job was to carry out efficiently the duties of my appointment as Commandant of Camp 55, and everything else was merely a persistence of bad—or good—habits. What my job most certainly wasn’t, was to be a detective, either before or after the events that actually happened. If I hadn’t got into my head that George Wharton had wangled the appointment for mysterious reasons of his own, I should never have noticed things, imagined them, or made deductions. After all, to do those things in Government time was taking pay and allowances under false pretences, though that point of view would never cause me many sleepless minutes.

  But to get back to the story. It was still five minutes short of seven hours thirty, when the first breakfasts are available in the Mess, and I was longing for a cup of coffee when an orderly fetched me to the telephone. Penelope Craye was on the line, and as soon as she spoke I knew something serious had happened.

  “Major Travers, is that you? Can you come here at once?”

  “Why? What’s the matter?” I said rather blankly.

  “I’m frightened to death,” she said. “Something’s happened to Colonel Brende. I think he’s been murdered!”

  “The body’s there?” I said, and gaped even more blankly.

  “No,” she said. “I hardly know what I’m talking about. He isn’t here, but—” She broke off and I could hear her making strange noises as if she had the words but they wouldn’t come out.

  “Listen,” I said. “This isn’t a matter for me. It’s to do with the local police, or some higher authority.”

  “But I thought it was to do with you,” she said. “You’re responsible for looking after us.”

  That hadn’t struck me. I gaped a bit more, then decided on a policy.

  “You get hold of the local superintendent. I’ll ring the guard to admit him. After that I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’m so grateful,” she said, and from the wobble in her voice I knew she was crying. I waited a second or two, then hung up.

  To say I was taken aback was putting it mildly. A dozen things then began to flash through my mind, and first was the wonder how I stood in the matter. Whatever the delinquencies or neglect of any subordinates, I myself in the long run was responsible for the safety of the Hall and its occupants. How would Command take what had happened? But what had happened? I had gathered precious little from Penelope’s incoherencies, except that Brende was missing and she suspected murder.

  The bell shrilled again, and this time it was Wharton on the line.

  “Get me Major Travers, will you? Very urgent.”

  “This is Travers.”

  “Didn’t recognize your hallo,” he said. “Now listen to this carefully. Something’s happened at the Hall with regard to Colonel Brende. Miss Craye rang me about a quarter of an hour ago and I’ve been trying to get you ever since. I’m going along there and I’d like you to come. Be at the main gate in half an hour’s time.”

  “Right,” I said. “Did Miss Craye mention my name to you?”

  “She did,” he said curtly. “You’re in charge of the place, aren’t you? In half an hour then at the front entrance.”

  He rang off, leaving me with cold comfort. I was in charge of the place and there was no denying it. Still, as I told myself as I hastened to the Mess for a quick meal, there was no use in getting flurried. Even George didn’t appear to know just what had happened, and I could also console myself with the knowledge that it was the nature of Penelope and her kind to talk in superlatives.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Missing Colonel

  Now though I had no idea what had actually happened to Colonel Brende, I did realize that it must have been something pretty serious, if only because Penelope Craye had been so obviously distressed and had mentioned the word murder. As I was driving towards the Hall, I naturally therefore wondered if there was anything I could contribute by way of information, and it seemed to me that there were three things I might have to tell Wharton. There was the man, or person, I had seen at the summer-house at about twenty minutes short of nine o’clock, there was the fact that the side door in the boundary wall, unguarded by us, had been in use, and lastly there was that crack on the skull which had laid me out at about a quarter of an hour before midnight.

  I was early at the front gate, but Wharton was a few moments late. As we walked towards the house he told me he had been getting hold of someone whom he called “one of the Nobs.” He loved little secrecies like that, and there was a wee, likeable touch of the snob in him, so that though he would use those derogatory terms for what he would also term “the Big Bugs,” or “the High-and-Mighty,” you could tell that he was always gratified by even the most remote contacts with the great ones of the land. I rather guessed he’d got through to the Home Office. At any rate he told me his orders were that whatever had happened was to be kept secret.

  “There’s not to be a word to the local police,” he said. “We don’t want more than one cook at this pot of soup.”

  “Is that a hint to me?” I said, but George wasn’t in the mood for flippant conversation. Also we were almost at the front door, and George marched straight on to it and only halted in the very act of ringing the bell. He also knocked to make sure. Ledd opened the door while Georg
e’s hand still was at the knocker. There was something different about Ledd that morning, and then I tumbled to what it was. He had assumed an expression of extraordinary gloom, but as that snub nose of his rather militated against the dismals, the effect was rather that of a determined scowl.

  “Who are you?” Wharton fired at him as we stepped inside.

  “Corporal Ledd, sir, Colonel Brende’s servant.”

  Wharton grunted, and then Penelope appeared. Her nose had recently been powdered, but she had not quite eradicated the traces of many tears. She, too, was different. If she had been quiet the last time I saw her, now she was positively subdued. The Quaker Girl to the life, I thought, what with the dove-grey frock and its white trimmings, the downcast look and the gentle voice rich with gratitude.

  “So glad you’re here. It’s been awfully worrying for us. Will you come this way?”

  “Where’re we going?” Wharton wanted to know.

  “I thought perhaps you’d like to see his room.”

  Wharton nodded, then glared round at Ledd.

  “You’d better come too.”

  Ledd shot me a look of plaintive surprise, with, it seemed to me, a certain uneasiness. Up the stairs the four of us went, and past the door of Brende’s office, and then Penelope was opening the next door to it. Wharton stepped in and filled the doorway. Over his shoulder I had a good view. There was a camp-bed which had been slept in, a couple of chairs, of which one was an easy one, belonging to the house, a trestle-table, a small table by the bedside with a carafe of water on it and a pad and pencil, and finally two chests of drawers, the drawers opened, some of the contents on the floor, and all giving signs of thorough search.

  “Who’s been in here?” Wharton asked over his shoulder.

  “I have, sir,” said Ledd.

  “I had to come in,” Penelope explained. “And I thought I’d better bring Mr. Newton.”

  “Who’s he?” Wharton wanted to know.

  He was told, and that Newton was second-in-command, as it were, and therefore in charge when Colonel Brende was away.

  “Well, thank God Lockhart’s elephants haven’t been in,” Wharton said with his first attempt at humour. “Not much point in worrying ourselves to death about foot-prints.”

  So we all stepped in, and then Wharton was once more rounding—I can only call it that—on the mournful Ledd.

  “What did you touch in here?”

  “Me, sir? Nothing, sir,” Ledd said with injured innocence.

  “Then where’s the suit and so on he was wearing before he got into bed?”

  Ledd stared, looked a trifle foolish, then took a step forward as if he were going to search the drawers. Wharton had a look instead for himself. Nothing was either in the drawers or on the floor but oddments of underclothing, and a pullover or two, a tunic and two pairs of slacks.

  “What was he wearing when you saw him last?” Wharton asked Ledd, and Ledd described the very clothes Brende had been wearing that afternoon when I first met him. Penelope put in a word.

  “Men get very attached to their clothes. He simply loved that brown coat, and it really wasn’t too untidy. Do you think so, Major Travers?”

  I said readily enough that I’d have gone anywhere in it. Wharton chimed in by asking where the Colonel had been in it. Penelope repeated that she had no idea. He’d left a chit, which she’d thrown on the fire, to the effect that he had gone out and might not be back till next day. Wharton wanted to know if he would have seen any important person in that easy-going rig-out. Penelope said he was very unconventional that way, and when a highly important person came down from town to review the research work that had been done, Colonel Brende had worn precisely the same clothes.

  Ledd said the Colonel put his clothes on the bedside chair at night, and his boots or shoes on the floor. He had been so astounded not to see the Colonel there that he had not noticed the slippers had gone too. What he had thought was that the Colonel had got up for an early walk.

  “I’m not blaming you about anything,” Wharton told him.

  “I might have thought the same as you did. And now you, Miss Craye. Did you touch anything here?”

  “I only touched that,” she said, and pointed to a white something like a large rolled-up handkerchief that lay on the floor by the bed.

  “Naturally you would,” Wharton told her with an immense amiability. “It would offend your sense of tidiness.”

  He slipped on his rubber gloves, picked up the wad and shook it. I caught at once the sweetish scent of choloroform. Then he replaced it carefully and his eyes went slowly round the room.

  “What’s that?”

  That was a fishing-rod, tucked in the shadow beneath the open window along the wall. Wharton picked it up. Then he tried its length. When extended it reached well beyond the pillow of the camp-bed. The rod was replaced and he was looking out of the window. Through it I could see the trees that bordered the park and beyond them the greyish line of the hills.

  “Fond of fresh air, was he?” Wharton was asking Ledd.

  “Yes, sir. Always had that window open, no matter what it was like outside.”

  “What sort of a sleeper was he?”

  “You couldn’t move, sir, without him hearing you. Regular like a cat, he was.”

  Wharton was motioning for me to go over, but to keep clear of the window-sill. Along the wall beneath us ran an immense wisteria, as fine a specimen as I have ever seen. Some of its trained branches were more than my two hands could have circled. Wharton grimaced at me, then sadly addressed the room.

  “There we are then. If he’d sent out invitations on gilt-edged paper asking for the place to be burgled, he couldn’t have done it better. He asked for service and he certainly got it.”

  Penelope clicked her tongue.

  “I don’t think you ought to say that, Mr. Jenkins. It’s not fair to Colonel Brende. He was a light sleeper. You said so, didn’t you, Corporal Ledd? I’m sure he’d have heard anybody at that window.”

  Wharton was at once his most gushing and apologetic self.

  “You must excuse me. No fool like an old fool, and that fits me pretty often. But there’s been just a little subterfuging— shall we say? The name’s Wharton—not Jenkins.” He had put on his spectacles, and now was roguishly regarding her over their tops. “Jenkins is on my mother’s side. Superintendent Wharton of New Scotland Yard—that’s me.”

  Penelope’s face had flamed red and she was staring. Ledd also went a rich pink, and his lips were moving as if he were talking to himself.

  “That’s highly confidential, of course,” Wharton said. “And now where’s the Colonel’s office? Through that door there if I remember rightly.”

  I didn’t know till then that Wharton had ever met Colonel Brende, but I should have known that he must have met him, even if it was not in the Hall. At any rate he turned the key of the door through which we had come, slipped it into his pocket, and then was courteously opening the other door for Penelope to pass through.

  The room was in much the same condition as the other. Every drawer in the desk had been prised open, and papers were scattered everywhere. My eyes went at once to the etching behind which was the safe, and as they left it I saw that Penelope Craye’s eyes had been that way too. Wharton was across as soon as he heard about the safe. I guessed it was open since the etching was hanging crookedly, and open it was. Wharton had a good look inside and announced that it was empty.

  “What was kept in it?” he asked Penelope.

  “I don’t really know,” she said. “Everything that was secret and confidential I know went in it. But I was never allowed to see them. Colonel Brende was most particular.”

  “He never even gave you a hint of anything extra special being in it?”

  She shook her head. “Never. I did guess, though, that all his private papers were in it.”

  “You mean the results of his private researches?”

  “Yes, of course. His private researches
.” She hesitated for a moment. “That’s really why he slept in the next room. He used to say he was his own bulldog.”

  Wharton grimaced. “A pity the bulldog didn’t have a burglar-proof kennel. That”—and he waved contemptuously at the safe—“I could make a mess of myself with a Woolworth screwdriver and a couple of hairpins. As for a burglar—”

  He broke off, and over his face came a look of what I can only call brazen roguishness. He swivelled the look on Ledd.

  “I suppose you’ve never been a burglar?”

  I expected Ledd to grin. He didn’t. His face went crimson again and his tongue went round his lips. He heaved a breath or two, then sort of puffed out a “No, sir.”

  “Good,” said Wharton. “You keep to the straight and narrow path, my lad. It always pays.”

  He gave Ledd a last look from over the spectacle tops, and Penelope Craye’s voice came in after a premonitory cough.

  “There’s something I think I ought to tell you. Colonel Brende did have something really important in the safe.” She smiled disarmingly. “I don’t really know it, of course, but I think he had.”

  “Ah!” said Wharton hugely. “You tell us all about it.”

  “I think so, because that’s the reason he came home.”

  “Just a minute,” I said most apologetically. “I think I’d better tell Superintendent Wharton about Major Passenden.”

  Wharton made notes on what I had to say, but Penelope added nothing.

  “I see,” he said. “This Major Passenden wanted to see him but he was out. He wasn’t expected back but he came back.”

  “Yes,” she said. “At just about seven o’clock. I happened to be in my office, and I was simply staggered when he rang. I even thought to myself, ‘Now who on earth can be in the Colonel’s office!’ and then it turned out to be the Colonel. I said I hadn’t expected him, but he said he’d got the very idea he’d been hunting for for months. He looked simply delighted with himself.”