The Case of the Red Brunette: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

By Christopher Bush

Providence, they say, is good to drunkards and children. Maybe there’s a third category—the unorthodox detective.

A new case finds Ludovic Travers travelling to the respectable English Midlands town of Mainford. He is commissioned to investigate the death, under compromising circumstances, of Harry Landlace—a man

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Release date: May 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913527082

Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush is a debut author of ‘Jake’s Lunchbox Surprise’, alongside being a primary school teacher with a passion for sparking children’s creative instincts. His fun-filled experiences with his cheeky, mischievous and most of all, brilliant children have inspired his first children’s book. Chris hopes to bring as big a smile to children’s faces, as much as they have to his.

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1

THE LANDLACE AFFAIR

The unusual thing about the letter was that it was addressed to me, care of the Broad Street Detective Agency, and not to the agency itself. I admit that I am the agency in the sense that I own it and that I spend a goodish part of my time there when I don’t happen to be working for the Yard as what they call an unofficial expert. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Norris is the managing-director. He’s in charge and I have the old-fashioned view that when authority’s delegated it ought to be delegated completely.

But we work very harmoniously; and if Norris wants advice or even help when we’re rushed with work, then it’s up to him to ask for it. That’s how it was that afternoon in the July of Festival Year. I’d been doing a job at Norris’s request and was just leaving, when the early afternoon post arrived. Norris passed me the letter, the one addressed to Ludovic Travers Esq., c/o. The Broad Street Detective Agency. I raised my eyebrows as I opened the envelope. It was a fairly bulky envelope, and in it was a collection of newspaper clippings as well as a letter. I had a look at the letter first.

The address was Mainford, a Midland city that I knew only moderately well. Not that Mainford is its actual name. There’s still a law of libel and it’s just as comfortable to be really on the safe side. The notepaper was excellent and was that of a firm called H. Landlace and Sons, Ltd., of 22-29 Mainford High Street—obviously a biggish firm of furniture dealers, with antique and second-hand departments, and a repair shop, as well as the main business of modern furnishings. The directors were H. Landlace, J. Landlace and G.B. Young, the latter—from the letters after his name—being apparently the firm’s accountant. It was James Landlace who had written the letter.

Dear Sir,

I have been recommended to apply to you by an old friend, ex-Inspector Dailey. It is in connection with the death of my brother, Harry Landlace, and you will find the facts that were made public in the newspaper cuttings herewith, but the point I want to make is that they are not necessarily the real facts, or all the facts, or even facts at all.

I regard the matter as rather urgent, and as I shall in any case be in London tomorrow I would like you to ring me at the Hotel at any time after four o’clock saying if I can see you. There will be no argument about terms. I should add that Dailey does not wish to be in any way connected with the matter. He is retired now, by the way, and living at Warbury, and he sends you what he calls his very warmest regards.

Yours truly,

JAMES LANDLACE.

Landlace had typed that letter himself: certain inequalities and corrections showed that. Not that it mattered, except perhaps to prove that the affair was secret and not even to be mentioned to a secretary. I passed the letter to Norris and began running an eye over the clippings. The longest was an account, from a Sunday paper which specialises in such luridities, of the strange death of a Councillor Harry Landlace in what was hinted at as a love-nest in a Mainford hotel called the Homeways.

I remember old Dailey, Norris was saying as he passed the letter back. A nice chap. A bit on the quiet side.

I ran across him once at Mainford, too, I said. It’s very nice of him to have remembered me. But about the client. Perhaps we’d better have a good look at these cuttings. He’s almost certainly expecting a call.

We got down to the cuttings. Harry Landlace, senior partner in the firm, had a flat in a block known as Park Mansions, Crewleigh, which is Mainford’s best residential suburb. Apparently his father had died some five years back, and shortly afterwards he had put up for the City Council as an Independent and had got in with a tidy majority. He had then begun to make a name for himself as an outspoken critic who stood for efficiency and honesty in local government. It was he who uncovered the scandal of two of his fellow councillors who were convicted of taking substantial bribes from a building contractor. Landlace also took an interest in boys’ clubs and maintained one at his own principal expense in one of the industrial areas.

His death had taken place at the beginning of May, which meant, from our point of view, that the trail was six weeks old. But one could begin at once to sense a mystery about it. The two or three photographs of him showed a man of the fifty which he was, with a fine face, full of character. One gathered that he spent his spare time between that boys’ club of his and the local chess club, of which he was a prominent member. The manner of his death, therefore, was either a mystery of the first order or else a revelation of amazing hypocrisy, whichever way you happened to be biased. The facts seemed to be these.

A man rang the Homeways Hotel—not the biggest but the most select in the city—on the Friday and booked a double room in the name of Porter. An interesting thing was that he asked for a double bed, not twin beds. He also said his wife would probably arrive first on the Saturday evening with the luggage and he would be in later, and the room would be needed for about a week.

Early on the Saturday evening Mrs. Porter duly arrived and was given Room 66. She was a red-head and her age probably nearer thirty than forty. She was smartly dressed, wore horn-rimmed glasses and had with her one not very heavy fibre case. A taxi, by the way, had brought her to the hotel from Central Station. The time was then six-fifteen. At just about an hour later a man came to the desk.

Mrs. Porter’s room?

The lady receptionist looked it up.

Room 66, Mr. Porter. She’s already signed the book. The key isn’t down, so she’s probably in.

That was all till the following morning at eight o’clock. Mrs. Porter had ordered early morning tea, and when the chambermaid brought it she found no one in the room but a dead man lying on the bed. The case—a stout but perfectly plain fibre one—was there, but it was empty. Detective-Inspector Pixmore, head of the local C.I.D., arrived, and he recognised the dead man as Harry Landlace. Death turned out to be from heart failure.

But things were more complex than that. The room was in a sufficient state of disorder to prove that there had been at least a scuffle. A table with two glasses and a bottle of whisky had been overturned. One of the glasses had Landlace’s prints and the other no prints but traces of the woman’s lipstick. The same lipstick traces were at the side of Landlace’s mouth. He was wearing pyjama trousers only and they were damp with spilled whisky. On the side table by the wall was his only luggage, brought probably in his pocket—a small hair-brush, a safety-razor with brush and shaving-soap, and a tooth-brush standing in a glass on the basin shelf. He had artificial dentures, but they were still in his head. Nowhere on his body were there signs of a fight or struggle. But the most important thing seemed to be that there were in the room no finger-prints except those of Landlace and the chambermaid responsible for its cleaning.

I suppose we’d spent a good half-hour over those newspaper clippings before I asked Norris what he made of it all.

On the surface it’s pretty clear, he said. He was having an affair with this woman, but her husband had got wind of it somehow and followed her. Soon as he stepped into the room Landlace collapsed from shock and overturned the table. When the two saw he was dead there was nothing to do but bolt, so they wiped off all prints and got out. It wouldn’t have done to go down with the bag, so she or he or both stowed the contents about them and left the bag behind.

That’s how I see it, I said. The trouble is, the brother doesn’t see it the same way, and the client’s always right. Obviously he’s dissatisfied with the way the police have handled things. If so, where does that put us?

He refused to commit himself beyond a wry smile. The woman hadn’t been found, and so the police were still at work on the case, and nobody knew better than Norris—himself an ex-Chief-Detective-Inspector of the Yard—that the police don’t welcome intrusions from the interested laity. Mainford might be a long way from Broad Street, but it wouldn’t pay to make enemies. One never knew in our line of business when even in Mainford we might need the help of the police.

Who’s the Chief Constable there? I said. It can’t be old Silby. He must have retired by now.

Norris reached for a reference book, but I butted in.

Look, I said. You get hold of one of your pals at the Yard and unearth what you can about the general police setup there—the kind of people we might come up against. There’s plenty of time before we need ring Landlace. I’ll slip out for a cup of tea. Strikes me we might have a busy hour or so if we take the case.

While I was having a word with Bertha Munney, our secretary-receptionist, on my way out, her buzzer went.

Mr. Norris says to tell you, if you haven’t gone, that Major Horace Silby—I think that was the name—is still the Chief Constable.

That’s the name, I told her, and I was frowning to myself as I went out.

Over my tea I was thinking about Chief Constables, and Major Silby in particular. There are two kinds of Chief Constables, and it’s the Silby kind that’s happily and rapidly dying out. Men like Silby got their jobs in the past through influence and the ability to put up a good front before a selection committee. A bluff bearing helped, and of course military rank, and, best of all, a facility for picking the brains of subordinates and making a silence a pregnant cloak for utter incomprehension.

That’s the Silby kind. The rest are those who’ve come up the hard way: a year pounding a beat, perhaps, and then a transfer to the detective side, and so up and up by sheer merit through the various grades. They’re the ones who never need the Silby kinds of bluff. They know their job. They know it backwards and forwards and sideways, and because they’ve always had to know. And they’re always learning.

Silby, I was thinking, would be sixty-five if he was a day. Most retired at sixty, but he was clinging on to a good job and all the things that went with it, like social prestige and public appearances and the knowledge of immense power. Easy enough to be a limpet if you were the excellent friend of a majority of your watch committee, and there was no reason why Major Horace Silby shouldn’t continue to be Chief Constable of Mainford till decrepitude or death.

And yet I had to smile, and not only because Silby would be easy enough to deal with. I had had one official contact with him, and I couldn’t help remembering him as in many ways likeable: the sort of man under whom, for instance, I wouldn’t have minded soldiering. His manners were charming; he was generous and hospitable; and, as I had had cause to recall, he backed up his subordinates. In a way he had had to. The voice might be the fine, urbane but always aristocratic voice of Horace Silby, but the ideas were very definitely theirs.

When I got back Norris had something for me. The set-up was the usual, and in case you don’t know it I mean this. Under Silby was a Superintendent, chiefly administrative and available as deputy. There was a Chief-Inspector, who performed the same functions as the superintendent, but externally, and who acted as his deputy. Then in the hierarchy came the various inspectors—administrative traffic patrol, C.I.D. and so on.

That Pixmore who’s in charge of the case is pretty young, Norris told me. About thirty-five, I think. Very smart though, so they say. A protégé of Silby’s, so I gathered. There’s a rumour that when their Super. retires next year he’s going to be jumped into his job.

That was Silby’s business, though I wondered what the chief-inspector would think about it. Or perhaps he was one of those who was holding down a job which he knew and had no ambitions about the rest.

Silby should be all right, if we have to go to him, I said, but I don’t like the sound of this chap Pixmore. Still, you never know. And now what about the client?

About three minutes later Bertha was saying that Mr. Landlace was on the line. Norris passed me the receiver. Another couple of minutes and I was hanging up.

He sounds a nice fellow, I said. Good voice. Hardly a trace of accent. Didn’t waste a word, either. Says he’ll be here as fast as a taxi can bring him.

We talked about terms; and then while we were waiting we yarned generally, and, since Silby was in both our minds, about some of the old types of Chief Constables, and the autocrats they were, and the things they contrived to get away with. Then, long before we expected him, the client was being shown into the office.

James Landlace was a man of about fifty. He was of medium height, but with quite a good presence, and we’d rarely had a client who was so immediately at his ease. He refused a cigarette and asked if he might smoke a pipe. I stoked up my own in company.

Do you know, sir, I must have seen you before somewhere, Norris said. Your face seems very familiar.

I doubt it, Landlace said. Perhaps it’s those photographs of my brother. We’re the living spit of each other. We were twins. He was just the elder.

A pretty bad opening, Norris told him ruefully. I ought to have worked that out for myself. But just a couple of questions, Mr. Landlace, before we get down to things. The police are still busy on your late brother’s case? Trying to find the woman, for instance?

They are, Landlace said almost brusquely. And getting nowhere as far as I’ve been able to discover.

That cuts out the second question, Norris said. You’re just not satisfied with the progress they’re making, so you’ve come to us for an independent inquiry. Anything else you’re not satisfied about?

The whole thing, Landlace said. In my judgment there isn’t a word of truth in it from beginning to end.

I leaned forward.

You mean the events in the hotel?

That’s it, he said. I’m a blunt man because I’m a businessman. You people are businessmen. That’s why I’m going to stick to facts and talk business.

Glad to hear it, I said. All the same, we’d like to begin with a background. Facts by all means, but we’ve got to see everything through your own eyes. Your brother, for instance, and yourself.

This was the shape that emerged: an old-established and lucrative business that had been always run by Landlaces. On the father’s death Harry became chairman. Previously he had been in charge of the modern side. James still ran the antique department, which apparently had always been a passion with him. He was married and had an only son in the business. Young, the other director, had married the only sister, and she had been killed in a blitz. Harry was a bachelor and had never even looked like marrying. The firm was less an absorption than it had been, which was why he had taken up local politics. He now played very little chess, and what spare time he had was given to that boys’ club of his. He lived in that furnished flat in Crewleigh. Park Corner was the name of the family house and James had moved into it on his father’s death.

So much for the background, and on to the vital question. What did Landlace mean by a questioning of the facts as set out in the various cuttings he had sent us?

Bluntly this, he said. My brother never went to any hotel to spend a night with a woman. Why he went there and who the woman was, I don’t know. He and I were very close together, gentlemen, and you can take it as an absolute fact that he wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. He was as fine a character as ever I’ve known. No man had a higher reputation either in business or out of it. Ask anyone in Mainford.

I doubted if he could really be as sure as that—of a brother, that is. There are dark and secret corners in the lives of most of us, but it wasn’t good policy for me to hint as much, so I tried the circuitous as a means of getting my own ideas about the truth.

He was a moderate drinker?

Extremely moderate. Always a whisky and soda with his evening meal, and then, I think, he regarded it as a tonic. Sometimes a sherry, and that’s about all.

He held any particular religious views?

He nearly always attended St. Anne’s on a Sunday morning. What I might call a relic of the old days. My father was churchwarden there till he died. He smiled, and for the first time. I’m a bit of a backslider.

Aren’t we all, I said. But you’d call your brother a moral man? That’s for want of a better term.

I would, he told us emphatically. He was good-living. He didn’t make a show of it, mind you, but it was there.

He was popular?

That’s a queer question, he said. He was highly respected in the city. As for those boys of his at the club—well, they simply worshipped him. He thrust the cold pipe so suddenly at me that I actually drew back. That’s one of the reasons why I want his name cleared. Half his life’s work ruined now, after what’s been done to him.

I said that was something we’d already appreciated. What our job would be, in fact, was to clear his brother’s name. I asked if he had any enemies.

Who hasn’t, he told us dryly. You have to be a mighty accommodating man not to make enemies in business. And in politics.

That reminds me, I said. We will get you to give the names of those two councillors who were concerned in that bribery business your brother unearthed.

That was only a beginning, he said. There’re worse things going on than that, if only you could get at them. I think Harry was working on something of the kind."

That’s interesting. You’ve no idea what?

Sorry to say I haven’t. He was a bit secretive about that sort of thing, but how I came to suspect was like this. This is a Socialist council and they never forgave him for what he did about those two crooks. He caught my enquiring look and interpreted it in his own way. Oh no: I don’t say they’re not as honest in the main as you and me, but that business did the party a lot of harm. But, be that as it may, they picked one of their best men to stand against Harry at next spring’s elections. I mentioned it some weeks ago to Harry: you know, sort of asked if he wouldn’t have a tough fight on his hands. He just laughed in his quiet way. ‘All sorts of things might happen before the spring,’ that’s what he told me. ‘There’s something I’m interested in which might make all the difference.’ I knew it was no use asking exactly what he meant, but I had my own ideas.

Norris caught my eye.

That’s a highly important bit of evidence, he said. Would you mind if I put it in my own words? You’d be prepared to swear here and now that your brother was engaged on unearthing another scandal, exposing some racket or graft—call it what you like—and he had good hopes of succeeding; and if he did, then he wouldn’t have to worry about losing his seat on the council.

That’s what I think, Landlace told him quietly. To you gentlemen it may sound very indefinite, but to me it isn’t. Harry always kept council matters strictly to himself. He wasn’t a talker. Even before that other affair he never even hinted a thing to me. I was just as surprised as everyone else was.

We’ll take your word for it, I told him. But about your brother’s heart. He knew it was bad?

It had been giving him trouble. I don’t think he regarded it as all that serious. His doctor told him to go slow. You know what they say.

Well, you’ve been most helpful,