The Case of the Benevolent Bookie

A Ludovic Travers Mystery

Christopher Bush

• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Year: 2020
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781913527129
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

PART I
THE MISSING LADY

Chapter I
THE EARLY CLIENT

It was the February of 1953. You remember it, even if you weren’t involved in actual disaster from flood and tempest. All the winter had been bad, with intermittent blizzards and plenty of fog, but just towards the middle of the month there had been a bit of a respite. A thaw had set in and roads that had been blocked soon cleared, and there was even an occasional glimmer of sun. But the sun meant fog at night and its persistence till well into the morning.

As I looked out of the window at about half-past seven I was thinking that the fog was far from thick. The early weather report had said it would clear early after a period of patchiness, and it seemed to me that I wasn’t going to have any need to start earlier than usual for the office of the Broad Street Detective Agency. Norris, my general manager, was in Birmingham on an insurance job and, as usual, I was handling things till his return. And that, luckily, was to be that afternoon. Things were rather quiet except for routine work, but I liked to get in by half-past eight. You never knew what might arrive by the first post.

I’d made the early tea and Bernice had rung down for service breakfasts. I picked up the morning papers and was just about to look through them when the telephone bell rang. It was the duty man at the office.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir, but a Lord Tynworth wants to see you very urgently.”

The name conveyed nothing to me. I asked him to repeat it, and I still hadn’t heard it before. Or had I? Something very vague was stirring at the far back of my mind.

“Put him through,” I said, “if he’s still on the line.”

A few seconds and I was hearing the client’s voice.

It wasn’t what I might unfacetiously call a noble or peer-like voice: just an ordinary workaday voice whose owner might have been anything in the lower middle-class brackets.

“Tynworth here,” he said. “Sorry to be such a nuisance to you at this ungodly hour.”

“No nuisance at all,” I said. “My name’s Travers, if you haven’t been already told. I gathered you had some urgent business.”

“Yes,” he said. “I feel I must talk to you personally. How soon can you make it?”

“In half an hour?”

“Not earlier? You see, I’m flying to America this morning and I mayn’t have all that time. The fog might mean a diversion to some other airport.”

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” I told him consolingly. “The weather report gave no hint of it.”

“You’re not by any chance going to your office by car?”

“No reason why I shouldn’t,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I wondered if you could drive me from there to the Airport Building. I know it’s an imposition, but we could have our talk on the way.” I heard him click his tongue annoyedly. “The fact is, everything has to be done in such a damnable hurry. Things have happened so suddenly that I still don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels.”

“I’ve got a better idea than meeting at the office,” I said. “Where are you now?”

“Liverpool Street Station.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll come straight there. See you outside the main entrance.”

I reported to Bernice something of what had happened, grabbed hat and overcoat and gloves and made for the garage. Inside fifteen minutes I was drawing up outside the station. A man was waiting there. He was about five foot eight and looked about forty. He was wearing a brown felt hat and a heavy tweed overcoat, and a bulging portfolio case was under his arm.

“Lord Tynworth?”

“Yes,” he said, and his free hand went out.

“I’m Ludovic Travers. Sit alongside me, will you?”

I opened the door and he got in. I moved the car on through the patchy fog towards Moorgate Street to avoid the traffic as far as the Bank. I didn’t feel too happy about driving with one part of my mind while the other part was trying to absorb details of a probable case.

“This business of yours,” I began. “Exactly what is it?”

“Something most damnably private,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t like talking it over in a taxi. And why I as good as asked you to drive me.”

“Why not?” I said. “You’re in a hurry, I have this car and here we are. Very private business, you say. Let me assure you that with us it’ll stay private.”

“I’m sure it will. You see, it happens to concern my wife. I’d intended to spend all yesterday in town and then I was rung confidentially by my sister-in-law to say she’d gone.”

“I don’t get you. By gone, do you mean that she’s left you?”

“Yes,” he said. “And she did it surreptitiously. Practically in the dead of night. The night before last. She must have had her things packed unknown to anyone. I came to town in the late afternoon intending to spend all yesterday clearing up certain matters and doing some shopping, and then early yesterday morning I was rung at the hotel by my sister-in-law. I went back at once. I was scared she might have taken the boy, but she hasn’t.”

I slowed the car and drew up just short of the Bank.

“Before we go any farther, there’s one thing I must make absolutely clear to you. If this has anything to do with divorce, then we can’t handle it. That’s something about which we never make an exception.”

“I assure you it’s nothing whatever to do with divorce,” he told me earnestly. “I want her found—nothing more. Why I’m applying to you is because you were strongly recommended by a friend. A chap called Balfour. Perhaps you don’t remember him. He mentioned it yesterday, but I didn’t somehow like the idea of a private detective agency. No offence, I hope.”

“No offence at all. But what made you change your mind?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps because I realised I just damn-well had to do something besides what Balfour himself will be trying to do. I didn’t really make up my mind till I was virtually at Liverpool Street. I was worrying about any scandal, and tact and so on, and then I remembered Balfour had said I needn’t worry about that if I employed you people.”

I’d missed one green light, but now it came on again.

“And you want us to find your wife.”

“That’s it exactly. Once you’ve found her, then you’re through. But I ought to warn you that she’ll have covered her tracks. It isn’t going to be easy. We ourselves haven’t a clue.”

“Tell me some more,” I said, and he began telling me more. He was worried: I’d known that from the first minute I’d clapped eyes on him. When I’d stopped the car and half swivelled round as I told him we didn’t handle divorce cases I’d really been seeing him for the first time—seeing, that is, as far as the inside of a car and a devilishly dark morning permitted. He wasn’t bad-looking, I’d thought, even if the face was a bit pale. In profile it was quite a good face with a rather hooked nose and what looked like a tiny mole alongside it. His hair was dark, and the desert-rat kind of moustache gave him rather a raddled or rakish look. But it wasn’t a hangover look: it was the look of a man who’d had a bad twenty-four hours.

“Excuse me if I’m blunt,” he said, “but there’s nothing to this Lord Tynworth business. My father was a Labour peer. My only brother was killed and I came in for the title. I’m a racehorse owner and trainer, by the way, at Herndown in Essex. In a very small way. I’d have dropped the title long ago if my wife hadn’t been so against it. A bit incongruous for her to have been Lady Tynworth and me just plain Tom Bolfray.”

There’d been a whiff of something peculiar about that heavy tweed coat and I hadn’t been able to place it. Now I knew it was just a faint scent of the stables.

“I mentioned that,” he said as we began circling St. Paul’s, “because the whole thing’s being hushed up. No one knows except my sister-in-law and that’s why enquiries can’t be made openly. Even my sister-in-law mustn’t on any account be told that I’ve consulted you, for instance.”

The fog was quite thick in patches and it was hard to follow what he was saying and discern any sort of logic. There was no particular logic in my own question.

“You been married long?”

“Only three years,” he said, and the shake of the head seemed to have in it a certain regret. “I’d known her for years. Used to work at a place near her home. Later on she’d been singing with a well-known band and doing quite well at it. I still can’t think why she agreed to marry me.”

“You don’t think she’s going back to this singing or crooning or whatever they call it?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or to some other man—not that that matters at the moment. That isn’t why I want her found. I’ve had suspicions for quite a time, and if she wants another man—well, she can have him, provided I keep the boy. But that isn’t the real point. The real point is that she’s taken certain valuables with her to which she had no claim. She’s got to be found before she disposes of them.”

“Valuables?” I’d pricked my ears at that. “What sort of valuables? Mink coats and things?”

That last, as I knew afterwards, was a stupid question, but I just wasn’t myself. That drive through the heart of the city in patchy fog and with slow-moving traffic was a nightmare.

“Mink coats!” The tone was bitter. “We don’t run to that kind of thing. The only mink coat was her own. It was just valuables.”

He took a quick look at his wrist-watch.

“But there’s really no need to go into that. That’ll be for Balfour to handle later.”

“No use employing us if you don’t trust us,” I told him.

“It isn’t that,” he said. “I’m trusting you quite a lot. All I’m trying to do is simplify everything. The valuables are not your side of the problem. It’s locating her that matters. Once she’s found, we’ll know where they are.”

“Right,” I said. “That clears that up. All we have to do is find your wife. And where do we go for enquiries?”

“Sorry again,” he said, “but that’s for you to work out. No one at Herndown is to be questioned. Everyone, except my sister-in-law, will think she’s away staying with friends. That’ll last at least till I get back from the States in about a week’s time. Sorry about all that, and I do realise the difficulties for you. But I’m prepared to pay.”

“It won’t be cheap,” I told him bluntly.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“One doesn’t expect it to be. Meanwhile, what about a retaining fee? A hundred pounds be enough?”

“Ample,” I said. I was crossing over at the foot of Ludgate Hill and that was all I could say till I had a clear road again. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him opening that portfolio case of his. A bus held us up, and as he closed the case I caught a glimpse of a pair of green-striped pyjamas and what looked like some documents. He had taken something out but I hadn’t seen what. Then we were going round the now stationary bus, and from there on till Trafalgar Square we had the best of luck with the lights.

“And another hundred pounds to carry on with,” he said, and reached across me and put two bundles of pound notes in the locker in front of me. “That be enough till I get back?”

“Plenty,” I said. “What about a receipt?”

“Anything will do,” he said. “Just a scribbled note. We’re honourable sort of people or we shouldn’t be here.”

He seemed worried about the time, and as the lights turned red at the foot of Whitehall I wrote a quick receipt on a page of my notebook. He was opening that portfolio again and hunting feverishly through it. Something seemed to be lost. Then he smiled relievedly.

“Cloak-room ticket,” he told me. “Thought for a moment I’d left the damn thing behind. All my stuff’s parked at the Airport Building.”

“You have a photograph of your wife?”

“Of course,” he said. “You’ll want that.”

He brought out his wallet from the inside breast pocket.

“Here’s one I always carry about with me. Don’t think I’ll want it now. It’s pretty good of her.”

It was an enlarged snapshot, mounted inside a stiff paper folder. I couldn’t look at it till we were held up again by Victoria Station. It was tricky driving round as far as the Grosvenor Hotel, and then the fog was suddenly almost gone. I could just see the Airport Building.

“If we do find your wife, what’s to be done about it?”

“Ah, that,” he said, and brought out the wallet again. “You don’t really do anything. You keep her under observation till you get a reply to this message which you’ll have inserted in the Personal Column of The Daily Telegraph. This is it.”

I had a look at it while the lights held us up for the last time.

HENRY—Glad to report the lost found—ALFRED.

Just enough, I thought, for one line of print. I moved the car on and asked what then.

“The morning the message appears Henry will ring you,” he said. “He’ll say, ‘This is Henry Balfour.’ That’s how you’ll know him. You then tell him just where my wife is and he’ll take over from there. He and the solicitors will know how to handle her.”

We were at the Airport Building and he was getting out of the car. I had half a dozen questions I still wanted to put to him, but now it seemed too late.

“Sorry to have had to be so mysterious,” he said, “but I’m in the devil of a hurry. Also Henry’s meeting me here. I rang him to say I’d taken his advice about you.”

He half turned, his hand lifted as if to wave a goodbye, and then he turned back.

“I’m more than grateful to you. Put everything on the bill, including the ride. Thanks again.”

A quick wave of the hand and he was gone. I was still so full of questions and hedged about with such a feeling of unreality that I hadn’t even time to find the words to wish him a pleasant trip. I watched him go through the doors; and then I was suddenly fingering my glasses—a nervous trick of mine when I’m at a mental loss or faced with the unexpected. But now it was more like an involuntary attempt to get back to reality. It had been, as I said, rather like a nightmare, with moments of coherence and lucidity. Now the whole thing mightn’t have happened at all, except that I was where I was, and that in the locker in front of me were two bundles of pound notes.

I pocketed the notes and moved the car on. I though I’d go to Broad Street by way of the Embankment. And then I had an idea—just a sudden burgeoning of that insatiable curiosity which with me is never really dormant. What I did was park the car in a side street and cross the road to where I could watch those doors through which Tynworth had gone. I wanted to run my eye over that Henry Balfour whose fingers seemed to be pretty deep in the Tynworth pie.

I watched for five minutes and then knew the idea was hopeless. Henry Balfour might have arrived before us. If he hadn’t, then how was I to know him from the various people who were going in and out? My only hope was that Tynworth might come out with him. But I abandoned even that hope after another minute or two. At any moment the c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page/About the Book
• Contents
• Introduction by Curtis Evans
• Chapter I THE EARLY CLIENT
• Chapter II PREPARING THE GROUND
• Chapter III A MR. CONN
• Chapter IV GETTING NEARER?
• Chapter V THE LADY FOUND
• Chapter VI THE SURPRISE
• Chapter VII THE LIARS
• Chapter VIII THE THUNDERBOLTS
• Chapter IX THE OLD FIRM
• Chapter X OLD FARM AGAIN
• Chapter XI FRESH THUNDERBOLT
• Chapter XII THE BODY
• Chapter XIII RABBIT FROM THE HAT
• Chapter XIV A BRICK WALL
• Chapter XV IDENTIFICATION
• Chapter XVI CLOSING THE GAP
• Chapter XVII READ ALL ABOUT IT
• About The Author
• Titles by Christopher Bush
• Copyright