Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Morbid attraction of the scene of a murder,” Olive suggested.

  “Might be,” Bobby agreed, but with some doubt. “There are often staring crowds for days after a murder, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of it leading to breakings-in—two of them at that. Now there’s the girl you saw by the pillar-box. Chap on the beat reported noticing her hanging about. He had been warned to keep an eye on the place, just in case of any more breakings-in. The D.D.I. passed the report to me. Then she was found on the stairs outside the flat and no explanation, except some vague story about looking for a Mr Smith.”

  “Who found her?” Olive asked.

  “Mrs Marks. She has the basement flat with her husband at a reduced rate on condition of keeping the stairs clean and so on. The husband looks after the boiler and does odd jobs after he gets home from work—he is a packer with one of the big stores. And then there’s Mr Jasper Jordan, who is beginning to try to make himself unpleasant, as is, I gather, his chief aim and desire in life.”

  “Oh, that man,” Olive exclaimed, bristling visibly. “That silly paper you brought home—Freedom’s Bugle Call, didn’t it call itself?”

  “That’s it,” Bobby agreed. “Organ of the Mayfair Nihilist Group, which, besides, doesn’t exist unless one man can be a group. I don’t know why Jordan is interested, but he does seem to think, and even to say, that Commander Owen is an incompetent nincompoop who owes his promotion solely to influence: he’s found out that for my sins I went to one of the sacred nine as well as Oxford—the whole bag of tricks, in fact; and, as a kind of head-piece, with a distant cousin of sorts in the House of Lords—at least, he would be if he ever went near the place. Which, of course, he never does.”

  “What’s the sacred nine?” asked Olive. “Aren’t they the Muses or something?”

  “In this case,” Bobby explained, “they are the nine Public Schools, which are so far above all others that those who have been to them never tread the common earth again. Unless, of course, they join the police, and then they jolly well have to.”

  “Oh,” said Olive, suitably impressed.

  “All of which means,” Bobby continued, “that, in Mr Jasper Jordan’s opinion, Commander Bobby Owen came up by the back stairs instead of by the hard way, as he himself thinks he did. So I want to drop in for a chat and see if I can find out if there’s anything behind this sudden and rather vicious interest in me. But I’ve had a hint not to take any notice of it officially. All the same, I can’t help thinking there’s something behind it all. If I take you with me, no one can say it was in any way official, just a mild protest by a private citizen out for an evening stroll.”

  “Me as a camouflage?” asked Olive, rather doubtfully.

  “Well, you could put it that way,” Bobby admitted. “I wouldn’t. But it will stop him writing to Centre to demand what it means and how dare the police, etc., etc. Also there’s another report that a young woman, the one we’ve just seen, has been visiting Jordan as well as hanging about the flat where this Banquet Murder, as they call it, took place. It all seems to add up to there being some connection between the flat, the continuing interest in it as shown by two breakings-in, the murder of the man, Hugh Newton, and Mr Jasper Jordan.”

  “What you mean,” Olive said resignedly, “is that you’re off again.”

  “Well,” Bobby answered, “it’s not too good when murderers get away with it. My job to see they don’t.”

  CHAPTER II

  AN ENEMY OF SOCIETY

  WEST KING STREET, into which Bobby and Olive now turned, was one of tall, narrow, business-like Victorian houses with no nonsense about them, built for plain, business-like Victorians with no nonsense about them. Unfortunately, tall and narrow as they were, built before ‘c. h. w.’ and bathrooms had become necessities or slaves of the basement as rare as slaves of the lamp, they were now degenerating, with the slow inevitability of history, into slums, so that a district once of such prim respectability was already neither prim nor respectable. Half-way along, over the basement of one such house, a large sign announced:

  J. Jordan and Co.,

  Printers and Publishers,

  Freedom’s Bugle Call.

  Central Bureau Mayfair Nihilist Group,

  Discussion Circle. Evenings. 8 p.m.

  You are welcome. Admission free.

  A faint glimmer visible through the fanlight of the area door suggested also that possibly some of these numerous activities were now in progress.

  “Well, here we are,” Bobby said. “Come along.”

  “Are you going down there?” Olive asked, viewing with distaste the murky descent offered by extremely dirty stone steps into a darkness murkier still, and illumined so very feebly by that glimmer barely penetrating through the immemorial dirt of the fanlight. “Suppose there’s a meeting?”

  “Well, it says ‘Admission Free’, so that’s all right,” Bobby answered, and led the way. “But according to our chaps, there never is any meeting. They seem to regard that as rather suspicious. I think that’s a swill bucket there, so don’t put your foot in it. Personally, I am inclined to think that there’s rather an unnecessary amount of interest being taken in Mr Jordan. Nothing more likely to please him. My own idea is that he is just a harmless eccentric who sees himself as a David challenging the Goliath of Authority. But you never know. He may be in the black market or the brains of one of these gangs that are giving such a lot of trouble just now. I want to form my own opinion, and I want to make my visit as unofficial as possible.”

  “Am I a wife or a camouflage?” demanded Olive, and then said, and loudly: “Oh, dear.”

  “I told you to look out for that bucket, but I think it’s only ash, not swill,” Bobby said, and knocked at the door with some vigour.

  It was opened at once, a flood of light streamed out, and an angry voice demanded:

  “Who the hell’s there? What do you want?”

  “Well, my name is Owen,” Bobby answered, and then what he was saying was drowned in a roar of beautifully mingled delight, anger, and surprise.

  “It’s the raid,” the roar proclaimed, becoming articulate. “Come in, come in by all means, and we’ll thrash this out if I have to take it to the House of Lords, I’ll get it raised in Parliament. I’ll—but where’s the rest of your gang?”

  “What gang?” Bobby asked, slightly bewildered by this reception. “What are you talking about?” He turned to Olive. “Mr Jasper Jordan, who is agin authority just as the American preacher was agin sin. Mr Jordan, my wife, Mrs Bobby Owen.”

  Mr Jordan, silent now, retreated down a dirty stone passage into a large room opening from it. Bobby and Olive followed. Over his shoulder Mr Jordan mumbled in a voice heavy with disappointment:

  “I made sure it was the raid I got word of.”

  “Sorry,” Bobby said apologetically.

  The room they entered had probably once been the kitchen. Now it had been transformed into half-sitting-room, half-office. The furniture was an odd accumulation gathered apparently more or less haphazard. There were various chairs, all in different states of decrepitude, an old roll-top desk in one corner, a tumble-down sofa that once no doubt had graced a Victorian drawing-room but now sagged on three rickety pegs, and an old biscuit-tin. On an occasional table near the window stood a brand-new typewriter, which at present prices must have cost £50 or so, and on the floor near, was the aspidistra it seemed to have displaced. One side of the room was entirely covered by shelves, crowded with books, the lucky ones, that is, for on the floor beneath were piled many others that either had been ejected from the shelves or had never been so fortunate as to find a place there. Making a swift expert calculation, based on the thickness of the dust lying about, Olive decided that it must be between three and five years since the room had last been swept, and her eyes went instinctively in search of a broom with which to start operations.

  “Well, if it’s not a raid, what is it?” asked Mr Jordan, his voice rather subdued now, but
still strong and deep.

  He was a short, broad man, almost a dwarf indeed, and very nearly as broad as he was tall, with arms so long he could probably, if required, have rivalled Rob Roy’s legendary power of fastening his stockings below his knees without stooping, and with a face of a fascinating grotesque ugliness few women could resist. His flat little nose with wide, hairy nostrils, his enormous mouth with black irregular teeth, several of them missing, his ears that stood out like handles, the cast in his left eye, a sprinkling of warts here and there—all made up a picture that sometimes attracted comment from rude small boys, who, however, were apt to flee in terror even if he did no more than turn upon them the full force of his astonishing and hideous scowl.

  Before Bobby could reply to Jordan’s question the door opened and there appeared the tall, fair girl of the pillar-box. She was carrying a tray on which were two cups, a jug of cocoa, and some biscuits. She nearly dropped it when she saw Bobby and Olive, but recovered at no worse cost than the slopping of some of the cocoa on tray and floor. Bobby said, “Good evening,” Olive produced a friendly smile, Jordan said, or rather shouted, “Come in, come in, girl.” She, however, responding neither to greeting, to smile, nor to invitation, vanished with extreme, silent speed. Mr Jordan turned angrily upon Bobby, and with every appearance of deep and genuine indignation exclaimed:

  “There you are. Bullying again. Bullying the public. Can’t help it. That’s you all the time.”

  “Who? Me?” asked Bobby, slightly astonished at this accusation.

  “You,” repeated Jordan firmly. “Look at the way that girl ran at the sight of you. That shows. And I suppose you called off your raid? Eh?”

  “Never heard of any raid,” Bobby asserted, and Jordan snorted his disbelief. “I probably should have though, if anything of the sort had ever even been thought of. And surely you don’t want to pretend that saying ‘Good evening’ is bullying?”

  “Of course it is,” declared Jordan stoutly, “when it’s you police, puppets of authority that you are. There was to be a raid. That’s certain. I had information, and my information is always good. Only you’ve called it off and come along yourself? Why?” demanded Jordan, looking very fierce indeed. “Why? I demand an answer.”

  “Oh, well, Mr Jordan,” Bobby answered, his tone almost as mild as the other’s had been fierce, “you’ve been taking a great deal of personal interest in me just lately. Very uncomplimentary interest, too. Every week I get a copy of Freedom’s Bugle Call. More than personal at times. So, as my wife and I were taking a stroll this evening, I thought we might as well call in and ask what it was all about.”

  “Murder,” said Jordan briefly.

  “At Number Seven Mayfair Crescent?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why,” demanded Bobby, “this sudden interest in something that happened three or four months ago?”

  “I am always fair, strictly fair,” pronounced Jordan with obvious sincerity. “I felt it only right to give you your chance. You had it. You have failed. I decided it was time for me to intervene. I ask: Is it, or is it not, your duty to protect life and property? I ask: Is letting a murderer go free through sheer bungling incompetence compatible with the proper performance of that duty? Is—?”

  “Hold hard,” Bobby interrupted, feeling it was time to check this flow of invective. “Tell me. Do you know anything that might help?”

  “I do not, not my affair. Up to you, not me. If I did know something, it wouldn’t be any good telling you. You would only bungle it.”

  “Were you acquainted with Mr Newton?”

  “Never heard of him till he was murdered. All my concern is to expose the neglect, the incompetence—”

  “Yes, yes, never mind that just now,” Bobby interrupted again. “I’m still inclined to think there’s something behind this sudden outburst of interest in a crime half-forgotten by now. Except by us. We never forget.”

  “Perfect elephants, aren’t you?” sneered Jordan. “Only elephants are supposed to be intelligent.”

  “A young lady has been noticed,” Bobby went on, “showing a good deal of apparent interest in the flat where the murder took place. Other people seem interested, too. Two breakings-in have been reported. And now the young lady turns up here. Any connection, do you think?”

  “Smart, aren’t you?” growled Jordan. “In a silly sort of way,” he added hurriedly, as it occurred to him that ‘smart’ and ‘gross incompetence’ did not fit too well. “Probably got it into your head now that she’s the murderer. What on earth could she have to do with it?”

  “That’s what I want to know—what I mean to know,” Bobby told him, and this time put into his voice that note of hard determination he could employ at times and that so often had its effect.

  “Oh, well,” Jordan growled, “people come to me. They know I’m always there. They know I’m not easily frightened. They know I’m the enemy of all bullying officials; all stupid, blundering, brutal authority. An enemy of a society organized to uphold its own tyranny. What right has any man to give orders to another? Let us act together if we must, freely and willingly, like the brethren we were meant to be, not with halters round our necks and the other end of the rope in the hands of—of—”—and now came a glare too full of scorn, of indignation, and of hate, for words to be found to match it—“of officials.”

  “The simple anarchist creed,” Bobby remarked. “Have you many members?”

  “Every living man or woman is a potential member, and will join us as soon as they understand,” Jordan retorted. “That’s why ultimate triumph is certain in the undeviating logic of history. Except the trained, tamed puppets of Governments, such as police and bureaucrats, every human being resents being ordered about. It is an insult to our humanity. Brother helping brother. There lies salvation. Master ordering slaves. There lies the last damnation.”

  “Dear me,” said Bobby.

  “How very interesting,” said Olive, whose presence the two men had almost forgotten where she had seated herself inconspicuously in a corner.

  And it was her comment that was the most effective. Mr Jordan almost choked.

  “Interesting,” he gasped, “the salvation of man, and it’s very interesting,” and he took out a large red handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “That’s women,” he muttered darkly.

  Bobby went to the door and called:

  “Young lady, are you there? Could you let us have a word with you, please?”

  Jordan bounced forward indignantly and instantly.

  “Here,” he shouted, “who do you think you are?”

  His evident intention was to push Bobby away from the door and shout a warning to the girl to pay no attention to Bobby’s request. But Bobby, six feet of him and near a hundred and eighty pounds of bone and muscle, did not come easily into the displaced-person category. He stood stolidly, amiably, immovably, in the door-way, his air one of bland surprise.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “You’ve no business, you’ve no right,” Jordan spluttered, and choked into silence as he tried to express clearly what it was he so strongly felt Bobby had ‘no business’, ‘no right’ to do.

  But already it was too late. In answer to Bobby’s summons the girl emerged timidly from another room, farther down the long stone passage and came towards him. He stood back to allow her to enter. Jordan went back sulkily to where he had been standing before. Olive greeted the new-comer with another friendly smile and pulled forward a chair for her. Bobby said, “Oh, good evening,” and Jordan said still more sulkily:

  “You shouldn’t have paid him any attention. Like his impudence.”

  “Won’t you introduce us?” Bobby asked Jordan, and to the girl he said, when Jordan only scowled: “My name’s Owen—Bobby Owen, employed at Scotland Yard.”

  “Don’t let him frighten you,” Olive said. “He’s my husband. I’ll see he behaves.”

  “I always do,” Bobby protested, hurt.

&n
bsp; “Tell him to shut up,” Jordan growled. “Don’t say a word. You never know with these fellows. He’s got no right to ask questions.”

  “Oh, yes I have,” Bobby retorted. “The right to ask questions is one of the natural rights of man—I’m sure Thomas Paine would agree.” He was consulting his note-book. He found the entry he wanted. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Miss Doreen Caine, Flat B, Seventy-two, The Terrace, Chelsea. Occupation. Cookery Instructor. Is that correct?”

  CHAPTER III

  AN INSTRUCTOR OF COOKERY

  EVEN OLIVE looked surprised, used as she was to Bobby’s way of keeping back information till he judged there had come the appropriate moment to disclose it. The thus suddenly identified Doreen gasped and looked inclined to drop through the floor, if only that had been practicable. Jordan once more opened the black cavern of his mouth to the fullest extent. Olive, the first to recover, gave Doreen another smile and made another little gesture of invitation.

  “Just professional swank,” she explained. “Sort of thing that doesn’t impress any wife.”

  “I never swank,” protested Bobby. “Ruin you in the force, swanking.”

  Doreen, wary eyes on Bobby, whom she evidently suspected of being liable to produce at any moment an even more startling rabbit out of his hat, but encouraged by Olive’s smile, slipped across to her and felt safer. Jordan demanded angrily:

  “How the devil did you know?”

  “Shall we say—sheer incompetence?” suggested Bobby in his silkiest tone, and then, changing it again, he added briskly: “Oh, come, Mr Jordan, be your age, as the Americans say. Did you really think that if you suddenly started being—shall we say, ‘impolite’?—to us chaps in the C.I.D., and to me in particular, and if at the same time a young lady had been remarked taking a good deal of interest in the scene of a recent murder, no one was going to sit up and take notice? Things don’t happen without cause, you know. So I thought it might be as well to find out who the young lady was. Quite simple. She was followed home.”