“Yes, sir,” said Ford respectfully, but all the same wondering if this time Bobby were not allowing himself to be side-tracked. “Don’t you think, sir, Dow might have been trying to sell us a red herring? They aren’t things you can eat, are they?”
“Red herrings? Oh, you mean limpets. I don’t know, I don’t see why not. I must ask Miss Caine. Limpet sauce or something like that. The chief thing I know about them is they stick. Knew all about a vacuum long before homo sapiens did. It was more how Dow looked than what he said started me thinking he intended some sort of obscure hint or another. I may be all wrong about that, of course. We shall have to get Kenneth Banner’s record from the Admiralty, and we must try to get hold of the other members of this rather unusual yacht crew and hear what they have to say. Herbert Abel was one name, and Ted Louis the other. We’ll have to ask Southampton to look them up. Pity no records available about either of them.”
“Just a little bit too convenient, don’t you think, sir?” Ford put in.
“I do,” Bobby agreed. “Something else to remember. Anyhow, while we are here we can look up the ‘As you Like It’ engineer. Stanley Foster, tobacconist and engineer in his spare time apparently, and see if he’s as talkative a gentleman as Mr Ossy Dow.”
He turned to beckon to the waiter, and as he did so the door opened and Imra Guire entered. She saw them, and came straight to their table. She did not speak, but stood for a moment, a brooding, sullen, tormented-looking girl. Then she sat down, still in silence, and Bobby beckoned again to the waiter, who apparently had not noticed Bobby’s previous summons.
CHAPTER VIII
DESIGN TO MARRY
THE WAITER, who had seen Imra enter, saw also Bobby’s second summons, and came at once. To him, Bobby said:
“A cup of coffee for the lady, please.”
Imra, chin cupped in hands, still sat motionless and silent. She might not have been aware of the presence of the two men, and her dark gaze seemed to pass them by to lose itself in distant, unknown depths. The coffee came, but Imra took no notice. The waiter retired, though he remained near by and watchful. He seemed to feel that something unusual was going on, and he was inclined to bring the bill as a hint to the three of them to leave. He didn’t want any scene of any kind. If there were one he would probably be blamed, but when he looked again he decided it would be better not to interfere. He suddenly got the idea that Bobby had not much the air of one likely to accept hints from waiters. With her dark and brooding gaze still passing the two men by as if she did not see them, Imra said:
“Why were you asking all that?”
“Were you listening?” Bobby asked.
She seemed a little startled by the question, and even brought back her distant gaze to focus it on him, as though she saw him for the first time. Then she said:
“No need to listen. You can hear Ossy across the street when he shouts, and he generally does. Well, why?”
“If you heard what was said, why ask?” Bobby retorted.
“Is it murder?” she asked, and all her body trembled as she spoke, but her eyes were still steady.
“Why should you think so?” Bobby asked in return. To that she made no reply. She knew none was necessary. Bobby went on: “You know the evening before Mr Banner disappeared there was a murder in London. Mr Dow must have known that, too. But he said nothing.”
“Ossy is a fool,” she said with contempt. “The worst kind of fool—the clever fool. Do you think Ken Banner has been murdered?”
“There is always a reason when a man disappears,” Bobby said. “It may be murder. Not often, but it happens. It may be debts or a love affair gone wrong.” He watched Imra closely as he said this, but could see no alteration in her dark impassivity. “It might even be merely a desire for change. Or almost anything. But in this case it seems Mr Banner rang up Mr Dow next morning after the murder. So it doesn’t seem likely he was the victim.”
“I’m not a fool,” she told him in her tone of sullen, repressed anger. “You’re thinking all the time there’s nothing to show there ever was a ’phone call. Ossy says he took it at the ‘Blue Bear’.”
“Don’t you trust him?” Bobby asked.
“As much as I trust you or anyone else,” she retorted.
“Why have you followed us here?” he asked next.
“I want to know what it’s all about,” she answered. “You come here asking all these questions. Well, why?”
“About Kenneth Banner and a London murder,” he told her then.
“What else?” she demanded. “Well, what else?”
“Isn’t that enough?” he asked in his turn. “I am here to ask questions, not to answer them. You thought of murder at once. I never mentioned the word. Mr Dow apparently saw no connection. You did immediately. Is that significant? Will you tell me one thing?”
“Why should I?” she said, and now her tone was defiant. Then it changed. “Well, what is it?” she asked.
“Do you sleep well?”
She was silent, staring at him doubtfully. The question had taken her by surprise, so different was it from what she had expected. Perhaps it had even frightened her. Then she laughed, not very naturally, and said:
“Like a top. I never wake till it’s time to get up. Why?”
“Because,” Bobby said slowly, “I thought you might have something on your mind, and I thought you might sleep better if you told me what it was. Think it over. Another thing, I’m told Mr Banner was a first-class cook?”
“So he was. Yes. It helped a lot. To attract clients, I mean. They used to talk about the meals they got, and it was all his doing. He had a real gift for it. He ought to have gone into the hotel trade. He would have done well at it, but he always said he liked the sea better than kitchens.”
“The man who was murdered in London,” Bobby said, “seems to have had the same sort of gift. A coincidence? His name was Hugh Newton, but there’s some reason to think he may have had other names as well. That’s a photograph of him,” and as he spoke Bobby took the photograph from his pocket and showed it her.
She looked at it long and steadily, but she showed no trace of recognition, of emotion of any sort. Her voice, too, was unmoved when at last she said:
“I think that was taken after death, wasn’t it? Ossy told me. He said he couldn’t make out at first what was funny about it, and then afterwards, after you had gone, he began to think.” She picked it up then from the table where it was lying and looked at it again. “No one I have ever seen,” she said, and added: “Definitely.”
“You know the papers called it the Chef Murder and so on? Mr Newton had been preparing a meal for two. It was ready for serving when he was attacked and killed. A very tip-top swell sort of affair apparently, the sort of thing you only expect in high-class expensive restaurants.”
“I don’t see anything so awfully out of the way about fried chicken and apple fritters,” she remarked, apparently a little puzzled. “You could get that anywhere, couldn’t you? Smoked salmon costs a lot, but you don’t cook it. At least not as a rule. They do in France sometimes. You don’t know much about cookery, do you? I heard you say it was all in using plenty of wine and butter—and Worcester sauce. Why not pickled onions? It depends on the cooking and nothing else, and that’s a gift like any other. Ken had it.”
“Didn’t any other of the yacht’s crew ever take the job on,” Bobby asked.
“Ken would never have let them, not even if it were bacon and eggs for breakfast, and there’s more to that than most know.”
“I know I’m a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to cooking,” Bobby admitted humbly. “Odd how it keeps turning up in this business. Mr Banner and the dead man, and you know about it, too, don’t you?”
“It’s got to be done,” she answered with a shrug of her shoulders. “You may as well know how. But not like Ken. He could take a few left overs and odds and ends and turn out a soufflé like a dream. That’s finished now,” she said, and stared at Bobby as
if offering him some obscure challenge he on his part knew not how to accept. “All over now,” she repeated; and the tone of challenge changed, till in it there seemed to echo all the lamentations that all through the ages have risen from the sons and daughters of man.
All at once she laughed. Not a good laugh. She cut it short in the middle and, of all things, began abruptly to polish her fingernails.
“Were you in love with Kenneth Banner?” Bobby asked; and this time he made his tone sharp and abrupt to prevent her from thinking too long before she answered.
The device was not successful. She went on polishing her nails, absorbed in the task, as if she had hardly heard a question that in any case she found uninteresting. Still concentrating her attention on polishing her nails, as if to make sure that the job was being properly done, she said:
“What is being in love? Losing your head for the sake of a kiss? I think there was some poor fool he had on a bit of string somewhere. When I say poor fool, I mean girl. The same thing. He wanted me to marry him. I didn’t say I would. I might have. You’ve got to marry someone. Or have you?” And there came a kind of blaze into those dark, dreaming pools of passion that were her eyes. Bobby saw it and was startled, so much in contradiction did it seem to the light carelessness of her tone. She had paused, but now she was saying in the same light, indifferent, casual way: “I expect I’ll marry Ossy now,” and Bobby wondered if that were really an intention or merely some kind of bluff or else perhaps—despair.
“I think I remember Mr Dow mentioned he was a bachelor,” Bobby remarked.
“So he says,” she answered casually. “I’ll make sure before I tell him.”
“Tell him?” Bobby repeated.
“Tell him I’m going to marry him,” she explained. “I haven’t yet.”
“Oh, I see,” Bobby said, though he didn’t, for he was wondering if Ossy had asked her, or if her announcement would come to him as a complete surprise. “You are sure none of the rest of the crew ever did any of the cooking.”
“I expect I should have heard if they had,” she answered. “Mr Banner always said he wouldn’t trust anyone else. He thought even one botched meal might spoil our reputation we were trying to build up. ‘If you want good feeding, go a cruise with the “As You Like It”.’ That was the slogan we were trying to put about. But I don’t know. I didn’t really see much of any of the others. Except for Mr Banner, they hadn’t much occasion to come over to the office from Southampton, and I never had any reason to go there. There’s Stan Foster of course. He has a tobacconist’s shop just off the High Street. I’m sure he doesn’t know anything about cooking.”
“The other two were Southampton men I understand. Ted Louis—”
“Oh, he’s a half-wit,” Imra interrupted. “He wouldn’t know how to boil an egg. Bert Abel I only saw once or twice. Ken told me once he was more than useful—could turn his hand to anything.”
“I must try to have a talk with him,” Bobby said. “You couldn’t give me his address?”
Imra shook her head.
“I told you,” she said. “I hardly ever had anything to do with any of them—except Ken.”
“Ken the cook,” Bobby mused, “and the dead man a cook, and now there’s a girl turned up in town who seems to know all about cooking, too. Always this cookery motive.”
Imra said:
“What girl is that?”
“Oh, just a girl,” Bobby said, and again he was watching her closely, and again he thought that she knew it.
“Most girls can cook,” she said indifferently. “Nothing in that,” but Bobby felt she thought that this time there was a good deal in it. She got to her feet. “I must go,” she said. “I’ll be late at the office.” She got up and made a step towards the door, but then turned back, and again there came into her eyes that look so like the black thunder-cloud charged with latent lightning. She said: “You haven’t told me what girl. I suppose that means you don’t intend to. On the track, aren’t you? A keen scent? How long will it be before you shout ‘tally-ho’ or whatever it is they say when the fox is in sight?”
With that she turned again and went swiftly away, and Ford said with a little gasp as he watched her go:
“That’s a queer one.”
“A formidable one,” Bobby corrected him. “Dangerous.”
“What do you think she was driving at?” Ford asked, and he was certainly looking puzzled enough.
“Oh, I think there’s no doubt about that,” Bobby said. “It came out at the end. Like a woman’s postscript. She wanted to know if there was another woman in it anywhere. So I told her there was, and now we shall have to look out for any reaction.” He beckoned again to the waiter, who came hurrying with the bill, glad to know these troubling customers were at last departing. Bobby paid it, and said to Ford:
“We’ll go along and have a talk with the local lads first, and see if they can tell us anything, and then we’ll have a talk with Mr Stanley Foster.”
CHAPTER IX
SMALL INFORMATION
TO THE home of the ‘local lads’, as Bobby had called them—otherwise known as the Seemouth Police-station—the two of them now made their way accordingly and in almost complete silence. For though Ford was bubbling with questions, he dared not put them while Bobby seemed so deep in thought.
The ‘local lads’ had, however, very little information to give. Mr Dow was a well-known inhabitant of the town. Born there, he had left as a young man. He had returned once or twice at long intervals to engage in not generally very successful enterprises, and more recently to start, or rather to continue and extend the already started ‘As You Like It’ cruises and to combine with them a local travel agency. Recently he had bought a substantial share in the ‘Blue Bear’—a ‘free’ house—and now lived there. He was not the licensee, and he took no part in the daily routine of the establishment. It appeared that it was the striking success of the Banner Travel Agency, described by him as ‘a little gold-mine’, that had provided the money with which to make this purchase. Nothing was known against him, except a memory of some youthful escapades and a few complaints about a certain laxity in money matters. But these, said the Inspector who was providing this information, had never come into Court.
“Just a little sharp dealing,” said the Inspector tolerantly. “Two of ’em each trying to do the other down, and him coming off best. There was one story about an old lady losing all her money through him, but she died, and there was no one to carry it on. Besides, he could show letters of his warning her to be careful and she had better consult a lawyer.”
“What did she die of?” Bobby asked.
“I don’t think that was ever gone into,” the Inspector answered and he looked a little startled. “There was a bit of talk,” he admitted. “Before my time,” he said, with a faint touch of relief in his voice. “Mrs Fanshaw was her name.” He hurried on as if to get away from unwelcome thoughts: “Dow went in for boxing as a youngster, and got to be rather too free with his fists. He was fined twice, I think. I could look that up, if you like. I have an idea that was why he left Seemouth the first time. Of course, he’s too fat now for that sort of thing.”
“There’s a Miss Guire, a typist at the Agency,” Bobby said. “You know her?”
“Oh, yes, everyone does,” said the Inspector at once, and now a far-away look came into his eyes, that Ford later on was rude enough to compare to that of a ‘dying duck in a thunderstorm’. “Fine girl. Fast stepper. No one could help noticing her in a place like Seemouth. Keeps herself to herself, and not her fault if she can’t walk down the street without all the women wondering where she gets her clothes and all the men gaping. But none of ’em get any change out of her,” and this last was said with such asperity that both Bobby and Ford were inclined to suspect that the Inspector was to be numbered among those who had got no change out of Miss Imra Guire.
“Can you tell us anything about Mr Kenneth Banner, Mr Dow’s partner?” Bobby asked next.
“We want to get in touch with him. He seems to have vanished about the time a man was found murdered in London.”
The Inspector whistled softly.
“That’s it, is it?” he said. “I’m afraid we can’t help you there. Lived in Southampton, didn’t he? Came over sometimes, I believe, but I don’t know that any of our chaps ever saw him to notice. I know I never did.”
Of Mr Stanley Foster, when Bobby introduced his name, the Inspector seemed to disapprove.
“Good mechanic,” he said, “but unreliable. Never holds a job for long, and he’s got one or two girls into trouble. Wriggled out himself mostly, except for one maintenance order. He seems to have settled down now though. Came into some money recently and bought a tobacconist’s business. His wife runs it, and he’s stuck to his job with the Banner Agency longer than he’s ever stuck to any job before.”
“We must go along and see if he has anything to tell us,” Bobby said. “You’ll keep a look-out for any developments here, will you? Especially Miss Guire. We’ve had a talk with her, and I’m not sure what it means. She says Kenneth Banner wanted her to marry him, and it’s possible she knows where he is or what’s happened to him. Mind your step of course. I don’t want her to get the idea that we’re watching her—if we can help it,” he added, as he saw Ford looking very doubtful. “She’s tough, formidable, I should say. So is another girl we know of who may be mixed up in whatever’s going on. But tough differently, though every bit as formidable in her own way.”
“You think there is something going on?” the Inspector asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Bobby said gloomily, “and there’s nothing at all to show what. We know nothing about the murdered man and nothing much about Mr Banner. All records concerning the yacht and her crew have disappeared. Mr Dow says Banner took them away the morning after the London murder.”
Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 7