“So Jasper’s up and doing, is he?” Bobby commented to himself. “Well, so much the better. So long as things are moving, there’s always hope. It’s only in a dead calm there’s no chance of progress.”
With which sage reflection he tried to console himself and to control a growing impatience, till presently there came another report to say that Imra Guire had paid her bill at her hotel and walked off, remarking casually that she was returning to See-mouth, where, however, she had not yet appeared.
Finally, a ’phone call to Doreen’s home brought the information that she had gone away on what she had described as urgent private affairs. A cousin had been called in to look after Mrs Caine during Doreen’s absence, which she had said would only be for a day or two. She had given to no one, not even to her mother, any hint of what were these private affairs, what was her errand, or where she was going.
“Hope,” Bobby said to himself, musing over this last bit of news, “she won’t be away longer—possibly longer than she ever dreamed she might be,” for indeed he was growing more and more convinced that behind all this lay hidden those already guilty of one murder and not likely to hesitate at another.
It seemed to him to be becoming clear from what he knew already, more especially from the odd little incident of the theft of two wrist-watches, nothing else taken, from the murder flat and of their subsequent return, that large sums of money were at stake and, inevitably, the safety of those concerned.
But if the motive was gradually and doubtfully emerging, from the obscurity that had at first surrounded it, into a somewhat clearer light, the identity of the murderer or murderers still remained as completely hidden as before.
“Might be almost anyone,” Bobby told himself gloomily. “Only just the one little tiny straw to show which way the wind might be blowing. And too many cross-currents for one to be sure its drift means anything at all.”
He tried to console himself with the reflection that at any rate the two men whose names, up to the present that is, had come most prominently into the affair—Ossy Dow and Jasper Jordan—had, again up to the present, remained comparatively quiescent. And then came fresh word from Seemouth. Stanley Foster, the little tobacconist and spare-time engineer, was missing from his shop, had not been seen for a day or two in the neighbouring public-house he always ‘used’, was believed to have gone to London, and did the Yard think that was likely to have any connection with the general set-up?
Bobby had to answer that he didn’t know, and then he rang off and looked worried.
For here it seemed was a new entrant on the scene, and one who hitherto had been thought of as merely a super, or even a spectator, safely out of the way in the wines. But now perhaps about to step forth to play his part in that last act on which Bobby felt in his bones the curtain was about to rise.
He began absent-mindedly to arrange pens and pencils in a kind of pattern on his desk.
“That,” he said aloud, putting one down, “is Doreen the inflexible, and that”—he placed a second in position—“is Imra the unpredictable and here”—‘here’ was a specially fat pencil stump—“is Mary Ellen Adam the incongruous.” He added two more, murmuring: “For Jasper the Enemy of Society and Ossy the wrong ’un.” He hesitated whether to include Mr Pyne, but did so finally, choosing for him a nice new blue pencil; “Sick without knowing it,” he commented, “of rule, routine, and respectability, the three ‘R’s’ of bureaucracy, and letting a touch of adventure go to his head. Risky. Very. In deep water without having learned how to swim.” Now there were no more pens or pencils left, so he added a penknife from his pocket. “For Stanley Foster,” he said, “so sharp he may cut himself.” As an after-thought he found an odd bit of string, tied it into the form of a noose, and put it with the rest. “Kenneth Banner?” he muttered doubtfully. But then he changed his mind, undid it, and shaped it instead into the resemblance of a question mark.
For some moments he sat staring at the resulting pattern, and found in it nor sense nor significance.
With an impatient gesture he swept them all together again, the penknife falling on the floor. To retrieve it he had to go down on his hands and knees, and in that undignified position he was discovered when his next visitor entered the room.
He had come, however, on a different and comparatively unimportant matter. This disposed of, Bobby returned to his own contemplative act, and more and more found his attention concentrating itself on the three women he had named the Implacable, the Unpredictable, and the Incongruous. But this contemplation might as well, for all the enlightenment it produced, have been concentrated, in the approved Eastern fashion, on his own navel. Unless indeed it may be called enlightenment that more and more it grew into his mind that one of those three knew consciously or unconsciously the answer, and therefore that that one was in imminent and certain danger, since it only needed for that answer to get itself spoken for all immediately to become plain. It seemed to him that a shadow like the shadow of death itself had crept into the room and there was hovering over those three names, but uncertainly, as if not yet were it decided on which one of the three it was to fall.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MOTOR CYCLIST
FOR A LITTLE more than twenty-four hours the situation remained unchanged. Then, late in the evening, when Bobby was already beginning to think of bed after a long—and boring—day at his desk, the ’phone rang.
Bobby said something under his breath. Olive didn’t say anything, but what she thought was much worse. Bobby picked up the receiver and answered. A voice he recognized for that of Doreen told him that she was coming in a car to pick him up, and would be there in a few minutes.
“I’m sorry for the short notice,” she added, “but I’ve only just been able to make sure it was all right with Kenneth—Mr Banner.”
Bobby told her he would be ready when she came, and to Olive he said:
“The Doreen girl. She’ll be here in a few minutes, and wants me to be ready. You had better go to bed. I may be late.” He saw Olive was looking uneasy, troubled. He said: “No earthly reason to look like that. There’s nothing whatever to worry about.”
“I know,” said Olive. “You always say that, and then you come home just a battered wreck.”
“I don’t,” Bobby almost shouted in his hot indignation. “Battered wreck indeed. That’s the other chap.”
“Well, you’ll take one of those gun things with you?” Olive urged.
“A gun?” Bobby repeated, more horrified this time than indignant. “A nice sort of example that would be to the rank and file, wouldn’t it?” They heard a motor hooting outside. “That’ll be the young lady,” Bobby said. “I’ll be off, and don’t worry.”
“As if,” Olive sighed, “your unfortunate wife ever had a chance to do anything else. Oh, why didn’t I marry a nice little Civil Servant in a nice little office with a nice little carpet all to himself?”
“Because,” Bobby explained as he made for the door, “you had fallen so passionately head over heels in love with me, you just couldn’t help it,” and therewith banged the door behind him before Olive had time to get out even one of those words bubbling and boiling on the tip of her tongue.
“Men are such cheats,” she told herself crossly. “Get the last word by running away, the mean things.”
Down below, drawn up before the entrance to the flats, Doreen was sitting at the wheel of a Bayard Twenty. Bobby walked round it, made a mental note of the number, and then got in beside her.
“Your own car?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she answered. “Hired.”
She seemed a competent and careful driver, a little too careful perhaps, if that can be thought possible in these days. At any rate, there were one or two indignant hoots from behind as if her modest, less than thirty m.p.h. was too slow for others anxious to get by on their way home—or elsewhere. Not that Doreen took any notice. As for Bobby, as a police officer he applauded. As a man, his fingers itched to get hold of
the wheel. Presently he said:
“Any objection to telling me where you are going?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Oh, well,” he said, slightly taken aback by the simplicity of this reply, which had been delivered quite seriously and gravely. “Oh, well, I hope you’ll get there.”
She made no reply, but drove on at the same steady pace. Now they were out of the main stream of London traffic, and there were no more indignant hoots from drivers who considered themselves unduly held up. Even when a long straight stretch of road with no sign of other traffic lay before them, there was not the slightest increase of speed. Just the same steady jog trot. Bobby began to wonder if there was a reason for this restraint, as indeed there is for everything. Presently he said:
“There is a motor cyclist behind. I think he is following us.” Doreen made no reply. Bobby was a little uneasy lest some too-zealous subordinate had thought it safer that there should be an escort. If it were that, Bobby determined grimly that the too-zealous would hear about it—would hear, in fact, quite a lot about it. He said: “If you’ll stop the car, I’ll get out and ask him what he’s up to.”
“He’s not following us,” Doreen answered, and she slightly increased speed, as if for fear Bobby might do as he had suggested and jump out.
But that the cyclist was in fact following them Bobby was certain, and it was clear that Doreen must be aware of it, in spite of her denial. Now, however, before he could decide what to do or whether to do anything but wait, they came to what was apparently a country club or road-house, to judge from its display of lights and Chinese lanterns. Here Doreen came so nearly to a dead stop that Bobby thought they had reached their destination—but not that of the motor cyclist, for he rode by, emitting a hoot as he did so. Doreen answered with her own hooter and increased speed. The country club was left behind, and Doreen said:
“He is not following us. I’m following him.”
“Oh, I see,” Bobby said, realizing that that was what she had meant when she said she did not know where they were going. That had been left for the motor cyclist to decide, and the country club had evidently been agreed on as the spot where the cyclist was to take control.
Presently the cyclist turned up a side road and then another. Following this, they came soon to where close-growing trees on either hand made a kind of tunnel of impenetrable darkness through which the headlights of car and cycle threw narrow beams like flying arrows of light. Half-way through this tunnel the cyclist stopped and dismounted. Doreen said to Bobby:
“It’s Kenneth. He’s going to tell you exactly what happened, and he says you can write it all down if you like.”
“Good,” Bobby said. “I was hoping that,” and to the motor cyclist, who had now propped up his machine against a tree and come to the side of the car, he said: “Glad to meet you, Mr Banner.”
“I don’t know that I can say the same,” Kenneth answered.
His voice was light and pleasant, a tenor voice. But it was none too steady. Highly nervous, Bobby thought, and no great wonder if he were. Bobby began to descend, and Doreen said:
“No. Kenneth, you get in. You and Mr Owen can sit in the back seat while you talk, and don’t whisper. I want to hear everything.”
“She’s been plugging that all the time,” Kenneth grumbled.
“Oh, all right,” Bobby said, and thought that at any rate this showed there were no accomplices lurking in the dark shade of those trees, waiting their opportunity to attack. Which was the uncomfortable thought that had come into his mind when he realized that this black tunnel was their trysting place. An ominous line, full of sad foreboding, had come into his mind, ‘Ronald to the dark tower came’, and coming to a dark tunnel had seemed to him for the moment even more ominous for Bobby Owen. So it was with some relief that he ensconced himself next to Kenneth on the car’s rear seat. He said: “I see you are wearing a mask, Mr Banner.”
“Yes, I know,” Kenneth said discontentedly. “Silly, isn’t it? Melodramatic, and all that. Doreen would have it.”
“I told him he must,” Doreen said. “I wasn’t going to help you get a description for those horrid notices you talked about.”
“I told her goggles would be good enough,” Kenneth said. “Nothing else would do but a mask. Once she gets an idea into her head, it’s no good saying anything. She doesn’t listen.”
“I do,” Doreen exclaimed angrily, “only when I know I’m right and it’s the only sensible thing—well, no good talking about it, is it?”
“We won’t argue about that,” Bobby interrupted. “Please begin, Mr Banner. Miss Doreen tells me you are willing that I should take notes of what you say. Of course, I needn’t remind you that anything you do say may be used in evidence. So now, if you’ll make a start, Mr Banner.”
But making a start was clearly something that Kenneth was not finding at all easy. He hesitated, began to say something, stopped, began again, then abruptly blurted out:
“I didn’t murder him. I don’t know what I did do. I suppose it’s no good my saying that. You won’t believe it.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Bobby answered when Kenneth paused for a reply. “What I am here for is to listen to anything you wish to say. Please go on.”
“Well, it’s like this,” Kenneth continued then, and more calmly. “Doreen says you know all about our ‘As You Like It’ yacht cruises. I mean about our letting the people who booked with us choose where they wanted to go—Paris mostly. And about our giving them slap-up food. We did, too. Up to the best you would get in any of the swell restaurants, and we didn’t try to put them off with second-rate grub by handing round third-class champagne. I got the idea from the Air Lines. More common sense to it with us though. On a yachting cruise you have to have meals, and if you can use the yacht as an hotel in port you’ve so much more of your travel allowance to spend as you like. You may have seen our ads. They were jolly good. ‘Epicurus goes yachting’. That sort of thing.”
“Do I understand you did the cooking?” Bobby asked.
“No, I’m coming to that.” Kenneth paused and gulped. “That was the chap who was—murdered.” He brought out this last word with an obvious effort. “Murdered,” he repeated. “If he was. I don’t know. God help me, I don’t know.”
“Take it easy,” Bobby said.
“Easy,” Kenneth repeated, and he gave something that was between a laugh and a groan. “Well, Abel we called him—Bert Abel, he must have called himself Hugh Newton as well. That was the name in the papers. I’ve no idea which was his real name. Neither perhaps. He was wizard with food. He could cook up almost anything, and turn it out so you dreamed about it for days afterwards. I’m not so bad at the job myself, but not like him. He was a sort of genius. He could have made big money as a chef if he had chosen to. I think it was his cooking made our trips go so well. It was the overheads were the trouble. I planned to get more yachts on the go so as to reduce them, but the trouble would have been to find more cooks like Abel. We weren’t doing much more than pay ourselves wages and a profit of about one per cent on our capital. All right. But I began to notice that all the others seemed to be splashing money around, and I couldn’t make it out. Ossy Dow bought a share in a pub at Seemouth. Stan Foster bought a tobacconist’s business, and they pay like winking, so you have to put money down to get one. And I got the idea that Abel was doing himself jolly well in town. He said things that made me think. He said he had been lucky at the dogs. Foster said he had had money left him. Ossy said he had bought his share in the pub with borrowed money, and Imra Guire said I was a fool. She wouldn’t say what she meant, but by that time I was beginning to smell a rat.”
“Was it a rat you smelt or a limpet?” Bobby asked.
CHAPTER XIX
KENNETH TELLS HIS STORY
KENNETH WAS clearly much taken aback by this remark. He was silent for a moment or two. Then, in a tone of mingled surprise and unease—and with a touch of admiration as well—
he said:
“Oh, well, I don’t know. I have been wondering. What put you on it? Ossy asked a whole lot of questions about the job and how we stuck the things on, clamping them or what. I thought he was just interested. People are. I’ve often been asked about it, but I can see now Ossy went into a whole lot of detail. It never struck me there was anything behind. It was only when the others all seemed so flush and I wasn’t that I began to worry.”
“I don’t know how big these limpet mines are,” Bobby said, “but I suppose they are a fair size. Anyhow, in the same way something fairly big, big enough to hold quite a lot of valuable stuff, could be fixed to your yacht’s bottom?”
“I suppose so,” Kenneth agreed. “I daresay you think I ought to have spotted it. I never did.”
“Swiss watches,” Bobby remarked. “A lot of very valuable watches could be packed away in a very small space.”
“I hadn’t got as far as that,” Kenneth said. “But I did let the others see I thought something was wrong. Then Abel or Newton, or whatever his name really was, hinted he was getting worried and he thought something might be going on we two knew nothing about. He said he really had been making big money betting, and if I would come along to the flat he was running on the strength of it, he would show me how he did it. But it was a bit thick to suppose that Stan Foster had had a fat legacy from an aunt no one had ever heard of before and no details given. And Ossy’s story about borrowing money to buy a share in the pub was even thicker. You don’t borrow money so easily as all that, unless you have jolly good security to put down. Well, I fell for Abel’s story. He played me for a sucker all right. I expect you think I was all sorts of a fool.”
Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 13