Bobby grunted, considered this, and then admitted reluctantly that there might be something in it.
“Not,” he added, “that that’ll prevent us going all out to get the young man. But there are parts of his story that do seem to fit. It’s been pretty clear for some time that smuggling was going on and that was what the go-as-you-please ‘As You Like It’ cruises were a cover for. The limpet motif suggested the method. At a guess I expect their best runs were when they had been doing a nice innocent-looking trip round the coast or up among the Scottish isles. It would be easy to send a code message to pals in France to meet them at sea and transfer the stuff. The tourists would be told it was unrationed food for use on the voyage, as most of it would be, and they would be told also to be sure to say nothing about it in case the authorities tried to make a fuss. Quite legal and all right, of course, if eaten at sea, but the Customs might try to pretend that it was eaten in port, and that would mean a lot of bother and possibly calling all of them as witnesses. A bother for everyone, it would be emphasized, especially, it would be added, as just possibly some of it was occasionally served up in port or anyhow in territorial waters. That would serve to keep the tourists quiet, and how were they to know or even suspect that one of the packages handed across contained not caviare or pate de foie gras, but a nice consignment of gold wrist-watches from Switzerland.
“When they got back to Southampton at the end of their cruise and it was evident there had only been a wholly innocent trip round the coast, and no smuggling possible, the Customs examination wouldn’t be very strict. All very well thought out, but all dependent on a careful avoidance of giving any cause for suspicion.
“What put me first on the idea of smuggling was the odd story of the two searches of the Abel flat and of the taking away—in the second search, when Pyne had his unpleasant experience of being tied up—of two wrist-watches and then of their return. That suggested there was some motive other than theft for the searches, and a pretty strong motive, too. Then there was the fact that of the five chiefly concerned in the ‘As You Like It’ trips, three—Ossy Dow, Abel, and Stanley Foster—seemed to have suddenly got hold of plenty of money, while the two who apparently hadn’t were the half-wit, Louis, and Kenneth Banner himself. It might be then that Kenneth was beginning to sit up and take notice, as he says was the case, and that the other three were equally beginning to think he had to be silenced one way or another.”
“Do you mean you think they drugged him because they meant to kill him?” Olive asked, but Bobby shook his head.
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “In fact, I’m pretty sure not. The difficulty is to find any motive for Abel’s murder. Smuggling doesn’t generally lead to murder. In this case murder would be the last thing they would want. It would mean the very thing they were doing everything to avoid—starting a general investigation. Murder means an all-out inquiry to dig up everything possible. More likely there was a plan to compromise Kenneth in some way. Not too difficult. He could have been taken to his lodging in his unconscious state with the explanation that he was drunk, put to bed, and the opportunity taken to plant some of the smuggled stuff on him somehow, here or in Southampton. Or even in his name in a suit-case of his in a London left-luggage office. Something like that. Then it would be put to him that he was in it up to the neck. Information would be given to the Customs and all the blame laid on him unless he came in.”
“That would have meant just what you say they didn’t want,” Olive objected. “Once the Customs knew, they would have had no chance of going on with it.”
“No, I know,” Bobby agreed, “but they saw the game was up for good unless Kenneth could be brought in somehow. To do that was their last throw so to say. It may be there had just been a specially big run or that they had an accumulation of stuff on hand they wanted time to get rid of. The drugging business does rather look like playing for time before inquiries made what they had on hand too hot to handle.
“All that seems to me a fairly logical build-up, assuming that Kenneth’s story can be trusted. There’s no flagrant contradiction anyhow. Then there’s his story that he tripped over a chair and fell with it and the cushion on top of Abel, still unconscious. If that’s not true, I don’t quite see the point of inventing it. Not a very convincing detail. There is no mention of an overturned chair in any of the reports made at the time, as there certainly would have been if it was there. It does seem to support the idea of someone else having been in and having put the chair back after Kenneth left. Not very strong in itself, but a point to be kept in mind all the same.
“Something else to which I don’t think sufficient attention has been paid is the twice-repeated search of Abel’s flat, once when empty and once after Pyne moved in. Clearly that means someone is very anxious to find something—well, who? what? why? Not the seven golden whys some theorists talk about, but three very important whys all the same. Who?—doubtful, very. What?—almost certainly a cache of smuggled watches tucked away somewhere. Why?—hidden by Abel in case suspicion had already been roused and his flat was raided. That brings in a fresh ‘golden question’—where? Any suggestions?”
“I expect you mean Jasper Jordan?” Olive said, a little doubtfully.
“Full marks,” Bobby told her. “You remember he said he was sometimes called a post office—G.P.O. was the expression he used. Abel evidently knew that, since he made use of him sometimes. Quite natural to think of him when a safe hiding-place had to be found in a hurry. That means a possible past ‘where’, but not, I think, a present ‘where’. I don’t see Jasper—with his sort of obsession over search warrants he’s always talking about—keeping something he must have begun to have his suspicions about. Moreover, we know he went off with a suit-case and then brought it back again. Looks as if he had taken away a smaller suit-case or dispatch-case inside the bigger one and left it somewhere. Any suggestions where?”
“He might know someone to take charge of it, and there are always the left-luggage offices?” suggested Olive.
“A Beta mark only for that,” Bobby pronounced. “Full marks for first suggestion if you had mentioned a probable someone. In any case, a mark lost for the left-luggage suggestion.”
“Why?” asked Olive belligerently. “I think it was a very good, sensible suggestion.”
“Jordan is not the sort to pass unnoticed,” Bobby pointed out. “He knows people stare when they see him, and he is sensitive to it. If not a face to launch a thousand ships, at any rate one to be remembered. Any cloak-room attendant would remember him all right, and routine inquiry would soon have him spotted. The obvious someone is Mrs Abel-Adam. Jordan gets rid of the stuff, and has the excuse that he thought it only right to hand it over to Abel’s widow. He considered it had become her property, and he hadn’t an idea in all the whole wide world what it was or that there was anything wrong about it. Unfortunately she has taken herself off. Which must mean that she’s opened it and found what was in it. If I’m right, a whole glittering display of valuable Swiss watches she means to hang on to.”
“I suppose you’ll have to try to find her,” Olive said. “Of course, you’ve worked it all out very cleverly.”
“Thank you,” interposed Bobby. “Praise from a wife is rare praise indeed.”
“But,” Olive continued, unheeding, “it’s all built up on a jolly thin foundation of theory. Anyone,” she said severely, “can spin ingenious theories put together out of nothing much.”
“Only too true,” Bobby admitted, “and you might have added that none of it throws any light on who murdered Abel or why? Which is the main question for us at the Yard. We don’t like murderers running round undetected. They are much too apt to think they can bring it off a second time. They have once, so why not twice? Heath went on far too long. That last unhappy woman ought to be alive and well if—but no use talking about ‘ifs’. The smuggling business is a headache for the Customs chiefly though of course we shall do all we can. The murder is for us, and t
here are several possible suspects—three women and five men in all. One or two of them so unlikely we shall have to pay them special attention. Almost certainly the guilty person is one of them. Always excluding the possible, improbable unknown ‘X’ who might turn up at the last moment, and does sometimes.”
CHAPTER XXIII
BELIEFS AND SUSPICIONS
“HADN’T WE better be getting to bed?” Olive suggested at this point, but not with much hope of being heard; for when Bobby was, as now, immersed in a spate of theories, possibilities, and ideas, he was as likely as not to sit up half the night considering them, weighing one against another, discarding them for good, and then picking them up again.
As for bed, that became a secondary consideration till he had everything sorted out and put down on paper, all pros and cons duly noted.
Now, as he uncapped his fountain-pen and drew a pad of paper towards him, he was saying:
“First the three women. Mrs Abel-Adam and Imra Guire,” and there he stopped to refill his fountain-pen, which was running dry.
“That’s only two,” Olive interposed, “and there isn’t another.”
“Doreen Caine,” Bobby said, pumping energetically at a nearly empty ink-bottle. “Been talking about her all evening.”
“Oh,” said Olive. “Well, it just couldn’t be her, not when she’s in love with Kenneth Banner.”
“Might be the reason why,” Bobby retorted. “Or it might be she was in love with Abel and then found out he was married. Not a young woman I should much care, myself, to get across, not when you think of the bluff she pulled off on—me.” Bobby almost put this last word in capitals, and paused to frown at the memory. “Capable of anything,” he pronounced. “Burnished steel all right, and you make knives and daggers out of burnished steel. That girl could work herself up to anything—and no hysteria about it, either. Just calm, cold, calculation. Unfeminine,” he concluded disapprovingly.
“Well, I don’t believe it,” declared Olive.
“Emotion, that, not logic,” Bobby told her, and went on, “next, Mrs Abel-Adam, busily engaged on hunting down a husband I think she had come to hate, not only because he had left her, but because he was also cheating her out of her money she was entitled to. Remember it is certain she had got a clue to his London address about the time of the murder. Take it the Kenneth story is true. Take it that she went to the flat that night and found Abel had been living in what would seem to her luxury, while at the same time keeping her maintenance money from her. It could have caused her anger to boil over into active hate. Suppose the cover of the cushion Kenneth talked about had a tear or hole in it—unmended, this was a bachelor flat—and some of the feathers had come out. I can’t imagine their doing so in such a way as to cover Abel’s mouth and nose so as to stop his breathing. Besides the medical evidence distinctly says ‘rammed in’. But I can imagine the woman raging at his refusing her her money while living in such style himself, noticing as she probably would, since she was a cook herself, that expensive food—smoked salmon—was on the table, thinking she would give him something else to eat and cramming a handful of the loose feathers into his mouth. Quite likely without any clear intention to kill.”
“Isn’t all that rather difficult?” Olive asked doubtfully. “Besides, how did she get in? She can’t have had a key?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Bobby agreed. “I am working on the idea that Kenneth Banner, when he left the flat, left the door open, either because he was in the state he describes or because he panicked after committing the murder. You remember the murder was discovered first thing next morning when the milkman told Marks, the caretaker, that the door of the flat wasn’t properly closed and that he got no answer when he called that the milk was there. Means that any time during the night anyone could have walked in, and there is one thing that does rather support the idea of somebody having done just that after Kenneth left. I ought to have spotted it before, but it has only just dawned on me. It doesn’t amount to much, and anyhow it doesn’t prove anything. Even if there was a later visitor, that’s no proof that whoever it was killed Abel. But it may be a pointer.”
“What do you mean, just dawned on you?” Olive asked.
“It ought to have dawned on you as well,” Bobby told her, and went on: “Then there’s Imra Guire, the last of the three women we know of. She made an odd impression when we saw her at Seemouth. A dark, unhappy, passionate girl, who looked as if she lived in a perpetual nightmare. She told us she was going to marry Ossy Dow but hadn’t told him so far. She may have been in some sort of emotional tangle with either Abel or Kenneth or with both at once, and now one is dead and the other in hiding she may have decided to make do with Ossy Dow. It all happened too long ago for there to be any chance of finding out if she was in London that night, and anyhow it would be quite easy to leave Seemouth by the early-morning express and get back by the last train without anyone knowing where she had been or whether or no she had been out of Seemouth that day. It may have been her warned Kenneth against going to Abel’s flat. He sticks to it it was a woman’s voice. Well, there are the three of them: Imra Guire and Doreen Caine, two strange, unpredictable girls with strange depths in them, as perhaps we all have; and Mrs Adam, the wife who had learned to hate where she used to love. Nor is there any greater bitterness than that.”
“It doesn’t look to me,” Olive declared, “that there is really anything much to go on. It’s all mights and mays.” Bobby looked gloomy and nodded assent. Olive went on: “But I do think I’ve just seen what you mean about there being one little pointer you’ve had.”
“Good girl,” Bobby approved, though rather absently, as though, discouraged, he had lost all interest in this possible but doubtful ‘pointer’. “Let’s go on to the men we know were mixed up in it one way or another: Ossy Dow, Stanley Foster, Kenneth Banner, all of the ‘As You Like It’ crew.”
“Three,” Olive said. “Unless you include the man you call a half-wit.”
“I’m leaving him out,” answered Bobby. “Safe to eliminate him. No half-wits in this business. But there’s Jasper Jordan.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Olive, surprised. “I never thought of him.”
“I’ve been thinking of him quite a lot,” Bobby told her. “He clearly makes it his business to know all he can about what’s going on locally, if only for use in that rag of his—Freedom’s Bugle Call, isn’t it? It is more than likely he knew something, or even quite a lot, about this smuggling business, and even, in his capacity of self-styled ‘Enemy of Society’, rather approved than not. Or it may go a good deal deeper. I’ll come to that soon. Anyhow, we do know it was his address Mrs Adam got from the Southampton lodging-house, and it must have been from him she got to know where Abel was living. We know, too, that that was about the time of the murder, though we can’t tie it down to an exact date. Curiosity may very well, indeed almost certainly, make him follow her, and that would mean he would see her hurrying away, running away rather. Frightened? Jordan being what he is, he would, again almost certainly, slip up the stairs, to see if he could find out what had been happening. If Mrs Adam, too, left the door not properly latched, then it is fairly safe to assume that, getting no answer, he went in.
“You may say that’s all built up on surmise. I think it is a reasonable and probable reconstruction of what may well have happened, starting from the few facts we do know. If it was like that, taking it as something to work on as a beginning, then he found Abel either dead or unconscious, with, as before, the torn cushion and its feathers close by.
“On the first possibility he must have decided to say nothing and go quietly home. I rather doubt that.
“On the second, if he found Abel, unconscious, then he is the murderer.”
“But why?” Olive objected. “Why should he?”
“Remember I said it might go a good deal deeper,” Bobby reminded her. “We know so little about him. All that guff about being the Enemy of Society, and running a Nihilist gr
oup that doesn’t seem to exist at all, may be pure camouflage, meant to conceal his real activities. Those Swiss watches had to be disposed of somehow. Did the ‘As You Like It’ gang do that themselves? or are we on the track of a receiver? Difficult to smuggle the things into the country, and more difficult still to get a good figure for them. You have to know the ropes.
“The point is that Jasper has already been suspected by our local chaps of being concerned in black-market activities. Disposing of smuggled goods is going only one step farther. You remember Ossy Dow says he put two thousand pounds capital into the Banner Agency? Yet he also told us that when he met Kenneth Banner at Plymouth just before they started he was on his beam ends. Another of those little discrepancies that may or may not mean a lot. Conceivable, then, that Jordan provided the money, and that he was in it from the start, was in fact the mainspring of the whole thing. Not proved again, but conceivable. Conceivable, too, that Jordan had purposely got himself suspected of black marketing he wasn’t guilty of, not merely to get a cheap score off our people, but because he calculated it would be a good camouflage. I’ve met with it before—letting it be suspected that you are what you are not—in this case a black marketeer—in order to hide what you really are—smuggler. Prove then you are innocent of the first, and it will be supposed you are also innocent of the second. Risky, but such sheer cheek often succeeds. As someone said: ‘Audacity, first, second, and third’.
“Conceivable, then, that whether Jordan found Abel already dead or only unconscious he had a good look round, knowing what to look for; found the last consignment of Swiss watches, and went off with them. He would tell himself there was nothing to connect him either with Abel’s death or the watches, so it was quite safe. They would be worth a lot of money, and murder has been done often enough for a good deal less than they would bring.”
Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 16