This was effected by the middle of the afternoon. The taxi-man had, however, nothing much to say. He had driven his passenger to Liverpool Street, where she had told him she had to catch a train, and there all trace of her was lost.
“All of which means,” Bobby decided, talking to the sergeant who had brought him the report, “that she is almost certainly in possession of the stuff. She may have got it on the night of the murder, either after committing the murder herself or by the accident of having arrived after someone else had done the killing.” But that involved, apparently, the working once more of the long arm of coincidence, so Bobby felt inclined to put it aside in favour of his earlier theory that Jordan, having had the dispatch-case containing the watches left in his care—in his G.P.O. capacity—and becoming suspicious of its contents, had decided to get rid of it by handing it over to Abel’s widow as the rightful owner. “Probably felt that put him on the right side of the law,” Bobby decided again. “That is, unless he’s really deep in it all. As he may be.”
“What about his using Mrs Adam to get rid of the stuff bit by bit?” the sergeant suggested. “Or even handing over one or two watches to sweeten her if she knows too much? Or even to get her more mixed up in it?”
“I don’t think Jordan is likely to do anything like that,” Bobby said, after reflection. “He is far too fond of playing his own game by himself and far too self-satisfied to want anyone else’s help. Plenty of other possibilities. Abel might have given it her himself by way of making up for what he owed her under the maintenance order. She might not want to say so, for fear of coming under suspicion. I don’t think I’ve ever known a case where there were so many possible explanations, all equally suggesting the innocence or the guilt of so many of those concerned. All the same, I think I’ll try to have a chat with Jordan to-day. I can see if he is willing to talk, though I don’t expect our ‘Enemy of Society’ bloke to be very helpful. Hard to know how far he may be prepared to go in his self-appointed role. A warped, embittered, first-class mind working on a sense of utter frustration. I expect he feels he ought to be Lord Chief Justice if he had had a fair deal.”
“Sounds to me,” said the sergeant, “like him being well on the way to going crackers.”
“He never strikes me at all like that when I am talking to him,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “I should say he was as sane as anyone can be in a world as mad as this one.”
The sergeant said politely that no doubt Mr Owen was right, and anyhow there were the MacNaughten rules, and retired, while Bobby, as soon as he had got his desk clear, took a ’bus that ran past the corner of West King St. There he alighted and walked down the street to the house, where in the basement flat dwelt Jasper Jordan, only to find himself faced with a notice on the door, bearing the simple word ‘Out’.
Bobby stood looking at it thoughtfully for some moments. It might be, he reflected, merely an indication that Jordan did not want to be disturbed. Or again it might be that Jordan had returned but had not removed the notice. In any case, it seemed worth while to knock, and knock accordingly Bobby did, as loudly as the absence of a knocker and the use of bare knuckles permitted. A good deal to his surprise, he heard footsteps approaching at once, and then the door opened and there appeared Doreen Caine.
Which was the more surprised it would be hard to say, and if Bobby said, ‘Oh, you,’ the more loudly of the two, certainly Doreen’s mouth opened the more widely. Bobby was the first to recover.
“Mr Jordan here?” he asked.
“No, I thought it was him knocking,” Doreen answered. “It’s funny.”
She went back in the flat, and he followed. She turned round then in the passage and repeated: “It’s funny. I don’t like it somehow.”
“Hasn’t he been here?” Bobby asked. “Who let you in?”
“The door was open,” Doreen said. “Not wide open, just closed. That notice ‘Out’ was on it. I pushed the door back and called, but there wasn’t any answer, and it was so silent I began to be afraid. I kept calling, and then I went in. I thought Mr Jordan must be ill or something. There wasn’t a sign of him or anyone anywhere. I can’t make it out. I thought perhaps I would wait till Mr Jordan came back, and then I heard your knock and I thought it was him.”
“I had better have a look round,” Bobby said, a little uneasy now himself, for he did not think it in any way like Jordan to go off leaving the door of his flat open, and now there were stirring in his mind memories of that other flat of which, too, the door had been left unlatched.
Doreen stood aside to allow him to enter. He went into each room in turn. There were three in all. Nowhere could he see the least sign of any disturbance, nothing in any way suspicious or unusual. All the same, his uneasiness increased. There was still the door left open. There was still Jordan’s unexplained absence. He remembered the warning he had once given, that the ‘Enemy of Society’ in the abstract might be receiving a visit from the enemies of society in the concrete, more commonly known as gangsters.
The first of the three rooms, the one Bobby had been in on his previous visits, the former kitchen he imagined, in those Victorian days when from it had issued, if not Kipling’s five meat meals a day, at any rate three of them, all sufficiently lavish. Behind it was a second room, at one time the scullery, now evidently used by Jordan for sleeping, eating, cooking. It was dark, lighted only by a small barred window, smelt damp, and Bobby suspected the presence of numerous black beetles, but did not investigate that detail. There was a small truckle bed, table and chairs, shelves for crockery and so on, and a tall, narrow, oaken cupboard, that in this dim light almost resembled a coffin. Probably it was what had given rise to the story current at the ‘Rose and Crown’ that Jordan kept his coffin in his bedroom. Bobby opened it. It was stuffed full of clothing, mostly old, but some looking new. Bobby made sure there was nothing else, and then shut it again. The third room was smaller, did not seem to be much used, was cluttered up with all kinds of lumber and odds and ends, none of any special interest or value. Bobby guessed that when Jordan found anything in the way he just threw it in here and forgot it. From it opened a back door on what had once been a small walled-in yard but was now a heap of rubble from walls overthrown by the explosion of the bomb that had wrecked the houses in the parallel street at the rear.
Bobby went back to the front room, where Doreen was quietly waiting.
“Were you expecting to meet Kenneth Banner here?” he asked. Doreen looked at him but made no reply, nor did she answer when he repeated the question. She sat still and silent, watching him. He changed the question and asked: “Do you come here every afternoon to see him or to see if there’s any message?”
“Kenneth has not been here, if that’s what you mean,” she answered, then: “And there’s been no message that I know of. I come in the afternoon because it’s generally my free time. Most of my cookery talks are morning or evening. If I’m helping with anything special, a lunch or a banquet, that’s morning or evening, too. A newspaper once called me a free lance of the kitchen.”
“Yes, I see,” Bobby remarked, “but not quite what I asked. I take it Mr Jordan likes you to come?”
“I think so, I think he’s rather lonely really. He’s a little morbid about people staring at him, and he thinks they laugh at him when he’s not there. He’s got no one to look after him,” Doreen added, with woman’s immemorial conviction that no man can ever do that for himself.
Bobby for his part was fully convinced that Doreen’s visits had for their object to get or keep in touch with Kenneth. Probably a meeting-place could easily be arranged by ’phone without Kenneth running the risk of visiting a place he must guess would be more or less under observation. He said:
“Well, I don’t know that there’s anything to be done. Mr Jordan may be back soon. He may simply have forgotten to lock up. Not like him, but you never know. Shall you wait any longer?”
“I must go soon,” she said, looking at her wrist-watch. “I have a
demonstration to give for a pressure-cooker firm—a three-course dinner cooked in fifteen minutes,” she said with a faint smile.
“An age of speed,” Bobby said, conscious that both he and she were talking as much to hide a growing disquiet as for any other reason. “No time to be lost.”
“The slower the cooking, the better the flavour,” Doreen told him. “Nature always takes her time. It’s only people who are in such a hurry.”
“I must go,” Bobby said. “If you’re stopping on, you’ll have to make up your mind whether to leave the door the way it was or shut it. I’ll tell the man on the beat to keep as close a watch on the place as he can. Can’t keep it up all the time, but he’ll do his best. Good evening.”
He began to move towards the door. She watched him in silence till he had it open. Then abruptly she said:
“I had better tell you. I daresay it’s all nonsense. It’s Mrs Adam. She’s frightened. She’s saying she expects she’ll be the next to be murdered.”
CHAPTER XXVI
AGENCY ERROR
BOBBY TURNED back quickly. He was wondering how this fitted in with the recent report of Mrs Adam’s visit to a City jeweller and her rapid flight therefrom. He did not think he liked it very much.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“It’s what she been saying to people, she said it to me,” Doreen answered.
“When was that?” Bobby asked quickly. “I didn’t know you knew her.”
“I don’t, I’ve never seen her,” Doreen told him. “It was when she rang up yesterday. I went to where she was lodging, but she was out, and I couldn’t wait. So I left my address and would she give me a ring, and she did, and that’s what she said. She sounded very excited and upset.”
“Where was she? Lodging, I mean?”
“Erewhon Street, in Pimlico. Number Seven. But she’s not there now, and she didn’t ring from there. She left first thing this morning without saying anything about where she was going, and she must have made up her mind in a hurry, because she had paid a week in advance, and she only stopped the one night.”
“How did you know where to find her?”
“Well, I asked,” Doreen explained simply. “I knew she worked as a cook, so I inquired at one or two employment agencies for hotel and cafe staff if they had her name on their books. The Liddel and Scot Agency had, and they told me the last address she gave them, and so I went there.”
“We’ve been looking for her,” Bobby said, rather discontentedly. “I’m sure our men would go to the employment agencies. I think I remember the Liddel and Scot was one. They all said they didn’t know.”
“Well, of course,” Doreen told him, with the patient smile of one explaining things to a very small boy. “What would become of their business if it got about they were giving people’s addresses to anyone who came asking for them? Especially policemen. They might have heard you had been buying an egg or two off the ration. Of course, if the agency had known it was something serious like murder, it would be different, but they weren’t told that.”
“We can’t go hinting about people being wanted in a case of murder,” Bobby grumbled, eyeing with considerable disapproval this girl who first had put him on the spot so badly, that for the first time in all his long career he had had to let his man go, and who now had succeeded so simply in finding a witness, even a suspect, his men had failed to get any trace of. “What did she say exactly when she rang you?” he asked.
“It was all muddled and confused,” Doreen replied. “It was about how she had been stopped in the street by a man who jumped out of a car, and he wanted her to get in, and she wouldn’t, so then he tried to hustle her in, and she screamed, and people came, and he said, ‘Next time we’ll get you, if we have to do you in for it’, and then he jumped back into the car and drove off full speed.”
“Did the agency people say she had been to them recently?” Bobby asked.
“No, not for a long time,” answered Doreen. “They had to go a long way back to find out. They know me, you see. I’ve sent them business sometimes, so they didn’t mind, and they gave me the last address they had. I went there. It was a Mrs Harris. She and Mrs Adam are rather friendly. Mrs Adam told her the same thing about the man and the car. She had wanted to stay at Mrs Harris’s, but there wasn’t room, and she had gone somewhere else, and she said her room there had been searched while she was out. It looked as if someone had got in through the window, because the door had been fastened by a wedge, and she couldn’t open it at first. So then she went to Mrs Harris’s again, and Mrs Harris gave her the Pimlico address; she left in a hurry this morning as if something else had frightened her.”
“It’s rather a disturbing story,” Bobby said, and he told himself this made it certain that Mrs Adam either had the smuggled watches or was believed to have them.
Believed by whom, though, threatened by whom? And if she were the holder of these unCustomed watches whose existence seemed more and more certain, though as yet there was no tangible proof that they did so, much less that they were in her possession, how did that fit into theories of complicity in her husband’s murder? On these thoughts the voice of Doreen broke in again.
“I told the agency they must let you know, because it was serious, and they promised,” she was saying. “They said they would ring up and tell you they had had another look through their card index and found her name this time. It had been overlooked before because it had been filed wrongly.”
“They hadn’t when I left,” Bobby remarked.
“They may be waiting till closing time,” Doreen suggested. “It doesn’t do an agency any good to have police coming and going. Or they think it doesn’t.”
“Did Mrs Adam give any description of the man she says tried to get her into a car?”
“I didn’t ask. I didn’t know what to think. It seemed difficult to think of anyone wanting to run away with Mrs Adam, and then it wasn’t easy to make out what she was talking about, it was all so muddled. It wasn’t only about the man in the car or the one she says got through her window and searched her things, but about police trying to find her because of her husband’s murder, and she didn’t care who killed him, but it wasn’t her, and she wasn’t going to have anything to do with it, or being a witness. She wasn’t going to be bullied into saying what she didn’t mean and it being twisted against her.”
“Afraid of having to tell the truth, she means,” commented Bobby. “If she really has managed to get hold of the smuggled watches, she probably means to hang on to them as long as she can. She may have tried to persuade herself she has the best right to them as Abel’s widow, and now she has them tucked away in what she thinks is a safe hiding-place. And it’s always possible she actually is connected with his death. She seems quite as likely a suspect as any of the rest of you.”
“You mean me, too?” Doreen asked, but without any great show of surprise.
“It could be that way,” Bobby told her.
“Yes,” she said, slowly and musingly. “Yes. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Kenneth, but it’s no good my saying so, is it?”
“None at all,” agreed Bobby. “In a case like this, ‘say so’s’ don’t count.”
“I never thought,” Doreen went on, in the same musing tone, “I should ever be sitting in a flat belonging to someone else who wasn’t there listening to a policeman telling me I’m suspected of murder. You never know, do you?” and now her tone had become one of grave astonishment.
“You never know,” repeated Bobby. “Never.” He went on, a little viciously, for he had not yet entirely forgiven her: “I wouldn’t put it past you, not after your performance the other night.”
She was silent for some time, apparently considering this with the same grave attention.
“I must go now,” she said after a minute or two, “or I shall be late for my pressure-cookery talk. But I don’t think it’s very intelligent to suspect Mrs Adam. I’m sure she isn’t a bit like a murderer.”
> “No one ever is like a murderer, not even another murderer,” Bobby told her.
“You know,” Doreen said, pausing on her way to the door, “you know, I think perhaps you’re right. About me, I mean. I think I could. I think so if I had to, if there was no other way. If it’s for your own man—or your child—or—or—and all that killing in the war like my brother.. . .” Her voice trailed away into silence. “I wonder,” she said, and now she had an air of contemplating herself with surprise, and even fear, as if she had glimpsed depths within herself she had never known before were there.
“Yes,” Bobby assented, speaking also very slowly, very thoughtfully. He looked again at her small, strong face, at the small, firm chin below the determined, close-set mouth, at the clear, unflinching eyes. “A Judith in the making—or made?” he said. Again there was a pause before he added, more lightly: “I must be going, too. I mustn’t get too far lost in speculation. What an investigator has to look for are facts, not theories. I think I had better shut the door when we go. No sign of Jordan yet, and he’ll have his key. I’ll leave a message pinned on it to say I would like to see him when convenient. He may know something about Mrs Adam and her story.”
“You don’t think he was the man with the car, do you?” Doreen asked. “She would have said so, wouldn’t she?”
“She might not have wanted to,” Bobby answered. “Anyhow, it’s no good thinking anything till we know more—blind man’s buff at present.” He crossed to the table in the middle of the room. On it lay the usual confused litter of papers. He was looking for a spare scrap of blank paper to write on. He noticed a few letters and circulars lying there unopened. “Did you put them here?” he asked, showing them to Doreen.
“They were lying in the passage,” she answered. “I picked them up. There’s a card from Mr Pyne. I must go.”
Bobby had picked the card up and was looking at it. It was Mr Pyne’s visiting-card, and it bore a pencilled message to the effect that he had called, that he had got no answer, and would call again some other time. Bobby put it down without comment. He went with Doreen to the door, watched her ascend the area steps. He fastened his own message to the door under the ‘Out’ notice, and then followed up the steps, after he had made sure that this time the door was securely closed. As he reached the street he saw a uniformed man, standing there, apparently waiting.
Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 18