“You’ve no witnesses,” Jordan put in. “We aren’t saying anything. All over and done with. And you can’t make us. Nobody can be forced to answer questions tending to incriminate him. And if we don’t speak we can’t be cross-examined. If there’s anything in this smuggling story of yours—I don’t know—go and talk to Mrs Adam, Abel, whatever she calls herself.”
Bobby meekly put his note-book back in his pocket. Not the first time he had known its production scare witnesses into stolid silence.
“Suppose you tell me what really happened,” he suggested. “Then I shall know better what to do. At present my idea is to take all of you—including Miss Caine—into custody on a charge of complicity in murder, in smuggling, and I expect a few other little things.”
“No magistrate would commit, no evidence,” Jordan declared. “I’ll undertake the defence of us all. I’ll knock your evidence endways out of hand. Not that you’ve got any. None of us will say a word, and you can’t make us I told you. No one can be asked to reply to questions tending to incriminate himself. None of us knew anything about the smuggling, and you can’t show we did. All Abel’s doing. I was an innocent bailee of the dispatch-case. I had, and could have had, no knowledge of what was in it. Same with Abel’s murder. If you got Mrs Adam into the box, she couldn’t identify anyone, and in half a minute’s cross-examination I could get her so tied up she wouldn’t know what she was saying, and the jury would be thinking it was her who was really guilty.”
“Tell him,” Kenneth urged, “what really happened about Dow. We don’t want any publicity,” and it was clear he was thinking of Doreen. “If you don’t, I will.”
“Publicity,” observed Mr Pyne in this thin, dispassionate way, “would mean the immediate end of my connection with the Ministry,” and in that last word there was a note such as a man might use in speaking of his lost love. “Serve me right for not knowing when I was well off.”
“O.K.,” growled Jordan. “I have noticed in Mr Owen from time to time rare gleams of decency and common sense such as are most unusual in anyone connected with the police, puppets of the law that they are.”
“And it won’t do any harm,” Bobby informed him tartly, “if you try for once to keep a decently civil tongue in your head. Persistent rudeness is such a give away, don’t you think? Bad inferiority complex and all that.”
“Jargon,” Jordan retorted. “The day’s jargon, that’s all. Inferiority nothing.” All the same, the remark had its effect, for it was in a much less truculent tone that he continued: “As for Dow. Thick headed, poor chap. Can’t help it. He got it into his thick, thickest head I had those watches he was chasing around. So he took me for a ride. I went on my own without a word of protest, just as if I had been sandbagged. As if, remember. I’m not saying I was. It might have been when I turned my back for a moment. Left the door open when we went off in the car Dow had waiting, and then you came along as usual—you always do, don’t you? always come along as and when not wanted.”
“Part of my job,” Bobby explained. “Especially as and when not wanted.”
“‘Conducted a thorough examination of flat, found nothing in any way suspicious’. That’s what you wrote in your report, wasn’t it?” Jordan went on. “So Dow had the idea to come back, me and all, tied up I was, and surgical tape over my mouth. Got that cupboard ready the way it is and popped me in. I could move, wriggle a bit, but not enough to get any leverage. Quite helpless, and two nails fixed so if I wriggled too much they ran into my neck, the more the wriggle the deeper they ran. So I didn’t much. Ossy’s idea was to starve me out till I told him what I didn’t know—where the watches were—and what I did with the dispatch-case. Told me I wouldn’t get anything to eat or drink till I talked. Well, I didn’t and I didn’t—didn’t talk and didn’t get any food or drink. Dirty trick, though, to cook sausages in the same room so I could smell ’em.”
“Dirty trick indeed,” Bobby agreed. “I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t been in such a hurry to let Mr Dow out of this contraption of his, if it was all his own invention.”
“We never meant to keep it up,” Dow protested. “I was just going to let him out when those three set on me. And all the time he only had to say who had them. Kidding himself he was protecting a woman as likely as not. Showing off.”
“I have no feeling about women,” Jordan almost shouted. “Mantraps. That’s all they are. Walking man-traps. I didn’t choose. That’s all. Fixed me up safe as in my coffin, they had. Smart idea, though, to put me back in my own flat when they knew it had been looked through and seen empty.”
“Oh, all the brains aren’t in the police,” boasted Ossy. “You agree?” he asked Bobby, with something of his old impudence.
“Were the brains yours or Imra Guire’s?” Bobby asked him, and turning to Jordan, he added: “You’ve said ‘they’ and ‘we’. Dow and Miss Guire, I suppose?”
“Suppose ‘As You Like It’, same as their yacht,” Jordan retorted. “Banner and the Caine man-trap that’s got him, have brains, too—not so much Banner. It’s the other half—nine-tenths I mean—has them.”
“Doreen thought it out where he might be,” Kenneth confirmed. “When we started to wonder what had become of him. I said to leave him where he was. Why hurry? But she would have it for us to come along here at once to see. Beat you by a short head, Mr Owen. I suppose you had been thinking it out on the same lines. Half an hour later, and there wouldn’t have been a trace of us. Mr Pyne insisted on joining in the show. Rigged himself up as a postman. Our trouble was how to get the door open. Easy for you, but no search warrants for us. If Jordan were still fixed up in that box thing, he couldn’t, and if Ossy were there, as we thought likely, he mightn’t want. So we worked the postman idea. Shouted through the letter-box there was a registered letter. We didn’t want Mr Pyne to come in, but he jolly well would. Great old sport, Pyne.”
Mr Pyne blushed as never he had blushed before, nor ever dreamed he could.
“My daughter procured me the postman’s uniform,” he explained hurriedly, as if anxious no more should be said on the subject of his alleged sportsmanship. “She is a member of an Amateur Dramatic Society.”
“Dow fell for the registered-letter stunt,” Kenneth went on. “When he opened the door we rushed him. He dodged back into the front room. Quite a lively little do while it lasted. Pyne got the worst of it. Laid out flat, and his damn pistol went off. As near as possible got me. Then Dow and I had a set-to. He has a good idea of boxing, but out of training, out of practice. Left himself wide open, and I got home. A K.O. By the time he came round we had found Mr Jordan in that contraption Dow had rigged up. So we shoved Dow in instead, just to let him see what it was like. But we fed him all right. Slops,” said Kenneth, with a faint reminiscent smile. “Through a straw. You ought to have heard him curse. A liberal education in itself.”
“All highly irregular,” Mr Pyne admitted. “But we were all averse from prosecuting. We felt it would lead to unnecessary and indeed most regrettable publicity. In my considered view, so long as we adhere to the extremely plausible story we have—er—concocted, there is no charge that can be formulated with any prospect of its being accepted. This, of course, implies that we shall enjoy the co-operation of Mr Dow, whose not unnatural resentment over recent occurrences may be modified by the fact that he has probably more to apprehend from the operation of the law than have we.”
“Yah,” said Mr Dow, or words to that effect. But having finished saying it, he added: “O.K. That goes with me, too.”
Bobby was inclined to agree that with no direct evidence available, with indeed all those concerned having only one desire—to keep out of court—there was not much chance of a successful prosecution. Nor did he feel there was any reason for bothering too much about what Jordan and Dow had been doing to each other. If they were ready to leave things as they were—well all right. For his part, he did not see why the law should wish to intervene. But of course it would all be carefully cons
idered on the basis of the full report he would submit, and the final decision would rest with the lawyers, not with the police.
His meditations were interrupted by the sudden return of Ford with a doctor and two ambulance men.
“Not wanted,” roared Jordan indignantly.
“I’m all right,” said Dow, who, however, hardly looked it.
“Never again,” said Mr Pyne, waking from meditation as profound as Bobby’s, “never again anything for me but the Ministry in the morning and back home at night, and thank God for it. A secure, tranquil, and regular way of life has many overwhelming advantages not invariably fully realized by those whose privilege it is to enjoy them.”
“Oh, stow it,” Jordan interrupted.
“There’s still one little matter of murder you seem to have forgotten,” Bobby observed. He turned to Dow. “Where is Imra Guire? She’s not been home since I saw her last.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
CONCLUSION
THERE WAS a long pause. Ossy was clearly very reluctant to answer. He was trying, as it were, to stare Bobby down. Not an easy task. For Bobby was waiting—not so much with unending patience, as with determination, that silent, unending determination, which, before this, more than once, by sheer force of will, had made reluctant witnesses speak. Then Ossy muttered:
“How should I know?”
“You and she are married, aren’t you?”
“Well, suppose we are?”
“I’m not supposing anything,” Bobby told him quietly. “Except that a husband generally has some knowledge of his wife’s movements.”
“Not when it’s Imra,” Ossy muttered sullenly. “You never know where you are with her. There’s a devil in her. Doesn’t give a damn what you say. Lets you talk as if you weren’t worth even listening to. And if you make so much as to lift a hand—knife you as soon as look at you. If it’s one, why not two?”
“What does that mean?” Bobby asked.
“Nothing,” Ossy said, and repeated: “Nothing at all.” Then he said: “Married we are, and can’t be made give evidence against each other.”
“Is that why you married her?” Bobby asked, but Ossy only scowled and did not reply. Bobby said again: “Where is she?”
“No idea, I told you,” Ossy muttered, and then, when Bobby still waited, he said reluctantly: “I did hear her say something about Birmingham.”
“Birmingham?” Bobby repeated, surprised. “Why? Has she friends there?”
“She got to hear about a first-class doctor there. She had an idea she might go and consult him. I don’t know why.” He paused, and when he saw how Bobby was looking at him, he said hurriedly: “A psychiatrist.”
It was what Bobby had feared ever since the talk in Hyde Park, but what also he had seen no way to prevent or even hinder. He turned to Ford and said:
“Carry on here. I must get busy. Too late, I expect.”
Therewith he hurried away.
But by now it was too late in the evening for any effective action to be taken. An urgent call to Birmingham was answered however by a promise that everything possible would be done.
“Not much to go on,” Birmingham said. “Of course, we know places like you say where she might be. But even if by good luck we hit on the right one, they’ve only got to deny it, and we’re stuck. Have to be careful, too. Some of them as soon as they saw us would be quite equal to dumping her somewhere handy out of the way. Know nothing about it if she’s picked up dead. Even if we traced her there—well, she insisted on leaving, and they couldn’t stop her. That would be their story. We’ve had one case like that. Can we say we are acting on the request of the husband, who is extremely anxious?”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby answered at once. “Certainly. You can certainly say that,” and as he hung up he reflected that if Ossy wasn’t anxious, he ought to be—and probably was for that matter, though not on Imra’s account.
News of success in the Birmingham search came, however, more quickly than Bobby had dared to anticipate, for in the middle of the morning next day he was rung up with the information that a woman answering to the description given had been admitted to hospital late the previous evening. Those who brought her had managed to slip away in the bustle of admission at that time of night without leaving name or address. The car in which they came had been identified as taken from outside a night club and returned without the owner knowing anything about it. The patient had been put at once on the danger list. Though conscious, she was maintaining an obstinate silence, nor was she in any condition to be pressed to answer questions.
As soon as train and car could take him there, Bobby reached the hospital, where a doctor told him at once that there was little hope.
“These illegal operations are tantamount to suicide,” the doctor added. “Or murder if you like. Make ’em legal and let us do them in proper conditions, and a good many lives would be saved. As it is, well, almost sentence of death.”
“There may be other considerations,” Bobby said. “Two lives involved, and who is the judge? whose the responsibility? But in this case I think death was probably hoped for and expected.”
“Well, that’s what it is this time anyhow,” the doctor grumbled, as he handed Bobby over to a nurse who had been sent for, and who took him to the ward where Imra was lying. She was awake and fully conscious, and she even managed a faint, fleeting smile when she saw who it was. But a smile in which there was now no trace of those dark secret meanings, known only to herself—even if fully to herself—at which before they had seemed to hint.
“I half-expected you,” she said, “as soon as I knew those people had let me down, brought me here. Was that you, too? Did they know you might have guessed? I suppose you did after Hyde Park?”
“I was afraid that was what you wanted your £200 for,” Bobby said.
“Not too much to pay for death,” she told him. “Most get death free. I had to pay.”
“You may still recover,” he told her, but she shook her head, though so feebly it seemed she had hardly the strength to move it.
“None of us ever meant all this,” she went on reflectively, he having to bend nearer to catch what she was saying. “I suppose people never do. Things just happen once they have begun. Bert wasn’t bad, not really bad bad. He never meant it either. Things just got all mixed up, and he had to do something. It wasn’t his fault he was born so women couldn’t keep their heads with him. There was something about him—God knows what. Or the devil. You went all weak inside, and you knew you had to go to him. You didn’t know why, but you just had. It wasn’t love. Was it hate? It turned to that. What’s the good of talking? It’s all over now.”
“You are young enough to have lived,” Bobby said, a little sadly. “Perhaps you will. You should have lived.”
But at that her strength seemed to come back to her, to return for one brief and vivid moment. With a fierce, sudden, unexpected effort, she sat upright in bed.
“Do you think,” she cried, and her voice was loud and clear and strong, so that all could hear, “I wanted to live to bear the child of the man I killed?”
They were her last spoken words.
GOOD BEGINNING
Originally published in the Evening Standard, 1 August, 1950
“Case of suicide, name of Ben Allen, 19, Whippet Buildings,” said the Station Sergeant as Constable Bobby Owen came in that evening to report off duty. “Cut along and relieve Jenkins. Inspector Morris will be there presently to give it the once over.”
“Body’s been removed so all you have to do is to see nothing’s touched or moved. I’ll send a relief as soon as I can, but with all this influenza going about I don’t know where I’m going to get one. Hurry along.”
Bobby went off obediently. Hard lines after an eight hour tour of duty when supper and bed had been shining so brightly on the distant horizon of his thoughts. But there it was. Things were like that in the police. It was the first piece of really serious police work that had come Owen’
s way in his total of six months’ service. It had been early closing day to-day and so walking his beat was even a more dull occupation than usual.
He knew Whippet Buildings well. Very respectable tenants on the whole, most of them in good employment. He had never had any trouble there. At No. 19 Constable Jenkins was waiting for him.
“All you have to do is to sit tight till the Inspector turns up,” Jenkins explained again, for Bobby was a new man and new men have to be told things. “Tell the Inspector that’s the list of all articles found on deceased’s person. He’ll want to check it probably.”
Bobby glanced carelessly at the table where lay the dead man’s belongings: a bunch of keys, a pen-knife, a folding 2ft. rule, two one pound notes, three half-crowns, four florins, one shilling, five sixpenny pieces, and some coppers, a handkerchief, two railway tickets, singles, to Sheffield, a few used tramcar and bus tickets, other odds and ends of one sort and another.
“Was it gas?” Bobby asked, sniffing the air.
“That’s right,” Jenkins answered. “Head in oven. His wife found him when she got back from work. Seems Allen had been carrying on with a Mrs. Clements and Mrs. Allen told him he had to choose and now was his chance because of being offered a good job at Sheffield. Upset him, not knowing which, so he took the easy way out.”
“Not so easy as all that,” Bobby commented.
“Well, he filled himself up with gin first,” Jenkins explained, nodding towards a nearly empty bottle on the mantelpiece. “Smelt nearly as strong as the gas when we got in here.”
“No glass,” Bobby remarked.
“In the sink.” Jenkins explained. “Rinsed it out seemingly and left it there to dry. Wanted to leave everything nice and tidy. Funny the things suicides do. Cheery-oh for now.”
With that not altogether appropriate farewell, Jenkins departed and Bobby, left alone the little flat, went into the kitchen.
Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 25