“Well, then, that’s all right, isn’t it?” Bobby asked. “If the Home Office gives permission that’s all that’s necessary.”
“Not quite all,” Rowley explained. “The grave is the freehold of the Merton family, and is now in the name of Miss Christabel Merton. She’s a niece of Janet Merton’s, and she says she will never agree to its opening. It was what they wanted and they loved each other, and she won’t have her aunt’s resting-place disturbed. Mrs Asprey—Asprey’s widow—backs her up, and she’s a formidable old lady.”
“I don’t see what say she has from the legal point of view,” Bobby remarked, “but Miss Christabel is clearly within her rights. Nothing doing if she holds out. What’s Mr Day-Bell worrying about? He’s the Vicar, didn’t you say?”
“He seems to think,” Major Rowley answered, “that attempts may be made to open the grave one night—without permission.”
“Well, of course, that would be illegal,” Bobby pointed out. “Fine or imprisonment. Or is it only a fine? I forget. And of course anything taken from the grave would have to be returned, if Miss Merton insisted. At least, I suppose so. Anyhow, it’s Mr Day-Bell’s responsibility if he’s the Vicar.”
“No, priest-in-charge, I think they call it, or curate-in-charge, or something like that,” the Major corrected him. “The last Rector, not Vicar—a Mr Thorne—disappeared about two years ago. He left the rectory one night for what he told his housekeeper was to be an evening stroll before bed. He has never been seen or heard of since. The Bishop put Mr Day-Bell in charge after a time, but I gather there are legal difficulties in the way of declaring the benefice vacant. Parson’s freehold, you know, and his daughter has started legal proceedings in restraint. She claims that her father may return, that his absence may not be voluntary, that there is no proof of wilful neglect and that if he returns and proves his absence was by force majeure, then the Bishop would have acted ultra vires.”
“A jolly little legal fight on hand, I can see that,” Bobby agreed. “Lawyers’ idea of a fun fair, I should say. Who is fighting it? Costs will run pretty high, won’t they?”
“It’s Mr Thorne’s daughter,” Rowley explained. “She’s married and a practising barrister, and so is her husband. The Hillings living is one of the best endowed in the country. In the sixteenth century a pasture field was left to the parish for ever, and it’s where all this part of the High Street has been built. Ground rents run high, and she doesn’t mean to let all that money go out of the family if she can help. And I daresay the case is quite a useful advertisement for her. Gets her well known to solicitors.”
“Nothing ever found to explain Thorne’s disappearance?”
“Nothing definite. Lots of gossip, of course. He was rather heavily in debt. He had lost a packet, speculating on the Stock Exchange. There were hints that he had got himself compromised with some woman who vanished about the same time. Nothing ever proved, but he had got the name of being inclined to be a little too friendly with some of his women parishioners. And suggestions that he had opened the Janet Merton grave on the quiet and gone off with what was buried with her.”
“Good lord!” Bobby exclaimed. “The thing’s opening out all right. But what for? What good would the buried poems be to him? He couldn’t make any use of them. If he did, he would have to explain how he got hold of them.”
“Well, that’s another angle again,” Major Rowley explained, though hesitatingly. “It’s not so much Asprey’s last poems, though some of these high-brow johnnies talk as if recovering them would be like recovering a lost play by Shakespeare. It’s the letters—those he wrote to Janet during their intimacy. There’s reason to think there’s a lot in them about his friendship with the young Duchess of Blegborough. If you remember, she died from what was said to be an overdose of sleeping tablets. It was all very much hushed up. The verdict at the inquest was ‘Death by Misadventure’. Probably her husband didn’t want it brought in as suicide. Natural enough if that were all, but—well, ugly stories got about that the Duke knew a good deal more than he said at the inquest; and that others knew still more, but were frightened or bribed into keeping their mouths shut.”
“I’m beginning to remember the case,” Bobby said. “It never came up to us at the Yard.”
“It was all very hush-hush,” Rowley repeated. “The whispers going round were very low whispers indeed. I happened to know of them because an old Indian colleague of mine had a lot to do with handling the case and he wasn’t at all happy about the whole thing. He told me the Duke wanted to take action against the whisperers, but his lawyers wouldn’t let him. There was nothing he could lay hold of, and the only result would be to give the stories wider publicity and make people think there must be something in them. While if he kept quiet, they would die out of their own accord.”
“You say ‘ugly’ stories,” Bobby remarked. “What precisely were they?”
“Well, of course, you won’t let it go any further,” Rowley replied, still rather unwillingly, “but it was said that the Duke was jealous of Asprey, believed his wife had been unfaithful, and—well, suppose he had slipped just one or two extra tablets into the dose his wife took? Murder, in short.”
“There may be evidence of some sort in the buried Asprey letters?” Bobby asked again. “You know, that’s pretty serious.”
“Opportunity for blackmail,” Rowley said. “Presumably the Duke would pay a good price for letters like that if anyone got hold of them.”
“Nice reputation this Mr Thorne seems to have,” observed Bobby. “Stock Exchange gambler. Woman chaser. Desecrator of graves. Potential blackmailer.”
“Very likely it’s all mere malicious gossip,” Rowley said uncomfortably, “except of course for Thorne’s disappearance. That’s a fact. It’s why Day-Bell wants to talk to you. He says if you at the Yard will take the case up and find out what really happened to Thorne, then everyone will be satisfied and all the gossip will die down.”
“Well, I hope he doesn’t think I can do that off my own bat,” Bobby protested. “I should think his best plan would be to get his lawyers to work the thing up. If they can present a reasonable case for further investigation, supported by the next of kin—there’s a wife and daughter, you said—the Commissioner might take it up. I don’t know. I expect he would want to consult the Home Office. I don’t see there’s much to be done—not after two years. Quite possibly Mr Thorne is living very happily somewhere in South America with his unidentified woman—and the Asprey documents in reserve for possible use if and when trouble crops up. It’s a queer business, though. Compromising letters. Lost poems of a dead poet. A desecrated grave. A mysterious disappearance. Possible blackmail. A Ducal suspect. And all as vague and unsubstantial as a November fog.”
“The worst of it,” Rowley went on, “is that there’s a lot of back-stairs stuff going on. The man behind that question in Parliament is a Mr Pyle. He’s a chairman of the Morning Daily group. His brother is editor of Morning Daily itself. He could start one of those Press stunts any time he wanted. Morning Daily is an awful rag.”
“Yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “We don’t want them butting in if we can help it.”
“Then there’s Mrs Asprey—Asprey’s widow,” Rowley added. “She’s rigged herself up rooms in an old half-ruined house near here—Two Mile End.”
“What for?” Bobby asked.
“I don’t know,” Rowley answered. “I suppose she wants to be on the spot. Then there’s the Duke of Blegborough; and a duke is still a duke, even under Socialism.”
“Even more so, I’m told,” Bobby remarked.
“Day-Bell himself as well,” Rowley went on. “He has a big pull with the Joint Committee. Both the Days and the Bells are old local families with a lot of say in local affairs, and Mr Day-Bell has family connections on both sides. Born a Day and tacked on Bell under a family will. Rather a pushing sort, too. And a poor devil of a Chief Constable likely to come under pretty heavy cross-fire between the lot of them
. I should be really grateful if you would have a chat with Day-Bell and try to choke him off, if you can. He did say something about fresh developments he would like to consult you about.”
Published by Dean Street Press 2017
Copyright © 1953 E.R. Punshon
Introduction Copyright © 2017 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.
First published in 1953 by Victor Gollancz
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911579 06 9
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 27