“Rosamund’s doing, I expect. She must have taken them out of the car when she drove it off and carried them up here.”
“Yes,” agreed Olive. She finished getting out what she wanted and shut the suitcase. Then she said: “There’s something about her—” but what she did not say and Bobby did not ask. Abruptly Olive said: “Myra’s worried.”
“You could tell that from her letter,” Bobby said. “I wonder if it’s Rosamund.”
Olive made no comment and they went downstairs. Myra took Olive off somewhere. Rosamund did not appear. Mr Outers led Bobby into a room that was evidently his own special domain. It was long and narrow and looked the larger for being so sparsely furnished. A library table stood by the window at one end, the only window there was, so that the other extremity of the room remained in obscurity. The walls were bare except for a shotgun hanging above the mantlepiece. Two bookcases stood opposite each other, one on each side of the room, though on their shelves there seemed to be as many miscellaneous objects of one kind and another as there were books. At the room’s further end, in the semi-gloom that reigned there, except on the brightest summer day, was a fine old mahogany bureau. Three rickety cane chairs were ranged before the fireplace, a brand new revolving office chair was by the library table and there were one or two other chairs. On the floor the only covering was a rug made from a lionskin. Altogether Bobby thought he had seldom seen a room in which there were so few indications of the occupant’s character or interests. Strange then that it also gave such an impression of holding within itself a throbbing, concealed energy, such an impression indeed as Bobby had already received from Rosamund when she came out to greet them.
“I expect luncheon is nearly ready,” Mr Outers said. He waved a hand round the room. “Where I work,” he said, but gave no indication of what the work might be.
“Oh, yes,” Bobby said, and for want of something else to say he went on: “You have a nice outlook here,” for the room’s one window gave a pleasant view over open country, a northern view, the house itself facing west and overlooking that market garden which once had been the great lawn and the shrubberies and flower beds that had composed the Constant Freres grounds.
From a cupboard under one of the bookcases Mr Outers now produced sherry. He poured out two glasses and Bobby, though no connoisseur, recognized at the first taste that the variety was that known as ‘cooking’. He consoled himself with the reflection that it might have been cocktail or cocoa, both of which he detested.
“Folklore,” Mr Outers said abruptly. “African folklore.”
“That must be very interesting,” Bobby commented, with the mental proviso that no doubt so it was to some people.
“Frightening,” declared Mr Outers, glowering at Bobby over his great black beard. “You understand?”
“Well, really, I know so little about it,” said Bobby, hurriedly warding off an attempt to fill his glass again with that rather trying sherry.
Mr Outers turned to fill his own glass, found to his apparent surprise that it was still nearly full, since so far he had merely tasted it, and then pointed to the bureau at the back of the room.
“I have a witch-doctor’s medicine bag in there,” he said. “I bought it from an African as he was dying. He didn’t want to take it with him. He made me promise that I would never open it. You understand?”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby agreed. “Promises should always be kept.”
“I know. I have,” Mr Outers said gloomily. “You’re in the police, Myra says?”
“Quite true,” admitted Bobby, and added as a precaution, “I’m on leave at the moment, at least as far as a policeman ever is on leave.”
“I was a district officer,” Mr Outers told him. “A district officer has to act as a policeman sometimes. You understand? Then he gets blamed. If he doesn’t, he gets blamed again, only more.”
“Oh, well, that’s often the case everywhere,” Bobby commented.
“A district officer,” Mr Outers repeated. “I never got much promotion. My ideas didn’t meet with approval. I was told I was giving support to the witch-doctors. They were unprogressive, opposed to our civilizing mission. The missionaries. They complained I was encouraging devil worship. It was the chiefs I ought to have backed. Chiefs all muddled with a Christianity they made no sense of, a college education that cut at the root of all their traditional knowledge, and a way of government that prevented them from governing in the only way they knew.”
“It must be pretty confusing,” Bobby said. “One can only hope it will all straighten out in time. You were interested in native beliefs?”
“Devil worship, the missionaries called it,” Mr Outers said. “A wicked mistranslation. The early Christians did the same thing. Tried to make out that Venus and Mars and the rest of them were demons. Fiddlesticks, of course. The African word ought to have been simply translated ‘power’—the hidden power. No good or evil about it in our sense. The hidden power that makes the world tick. So keep on the right side of it and the witch-doctor knows best how to do that and others had best keep out of it. Exactly like Christianity.”
“Well, there are differences after all, aren’t there?” Bobby suggested mildly. “Of course, I know nothing about what Africans believe.”
“The science of the West,” Mr. Outers said. “The wisdom of the East. The insight of the African. A synthesis of these might take us somewhere. Do have some more sherry?”
From this fate Bobby was saved by the sudden appearance of Rosamund.
“Luncheon’s ready,” she announced. “I’m sorry about the sherry,” she added, looking doubtfully at the glasses on the library table. “Mr Baynton and Mr Manners both say it’s poison, but we haven’t got any whisky. It’s so dear.”
Bobby hastened to assure her that he seldom tasted spirits and never before night, but Rosamund didn’t seem to be listening. She was looking at her father, frowning from under her dark, overhanging brows.
“You’ve been talking to Cousin Owen about the medicine bag,” she said accusingly. “Or why is it so dark over there by the bureau?”
Mr Outers didn’t answer. Bobby said, rather feebly:
“The sun has just gone in.”
Rosamund took no notice of this remark. She moved towards the door. The two men followed her into the hall, past the foot of the stairs into a large, pleasant room, conventionally furnished with a dining-room suite evidently from Tottenham Court Road—though perhaps, Bobby thought, at one remove. He noticed, too, and with more interest, some paintings on the wall, sombre, dreamlike productions, where even a still life of fish on a large china plate seemed to convey its own mute warning. He felt he would like to examine these more closely. The window overlooked the market garden, as Bobby took it to be, with its neat orderly beds of vegetables and its rows of fruit bushes. On the left were the ruins of Constant Freres and its tall, adjacent tower. At the window Myra and Olive were standing together, watching a scene outside that apparently interested them. Olive was saying as Bobby and the others entered:
“I can’t think how she possibly can.”
“Rosamund,” Myra said. “Teddy Peel’s here.”
“I know,” Rosamund said, and did not look pleased.
Bobby joined Olive at the window. Mr Outers stood by the table already laid for luncheon. He was fidgeting with the knives and forks as if their arrangement did not altogether please him. Olive said to Bobby:
“Just look. How does she manage?”
This referred to the scene outside. Beyond the low wooden fence—almost a token fence, in fact—that seemed to mark the dividing line between the market garden territory and that still appertaining to Constant House was the old crippled woman Bobby and Olive had seen previously at the door of her cottage—the old Constant Freres lodge. She was now however using her crutch not so much as a means of support but for giving emphasis to what she was saying. She seemed to be talking with some heat to a smallish man in bowler hat and rain-coat, carrying a disp
atch case and a badly rolled umbrella. Bobby guessed—quite wrongly as it turned out—that he was a travelling salesman of one sort or another, either trying to make a fresh sale or to collect instalments on what had been already sold. There was a second man there, too, but he did not seem to be taking much part in the lively discussion or argument or whatever it was, going on between the other two. Neither Bobby nor Olive could see him clearly, as he was half hidden behind a line of raspberry canes, though now and again he bobbed up under a cloth cap to say something or other, of which apparently no notice was ever taken.
“Oh, look,” Olive exclaimed, for the crippled woman had just aimed a vicious thrust with her crutch at the little man in the bowler hat, before which he skipped away with an entirely justifiable prudence. From behind Rosamund said:
“That’s Mrs James, Dewey’s mother. She tries to do without her crutch as much as she can. She can’t quite, of course, but she is more active on one leg than most people are on two.”
“How did she lose it?” Olive asked.
“During the war, while she was at the B.B. works. Mr Baynton says she was an awfully good mechanic, just as good with her tools as any of them or better. Only then there was an accident. A wheel flew loose or something. Several people were hurt and Mrs James lost her leg. They started their market garden with the money she got in compensation. I don’t think Dewey’s an awfully good gardener,” she added thoughtfully, “and then it’s poor soil he says, all chalk underneath.”
“Oh, look,” Olive said, for now the little man in the bowler hat was fairly on the run and it almost seemed as if Mrs James would have started in pursuit had not the second man run out from behind the raspberry canes to stop her.
“That’s Dewey; he’s her son,” Rosamund said, and added, almost defiantly it seemed. “He’s terribly deformed—a hunchback.”
CHAPTER III
STUDENT OF THE OCCULT
THAT DEWEY JAMES was a hunchback was something to which it seemed hardly necessary to call attention. He was also, as those so afflicted often are, almost a dwarf, a full head and shoulders shorter than his mother. He gave also the impression of possessing great physical strength, with long arms reaching nearly to his knees.
The two of them, the crippled mother, the deformed son, walked away together; and Mr Outers, rousing himself suddenly from his apparent absorption with the placing of the knives and forks on the table, said to no one in particular:
“What about lunch?”
“It’s all ready,” Rosamund said. “You others sit down. I’ll get it.” She disappeared, returning quickly with a plump roast chicken, which Bobby regarded with highly appreciative eyes. “We’ve no help,” Rosamund explained, “except a daily who doesn’t come as often as not. We practically live on chicken,” she went on apologetically. “We did, too, out there, only they are so different at home.”
“Skinny,” said Mr Outers. “All skin and bone. Rosamund feeds these up. Grain. Milk. Scraps from the kitchen. Cod liver oil.”
The roast chicken was followed by an egg soufflé and by coffee—tea for Myra—such as neither Bobby nor Olive had ever met before. Myra explained that it was sent direct to them from ‘out there’.
“An African planter,” Rosamund said. “Father knew him. He grows better coffee than anyone else. No one knows how he does it and he won’t say. All the white planters are furious.”
“Brings its own price,” Mr Outers said. “You understand? Used for blending. You can’t buy it retail. He sends us ten pounds twice a year. A gift.”
“Because Father was interested in African ideas,” Rosamund put in, “and he stuck up for the witch-doctors.”
“I never drink coffee,” Myra said; and said it with an unexpected emphasis that struck a sudden silence on them all.
It was an awkward silence, a silence to be felt as it were. One sensed that Mr Outers’s mouth, hidden beneath his great black beard, was tightly closed. Rosamund was staring straight in front of her, but the knuckles of her hands, clasped in front of her upon the table, showed white with the force with which she held them. To break that silence, Bobby said something about those paintings on the walls he had noticed immediately he entered the room.
“Rosamund does them,” Myra said, but not with much show of pride or appreciation.
“When she’s not fattening up the chickens, she’s painting,” Mr Outers said. “Jolly good, too. Gets it all just as it is. You understand?”
“The dealers don’t think they are jolly good,” Rosamund interposed. “One of them said people didn’t like nightmares. He told me to change my style and do flowers or jolly little landscapes with lots of sunshine—sunny glades in springtime.”
“Don’t change your style to please the dealers,” Bobby warned her. “In art, always follow your own nose.”
Rosamund received this advice in silence, evidently slightly puzzled by it. But by now luncheon was over. The three women set to work to clear the table while Mr Outers and Bobby took themselves out of the way to the room where they had been before. Now it had another occupant, that same little man Bobby had seen flee with such speed before the deadly thrust of Mrs James’s crutch. He rose as the other two entered, clutching his bowler hat in one hand, his baggy umbrella in the other.
“Miss Rosamund said I could wait here,” he explained. “It’s about to-morrow night. Mr Owen, I presume? Pleased to meet you, sir. An honour.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember you at the moment,” Bobby said, searching his memory to see if among all those many others with whom his work was so continually bringing him into contact, he could place this little man with his small, pale eyes, his indeterminate features, his muddy complexion, his sharp, little pointed nose.
“Our paths have never crossed before to-day,” the little man assured him. “But Mr Owen is well known. I also may claim the same in my more restricted sphere. I regret my own encounters with our wholly admirable but possibly at times rather too enthusiastic police forces have not always been so agreeable as I for my part could have wished.”
“Oh, well,” Bobby murmured, thinking this was at least candid.
“Twice,” the other said. “On two separate occasions. But each time discharged without a stain, and on the last occasion with a definite expression of opinion that proceedings should never have been brought.”
“Mr Peel—” Outers began, but was promptly interrupted.
“Teddy Peel,” the little man corrected him. “Such has become, if I may say so, my professional name. So am I billed. So am I universally known. My cognomen. If you please.”
“Mr Peel,” Outers resumed as if he had not heard a word of this, “is a medium well known, I believe, among spiritualists, but not recognized by all of them, the most responsible ones. Caught out faking more than once.”
“Not me. The power,” Mr Peel protested. He lifted a hand, dropping his bowler hat in the process. He stooped to recover it. “Not me,” he repeated. “And I’m not a medium, Mr Outers, sir, as I’ve said before. A humble student of the occult. That’s me. But sometimes the power fails, it can’t get through; then in its impatience it short circuits the message, so to say.” He paused to shake his head reproachfully at such behaviour. “Or else it fades out and then mischievous, even evil influences rush in. But I can generally cope.”
“What the witch-doctors say,” Outers commented. “Medicine gone bad is how they put it.”
“Is it too much to hope that Mr Owen will honour us tomorrow evening?” Teddy Peel asked, and, without waiting for a reply—possibly Bobby did not look very encouraging—he went on: “Mr Baynton is anxious to be present. I might say very anxious. Mr Manners, of course. He has shown himself greatly impressed. A substantial monetary gain he informed me.”
“So he told me,” Outers agreed. “Naturally. Money talks. Results.” He turned to Bobby: “You understand?” He turned back to Teddy. “The witch-doctors, too. They produce results or they are believed to. The same thing. Settle it all
with Mrs Outers, just as she wants. She’s somewhere about. Wait in the hall, will you? I’ll find her for you presently.”
Teddy expressed his thanks and managed to edge himself out of the room without further talk. Bobby, a little puzzled, a little wary, more than ever determined to attend no meeting with which Teddy had anything to do, settled himself in the rickety basket chair Outers now pushed forward. A box of cigars was produced, but Bobby—a little afraid these cigars might be to other cigars as his before-luncheon sherry had been to other sherries—asked if he might have one of his own cigarettes instead. Mr Outers seemed to think some explanation of Mr. Peel was necessary. He said:
“I don’t know exactly where Teddy came from. He’s managed to impose himself. He seemed to know a lot, things he shouldn’t have known. Myra’s quite accepted him. So has Rosamund. It’s the top room of the tower where we meet now. Things have happened. Ludovic Manners—Ludo they call him. A business-man from Midminster. Over there.” He made a vague gesture in the direction of that famous city some twenty miles or so distant. “He and Rosamund are friendly and Myra says he wants to be more friendly still. Information he got through Teddy was worth a lot of money to him, he says. You understand?”
“I do indeed,” Bobby admitted. “No getting away from money. But you have to take into account lucky guesses, coincidence, scraps of information picked up somehow, that sort of thing. There’s always the traditional test—who is going to win the Derby? I’m afraid I don’t feel an awful lot inclined to trust Mr Teddy Peel any further than I can see him. Not quite so far in fact.”
“A bit of a rogue, a bit of a charlatan,” Outers agreed dispassionately. “But the power comes—sometimes. It’s the same with the witch-doctors out there. Immaterial. A priest may betray his altar, but the altar remains. Teddy knew—” Outers paused, glanced towards the end of the room where the old mahogany bureau stood, resumed: “He knew about the medicine bag I’ve got, he knew where it was, he knew how I got it. He knew the man who gave it me said it had gone bad. He knew what was in it.”
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 3