“It was put very clearly,” Bobby admitted. “Not exactly what I should have said, though. You only need to be jolly careful if there’s something to hide. If there isn’t, why try to keep me out?”
“I would,” Rosamund exclaimed. “It’s my mind.”
“Hush, Rosy dear,” her mother said. “I’m sure we can trust Cousin Owen.”
“He’s a policeman. He keeps on saying so,” Rosamund muttered, and subsided into her usual gloomy, frowning silence.
Bobby—who had had quite a shock when he heard her addressed as ‘Rosy’—somehow it seemed as ill-fitting an appellation, as ‘Rosamund’ had appeared appropriate—began to ask his questions. All Mrs Outers said, however, was very much the same as that told by the others, nor had Bobby expected it would be otherwise. But it served to get her talking freely. He made no attempt to take anything down in writing. That is apt to inhibit any witness, no matter how anxious to be helpful. Gradually the atmosphere relaxed. Mrs Outers talked more freely, Rosamund began to seem less keyed-up.
“Thank you,” Bobby said presently. “It’s just the same, of course, only seen differently. That often brings out some fresh detail. A shift of emphasis. Now I must ask you this. Have you any feeling of suspicion against anyone? For any reason whatever, no matter how slight. Was anything different? The order in which you sat round the table? Was that always the same? It might be very important,” he added.
“Oh, no,” Mrs Outers answered immediately. “Nothing. We always sat like that. Mr Peel said it helped results. I do remember now Mrs James said her leg was hurting her. It’s never healed completely. Splinters of bone keep coming away. That’s why she can’t wear an artificial leg, and has a crutch instead. Generally she leans it up against the wall and then makes one of those great hops of hers to the table. I think they are wonderful, though it frightens me sometimes. It doesn’t seem natural the way she does it.”
“She’s always there, isn’t she?” Bobby asked. “But not her son?”
“Oh, no, never,” Mrs Outers answered. “He never comes. I’m afraid Val didn’t like him very much and he’s so sensitive. He’s so deformed. Val used to say in any African village he would have been destroyed at birth. Of course, he didn’t mean it was right to do that; only Africans do know a lot more than we do in some ways. Mrs James never misses. Mr Peel says her being there helps with what he calls his electric magnetism. I’ve wondered sometimes if he was wanting to marry her.”
“Oh, Mother,” protested Rosamund, very much surprised. “Why, she’s only got one leg.”
“You don’t marry people’s legs,” Mrs Outers retorted. “She’s very active—those hops of hers. You never know who’ll want to marry who.”
“Well, I don’t,” Rosamund said—a remark Bobby found somewhat obscure.
To her mother, he said:
“Myra, there’s something else that may be important. Apparently a story’s going round that Val had a map showing where there’s a hitherto unknown gold-mine or something of the sort in a native location in Africa?”
“Oh, that,” Myra answered. “Oh, yes. Not in a location; somewhere right in the interior. It was in that thing he got from an old witch-doctor. Val, said probably it was notes of his travels by some European—someone meaning to write a book. They all do—such nonsense, most of them. Natives don’t know much about books, but they all know about gold and how Europeans want gold more than anything.”
“Val never looked to see?”
“Oh, no,” she exclaimed. “No. You see . . . well, I can’t explain exactly . . . of course, he didn’t really believe . . . only you never know with those dreadful men.”
“Father knew,” Rosamund interposed, “and so did we, it was better left unopened.”
“Scorpions and things,” her mother suggested and repeated: “You never know.”
“Now it’s gone, hasn’t it?” Bobby said.
“Rosy says so,” Mrs Outers answered. “She says it was in the old bureau in his room. He always kept it locked. Rosy says the medicine bag was there, and now it isn’t. I don’t know how she can tell.”
Rosamund offered no explanation and Bobby asked for none. He knew he would not be likely to receive any that the common-sense side of him could accept and use. If Myra’s suggestion that the missing bag might contain a dozen or so living—and stinging—scorpions or any other form of poisonous insect, then no doubt it was most desirable it should be left unopened. Still more desirable perhaps that it should be promptly put in the fire. Breaking the silence that had followed Myra’s last words, Bobby went on:
“There’s another story I’ve heard, about two old Negroes seen dodging about here.”
“So silly,” Myra told him. “What for? Africans wouldn’t touch a medicine bag, even an old one, for anything in the world. Besides, how could they possibly get here or get passports or anything? I told Val. He said it was most likely a bush or something by the side of the road, and it was taken for Negroes because of Val having been out there and not being quite like other people. He would never play golf or bridge and he was so interested in the Africans, and gossip got about. I never knew Home was such a place for gossip.”
“All places are places for gossip,” Bobby told her. “Good thing, too. Often how we get at the truth. About Mr Peel—do you think he can be trusted? He seems to have taken himself off somewhere now.”
“Trusted?” Myra repeated, apparently somewhat surprised by so naive a question. “Oh, no. Not a bit. But Val always said there was something odd about him, and it was very interesting, like the witch-doctors out there. Only they claim it’s because they can compel or persuade natural forces that aren’t exactly either good or bad, but just powers—it’s in the Bible, ‘principalities and powers.’ Mr Peel talks about electric magnetism and believes it’s inside him and nothing to do with anything else, like poetry and things. Shakespeare,” she concluded abruptly.
“He does produce results not easily explained?” Bobby suggested.
“Oh, funny things do happen,” Myra admitted. “Floating tambourines. That sort of thing, and he tells you what you’re thinking or things you had absolutely forgotten, only they’re really true and you remember them when he tells you.”
“Silly things,” Rosamund interposed. “Like that once I went to have a shower and forgot to take all my things off. Mother says she remembers. I don’t. He never knows what I’m thinking.”
“He says you close your mind against him,” Mrs Outers said.
“Do either of you see any possibility of his having had anything to do with the disappearance of the knife used?” Bobby asked them.
Rosamund shook her head. Her mother said, “No.” Rosamund went on:
“How could he? He never went out of the room till the police came. None of us did. We were all together, all the time till then.”
“Except Mr Baynham,” Bobby reminded her gently.
“He only went to ring up the police,” Rosamund explained; and seemed to think that fact ruled out any possibility of his having taken away the knife at the same time. “When the police came we were all searched. Mother and I were taken away to wait for a policewoman. There was a policeman with us till she came. They made the men strip to the skin.”
“It was all horrible,” Mrs Outers said. “The policewoman said it was only a matter of form, but she was very particular.”
“I suppose it means Mother and me . . .” Rosamund said, looking at Bobby almost pleadingly, plainly seeking reassurance.
She did not finish her sentence, but her meaning had been plain through that deep reserve in which she lived, and Bobby said gravely:
“We have not been able to eliminate anyone yet. Nor find anyone else.”
“There wasn’t anyone else,” Rosamund repeated. “That’s why it’s all impossible.”
“It happened,” Bobby said as he had said before. “And only the possible happens. Therefore . . .”
He, too, left his sentence unfinished. Nor di
d either of the two women attempt to answer that ‘therefore’, which to both of them had sounded like a word of endless doom. It was a minute or two before, a little sorry that that ‘therefore’ had escaped him, a little afraid that perhaps more might have been read into it than he had intended, Bobby spoke again. He said:
“You both heard this voice you’ve spoken about, the one that seemed to come from the top of the room above the table. In a native African language. You both know it well enough to be sure of the meaning?”
“Rosy speaks it like English,” Mrs Outers said. “I know it well enough to talk to the servants. It’s a very difficult language.”
“But you’re quite clear of the meaning?”
“Well, not at first,” Mrs Outers admitted. “It was a funny voice.”
“It said what you’ve been told,” Rosamund said slowly and steadily. “That a death wish was loose among us, trying to get itself born into action.”
“Ventriloquism?” Bobby suggested. “That’s one explanation that’s been offered.”
“How could it be?” Rosamund asked. “Mr Peel has never been to Africa, never been out of England. I shouldn’t think there are more than ten or twelve people in the world know it well enough to speak it. Europeans, I mean. We’ve thought of it, Mother and me—we’ve thought of everything.”
Bobby made no comment. There was nothing useful he could say. Instead he changed the subject and asked:
“Is there any chance that what you heard could possibly have meant: ‘Blood washes out blood’?”
CHAPTER XVIII
BY DEATH SET FREE
THE EFFECT OF this sudden question upon Mrs Outers was both marked and startling. Rosamund’s expression remained comparatively unchanged. Only a slight increase in the intent watchfulness with which all the time she regarded Bobby seemed to show itself. Otherwise she might not even have heard. But Mrs Outers stared and flushed and stared again and became very pale. Till now she had been chatting freely as if some inner tension had been relieved, some barrier removed.
“What do you mean?” she asked in a voice not too steady. “Rosy?” Rosamund shook her head slightly, but did not attempt to speak. Nor did Bobby make any reply to the first question. Mrs Outers asked him now: “Who told you? No one knew.”
Bobby remained silent. It was a way he had, a theory that if no answer were given to a question whose significance and meaning were not quite clear, then silence could often elicit a second question that might provide unconsciously an answer to the first. This time that did not happen, for abruptly Rosamund spoke.
“It was Mrs James told him,” she said briefly.
“Mrs James?” her mother repeated, though now with less of the sheer terror that had seemed before to underlie her first surprise and bewilderment. “How could it be?” she asked. “She didn’t know.”
“She said she heard you talking in your sleep,” Rosamund answered. “I don’t believe her.”
“What does it mean?” Bobby asked.
Neither mother nor daughter replied. They were staring at each other. It seemed that between them there was a mutual understanding, though to neither was it quite clear nor sure. Apparently they had completely forgotten Bobby’s presence. He repeated:
“What does it mean?”
“We don’t know,” Rosamund answered, now, her attention still, however, on her mother.
“Val is dead, murdered,” Bobby said, and his voice had become harsh and compelling. “Was it he or his sons’ blood death was to set free?”
“We don’t know,” Rosamund said once more; and Bobby felt that that stark self-control of hers was on the point of cracking. “All nonsense,” she said, a little wildly. “I wish it had been mine.” With what seemed an extreme effort of self-control, she continued in a quieter voice: “When we were trying to find out what had happened to the boys, Father went to see an old medicine-man he knew of. Father said if anyone knew what had happened to the boys, he did. The Africans said he was older than anyone had ever been before. They said he was kept alive because the dark powers feared that if he joined the dead people they might become too strong and he would lead them back into the world again. But when Father found the old man he would not speak. He sat there and was still, as though he were dead himself, he was so old. Father came away and that night I went myself. I walked all through the night, and all day and all the next night as well, and then in the morning I came to the hut in the village where he lived. But he would not see me, so I sat by the door and waited, and when it was nearly night he sent his chief wife and she asked me if I had eaten or drunk since I started. So I said, ‘No’, and she said then it is well and she went back into the hut and presently he came out, and he went into a kind of trance. After a time he began to speak in a language I did not know and in a voice that was not his. And behind what wasn’t his voice I heard two other voices, very low and faint, but I do not know whose they were or what they said. Then all at once he spoke in English, a very loud voice, and that is what he said: ‘By death set free.’ So I asked him what it meant and he did not answer. He could not, for he was dead.”
“Dead?” Bobby repeated. “You mean he died as soon as he had said that?”
“Or else before,” she answered simply. “I do not know. The villagers gave me food and drink and I rested and they helped me home. I think they were afraid because they thought my medicine must be stronger than his. I had left a note for Mother telling her where I had gone, and not to let Father know. She said I had a sick headache and mustn’t be disturbed. I told Mother when I got back, but I never told Father.”
“Why didn’t you?” Bobby asked.
“I think it was because I was afraid,” she answered, and after that there was for a time silence among them.
What bearing this macabre story had upon the investigation he had undertaken, Bobby was not sure, but he knew that for long—very long—there would remain in his mind a vivid picture of this lone English girl on her strange mission, battling her solitary way, by day and by night, through the darkness of the African forest. Little wonder perhaps that after such an effort, such an experience, as few of her age and sex had ever known, she had wrapped herself in such clouds of dark reserve as seemed at times to cut her off from common human intercourse. He could understand, too, that this tale of a white woman sitting waiting outside the hut of a native witch-doctor might well have aroused passionate repercussions had it become generally known. Probably, if any hint of it had got about, the authorities had taken pains to deny or suppress it, while Africans, though they might whisper it among themselves, would very likely not dare to repeat it aloud. At any rate, so far as he knew, no hint of it had ever reached Europe, or, if it had, its significance had not been understood and its impact negligible.
So was he musing, lost in thoughts darting hither and thither in his mind. When with a quick, abrupt movement Rosamund jumped to her feet. For a moment she stood still, then gave herself a little shake. Like a dog shaking off water from its coat, so she seemed to be shaking off thoughts and memories on which was she knew dangerous to dwell too long.
“I’ve got to see about lunch,” she announced. To her mother she said, her voice, her whole demeanour, changing thus with startling suddenness: “You must try to go to sleep again. I’ll bring you something on a tray. The fish-man has been this morning, and he had some turbot, so I got that, and I’ll do an omelet as well.”
“I don’t want anything except a cup of tea,” Mrs Outers said.
Rosamund was moving towards the door, at the same time glancing at Bobby to follow her. On the landing outside he said to her:
“It doesn’t explain Mrs James’s knowing.”
Rosamund made no comment. It seemed now she had told her story she had lost interest in all but her household duties.
“Lunch ought to be ready by one,” she said. “You can start laying the table—if you know how,” she added doubtfully.
“I’m a married man—fully trained,” he to
ld her. “I’m wondering where Peel’s got to, though.”
“He’s rather fond of turning up about lunch-time,” Rosamund said over her shoulder as she led the way down the stairs to the hall. “Please don’t go finding him. If you do I shall have to give him lunch, and I don’t want to very much.”
“I think I must try to find him,” Bobby said. “But I won’t invite him to lunch. I’ll pack him off instead.”
They had reached the hall now. She turned to look at him.
“You make people do what you want, don’t you?” she said disapprovingly. “I expect you bully poor Cousin Olive dreadfully,” and this remark so flabbergasted—it’s the only word—Bobby that he could do nothing but stare and gasp at the mere idea of his bullying Olive, when it was so much, and so obviously, the other way round. “In here,” Rosamund was saying now, leading the way into the dining-room. She showed him the sideboard standing against the inner wall. “Everything’s there,” she informed him. “There’s a clean table-cloth in the middle drawer. If you must go looking for Mr Peel, mind you’re back by one.” She disappeared towards the kitchen, and then, before he had fully recovered from the slightly dazed condition in which she had left him she was there again, framed in the open doorway. “Now it’s off my mind,” she said and was gone, this time shutting the kitchen door behind her with considerable emphasis.
So Bobby set himself to complete the task allotted to him, decided presently that he had made a good job of it, and then, proceeding with some caution in case Rosamund called him back again to render her more assistance—peeling the potatoes perhaps—succeeded in reaching the Folly Tower unperceived. For it was much in his mind that there Teddy Peel was to be found, though for what purpose it was hard to guess.
He went in by what once had been the main entrance, though now it was little more than another gap torn in the nevertheless still solid shell of four walls. He picked his way with care through the jumble of debris and rubbish. Was there more of all this or was it simply that he was noticing it more? He didn’t know. Leaving on his right the great marble stairway rising so bravely and so uselessly from the chaos and the ruin around to reach vacancy above, Bobby went on, listening, looking, searching for any sign of a recent visitor. He found none, though he did disturb a big black cat—it belonged to Mrs James, as he discovered later. It made a dignified retreat when he appeared—so dignified, in fact, that Bobby was tempted to expedite it by the help of a suitable and well-aimed bit of rubble. However, he reflected that neither the cat nor the ruin nor the rubble belonged to him, so he refrained. Nearby was what at first sight seemed merely a hole torn in the elsewhere intact flooring of the old building, but that on closer view showed itself as having been a way into the cellars, for there was a flight of stone steps, still firm and in position, leading downwards. It did not look a promising or an inviting field for further exploration. Not much likelihood that Teddy Peel would be seeking shelter there, and it was that gentleman Bobby was anxious to find—if, that is, he was there to be found.
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 12