CHAPTER XXIV
CRUTCH AND CAMERA
NOW, HOWEVER, CAME an interruption, for the doctor arrived, and showed himself much annoyed at his patient’s having got up and dressed without his permission. If his advice wasn’t to be followed, he grumbled, he might well withdraw from the case. Myra at once became extremely apologetic; Bobby much less so, and then Rosamund, who had vanished on some household errand, returned to say all the reporters were back again, the crowd of gapers bigger than ever, and Dewey, trying to keep them of, on the point of losing his temper.
Bobby said that would never do—losing your temper was always the biggest mistake you could make—and he would go and see if he could help. He was only just in time. Dewey and one of the Press photographers were by now on the point of blows, and, as Dewey possessed an unusual physical strength of the extent of which he was hardly conscious, and as the photographer was a tough six-footer, always ready ‘to mix it’, as he called it, the situation was threatening to become serious. It was all Bobby could do to separate them. He had to warn the photographer that he was trespassing, so adequate force to remove him would be in order. Fortunately, a sudden heavy shower intervened at this point. The reporters, photographer and all, fled back to the shelter of their cars, the gapers dispersed on the run, and Bobby and Dewey retired with equal speed to the shelter of a nearby shed, one of the old outbuildings of Constant House. To Dewey, Bobby said severely:
“What’s the sense of losing your temper with a crowd like that?”
“He called me a misshapen dwarf,” Dewey answered. “I know I am. He asked me if I wasn’t the murderer myself. I know I’m not. Perhaps you think I am. Do you?”
“Well, you weren’t there,” Bobby observed. “You aren’t one of the six who were.”
“It comes over me at times,” Dewey said. “Something seems to go in my head. If you hadn’t got between us, I believe I might have killed that chap.”
“Well, watch it,” Bobby said. “Watch it,” he repeated. “There’s been enough killing round here for the present.”
“I know,” Dewey said. The heavy rain seemed to have passed now and a clap of thunder in the far distance suggested that it was only the tail end of a thunderstorm they had experienced. Dewey opened the shed door and looked out. He said: “I caught that photographer fellow trying to sneak round to the front of the house to get snaps of Mrs Outers and Rosamund. He offered me a pound note to let him through. That started it. I think the rain’s stopping.”
A sudden gleam of sunshine appeared. It shone directly on Dewey’s face, and again Bobby was struck by the calm, serene nobility of those beautifully shaped features, Grecian in their perfection and yet in a way so terrible a contrast to the twisted and distorted, almost ape-like body. It was as though Nature, having planned a masterpiece, had then forgotten and produced an abortion. Understandable that some, seeing so distorted a body, were inclined to think, as they had done throughout the ages, that so twisted a form must contain a mind equally twisted.
Dewey began to walk away. Then he turned and said:
“I think I should kill, I’m sure I should, if it were for the sake of someone I cared for. Why should life be sacred when it is so soon over?”
He did not wait for any answer nor did Bobby attempt to give one. But he was deeply troubled. It sounded so much like a deliberate, even defiant confession, and yet was it meant to be so? Or was it put forward as a possible defence of probable guilt? Impossible to say. Difficult, more than difficult, to tell what thoughts were going on behind that broad forehead, those clear, deep-set eyes. Meanwhile, there was the problem of the reporters and the gapers to be dealt with. They were all beginning to drift back now that the rain had almost stopped. Dewey seemed to have abandoned his post. Rosamund had previously objected strongly to a suggestion that Mr Nixon should be asked to supply a uniform man to ward off unwelcome intruders. Then Mrs James appeared, swinging along on her one leg and her crutch at a speed at least as great as any one still blessed with both legs would have been likely to show.
“Dewey says,” she explained to the surprised Bobby, “you want that crowd of gaping idiots kept out and he can’t stay here any longer. There’s things to do, stuff to be got ready for market. Leave it to me. I’ll attend to ’em.”
“Do you think you could?” Bobby asked doubtfully.
“I’ve got my tongue, haven’t I?” Mrs James retorted.
“That may not be enough,” Bobby said. “At Constant House they’re in no state to be bothered by all that lot.”
“If it isn’t, there’s always this,” she told him. She held up her crutch. “Put the end down hard on anyone’s toe and they won’t ask for more. If they do”—levelling her crutch like a spear, she made a sudden, thrust forward—“in the tummy,” she said through a brief cackle of laughter, “and he’s out for keeps. Didn’t think I had it in me, did you? I lie low. I keep quiet. Like Dewey. He knows a lot, but he keeps it to himself. He’s not telling.”
“He knows a lot about what?” Bobby asked.
“That would be telling,” she replied. “Ask him. Ask Dewey. Tell him he can if he likes for all I care. Up to him.”
Bobby was watching her closely, and she returned his gaze with an equal sharp intensity. He felt there was much behind her words she was not allowing to appear, though what that ‘much’ was, impossible to say. A formidable, secret, strange old woman, he told himself.
“Do you mean,” he asked, breaking at last the silence that for those moments had hung between them like a cloud, “Dewey knows or suspects who it was killed Mr Outers?” But to this he got only the same reply, “Ask him,” emitted through a fresh cackle of laughter.
She began to move away then, towards the shrubs and evergreens that bordered the path giving direct access to the house. He called after her, but she took no notice. She now appeared to be hobbling along with some difficulty, in curious contrast to the almost uncanny agility she so often showed. She vanished behind the screen of rhododendrons and evergreens that lined the approach to the front of the house. Bobby waited, puzzled. She’s up to something, he thought. Next moment there was a roar of loud, masculine rage and Mrs James shot out from behind the rhododendrons, swinging along on her crutch in one of those fantastic leaps of hers that always made Bobby think of some story-book witch and her broomstick. There followed her that same tough, six-foot photographer, shouting and furious, Bobby had seen before.
“Here, what’s all this?” he exclaimed, running towards them.
“She’s smashed my camera, my new camera, my brand new camera,” the photographer shouted. “I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” and his voice trailed off into a kind of whimper like that of a small child who has just seen his favourite toy inexplicably destroyed. “My camera,” he repeated.
“I caught him trying to sneak through to the front again,” explained Mrs James, now safely ensconced behind Bobby. “I told him to stop it. He thought I was a poor, harmless, crippled old woman. So I am. So I am.” She paused to giggle delightedly. She resumed: “He said, ‘That’s all right, mum. Don’t you bother. Just doing my job.’ I said, ‘So am I,’ and I knocked that camera thing of his for six, as Monty used to say in the war.”
“You old devil,” the photographer snarled. “I’d like to wring your damned old neck.”
“Now, now. Naughty language before ladies,” the old woman rebuked him. “And if you try you’ll get a poke”—she illustrated—“that’ll lay you out, young man, in double quick time.”
“That’s enough,” Bobby said authoritatively. “Mrs James will have to answer for what she did if you care to press it,” he added to the photographer. “I wouldn’t advise it myself, but that’s your affair, and that of your paper. The Daily Whirl, is it? I guessed as much. It would make good headlines for all the other papers. ‘Whirl Man and Crippled Woman.’ I think I should let it go if I were you.”
“I was only doing my job. We’ve all got to, haven’t we?” the photog
rapher asked in a very injured tone. He began to walk away. Then he turned and said: “If I do let it go, you won’t tell the boys?”
“Certainly not,” Bobby replied at once. “Mrs James, too, I’m sure.”
“Of course,” declared Mrs James. “Only too glad. I can see now my conduct was not really ladylike. I regret it,” but the effect of this conciliatory speech was rather spoiled by the snigger with which it concluded.
The photographer gave her a glance of ineffable hatred, but said nothing as he went away. Bobby said:
“I don’t think I like that crutch of yours.”
“I don’t think I do either,” she answered, and to his utter surprise he saw tears gathering in her old, sharp eyes beneath their wrinkled lids. “One does what one can,” she said.
Bobby made no comment. Leaving her on guard, he returned to the house. The first thing he did was to ring up the Midminster Police Headquarters and ask for a uniform man to be sent to keep away intruders. Neither of the Constant House ladies, he repeated, was in any state to be bothered by newspaper men, or by anyone else for that matter. Rosamund, who had heard him come in, appeared in time to hear what he was saying. She began to renew her former objections, but he told her somewhat brusquely that it had become necessary. She was evidently surprised at the sharp authoritative tone he used, but made no further protest. Instead she said:
“Mother wants to talk to you as soon as you have time. You’ll be in for lunch, will you? Not that there is anything. Mr Peel has been. He wants his money.”
“What money’s that?” Bobby asked.
“He always had five pounds when he came,” Rosamund explained. “I don’t think he ought to have it, but I suppose he must. Only I haven’t got any, and he says he can’t wait. I haven’t even enough to pay the butcher and the milkman.”
“Well, I can give you enough for that,” Bobby said. “Enough to carry on for the present. I’ve been wondering about money?”
“I don’t know,” she answered doubtfully. “I don’t think Mother does either. There was only the pension, and there was a lot of money went trying to find out what had happened when the boys didn’t come back. We shall have to sell this place, only there’s a mortgage, I think. I shall have to get something to do. I think it’s what Mother wants to talk about.”
“I’ll go to her at once,” Bobby promised. “She was saying some strange things this morning before your doctor came. Something I didn’t understand about your two brothers being safe now, safe from what she called the ‘Dark Ones’, whatever they are. And about what the old medicine man said to you before he died.”
For a moment or two it seemed as if Rosamund was not willing to reply. He had a feeling that she was frightened and she was trembling slightly. It was with a visible effort that she said, almost whispering: “Through death set free.”
CHAPTER XXV
AGAINST ALL CREDENCE
HERE AGAIN THEIR talk was broken into by a loud knocking at the back door. Rosamund hurried away so quickly to answer it that Bobby felt the interruption had not been unwelcome to her. He even had an uneasy feeling that she might not return. However, he had not long to wait.
“It was only the butcher,” she said as she came back. “I got some chops. They’ll do for lunch. I’ll get it ready while you are with Mother. I told her you were coming.”
“Could you explain things a bit more first?” Bobby asked with no idea of accepting this broad hint to go. “Who does death set free? Your brothers? But you say there’s no hope that they are still alive. Who then? Set free from what?”
“How can I explain what I don’t know or understand?” Rosamund asked. “What that old, old man said to me, he said, and then he died, and that is all.”
“And the Dark Ones—who are they?” Bobby asked; and somehow as he said this he was aware of a distinct feeling of discomfort, though it passed almost immediately, even before Rosamund could reply.
“They are some of the Unknown Powers the Africans believe in,” she was saying now. “I mean, believe in all the time, not merely on Sundays and never again all week. They believe some are good and some are bad. Of course, it’s the bad ones you have to worry about, because the good ones aren’t likely to do you any harm anyhow, though some of them may be a bit touchy, and you have to look out for fear you offend them without meaning to; and very likely there is a big power like a big chief, but you can’t expect it to bother too much any more than you can expect a tribal council every time there’s a quarrel about something or another. The Europeans all laugh and call it silly superstition, and the missionaries talk and talk, and I daresay it is all very childish, but I don’t see that it’s so very different from saints in Heaven and devils in Hell and a Supreme Being no one is very sure about. I dare say they’ve got it all wrong, but then perhaps all the other religions have got it all wrong, too.”
“Yes,” Bobby said. “Yes. But haven’t you been talking rather round and about what I asked? I don’t quite see how all that explains about your brothers and the Dark Ones or what was meant by ‘Death sets free’.”
“I’ve told you all I can,” she answered angrily. “What else do you expect me to say?” But when he still waited, watchful and expectant, somehow making his strong will felt on hers, she burst out in a new hard voice. “I can tell you what the Africans say, only not out loud, whispering round the fires at night. They say because of how the boys died they came under the power of the Dark Ones, the Evil Ones, those that hate men and do them mischief, and that unless the boys can be set free, very soon they will become the servants, the agents, of the Dark Ones, and then they will be lost for ever. I didn’t mean to tell you, but you’ve got it out of me. I think you are good at getting things out of people, aren’t you?”
“Surely you can’t believe all that?” Bobby asked, still a little bewildered by what seemed to him so monstrous an idea, too horrible, too outrageous, to deserve even a moment’s serious consideration. “I don’t believe it could happen, not if there are what you say they call ‘good’ powers.”
“Why should they interfere?” Rosamund asked, and her voice had grown heavy and sombre and her young face a tragic mask. “They don’t seem to while they are alive. Why should we expect them to afterwards? We do things on our own and what happens is our own look-out. Why should we expect it to be different—afterwards? I’ve only been saying what the Africans believe. I’ve talked to them and I’ve talked to the missionaries, and I’ve thought and thought, and now I don’t any more. No one knows anything, anything at all, so what’s the use?”
“Well,” Bobby insisted, “I don’t believe anything like that could happen or would be allowed to happen. It would be against all ideas of justice. There was no guilty mind. Your brothers meant no harm.”
“Is justice a thing of this world?” Rosamund asked him, echoing, though she did not know it, a modern philosopher. “How can there be when anyone like Dewey James can be sent into the world as he is, all crooked and misshapen, so that when you see him you want to cry and yet you want to laugh too? What did his mother think about justice when she saw other babies and then looked at her own? Justice?” Rosamund repeated, almost with scorn.
“How did your father look at it?” Bobby asked after a momentary pause. “Or your mother?”
“I think Father was frightened, deep down in him, but I don’t know. How should I? I was afraid sometimes he meant to follow the boys and try to find them, but he never did. He used to say primitive people knew things we others have long ago forgotten, and it might be the more you knew of this world the less you knew of any other. You must ask Mother yourself. We never talked about it. We daren’t,” and Bobby knew that what she meant, but did not say, was that that way madness lay.
“She seemed to me quieter somehow, more composed, so to say,” Bobby said. “More restful than she was before.”
“Now it has happened, she knows it can’t happen again,” Rosamund answered steadily, and added: “She’s waiting for yo
u. I told her you wouldn’t be long.”
“Yes. I’ll go,” Bobby said; but all the same still hesitated, deep in troubled and uneasy thought, nor did he either look up or speak when Rosamund went quietly away.
He roused himself then and went into the hall. A clatter of dishes told him that Rosamund was again seeking relief, as she had done before, in a flurry of household tasks—her way of avoiding brooding. He crossed the passage to the room where Mrs Outers was waiting, sitting by the window. She greeted him with a faint smile and explained that she didn’t quite know what to do, and could he help her? It soon appeared that she had only the vaguest idea of how things stood. She knew that the pension stopped and she knew that there was a mortgage on the property. She knew also that the last instalment of interest had not been paid, but of what money there was available she seemed to be entirely ignorant. Bobby gave her what advice he could and suggested her best plan would be to have the help of a lawyer. He promised to try to get the name of a reliable one for her to consult. Then he went on:
“I’ve been having a talk with Rosamund. I don’t understand a lot of what she’s been saying.”
“Poor child,” Myra murmured; and he thought she was looking at him warily, as much as to say it was just as well he didn’t. “It’s all been so dreadful. She’s too young. What has she been saying?”
“Well,” Bobby explained—or tried to, though he thought that Myra had probably guessed already—“she seems to be taking seriously some fantastic native superstition or another. Do you?”
“When you have lived so close to the Africans as we did for so long,” Myra answered, “you can’t help wondering. Everything sounds so different back here from what it does in the African bush. You may laugh here at home. You don’t out there. It’s so quiet there, so noisy here. No wonder you can’t hear what’s so loud and clear out there.”
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 16