“You mean you want to give up?” she said. “If you do, we shall never know. No one will ever.” And now he wondered if it was with fear or with hope that she spoke, or perhaps with both together.
“Would that be best?” he asked in his turn. “That none should know?”
“There is no best,” she said. “There is only bad and worse”; and, saying this, she disappeared into her fastnesses of the back regions of the house, whence sundry sounds soon announced that she was seeking relief—forgetfulness, perhaps—in ceaseless activity as others might perhaps in drugs or drink.
Bobby lingered, listening, for a moment or two, and then went to his room, there to sit for a time in solitude, in one hand his cigarette he had forgotten to light, not so much lost in active thought as in slow, steady contemplation of the whole of recent events in their entirety, hoping that somehow there would presently emerge something either to confirm or to deny the tentative theory he was half unconsciously formulating to himself.
It did not. The only result was a kind of mental vacuum, as if he had emptied his mind of its whole content.
From this he was presently aroused by certain interior promptings reminding him that the hour for the evening meal had arrived. So he went downstairs to the dining-room, found the table laid for one only, while from her inaccessible retreat at the back of the house Rosamund’s voice informed him that her mother had retired to bed, that she herself was busy cleaning out the boot and broom cupboard, and that his supper was ready and waiting. She had heard him coming, she explained, and so had taken it out of the oven where it had been keeping warm and popped it on the table—two pork chops, and she hoped he would enjoy them and wouldn’t mind having his meal alone.
Bobby replied sourly that pork chops was his favourite dish, that it was all very kind of her, that of course he didn’t mind having a solitary supper, and then banged the dining-room door behind him as hard as he could to indicate extreme displeasure—not that he felt Rosamund was likely to take much notice. But before he had done more than convey one of the chops to his plate he heard the ’phone ring. As it went on ringing, as Rosamund was either too far gone in the depths of her boot and broom cupboard to hear, or else had decided to take no notice, he went to attend to it himself in case the call was for him.
As it was, for Chief Constable Nixon was on the line and seemed rather excited. A new startling development, he said. It seemed that an A.A. scout on his usual round had been stopped by a man who had asked him to ring up the police and give them a message to the effect that the ‘Holy thing’ was back whence it came, that the curse had been lifted and now all was well.
“I know the A.A. man,” Nixon went on. “Very reliable, trustworthy. He says he thinks it was a coloured man, but the chap went off so quickly on his bike that he can’t be positive. It was getting dark, too. He says the chap spoke in an odd, high, squeaky voice and broken English. Is this your Mr X, do you think?”
“Shouldn’t think so,” Bobby answered. “Holy thing? Holy fiddlesticks more likely. Holy red Herring. Coloured man? What about black gloves and burnt cork?”
“Oh, well,” came Nixon’s voice, sounding much less hopeful now. “May be important, though. What I always say is, follow up every line. Besides, you remember there were those earlier reports of coloured men appearing and disappearing like so many jacks-in-boxes. Worth seeing if there’s anything in it. You agree?”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby answered at once. “Certainly. Follow up everything. Anything may lead anywhere.”
On this profound reflection the conversation ended. Nixon rang off and Bobby went back, past the dining-room, where his two pork chops were slowly congealing, and on to the green baize door that guarded regions unknown—unknown to Bobby that is.
“Rosamund,” he shouted imperiously. “Rosamund. I want you.”
“I’m busy,” came the muffled reply, emphasized by an extra clattering of pans and pails.
“Never mind that,” Bobby roared back, determined to make his voice heard though all the pots and pans in Christendom defied him. “It’s important.”
A reluctant, somewhat dishevelled Rosamund then appeared and looked at him sulkily.
“Well?” she said.
Bobby returned her sulky look with a scowl as serious and menacing as he could contrive, for though he thought he understood the dreadful fear that lay behind it, none the less he found her lack of co-operation exasperating in the extreme.
“Listen to me,” he said sharply, “and don’t try to dodge. That’s no good. There’s always been a chance there was someone else in all this—a Mr X. Somebody no one knew about. Mr Nixon thinks that he has now got supporting evidence. A man, described as coloured, otherwise unidentified, asked an A.A. scout to ring up the police and tell them that the ‘holy thing’ had been returned, the curse lifted, and all was well. What I want to know is if that is the kind of message any African coming here specially to recover the medicine bag that keeps popping up all the time would be likely to give? Or even the kind of language he would use?”
“He wouldn’t even know what such a word as ‘holy’ meant,” Rosamund replied. “To him, the ‘Unknown Powers’ simply represent something you had better keep away from. Witchdoctors may help if things are going wrong—but that’s a kind of magic. Nothing to do with holiness or anything like that.”
“Supposing the African’s a Christian convert?” Bobby asked.
“If he is, he probably takes his Christianity much more seriously than most Europeans. He would be horrified at the very idea of calling a witch-doctor’s medicine bag ‘holy’. But there, again, he would be as frightened of it as any other African, especially if the medicine in it was said to have gone bad. He would be sure it would bring the worst of luck. Well, it has, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t know about that,” Bobby answered. “I’m no great believer in luck, except what you make for yourself. Most of what you’ve been saying, I rather thought myself. It looks as if we had a Mr Y on our hands, not a Mr X at all.”
“How do you mean?” Rosamund asked, puzzled and a little suspicious as well.
“A Mr Why,” Bobby repeated. “Why has whoever it is chosen to send us a faked message? It may be merely a silly hoax, someone trying to be extra clever. There’s hardly ever a difficult case but some fool of an exhibitionist jumps in. Or it may be one of the six who were present trying to confuse issues and send us off on a false trail. If it’s that, then it must be one of the three men as the A.A. scout says it was a man spoke to him. Which of the three—Baynham, Ludo Manners, Teddy Peel? Young Baynham? I don’t somehow feel it’s an idea likely to occur to him.”
“Oh, no,” agreed Rosamund.
“Or Ludo Manners?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Rosamund answered, but this time more doubtfully.
“Or Teddy Peel?”
Rosamund made no reply, and this Bobby interpreted as meaning that she, too, thought the cyclist might well have been Peel. Bobby continued after a minute or two’s pause:
“He seems to have all the qualifications. We know he is a bit of a ventriloquist. He gets tambourines and so on floating in the air, and that’s evidently faked. Means he is used to playing on the credulity of his clients, so why not try it on other people as well? He almost picks himself.”
Rosamund had not been listening very attentively to all this. She had been following her own line of thought instead. She said:
“If he has the medicine bag, does that mean he did it?”
“Well, at any rate,” Bobby answered, “he would have to give a very convincing explanation of how the thing came into his possession and why he didn’t inform us? Holding back vital evidence is one way of becoming an accessory after the fact.”
Again Rosamund did not reply, but as she stood there in silence and deep thought, Bobby got the impression that there had come to her a great relief, greater even than that all pervading fear he had sensed in her before, though whether that fear
had been for herself or for another he could not tell. He was on the point of making that attack by sudden direct question, pressed home, which does so often succeed in breaking down the most obstinate silence, when she said, as if indeed anticipating this:
“I must go to Mother, she will be waiting,” and with that she went, nor did Bobby try to stop her.
CHAPTER XXX
FOLLY TOWER BY NIGHT
IT WAS LATE NOW, and presently, as Rosamund did not reappear, he went upstairs to bed. But he made no attempt to undress. Instead, he sat still and tried to think out the implications of this new development. After all, here was at last a break in that apparent dead end which had produced in Nixon a kind of defeatism and had at times made even Bobby himself wonder if he would ever be able to find certitude. But now had come proof that the guilty person—or at least an associate—was sufficiently disturbed by the investigation to try by action of his or her own to divert it into other channels. And when that happens this fresh action opens of necessity a new point of attack.
Yet still to be determined was whether it was more concerned with the murder or with obtaining and retaining possession of the medicine bag and its contents of such, by all accounts, great potential value: or, again, it might be with both, so closely interwoven did they seem. A question to which at the moment Bobby saw small hope of being able to supply an adequate reply.
It was this tumult and even indeed confusion in his mind, as much as anything else, that presently moved him to put on again his shoes he had just taken off, creep out of his room, and tiptoe down the stairs. He knew where the front door key was usually kept, found it, as softly as possible unlocked the door and drew the bolts, paused a moment to make sure there was no sign of his having disturbed either Rosamund or her mother, and then let himself out, locked the door again, and pocketed the key.
The night was singularly dark, with occasional showers of cold, driving rain. A gale was blowing up and seemed to be growing rapidly worse. Dark as was the night beneath its canopy of heavy rain clouds, Bobby was sufficiently familiar with the ground to be able, without too much difficulty, to pick his way towards the tower—the focus, as he felt, of all those strange and menacing activities he sensed gathering around.
As thus with care he groped his way onward he became aware of a vague impression that in the all-pervading cloak of darkness around, he was not alone. The belief grew strong within him that he was following someone who was moving with a speed and surety of footing he could not rival.
“Who’s there?” he called.
He got no reply save from the wind and the rain, but the faint sounds he had heard, or fancied he had heard, ceased entirely. He took out the electric torch—it was one larger and more powerful than most—he had taken the precaution to slip into his pocket and flashed it. Uselessly. In that darkness its ray penetrated no more than a yard or two and he switched it off again immediately. It was serving merely to proclaim his own presence, if indeed there had been anyone there at all. He began to think he must have been mistaken.
Nevertheless, he went more cautiously, listening more attentively, though the swiftly rising wind and the patter of rain made listening to anything but them almost impossible. It was a relief to reach the ruin, since the wind was coming from that direction and even its crumbling walls afforded some protection. But that relief was mitigated when close by there came crashing down a shower of heavy stone-work, dislodged by a gust stronger than most, and accompanied by pelting rain.
In some haste Bobby hurried to seek at least temporary shelter. Aided by his torch he flashed from time to time, he groped his way to the entrance to Folly Tower. That at least stood secure, invulnerable to anything except earthquake or high explosive. Not likely, he reflected, as he rested for a moment from that breathless struggle with the weather that anyone but himself would be out on such a night. For his own part, he was only sorry that on a mere restless, unreasoned impulse he had deserted the comfort of his room at Constant House and the near prospect of bed. He told himself that as soon as the present squall abated he would return to them with all the speed possible. Meanwhile, as no abatement seemed a near prospect, he climbed the stone steps to where there still remained on first-floor level the usable entrance between the tower and the old house. There he stood for a moment, telling himself that if the storm increased in violence, it was as likely as not that the whole of what was left of Constant Freres might collapse in one great final crash.
Fortunately, there was now a lull in the fury of the wind. The rain, however, was still as heavy as ever, and Bobby had no wish to get himself as thoroughly drenched as any attempt to return just now would certainly result in. He hoped the rain was too heavy to last for long. Probably for a time at least, it would be better to stay where he was. Idly he flashed his torch into the darkness stretching before him, reflecting that, strictly speaking, in deference to the strange uneasiness still at the back of his mind, he ought to explore that tangle of rotting floors, unsteady walls, passages and corridors where gaps lay waiting for incautious steps. Even so, he was still conscious of an impulse to make a search till common sense told him that the risk of a bad fall was too great and the chance of any such search being worth while too small.
He was on the point of returning to ground-level to see if the weather was showing any sign of improvement when he had his answer in the form of a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder just overhead. Not very hopeful. If the rain did not stop soon, he supposed he would just have to go through it and get drenched, since the only alternative seemed to be staying all night where he was—an even less attractive prospect. Then, in the comparative silence that had followed what seemed to be in that place of resounding echoes a loud and distant cry, or rather scream, smothered almost simultaneously by such a crash of falling masonry as to make Bobby feel that the whole building was about to collapse beneath the renewed anger of the storm.
Yet that scream, if indeed it was one, demanded investigation. If there was anyone else wandering about here on this tempestuous night, it was necessary to know who and why—and why that scream so immediately smothered by other sounds? It could very well mean that this other midnight prowler had met with an accident. Accidents might easily happen on such a night, here where footing was so insecure and treacherous, pitfalls so numerous, where what seemed perfectly safe might end abruptly in such a yawning pitfall as those many others he himself had left behind him. Fortunately, he had his torch and by its help he was able to pick his way with a fair measure of speed in the direction whence that scream had seemed to issue.
This aid, however, he discarded when at a little distance ahead he caught a glimpse of another light that shone brightly for a moment and then was gone again. An electric torch switched on and off apparently. Towards this then he hurried as silently as he could, but also with more speed than was altogether prudent, and indeed once his foot broke through the flooring, so that now there was another pitfall to be avoided and lucky it was no worse.
Again the light ahead shone out, now not so far ahead, though, by any means. The going was easier too, and he even risked a kind of tiptoe run. He turned a corner, dodged with difficulty, for he was intent to give no warning of his approach, a pile of debris of which the slightest touch might have disturbed the balance, saw where, crouched at the other side of a yawning gap in the flooring, peering down by the aid of an electric torch into the darkness below, was the crouching figure of a man. From both sides of this great gap, bits of debris were still falling off, as if in warning not to approach too near, from below clouds of dust were still rising, as if to conceal what it was had fallen. The gap, though thus continually widening by the still-falling debris, was not too wide for a jump. But the difficulty of the approach the uncertainty of a secure landing made Bobby hesitate. No help to the investigation if he himself went crashing down with more of this tessellated flooring, there to lie crippled or worse till morning came and he was found.
Even as these consideratio
ns flashed through his mind the crouching figure opposite straightened itself, stood upright, shone its torch on Bobby, revealed itself as Teddy Peel, and exclaimed:
“Oh, Mr Owen! I might have guessed you would be around.”
“What are you doing here?” demanded Bobby.
“Don’t try to jump,” Teddy warned him, perhaps guessing from some instinctive movement Bobby may have made that such a thought was in his mind. “It’s not too safe over here. I thought I heard someone cry out, as it might be he had come a cropper. It wasn’t you, was it, as let out that yell I didn’t half like the sound of? And then a smash as if half the place had come down. If it wasn’t you, who was it?” and again, not waiting for an answer, he stooped down to flash his torch once more into the darkness of the hole at his feet. “I can’t see more than a big heap of stuff,” he said. “The chap may have got away safely.”
“What are you doing here?” Bobby repeated, his first impression that Teddy was merely trying to put him off strong in his mind.
“Well, now,” Teddy answered, rather with the air of someone trying patiently to explain something quite simple to an unusually dense person, “I just had a feeling like us sensitives have, or else we wouldn’t be such, would we? Very strong it was, keeping on and on like a nagging woman, only if it’s that you can go off to a pub, and there you are. But if it’s a feeling you take it with you and it gets worse and worse. Sort of treachery to yourself, if you see what I mean, if you don’t take notice. Bed was what I wanted, but what it said was, ‘Get your bike and go along. Things happening.’ So off I went, for peace’s sake. That’s all.”
It was hardly an explanation Bobby was much inclined to accept at face value, but he felt this was no time for further questioning. That could wait. Instead, he said:
“I must make sure no one fell. I’ll have to go round and out by the Tower. You get down by the stairway and wait for me. You’ll be there first. If anyone has fallen through, we must get help first thing.”
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 19