“O.K.” Peel answered. “There is someone—must be. That cry I heard. And you don’t have to be a sensitive—”
Once more he left a sentence unfinished, for Bobby was already hurrying away with all the speed permitted by surroundings so treacherous and doubtful. He turned to go, and by the time Bobby arrived he was standing by the side of a prostrate, unconscious man.
“I had pretty near to dig him out,” Teddy said as Bobby came up. “He’s bad. He’s alive, but he’s hurt bad.”
“Who is it?” Bobby asked, and then answered his own question: “Ludo Manners.” He knelt down by Ludo’s side to see what he could do and recognized at once that that was little. “What was he doing here?”
“After that medicine bag,” Peel said. “There’s ill luck goes with it, but all the same—” and once more he left unfinished what he was saying.
“Go back to the house,” Bobby directed him. “Here’s the front door key. Call out there’s been an accident and I’ve sent you to ring up for help. Hurry.”
“Hurry no good,” Teddy said. “He’s past help.”
Bobby was supporting Ludo’s head on his knee. He had wiped away the blood, the dirt, the dust that had covered it, and he had wiped out Ludo’s mouth with a handkerchief soaked in the brandy from a flask he always carried with him. He dared not try to give any to Ludo to drink for fear of choking him. Ludo opened his eyes. He seemed to recognize Bobby. He said quite loudly and clearly:
“I’ve had a fall. Damn tricky up there. I don’t feel anything, but I think I’m hurt. She poked me. From behind.” His expression changed. “Hullo, Mummy,” he said and died.
CHAPTER XXXI
NO ESCAPE
SCARCELY HAD THE dread sound of the death rattle died away, scarcely had Bobby time to lay a handkerchief over the dead man’s face, than the sound of approaching footsteps became audible. Teddy Peel heard them first.
“There’s someone coming,” he said with a kind of nervous giggle, for he was in fact much shaken. “Getting to be kind of a general meeting, ain’t it?”
The footsteps grew nearer, hurrying a little now, as if speeded up by hearing voices. B.B. appeared. He said no word, but stood there, staring, as incredulously he took in the meaning of those two men in the small islet of light their torches made in the dense surrounding dark and of that still form with the shrouded face that lay between them. Neither did they speak, but looked at him strangely, doubtfully. Then he said, pointing:
“Who’s that? What’s happened?”
It was Peel who answered with the same nervous alacrity he had shown before, saying:
“Had a fall. Croaked. It’s Ludo Manners. He said ‘she’. Clears you and me. ‘She’ he said; plain he said it. Didn’t he?” he added, appealing to Bobby for confirmation.
“What are you doing here?” Bobby asked, speaking to B.B.
But B.B., staring at the two of them and then at the dead man and then back again at Bobby and at Peel, seemed too bewildered to answer.
Peel said, repeating himself:
“‘She’, he said, plain as you like before he went. So it isn’t you nor me. Or Mr Owen would have had us both in clink by now. Wouldn’t you?”
Bobby made no answer to this appeal either. But the word ‘she’ seemed to catch B.B.’s attention and he said:
“Is Rosamund—Miss Outers—is she here?”
“Why do you think she might be?” Bobby asked. “What are you doing here? In this weather, at this time of night?”
“She’s not at the house,” B.B. answered, making an obvious effort to collect his scattered wits. “She rang me. She said to come quickly. She didn’t say why. I was out. They told me as soon as I got back, and I came at once. I couldn’t make anyone hear. Her room’s at the back, so I went round to see if there was a light showing, but there wasn’t. I thought it was funny, and I tried the back door. It wasn’t locked. I went in, but she wasn’t there. So then I thought she might be here for some reason, and I came to see.” He paused, and again stared at them, outlined in their little patch of light which now his own torch had widened. “For God’s sake,” he cried out suddenly and violently, “what’s happened? If—that—is Manners lying there, where’s Miss Outers?”
“That’s just it,” Peel answered before Bobby could speak. “‘She’, he said, plain as tripe. Well, where do we go from here? What next?”
“Stop chattering,” Bobby told him sharply and a little unfairly. “Do what I told you. And hurry.”
“O.K. O.K.,” Peel said, a trifle scared by that tone of angry authority that sometimes came without his knowing it into Bobby’s voice, coming as it were spontaneously from that fiercely latent, inner force of which his general manner gave but small indication. Before it Peel scuttled away, as if blown by a sudden gust of the wind still howling without. To B.B. Bobby said, equally sharply, “You stop here,” though, indeed, B.B. had shown no sign of wishing to do otherwise, and now was saying:
“What’s been happening? . . . There’s been an accident. . . . This place ought to have been pulled down long ago . . . dangerous. . . . It is an accident, isn’t it? What was the poor devil doing here?”
“There’s nothing we can do till Mr Nixon gets here,” Bobby said.
He lapsed into silence and deep thought—nor were those thoughts happy. Dark was his mood, dark as the surrounding night. If only he had not obeyed the quixotic impulse to use all his long painfully acquired experience and skill to remove even the faintest suspicion from those who, after all, had some claim upon him, both of kindred and of childhood memories. Unless that could be done, doubt and fear, mistrust and whispering gossip, would follow both mother and daughter all their lives. But now it had come to this—that he would have to testify to the dead man’s last words, and to the last words spoken by a dying man both law and natural feeling attach the utmost importance. Faced with the last verity, few men lie or none. It was an issue from which there was no escape. Not only he, but Teddy Peel had heard, plainly, beyond all possibility of doubt or misunderstanding. And Peel would certainly be no way inclined to keep silent. Nor was there any reason why he should.
He was still facing this unhappy prospect with ever-increasing dismay when he heard cars approaching. Nixon’s men had not lost much time. Bobby braced himself to say what had to be said. It was Nixon himself who appeared first, called from a warm and comfortable bed, and, though the wind was now dropping, and the rain lessening, wet through, since in his haste he had brought no coat.
“Bad business,” he said with brief greeting. “Now it’s two. Ten to one whoever did the first did this as well. ‘She pushed him’, he said, didn’t he? Can’t be Peel or Baynham if he said ‘she’. Peel says you’ll confirm?” Nixon waited for a nod of assent, received it, went on: “Well, that Outers girl was always my first pick.”
“There was no name,” Bobby said. “Manners gave none.”
“No. I know,” Nixon agreed. “Just ‘she’. No name. Might be anyone in a way. All the same, there you are. One thing and another. Clear enough to my mind, even if a bit more evidence would strengthen it. It’ll come all right now we know.”
Bobby made no comment, even though that last word seemed to extinguish all hope, since he felt that how Nixon saw it was how most people would see it. Now more of Nixon’s men were arriving—those who conduct the preliminaries to the investigation proper: the photographer, the pathologist, the finger-print expert, the specialist in preparing those plans and models so necessary for the full understanding of the scene of any crime. All this busy, grim activity Nixon became fully occupied in supervising, making sure that everything was being done according to rule and method as officially laid down.
Bobby, who in spite of all his training and long service, had never got over a deep inner distrust of all rule, all method, all too strict adherence to the beaten path, though none the less admitting their absolute necessity, now slipped away; since in all that was now going on he had no part to play. The rain had c
eased, though it seemed likely to start again at any moment. He noticed that no light showed at Freres Lodge, so apparently neither Dewey nor his mother had been disturbed, or, if either of them had heard anything had not thought it desirable to be again concerned in any further happenings. Very prudent, very sensible, Bobby thought, and not uncharacteristic of Dewey, who always seemed much to prefer to be a spectator rather than a participant in events. Hurrying on, Bobby found the Constant House front door open and entered. Teddy Peel heard him and promptly appeared. He said eagerly, not without a trace of satisfaction in his voice:
“Her outdoor things are in the kitchen. Sopping wet. She was trying to dry them. Shows she’s been out to-night, and no use her saying she wasn’t.”
“Has she said she wasn’t?” Bobby asked.
“Hasn’t had much chance to yet,” Peel retorted. “You see if she don’t. Makes it a sure thing, even if that ‘she’ of Manners’ didn’t.”
“It’s a lot to build upon a pronoun,” Bobby told him. “You’ve seen her?”
“She heard me on the ’phone,” Peel explained. “Came to the head of the stairs and called down to know if it was you. Dressed she was, which makes it a safe bet she had a job to do and went and did it.”
“I think it would be better not to talk like that till Mr Nixon has finished over there,” Bobby said. “He’ll want to take statements from both you and me. You told Miss Outers what had happened?”
“That’s right, and she never turned a hair, just listened like a stone statue. Made you feel funny like, when it was her ought to have been feeling that way—and plenty cause, too.”
“You didn’t ask any questions?”
“No,” Peel answered resentfully. “Somehow she made you feel you hadn’t better, and if you did you wouldn’t get any notice taken, and what she thinks you can’t even guess. Oh, she’s a deep one, and what I say is, she’s got the medicine bag all right. Ludo Manners had it and that’s why she went to meet him to-night. Only he wouldn’t part, so she outed him and got it. You find it, and that’ll show you. Ought to be enough for anyone,” and when he had said this he looked at Bobby in a sly, sideways way, evidently already suspecting that Bobby meant to do his best for these two relatives of his—that they were of his kindred was now generally known and had been the subject of some behind-the-back whispering. He might even just possibly be open to the suggestion of what Teddy Peel himself was wont to call a ‘gentleman’s agreement’. If anyone had suggested that that was another name for a mild form of blackmail, Teddy would have been most virtuously and genuinely indignant. Besides, in any case, call it by what name may be preferred, there were only one or two such ‘gentleman’s agreements’ in force between him and his clients. After all, a ‘sensitive’ can’t help now and then picking up little things the client is not too anxious should be generally broadcast to the world. He tried a cautious gambit. He said: “I’m sorry about all this. I only wish there was something I could do to help. Not much I wouldn’t if I saw a way.”
Bobby made no comment. He did not choose to let Peel see that he had so much as noticed the veiled suggestion, not even to show, or still less betray, any indignation. Teddy, realizing quickly that his gambit had failed, himself lapsed into silence.
They had been standing in the entrance hall at the foot of the stairs as they talked. Now at the head of these stairs Rosamund appeared. Slowly she began to descend them, almost like a woman walking in her sleep, so remote did she seem, so far away in a dark world of her own. At the foot of the stairs she paused, and when she still did not speak, but only stood there motionless, looking silently at them who in equal silence had watched her slow descent, Bobby turned and said to Peel:
“You go, will you, and wait somewhere? Mr Nixon may be some time yet,” and when Teddy hesitated, plainly reluctant to obey, Bobby, whose mood was not one of patience and of tolerance, repeated: “Get out. And don’t try to listen or any other tricks,” and this he said with such a tone and manner as induced Teddy to depart with all convenient speed. To Rosamund, who had remained impassive, as if she had not even noticed this small passing interlude, Bobby continued: “I’m not going to ask you questions. That’s for Mr Nixon. He will be wanting you to make a statement.”
“Yes. I know,” Rosamund breathed rather than spoke.
“But there’s one thing I would like you to tell me. You’ve heard what’s happened?”
“Mr Peel told me,” she answered in the same dull, far-off voice. “I knew before,” and Bobby was only too quick to see how those few words would sound if they were repeated in a court of law.
As well might be.
CHAPTER XXXII
COUNSEL FOR TRUTH
NOW THERE WAS a silence that hung between them like a cloud, a silence like the silence of the grave. Yet it was one to which Rosamund, standing there so motionless, to all appearance so far removed from present things, seemed hardly aware, or, rather, was to it utterly indifferent. All the same, it was she who broke it first, saying:
“Mother is awake. It was the cars coming that woke her. I said I would go and see what it was. It’s the police, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Bobby answered.
“They have been quick,” she said musingly. “That was you, wasn’t it? I want to warm some milk.”
“Yes,” Bobby said again. “Where were you? Out there I mean. How long? How much did you see?”
“I heard you go out,” she answered, “and I saw a light in the ruin, and I knew then there must be some one there. There hadn’t been time for it to be you, and I thought it must be Mr Baynham, sheltering.”
“Why him?” Bobby asked when she fell silent again, thinking seemingly that she had said all that was required.
“I had rung up to ask if he could come,” she answered in the same monotonous voice, almost as though a marble statue spoke. “He was out and they didn’t know when he would be back. It got so late I thought he couldn’t be coming. I went to bed. When I heard you and saw the light I thought I had better go, too. But it wasn’t him. It was you and Mr Peel, and someone lying still between you, and you and Mr Peel looking at each other and I saw the man lying there was Mr Manners and I saw he was dead.”
“How did you know it was him? How did you know he was dead?”
“There is a difference between life and death,” she answered slowly. “I knew. And I knew who it was. I knew the suit he had on—the pattern.”
“Why was it so urgent to see Mr Baynham? I mean, what made you ring him up like that? Don’t say if you don’t want to.”
“Mr Peel had been again. Earlier. Soon after you went to Midminster. I expect he had been waiting till you were out of the way. He said Mr Manners had Father’s medicine bag, and if I would promise to give him a half share in it and let him open it, he would get it back. I only wanted it to destroy it for ever. I said so. I said it brought ill luck with it—the worst luck, because the medicine in it had gone bad. He said he knew that, because he is a sensitive, and I think he is. All he wants is the money he thinks might come from opening it, and he doesn’t understand that may make the medicine ever so worse—stronger and worse, too strong for him to deal with, at least when it’s only himself and his own gain he is thinking of.”
“I don’t know about all that,” Bobby said doubtfully. “It doesn’t seem to help to find who killed your father. Or Ludo Manners. It can’t have been Peel himself, or Manners wouldn’t have said what he did as he was dying. It may show a motive. I don’t know. You ought to have told me when I got back. Why didn’t you?”
For the first time the frozen composure of her countenance was broken by a faint smile, or rather the semblance of a smile. It was gone again instantly, but a greater animation showed in her voice as she replied:
“I never know what you will do. I expect you would have rung up Mr Nixon at once. Mother says you are like Abraham.”
“Abraham?” Bobby repeated, not for the moment quite certain which Abraham was meant—Lincoln or
Biblical. “What on earth did she mean?”
“Abraham was ready to offer up his son as a burnt offering to his God. Your god is duty, isn’t it? You would sacrifice your son to it, wouldn’t you, if you had one? Anyone else as well.”
“Hardly a fair way to put it,” Bobby protested, deeply hurt, even though he knew it was true enough.
“Men are so impersonal,” she said tolerantly, trying to soothe any feathers she had ruffled. “It’s always like that with men. We think of persons first—persons are more important than rules and things.”
But now they were interrupted by the arrival of Nixon.
“What a night,” he said as he came in. “A bit better now, though.” Then he said. “This is the second time.” And he looked hard at Rosamund. “You’ve been out there, haven’t you?” he asked, and when she made a gesture of assent he went on: “I’ll have to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. To clear things up. Anywhere we can talk?”
Silently she led him into the dining-room. Bobby watched them go. He did not speak. Plainly Nixon wished to be alone with Rosamund while he asked a few questions before taking the more formal statement that would be required later on. It might be he was merely being tactful, in sparing Bobby the embarrassment of being present at, and perhaps taking part in, the examination of one of his own family—one, too, to whom at the moment he stood as guest to host. Or, more probably, because he feared Rosamund might derive courage and support from the presence of a relative and prove more obstinate in her attitude—if, that is, there was anything to be obstinate about.
In neither case was there anything that Bobby could do. His position was so entirely unofficial that he could hardly open his mouth unless by previous agreement with Nixon. In a thoroughly depressed mood, Bobby wandered off to find Peel dozing by a kitchen fire, now surrounded by a collection of drying clothing. He looked up when Bobby entered and said:
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 20