“Putting her through it? Rather her than me. Watertight, and, if you ask me, her pa, too, most likely.”
“There’s nothing certain yet,” Bobby said, speaking as much to reassure himself as to contradict Peel. “Nothing proved. Manners may have been mistaken.”
“Well, he ought to know who it was, oughtn’t he?” Peel grumbled.
Still speaking half to himself, Bobby went on:
“It’s possible a third person crept up and Manners didn’t know, hadn’t heard anything, remembered who had been there, and thought it must be her. Or it might have been just possibly all an accident. If the floor gave way suddenly, and if Miss Outers was there and made a grab to try to save him, that might account for it. In his confused state of mind he might have taken it she had done the opposite.”
“Lord, Mr Owen,” exclaimed Peel, a little less assured now, “you might be counsel for the defence.”
“Counsel for neither side; only for the truth,” Bobby told him. “Miss Outers says you claimed that Manners had the missing medicine bag as they call it and offered to get it back from him. Did you?”
“Haven’t had much chance to try yet, have I?” complained Peel. “All this happening, and I only put it up to her this afternoon, and how, if I did, then I wanted a fifty per cent. interest. Turned it down flat, she did.”
“Both you and Manners were there to-night. Does that mean you were following him without his knowing it?”
“Lucky for me, he said ‘she’, before he went which I’m not, or you would be after me all right, wouldn’t you?” complained Peel. “I had to keep an eye on him, hadn’t I?” and now the one-time confidence he had begun to show had clearly become a distinct uneasiness. “Me being a sensitive—”
“Oh, cut that out,” Bobby interrupted impatiently. “I want facts, not humbug like that.”
“Which shows how little,” retorted Peel with an odd touch of dignity that took Bobby entirely by surprise, “how precious little you know about it. Humbug I may be, but a sensitive I am, like it or not, and know things that others don’t and never could. Not all the time. It comes and goes. The same as at cricket. One day you’ll see the ball big as a pudding, and next day fumble at it as if you couldn’t see straight any more. Believe it or not, there it is, and that’s a fact.”
“I meant as evidence given in Court,” Bobby explained, half apologetically. “Mr Nixon will want a lot more than talk about being a ‘sensitive’. He’ll certainly take into account the possibility of an accomplice being there. A lot of digging to be done before we get to the bottom of it all. And there’s something Miss Outers told me that may alter all our ideas. I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, if anyone else—and I don’t see who—did the pushing, it wasn’t me, and that’s a fact,” Peel protested, and still not too comfortably. “And I’ll tell you something else I’m getting to feel pretty sure about. But not a feeling like I meant before when you know without knowing how or why. The sort that only comes from brain work, logically, if you see what I mean, reasoning it out. I’m only trying to help. For why? Because it’s doing me no good with half my clients holding off because it looks like I’m a suspect, and the other half because if I’m a sensitive and was there, but can’t say who did it, then looks like I’m a humbug all right. Like a nut caught between the crackers I am. See?”
Bobby did see and said so, but added:
“You were going to tell me something? What was it?”
“I’m coming to that,” Peel answered. “Only wanting you to understand first. What I reason is that, seeing someone got Mr Outers’s bag, it was more likely Ludo Manners than anyone else. Up and coming chap. B.B.’s not that sort: slow and sure and more slow than sure, and that’s a fact. I don’t know how Manners managed it, but I reckon he did, and hid it somewhere in the old ruin, meaning to take it away on the Q.T. when he got a chance. Only then some other party found it, and went off with it, or else Manners forgot exactly where he’d put it. That’s the way how I believe it happened, and if I’m right—and I’ll bet I am—then I know who has it now.”
“Who?” Bobby asked.
“Ah! That’s telling,” Peel replied, with a little knowing nod added for good measure.
CHAPTER XXXIII
ONE LINK NEEDED
BOBBY OFFERED NO comment. He allowed Peel’s claim to know what Bobby himself was so anxious to know and did not to pass by him as though he had hardly heard it. For he was very well aware that a show of indifference was often the best and quickest way to induce most people to reveal what they knew, or thought they knew, and were inclined to keep to themselves. To feel they know what others are ignorant of seems to enhance their ego, while simply to ignore their claim tempted them to prove its value by revealing its nature.
So it was now. Peel was evidently both surprised and disappointed by his failure to impress Bobby, but then the door of the dining-room opened and Rosamund appeared. She came into the kitchen and stood for a moment in the doorway, looking at the two men as if wondering who they were and what they were doing, and Bobby was once more struck by the marble rigidity of her face and bearing, so that she more resembled a walking statue than a living, breathing woman. Then she spoke. She said:
“Mother’s waiting. I must get her milk ready.”
She went through into the pantry, presumably to get the milk. Peel got up and said to Bobby in a kind of muffled whisper:
“Gives you the willies, don’t she? And that’s a fact.”
Bobby went into the hall and through to the dining-room. Nixon looked up as he entered and said:
“Looks to me as if we had it all sewn up now.”
“You’ve decided to charge her?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, yes,” answered Nixon. “Yes. Not at once. I’ve told her I shall have to get her to make a full statement, and she had better think over what she wants to say, and how she can have her lawyer present if she likes. We don’t want to take her at any disadvantage, I told her. What you say yourself in one of those lectures of yours on C.I.D. work about giving suspects time to think things over, and what they say then often gives just the lead wanted. Very interesting, those lectures of yours. You ought to put them in a book. Why don’t you?”
“Oh, I might some day,” Bobby answered, secretly much flattered. “I don’t know, though. Talking’s not like writing. Besides, chiefly of technical interest.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Nixon protested. “Lots of men turn author when they retire—make a jolly good thing of it too. ‘The Reminiscences of Bobby Owen.’ Should go down well, and keep you busy when you retire.” He reverted then to what he had been saying before. “Giving her time, that’s the idea. She may come clean when she sees she’s cornered. She might even try to make a get-away. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. Panic. Or do a suicide. She has a way of staring at you I don’t like.”
“I don’t think she’s that kind,” Bobby said. “If you don’t mind my saying so. I should wait a bit. I don’t feel myself that the evidence is quite enough as yet. There’s been too much happening too quickly to-night for it all to be thought out yet as it should be. I am inclined to think that a careful study of what’s been said and done to-night might give a new conclusive lead.”
“You don’t mean you’ve an ace up your sleeve, do you?” Nixon asked, a touch of suspicion and distrust in his voice.
“No. No,” Bobby protested. “Nothing like that. All cards on the table. But I’m not sure how to sort them out till I’ve had another good, long look at them.”
“Well, tell me when you have,” Nixon said. He blinked drowsily at the clock on the mantelpiece and then yawned mightily. “Might be time,” he said, “to get an hour’s shuteye before starting again. Lord knows I need it. My chaps, too. Occupational risk, I suppose, having to work the clock round. If it hadn’t been for Manners saying ‘she’, I don’t deny I might have paid a little more attention to Teddy Peel. Don’t trust him somehow. He says you’ll confirm it was ‘sh
e’ Manners said. You wouldn’t say there was any chance of any confusion, misunderstanding?”
“None whatever,” Bobby assured him. “Manners spoke clearly and strongly as men do sometimes at the hour of death.”
“Not the first time everything has depended on the last words of a dying man,” Nixon commented.
“No, indeed,” agreed Bobby. “I do think that perhaps if you think them over . . . they may show . . .” He drifted away into silence, deep in a medley of thought.
“Show what?” Nixon asked, and, without waiting for a reply, went on: “Well, they do, don’t they?” He paused again, and when Bobby still seemed lost in his own thoughts, continued rather uncomfortably, as if he wished to show sympathy but didn’t know how: “I’m afraid you’ll have to go into the witness-box. I’ve been thinking about that. I’m sorry, but I don’t see any way to dodge it.”
“There isn’t any,” Bobby said.
“A relative, isn’t she?”
“Mrs Outers is a first cousin,” Bobby explained. “We were children together. Miss Outers will be a second cousin, isn’t it? I’m not sure. Anyhow, one of the family one way or another.”
Nixon looked a little shocked, as if he felt Bobby’s attitude rather callous, rather too carefree. Nothing to do with him, though. All he said was:
“Well, what must be, must be. What about bed for an hour or two?” and he yawned even more mightily than before.
Bobby looked at his watch.
“Not for me, I think,” he said. “I want to have a talk with Dewey James and his mother as soon as I can. There’s been no sign of either of them all night, though you would think they must have heard something was going on.”
“Want to keep out of it most likely,” Nixon suggested. “I don’t blame them. I would myself if I could. I expect you would, too.”
“Yes, indeed,” Bobby declared with fervour. “Too late for that, though. Got to go through with it. Dewey might have something to say. Or his mother. I’ll try and see them as soon as they show.”
“Well, I’ll be off,” Nixon said. “Won’t be long before I’m around again. Got to do a report, and I must ring up our Chairman and tell him it’s in the bag now. As near as near can be,” he added hastily, remembering that Bobby had hinted at the possibility of fresh evidence coming to light. “Not going to bring in an accomplice, are you?” he asked. “If there is one, most likely it’s Teddy Peel. I feel he’s up to something, or has been. I don’t know which.”
“I feel fairly sure no one else was in it,” Bobby assured him. “It’s a one-man job, carefully planned, carefully worked out.”
“I’ll leave you one of our chaps,” Nixon promised through another yawn, the biggest yet. “In case you need help. Take my advice. Never mind Dewey. If he has anything to say and is ready to say it, he will, if he isn’t, he won’t; and nothing on earth will make him. By the way, Teddy Peel’s gone off. Asked if he might, and didn’t wait to be told; just buzzed off on his bike.”
With that Nixon himself departed to find his car. Bobby sat down in the nearest chair. His watch showed it was five o’clock. Too early to expect yet those signs of activity at Freres Lodge for which he was waiting. Another hour perhaps. He closed his eyes, but he felt no inclination to sleep. His thoughts were in a ferment, seeking the more probable, seeking certainty, testing one theory against another, only to discard each in succession as each began to show those inner contradictions which deny validity. Always he found himself returning to his original belief he had never yet mentioned, since to do so might, if it became known, lead to the destruction of the one piece of factual evidence he needed to establish his theory on a firm, objective base. He glanced again at his watch. Six o’clock. He got up and went to the window. It was growing lighter now, in spite of the rising morning mist, and the storm of the previous night was subsiding rapidly. A light appeared in Freres Lodge. In the kitchen, Bobby thought, from what he remembered of the layout of the cottage. Preparations for breakfast probably. Soon the first of the day’s outdoor activities would begin and then he would go across and have his talk.
Then as he watched he caught a glimpse of a figure, that of a man, hurrying at speed between cottage and outbuildings, into one of which it quickly disappeared, the one Bobby was nearly sure wherein a short time previously he had found Mrs James busy over some mechanical job and been struck by the dexterity with which she handled her tools.
Much puzzled, Bobby rubbed his eyes, wondering if, more sleepy than he knew, he had dozed for a moment on his feet and mistaken a passing dream for reality.
The mist, rising from the soaking ground, made it difficult to distinguish objects or be sure of their identity when at one moment they were shrouded in invisibility and at the next showed clear and distinct. All the same, he felt fairly sure it was a man he had seen, a man hurrying to seek shelter—or concealment—and that that man had not been Dewey James. Nor was it in any way likely that Dewey would be hurrying in so furtive, almost slinking, a manner to dodge into one of his own outbuildings. And then Dewey, as Bobby knew, seldom ran or even hurried. He was more accustomed to move with a certain grave deliberation, as of one who knew there was always time, since time is but the gloss upon eternity.
Who, then, and on what errand? The name that now began to run in Bobby’s mind was that of Teddy Peel. But Teddy Peel according to Nixon, had ‘buzzed off’ in the small hours. And what could he be doing back again at an hour scarcely less small?
Matter for investigation, even though it might not be Peel at all. Some friend of Dewey’s, perhaps, or one of the casual helpers he occasionally employed—when he could get them—or even Dewey himself, forgetting his usual non-hurry habitude.
Bobby decided it would be as well to go across to the cottage at once and see. He went out into the hall. Rosamund was there. She had just come downstairs. She saw him and said:
“Mother is sleeping now. Haven’t you been to bed? You ought.”
“Have you?” he retorted.
“I have been lying down,” she answered. “I must get breakfast ready. Has Mr Nixon gone? He thinks I killed Mr Manners. You think so too, don’t you? Mr Nixon wants me to say I did. Father, too. Mr Nixon says they wouldn’t hang me, now it isn’t done any more. They would bury me alive instead. Is it better to be buried alive than to die and be done with it all?”
It was a question to which Bobby knew no reply.
CHAPTER XXXIV
CONCLUSION
THE SUN WAS rising, the dank morning mist dispersing, as Bobby picked his way across the soggy, sodden ground towards the Lodge. From the direct path to it he turned aside to the tool-shed into which he had seen that hurrying figure vanish. Of course, whoever it was might not be still there, might have slipped out again as swiftly and as secretly as he had entered.
Hurriedly Bobby pushed on past the hen-run, where its inhabitants were noisily proclaiming their conviction that breakfast was much overdue, and arrived at the tool-shed. The door was shut and he noted that it was strong, as was indeed the whole substantial building. He saw that the key was in the lock. It was more a general feeling that a crisis was near at hand than any real sense of danger that made him cautiously remove the key and slip it into his pocket. Not likely that anyone would turn the key if he left it where it was. But if that did happen he would be a prisoner, nor would it be easy to break out quickly in case of necessity. He pushed open the door and entered. There was no one visible and nothing to suggest that anybody had been there that morning. Later on, he thought or imagined he had thought—he was never able to determine which—that as he entered he had been aware of a faint, all-pervading smell, stench rather, hovering in the air. If he had done so, he paid it now no attention. He gave a quick glance round, at the work bench, at the rough deal table near by, at the two tool chests, both padlocked. Why two? One for Dewey, one for his mother?
He stood there for a moment or two, slowly looking round. He was not fully satisfied, but for the moment he did not
push his explorations further. Instead he said aloud, as if communing with himself:
“No one here, anyhow.”
With that he opened the door to go and once outside two or three quick strides took him to the small side window by which the shed was lighted. One glance showed him a man crawling from under the table. It was Teddy Peel. While Bobby watched, Peel went across to where the two tool-chests stood. He seemed to be examining each in turn, bending over them and apparently sniffing at them, as though testing them with his nose. To judge by the little nod, as of satisfaction, that he gave he seemed to have found what he had expected. Taking some small tool or another from his pocket, he began operations on the padlock of one of them. Bobby judged the time had come for him to intervene. He went back to the front of the shed and pushed the door open. Teddy jumped round, all tense and ready. His hand dropped to his coat pocket. Then his attitude relaxed. His hand emerged empty. He said ruefully:
“I might have known your popping off like that was just a do. I might have known you would be sure to be around. And me thinking you would be in bed.”
“What are you doing here?” Bobby asked, ignoring these lamentations.
“Trying to recover Mr Outers’s bag that’s missing and you can’t find. No idea where to look, you police haven’t.”
“Do you mean it’s in that tool-chest you were fiddling with?” Bobby asked.
“That’s right,” Teddy answered.
“How do you know?” demanded Bobby.
“Can’t you smell anything?” Teddy asked.
“No,” snapped Bobby, even though afterwards he came to feel that this prompt response had been given too quickly—the result perhaps of an unconscious resolve not to be put off by any other than an explanation in terms of common experience.
“I’ve told you before,” Teddy was saying now, “that me being a sensitive—”
“And I’ve told you before,” Bobby interrupted sharply, “to drop that sort of thing when you’re talking to me. I want to know what you would say if you were in the witness-box. I don’t advise you to start offering explanations of that sort there. Wouldn’t go down too well with the lawyers, or the jury either.”
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 21