BOBBY. And you opened it and stole the money?
CARTER. No. It wasn’t that at all. The handbag burst open itself. Weak fastening and the wad of notes fell out and I picked them up. Of course, I was going to give them her back for the reward, only with the murder and the excitement I never got a chance. Murder does put things out of your mind, you know. You’ve got nothing on me. It’s not theft to pick things up. Not as if I cleared out with ’em.
BOBBY. I think I remember you tried, only I stopped you.
CARTER. That’s neither here nor there. I ask you. Suppose I had pinched that wad of notes and meant to do a bunk with them, should I have corpsed the old boy and spoiled my chance of getting away? If it hadn’t been for the murder, I would have been out of that lift, got the down lift, been out of the hotel, and off with a good night’s work done, before any one knew a thing. That old boy’s being done in has cost me a good thirty pounds. Well, I ask you.
BOBBY. Anyhow, I think that’s all I want to ask you.
A.C.. All right. Chief inspector, send him back to the others but don’t let him go yet.
CARTER. I’ve told you the truth. You’ve nothing on me.
HUNT. Sergeant. Take him back to the others. None of them are to go yet.
MARTIN. Very good, sir. Come along, you.
BOBBY. I think, sir, we must accept Carter’s story. The wire of Lady Weedon’s necklace was certainly cut as he described. I don’t see how he could have known that unless he had done it himself. He had her money and as he says his guilt of the theft is clear proof of his innocence of the murder.
A.C.. Guilt proof of innocence, eh? Well, well.
HUNT. But, hang it all, man alive, you’ve proved the whole blessed lot are innocent. Owen, all the same, it’s perfectly certain one of them is guilty. Unless there was an invisible man in the lift.
BOBBY. Not an invisible man. There was some one else in the lift though, wasn’t there?
HUNT. But all the time you’ve kept saying no one else could possibly have been near except that lot.
BOBBY. Yes. That’s so. Quite certain.
HUNT. Well, then.
BOBBY. You see, we’ve forgotten – the liftman.
HUNT. The liftman? What on earth has he to do with it?
BOBBY. Well, he was in the lift, wasn’t he?
HUNT. Yes but . . . but . . . well, why should he? You can’t think he murdered Briggs because of that threat to report him he said himself didn’t amount to anything. A transfer to another lift at the most. Not likely the management would be keen on sacking him with the staff so short through the war.
BOBBY. No, but he did he say he might be moved to another lift.
HUNT. Well, what about it?
BOBBY. He would have lost his chance of being alone with Sir John as the lift went up and down.
HUNT. Yes . . . but . . . I mean to say . . . why should he?
BOBBY. May we have him in again? I think there are a few questions we could usefully ask him now.
A.C.. All right. Chief inspector.
HUNT. Sergeant, tell the liftman we should like to see him again.
MARTIN. Very good, sir. He’s been fixing the lift as high as it’ll go, in the free space above this floor. To prevent any risk of interference. I told him that had to be seen to and he said that was the best way.
HUNT. All right. Fetch him in.
MARTIN. The liftman, sir.
LIFTMAN. The sergeant says you want to ask me some more questions.
HUNT. That’s right.
BOBBY. About your livery or uniform or whatever you call it. Do all the liftmen here wear gloves on duty.
LIFTMAN. Yes. Yes. I suppose so. Yes. The management makes rather a point of it.
BOBBY. Yes, I noticed you wore gloves. I wondered if it was usual.
LIFTMAN. Oh yes, quite usual.
BOBBY. That means that you yourself and the three ladies were the ones in the lift who were actually wearing gloves?
LIFTMAN. I . . . yes . . . well, what about it?
BOBBY. Gloves were point one. The voice was point two.
LIFTMAN. What voice? I heard no voice. What do you mean?
BOBBY. I mean that when I heard you talking at first, you talked very bad grammar with a strong cockney accent. When you were giving your evidence you talked like an educated man.
LIFTMAN. What about it?
BOBBY. Only that it made me wonder why an educated man should be content with a job like running a lift. Unless of course he had some reason of his own.
LIFTMAN. What could that be?
BOBBY. I’m wondering. I’m wondering, too, how it was you knew there was tattooing on Sir John’s breast, above the heart, where the bullets that killed him made issue?
LIFTMAN. Wasn’t a secret, was it?
BOBBY. Hardly a thing he would be likely to chat about, I thought. I wondered if it had been noticed when he was bathing – having a swim. But you remember you told me there was no swimming pool here so that didn’t seem likely. We asked all the others about bathing and swimming and about the tattooing. We drew blank. Except that Lady Weedon knew about it. After all she was his wife. I wondered if you had been told of that tattooing by some woman who had also had chance and opportunity to see it.
LIFTMAN. I don’t know what you mean.
BOBBY. I think you do. How long have you been working here?
LIFTMAN. Five years.
BOBBY. That’s a long time. Jacob served seven years for a wife, didn’t he? Would five years be too long to serve to avenge a wife?
LIFTMAN. How should I know?
BOBBY. I thought you might. When Sir John Briggs threatened to report you, were you afraid you would lose your opportunity of being alone with him sometimes?
LIFTMAN. Why should I? Why should I care which lift I worked?
BOBBY. You said your name was William Johns. William Johns is not unlike Billy Jacks. Is Billy Jacks your real name?
LIFTMAN. What do you know of Billy Jacks? I thought everyone long ago had forgotten Billy Jacks.
BOBBY. Some memories are long. You are Billy Jacks?
LIFTMAN. How did you find it out? I thought I had got away with it. I meant to kill the swine. I always did. But I didn’t want to hang for him. Not that I cared about going on living. Why should I? He took it all from me. He took my business. He took my wife. He chucked her out into the street and then she came back to me. She told me about the tattooing. We went abroad. She died there. I let them think at home I had died too. I think perhaps I had. But I made up my mind to see Briggs paid. I found out this hotel was his London headquarters. I got a job here. I worked it to be put on the lift he used – the up-lift to Nine. I had a little automatic I bought in America and smuggled in when I came back. I used to finger it when we were alone in the lift, thinking about pushing it in his face and letting go.
BOBBY. Why did you wait so long?
LIFTMAN. I don’t know. It’s not easy to make up your mind to kill a man. Besides, I didn’t want to hang for it, because I knew how he would have grinned at that.
BOBBY. You were willing enough to let some one else hang for it. A very little more one way or another and any one of the others in the lift might have hanged for what you did.
LIFTMAN. I never thought of them. They had to take their chance like everyone else.
BOBBY. I might have been sorry I had to bring you in for doing what you did to any one like John Briggs. But not when I think of your putting six other people who had never harmed you in peril of their lives, making them suffer the agony of mind they must have gone through to-night.
LIFTMAN. When you have memories like mine going round and round in your head, you don’t think of other people. But I shan’t hang. I’ve taken my precautions. Good-bye.
And good luck and no hard feelings.
BOBBY. Stop, you fool, you can’t –
HUNT. Stop. Hi. Sergeant. Sergeant.
A.C.. Here, you, come back.
HUNT. It’s all
right. He can’t get away. The lift’s hung up out of reach. The corridor’s guarded at both ends.
(Shouts are heard)
MARTIN. It’s the liftman, sir. He ran out and he’s jumped down the lift shaft.
THE END
About The Author
E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.
At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.
He died in 1956.
The Bobby Owen Mysteries
1. Information Received
2. Death among the Sunbathers
3. Crossword Mystery
4. Mystery Villa
5. Death of a Beauty Queen
6. Death Comes to Cambers
7. The Bath Mysteries
8. Mystery of Mr. Jessop
9. The Dusky Hour
10. Dictator’s Way
11. Comes a Stranger
12. Suspects – Nine
13. Murder Abroad
14. Four Strange Women
15. Ten Star Clues
16. The Dark Garden
17. Diabolic Candelabra
18. The Conqueror Inn
19. Night’s Cloak
20. Secrets Can’t be Kept
21. There’s a Reason for Everything
22. It Might Lead Anywhere
23. Helen Passes By
24. Music Tells All
25. The House of Godwinsson
26. So Many Doors
27. Everybody Always Tells
28. The Secret Search
29. The Golden Dagger
30. The Attending Truth
31. Strange Ending
32. Brought to Light
33. Dark is the Clue
34. Triple Quest
35. Six Were Present
E.R. Punshon
So Many Doors
“What happens,” Bobby asked, “when a woman with an irresistible attraction for men, and the man with an irresistible attraction for women, meet? When glamour meets glamour . . . ?”
“Lummy,” said the superintendent.
A seemingly innocent young woman has disappeared, presumably to elope with an unscrupulous lothario. Despite his wife Olive’s urging, Met Commander Bobby Owen is originally reluctant to get involved in a seemingly personal matter. But he soon finds his professional whiskers twitching when he discovers the cad in the case is a former suspect in a knife murder. Before long Bobby discovers a new murder scene – plenty of blood, but strangely no corpse …
So Many Doors, a classic golden age whodunit, is the twenty-sixth novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1949. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans, and a selection of E.R. Punshon’s prolific Guardian reviews of other golden age mystery fiction.
“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” DOROTHY L. SAYERS
CHAPTER I
“FULL MOON TO-NIGHT”
Bobby Owen, lately honoured, slightly to his embarrassment, by the somewhat ambiguous title of ‘Commander (unattached), Metropolitan Police’, raised his eyebrows.
This was a trick he had learned since his return to Scotland Yard. He had found it useful both to indicate disagreement with his superiors and disapproval of too zealous subordinates. His wife did not even notice it. But she was waiting for a reply. He said:
“My dear child, I can’t do anything. No one can. Even if a silly girl runs off with some undesirable or another, it’s not a police matter. We can’t interfere.”
“Yes, but they’re so terribly upset,” pleaded Olive. “Mr Winlock was almost crying himself. Isobel’s their only child, and they say they believe Mr Mark Monk is married already.”
“Enough to upset any one,” Bobby agreed. “It’s always pretty bad when your children make fools of themselves. It’s not the one who goes to gaol who suffers most, it’s wife or husband, the parents or the children. But there it is, and elopement’s no crime—or, if it is, it’s one that carries its own punishment with it.”
“Mrs Winlock says some of her jewellery is missing, too,” Olive said.
“Of course, that’s different,” Bobby admitted gravely. “If jewellery is missing and there are reasonable grounds for thinking that Miss Winlock has taken it, and if it is reported to the police, action will be taken at once. But do the Winlocks really want this Isobel girl prosecuted for theft?”
“Oh, no,” exclaimed Olive, shocked. “Only Mrs Winlock thought if you could find out where Isobel is before it’s too late and you went to see her—and—” Olive subsided, for Bobby was looking at her very sternly indeed. “Well, you’ve often said yourself,” she protested defensively, “that more things are done by pulling strings than this world ever knows.”
“That,” Bobby explained, “only applies to politicians and the topmost social peaks. But I’m neither an M.P. nor a duke, I’m only a humble cop, and I’m not going to risk my job tripping up over any string-pulling. If the loss of jewellery is reported, action will be taken as usual, and if Miss Isobel is caught she’ll go into the dock like any one else. Of course,” Bobby added thoughtfully, “a clever counsel might pull off the kleptomania stunt. If he did, nothing to prevent the girl going back at once to what’s-his name—Mark Monk, did you say? I suppose she’s of age?”
“A month ago,” Olive said.
“Well, then,” Bobby said with finality. “We don’t know them, do we?” he asked. “What brought them here? Cheeky, wasn’t it?”
“Mrs Winlock is a sister of Mrs Barrett in the flat opposite,” Olive explained. “Isobel was her favourite niece, and she’s almost as much upset as Mrs Winlock. Oh, Bobby, can’t you do anything to help?”
“No, I can’t,” Bobby told her crossly. “You ought to have told them so. I know it’s a tragedy, but it’s a private tragedy. I can’t do anything, any more than I could if the girl got pneumonia and died. Hang it all, don’t you see enough trouble and tragedy in the Force without having this sort of thing pushed on you as well?”
“It’s the man, too,” Olive said. “He frightens them—the Winlocks, I mean. Mr Winlock tried to forbid him the house, but he went on coming all the same.”
“He doesn’t seem to have frightened the girl,” Bobby remarked.
“Mrs Barrett says she’s sure he did,” Olive told him. “Isobel is such a quiet little thing, awfully timid and shy. Mrs Barrett says the man must have terrorized her. Very likely pushed her into a car and drove off with her.”
“Oh, well, if there’s any reason to suppose that, that’s different again,” Bobby agreed once more. “But it must be reported in the ordinary way.”
“They do so want to avoid any scandal,” Olive said pleadingly. “It might ruin her whole life, and she did seem such a nice, sweet little thing. She was at that party the Barretts gave that we went to, sitting in a corner all by herself and hardly speaking to any one. Different from most girls to-day. Don’t you remember her?”
Bobby searched his memory. He was growing rather tired of this tale of the escapades of Miss Isobel, who, having made her bed, must lie on it. Olive had evidently been a good deal upset by the sight of the very natural distress of the parents, and that did not make Bobby any more sympathetic towards the young woman who was the cause of so much trouble. He did not in the least see why Olive should be asked to share a grief that neither he nor she could do anything to help. Gradually into his mind came a faint recollection of a small, nondescript young woman, sitting alone and taking very little part in the proceedings. He
thought he remembered offering to get her a cocktail and of the offer being flutteringly refused in a rather shocked and frightened tone. But the image was so faint that it faded away almost at once. Bobby shook a disapproving, slightly uneasy head.
“Just the sort of innocent little fool,” he pronounced, “likely to let herself be bullied into doing anything any one wanted who got hold of her. That’s no help, though. Not unless some definite charge is laid. And that wouldn’t help the girl much—or the father and mother’s happiness either, if it’s her they’re thinking of and her future.”
“Oh, it is,” Olive declared. “I wish you had been here when they called.”
Bobby was devoutly thankful that hadn’t been the case. The police have quite sufficient experience of listening to sad and tragic tales where they can do nothing to help, without seeking more.
“All they can do,” he said briskly, hoping the subject was now disposed of, “is to wait till they hear from the girl. It may not turn out so badly. She may be married by now, or if there’s already a wife in the background Mr Mark Monk may get a divorce and Miss Isobel settle down as a respectable married woman.”
“I suppose it might happen,” Olive agreed, though doubtfully. “Mrs Barrett saw him once, and she says, too, that there’s something about him that’s positively frightening, the way he looks at you. It makes you chilly all up and down your back. Even when he’s being most awfully formal and polite. I told you Mr Winlock tried to forbid him the house and he just listened and said of course, of course, but he went on coming all the same. And then it’s so funny about the money.”
“What money?” Bobby asked.
“Isobel had a small allowance as well as all her salary, and she’s a little extravagant, so generally there wasn’t any left at the end of the month,” Olive explained. “Sometimes she tried to coax a little more from her father. But just lately she never did, and instead she’s been paying quite large sums into the Post Office. Mr. Winlock found the old book, and it had all been drawn out the day before Isobel went away. Five hundred pounds.”
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 28