The Golden Dagger: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  She went over to the window and stood there with her back to them. Bobby thought she was trying to keep back her tears. Over her shoulder, in an odd little voice, she said:

  “It all looks so peaceful.”

  A gong sounded. Lord Rone got up in a relieved sort of way and said briskly that that was lunch, and less briskly, would Bobby care to join them. Bobby said that was very kind, but he thought he must get back to the village. Without turning round, Maureen said:

  “Mr Owen means he can’t lunch with people he may be having to arrest soon. Not the thing.”

  Neither of the other two said anything. Lord Rone was too depressed and worried even to utter his accustomed rebuke. Bobby had no wish to dissipate any aura of suspicion that there might be. It might result in someone coming forward with helpful information. Maureen came away from the window and went with him to the front door. From the study window the view had been chiefly of the lawn and the trees beyond, but from here, the front of the house, there was a long view over green and pleasant fields, a small brook meandering across them, down to where the old village lay half hidden in a fold of the ground. Maureen stood still to look at it and somehow her mobile, expressive features gave the idea that she was bidding it farewell.

  “It’s so lovely,” she breathed. “Hundreds like it everywhere in England. But this one is ours.”

  Bobby understood what she meant. He had always liked to spend his leave abroad when possible, but for all the grandeur of the Alps, the warmth of Mediterranean sunshine, the romance of the Rhine, the long flow of the Danube or the quiet of the Finnish lakes, there was for him an appeal in the soft, sweet English countryside that nothing else could rival. He did not answer her, telling himself he was there on a grimmer errand than admiring landscapes. Maureen spoke again.

  “You can’t look at it and think of murder or things like that,” she said, half to herself and then, to Bobby, she said, pointing at the same time to the dark mass of the newly planted pines hanging sombre and menacing on the higher ground behind the New Bungalow: “You might think of murder there perhaps, you might look for it there, but not down here.”

  She went back into the house, leaving him standing there. He walked on slowly, thoughtfully, to where his car was waiting. He did not really think Maureen had meant anything, but—well, had she?

  To his policeman chauffeur he said as he was taking his seat:

  “It’s an odd case—difficult. You expect to start a murder investigation with a dead body. No sign of one at present.”

  “Easy to hide, sir,” said the chauffeur cheerfully. “You never know.” He, too, was looking up at the dark, close-growing pines. “Up there,” he said. “Bit of a job digging all that up, though,” a memory in his mind of long, laborious hours spent in digging up a suburban garden—all to no purpose.

  “Too soon to think of that,” Bobby said as he settled himself in his seat. “Besides, I expect the Forestry Commission’s men cover it pretty thoroughly. They would notice anything most likely.”

  He liked to drive himself as a rule, but he left that job this time to his companion. His thoughts were in a turmoil and he wanted to try to get them into order. He felt that Maureen, probably without intending it, had told him a good deal. So had her father for that matter. But exactly where that ‘good deal’ led, he was not at all sure. As they turned into the avenue they saw Lady Watson and Norman Oxendale hurrying towards them, evidently feeling that they were late for lunch. Lady Watson stopped, however, and made a beckoning gesture. Bobby stopped the car and got out. Lady Watson said:

  “They are all saying the most extraordinary things in the village. Is it true you’ve found a dead body?”

  “No; it isn’t,” Bobby answered.

  “Norman,” Lady Watson said to her companion, “be a dear and run on and tell them not to wait lunch for me. I shan’t be long.” Obediently Norman went off, not without alacrity, though whether in deference to Lady Watson or because he wanted to get away from Bobby’s vicinity as fast as possible may be an open question. Lady Watson continued: “They’re saying you’ve come to arrest someone at Cobblers.”

  “I wouldn’t pay any attention to what people say,” Bobby advised her. “It’s generally nonsense. What I am trying to do, what has got to be done, is to find out why the golden dagger, as they call it, was taken from the glass case in the Long Gallery where it was kept, why it was returned, and who it was rang up from the call-box here.”

  “No one has ever had a glimpse of Mr Tudor King, have they?” Lady Watson asked. “Isn’t that very peculiar? Don’t you think that extraordinary woman at the New Bungalow ought to be asked about it? That’s what they are all saying in the village.”

  “I’ve no doubt they are saying quite a lot in the village,” Bobby said. “They generally are.”

  “Well, it’s all so funny, isn’t it?” Lady Watson persisted, though a trifle dampened by Bobby’s unenthusiastic response to her suggestions. “You know that new girl at Cobblers used to be at Mr Tudor King’s flat? She’s slipping out late at night without anyone knowing and going off by that path through the wood? It goes to the bungalow.”

  “Well, both she and Mrs Cato were in Mr Tudor King’s employ, so they know each other,” Bobby remarked. “But what makes you say the girl goes out late without anyone knowing?”

  “I saw her myself—Monday night and last night. I was sitting at my window because I couldn’t sleep—and then Sir William does snore so. Monday night it was terrible. I never closed an eye listening. I saw her distinctly.”

  “Wasn’t it dark?”

  “Well, of course. I said it was late. She came out from the garden door just under my window and the light from the passage showed plainly who it was.”

  “At the moment,” Bobby said, “I don’t see much connection between Linda’s late visits to Mrs Cato at the bungalow and all this other business. She may be merely feeling lonely at Cobblers and want to have a chat with someone she knew before.”

  “It’s all so very odd,” said Lady Watson impressively, and went away, presumably in search of her lunch, and Bobby looked after her thoughtfully.

  He was asking himself if there was anything behind her intervention, if, for example, she were trying to divert suspicion from someone at Cobblers. Or if it were only that she found it difficult not to be always talking. Not unnatural if she had been excited by the gossip and the rumours which the village was busy circulating. To his chauffeur he said:

  “We’ll pick Ford up and then get back to Town as quickly as we can.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the man mournfully; so mournfully indeed that Bobby could not help noticing—and being thereby reminded of lunch.

  So he said that perhaps they had better see if they could get something to eat first, and the chauffeur immediately smiled again.

  CHAPTER XIV

  “THE PERFECT SPIV”

  BACK IN TOWN, Bobby first jotted down a rough outline of plans for further investigation he had tried to think out during the return journey. He made arrangements, too, for other work he had on hand to be carried on by colleagues, since he felt he must give his full attention to what had now crept into the papers under the headings ‘Golden Dagger Puzzle’, ‘Valuable Mediæval Dagger Lost and Found’. All this satisfactorily disposed of, he returned home to warn his wife, Olive, that he would have to be out late, possibly all night, indeed; information Olive received in the small, sad, lonely little voice she reserved for an announcement all too frequent.

  “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if the ’phone call doesn’t turn out a fake,” she declared as she started that so familiar task of cutting sandwiches, and preparing, for the vacuum flask, coffee that made her, as a poor weak woman, fairly tremble before its strength. “Isn’t it just the sort of silly trick all those boys would think awfully funny?”

  “I’ve rather given up that idea,” Bobby told her. “And they are not boys exactly. And then you know it is human blood the golden dagger shows. It
’s fairly certain all the four of them are there for private reasons of their own, different from what they pretend.”

  “Four?” Olive asked. “Why four?”

  “Dick Moyse, Norman Oxendale, Jack Longton, Baldwin Jones,” Bobby recited. “Dick Moyse, for instance. I don’t like that story of the recovered dispatch case and all the rest of it. Smells. He strikes me as the perfect spiv, and perfect spivs don’t go in for humdrum everyday jobs like a private secretary’s, even if they could hold it down, which as a rule they couldn’t.”

  “Perfect spivs don’t go in for murder, either, do they?” Olive asked.

  “They might if cornered,” Bobby said. “Even a cornered rat is dangerous. Anyhow, Moyse is certainly on some game of his own. Then there’s Norman Oxendale, the budding art critic, ostensibly there to study miniatures, but most likely with an eye on Maureen Carton.”

  “Do you mean he is in love with her?” Olive asked, interested at once.

  “She’s a catch, I suppose,” Bobby said. “Only daughter of a very rich man.”

  “Well, you don’t go committing murders because you’re in love,” Olive protested.

  “It’s been known to lead to jealousy,” Bobby reminded her. “And jealousy to murder. Next, Jack Longton, man of the theatre, on terms of what he calls mutual insult with Maureen, not invited to Cobblers, but turns up there when it’s open to the public on Saturdays. No reason given why he has to come to an hotel nearby in order to study the play he’s to produce. Then the last of the four, Baldwin Jones, arriving with the Watsons, as established ‘lap-dog’, to quote Maureen, but almost certainly something else as well.”

  “But he’s not there,” Olive exclaimed; “not now.”

  “No; he isn’t, but he was,” Bobby said.

  “Oh, well,” Olive said uneasily.

  “Of course, it’s not only the four young men we have to think about,” Bobby went on. “Lord Rone, for instance. Take him next. He got very worried when Maureen started talking about blackmail, rather as if the word meant something to him. Maureen let out that there’s some family feeling over heirlooms, and are they all safe? Does that link up with her father not liking it when I said I didn’t think his ‘Young Stallion’ picture lived up to its reputation and with his looking relieved when Norman Oxendale praised it? Does that suggest the thing may be a copy and that the original has been sold? He does seem to be living rather beyond the six thousand a year said to be all anyone can have clear after income tax and super-tax. Plenty of people are spending capital because they think it will only go in death duties, so they may as well have the benefit while they’re alive. And is selling heirlooms his way of raising capital?”

  “But that wouldn’t make anyone want to murder anyone else—except the tax-collector,” Olive remarked.

  “It might lead to quarrelling,” Bobby answered. “And quarrels have nasty results sometimes. All very vague. Matter for suspicion, but only the bare outline of a case. Till filled in.”

  “If he’s really been selling heirlooms,” asked Olive, “could he have been employing an agent—Baldwin Jones?”

  “It’s possible,” Bobby agreed. “Or Jones might even have had the idea of trying to steal the thing—or one of the other heirlooms, perhaps. You can’t rule out the idea that attempts at theft—of the golden dagger or the stamp collection possibly—come into it somehow. There’s the vague sort of hint that Moyse may have been concerned in attempts on other stamp collections. There has even been one such attempt already at Cobblers. But Baldwin Jones has vanished for the time and theft may have nothing to do with it. Tudor King seems to be missing too. Anyhow, he isn’t at the bungalow he’s rented, and the present occupant is a rather grim sort of person who appears to be linked up with one of the inmates at Cobblers—Belinda Blythe, the new maid there, who did seem a bit scared when she knew we were police. Didn’t seem to like us at all.”

  “You don’t think,” Olive asked, though with some hesitation, “I mean—you don’t think the two of them could be the same—I mean Mr Tudor King and Baldwin Jones? Under different names?”

  “Well, there again, it’s possible. Have to be remembered,” Bobby agreed. “It’ll have to be kept in mind. But Jones seems to be generally on his beam ends. Tudor King is said to be making pots of money.”

  “Do authors ever?” Olive asked incredulously. “I mean unless they are Bernard Shaw and that sort of thing.”

  “I’m told it does happen,” Bobby answered, though his tone, too, was a little doubtful. “The idea seems to be that Tudor King is a kind of Bernard Shaw of the literary underworld. Baldwin Jones turns up now and then at swell West End hotels, and that might be when, as Tudor King, he’s just got a cheque from his publishers and he’s blowing it in. You can spend an awful lot in the West End if you try—a hundred a night without any trouble.”

  “How nice,” said Olive. “I’m having to give you marg for your sandwiches because there’s no butter left,” and she added that she didn’t suppose he would mind because he wouldn’t know the difference any more than if he were a Cabinet Minister. “Any favourite suspect?” she asked as Bobby seemed inclined to ignore this excursion into high politics and to drop instead into one of his profound and silent meditations, occasionally known as the ‘Owen trance.’

  However, this time he roused himself to answer her question.

  “No,” he said; “not yet. I’ve been told quite a lot, but more than I can sort out at present. Still, it does look as if a faint suggestion of the outline of a pattern were beginning to show. Something like a hint of an underlying connection, a thread of cause and effect, so to speak. Anyhow, there’s not one of the lot of them at Cobblers who strikes me as quite at ease.”

  “Well, would anyone?” Olive asked, tying up one packet of sandwiches and thinking that he had better have another as well, margarine and all, “when perhaps there’s been a murder and a dagger worth hundreds and thousands getting lost and turning up again? I know I wouldn’t.”

  “The girl worries me as much as anyone,” Bobby went on. “Maureen, I mean. I can’t quite place her. She never seems to know herself when she’s play-acting and when she’s being serious.”

  “Well, of course, both at once,” Olive said. “But you can’t suspect her. You always say women never use knives, and I’m sure I shouldn’t. I don’t know how you can ever tell which is the right place—and so messy,” she added with distaste.

  “I’ve a pretty good idea she knows something,” Bobby said. “She’s told me a lot, but I’m not sure whether she’s trying to help or trying to put me off. One thing I am fairly clear about. She engineered Norman Oxendale’s visit chiefly in order to show Jack Longton where he got off. She went out of her way to insist Longton had an alibi and to tell me there was nothing in it if I heard he and Baldwin Jones had had a row. She may have told Longton about Baldwin Jones’s attempt to kiss her and he may have thought he had to do something about it. It might be that she is trying to take the credit for the black eye Jones got, though it really belongs to Longton.”

  “Isn’t that rather a side issue?” Olive asked, thoughtfully surveying her two packets of sandwiches; deciding that it ought to be enough even for Bobby’s nocturnal appetite, and, anyhow, now there was left as little margarine as butter and no more of either to be had till next week.

  “The whole thing is lousy with side issues,” declared Bobby impatiently. “You’ve got to try to dovetail things together to make them fit, and up to now they jolly well won’t. All dead ends.”

  “Miss Carton and Mr Longton are both theatre people,” Olive reminded him. “You’ve got to remember that. Theatre people are never quite normal, are they?”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know that you can say that exactly,” Bobby protested. “Some of them are a little mad, but that’s only because they live in a different world. The Watsons aren’t theatre.”

  “Do you think they come in?” Olive asked. “I mean, seriously. Not just because they were there, o
n the spot. That is, if there is a spot to be on at all.”

  “Lady Watson went rather out of her way to give her husband an alibi,” Bobby said. “Complained his snoring kept her awake all night. Implications there, if she happened to know Baldwin Jones intended to return. She’s fond of collecting what Maureen calls ‘lap-dogs.’ Has she gone too far with one of them? There’s the story of the row at an hotel when Baldwin Jones got rather badly knocked about. Was that a case of a lap-dog turned nasty and trying a little blackmail that didn’t come off? If we could trace the people concerned, it might be a help, but they’ve gone back to America. Take too long, anyhow. Time is always of the essence of the contract when it’s murder. Besides, they might not want to talk. But if, instead of a young, vigorous man, an elderly man like Sir William were concerned, might he use not his fists, but a dagger—even a golden one?”

  “You said,” Olive reminded him, “that he was most awfully bullied and henpecked and all that. It doesn’t sound as if he would ever take to killing?”

  “Henpecked in excelsis,” agreed Bobby. “But Maureen seems to think he rather likes it and is quite able to assert himself when he wants to. I’ve noticed myself how quickly he can shut his wife up when he wants to. I thought at the time that at bottom she was really a little frightened of him. It might be that at one time or another he did something he is thoroughly ashamed of and is trying to make up for it by letting her bully him. She has forgiven him, but they neither of them forget.”

  “Isn’t that rather far-fetched?” Olive asked doubtfully.

  “Real life so often is—nothing so improbable as what happens,” Bobby answered. “I heard something of the sort about a very well-known writer—dead now a good many years. I feel myself that Watson is a man of very strong emotions, feelings, all very strongly suppressed, but still liable to break loose. Then there’s Lady Watson herself to be considered.”

  “Oh, surely,” Olive protested.