Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  She flashed—there is no other word to describe the swift, sure silence of her movements—across the room again and was once more at his side. Her head hardly came to his shoulder, her eyes were hidden, she spoke quickly and clearly.

  “It’s Billy,” she said. “Billy Baird. He’s such a nice boy and Harry’s ever so fond of him and so am I, too, though of course I only know him a little, and Harry’s been friends with him all his life—shared the same cradle, didn’t you?”

  “Same prep school and stuck to each other ever since,” corrected Lord Henry, quite seriously.

  “And Billy hasn’t too much money, not if he’s going into politics, because that does cost lots and lots, doesn’t it? and then he’s been spending oceans, hasn’t he, Harry?”

  “Cripes, I should think he had,” confirmed Lord Henry. “He bought some sort of swell ruby thing at Christie’s the other day for three thou. Three thou, I ask you, and him needing every blessed penny he’s got if he’s to nurse any constituency properly. Bought it on the q.t. through Higham’s, of Bond Street. Old Higham let it out himself when I was in there the other day. It’s only the big deals the old man takes an interest in himself, you know.”

  “May Grayson was awfully disappointed,” Gwen went on. “She told me so herself. She’s crazy about jewels and wanted to buy, only of course she couldn’t afford all that.”

  “I asked Billy what was the game,” interposed Lord Henry, “and he said he had a market and hoped to make a good profit.”

  “May said it was an awfully outside figure,” remarked Gwen. “I don’t think she believed any one would ever give more.”

  “If you ask me,” declared Lord Henry, “he’s got mixed up with some woman and he bought it for her.” He gave a little nod of defiance at Gwen. “All right, Gwen,” he said, “you needn’t believe it. Gwen says,” he explained to Bobby, “it isn’t that, because if he gave it to any woman, she wouldn’t be able not to show it off, and then every one would know.”

  “Well, don’t you think so, too, Mr. Owen?” asked Gwen, but Lord Henry swept on unheedingly.

  “It’s not only that,” he said. “Billy’s bought a slap up motor caravan—swell affair, jewelled in every hole, that sort of thing. It must have cost him a packet. I’ve backed two bills for him, too—three hundred altogether, and he used to get shirty if I even hinted at stumping up to help him along till he got going in politics. Gwen said I ought to, and all he said was I ought to have more sense than to start throwing my beastly money about. Next thing I knew he was touching me himself for coin. Not that I mind, he’s welcome—only it’s so damn funny, if you see what I mean.”

  “All that is surely his own private business, isn’t it?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, if you put it like that,” said Lord Henry doubtfully. “Only there it is, isn’t it? I mean to say. Going off caravanning all by himself. Not like him. Never cared for motoring even. Bridge at the club was his best bet. Now here he is, all on his own and no one knows why. In Wychwood Forest. That’s near Midwych, you know.”

  Bobby nodded. Wychwood forest, dating from the days when William the Conqueror ravaged great areas of Yorkshire and Mercia, extended still for many miles north and east of Midwych. Of late years it had become a favourite centre for ‘hiking’ and other holiday parties. Even one or two holiday camps had been founded on its outskirts, but generally its dense and ancient woodlands, alternating with bare, open expanses of high moor, were as lonely and deserted as in the days following the passage of the Conqueror’s destroying bands. Abruptly Lord Henry said:—

  “Billy told one or two chaps at the club he was in love with a girl. Not like him, either. He wasn’t a chap to talk about things like that. He never let on who it was. He started going to the Cut and Come Again. He never went to places like that before—serious sort of johnny and dead keen on politics. Wanted to reform everything, only not Bolshevik, you know. Just reform.” Lord Henry emphasized the word with a wave of the hand that seemed to include the universe. “Sound conservative, of course, he was. Night clubs something new for him. It was Becky Glynne he used to dance with there. You know. Old Colonel Glynne’s daughter. Set people talking.”

  “It’s all happening,” Gwen said softly, “just the way it seemed to happen with Andy White and the Byatt boy.”

  “Gwen’s a bit scared,” Lord Henry said, and he put an arm around her with a gently-protecting gesture. He had the look of one guarding something infinitely precious, infinitely fragile, a look that Bobby never forgot. Gwen snuggled up against him, as if she felt the comfort of the safety that his strong embrace offered, and Lord Henry said again: “Gwen’s got the wind up, haven’t you, old girl, eh?”

  Gwen smiled faintly, timidly, almost, and snuggled closer still. Bobby said:—

  “Is it certain it was Miss Glynne?”

  “A girl I know told me,” Gwen answered. “She described her and it did sound like Becky—Becky’s small and fair and she generally wears blue and very often a striped pattern to make her look taller. I’ve seen her playing tennis. She plays doubles with Hazel Hannay. I play, too,” Gwen added with a faint smile, “but I’m not in their class.”

  “It’s this caravanning stunt worries me,” Lord Henry repeated. “It’s not like him. And it wasn’t like Andy White to go off to some god-forsaken cottage in Wales, or for Byatt to go motoring all alone on Dartmoor. Andy’s idea of a country cottage would have been a place with thirty bedrooms, all with their own baths—gold plated taps, most likely. It wasn’t natural, that cottage business, miles from the next place. And it isn’t natural, Billy’s caravanning all alone in Wychwood Forest. I’m a bit scared too—scared,” he repeated, and Gwen pressed his arm comfortingly as once more he said—“I’m scared.”

  “Harry wanted to go and see about it himself,” she said, and added, “Billy’s such a nice boy.”

  “Well, I did think of chasing up there,” admitted Lord Henry. “Only of course it wouldn’t do. Even Gwen saw that.”

  “I don’t know why you’ve come to me,” Bobby said resentfully, for it was no such introduction as this that he had desired to his new appointment. “If you can’t do anything, when you are his friend, what do you think I can do?”

  “Well, you see, you’re police,” explained Lord Henry. “All right for you to keep an eye on the silly ass and see he’s O.K.”

  “How do you suppose I’m going to do that?” demanded Bobby. “We can’t go interfering with people. I’ll report what you say to Colonel Glynne, especially as Miss Glynne’s name has been mentioned. I don’t suppose he’ll be pleased.”

  Bobby wasn’t pleased himself. It depended of course on what sort of person the Wychshire chief constable turned out to be. He might quite well be seriously annoyed, and a fair part of that annoyance might very possibly be turned upon Bobby. Not too auspicious a beginning, Bobby feared, and one that might even cost him his chance of this new appointment on which he had been building so many hopes. These vague hints pointing in the direction of the chief constable’s neighbour and chairman of his Watch Committee, the mention of his own daughter’s name, might well disturb him. Of course, he might refuse to take it seriously. Bobby hoped so. Gwen and Lord Henry were whispering together, and, having received instructions, Lord Henry said:—

  “What we thought was you could send one of your chaps round—there’s always a blue bottle buzzing about when you’re motoring. You know. Lights or speeding or causing obstruction or one blessed thing on top of another, brakes perhaps. Well, there you are. Couldn’t you let on it was something like that, and send a chap along, sort of nosing round?’’

  “Yes,” said Bobby bitterly, “and have your friend writing to the Times about needless persecution of motorists and the Home Office asking for explanations. Thank you. I think not.”

  This seemed to depress them a good deal; and Lord Henry said it was jolly awkward; and Gwen apologized very prettily, and said it was all because they did feel so anxious and they both knew w
hat a shame it was to have troubled Bobby so late at night. So Bobby said it was quite all right in a funereal tone of voice he hoped would make them both feel it was anything but all right, and then they departed. At first Bobby thought the car outside could not be theirs for he heard them walk away, the tap-tap of Gwen’s high heels loud on the pavement in the stillness of the night. But then they came back and he guessed they had merely been walking up and down, talking and wondering what to do. Soon he heard them drive off and he went up to bed to seek such sleep as he could hope for in the brief remaining hours of the night. Yet he could not, as he would have wished, dismiss what he had been told as mere fantasy or imagination. It was simple fact, with no trace of fantasy or imagination, that two young men of wealth and position, Andy White and Viscount Byatt, had died in strange circumstances strangely resemblant.

  Now it seemed another young man, this Mr. Baird, was travelling by the same road, perhaps to the same destination? Even more disturbing did Bobby feel it that so much of this seemed vaguely connected with the places and the people where he was hoping to take up his new appointment.

  Again that thought occurred to him which once before had flashed through his mind, that Colonel Glynne had not merely been requiring some pleasant and amiable and well-recommended young man to help him in the routine work of his office, but rather was seeking even desperately for help as he felt drawing closer about him strange forces of darkness and terror.

  One of Bobby’s greatest gifts, however, was a capacity to close his mind for a time, to shut up, as it were, his worries and his problems in a drawer by themselves. He liked to remember having read somewhere that Napoleon had once described his mind as resembling a series of drawers, so that he could shut up by themselves, or take out as desired, the different questions he had to consider and answer.

  Besides he had enough to occupy him in getting what sleep he could, finishing his packing, getting himself and his bag to the station in time for the fast afternoon train. Not even in the train did he allow himself to open that compartment of his mind in which he had packed away last night’s conversation. Arrived at Midwych he went to the hotel where he had booked a room, and then, according to plan, dressed and waited for the car which he had been promised would call to take him to Asbury Cottage, Colonel Glynne’s home in the half village, half Midwych suburb, of Asbury. There he was to dine, and, as the colonel put it, ‘get acquainted’, or, as Bobby expressed it in his mind, ‘be vetted’. The more formal interview and provisional appointment, subject to the approval of the Watch Committee, was to take place the next morning.

  Punctually at the time arranged the car arrived, driven by a tall, lean, thin-faced chauffeur, an uncommunicative and suspicious person, who admitted reluctantly that his name was Biddle, and that the car, privately owned by the colonel, had come to fetch Bobby. With some indignation he denied, when Bobby put the question, that he was a member of the police. Certainly, he agreed, there were police cars and police chauffeurs, and the colonel employed them on official work, but he never used them for private purposes, though often enough he did use his own car and his own petrol for what were really duty errands.

  It took all Bobby’s tact to get even this much out of the taciturn and somewhat sullen Biddle, and Bobby finally gave up all effort to make conversation with the depressing conviction in his mind that Biddle had already determined to be as hostile as he dared. He was evidently a very good driver, for once he took a risk that only a man sure of himself and his car would have run, and at another time he avoided by skill and cool judgment what might have been a nasty collision, with another car, for which the blame would have been entirely the other driver’s, since he came out of a side turning at full speed and without warning.

  “Good driving,” Bobby said, “but that fellow ought to be reported.”

  “Copper’s job, not mine,” grunted Biddle, “don’t believe in doing coppers’ work for ’em. No good neither bringing in the guv’s name.” Then he added, “One blighted fool more or less on the road makes no difference.”

  Bobby did not attempt to dispute this dictum. They had passed, by now, through the Midwych main streets, and through the far-stretching suburbs, and had entered charming country, as lovely as is the English scenery at its peaceful best. Once he took an opportunity to ask the silent Biddle in which direction Wychwood Forest lay, and was answered by a jerk of the thumb towards the north, and the brief comment:

  “Over there—miles of it.”

  “Nice place for picnics and so on,” remarked Bobby.

  “For them as likes it,” grunted Biddle, plainly not of the number.

  They were passing a large house now, standing in what seemed extensive grounds, the entrance guarded by a lodge. Bobby asked who lived there and Biddle looked as if he didn’t want to say. Bobby repeated the question with a touch of authority in his tone this time, and Biddle mumbled that it belonged to General Sir Harold Hannay. A little further on Biddle gave another proof of excellent driving, by neatly avoiding a cow that chose that moment to emerge from behind a tree, and then turned the car into a gravelled drive of which the entrance gate bore the name ‘Asbury’.

  The house was much smaller than the imposing residence of General Hannay they had just passed, the grounds much less extensive, but they were well kept and the house had a pleasant and attractive air. Bobby told himself Colonel Glynne was a lucky man, and he allowed his mind to play agreeably with the thought that one day perhaps, when he, too, was a chief constable, he and Olive might have a home like this.

  His thoughts were busy enough, but his eyes were still alert and watchful as they swung round the circular drive and passed a gap in some flowering shrubs and trees through which they both saw plainly a girl and a young man facing each other. There was no mistaking their attitude. It was that of furious hostility. The young man had his hand raised. There was something in it and Bobby almost thought he was about to strike. The girl was crouched and tense, her attitude that of one about to spring. A threatening tableau, Bobby thought. Instinctively he raised himself in his seat. At the same instant Biddle jammed his foot hard on the accelerator. The car shot forward with such speed that it flew past the door of the house they had almost reached and plunged straight across a bed of mingled dahlias and chrysanthemums towards a small glass-house at a few yards distant. Biddle tried to swerve, swerved too much, the car overturned, Bobby found himself prone on another flower bed, his eyes, nose, mouth full of mould. He had a vision of a pair of gaitered legs raised in the air at a little distance. He recognized them as belonging to Biddle. He twisted round and sat up. Biddle resumed an upright position and stared in dismay at the ruined flower beds.

  “The guv’s dahlias gone west,” he said aloud. “I’ll get the bleeding sack.”

  Bobby, much annoyed at this concern for the dahlias, this indifference for his own safety, began to get to his feet. He saw an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, come running out of the house. Biddle stood to attention and saluted. The newcomer looked at Bobby, now on his feet, and seemed reassured.

  “Not hurt? no bones broken?” he said, and then very quietly to Biddle, “Drinking again, I suppose? Very well. You have been warned before. Pack up and then come to the study for your month’s wages.”

  Biddle, standing very stiffly to attention, saluted and made no answer, no attempt to excuse himself, offered no plea for leniency. Colonel Glynne, as Bobby assumed him to be, turned to him again.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said. “You must be shaken pretty badly. Come along to the house. It is Mr. Owen, of course? A bad beginning, I’m afraid, but lucky it’s no worse.”

  CHAPTER III

  INTERCESSION

  Still full of apologies, Colonel Glynne escorted Bobby to the house where Bobby removed as far as he could the traces of his contact with the flower bed, of which, however, the soft earth had served very effectively to break his fall, so that, except for the effects of the slight shaking he had received, he
felt none the worse. The scarf and light overcoat he had been wearing over his dinner jacket had suffered most, but the dry earth brushed off fairly well and his host brought him a choice of clean shirts and collars.

  Unfortunately one of the two shirts offered him had too much in breadth and too little in length. Bobby guessed it belonged to the colonel, who was some six inches less in height than Bobby but fully a foot more in circumference. The second shirt seemed to be the property of someone about Bobby’s own height but of much slighter build. The collar band would not meet round the neck just as the other overlapped by inches. Bobby decided he would have to be content with his own shirt and to put up with the stained and crumpled condition of it and of his collar.

  He made his way downstairs and was met by the still apologetic colonel, who led him into a large, pleasant room, of which the french windows opened on the garden. Bobby thought the room was empty at first, and then a small, fair girl rose from the arm-chair in which she had been completely hidden.

  “My daughter,” the colonel explained. “Becky, this is Mr. Owen you’ve heard me speak about.”

  Becky Glynne acknowledged the introduction by a curt nod, an inaudible murmur, and a hostile stare. She was hardly a pretty girl, for her features were too irregular, but the prominent nose, the firm lines of the closely shut mouth above the square little chin, the direct look, all suggested considerable force of character. The eyes were a light clear blue with a certain depth of penetration in the steady gaze, and Bobby felt that they took in his crumpled shirt and stained collar with an air of having expected that sort of untidiness from the sort of person her father would go on inflicting on them. Her best feature was her hair, of a light, almost golden brown with a fascinating and obviously natural wave to it such as no hairdressing expert could ever have achieved. But the general expression was bitter, hostile, angry, and Bobby wondered whether this hostile attitude was particular towards himself or general to the world at large. Suddenly it dawned upon him that the arrangement of her hair had something odd about it, something not quite neat or becoming, and then he saw that on the left it had been hastily dragged down and forward to cover a freshly made bruise.