“I thought it might be out here on the Massif that Volny was hiding,” Camion explained. “I knew that he had been in Barsac, but then he had vanished, only I was sure he could not be far away. Also I was worried because I had seen Monsieur and Madame Williams again. They had come from Paris by train and I wondered why. I thought possibly Volny had found the things Mademoiselle Polthwaite was said to have hidden and that he had asked the Williamses to help him to get away to Paris with it to claim a reward there. I found out that Monsieur Williams had been trying to hire a car, and that he had specially asked for one that would stand up to rough ground. So I guessed that he meant to drive out somewhere on the Massif to pick up Volny.”
“I daresay it was a bit like that,” Bobby said, “only not Volny.”
Alain and the doctor came back. Alain gave a few orders to his men and Bobby told as briefly as possible both his own story and the gist of Camion’s.
“Looks to me,” he said in conclusion, “as if, after they had dug up the Polthwaite jewellery from where Shields had it hidden, and after they had shot him and buried his body, Mrs. Williams remained hidden in this grove while Williams himself went off to get the car Camion says he had been bargaining for. I expect they thought it would be safer not to go back through Barsac, especially while in possession of the jewels. Unfortunately for them the search you organized upset their plans altogether. Williams wouldn’t dare show himself in a car while your men were all about. He would have been seen at once and asked for explanations. It must have been a bit of a shock to him when he found he couldn’t get back and was cut off both from his wife and from their loot, and he must have wondered a good deal what the search of the Massif would reveal. Mrs. Williams most likely didn’t realize there was a general search taking place. She would only see Père Trouché and me making for the very spot where Shields was buried. She would realize we were bound to find his body and then I suppose she decided their best chance was to stop us reporting it. She would think it might be weeks before our bodies were found, and she and her husband could be anywhere in the world by then, South America, China, anywhere. Her bad luck, that the firing was bound to be heard by your men, Monsieur Alain, though as it happened Camion heard it first. It must have been another shock for her, and the worst of all, when she realized that her pistol practice had brought down all your gendarmes on her. No wonder she made up her mind to end it.”
“There was an old leather valise near the body,” Alain said. “It is full of rings, brooches, unset stones in handfuls. Gold cigar cases, handbags in gold mesh, and so on, too. It had evidently been buried for some time, it was damp and covered with earth. It’s a good weight. They would want a car to take it away in, if only to avoid attracting attention.”
Darkness had been increasing rapidly while all these things were taking place and by this time was nearly complete. The doctor had been making out a brief written report as best he could and now was ready to listen to Bobby’s request that he should see to old Père Trouché, who in the midst of so much excitement, with so much needing swift and instant attention, had been almost forgotten.
“Yes, yes, I go, I go at once,” Mendel answered a fresh request from Bobby, “but if the man is dead, there is nothing I can do.”
“I thought he was hit right over the heart,” Bobby said.
Together they started off; Clauzel, to whom Bobby had also spoken, promising to follow immediately with two of his men as soon as they had ready the improvised stretcher he set them to construct.
The distance was only short but in the intense, impenetrable darkness that had now set in, no stars showing, the moon not yet risen, progress was both slow and difficult over the rough, uneven ground, covered with tangled vegetation, here and there with loose stony patches where sometimes big boulders lay. The battery of Bobby’s torch had run down, the doctor had none with him, their only light came from an occasional match one or other of them struck, though even between them they had so few they were obliged to be economical in their use. Once indeed the doctor, who had stumbled several times and once fallen full length, refused to go on, protesting that it was useless to continue.
“We shall be breaking our necks,” he complained. “Already I am covered with bruises. Also if the man is dead, then a doctor is no longer of any use.”
“Two shots hit him,” Bobby said. “He never moved after the second shot. Only it does not seem decent to leave him lying there.”
As he spoke there came an instant response, from out of the heart of the black night, as a voice that Bobby knew well called softly:
“Hé, Mr. Englishman, is it you? What is it that has happened and who is that with you?”
Bobby, after a moment of blank amazement, began to run, then stood still, bewildered by the darkness. He struck one of his few remaining matches and held it up. Instantly a puff of wind, though the air had seemed calm before, blew it out. He called:
“Where are you? It’s dark. I can’t see a thing.”
A familiar chuckle answered him.
“Now it is you who cannot see,” the voice from out the darkness said. “Eh, well, that is amusing. Forward, march, but more to your right. No. More still. That’s it. I am here but be quick for I think that I am dying though I do not understand why.”
Bobby made his way on through the dark night he felt like a hostile force, holding them back, impeding them, that was almost like a palpable thing, hindering every movement. Behind him he could hear Dr. Mendel, stumbling and grumbling, but no longer thinking of turning back, now he knew a living patient might need his care. Behind them the darkness was broken by an increasing glow where some of the gendarmes had heaped together dry wood to make a bonfire that would give at least a little light. Bobby called again:
“Where are you. I can’t see. I can’t see a thing.” Once more there sounded that familiar chuckle. “But I am here,” came Père Trouché’s voice. He said compassionately: “No doubt it is difficult when one is not accustomed to the dark. Tell me then, what happened? I remember only that I fell down and then I think I must have fallen asleep for when I woke I was alone. I tried to find you but it tired me to walk and presently I began to understand that I was dying. It is surprising, for I do not seem to remember having been ill.”
Bobby, groping desperately, stumbling forward, striking now and then a match that was of little use, came at last to where the old man lay, propped up against one of the boulders that were scattered around.
“It was the Williams woman,” Bobby said. “She fired at us. I thought she had killed you. Now she has killed herself. Doctor, he’s here.” He stood up and lighted another match that was of small service, so small it seemed in the vast, enveloping, tremendous darkness that was as though it covered the whole earth, as though nothing else existed save eternal night. “Doctor, here, he is here,” he called again.
“You have brought a doctor?” Père Trouché asked. “A doctor for the old blind beggar? It is very good of you, but also it is useless.”
“It’s so dark, black as pitch. There is no light anywhere,” Mendel’s voice came complainingly.
“That is difficult for you others, is it not?” Père Trouché commented, “but for me, it is nothing, for I have always lived in darkness all my life and now it is only natural that I should die in it. Only I wish that I could just once have known what is this light that people talk about so much. Always, I have wondered.”
Doctor Mendel came up at last, to join them.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, “but I have used my last match and what can I do in this darkness?”
“Darkness? Here is no darkness,” Père Trouché said in a voice louder than any Bobby had ever heard him use before. “There is only light, light everywhere, shining all round; oh, how lovely a thing is light.”
He slipped away from the half recumbent position he had held before. Bobby thrust into Mendel’s hand his few remaining matches. Mendel struck them one after the other. He said:
“The
man’s dead.” A moment later he said: “He has been shot twice, right over the heart, through the heart. He must have died on the spot. It is inconceivable that he lived more than a moment or two.” He stared up at Bobby, the light of the match he was holding flickering uncertainly on his face, on the face of the dead man. He said: “He was shot clean through the heart, twice. Well, after that, how could he walk and talk?”
Bobby had no answer to make. Mendel got to his feet, mechanically trying to brush dirt and earth from his clothing. He muttered:
“What was all that about light? It’s black as pitch all round.”
Again Bobby made no attempt to answer. Help came. Improvised torches of dry wood and brush gave uncertain illumination. The body of the old blind beggar was placed on the rough stretcher that had hastily been put together and was carried away. Bobby, conscious now of an immense fatigue, followed slowly. Clauzel said to him:
“Well, now it is finished. Shields has paid for his murder of Mademoiselle Polthwaite, of the unfortunate Volny. The Williams woman has escaped us. True, there is still Monsieur Williams to deal with but we shall soon put a hand on his collar.”
In this, however, Monsieur Clauzel was mistaken, for from that day to this nothing has been heard of Williams. Evidently he took the alarm in time and in the car he had succeeded in hiring he must have escaped across one of the frontiers—possibly by means already prepared in advance for his and his wife’s escape with their projected booty.
From his own private point of view, Bobby was not sorry, since it saved him from being involved in long legal proceedings and a sensational trial that might have dragged on for months. As it was, nothing could be done and nothing more was required from him except a long statement to be added to the enormous dossier of the case.
Of the others who had played their part in working out the drama to its end, there is not much to be told. The reconciliation between the Abbé Granges and schoolmaster Eudes still holds good and Citry-sur-l’eau remains one of the few places in provincial France where church and school work together in their common task of showing youth how to attain the good life. Charles Camion, cleared of the suspicions of which he had so long been the object, and finding himself as a result ceasing to be so generally of interest, made up his mind at last to leave Citry. By help of the publicity still attaching to his name, and with the aid of introductions given him by some of the journalists who came to hear his story, he was able to join a small travelling theatrical company. There he found his own special niche in life so rapidly that already he is becoming known, if not yet to the public, at least in the profession, and he has even had the good luck to get work on the films. The contract he secured made his position seem sufficiently sure, especially as his parents’ hotel was beginning to do well again, to make possible his marriage with Mademoiselle Simone. It is likely to take place very shortly, and Bobby, returning to England, in the hope both of claiming the reward due to him and of securing the appointment promised, felt that now he ought to be able to induce Olive to follow so admirable an example.
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.
Also by E.R. Punshon
Information Received
Death Among the Sunbathers
Crossword Mystery
Mystery Villa
Death of a Beauty Queen
Death Comes to Cambers
The Bath Mysteries
Mystery of Mr. Jessop
The Dusky Hour
Dictator’s Way
Comes a Stranger
Suspects – Nine
Four Strange Women
Ten Star Clues
Dark Garden
Diabolic Candelabra
The Conqueror Inn
Night’s Cloak
Secrets Can’t Be Kept
E.R. Punshon
FOUR STRANGE WOMEN
“You think it’s murder, don’t you?”
“There is no proof of that as yet, sir,” Bobby answered cautiously.
“No, I know, but it’s what you think,” Glynne answered. After a pause, he added: “So do I.”
Viscount Byatt was found dead in his car without a mark on him. Millionaire Andy White’s corpse was discovered in a remote cottage in Wales – no clue to the cause of death. When a grotesque-looking visitor calls on Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen in the middle of the night, the latter’s help is urgently needed – if a third young man isn’t to suffer the same murderous and mystifying fate. Accompanied by his fiancée Olive Farrar, Bobby is up against more than one femme fatale in this delicious and diabolical golden age mystery.
Four Strange Women, originally published in 1940, is the fourteenth novel in the Bobby Owen mystery series. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
“What is distinction? The few who achieve it step – plot or no plot – unquestioned into the first rank… in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” Dorothy L. Sayers
CHAPTER I
BEGINNINGS
Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen had spent a most enjoyable evening—dinner, theatre, dance, supper—with his fiancée, Olive Farrar, and was now on his way home. In his pocket was his application for permission to transfer to the Wychshire County Police, and on the morrow—or to-day, rather, for now it was in the small hours—he was travelling up to Midwych, the county town of Wychshire and a busy manufacturing centre, there to interview Colonel Glynne, the chief constable.
The fortunate conclusion of a recent semi-private investigation on which he had been engaged had put money in his pocket, won him influential friends, and gained him the promise of an appointment as inspector in the Wychshire county force, with special duties as private secretary to the elderly Colonel Glynne, and with the additional prospect, therefore, of some day succeeding him as chief constable. Indeed the rich, enchanting words, ‘deputy chief constable’, had already been breathed to Olive by Lady Markham, who, in gratitude for Bobby’s services in the semi-private case already mentioned, had been busy pulling those necessary strings by which such comfortable appointments are generally to be obtained in our happy land of England.
Bobby, therefore, was in a very contented, not to say complacent mood as he strolled along. He wondered a little what his future chief would be like. Lady Markham had described him as both efficient and considerate to those working under him, though with a bee in his bonnet about football pools, against which he had been conducting a kind of crusade. He had indeed obtained a certain notoriety by an attack he had delivered on them in public, in which he described them as a menace to society and produced figures to show how badly trade in Midwych was suffering from the diversion to the pools of money that would have been so much better spent in other more productive and useful ways.
Bobby wondered if his future work would include taking part in this campaign. He would be quite willing to do so. Not one of the ways in which he wasted his own money, and every policeman, like every social worker, knows well what harm is done by unrestricted gambling. A little awkward though, if it were true, as he had heard, that a son of the chief constable’s, a young man who had occasionally himself played as an amateur in first division football, was rather a devotee of those same pools. However, that, Bobby supposed, would be papa’s trouble, not his. He turned into the street in which he lived and noticed without interest a large, imposing-looking car standi
ng near his door. He supposed vaguely that perhaps the doctor occupying the next house had bought a new car and was now suffering under the doctor’s tenth plague— a night call. As he passed it on his way to his own door, he was aware of an odd impression that some one from within the car’s dark interior was watching him intently. It was almost like a physical sensation and one curiously disturbing, this idea he had that from out that darkness so intent a gaze was fixed upon him. He almost turned back to ask who was there and why such intensity of interest, but then, putting aside an idea he felt absurd, he inserted his latchkey in his door and entered. To his surprise his landlady, who should have been in bed long ago, made a prompt appearance. “There’s a man to see you, Mr. Owen, sir,” she announced.
“At this time,” protested Bobby, for by now it was less late than early, nearly two in fact, since theatre, supper, dance, escorting Olive back to her little hat shop where she lived near Piccadilly, had eaten up the night.
“I couldn’t get rid of him,” the landlady explained resentfully. “Said he was going to stop if it was till the milk came. I don’t like his looks,” she added, “and me all alone, and should have been in my bed at a Christian hour long ago.”
“Too bad,” said Bobby, “I’m sorry.”
“As villainous looking he is as ever I saw,” the landlady went on, “ so I asked him if he would like a drop of beer, and I gave it him in a glass with a bit of butter rubbed on it so as to leave his fingerprints and then you’ll know who he is.”
“By Jove,” said Bobby admiringly, “that was smart.”
“I won’t say it wasn’t,” admitted the landlady complacently; “but then I’ve not had a Scotland Yard gentleman with me so long without picking up a bit of how it’s done.”
“We shall have,” Bobby told her gravely, “to get you a job on the staff at Central. Did he say what his name was?”
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