Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Mr Pyle,” Bobby explained, “probably wanted to make sure of getting a lift from the Duke. He knew the Duke’s car would be coming that way, and he meant to have a good reason for asking for a lift. By way of a spanner, I expect, applied where it would do most good. We shall have to ask what that last conversation was about.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t the last,” Rowley said. “Hagen also says that late on Wednesday night he saw Mr Pyle in company with a man Hagen believes was the Duke. They were standing near the Janet Merton grave and talking in what Hagen calls a confidential sort of way. The Duke, if it was him, kept shaking his head, as if doubtful of what the other was saying. There is also independent evidence that a large car was seen on the Hillings road, travelling toward Penton. It was not noticed in the town itself. Of course the main road can be reached by by-passing the town.”

  “So far as is known, then,” Bobby asked, “the Duke was the last person to see Pyle alive?”

  “Well,” Major Rowley answered, looking very uncomfortable—“well, Chrines says he saw Mr Day-Bell on the moor late Wednesday evening and some one else he can’t identify near the caravan.”

  “That may have been Pyle,” Bobby said slowly. “Or it may have been his murderer, or even a villager—possibly the one who started the fire under the caravan, if there’s anything in that idea.”

  “Sims,” the Major said. “If his story’s true.”

  “Yes,” Bobby agreed. “There’s Sims. Seems to lie between him and the Duke.” There was a box of cigarettes on the table. Bobby drew it towards him, selected a cigarette with great care, and then with equal care put it back. “Early days,” he said abruptly. “No weapon found, I take it?”

  “None,” the Major answered. “The murderer may have thrown it away somewhere on the moor. I’m offering a pound reward for its recovery. I can’t spare men to make a thorough search of the moor—it would take whole battalions. But a reward may set people searching. Especially over the week end—especially small boys.”

  “Good idea,” applauded Bobby. “After all, one has to admit that even small boys have their uses—and sharp eyes. Oh, by the way, do you think you could let me see the dossier of the Thorne disappearance case? It was gone into very thoroughly at the time, I know, but somehow I can’t help feeling a re-reading in the light of what’s been happening just now might help. I can’t think how. Just an idea.”

  “Well, yes, of course,” Major Rowley agreed. “I’ll have it got out for you. But surely—I mean I can’t see how there can possibly be any connection.”

  “No more can I,” Bobby said. “Just an idea,” he repeated.

  CHAPTER XIV

  BURNT-OUT CARAVAN

  NEVER CERTAINLY through all the years had the Penton–Hillings road carried such a press of traffic. An almost endless succession of cars fled up it and down it and back again. And never probably had so many disgruntled journalists said so many and such varied things about the Post Office authorities when they discovered they had to return to Penton to find a telephone. For indeed a journalist without a telephone to hand resembles nothing so much as a modern Bo-Peep without her sheep.

  To this swift panorama of flying cars two more were now added: a small one carrying Bobby and Major Rowley, a larger one for more of the West Mercian police, destined to reinforce those already on the spot.

  “My chief superintendent is in charge,” Rowley was explaining. “Evans. Good man. Very thorough. Not long since he was pounding a beat, but the war gave him his chance, and he took it. Hustles the men a bit too much at times, but that’s all.”

  Bobby made some conventional reply, but his thoughts were far away. Already ideas and theories were flitting through his mind like butterflies on a summer afternoon, vanishing, reappearing, vanishing again. One or two of the cars pelting back to Penton in search of a ’phone abandoned that errand when the police cars passed and turned to follow, the hope of being in on some fresh development preferred to the earlier sending off of such scanty material as would tax even the most expert re-write man to work up into a really good, public-rousing story.

  Already there was something like a beaten trail to guide newcomers to their destination. There half the population of Hillings stood and stared at the burnt-out caravan, and nearly as many journalists, with itching pencils and open notebooks, stood grouped together, almost but not quite, projecting themselves by sheer force of will-power and desire into the roped enclosure within which the police were going stolidly about their grisly business. As Bobby and the Major drove up, there came forward to greet them Superintendent Evans, a burly, bustling, red-faced man, energetic and eager-looking still, even if he had grown a little fat since leaving his beat.

  “We are going over the ground inch by inch,” he said. “‘Look under every blade of grass,’ I’m telling the lads. Not that the fire has left much, but I’ve something to show you.” As he was speaking he led them to a spot that had been carefully marked off within the larger, roped-off enclosure surrounding what was left of the caravan. “Unluckily,” he went on, “a lot of ’em got here before us. It doesn’t take long for news of this sort of thing to get round, and as per usual they’ve been tramping all over everywhere. They’ve even been poking about in what’s left of the caravan, and I shouldn’t be surprised if some of them haven’t gone off with what they call souvenirs. I’d like to souvenir them! Destroyed vital clues, as likely as not. But they don’t seem to have noticed this. Bit of luck, and a bit of luck it’s been raining so hard the last day or two.”

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Bobby, even if poignant memories now brought forth from him a violent sneeze and then another.

  “Caught a cold?” asked the Major with sympathy.

  “I never catch cold,” declared Bobby with dignity; and, what’s more, when he made this statement he firmly believed it to be absolutely true.

  Then he sneezed again, and after that was able to give his full attention to what the Superintendent was showing them. This was a spot which owing to the configuration of the ground, had remained damp and muddy from the recent rain much longer than had been the case elsewhere. Crossing it diagonally were the tracks of a large car, plainly visible.

  “I’ve had inquiries made in Penton,” Evans was saying. “The only car I could hear of, of this size and with Hardwear tyres—you can always tell ’em—was at the Grand Hotel. Their garage attendant spent most of the time it was there admiring it—and hoping for a tip most likely.” He paused and went on with studied indifference. “It belonged to the Duke of Blegborough. Seems he and Pyle had dinner together. Of course, it can’t be him—dukes don’t commit murders—but it might be as well to ask him if he could help us.”

  “Necessary,” Major Rowley said firmly. “Quite necessary.” He looked depressed. “What a case!” he sighed, “with dukes and poets and newspaper proprietors and Lord knows what, all mixed up together.”

  “There’s something else,” Evans said, rather with the air of a conjuror who, having produced one rabbit out of a hat, now proceeds to extract a second. Stepping carefully, he showed them where on the edge of the damp patch of ground a piece of board supported at each end by stones, protected what was underneath.

  “Woman’s footprint,” he said, lifting the board for them to see for themselves. “Not one of the villagers. They don’t wear shoes like that in the ordinary way. Only when they are going to a dance or somewhere. Size, a number four, I should say. She didn’t come in the car. Footprint too far away and none in between. Who was she and what was she doing? I’m having a plaster cast taken.”

  “Good,” Bobby said, approving this obvious, but occasionally forgotten bit of routine. “Have the doctors said anything fresh?”

  “Only the usual ‘further examination necessary before pronouncing a definite opinion’—as if doctors ever gave a definite opinion. Breach of professional etiquette, most likely, if they did.”

  Bobby nodded absently and walked over to what was left of the caravan—lit
tle more than a charred and jumbled heap of debris. It told him nothing. The fire had done its work well. A more careful and detailed examination would presently be given, but not much hope of any useful result. Bobby asked if anything in the nature of a cash-box or anything else of value had been found, and was told only a gold wrist watch, much damaged by fire, and a signet ring. He suggested then that special care should be taken to see if among the ashes any trace of money could be found. A tight, thick wad of pound notes, he remarked, such as Mr Pyle might have had with him for current expenses, takes a good deal of getting rid of ‘without trace’, and Evans nodded in full agreement.

  “That’s not been overlooked,” he said, pleased to show this Scotland Yard man that West Mercia knew things, too. “It may be the motive for the murder if this man, Sims, had been helping himself and Mr Pyle found out, or even if Sims had to put him out of the way to get hold of it. May have been quite a sum.”

  “Sims has a fairly sound alibi,” Bobby observed, and when Evans’s expression showed clearly what he thought of alibis, Bobby added: “From what I know of him, he hasn’t brains enough to think out anything that would need careful planning. Of course, he may have had an accomplice, but no sign of one, and he generally works alone.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Evans with the touch of deference naturally due to a high-ranking official from Scotland Yard, and then added to show he could keep his end up: “Sims is my man at present, though, and once we can bring him in, we ought to know a lot more.”

  Bobby nodded in full agreement and then became ‘tranced’, as they say at the bridge table. Evans went off to talk to Major Rowley and to express a guarded opinion that this Scotland Yard swell spent rather too much time with his hands in his pockets, staring at nothing.

  “Action,” he told the Major. “That’s what I say. Get going, and then you know where you are.”

  Major Rowley expressed qualified agreement with this sentiment; without adding that knowing where you are, and knowing your right destination, are possibly different kinds of knowledge. He proceeded to explain his plan for enlisting the aid of small boys in a search for the missing murder weapon. Evans expressed approval, also qualified, for, having four of them himself, he was inclined to regard all small boys with but a wary and a doubtful eye. Then Bobby woke up from his trance, removed his hands from his pockets, and, aware as he was that the others were now talking about the missing revolver, since however deep his ‘trance’ he always remained fully conscious of what was going on around him, he said abruptly:

  “Hagen told me he saw Sims with a revolver. Sims was in the caravan. He had taken the revolver to pieces and was cleaning it.”

  “To my mind,” declared Evans, “that about clinches it.”

  “Hagen might be able to tell you more,” Bobby said. “I didn’t press him for details. It didn’t seem important at the time. Now it does. It is what was in my mind just now—very much in my mind. I was trying to think out what it might mean.” He paused, and Evans only just stopped himself from saying: ‘Plain enough what it means. Not much thinking needed to see that.’ Unaware of this piece of criticism of unnecessary thinking, Bobby continued: “Not the only gun I heard of when I was here before: Mr Pyle complained that Mrs Stephen Asprey had threatened him with one.”

  “What on earth for?” demanded Major Rowley in a very surprised tone. “What was she doing with a gun, anyhow?”

  “There’s that woman’s footprint we found, not a villager’s,” said Evans, and looked thoughtful.

  “So there is,” agreed Major Rowley, and also looked thoughtful.

  “She lives alone; no neighbour for miles, is there?” Bobby remarked. “She may have thought she needed it for self-protection.”

  “She never applied for a certificate,” the Major said with severity. “What was she threatening Pyle about?”

  “Over his plan for opening Janet Merton’s grave,” Bobby explained. “Pyle wanted her support, and she seems to have objected—strongly. When he tried to argue she chased him away at pistol point. I only know what he told me. Then there is Mr Chrines, the young fellow who claims to be a son of Asprey and Janet’s, and tells everyone—in confidence.”

  “He hasn’t a gun and been threatening people, too, has he?” demanded Major Rowley.

  “It was Chrines discovered the murder,” observed Evans, and once more he was looking thoughtful.

  “So it was,” agreed Major Rowley. “Who was he threatening?” he asked Bobby.

  “Duncan Day-Bell,” Bobby answered. “Miss Christabel Merton wanted Chrines stopped talking about being her aunt’s son. Young Day-Bell constituted himself Miss Christabel’s champion.”

  “Sweet on her,” interposed Evans. “Everyone knows that. Young man in love always liable to make even a bigger fool of himself than as per usual.”

  “He’s evidently a believer in direct action,” Bobby said. “He told Chrines he would give him a good thrashing if he didn’t dry up. Chrines retorted that he had a gun, and if Duncan tried that on he would get a bullet in him. Once again I’m only repeating what I’ve been told.”

  “It was young Mr Day-Bell brought us the first news of the murder,” observed Evans moodily. “Have to take a statement. Guns and that footprint and Sims on the run,” and he frowned angrily at a problem he was evidently beginning to feel was less simple than he had at first thought it.

  “If he believes Janet Merton was his mother,” Major Rowley put in, “he may have objected to this grave-opening idea.”

  “I believe he did, from what Pyle said,” Bobby answered. “Another thing. Pyle was writing a Life of Asprey. So was Chrines. There seems to have been quarrelling over that. I suppose each thought the other was queering his pitch. Apparently, too, Chrines had got hold of some fresh material Pyle badly wanted for his own book. Chrines wouldn’t part. Wanted it himself. Probably thought that it would put his book definitely ahead.”

  “Looks,” said Evans, frowning harder than ever, “as if it might be this grave-opening and the papers said to be in it, as might have something to do with it. Only, if it’s like that, why has Sims done a bunk?”

  “Panicked, perhaps,” suggested Bobby. “Likely enough, with the record he has. I take it most of the farmers and so on round here have shot-guns. Have any of them certificates for pistols?”

  Major Rowley and his Superintendent looked at each other.

  “I hadn’t thought of it before,” Major Rowley said slowly. “Duncan Day-Bell has one. Service type.”

  “Same,” put in Evans, “as was used, judging by the bullets the doctors dug up.”

  “Have to ask him to produce it for testing,” Bobby said.

  “He was the first as came along to tell us,” remarked Evans.

  “There’s nothing in that,” Major Rowley said testily. “For God’s sake don’t bring in any more than you have to.”

  “The Duke of Blegborough,” Bobby said. “He may have had the strongest motive of all, if the letters Pyle wanted dug up did contain allegations that he poisoned his wife. And,” Bobby added, “this looks to me very like his car. Hasn’t taken him long to get here.”

  CHAPTER XV

  SUSPICIONS

  MAJOR ROWLEY and his superintendent had been too busy talking and discussing to pay attention to anything else. But Bobby, who could combine intense mental concentration with a curiously alert awareness of his surroundings, had remarked a stir among the bystanders—especially the journalistic bystanders—and then had seen the Duke’s imposing Rolls-Royce bumping its aristocratic way towards them over the rough plebeian surface of the moor.

  It came to a stop. The villagers stared. The journalists swooped. The Duke looked alarmed. Bobby said:

  “Better rescue the poor man, or he’ll be torn to pieces to make a journalistic scoop. No telling what they won’t get him to say.”

  Major Rowley nodded agreement. The superintendent beckoned to two of the constables to follow him; and so advanced with all the dignity and a
uthority of the law. The Duke was repeating somewhat helplessly:

  “Really, gentlemen, really . . . please . . . one moment.”

  The superintendent appeared, brushed aside the journalists; taking most of them unawares as he did by advancing on them from the rear. He nearly said: ‘Move along there, please,’ but remembered in time that this was an expression used, not by superintendents, but by constables on the beat that he for his part had left so far behind. Instead he said:

  “Now, gentlemen, now, if you please. His Grace isn’t here to give interviews. Not at present. Afterwards, perhaps,” he added tactfully. To the Duke he said: “Would your Grace please come this way? The Chief Constable would be most happy to have your assistance.”

  “I don’t know if I can give any,” the Duke said, but relieved all the same to find himself thus taken as it were under the wing of authority. “A dreadful business. We dined together only last night,” and at this all around pencils grew busy and note-books fluttered. “I could hardly believe it when I heard.”

  The two constables formed an escort. Too eager journalists were politely but firmly repulsed. But nothing could stop the cameras already hard at it. Major Rowley shouted an order, but for that not a camera ceased its busy clicking. Major Rowley came running. He clearly meant business. The cameras bolted for their cars, fearful of impending seizure. The descriptive writers, with professional solidarity, formed themselves instinctively into a protective and delaying squad. Successfully. Some excellent photographs appeared in next morning’s papers. Nobody’s fault if the best of them all was a shot of the Duke walking between two policemen and giving an unfortunate first impression. The Red Toiler used it on its front page, and later it appeared in every Russian newspaper as proof decisive of the crimes and villainy of the governing class holding Britain in its relentless cannibal’s grasp. But that was in a future at present unforeseen, and now the Duke said simply: