“That’s the end of them,” Bobby said slowly. To the Duke he said: “What were they?”
“Don’t know, ole boy,” the Duke told him. “Never read ’em. Best burnt. Cost me two fifty. Go away, please. My God, my head!” and he lifted both hands to it as if in an effort to hold it still.
“Paid willing as between fren’s, value received,” said Mrs Sims, interrupting her crooning for a moment and then resuming it.
McKie came across to the Duke. He had a brandy flask in his hand.
“Hair of the dog that bit you,” he suggested. He offered his flask to the Duke. “Here, that’s enough,” he said, withdrawing it when the Duke seemed inclined to finish at one gulp all the flask held. “Feel better?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you, thanks awfully,” the Duke said. He got out a handkerchief and wiped his face and hands. He pointed to the prostrate and groaning Sims. “Is he all right?” he asked anxiously.
“He’ll be better when he’s had a bucket or two of water thrown over him,” McKie said.
Bobby said:
“If you feel up to it, hadn’t you better tell us what’s been happening?”
“Certainly, certainly,” agreed the Duke. “All very extraordinary, but all over now. Family papers burnt. I’ve an act of indemnity, covering all charges of false imprisonment. My friend, Mr Sims, I do hope he’ll soon be better, very decent sort really, has my cheque for two hundred and fifty. Most satisfactory all round.”
“I suppose these family papers, as you call them,” Bobby said, “are those stolen by Sims from young Chrines?”
“Are they?” said the Duke, whom the hair of the dog that bit him seemed to have restored to an almost normal condition. “I don’t know. Asked no questions. Why should I? Very decent sort of chap.”
“Who? Sims?” asked Bobby. “I’ve heard him called many other things, but never that before.”
“Mr Sims came to see me,” the Duke went on. “Ordinary business transaction. He had something to sell. Did I want to buy? Would I like to have them? Family papers. Rooms full of them upstairs. Why not more? He put the price high. Good business man. Always quote your top price first. I said: ‘Too much’. I said: ‘Not buying any pigs in pokes. Family papers handed over first. And two hundred only, and not a penny more.’ He said, ‘O.K.’ and he would go fetch ’em. I said suppose he forgot to come back and got a better offer from someone else. We argued it out—my poker v. his knife. My poker won—there’s an awful lot of sound logic in a poker. So I put him for safe keeps in the old wine-cellar and warned him there he was stopping till I got my family papers.”
“In the wine-cellar?” Bobby repeated, slightly dazed.
“In your wine-cellar?” echoed McKie, almost envious.
“That’s where the joke was on me,” the Duke explained. “I thought it was empty. Sold most of it when the old dad died to help pay death duties and sent the rest to London. Somehow a small case of brandy—Napoleon brandy at that—and bottles of champagne, pre-first war, were overlooked in a corner. Sims found them.”
“He would,” said McKie. “Trust him. Or me either if I had the chance.”
“Next thing,” the Duke went on, “was Mrs Sims, worrying about her husband, as a good wife should.”
“That’s me,” said Mrs Sims, still crooning happily to herself on her couch. “Sims is a rat, but Sims is my man.”
“I told her,” the Duke resumed, “no family papers, no husband; I knew she wouldn’t dare go to the police.”
“Police?” said Mrs Sims. “Police? Not me. I never could abide busies. Poison.”
“But two hundred waiting for the family papers,” the Duke added.
“Business deal,” said Mrs Sims. “Not blackmail, and busies keep out.”
“Family papers there,” said the Duke, again nodding towards the ashes in the grate. “Cheque two hundred for them and fifty extra for bill of indemnity against false imprisonment, in Mr Sims’s pocket, and everything friendly all round. Sims very cheerful in his cellar, though. Didn’t deserve that extra fifty, didn’t want to leave cellar. I told him to bring up what was left and we would all have a drink together to show there was no ill feeling.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs Sims indignantly. “What for should there be?”
“Those family papers,” the Duke said. “On my mind. Very much. I didn’t know what was in them. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. Now no one ever will.” He paused and spoke slowly and deliberately. “Not that it mattered. Nothing in them of the least consequence. But better burnt. Thank God.”
“Were Stephen Asprey’s last poems with them?” Bobby asked.
“I don’t know,” the Duke said. “I didn’t look. I didn’t care either. All I cared for was ending a nightmare I thought would drive me mad. Now it’s lifted for ever. I feel released. Released. Relaxed. Safe at last from all the hints and gossip that are hell, hell, hell! So I had a drink with Sims. The nightmare all gone. Nothing to keep me awake at night. I went on drinking, we went on drinking, all of us.”
“Besh party ever,” said Mrs Sims, and that seraphic smile of hers returned—stronger even than before.
“That’s all,” the Duke said. “Nothing like it since I got sent down. An orgy, they called it then, I remember. That’s all,” he repeated, and rose suddenly to his feet, shaking again as he did so his admonitory finger at Bobby and at McKie. “Never,” he said, “never, whatever you do, no matter how released you feel, never mix brandy and champagne.”
“I won’t,” Bobby promised.
“Chaps like us don’t get the chance,” said McKie sadly.
“Well, you have the chance now,” said the Duke, indicating the bottles on the table. “I don’t think they can all be empty.”
“Can’t they?” said Mrs Sims. “That’s all you know, ducks. Ha, ha.”
“I don’t think there’s anything more for me to do here,” said Bobby. He turned to McKie. “Coming?” he asked.
McKie shook his head.
“I’ll stay around a bit,” he answered. “You might tell them at Blegborough to send my car along, will you?”
“You aren’t going to try to make one of your blessed exclusives out of all this, are you?” Bobby asked, alarmed.
“They wouldn’t print it if I did,” McKie said with resignation.
“I’ll ask them to try to get hold of a doctor as well,” Bobby promised. “I think one had better see Sims.”
“He’s all right,” said Mrs Sims. “He’s a rat and always was, but he’s all right and you can’t touch him. Alibi—and not faked either. Not like them two Bristol tickets to get you so as you would think there was two to pick up. Genuine all through.”
She paused to contemplate this unusual fact with considerable surprise and then went on: “With an old pal in Bristol the night the newspaper bloke was done in and same the night the young chap walked into trouble in London. Learn him to go round asking questions. No one should go round asking questions. Asking for trouble, that is. If family papers got pinched—where did young chap get ’em? Tell me that. He won’t raise no bother. Knows better. Happy ending all round.”
The door opened. An elderly woman stood there. She had a hearing aid in one ear, she held an old-fashioned ear-trumpet to the other. She did not speak at first. She let a severe and disapproving glance travel round the room, and beneath it all visibly quailed. Even Mrs Sims felt it. She rose hastily from her couch.
“We’ll be off,” she said.
“Oh, Mrs Hopkins,” said the Duke. “Er—how is Hopkins?”
“As well as could be hoped,” said Mrs Hopkins, “when picked up by me drunk in the hall, as never happened before, and him serving here respectable nigh on seventy years, man and boy, which little did I ever think to live to see the day and trying to excuse himself, as being as good as told he had to,” and saying this she surveyed the Duke with a cold, unwavering, accusatory stare.
“I must be going too,” Bobby said, a l
ittle afraid that that disapproving eye might next be turned upon him, and as he went he heard a voice more icy now than all the polar regions put together.
“Would it be quite convenient, your Grace, if I began now to clear up the—MESS?”
CHAPTER XXXV
THE LAST DISCOVERY
FROM BLEGBOROUGH Bobby drove on to Penton at all speed possible. There was much yet to be seen to, many arrangements to be made before nightfall, much that required his supervision. Precautions had to be taken, too, to prevent any leakage of information; and Bobby was by no means sorry that McKie was safely occupied at Blegborough, well out of the way, for once or twice it had seemed to him that McKie had a better idea of the lone line of thought Bobby had followed than had anyone else. Certainly, it had come to Major Rowley as a profound shock when Bobby first explained to him his suspicions and his intentions. Even Superintendent Evans had been less astonished.
“I’ve had my doubts all along,” Evans had said. “It didn’t seem natural like, if you see what I mean.”
By nightfall all was ready; and the little cavalcade started off—Bobby, Rowley, Evans, two doctors, two hospital attendants, two Penton constables, stolid and unmoved, for to them all this was just part of their job. Of all the little party, Bobby was in fact the most nervous. He was very conscious that if his careful theorizing, by virtue of which, with no clear fact to be marshalled in support, he had managed to extract the necessary consent from a reluctant Home Office, proved to be ill-founded, then his prestige and authority would be too badly shaken for him to hope to be permitted in the future the kind of independent action to which he always felt he owed so much of his success.
The cars—there were four in all, the one containing the two Penton constables conveying also a good deal of paraphernalia of one sort and another—started at slightly different times and left the town by different routes, so as to avoid attracting attention. At the place arranged on the Hillings road they all met. From it they drove on together, for now the hour was late and they were little likely to be seen. At Hillings church they halted and all alighted. There was nothing to indicate that their arrival had been noticed. Even Hagen’s cottage showed no light. In silence Bobby left the others to make their required preparations while he walked on alone to the rectory. He returned soon with an angry, protesting, frightened Mr Day-Bell.
“There were reasons why it was thought better that information about what was intended should be kept back for the time,” Bobby explained. Not to much effect. “I am sure the Home Office—”
“Home Office indeed,” Mr Day-Bell broke in with an indignant snort. “This is sheer Erastianism. The Established Church has its rights.”
Bobby did not attempt to argue the point, especially as he was not quite sure at the moment what Erastianism really was. Also because he had heard in the distance what sounded very like another car coming—and coming fast. A dire suspicion entered his mind. Major Rowley came up to him and said:
“Mrs Asprey’s here. She was here when we got here. She says she’s staying on. What can we do?”
“If she insists, I don’t see that we can do anything,” Bobby answered.
Mrs Asprey had followed Major Rowley. She heard these last words. She said:
“You had better not try. The moor is free to all—common land. I’ve been here every night. Watching. That man”—she pointed a finger at Bobby—“I knew what he wanted to do.”
“Do you know why?” Bobby asked.
Without answering, she went back to stand near the Janet Merton grave. The cars in which the party had arrived were now so arranged, the head lamps so directed, that the grave had become as it were an oasis of light in the midst of the surrounding darkness. In this illumined circle men were busily coming and going. Rowley, Evans, and the two doctors were standing watching. Rowley said to Bobby:
“There’s a car coming; I can hear it plainly.”
“Ten to one it’s McKie,” Bobby said. “We had better hurry.”
“Can’t we warn him off?” Rowley said. “A churchyard isn’t public property.”
“As well try to warn off a hungry tiger from its food,” Bobby said. “Besides, what would be the good? He could see all he wanted looking over the churchyard wall.”
The car they had been listening to was quite near now. It came at such speed that it was within inches of the wall when McKie brought it to a standstill. He jumped out and hurried towards them. No one took any notice. The two Penton constables had produced spades and picks and had already taken down the headstone. Now the door of Hagen’s cottage opened, and he himself came out. He was carrying a powerful hurricane lamp in one hand and he had shovel and pick on his shoulder. He was wearing his working clothes. He came to the grave, and the two constables paused in their work to look at him. He waved them away. He said:
“This is for me, not you.”
The two constables looked at Bobby, waiting for orders. Bobby said:
“If he wishes it, he has the better right.”
The two men stepped aside. They were more than willing to be spared the gruesome task before them. Hagen put down the hurricane lamp at the edge of the grave and began to work with the silent, swift efficiency born of long practice. In silence he worked and in silence the others watched. Even McKie, who had now joined them, was silent. The only sounds to be heard were those made by pick and shovel as slowly the excavation progressed. It was knee deep now, then deeper still, and still Hagen worked on, steadily, expertly, without pause or rest or speech. It was work he had done before. Abruptly he stopped. He climbed out of the open grave. He said softly, but so clearly all heard him well in that midnight silence broken by no other sound:
“I see a man’s hand, and I think it is greeting me.”
When he had said this he went aside a little and lay down.
Bobby switched on his electric torch and directed its beam into the open grave, already well lighted by the hurricane lamp on its verge.
Major Rowley said in a kind of strangled whisper:
“Look. Look.”
No need to tell them to look. They were all looking. There, thrusting through the dry, disturbed, loosened earth, was what once had been a human hand, was indeed still so recognizable. On a sudden one of the constables gave a loud cry. One of the doctors began to run. The other followed him. They had heard a strange, gurgling sound. The first doctor called out:
“He has cut his throat, cut it to the bone.”
Bobby said:
“Do what you can.” To the two constables, he said: “Carry on. It will be the body of Henry Thorne, the clergyman who disappeared so long ago, but it must be properly identified. Be careful. Disturb it as little as possible. The coffin must be opened, too. We must make sure whether there is a casket there and, if so, if there’s anything in it. Probably not, but we must be certain.” He went across to the two doctors, only to be told what he had been sure of from the start. Death had been almost instantaneous. He stood for a moment looking down at the body of one who might, he felt, in other circumstances have been of some service to man in his effort to understand himself and his environment. “Waste,” he said aloud. “A high endeavour and an ill ending.” He went back to Rowley and said to him: “Hagen may have left a letter or statement of some kind. I expect he has. He saw what was coming, and there was no escape. Don’t you think it might be as well to see if there is anything like that?”
Rowley nodded assent. Leaving Evans in charge of what had still to be done, he and Bobby went across to the dead man’s cottage.
CHAPTER XXXVI
APOLOGIA
WHAT HAD been chiefly in Bobby’s mind when he made this suggestion to Major Rowley was his memory of the MSS he had seen Hagen put away the last time they had talked together. It had been headed, he remembered: ‘Apologia’. It was still there in the kitchen table drawer where Hagen had placed it. Bobby took it out, glanced at it, and began to read it aloud, while Rowley listened and took notes. It started:
‘Ever since I began to try to think for myself—and that is many years ago—I have kept commonplace books. Twenty-seven of them in all, and all full, though the new one I bought recently has no entry in it yet, and now it may be that it never will have, for I think it likely that the end I have watched, as rabbit watches snake, is now close upon me.
‘There have been times when I pleased myself by playing with the notion that these records of my thought, uninterrupted since the day when I started to put down my ideas in writing, might be considered worthy of publication. Or rather, extracts from them, for in all they must contain several million words. When and if, that is, I had succeeded in making clear my belief that there are objective links in all vision, whether drug-inspired, or coming by way of prayer and fasting, or spontaneous in moments of thought and wonder and deep emotion, or even in the dreams that come to us sometimes in sleep. In all these varieties of experience we are translated, knowing another circle of being that should be higher but may be lower, but that in either case has as clear an objective reality, existing independently, in its own right, as the material world we know, that in which we live and move and have our being, and whose identity continues through the changing conditions of time and accident all creatures, having what we call life, experience from day to day. The axiom that we never step into the same river twice is merely a bald truism. What is important is the sameness which permits the same river always to be there.
‘It follows, then, I think, unless my reasoning is sadly at fault, that it should be possible, conditions being fully understood, for all intelligences, no matter dressed in what appearance, whether of our human flesh or otherwise, to move freely from one sphere of being to another, and then to return with full knowledge and understanding, able to report on these other spheres in absolute truth and being, and so make plain to all what is our complete environment in sober factual reality.
Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 26