Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery
Page 29
34. Triple Quest
35. Six Were Present
E.R. Punshon
Dark is the Clue
“You called him a ‘wrong ’un’. Why? Birds of a feather know each other? Is that the idea? Or do you really know something about him? Oh, and don’t lie.”
Commander Bobby Owen of the Yard is on his way to visit Willoughby Wynne, concerning a gang of thieves operating in the immediate rural neighbourhood. But when murder comes, amid the loganberry bushes, it is a suspected blackmailer, not gangster, who is found strangled. Mr Wynne demands to be considered a suspect himself, but the list isn’t short. It seems more than one person in the district has been living a double life, one they are anxious to protect. And among the petty feuds, petty criminals and respectable gentry, a criminal mastermind is moving anonymously, pulling strings. Bobby will need a very large pair of shears to cut them this time.
Dark is the Clue is the thirty-third novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1955. This new edition features a bonus Bobby Owen short story, and an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” DOROTHY L. SAYERS
CHAPTER I
THE ATROPOS
COMMANDER BOBBY OWEN, of the Metropolitan C.I.D., was driving rather carefully down the narrow, twisting main street of the small but quickly growing village of Twice Over, past the old village church, from which the village itself was rapidly receding, preferring perhaps proximity to the railway station to proximity to the church, and so on towards Over Abbey, erected in Victorian Gothic early in the last century on the site of the very ancient, venerable, and once-famous Benedictine Abbey of Over Once, and now the seat of Sir Charles Stuart, well known and prominent in all local affairs.
A little outside the village, but nearer to it than was the Abbey, stood the Old Dower House, dating from at least a century earlier, and if of no architectural pretension, at any rate showing that sense of proportion which seems to have been innate in the master builders and craftsmen of the period.
It was here that Bobby halted his new Du Guesclin Twelve he had preferred to use on this trip rather than one of the Yard cars. He alighted to open the gate admitting to the long, straight, rhododendron-lined avenue leading to the house. A well-kept garden, he noticed—no trace there of the difficulty often experienced in these days of keeping lawns and flowerbeds in good order. Possibly, though, Mr Willoughby Wynne, the occupier of this attractive little place, looked after it himself.
Before the front door Bobby halted his car again, and then, as he was in the act of alighting, a young girl came flying out of the house in a flutter of skirts and little cries of delight.
“Oh, Marty, how lovely!” she called; and then gasped and stood still as Bobby turned to face her and she saw it was a stranger. “Oh, I am sorry,” she said, changing all at once from a whirlwind in petticoats to a dignified and sedate young lady. “I thought it was a friend I was expecting. He’s buying a new car and he said it would be either a Du Guesclin Twelve or a Tiger Ten and he would bring it for me to see, so when I saw it was a Du Guesclin I made sure it was him, and I got so excited; wouldn’t you?”
“I’m sure I would,” Bobby agreed; “and I’m so sorry to disappoint you. I hope your friend will like his new car as much as I do mine—I’ve only had it a week. I believe Mr Willoughby Wynne lives here. Do you think I could see him for a few minutes? It’s a small matter of business.”
“I expect he’s in his study or somewhere,” the girl answered. “Stamps, isn’t it? It almost always is. Or chess? I do think they are both so utterly boring, but Daddy loves them. If you’ll come in, I’ll see if I can find him.”
Bobby did not attempt to correct her assumption that it was either stamps or chess with which his errand was concerned. They were two subjects of which he knew little, except that you could spend a fortune on the one and a lifetime on the other. He produced his card—private, not official. He said:
“You are very knowledgeable about cars. Not every young lady would be able to tell at a glance a Du Guesclin Twelve from a Tiger Ten.”
“Oh, but you’ve simply got to know about cars, haven’t you?” she protested. “You couldn’t live without one, could you? Vital.”
She was an attractive-looking young woman, though not because of any exceptional claim to beauty, or indeed to beauty at all. Her best point was her complexion, which was very much as God made it, owing little to that excessive use of cosmetics by which some girls manage to give themselves so striking a resemblance to a new-laid egg. Her eyes were good, too—of an unusually clear light brown. But her hair could have been fairly described as ‘mousey’, and her features were irregular: her mouth too large and her nose too small. None the less—though this she hardly knew—she often drew an admiring attention prettier girls sometimes missed, and would occasionally find herself sought out in apparent preference to these others. It was a result, one supposes, of a sense of joy in life that she seemed, though so unconsciously, to spread about her, as though every passing moment were a fresh delight. As a baby in its cradle may be seen at times to chortle to itself as with the sheer pleasure of being here at last, so now an incarnate joy this girl appeared, as she almost literally danced up the few steps leading to the front door, and then turned, with a smile Bobby knew was not meant for him but for all existence, to see if he were following. And the thought came suddenly into his mind that this was how life was meant to be for all created things.
The lofty hall they now entered was paved in alternating squares of black and white marble, the coldness of this effect much relieved, however, by the rich colours of several oriental rugs lying here and there, and by a soft amber light where the late September sunshine penetrated through the glass cupola in the roof. Opposite the door a graceful semi-circular stair, in gilt and iron, rose to a kind of balcony above. On one side a columned alcove sheltered a striking marble statue—of Atropos, Bobby guessed, to judge by the ‘abhorred’ shears she carried and by the darkly grave expression the sculptor had managed to give her. His guide saw how Bobby paused involuntarily to look, for it was indeed a magnificent piece of work. She said:
“Doesn’t she look a sulky, solemn old thing? I always make a face at her when I remember,” and this, having remembered, she now proceeded to do. “Daddy’s awfully proud of her, though. He found her in an old back-yard somewhere. Genuine Grecian antique by Phidias or someone, and worth pots of money. People write to Daddy to ask if they can come and look at her. Sort of film star in stone. When I was a tiny years ago I used to be scared she might come walking into my room one night.”
So, chattering happily, she led the way down a corridor into a room commanding a gay prospect over lawn and flowers and shrubs, with in the distance a background of tall tree-tops, now golden with autumn foliage. On this french windows opened, and these were swung widely apart, as though through them the occupant of the room had only that moment left.
“Daddy can’t be far off,” the girl said. “I’ll see if I can find him. Sit down, won’t you?”
With that she ran out into the garden, and Bobby watched her as she crossed the lawn so swiftly and so lightly it might well have been she went on wings and not on mortal feet. A corner of the house hid her from sight, and Bobby turned his attention to the room itself, hoping to gather from it, as he always tried to do, some impression of the character of its occupant.
In this he failed. It seemed to him entirely impersonal, withdrawn, as if inhabited only by some disembodied spirit, a ghost from past times, or even as if it guarded jealously secrets it did not mean any should ever know. A fanciful impression for which he could not account. The room was of fine proportions, the walls panelled in gold and white, with blue-and-white medallions at the corners, the plaster ceiling showing in the centre a gilded floral device. The general effect was charming, though, again, a little withdrawn. It was furnished so impeccab
ly in the style of the period that instinctively the name of a famous firm in Tottenham Court Road came to mind. Even the books on the shelves of a magnificent Gothic library bookcase seemed chosen to be typical of the time, and, closely packed as they were, gave but little the idea of ever being read. Bobby told himself that whoever used the room lived a life entirely apart from it. He found himself beginning to wonder if the complete impersonality of these surroundings did not in itself constitute a clue to the personality of their owner.
From such rather dreamy thoughts he was abruptly recalled—his back had been to the open french windows as he stood admiring the bookcase—by a sudden conviction that he was no longer alone. He turned quickly. A man was standing just inside the room. The windows he had closed noiselessly behind him as he entered. He appeared to be of middle age, of medium height and build, dark eyes and dark complexion, clean shaven, as are most men to-day. In one hand he was holding both a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and Bobby’s card. His voice when he spoke was low and soft, and he had a trick of running his words into each other, so that it was not always easy to catch what he was saying. He came forward. He hardly seemed to move, and yet he was suddenly in the middle of the room. He said:
“Mr Owen, isn’t it? I am Mr Willoughby Wynne. Sylvia tells me you have called on business. Not, I hope, about my Atropos? But won’t you sit down?”
He waved Bobby to a chair which was either genuine Chippendale or else a remarkably good reproduction, seated himself and waited—waited as if he were prepared to wait for ever, indefinitely and indifferently, with the same unvarying grey patience. Bobby himself knew well how to wait, but he with a controlled force and passion that often brought forth the response that it demanded. The manner of tired attention, as if to what could not possibly be of concern to him, shown by this apparently withdrawn and secret man was new to Bobby, and he did not think that he much liked it. He produced his official card and handed it to Mr Wynne, who took it, looked at it, laid it down.
“Yes?” he said, as though well used to visits from highly placed Scotland Yard officials.
“My information,” Bobby said, beginning to talk more formally, “is that there is a private entrance from these premises to the copse at the back. The copse, I am informed, is the property of Sir Charles Stuart, of Over Abbey, your neighbour, but you have a right of way across it to the public footpath running between it and the fields beyond.”
“Perfectly correct,” said Mr Wynne. “Yes?”
“We have reason to believe,” Bobby continued, “that an attempt may be made to-night to recover stolen property of considerable value buried there by the thieves. We are asking your permission to have access to the copse by your right of way. We wish to avoid any risk of attracting attention in the village. It is vital no suspicion should be roused of our presence here, or the attempt may be put off for weeks or even for months.”
Published by Dean Street Press 2017
Copyright © 1954 E.R. Punshon
Introduction Copyright © 2017 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.
First published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911579 08 3
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk