Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Even if it is Bardolph and he denies it there’s not much we can do,” Bobby reflected. “He’s not the only man with a moustache.”

  A quick glance at the directory gave the address of Bardolph Products, Ltd., Paint Manufacturers and Distributors, and thither Bobby now betook himself. When he explained that he wished to see Mr. Bardolph on a private but pressing matter, he found himself regarded with some suspicion. So he put his official card in an envelope, sent it in, and was presently ushered into a large, comfortable, very up-to-date-looking office where a large, comfortable, very up-to-date-looking man was sitting at a large desk also provided with every possible modern office gadget. The impression Bobby gained as he glanced round was that of a prosperous flamboyant personality, one that had met with few difficulties and much success in life, one again who in his own probable phraseology knew what he wanted and meant to have it—and keep it.

  “Is it about this Atts business?” he demanded as Bobby entered, and without giving him a chance to speak. He indicated a chair—placed, Bobby noticed with a touch of amusement, so that the occupant was in the light and Mr. Bardolph in the shadow. “I don’t know anything about it or him and don’t want to,” he said.

  Bobby had already decided that in this case the direct approach was best. The Bardolph type was one always apt to talk itself into confidence, equally apt to be shaken by immediate attack.

  “Can you tell me when you saw Mr. Atts last?” he asked.

  Mr. Bardolph hesitated. Bobby waited. Mr. Bardolph was already looking a little less confident, slightly less comfortable.

  “I’m not sure—” he began and Bobby interrupted sharply.

  “Please be quite definite about this,” he said. “We have received certain information.”

  “Well, what I mean—” Bardolph began, paused, and went on: “I was on my way to Reading where I had business to see to—a new contract—and I noticed Atts on the pavement, on one of the bridges, I think. Vauxhall it would be. And then when I was coming back I think I saw him again in Parliament Street.”

  “Thank you,” Bobby said. “In either case, it would seem, as far as we can tell at present, that you are the last person to have seen him since he left the Tate Gallery and failed to arrive at the South Bank Gallery where he had said he was going. Please continue.”

  Again Bardolph paused, very plainly hesitating whether to tell the truth or lie. He saw how closely Bobby was watching him. He was growing more nervous every moment. Now, too, he was beginning to feel that a good deal might be known already and he decided to come down on the side of telling the truth—but perhaps not quite all.

  “I don’t see what it has to do with Atts taking himself off somewhere or another,” he grumbled. “I wanted to have a chat with him and I had to be in Reading on time. I asked him to jump in. My idea was we could lunch at a rather good pub I know on the Reading road, talk things over, and then he could get a taxi to return in—of course lunch and taxi would have been on me.”

  “Was that what happened?”

  “Well, no. Atts said he hadn’t time. He had to go to the South Bank place—something about a picture there he wanted to show at a lecture and he had to ask the Director to bring it along.”

  “Do you know what picture it was?” Bobby asked quickly.

  “Something about a girl doing something. I didn’t pay much attention. Why? Does it matter? Anyhow, I had to put him down at Clapham Common. He said he would take the Tube back to town—the quickest way.”

  “Did you part on good terms?” Bardolph’s scowl was sufficient answer, and Bobby did not press for a direct reply. He went on: “I am afraid that in view of information received I must put to you a rather intimate and unpleasant question. Had you any reason to consider that Mr. Atts was showing rather too much interest in Mrs. Bardolph?”

  “Leave my wife’s name out of it,” Bardolph shouted, suddenly angry with the typical sudden outburst of those of fundamentally weak character.

  He banged his fist on the table and then, making as if to rise: “Do you hear?” he demanded.

  “I couldn’t very well help hearing, could I?” Bobby asked gently. “I should think they probably heard in the outer office.” At this, Mr. Bardolph glanced apprehensively at the door and sat down, rather quickly. Bobby resumed: “I can give you my word no one’s name will be mentioned, either publicly or in private, unless the investigation into Mr. Atts’s disappearance makes it absolutely necessary.”

  “My wife has nothing to do with all that,” interposed Bardolph.

  “From information received—” Bobby began again, and Mr. Bardolph glared at him and said still very angrily but in a much lower voice:

  “Damn your information received.”

  “As you like,” Bobby said, “but there is independent evidence that Mr. Atts and Mrs. Bardolph used to meet occasionally at the South Bank Gallery before a picture almost certainly the one Atts mentioned.”

  “It’s a dirty lie,” Bardolph snarled.

  “Possibly,” Bobby agreed, “but whatever it is we have to take it into consideration. A further suggestion has reached us that Mr. Atts was contemplating trying to obtain a divorce. He appears to have employed a private detective in the hope of securing sufficient evidence.”

  “Well, that’s nothing to do with us,” Bardolph said.

  “Obviously,” Bobby pointed out, “if Atts obtained a divorce from his present wife, he would be in a position to offer marriage to another woman.”

  “Look here,” Bardolph said, “I’ve had enough of this.”

  “It has to be cleared up,” Bobby told him. “There are some very ugly rumours about and they must be investigated. The investigation will go on—nothing can stop it now—till it is known what has become of Mr. Atts. No doubt you know you can refuse to answer questions and you can have a solicitor present if you wish. That might be wise from every point of view. You have only to say so and I will leave at once. Then if you will give me the name of your solicitor we will write asking him to make an appointment with us for you and him to call at the Yard. You must let me suggest that if you were a little more helpful, a little more frank, it would probably be better in the long run. I understand you put Mr. Atts down at Clapham Common and he was returning to town by Tube. Inquiries will be made to see if he was noticed. It is not likely but he may have been, as he appears on television from time to time. He is still down for tonight I see. Do you think anyone could have noticed you at Clapham when you stopped there?”

  “How the blazes should I know? I drew up and he hopped out and that’s all.”

  “Are you sure you saw him in Parliament Street?”

  “I thought I did. I can’t swear to it, if that’s what you mean. I know I said to myself: There’s Atts again. It might have been someone else.”

  “When you were talking to Mr. Atts in your car, was it connected in any way with his attentions to your wife, if there were any?”

  “I told him if he didn’t stop making passes at her I would wring his blasted neck for him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He didn’t like it a little bit,” Bardolph answered. “He said if I didn’t stop and let him get down he would smash the car window and shout for someone to get a policeman.”

  “I see,” Bobby said. He got to his feet. “I think that is enough for the present. But I’m afraid we shall probably have to ask you for another interview. If I may say so, I think it would be wise for you to do as I said—get in touch with your solicitor. At present it does seem that you are the last person to have been in Mr. Atts’s company and that you parted on bad terms. That, of course, very likely means nothing much, but as I said before there are some very ugly rumours in circulation and we have to take notice of them.”

  CHAPTER XII

  POISON

  BOBBY WENT AWAY then, leaving behind him a frightened bewildered-looking man who had very much the air of saying to himself: This can’t possib
ly be happening to me.

  Not that Bobby was himself too well satisfied with the result of his interview. It certainly established that Bardolph was the last person, so far as was known, to have seen Atts, and it also established the fact that Bardolph had against Atts such reason for resentment as has not infrequently led to murder. Bobby, however, had it very much in his mind that the Rembrandt painting at the S.B.G.—as the South Bank Gallery was often called—was in some way the centre and the focus of what had happened, and in Mr. Bardolph’s story it had played no significant part. But Bobby also was fully aware of the danger of committing oneself to preconceived theories that might easily lead one far astray. He knew of cases where a criminal had escaped justice simply because the investigating officer had neglected or ignored the clues offered him as not fitting in with the pattern of the crime he had formed in his mind. To follow the evidence wherever it led was the only safe rule.

  So back at his desk Bobby decided that the whole vast police machinery must be set in motion at once. Inquiries must be made in Clapham, in the Tube, from the police officers in Parliament Street. People in busy London streets do not pay much attention to other passers-by, but a man like Atts, made familiar to many by his appearances in television programmes, might possibly have been recognized.

  Also, with grimmer possibilities in view, inquiries, as complete as possible, had to be made all along the Reading road, and all police in the district must be asked to report any unusual or even vaguely suspicious incident they might know of.

  “Out of the question to cover thoroughly any district of this size,” one police force replied. “Thousands of places where a dead body might lie hidden for years. If we do hear anything we’ll let you know at once. Who is this Atts bloke all the fuss is about?”

  “Appears on television,” Bobby explained; and before he hung up heard the little long-drawn, understanding “Oh-h-h” that greeted this announcement.

  The next development was a letter from a firm of solicitors ‘re our client, Mr. Bardolph’, in which it was requested, or rather demanded, that all future inquiries should be made direct to them, they having Mr. Bardolph’s full authority ‘to deal with such’. Their client, they added, might shortly, for business reasons, be obliged to leave for America.

  To this a polite reply was made to the effect that it would be necessary to address any such inquiries, if these were required, to Mr. Bardolph in person, though it would be entirely for him to decide whether he wished his solicitors to be present. Further, the hope was expressed that Mr. Bardolph would, if at all possible, postpone for the present his visit abroad. His absence might seriously hinder the investigation now going on and might just possibly make it desirable to ask him to return.

  “That ought to be a broad enough hint,” Bobby remarked to his secretary as he signed this communication. “All the same, jolly awkward if he does take himself off—awkward and suspicious, too.”

  Meanwhile, the taximan’s story had been published by the Evening Press—‘exclusive’, and indeed a most notable scoop. Bobby had his work cut out, explaining that a lucky phone call, and no favouritism on his part, had gained for that paper so resounding a triumph.

  All further efforts by police or Press remained, however, entirely fruitless. Mr. Atts was reported as having been seen in all conceivable spots in the British Isles—though never in Parliament Street. None of these reports could be substantiated. No dead body was discovered in the Reading district, and if, nevertheless, the great police machine went on grinding away, it ground out from all the material submitted to it, nothing of any significance.

  The Atts case began indeed to fade from the public memory as it had already faded from the columns of the daily papers when Bobby found one morning on his desk a letter from a well-known art dealer—a Mr. Tails with whom Bobby had, some years previously, had some contact in connection with another case—informing him that in the secret drawer of a small Sheraton rosewood cabinet, recently in possession on approval of Mr. Atts, had been found a small paper packet marked ‘poison’.

  Bobby had a distinctly worried air as he sat and stared at this communication. An entirely fresh development that in no way fitted in either with his own private ‘hunch’ that in the S.B.G. Rembrandt lay the key to it all—though how or in what way he had no idea—or with the established fact that the missing Atts had last been seen in the company of a man who had good reason to believe he had suffered from Atts what many still regard as the worst, the most bitter, injury of all.

  “Three different lines of inquiry,” Bobby commented aloud, “all three pointing in opposite directions, like a compass pointing at the same time, north, east and west. Next thing will be a new line pointing directly south.”

  He roused himself from such gloomy meditation. The first thing to do was plainly to send to Mr. Tails’s establishment in Mayfair Square and secure the packet in question.

  “I don’t suppose there’ll be any ‘dabs’ of any use on it,” he remarked to Detective Sergeant Ford to whom he was entrusting this errand. “Probably everyone in the place from Mr. Tails down to the charwoman has been handling the thing. And then it may turn out to be something quite harmless. But the sooner we have it here the better.”

  Ford departed accordingly on this errand. Bobby turned to other work of which he had plenty in hand. At the moment he was busy with a new training scheme for Investigating Officers from beyond the seas attending courses at the newly established, almost international, police training college. But he laid this aside for the time when Ford returned from his errand. The paper covering was at once sent to the fingerprint department to be dealt with there. The contents went by special messenger to be tested and analysed. It was not long before reports were received. The paper covering provided no ‘dabs’ that could be of any value. The powder had been immediately identified as cyanide of mercury, used in the manufacture of Prussian blue and for other purposes. And these last words, though used without intention by the analyst, did not make Bobby feel any more comfortable.

  He made up his mind that another visit to Crescent Court was indicated, and that this time he had better make it himself. Not only Mrs. Atts, but Manley, the head porter there, must be interviewed again and this would have to be done with great care. Manley was not, Bobby felt instinctively, a man whose discretion, or even whose honesty, could be trusted implicitly. Yet he might have valuable information to give. It might well be that he knew much he had not wished to tell in case Mr. Atts returned safe and sound. The story about the ‘corpse’ having been carried away by the service stairs might then form the subject of a complaint to a management, less impressed by Mr. Manley than he had wished Bobby to believe. Or now, if followed up in the light of this tale of discovered poison, provide a further line of investigation it would be necessary to pursue.

  Bobby had already warned Mrs. Atts—her phone was now again in normal working condition—to expect him and on his knock she at once opened the door. She looked pale and worn, with red-rimmed swollen eyes as though she had recently slept little and wept much. Other signs there were, too, of the great nervous strain under which she was living. And of this he knew a grim and dreadful fear must be the chief cause and origin.

  “Have you heard anything?” she asked immediately, and then: “You had better come in.”

  She led the way into the room, the lounge, he had been in before. Here he had a shock. Before it had been full—over full—of what the trade calls ‘museum pieces’. On the walls had been many paintings of high—in some cases very high—value. Bobby remembered specially the really beautiful Persian carpet, now vanished, it had seemed almost sacrilege to tread on.

  To-day the only furniture the room contained was a small deal kitchen table and two or three cane-bottomed bedroom chairs. The walls were bare, the floor uncovered. Mrs. Atts, hearing the little involuntary gasp Bobby gave, said:

  “It’s different, isn’t it? It didn’t take the dealers long to take their things away—as well as
some I always thought were our own. I expect they thought I might sell them all and run away with the money. Mr. Shirley went to see his lawyers about it. I didn’t want him to. Have you heard anything? The papers said a taximan had seen him getting into a car on Vauxhall bridge. It sounded like Mr. Bardolph’s.”

  “He has made a statement,” Bobby answered cautiously, “that he drove Mr. Atts as far as Clapham where he put him down, Mr. Atts saying he would return by tube. We have not been able to trace Mr. Atts’s movements further.”

  She did not speak. She was sitting down now and he could see that she was trembling violently in spite of all her efforts to control herself. She said in a voice so low he could hardly catch the words:

  “I am so afraid—so afraid,” and Bobby, hearing those soft-murmured words, could not help wondering if this fear she felt was solely for her husband’s fate or if it were more personal, more dreadful still—perhaps fear for a lover, too.

  “Have you done anything to get back the property you claim?” he asked. “I think you said Mr. Shirley was consulting a lawyer. Was it valuable?”

  “Everything here was valuable,” she answered, looking both a little relieved and a little surprised at the abrupt change of subject. “Even the dresser in the kitchen is an old Welsh piece. There were two Bonnington water-colours Mr. Atts gave me before we were married. And some Chinese jade. I was there when he bought it. I remember it very well because he paid so much and afterwards told me it was a great bargain and the seller could have got three or four times as much if he had known. And a lovely Sheraton rosewood cabinet Mr. Atts found in a farmhouse in the country. They were all in my bedroom. I didn’t know they had gone till afterwards. I was too worried to notice what the men were doing. I thought at first it was a mistake, but when I rang up Mr. Tails he said the pieces were all listed and Mr. Atts had signed it.”