Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery

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Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 16

by E. R. Punshon


  “Like to do it in a nice ladylike way,” added the brisk young man. “Just a nice cup of tea with plenty of milk and sugar and the little something extra that makes all the difference.”

  “There’s still the body to get rid of,” remarked another man, one who had hardly spoken before.

  “Oh, cart it down the stairs,” came a prompt reply from the brisk young man, “and dump it as before—down a chalk pit, disused well, anywhere, easy as winking if thought out beforehand. Needs planning, that’s all. The Shirley bloke’s job.”

  “Come to that,” said the senior man, “if it’s Sir Walter, what about those cellars under the S.B.G.? When I was on the beat, years ago, when some of you were still having your nappies washed”—this last was said with a severe glance at the brisk young man—“I was called in when one of the staff swore she had seen a man down there after closing time. Turned out to be a drunk, trying to find his way out and couldn’t, so went to sleep in a corner instead. But those passages—miles of ’em, and cellars all the way all stuffed with pictures no one ever saw or wanted to. A nightmare.”

  “Well, there you are,” Bobby said. “Sir Walter Welton, and has he been trying to save himself from a possibly true and certainly ruinous accusation? Bardolph, and did he mean to keep his wife, even at the cost of killing? Mrs. Atts, and was she planning to get rid of one to get another? And what has become of Atts: dead or alive, where is he? And what about Jasmine? How much does he know, and how far in it all is he? He seemed friendly with one of the attendants. Early Hyams. Does Hyams know anything? And why has Monkey Baron been trying to get into Jasmine’s room? Oh, and how many more of the S.B.G. paintings are going to turn out fakes? Doesn’t bear thinking of. But that’s enough posers for one time.”

  And as the rest of them thoroughly agreed with this, they all settled down to decide what the next steps should be and how many men could be spared for the work.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  PLAN FOR DIVORCE

  NEXT MORNING, HOWEVER, there was a new development, for Bobby found waiting for him on his desk a note of a phone call from Mrs. Atts asking if he could come to see her that morning, and explaining that owing to an injury to her foot she was unable to go out. There was also a report from the plain-clothes man detailed to watch for Jasmine’s return to the effect that he had not been seen, and that no one seemed to have any idea what had become of him.

  This last report Bobby did not like at all. It made him vaguely uneasy. For one thing there was nothing to prevent Jasmine, if he had the money to pay his fare, from departing for the Continent; a favourite device, and a very effective one for those who had their reasons for avoiding questioning and yet against whom there was nothing like enough evidence to support a request for extradition. Of course, ‘Interpol’, the international police force, could be asked to keep track of Jasmine, but that is not easy when it has to be done, so to speak, unofficially, without the use of the usual methods employed in tracing those against whom a charge has been made.

  Bobby called Mrs. Atts on the phone to say he would be at her flat as soon as he could get away from the desk work waiting for him. He hoped and expected that this would ensure Philip Shirley’s presence, for he thought it might be helpful if he could see them together and note their reaction to each other. Then he sent for Acting-Sergeant Ford, only recently promoted to that rank, and warned him to be ready to come too. If Mrs. Atts was going to have a witness in Philip Shirley, it would certainly be advisable, Bobby felt, for him to have one as well.

  “I’m rather worried about young Jasmine,” he told Ford when the Sergeant arrived. “These artist chaps are too temperamental for my liking. Up in the clouds or else in the depths of despair, and you never know what they’ll be up to next.”

  “Yes, sir; I know, sir,” Ford agreed heartily. “Thank the Lord, I’m not one.”

  “Same here,” said Bobby, equally heartily. “Anyhow, if there’s no sign of him this morning, we shall have to start inquiries. Monkey Baron may know something. Or there’s Early Hyams, an attendant at the S.B.G. We must see what he can tell us. Or we could inquire Chelsea way, among other young artists. But then as a rule artists are a self-centred lot, only interested in each other’s work and ideas, not personally, nor in each other’s background, which is what we want to get at with Jasmine. I did get rather the impression, too, that he was a solitary sort of chap. Though if we could find a girl who knew him that might help. Women are always personal.”

  “Our best bet,” declared Ford. “Pretty sure thing there’s a girl somewhere. There always is.”

  With that sage and comforting reflection Ford retired and was ready with a car at the time suggested. Their car they left in the side street, in the garage yard appertaining to Crescent Court. They failed to avoid the watchful eye of Head Porter Manley and presented themselves at Mrs. Atts’s flat where also they found Philip Shirley waiting—both Mrs. Atts and Philip looking, Bobby thought, pale and uneasy. He thought that probably neither had slept well.

  Mrs. Atts, whose left foot was heavily bandaged, began by apologising again for troubling Bobby to come and see her and explaining that while she was trying to argue with the men sent by Mr. Tails, and to check their apparent tendency to remove everything in sight, one of them, either accidentally or not, had trodden on her foot, and now the doctor was saying that he thought a small bone had been broken.

  “Accidentally on purpose,” interposed Philip to Bobby. “Done to keep her away while they went off with the cabinet. Tails had most likely promised them a good tip if they got it.”

  Bobby made no comment on this observation which he thought was very probably true, and Mrs. Atts went on:

  “Mr. Shirley says there’s a secret drawer. If there is, I never knew anything about it. I never looked. If there was poison in it, it must have been there all the time.”

  “I hardly think that can be accepted,” Bobby said. “I think we must take it that it was put there quite recently. That is plainly stated in the report made. I understand you kept it in your bedroom. Who else could have access to it besides yourself and Mr. Atts?”

  “Oh, no one at all,” declared Mrs. Atts at once. “No one.”

  “You have a daily woman, haven’t you?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, I had, but not now. She’s gone, she told me she always liked to be respectable and didn’t care to help where there was police about. Goodness knows, she liked to poke her nose into everything, but she couldn’t possibly have known about any secret drawer.”

  “Probably not,” Bobby agreed, “but she may know or have noticed something that might be helpful. We shall have to ask her for a statement.”

  “You’ll only hear a lot of lying gossip,” put in Philip.

  “Lying gossip is sometimes very enlightening,” Bobby assured him. “Lies can hardly be lies if they are not founded on something like the truth, and we have plenty of practice in sorting it all out. But I agree it is difficult to imagine a daily woman ferreting out a secret drawer in an eighteenth-century cabinet.”

  “When we had friends,” Mrs. Atts said, “or gave a cocktail party or anything like that the women would leave their things in our bedroom. Sometimes they noticed the cabinet, but I’m sure none of them would touch it.”

  “It isn’t the drawer that matters, is it?” Philip put in. “It’s this poison stuff you say you found in it.”

  “It was Mr. Tails who found it and informed us,” Bobby reminded him.

  “Put it there himself,” growled Philip.

  “It would be difficult to accept that,” came a sharp retort from Bobby. He went on: “Mr. and Mrs. Atts had constant access. Other people only occasionally. One of them might conceivably have been told of the secret drawer and asked to put the poison packet in it. An almost equally far-fetched idea. Mrs. Atts denies all knowledge. We can’t question Mr. Atts, but as a specialist and in some ways an antique dealer himself, he would probably know about it. Mr. Tails found it at once. But why shoul
d Mr. Atts conceal poison there—especially an irritant?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Philip said, adding somewhat sulkily: “You’ll call it far-fetched or something. All the same. Atts wanted a divorce but he had to pose as the innocent party—”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby interrupted. “Mrs. Atts told me.”

  “What put it into my head,” continued Philip, “was the way he bounced out of the flat once, shouting at the top of his voice that she must have been trying to poison him. The breakfast coffee, he said. He wanted someone to hear him, and remember it.”

  “It seems they did,” Bobby said. “It has been reported to us.”

  “Oh, well,” Philip said, slightly disconcerted, for he had hoped to give Bobby an entirely new point of view. He went on: “Well, did you know that he had been saying much the same thing to other people—dropping hints here and there about the coffee they had at home having a bitter taste and he couldn’t think what was the matter with it? Post-war coffee, he supposed. He had asked Mrs. Atts to go to a different shop, but it was all the same.”

  “You are suggesting Mr. Atts’s plan was to give Mrs. Atts the choice between consenting to divorce as the guilty party or be accused of attempting to poison him?” Bobby asked.

  “That’s right,” Philip answered, “and dragging me in as well. Giving her the poison. I expect he knew I wouldn’t care too much if it meant I could marry her.”

  “It wouldn’t be very easy to make a charge like that stand up,” Bobby commented.

  “He was hoping the threat would be enough,” Philip said. “Send a lawyer’s letter, quoting the gossip he had started himself and then there was the poison itself to show. Only he took care it should be an irritant no one could possibly take without knowing it at the first taste. By way of a precaution in case of accidents.”

  “Oh, Philip, don’t, don’t say such things,” Mrs. Atts cried, frightened and distressed.

  “Even if Atts had something of the sort in his mind,” Bobby asked, “does that in any way explain his disappearance?”

  “I know what you mean,” Philip said, without answering directly, and he leaned forward and took Mrs. Atts’s hand.

  “We needn’t go into that now,” Bobby said gravely. He looked at Mrs. Atts and she tried to return his gaze but failed. He continued, still speaking directly to her: “You told me once that Mr. Atts used to meet Mrs. Bardolph at the South Bank Gallery before the ‘Girl Peeling Apples’ painting. It was there I heard you ask Mrs. Bardolph if her husband had murdered yours.”

  “I ought never to have said that,” she answered. “I never meant to. It came out by itself. I don’t know why. It just came. I didn’t mean to.”

  “God in Heaven,” Philip cried excitedly, “that’s it—that’s what happened, of course it is.”

  “If you can produce any evidence, we shall be glad to have it,” Bobby said. “At present we have none. All we know is he is reported seen entering Mr. Bardolph’s car and is said by him to have been put down at Clapham. We have no subsequent information.”

  “Well, isn’t that good enough?” demanded Philip, still flushed and excited. He let go of Mrs. Atts’s hand as if he felt she no longer needed his protection and began to move restlessly up and down the room. “Good enough,” he declared, looking rather defiantly at Bobby. “Lots of men been hanged on less than that,” he said.

  “I hope not,” Bobby told him. “A lot more is needed before we can even show ground for a charge, let alone a conviction.”

  “That picture you mentioned just now,” Philip said. “At the S.B.G. What about that? There’s talk of some funny work there.”

  Bobby hesitated for a moment. He was always wary of premature publicity which too often only served as a warning to those implicated to cover their tracks and go into hiding. But impossible to suppose that the Press wouldn’t soon hear of the unusual proceedings at the S.B.G. and then they would soon be hot on the trail. Quite likely that Sir Walter Welton would call a press conference so as to get his version current first. If Atts were really dead, he could say what he liked since a dead man cannot be libelled. Bobby decided he might as well explain.

  “It seems the version shown at the South Bank is only a copy,” he said. “There are two alternatives. The painting found by Sir Walter may have been a copy, made by or for him, from the description in the Six dowry list, and planted by him where he claims to have found it. Or it may have been in fact the original, and a copy since substituted for it. The copy is almost certainly the work of a young painter, a Mr. Jasmine. I mentioned him once to Mr. Shirley. The substitution can only be recent and may have been carried out by Mr. Atts, and that may be why he always arranged to meet Mrs. Bardolph there, so that the attendants would get used to seeing him in that room. That would mean Mrs. Bardolph may know something. She will have to be questioned. So will Mr. Jasmine as soon as he can be found.”

  “Good Lord, you don’t mean to say he’s missing, too?” Philip cried.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THREE PROBLEMS

  BOBBY HAD MUCH to think about on leaving Crescent Court, nor did he feel that he had learned a great deal from his visit there—except indeed what he could have taken for granted, that Mrs. Atts was considerably distressed and alarmed by the discovery of the packet of poison. As for the theory put forward by Philip Shirley that it was all part of a cunning plan to force Mrs. Atts into accepting the role of the guilty party in a divorce, that at present could only be treated as a theory without supporting evidence.

  But now it seemed there were three major problems to be solved—what had become of Atts, where was young Jeremiah Jasmine, who was in possession of the original Rembrandt painting? If, that is, there ever had been an original at all and the whole affair was not merely a question of the substitution of one copy for another. And these three inter-related problems, Bobby viewed with considerable distaste.

  Evidently the first thing to do was to interview as speedily as possible both Jasmine and Mrs. Bardolph; first, Jasmine as suspected purveyor of the copy and then Mrs. Bardolph as possible holder of the lost original. A street phone box opportunely presenting itself to his notice, Bobby rang up to ask if any report had been received from the plain-clothes man looking out for Jasmine’s return. The reply was that Monkey Baron had been seen hanging about in the neighbourhood as if waiting for, or expecting, someone but had not been seen to enter the house where Jasmine lodged.

  After a time he had gone away and presently Mr. Groan had appeared. On being challenged he had admitted at once that he had come to see Jasmine. Asked why, he had replied that he still considered himself in the employ of Mr. Atts, as his last account had not been fully paid.

  But the C.I.D. man had added that for his part he thought there was a good deal more in it than that, and this was an opinion in which Bobby fully concurred.

  Groan had then entered the house but had quickly reappeared, complaining that a tough-looking bloke on the attic floor had offered him his choice between getting out quick on his legs or quicker still on his ear, that thereupon he, Marmaduke Groan, had opted at once for the former alternative and had furthermore formed the clear opinion that there was something dicky about it all.

  This did not seem either very helpful or very encouraging and Bobby next rang up Mr. Bardolph, first at his business address, whence the only reply he got was from a man who said he was the night-watchman and that all the staff had left. So then Bobby tried the Bardolph home, there to be informed that Mr. Bardolph had not yet returned from the city and that Mrs. Bardolph had left for the Continent in company with her mother, Mrs. Duxbury.

  So Bobby hung up, reflected that the Bardolphs seemed an elusive couple, hoped that Sir Walter Welton would not be the next to vanish, wondered if not only Mrs. Duxbury but the lost Rembrandt might be accompanying Mrs. Bardolph, and, if so, what could be done about it? And finally, after a visit to the Yard to clear up a little desk work, went off home.

  As soon as possible
next morning he got a roving police-car to put him down near the street where Jasmine lived. He knew already that the constable on night duty had reported all quiet, and he had made up his mind that a little personal investigation might prove helpful before deciding to list Jasmine as definitely missing. Also, as they were such old friends, a visit to Monkey Baron, who was displaying such unexpected interest in it all, seemed indicated.

  A few minutes’ brisk walk brought Bobby to his destination. The front door of the house was open, as indeed it generally was during the day, so he entered and as he was ascending the stairs he met a woman coming down. She looked at him doubtfully and said:

  “Better mind, mister. There’s them on the top floor fed up with blokes poking about, asking questions and all.”

  “Are there?” Bobby said. “What sort of blokes?”

  “Blokes like you,” she retorted, and did not look as if she intended any compliment.

  Unheeding this warning, he continued on his way, and, reaching the attic floor, knocked at Jasmine’s door. There was no response—he had hardly hoped for one—so he knocked again and more loudly. This time a door behind opened. He turned quickly and saw Mrs. Montgomery there.

  “There’s no one in,” she called, “and it’s no use you knocking. Getting on my nerfs it is—oh, it’s you, is it?” she broke off to say in a slightly less truculent tone, so that Bobby hoped he had not made a too unfavourable impression when he had been talking to her and her husband before.

  “Too bad,” said Bobby sympathetically. “I’m sure it must be very trying.”

  “I’m that worritted as never was,” she told him. “Not a moment but some banging at Mr. Jasmine’s door and then most like at ours, wanting to know what we can’t tell.”

  “I hope nothing’s happened to him,” Bobby said. “Nice young fellow as you said. But I’m getting worried too. Looks as if other friends of his were as well.”

 

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