The Bath Mysteries

by E. R. Punshon

  “You didn’t do as they asked?” Bobby inquired.

  “Certainly not. Afterwards I had a long letter of apology and explanation. It seems they’ve been badly let down some time – that’s their affair.”

  “You were contemplating investing a large sum through them?” Bobby remarked.

  “Twenty thousand pounds,” agreed Beale.

  “Was the transaction completed?”

  “No, and it won’t be – not if there’s any doubt about them,” Beale replied with energy. “It’s a trust fund; if it were lost, I might find myself responsible. I suppose I could pay it, but I shouldn’t want to. Make a big hole in my capital.”

  Apparently disturbed at the mere thought, he jumped up and began to pace the length of the room, or rather to flash from one end of it to the other, talking excitedly as he did so, and making it quite clear how disturbed he was by the mere thought that possibly he might have been dealing with untrustworthy people. Two or three times he asked Bobby to promise to let him know of any developments affecting the syndicate, and Bobby undertook to do so, subject, of course, to his duty.

  “I understand,” Bobby said, “you came in contact with them through a friend who was killed accidentally on the Continent. Could you give me the details? I was instructed to ask for them – indeed it’s one reason why I came.”

  “But why? What for?” demanded Dr. Beale, standing still for once and looking very surprised.

  Bobby said it was thought that a fuller knowledge of the tragedy mentioned by Dr. Beale might lead to a fuller knowledge of the people with whom the young man had been connected. Dr. Beale did not seem satisfied, and asked a good many questions that Bobby, mindful of his instructions, was careful not to answer. He pressed instead for a reply to his own, but Dr. Beale proved unexpectedly reticent.

  “I should have to ask the permission of the lady whose son it was,” he declared, “It would be most painful for her if it had to be all raked up again. She is travelling at present, so it would be two or three weeks before I heard from her, even if I wrote at once. The fact is,” the doctor declared, with a sudden burst of candour, when Bobby still persisted, “the boy was not alone when it happened. He had gone away with – well, with a married woman whose husband has a very important official post. If the facts got out, there would be a most unpleasant scandal – best avoided, I think, for all concerned. It would be terrible for the lady concerned – drive her to suicide, perhaps. No, no, nothing must be said; nothing must come out.”

  In vain Bobby urged that nothing would come out, that Scotland Yard’s discretion was absolute. Dr. Beale remained unshaken. He simply would not take the responsibility of giving even the merest scrap of information.

  “You are asking me to let off a bomb that might destroy the lives of quite a number of people,” he declared, and from that position he could not be moved, though he promised to think it over very carefully.

  As for any suggestion that foul play might have occurred, though he expressed himself as very startled and upset by the idea, none the less he firmly denied the possibility. Certainly the young man’s death had meant a payment of ,£20,000 to his associates, but then Dr. Beale had been told that had hardly covered the loss his death meant to them. The doctor would not even say in what Continental country the incident had occurred – he even hinted that perhaps it had been in America or the East – and so, having learned no more than he had known before, Bobby was forced to return to town with no more consolation than a promise that, if the doctor on further consideration saw any possibility of acceding to the request made him, he would at once communicate with Scotland Yard.

  CHAPTER 19

  APPROACHING BLINDNESS

  Bobby left Dr. Beale’s house to return to the town in a very disappointed and worried mood. Headquarters had, he knew, been building a good deal on the information it expected Dr. Beale would be able to supply, and would not be pleased to hear of this blank refusal. The mind of headquarters might acquit Bobby of any responsibility in the matter of this refusal, but the heart of headquarters – if that is not a contradiction in terms – would continue to associate together the thought of Sergeant Bobby Owen and the thought of failure, so far removed always are the human intellect and human emotion. Bobby frowned at the prospect he found the more distasteful because he saw no hope that Dr. Beale’s attitude would change. Only too well do all connected with criminal investigation know how the fear of scandal will close the mouths of those who know and dread that they themselves or their friends may be implicated.

  Even if the restraint laid upon him was removed, and Dr. Beale was told plainly the nature of the foul play suspected, it was little likely that he would become any more communicative. To guard the feelings and the reputation of the living would still almost certainly seem more important than avenging the dead.

  “It’s checkmate there all right,” Bobby told himself. “No willing help will ever come from that quarter.”

  Of course, there was the chance that independent inquiry on the Continent might have useful results, but a continent is a wide field, there was again the time-lag to consider, and Continental conditions were still disturbed. No doubt the effort would be made, but Bobby felt success was unlikely, and in any case there would be more delay in a case in which delay had already caused difficulties threatening to prove insuperable.

  Still deep in thought, going over in a mind a little slow perhaps, but tenacious to a degree, every detail of his interview with the philosopher, Bobby went on to the local police station. There he made himself known, and, producing his copy of the report concerning Dr. Beale, asked for a few further details on one or two points.

  He learned nothing of any interest. Dr. Beale was known locally as a learned recluse, with a taste for good living. There was even wondering gossip in the town concerning the sums Dr. Beale would spend on out-of-season or rare delicacies, and those to whom from time to time had been accorded the rare privilege of dining with him would speak ever after of the experience in terms of awestruck reverence.

  “They say,” added the station sergeant, who, in the absence of a superior officer, was talking to Bobby, “that it’s his old woman does it all, except the washing up, and that she’s a wonder at the job. I’ll bet a good deal,” added the sergeant jealously, “she couldn’t give my old woman a yard in a mile – especial if it’s suet dumpling. My old woman’s are that light you could use ’em for refilling an eiderdown quilt.”

  Bobby expressed a proper admiration, agreed that, taking it all round, a suet dumpling was the true test of a cook, and asked about the domestic staff. It seemed there were just the two, a Mr. and Mrs. Price. The sergeant knew nothing about them except that Mrs. Price was deaf and Mr. Price slightly addicted to drink. The police on the beat had once or twice known him in hilarious mood, and once had found him sleeping it off on a summer night in the garden of the Beale residence. Curiously enough, he was not known, except as a casual customer, at any of the neighbouring public houses, and the theory was that occasionally he got hold of some of his employer’s rare wines and found them too potent for him. However, as Dr. Beale never complained, and seemed content to continue to employ him, it was no business of anyone else.

  Bobby agreed that it wasn’t, though it seemed a pity that rare and precious wines should be wasted on a man who could put them to no better use than to get drunk on them, as if they were so many cocktails, and asked about Dr. Beale’s reputation for learning. But that, it seemed, the station sergeant considered, shaking his head gravely, was better accepted as it stood. Philosophy meant deep water, best kept away from. On one occasion Dr. Beale had been persuaded to deliver a lecture to the local literary society. No one had understood a word of it; and the doctor had been so disappointed at the lack of appreciation and understanding, and by the fact that no member of the audience had asked a single intelligent question, that now it was impossible to get him to say a word about his subject. Talk to him of metaphysics and he would reply in ter
ms of soufflés and sauces.

  Bobby, though philosophy had never been any pet of his, was sufficiently interested to ask if he could anywhere get hold of a report of this discourse no one had understood. The station sergeant, when he had recovered from the shock of so unnatural and even morbid a request, promised to inquire. A report of the proceedings had no doubt appeared in the local paper, since most of the local big-wigs had been present, but it was more doubtful if much had been said about so complicated an address, so involved probably no one had even understood it well enough to prepare a synopsis. But the station sergeant promised to ask the honorary secretary, and, if any report had been made, to procure it for Bobby.

  From the police station Bobby went on to the railway station, where he found he had missed the London train by two minutes and would have to wait an hour for the next. As a consequence, it was late before he got back to the Yard, where Ferris told him another conference was being held.

  “You haven’t seen the Evening Announcer, have you?” asked Ferris. “They’ve got hold of it somehow. Someone’s been talking – that Mrs. Charles, perhaps, you saw at Islington, or Mrs. Ronnie Owen, or someone.” Ferris paused to make a few lurid comments on the enterprise of the press. “It’s not much as yet,” he conceded; “just a hint or two to let us know they’re on the track, and will spill the beans if we don’t promise them the full inside story as soon as we’re ready. Blackmail, I call it.”

  “Have we told them anything?” Bobby asked anxiously.

  “They’re talking it over at the Press Bureau meeting,” Ferris answered. “Most likely we shall have to promise the whole story if only they’ll be good for the time.” Ferris snorted his disgust. “If you ask me,” he said, “we ought to be able to suppress any paper we don’t like.”

  Bobby agreed warmly that that would certainly be a provision of the ideal republic, papers being as big a nuisance as ever poets could be, and Ferris went on to tell him that both the china figure and the signet ring had been identified by Mrs. Clarke.

  “Picked out the ring at once from a tray full of others,” Ferris said, “and showed where the chip at the back of the china piece had been mended so you couldn’t see it unless you looked pretty hard. So that’s that, and what are you to make of it?”

  Bobby said he didn’t know.

  “Proof,” declared Ferris, “that Mr. Chris Owen knew all about where his cousin was, or what was he doing there? And then all those investments he’s been making. He’ll have to account for them all right.”

  “Perhaps he can,” suggested Bobby gloomily.

  “Perhaps – and perhaps not,” said Ferris. “But they’re taking seriously the theory that he saw how to put out of the way a man he knew was living under a false name and there wouldn’t be any inquiry about – and then found the job so easy, and such big money in it, he went on with other poor friendless devils he picked up on the Embankment.”

  “But then where would Percy Lawrence come in?” Bobby asked.

  “Accomplice. You would need accomplices in such a complicated business,” answered Ferris. “Most likely Lawrence was picked up on the Embankment, too, perhaps meant first for another victim and then, when his record came out – well, he would be just the sort wanted to help, an ex-convict with a record like his. That part’s plain enough. The Assistant Commissioner has a whole crowd down on the Embankment all the time now, on the lookout, and half of them have brought in dud reports already.”

  “Who are on the job?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, occasionals,” Ferris answered. “Women, some of em.”

  Bobby nodded approval, for naturally the average C.I.D. man, large in size, upright in bearing, firm-footed, as well nourished, as is likely to result from a healthy appetite regularly satisfied, was not likely to pass unnoticed or unsuspected among those underfed and undersized laggards in life’s race.

  His chat with Ferris concluded, Bobby retired to make out his report of his day’s activity, bringing it back to Ferris when completed that it might be added to the growing pile of documents in the case. After that he had to wait till he learned that the conference had reached an inconclusive end and that he had permission to return home. Thither, accordingly, he betook himself, highly pleased at being relieved from duty in such good time and to have before him the prospect of a quiet evening for a rest and a chance to think things over.

  After supper it was not the maid, but the landlady herself, who appeared – an unusual honour – to clear away. But Bobby soon realized there was something she wanted to talk about, and as she folded up the tablecloth she began.

  “It’s wonderful comforting to be all rented,” she said, “but I don’t know that I’m easy in my mind about Miss Yates, though she does seem to be such a nice young lady.”

  “Why? How’s that?” Bobby asked, sitting up quickly, with more interest than he always showed in his good landlady’s gossip.

  “She’s going blind,” said the landlady.

  Bobby stared.

  “What?” he exclaimed. “Blind... going blind... but...”

  He subsided into silence, completely bewildered by this unexpected and startling announcement.

  “A young lady like her,” said the landlady, “and seems she knows it, too, but goes on just the same in spite of all.”

  “Knows she is going blind?” repeated Bobby, still more bewildered.

  “They told her plain at the hospital when she went,” the landlady assured him, “what she had to do and to come again, but she won’t go near there now, and acts just the same, plain as they put it to her. ‘Your eyes will be gone in two or three months or less,’ they said, and might as well have never said a word for all the heed she takes.”

  “But surely... ” began Bobby, his tone quite incredulous, for the story seemed to him beyond belief.

  “I spoke to her myself,” the landlady said, “not being able to believe it, either. All she said was, never even looking up: ‘What must be, must be,’ and what I say is, it ought to be stopped. Goodness knows, there ought to be some way of stopping her, so there ought.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bobby protested. “What’s she doing... or not doing...?”

  The landlady was quite willing to explain as long as Bobby, by exception, was willing to listen. It appeared that from the start she had been a trifle worried about the new lodger. Bobby guessed, though this was not plainly stated, that the good lady could not quite understand why so eminently eligible a lodger, quiet, pleasant, anxious to avoid “giving trouble,” out all day (quality No. 1 in a lodger), in good work, should be willing to rent a room so generally inconvenient and undesirable as the landlady knew in her heart this one to be. Moreover, it had been taken promptly, at the first figure mentioned, with no attempt to bargain; with, indeed, every appearance of satisfaction and even eagerness. To the landlady it had seemed too good to be true, and as her experience of fife had led her to mistrust all – and more especially lodgers – that seemed too good to be true, she had gone to visit Miss Yates’s former landlady in order to find out more about her.

  The information she obtained regarding Miss Yates’s own personality had been eminently satisfactory – quiet and amiable, never out late, paying regularly, giving no trouble.

  “You don’t often find young ladies like her nowadays,” was the final verdict, delivered with heartfelt conviction.

  But she displayed a feverish intensity of industry that had worried both present and former landladies with its suggestion of an inevitable breakdown certain to involve the girl herself, and therefore themselves as well, in difficulties.

  “She sits up to all hours,” Bobby’s landlady told him, “and up again first thing in the morning, as I’ve noticed myself – it’s one or later when she goes to bed, and up again at five or thereabouts when you hear her alarm going off. Ten hours’ office work and coming and going, and then ten hours’ steady work in her own room, except week-ends, when it’s all afternoon Saturdays, and Sundays all day. It
isn’t natural or right, and I don’t like it, any more than the other lady did where she’s come from. I never heard of anything like it.”

  Nor had Bobby, nor did he know what to make of such a story.

  “It’s why she left where she was,” the landlady said. “The other lady told her straight out, and quite right, too, that she didn’t ought, and she said she couldn’t stand being annoyed, and off she went, and sorry the other lady said she was to lose her but glad not to feel responsible any more, not knowing what might happen next.”

  “What work does she do?” asked Bobby.

  “Sewing for the big West-End shops. Mr. Owen, what do you think she gets for it?”

  Bobby had no idea.

  “Threepence an hour,” said the landlady. “The other lady went and asked, and that’s what she found out – ten hours’ work five days a week, and more on Saturday, and twice as much on Sundays, and, when all’s said and done, not so much more than a pound a week.”

  Bobby was silent, contemplating with amazement and unbelief this picture of toil almost superhuman for a pittance so small. And by a girl believed to have followed the undisciplined and lawless life of the streets. The thing was incredible, impossible, beyond belief.

  Nothing, Bobby told himself, could bring about a change so miraculous, transcending all knowledge or experience.

  In the streets they live at the mercy of every chance, drifting helplessly here and there as whim and accident may send, incapable of foresight or of energy, lacking willpower to carry out one course of action for one consecutive half hour. But this tale was of a discipline so strong, so persistent, so unvarying and bitter, medieval monk or hermit might well have shrunk from its endurance.

  The inconsistency was too great, Bobby thought. How relate that strength, that virtue, to the frailty of the light- minded woman of the street, careless of all restraint and order?