The Bath Mysteries

by E. R. Punshon

  He paused, letting his voice sink away in wondering bewilderment, and Bobby said:

  “As if – what?”

  “What 1 wouldn’t believe. I knew too much to be taken in any more. I was beginning to understand then why I had been picked up from the Embankment; what I was for – a useful thing again. Well, I didn’t care. Things don’t care; men and women may, but not things. Besides, he had given me food when I had had nothing to eat for a day or two and not much before that for long enough. A lot of it is all a blur, but I remember the coffee well enough, and how the strength of it went into me, and I remember the sandwiches he bought me, and how hard it was to get them down fast enough. Funny, I mean, funny what coffee and a sandwich mean. Even when your mind’s like mine was then – even then, coffee and a sandwich mean a lot. Body and mind, you may be both, and God knows which counts most. Well, he got me a bed as well, and a job, too, and I thought at first – but that doesn’t matter, only I was growing human again with a kind of warmth of gratitude, and then I began to understand what was behind it all.”

  “What?”

  “Money and death,” Lawrence answered dreamily. “His money and your death. I didn’t care, only I felt myself grow like a stone again, just as I had been before. I was glad really, I suppose – after all, it was only paying a debt. He had given me food, given me a bed. You don’t know what a bed means.”

  Bobby, chinking of his own unoccupied so long, was not so sure, but he made no comment.

  “When I understood, at last, what it all meant,” Lawrence went on, in the same dreary, reminiscent tone, “I had to laugh.”

  He fell silent once again, and Bobby could almost fancy that he heard that laughter, so lost and desolate, so full of – acceptance.

  “I had to laugh,” Lawrence continued. “Just for a moment I had let myself think the world wasn’t quite what it seemed – not altogether a place where old women drowned, and young girls lied, and men were tied up like packages and parcels. But when I understood just why I had been given that coffee and those sandwiches, just why I had been picked up off the Embankment, why, then I had to laugh because I saw it was all of a piece.”

  “So it is,” agreed Bobby. “Including girls who are fools enough to sew themselves blind for money to help someone else. It takes all sorts to make a world, they say, and I suppose she’s that sort.”

  “I suppose she is,” agreed Lawrence, drawing his brows together in a heavy frown. “I suppose she was the person who warned Norris.”

  “Warned Norris?”

  “Yes. He had had a letter. That’s why I went there. He sent for me.”

  “You knew who he was, then?”

  “He used to come to the office – to the Berry, Quick office; and to another near Green Dragon Square – the London, Brighton & South Coast, they called it. At first I thought he was doing it all, and that the man with the stutter was a tool, like 1 was. But afterwards I got to understand Norris was meant to be the next after me, and so he was safe till then.”

  “What... what are you getting at?” Bobby muttered. “You mean...?”

  “Didn’t you know?” Lawrence asked, with a kind of dreadful calm. “Didn’t you know I had been insured for £20,000?”

  Bobby felt his mouth and lips had gone dry. Incredulously he stared at this man who incredulously related how he had acquiesced and helped in the steps that he had known were the preliminaries to his death.

  “I... I...” he muttered again. “You knew all the time...?”

  “Not all the time,” Lawrence corrected him. “I got to understand after a while, that’s all. It wasn’t difficult. Easy enough to see what it meant. I found out it had happened before. That was why someone was wanted who had no friends, no relatives, to make troublesome inquiries. That was why the man who was planning it all kept away from the office; why I got all my instructions by phone, or letter; why I got long lists of what I was sure were imaginary deals on the Stock Exchange to enter up in our books – that was so it would look like a genuine business. There was a Dr. Beale as well. I was told to try to get him to insure himself, too, for the same amount. He wouldn’t. I think he is marked down to be the third, after me and after Norris. You ought to take care of him.”

  “Oh, we will,” said Bobby.

  “Don’t be too late,” Lawrence warned him gravely. “Too late as I was with Norris. I used to be afraid, sometimes, they were operating, in a way I knew nothing about, through that other office they rented. Dr. Beale ought to be told.”

  “He’ll be told all right,” Bobby repeated; and Lawrence looked at him a little doubtfully, as if not quite understanding his tone.

  “It was too late with Norris,” he said. “I was so sure I was the next, and that when everything was ready, and enough time had gone by since the last one, I was to be found dead in a bath. That was all right. I didn’t mind. I was glad to think I should be out of it all without any trouble, without having anything to do myself. Somehow I felt I had lost all power to do things myself, and, if he would manage it for me, all the better. And if it brought him in £20,000, I didn’t mind – why should I? I felt I had been thrown out – the world had thrown me out, and why should I care what happened in it? I didn’t – belong.”

  “Rough luck on the next man – on Norris, if you thought he was to be the next,” Bobby said, a little sternly.

  “I didn’t mean there to be a next after me,” Lawrence answered. “I was willing to be the next myself, and glad enough, for that matter, but I meant it to end then. I wrote a letter and put it in the office safe, where I knew he could find it – only he and I knew the combination. 1 told him in it I knew exactly what was going to happen, and how he meant to do it. But I told him, also, he had to stop, because I had left all proofs and particulars with a friend, a lawyer, who would send them at once to the police if anything else of the same sort ever happened again.”

  “A friend? Who is he?” Bobby asked quickly.

  “He doesn’t exist,” Lawrence answered. “I had no friend; no proofs either. I knew. I knew all right, but only because I had guessed and understood, not because of proofs on paper. But I was certain what I said in the letter would make him give it up. It couldn’t help. I told him he needn’t worry about me – I was a consenting party. I couldn’t bring myself to do it myself; somehow it seemed too – deliberate. But I wasn’t sorry someone else meant to do it for me – that would end it all.”

  “What about the insurance company that was going to be done down for £20,000?” Bobby asked.

  Lawrence stared at him with quite absurd surprise.

  “I don’t believe,” he said slowly, “I ever once thought of them. But, if I had, I don’t think I should have cared.”

  “What about those walks of yours?” Bobby asked. “Every evening, I mean, round by Kew and Acton and that way?”

  “I had to sleep,” Lawrence answered. “I used to lie awake and think, and then I felt that I was going mad. But if I walked for two or three hours – then, sometimes, I slept.”

  “Did you ever notice Miss Yates? During those walks of yours, I mean?”

  “No. Why? Why should I?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Bobby answered, convinced the girl had merely watched Lawrence pass; possibly, on his return, to make sure he had come back safely. He added: “Do you think Mr. Norris had any suspicions?”

  “Yes. Not at first, but afterwards. Only he didn’t know who to suspect. He thought it was me at first. He began asking me questions. I never told him much – I didn’t know much, for that matter. Then he tried to find out, hanging about the Embankment and asking questions there – he hadn’t got it right. Only, he was beginning to feel he had to be careful, and then he got an anonymous warning. I couldn’t think who that could be at first, but now I suppose it was Alice. I expect she was getting nervous. But I don’t think he quite believed what it told him. I ought to have said more. Only he didn’t give me much chance; he still thought perhaps I was at the bottom of the whole thin
g. And I still felt so sure he was safe, because I was so certain I was marked down to be the next. I suppose it comes to my being responsible for his death. I told you I was. But I was so sure it was to be me, not him. So I told him he was safe enough, and perhaps that put him off his guard – I mean, that’s what I told him when I was at his fiat. He tried to make me tell him what I didn’t know – who it was working it all. He said he had proofs of everything except that. But I didn’t know either; all I knew was a name I was sure wasn’t his own – that and a stuttering voice in the dark. But after I had gone away I thought that, if Mr. Norris really had the proofs he said he had, he might be in more danger than I realized – perhaps it might be him next, not me. And, while I was thinking that, I saw some of your men in a police car looking at me. I knew at once they were after me – you can always tell, the way they look. There was a lot of traffic between us just then, and a bus came along. I made up my mind I would go back and tell Mr. Norris he was in more danger than I thought. But when I got back where he lived, there was a crowd hanging about, and one of them told me what had happened.”

  CHAPTER 27

  TRIP TO OXFORD

  Returning thoughtfully towards his desk from his interview with Lawrence, Bobby met a colleague, who said to him with a cheerful grin:

  “They’ve pulled in Magotty Meg and now they jolly well wish they hadn’t.”

  “Why?” Bobby asked.

  “Nothing on her,” the other answered. “She’s got two girls to swear she was with them at the time the bus conductor says he saw her. Lies, of course, but there it is. And no sign of the suitcase or its contents. Not that there ever was much chance of getting her unless we traced the thing to her.”

  “Nothing of much value in it, was there?” Bob asked.

  “No, and there’s a report a man was seen to throw a small attaché case over Southwark Bridge into the river and then run for it when he was asked what he was up to. Said it was an accident and scuttled off. Looks as if Meg had given it to a pal to get rid of when she found there was nothing in it worth much.”

  Bobby agreed that might be what had happened, though, from what he had heard of Magotty Meg and her thrifty ways, it did not seem likely that anything pawnable, even for a few coppers, would go into the river if she had anything to do with it. The story stuck in his mind as he went on to report to Ferris and tell him Lawrence was now apparently ready to tell all he knew, but that in spite of all their expectations that all amounted in fact to very little – not to much more than how vague suspicions had ripened slowly into certainties, and how at one time he had been inclined to believe Norris was the head of the conspiracy the Berry, Quick Syndicate masked, but that all he really knew was that that unknown’s name might be Chris Owen and that he spoke with a slight but noticeable stutter.

  “Chris Owen?” repeated Ferris. “Isn’t that the name of that cousin of yours? The bird with an eye for the ladies, said to be in with the widow of one of the deaders, known to have visited his flat and never said a word about it? I say, that looks –”

  He left the sentence unfinished, except for a low whistle, and Bobby agreed that it did, and said he thought he would like to spend the day taking a trip to Oxford to see an old tutor of his. Ferris agreed that things became awkward when a member of a man’s own family, even if only a cousin, came under suspicion.

  “You think,” he added doubtfully, “Lawrence is really ready to make a statement? He won’t shut up again?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so," Bobby said. “I should put it he has had concussion of the soul, but that’s passing now and he’s getting normal.”

  “What do you mean – concussion of the soul?” demanded Ferris.

  “A result of what’s happened to him,” Bobby explained. “He’s been living in a kind of dazed condition, only half conscious, about one percent awake, or less, to what was going on round him.”

  Ferris grunted and did not seem to think this very enlightening. He said:

  “Anyhow, if he talks, he ought to be able to tell all about it.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find he has more to tell than he’s told me,” Bobby said. “Whoever it is has been engineering all this business has been careful never to let Lawrence see him. Lawrence only met him at night or in rooms in the dark – all the lights turned out. All instructions came to him typed: all the figures he was given to copy into the firm’s books were typed and so on. And, in the dazed sort of condition he seems to have been living in, I don’t think he ever made any attempt to find out anything. All he did was to try to make sure he should be the last in the list.” Bobby explained briefly ’the precautions taken by Lawrence to come into effect after his death which he anticipated so passively. He added: “There’s evidence now, isn’t there, to show Lawrence had nothing to do with Norris’s death?”

  “One of the occupants of one of the other flats,” Ferris explained, “has come forward to say he saw Norris come out into the corridor with Lawrence, and wait, talking to him, till the elevator came up. He saw Lawrence go down in the elevator and Norris go back to his flat. And there’s no evidence Lawrence returned afterwards and a good deal to show he didn’t. Seems to rule him out so far as that’s concerned.”

  Bobby thought so, too, and departed to acquaint Higher Authority with his Oxford project. Higher Authority was too worried and busy to be really interested. Bobby, told off for special duty in connection with the Ronnie Owen investigation, was not yet returned to ordinary routine, and so his name was not in any list of those detailed or available for duty. Higher Authority supposed Bobby might as well spend the day at Oxford as anywhere else, and if Bobby could dig up any fresh evidence in that unlikely spot, so much the better. It was badly wanted. At present there was hardly evidence even to prove murder, let alone to prove the identity of the murderer. A coroner’s jury could easily and reasonably return a verdict of “Accidental Death.”

  “Not enough proof to convict a small boy in an orchard of being there to steal apples,” grumbled Higher Authority; and expressed a strong opinion that, unless Lawrence had more to tell them, it would be another washout.

  There was, for instance, nothing to show that the apparent search of the room, of which it was thought traces were discernible, was not merely due to Norris himself having mislaid something and looked for it. He was not known to have had any other visitors than Lawrence, who seemed to be fully cleared by the proof that Norris had been seen to accompany him to the elevator in which he had descended. Nor were any valuables missing so far as could be told; money, gold watch, studs, and so on, were all in place. The only real bit of evidence was the fact that the electrical apparatus found in the bath had been deliberately loosened with the aid of a screwdriver. But the only fingerprints – and they were plain – on the handle of the screwdriver were those of the dead man, and it was quite conceivable that he himself had loosened the thing for some reason of his own.

  “What’s this about Lawrence and soul concussion you’ve been talking about?” Higher Authority added.

  Bobby tried to explain, not very successfully, and Higher Authority didn’t seem very interested, but thought and hoped that Lawrence, having said so much, would be willing and able to say more.

  “Once they begin, they go on,” said Higher Authority from long experience; “it’s the birds that keep dumb all the time are the trouble. And he’s given us two good pointers. By the way, this Mr. Chris Owen – name only a coincidence perhaps, but the Chris Owen – that’s a cousin or something of yours speaks with a slight stutter, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir; not much, but it’s quite noticeable.”

  “Let me see,” mused Higher Authority, “wasn’t there some report? Wasn’t he thought to be cataloguing some collection and then it was found he couldn’t be, because it was in cold storage somewhere, and no one seemed quite to know where he actually was?”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby impassively.

  “Great ladies’ man, too, I remember,” mus
ed Higher Authority; and then dropped the subject, but thought that if Bobby wanted to spend a day at Oxford, looking up old friends of his undergraduate days, there was no objection at all. Sergeant Owen had done a good deal of work – quite useful work – and deserved a day’s rest and change. Higher Authority was, in fact, quite benevolent about it, and Bobby expressed his gratitude and retired, fully convinced it was thought just as well he should be out of the way for the time.

  “Mean to haul in poor old Chris,” he thought, “and don’t want me around. Nothing I can do.”

  He returned to his rooms, and was glad to find waiting for him the report he had been promised of the address given by Dr. Ambrose Beale to the local literary and debating society. Bobby put it in his pocket to read in the train, and during the journey from Paddington to Oxford did his best to carry out that intention, but soon found himself in acute sympathy with the members of the literary society. He supposed the words made sense; they seemed to be put together in grammatical sequence, a good many of them he even recognized as being in ordinary everyday use, the meaning they conveyed to him was just none at all.

  Sighing, he put the document in his pocket, and on arrival at Oxford, and after evading the various guides who assured him that unless he accepted their services he would see very little of the place, he found his way to the rooms of a Reader in Philosophy with whom his own acquaintance in his college days had been chiefly confined to the receipt of violent exhortations from the towing path, when he was being tried out for the college boat and the philosopher had been transformed into a coach.