Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘Yes, sir, very,’ agreed Ferris. ‘Er – in what way, sir?’

  But Mitchell had no time to answer, for as they came up to the car Jacks held out a slip of paper to him,

  ‘Report from Detective-Constable Owen, sir,’ he said, ‘marked “important”. Owen left it in person, sir.’

  ‘Oh, he did, did he?’ grumbled Mitchell, and took the message and read it aloud to Ferris, ‘“Keeping Curtis under observation as instructed, followed him to Ealing where he visited Mrs Frankland’s house. Was able to watch him with Sybil Frankland in drawing-room. Windows were closed and could hear nothing but both seemed excited. After Curtis had gone decided to wait in case of developments, and heard Sybil Frankland’s voice in front bedroom saying presumably to Mrs Frankland who is in bed, suffering from shock, ‘I murdered Jo, I did it’. Then heard sound of sobbing till window was closed. Waited for further developments but none occurring, left, to try to pick up Curtis again”.’

  Mitchell folded the report and put it away in his pocket-book.

  ‘Did she mean it or didn’t she?’ he asked, though speaking more to himself than to Ferris. ‘That’s the worst of a woman, Ferris; what they mean and what they say are two things with a strictly limited connexion.’

  ‘So I’m told, sir,’ agreed Ferris with suitable caution, and when the car had started and they had gone a little way he leaned forward suddenly, and then turned to Mitchell, who had been too deep in thought to notice anything.

  ‘That was her, sir, we’ve just passed, Sybil Frankland, I mean. It’s getting dark, but I saw her plainly in that field just behind the hedge, as if she were hiding.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The A.A. Scout’s Evidence

  Mitchell let the car proceed another hundred yards or so and then stopped it and alighted, telling Jacks to wait there by the roadside till they returned.

  ‘What do you think it means, sir? the other Frankland girl turning up like this,’ Ferris ventured to inquire when Mitchell, after walking back to the spot where Ferris said he had seen Sybil, came to a standstill there and remained with his hands in his pockets, staring blankly over the hedge into the field beyond, rather as if he hoped to see her still there.

  But at Ferris’s question he roused himself and turned a gloomy eye on his companion.

  ‘Ask me another,’ he said briefly, and lapsed again into deep thought, a natural loquacity he possessed frozen by his utter incapacity to form any reasonable theory to account for these happenings.

  Ferris did not venture to speak again. His own mind seemed a blank, so little did it find on which to lay reasonable hold, but he hoped the superintendent was able to see more deeply into things. Presently Mitchell roused himself and began to move slowly back towards the Grange.

  ‘Wonder where Owen is,’ he muttered. ‘Never where he’s wanted, of course. Dodges about and leaves silly messages and never lets you have a chance to give him fresh instructions.’

  The measure of the injustice of this remark, since Detective-Constable Owen had received special orders on no account to run the least risk of rousing any suspicion of any connexion existing between himself and the officers more openly investigating the case, is the measure of the bewilderment felt by the normally fair-minded Mitchell.

  Still wrapped in thought, if that can be called thought which was but a chaos and a turmoil of conflicting bewilderments, he stopped to stare again over the hedge into the field where Sybil had been seen, as if he hoped to stare into existence some plausible explanation of her appearance.

  ‘You know, I never thought she was mixed up in it,’ he said, ‘and yet she must be if she’s dodging about here, or at least that’s what it looks like. You are sure it was her, Ferris?’

  ‘I don’t reckon to make mistakes in identification, sir,’ returned Ferris, somewhat stiffly.

  ‘No, no,’ agreed Mitchell, for indeed long practice had made Ferris’s natural memory for faces as near infallible as could be. ‘No, only I don’t like it, I don’t like it one little bit, not after what Owen reports. The whole business seems gradually concentrating on this blessed sun bathing show, and yet you don’t associate cranks with crime – cranks are generally too busy with their own special fad to go in for crime as well.’

  ‘Might make it all the better cover for crime, sir,’ suggested Ferris.

  ‘There is that,’ admitted Mitchell, ‘and they do seem hard pressed for money, but then again the little Bryan man was quite open about that. Still, how would murdering a working journalist like Jo Frankland help them there? A journalist wouldn’t be likely to have any money, anyway.’

  ‘No, sir,’ agreed Ferris. ‘It would be a big help if we could get some idea of what the motive was,’ he added.

  ‘It would,’ growled Mitchell, whose temper was giving way under the strain of his perplexity, ‘and if we knew how many blue beans we wanted, we wouldn’t have to count ’em. Anyhow, we know Keene and Hunter both frequent this place, and we know they are up to crooked work, probably arson, or why do they want a man with a record like that of Bobs-the-Boy in their employ? But so far we’ve no proof, so far those two have done nothing we can hold them on, and for all we can tell they never may. It’s no crime to take out big assurances on your stock, and though I daresay it’s easier just at present to burn pictures and mink coats than sell them, it doesn’t follow that’s what they’ll actually do. And if it’s only that, I don’t quite see what they want a man like Bobs-the-Boy to help them for. They could light a candle on top of a can of petrol all by themselves without his help.’

  ‘Do you know how they came to get in touch with him?’ Ferris asked. ‘That would be a useful point to clear up.’

  ‘Oh, that was through Mousey; Mousey sent him to Hunter,’ Mitchell answered. ‘Mousey says it was because he saw an advertisement for a man to do odd jobs Hunter put in the paper, and wanted to put Bobs-the-Boy in the way of earning an honest living, but of course that’s just cheek and eye-wash. Unluckily Mousey knows we can only hold him another couple of months till his original sentence expires, so he doesn’t care much, and very likely he’s been well paid. But do Keene and Hunter come here only because it’s a convenient place to meet, and they can talk without any risk of rousing suspicion, or is there someone else they want to meet as well?’

  ‘There’s another point, sir,’ Ferris observed. ‘Apparently Jo Frankland was trying to break off the engagement between her sister and Keene, and there is some evidence that Keene had a violent scene with her over that.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem very strong as a motive for murder,’ Mitchell objected. ‘Of course, in a quarrel anything might happen, only this strikes one as a deliberately planned affair. Still, we do know Keene was here that afternoon, only apparently he left before she arrived. Have to get Owen to check up Keene’s movements and see if it’s possible he hung about here till she left. Better have Keene’s movements all day checked up as closely as possible. Gibbons might do that, so as to keep Owen out of it as much as possible. Then there’s Hunter. Seems there was some sort of connexion we haven’t got the hang of yet, between him and Jo Frankland, or why was she visiting Howland Yard, as there’s evidence she was? Curtis evidently suspected an intrigue. He was all eaten up with jealousy, and that day he had been drinking, but I can’t see a man in a frenzy of drink and suspicion planning a murder so deliberately and carrying out so coolly so damnably clever a scheme to hide the crime. For it was clever, you know, Ferris, and if we hadn’t been on the spot to put out the fire before the body was too badly burnt, the whole business might easily have passed off as an accident, and the fact that she had been shot never been noticed at all. Besides, Curtis is a big man with tremendous shoulders, and though Mrs Curtis was tall, she was thin – he could never have got inside any coat of hers without splitting it right down. I don’t think it’s possible it could have been Curtis we saw driving the car when it passed us, any more than it can have been the poor woman herself, since it is certain she had been
shot before then. The evidence of the photograph in the Announcer is conclusive that whoever the driver was, it wasn’t her.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Ferris. ‘Good thing you noticed that.’

  ‘Sort of thing someone was bound to notice,’ Mitchell answered, though purring a little at the compliment. ‘Young Owen spotted it quick enough, without even seeing the photo, just on my describing it to him – of course, I had told him to look out for something wrong.’

  ‘Oh, well, you know, sir,’ Ferris pointed out, ‘that makes all the difference – anyone ought to be able to spot the discrepancy once they were told there was something to look out for. It was spotting it the first go off without any hint was the smart work.’

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ conceded Mitchell, who secretly was of the same opinion, ‘anyhow, it’s good proof the murder took place some time after Bryan left her at the entrance to the car park and before we saw the Bayard Seven pelt past us the way it did. So that seems to let Bryan out, even if there were anything much to implicate him, because there’s the good independent evidence Gibbons got that Bryan did actually walk across the lawn as far as the car park and that it really was Jo Frankland with him. One of the sun bathers knew her quite well, because of having worked on the same paper with her at one time, and spoke to her as she and Bryan came out of the house together. That corroborates Bryan’s story, and there’s further corroboration of his story that at the entrance to the car park he left her, went back to the house, and rang up Lord Carripore just as he says. He’s got a cast-iron tale, and though I don’t like cast iron, because the truth so seldom is, still, there you are – amply corroborated and not a weak spot anywhere. Only there’s just one little point. Bryan said Wilson could have helped her to get her car out, if she needed help. Wilson himself says he wasn’t there, had been called up to the house to see to a leaking tap.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Ferris, ‘and a leaking tap that Wilson told us looked as if it had been damaged on purpose. It does seem just a little as if there had been a plan to get Wilson out of the way, away from the car park, I mean, just when Miss Frankland was likely to get there. Only, was it a slip on Bryan’s part when he said that, or was Wilson sent out of the way without his knowledge?’

  ‘Beginning to look,’ Mitchell mused, ‘as if we had got it down to the murder having been committed in the car park directly Bryan left her. If that’s so, the only question is, who was waiting in the car park when Bryan went back to the house?’

  There was a touch of horror in his voice as he spoke, and in the minds of both the men was a clear picture of the assassin lurking in the car park, between two of the cars perhaps, waiting till the unsuspecting victim should return.

  ‘A black business,’ Mitchell muttered, ‘but anyhow Bryan can’t be the actual murderer, since the girl was alive when he left her and he went straight back to the house.’

  ‘He might be in it all the same,’ Ferris answered, ‘for I’m beginning to think this business is a bit too big and complicated to have been a one-man show.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Mitchell, ‘and it’s one of the things that points away from Curtis. A crime of jealousy would be carried out single-handed.’

  ‘Taking it as proved,’ Ferris said slowly, ‘that it was neither Curtis nor his wife we saw when the Bayard Seven passed us – Curtis being too big across the shoulders to wear the coat and the Announcer photograph proving it wasn’t her herself but someone personating her – would you say that personator was a man or woman, sir?’

  ‘It must have been a man, I think,’ Mitchell answered. ‘The only other woman we have any trace of in the whole business is her sister, Sybil Frankland, and it hardly seems possible to suspect her, not without a lot more evidence than we’ve got so far. Of course, there is the possibility, and there’s the cry accusing herself Owen reports hearing, but it’s odds that only means she was hysterical and excited, overwrought with the thought of what’s happened, and felt she was to blame somehow. All the same, we’ve got to agree it does seem to require more explanation now we’ve seen her hanging about here, behind hedges as if she had some special reason for not wanting to be seen.’

  ‘And dodging off just the way Bobs-the-Boy dodged off between those two cars,’ observed Ferris with a grin.

  ‘Well, we know why he didn’t want to be seen,’ Mitchell said impatiently, ‘but it does look as if Sybil Frankland knew more or suspected more than she’s told us – and if she’s innocent, why’s that?’

  ‘Curtis was jealous,’ Ferris remarked. ‘Of Hunter apparently. But could it have been Keene Mrs Curtis was meeting at Howland Yard? If so, did Sybil Frankland suspect it, and if it’s a crime of jealousy, is it her jealousy and her crime? Seems to me it would look rather like it if we could be sure it was a woman driving the Bayard Seven and not a man.’

  ‘In my idea,’ repeated Mitchell, ‘it was a man, though of course no one could be sure, going at the rate it was. I take it what happened is that after he passed us, he stopped just long enough to take off her hat and coat he was wearing as a disguise, and to put them back on the body. Then he sent the car full tilt over the railway embankment, jumping out first himself, of course. He scrambled down the cutting after it to make sure it was burning all right – or perhaps to start the fire. Then he made off along the railway track. We’ll go round and see the local people and ask them to try to find out if anyone saw the car starting, and, if so, what the driver looked like. It’s a pity there’s no way of getting in touch with Owen at the moment. I think you had better stay on and if he sees you he may guess you’ve something to say and show himself. If he does, tell him Sybil Frankland is here, and meanwhile I’ll ring up now to have a good man put on to take care of her at her home end.’

  It was evident that Sybil’s unexpected appearance was troubling Mitchell a good deal, and that he did not know quite what to make of it. Perhaps it was what is called the detective’s sixth sense that made him so uneasy, or, to put it in another way, just the impression that for so strange a happening there must be some cause of real significance. They had been walking on as they talked, and now had come to the local police station where by good luck the sergeant in charge had waiting for them the very piece of information they required. For it seemed that only an hour or two before an A.A. scout had been in to say that on the day of the murder a lady driving a Bayard Seven had stopped him to make some quite trivial, and not very sensible, complaint about the driving of some other car, and had given him her card. He had not paid either the card or the complaint much attention at the time, regarding the complaint as merely fussy and the card not interesting him. But that afternoon, when on the point of throwing it away with some other rubbish he was turning out from his pockets, he had noticed that the name on it was that of the victim of the sensational murder with which the papers were so occupied. He had thought it just as well to mention the fact, though he didn’t know that it was of any importance, but there at any rate lay the card on the table. And if Mr Mitchell thought the matter worth following up, the spot, said the sergeant, where the A.A. scout was on duty was not far distant.

  Mitchell said he thought it would be as well to hear what he had to say, which was in fact no more than already reported except that he was quite certain, though he had not paid her any attention and could give no description of her at all, that she was most certainly a woman. On that point he was quite clear and definite.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘Bobs-the-Boy’ Makes Suggestions

  When Bobs-the-Boy slipped away from the Grange car park on the approach of the two investigating police officers, he went with his swift slouching gait, so like that of some wild creature of the jungle prowling in search of its prey, to a small beerhouse that stood on the outskirts of the village, a kind of humble rival to the Leadeane Arms that since the installation of the sun bathing at the Grange had begun to take on the airs of a smart, up-to-date hostelry. Indeed the proprietor had just given a week’s notice to the
admirable cook he employed, since she could only serve up sound English roasts and baked, and apple pies made the way they are in heaven, so as to be able to substitute for her a chef who really understood the art of cooking – as shown by bad French on a menu, innumerable sauces differing chiefly in name and colour, and a resolute determination that nothing should appear at table resembling itself either in taste or appearance.

  But from the humble beerhouse, which neither dreamed of nor aspired to anything beyond good ale and bread and cheese, a clear view of the village police station could be obtained; and of the arrival there of Mitchell and Ferris, Bobs-the-Boy was an interested spectator.

  ‘Something on,’ he decided; ‘got to find out what.’

  So finishing his beer he strolled down into the village, where, since naturally the one topic of conversation was the sensational murder that had brought their quiet neighbourhood such notoriety, he had no difficulty in learning, among other things, of the visit of the A.A. scout to the police just a little before.

  The gossip Bobs-the-Boy had no need even to provoke, so spontaneously did it flow, varied from pointing to the A.A. man as the actual murderer to declaring that he had been an eye-witness of the deed. Having his own reasons for being interested, Bobs-the-Boy decided that as the cross roads where the A.A. man was posted were not far, it would be worth while to pay him a visit and see what could be found out from him. He slipped off quietly in that direction, therefore, though not so quietly but that his going failed to escape the watchful eye of Inspector Ferris. However, the A. A. man had been told not to talk, understood discipline, did not seem favourably impressed by his questioner’s appearance, and in fact promptly extended to him a brief invitation to ‘hop it’. Bobs-the-Boy countered with a truculent offer to bash in the A.A. man’s face, but on that individual showing some willingness to afford him the opportunity to try, apparently thought better of it and went off with his long prowling stride that seemed so slow and unhurried and yet took him over the ground with such unexpected rapidity.