Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘I know,’ agreed Bobs-the-Boy gloomily, ‘same here... Something happens, you didn’t never mean it... but what do them busies up at the Yard care?... Swing you for it all the same, so they will, if they can.’

  It was a remark that did not seem to raise the spirits of any of the others. Even Bryan looked appreciably paler as he went on,

  ‘What made it worse was that Lord Carripore, it was his company had to pay up most, began messing about, trying to find out things, and we had to slow down operations for the time. This place costs a lot to run at present, it will till it gets fully established, and though we managed to collect a bit of coin from our operations, expenses were heavy – assessors, for instance, scandalous, what we had to pay them when they did nothing at all, nothing till it was all over and then walked off with the fat. So we had to try some more, and Mr Hunter and Mr Keene came in to help. But we wanted a good trustworthy odd job man as well.’

  ‘Bob’s the Boy for that,’ grinned Bobs-the-Boy. ‘It was Mousey told me you might have a job for a fellow what knew his way about. Mousey had been in it already hadn’t he?’

  ‘Off and on,’ Bryan answered with some reserve, as if he didn’t care to go into details. ‘Unluckily he got taken again just then, but not till he had told us where to find you. Though he seemed to have some sort of idea–’

  Bryan paused and Bobs-the-Boy laughed harshly.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Mousey thought that Salvation Army bloke had got hold of me and I was running straight. Mind you, I ain’t got nothing against running straight, only a bloke’s got to live, ain’t he? Well then...’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Bryan. ‘What we wanted was a man who would know how to break into Mr Hunter’s warehouse and remove some of his more valuable stock the staff could swear was there when they closed down. After that, you were to start the fire, and no assessor afterwards could have told the difference between the cheap minks and sables we should have given you to put in the place of what you were to remove. We didn’t mean to be bled by assessors any more. The same idea was to be carried out at Mr Keene’s place, where there are valuable paintings, good, honest, sworn testimony would have shown were on the premises when the fire broke out but that the fire had utterly destroyed. Only your job would have been to break in and clear them out before starting the fire, so we should have had the insurance on them and the things themselves as well, to sell afterwards; and it would have been a mighty smart assessor who could have told the difference between a genuine Old Master and a copy all nicely charred up. The fires were to have happened when Mr Keene was in Paris on business and Mr Hunter somewhere else, on a weekend cruise or somewhere, so they could both have had good alibis. I suppose you knew most of that already?’

  ‘Most of it,’ agreed Bobs-the-Boy with another of his grins; ‘all of it, pretty near. I told Mr Keene as much the other day. It wasn’t anyway difficult to see what the game was... smart, too, all right, smart and safe as houses.’

  ‘Now Keene’s backed out,’ Hunter said gloomily. ‘I told him what I thought of him. But he’ll hold his tongue for his own sake.’

  ‘They used to come here to talk it over and fix things up,’ explained Bryan to Bobs-the-Boy, ‘and then afterwards I would tell Zack and Elsie what had been arranged.’ He paused and licked his lips that had become a little dry. ‘Well, that’s how the whole thing happened,’ he said. ‘Zack and Elsie–’ He stopped again for a moment, to glare malevolently at the woman. ‘I used to think Elsie had good nerves,’ he went on; ‘now she’s gone all to pieces. Well, we were talking things over in here, in this room. I explained everything so we should all know just what was arranged and what we had to do. Then we heard a noise in the room beyond there that opens out of this one. There was a sort of scratchy sound as if a chair had rubbed against another, and then something fell on the floor and smashed, a bit of china it was, and there was a sort of cry. So that told us there was someone there listening to all we said.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Dodd said, speaking for almost the first time, ‘that’s what we heard... then we knew someone was there.’

  In a silence filled for Bryan, for Dodd, for the woman, with a memory of that moment when they realized an unseen listener had heard their talk, they all three looked at one another, living over once again that moment of appalling knowledge. Bobs-the-Boy watched them with his everlasting grin, and then, just as he was about to break that heavy silence of dark memory in which they seemed all three so closely wrapped, all of them heard distinctly a sound from the adjoining room as if a chair had knocked against another. Almost immediately there followed a noise of china breaking, as if a flower vase or something of the sort had fallen and broken, and then a low, soft cry to tell them beyond all doubt that once again there was someone in that inner room, someone who had listened to all they said, had heard it all, and now knew all their secrets.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Bobs-the-Boy’ for –

  For a moment, a long and dreadful moment, there was a silence in that little upper room so complete and strange one might have thought the world itself had stopped.

  Had the five who were present there been smitten dead upon the spot, they could not have been more still or quiet. It was as if even their hearts had ceased to beat, their breath to come or go.

  Then at last there was a whisper heard. Who spoke it first none could tell; perhaps it came from them all at the same moment; a low, half uttered whisper that seemed to murmur interminably all about the room as though it would never cease, a whisper that was but one word – a name endlessly repeated.

  ‘Owen, Owen, Owen,’ it went on and on, and they all heard it, and hardly knew whether they uttered it themselves, or listened to it spoken by the others; whether they repeated it aloud again and again that it seemed to linger so in the air around, or whether they were merely conscious of it as the overwhelming knowledge of them all.

  But at last Bryan spoke, very softly, his words hardly audible, yet all the same clear and distinct to the minds of them all.

  ‘If it’s Owen, if it is,’ he said, staring at the door that led into this inner room, ‘then he’s there still, for the outer door into the passage has been locked and bolted ever since... ever since...’ He did not complete the sentence, but they all understood well enough. He added, ‘There’s the window, but it’s barred; it was the day nursery in there once.’

  ‘If it’s Owen,’ Hunter babbled, so shaken in every nerve and muscle he could hardly articulate, ‘if it’s Owen... then he’s heard it all... he knows it all... what are we to do?’

  ‘If it’s Owen,’ Zack Dodd mumbled in his heavy, rumbling voice that was so full of threat and menace, ‘then he’s got to be... dealt with... like her... dealt with,’ he said with a gesture of his great, clenched fist. ‘It’s him or us,’ he said.

  Miss James said,

  ‘It’s him all right... it’s him... it’s him... he’s been there all the time... he’s heard it all.’

  ‘If it is,’ Bryan said, still staring at the door, still fingering what he held still hidden in the pocket of his coat, ‘he must have slipped in when you and Zack went down to let Hunter in.’

  Hunter said,

  ‘I’ll go, it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know anything about all this or what happened to Jo Frankland.’ He said this last sentence very loudly and in the same high, almost shouted tone, he added, ‘I was miles away. I can prove that. Easily. I’ll be going.’

  But when he made as if to rise from his chair to carry out his intention, he saw how the other three were looking at him, and he understood and sat down again very quickly. ‘Oh, all right, all right, all right,’ he stuttered.

  ‘You’ll see it through same as the rest of us,’ Zack rumbled. ‘You’d best be careful too, you sneaking cur.’

  ‘All right, all right, all right,’ Hunter stammered again, and indeed by now he was so shaken with such an extremity of terror it is doubtful if, even if they had permitted
it, his legs would have carried him as far as the door.

  Bryan muttered, almost whispered, his glance turned back again upon the closed door of the inner room,

  ‘We’ll all see it through together, but what a fool the fellow is to let himself be caught in there like this.’

  They were silent again, silent and waiting. Hunter managed at last to gasp out,

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t hear... most likely he couldn’t.’

  They took no notice, and presently Zack Dodd said, leaning across to Bryan,

  ‘If he’s got a gun, he’ll shoot it out.’

  ‘If there’s firing, they’ll hear it in the village,’ Bryan said.

  Miss James said in a kind of whispered incantation,

  ‘Owen, Owen, Owen, Owen.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, can’t you?’ Bryan snarled at her, but she took no notice and went on muttering,

  ‘Owen, Owen, Owen, Owen.’

  ‘We can’t do anything,’ Hunter clamoured in the same hoarse and strangled voice, ‘even if he heard, it doesn’t matter, it’s only his word against ours, that’s all... I mean... oh, my God, you don’t intend...?’

  They still took no notice of him, they might not have heard him; they all continued still to watch that inner door. The expectation they all had was that it would open and that Owen, unable to escape by the locked and bolted outer door, finding the window secured by the iron bars put up when the room had been a nursery, would presently come out.

  So they waited, still and watchful and intent, while Hunter crouched and trembled in his chair, and Miss James muttered still her perpetual litany, ‘Owen, Owen, Owen’s there... Owen,’ and Zack Dodd now and again put out his tongue to moisten his lips, intolerably dry, and Bryan moved not a muscle but sat there quite motionless, motionless now as the weasel the moment before it springs, absolutely still that is, and yet with a kind of quivering intensity of every nerve and muscle. Zack whispered across to him,

  ‘Suppose he’s got a gun... if he has he could have us covered first.’

  From his post at the door where he stood, darkly thoughtful, formidable somehow in his patient waiting, though in the shock of their realization that there was someone hidden in the inner room the others had half forgotten his presence, Bobs-the-Boy said quietly,

  ‘That’s all right, Guv’nor... them Yard chaps never carry guns.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Bryan.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ Hunter cried wildly, getting this time to his feet and even making a step towards the door.

  ‘You’ve got to,’ Dodd growled, and beneath his baleful glare Hunter suddenly sat down again, and from the doorway Bobs-the-Boy said,

  ‘You’re in it, aren’t you? Just the same as all of us.’

  ‘I can’t stand it,’ Hunter repeated as wildly as before. ‘What are you going to do? My God, my God, what are you going to do?’

  None of them took the least notice.

  Swaying softly to and fro where she sat on the sofa, Miss James was still muttering her perpetual litany,

  ‘Owen... Owen... Owen... I knew all the time he was there.’

  ‘Got to do something, ain’t you?’ Bobs-the-Boy demanded. ‘Sooner the quicker if you ask me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Bryan again.

  Looking round him, Bryan seemed to be asking the opinions of his companions. No one volunteered any suggestion. Hunter noticed suddenly the time his wrist-watch showed, and understood with amazement that all this had happened in rather less than five minutes. From his place in the doorway where he still stood, Bobs-the-Boy barked out suddenly a loud and disconcerting laugh.

  ‘Scared, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Well, Bob’s the Boy for the job.’

  Before they realized his intention he crossed the room with a light, quick step, so lightly, so swiftly indeed, that had they not seen his passage they would not have known he had moved. He swung open the door and was through it in a flash, banging it behind him, and in the room he had left the three men and the woman still there sat motionless and astonished and afraid. Even Miss James’s muttering ceased at last, and like the men she sat staring at the closed door behind which might be happening – they knew not what.

  Intently they listened but they heard nothing. No sound came to give them any hint of what was passing there. It might almost have been that they had dreamed that swift passage of Bobs-the-Boy across the room and his disappearance into the inner chamber, but for the fact that at any rate he was no longer visible at his post in the doorway. The mysterious quiet following his entry into the inner room increased almost unbearably the tension of their amazement, their terror, and their suspense.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ Hunter muttered, ‘I can’t... I’ll go mad soon, I shall... mad.’

  Dodd said, but not as though he much believed it,

  ‘There’s no one there after all.’

  ‘Owen’s there,’ Miss James said. With the accent of a profound and unalterable conviction, she repeated, ‘Owen’s there... I know it.’

  Bryan did not speak, but it was evident that even he was uneasy. Indeed the strain of waiting thus without knowing what was passing behind that closed door they watched was becoming more than any of them could bear. Hunter’s features had grown contorted, convulsive, to such a degree that it was plain that, if not madness, then at least hysterics, was very near. And Bryan knew that if once one of them broke down, anything was possible. He knew he ought to take some action to check this rising tide of panic that threatened to sweep away from them all every vestige of self-control, and yet he could not. He sighed a little and saw the handle of the door turn.

  Abstractedly he watched it, for long years, for something like an eternity, it seemed to him he watched that turning handle. The door swung slowly back. Bobs-the-Boy came out. He closed the door again behind him very carefully and stood looking at them. His face was quite expressionless. Not one of them dared speak at first, but their avid and dreadful eyes searched for some sign on his dress or person to tell them what had happened, and searched in vain. Bryan said at last,

  ‘There’s no one there?’

  ‘Vases and chairs and things don’t upset themselves of their own accord,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered, grinning at him.

  ‘There’s someone there?’ Bryan said.

  ‘What have you done?’ Dodd almost shouted. ‘Who was it? What have you done?’

  ‘Done?’ repeated Bobs-the-Boy, ‘why, nothing.’ He let the word drop so softly it was almost inaudible, and yet there was a thrill of something terrible in its soft sound. ‘Not yet,’ he added as gently, ‘nothing yet.’

  ‘It’s Owen who’s there,’ Miss James said, ‘it’s him, and he’s been there all the time, but now somehow he’s got away.’

  ‘Aw, cheese it,’ Bobs-the-Boy retorted contemptuously, ‘it ain’t Owen at all. You’ve got that bloke on the brain all right, haven’t you? Cut it out, ma’am, cut it out... Owen ain’t there... it ain’t no Yard man at all... it ain’t no man either.’

  ‘Not a man? What do you mean?’ Dodd asked, and Bryan said almost simultaneously,

  ‘Stop playing the fool... tell us what you mean.’

  Even Hunter lifted his head that he had hidden in his hands as though he would try to conceal his own terrors from himself, and Miss James repeated the name that seemed by now the only word she had power to pronounce,

  ‘Owen... Owen.’

  ‘Lumme,’ cried Bobs-the-Boy, exasperated, ‘like a blooming grammyphone, ain’t you? I tell you Owen ain’t there, not him. There’s no man there, neither, same as I told you before.’

  ‘If it’s not a man–’ Bryan began.

  ‘So it ain’t,’ Bobs-the-Boy interrupted, ‘and for why? Because it’s a girl, that’s why.’

  ‘A girl...?’ Bryan repeated, ‘a girl... what girl?’ It was plain neither he nor the others quite understood. ‘What do you mean... what girl?’ he said again.

  ‘That other one’s sister,’ explained B
obs-the-Boy. ‘Her sister. Sybil Frankland, that’s who it is.’

  ‘Sybil Frankland,’ Dodd repeated, ‘but... but–’

  ‘Her... her sister?’ Miss James asked in a kind of bewildered whisper.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered.

  ‘If it’s her,’ Miss James said slowly, ‘if it is... why, then I would almost rather it was Owen instead.’

  ‘Oh, it’s her all right,’ Bobs-the-Boy repeated, ‘fainted she has... most likely when she knew she had given herself away knocking the chair and tilings over, then she was so scared she just fainted, and there she is.’

  He made a slight movement aside as if inviting them to look for themselves. Bryan got up and looked past Bobs-the-Boy, standing sideways in the door. Drawing back again, Bryan said,

  ‘It’s her all right... what was she doing there?’

  ‘Do you think she heard what we were saying?’ Dodd asked slowly; ‘if she’s fainted...’

  ‘She heard it all first,’ asserted Bobs-the-Boy, ‘that’s why she fainted when she knew as she had give herself away. You can bet on that, you can hear every word in there what’s said in here.’ He added meditatively, ‘That’s why the little fool fainted when she knew she had give herself away, because she had heard every word you spoke.’

  ‘Perhaps it makes it easier, that she’s fainted,’ remarked Bryan, who had gone back to where he had been sitting before.