Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  Bobs-the-Boy turned his head to look at him. For a moment, a long and dreadful moment, their eyes met... and understood... understood the secret message that flashed between them.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bobs-the-Boy said at last, ‘makes it easier in a manner of speaking, so it does.’

  He made a gesture, his hand with outspread fingers circling his throat, and looked at Bryan. Almost imperceptibly Bryan nodded. More deliberately still, while the others watched him, he took a large, dirty, red silk handkerchief from his pocket and twisted it into a noose. Again he looked at Bryan and again Bryan nodded slightly, more slightly even than before. Bobs-the-Boy stepped back into the inner room once more, softly closing the door behind him.

  He had not been gone more than a second or two, they were still watching the closed door behind which he was hidden, when they heard a step in the corridor without. Not only did the lips of Miss James open to give vent to a startled scream. Dodd, too, jumping to his feet, had a cry of terror and alarm hovering on his lips. As for Hunter, only the choking, strangling feeling in his throat prevented him from screaming out aloud. But then the furious and frantic gesture Bryan made, one of intense command, held them silent, checked their cries still unuttered. The door opened and Maurice Keene stood there, watching them doubtfully.

  ‘Is Sybil here?’ he asked. ‘Miss Frankland, I mean, Sybil Frankland?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Keene Suspects

  When he had said this he remained standing in the doorway, darkly watchful, almost in the same attitude, almost with the same expression, as Bobs-the-Boy had shown when he stood there shortly before. It might have been indeed that he had come again, though in different guise.

  At first none of them made any effort to reply to Keene’s question. They were too conscious of what their imaginations pictured to them as occurring on the other side of that closed door through which Bobs-the-Boy had just vanished with his knotted, noosed handkerchief in his grasp. Keene’s sudden appearance at that moment of all others held them indeed appalled. Even Bryan was shaken dreadfully; the merest trifle, one way or another, would have sent them all flying in a panic-stricken madness of terror, or launched them in a wild attack on Keene himself, or indeed hurled them into other extremity of action of any sort or kind in which their overwrought and quivering nerves could have found relief. To all of them it seemed certain that the next thing that would happen would be that Keene would cross the floor of the room and tear open the closed door that alone laid what was passing in the adjoining room. This seemed to them so obvious a thing for him to do that they could not understand why he delayed, and he on his side could not understand why they all sat there, so strangely watching him, so silent and so still.

  ‘Well, now then,’ he said at last, looking from one to the other, ‘now then, can’t you say something?’ He turned his gloomy, questioning gaze on Hunter. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here,’ he said. ‘Have you seen Sybil?’

  By a great effort, Hunter succeeded in making a negative gesture with his head. He was quite incapable of speech, nor could he keep his eyes from wandering towards that closed door behind which – he jerked his thoughts away, he jerked his gaze back towards Keene, and then he shut tight his eyes for fear they should betray his awful knowledge.

  Bryan spoke then in a voice that was fairly calm and well controlled.

  ‘Miss Frankland? Miss Sybil Frankland?’ he asked. ‘She’s not here, I don’t think she’s been here to-day, has she, Miss James? How did you get in, Mr Keene, if I may ask? It’s long past our hours, we closed long ago.’

  ‘I knocked, I rang, there was no answer,’ Keene replied, ‘so I pushed the door open and came in. I heard voices and I came up here. Are you sure Miss Frankland has not been here?’

  ‘I think so,’ Bryan answered. ‘Miss James, you haven’t seen Miss Frankland, have you? Her name’s not in the visitors’ book, is it?’

  Miss James shook her head and her gaze, too, because she could not control it, went wandering in torment and in terror to the closed door of the inner room.

  ‘What made you think the young lady was here?’ Bryan asked Keene.

  ‘I was told,’ Keene answered, ‘someone said–’

  He hesitated and did not complete his sentence. It was fairly evident that now he was definitely suspicious, though of what he did not know. But in his heavy and gloomy gaze, a question was now apparent, and in turn he stared at each one of them, as though trying to extract an answer to what as yet he had not asked.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid we can’t help you, we know nothing of the young lady here,’ Bryan went on in tones and with a manner that by now he had made nearly normal again. ‘She’s not one of our members, and I’m pretty sure she’s not visited us to-day. If you found the door downstairs open, did you shut it again after you came in?’

  ‘Sybil came to Leadeane by the seven-seventeen from town,’ Keene said, ignoring Bryan’s question, which indeed he had hardly heard or noticed, since only what affected Sybil and his search for her had power just now to enter his mind or awaken his attention.

  But Bryan turned to Dodd.

  ‘Zack,’ he said, speaking rather slowly and loudly, ‘you might go and see to the door, will you? Goodness knows who else may come walking in or out.’ He tossed a bunch of keys across to Dodd. ‘They are labelled,’ he said, ‘so you can pick the right one out. It’s not safe to have doors open. Sometimes it’s not safe to have them locked either.’

  He laid a slight emphasis on these last words as he spoke them, that his associates understood well enough. It was the key of the outer door of the adjoining room, of the door that opened on the corridor, that he was giving Dodd, so that Dodd could unlock it and allow the imprisoned Bobs-the-Boy to escape, carrying with him as he did so what there was need should not be allowed to remain there.

  Dodd was not over quick of apprehension, but he understood all that well enough. He rose and lumbered heavily to the door, where Keene was still standing. Keene, though plainly more puzzled and uneasy with every passing minute, stood aside almost mechanically to let him pass on what was to all seeming so harmless and so necessary an errand. They all heard his heavy step lumbering down the passage without for a moment or two, and then pause as a fit of coughing took him. They all heard that equally plainly, and all of them, except Keene, knew that under the cover of that fit of coughing Dodd was unlocking the outer door of the adjoining room. Then they heard his heavy step go lumbering on, and they knew that now the way of escape was open to Bobs-the-Boy. Bryan began to talk in order to distract Keene’s attention.

  ‘Well, Mr Keene,’ he said, ‘I really don’t see, even if Miss Frankland did leave by the seven-seventeen from town, why you should think she was coming here. Did she express any intention of paying us a visit? And if she did, did she say why she was coming so late? She has been here once or twice, I think, and she seemed interested, but she never became a member. Are you sure she was coming to Leadeane at all? The seven-seventeen goes to other places as well, you know. Anyhow, I don’t see what we can do to help you. Of course, if we could, anything in our power, anything at all, we should be delighted. We all feel very keenly her sister’s dreadful murder, and that this was the last place she visited before it happened. Indeed, I may as well tell you that affair’s done us a lot of harm; illogical of course, but an establishment of this kind can’t afford even the most indirect association with anything criminal, with anything not entirely and absolutely above board and respectable. You see it has meant visits from the police and questioning and what not – most upsetting. I’m not complaining, of course, very necessary no doubt and quite natural, but also very upsetting for our members, most upsetting and disturbing.’

  ‘I believe Sybil may have thought,’ began Keene slowly, ‘in fact I was told–’

  ‘Who told you?’ Miss James interrupted him in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, ‘who told you... was it Owen... Owen?’

  ‘Owen... who is Ow
en?’ Bryan asked blandly, though the look he shot at Miss James was anything but bland. ‘I don’t know that name, do I? Not one of our members, I think?’

  ‘Owen–’ began Keene, and again Miss James interrupted him.

  ‘If he told you, then you’ve seen him? Have you seen him?’

  ‘Why, no,’ Keene began once more, and yet a third time Miss James interrupted him.

  ‘No one ever has,’ she said, ‘no one... no one at all. But some day we shall all see him, all of us.’

  Keene, more puzzled than ever, dimly aware of an atmosphere of suppressed terror and emotion there seemed little to account for, was again about to speak when now it was Bryan who interposed,

  ‘But really, Mr Keene, if you have never seen this Owen person, whoever he may be and certainly not a member here, how did he manage to tell you Miss Frankland might be visiting us to-night?’

  ‘He came to my place in Deal Street one time when I was out,’ Keene answered. ‘He asked a lot of questions of the girl I have there to look after things for me. She’s pretty quick... she thought he meant... I don’t know if she was right, but she’s quick at spotting things.’

  ‘What things?’ Bryan asked, and the door opened and Zack came back into the room. He had regained now something of his natural, heavy swagger; the terror that had oppressed him so visibly before seemed to have passed away, and to have been replaced by a kind of ponderous insolence as of one who now felt himself secure.

  ‘That’s all right now,’ he rumbled. ‘All safe now,’ he declared, grinning at that closed door of the adjoining room, which till now had seemed to all of them so frail a barrier between them and the discovery of the dread horror it concealed.

  Even Bryan could not help drawing a long breath of relief. It was to all of them like a reprieve from a discovery that had seemed as imminent as inevitable, for what had there been to prevent Keene at any moment from walking across to that door and flinging it open and perceiving what lay behind? But now that opportunity had passed and gone for ever, passed by without his having even been aware of what to all of them had seemed so strangely obvious. Hunter lay back in his chair and shut his eyes, collapsed indeed, quite exhausted by his emotions and no longer with sufficient strength to sit upright. Zack’s attitude of triumph he hardly troubled to conceal; it was as if he stood there and visibly snapped his fingers at defeated Fate. Miss James, experiencing suddenly a need for more air, flung back the curtain that had been drawn before the window, and leaned out a little that the cool air might bathe her throbbing temples and flushed, fevered face. Her action was just in time to permit her to see in the patch of light thus thrown abruptly on the lawn below, a man who ran heavily, and yet with speed, across it towards the shelter of the trees beyond, and who bore over his shoulder the body of a woman, limp and still and helpless, her head and feet dangling.

  For one moment the two of them, the bearer and the borne, were plain there on that illumined patch of grass. Then they vanished into the shadows beyond. One last glimpse remained with Miss James of two feet in high-heeled shoes that hung down aimlessly, swinging a horrible tattoo against the ribs of the man, and then she sank back upon her sofa.

  She had spoken no word, she had uttered no sound, and yet there was something visible about her, as it were, of the terror and the horror that she felt, a visible emanation of her dread. They were all looking at her, Keene in doubt and wonder, Bryan in cold fury, Dodd with a sort of sullen contempt. Only Hunter was unaffected, and he merely because he was insensible to all but the overpowering relief he experienced in knowing that what had before been behind that closed door was now no longer there.

  Keene came forward from the doorway where till that moment he had been standing. He said, loudly and clearly,

  ‘Something’s been happening here... you know something you are trying to hide.’

  ‘Oh, really, Mr Keene, really,’ protested Bryan with the best laugh he could summon up, but one that even to himself sounded false.

  ‘There is,’ Keene repeated with vehemence; ‘there’s something, and you’re trying to hide it. I know there is, I can see it, the way you look. I interrupted something. What?’

  ‘We were talking business, I think, when you came in,’ Bryan replied.

  ‘Then why did you all look the way you did? Why do you all look like you do now?’ Keene demanded. He flung out a challenging hand. ‘I’ll ask you something,’ he said. ‘It’s been on my mind long enough and now I’ll ask you. Did Jo Frankland know anything... or suspect...? Did she ever guess it was arson you got your money from?’

  ‘There’s no need to shout like that,’ Bryan answered. ‘How should I know what she knew or suspected? If she did, it could only have been if you told her things – did you?’

  ‘She may have guessed, perhaps,’ Keene admitted. ‘I don’t know. If she guessed Hunter and I were planning to have big fires at our places to draw the assurance money, if she managed to get to know somehow that it was you who were behind us, well, then perhaps she came here to try to find out more, and if you found her out in that–’ He paused and then went on, ‘I’ve tried to think that wasn’t possible. I tried to think arson was only a bit of sharp practice with an assurance company that had lots of money already and could easily stand a loss or two. Only somehow Sybil made me see it differently. But anyhow murder’s different, a long way different. If there’s anything happened to Sybil, I’ll go straight to Scotland Yard and tell them all I know and just what we had planned to do.’

  ‘If you do that,’ retorted Bryan, ‘the only result will be, you will get a dose of penal servitude, that’s all... and I don’t know that that would help you to marry the lady you’re working yourself into such a state of excitement about. That is, if they believed you at the Yard, but I don’t know that they would, for you’ve no evidence, not a scrap. I’ve taken care of that.’

  ‘Bobs-the-Boy,’ began Keene, and then stopped, for the unexpected mention of that name that was so heavy in all their minds so startled them that one and all they turned to look at the still closed door admitting to the adjoining room.

  Again and again before then, Keene had subconsciously been aware of this trick they all seemed to have of letting their eyes turn towards this door, as though there were something behind it that held intensely their interest and their thoughts. This time his awareness of their action was more acute, made itself more felt, and he asked sharply,

  ‘Why do you keep looking at that door, all of you? Is there something there?’

  ‘Really, Mr Keene,’ Bryan protested, ‘you seem to have quite lost all common sense... Do you think Miss Sybil Frankland’s hiding there?’ He crossed to the door and flung it widely open. ‘Go in and look for yourself if you like,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you would like to search the rest of the house for her as well afterwards?’

  Keene went into the room. That there was no one there was evident enough. It was a large room and held a good deal of furniture, but that was all, it seemed, till Keene, advancing across it, looking sharply around, saw lying on the floor a dirty red silk handkerchief knotted into a noose at one end, and not far away, a lady’s handbag.

  ‘That’s Sybil’s,’ he said and picked it up. ‘What is it doing here? What have you done with her? What’s this for?’ It was the noosed handkerchief he held up now. ‘What’s happened here?’ he asked.

  They did not answer him, but Bryan’s attitude had grown suddenly rigid and in the doorway loomed the huge and threatening figure of Zack Dodd.

  ‘I’ll show these to Owen,’ Keene said, and leapt away with all the speed he could command towards the door that opened into the corridor without, while Dodd thundered in pursuit and Bryan went sprawling on the floor from a swinging blow Keene aimed at him as he fled by.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Bobs-the-Boy’ Comes Back Again

  It was late, it was midnight past, when Bobs-the-Boy came back again across the lawn Miss James had seen him traverse earlier, carrying a wo
man’s body slung over his shoulder.

  He bore no such burden now as he came quickly and softly to the door of Leadeane Grange and knocked and rang and rang again. When he got no answer he pushed the door, as Maurice Keene had done before, and, finding it unlocked, went in quickly.

  The darkness was profound, the silence unbroken, and when he called he got no answer. He had a pocket electric torch with him. He took it out and by its light made his way up the stairs. Plainly he was puzzled and a little uneasy. At the head of the stairs he waited and then called out again, and getting no answer went on to Miss James’s room. The door of it hung open, and when he swung the ray from his torch about the room he saw her sitting there in a chair, quite still.

  He addressed her by name, but she took no notice. He switched on the electric light and spoke to her again, but she still made no response, only looked blankly at him. He said to her,

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s been happening here? Where’s the Guv’nor?’

  She tried twice before she managed to articulate a reply, and then, instead of answering, it was other questions she put him.

  ‘Where have you... what... how...?’ she muttered and again, ‘Where have you...?’

  ‘Where have I planted her?’ Bobs-the-Boy completed her question for her. ‘Never you mind, don’t you worry about that. What I’m asking is, where’s the Guv’nor?’

  She continued to stare at him, but without making any attempt to answer. She appeared indeed quite dazed. Bobs-the-Boy seemed puzzled, and then from one of his pockets he took a small flask of brandy. Nearly half its contents he poured out and put to Miss James’s lips.

  ‘Drink it up,’ he commanded briefly.

  She obeyed, and the strong spirit seemed to restore to her that balance of mind which at more normal moments it might have been likely to overthrow. Her dazed look and manner gave place to one more natural. She said presently, as under the influence of the brandy her life began to flow again,