Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  Bobs-the-Boy chuckled again when he read this name.

  ‘Quite pretty,’ he said, ‘shows the Guv’nor hasn’t got Mr Detective-Constable Owen on the nerves quite as much as some other people.’

  ‘Might be better if he had,’ grumbled Zack. ‘And I call it a fool trick, sticking that bit of paper there. We might easily have gone away and never seen it.’

  ‘Ought to have had sense to spot it long ago, you mean,’ Bobs-the-Boy observed. ‘We’ve wasted half an hour for want of a little gumption. Bryan’s got some sense himself, and he thinks other people have brains, too, which generally they haven’t.’

  Zack only rumbled inarticulately in reply to this, and then they went to the indicated garage, where they found a car waiting for them. It was of a cheap and common make, but it was possessed of a good turn of speed, and as there was not much traffic about they bowled along rapidly enough. Outside the London limits, on a straight stretch of road without side turnings, Bobs-the-Boy suddenly turned the car and went tearing back at a speed even the makers would hardly have believed possible – would certainly never have dared to claim in their advertisements. Before long they tore past a solitary motor-cyclist who drew to one side to let them go by, and Bobs-the-Boy said to Zack sitting next him,

  ‘Notice him? Was it Owen? If it was, now you’ve seen him at last.’

  Afterwards the road was quite clear, and Bobs-the-Boy presently slowed down.

  ‘No one else,’ he said, ‘no one following him – Owen or not. So that’s O.K., but I was always sure he would want to play a lone hand.’

  He swung the car round and tore back again the way they had come. Once more they met the same solitary motorcyclist, who evidently had turned round himself in order to follow them.

  ‘Owen all right,’ Zack muttered. ‘He’s trailing us for sure, that’s clear enough. He’s alone, too, if that’s what you played for. You’ve brought it off sure enough.’

  ‘I told you you could trust me to bring things off the way I wanted,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered quietly, and after a long pause, Zack said,

  ‘He’s still following. You’ll let him catch us up?’

  ‘Soon,’ Bobs-the-Boy answered softly, ‘very soon. Don’t you worry, it’s all working out the way it should.’

  Zack said no more, and presently, after some twists and turns, they came to what seemed the appointed spot – half way through a wood where tall trees grew on either hand. One in especial, a tall birch, shot up above all the rest. Beneath its shade, as their instructions said, they halted, and heard at once the sound of the engine of a motor-cycle that was not far away.

  ‘Owen,’ Zack said again, ‘he’s coming all right,’ and with a low, snarling laugh let his hand touch his pocket where the brass knuckle-duster bulged.

  But there was no sign of Bryan, and Bobs-the-Boy observed, when they had waited a little,

  ‘Better see if there’s some other message here, sending us off somewhere else.’

  But they could find none, though they looked carefully by the light of their headlamps, and Zack cursed softly to himself.

  ‘He’s fooling us,’ he said, ‘and all the time Owen creeping up behind the hedge most likely or signalling for help maybe.’

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ Bobs-the-Boy agreed, listening intently. ‘Sounds up above, though, in the tree somewhere,’ and down the trunk of the tall birch came a small figure, dexterously sliding.

  It was Bryan himself. He had waited cautiously, well hidden on one of the lower branches of the birch till he felt it would be safe to show himself. He said without other greeting,

  ‘You’ve been followed. There was a fellow on a motorcycle. I heard it plainly, I could see the headlight. It stopped when you did, it was following you.’

  ‘It’s Owen, Mr Smarty Owen,’ Zack explained. ‘There’s always Owen,’ he said with a little nervous laugh. ‘Bobs-the-Boy fixed it for him to follow us, so as to get him here all alone. We three can fix him all right,’ he said, and laughed again.

  ‘You mean that fellow following you on the motor-cycle?’ Bryan asked, startled, and when Zack nodded, he clapped his hands together with an odd, bizarre gesture of applause. Even in the darkness one could see how his small eyes gleamed, with what a deadly purpose his small and shrunken form seemed all at once informed. ‘If it’s Owen...’ he said, a gloating anticipation in his voice, ‘... why, that’s fine; fine, that is.’ He turned to Bobs-the-Boy. ‘Smart of you,’ he said, ‘you’re smart all right... you’re sure it’s Owen?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ answered Bobs-the-Boy, ‘it’s really Maurice Keene. It couldn’t very well be Owen, because,’ he explained as he dexterously fitted to Bryan’s skinny wrists a pair of specially small size handcuffs, ‘I happen to be Owen myself.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Conclusion

  For a moment or two, in the shock of this announcement, of this action, both Bryan and Dodd stood perfectly still, Bryan blinking at the bright fetters on his wrists, as though he could not relate them to reality, and Dodd’s mouth very slowly opening wider and wider till it gaped gigantic in the glare of the car’s headlamps. Slowly, then, Dodd swayed vaguely forward, as if he meant to hurl himself on Owen, and next as slowly sideways, as if instead he meant to turn and run. Bryan screamed,

  ‘Out him, Zack! out him, you fool! out him, why don’t you?’

  As he spoke he tried to wrench himself from Owen’s grasp upon his arm, but that was like the grip of fate itself, and held him fast. Zack’s hand dropped to his pocket, and with fresh bewilderment found nothing there – groped in emptiness. Owen said,

  ‘Oh, that little knuckle-duster of yours; oh, I’ve got that. I slipped it out of your pocket while you were gaping at our friend here swarming down from his perch up in the tree. Our Super always says a good detective must be a good pickpocket as well, so I’ve done my best to learn.’

  ‘Out him, out him!’ Bryan screamed again, his voice more loud, more shrill, more utterly despairing even than before.

  But Zack Dodd turned. His instinct now was flight. His slow mind had told him at last his only chance of safety was swift and instant flight. As he turned he began to gather up all his energies to run, to run and run and never stop. Vaguely it occurred to him that it was lucky for him that Bryan had been taken first; occupied with the safety of his prisoner Owen would be unable to pursue. A bit of luck that, he thought, and he perceived abruptly that in turning he had brought himself face to face with Maurice Keene who held in one hand a pistol levelled at him, in the other a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Put your hands out,’ Keene said, ‘so I can get these on, and don’t try any tricks, or I’ll put a bullet through you and glad of the chance, glad of the chance to give you what you gave to Jo Frankland.’

  Meekly, quietly, Dodd obeyed, for there was that in the other’s voice which told him there was no other safety. From behind Bryan’s thin voice still screamed wild curses, strange appeals and blasphemies, filling all the silence of the night with the clamour of his rage, his terror, his despair. Owen took no notice, but urged his prisoner on towards the waiting car. Keene followed with Dodd. Dodd said to Bryan, ‘Oh, shut up, what’s the good of that?’

  Bryan was silent instantly, exactly as if some spring had been touched that shut off the torrent of his speech. But as he stumbled into the car, he muttered, half to himself,

  ‘Well, it was only one woman, and my work down there at Leadeane Grange was adding years to people’s lives.’

  After that, the only thing that either of them said was when Zack Dodd, as if the fact had just dawned upon him, said to Owen,

  ‘You were a detective all the time then, and not Bobs-the-Boy at all. Where is Bobs-the-Boy? Isn’t there any Bobs-the-Boy?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Owen answered, ‘but some Salvation Army people got hold of him. That’s what made that brute of a Mousey get after him. Mousey’s so crooked himself he simply couldn’t bear to think of anyone trying to go
straight, so when he knew you wanted someone to send to Hunter to do some dirty work for him, he thought of Bobs-the-Boy at once and thought it was a chance to get him back into the crooked crowd again. But the Army people told Bobs to come and see us, so we got a decent sort of job for him in the north of England out of the way; and then because we thought we would like to know what an ex-crook and ex-burglar was wanted for, I was told off to take his place. And so that Mousey shouldn’t get a chance to give the show away, and because he rather more than jolly well deserved it, we reported to the Prison Commissioners and got his licence revoked. But so that the real reason shouldn’t be suspected we shopped him on a framed-up charge of having stolen property in his possession that we withdrew with apologies as soon as the case came on and substituted instead the real charge of “inciting to commit a felony”. Nearly got us into bad trouble, though, because an M.P. got hold of the story, saw the stolen property charge looked like a frame-up, and thought there was a chance to prove we were persecuting ex-convicts – and make a name for himself into the bargain. We couldn’t explain, either, because if you tell an M.P. anything, you tell his private secretary, and if you tell a private secretary you tell the typist, too, and by that time you’ve told the world as well.’

  Neither of the prisoners made any reply, and though Owen was a firm believer in Mitchell’s favourite maxim that if you only talk to people long enough they’ll always finish by telling you everything you want to know and a great deal more as well, he did not attempt to continue the conversation. After all, there was little that was not already well enough known. The car stopped, and a uniformed man opened the door. They had arrived at Scotland Yard. As Dodd was alighting he said to Owen,

  ‘What about Elsie?’

  ‘She’ll have been arrested by now,’ Owen answered. ‘She’ll be charged with you, I expect – accessory before the fact, I suppose, or something like that. If you’re really married she’ll get off fairly easily, most likely – acted under the compulsion of her husband, you know.’

  ‘We’re married all right, I can prove that,’ Zack answered. Then he added, ‘I’m glad they won’t hang her, too.’

  A slow trembling shook his vast frame as he heard himself pronounce that last word. Behind him, Bryan heard it, and was shaken by the same slow trembling. Side by side they disappeared into the charge room as into the tomb.

  An hour or two later Detective Robert Owen, restored to rank and name and place after his long masquerade as ‘Bobs-the-Boy’, presented himself before Superintendent Mitchell. The mere substitution of a clean collar and tie for the spotted handkerchief round his neck wrought by itself a tremendous change; a shave and a wash completed the transformation. Then, too, he had removed the daub of black stain on a perfectly sound tooth at the back of his jaw that had given the appearance of one missing there, and had contributed to his smile a sinister and menacing quality of which he had been more than a little proud when practising it before his mirror.

  ‘Got through all right, then,’ Mitchell remarked. ‘I’ll not deny I’m a bit relieved you’ve turned up all hunk-a-dory, and got your birds as well. It wasn’t quite regular to allow an unauthorized civilian like Keene to chip in, and I might have got told off for it if it hadn’t worked out all right. Only what can you do when a man tells you quite coolly that if he doesn’t get his own way he’ll give the whole show away and muzzle your chief witness as well? I really think he was quite capable of trying to get Miss Frankland to refuse to testify. And though you can get a witness into the box all right, you can’t stop them messing up their story if they want to. She could easily have said she wasn’t sure what she really overheard.’

  ‘I am sure it was best to let Keene have his own way,’ Owen said. ‘It would have given the whole thing away, to have more than one man following, and it was just as well to let it be Keene as anyone else. They are such wary birds that if there had been any sign of more than one man trailing us they would have taken alarm at once, whereas so long as they thought it was just “Owen” being lured to his doom, they were quite happy about it. Besides, after all, I suppose Keene had some right to take a hand in the show – it was his girl they tried to murder.’

  ‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I called at the nursing home this afternoon. She’s getting on well, they say, though it’ll be a long time before she gets over it altogether. I suppose in a way she can say she’s actually had the experience of being murdered. When she saw me come in that time at Leadeane Grange, it’s no wonder she thought it was all over. So did I, for that matter, for though I wasn’t sorry she fainted, I didn’t see how I was going to get either her or myself away safely – I knew they all had guns and knew how to use them, too. And then Dodd unlocked the outer door and told me to get off quick and take her body with me and hide it somewhere.’ He paused to chuckle faintly. ‘They couldn’t make head or tail of it when I told them her “dead corpse” would never be found because it didn’t exist any longer.’

  ‘Should have almost expected them to fall to that,’ observed Mitchell. ‘Anyone almost might have spotted what you meant.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ admitted Owen, ‘I think I did overdo that bit – all at once I had a feeling I might be giving myself away, and so I dried up. Lucky they weren’t smart enough to tumble to what I meant, though it’s a wonder they didn’t; most people would, I think. Of course, they had seen me carrying away what they took for her dead body on my shoulder, and I suppose they were too sure of what they had seen for it to occur to them that I meant her “dead corpse” didn’t exist because her live body was in a nursing home. Then the broadcast asking for information was a good dodge; I expect that took away any doubts any of them might have developed afterwards.’

  ‘A terrible experience for her,’ Mitchell agreed. ‘Did you ask her what made her go telling her mother it was she herself who had murdered her sister?’

  ‘She mentioned that herself,’ Owen answered. ‘I think she had an idea I overheard her. She says she still feels it all happened through her. It was what she half told Miss Jo Frankland, and half didn’t tell, that set Miss Jo trying to ferret out the truth for herself – partly, I suppose, in the hope of proving young Keene wasn’t a desirable person to marry; she was quite set on breaking Sybil’s engagement off if she could. I expect when Miss Sybil gets stronger she will realize she’s no cause to blame herself.’ Owen paused and smiled faintly, ‘I don’t know if you remember, sir,’ he said. ‘She saw me once in their garden at Ealing, just after the murder, when I was dodging round there as Bobs-the-Boy. We bluffed her by my slipping inside your car that was waiting and our people swearing, quite truly, there hadn’t been anyone but police there. It seems to have worried her quite a lot, made her think perhaps she was subject to hallucinations; she was quite relieved to know the truth and that she really had seen me and not a ghost of some sort.’

  ‘All the same,’ observed Mitchell, ‘I don’t know so much about her not being to blame. If she had come straight to us and told us all she knew, she would have saved us a lot of work – and herself a good deal more.’

  ‘Well, sir, I think she was too scared,’ Owen remarked. ‘She knew Keene was involved, she had no idea how deeply; I think she was even afraid at times he might be implicated in the murder of her sister in some way or another – and then she wasn’t sure she was thinking straight, especially after we had bluffed her into believing she had an hallucination when she thought she saw “Bobs-the-Boy” in their garden. It was all that taken together drove her on to try to find out the truth by herself and in the end to do just exactly what cost her sister her life – hide in the room next to the one they were talking in to try to overhear what they said. And when she heard them telling how it was poor Jo Frankland had betrayed herself – well, I think she lost her nerve altogether. I think it was a kind of auto-suggestion made her do the same thing, just as when you’re learning to cycle you’re apt to run into the very obstacle you’re trying to
avoid. I hope I didn’t go too far, when I told her I didn’t think any question of any prosecution of Keene would arise?’

  ‘No, he gets off,’ answered Mitchell, ‘no overt action on his part we can take notice of. Hunter, too. It ought to be a lesson to them both, though Keene, at any rate, has done his best to make good again. None of them seem to have had any suspicion of your identity?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir, not once.’

  ‘Not even when you sounded Keene, and Hunter as well, about making a clean breast of it? I was afraid that might set them thinking; it wasn’t quite in character.’

  ‘Miss Sybil had been saying much the same before me, and I suppose it only seemed like repetition,’ Owen remarked. ‘I expect they both felt they had heard it all before.’

  ‘She was lucky to escape,’ Mitchell said. ‘You told her we should have to ask her to appear and give evidence?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I explained that was necessary because a jury might hesitate to accept my story without corroboration. I told her that was why after I had got her away we didn’t proceed to arrest at once, as we didn’t know how much she had heard, or what she could say, and if we had enough to be sure of a conviction. So we had to wait till she was able to tell us what she knew.’