“It’s the moon,” Jane said.
“The moon?” Bobby repeated, completely puzzled.
“I think it’s that. I think Helen knows she is never so lovely, that her beauty never seems so much like something that doesn’t quite belong to this world, as when she walks by herself in the moonlight. It’s quite true. I’ve seen her. I’m a woman, too, but I held my breath as I watched. You never know how lovely and apart she is till you have seen her like that. Somehow it makes you think of all the beauty that there is in this world or the next, and you feel you wish it was all like that.”
“Well, you know,” Bobby said, and there was a distinct touch of exasperation in his voice, “all this makes it very difficult. If everyone goes looney whenever they come near the girl, how are you to work out any reasonable pattern of behaviour?” He sank into gloomy and resentful silence. He asked crossly: “Was that why you were there as well, simply to stare at a young woman mooning about—literally mooning about apparently?”
“Oh, no,” Jane answered. “It was Helen. She asked me to make sure there wasn’t anyone. It was Martin she meant. If he was there, I was to ask him please to go away, and I did and he promised. It was when he had gone that—that it happened.”
“Lord Adour was there, too,” Bobby remarked. “He said he came when he heard your cry. I noticed he was fully dressed for outdoors, late as it was.”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think I noticed,” Jane said. “He is always uneasy about it, when Helen slips out like that. He doesn’t like it. I think he feels it isn’t respectable. I told him once such loveliness as Helen’s couldn’t be respectable and he was awfully cross. Sometimes he goes out to find her and bring her back. Perhaps he was going to last night.”
Bobby supposed this was an explanation that might be accepted. Plausible certainly, but not necessarily the whole and complete truth in this household where all seemed bewitched by a girl’s good looks.
“Have you any idea,” he asked as he rose to go, “when Lord Adour and Miss Helen will be back?”
“It depends on how old Miss Adour is feeling,” Jane answered. “Sometimes she wants them to stay and then they have to.” She smiled faintly. “Poor uncle’s dreadfully hard up. It’ll be all right in time, he says, when things are more settled on the Continent. Some of the people he was in business with in France got mixed up with the Germans, and he can’t get in touch with them. So he tries to keep on good terms with Great-aunt and then perhaps she’ll lend him the nine or ten thousand pounds he wants to keep things going. It’s an awful lot of money.”
“So it is,” agreed Bobby. “I’m rather anxious to meet Miss Helen, but somehow I always seem to miss her. Gould you make an appointment for me?”
Jane shook her head and smiled again.
“Helen is like a queen,” she said. “She expects others to wait on her, not the other way.”
“Well, I shall have to try,” Bobby grumbled. “There’s such a lot to see to, it’s not easy to find time.”
“It won’t be any help,” Jane said seriously, “if you do see her. You’ll only be like everyone else and fall in love.”
“Oh, I’m a policeman,” Bobby told her laughingly. “That’s different. Duty, you know, and all that. I must judge for myself.” Jane shook her head, as if to say it wasn’t different at all, but very much the same; and as by now it was lunchtime and past, he took a hasty leave and departed for Mrs. Gregson’s, hoping she would have something nice waiting for him.
She had. Sole, fresh caught that morning, with all the fresh savour of the sea still intact, and where’s the chef who can compose a sauce one hundredth part as good as that?
CHAPTER XX
UNTIDY WORLD
Luncheon over, Mrs. Gregson, a little shyly, a little proudly, served coffee, for she knew that was the stylish thing to do. Alas! She had made it by the simple rule of one teaspoonful for each person and one for the pot, then fill up with boiling water.
But Bobby could show himself at times of heroic mould and he sipped the stuff without blenching as he chatted amiably with them both; at first about nothing in particular, and then in a casual manner, for he had no wish to let it be guessed that what he had to say was of any great importance, he asked about the fisher-folk of the little village and if they were honest and trustworthy.
“As for that,” said the sergeant firmly, “there isn’t one of them I would trust any further than I could see ’em.”
“The price they have the face to ask for any bit of fish …” said Mrs. Gregson.
“I don’t hold with summer visitors myself,” said the sergeant, “but there are limits … a pound a night for bed and breakfast!”
“They’re human, too, said Mrs. Gregson, “even summer visitors.”
“Us, being official like,” said the sergeant, “the Commander holds as we didn’t ought. So we don’t.”
“A scandalizing set,” said Mrs. Gregson, “that’s them hereabouts.”
“As for Saturday night,” said the sergeant, “you wouldn’t believe it—drinking and fighting.”
“An orgy,” said Mrs. Gregson firmly.
“It’s fair breaking Vicar’s heart,” said the sergeant, “the way the kids don’t go to Sunday school any more.”
“Most of them not speaking, though neighbours, not living in amity, same as Vicar says all ought,” said Mrs. Gregson.
“Well, well,” said Bobby. “Sounds bad.”
“Of course,” admitted the sergeant, “I don’t say but, if there’s need, they won’t share their last crumb, even if going hungry themselves.”
“That’s different,” said Mrs. Gregson, waving it aside. “Natural like, if a neighbour’s ill or there’s kiddies to see to and suchlike, they’ll stop up all night if they have to, so as to do the work after they’ve done their own.”
“I wouldn’t say there’s one of ’em what you might call outright dishonest, not even for summer visitors,” said the sergeant. “There was that lady left her bag on the beach with jewellery in it and twenty pounds in notes. Handed in the same night.”
“Three of them’s got Humane Society medals for saving life,” said Mrs. Gregson.
“One was only a summer visitor,” the sergeant reminded her. “It counts just the same …” said Mrs. Gregson.
“Well, well,” said Bobby. “Sounds good.”
“It’s the way you look at it,” said Mrs. Gregson.
“What I mean is,” said Bobby, “could you find one of them you could trust to keep a promise if he made it?”
“There isn’t any of ’em,” said the sergeant, “if he made a promise, wouldn’t keep it, low tide, high tide, come wind, come calm. What do you expect?” said the sergeant, and looked rather offended.
“Good,” said Bobby. “What I’m after is to try to find out what has happened to the Seagull launch Itter Bain bought just before his death from Lord Adour. I don’t want to ask you to put one of your own men on the job, because it’s important there shouldn’t be any talk. I simply want to know where it is. I thought perhaps Mrs. Gregson might help if she could tell us if there’s any talk about it going on. Spontaneous talk, I mean. I don’t want any questions asked. Just to know if there is any talk about the way it’s gone from where it lay in the harbour.”
“Well, sir, as far as that goes,” Gregson said, though much puzzled by this sudden exhibition of interest in the Seagull, “I did hear as Mr. Mauley Bain sent for it to the factory for overhaul.”
“It doesn’t seem to have got there,” Bobby remarked.
He went on to repeat that what he wanted was some trustworthy man who would try to find out what had become of the launch, but without giving any occasion for gossip. It was important, Bobby insisted, that no one should know he was taking an interest in the launch. He added that it would be useful, too, if he could be given the names of the men who had towed the boat away.
The Gregsons assured him they understood and would do their best. Mrs. Gregson reminded her husband tha
t young Soper, one of the men at the harbour, was a steady young fellow with more sense than most young people seemed to have nowadays. The sergeant agreed and Mrs. Gregson began to clear the table. Bobby remarked that, Sunday or no Sunday, he must be getting on the job again, and by the way, there was the Seashire Herald reporter who was hanging about, trying to write up the Itter Bain case. Haile was his name, Harry Haile. Was anything known about him? Was he a newcomer or had he been seen in the district before?
“Wasn’t it him,” Mrs. Gregson said to her husband, “as you saw talking to Mrs. Mack’s last young woman?”
“So it was,” agreed the sergeant, “but that was a week or more before all this started.”
“Who is Mrs. Mack and why her last young woman?” Bobby asked.
“It’s Miss Lambert, sir,” the sergeant explained. “Maybe you remember? She’s the young woman who lost her fur. She was telling me how glad she was to get it back that first night you were here when you asked me about Mr. Mauley Bain and who he was?”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby said. “I remember. Who is Mrs. Mack?”
The sergeant and his wife exchanged looks. The sergeant said:
“It’s a nursing home. Leastways, that’s what Mrs. Mack calls it. For old people mostly. Some of them die a bit quick like, but the relatives don’t complain. An old body’s often best out of the way, and dying quick, anyhow, and so what’s a day more or less, and a mercy being took?”
“There’s some that call it—now what’s the word?” said Mrs. Gregson.
“Euthanasia,” suggested Bobby.
“That’s right,” agreed Mrs. Gregson. “Dr. Norris here, he don’t much like attending at Mrs. Mack’s, but he has to, there being none other till there’s more back from the war.”
“You can’t call it murdering or such like,” Gregson said, “not putting a poor old soul out of pain and misery, and nothing to be done about it, even if it’s true, as none know, except Mrs. Mack and no one else.”
“Vicar says,” observed Mrs. Gregson hesitatingly, “God knows.”
“Parson’s talk,” commented Gregson, and waved it aside. “Parson’s talk,” he repeated.
“What about Miss Lambert?” Bobby asked. “She’s not old.”
“That’s the other side to it,” said the sergeant. “Miss Lambert’s one of the young uns. They come, too. Girls at times, not much out of their teens, if as much. Older ones, too. You wonder a bit why they’ve come when you see them, because of their looking well enough. Then they’re took bad, and Dr. Norris isn’t asked, but their own doctor comes down from Town, and he goes again, and presently the young lady’s up and about, and says she’s better now. Then she leaves, and that’s all there’s to it, till another comes, and it’s the same thing over again.”
“That isn’t murder, either,” Mrs. Gregson said. “You can’t end what’s never begun. Can you?” she asked doubtfully.
“A very nice lady, Mrs. Mack,” said the sergeant, “and always willing to do you a good turn. Them as have had friends there or been there themselves say how kind and attentive she is and how no one could ever have been more attentive or thoughtful. There’s many round here think well of her.”
“And some as don’t,” said Mrs. Gregson, “and say as they wouldn’t like to be her come Judgment Day.”
“That’s a long way off,” said the sergeant comfortably.
“Probably,” agreed Bobby, “though you never know, and then there’s always the atomic bomb that may provide a short cut. Do you mean Haile brought Miss Lambert to this place of Mrs. Mack’s?”
“Nothing to show,” Gregson answered. “I did wonder when I saw her talking to Mr. Haile same as old friends.”
“I think I should like to have known all this before,” Bobby said in a voice so soft and gentle and meditative that those who knew him better than did the Gregsons would have guessed at once how angry and dismayed he was. “I wonder why I wasn’t told?”
“Well, sir, I did put it in report,” Gregson answered, “but Commander said to take it out. Keep to what matters, he said. No business of ours, Commander said, even if it was him had got the young lady into trouble and Mrs. Mack had nothing to do with Mr. Itter Bain, and her place outside our district, so she’s not our concern either.”
“I see,” said Bobby gloomily. “Perhaps Commander Seers was right,” he admitted; and it says a lot for his sense of discipline and his complete acceptance of the sacred official dogma that a superior must never be blamed or criticized before one of inferior rank that he managed to utter this last sentence almost as if he meant it.
But to himself he was thinking viciously that he would like to put in his report he would have to make to the Home Office that Commander Seers was stupid, narrow, incompetent, utterly unfit for his job, his head full of nothing but old-fashioned prejudices, and should have been thrown out of his position long ago.
“I’m not so sorry myself,” Gregson said, “that it isn’t for us to say about Mrs. Mack and what goes on at her place, such being what no one knows,” and he spoke a little uneasily, vaguely aware that Bobby was upset about something, though unable to guess what that something might be.
“I shall have to see Commander Seers,” Bobby remarked.
“Oh, hadn’t you heard, sir?” Gregson asked. “He was blown up this morning.”
“Blown up?” repeated Bobby.
“Yes, sir. I always said as it was sure to happen, and so I told him, fiddling about with them drifting mines the way he did, but all he said was for me to shut up. They were trying to tow another of the things offshore into the westways current and they heard it beginning to tick over. Commander sent the boat off while he sat on the mine to get the tow rope right and then he would swim back. Which he did, and started to swim, but then the mine went off, and Commander, first he went up and then he went down. But he come up again and they got him in the boat and now he’s in hospital, but he says as it’ll take more than doctors, or even matron her own self to keep him there, and as how if they try to play tricks hiding his trousers, then he’ll walk home same as when born, which he will, if put to it, as we know, having experience of what Commander’s like when set on his own way.”
Bobby decided that he wouldn’t say anything in his report about Commander Seers being unfit for his job. But why, he wondered, was this such a contradictory muddled sort of a world, in which an obstinate, pig-headed old man, years behind the times, should also be of true heroic stature, ready to sacrifice his life to save others? Not at all a tidy world, by no means a card-index, neatly ticketed sort of world. Yet every business man knows that a card index is the first principle of order, and order has been said to be Heaven’s first law. Then he reflected that though God has been described in many ways—artist, mathematician, the Absolute, the First Cause, unwitting will, player of games, tyrant, Man vital, life force, what not, no one has ever thought of describing him as a business man. That might mean something, Bobby supposed, but, anyhow, even if it did, he had neither time nor capacity to think it out. He asked for the address of Mrs. Mack’s nursing home and how to get there, since it might be useful to have more evidence of Haile’s presence in the neighbourhood at the time of Itter Bain’s murder. On the way, too, he could call at the River Farm, to have a chat with Martin Winstanley.
But that he was not destined to accomplish this afternoon, for when he reached the River Farm, he found that, though it was Sunday, Mr. Winstanley was out somewhere on the farm with his head foreman, a disgruntled man summoned specially from a comfortable Sunday afternoon nap. Mr. Winstanley had decided apparently on a new schedule of work, to be put in hand without delay. Bobby wondered what could be the reason for this sudden outburst of energy; and then, before he could do anything, and before Winstanley and his head foreman could be found, Bobby was urgently recalled by a ’phone call from the senior superintendent, who acted as Seers’s deputy. A confession of guilt had been received from a man describing himself as a discharged worker from the Bain P
roducts factory. Bobby knew these confessions. Hardly a murder gets into the papers but some weak-minded person comes forward to confess. However, all such confessions have to be tested and what truth they contain sorted out. It took till after nightfall to make it quite clear that this time there was no atom of truth, not the remotest approach to fact, in this particular story, and by that time it was too late for further activity. Though Bobby did make sure that another officer had been placed on guard at Kindles, and had been warned to remember that what happened to his predecessor would probably happen to him if he did not keep his eyes open. Bobby also secured from a superintendent worried to death to provide for all necessary duties that another constable should be stationed inside the house, if permission could be obtained. He did not learn till next day that this permission was firmly refused, Lord Adour pronouncing such a precaution to be uncalled for and entirely unnecessary.
Bobby wrote that night:
“This case is beginning to get me down. Every new fact I manage to unearth seems to point in an entirely new and different direction. It is like following a path continually branching off in new ways, so that you never know for certain where you are going except that it is somewhere fresh. Of one thing, though, I am beginning to grow convinced, and that is that the truth of what did happen that day in the Coldstone Spinney near Kindles will never be established by direct evidence. The only chance is to construct a pattern of events so clear and definite that only so, and in no other way, can what happened have come about. That once established, and the chances are not too good, there may be some hope of obtaining the kind of factual evidence that a jury always requires, very rightly, as a reinforcement of the logical deductions every British jury instinctively distrusts. Naturally, since, than logic, there is nothing more deceptive and misleading. Except perhaps facts. To trust to logic in this illogical world is to trust to the guidance of a blind man in a place where he has never been.
“The most important new fact that has come up is this story of Prescott Bain’s sudden production of such a large sum as £9,000, so rescuing his firm from the clutches of a bank preparing to rationalize it out of existence. Where did that money come from? And why was it all in one pound notes? Why not a cheque? Generally a large payment made in small notes means there is a very good reason indeed for trying to conceal its origin? If that is so this time, what reason, what origin? And is there any connection with Itter Bain’s death?
Helen Passes By: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 16