Helen Passes By: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Why should Mrs. Mack’s being conscientious make her give up?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, you see,” the waitress explained, “what she feels is that her doctor made a mistake. He’s a London gentleman and he attends nobility and royalty, Mrs. Mack says, and he got Mrs. Mack to come down here because he thinks ozone from the sea is what you want more than anything when you’re old. Mrs. Mack says he ought to know, and it may be what science says, but she thinks it’s too strong for some, and it’s quite true old people do seem to die off quick like after they get here. Not but that it’s a happy release for the poor old souls. But Mrs. Mack is that conscientious doing her duty to her patients she’s worried like, and she thinks she’ll close down. She says if she does the doctor gentleman won’t ever forgive her, and she’ll have to do without him. But she’ll try to manage somehow.”

  Bobby said it was fine to think Mrs. Mack thought first of those in her charge. The waitress agreed enthusiastically. She said it made you feel better to know there were people like Mrs. Mack in the world. Bobby agreed in his turn, and asked if Mrs. Mack only accepted aged people. The waitress said, Oh, no. Ladies came quite often. The strong sea air seemed to suit them better, and they seldom stayed long. But then, of course, they were young. The Waitress seemed less willing to talk now or to pursue the subject of these transitory patients. It was with evident relief that she went off to attend to a large party who had just entered the shop.

  Bobby paid his bill and departed, leaving a generous tip to reward talkativeness, a quality he much approved—in other people.

  A well-worn path led up the slope of the cliff and along it, past the nursing home. No doubt a favourite stroll for visitors, affording as it did a fine view over the sea and plenty of fresh air. Bobby strolled on, and then left the path to approach nearer the edge of the cliff. He stood there for a moment or two, watching the incoming tide foaming angrily on the formidable rocks below. Not much chance, he thought, of anything thrown down there ever being found again. He turned back again to the nursing home. It stood in a rather bleak garden, separated from the open cliff by a brick wall. In the garden were two or three shelters, open to the sea, where in fine and sunny weather it would evidently be pleasant for an invalid or a convalescent to sit for a time. One of these was occupied now by a young woman well wrapped up and as good-looking as any young woman needs to be. Bobby knew her at once for the Miss Lambert he had seen before; and if he stood where the corner of the wall provided a little shelter and watched her, it was not because of her looks, but because, as she sat there so quietly, hardly moving, she seemed somehow to convey a most strange impression of an inner radiance, a hidden but intense content and joy. It was as though in some way she had become a joy incarnate, as if all about her were a golden dream. Bobby found himself wondering how it was she could spread around this, as it were, aura of delight; and then he discovered he was being oddly reminded of Helen, who walked alone and aloof in beauty as this other sat and communed with herself in joy. His own business in life was grim enough and led him into grim surroundings, and it came to him that he would always be glad to remember that in this investigation at least he had seen joy and seen beauty both made manifest on earth.

  There came quietly and quickly round the corner of the shelter the plump, comfortable figure of Mrs. Mack.

  “My dear girl,” she said scoldingly, “you know you oughtn’t to be sitting there like that. What would Mr. Haile say? You’ll be catching cold.”

  “I’m quite warm, really I am, Mrs. Mack,” Miss Lambert said, getting to her feet.

  “You can’t be too careful,” declared Mrs. Mack, still severe, “till baby comes.”

  “Have you made up your mind yet?” the girl asked while Mrs. Mack fussed to see she had all her belongings and was properly wrapped up.

  “Yes. I’m giving up. I’ve told the agent so,” Mrs. Mack answered. “But not till I’ve seen you and baby comfy together. I haven’t told Mrs. Orchard I’ve decided, but I’ll take her with me if she likes, poor old soul.”

  They moved away together towards the house and Bobby watched thoughtfully till they vanished indoors.

  Even more thoughtfully he asked himself how he was to reconcile this care for Miss Lambert, this thoughtfulness for old Mrs. Orchard with the dark and ugly hints he had been given.

  A contradictory world, he told himself. He hoped very much he was following a false trail and that all this had no connection with the Itter Bain murder. But of that it was his duty to assure himself, no matter what the cost, or to whom.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  AN ENGAGEMENT

  When he knocked, Mrs. Mack came to the door. He asked if he could have a few words with her and she hesitated, plainly both doubtful and suspicious.

  “What’s it about?” she asked. “I saw you outside. You looked as if you were after something, listening. If it’s to take anyone in, I’m leaving.”

  “Yes, I heard you say so,” Bobby agreed. “Not that I was listening, but I couldn’t help hearing what you said.” He produced his official card. “I thought you might be able to help,” he said.

  She took the card and read it and gave it back to him in silence. But she had changed as she read, changed oddly and suddenly. The smiling, good-tempered face became alert and wary; the mouth grew hard, too, hard and tight-lipped; the eyes were hostile and angry now, the eyes of one ready for attack, ready to attack in turn. A formidable and dangerous personality had leapt into sudden being from behind the façade of the stout, comfortable, motherly matron. She said in a slow and careful voice:

  “All right. Come in if you must. I’ve nothing to hide. I’ve been expecting this.”

  “Why?” asked Bobby.

  “Because fools talk,” she answered. She led the way into a comfortable, conventional sitting-room, such as could be matched anywhere in any suburb of any town in England. Even the engravings on the wall were familiar, and so were the spindly occasional tables, the china ornaments, the framed photographs on the piano lid, the flowery pattern of the wallpaper. Bobby followed her. She turned to face him, without either seating herself or offering him a chair. She was still silent, but when Bobby, too, was silent, she said:

  “There’s never been a death in this house that wasn’t properly certified. Ask Dr. Norris. He knows, though none too civil about it either, and always paid on the dot. Was it him sent you?”

  “No,” said Bobby.

  “Well, then,” she said, and watched him as a boxer fresh into the ring watches his opponent for the first blow.

  “I’m told old people have a way of dying here rather quickly,” Bobby said. “I don’t know if that is true or not. I have no authority to ask. There have been no complaints.”

  “There’s been no call for any,” Mrs. Mack retorted swiftly, but at the same time with such an air of quick, unconscious relief as Bobby felt must be the measure of the apprehension she had felt. “Nothing’s ever done here but what was wished by all and for the best.”

  “Well, then, if that’s so, that’s all right, isn’t it?” Bobby said.

  She nodded in assent and then sat down, first pushing forward a chair for him. But she still seemed to feel a need to justify herself. She said:

  “If it was only what the relatives called incurable, even if there was doctor’s word for it, I never took the case. Because incurable—well, you never know, not even doctors. But old age—well, there’s no cure for that, is there?”

  “No,” agreed Bobby. “None.”

  “Lingering,” she said. She went on: “You could see plain there was nothing left, only suffering, and being a burden to all. Lingering,” she repeated as if it were a word she found comfortable, soothing. “Just lingering. Nothing left except wait, just lying there, groaning and suffering, and why should young strong lives with all before them be sacrificed for a few weeks or months of nothingness but pain? The children’s education, too, as likely as not.”

  “I haven’t come to talk about that,
” Bobby interposed, but Mrs. Mack went on unheedingly:

  “It’s not like that with old Mrs. Orchard. She’s lively enough, even if fretful as a baby at times, and enjoys her cup of tea and the wireless you can always turn on to send her to sleep, and no one can say there’s not been good care taken of her ever since I had her, and that’s two years or near.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby said. “So I’ve been told.”

  Mrs. Mack gave him a quick, half-defiant, half suspicious look, as if asking what else he had been told and why it was he had been told anything at all. She went on talking, a little quickly, a little nervously.

  “Her daughter has a job in a London store,” she said. “Five guineas a week and she sends me half as regular as clockwork, which isn’t my regular terms or anything like, but the other half’s not much to live on and look respectable the way things are today and like to be for long enough. No chance to go out and meet people and maybe find a man for herself. Well, if old Mrs. Orchard were like some and no life left in her but sleep and suffering, if you can call it life, wouldn’t it be best for it to end, so that others could have their chance of life as they’ve a right to? Instead of two lives going on and neither to be called rightly a life at all? What do you say?”

  “No one has made me a judge in such things,” Bobby answered gravely. “People must take their own decisions—and the consequences. Some people might call a girl a fool if she gives up her own life for an old woman’s sake. A matter of opinion. I suppose other people have sometimes given up their own lives for the sake of others, though in different ways. Shall we talk about something else? I understand you are leaving here?”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Mack, but the urge, the half unconscious urge to justify herself was still strong upon her. She said: “Mostly they were willing enough to go, willing and glad, tired out, so tired they only stayed for lack of strength to do else. Lingering,” she said once more. She went towards a small book-case inconspicuous in one corner of the room. As she fumbled in it, she said over her shoulder, almost as if the words were dragged from her against her will: “There were a few who didn’t.” She turned round with a pamphlet in her hand and said: “But often only conscious half the time or less and the money not there, not unless others were to suffer for it, and they children very like. Don’t the children with their lives before them count for more than those that have had their time?” She offered him the pamphlet she had found and said: “You can read about it here. They want to make it legal and for the incurables, too, and so they ought. It’s only right. Read this.”

  “No, thank you,” Bobby said.

  Mrs. Mack put the pamphlet down.

  “Oh, well,” she said, “if people won’t hear reason.” More briskly and in a more satisfied tone, as if pleased with the defence she had not been asked to make, she continued: “I told the agent this afternoon I was giving up, but it isn’t about that you’ve come, is it?”

  “No,” said Bobby. “The young lady you were talking to is a Miss Lambert, isn’t she?”

  “What about her?” demanded Mrs. Mack, and once again was alert, on guard, formidable, no longer on the defensive as she had been just recently, but ready to attack if need be. “She’ll have her baby soon, and when she does I’ll see she gets every care, and they’ll be married first as well.”

  “Married?” Bobby repeated quickly, for that was something he had not expected. “You mean Miss Lambert and Mr. Haile are getting married?”

  “That’s right. He gave the notice in this morning.”

  “Did he?” Bobby said. “Good. It was Mr. Haile brought Miss Lambert here, wasn’t it? Can you tell me the date?”

  “Let me see now,” Mrs. Mack said. She gave the date after reference to a book she produced, and it was the day of the murder of Itter Bain. “Mr. Haile came with her by the early train,” she remarked as she put her book away.

  “Did he stay long?”

  “No. He went off almost at once. He had an engagement. What do you want to know for?”

  “It is only a question of fitting in times and dates and so on,” Bobby explained. “Very useful sometimes in checking what you hear, very helpful indeed. If times fit and everything, then it’s pretty sure to be true. If they don’t, there’s generally something wrong. Are they keeping their engagement private? Mr. Haile didn’t say anything to me when I saw him last. Not that there’s any reason why he should.”

  “Nothing private about it that I know of,” Mrs. Mack said. “No reason why there should be. It’s only just been settled, this morning.”

  “Oh-h,” said Bobby, understanding, and smiled as he remembered how the girl had looked, sitting there in the shelter facing the sea, as if lost in a kind of golden dream. “I thought she was looking rather happy,” he said.

  “So would you look happy,” Mrs. Mack told him sharply, “if you were a girl and you thought you wouldn’t have either a husband or a home or a baby, or a name, and something to hide all your life, and then all at once you knew you were going to get ’em all and nothing to keep hidden from all the others. You’re a man,” she added with a touch of pity in her voice. “You couldn’t understand.”

  “I expect not,” Bobby said. “I’m glad Haile has made up his mind. I wonder what made him?”

  “Helen Adour,” said Mrs. Mack.

  “What on earth has she got to do with it?” Bobby demanded, astonished.

  “It was seeing her go by,” Mrs. Mack said. “Watching her pass. It makes you feel like that somehow. It’s a sort of loveliness she has that’s frightening in a way, like the stars some nights when their shining makes you want to run away, only you can’t, because there isn’t anywhere to go. Have you seen her?”

  “No,” said Bobby. “I must as soon as I can. Somehow I’ve always missed her till now.”

  “You’ll be like all the others when you do,” Mrs. Mack told him. “Every man falls in love with her at once. Or else it’s not with her, but only with her beauty.”

  “Are they different?” Bobby asked.

  “The warmth of the sun is not the sun,” Mrs. Mack answered. “Mr. Haile said that this morning. I thought at first he had been drinking when he got here, he was so wrought up. But it wasn’t drink, it was Miss Adour’s beauty working on him. Gone to his head like spirits. He said when some could show such loveliness he wouldn’t spoil it by doing the dirty on Emmy—that’s Miss Lambert. When he went, I said to him Emmy was that happy it was worth Miss Adour’s loveliness ten times over—and he had done it, so it was up to him to keep it so. He said he would. But all worked up he was, and you can’t tell.”

  “We can hope for the best,” Bobby said. “I shall be more keen than ever on getting to see Miss Helen.”

  “Better mind,” Mrs. Mack said, and laughed. “There’s never any knowing what she won’t do to you. In a way, it was my seeing her while I was hanging about near the agent’s office and not knowing whether to go in or not that made me decide. She went by at the top of the street and all the street seemed to light up, and before I knew there I was in the agent’s office, giving notice to end my tenancy, and glad they were to have it, too, with a long list of clients all waiting and ready to pay any price. So that’s settled. Can’t be undone now, but I don’t know if I should have if I hadn’t seen her just at that moment.”

  “Well, I’m glad you have,” Bobby said. “You can tell me it’s no business of mine if you like, but I’m sure it’s better so in every way. I must be getting on now, so I’ll say goodbye and thank you.”

  “What for?” Mrs. Mack asked with a sudden return to her former attitude of doubt and suspicion. “I don’t know what you wanted, but I haven’t told you anything, have I?”

  “Oh, no,” agreed Bobby. “Except about you leaving and Mr. Haile and Miss Lambert getting married and all that.”

  “Everybody’s welcome to know,” Mrs. Mack said, but still a little doubtfully.

  “Well, why not?” Bobby agreed.

  “If
it wasn’t about the old people you came,” Mrs. Mack said, “was it about … the other thing?”

  “What’s that?” Bobby asked.

  “You know,” she said, watching him steadily. “If it was, though you’ve never said, you ought to have heard how the girls thanked me and how grateful they were with a chance to start their lives all fresh and new. Men don’t know what it is to have a baby without a father.”

  “It’s a pity, don’t you think?” Bobby said, “that some girls don’t think of that a little sooner. But I’ve no authority there either, and it’s not for me to say. Goodbye and thank you very much. I hope I shan’t have to trouble you again. Take good care of Miss Lambert—I mean, Mrs. Haile—when her baby arrives.”

  “Trust me,” said Mrs. Mack. “There’s been too many babies never born here for me to miss the chance of one that may be.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  LAUNCH LOST

  Bobby drove away from the Toad-in-Hole Nursing Home in a very troubled frame of mind. It was not that he was thinking of what had been happening there, or of how there the deepest questions of life and death seemed to have been dealt with on an irresponsible basis of private judgment and convenience. All that was for the law of the land to deal with, the law and public opinion of which the law can only be the formal expression. But it was as though as he drove on there floated by his side the smiling, glowing features of one to whom had come a joy as great as unexpected. It might be his duty, he knew, to take such action as would wipe away that joy for ever, to turn that happiness into the ultimate despair.

  He hoped it would not come to that, but he did not know, and, strive as he would, he could not banish from his mind memory of that great contentment he had seen and that now hung in such peril. Nor was it any avail for him to remind himself that in this world joy is the most fragile, the most ephemeral of all that ever the human spirit knows.

  When he arrived back he found waiting for him a young harbour man named Soper. He was the man who had been engaged by Sergeant Gregson to search the river for any sign of what had become of the Seagull. His report was emphatic. He had covered the whole length of the river to and beyond the Bain Products factory, to, in fact, the point where the river branched into its two main constituent parts, both too shallow for the Seagull. He had seen nothing of it and was quite certain that nowhere could it be concealed along the river banks. A conclusive report and Bobby thanked the man and dismissed him thinking to himself as he did so that anyhow that was that. No Seagull, and so what had become of it?