Helen Passes By: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You mean,” Bobby said thoughtfully, “that Thibaut, or whatever his name is, was smuggled across in the Seagull for a quiet chat with Lord Adour,” and now Haile had a very disconcerted air indeed.

  “Oh, well,” he muttered and then again: “Oh, well.” Finally, he said sulkily: “No good my telling you what you know already.”

  “Not a bit,” agreed Bobby, “but hadn’t you better tell me exactly what you do know? Supplementary information is often very useful indeed. For instance, you might tell me why you made up your mind now to tell me as much as you have. Pretty plain it wasn’t just simply a pure desire to help justice—or me. And I don’t think it was all because of my visit to the nursing home, though very likely that helped. Well, what was it?”

  “I want to be quit of the whole thing,” Haile admitted. “I’ve a good chance of a job in Liverpool. I want some cash to go on with. I don’t want to start with Emmy on my uppers.”

  “More fool you,” Bobby said calmly. “Haven’t you sense enough to see that all the blessed girl wants is to pig in along with you, good luck, bad luck, or no luck at all? Women are like that. A queer lot. No common sense. You must have known you wouldn’t get much cash from us. We don’t go round handing out pound notes, making ourselves targets for every liar in the land.”

  “I’m so hard up even a fiver would help,” Haile admitted. “I thought you might run to that.”

  “Never get through expenses,” Bobby declared pessimistically. “I might run to it myself. As a loan, on a strict promise to repay. But more for Miss Lambert’s sake than yours. She’s got a tough time ahead if she is going to hitch on to a chap like you.”

  “That’s right,” Halle grumbled. “Rub it in. All very well for you to talk. You’re O.K.”

  “You’ve got a girl of your own and you say you’ve a chance of a job,” Bobby retorted. “What else do you want? All you need now is to run straight for a change. Up to you. Let’s get back to business. I take it what you mean is you’ve tried to squeeze Lord Adour and it didn’t come off.”

  “He wouldn’t even see me,” Haile admitted. “Has he told you?”

  “Goodness no. But I can put two and two together when it’s not too difficult. Plain you wanted money and thought you knew something worth money. Plain you would think you had a better chance of getting more out of Lord Adour than out of police. Plainer still that if he is innocent he would turn you down and that then you would try us as the only chance left.”

  “He isn’t innocent,” Haile said. “He’s your man all right. But it wasn’t because of Helen. He and Itter were doing a bit of black market smuggling or whatever you like to call it. Plenty to be made playing round with currency, or with gold if you can get it. Then they quarrelled.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Old Sammy Robinson—Jack Cade Junior, as he calls himself —Itter and Mauley’s uncle, has been hearing things from his pals in the French Resistance Movement. Just as you said. He says they’ve told him a lot more than I have and he’s shut down on the cash. A dirty trick. Says he’ll only pay on results now, blast him.”

  “It doesn’t seem too likely,” Bobby remarked, “that a man in Lord Adour’s position would join in that sort of smuggling. I should want a lot of proof before I accepted that,” but all the same he was remembering very clearly the chart he had found in the library at Kindles with on it marked a track leading straight to a lonely spot on the French coast.

  “It didn’t begin like that with him,” Haile explained. “At least that’s what Sammy says. If it had only been that, his Resistance Movement pals wouldn’t have known about it—or cared. The smuggling began when Itter Bain found his firm was being hit pretty badly by the peace and might have to close down. He was willing to take big risks to prevent that, because there he was his own boss and could spend all the time he wanted playing round with his own inventions. When he got to know there was easy money to be made in the gold and currency racket he thought it was a chance to get the necessary.”

  “I suppose that is where the £9,000 came from that Prescott Bain produced so suddenly the other day?” Bobby commented.

  “That’s right. Trust Prescott for nosing out any cash going. He and Mauley may have suspected what was going on, but I don’t think they knew. Itter must have had the cash tucked away somewhere and Prescott had a look and found it.”

  “It seems to fit in,” Bobby agreed, “but there’ll have to be a lot more to make me believe Lord Adour was taking a hand in that sort of thing. His interests are too big for it to be likely he would mix up in cross-Channel smuggling.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Haile doubtfully. “Don’t see why he would be likely to turn up his nose at an extra thousand or two. But, according to Sammy, it didn’t begin like that with him. What he wanted, and wanted pretty badly, was to get in touch with his old business pals and see what he could save from the wreckage—and if he could get hold of any of the coin they had pocketed during the Occupation. Only they were mostly in quod, the French authorities knowing all about the big profits they had made, working for the Germans. So Lord Adour decided to stay at home, in case when he got to France they might start asking him nasty questions about pre-war deals. Adour was a hot Munich supporter, you know, one of the ‘there won’t be any war’ lot. A dead cert, he was doing deals with the Germans right up to the last moment—or beyond. But he was still desperately keen on getting in touch with his old pals. That’s where Itter came in. Mutual assistance idea. Lord Adour had a launch, the Seagull. Itter wanted one he could slip across to France in on a calm night and not too many questions asked at the harbour here, where they all knew him. A bottle or two of brandy and a few pound notes go a long way these days. And Adour wanted one of his pals brought across on the Q.T., so he could know how things stood with his interests over there. That’s where the Resistance people came in. They wouldn’t have troubled their heads about the smuggling, but they’re hot stuff when it comes to collaborators and ex-collaborators and their agents, like Thibaut. The sale of the launch to Itter was most likely ‘phony.’ Just Lord Adour covering up his tracks or trying to. The real consideration was Itter’s undertaking to bring back a representative of Adour’s French interests to tell him how things stood and was there any way of saving anything from the wreck. So Itter brought Thibaut back and put him ashore and then Thibaut missed his way trying to find Kindles in the dark. That’s when Emmy saw him. She couldn’t make out what he wanted, except that it was something about Kindles, and then a cop came along and Thibaut cleared off in a hurry for fear of being asked questions. He must have managed to find his way to Kindles in the end. Perhaps he waited till it was light.”

  “Yes, but,” Bobby objected, “this was a day or two before Itter’s murder. I’m not interested in this smuggling business, especially as it will have stopped now. What I want is evidence proving who murdered Itter Bain, and I don’t see where Thibaut comes in.”

  “He had to get back, hadn’t he?” Haile retorted. “It seems he went on to London. Lord Adour met him there. He has a flat in Town. He could put Thibaut up there and no questions asked. Then they came back here, separately, no doubt, for Itter to take Thibaut across again. That’s when the quarrel occurred. My own idea is that Itter tried a spot of blackmail. He knew big money was involved and he wanted a bigger share. What is certain is that there were the three of them present and one got shot. Itter. That leaves two—Lord Adour and Thibaut. Pretty clear which of the two.”

  “Why?”

  “Who had the gun?”

  “Hardly conclusive.”

  “Thibaut had nothing much to fear—expulsion from this country, maybe a fine, and the French had nothing on him. Slipped over to do a business talk was all he needed to say. And Itter’s death cut off his best chance of getting back to France. Sammy’s information is he complains now he was robbed by swindling English fishermen of every penny he had with him before they would put him over. But Lord Adour had a l
ot at stake. Itter’s death, apart from any quarrel, saved him from all risk of being compromised. If he thought he was being blackmailed, he may have thought there was no other way of making himself safe. Or it may have been nothing more than a quarrel, a fit of anger. I don’t know. Anyhow, it’s clear enough that’s what happened. Nothing to do with Helen. You can leave her out. That’s not because I’m in love with her. I’m not. She scares me. She always has. Not like Emmy. You know where you are with Emmy,” he added comfortably.

  “You were on the spot, though,” Bobby remarked, “that night the attack on her was made. Why were you, if you aren’t interested in her?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Haile retorted. “She’s worth looking at. I knew she went walking alone in the moonlight at times. I think in a way her own knowledge of her own beauty has made her a bit abnormal. But I saw the two of them together and I saw the girl wasn’t Helen, so I cleared off. Besides, I knew you were snooping round. I saw Wayling flash a torch at you. He was there, too.”

  “But you left his cap?” Bobby said.

  “I picked it up after he had been thrown out of the ‘Good Haul,’” Haile explained. “I thought I would wear it as a sort of disguise. Everyone knows I never wear a hat, and if I were seen I thought I wouldn’t be spotted so easily. I didn’t want it to get round to Emmy that I had been trying for a sort of last look at Helen. All the same, in a sort of way, it’s because of Helen I made up my mind about Emmy. Somehow when you look at Helen you sort of feel you don’t want to do the dirty any more than you have to—anyhow, not on another girl. You can laugh if you like,” he added defiantly.

  “Why should I?” Bobby asked. “Beauty can be a strong wine, to make you mad or make you—different. You’ve nothing more to tell me?”

  “No,” Haile answered. He said: “I expect I’m a fool to have told you so much, but I want to get out of here with Emmy as soon as I can. Besides, you seemed to know it all, or guess it all. I don’t know which.”

  “Neither,” Bobby told him. “Not so hard when you know bits and pieces to put other bits and pieces together to make a whole. Oh, half a minute, have you any idea what’s become of the Seagull? It has vanished from its moorings. Mauley Bain says it’s been stolen.”

  Haile laughed, and his laughter had just a touch of malice in it.

  “I’m afraid Mauley got ahead of you there,” he said. “I think he knows, but he doesn’t want any questions asked about that £9,000 or to have his dead brother’s name brought into it. I told you before to keep an eye on him. He may try to square accounts on his own.”

  “Yes. I remember,” Bobby said slowly. “I remember very well. Do you think he has managed to get rid of the launch?”

  “I expect he took it out to sea, sank it, and swam back to shore, Haile answered. “He’s in the number one plus class at swimming, you know. Anyhow, that’s the talk. They all have a good idea about the smuggling that was going on. There’s a story that Mauley was afraid there might be traces in the launch of earth or sand from the last load brought over that might have been identified with French coast soil.”

  “What’s a poor detective to do,” Bobby sighed, “when everyone everywhere knows all the tricks of the trade?” but when he said this, or perhaps it was because of the tone in which he said it, Haile gave him a quick and doubtful look before he turned and went his way—in his pocket Bobby’s five one-pound notes and in Bobby’s mind some degree of doubt whether he would ever see that £5 again.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  AVOIDANCE

  Bobby drove slowly on his way to Kindles, and once at least drew up by the wayside to sit there for a time in deep thought. The case put forward by Haile was plausible, so plausible indeed that it provided justification for a charge. Details would have to be checked first, of course, and there was the possibility that it was the missing Thibaut who had in fact fired the fatal shot. But, even if it had been like that, Lord Adour, if not guilty of murder, was guilty of complicity—“accessory after the act,” in the legal phrase. Bobby found himself thinking that an arrest, even on the minor charge, or preferably the threat of one, might be useful in inducing Lord Adour and Avon, to give him his full title, to be a little more frank.

  A difficult decision, Bobby told himself, more especially as he knew well that there were other and equally probable—or possible—explanations that had to be considered. His mind went back to that long list he had given Olive at home in his last letter. But he also felt, and very strongly, that the time had come to take some step, even at the risk of making a blunder, in order to clear the air and so bring into the light of day many things as yet obscure. There is often a moment in difficult and complicated situations when a sudden act, an abrupt decision, may prove a catalysis, as chemists call it, and so change the appearance of facts and values as to show all things in a newer and a truer aspect. All the same, he was also very well aware that to arrest a man as prominent in social, political, business worlds as Lord Adour and Avon was a step that would require very complete, very full justification.

  “If it turns out a bad bloomer,” he told himself grimly, “it may be the end of me.”

  He drove on then, his mind not yet made up, determined only to act as seemed best from moment to moment. Arrived at Kindles, he told Jane, the first of the family to appear, that he wanted to see both her uncle and her cousin. Jane said she would let them both know, and he could not help noticing how uneasily she looked at him over her shoulder as she disappeared, leaving him sitting in the small lounge hall. Soon she returned to tell him Lord Adour would be with him in a moment or two, but that Helen had retired to her bedroom, saying that one of her headaches was coming on and she didn’t feel up to talking to anyone that morning. This last message Bobby did not receive with any complacence.

  “It looks to me,” he said sternly, “as if Miss Adour was avoiding me on purpose. Will you please tell her that it is necessary I should see her to-day?”

  “I could tell her, of course,” Jane agreed with a small, half-hidden smile, “though I expect I should have to shout through the keyhole or push a note under the door. But it won’t make any difference. She really is prostrate when her headaches do come on.”

  Bobby thought he detected in the phrasing of this last sentence a touch of doubt as to whether this time any headache had, in fact, come on. He said with emphasis:

  “I shall have to ask for a doctor’s certificate.”

  But now Jane’s half-smile became broader, developed, indeed, into something like a chuckle.

  “Helen could get any doctor to give her any certificate she wanted,” Jane told him. “They are all men doctors near here,” she added casually.

  “Oh, well, if it’s like that,” demanded Bobby with resentment, “why doesn’t she try the same game with me—try to get me to say anything she wants?”

  Jane surveyed him dispassionately.

  “I expect she could,” she pronounced finally.

  “Well, then,” said Bobby.

  “But I don’t think she’s quite sure,” Jane continued, a little as if she were thinking out a problem that had often baffled her. “She never is. When people do what she wants, she thinks it’s because it’s the natural and proper thing to do—like passing the mustard at dinner. When they stare and stutter and go red and pale by turns, she only thinks how silly they are. She knows very well how lovely she is and she knows in a way that it makes her different from other people. In a way, she’s a girl like anyone else and in a way she isn’t—as hard for the rest of us to understand as I suppose it is for men and women to understand each other. I told her once she made men all upside down inside when they saw her and she thought about it a long time and then she said: ‘Well, why?’ She said once she had seen the sun rise over the Alps and again the sun set from St. Malo, and it was more lovely than a dream, but it didn’t make anyone upside down inside, and was it like the way you felt when you eat too many cream buns?”

  “Well, she’s got to see me,”
Bobby repeated. “Tell her that— through the keyhole if you have to, but tell her. Tell her, if she persists, there are ways and means. I don’t want to take drastic steps, but I may have to.”

  “What steps?” Jane asked.

  Bobby waved the question aside. He wasn’t quite sure how to answer it, for one thing. He said severely:

  “Please make it plain to her I am an officer of the Law, and the Law must be obeyed.”

  “The Law?” Jane murmured. “Rex v. Beauty, the lawyers would put it, wouldn’t they? I wonder?”

  Bobby surveyed Jane with disfavour. Her tone seemed to show less respect for that august conception, the Law, than he felt was its proper and rightful due. He said, still in his most severe, official tone:

  “Miss Adour’s looks have nothing to do with it.”

  “Of course they have,” retorted Jane. “What’s the good of saying silly things like that? Helen’s looks make all the difference. You feel as if they belong to everyone and everyone ought to protect them. Women are said to be cats to each other, but we all know Helen’s beauty belongs to all of us, too, and we would all do anything—not for her, but for it. I know I would.”

  There had been a touch of almost mystical devotion in her voice as she said this. It made Bobby vaguely uneasy, disturbed him. Before he could make any comment, however, while they both stood silent, as Jane began to look slightly embarrassed as if only now were she beginning to realize what she had said, Lord Adour came bustling into the room. He seemed nervous, uneasy, but with his entrance the overstrained atmosphere became more commonplace, and when he spoke it was amiably enough.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “Come along to the study, will you? I was half expecting you. Nearly rang you up. Very disturbing business, all this.” He ushered Bobby into the study, thrust forward a chair, seated himself, and said: “About this keeping your men hanging about here all night. I don’t like it. It makes people talk. Gossip enough already. I don’t like it. I don’t want it. Seers is in hospital or I’m sure he would agree. I want it stopped.”