Helen Passes By: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You found Itter in the spinney?” Bobby asked.

  “That was the meeting place, where Itter waited for her where she came. I was too late. A little sooner and it would never have happened. But it had happened already.”

  “What do you mean?” Seers cried, horror and dismay in his voice. “You don’t mean … not Helen Adour … ?”

  “If I had been earlier,” Mauley said, speaking slowly and very thoughtfully, “then I think it need never have been and Itter would still be alive. But it had to be, for when a deed has to be done it can’t be stopped. And I was too late. He would not listen, he could think of nothing but that she was coming for he had seen her through the trees, and he did not know she was coming for his death. He fetched the gun. To make me go. But he let me take it from him, for that was how it had to be. We were all innocent. She did not wish his death. Was it Itter’s fault he could not understand she was for no man’s privacy? Was it my fault I was too late in getting there? Was it her fault that she dazzled like the sun, so that nothing was the same when she went by? Or was it perhaps the fault of the gun that it was there, waiting? But it is necessary that it must not happen again, never again get itself accomplished. Never again must her beauty kill. The instrument must be broken, the gun hidden away, and blood paid for in blood, as it has been from the beginning and always shall be.”

  Bobby turned and began to run towards the house. He shouted over his shoulder as he ran:

  “Don’t let him get away.”

  A light shone in the house, in one of the windows, then in another and another. Against the blinds there could be seen shadows of people running to and fro.

  Seers said:

  “That was her room, Helen’s room, where the lights showed first,” and in the thoughts of all their minds, in Bobby’s mind, too, as he raced towards the house, ran the unspoken question: “Has then another deed got itself accomplished?”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  AN EPITAPH

  Bobby, racing up the Kindles avenue, paradoxically driven on by the fear, the knowledge, that it was too late and speed all unavailing, reached the entrance to the house. The door was open. He ran in and called aloud. Somebody, he could not see who it was, was running down the stairs, but as he entered turned and ran up them again. From the rear of the house, Lord Adour appeared.

  “Is it the doctor?” he called. He saw Bobby. “Oh, you,” he said. “Have you brought a doctor? I can’t get through.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he rushed away again, back to his study, and Bobby could hear him shouting into the ’phone. A woman came from the back regions. Bobby recognized the elderly maid who formed the whole of the resident domestic staff. Her hair was in the curling pins he had been told were an obsolete relic of a past and forgotten age, she clutched an ancient dressing gown about her. Bobby said:

  “What’s going on here?”

  But he thought he knew and perhaps his question was an unconscious effort to postpone assuring himself by sight and touch.

  “It won’t burn up,” the elderly maid answered. “There’s no oil. Shall I use sugar? It’s rationed.”

  She disappeared again. Bobby ran up the stairs. There was a light burning in the corridor. Jane came to the door of a room almost opposite the head of the stairs. It was the room Bobby knew from its position must be that occupied by Helen. Without showing any surprise at his appearance, Jane said:

  “Can you help? Can you get a doctor? I think it’s too late.”

  She went back into the room. The window was open and the dressing table near it had been pushed aside. On the small bed lay a still form. The bedding had been turned back and on the sheets were crimson spots. There was a dreadful contrast with the dainty furnishings, the soft colour harmonies the room displayed. Jane was speaking again. She said:

  “He must have got in through the window. Can’t you get a doctor?”

  “Lord Adour is trying,” Bobby said. “He is ’phoning.” He heard footsteps in the hall below and someone calling out. Seers and the others had arrived. Bobby ran to the head of the stairs and shouted: “Send the car for the nearest doctor. Very urgent.” Lord Adour rushed out of the study.

  “I’ve got London,” he called. “They’ve promised to get through here.”

  He disappeared again. Seers was giving instructions as Bobby had requested. Bobby went back into the room. Jane repeated: “He’ll never get here in time.”

  Bobby went nearer to the bed. He stared unbelievingly at the still, quiet figure lying there. He said:

  “That’s not her. That’s Wayling.” Then he said: “Is he wounded?”

  “He is dying,” Jane said, “and there is no doctor.” She came to the bed and stood by Bobby’s side. She went on: “I did what I could There wasn’t much bleeding. I think that makes it worse. I tore the sheet for bandages to keep out the air. I don’t know what else to do. Do you? I’ve told them to get the fire going. I got my hot-water bottle. Helen’s too. It’s all no good.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Bobby said. “I never expected this. How did it happen?”

  “There was no light,” Jane said. “Both bulbs had been taken out. I had to put one in to see by. He must have done it on purpose, to prevent any one knowing.”

  Seers came hurrying into the room, up to the bed.

  “That’s not Helen,” he said.

  “Is there anything—anything at all we can do to help?” Jane said to Bobby.

  Bobby was bending over that still, quiet form.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s no bleeding—not much, I mean. I’ve a brandy flask, but there’s a stomach wound.”

  “Two,” Jane said. “There are two.”

  “I think we can do no more than try to keep him warm and wait for a doctor,” Bobby said.

  “That’s Wayling,” Seers told them challengingly, almost protestingly. “That’s not Helen. It’s the fellow who was at that what d’ye call it pub. How did he get here? Where’s Helen?”

  “She is in our room,” Jane answered. “I sent her away. She wanted to help, but she couldn’t. No one can. I must go to her. She’s terrified. I thought she was going to faint.”

  “Thank God she’s safe,” Seers said; and, as if his relief were so great he could no longer stand, he sat down on the nearest chair and then got up again, not sure such fragile daintiness would endure his weight. Pointing to the bed, he said: “How did he get here? What was he up to? Is he badly hurt?”

  “I think he is dead,” Bobby said; but, as he spoke, Wayling opened his eyes.

  “Hullo, Owen,” he said. “On the spot as usual. Smart boy, and what’s the good? My note-book … in my breast pocket.”

  “Who did this?” Bobby asked him.

  “My note-book,” Wayling said again. “I want it. In my coat pocket.” He began to cough and a little blood and froth showed on his lips. “My note-book,” he repeated, but much more feebly. “I want it. Damn you,” he whispered, “can’t you see I’ve no time to spare?”

  His clothes were in an untidy, sprawling heap on a small silk and golden chair. Bobby picked up the coat and took the note-book from a pocket. He said:

  “Never mind all that now. How are you feeling? Have you any pain? We’re trying to get a doctor. Who did this?”

  “It’s all there,” Wayling said, whispering still so that Bobby had to bend to catch what he said. “All I ever borrowed. I always meant to pay back every penny.”

  “It will be,” Jane said. “Every penny, if I have to sell my last frock to do it.”

  “Thank you,” Wayling said, and smiled, and the smile seemed touched with some strange and sudden glory. “O.K.,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

  “Did Mauley Bain do this?” Bobby asked and, when Wayling made no answer, he said again: “Who was it? Who?”

  Wayling opened his eyes again and chuckled. He said very loudly and clearly:

  “I fooled him beautifully, didn’t I? With the bulbs taken out, he couldn�
��t see, and he never thought to look, and so he thought that I was Helen. That’s damn funny, you know,” and the chuckle became a delighted laugh, and as he thus laughed with delight, he died.

  “It is finished,” Jane said, and, to the two men: “You can go. I will do what must be done.”

  “But what was he doing here?” Seers asked, still in utter amaze and complete bewilderment.

  Jane answered:

  “He told us Helen was in danger and we must let him sleep in her room and she could sleep with me; because then she would be safe and it was the only way to make sure and know for certain who it was, so it could be proved. And he said it would be quite all right, because no one wanted to hurt him, and so there wasn’t any danger for him. But, of course, that wasn’t true and he knew it wasn’t, and I expect we knew, too, only somehow you always believed what he told you even when you didn’t really, only he made you think you did.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby said.

  “Well, anyhow,” Seers said, his voice full of an enormous relief, “you’re sure Helen’s all right? Quite safe and well?”

  “She is safe and well,” Jane answered, “but he is dead.”

  “Yes, I know,” Seers echoed Bobby; and his voice was still all one great relief. He looked in a puzzled way at the dead man on the bed. “He was potman at the ‘Good Haul,’ wasn’t he?” he said. “There’ve been complaints … getting money … false pretence … that sort of thing. Nothing you could lay hold of in a criminal sense, civil proceedings generally. He seemed to be an unscrupulous little scamp.”

  “It will do for an epitaph as well as another,” Bobby said. “He did what he did and he was what he was, and he died well.”

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  MAGNIFICENT SUICIDE

  One of Seer’s men was posted at the door of the death chamber. It was explained to Jane that for the present nothing must be touched. She went back to join Helen in the room they shared together. The elderly maid, having got the fire going at last, made tea, which she and Lord Adour shared together in friendly companionship. Lord Adour had finally succeeded in getting in touch with a local doctor. Through the London exchange, a second doctor had been told that his services were badly required at Kindles. The police car sent off by Commander Seers was returning with a third. It seemed likely all three would arrive together. The Commander himself was hurrying down the avenue with Bobby, on their way to where they had left Mauley Bain in the charge of the two remaining constables.

  “Wayling never told us who it was,” Seers was saying uneasily. “Is there enough to justify a charge?”

  “Enough on both counts,” Bobby answered grimly.

  “His own brother,” Seers said. “I can hardly believe it.”

  “Not the first time,” Bobby answered, “that brother has killed brother for a woman’s sake.”

  “It is the mercy of God,” Seers said, “that Helen is safe.”

  “Don’t forget Wayling,” Bobby said.

  Seers did not answer. He could not quite co-ordinate his memory of the potman at the local pub, the unscrupulous little scamp about whose conduct he had received complaints, with his memory of the man who had died in Helen s room to save Helen from danger. The inconsistency was too great and he was still half-unconsciously seeking for a comfortable explanation.

  They came to where Mauley Bain and the two constables were waiting. Mauley was sitting on the ground, his knees hunched up, his hands clasped about them. The two constables left to watch him were standing near. They had moved the police car so that its headlamps shone full upon them all, so making around them a little island of light. As Seers and Bobby came up, they stiffened to attention. Mauley, seated, immobile, staring out across the darkness at the lighted Kindles windows, might have been unaware of the return of Bobby and the Commander, so utterly did he ignore it and them. Even when Seers spoke to him he took no notice. There was something a little frightening about this intense abstraction, as though, still living, he had yet withdrawn himself into another world. Only when Seers laid a hand upon his shoulder did he look up. He shook off the Commander’s hand, not impatiently, but as if it were irrelevant, and would have relapsed again into whatever dark sea of thought and memory had absorbed him, had not Bobby called him sharply by name.

  “Mauley Bain,” he said. “Mauley,” he repeated, for somehow he understood that it was the first name—his private name, as it were—that was important and that best could reach him, “we have come back from Kindles and we have seen what you did there.”

  “Is she still beautiful?” Mauley asked.

  “What a thing for you to ask,” Seers gasped.

  “It was a beauty that was never right, never in its place, not in this world,” Mauley said.

  “If you mean Helen Adour,” Bobby said, “it was not her we saw.”

  “Now no one ever will,” Mauley said. “A loveliness like hers was only here to make men mad.”

  “It was for worship and for love,” Seers said loudly; and then stopped and looked surprised, astonished to hear what he himself had said, not quite sure indeed that it was really he who had spoken. Then he said: “I think I was in love with her myself.”

  “No one ever loved her as I loved her,” Mauley said.

  “My wife said once I was,” Seers continued, pursuing his own troubled line of thought. “I was angry. I must tell her she was right.”

  “I only spoke to her twice,” Mauley said. “The first time I said, ‘How do you do?’ The second time I said it was a fine day. She looked surprised because it was raining hard. I hadn’t noticed. I hurried away as fast as I could. I expect she was used to that sort of thing—people behaving strangely, I mean. How could they help?”

  “I put this to you,” Bobby said. “You climbed into the room you believed was occupied by Helen Adour. The room was dark.”

  “I hadn’t thought to bring my torch,” Mauley said, “and the electricity wouldn’t come on. There must have been something wrong. It didn’t matter. I knew where the bed was and I knew what had to be done. Death must answer death and Itter’s death required another Death always does. Why do you say you did not see her. The lights came on in her room.”

  “Helen wasn’t there,” Seers interposed. “She was safe somewhere else, thank God. It was Wayling you killed, the potman at the ‘Good Haul.’ I can’t make out how he got there. He was in the bed.”

  “Oh, no,” Mauley said. “It was her. It was her room, her bed.”

  “Her room,” Seers agreed. “But she wasn’t there. She had moved out. Wayling was sleeping there. It should never have been allowed.”

  “That’s nonsense,” Mauley said. “It couldn’t be. I know the man you mean. An ugly little brute, more like a gargoyle than anything else. How could he be taken for Helen’s loveliness?”

  “It seems you did,” Bobby said. “I think he found it funny. I think he saw the joke. That his ugliness should answer for her beauty.”

  “He died laughing,” Seers said.

  “You’re lying,” Mauley said. “Liars both of you. It couldn’t happen.”

  “Only it did,” Bobby said, “and nothing now can alter it.”

  “It’s all a lie,” Mauley repeated. “That ugliness of his and her high beauty. It couldn’t. It would be too funny.”

  “So Wayling thought,” Bobby said. “It is why he died laughing.”

  “Oh, well,” Mauley said. “Now then.”

  “You must come with us,” Bobby said. “You will be charged with the murder of Alexander Wayling and with the murder of your brother, Itter Bain.”

  “Well, now then,” Mauley said. “What next?”

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, with a lightning and an astonishing activity, he was on his feet. The change from the perfect immobility of his previous attitude to this of intense action, movement, was baffling in its rapidity. It took them all entirely unawares. Before any one of the four men around could so much as raise a finger he was racing away. They followed, followed
hard upon him for their momentary paralysis of surprise lasted but the fraction of a second.

  Swift and straight he ran, unfalteringly, taking every obstacle as it came, hesitating before none. It might have been the cinder track of athletic grounds on which he fled, so heedless did he seem of where he trod. Behind him, hard upon him, the gap between measured only in feet and inches, the others followed fast. One of the two constables was, as it happened, an athlete, only just released from service as a Commando, and still in first-class training. He was so near as he ran that he was almost within arm’s length—but not quite. Bobby was only a foot or two behind, and he ran as not even he had often run before. Behind them were the second constable, less agile, falling slowly behind, and Seers who, despite age and lack of condition, kept gallantly his place.

  So they ran and fled and thudded through the night and ever the former Commando was so near to the fleeing Mauley, he was almost within arm’s length—but not quite. And Bobby, though he called on every ounce of energy he possessed, was still that foot or two behind, and still he could not close that tiny gap.

  For all the reckless speed with which they three fled un-hampered through the night, they might have been three static figures, so little did their positions change in relation to each other. But for the trees and the bushes and the night that fled by, they might have seemed as immobile as when Mauley was sitting hunched up on the ground and Bobby and the Commander talked with him.