Secrets Can't be Kept: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Furthermore,” continued Bobby, quite unmoved, “the petrol has been removed from the tank of my car. That prevented me from following a man we saw escaping on a motor-cycle. The only person seen near the car was Miss Wood.”

  “I did go for a stroll just before dinner,” agreed Miss Wood. “You remember,” she said to Lady Vennery, “I said I would take that letter to Conrads to the post-box. Does the inspector think I pocketed his petrol and brought it back with me?”

  “I think there’s been enough of this,” said Lord Vennery.

  “I think the facts I have mentioned, facts within your own knowledge,” Bobby told him, “justify me in asking for an explanation.”

  “If you mean,” said Lady Vennery, “that you are trying to accuse Miss Wood of having anything to do with what’s happened to-night, I can only say she has had no more to do with it than I myself. Please understand I guarantee that. Or do you want to accuse me, too?”

  “Lady Vennery and myself,” said Lord Vennery, “have the most complete confidence in Miss Wood—as complete as in ourselves. I am sure,” he added more graciously, “we all appreciate, inspector, that you have shown great energy and zeal, and I fully understand your position. But I think the matter must now drop. Nothing is missing. We have lost nothing, no complaint to make about anything. We are much obliged to you, inspector, for your efforts, and that ends it.”

  Bobby hardly heard. From behind the protective forms of Lord Vennery, of Lady Vennery, Miss Thea Wood looked at Bobby, and then slowly and quite deliberately put out her tongue at him.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Lady Vennery, seeing how Bobby gasped and stared, and she turned to see what he was staring at, as if Medusa had suddenly appeared.

  All she saw was her demure, efficient secretary standing meekly there, butter certainly quite unable to melt in her small, made-up mouth.

  CHAPTER XX

  JITTERS

  OVER LATE—VERY late—supper that Sunday evening Olive listened with interest while Bobby recounted the events of the day. At the story of the behaviour of Miss Thea Wood she shook a sympathetic head and said severely that she really didn’t know what girls were coming to now-a-days.

  “I do wish I had been there,” she added dreamily. “I always seem to miss the best bits.”

  “What best bits?” asked Bobby suspiciously.

  “Oh,” said Olive in a hurry, “just—well, you know. That’s all.”

  “If,” said Bobby with dignity, “you see anything to laugh at . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t,” Olive declared. “Certainly not. Why, I was as grave and solemn as if—as if I had been thinking about points.”

  “Outwardly perhaps,” conceded Bobby, “but inwardly you were—amused. In fact, inwardly you were nothing but one vast grin. There, it’s coming out now,” he added, as Olive’s solemnity showed signs of giving way.

  “Well, you know,” Olive admitted, “it must have been rather funny—your face, I mean, dear. All the same, Miss Wood is a horrid little wretch, and I suspect her of the worst; but I don’t think you do, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Bobby said. “There was certainly something going on behind the scenes, and she was in it up to the neck, but I don’t know what, and nothing I could do with the Vennerys sticking up for her the way they were.”

  “Do you think it was Captain Dunstan who got away?”

  “There again,” said Bobby, “I simply don’t know what to think. The one thing quite certain is that it wasn’t Ned Bloom. He isn’t physically capable of climbing down gutter-pipes and knocking out Adams.”

  “Is Captain Dunstan? Mightn’t the arm-in-sling be a mistake of Cox’s—or even a put off, camouflage?”

  “Might be. Even so, it still suggests a link—some connection somewhere. Dunstan is all right physically, except for his arm, and that wouldn’t prevent him from climbing down a gutter-pipe—I daresay Army training includes doing things with one arm out of action. And he could have knocked out Adams all right. Or fired a pistol, for that matter. An army officer is sure to have a revolver, I suppose.”

  “Poor Mr Adams,” said Olive sympathetically.

  “Poor Mr Nothing,” snorted Bobby. “He simply walked into the other fellow’s fist—asked for it, and got it, and I’m only sorry it wasn’t more.”

  “Oh, Bobby,” said Olive, and looked quite shocked.

  “Got treated with a brandy and soda,” added Bobby disgustedly, “when better men than Adams have forgotten what brandy tastes like.” He went on: “First thing to-morrow morning I’ll have a talk with Dunstan. No good. He’ll bluff it out all right. No evidence. There is one clue, though, one scrap of evidence. May be a help. Tyre-marks on a soft patch of ground. Quite distinctive marks. If we can find the cycle, we can identify it. Got to find it first, though, and that’s a bit of a forlorn hope. But we’ll have a try.”

  “Suppose,” said Olive, “suppose it’s known the tyres leave distinctive marks and they’re changed?”

  “Then we’re sunk,” admitted Bobby. “Quite likely, too. Or the machine may turn out stolen for the occasion. Common trick. I suppose it’s possible Ned Bloom was mixed up in it somehow. He is the sort to like working in the background.”

  Olive shook her head.

  “I don’t think he is alive,” she said.

  Bobby looked up quickly. Somehow the quiet words had fallen across the homely, comfortable supper-table with an unexpected accent of doom. He put down the cup of coffee he had been raising to his lips.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Well, do you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said; and was surprised himself to feel with what strong inner conviction he said this. Then he asked again: “Why did you say that?”

  “I went to Threepence to-day,” Olive said. “I thought I would like to see Mrs Bloom’s tea-garden. They were very busy there. I wanted to see Miss Skinner, too. She is awfully handsome—sort of daughter-of-the-gods type. She looks—well, formidable somehow. As little like a tea-shop waitress as any girl could. First class at the job, all the same. Never hurried, never made a mistake, eyes everywhere, no one kept waiting. And I believe she knew who I was.”

  “How could she?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps not. But I am sure she knew very well I wasn’t there simply for tea?”

  “Why? Why do you think that?”

  “Well, I do. Miss Roman Wright was there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Mrs Bloom came to sit with her.”

  “What?” cried Bobby, astonished.

  “Mrs Bloom came to sit with her,” Olive repeated. “Miss Wright was there when I got there. Sitting alone. I knew her at once from what you said, and I got a seat quite near. She had tea and a scone, but she never tasted her tea or touched her scone. She just sat. I was watching. Mrs Bloom came out from the house. Bobby, she made me afraid.”

  “Mrs Bloom? Yes, I know. She does. Why?”

  “I think she has known dreadful things, and I think perhaps she lives with them still, so that the memory of them is about her like a garment.”

  “Oh, well,” Bobby said uncomfortably.

  Olive went on after a pause:

  “You could see people look up in a startled way as she passed and look at each other, and some of them who had only been sitting got up and went away. She sat down at Miss Wright’s table, and they never said a word to each other. At least, I don’t think they did. They sat there together, and somehow it was rather awful to watch them, but I don’t know why.”

  Bobby didn’t say anything. Had he never seen Mrs Bloom or known that dreadful stillness which lay about her, he might have smiled. As it was, he had no such inclination. It was Olive who laughed, or tried to.

  “It’s sounds silly, doesn’t it?” she said. “Just a lot of people having tea out of doors, just a pleasant Sunday afternoon, everyone trying to forget the war for half an hour, and why should that give you the jitters?�
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  “If they never spoke to each other,” Bobby said, “what was the idea?”

  “I think there is something they both know, and they each know the other knows it, and I think what they know is that Ned Bloom is dead.”

  “Does that mean—?” Bobby began and paused. “Do you think that means,” he resumed, “that one of them killed him?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t follow,” Olive said. “You can know about things you haven’t done yourself.”

  “Mrs Bloom’s his mother,” Bobby said.

  “Yes,” Olive answered, and after a pause she said again: “Yes.”

  “If they know, why don’t they tell?” Bobby asked, speaking more to himself than to Olive.

  “I daresay it’s all my fancy,” Olive said abruptly. “Perhaps I was only imagining things. It was just as if he were sitting there between them—Ned Bloom, I mean—and they knew, both of them. At least, I mean that’s what I thought, but I don’t know why. I expect I was letting my imagination run away with me. Only I shall always remember seeing them, sitting there together, never speaking, not even looking at each other. Then Miss Roman Wright got up and went away, and Mrs Bloom returned to the house. I saw Miss Skinner watch them both as they went, and then I saw her look at me, and I knew that she was afraid—just like me.”

  “Look at the time,” Bobby said. “I’m going to bed. I hope I shan’t have bad dreams.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  A WATER-COLOUR

  THOUGH HIS NIGHT’S sleep was disturbed by no bad dreams, yet when Bobby awoke his mind returned at once to that picture of the two women in the tea-garden sitting side by side before untasted scone, untouched cup, and yet exchanging no word. He came down to breakfast in no cheerful mood.

  “There’s so little to go on,” he complained, “and at the same time so much. A young man missing from his home—but perhaps off on his own private affairs. A man hiding in a girl’s bedroom—and that may be immoral, but isn’t necessarily illegal. Another woman with a sudden fancy for ordering teas she never tastes, and if she likes it that way, why not? A shot fired in the dark, unknown by whom at whom, and that’s a bit vague. A music-hall performer who tears up registered letters, and a country vicar who clears out in a hurry when he sees a policeman coming, and country vicars do sometimes get urgent calls, and sometimes music-hall performers get writs served in registered letters. And there’s a tea-shop waitress who doesn’t look like one, and an old boy who sits about in an invalid chair and yet threatens to shoot people, and what about it? Invalids have tempers still, and almost anybody can be anything these days—even waitresses in tea-shops. Oh, and I had forgotten an artist who can’t draw for nuts, but boasts of giving tips to Mr Augustus John, and I’ve met quite respectable citizens who liked to swank about how they are pals with the great. So there you are; and if a junior came to me with a lot of chat and gossip like that, I should tell him to lay off and get on with the day’s work.”

  “Well, why don’t you?” asked Olive.

  “Because,” said Bobby, and lapsed into such gloomy and absorbed thought that he helped himself to Olive’s rasher as well as his own.

  “And that,” said Olive, as firmly though kindly she retrieved her share, “is the last of the ration—porridge tomorrow, and not much milk.”

  But even this announcement did not stir Bobby from his inner abstraction, and so Olive added:

  “Here are two more facts. The missing boy said he knew things when he came to see you, and three people were so anxious to know what it was he knew that they rang you up—all three of them claiming to be his mother, which does not seem probable. But it shows two of them at least thought it worth a lie to try to find out. And it shows that they all three knew—something.”

  “Oh, a lot of people know a lot,” said Bobby; “it’s only me that doesn’t.”

  Therewith he asked for another cup of tea, and, having drunk it, went to ring up head-quarters to explain he would be late, as he intended to go round first by Threepence. Not, he told himself privately, that there was much chance of getting anything out of Captain Dunstan, even if Captain Dunstan were in fact the man involved. He came back from the ’phone looking more worried than ever.

  “Sergeant Young,” he told Olive, “has just rung them up to report a complaint by Mr Roman Wright that his motor-cycle has been stolen. Any connection, or just another coincidence?”

  “Coincidence—aw, nuts,” said Olive; yet another victim to the American film language so rapidly replacing Esperanto, Volapuk, Latin, pidgin, basic and all the other tongues that have ever striven to become universal.

  But all the same Bobby knew how often a foolish coincidence has tangled and confused a problem already sufficiently confused and tangled. Part of a detective’s business, no doubt, to be able to distinguish the unnecessary coincidence from the relevant fact.

  “I’ll call at Mr Roman Wright’s on the way to see Captain Dunstan at Miles Bottom,” he said. “Prospect Cottage is near the ’bus stop. I’ll have to run,” he added, glancing in alarm at the clock.

  In fact, he only just managed to catch the ’bus, and when he alighted at Threepence and went to Prospect Cottage the door was opened to his knock by a profusely apologetic Mr Roman Wright.

  “Brought you on a fool’s errand, I’m afraid,” he said. “The thing’s turned up.”

  “Oh, how’s that?” Bobby asked.

  “We’ve just found it inside the front garden gate. Some one must have put it there during the night. But come inside and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  He led the way into a small, bleak sitting-room with conventional furniture; on the walls, one or two Landseer engravings—‘Dignity and Impudence’, ‘The Monarch of the Glen’—another entitled ‘His Majesty’s Progress’, showing a small child toddling through a press of traffic all stopped to permit his passage, and two or three water-colours, all so bad Bobby felt convinced they must be Mr Roman Wright’s own work.

  Mr Roman Wright fussed about a little, offered Bobby a drink, but agreed it was still early, produced cigarettes, and seemed disappointed when Bobby explained that in the interests of discipline he had to keep the ‘No smoking on duty’ regulation much more strictly than did, he feared, most of his subordinates, and finally was persuaded to resume his story.

  None of them, he explained, had had occasion to go into the front garden that morning, and they had known nothing of the return of the motor-cycle till the daily woman arrived and told them it was there. It had evidently been used, for there were still a few drops of petrol in the tank.

  “Hasn’t been a smell of the stuff here,” declared Mr Roman Wright ruefully, “since they shut down on the supply. I asked for an allowance. I need it for my work. How can I study a sunrise effect out there in the forest, miles out perhaps, if I can’t use my motor-cycle to get there and carry my materials? Am I supposed to carry my stuff, my easel, all the rest of it, a few odd miles before dawn? No good, though. I might as well have talked to a blank wall. I was simply told right out that art was not a work of national importance. Typical British outlook.”

  Bobby sympathised politely, asked a few more questions, learned little more. The motor-cycle was kept in a shed at the back of the house. During most of Sunday there had been no one at home. Mrs Roman Wright and their niece, Jane, had gone into Midwych by an early ’bus—the only convenient one—to attend service at Midwych cathedral. Mr Roman Wright himself had been away for the week-end on business. To see his dealer about a new commission he had been offered. It was to make a new version of one of his forest pictures.

  “The idea is to put in kiddies playing with rabbits or squirrels,” he explained, “and call it ‘Babes in the Wood’ or ‘Folk of the Forest’, or something like that. For reproduction as an engraving. One of my things did well in the States a year or two ago, and my dealer wants me to try again.”

  Bobby, sacrificing truth, said he thought it an excellent idea. Still offering up truth on the altar of po
liteness, he made one or two complimentary remarks about the water-colours on the wall, remarking, this time with perfect truth, that he remembered Mr Roman Wright’s brushwork and his command of line so well that at the first glance he had recognized them for Mr Roman Wright’s own work.

  Mr Roman Wright smirked and purred, and yet, or so Bobby fancied, there was behind the smirking and the purring a curious sly, excited triumph, as though in some odd way these somewhat vapid compliments had for him their own significance. He was voluble enough, all the same, in explaining how much he valued Inspector Owen’s appreciation. The very first time they met he had seen at once that the inspector “understood”. He emphasized the word “understood”, and again as he said this there was in his voice, in his eyes, that same expression of a sly, a hidden, almost a leering triumph very hard to understand. Then it vanished again, as if on command, and Mr Roman Wright ventured to draw the inspector’s attention to one water-colour in particular. His own favourite. His wife’s favourite, too. He wondered if the inspector, in whom he recognized a brother art lover, a kindred soul, could tell why? Bobby, to whom the thing seemed neither better nor worse than the rest of Mr Roman Wright’s very tenth-rate efforts, made a few vague remarks. The picture showed a desolate bit of boulder-strewn woodland, a tangle of undergrowth of bramble and rock and bracken it would not be easy to penetrate. To Bobby’s eyes the scene showed nothing to indicate why any one should want to paint it, and nothing in the execution of the work to explain the somewhat odd excitement with which the artist seemed to regard it, seemed also to expect his visitor to regard it. He interrupted Bobby’s somewhat embarrassed examination of the picture by saying with a high, affected laugh:

  “Now, Mr Owen, you might as well confess you see nothing much in it. Now, do you?”

  “Well, I must admit,” agreed Bobby, “I don’t think—”

  “—You would have picked it out,” interrupted Mr Roman Wright, completing the sentence. “Yet I think it my most remarkable bit of work—sometimes I think it the most remarkable picture ever painted. That’ll make you laugh.” He laughed himself, again in the same odd, sly, excited manner. He went on: “Sometimes I bring my wife in to look at it again. It never fails to have its effect.”