Bobby gave it another polite look or two. Roman Wright asked him to notice how the stunted pine in the centre of the picture served to tie the whole composition together. Bobby said, untruthfully, that certainly that was a clever device. Mr Roman Wright said he wished there had been an oak growing there, on one side of that stunted and ill-shaped pine. Perhaps there would be some day. You couldn’t tell. For the sake of saying something, Bobby remarked that he thought that would throw the composition out of balance. Still trying to give the thing the attention he felt it did not deserve, he noticed that it was dated 1941, and certainly it had been completed a year or two. The time must have been the early spring, he supposed, to judge from the appearance of the trees and undergrowth. Having by now had enough of this chatter about a highly uninteresting water-colour—one that from its date, he supposed, could not possibly have any connection with recent events—Bobby asked if he could see the returned cycle and the shed whence it had been taken. Mr Roman Wright said certainly, he would show him them at once; and as they went Bobby was still aware of a kind of inner heat of excitement and of exultation in the other’s bearing, as though he had just accomplished with success something full of danger and of risk and wherein success had brought him a new conviction of power and security.
“Curious,” Bobby thought, “a puzzle,” and it interested him and worried him, because all puzzles interested him and worried him till they were solved.
He told himself the incident was one he must remember, must try to think about. He made a clear image in his mind of every detail of the water-colour. Perhaps if he went over it again and again in his memory he would be able to discover what hidden significance, if there were one, it enshrined for Mr Roman Wright.
But then perhaps the whole thing meant no more than that Mr Roman Wright was so unused to compliments, or to any show of appreciation, that even the purely polite remarks made by Bobby had gone to his head. Praise is heady stuff at times, especially for those not used to it, more especially if they themselves doubt if it be truly merited.
CHAPTER XXII
EX DEAN
THE EXAMINATION OF the shed and of the returned motor-cycle brought Bobby no further information, except, indeed, that a glance at the back tyre showed this was undoubtedly the machine on which escape the previous night from Theodores had been effected.
This fact, however, Bobby did not mention. For one thing, identification of the machine in no way helped to identification of the rider, which would have been so much more interesting and important. In the second place, what is not known cannot be told; and Mr Roman Wright seemed too chatty and talkative to be trusted with a detail Bobby had no desire should be spread abroad.
So he said no more than that every effort would be made to clear up the matter—one of those nice official phrases Bobby always found so useful as camouflage—but that even if the culprit were discovered it was not easy to say what could be done.
“Generally,” he explained, “there can be a prosecution for theft of petrol, but this chap seems to have provided his own.”
Bobby departed then, as there seemed no more to be seen or learned or done at Prospect Cottage; and as he walked away he found that just as he had wakened that morning still obsessed by Olive’s tale of the Pleezeu Tea Garden and two silent women sitting there side by side before an untasted tea, so now his tormented thoughts returned perpetually to that incompetent effort in water-colour to which Mr Roman Wright had drawn his attention so pointedly, and of which he seemed so curiously proud.
“Most remarkable picture ever painted, indeed,” Bobby repeated indignantly and aloud. “Talk about conceit—incredible,” and the last word he muttered twice over to himself. “Never fails of its effect on his wife, doesn’t it?” he said again, and wished he had a chance to ask Mrs Roman Wright for her own opinion of the thing.
Abruptly he discovered that he had in his abstraction taken the wrong path and was now almost opposite the vicarage. On a sudden impulse he turned in by the garden gate. Monday is the parson’s holiday, and so he might have a chance to catch Mr Martin Pyne at home and disengaged. But when he knocked, Mrs Billings, Mr Pyne’s widowed sister and housekeeper, came to the door to tell him that the vicar had gone away for a few days’ change and holiday. Nor had he left any address. His holiday was to be a walking tour, and he had no settled plans.
“Dr Reynolds—the dean, you know—is most kindly taking duty for him while he’s away,” she explained.
“Not most kindly,” corrected a voice from behind, “not most kindly, dear lady, but most gladly.” There came towards the door a pleasant-looking, silver-haired clergyman, a man of probably about seventy years of age, but still strong and vigorous in appearance. He went on smilingly: “And not a dean. An ex-dean. Once a bishop always a bishop, but an ex-dean is a dean no longer.” He chuckled at his little joke and to Bobby he said: “Is there anything I can do in the vicar’s absence?”
“It’s the police inspector,” explained Mrs Billings. “There’s one of the young men in the parish gone away, and his mother’s worried about it, so the police are trying to find him for her.”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Dr Reynolds, “Martin said something about it.” To Bobby he said: “Did you think the vicar could help in any way? I understood the boy wasn’t one of his congregation and he didn’t know much about him.”
“I did think perhaps there were one or two things,” Bobby answered vaguely. “Sometimes any scrap of information is helpful. There are complications.”
“I trust no harm has come to the young man,” said Dr Reynolds. “I’m sure the vicar would have been only too glad to give any help in his power. One of my oldest friends. I’ve known him since he was a student at the theological college where I was lecturing, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. Did you know he won a decoration in the first German war? Probably not. One of his little secrets. He won it when he was serving with the Dublin Fusiliers in the days when Ireland’s name was still one to be proud of, still blazed in battle. One of the finest examples of our country clergy—the backbone of the Church. But don’t tell him I said so,” he added with another smile to Mrs Billings. “If you give him any praise he worries because he knows he doesn’t deserve it, but he’ll try to, and so he works harder still, when he is working too hard already.”
“Indeed he is,” said Mrs Billings, and sniffled and dabbed at her eyes. “I feel it’s all my fault.”
Dr Reynolds patted her on the shoulder and told her she must not say or think that, and she snivelled again and said she couldn’t help it, and Bobby said how sorry he was to miss the vicar and retired, feeling almost as puzzled as when leaving Prospect Cottage.
Did Dr Reynolds, he wondered, and he remembered the name as that of a former and popular dean of Midwych, usually indulge on the doorstep in such paeans of praise of his friends? Not very dignified and very forthcoming, and yet the former dean was as dignified in manner and appearance as one should be who had held high office in the Church. Nor did he give the impression of being much in the habit of growing confidential to strangers. Nor yet of often using the somewhat flamboyant and excited language he had just indulged in. Was it possible all that had been deliberate, planned, and intended to prove to Bobby that the vicar was above all suspicion? Yet if his friends had to go to such lengths to show him beyond suspicion, then they must feel that grounds for suspicion existed? Suspicion of what? An ugly question. Had they any knowledge about which they preferred to keep silent? A still uglier thought: was such suspicion better founded than they knew?
Impossible, of course, to suppose that a man of Dr Reynolds’s character and standing was concerned knowingly in any wrongdoing. But was it possible that that character and standing were being used as a cover for things of which he had no knowledge? Again a disturbing thought. And there was still the question of where the money came from that allowed Mr Pyne to pay for the education of three nephews? And was this sudden departure on a holiday, no address left, m
erely a coincidence?
Bobby seemed to hear again Olive saying so deplorably: “Coincidence? Aw—nuts,” and he was much inclined to agree. He gave himself an angry shake as these and other such thoughts buzzed to and fro in his brain, like bees preparing to swarm. He wished his thoughts would swarm like them on a central point, and so find refuge in the hive of truth. Yet how likely it was that all this was mere irrelevant detail, with no place whatever in the pattern he was trying to construct—a pattern that must necessarily remain incomplete till he knew where was the key piece, Ned Bloom.
He told himself it was as inconceivable that a man like Dr Reynolds could be playing any part in this doubtful and sinister drama as that, for instance, a water-colour painted some two years back could throw any conceivable light on recent happenings.
By now, worried and irritable at finding himself faced by so many irreconcilable contradictions, Bobby had reached Miles Bottom Farm. He was not surprised, late as had become the hour, to find Captain Dunstan only now finishing his breakfast, nor in any way surprised to be greeted with no great show of cordiality.
“Still snooping round, inspector?” Dunstan asked. “You know, if I had lost any one like Ned Bloom I should let him stay lost and glad of it. Why not call your men together and thank God you’re rid of a meddling young bounder?”
“Bounder or not,” Bobby said with some sternness, “he has a right to the protection of the law. If it is too late for that, then he has another right and the law another duty.”
“Oh, well,” Dunstan said, a little uncomfortably. “Oh, well,” he repeated. He pushed back his chair. He began to fill his pipe. “I don’t see why you need take it like that,” he said. “Poking his nose into other people’s business somewhere else, I expect. That’s all. If you ask me, I can’t see any reason to take it seriously.”
“I shall continue to take it seriously,” Bobby said, “till I know what has become of Ned Bloom.”
“Well, I can’t help you,” Dunstan grumbled. “I don’t know anything.”
“Where were you last night?” Bobby asked.
“In bed.”
“All night?”
“Depends on what you call all night. I sat up a bit late. Why?”
“Last night there were some curious happenings at a house called Theodores. You know it?”
“I’ve heard of it. They call it Tedders, don’t they? Typical British joke. Well, what about Tedders and what did happen there?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“We had warning that an attempt at burglary might take place there. My men were on the watch. One of them saw a man climbing down a gutter-pipe from the first floor of the house. He tried to arrest him, but was knocked out. His assailant was followed, but got away safely. He was seen by another of my men and was described as tall and having one arm in a sling. There is further evidence that he came from this neighbourhood. Was it you?”
“Well, I must say that’s putting it straight,” Captain Dunstan exclaimed. He smiled as he spoke, but Bobby noticed that though he had filled his pipe, he left it lying by his plate as though he had forgotten it, and was now fumbling for a cigarette. “I thought detectives were more subtle than that. I thought you led your suspects on by clever, cunning questions till at last you got them cornered.”
“I generally prefer to ask a direct question,” Bobby said. “It is simpler, for one thing. Simplicity is sometimes more effective than clever cunning. Only when I ask a direct question I like a direct answer.”
“Well, you know,” Dunstan answered slowly, “I’m not so sure in your case whether it is simplicity or—or something else. Anyhow, I am not the only tall man in the world, or even in Threepence, and any one can put an arm in a sling. It comes to this; you suspect me of assault, attempted burglary, and I’m not sure you don’t suspect me of attempted murder, too, for good measure. Well, that’s quite a lot, and I don’t like it one little bit. So I’m going to refer you to my solicitors, and I’m going to refuse to answer any more questions till I’ve consulted them.”
“That is your right,” Bobby answered quietly.
He took a note of the name and address of the firm and agreed that any further inquiry he had to make would be either direct to them or in their presence. “But you will forgive me for pointing out,” he added gravely, “that your attitude is not that generally adopted by entirely innocent men.”
“If it were,” retorted Dunstan, flushing a little, “innocent men might save themselves quite a lot. I don’t know what right you have to ask people questions like you are doing, or popping off pistols at them either, or hinting accusations of all sorts of crimes, but I tell you straight I don’t like it, and I don’t mean to put up with it any more than I can help.”
“Well, then, I’ll get on,” Bobby said, rising, “with apologies for having disturbed your breakfast—and I hope you won’t mind if I say that I was rather wondering if this morning I should find you had got up a bit late.”
With this parting shot, which he felt Dunstan deserved, Bobby retired, having learned no more than that once again he was face to face with contradiction; for if he felt this talk had given him proof that Captain Dunstan was in fact the man seen at Theodores, there still remained the question of who fired that pistol shot, at whom, and why? Miss Wood, perhaps, he told himself; as capable, he believed, of firing pistols with intent as of sticking out her tongue.
CHAPTER XXIII
BOY SCOUTS
FROM MILES BOTTOM Farm, after an interview as unsatisfactory as he had fully expected it to be, Bobby went on to the small Threepence police station, where he found Sergeant Young waiting for him and already informed of the return of the missing motor-cycle.
“Some one pinched it just to use it,” declared the sergeant, puckering his brows. “Leastways, that’s what it looks like to me.”
“Looks like that to me, too,” agreed Bobby gravely. “I suppose you haven’t any report of any motor-cyclist behaving suspiciously or attracting attention in any way?”
“Well, you see, sir,” explained Young, “Mr Roman Wright’s place is right on the main Midwych road, and even in black-out there’s a deal of traffic up and down—Army dispatch riders and what not. No notice would be taken in a general way.”
“I suppose not,” Bobby said. “No reason why a motor-cyclist should be noticed. No report of any one seen near Prospect Cottage early this morning?”
“Now you mention it, sir,” admitted Young, looking a trifle worried, “Constable Jones did say as he saw Miss Kitty Skinner there round about daybreak, and he wondered why she was there so early. He didn’t report it, sir, there being nothing to report; just mentioned it, like.”
“Well, give him a pat on the back for having kept his eyes open,” Bobby said, and Sergeant Young looked very puzzled.
“You don’t think, sir,” he ventured, “as a nice young lady like her, always a smile for you and good to her pa and ma—”
“No, I don’t,” declared Bobby as Young came to a pause. “Only you never know, do you?”
This being incontrovertible, Young was reduced to silence; and Bobby decided that instead of returning at once to Midwych to try to catch up with all the other matters there needing attention, he would have a meal first at the Pleezeu Tea Rooms. He knew light lunches were served there, though the main profits of the business came from teas and, more especially, from the cake trade Mrs Bloom had built up.
First, however, he asked for a sheet of paper. Thereon he tried as best he could, and not without success—for he had a good visual memory and had taken very special notice of the thing—to reproduce an outline of the water-colour to which Mr Roman Wright had drawn his attention, which also had seemed to inspire in him so queer a kind of sly and leering triumph Bobby found more and more unpleasant the more he thought of it.
With the aid of the rough reproduction in outline, he thus produced, and by verbal description, he tried to convey to Young as clear an idea a
s possible of the scene painted by Mr Roman Wright.
“What I want to know,” he said, “is it, as I think it must be, an actual sketch of an actual spot in the forest, and, if so, can it be identified?”
Sergeant Young thought it very doubtful. Wychwood Forest was a big place. There were spots in it that no human being visited from year’s end to year’s end—spots, indeed, that perhaps no human foot had trodden since the creation. This apparently was just such a wild and desolate spot for ever unvisited. A rummy sort of spot to go and paint, in Sergeant Young’s opinion, but, then, artist gentlemen often were a rummy lot. For his own part, he wasn’t very familiar with the forest, and didn’t want to be. Threepence kept him busy. Growing potatoes in his garden was as near as he ever wanted to get to what some called Nature. If he ever had a day off, which happened once in a blue moon, as goodness and the inspector both knew—this with a glance and accent of sad reproach—he didn’t spend it traipsing about the forest, and hadn’t since he was a boy with no more sense than any other kid.
“What about the Boy Scouts to help?” asked Bobby, taking up the unconscious suggestion thus made.
Sergeant Young admitted reluctantly that there wasn’t much those youngsters didn’t know. If he had known half as much at their age, his old dad would have up-ended him, so he would, just for the cheek of it. If the inspector so wished, he would show the outline sketch to Mr Fletcher, the local Scout-master, repeat the inspector’s description, and they could be sure the forest would be alive the next few days with the kids, poking about everywhere and thoroughly enjoying such a fine chance to get into every kind of mischief.
Bobby said he thought it was a jolly good idea of the sergeant’s, and would he see it was put into action as soon as possible? He wondered he hadn’t thought himself of asking the help of the Boy Scouts. Much pleased, Sergeant Young undertook that every Boy Scout in the neighbourhood would be on the job that very day; and Bobby was well pleased himself that by a few words of quite undeserved praise he had transformed Sergeant Young into an enthusiastic supporter of a project of which at first he had not seemed much inclined to approve. Now, Bobby felt, the Boy Scouts would be given every help and encouragement. If it were possible to identify that forest scene, of which the presentation never failed in its effect on Mrs Roman Wright, he told himself they would succeed.
Secrets Can't be Kept: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 13