“That’s a pine in the middle there. Hasn’t it grown crooked? It’s a little oak next to it.”
“Is it?” said Bobby abstractedly. “Is it now? An oak, is it? You know, that’s interesting. Very. How old is it, do you think?”
The boy considered this carefully. Then he gave his verdict. Three years, he thought. He appealed to Mr Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher thought only two years. He gave his reasons. Bobby, listening, regarded the seedling with renewed and close attention. It was beginning to loom large in his imagination, to take on a strange significance. It had not been shown, he thought, in Mr Roman Wright’s water-colour, almost photographic in detail as that had been. Presumably, though, it had not been there to show, since, according to Mr Fletcher, it was only two years old, and two years ago was about the time when Mr Roman Wright had painted the scene. Yet Mr Roman Wright had certainly made some remark about an oak being there in that exact spot where this seedling was growing now. He had even said something about its growing tall and big, and had seemed to hope that it would do so. Why? Why had he wished for an oak in that particular spot? Or expected it? Had he planted an acorn there himself? Why? Why should he? Bobby said:
“I’m no woodsman, but I don’t remember noticing any other oak as we came along.”
Mr Fletcher, wondering at this sudden interest in trees, said he hadn’t taken special notice, but certainly there were few oaks in this part of the forest. Ground didn’t suit them; he would have been surprised if there had been many. In fact, it was surprising to find even this one seedling growing here. Bobby asked how it had got itself planted. Mr Fletcher, looking a little pained at the use of the word ‘planted’ for a seedling, said he supposed perhaps a bird might have dropped an acorn. Or even a squirrel. One never knew. Or possibly one of his own boys had thought to push an acorn into the ground here. He had often talked to them about the need for afforestation. Anyhow, he said smilingly, it had got there somehow, and it was pretty certain no one would ever know how.
Bobby said he supposed not, and suggested that Mr Fletcher might like to take the two boys back to Threepence now. Watts would go with them to the car and drive them to the village and then return. He himself, Bobby said, would remain a while with Sergeant Payne and have a further look round. They might find something else. No telling. Mr Fletcher smiled proudly, and said that if anything of any interest had escaped his boys he would be—well, surprised. He indicated that he did not in the least expect to be surprised. Bobby agreed it wasn’t very likely, and gave Watts his instructions.
“May as well leave that spade and pick here,” Bobby added negligently. “No use toting them around.”
Constable Watts smiled gratefully. He was heartily sick of the things. But Mr Fletcher had not added to the experience of the first German War a good many years of still more enlightening and enlarging experience in the company of small boys without learning how to put two and two together. He said aside to Bobby and Payne:
“That seedling hasn’t been transplanted recently or anything like that, you know. I’m sure of that. It’s been growing there two years at least.”
“Two years is a long time,” Bobby said vaguely.
Mr Fletcher shrugged his shoulders and departed. If the police liked to waste their time, no affair of his. When they were alone, Bobby possessed himself of the pick.
“Like to do a bit of excavating?” he asked Payne.
“The oak sapling?” Payne asked, puzzled.
“Oh, I’m not going to try to transplant it,” Bobby assured him. “Wouldn’t like to, somehow. In any case, I don’t suppose it would ever come to much. A stunted, twisted, evil growth.”
“Sir?” said Payne, startled by this. “Why?”
“Oh, I may be wrong,” Bobby said.
He started to work. Presently Payne relieved him. After Payne had been digging for a time he stopped and said abruptly:
“There’s something here.”
“Dig carefully,” Bobby said. “Dig very carefully.”
Payne with care lifted another spadeful and yet another, still more carefully. His face had taken on a chalky, sickly hue. He rested on his spade and said:
“In God’s name, sir, how did you know?”
“Go on digging,” Bobby said. “Shall I?”
Payne worked on, ever more carefully, more slowly. Presently he put down the spade and scrambled out of the hole they had made. He looked as if he were going to vomit. When he had recovered a little, he said:
“It’s him all right. There’s a foot and part of a leg uncovered now, plain to see. How did you know, sir? How did you know Ned Bloom was buried here? How can he be?”
“I don’t think he is,” Bobby said. “I think it is a woman we have found.”
“A woman?” Payne repeated. “But there’s been no woman ever reported missing hereabouts—never.”
“No,” agreed Bobby. “That was clever, wasn’t it?”
Payne had gone back to the hole they had made and was looking down at the dreadful thing uncovered there, so well, so long and truly hidden, now brought at last to the knowledge and the justice of God and man.
“That’s why you got rid of the kids, isn’t it?” Payne said. “Good thing too, sir. Not fit for any kid to see.”
Sounds behind made them both turn. One of the Boy Scouts was there. For some reason, on some pretext, he had come back. His eyes were bright and shining, his cheeks flushed.
“Crumbs,” he said delightedly, “if they haven’t found a dead ’un.”
Bobby turned on him angrily.
“Get out of here,” he almost shouted. “Quick now. Hurry.” He called after him as the boy scuttled away. “Mind, hold your tongue; not a word to any one.”
“Oh no, sir,” said the boy.
“If you do,” said Bobby, searching in his mind for the most awful penalty he could imagine, “if you breathe a word—I’ll ask Mr Fletcher to throw you out of the Scouts for good and all.”
“Yes, sir, I promise, sir,” said the lad and vanished, having at any rate learnt to know when defiance was possible, when obedience was necessary.
Bobby turned gloomily to Payne.
“All the same,” he said, “it’ll be all over the place before long. Secrets can’t be kept.”
CHAPTER XXX
VANISHED WATER-COLOUR
SUCH A DISCOVERY as this that had now been made naturally meant that very many different matters had to be attended to. Every one was kept exceedingly busy for the rest of the day; and, whether by the fault of the little Boy Scout, or, more probably, simply because of the many signs of unusual activity to be observed, soon the whole neighbourhood was buzzing with rumours of one sort or another.
It couldn’t be helped, Bobby told himself, and he anticipated with resignation the arrival on the scene of various reporters, most of them probably much more keen on securing a front-page story than on consulting the convenience of the police.
One of the first things Bobby did was to send Watts to Prospect Cottage to find Mr Roman Wright. But very soon Watts returned to say that Mr Roman Wright was in London on business and was not expected for a day or two. Watts said also that his knocking and ringing had gone so long unanswered that he had thought no one could be at home till, just as he was going away, he discovered Mrs Roman Wright in the garden.
“She must have been there all the time,” he complained to Bobby. “Somehow you never seem to see her. Swore she hadn’t heard me knocking. Can’t imagine why I didn’t see her before.”
“She has practised the art of being inconspicuous,” Bobby remarked; and wondered if Roman Wright had vanished on account of this discovery, or for fear that it was about to be made.
But that did not seem likely. He could hardly have known so soon what was happening.
Bobby had also rung up Olive to ask her to meet him at the little Threepence police station, but he was delayed in getting there, and when he did arrive he found that she had been and had gone again, leaving word that s
he was going to the Pleezeu Tea Rooms for her tea.
Presently she returned. She had nothing to report. Everything had seemed much as usual. A fine day and business good. Olive had asked Kitty if Inspector Owen had been, and Kitty had looked disturbed and had answered, no, she had not seen him. She had either not heard any of the rumours with which all the district was alive, or else had not seen fit to refer to them. Olive had asked her to tell Mrs Bloom she was there, but to that request Kitty had made no reply. She had gone away to attend to another customer, and she had not come near Olive again.
“Do you think she did tell Mrs Bloom?” Bobby asked.
“I don’t know,” Olive answered. “Miss Skinner is rather an alarming sort of young person. You feel you don’t know why she’s there or what to make of her. I waited for a time, and Mrs Bloom didn’t come, so I went away. I didn’t see Miss Wright either. Everything was absolutely ordinary. People sitting about, having tea, talking, and so on. It’s rather nice there. So was the tea. Only—”
“Only—?” Bobby repeated, when she paused.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Olive answered, with an uneasy and unmirthful laugh. “Imagination. That’s all. Nerves, I suppose. Only—well, as if there was someone there you couldn’t see, waiting. Just waiting. If you know what I mean.”
Bobby said he knew what she meant all right. He said if she would wait a little he would be ready to go back to Midwych with her, and then she would have to go on home alone while he came back to Threepence to keep his appointment in the church porch.
“Suppose there’s no one there?” Olive said.
“Then I shall have a long wait for nothing,” Bobby answered. “Not for the first time, and probably not for the last.”
Olive said he must remember to take an overcoat, as it was sure to be cold and draughty in the church porch and he might have a long wait; and Bobby explained how disastrously discipline would be affected if it got about in the force that the inspector coddled himself.
‘“Noblesse oblige’,” he reminded her, “inspectorship even more so,” and Olive said that was nonsense, and very silly as well, and she didn’t think much of an inspector whose authority depended on no overcoat. Let him, she exhorted him, pluck up his courage, put it to the test, take his overcoat and a woollen muffler as well, and show himself a real boss.
Bobby, slightly alarmed lest a hot-water bottle and a portable stove should be added to the list, protested still—and the argument was still undecided, or at least Bobby thought so, when Sergeant Young appeared to say that an odd discovery had been made about the petrol tins discovered in the forest. It had now been found that four of them were filled not with petrol, but with water.
“Black-market dodge,” declared Sergeant Young; “just their sort of trick—hand out a can full of petrol and let the customer see for himself, and then change it for another full of water, and he daren’t complain. Regular black-market style.”
Bobby said he supposed that might be it. Sergeant Young retired, but left Bobby both looking and feeling worried. Vaguely he felt the cause might well be deeper than any such mere swindling trick. But what that deeper cause could be there was nothing to show, nor anything, so far as he could see, that he could do about it.
All the same, his mood was troubled as he departed for Threepence, where he saw for himself the four petrol tins filled with water, and again wondered uneasily what the cause and purpose could be of such a substitution.
There was still no news of the return of Mr Roman Wright, but Miss Jane was back home from what seemed to have been a shopping expedition to Midwych. So Bobby decided to call and see if she could give him any information. She did not seem in any way pleased to see him when she answered his knock. Her uncle was expected back at any moment, she said, but he had not returned yet, and would the inspector call again some other time? Bobby said he had called chiefly about Mr Roman Wright’s motor-cycle. Was it still in the shed where it was generally kept? and could he see for himself? as he thought it possible it might once more have been borrowed without its owner’s knowledge. Jane said that was quite impossible, but she allowed Bobby to enter, and asked him to wait for a moment in the dining-room. She would take him to the shed, she explained, as soon as she had fetched herself a wrap, and he could assure himself that Mr Roman Wright had taken precautions.
Alone in the dining-room, Bobby noticed with some interest that the water-colour to which that other day Mr Roman Wright had directed his attention, and for which he had made the curious claim that it was the most remarkable painting in the world, had now vanished. Its place was taken by another, also in no way remarkable, unless for lack of skill, nor was Bobby much surprised by this disappearance. He thought it might have significance, though, and when Jane came back with her wrap he said something to her about missing the very interesting sketch Mr Roman Wright had shown him on his previous visit. But Jane merely looked blank and said that the pictures had not been changed. They were just the same as they had always been. The inspector was making a mistake; he must be thinking of something else.
Bobby did not pursue the subject, and followed her out to the back. Mrs Roman Wright was not visible, and Bobby was inclined to suspect that Jane’s desire for a wrap to visit a shed only a yard or two from the back door had been an excuse to get the old woman out of the way. In detail she explained the kind of booby trap Mr Roman Wright had rigged up to give warning of any attempt to tamper with the cycle. It was a device, well concealed, by which opening the shed door would set a bell ringing in the kitchen. Jane disconnected it, went outside with Bobby, opened the shed door, and showed the cycle within. Bobby examined it with care. Nothing, of course, to prove that because it was there now, it had been there all the time. It had plainly been cleaned recently; but why not?
So he thanked Miss Jane and went off to return with Olive to Midwych, thence home for a brief meal, and so back again to Threepence well before midnight. He alighted some distance from the church, parked the car by the roadside under some trees, carefully left therein the overcoat he had been obliged to bring with him—though a trustful and confiding wife had forgotten to exact a promise that it would also be worn—posted an accompanying constable in a convenient position to keep further watch, and settled down to wait. It was well before midnight when he heard cautious footsteps approaching. He waited till they were at the entrance to the porch, and then he flashed his torch.
“Dr Reynolds, I presume?” he said.
“Oh,” exclaimed the startled voice of the former dean. “Oh. Oh, it’s you.”
“It is,” agreed Bobby and added: “I see you’ve brought the church keys.”
“So I have,” agreed Dr Reynolds thoughtfully. “Yes, I have, haven’t I?”
“I wonder why,” mused Bobby. “Any notion of—er—well, of seeking seclusion within the building? A place of ambush and advantage perhaps? However, never mind that. It was Mr McRell Pink I was really hoping to see. Do you think he is likely to come?”
“I suppose you know all about it,” Dr Reynolds said dismally. “I can’t imagine how.”
“Do you think he will come?” Bobby repeated.
“I have no idea. I suppose if he chances to see your advertisement—I presume I am right in concluding that it was inserted by you?—he may consider it wise to respond. A matter of pure chance, I imagine.”
“Hadn’t you made any arrangements to communicate with him?” Bobby asked.
“It had not struck us as necessary,” Dr Reynolds answered. “Indeed, it had not occurred either to him or to myself or to Mrs Billings that it would be possible to do so. The exceedingly simple method adopted by you had not been thought of by us. I fear we were all three lacking in the wisdom either of the serpent or the dove. I cannot help wondering by what means you penetrated a secret we so carefully guarded.”
“Secrets can’t be kept,” Bobby answered for the second time that day. “It was fairly obvious—your secret, I mean. Mr Pyne was earning enough money to provide
for the education of his nephews. How? Literary work, I was told, but his study didn’t look like a writer’s. A journalist or author generally uses a typewriter. He seemed to have none. Mr McRell Pink was refusing all chances to appear elsewhere than in Midwych or oftener than three days a week. Why? Obviously the answer to one question might be the answer to the other, too. Mr McRell Pink appeared only on Mondays—and Monday is the parson’s holiday—Fridays and Saturdays. On Fridays and Saturdays Mr Pyne went into seclusion to prepare his sermons. What clinched it was that Mr Pyne knew who I was the moment he saw me coming through his garden gate, and immediately vanished. Yet we had never met. But I had had a talk with Mr McRell Pink the evening before. Obvious conclusion. I am afraid I must press for an explanation. We are making inquiries in Threepence, and we can’t leave mysteries and disguises unexplained.”
“Mr Pyne consulted me,” Dr Reynolds said. “I could see no harm in it. I remembered the legend of the juggleur in mediaeval times who praised God and the Virgin by performing alone before her statue in an empty church. The need was great. Had it not been for the money earned in this way, there would have been nothing with which to pay for the education of the boys, not enough even, for that matter, to provide for their daily bread. This is a poor living, shamefully poor, like so many others. I could not think there was ill in the use of the gift God had bestowed on Martin to provide for the widow and the fatherless. Fortunately the need no longer exists. Mrs Billings has been informed by her solicitors that the Treasury is prepared to make a substantial grant in recognition of services rendered by her late husband. But we both realized from the first that every precaution must be taken to avoid unnecessary and distasteful publicity and the ribald comment that might have been aroused if the facts became known. I always felt—and Martin agreed—that the dear bishop would have found it difficult to understand.”
“I imagine,” Bobby said slowly, “young Ned Bloom had ferreted out all this.”
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