“I didn’t put you there to be beaten,” Bobby said with some severity. “If it’s like that, she must be in the house somewhere.”
“Well, sir, there’s the windows,” answered the crestfallen constable, well aware that though Bobby seldom rebuked his men, when he did, it meant something. “I looked everywhere, sir, and not a trace of her nowhere.”
But Bobby, remembering the strange trick she had of achieving an immobility, an invisibility, gained by long habit of long-felt fear seeking safety in avoidance, thought it not unlikely she was still there, silent in some corner, still and quiet behind a curtain or a door. Her deeply ingrained terror of her husband might well be stronger than any hope of refuge or of safety held out to her by the large, strange, busy men who had so suddenly thrust themselves upon her.
“We’ll have another look,” Bobby said. “Unless we find her I don’t think her life will be worth much.”
“She can’t be there, sir,” the constable insisted. “The young lady looked, too. She said as the old party must have slipped out; said she had a trick of doing that so quiet like no one knew.”
“What young lady?” demanded Bobby sharply.
“The young lady that stays here—niece or something,” the man answered. “Called her aunt, anyhow: ‘Aunt’s like that,’ she said, when she come in and found me looking. ‘Off she goes in a moment, and you never notice she isn’t there till you look again.’ Miss Jane Wright, she said she was.”
“Still time to save her at least, if she’s come back,” Bobby said with some relief.
If Jane had returned and was somewhere in the house, as he had no doubt Mrs Wright was too, then there seemed a better prospect than he had hoped for of saving both these women from a death they appeared themselves to have so small care to avoid. Because, he thought, it was to them as a thing inevitable, and because all hope or even desire to oppose the strange and fatal will of Roman Wright had long since been drained from them both. He gave the man he was speaking to a sharp, quick order to go round to the rear of the house and to be on his guard, both to prevent either of the women from leaving that way and against the sudden appearance of Roman Wright.
“Can’t tell what he’ll be up to next,” Bobby said. “He’ll very likely come back here—for money, perhaps. So look out. If he does come, he’ll probably be armed—and he’ll certainly be desperate.”
The other constable, the man who had brought the car, Bobby called to come with him. The doctor he told to keep out of the way, and the doctor told him a doctor was never in the way, except when presenting his bill. So Bobby said it was an order, and the doctor said Bobby could put his order in his pipe and smoke it, and they all three went on up the garden path together. But not very far, for a shot rang out and then another, and there was Roman Wright in the half-open doorway emptying his revolver at them.
The light was dim, the shooting bad. His revolver empty, Roman Wright dodged back into the house. When Bobby, the first to reach the door, his own revolver in his hand, threw his weight against it, it held fast. He heard the bolts shot, and then a heavy crash that suggested some piece of furniture or another had been thrown against it for a further barricade. The doctor and the other constable had joined him now. They heard an upstairs window go up, and then a louder discharge.
“Shot-gun,” the doctor said. “Double-barrelled gun. I know he has one for shooting rabbits—us the rabbits now,” he added ruefully.
Bobby stepped out a yard or two and fired back. He did not suppose his shot would have any effect, but it might serve to check Roman Wright’s activities a little, and anyhow it much relieved his own feelings. A couple of shots in reply showed that Roman had reloaded his pistol and was not short of ammunition. Bobby dodged back in the shelter of the doorway, which gave good protection from that upstairs window whence death threatened.
“We’ll have to break the door open,” Bobby said. “Try to smash a panel,” he said to the constable. To the doctor he said: “Bend down, low as you can, hands and knees. Shots always go high. Aim at the feet is the rule, but you never do.”
The constable was hammering at the door. He had his truncheon with him, and he was using it to try to force a panel. It was strongly built, and resisted stoutly.
“Why not shoot the lock away?” the doctor asked Bobby.
“No spare ammunition,” Bobby said. “I may need the cartridges I’ve left.”
“It’s no good, sir,” the constable said. “I can’t do it.”
“Try the lower panel,” Bobby said. “Try to kick it in.”
He himself took the truncheon and using it as a kind of battering ram continued the assault on the top panel. It split suddenly. The doctor cried out:
“My God, the place is all on fire.”
Through the splintered panel they could see plainly where a great river of flame flowed upwards, a cataract in reverse, up the stairway. At the top of the stairs a man stood, coming running from one of the rooms at the sound of the roar of the flames on the stairs. The tongue of flame leaped at him, wrapped him round so that for an instant he stood as in a garment of fire. Then he was gone and they saw him no more. Desperately they strove to tear down the door, and within the flames spread still, leaping up the banister rails, springing hither and thither as they sought fresh sustenance. In the strange glare of that spreading blaze they could see now where an old woman stood in the passage, as yet unharmed. With outstretched arms, as though she waved it on, she watched the fire go roaring up the stairs. The door at which the three men strove, Bobby and his two companions, gave way at last. They ran into the passage. Mrs Wright turned to them and laughed.
“I poured it out, I put a match to it,” she cried. “He’s up there, and it’s all a blaze, a blaze.”
Bobby pushed her into the arms of the constable behind him.
“Take her out, look after her,” he said briefly. “One saved anyhow.”
He was about to try to make a dash up the stairs. The doctor caught hold of him and pulled him back.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “The stairs are going.”
“There’s a woman up there,” Bobby said. “Let go.”
But even as he spoke the stairs fell in, and there was no longer any means of access to the upper floor.
“No, there isn’t, not alive,” said the doctor grimly. “Come on out of it while we can.”
“There may be a ladder somewhere,” Bobby said, and ran outside, and the doctor after him, while after them came a long, licking flame as though in baffled rage at their escape, as though in a last effort at pursuit.
But there was no ladder they could find and nothing they could do, for the flames were roaring everywhere and the house alight from floor to roof.
“Well, anyhow,” Bobby said, “I know now why four of those petrol tins we found had only water in them. Mrs Wright must have planned this long ago. Who would have thought that old, still, silent woman had such thoughts, such plans behind her stillness and her silence?”
“Petrol-fed, eh?” the doctor said. “I must go and have a look at the old girl,” he added.
The house was now no more than a huge flaming torch. The firemen came. Nothing they could do, nothing any one could do, except watch from a distance and keep at a distance the crowds that came hurrying from every direction. In that furnace no life could endure, from it none emerged. Only such relics were ultimately found as proved beyond all doubt that there had perished both the man known as Roman Wright and the woman calling herself Jane and passing herself off as his niece, her true identity never established. There was proof, too, that before the flames reached her, the woman had met from the gun of her paramour that death of which, since the hour she had seen it and known it so near and so dreadfully, she had felt the urge and the fascination, had done so little to avoid.
There still remained much to be seen to, many formalities requiring attention, the necessary inquests to be arranged for and attended, a host of eager newspaper men to be satisfied s
o far as it is humanly possible to satisfy a newspaper man. Often enough during the succeeding days Bobby had to leave the routine of his daily work to go again to Threepence for one reason or another. On one such visit, as he was alighting from his car before the Threepence police-station, there came hurrying by Captain Dunstan and Miss Thea Wood, both apparently in considerable haste and engaged in a somewhat animated and even heated conversation. On Bobby as they came by Miss Thea bestowed a charming smile of greeting and recognition, and Captain Dunstan a curt nod and a brief good morning.
“You still around?” he said, and then, unable to keep the news to himself: “I’ve got to get busy. Passed my medical all right, going to join up again, the battalion’s got embarkation orders, and Kitty says she’ll marry me before we go. I thought I was going to get left behind when the battalion moved, and I thought Kitty wasn’t going to have me—and now. Well, talk about bringing off a double. Not so bad, eh?”
“No, indeed,” agreed Bobby. “Congratulations. Miss Kitty is worth a dozen of most of us—present company not excepted,” and if there was a faint touch of the acid in his tone as he uttered these last words, he was careful not to give so much as the merest glance in the direction of Miss Thea Wood.
“Well, now then,” said Dunstan, surprised, “that’s about the only sensible thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Don’t mind me,” murmured Miss Thea Wood abstractedly.
“Eh? What? Who? You?” said Dunstan, and quite obviously he didn’t.
“Not at all,” said Bobby, trying to add a sting to this mild and inoffensive phrase.
“So long,” said Dunstan. “Some doings round here while I’ve been away, weren’t there?”
“Some,” said Bobby.
“Come on, Polly,” said Dunstan, “there’s lots to see about, only I tell you straight, bride maid or no bridesmaid, a bunch of lilies of the valley is all a maiden aunt ought to expect.”
But he said this in a blustering tone that showed how weak he knew his position to be; and Polly smiled on him with tolerance, turned to give Bobby a farewell smile and then once more put out her tongue at him.
“Well,” said Bobby to himself, and said it with deep emotion.
THE END
About the Author
E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.
At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.
He died in 1956.
The Bobby Owen Mysteries
1. Information Received
2. Death among the Sunbathers
3. Crossword Mystery
4. Mystery Villa
5. Death of a Beauty Queen
6. Death Comes to Cambers
7. The Bath Mysteries
8. Mystery of Mr. Jessop
9. The Dusky Hour
10. Dictator’s Way
11. Comes a Stranger
12. Suspects – Nine
13. Murder Abroad
14. Four Strange Women
15. Ten Star Clues
16. The Dark Garden
17. Diabolic Candelabra
18. The Conqueror Inn
19. Night’s Cloak
20. Secrets Can’t be Kept
21. There’s a Reason for Everything
22. It Might Lead Anywhere
23. Helen Passes By
24. Music Tells All
25. The House of Godwinsson
26. So Many Doors
27. Everybody Always Tells
28. The Secret Search
29. The Golden Dagger
30. The Attending Truth
31. Strange Ending
32. Brought to Light
33. Dark is the Clue
34. Triple Quest
35. Six Were Present
E.R. Punshon
There’s a Reason for Everything
With a slow gesture of one lifted hand, Bobby pointed. There, in a space between the prostrate stag and posturing goddess, there showed a human leg, a twisted, motionless leg in a strained, unnatural position.
Bobby Owen, now Deputy Chief Constable of Wychshire, finds himself taking part in a ghost hunt at legendary haunted mansion Nonpareil. What he discovers is the very real corpse of a paranormal investigator. It seems that among the phantoms there are fakes – but will that end up including a priceless painting by Vermeer?
There’s a Reason for Everything was first published in 1945, the twenty-first of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series eventually including thirty-five novels. This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” DOROTHY L. SAYERS
There’s a Reason for Everything
CHAPTER I
ASSORTED
Newly appointed Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Owen, feeling both a trifle unemployed and a trifle grand, sat in his big new office on the first floor of the Wychshire county police headquarters, while below, on the ground floor, in Bobby’s old office, reigned Inspector Payne, new head of the Wychshire C.I.D., and so dealing with all that routine work which, as Deputy Chief Constable, Bobby had now relinquished to Payne’s care. It was a loss he was inclined occasionally to regret because of the close relationship into which it had brought him both with events and with his men. Now Payne only let him know those more important events he thought worthy of troubling the remote dignity of a Deputy Chief.
Even promotion, Bobby reflected with some surprise, has its thorns, and though, as Chief Constable’s private secretary, the position he had previously doubled with that of head of the Wychshire C.I.D., he had long acted in practice as deputy, now his position was official, and due etiquette had to be observed. And Payne, jealous of his own new dignity, was taking care that it was so observed, and that no superior got away with any poaching on his preserves.
One letter this morning he had, however, allowed to be passed on for Bobby’s information and direction. Because it was so unimportant, Bobby suspected, though certainly a little out of the way. It was from a Dr. Clem Jones, of Wessex and Mercia University, and was to the effect that he and two or three friends and colleagues had received permission from Mr. Ivor de Tallebois to investigate the rumours of renewed hauntings at Nonpareil, the ancient seat of the Tallebois family, though it is true that there seemed some doubt as to the exact connection of the present de Tallebois, whose great-grandfather had done well—even exceedingly well—supplying, or, as the unkind said, not supplying, food and clothing to the British armies during the Crimean war, with the original owners of Nonpareil. However, this was a detail of small interest, and in no way diminished the size and importance of that ancient and historic building, where it was often said more murders, torturings, crimes, had been committed than in any other in England, excepting the Tower of London itself.
No wonder, then, that it was provided with a choice assortment of ghosts, all well authenticated by numerous accounts of eye-witnesses. The particular stories Dr. Jones and his friends wished to investigate were first the tale of the cavalier, Sir Thomas de Tallebois, who, in the reign of Charles the First, had taken refuge from pursuing Roundheads in the great cellars of the building, and had there been inadvertently locked in, to die of starvation, he, his wife and children together. Their groans and lamentations were said still to be heard once every year on the returning anniversary of the tragedy. The other tale was that of the twin brothers who, rivals in love, had fought a duel to the death in one of the upper rooms. With some apparent lack of justice, however, it wa
s not their ghosts that had been doomed to haunt the scene of the duel, but that of their presumably innocent mother, who was often to be seen wringing her hands in despair as she fled along the corridors leading to this room. After each of these visits, it was believed, a fresh bloodstain always appeared on the floor of the room, gradually fading away and then reappearing after each renewed visit.
Dr. Jones had apparently thought it well to inform the police of his impending visit in case of their attention being attracted by rumours of unusual proceedings at Nonpareil, closed for the duration, and, indeed, considering its enormous size and total lack of all modern amenities, never likely to be occupied again. Midwych Corporation, for example, had already refused, with some haste, an offer of it as a free gift. Bobby supposed that it was, in fact, possible that undesirable rumours might become current if strangers were observed in the vicinity of so lonely a building so long deserted. In time of war the fewer rumours to gain currency, the better. He marked the letter ‘Ack. C’, which meant that it was to be acknowledged under formula C—the most polite and flowery of the three in use—and decided it was time for lunch.
So he descended to the ground floor, and looked in at his own old room, though well knowing that Inspector Payne would soon make him aware that while Deputy Chief Constables might have time to spare, C.I.D. inspectors had none. However, to-day Payne seemed in a more chatty mood, admitted he, too, had been thinking of lunch and there was an odd report sent in by the sergeant-in-charge at Lonesome, a small, half village, half suburb dormitory, just outside the Midwych city limits. It seemed the new man there, Constable Reed, known to his superiors as Broken Reed, since his first name was Brodie and he, an old pensioner recalled to war-time duty, was much troubled by rheumatism, a fact whereof he seldom failed to remind the world in general and the Deputy Chief Constable in particular.
Payne, indeed, so far unbent as to allow Bobby to have a look at the report, if only to admire the dexterity with which a reference to the pangs of rheumatism had been brought in. Leaving the recurrent rheumatic theme apart, it was to the effect that while Constable Reed and Major Hardman, of The Tulips, were ‘passing the time of day’—so said the report, though it seemed the time was ten at night—they had both heard what sounded like a shot coming from the direction of Wychwood forest, on the outskirts of which, between the forest and Lonesome village proper, stood Major Hardman’s pleasant detached villa, known as The Tulips.
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