“Oddly enough, it came about in a queer way that Kram himself provided the evidence I was beginning to think we should never get. He rang up from a street box to say there was a revolver buried on the Conqueror Inn land. He didn’t say who he was but luckily I had him under observation, so we knew all right though we couldn’t prove it. Difficult to prove a ’phone call in the ordinary way, especially with the dial system. But Kram didn’t know, no one knew, that when the Christophersons buried the revolver for fear it might implicate Derek, they buried it wrapped in a paper Christopherson had picked up at the same time. It happened to be the map that had fallen out of Larry Connor’s pocket and it showed the position of war factories marked by pin pricks. It wasn’t hard to draw conclusions, but it still remained to link up map, revolver, and murder. Not too easy, especially when it turned out that the revolver wasn’t the one that killed Larry.”
“How did Kram know anything about it?” Wintle asked.
“Leader told him. Leader trying to divert suspicion from himself. If criminals had sense enough to keep quiet and do nothing, say nothing, we should have a hard job to get them. I suppose it’s too much for human nature, anyhow guilty human nature, simply to stand and wait and do nothing, when it knows it is under suspicion and in danger. It has to do something to try to make itself safe and then as often as not, what it does do, gives us the evidence we want. Probably Leader was on the watch, trying to reassure himself, trying to find out what was happening. Frightened. Badly frightened. Scared of developments. He must have seen Christopherson and Miss Rachel digging and guessed why. He may even have seen—I know he had a good pair of binoculars—what they were hiding. So then he thought that if he could get us informed and we dug the pistol up, we should assume the Christophersons guilty and that would make him safe. I daresay he has no idea how exactly it can be told which bullet comes from which gun. And he didn’t know Hall had managed to get blood from the dead man on his hand and from it to the revolver he picked up when Derek threw it down and that then Hall had thrown down again in turn. I let them go on believing we thought we had the right weapon. I argued Leader would then feel safe and confident and probably start carrying his own revolver about with him. Once we could get hold of that and identify it with him, trace it to him in his possession, I would have the final link in the evidence that I needed to bring it all into order and relation. Perfectly simple logic. If he were guilty, then the revolver used must be his. I guessed he would have got rid of it immediately afterwards, because that is always a killer’s first instinct. There was the risk it might be beyond recovery, at the bottom of the canal or somewhere like that. But there was a good chance it was only hidden, and that he could get it back; and I calculated he would want to begin carrying it again, once he believed we believed we were in possession of the murder weapon. He would want to feel himself protected against sudden arrest, still more against Micky. How scared he was of Micky I knew from the fact that he had been rather pleased at the idea of being under police observation. That meant police protection against Micky. I think he knew, I think Kram told him, that Micky had accused him to me, and he knew well enough what a dangerous little man Micky Burke could be. In actual fact, any suspicions Micky had of him, he had given up when Kram persuaded him it couldn’t be Leader by pretending he had seen Leader somewhere else at the time of the shooting. Kram suspected Leader, more than suspected him, but he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that if Leader were arrested he would tell what he knew about Kram’s black market activities. All the time, all Kram did was with the one object of preventing any inquiry that might have that result.
“That was another of our difficulties. No one of them knew exactly what had happened. It all took place in a moment, in pitch darkness. Leader himself didn’t know for certain whom he had killed—or at first whether he had killed at all. Neither Kram nor Micky Burke knew who was the killer. The Christophersons only knew that Derek had vanished. Maggie knew no more than that Larry had gone. Apparently you yourself knew even less. It was the sum total of all these ignorances I had to add together to reach the truth. Only when I saw Leader produce his revolver just now did I know my calculations were correct and that at last he had given me what I had wanted so long—final proof.”
“What are the papers,” Wintle asked, “I heard Kram talking about?”
“I don’t suppose they’ll amount to much,” Bobby said. “They’ll give proof of Micky Burke’s fifth column activity but we knew that already. Both Kram and his daughter knew Micky meant to take his revenge for what Kram did to the dead boy. That had upset him terribly. He meant to retaliate in kind, Maggie feared by murder. Kram thought to protect himself by getting hold of Micky’s letters. I expect we shall send copies to Dublin for the Irish police to act on, but I expect they know it all already. Even if they wanted to—and probably they won’t want—not much they can do. No harm in one neutral in a neutral country telling another neutral where a British factory stands. And if the second neutral happens to mention it to the German or the Japanese ambassador, well, why not? One of the delights of being neutral. ‘Ourselves alone.’ The Eire motto and proud of it. Kram reckoned he could hold Micky off by threatening him with handing over the letters to us. But he didn’t dare keep them himself so he gave them to Leader to keep for him. He thought he knew enough about Leader’s complicity in Larry’s death to make sure of Leader’s loyalty. Leader played against Micky and Micky against Leader. A double game. A simple game. Kram always showed the kind of simple, obvious cunning you expect from a man of his type, the ‘get-rich-quick’ type, with always just the one idea—to find short cuts.”
“I know,” Wintle said. “You worked it all out to a fine point,” he added.
“Detective work is like that,” Bobby said. “You add one thing to another, one little thing to another, one here and another there, till at last all you want is the last nail to drive home to make the case complete, the last brick to lay to finish what you’ve been building up. And when you know that’s all you want, you are almost bound to get it in the end.”
“What will happen to Leader?” Wintle asked. “If it was like that, if he was only trying to butt in and never meant to kill, you can’t call it murder, can you?”
“If you kill while committing an unlawful act, it’s murder,” Bobby answered. “The charge might be reduced to manslaughter. I don’t know. That’ll be decided later. Not by me. Thank God, punishment is no responsibility of mine. All my duty is to uncover the truth. Personally I always think English law ought to distinguish between degrees of murder. They do in some countries. Leader may get off with a long term of penal servitude. Better than hanging I suppose. Alf Hall will probably escape with a year or two in prison. As an accomplice. Kram will get off like that, too. And a fine he won’t be able to pay, for I don’t suppose there’s much ready cash left after the loss of that two thousand and his Irish backers will have no further use for him. So he’ll go bankrupt again. Two thousand is a big sum to drop at one go and now I expect the Treasury will pinch it, unless we can hold it for the benefit of the Wychshire police rate.”
“Not a hope in the world,” Wintle told him, “not if I know our Treasury.”
And with that Wintle went back into the inn where he had caught sight of Rachel moving slowly in the background.
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
NIGHT’S CLOAK
“I’ve got to hurry,” Bobby said. “Mr Weston has been found dead from a knife-wound in his study.”
IT’S NOT easy for a county police Inspector to handle prominent local citizens diplomatically, while getting on with the real work of crime detection. But it’s particularly hard when Bobby Owen finds himself the victim of a sinister swindle worked by a millionaire business executive. Not to mention the machinations of a radical political movement, a secretary with a puzzling alibi, and a young scientist-inventor, willing to do anything, even murder, to put his schemes into action …
Night’s Cloak was first published in 1944, the nineteenth 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
Night’s Cloak
CHAPTER I
IMPERIOUS SUMMONS
“AND WHO,” demanded Inspector Bobby Owen, addressing his question to the universe in general and to the Wychshire County Police in particular, “who is Mr William Weston, if you please?”
The question was purely rhetorical, for Bobby knew perfectly well—as did every one in the city of Midwych and most in the county of Wychshire and many elsewhere—all about that great man. Was he not a former Lord Mayor of the city; a former M.P. for the Stimmell Division of Midwych; the present chairman, managing director and virtual dictator of the Weston West Mills and its subsidiary undertakings, above all, was he not a millionaire, or at least a “near millionaire”, with all that implies in our present-day civilization of power, prestige and influence? Did not his position therefore resemble that of one of those great feudal lords who, in the Middle Ages, were the powers behind the throne—and not so very much behind, either? True, he did not wield the power of the High Justice, the Middle, and the Low, but he did wield the power of job or no job, which comes to much the same thing.
A great man, then, but none the less, as the great and the powerful so often as, a disappointed man. He had expected at least a knighthood—stepping-stone to the peerage—on the conclusion of his term of office as Lord Mayor of Midwych. He had not received it, whereon in a fit of pique he had resigned from the City Council. Again at the last general election, though Tory successes had been widespread, he had lost his seat for the Stimmell Division in spite of the fact that the Stimmell Division was largely inhabited by his own workpeople.
This misfortune Mr Weston was accustomed to cite, not without bitterness, as a classic example of working-class ingratitude—a “biting of the hand that fed them”—and as a not surprising result of recent political pampering. And he would quote figures from the annual reports of the Weston West Company to show how much money had been spent on such amenities as a canteen where meals were provided at a cost that showed only a trifling profit, as a playing-field laid out on a site purchased cheaply for that purpose and possibly one day useful for an extension of the mill buildings. Indeed, as Mr Weston was accustomed to say, on a thousand and one other benefits that were neither more nor less than free gifts. Why, there was even a welfare officer, if you please, a Miss Olga Severn, though the fact that she was a rather charming girl, fresh and lively, certainly counted as an alleviating factor. Nor was it necessary to pay too much attention to her recommendations, even though old Dan Edwardes, another director, and holder of as many ordinary shares as were held by Mr Weston himself, had recently gone all sappy and sentimental. Age, and the loss of all his three sons on active service in the early stages of the war, no doubt accounting for this, and indicating, Mr Weston felt, a sad loss of mental stability, as shown in certain suggestions recently put forward by him for the future control of the business.
And that at a time, Mr Weston would add quietly, when the shareholders, thanks to the former general business depression and present war-time difficulties, had received no dividend for some years, though certainly their property was of great potential value.
Furthermore, Mrs Weston, expressing a pedantic disapproval of a certain largeness of heart that could refuse a welcome to no—feminine—visitant, had departed to the south of England, where she had recently died, leaving a will which bequeathed all her possessions—these were both few and small—to her husband, with the exception of a block of five thousand one-pound ordinary shares in the Weston West Mills Company. These she had left to young Martin Weston Wynne, her husband’s first cousin once removed and his nearest living relative in England, though there were other cousins in the Dominions.
Not that this bequest seemed of any great pecuniary value, since not only had no dividend been paid on the shares for some years, but none could be paid until the very heavy arrears on the preference shares had been entirely cleared off. But it was an open secret that Mr Weston’s feelings had been much hurt, and that he had expressed himself as being entirely unable to understand what had induced his wife to do such a thing.
“Not that I mind her remembering the boy and leaving him anything she wanted to,” he had been heard to remark. “But why these shares in my company that the young man has never shown any interest in? He was with us for a time. I meant him to take my place some day. Threw it all up and went off on his own!”
All this Bobby knew well, and Sergeant Payne, his chief assistant in the much-depleted Wychshire County C.I.D., knew he knew it. Which did not prevent a very shocked tone appearing in Payne’s voice as he said:—
“Mr Weston, sir? Mr Weston? Why, sir . . . well, sir . . . the Weston West Mills, sir. ...”
“Yes, I know,” snapped Bobby, somewhat illogically. “Look at that.”
“That” was a note from Mr William Weston, requesting, indeed demanding, that Inspector Owen should call at Weston Lodge Cottage at eight o’clock that evening.
Payne read it gravely, but made no comment. No comment annoyed Bobby still more. He said:—
“Does the fellow think we have nothing to do but run about after him?”
Payne coughed.
“Well, sir,” he said, “you know, sir—very influential gentleman, Mr Weston. Mayor a few years back. Very friendly with Sir Merrick Templemore, and you know yourself, sir, Sir Merrick—well, he just is the County Watch Committee.”
“No reason,” growled Bobby, “why this Weston bloke should think we’ve got to be at his beck and call. Seems to think he can give us orders—he might be our chief, from the way he writes.”
“I expect it’s only his way,” Payne suggested placatingly. “Very autocratic gentleman, Mr Weston, I’ve always heard. Used to giving orders and expects to be ob
eyed.”
“Oh, does he?” said Bobby, the light of battle beginning to gleam in his eyes.
“Colonel Glynne,” murmured Payne, apparently changing the subject and gazing in an abstracted way at the ceiling, “thinks Sir Merrick will be likely to approve of the plans for the new headquarters going through.”
Bobby nearly choked. New headquarters for the county police was the pet dream of the Chief Constable, Colonel Glynne. He had even spent some of his own money in getting plans prepared for the projected building. By careful diplomacy, strengthened by the discreet use of a special port, Sir Merrick Templemore had been induced to promise support when the scheme came before the Wychshire Watch Committee, notorious for turning down every suggestion even remotely threatening an increase in the rates. If Mr Weston got to work on Sir Merrick and Sir Merrick withdrew his support, then the project would certainly be wrecked and Colonel Glynne’s heart broken—which would be a pity. Moreover, the county police would lose their nice new headquarters Bobby wanted as much as any one—and that would be an even greater pity.
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