“An old friend,” Colonel Godwinsson commented. “Always glad to see him.”
“Which means,” Bobby thought, “you know any inquiry he has anything to do with will be carried out in the most friendly, ‘dear-old-boy’ style possible. Well, as to that, there may be someone else on the job as well.”
CHAPTER XXV
STOKES IS AFRAID
Bobby drove away from Ing Wain in a very troubled and disturbed state of mind. That Colonel Godwinsson was to some extent implicated in recent events seemed clear, but it was by no means clear how far he was directly concerned and how far he was merely trying to protect others. Or, indeed, whether it was the actual criminals he wished to shield, or only someone more or less innocently concerned. But, then, who was that someone? One or both of his sons? Was it Gurth, the strangely handsome lad whose good looks might well have had their own disturbing effect and who was said to have been in love with Lady Geraldine? Or Leofric, seen more than once in the Angel Alley district and once already ‘held for questioning’? Or did the colonel think it his duty—’up to him’ in the current slang of the day—to guard the reputation and good name of the dead girl who once had been his ward? Considering the colonel’s old-world ideas of chivalry and the duty of a gentleman to go to all lengths to protect a woman’s reputation, here might be a powerful, indeed a compelling, motive. There was Monica Leigh, too. There had apparently been a quarrel between her and Lady Geraldine, sufficiently serious for Miss Leigh to decide to leave the flat. Was jealousy the cause? Bobby had to remember that the murder of Lady Geraldine could easily have been carried out by a woman. Easy to hold a cushion over the face of an unconscious person till unconsciousness lapsed into death. But though Mona had been seen in the district and had admitted, though not in words, that she knew about Angel Alley, there was nothing so far to show she had any knowledge of that remarkable flat over the Yates grocery.
That the colonel was responsible for the return of the Wharton jewellery, Bobby was fairly certain. But he was by no means certain whether that return had been made directly or as a result of pressure the colonel had exercised. Not a very important point. What was important was to know how the jewellery had come into his possession, or, in the alternative, how he had known on whom to exercise pressure and what form that pressure had taken.
However, the Wharton jewels had now become relatively uninteresting. They had been recovered; and presumably there would now be fewer nasty remarks darkly muttered in ducal circles about the incompetence, negligence, and other faults of Scotland Yard. The pressing problem was to bring to justice whoever might be guilty of the cold-blooded murder of Lady Geraldine Rafe. And to discover in what way, if any, that shocking crime was connected with the almost simultaneous killing of the enigmatic Joey Parsons, as mysterious in death as in life, still guarding his secret so that it was still uncertain whether he had been prime mover in what had happened, or a mere errand-boy and go-between.
Upon these points Bobby felt attention should be concentrated. Yet there were clearly others concerned, others whose activities seemed to centre strangely on Colonel Godwinsson; on Colonel Godwinsson with his unblemished reputation, his high sense of responsibility, his excessive pride of birth, superb or fantastic according to the view taken. Ex-Sergeant Stokes, for example, hovering assiduously on the outskirts of the affair, evidently knowing something, though impossible as yet to say whether that something was much or little. Or indeed anything, since it might well be his sole motive was a vague hope that he might pick up something or another of which he might make use. A share in the offered reward, perhaps—the innocent motive he had himself put forward. And behind him the sinister and doubtful figure of Cy King, whose sudden appearance in the Ing Wain grounds seemed to Bobby disturbing and menacing in the extreme.
Was he there, for instance, by appointment, so to say? Colonel Godwinsson had shown no great surprise, or even interest in his appearance. Almost certainly Cy King and his associates would have heard by now of the return of the Wharton jewellery, so the hope of laying hands upon it could not be the reason for the visit.
Bobby was not even sure that there was much truth in the stories of bitter enmity between the Cy King gangsters and those with whom Joey Parsons had been connected, whether as leader or subordinate. As good business men, gangsters do not often waste much energy upon feuds, though of course it happens at times when one gang tries to intrude upon another gang’s private preserves. Or they may be at feud one day, carrying on fierce warfare, and in firm alliance the next—just like the Great Powers of the world. In this bewildering jungle of doubt, intrigue, and treachery, it was even possible that Joey Parsons had been one of Cy King’s men, used as a ‘stooge’ to deceive the police and even, for that matter, others of the gang.
In that case Joey might have met his death as a result of such activities, and that again might mean there was no connection between his murder and that of Lady Geraldine Rafe.
Gloomily did Bobby contemplate this welter of conflicting and contradictory facts and theories. True, now and again, as he went over and over them in his mind, he did think he caught a glimpse of what seemed for the moment as if it might turn out to be a thread leading to the heart of the labyrinth. But only for a moment or two. Then again all seemed hopeless confusion. He tried to comfort himself with the reflection that at least there were a few things certain, a few facts. Some confirmation at least he had obtained this morning. But was the interpretation he was inclined to put upon them the true one? Doubtful, startling, improbable even; but what else was there to work on for a starting point?
Of one thing only was he sure—that the appearance of Cy King at Ing Wain was ominous in the extreme. Where Cy went, death was apt to follow. If there really was any connection between him and Colonel Godwinsson, then the colonel was in danger—danger much greater than he knew.
Bobby began to drive faster, as though responding un-consciously to the sense of urgency he felt. Colonel Godwinsson, wrapped in the innocence of his pride of family; his belief that by right of the royal and ancient descent he claimed, he was in some sort set apart from other men; his deep instinct that he had a right to expect deference and respect from all, would be like a child in any dealings he might have with such a man as Cy King. All kinds of inhibitions, scruples, traditional restraints, on one hand. None on the other. The colonel would be like a country clergyman dealing with a city shark; like a young girl thinking to amuse herself in the company of an experienced roué; like a sheep before the shearers. Or would he? Which was his part? The first in each pair or the second?
Was it possible he merely felt himself at war with a society refusing to admit the claims he believed so well founded?
Faster and faster Bobby drove, as these doubts and speculations drove in upon his mind—at least till he came to a built-up area and slowed down just in time as he noticed the disapproving eye of a policeman on, fortunately, the hither side of a warning notice. But there was no built-up area to set a barrier against the rushing tide of fear and doubt that was flooding in upon his thoughts.
He had reached Town now, but he did not go direct to Scotland Yard. He wanted his lunch—wanted it badly—and he knew if he showed himself at headquarters he would be immediately caught up in a flurry of reports and interviews and probably get no lunch at all. So instead he drove home. Olive would not be expecting him, but she was trained to endure with resignation his sudden arrivals and departures, and he could take her out to a neighbouring restaurant. Of course, by this time she would have had her own lunch, but as he knew she had been intending that morning to do something she called turning out a room, it was fairly certain that that lunch had consisted of a cup of tea and a bun—woman’s favourite meal for that matter. So she ought to be able to deal with a more reasonable repast; and anyhow he wanted badly some one to talk to, some one before whom he could lay all the different possibilities he saw, the varying theories and beliefs in his mind, including one so strange, so doubtful, he felt
he would not dare mention it to anybody else.
But there was to be no lunch for him just yet, for as he drew near he saw Stokes lounging close by the entrance to the flats. Bobby, not pleased, greeted him with little cordiality.
“Well, what is it now?” he demanded.
“I’m only trying to help, Mr Owen, sir,” Stokes protested in his most injured voice. “I don’t hold with murder. Nasty. Bad publicity. Means every one on the qui vive, and a bloke getting no chance to go about quiet and peaceful like. I don’t hold with it. Not with killing I don’t,” and this time into his rather whining voice came a note of what seemed like sincerity and real feeling.
“Well?” Bobby asked when Stokes paused.
“Cy King,” said Stokes, and was silent.
“What about him?”
“There’s something made him murderous mad,” Stokes said slowly. “He was at Mike’s last night. You know Mike’s?” Bobby nodded. All the police knew Mike’s. It was a Soho cafe, utterly respectable under another name in front, very much other than respectable at the back, where it was known to the initiated as ‘Mike’s’. Stokes went on: “He came in looking like all the devils in hell. He didn’t say nothing, but some of the boys as was there just looked at him and got up and went out and none of them that stayed said a word. I wanted to go out too, only I would have had to go right in front where he was, and I didn’t want, and then I was sitting in a corner and hoped maybe he wouldn’t notice. He had that knife of his, and he was stropping it, loving like. Mike brought him a drink—a special. Well, you know what Mike calls his special. Cy King don’t drink much as a rule, but he had two specials right off and asked for a third. Mike hesitated in a way because rightly speaking two specials is enough for most; but Cy sort of looked, and Mike fair tumbled over himself to get that third one. Cy downed it like it was nothing at all, but it did sort of loosen him up. Made him talkative, and you wished it hadn’t. He said he had been double-crossed. He asked if we knew what he did to blokes who double-crossed him. He saw me and he said: ‘You tell ‘em, Tim Stokes, what I do to them that double-cross me.’ I said I didn’t rightly know, and he said: ‘You don’t know, don’t you? I’ll show you,’ and he got up from where he was sitting, but I beat it—in quick time I beat it. I heard him laughing, and I’ve not been near Mike’s since, and don’t mean to. He means it, Mr Owen. He means it all right, same as a snake means it when it puts its head up and back.”
“Who has double-crossed him?” Bobby asked. “What does he mean?”
“It’s to do with the Wharton stuff,” Stokes answered. “Is it true you’ve got it back? It’s what some of the boys are saying.”
“Well, they can go on saying,” Bobby answered. “No business of theirs. Have you any idea who Cy King means?”
Stokes shook his head.
“Whoever it is,” he said, “had better mind or he won’t be alive much longer.”
“Is it you?” Bobby asked, and Stokes denied it with vehemence; but his face was very pale, and when he went away he stumbled a little, walking like a drunken man.
CHAPTER XXVI
HELD FOR QUESTIONING
An unlucky day for lunches. Olive, having finished turning out her room, had apparently then turned herself out, and was probably now standing in a queue somewhere. A used teacup and a plate with a few crumbs on it in the sculleryette (why not? if there’s a kitchenette) gave evidence that Bobby’s suspicions about her probable lunch had been well founded.
Nursing a distinct sense of grievance—for why a wife if she isn’t there when you want her?—he went off to lunch alone. Nothing much left, though, since now it was late, except some cold corned beef and a salad that once no doubt had been young and fresh and gay, but was so no longer. Moodily he ate, thinking how much easier it would have been if he could have put all his different, conflicting theories and beliefs to Olive. Brought into the open, expressed in plain language, some would have appeared more, some less, plausible. Still more moodily he reflected that the case seemed to be developing from the problem of who had committed two murders in the past to that of whom was to be murdered in the future.
Stokes certainly feared it might be he, but Stokes was an egotist who always thought of himself as the centre of all things. No doubt Cy King had heard of the return of the Wharton jewellery, was furious to think he had no longer any prospect of being able to lay his hands upon loot he had searched for so long and at such risk, and perhaps intended revenge upon whomsoever he chose to think responsible for his disappointment. Especially if he had heard and believed that two such valuable pieces as the Blackamoor pendant and the Charlemagne jewel had been held back. Double-crossing he might call that, though in criminal circles ‘double-cross’ means generally not double treachery, but any trickery one rogue carries out upon another. If, in fact, Cy King had been tricked in any way, not only his prestige among his friends would suffer, but his vanity as well, and vanity is the chief ingredient in every criminal’s make-up.
Possibly that was behind the attempt to kidnap Leofric Godwinsson. Could it also explain Cy’s visit to Ing Wain? He might have thought to find Leofric there, or get news of where he was, or he might have been hoping to get on the scent of the two supposedly missing pieces of the Wharton loot.
Impossible to take any action. There was no charge that could be brought against Cy King—none, at least, supported by any evidence at which a magistrate would look for a moment. Bobby gave it up, paid for his corned beef at the pre-war rate for grouse on toast or smoked salmon, and departed for his office, wondering unhappily what the next development was likely to be.
He had not long to wait. Almost the first thing he learned when, still hungry, he arrived at the Yard was that Mona Leigh was being ‘held for questioning’—that convenient euphemism for an arrest, though one that might possibly not be followed by a formal charge.
The news had just come in from the Angel Alley district police station. Bobby got on the ’phone at once. What had happened was that police officers, continuing their examination of the flat over the Yates grocery, heard a ring at the door, answered it and found Miss Leigh there. She received a pressing invitation to enter and was questioned. She had refused to answer except in the presence of her lawyer, who was also her uncle. His office, when rung up, replied that he was out of town and would not return till the next day. Mona had then decided to wait for him rather than accept the services of either of his partners, even though told that that meant her remaining in custody for the time.
Bobby rubbed the end of his nose defiantly. If Olive couldn’t be there for lunch when he wanted her so badly, then he didn’t care how much she disapproved that gesture. He rubbed it, indeed, so hard he seemed to want to rub it off altogether. Then he decided, leaving all the work piled up on his table and clamouring for attention, to interview Mona himself. She might, remembering the small service he had once done her, be more willing to talk to him. Not if she were guilty, of course, but if she were innocent. Probably her uncle-lawyer, concerned only for her immediate interests, would advise her to say nothing—always a lawyer’s first instinct and last resource. But Bobby was thinking also of that dark warning he had just received, and it seemed to him possible that Mona might be able to give some intimation of where the threatened blow was likely to fall.
At the police station he found a very scared-looking girl in charge of an amiable, fussing matron who kept calling her ‘dearie’, advising her not to worry, and providing her with cups of tea for which Mona had not the least desire. She brightened up a little when Bobby appeared. He told her frankly that not only was she entirely within her rights in refusing to speak till her lawyer arrived, but that also it was probably much the wisest thing to do, whether she were innocent or guilty—
But at this last word Mona broke in with a cry of indignation that was either genuine or at least a wonderfully good imitation thereof.
“Oh, I’m not … it’s awful … you can’t think … no one could really …” s
he protested, and clearly she was having some difficulty in keeping back her tears.
“My dear young lady,” Bobby said gravely, “when a person turns up at what seems to have been a most carefully concealed hide-out where a murder has just been committed, that person is bound to be asked for an explanation. I was going to say that as regards yourself and your own interests, you are very right and wise to say nothing till your lawyer gets here. But I’ve been warned—information received is what we say—that there is a very real risk of another murder happening. I don’t know of whom, and I don’t know why. But there’s some connection with what’s been going on. I’ve no right to say more than that I think you might be able to help.”
She was staring at him with great, wide-open eyes. She was clearly both puzzled and apprehensive, and it was a moment or two before she answered.
“I don’t think …” she began hesitatingly. “I don’t … understand. How can I help?”
“By being willing to answer a few questions,” Bobby told her.
“Oh, but …” said Mona and paused again.
“If you would like time to think it over,” Bobby said, “I will come back whenever you wish. Or not at all if you say so. I would like to repeat that, to the best of my belief, a man’s life may hang on it. A man’s life—or it may be a woman’s.”
“Oh, but …” said Mona again, and again paused.
“Shall I make you a nice cup of tea, dearie?” asked the matron.
“Oh, please,” said Mona; and the matron looked hurt, so negative had been that ‘please’ and the accompanying gesture, so plainly had they meant: ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, leave me alone.’
“You have known yourself,” Bobby said, “what it is to be in danger.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mona; and looked still more frightened, and became so pale that it was all the matron could do not to repeat her suggestion of a nice cup of hot tea.
The House of Godwinsson: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 17