“No,” she said, “no.” After a moment she added: “It’s the dream keeps coming back.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
IDENTIFIED UMBRELLA
That ended the interview, Bobby reflecting gloomily that he was no nearer than before to knowing whose life was threatened. Nor had he learnt anything to help to show on whom rested the guilt of the murders of Joey Parsons and of Lady Geraldine.
For that matter, he could not even be certain that Mona’s dramatic tale was true. Only her word for it, and Bobby’s first principle was to accept no story without corroboration. Undoubtedly it was coherent, and it was consistent with what else he knew. All the same, he told himself cautiously, he must suspend judgment. The other two actors in the scenes Mona had described were both dead; that is, if, as Bobby thought might fairly be assumed, the driver of the car had been the man known as Joey Parsons and by other names. And Mona’s story, even if accepted, left it still most maddeningly uncertain whether he were chief and ‘leader’, or merely an unimportant hanger-on. If this last were the case, then it might even be that his failure to dispose of Mona on Putney Bridge had been the cause of his own death. Gang parasites who omit to carry out their orders do occasionally come to a swift and messy end.
Plainly the next thing to do was to have a talk with Gurth. He must be questioned about that umbrella Mona said she had noticed at the ‘love nest’ flat. Presumably this was the same umbrella that Bobby, too, had seen there, and that was now in the hands of the police, who had been trying, without success, to trace its owner. And if that owner were Gurth, then considerable explanation would be required. This, however, had to be postponed for the time. Gurth, it seemed, was away on a motor trip, and it was not known when he would return. Leofric, too, must be questioned, but that again would have to wait. He had developed pneumonia and was now on the danger list. Bobby decided, as the best that could be done in the circumstances, to recommend that a plain-clothes man should remain on duty at the hospital. It might well be that Cy King’s threats were aimed at Leofric.
Nor did that mean, Bobby reflected, that Leofric was innocent. Whoever Cy King considered had ‘double-crossed’ him over the Wharton jewellery might well be the murderer of one or other of the two victims, or even, indeed, of both. So, neither Gurth nor Leofric being available, Bobby was able to get a quiet evening at home—and there annoyed Olive very much by pointing out that Mona’s story could only be accepted provisionally. At the moment there was nothing to support it except her own word.
“I think that’s being rather absurd,” Olive declared with dignity. “I’m sure no young girl could invent such a story.”
“Ever hear of Elizabeth Canning?” Bobby asked.
“We aren’t talking about Elizabeth Canning, whoever she is,” retorted Olive, still more dignified. “We are talking about Mona Leigh.”
“Well,” Bobby said, “if she is guilty, as is possible, of two murders, one out of jealousy, and the other to cover up the first and she is clearly under suspicion—she would probably be more than equal to a spot of invention. One thing certain is that she is in love with Leofric. Love can lead into strange places.”
“It can,” agreed Olive, slightly vicious now. “To darning socks, for instance, and washing up, and sweeping floors. And even,” said Olive, looking very bewildered, “it can make you rather like it—at least sometimes.”
But Bobby was not listening. He said:
“There is one thing to remember. Mona did seem to be suffering from a sort of delayed-action panic. It did rather seem as if she had not realized at first what that weighted sack might mean. As if only much later, and rather slowly, had she taken in the idea that it might have meant being knocked on the head, pushed in the sack, and dropped over the Putney Bridge parapet into the river.”
“Bobby, don’t,” Olive exclaimed; and Bobby said he wouldn’t, and anyhow it was time for bed, though he didn’t suppose, he added sadly, that he would sleep a wink.
Olive had heard this prognostication before, but remained unaffected, since she had never known it fulfilled. Her own belief was that if Bobby remained awake two minutes after getting into bed before going to sleep and remaining asleep for the rest of the night, that was the full extent of his insomnia. Incidentally, her own idea of the perfect husband was of one who would never sleep so soundly while his wife lay and counted endless sheep—without result.
Next morning, Gurth, in response both to a letter and to a ’phone call, was early at Scotland Yard. He looked pale and ill; and his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, yet that fine physical beauty he possessed seemed by this rather enhanced than diminished. He expressed regret for not having answered the earlier summons sent him the night before, but he had been out motoring. Asked if he had been to visit his father at Ing Wain, he said he had merely driven straight into the country without much caring where, and then back again.
“I wanted to be alone,” he said. He added after a momentary pause, as if feeling the need of further explanation: “I had only just heard about Geraldine Rafe. She was a friend of mine,” and in spite of all the self-control and suppression of emotion that was in the tradition of his class and country, he had difficulty in getting out those last few words.
Bobby did not try to express sympathy. For all he knew, he was talking to her murderer. Not the first time, if so, that a murderer has wept at his victim’s fate. For a moment or two he talked more or less at random, to give Gurth a chance to recover. Then he explained that he wished to ask a very few questions. Nothing formal. No question of making a statement at present. He always found that when a will to co-operate existed, a friendly chat was the best way of getting at the truth. Of course, purely voluntary. Later on perhaps the procedure would be formal, question and answer taken down in shorthand and typed out for signature. At the moment, though, the chief need was for speed. Two murders had been committed, and now a third was threatened.
“A third? Who of?” Gurth asked; and he looked startled, and, if not more pale than before, since that was impossible, at least more uneasy.
“That is what we want to know—very badly,” Bobby answered. “Police duty is not so much to bring criminals to justice as to prevent their becoming criminals by preventing crime—if we can. A difficult job. Can you make any suggestion? Apparently a man named Cy King—have you ever heard of him?” Gurth shook his head. Bobby resumed: “He seems to think he was double-crossed, as he calls it, by one of his accomplices when the Wharton jewels were returned, and he threatens reprisals. A question of his prestige with his pals. And then a big disappointment, no doubt. Those jewels might have brought enough for him to retire on, or to visit one of the South American countries, where there is said to be considerable scope for gentlemen like himself.”
“I don’t see the connection,” Gurth grumbled. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“Some cases,” Bobby went on, “are difficult because there are too many clues. Some because there are few or none. This case is exceptionally difficult for both reasons. There are no physical clues. Any there may have been at Angel Alley were destroyed when the flooring collapsed—unfortunately before any thorough examination had been made. But the case simply bristles with motives of all kinds. We can pin a motive on almost every one concerned. But of course a motive isn’t proof, or anywhere near it. Any one may have a motive for murder without ever even dreaming of committing it.”
“Lady Geraldine’s body was found in some sort of hide-out in the East End, I believe,” Gurth said, and now his voice was perfectly steady and equable.
“A hide-out very carefully hidden,” Bobby agreed. “Most elaborate precautions were taken, and the place itself was care-fully chosen. A high blank wall opposite, which meant no inquisitive neighbours on the watch. The shop people say they saw nothing and know nothing. In working hours they were always busy in the shop, and outside working hours they never went near the place. They don’t think there was often any one upstairs during the day. Gas, ele
ctricity, water, were all laid on from the shop services, so that even the gas and water people and so on didn’t call at the flat upstairs. They generally paid their rent, after deducting payment for gas and the rest of it, by dropping what was due through the letter-box of the side door. The whole business thought out to the last detail.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Gurth repeated. “I had no idea anything of the sort was going on.”
“I must ask you a personal question,” Bobby said. “I ask it because a letter was found in Lady Geraldine’s bag. It was from you. I think it may fairly be described as a love-letter—even a passionate love-letter.”
“I suppose you had to read it,” Gurth said angrily.
“Letters found in a murdered woman’s handbag can hardly be regarded as private,” Bobby answered. “What were your relations with Lady Geraldine?”
“I wanted to marry her,” Gurth said. “She wouldn’t say anything. That’s all.”
“I must apologize for mentioning it,” Bobby said. “But I’m probably not the first to have noticed your unusual good looks. I’m told it’s hereditary in your family. Certainly Colonel Godwinsson had them when he was a young man, and he’s a most striking, impressive figure still. Your brother Leofric, too. I imagine that you’ve often found women aware of it.”
“It didn’t seem to make any difference to Gerry,” answered Gurth. “All she did was to rag me about it. Plenty of girls wanted to flirt, if that’s what you are getting at. Some of them made beastly nuisances of themselves—especially the older ones. Made me sick, some of them. Gerry wasn’t like that,” and again his voice shook with an emotion he could not wholly control.
Bobby found himself wondering if Lady Geraldine’s in-difference to Gurth’s good looks had not been a main factor in attracting him to her. And that that attraction had been strong, possibly even passionate, Bobby felt convinced. Probably Gurth had grown tired of the easy conquests he so often experienced, and had found a challenge and an incentive in her indifference. Into what strange and dreadful paths might not that passion—if indeed so strong a word could be justly used—have led him?
Grim possibilities there, Bobby felt, and yet at present suppositions only. On a sudden impulse he got up and from behind a filing cabinet, where it had been inconspicuously hidden, he took out the umbrella found in the rooms over the Yates shop. He laid it on his table. Gurth said:
“That’s mine. How did you get hold of it?”
CHAPTER XXIX
FRIENDLY CHAT
“So I understand,” Bobby said. “We’ll come to that later on.”
“Why?” Gurth asked. He had a challenging and uneasy air. “What about it?” he demanded. “It’s my umbrella all right. What’s the idea?”
“The truth, the facts,” Bobby told him. “Two murders committed, and perhaps a third in contemplation. It entitles me, I think, to ask for full co-operation. Police are pretty helpless without the help of the public. It is they who do the work. We only take the pay and the credit—or blame. Generally the latter.”
“Well,” Gurth muttered. “Well.”
“I am taking it for granted,” Bobby went on, “that you wish to see the murderer of Lady Geraldine brought to justice. It seems to have been a very specially brutal affair, very deliberate. I am sorry to press you, but this may be important, and I do beg of you to give me a perfectly candid answer. Had you any reason, even the slightest, to think that any one else was more fortunate? With Lady Geraldine, I mean.”
“Well, of course, I wondered,” Gurth admitted. “She always said there wasn’t. Plenty of chaps hung around her, but she never seemed to take much notice of any of them.”
“There seems to have been a clergyman, a Mr Brown, who came to see her fairly often,” Bobby remarked, and this produced from Gurth a faint and passing smile.
“That blighter?” Gurth said. “Sort of religious maniac. He came to cadge for subscriptions—pretended he wanted to convert her, but it was her money he was after. He tried to convert me once. I’m afraid he hadn’t much success. I shut him up. I told Gerry to cut him out. He used to upset her with his talk of hell fire and all the rest of it. My own idea is she paid up as a kind of insurance. Regular fanatic—tried to look shocked if any one even said ‘damn.’ I expect he said it himself and worse when he was alone.”
It was Bobby’s turn to smile now, for, if his own suspicions were right, he thought Gurth’s remark was much nearer the truth than Gurth himself probably imagined. He opened a drawer of his table and took out the photograph of dead Joey Parsons, taken in the hospital mortuary and touched up later to make it look as much as possible like that of a living man. He passed it across the table to Gurth.
“Do you recognize that now?” he asked. “I showed it you once before.”
“There’s a likeness,” Gurth said after he had studied it for some moments in silence. “I told you so. I’m not sure. I only saw him once or twice. Different somehow. There’s a queer sort of look about it. It isn’t that Cy King man you were talking about, is it?”
“We haven’t established identity yet,” Bobby answered, “but it’s not Cy King. So far as you know, then, though Lady Geraldine had plenty of admirers, there was no one she seemed to favour?”
“No, there wasn’t,” Gurth said positively, and Bobby was inclined to think that his eager and jealous eye would soon have noted and resented any sign of preference Lady Geraldine had shown.
“What about your brother, Leofric?”
“Leofric?” Gurth repeated. “Good Lord, no! What on earth made you think of him? You do get some cracked ideas.”
“Oh, yes, rather,” Bobby agreed whole-heartedly. “And sometimes the most cracked of the whole lot turns out the right one. You feel sure, then, that Leofric …”
“He hardly knew her. He was away on foreign service nearly all the war years. Besides, he was Mona Leigh’s meat, poor devil.”
“You mean she was in love with him?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“More so than he was with her?”
“Definitely. But he hadn’t a chance. That girl knows just what she wants and means to get it. I told him once his only chance was to run for it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said she could run faster.”
“I think you know he is in hospital after a somewhat mysterious attack on him near the place where Lady Geraldine’s body was found?”
“Yes I’ve been there. They won’t let anyone see him—not to talk, that is.”
“You know, too, that he was held for questioning after the theft of the Wharton jewellery?”
“So was every one else, weren’t they?”
“No. Questioned, yes. But not held.”
“Well, they let him go again—with apologies.”
“You know also that he is believed to have been seen near Angel Alley shortly before a man named Joey Parsons was. murdered there.”
“No, I don’t, and I don’t believe it,” Gurth answered. But he had paused before speaking, and his manner was not very convincing. “Look,” he said more firmly, “I’m not going to say anything about Leofric. Ask him yourself anything you want to know. I don’t think you have any right to cross-examine me about him.”
“None at all,” agreed Bobby. “But I haven’t. For one thing, our talk hasn’t been a cross-examination at all—an examination-in-chief, if anything. Cross-examination doesn’t mean close questioning. I should have preferred to say we had been having a friendly chat. And I haven’t asked you any questions about your brother. I asked about your personal knowledge of certain facts concerning him, facts that seem both relevant and important.”
“What you mean, I take it,” Gurth said, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if he felt a need to choose his words, “is that you’ve heard Leofric has been a bit rackety. He’s not the only one. It takes a bit of time to settle down after you’re demobbed. Especially when it’s been foreign service nearly all the time. Has
Mona been saying anything? I expect you would try to get it out of her. That Wharton jewel business did it. After that she felt it was her mission in life to save him.”
“Save him from what?”
“Oh, bad companions.”
“She never hinted anything of the sort to me,” Bobby said.
“Didn’t she? She tried with the dad once, and got put where she belonged. The dad wouldn’t stand for any one trying to come between him and one of us. Pretty big ideas he has of the rights and duties of the head of the family.”
“The ‘patria potestas’?” Bobby asked, smiling; and Gurth looked surprised, as if wondering how a mere policeman could ever have heard of it, but said nothing. Bobby went on: “You had an elder brother, hadn’t you?”
“You mean Harold? A half-brother. The dad’s been married twice. The Germans got hold of the poor devil at the beginning of the war and shot him out of hand. Called him a spy, and afterwards said it was all a mistake and how sorry they were. I never saw him.”
“How was that?”
“Oh, under his mother’s will he forfeited his money if he came to England before he was thirty, I think it was. I forget. To preserve him from the ‘corrupting influence of outworn British feudalism and keep his American democratic instincts uncontaminated’. I think that’s how the will put it. France was as near as he dared come. The dad went to Paris once or twice to see him there. I don’t gather they hit it off very well.”
“To go back a little,” Bobby said. “Did Colonel Godwinsson share Miss Leigh’s feeling that your brother was getting mixed up with bad companions?”
“Ask him,” Gurth said with a shrug of the shoulders. “There’s not much he does miss, and not much he says till he has it all, and then he drops on you like a ton of bricks. Well, if that’s all, what about my umbrella? Can I have it now?”
“Sorry,” Bobby answered, “but I think for the present we must ask you to let us keep it—exhibit so and so. When did you lose it?”
The House of Godwinsson: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 19