The House of Godwinsson: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

“I don’t know exactly. I missed it a few days ago. How did you get hold of it?”

  “It was on the landing outside the room where Lady Geraldine’s dead body was found.”

  Gurth hesitated, stared, was silent. It was evident that he was slowly beginning to appreciate the significance of this. Bobby waited. There was a long pause before Gurth said:

  “I don’t even know where that is—Angel Alley, I take it, or thereabouts.” He stared at Bobby defiantly. “All I can say is that I lost the thing and I can’t say when or where.”

  “Did you report the loss to the police? It seems quite valuable, and good umbrellas are as scarce as most things.”

  “No. I never thought of the police. I was expecting it to turn up somewhere. Look. Has all this anything to do with the Cy King, was it, you were talking about?”

  “Not that I know of,” Bobby answered. “Why?”

  “I’ve noticed a rather shady-looking customer hanging about the garage where I keep my car. I didn’t take much notice beyond wondering what he wanted. But then later I thought I saw him again near where I live, and after that I noticed him in the Tube. I rather thought I would speak to him if I saw him again. Anyhow, I haven’t. Of course, it may have been only my fancy.”

  Bobby asked him to describe the man. Gurth’s description was as vague as is that given as a rule by the untrained observer. But it could have applied to Cy King, though no doubt also to many thousands of others. Nothing at first sight to distinguish Cy King from any other of those shabby, furtive inhabitants of the borderland between crime and just not-crime who are only too plentiful in London at present. All the same, disquieting in view of the threats that Tim Stokes had reported and so clearly believed in so implicitly.

  “If you see him again,” Bobby said, “let us know at once. Mention my name, so that I can be told immediately. Cy has gone underground. There’s no charge we can bring against him at present, but we could pick him up for questioning. Not that that will do much good. Still, it would let him know we were watching. It might prevent his carrying out his threats—that is, if he has really made them. I don’t think I need trouble you any longer, Mr Godwinsson, though I may have to bother you again. In the meantime I am deeply grateful for the information you’ve given.”

  “I didn’t know I had,” Gurth said with a slightly disconcerted air, as though that was the last thing he wished to do. He got up to go. “I don’t see what right you have to stick to my umbrella,” he complained.

  “Oh, I do hope you won’t object,” Bobby said amiably. “You see, it really is important. Of course, it will be returned in time. Meanwhile, if you could remember when and where you lost it, it would be a great help.”

  “I’ve no idea,” Gurth repeated. “I may have left it anywhere. I may have forgotten it at the office, and one of the cleaners may have taken it. Or one of the clients, for that matter. You get some queer customers sometimes in a stockbroker’s office. I don’t know. Or, for that matter, I might have left it in Gerry’s car. She gave me a lift sometimes.”

  Bobby let this pass without comment. It was a possible explanation, of course. But also a suspiciously convenient one. As with Mona’s story, no confirmation. Gurth was on his way to the door now, Bobby having filled in the slip that would take him past the constable on duty at the entrance. With his hand on the door-knob, Gurth said:

  “I suppose what all this means is that you think I may have done it?”

  “Every one connected with the case is under suspicion,” Bobby answered gravely. “We can’t be sure of any one’s innocence till we are sure of some one’s guilt.”

  “Well, now, then,” Gurth muttered; and, with sudden passion breaking through the self-restraint he had hitherto preserved, he burst out: “God in Heaven, man, I loved her!”

  “Even love is sometimes a reason,” Bobby said, and Gurth made no answer but went slowly away.

  CHAPTER XXX

  CONSULTATION

  Left alone, Bobby sat for some time, doing his best to sort out in his mind the impressions received from his talk with Gurth. He had he felt learnt this time things that were probably both important and significant. Presently he took a half-sheet of paper and on it wrote down slowly the names of all those who, so far as he knew, had been in any way concerned with recent events.

  First the Godwinsson family, the colonel and his sons. Next the others, Monica Leigh, Ex-Sergeant Stokes, Cy King, even Pitcher Barnes; and, finally, the two victims, Lady Geraldine Rafe and Joey Parsons, since the part these two had played seemed essential to understanding the problem. Underneath, in block letters, the very care with which he formed them indicating, by an odd contradiction, the doubts and hesitations in his mind, he wrote:

  “Motive: (A) Jealousy. (B) Theft. (C) Mixed A and B. (D) Unknown.”

  With this in his hand he went to consult a senior colleague. Not that he wanted to, or hoped for any special result, but he knew his own highly individual methods were often criticized severely, and that he was sometimes accused of playing for himself and not for the team. He suspected that this was one reason why his position in the police hierarchy was not yet very clearly defined and why he was still chiefly employed as what he himself called a ‘back-room boy’—that is, in lecturing to new entrants and in refresher courses to men back from the services.

  Now his senior colleague, glancing at Bobby’s half-sheet of paper, shook a doubtful head. He expected a report to be submitted in triplicate, with plenty of red-ink headings, a wide margin for notes, and to be at least a dozen pages long. Half-sheets of paper he could not help regarding as highly irregular.

  He said finally:

  “When you stress motive and insert ‘(B) Theft’, presumably you are referring to the Wharton case?”

  “That and others,” Bobby answered.

  “Although the Wharton jewels have been returned?”

  “I think,” Bobby explained, “that it is precisely their return which is causing the new trouble. Whether Cy King was one of the original gang I don’t know. But I’m sure that he is in it up to the neck now. Hi-jacking, very likely. I don’t know. But it’s clear he thinks he has been what he calls double-crossed. Hurt his vanity, lowered his prestige with his pals, disappointed his hopes. He may feel he has got to reassert himself at all costs, so as to stop the rot. Afraid of being given away by one of our contacts unless he keeps them all in terror. His sort rule by terror, and if he doesn’t keep it up he won’t be able to trust his pals to do what he wants.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder,” the senior colleague commented, “if Cy King hadn’t been the prime mover from the start.”

  “It’s possible,” agreed Bobby cautiously.

  “Got one or two murders to his credit already,” said the other. “Not much doubt of that.”

  “Very little,” agreed Bobby again, less cautiously this time. “Don’t want another, do we?” declared the senior colleague, and glared at Bobby as if challenging him to deny it.

  Bobby didn’t. It was indeed his chief preoccupation at the moment. He said:

  “That’s the danger. Anyhow, he is the prime mover at the moment, whether he was from the start or not.”

  “Only there’s this,” remarked the other doubtfully. “Is he the type to fit up the sort of place you found? Room of the Seven Lusts, that sort of set up?”

  “That may have been Lady Geraldine’s doing,” Bobby suggested. “No telling. Lot of careful planning there, and Cy King’s speciality is action—tactics, not long-term strategy.” The senior colleague grunted and turned again to that half-sheet of paper he privately so strongly disapproved of. He said:

  “How much do we really know about these Godwinssons—the colonel and his sons?”

  “Not very much,” Bobby answered. “I feel sure it was Colonel Godwinsson who was seen talking to Joey Parsons in Canon Square, at the car park there, shortly before Joey was killed. He denies it. I don’t accept his denial. He was clearly very worried about, and felt responsible for,
Lady Geraldine. He knew she hadn’t returned home. He may simply—and innocently—have been trying to find out where she was. If so, while he wouldn’t tell a lie to save himself, he very likely would lie himself black in the face, in his old-fashioned way, to save her. A point of honour to lie to protect a woman. Old-style version of the rate for the job. I haven’t put that idea to him yet. I didn’t feel the time was ripe. Perhaps it is now.”

  “Waiting for the time to be ripe,” complained the other. “That’s what you always say. Means missing the ’bus as often as not.”

  “There’s always a risk,” Bobby agreed. “Colonel Godwinsson’s own method, by the way. I’m told he says nothing till he is sure, and then comes down like a ton of bricks. A concentrated offensive when your preparations are complete, but not before. The Montgomery plan.”

  “What do you think of him personally?”

  “Of Colonel Godwinsson? I think he is the most dignified, impressive personality I have ever met. His standing in the community is the highest possible from every point of view. He would probably have played a much more prominent part in the world, but for the old tradition he seems to take quite seriously of his family’s rightful claim to the throne. But, then, his retired manner of life has in one way given him even greater influence. No possible suggestion of self-seeking, and it’s not every one you can say that of to-day. In an odd way, too, his family tradition makes him very democratic—inclined to favour labour claims. The ancient royal idea. All are equal before the king, and his duty to protect all impartially.”

  The senior colleague was looking very impressed. He was a man who had risen from the ranks and had not yet fully freed himself from the most insidious fault of the police in all countries—respect for persons and position. Now he suggested a trifle uncomfortably:

  “Sort of bloke we have to handle with kid gloves?”

  “Or he might raise a stink,” Bobby agreed; “that would ruin all our chances.”

  “Oh, well,” said the colleague resignedly, “kid gloves for the colonel. That’s understood. What about this son of his? Gurth, you called him. New name to me—is it German?”

  “Good old Saxon from before the Norman Conquest,” Bobby explained. “Chief thing we know is that he was deep in love with Lady Geraldine. Witness his letter we found in her handbag. Then there’s his umbrella. Highly suspicious, but no proof. You can’t judge a man from the umbrella he loses. He has his explanation pat.”

  “Looks like,” said the other, “as though he may have followed the lady to this love-nest of hers and killed her there in a fit of jealousy—and possibly Joey Parsons afterwards to cover up. Fits O.K. Only was the love-nest all her own, or was there some one else? Could it have been Gurth all the time?”

  “It could,” Bobby said. “It has to be considered.”

  “What about the other lad? Leofric, isn’t it?”

  “Well, Mona Leigh is in love with him—more so than he is with her, according to Gurth. I’m inclined to accept that. He seems rather a weak character—the Godwinsson strain rather run to seed. The general idea one gathers is that he comes very easily under the influence of others and finds it difficult to get free again—a sort of mingled loyalty and obstinacy. Weak characters often show it. Then we know he was picked up after the Wharton robbery and that an attempt was made to kidnap him by Cy King and his pals. Why? What they wanted with him isn’t clear. Probably they thought he might know something about the Blackamoor pendant and the Charlemagne jewel supposedly not returned with the rest of the Wharton stuff. And he is reported as having been seen near Angel Alley shortly before the murder there.”

  “And what,” demanded the senior colleague, “does all that add up to?”

  “Very little,” Bobby confessed. “But if we can fit it in with what else we know, or think we know, it may prove helpful.”

  “What about Miss Mona Leigh, apart from her being in love with Leofric Godwinsson?”

  “Well, she seems a very determined young woman who knows what she wants and means to get it. An example of Bernard Shaw’s theory of woman as the eternal huntress. Like the Canadian Mounties, she always gets her man.”

  “My old woman got me all right,” agreed the senior colleague, “but she gave me a hell of a chase first. Are we to accept her Putney Bridge yarn? Bit melodramatic—send the shivers up your back and play for sympathy? That it, do you think?”

  “Well,” Bobby said thoughtfully, “there’s no telling. No outside confirmation. But there is the way she seemed to get more and more scared, remembering. As if she hadn’t quite understood at the time but now it was beginning to register. She may have been acting. All women act by nature—born to the job. She denies she was jealous, but of course she was, and, on her own story, Lady Geraldine thought so. There may have been good reason for Mona’s jealousy. She may have followed Lady Geraldine on her own. If she did she may have taken the opportunity to rid herself of her rival. Quite easy, if Lady Geraldine took too much to drink and dozed off, to put a cushion over her face and hold it there as long as necessary. No telling what a jealous woman won’t do. Jealousy—temporary insanity. But fully responsible.”

  “In my opinion,” said the senior colleague, speaking with authority, “no woman is ever completely sane.”

  Bobby let this profound aphorism pass unchallenged. Later, when he repeated it to Olive, she gave it a grave and thoughtful assent, pointing out that only a degree of insanity could possibly account for any woman getting married. At the moment, however, Bobby contented himself with remarking that so far they had been talking of the jealousy motive only. But there was the stolen—and now returned—jewellery to be remembered. That, and no emotional entanglement, might be where the solution lay.

  “We haven’t been able to get proof,” he said, “but I think we are safe in following up the idea that Lady Geraldine was working in with a gang of expert jewel thieves. It was her job to give them information—such items as where it was kept, when it was going to be worn, when it was going to be taken out of banks and safe deposits and so on. We always felt something of that sort was going on. And now, on the evidence of the rooms where her body was found, there was some sort of emotional tie-up as well.”

  “Gurth Godwinsson?” asked the senior colleague.

  “We’ve been into that as far as we can,” Bobby said.

  “Cy King?” suggested the senior colleague. “He seems the sort of elemental male brute that does occasionally attract some women—God knows why.”

  “I know,” Bobby agreed. “Of Human Bondage,” he quoted. “And that doesn’t always mean the man going under to a woman. Just as often the other way round.”

  “Joey Parsons? Where does he come in?”

  “Which of him?” asked Bobby. “He turns up as all sorts of different people, and we can’t be perfectly sure it’s always the same. He was certainly also the Kilburn householder, for there we have his wife’s identification. For the rest, there’s only the evidence of the photograph—and that taken after death. Was he also the fanatical parson who preached hell fire and bullied subscriptions out of Lady Geraldine, and was he as well the jolly business man who took an interest in the boys’ club? Probable, but not certain. Nor is there anything that we know of to connect him with the Room of the Seven Lusts. All we can be sure of is that he is dead—or one of him.”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  TIM STOKES TELLS

  It was the next morning when Bobby, immediately after breakfast, went across to the garage where he kept his car, that one of the men employed there came forward to meet him.

  “There’s a bloke waiting for you, sir,” he said. “Don’t know what’s the matter with him—all in a twitter like. He wanted to wait inside your car. I told him to go to hell. I said, didn’t he know where you lived? Like a lump of jelly, he was, and I let him sit on the footboard. He’s there now on the off side, where no one can’t see him.”

  Bobby nodded, went towards the car, and was not greatly surprised when,
as he approached it, he saw ex-Sergeant Stokes peeping at him over the bonnet.

  “What’s this mean?” Bobby demanded sharply. “What do you think you are doing here?”

  Stokes emerged cautiously.

  “I’ve been warned,” he said, and wiped a perspiring forehead. “After this,” he said earnestly, “I’ll get a good, steady, respectable job. I know where there’s one going. Attendant at the—” and he named a night club in a Soho side street, a club Bobby was not quite sure could be classed under the heading ‘respectable’, even in these tolerant days, when psycho-analysis has shown us that the Ten Commandments are merely rather mischievous repressions of our natural instincts.

  “Well, Stokes, that’s your affair,” Bobby said. “But what are you dodging about here for?”

  “It’s Cy King,” Stokes muttered, and looked nervously all round, as if half expecting to see him lurking and sidling in the background. “I’ve been warned,” he repeated.

  “I’ve warned you myself,” Bobby told him. “To keep away from Cy King. But I don’t think a night club like that one in Soho is the place to do it. Your affair. Do you mean Cy King has been talking to you again? I rather want to talk to him myself.”

  “No, not him; a youngster name of Eddy Heron heard him talking about me.”

  “Eddy Heron?” Bobby repeated. “Oh, yes, I know—that’s the boy who wanted to get locked up safe out of the way, only our chaps smacked his behind and let him go instead. What about him?”

  “It’s what he heard Cy King saying—called me a copper’s nark trying to get back to be a cop again. Not much chance of that,” he added, glancing hopefully at Bobby.

  “None at all,” Bobby told him, and Stokes hardly looked disappointed, so well had he known what the answer would be.

  “Cy’s been saying more than that,” Stokes went on. “He’s been saying it was me did in Joey Parsons.”

  “Well, did you?” Bobby asked.

  “Me? I never,” Stokes cried. “Mr Owen, sir, you can’t be thinking that. I know I was in with Joey a bit more intimate than I said, but I hadn’t seen him or had anything to do with him for a week or more before he was put out. I was keeping out of his way. He got the idea I was nosing after that Lady Geraldine Rafe. I don’t deny I wanted to know for sure where she came in—a swell like her. And where they met, because I knew they must have a rendezvous on their own. Joey said the boss had noticed it and if I didn’t get out and keep out I was liable to find myself in the river with my throat cut. So I wasn’t sorry when I heard Joey had got his; and that’s why I went along to the hospital where I met you, Mr Owen, if you remember, so as to make sure. Because I thought it was evens Joey was the boss himself, though he always let on he didn’t do more than run errands. And now there’s Cy King saying the same about me going in the river,” and once again he looked nervously around as though still half expecting to see Cy King there, waiting for him.