Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “If we come here, we shall have fruit—fruit,” she said again, her voice lingering lovingly on a word of which she had almost forgotten the significance.

  “We aren’t here yet,” said Bobby.

  “Wet blanket,” said Olive.

  They fell silent then, sitting there and looking round, absorbing the quiet beauty of the surrounding scene. At a little distance was visible, above tree tops, a church tower, and they heard the clock slowly chime the hour, the sound gentle and muffled in the distance. Nearer, showed the chimneys of a large house, the building itself hidden by a row of tall poplar trees. No other habitation was in sight, except for a smaller cottage they had passed two or three hundred yards further down the road.

  “I suppose,” Olive said, drawing a deep breath, “it is real, isn’t it?”

  “It looks a jolly little place,” Bobby admitted, and quite forgot to add that there was sure to be a snag in it somewhere.

  Olive said:

  “You might pinch me, will you? so I can be sure I’m awake … ai–ee, you beast, I didn’t mean a hard pinch, I meant a teeny-weeny one.”

  “I wanted you to be quite sure,” Bobby explained.

  “I wonder,” said Olive, letting, in spite of herself, doubt creep into her mind, “I wonder what the kitchen’s like? I don’t suppose there would be any hope of a resident maid. They want cinemas and things. I might be able to get someone from the village to help.”

  “We aren’t here yet,” Bobby reminded her. “Time enough to worry about maids and help when we are. What do we do now? No one about. No ‘To Let’ board, nothing to show where you get the key. And the garden gate padlocked.”

  He sounded his horn in the hope of attracting attention. The only result was that Olive gave him a reproachful glance.

  “Oh, don’t,” she said, “not with everything so quiet and lovely. Couldn’t you go and look for someone to ask? They would know in the village most likely or there’s a house over there. You can see die chimneys behind that row of poplars. Or that cottage we passed down the road. They might know there.”

  “I suppose we have come to the right place,” Bobby said doubtfully.

  “If we haven’t,” Olive told him, “I shall probably die of heart failure on the spot. Serve you right, too.”

  Bobby was studying the directions given on the order to view they had received.

  “Seems all right,” he said. “It says, ‘Fern Cottage, Steep Lane.’ This is Steep Lane and there’s the name on the garden gate. It’s empty, too.”

  “Oh, look, someone’s coming,” Olive said.

  Walking up the road towards them was a tall woman, dressed entirely in black, a sombre spot in the bright sunshine, her shadow dark before her on the white and dusty road. She came slowly, not looking at them, her gaze directed straight down the road, far into the distance, but not as though there were anything there it watched; a strange abstracted gaze, as of one who lived only either in the past or in the future, or indeed it might be in some other world. A handsome, stately figure she presented in her slow progress towards them, and yet one that seemed, as it were, alien to and apart from all that lay around.

  It seemed at first as if she meant to pass them by unheeded, almost indeed as if she failed to distinguish them from their surroundings. Bobby, overcoming an odd reluctance to question one who seemed so much apart from common things, began to alight from the car, with the intention of speaking to her as she passed. But it was she who spoke first, and her voice was deep and strange in its suggestion of unheard, undetected undertones as she said:

  “Is it Mr. and Mrs. Owen? Mr. Fielding asked me to say he was sorry he had been obliged to go to town. He asked me to look out for you and give you the keys. When you have finished, will you please lock everything up just as it was and return me the keys. I live at the cottage down the road.”

  When she had spoken she turned without waiting for a reply and went back as she had come with the same slow, measured step, with the same strange manner of being somehow apart and aloof and separate. In a way nothing could have been more commonplace and ordinary than this production by a neighbour of the keys of the house they had come to look at. None the less, both Bobby and Olive felt they had been through an experience beyond the ordinary, an experience fraught with meanings, implications, inferences that were beyond their apprehension.

  CHAPTER II

  MUSIC OF DOUBT

  For a moment or two they stayed, watching that tall and upright figure as it receded down the road, a little black blob of shadow dark behind. Bobby turned to the garden gate and unfastened the padlock. As they were walking up the path he said:

  “I hope that woman isn’t going to be the snag in it.”

  “Well, how can she?” Olive asked. Then she said: “It was a tragic face.”

  Bobby opened the front door—each key on the bunch was neatly labelled. They entered the hall or rather the lounge, for so it was clearly meant to be. Everything seemed bright, airy, clean. The whole place had apparently been newly decorated. Olive felt that the lounge wall-paper was one she might almost have chosen herself, a shade too dark perhaps, but that could be relieved by a judicious choice of curtains and cushions. She said: “Let’s find the kitchen. If that’s nice, too … but I don’t suppose it can be. Nothing can be perfect.”

  “Wet blanket,” said Bobby.

  But the kitchen was perfect or at least so it seemed. Olive could only stand and gaze. There was even one of the new heat preservation stoves. She said slowly:

  “If you hadn’t been so mean about it, I should ask you to pinch me so I could wake up. This can’t possibly be real.”

  “I know now what the snag is,” Bobby said.

  “What?”

  “The rent. Most likely it’s a thousand a year.”

  “Then we’ll pay it,” said Olive with decision, “and I’ll take in washing or lodgers or something.” She went to the window. “Fruit trees,” she said with a kind of dreamy ecstasy, “one—two —eight—ten. Bushes, too. I shouldn’t wonder if those aren’t gooseberry bushes. I never saw a gooseberry last year. If they are and it’s a good crop perhaps I’ll let people I’m very fond of have one or two each. But that’s not a promise.”

  They proceeded to explore the rest of the house. There may have been defects—dark corners, awkward turnings, inconveniences of one kind or another, but if so they passed unheeded and unnoticed. There was only one room where the decoration aroused Olive’s criticism. She thought the paper gaudy and that the colours in the frieze and the paper swore at each other, as the French say. A little awkward and inconvenient in shape, too. It was one of the smaller of the four bedrooms, and, after careful consideration, Olive made up her mind that it would do nicely for Bobby who wanted a separate room to work in and for his papers, reference books and so on.

  They made a tour of the garden over which Olive uttered little cries of breathless delight, though Bobby was less enthusiastic. His back was already beginning to ache in anticipation. When Olive wondered wistfully if it would be possible to get anyone for occasional help from the adjacent village of Much Middles, Bobby wondered equally wistfully if there was any hope of finding a jobbing gardener there.

  Finally they tore themselves away. They locked up and went to return the keys. Olive was feeling a trifle depressed now. Reaction probably. She felt it was too good to be true and she even omitted to rebuke Bobby when he observed that he never feared the Fates so much as when they proffered gifts. Also he murmured something about lunch, but Olive shook her head firmly.

  “We’ve got to wait to see Mr. Fielding,” she declared, “even if we don’t have anything to eat all the rest of the day.”

  It was now Bobby’s turn to feel depressed.

  “What about having a try in the village?” he suggested timidly. “There should be a pub or something there.”

  “Mr. Fielding might come and bring someone with him and let it behind our backs,” Olive pointed out, though she di
dn’t care to think anyone could really do a thing like that. “We mustn’t run unnecessary risks,” she said.

  They had reached the other cottage now. This was a real cottage in the workaday sense of the word, built for a labourer for whom anything would do, though apparently there had been one or two improvements. When they knocked, the woman they had seen before came to the door. They could see her more plainly now. A ravaged face, Olive thought, yet striking and distinguished, that of one who had seen much, felt much, suffered much and not with resignation. Rebellion rather. The features were large, the nose prominent and defiant, the dark and distant eyes like two overshadowed pools to which the sun never came. Nowhere did she show any concession to current feminine fashion. Her complexion was all her own; her hair black, thick, abundant, was caught up at the back of her neck; and her figure was tall and straight and graceful as a mountain pine. When she saw them she did not speak but stood aside as if to make room for them to enter. Olive held out the keys, saying they had come to return them. The other made no attempt to take them. She said in that deep voice of hers in which it seemed there always sounded such far-off mysterious undertones:

  “Mr. Fielding will be back soon. You had better wait here to see him. That is, if you wish to take the cottage.”

  “Oh, we do,” Olive exclaimed. “It’s lovely. But we mustn’t trouble you. We can wait in the car.”

  The woman did not answer in words nor did she move from where she stood at one side, or make the least gesture of invitation. Nevertheless it was somehow as though she impelled them to enter and it was almost involuntarily that they obeyed. They found themselves immediately in a fairly large room that had evidently once been the cottage kitchen. Now the cooking stove had been removed and replaced by a sitting-room grate. One end of the room was occupied by a magnificent grand piano. The other furniture consisted only of a few wooden chairs and a table—but a table laid for four people. The walls were perfectly bare. There was not an ornament to be seen, not a photograph or anything of the kind, not even a vase of flowers. There were not even shelves to hold the piles of music heaped up on the floor. But before the fireplace lay a superb Persian carpet that must have been extremely valuable, though Olive s housewifely eye perceived at once that it badly needed brushing. The rest of the floor was bare boarding and equally in need of a sweep and a scrub. But the grand piano shone like the dawn and Olive decided that it was dusted and polished every morning. Their hostess said:

  “Lunch is not quite ready yet.”

  “Oh, but,” Olive protested, “we couldn’t think of troubling you. It’s awfully good of you—” she glanced at the other’s hand and saw no wedding ring, “Miss—”

  “Bellamy,” said the other.

  “Miss Bellamy. It is awfully kind of you, but really—”

  Somehow her voice trailed away into silence. She had the feeling that Miss Bellamy was not listening, that she had sunk again into some distant world of her own. Olive’s silence seemed to recall Miss Bellamy to her surroundings, as if only silence reminded her of the presence of others. She said:

  “Mr. Fielding asked me to say would you please wait for him, if you liked the cottage. He wants to get it settled. I expected him back before this. If he doesn’t come soon we will have our lunch without him.”

  “It’s most awfully good of you,” Olive repeated, “and we do want to wait to see Mr. Fielding. The cottage is just lovely. Only it’s a shame to bother you and food’s so difficult.”

  “There is plenty,” Miss Bellamy said in her indifferent tones. “That is, for a light lunch. An omelette.” Perhaps, though it did not seem that her eyes ever rested on either of them but only on some far-off thing visible to her alone, she saw that Bobby winced slightly at the word omelette, for the memory was still with him of that other omelette—‘omelette aux choux’—with which he had wrestled that morning. It was almost in explanation that she added: “Not dried egg—with eggs my hens laid this morning. There’ll be some fruit from the garden I bottled last year. I can’t offer you a fruit tart. I haven’t enough fat left.”

  “It sounds,” said Olive, slightly overwhelmed, “simply most tremendously delicious and wonderful.”

  “I’ve managed to get some cream,” Miss Bellamy added.

  “Cream?” repeated Olive incredulously. “Cream?” she repeated once more, and very nearly said: “What is cream?” so long was it since she had even heard the word.

  “There was some milk left over at the farm,” Miss Bellamy explained, “and they let me have it. So I set it and skimmed it this morning.” Then she added in the manner of one stating a simple fact, such as ‘it’s a fine morning’ or ‘it’s a quarter to one’: “I am probably one of the best cooks in England.”

  With that she went away and Olive turned helplessly to Bobby. “Well!” she said simply and then again: “Well!”

  “Let’s hope she is,” Bobby said.

  Miss Bellamy came back into the room. She was carrying a bowl of strawberries—no less—and another of cream, rather thin cream perhaps, for the skimming had been on the comprehensive side, but cream all the same.

  “I’ll give Mr. Fielding five minutes more,” she said, “and then, if he isn’t here, I’ll put the omelette on.” She put the strawberries and the cream on the table and said: “Strawberries are difficult to bottle, but I’m good at that, too.”

  “It’s … it’s wonderful,” Olive said, quite at a loss for words.

  “You can’t think how greedy I feel. I’m sure we both of us—”

  Again she left her sentence unfinished with that same odd feeling that Miss Bellamy was not listening, that she might as well have not been there for all she heard or heeded. And again Olive’s abrupt silence seemed to recall Miss Bellamy to her surroundings.

  “If you will come upstairs,” she said, “I will show you where you can wash your hands. Your husband must use the scullery. There is no bathroom here. The W.C. is outside.”

  “Please don’t bother about me,” Bobby said, slightly embarrassed.

  Olive obediently followed Miss Bellamy upstairs. Bobby went to look at the grand piano. It was not the sort of instrument one expected to find in a small country cottage. Then he went to look at the Persian rug lying before the fireplace. A lovely thing. He could not even begin to estimate its value. Yet everything else in the room was cheap and simple in the extreme. Olive came back. She said in a low voice:

  “Such a bare little room upstairs. A tiny iron bed with a mattress like a board. The dressing-table is an old packing case. There’s only one chair and that’s broken. There isn’t a single ornament or picture or anything, except a small oil portrait, of an oldish man with a grey beard, over the head of the bed. But there’s another Persian rug like this and just as lovely, and the toilet set on the packing-case table is tortoiseshell and silver and must have cost pounds. And then that grand piano!”

  Miss Bellamy reappeared. She had evidently heard Olive come downstairs. She said to Bobby:

  “I have put soap and a towel in the scullery.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Bobby said. “I was admiring your piano. I take it you are a musician?”

  “It takes more than a grand piano to make a musician,” she answered severely.

  She sat down at the instrument and began to play, slowly at first. Then her hands flew along the keyboard and the room was filled with a roaring torrent of sound, threatening, ominous, and angry as thunder crashing overhead. Then it softened, it nearly died away and rose again in a long lament, so that one heard in it the wailing of all women sorrowing for those who would return no more. It grew louder again and muttered and growled, full of menace and distant, helpless rage. A crash of discords that violated every known law of harmony and yet made a kind of angry harmony of their own, succeeded and ended. Neither Bobby nor Olive knew how long they had listened. It might have been two minutes or an hour. In listening, time had ceased. Miss Bellamy rose and without even looking at them went back to her kitchen. Olive
said:

  “My gracious.”

  CHAPTER III

  CROSSED FINGERS

  It was Bobby who spoke next.

  “Let’s hope,” he said, “she can cook as well as she can play.”

  “That’s awfully Philistine,” said Olive.

  “Well, I’m hungry,” Bobby defended himself.

  “So am I,” said Olive, hovering over the bowl of strawberries and fighting hard against the temptation to put in a finger and pull one out. “I wonder what it was she played,” Olive added; and Bobby said simply that, whatever it was, it was a one-er.

  An enormous limousine was drawing up outside. They both went to the window to look, saying to each other hopefully that perhaps this was Mr. Fielding. Before the car had well stopped a fat little man threw open the car door and hovered there a moment undecidedly, a small parcel in one hand. He put it back on the seat inside the car, jumped out, and came bounding up the path to the cottage, a little like an eager schoolboy running home. Without knocking he flung the door open and dashed in, crying:

  “Tilly! Tilly! Are you there?” Then he saw Bobby and Olive and stopped. “Oh, beg pardon,” he said. “Oh, is it Mrs. Owen? And Mr. Owen? How nice of you to be so prompt. I do want to get the thing settled.” He had rushed at them as he was talking and now was shaking hands vigorously. “I do hope you like it,” he said and dashed away to the inner door, the one that admitted to the tiny kitchen. “Oh, there you are, Tilly,” he cried and bustled back to the front door. “Biggs,” he shouted. “Biggs, I’ve left a parcel in the car—Fortnum and Mason. Bring it along, will you?”

  Miss Bellamy came in from the kitchen. This had originally been the scullery but a cooking stove had been inserted and the clothes boiler removed, so that now, with the addition of one or two cupboards, it made a fairly convenient kitchen. A small outbuilding had been added to serve as combined scullery and pantry.

  “I was nearly giving you up, Mr. Fielding,” she said, in her slow emotionless voice.