Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Never do that, Tilly, never,” he answered with an emphasis Miss Bellamy either did not, or did not wish to notice.

  “I must see to the omelette,” she said.

  There was a knock at the door. Mr. Fielding rushed to it and tore it open. The chauffeur was standing there, holding a small parcel in one hand.

  “Give it to Miss Bellamy,” his employer said and bounded back to the kitchen door. “Tilly,” he called. “Tilly. Biggs has got something for you. My contribution for lunch.”

  The chauffeur came into the room; a tall, dark, lean man, slightly disfigured by the scar of a wound that had ripped open his left cheek from eye to chin but had fortunately left the eye itself uninjured. He seemed to hesitate, as his eyes, as dark and deep as Miss Bellamy’s and nearly as large, flickered uneasily about the room, apparently searching for her. She came to the door of the kitchen. Impassively he crossed the floor to her and held the parcel out. Impassively she took it, while, if Mr. Fielding did not actually hop round the two of them, he certainly gave the impression of being about to do so. There was the oddest contrast between his exuberant vitality and the machine-like and disciplined movements and gestures of the other two. The chauffeur turned away; and now for the first time that flickering and uncertain glance of his, again a contrast to the steady deliberation of his every movement, seemed to become aware of the presence of Bobby and of Olive. On Olive it rested for scarcely a moment, but on Bobby his gaze was as intent as it was swift. His head tilted a little to one side in what seemed a characteristic trick of attitude, he stood and gazed with an almost fierce intensity. It was only for the fraction of a second that this continued and Bobby was not sure how much of the impression he received was not due to his own imagination, a little startled as he was by that swift, direct, and searching glance. Yet the impression remained that he had seen both recognition and perhaps defiance flash for a moment and pass in the other’s deep, dark, and hidden eyes, shadowed as they were by overhanging, slightly swollen lids.

  “Caviare sandwiches,” Mr. Fielding was saying, beaming with satisfaction. “I love ’em. First course, Tilly darling. Second course, one of your adorable omelettes, and do I see strawberries and cream? Not so bad, eh? Not so bad.” He swung round to address this last remark to Bobby and Olive. The chauffeur was turning away after that brief exchange with Bobby of glance given and returned. Mr. Fielding called: “Oh, by the way Biggs.”

  “Sir?” said Biggs, halting in the doorway.

  “This lady and gentleman are going to be neighbours of ours. They are taking Fern Cottage—at least, they are thinking of it. That’s your car up the road, Mr. Owen, isn’t it? If ever you’ve trouble with it, you ask Biggs. Biggs knows it all. Don’t you, Biggs? I mean, about cars?”

  “I try to give satisfaction, sir,” said Biggs and departed.

  Mr. Fielding winked at Bobby.

  “An excellent driver,” he said. “First class mechanic, but he does keep me in my place. I’m afraid he thinks me vulgar. I suppose I am. Am I vulgar, Tilly?”

  “No,” answered Miss Bellamy, who had been occupied opening the parcel and arranging the contents on a plate, “no, but you like to pretend to be.”

  “Well, there’s my character for you,” Mr. Fielding said, turning again to Bobby. “You’ll find it a nice quiet run to town—if you can make do with your petrol ration for the run, that is if you have to go to town daily. The train service isn’t too bad and I hear there are to be more ’buses, soon. High time, too.”

  “If you’ll sit down,” said Miss Bellamy, in her far off distant voice, “we’ll begin.”

  She had put the sandwiches on the table and had produced some fresh-gathered parsley to garnish the plate. Whatever her air and manner of abstraction might be, she seemed to be fully aware of all that needed attention and to attend to it promptly and efficiently.

  “Now, do tell me,” Mr. Fielding asked Olive as soon as they were seated, “what you think of Fern Cottage?”

  “I think it’s adorable,” Olive said, and, throwing all the prudence of the purchaser to the winds, she exclaimed: “Oh, Mr. Fielding, I do hope you can let us have it.”

  “It depends,” said Bobby, trying to be business-like, “on whether we can afford. What rent are you asking?”

  Mr. Fielding popped a sandwich into his mouth. His round little face puckered into a worried frown. He helped himself to another sandwich. Olive told herself she would simply have to scream if he took much longer to answer. After a thoughtful bite, he said:

  “That’s been bothering me more than a bit,” and his candid, childlike eyes seemed to ask Olive for sympathy and understanding. “The first thing I want to be quite clear about is that whoever takes it must promise to leave at the end of three years.”

  “We can promise that, can’t we?” Olive said, appealing to Bobby.

  “Certainly,” said Bobby.

  “Good,” said Mr. Fielding in a relieved tone. “You see I’ve promised Fern Cottage to a very old friend out East. He expects to be back at the end of three years—retired. He’s relying on me to let him have Fern Cottage—and I’m relying on him, too. Nice to have an old pal living near you can drop in on occasionally.”

  “There will be no difficulty about that,” Bobby repeated. “It could be put in the lease.”

  “Oh, so long as it’s fully understood,” Mr. Fielding said deprecatingly. “My lawyer did suggest a clause to provide for a fantastically increased rent at the end of the three-year period. But people have really got to trust each other sometimes. The world would come to a standstill if we didn’t. Wouldn’t work, you know, simply wouldn’t work.”

  “Yes, and the rent, Mr. Fielding?” asked Olive, who felt she really couldn’t bear the suspense any longer.

  “It’s difficult,” Mr. Fielding said again, and he looked more like a worried child than ever. “I don’t want to take unfair advantage of the way things are and yet as a business man”—he assumed a portentous scowl, as though he felt that for a business man a scowl was your only wear—“as a hard-headed business man I must consider the market. Frankly, I had no idea the demand was so great. I put an advertisement in all the papers—personal column, because they said if I didn’t it might be weeks before the thing appeared. I wanted to get quick action. I couldn’t believe it, the way the replies poured in. I couldn’t face it. Not reading all that pile. Would have taken me a month of Sundays. So I left it to luck. I’ve always been a gambler. My profession. You ought to see our vicar’s face when I tell him that. Well, anyhow, what I did was to shut my eyes, turn round three times, and make a grab. It happened to be your letter I got.”

  “Oh,” said Olive, turning pale as she thought how easily it might have been another.

  “I liked the way it read,” Mr. Fielding went on. “Brief, business-like. To the point. Good references, too. Not that I took them up. I never take up references. I trust my instinct. A gambler has to. When I hired Biggs I never took up his references. Took him on the strength of my instinct—and his war service. You noticed that cheek of his? Egypt, the desert.”

  “You were saying about the rent?” Olive reminded him, and how she longed to shake him and shake him till he answered.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Fielding. “Before the war, it was forty pounds a year. Cost of living doubled since then. That makes it eighty. But there’s an extra demand for houses—market very short. Well, add another twenty for that and call it a hundred a year. What do you say to that? Or am I being greedy?” Olive looked at Bobby, simply daring him to say ‘No’ at the peril of his life. But Bobby had no inclination to say ‘No’. Instead he said:

  “May we call it agreed then that we take the cottage on a three-year lease at a rent of a hundred a year?”

  “You paying rates?” Mr. Fielding warned him.

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Bobby, and Mr. Fielding immediately and warmly shook hands with them both.

  “Good,” he said. “Glad to get it off my mind. But I’m afraid
,” he said, shaking his head at them sternly, “you aren’t really good business people. I expected you to bargain. I should have been quite willing to take eighty or ninety. I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you that, but I do rather feel as if I had done you down for ten pounds. We’ll make it a non-repairing lease, shall we? Sort of compensation—to ease my conscience.”

  Bobby said that was a very kind suggestion; and Miss Bellamy appeared, carrying a superb omelette, as it were the apotheosis of all possible omelettes that ever were or could be. Mr. Fielding beamed on her, too.

  “All arranged, Tilly,” he told her, and seemed inclined to shake hands with her as well, had she not been fully occupied placing her omelette on the table. “These good people are going to be our neighbours,” he went on, “and I’m sure we shall all be very happy together.” Miss Bellamy said nothing but deposited the omelette before him. “Do I help it?” he asked and set to work. “Tilly,” he demanded, “how many eggs did you use?”

  “Twelve,” she said, and her heavy and sombre voice sounded very different from Mr. Fielding’s light, cheerful chatter.

  “Twelve,” repeated Mr. Fielding proudly, as if there were some great merit in the number.

  “Twelve,” repeated Olive in her turn; and this time pinched herself—she had no idea of trusting Bobby again—to make sure she really was awake, and that this incredible land where lovely country cottages were to be had for the asking and new-laid eggs were counted by the dozen, had actual material existence.

  Under the table she crossed her fingers, having a vague idea that this in some way acted as a charm to ward off bad luck when good luck seemed as though it must be waking the wrath of the jealous gods.

  CHAPTER IV

  HOUSE AT LAST

  The conversation became general. Bobby took occasion to mention that he had recently resigned his position in a provincial police force to accept an executive post at Scotland Yard. Mr. Fielding was very surprised and immensely interested. He made two or three little jokes about how safe they would all feel and how soundly they would all sleep, safe and secure in the glow of the prestige of Scotland Yard. At these jokes Bobby and Olive smiled wanly—few appreciate jokes about their own profession—Miss Bellamy listened with an unmoved countenance, and Mr. Fielding himself enjoyed them as much as most people do enjoy their own pleasantries. And what a remarkable piece of luck it had been that he should have happened to pick on Bobby’s letter. Pure luck. It might so easily have been that of someone else. He would have to tell the vicar how well it paid to be a gambler and trust to luck.

  “I do enjoy pulling his leg,” explained Mr. Fielding looking more like a beaming happy child than ever, “though he’s a jolly good sort all the same. Isn’t he, Tilly?”

  “He dislikes me,” observed Miss Bellamy in a tone of the most complete indifference.

  “Oh, you mustn’t say that,” protested Mr. Fielding earnestly. “No one could. Please don’t think that,” and both Bobby and Olive noticed that in Miss Bellamy’s dark, far-off eyes there showed for the moment a gleam, a look, of a kind of half puzzled, half resentful, wholly pitying tenderness. It went as quickly as it had come and again she seemed to remove herself from all present surroundings. To Bobby and Olive, Mr. Fielding explained: “It’s Tilly’s music. He doesn’t understand it. Called it pagan. Funny idea. My fault. I got Tilly to play the organ once when Mrs. Marks—she runs the Sunday school—was laid up. I suppose,” admitted Mr. Fielding thoughtfully, “it was just a bit startling.”

  “I forgot,” Miss Bellamy said, and again it was noticeable that however aloof and abstracted she might appear, however deep in a silence she seldom or never broke of her own initiative, yet she none the less seemed always aware of what was going on. “Sometimes I do. When I’m playing, I mean. I forgot it was church and they wanted a hymn tune.”

  Olive reflected that if instead of the expected hymn tune Miss Bellamy had treated a village congregation at morning service to such a display as she had just given, then it was no wonder the vicar had been a little startled. A remarkable performance and oddly disturbing. Olive said:

  “I’ve been wondering ever since what it was you played just now. It was wonderful, I’ve never heard anything like it before. I do wonder what it was.”

  “It was nothing,” Miss Bellamy answered carelessly. “Just what came into my head. That’s all.”

  “Tilly’s like that,” said Mr. Fielding proudly. “She’ll sit down and play something that makes you feel all turned over, if you see what I mean, almost as if you weren’t yourself any more. And two minutes afterwards, she hasn’t any idea what it was all about. Just comes and goes.”

  “Oh, Miss Bellamy,” Olive cried, “you ought to write it down, you ought really. It was wonderful.”

  Without answering, again as if she had not seen or heard, Miss Bellamy began to clear the table. Olive asked if she might help, but Miss Bellamy shook her head and went on alone with her task.

  “Tilly says she doesn’t want to be bothered,” Mr. Fielding explained; “not with these scraps and bits of things. Just incidentals so to speak, if you see what I mean. What’s really important, big, she puts down all right and when it’s ready, I’m going to see it’s heard by everyone. Everywhere. Worth waiting for.”

  “I’m sure it will be,” Olive said with emphasis, and though Miss Bellamy made no comment there came again into her eyes as she glanced at Mr. Fielding that same expression of half puzzled, half resentful, wholly pitying tenderness they had shown before.

  She had finished clearing the table by now and she disappeared again into the kitchen. Mr. Fielding said with a little chuckle:

  “Poor old vicar. What made it worse was he called next morning to talk it over, he said, and Tilly was at it again. Just playing, if you see what I mean, thinking at the piano she calls it. She says she hasn’t an idea what it was she played, just letting her fingers do what they liked, she says, but vicar had the scare of his life. I can’t make out exactly, but he says it was pagan—heathen, he says. Says he started by wanting to dance and what would the village have thought if they had heard of their vicar dancing in Miss Bellamy’s garden at ten o’clock on a Monday morning?” Mr. Fielding stopped to indulge in his rich gurgling chuckle. “I expect they would have wanted him unfrocked or something,” he went on; “what’s more, he told me that wasn’t the worst of it. I don’t know what he means but he says he turned and ran and he didn’t feel safe till he got to the church and that’s half a mile away. Stories did get about because he was seen running like mad and people wondered. It’s died down now.”

  “Odd,” Bobby said thoughtfully.

  “Well, I think her playing’s simply marvellous,” Olive declared.

  “It’s being out of touch with real things,” Mr. Fielding explained. “Vicar, I mean. Unworldly, they call it. A real good sort and people love him, but I can’t help pulling his leg at times now and then.” Mr. Fielding paused and bubbled over with his rich infectious laughter. “When I tell him I’m a professional gambler, he gets worried. If I called myself a general agent, which is what I am, or rather was before I thought I had enough to retire on, it would be all right. Not that I’ve retired altogether. I’ve still my office and I keep my secretary on. Didn’t want to sack her after all the years we’ve been together, so she goes every day to see to any correspondence. If there’s anything special she rings me up and I toddle along. I don’t often bite but I do sometimes. I bought some surplus government stores at auction the other day and sold the stuff at a good profit without even taking delivery. And just at the moment it’s almost too easy making money on the Stock Exchange. You apply for a big allotment of any new issue of shares. You get a few. You sell ’em on the spot at a premium and there you are. I’ve made a thousand or two like that, but I’ve dropped it now. Not sporting enough. Of course, you have to keep your head. Most people don’t and so they go smash. They hang on. I never do. As soon as I see my profit, I sell. But it needs discipline—self discipl
ine. It’s rare.”

  He paused and beamed on them, his chubby little good-tempered face, his candid smiling eyes, his general air of a happy trustful child strangely unlike those supposed to mark the professional speculator he was describing himself to be.

  He went on to talk again about Miss Bellamy’s music and then to ask a few discreet questions about Bobby’s work, which he thought must be very interesting. Bobby explained that it was ninety-nine and a half per cent dull routine and one half per cent violent action. Mr. Fielding supposed that at Scotland Yard they knew every crook in the country. He had heard about finger prints and thought it very interesting. He supposed they enabled the Yard to trace anyone they wanted. He picked up a glass and pressed his own fingers on them, calling on Bobby to admire the perfect impressions resulting. Bobby’s cigarette case was lying on the table and Mr. Fielding picked that up, too, and put his prints on it also. Not so clear, he pronounced, but he supposed the Yard experts could make them do if they had to. Bobby agreed that that was very possible and in response to further questioning explained that for the time he was chiefly occupied with instructional work—giving lectures, explaining new procedure, organizing tests of new methods and rehearsals of procedure to be followed in cases of emergency. He might for example send out an alarm of a supposed smash and grab raid somewhere, and see how quickly police cars arrived and if not why not? And how promptly and efficiently probable lines of escape were blocked and so on. Practice was necessary to make sure every man knew exactly what to do, once an alarm was given. Of course, care had to be taken to inconvenience the public as little as possible. The public expected efficiency but didn’t expect the process of acquiring it to interfere in any way with the public’s comfort or convenience.

  Presently Miss Bellamy came back into the room. After some more general talk, wherein Miss Bellamy took small part, Bobby and Olive departed. An appointment in town for the next day had been made so that the necessary preliminaries to entering in possession of Fern Cottage could be completed; and as Bobby and Olive drove away they heard once more music flowing passionately from the cottage where Miss Bellamy was now alone, Mr. Fielding having left at the same time as Bobby and Olive. Involuntarily Bobby stopped the car to listen; and Oliver shivered and was not sorry when it ceased as suddenly, as abruptly, as it had begun. It was as though the player had risen in the middle of a movement and gone away.