Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Where is the body?” Bell asked.

  “In the air raid shelter.”

  “The air raid shelter?”

  “That’s right. We’ve suspected sometimes tramps used it for sleeping in. One reason why I wanted it pulled down.”

  “Is it a tramp, do you think?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I didn’t stop to look. I felt I might be sick and I wanted to get help. I can’t think what’s become of Biggs. I haven’t seen him since last night just before I went to bed. I told him I shouldn’t want him this morning and he said he would give the car a look over. Said it needed it. Now I can’t find him anywhere and Mrs. Hands is in hysterics. I’ve had to do everything myself—everything.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “It was the dog barking,” Fielding explained. “Mrs. Hands heard it. She went to see what was the matter. She thought perhaps it was a tramp and she had better send him away. The dog was near the air raid shelter, howling. Mrs. Hands took a look and bolted back to the house. I don’t blame her. I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it must be some drunk or someone sleeping out. I went to look. It was an awful shock.” He paused again to dab at his perspiring face. “An awful shock,” he repeated.

  “I’m sure it would be,” Bobby murmured sympathetically.

  “Where is the air raid shelter?” Bell asked.

  “In the orchard, at the back of the house,” explained Bobby. “Mr. Fielding showed it me the other day.”

  “You won’t want me?” Fielding asked. “Mr. Owen can show you. There’s Mrs. Hands, too. In the state she’s in she’s not fit to be left. I must try to get hold of someone from the village. I’ll send Biggs if I can find him. You’re sure you won’t want me?”

  “No, that’s all right,” Bell said. “You’ll stay around though, won’t you? I shall want to take a statement later. You didn’t touch anything, I suppose?”

  “I took one look,” Mr. Fielding assured him, “and then I got away as fast as I could.”

  He went back to the house and Bobby led the way round to the small orchard where the air raid shelter stood. It had been dug out to a depth of about five feet below the surface of the ground, with surrounding brick walls another five feet in height. This had given space for three tiers of bunks, with three feet or so between each, on each side. At the north end, where the entrance had been, the wall had been completely levelled. At the south end, it was still intact, but demolition had made good progress on both side walls. On the west indeed demolition was nearly complete. The resulting bricks and rubble, together with the earth that had been piled on the corrugated iron roof for further protection had filled up the interior of the shelter to within a foot or less of ground level. On this piled-up mass of debris lay a man’s body.

  It was that of a man of middle age, certainly not a tramp, though somewhat shabbily dressed. But that is little to go by in days of clothes coupons. Well nourished, Bobby thought. Probably a member of what is called the lower middle class, a shop assistant perhaps, or one of the more poorly paid clerical workers. Almost certainly not a man who worked with his hands. The face had acquired something of that repose and dignity that death often gives, though still the glazing eyes stared upwards as in wonder and surprise, as though those had been the last impressions of the departing spirit.

  There were, close inspection showed, three wounds. One was apparent, for a bullet had drilled a hole right through the centre of the forehead, a small, neat aperture that had bled only a little. From his knowledge of gunshot wounds, Bobby suspected that the exit wound would be much larger and have bled much more freely. The bricks and earth and rubble, near where the head lay, showed signs of this, though much of the bleeding that had occurred had evidently soaked away through the interstices of the debris.

  The other two wounds were much less apparent. They were in the chest and again bleeding had been small. Bobby expected that with both of these there would be no exit wounds, the bullets being probably still in the body. One wound was nearly hidden by a fold of the coat, disarranged by the fall. Both Bobby and his companion agreed that the weapon used had probably been a small automatic. If so, it was likely the thrown-out cartridge cases would be somewhere near.

  All this was noted and observed from the edge of the shelter. The two detectives did not wish to go nearer, to disturb either the loose debris on which the body lay or the body itself, till further help arrived. At one time, though, Bell, catching his foot on a course of bricks where the west side wall had been nearly levelled, had a narrow escape from overbalancing to fall headlong into the shelter on top of the dead body. Fortunately Bobby was able to catch him just in time, so preventing a fall that would have considerably affected their decision not to move or touch either the body or the environment until both a doctor and further technical help arrived.

  In the meantime they began a close search of the ground near.

  It was not very rewarding. The long, thick, overgrown grass had preserved no trace of footsteps and showed no sign of any struggle. They did indeed discover three thrown-out cartridge cases to confirm their belief that the weapon used had been a small automatic. Expert examination would probably reveal the actual type and make. The position of the cartridges seemed also to suggest that the victim, when shot, must have been standing where his body now lay, that is, within the limits of the half demolished shelter.

  “Only, if that’s so,” Bell asked, “what was he doing there? He can’t have been meaning to sleep in the place. No roof and all that rubble to lie on.”

  “No,” agreed Bobby, thoughtfully. “No, difficult to say.”

  “Might have used it before and came to have a look,” suggested Bell. “Mr. Fielding did say tramps sometimes slept there. But this chap doesn’t look like a tramp. Might have been trying to hide, perhaps.”

  “That’s possible,” Bobby agreed, but with little conviction.

  “Got to get identity established first of all,” Bell said. “Any ideas?”

  “Same as yours, I expect,” Bobby answered. “Seems to answer to the description given of the travelling salesman we’ve been told about and his dispatch case full of jewellery young Rogers was so sure wasn’t worth anything. All the same, it does seem to have included an opal ring of worthwhile value.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Bell said. “Fielding says his chauffeur can’t be found. Looks like motive and murder both pretty plain?”

  “So it does,” agreed Bobby, but with doubt in his voice, and now Bell shook a despondent head.

  “You don’t get things handed to you on a plate like that,” he admitted. “At least, not if you’re me, you don’t. When things look dead easy, you may be dead sure there’s a snag in it somewhere.”

  Bobby could not have been more heartily in agreement.

  “But this chauffeur chap has got to the found,” Bell added, and again Bobby was in hearty agreement.

  “It looks to me,” he said, “as if there’s a bag of some sort under where the body is lying. I should say that when the chap was shot he fell on it and pressed it down into the loose rubble where he had been standing.”

  Help arrived; the Dr. Stevens summoned by Mr. Fielding; Bell’s two assistants; the technicians, photographers, finger-print experts and so on, sent in haste from headquarters. The body was moved and under it was in fact a dispatch case. Bell opened it. Within was a glittering mass of jewellery. Rings chiefly, but other articles as well. The doctor left his examination of the body to stare. One of Bell’s sergeants said:

  “That’s the smash and grab loot. This bloke must have been trying to hide it on his own and his pals knew. So they put him out but hadn’t any notion the stuff was there, waiting for them.” Bell had been looking more closely at the contents of the dispatch case. He said in a voice from which tears were not far distant:

  “All dud stuff, and fourth rate at that. The whole lot’s not worth a fiver.”

  CHAPTER XII

  NIETZSCH
E IN MUSIC

  The technicians were by now all absorbed in their respective tasks. An ambulance had arrived to remove the victim’s body for the post-mortem the doctor was to carry out. Bobby suggested to his companion that as there was nothing much more they could do until the routine work had been completed, and more information was available, it might be as well to find out if Biggs had put in an appearance yet. Bell agreed, and they moved away towards the house. Emerging on the drive, they saw hurrying towards them an elderly man and, at a little distance behind, Taylor apparently in pursuit. Seeing them in front of him, the elderly man paused. Taylor came up, looking very red and angry.

  “I told him there was orders against it,” he explained, “and off he went and sneaked in, he did, behind my back, through the fence somewhere. You come along back with me, Tom Sadler, and don’t try any more of your tricks.”

  “Free country, ain’t it?” retorted the man addressed as Tom Sadler. “No one’s got no right to stand between a bloke and his work.”

  “Does he work here?” Bell asked Taylor.

  “Odd job man and helps in the garden when he feels like it,” answered Taylor, still indignant, “and that isn’t often. Mr. Fielding was asking me only yesterday about him and what he was doing, because of his having promised a week ago to help pull down the air raid shelter but he hadn’t been near the place.”

  “That was my rheumatics, that was,” said Sadler with dignity. “Pulling down air raid shelters isn’t no work for rheumatics.”

  “Too much like hard work, you mean,” retorted Taylor. To Bell he said: “All he wants is to get to know what’s going on, so he can tell about it at the Much Middles Arms and get stood a pint or two in return.”

  “Well, you clear out now,” Bell said to Sadler, “and mind what you’re doing. If I want to see you later, I’ll send for you.”

  Sadler retired, grumbling, and as he moved off there arrived a newcomer, a tall man in clerical dress, the vicar, Mr. Gayton, as they guessed at once. He was thin and emaciated-looking, with a thin ascetic face; of him indeed Olive was moved to remark thoughtfully at a later date that in her considered opinion he ought to be fed forcibly at least twice a day. He had a loose-lipped, sensitive mouth, large dreamy eyes, and long beautifully shaped hands. An imaginative type, Bobby thought, and was inclined to guess that what the Church had gained, Art had lost. A difficult type, too, he reflected. Neither artist nor priest ever looked at things quite as did other men, and the combination would probably be more unpredictable still.

  Mr. Gayton seemed to know, or guess, the identity of Bobby and his companion. He greeted Bobby by name as a newcomer in the parish on whom he had been meaning to call immediately, and he had heard of the arrival that morning of an officer of the county police. He went on to explain his appearance. Mr. Fielding had asked him on the ’phone to come across. He hoped there was no objection. At the entrance to the drive there was a small group of gaping, staring villagers. They had told him that Constable Taylor had warned them against entering the Middles grounds and was at the moment engaged in fetching back old Tom Sadler who had tried to sneak in. Mr. Gayton had, however, ventured to assume that these instructions did not apply to him. Bell said that was all right. The only object had been to prevent the intrusion of a crowd of merely curious spectators. Indeed, he and his friend and colleague, Mr. Owen, of Scotland Yard, had been meaning to call on Mr. Gayton to ask if he could give them any information: first, about his discovery of the opal ring, and, secondly, about anything that might be useful concerning the village and its inhabitants.

  Mr. Gayton didn’t think he could tell them anything. Nothing useful, that is. On either count. He had called to see Mr. Fielding on some small point of parish business. Mr. Fielding was kind enough to act as treasurer to one or two parish funds. He had stayed only a few minutes. When leaving he had seen the opal ring lying right in the middle of the drive, near the gate. He could not be sure it had not been there before, but that did not seem likely. Moreover, as it happened, when he arrived the laundry delivery van was standing at the entrance to the drive and he had stopped to say a word or two to the driver, who was just returning from the house where he had left Mr. Fielding’s long delayed, long awaited, much desired laundry. Mrs. Hands, the house-keeper, had been ringing up to complain that Mr. Fielding hadn’t so much as a clean sock or a clean handkerchief left. So if the opal ring had been there at that time, not only he himself but the laundry delivery man must have failed to notice it. That seemed highly improbable. He had seen and heard nothing to suggest that any third person was near by at the time, but agreed that there were rhododendron bushes near that would have provided ample concealment for anyone wishing to remain unseen. He had thought it best to take the ring at once to Constable Taylor, an admirable man and a member of the church council. Taylor had asked him to say nothing about it for the time being and so of course he had not done so.

  “Mr. Fielding,” added the vicar, “was evidently much distressed when he spoke on the ’phone. I felt bound to come immediately. He seemed disturbed about his chauffeur. I couldn’t quite understand why. The unhappy victim is a stranger here, I’m told. Surely there is no suggestion that Biggs … it surely isn’t possible … ?”

  “No suggestion about anything so far,” Bell answered crisply. “Mr. Fielding did mention that he didn’t know what had become of his chauffeur. That’s all the information we have at present.”

  “Possibly,” Bobby suggested, “Mr. Gayton could tell us whether he thinks there is any truth in the story we’ve heard that there has been trouble between Biggs and a resident in the village, a Mr. Rogers, and that recently it resulted in a fight between them?”

  “Oh, have you heard that?” Gayton exclaimed. “Who told you? I don’t know if it’s true. There has been some such talk but I think they both deny it.”

  “Do you know anything about Mr. Rogers?”

  “No. No. He and his sister have not been here long. They bought the bungalow you may have noticed not far from the church. I called, of course, but I was not made very welcome. Indeed I might almost say they were not very civil. Mr. Rogers kept turning to his books. He let me see he wanted to get on with his work. I understand he is reading for an examination. Miss Rogers was cleaning a pistol. She did offer me a cup of tea, but she seemed unwilling to leave what she was doing. They have not seen fit to become members of my congregation and they take no part in village life. I did make another attempt. I thought perhaps my first call had been at an unlucky moment. But my knock was not answered, though I am under the impression that there was someone in. I may say I am sure of it, for I saw the young man at the window behind the curtain. I believe he was a conscientious objector during the war. A mistaken point of view in the opinion of the Church but one that must be respected.”

  “We can take it anyhow,” Bobby said, “that there has been gossip about a quarrel between Rogers and Biggs. Do you know what is supposed to have started it? There seems no obvious reason why there should be any trouble between a young man reading for an examination and a chauffeur in somebody else’s employ.”

  “I’m afraid a good deal of very foolish gossip goes on here,” Gayton admitted in a distressed tone. “I try to check it as much as I can.”

  “Quite right, too,” declared Bell. “Very mischievous is gossip. Leads to a lot of trouble. But there’s been a murder done and if there has been gossip, it may help to give us a line, if you would tell us what it is.”

  “I should not care,” Mr. Gayton answered firmly, “to repeat any story of the truth of which I was not sure. It might do grievous wrong.”

  “If people are innocent, they’ve nothing to fear,” Bell argued, but Mr. Gayton seemed unconvinced, pressing his long, mobile lips closely together.

  Bobby said:

  “We quite understand your point of view. Our duty is to try to get hold of any piece of information that may help to bring a murderer to justice. I am sure we may depend on your help.”


  “It is less important,” Mr. Gayton answered, “to bring a murderer to justice than to bring him to repentance.”

  “In my experience,” said Bell gloomily, “they only start repenting when they’re caught.”

  “All that’s a bit outside our province,” Bobby interposed. “What we have been told is that there was jealousy between Rogers and Biggs and that the cause was Miss Bellamy.”

  “Who told you that?” demanded Mr. Gayton, startled.

  “I don’t think we must give names,” Bobby answered. “We always say ‘From information received’. In this case there is information that Biggs was seen entering Miss Bellamy’s cottage late at night.”

  “Was it Miss Cann?” insisted Mr. Gayton.

  “What made you think of her?” Bobby countered.

  “She told me the same story. I could not believe it. I questioned her closely. She was quite positive and clear in what she said. I suggested that possibly Biggs had brought a message from his employer. It doesn’t seem very likely, I know, at that time of night. It was midnight, Miss Cann said. She said he didn’t come out again while she was there. I am inclined to think she waited for some time. I laid it upon her very strictly that she should say no word about it to anyone else. We must not be ready to think evil of one another. She promised faithfully. I am distressed she has spoken now.”

  “She might have got herself into trouble if she hadn’t,” Bell interposed, and added, not without intention: “It’s a serious criminal offence to keep back information. Liable to imprisonment. I must really ask you, sir, to distinguish between repeating gossip and giving information to the police.”

  “Especially,” Bobby added, “in a case of murder. If murder goes unpunished, it is apt to be repeated. Once a man has killed, it sometimes seems as if he were the more ready to kill again. It is as though the blood guilt, once incurred, is easier to endure another time. I have even heard it suggested that it’s a kind of despair. The blood guilt cuts the murderer off so completely from his fellows that he feels he may as well incur it again. Perhaps that is why Cain bore the killer’s mark, so that others might beware. The only safety for the rest of us seems to lie in sure punishment.”