“The worst punishment of all,” said Mr. Gayton, “is—immunity.”
“What they would like best, anyhow,” grumbled Bell.
“We mustn’t argue about it,” Bobby said. “All that is outside our duty. I believe Miss Bellamy is a newcomer, too?”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Gayton. He added slowly: “A strange, disturbing personality, but certainly not one in any way likely to be mixed up in a vulgar intrigue with a neighbour’s chauffeur. No, that I do not believe, whether Miss Cann’s story is true or not. Whatever the explanation I am sure it is not that.”
“In what way—disturbing?” Bobby asked.
“Have you heard her play?” Gayton asked.
“Once or twice.”
“Well, then,” Mr. Gayton said as if no further explanation were required. Then he repeated: “A disturbing element. Not, I fear, a good influence. Ever since she came, there has been—what shall I say? Unrest. Definitely. A kind of pagan element. I shall never forget the Sunday she played for us in church. It seemed as though what she played was a denial of the whole body of the Christian faith, as if she were telling us that hate is stronger than love, and that pity and mercy were no more than foolish weakness.” He paused and then as his two listeners watched him in wonder and surprise at this outburst, he said loudly: “Nietzsche in Music.”
“Well, I don’t know if all that has anything to do with us,” Bell said, a good deal puzzled.
“I think perhaps it has,” Bobby said thoughtfully.
“Why? How? How can it?” Bell demanded.
“I haven’t the least idea,” answered Bobby.
Bell grunted. Mr. Gayton began to walk on towards the house, saying something about not keeping Mr. Fielding waiting. The two others turned to accompany him and Bobby said to him:
“Would you say it is likely to affect everyone in that way? Or is it merely personal? In your own case, for instance?”
Mr. Gayton flushed. Possibly he had detected a hint of hidden meaning in Bobby’s last words, for indeed Bobby was thinking of the story Mr. Fielding had told of the vicar hurrying away from Miss Bellamy’s cottage, lest her playing should set him dancing on the lawn.
“I think it affects most people more or less strongly,” he answered now. “I can’t say it’s so with everyone, of course. You have heard her yourself, you say.”
“On our first visit,” Bobby agreed. “I remember it did suggest —the word my wife used was ‘warning’, I think. I thought it more like a kind of sending round the fiery cross, so to speak. A sort of summons to action—or to readiness for sounding action. One could almost hear the trumpets.”
“If she meant there was trouble coming,” Bell remarked, “she hit it all right. But how did she know?” Then he added: “Of course it’s generally a safe bet that there’s trouble on the way.”
“Is that how it affected you?” Bobby asked Mr. Gayton.
“I think,” Mr. Gayton answered in a low, abstracted voice, almost as if he were thinking aloud, “I think somehow it calls out the deepest, most hidden instincts of our nature. What is buried there, even beyond our own knowledge, it calls forth and brings to life. After that Sunday I mentioned I went to—well, to remonstrate. It had not been seemly. Whether intended or not, it had sounded like a challenge to the Church and all that the Church stands for. I don’t know if she saw me coming. As I opened the garden gate, she began to play. I had to listen. There is a strange force in her playing. I became conscious once again of feelings and desires and wishes I had thought long ago expelled from my life. Not evil in themselves, I hope and pray, but unseemly. A young man may quite rightly seek outlets for his energies that would be most improper and unseemly in one of my age and profession. A stricter discipline is required. It seemed as though an attack were being made upon it. I—I went away. I confess—” and Bobby, watching him closely, saw that his forehead was damp, that his full, loose lips were twitching nervously. “I confess I fled as from the accursed thing.”
“You would say,” Bobby persisted, “that others often have much the same experience?”
“Each according to his temperament and his temptations,” Mr. Gayton answered. “I do not suppose Miss Bellamy knows what her playing does. I do not think we must blame her. I do not think she understands. But I did feel—I do not think it was merely fancy—that after that Sunday there was less desire in the village to be friendly, to meet others half-way. I seemed to find an unhappy inclination to stand upon strict rights, to claim the utmost possible, to show a hardness towards others no practising Christian should show to any but himself—or to open and acknowledged sin. I remember well how one evening I found two of the village lads who had always been good friends fighting outside her cottage. Miss Bellamy was playing. It was as if she were playing to them. I’ve no reason to suppose she even knew they were there, much less what was going on.”
“What were they fighting about?” Bell asked.
“They couldn’t tell me. I don’t think they knew. My own belief is that Miss Bellamy’s playing had brought out the pugnacity and love of violence that does seem to be an innate evil in the young man. A form of original sin only to be conquered by discipline and prayer.”
“Well, I don’t see,” protested Bell in a perplexed voice, “why listening to a lady playing the piano should make two boys want to fight each other.”
“It is strange music,” Mr. Gayton said.
CHAPTER XIII
CROSS-EXAMINATION
Mr. Fielding had seen them coming and was standing waiting at the front door. He looked, as was natural, pale and worried, changed indeed from the perky, self-confident little man Bobby had met before. He said there was as yet no news of Biggs. Biggs had not come to the house for his breakfast as usual, but Mrs. Hands had not worried. Her attitude had been that what he didn’t want, he could go without. Mr. Fielding said with a faint smile that Mrs. Hands was a stickler for the proprieties, and that once or twice, when Biggs had appeared in his working clothes and with oily or greasy hands, she had packed him off again to tidy himself. So, although the terms of his engagement provided that he should have his meals in the house, sometimes in the morning he contented himself with what he could prepare on a gas ring in his own quarters. There seemed indeed, Mr. Fielding explained, a kind of private feud between housekeeper and chauffeur, and there had been some bickering over the disposition of Biggs’s rations.
“Mrs. Hands was friendly with the man I had before Biggs,” Mr. Fielding said. “I think she thought Biggs was in some way responsible for Cann’s leaving. I don’t know why. Cann left entirely on his own account as far as I know. I was sorry to lose him, though very glad to get as competent a man as Biggs in his place.”
Bell asked where Biggs’s quarters were. Mr. Fielding explained that Biggs occupied two rooms over the garage. The only possible arrangement, for there wasn’t a spare bed in the village. Mr. Fielding agreed at once to the suggestion that it might be as well to have a look at these rooms. Access, he explained, was by stairs at the back of the garage. The garage door was open. If that admitting to the two upper rooms was locked, they must do as they thought fit about breaking it open. For himself, he gave his full consent. But Biggs wasn’t there. There was no answer when he was called on the house ’phone. He couldn’t, Mr. Fielding said, imagine what had become of the fellow, but he would give him a good talking to when he did turn up. And then very likely Biggs would give notice and competent chauffeurs were hard to get.
Therewith Mr. Fielding retired indoors, taking the vicar with him, and the two detective officers made their way to the garage.
“Is that vicar,” Bell asked doubtfully, as they walked along, “as simple as he seems, or did he put in all that about the Rogers girl and her pistol as a hint where to look?”
“It’s a possibility,” Bobby agreed. “She’s a bit handy with firearms apparently,” he added, remembering the story Bell had told him of what had happened during her term of service in Egypt.
> “We’ll have to go into Mr. Gayton’s story,” observed Bell gloomily. “Bit difficult.”
“Hard to see,” Bobby agreed, “how either of the Rogers pair come into it. It’s hardly likely they can have had anything to do with the smash and grab raid.”
“Only thing you can be sure of,” pronounced Bell, and even more gloomily, “is that there’s a lot more to come out—and won’t, if it can help it. Got to be dug out and that won’t be easy—not by a long way it won’t. And what’s all this about some woman or another and her piano playing? Where’s that come in?”
“Miss Bellamy? Probably it doesn’t come in at all, though I think it does—somehow, somewhere. There are times when I feel as if the whole explanation lies in her playing.”
“Oh, well, now then,” Bell muttered. “I suppose she’ll have to be questioned,” he added with a sigh, “but I don’t know anything about music. Noisy,” he complained.
They had reached the garage now. It was large, with ample room for three cars. At the back was a small partitioned off space, used apparently as an office. There was an old roll-top desk, a chair or two and some shelves, holding various guides, maps, motoring manuals, a few paper-covered novels, and a number of odds and ends. The roll-top desk was open and a hasty inspection revealed no more than accounts, expense lists, bills paid and unpaid, and so on. Nothing apparently of any immediate interest. At the back were the stairs. The two men ascended these and entered first a small room, half sitting-room, half kitchen. Opening from this was the bedroom. The bed had not been slept in, and no toilet articles appeared to be missing or to have been used that morning. There was an empty suitcase, clothing in a wardrobe and in a chest of drawers. Everything in fact was as if the occupier might return at any moment. They began a swift methodical search and found nothing till Bobby, turning again to the wardrobe, discovered there a cash box tucked away to one side, out of sight.
“Locked,” he said, showing it to Bell.
“I suppose we had better leave it for the time,” Bell said. “We’ll have an independent witness present if we do have to open it. Biggs may turn up yet, but it’s beginning to look bad. I’ll send one of my chaps to wait here. If Biggs does show up, he can bring him along. I don’t like it very much,” he added.
“More do I,” said Bobby.
They left the garage then, taking the precaution to lock the door behind them with a key they had found hanging on a nail just inside. First they returned to the air raid shelter where the routine work was still in progress. More help had arrived, so it was possible to detail a man to stand guard at the garage, there to await the possible but now hardly expected appearance of Biggs. There were other matters to be attended to, other directives to be given, and then, Bell having satisfied himself that all was being carried out properly, he and Bobby returned to get their car and drive to the Rogers bungalow. Rhoda heard the car stop. She came to the door and opened it, standing there to watch them as they alighted. She stood very still. Her brother came to her side and said something. She took no notice. He went away. Bobby, coming with Bell up the garden path was aware again, and even more strongly, of the impression she somehow conveyed of an intense and passionate nature, held in fierce yet uncertain control.
“If she ever lets herself go …” he said to himself and then he thought: “Well, suppose she has …”
“Miss Rogers, I think?” began Bell, raising his hat. “I hope you’ll excuse …”
“Is it true a man’s been murdered?” she interrupted. “Is it true? Is it true Mr. Fielding’s chauffeur can’t be found?”
“Why, yes,” Bell answered.
Rhoda’s brother appeared abruptly at her side.
“That travelling salesman chap, isn’t it?” he said. “Well, we don’t know anything about it.”
Rhoda cut him short with a gesture that was only a lifted hand but nevertheless conveyed a passionate command for silence. He seemed to understand.
“Oh, all right, all right,” he muttered and went away again.
“Do you think he is the murderer?” she asked, though indeed she made her words sound less like a question than a challenge and a defiance.
“Do you, miss?” Bell asked.
She did not answer but went back into the house. She seemed to expect them to follow and they did so. They entered the large sitting-room or lounge that occupied almost the whole frontage of the bungalow. George was there. He had ensconced himself at his writing table, behind a barricade of books, papers, an old and battered typewriter and so on. Over it he watched them moodily as they came in. Rhoda, looking almost as sulky—or was it frightened?—sat down and pointed silently to two chairs for the two visitors. Bell apologized for disturbing them. It was, he said, as he well knew, having suffered himself, bad enough to have to face exams, without having to suffer interruptions as well. George looked contemptuous.
“I suppose you picked up that exam, story in the village,” he said with his most superior smile. “People simply can’t understand research work. If they see you with a book in your hands, they take it for granted you must be reading for an exam, so as to get a good job. The only idea in their heads.”
“Oh, yes,” said Bell, slightly puzzled.
“Research?” repeated Bobby, interested and trying to make his voice sound as impressed as he didn’t feel.
“Research,” confirmed George in such a tone as Mount Everest might use in speaking to a mole hill. “As a matter of fact, I’m engaged on a most interesting inquiry into the meaning and origin of the O.S.T.”
“O.S.T.?” repeated Bobby inquiringly, trying to remember what in the present world plethora of initials those particular letters referred to.
“Old School Tie,” George explained, still in his Mount Everest voice. “Many relate it—and I admit at first sight the idea seems plausible—to the ancient tribal totem by which the members of the tribe distinguished their semblables from others who of course in a hostile world had to be regarded as hostile. But I think I can show that in fact it is an unconscious symbolism of the infantile desire to return to the safety and comfort of the maternal womb.”
“Oh, come,” said Bell, and looked uneasily at Rhoda who was not listening and had no need to, since she had heard it all so many times before.
“The proof,” George went on, “lies on the surface. It can be seen in the brilliant colouring and loud pattern of the O.S.T., which is an expression of the need the infant feels to utter as loud a cry as possible so as to attract the attention of the protective mother.”
“Good God,” said Bell.
“Shut up, George,” said Rhoda suddenly.
“Well, I daresay they don’t understand a word of what I’m saying,” remarked George, still very much Mount Everest.
Bell agreed. Bobby, he supposed, might understand, but he certainly did not—nor saw any need to. He turned to Rhoda and repeated his earlier question.
“Do you think Biggs may be the murderer, miss?” he asked.
“No. Why should I? Why do you ask? Why should I think anything when I don’t even know what’s happened. Tell me.”
“We don’t know much ourselves at present,” Bell admitted. “An unidentified man has been found shot dead in the grounds of Mr. Fielding’s house. Biggs can’t be found and his bed hasn’t been slept in. We should like to find him and question him. Can you give us any information?”
“Of course not,” interrupted George. “What on earth have we got to do with it? Nobody with any sense—I mean we only heard by pure chance … it’s … it’s idiotic …” He seemed to be about to launch into a tirade but Rhoda turned and looked at him and he stopped. “Oh, well,” he said angrily.
“I don’t know what there is you think we can tell you,” Rhoda said in those careful, restrained tones of hers that seemed to put into each word, even the simplest, a strange, deep significance. She was staring at them with passionate intensity. “Tell me what you know,” she said, or, indeed, commanded.
“No more than I’ve said already,” Bell answered.
“Well, that’s not much,” she retorted, and seemed to retire into her own thoughts, and it was as though they were thoughts that burned and throbbed as with an inner life of their own, as if indeed they were almost tangible in their intensity.
“There’s this,” Bell said. “The dead man was shot. The firearm used can’t be found. It is necessary to check up on all reported in the vicinity. Our information, miss, is that you are in possession of a pistol and that you’ve been seen cleaning it.”
“Doing what?” George exclaimed from behind his barricade of books and then he began to laugh. “That old woman told you, I suppose?”
“What old woman?” Bell asked.
“The one going about in trousers and calling himself the vicar,” George explained. “Physically male no doubt, but spiritually the complete old maid.”
“Never mind that,” Bell said. “I want that pistol, please.”
“There isn’t one,” George told him. “The dear vicar couldn’t tell a pistol from a feeding bottle.”
“It was a gas lighter,” Rhoda explained. “One of those they sold before the war, shaped like a pistol. I was trying to get it going again.”
“They won’t believe that, you know,” George said jeeringly. “They’ll be sure now it was you bumped off the poor devil they’ve found. They’ll have you in the dock before you know it. Police,” he said contemptuously.
“You deny the possession of any pistol or other firearm at any time recently?” Bell asked.
“Of course she does,” said George.
“Will the young lady answer for herself?” Bell persisted.
“I deny it absolutely,” Rhoda said. “You can search the house if you don’t believe me.”
“No, they can’t,” snapped George. “I’m not going to have my papers all turned upside down.”
Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 10