The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You take these threats seriously?”

  “I saw the way he looked.”

  “Can you produce any evidence that threats have been made in public?”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered. “It was at the ‘Rose and Dragon’ one night.” Then she paused and seemed to consider. “I see what you mean,” she said. “It’s possible the men who heard him wouldn’t want to come forward. They are all afraid of Osman Ford.”

  “Would you have thought what he said important if you hadn’t known of his quarrel with Mr Anderson?”

  “It was the way he looked,” she repeated.

  “I am afraid it is impossible to take police action on a look,” Bobby said; and probably he would have let the matter rest there had he not himself seen Osman Ford and been struck by the dark, glowing anger of the man.

  “You mean you won’t do anything?” Miss Earle’s voice broke on his thoughts, and there was a hard tone in her voice that reminded him oddly of how Osman Ford, too, had said almost the same thing in almost the same manner. Curious, he thought, how much these two, the young girl and the middle-aged man, seemed to resemble each other, not only in physical bearing, but also in the impression they gave of passions and emotions stronger than the ordinary.

  “I think all I can do,” Bobby said presently, “is to have a talk with Mr Ford and try to give him some sort of discreet warning. But it will have to be very discreet,” he added with a faint smile, for he felt that unless he was very tactful indeed he might easily get Mr Ford sending in complaints of officiousness and meddling.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She stood still for a brief moment, proud, impassive, vaguely challenging. Then in a second she was gone, leaving him wondering a little at the impression she had made on him.

  “A dangerous, vivid, vital sort of girl,” he reflected, and he wondered much how one who seemed so violent, so primitive even, in her emotions, fitted in the dull ordinary routine of a lawyer’s office.

  She ought to have lived, he thought, in a more highly coloured, more picturesque age, not one in which even war has become a factory product, and death is dealt out by machinery.

  He crossed the room to the window. In the street below, her tall, thin form and long, swinging stride made it easy to pick her out amidst the hurrying crowd on the pavement. Again he was struck by something aloof, almost elemental about her—primitive was the word that had occurred to him before. The thought came to him that it matched curiously with something equally primitive, or elemental perhaps, in the Osman Ford of whom she seemed so much afraid, though less for herself than for her employer. Was that, he wondered, because instinctively she recognized in him a spirit akin to her own, and therefore knew, by instinct also, what headstrong strength of passion it concealed?

  That night at dinner, chatting with Olive, his wife, he described the impression made on him by these two visitors and remarked that he thought they would have been well suited to each other had they chanced to meet in favourable circumstances and had they been more of an age. But Olive shook her head.

  “It’s not always like that suits like best,” she said. “Like and unlike often get on better.”

  Bobby rubbed the end of his nose and thought this over. Possibly this remark of Olive’s explained the attraction Anne Earle apparently found in Mr Anderson. Bobby had never seen him, but the picture in his mind was of a staid, elderly, shrewd, calculating lawyer, as different as possible from the enigmatic young woman who had come to see him. He said presently:

  “Well, of course, he is old enough to be her father. I think I’ll try and see Osman Ford. We don’t want any trouble if we can help it. I could drop him a hint.”

  “It will have to be a very tactful hint,” Olive warned him. “He sounds the sort of man likely to turn nasty.”

  Bobby agreed that that was possible, but knew also that if it did chance that serious trouble developed, and it transpired that he had taken no action on warning received, then he would probably be blamed. Another of those continual dilemmas of which a policeman’s life is almost wholly composed, he told himself sadly, but decided that on the whole the best horn of the dilemma to choose for impalement was that of dropping a discreet, even a very discreet, hint to Mr Ford.

  On the afternoon of the following Monday an opportunity presented itself. He had occasion to visit one of the county police stations, one situated so close to Roman Ends farm that to call there would hardly take him out of his way.

  The farm lay, he found, on rising ground on the outskirts of the great Wychwood forest, and had the air, as even Bobby with his small knowledge of farming could tell, of a prosperous, carefully looked after, well managed place. Hedges, ditches, fences were all trim and in good repair and condition. The live stock evidently received the most careful attention. The out-buildings seemed equally well cared for, not a nail or a tile out of place, no lack of paint or whitewash. Even the farm implements, wagons, and so on, were all carefully ranged under cover, which is not always the case on even well managed places. Through the fields of the farm ran a small stream that had its origin somewhere in the forest. In two or three spots, it had been dammed up to make convenient watering places for the live stock and to form in front of the house a small, well sited ornamental pond.

  The house itself was a low, weather beaten building, unpretentious but comfortable, mellowed by age to a beauty of its own. The farm buildings lay to one side and a little in the rear, and Bobby noticed, running from the house and between the buildings, wires that suggested Mr Ford made good use of electric power. Apparently an up-to-date as well as a prosperous establishment. Money had evidently been spent freely, and Bobby wondered whether it had all come from profits or whether there had been perhaps an overspending of capital. If so, that might account for Osman Ford’s need to make use of his wife’s five thousand pounds. If he had really been overspending on the place, then that money of hers might be very badly needed indeed, possibly even needed to avoid bankruptcy.

  If a man were threatened with the loss of all this for the lack of a little more cash, and if he were refused, by a narrow-minded lawyer, the use of money he might think himself entitled to, he would be quite likely to feel very deep resentment indeed. Little wonder perhaps that Osman Ford’s anger had seemed to glow within him like a living fire.

  Bobby noticed, too, that in front of the house was a very well arranged garden, at the moment gay with flower beds. It was a really fine display, and Bobby looked at it with admiring envy. Since his marriage and his removal from London to Wychshire he, too, had been endeavouring to cultivate a garden but with a success so far strictly limited. This garden was not much larger than his own, but it had been laid out with unusual skill and taste and tended evidently with equally unusual care and knowledge. Bobby had been told more than once that farmers as a rule despised gardening, considering it a waste of time and energy and grudging fiercely every hour that garden took from farm. Surprising, Bobby thought, to find grim and dour Osman Ford an exception to that common rule, for gardens such as this are not made by sitting in the shade, and evidently much care and labour had gone to its cultivation.

  He pushed open the gate and entered, and all at once there stood up and faced him a small, pale, scared-looking little woman, who seemingly only controlled with difficulty her first impulse to take to instant flight. She had been bending so low over a flower bed with which she was occupied that he had entirely overlooked her proximity, and indeed her whole appearance gave an odd impression that she was always likely to be overlooked. She had on an enormous gardening hat, and a huge gardener’s apron provided with innumerable pockets for all the appliances of the craft. The gauntlets she wore to protect her hands looked almost as big as herself. In fact, a fanciful person might have been excused for supposing that she was not actually there, but only existed as a kind of impalpable background for apron, hat, gauntlets, and the other gardening paraphernalia that alone possessed substantial reality.

  Trying
to make his voice as reassuring as if he were speaking to a small, frightened child, Bobby explained that he had called to see Mr Osman Ford on a matter of business.

  “Oh, yes, yes,” she answered, edging away a step or two as she spoke, as if she felt safer at a distance. “I expect they will tell you at the office where he is, the small building on the left.”

  Bobby turned to look and when he looked back she had vanished, merged apparently in the garden, for just at first he could see no sign of her till he discovered her behind some tall-growing hollyhocks.

  With an amused shrug of his shoulders Bobby walked on along a path that took him in the direction of the indicated building, a small one-story affair and apparently a recent addition. He noticed it had been planned with some skill to harmonize with its surroundings and to leave unobstructed a fine vista across fields and stream towards the great mass of the distant forest.

  “Certainly a good deal more in Mr Osman Ford than you would think at first,” Bobby decided.

  He thought, too, how curious are the contrasts between human beings, between the vivid, vital, passionate Anne Earle for instance, formed to attract attention in any surroundings, and the small, timid, frightened little mouse of a woman he had just been talking to. If, as he supposed, she were Mrs Osman Ford, the former Miss Vigors, Bobby told himself it was no wonder she had been unable to offer much resistance to the wooing of so dominating, tempestuous a personality as her present husband and former bailiff. “As much chance as a lamb against a wolf, a dove against an eagle,” Bobby told himself, and felt very sorry for the poor little woman, who would hardly dare nowadays, he supposed, call her soul her own.

  “I don’t expect he actually ill-treats her,” he decided, “but she’ll have to toe the line and quick about it. Most likely after her father’s death she was all alone without any male relation to help her.”

  He was still feeling very sympathetic when he reached the office building. Telephone wires ran between it and the house and buildings. A complete system apparently. The door was half open and through it came the busy rattle of a typewriter. Before the typewriter was seated a brisk, efficient-looking young woman who glanced up, saw him, and said:

  “Please come in. Mr Ford is out on the farm. Kindly take a seat. If you will state your business I will try to call him.”

  Bobby accepted the invitation and found himself in a very modern, well fitted office. There were two filing cabinets, a card index cabinet, a small safe, a house telephone exchange, everything in fact that up-to-date business requires. A farm to-day, especially in war time, demands so much clerical work, so much filling up of official forms, keeping records, giving, receiving and delivering orders, that the farmer needs to be not only a farmer but also accountant, correspondence clerk, filing clerk, cashier, in fact a whole office staff in one. Osman Ford, who grudged every moment taken from the land, had, like some other farmers on a large scale, thought it worth while to employ skilled clerical labour in the person of the young woman now busy with her typewriter, sharing her services with another farmer to whom half her time was allotted.

  Bobby said as he seated himself:—

  “You might tell Mr Ford Inspector Owen of the county police would like to see him for a moment or two, if convenient.”

  The young woman looked at him with indignation. In these days of multitudinous orders and regulations police are visitors to farms both frequent and unwelcome. She said sternly:

  “There’s no foot and mouth disease on this farm or in this district either. Or any swine fever,” she added still more sternly.

  “I’m sure there isn’t,” said Bobby amiably, though he knew very well that there had been disturbing even if unconfirmed rumours of the dreaded foot and mouth disease having appeared in the district, and though he knew, too, that sometimes farmers were apt to ignore the trouble on its first appearance in the hope that it would disappear of itself and so they would be saved the loss and inconvenience of the stand still order. “It’s nothing of that sort I’ve come about,” he added.

  The young woman gave him a frowning and suspicious look as if she did not much believe him and then turned to her small private exchange. She plugged in to ‘Pigsties’ first, got no response, tried ‘Silos’ and ‘Stables’ with equal lack of success, said ‘Tcha’ impatiently, and remarked that she didn’t know where every one could be, and then got a return call from ‘Pigsties’. She listened and said to Bobby:

  “Mr Ford is on his way here. He won’t be long.”

  It was in fact only a moment or two before he appeared. He was dressed now in his working clothes, heavy boots and gaiters, a loose Norfolk jacket with large bulging pockets, filled no doubt with samples of grain and oilcake, packets of seed and so on, and he was carrying a pitchfork sloped over one shoulder. When he saw Bobby he halted in the office doorway and favoured him with a stare of slow hostility. Bobby said:

  “Oh, good day, Mr Ford. I was driving by here on some business, and I wondered if I could have a word or two with you in private.”

  “No,” said Osman Ford.

  Bobby raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, really, Mr Ford, that’s a little abrupt and decided, isn’t it?”

  Osman said nothing. He had a way of saying nothing that was very expressive. Bobby made a little bow and moved towards the door. Osman drew back to let him pass. Bobby closed the door behind him as he went out. Now they were alone on the threshold of the office, the closed door behind them, through it coming the renewed rattle of the typewriter to show the efficient young woman was briskly at work again. Bobby said:

  “I merely wanted to inform you, Mr Ford, that we have received complaints that you have uttered certain threats. I don’t know if the complaint is justified. I hope not. I have not thought it necessary to inquire. But I may remark that uttering threats is very clearly a police matter. If the complaints are repeated, inquiries will have to be made. You understand that at present I am merely mentioning it privately and unofficially, simply so that you may know what is being said.”

  “You are on my land,” said Osman. “Get off it.”

  “Well, I’ve certainly no desire to stay on it any longer than is necessary,” Bobby answered, “but don’t you think you are being rather needlessly offensive?”

  “No.”

  “And just a little foolish as well?”

  “I’ve told you,” Osman said, still more threateningly. “Get out or I’ll throw you out.”

  “Good day, then,” Bobby said and walked away, trying to look as dignified as it is possible to look when retiring under threat of personal violence.

  He knew well it would never do for the secretary to the chief constable and the head of the Wychshire C.I.D. to get involved in a scuffle with a bad-tempered, bad-mannered farmer.

  “Hi,” shouted Osman after him.

  Bobby, still dignified, took no notice, though he did walk just a trifle more slowly. Osman shouted again, bellowed rather:

  “Hi! You!” And, when Bobby, continuing to be dignified, still took no notice: “If you are so keen on detecting, why don’t you try Rose Briar Cottage? Plenty to detect there.”

  Bobby still took no notice. If the man had anything to say, he could say it properly and decently, not bawl like that, breaking the peace and quiet of this lovely garden with his raucous shouts. Bobby’s indifference evidently exasperated Osman as much as, perhaps, it was meant to, and he let out another bellow that ended abruptly in full volume. Bobby, his curiosity this time really aroused, looked back. Osman, staring hard at the sky, as though all at once it had begun to interest him enormously, was shuffling nervously with the toe of his heavy farming boot in the gravel of the well-kept path. He had exactly the air of a clumsy, coltish school boy, aware of the eye of authority and more than half expecting stern rebuke. At the door of the house little Mrs Ford was visible, just visible, that is, her small faded self hardly noticeable against a background of wall and Virginia creeper. Had it not been such an absurd id
ea, one might almost have supposed that here were cause and effect—Mrs Ford’s appearance, Osman’s silence and embarrassment—and that Mrs Ford did not approve of noisy shouting in her quiet garden.

  She disappeared back into the house or somewhere. Difficult in fact to notice where or when so insignificant a presence did disappear. Osman turned and went back—it wouldn’t be fair to say, crept back—to the office. Bobby, faintly puzzled, walked on towards his waiting car and then forgot all about the incident as he wondered what Osman had meant by saying there was much ‘to detect’ at Rose Briar Cottage.

  CHAPTER III

  ROSE BRIAR COTTAGE

  IT WAS NOT difficult for Bobby to invent some excuse for calling again at the small police station he had previously visited, and as he was leaving he remarked to the sergeant to whom he had been talking:

  “By the way, is there a Rose Briar Cottage near here?”

  The sergeant gave him a quick look, wondering evidently what had produced this inquiry that sounded so casual but that he guessed had a purpose behind it.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “It lies on the Chester road a little past the London fork. Occupied by Mrs Augusta Jordan and a niece of hers, Miss Anne Earle. Miss Earle works in a Midwych office.”

  Bobby had more than half expected it might be Anne Earle’s name he would hear and there seemed to rise before him a memory of her dark and passionate face, her eyes in which deep fires could glow so clearly and so easily. The sergeant had paused but his manner made it plain there was more to come if Bobby wished to hear it. Bobby said:

  “Know anything about them?”

  “One or two reports. Gossip mostly, nothing to take action on,” the sergeant answered. “You know what villages are for gossip, all of ’em knowing all about their neighbours and inventing a lot more.”

  “What sort of gossip?”

  “Oh, they say a man has been seen leaving the cottage early in the morning. No reason why an elderly lady and her niece shouldn’t have a man friend visiting them, but he slips away as if he didn’t want to be seen and that’s set tongues going. Then there’s a story that at week-ends Miss Earle goes for a walk and she meets a car and she hops in and doesn’t turn up again till she gets back from town on Monday evening. Visiting friends perhaps. Why not?”