The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  He had not been seen since Tuesday night—it was on a Tuesday that Bobby paid his visit to Messrs Castles’ office—and no one knew what had become of him.

  CHAPTER VII

  FACTS AND SURMISE

  THE POLICE ARE well accustomed to reports of mysterious disappearances. Usually they mean little—a domestic upheaval, for example, or a sudden desire for a change of scene. Sometimes there is a more serious origin in the nature of trouble in cash accounts. Now and again, the reason is tragedy.

  Bobby, indeed, would not have worried too much even over the disappearance of a well-known solicitor had it not followed so closely upon so much that had seemed ominous and menacing. Even as it was he hesitated to take more than routine action, since it was still possible that Mr Anderson had simply been called away on urgent business and had had reasons of his own for keeping his business secret. The inspector who brought in the report to Bobby was, too, very strongly of opinion that it would be better to wait for further developments before becoming too active.

  “You go chasing round after these disappearing blokes,” he said, “and ten to one in the end you find ’em back home with their wives—or else away from home with someone else’s wife. Then all you get for your trouble is an all round cursing. Let ’em alone and they’ll come home,” he quoted, “bringing their tales with them all right.”

  Bobby was inclined to agree with this somewhat cynical view, but all the same he sent for Sergeant Wright, whom he had noted as not only intelligent but careful and painstaking, which is even rarer, and told him to make a few discreet inquiries.

  Then he dismissed the matter from his mind till the next morning, when on his arrival at his office he found Anne Earle waiting to see him. More than ever like a tragedy queen she looked as she came into his room—Colonel Glynne’s room, really—and stood gazing at him steadily from under her dark, straight brows. He offered her a chair but silently she waved it aside. Tall and still and silent she stood, waiting, apparently deep in thought, till a little puzzled, he said:

  “You wished to see me? You have something to say?”

  “Yes,” she answered, and was silent again.

  They remained looking at each other and there began again to glow in the depths of her eyes that appearance of a small and distant fire Bobby had observed before. He said:

  “There is something special you wish to tell me?”

  “You know Mr Anderson has disappeared?” she asked.

  “We have a report,” Bobby answered, “that he has not been seen at his home or his office since Tuesday. Mr Castles, your managing clerk, says they are very uneasy.”

  “He is dead,” Anne said. “I think he has been murdered.”

  “Why do you say that?” Bobby asked, though he had felt from the moment of her entrance that that was what she had come to say.

  “Last night I dreamed that he was drowning.”

  “Dreams have causes,” Bobby said. “Or, if not, they are only dreams and don’t matter. What caused that dream?”

  “How else could he tell me except in a dream?”

  “I am afraid police cannot act simply upon dreams.”

  “If he were alive he would let me know,” she told him, and then abruptly: “You know about us? You know we lived together, that I am what they call his mistress?”

  She flung the word out with passion proudly, like a challenge, like a flag that she was proud to fly. Bobby said:

  “In itself, that is a private matter with which police have no concern.”

  “We loved each other,” she told him. “We were more truly married than most of those who go to church. It wasn’t our fault if we couldn’t. I didn’t care. It made no difference to me. What mattered was what we felt for each other. It bothered him sometimes. Never me.”

  “I haven’t to discuss that with you,” Bobby said. “People who live in society and yet break society’s rules bear their own responsibility. If you have any solid grounds for believing that Mr Anderson has been murdered, please tell me. You understand you have made a very serious statement.”

  Her gesture then was full of a supreme contempt.

  “Does a fact only become serious when it is spoken?” she asked. “I want you to understand. I’ve come because he has no relations likely to bother much. I shall bother a good deal.” She paused and put her hands together, holding them strongly in position. “I shall not rest,” she said, “till I know. Then I shall not rest either till his murderer has been punished. You see, we loved each other. I don’t suppose you understand that. Why should you? I don’t suppose you believe it. Why should you? People generally don’t. Understand I mean. Or believe. Because they don’t love either. Women want a man to look after them and give them a home and children. Women call that love. It isn’t. It’s a need. Love is different. It’s to give and to receive, both at once, both utterly. Men want a woman as they want their dinner. One woman or one dinner is as good as another. It’s an appetite. That’s not love either. But we—he and I—we were different. We loved each other. Now he has gone. But he would not if he were alive. So he is dead. But he did not wish to die. Why should he while I am alive? If it was an accident, there would be some trace of it. What else is left but murder?”

  “It may be so,” Bobby said. “I don’t know. But police need facts to act on. Have you any facts to give me?”

  “The fact that no one knows what has happened to him,” she answered. “Isn’t that fact enough? Why do you want more? Isn’t it a fact he would never have left me like this without a word?”

  “I don’t know,” Bobby answered. “You have told me your own feelings. I believe you. But I have only your own statement of how Mr Anderson felt. Police soon learn never to accept any other than first-hand statements.”

  She regarded him steadily and with a faintly surprised air, as though that point of view had never even occurred to her. So certain was she of their mutual affection, she had not thought till now that anyone could doubt it. Indeed that such a doubt could exist appeared to her a little absurd, even wilful, as though one should pretend to doubt the existence of the sun at noon.

  “Would I feel what I do for him,” she asked presently, “if I did not know that he felt the same for me?”

  Bobby did not attempt to answer. He realized that her conviction was absolute. For him that conviction was necessarily open to doubt. True, it was confirmed to some extent by the story Mr Blythe had told. She remained standing, motionless, upright and silent, for she still refused to seat herself; alight, as it were, with a kind of inner passion, a passion that Bobby felt to be akin to hysteria but that yet he felt also was held so firmly in control there was no danger of its breaking loose. Watching her in a silence not unlike her own, he was oddly reminded of Osman Ford, who had been not long before in this same room; who, too, had in something of the same way, glowed with an inner passion that in the same paradoxical manner seemed at once uncontrolled and yet held tightly reined.

  “Won’t you sit down?” he asked again.

  She did not seem even to hear him, her sombre and heavy gaze never wavered, he had the idea that she saw quite other things than those her eyes rested on. There crept into his mind the ugly thought that women such as her, in the grip of an emotion and a passion so intense, had been known themselves to kill. He thought, too, that it would be wise to encourage her to talk as freely as possible. The more she talked, the better he would be able to judge her character. Not that that, he supposed, would be easy. There still persisted in his mind that first impression he had had of her—that she was one who hid herself, who walked indeed in a perpetual disguise, a disguise that even she herself had perhaps never penetrated. He said:

  “I wish you would tell me everything you can think of. You see, we really can’t do much until we have more facts.”

  “Oh, facts,” she exclaimed with an energy of repudiation that made him smile faintly.

  “They have their importance, you know,” he said. “Merely symptoms of t
hought perhaps, but it’s always symptoms both doctors and police have to deal with. To be frank with you, I don’t see at present, from the strictly police point of view, what standing you have in the matter, or that you have told me anything on which I can act.”

  “You mean you don’t believe me?” she asked scornfully. “You don’t believe me when I say we were everything to each other and that I shall never rest till I know what has happened and why, and till whoever has done it has been punished. I suppose you want to see a properly executed deed, duly stamped and witnessed, explaining it all? Well, I can tell you one thing. He gave me five thousand pounds.”

  “Oh, yes?” Bobby said, a little startled, and he wondered why the sum had a familiar sound to him till he remembered that it was the amount of the Ford trust fund that Osman Ford had accused Mr Anderson of misappropriating.

  A coincidence, probably, and one without significance, but all the same Bobby tucked the fact away in his memory as one not to be forgotten.

  “You don’t believe me?” she asked again, noticing, but misinterpreting, his quick upward look at her. “Do you think me such a fool as to tell you lies about something you can easily check? Or else you think it only means an old man paid for his pleasures? I suppose you would think that.” There was deep scorn in her voice. “Is it so utterly impossible that two people should really care for each other?”

  “When they do,” Bobby observed, “they are generally more of the same age.”

  “I was the older,” she told him. “He had stayed young. Young in body, young in spirit. I have never been young, never. Do you know anything about me?”

  “Only what you have told me yourself.”

  “I thought you might have heard things. Perhaps you have, only you don’t want to say. Everyone is generally quite keen to tell everyone else. They all do, in the office, everywhere. If you really don’t know, I’ll tell you. You would hear soon enough. I am a workhouse brat. Nobody’s child. A foundling. On a doorstep.”

  She paused abruptly, and it was easy to see how much that had meant to her, how deeply her proud and aloof spirit had suffered from, and been influenced by, the circumstances of her birth.

  “Well, that wasn’t your fault, was it?” Bobby asked. “You couldn’t help it. I thought Mrs Jordan was your aunt.”

  “That is how I know my name is Earle,” she said. “I was called Durban before, because, when I was picked up on my doorstep it was in Durban Street. When Aunt Jordan found me she told me my mother’s name was Earle and so it was mine.”

  “I see,” Bobby said, though hesitatingly, for in fact he did not quite ‘see’. “When was this?”

  “Three years ago, when I was eighteen. Aunt Jordan had been living in Australia and then she came back and she made inquiries and she found me. It meant a good deal to me, to know I had a name of my own and someone belonging to me. It meant more—” She paused and repeated the word ‘more’ with the deep, almost solemn emotion her strong, soft, passionate voice with the ringing undertone seemed so well fitted to convey. “It meant much more when we met—Mr Anderson and me.” Again she paused for a brief moment and then continued: “We both knew at once what it meant. Our meeting.” After another short pause, she added: “Now he has been murdered.”

  “There is no need yet to feel so sure of that,” Bobby said. “When did you see him last?”

  “Tuesday evening. He came to the cottage.”

  “How long did he stay?”

  “Until after supper. Aunt cooked it. Aunt is a very good cook. It is the thing she likes doing best of all. He left about half-past nine.”

  “By car or on foot?”

  “He had left his car a short distance away. He generally did. I walked with him that far. He got in and drove away. It was about ten minutes altogether. He would be on his way home by a quarter to ten or thereabouts. He had to be in the hotel by half-past because he was expecting a long distance ’phone call.”

  “Was it made?”

  “Yes. He was not there to answer it. It was that made us really uneasy at the office. We were surprised he hadn’t come at the usual time. We thought something might have delayed him. Then we heard the long distance ’phone call had been made and he hadn’t been there to answer it.”

  “Apparently, then, if anything did happen to him, it happened between a quarter to ten, when you saw him leave in his car, and half-past ten, when he failed to answer a ’phone call.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him every evening?”

  “No. But I always knew.”

  “Did he say anything about his next visit?”

  “He told me to expect him the next evening—Wednesday. But only for a few minutes. He was busy. He was going to London this week-end and I was to meet him there. It was my Saturday off. We have one Saturday off in three at the office. We were both looking forward to it. If there had been any change in the arrangements he would have let me know. He hasn’t. He is dead. Not accident. Not illness. Not suicide.”

  “You came here once before and complained that Mr Osman Ford had used threats against Mr Anderson? Do you want me to understand that you suspect him?”

  For the first time she seemed to show some hesitation. Then she said:

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t murder I was afraid of that other time. Somehow one doesn’t think of murder—not till it happens. It seems so—so remote. What I was afraid of was that he might try to knock him about. Osman Ford is a big, strong brute, like one of his own farm animals, a great cart-horse or something. Mr Anderson was gentle and delicate. He wouldn’t have had a chance to defend himself. I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be attacked. I knew he was half expecting it. It would have made a scandal, too. He was worried about business. Business has been very bad since the war began and a scandal might have been fatal. That’s why, too, he was so careful about us. Of course, that doesn’t matter now.”

  “He was hard pressed for money and yet he found five thousand pounds for you?”

  “Yes. That was why. To make me secure, he said. Because sometimes he said he thought he was going to lose all his money. So while he still had some he wanted to give it to me so as to make me what he called safe. Of course, money doesn’t, money can’t, but it’s how he felt.”

  For the first time she smiled faintly, as if at the memory of a lovable and touching but also futile and even childish precaution. To Bobby it seemed she was genuinely unconscious of the other and graver implications that this transaction so clearly carried with it. Yet of that he could not be sure. There was nothing about Anne Earle, he told himself with exasperation, of which he could be sure. She might, and quite possibly did, understand very clearly indeed, and yet for obvious purposes wish to give him an impression of complete indifference and ignorance.

  He wondered whether to ask her any more questions and then made up his mind not to do so for the present. If the affair were to take the serious turn suggested, there would be plenty of time and many occasions for further questioning. He thanked her formally for what she had told him, promised to take such steps as were possible, and as would indeed become necessary if Mr Anderson’s absence remained much longer unexplained. But with that she did not seem content.

  “What you mean,” she interrupted abruptly, “is that you will do in your official way what you are officially obliged to do. That’s not enough. It only means wasting time till it’s too late. I don’t mean to let it be like that.”

  Therewith she turned and went swiftly away in her quick, unexpected manner; and Bobby, too late to get to the door to open it for her, saw her pass through and along the corridor beyond, as one intent upon her own purposes. A little uneasily he went back to his desk to get on with the more pressing of the war-time work by which he was being daily overwhelmed.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE GLOVE

  LATE IN THE afternoon of the following day there reached Bobby a report to the effect that a young man, unidentified, had been seen to throw a glove into
the Midwych, Wychshire and Southern Canal, near Ends Bridge. The young man had immediately hurried away, but a small boy chanced to be in the vicinity, observed the incident, and, being as curious as small boys are and should be in so strange a world, promptly retrieved the glove. He took his booty home, but there his mother, seeing that the glove was fur-lined and of an expensive make, sent him off with it to the police. Now, awaiting a claimant, it reposed in the charge of the Long Barsley sergeant.

  The incident was curious, Bobby thought, for why should any young man, or any one else for that matter, throw an expensive glove into a canal where probably it would have sunk and been lost for ever but for the curiosity of a small boy? Curious, too, that it had happened near Ends Bridge, since Ends Bridge lay on the road between Rose Briar Cottage and the small, private, and somewhat expensive Upper Forest Hotel where the lost Mr Anderson had made his home after his wife left him. Curious incidents needed explanation, Bobby told himself, and he picked up his ’phone and asked for the number of the hotel. In reply to Bobby’s inquiry, a slightly surprised manager declared that he had never noticed that Mr Anderson possessed motoring gauntlets of the kind described. Mr Anderson, he said, always dressed very quietly, and had he owned such gloves, the manager thought that either he or one or other of the staff would have noticed them.

  Bobby thanked him and put down the ’phone. He was hardly disappointed. No real reason to suppose the glove had belonged to Mr Anderson; or that there was any connection between it, the odd manner of its disposal, and whatever had or had not happened to the missing man. All the same Bobby was remembering very clearly that a motoring gauntlet resembling that of which he had just been reading the description, had been shown him, a trifle proudly, by Mr Blythe. But then it was Anderson, not Blythe, who was missing, and no doubt there were other people who owned expensive fur-lined motoring gauntlets. All the same Bobby wished so worrying an incident had not been reported from the vicinity of Ends Bridge, a locality that was beginning to take on in his mind an ominous and threatening significance.