The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  From a drawer in his desk Bobby took the report of the routine inquiries carried out by Sergeant Wright. It stated that Mr Anderson had left his office half an hour or so earlier than usual. He had seemed in his usual health and spirits. He had evidently driven straight to his hotel since he had been seen there and had spoken to one or two of the staff and fellow guests about half an hour later. He had not dined at the hotel, but that was not unusual. Breakfast was the only meal covered by the weekly payment he made, extra meals were charged separately and were only taken very irregularly. Not until the Wednesday morning, when the maid, taking him his usual early tea, had found the room unoccupied and his bed unslept in, had his absence been noticed. Even then no alarm had been felt. The maid had assumed that, as sometimes happened, he had gone away for a day or two on business or for other reasons, and that the management had omitted to warn her. No one had given the empty room, the unslept-in bed, the uneaten breakfast, a second thought till his office—Mr Blythe in actual fact—rang up to inquire. Then it was found that Mr Anderson’s car was in the hotel garage as usual and that his bag and small personal possessions—shaving tackle and so on he would naturally take with him when he was going away—were still in his room. The car had been found by the garage attendant standing in the yard about midnight, just before he went off duty. He supposed it had been left there for him to put away, and that he had accordingly done. In the morning he had given it its usual routine cleaning.

  Possible, Bobby supposed, that Anderson might himself have brought the car back, left it there, and either on foot or securing a lift from a friend, have gone on to Midwych to catch the midnight train for London, or a later one that left in the small hours for the north. But it hardly seemed likely; and if that was really what had happened, curious that no one at the hotel, staff or guest, had seen him. On the whole it seemed to Bobby that probably some other person had driven back the car and left it where the garage attendant had found it.

  A disturbing thought and one with ugly implications, Bobby felt.

  He sent for Sergeant Wright again and instructed him to try to ascertain if any one answering Mr Anderson’s description had travelled from one of the three main Midwych stations by the trains leaving at or after midnight. There would be a good chance that any passenger at so late an hour might have been noticed—in Mr Anderson’s case even recognized, since he was fairly well known in the city. Afterwards Wright was to make inquiries all along the route from Rose Briar Cottage to the Upper Forest Hotel on the chance of something having been seen, either of Anderson or of his car. Later, an appeal might be made to motorists who had passed along that road about the relevant time in the hope of thereby securing some scrap or other of useful information. Necessary, too, to try to get in touch with the young man who had so summarily disposed of the gauntlet, but that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, unless he were prepared to come forward of his own accord in answer to the public appeal Bobby decided would have to be made. But as that action of throwing the glove into the canal suggested strongly a desire for secrecy, Bobby did not feel that any such appeal was very likely to be answered. And if not, how was a young man to be traced when of him nothing else was known but that he was young?

  All this, of course, was the ordinary spade work of detection, in which so much more depends on team work than on individual brilliance. Sergeant Wright had already left on his errand, and, for his part, Bobby decided that he would like to have a closer look at the retrieved gauntlet, even though it was entirely probable that the thing possessed neither importance nor significance. An odd glove is of small value, and quite possibly the finder had merely decided that he didn’t want to be bothered with the thing and so had adopted the quickest way of getting rid of it. But somehow this suggestion did not much appeal to Bobby. No doubt he would have been more willing to adopt it had the locality been other than Ends Bridge.

  He had a long evening before him, for this was June, that dreadful month when all the world held its breath to watch the British Empire fall, when a Marshal of France was earning for himself that title—‘enfant chéri de la défaite’—by which history will know him, when German officers were jovially inviting each other to dinner in London, when Britain, all unaware of the doom so unanimously pronounced, was making her public preparations and going about her private affairs in her usual and accustomed manner. His office work finished therefore, Bobby rang up his wife to tell her he would probably be busy all evening, received a tart reply that he was never anything else, made the trite and unacceptable excuse that there was a war on, and then got out the small car he had been supplied with for use on official errands, and drove over to Long Barsley.

  There the Long Barsley sergeant, though a trifle surprised by the interest Inspector Owen was taking in the thing, produced the gauntlet, now carefully cleaned and dried and showing little trace of its immersion in the muddy waters of the canal.

  “Given it a thorough good cleaning, haven’t you?” Bobby remarked gloomily.

  “I have so, sir,” agreed the sergeant, not without some pride. “All mucky it was. Cost real money that did, and now as good as new.”

  Bobby agreed. No use blaming the man. Quite right and natural he should give it a cleaning, just as it had been quite right and natural for the hotel attendant to give Anderson’s car its accustomed rub over. For that matter, very likely there had been no clue of any importance to destroy. But Bobby could not help thinking that there might have been. Might have beens are little use, however, and anyhow neither car nor glove would now show anything to help. All the same Bobby examined the glove very carefully and the longer and the more closely he looked at it, the firmer grew his conviction that it exactly resembled one of the pair Mr Blythe had shown him.

  Impossible to be quite sure though, and in any case, how did its appearance in the canal fit in with the disappearance of Mr Anderson? Or was there nothing here but a meaningless coincidence? But Bobby did not much think so, for his dislike of coincidence was always strong.

  “Do you think we can take it that the lad who brought the thing in was telling the truth about its having been thrown into the canal?” Bobby asked.

  “All boys are liars,” said the sergeant, speaking not in haste but with calm thoughtfulness, “but he stuck to his story and you don’t see why he should invent such a queer like tale. Dead cert. it had been in the canal some way, that was plain all right.”

  “He gave no description of the young man he said he saw, did he? Was he quite clear about the chap being young?”

  “It’s what he said. Maybe he just meant it wasn’t any one very old. I tried to get a description but it was no good. He didn’t wear a hat and that was all. The boy said he didn’t notice much, being busy watching the glove and the splash it made and making up his mind to get it out again.”

  “I wonder if he would know him again?” Bobby said, and on that point the sergeant had no opinion to offer.

  He suggested questioning the boy again but Bobby told him not to bother doing that but to keep the lad’s interest up by promising him a reward of a shilling or two.

  “He shall have something if I have to produce it out of my own pocket,” Bobby said. “It may turn out important. One never knows.”

  The sergeant looked politely incredulous and Bobby made a note of the youngster’s name and address, deciding privately that if any questions were to be asked, he would put them himself. Questioning, especially the questioning of children, has to be done with care and skill, if it is not to produce the wished for rather than the accurate reply. Bobby decided, too, to take charge of the gauntlet himself. It might be as well to have the thing where it would be in safer custody and where it could be more conveniently referred to, if necessary. He told the sergeant that any claimant for it was to be sent to headquarters and then he drove on to Rose Briar Cottage. When he knocked, Mrs Jordan came to the door and stood looking at him doubtfully.

  “Heard anything?” she asked, and when he shook his head
she said gloomily: “I don’t suppose you will.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “People don’t vanish for nothing,” she answered. “Better come in,” she added.

  She led the way into a large sitting-room, furnished with a taste Bobby credited to Anne, with a touch of luxury he put down to the lost Mr Anderson’s money, and a display of a general untidiness he attributed to Mrs Jordan. An alcove at one end, before a window facing east, was evidently where meals were taken, for on a table there stood some uncleared tea things, a lump of rich sugary cake, and an open and partly empty box of chocolates. The rest of the room was fitted up as what is now called a lounge, since that term seems to suit better our less conventional days than the old word ‘drawing-room’. Mrs Jordan cleared a chair—every chair had something on it, even if only an ash-tray—motioned to Bobby to seat himself, swept to the floor two current film periodicals from another chair, seated herself, and then said abruptly:

  “Anne says she’s sure something has happened. She has had dreams at night. I can hear her. Perhaps he’s done a bunk. Men do. A dirty lot,” she pronounced.

  “Have you any reason to think that’s what’s happened?”

  “No,” she answered. Then she said: “I shouldn’t wonder.” After a pause, she added: “A regular man’s trick. Don’t I know?”

  “Miss Earle seemed convinced Mr Anderson was far too fond of her to leave her without a word,” Bobby observed.

  “Hard to tell what a man really feels for you,” Mrs Jordan pronounced. “You can’t ever be sure of ’em. Anne thinks she knows. So you do till you find out different. Feel like that all right, men do, when there’s kisses to be got, but once their backs are turned—well, you’re only a fool to trust ’em.” Once more she paused and added heavily: “I know. Anne’s young. She don’t.”

  “Then you think that possibly he has left her?”

  “Anything possible with a man,” she declared. “You’re never sure. Trust a man, trust thin ice when there’s a thaw.”

  “What about women?” Bobby could not help asking.

  “Women cling,” she told him. “They’re like that.”

  “If it’s what you think,” Bobby said, “Anderson has apparently left his business, too.”

  “Perhaps it’s his business left him,” Mrs Jordan suggested. “He’s been worrying about money. I know that. The war and all.”

  “Did you know he had given a large sum of money to your niece?”

  “Anne told me. I haven’t seen the money. If he’s done a bunk, can she keep it?”

  “I suppose that depends,” Bobby answered cautiously. “Miss Earle was quite open about the connection between them. I suppose you knew?”

  “Think I ought to have stood up on my hind legs and been shocked, I suppose?” she retorted. “If his wife gave him the go by, hadn’t he as good a right to get another woman if he could, same as if she had died on him?”

  “There is a good deal of difference in their ages,” Bobby remarked.

  “He wasn’t as old as all that,” she answered, “and Anne was born middle aged, I think. Never young like other girls. You can’t blame her. Dumped on a doorstep, she was. You knew that? I don’t suppose her mother wanted to, but what’s a girl to do?” She stared at Bobby silently, challengingly, as if daring him to reply. When he made no comment, she went on: “My sister, it was. Well, now then, you can take it from me, him and her—Anderson and Anne—they took to each other all right. Deep it went with her, deep. I don’t know about him. I mean to say, it went deep all right while he was with her, but a man forgets so soon. A man forgets so soon,” she repeated half to herself, and Bobby thought it was her own past she was remembering. With a sudden change, a sudden darkening of her expression, a sudden malice as it were abruptly gripping her, she muttered: “Only sometimes they aren’t let.”

  “Yes?” Bobby said, hoping she would go on talking, but she gave him a quick and cunning look.

  “No business of yours, young man,” she said. “You don’t go pumping me.”

  “But that’s exactly what I’m here for,” Bobby explained amiably. “I want to pump you of anything that can help me to get a line on what has happened. You want to help, don’t you? If only for Miss Earle’s sake, you want to know what’s become of Anderson. I wonder if you would like to say anything more about that affair we had a report of—when a young man was seen climbing out of a window here and pistol shots were fired after him? I should very much like to know who that young man was. It might help if you could tell me that.”

  Mrs Jordan appeared to consider. Evidently she was not troubled overmuch by any memory of her previous denials.

  “Young fellow at Anne’s office,” she said. “Articled pupil, they call him. Means he’s going to be a lawyer himself. Name of Green, Roy Green.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, wondering if she had given the wrong name on purpose, since the description supplied by Constable Smith plainly indicated young Dwight. More probably, since any such attempted deception seemed aimless, she had got hold of the wrong name in some way. “What did he want?” Bobby asked abruptly.

  “Mad jealous he was, if you ask me,” she answered. “Came along thinking he was going to catch ’em together, but not too sure about it, or who it was, but wanting very desperate to know. Just as well there was no one here. Anderson, he was always mighty careful. Came late. Left early. Always left his car well hidden and made sure there was no one looking and kept his hat down and his coat collar turned up. I said: ‘Better have a false beard and moustache while you’re about it, or a mask.’ He didn’t like that, not half he didn’t. That young man was keen on making sure. Just as well there was no one here, him and his pistol.”

  “He brought a pistol with him? Bobby asked.

  “More than a bit frightened of it, too, if you ask me,” Mrs Jordan answered. “But a frightened boy with a pistol can easily mean a bit of trouble. He was still here when I came in from the village That scared him all right. I was scared, too. Took him for a burglar. There was his gun lying on the table where he had put it down when he found there was no one in. I grabbed it and he was scared and so was I and I don’t know which was scared the most. He did a bunk out of the window and I let the gun off after him, not meaning to hit, just in the air like. Don’t you go for to bring that up against me, young man. If you do, I’ll swear you invented it all to back up your blinking copper, all out of esprit de corps.”

  “Have you the pistol still?” Bobby asked.

  She looked at him sideways and cunningly and then said:

  “No. I took it down to the canal and chucked it in.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bobby, not believing this for a moment. “If you come across it any time and let me have it, it might be useful. Just think it over, will you?”

  “You don’t suspicion that young man, do you?” she asked.

  “You say he was mad jealous. He had a pistol with him that day. Miss Earle talks of murder.”

  “I wish she wouldn’t,” Mrs Jordan muttered. “Murder. I don’t like it. Once is enough. My God, once is enough.”

  “Was there a once before?” Bobby asked softly, but he had the impression that she had not heard him, that her thoughts were far away, and it was very strange as he sat and watched her to see how slowly her whole gross, overfed body began to quiver, with slow, long shudders as though an uncontrollable memory had risen from the depths, held her in a grip she was powerless to shake off. Over-powdered, over-rouged as she was, too crimson as was her mouth from too free a use of lipstick, yet all that could not entirely conceal how deeply moved she was by thoughts that word of murder called up in her. Recovering herself a little she said hoarsely:

  “Don’t look at me like that. I haven’t murdered anyone.”

  Bobby did not answer. Very puzzled he sat still, waiting. The suggestion of ‘murder’ had deeply shaken her. That much was evident. But why? Could she know that in fact murder had been committed? Not probable, he thought
, and yet a possibility to keep in mind. He reflected that by her own story she had at least known how to use a pistol and possibly she had been less complacent to the liaison between her niece and her niece’s employer than she professed. Or was there something in that story of the gift of money to the niece to account for a quarrel? If it is true that when poverty comes in at the door, loves flies out of the window, it is equally true that when money comes in by door or by window, hate and conflict often enter, too. She said again:

  “What are you sitting there for like a great dummy? You get out. I’ve had enough. I don’t know what’s happened. Anne doesn’t know either. She went with him to where he left his car. He always left it a little way away. He never brought it here. She went with him and he drove off and she came back. She sat a bit. I had gone up to bed. She’ll tell you the same. I suppose you think it’s us. I suppose you want to dig the garden up and see if he’s buried here.”

  Her voice had risen to a shriek, then died away. Bobby sat silent and waiting, for when self control goes, truth may come out. They heard the front door open and Anne came in.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said to Bobby. To her aunt she said: “What are you shouting like that for?”

  Mrs Jordan pointed a shaking finger at Bobby.

  “He thinks we’ve murdered your Nat. He thinks we’ve got him buried under the floor or somewhere. He wants to dig up the garden and see.”

  “Do you?” Anne asked.

  Bobby shook his head.

  “No suggestion of murder has yet been made,” he said, “except by you and your aunt. At present I have no evidence to support the idea.”

  Anne made no attempt to seat herself. Bobby wondered if she ever did sit down. Upright and brooding she stood, bending slightly forward, her heavy gaze upon the ground.

  “I don’t know anything about evidence,” she said, “but I know that he has gone,” and in the last word was the desolation of those who have lost and know not why. “That’s evidence,” she said, and went heavily and slowly from the room.