The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You clear out, too,” Mrs Jordan said angrily to Bobby. “There’s nothing we can tell you.”

  “I wish I were quite sure of that,” Bobby answered, and she gave him another angry scowl as he got to his feet. “Oh, by the way,” he added: “There is one thing more I meant to ask you only I nearly forgot. I understand there was nothing found on Miss Earle to identify her and yet you were able to tell she was your niece. I was wondering how.”

  “You want to know a lot, don’t you?” she muttered. “It’s quite simple. My sister’s last letter hinted she was going to have a baby, and when I got back from Australia I tried to find her but I couldn’t. No one knew what had become of her. So then I wondered about her baby, and I found out there had been a baby picked up in Durban Street and it was Durban Street she wrote from last, my sister, I mean, so I went to ask and they showed me the woollie the baby had been wrapped up in. It was one I had knitted myself. I knew it at once and that was good enough for me. Then when I saw Anne I knew her, she’s got the family look about her. Haven’t you noticed it?”

  There was an almost wistful note in her voice as she said this and Bobby agreed that there certainly was a family resemblance, though not a very strong one, and so took his leave.

  “A pretty thin tale,” he said to himself as he drove away. “I suppose it may be true. I wonder what’s behind it. I don’t see there can be any connection with Anderson’s disappearance. I suppose perhaps her story may be true. You never know. Or near true, anyhow.”

  CHAPTER IX

  INQUIRY AND DISCOVERY

  THE NEXT MORNING Bobby made an early opportunity for a word with Sergeant Wright, whose inquiries were proving none the less useful for being so far entirely negative.

  “Do you know Durban Street?” Bobby asked.

  Sergeant Wright rubbed the tip of his nose, a gesture which, ever since Bobby had been observed indulging in it, had become popular in the Midwych county police force.

  “Well, sir,” he said finally, “I’m Midwych born and bred and I thought I knew every stone in the place, but I can’t call to mind any Durban Street. Perhaps,” he added hopefully, “it’s one of these new corporation housing estates.”

  “I looked in the directory,” Bobby said. “It seems to run out of St. Peter’s Square.”

  The sergeant clicked his tongue and made other sounds expressive of annoyance and apology.

  “Why, of course,” he said. “I know it quite well only I didn’t just think. Runs behind the Art Gallery and the new library building, and there’s a small alley outlet leading into Lord Street. It’s not a thoroughfare, only for foot passengers, so it’s not much used except for delivery to the Art Gallery or the library or the warehouses across the way.”

  “Any dwelling houses?” Bobby asked, and when the sergeant said “No”, added: “Caretakers, I suppose?”

  The sergeant didn’t think so. Certainly the Art Gallery and the library had resident caretakers, but they did not consider themselves residents of Durban Street and he did not think their apartments even had back doors in it. The warehouses had no caretakers as far as he knew. Warehouses seldom had.

  “I want,” Bobby explained, “to trace a Miss Earle who is said to have lived in Durban Street twenty-five years ago and to have abandoned a baby on a doorstep there.”

  “Near where she lived?” asked the sergeant doubtfully. “They don’t often do that.”

  “It does seem a bit unusual,” Bobby agreed, “but that’s the story. Anyhow, I want you to try to check up on it as far as possible. Find out if there’s ever been a caretaker named Earle and so on. There may be some connection with the Anderson case but keep that to yourself.”

  Wright accordingly departed on his errand, and Bobby, having made sure that none of the work waiting for him was of immediate importance, went on to Chief Building, where the porter told him, as he had hoped might be the case, that Mr Blythe had not yet arrived.

  “He’ll be here almost any minute now,” said the porter. “Very regular gentleman. On the dot as you might say.”

  “Does he come by car?” Bobby asked.

  “Most of our tenants do,” said the porter proudly, for one of the chief attractions of Chief Building was its private car park for the use of tenants alone, thus sparing them the trouble, indeed the impossibility, of finding parking space in the maze of small, narrow, and twisting streets that formed the centre of the town.

  Bobby thanked the man and withdrew, nor had he long to wait before Mr Blythe drove up. At once Bobby noticed that he had on a very ordinary pair of driving gloves. Seeing Bobby approaching, Blythe said at once:

  “Any news? Heard anything?”

  Bobby shook his head.

  “I was hoping perhaps you had had word,” he said. “You knew his car was still at the hotel? He was using it that Tuesday night, so someone must have brought it back. If it was Anderson himself, how is it no one saw him, and what did he do afterwards? If it was someone else, who and why?”

  “I don’t see how anyone else could get hold of Anderson’s car,” Blythe said thoughtfully. “Anyhow, why should they trouble to take it back to the hotel? If there has been foul play, what good would it do to have it found there rather than anywhere else?”

  “Delayed discovery a bit perhaps,” Bobby said. “Difficult to say though till we know more.”

  “I suppose the idea might be to cause delay,” Mr Blythe agreed. “I didn’t think of that. Yes, that’s possible. Do you think there is any reason to suspect foul play?”

  “It’s always a possibility in these cases,” Bobby answered. “Only one possibility in many, but it has to be considered. Clearly it will be necessary to go on with the investigation. I wanted to make sure first that you had heard nothing. Oh, there’s something else I wanted to ask you. You remember you showed me once a very swell pair of motoring gauntlets your Hopewell House boys gave you?”

  “Good lord, have you got it back already?” Blythe cried, looking quite excited. “Quick work. Very smart indeed.”

  “You mean you have lost them?” Bobby asked.

  “Not them,” Blythe answered. “One of them, the right-hand one.” He jerked open a locker. Within lay a solitary fur-lined gauntlet. He took it out. “One of them was stolen,” he said. “If you’ve got it back, I shall be more than a bit relieved.”

  “Odd to steal an odd glove,” Bobby remarked.

  “I took it the thief had been interrupted,” Blythe said.

  “You’ve reported the loss, I suppose?” Bobby asked.

  Mr Blythe shook his head.

  “I only found it out last night for one thing,” he said. He added with a faint smile: “I wasn’t very keen on saying anything. I didn’t want my boys to think I was careless with their presents. I was really thinking I would say nothing and get it matched in town. But if you’ve found it—?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” Bobby told him. “There is an odd glove reported found. We’ll have to show it you to see if you can identify it. You can’t be sure when you lost it? Or where?”

  “I only missed it last night,” Blythe repeated, “but I am sure it was stolen, not lost. I shall be very relieved to get it back. The lads saved up a good many of their pennies to buy those gloves for me and I don’t want them to think I don’t value them. I hardly ever put them on except when I’m going to Hopewell House and then I always do.”

  “You leave your car in the car park here during the day, I suppose? You have your own garage at home?”

  “No, no space,” Blythe answered. “I garage at a place in the main road, only a few minutes away. Farquhar’s. Very trustworthy people. Never lost anything before.”

  Bobby made a note of the address and then said:

  “There’s one thing more. Can you give me some sort of rough idea of Mr Anderson’s financial position?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Blythe answered. “It’s all very difficult. Of course, the war’s hit us hard, like everyone else. Practi
ce ruined. No clients, no new business. We’re just living on our fat. And all expenses up. We have been trying to carry on much as usual in the hope that the war wouldn’t be a long one. Doesn’t look like it now, though. Mind you, I don’t want you to think we are on the point of filing our petition. Nothing of the sort. We are hard hit, but we are still on our feet and we mean to stay there. But drawings by partners will have to be on a very limited scale for the present.”

  “You can’t give me any details about Mr Anderson’s financial position?”

  “No. Not more than I’ve said. I believe I’m his executor, but that doesn’t come into question yet and I hope to God it never will. Naturally, his disappearance is going to make things awkward.”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Bobby. “Would it surprise you to know he had recently disposed of a sum of five thousand pounds?”

  Mr Blythe gave Bobby a quick and doubtful glance.

  “It would, very much,” he said. “I shouldn’t have thought Anderson had five thousand pennies at his disposal at present. I know I haven’t.”

  Bobby thanked him and turned away. Blythe, still looking very puzzled and worried, drove his car into the car park provided for tenants. Bobby noted that he did not re-appear, so that presumably there was a way from the car park into the building. After a minute or two Bobby went back to speak to the porter again.

  “Ever have any cases of pilfering from the cars parked here?” he asked.

  “Never,” declared the porter quite indignantly. “There’s always an attendant on duty and I keep my own eyes open. We know our tenants and anyone else would be asked at once what he wanted. No sneak thief would stand a chance and it’s never been tried on, either.”

  “I take it there’s a way into the building from the car park?” Bobby asked.

  “What about it?” the porter demanded. “The car attendant’s always there, isn’t he? And I’ve got eyes in my head.”

  Bobby admitted this undeniable fact, but reflected also that ‘always’ is a word that is not always used in its exact and literal meaning. Negatives are ‘always’—in the full sense of the word—difficult to prove, and Blythe’s story had in it nothing inherently improbable. The glove might easily have been stolen. The fact that only one of a pair had been taken was open to the explanation already given of haste or interruption. But other explanations were equally possible; and it seemed an unsatisfactory coincidence that the disappearance of the glove should coincide with the disappearance of Mr Anderson, and then that it should have reappeared so near the road the missing man must have traversed. But for all that, theft at Farquhar’s garage, theft in the Chief Building car park, remained as a possible and even plausible explanation.

  Bobby walked back to his office deep in thought. Difficult to believe, he decided, that there was no connection between the lost glove and the disappearance of Mr Anderson. Hard to suppose that a casual sneak thief would take only an odd glove, and even more difficult to suppose that such a sneak thief finding himself in possession of unwanted booty, would dispose of it on that one particular spot where the missing man must have passed. Noticeable, too, that Blythe had not reported its loss, though once again the reason he gave was plausible. Yet apparently the disappearance of the glove would never have been mentioned but for Bobby’s questioning. It didn’t seem, Bobby thought, to add up very satisfactorily.

  Only, where did the hatless young man come in? Was he the hypothetical sneak thief, or merely someone who, having more or less by accident come into possession of the thing, wanted to be rid of it? If so, why? Because it was dangerous or embarrassing for some reason or another? If so, surely that meant that it had been recognized as George Blythe’s property. That seemed reasoning both sound and simple. In and by itself an odd glove can be an embarrassment to no one. But then who could have recognised it? One of the Hopewell House lads? A possibility to be remembered. A personal friend? If so, a wide field was opened. Or one of the office staff? The personal friend theory would be difficult, indeed impossible, to investigate without Mr Blythe’s own co-operation, and that Bobby felt he did not wish to invoke for the present. One has to be on firm ground before taking steps that might seem to indicate suspicions, especially suspicions of a well-known solicitor of good reputation like George Blythe. The Hopewell House lads during the day were all scattered at work. One evening the youthful discoverer of the glove might be taken there to see if he could recognize the young man he said he had seen. There remained the staff of Messrs Castles, and Bobby had it in his mind that the unknown young man had been described as hatless and that the only time he had seen Roy Green in the street he had been bareheaded.

  A slender clue enough in days when half the young men in the country have given up hats, but even the most slender clue may prove of value and in default of a better be well worth following up.

  Bobby went back to his office and found a brief report from Sergeant Wright to say there was no trace of the missing man or of anyone resembling him having travelled by any late train from any one of the three Midwych stations. As a matter of routine the police at all places where such trains stopped were being communicated with and asked to make the necessary inquiries. Secondly, it seemed fairly certain no one of the name of Earle had ever lived in Durban Street. The Art Gallery caretaker had held his present post for thirty years. He had kept a diary all that time and had shown Sergeant Wright the entry regarding the discovery of a child in one of the warehouse doorways, wrapped in a pyjama jacket and an old blanket, neither of which had afforded any clue to the child’s identity.

  “Well, that shows Mrs Jordan lied in part at least,” Bobby reflected, and wondered why she had thought it worth while to lie. Certainly an explanation suggested itself to him, but he did not think that any purpose would be served by attempting to follow it up.

  As well to remember it perhaps, but at present he knew of nothing to suggest that there could be any connection between the abandonment of a baby nearly a generation ago and Nathaniel Anderson’s disappearance.

  The third part of the report stated that there were only two cottages actually on the road between Rose Briar Cottage and the Upper Forest Hotel and one of them was unoccupied. Of the other, the inhabitants went to bed regularly at nine, slept all night as soundly as generally do hard-working farm labourers and their families, and had no recollection of hearing a car pass on any recent night. The only other residence anywhere near was Roman Ends farm; and as that stood some half mile back from the road, with which it was connected only by a narrow lane, Wright had not thought there was any need to make inquiries there.

  Bobby supposed not. All the same he found it interesting that Osman Ford should chance to live so near. Another of the disconnected and isolated facts, entirely without significance in themselves, which seemed to be turning up in a way to suggest that in their totality some significance did in fact lie hid.

  Another report from another of his assistants told Bobby that there would be duly carried out his request for an appeal to be made to any motorist using the road on the relevant night to come forward. But that was a slender hope. Motorists, unless exceptionally conscientious, are apt to dislike answering police appeals that may involve them in long drawn out and troublesome police proceedings.

  Nor for that matter was it very likely that any motorist knew anything. If there had been foul play, no more fitting spot could have been selected than that stretch of lonely road, of which Ends Bridge, crossing the dark and slow-moving waters of the canal, was almost the centre.

  He picked up the ’phone, got in touch with Long Barsley and asked the sergeant in charge to find the youngster who had rescued the motoring gauntlet, promise him a reward of half a crown, and bring him along at once.

  In a very short time sergeant and boy arrived. Bobby handed over the promised half-crown at once so as to avoid any risk of a too great eagerness to earn it rendering the lad too eager to oblige his questioners, and then told him he was wanted to identify, if possible, the
young man of the glove incident.

  “It won’t matter if you can’t,” Bobby explained. “Suit us just as well one way as another, only if you do happen to see him, we should like to know. Do you think you would know him again?”

  “Oh, yes,” declared the boy with great confidence, but when Bobby tried to get a description, the attempt was a complete failure.

  Apparently the youngster combined a clear picture in his mind with a complete inability to translate that mental impression into spoken words.

  “Well, never mind,” Bobby said, anxious to avoid making the lad nervous or self-conscious, anxious indeed to treat it all as a quite ordinary and commonplace affair, without any real importance. “Doesn’t really matter much, only I would like to see if you can spot the chap again.”

  They set out accordingly, Bobby, the boy, Sergeant Wright, and near Chief Building they gathered round an itinerant ice-cream merchant. Bobby was not sure how the dignity of an inspector of police and a private secretary to a chief constable consorted with eating ice-cream sandwiches in the street. But then he liked ice-cream, even if a city constable across the street did seem to be grinning a bit. Sergeant Wright was quite sure that eating ice-cream from a street barrow was very much ‘infra dig’, for sergeants and inspectors, too. Besides he had a sore tooth with an exposed nerve, but not for him, a sergeant, to draw back where his inspector led. So he accepted his two pennorth without protest, though gloomily aware that that grinning ape of a city constable across the road would spread the story all through the city force, which, knowing well its essential inferiority to the county men, simply loved to tell silly stories about them. But the ice-cream merchant told himself happily that day by day in every way the world, including the world of grown-ups, was growing more and more ice-cream-minded, and the Long Barsley youngster combined luscious enjoyment of the horn he had asked for with a bright-eyed attention to all passers-by.