“That’s him,” he said suddenly, giving his ‘horn’ a final lick, as there emerged from Chief Building a hatless young man evidently on his way to lunch.
Bobby recognized Roy Green. Sergeant Wright said:
“Sure?”
“Yes, that’s the bloke without a hat, same as he was,” answered the boy, and then, transferring his attention to the ice-cream barrow, decided not to spend any of his half-crown yet, since there was always the chance that if he looked long enough and hard enough, another horn might come his way.
It did, for Bobby thought he deserved it, and then he was returned to the care of the Long Barsley sergeant for safe redelivery. Sergeant Wright, now suffering in heroic silence from a violently protesting tooth waked to anguish by the sudden impact of ice-cream, was instructed to get hold unobtrusively of Roy Green when he was leaving the office that evening and bring him to headquarters. Thither Bobby himself repaired to get on with his other work; and later in the afternoon came a report that in the canal, below Ends Bridge, had been found a dead body, identified by papers on it as that of Nathaniel Anderson, the cause of death being first a bullet wound in the back and then drowning, since apparently life had not been extinct at the moment of immersion.
CHAPTER X
URSULA’S TEARS
HARDLY HAD THIS news been received, Bobby in fact was still occupied with routine instructions of one kind and another concerning the discovery, when there appeared a somewhat worried Sergeant Wright.
“I’ve brought Mr Green along, sir,” he reported, “but his young lady has come along, too, no stopping her, sir. There wasn’t anything I could say made any difference.”
“If you were a married man, Wright,” Bobby pointed out, “you would know it never does. Where is she?”
“Having hysterics on the charge-room floor,” answered the sergeant gloomily. “And half a dozen of ’em fussing round her, all just about going to have hysterics their own selves.”
For one brief moment Bobby allowed his imagination to dwell, not without awe, on the thought of half a dozen stout policemen all having hysterics on the charge-room floor.
But then he remembered his rank and office.
“Tell them,” he said sternly, “not on duty. Er—why hysterics?”
“Seems to think her young man’s going to be hanged right away,” the sergeant explained. “Says he never did, and never had anything to do with it—at least, that’s what it sounds like in between squeals and such.”
“Curious,” Bobby said. “Very. Why should she think he may be hanged? People are only hanged for murder. Did they know it was murder? We didn’t—till this report came in. You’ve heard about that, Wright?”
“Yes, sir,” Wright answered. “They told me outside. It does seem a bit like guilty knowledge, doesn’t it?”
“I think I had better see her first,” Bobby said slowly. “I’ve sent Inspector Blane to examine body and clothing. I don’t suppose it’ll tell us much—not after so long in the water. Make the girl a cup of tea, will you? And when she quietens down a bit ask her if she will be good enough to spare a few moments from hysterics for me. Where’s Mr Green?”
“In the duty inspector’s room, sir, with Robins keeping an eye on him and taking notes of such language as you don’t often hear. It’s along of his being a legal gentleman most like and knowing more words than most.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” agreed Bobby. “Well, tell Robins to go on watching and note taking—so long as his notes are for private use only. Because, Wright,” said Bobby, very earnestly, “on duty no policeman must ever say anything except please and thank you—especially thank you.”
“No, sir, I know, sir,” answered the sergeant. “I’ll remind Robins.”
“Good,” said Bobby. “Well, bring the young lady in when she’s finished her hysterics—not before,” he added warningly.
He had not long to wait before there appeared a small procession of first Sergeant Wright, then the flushed, tear-stained, slightly dishevelled Ursula Harris, and finally a very large policeman carrying with great care a tray, on it a large cup of tea and two biscuits; untouched, for they had been refused with contumely.
“Oh, yes, just put that down here, will you?” Bobby said, guessing that the offer of tea had not been received by Ursula with any gratitude. “Do take a chair, Miss Harris,” he added in his friendliest tones, at the same time pushing forward the arm-chair Colonel Glynne had provided for his more important visitors. “We are very pleased to see you, of course, but I am wondering just a little why you came along.”
“You’ve arrested Roy, haven’t you?” she demanded. “You’ve got to arrest me, too, because it’s all my fault, and even if Mr Anderson was going to write to Roy’s father about us, he wouldn’t murder him for that, would he? And he never did, either.”
“One moment, please, please,” Bobby said, throwing up his hands in an effort to stem this torrent. “What makes you think Mr Anderson has been murdered?”
“Well, he has, hasn’t he?”
“Why should you think so?”
“Well, what’s happened to him?”
“I am asking you a question,” Bobby said. “You don’t answer it. Let me repeat it. What makes you think Mr Anderson has been murdered?”
“Well, Anne thinks so—Miss Earle. He isn’t ill or anything. There hasn’t been an accident or we should have heard; or if he had committed suicide, someone would know, and besides he never would. Why should he? He’s just disappeared.”
“People who disappear aren’t necessarily murdered,” Bobby pointed out. “Sometimes they go away of their own accord.”
“Mr Anderson wouldn’t,” she said confidently. “Why should he? Miss Earle thinks so, too.”
“You can give me no other reason?” Bobby asked. “It’s rather important, because, you see, Miss Harris, you happen to be right. Mr Anderson’s body has been found and it is a case of murder.”
He paused and she gave a little gasp and went very pale, but yet retained her self-control better than had been the case previously. The news had certainly been a shock to her and yet a shock for which to some degree she was prepared. Bobby was watching her intently. He said:
“You see, you were right. Miss Harris, I want to be quite frank with you. I would like you to understand our position. You evidently suspected what has in fact happened. Unless you can explain, it must seem that you knew something.”
She was thoroughly frightened now. She began to cry. Through her sobs she protested that everyone in the office had been wondering and guessing. She did not know who first suggested ‘murder’, but more and more often had the word got itself whispered, muttered, spoken more and more freely, loudly. They all knew about Roy. Of course, Roy had been silly to talk as he had done, but equally of course, he hadn’t meant anything. Besides, it was Mr Blythe who had been so Beastly about it, not Mr Anderson. Of course, it was Mr Anderson who had said he would have to write to Roy’s father, but it was all Mr Blythe really.
She began to cry again. Bobby waited patiently, indifferently, referring now and again to papers on his table. Tears may be a woman’s best weapon. Indifference is a good defence when they are so used. When the tears began to flow less freely, Bobby said:
“Miss Harris, do please try to control yourself. You say all the office knew about you and Roy Green. Your private affairs have nothing to do with us, of course, but what does that mean? What did the office know about you two?”
“They knew Roy wouldn’t ever give me up,” she answered simply, “I told him he must but I knew he never would. You see, we love each other.”
She said this with a simple pride that Bobby found all the more touching because it was so evident how wonderful she thought it, wonderful that she alone out of all alive should have been chosen for an experience she clearly believed unique in the world’s history.
“He’s my boy,” she said suddenly and as simply as before.
“I’m sure a very l
ucky boy,” said Bobby, but she shook her head.
“Oh, no,” she said, still with the same simple, quiet conviction, as of one with absolute knowledge, “it’s me that’s lucky.”
“Perhaps both of you,” Bobby suggested smilingly. “I suppose you mean Mr Green’s father was likely to object?”
“Oh, yes. He wants Roy to marry the daughter of one of his partners, because then Roy would have two shares, if you see what I mean, and then his father would have control of the practice; and that’s rather important, because there’s another partner Mr Green doesn’t get on with very well. It’s only a small practice, Roy says, but it brings in a lot of money, because they are trustees and executors for two different big estates. Only the other partner wants to do things Roy’s father doesn’t approve of and he thinks if Roy married the first partner’s daughter, then the two of them would work together and old Mr Green would get his own way. You do understand, don’t you?”
“I think so,” Bobby answered. “A bit complicated, but the essential part is that Mr Green’s father thinks it very important for business reasons that Roy should marry the daughter of one of his partners and that he is likely to object very strongly indeed to any idea of marriage between you two.”
“That’s right,” Ursula agreed. “Of course, I told Roy at once he must give me up but he won’t. He just laughed at me. So I said I would go away and he said if I did he would, too, and that would make everything worse all round, and so it would, wouldn’t it?”
“Mr Anderson told you he was intending to let the elder Mr Green know?”
“Yes. He told Roy. He said Roy and I must promise not to have anything to do with each other. It wasn’t Mr Anderson really. I don’t believe he would ever have cared a scrap. Besides, if it’s true about him and Anne, we could have told about him, too, couldn’t we?”
“I suppose so,” Bobby agreed, and thought to himself that the girl was either extraordinarily naive or even more extraordinarily cunning. He was not sure which. He said: “Is it true, do you think?”
“Oh yes, I usen’t to but I do now. You’ve only to look at Anne to see how she feels. They kept most awfully quiet about it. I suppose they had to. A solicitor has to be careful. I didn’t think Anne was that sort of girl,” she added primly.
“Perhaps she isn’t,” Bobby remarked. “I understand you and Mr Roy Green thought it was Mr Blythe, not Mr Anderson, who wanted the elder Mr Green told?”
“Mr Anderson would never have known a thing about us if Mr Blythe hadn’t told him. He happened to see us meeting where we generally did. Our trysting place,” she explained, using a word that evidently for her was all compact of wonder and romance. “He saw us. Then he saw us saying good-bye, because we always went home separately. There’s nothing wrong in meeting but he has a beastly mind and he was sure there was. He’s like that. It’s why he’s so keen on Hopewell House because they’re all boys. I expect a girl turned him down once and a jolly good thing, too, only that’s why he hates it so, if a boy looks at you. Or perhaps it’s something else, something inside him, his own self.” She paused and looked puzzled as if she had said something she herself did not fully understand. “I believe it’s that,” she said.
Bobby did not ask what she meant, for he felt that here were strange depths of psychology that neither he nor she, nor perhaps any human being, fully understood. He said:
“What you mean is that Mr Blythe objected to you and Roy Green being too friendly, and that he was pressing Mr Anderson to warn the elder Mr Green so as to put an end to it—perhaps by calling his son home?”
Ursula nodded.
“Roy said he wouldn’t go,” she declared. “He said he would get another job if he had to, and anyhow it wouldn’t matter, because very soon he’ll be joining the Royal Air Force, only they won’t have him just yet. He knows how to fly already and he’s got a certificate to say so, too, only they told him he would have to forget all about that when he joined up. I think it’s rather silly to tell him that, don’t you? Because flying is just flying, isn’t it? And if you can, you can, can’t you?”
Bobby made no comment. He was wondering if all this artless chatter held any significant clue. He thought perhaps it did. Then he wondered if it was all quite as artless as it seemed, and even Ursula’s round, innocent face and wide, guileless eyes did not entirely reassure him. Too well did he know how different may be the inner spirit from the outward show; how man, and woman, too, may smile and smile and be a villain still.
Ursula was talking again, more nervously now. She said:
“I expect you’ve heard about some of the things Roy said, but of course he didn’t really mean them—not about murdering him. It was just because he was so awfully furious.”
“Was it?” Bobby said, and told himself again that talk of murder seemed to have been just a little too prevalent in what should have been the calm, peaceful, everyday atmosphere of a busy solicitor’s office.
“It was always Mr Blythe he meant, not Mr Anderson,” Ursula insisted. “So it doesn’t matter about his having said things, does it?”
“Such things are better not said,” Bobby told her. “Where is this place you say you used to meet?”
Her reply was hardly unexpected.
“Near Ends Bridge,” she explained. “There’s an empty cottage where nobody lives and just behind is ever such an old apple tree. It makes a sort of shelter, no one can see you unless they look. It was there we found Mr Blythe’s glove, so we knew he had been snooping around again, trying to catch us.”
“What day was that?”
“Thursday evening. We made it up always to be there Mondays and Thursdays, even if we hadn’t been able to arrange it. As soon as Roy saw the glove we knew who it belonged to, and Roy said that showed Mr Blythe had been snooping again, and I said to give it back to him, because then he would know we knew and he would be ashamed of himself. But Roy said, no, nothing would make him ashamed, and he threw it in the canal.”
“How long do you think the glove could have been lying there?” Bobby asked.
Ursula was sure it hadn’t been there on the Monday but could not be more definite. They hadn’t given that point a thought. They had simply picked the glove up, recognized it, and thrown it at once into the canal with the feeling that it served Mr Blythe right to lose his expensive gauntlet.
That seemed the whole of her story, so Bobby took her to another room, promised that if she would wait there he would send Roy Green to join her presently, and then went back to interview Roy, who had, however, very little to add to Ursula’s story. He agreed that he had been deeply disturbed by Mr Anderson’s threat to write to his father, but insisted that nothing would induce him to give up Ursula. If old Mr Green disowned him, it couldn’t be helped. He had a right to choose his own girl. As for the money aspect—well, so far he had been dependent on his father. But they could manage well enough until he joined the Air Force and then of course it would be all right.
“I don’t know if you really think I did in poor old Anderson,” he said, “and I don’t know how you got on to that glove business. I suppose perhaps it does sound a bit funny, though it seemed all right at the time. It was only when one of the chaps at the office asked me if it was me, because of the things I had been saying, that I saw it was going to be awkward. Only it was always Blythe I meant. It was all through him. It was Blythe who saw us together near where we used to meet, and it was Blythe who chose to think what he did about us, the dirty-minded swine. I told Anderson it was all a filthy lie of Blythe’s. I think he believed me, too. Perhaps I wouldn’t have minded murdering Blythe if I had got the chance. I know I felt like it. After the things he hinted about Ursula. But it isn’t Blythe that’s got done in, it’s Anderson.”
“Yes, of course, there’s that,” agreed Bobby absently.
He was deep in thought. Plain enough that this young man hid strong, even violent passions behind his somewhat commonplace exterior. That much he had made clear by the in
tensity with which he had spoken, by the evident sincerity with which he had expressed his willingness to break with his family and his prospects for the sake of the girl he loved. Ursula, too, for all her round, baby face, her innocent-sounding chatter, had shown the strength and resolution of her spirit by the way in which she had insisted in sharing in what she had believed to be his arrest and danger. Were these two young people, Bobby wondered, as candid and as simple as they appeared? On the face of it, there seemed a marked contrast between their open, natural, innocent love affair, and the dark and hidden passion that had drawn together Anne Earle and the murdered man. But could one be sure? There were so many possibilities. One possibility—a possibility supported by one phrase Ursula had used—was that they knew of Mr Anderson’s visits to Rose Briar Cottage, knew that he must return to his hotel by way of Ends Bridge, had almost certainly seen him doing so, had decided to stop him with the object of blackmailing him into silence about themselves by threatening to make public his own intrigue, and that as a result there had ensued a quarrel, shooting, murder.
“Where were you Tuesday night?” Bobby asked.
“We went to the pictures, the Regent in St. Peter’s Square,” Roy answered, and when he saw that Bobby looked doubtful, he added: “I’ve got the ticket stubs still, I expect.”
He duly produced them. But it is perfectly easy to buy tickets, present them, walk out again immediately by a different door. No one will notice, or, if they do, remember the incident for five minutes. When Bobby pressed the point, Roy admitted that he could produce no independent evidence. So far as he knew, no one had seen them and certainly the attendants would not remember them.
“We don’t often go there,” he explained. “Generally we go to the Palace. Only the Regent had a picture Ursula wanted to see, so we went there that night. I expect they know us all right at the Palace but not at the Regent.”
“It’s a bit unlucky,” Bobby remarked. “But there’s no need for you to worry, that is, if you are innocent. Though it would have been a lot better if you had taken that glove to the nearest police-station instead of chucking it into the canal. Can’t be helped now. There’s nothing else you can tell me?”
The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 11