The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You mean,” she flashed, “confidential when it suits you and not when it doesn’t.”

  “Oh, well,” said Bobby, not quite liking this, though admitting to himself that the remark did possess a certain fallacious plausibility.

  “If you won’t tell me,” she went on quietly, “I’ll tell you.”

  “Oh, well,” said Bobby again, thinking it very likely she might guess correctly, but determined to do his best to prevent her seeing that her guess was correct—if in fact it were. “Well, who?” he challenged her.

  “The murderer,” she answered.

  Once more Bobby sat upright with a jerk. Once more he found the suggestion unpleasant, unexpected, disturbing. And he was by no means sure that it might not also be accurate. The possibility of Mrs Jordan’s guilt had indeed been considered, and in some odd way this apparently unknowing denunciation by her own niece seemed confirmation. It might be because she herself was guilty that she had tried to put them on a false trail. A more sinister thought still flashed abruptly into his mind. There was that £5,000. Mr Anderson, who alone knew the details of the gift or settlement, was no longer there to say anything about it. If anything happened to Anne, if she also were removed, there would presumably be no one else to claim it but Mrs Jordan herself.

  Bobby seemed to see her making her careful plans; diverting suspicion from herself by this preliminary warning and demand for police protection; feeling sure, or making sure by some casual remark, that Anne should become aware of it; knowing her well enough to be well aware that once she did know she would demand its removal, and that then the contemplated deed could be carried out with an excellent chance of safety and success. Possibly this was in fact what really lay behind Mrs Jordan’s recent visit. Grim thoughts and ugly, but then murder is a grim and ugly business. He wondered if Anne knew. No telling that, no telling what went on behind the dark, inscrutable loveliness that was hers. They were both silent for some moments. Bobby because he was deep in contemplation of this new and troubling possibility; Anne, because, as it seemed, she had again withdrawn from her immediate surroundings into that brooding world of her own in which she lived.

  Bobby roused himself from his speculations. No use, he decided, indulging in them till there was more evidence one way or another.

  “The murderer?” he said. “Oh, yes. Well, who is that?”

  “You know,” she told him, “if it’s true what you say, that someone came to tell you I was in danger.”

  “Oh, that’s true,” he assured her, “but I don’t see why you should think that it was necessarily the murderer who wanted us to give you protection.”

  “Because,” she answered, as one who had it quite clear in her own mind, “the murderer calculates that any protection of yours won’t amount to much—how can it? And the murderer knows, too, that I mean to see he hangs.” She spoke simply and quietly, with less of that strong passionate resolve in her voice and manner than she often showed, and yet all the same, and perhaps the more because of that absence, conveying in her words an even greater impression of an implacable determination. “So there’s this attempt to frighten me through you,” she concluded, now with contempt.

  “It’s possible that’s the idea,” Bobby admitted thoughtfully, and again he wondered if by any chance the girl knew who it was of whom she spoke. She interrupted his thoughts, saying:

  “So will you please tell your man to stop following me?”

  Bobby shook his head.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I wish I could. Goodness knows, we are hard enough up for man power. The work doubled and the force halved. But there it is. I can’t afford to disregard even an improbable story. Nonsense very likely, but it has to be treated seriously.”

  “If you don’t,” she told him calmly, “I shall buy a dog whip and thrash him with it, and I shall go on till he stops following me.”

  Bobby was a good deal taken aback. He knew her well enough by now to feel sure that she meant what she said.

  “If you did, we should have to prosecute you for assault,” he said weakly.

  She did not answer. It was characteristic of her that having stated her intention she left it at that. Probably she knew the consequences as well as did Bobby himself. The country-wide sensation, the public interest, the sympathy for her, the general ridicule for the police, the complete upheaval and probable ruin of the whole conduct of the investigation.

  “It is for your own safety,” he urged.

  “Never mind my safety,” she said. “I will attend to that myself. But I don’t want a policeman always at my heels. I couldn’t do anything, I should never find out anything.”

  “That’s our job,” Bobby told her. “To find out.”

  “And all you do is to tell a man to follow me about,” she said scornfully. She added: “Well, are you going to tell him to stop it?”

  “I must if you insist,” Bobby admitted, “but I think it very likely that if you do make any attempt to get at the truth by yourself, there may actually be an attempt on your life.”

  “It is what I am counting on,” she told him calmly. “If that happens; then I shall know. Now I only suspect.”

  “If it happens and if it succeeds,” Bobby pointed out grimly, “you may still not know. People have been murdered before now and never known who it was. Or if you did know, you would never have the chance to tell.”

  She looked at him very steadily and intently. It was with an almost dreadful intensity that she answered:

  “If I knew I should tell, though I had to rise from the grave to speak.”

  And for the moment Bobby really believed that that power would be hers. Then he tried to bring the conversation back to a more ordinary level by saying:

  “Well, you might tell me why you stole Mr Blythe’s glove and put it where it was found?”

  “Why should you say I did that?”

  “Well, it’s the fact, isn’t it?”

  “Isn’t it a little childish,” she retorted, “to try to trick an admission out of me like that?”

  “You haven’t answered my question yet,” Bobby reminded her, though wincing a little at the rebuke.

  “I do not mean to,” she assured him calmly. “You can guess as much as you like. That’s all you are doing—guessing. And then trying to trap me into an admission.”

  “Not necessary,” he retorted. “Hardly guessing, either. It’s plain enough. You had opportunity. You are the only person who knew where Roy Green and Miss Harris used to meet.”

  “How do you know that?” she interrupted. “I don’t believe you do know. You are only guessing again.”

  “No,” he answered. “Deduction from the facts. It was their secret. But Miss Harris is a romantic little person. She called it their trysting place. She was sure to confide such a lovely secret to you, you the only person who saw them together. You used it to throw suspicion on Mr Blythe. That tends to exonerate him—and to direct suspicion somewhere else, to you.”

  She was silent for a moment, looking at him with a new interest, almost as if seeing him clearly for the first time.

  “Have you made all that up merely because Ursula talked about her trysting place?” she asked.

  “A detective has to notice small things,” Bobby told her. “Small things sometimes lead to big. Won’t you tell me what your reason was?”

  She seemed to consider this gravely and then said:

  “There’s nothing to prevent your guessing that perhaps someone or another felt your official routine wasn’t getting anywhere and that something had to be done to quicken it.”

  “I thought perhaps that was the idea,” Bobby agreed, and he remembered again that sudden breath of wind through the open window which had stirred and disarranged and moved all the papers in the case. The glove incident had been designed, to serve the same purpose of making him re-arrange his thoughts and plans. He said: “I wish I could make you understand how foolish and how dangerous that sort of thing is. It only confuses. It is mu
ch more likely to help the murderer than anything else. Did it ever strike you that the consequences for Mr Blythe might be serious? Rather a stab in the back for him, an assassin’s stab in the back, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” she answered, “because it couldn’t have been him. He was quite safe. Everyone knew he was visiting one of his rich subscribers that night. That made him all right. But you were doing nothing. It was all nothing to you. Just routine. What you call your duty. Like stopping motorists from going too fast. It couldn’t hurt Mr Blythe, but it might make him see you did something.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Bobby told her, “it could have hurt Mr Blythe very seriously, because it happens he didn’t make the visit you say everyone knew he intended. He is by no means free from suspicion and the glove incident might have been very serious for him, only for something else we discovered.”

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “I haven’t the least intention of telling you,” he answered, and she broke out passionately:

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you are even trying- just routine and your duty and you don’t really care.”

  “I would ask you to believe,” Bobby said with some anger, “that we take our duty seriously.”

  “Very likely you do,” she retorted with all her old scorn, “but it’s more than duty to me. He and I. We were alone. We only had each other. My mother deserted me. On a doorstep. Nothing could make that up to me—but he tried. His wife deserted him. Nothing could make that up to him. But I tried. We were like each other. We knew. There was a great gulf between us and the others—we were on one side and they on the other with, their own, their wives, their families. There had always been a great gulf between me and everyone else. Now it was there for him, too. He had come to my side of the gulf. That’s over now. Finished. Done with. But whoever ended it, shan’t escape. Not while I live.”

  “Miss Earle—” Bobby began, but she was on her feet now, ready to go.

  She said:

  “You told me just now you suspected me. I don’t know if you meant it or if you were only trying to frighten me. Well, I suspect someone, too. I won’t tell you who it is. But perhaps something may happen soon and then you’ll know.”

  She turned towards the door, and Bobby, startled and alarmed, jumped to his feet, meaning to stop her.

  “For heaven’s sake—” he began.

  His voice died away. She had turned again to face him and there was that about her, in her manner, in her direct and sombre gaze, in her whole aspect, that convinced him words were useless.

  “I’ve a good mind to arrest you on suspicion,” he told her angrily.

  She paid no attention to the threat. Probably she knew it was futile. No magistrate would have sanctioned her detention for a moment. She went away then and Bobby, gloomily watching her go, thought to himself that death walked with her, though whether to claim her or another, or both, he did not know. He went back to his desk and he found his hand shaking a little and his forehead a little damp.

  “What a woman,” he muttered, half aloud. “Judith and Holofernes, Sisera and Jael. All that. Capable of having done it herself, too, if she felt like it, if she felt she had reason.”

  A fresh, disturbing thought came to him. If she did believe she had discovered the truth, what action did she contemplate? Very uncomfortably he remembered the last look she had given him as she went away.

  “Capable of anything, once she gets an idea in her head,” he told himself.

  Or worse still, suppose she found out, only found out wrong. What then? A contingency that had to be faced but of which he did not at all like the look. She was in no condition to form sound judgments. Any misunderstood detail might easily lead her to entirely wrong beliefs on which, again, she might easily take disastrous action.

  He got to his feet and began to walk up and down the room, chilled with fear of coming developments, in the grip of something not far from panic. He made a grab for the telephone, meaning to consult the chief constable, and then remembered that Colonel Glynne had suffered a relapse and that the doctor had said he was not to be disturbed. He sent for Sergeant Wright instead, and learned from him that one of the best men in the force had been entrusted with the task of watching Miss Earle and that he had been very careful, as instructed, to make sure that she should have no suspicion she was being followed. He was confident that in this he had succeeded. He had also discovered that it was true that Dwight was, if not exactly following her, at any rate prowling about in the vicinity of Rose Briar Cottage in a highly suspicious manner.

  “Can’t say I like it, sir,” Wright added uneasily. “He’s up to something.”

  “We’ll wait a bit and then perhaps we might bring him in for questioning, to try to find out what he is up to,” Bobby decided. “Meanwhile, take your man off Miss Earle and put him on Dwight instead.”

  “Sir?” said Wright, very much surprised.

  “She’s spotted him,” Bobby explained, “she’s been here to complain. She says she’ll go for him with a dog whip if it goes on. We don’t want that.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Wright, “wouldn’t do at all, that wouldn’t. Be in all the papers at once.” After a pause, he added: “A formidable young party, sir.”

  He retired then, and Bobby reflected moodily that now he was face to face with two apparently insoluble problems, first, how to secure enough evidence to justify him in making an arrest of the person he so strongly suspected, and, secondly, the problem of discovering what it was Anne Earle intended, in time, if possible, to forestall it.

  “What ever she has in mind,” he found himself saying aloud, “it’s going to be pretty drastic, and only God knows what will come of it.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  HER OWN FATHER

  SO STRONG INDEED were Bobby’s misgivings that he even took the trouble, which he did not grudge, or at least not much, and the time, which he did grudge, for in these days he had none to spare, to travel up to London to consult the office of the public prosecutor.

  He got small comfort. He was told that on the evidence he could produce, it was hopeless to expect a conviction. Very likely, most likely indeed, his suspicions were well founded. The public prosecutor’s office, placing the tips of its fingers together, leaning back in its chair, surveying gravely the ceiling through a pair of gold rimmed pince-nez, offered to bet half a dollar to a bad ha’penny that Bobby was quite right. But what, inquired the public prosecutor’s office sadly, was the good of being right if one couldn’t prove it? No use going into court to offer judge and jury a safe bet. One had to show them facts. Inspector Owen’s powers of observation and deduction did him immense credit, but remained entirely useless without facts. Facts!

  Bobby winced at this repetition to himself of what he himself had so often preached to others. He had not really known before how annoying, maddening indeed, it could be. Facts. Quite so. Certainly. Of course. Only where were they?

  On that point the public prosecutor’s office had nothing to say. Not their affair. Their business was not to find facts but to receive them from others, chew them, digest them, serve them up in a dainty dish fit to set before a jury and a judge.

  Probably also, in the considered opinion of the public prosecutor’s office, Bobby was right in his expectation of still more mischief to come. Miss Anne Earle—who was very likely guilty herself, for one never knew what these irregular unions might not lead to—was no doubt up to something. Tilting the chair still further back, fixing those gold rimmed pince-nez still more intently on the ceiling, the public prosecutor’s office, increasing the odds, offered to bet a quid to a brass trouser button that Miss Anne Earle meant to make trouble, or, that if she didn’t, then someone else did.

  “Nothing you can do about it, though, inspector,” observed the public prosecutor’s office. “Not your move. You can’t take action on intention.”

  “You mean we’ve just got to stand by till something fresh breaks?” Bobby asked
gloomily.

  The public prosecutor’s office agreed genially that that was precisely what it did mean. If murderers, the public prosecutor’s office pointed out, would just be content to go home and forget all about it, then it would almost always be impossible to get a conviction. But to go home and forget it, was exactly the one thing no murderer seemed able to do. The public prosecutor’s office regarded this strange fact with great apparent interest. A murderer always did something, or else someone else did something, and then the murderer re-acted and then you got him. No doubt Inspector Owen would agree that the one safe thing for a murderer to do was to wash his hands and go home to tea; and yet, oddly enough, that was the one thing they never did seem capable of doing. The public prosecutor’s office shook a mildly rebuking head over this quaint and puzzling fact, and then abruptly shook hands with Bobby and wished him the best of luck. Wherewith Bobby returned to Midwych, not greatly comforted, and found waiting for him little Ursula Harris in a very nervous and worried state of mind.

  “You see,” she explained, “Roy and me, we made it up never to meet again where we used to. I mean to say, not in that old empty cottage garden. It gives me the creeps and Roy said so, too. Only—”

  “Only what?” Bobby asked when she paused.

  “Only Roy and I—we had been out and we came back that way, along that road, I mean. And we thought we would just have a look again and we did and—and—”

  “Well?” said Bobby patiently.

  “I was never so frightened in my life,” Ursula said, and looked it.

  “What at?” asked Bobby.

  “A—a grave,” said Ursula and shuddered.

  “A—what?” asked Bobby, puzzled.

  “It’s what it looked like,” said Ursula and began to cry.

  Bobby sighed and waited. He knew that when a woman begins to cry there is nothing else to do. When the sobs diminished a little in violence, he asked:

  ‘‘What makes you say that?”