The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “I’m O.K.,” Wright declared. “Hit me from behind, he did. The murderer, I mean.”

  “Who’s that?” Bobby asked.

  “Dwight,” the sergeant answered. “He said so…he said he would out me…but I’m O.K.,” and proved his words by promptly losing consciousness.

  Bobby knew how to make use of what is sometimes called the ‘fireman’s lift’. With some trouble, for Wright was a heavily-built man, Bobby got him hoisted into the correct position, and then was able to carry him easily enough to where he had left his car. He managed to get him inside and made him as comfortable and warm as possible with the rugs. There was a flask of brandy in one of the car lockers. With the contents, in default of clean boiled water, he bathed the wound gently, and then bandaged it as best he could with lint from a first-aid box there was also in the car. Wright opened his eyes and said:

  “Don’t bother about me, sir. I’m O.K. You go after Dwight, sir. He’s your man, he’s the murderer, he said so.”

  Again Bobby had a difficult choice to make. He did not like the idea of leaving the injured man alone in the car, and yet he felt, too, that he ought not to leave the vicinity, even temporarily, till he knew more of what was going on. He wondered if Dwight had really proclaimed himself the murderer, or whether that was merely an impression the injured sergeant had received, due perhaps in part to the injury itself. Safe neither to leave Wright alone nor to leave Dwight free to carry out possibly his further plans without let or hindrance. Only too likely that Dwight was here because he had known or suspected that Anne also would be here. He had apparently been watching her for some time past. For that matter it might well be Dwight who was responsible for the secret digging in the garden of the old deserted cottage. Swiftly these thoughts and considerations passed through Bobby’s mind, swiftly he decided that Wright must take his chance till it was a little plainer what was happening or about to happen, and then Wright himself clenched the matter by muttering in an excited whisper:

  “There he is, sir, there—over there, in the field there, I saw him shine his light. If you’re quick, sir, you can catch him.”

  He tried to sit up in his excitement but collapsed with a groan; and Bobby, already half-way out of the car, hesitated and said:

  “Sure you’ll be all right?”

  “If I keep still, if I don’t sit up,” Wright answered. “There, sir, look; there it is again, the light. You can catch him, sir, if you’re quick. Don’t mind me.”

  Losing no further time, Bobby jumped down and started at a run he had to change at once to a hesitating and uncertain stumbling walk, so dense was the all-pervading darkness. The light Wright had noticed first was still visible, apparently in the middle of the field that here was skirted by the canal road. To enter it Bobby had to force his way through a hedge, not without damage to his clothing and his hands, and when he had managed to get through, and was pushing on towards the still visible light, which by now he had recognized as the glow of a cigarette, he discovered that he had lost his torch, jerked either from his hand or from his pocket, he could not be sure which, as he had pushed and scrambled and struggled through the hedge. He half-turned, with some intention of going back to try to recover it, and then, recognizing the futility of such an attempt in that darkness, he turned again to discover now that the guiding light for which he had been making had vanished. Presumably the cigarette had either been extinguished or thrown away.

  Only then did Bobby fully realize the immensity of the darkness in which he and all around were enveloped. A feeling of utter helplessness possessed him. He had even lost his sense of direction in that quick turn he had made with the idea of recovering his torch, and he was no longer certain in which direction lay the cottage, in which the spot where he had left his car, in which the light that was no longer visible. He lay down flat in the hope that some landmark he could recognize would show itself against the horizon, but the horizon showed only the same inky blackness that seemed to begin where he put out his hand and to continue without end. It was so intense he even had a feeling that he could gather it up in handfuls and hold it so. He cursed the haste that had brought him here into the middle of this utter blackness, with, for guidance, nothing but the light that now had vanished. Then he reflected that at any rate he was in a field, that the field would have a boundary, a hedge. If he could find it he could follow it round till he reached a gate; but when he did this, the gate he came to admitted only to another field, and he did not know whether to enter it would bring him nearer to or further away from the canal road he sought. He left it without passing through and continued with difficulty to grope his way by the hedge. Presently he became aware that he had lost it and in that all-enveloping darkness stood still, a helpless prisoner of the night.

  He began to wonder whether he would not have to spend all the night there, unable to penetrate the encircling wall of blackness which was always all around him, which moved in unison with him as he moved, and then quite near at hand he heard a faint and tiny sound.

  So small, faint, and remote it was, he could not be sure it was not merely a product of his own strained attention, imagining what was not there in fact at all. Then he heard it again, this time familiar and unmistakable, the striking of a match. The tiny flame appeared, shone out indeed like a beacon against the immense background of the night. It showed clearly for an instant the form of a man, standing sideways to Bobby, so that he could not distinguish the features, but holding in one hand something which, even in that momentary glimpse, Bobby recognized as a revolver with an unnaturally long barrel. That meant, he supposed, that it was fitted with a ‘silencer’, or rather a ‘reducer’ as it is more accurately called, since the thing does not silence, though it does greatly reduce, the sound of the explosion.

  Bobby began to run towards the unknown. At once the match went out. He guessed what he had to expect and swerved sharply to one side, though that was useless enough since he was as likely to swerve into the path of the bullet as away from it. He heard the ‘plop’ to which the ‘reducer’ had diminished the normal report. He heard, too, and liked it less, the whine of a bullet passing overhead. Next came the sound of rapid footsteps. Whoever had fired at him was now in flight, endeavouring to escape. Bobby started to run in pursuit, but warily, for he did not know when he would not be fired upon again.

  “Who was it?” he thought as he ran. “Dwight? Since Dwight apparently was or had been in the neighbourhood. Osman Ford? Since it was on his land all this was happening. Or someone else altogether? Young Roy Green, perhaps?”

  His run slackened, became a walk. He stood still, once more baffled by the surrounding darkness into which the man of the revolver had fled as into a sure refuge. In vain he strained his ears, hoping to hear even the faintest sound that might direct him. But the silence was as vast, as universal as the darkness, and once more he felt himself held a prisoner and helpless in the night. He wondered if perhaps the fugitive was doing the same thing, standing still and quiet, secure in the cloak of invisibility the night provided. Intently Bobby listened, hoping for some faint sound to help. Gradually he began to distinguish one from other the different soft sounds, the flight of a beetle, the scurrying progress of a field mouse through the grass, the scratching of a mole busy underground, that taken together make up in their totality the enormous quietness of the night. But he heard nothing to show there was any other human presence near.

  Then all at once, and not far away, there broke out a confused shouting, a sound of struggling, blows, a stamping to and fro.

  Bobby shouted at the top of his voice and began to run in the direction whence the sounds came. But it is not easy to run fast in the pitchy darkness of a night without stars or moon, with heavy rain clouds low overhead, with a thin mist spreading on the surface of the ground. Again he heard the ‘plop’, something like the drawing of a cork from some giant bottle, that told once more of the discharge of a pistol fitted with a ‘silencer’ or, better, a ‘reducer’. It was fo
llowed, not so much followed as echoed simultaneously, by a shrill, piercing scream and the noise of a body falling. Bobby tried to increase his speed, to run faster still in spite of that hampering, treacherous darkness. Quickly he paid the penalty, catching his foot in a tangle of grass and falling headlong. For a moment he lay half-stunned and breathless, for he had fallen heavily. He scrambled to his feet again and ran on, and almost instantly found himself grappled in a fierce and close embrace.

  He had been taken by surprise and at a disadvantage. He felt a hand gripping at his throat. He retaliated with a blow that in the darkness missed entirely, but somehow he got free from the fingers clutching to strangle him. Confusedly they fought on. Once his unknown antagonist managed to wrench himself free, but before he could altogether escape once again Bobby gripped him, and once again they were struggling and wrestling together, Bobby trying to make his grasp secure, the other twisting and fighting to get loose. Neither of them spoke a word, their breath came heavily, their feet were loud in the night as they stamped to and fro, the blows they exchanged were ineffective, they lost their balance and rolled over on the ground and Bobby was undermost. His grip loosened for the fraction of a second so that with a sudden swift and violent effort the other was able to wrench himself free, to get to his feet. In another fraction of a second he would have melted away in that darkness which offered so secure a refuge. But Bobby was able just at the last to throw out a hand and grip the fugitive by the ankle and pluck him down. Instantly he was upon him, grinding him down with his knee in the small of his back.

  “Had enough?” Bobby asked. By way of emphasis he took his prostrate prisoner ungently by both ears and made ready to bang his head on the ground if he still showed signs of resistance. “Had enough?” he repeated. “Coming quietly or do you want some more? Where’s your pistol?”

  A voice he had not expected, a voice he recognized for that of Roy Green, stammered:

  “I haven’t got one. You swine, let me up. You swine, if I had I would have potted you long ago.”

  “Oh, it’s you, is it?” Bobby said.

  “You’re breaking my back,” Roy panted. “Let me up. You’re killing me.”

  “No great loss if I did,” Bobby answered unsympathetically.

  He twisted the boy’s arms behind his back and held him helpless in a grip all policemen know. Roy said again:

  “Let me go. You’ve no right. Where’s the other cop?”

  “What other cop?” Bobby asked. “What do you mean?”

  “It was another chap just now,” Roy answered sullenly. “Then it was you. What’s the game?”

  “Where’s your pistol?” Bobby repeated. “The one you took a pot shot at me with just now.”

  “I tell you I haven’t got one. He had one. The other chap I mean. He fired at me and I yelled and fell down to make him think I was hit and then I went for him and then it was you. I haven’t any pistol. I’ve never had one. Why should I? I wish I had and I wish I had tried to shoot you and done it, too. Just now it was another chap and now it’s you. What’s it mean?”

  “Have you any idea who it was, who you were scrapping with, I mean?”

  “No. How could I tell, in this darkness? You can’t see a thing. It’s like—like a coal cellar. I don’t know who it was. If it wasn’t one of your cops, who was it? I ran right into him and before I could say a word or ask what it was all about, he fired at me. He called me a damn police spy. Perhaps he thought I was you. I don’t know. He hit me with something hard. I think it was a gun. It had a long barrel thing. I tried to hit back, and I think I landed one, but I don’t know, and then he hit me again, and then it wasn’t him any longer, it was you.”

  “Sounds a bit muddled,” Bobby said. “If he called you a police spy, it’s not likely he was a policeman himself, is it? You didn’t recognize the voice?”

  “No. No. It was all so sudden, I hadn’t time to think even.”

  “You can’t form any idea?”

  “No. It wasn’t natural. Not disguised, I don’t mean, a sort of scream, only in a whisper, if you see what I mean. Not natural,” he repeated, shuddering a little at the memory.

  Bobby felt he knew what Roy meant. The killer’s scream in a high-pitched whisper from which all trace of humanity had vanished in the beast-like urge to kill.

  “Well, look here,” he said. “Wait a minute though.” He ran a practised hand up and down the boy’s clothing and made sure that he had on him no weapon of any sort or kind. But he found something nearly as valuable at the moment—a small electric torch of which he took instant and probably unlawful possession.

  “You’re hurting, let me loose,” Roy said again.

  Bobby hesitated for a moment.

  “All right,” he said then, and let go the grip in which he had held Roy’s arms uncomfortably twisted behind his back. But he still held him by one arm, having no mind to see him vanish suddenly into that black night, in which, once it was attained, it was as though a fugitive dematerialized. He said:

  “What brought you here at this time of night?”

  “It’s not so late as all that,” Roy answered sullenly. “There’s been some funny work in that old cottage garden. I thought I would see if I could find out what was up. I meant to wait behind the hedge round the garden to try to spot what it was all about. I thought I would cut across the field so as to come up at the back, if you see what I mean, just in case there was anyone there already. But it’s so blasted dark I got lost. I couldn’t tell which way—where the cottage was, I mean. I was beginning to think I should never find it. Then I ran into that other bloke, whoever he was, and he fired at me and went for me like hell. I expect he thought I was you and then I thought at first you were him.”

  “Bit of a muddle,” Bobby repeated thoughtfully. “What do you mean by ‘funny work’ in the cottage garden?”

  “Someone’s been digging a hole,” Roy answered. “Behind the old pigsty—between the pigsty and the hedge. Ursula said it looked like a grave. It’s just a hole, but that’s what Ursula said.”

  “I think perhaps she is right and you’ve run a good chance of being its occupant,” Bobby said grimly. “Why didn’t you come and tell us?”

  “I wanted to be sure, I wanted—”

  He didn’t complete the sentence, so Bobby finished it for him.

  “You mean you wanted to be extra clever and find it all out for yourself,” he said. “A fool’s trick,” he said dispassionately, and wondered if the boy’s story were true or if there were another and more sinister explanation. Perhaps he had heard, through Ursula again, that Anne had some plan for discovering the truth. If that truth was that Roy himself was guilty, a possibility still, then it might be he himself had dug what he called a hole, though Ursula called it a grave, and that therefore it was he who had planned who was to be its occupant. “Did you hear anything else?” Bobby asked abruptly.

  “You hear all sorts of funny noises at night,” Roy answered. “There was something rummy about that pistol the chap fired at me. It was—sort of smothered, if you see what I mean. There was something like it before. I couldn’t make out what it was. Just as I got back. Over there, in the cottage garden or somewhere near.”

  “Are you sure?” Bobby asked, startled and alarmed, for this meant that an earlier shot still had been fired.

  Three then, it seemed. One at Bobby himself and one at Roy a moment ago, and now apparently a third as well. But at whom directed? And had it missed as had those other two or had it found its mark? Disturbing questions, and they brought to Bobby’s mind a vision of digging, of digging that no longer resembled a grave because it had been completed, finished and smoothed over—a task that possibly, indeed, someone at that very moment was busy with.

  “What’s it all about?” Roy’s voice broke in suddenly upon his troubled and uneasy thoughts. “What’s it—mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Bobby answered. “I wish I did. But I may as well tell you at once I am not altogether satisfi
ed with your story. I hope it will stand up when we look into it. Anyhow, there’s something very queer going on about here and I want help.” Again he hesitated. He knew he was taking a risk, but he felt it was necessary to obtain help and the only way of getting it was through Roy. After all, his story hung together, and his appearance here was consistent with the story little Ursula Harris told. Bobby went on: “I took your torch. You had better have it back. Catch hold. I’ve lost mine, worse luck. I want you to go back to Ends Bridge, you know, where the road crosses the canal. You can drive a car, can’t you? Good. You’ll find my car there, by the roadside. One of my men is in it. He’s been knocked out and he is in pretty bad shape. I want you to go for help. Stop at the first ’phone box you come to and dial the county police. The number is MID 1234, easy to remember. Tell them where I am and that I want help. One car with four men and two motor-cyclists. Tell them to turn out the police surgeon and fetch him along. There may be something for him; and if there isn’t, he’ll just have to curse. Then find the first doctor you can and get the chap in the car seen to. If the doctor thinks it’ll be O.K., take him home and go home yourself. And stay there. Understand?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I shall be stopping around to see what else happens,” Bobby answered. “It’s been a bit lively so far and it may continue.”

  “All right,” Roy said.

  “Sure you understand?”

  “Yes. One car. Four men. The police doctor. Two motor-cyclists. Why not mobilize the whole blessed police force at once? And get one of your men you’ve left in your car seen to by a doctor. Doesn’t strike you you nearly killed me, I suppose?”

  With this parting shot he turned and began to make his way back across the field, using the torch Bobby had returned to him with which to pick his way.

  All the same, as he stood for a moment to watch Roy vanish into the darkness, and saw the light of the torch flash out and vanish and flash again, Bobby wondered if it was not the murderer himself whom thus he was permitting to make a safe departure, to whom he had entrusted the task of calling the aid needed so desperately, at whose mercy he had placed the life of Sergeant Wright.