The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  A heavy responsibility indeed to have undertaken. Nor did he feel quite sure he could justify himself if it turned out ill.

  The light, however, that the departing Roy switched on from time to time and that, though kept carefully on the ground, none the less shone out clearly against the immense background of that black night, served also to show Bobby the correct direction to follow. He knew now, provided, that is, Roy was taking the right path for Ends Bridge, where the deserted cottage must stand. Towards it, therefore, he began to make his way.

  This time with success in spite of the ever-hampering darkness, for presently he found that he had reached that corner of the cottage garden hedge where it met the other hedge bordering the canal road. Treading very cautiously, he groped his way along, trying to find a gap, of which he remembered having noticed one or two, whereby he could penetrate into the garden. He stiffened to attention. There was a careful step approaching, slow and careful, and by the rustling of a skirt he knew the new-comer must be a woman.

  CHAPTER XX

  FROM OUT THE PIT

  HE HAD AN impulse to call out, to ask who was there, even to make a guess and use Anne Earle’s name. But between stood the strongly-grown hawthorn hedge that was the boundary of the garden of the deserted cottage. Probably, too, if he gave any such challenge, the woman, whoever she might be, would disappear into the darkness. Already he had had too much evidence of how easily in the shelter of that impenetrable night pursuit and recognition could be evaded.

  As silently as might be he groped his way along the hedge, hoping to find a gap through which he could pass. He thought he remembered there was one such gap just behind where the old pigsty stood at the bottom of the garden. He remembered, too, that if he found it and got through there he must be careful to avoid that freshly-dug pit of which Ursula had spoken. He wondered again if it could be Anne he had heard pass by, and, if so, if she would have answered if he had risked calling her by name.

  Probably it had been Anne, he told himself. He had felt all the time that the scheme she seemed to have formed for obtaining proof of the murderer’s guilt, whatever that scheme might be, almost certainly had some connection with this garden. Of the other women in any way connected with recent events, nothing he was sure would induce Ursula to come near the place, and so far as he knew there was nothing to bring to this vicinity either Mrs Jordan or Mrs Osman Ford. The only persons he had expected to find were Anne and whoever it was against whom she expected to obtain proof. Dwight, perhaps, since Dwight apparently was in the neighbourhood, or young Roy Green, or possibly the person unidentified with whom Roy had wrestled and who might or might not be identical with Dwight.

  His mind was busy with these thoughts as he came presently to the gap in the hedge he was searching for. Not without difficulty he crawled through, and almost at once he became certain that there was someone else there, not far away, like himself intent and listening and prepared. Almost at once, too, he heard another sound, a little further away. It was someone else approaching, stumbling and nearly falling, and then came a low exclamation in a voice Bobby knew at once for that of Roy Green.

  Roy was back then in this garden of darkness and of doubt. Instead of carrying out the errands given him, instead of hurrying to bring help, he had returned. And what, Bobby asked himself with a cold chill at the heart, had happened to Wright, whose helplessness he had, too rashly he felt now, trusted to Roy’s care. How easy to send car and unconscious man down the slope of the embankment into the canal, and how difficult afterwards to prove what had happened.

  “If he has done that, I’ll see he pays for it, proof or no proof,” Bobby swore to himself.

  Even, he told himself fiercely, at the cost of his own life, for if indeed that had happened, then it was through him that Wright had lost his life; and for a life, a life must pay.

  But if this was Roy come back, who was it of whose presence so near by he was so certainly aware?

  He remained motionless, thinking it best to wait what happened next. Abruptly, another voice that was not Roy’s called out, shrill and startled:

  “Who’s there?”

  No answer came. The silence that had been broken returned. It seemed that the whole garden waited, watchful and still and expectant. Bobby began to move forward, very slowly, very carefully, testing well each step before he took the next. A feeling of helplessness possessed him, enclosed as he was in this prison of unending night, so full of mystery and peril. Crowded the garden seemed to be. Dwight was here, he believed, and Roy Green certainly, and the unknown woman he had heard go by so recently, and that other to whose shrill challenge ‘Who’s there?’ neither he himself nor anyone else had given any answer.

  Another step forward Bobby took with the same caution and it brought him against a low wooden paling. It puzzled him for a moment, and then he realized that this was what, when the cottage had been occupied, had been the pigsty. Close by then must be the digging of which Ursula Harris had spoken. She had likened it to a grave Bobby remembered. He sank on his hands and knees and so made his way behind the sty, since between it and the hedge Ursula said the pit had been dug.

  There had once been a kind of rough path here, so that the ground was comparatively smooth, and progress was easier and more silent. There came to him the smell of fresh-turned earth. He put out a hand and felt the edge of a pit. Fragments of earth his hand displaced crumbled and fell, and the sound of their fall was heavy and dull, and full of strange and ominous foreboding. Cautiously Bobby dragged himself nearer, nearer still. He hardly knew what he expected, but he did know it would be dreadful. Groping carefully with outstretched hand, he made out that the edge of the pit extended as far as he could reach, parallel with the pigsty. Towards the hedge it was narrow. Long and narrow, therefore, like a grave. He dragged himself nearer still and stared downwards into its interior, but he could distinguish nothing, nothing but a great blackness.

  “The blackness of the pit,” he found himself muttering.

  Slowly, carefully, with dread, he leaned over further still, and groped with his hand to see if he could reach to the bottom. He was hardly surprised when his hand touched a face, a human face that was cold and still, and so he knew that what he had found was indeed a grave and that the grave had an occupant. Yet though it was hardly a surprise, though it was but what he had more than half expected, he gave a loud and sudden cry as his hand touched those cold features.

  As if the note of terror and of urgency that, though without his knowledge, had informed his voice, had roused the garden to sudden action, had stripped from it all that dark secrecy and silence which before had seemed to fill it, abruptly it became full of a confusion of sounds, of voices crying, of a running to and fro, of angry, startled exclamations, of a woman’s voice crying ceaselessly:

  “Osman. Osman. Osman. Where are you?”

  “So Osman Ford is here, why is he here?” Bobby muttered.

  Abruptly, suddenly, unexpectedly, a light began to glow, somewhere half way between the empty cottage and the end of the garden where Bobby stood. At first a tiny light, a little glowing light that flickered humbly by the ground and did no more than make its own self visible. But swiftly, swiftly, it grew, increased, till it became a dancing flame, a high and ardent flame, a leaping pyramid of light before which the darkness of the night drew back and shrivelled utterly away, till cottage and garden and beyond were all lit up in a pattern of changing light and shade. Bobby remembered now having noticed a pile of brushwood, old hedge clippings, broken palings, other odd bits of wood, all thrown together in a pile. This it was that was now alight. Someone had put a match to it, and now it glowed, a pyramid of fire, and in its glow, as that increased, one thing after another grew into visibility and recognition.

  One by one in quick succession, garden and cottage, out-buildings, the hedge, became as it were outlined against the hitherto all prevailing night as that rolled back before the mounting flame. Into that bright visibility there grew also one
by one other human forms, startled or passive, alert or still, and nearest of them all, quite close to his right hand, stood Roy Green. Bobby said to him:

  “So it’s you.”

  Roy said quickly:

  “Dwight’s there. What’s he here for?”

  “Why have you come back?” Bobby asked.

  Neither answered the other’s question.

  Close by, a little further back from where Bobby stood, Dwight was moving forward. He stopped and called out loudly:

  “Where’s Anne? I’m looking for Anne. What have you done to Anne?”

  “Give me your torch,” Bobby said to Roy.

  Roy was still holding it in one hand. Bobby took it from him and ran back a step or two to that open pit he had found between the pigsty and the hedge. He bent over and flashed the light of the torch into its depths that still lay dark in heavy shadow. Nor was he surprised when he recognized the still, cold face of Anne Earle looking up at him. There was loose earth upon it, and more loose earth upon her body, as though already an effort had been made to complete the burial. Into the circle of light, from the direction of the cottage, came the sound of a man’s steps. It was Osman Ford, and in one hand he held a spade. Bobby said to him:

  “Did you do this?”

  Osman did not answer. He came a little nearer and stood gazing down into the pit lit up by the beam of Bobby’s torch. Osman said:—

  “It’s her I saw in Castles’ office.”

  “Did you kill her?” Bobby asked.

  “No. No. Why should I?” Osman said, and yet the question did not seem much to surprise him.

  Unexpectedly he put out his hand and took the torch from Bobby and still kept the ray direct on the quiet and prostrate form, lying cold at the bottom of that narrow pit, loose earth staining face and clothing.

  “What are you doing with that spade?” Bobby asked.

  “I picked it up,” Osman said abstractedly. “I picked it up. It was under my feet and so I picked it up.”

  “Why are you here?” Bobby asked.

  “I had a letter,” Osman said. “I think she wrote it,” he said, though apparently now speaking more to himself. He knelt down by the edge of the pit. He continued to direct the ray from the torch so that it illumined the pit and the prostrate form within, while behind the flame from the burning pile leaped ever higher and threw ever further and wider the circle of light it made in the darkness. Till now Osman had seemed only half aware of Bobby’s presence, of Bobby’s questions, but now he looked up at him and said:

  “I have only seen her once or twice and I never noticed her much, so why do I think now that I have always known—”

  “Known what?”

  “Known that she was my daughter.”

  “Is that why you killed her?” Bobby asked.

  Osman said:

  “I heard a shot. I remember now I heard a shot, a muffled shot.”

  “How long have you known she was your daughter?” Bobby asked.

  “I only knew when I saw her there,” Osman answered with a gesture towards the pit and the body. “Then I saw it was myself looking up at me. I do not understand. I had a letter and I think she wrote it.”

  “Where is it?” Bobby asked.

  “I showed it to Blythe, I gave it to Blythe,” Osman answered.

  Roy Green touched Bobby on the arm.

  “Mr Blythe’s here, too,” he said.

  “Making it complete,” Bobby muttered. “Anyone else?”

  “There was a woman here just now,” Dwight said. “I thought at first that it was Anne but it was not, for her step was different.”

  “Where is Mr Blythe?” Bobby asked, and the lawyer stepped forward from the further side of the burning pile of brushwood behind which he had been standing.

  “I saw it all,” he said, and from behind the hedge a voice said shrilly:

  “That was uncommon clever of you in the dark.”

  “Who’s that?” Bobby asked sharply, and Mrs Ford came forward, forcing her way through the hawthorn hedge of which a stray branch made an ugly scratch on one hand. Only then did Bobby notice a similar scratch on Blythe’s face that had bled a little, that in fact was still bleeding, so that he had to dab at it occasionally with his hand.

  “I followed my man,” she said. “I saw there was something troubling him and I followed him. What’s to do?”

  “Murder,” Bobby answered. “Anne Earle has been murdered and the murderer has tried to bury her in a pit he had dug before, and I think it must be one of you, but I do not know which.”

  None of them made any answer except, indeed, that from them all came much the same sharp intake of breath, the same stir and quick movement that might be either knowledge of guilt or the protest of innocence. Dwight was the first to speak. He said loudly:

  “I was following her to look after her.”

  “You attacked Sergeant Wright,” Bobby said to him. “Perhaps you tried to murder him. Perhaps you murdered Miss Earle, too.” To Roy he said: “You’ve come back. Why did you come back? To commit a murder?” He swung round upon Osman. “You were standing there by her grave with a spade in your hand. Was that to cover up what you knew was there because it was you had put it there?” When Mrs Ford tried to speak he silenced her with a strong gesture: “You say you followed your husband,” he said, “but perhaps you came with him to help him in what he had to do. Did you know she was his daughter?”

  “I’ve thought that long enough,” she answered composedly “How could I help when there was so much of him in her, of her in him? Both with the same slow anger to lead them anywhere. But not to murder.” She went and stood by her husband’s side. Then she said: “There’s still someone else over there, watching by the corner of the cottage. Come out there,” she called, “and let’s see who you are.”

  It was Mrs Jordan who moved forward.

  “Where is Anne?” she said. “I came for Anne because I thought she might be here. What has happened to Anne?”

  But Bobby, at least, thought that she already knew or guessed, and then he found himself wondering how that could be, or if it was possible that for this knowledge so plainly visible in her eyes, there was good reason.

  Mr Blythe began to speak. He said:

  “I think I can tell you what happened because I saw it all. That unhappy man,” he pointed to Osman Ford who stood still and silent, apparently only half conscious of what was going on around, though to his wife he had muttered in a murmur audible only to her: “Did you know? How strange you should know before me.” More loudly he said: “You shouldn’t have come but I’m glad you’re here.” “That unhappy man,” Mr Blythe continued, unheeding the interruption, still with one uplifted hand directed towards Osman, “came to see me this afternoon. I don’t know anything about a letter, but he seemed in a very excited mood. I thought at first he had been drinking. Afterwards I felt it was something much more serious. I couldn’t guess what. But I was very uneasy. He wanted to know if I thought he was suspected of the murder of my dear friend and partner. I told him I knew no reason to think so. He said he had been questioned and I reminded him others had been questioned too, including myself. He asserted that someone—he wouldn’t give any name—was trying to make out he was guilty. I tried to persuade him he had nothing to fear if he were innocent. He left me in the same excited mood, and it made me so uneasy I decided after he had gone to have another talk with him and try to get him into a more reasonable mood. On my way to his house, as I was driving along the road by the canal, I saw a light in this garden. I knew the cottage was empty. I felt puzzled. Curious perhaps. Uneasy certainly. I drove on a short distance, and then I thought I would see if anyone was there and I stopped the car and got down and walked back. To see if anything was going on. I heard voices. It was Mr Ford talking to a woman. My first thought was that I had come upon some vulgar assignation. Disgusting enough but not my business. I turned back towards where I had left the car and then I heard—well, I can’t quite describe
it. It made me think of the report of a gun and yet it wasn’t loud enough for that. But I remembered Ford told me once he was buying a silencer as they call it for his rook rifle, so that when he shot one bird the report should not alarm all the rest of them. I found myself asking if a silencer for a rook rifle could be adapted to a revolver, and if so why and for what purpose. I was thoroughly uneasy. There was a light in the garden again. It came from an electric torch on the ground. By its light I could distinguish Ford with a dead woman’s body at his feet. I felt it was as much as my own life was worth to let him know I had seen him. Not very heroic perhaps, but middle-aged lawyers aren’t always heroes. I tried to creep away without letting him hear me. I saw he was holding a spade, and then I heard footsteps and so did he, I think, for I saw him listen. He had switched off his torch before, but I heard plainly movements he had been making. Now they stopped. I suppose it was your footsteps, Inspector, we both heard. That is all I know.”

  “A pack of lies,” Mrs Ford said. “I pray God never to forgive you them.”

  “All lies,” Osman repeated. “Why are you telling lies like that about me? Did you kill her yourself?” he asked.

  “Inspector,” Mr Blythe said. “You can test for yourself whether one detail at least is true or a lie. There is something bulging in Mr Ford’s coat pocket that looks to me like a pistol.”

  He had shot out his hand again as he spoke, and Bobby said:

  “Your hand’s bleeding. There’s blood on your hand.”

  “I scratched my face scrambling away in the dark,” Mr Blythe answered, slightly disconcerted. “That’s all. Some blood must have got on my hand when I wiped it. It’s nothing. Mrs Ford’s hand is bleeding, too.”

  There was in fact a little blood oozing from a place where she had scratched herself forcing her way through the hedge. Apparently she had not known before for she looked surprised when she lifted her hand and saw it. Mr Blythe said: