“I should like the recipe myself,” Olive added thoughtfully.
Bobby composed himself to resume his gardening by lying back in his deck chair and closing his eyes. Olive poked him violently in the ribs. Bobby opened a reproachful eye—only one though, so as to be able to resume his gardening more quickly.
“Here. I say,” he protested.
“It’s where you come in,” Olive told him.
“Me,” protested Bobby. “My good girl, I don’t know anything about making chocolates.”
“You see,” explained Olive, unheeding this unnecessary disclaimer. “Walters’s say they get them from a Miss Floyd and they don’t know her address and they send the money to the Barsley Forest post office, and they are always asking her to send more, and she never does, so Mrs Weston wants me to try to find Miss Floyd and ask her for the recipe.”
“Why can’t she go herself?”
“It’s a long way for them, we’re much nearer, and then there’s the petrol. Mr Weston wants it all. Mrs Weston says she daren’t even fill her lighter. He’s a sort of inspector for salesmen or something, and he has to use his car all the time. Besides,” added Olive candidly, “I offered, because if I can get the recipe I should like to try myself.”
“Suppose this Miss Floyd doesn’t want to tell?”
“Well, she mightn’t,” admitted Olive, “but it would be mean, and besides Mrs Weston said she wouldn’t mind paying her. She told Mr Weston and he was awfully interested and said that would be all right, she could pay as much as she liked, as it was for the church bazaar. Mrs Weston was rather surprised, because Mr Weston doesn’t take much interest in church work generally.”
Bobby mused on this. He thought Mr Weston sounded very generous, but then he didn’t know Mr Weston, and quite possibly that gentleman was of a liberal and generous disposition by nature.
He said thoughtfully:
“It may be a girl who lives in a lonely sort of cottage near Barsley Forest village, but right in the forest. I think her name is Floyd and I think there’s an invalid mother who has married again. I remember altering the beat of one of our chaps so as to pass by their cottage. It’s a lonely sort of place for one thing and the man’s a bit of a bad lot, too, or supposed to be, so I thought it might be as well to keep an eye on the place occasionally. He’s under suspicion of having been mixed up in a burglary or two, and he’s been sent up for petty larceny, I think. I don’t remember exactly. Stealing rabbits out of traps, too, I think. Anyhow, I know I thought it might be as well to let him see we existed. Possibly that’s why the girl has her money sent to the post office, to keep it safe from step-papa.’’
“We’ll go and see her to-morrow, Bobby, shall we?” decided Olive. “You know, Bobby, those chocolates are really delicious. I’ve never tasted anything quite like them. I’m sure that girl could sell as many as she liked to make. It’s what Walters’s said. She could work up a very good business if she wanted to.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want,” Bobby said. “Are you going to try to cajole her out of her valuable secret?”
He spoke half jestingly, but Olive was beginning to look serious.
“Bobby,” she said, “do you think it might really be valuable? I mean, suppose a manufacturer began to make them and advertised a lot and all that?”
“Might mean a fortune,” Bobby said, still half jestingly. “It all depends.”
“I was only thinking they would be nice to make,” Olive explained. She was looking troubled now. “Mrs Weston says Walters’s say people are beginning to ask for them and they charge seven and six a pound and that’s rather a lot for chocolates.”
“Suggests a fair margin for profit,” Bobby agreed. Now he, too, was beginning to look interested. “What sort of a chap is Mr Weston?” he asked.
“She’ll have to be told,” Olive declared. “I mean I don’t want the recipe, if it’s going to be worth a lot of money. I don’t think we’ll go, shall we? Mr Weston? I don’t like him very much. I’ve only seen him once or twice, though. I expect he’s all right. Only I promised Mrs Weston I would try and get it for her—the recipe, I mean.”
Bobby was thinking hard. The official part of him warned him that it was no affair of his and that only the most utter, hopeless fool of a policeman would ever risk seeking trouble when trouble was always so persistently finding him. The human part of him suggested that a girl who might possibly have hit upon some unusual flavouring for her homemade chocolates ought to be given a hint not to part with her secret without due consideration. In the confectionery trade a new flavour might well have its value. Olive’s voice broke in upon his thoughts.
“I did promise,” she said, for she was one of those rare people who believe that promises should hold.
Possibly it was this remark that influenced Bobby. Or it may have been mere curiosity, a marked trait in his character, so that he could never hear of anything unusual without wanting to get to the bottom of it. Or it may have been even a kind of uneasy premonition that lonely girls in possession of a trade secret of possible cash value might just conceivably come to be in need of police protection. Anyhow, he said:
“We’ll go and have a look round if you like. To-morrow’s Sunday and I’m not on duty for a wonder.” He paused to regard this fact with faint surprise, for it was his deep conviction that he was on duty practically every Sunday. “It’s a goodish way, but there’s a drop of petrol to spare and if the weather keeps up we could take some lunch and make a sort of picnic of it.”
Olive thought this a very good idea. What with war work and threatening air raids and ordinary police routine, it was long since Bobby had had anything even remotely resembling a holiday. Do him good, she decided. Do them both good, for that matter.
“Even if she wants to keep the recipe to herself,” Olive went on, “I expect she would be willing to make some for the bazaar. Mrs Weston would love to have them for her stall and she could charge as much as she liked, because you can at a bazaar.”
“So you can and so you do,” agreed Bobby; and Olive looked at him severely, for she did not altogether approve of the tone in which this last remark had been uttered.
Published by Dean Street Press 2016
Copyright © 1941 E.R. Punshon
Introduction Copyright © 2016 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.
First published in 1941 by Victor Gollancz
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911413 32 5
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 25