“Find anything?” Bobby asked.
“He found a cartridge recently fired from a point three two automatic. A lady’s shoe, size four, and a good deal worn. And a five-pound note, identified by Major Hardman by the number as the one he gave his nephew. You remember there was heavy rain later in the night till well on in the morning, so there was no chance of finding footsteps or anything like that.”
“An odd assortment,” Bobby said, “a very odd assortment. Have to wait and see if there are any developments, I suppose.”
Payne agreed, and went off on his errand, while Bobby continued on his way to his room on the first floor.
CHAPTER II
LEGENDS
That evening there was to be a meeting between the heads of the Midwych city civil defence authorities and those of the outside districts. In a recent raid a certain lack of co-operation was thought to have been shown, and the meeting was to discuss ways and means of putting this right. Bobby was to attend and speak, since a good deal of general official responsibility was his now that he was Deputy Chief Constable. His wife, Olive, was also to be present, as one of the representatives of the organization outside the town boundaries. Bobby had suggested that a really dutiful wife would get someone else to take her place and herself stay at home, rather than see her husband make an ass of himself—as Bobby was always gloomily sure would be his fate whenever he had to speak in public. Olive, however, had pointed out that to see a husband making an ass of himself was no novelty to any wife; that, in any case, she would rather know the worst at once; and then had added the consoling reflection that on the whole sometimes he did not do so badly. Nor did she know why the prospect of speaking in public should invariably reduce him to a state of anguished panic. Hadn’t he, she asked, faced worse things? And Bobby said, No, because there was nothing worse than speaking in public.
The meeting was to begin at a comparatively early hour on account of blackout conditions and the possibility of another raid. Accordingly Olive appeared in good time, demanding to be taken out to tea. Bobby protested that was impossible. They must have their tea sent up from the canteen. He explained he had just written out an entirely new version of his proposed speech, and he had to learn it by heart. Olive asked to look at it, and, when he handed it over, put it in her handbag, snapped the handbag fastening to with great firmness, and told him that his old speech was good enough, that the fewer versions he burdened his somewhat limited intelligence with, the better; and that, anyway, she wanted her tea, and not from the canteen, where it was intended for the most He-like of He-men, and not for poor weak, fragile, feminine constitutions like her own.
“What about this stuffy old club of yours?” she demanded. “Or is it one of those places where they daren’t let a woman in because it isn’t fit to be seen?”
Bobby tried to stall, but soon realized that Olive had made up her mind, and that that being so, further argument was useless. To the Union club accordingly they adjourned, since a newly-elected revolutionary—practically Bolshevik—committee had recently ordained that members might entertain women friends in the smaller and less convenient tearoom—the one that had suffered bomb damage—between the hours of four and six. And what these changes would end in was a matter of somewhat gloomy speculation among the older and more staid members.
However, Olive had to admit that the service might have been worse, and that the anchovy toast was, at any rate, tolerable. Cakes, of course, in war time, are always wartime cakes, but she did wonder why women were not allowed in the bigger, brighter tearoom, since all the service there was now by women attendants.
“But then men always are so illogical,” she admitted, and did not stress the point.
They had nearly finished their tea when a member who knew Bobby, the one, in fact, who had proposed his election, brought up a Mr. Parkinson, a tall, thin man with thin, ascetic features, so thin, indeed, that Olive was at once convinced he must be a bachelor with no one to look after him and see he had proper meals. So she at once ordered a fresh supply of anchovy toast and made sure, too, that he ate it.
It appeared that Mr. Parkinson was the colleague to whom in his letter Dr. Clem Jones had referred as his companion in the contemplated Nonpareil investigation. This had begun the previous night, and the member who was Bobby’s friend had thought the story of what had been seen and heard might interest Bobby. So Bobby said politely that he was sure it would, inwardly prepared to be bored, reflected that anyhow he would soon have to leave for his meeting, and settled down to listen.
“Some odd things happened,” explained Mr. Parkinson, looking slightly embarrassed and also grateful for the newly-arrived anchovy toast in which he seemed inclined to seek refuge. “Dr. Jones was extremely interested—excited. I am meeting him there again to-night.” Mr. Parkinson paused, and laughed uneasily. “Not too willingly,” he said. “The more I think of what happened last night the less I like it.”
“What was it?” Bobby asked.
“First of all, we thought we heard footsteps. Empty houses are always full of noises, of course—especially old houses. But what we heard did sound like footsteps. I remember in the last war, when I was on sentry duty, how exactly the sound of dry leaves blown by the wind seemed like footsteps. But this was indoors.”
“Rats, perhaps,” suggested Bobby for the sake of saying something. “I thought of that,” Mr. Parkinson answered. “Dr. Jones didn’t think so. He was quite emphatic. Even before that we had been—I don’t know how to put it…” He paused to turn his attention to the anchovy toast, and with such effect that Olive thought it well to order a fresh supply. “There was a sort of feeling,” he went on, when his mouth was comparatively empty again. “I can’t describe it—a presence, someone, something, watching. Yet the caretaker had assured us that he was in the building nearly every day, and he had never seen or heard anything unusual. A surly sort of man, the caretaker, I mean. Not very civil, either. He made difficulties about admitting us in spite of the letter from Mr. de Tallebois we showed him. All other letters had been from the agents, he said, and he wanted to know how he was to tell the letter we showed really came from Mr. de Tallebois. However, he let us in at last. Do you know the Nonpareil legend?”
“Well, there are several, aren’t there?” Bobby remarked. “I think there’s one about some people during the Cromwellian civil war getting locked up by accident in the cellars and starving to death.”
“I hadn’t heard about that,” Mr. Parkinson said. “I meant the story about twin brothers having murdered each other in one of the rooms of the corridor leading to the old picture gallery.”
“That was a duel, wasn’t it?” Bobby asked. “They were both in love with the same girl, and so they had it out together, and managed to kill each other. Isn’t the story that their mother’s ghost is still to be seen in the corridor trying to find the room where they were fighting, and knocking at the door to be let in?”
Mr. Parkinson nodded, and pushed aside the freshly arrived anchovy toast Olive was now offering him. He seemed to have lost his appetite. He said:
“The story goes that on the floor of the room where it happened there appears at intervals a fresh bloodstain.”
“Oh, does it?” asked Bobby smilingly. “Did you see it?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Parkinson, and Bobby sat upright with a jerk.
CHAPTER III
HEIRLOOMS
“Are you sure?” Bobby asked after a moment’s pause. “Were you and Dr. Jones actually in the room? You saw it yourselves?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Parkinson again. Then he said: “Jones saw it first. He called me. We examined it closely. I touched it. It was fresh. Jones drew a chalk mark, an outline round it. Unluckily we had no camera—at least, we had a camera but no film. We hadn’t been able to get any—none in the shops we tried. So we couldn’t take photographs. But that there was a stain of fresh blood on the floor of the room, where the twin de Tallebois brothers are said to have killed each other th
ree hundred years ago, is an absolute fact.”
Bobby hardly knew why his thoughts returned at once to that tale he had listened to earlier in the day of the shot heard in Wychwood, by the lonely and rough path that led past the new bungalows erected there immediately before the outbreak of the war; and to the odd assortment, the cartridge case, the lady’s shoe, size four, the five-pound note originally in the possession of Major Hardman’s nephew, all found thereby. Could there be any connection, he asked himself? Nonpareil was at least two miles distant. He said:
“What time was this?”
“About twelve—midnight. I don’t know exactly. We had meant to be there earlier, but we got delayed with one thing and another, finding the way, arguing with the extremely unpleasant caretaker. I should say it was nearly eleven before we were inside the house. We had a look round the ground floor. It was then we felt—as I said, I can’t describe it. A feeling we were not alone, a feeling that there was a presence, a watching, hostile presence. Then we went upstairs. There’s an enormous double central stair rising from the inner hall.”
“You had torches, I suppose?” Bobby said.
“Oh, yes, both of us. It was when we were going up the stairs we heard—well, it sounded like footsteps, very low, cautious. Rats, I said it might be. Jones wouldn’t have it. We went on to the murder room.”
“You knew which it was?”
“Jones did. He knows all about Nonpareil, and its history. He is some sort of distant connection of the family, I gathered. Through his grandmother he said, I think.”
“Oh, yes,” said Bobby when Mr. Parkinson paused to help himself afresh to more anchovy toast.
“It shook me a little,” said Mr. Parkinson, and Bobby wondered if this referred to the footsteps or to the just-mentioned grandmotherly connection.
“You remember the legend?” Mr. Parkinson asked. “The story is that the appearance of the bloodstain is a sign of an approaching death in the de Tallebois family.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Bobby, and he looked thoughtful.
“I didn’t like it, I was—disturbed,” said Mr. Parkinson, suddenly, and once again, seeking refuge in the anchovy toast.
“Did Dr. Jones seem worried at all?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, no. Interested and excited rather. Well, nervous perhaps. He did just mention the story in a joking way.”
“Did you take any further action? I mean, make any further search?”
“Yes. Yes. But we found nothing, saw nothing. At least—Jones said it was nonsense, nerves.”
“What was?”
“Well, as we were leaving the picture gallery I thought I saw one of the statues move. Jones said it was just the shadows. But I was clearly under the impression that when we first went in, the pedestal second from the door was vacant and all of those farther on were occupied. As we were leaving I happened to look back and certainly then the pedestals near the door all had their statues, and one of the others seemed vacant.”
“Statues do not change places,” said Bobby.
“No, they don’t, do they?” agreed Mr. Parkinson, and looked quite cheered up, as if this were a most novel and encouraging statement.
“Your torches were giving a good light?”
“Excellent. The windows are boarded up so the blackout wasn’t affected. Naturally it seemed darker still when we switched off or where the light from the torches didn’t reach.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course, it would be that way,” agreed Bobby absently. “What is the picture gallery like? Furniture, curtains? Anything besides the statues? I understood the house had been completely emptied.”
“I think that’s so, except for the statues and, I believe, for a certain amount of rubbish in the cellars that’s never been got rid of.”
“About the picture gallery?”
“It’s long, lofty, narrow. About a hundred feet long I should say, more or less. Doors at both ends, and one in the middle. Windows at one side. Niches between the windows. That’s where the statues stand.”
“Do you know why they have been left?”
“Jones told me they are quite valueless, and yet they are all listed as heirlooms. So they can’t be got rid of. Of course, the courts would give permission. But it would be troublesome and expensive to get it—permission, I mean. The things have an odd history. Until recently they were supposed to be of very considerable value, artistic and historical as well. Examples of ancient Greek art and one or two attributed to great Italian artists like Michelangelo and della Robbia, I think. They are all certainly antiques. At any rate they would be admitted into America duty free as over a hundred years old. In the eighteenth century, when everyone made the grand tour and when people like the Earl of Carlisle were making really fine collections, the de Tallebois of the time wanted to show he was a cognoscenti, too, as they were called. Unfortunately he had no qualification except money, neither taste nor knowledge. Not unnaturally he was as a sheep to the shearer. Astute Italians weren’t going to miss a chance like that. Many people seem to think faking works of art is a modern industry, but they knew all about it two hundred years ago. There’s a description of how Mr. de Tallebois himself presided over the recovery from the site of a buried Roman villa of a statue of Hermes with an inscription saying that it was dedicated to the gods by Praxiteles. Unfortunately, neither the lettering nor the language is in the style of the fourth century B.C. Eighteenth-century Greek in fact. The statue had evidently been buried beforehand, all ready to be found when Mr. de Tallebois was there to see. And in one of his own letters he tells very proudly how his agent told him of a story that Michelangelo’s portrait statue of the Pope, Julius the Second, placed over the gate of San Petronio and believed to have been destroyed later on, had really been rescued at the last moment, and was in existence on a farm near Rome. Mr. de Tallebois tells how, in spite of his agent’s reluctance, he insisted on going to look, spent a day or two in the search, and finally discovered the statue. The farmer at first refused to sell because the statue was of a saint, and if he sold it he would have bad luck. In the end Mr. de Tallebois, to secure the statue, had to buy the farm as well—at a price that probably made several Italian families rich for life. For his share the agent got the farm as a free gift, Mr. de Tallebois probably having no wish to become an Italian farmer. Unluckily the statue is in marble and of poor workmanship, and the Michelangelo statue was in bronze—it was melted down for cannon, which wouldn’t happen with marble. Much the same applies to the other pieces of sculpture, though for many years the de Tallebois family clung to the belief that their collection was of enormous value from every point of view. But when death duties came in they had to think again. If the collection was still valued at a good many thousand pounds, there would be appropriate duty to pay. So they got expert opinion, which was that the whole lot were crude eighteenth-century fakes, and had better be sold to make lime. But they are still listed as heirlooms, and can’t be touched. In time of course they will be quietly dropped, and no more heard of. There seems, though, to be still some lingering hope somewhere that one or other of them may be of value. Jones had heard that another expert had asked permission only the other day to examine them—a Mr. Marmaduke Clavering, an Honourable, I believe, a son of Lord Grandlieu.”
Bobby sniffed. He didn’t think much of Honourables. But for the grace of God and for the accident of his father being the younger of twins he might have been an ‘Honourable’ himself. Bad enough as it was—having an impecunious peer for uncle.
“What was his verdict?” Bobby asked, his voice expressing all the contempt he felt for the opinion of any expert who was also an Honourable by right of birth.
“I don’t think Jones had heard—probably the same, though.”
“Can you say anything more about why you thought one statue moved?”
“No. No. It was my impression. I hardly know. All the statues are covered with dust sheets. It gave them a very ghostly appearance. Jones pointed that out.”
“Did you move the dust sheets?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. We were very much on the alert. We missed nothing.”
“How many of the things are there in all?”
“Thirteen. I am quite clear about that. I happened to remark that it was an unlucky number. Jones insisted there were only twelve.”
“Are they all single statues? Any groups among them?”
“Mostly they are single statues. There were two busts I think, two or three. Two large groups, one of a goddess reclining by a stag, a barefaced copy of Goujon’s work in the Louvre, but supposed to be an original work of the school of Phidias—a modest touch that ‘school of’. Another is a group showing a river god with attendants, a big, clumsy thing.”
“Very interesting,” Bobby said. “Thank you very much. You mean to join Dr. Jones at Nonpareil to-night?”
“Yes. At least I shall if I can get there. I am trying to arrange for a taxi, but it seems difficult. The friend I’m staying with has a car but no petrol. I don’t cycle and it’s too far to walk.”
“I could give you a lift,” Bobby said unexpectedly. “I think I should like a look at this bloodstain. Interesting. Do you think Dr. Jones would mind?”
“I’m sure he would,” Mr. Parkinson answered with emphasis.
“Pity,” said Bobby. “I suppose, like most experts, he hates having blundering amateurs messing about. How I sympathize! There’s a meeting to-night I’m bound to attend, and there’s no knowing how long it will last. Much longer than it ought to or need, I expect. If you care to wait for me here, I’ll look you up as soon as I can. I’ll have a car.”
Olive lifted both hands in resigned dismay.
“Talk about mobile women,” she sighed. “Why haven’t I a static husband?”
CHAPTER IV
ESCAPE
There's a Reason for Everything: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 2