There's a Reason for Everything: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  That meant that one small point, at least, Bobby had had in mind was settled, and now the door opened to admit Major Hardman, a bluff, smiling, red-faced man, wearing plus-fours and his Old Etonian tie, and expressing his great pleasure at meeting Bobby, of whom he had often heard since coming to reside in Wychshire. There was no trace of any family resemblance between him and his niece, for whereas she was tall and angular, he was short and round. Nor did he seem much like an invalid, for his manner was brisk and confident, he seemed in good trim physically, there was an alert look in his small, quick eyes, and indeed about his whole personality. His mouth, too, or what one could see of it beneath a moustache unusually exuberant for these clean-shaven days, seemed set in firm lines, with lips hard pressed together and showing seldom the double row of large white teeth behind.

  Still expressing his pleasure at Bobby’s visit, which he appeared to regard as a personal compliment, he produced cigarettes, regretted he had nothing in the shape of a drink to offer.

  “Haven’t,” he explained, “had so much as a smell of whisky since Lord knows when. There’s still a bottle of brandy left, but somehow one doesn’t drink brandy in the afternoon. Not done. I don’t know why. Do you?”

  Bobby said he didn’t, and he did hope Major Hardman wouldn’t trouble. Anyhow he was on duty, and as constables were forbidden to smoke or drink on duty, he, as deputy chief, had to be extra careful.

  Major Hardman said he quite understood. As an officer of the regular army he understood the importance of setting an example to ‘other ranks’—in action, going over the top, facing the bullets, on the parade ground, everywhere in fact. But he would like to say that much as he appreciated the courtesy of this visit, he had never intended or dreamed that his small and possibly unnecessary complaint should receive the personal attention of so senior an officer as the Deputy Chief Constable. He, the Major, didn’t suppose he would have ever bothered to mention it to the man on the beat—“very civil, obliging chap, name’s Reed, I think, quite a pal of mine”—if his niece hadn’t been nervous.

  “You know what women are,” said the Major benevolently. “Bombs? Yes. Mice? No. Spiders? The absolute limit. Burglars? In between mice and spiders. Ha, ha. I believe Frankie looks under the lid every night to make sure there isn’t a burglar there, ha, ha.”

  Bobby was interested.

  “I didn’t know about that,” he said. “Have you had a burglary here?”

  “Footsteps,” said the Major.

  “Footsteps?” repeated Bobby.

  “In the garden,” the Major explained. “Frankie—that’s my niece—woke me in the night. Stuck to it there was someone outside, trying to get in. I told her to go back to bed. Didn’t believe it. Thought she had been dreaming. Bit cross I was, being wakened up like that. All the same I had to take it back in the morning. There were footprints all right, right under the drawing-room window, too.”

  “Any sign of an attempt to break in?”

  “No, no. Just footprints to show someone had been there. I thought I had better just mention it. Frankie said I must or she would, and I had to give in, especially as she was right, and there really had been someone on the prowl during the night. I told Reed, and asked him to keep an eye on the place. Very civil, obliging chap, Reed. He said he would—keep an eye on the place, I mean. And you can’t even give him a drink, there being nothing to drink these days—sometimes not even at the Horse and Groom.”

  Bobby asked if any record had been made of the footmarks. No one had thought of doing that. But the Major remembered that they were smallish and long and narrow, and probably made by a light city shoe. Definitely, said the Major, not the heavy, nailed boot an ordinary working man or farm labourer would wear. It was, indeed, partly because of that fact, that the Major had thought the incident worth mentioning. Otherwise he would have dismissed it as one of the men from the village on the prowl for cheap vegetables or for eggs.

  “Eggs have their value now,” he said, “and Frankie has a few hens she looks after. Very welcome, an occasional new-laid. Reed has told me of cases of gardens and allotments having been raided round here.” Bobby remarked that it was a specially mean-spirited and nasty kind of petty crime, and all too prevalent. Difficult to check, too, and some magistrates seemed to think that fining a man a shilling for stealing five shillings’ worth of vegetables was enough. But he hadn’t called about that, annoying as it was. He went on to tell, briefly, of the Nonpareil tragedy, and the Major was surprised, horrified, distressed. Like the Baileys, he seemed to have some difficulty in grasping the reality of what he had been told, and kept expressing bewilderment over such a thing happening in an empty and long-deserted house. He was puzzled, too, that Bobby should think there could be any connection between the shot he and Constable Reed had heard in the forest at no great distance, and the death by strangulation of this unfortunate psychical researcher at Nonpareil two miles or more away. If indeed the Major understood rightly that it was on account of the pistol shot heard by himself and Constable Reed that Bobby had honoured him with a call?

  Bobby said, well, partly, and might he now broach a somewhat delicate matter? He understood complaints had been made about rowdy behaviour in the neighbourhood by a young man said to be, or claiming to be, a nephew of Major Hardman.

  “Frankie’s brother,” admitted the Major gloomily. “That’s who you mean. They’re twins. He’s Frank, too. She was christened Frances. He’s Francis. As different in character as they are alike in looks. She’s a thoroughly nice, quiet girl, and he’s the black sheep of the family. Is it about that five-pound note I gave him? I heard something about its having been picked up in Wychwood.”

  “I suppose you can’t say how it got there?”

  The Major shook his head.

  “I understood the boy wanted it to pay some debt or another, someone waiting for him outside, he said. Some disreputable associate or another, I expect. To keep a girl quiet perhaps. I didn’t ask. No good. I don’t suppose if I had I should have got the truth. I gave him the money, and told him to clear out, and that’s all I know—or wanted to know.”

  “I see,” said Bobby. “It did cross my mind that possibly he might be your last night’s burglar—trying to get in touch with his sister perhaps. You know what sisters are?”

  Again the Major shook his head, even more decidedly than before. “My own idea at first,” he admitted, “but it won’t do. For one thing, why should he? He could easily get hold of Frankie any time he wanted. Besides, those footprints are too small for him.”

  “That clears that up then,” Bobby said. “Thank you very much. It was just an idea.”

  “Very natural one,” agreed the Major.

  He hesitated, looked embarrassed, coughed, seemed about to speak and then changed his mind. Finally, Bobby waiting to hear what was coming, the Major got to his feet and went and stood in front of the fireplace and said:

  “There’s something I’ve just thought of, though I expect you’ll say there’s nothing in it. Only—well, there was a bloke here the other day. Called himself an art expert. Didn’t strike me that way. Said he was the Honourable Something or another. Didn’t strike me that way either. Might be, though, Nowadays, an ‘honourable’ needn’t be a pukka sahib—son of some Labour lord or another perhaps.” The Major laughed good-temperedly. “I’m old-fashioned, I know,” he said. “I like the days when a gentleman was a gentleman. I can’t say I smelt a rat exactly. I don’t now for that matter. Only somehow you don’t generally expect an ‘honourable’ to be an art expert, do you?”

  “You do not,” agreed Bobby emphatically, remembering how long it had apparently taken this particular ‘honourable’ to make up his mind about that deplorable Nonpareil sculpture.

  “Only what you said,” the Major went on, “made me remember that this bloke was wearing rather long, narrow, city shoes. I don’t know what made me notice them, but I did.”

  “Did he give his name?” Bobby asked.

  “I
t was Marmaduke something,” the Major answered, frowning in an effort to remember. “I can’t think of the surname. I do remember ‘Marmaduke’, though. Stuck in my mind somehow—silly sort of name, don’t you think?”

  Bobby nearly remarked that it was all you could expect of an ‘honourable’. Instead he asked:

  “Did he say why he called?”

  “Talked round and round. I had to ask him to cut it short. Something about some valuable painting or another—an old master, I gathered, Vermeer, the Dutch artist. I’m no art expert.” Here the Major paused to give a somewhat self-conscious laugh which suggested that others might hold a different opinion. “Quite the amateur. But I do know a good thing when I see it, and once or twice I haven’t come out so badly when I’ve backed my opinion. During my time I’ve got together a few good things of one sort or another. Oh, not here,” he added quickly as he saw Bobby give a quick glance round a room that seemed the very embodiment of the commonplace, from the ‘Jacobean’ chairs and table to the Christmas number engravings on the walls—all snow and holly leaves and kisses. “Most of my stuff’s at the bankers—for safety in these air-raid days. But I did bring one or two things up here with me. Nothing very much. A Birket Foster water-colour in the drawing-room I’m rather fond of, and some Chinese jade. Insured for two thousand guineas.”

  “Is the jade in the drawing-room, too?”

  “Well, it was. The Birket Foster is still there, but I put the jade bowls away this morning. I didn’t much like the combination of footsteps under the drawing-room window and a visit from a somewhat doubtful art expert. It’s all insured, but these jade bowls mean a good deal more to me than their cash value.”

  “Very prudent step to take,” agreed Bobby warmly. “I don’t know what it all means—‘too hard a knot’ for me,” he quoted, remembering a line that had struck his fancy in a performance of Twelfth Night by the old Vic company Olive had taken him to see a few nights previously. “Just as well to be careful till it’s all cleared up, if it ever is. The odd thing is that this same art expert has been at Nonpareil. He had a card to view from the agents, and said he wanted to have a look at the sculpture. Also, when he left he asked the caretaker if he knew your address, which Bailey didn’t.”

  Once more the Major hesitated, seemed embarrassed, inclined to speak and yet hesitating to do so. Again Bobby waited to hear what was coming. Finally the Major said:

  “Hardly the thing, perhaps. Not playing the game, not quite cricket.” He paused, still reluctant, still hesitant, shaking his head distastefully. Finally he said: “I think you ought to know. Murder—well, murder is murder, isn’t it?”

  Bobby agreed that it was, and waited. The Major said all in a rush, as if at last making up his mind:

  “That Bailey fellow, the Nonpareil caretaker, is an old convict.”

  “Is he though?” Bobby said gravely. “Are you sure?”

  “I knew him at once,” the Major said. “I was driving by there one morning, and he was at the door, and I recognized him at once. I happened to be in court in—in 1935, was it? I was there with a barrister friend of mine, and Bailey was in the dock, charged with burglary and attempted murder, I think. I remember noticing in the paper next day that he had got three years’ penal servitude. I am sure it’s the same man, but I suppose you can check up.”

  “We can and will,” Bobby said earnestly. “We always check up on everything. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for telling me, and how useful the information will be. Of course, it doesn’t prove anything. Bailey may have had nothing to do with what has been happening, but it does confirm me in following up one line of investigation at least.”

  CHAPTER IX

  INTRUDER

  Leaving the tulips in thoughtful mood, for what he had just heard seemed to him to be both significant and important, Bobby found Payne waiting for him, sitting on the running board of Bobby’s parked car and looking impatient.

  It seemed Payne had come, knowing that Bobby intended to interview Major Hardman and assured by the sight of the car that he was still there, to report an exciting piece of information that had just come to his knowledge.

  “There’s a Miss Betty Anson,” he explained. “She lives with her mother in one of those bungalows they call the New Bungalows, near where the Barsley footpath starts.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bobby, wondering what was coming next.

  “Miss Betty Anson,” said Payne impressively, “is a small and slight young woman, and she is laid up with a sore foot.” He paused and waited, expecting eager comment. None came. Bobby, his mind full of what he had just learned, only looked puzzled, not quite seeing what the sore foot of this hitherto unknown young lady had to do with it. Payne looked gravely disappointed. He hoped Bobby, in his new rank, was not losing touch. He had never known the deputy chief so slow in the uptake. He said, a touch of severity in his voice:

  “Miss Anson works in Midwych. She has a job with Midwych Goal and Iron Consolidated. Sort of supervising job of some kind. Working overtime recently, leaving work about nine and coming home by a ’bus the company runs for late workers. Miss Anson is the only one of the workers living about here. The ’bus drops her on the Barsley Road, and she takes the forest footpath to cut across home. Saves her going round, and brings her home half an hour earlier than if she waited for the train. So she might be coming along the footpath at ten or thereabouts. I haven’t seen her myself, but Broken Reed says she might very likely take a No. 4 shoe.”

  “She has hurt her foot,” Bobby commented, “and we found a No. 4 woman’s shoe on the footpath near a cartridge case?”

  “That’s right, sir,” said Payne. “Looks to me we’ve got something.”

  “So it does,” agreed Bobby thoughtfully. “How did you get all this?”

  “Well, sir, you said to try to find out if anyone else had heard the pistol shot besides Major Hardman and Broken Reed. We haven’t found anyone yet, but when I tried the New Bungalows, and they are nearest, nearer even than The Tulips, Mrs. Anson said she hadn’t heard anything herself. Her hearing wasn’t too good, though, and she would ask her daughter, because she came home that way when she was working late, and Mrs. Anson didn’t like it. It was dark and lonely, and she thought she ought to be very firm indeed and absolutely insist on Betty waiting for the train even if it did make her so much later. I said could I see Miss Betty, and Mrs. Anson said no, because she had hurt her foot and couldn’t even go to work, but she would ask her. So Miss Betty didn’t appear, just sent a message that she was sorry she couldn’t help, she didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t insist. I thought I had better report first.”

  “Good work,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “Very good work. Something to go on. Do the times quite fit, though? You might check up on that, will you? If Miss Betty leaves work at nine and there’s a company ’bus waiting, surely she ought to be home before ten?”

  “Yes, sir, I see that,” agreed Payne. “But the ’bus may have been running late or the girl may have been hanging about or anything. How about her meeting a boy friend on the way home? You never know. Anyhow, it’s a coincidence, sir. Shoe lost and injured foot. Granted it may mean nothing, but it’s still a coincidence, and I never did like coincidences, and never shall.”

  “Quite right, too,” applauded Bobby, though well aware this was a catchword of his own Payne had adopted. “Coincidences are a bit suspicious. You said the girl’s mother was there, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Mother keeps house and the girl works.”

  “Have they been there long?”

  “Ever since the bungalows were built. Mrs. Anson isn’t very strong. She was nervous about air raids long before they began, and they moved out here from Albert Park, in Midwych, soon after her husband’s death.”

  “It’s a bit late,” Bobby remarked, “but if the mother’s there, it will be all right for me to call.” Bobby was as careful as all police officers learn to be, to have a witness at hand when interviewin
g a woman, since all a woman has to do is to lie down and scream to establish at once a grave prima facie case against any man. “I’ll go and see if I can get anything more. There’s a job I want you to attend to. I want all possible information about Major Hardman. His army service, his record, everything you can get. As he had a London address, get it, and ask them at the Yard if they can help. And there’s that Eton tie of his. He wears it a bit more often than most Old Etonians. I would like to be quite sure about it. Anyone can buy an Old Etonian tie. I don’t know how you can check up. Easy enough, to borrow a name from the Eton register. But have a good try.”

  “No difficulty, sir,” Payne assured him. “I’ll ask Burton.”

  “Burton?” repeated Bobby. “You don’t mean Babs Burton of ‘A’ squad.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s the man. Old Eton boy.”

  “Dear me,” said Bobby, surprised, for though he knew he had under him many men of many trades and varied origins, he had not, till now, known there was an Old Etonian among them. Nor had he noticed any trace of an Etonian upbringing in the aforesaid Burton, except indeed that Burton had always seemed rather specially ill-informed. “Are you sure?” he asked a little doubtfully. “Burton’s not just swanking, I suppose?”

  “Oh, no, sir, I don’t think so,” Payne answered. “His father was odd job man or something of the sort at Eton—at what they call a ‘house’ there, really a kind of boarding establishment with guests who can’t leave, and get swished if they complain. A boarding-house keeper’s dream. Burton’s father was an old county cricketer, too, so that helped with the boys; and Burton himself was in with them all the time, running their errands, smuggling in things they weren’t supposed to have, helping them with any mischief they had on, and helping them out when they got caught. He says he gets a box of swell cigarettes every Christmas still from some cabinet minister or another he saved from being expelled probably.”