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

by E. R. Punshon

  Bobby tactfully expressed his appreciation of, and his admiration for, such an attitude. Mr. Tails lifted a nobly deprecating hand. Bobby asked if Dr. Jones—he only just in time stopped himself from saying ‘your unfortunate relative’—had any knowledge of art matters, and was likely to recognize rarity and value in a painting he happened to come across casually. Mr. Tails smiled his beautiful smile, and feared that dear Clement was hardly an expert in such matters. Possibly, though, he might have thought it worth while to mention any painting that happened to catch his attention in unusual surroundings.

  “Especially,” added Mr. Tails thoughtfully, “if his curiosity had been roused in any way, as certainly it had been in this case by Clavering’s behaviour.”

  Fastidiously and unwillingly, it seemed, he appeared to contemplate unpleasant possibilities. Then he departed, and almost at once Payne came in, looking very impressed.

  “There’s a bloke just gone out,” he began, but Bobby, slightly shocked, interrupted him.

  “Not a bloke,” he said, “a Presence, a Personality, an I-know-not-what.”

  “Not the Pope in mufti by any chance?” inquired Payne.

  Bobby shook his head.

  “In common parlance,” he said, “Mr. Tails, the art dealer, and Dr. Jones’s brother-in-law, come to tell us Clavering murdered Jones.”

  CHAPTER XV

  SUSPECT

  It was later, in the same day, in the afternoon, that Bobby, returning from a conference at the Midwych Town Hall, came face to face with Mr. Clavering in St. Paul’s Square—not altogether by accident, he suspected. For Clavering evidently wished to speak to him, and Bobby stopped, quite willing to hear anything Clavering had to say. It was a maxim of his that only when people started to make voluntary statements did you begin to get at the facts. For if they spoke the truth, that was what you wanted; and if they lied, then that was even more enlightening.

  “Mr. Tails is here,” Clavering began, “did you know? Has he been to see you?”

  “Yes. Why?” Bobby asked.

  “I just wondered,” Clavering answered without specifying what it was he wondered.

  “How did you know?” Bobby asked.

  “I’ve seen him.”

  “Accidental meeting?” Bobby asked next, and Clavering looked at him quickly and then gave his cherubic smile.

  “No,” he said. “Information received. In other words, a wire from Solomon that Tails had gone off in a taxi with a suitcase. Obvious guess, Midwych. So I went round to the Midwych Central Hotel. Another obvious guess. Tails was sure to put up at the most swagger hotel in the place. His position demands it. Ask him. I saw him in the lobby. I don’t think he saw me, and I didn’t speak. Just withdrew. I do rather wonder why he came himself.”

  “In the circumstances,” Bobby suggested, “it would have been odd, wouldn’t it? if no relative of Dr. Jones had appeared. Mr. Tails is here instead of his sister to make necessary arrangements. We should expect one of the family to be at the inquest. Mr. Tails tells me Mrs. Jones is in a state of collapse, and unable to travel.”

  “Well, I suppose that may be so,” agreed Clavering, “though to my certain knowledge they’ve been living apart for the last five years.”

  “Why are you interested?” Bobby asked with some suspicion. “Why did your employer send you a wire about Mr. Tails’s movements?”

  “My employer? Who’s that? Oh, you mean old Solomon. Yes, I suppose he is, isn’t he? Because he thinks Tails would need some stronger motive to make him come up here than merely to represent his sister. Instructions to a lawyer are all I should have expected. What we do think is that Tails is asking himself if the Vermeer has anything to do with the murder; and, if there is a Vermeer in it, Tails means to be on the spot. Solomon thinks, too, the Vermeer may be behind it all. So do I, for that matter. Like to see the old man’s wire?” Clavering produced it. He said: “You see what it says? ‘Tails left Bond Street. Taxi. Suitcase. Why? Anything in Vermeer story?’ Solomon doesn’t believe Tails would leave London with one or two important sales coming on and plenty of rich Americans—diplomatic and military—hanging about, merely on account of the death of a brother-in-law. I don’t either.”

  “You don’t seem to have a very good opinion of Mr. Tails,” remarked Bobby.

  “Good lord, we’re at daggers drawn, and have been for years,” Clavering answered happily. “Hated rivals, ever since I sold him a faked set of Chippendale chairs for exactly a hundred and one times their value—after he had first sold them to a pal of mine for a hundred times their value. The extra one times was for expenses. If you could only have seen his face when he realized he had bought the same old faked stuff back again.” A smile more than cherubic, seraphic in fact, spread over Mr. Clavering’s rosy countenance. “But I gave you a close up of Tails before, and, if he has been to see you, I expect he gave you a close up of me?”

  “He did,” admitted Bobby briefly. “It was very illuminating. Close ups often are. Especially of those who give them.”

  “That’s an apple in my basket, I suppose,” observed Clavering cheerfully.

  “Why all this excitement about the Vermeer, even if it exists?” Bobby demanded. “It won’t belong to either of you even if it does turn up. If it’s at Nonpareil it will belong to the de Tallebois family, won’t it?”

  “Are cops really as innocent as all that?” demanded Mr. Clavering, looking quite sad. “My good man, think of the publicity, think of the advertisement. You would be famous ever after. The Man Who Found the Lost Vermeer. Why, the B.B.C. would most likely let you give a special broadcast about it all to yourself—and what else is fame but a special B.B.C. broadcast? Apart from the chance of getting in a first offer or else of getting the sole sale rights as agent. Or rights of reproduction—a goldmine. And you ask me why so much excitement? My dear man,” said Mr. Clavering reproachfully, polishing his monocle with vigour, “be your age.”

  “I’ll try,” Bobby promised. “At any rate, you are making it plain that this merely possible Vermeer provides sufficient motive for a murder?”

  “For one? For a dozen,” Clavering assured him earnestly. “I wonder if Tails is really sold on the idea? Can Jones have told him anything? A wire? A letter? A phone call? There doesn’t seem much time. Jones was an inoffensive sort of bloke. Why should anyone want to murder him? Someone did, though.” Clavering paused. “The Vermeer’s problematic. The murder—isn’t. I say, did Tails drop any hints about me being the murderer? If he got you to run me in that would be one competitor safely out of the way. A real Tails touch—and he might even believe it.” Clavering looked more thoughtful now, even a little scared. “Do you?” he asked abruptly.

  “There’s not enough for any belief yet,” Bobby answered.

  “You mean you’re lying low and sayin’ nuffen—like Brer Rabbit? The correct official attitude, I suppose.”

  “Could you give us a statement of your movements since you got here?” Bobby asked.

  “Why, yes, I suppose so,” Clavering answered, and looked more thoughtful still—and more scared. “I say, up to the neck in it, aren’t I? The murder night? Let me see. It’s a long time since I was in Midwych, and I spent the afternoon at your art gallery. Most of the stuff has been cleared out in case of air raids, but the miniatures are still there—they put them in a safe in the cellar if a warning comes through. Very good collection, though I’m pretty sure the Cosway Lady Hamilton is a fake. Your curator will want to murder me if I establish that. I spent all the evening in my room in the hotel writing up notes about the miniatures, and then I went to bed. I went out for a breath of fresh air before going to bed. I know the night porter saw me comeback, but I don’t know whether anyone saw me go out. Or if they did, if they will remember. Not much of an alibi, is it?”

  “No,” agreed Bobby.

  “Means I’m still on the suspect list?”

  “Oh, yes, but then so are several others.”

  “But not, I fear, Mr. Tails,�
�� Said Clavering sadly. “For one thing, he was in London, and, for another, he hasn’t it in him—not murder. Impressive personality, hasn’t he?”

  “Mr. Tails has a very distinguished appearance,” admitted Bobby cautiously.

  “His Stock-in-trade,” said Clavering. “He can strike awe into the breast of a duke, princes are proud to be seen in his company, prominent American business men have been known to say that to be done down by him is a liberal education in itself.” With this parting broadside he nodded a farewell, and turned away. Bobby continued on his road, and was almost immediately caught up again by Clavering. “I say,” he said. “I’ve just thought of something. I’ve just remembered the way they looked at me at the hotel this morning. I wondered why. Have you blokes been making—making inquiries? Isn’t that what you call it?”

  “Naturally,” Bobby answered, willing to admit a fact Clavering had been shrewd enough to guess. “We didn’t learn much, though. The night porter did see you go out, and did see you come in, but he has no idea of the times, so it’s not much help. He seems to have trained himself to remember if guests are in or out, but never thinks of noting the time. Oh, by the way, you’ve been calling at a good many places in town, second-hand dealers, and so on.”

  “I say, though,” said Clavering; and now he looked not so much thoughtful or even frightened as for once extremely grave. He even forgot to play with his monocle. “You do find out things, don’t you?”

  “What we are for,” Bobby told him.

  “I suppose so,” agreed Clavering. “You’re quite right. So I have. I’ve been trying to trace any purchaser of odd lots at the Nonpareil sale. The Vermeer may have been sold like that, it may just possibly be hanging up in some dealer’s shop, unrecognized. One never knows. No luck though. No trace, no sign, no hint of anything of the kind.”

  With a slight return to his former jaunty manner of an airy frivolity, Clavering again nodded farewell and departed; and Bobby, watching him go, told himself that for once the young man was really shaken.

  “The grand manner may be the Tails way of impressing,” Bobby reflected, “and is certainly deliberate. Careful preparation and long training in the Tails case. But is Clavering’s frivolity put on with the same idea of getting under your guard, or is it natural—or is it both natural and cultivated?”

  It was too late, and there was too much needing attention, for Bobby to undertake, that afternoon, the further task he had in mind. So it was not till the following afternoon that he could take the road to Nonpareil on the bicycle the petrol shortage compelled him to make frequent use of in place of the car of earlier and more lavish days, before all had to give way to the prime necessity of smashing the Hun and the Jap.

  Arrived at Nonpareil he propped his bicycle against one of the stone pillars of the great entrance gate and knocked at the caretaker’s lodge. There was no answer, and still none when he knocked again. Apparently the Baileys were out, and then he thought they might be at the back or at work in their garden. He went to the rear of the lodge, therefore, but saw no one, and there was no one in the garden. For a moment he paused to admire it. It was large, nearly half an acre in extent, and cultivated with extreme care and skill. No doubt, the soil was good, washed down, probably, from the slopes around, for Nonpareil lay in a hollow, as is so often the case with the great houses built in times when the security a hill offers for defence had ceased to be required, and before light and air and a dry site had begun to be thought of as desirable. Good soil counts for little, however, without that constant loving care whereof this garden showed such plain evidence. Bobby even indulged in sentimental and perhaps not altogether sincere reflections on the enviable fate of those who work in close and innocent and fruitful contact with the good earth, as compared with the hard tasks that are the lot of a Deputy Chief Constable.

  All the same, as he retrieved his bicycle and wheeled it up the avenue towards the house, he began to have a reminiscent pain in his back. A memory of a distant day when he had assured Olive, a for once unsympathetic Olive, that it was permanently broken as a result of just two bare hours spent planting out lettuce and cabbage seedlings.

  Now the main building came in view; and when he turned the corner following the path that led to the side door whereby entrance was now effected, he was pleased to see the door was open.

  Probably, therefore, Bailey and his wife were inside, carrying out their weekly task of maintenance and care. He wheeled his bicycle into the passage, for in these days bicycles are precious, and have a curious trick of disappearing suddenly and for ever. As he was leaning it against the wall of the passage a slight sound made him turn, and he had a glimpse, but no more than a glimpse, of a man standing there, a tall man, a young man, Bobby thought, and certainly not the short, squat, thick-set Bailey. Nor were the footsteps that he heard in swift retreat those of the heavily-shod caretaker. These were light and sure and swift, and already the sound of them was dying away. The bicycle in Bobby’s hands hindered him for a second or so from starting in pursuit, and by the time he had raced up the long passage and into the central hall, the silence of the huge empty house lay once more all around like a great calm, soundless sea.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted, loudly and uselessly, and got no answer.

  CHAPTER XVI

  PURSUIT

  There, in the great hall of Nonpareil, Bobby stood for a moment, motionless and listening, straining his eyes to pierce the enormous obscurity around, his electric torch ready in his hand to throw a beam of light the instant that he saw or heard anything to give him a clue to the whereabouts of the figure he had seen for that one fraction of a second.

  So utter, so intense, was the silence shrouding the huge building in one vast still pall that he could almost have persuaded himself he had dreamed that momentary vision he had had of a young man watching from round the corner of the entry passage. Or that he had mistaken for a human figure what in reality had been but some chance trick of light or shade. But then there had been no light in all the long stone passage, only an all-pervading gloom, and besides he had heard footsteps.

  Not much chance, he told himself resentfully, of successful pursuit in this far-stretching labyrinth of corridors and of rooms, room upon room, one opening from another, all in a gloom alleviated but little by the spare daylight that here and there struggled through chinks and cracks in the boarded windows. And then above, on the first floor, were the old reception apartments; so big, some of them, that, to one standing at the entrance, the farther end in this shuttered gloom was nothing but a great shadow, where a man might well lurk unperceived. Behind them more passages, more rooms, and behind them again still more, reaching away to the east and west wings, space enough, indeed, to hide an army.

  Whoever it was of whom he had had that passing glimpse must, however, be somewhere within the building. At least unless Bailey had lied in saying that every other means of exit and entrance, save that one small side door whereby Bobby himself had just come in, had been made secure. Bobby went back to the service door beneath the stairs through which he had reached the central hall. It had neither bolt nor lock, but with the aid of his pocket knife, jammed below the lintel, he made it fast, so that any fugitive attempting to escape that way in a hurried flight would at least be delayed for a time before discovering the obstruction and removing it. As he was busy with this small task he thought, but was not sure, that someone watched him from the gallery above, and he had the impression, but again he was not sure, that a faint laugh floated down to him through the still and stagnant air, to tell him that his precaution had been noted, and that it was found amusing.

  He went back slowly to the foot of the stairs, and then ran up them swiftly and lightly. At speed he raced through the great reception-rooms, sweeping the space before and around with the ray from his torch. The rooms opened one from the other, occupying the whole of the front of the building. Passing beyond, he found himself entangled in a maze of passages and other rooms, bedrooms pr
obably, and remembered a tale of how, in former days of grandeur and hospitality, guests had been provided with bags of different-coloured wafers so that they could lay trails, red or blue or white as the case might be, to guide them to and from their rooms, much as in some of the big stores in modern cities customers are exhorted to ‘follow the coloured lights’ to such or such a department.

  Another turn in the corridor he was following brought him, however, to the picture gallery, at the end farther from that by which he and the others had entered before. It was darker here, even, than elsewhere; but his torch showed him where still stood those silent, sheeted figures that had been the witnesses of the recent tragedy. Strange and eerie they seemed in their likeness to watchful living beings peering from under their coverings. Possible, even, that the fugitive for whom Bobby sought lurked behind their shelter. The questing ray from his torch showed nothing to support such a fancy, but he told himself it was no wonder Parkinson had been tricked by his fears into imagining that one of them had moved. Or had it been no trick of fancy, and had, that night, one sheet concealed no statue but a living man, one, who, being discovered, had been willing to use murder to make secrecy sure.

  Anyhow, there was no one here now, of that Bobby made certain. And he knew now whereabouts he was. But when he left the gallery and tried to find the great central stairway again he took a wrong turning, and, as he did so, saw a shadow fall across the passage where it turned again. He ran, but when he got there he saw nothing, and he supposed that very likely it was only his fancy that made him think he felt, as it were, a movement in the air, a faint and transitory quiver, as though from some swift recent disturbance by a passing body.