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

by E. R. Punshon

  Bobby had to knock twice before he got an answer, and then the door was opened by a young man whom he had some difficulty in recognizing.

  “Hullo!” he said; and young Mr. Claymore, for young Mr. Claymore it was, though even his own mother might have been excused for failing to recognize him, said nothing, and from his one serviceable eye came a gleam of but small welcome.

  “Hullo!” said Bobby again, and then with solicitude: “How’s the other fellow?”

  “What other fellow?” demanded Mr. Claymore as well as a much swollen and damaged mouth—the lower lip split and two teeth missing—permitted utterance.

  “Well, I thought it looked,” explained Bobby, “as if there had been an argument, and I was rather wondering if your arguments had been as striking as the other chap’s seem to have been?”

  “Think you’re funny, don’t you?” growled Claymore; and looked as if he would have banged the door, had not Bobby so obviously taken precautions against any such happening.

  “To fallen human nature,” explained Bobby, “there is always something slightly funny about the misfortunes of others. That’s Rochefoucauld, isn’t it? Cynical, no doubt. Can I see Miss Anson?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry,” said Bobby, “but I’m afraid I must, unless you can produce a doctor’s certificate, and even then I should probably want another opinion. And even then,” he added, playing a card he knew was generally effective, “I shall have to place a man on duty at the front and another at the rear, just in case Miss Anson went away for reasons of health and forgot to leave her address.”

  “You’ve no right,” began Claymore furiously, but Bobby interrupted.

  “Mr. Claymore,” he said, speaking now with emphasis and with authority, “two men have been killed—one not far from this spot, the other at Nonpareil, which is also not very far away. There is my right to ask Miss Anson further questions—questions which I think may help to bring out the truth. Why do you wish to stop me?”

  “She isn’t in a fit state to answer any questions,” Claymore muttered. “She wasn’t able to go to work to-day.”

  “It must be either now or later,” Bobby said: “If not now, then I must do what I said, and I must ask the police surgeon to give an independent opinion.”

  “Oh, very well,” Claymore muttered.

  “Meanwhile,” Bobby added, as he followed Claymore into the small entrance hall, “what about yourself? I think you had better tell me what happened. Has the man I saw climbing in at the window here paid you another visit?”

  “No,” said Claymore.

  “I can’t force you to speak if you don’t want to,” Bobby admitted. “I think it would be wiser of you, though, if you did. You know, I put a man to keep a watch on this house because I felt, after that window incident, it might be better if help were not too far away. For the same reason, I was glad to know you were sleeping here. Now it looks to me as if something rather violent had happened. Will you tell me what it was?”

  “It wasn’t anything much,” Claymore answered. “Of course, we knew all right you had put a cop to spy. He was always hanging about.”

  “Not to spy,” Bobby said gently. “Spies don’t wear uniform. As a precaution, in the interest of the safety of two women. His instructions were to keep as much out of the way as he could, consistent with being on hand if there was trouble. And it seems there has been trouble, though apparently he didn’t notice it. I may be merely fussing unnecessarily, but the fellow I saw at the window had all the air of meaning mischief.”

  Claymore did not speak, but he gave the impression of being very much of the same opinion. Bobby continued:

  “You see, I can’t help feeling that you must have some idea what he wanted.” Claymore shook his head this time, but still did not speak. Bobby said: “I suppose what it comes to is that some day I shall have to tell you. Because I feel pretty sure I could guess.”

  “Policeman’s bluff,” muttered Claymore, but all the same looked both alarmed and uncomfortable, so far, at least, as his battered and discoloured visage allowed any expression to appear. Then he said: “If you want to know—well, I had a fall.”

  “Had you?” said Bobby. “Interesting—but the truth would be more so.”

  “It happens to be the truth,” Claymore grumbled. “It was yesterday. I carne here straight from work. I had just got in. Mrs. Anson said there was a man at the back, she had seen him before. I went into the garden. There was a fellow looking over the hedge. I called out to ask who he was, and what he wanted. He moved off. I went after him. He started to run, and so did I.”

  “What was he like?” Bobby asked. “Short, broad, working man class?”

  “No,” said Claymore. “Rather small and slight, in a grey lounge suit. Youngish. He ran like a good ’un, but I was catching him up. I knew I had to before he got among the trees. I yelled to him to stop, and he yelled back over his shoulder to keep off or he would fire. He had what looked like a pistol in his hand. I put on steam. I didn’t suppose he meant it, and anyhow I would wait till he did—fire, I mean. Besides, he might miss. We were chasing across the field behind here. He got to the hedge first and he went over like a bird. I put on another spurt, and I caught my foot on a beastly wire. I expect he knew it was there and that’s why he picked that particular spot. Perhaps he put it there. Anyway, I came the most awful cropper, flat against the stump of a tree. When I began to sit up and take notice, there wasn’t a sign of the bloke I had been chasing. A mile or two away by then. I felt too jolly sick to do anything about it. I came back here, and I had to tell them at the works I couldn’t show up to-day.”

  “That’s two of them,” said Bobby disgustedly, “that we want to see and can’t, and others meet them at every turn.”

  “What do you mean? every turn?”

  “That’s only being picturesque,” Bobby explained, “but it’s pretty foul. I want the worst possible way to have a chat with that young man—or at least with a young man in a grey suit. If you see him again, grab him and hold him and let us know. We’ll be along—and we won’t keep you waiting either. The same with Mr. Tails—a short, thick-set, middle-aged working man I want to meet, and I can’t, but Tails can.”

  “Is that the man who tried to get in by the window here?”

  “Suspicion only,” Bobby said, “but he may be, and anyhow I would like to ask him. But if you would tell me what you know, then instead of suspecting only, I might be sure. But have it your own way. If you won’t, you won’t.”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” Claymore insisted. “None of us do. We’ve no idea what he wanted either.”

  “Well, think it over,” Bobby said, “and now, if you don’t mind, I would like a word or two with Miss Anson.”

  “I’ll go and tell her,” Claymore said, but still very unwillingly.

  “It has got to be,” Bobby said, and his voice had taken on an edge. “Now or later, but sometime and soon. Better get it over.”

  All this had taken place at the open door of the bungalow, at the entrance to the tiny hall. Now Claymore took Bobby into the sitting-room and left him there. Bobby could hear a murmur of voices coming from the kitchen. He waited patiently. Claymore reappeared. He said:

  “Miss Anson isn’t fit to see anyone, but she says she supposes she’s got to, if you insist. Come along.”

  He led the way into the kitchen. Betty was sitting up in a long chair in which she had been reclining. She looked ill and frightened, with a face like death and eyes full of terror, staring at Bobby, and yet as if they saw not him but something else whereof the vision was to them always present. Bobby felt a quick sensation of pity. Someone ought to pick her up and comfort her, like a tired and frightened child. None the less, duty had to be done and questions asked. The truth must be established, whatever it might be. An altar on which sacrifice was sometimes necessary, for justice must be done, no matter at what cost. Mrs. Anson was crying quietly by the window, a helpless, bewildered weeping,
as of one who wept without knowledge, without understanding, aware only that her child suffered. Claymore went to Betty and knelt by her side, so that their eyes were on a level. They looked at each other, and it was as though the whole room was illumined by the passion and the fire of the glance that passed between them. For that one moment it seemed that their two beings merged and were one, that for each there was nothing else that mattered or that was, nothing save each to the other. Bobby turned to Mrs. Anson. He said:

  “I’ve forgotten my bike. I’ll get it and bring it up nearer the house if you don’t mind. Bikes have a way of disappearing just now. I won’t be a minute.”

  Though he did not look at them, he knew, somehow, that his voice had called back the two lovers from their moment, their brief moment, that yet, he knew, would be a living memory to them all through their lives, back again to the exigencies of the moment. Mrs. Anson made no answer, but Betty whispered something Bobby could not hear, and Claymore said:

  “If they do, I’ll follow you the same day, the same way, the same hour, so as to be with you again.”

  When Bobby returned, having placed in safety his bicycle whose security he had made an excuse for giving Claymore and Betty a chance to recover themselves, Mrs. Anson was standing in the little hall, looking more frightened, more bewildered than ever. He said to her:

  “What did young Claymore mean by what he said just now?”

  “He’s all wrought up, I don’t know,” she muttered, her voice dying into a whisper as she spoke as though the sound of it made her still more afraid.

  Bobby thought to himself that perhaps she did know, or at least that she guessed. He did not press her. He went on into the kitchen. Claymore looked up. He said:

  “You have come back.”

  “I have come back,” Bobby said, “for there are questions I have to ask that must be answered.”

  “Yes, I know,” Betty said, and repeated: “Yes, I know.”

  She tried to sit up, and then suddenly fell back in her chair, and Bobby saw that she had fainted dead away.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CONSULTATION

  “Which, of course, put the lid on it,” Bobby somewhat disconsolately explained to Olive that evening. “If a woman starts to cry, you’re finished. But you can at least wait till she’s finished, too. If she starts fainting, though, well, there you are, aren’t you?”

  “Girls don’t nowadays,” Olive observed uneasily. “If they do, it means something.”

  “Yes, but what?” Bobby asked. “And what did young Claymore mean when he said that about following her the same day the same way so as to be with her still?”

  “I don’t know,” Olive said, and looked more uneasy still. She added presently: “Mr. Claymore’s very young, isn’t he? When you are very young you do say silly things sometimes, and then sometimes you do them, too.” Then she said: “You don’t really think a girl like Miss Anson…”

  She left the sentence unfinished, and Bobby’s voice was grave as he replied:

  “Facts matter, not thinking. It’s a fact a man was shot that night when Major Hardman and our own man, Reed, heard a pistol shot. And another fact is that his body was found in the canal. That looks like panic. A body thrown into a canal is sure to be found sooner or later, and probably sooner—as this was. And at the place where we believe the shot was fired we found a woman’s shoe that may very well be Betty Anson’s, though we can’t prove it. If she says she hurt her foot in the house, we can’t prove she didn’t. Then there’s the five-pound note Hardman says he gave his nephew, and how did that get where we found it, in the same place? All the same, though we know a shot was fired we don’t know for certain that it took effect, or, if it did, on whom. Nor is there any evidence to show if anyone else was present, unless the Hardman five-pound note is evidence. It’s all consistent with Miss Anson being the person who fired, with her having panicked when she saw what she had done, and with her having asked Claymore to help. And if so, he might well have dumped the body in the canal, not knowing what else to do with it. Not so easy to dispose of a dead body; and a bullet kills whether it is fired by a man or a woman, or by a child for that matter. When I went to the Anson bungalow I more than half intended to detain Miss Anson unless she made a much more satisfactory statement than she has produced so far. I’m asking our police doctor to see her. As soon as he says she is fit for it I shall have to question her again, and at headquarters. If she faints there, she’ll have to go to the cells till she recovers. Sooner or later she’s got to answer—or be charged.”

  “Yes, but, why should she?” Olive asked. “I mean, why should she shoot anyone? What for?”

  “Didn’t someone say once: ‘What I would not, that I do?’ Perhaps it was like that with Betty Anson. Anyhow, the Vermeer picture—existent or not—appears to be the key to the whole business, and I take it to be motive enough for a dozen murders. Old Masters aren’t often stolen, because when you’ve got them you can’t do anything with them. The ‘Mona Lisa’ thieves, for instance, when that was stolen, never got a penny for it. No one dared have it. Labour lost. But if this Vermeer turned up in a few months with some more or less plausible story of how it had been discovered somewhere or another, you mightn’t believe it, but you couldn’t prove anything. It could be sold in the market at top price, and that would be in six figures, according to Tails—Clavering too. I’ve got to remember Miss Anson has been mixed up in it from the beginning. Apparently it was what she said about having seen something of the sort at the Nonpareil sale that started it all. According to Major Hardman she and this nephew of his were on very intimate terms. And now, according to Claymore, Frank Hardman has turned up at the bungalow, so are they still intimate?”

  “But Betty Anson and Mr. Claymore are engaged,” Olive protested.

  “A girl can be engaged to one man and go pretty far flirting, or more than flirting, with another,” Bobby told her; and Olive looked as if she wanted very much to deny this, but didn’t quite see her way to do so.

  “No really nice girl would,” she said finally; and then hurriedly continued, to prevent Bobby from pointing out that really nice girls never, or hardly ever, shot people: “If you really think you know where the Vermeer is, why don’t you go and get it?”

  “No authority. No proof of ownership, for that matter,” Bobby explained. “No one to identify it as having come from Nonpareil, except perhaps Betty herself, and if she could, would she? Besides, what good would it do? My job is to bring a murderer to justice—two murderers, perhaps, or else a double murderer, for there are two deaths to be accounted for. I’m no picture-hunter. A great picture may mean a lot, but to me, anyhow, a human life means more. At least I think so, even if the highbrows don’t. Besides, when I say I’m sure, I only mean that’s how I’ve reasoned it out from what I’ve seen and heard, and it’s easy to be both sure and wrong. I think the Vermeer had better stay where it is for the present. It won’t vanish while all this is going on. Too big a risk to move it now.”

  “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Olive said. “That’s what you really mean.”

  Well, yes,” admitted Bobby.

  “If I knew where there was a picture worth ever such a lot of money,” declared Olive, “I should go and get it.”

  “Not if you wanted to go on being a Deputy Chief Constable, you wouldn’t,” retorted Bobby.

  “Well, anyhow,” Olive said, “what is Major Hardman doing? He may have an absolutely perfect alibi with a policeman to back it up, but he must be mixed up in it somehow.”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Bobby promptly. “He is playing his own game. So are they all, and it may be a perfectly innocent game, with nothing like murder coming in at all—or it may not. On the face of it, perfectly right and proper, and even praiseworthy, trying to trace a lost picture of such value. On the whole, I’m rather glad to be able to leave Miss Anson alone for the time. She may be more willing to speak when she’s had a little time to think things over. A volunta
ry statement is always best. You get much more than you do under pressure. The old story—one volunteer worth three pressed men. Meanwhile, there are others. Mr. Parkinson, for instance.”

  “I thought you thought he was much too much the respectable provincial draper type to be a murderer?”

  “Well, I did,” Bobby admitted. “Middle-aged, middle-class, suburban respectability doesn’t often run to murder. But it does sometimes. Consider the evidence. He’s the last person known to have been in Dr. Jones’s company. His walking-stick is the murder weapon. Here’s a theory. Poking about Nonpareil on their ghost hunt, which was half merely an excuse as far as Jones was concerned, they find the Vermeer. Jones tries to pooh pooh it. But Parkinson recognizes its value. Both get excited. Both claim it. Possibly Parkinson was the one to spot it first. They come to blows. All that’s quite possible, and it’s got to be followed up. After the way Parkinson made off with Tails’s taxi and left Tails to get home the best way he could, you can’t help seeing he has a capacity for sudden, explosive action. To make off with someone else’s taxi, ditching the rightful occupant, is almost as far from suburban standards as murder itself.”

  “That would mean Mr. Parkinson has the Vermeer?”

  “Not necessarily. He may have panicked and made off, leaving it behind. Panicked in the way that possibly Betty Anson panicked. Murderers are apt to lose their heads. Or if it wasn’t like that, he may have hidden the thing again somewhere at Nonpareil. Waiting opportunity to collect later. Buried perhaps. That might explain the sudden spate of spades. Apparently the Vermeer was painted on a wooden panel. A canvas can be cut out of the frame and rolled. A wooden panel is more difficult. If Parkinson went back to his hotel with a wooden panel under his arm, it would probably have been noticed and remembered. Or he would have been afraid it might be. Not like a rolled up canvas that might go in an ordinary suit case no one would look at twice.”