“We’ve been down here,” Bobby said when they came upon one abrupt turning. He pointed to their chalk mark on the wall. “Haven’t we?” he said doubtfully. “Or did we put that mark when we came the other way?”
Payne didn’t know. They had hurried so.
“Better be on the safe side,” Bobby said, turning down the passage. “It ought to take us towards the main stairway, oughtn’t it?”
Payne said he didn’t know. He said the famous maze in the Midwych Pleasure Park was nothing to this place. He said finding your way in one of the celebrated Midwych fogs during black-out was child’s play to this. Bobby was inclined to agree. It was only a short corridor, though, with a small window to one side, very effectively boarded up so that the darkness here was greater than elsewhere. Opposite the window was a cupboard, easily overlooked in that gloom. Probably it had been used at one time for keeping brooms and pails and so on. Hurrying as they were, uneasy about what might be happening elsewhere, they very nearly passed that cupboard by unnoticed. But Bobby paused, as they were rushing by, to pull at the door handle; and when it resisted his tug and would not open, he stopped and tried again.
“Locked,” he said. “What for?”
Like all the doors, windows, furnishings, in this old house, built before mass-production had been heard of or conveyer belts invented, the door was strong, solid, meant to last. Bobby, having tried a kick or two, was just about to say they would have to get tools from Bailey to force it with, when Payne pointed to the floor a yard or two away.
“There’s a key,” he said. “It may belong.”
He picked it up as he spoke, and gave it to Bobby. Bobby tried it. It seemed to fit. When he turned it the door opened and there tumbled out the inanimate body of Mr. Tails.
Bobby bent over him, tried his pulse, felt his heart.
“Alive,” he said, “but not very much so.”
A further hasty examination showed no injury except a bad bruise at the back of the head.
“The skin’s broken,” Payne remarked. “It’s bled a little.”
“Not enough to make the blood we saw,” Bobby said. “Besides, that was quite recent. This is twelve hours old at least.” He added, looking into the cupboard, now quite empty, and then feeling Tails’s pockets, “No picture and no wallet either.”
Between them they carried the still unconscious man down to the great hall. Bailey was sent to get water. There was, of course, none in the building, for the well by which it had been supplied was out of action, but there was a big rainwater tank outside. From this Bailey brought a pailful. As he set it down, he said:
“That bloke you’ve locked up is banging away good and proper. Sounds as if he had got my hammer out of my tool box, and when he heard me he started yelling blue murder through the keyhole and all, so what’s the odds?”
“I don’t know,” said Bobby, intent on Tails, now beginning to show signs of returning consciousness under the influence of the free application of water and of Payne’s industrious fanning in the most approved first-aid style.
“Best be ready for him,” Bailey added. “He’ll be out soon, and by the way he’s cursing there’ll be trouble when he is.”
Tails opened his eyes. He stared hard at Bobby. He put up a hand to stop the flapping of the handkerchief Payne was using so energetically as a fan. He said:
“Was it you?”
Bobby said:
“Drink this.” He had in his pocket a small flask of brandy. He put it to Tails’s lips, supporting his head to let him sip a few drops. He said: “How do you feel?”
Tails considered the point, but did not seem quite sure. He said, and shuddered as he spoke:
“I thought I was buried alive.”
“Not you,” said Bobby, producing a loud laugh for the occasion, though a grim picture flashed into his mind of consciousness awakening to darkness, silence, boards all around, then panic, then merciful swoon again. “What’s it all about? Had a fall or did someone knock you out? You’re all right now, of course, but you’ve had a bad whack on your head. Feeling better now?”
He let Tails sip a few drops more brandy. They had a strongly reviving effect. Tails tried to sit up.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” he said. “It was dark.”
“So it was,” agreed Bobby, “but it’s daylight now. Where’s the Vermeer painting?”
The last two words seemed to galvanize Tails into renewed life and energy. He struggled upright, though he held himself so with some difficulty, and only by the aid of Payne’s grasp upon his arm.
“Clavering,” he said. “That’s it. He guessed. He guessed from what I told him. The young scoundrel. He guessed, and he was here first. He laid me out, and he got the Vermeer.” He began to feel in his pockets. “My wallet’s gone,” he said. “You’re witnesses. I’ll prosecute. I’ll have him into every court in the land. It’s criminal, theft, it’s theft.”
“Did you see Clavering?” Bobby asked.
“Yes, I did, of course I did, who else could it be?” Tails tried to take a step forward, but nearly collapsed in doing so. Payne said “Steady on”, and held him up. But if Tails’s legs were still somewhat untrustworthy, his tongue was in good working order, and he let out a stream of oaths and anger and abuse that would have much astonished some of his elite clientele. “Who else could it be? That young scoundrel would stick at nothing, murder, he tried to murder me, didn’t he? He’s been watching, waiting, spying, and now he’s tried to kill me, and he’s stolen the Vermeer painting. Why don’t you arrest him? Clavering.”
His voice rose to a scream. He collapsed, and Payne lowered him gently to the floor. The door at the back, giving admittance to the hall, opened, and Clavering himself appeared.
“Did I hear my name?” he inquired suavely.
CHAPTER XXXIV
GIRL–BOY
It was Clavering himself who had to break the staring, surprised, suspicious silence that ensued upon his unexpected appearance.
“Quite a party,” he said, putting up his eyeglass to survey benevolently the small assembled group. “I thought I heard…” He broke off abruptly. “Good Lord, it’s Tails,” he said. “What’s up now?”
Tails had managed, somehow, to get to his feet again.
“That’s him,” he cried. “Where is it?” he shouted at Clavering. “You’ve got it, you lying, swindling, thieving…”
“Quiet,” snapped Bobby.
“What’s he mean? Got what?” Clavering asked. “Looks as though poor old Tails has had it, though. What’s going on here? There’s a bloke trying to kick a door in and raising Cain generally, and young Frank Hardman’s been hurt and wants help. He’s been shot up. Did he do that?” Clavering added, nodding at Tails. “Or was it the bloke you’ve got locked up?”
“What’s that about Frank Hardman?” Bobby asked.
“He’s out there hiding in the rhododendrons at the front,” Clavering answered, “with a bullet in his arm, and looking pretty sick. He said there was someone in the house, so I came to get help. He wants a doctor, he looks bad.”
“Where’s the Vermeer? What have you done with it?” interrupted Tails suddenly, and then collapsed.
Payne caught him, and again lowered him gently to the ground. Bobby said to Clavering:
“What do you know about the Vermeer? Have you got it?”
“Good lord, no,” Clavering answered, astonished. “If I had, I shouldn’t be here. I should be half-way to London. What about the Hardman boy? He wants looking after.”
Bobby gave a quick look at the now again half-swooning Tails, and decided he could be left for a few moments. To Bailey he said:
“Get along quick as you can to the nearest call box. Put a police call through. Tell them I want the ambulance, a doctor, four duty men, all most urgent. Hurry up. Get your bike.”
“O.K.” said Bailey. “So what’s the odds?”
With this cryptic question, he departed at a clumsy trot, and to Clavering Bobby said
:
“Front of the house? In the rhododendron bushes? Come along then.”
They all three hurried off, Bobby leading the way, and Payne keeping a suspicious eye on Clavering, in whom he felt small confidence. They passed the door of Parkinson’s prison, where, as the captive heard them coming, the violence of the assault upon it increased, accompanied by such a torrent of lurid threats as can but seldom have issued from the lips of a peaceful, respectable draper.
“Just a minute, Mr. Parkinson,” Bobby shouted to him. “I’ll let you out as soon as I can.”
Probably what he said was not fully understood. At any rate the only results were a spate of even more remarkable language surely never learned in the drapery trade, though indeed all trades have their secrets, and an even fiercer assault on a door now clearly showing signs of surrender, just like a cornered German army. “Old Parkinson, is it?” Clavering said as they all three still hurried on. “What’s he been doing?”
Bobby said to him:
“Tails says you knocked him out. Did you?”
“Me? No,” Clavering answered, with apparent surprise. “What did he say that for? The old liar. What’s the idea, saying it was me?”
“His story is he saw you,” Bobby said. “Why should he tell me that if it isn’t true?”
“Oh, just the first lie he could think of,” Clavering suggested. “Or perhaps to stop you knowing who it really was. For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, &c. He says he hasn’t got the Vermeer? How do you know he hasn’t? Perhaps he’s got it salted down some where. More likely he’s been double-crossed, though, with that broken head of his. Perhaps he really thinks it was me. If it had been, I shouldn’t be here. I should be miles away with the loot.”
“Why are you here?” Bobby asked, still with suspicion in his voice, though he admitted the force of this last remark.
“’Phone call from old man Solomon,” Clavering explained. “In the picture racket we all know all about the other fellow, and what he’s doing, and Solomon and every one else knew the Tails outfit was badly rattled because they hadn’t heard from him, and didn’t know what he was up to. But only Solomon and self knew Tails was playing around up here, and why, and as Tails was missing from his hotel it struck me something had gone wrong with the deal I told you he was boasting to me about. I tried Major Hardman’s place to see if he knew anything about it, but there was no one there. You said something about Nonpareil, so I came on here. Lots going on apparently, including the Hardman boy. There he is.”
They had reached, now, the great rhododendron beds that lay in front of the house, about a hundred yards distant. In front of them half lay, half sat young Hardman, the right arm roughly bandaged, though blood was still oozing from it. Sullenly, silently young Hardman watched their approach. Bobby bent to examine the wound. He did what he could, though that was not much. He thought the bullet was still there, embedded in the bone. He said:
“Who did this? Was it your husband?”
The only answer he received was the same sullen, angry stare. Payne, surprised, for he had not anticipated the word ‘husband’ repeated it under his breath, and looked very bewildered, and Clavering, open-mouthed, all his surface sophistication slipping from him, gasped out “Oh, I say,” and then subsided. Bobby went on:
“That arm of yours wants looking at. Dirt in it, I think. I’ve sent for a doctor. It was your husband, wasn’t it? Were you running away from him with someone else or with the Vermeer painting, or was it both?”
“Think you know all about it, don’t you?” she muttered.
“Well, I know a good deal,” Bobby agreed, “and I can guess the rest. But not yet where you hid the Vermeer painting when you took it from behind the portrait in The Tulips drawing-room. Where is it now?”
She made no answer, only looked as sullen and defiant as before. Clavering burst out:
“Her brother’s got it. That’s it. She’s given it him. That’s why he’s been hanging round all this time. Ask her where her brother is.”
“She has no brother,” Bobby said.
“Yes, of course, you know, her twin,” Clavering exclaimed eagerly.
“There isn’t any twin,” Bobby said, but again Clavering interrupted.
“Yes, there is,” he declared. “I’ve seen him, I’ve spoken to him. I had an idea sometimes he dressed up to pass off as his sister, but I never thought of her playing the same trick. It’s being twins.”
“There’s no twin,” Bobby said. “There couldn’t be. I always knew that. But I didn’t know what it covered. You see,” he explained, speaking directly to the girl whose air of sulky and defiant reserve was now giving way to an expression of uneasy surprise, “there are two sorts of twins—ordinary twins, who come from two different eggs and are just ordinary brothers or sisters who happen to be born at the same time, and who no more resemble each other than do ordinary brothers and sisters—family likeness and no more—and identic twins who come from one egg, who were meant to be one personality, who, therefore, always resemble each other, and who sometimes show an odd psychic link with each other. But they have to be both of the same sex, either both male or both female, because sex determination takes place before the splitting of the one egg into two. So it was certain, unless medical and scientific theory was wrong, which I didn’t think likely, that the twin story was a fake, and used merely to provide a useful scapegoat, and set us police looking for someone who didn’t exist, and therefore couldn’t be found. Major Hardman did his best to push suspicion on the non-existent Frank. Only I couldn’t be sure, at first, whether it was a boy pretending to be a girl or the other way round. What settled it was when I found out you had been working a lot with the W.V.S. A boy can pass as a girl easily enough for a time, but I wasn’t going to believe that any young man could associate regularly with a lot of women as you did at the W.V.S. centre without their spotting him. That swell coiffure of yours rather gave the game away, too. Not quite your general style. So why were you wearing it? Because, you know, there’s a reason for everything. And it was certainly a wig, or why did no hairdresser round here—and we asked them all—know you as a customer?”
As Bobby talked the settled, sullen hostility on the girl’s face slowly changed into a sort of bewildered fear. As indeed Bobby had hoped might be the result of the long harangue just delivered and the object he had had in mind. For he had reasoned that if he struck at the security she had felt in secrecy, and showed her how much he knew, then it was possible she would break down. And so it happened, for now she said with fear:
“You knew all that all the time?”
“Oh, yes, and much more as well,” Bobby told her smilingly, “but I’m not certain yet what you’ve done with the Vermeer painting.”
“It’s where it was all the time till he took it away,” she said then. “Under the sheet covering the river god statue in the picture gallery.”
CHAPTER XXXV
NARRATIVE
It was Clavering who reacted first to this intelligence. The form his reaction took was a stifled yell, a quick turn, and the beginning of a wild rush towards the house. But it was checked by an angry roar from Bobby, a roar calculated to put into the shade for ever any roaring by any bull of Bashan that ever was.
“None of that,” Bobby ordered. “You stop here.”
Clavering obeyed. It was, indeed, an obedience-compelling roar that Bobby had emitted. Clavering said:
“There’s nothing there. I’ve looked.”
“So have I,” said Bobby. He turned again to Mrs. Hardman and, producing once more his brandy flask, poured out a liberal allowance he put to her lips. “Drink this,” he said. “It’ll do you good. I expect the doctor won’t be long. Drink it up,” he urged, and she obeyed. It brought colour back to her cheeks, and it loosened her tongue as well, a result possibly not wholly unhoped for by Bobby, who said persuasively: “I think you would be wise to tell us all about it. I know most of it, but I would like to hear your side.”
“Oh, all right,” she said. “I suppose I may as well.”
“From the beginning,” Bobby said, and warned her: “Only, mind, the truth. I know enough to be able to check what you say. How long have you been masquerading like this?”
“Ever since I married him,” she answered. All the time she referred to Major Hardman by the pronoun, never once using his name. It was as though she did not dare to use it. “It was his idea,” she went on. “I mean, to do it as a regular thing for a purpose. I had before sometimes just for fun. That’s what he said it was for at first, just fun. But then he began to get me to do things, and then, when there were questions, he said I had a twin brother, and if they tried to find him they couldn’t, because, of course, there wasn’t one. When the police came, though, I had to show up as Frank, but they hadn’t anything to go on, they could only ask questions, and they never guessed. But they kept on coming, and we knew they were bound to find out sooner or later. He—said we would have to close for a time, so we shut down, and came here to be out of the way till it was safe to begin again, and it was partly because of the Nonpareil sale that he thought of here. Because in sales at these big, old country houses there are things you can pick up; and even if it’s only junk, and sold as junk, you can often get a good profit if you can say it came from somewhere like Nonpareil and do a sales talk about valuables forgotten or overlooked in attics and muniment rooms.”
“A common trick,” Clavering commented, “only the Antique Dealers Association hoof you out if they get to know—and they generally do.”
“We never tried to join,” she explained simply. “We knew it wouldn’t be any good. When it was the Nonpareil view day I went dressed up as Frank. He—stopped away because someone might have known him, and he wanted to be able to prove he wasn’t there, and didn’t know anything about what his nephew—me—might have done. I saw the Betty Anson girl looking at a picture, and I thought it looked good, though I didn’t know. I told her it wasn’t worth anything, but she went to speak to the auctioneer’s man, and I didn’t want him to show it anyone, so I hid it in the picture gallery behind the dust sheet covering one of the statues. It was the only place I could think of. It was no good trying to take it away, the men were watching. When I got home I told—him—and he was very excited, and he said I must get hold of it somehow, and it must be me, because it wouldn’t do for him to show. But next day, when I went, it wasn’t there any more. Someone had moved it, and when I told—him—he was so furious I thought he would kill me, and he did hit me—it was the first time—and it was then I made up my mind to leave him.”
There's a Reason for Everything: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 24