‘“It was a desperate plan but Mr Marsden was desperate, and he was not going to let a life stand between him and his own safety, even apart from his hate of Peter, and his fear that made his hate greater still. For he knew well that unless he stopped Peter somehow, his own fate was certain.
‘“But I knew so well everything that was in his mind. I knew it all, his hate, his fear, his dread, his determination to do what he, too, felt he had to do. I think it was the will of the Unknown Powers that I should watch in another all I had experienced in myself, watch it in all its horror and abomination.
‘“Why, I felt I knew every shade of every thought he had.
‘“His plan was simple enough. He meant to entice Jennie to some lonely spot, and murder her, and arrange for Peter to be on the spot, and for the police to be there, too, and for them to arrest Peter, as it would seem, almost in the act. Who could doubt his guilt when he was already under suspicion for the murder of the father, and when Jennie’s death would mean that her father’s fortune would pass entirely to him?
‘“But I was watching and I made Jennie tell me everything. And now she has had a message telling her to go secretly and alone to some old house where she is to be given evidence to show who really is guilty and therefore proof of Peter’s innocence.
‘“It is a trap and I know whose trap. But Peter’s innocence will be known well enough when this is read, and meanwhile I am going in her place to keep this appointment. I am going wearing her hat and coat, our figures are much the same, and it is my dear hope, my belief and expectation that I shall not come back alive. Peter will be safe then, and Jennie, too, and I don’t think anything else will make them safe, for Mr Marsden knows the time is short, and he is very desperate.
‘“I do not think he will recognize me but I must risk that. He has only seen me once or twice, and I don’t think he took any special notice, and he will be expecting Jennie, and I shall be wearing her things. We often did, we have the same figure nearly, and I shall take a scarf to hide my face.
‘“I think all will go well; I feel it somehow.
‘“Mark took his way – Mark’s way. This is my way – Brenda’s way.
‘“To-night I think the weaving of the pattern will be completed, the tangled web made straight, and that come to its appointed end which began the night my father brought home Mr Clarke to dinner, so that they might talk business together.”’
CHAPTER 37
THE END
Superintendent Mitchell laid down the paper when he had finished reading it.
‘Now we know,’ he said slowly, ‘now we’ve been told. I always say it’s the only way to find things out – to get someone who knows to tell you all about it. Information received.’
Bobby was looking at his superior and suddenly he blurted out:
‘Then that’s why you went to the Regency Theatre, sir, that’s what you meant about the show there. I couldn’t make it out but now I see. It’s been Hamlet all over again from start to end, except that this time Hamlet’s been a woman. And you knew that all the time.’
‘In police work,’ explained Mitchell, ‘you never know anything till you can put it in a report, with all the “i’s” dotted and all the “t’s” crossed – lots of red lines as well. I had a kind of idea but ideas are no good. Treasury Counsel want facts, not ideas. Why, the Assistant Commissioner said I was fanciful – almost as good as asking me to resign. I dropped a hint or two to you, Owen, just to see if you would take them up. You didn’t. So I took it your fancy didn’t run as quick as mine and a good thing, too. I told Treasury Counsel in a non-professional way what I thought and they said it was very interesting in a non-professional way, but what they wanted was facts to put before a jury and where were they? Well, now we’ve got ’em because someone’s come along and told us.’
‘What about Peter Carsley?’ Gibbons asked. ‘Where does he come in? After all, he’s been identified leaving the scene of the murder immediately after it happened.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Mitchell. ‘I wonder if he’s got here yet. He rang up to ask if I could see him, wants to know about these new developments, I expect – Marsden’s arrest and Miss Laing’s death.’
He picked up his desk telephone and inquired and on being told that Mr Carsley was waiting directed that he should be brought up. In the interval before Peter appeared he picked up Brenda’s statement and glanced at it again.
‘“Good-looking young policeman,”’ he mused abstractedly. ‘I wonder who she means?’
Gibbons looked sourly at Bobby, who wriggled uncomfortably in his chair.
‘It’s the curl in his hair does it,’ Gibbons pronounced. ‘When he’s in a Lyons shop he gets served practically before anyone else.’
‘It won’t lie flat,’ Bobby protested. ‘I’ve tried but it never will.’
‘Making excuses isn’t any help,’ observed Mitchell, ‘some day some girl will catch you by it – then you’ll know.’
But this discussion on the aesthetics of the person was interrupted by the appearance of Peter, showing stronger evidence even than of late of the strain recent events had put upon him.
He, too, had apparently been the recipient of a note from Brenda explaining, though in only a few words, without the wealth of psychological details she had given in her longer statement, what she meant to do.
‘But then I always knew it was Brenda who shot her stepfather,’ he explained, ‘for I saw her do it.’
‘You mean you were an eye-witness?’ Mitchell asked, and when Peter nodded, he continued: ‘Was it because of your having seen it happen that you went off the way you did through the next door garden? I may as well tell you now that we’ve suspected that was you for some time and finally we got you identified. In fact, but for this statement made by Miss Laing, you would probably have been arrested to-day.’
‘I’ve been expecting that long enough,’ Peter answered quietly. ‘I didn’t know anyone had seen me though. I thought I had managed very well, especially the way I changed after that fellow hit me with his ripe tomato.’
‘I don’t say you didn’t,’ sighed Mitchell, ‘but it’s meant the devil of a lot of worry and work for us. How was it you happened to be there at the time?’
‘You knew my wife and I had been secretly married just before all this happened?’ Peter asked. ‘Well, there had been a bit of a dust up at the office and I saw a crisis had come. Sir Christopher very plainly suspected something. I could see there was bound to be a flare-up, and I went to “The Cedars’’ to try to see Jennie on the quiet. I didn’t want her father to know or any of the servants. We had a way fixed up by which I could let her know, when she was in her room, that I was waiting. I knew Sir Christopher, when he was at home, nearly always spent the hour before dinner in the billiard-room – billiards was his great hobby. But just to make sure he was safely occupied and wouldn’t be likely to interrupt us, before I let Jennie know I was waiting, I slipped round by the shrubbery, so as to have a look into the billiard-room and be certain he was there. And while I was looking, Brenda opened the door and came in, and I saw and heard it all. It was a bit of a shock. I thought my only plan was to clear out before I was seen. I didn’t want to be called as a witness. It didn’t strike me at the moment that I ran any risk of incurring suspicion myself. Anyhow, I think I should have run that risk. What I really felt was that it had better be kept quiet as far as possible. It was dreadful and horrible enough for Jennie that her father should be murdered, it would only make things worse if her sister were hanged for doing it. That’s what I thought and then I suppose it’s always a lawyer’s instinct to try to hush things up, that’s always the legal instinct. So I cleared off, but I didn’t dare go by the drive for I had seen a policeman in uniform hanging about there as if he were waiting for someone. He hadn’t seen me come, for he had had his back to me, and I thought it very much better not to give him any chance of seeing me going either. So I cut off across the next door garden, as I had d
one once or twice before, after seeing Jennie on the quiet, only of course this time I was bound to be spotted and some ass got after me with tomatoes and things.’
‘I rather thought it must be like that,’ observed Mitchell. ‘Well, Mr Carsley, so far as that goes I suppose Miss Laing’s statement clears you, but I think you’ve had a pretty narrow escape twice over – you might easily have been hanged for Sir Christopher Clarke’s murder, and this last time Marsden had everything arranged so neatly, it was a hundred to one your guilt would have been taken as proved. The only weak point in the Marsden scene was that it was so ingenious as to be just a little too ingenious. Life’s not so clever as all that, and so I think it’s Marsden will hang and not you.’
In this Mitchell was a true prophet, for the jury before whom he presently appeared found the evidence overwhelming. Indeed Marsden hardly troubled himself to give much help to the lawyers charged with his defence or take any great interest in their efforts. Nor did he attempt to deny that it was he who had been responsible for the burglary on the night of the murder.
‘I had had it in my mind for some time,’ he said. ‘I knew things couldn’t go on much longer and I managed to find out the safe combination and to get a key. The job itself was easy enough. The mistake I made was coming back from Paris when once I was there. But I knew the hardest part is always to escape afterwards, with police looking for you everywhere, and I thought I could bluff my way to safety now the old man was dead. I calculated there wouldn’t be anyone very energetic about following it up, now he was gone, and I didn’t expect any trouble with Carsley. I was quite sure he had committed the murder, and you don’t expect murderers to make trouble for others, you expect them to be too busy keeping out of it themselves. So I took what seemed the smallest risk, and that offered the biggest prize, for the only thing I had to hope for, if I stayed abroad, was escape; whereas if my bluff came off I was back in my old place, safe and respectable once more, able to pick up my career again. What did for me was the way Carsley turned stupid, and I never expected that, how could I? And if I hadn’t been unlucky right to the end – for who could have expected that girl to interfere the way she did?– I could have settled him all right. If Brenda Laing hadn’t played the fool the way she did, Carsley would have hung and I should have been safe for ever – and so would she herself. She threw it all away, her safety and mine, too, she spoilt it all. Never trust a woman.’
After that he said very little more and the inevitable sentence, duly pronounced, was carried out in due course.
By that time Peter and Jennie – Peter had wound up the practice after having seen that all his clients’ accounts were straight and in good order – had gone abroad for a long holiday and rest, and the change of scene and company of which they both felt the need.
Peter’s intention is to abandon the law and to put what money he has left into some small country estate, so that in quiet rural pursuits he and his wife may forget their tragic and unfortunate experiences.
As for Constable Robert Owen, he has received his transfer from the uniform ranks to the C.I.D., where, as he is known to stand rather well with Superintendent Mitchell, he will probably be called upon to play his part in any other difficult or complicated case that may arise.
About The Author
E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.
At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.
He died in 1956.
Also by E.R. Punshon
Death Among The Sunbathers
Crossword Mystery
Mystery Villa
Death of A Beauty Queen
Death Comes To Cambers
The Bath Mysteries
Mystery of Mr Jessop
The Dusky Hour
Dictator’s Way
The next in the Bobby Owen Mystery Series
E.R. PUNSHON
Death Among The Sunbathers
The body of a brilliant woman journalist is recovered from the wreck of a burning car. It is soon discovered that the smash did not kill her; she was dead already, shot by a Browning automatic that was found near by. Superintendent Mitchell, with the help of Owen, a young University graduate turned policeman, follows the enigmatic clues backwards and forwards between a furrier, a picture dealer, and the establishment of a fanatical sunbathing enthusiast.
Then dramatically the story begins to repeat itself, as the persistently recurring figure of an old lag who calls himself ‘Bobs-the-boy’ carries another body out into the night.
Death Among The Sunbathers is the second of E.R. Punshon’s acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1934 and part of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels.
CHAPTER ONE
The Burning Motor-Car
A slight defect had developed. Nothing of much importance, but it needed attention, and since just here the road was dangerously narrow, since also close behind was the sharp bend they had just come round, and as, moreover, darkness was now beginning to set in, Constable Jacks, the careful driver Superintendent Mitchell always chose when he was available, decided to take precautions. Near to them was a large, imposing-looking house with a wide drive sweeping up to it, and prudently Jacks backed their car a yard or two up this drive, of which the gate fortunately hung wide open. In that way the rather narrow road itself would be left free, and if any car did happen to round the sharp bend in it at the speed at which cars do occasionally take sharp bends, there would be no risk of any accident occurring. Satisfied with the precaution thus taken, Jacks alighted, got out his tools, and set to work.
Mitchell descended, too, to stretch his legs, as he said. He was a big, generally slow-moving man, with a pale, flat face, small, sandy moustache, deep-set grey eyes, and loose, loquacious lips that at sudden, unexpected moments could set in thin and rigid lines. His companion, Inspector Ferris, followed, a big, bluff, hearty, smiling man, whose chief merit as a detective was not so much any special subtlety of mind or insight into things, but a devastating, almost awe-inspiring patience that permitted him to sit and wait for hours, and to be, to all appearance, as fresh and alert at the end of the vigil as at its beginning. He and Mitchell had been on a visit to Lord Carripore, chairman of Universal Assurances, a company somewhat badly hit by a recent series of big fires, including one on a transatlantic steamer, that Lord Carripore had personally declared to the Home Secretary could not possibly be accounted for by natural causes. As his lordship was suffering from a bad attack of sciatica, probably a result of sun-bathing, to which he was a recent and enthusiastic convert – though that that was the cause he would not have admitted for one moment – Mitchell and Ferris had been detailed to visit him at his country house. But the interview had proved of small interest. Lord Carripore appeared to have little to say, except that it was all most suspicious, and that his company had been hit to the tune of a quarter of a million, so that the annual dividend would probably have to be reduced, and the shareholders wouldn’t like that, might even hint at making changes in the directorate. As, moreover, this prospect, or the sciatica, or both together, had affected his lordship’s temper to a most unfortunate degree, the two police officers had been glad to take their leave as soon as they decently could.
‘Of course, any assistance we can give, you can depend on,’ Mitchell assured him as they were going; ‘any information we can be supplied with, we will follow up instantly.’
‘I thought it was the business of the police to get information, not to wait to have it given them,’ snarled Lord Carripore, wincing at a
fresh twinge of his sciatica.
‘But we can’t get it unless someone gives it us, can we?’ Mitchell protested mildly. ‘Information received is what we always need before we can take action.’
Therewith he and Ferris took their departure, leaving Lord Carripore writhing with mingled sciatica and temper, and determined as soon as he was well enough to ask the Home Secretary to dinner for the sole purpose of telling him exactly what he thought of Scotland Yard.
Unaware, however, of this determination, Mitchell and Ferris had already forgotten all about his lordship and his more than somewhat vague complaints and doubts and suspicions. It was another subject they were debating, and, as he followed Mitchell from the car, Ferris was saying,
‘Well, sir, of course, it’s for you to say, but Owen’s young, very little experience. I would much rather have a more experienced man for the job myself.’
‘Owen’s young all right,’ Mitchell admitted, ‘though you and I were both the same age once.’
‘Not long since he was transferred from the uniform branch,’ Ferris persisted.
‘Earned it,’ said Mitchell; ‘he was quite useful in that case of the murder of Sir Christopher Clarke.’
‘Happened to be on the spot,’ commented Ferris, still unsatisfied; ‘never struck me as having any more brains than the next man – or much initiative.’
‘Educated instead,’ explained Mitchell, ‘and education just naturally chokes initiative. He’s ’Varsity and public school, you know, and you can’t expect to have an education like that and initiative as well.’
‘Don’t hold with it,’ grumbled Ferris, ‘not with all these B.A.s and M.A.s and A.S.S.s crowding into the force – changes its whole tone.’
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