Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Well, it’s he who got hurt this time,” Bobby remarked, and she turned and stared at him with a kind of obscure menace, but did not speak. Bobby went on: “Is there any one in your mind? I mean, any one likely to go as far as murder? Have you ever heard any threats made against him, for instance?”

  “I could give you a list as long as my arm,” she said, lifting a long white arm in a gesture that suggested such a list would be indeed interminable.

  “As for threats—” With another gesture she seemed to dismiss threats as idle, not worth notice. “But there’s not one of them of all I know would have the guts. Murder,” she said again, dark and sombre. “It’s a word. Just a word. But it would make many afraid.”

  “So it would,” Bobby agreed drily. “You can’t help us, then? Do you know of any recent quarrel, for instance?”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered. “Quarrels. That’s one thing. But murder—” the word seemed to have a fascination for her. “Isn’t murder more likely to come from an old grudge than from a new offence? I should think murder’s a thing needs time to work up to.” She seemed to expect an answer to this, but Bobby did not reply. She went on: “Recently he has been furious with Mr Martin Wynne. That’s a cousin. He’s been here this morning, hasn’t he? You’ve seen him. I take it you don’t suspect him? Mr Wynne’s head is always in the clouds. Literally. Above the clouds. He came to dinner last night, and I think they had it out. It was because of Mr Dan Edwardes. Now if Mr Weston had murdered them—the two of them—you could understand it.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “They were trying to get control of the Mill. At least, Mr Edwardes was. All Mr Wynne cares about is money to build aeroplanes to go higher than any one has ever been before. But Mr Edwardes had some scheme for turning the Mills over to the hands to run for themselves. Well, of course, that wouldn’t have done. Chaos in a week or two and bankruptcy next. You couldn’t expect Mr Weston to agree, could you?”

  “Could he have stopped them?” Bobby asked. “I gather that with Mr Wynne’s help, Mr Edwardes would have a voting majority.”

  “I’m sure,” she answered, with her red lips parting in a disdainful smile, “Mr Weston would have been more than a match for the two of them—even if they did hold a majority of the shares. A boy who can’t think of anything but what’s up in the clouds and an old man who doesn’t know anything about business or anything else.” Again that scornful smile parted Miss Rowe’s red lips and showed the white even teeth behind. “He wouldn’t have needed to murder either of them,” she went on, “though I think he might have done, perhaps, if there had been no other way. I don’t know that I should have blamed him either. Self-defence, wouldn’t it have been? Is it murder if it’s self-defence? I don’t think so. Haven’t you a right to defend your own? The Mill, it was like his child. If any one tried to take away from you what you valued most—your wife, your child, if you have them—wouldn’t you be ready to kill? Only, of course, that has nothing to do with it, because it is Mr Weston who has been—murdered.” Once again she seemed to bring out the last word with difficulty, as if she found it hard to pronounce, as if it needed an effort, and yet forced herself to say it loudly and clearly. “So all that’s beside the point,” she said.

  “Who is John Weston Wilkie?” Bobby asked.

  “Mr Wilkie? Have you heard about him? He is a cousin, too. He had a good position in the business—at the Mills. Then Mr Weston hoofed him out. I think it was something about money, but I don’t know. There was a scene between them and he went. He can’t have anything to do with it either, because he lives in London now.”

  “We shall have to get in touch with him,” Bobby remarked. “Perhaps we shall hear from him when he knows what has happened. Do you know what he does now?”

  “I think he is on the stage—music-hall, rather. It is what they call a song-and-dance act with some trick conjuring thrown in. Something like that.”

  “Probably he travels about the country, then?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered indifferently. “But I do know Mr Weston made him a small allowance, and I think he had to promise to stay in London or the south.”

  “Do you know if Mr Weston made a will?”

  “I never heard of his doing so,” she answered. “I don’t think he would. You seem to think a private secretary knows it all. She doesn’t. If there is a will, Mr Wilkie won’t be mentioned, I expect. Or Mr Wynne either.”

  “If Mr Weston died intestate, they would both be likely to come in for a share, wouldn’t they?”

  “Mr Wynne might. Not Mr Wilkie. He is only a very distant cousin of Mr Weston’s wife. She’s dead, you know. There may be a will leaving everything to him, and that may be why Mr Wilkie murdered him. Or Mr Wynne. I suppose that’s what you are thinking about them both. I don’t think it’s likely.”

  “I don’t either,” Bobby agreed, “but we have to consider everything. I’m afraid, Miss Rowe, I must ask you a somewhat intimate question. There seems to have been a good deal of gossip about Mr Weston’s private life. Have you any knowledge of his relations with women other than his wife?”

  Miss Rowe shrugged her shoulders.

  “No,” she said. “Of course, I know there was a lot of talk. Some one told me once there were illegitimate children of his in the cottages near here and in Midwych, too. He left me alone. He knew I was engaged.” She showed her left hand where shone that valuable-looking diamond Bobby had already noticed; and for the moment her whole expression changed, softened, there came a new look into those darkly brooding eyes of hers, she glowed, as it were, with a kind of inner warmth, her whole body seemed to offer itself, yield itself to a deep, concealed emotion. “If he hadn’t behaved,” she went on “he would soon have needed a new secretary—and a little arnica and sticking-plaster, too, perhaps.” She flashed a look at Bobby, and half lifted that white, strong, shapely hand of hers, as if to intimate she could have used it with effect, nor was Bobby much inclined to doubt the fact. Then she laughed. “Just now,” she said, “it is the employer who is afraid of getting the sack, not the secretary.”

  “I suppose so,” Bobby agreed. “Do you know a Miss Bessie Bell?”

  “No,” she said. “I never heard of any one of that name. Why? Is she some one who was here last night?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “I’m not a school-girl,” she retorted. “I know very well Mr Weston had women visitors. The servants were never allowed in this part of the house after dinner. Sometimes women came to dinner, and after they left by the front door he let them in again by the study windows. At least, that’s the story. Nothing to do with me. He didn’t tell me about that sort of thing.”

  “You left rather earlier than usual, didn’t you, last night?” Bobby asked.

  “Yes. Mr Weston told me I could. I wanted to go to the cinema. To see—” and she named a popular picture running at the time in Midwych.

  “Did you go to it?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “Did you go alone or with a friend?”

  “Is this to see if I have an alibi?” she asked, looking amused. “Well, I have, fortunately. I went with Mr Franks. My fiancé.” And again her whole being seemed suffused with a kind of soft, inner glow. “You can ask him if you like. He works for the Midwych Central Iron and Steel Company—that’s why he is not in the army. He’s not allowed—thank goodness,” she added below her breath.

  “I’ll get in touch with him,” Bobby said. “A matter of form. I’m sure he will confirm what you say. If any one suggests there is evidence you were back near here last night, what would you say?”

  “That they were liars, and rather silly liars, too,’’ she retorted promptly. “Why should any one say anything so stupid? How could I? I was with Mr Franks at the Super-Superb.” She looked straight at Bobby, those dark, strange eyes of hers open to their widest, her red lips parted. “You don’t think I came back here to kill Mr Weston, do you?” she asked, a little catch in
her breath.

  “We have to put all kinds of questions to all sorts of people,” Bobby explained smilingly. “You remember I was saying just now we can’t even take your visit to the cinema for granted. So we shall have to ask Mr Franks, and even then we have to remember that often a man will feel himself bound to back up a lady’s story. Did you happen to see or speak to any one else, by any chance? Or is there any other confirmation you can think of?”

  “Well, I suppose Mr Franks might have the ticket stubs still, if that’s any good. And I told my landlady where I was going, and she heard me come in. It was rather late—midnight. Is that enough? Oh, and I remember Mr Franks saw a friend of his and went to speak to him. I kept out of the way. Mr Franks said they went the same way home, so we dodged into a covered doorway opposite to get out of the rain, and waited a bit till they had gone. You see,” she added with that kind of warmth and inner glow which seemed to come at once to her when she spoke of her fiancé. “I don’t think we were very anxious to talk to any one else. We don’t get much time together. Ronald is often working late and Sundays, too. We just walked home together rather slowly after the rain stopped.”

  Bobby said he quite understood that with working hours so long meetings must necessarily be rare. He asked a few more questions on routine matters, and then let her go with the understanding that she was to remain in the house for the day in case her services were required.

  “Mr Weston’s solicitors have been informed,” Bobby explained. “I’m expecting them any minute. They’ll have to take charge till we know if there’s a will and, if so, who are the executors. Most likely they will be glad of your help for a time.”

  She went away then, and when she had gone Bobby turned to Payne.

  “Something wrong there,” he said. “I can swear I heard her talking to some one—a man, I think—in the grounds when I got here last night.”

  CHAPTER X

  STAFF UNDERSTANDINGS

  AT THIS Payne gaped, open-mouthed.

  “Well, then,” he said, repeated: “Well, then”, and paused, uncertain how to proceed.

  “Long before the murder,” Bobby pointed out, looking worried. “When I got here first, as I was driving up the avenue.”

  “Still—” Payne said and paused again.

  “Not evidence, anyhow,” Bobby said. “She has a distinctive voice, and I am sure I recognized it. But then I had only heard it once before and that was over the ’phone. Good enough for me, but other people could say I might be mistaken. All the same, I’m putting her down in my own mind as a liar. But that’s a long way from proving her guilty of murder.”

  “I suppose,” Payne admitted reluctantly, “she may possibly have been hanging about for her own reasons and not wanted to say. Could she be one of Weston’s fancy women on the prowl to see if he was carrying on with some one else?”

  “Well, there’s that,” agreed Bobby. “Though she did strike me as being very much in love with her young man—Franks, didn’t she call him?”

  “Well, yes,” admitted Payne. “I forgot that. Sort of all lighted up inside, she was, when she spoke of him. You know, sir,” Payne went on reflectively, “I don’t think I should much like to be that young woman’s best boy.”

  “Why not?” Bobby asked, a trifle amused. “I can imagine any youngster as proud as a peacock to walk down Market Street with her and watch all the other men turn and stare. The women, too. I’ve not often seen a more striking-looking girl.”

  “Yes, I know. That part of it would be all right,” Payne admitted. “I was thinking of the way she sort of lit up inside. Her life for his all right, but his for her. Give all and ask all and more. Totalitarian, if you see what I mean. Rather frightening, somehow.”

  “A fire not so much to warm as to burn, to consume,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “Perhaps you’re right. You’re getting quite a psychologist, Payne.”

  Payne looked as if he were not sure whether this was a compliment or the reverse.

  “Dangerous, that’s what I should call her,” he said. “Dangerous. Definitely. I wouldn’t put it past her to stick a knife into any one who tried any funny work with her.”

  “Nothing to suggest any one ever did—Weston or another,” Bobby remarked. “Besides, she’s clearly all gone on her Ronald Franks young man. No one could sham the way in which she sort of glowed at his name. Must be a bit out of the way himself to make a girl like her feel like that. Even if Weston had tried it on, she would never have let it get far enough to make knifing necessary—a smack across the face, perhaps; and she looked hefty enough to give a good one, too. Still, I think it might be a good idea to look up Mr Franks, see what sort of a young man he is and if he confirms her story. Of course he will. After you’ve finished with Miss Bessie Bell. I very much want to know what she was really doing here and who it was spoke to her at the window while she was waiting in this room. Bad luck the heavy rain last night washed out the footmarks in the flower-bed outside. Better go ahead with all that at once.”

  “Very good, sir,” Payne answered. “There’s just one thing more. Constable Clerke has sent in a report.”

  “Clerke?” repeated Bobby. “Oh, yes. Old pensioner, isn’t he? Called back for war service. Oldish man, rheumaticy, not very fit, a bit deaf, too. Isn’t he down for discharge again?”

  “That’s the man, sir,” agreed Payne. “No good at all, and isn’t trying, either. He was on this beat last night, and his report is that there was some one in the lane that runs behind the grounds here. Nothing in that, of course. It’s a short cut for a good many people—especially after closing time at the ‘Green Lion’. Clerke says it was somewhere about eleven. He remembers hearing the church clock strike. So apparently nothing to do with the murder. He didn’t see the chap clearly. Says seemingly the chap had dropped a torch and was groping about for it in the hedge and ditch by the side of the lane. He said something to Clerke about having hurt his eye, but Clerke didn’t take any notice. My own idea is Clerke was afraid the chap was drunk and he might have trouble. Which there isn’t if Clerke can help it. He’s all for a quiet life and his discharge as quick as can be.”

  “Not much meat there,” grunted Bobby. “When you get back see if you can get any confirmation. Not very likely you will. Oh, and warn Clerke not to say anything.”

  “No fear of his doing that, sir,” Payne assured him. “I’ll warn him all the same. All he wants is to keep out of anything that might delay his discharge.”

  Therewith Payne departed, on his way out pausing to send in to Bobby the old butler to be questioned afresh.

  “Let’s see, your name is Hargreaves, isn’t it?” Bobby asked when the butler appeared. “First names?”

  Hargreaves hesitated, coughed, and did not answer at once. When Bobby looked up in some surprise, he noticed, too, that this morning the man’s hair seemed changed somehow—slightly muddied in tint, it now seemed, and less venerably white than before. He wondered what the cause might be, and Hargreaves said, still hesitatingly:—

  “Well, sir, when applying for a situation, I generally give it as Thomas. Ladies seem to consider it more suitable.”

  “Do you mean it’s not your real name?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, sir,” Hargreaves said again, looking a trifle red and embarrassed, “you see, sir, I was christened Lancelot Galahad. My father, sir, was a great admirer of the late Lord Tennyson. Ladies do not seem to consider it suitable for service.”

  “I don’t see why,” Bobby said gravely. “Two jolly good names if you ask me. Anyhow, if those are your right names—on your identity card, are they?—they had better go down. I wanted to ask you if you know the address of Mr John Weston Wilkie?”

  Hargreaves shook his head.

  “No, sir,” he answered. “He’s been left fully a year.”

  “Has he been back?”

  “No, sir,” Hargreaves said again and coughed. “I don’t know if I ought to mention it, sir,” he began hesitatingly, “but it was generally
understood by the staff, sir, if I may say so, that the late Mr Weston made Mr Wilkie an allowance on condition that he remained in London.”

  “Why was that?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, sir, it was generally understood by the staff, sir, if I may say so, that there had been a somewhat violent scene between the two gentlemen. It was generally understood by the staff, sir, if I may say so, that Mr Weston addressed extremely violent reproaches to Mr Wilkie and that in return Mr Wilkie threatened the late master with personal violence.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bobby interested. “What made the staff think that?”

  “The assumption, sir, was based on a statement made by the under-housemaid, a not too trustworthy witness. I am inclined to doubt if it would be wise to attach too much credence to her declaration.”

  “Perhaps not,” agreed Bobby. “What did she say?”

  “Well, sir, if I may say so, I always make it a point to discourage gossip among the staff. It did, however, come to my knowledge that the under-housemaid informed others of the staff that Mr Wilkie had threatened—er—to repeat verbatim what the under-housemaid reported—threatened to slit the old geezer’s gizzard. The exact significance of the words used escaped me at the time, but I have since gathered that they conveyed a menace of violence pushed to an extreme against Mr Weston’s personal security.”

  “I think,” Bobby agreed, “that’s about what it came to. Is the young woman still here?”

  “No, sir, she quitted our employment shortly afterwards in order to better herself. I am unaware of her present address. Possibly Mrs Parham, our cook, may be acquainted with it. But I don’t think so. But if I may say so, sir, Mr Wilkie was a gentleman of somewhat theatrical tendencies. It is understood by the staff that he now occupies a leading position in a London theatre. I must say,” added Hargreaves, suddenly becoming more human, “he and Miss Olga Severn could give a most amusing show—with him dancing fair wonderful and her taking you off a marvel and Mr Weston to his face like.” Hargreaves paused and coughed. “It was generally understood by the staff that though the late master laughed a lot, he wasn’t so pleased as all that, and it led to words between him and Miss Florence Severn, the young lady’s aunt, she is, as he thought did ought to have taken measures against such.”