Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Do you mean,” Bobby asked, “you think Mr Weston was actually anticipating that Mr Edwardes might attempt to murder him?”

  “I expect so. Definitely.”

  “What I mean,” Bobby said, “is: Is that just a general idea of yours or do you know any facts to support it, anything said or done?”

  “Oh, well,” Wilkie said, slightly disconcerted. “Pretty plain, if you ask me. Definitely. Look at the set-up. Cousin couldn’t give way. Simply couldn’t. Look what it would have meant. Whole shebang messed up. Absolute ruin. Total. And old Dan gone off the rails with this idea of what his dead sons wanted done. Three sons killed, and killing in his mind. Definitely. Of course, he’s looney. They won’t hang him.”

  “You are going a little fast, Mr Wilkie, aren’t you?” Bobby asked smilingly.

  “Putting two and two together and making four, that’s all,” retorted Wilkie. “Definitely. Isn’t that what you detective johnnies do?”

  “Well, yes,” Bobby admitted. “But we have to make sure that it really is a two we are adding to another two. If the two we thought was a two turns out to be another figure, the addition will be all wrong. I wonder how you know all this. I understood you and Mr Weston haven’t been in touch lately?”

  “Oh, well,” Wilkie said. He threw away what was left of the cigarette he was smoking and lighted another. “Oh, well, one hears things, you know.”

  “How?” asked Bobby in a tone that showed he expected a more precise reply.

  “Oh, well, pal of mine,” Wilkie explained, a trifle unwillingly. “We wrote sometimes. Not so often, but we did. He knew I had had a job at the Mills. Couldn’t stick it, though. I’m an artist, not a business man. So I quit. Cousin Weston was mad, but I’m an artist, and I told him you couldn’t make silk purses out of sows’ ears, and off I went.”

  “I see,” said Bobby. “Naturally, after telling him that. Who is this friend of yours?”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Wilkie grumbled, but when Bobby still waited, looking very much as if he meant to know, Wilkie said sulkily: “Oh, well, if you must know, he’s the Rowe girl’s best boy. High stepper, that girl, isn’t she?”

  “You mean Mr Ronald Franks?” Bobby asked, expressing no opinion on Miss Rowe as a “high stepper” or otherwise, and inwardly both surprised and interested by this fresh appearance of Mr Franks in the sequence of events.

  “Know about him, do, you?” Wilkie asked. “Straight from him to me, straight from her to him. Good enough?”

  “Are you an old friend of Mr Franks?” Bobby asked. “Was there any special reason why you and he wrote to each other?”

  “No, no, just good pals,” Wilkie answered airily.

  “Nothing more? an old friendship?”

  “You want to know it all, don’t you?” Wilkie grumbled, and something in the tone in which Bobby said “Yes” made the other look a trifle less self-satisfied as he straddled there before the fireplace. “Oh, well,” he said as Bobby still waited, “I asked him to tip me off how things were looking here. After all, I’m one of the family. I’m the only relative in this country, except Martin Wynne. Martin and him parted brass rags, but you never know. Martin was dead keen on getting money. Some wild-cat scheme or another he had on hand. Flying aeroplanes higher than they ever flew before. That sort of thing. Nothing in it, naturally. I just asked Franks to drop me a line from time to time to let me know how things were developing.”

  “Developing in what way?”

  “In any way. If Martin was going back to a job at the Mill. If they were patching things up between them. Why not? Perfectly natural.” “Oh, yes,” agreed Bobby. “Perfectly.”

  “Martin wanted him to stand the racket for his aeroplane scheme,” Wilkie went on. “Cousin wasn’t having any. Definitely not. If old Anderson’s right, and there’s no will, Martin will get a cut. I shan’t. Nothing in it for me. I’m family but not blood kin. But Martin will be on velvet.” He paused and looked at Bobby. “There’s a motive,” he said, “if that’s what you’re trying for. You keep an eye on Mr Martin Wynne. No pal of mine. I could never stand him. Awful prig. Do anything for cash, though, to get his aeroplane scheme tried out. Inventors are like that. Definitely. I wouldn’t forget that.”

  “I won’t,” Bobby promised. “Did Mr Franks, in his letters to you, say anything about Mr Wynne?”

  “I don’t think so. No. Martin’s a deep one. Definitely. He was here last night. Did you know that?”

  Bobby was about to say “Definitely”, but checked himself in time.

  “I did,” he admitted; “but how did you know if you only got to Midwych this morning?”

  “Oh, that was Hargreaves,” Wilkie explained. “The world’s No. 1 gossip. Has the wireless beaten to a frazzle when it comes to broadcasting the latest. You can’t blow your nose in this house without Hargreaves knowing.”

  As if to emphasize his words he blew his own nose loudly, and Bobby expressed concern and hoped Mr Wilkie hadn’t got a cold as a result of being caught in the rain that morning.

  “Woke me up, it was so heavy,” Bobby remarked. “Thank goodness, it wasn’t time to turn out, so I could snooze off again. There’s another thing I wanted to ask you. Do you know Miss Bessie Bell?”

  “The girl at the Wych and Wych Arms? Yes. Why? Fine girl. What’s she got to do with it?”

  “Have you ever heard there was anything between her and Mr Weston?”

  “Definitely, no,” Wilkie replied, looking surprised. “Cousin Weston knew his onions O.K. when there was a bit of skirt in it. Deep as you like. But Bessie Bell, you had to mind your step with her. As jolly as you like, but just one inch too far and you got it in the neck. As like as not, you would be warned off the premises. Why, I’ve known a bloke who tried to get a bit too fresh—bloke in a big way, too, city councillor and all that—told not to show his face in her bar again for a month. He didn’t either. Knew better. You can take it from me, nothing between her and Cousin Weston. He got ’em all right and plenty, but he didn’t pick ’em up in pubs. No need to.”

  “Do you know Miss Severn?” Bobby asked.

  “The old girl, do you mean? Set her cap at Cousin and made good running, too, till he turned her down. She won’t be shedding any tears, if you ask me.” He paused, frowned, lighted a fresh cigarette, said: “I wonder if that’s it. I mean, did he turn her down because he had had all he wanted and then sweet good-bye? She’s not the sort to take that lying down. Definitely. With that temper of hers, I wouldn’t put it past her to slip a knife into any bloke who did her wrong, You find out what she was doing last night and if she was out late and why. There’s a tip for you, inspector. Definitely.”

  “Well, now,” Bobby said, “that’s three tips you’ve given me. Mr Edwardes as out of his mind. Mr Martin Wynne as wanting his share of the estate for his aero-dynamic inquiries. Miss Florence Severn as the woman scorned.”

  Wilkie looked at him sulkily, not quite liking Bobby’s tone.

  “Well, why not?” he said. “Dan Edwardes has bats in the belfry. That’s definite. Martin’s next of kin or near and wants money the way inventors always do, and that’s the way a mother wants her baby saved when the house catches fire. Of course, there may be a will and he may be out, and there are illegitimate kids, too, several of them if you ask me, but they don’t count, do they? Not unless there’s been a marriage he never let on about, and he was much too wary a bird to be caught like that.”

  “I’ll have a search made,” Bobby said. “Just on the chance. And Miss Severn?”

  “Oh, well, that’s only an idea. But it fits. You wait till you’ve seen her. Fine woman and hard as nails.”

  “There’s a Miss Olga Severn, too, isn’t there?” Bobby asked.

  “Nice little thing, not much to look at, but she grows on you,” answered Wilkie. “I thought Martin was keen on her at one time, but he has cooled off lately. Very likely she wasn’t so keen on a boy with his head always in the clouds.”r />
  “I daresay not.” agreed Bobby. “Oh, there’s one thing more. I wonder if you would mind giving me a complete time-table of your movements from the time you left Bristol to visit Mr Jones of the ‘Miss and Death’ act in Cardiff till you reached Midwych this morning. A pure formality, of course.”

  “I don’t see why I should,” Wilkie said, flushing angrily. “I call that a bit thick. I’m not a suspect, am I?”

  “If you were I certainly shouldn’t say so,” Bobby answered. “All I want is facts I can verify so that I can clear those not concerned. Definitely,” he could not help adding, and wondered if he would ever get the word out of his mind again.

  But Wilkie looked no whit appeased, looked indeed angrier and sulkier than ever.

  “I don’t think you’ve any right to ask any such thing,” he declared. “I’ve my alibi all right. I was in the train all last night. You ask the guard. I expect he’ll remember. Bit sharp I was with him. I’ve my return ticket, too. Date on it. There it is. Look for yourself.” He flung it on the table before Bobby. “I don’t see why I should bother with time-tables to please you, and I damn well won’t. It’s an insult.”

  “Sorry you take it like that,” Bobby said equably. “Of course, you are within your rights in refusing. No one can be forced to answer questions they think might incriminate them.”

  “You’ve no right—” began Wilkie furiously. “It’s not that—” but Bobby checked him with a gesture.

  “One thing more,” he said. “In going through the papers in the safe, we came across a confession of forgery and misappropriation of funds signed by you.”

  Mr Wilkie’s mouth dropped open. He looked very disconcerted. He came away from the fireplace and sat down in one of those enormous chairs in which he seemed forlorn and lost.

  “It’s not true,” he said weakly. “I mean, I never did. I mean, the old blackguard bullied me into signing it. Not a word of truth in the whole thing.” His voice, so shaken at first, began to recover confidence. “There was money missing, but I never had it. A bit careless I may have been. I don’t deny it. Trusting others. I hadn’t had a penny. I swear that.” He lifted a hand as if prepared then and there to take any oath Bobby might propose. He went on: “What could I do? He wouldn’t believe me. I knew he was going to kick me out, anyhow. He made that plain enough. Brutal about it. A brute all through. He said he would allow me twenty-five quid a quarter if I signed. So I did. I thought a hundred a year was worth a signature. What about it?”

  “Well, it did just cross my mind,” Bobby admitted, “that the recovery of that confession might be a motive, don’t you think?”

  CHAPTER XVI

  VANITY CASE

  IT WAS a disturbed little man, a pallid little man, his forehead suddenly damp, his mobile features eloquently proclaiming sudden dismay, who now stood and stared at Bobby across the table in the garden room. He stammered something incoherently. Bobby said:—

  “I wish you would change your mind about that time-table I asked you for.”

  “Look here,” Wilkie muttered. “Now then. You don’t . . . you can’t . . . I mean . . .”

  He paused, he looked nervously, imploringly at Bobby. Bobby said:—

  “Yes? Well? Don’t? Can’t? What?” Wilkie did not answer. More and more plainly his expressive features showed his alarm, his anger, his dismay. Bobby continued: “Well, about that time-table. It would help us a lot.”

  “All right,” Wilkie muttered gloomily. “I don’t see why.” He began to sidle towards the door. “I’ll do my best. You can’t expect me to remember what I was doing every minute.”

  “Oh, no, no need,” Bobby assured him. “Just the broad outline, as near as you can get it. If you don’t mind letting me have it as soon as possible.”

  Looking gloomier and sulkier than ever, Wilkie withdrew. Entered at once, for he had been waiting his opportunity, the finger-print expert.

  “Miss Florence Severn has just been here,” he said. “You know, sir, the Miss Severn.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” Bobby answered. “Why ‘the’?”

  “She’s the lady golfer,” explained the other; and Bobby, who had never indulged in that odd pursuit of little balls into little holes, tried to look impressed. “Won,” continued the finger-print man, who, when he was not finger-printing, regarded golf as man’s highest interest here below, “won the Wychshire Open Amateur in 1931, the only lady who ever has won it—at the nineteenth hole. Jolly good at tennis, too.”

  “The complete athlete,” Bobby said. “What did she want?”

  “It was about a vanity case a niece of hers had lost. She thought she might have left it here, and if we came across it, would we send it back to Mayfield, where she lives, close by. I asked the old butler bloke, and he said there was a vanity case in a drawer of the dressing-table in the little cloak room off the hall, though he didn’t know how it got there. I thought I might as well test it for dabs.” He paused dramatically. Bobby said: “Jolly good idea,” and waited. The finger-print man said: “The dabs on the vanity case are the same as those on the inside of the kneehole of the study writing-table.”

  Bobby, startled this time, sat upright.

  “Are they, though?” he said thoughtfully.

  “Means,” said the finger-print man, “means the young woman was hiding there, and what for? if it wasn’t to slip out—and slip her knife in. That’s how it looks to me.”

  “So it does, doesn’t it?” Bobby agreed. “It’s a complication,” he said, half to himself.

  “Dabs,” said the finger-print man, awe and reverence in his voice. “Dabs—they tell you things, do dabs.”

  “So they do,” agreed Bobby, even more thoughtfully. “They told us things about Edwardes, too, didn’t they? I’ll have to have a chat with Miss Severn.”

  There was still a certain amount of routine work to be attended to, but, as soon as that was finished for the time, Bobby walked down the road to Mayfield. He found it a small, pleasant-looking house, standing back from the road in a garden still devoted more to flowers and less to carrots, cabbages and turnips, than the really austere patriot could approve. A cardinal rule of police work—one that sad experience has bitten deep into every police force—is that no woman should ever be interviewed save in the presence of a witness. Too dangerous, otherwise. But Bobby felt he could pass off this particular call as one of ordinary routine rather than as an official inquiry. He knocked, and, when a maid opened the door, he explained he had merely called about a missing vanity case he understood one of the Misses Severn had lost.

  He was shown into the drawing-room, a comfortable-looking, conventionally furnished room that at first sight seemed to offer none of those small clues to the characters of those using it for which it was his custom to look. He noticed, indeed, that the furniture, carpets, curtains', all had a well-worn and even shabby air, but then we are often told that in war-time it is our duty to be shabby. That duty had apparently here been well performed. He had not much time for such reflections. Almost immediately Miss Florence Severn came in.

  She was a small woman, but of strong, compact build, and, though in these days it is often difficult to distinguish between the maiden of sixteen and the grandmother of sixty, Bobby guessed that she was most likely ten or fifteen years older than the thirty she seemed to wish to appear. Probably she had never been a pretty woman, for her features were large and irregular; and her too elaborate make-up deprived her, as it deprives so many women to-day, of all individuality and expression save for that indicated in the quick, eager, heavy-lidded eyes and the large, firm mouth. No, Bobby decided, never a pretty woman, even in the first flush of youth, but a woman of will and determination. She showed, too, a well-balanced ease of movement that pleased, as it pleases to watch a leopard’s sinuous walk, and that bore witness to those past athletic triumphs of the links and the tennis-courts. He was not quite sure why, beneath that heavy mask of make-up, in spite of the light and easy poise of her be
aring, he sensed a profound unease, even a hidden terror, that only a strong will prevented from showing itself in panic. He thought possibly it was because of the impression she gave of an inner tension, of every faculty and power she possessed all summoned to her need. But what need, he wondered, and he wished that he could see more plainly her eyes so well veiled beneath such swollen, heavy lids. Recent tears, he thought, and all this make-up in part designed to hide them. But why should they be hidden? What more natural than that such a tragedy so near at hand, to a close neighbour, should produce the tribute of a few tears? He found himself thinking that perhaps she had worn this same tense air in the hour when she had won the Wychshire Open Amateur at the nineteenth hole. An absurd comparison, no doubt, for more was here at stake than any athletic triumph or defeat. He wondered, as these thoughts raced through his mind, what were her thoughts, for she had not spoken yet, and as she stood there in the doorway, his card in her hand, he knew very well that the eyes beneath those swollen, heavy lids were forming their own impression of him.

  “Inspector Owen?” she said, coming forward from the door, where she had seemed to linger for the moment. “Is it about this awful thing that’s happened?”

  “A terrible affair, isn’t it?” he said conventionally, still doing his best to co-ordinate impressions that he found in many ways contradictory.

  “I can’t tell you,” she began and paused. He could see that she was trembling slightly. “Such a shock,” she murmured. “You must excuse ... a neighbour ... a dear friend ...”