Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Shall you mind if I smoke?” she asked.

  Bobby answered that he hadn’t the least objection, though he hoped she would not mind if he didn’t, as he was on duty. Police weren’t supposed to smoke on duty, and it was bad for discipline if subordinates saw senior officers giving themselves little indulgences.

  “Oh, well, discipline,” said Thomasine, with again that remote and proud smile of hers. “Oh, I suppose it’s good for subordinates,” she agreed carelessly; and Bobby told himself that this young woman, typist or secretary or whatever she called herself, had little sense of being a subordinate.

  She was lighting her cigarette now. Enormous as was the chair, slight in build as she was, she seemed to fill it entirely, and once more he noticed the easy speed she showed in every movement. Of Bessie Bell he had thought as a lioness, of this girl as a tigress; and again, and more strongly, he had the impression of a tigress, not so much at bay as crouching in readiness to spring at need.

  “What I’ve chiefly come about,” Bobby explained, “is that Japanese knife you bought in Midwych some little time ago.”

  “Oh, you’ve found that out, have you?” she asked, with a curled lip. “Thorough, aren’t you?”

  “We do our best,” he answered. “Of course you know a Japanese knife was used in the murder. When Mr Weston was found—there”—Bobby pointed to the exact spot—“lying there, it was sticking in his body.”

  If he had meant these words, his gesture, as a further test of her nerves, there was no result. Her eyes followed his pointing hand, her gaze rested on the spot indicated, by not so much as the quiver of an eyelid did she show any emotion.

  “Mr Weston was killed with a dagger,” she said. “A good, clean blow. What I bought was a paper-knife. You could not have struck such a blow with it.”

  “A paper-knife, yes,” Bobby agreed. “But a paper-knife that could take an edge.”

  “Could it?” she asked indifferently. “I suppose you want to know if I can still produce it. Suppose I can’t? What then?”

  “It would then become a more serious matter than you appear to realize,” Bobby answered, growing impatient now with this scornful young woman who seemed as if she held herself above all natural emotion.

  “Has the knife used been identified as the one I bought?” she asked; and he could see well the challenge and the mockery in her eyes.

  “I have not troubled to go into that yet,” he told her. “Because I felt sure you would have a perfectly satisfactory explanation.”

  For the first time she seemed a trifle disturbed, as if this reply had not been anticipated, was not even welcome. Up to the present she had seemed indifferent, disdainful indeed. But now she showed herself less aloof, her eyes became attentive, more than attentive, a suggestion in them of how the tigress might look the instant before the final spring.

  “I’ve been told you are clever,” she said unexpectedly. “I didn’t think it likely. It’s so rare. But I think you are.”

  “Some other time,” Bobby said smilingly, “I should like to argue that most people are clever, and that it is not brains people lack, but purely and simply the will to use them. Too much trouble. But I do rather wonder why you have changed your opinion about me. For the life of me, I can’t see why.”

  “You’ve a sound judgment,” she said. “You judge well. You don’t think I killed Mr Weston, do you?”

  “I certainly don’t think you killed him with that knife you bought the other day,” he told her.

  “Yes, you are clever,” she repeated, and now her eyes, watching him, were keen and hard. “I bought that knife as a present for a friend on her birthday, and I sent it her more than a fortnight ago.”

  “You can give me her name and address?”

  Thomasine went back to her place by the window. There she typed a name and address on a half-sheet of notepaper. She came back and gave it him. He thanked her and put it in his pocket.

  “I am wondering a little,” he remarked as he did so, “why you never mentioned it before?”

  She had gone back to the big arm-chair. She settled herself in it, again with that air of somehow making her slim and youthful body fill it entirely. There was once more a faint disdain in her voice as she said:—

  “Would not that have been what you call causing a public mischief? Sending police on a fool’s errand. Giving them a red herring to follow. Or perhaps I wanted to know how effective police methods really are.”

  “Yes, I see,” he said, smiling back at her. “That explains it perfectly. There is just one more small point. You tell us you and Mr Franks went to the cinema in Midwych that evening. The ticket stubs Mr Franks gave me shows they were purchased shortly before the big picture you went to see comes on. There is also a witness who is prepared to swear he saw you and Mr Franks leaving—at about the hour of the murder.”

  “Well, then,” she interrupted, “doesn’t that clear us if you are really suspicious of us? Isn’t that what you call an alibi?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby agreed. “Most complete. All the same, there is another witness—a generally reliable and certainly truthful witness—who says he heard you here, in the Weston Lodge Cottage grounds, at a time when you would only have been able to get to the cinema in time for the big picture by hurrying—in fact, only by the use of a car or a motor-cycle, perhaps. Did that happen?”

  She did not answer him for a moment or two, taking time first to provide herself with a fresh cigarette. Then she said:—

  “I suppose you mean yourself. I suppose you mean you are your own reliable and certainly truthful witness?”

  “Oh, well,” he said, slightly disconcerted. Then he said: “Why do you think so?”

  “You may be clever, but I am not an utter fool,” she retorted. “There was no one else here that night you would be likely to call reliable and certainly truthful. You don’t know enough about them, for one thing.”

  “Let me return your compliment,” he said, smilingly. “About being clever, I mean.”

  “What makes you think whoever it was you really saw was me?” she asked. “It was getting dark, wasn’t it? You couldn’t see any one clearly enough to be sure. Was it that you heard some one talking and thought it was me?”

  “Your voice is easily recognized,” Bobby admitted.

  “I suppose so,” she said. She seemed deep in thought. She had put down her cigarette and allowed it to go out. She leaned forward, frowning, intent. She said: “If it is easily recognized, it is easily imitated. Have you thought of that?”

  “Why should any one imitate it?” he asked doubtfully, for this did not seem to him a probable explanation.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know why a good many things happened that have happened. Especially that night when Mr Weston died. But I know some one who could imitate me, imitate me marvellously.”

  “Miss Olga Severn?” Bobby asked.

  “You know about her?” Thomasine asked, and not as if best pleased. “You know a lot already, don’t you? Well, Olga Severn gave imitations at a works welfare concert. Very clever. One of me. Behind a screen. Mr Weston giving me a letter to take down—a letter to her it was supposed to be—about welfare. And me making suggestions. She took us both off exactly. When the screen was knocked over, the workpeople could hardly believe it was all her. If she didn’t want you to know it was her, and yet thought you had seen some one, she might have done one of her imitations to put you off.”

  “Yes, I see that,” Bobby said. “A little complicated. Only why should she? I can’t imagine why Miss Olga should murder Mr Weston?”

  “More can I. But it’s not only murder that takes you out at night. Sometimes it’s something quite different.”

  “A love affair?” Bobby suggested. “Yes. Has Miss Olga one?”

  “I don’t know, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you,” Thomasine flashed back. Then she added thoughtfully: “Mr Weston never bothered me. I think he knew better. But if half the tales you he
ar are true, he was a man many women have had reason to think better dead.”

  “Do you think it was a woman, then?” Bobby asked.

  “Gracious, no, and certainly not Olga. The aunt more likely. Only it’s silly to guess at random. I would as soon suspect any one—you or me or—or Hargreaves. He is the most unlikely person I can think of, but I’ve seen him look daggers at Mr Weston, though I can’t imagine him putting one in him.”

  “I don’t think I can either,” Bobby agreed. “Do you know if any will has been found?”

  “No, and Mr Anderson says he is sure there isn’t one. He is going to assume Mr Weston died intestate. There’ll be a lot of formalities to go through, I suppose. It’ll be a long time before it’s all cleared up and the estate is ready for distribution. A year perhaps, he says. He has asked me to stay on till it’s all settled.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I expect so.” She smiled faintly. “Mr Anderson is so afraid of my leaving that he has promised me a rise—ten shillings a week more.”

  “I’m sure you will be worth it,” Bobby said. “I expect he would be rather at sea without your help. I hope,” he added, rising, “that I haven’t taken up too much of your time.”

  “It has saved me time,” she answered quietly. “I was coming this evening to see you.” He looked surprised, and she got up and went across to the table in the window where she had been working. From a drawer she produced box of chocolates. She handed it to Bobby. “It came this morning,” she said. “By post.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, opening it. There were gaps in the top row. “I see you’ve sampled them,” he said.

  “I did not,” she answered. “A puppy did. This puppy.” She opened a small dispatch case that had been standing on the floor. Inside was a little dead dog, pathetic even in these days when death has grown so common. “It died quickly,” she said.

  Bobby looked at it, looked at the chocolates, looked at her. The quiet atmosphere of the room had grown tense again with the presence in it once more of death, of sudden death, man-given death.

  Involuntarily he glanced at that length of the carpet where when last he had been in this room a dead body had lain. There might have been another lying there now, he supposed, if those chocolates had been eaten by her to whom they had been sent. Thomasine saw where his glance had gone and seemed to read his thoughts.

  “Me, too,” she said quietly. “Very nearly. Not quite.”

  “Poison,” Bobby said.

  “First the knife, then poison,” she agreed. “And next?”

  “Who should want to murder you?” Bobby asked. “Why?”

  She did not answer that. She was closing the small dispatch case, hiding from view the little stiff body it contained.

  “Don’t tell Hargreaves, please,” she said. “He would make an awful fuss. Or any of the others. It belonged to Hargreaves, but they all made a fuss of it.”

  “You have good nerves,” Bobby said again, wondering how little she seemed moved by her escape, by her new knowledge that she had an enemy who hated or feared to the pitch of killing. “Have you said anything to any one else?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “For the present it would be wiser to say nothing,” Bobby told her. “I will detail a plain-clothes man to be at hand here in case he is needed.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t want that done,” she protested.

  “I can’t run the risk of a fresh tragedy,” he replied. “You may be glad to have help at hand.”

  “I can look after myself, I don’t want anybody’s help,” she answered, with all her old disdain. “Your policeman or a dozen of him wouldn’t have saved me from those chocolates if I hadn’t felt suspicious.”

  “No, I suppose not,” he admitted. “What made you suspicious?”

  “Well, I couldn’t help wondering what it meant. A box of chocolates to-day is about as common as a box of diamonds. And nothing to show who it came from. Who did it come from? I don’t know how many points that box would take. A good many, anyhow. I was quite sure it didn’t come from Mr Franks. For one thing, I knew he had used all his points already, and besides, he wouldn’t have sent them like that, without a word. The more I wondered the funnier it seemed. I suppose I was expected to eat one or two while I was wondering. Well, I didn’t. I had a good look, and they looked as if something had been done to them. I cut one or two open, and there was a sort of white powder I could see inside. The puppy was in the room, being a nuisance. It was always tugging at your dress or scratching your stockings and making them ladder. I gave it two or three just to see, and it was dead very quickly. I was coming to tell you if you hadn’t come here instead.”

  “I will try to trace the chocolates,” Bobby said. “There is a packer’s number. That may help. I don’t suppose it will, but it may. I must get them analyzed, too. To make sure of the poison. I think it is arsenic. Perhaps we can trace that, though it’s easy stuff to get hold of. I had better take the puppy’s body, too. Hard luck for the little brute. It will be necessary to have proof the death was caused by poison and identify the poison.”

  “Well, don’t tell Hargreaves,” she repeated. “He would make the most awful fuss. So would all of them; they were all perfectly silly about the wretched little animal. They seemed to think I ought to like having my skirt torn and my stockings laddered.”

  “Can you think of arty one who might want to murder you?” Bobby asked.

  “Gracious, no,” she declared. “It’s a mystery to me.”

  “Have you any enemies you know of?”

  “Oh, dozens,” she answered carelessly. “Only when it comes to trying to murder you—well, I think most of them would draw the line there. I’ve been trying to think. It’s so soon after what happened to Mr Weston, you can’t help feeling it’s something to do with it, can you? One thing did strike me. If there’s something I know or saw or heard, who ever it was killed Mr Weston may think would help you if I told you—well, that might be it, mightn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Bobby agreed. “Can you think of anything?”

  “No,” she answered at once. “I’ve tried my hardest, but it’s no good.”

  “Go over everything in your mind, every possible word and incident you can remember,” Bobby said. Grimly enough he added: “Your life may depend on it.”

  “Yes, I know,” she answered, apparently unmoved. “There’s one thing. If you look at the brown-paper wrapper—here, I’ll show you—it’s been used before, and you can see where there’s been an address written on it. It’s been erased, but I’ve been trying to make it out, and it does look as if you could make out something that looks very much like ‘Dan Edwardes, Esq.’ ”

  “Yes, it does,” Bobby agreed. “We can make certain. It won’t be difficult to bring the writing up.”

  “Of course, that doesn’t mean he sent it,” Thomasine said. “I’m sure it couldn’t be him. He didn’t murder Mr Weston, did he? And he has never taken the least notice of me, beyond being civil and saying good morning and so on.”

  “Oh, no,” Bobby agreed. “No. Of course not.”

  “Don’t bother about any plain-clothes policeman,” she added as he prepared to depart. “I can look after myself.”

  “You are a very capable young lady,” Bobby agreed, “but you are also my responsibility. You must let me do what I think best.”

  He went away then, and in the hall found Hargreaves, looking very anxious and troubled, and one of the maid servants, looking even more troubled and anxious, and indeed not far from tears.

  “Mr Hargreaves has lost his little dog,” the maid explained. “We can’t find it anywhere—such a dear little thing.”

  “A little Sealyham,” Hargreaves said. “It knew us all.”

  “The only bit of happiness in the whole house,” the maid declared, and went to pursue her useless search elsewhere.

  Guilty as Bobby felt, he said nothing. A human life might be at stake, and his responsibility was heavy. He
told Hargreaves a plain-clothes constable was coming, but Hargreaves hardly seemed to take it in. Evidently the only thought in his mind was concern for the little lost pup.

  CHAPTER XXII

  FISH SOUP

  BOBBY WAS in no happy mood as he left Weston Lodge Cottage. Twice death had struck in that room he had just quitted, once at a man, once at a woman, though this last time missing its aim to destroy a harmless puppy instead. A pity, he thought, that human hate and malice should have cut short that brief spell of innocent, playful animal existence. Sentimental, he supposed, and he did not usually count himself a sentimentalist. Indeed, he had always felt a touch of contempt for those who, as has been said, are inclined to spell “dog” backwards; and, anyhow, what he had to think of was this new imminent threat now disclosed. Perhaps, he told himself, the unease he felt was no mere sentimental regret for a puppy’s death, but rather foreboding of ill things to come.

  He stopped at the first road call-box he came to and rang up headquarters to give instructions for a plain-clothes man to be sent out to Weston Lodge Cottage at once, with orders to keep his eyes open, and more especially to keep them on Miss Thomasine Rowe. He also gave details of the packer’s number found in the box of chocolates, these to be ’phoned on immediately to the firm concerned, with a request for any possible information that could be supplied.

  “Tell them we want to know everything, down to the colour of the packer’s eyes, if possible,” Bobby said, “and tell whoever you send to Weston Lodge Cottage he is responsible for Miss Rowe’s safety, and if anything happens to her, worse will happen to him.”

  “Though, of course,” he reflected, “the ultimate responsibility is mine and not his at all.”

  Then he rang up Mr Anderson’s office, got permission to post his man at the Lodge—“to watch developments”, he said—and received a promise that Hargreaves would be told to make the necessary arrangements.