“You’ve got the car number?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, yes, sir,” the man answered, and, becoming less official, went on: “I got that down O.K. and was asking for her licence, when all of a sudden like she gave me a shove over, which a lady didn’t ought, and there was me flat in the ditch and her doing a speed act.”
“I suppose it wasn’t any one you knew, was it?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, yes, sir,” came the unexpected answer. “Quite well, sir. Miss Bell it was, what serves in the saloon bar at the Wych and Wych Arms in town.”
Bobby went back to the house, feeling more uncomfortable even than before, a vivid memory in his mind of that glass of port, which, owing to its resemblance to red ink, had so fortunately remained untasted. By ’phone he set in motion a county-wide search for Bessie’s car. There was, he hoped, every chance that it would soon be reported. A car is noticeable in these days of deserted roads. It may even be stopped on general principles to make sure the driver has a right to the use of the petrol he is consuming. Nor was this hope deceived; for presently the ’phone rang and there came through a message to say that a car bearing the required number was standing deserted in the road at a spot about twenty-five miles distant—so Bessie had evidently driven at speed—and described as only a few hundred yards from Milton Pagney railway station and directly outside the exclusive and expensive nursing-home known as Pagney Manor.
“She would get there just in time to catch the London train,” Bobby said. “It’s a slow train. She could leave it anywhere it stops. Jump for that matter at the Singlewhurt curve before the tunnel. They slow up there to twenty miles or less. I suppose she left her car at a distance so as to attract less attention.”
“There’s the nursing-home, too. She may know some one working there,” Olive said. Then she said: “I don’t believe it was her.”
Bobby said nothing, but looked gloomy. That untasted glass of port was still in his mind. Presently he said:—
“You had better come, too. I’m not leaving you alone with God knows who prowling round.”
Olive had strong nerves. She had proved it in early days before her marriage. She had had need of them then, she had had need of them again in recent months, as indeed had had every other British woman when came the Germans, exultant and joyous and busy, because as yet Britain the Unready had such small power to reply. All the same she was glad of Bobby’s suggestion. The friendly, familiar kitchen, her daily workshop, had taken on a strange and sinister air; no longer did it seem a centre wherefrom issued the stuff of life, but instead was dark and heavy with the shadow of treacherous, lurking death.
Bobby issued a few more directions over the ’phone and then they started out in his small two-seater. The moon was not yet up and the darkness had grown intense, so that he had to drive with caution. It was more than an hour before he reached the Milton Pagney station. But there he found no trace of Bessie. None of the railwaymen had seen anything of any one answering her description, nor was her striking personality one to be easily overlooked or forgotten. It seemed clear she had joined no train at Milton Pagney.
So Bobby decided as a forlorn hope to inquire at the Pagney Manor nursing-home.
“Not much chance of any luck,” he remarked. “If she had meant to hide there, she would hardly have left her car right outside. Making it a bit too easy. Still, we’ll ask.”
He left their own car by the roadside near Bessie’s, for the heavy gates admitting to the drive, though not locked, were both closed and cumbersome, and it seemed less trouble to walk the short distance to the house rather than to open them. There was a short delay before Bobby’s knock and ring were answered, and then it was a nurse who opened the door, for by now it was late and the household staff had gone off duty. She did not look best pleased at being disturbed at such an hour and looked even less so when she knew their errand was simply to inquire for a Miss Bessie Bell, of whom she had never heard. In fact, Bobby had to display his official card to check a distinct tendency to bring the interview to a close by a firmly shut door. In any case the nurse was certain there was no one of that name among the patients or belonging to either the nursing or domestic staff. But she hesitated when Bobby briefly described Bessie.
“Mrs Abel’s like that,” she admitted reluctantly, “and Mr Abel calls her Bessie.”
In fact it was soon apparent that Mrs Abel and Bessie Bell were one and the same and that Mrs Abel—or Bessie Bell—had arrived at the nursing-home only shortly before and was still there.
“But you can’t possibly see her,” the nurse insisted. “The doctor sent for her because poor Mr Abel isn’t likely to live much longer. She is with him now. It may be all over any hour almost, or he may take a turn for the better. It all depends.”
It was a case of infantile paralysis, the nurse explained. A bad case. Now complications had set in. There was small hope of recovery, though the end might be postponed for a time. Bobby asked if he might see the doctor in charge. Not too willingly the doctor appeared, complaining this was no time for police inquiries. Bobby was obliged to produce again his official card, at which the doctor sniffed contemptuously. This wasn’t Germany, he pointed out, Bobby wasn’t Gestapo, Mrs Abel was at the death-bed of her husband. She was an admirable woman for whom he had the greatest respect. He had good reason to believe that only Mrs Abel’s own earnings had provided the necessary fees to pay for the sick man’s treatment during recent years. The home had done what it could to make it as easy for her as possible, but all the same expenses were necessarily high, and Mrs Abel always wanted the best. Nor had she ever once pleaded poverty or asked for any special consideration.
“Wants to do it all herself,” the doctor said. “A proud woman. Proud as hell. In my job you see the worst side often enough, but you see the best as well sometimes, and you see it in Mrs Abel. You ought to watch those two look at each other when she goes into the room on her weekly visit. You may be all the police in the country, but I’m not going to have her worried just now.”
The doctor grew quite flushed and excited. He said he must protect his patients. Bobby said he was very sorry but unless Mr Abel was actually dying he must insist on a personal interview. It was essential he should know if Mrs Abel and Miss Bessie Bell were one and the same. If necessary, he would wait all night. In that case, he would have to send to his headquarters for help, which would mean stationing constables on guard both front and back of the building. This made the doctor more angry than ever, but Bobby made it clear he intended to do what he said. The prospect of having the place picketed by police patrols did not appeal, as Bobby had known it would not. The doctor showed signs of hesitation, and Bobby repeated it was necessary he should see Mrs Abel sooner or later and he thought himself it had better be sooner. Finally the doctor, though still indignant, gave way, and went off to ask Bessie if she would leave her husband for a few minutes. When he had gone Bobby looked somewhat ruefully at Olive.
“Thinks I’m a brute,” he said. “I suppose I am. Murder’s a brutal business.”
“I expect it’s true, what he’s been saying,” Olive said.
“So do I,” Bobby agreed. “But I must be sure. I can take no one’s word unconfirmed.”
Olive did not reply. She was thinking of her pleasant little kitchen and of those few grains of whitish powder spilt near the egg she had been preparing, and of how now it seemed to her her kitchen would never again seem quite the same.
The door opened and Bessie stood there, no longer fierce and defiant in her lusty strength, no longer self-confident and proud. Humbly she said:—
“Now you’ve found me, can’t you wait to take me till John is dead?”
CHAPTER XXXI
FAITH
BOBBY LONG remembered their slow drive home that night, the heavy darkness brooding all around like a thing tangible and felt. His mind was uneasy, his sense of duty troubled, his duty that for him came before all else. It added to his unease that he knew well how much his decision to act as he had
done had been influenced by the mere fact of Olive’s presence. Not that she had uttered a word, made the least sign. She had taken care not even to look at him. All the same, all the time he had known what she was thinking, willing, wishing, hoping. Like tangible things, those thoughts of hers, those emotions, willings, hopes, had beaten upon his mind, bending it as it were, bending it by some strange force of sympathy and understanding to ultimate consent. Grimly Bobby asked himself what he would have thought and said if he had heard that one of his subordinates allowed himself to be accompanied by his wife on an official errand, had moreover endured her mute influence on his conduct. Would he have accepted the excuse of fear for her life and safety? He didn’t know. Olive’s voice broke suddenly upon his thoughts.
“You know very well,” she was saying quietly, and more as if she were speaking to herself than to him, “you wouldn’t have done anything else, even if I hadn’t been there.”
Bobby was so startled that as nearly as possible he jerked the wheel over to send them into the ditch by the side of the road. So all the time she had known exactly what was in his mind. How? he wondered. But, then, she often did. He said moodily:—
“How am I to tell it wasn’t all a put-up job? That doctor eats out of her hand. How do I know Abel wasn’t simply putting on an act? How do I know any of it’s true?”
“It’s all true,” Olive said. “I know it is.”
But Bobby knew that wasn’t so. She didn’t know. It was faith she had, not knowledge. He wanted knowledge. The sort of knowledge that you can put down on paper and tie up with red tape in a neat bundle. Official knowledge. Facts. Hard, solid, sensible facts, quite unaffected by such considerations as long years of devotion to a sick man, of toil and self-denial to give him comfort, of presence at, or absence from, a death-bed.
“She says she came to our house to-night to tell me all about it, because that’s what you advised her to do,” Bobby went on. “Well, perhaps. She says she saw some one in the kitchen but it wasn’t you, though she doesn’t know who it was, so she thought you had a visitor and that made her change her mind and go off again—pushing my constable into the ditch on the way. Well, perhaps. Or perhaps it was for another reason she came and she herself was the woman in the kitchen. I always knew there must be something between her and Martin Wynne, but if it’s true she married him before she married this Abel person, then it may be true, too, that she thought I had followed her to arrest her for bigamy and nothing to do with Weston’s murder. But if it’s like that, why is there no trace of any such marriage anywhere?”
“You must look again,” Olive said. “Look where she said.”
Bobby went on unheedingly:—
“If Weston had got hold of any such story, possibly he was using it to put pressure on them both. Provides strong motive for getting rid of him. If Bessie were charged with bigamy, that would put an end to her power to go on paying the nursing-home fees and Abel would have had to go. Public assistance.” Bobby paused and looked at Olive: “Didn’t you tell me once,” he said, “that if a woman found the man she loved weak, or in trouble—or ill—then he became her child, and for her child a woman would do anything, dare anything? Right or wrong no longer counted.”
“If I did, I wish I hadn’t,” Olive said.
“Martin Wynne as well,” Bobby continued. “If he’s in love with the little Olga Severn girl, and there was a previous marriage with Bessie, and Weston knew—well, there you are again. Weston has to disappear or Martin’s chance with Olga goes.”
Olive said abruptly:—
“All that doesn’t bring in the envelope you found—the one marked about some one called Agnes and with the bank-notes inside.”
“May turn out to be just a side issue,” Bobby said. “You can’t tell. Not in the picture at all, perhaps.”
Olive did not reply, and the rest of the journey was completed in silence. On their arrival they found the constable of the “push-over” incident waiting at the garden gate.
“’Phone bell’s ringing, sir,” he explained. “I came back this way and I ¡heard it. I knew as you were out chasing after that there hussy, so I thought I would wait in case of being wanted when you got back. There it goes again,” he added, “every quarter hour or so it goes regular like.”
Bobby told him to wait, and went in to find out what was the cause of this persistent ringing. More trouble, he told himself uneasily. He picked up the receiver and heard the voice of Hargreaves, the butler at Weston Lodge Cottage. Hargreaves said that the constable on duty there that night had been taken ill with pains in the stomach and was now unconscious. The doctor had been rung up and prescribed treatment which had been ineffective. He had been rung up again and had promised, very unwillingly, to turn out. He had not, however, yet arrived. Before losing consciousness the sick man had asked that Inspector Owen should be informed, and accordingly Hargreaves had been ringing up at regular intervals, but without a reply till now.
“I’ve been out on duty,” Bobby said briefly. “I’ve only just got back. Have you rung up county police headquarters in Midwych?”
It had not occurred to Hargreaves to do that. The constable had only asked for Inspector Owen to be told. He had said nothing about headquarters.
“When was he taken ill?” Bobby asked, and got the more or less expected answer that it was an hour or two after supper.
“What did he have for supper?” Bobby inquired next, and again got a not unexpected reply. The supper had consisted of bread and cheese and cocoa.
Easy enough, Bobby reflected, given the opportunity, to slip a doctored chocolate into a cup of cocoa.
Had Bessie, he wondered gloomily, been at Weston Lodge Cottage before coming on to his own home?
An inquiry whether there had been any callers during the evening, or if any strangers had been seen near the house, brought the reply that Miss Severn, the younger Miss Severn, had been in to see Miss Rowe, with whom she had had a chat. Just before supper-time, Hargreaves agreed, in reply to a further question.
“I’ll come along at once,” Bobby said. “Meanwhile, ring up the doctor again, and if by any chance he hasn’t started yet, tell him it may be urgent, that you suspect arsenic poisoning, and ask him what to do.”
“Arsenic,” repeated Hargreaves, sounding more bewildered than shocked. “What arsenic?”
Bobby wasted no time trying to explain. He told Hargreaves to try again to get in touch with the doctor. On his own account Bobby gave a few elementary first-aid suggestions—an emetic, the administration of magnesia—and added:—
“Send one of the maids to see if Miss Rowe is in her room.”
This demand completed Hargreaves’s disarray, so much so that Bobby half expected to hear that Thomasine had been given the magnesia and a visit made to the sick constable to see if he were still in bed. However, presently some one did come to the ’phone—one of the maid-servants apparently—to say that knocking at Miss Rowe’s door got no answer.
“Break down the door, then, if she doesn’t reply,” Bobby ordered. “Lose no time. She may have had cocoa for supper, too.”
“She always has,” came the startled reply.
Bobby repeated that he would get to Weston Lodge Cottage as soon as possible. Olive had been listening to all this, and from Bobby’s questions and brief remarks had guessed what was happening. When Bobby now hung up the receiver, she said:—
“Bessie can have had nothing to do with all that.”
“Why not?” Bobby asked. “She had a car. It’s only a few miles.”
“Suppose Miss Rowe is not in her room?” Olive asked.
“May mean anything,” Bobby answered. “She may have had some message calling her away. She may have gone out for her own reasons. She may merely be sound asleep. Or,” he added sombrely, “the cocoa she had for supper may have been a stronger brew.”
“I don’t understand what it all means,” Olive said, and she shivered slightly.
“It may mean anything,” Bo
bby said again. “Perhaps that the waters are getting deeper, but all the same that shore is nearer. Only I’ve a feeling that when we do reach shore, it may be to find a dead man or woman lying there.”
“Who?” asked Olive, though barely above her breath, but Bobby made no answer, merely said that he must hurry away.
He stood for a moment, asking himself if there was anything he could have done that might have averted the coming tragedy of which he felt with apprehension the near approach. He could not think so. Not within the limits of his recognized authority and duty. In England one may not act upon suspicion, mere suspicion, nor even upon certainty unless in support thereof can be marshalled those plain facts which alone allow action infringing upon private right. Better the skies should fall than that an innocent person should be—inconvenienced. An improvement on the old Roman maxim no doubt. Or was it?
Leaving that question unanswered, he told Olive to go and get some rest. The still-waiting constable he installed in the kitchen, telling him to wait there till either Bobby returned or till he was called on the ’phone. Help might be needed, Bobby told him, and did not, even in his own mind, admit that he did not mean to leave Olive without protection. He persuaded himself it was as useful and sensible to leave the man there, in reserve, so to say, as to take him with him. Nor had the constable any objection to spending duty time, not trudging his beat, but instead in a warm, comfortable kitchen and with full permission to smoke or to make himself a cup of tea if he liked.
CHAPTER XXXII
LOST TORCH
AS HE drove on his way through the long, dark night, Bobby’s uneasiness transferred itself from Olive, now in safety, he hoped, to Nicholls, the constable he had established at Weston Lodge Cottage and now in danger, as it seemed, of his life. Why, Bobby asked himself, had this attempt on the man’s life been made? Whose interests could it serve? The attack on himself—and incidentally on Olive—he could understand. His death or even his prolonged illness would have delayed and confused the whole inquiry, very likely have rendered it finally ineffective. But the death or the incapacitating of a man like Nicholls would make little difference to the course of events.
Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 21