Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “I don’t know,” Bobby said. “I think I know who murdered Weston and why, or why should ten fifty-pound notes have been left lying untouched? But to-night’s a nightmare I see no sense or reason in as yet. Unless it’s murderer’s panic,” he added sombrely, “and that is always bad.”

  “What murderer?” Mr Edwardes asked. “I don’t know how my walking-stick got here. Does that make you think of me again? At any rate, I suppose it clears Martin, doesn’t it?”

  “I thought what’s going on to-night,” Bobby said slowly, “cleared Martin Wynne and you, and John Wilkie, too. But I’m not sure now. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve been on the wrong track all the time.” He paused, frowning and uneasy. He said: “I’m going to Miss Severn’s place—Mayfield. Down the road. Will you come? I might need help.”

  “A polite way of saying you want to keep me ‘under observation’?” asked Edwardes, with that faint touch of irony in his voice Bobby had heard before. “Certainly I’ll come. But why Mayfield? Why Miss Severn?”

  “Thomasine Rowe isn’t here,” Bobby explained. “I want to know where she is—and why,” he added under his breath.

  “Oh, Miss Rowe,” Edwardes echoed. “Martin can’t have come here for her? Nothing between them. It’s Olga Severn he is interested in.”

  “Or Bessie Bell?” Bobby said, wondering if Edwardes knew anything.

  He did not seem to.

  “The Wych and Wych Arms barmaid?” he asked. “Why . . . what about her? . . . this isn’t a love story.”

  “I’ve thought sometimes,” Bobby retorted, “that that’s just what it is—that it is even more a love story than a murder tale. But I’m not sure yet where love and murder cross.”

  He went to find Hargreaves and borrow a torch. Hargreaves managed to find him one, though with a battery nearly exhausted. It was the best he could do, Hargreaves said, and he thought it would last. By its light occasionally switched on Bobby and Mr Edwardes hurried together down the long, dark avenue and the road beyond till they reached the gate admitting to the Mayfield garden. Through it they passed and came to the front door. Bobby knocked. He found the bell and rang. They heard its shrill summons echo through the house. He knocked again and the sound was loud in the quiet, still night.

  No answer came and Mr Edwardes said:—

  “I think there can be no one there.”

  “We’ll try the back,” Bobby said.

  They groped their way round the side of the house through the quiet garden where the long shadows of the night crept away before the flickering light of their torch. The last glimmer that it gave before the battery expired showed them the back door and showed them that it hung open.

  “I wonder how long that’s been like that,” Bobby said. Impatiently he put the useless torch back in his pocket. “No luck with torches to-night,” he said, hesitating on the threshold.

  “Why are you afraid?” Mr Edwardes asked.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  INTERRUPTED MEAL

  BOBBY DID not answer. Indeed, it was a question he had but half heard, nor had he been aware of the hesitation, of the tremor in his voice that had told how much he feared what that dark and silent house, that open door swinging slowly to and fro in the still night air, might presently reveal.

  He entered and Mr Edwardes with him. He told Mr Edwardes to close the door so that they might light up safely.

  “What is it here?” he asked. “Electricity? Gas? What?”

  “Oil lamps,” Edwardes replied. “Miss Severn wouldn’t pay to connect up with the company’s main cable.”

  Bobby had some matches in his pocket. He struck one, and by its small light saw they were in a bare passage. On one side was a door. He opened it. Within was the kitchen. He struck another match and saw the table was laid for a meal. There was a lamp on the table. He lighted it. Now he could see that places had been laid for two. But only one plate and cup had been used. Apparently the meal had been interrupted, for there was uneaten food on the plate, unfinished drink in the cup. The chair opposite was standing at a little distance and sideways, as if it had been pushed hurriedly and violently to one side. The picture in Bobby’s mind was of some one who in the middle of a meal had risen and gone in haste. Why? There was a jug on the table, half full. Bobby picked it up.

  “Cocoa,” he said, and his voice was troubled.

  “Why not?” Mr Edwardes asked. “A pedestrian drink, no doubt, but grateful and comforting.”

  Bobby was smelling, tasting—this last cautiously. He could find nothing suspicious. Edwardes, puzzled and curious, said:—

  “Is cocoa something new and strange to you, inspector? A fresh experience in the dailiness of daily life?”

  “My man at Weston Lodge Cottage had cocoa for supper, too, tonight,” Bobby answered.

  Mr Edwardes looked startled and drew away a little from the table, as though suddenly it gave him fear. Then he said:—

  “I’ve trodden on something squashy.”

  Bobby took the lamp and looked. He saw it was a chocolate on which the other had put his foot. Bobby asked him to sit down, and Mr Edwardes watched with grave attention while Bobby scraped with care from shoe and floor every atom and remnant of the chocolate, preserving them with equal care in a small box. Then, together with Edwardes, who had asked no questions but seemed to understand, he searched the rest of the house and found nothing of interest. There was no sign of Florence Severn, nothing to show where she had gone or why. The bed was untouched, though preparations for the night had apparently been begun, since between the sheets was a newly heated hot-water bottle. But nothing to suggest why the house had been left thus, deserted, a meal on the table, the door open. But then, as they were descending the stairs again, it occurred to Bobby to look in the letter-box. Within was a postcard. It was from Olga, and was to the effect that she might be kept late at work, but would try to be at Mayfield as soon as possible. Slowly Bobby read it aloud.

  “Came while Miss Severn was out, I suppose,” he said, “and she never thought to look—if she came back, that is. Perhaps she never did.”

  “She must have,” Mr Edwardes pointed out. “She had supper.”

  “Probably,” Bobby agreed, “but nothing to show who made that meal or ate it. It might be some one else. Did Olga come as she said she would?” he mused. Very carefully he put the card away. ‘‘May carry dabs,” he said. “Neither of them, neither Miss Olga nor her aunt, would give me their dabs. There should be some on the crockery in the kitchen. They would help.”

  “I think I heard some one come in,” Mr Edwardes said.

  Bobby stiffened to attention. The utter silence in that deserted house seemed less intense now. No recognizable sound, indeed, hardly a sound at all, rather a sensation, as though a sound had been, had passed, had left the air a little troubled. Bobby put down the lamp so that its light should not show, convey no warning, and softly as he could tread moved on tip-toe down the hall towards the back, whence that faint tremor in the air had seemed to come. But before he had gone half-way he heard a door open and shut, the back door, he knew instinctively. Then he ran, leaving caution, reached the back door, tore it open, ran forward a few yards, stood listening intently for some hint by sound or sight that he might follow.

  Useless. Only silence and the black night, and in that darkness what hope in pursuit? Though he made the effort, he had soon to abandon it, helpless in that dense obscurity. Not even so much as a sound of retreating footsteps could he catch. The fugitive had understood that night, not speed, was his—or her—best friend, and so had put faith not in haste, but in silence.

  Bobby groped his way back to the house. Mr Edwardes was waiting at the door. He said:—

  “I didn’t bring the lamp. I suppose there’s still the black-out to remember.” Then he said: “You know all this is getting on my nerves. Who was it?”

  Bobby said crossly that he didn’t know. How could he? He added that in his opinion blind man’s buff was a much over-rated a
musement. He returned for the lighted lamp, and, defying the black-out regulations, went out again. He found nothing, and, as the weather had been dry, and outside the back door the path was paved, he doubted if even in broad day there would have been any footprints to help. He went back into the house and into the kitchen, and looked at the crockery still on the kitchen table. Nothing to show anything had been touched, but now on a chair he noticed a man’s hat.

  “Was that there before?” he asked Edwardes, who had followed him into the room.

  “I don’t think so,” Edwardes said, looking at it. “I don’t know.”

  Bobby picked it up. It was a light-coloured felt of the type worn by many men at present. There was nothing to give any clue to ownership.

  “A small size,” Bobby said. “Six and five-eighths. Mr Wilkie has a small head, I think. About his size, isn’t it? Anyhow, it’s a man’s—”

  “Did you think it might have been a woman we heard?” Edwardes asked.

  “Why not?” Bobby asked. “It’s late. Past bed-time. And two women out somewhere—we don’t know where or why. Thomasine Rowe and the elder Miss Severn. And Olga Severn, for that matter, who sent a card to say she would be here, but no sign of her. Has she been, I wonder? And if she has, where is she?”

  In a low voice Mr Edwardes said:—

  “Don’t look round, but there is some one peeping in at the window, and I think it is Ronald Franks.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  GAOLER NIGHT

  “OH, WELL,” Bobby said, careful not to turn his head in the direction of the window, “just wait here a moment, will you? and I’ll show you.”

  He hoped this vague, ambiguous remark would both arouse Franks’s curiosity, if he were really listening at the window, and at the same time put him off his guard.

  He went out of the room, closed the door behind him, all with a show of indifference, and then leaped into sudden energy as he raced down the passage, and round the side of the house to the kitchen window.

  Useless again. No one was there, and he thought that very likely it was only his imagination that made him fancy he heard a faint ironic laugh somewhere out there where the darkness lay, covering all the land. He went a few yards in one direction and then in another. He heard no sound, he could see nothing, nothing save the vast blackness around. To a fugitive this night was like the cloak of invisibility old tales tell of, wherein those who possessed it could wrap themselves, and so pass unseen, safe from all pursuit. He went back to the house and found Mr Edwardes in the doorway, this time holding up the lighted lamp.

  “Black-out or none,” he said, “all this is a bit too much.”

  “A lamp’s no help,” Bobby said. “You can’t run carrying a lamp. Not like a torch. A lamp only means you are not seeing, but seen.”

  Edwardes took the lamp back into the kitchen and then returned to where Bobby still stood in the doorway, staring out into the night. In the distance they heard the rumble of a passing train. A searchlight shot across the sky, darted to and fro, and vanished. The distant sound of the passing train, the dancing light above, both seemed to intensify the dark and sombre silence around.

  “No good standing here,” Bobby said. “No help, no hindrance to what is happening out there,” and he nodded towards the depths of the night, but made no effort to move, oppressed as he was by a dreadful helplessness.

  “No,” agreed Mr Edwardes, “no,” but he, too, stayed, staring and listening, and they both watched the searchlight as it came again and went dancing up and down the heavy skies, as though waiting for the stars to come out and play.

  Abruptly and not far away, more or less from the direction where an orchard lay at the end of the Mayfield garden, they heard a shrill young voice that cried: and, they thought, with terror:—

  “Aunt Flo., Aunt Flo., where are you?”

  ‘‘That’s Olga Severn,” Bobby said. “Or is it?” Then he shouted: “I am coming. Wait for me.”

  Therewith he plunged into the darkness, running in the direction whence the voice had seemed to come, shouting again as he went. But almost at once in that baffling darkness he lost his way. He found himself tangled up with raspberry canes and then blocked by a hedge that seemed to run in circles, round and round on every side. He broke through it and ran on and came to another hedge. Through that, too, he forced his way, and came presently to a brick wall, though he knew for certain there had been no brick wall anywhere around Mayfield. Yet there it was as though it had sprouted magically in the night, solid and real, too high to climb, stretching interminably away on either hand, a nightmare wall, since it was where no wall could be. Then he realized what had happened. He had broken through the same hedge twice, once outwards, once back again, having somehow turned right round in the dark, and now here he was back at Mayfield again, brought up short by the wall of the house. He heard footsteps. It was Mr Edwardes. Mr Edwardes said:—

  “Is that you? It is you, isn’t it? I heard you coming back. Did you find her?”

  “How can any one find anything in this darkness?” Bobby asked irritably. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack when you can’t even find the haystack.” Then he said: “She never answered. Why didn’t she answer? She must have heard.”

  “I suppose she didn’t want,” Mr Edwardes said, a reply which did nothing to soothe Bobby’s irritation.

  “I’ll have another try,” he said. “You stay here. Show a spot of light. Never mind the black-out. Put the lamp just inside the open door. It’ll be a guide, and there aren’t any Germans about to-night,” and even as he spoke far off the sirens wailed above the sleeping town of Midwych. “There,” said Bobby, with intense exasperation, “it only needed that.”

  For a moment or two he stood hesitating. But the warning might come to nothing. It often did. One waited for the message of the guns before taking action. If their voices sounded, he would have to drop everything and go where the need would be more urgent. Mass murder must take precedence of a mere private killing.

  “What about the lamp now?” Edwardes said.

  “Better not show it,” Bobby said. “You never know. If the raid develops I shall have to go. If it doesn’t I’ll be back here.”

  With that he plunged again into the darkness, going more cautiously now. He was not sure how far the Mayfield garden extended, or whether the orchard he remembered was part of it or no, nor was he sure whether it lay in the straight line or to one side. There were open fields beyond, he remembered, and he thought there was a small spinney to one side a little further on, between Mayfield and Weston Lodge Cottage, provided, too, he fancied, with an undergrowth of blackberry bushes—difficult going there, he supposed. He came to the hedge that had confused him before. But now he had a better idea of his whereabouts, having proceeded with greater care. Once more he scrambled through, to the even greater detriment of his clothing that to-day is not only clothing, but coupons as well. Not far off he saw a torch flash in and out. He made his way towards it, came to another hedge and, coupon-conscious now, shirked another scramble. He wondered if he dared risk a jump in the dark, take off and landing both concealed. He heard footsteps and the torch shone again. A voice said:—

  “Is that you, Wynne? Is it you?”

  Bobby did not answer. He had had too much experience this night of vanishings and disappearances into that too convenient darkness. By good luck, the questing beam of the torch, though it had failed to find him, had shown him a gap in the hedge through which it seemed easy to pass. Unhappily, the swiftly passing light had not shown a strand or two of barbed wire wherewith an effort to close the gap had been made. It caught his trousers and ripped them more than many coupons could atone for. In anguish of spirit more than of body, though his leg was bleeding from a long red scratch, he commented aloud on such ill luck by the use of one expressive word. At once the beam of the torch settled upon him.

  “Oh, you,” the voice said, half in relief, half in apprehension, and Bobby knew it for that of Jo
hn Wilkie.

  “Why are you here?” Bobby demanded sharply, old suspicions flaring up.

  “I’m looking for Martin Wynne,” Wilkie said. “Have you seen him? He was at Mr Edwardes’s place when I got there, and he said he was going on to Weston Lodge Cottage. But they hadn’t seen him there, so I thought I would try Mayfield and I couldn’t get any answer, and just now I thought I heard some one calling, but I don’t know who.”

  “Why are you looking for him?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, why shouldn’t I?” Wilkie retorted. “He’s up to something, he knows something, if you ask me. I thought I would follow.”

  “Why did you take a Japanese knife from Mr Edwardes’s collection this afternoon?” Bobby asked abruptly.

  “How do you know?” Wilkie asked, surprised. “Who told you? I thought I had better have something.”

  “Why?” Bobby demanded again.

  “Well, some one got killed not so long ago,” Wilkie retorted. “If there’s another I don’t mean it to be me. Martin Wynne took a walking-stick of Edwardes’s—one with a nice heavy handle. I noticed that.”

  “You’re not being frank with me,” Bobby said. “You are keeping things back. I think you’ll have to be held for questioning.”

  “A fat lot of good that’ll do you,” retorted Wilkie sulkily. “I’m not keeping anything back. I don’t know anything to keep back, for that matter. I’m only trying to help. I’m as keen as you are on finding out who did it—killed Mr Weston, I mean. I know people think it was me, and so do you. What sort of chance of getting bookings do you think I’ll have if a story like that gets about? You don’t know how stage people gossip. If it’s any one, it’s Martin Wynne.”

  “Wynne has been attacked to-night, knocked out,” Bobby said, wondering if this were news or something Wilkie had the best of reasons for knowing already.

  “Has he, though?” Wilkie said, and sounded surprised enough. “Who did it? Not me, if that’s what you’re hinting at.” Wilkie lowered his voice. “Are you sure, or was it faked? I mean, how about his having knocked himself out? If you ask me, it was he did in his uncle. There’s something he had got hold of—Mr Weston about Martin, I mean. That’s what he was always scheming for—to get to know something about you so you had to do what he said. Power. That’s what he wanted—to feel he had power and you had to do what he told you. Then it was all right if you did what he said. Something about Martin and the barmaid at the Wych and Wych Arms. Anyhow, that’s my idea. Bessie’s not like most girls—stand up to any man she would and give as good as she got. Or better. I wouldn’t put it past her and Martin to have done that other job and then fixed it to-night for her to lay him out so as to put you off.”