It Might Lead Anywhere: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “He comes with me,” said Duke Dell, loudly and firmly. “Come along, Brother Brown, I’m waiting, and time presses.”

  Little Mr. Brown, answering to the call, came trotting out. Together he and his big companion went away, Brown keeping pace, with difficulty, with the big man’s long strides.

  “His master’s voice,” said the fair-haired youth, looking amused.

  “Deplorable,” said Mr. Childs. “Undisciplined and ignorant zeal can be most dangerous. Something must be done.”

  He was plainly a good deal disturbed but he said no more, except for a word of farewell as he mounted the bicycle on which he had arrived and rode off. Bobby was feeling a trifle disturbed himself. The relationship between little Alfred Brown and Duke Dell seemed to him to resemble rather too closely that between the rabbit and the boa-constrictor. Uneasily he watched them till they were out of sight, hidden by the row of tall elms by the churchyard wall.

  “What was that big chap talking about?” the fair-haired boy asked. “I mean all that about a vision or something.”

  “I don’t know,” Bobby answered. “Was his friend really in danger of drowning if you hadn’t got him out in time?”

  “Oh, rather. I told you, didn’t I? He was dead out and lying face down in a foot of water.” He paused and said more to himself than to Bobby: “Washed it all out if he had been.”

  “Washed what out?” Bobby asked and the other looked a little taken aback, as if he had not meant to speak aloud or had not wished what he said to be heard or noticed.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said and repeated: “Nothing.”

  But he spoke with a certain embarrassment or hesitation and Bobby looked at him.

  “I thought you meant something,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

  “I must be getting along,” was all the answer the boy gave as he nodded a farewell and began to walk towards a motor cycle he had left standing against a garden fence near.

  “You might let me have your name and address first,” Bobby said, staying him with a gesture.

  “What for?”

  “Just in case,” Bobby answered. “You never know. There may be more behind.”

  The young man looked more disconcerted than there seemed cause. He stood hesitating, doubtful and frowning.

  “I don’t see why you should say that,” he muttered. “I don’t see what makes you think that.”

  “You never know,” Bobby repeated.

  He had his note-book in his hand, waiting. The young man still hesitated. He said:

  “I don’t see why. I don’t see what you’re getting at. Suppose I refuse?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you won’t; why should you?” Bobby retorted smilingly. “But if people do refuse, we have to exercise our powers as police officers and ask to see their identity cards.”

  “Oh, well,” the other grumbled, nor did he fail to notice that Bobby was already jotting down the number of the motor cycle. “Persistent sort of beggar, aren’t you? Oh, all right. Flight-Lieutenant Kayes, Denis Kayes, Royal Australian Air Force. At present staying at Mrs. Jebb’s. Aspect Cottage in Oldfordham. There’s my card.”

  Bobby thanked him, accepted the card, said he didn’t suppose for one moment that it would be necessary to trouble Mr. Kayes, but still, one never knew, one had to be prepared for everything, even the most unlikely. Flight-Lieutenant Kayes said, somewhat sulkily, that that was all right, and departed on his motor cycle. Bobby went towards his own car, meaning to resume his interrupted tour. By now the village green was deserted, except for two or three staring, curious children. In the door of one of the two or three shops the village boasted, a woman was standing. Bobby noticed that it was also the local post office. He went across to the woman and asked a few questions. She had not much to tell him beyond what he already knew. She did say that Duke Dell had visited the village two or three times before, and had annoyed everyone very much by a general and sweeping denunciation of them and all their ways. For one thing he had spoken very violently about what he had called ‘popish and idolatrous’ practices in the Church, and had been told with equal violence that it had nothing to do with him and he had better mind his own business for the future. Even greater and more serious anger had been roused by his use of the word ‘whore’ which had been taken as a direct imputation on the virtue of the village girls, though Bobby was inclined to guess Duke Dell had used the word more in the old sense of ‘a-whoring after false gods.’ The expression had been bitterly resented.

  “They told him he would get a ducking if he came again,” the woman said, “but he did, and it served him right what happened.”

  “People have no right to take the law into their own hands,” said Bobby severely. “There was no need to listen to him or go near him for that matter. It was you who rang up about Mr. Brown, wasn’t it?”

  The woman looked puzzled.

  “Mr. Brown? No. What about? Who is he?” she asked.

  “Isn’t that the name of the little man who got knocked into the stream there?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh,” she said, enlightened. “I didn’t know. Mr. Goodman was on the phone and I was taking down his order and Betsy Green ran in and said a man had been killed dead and I told Mr. Goodman and he said he would ring up the police. It was you he rang, wasn’t it?”

  Bobby wondered why she hadn’t rung up the police herself. She explained that Mr. Wiggins, the village constable, was out on his beat; and evidently considered that if Mr. Wiggins wasn’t on the spot, only important and influential people like Mr. Goodman could do anything. Besides, he had offered his help and that freed her from all responsibility. Just as well, Bobby reflected, that he had been near at hand. It would have taken an hour or more for help to reach Chipping Up direct from Midwych, and by that time, with tempers roused to the pitch they had been at on his arrival, the trouble might have become really serious.

  Fortunately he had arrived in time and he hoped the whole matter could be regarded as over and done with. He continued on his way, therefore; and, in the absorbing new task of steering Constable Wiggins’s new bathroom past the eagle, economic eye of Mr. Young, he almost forgot the small excitement of the Chipping Up riot or near riot.

  But it was recalled to his mind next morning when a paragraph in the Midwych Courier, in the stop-press column, announced briefly that a man named Alfred Brown had been found dead in his home at Oldfordham and that foul play was suspected.

  CHAPTER IV

  EXERCISE IN DIPLOMACY

  Twice over Bobby read the brief announcement and liked it less each time. He rubbed thoughtfully the end of his nose and across the breakfast table his wife saw the gesture and shook her head sadly. How she had tried to break him of that trick and how ill she had succeeded. Then she began to grow uneasy, there was a tense and eager look about him she did not like at all. She had seen it before. Bobby showed her the paragraph.

  “Notice this, Olive?” he asked with an indifference she liked still less.

  “It’s Oldfordham,” she pointed out. “You’ve no responsibility there, have you?”

  “Oh no,” said Bobby.

  “If Oldfordham wants help, they’ll call in the Yard,” said Olive. “They won’t ask you.”

  “Oh no,” said Bobby.

  “Nothing to do with you at all,” Olive declared. “Is it?”

  “Oh no,” said Bobby.

  “If there’s one thing I do hate more than another,” said Olive passionately, “it’s when people go on saying ‘Oh no’ when all the time they mean ‘Oh yes’.”

  “Well, you see,” Bobby explained meekly, “it was a bit of queer business at Chipping Up and I suppose the Oldfordham force ought to know.”

  “Aren’t there plenty of other people to tell them?” demanded Olive.

  “Oh yes,” said Bobby.

  Olive made a gesture of extreme despair.

  “And now,” she complained as one appearing to High Heaven, “the man says ‘Oh yes’ when he means ‘Oh no.’ What can
you do with people like that?” she asked sadly.

  “Well, you see,” repeated Bobby, and still more meekly, “they are sure to hear I was there because I did chuck about pretty freely ‘in the name of the law’ and all that sort of guff. And they are sure to want to know what I thought of it all—not that I know that myself yet.”

  “What you mean,” said Olive, still severe, “is that you are simply aching and longing to try to find out all about it, and you think if you go there and make eyes at them, perhaps they’ll ask you for help, instead of calling in the Yard.”

  Bobby was just about to say “Oh no” very indignantly when he realized suddenly that that was just exactly and precisely what was in his mind. So he gulped down what was left of his tea, glanced at the clock, remarked that it was time he was off, wondered if it would be any use trying to bluff Olive by saying something about having so much paper work to attend to, he didn’t suppose he would be able to leave his desk all day, and knew very well she would not be deceived for one moment. So he said nothing and was glad he hadn’t when Olive asked him if he had made sure he had enough petrol for the drive to Oldfordham.

  More meekly than ever he replied that he thought so and anyhow he would have to call at headquarters first. It was quite true, though, that there was enough paper work waiting on his desk to keep him busy all morning and not till after lunch was he able to leave for his projected visit to Oldfordham.

  Long years ago Oldfordham had been a place of high importance in days when bridges were scarce and the town’s position on an almost always practicable ford had made it a centre of communication and the site of a yearly market to which people came from far and near.

  Shrunken though was the pleasant little town, it was still a borough with a charter granted by one of the early Plantagenet kings. On its roll of citizens great names of the past were inscribed and here great events in the history of the land had taken place. The Church of St. Barnabas could have rivalled some cathedrals in size if not in beauty. The mayor’s chain of office dated from Saxon times and could probably have been sold for enough to give the town the new water supply it badly needed, though of course no such act of vandalism had ever even occurred to anyone. Up to the time of the Reform Bill it had returned two members to Parliament and the loss of this privilege was still spoken of somewhat bitterly in local circles. In addition it could also boast of the smallest independent police force in the country—ten all told, including the chief constable, Mr. Spencer, whom Bobby was now upon his way to visit.

  Mr. Spencer was a middle-aged, grey-haired man who believed in the quiet life and practised it to the best of his ability. Up to the present, he had found little to disturb it in the calm routine of Oldfordham days when even the war seemed far away—except when news arrived of some fresh local casualty or when on Saturday afternoons workers from nearby factories flooded the little town. At first Bobby found himself received with suspicion, even hostility. Some iconoclast, some reckless, would-be breaker of even the most treasured links with the past had once suggested that it might be a good idea to merge the gallant Oldfordham ten with the Wychshire county force. Naturally this had aroused a storm of indignation before which the rash proposer should have fled the district, though somehow he had managed to survive and even to stay on. Just at first, therefore, Mr. Spencer was inclined to suspect that Bobby came with dark designs of using the Brown case as a lever for securing control. Bobby had some difficulty in dispelling this fear and soon saw the situation would have to be handled carefully. He began by explaining that he had thought it better, as an eye-witness of the odd little fracas at Chipping Up, to come to see Mr. Spencer rather than wait for Mr. Spencer to send for him. This at once relieved the situation. A deputy chief constable expecting to be sent for and hurrying to anticipate the summons, presented a picture very different from that of a deputy chief constable trying totalitarian tactics on a neighbour. Before long Mr. Spencer’s long, thin, melancholy face was assuming an even more melancholy air as its owner admitted that he felt out of his depth. He had been chief constable of Oldfordham ever since his discharge from the army a few years after the first German war, but never before had he had to deal with any very serious crime. The worst offence known to Oldfordham until now had been an occasional larceny, a theft of washing from a cottager’s back garden or something of the sort. Possibly, too, a little rowdiness on a Saturday night. He began to explain what had already been done. Bobby listened and approved. Unimaginative routine in fact, but Bobby didn’t say so. Besides, unimaginative routine is necessary foundation. In his turn he told in full the tale of his experience at Chipping Up, mentioning but not emphasizing the two or three little points that had struck him as just a trifle odd. It was for Mr. Spencer to follow them up or not as he thought fit. Presently, in response to an innocent question or two that Bobby dropped in casually, there came the suggestion that possibly the Wychshire deputy chief might like to visit the scene of the crime. Bobby said it was indeed kind of Mr. Spencer but he feared he hardly had the time to spare. Besides, Mr. Spencer had evidently done all that so far was possible. Having said this, Bobby sat back and waited, in deadly fear lest Mr. Spencer should acquiesce. Fortunately, instead of acquiescence, there came reproachful protest. Of course, Mr. Spencer understood that the deputy chief of the Wychshire county police was enormously busy, but couldn’t he spare just a few minutes? Mr. Spencer would be very grateful for any suggestions or advice Bobby could give from his greater experience. Bobby deprecated any such idea. Mr. Spencer was doing everything possible. That was evident. Certainly every member of every police force was bound to do his best to help every other member of every other police force. All had the duty of mutual aid. If Mr. Spencer really thought Bobby could be of any assistance, Bobby would, of course, willingly postpone his own pressing, but admittedly less grave, business and see if he could be of even the slightest assistance to him.

  Friendly relations were now established and both men felt very pleased with themselves: Bobby, because, as Olive later on remarked with regrettable vulgarity, he had managed to poke his nose in; Mr. Spencer, because he was beginning to think that he might be able to avoid the odious necessity of calling in Scotland Yard who would come, if they did come, with overriding authority and a bill in prospect likely pretty nearly to double the Oldfordham police rate. And what would Oldfordham say then? Perhaps that it wanted a new chief constable?

  By this time indeed Mr. Spencer was beginning to congratulate himself on the skill and cunning with which he had inveigled the deputy chief into offering assistance without there having been made any such formal request as would have involved promise of payment, not even of expenses. He dropped a hint about finger-prints. He admitted that just possibly in fingerprint technique Oldfordham might be a trifle behind Yard or Wakefield standards. In that one respect, perhaps not fully up-to-date, as was, no doubt, the Wychshire county force. In photography and in preparing plans and so on and so forth, Oldfordham, in Mr. Spencer’s opinion, could hold its own. He himself had been training as an architect before joining the army in 1917, and one of his men was an enthusiastic amateur photographer, intending, indeed, to set up as a professional when peace came and he could retire from the force. But finger-prints were different; there, perhaps, Oldfordham was a trifle behind. Bobby at once offered to ring up his headquarters and ask his own specialist to come along. Mr. Spencer accepted with gratitude, and, the ice now thoroughly broken, Bobby felt in a position to ask a few more direct questions.

  “Was Brown a native here?” he asked. “Anything known about him?”

  Mr. Spencer looked at Bobby moodily and gave an answer that can only be described as succinct.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?” repeated Bobby surprised. “Surely … something?”

  “Nothing at all,” repeated Mr. Spencer firmly. “I thought I knew every living soul in the town. But not Brown. He came here several years ago. He bought a cottage in Market Row, near St. Barnabas. He
has lived there ever since. Not one of my men knew anything about him. He just lived there. Every week he went to Midwych, where he did most of his shopping. He did his own cleaning, his own housework. Even his neighbours hardly knew him by sight. They say he was so quiet, so unobtrusive you never noticed him. One of them told me Brown could walk down an empty street in broad day without anyone seeing him. An exaggeration no doubt. But it gives you an idea. Until recently, until a few weeks ago.”

  Mr. Spencer paused dramatically. Bobby said “Yes?” Mr. Spencer continued:

  “He got religion.”

  “Oh,” said Bobby, puzzled.

  “St. Barnabas is a high church,” Mr. Spencer went on. “Very high it always was. The present vicar, Mr. Childs, is even more ritualistic. Some of the practices he has introduced have been resented. Complaints have been made to the bishop. In general Mr. Childs has the support of his congregation. Some people may have left, but more have been attracted. I don’t go myself but the church services are crowded, and the bishop has said publicly that he only wishes he had some more clergy like Mr. Childs. But then Brown came out of the sort of anonymous life he had been leading, took to attending the services and began to protest publicly against what he called popish practices. Mr. Childs consulted me. He was very upset, very distressed. It was hardly brawling in church, he thought, because Brown always walked out as soon as he had made what he called his protest. In any case, Mr. Childs seemed very unwilling to take any action. He didn’t like the idea of forbidding one of his parishioners to attend church. Yet Brown was causing a great deal of unrest, interfering with the service of worship. In fact, creating an intolerable situation. He was even beginning to attract a following.”

  “I can understand that,” Bobby said. “Many people are indifferent to religion and yet ready to get quite excited about any cry of popery.”