“No, indeed,” declared Mr Lawson fervently, and he had even become a little pale.
“Political parties being what they are,” Bobby went on, “I don’t expect the local Labour people would be awfully sorry if rumours got about involving the other side’s prospective candidate as well as their chief local leader, if the colonel’s that.”
“Oh, he is,” Lawson declared. “And if it turned out that way, they would light bonfires—in a manner of speaking.”
“One head of local police, one member of Joint Standing Committee,” Bobby commented without satisfaction, “and tongues wagging about a possible suspect they both have private connections with.”
“There’s the Communists, too,” Mr Lawson went on. “A nasty lot. Mischief-makers, that’s them. Simply jump at any chance of undermining respect for law and order. They hate us police for keeping an eye on them, and if they can find any excuse for spreading malicious gossip—well, that’s what they’re out for.”
“Need you bother about them?” Bobby asked. “Noisy. That’s all.”
“Noise,” Mr Lawson pointed out severely, “is—well, noise.” With a flash of sudden insight, he translated this into “Publicity. Publicity,” he repeated impressively, and waited to see if Bobby had anything to say to that. Bobby hadn’t. He knew he had been silenced by that modern word of power. A little pleased with himself, Mr Lawson continued: “Then there’s the Standing Committee Chairman. Hand in glove with them, he is, if he isn’t one himself, and would give a lot to get me out. It was him was behind trying to hand us over to the Westshire East and Central lot, lock, stock, and barrel, us that’s been an independent force since there was police in Westshire, and a record second to none.”
“No, indeed,” confirmed Bobby sympathetically.
“I did manage to put a stopper on that,” explained Mr Lawson, with much satisfaction, “and now he’s all out to get rid of me if he can, so he could push it through. Pals with the Home Secretary, he is, too. Birds of a feather, if you ask me. I’ve no politics myself,” he added hastily. “Wouldn’t do, in my position, but I must say I don’t know how any one can stick that lot.”
“The beginning and the end of political thought,” Bobby approved. “We could send you two of our best men,” but already he knew what was coming and already he was casting an apprehensive eye on his paper-laden desk.
But Mr Lawson was prepared, for this had been talked over beforehand, and he knew just what to say.
“That would be fine,” he began, but without enthusiasm, and then he continued: “Only, if you see what I mean—chief inspector and sergeant—well, they wouldn’t carry weight, not with the public, same as a really top-ranking officer would, would they?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Bobby said. “A Yard Chief Inspector.”
“You know and I know,” Mr Lawson interrupted. “But the public don’t. Now, some one like yourself, Mr Owen, a Commander. No one could believe there was any hushing-up going on or the case not being handled properly. No one could talk then, could they?”
“Could you give me a few more details?” Bobby asked.
Mr Lawson proceeded to do so. The spot where Mrs Holcombe, the great lady of the district, had found the dead body was quite near her residence, Castle Manor, in a copse through which ran a path providing a short cut from a ’bus stop on the high road. The time had been somewhere about ten in the evening. It had not been noted exactly. The copse path was one not much used, very seldom indeed in the evening, and at all times chiefly by the inmates of, or those having business with, Castle Manor. No weapon had been found, though the copse had been most carefully searched, nor any other clue. One small detail, Mr Lawson almost apologized for mentioning, was that a tree at the entrance to the copse, some distance from the scene of the murder, showed signs of having been recently climbed. Boy probably, Mr Lawson said, and Bobby nodded agreement and thought this satisfactory proof the copse had in fact been well and truly searched. The motive was not robbery, for the dead man’s watch and his money had not been touched. Unfortunately the village constable, called to the spot at once and unused to murders, had rather lost his head. He had allowed the body to be taken away immediately, and so much indiscriminate and excited running to and fro had taken place that any chance of discovering useful footprints or anything of the sort had been utterly destroyed. All that was certain was that a brutal murder had been committed and that the victim was a stranger in the neighbourhood for whose presence there no reason was at present known.
This said, Mr Lawson suggested that it might be better if, having now given Bobby the bare bones of the case, he didn’t put forward any theories of his own. He had them, of course, but he reminded Bobby of a lecture Bobby had delivered two or three years previously, in which great stress had been laid on the desirability of every investigator approaching his cases with a perfectly free and open mind, untrammelled by preconceived ideas or suggestions, seeking only his own interpretation of the known facts.
“Be sure your lectures will find you out,” Bobby murmured sadly. “Well, I’ll see what the Commissioner says.”
With that, Mr Lawson departed, leaving with Bobby, however, the full dossier of the case and on the whole well satisfied. He felt his battle was already half won, and when Bobby went to talk to the Commissioner, he found that that gentleman already knew all about it.
“The Home Secretary has been on the ’phone himself,” he informed Bobby. “Doesn’t want any opening given for talk. Up to you to decide, Owen. Not,” added the Commissioner thoughtfully, “that there’s much chance of your passing up what looks like a really first-class A.1 puzzle with all sorts of possibilities. Itching to have a go at it all right, if I know you,” and Bobby made it plain that he was deeply offended by these last entirely uncalled for and wholly unfounded remarks, and the Commissioner didn’t care two hoots if he were, because it was quite true—and Bobby knew it was.
CHAPTER II
“HE SAID HE WAS A STRANGER”
NEXT MORNING, sitting in the train that was bearing him westward, watching idly the lovely countryside slipping by, Bobby occupied himself turning over and over again in his mind the story he had heard the day before, and as he did so felt growing ever stronger and stronger within him a strange, illogical conviction that among the names that had been mentioned was that of the murderer.
“Ten to one Lawson thinks so, too,” he muttered to himself, “and that’s really why he was so keen on getting some one else on the job. Didn’t want the responsibility of chasing after V.I.P.’s like Mrs Holcombe or Colonel Yeo-Young, if the trail leads to them. Only why should it? unless Lawson knows more than he told.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the man sitting opposite, the only other occupant of the carriage.
“Not at all,” said Bobby very politely, but only now realizing that he had spoken half aloud; and the other regarded him more doubtfully than ever, in accordance with the general belief that any one who spoke to himself must be either drunk or lunatic.
However, as Bobby showed no sign of growing violent, he returned to his crossword puzzle, and Bobby got out his note-book.
“Mrs Holcombe, wealthy widow, daughter Livia, son Harry,” he wrote, “and is Livia known as Miss Holcombe or does she use her father’s name? Colonel Yeo-Young, no money but local big pot. Next Lawson’s son, Norman—or Norry. Lawson himself, too—mustn’t forget him. A tight little group,” he thought, “with all sorts of social, emotional, business ties, but all most unlikely, and therefore, by all the rules, all open to grave suspicion. Then there’s the grocer, Jones, whom Winterspoon called to see, apparently, and the barmaid at the ‘Black Bull’. Have to include them, as they both talked to him, and so did no one else in the village. But they are more unlikely still, so they are still more open to suspicion.”
He put his note-book away, and soon had to change. He had to change again before reaching the nearest station to Pending Dale, still distant, though, by a good ten miles. The pol
ice car he had asked for was there to meet him, driven by a taciturn constable who gave the impression of strongly disapproving of this intrusion into the Westshire West domain of a stranger from foreign parts. However, he deposited him at the village inn, the ‘Black Bull’, where had been engaged for him one of the three or four rooms the ‘Black Bull’ kept ready either for the passing ‘casual’, or for visitors attracted by the old parish church and its many and ancient monuments, several of the Yeo-Young family.
No attempt had been made to conceal Bobby’s purpose or identity or the errand on which he had come. Useless to try. So he found himself regarded with a kind of wary suspicion, and the first thing he did, after he had been shown his room and been promised new-laid eggs for his tea, was to inquire for the barmaid who had served Winterspoon and who had decided that he had had already as much drink as was good for him.
Fortunately she was on the premises and available. But she seemed to have nothing fresh to say, nor was she too willing to repeat it. Evidently she accepted the tradition that a good barmaid may hear but doesn’t tell, since to do so would be to take a mean advantage of those of her customers whom her ministrations might have helped to make more voluble than usual.
“He came by ’bus, apparently,” Bobby remarked. “One of the busmen recognized his description, but isn’t sure whether it was on an ‘out’ or ‘in’ journey, and can’t be sure either where he got on. He wasn’t carrying a suit-case or anything like that, was he?”
“Not that I noticed,” the barmaid answered. “I don’t think so.”
“You feel sure he had been drinking before he got here?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to let him have any more,” she answered. “Another whisky he asked for. Nothing doing. That was partly why I told him we had no room to spare when he wanted to know if he could have a bed, and, then, he wasn’t the class the boss would want. I told him Mrs Mars might be able to put him up.”
“That’s some one in the village?”
“Yes, she takes in a lodger sometimes, but not regular. He never went there, though. I asked her next time she came in, and she said she hadn’t seen him.”
“Did he ask where she lived?”
“I told him. He said he was a stranger.”
“He seems to have been. Makes it all the more difficult to know what he really came for. You are sure he said nothing else?”
“Not that I remember. I thought it was the drink made him sort of short like. It takes some that way,” she added as an expert. “He did say something about the Longlast factory and was Mrs Holcombe being just as bossy as ever, which she is,” said the barmaid resentfully, “and wants to buy us out and run the house to suit herself, same as everything else.”
“Well, if she offers a good price,” Bobby suggested.
“Not her way,” retorted the barmaid. “Offers what she calls a fair price she fixes her own self, and if you don’t take it, then you most likely have to fight. Been hinting about getting a licence for a new house, and what with her friends she has on the Bench, so she might, too. If she does, she’ll do her best to drive us out of business.”
“She can’t undersell you,” Bobby pointed out. “The brewers wouldn’t let her.”
“There’s ways and means,” said the barmaid gloomily. “She could fix her place up regardless.”
Bobby said it seemed too bad, and learned that Mrs Mars lived in the second row past the Good Grocery Stores, Mr Jones’s establishment. Any one would tell him which house. So as soon as he had had tea and the two really new-laid eggs, fresh from the nest, he had been promised, he went out in search of the Mars residence. A new name in the case, and one that Mr Lawson had not mentioned, presumably because of the denial that Mr Winterspoon had been there. A denial which Bobby supposed could be trusted, since most likely if he had called, some of the neighbours would have noticed him. Even if Mrs Mars had had any motive for hiding the fact, she would not have been likely to deny anything so easily checked.
His way took Bobby past Mr Jones’s shop. It seemed well stocked, and the windows showed an attractive display. Above the ordinary village shop in its range of goods and in the manner in which they were set out, Bobby thought. It stood by itself, with vacant ground on each side, and seemed once to have been a fairly large private residence. Bobby noticed a tall, gaunt, rather formidable-looking woman just entering this residential portion of the building by a side door, and he wondered if it were Mrs Jones.
Following the directions given him, he arrived at the Mars residence. He knocked, and the door was opened by a tall, slim, not only unusually pretty girl, but one displaying also in her dress a sense of style that even a crude, coarse masculine taste could recognize. Pretty girls, even unusually pretty girls, even girls with hair of shining gold and eyes like a summer dawn, are of course to be found in all classes of society, and it was not merely, or even chiefly, this girl’s good looks that held Bobby silent for the moment in a kind of startled surprise. It was rather the high, almost aloof manner in which she held herself, as of one set apart from ordinary people, that was so striking. Plainly, too, she was not unused to the sort of involuntary homage she was now receiving, for she appeared to notice nothing surprising in Bobby’s startled silence.
“Yes?” she said, and the clear, low beauty of her voice was in harmony with her manner and appearance.
Bobby produced his card.
“I think Mrs Mars lives here,” he said. “Could I see her for a moment?”
“She has just gone out,” the girl answered. “Is there anything I can do?” She said this with an unconsciously queenly air of being willing to grant any boon in reason. “My father is here,” she added, “if you would like to see him.”
“What is it, Annie?” came a shout from within, and there shambled into sight a small but powerfully built, rough-looking man in his shirt-sleeves, unshaven and untidy, and bearing neither in face nor form the least resemblance to this tall, queenly girl who carried herself with such quiet assurance and who trod so lightly where this man who seemed to be her father went so heavily, so clumsily.
Bobby found himself irresistibly reminded of Beauty and the Beast, though little chance, he thought, of any transformation of the last-named into a rescuing prince, and then he found himself wondering, too, if somewhere in the background some such prince were waiting. He did not speak, and the girl said in her clear, low, vibrant tones:
“It’s a police officer from London. He wants to see mother.”
“We don’t know nothing—nothing we can tell him,” the man growled, lurching forward. He was not drunk, but he had certainly been drinking. “Never set eyes on the blighter, none of us.” To the girl he said: “Where’s your ma? Gossiping most like.”
She took no notice of this. Bobby said:
“You are Mr Mars?”
“That’s me,” the other answered. He came nearer, peering at Bobby from short-sighted, red-rimmed eyes. “It’s all over the place there’s a cop come from London. Ain’t the cops here good enough for you? Been buzzing about like wasps round a jam-pot, so they have. Nothing we know. Nothing to do with us.” He leaned a little nearer, giving Bobby the full benefit of his beerladen breath. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “Stop long enough, and maybe you’ll have another murder on your hands.”
“Father,” the girl said, not sharply, not angrily, but rather with a certain, calm authority.
“What do you mean by that?” Bobby demanded, and he spoke sharply enough.
Mr Mars turned and shambled away, rather hurriedly and still without speaking. Bobby had the impression that he regretted having said anything. He vanished into the back regions, banging a door behind him as if to emphasize that he had no intention of saying anything more.
“He says things that mean nothing at all,” the girl remarked, but all the same Bobby had a feeling that her aloof and still composure had become just a little troubled.
From those back regions in which Mr Mars had sought shelter
emerged now a youth fully as unkempt and untidy as had been the older man, and if he couldn’t also be described as unshaven, that was probably only because the necessity had not yet become pressing. The resemblance between the two of them was so marked that Bobby at once concluded they were father and son. In which case, of course, this uncouth youth and the tall, serene, and stately girl were brother and sister, incredible as it seemed that two young people so different in every way could really be such close relatives. The boy bestowed a sullen scowl on Bobby, one hardly less hostile on his sister, and said:
“Dad’s gone off tearing mad. What’s the big idea, worrying us? We don’t know nothing. Nothing to do with us if some bloke gets himself knocked on the head, is it?”
“Murder has something to do with every one,” Bobby told him “Murder is like that.”
“Well, we don’t know nothing,” the boy repeated. “Go and talk to Mrs Holcombe; she might know something.”
“You’ve no business to say things like that, Alf,” his sister intervened, still with her air of quiet authority. “You are much too fond of talking.”
“Oh, I am, am I?” grumbled the other. “No one can’t say that of you, Miss Shutmouth.”
“That’ll do, Alf,” the girl said.
“Well, I didn’t mean nothing,” he protested. “I mean not like what you think I meant, only Her Royal Highness Holcombe does know all about every one, don’t she? and lets you know it, too,” and before Bobby could speak again a woman’s voice from behind called:
“If it’s lodgings, we aren’t taking any. It’s what you said yourself, Annie. Haven’t you told him?”
CHAPTER III
“THEM CELLARS”
BOBBY TURNED quickly to see who had spoken. Young Mars took the opportunity to slip away. Close behind stood a tall woman of whom Bobby’s first impression was that of a stately ruin. Her dress was old, patched, and slatternly, and yet she still managed somehow to wear it with an air. Her features were worn, her complexion coarse, and yet beneath there showed a bone structure that must for ever prevent them from seeming commonplace or vulgar. Her hair, straggling, untidy, grey, still displayed here and there a stray thread or two of pure gold that must once upon a time have shone like her daughter’s, and in her movements could still be seen traces of that light grace so conspicuous in every least gesture made by the girl. To her the girl said:
The Attending Truth: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 3