“He is the only person, so far as we know,” Bobby said, “Winterspoon spoke to—except for the ‘Black Bull’ barmaid, and I think we can leave her out. She has an alibi, too, which is more than you can say for any of the others.”
“Jones has been questioned about that talk,” Lawson said. “He says now he thinks Winterspoon may have wanted to get to know something about some one in the village and used the fact that they are both in the grocery line as an opening.”
“Anyhow, another name for our short list,” Bobby repeated. “Let’s go through it:
(A) Mrs Holcombe, because she found the body and why was she there to find it?
(B) Livia Holcombe, because she was hunting around in the copse and won’t say why.
(C) Harry Holcombe, because he may have been carrying on a flirtation or more and didn’t want it known.
(D) Yeo-Young, because I don’t like him and the reason why I know quite well—he’s a bully.
(E) The Vicar, because he has an obsession about the copse, and an obsession’s the devil.
(F) Matt Mars, because he has a daughter and doesn’t know what to make of her.
(G) Annie Mars, because she’s odd—and because of Harry Holcombe.
(H) Mr Jones, Good Grocery Stores, because Winterspoon called on him.
(I) Norman Lawson, because he was helping Livia.
(K) Chief Constable Lawson, because he says he feels he ought to be on it—the short list, that is.”
With that Bobby shut his note-book, in which he had been jotting down these names, though not the comments he had made aloud, and shook his head doubtfully.
“Flimsy, very flimsy, all of it,” commented Mr Lawson.
“Flimsy isn’t the word,” Bobby declared. “Even though several of them do seem to have a sort of connection with blunt instruments. Livia and her missing mallet. Harry Holcombe and the Vicar with the wrench that’s been in the fire. Yeo-Young and his Penang Lawyer.” Bobby consulted his list again. “Five of them in all,” he said.
“Four,” Lawson corrected him. “But any stone or bit of heavy wood would have done, and there are plenty of blunt instruments in every house, for that matter—a coal-hammer, or a poker, or something like that.”
“Yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “In a case like this, with so little to go on, all you can do is to study character and circumstance and see how, if they come together in one particular way, murder might result.”
CHAPTER XV
“WERE YOU WATCHING?”
IT WAS getting late by now. A rather half-hearted invitation to stay to supper Bobby declined on the ground that he had just time to catch the next ’bus back. If he missed it, he would have to wait two hours for the next.
So he said good-bye, hoped Mr Lawson would be all right in a day or two, and outside found young Norman Lawson waiting for him.
“I’ll walk as far as the ’bus with you, if you don’t mind,” Norman said.
“Good,” said Bobby, and was silent, and they had walked nearly half-way to the ’bus stop before Norman blurted out:
“Dad’s worried. He doesn’t think it was me, but he thinks very likely you may.”
“‘May’ is an umbrella sort of word; like charity, it covers a lot,” Bobby remarked. “If you would say what it was you and Livia Holcombe were looking for, it would help. If you won’t, you can’t wonder if it is rather a case of ‘may’.”
“Fact is,” Norman said gloomily, “I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”
“You were looking for something, but you don’t know what?” Bobby asked.
“That’s right,” Norman answered. “Livia said anything. Just anything. Rags, bits of paper, old cigarette packets—anything. I told her there wouldn’t be anything, because the whole place had been gone over very carefully. I said when police were on a job like that they didn’t miss much—trained not to. Dad mayn’t be as smart as some of your Scotland Yard chaps, but he knows his job all right.”
“I know, I’ve seen that for myself,” Bobby assured the young man.
“Livia wouldn’t have it, though,” Norman went on. “Said it might be something they wouldn’t know meant anything. So I said all right, we would go ahead, if she said so.”
Bobby was silent for a moment or two. He was wondering if this meant that Livia really suspected her mother was implicated and really thought she might have left some clue in the copse, something significant, but not yet so recognized.
“Did either of you find anything?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Norman told him—“nothing at all. The place might have been gone over with a vacuum-cleaner. Every leaf turned almost. We had to chuck it, though, when you came along. I saw the junk they had picked up before dad sent it off to the Combined West Laboratory for the experts to have a go at—finger-prints, bloodstains, all that. There was even an old wrist-watch—not Livia’s, though. Cheap one, and must have been there for years. And enough paper to fill a sack.”
“An envelope might be useful if it had a legible address,” Bobby remarked.
“Well, a murderer would hardly be so obliging as to leave his address behind him, would he?” Norman asked.
“Oh yes, murderers do odd things, and that among them. Happened in Birmingham only the other day in the Dundon case,” Bobby told him. “Do you know if the laboratory report has come in yet?”
“I don’t think so, I haven’t heard dad say anything,” Norman said, and added abruptly: “I rang up Livia. I told her I was going to tell you. She said if I did she would never trust me again. I said I must, and she just rang off,” and now the boy’s tone sounded so utterly miserable that Bobby felt obliged to try to cheer him up.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said, with a cheerfulness for which Norman hated him bitterly. “She’ll soon come to feel she can trust you all the more because you’ve a mind of your own and put first things first. ‘I could not love thee, dear, so well’—you know that old tag? I expect she’ll bully you a bit at first. Women are awful bullies, you know. Start it in the nursery and keep it up till second childhood.”
Norman didn’t seem much consoled.
“She feels I’ve let her down, and so do I,” he said sadly. “Here’s your ’bus,” and after Bobby had climbed to the top deck—in obedience to the conductor’s warning ‘Full inside’—and looked back he could see a sad, dejected, down-and-out-for-keeps sort of figure trailing miserably back to the Lawson habitation.
So he sent after it a small, sympathetic smile; wondered whether he could now dismiss Norman from the ‘short list’, and feared he couldn’t; wondered if Norman had told all or was still keeping something back—perhaps the only thing that was of importance. He woke from his thoughts to realize with surprise—so great is the difference in speed between a pedestrian and a motor-’bus—that already they had reached that stop outside Pending Dale village and near the copse path where the fare stage ended—to the great and justifiable indignation of all the Pending Dale inhabitants.
However, this evening most of the passengers seemed to have been willing to pay the extra penny required to take them into the village. Two or three of the more economically minded were, however, descending; and, as the ’bus moved away, Bobby saw that one of these was Annie Mars, walking briskly on to where a swing gate admitted to the copse path she evidently intended to take. He saw something else. He saw that, having gone through the field gate, she, instead of following the path onward, turned aside by the hedge and ditch between field and road, stooped, straightened herself, and only then returned to continue by the path towards the copse, so dark and threatening at a little distance.
Luckily the ’bus, though it had started again, was travelling at a comparatively slow speed, for here there was a steep upward gradient. Bobby hurled himself down the steep ’bus stairs—it was more tumbling down them than running down them—took a flying leap to the ground, kept his footing, heard the conductor shouting—probably something extremely uncomplimentar
y—and ran as hard as he could back to where the swing gate admitted to the copse path. He pushed it open, and turned along by the hedge as he had seen the girl do. Almost at once he saw, as he had half-suspected might be the case, a round-headed wooden mallet he guessed at once must be the one Livia said that she had lost.
He picked it up and went running full speed after Annie, who by now had reached the copse. He called to her, and she turned, and when she saw him, she stood still waiting. He slackened his pace a little then, and when he came up to her, he held out the mallet, saying:
“You left this behind you. Where did you get it?”
“Were you watching?” she asked, with just the faintest note of surprise, but making no attempt at denial.
“I was on the top of the ’bus,” he answered. “I saw you. It is the one Miss Holcombe lost, isn’t it? Where did you get it? Why were you leaving it there in the ditch?”
“It’s where it was before,” she explained simply, ignoring the other two questions.
He repeated:
“Where did you get it?”
But now she shook her head.
“I don’t think I want to tell you that,” she said as simply as before—so calmly, indeed, so gently, yet with such decision that Bobby was annoyed.
“Well, you’ve got to,” he said sharply; and when she hardly seemed to hear or notice, he said, as he had so often said before, and always with such effect: “You can be called to give evidence at the inquest, you know, and then you will certainly be asked.”
But this time all the response elicited was a quiet:
“Do you mind if we walk on? I’ve got some kippers. Father likes kippers so much and you can’t always find them. He could have one for his supper if I’m quick home.”
“If you don’t answer questions at an inquest,” Bobby warned her, “the coroner can commit you to gaol.”
“How long would he keep me there?” she asked.
“Till you answered,” Bobby said.
“Oh, dear,” she exclaimed. “How dreadful! It might be always. Could it be always?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
She gave a little sigh at that, and Bobby was more annoyed than ever; somehow in that sigh, breathed so softly into the quiet evening air, there sounded a suggestion of such inflexible determination he seemed to have a vision of her growing old and older still in gaol and never changing her resolve. She had turned now, and was walking on. He had to walk with her, since there was no way of stopping her, except by force. They were in the copse now, and the darkness fell around them like a cloak, as the slow evening light changed into the deep shadows beneath the trees.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked. “We can talk just the same if you like, only I do so want to be in time for father to have his kipper.”
“Some women would be afraid to pass here where a man was murdered only a day or two ago,” Bobby said, for he had noticed how completely free from nervousness she seemed to be.
“Would they?” she asked. “I expect you are right,” she admitted, considering the point. “You might feel you might be murdered, too. But if you were, it could just as well be anywhere else as here, couldn’t it?”
“You aren’t much subject to nerves,” Bobby said, a touch of suspicion in his voice, for he did feel there was something not quite natural in her complete tranquillity and peaceful self-possession.
By now they had nearly reached the centre of the copse—the spot where the murder had taken place, the spot where the shadows and the darkness lay the thickest, and Bobby said again:
“This mallet may have been what was used in the murder. Are you going to say how you got hold of it?”
“I told you I couldn’t,” she answered, a little surprised, it seemed, that he should repeat a question already asked and answered. “I’m so sorry,” she added, “I really am, but I don’t want.”
“Don’t you? Well, you had better change your mind in a hurry,” Bobby told her, even more crossly than before, for he was really angry on his side at this gentle, persistent, inflexible, and yet almost innocent obstinacy. “Or I shall have to ask you to come to the police station for questioning.”
“Oh, must you?” she said. “Do you mind if I go home first and tell mother and give her the kippers for father’s supper?”
Bobby as nearly as possible said something quite unpardonable about all the kippers that ever were or had been. But just at this moment a man stepped out from behind the trees and flashed a light at them. It was Mr Duggan, and if Bobby was completely taken by surprise, the Vicar seemed no less so. As for Annie, nothing ever appeared to surprise her, perhaps because she found the world and the people in it so surprising that nothing could ever possibly be more surprising than anything else.
“Annie Mars? You?” he said. He turned his torch full on Bobby. He demanded: “What does this mean, Mr Owen?” and his voice was full of evident suspicion.
Bobby, whose temper was still ruffled, very nearly told him to shut up. Fortunately Annie answered for him before he could speak. She said:
“Mr Owen is going to take me up, but I can go home first to give mother the kippers I got for father’s supper. It’s because I found Miss Holcombe’s mallet she lost and I won’t tell him where. And I expect he thinks it’s awfully suspicious you and me being here, where that poor man was killed. They do say murderers can’t keep away, don’t they?”
Bobby fairly gasped. No remark could possibly have been more unexpected—or more pointed. It seemed to reveal in the generally peaceful, gentle Annie a vein of mischief—even of malice, or even something deeper still—that was in utter contradiction to all his previous ideas of her. He was sure that she had been fully aware of the implication in what she said, that this had been intentional, but he could not think why. Mr Duggan, too, evidently did not know what to make of it. Bobby had an impression—he could not see clearly, so he was not sure—that Mr Duggan’s mouth was wide open and that he was breathing rather hard. Bobby said hastily:
“I was wondering myself what brought you here at this time, Vicar.”
“A man died on this spot,” the Vicar said. “I came to pray for him. And for his murderer.”
To that there was nothing to be said, and Bobby did not try to say it. Mr Duggan walked away. They followed. Bobby said to Annie in a low voice:
“What made you say a thing like that? It’s not true, anyhow.”
“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice, her manner, less calm than usual. “If you think about something for a long time, sometimes something comes into your head and you say it before you know. Mr Duggan is always suspecting every one of every thing. I’m sure at first he thought we were one of his ‘erring couples’ he is always talking about—very likely he is still suspicious.” She laughed lightly and went on: “I can’t help feeling it does people harm, always suspecting them, and letting them see it. Some of them just say to themselves: ‘All right, if that’s what he thinks, let’s go and do it’.”
“Reading up all the latest psychiatry?” Bobby asked, suspiciously.
“What’s sigh—sigh—?” she began, and gave up. “Perhaps it won’t do him any harm if he feels he can be suspected too. Only I don’t think I ought to have said it. Do you?”
“No,” said Bobby. “This is my quickest way back to the ‘Black Bull’, isn’t it?” he added as they came to where the path branched.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll just run home, and then must I come on to the police station?”
“We’ll send for you when we want you,” Bobby said. “You’ll have to answer, you know. A man has been murdered, and the murderer must be found.”
“Must he?” she asked doubtfully. “Thank you so much for letting me go home to-night.”
With that she went on her way, and Bobby on his back to the ‘Black Bull’, where, he reflected thankfully, he would be too late for such a dinner as he had suffered before, but where, no doubt, bread-and-cheese would still be available. And as he
went he asked himself if Annie was quite as innocent as she seemed, or whether what she said had been meant to show that there were things she knew but would only say when she chose.
CHAPTER XVI
“LITTLE DRUNKEN GIRL”
BOBBY SAT up late that night, filling in his diary, completing his notes, brooding over the few facts in the case—very few so far that were certain and confirmed—trying to match them against that co-ordination of character and circumstance from which alone he felt in such a case as this the truth was likely to emerge.
But he was up early, fortified himself by a good breakfast against the trials and troubles of the coming day, and then rang up the Felstead police headquarters to ask if the report from the Combined West Laboratory on the findings and sweepings from the copse had yet come in. He learned that it had arrived that morning and was now on its way by special messenger to Pending Dale so that he could see it. The junk itself—lots of it—was at Felstead, available for his own personal examination if that were his wish. On his side he reported the recovery of Livia’s mallet from the ditch where she said she had left it. The man he was talking to opined that it had been there all the time, and Bobby did not contradict this. It was after all a possibility, for he had not actually seen the mallet in Annie’s possession, nor did he suppose it likely that any one of the passengers in the ’bus would have noticed it, or indeed had had any chance to do so. All he said therefore was that he was trying to find out more about it. Therewith he rang off and went on to the little village police-station, where he and the laboratory report arrived together.
He read it through slowly and carefully, hoping against hope that some vital clue would suddenly appear in its neat typing and careful red ink ruling. The list of things found was odd and extensive. No such luck, though, as had been the happy fortune of the police officer who, in that recent Birmingham case he had mentioned to Norman Lawson, had discovered on the scene of a murder an envelope bearing the murderer’s address. Many stray bits of metal had been found, several old torn handkerchiefs, the remnants of a scarf, a baby’s shoe, and so on. But most of it had clearly been there from long before the murder. One item did, however, catch his eye. Under a special heading ‘Recent—probably post-murder’ was listed a half-sheet of note-paper, on it in block letters a Biblical reference: ‘Luke VII. 15’. He wondered if it could have any connection with Mr Duggan—perhaps some text to which he wished to draw the attention of those he challenged in the copse, as Bobby was still slightly ruffled to think he had been about to do with Annie and himself the previous evening. Bobby made up his mind he would have a look at this half-sheet as soon as he could get to Felstead, and that meanwhile he would take an early opportunity to look up the reference.
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