The Attending Truth: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh, yes, sir, both ways,” Stubbs told him. “I couldn’t rightly say what time they generally come home. Never had any occasion to notice, as far as I know.”

  “No, no,” Bobby agreed. “Of course not. I was just wondering. Well, you might ring up Mr Holcombe and tell him I’m here. Tell him not to be long, if he wants a chat. By-the-by, Mr Lawson is back at duty, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I think so,” Stubbs answered.

  “Ring him up, too, will you?” Bobby said. “Tell him I’m trying to fix up a sort of conference this evening at Castle Manor, all of them together. It may help to get at the truth, and I want Mr Lawson to be present, if at all possible. Tell him it’s important. I shall want you to be on hand, too, and to bring a man with you—uniform man. Don’t show yourselves, but be ready, on the watch. If you hear me whistle, come on the run.”

  “Expect to make an arrest, sir?” Stubbs asked eagerly.

  “More hope than expectation,” Bobby told him. “I’m hoping, anyhow, to make sure that I’m on the right line. But I wish I had something more definite to go on than a scrap of dirty paper with a text from the Bible on it.”

  “Yes, sir; it’s straight evidence you want,” declared Stubbs. “Something you can show and the smartest Q.C.”—and with what a mixture of dread and dislike did he not pronounce those two formidable and justly feared initials—“can’t talk away. Can’t say I see myself where the Bible text comes in, though.”

  It was more a question than a comment, and as that Bobby answered it.

  “I don’t want to say too much,” he explained, “till I know more. It may have nothing whatever to do with the case, and then the less said the better. Quite enough talk going on as it is. Oh, and you might arrange to look out for the Jones’s. I might find it useful to know exactly when they get back. They are pretty sure to come by ’bus, I suppose.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, bound to; no other way,” Stubbs assured him.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  “THE SHORT ANSWER”

  HARRY HOLCOMBE was not slow in responding to the call put through to Castle Manor by Sergeant Stubbs. The moment he arrived he was shown into the room where Bobby was busy with all the various, generally irrelevant, seldom worth while, reports and statements, sent in by his different assistants. Nor had the door closed behind Holcombe before he burst out:

  “Look here, I want to know. Your chaps keep saying it isn’t you, but if it isn’t, what’s it mean?”

  “Sit down, Mr Holcombe,” Bobby said, pointing to a chair the young man showed no inclination to take. “About Miss Mars, isn’t it? You’ve been told already we know nothing.”

  “Yes, but they’re all saying in the village—”

  “I daresay; they generally are and I wish they wouldn’t,” Bobby interrupted. “Do sit down. It’s difficult to talk while you’re giving a good imitation of a tiger in a Zoo waiting for its dinner. Surely you know arrests in this country can’t be kept quiet. Good gracious me! if every charge wasn’t carefully entered and the accused brought before a magistrate at once, Magna Carta would be up on its hind legs in less than no time.”

  “Yes, but—” Holcombe began again, and again Bobby interrupted him.

  “There’s no ‘but’ about it,” he said, rather sharply. “Sit down, for goodness sake, and have a cigarette. Getting excited won’t help.”

  “I’m not excited,” Holcombe grumbled, but now he did sit down, and he took the cigarette Bobby offered him, though he made no attempt to light it. He went on: “It’s only, if she isn’t here, where is she?”

  “The short answer to that,” Bobby answered, “is that we don’t know.”

  “That’s not much help,” Holcombe said angrily. “Your job, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know that it is,” Bobby answered. “Not yet, anyhow.”

  “But, good God!” Holcombe burst out. “A girl disappears—”

  “One moment, one moment,” Bobby interrupted once again. “You go too fast. Why ‘disappears’? Simply gone away for a day or two, perhaps. We can’t be sure. Apparently she said nothing to her family. But it is not before us officially. Nothing like ‘disappears’ has been said by any of her family—by any one entitled to, that is, by any special connection.” He paused when he said this and waited. Holcombe made no reply. Bobby, watching him closely, could see in his restless hands, his eyes, in a recurrent twitching at the corners of his mouth, how great was the nervous strain he was enduring. Bobby went on: “She may merely have gone to spend the night with a friend. All the same, I don’t like it. There’s been one murder in this village, and the murderer is still at large, undetected. But we may be nearer on his track than we know—or he may think we are.”

  “I’ve been telling myself it’s only silly,” Holcombe said. “I mean, to get ideas like that into your head.” He paused and stared at Bobby, and both men were silent. It was Holcombe this time who broke the silence first. “You don’t think it’s silly,” he said, more as an assertion than a question.

  “There’s no reason to think anything yet,” Bobby said. “I can only repeat that I don’t like it. I have taken steps, as we say in our reports—what precautions I can, that is. For one thing, I am going to ask her father or mother to report her missing. That will give me a freer hand.”

  “Tell me, what have you got in your mind?” Holcombe said, and now his voice had become very low, almost a whisper, and a little uncertain as well.

  “Nothing definite,” Bobby answered. “I’m just vaguely uncomfortable. That’s all. I have formed a certain theory or belief, but I am keeping it to myself, because it is not founded on concrete evidence—circumstantial evidence, that is—and very often much the best and most convincing. You know as much as I do, probably more. All I have to go on is how people behave, what they say and do; and how people behave has as many explanations as a cat has lives.”

  “Yes, yes,” Holcombe interrupted in his turn. “What are you going to do? That’s what I want to know. You must do something,” and again that note of urgency, of hysteria almost, was creeping into his voice.

  “There are two possibilities,” Bobby went on, taking no notice of this outburst, but not displeased at such signs of a lessening self-control, for then it would become more likely that everything in the other’s mind—his secret doubts, his fears, his inner-most thoughts of which he himself might not be fully aware—would all come out, and so provide more on which to construct a clearer knowledge of what might be the truth, the facts. “One such possibility,” he continued after a brief pause, “is that Miss Mars has gone off on her own account, and the other is—that she hasn’t. In the first case, there’s nothing much to worry about. She will have to be found and brought back in time to give evidence at the adjourned inquest. That’s all. I imagine you know people here are hinting that she has eloped with you?”

  “Well, she hasn’t,” Holcombe asserted at once. “That’s all rot. I wish it wasn’t. I shouldn’t be in such a stew then.”

  “The ‘stew’ might be because you didn’t want it known,” Bobby pointed out. “I understand Mrs Holcombe objects to there being any special friendship between you. And I gather you are largely or entirely dependent on her?”

  “That wouldn’t stop me,” came the swift and angry answer. “I’ve told her. I can earn my own living on my own if I want to.”

  Bobby, after another short pause, began to speak very slowly and carefully, choosing each word upon consideration. For what he was going to say would go far, by the answer it received, either to substantiate or to show to be without foundation in fact the whole theory of events he had been slowly building up in his mind. He said:

  “Of course, you know, too, that there has been a lot of talk in the village about a secret marriage?”

  Holcombe stared blankly. He had the air of being utterly dismayed; he hesitated, stammered. It was a minute or two before he managed to get out a mumbled, confused, stammering reply:

  “No, I didn’t.
I had no idea...how could I?...They wouldn’t tell me.... How do you mean?...Is it your own lot you mean?...Or in the village?...I don’t see why.... Why should any one...start off talking, I mean?”

  He lapsed into silence, apparently waiting for an answer, and yet afraid of what that answer might be if it came. This time the silence between the two men lasted for three or four minutes, as though neither had any idea what to say next. But Bobby was intent and watchful, not sure of his ground yet, yet his mind fiercely active. Holcombe seemed plunged into deep and troubled thought, as though faced with a decision he did not wish to make, a situation he had no idea how to resolve. It was Bobby who spoke first, and more briskly, even cheerfully than before.

  “Never mind about all that, for the moment,” he said. “I’ll ask you something else. A personal, intimate question. You may resent it and refuse to answer it. I shan’t complain if you do, but I hope you won’t. If you will answer, it will help to clarify the way I see things and make it easier for me to get at the truth. Are you in love with Annie Mars?”

  “I don’t know,” Holcombe answered slowly. He did not seem to resent the question. It was more as if he found it natural because he had so often asked it of himself. He seemed, indeed, to be searching in a bewildered sort of way to see if he could find an answer in the recesses of his mind where till now he had seldom had either the need or the desire to penetrate. He repeated: “I don’t know. I think I’m afraid I may be. You see—well, she’s different. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t be likely to have me. She’s different. Nothing different about me. I’m just like every one else.”

  “No one is,” Bobby told him, with a faint smile. “Like every one else, I mean. All as different as are our finger-prints from each other’s. That’s one thing our job teaches us. Tell me, is it true you sometimes met her in the copse, where the murder took place?”

  “Well, it was always just accidentally—at least, well, practically by accident. There wasn’t any sort of date, if that’s what you mean. Of course, I knew she went home that way sometimes—short cut, you know. Some one told mother. That’s what started her off.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “I’ve my own idea, I don’t know.”

  “Colonel Yeo-Young?”

  “I thought it might be. Mother wouldn’t say. Made the row worse. Then this happened. While we were both sulking and wondering what next. Of course, I don’t know, but he’s that sort of swine—Yeo-Young, I mean. There isn’t much I would put past him. What made you think of him?”

  “I think,” Bobby answered, “that I’ve considered pretty well everything within the range of possibility—and even outside it.” He went on: “You said just now Miss Mars was different. Will you tell me—in what way? To make the picture complete I have in my mind, I must try to fit every one’s character into it. Or else it’s no good. Can you suggest any reason why she should have gone away on her own account?”

  “I expect you frightened her, talking about making her give evidence at the inquest. If it was to say something against her father, she jolly well wouldn’t.”

  “Well, that’s rather my own idea,” Bobby remarked, “and if you won’t, no one can make you, if you can stick it out. I think Miss Annie might, and I don’t think she is easily frightened, do you?”

  “No, I know,” Holcombe said, and again he was beginning to look troubled and uneasy.

  “Why do you call her different?” Bobby repeated. “You haven’t told me yet?”

  “Well, because she is, that’s all. She never sees things the way most people do. It’s like Livia, somehow, only in another way. Livia gets all hot and bothered about how things look, the form they’ve got, if you know what she means, I don’t. Rather like the way some of those old Greek johnnies used to talk—about ideas being given form. That sort of thing. Highbrow guff, but it means a lot to her. Annie sees things differently, too. Only not about form and what it means. About, well—oh, I don’t know.”

  “About life and what that means, perhaps,” Bobby remarked. “I don’t wonder you’re a bit scared. I should be. Ideas. You never know where they’ll lead you. Just anywhere,” and this he found an unpleasant and disturbing reflection.

  “There’s another thing,” Holcombe went on, as much to himself as to Bobby. “Of course, I don’t put any stock in all that rot about thought-reading and telepathy and the rest of it. No one with any sense does. All the same...”

  “All the same, what?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know,” Holcombe answered in a puzzled, hesitating sort of way. “Only you would think sometimes Annie knew things without being told. Turns up when any one’s in a fix. Doesn’t say much; it’s just that she’s there. She listens to Livia just as if she understood what Livia was driving at—perhaps she does.”

  “I noticed,” Bobby said thoughtfully, “that she was at Castle Manor yesterday morning. I didn’t gather your sister had asked for her. Have they been friendly at all?”

  “Yes, I told you. She lets Livia talk, and she listens—Lord knows why.”

  “It’s just possible,” Bobby said, “that she may have said something to Miss Holcombe about her plans. I must ask. I’m trying to arrange a kind of general talk with some of you at Castle Manor for this evening. There are some points that could more easily be cleared up like that. They are rather worrying me. You’ll be there, will you?”

  “I suppose you mean,” Holcombe said gloomily, “afterwards, one of us will go away in handcuffs.”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  “THAT’S ALL, I THINK”

  IT WAS some time after Harry Holcombe had left—not in handcuffs, by the way, and this fact he was inclined to regard with some relief—before Bobby roused himself sufficiently from the sort of trance of meditation into which he had fallen, to answer a tap at the door. Sergeant Stubbs thereupon appeared.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” he said cautiously. “Hope I’m not disturbing you, sir.”

  “No, not at all,” Bobby answered. “Why?”

  “Well, sir, I did knock once before,” the sergeant answered, thinking it wise to let his superior down easily by reducing three attempts to one.

  “Oh, did you?” Bobby said. “Sorry; I didn’t hear.”

  “No, sir,” Stubbs answered, thinking, with cruel injustice, that this meant Bobby had been indulging in a little nap. But though unjust, he was tolerant, and he admitted inwardly that he would have liked the same himself. “It’s about to-night, sir,” he went on. “About me and two men being on call near Castle Manor. I think you said ‘uniform men’. Does that mean me in uniform, too?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, “and it might be as well if you issued yourself with a revolver. The situation may develop.”

  “Yes, sir; very good, sir,” Stubbs said, though considerably startled, for this was the first time in all his long service that he had been warned to carry arms. “Will you have an issue, too, sir?”

  “No, no; one of them will be enough,” Bobby answered. “You can pass yours to me if it looks like being necessary. Don’t like the things, but you can never tell, and I’m not sure who we shall be dealing with. I’m hopeful, though.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Stubbs doubtfully, for he wasn’t.

  “I got a lot of information from young Holcombe,” Bobby went on. “It does seem to me to go a long way to confirming the buildup I’ve tried to put together. Of course, there’s a chance that what I get out of these people to-night may knock it all endways. If it’s like that, we shall be right back again where we began.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Stubbs, thinking that, after all, that wouldn’t be a long way to go, since so far as he could see no progress whatever had been made up to the present.

  “The idea,” Bobby continued, “is to get every one there—I mean every one who seems at all concerned. Then I’m going to put it up to them all what I think really happened. If they start saying it wasn’t at all like that, I mean to ask them in turn what did happen,
and if they tell the truth—well, that’s what I want. And if not, they will almost certainly start contradicting each other, and in that way I think the facts may come out. I feel some of them must have some idea why Winterspoon came here, what he was doing in the copse, why he was killed. If we can put it all together, it ought to spell the murderer’s name.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Stubbs, but still more doubtfully, for he could not see why the murderer’s identity should be at all likely to emerge from the sort of round-the-table chat, that was all, as far as he could see, that was being planned. “Very good, sir. Felstead has rung up to say Walker is being sent along as per request to hand.”

  “I hope they’ve made him look a bit respectable?” Bobby said.

  “Message said,” Stubbs answered, “as he had been rigged out with a new second-hand suit—cost £3 6s. 9d. same being charged to the Yard.”

  “Charged is one thing,” Bobby remarked; “getting paid is another.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Stubbs; and, had not discipline prevented, would have added that every child in arms knew that much. “Oh, and they say they had to give him half a crown extra to get him to have a bath, him being bitter about it’s not being Saturday night, and consequently not needed.”

  “I expect I shall have to stand the half-crown myself,” Bobby said sadly. “Not a dog’s chance of getting that through.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Stubbs, thinking that that, too, was too obvious to be worth saying. “Mrs Mars has been round again. I told her she would be kept fully informed as and when reliable information is received, if any.”

  “I’ll see Mars as soon as I can,” Bobby said. “I think he had better be there to-night. In a way he has a right to be. Annie’s his daughter.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Stubbs, wondering more and more what Bobby really had in mind and how the ‘nobs’ would like the presence of this villager of a not too good reputation at what seemed as if it were going to be a highly confidential and possibly embarrassing round-table conference. Not his business, he supposed, and glad of it. The nobs wouldn’t like it, and not wise to get across them unless forced in the plain way of duty. He continued: “Re Jones and Mrs Jones, Felstead reports that same have been noted entering the Super Palace Cinema in the High Street. Doesn’t follow they’ll stay there. Is the Cinema to be watched to make sure?”