The Attending Truth: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh, no,” Bobby answered. “Quite unnecessary. I did ask you, didn’t I? to keep an eye on the Felstead ’bus and let me know as soon as they get back.”

  “Very good, sir,” Stubbs said.

  “Very keen on the pictures, I’m told,” Bobby remarked. “Especially Mrs Jones, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Stubbs. “Tells you she wants to go and live in Hollywood.” He smiled gently, and added: “They all laugh about it, and say she wants to be a film star herself. Only it’s a bit late, and never had the face for it neither.”

  “More I expect that she wants to live in a dream-world she finds much more attractive than the real world,” Bobby commented. “Dangerous when you get so you can’t distinguish between dream and reality. There’s another thing I want you to do, if you can. I want you to try to stop any possible caller at Castle Manor while I’m there. I don’t want any interruption. I’m depending partly on shock tactics to get the information I want. Any interruption might spoil all chance of that. You’ll have to depend on tact and persuasion. No right to stop any one from visiting any one else. Magna Carta again, I suppose.”

  “I don’t quite know who you expect to be present,” Stubbs hinted gently.

  “I don’t either,” Bobby remarked. “They may all stay away, and then I shall be scuppered. Mars, of course. I’ve mentioned him. Colonel Yeo-Young. A gentleman rather inclined to take a high hand. If he brings that great dog of his, make sure it’s securely tied up.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Stubbs stoutly, but all the same not liking the job very much.

  “Ask the colonel to see to it,” Bobby said. “If there is trouble I don’t want that brute interfering. Is the colonel much liked in the neighbourhood?”

  “Well, no, sir; I couldn’t say that. Bit high-handed, as you said yourself. Seems to have the idea he can order you about same as if all of you were other ranks and him C.O. still. He went too far a while ago with a man on Higgins’s farm who said he was trespassing, which he wasn’t, there being a public footpath, only ploughed up during the war and Mr Higgins, he wants to keep it so. But the colonel went too far and it cost him nigh on fifty pounds or else being summonsed, which wouldn’t have looked too well, him being on the committee and all.”

  “Interesting sidelight on his character,” Bobby remarked thoughtfully. “I wonder if it’s liver, or too much whisky, or just natural disposition—or after-effects of the war? By the way, I’ve heard vague hints about there being something between him and Mrs Holcombe. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Just talk, sir,” Stubbs assured him. “Some were hinting they might be getting married—or had been already on the quiet, along of what’s in the will. I never paid much attention. Talk, in my humble opinion. Both of them that masterful they wouldn’t ever fit or think of it.”

  “It might be,” Bobby said, considering the point. “Bossiness in one might appeal to bossiness in the other. Like to like, so to say. Mrs Holcombe is masterful all right, but she’s still a woman, and the idea of being mastered herself she might find attractive in a way. Then Harry Holcombe. He seems very uneasy about Annie Mars.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder,” declared Stubbs, “if he didn’t know a deal more about her than he lets on.”

  “Then,” Bobby continued, “there’s his sister. I’ve been waiting to ask her a few questions.”

  “Her mallet we’ve got,” Stubbs said, “and no telling how Miss Annie got hold of it.”

  “I’m afraid she won’t be at my little conference,” Bobby said, and frowned and was silent. “I only wish she might be. It would be a great relief,” and then he was silent again, and Stubbs looked up curiously from his note-book, for there was something in Bobby’s voice that filled him, too, with an uneasy apprehension.

  “You don’t think, sir—” he began, and paused, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  “I think all sorts of things,” Bobby told him. “But none that I can see my way to act on, any more than when you find yourself in a thick fog and have no sure guide left. I’ve rung up Mr Lawson and told him what I’m planning, so he’ll be there. I’ve asked him to bring his boy along.”

  “Have you, though, sir?” Stubbs asked, looking quite excited. “There’s been a bit of talk about him. There’s some say—it couldn’t be him, sir, could it?”

  “I’m beginning to think,” Bobby said in a rather dispirited way, “that it might be almost anybody. If I don’t mind, I shall be suspecting you next, sergeant,” and Stubbs gave a little gasp and looked so dismayed that Bobby had to smile, though rather wanly, for he was in no smiling mood.

  “That’s all, I think,” he said. “Mr Lawson and his son. The three Holcombes—mother, son and daughter. Colonel Yeo-Young. Mars. Walker. That’s all. Do your best to keep any one else away.”

  “Very good, sir,” Stubbs answered, and asked himself with some excitement, even hope, if by any possibility it was going to turn out that it was Walker the tramp who was guilty. He very much hoped so. For one thing tramps generally were guilty, if not of one thing, then of another. Or else, going to be. And then, it really would be so much more convenient all round. Admittedly Walker had been on the spot at the time.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  “WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA, GUV?”

  BOBBY WAS careful to arrive in good time at Castle Manor for this kind of group interview he had arranged. And indeed, on the outcome of it, he was beginning to think, depended his sole chance of bringing the investigation to a successful conclusion.

  “All hangs,” he said, somewhat gloomily, to Sergeant Stubbs before he started out, “on whether I’ve been able to deduce correctly what has been behind all this. Psychological evidence, not circumstantial.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Stubbs, not quite sure what psychological evidence was or where it came in, and anyhow what could you expect a jury—or the Public Prosecutor’s office, for that matter—to care about a lot of talk without an ounce of solid fact to back it up?

  “And for my part,” Bobby added, even more gloomily, “it’s circumstantial evidence I like, tracing the weapon used to its only possible owner and that sort of thing, and we’ve had no luck that way in this case.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Stubbs, and this time his agreement was heartfelt. “Doesn’t look to me as if we had much chance of pinning it on any one,” and to himself he thought: ‘We could have done all that ourselves just as well, without bringing in any of these London experts.’

  At Castle Manor when he arrived Bobby was admitted by Mrs Holcombe herself, and her manner could hardly be described as cordial when she stood aside to let him enter. She led the way into the dining-room, a large room at the front of the house. There Bobby was a little surprised to find the Vicar. He was standing looking out of the middle window—the room had three windows—though indeed in the gathering darkness there was not much any one could see. His thin, ascetic features were even paler than usual, and he was holding his hands tightly clasped behind his back. When Bobby came in he turned to say “Good evening, Mr Owen”, and then immediately turned again to resume his blank, unseeing stare into the oncoming night. Mrs Holcombe, cutting short Bobby’s return “Good evening”, and speaking for the first time, for she had admitted him in silence and had ignored his greeting, said:

  “I asked the Vicar to be present. I consider it essential there should be an entirely independent observer. I do not understand what all this is for. I was much inclined to refuse to have anything to do with it. I understand neither the meaning nor the necessity of your request, nor its justification. I hope you will make that clear satisfactorily. If I had had more warning I should have asked my solicitor to be present.”

  “To that, of course,” Bobby answered formally, “there could have been no objection whatever. Still, I am rather glad you didn’t. I expect you know a solicitor is an officer of justice himself. So he’s under certain obligations which are sometimes embarrassing both to him and to his clients. He owes a double and
sometimes conflicting duty. To his client and to the law. A policeman has only one duty, to the law—and he has always a convenient escape route. He can always say the evidence is insufficient, and then the Public Prosecutor is very apt to think that, anyhow. Finding,” he added, a trifle resentfully, “a small boy with jam on his fingers in no proof for them that he’s been at the pot in the pantry.”

  Bobby said all the latter part of this with his most amiable smile, in the hope of appeasing the distinctly hostile attitude he was aware of. Co-operation, though he hardly dared expect it, would be so much more useful than the hostility he had always known he was more likely to receive. His amiable smile was entirely without effect. Mrs Holcombe looked as uncompromising as ever. Mr Duggan said over his shoulder:

  “I have tried to explain to Mrs Holcombe that I am hardly an entirely independent observer. I have tried to make it plain that I have by no means escaped this dreadful miasma of suspicion we all find ourselves caught in.”

  “Ridiculous,” pronounced Mrs Holcombe, with a fresh glare at Bobby. “I am almost inclined to refuse to go on with this absurd business even now.”

  “You have, of course, a right to do so if you wish,” Bobby said gravely. “I should then be forced back on other methods. They may fail. I think they very likely would. May I remind you that if they do, then what Mr Duggan has called the ‘miasma’ of suspicion in the village will remain, and will, I think, he means to suggest, poison its whole life.” He paused. Neither of the others spoke. He went on still more gravely: “On what happens here to-night life and death may very well depend. The life of an innocent person. For, please remember, one thing is certain, if no more. There is a murderer at large in this village. If he feels hard pressed—as I think he may—he may strike again. That is a fear very much in my mind.”

  There was still silence—a silence even more uncomfortable than before. Then it was broken by the opening of the door. Harry Holcombe appeared, ushering in Colonel Yeo-Young.

  “Judge, jury, all assembling,” Harry said. “Who is for the dock, though? I suppose we shall find out soon enough.” He, too, was plainly in a considerable state of nerves, and was trying to conceal the fact by putting on an air of jocularity. “Prosecuting counsel and executioner all here in one,” he added, with a sort of uneasy grin at the grave and silent Bobby.

  “Be quiet, Harry,” his mother said sharply. “Call Livia. Where is she?”

  “How should I know?” Harry retorted, but he went out into the hall, and they heard him shouting at the top of his voice: “Now, then, Livia, show a leg.”

  Yeo-Young said to Bobby:

  “I see you have assembled your myrmidons in force—all armed to the teeth?”

  “Why?” Bobby asked, annoyed, for he thought this must mean that Stubbs had been displaying the unaccustomed weapon he had been told to bring with him. “Why do you say that?”

  “I rather think,” Yeo-Young answered, “that your men are a bit scared of poor old Pompey. Stubbs, I think his name is, wanted me to tie him up. I told him to see to the job himself. Didn’t seem to fancy it. Brought out a revolver he evidently didn’t know one end of from the other, and had the insolence to tell me he would use it at once if Pompey turned nasty. Pompey never does. He just wagged his tail. I gave your man a pretty sharp warning to be careful what he did. I happen to attach some value to Pompey’s life. A valuable animal and, what is more, an old friend.”

  “In that case,” Bobby said, “I should think it more prudent if you did see the dog was made secure. Sergeant Stubbs has my full authority to use his revolver if the dog gives trouble. However well trained and intelligent your dog may be, that might happen.”

  “If it does—” began Yeo-Young, but paused for Bobby interrupted:

  “I am speaking as an officer of police,” he said, and the two men faced each other in silence, and the glance of each was direct and firm.

  But then Yeo-Young turned on his heel.

  “Oh, well,” he said, and went from the room.

  No one spoke during his absence, till, in a minute or two, Harry came back.

  “Livia won’t be long,” he said. “Powdering her nose or something. What’s the matter with Yeo-Young? Went by looking like several consolidated thunder-storms.”

  “He seems very fond of that dog of his,” Bobby said.

  “Apple of his eye,” Harry said. “Passing the love of woman,” and Bobby noticed—and remembered—that, saying this, Harry glanced sideways at his mother, as if to remind her of something else that had perhaps passed between them another day.

  Colonel Yeo-Young came back. There was a red and sultry glow in his rather deep-set eyes, that made Bobby realize he would receive no co-operation from that quarter. But, then, he had not much expected any. Only now hostility might be more active. A formidable man, Bobby reflected, not for the first time. He knew all in the room felt that the tension had increased, that hostile forces were gathering. Perhaps in an effort to relieve the situation, Mrs Holcombe said:

  “Harry, tell Livia to be quick. The sooner all this is over, the better.”

  “Very much better,” Harry said. “Sooner, the quicker, as the missionary said when they told him it was dinner-time.”

  “It’s not the time for trying to be funny,” snapped Mrs Holcombe.

  Harry went back into the hall and shouted again:

  “Now then, Livia, curtain up.”

  He returned, and said as he opened the door:

  “Here’s Norman, too. General mobilization order, I suppose. Hullo, Norman. You joined the force?”

  Norman came slowly into the room. He looked pale and nervous, and his troubled and uneasy eyes kept wandering round the room as if in search of some one he wished to see and yet was infinitely relieved was not present. He took no notice of Harry. To Bobby, Norman said:

  “Father’s awfully sorry he can’t come. He rang up to say he would be along as soon as he could get away. Something turned up to stop him. He didn’t say what,” and still the boy’s wandering glance went searching round the room.

  Interpreting it aright, Harry said:

  “Livy’s still powdering her nose. Been at it for the last half-hour.”

  “I’m sorry Mr Lawson can’t come,” Bobby said, slightly vexed, for he felt that once again Mr Lawson was, perhaps understandably, avoiding responsibility.

  “Scotland Yard’s got something up its sleeve,” Harry put in. “Handcuffs in its pocket and the ace of trumps up its sleeve.”

  “Harry,” said his mother, in angry rebuke.

  “It’s only that he is letting his nerves get the better of him,” Bobby explained, assuming his most superior air. “Young people often try to be funny when they are feeling uncomfortable—the more uncomfortable, the harder they try.”

  Harry glared and subsided, as had been Bobby’s intention. Later on, Harry thought of at least a dozen different effective retorts he could have made, but at the moment none came to him. Then Livia entered. She, too, was pale and nervous, and Bobby noticed that the first person she looked at was her mother, but that when Mrs Holcombe returned the look she turned away quickly and sat down on the nearest chair, as if she felt her legs might fail her. She was trembling a little, and her voice was not too steady as she said:

  “There’s a man in the hall. A strange man. He looks like the man I met in the copse before—before it happened. Only different.”

  “Cleaned up, I think,” Bobby said. “It is Walker, I suppose?” he asked Norman Lawson.

  “I brought him along,” Norman answered. “Father said you wanted him. I told him to wait. I don’t know if you want him at once?”

  “I think not yet,” Bobby said. “If Mrs Holcombe will allow it, I wonder if he might have a cup of tea or perhaps a glass of beer in the kitchen. Could that be done?”

  “Very well,” Mrs Holcombe said. “Harry, ring the bell.”

  Harry did so, and Bobby went into the hall, leaving the door wide open behind him. Walker was si
tting there, looking prim, clean, and uncomfortable.

  “What’s the big idea, Guv?” he asked as Bobby appeared. “I wouldn’t ever have said a word if I had known what was coming—togged up so I wouldn’t ever dare be seen on the road no more. Lummy, they wouldn’t own me.”

  “Too bad,” Bobby said. “Oh, by the way, was it you picked up an old wrench the other day? Not that it matters much, but did you?”

  “All eyes, aren’t you?” Walker complained. “Can’t a bloke do nothing without you knowing?”

  “Not a thing,” Bobby assured him cheerfully—and rashly. He hurried on for fear Walker should put this boastful claim to omniscience to some disastrous test. “I only wanted to know. Dumped it on a rubbish-heap, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right,” Walker agreed. “Wasn’t worth nothing, come to look at it.”

  Yeo-Young had followed Bobby into the hall.

  “I thought as much,” he said. “It’s the scamp I caught trying to break into my place. Pompey chased him half a mile down the road. I could hardly whistle Pompey back for laughing. So he’s stuffed up Scotland Yard with some cock-and-bull yarn or another.”

  A maid had now appeared from the back regions. Bobby said to her:

  “I’ve asked Mr Walker to wait for the present, and Mrs Holcombe has very kindly suggested that you might please give him a glass of beer or a cup of tea in the kitchen, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the maid, and glanced at Walker, who rose to accompany her.

  “Beer for me,” he said, and to the colonel he said: “No cock-and-bull story it ain’t, just what I saw with my own eyes, only I never would have said a word only for it’s being murder,” and somehow that word spoken over his shoulder as he went with the maid, spoken simply and quietly, seemed to recall them all to a sense of the grim reason for their assembly.