The Attending Truth: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  “NEAR BREAKING POINT”

  IT WAS in complete silence that they all now began to seat themselves at the dining-room table. Bobby had closed the door while that last word still lingered in the air, and the glance he had then given round the room all had seemed to accept as an invitation to be seated while he explained the purpose of their meeting. Mrs Holcombe took her accustomed place at the head of the table. Bobby seated himself at the other end. There was room for four on each side, and this meant that two seats, one on each side of Bobby, remained unoccupied.

  “I expected Mr Mars as well,” he said. “I asked him to be here in good time. He promised he would, but it’s beginning to look as if he wasn’t coming.”

  “I hope so,” Mrs Holcombe said, with considerable asperity. “Really, Mr Owen, I think you go too far. My house is not a public meeting-place. I only consented to all this because I was under the impression that you wanted to make some sort of confidential statement or something of the kind.”

  “There is nothing confidential about murder,” Bobby answered, and again that last word had its effect on them all. “I think Mars has a right to be present. He is, after all, the father of a young woman whose name has been mentioned more than once in this case. Miss Holcombe’s lost mallet has been traced to her, but she refuses to tell me where she got it.”

  “What’s Livia’s mallet got to do with it?” demanded Mrs Holcombe.

  “I don’t know,” Bobby answered. “Nothing at all, perhaps, but it is such an instrument as could have been used.”

  “Scotland Yard,” observed Yeo-Young, and plainly he meant this thus repeated oblique reference to Bobby to be offensive, “has also had its eye on the walking-stick I generally carry.”

  “Very much so,” Bobby agreed crisply; and this prompt endorsement of his remark evidently slightly disconcerted the colonel. “What I was going to say,” Bobby went on, “is that Miss Mars did not return home last night, and none of her family seem to know where she is.”

  “Well, what about it if she didn’t,” Yeo-Young interrupted, plainly trying to assert himself again. “Girls don’t sometimes—come home, I mean. You aren’t trying to suggest that she may have been murdered, too?”

  It was a flippant question, asked in a flippant spirit, but the effect was greatly to increase the general sense of tension and discomfort. Bobby made no attempt to answer. He let the question do its own work for all of them to provide their own answer if they wished. Even Yeo-Young himself was looking uncomfortable. There came a loud knocking at the front door that they all heard. Bobby said:

  “This may be Mars.”

  They heard the steps of the maid passing through the hall on her way to answer the summons. They were all so wrought up they might have been listening for, waiting for, a message to decide their own fate. It was almost a relief when the door opened and the maid appeared.

  “It’s a man from the village,” she said. “He says his name is Mars and the police gentleman is expecting him.”

  “Ask him to come in here, will you?” Bobby said. “He’s late.”

  The maid glanced at her mistress and, getting no response, assumed she could obey. She went to fetch him accordingly. Mrs Holcombe said in her most acid tones:

  “Really, I am beginning to wonder whose house this is.”

  “I apologize,” Bobby said, “but I think I am justified in asking for every possible help or, for that matter, in taking almost any liberty. I don’t feel at all happy about Miss Mars.”

  “I don’t either,” Harry Holcombe interposed. “I don’t like it. It’s not like her.” Mrs Holcombe swung round on him and seemed about to speak. “It’s no use, mother,” he said.

  The maid reappeared, Mars close behind. He came forward in response to Bobby’s gesture when Bobby beckoned to him, and sat down awkwardly in the chair on Bobby’s left. The maid, after one glance of passionate, burning curiosity round the table, retired. Bobby said:

  “I think, if you don’t mind, we will leave the door open. There is no one else in the house but the two maids, is there? I’m sure they would never try to eavesdrop, but an open door does discourage that sort of thing. It will also serve to remind us not to talk too loudly. With your permission,” he added to Mrs Holcombe. She again made no response, except perhaps to look a little angrier still. Bobby went to the door, crossed to the other door at the back of the hall leading, he knew, to what are called the ‘usual offices’, made sure it was shut, and returned to his place. To Mars he said as he sat down: “You have not heard from Miss Mars, have you?”

  “No, none of us—not a word,” Mars said. “Her ma’s in a rare taking. She’s never done such a thing before, and why should she now?” He was silent as he looked slowly, questioningly, round the table, at each of them in turn, but not at one longer than another. There was almost a note of entreaty in his voice as he continued: “She’s my girl, though she didn’t ought to be, being different like. But if there’s anything happened and there’s some here as might know...it’s upsetting,” he concluded vaguely.

  “I’ve been trying to find out,” Harry said, as if he felt these last words were specially addressed to him. “I’ve been asking. She went to get her rations, and she left them and said she would call back to get them, and no one seems to have seen her since.”

  “I don’t see where all this is getting us,” Colonel Yeo-Young said.

  “I think I saw her near Jones’s shop,” interposed the Vicar, speaking for almost the first time. “I’m not sure. She might have been going to Jones’s or coming away. I am bound to say I do remember seeing your car somewhere quite close, Harry.”

  “I left it,” young Holcombe answered, “while I went to see if she were at home. I wanted to ask why she hadn’t turned up at the office that morning. She rang up to say she was prevented, but she didn’t say why. There was no answer when I knocked. I don’t know if any one saw me.”

  “Have we been asked here like this merely to discuss what’s become of one of the village girls?” demanded Mrs Holcombe.

  Bobby ignored this question, as he ignored also, though he noticed it, the angry frown with which Harry greeted his mother’s summary dismissal of Annie as ‘one of the village girls’. Nor did Bobby speak for a moment or two, though they were all watching him and waiting. He was drumming with his fingers on the table, for he was really not quite sure how to begin. He took out his note-book and laid it on the table before him. Livia was lighting a cigarette, and she still kept turning her head slightly to stare at her mother and then looking quickly away again, and each time her eyes were more restless, those large, capable hands of hers less steady.

  “Well,” Yeo-Young said loudly and repeated, “well?”

  Bobby, lifting his eyes from his note-book, saw now again that red, sultry glow in the Colonel’s eyes he had noticed before.

  ‘Near breaking point,’ Bobby thought, and he wondered why. He said:

  “Oh, sorry. Yes. Well, the difficulty in this case, of course, is that there are hardly any material clues. The only way, it seemed to me, to get at the truth was to try to construct what I might call a psychological pattern of events, and then ask you all either to confirm it or to explain what really happened. From that I hope we may find the murderer’s identity beginning to appear.”

  “In other words,” Yeo-Young interrupted, “a lot of vague, irresponsible guess-work. Suppose we don’t see why we should take the trouble either to confirm or deny that sort of stuff?”

  “In that case,” Bobby said, “I shall be, of course, entirely helpless. I am depending on your help. I am assuming that you all want this matter cleared up. I hope none of you wish suspicion to remain, as it does at present, on nearly every one in the village. Neither I hope do you wish a murderer to go undetected and unpunished. As an officer of police, I think that Society which employs me has a right to protect itself.”

  “I don’t think we need discuss that,” the Vicar said. He had
been sitting with his face hidden in both hands, and he did not look up as he spoke. “The truth must be made known if possible.”

  “I was only appealing for co-operation,” Bobby said. He went on: “Well, the first problem we were up against was what Winterspoon—in passing I draw your attention to his name, which may be significant—what he was doing in this village, why he had come, why, being here, he went to the copse. Naturally all possible inquiries were made about him—without any useful result, though we could not trace him beyond his first engagement with his present, or rather his late employers. A wholesale firm of grocers. They took him on during the war, when they were only too glad to get any one they could, and they have no complaint to make about him. He seemed to have no private life. He lived in lodgings—a quiet, inoffensive, humble existence in which there seemed to be nothing likely to lead to such a strange and tragic end as was his on the path through the copse near this house.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  “I PURSUE THE TRUTH”

  BOBBY PAUSED when he had said this. He looked slowly round the table. Mrs Holcombe was sitting back in her chair, her eyes closed, but Bobby felt she had listened to every word with strained attention. Livia, imitating perhaps the Vicar sitting opposite her, had buried her face in her hands, her elbows on the table. She had quite forgotten her cigarette. Her brother was staring up at the ceiling, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and Yeo-Young was staring equally intently straight in front of him. That red and angry glow Bobby had seen before smouldering in his eyes had vanished as it had come, and Bobby guessed that something had been said that had reminded him of the need for caution. They were all very still, all except Mars, who was fidgeting uneasily.

  “About my girl—” he said, and was silent, looking rather helplessly round the table.

  Bobby went on:

  “As you all know, that path is a short cut to this house from the Felstead ’bus route, and of course I had to ask if there was any connecting link—house, path, and murder.”

  “It is equally a short cut to the upper part of the village by the church,” Yeo-Young remarked.

  “Where Mr Mars lives,” Bobby said. “That is so.”

  “What about it if I do?” demanded Mars, but Bobby made him a gesture to be silent, and continued:

  “Every possible inquiry has been made, of course, and most efficiently, by Mr Lawson, but it has only been possible to establish that during his visit here, Winterspoon spoke to two persons—the barmaid at the ‘Black Bull’, and to the man who keeps the grocer’s shop here. I think the barmaid may be left out of it, though she gave us one piece of interesting information. She says that Winterspoon had so plainly had as much to drink as was good for him that she refused him a second whisky when he asked for it. Yet all we could learn about him showed that he was normally a most moderate drinker, never taking more than an occasional glass of beer and, indeed, not able to afford much more. Jones tells us that Winterspoon’s visit was after business hours. He says he never quite made out what Winterspoon wanted. They talked about business matters chiefly. Jones finally got the idea that Winterspoon was trying to find out if the shop was for sale. There is a big demand for retail businesses at present, and it is quite common for agents and go-betweens of one sort and another to try to find where there is any prospect of buying. Generally with the idea of re-selling. Often a waiting list, it seems. Jones tells us, however, that this wasn’t gone into because he made it plain he had no idea of selling. Settled here for life, he told us, and very content. He seems, in fact, to have made a place for himself in the village life, in the church, too.”

  “I only wish all my parishioners were as willing to help,” the Vicar said, taking his hands away from his face and turning to look at Bobby.

  “He put forward one idea,” Bobby continued, “though we rather had to drag it out of him. He kept wondering, he says, what Winterspoon really wanted, and it struck him that just possibly he might be acting—confidentially—for Mrs Holcombe, who he thought might wish to buy him out, but might not wish to appear personally.”

  “Rubbish,” Mrs Holcombe exclaimed, opening her eyes and leaning forward angrily. “Utter rubbish. I’ve enough on my hands without wanting to go into the grocery business. Ridiculous.”

  “They all knew you were thinking of buying up the ‘Black Bull’ or starting another pub in opposition,” Harry remarked, hands still in pockets, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. “That’s what started it—if beer, why not butter and bacon?”

  “Preposterous,” Mrs Holcombe repeated. “I never heard anything so silly.”

  “It had to be considered, like everything else,” Bobby went on. “If it were confidential, and it was not wished that the project should be generally known, that might just possibly have explained why there was, as there appeared to be, some sort of rendezvous in the copse for Winterspoon to report on the result of his errand.”

  “If this is what your psychological pattern produces,” Mrs Holcombe told him, “I can only say I think we are wasting our time.”

  “My opinion all along,” Yeo-Young said. “What about breaking it up?”

  “You force me to ask you, Colonel Yeo-Young, why you seem so anxious to do so?” Bobby retorted. “I think it would be in the interest of you all, as well as of the investigation, if you allowed me to continue. There is another point to which I would like to draw attention. You remember I asked you all to notice his name, as I think it may be significant. Now I ask you to remember that the barmaid thought he had been drinking freely. The post-mortem confirmed the barmaid’s opinion. Yet Winterspoon was as a rule a temperate man. It may be a fair deduction—it is one I have made—that he was expecting to meet some one, and that he was nervous about it, or even afraid, and so had been priming himself with drink.”

  “Doesn’t help to show who it was,” growled the colonel, but more to himself this time than to Bobby, for the sharp question Bobby had put had had a distinctly sobering effect on him.

  Without either expecting or receiving any answer, Bobby continued:

  “As soon as I got here, the same evening, I visited the copse. Any investigating officer, of course, tries to get to be familiar with the locality as soon as possible. I found Miss Livia and Mr Norman Lawson very busy there looking for something. When I asked, I was told it was Miss Livia’s wrist-watch. It was not a statement I felt able to accept.”

  “You mean you knew it was a bloody lie,” Livia interposed. “Why don’t you say so? Norman told you, didn’t he?”

  “I had to, Livy,” Norman said. “I had to, really. When it’s a thing like this...”

  “Yes, I know; it’s all right, Norry,” Livia said; and flashed him a sudden smile, so that at once he sat more upright, straightened his shoulders, had altogether now a different air, now he felt he was forgiven.

  “I do not know,” Bobby said, “if Miss Livia would be willing to say what it was she was really looking for?”

  “Well, I wanted to know just as much as any one,” Livia said, evading, however, a direct answer. “I had to know.” All at once something seemed to give way within her, her voice grew shrill, almost hysterical as scattered, broken incoherent words broke from her with passion: “I had to...know, I mean...I didn’t dare not to...know, I mean...I had to if it killed me.”

  Bobby was looking not at her, but at Mrs Holcombe, and he saw that she was looking straight at him. There was an instant’s silence that seemed the more intense for the sudden ceasing of Livia’s high, hysterical voice. By another sudden effort she seemed to have regained self-possession. Mrs Holcombe broke the silence by saying very quietly:

  “Cat and mouse, isn’t it, Mr Owen? Cat and mouse. Is it necessary?”

  “I pursue the truth,” Bobby said, and his voice was stern. “Cat and mouse? Well, I think you can end it when you will. But I must show on what grounds I put my questions. Questions without reason given may easily receive answers without fact. Fact and reason, I have to depend on them. I was
still trying to think what might be the meaning, the object, of this search by the two young people in the copse on the night of my first appearance here, and I could not think there was no connection—when I witnessed a strange little scene between Mrs Holcombe and her daughter that set me wondering again.”

  “There wasn’t,” Livia said quickly; “there never was. Was there, mother?”

  “Yes,” Mrs Holcombe said. “Don’t tell any more lies, Livia. It doesn’t help.”

  “Oh, all right, all right,” Livia said, sitting back in her chair. “I won’t say another word,” she mumbled.

  “It seemed to me, watching them both,” Bobby said, “that they were each asking the other a question, and that the answer to it they feared as much as they both felt that they must ask it. I cannot attempt to make any one of you understand the intensity, the dreadful intensity, with which both spoke and both waited a reply. I don’t think I shall ever forget it. Mother and daughter. But I had to ask myself—does the daughter think her mother a murderess? Is that what she believes?”

  “I never did—never,” Livia cried. “Not that, no.” She raised her hands in what was almost a gesture of appeal. “Oh, mother, please say you never thought that.”

  “Hush, Livia, dear,” Mrs Holcombe said, and Bobby remembered that this was the first expression of affection he had ever heard Mrs Holcombe use towards her daughter.

  Once more Livia sank back in her chair. She had an exhausted air. In a frail, low voice, she said:

  “I suppose I did think it might be Colonel Yeo-Young.”

  “Under cross fire I am, aren’t I?” Yeo-Young said. “Nice reputation I seem to have. I’ve used a Bren gun on poor devils who only wanted to scuttle to safety as fast as they could. I got a D.C.M. for it. I heard it might have been a V.C. recommend, only there was no senior officer left to report. Now apparently the gallows is to be the recommend. I don’t happen to have done it, no matter what any one thinks, but Mr Owen may manage to make it look like it. I’m sure he’ll do his best,” and, jaunty as was his tone, he had become a little pale.