The Attending Truth: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Do you really think,” Mrs Holcombe asked, and her voice was none too steady, “that they would actually have left the child to die like that?”

  “Is there much doubt?” Bobby asked gravely. “She had made it clear she knew too much and that she meant to speak. They were already guilty of one murder. Summerson. Because he knew too much. Like Annie. When Miss Livia told her the dead man was her father, Annie began to understand and her suspicions to become certainties. With that odd, mingled insight and innocence of hers she went off to ask them. I have her statement here. She says: ‘I told Mrs Jones what I was thinking. She asked what I was going to do. I said I must tell. I couldn’t help not. She began to laugh, and she said I could begin by telling Mr Owen because he was there behind the shop and they had been working with him all the time. So of course I went to see.’” Here Bobby broke off for a moment to say: “Notice the ‘of course’? Like her. Even then she couldn’t really bring herself quite to believe.” He resumed reading: “‘She went first, and I followed. She had been cutting bacon. She brought the knife with her. I hadn’t noticed. When we got behind she shut the door, and she put the bacon-knife against my throat. She said she would cut it unless I did what she said and I was to go down the cellar steps. So I had to. She made me go before her right to the end of the cellars, where they had been building a kind of recess. There were small boxes in it. She told me to go in the recess and hand her out the boxes, and I did. There was a wall across the opening to the recess about three feet high. I had to climb over it to get in. After I had given her the boxes I tried to climb out again, but Mrs Jones made me go back and told me to wait there. Mr Jones had come by then. They talked together for a little, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then they began to build up the little wall across the opening. I asked them what they were doing that for, but they wouldn’t say. I asked them to let me out first, but they never spoke. They just went on building and building till it was finished, and I knew they meant it for always, and I thought most likely no one would ever know what had happened. I expect mother would have worried most awfully, not knowing. So I said my prayers and waited, and then Mr Owen came.’”

  “Just as well you were around,” the colonel said gruffly. “All my apologies. Didn’t think much of you at first. Didn’t like being suspected myself. Eat all the humble pie you like to hand out now. All the same, don’t you owe me a bit of an apology, too? I’ve had a hell of a time, wondering about the dog howling. Curious incident! I thought you meant that proved it was me, and I didn’t like the idea of going to trial. And all the time you meant it showed it wasn’t.”

  “Oh, well,” Bobby explained, but not without a certain twinge of conscience, “I did rather think you might see that for yourself. The fact is, I felt it so important to keep the Jones couple from having any idea that I had the least suspicion of them, that I did try to make it seem I suspected every one else. In our job everything has to be cast iron before we make a move, and if we make it too soon, vital evidence may go. That’s what I’ve been afraid of all the time.”

  “What vital evidence?” the colonel asked. “What made you suspect them, anyhow?”

  “Well, I suspected them before I had been in Pending Dale more than an hour or two. It was the way the fire-irons in their best parlour were polished.”

  The colonel stared, his mouth wide open. Mrs Holcombe looked as utterly bewildered. As soon as his blank amazement permitted, the colonel said:

  “What on earth...?”

  But he could get no further, and Bobby completed his sentence for him.

  “You mean,” Bobby said, “what had the extra polish given to a set of heavy old-fashioned fire-irons dating from the days when you had big fires and poked ’em to make them burn, got to do with proving Jones’s guilt? Well, it was such a contrast. The rest of the room had rather a neglected look—a lick and a brush and a promise air about it. The brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece didn’t look as if they had had a real polish for months. But those fire-irons shone the way to make a sergeant-major in the Guards swoon with admiration. Well, there’s a reason for everything, and I started wondering what the reason was for those fire-irons getting such a super-polish, and it struck me it would be a good way of getting rid of bloodstains or hairs or finger-prints, for that matter. I don’t mean I thought all that at the time. It just grew into my mind, so to say. I nearly gave myself away twice over. Twice over I said there were four heavy, blunt instruments that could have been used, and all four of them more or less connected with what had happened.”

  “My walking-stick was one, wasn’t it?” the colonel said.

  “The other two,” Bobby went on, “were the old wrench traced to the Vicar and Harry Holcombe, and Miss Livia’s mallet, traced to her and to Mars. And twice over it was pointed out that was only three. Luckily no one made any deduction.”

  “I don’t see how any one could,” Mrs Holcombe commented, subconsciously defending herself, since she remembered that she herself had failed to notice that slight discrepancy.

  “Mr Owen did,” Yeo-Young reminded her. “That poker—spotting what it meant. Good show,” and now there was respect and even something like admiration in his voice.

  “A strange thing about that,” Bobby said. “If I had only known it, the poker does provide complete proof of Jones’s guilt. Which will make it unnecessary for anything to be said about what they tried to do to Annie. She was asking about that. Most frightfully scared at the idea of all the fuss and publicity there would be if it came out. Just what the popular papers would love to get hold of. Reporters on the doorstep all day long, offering any amount of money for an exclusive on ‘How it Feels to be Walled Up’. That sort of thing. Hollywood after her, too, very likely. Now she knows nothing need be said, she’s breathing again. I’m half inclined to believe she would rather have been left there than have to face the publicity.”

  “Give me the publicity rather than—that,” Yeo-Young said with fervour. “But what proof do you mean? Couldn’t Mrs Jones simply say she was starting to give the room a thorough clean-up, and she merely happened to begin with the fire-irons?”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “Another reason I had for being cautious in my approach till I had more evidence. But now there’s a report in from the pathologist at the Westshire Laboratories. It says that in the shoulder of the poker they’ve found microscopic specks of human blood all the careful polishing in the world would never have got rid of.”

  A STUDY IN THE OBVIOUS

  Originally published in the Evening Standard, August 1936.

  Being a record of the events which led to Bobby Owen, B.A., (Oxon), seeking admission to the ranks of the Metropolitan Police.

  Bobby Owen was in a somewhat depressed mood as he walked slowly through London streets.

  He had just left Oxford, and almost simultaneously the slump had burst upon the country with equal unexpectedness and vigor. True, he had his degree, but to-day even Honours men seemed counted as of small worth, though to Bobby himself, his tutor, saying farewell, had been most complimentary.

  “You know, Owen,” he had said thoughtfully, “I never once thought you would get through; it’s a most pleasant surprise.”

  For the man who takes a double first causes no astonishment, he has long since been marked down, he enters the examination room as a conqueror registering his triumph, the congratulations he receives are almost formal, he accepts them as probably Mr. Bradman accepts congratulations on the double or treble century he scores in a Test match. It is merely that the expected had happened. But that Bobby should have received his pass degree seemed to the tutor to border upon the miraculous.

  “It is not, Owen,” the tutor went on musingly, “that you are entirely devoid of intelligence. I have noticed certain qualities in you. You possess a curious faculty for—er—what is called, I believe, having your wits about you.” The tutor looked slightly envious, for his own wits were often far, far away—was there not told of him
the wicked story that, departing once on a lecturing tour, he had given his wife sixpence and kissed the porter good-bye? “You do not, as is often the case with those of superior gifts, tend to overlook the obvious.” The tutor sighed again, remembering how, a month or so ago, he himself had, when crossing the street, overlooked an extremely obvious motor bus, with the sequel of a week in bed—for himself, not for the motor bus, which hadn’t taken much notice.

  “Have you any plans for the future? The army, for example? I understand from Mr. Lloyd George’s writings that in the army any show of intelligence is in the nature of a bar to promotion.”

  This problem of his future career was indeed the one Bobby was now trying to solve as he wandered rather aimlessly along. He had small taste for business, and anyhow, business apparently had no place for him. The army in days of peace seemed to him a futile thing. For journalism he felt he possessed neither the imagination nor the thirst requisite. The law alarmed him, and for medicine and the church he knew himself unfitted.

  Of course, for him, as for all, even distant, relatives of such well-known if impecunious peers as Lord Hirlpool, his uncle, a career as half commission man on the Stock Exchange was always open. Bobby decided to leave it open. He felt a little sorry that his athletic record, though good, was not good enough to allow him to aspire to the scholastic profession. Rain began to fall as he strolled on, deep in somewhat gloomy thought; a heavy shower, but one that did not seem likely to last long. A tea shop was near, and as Bobby had neither hat, coat, nor umbrella, he entered, seated himself at an empty table, and asked for a cup of coffee.

  It was a quiet hour of the day, and the shop was nearly empty; in fact, one-half of it was in darkness, roped off behind a large “Closed” notice. Few customers were present, only two men in a corner absorbed in a game of draughts, and two ladies, near them absorbed in a discussion on cooks. The waitresses were far off in a group discussing their respective boys; the girl in the cash desk was dozing, and there followed Bobby into the shop another man, who came in rather hurriedly, said something about “dodging the rain,” dumped a small attaché case on a chair by Bobby’s side, put down his hat on the table, said to Bobby, “Keep an eye on these a minute,” and walked on towards the absorbed draughts-players.

  “Well, of all the cheek,” thought Bobby, disturbed for a moment from his dark musings on the future.

  He had not noticed the other much, had not had time, indeed, and now a corner of the “T” shaped room hid him from sight. He just had a vague impression of a tall, upstanding personality, about Bobby’s own age, height and build, wearing, like him, a light grey flannel suit. Bobby noticed, too, that the hat reposing by him on the table had a small feather stuck jauntily in the band, and he wondered vaguely if that perhaps were a sign its owner had been holiday-making in the Tyrol.

  There came into the shop a severe looking elderly woman of the manageress type, brisk and business-like, her resolute chin pushed firmly forward. Outside a policeman was now standing, almost in the doorway as if sheltering from the rain, though that had ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

  The severe looking woman came straight up to Bobby’s table and sat down at it.

  “Well, of all the blessed cheek,” thought Bobby, still more indignantly, for he shared to the full the instinctive British belief that so long as any other restaurant table were free, none had the right to come to his. That was emphatically a thing not done. He even contemplated administering a well-deserved rebuke by removing himself and his coffee to another table, and then he perceived that the woman was regarding him with a fixed attention that, had she been young and pretty, might have been flattering, but that as she was neither seemed both embarrassing and puzzling. He put out his hand to his coffee. As it happened he was wearing on one finger a large and prominent signet ring that had belonged to his father and that had engraved upon it the crest of his family—three fishes, supposed to be porpoises and vaguely believed by family legend to refer to a crusading ancestor’s journey to the Holy Land.

  Apparently to see it more closely, the woman leaned forward, her eyes fixed upon it. Then she gave a satisfied nod, as if now all was clear, got up and left the shop; neither the waitresses absorbed in comparing their boys, the dozing girl in the cash desk, nor the girl behind the counter absorbed in knitting a jumper she meant to win a £1000 prize with, paying her—or, indeed, anything else—the least attention.

  A drowsy shop, indeed, where it seemed always afternoon.

  Bobby looked at his hand, and wondered what there was about it or about his ring that had interested her so much. He slipped off the ring to look at it more closely, with the idea that perhaps there was something about it he had never noticed before, and it slipped through his fingers splash into his coffee.

  “Bother,” said Bobby, and was about to fish it out with the spoon when a voice behind said:—

  “That’s him. I knew him again the very moment I saw him.”

  Bobby looked round. Behind him was the stern looking lady, returned in the company of a big man in a tweed suit.

  “Is this yours?” said the big man, pointing to the attaché case on the chair by Bobby’s side.

  “No,” answered Bobby. “Why?”

  “Lady says it’s hers,” said the big man.

  “Oh,” said Bobby. “A fellow dumped it there just now. Said he would be back in a minute. He went down the shop somewhere.”

  “Don’t see him,” said the big man, looking round a shop obviously empty save for the staff, for themselves, for the two men playing draughts, for the two ladies discussing cooks. He said to the lady with him: “Are you sure?”

  “I can’t swear to the attaché case,” she answered. “Mine was new, and so is that, and it was the same size, but they all look the same. But I can swear to the man. It was his hat I saw first. I knew it because of the little feather in it. I think he saw me and that’s why he came in here to hide. I came in, too, and had a good look to be sure. I knew his hat, and the clothes are the same, and though I only had a glimpse of his face I’m sure it’s him. I noticed specially the signet ring on his finger when he picked up my bag. I saw his hand with the signet ring on it ever so plainly.”

  “What on earth—” began Bobby, quite bewildered.

  “C.I.D.,” said the big man briefly, putting a card on the table. “Lady’s name is Miss Salter. She spoke to a uniform man. Uniform man saw me passing, and called me. Miss Salter had her bag stolen at Euston an hour ago. She identifies you as the man who picked it up from a seat where she left it when she went to get some chocolate from an automatic machine. Her statement is you got away in the crowd before she could do anything. Any objection to my opening the attaché case?”

  “Nothing to do with me,” said Bobby. “I told you—a fellow put it there just now. I suppose he’s the man the lady means. That’s his hat, too.”

  “Oh, yes?” said the C.I.D. man. “Where’s yours?”

  “I wasn’t wearing one,” Bobby answered.

  “Ah,” said the C.I.D. man, and managed to invest that monosyllable with considerable significance.

  It began to dawn upon Bobby that he was in an extremely awkward position.

  The C.I.D. man was looking round the shop. No one was visible except the staff, the two men playing draughts, the two women talking.

  “Where is he, this chap you’re talking about?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Bobby answered. “He walked on down the shop somewhere; I didn’t notice.”

  “Well, he’s not there now, that’s obvious,” said the C.I.D. man.

  He opened the attaché case. Within showed the contents Miss Salter had already described. Then he went away and spoke to the waitresses, the manageress, who had now appeared, and came back to Bobby and said to him:—

  “A uniform man has been at the door all the time. No one has passed him. There’s no other way out except through the service room. No one has been through there or could without being seen. None of
the staff has seen anyone else. Nor have the other customers.”

  “The waitresses were all too busy chattering to notice anything,” Bobby protested uncomfortably.

  He was staring round the room, wondering what could have become of the fellow. Indeed, he could almost have believed himself that he had imagined him but for the concrete evidence of the hat and the attaché case.

  “He’s the man,” said Miss Salter, in her most stern tones. “That’s perfectly obvious. I could swear to him anywhere. I could never forget his face; it is stamped upon my memory.”

  “Coming quietly?” said the C.I.D. man to Bobby.

  Bobby took a drink of coffee. He perceived clearly that he was in need of all those wits, his ability to keep which about him had so aroused his tutor’s admiration. But he was quite sure that the firm-chinned Miss Salter would swear to his identity through thick and thin with fervor, emphasis, and conviction. In her private dictionary he felt instinctively there were, for her personal use, no such words as blunder, error, or mistake. He said:—

  “This is perfectly absurd. I can give you my name and address—lots of people know me. This lady told you she had hardly had a glimpse of whoever took her bag, and now she says his features are stamped on her memory. She mentioned specially that he was wearing a signet ring—”

  He held up his hands as he spoke to show he wore no ring. Miss Salter snorted and said:—

  “You’ve taken it off. It’s in your pocket. That’s obvious.”

  “You can look and see,” said Bobby. “If you find any signet ring on me, I’ll—I’ll eat it.” Privately he thought “drink it” would have been a more appropriate offer as he stirred up the few drops of coffee that covered the bottom of his cup—and the ring.

  “The lady’s identification is absurd,” he went on. “I might as well try to identify her by that spot of blood on her cheek, and say it proves she’s done murder.”