Dark is the Clue: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Every one of the four rooms—the cottage had the usual layout, two rooms downstairs, kitchen and scullery, two bedrooms upstairs, one of them now converted into a bathroom—had been thoroughly and completely ransacked. Tables and chairs had been overthrown, drawers and cupboards emptied, the divan bed turned upside down, books and papers tossed aside, clothing—not much of it—thrown into a heap. Even the bathroom had not been spared; and later it was noticed that the rain-water tank from which it was supplied had been emptied to make sure there was nothing there. Yet Bobby thought that beneath all this he could still distinguish a former care and well-ordered tidiness. Crockery, much of it broken, was clean. Washing up had evidently been done before the cottage was left. The cleaning rags had been washed out, the cooking utensils properly cared for, the linoleums covering the floors well kept. And these small points Bobby noticed with interest and attention, since it was his belief that such details threw much light on character, and character much light on the problems presented to him.

  There was something else that he remembered. Those who lead irregular and lawless lives generally, almost invariably, show a comparable disregard for order in their daily existence. Not only do they dislike and shirk the discipline of society, but also they deny that imposed upon us by the routine of daily life. Some few there are to whom this does not apply, some whose daily life seems as regular and well ordered as that of any city clerk, and these are the most formidable and dangerous of their kind.

  “Someone must be wanting to find something pretty badly,” Bobby said suddenly, leaving these abstract considerations for the time.

  “Yes,” said Kimms. “Only what?” he asked and clearly expected no reply.

  The sergeant, who was also the local finger-print expert and who had been busy with his powder and his brushes and the rest of it, came up and said:

  “There’s some dabs I’ve found look to me uncommon like those I got from Mr Dowie’s room at the Over All Arms. Of course I can’t be sure till I’ve tested them.”

  “Queer bloke, Dowie,” said Kimms. “Suspicious.”

  “Battledore and shuttlecock,” said Bobby. “Clues tossed to and fro from one to t’other.”

  “No straight line,” Kimms said. “If only—” And he lost himself in a vision of how easily and quickly a solution would be arrived at if only such straight line would kindly present itself.

  As there seemed nothing more that could be done at the cottage for the present, the sergeant and constable were left in charge to clear up as far as that was possible, and Bobby and Kimms began to walk back to where they had left their car. It was, or would have been if their thoughts had been less busily engaged, a pleasant way they thus followed along this winding woodland path through trees bright with their autumn tints, and then presently they caught sight of someone approaching. A good way distant still, but Kimms had had a momentary glimpse through an opening in the trees, giving him a clear view.

  “Miss Wynne,” he said. “To meet Maxton?”

  “He’s not there and hasn’t been for some time,” Bobby said. “More likely she’s heard about us, or been told I’m here again, and wants to know why.”

  “Her and him,” Kimms said. “Everyone knows.”

  “Mr Wynne doesn’t altogether approve, does he?” Bobby asked.

  “He won’t stand out,” Kimms said. “She’s all the world to him and Heaven, too.”

  “A cold, reserved man,” Bobby said. “But not to her?”

  “No,” said Kimms.

  They had halted as they talked, and Sylvia was near now, coming with her quick, light, dancing step, and all about her lay the varying rays the sun sent down through the overshadowing foliage of the trees. A veritable incarnation of the spirit of youth and joy she seemed as she came towards them like a morning in May, and yet to Bobby came the thought that the first beginning of a hint of approaching griefs was with her, like a following shadow of which she was neither quite aware nor wholly ignorant. She had seen them now where they waited. For a moment she stood still, and it seemed as if her glance went past them to see if any other was in sight. Then she came on, her step quicker and her clear bright eyes with an odd little look of determination in them, as much as to say: Yes, you’re two big men, but I’m not a bit afraid of you.

  “I thought I might meet you,” she said, now with a touch of rebuke in her voice. “People are saying such things, I had to know.”

  “What things?” Bobby asked.

  “Nothing’s happened to Mr Maxton, has it?” she asked in return, without answering him.

  “Not that we know of,” Bobby told her. “Why? Is that what’s being said?”

  “Yes. Only I knew it couldn’t be true, but I had to be sure,” she replied. “I expect it was just you being here again, and then what happened to that poor woman is so awfully upsetting, isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed,” agreed Bobby, “and so is Mr Maxton’s going away without warning. He didn’t say anything to you, did he?”

  “No. Why should he?” she retorted with just the faintest touch of sharpness in her voice.

  “What were people saying that was so silly?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, it was just stupid,” she answered, and when Bobby still waited, pressing for an answer as it were, silently demanding one, she added: “It was Mrs Griggs from the village; she said he had been found dead where he lives, and of course I knew it wasn’t true.”

  “No, it isn’t true,” Bobby said. “His cottage has been entered in his absence and searched, and we would like to know why. That’s all.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  PERTURBED MR WYNNE

  AS PERHAPS HAD not been far from Bobby’s intention, for he knew that a touch of temper loosens the tongue as effectively as wine is said to do, there was unusual asperity in Sylvia’s voice as she retorted:

  “Well, that’s horrible, isn’t it? Somebody pawing all your things all over. I do hope you find out who it was.”

  “Do you remember ever hearing Mr Maxton say anything about a Mr Dowie?” Bobby asked. “He’s been staying at the Over All Arms.”

  “The man they said was trying to find the old monastery church plate?” she asked in return. “Daddy says it’s all rubbish. I don’t think Mr Maxton ever said anything about him—I don’t remember if he did. Why? You don’t think it was him, do you?”

  “Oh, no,” Bobby said. Now they were all three walking back to the road. “But we have reason to believe that Mr Dowie visited Mr Maxton. They left here about the same time, so possibly they left together.”

  “I shouldn’t think that at all likely,” Sylvia said, and she was beginning to look a little worried. “I’m sure they weren’t friends. Martin—Mr Maxton would have said something.”

  “Mr Wynne,” Bobby went on, “mentioned that you saw a light in the copse behind your home late one night shortly before the murder. Do you think it could have been Mr Dowie busy with his treasure-hunting?”

  She shook her head without answering in words. But her cheeks showed a slightly heightened colour, and for Bobby, watching her closely, that was enough.

  “Could it have been Mr Maxton?” he asked. That tell-tale colour deepened, but she was still silent. “I think it was, wasn’t it?” he asked again.

  “He’s most awfully silly,” she said; and Bobby, taking this for an admission, pressed her no further.

  They had reached the road by now. Sylvia had left her bicycle there, leaning against a tree, near the police car. She hurried to it. Kimms called an offer to take her and the bicycle back to the Old Dower House. She did not seem to hear. At any rate, she did not answer. She mounted and rode away as quickly as she could, and the two men watched her in silence till a turn in the road hid her from sight.

  “Frightened?” Kimms said. “Why? That light she saw? Before the murder, though.”

  “Maxton may have been back in the copse but shown no light,” Bobby said.

  “Um-m-m,” said Kimms. “Well, now then. Search.
Buried pound-notes or monk’s hidden treasure? Two lots of ’em on the job. Clashing? As they would. Is that it? Eh?”

  “Might be,” Bobby agreed. “Worth keeping in mind, but no more than a possibility. One strand making up the knot we have to unravel, but all pure theory at present. No solid foundation of fact to build on, and what we want is facts first of all. Theory from facts, not facts from theory.”

  “Spade found,” Kimms said. “Not traced. Fact.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” Bobby agreed, and thought to himself, but did not say, that it was a pity Kimms had been so prompt to start digging under and around the loganberry bush at the scene of the murder. A pity, too, he himself had not thought to warn Kimms that many archaeologists—as he knew, but Kimms perhaps did not—maintain that where a hole has once been dug the resultant disturbance of the soil can always be recognized, even though centuries have passed. “Any suggestion of anything being buried would naturally mean providing a spade,” he added.

  “Might have been for a grave,” Kimms said. “No telling. Eh?”

  “Oh, well, yes,” Bobby said, a little startled by this suggestion and not much liking it.

  They had been standing by the car as they talked, or rather as Bobby talked and Kimms made his brief comments. Now they took their places in the car and drove off, soon passing Sylvia, who had stopped to chat to a passing woman from the village and who kept her back resolutely turned to them as they went by. Soon they were at the Old Dower House, and Bobby suggested it would be a good opportunity for a chat with Mr Wynne, still so much, it seemed, in the forefront of all these happenings. But Kimms had an appointment to meet his Chief Constable at the home of the chairman of the Joint Committee, and had no idea of offending two such dignitaries by keeping them waiting for the sake of what he privately called a desultory chat with Mr Wynne.

  “Never get anything out of him,” he said by way of explanation or excuse. “Misses nothing. Says nothing. Not quite human.”

  With this diagnosis, unusually full for Kimms, Bobby was in complete agreement. And he was more than willing to make his visit unaccompanied. It was his experience that people talked much more freely to one than to two. Naturally, when a formal statement had to be taken, a companion was necessary—at the mouth of two witnesses shall it be established.

  So, alighting here and waving farewell to Kimms, he walked briskly up the rhododendron-lined avenue to the house, where in answer to his summons, it was Wynne himself who came quickly to the door and who, seeing who it was, there stood in silence, not answering Bobby’s greeting, for once his habitual calm entirely deserting him.

  “Have you . . . is anything . . . ?” he asked at last, stammering a little. “Sylvia isn’t here,” he said.

  “Why, what’s happened?” Bobby asked quickly, surprised in his turn.

  “Someone was in the house when I got back,” Wynne said. “I’ve been in town all day. I think the telephone wire must have been cut. I couldn’t get through. Sylvia isn’t here,” he repeated.

  “I saw her a few minutes ago,” Bobby said. “She was up the road not far away. She was talking to someone.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, then,” Wynne said. He put his hand up to his face; and it was for all the world as if he were replacing the mask behind which he habitually hid himself but that for the moment had slipped aside in his fear that ill might have come to Sylvia. Even that brief split second of time had been enough, though, for Bobby to glimpse the almost terrifying passion of fear and anger that had raged within him at the mere suspicion. Now it was gone, now he knew that she was safe, and in his ordinary level, somewhat monotonous tone he went on apologetically, “Stupid of me, but for the moment I half thought—” He broke off his sentence. He resumed: “Someone has been in my study. The door was locked.”

  “Did you see anyone?” Bobby asked.

  “No. The front door was open when I got back. I thought Sylvia must be somewhere about, and I sounded the gong to let her know. There was a sort of scuffling at the back of the house. I went to see what it was, and of course when I found the study door locked I knew something was wrong. I ran round through the kitchen. The study windows were open, but no one was there. They must have made a quick get-away into the copse at the back. I tried to ’phone, but couldn’t, and then I heard your knock.” Now as he talked he began to lead the way through the hall where the Atropos presided and on to the study Bobby had seen before. “I don’t like it,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Do you know how they got in?” Bobby asked.

  “No; just walked in, perhaps,” Wynne answered. “It wouldn’t be the first time Sylvia has run out and left the door open. Goes to the shed for her bicycle and forgets to come back to shut the door. She’s a careless child. I must give her a good scolding,” he added with a fond smile that hardly promised a scolding of any great severity, his voice indeed now tinged with that warmth—that glow, so to speak—which came so strangely into it whenever he made reference to his daughter. “It’s all just as it was,” he added as they entered the study.

  “Nothing missing?” Bobby asked, glancing round the room, where at first sight no sign of disturbance showed.

  “They’ve been at my desk,” Wynne said; and when Bobby made a step forward he could see that one drawer was wide open and that another had been pulled out and emptied on the floor. Wynne opened a third drawer. “There’s some money here—or was,” he said. “No, they’ve not found it. About a hundred pounds in pound notes, but it’s not been touched. Nothing much to be done, is there? I suppose it is hardly a criminal offence to walk into a house by the front door and then out again without taking anything?”

  “No,” Bobby agreed. “No, but there may be a tie-up. I think that is more than likely. With the murder. I can’t imagine how.”

  “Nor can I,” Wynne said in his impassive way. “Disturbing and annoying. I don’t pretend to like it. I was alarmed. I thought a thief might have got in and that Sylvia had interrupted him and been attacked. I half expected to find her knocked out and pushed into some cupboard out of the way. Stupid, no doubt. Fortunately she can’t have been in.”

  “Something of the same sort has been happening elsewhere,” Bobby commented. “Mr Maxton’s cottage has been entered and thoroughly ransacked. He is still away, so whoever it was had plenty of time and no risk of being interrupted. No telling if anything is missing till we can get in touch with Maxton.”

  “Maxton’s place, too,” Wynne repeated incredulously. “But that’s mere lunacy. Lunacy,” he repeated and went on: “I did just wonder for a moment if it could have been Maxton here. Trying to get to see Sylvia without my knowing. I don’t understand it,” he repeated, and he looked really worried, that customary, aloof, untroubled demeanour of his deserting him for the moment, as it was so apt to do whenever Sylvia’s name was mentioned.

  “In London, too,” Bobby continued. “We believe we have identified the murdered woman with a Mrs Meadows, reported missing. The flat she occupied has also been entered and most thoroughly searched. No telling if anything was taken, but nothing whatever found to throw any light on her personality or her past. That suggests, of course, that it was the murderer himself, and that his aim was to remove everything of the sort.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” Wynne agreed. “But surely not here, or at Maxton’s place. A murderer would never risk returning, would he? I’m sure I shouldn’t. I should keep as far away as long as possible.”

  “You are sure no valuables have been taken, no papers of any sort?” Bobby asked again.

  “I’m pretty certain none at all,” Wynne assured him. “Anyhow, my wall safe’s not been disturbed. Behind that picture,” he said, indicating one hanging on the wall near the french window. “I keep anything important either there or at the bank. Not that there’s anything much in it at the moment.” He showed a brown-paper parcel, lying on a chair near. “I’ve paid four thousand—guineas—for that this afternoon,” he said. Bobby regarded the brown-p
aper parcel with a respect seldom accorded to brown-paper parcels. “That’s what I’ve been in town for,” Wynne resumed. “Stamps. Unless I’m badly mistaken I can keep those I want and sell off the rest by degrees to show a good profit. The advantage of paying cash down. Most people can’t resist a good fat roll of crisp, new bank-notes. If the man I bought from—it was his father’s collection, I knew him slightly—had employed an expert to sort it out and then sold separately, he could have got two or three times what I gave him. But it would have taken a year or more and waiting your chance—and taking it. When I began to cover the table with bundles of a hundred one-pound notes, more than he could resist.”

  “Very interesting,” Bobby said, and indeed found it even more so than his tone suggested.

  He looked vaguely round the room, expecting to see some signs of Mr Wynne’s own collection: whole rows of stamp-albums, perhaps. Mr Wynne noticed that wandering eye.

  “Oh, I keep mine upstairs,” he explained. “Too bulky for here.” He indicated the brown-paper parcel again. “Only the cream of the collection,” he explained. “The rest is coming later.”

  “I don’t think,” Bobby said, “I had realized stamp collections could be so valuable, but I daresay they make a good investment.”

  “None better,” Mr Wynne assured him. “Stocks and shares, outside your control. Slumps, take-over bids, other people’s skill and knowledge—all kinds of unpredictable factors. With stamps you depend on yourself alone. No income tax either. Capital gains. I estimate my collection upstairs is worth a hundred per cent more than it cost me, and that should make a very substantial addition to what there’ll be for Sylvia when I’ve gone.” And, with these last words, there came again into his voice that warmth, that kind of inner glow, which seemed always to be there when he spoke of his daughter.