Dark is the Clue: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Dominion over palm and pine? Yes,” Bobby answered. “Dominion over life and liberty? That’s easy. Dominion over wagging tongues? That’s different. What are they saying?”

  “You don’t suppose they say it to me, do you?” Sir Charles snapped. “It’s got round that you came down here about that big P.O. robbery there was years ago. Kimms seems to think he’s on something to do with it. The stuff they got away with buried near here, perhaps. Oodles of it, apparently, all cash. Well, it does happen I made a big killing on the Stock Exchange about the same time. Nothing wrong in that, is there?”

  “Matter for congratulation,” Bobby assured him. “Every City man’s favourite dream. I am sure you could easily satisfy Mr Kimms if you cared to. He would certainly appreciate it.”

  “I thought you might help if I put all my cards on the table,” Sir Charles said moodily. “It’s Wynne started it all. Done me down two or three times already—that Atropos statue and the lease trick—and now fixing it so I should be the one to find that poor devil of a woman’s body. I wouldn’t put it past him to have done it himself. God knows why.”

  “I wouldn’t say that to anyone else,” Bobby remarked. “Might lead to serious trouble. I think I’ve told you so before.”

  “Oh, I know, I know,” growled Sir Charles. “But I’ll swear he knew. He always knows. Sits there, all eyes and ears, and hardly ever speaks, but always ready to drop in a word to turn things the way he wants. I can’t stand the fellow. How the devil he managed to have a girl like Sylvia, I don’t know. Even Joey calls her a sight for sore eyes, skipping along the way she does, as if no one ever had a care in the world. And Joey hasn’t much use for other girls—too competitive, I suppose. So I gave her a drink or two, and then she was happy, too, and so was I,” and he finished with a grin that made Bobby feel he would rather like to push it down his throat.

  “Did it last?” Bobby asked.

  “Our being happy?” Sir Charles asked in his turn. “Well, it never does, does it?”

  Ignoring this question, to which he felt many replies could be made, all different, Bobby went on:

  “Mr Wynne tells me he very seldom uses that copse path. Damp and overgrown in places. It seems, though, that Miss Wynne saw a light there the night before the murder. None on the murder night itself. Mr Wynne told me that at the time he thought it might have been you on the look-out for trespassers.”

  “Just what he would say,” Sir Charles grumbled. “A word in season, that’s him, and next thing you know every one has heard it and no one knows who started it. No need to ask how he got his money. Buying agent, he says. Doing people down more likely, same as he did me.”

  “Isn’t there some story of the old monks having buried the monastery treasure in the copse?” Bobby asked. “People seem to have started looking for it again recently—or else for the pound-notes from the P.O. robbery, if that’s got about, too. Trespassing, of course, and very annoying.”

  “Well, I have been keeping an eye on the place,” Sir Charles admitted. “But not at night. Break your neck as likely as not, tripping over roots and brambles, or getting your eyes scratched out. All tommy-rot about the monastery treasure, though if it is there, it’s mine. Treasure trove. If anyone’s really looking for it, you can bet your last potato it’s Wynne himself, trying to do me down again.”

  “Well, we should very much like to know who was showing a light there the night before the murder, and why,” Bobby said. “I’m accepting it as true. I don’t feel if Mr Wynne had invented the story he would have said it was Miss Sylvia saw it. She would always tell the truth, and if she didn’t anyone could tell at once.”

  “Wouldn’t know how to lie even if she wanted to,” Sir Charles agreed grudgingly, resentfully almost, as if unwilling to make any such admission in which he sensed there lurked somewhere a rebuke to others.

  It was, Bobby felt, an unconscious tribute to the kind of aura of a joyous and completely integrated integrity which seemed to accompany Sylvia wherever she went. He found himself wondering, a little uneasily, how life would deal in days to come with one who seemed to find in it only sunny hours. He noticed that Sir Charles was looking at him with some curiosity—uneasiness, too, perhaps—as if wondering for his part what had plunged Bobby so deep in thought. He got to his feet to go, and Sir Charles’s relief was almost palpable.

  For many reasons, most of them accumulating on his desk at the Yard, Bobby was anxious to get back to town, but he decided, he must first discuss with Kimms the implications of Maxton’s reported visit to France. The comment made by Kimms, now returned from his conference, was characteristic. It consisted of the one word:

  “Awkward.”

  “Very,” agreed Bobby. “Nothing like enough to apply for an extradition order on. We could ask to be kept informed if anything is heard of Maxton and if he registers anywhere in his own name. But nothing much else, for the time anyhow.”

  “No,” said Kimms. “That boat meeting. Put-up job?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby agreed again. “That’s fairly clear. Prefabricated, as the business people say. But why and who by? The Joey girl? Her postscript shows she was trying to use Maxton as a prod to Stuart. But was Maxton using her to let us know he was out of our reach? If he was, why? Just cocking a snook at us? That would mean he is the murderer? Or would it?”

  To this question, when Bobby paused to let the other reply, Kimms returned his favourite observation, only more drawn-out than usual.

  “Um-m-m-m,” he said.

  Bobby nodded in full agreement. The two men sat and looked at each other. Then Bobby said:

  “I had quite a long chat with Stuart, trying to weigh him up.”

  “Get anywhere?” Kimms asked.

  CHAPTER XVII

  FIVE FOR CHOICE

  IT WAS A question Bobby found difficult to answer, so he lapsed into a silence as complete as that in which Kimms sat ruminating. Indeed, it was Kimms who spoke first. He said:

  “Chap on the run? The one we want?”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “As a rule, but not always. Fear, not guilt, perhaps. But there are other things against him. Woman answering dead woman’s description reported seen by Wynne near Maxton’s cottage. Faint flavour of blackmail about it, too.”

  “Confirmatory evidence,” Kimms said. “Strange woman seen by others making regular monthly calls, but descriptions differ.”

  “Descriptions always do,” Bobby remarked. “Nothing except Wynne’s story to suggest connection with Mrs Field. She certainly had more money than she got at the ‘Bell and Boy’. That would hardly have paid the rent of her Oxton Court flat. And why her sort of double life, and what for? And what was her extra source of income?”

  “Maxton?” Kimms suggested.

  “There’s nothing to suggest that he had any money beyond what he earned as a writer,” Bobby objected. “And that wouldn’t be much. It’s only the very tip-top ones who make money, and they don’t always. Still, we know nothing about his background. Have to make inquiries. His friendship with Miss Wynne was no secret, apparently, and Mrs Field may have known something to put a stopper on his hopes in that direction.”

  “Wife?” suggested Kimms.

  “Eh? Whose? Maxton’s?” Bobby asked, rather taken aback by this flight of the imagination. “Well, I suppose youngsters do make fools of themselves with barmaids at times, but that does not seem to explain either her double life or where the money for it came from. Why, too, did she insist on keeping that tin of loganberries in plain view on a shelf behind the bar at the ‘Bell and Boy’, and another such tin in her flat, and then meet her death by a loganberry bush? There must,” said Bobby, with a kind of angry exasperation, “be some meaning to it all, if only we could hit on it.”

  “Loose ends,” said Kimms. “The whole case. Got to tie ’em up.”

  “Got to make ’em meet first,” Bobby retorted. “I don’t know that I see young Maxton as a killer.”

  “All may be,” Ki
mms said. “You, me—anyone.”

  “That tin of loganberries,” Bobby repeated. “I can’t help thinking that in it there lies the key to it all. And Sylvia Wynne, does she come in somehow?”

  “No,” said Kimms firmly.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Bobby said. “My feeling is that if she wasn’t what she is, this might never have happened. I don’t know. Wynne worries me. There’s that sort of imperceptible smile of his, as if he knew it all but wasn’t telling, and it amused him. You’ve noticed it?”

  “No,” said Kimms, even more firmly than before.

  “He’s a man so secret you feel he must have something to hide,” Bobby continued. “Not much to take into court, I grant you.” Kimms grunted acquiescence—emphatic acquiescence. “And if Stuart is right—as I think he may be—in believing that Wynne knew the position of the dead body—well, how did he know?”

  “If,” said Kimms. “Ifs aren’t evidence.”

  “No,” agreed Bobby. “But ‘ifs’ do at times turn into pots and pans for tinkers and detectives, too. Stuart himself became suddenly rich soon after the first big P.O. robbery. He has his explanation pat, but I can see the shadow of an ‘if’ there, too. My reading of his character is that he might kill in rage or fear, while Wynne, I think, would kill very quietly, but only in cold blood—only if he had to, all risks calculated. Then in the background Mr Dowie, and was the treasure he was looking for not the legendary one the old monks are supposed to have buried, but the cache of pound-notes from the P.O. van?”

  “Yes,” said Kimms.

  “There you are, then,” Bobby said; and at the ‘there,’ he looked rather moodily, with very little idea in his mind of where to go from this ‘there’. “About the most puzzling case we’ve had to do with since those Old People’s Home murders. Thank goodness, I had nothing to do with that. It’s almost certainly one of those five, though.”

  “Which?” said Kimms.

  “All lined up for you to make your choice,” Bobby told him, scowling at the five as he spoke, as if they were actually ranged before him in their own persons. “Wynne; and why is he so secret, so knowing, with that tiny smile you never see till it has gone?”

  “Gone?” repeated Kimms, and meant how can you when it’s gone, but did not say so.

  “Stuart, and why so suddenly rich?” Bobby went on.

  “It happens,” said Kimms, and meant ‘but never to me’.

  “Maxton,” continued Bobby; “and if he’s innocent, why in France?”

  “Ah,” said Kimms, and meant ‘he’s my man’.

  “Mr Dowie,” Bobby continued; “and what was he after with his treasure-hunting gadget?”

  “U-m-m-m,” said Kimms, and meant he didn’t think Dowie was worth bothering about.

  “Not forgetting,” Bobby concluded, “Jolly Rogers, and how much did the Milkman tell him in gaol? Oh, and Miss Wynne. A delightful little person in herself and a pleasure to watch, like a dawn in May; but has she been a kind of catalyst to change the way things had to happen. And there’s a very nice little set-up I’m leaving you to handle.”

  “Thanks,” said Kimms, and meant the opposite.

  “Oh, we’ll do our share,” Bobby promised him. “I’ll try to pep up our inquiries at our end, and if we manage to dig up anything, we’ll call you pronto.”

  “Thanks,” said Kimms, but in a slightly different tone of voice.

  “Well, I must be off,” Bobby said; and then, as he got to his feet there came a knock at the door and Sergeant Jenkins appeared.

  “Sir Charles on the line,” he announced. “Says suspicious-looking stranger found in copse near scene of murder. Is detaining same and now awaiting your arrival to take over. Requests immediate action.”

  “O.K.,” said Kimms. “Tell him so. Coming?” he asked Bobby, who nodded assent, and as he had left his car just outside the inn entrance, in this they drove to the Abbey, only to be greeted with the disappointing news that the captive had made his escape.

  “I had him safe,” Sir Charles explained. “By his arm—you can’t wriggle out of your arm. He was quiet as a lamb. He knew he had better. Took me off my guard, a twist and a wriggle and he was off like a shot and out by the garden door where I had brought him in. Too quick he was for me, and not a man around to help; only the maids all squawking their heads off.”

  “Middle-aged chap,” Bobby said. “About five feet four. Square head. Square, heavy build. Grey, bloodshot eyes; thin sharp features; long nose; two front teeth missing; prominent ears. Wearing dirty raincoat and soft hat over eyes. Is that right?”

  “How the devil did you know?” demanded Sir Charles, opening wide his mouth.

  “I suspected it might be a man recently released from prison,” Bobby explained, though he hated having to give explanations that took away all glamour from any little attempt at swanking he might be tempted to make. “Bad record,” he went on, as he watched Sir Charles’s mouth close again. “The Old Dower House was entered earlier, though no one was seen. Mr Kimms and I both thought it was probably the same man.”

  “Ah,” said Kimms, who hadn’t thought anything of the kind, but was now deciding that anyhow he soon would have. “’Phone?” he asked, and without waiting for assent went off to use it where he had seen it lying on a table in the hall.

  “Well, what did the fellow want, if he was at Wynne’s place as well?” demanded Sir Charles, without noticing this. “Why Wynne, too?”

  “That’s what we should like to know,” Bobby said. “If you had been able to hold him, we might have got something out of him. We may still, if we can bring him in. That’s what Mr Kimms is trying to arrange now. He’ll probably go underground, though, and it may be days before we can pick him up. Could you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “Unders—he does odd jobs here, makes himself generally useful, or says he does—was going home when he noticed this fellow hanging about by the copse path. I had warned him to let me know at once if he saw anything suspicious, so he came back and told me, and I went out to see for myself. Well, there this fellow was, poking about just where it happened. I collared him. He tried to put up a fight, but that game didn’t last long, and I took him along here to wait for you. Where I slipped up, though. Took me off my guard, he did, and off like hell.”

  “Too bad,” Bobby said.

  “May get him yet,” said Kimms, who by now had returned from the ’phone.

  “Looks to me as if he might be the man you want,” Sir Charles said. “If you know him, you ought to be able to get him all right.”

  “Get him, question him, let him go,” said Kimms moodily. “That’s all.”

  “Nothing much to hold him on,” Bobby agreed. “Not yet. But he might talk.”

  Sir Charles expressed a strong opinion that there was plenty to hold him on. Bobby said the thing was to get a magistrate to think so. Kimms expressed his appreciation of all Sir Charles had done. Outside, driving away in their car, Bobby said:

  “It must have been Jolly Rogers Stuart collared; but why did he let him go again?”

  “Think he did?” Kimms asked.

  “That’s the idea I got,” Bobby said. “Stuart’s the sort of man to stick to what he’s got. There’s someone signalling us,” he added, as he stopped the car.

  “Him,” said Kimms.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  ALIBI

  FROM THE DARKNESS now swiftly gathering in the shadows by the wayside there emerged a hesitating figure—that of Jolly Rogers—and approached the car.

  “Ah, you,” Bobby said. “Jump in.”

  “I dunno as—” began Jolly; but Bobby cut him short, repeating an invitation that sounded very much like a command, and one Jolly obeyed, though very much in the manner of the animal-trainer who places his head in the lion’s mouth without being too sure either of the lion’s temper or his own courage. “What’s the big bloke up there been saying?” he asked somewhat anxiously, as he settled himself in the back of the car.

>   Bobby, driving on, made no reply. The distance to the Over All Arms was not great, and soon they were there. They all three alighted, and Jolly, looking less and less every minute like his nickname, was ushered within.

  “I could do with a drink,” he said as they entered.

  Bobby gave the expected order, and as soon as they were in the room where Kimms had established himself, supplemented it with a cigarette and said:

  “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “What for, guv’nor?” Jolly asked. “You’ve nothing against me. Has the big bloke—”

  “He caught you in the copse, didn’t he?” Bobby interrupted. “What were you doing there?”

  “Just having a dekko. Spot marked with an X,” retorted Jolly, his natural confidence fast returning under the combined influence of beer and cigarette. “That big bloke, he’s a wrong ’un himself, for all his coming the swell the way he does.”

  “Is that why he let you go?” Bobby asked, careful to show no surprise at this statement and relieved to notice that Kimms, too, had received it with the same equanimity—but, then, Bobby had long ago realized that it took much to disturb Kimms.

  “In a manner of speaking, it was,” Jolly admitted. “Did he let on? Took him all in a heap like when he saw I knew, but I didn’t wait to talk it over. Saw my chance and took it, and I heard him shouting away behind me, but I didn’t hear him running any. I hung around a bit, and I saw you coming, so I reckoned I might as well ask what sort of a yarn he had been pitching.”

  “Never mind that just now,” Bobby said. “Why do you call him a wrong ’un?”

  “Well, I don’t know as I did ought to say,” Jolly answered, looking even more cunning than usual. “Might be putting you off, and you would be saying I done it of purpose.”

  “This is a murder inquiry,” Bobby reminded him sternly. “We know that before his death Charley Cream talked to you about the first big P.O. van robbery, and we know that after your release you boasted he had given you information about where some at least of the stolen money was still hidden.”