Dark is the Clue: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Shooting off my mouth, guv’nor, that’s all; strike me dead,” protested Jolly.

  “Probably what Charley Cream told you referred to the copse here,” Bobby went on. “Not much help in itself. You couldn’t dig up the whole copse. But you were seen near it shortly before the murder.”

  “I’ve an alibi, guv’nor,” Jolly interposed; and when Bobby seemed but little impressed, for his opinion of alibis was that, like pie-crusts, they were made to be broken, Jolly added earnestly: “A genu-ine, true alibi, guv’nor, what stands up along of so being,” and as he said this he looked a little surprised himself, as though such a thing as an alibi of truth was so rare he could hardly believe it himself. “Straight, guv’nor, I didn’t know nothing, except that the Milkman, all wandering like and out of his mind, kept on about tinned loganberries, and none I asked knew what that meant—only some sort of pass-word. So I come down here to see if anyone knew anything about tinned loganberries, which they didn’t, only thinking me being funny; but then it was in all the papers about her as was done in being found near a loganberry bush, but where it all fits in is more than none can tell, and me with no thought in my mind, only the reward as was offered for recovery of the stuff, and no harm in that, guv., now is there?”

  “None,” Bobby agreed; “no offence in the world if that were all. No, don’t go yet,” he added as Jolly scrambled to his feet. “Got a good deal more to tell us, haven’t you? Let’s look at it another way. There’s the Milkman’s story, and if you can find out a little more you may be able to get hold of the hidden money—if it exists. So you start asking questions, and you hear there’s a barmaid at the ‘Bell and Boy’, who keeps a tin of loganberries in full view of all customers, but no one knows why, and she won’t say. That fits in with what Charley Cream told you. You visit the ‘Bell and Boy’ to see if you can get anything out of her. You don’t, but she gets out of you, or hears in some other way that it’s Twice Over you’re interested in. So she follows you here. That doesn’t suit you. You don’t mean anyone else to get those notes, but if she has some idea of their exact position, she may be induced to tell. Did you try, and if you did, what happened next? Or did she tell, but claim too big a share, perhaps—and, if so, again what happened?”

  “For God’s sake, Mr Owen, sir,” Jolly protested. He had become very pale. He took out his handkerchief, twisting it uneasily between his hands. When Bobby did not speak, but only watched him, he went on: “There’s my alibi. You can’t get over that. You check up, Mr Owen. That’s all I say. It’s straight, it is. I caught the last train that night, and a gent, in my carriage, just us two, was took bad. Soon as we got in I called the railway blokes, and me and them we got him out, and they sent him off to hospital. You ask them; they’ll remember—can’t help it. You got to accept that.”

  “If proof of identity is satisfactory, yes,” Bobby agreed. “We will go into it carefully, of course.”

  “I don’t hold with murder,” Jolly insisted, finding Bobby’s tone less warm than could have been desired. “I never did. A bloke’s got to live, hasn’t he? And if no one won’t give him a job along of his having made a mistake once, what’s he to do? But murder’s a thing as never brings luck, not even if you get away with it for a time. Not me, Mr Owen, sir,” he said, gathering confidence as he talked, but still anxiously watching for any sign to show his story was winning credence. “It’s right I came along because of hearing there was a lady seeming interested like in what the Milkman told me before he popped off, but him never saying nothing about no ladies, which same is always best kept out when it’s business, and me reckoning I had to know who she was and what she wanted, and if maybe we could do a deal. Most like,” he concluded, “there’s no money buried there at all and never was, only poor old Milkman wandering like.”

  “Whether the money was there or not,” Bobby said, “it’s where a woman was murdered.”

  “There’s my alibi,” Jolly repeated, clinging to it like the shipwrecked sailor to his raft. “No getting away from that. And if you ask me, it was that there Dowie bloke did her in. What was he messing about for, as I saw with my own eyes—him and that dodge of his, like what they used for mines in the war, as is different?”

  “Mr Dowie?” Bobby repeated, a good deal surprised at the sudden introduction of this name; “what do you know about him?”

  “Asking questions,” Jolly said with some resentment, for this was an activity of which he did not approve, associated as it was in his mind with the unwelcome methods of the C.I.D. “He did use to claim it was him found the stuff what was lifted from Wilbraham Hall up north and left behind, only buried, it being too heavy to take when pressed, but safe as houses till this Dowie bloke figured out where it was—him and his dodge. May have been the way it happened here, like you said, Mr Owen, sir, only him, not me, meeting the lady and doing her in because of not wanting to split with her, and it was him bought a spade. In all the papers that was. Shows he meant to dig and knew where—only she was there first, so he had to split or else the other thing. And got no alibi, either, has he? Mr Owen, sir, not forgetting the Superintendent. You pull him in and see.”

  “Got to find him first,” remarked Kimms, but all the same obviously impressed by Jolly’s eloquence.

  Bobby was silent. It had to be admitted that the provisional theory he had put forward could apply just as well to Dowie as to Jolly, who for his part had certainly shown an unexpected nimbleness of wit in adapting it so quickly to divert suspicion from himself to the vanished Dowie.

  “Done a bunk, has he?” inquired Jolly sympathetically. “Daren’t face it, as he would if innocent and a straight alibi like me,” and his complacent smile expressed now his complete confidence that he had fully established himself in the eyes of his two interrogators.

  “Tell me more,” Bobby said abruptly, “about these questions you say Dowie was asking?”

  “Mostly,” explained Jolly, “about stuff hidden after lifting, like he had a notion that when a bloke did a job he just buried what he got all nice and tidy, waiting for him to come along and dig it up. Reaping where others sowed, if you ask me,” Jolly concluded disapprovingly.

  “Did he seem to know about you and the possible hiding-place of the stolen Post Office notes?”

  “He might have,” Jolly admitted. “Only human nature when you’ve been inside, where you never get a drop, to get a bit tiddly when you do come out, and easy to let slip more than you ever meant.” Jolly paused for a moment to shake his head at this unfortunate but so understandable human weakness. He resumed: “Only he got it all mixed up some way with what them old monks and such like used to hide away along of there being no banks in them ancient days. He had a book telling all about it.”

  “A book?” Bobby repeated. “Do you know what it was called? Who wrote it?”

  “I never take much notice of books, only when they’re spicy,” Jolly answered. “Some sort of guide-book, I think he said.”

  Bobby glanced at Kimms to see if this had registered. Kimms indicated by a nod that it had. Bobby said:

  “Well, all that’s very interesting, though I don’t know that it takes us much further forward. If your alibi stands up, you’re all right, of course; and we will go into it at once. What sort of response was there to Mr Dowie’s inquiries? Was he taken seriously? It sounds to me as if he were heading for trouble.”

  “That’s right,” Jolly agreed. “Some of the boys wanted to beat him up—not bad like, just enough to teach him as you shouldn’t want to know too much about other blokes’s business. But some of ’em said to wait and see what he can do with that dodge of his. If it’s the goods—O.K., take it over. I stood out. I’m running straight now. Reformed, and if you can help me to get a good job, Mr Owen, sir, you’ll never hear no more of me.”

  “What do you call a good job, and how long would you keep it?” asked Bobby, who had heard this story too often to be much impressed by it. All the same, he gave Jolly an address, and told him if
he meant what he said he would be given all the help possible. But Jolly, who knew that address of old, shook his head and murmured something about ‘no sympathy, no understanding’, and Bobby, who had expected nothing else, went on: “There’s one thing more. You called Sir Charles Stuart a ‘wrong ’un’. Why? Birds of a feather know each other? Is that the idea? Or do you really know something about him? Oh, and don’t lie.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  DIAMONDS

  A CERTAIN HESITATION was apparent before Jolly answered this question. One might have surmised he was considering, with some uneasiness, how far he could go without incriminating himself. Bobby waited. Kimms looked at him, clearly wondering why he did not speak again. But Bobby never hurried a witness. He used to say that silence was often as eloquent as speech. Jolly, apparently making up his mind at last, now began to speak, but slowly and with evident caution.

  “It’s like this,” he said. “If he got them diamonds for Fatty Veale on the straight, why does he? That’s what I say.”

  “Does what?” Bobby asked, more than a little taken aback by this sudden introduction of mysterious diamonds into a case already sufficiently baffling.

  “Does what I’m telling you of,” retorted Jolly, “letting Fatty Veale have ’em instead of going where more would be give but questions asked.”

  “Who is Fatty Veale?” Bobby asked. “I’ve never heard of him. Do you mean he’s a fence?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t quite go for to say that,” answered Jolly, a little shocked by the use of such blunt language. “It’s only that he don’t ask questions. If you’ve the goods, he’s got the money, and no more said. No office neither.”

  “Post Office never reported diamonds missing,” Kimms interposed, as bewildered as was Bobby by all this about diamonds.

  “Which I never said,” retorted Jolly, rather pleased at having so evidently puzzled his two interlocutors. “Nothing to do with it, no more than the new-born babe.”

  “You haven’t told me yet who this Fatty Veale is?” Bobby reminded him.

  “Everyone knows that, unless not knowing anything at all,” Jolly told him severely, and clearly he now placed Bobby with those in the latter category. “Hatton Garden, like the other blokes, but no office. If you want to sell diamonds and such, and no questions asked, you wait till you spot him having a cup of coffee somewhere and you go and sit at the same table and he don’t take no notice, so you put what you have on the table and he names his price, take it or leave it, which you take it, his price being as good as any and better’n most, but a lot less than if it was all on the straight. Smuggles ’em abroad again, if you ask me.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Ain’t much I don’t know when things are moving,” Jolly grinned. “And warned him there was talk of a job being done on him, so him, grateful like, and wanting a trustworthy bloke, same as me, ten bob, he paid me regular to sit around handy like, all ready for funny work, if tried. Which I did till put inside, all on account of a bit of bad luck as might have happened to anyone.”

  “I don’t see where all this comes in,” Bobby said, but he was looking worried. “What we are working on is who killed Mrs Field and why, and if her murder is in any way tied up with the supposedly buried Post Office pound-notes.” He took out his wallet, produced a ten-shilling note, looked at it rather regretfully and passed it across the table. “Sure you’ve told us all you know?” he asked. “But remember, you are not in the clear till we’ve tried out that alibi of yours. If it doesn’t hold water you won’t be long in hearing from us again.”

  “Hold water?” repeated Jolly, looking really hurt. “Why, guv., it would hold the whole At-a-lantic Ocean.”

  Therewith he departed. And when he had gone Bobby and Kimms sat for a long time in silence, till at last Kimms broke it by saying aloud:

  “The more you know, the less you know.”

  “Very true,” said Bobby, much impressed by this profound observation. “What do you make of all that?”

  “Ah,” said Kimms. Then he said “U-U-m-m-m,” and Bobby nodded his agreement.

  “If,” he said, half to himself, half to Kimms, who anyhow wasn’t listening—“if it’s jewellery or something of that sort the crook has to get rid of, he’s almost bound to go to a fence, and the fence of course takes the lion’s share. Pound-notes are easier, but when you get into the thousands and tens of thousands, there are difficulties. No one takes their numbers, but bank officials can sometimes identify them by private marks and so on; and if they are deposited in bulk, it may easily attract attention, especially after there’s been a big-scale robbery. It might give a very useful lead. Or even if we heard that a possible suspect was splashing money about in a big way, always putting down chunks of pound-notes—that again might be a useful lead. And to avoid the risk, some such dodge might be used as buying diamonds on the black market and then selling ’em again.”

  “Any lead better than no lead,” observed Kimms, whose attention had now been caught; and Bobby agreed, and said it was time he got away back to town.

  It had grown too late, however, for anything more to be done that night, so he went to bed instead. Next morning the first thing he did, after his usual preliminary glance through the reports and correspondence waiting his attention, was to send for Ford, the young C.I.D. man, who already had been of some help in the case.

  “It’s the Twice Over murder,” Bobby said when Ford appeared. “Jolly Rogers comes into the suspect class. So do several others, for that matter. Jolly claims an alibi. Common form, of course—they always do; but this time he seems confident and says it can be supported by reliable independent witnesses. His story is that on the night of the murder he came up from Twice Over by the last train. He says a man in his compartment was taken ill and that when the train arrived he called the railway people. Check up.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Ford, and departed, and Bobby put another mental good mark against Ford’s name.

  So many would have asked questions, required more detail, wanted a full description of Jolly, and so on and so forth. Ford had simply accepted his orders, and was content to think out for himself the best way of implementing them.

  Satisfied then that this question of the alibi was in good hands, Bobby rang up the City Police force and asked if anything was known of a certain Fatty Veale—a question which seemed to produce a good deal of interest and even excitement at the other end of the line.

  “Have you got anything on him?” demanded the telephone hopefully.

  “It’s only information about him I want, if you’ve got any,” Bobby explained, and the telephone registered resigned disappointment. “His name has cropped up rather vaguely in the Twice Over murder case—not our pigeon exactly, but it does seem connected in some way or another with the P.O. van robbery we’ve opened up again.”

  “Yes, I know,” the distant voice replied, sounding still more disappointed, “but Fatty Veale isn’t likely to have been mixed up in that. Not his line of country at all. Black market and smuggling—especially diamonds and that kind of thing—is his speciality. If it’s diamonds, put us wise and we’ll follow up. If it isn’t, you can probably wash him out.”

  “One of the suspects in the Twice Over murder seems the connecting link,” Bobby said. “There are diamonds in it, too; but no idea how or why. May all come to nothing. If you hear anything fresh about the chap, let us know.”

  “O.K.,” came the prompt reply. “Got your hands full with that Twice Over business, haven’t you? You and the local boys.”

  “You’re telling me,” retorted Bobby, who always boasted that he could speak three languages fluently—English, French, and American. “An awful snarl of a case.”

  The telephone told him that a little intellectual exercise in straightening out snarls would help to brighten wits that probably needed it badly; and Bobby was too dispirited even to try to think of an appropriate and sufficiently cutting retort. He simply hung up. Another disappoi
ntment for the telephone.

  For a time Bobby sat in silence, wondering a little how to set to work to brighten wits that did indeed at the moment seem as if they required a bit of extra polish. Then he applied himself to the routine work needing his attention, and did it badly enough, since all the time his thoughts were elsewhere. Then came lunch—a late lunch—and afterwards he went on to the office of the ‘Morning Daily’—a building so enthusiastically up to date when erected that already it seems more old-fashioned than anything from the Victorian era. There he asked for a journalistic acquaintance of his, a Mr McKie, more generally known as Sandy Mac. Fortunately he was available, and he appeared at once.

  “Come to papa to help you out,” he greeted Bobby cheerfully. “Just tell me what it is and consider it done.”

  “You’ve heard about the murder of a woman at Twice Over?” Bobby asked.

  “Now, don’t tell me there’ve been sensational developments?” McKie implored. “Such a cliché. We haven’t been running it at all. Too many women getting themselves bumped off just now, for one thing. Common form almost. And then I’ve been away, so there was no one to work it up. It could have been,” he added reflectively, “if I had been on hand to do it. Needed someone with the right touch.”

  “Modesty was always your most marked characteristic,” Bobby observed.

  “Yes, I know,” McKie answered, seriously, even regretfully. “Well, what’s the trouble?”

  “I didn’t say there was any,” retorted Bobby. “And I’m not playing Lestrade to an all-wise, all-knowing private eye.”

  “That’s me,” said McKie complacently. “Go ahead.”

  “Can you tell me anything about a Martin Maxton? A journalistic free-lance, apparently, and writes books about the country.”

  “Maxton?” McKie repeated, and his manner changed perceptibly. “Why? What about him? You don’t think he’s the unknown murderer, do you?”