“For goodness sake,” Bobby said irritably, “don’t go jumping to conclusions like a flustered landlady who sees the gallows before her if one of our chaps calls to make some routine inquiry. I simply want any information you can give me about Maxton and his background and so on.”
“Well, I can’t,” McKie answered, not at all pleased by being compared to a flustered landlady. “I don’t think anyone can. He’s a bit of a mystery man. Blew into Fleet Street some years ago—I couldn’t say when exactly—and started sending in his stuff, like several million others. It all went back, of course; and then by some accident—Lord knows how or why—some of it got into print, and that started a weekly series: ‘Nature Study in London Squares’ it was called, I think. Ran quite well. Now he is entered for the Best-seller Stakes.”
“Country Boy Makes Good,” Bobby commented. “Ordinary success story; is that all?”
“Success stories aren’t ordinary,” retorted McKie. “And I never said he was a country boy. But it was his walking in his sleep that really gave him his start.”
“And what on earth,” demanded Bobby, exasperated by this new twist to the affair, “has walking in your sleep got to do with it?”
CHAPTER XX
THE SLEEP-WALKER
MCKIE HESITATED. HE did not seem to wish to answer, and he looked almost imploringly at Bobby, as if he hoped Bobby might just possibly say, ‘Oh, well, never mind’, and yet knew well that would not be, nor could. And still Bobby waited with his air of inexorable patience that indeed McKie had seen before. McKie said:
“Oh, well, I suppose you would dig it all up anyhow, so I may as well tell you what I know, and then you’ll get it right. I was there at the time, you see.”
“At the time of the sleep walking?” Bobby asked.
“That’s right,” answered McKie. “There was a lot of talk. ‘The Man with a Past’, some of them got to calling him. Occupational disease in our job, thinking in headlines.”
“Suppose,” Bobby suggested, when McKie seemed inclined once more to lapse into silence, “you tell me what on earth you are talking about. For instance, what walking in your sleep and having a past have got to do with Maxton’s getting a start?”
“My dear innocent,” retorted McKie, beginning to recover himself, and inwardly hoping that this last word would cut as deep as had Bobby’s recent ‘flustered landlady’, “it all meant publicity,” and now this last word was uttered with the reverence, the awe, due to that strange, lime-lit, capricious god whose will and whim have come to rule so much of human destiny.
“Why the publicity?” Bobby asked. “Walking in your sleep isn’t so rare as all that, is it?”
“No, but always something uncanny about it, don’t you think?” McKie asked in his turn. “Something not quite—right. What is it takes control and works the body perfectly when consciousness isn’t there? And when it ends up in what seems like a try at suicide—well, what do you make of it?”
“Why not start at the beginning?” Bobby suggested. “Then perhaps I may be able to make something of it?”
“It was when his stuff was first attracting attention,” McKie answered in response to this appeal. “One of the ‘Announcer’ blokes had the bright idea of taking Maxton on the staff, so as to keep his stuff exclusive to them, and another ‘Announcer’ bloke thought he was just another of the cub reporters every paper has to take on now and then to oblige somebody’s aunt, try out, and sack. Routine. But he did know in a vague sort of way that Maxton was a country boy, so he gave him an assignment to cover a big West-country agricultural show that was on at the moment. I was there to cover the musical festival being held at the same time so the farmers could park their wives out of the way while they got down to the pigs and the cows. Maxton being just a cub reporter on his first—and probably last—assignment, the office booked a room for him in a small cheap hotel right outside the town, and in the middle of the night Maxton walked out of the hotel in his pyjamas. There was a canal running at the back of the hotel, and next thing Maxton was in it. Luckily some wandering night-bird saw him and he was fished out in time. But he acted as if he didn’t want to be—fished out, I mean. Afterwards he claimed he must have been still asleep; he didn’t remember anything about it. The police claimed that was rather a stiff yarn. They claimed finding yourself in the middle of the night in a canal instead of in your bed would wake up the most hardened sleep-walker that ever was. So they ran him in for attempted suicide, but Maxton got hold of a doctor or two and they talked a lot—induced self-hypnotism and Lord knows what. Anyhow, the jury disagreed, the police dropped the case, and that was that. But it didn’t stop the talk; that went on all right. Our job in Fleet Street may be writing, but what we really like is nice spicy libellous talk.”
“Yes, I know,” Bobby said. “What sort of talk?”
“I don’t know exactly. On the ‘Macbeth-hath-murdered-sleep’ line. There’s always been a sort of ravaged look about Maxton, a way he has if you’re talking to him of suddenly seeming to lose contact with what you’re saying and staring past you at something that isn’t there and never was. Some chaps put it down to drink, but it isn’t that. Drink doesn’t give anyone that sort of look.”
“I met him once,” Bobby said. “I can’t say I noticed all that. He looked nervous, worried. Well, struggling journalists often do.”
“Was there a girl, name of Sylvia, knocking about anywhere near at the time?” McKie asked.
“Yes; why?” Bobby asked in some surprise. “Miss Wynne. Have you met her? Where?”
“The office sent me to try to bribe Maxton to leave the ‘Daily Announcer’ and sign up with us,” McKie explained. “Said if anyone could talk him over, it was me. Nothing doing. Maxton didn’t want to leave the ‘Announcer’. They had given him his first chance and he had a contract. You knew he was living alone in an old cottage, in the middle of nowhere, miles from anywhere?”
“To get material for his nature-studies, I understood,” Bobby remarked.
“Not him,” retorted McKie. “No writer worth twopence ever wants more material than he can find in the London library.”
“Don’t go to the ant, go to Fabre instead,” commented Bobby. “That the idea?”
“Who is Fabre?” asked McKie, and without waiting for a reply, he went on: “In my idea he’s living alone because he’s afraid of living alone and wants to get over it. I left my car in the village, and in case I got lost going back, as I had done coming, Maxton walked back with me. We ran across a girl in the village. I shall always remember her. God knows why. You could see a dozen prettier girls in Fleet Street any day. It was something about her—something she carried with her like an aura. Happiness. It was like she had so much of it, it just overflowed all round her. Turned Maxton into quite a different sort of chap—into the ordinary, everyday bloke you felt he was meant to be if something hadn’t happened. There wasn’t any more of that looking over his shoulder, as if there might be something there he didn’t want to see. Sort of gave you the willies to watch—as if you might see it too. He may have a past, but he has a present, too, and I don’t believe his present has murder in it.”
“There’s murder in someone’s present,” Bobby said grimly, “and we’ve got to find out whose.”
“Well, if you go asking more questions about him up and down Fleet Street he’ll be done for,” McKie said. “No one likes suspected murderers. Publicity’s fine, but it can be overdone. Besides, I’ve told you all about him, and I know more than anyone else. What’s put you on him?”
“The last information we’ve had,” Bobby said, “is that he was seen on a cross-Channel boat going to France.”
“Run off?” McKie asked. “I suppose that does look bad. Makes things difficult, too. You can’t try your celebrated technique of getting ’em talking, and if they talk, they tell. One of the nurses at the hospital where they took him after the canal business told me that when she asked him how it happened, he said he had a debt to pay,
and somehow the way he said it frightened her. You don’t think the dead woman at Twice Over—”
“Could be that debt,” Bobby completed the sentence when McKie paused. “Possible, of course; but, then, anything’s possible in this affair.”
“Maxton’s under contract to deliver his new country book quite soon,” McKie said gloomily. “I don’t see why he should go running off like that. The publishers told our literary bloke that Maxton had sent in half his new stuff, and they think it so good they are planning to splash it. They’ll be left high and dry if the second half doesn’t turn up to date. All their next season’s schedule knocked endways. He had a special advance from them, too, on the strength of it, for a new car. Not a thing they would do for every author.”
“He doesn’t seem to be making much use of it,” Bobby remarked. “It’s in a Hammersmith garage under close observation in case it’s claimed.”
He got up to go then, but McKie spoke suddenly.
“You are reopening the killing of one of the gang who brought off that first big P.O. van robbery, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Bobby replied, “but we are not forgetting it.” He paused then, wondering if McKie too saw the possibility, however vague, of some connection between that half-forgotten, far-distant tragedy and this debt young Maxton had said he owed, and that perhaps had now been paid in full at midnight by the side of a loganberry bush in the Twice Over copse? Changing the subject abruptly, Bobby said: “Did you ever happen to hear of a man named Dowie in connection with Maxton?”
“Dowie?” McKie repeated. “No. Why? Who is he? Another suspect? Never heard of him. You know that girl I told you about. Maxton was pretty badly hit—anyone could see that. Perhaps she turned him down, and that’s why he’s taken himself off to France—broken heart and all that, and nothing else matters a damn. What do you think of that for a theory? You know, I can’t help remembering her and the way she seemed just a sort of living joy scattering it all round. Not quite natural, somehow. Riding for a fall. You felt life’s not like that, nor meant to be.”
“Or else exactly what it was meant to be if we hadn’t messed it up,” Bobby retorted.
But McKie shook his head doubtfully, and went on to suggest that in common decency, now that he, Sandy McKie, had given Bobby, as pal to pal, so much highly important information, the least Bobby could do in return was to promise a twenty-four hour ‘exclusive’ tip-off if and when there was any fresh development. Bobby replied by reminding McKie that he had done no more than his duty as a good citizen, and McKie said “Nuts”, and anyhow he wasn’t a good citizen, he was a journalist. So Bobby said he fully recognized the distinction, but he would promise that if and when lollipops came to be handed round, McKie might be sure of getting one—an undertaking for which McKie seemed little grateful.
Therewith Bobby departed, and as soon as he was back in his room at the Yard he rang up Messrs Dickens and Defoe, Maxton’s publishers, to ask if they had any news of Mr Martin Maxton, who might, Bobby explained carelessly, be able to throw a little light on some small matters of detail.
It appeared that nothing had been heard, and that McKie had in no way exaggerated when he described the firm as worried. They sounded, indeed, almost panic-stricken. They had planned the whole of the coming season’s campaign round this one book. The first half was already in print, and if the remainder didn’t arrive in time they would, said the scholarly voice at the other end of the line, ‘miss the bloody ’bus’. They only hoped that Maxton hadn’t met with any accident. Even his friends were getting anxious. A Mr Dowie, for instance, had only a few minutes since been ringing up to inquire, and had seemed quite worried when told no communication had been received from the missing author for some time.
“Authors are so irresponsible,” sighed the scholarly voice. “A necessary evil in our job. If only we could do without them!”
“Did Mr Dowie give his address?” Bobby asked, and was told no, but learned in reply to further questioning that it was a long-distance call.
A slender clue indeed. Bobby asked to be informed at once if any similar inquiry was received, then rang off, and at once rang up the Post Office to ask if the place of origin of a long-distance call just made to Messrs Dickens and Defoe could be traced. He received a promise that every effort would be made to do this, and then some time later, indeed not till he was beginning to think of going home, did he get the information that the call had come from Applegarth in Holmshire, and Bobby expressed gratitude for such a prompt reply, while inwardly wondering if it would prove of the slightest use. Still, information was always information, and then, the name of Applegarth seemed somehow vaguely familiar.
But he was not destined to be allowed to depart homeward yet awhile, for Ford appeared, looking very pleased with himself.
“About that alibi of Jolly Rogers, sir,” he said. “I thought you would want to know at once.”
“Yes, of course,” Bobby said, sitting down again. “Go ahead.”
CHAPTER XXI
LEGEND
WELL, SIR, IT’S this way,” Ford began, but speaking hesitatingly, as if he felt some difficulty in expressing sufficiently clearly what he wanted to say. “In my view Rogers’s alibi is cooked all right, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t go down with a jury; I can’t put my finger on any obvious flaw. All of the railway staff on duty that night remember a passenger shouting from a carriage window that there was a man taken ill and to get a doctor at once, just how Rogers said. But I couldn’t get any description. Whoever it was seems just to have faded away, ghost-like. The railway people didn’t even know whether he was tall or short or fat or thin.”
“I suppose they were all too busy with the sick man to give the other a thought,” Bobby commented. “What about the sick man? He ought to be able to say.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Ford. “But he died soon after they got him to hospital. Heart failure.”
“That’s bad,” Bobby said. “Bad all round. No chance of a satisfactory identification, then?”
“No, sir, none at all that I can see. I suppose Rogers might be able to produce some sort of evidence that he was really there. More likely he’ll get a pal to swear he saw Rogers that night and Rogers told him all about it, and expecting as much to be done for him when needed. I rang up Twice Over to ask if anyone of Rogers’ description was seen leaving by the last train. No one was.”
“Negative evidence,” Bobby said. “We need a positive statement before we can either break it or accept it as an alibi of truth and consider Rogers cleared. What about tickets?”
“None issued to London by that train,” Ford answered; “but Rogers may have had a return, though none seems to have been collected. There was a lot of bustle and excitement, of course, and Rogers could claim it had been forgotten or lost. In my view he could give a prompt answer to any objection raised.”
“It does seem the perfect alibi,” Bobby agreed. “Which may be because it really is genuine. But it also seems just a little too pat, and one doesn’t associate Rogers with anything genuine.”
“There’s one thing, sir,” Ford continued, “that did strike me. Is Rogers likely to have slipped away like that? Not so much of the modest hero about him, in my view.”
“No,” agreed Bobby, considering this suggestion carefully. “No. I think you’ve got something there. No. But he knew all about it, apparently?”
“It was in all the evening papers next day,” Ford said. “I checked on that. And a par. in two or three of the morning papers the day after. Putting things together and picking up a bit of gossip as well would soon give Rogers enough to make his story stand up. At least, that’s my view.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Bobby agreed. “I don’t think at present we can do more than keep him under close observation. You have his address, I suppose?”
“He left this morning,” Ford answered. “Not notified any change to us so far. Hope he’s not gone underground.”
/> “Well, do your best to bring him in—for questioning only, of course. Make that plain. On the face of it he seems as likely to be guilty as any of the others. And certainly not in character for him to slip away quietly. I should have expected him to fuss about telling everyone all about it, making himself the central figure of it all.” Here Bobby paused and began to show signs of going into one of those profound and prolonged meditations which had come to be known as the ‘Bobby Owen trance’. But this time he came out of it quickly. He asked: “Can you think of any good reason why Rogers should want to make a quick get-away?” Ford looked puzzled and shook his head. Bobby said: “Well, have a try. One thing did occur to me. But never mind. Too obvious, perhaps. Did you get a list of what the dead man had in his pockets?”
“Much the same as usual,” Ford replied. “Handkerchief, keys, ball pen, cigarettes, lighter, small pocket diary, pen-knife. Two ten-shilling notes in waistcoat pocket and nine and six in silver and copper in trousers. Wrist watch.”
“One thing missing,” Bobby said reflectively. “Yes. Isn’t there?” Ford, a little puzzled, did not reply. He was not sure what Bobby meant. “One thing nearly every man carries,” Bobby continued, and Ford looked at him interrogatively, but got no response. “It might be the explanation,” Bobby said, more to himself than to Ford, and then went on: “There’s Mr Dowie staying at the Twice Over pub at the time of the murder; he was seen near the copse shortly before it happened; then he disappeared and all trace of him was lost. Now I’ve heard of him at Applegarth in Holmshire.”
“Do you think it might be him the murderer?” Ford asked doubtfully. “It was before it happened he was seen . . .” and he left the sentence unfinished, sub-consciously unwilling for attention to be diverted from Jolly Rogers, his own pet suspect, in whom indeed he was beginning to take a kind of proprietary interest.
“Dowie could have gone back,” Bobby pointed out, “but the copse-murder side of it all is Mr Kimms’s pigeon. Our business is the supposedly buried P.O. notes, which may never have been buried at all, or if they were once, been lifted years ago. Dowie seems to have heard something about it. I want to know what and how. It might give us a lead. And I’ve a feeling, too, he may be able to give us a lead as well to the killing of one of the gang that’s never been cleaned up. I’m writing to Applegarth to ask their help, and I’ll ring them in the morning to hear what they have to say—if anything. I spend half my time ringing people up—detection by ’phone,” he added gloomily. “It gets you nowhere. You need the personal touch, so I may go up there myself to-morrow, and if I do I shall want you, so report to me first thing, in case.”
Dark is the Clue: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 15