“The old woman settled that on her own,” Rogers answered ruefully. “No loving wife about her, no open arms for her man home again after long years of absence he couldn’t help. ‘No beggars wanted here,’ she says the moment she clapped eyes on me. ‘Beggars?’ says I. ‘What do you think you’re getting at? Take an eyeful of that,’ I says, and I shows her the wallet with eleven pounds ten in it. ‘Who did you pinch that from?’ she says, nasty like. ‘Earned it,’ says I. ‘By the sweat of me brow,’ I says. ‘Then why has it got another bloke’s name in it?’ says she and slammed it in her desk. ‘Scoot!’ says she. ‘Scram. You’re not bringing me into it again,’ and next thing lets out a yell like a steam whistle gone dotty, because of spotting some kids what had been doing themselves extra proud and now not waiting for the bill. ‘Oh, he’s paying,’ says one of ’em, meaning me, so I up and lammed him one as knocked him cold. Trying to cheat a poor lone widow woman, they was. They paid up then all right, not wanting more of the same their pal had had—and a bit over for me, as was only right. So when I had kicked the last of ’em out, the old woman says as I could stop there, only sleeping at the back at night and being useful in the day. A nice little business it is, and I don’t know but now I’m in I’ll ever feel like getting out. Female woman can be tough as hell outside, but still female woman soft inside.”
CHAPTER XXVI
THE INQUEST
BOBBY REMAINED SILENT for a time. He was wondering how far this story would carry conviction to others. For himself he accepted it. But others might think it a little too well invented, too well tailored to fit the circumstance. Rogers was silent, too, but his was an uneasy silence. Badly shaken had been his former instinctive faith in the power of truth to convince—strange as that instinctive faith must seem in one who always had relied upon falsehood to save him when in difficulty. Bobby was the first to speak.
“You said your wife got rid of the wallet. Could you get it back? If you could, that would be good evidence.”
“She got rid of it all right,” Rogers answered gloomily. “You wouldn’t hardly believe it. Slammed it into the post, she did, eleven of the best in it and all, back to them as wouldn’t never have missed it, not knowing, and me left without so much as a penny to pay a ’bus fare.”
“Do you mean she posted it to the address she found in it?” Bobby asked. “If she did, we can probably get it back again. There might even be your dabs on it still.”
Rogers, not noticeably quick in the uptake, set his slow wits to puzzle this out. For him ‘dabs’ were always the chief enemy to be feared; so treacherous, so dangerous, that even a mere passing touch on some polished surface might bring a man to his doom. Difficult then to assimilate the idea that also they could serve to prove innocence. A novel idea to Bobby, too, for that matter, but now he was busy already issuing instructions to put it to the test. This done, he turned back to the still-bewildered Rogers.
“Is there anything else you got to know from this man Cream? Could you remember the exact words he used?”
Rogers shook his head.
“Popping off, the poor bloke was,” he said, “and knew it, and half the time didn’t know what he was saying, or too weak to get it out proper; but awful worried about leaving all that stuff behind. ‘Could have had a good time with it,’ he kept saying. ‘Good time,’ he says, ‘and now it’s nix. Don’t seem fair, do it?’ he says. ‘No good time,’ says he, and them’s the last words he spoke before he croaked.”
A grim death-bed scene, Bobby thought in the grim precincts of a gaol, and one that had apparently brought in its train yet another death, and it might be there would be still another. So Bobby thought, wondering a little once again at the way in which things work themselves out. He put these thoughts from him and said abruptly to the still-meditative Rogers:
“Had you known him before you met him in prison? Why did he choose you to talk to?”
“We was kids together—lived in the same street,” Rogers explained. “Ran away together when he got hold of his dad’s P.O. book. Mr Logan told my dad I was in it too, so I came in for it same as Charley. Then, when we were at Borstal, we did a bunk together, and weren’t never caught neither, though your blokes did bring it up years after, along of them dabs being took.”
“I see,” Bobby said. “Who is Mr Logan?”
“Him? Why, Charley’s dad. Changed his name, Charley did, after we bunked from Borstal. Took his mum’s instead. Charley said it was safer—safety first, he said. But, lummy, what’s the good, when there’s always them dabs to trip you up?”
“What indeed?” Bobby agreed. “Did he ever talk to you about the robbery itself or about the murder of one of his pals, a man named Farmer? Farmer was found dead soon afterwards, shot through the head. You remember?”
“That’s right,” Rogers agreed. “He did use to talk about it sometimes. Charley said most likely it was an outside bloke, trying to push in and get a share he hadn’t any right to, not having worked for it. There was a bloke Farmer got sometimes to carry messages and that sort of thing—not one of the regulars, if you see what I mean. Just a sort of odd-job man, and paid according. He might have let on Farmer had the stuff, and someone took advantage according.”
“Did he know his name?” Bobby asked. “The runner’s, I mean.”
“‘Fingers’ was what Farmer called him,” Rogers answered. “Might have been good at lifting things. I don’t know. Charley had never seen him, he said. And he hadn’t no right to anything more than what he did and was paid for. But he or a pal might have done in Farmer, aiming at Farmer’s share, as was plenty. That’s what Charley thought. Hard luck on Farmer, as was a good pal, always straight, and planning to retire and live quiet and respectable, same as his wife wanted.”
“He was a married man, then?” Bobby asked.
“Well, I don’t know about married,” Rogers answered doubtfully. “It was a dame he had fallen for—quite took up with her, same as happens easy to the best of us.”
“I don’t think that was known at the time,” Bobby remarked. “Nothing about it in any of the reports I’ve read. And not much chance of learning any more after all these years, with nothing to go on but a nickname—if ‘Fingers’ was a nickname and not his own.”
He went on to ask a few more questions, without eliciting any further relevant information. Finally he sent Rogers off with instructions that he was to be given a meal in the canteen but was not to be allowed to leave for the present—not till the result of the wallet inquiry came in. When it did arrive—the delay was not long—it was to the effect that the wallet had been duly recovered from the relatives of the dead man, to whom it had been sent through the post, that it had contained the sum mentioned by Rogers, and that it did in fact still show Rogers’s finger-prints. So Bobby sent for him.
“You may take it your alibi is accepted,” Bobby told him. “Puts you in the clear. You may be called as a witness at the inquest, but nothing need be said about the wallet, as it has been returned and nothing missing. So you can get away back to Mrs Rogers and tell her that, thanks to her, everything’s all right.”
“Lummy,” interposed Rogers, aghast; “if I said a thing like that she would get above herself so there wouldn’t be no standing it.”
“It might get her to let you stay on,” Bobby suggested. “Then you could carry on as a social reformer and sleep quiet at night—and perhaps not always in the back kitchen. Up to you; so good-bye and good luck and—well, may we never meet again.”
“Same here, guv.,” said Rogers earnestly, accepted the two half-crowns Bobby offered as a solatium for time occupied, and departed, leaving Bobby deep in thought, for it seemed to him that all this contained much that might be of significance, though significant of what he was not sure.
The following day was that on which the inquest on Mrs Field’s death was to be held. Bobby knew, of course, that Kimms intended to ask for an adjournment on the ground that ‘inquiries were not yet complete’—‘at a comp
lete dead end’ would, as he had remarked to Bobby, have been a more exact description. All the same, Bobby had made up his mind to be present. There might be unexpected developments. One never knew what might not turn up next in so baffling a case as this; and besides, there was that comparing notes with Kimms which had been tentatively arranged and which both Bobby and Kimms felt to be advisable.
The village hall where the inquest was to be held was already crowded when Bobby arrived, but a place had been reserved for him. He noticed that both Sir Charles and Mr Wynne were present, the former evidently uneasy and restless; the latter imperturbable as ever and showing at times that small, secret smile of his which vanished again almost before it could be seen. Was it by any chance, Bobby wondered, a sign of satisfaction at having pushed Sir Charles into the front while himself remaining in the background, which he apparently so much preferred? Or was there some other, deeper reason?
The brief proceedings over, both of them took opportunity to speak to Bobby, Wynne the first. With his usual quiet, concealed efficiency he managed to be next to Bobby in the general exodus, while Sir Charles, who had made a point of pushing his way out among the first to depart, waited impatiently outside in the obvious intention of waylaying Bobby there and as obviously perturbed when he saw Wynne already at Bobby’s side and already chatting to him.
“I was rather relieved to see you here to-day,” Wynne was saying amiably. “There’s been some talk about your being likely to drop out. With all respect to Mr Kimms—a highly efficient officer in his own way, I’m sure—there is a feeling that he hasn’t the experience for handling a case like this. There’ve been letters in the Press.”
“There always are,” Bobby said. “The less people know about anything, the more they like to air their opinions about it. Mr Kimms can be trusted to do all that’s possible.”
“No chance of your taking over, then,” Wynne said, with a faint touch of disappointment in his voice, and Bobby was aware of an odd impression that this was what Mr Wynne had wanted to know.
Now with a nod and smile Wynne melted away, and instantly Sir Charles was at Bobby’s side.
“I want a word with you,” he said truculently. “I’m going to see my lawyers about all this. I take the strongest possible exception to your following me, as I hear you did, to the Hangover.”
“Oh, yes; I was hoping for a chat with you,” Bobby answered. “But they told me you weren’t there and weren’t a member.”
“Why should you think I was?” demanded Sir Charles, his tone more truculent than ever. “Any business of yours what clubs I belong to? I had never even heard of the place till a friend asked me to lunch there?”
“Mr Veale, was it?” Bobby asked. “The gentleman his friends call ‘Fatty’ Veale?” and the question shocked Sir Charles completely and instantly out of all his truculence.
“What do you mean?” he demanded. “What’s Veale got to do with it?”
“Has he anything?” Bobby asked. “I’m sure I don’t know. I met a Mr Dowie there. He was waiting for you, I think?”
“That’s another thing,” Sir Charles said, struggling to get back some of his former truculence. “I had arranged to meet him about a dodge of his he’s invented. He wrote to me, and I wanted him to meet Veale—clever business chap, Veale. My idea was we might float a small private company, if Veale agreed there were possibilities. Gadget to register emanations from gold or silver, perhaps uranium. Might turn out a big thing for prospectors and mining engineers. Others too. Very big thing. And then you interfere and take Dowie off with you. Ought to be actionable. I shall probably lodge a complaint. My whole day ruined. Wasted. Veale was very annoyed. Next time I want to put a business proposition to him very likely he’ll turn it down without looking at it. Veale’s a busy man.”
“Deals in diamonds, doesn’t he?” Bobby asked; and once again that question went home through the other’s armour of truculence and assurance. “But I really mustn’t keep the Superintendent waiting any longer. Lot to do in these cases, you know. Takes time to collect all the facts, and then a lot more time to decide which are relevant. See you again later on, if you don’t mind.”
CHAPTER XXVII
PHOTOGRAPH
WITHOUT STAYING TO hear if Sir Charles did mind or did not, Bobby nodded a farewell and went to join Kimms, waiting for him at a little distance. A good many people were still lingering in the vicinity, exchanging views and opinions and hardly concealing their disappointment at so tame an ending as an adjournment. It was clear from their manner and from a snatch or two of talk that Bobby caught as he passed by that Mr Kimms’s prestige was not at the moment at its peak. One such group included Mr Wynne, though he did not seem to be saying much himself, but listening rather to what others had to say.
“Always the bystander, the looker-on,” Bobby remarked to Kimms as he joined him. “Wynne, I mean. Never in the centre of things, always watching from outside.”
“Knows a lot,” Kimms said.
“That’s how,” Bobby told him, aware of a certain unreasonable irritation against one who seemed to hold himself serenely posed ‘above the strife’, as once a famous writer had so calmly claimed to be. Not that there was any reason why Wynne should descend from his lofty pedestal of god-like indifference, but—well, irritating, all the same.
Sir Charles had joined another small group a little further away, to whom he was apparently expounding the law and the prophets. One or two of his hearers occasionally glanced in Bobby’s direction, and Bobby noticed this and guessed that he himself was probably the target for some of Stuart’s more vehement remarks.
“They make an interesting contrast, those two,” Bobby observed. “Stuart and Wynne, I mean. One likes to keep his mouth shut, and the other never misses a chance to open it—wide.”
“There’s talk about them both,” Kimms said. “I haven’t tried to stop it.”
“Good man,” Bobby applauded. “The only thing in a case of this sort is to let the pot boil and see what scum comes to the top.”
“If there’s none?” Kimms said moodily.
“If there wasn’t,” Bobby retorted, “you and I would soon be out of a job.”
“Yes,” agreed Kimms. “Not likely,” he said on further consideration, and added: “Here’s Miss Wynne.”
Sylvia was coming towards them down the long village street, and Bobby, well as he remembered the impression she had made on him the first time he saw her, yet was again aware of how vividly she brought with her an aura, as it were of innocence and joy in life. Even Kimms allowed his generally rather glum expression to soften into a smile as he watched her approach.
“Come to pick up her father,” he said. “He fair worships her.”
One of a little group of chatting women near said aloud: “It don’t seem natural like, always happy and smiling. Things aren’t so much a laugh as all that.”
“Let her while she can,” another said, and a third added:
“She’ll find out different soon enough; she won’t always have her dad to give her all she wants.”
Mr Wynne had noticed his daughter’s approach. He turned to greet her, and the look he gave as he saw her coming reminded Bobby of the word Kimms had used, ‘worship’. It did not seem hyperbole; that look was, indeed, almost reverent in its tenderness.
“I’m not late, am I?” she asked gaily. “Have they finished? I do hope it’s all over and done with.”
“You must ask those two gentlemen, my dear,” Wynne answered, indicating Bobby and Kimms, and at that she gave them one of her lovely smiles, one that seemed to make her not so much pretty as really beautiful.
“Is it?” she asked them. “Oh, do say yes.” But Bobby answered:
“I’m afraid not.”
“It’s making everyone so miserable,” she said. “I try not to think of it.”
“Yes,” Bobby said; and the thought came into his mind that perhaps the joyousness she found in the mere act of living was a little too narrow, t
oo self-centred, with but small understanding of the griefs of others. He watched as she turned away to join her father, and then he heard her say:
“Oh, Daddy, I found that old photo you asked me about, and I put it away somewhere to be safe, and now I can’t think where.”
“Never mind; it doesn’t matter; it’ll turn up again,” Wynne answered.
His voice sounded for once a little hurried, or at least less calm and equable than usual, and the quick glance he gave over his shoulder to Kimms and Bobby, now beginning to walk away together, did seem to suggest that he was wondering if they had overheard and if they showed any sign that they had done so. There was none, though in fact Bobby had heard clearly enough. Whose photograph? he wondered idly, and then, as he so often did, tucked the trivial incident away in his memory, there to lie dormant for evermore unless the need should arise to call it back to active life.
“Nice girl,” Kimms was saying. “Don’t know how she does it. Cheers the whole place up. She’ll go into the Stores crammed with women grumbling at the cost of everything, and money going before you know it’s there, and all trying to get served first, and in half a mo. they’re different, smiling and friendly, though she’s hardly said a word. Just being there. It’s like a miracle.”
“A miracle of youth,” Bobby suggested lightly. “But, then, youth is a bit of a miracle all by itself,” and silently he decided that not the least miracle to be credited to Sylvia was that of having extracted from Kimms so long a speech—the longest speech Bobby had ever heard him make.
They had reached the Over All Arms now, and in the room still serving Kimms as headquarters there lay on the table the copy of the report Bobby had had sent him. Kimms picked it up and said:
Dark is the Clue: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 19