Dark is the Clue: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “What did you say?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, I agreed at once; only he had to understand I should name him as the actual murderer and explain I only stood by and looked on—under protest. That rather choked him off.”

  “I daresay it would,” agreed Bobby, a little pleased to hear that the enterprising Mr McKie had been scored off for once, reflecting, too, that a suspect capable of introducing a frivolous note into a talk with an investigating officer was certainly out of the usual. He continued: “Miss Wynne saw a light near the scene of the murder the night before it took place.”

  “Me,” Martin said simply.

  “What were you doing there at that time of night?” Bobby asked. “Making yourself familiar with the ground, by any chance?”

  “Preparatory to committing a murder?” Martin retorted, ready as ever to dot the ‘i’ and cross the ‘t’. “If that had been the idea, I should hardly have told Miss Wynne I would be there, or asked her to look out for my light, should I?”

  “Were you in the copse on the night of the murder as well?”

  “I was. I told Miss Wynne I wasn’t, but I was. But I didn’t show a light. I had meant to as soon as she put out her own, just to let her know I was still there.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because there was someone else hanging about. Near that loganberry bush. I imagine it must have been either Mrs Field or her murderer. I don’t know. It was a dark night, anyhow, and under the trees it was as black as pitch. I nearly got lost myself though I’ve trained myself to move in the dark by sound and feel, the way blind people do. On a really dark night, under trees, you are as good as blind. I’ve rather made a corner for myself in nature-studies by night. I could tell someone was there. There were little noises none of the creatures of the wood would have made. At the time I thought it was probably a boy waiting for his girl. I heard them talking. But definitely not lovers. I couldn’t hear what they said and I didn’t try. It was getting late, so I gave it up and went home.”

  “You’ve said nothing of all this before?”

  “No, I haven’t, and I wouldn’t now,” Martin retorted, “if my hand hadn’t been forced and my sister on the verge of a breakdown with worry. She’s very nervous—has cause to be. I hope now I’ve told you all this you’ll lay off their hotel. Of course, too, I wasn’t in any way awfully anxious for it to be known I was there that night. People talk—they’ll talk a man to hell if they get half a chance.”

  “I can believe you didn’t want us to know of your presence,” Bobby remarked drily. “Did you notice anything else you remember?”

  “No,” Martin answered. “Unless you mean the light in Wynne’s room. I knew he often lay awake reading in bed before going to sleep, but that night it was later than usual. It was one reason why I thought I had better go home. If I showed any light and he saw it and thought it was me, he might suspect there was something on between me and Sylvia, and that might make a bit of trouble.”

  “What you say is entirely your own story. No supporting evidence?”

  “Not a scrap. There isn’t any. For you to believe or disbelieve just as you like.”

  “Your first visit to the copse was simply to impress Miss Wynne with your devotion? Was that it? A sort of serenade, in fact?”

  “Rather a token serenade,” Martin commented. “But that was more or less the idea. Sounds silly, I know. She never seemed to be aware of me any more than of anyone else. Out of sight, out of mind. Interested in everyone and everything just the same, and how lovely it all was. The world full of a number of things, and everyone as happy as kings. That was how she saw it. A sort of divine content with us all. She loved all the world, and what I wanted was that she should love me. She didn’t. No reason why she should. I suppose that has to come of its own accord. The serenade idea was a sort of forlorn hope to get her to feel that I was—well, that I was me. She took it as a kind of joke, only more silly than most. That’s all over now. I don’t even mind talking about it. A bit of a relief. It’s all as if it were someone else—someone I knew once, but not now.”

  “You told Miss Wynne, didn’t you? that you were going away and would never return. A final good-bye?”

  “How do you know? Have you seen her? Yes, that’s what I told her. I’ve always known I ought to. All the same, I hung on, though I knew it was impossible. Wrong.” He was silent, and he looked long and thoughtfully at Bobby. He said: “I’m treating you as a sort of father confessor, instead of a detective chap out to get me hanged. Do you know, I don’t think I should much care if you did. It would end what ought never to have begun.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Bobby asked, but this question Martin did not answer. He resumed:

  “Perhaps I should, though, if you managed it, though I don’t see how you could. I daresay that really, way back at the bottom of my mind, I did rather hope you might believe me. Always the optimist, you see. Sometimes, too, the prospect of getting hanged—well, I do rather panic.”

  “The risk would be less if you held less back,” Bobby said. “You are not telling all.”

  “I tell my own tale, no one else’s,” Martin retorted.

  “As I understand it,” Bobby continued, “you were in love with Miss Wynne and hoped you might win hers. Then suddenly, after the murder, you changed, and now you’ve told her you are going away and she is not likely ever to see you again. She seems to have found that rather puzzling, and even disturbing.”

  “I hope you are right,” Martin said. “I hope even more that you are wrong.”

  “That makes it seem something happened—something serious to make you change your mind,” Bobby said. “What?”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Martin agreed. “What happened was that I woke up from dreams and faced realities instead. It was all wrong, and I knew I had to go away. That’s all.”

  “What do you mean by ‘all wrong’?” Bobby asked, but Martin did not answer. He sat silent, staring straight before him, and his eyes were strange and dark. It was as though they were watching visions from the past, visions that were strange and dark. Bobby said: “Why do you sleep badly?”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  MARTIN’S STORY

  NO ANSWER CAME. Bobby waited—watchful, patient, as so often before when instinct told him a crisis had come, one that might or might not come to a head but that any spoken word would certainly dispel. For some moments Martin remained silent, motionless, staring straight before him, and when he spoke at last, it was rather as if the words came automatically, without conscious will.

  “Yes, I do, don’t I?” he was murmuring, and the words were hard to catch. “Sis and I, we sleep badly.” Then he passed his hand before his eyes as if to wipe away whatever it was they saw, and said more loudly, “Yes, that’s right. How did you know?”

  “The first time I saw you,” Bobby answered, “I got two impressions. There are things that in police work you get to recognize instinctively. One was that you slept badly. Your eyes, I think. Tired and watchful, they seemed to me—the eyes of a man who often lay awake watching the dark. Also I heard you were much abroad at night and in the small hours of the morning, and that people talked about it.”

  “‘Macbeth hath murdered sleep,’ is that the idea?” murmured Martin, and now he seemed more self-possessed, more like his usual self. “If you really want to know, yes, I do have dreams—ugly dreams, nightmares. Is it a crime to have nightmares or to suffer from insomnia?”

  “No, but crime might be their cause,” Bobby retorted. “You know your cottage was entered while you were away? Have you any idea who it was or why?”

  “None,” answered Martin. “Have you? I’ve missed nothing. I did wonder if it had anything to do with all those stories about stuff buried in the copse that were going the rounds. Do you know?”

  “We have strong suspicions, but that’s all,” Bobby answered; “and we suspect, too, that there may be a tie-up with those stories you mentioned. If you’ve missed no
thing, it seems more like a civil action for trespass and damage than a police matter. But there’s another thing I thought I noticed that time we first met. I thought you knew me, recognized me. I even had your finger-prints checked. They are not on record.”

  “How on earth did you manage that?” Martin asked. “To check them, I mean. They’ve never been taken.”

  “There were plenty in your cottage,” Bobby explained. “When the local police were informed of the break-in they took a number. They were nearly all the same, so presumably made by the occupier—yours, in fact. Most likely the intruder wore gloves. They were sent to Scotland Yard—without result.”

  “Well, I’m glad I’m cleared on that point, anyhow,” Martin commented, more than half mockingly. “Thorough, aren’t you? I shall have to be careful, though, in the future. Down on me at once if I misbehave; is that it?”

  “As a matter of fact, they’ve all been destroyed,” Bobby assured him. “We are allowed only to keep dabs of convicted persons. It seems I was right in thinking that you slept badly, and I heard you say just now that your sister did, too. Does it run in the family, I wonder? Never mind. Would you care to say if my other idea was correct? That you recognized me and were rather upset by doing so?”

  “Was that another guess?” Martin countered. “Good at guessing, aren’t you?”

  “Everyone calls it guessing,” protested Bobby. “I call it deduction from observation. Anyhow, was I right?”

  “Well, I was there once when you were shooing off a lot of journalists, trying to get you to tell us something about a case you were handling. Years ago. I was in the back row. I always am. I’m no newshawk, able to smell an exclusive a mile away. I don’t expect you even saw me.”

  “If that was all,” Bobby insisted, “why were you so plainly startled, uneasy even, seeing me?”

  “Top-rank police officers turning up unexpectedly generally means trouble somewhere,” Martin retorted. “And I knew there were some funny rumours going round, though I didn’t know exactly what. Or was it just instinct?”

  “Our information is that a woman answering the description of Mrs Field was seen earlier in the day of the murder coming from the direction of your cottage.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Martin said. “So far as I know, I never saw her in my life.”

  “We have further information that a woman has been paying you regular visits and that you gave her sums of money—rather large sums? Do you care to say anything about that?”

  “You are on that, too, are you?” Martin exclaimed. “Is that suspicious? My God! is there anything a man can do that can’t be called suspicious? Yes, I do give a woman money at regular intervals. Once I gave her a hundred pounds, and of course that was the time she managed to lose her hand-bag, the hundred pounds and all! Started some of my more amiable neighbours talking about blackmail when they heard.”

  “A hundred pounds is a lot of money—at least, most of us think so.”

  “You do when you have to save it up in shillings,” Martin retorted. “But that’s what television sets cost, if you get a good one. And I don’t see why I shouldn’t pay for someone else’s, if I want to.”

  “No,” Bobby agreed, “but it’s unusual, and there are a lot of unusual things in this case, and a good many of them seem to centre round you. However, if that’s all you have to tell me, I won’t detain you any longer. But I am bound to say that serious consideration will have to be given to the question of charging you.”

  “I thought that would be next,” Martin said. “Pretty flimsy evidence, in my opinion. But no doubt I’m prejudiced. I hoped I might manage to put you off. Sis told me I should only make it worse, but I didn’t see what else there was to do. I knew you would go on working. The Yard never stops, does it? All right, I have been keeping things back a lot. Once I swore on the Bible I would never tell. Now I suppose I’ve got to. I told Sis it might come to that, oath or no oath, and anyhow, getting had up for murder and perhaps hanged wouldn’t be much good to anyone—not even to that blessed hotel Tom Toosoon thinks is the beginning and end of all created things.”

  “Yes?” Bobby said, when Martin paused, as if uncertain how to continue or else unwilling to. “Yes?”

  “I saw you once before that other time I told you of,” Martin resumed. “But I don’t suppose you saw me. Sis and I. We were hiding behind the curtains looking through the window at a woman hammering at the front door with one hand and waving a knife in the other. She wanted to get in to murder me.”

  “Who was the woman?” Bobby asked.

  Martin seemed to have some difficulty in answering. He got up from his chair. He went to the window. For an instant the fear flashed into Bobby’s mind that he was going to jump out. But there was no sign of that. Over his shoulder Martin said, and now his voice was loud and clear:

  “She was my mother.”

  He turned from the window then and came back slowly to his chair. There was a long silence. For this at least Bobby had not expected, and he had some difficulty in adjusting his mind to it and to all that it implied. Then at last he said:

  “Why did your mother wish to murder you?”

  “Because she thought she had,” Martin answered; and once more he lapsed into silence, and once more his heavy eyes seemed to be watching strange, dark visions surging up from past years, and it seemed to Bobby that this time he could well guess what those visions were. Martin said abruptly, Bobby’s question unanswered: “I don’t suppose you remember. Why should you?”

  “Do you mean that I was there?” Bobby asked.

  “I expect someone rang up the police station, and you came along to see what was happening. It’s years ago. It might be yesterday for me. Not for you. I was fifteen. Sis is seven years older. You managed to coax mother to give up the knife and come away. I believe you told her that if she wanted me killed, all right, but it had to be done in the proper way, and it was most unladylike to be making such a disturbance. She must come to the police station so that the necessary steps could be taken and proceedings begun. So she did, and then two nurses arrived, and she went back quietly to the Home she had escaped from. When she remembers, she still asks when the proceedings will begin.”

  “Had she been long like that?” Bobby asked.

  “Since she watched my father die and the baby was born blind,” Martin answered. “A car knocked her down crossing the road. Father ran to pick her up. Another car came along and overturned trying to avoid the first. It pinned father down right across mother lying there. By the time they got the car lifted father was dead and mother had watched him die. The baby was born soon afterwards, before its time, and it was blind. Some mischief-making fool started the idea that the baby was blind because mother’s unconscious wanted to protect it from ever seeing what mother had seen. She got to know somehow what was being said. I think that was what did it. No one had any idea anything was wrong. Except Sis. She was twelve and she knew, only she didn’t know what. One day mother told us she was going to take us all for a nice walk by the river. Sis and me—I was five—and the blind baby. When we got there she sat down, nursing the baby, and I began to play about; but Sis stood a little way away, watching. Mother called to us. I came, but Sis waited. Mother stood up and pushed the baby into the river. I remember saying, ‘Oh, mummy, that was baby.’ I think I thought it was just a mistake. Mother took my hand. She said: ‘Yes, darling; she’s going to join father, and we must go, too.’ I don’t remember any more except being in the water. Sis ran away, crying. Some men heard her. They were in time to get us out, but the baby had disappeared.”

  When he had finished speaking, Martin sat back and closed his eyes, as if to shut out the vision that so often tormented him. Bobby let some minutes pass before he spoke. Then he said: “Is your mother, then, still suffering from the delusion that you and she must join your father?”

  “It’s not that exactly,” Martin answered. “She believes she did drown me and that I’m dead, and wh
en she sees me she thinks I must be some evil spirit, masquerading as me—a kind of zombie—and it’s her duty to kill me again. It’s quite logical. She knows she pushed me into the river, and so I must have drowned. If she sees me she goes into such paroxysms that the doctors at the Home where she is now have asked me not to try to see her. The woman who visits me regularly is a nurse from the Home, and she is our only link. She comes to tell me how mother is, and the money I give her is for any little extra comfort and to pay her for her trouble. The hundred pounds you’ve heard about was for a television set for mother’s own use. Very often she won’t mix with the other patients. Nurse wants any money I give her to be in cash. She has an idea the Home wouldn’t like it if they knew.”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  DOUBTS AND FEARS

  ONCE AGAIN THERE was a long silence, but not now because either had become lost in past memories or present thought. Rather it was as though, like two skilled swordsmen, well knowing that in their encounter lay issues of life and death, they had drawn apart for a momentary pause. Yet each still as wary and intent as when keen rapiers had clashed and thrust and parried, flickering to and fro.

  In no word that Bobby had uttered had doubt or misgiving found expression, yet a deep awareness was in Martin’s mind that in Bobby’s such thoughts and feelings had been born. So equally did Bobby know, with equal strong assurance, that everything Martin had told him had been carefully prepared, chosen to conceal some one vital fact, the one that might provide the necessary clue. Yet what that could be he could not conceive. Then Martin stood up, glancing towards the door, as if he felt that now he had told everything he had to tell he was entitled to go.

  “That’s all,” he said. “You can check it all if you want to. It was in all the papers at the time.”

  “Oh, yes, it will probably be checked,” Bobby said. “Matter of routine—red tape, if you like. But no one could suppose that you would invent or suppress”—was there just the faintest emphasis on this last word?—“anything that could be so easily confirmed—or not. No, I accept your story as it stands as factual and complete. There are just one or two minor points. You began by saying you had promised never to tell anyone. Do you mind saying who it was you promised and why your promise—oath, you said—was asked for? Surely it was all well known, and I imagine there was no great risk of your talking about it.”