Dark is the Clue: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  To the woman Bobby said: “Mrs. Rawson, as soon as it is ready you will be asked to read it over. If you are satisfied that it is a fair and accurate report you will be asked to sign it. Till then I should like to suggest that you try to rest.”

  Her face seemed to break up and for a moment Bobby feared hysteria. She recovered herself. Her voice was perfectly calm and steady as she answered: “Do you think it is easy to rest when you are waiting to be hanged?”

  “I don’t think we have got that far yet,” said Bobby.

  “You have made it perfectly plain what you do think,” she retorted.

  “I hope not,” Bobby exclaimed. “Making it plain what you think is just about the worst fault a police officer can commit. Quite inexcusable.”

  “I’ll wait here till the thing is ready, then I’ll sign it,” she said.

  “You must do as you wish.”

  “When I’ve signed it, I suppose you will want to take me away?”

  “That won’t depend on me,” Bobby said, “and I wish you wouldn’t jump to conclusions. But if you feel equal to it— anyhow, it will be better for you than just sitting and waiting—I would like to go over some of the main points again. You were married about seven years ago when you were only eighteen. There are two children. I think you ran away from home with Mr. Rawson. I think your married life has not been very happy.”

  “It was at first, the first few months,” she answered slowly. “Then John became violently jealous. It amused me at first, I liked to tease him a little. I was so young then. Eighteen. Now I’m twenty-five. It became a sort of mania with him. I don’t think anything would have satisfied him except shutting me up away from every other man for always.”

  “I understand there were some violent scenes?”

  She rolled up her sleeve and showed the bruises on her arm. Bobby had seen them before.

  “Did he threaten your life?”

  “Yes, but he was always sorry afterwards. I don’t think he knew how strong he was. If I showed him my arm like this he would begin to kiss it and almost cry and say he would never do it again. It all started all over again, all the same.”

  “Two days ago,” Bobby continued, looking at the notes before him, “Mr. Rawson was found dead in bed. The post-mortem showed that at least two grains of morphia had been taken. It is suggested that the morphia was administered in the cup of hot milk he took at night and that you prepared. It was given to him by the maid as you had gone out, but you left the milk ready for her to warm. You told your husband that you were going to the cinema with a friend. You repeated that statement to the police officer first called in and later to me.”

  “You soon found out it was a lie, didn’t you?” she said wearily. “I went to meet Don Merton. We had a long talk. When I got back John was in bed or dead. I don’t know which. I didn’t go into his room. I went straight to my own. I didn’t feel I could bear seeing John just then.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I knew I had just thrown away my last chance of freedom—of anything like happiness. I know what you think, what everyone else will think—the jury, too. They’ll all say I didn’t dare look again at my victim. I’m credited with that much decency apparently. That’s something.”

  “Your statement is that you told Mr. Merton you were not prepared to leave your husband?”

  “No. I would have left him. It was the children. I had to stay with them. They’ll say I planned to keep them and rid myself of John and then I could have Don and the children, too. I can hear the judge saying it and all the jury nodding yes. I didn’t. I told Don there were the children and I must go back to John, and so I did—you think to kill him.”

  “I do wish,” Bobby said, “that you wouldn’t keep telling me what I think. I don’t know that myself yet. At first Mr. Merton confirmed your story but afterwards admitted the cinema tale had been concocted between you.”

  “I rang him up,” she said. “I told him what to say.”

  “Let us go back a little,” Bobby continued. “You visited Dr. Long shortly before your husband’s death. He had been sleeping badly and he asked you to get him some sleeping tablets. Dr. Long states that he gave you a small phial containing some. They were quite innocuous and contained no morphia. You have handed this phial over. Two of the tablets are missing.”

  “I put them in the milk I left ready. I put in nothing else.”

  “Dr. Long was questioned. He examined his poison cupboard. He found a morphia tablet was missing. He says, and you agree, that he left you alone for a few moments while he went to answer a phone call—a wrong number as it turned out. He had heard the phone ringing, and as he knows his wife is hard of hearing he went to attend to it himself. Your fingerprints are on the small glass container holding the morphia tablets of which one is missing.”

  “I never touched it,” she said again, as she had said before. “I never touched anything all the time that I was there. I didn’t even take my gloves off. It’s not true.” Her voice grew a little wild. “It’s not possible,” she said. “You’re only saying it to trap me. How can they be when I never touched a thing?”

  “Nevertheless,” Bobby answered, “your prints are there and can be seen plainly. They are very clear prints. That is a fact.” She did not answer. He went on: “The poison cupboard is in the dispensary, and that is where Dr. Long saw you. That was because the gas fire in the surgery proper was out of action. The radiants had been accidentally broken. A chair had fallen against them and the new ones ordered had not arrived.”

  “There was something like that,” she agreed, “I didn’t notice particularly.”

  “Dr. Long’s house is one of those big, old-fashioned places, isn’t it?” Bobby went on. “As you go in, on the left is a large room. It is used as the waiting-room. Opening out of it is a smaller room, the consulting-room or surgery proper where the doctor sees his patients, unless, apparently, it is a cold day and the gas stove is out of order. Finally, built out from the house is a third room, a large room. Dr. Long uses it as a dispensary and also for research work. As he dislikes being disturbed in any way while he is at work there are heavy curtains over the door of this room.”

  “Why are you going over all this again?” she asked.

  “To make sure of details,” Bobby answered. “Details are important. Details give the truth, if you can read them aright. I will mention three that interest me. First: two grains of morphia at least were given your husband. Second: the radiants in the gas stove in the consulting-room or surgery were broken. Third: there are heavy curtains over the door of the room where the poison cupboard is.”

  “What has all that to do with it—or me?” she asked. Bobby continued: “There’s one thing more I want to ask about. You and Mr. Rawson were on friendly terms with Dr. and Mrs. Long. You visited each other. Did Dr. Long ever take you into the dispensary to show you what he was working at or specimens of it he thought interesting?”

  “Not in the dispensary,” Mrs. Rawson told him. “I was never there till this happened. He didn’t like people in his room. Mrs. Long said it was because it was so untidy he was ashamed of it. She complained a lot because he wouldn’t let her have it cleaned. He always said he wasn’t going to have his things disturbed.”

  “I take it,” Bobby said, “you mean he would occasionally fetch things he thought of interest and hand them round to be looked at. What sort of things?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Why? What does it matter? I didn’t like touching them if I could help. They were all horrid. John was interested in them. I wasn’t.”

  “Thank you. That’s all at present, I think,” Bobby said. “Another detail, you see. Now come with me.”

  She rose and obeyed mechanically. He led her into the next room where a younger sister of hers, pale, bewildered, anguished, was waiting.

  “I have to go now,” Bobby said. “Look after Mrs. Rawson till you hear from me. I may be ringing up.”

  He went out then to where his car
was waiting. A young man came running. He called: “I must see her. I must. You’ve no right—”

  “I have given instructions that Mrs. Rawson is to see no one for the present,” Bobby answered. “You must wait for a time.”

  “If you get her hanged,” Merton cried, “I’ll hang myself as well.”

  “Mr. Merton.” Bobby said, “try to keep your head. It is not certain yet who, if anyone, is going to hang.”

  “How can I keep my head when I am going mad?” Merton asked.

  Bobby got into the car without replying. The constable who was driving started it. At Dr. Long’s house they stopped. Bobby knocked and was admitted by Mrs. Long, a small, thin, discontented-looking woman, plainly very hard of hearing. But Bobby made her understand who he was, and he was shown into the waiting-room. In a moment or two Dr. Long entered. He was a middle-aged man, stout in build, almost chubby indeed, though now evidently nervous and suffering from fatigue and loss of sleep.

  “A dreadful business this,” he explained. “I have felt it all most terribly.”

  “I can understand that,” Bobby said. “I think my case is complete.” The doctor did not speak, but his face twitched. Bobby went on: “I would like to see your poison cupboard again.”

  Still not speaking, Dr. Long led the way to the dispensary. Bobby followed. The doctor held back the heavy curtains to allow Bobby to enter and then let them fall back into place. Bobby looked at the poison cupboard, saw that it was safely locked again, chatted rather aimlessly for a moment or two, looked at his watch, and then asked suddenly: “Do you hear anything?”

  “Hear anything? No. Why?” Long said, evidently surprised.

  Bobby pulled back the curtains over the door and opened it. He went across the room and opened the door of the next room as well. The phone was ringing and could now be clearly heard.

  “A phone call,” Bobby said, returning to where Long was waiting, puzzled, faintly troubled. “You needn’t answer it. It was for me. I arranged for it and was expecting it, and my driver is there to answer it. Please listen carefully to what I’m going to say. On the day Mrs. Rawson was here you were not expecting any call. Yet you heard it in this inner room, through closed doors and those heavy curtains. You went to answer it. It was a wrong number, so it cannot be traced. But in this way Mrs. Rawson was left alone and thus was given the opportunity to get hold of a morphia tablet. Can you explain how it is you heard the phone ringing that day, though you were not expecting it, while to-day neither you nor I heard it? Yet, anyhow, I was expecting it.”

  “I really don’t know,” Long answered. “I suppose I had forgotten to draw the curtains, shut the doors, something like that.”

  “The curtains seem to fall into position by their own weight.” Bobby said. “It would be unusual for you to forget to shut the door when you so much dislike any interruption while at work. Is not that so?”

  “Probably I was more on the alert, listening more attentively. As a matter of fact I was expecting a call from one of my patients.”

  “Will you please give me his name and address?”

  “Certainly not. I do not give my patients’ names. It would be betraying their confidence.”

  “Mrs. Rawson.” Bobby went on, “was brought into this room because the gas fire in the consulting-room was out of action, its radiants having been accidentally broken. I have ascertained that new radiants were not ordered till the day after Mrs. Rawson was here.”

  “They must have been forgotten,” the doctor said.

  “Or was it all part of a plan to get Mrs. Rawson into this room where the poison cupboard is and where she had never been before?”

  “How could that account for the fingerprints you found on the morphia tablet container?”

  “It seems that occasionally,” Bobby said, “you used to show her and her husband specimens of your work. Was one such specimen handed to her in a glass container? Was the contents of that container, with her fingerprints on it, afterwards removed and morphia tablets substituted?”

  “Fantastic,” the doctor said. “I never remember giving her anything to hold. I might have, of course. But it’s not likely. She used to object, said it was horrid.”

  “You admit, then, that you tried?” Bobby asked, and the doctor did not answer.

  Now he had become very pale and Bobby was watching him closely. Bobby went on, speaking slowly:

  “The morphia tablet that is missing, and that it is suggested Mrs. Rawson took, contained half a grain. I’m told that is about the biggest dose made up in tablet form. But two grains at least were found at the post-mortem. Does that suggest a specially prepared tablet had been placed at the head of those in the phial of sleeping tablets given Mrs. Rawson?”

  “I never thought there would be a post-mortem,” Long remarked quietly. “I thought the plain symptoms of morphia poisoning and the fact that one of my tablets was missing would be enough without any post-mortem being held. I had to make sure, hadn’t I? Half a grain might not have been enough. So I made up one specially with two grains in it for her to give him.”

  “Making sure?” Bobby asked.

  “Making sure,” Long agreed. He said: “She was a woman with a flame in her that ate men up. It had to be stopped.”

  “And Rawson?” Bobby asked. “Why should you want to destroy him?”

  “Could I bear, was it tolerable,” Long cried, “that he should live with memories of her in his arms, of kisses, of all no other man had ever had?”

  His hand, which he had taken from his pocket, was going to his mouth. Bobby leapt. They struggled for a moment. They were on the floor. Long was struggling desperately to get his hand to his mouth. The policeman-chauffeur came running. In a moment or two Long was handcuffed. He did not speak and a little froth gathered at his mouth. Bobby said:

  “Take him to the car. I must ring up Mrs. Rawson and tell her I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid she will have to be a witness at the trial.”

  About The Author

  E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.

  At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.

  He died in 1956.

  The Bobby Owen Mysteries

  1. Information Received

  2. Death among the Sunbathers

  3. Crossword Mystery

  4. Mystery Villa

  5. Death of a Beauty Queen

  6. Death Comes to Cambers

  7. The Bath Mysteries

  8. Mystery of Mr. Jessop

  9. The Dusky Hour

  10. Dictator’s Way

  11. Comes a Stranger

  12. Suspects – Nine

  13. Murder Abroad

  14. Four Strange Women

  15. Ten Star Clues

  16. The Dark Garden

  17. Diabolic Candelabra

  18. The Conqueror Inn

  19. Night’s Cloak

  20. Secrets Can’t be Kept

  21. There’s a Reason for Everything

  22. It Might Lead Anywhere

  23. Helen Passes By

  24. Music Tells All

  25. The House of Godwinsson

  26. So Many Doors

  27. Everybody Always Tells

  28. The Secret Search

  29. The Golden Dagger

  30. The Attending Truth

  31. Strange Ending

  32. Brought to Light

  33. Dark is the Clue

  34. Triple Quest

  35. Six Were Present

  E.R. Punshon

  Triple Quest

 
; Bobby studied the Rembrandt intently, with his own strange intensity of gaze that seemed as if by sheer strength of will it could force all secrets to reveal themselves.

  Commander Bobby Owen receives a visit from private detective Marmaduke Groan. Groan is concerned about a missing client, the influential art critic Alfred Atts. Due to give a much-anticipated Royal Arts lecture, Atts promised to use the occasion to reveal sensational facts. But he vanished before getting the chance.

  And Mr Atts had suspected his wife of wanting to poison him …

  Triple Quest, a thrilling and thoughtful tale of art fraud and murder, is the thirty-fourth novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1955. This new edition features a bonus Bobby Owen short story, and an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  “What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” DOROTHY L. SAYERS

  CHAPTER I

  THE ‘PRIVATE EYE’

  ON HIS PROFESSIONAL cards, on his office-door plate, Mr. Marmaduke Groan described himself as ‘Confidential Investigator’. In other words, a private detective, or, more colloquially, a ‘private eye’. Now, at Scotland Yard, in the sanctum of Deputy Commander Bobby Owen, he sat nervously, or at any rate to all appearance nervously, on the edge of his chair, though in fact he was about as subject to nerves as is cold boiled cod.

  His bowler hat he held clutched in one hand, his badly folded umbrella in the other, a small dispatch case he nursed awkwardly across his knees. Obviously it held his sandwiches for lunch, only it didn’t, and altogether he presented a perfect picture of the insignificant little man, one whose insignificance had been so impressed on him since birth that he had come to accept it as a part of the natural order of things, no more to be questioned or resented than the natural sequence of day and night. The impression was heightened by protuberant eyes behind large spectacles fitted with perfectly clear lenses and a mouth sagging loosely open, giving no sign that it could on occasion snap to like a rat-trap.