Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You don’t mean you think there could be any question of marriage between them, between a hunchback, almost a dwarf, and a girl like Rosamund?” He did not wait for an answer that seemed to him self-evident, but went on: “What about Val and Myra? Have they any idea?”

  “I don’t think so,” Olive answered. “I’m sure Val hasn’t. They both take Dewey as a kind of freak to be sorry for. They didn’t mean to, but they’ve let Mrs James see that—that they hardly think of Dewey as human at all. Val once said that among the Bantu anyone like Dewey would have been smothered at birth, and that was the best way. Of course, he didn’t mean Mrs James to hear, but she did.”

  “Well, of course, she would be sure to,” Bobby said.

  “You can imagine how she felt,” Olive said presently and Bobby nodded. “Anyhow, Dewey never wants to do anything but worship at a distance,” she concluded, and this time with a slight note of relief in her voice.

  By now Bobby had brought the car to a halt outside the old lodge. No one was visible. He alighted and knocked at the lodge door. There was still no answer. He thought, however, that he could hear sounds, as of some one hammering, coming from the back, where he knew there were various sheds and outbuildings. There he found Mrs James at the bench in what was evidently the tool and repair shed. She was working with a file and vice at what seemed some kind of lazy tongs, to which apparently she was trying to affix a spring. Her crutch was at some distance, leaning against a chair and she gave Bobby the impression that she was both startled and discomposed by his appearance. Hurriedly she pushed the lazy tongs contraption she was working at into the midst of a huddle of tools and so on nearby on the bench, wiped her hands on a dirty cloth and then flung it on top of the heap. Bobby began an apology for disturbing her. She did not listen, but with one of those odd, prodigious leaps of hers, balanced on her one leg, she reached her crutch. As if now she felt safer, reinforced, so to speak, she turned to face Bobby.

  “You’re the murder man, aren’t you?” she demanded.

  “Well, that’s not exactly how I describe myself,” Bobby answered; a little startled by the undisguised hostility with which this remark had been hurled at him. “The fact is I’m very interested in what happened the other night when you were in the Folly. You all heard a voice?”

  “There was something,” she admitted, though Bobby felt she would have liked to deny it if possible. “Sounded gibberish to me. Like the quacking of a duck with a bad cold. What about it?”

  “Didn’t Mr Outers say it was an African dialect he understood?”

  “I didn’t,” she snapped. “Ask him if you want to know what it meant?”

  “Oh, he’s told me,” Bobby answered.

  She made no reply. She shifted her weight on her crutch as she stood. Bobby thought it might be because she found standing irksome or her crutch misfitting in some way. Adjusting it, might have been the task she had been engaged on when he appeared. He glanced at a chair and made a move to get it for her. It seemed she noticed his movement, but misinterpreted his intention. In the same sharp, angry tone she said:

  “If one leg can stand, so can two.” Then she added: “It may all have been Teddy Peel.”

  “You think it possible he faked it?” Bobby asked. “You don’t trust him?”

  “No. I don’t,” she snapped. “I don’t trust him. Or anyone else. Or you either.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for that,” Bobby said. “I don’t see why. You don’t know much about me, do you?”

  “Poking your nose into things that don’t concern you,” she said.

  “But they do,” Bobby protested. “And everyone else for that matter. We would all like to know what these things mean.”

  “Nobody knows what anything means,” she retorted; and as this was an incontrovertible statement, and as by this time he had decided that Mrs James was determined not to talk, he apologized for troubling her—an apology of which she took not the least notice—and retired to where Olive was waiting for him in the car.

  “I’m afraid Mrs James doesn’t like me,” he said in an injured tone. “I can’t think why. All I got out of her was a hint that Teddy Peel is probably a fraud.”

  “Well, then, why does she go on being there?” Olive demanded; and Bobby said that was what he wanted to know, but there might be any one of a dozen reasons or more.

  “She may be more impressed than she admitted,” he said. “Or she may merely want to keep on terms with Val and Myra because of Dewey’s friendship with Rosamund. If you’re right about that.”

  “Oh, I am,” Olive assured him with complete certitude in her tone. “You don’t mistake absolute pure devotion when you see it.”

  Bobby started the car then and they drove on. Their first call was to be Cranmer, formerly a remote and picturesque village in the midst of lovely though not very fertile country, but now become a kind of exclusive dormitory for the wealthier inhabitants of booming, smoking, bustling Midminster and also for a few of the less wealthy who had established themselves there before land values shot up to astronomical heights. In this latter class was Mr Nixon, the West Midshire Chief Constable and an old colleague of Bobby’s, with whom he and Olive were to lunch. The happy uncertainty of English country roads nearly doubled the map distance and kept Bobby’s attention fixed on the problem of finding his way. Not until presently they came to a signpost that condescended to mention Cranmer and gave the distance to it as a mile and three-quarters did he relax a little. Then he said:

  “Remember what I told you about Val having a map showing the position of a big uranium field somewhere in a native reserve in South Africa?”

  “Oh, yes,” Olive said. “I’ve been wondering. Isn’t he really going to do anything about it? If he doesn’t, someone else is sure to.”

  “Well, of course, he knows that,” Bobby agreed. “Needs must, but not through him. He didn’t ask me to keep it quiet and he must have known I should be likely to tell you if he thought about it at all. All the same, it’s rather worrying. It really is tremendously important—much more than a new gold mine or two or a new diamond field stuffed with Koh-i-noors. Every government’s dream in every country is to find a nice new fat uranium field in its own territory. All the same, it’s Val’s secret, not ours, and I don’t feel we have any right to give it away, and yet I feel it’s too big a thing to keep quiet about. If it got known, Val would be under tremendous pressure—official, Press, public. I don’t think he or anyone could stand out. If they tried, they would probably be driven mad. Well, have I any right—?”

  “Certainly not,” interrupted Olive in her most decisive tone.

  “But have I any right to hold back anything of such importance to the country? Val didn’t make any sort of suggestion that what he said was meant to be confidential—perhaps on purpose so as to push off part of the responsibility on to me.”

  “I don’t think Val’s like that,” Olive said.

  “I don’t either,” Bobby agreed. “All the same, if I keep quiet it may be the end of me. Think of the rage in the City, the pompous articles in all the papers deciding that I acted from admirable but wholly mistaken motives, and so I had better have the sack.”

  “Oh, dear,” Olive exclaimed, and considered this. “Oh, dear,” she said again. “What a nuisance it’s always so wrong to do what’s right. I expect you could get another job, though. I’m sure I could. We could be caretakers at some ducal mansion, showing people round. It would be rather fun.”

  “Nothing doing,” answered Bobby with decision. “Ducal families keep that job for themselves. No wonder. Remember the tips. I’ll write to Val or go to see him again and try to persuade him he oughtn’t to trust his own judgment in anything so big and important. It ought to be decided at Government level.”

  “I wouldn’t trust any government one inch further than I could see it,” announced Olive firmly; and, as Bobby had no comment to make on this most natural and proper sentiment, he drove on in silence.

  The
so carefully measured mile and three-quarters to Cranmer was soon covered, nor had Bobby any difficulty in finding Mr Nixon’s home. An excellent luncheon provided the background for an enjoyable gossip, in the course of which Bobby managed to turn the conversation to the Folly Tower.

  “Mr Outers is a far-off cousin of mine,” he explained; and it was impossible to miss the air of slight embarrassment that now showed as Nixon and his wife looked at each other. “He was a district officer in the depths of Africa,” Bobby went on. “Not a policeman, he said, but he often had to act as one. Ever come across him?”

  “I called there once,” Nixon answered. “There were some rather funny stories going about and I drove over to have a chat and see if he knew anything about it.”

  “Did he seem to?” Bobby asked.

  “Just sat there glowering and pulling at that great black beard of his,” answered Nixon. “Thanked me for coming and got out the whisky and all that, but wasn’t talking and, of course, I couldn’t press him. I tried to drop him a hint about a man named Peel. Slippery customer. He’s been through our hands once or twice, but we’ve never been able to pin anything on him. He calls himself a student of the occult. Has the impudence to print it on what I suppose he calls his business cards. The Midminster chaps have tried to get him for fortune-telling, but that was no good. We’ve had a series of burglaries, you know, at the big houses in this neighbourhood. Very worrying. Peel’s name keeps cropping up as having been a visitor doing his stunts just before. Of course, there may be no connection.”

  “Reconnaissance?” Bobby suggested.

  “That’s right. What we thought,” agreed Nixon. “Then he was a dewy-eyed, innocent witness after a gang fight on Midminster Racecourse a year ago. One man got a knife pushed into him and died of it. It couldn’t be brought home to anyone, but we had a good idea Peel was the knife-pusher.”

  “We saw him at Freres when we were there yesterday afternoon,” Bobby said. “I shouldn’t have taken him for the knife-happy type.”

  “In the back,” Nixon said, and Bobby nodded comprehension.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE WISH FULFILLED

  “IT WASN’T EXACTLY what you would call a police matter I called to see Mr Outers about,” Nixon resumed presently in rather an apologetic tone. “But worrying. And then you never know how things will turn out, do you?”

  “Never,” agreed Bobby. “Except that it’s generally the way you don’t want.”

  “One of my chaps,” Nixon continued. “Youngster, but seems reliable and sticks to his story. He was on night patrol, and near Freres he claims he saw a little old man sitting by the roadside. It was late, and dark except for a bit of a moon, but he says he could see plainly enough. He thought it queer, so he got off his motor cycle to question him. He heard the old man say something he couldn’t understand, but when he looked again the old man wasn’t there, and nowhere, my chap says, where he could have got to. I shouldn’t have thought so much of it, but for a lorry-driver coming in later on with the same sort of yarn. Shaken, he was all right. This time it was early in the morning, soon after daybreak. Little old man sitting by the roadside near Mr Outers’s place. The lorry driver says he saw him plainly and thinks he was a Negro. He was quite naked except for a cloth round the middle and a kind of necklace of polished bones. The lorry chap slowed up to have another look. The old man said something in what the driver called ‘a kind of foreign lingo’, and then he wasn’t there any more.”

  “There’s such a lot of gossip goes on in Cranmer you can’t believe a word you hear,” interposed Mrs Nixon. “I get it all from our daily. Her sister started going to the Outers to help, but she stopped. She complained Miss Outers went about looking fit to scare you.”

  “They had a tragic experience in Africa,” Bobby said. “I don’t think they’ve ever got over it. Their two boys were killed by natives—a kind of ritual murder as far as I can make out.”

  “I didn’t know that,” observed Mr Nixon, and looked as though he thought someone ought to have told him. “And now mysterious natives hanging about.”

  “I thought Rosamund a very nice, quiet girl,” declared Olive. “I expect she didn’t gossip enough. Some dailies seem to think that’s all they come for—a nice cup of tea and a gossip.”

  Mrs Nixon, all bubbling sympathy, said “I know,” and for a moment or two the conversation seemed about to develop into a duologue on the iniquities of ‘dailies’. But then she reverted to an earlier theme and said instead:

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Miss Outers, but she seems attractive to young men. There are two of them in Cranmer never off the Freres doorstep—Mr Baynham and Mr Manners. They used to be friendly enough but now they never speak except to scowl at each other. Daggers drawn. And Dewey James as well,” and at that she and her husband exchanged glances of sly amusement.

  “He’s a hunchback,” Mr Nixon explained unnecessarily. “Runs a market garden in what used to be the Freres grounds before the old place was burned down. Not making much of a success of it by all accounts.”

  “People say it’s because he spends all his time running after Miss Outers,” Mrs Nixon told them. “And Mr Outers doesn’t like it, but can’t stop it and I do think he ought to—a hunchback. Only it’s just wicked to try to make a joke of it, as some do.”

  “They’ll be more careful about that now,” Nixon remarked. “One man tried to be funny in a pub and Dewey picked him up and took him outside and threw him into the old horsepond there. When he tried to get out, Dewey threw him back again. I had to send a chap to warn him against taking the law into his own hands. I wouldn’t like to answer for him if he got really worked up.”

  “I always say it’s what started these silly stories about little old black men,” Mrs. Nixon put in. “It’s really been Dewey wandering about, trying to walk it off. If it was too dark to see properly he would look all bent up and small like old men are and all the rest is just the way stories grow. Tell someone you’ve found a safety-pin in the road, and it’ll be a fur coat before you can turn round.”

  Mr Nixon nodded agreement, and Bobby said it was time they were getting on their way if they were to get to Bristol, where they had arranged to spend the night, before dark.

  They started off accordingly and not until they had driven some considerable distance did Bobby rouse himself from the silent and abstracted mood into which he had fallen and remark on how pleasant it was to meet an old colleague and have a chat with him. So Olive said, “Yes, wasn’t it?”

  “Not that I think for one moment,” Bobby told her severely, “that there’s anything to worry about in those stories of talkative old Negroes sitting by the roadside. What’s happened is plain enough. Teddy Peel’s bit of ventriloquism in the Tower Room has got about and been fathered on some harmless old tramp whose one idea, of course, was to make himself scarce as soon as he saw a police patrol. Then the lorry driver heard about it and wasn’t going to be outdone. All quite normal. I shouldn’t be surprised if some more of the same stories don’t come in soon.”

  “I shouldn’t either,” agreed Olive.

  “Soon be forgotten,” Bobby said, staring angrily at the signpost, which told him he was on the right road to Bristol. Then he said: “Very disturbing. I’ve half a mind to turn round and go straight back to Val’s to have it out with him.”

  “Oh, you can’t do that, dear,” protested Olive, startled into housewifely sympathy with an unprepared Myra. “Have what out?” she asked.

  Bobby made no attempt to reply, and not till he had driven on another mile or two did he speak again.

  “I don’t much like it, that’s all,” he said. “There’s Rosamund looking like a thunderstorm except when she’s talking to a hunchback Nixon thinks is capable of anything if he gets worked up—which is what you say he is already. There are two other young men hating each other like poison because of the girl—and are they capable of anything? You could think so when you see them glaring at each other. And wh
at does she feel about the death of her brothers? Does she think her father’s to blame? There’s Myra brooding for ever on what happened to her boys, both before they died and afterwards. There’s Mrs James hopping about on that crutch of hers and fiercely angry with Val for what he said about her son. What’s in her mind? There’s Teddy Peel who is certainly a rogue and possibly a murderer. And what’s he up to? No good probably. Behind it all, Val, knowing he’s thought responsible for the tragedy and holding back the secret of this uranium field that may be worth millions in money and much more in other ways. It’s a position that may develop in almost any way. Explosive.”

  “I suppose it could,” agreed Olive, “but there’s nothing you can do, or anyone as far as I can see. They must work it all out for themselves as best they can and we must hope they do. Only I wish that silly old tower had been burnt down with the rest of it.”

  Without incident, without much further talk, Bristol was reached, an hotel found. Dinner and bed followed, and next morning Bobby was called away from his breakfast to the telephone, an interruption both he and Olive deeply resented.

  “I did think we could get away from that horrid thing for just a few days,” Olive lamented.

  “I can’t imagine how anyone knows we are here,” complained Bobby. “We didn’t know ourselves where we were going to stop.” He added apprehensively: “Nixon knew we were making for Bristol.”

  “It’s a local call, sir,” said the waiter.

  Bobby went off then to the hotel ’phone booth and returned, wearing what Olive sometimes called his official face. Olive looked up at him and said at once:

  “It’s broken then?”

  Booby nodded.

  “Nixon on the line.” he said. “The local chaps put me through to him. He had asked them to try to find us. They’ve been calling all the A.A. hotels in this place. He wants me to go back there at once.”

  “Who it is?” Olive asked.

  “Val.” Bobby answered. “During their sitting last night in the Tower Room. Stabbed and died immediately. Nixon says I seem to be the only man relative they have in the country, and he thinks I might be able to help. He’ll have to know about the uranium field map.”