Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “He told you, didn’t he?” she said. “He may have told others as well. I can’t say. Generally he didn’t talk much, but sometimes he did.”

  “The medicine bag, and the map in it, was kept in that mahogany bureau. You said just now that it wasn’t there any longer. How do you know? The drawers are both locked.”

  “I knew as soon as I came in,” she told him then, suddenly excited. “I came to see and I knew. It was bad medicine. I always knew it would bring bad luck. I always knew it would do harm if it could, and now it has. I meant to burn it so that nothing should remain—only ashes I could throw away. From the top of the tower. In the wind. Or bury it. Deep. Very deep. That would be better. In the fire it might escape when the bag began to burn. But if it was buried, deep, deep, deep, before it had a chance, it and bag together, the bag never opened, that would be safer.”

  Nixon stirred uneasily in his seat by the window. Bobby knew what he was thinking, for he was thinking the same himself: How would all this sound in an English court of law? He could imagine how the hard, stiff, legal mind would react. He could imagine the small cynical smiles, the amused jests passing from one to another before the world of precedent and man-made written law was returned to. Never mind. He went on:

  “I am afraid all that is very difficult to follow. I don’t understand very clearly. What is this ‘it’ you talk of as if it were something alive, something in the medicine bag, something that was trying to get out?”

  “You think it all childish superstition, don’t you?” Rosamund flashed, still speaking with the same sort of only half-suppressed excitement. “Everyone does. Here. Not if they have lived in Africa. Not if they know the deep African bush. Even if the settlers don’t believe it, they are afraid. They invent all kinds of explanations. Perhaps they are right. They can’t bear to think the Africans they call savages and look down upon so much may know more than their civilized selves, more about unseen things. But the Africans live close to Nature, very close, and why should they not know what Europeans may have known as well once but have forgotten because they have become such busy little people, bullying her, making her do what they want? It may be she has her secrets still that the scientists know nothing of and never will.”

  “You have thought a good deal of these things,” Bobby said, and she answered in a tired voice from which all emotion had vanished:

  “Haven’t I good cause?”

  “Does it help to tell us who murdered your father?” he asked.

  “It was you keeping asking questions,” she retorted.

  “There will be many questions to be asked,” he warned her again. “Till we know who killed your father.”

  “I suppose so,” she agreed listlessly. “One of us six,” she said. “That’s what you are thinking all the time, isn’t it?”

  “Isn’t that what you are thinking, too?” he countered.

  “And that Mother and I were sitting next to him? You haven’t forgotten that, have you? Very well. Very well.”

  “Unless you help me, there is little I can do,” Bobby repeated.

  But she showed no sign that she had even heard what he had said. She got to her feet once more. This time he did not motion to her to sit down, nor would she have obeyed if he had. She went to the door, her step much firmer than it had been, as if in a way she had been purged of uncertainty and fear. At the door, her fingers on the door handle, she turned and said to him:

  “You are a hard man. I think you could be a cruel man, a bad man. I don’t think you are.”

  “I hope I’m not,” Bobby said, more than a little disconcerted by this sudden transformation of suspect into judge.

  She did not hear, however, for she had already opened the door and gone out, closing it behind her.

  “Rather a back-handed compliment, that,” Nixon commented. “What do you make of all that guff? Is she off her head? Or putting on an act? In my view, it’s as likely her as anyone. Thinks her father as good as killed her brothers and so . . . Eh? He knew what she was working herself up to, and he and Teddy Peel faked that voice they heard to head her off. Easy. The mother knew too. Or guessed. Why she got you here. To frighten the girl and it didn’t, only made her hurry up. It’s like that sometimes.”

  “So it is,” Bobby said.

  He opened the door. There was no sign of Rosamund, but Mrs James was standing at the foot of the stairs. She was supporting herself as much by the newel post as by her crutch. It looked to Bobby as if she had just made one of those prodigious hops of which she seemed to have the secret. And he had another idea—that perhaps she had been listening at the door while he and Rosamund were talking. But she was speaking now. She was saying:

  “I’ve just this minute been in to see how Mrs Outers was, poor soul. Still asleep, thank God, but a little restless now and talking to herself.”

  “What did she say? Did you hear?”

  “I could hardly catch a word, not to make sense. Something about blood washing out blood. Everyone in the room got blood all over them. Except me. I got knocked down instead, and it’s a job getting up again when you’ve only one leg. Everyone knows it’s only cold water washes out blood.”

  “Yes; I know,” Bobby said with a friendly smile. “If I may say so, you get about wonderfully—stairs and all.”

  “Well, I’ve plenty of practice,” she told him; and not as if the remark had much pleased her, but rather as if she were sensitive, though she had not hitherto seemed so, to her crippled condition or any reference to it.

  “I’ve been asking Miss Outers a few questions,” he said next. “I wonder if I might do the same to you?”

  “There’s not much I can tell you,” she answered. “I’ve made one statement to the other gentleman already. Of course I don’t mind if that’s what you want.”

  “Thank you,” Bobby said and led the way back into the room he had just left.

  CHAPTER XI

  ‘ELECTRIC MAGNETISM’

  NIXON WAS COMING out as Bobby and Mrs James entered. Nixon went on his way. Bobby found a chair for Mrs James and another for himself and said:

  “I’ve read your statement. There are one or two small points I would like to mention, so as to get things a bit clearer in my own mind. For instance, what was your impression at the time of the voice you all heard—didn’t you?—at one of your sittings a week or two ago?”

  “Teddy Peel,” she answered promptly. “Up to his tricks. Mind you, things do happen, and if it’s always him, he’s a wonder.”

  “You didn’t understand what the voice said?”

  “Gibberish,” Mrs James declared. “Didn’t sound like any Christian talk. Mr Outers understood. Mind you, I don’t know, but he looked as if he did.”

  “Did his wife and Miss Rosamund?”

  “I didn’t notice. It was him I was looking at.”

  “In your statement you say no one else could have been in the room, only those sitting round the table. You still feel sure of that?”

  “Stands to reason. How could they? There was a hullabaloo going on, what with the gramophone and the wind howling and the rain. All the same we should have heard, all listening as we were, ready for that voice if it came again. Besides, if anyone had crept in—which he couldn’t—how could he have leaned over the table with us holding hands. One of us six did it, stands to reason.”

  “We have to try to consider everything,” Bobby said. “Everything however improbable or far-fetched. Things do happen, as you said a moment ago. You have no notion of who it could have been? You noticed nothing unusual? Even the tiniest detail might help.”

  “I have my own idea,” she told him with a little nod, as if challenging him to make what he could of that. “I’m not saying anything. I was never one to scandalize people without being sure.”

  Bobby asked a few more questions, not very important ones, and to them received equally unimportant replies. Mrs James began to get restless.

  “I ought to be seeing to things,” she said.
“There’s no one else with those two poor souls not fit to do a hand’s turn. Meals have to be got ready. They don’t do it themselves.”

  “No, indeed,” agreed Bobby. “I’m sure it’s more than good of you to help as you are doing.”

  “It’ll have to be cold,” she said. “And not too much of it, either. No time to do any cooking and very little in the house. Only mostly the few eggs I found in the hen-run. A lot of hungry men.”

  “You needn’t bother about them,” Bobby told her. “Mr Nixon has sent for sandwiches and beer.”

  “Oh, has he?” she said, and he thought she sounded slightly disappointed. “I’ll be off then and get a little something at home. Dewey will be wanting his. He can get it all right for himself if he wants to, only he never does.”

  “Oh, well, men always do expect to be waited on,” Bobby remarked smilingly. “By the way, you’ve never heard anyone say anything about a map, have you?”

  “A map? What sort of map?” she asked, and with obvious suspicion as if she felt this question, so suddenly shot at her, might conceal some sort of trap.

  “Oh, just a map: that’s all,” Bobby said, and went to the door to open it for her.

  She swung away on her crutch. Bobby got the impression that she felt less sure of herself than she had been before, but he could not think why. He went back to his seat by the window and became lost in rather worried meditation. Presently Nixon came in again.

  “Want anything to eat?” he asked. “Meat-pies, sandwiches, ice-cream. Beer if you like the stuff. I don’t.”

  “Well, I can put up with it on occasion,” Bobby confessed.

  “Mrs James is in the kitchen,” Nixon said. “Hopping about the way she does. Making toast and boiling eggs for Mrs Outers and the girl. She says they’ve had nothing to eat yet. Very useful old lady. Did you get anything out of her?”

  “Nothing,” Bobby answered. “Except a personal impression, and that’s useful at times. A strange old woman. Warped, I think. Partly the loss of her leg and then her son.”

  “What about him? You mean his being the way he is? She can’t help that, can she?”

  “It may have left her with a sense of guilt that she didn’t,” Bobby remarked.

  Nixon made no comment. Apparently he thought it irrelevant to the problem they had to solve—that of finding the one guilty among the six who might be. Bobby went off then to claim his share of the meat-pies and the sandwiches before they were all gone. Of the ice-cream and the beer he had not much hope, nor in this expectation was he disappointed. That duly accomplished, he went on to examine the ground by the Tower. It had already been carefully inspected, but all the same he wanted to see for himself, as he held strongly that the officer in charge of an investigation should always make a point of doing. True, here he wasn’t the officer in charge, but old habits prevailed.

  He soon satisfied himself that the inspection had been made with skill and care. Nothing fresh to be learned here. He turned away and almost at once was joined by a little man in whom he recognized Teddy Peel.

  “You’re the boss, aren’t you?” Teddy demanded, his mouth full with a last bite from the last of the meat-pie he had been holding in one hand. He had had three in all and now had just been warned off the course. “What’s the big idea, keeping us blokes hanging around? Not legal if you ask me. I’ve got my appointments to keep. See?”

  “I’m not in any way in charge,” Bobby explained. “I’m not here as a police officer. Only as a friend of the family. Both ladies are suffering from shock and there’s hardly anyone else they know.”

  Teddy did not seem much impressed by this disclaimer.

  “I call it a bleeding shame,” he protested. “Quite free to go, no compulsion at all, they tell you. Only if you do clear out, it will look a bit suspicious, won’t it?” He made a sound expressive of extreme disapproval. “Statement taken and all,” he said.

  “I’m sure Mr Nixon won’t ask you to stay one moment longer than he thinks might help,” Bobby assured him. “I wonder if you would mind telling me what you thought of the voice I understand you all heard at one of your meetings?”

  “Nothing to do with me, if that’s what you’re getting at,” declared Teddy. “Knocked me flat. Scared me, too, and that’s a fact. See?”

  “Did you understand it?”

  “Not me. Not like anyone’s voice either, not of them sitting there. More like a parrot with a bad cold—regular croak. See?”

  “Did any of the others seem to understand what was said, do you think?”

  “Mr Outers looked as if he did. Upset, too. I don’t know. Afterwards I thought maybe it was him what worked it. But funny things do happen, and that’s a fact. Not spirits; that’s bunkum. Electric magnetism, same as what makes some write poetry and such, and some talk so you can’t help falling for it—the con. men or them as sells you what you don’t want and never meant to buy. My old dad was like that. Fair drove the three-card men out of business. As soon as they saw him they packed up.”

  “How was that?” Bobby asked, more than willing, if Teddy was in the talkative mood that nervousness and a sense of tension often induce, to let him run on as long as he wished, since, the more he talked, the more he would say, and some of it might be useful and all of it would help to an understanding of his character and personality.

  “He always knew where the ‘lady’ was,” Teddy was explaining now. “‘That one,’ he would say, pointing, and there it was. Or else, ‘Not on the table at all. Up your sleeve’, and sure enough it was. A kind of tingling he felt and then he knew. Did well at it for a time and that’s a fact. But then the three-card men tumbled to it.”

  “Rather a wonder he didn’t get beaten up,” Bobby remarked.

  “They didn’t dare,” Teddy explained, “see. They weren’t too sure how that electric magnetism mightn’t work. They made it up once for him to go to the Derby and spot the winner. N.B.G. Cards one things, see, and horses another.”

  “That’s very true,” agreed Bobby. “All very interesting, but not much help in what’s happened here. You were all sitting round the table, holding hands, weren’t you? I believe that’s usual? So that no one could move without those sitting next knowing. That is so, isn’t it?”

  Teddy’s nervousness became more apparent still; it was even beginning to approach panic, as if he felt this was probing altogether too deeply. He hesitated for a moment or two and then seemed to make up his mind.

  “Seems like you’ve been there,” he grumbled. “Nixon, he never went into that, didn’t never have heard of it, most likely. Gives confidence if you’re that way with your fingers locking. Easy enough, if things don’t seem like moving and you have to put the skids on with your clients getting impatient, expecting value for money, as is only honest and fair dealing they should have, to give the table a jolt. Makes ’em lose grip, but they don’t notice, being all worked up, and you bring their hands together right and left so they hold each other, but think it’s still you. That leaves you free. See? But you can’t fake a voice that way, same as we heard, and that’s a fact.”

  “No,” Bobby agreed. “No; but it might help to explain what happened last night.”

  “So it might,” Teddy agreed unexpectedly. “But it doesn’t. Even Mr Nixon, who would give his ears to pin it on me, said it didn’t look possible for any of the six of us to do the job the way it was. Took a mighty strong man to drive in a knife like that, even standing in front, and not possible, leaning over. So it must have been someone else, but there wasn’t anyone else, and that’s a fact.”

  “I know,” Bobby agreed. “It couldn’t have happened, only it did. So we’ve got to find out who and how and why.”

  “It might be that girl, if it’s anyone,” Teddy suggested and continued: “Women being able, when worked up, to do more than any man. Only what for should she, him being her dad? But looks like she might, anyone, any time. There’s times I’ve thought I could see a sort of cloud of darkness all round her.
That’s when the little old electric magnetism begins to tick, so I feel the tingle all over me.”

  “You liked Mrs James to be present at these meetings, didn’t you?” Bobby asked.

  “Seemed as if the electric magnetism got going quicker when she was there,” Teddy agreed. “I always like to get results that way without having to work it. The poor old geezer got knocked down, and there she was, squawking on the floor and him dead in his chair, and the rest of us pretty near off our heads. What with this and that and the storm outside, I don’t rightly know what did happen, but did my best to say in the statement the coppers took. Same with you. See? I own up: all I did was stand and gape and then run round the room, trying to find someone else, but there wasn’t anyone else—only our six selves.”

  CHAPTER XII

  CIGARETTE END

  ON THIS SOMEWHAT unsatisfactory note the interview ended. Teddy wandered away, muttering that he had a duty to his ‘clients’ and that he wasn’t going to hang about any longer, not to please all the coppers in the country. Bobby started to climb the Tower, anxious to see for himself the summit room where this apparently impossible murder had taken place. It was an arduous climb, arduous enough even for one, like Bobby, sound in wind and limb, let alone for the crippled Mrs James, though, indeed, she seemed able with her one leg and her crutch to be as active as anyone.

  The summit room had already, he knew, been thoroughly examined, tested for finger-prints, measured, photographed, so on. Even the walls of solid stone had been tapped and scrutinized. The locks of the two doors, the one at the head of the stairs, the one leading to the flat roof, showed no sign of having been tampered with. The shutters covering the windows had been opened, the heavy curtains drawn, and the possibility that, when these last were in position, the unknown assassin might have been hiding behind them had been considered and dismissed as manifestly out of the question. Bobby opened the second door and ascended the short flight of stone steps that led to the roof. It was surrounded by a low parapet, and from it there was a lovely view over the adjoining country—lovely at least except towards the west, where hung that great black cloud which proclaimed the bustling prosperity of Midminster. Not that Bobby took much notice of the view, or of the smudge of smoke either, for though he stood for long looking at it, of it he saw nothing, his thoughts so busy were they elsewhere. He had been wondering if by any possibility the murderer could have been lurking there and afterwards have escaped by lowering himself by a rope to the ground below. Not worth considering, he soon decided. On this smooth stone surface, surrounded by a smooth, intact parapet, there was nothing to which a rope could have been fastened, nor, if it had been, any way of removing it again. Nor had the ground at the foot of the Tower, reduced to a morass by the night’s heavy rain, shown any sign of the tracks such a descent must inevitably have left.