“You mean you do not wish to say?” and when Dewey still spoke no word, Bobby knew he must accept this silence as definitive—for the time at least. Further thought and further time for reflection, might, as often happened, make even those apparently most resolute in silence, decide to speak. Fear, doubt and, sometimes, conscience could frequently do their work best in a man’s own mind and heart.
“If you change your mind, let us know,” he said. “Murder has been done and truth must be made plain,” and with that he turned and walked away.
As he went, though slowly, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Dewey still remained as before, motionless and brooding, wrapped in his own dark thoughts.
Bobby, too, went heavily, oppressed by many fears and doubts. When he came to the Lodge, the door was open and Mrs James was standing on the threshold, clearly outlined against the bright glow of the oil lamp she had just lighted now that it was growing towards night. When she saw him approaching, she called:
“Did you find him?”
“Yes,” Bobby answered.
“Did he say anything?”
Bobby shook his head.
“Why did you expect him to?” she asked, and, without waiting for an answer, went back into the house, banging the door behind her.
From the Lodge, Bobby walked on to a road box he had noticed not far away, and, ringing up Nixon, informed him of what he had learned from Mrs James. Nixon sounded a little excited and seemed to think this ‘pinned’ the murder on Ludo Manners. Bobby, less optimistic, agreed, however, that it might be so and then hung up and returned to Constant House, where, when he entered, he was met by Rosamund, still looking like a distant thunder-cloud, still so closed in her own secret thoughts that when she spoke it seemed as though the words came automatically, without conscious purpose or intention. In this strange new, lifeless, voice of hers, she said:
“Your room is ready. It’s the one you and Cousin Olive had. One of the policemen has stayed on. He said he would sleep in an armchair on the landing outside mother’s room. He can if he likes, but I’ve made up a bed for him in the spare room next to yours, only it’s not properly aired.”
“Oh, he’ll be all right,” Bobby assured her; and he found something a little daunting in this careful thought for homely, household detail against the background of agony and fear he sensed lay hidden in her deepest self. He said to her:
“What do you think your mother meant by blood washing out blood?”
It was then that sheer terror leaped into her eyes. A dreadful panic so marked that he half expected to see her turn and fly. But that he knew was not her way; neither was she likely to seek refuge in tears or collapse. Her voice had even become steadier, more lifelike, though the fear was still in her eyes as she said:
“Did you hear her say that? You never did.”
“No,” he answered. “It is in a statement made in the course of this inquiry.”
“Whose?” she demanded.
“It is what we call ‘information received’,” Bobby explained. “We never give names unless and until it has been decided to lay a charge.”
“I suppose I was forgetting you are a policeman,” she said bitterly.
“That is a thing no police officer can ever forget,” Bobby told her. “It is because I am that I think I can help you and that I stay here to help get at the truth. You knew that. If you are afraid of the truth and would like me to leave, you have only to say so. But it is possible that I might be sent back, and then I should be more strictly controlled.”
“You would be all policeman then, I suppose,” she said, still more bitterly. “You may as well stay. Besides, I know. It was Mrs James. It isn’t true. She hates me; she hates her son. How could it be true? The doctor said no one was to see her, and he gave her something to make her sleep. Mrs James did take her some coffee and toast, but she was asleep. She said so.”
“Does your mother ever talk in her sleep?” Bobby asked.
“No; she doesn’t,” Rosamund answered quickly. “Never.” But the confidence had gone out of her voice, to be replaced by a kind of nervous tension. “Never,” she repeated. “She wouldn’t say a thing like that even if she did. I’ll get you something to eat. There’s not much in the house. I expect there’s some cheese and I can boil you an egg. Would you rather have coffee or cocoa? He had coffee.”
Bobby thanked her, begged her not to trouble, guessed that the ‘he’ referred to the man left behind by Nixon, opted for coffee, too, and as she went off to attend to his needs, she said over her shoulder:
“It doesn’t mean anything. How could it?”
Without waiting for an answer, she hurried off, and Bobby went upstairs to wash his hands and exchange his shoes for slippers. Then he went to visit the duty constable in the next room and found him lying fully dressed on the unaired bed, smoking a cigarette and filling up his football pool coupons. He jumped up as Bobby entered. Bobby said:
“Don’t set the bed things on fire. I’m in the next room, but I shall go to bed properly. Not yet awhile, though. If there’s any disturbance, call me at once. I don’t think there will be. Having a go at that £75,000?”
“That’s right, sir,” the man answered grinning.
“Better fun than five bob on the favourite that never wins,” Bobby said. “And all the same in the end—five bob down the drain. You’ve had something to eat?”
“Yes, sir. Very nice young lady, even if she does look as if she hadn’t only just seen a ghost as been living with ’em. I hope it won’t turn out to be her or her mum.”
“I hope not,” Bobby said and retired to seek his bread and cheese.
CHAPTER XVI
NO GLIMMER OF LIGHT
EARLY NEXT MORNING, Nixon arrived, all eagerness to follow up the hint of a clue that Mrs James seemed to have provided. He had had already an interview with her from which he retired in some disorder and from which he learned no more than he knew before. Next there was a consultation with Bobby, ending in agreement that for the present at least the available evidence was far too slender for any action to be taken on it.
“Not a glimmer of light anywhere,” Nixon sighed; and Bobby did not think it necessary or desirable to say that for his part he did think that a very faint such glimmer, very far off, might perhaps be discerned by the eye of hope.
“Got to wait and see if anything turns up,” Nixon resumed after lighting a cigarette, that ever-present help in moments of doubt and of perplexity. “Got to have something stronger to work on than dabs on an old bureau and a story about an unknown gold-mine that most likely isn’t one at all. There’s one thing I’ve noticed, though. When Manners was searched two sets of keys were found on him. He said one was for home, one for the office. Unusual. No trace of a map or anything like that.”
“It might have been there, but not noticed,” Bobby said. “No one was bothering about papers. A knife was being looked for. And the only one of the six with anything like a chance to get away with it was B.B.”
Nixon nodded a gloomy agreement.
“Had a chance yet for a talk with Mrs Outers?” he asked. “Or the girl?”
“She got us some breakfast,” Bobby said. “I tried to help, but was badly snubbed for my pains. I’m afraid the only part of me she likes is my back, and yet I think in a way she wants me to stay on. What they call a split mind about me. She says her mother had a little tea and toast this morning. But she’s taking jolly good care we don’t get a chance to talk to her before the doctor turns up and says we may.”
“Well, I must be getting on with the job,” Nixon declared. “Very little we can do though in my view, unless we get some lucky break. A dead end, and that’s a fact.”
“Should you mind if I saw Mrs Outers by myself at first?” Bobby asked. “I have an idea she may be willing to talk more freely if we are alone. Of course, I’ll make it quite clear to her I have to be a policeman before being a cousin.”
Nixon was frowning now. Not at Bobby
or at this suggestion, but at certain memories of his late interview with another elderly lady and of the ‘what for’ she had given him. No need to risk another interview with a second elderly lady if Bobby would take on the job.
“That’ll be quite all right,” he said. “Very difficult case. I’ve a letter about it from the Chairman of our Joint Committee. I’m relying a good deal on you, Mr Owen. There’s never been anything like it before in this neighbourhood. When we do have a murder, it’s generally quite a straightforward affair. Husband and wife doing each other in, or boy and the girl who turned him down, so he goes off his head—the young fool. That sort of thing. Money or sex. Simple. But this thing doesn’t make sense.”
“No; only a dead man,” Bobby said grimly; but Nixon still looked unappeased, as if he felt it hardly fair that he should be confronted with such a problem.
They were talking in the room Val Outers had kept more especially for his own use, where, too, stood that old mahogany bureau round which, to Bobby’s fancy at least, the shadows now lay less thickly. Nixon got up to go; saying gloomily that he supposed he must get along to see his Chairman and explain, or try to, why the guilty man had not already been arrested.
He opened the door to leave, and Rosamund promptly emerged from the kitchen, where she had been busy with domestic cares.
“Mr Peel’s here,” she said. “I put him in the sewing-room.” She pointed to the door of a small room that once had been so used, at a time when sewing-maids were still to be heard of. “He didn’t say what he wanted.” She went with Nixon to the front door and let him out, and then came back to Bobby. “Is that other policeman staying on?” she asked him, and Bobby recognized a little feminine dig contained in that ‘other’. “I want to know because of lunch.”
“He will be going almost immediately,” Bobby answered, “but there will be another to take his place. A relief. Please don’t bother about lunch. He’ll have sandwiches or something from the canteen. You don’t have to board police as well as air their beds for them.”
He made this remark smilingly, hoping to cheer things up, though indeed it had no such effect.
“He never slept in it,” she said seriously. “I expect he remembered I told him it wasn’t.” And then, with that deep, sombre passion she sometimes showed, she said, “I hate their being here,” and went back to the kitchen.
Bobby hesitated for a moment and then crossed to the room where Rosamund had told him Teddy Peel was waiting, a piece of information which Nixon had either forgotten or ignored—or perhaps thought there were more pressing matters to attend to than chatting to Teddy. Before Bobby could enter, however, there was a knock at the front door. Bobby opened it as Rosamund, immured in her dark little kitchen, built in days when the convenience of maids was not much considered, had apparently not heard. A stranger stood on the doorstep.
“Doctor,” he said briefly, and then: “You police?”
“Yes,” Bobby answered. “I was waiting for you to know if you consider Mrs Outers fit to give her account of what happened. She has made no statement so far, and it is important we should have one as soon as possible.”
“Not to-day, I’m afraid,” the doctor answered with a gleam in his eye Bobby noticed at once and recognized. Some doctors were always inclined to think their duty to their patients came before their duty to the law. And then this particular doctor had twice been summonsed and fined for small parking and speeding offences. “No, not to-day,” he repeated.
“Possibly you would like a second opinion,” Bobby suggested. “The police surgeon, for instance?”
But the idea was not very favourably received. Bobby even thought that he caught a murmur sounding very much like ‘Antiquated old fool.’ Aloud the doctor said stiffly:
“I see no need for a second opinion. Of course, if my patients wish it . . .”
“Oh, I’m sure they are perfectly satisfied,” Bobby said in what Olive was wont to call his ‘sugar and honey’ voice. “Just police regulations, that’s all. Red tape.” He made an apologetic gesture that seemed to include all police forces all over the world—they and their red tape together. “I’ll ask Mr Nixon to arrange it, shall I? To suit your convenience, of course.”
“I suppose I can be allowed to see my patient first,” growled the doctor, not—repeat not—pleased.
“So long as there is no undue delay,” Bobby agreed, this time with just a trifle less of the honey and sugar in his voice, and the doctor, a retired Army man, looked very much as if he would like to order Bobby Number Nines and be done with him.
By this time Rosamund, hearing voices, had emerged again from her kitchen. She greeted the doctor, gave Bobby a disapproving glance, for she suspected there had been something like an argument between them, and to argue with a doctor is, in every woman’s view, a kind of lèse-majestè—and Rosamund was all woman behind that dark, stormy cloud of reserve in which she wrapped herself—and so disappeared with the doctor up the stairs to her mother’s room.
Bobby, left alone, entered the sewing room and found it unoccupied. Teddy Peel had evidently taken some opportunity to slip away unperceived. Bobby wondered why he had come and where he had vanished to and then sat down to smoke a meditative cigarette. He had not long to wait. Soon he heard the two—Rosamund and the doctor—coming down the stairs together. The doctor tried to ignore him, but somehow Bobby had got between him and the door, which could not be reached without pushing Bobby aside. Nor did that look as if it would be easy. Bobby was evidently waiting to hear the verdict. The doctor said:
“I’ve told Miss Outers her mother is sufficiently recovered to see you—but only for a very short time. Five minutes at the most.”
“Is that final?” Bobby asked. “Or must I ask the police doctor to come over to confirm it?”
“If my professional opinion is not good enough for you, you can do what you like. Your responsibility,” came the snarled response.
With that he flounced away, and when he had gone Rosamund turned to Bobby.
“You had better come up now,” she said. “I don’t think you were very polite to the doctor.”
“It’s so hard to be loved by all,” Bobby sighed. “Even by all young ladies.”
This was meant for a gentle hit back for her recent ‘other policeman’, and for the first time he managed to produce from her what was nearly a faint semblance of a smile, even if it disappeared again almost at once.
“Where is Mr Peel?” she asked, and then, without waiting for an answer, continued: “I told Mother I would bring you back. Please be as quick as you can. There’s such a lot to do. I haven’t even been in the bedrooms yet. Will the new policeman want to stay all night?”
“I shouldn’t think Mr Nixon will consider it necessary,” Bobby said. “I don’t know. It’s for him to say, and he didn’t tell me. Can’t you let the house go for the present? Surely you needn’t worry about beds just now?”
“I’ve been through it all before,” she said, “when my brothers—” She paused abruptly. Her face twisted. Then her back was towards him, her whole body shaking. He thought she was going to break down. It was two or three minutes before she had her voice sufficiently under control to allow of speech. When she turned to face Bobby again, he was standing at the window, apparently absorbed in contemplating the landscape.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s all got to go on—cooking and cleaning and beds and everything. It stops you thinking too much.”
“Yes,” Bobby agreed from his post by the window. “It always has to go on. Everything. I’ve been wondering what’s become of Mr Teddy Peel and what he’s up to. I don’t trust him a lot. May I ask—have you yourself any suspicion of anyone? It might help if I knew.”
She shook her head.
“I suppose it must have been one of us,” she said. “Only it couldn’t be. So it must have been some one else. But there wasn’t anyone else. So that’s impossible, too.”
With that she turned towards the door, leadin
g the way up the stairs to her mother’s room.
“It’s Cousin Owen, Mother,” she said as she went in. “He says he wants to talk to you.”
CHAPTER XVII
IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE
MRS OUTERS WAS sitting up in bed, propped against pillows. She was wearing a woollen bed-jacket and looked pale and ill. Not to be wondered at, Bobby thought. But what struck him immediately, and far more forcibly, was a certain serenity in her expression, an air of peace as it were—or was it resignation?—that surrounded her, as if now she knew the worst had happened and there was nothing more to fear.
“The doctor,” she said after a word or two of greeting, “told me I wasn’t to talk to you for more than two or three minutes, but I don’t think I shall mind very much about that. I feel quite strong, and then he seemed so much more fussy than he is generally.”
“That’s Cousin Owen,” Rosamund put in, still disapprovingly. “He upset him terribly.”
“All in the way of duty,” Bobby explained with no great outward show of contrition. “Duty comes first.”
“Dear Val used to say that, too,” Mrs Outers agreed, “when he would go out on one of his inspection tours and I didn’t think he was well enough. I expect you want me to go over it all again. Rosamund says so.”
“Well, yes,” Bobby said. “Statements have to be taken from every one who was there, but that’s for Mr Nixon—a formal statement, that is, you will be asked to sign. All the facts, so to say. But facts can be so misleading. They can get interpreted all wrong. Often it’s the apparently unimportant background you have to know to understand the facts correctly.”
“I don’t think I quite understand,” Mrs Outers said.
“He means he wants to get into your mind and turn it inside out,” Rosamund interrupted with another frown at Bobby. “You’ve got to be jolly careful.”
“Oh, dear. I don’t think he’s like that,” Mrs Outers protested. “Are you like that?” she asked him.
Six Were Present: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 11
