“Now, Daddy, play fair,” Maureen protested. “Everyone knows you are devoted to Mum, and so you jolly well ought to be, and it isn’t comic. What is comic is the way Aunt Bella gives Uncle Bill hell all day and, I expect, all night, and the way he laps it up and asks for more.”
“He happens to owe his life twice over to her devoted and tireless nursing,” Lord Rone reminded her severely.
“She’ll be able to have another go soon,” Maureen said cheerfully, “if the way he keeps sneezing is anything to go by. I heard Aunt Bella giving him fits for getting his feet wet in that awful rain yesterday afternoon. She really has an extra special turn for nursing. It might even stop her talking.”
“I wonder if you have an extra special gift for nursing, too, Miss Maureen?” Bobby asked innocently.
“Me? Good gracious, no,” Maureen answered, as if at first slightly surprised by the suggestion; and then, with a sudden cocking of a doubtful eye at Bobby, she said: “Another left hook straight from the shoulder?” To her father, she explained: “He means that if I had it, it might stop me talking, too.” She gave what can only be described as a hollow laugh, worthy of the best days of Surrey-side melodrama. “Little he knows,” she declared in her most thrilling tone.
But Bobby was thinking that what he had just learned showed that both the Watsons had full knowledge of the golden Cellini dagger, of where it was kept, of its value, and would also have ample opportunity to visit the Long Gallery without arousing attention or suspicion. But then could any suspicion of any sort possibly attach to an elderly, henpecked gentleman of such eminence, or to an elderly lady who talked so much and bullied her husband? A vision came into Bobby’s mind of a fat little man with an outsize head trotting amiably and anxiously across the lawn, and he decided he had never come across anyone less likely to rob an old acquaintance of a valuable work of art or to be mixed up in anything else in the nature of a criminal activity. Of course, one never knew. The most unlikely people do the most unlikely things for the most unlikely motives. Nor did Lady Watson—Maureen’s Aunt Bella—seem an any more likely candidate for guilt.
“There are other guests in the house, I think you said,” he remarked to Lord Rone.
“There are two young men staying here at present,” Lord Rone admitted, but with a certain reluctance, or so Bobby thought.
He grew attentive. He saw Ford looking at him and knew the same thought was in both their minds—two larky young men trying to amuse themselves at the expense of their host and the police. If it was like that, Bobby decided, he would take care to see they were soon very sorry for themselves.
“Might I inquire their names?” he asked. “I shall probably have to ask to see them.”
“Mr Richard Moyse and Mr Norman Oxendale,” Lord Rone answered. “I am in need of a secretary,” he went on, “and I suggested to Mr Moyse that he should come down here for a day or two, so that I might consider him for the post.”
“I take it, then,” Bobby said, slightly disappointed, since a candidate for a situation would hardly be likely to start by trying to play practical jokes on his prospective employer, “you had satisfactory references?”
“Well, it has hardly seemed necessary so far,” Lord Rone answered, though again with a touch of hesitation. “Nothing very much has been said up to the present.”
“Dick Moyse,” interposed Maureen, “more or less saved Daddy’s life the other day, and he’s being most awfully modest about it. A man did a snatch of Daddy’s dispatch case and sent him sprawling into the road. As near as possible, he would have been run over, only Dick happened to be passing and he dashed into the road, stopped a car just in time, helped Daddy up, and dashed away again after the dispatch case. Got it back, too. Jolly good show.”
“It certainly sounds so,” agreed Bobby. “Suggests very considerable presence of mind.”
“I should have been greatly inconvenienced,” Lord Rone said, “if the dispatch case hadn’t been recovered. There were some very important papers in it. Not much value to anyone else. Nor, Maureen, is the word ‘sprawling’ entirely appropriate. I merely went down on one knee, though certainly in front of a car that was going at a very high rate of speed.”
“I would like a word with the young man later on,” Bobby said. “You have another guest?”
“Mr Oxendale,” Lord Rone said. “He wrote to ask if he might see the Cobblers pictures and miniatures. He gave Sir William as a reference to his qualifications. Sir William thinks very highly of him as an art critic, especially as regards miniatures. They are his chief interest, apparently.”
“He is interested in other things as well as miniatures,” Maureen observed complacently.
“You knew him previously?” Bobby asked her.
“Oh, yes,” Maureen said. “I heard him talking about miniatures at the Bay Tree, so I told him about ours and he seemed awfully interested. Then he wrote to Dad, so I said why not ask him down for a few days, and Mother did. It meant a bit of a change for her, she can’t get about much, poor dear.”
Bobby had never visited the Bay Tree, but he knew the name as that of a restaurant off Piccadilly where the cream—sometimes the sour cream—of the intellect of the town was wont to assemble for lunch and dinner.
“Would it be possible,” he asked, “for me to see these two young gentlemen? They may be able to tell us something.”
“Maureen,” Lord Rone said, “see if you can find them? Oxendale was asking if he might make a sketch of the old stables. He may be there. Moyse was talking about going for a walk. I don’t know where.”
“He asked me about the path through the west plantation,” Maureen said. “I told him it stopped at the New Bungalow, and he would either have to come back the same way or else by a much longer way through the village. Which he won’t do; not him. He hasn’t the feet for country walks.”
She went off then and Bobby asked if he might see Lady Rone.
“It’s the mistress of the house,” he remarked, “who is most likely to know better than anyone else what’s going on and if there’s been anything out of the way happening.”
So Lord Rone took him out across the lawn to where the little group he had seen before was still sitting quietly under the trees. There Lady Watson seemed to be still talking energetically, her husband still listening with rapt attention, and Lady Rone, in an invalid chair, still busying herself with some light needlework and apparently allowing the flood of discourse to pass tranquilly by to the accompaniment of an occasional faint ‘Dear me’ or some such exclamation from herself. She was an elderly woman, frail-looking and worn, and must once have been very good-looking till the passing of the years and much experience of pain had taken their inevitable toll. She greeted Bobby in a low, gentle tone in which appeared none of the querulousness that invalids sometimes develop. The news of the disappearance of the Cellini dagger from its accustomed place and its discovery in a ’phone box was received by her with equilibrium, her only remark being that, of course, it was a very wonderful piece of work, but for her part she wouldn’t mind if they never saw it again. Lady Watson was much more voluble in her expressions of wonder and dismay. Sir William seemed both startled and angry, almost as if he had suffered a personal insult.
“Disgraceful, intolerable,” he proclaimed. “What on earth can it mean? Why take it only to return it?” he demanded. “In a ’phone box of all places? Which one?”
He was even so far moved as to stop his wife’s flow of comment with a curt decision that she, though she seemed surprised, obeyed instantly. He repeated his question, “Which ’phone box?” but then broke into a violent fit of sneezing, for which he apologized profusely on the ground that he had been out in Monday’s rain, got wet through and caught a cold. This gave Bobby a chance to leave his question unanswered and for Lady Watson to tell him sharply that it was all due to his carelessness in forgetting to take his umbrella with him. All the same, Bobby was left with the impression that though Sir William might be the perfect
henpecked husband, he could evidently assert his authority when he wanted to. For Lady Watson still showed no inclination to renew that flow of talk he had checked so abruptly. Indeed, something cold and hard and hostile had come into the fat little man’s dark eyes, as if this treatment of so fine and treasured a relic of Renaissance art had aroused in him very deep-seated emotions and instincts. Bobby even wondered if his wife’s show of bullying was not a kind of protective screen to conceal, even from herself, her fear, even awe, of her seemingly docile mate.
Bobby went on to put a few general questions, but without learning anything fresh. In reply to a third inquiry from Sir William, his sneezes happily over for the time, Lord Rone gave the position of the ’phone box, and Sir William considered it frowningly as if he thought it might in some way be significant.
CHAPTER VI
BLACK EYE
LORD RONE AND BOBBY returned to the house, where Ford had been left waiting in the study. On the way Bobby said again that he would like to interview as soon as might be convenient the members of the domestic staff. Lord Rone protested that they were all old and trustworthy servants, and Bobby had once again, as so often before, to explain that suspicion automatically attached to everyone who by any possibility could have had access to the Long Gallery.
“Including,” Lord Rone asked with sarcastic intent, “myself and my family and guests?”
“Well, I said ‘all,’ didn’t I?” Bobby asked. “Of course, we consider probability and motive and all that. An owner of valuable property isn’t likely to rob himself, but it does happen. Insurance generally. Draw your insurance money and keep the stuff.”
Lord Rone made no comment, but Bobby had an idea that he found this remark somewhat disconcerting. Before anything more could be said, a good-looking young man presented himself, tall and fair, with that well-groomed look characteristic of the public school and university product, at least when it has not gone over to the corduroy trousers, sloppy, flowing ties, and the other customary indications of a high degree of intellectuality and sensibility. He had, too, the cheerfully self-confident air the same education generally gives to those to whom life so far has offered the smiling welcome due to their position.
“Sorry to trouble you, Mr Oxendale,” Lord Rone said as he came in. “Unfortunately—But perhaps Maureen has told you?”
“She said Scotland Yard chaps were here,” the young man answered, glancing at Bobby and the silent Ford. “Something missing from the Long Gallery, isn’t there? I do hope it’s not one of these exquisite miniatures.”
“The Cellini dagger,” Lord Rone told him before Bobby could speak. “It has disappeared from the Long Gallery and been found again in a ’phone box near here.”
Oxendale looked as if he were finding it rather difficult to take this in.
“But—well, what for?” he asked. “I mean to say—”
“Exactly,” interposed Bobby. “When an object of very high artistic and money value disappears from where it’s kept and then is found again not far off, an explanation does seem to be needed.”
“Oh, yes, quite so,” Oxendale agreed. “Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Still, if it’s been got back, that’s something.”
“There’s another complication,” Bobby went on. “A ’phone message was received at the Yard. I needn’t go into details at present, but we would very much like to know who sent it.”
“Not me,” Oxendale said promptly. “I never use the thing. Hate it. Haven’t got one. What’s the good of locking your door and settling down to work when, if you’re on the ’phone, anyone with twopence to spare can walk in on you any moment? I count my time worth more than twopence.”
There was not much more he seemed to have to say. He agreed he had been in the Long Gallery several times since Monday to examine again the collection of miniatures.
“I may be writing a monograph on miniatures,” he explained. “The elder Oliver especially. There’s one of his up there—very fine. Shows a young man against a background of the flames of love. Not identified as yet, apparently. I’ve an idea about that I want to try out.”
The miniatures were, however, all at the further end of the Long Gallery from that where stood the glass case in which had been kept the Cellini golden dagger. He had never noticed whether it was still there or missing.
“I remember it, of course,” he said. “Wonderful bit of work. But it’s painting I’m chiefly interested in. A chap has to make a living somehow,” he explained apologetically, as if regretting so vulgar a necessity, “and it may as well be something interesting like being an art critic.”
“Well, there are certainly some magnificent things here,” Bobby remarked. “That Paul Potter, for instance,” he added, glancing at it where it hung above the mantelpiece.
“‘The Young Stallion,’” Oxendale said, turning to look. “Yes, rather. The best thing Potter ever did. A masterpiece if ever there was one. I should rank ‘The Young Stallion’ as one of the forty or fifty finest pictures ever painted.”
He had spoken with enthusiasm, and Lord Rone looked very pleased; even, Bobby thought, relieved, as if the criticism Bobby had passed upon it shortly before had been troubling him. Odd, Bobby thought again, that casual criticism by a passing visitor with no very special qualification should seem to have been taken so seriously.
Oxendale withdrew then and was succeeded by Mr Richard Moyse. He was a small, rather dandified young man with wide, innocent blue eyes, a well-shaped if somewhat small mouth and nose, and a very pleasant, smiling, friendly manner. His hands were small and well-kept and of them he seemed a little proud, so carefully did he keep them in view. He had correspondingly small feet, clad in shining, well-cut, expensive-looking shoes. A glance at them made Bobby understand at once what Maureen had meant by her remark that Moyse had not the feet for a long country walk. He, too, had nothing of much interest to tell. He had not used the telephone since his arrival at Cobblers. He had had no occasion to. He had only been in the Long Gallery once, on the day of his arrival, when he had made the customary tour of the Cobblers art treasures that was incumbent on all visitors. With a slightly shamefaced air, he confessed he was not much interested in the visual arts. With him it was—music. He gave a little ecstatic sigh. “Music,” he repeated, and let the word linger on the air like Shakespeare’s ‘dying fall’. As for the golden dagger—yes, he had seen it. No one could help noticing it. “A frightening thing,” he said, and he turned a little pale, as if he found terror even in the memory.
“A superb work of art,” he repeated, and then, as in a burst of confidence, he added: “To tell the truth, I would give half the other works of art in the world for one movement by Popolivinski.”
So he, too, had to be dismissed. Nor did the questioning of such of the domestic staff as were at the moment available produce anything more. How the golden dagger had vanished from its place in the Long Gallery, to appear again in the ’phone box on Road X79, remained as great a mystery as before.
“None of all this seems to be getting us much further forward,” Lord Rone commented with some severity when the last of the available staff had been dismissed. “After all, it has been recovered. Is it necessary to pursue the matter further?”
“That will depend,” Bobby answered, “on what the report says of the stains on the handle. If they do prove to be human blood, I am afraid we shall have to go into it very thoroughly indeed.”
Lord Rone did not look as if this prospect pleased him. Maureen reappeared. After a certain show of hesitation, which Bobby thought, from his experience of her so far, to be a somewhat unusual phase with the young lady, she said:
“Oh, by the way, Daddy, does Mr Owen know about Mr Baldwin Jones? Have you said anything about him?”
“No, why?” her father asked in a surprised tone. “He could hardly have anything to do with it. He left Monday afternoon.”
“Who is Mr Baldwin Jones?” Bobby inquired.
“I met him in Town—at the Ba
y Tree,” explained Maureen. “You meet everyone there. I believe they used to let him run his face for a meal—goodness knows why. He said he had seen me at an R.D.A. show.”
“He left last Monday?”
“Yes. In a hurry.”
“Why?”
“Well, I suppose it might be because of the black eye I had given him,” Maureen explained once more.
CHAPTER VII
THEATRICAL PRODUCER
BOBBY GLANCED UP QUICKLY, not quite sure what this remark meant or whether it was intended to be taken seriously. Maureen had now, however, a distinctly sulky air, and he thought that probably this time she had spoken neither from bravado nor from what her father had called ‘showing off,’ but because she felt she had better mention herself an incident that in any case Bobby was sure to hear of.
“Really, Maureen,” Lord Rone protested and looked as baffled as he so often did before his daughter. “Was it necessary to mention that? Mr Owen will hardly be interested.”
“May I ask,” inquired Bobby, in fact very much interested, more especially as he felt Lord Rone’s remark was meant as an indication that it was no business of his and consequently he thought it might well be so, “may I ask how did that happen? Young ladies don’t usually give young gentlemen black eyes.”
“Oh, well, you see,” Maureen explained, smiling now, for indeed her mood changed with a most bewildering rapidity, and with her mood it almost seemed as if her personality changed as well, “it’s not so much that I mind awfully about being kissed, only—” And there she paused, her head a little to one side, as if waiting to see what would be the effect on her two listeners of this pronouncement.
Lord Rone said, as he seemed to be in the habit of saying:
“Maureen! Really!”
Bobby said:
“Only you believe the occasion should be adequate and the actuality rare?”
The Golden Dagger: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 5
