“I think,” Bobby said, “it would be as well to try to get what information we can about Mr Baldwin Jones and about Tudor King as well.”
“Better be careful,” said the colleague warningly. “Authors are devils to talk.”
“Oh, if he starts to talk, I’ve got him,” declared Bobby with complete confidence.
“Yes, but they don’t talk,” came another swift retort. “They write letters. In the Press. Much worse.”
Bobby looked thoughtful at this, but none the less determined. He went away, and the first thing he did was to ring up the famous Bay Tree Restaurant and ask if he could be given the address of Mr Baldwin Jones, who was, Bobby understood, a customer of theirs.
“Nothing to do with him personally, of course,” Bobby explained carefully. “But he might be able to give us some information about a case of bag-snatching he may have seen.”
The Bay Tree people were sorry they couldn’t help. They would like to know Mr Baldwin Jones’s address themselves. There was an account outstanding and Mr Baldwin Jones had not been seen in any of his usual haunts for two or three days. Oh, yes, they said, in reply to a further question, they knew Mr Longton as an occasional customer. A theatrical gentleman. But they knew nothing about any fracas between him and Mr Baldwin Jones. Most certainly not at the Bay Tree. At the Bay Tree such things did not occur. It was not consonant with the dignity of the Bay Tree or with the standing of its customers, and Bobby realized that no admission to the contrary would ever be extorted from the Bay Tree—the use of rack and thumbscrew being barred by modern usage.
So he hung up and sent for Ford, whom he had warned to be in readiness, and sent him out to wander round West End bars, especially those frequented by the hangers-on of the theatrical world. He was to see what information he could there pick up.
On this errand therefore Ford departed while Bobby himself went on to the palatial offices of The Teen-ager, and of some ten or twenty other periodicals, all of them only to be distinguished from all the others by a difference in the poise and persons of the various members of the Royal Family, whose photographs appeared on their covers.
The Editor of The Teen-ager, in private life the holder of one of the amateur boxing championships, offered Bobby a drink from a well-stocked cupboard and said if Bobby could tell him anything about Mr Tudor King, he, the Editor, would be awfully pleased to hear it.
“Nobody seems to know anything about him,” the Editor explained. “His copy comes in regularly. Same old stuff, every time, and it goes down the same old way. Different names, different setting. Characters and plot exactly the same. Our readers love it like that.”
“He has to be paid, though,” Bobby said.
“Oh, yes—and how,” said the Editor enviously. “We send his cheque to his agent and his agent pays it into the bank and his lawyers draw it out and hand it over, I suppose. Bank and lawyers close as oysters. Some of the smartest boys in Fleet Street have been out on his trail, but none of them had any luck. All sorts of stories, of course. Sometimes it’s a duke or a Cabinet Minister. Once it was an elderly invalid lady living in the Orkneys, and there was a wartime top-rank General had a good run. You can take your choice.”
“What’s the idea?” Bobby asked.
“Publicity, of course,” the Editor replied, a little pained at having to give so obvious an answer. “There’s two dodges. Get in the limelight and stick there. Or conceal yourself in a cloud of darkness. That’s much the most difficult to bring off, but very effective if you can. Tudor King has all right. What’s he been doing?”
“Nothing,” Bobby answered. “Can’t we want to get in touch with a man without it being assumed he’s committed a murder?” and when he had said this he paused abruptly, for he felt as if thus he had betrayed a secret fear of which he himself had not been aware. “Or something,” he concluded lamely.
But the Editor had not noticed.
“Sorry I can’t help you.” he was saying. “Sure you won’t have a drink? No? Too bad. Means I can’t either. Rule I’ve made. Never take a drink alone. Not safe. I say, be a good chap, and if you do turn up anything about Tudor King, tip me off.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” Bobby told him.
“I thought that’s what you would say,” the Editor sighed. “Blue lamp incorruptibles, aren’t you—the whole lot of you? Enough to drive a chap to drink.” He cast a longing eye at that well-stocked cupboard, but nevertheless went firmly across to shut and lock it. “Well, thanks for calling,” he said as he saw Bobby preparing to depart. “Nice break. It’s my morning for doing my ‘Mother of Nine’ column. Hell of a job, but it goes like hot cakes. By the way, there is something I can tell you. Tudor King is the son of a small tradesman in a small provincial town, and was educated at a small private academy for the sons of gentlemen.”
“How do you know?” Bobby asked, and the Editor gave him a triumphant grin.
“Deduction, my dear man, pure deduction,” he said. “If King had come from a working-class family, there would have been a touch of real honest to goodness vulgarity in his work instead of that awful mincing refinement of his. Only a small provincial town could produce his particular brand of snobbishness. If he had come from anything like educated people, he wouldn’t have made the awful bloomers he did in his last book. Upper Circles, he called it. Every blessed character with a title and all of them outdoing Ouida at her most Ouidaesque. The Literary Weekly had a special article. Dukes addressing their wives as ‘your Grace’, and breakfasting off solid gold plates. That sort of thing. Really funny, and the Lit. Weekly made the best of it. What about offering me a job in the C.I.D.?”
“I’ll think about it,” Bobby promised. “I suppose you don’t happen to know anything about a Mr Baldwin Jones?”
“He comes in here sometimes,” the Editor answered. “Brings in odd pars—about actresses’ legs chiefly. Don’t know anything about him personally. Why? Haven’t seen him for a week or two. You don’t think he is Tudor King, do you?”
Bobby laughed, and said he had no views on the subject and so departed, the Editor’s farewell remark being that there would be no trouble about finding Baldwin Jones. All Bobby had to do was to pop into the nearest pub, and if he wasn’t there, try the next.
CHAPTER IX
MISSING MEN
AFTER LUNCH, FORD appeared to report the result of his West End wayfarings. He was a little depressed, for he was still in that sanguine stage of youth which has not yet learned that success is generally bought at the price of many failures. He had discovered little, and that little of small value, and he was afraid that it might be thought he had been remiss in some way.
“No one seems to have seen Baldwin Jones for a day or two,” he told Bobby, “and no one seemed to know much about him. In one place they told me to try the Superb Hotel in Mayfair Square, and they all seemed to think that was some sort of joke, though they wouldn’t say why. And everyone always took it for granted I was looking for him because he owed me money. Two or three said they would like to know what had become of him for the same reason.”
“The Superb Hotel?” Bobby repeated thoughtfully. “Miss Maureen said something about the Superb, too. You may have got something there, Ford.”
Bobby did not really think this very likely, but he said it because he guessed that Ford feared he might be blamed for the scanty store of information he had brought back, and it was Bobby’s belief that there is no sharper spur for a willing horse than an occasional word of praise. Indeed, Ford at once looked more cheerful and became fiercely determined that next time he would be really brilliant. Bobby picked up the ’phone and put through a call to the Superb asking if he could have a word with one of their staff, a man who had previously been in the Force till enticed away by the offer of much better pay.
The man asked for was fortunately available. In reply, he said he thought he remembered the name—Baldwin Jones, was it?—and he would call back as soon as he had made sure. This Bobby took
to indicate a prudent desire to consult his chiefs before saying anything. So he sent off Ford to inquire in the appropriate quarters if anything was on record about a gentleman with a cast in one eye, interested in stamps, and with a penchant for acquiring them by other than the humdrum method of purchase.
“Don’t be long,” he said as Ford was leaving on this errand. “I think we may have to take another run out to Cobblers. It rather looks now as if we had heard of one man missing.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what I was thinking,” Ford said, and departed.
Meanwhile Bobby applied himself to the consideration of some of the papers in his ‘In’ tray till before long the ’phone rang. The call was from the Superb.
“I thought I remembered the name,” the distant voice said. “It’s on our ‘Full Up’ list.”
“What’s that?” Bobby asked.
“List of people to be told how much the management regrets that no accommodation is available. For one reason or another. Nothing very serious sometimes. Mr Jones had been here two or three times. Rather noisy and threw his weight about a good deal, but there are plenty try to make a splash that way—especially when young and not brought up to it. But last time there was a row between him and a young American gentleman. The American gentleman was busy picking Mr Jones up just to knock him down again. Our people had to interfere. We cleared them both out.”
“What was the row about?” Bobby inquired.
“We didn’t ask; nothing to do with us,” came the answer. “Something about a woman. It generally is. They were both put on the ‘Full Up’ list, but the American gentleman has been taken off again.”
“Dollars?” Bobby suggested.
“Oh, no,” said a voice that sounded suitably shocked. “But we heard that he and his mother stay at the Ritz regularly every year and no complaints. If they are good enough for the Ritz, they are good enough for us. The mother is a wealthy widow from the Middle West somewhere. Likes to get in with British society folk because she says there isn’t any society in New York.”
“Probably means,” Bobby suggested, “that she isn’t accepted there. Not in the Four Hundred or whatever they call it. Much more exclusive than ours, New York society, I believe, and money no passport at all—because they’ve all got such a lot it’s taken for granted. Why is the dollar drive like charity? Because it is? Because it covers a multitude of sins? Choose your own answer. Well, thanks for what you’ve told us. If you do happen by any chance to hear any more of Mr Baldwin Jones, give us a ring, will you? Nothing against him personally, but he may be able to tell us something about someone we are interested in. Goodbye.”
He rang off then, and very soon Ford appeared.
There was nothing in the Yard records, he reported, about anyone with a cast in one eye and interested in the acquisition of stamps. But he had been advised to try a firm supposed to know all there was to know about stamps and stamp-collectors. Their reply to Ford’s inquiry was interesting. They had never themselves come in contact with anyone answering to the description given. Crooks knew better, it was implied, than to try to play tricks on a firm of such knowledge and repute. But lately they had had a complaint from a well-known collector and customer of their own. It seemed that a young man claiming to be a representative of theirs had called on this gentleman and had offered a very high price for some of the specimens shown him. He had then departed to ask the firm, he said, to confirm his offer. He had, however, not returned and had not been heard of since. Nor had some of the stamps he had been examining. No proof he had taken them, but inquiry showed that he had been staying at a local hotel where there was also staying an older man with a cast in one eye. In the hotel they had appeared to be strangers to each other, but it so happened that one of the staff had noticed them in apparently earnest conversation on the outskirts of the town. They might, of course, simply have recognized each other as fellow guests at the same hotel and been discussing the weather or the scenery, and there the matter had to be dropped. A similar story had come from another quarter, again the chief actor being a young man, with another older man hovering in the background.
Bobby said he thought all this interesting and suggestive, but nothing they could follow up at present. So that, too, had to be left, at any rate for the time, and would Ford arrange for a police car, complete with driver, to take them to Lower High Hill?
“Might be as well this time,” Bobby said, “to have a uniform man with us. The more we stir things up, the more likely we may be to hear something to give us a lead instead of groping about in the dark as we are now.”
Ford went off accordingly on this errand and the ’phone rang again. This time it was the Editor of The Teen-ager.
“I thought I would tip you off, though you wouldn’t me,” he explained. “Tudor King’s agent is in a devil of a stew. Got a swell contract from Hollywood—umpty-umph dollars. Commission enough for the agent to buy that new Rolls Royce he has his eye on. But he can’t get in touch with King for him to sign the contract. Says he seems to have vanished from the face of the earth, and if the contract isn’t signed at once, Hollywood may fall back on Bernard Shaw stuff or something like that. Well, can I expect any gratitude? What about a hard and fast contract for your reminiscences when you retire?”
“I’m not thinking of retiring just yet,” Bobby retorted, “but you can have all the gratitude you like. Of course, you realize you have only done your duty as a good citizen bound by common law to give all possible aid and comfort to the police in the execution of their duty?”
“Oh, hell,” said the Editor and rang off, and to Ford, who had returned in time to hear this conversation, Bobby said:
“Two missing men?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ford. “I wonder which? Or both? One did it and one hopped it?”
Bobby said he thought it was too early even to start guessing, and soon he and Ford were on their way. Constable Yates had been warned to expect them and was waiting at his cottage, which served also as the local police station. He had nothing to report. The village was humming with all kinds of rumours, but none that seemed to have any substantial grounds. The lady occupying the New Bungalow had asked that a special watch should be kept on it, but that was probably only a nervous reaction to the many rumours in circulation.
“I had to tell her,” Yates explained, “that I couldn’t rightly—I mean watch special the New Bungalow, me having enough ground to cover already and then same being on private property and near a quarter of a mile across from Higgles Lane. And that I don’t come by in general. I told the lady, on receiving said request in writing, accompanying permission to enter on private property, I would forward same for instructions.”
“How do you get to the place if it’s on private property?” Bobby asked.
“You have to cross two fields,” Yates explained. “It’s in the lease. Occupiers and those with business with same have permission to cross the field in a direct line. But only for the time.”
“Curious sort of arrangement,” Bobby said.
“Yes, sir,” agreed Yates. “There’s been a deal of talk about it. It’s mushrooms.”
“Mushrooms?” repeated Bobby. “What on earth have they got to do with it?”
“Well, sir,” Yates answered. “It’s one field seems most out of the common favourable to mushrooms and some say as mushrooms is wild fruit, and common to all, same as game would be but for the game laws, so they can be picked by any, and all Mr Gilson—it’s his field—can do is to order trespassers to clear off. So Mr Gilson took and sowed mushroom seed all over the field and says now it’s cultivated mushrooms, not wild, and it’s stealing to take ’em. Which a lawyer gent says maybe, but how is Mr Gilson to prove what’s taken is seed and not wild?”
“Better take it to the House of Lords for decision,” Bobby suggested, smiling. “But why build a bungalow where there’s no right of way?”
“Seems when Mr Gilson built,” Yates answered, “he reckoned on being allowed to join up
with the path that runs from Cobblers by the west wood to the village. Not much used now, being out-of-the-way. But him and Lord Rone and Saine fell out over wheeled traffic, and his lordship said if Mr Gilson was going to stand on his rights about the mushrooms—they do say his lordship is partial to same when fresh picked—he would stand on his rights about the path. So there it is.”
“Village politics,” Bobby remarked. “Result a very much isolated bungalow. You have to cross two fields to get to it from Higgles Lane? How far is the lane from here?”
“About a mile. Seems there’s a writing gentleman has took the bungalow for to be quiet when doing his books; and if quiet is what he wants, he’s got it there all right.”
“You said something about an occupant,” Bobby remarked. “Is he there himself yet?”
“No, sir; not arrived. It’s a secretary lady getting the place ready for him as spoke to me, and wanted a special watch kept. Claims she’s heard things—what she says was a loud sort of cry Monday night and then a light moving and noises next night in the wood behind the house. Not but that she’s a lady looks able to take care of herself. When I called she was chopping wood and using a hatchet like a good ’un. I don’t wonder she’s a bit nervous, though. In my humble opinion, it’s more than the writing gentleman ought to ask of any female woman. Why, murder could be done there easy and no one know nothing about it for days.”
“We’ll hope that won’t happen,” Bobby said, though wincing once again at this introduction of the word ‘murder’ that seemed to hover continuously in the shadowy background of the case.
CHAPTER X
THE BUNGALOW
THE WAY TO HIGGLES LANE lay through the village, where naturally the appearance of a car driven by a policeman in uniform set tongues wagging ever more busily. That from gossip something of value can be obtained if we do but diligently distil it forth was one of Bobby’s favourite theories, though he doubted whether the prospect of that happening was very bright on this occasion. Then, too, of course no one in the village knew as yet of the darker, more dreadful fears roused by the discovery that on the golden dagger were stains of human blood.
The Golden Dagger: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 7
