The Golden Dagger: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Well, the alibi she was so careful to give her husband covers her, too,” Bobby pointed out. “She collects Maureen’s lap-dogs. Now apparently she is after young Oxendale. That may be because she can’t do without one. Or she might want to show one’s as good as another, so why should she mind about losing one of them? As a theory, suppose that lap-dog Baldwin Jones was trying the same game that earned him what he got at the Superb Hotel and that he came back Monday night to keep an assignation with her? Developments might have followed. She is not an unattractive woman, even if Maureen calls her fat, which might mean that she’s put Maureen’s nose out of joint once or twice. Jones may have tried to go too far, she may have taken the golden dagger as a precaution, and there you are.”

  “Sounds,” said Olive discontentedly, “as if you thought all of them did it, and they can’t all.”

  “No; but one of them did,” Bobby answered. “At least, that’s how I feel, though there’s no proof yet, and for that matter it might be either of the two we can’t get in touch with—Tudor King or Baldwin Jones; either of them. Or even both.”

  “Oh,” Olive exclaimed, really startled this time by such a development of her own suggestion.

  “Anyhow,” Bobby continued, “that’s the set-up. And that’s the lot we have to keep in mind. Jack Longton, the theatre man; Norman Oxendale, the budding art critic; Baldwin Jones, who isn’t there; and Dick Moyse, the perfect spiv, with one eye, I am inclined to think, on the stamp collection, which includes one stamp worth goodness knows how much because Queen Victoria’s head on it is upside down.”

  “Why does that make it valuable?” Olive asked. “It sounds silly.”

  “There is no why,” Bobby explained. “It’s just the way it is. When it’s stamps, the value of a bloomer is above rubies. Then I’ve to remember Lord Rone and his background of heirlooms that, like Baldwin Jones, may not be there any more; and Maureen, whom I don’t pretend to be sure about yet. She’s a woman and an actress, and I’ve always heard that if women are hard to understand, then she’s doubly hard to understand if she’s an actress, too.”

  “Fiddlesticks,” said Olive contemptuously. “Now, if you said men were hard to understand—” And she sighed and became lost in contemplation of a task she felt beyond all mortal powers.

  “Not to mention,” Bobby went on, his voice getting more and more depressed as he pronounced each name, “the two Watsons, Sir William and Lady Watson, the first suppressed but liable to break out, the second fat but comely—ask Maureen. And hovering on the outskirts of the case Mrs Cato, grim and hatchet-swinging, and Linda Blythe, liable to be scared when police come on the scene, and the spiritual, but not physical, presence of Tudor King. Sort it out for yourself.”

  “Not me,” Olive declared. “I wouldn’t know where to start. Do you?”

  “Asking questions,” Bobby said. “The right questions. All detection is there. The right questions. No murderer can take it.”

  CHAPTER XV

  A HAT

  LATER THAT NIGHT, Bobby brought his car to a standstill in Higgles Lane, a lane leading nowhere in particular, and more than a mile or so from the village of Lower High Hill, where he had no wish, by this nocturnal visit, to add to the number of the rumours already in such wild and whirling circulation. He and Ford, who was accompanying him, alighted. By arrangement, a sergeant, his Alsatian dog, two uniform men, were waiting. One uniform man was left with the car and its varied contents, including the sandwiches, the coffee, a pick and shovel, and what is known, but not officially, as the murder bag. The instructions given to this man were that if he saw a light flashed from the borders of the wood behind the bungalow, he was to come at a run, bearing the pick and shovel with him.

  These arrangements made, Bobby, Ford, the sergeant with his Alsatian dog on the lead, and the second uniform man, all under the guidance of the sergeant, made their cautious and silent way across two or three fields, and then into the wood through a gap in the fence marking the boundary of the Cobblers property. (“Where the poachers get in,” explained the sergeant in a cautious whisper, “though there’s not so much of that now with game not preserved the way it used to be. Geese and turkeys is what they want these days.” Further on, skirting at a safe distance the bungalow, where, Bobby noticed, no light showed, they reached the little-used path that led from Cobblers close by the bungalow and on to the village by way of a distant farm, now better served by another recently opened road.

  About halfway along this path, where the wood was thickest, the undergrowth most dense, Bobby divided his forces. He sent Ford on to take up his post at the point where the path entered the wood, with instructions to give warning if he saw or heard anyone approaching, but to be careful not to alarm whoever it might be. To the sergeant and his Alsatian he assigned the part of the wood lying to the north of the path coming from Cobblers. He himself, he said, together with the second uniform man, would take that portion of the wood lying south. It was the smaller half, the least overgrown, and therefore much the easier to examine.

  “If there is anything to be found, except a mare’s-nest,” he explained, “it’ll almost certainly lie to the north. It’s furthest from the farmland, so we will give you and your Alsatian the first chance. Dog better than man sometimes.”

  “That’s right,” agreed the sergeant. “Almost human they are, and nose and eyes a sight better than ours. Aren’t they, Boy?”

  The dog, hearing its name, gave a low whimper, and pricked up its ears, and Bobby said:

  “Ford is going to give two hoots like an owl to warn us if he spots anyone coming. He heard it given in a B.B.C. broadcast, and he has practised it up and says he can do it O.K. I hope he can—good Lord, what’s that?”

  For at this moment they were startled by a strange, weird noise resembling nothing else ever heard on land or sea, by day or by night. It was repeated.

  “That’s twice,” Bobby said doubtfully, for though he was not quite sure what an owl’s hoot sounded like, he could not think that any self-respecting bird of any kind had ever produced a cry like that.

  “Can that be him warning us, do you think, sir?” the sergeant asked wonderingly, and even a little awestruck.

  “More like,” said the uniform man judicially, “the dying squeal of an elderly pig what’s been stuck in the middle of a sneeze.”

  “Luckily, if it’s who I think it may be,” Bobby said, “she isn’t country and probably doesn’t know much about owls.”

  “Wood said to be haunted,” observed the sergeant. “It might be taken for a ghost and then they’ll be scared off.”

  Fortunately, this fear, which rather worried Bobby for the moment, proved unfounded. Approaching footsteps became audible, and there showed the gleam of a strong electric torch, which evidently the newcomer was using to show the way. The little party of watchers, sank into the obscurity of the surrounding darkness, the sergeant conveying to the Alsatian a warning to make no sound. The footsteps were quite near now. The light of the torch she carried showed the newcomer to be a woman whom Bobby recognized as the maid, Belinda Blythe. She passed by quickly, and then, a little further on, paused and seemed to be searching the ground as if looking for something. To and fro she flashed the light of her torch, keeping it low. Once or twice she even took a step or two away from the path into the shadows of the surrounding trees and bushes, but soon came back again. Then she went on her way and Bobby followed cautiously, at a safe distance, till he had seen her enter the bungalow. He noticed that the door opened to her approach, so that evidently she had been expected and waited for. Bobby went back to join his assistants.

  “She was expected,” he remarked. “I wonder if someone else is there, or only Mrs Cato?”

  “Did you notice, sir,” asked the sergeant, “how she stopped a few yards up the path as if she thought someone might be waiting, and then hurried on?”

  “It may be someone is waiting there,” Bobby said, “someone she knows is not likely to go away.”
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  “Yes, sir,” agreed the sergeant, but in a puzzled voice, for he did not understand the sudden gravity in Bobby’s voice and then the dog, perhaps concluding the injunction to silence no longer held, now its human companions were talking together, lifted its head and sent a long, sad howl echoing through the silent trees. A moment later Ford appeared, looking rather pleased with himself.

  “Heard me all right?” he asked. “Not so bad, was it? But I’ll practise it a bit more till I get it more natural like.”

  “Well, you’re young,” said the sergeant. “By retirement age you may have got it something like something, though I can’t think what.”

  “Never mind that,” Bobby interposed hurriedly, for now Ford was looking deeply offended. “Ford, you push on and watch the bungalow. If anyone comes out, follow them. If it’s Miss Blythe and she comes back this way, we shall see her, so you stay by the bungalow and watch. If she goes in any other direction, follow, of course.” Ford went off obediently, though not without a final, hostile glance at the sergeant; and to that unappreciative person Bobby said: “We’ll see if we can find anything to account for Miss Blythe stopping where she did. It did rather seem as if she were looking for something.”

  They walked on together a few yards to the spot where Miss Blythe had paused, and once again the dog sent its long, mournful howl echoing through the trees.

  “Now, Boy, what’s the matter with you?” the sergeant asked rebukingly, and the dog looked up, rather with the air of asking in return if such a question were really necessary.

  “See that?” Bobby asked, flashing his torch to show where on a bush by the side of the path, some twigs had recently been broken off.

  “Shall I let Boy go?” asked the sergeant, and when Bobby nodded an assent, he slipped the leash. “Search, Boy, search,” he said.

  The Alsatian bounded away. A moment or two later the dog’s cry sounded once more, like a long-drawn lamentation wailing through the loneliness of the wood. No one spoke. By the light of his torch Bobby hurried in the direction of the sound. The sergeant and the uniform man followed in single file. The dog was scratching with its paws at a kind of natural hollow that had been roughly and hurriedly filled in with brushwood, debris of one sort or another, collected hurriedly from the vicinity, but that only imperfectly concealed the body of a dead man. Bobby stood staring grimly, thoughtfully, at that still form. The sergeant said:

  “No leg-pull about the ’phone call.”

  They were still silent about that rough, improvised grave when once again there came that sound, so little resembling an owl’s hoot, they had heard before.

  “Go back to the path,” Bobby said to the uniform man. “If anyone comes along, stop him. Blow your whistle to let us know.”

  The man departed. Bobby and the sergeant began cautiously to release the body from the rough concealment it had been given. It was that of a youngish man, and the cause of death was evident—a deep wound in the body, over the heart. Death must have been instantaneous or nearly so.

  “We must wait for daylight,” Bobby said. “Can’t do much in this darkness and we may destroy evidence if we aren’t careful. The poor chap won’t mind waiting a little longer.”

  “Might never have been found, not for years,” the sergeant said. “No one uses this path much and no call for anyone to go poking round. Do you think it’ll be the author gentleman, sir? Him as took the bungalow and never been seen since.”

  “Never been seen at all,” Bobby corrected him, and then they heard the constable’s whistle that told them he had seen and stopped someone on the path from the bungalow.

  It was Miss Blythe they found there, indignantly demanding what right the constable had to interfere with her free movements. When Bobby and his companion appeared, she turned on them the wrath and indignation that had left the constable so entirely unmoved.

  “What’s all this about?” she demanded. “I must get back to Cobblers—they’ll be locking up soon.”

  “There is a dead man,” Bobby said. “We have only just this moment found the body. You were in Mr Tudor King’s employ. Now you are here—I had not meant to ask you, it will not be pleasant—but now you are here, will you see if you can identify him? Mr Tudor King is said to be missing.”

  “A dead man,” she repeated, and looked more bewildered than shocked. “You don’t mean—not about the golden dagger? I thought . . . I mean to say, I thought all that had come to nothing.”

  “It has come to a dead man,” Bobby said. “If it is Mr Tudor King—”

  “Of course it isn’t,” she interrupted. “He isn’t missing either. He’s only gone away for a holiday. It’s so silly. He’ll be very angry.” She paused, her first bewilderment and doubt giving way now, Bobby thought, to unease, dismay, even fear. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “You said—” And then she paused. “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Bobby answered.

  “Oh,” she said, and it was as if only now did she fully realize the meaning of his words. “Oh,” she repeated, and then in a voice no longer angry but shaken, she said: “Do you mean it’s true—what the ’phone said?”

  “Yes,” Bobby repeated.

  “It can’t be anyone I know,” she said slowly. “I’ve only been here a week or two. I don’t know anyone.” Once more she paused and then went on: “It couldn’t be Mr Baldwin Jones, could it? He was staying at Cobblers, only he left on Monday. He might have come back.”

  “Have you any reason to think he did?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, no,” she answered. “No, only—well, there was a hat Monday night and I picked it up and put it on the bush there out of the wet. I meant to take it to Cobblers, only it was gone when I came back. It was like one I had seen him wearing, so I thought it might be his, but I don’t know, and besides I met him just about here one night when I was going to Mrs Cato’s at the Bungalow.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE TURK’S TAIL

  DELAY CAUSED BY THE lateness of the hour and the consequent darkness was replaced by an intense activity as soon as daylight permitted. Nor was it long before the news of the discovery spread through the village and beyond, so that presently it was necessary to draw a cordon round the wood to prevent a rush of sightseers that would have seriously hampered the work going on. Journalists, too, soon began to make an appearance, not, at this stage of the proceedings, entirely welcome.

  Identity of the dead man as Baldwin Jones had been quickly established, but not as yet publicly announced, and now Bobby, content to leave routine work to the various specialists who had been hurried to the spot, was back at the Yard, concentrating on planning the future course of the investigation.

  To the various C.I.D. men he had summoned for a talk and to receive their instructions, he explained that the first thing necessary was to find out everything possible about the somewhat illusive personality known in life as Baldwin Jones.

  “I want,” he said, “to have as complete a picture as possible of his background, his friends and relations if any, his means of livelihood, so on. That ought to give us a starting-point. At present it does look as if one of the Cobblers people must be guilty, but there seems no very adequate motive and no explanation of why a weapon was used that certainly links up with Cobblers. And no hint of who made the ’phone call or why, or what became of the hat Miss Blythe sticks to it she found on her way to the bungalow, but was gone when she came back later on.”

  “Is it right, sir,” one of the men asked, “that he may turn out to be the writer gentleman there’s talk of being missing?”

  “I wouldn’t pay any attention to that,” Bobby said, a trifle vexed, for he felt this meant that Ford had been talking; and his own pet aversion was for his men to start work with the least suggestion of any preconceived idea in their minds, which, he held, should always be entirely blank until knowledge of facts made impact. He went on: “There’s nothing we know of that in any way links up Baldwin Jones with Tudor King, except, of cours
e, that he was in the neighbourhood of a bungalow which Tudor King has rented but never visited as far as is known. Besides, authors are a harmless race and seldom murdered—except, of course, by critics. And I suppose,” he added, considering the point thoughtfully, “they would plead justifiable homicide in self-defence. Well, you understand what I want you to do. See what you can pick up about Baldwin Jones’s background, his friends and habits, where he came from, what he did for a living. Above all, if he seems to have had any criminal connections—black market or in any other way.”

  The men went off then to play their part in weaving the meshes of the net in which it was hoped a murderer might soon be taken. Ford stayed behind, for Bobby had made him a sign to do so. First Ford had to listen to a brief lecture on the necessity of keeping his theories and ideas to himself till he could present facts in support. Then he was given more precise instructions. He was to visit literary and theatrical agents and more especially those agencies which specialize in supplying ‘extras’ to film companies. Maureen had said that she believed Baldwin Jones was sometimes so employed, and, if that were the case, his address might be known by one or other of such agencies.

  “Apparently,” Bobby went on, “he did a certain amount of stray journalism, if only by way of selling odd paragraphs to papers like The Teen-ager. Tudor King seems to have been a contributor as well. Only he was well paid, so it doesn’t seem likely he would bother about selling them bits and scraps for occasional half guineas. We’ve got to remember, though, that Miss Blythe was at one time in Tudor King’s employ, and she does appear to be in the habit of visiting Mrs Cato rather late at night. But that may be only because Mrs Cato feels lonely in her rather isolated bungalow and to Miss Blythe feeling lonely in her new job at Cobblers. All the rest of the Cobblers staff have been there pretty well from birth apparently, and they may be inclined to treat her as an outsider. By the way, taking her story at face value, she may have had a narrow escape herself. The murderer may have been there, watching, and very likely he may have come back for the hat she talks about. It’s a bit risky coming between a murderer and his crime.”