“If she’s not the murderer herself,” Ford suggested. “Her and Mrs Cato together.”
He went off then on his assignment. From it he returned soon after lunch—or, rather, lunchtime, for he had been too busy and was now too excited to bother about eating.
“I’ve got Jones’s ’phone number,” he reported. “It was quite right, sir, what you said about him being likely to be on the films. The second agent I went to had a list of extras, and his name was on it with his ’phone number where he could be reached.”
“Good,” said Bobby, very pleased. “That ought to be a big help. We had his name before and now we’ve got his local habitation as well.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ford, very pleased, too, for if it had been Bobby’s suggestion in the first place, it had been he who had carried it out successfully. “Another thing, sir. A barman in Collinton Street off Greek Street says Jones told him he made a big income writing under another name, but had to pay off heavy business debts. The barman said he didn’t believe him; he had heard stories like that before, and Jones had to pay cash all the same.”
Bobby did not much believe the story either, but he supposed it might just possibly be true. He reflected that practically anything is possible in the strange literary, art, stage worlds where the irresponsible Bohemian and the staid City clerk mentality of the Anthony Trollope variety exist side by side, sometimes in the same personality, and the talent may be with either—or neither.
“Well, what about the ’phone number you’ve got?” he asked.
“It’s a public-house, ‘The Turk’s Tail,’ in Hoxton,” Ford said. “I rang up our people to ask for particulars. They say it’s a most respectable place, free house, owned by a Mrs Abbott. It does a very good trade and there’s never been anything against it. Mrs Abbott is elderly, a widow, and very well thought of. It belonged to her father before her.”
“Elderly widow,” Bobby repeated. “Seems to fit. Elderly widow in the Superb Hotel story; elderly lady, though not a widow, at Cobblers. And where does that take us? We must pay this Mrs Abbott a visit. She may be able to tell us something. Be ready in half an hour. There are one or two things I must attend to first.”
“Car, sir?” Ford asked hopefully.
“We’ll go by ’bus,” Bobby decided. “People don’t always like police cars hanging about and a ’bus is almost as quick, anyhow—they both get held up just as long in the same traffic jam. Only snag is we shall have to pay our own fares and chance getting them back through our expense sheets, while, of course, no one would query the car. Had your lunch?” he added, for he had experience of young and zealous officers. “No? Well, get it. Never neglect lunch. You mayn’t get another chance.”
“No, sir,” said Ford and retired, appearing again, full of content, roast beef and apple tart, at the end of the appointed half-hour.
At the moment when Ford reported, Bobby was just taking a ’phone call. He put down the receiver and said:
“From Lower High Hill. Miss Maureen has left by train for London. I think, instead of coming with me, you had better meet her. Ask for a good man to be with you, point her out to him when she gets here and have her tailed. Keep me informed. I don’t think it’ll be only shopping or a matinée has brought her to Town to-day.”
“No, sir. I shouldn’t think so,” Ford said, and retired, while Bobby set off alone on his visit to ‘The Turk’s Tail.’ He found it in a turning off the main street, a quiet prosperous-looking little place. He went in, explained he was a police officer, though without giving his name or rank, and asked if he could see Mrs Abbott. He noticed that his visit created no show of uneasiness or excitement, and concluded that in ‘The Turk’s Tail’ consciences were fairly tranquil—as far at least as the conscience of any licence-holder can be easy under our complicated licensing laws. He was shown into a comfortable room, well furnished, half sitting-room, half office, and there was soon joined by a pleasant-looking woman, stout and comely, of what seemed a well-preserved middle age.
“Nothing wrong, is there?” she asked cheerfully, and with no appearance of being afraid of anything of the sort. She went on without waiting for any reassurance: “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. New to the district, aren’t you?”
“Well, I’m from Central,” Bobby explained. “We are making inquiries about Mr Jones—Baldwin Jones. He was a customer of yours, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, dear, has the poor boy been getting into trouble?” she asked at once and with every appearance of concern. “There’s no harm in him, only he’s so kept down and it makes him bitter and reckless. Is it anything money can put right? Anything in reason,” she added hastily, her evidently sound business instincts asserting themselves.
“I’m afraid not,” Bobby answered. “It is serious, very serious indeed, though not quite in the way you meant, perhaps. Was Mr Jones any relation of yours?”
“No,” she said, and, for she had been quick to notice that Bobby had again used the past tense and that he had spoken gravely, she asked: “How do you mean—was?”
“He has been found dead,” Bobby told her then. “In the country. It must have happened last Monday. The body has only just been found. An inquiry has had to be opened.”
She was staring at him open-mouthed. She seemed a little dazed and she had become very pale. Bobby began to think that the emotional relation between her and the dead man must have been much stronger than he had expected. She stammered:
“Baldwin . . . you mean . . . not Baldwin, not dead . . . he couldn’t be, he was so young and strong.” She paused, she had almost the air of expecting him to deny or to question what he had just said. She read in his expression that there was no hope of that. Suddenly she began to cry, very quietly. Bobby waited, wondering again what there had been about the dead man, of whom the accounts he had received had given him no very favourable impression, that seemed to have made him a favourite with women so different as this landlady of a Hoxton pub, a rich American widow, the wife of an eminent English archæologist. Mrs Abbott was wiping her eyes now and she managed to ask in a voice still unsteady:
“How did it happen? Was it an accident? Was it a car?” When Bobby shook his head, she asked, and with a growing unease, as if already she had a glimmering of the truth: “He can’t have been taken ill, he was always so strong and well.”
“No, it wasn’t illness,” Bobby answered. “It will be in all the papers—in the evening papers already, most likely, though I don’t expect they’ve got the name yet. He had been stabbed. Death must have been instantaneous.”
Mrs Abbott quietly fainted away.
CHAPTER XVII
BURNING PAPER
THE ELDERLY WOMAN Bobby had spoken to in the bar came running in response to his call for help. Smelling salts were produced. There was much rubbing of hands, loosening of neckbands. Brandy would have been administered had not Bobby protested that there was risk in administering any liquid to an unconscious person.
Clearly the news he had brought had been a very severe shock. Indeed, when Mrs Abbott recovered she still seemed to find it hard to believe. A paragraph in an evening paper that had just been delivered helped to make her realize it was indeed the truth, and that no error or misunderstanding was possible, but also brought a fresh outburst of tears.
“I know the poor boy had wicked enemies,” she sobbed, “but I never thought anything like this would happen.”
“What enemies were they?” Bobby asked at once.
“Them as kept him down,” she explained. “It was like a conspiracy, and he felt it bitter hard. Jealous they were. Jealous.”
“Could you tell me more?” Bobby asked. “It may be a great help.”
“It was all over his books,” she told him. “Kept down he was. Kept down and all out of jealousy.”
“Books,” Bobby repeated quickly. “Do you mean he wrote—an author?”
She nodded with a kind of melancholy pride and again wiped away her tears.
“
I have them all,” she said. “He wrote my name in every one and something nice as well and always different.”
This reminiscence was too much for the poor woman. She broke into fresh and noisy sobs. The elderly barmaid interfered. She prescribed more brandy. She protested that Mrs Abbott was not in a fit state to answer any more questions. Bobby was inclined to agree, so he said he would come back in an hour or two, and then as he was going the ’phone rang, this time with a message for him. It was from the Yard and to the effect that Maureen had been met and identified at the railway station on the arrival of her train, had been traced to an address in Hoxton, and that Constable Ford had been picked up by a flying squad car to be deposited at the corner of the street in which was situated ‘The Turk’s Tail.’
Bobby said that was fine; made inquiries of ‘The Turk’s Tail’s’ staff and was told that the address given over the ’phone was only two or three hundred yards distant in a street that had a somewhat unsavoury reputation; learned in addition from the elderly barmaid, returned from persuading her employer to lie down and apparently a sort of under-manager for her, that no one, neither Mrs Abbott nor anyone else, staff or customer, had ever known exactly where Baldwin Jones lived.
“I’m not one,” said the elderly barmaid, “to breathe a word against the dead, such not being able to answer back, but I will say if ever there was a nasty, sly, underhand, sneaking snooping”—she sought for a word sufficiently expressive of her feelings and yet sufficiently respectful to the dead, and remembered it from frequent headlines in her favourite picture paper—“planner,” she said fiercely, “it was him.”
“Mrs Abbott seems to have taken a great liking to him,” Bobby remarked. “She is very distressed.”
“No fool like an old fool, especially when female,” came the swift retort, and then, with some reluctance: “He had a way with him, talk the hind leg off a donkey, he could, and talk most round as couldn’t see through his cleverness.”
“Mrs Abbott has some books he wrote, I believe,” Bobby said. “Do you think I could see one?”
This time the answer was a sniff, a veritable outsize in sniffs indeed.
“Got ’em all locked up and put away, she has,” he was told, “like as they was that precious they might be run off with.”
“Ever read one?” Bobby asked, and this time received a look of mingled surprise and disdain.
“I’ve no time for reading,” declared the elderly barmaid. “If I do get a minute to myself, there’s plenty to do not such a waste of time as that,” and therewith all the world’s literature seemed to vanish into limbo for ever more.
“I dare say you’re right,” said Bobby meekly, and retired to find Ford, who was already waiting at the indicated corner in a doorway, for a light rain was beginning to fall. Bobby joined him and asked:
“Any trouble tailing her?”
“No, sir. Easy as shelling peas,” Ford answered. “I kept out of sight, but Sergeant Marks came with me himself, as I said it was important and you wanted a good man on the job. Marks said he didn’t know anyone better, so he came along, and when the young lady got a taxi he made an excuse about having lost his umbrella so as to speak to the taximan and tell him to drive slow so we could follow easy. Marks will wait to make sure she doesn’t leave.”
“Good. That ought to cover it,” Bobby said, putting on his raincoat. “We’ll push on, shall we?”
Arriving, they were assured by Marks that Maureen had not left. He nodded to the door of a house opposite. On the step, ignoring the rain which, however, had nearly stopped again, a small cripple girl was sitting.
“See that kid?” he asked. “Cripple. I’ve been talking to her. Lost a leg when a flying bomb dropped. Her mother was trying to get her to come in out of the rain. She didn’t want; said her Uncle Baldy might be coming. Not her real uncle, her mother said, when we got chatting, but the gentleman lodger on the top floor. He had made a bit of a pet of her and paid for some special treatment for her before the Health Service came in. Cost a deal, she said, and he was still giving her little treats. Took her to the pictures sometimes, so she thought there was nobody like him, and when he was away she was always sitting there, waiting.”
“I’m afraid the poor kid will have to wait a long time,” Bobby said. He thanked Marks for what he had done and dismissed him back to Central. He and Ford went into the house, and to Ford he said: “Baldwin Jones in a new character—philanthropist and child-lover. I wonder how many characters he has—how many we all have, for that matter.”
They began to ascend the rickety and unwashed stairs. The houses here were all marked for demolition. Most of the tenants were under notice to leave. Nothing was being done, either by them or anyone else, to keep them clean or habitable. A woman came out of one of the rooms and watched them, but did not speak. Bobby had a feeling that possibly she was not without experience and had recognized them for police—or possibly she thought they were two more of the various sorts of inspectors with whom the street had been populous of late. On the top floor there were two rooms. They knocked at each in turn without reply. They knocked more loudly. Another woman called up the stairs to know what they wanted.
“Which is Mr Baldwin Jones’s room?” Bobby asked.
“Don’t know,” the woman answered promptly. “He’s away; been away weeks. Didn’t say when he would be back.”
She went back into her room then, and Bobby suspected that that was the stock reply given to all strangers making inquiries in this street.
Ford had been putting his ear to the cracks of the two doors. He was listening carefully.
“I think I can hear someone in here, sir,” he said, showing one of the doors. “And I think I can smell burning paper.”
“That may be what she came for,” Bobby said.
He went up to the door and shouted through the keyhole.
“Please open at once, Miss Maureen. We know you are there, and I don’t want to have to break the door down.”
He emphasized the threat by giving the door a push that showed the task would be one of no great difficulty, so old and infirm was it on its shaky hinges. A moment or two of delay and then the door opened and Maureen stood angry upon the threshold.
“Have you been following me?” she demanded, her voice a splendid compound of wrath, rebuke, and menace, so that one expected next to hear: ‘Away with them to the deepest dungeon now unoccupied.’
But Bobby this time was much too angry himself to let his thoughts wander into such pleasant fancies. He pushed past her. Ford followed. Maureen went to stand by the window, watching them now in the manner of the tragedy queen watching the first and second murderers at work. Inside the grate was a heap of ashes over which, to Bobby’s further annoyance, a jug of water had been poured. Afterwards the resulting mess had been stirred together so that not one legible scrap remained. Bobby turned to the girl.
“You little fool,” he said with simple emphasis.
Maureen tried to stare back, but the tragedy queen attitude began to wilt under Bobby’s grim contempt. She turned sulky instead and began to pout like a defiant child.
“You needn’t be—Rude,” she said.
“What have you been burning?” he asked.
“Never you mind,” she retorted. “Nothing to do with you. And I am not going to answer any questions,” she announced, and then added, with much less effect: “So there.”
“Aren’t you?” Bobby said, even more grimly than before. “In that case, you will be taken to Scotland Yard and detained for inquiries. A serious view must be taken of what seems the wilful destruction of evidence. You will be allowed to communicate with your father and to send for your solicitor if you wish.”
Maureen looked at first as if she could hardly believe he was serious, and then began to look extremely uncomfortable, though trying hard not to let that be seen.
“I haven’t destroyed any evidence,” she declared. “It was only some old letters of mine. Can’t I burn my own le
tters?”
“No,” Bobby answered. “Above all, not when they belonged to a man who has been murdered. They might have been of value. How do I know they were your letters?”
“Do you mean to accuse me of telling lies?” she demanded with a return to her haughtiest ‘down on your knees, varlet’ manner.
“I don’t think you would have the least hesitation if it happened to suit you,” Bobby told her, for he was still very angry. “You’ve managed to make it almost certain you will be called as a witness at the inquest.”
Maureen gasped and looked very dismayed indeed. It was a totally unexpected blow, and Bobby watched its effect with all the satisfaction of a boxer watching his opponent taking the count. But she rallied—metaphorically at ‘nine.’
“They were only letters and I don’t know anything else and you can’t make me say anything else,” she protested. “I wasn’t going to have anybody else reading them, a lot of nasty lawyers and policemen”—and with what vicious emphasis did not that last word come out! “There wasn’t anything in them really, only I suppose they were a bit silly. It’s ever so long ago. I was only nineteen.”
“Was he trying to blackmail you?” Bobby asked.
Once again Maureen gasped and this time there was no ‘comeback.’
“How did you know?” she asked in the very smallest voice he had ever heard her use.
“Did you pay?” he asked in return.
She shook her head.
“I told him I would tell Jack Longton and if he didn’t look out Jack would half kill him,” and then quite suddenly she seemed to realize the full import of what she had said and for the first time she looked really frightened.
CHAPTER XVIII
POST-MORTEM CHEQUES
HER FEAR—HER SUDDEN dismay, indeed—when she realized what might be read into what she had just said were so evident that, in spite of all the girl’s youthful folly, Bobby was beginning to feel a little sorry for her. All the same, he had no intention of forgetting the remark. He said:
The Golden Dagger: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 12
