The Golden Dagger: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You mean you feel the most extreme steps would be justified in such a case?” Bobby asked.

  “Certainly, certainly; fully justified,” Lord Rone declared firmly, even loudly. “I should undoubtedly have acted in the same way.”

  “But you would still feel—within limits?” Bobby asked.

  “There could be no limits in such a matter,” Lord Rone answered. “A father has a duty to protect his child.”

  “I can understand your feelings,” Bobby said. “I have known of cases when a comparatively small act of youthful folly has wrecked a whole life. But you said, I think, no limits. None? Not even—murder?”

  The word dropped like a stone in that quiet room. Lord Rone rose from his chair and went to stand by the fireplace, beneath the great painting of ‘The Young Stallion.’ After a pause, while Bobby watched and waited, he said:

  “You have led me on, Mr Owen, to say more than I intended. I think I should prefer to continue this conversation in the presence of my solicitor.”

  “Very good,” Bobby said. “Will you let me know when and where? Entirely to suit your convenience, of course. Our preliminary investigation is nothing like complete as yet. I was glad to notice you do not trust Mr Moyse very far and made sure there was no chance of any eavesdropping this time. In confidence, I may say that I do not trust him very much myself.”

  “You don’t mean you suspect him of . . . of . . . ?” Lord Rone asked, almost hopefully.

  “I only mean that at present it would be better to trust no one, not even your oldest friend—no one. There is no evidence as yet against either your oldest friend or your new secretary or indeed against anyone else.”

  “I think you mean something, but I don’t know what,” Lord Rone said uneasily.

  “All I mean,” Bobby told him, “is that it seems certain that someone here at Cobblers killed Baldwin Jones and that someone else here knows who—or why the ’phone call?”

  “I don’t consider,” Lord Rone said slowly, “that your deduction that the guilty person is or was a resident of this house is in any way justified. In fact, I consider it a most unjustifiable assumption. I shall take the opinion of my solicitor on the matter. It seems to me the murder may have been deliberately planned to throw suspicion on us. In the same way, I should think the ’phone call may very well have been made by the murderer himself. An act of defiance, so to say.”

  “What the vulgar call cocking a snook at us?” Bobby suggested. “It might be. But an attempt was made to hide the body, and but for the ’phone call nothing might have been known for long enough. Baldwin Jones seems to have been a very unattached person. No known relatives or close friends. His disappearance could easily have gone for months unreported. No one directly interested. And it seems difficult to suppose that anyone but an inmate of this house could have managed to get hold of the golden dagger.”

  “Its existence is well known,” Lord Rone insisted. Bobby made no answer. It did not seem necessary. Lord Rone continued; “There seem to be many rumours in circulation in the village. Particularly about Mr Tudor King. I had never heard of him, but it seems his name is very well known.”

  “What sort of rumours?” Bobby asked cautiously.

  “Well,” Lord Rone answered, “one seems to be that he is the murderer and another is that he has been murdered himself. I rang up a literary friend in London to ask about him. Apparently he is a great favourite with the women’s papers, and it seems, too, he has always been something of a mystery. My friend said he had avoided publicity so successfully that it has become a most successful form of publicity.”

  “Flee when no man pursueth,” Bobby commented, “and all the world will soon join in the hunt. Who is supposed to have murdered the illusive Mr King?”

  “I understand some children were shouting after the woman at the New Bungalow yesterday afternoon—Mrs Cato, I think her name is.”

  “That’ll have to be stopped,” Bobby declared. “I had better drop a few hints about slander being actionable. Do you know if anyone else is mentioned?”

  “Well, one story seems to be that Baldwin Jones murdered Tudor King and then was murdered himself. Another is that Baldwin Jones and Tudor King were really one and the same.”

  “Well, that leaves an open field, doesn’t it?” Bobby remarked. “Difficult to stop people talking. A few reminders about the slander laws may help. Of course, anything said to us would be privileged.”

  Bobby, who was becoming acutely conscious that it was now time for lunch, took his leave then. He was getting into his car when he saw Sir William Watson and Lady Watson hurrying up the drive towards the house as if afraid they were going to be late. Bobby got out of his car again and began to fiddle with his engine so that they might have an opportunity to speak to him if they wished—and as he hoped.

  They were quite close now. Bobby finished what he had not been doing and made to get back into the car. Sir William announced his proximity by an enormous and air-shattering sneeze. Bobby looked round as if surprised, and Sir William said:

  “Any fresh developments in this dreadful business? Or oughtn’t I to ask?”

  “Why not?” Bobby said. “I’m afraid the answer is ‘No.’ But the investigation has only just begun.”

  “Well, the sooner it’s concluded, the happier we shall all feel,” Sir William said, and he was indeed looking pale and worried. “I imagine you are still thinking it must be one of us here at Cobblers. Very disturbing indeed to think that we are all under suspicion.”

  “I’m sure no one can suspect you at any rate,” declared Lady Watson indignantly.

  “You notice, my dear,” Sir William remarked, “that Mr Owen does not confirm. He would have no right to until he is sure who it was. For my part, I’m quite at a loss. Who could it possibly be? What possible motive?”

  “Those are the vital questions,” Bobby agreed. “Together with the other puzzle of the ’phone call and why it was made? But for it, nothing might have been known for months, perhaps years. And having made it, why hasn’t whoever it was come forward?”

  “Probably afraid,” Sir William said. “I remember when I was out East a whole family was killed because an assassin—” He paused to sneeze even more violently than before—twice over. “Because,” he resumed, “he thought they might give evidence against him.”

  “I hope that didn’t save him,” Bobby said. “Probably only made his guilt more plain. I’m afraid you’ve caught cold, Sir William. Most people have just now, though. Anyhow, yours doesn’t come from this new fad of going about without a hat. Responsible for much of it, I think.”

  “Oh, he never does that,” Lady Watson declared. “I simply wouldn’t let him.”

  “Wifely authority,” smiled Sir William, and Bobby had not failed to notice that the hat he had on was a smart-looking Homburg, apparently fresh from the shop.

  CHAPTER XXII

  “JUST LIFE”

  IT WAS ONLY A SHORT drive to the village. On the way Bobby kept a sharp look out for Dick Moyse, but saw nothing of him. There were footpaths though, as well as the road, so possibly Moyse might have returned by one of them. The first thing Bobby did, on the principle that what we have had even the jealous gods cannot take from us, was to visit the local pub in the hope of getting something to eat. They were able to provide bread and cheese, the latter having the advantage of being home-made and not of the variety known as ‘mousetrap.’

  This not unsatisfactory refreshment disposed of, Bobby went on to the small cottage that served both as village police station and as the residence of Constable Yates, sole representative of the law for a considerable distance around. Here were assembled three or four of the specialist officers engaged on the case. None of them had much of immediate interest to report, though, of course, such routine inquiries are of the highest value in avoiding waste of time and energy in following misleading trails. Nor did Bobby mention that he believed he had that morning gathered important information. Time enough to mak
e that known if and when confirmatory evidence was obtained. On one thing all present were, however, fully agreed—that the spate of rumours now in full flood in the neighbourhood must somehow be stopped.

  “Yates says,” one man remarked, “that Mrs Cato, the lady at the New Bungalow, has been complaining about the gossip that’s going on. Says it’s most unpleasant for her, the way people stare if she goes into the village.”

  Bobby said he would make a point of calling to see Mrs Cato and assure her that everything possible was being done to stop such irresponsible talk. The little conference ended, Bobby drove on accordingly to the New Bungalow, where he found also Linda Blythe, whose afternoon off it happened to be. Both she and Mrs Cato were very indignant.

  “It’s so silly, so utterly ridiculous,” they kept saying in turn, and Linda said she supposed it was all because when she came to visit Mrs Cato she used the generally unused path that led so near where the body of the murdered man had been discovered.

  Bobby asked if they had had word recently from Mr Tudor King, and Mrs Cato explained that they didn’t expect to. It was a motoring holiday. He might be anywhere on the Continent—Spain perhaps or Scandinavia.

  “Filling his notebooks,” Mrs Cato explained. “Getting the facts right for the new novel he’s writing. It’s going to have a cosmopolitan background, and it’s got to be right. Make the tiniest slip and the critics—pounce. Put the Bridge of Sighs in Florence instead of Venice and you would think that was all that mattered.”

  “Like that book,” Linda Blythe agreed, “where the heroine was serving in the gloves and shoes department of a big London stores. Everybody knows gloves and shoes are never in one department, and then, to make it worse, promoted her to be first assistant in furs, so she could meet the rich girl who was buying a mink coat for goodness knows how much. As if a first assistant didn’t need to know anything about what they were selling. Made you feel the author knew nothing about it. The critics never said a word. I don’t expect they knew anything about it either.”

  “Oh, well, critics,” said Mrs Cato, and said it as if she had been a leading politician referring to the other side as ‘vermin.’

  “Readers noticed it, though,” Linda said. “Letters by the dozen.”

  “Oh, readers,” said Mrs Cato, much as before, only more so. “I suppose you have to have them,” she admitted reluctantly.

  Bobby said politely that he could well understand how difficult readers and critics made things. Though for his part, he explained, he found one of the difficulties in this case to be the theatrical and literary atmosphere surrounding it, and to him so unfamiliar. Made it hard, he said, to estimate correctly the attitude and probable behaviour, past, present, and future, of those concerned.

  “So easy,” Bobby said, “to attach too much importance to one point and too little to another. Was there any special reason, by the way, for Mr Tudor King choosing this neighbourhood?”

  “He wouldn’t if we had known there was going to be a murder,” Mrs Cato answered. “Mr King is buying a villa in Capri. But it isn’t ready yet, and his lease of the London flat ran out, so he had to find somewhere to go. Linda told us about this bungalow. It seemed suitable and Mr King told me to take it. And sorry enough I am now, and what Mr King will think with all this fuss and this disgusting gossip and crazy talk—well, I don’t know.”

  “We are very sorry about that,” Bobby assured her, “and we’ll do all in our power to stop it. If we could get in touch with Mr Tudor King, it would be much easier. I think you told me you are a novelist yourself?”

  “Was one once,” Mrs Cato said with a kind of angry defiance, as though she threw a challenge in the face of neglectful fame. “Talked about. Discussed. Not now. Tudor King gets paid more for one short story than most of my books ever earned. But then I never pretended to give the public what it wanted.”

  “All the same,” Linda interposed, “people do enjoy Tudor King, don’t they?”

  “My books,” declared Mrs Cato firmly, “were never meant to be enjoyed. I never tried to be a mere merchant of joy—like Tudor King.” She was speaking now with great contempt and bitterness. “My works were studies of life as people really know it—a dreary repetition of a daily round without significance or purpose except to go on and on.”

  “Just life,” Bobby suggested.

  “Just life,” Mrs Cato repeated in a surprised and doubtful voice that in its turn surprised Bobby. “That’s the title of one of my books. Did you know?” Bobby shook his head, and Mrs Cato looked disappointed. “It was the one that was most discussed—took me two years to write and got long notices in all the important papers. But hardly any sales. I put all my irony and scorn into it, into the title even. Just Life,” she repeated; “and life is never just as I showed.”

  “Could you lend me a copy?” Bobby asked. “I should really like to read it now I’ve met you.”

  Mrs Cato, half flattered, half doubtful, gave him a suspicious glance, and hesitated.

  “No,” she said finally. “I never lend my books. If anyone wants one they can go to the trouble of getting a copy. In the remnant boxes of the second-hand shops,” she added, more bitterly than ever. “If you lend your books, people think they are doing you a favour in reading them instead of receiving one.”

  “I shall make a point of getting hold of one,” Bobby assured her, and was rewarded by another glare of mingled doubt and distrust, suspicion of his motives eloquent in every feature. “Just Life? I’ll remember.” He began to fumble in his pockets, produced his wallet, and from it the old photograph of Tudor King he had brought with him. He said: “I wonder if you would call this a good likeness?”

  Mrs Cato was plainly a good deal startled. She took the photograph and stared at it for some moments without speaking. Linda pressed forward to look at it over her shoulder and seemed equally surprised—even disturbed.

  “How did you get hold of this?” Mrs Cato demanded.

  “One of our men sent it in,” Bobby answered. “Good likeness?”

  “No,” Mrs Cato snapped. “He hasn’t got a beard now. What do you want it for?”

  She crumpled it up angrily as she spoke and threw it on the floor, and Bobby picked it up again. He had for a moment the impression that she was going to try to snatch it from him. He said:

  “Just one more thing. I believe Miss Blythe uses the path through the wood when she comes to see you. It’s rather dark and lonely, isn’t it?”

  “Not now,” Mrs Cato answered. “There’s police there all the time turning people back.”

  “They’ll be withdrawn soon,” Bobby said. “They were only searching for any further scraps of evidence. I think it might be better if both of you avoided using that path for the present. We still have no idea who the murderer is, but he probably knows a lot about us and what we are doing, and he may very well be afraid that Miss Blythe saw more than apparently she did and that she may have told you.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t,” Linda interrupted. “I didn’t see anything except the hat I put on a bush out of the wet, only it was gone when I came back.”

  “All the same,” Bobby persisted, “I think it would be much more prudent to run no risk of his trying to suppress the evidence he may be afraid Miss Blythe could give.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Mrs Cato said grimly. “I’ll take the chopper.”

  Bobby thought she looked fully capable of using it to good advantage, and he remembered the first time he had seen her and how she had come from behind the house, swinging it in one hand, like Clytemnestra coming to tell what she had done. Again he suggested mildly that it would be better to run no risks.

  “Probably the murderer came back to get his hat,” Bobby said. “He may even have been watching and have seen you pick it up. You are sure, Miss Blythe, there is nothing more you can tell me?”

  “Only what I’ve said before,” Linda answered. “It looked new and expensive. It came from Bailey and Bailey in Mock Street. I forget if I
told you that.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bobby said. “Bailey and Bailey? They are rather fashionable people, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, yes,” Linda agreed. “One of those small shops that have been there for centuries and charge the same way.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  A NEW HAT

  BOBBY DROVE AWAY, perpending, doubtful. He had certainly learned a good deal, but of its relevance to the investigation he was engaged upon he was not sure. And then there were so many points that had to be cleared up. He felt indeed that Mrs Cato’s dislike, contempt—was hatred too strong a word?—for Mr Tudor King, his work, and all that he stood for approached the pathological. He was inclined to think, too, that the younger woman, Linda, was very much on the side of Tudor King, and yet entirely under the influence, even control, of Mrs Cato.

  An odd situation, Bobby thought, and was it possible, even remotely possible, that Mrs Cato’s feeling towards her employer could have found issue in such violence as would account for Mr Tudor King’s rather curious and not very satisfactorily explained absence from the scene? Had Mrs Cato really been able to bear no longer the constant contrast between the popular success of the Tudor King books and the unfortunate, unconsidered fate of her own novels in the twopenny boxes of the Charing Cross Road? And again, did the Linda girl know or suspect something, and did that explain the frequent visits daily or nightly apparently, that she paid to the New Bungalow?

  He told himself that these were not questions to which he could devote much time at present. He could keep them in mind, but he must concentrate all his energies on the murder of the unlucky Baldwin Jones, all indeed that was officially before him. Only he found himself hoping, somewhat uneasily, that both Mrs Cato and Linda would heed the warning given them. With an unknown murderer loose in the neighbourhood, every precaution was necessary—even though one of the women concerned had an air of being well able to look after herself and a trick of handling an axe as if she could use it very effectively should the need arise.