Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  A maze of a place, Bobby thought it, and managed to get lost once or twice before arriving at number seven hundred and two, Block C, on the second floor, which was his destination. Depressing, too, he found this enormous wilderness of small habitations all piled one on top of another, with its general air of totalitarianism and mass production, of suppression of all individuality, of a heightening of that monotony of life that modern civilization seems to induce. He had the idea that all its inhabitants must necessarily be as much cut to pattern as were the flats themselves, that here every individual must be as utterly lost among the others, as indistinguishable from them, as one bee in the hive, as one ant in the ant heap. He wondered, too, how a dweller in this quintessence of humdrum middle, middle class acceptance of an existence of pattern, regularity and established rule, could ever have come in contact with Lord Henry Darmoor, who moved in such different circles, who in his polo and sporting activities had followed his own line, who even physically stood out from among others by an ugliness of form and feature so excessive that many found it fascinating.

  Probably, Bobby supposed, through a common interest in sport, since he remembered now that Gwen, though not even in the second rank of players, played a good deal of tennis, attended a good many tournaments, and so would no doubt meet many leading personalities in the world of sport where there exists a common freemasonry among its devotees.

  He knocked at the door of flat No. 702. Block G. Gwen opened it at once. She had apparently been waiting for him. She invited him to enter with one of her easy, rapid gestures. He followed her across a miniature lobby into a small room so ordinary in appearance with its waxed oak furniture, conventionally ‘modern’ in design, its framed engravings without interest on the wall, its china vases on the mantelpiece, as to resemble almost comically one of those ‘model’ furnished rooms the big shops display to tempt and instruct prospective purchasers with no ideas of their own. Almost the only sign of any personal existence the room showed was a basket of needlework with a half- mended stocking put down close by. Otherwise it was almost difficult to believe that any one really lived here. One almost expected to see a notice on the wall that the total cost was so and so and that the furnishings shown could be delivered the same day.

  Yet somehow, through the very conventionality of these surroundings, Gwen’s vivid personality seemed to shine the more strongly. Insignificant as she seemed at first with her small, slight figure, her mouse-coloured hair, and small, dull eyes that heavy lids half concealed, the deathly pale complexion and commonplace features lightened only by the vivid lip stick she affected, yet gradually one became aware of a kind of controlled and hidden eagerness in her, such a sort of suppressed desire as might, if it could find expression, change her entirely. Odd, Bobby thought, that this hidden intensity of hers, of which so gradually one grew conscious, should find expression in a room so entirely resembling that of any other of the thousands of young women who live alone in great cities. Yet all of these have their own possessions to themselves, however limiting their circumstances. Not one but will show in framed photographs, in knicknacks and books and trifles of one sort or another, some clue to private tastes and pursuits. But here was nothing like that, except indeed the basket of needlework and the half-mended stocking that probably spoke more of private necessity than of private taste. Utterly characterless did the place seem, uninhabited almost, even though the actual occupant was there in this small slip of a girl of the pale, undistinguished appearance, the swift and sudden movements, the dull, lifeless eyes that yet made Bobby wonder how they would look if ever it did happen that they lighted up. She was saying now:—

  “It’s about Henry’s friend you’ve come. I saw it in the paper.”

  “I was hoping,” Bobby explained, “that possibly you or Lord Henry might be able to give me some help. I tried to see Lord Henry last night but it seems he’s in the country somewhere.”

  “Not the country, Paris,” she answered, and he thought he caught a low sigh that escaped her after the last word.

  “Could you tell me where he is staying?” Bobby asked.

  With one of those quick, silent, slightly disconcerting movements of hers, she was at the window, her back to him. He could see her shoulders move, she seemed to be struggling to control herself. Slightly embarrassed, Bobby waited. She turned, moving back to the centre of the room, and he could see that there were tears in her eyes, nor was her voice quite steady as she said:—

  “I’m so sorry. I—I forgot for a moment. I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly where he is staying, he only said an hotel. He went in rather a hurry, it was a little unexpected. Of course, he will ring up and let me know or write or something.”

  Her voice was hesitant. Her long, white fingers with the sharp, tinted nails were twisting together. Evidently she was trying to conceal what she really felt, to put, so to say, a favourable gloss on her words. Bobby felt more and more awkward, and he looked away round the little room so oddly inexpressive of its occupier’s personality. She began to talk again, somewhat hurriedly now.

  “I’m afraid there’s very little I can tell you,” she said. “I didn’t know Mr. Baird very well. He seemed very nice. Henry seemed worried about him, troubled, I don’t know how to put it, almost as if he was angry. He has been a little —oh, I can’t explain. Henry, I mean. Different. I think he was really worried, but he would never say why, except that it was about Mr. Baird. He told me about you, only of course I knew already because of going to darling Olive’s little shop. I get my hats there and the girls talk, so I thought Henry was right in thinking it would be a good idea to see if you could do anything, and it all does seem so dreadful, doesn’t it?”

  Bobby asked a few more questions but without getting much more information. She repeated that she had felt just recently that Lord Henry was worried—‘changed’, was a word she used, and Bobby remembered that Clements also had used the same expression. He made a reference to Clements and his distress at his dismissal, and Gwen looked very sympathetic.

  “I was sorry about that,” she said. “It was all a misunderstanding, only of course Clements ought to have known better. I expect it will be all right again presently. Clements had been with the family such a long time he was inclined to take liberties. But I’m sure it will be all right if he will write and ask to be taken back. You see,” she explained earnestly, “Henry really has been awfully nervous and upset and now there’s this about poor Mr. Baird. It was an accident, I suppose, not—not suicide?”

  “That’s what we want to be sure about,” Bobby explained. “The inquest has been adjourned for a week and we are trying to get evidence together. There’s a suggestion that a woman visited Mr. Baird just before his death and we should like to get in touch with her. There’s to be a broadcast appeal asking her to communicate with us and we thought that possibly Lord Henry might be able to tell us something. I suppose I can take it you have no idea who it is?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “No idea at all,” she said. “I think what worried Henry was that he felt it was a sort of infatuation, it quite changed poor Mr. Baird.” Again that word ‘changed’, Bobby noticed, and again he remembered how Clements had said that nothing sent a man to the devil so quickly as when the wrong woman got hold of him. “But he had no idea who it was and he said Mr. Baird wasn’t letting any one know this and there must be some reason though no one could imagine what. Mr. Baird could have married any one he liked and nobody could have said a word.”

  “You can’t make any suggestion yourself?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said, but he fancied there was a trace of hesitation in her voice, and he wondered if perhaps she had not some knowledge she was at present not willing to communicate. She said abruptly:—“I think it’s such a pity about poor old Clements and I’m sure Henry will take him back. I shall make him.”

  She said this very emphatically and yet with still a trace of hesitation in her voice, as though now not reall
y sure that she could ‘make’ Lord Henry do what she wanted. Bobby went away with the firm conviction in his mind that there was something very wrong between the two young people. Had some other woman come between them, he wondered, and, if so, who could she be, and was it the same who had visited Baird just before his death? A little odd, too, Bobby thought, that Lord Henry had vanished abroad at this particular moment and that his fiancee did not know where he was staying. However no doubt soon he would return and then he could be questioned, though Bobby had no great hope that he would be likely to supply any useful information.

  Not that there seemed any good reason to connect Lord Henry’s absence with recent happenings. Deep in thought, however, was Bobby as he left Gwen’s apartment, for he felt he had learned significant things if only he knew how to relate them.

  The rest of the day he devoted to trying to secure more information about Mr. Baird, from his lawyers, from the Mr. and Mrs. Hands who already had visited Midwych, from other relatives, all without much success. For it appeared that there was nothing to be found to explain the tragic fate that had overtaken him. The dead man’s life had been open. He had been engaged in many activities. He had many friends and acquaintances, as far as was known he had no enemies, no concealed interests. There was ample confirmation of the fact that recently he had been dropping hints that presently he might be getting married. Also he had been getting rid of a lot of money. Comparatively little was left of what he had once possessed.

  “Changed him in a way,” said one somewhat distant relative but apparently fairly intimate friend, and Bobby could not help starting at the use again of that word ‘changed’. “Sort of exuded happiness, if you know what I mean. Got more—well, he was always a bit standoffish; you felt he was a chap who thought of himself first. Well, I suppose most of us do, so there’s nothing in that, but it made you notice it when he got so ready to help other people when he got a chance. Turned a bit religious, too.”

  All this was interesting, but not very enlightening as regarded what had happened up there in the Wychwood forest. Nor was any hint to be found anywhere of the identity of the woman who had presumably brought about this change. Nothing in his papers, nothing anywhere, either to indicate who she was or to explain why secrecy had been so carefully preserved. Only one hint did Bobby get, from a political acquaintance of the dead man.

  “Oh, he was badly hit all right,” said this person. “I gathered there was a risk of some sort of scandal developing so the affair had to be kept quiet till things cleared up. Candidates for Parliament can’t afford any sort of scandal, you know. No, I’ve no idea who the lady may be and I don’t suppose I should tell you if I did know. What’s it matter now? Let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “We have to be sure they really are sleeping,” Bobby said. “Sometimes they wake and bite again.”

  The other looked at him sharply.

  “Surely there’s no question of that in this case,” he said. “I can tell you one thing, though. Poor Baird was in love all right, head over heels. I called at his rooms once. Rather late. He wasn’t expecting me or any one else apparently. Well, the lady was there. He bundled her off into the next room out of my sight. I only got a glimpse of the tail of her skirt. Of course, I didn’t say anything. None of my business. But he was all—well, lit up. That’s what young fellows say nowadays when a chap’s had one over the eight. Well, he had had one over the eight all right— but not whisky or anything like that. Intoxicated, but not with drink. Sort of hit you between the eyes to see a chap like that these days when there’s precious little old-fashioned romance going round. Lit up he was through and through, if you know what I mean. Changed.”

  That word again. It was becoming almost the leitmotif of the case apparently. A puzzling leitmotif, too. Could this woman who had so ‘changed’ Baird be the same who had visited him in his caravan, the caravan that, it also, had been ‘lit up’ in yet a third and differing sense.

  All this had occupied the whole day—it was eleven at night before Bobby got hold of this final evidence that there really had been in Baird’s life a woman with whom he had been on such terms as to permit her to visit him alone in his flat in the late evening. Not that this knowledge, he told himself, as, tired out by his long day of running to and fro, he prepared for bed, brought him much nearer understanding what had happened in the lonely hidden glade in the depth of Wychwood Forest. If Baird had been so much in love as that expression ‘lit up’ suggested, and if there were truth in the further suggestion that some sort of scandal threatened, then no doubt the theory of suicide grew more probable. If so, there need be no fear that a sleeping dog might wake and bite again, no fear that a foul and hidden crime was to pass undiscovered and unpunished.

  The next day was Sunday, but it found Bobby on his way to Devon, and presently in the office of a Devon superintendent of police, who, in accordance with a telephoned request, had ready the full record of the enquiry into the death of young Lord Byatt, concerning which the unquestioned verdict of suicide while of unsound mind had been returned at the inquest. In the superintendent’s considered opinion, though, if people wanted to commit suicide, they might at least do it comfortably in their own homes, and not travel down to Devon for the purpose, giving the place a bad name and incidentally inflicting a great deal of unnecessary work upon an already overburdened police.

  No, he had no doubt about its being suicide, and he fully accepted the verdict. Beat him, though, why a young swell like that, a peer and all, pots of money even if he had been going the pace a bit, should want to do himself in. Got everything any one could want and then threw it all away. A girl probably. When a man went clean off the rails, there was probably a girl in it somewhere. Packets of dynamite, girls were, as well he knew, having three himself, all busy raising Cain one way or another. One witness had said something a bit odd but didn’t seem to know what he meant himself, something he said he had noticed about Lord Byatt the last month or so before his death.

  “That he had ‘changed’?” Bobby suggested.

  “That’s right,” agreed the superintendent. “How did you know? It struck me as a bit odd at the time, but I didn’t think it was in the reports.”

  “It wasn’t,” said Bobby, but offered no explanation, and the superintendent repeated that the witness himself had not seemed to know quite what he meant.

  There was, of course, the superintendent added, the odd business that came out later, not at the inquest, about the Byatt sapphires and their unexplained disappearance. There had been just one other thing, the superintendent also remembered, that had a trifle worried them at the time. They had tried to follow it up but it had led nowhere. A cyclist who was crossing the moor at the time reported having noticed a large car standing on a path that cars seldom followed. The sole occupant was a man in the uniform of a chauffeur, and the cyclist had noticed him because he had been watching through a pair of field- glasses another car on a lower level in a position roughly corresponding to that in which Lord Byatt’s car, containing his dead body, had presently been found. Efforts had been made to trace car and chauffeur, but had failed. The cyclist could give no description of the car and had not noticed the registration number. He only remembered that the car had been a big one. The incident had not interested him much at the time, nor would he know again the man in chauffeur’s uniform. He was not even sure of the exact date, only that it had been somewhere about; the time when presumably the tragedy had occurred.

  With so little to go on, not much wonder, the superintendent declared, a little challengingly, that their search had failed. Possibly indeed the whole thing had been an invention or a dream of the cyclist wanting to put himself forward. The only confirmation of the story they had been able to secure was from a garage in the district. A chauffeur driving a large and expensive-looking car no one had noticed particularly as the garage had been busy at the time, had stopped in passing to ask if a lady riding a motor-cycle had been there or had been seen passing. On getting an un
interested ‘No’ for an answer, he had asked that if any such lady did happen to call for any reason, she was to be told that Ted Reynolds had been there and had driven on to Plymouth.

  CHAPTER XIII

  ‘CHANGED’

  It was too late for Bobby to catch the night train back to London. He had to spend the night in Devon and next day, after a careful study of Bradshaw, he finally arrived by way of Bristol, Birmingham, and Shrewsbury, at the headquarters of a Welsh county police force.

  There, too, warned by phone, the authorities had ready for him a full record of their enquiries into the death of Andrew White.

  “Nothing to it, really,” said the inspector to whom Bobby was talking, “only a lot of fuss because of his being a rich man. Newspaper reporters everywhere, and why didn’t we call in Scotland Yard, and this and that and t’other, and all the lot of them with faces a yard long because there was nothing to make a splash about. What’s up now? This Wychwood Forest case? Or the family been pulling strings to get it opened again?”

  “There are points of resemblance that are rather bothering us,” Bobby explained. “With the Wychwood case, that is. At the Andrew White inquest there was an open verdict, I see.”

  “That’s right,” agreed the inspector. “Had to be that. Poor chap had been dead as much as three weeks and the weather warm and wet—rats as well. I’ve seen some things in my time, but—” He paused and went on:— “Dream of it still sometimes, but there you are. Nothing to take hold of. Doctors could tell us nothing. Suicide. Accident. Natural causes. Might have been anything.”