Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  “Now then, what’s all this?” he demanded accusingly. “You’ve upset that lady. Miss Hannay, that was. You’ve upset her.”

  “Looks like it,” agreed Bobby. “I wonder why.”

  The hall porter stared.

  “Miss Hannay,” he repeated impressively. “Her father’s General Sir Harold Hannay, he is.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Bobby.

  “Well, we don’t like it, annoying our clients,” said the hotel porter. “Annoying our clients,” he repeated, as one might say ‘committing high treason’ and then, seeing how little impressed Bobby seemed, returned to his post to welcome, with an effusion he would not otherwise have shown, a mere second lieutenant who had just come in.

  Bobby went away then and all the time as he walked slowly along there wavered before him the figure of Hazel, mingling indistinctly with another figure, one that fled through darkness and shadow down a narrow passage way between fence and wall. Were they identical, he wondered; did they, in fact, merge into one another as, in his fancy, they seemed sometimes to do; and through the roar of the busy London traffic he seemed to hear distinctly the tinkle of steel on stone as a long-bladed knife fell upon a flagged path.

  “On the whole,” he told himself gravely, “I prefer automatics to knives—you can miss with an automatic and generally do, but a knife thrust is apt to get home. No safety catch on a knife blade, either.”

  However, he had obtained some useful information, or rather, information that might be useful when he knew how to use it. For the present he had to be content with knowing that Sir Harold had been in town the night before, that he had been out late, that therefore it was at least possible that Marsh was right in his belief. An established possibility is, however, very different from completed proof. Also Sir Harold and his daughter had not come to town together and had not kept each other informed of their respective movements, since Hazel had come to seek her father at the hotel after he had left it. Did that suggest that he had followed her to town for some reason of his own and had not known exactly where to find her? Apparently Hazel, too, had spent the night in town, since no train from Midwych could have got her here so early, and she did not seem to have used a car or to have travelled by the night train. Quite plainly, too, she had found Bobby’s question disturbing when he asked her where she had been, nor had she answered it.

  All these different points Bobby found interesting, even suggestive, and yet, consider them as he might, and most of the rest of the day he devoted to that task, he could not see that what he had learned took the investigation beyond that domain of vague doubt and suspicion in which he felt himself caught and held.

  He wondered whether to go back to Cardiff to make another attempt to interview the Jinnie Reynolds, whose name, like that of Lady May Grayson, seemed so often to crop up in the affair. He decided that such an interview he was unlikely to obtain at present, and that in any case it would be better to wait till he knew more—if that were ever to be the case. Then there was Leonard Glynne, too, who ought to be questioned again, though again, with small prospects of useful results. But he, too, it might be wiser to leave for the present. Time allowed for quiet thought sometimes induced the reflection that speech is wise and prudent—the innocent begin to feel it more honest, the guilty that they must do something to make themselves more secure. Experience had long ago taught Bobby that often it was the best course to wait and watch for the other fellow’s next move.

  All this had taken up the morning so that now it was time for lunch, after which would begin the universal week-end pause, when in England the general rhythm of life sinks into something like immobility. So having for once a free evening Bobby seized the chance to spend it with Olive, who took him to the cinema to see the latest of the Marx Brothers films in the hope that the antics of those inspired clowns might change and relieve the current of his thoughts. Her idea was that laughter, loud, long, and continuous, might help to clear his mind. As they were coming away she remarked that a Shirley Temple film was always charming, and he agreed absently, and said how much he had enjoyed it, whereat she longed furiously to box his ears, since evidently he had not the least idea what they had been seeing. It seemed to her too bad of him and rather ungrateful as well, besides seven shillings and a whole evening wasted, since for her part she had never been able to understand what any Marx Brothers film was about, or why on earth people laughed so much at what seemed to her merely behaviour entirely lacking in commonsense.

  On the Monday morning Bobby presented himself, the world having decided to start revolving once more, at the office of the Public Prosecutor and afterwards at Scotland Yard. To his disappointment, he found neither place very keenly interested in the story he had to tell. It had been well enough known that such a place as he described existed somewhere in London, though its exact locality had never been ascertained. Interesting, of course, to be informed now that it was this Mountain Street hall. Amusing, too, that it should be a place also used for parish purposes. Only neither the Public Prosecutor’s office nor the Yard seemed very clear about what action could be taken.

  “Corrupting the young,” said the Public Prosecutors office, “only what statute makes that an offence? Blowed if I know. The leading case of Socrates does not seem to apply. Put it like this: what offence is committed when a pack of young degenerates get together to behave a little worse than usual? This Mountain Street place of yours,” the Public Prosecutor’s office pointed out with some severity, “is not even licensed for music and dancing. Private show all round apparently. Of course, if you could show any connection with your Wychwood Forest case—?”

  But that was precisely what Bobby could not do, and though he attempted to controvert the suggestion that the Mountain Street hall and Wychwood forest were his personal property, the Public Prosecutor’s office remained unimpressed. So Bobby went on to Scotland Yard who listened carefully and rubbed its chin thoughtfully and said:— “Private show apparently. Our job is public order, not private morals. Police have no power to enter private property, no power to do almost anything if you ask me, except say ‘Move on there, please’. Of course, if you could show any connection with your Wychwood Forest affair—?”

  Bobby was too dispirited even to protest that the Wychwood Forest affair was not ‘his’ in any sense whatsoever. Scotland Yard, accepting his silence as proof that no such connection was known—or, probably, existed,—promised cheerfully that the Mountain Street hall should be kept under observation, which meant, Bobby reflected gloomily, that the D.D.I. would be asked to send round a plain clothes man to have a look at it occasionally.

  Bobby had therefore to be content with the knowledge that the Public Prosecutor’s office was busy—more or less—looking up statutes, and Scotland Yard was—more or less—keeping the hall under observation.

  He went back to his rooms and sat there, trying to work out a plan of campaign. Finding that task difficult, he attempted to put down on paper a clear statement of his own thoughts, doubts, suspicions, for the vague, almost formless ideas in his mind he did not dare as yet to make explicit to others, hardly even to himself. He was in the middle of this task when his landlady came in to inform him of the arrival of a visitor.

  To his surprise, it was little Mr. Eyton, the Midwych journalist whose articles, hinting that the Wychwood forest tragedy had been neither accident nor suicide but murder, had made this investigation necessary.

  Bobby had learned, as all good policeman learn, that it is necessary both to be very polite to newspaper men and still more so never to tell them anything, except what it is desired should be proclaimed as widely as possible, strict accuracy, however, no object at all; for indeed it is a poor journalist who cannot, as Sir. Walter Scott said, put a cocked hat on a story, a staff in its hand, and set it walking.

  Bobby therefore was ready to tell Eyton as little as possible in as many words as convenient, but as he talked soon became aware of an odd change in the little man, who indeed was hardly lis
tening to him, and who was betraying a peculiar restlessness and excitability of which he had not shown the least trace during their previous talk. Now he seemed unable to keep still, he changed his seat, fidgeted continually, his eyes were feverish, his skin looked hot and dry. Bobby wondered if he were sickening for some illness, but was reminded still more strongly of some of those whom it had been his duty at other times to interrogate when they had been labouring under the consciousness of some secret knowledge.

  Abruptly he asked, for an abrupt unexpected question has sometimes unexpected results:—

  “Has anything happened? Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  Eyton looked startled indeed and hesitated for a moment, but that was all.

  “Something has certainly happened,” he agreed, “but not to interest you.” He paused, his restlessness and excitement seemed to leave him. He sat back in his chair, motionless and silent. He smiled to himself, a tender and a secret smile that changed and illumined his whole countenance, as at hidden thoughts too wonderful for speech.

  “My God,” Bobby thought, with sudden cold terror at his heart, “is he the next?”

  There was an interval before either of them spoke again. Bobby was watching the little man intently, still telling himself his sudden fear was unreasonable and unfounded, a mere result of the strain he had been under these last few days. Eyton, with that strange, distant smile still on his lips, seemed unaware of their silence. Bobby had the impression that he might sit there for hours, lost in whatever dream or vision held him in such abstraction. But presently he stirred, like a man wakening from sleep, and looked around him and at Bobby, as if remembering with difficulty where he was or why. To Bobby, still watching him closely, his eyes seemed aloof and dazzled, as though they had been gazing on a brightness too great for them to bear.

  “What has happened?” Bobby asked.

  Eyton, looking more normal now, smiled and waved a deprecating hand.

  “Oh, I didn’t come here to worry you about my private affairs,” he said. “I had to come up to town on business. I have a freehold plot of land I’ve been holding for years, as values were going up all round. I’ve just made up my mind to sell.”

  “Land this time,” Bobby said heavily, “not jewellery?”

  “Jewellery?” repeated Eyton. “Oh, I’ve no jewellery. It’s a bit of land left me by an uncle years ago. It was valued at about £300 then. I’m told I shall get £3,000 now, clear, the purchaser paying all expenses, even my solicitor’s fees.”

  “£3,000 is a lot of money,” Bobby agreed.

  Eyton nodded complacently.

  “I was keeping it as a reserve for old age or if I got the sack—a chancy trade, journalism, you know. I’m chucking it—Journalism, I mean. It’s a useful job in its way, of course, but is any one really ever the better for it? Does it ever help any one to a better understanding of life?”

  As this was a question Bobby felt unable to answer, he remained prudently silent. Eyton shook his head a little sadly at the failure of journalism to lead humanity ever upward and onward, and continued:—

  “I shall devote myself to my book. I believe I told you about it. On the forest. I shall try to show people the spiritual message there is in the forest, in its green beauty, its peace, its solitude. You remember the verse that one is nearer to God in a garden than anywhere else? No. No. It is in the forest one can draw nearest to God. I am sure you have felt that?”

  “No,” answered Bobby with a certain harsh vehemence. “I don’t like forests—hidden places, secret places, places of darkness shutting out the light and the air, places where life is strangled, smothered. Let trees grow to their will and they kill and smother everything else with their dark growth. Why, trees were the first of all the enemies men had to overcome. There’s life in the sea, there’s light on the mountains, but trees mean darkness and death.”

  “What an extraordinary tirade,” Eyton protested, quite amused and also startled from his abstracted mood, as in fact Bobby had intended to be the result of this sudden attack on what seemed his pet obsession. “Good gracious, no.”

  “Good gracious, yes,” retorted Bobby. “You only know our tamed, trimmed, conquered English forests. Wait til you’ve seen a real forest in its native state—dampness and darkness and rottenness everywhere.” He lowered his voice and said in a quick whisper:— “Did you meet her in the forest?”

  Eyton nodded. The question did not seem to surprise him. Perhaps the fact loomed so tremendously in his own consciousness he found no surprise in another’s awareness of it. Speaking very slowly, as though each syllable called up in his mind memories he could have wished to linger on, he said:—

  “I went there one evening. After my work. To have a look round where the fire was. I wasn’t expecting to find anything. It was just to look round. I suppose I thought there was an off chance I might spot something. I hung around till it was dark—the stars were coming out and it was all very quiet and lovely. It wasn’t quite dark and she could see me still and she called to me out of the bushes.

  “Who is—she?” Bobby asked, using every effort he could summon up to keep all trace of eagerness from his voice.

  Eyton was silent. Bobby dared not ask again, but the strain of waiting seemed intolerable. An answer might solve all. But Eyton presently shook his head.

  “I do not know,” he said. “I do not think I even want to know. Not yet. Not knowing makes it all the more wonderful—more wonderful by far. She called to me out of the bushes. We talked a little. She told me to come back the next day, only later.”

  “Did you?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, yes, yes, naturally.” Evidently Eyton thought the question a trifle absurd, as a soldier might think it a trifle absurd if asked whether he obeyed orders. “She was a little late. It was quite dark, a velvety, all-embracing darkness. She talked wonderfully, things I had never known, never understood, things about myself, too— about the trees, about life, about love.”

  “Are you sure it was love?” Bobby asked, and a soft, long sigh from Eyton was the answer.

  “I never understood before,” he said again. “I don’t think many people do. We live our narrow little lives from day to day, our cramped, artificial lives. All the time —if only we wanted to, if only we dared, if only we weren’t tied up with all kinds of petty taboos and restrictions, if only we could dare to live as Nature meant us to live.”

  “How did Nature mean us to live?” Bobby asked, and, had he ever heard it, would have agreed with the saying of that philosopher who declared that whenever he heard people beginning to talk about what Nature meant he knew they were beginning to talk nonsense.

  “She meant freely and simply,” came Eyton’s answer, “away from all the stupid codes and taboos we have invented ourselves. Freedom. Simplicity. The direct approach. All is there.”

  He got to his feet.

  “I am a bigger, a braver, a better man since I met her,” he said.

  Bobby was watching Eyton gloomily, and his thoughts were gloomier still and very busy. He seemed to see a motor car deserted on Dartmoor, and a lonely cottage, and a caravan in flames, and again he seemed to hear the tinkle of a falling knife, steel upon stone. Eyton said, smiling at himself:—

  “I was going without having told you what I came about. I want to find my wife now, so as to get a divorce. It’s stupid, another taboo, of no importance really, but it’s like wearing clothes in towns—stupid, and a great bore, but necessary to avoid a lot of bother. I shall have to trace her to get evidence, and the only private detectives I know in Midwych are a pretty incompetent lot and not too trustworthy. I thought possibly you could tell me of somebody honest and knowing his job and not too expensive.”

  “Was that your idea?” Bobby asked. “Or hers?”

  “What do you mean? Does it matter? It was mine, of course. She had read my story in the Announcer and I knew you were working on the case. That’s why she wondered if there had been any developments I was
going to write about.”

  “There haven’t been any,” Bobby said. “We know no more than we did,” and to himself he thought that what Eyton said made it perfectly clear that in everything he did he was acting on suggestions conveyed to him so subtly that he believed them his own. “Been like that all the time,” Bobby said to himself. Then he said aloud:— “You are getting a good price for your property. Is it all settled, cash down?”

  “Settled all right,” Eyton answered readily, looking surprised at this abrupt change of subject, “though the cash won’t be in the bank for a week or two, I suppose.”

  Bobby gave a sigh of relief. He knew only too well that no warning he could utter, based, too, on such unsubstantial grounds, would have the least effect, except indeed that of rousing an anger and mistrust it was terribly necessary to avoid. Now he felt fairly confident that Eyton at least was in no danger until the money was actually paid over. He wondered doubtfully if the same could be said of Count de Legett; and suddenly he made up his mind to go again the next morning to interview him. Useless probably; dangerous even to the success of the investigation. None the less Bobby felt the warning must be given, no matter though it brought to the ground in ruins the whole careful structure he was so laboriously building up. On his thoughts broke the voice of Eyton bidding him good-bye.

  “Look here,” Bobby said, “you wanted to know if there were any fresh developments. If there are I may ring you up, because I may need your help. I might see my way to lay a trap for Mr. Baird’s murderer you could be a big help in. Make a good story, eh?”

  It was an offer to stir the blood of any journalist but Eyton seemed only mildly interested.

  “What’s worrying me is how to find my wife,” he explained, “and get a divorce without too much delay. Why are people such fools as to marry before they know?”