Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  “I have my duty to do,” he said gravely.

  “I had mine,” she answered.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  “I think you know,” she said, and picked up her light feather brush as if she meant she had no more to say.

  Two tiny children appeared, sticky pennies in their small, hot hands. With an almost unbelievable change in her manner, she leaned, smiling and gentle, over the counter to attend to them. It was Judith laying down the scimitar to soothe a crying baby, it was Jael putting away hammer and tent peg for some loving household task. Before so many and such dazzling treasures, the two infants remained in an awestruck hesitation. Gently she helped them to their choice, finally sending them off with a kiss and an extra piece of toffee each, the last as a bribe for permission to wipe small noses that certainly had need of such attention. Bobby had been watching. He said:—

  “You have hurt your hands, Mrs. Reynolds.”

  She opened them and looked at them thoughtfully.

  “The skin has got rubbed off in places,” she said. “Why?”

  “It looks as though they had been pulling hard upon a rope,” he said.

  A small boy appeared. He had brought a penny. It seemed he was bringing a penny every week for the purchase of a shilling box of chocolates he wanted for a Christmas present for his mother. Mrs. Reynolds took the penny, carefully marked another X on a dirty card he produced and he ran off happily.

  “Isn’t it nice of him?” Mrs. Reynolds said to Bobby. “I think I shall have to try to coax a two bob box out of Sis for him.”

  “Well, you won’t,” said unexpectedly a stern voice from within. “You’ll ruin us the way you pet those children. This isn’t a home from home for all the kids in Cardiff.”

  “That’s Sis,” explained Mrs. Reynolds. “She’s worse than I am, really. They come in here, coughing as hard as they can, and buy a pen’orth of bulls’-eyes, so she’ll give them liquorice or eucalyptus drops for their cold.”

  “I never,” said the same indignant voice. The quiet-looking, elderly woman Bobby had seen on his previous visit, appeared at the inner door. “ If I do, it’s only business, so as not to lose their custom if they get laid up. It’s you. We’re getting notorious.” She gave Bobby a hostile look. She said:— “Why don’t you serve the gentleman and let him go?”

  “So I will,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “Shut the door, Sis, and then I will.”

  The other woman disappeared, banging the door behind her. Then she opened it again.

  “You mind what you’re doing,” she said. “And you only just up after a week in bed.”

  She disappeared again.

  Bobby said:—

  “Strengthening the alibi. Quite effective. Will you answer some questions?”

  “What do you want to know?” she demanded. “What shall I tell you? How happy we were together, Ted and I. We should have been happy still, but for her. I didn’t know at first. I saw he was feverish and excited, but he was always trying to do things for me. If I had known, I think I could have stopped it. He told me there seemed to be a down on him up at the big house where he worked and that was what was worrying him. I was a fool not to see what it really was. How was I to guess she had got hold of him the way she had, when all the time he was never tired of doing things for me? I think it was his way of asking me for help, but I never guessed, I never knew. I was too happy, I think, thinking of him, thinking of my baby I thought was coming. He never knew that. I didn’t tell him because I wasn’t sure—not then. I never knew anything till the police came and said he had gone and jewellery was missing. I didn’t know even then who it was. But I found out. It didn’t take so very long.”

  “It seems you were a better detective than I was,” Bobby said.

  “Perhaps I wanted more,” she said heavily. “It meant more to me to know. I knew it was one of those four, but I had to be sure which one. Do you know Lady May is married to Leonard Glynne? That was after he won a big football pool prize. He spent a lot of it on buying an awfully valuable ring for her. I suppose it will always be there as a reserve when he has muddled the rest of it away on those inventions of his. It didn’t take me long to be sure it wasn’t her.”

  “I felt that, too,” Bobby said.

  “First of all I thought it was Miss Hannay,” she went on. “She used to go to Mountain Street sometimes and she was frightened her dad might find out, and so he did, and he was frightened worse than she was, because someone rang him up and asked questions about her—questions that were really hints. Questions about Lord Byatt and about Mr. Andrew White. Pretending to be the police, and, because it was a woman’s voice, pretending to be a woman detective. All lies of course. Really her it was muddling things up. Colonel Glynne suspected Miss Hannay, too. Is his girl going to marry Lord Darmoor?”

  “Henry Darmoor, you mean?”

  “Isn’t he Lord Darmoor? They’ve both been in hell, they’ll understand each other. They’ve both known treachery, they’ll be the better able to trust each other. I’m glad. I liked her the best of them. Because she had been through it, too, I daresay. Having the child stopped me doing anything for a long time. It was born dead. The doctor said that was worry, I had worried too much. Shock, he said. So that was her, too. Husband and son as well. Perhaps if the boy had lived, it might have been different. But he didn’t live—born dead. Sis has a good living here and there’s enough to keep us both busy. But I had to live while I was going about to find out what I wanted to know. So I tramped and sang for coppers while I was asking my questions.” She paused for a moment and then resumed:— “Why shouldn’t you gossip before the street singer you’re giving a cup of tea to and some bread and cheese? Why shouldn’t you answer her questions? I found out a lot. So did you. I began to be afraid you would be first. I took a risk of spoiling my chance and helping you when I warned the man she was hottest after.”

  “Darmoor?” Bobby said.

  She went on without making a direct answer:—

  “I managed to get into her place in Camden Town. I cut out the lock of the area door of the next house and got in and climbed out of the skylight and in at the skylight where she was. One night I watched her. She sat on a big red divan in that room of hers, just sat there with the photographs all lighted up all round her—sat and looked at them and smiled. I saw her mouth all red and her crimson nails. I saw her smile. I wanted to strangle her then. But I knew she was as strong as I was and she had a little pistol she always carried with her. I had to be sure. So I waited.” She paused again and said:— “I can see her now, sitting there.”

  So could Bobby. The picture drawn was clear and vivid to his mind. He did not speak. She went on:—

  ‘‘But you won’t find any finger-prints or anything. I had on gloves, I wore a man’s bib overalls. And a boy’s shoes. They’ve been got rid of long ago. Do you wonder how I got her to—to where you found her? I gave her a message—from you.”

  “From me?” Bobby asked, startled.

  “She didn’t suspect anything. I think it had happened before—I mean, a man never seeming to notice her much and then all at once thinking of nothing but her. She expected it. It happened like that sometimes.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Just that you wanted to see her. Made her smile all over. Men were like that with her. One day they never thought of her at all, the next they thought of nothing else. I don’t know why. I’m not a man. She had that power. That’s all. I used to wonder sometimes if it would happen to you, too. When I gave her that message she thought it had. She was glad because she was beginning to think you were dangerous. So was I. I thought you might be first after all.”

  “First?”

  “With her. Perhaps she did suspect just a little. She had a pistol all ready, and I knew she would use it quick enough. I could see she was watching me and wondering. When I opened the door to the steps that go down to the cellar she saw the string I had put there to trip her up. She saw it at onc
e. Only too late. I was quickest. I gave her a push and she caught her foot on the string and she fell down the steps and I ran down after her, and to be sure I hit her head with a stocking I had filled with sand.”

  “As you did with Darmoor?”

  “When she came round I had her under a hook in a beam in the cellar ceiling with her wrists strapped behind her and one end of a rope round her neck and the other end looped over the hook above her head. I got open the door of the small cellar where I knew she hid Ted’s body after she killed him and I put him on a chair before her and I put the loose end of the rope in his hand—his dead hand. She was screaming then. I didn’t mind. I didn’t think any one could hear. No one did. I left them like that while I made a cup of tea. There was no hurry. I don’t suppose she ever expected to see Ted again, do you? But he was sitting there, with the rope in his hand and the other end round her neck. It was all I could do to pull her up when I was ready. You can’t think how heavy she was and what a time it took me. But I did it at last. Then I washed up the cup and saucer I had used and put everything straight and I came away, leaving them together. That’s how you found them, isn’t it?”

  Bobby did not speak. But he nodded slightly. They were both silent, watching each other.

  “That’s all,” she said presently. Then she added: “I’ve done the job I had to do.”

  Bobby was still silent. A child came in for chocolate drops. There was something wrong with the little one’s collar. She began to adjust it, coming round the counter for the purpose. Bobby saw her hands, tender and gentle, move about the throat of the child smiling up at her, and he thought he saw those hands about another’s throat, moving in another manner.

  He turned abruptly and went away. There was nothing to be done. He was not sorry. It was all over. He felt the matter could best be left to higher authority—and by high authority he did not mean his own official superior not even the Home Secretary himself for that matter.

  THE END

  About The Author

  E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.

  At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.

  He died in 1956.

  Also by E.R. Punshon

  Information Received

  Death Among the Sunbathers

  Crossword Mystery

  Mystery Villa

  Death of a Beauty Queen

  Death Comes to Cambers

  The Bath Mysteries

  Mystery of Mr. Jessop

  The Dusky Hour

  Dictator’s Way

  Comes a Stranger

  Suspects – Nine

  Murder Abroad

  Ten Star Clues

  Dark Garden

  Diabolic Candelabra

  The Conqueror Inn

  Night’s Cloak

  Secrets Can’t Be Kept

  E.R. Punshon

  TEN STAR CLUES

  “I’ll have breakfast ready before you’re dressed,” Olive said, her mind full of bacon and eggs, tea, toast.

  “Can’t stop,” Bobby told her. “I’ve to be at Castle Wych at once.”

  “What’s happened there?”

  “Murder,” Bobby answered as he made for the door.

  Bobby Owen has left London and is now a policeman in the bucolic county of Wychshire. The local community is stunned when a missing heir returns to Castle Wych, determined to claim his inheritance. But following the ensuing dispute over his identity, Castle Wych plays host to murder. There are ten “star clues” investigated by the resourceful Bobby, with help from his wife Olive, in this delightful and classic example of the golden age mystery novel.

  Ten Star Clues, originally published in 1941, is the fifteenth novel in the Bobby Owen mystery series. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  “Mr E.R. Punshon is one of the most entertaining and readable of our sensational novelists because his characters really live and are not merely pegs from which a mystery depends.” Punch

  CHAPTER I

  AFTERNOON TEA

  Tea was ready on the great south terrace of Castle Wych, one of England’s show places and not without its niche in history, open to the public on Saturdays and holidays on payment of one shilling, for the benefit of the funds of the Midwych General Hospital. Plump, soft-footed, complacent—too complacent—Martin, the new butler, was putting the finishing touches to the tea things. Somehow, correctly conventional as he was in movement and appearance, he yet managed to give an impression of a secret, gloating satisfaction. Ralph Hoyle, leaning against the parapet, found himself reminded of a vulture, a filthy, obscene vulture, hovering over a dying man. Ralph knew this was absurd. It was his own imagination, he was well aware, a result of the tension of the moment. Nevertheless the impression remained. He glanced at his cousin and fiancée, Anne Hoyle, wondering if she felt the same. Apparently not, for she was absorbed in twisting his engagement ring round and round upon her finger. But then Anne seldom noticed servants, not, that is, so long as they carried out their duties satisfactorily. She said abruptly:—

  “I can’t think why grand-dad doesn’t just send for the police.”

  “Well, I don’t like the chap myself,” Ralph agreed, “but why the police? Sack him. I don’t know why you ever let Uncle Ralph take him on. Of course, it’s no end of a job, getting decent butlers these days.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” snapped Anne. “You know I didn’t mean Martin.”

  “No, I suppose not,” agreed Ralph. “I expect I was trying to be funny. I always do when I’m a bit nervy.”

  “Nothing to be nervy about, is there?” Anne asked.

  Ralph did not answer. She knew as well as he did how much or how little there was to be nervy about. It was the length of the interview in the study from which they had been excluded that was troubling them, that was giving to Martin his air of a secret and malicious satisfaction. They had both thought it would have ended long ago, and it still went on. Neither of them could imagine why. But it meant that both were becoming conscious of a vague and increasing unease.

  Anne was still absorbed in apparent contemplation of the engagement ring on her finger. It was a nice ring. It had cost a hundred pounds. She knew the exact figure, because her grandfather, old Earl Wych, had told her as a great secret. But it hadn’t been Ralph’s hundred pounds. For one thing Ralph hadn’t a hundred pounds, hardly a hundred pence for that matter. Her grandfather—who was also Ralph’s great-uncle—had provided the money for this ring. That was a proof of how greatly the formal engagement had pleased him. Because he was not an old man who parted very easily with his money. Not a miser, of course, but his dislike of drawing cheques had always been marked, and had increased with age. All the same it was a nice ring. Turning it round and round upon her finger, Anne thought:—

  “Suppose it’s true. If it is... but it can’t be... it can’t.”

  She looked up at Ralph. He was tall, well built, with the fair hair, blue eyes, dominant nose of the Hoyles, who for some hundreds of years had lived and flourished at Castle Wych and owned most—but less now than formerly—of the surrounding country. In accordance with the present fashion, he was clean shaven, so that one could see the big mouth with the thin, straight lips that were also a characteristic of the Hoyles. His big, square chin stuck out, too, in a way reminiscent rather of the earlier than of the later Hoyles, who had generally owed their continued success to a certain nimble suppleness of mind rather than to that thrusting energy of which such a chin is supposed to be a sign. It was certa
inly a sign very apparent in the effigy of the founder of the family, the first Baron Hoyle, who had undoubtedly been a bit in the traditional robber-baron line.

  Since those far-off days, however, the Hoyles had generally preferred to be lawyers, politicians, high ecclesiastics— place holders, in brief—rather than soldiers or adventurers. So they had flourished exceedingly, adding acre to acre, sedately progressing from baron to earl, sending out many off-shoots, destined, they, too, to reap where they had not sown and gather where they had not strewn. Then when place holding became a depressed industry the family took to finance, since holding directorships and drawing fat fees therefor, seemed almost the same thing as holding a sinecure or two. Unhappily, it hadn’t worked out quite like that. More than once unscrupulous persons had taken advantage of the Hoyle aristocratic indifference to detail that they expected subordinates to attend to. Also, the trade, profession, or occupation of landlord had in its turn become something of a depressed industry. True, as in the days of Carlyle, if a tenant plucked two nettles to make soup, then of those nettles the landlord could still claim one for himself. But to-day there wasn’t always a tenant to do the required plucking. Alternatively, as the lawyers say, the market for plucked vegetation of all kinds was sometimes so bad that even transport costs could not be covered.

  This is known as agricultural depression, and Ralph, as heir to his great-uncle, the present aged but still vigorous earl, had long ago decided that when he inherited title and estates Castle Wych would have to go. Possibly it might be presented to the nation or to the Wychshire County Council, if either nation or county council could be cajoled or persuaded or otherwise induced to accept the sprawling white elephant of a place. Some of the outlying property would have to be disposed of, too, and the rest managed on very different lines from those followed at present. There was still money to be made in agriculture, Ralph was persuaded, if one had capital and adopted modern and scientific. methods. Unfortunately in his present position as agent to his great-uncle he had command of no capital, nor was he permitted to employ or introduce those new methods for which he yearned. Indeed these suggestions that he had more than once urged upon the old earl had led to somewhat strained relations between them, and to one really gorgeous row when Ralph had let slip his intention of somehow or another getting rid of the castle, the ancient seat of the family.