Murder Abroad

by E. R. Punshon

  “His sort,” sniffed the landlady, “has as many names as a cat has lives.”

  “So they have,” agreed Bobby, “Smith to-day and Brown to-morrow. You run along to bed. I’m sorry you’ve been kept up. Most likely it’s only an old ‘con’ trying to borrow the price of a bed because he’s sure of an honest job to-morrow and wants to look his best. Half a crown will get rid of him.”

  He bade her good night and opened the door of his sitting-room. One of the ugliest men he had ever seen was there and got up as he entered. A low forehead; a long, crooked nose; a mouth framing teeth too widely separated and irregular in shape, and stretching, it seemed, almost from ear to ear; ears themselves enormous and standing out nearly at right angles; eyes small and hidden, indeterminate in colour, the left eye with a cast in it; all that combined with a squat, ungainly figure and sprawling hands and feet to produce an effect so remarkable that Bobby found himself reflecting that fingerprints would hardly be required for identification if the Records Department at the Yard knew anything of him. He appeared to have omitted to shave, but this unfortunate impression was, in fact, due merely to an abnormal growth of beard, so that a shave twice a day at least was necessary to avoid an appearance of not having shaved at all. His hands, his brows, his ears, all showed, too, the same strong growth of hair, and Bobby noticed that though his clothes looked of good cut and material, they were old and worn, and as shapeless as if the coat had never known a hanger or the trousers a press. He was smoking a short pipe full of some exceptionally vile tobacco, so strong that Bobby, getting a whiff of the smoke, nearly choked. But when the stranger spoke from behind the vile, odorous cloud that half hid him, his voice was singularly pleasing, of a rich, musical tone—organ tones they might have been called. He said as Bobby came in:—

  “Mr. Owen, isn’t it? You must think it awful cheek, my hanging on like this, but I had simply got to see you.”

  “It is a bit late, isn’t it?” Bobby agreed, none too cordially.

  “Yes, I know. I do apologize. Only it seemed the only chance, if you’re buzzing off in the morning.”

  “How do you know that?” Bobby asked sharply.

  “Cripes,” answered the other, “everyone knows it. I’ve been waiting hours with poor old Gwen hanging on outside like grim death.” He dashed to the window, let the blind up, stood there, waved both hands above his head and went back to the chair in which he had been sitting when Bobby entered but that Bobby, himself still standing, had not invited him to re-occupy. “That was to tell Gwen I shan’t be long now,” he explained confidentially. “She must be fed up, waiting out there, but she wouldn’t come in, though it’s her idea really. You see, she gets her hats or something from Miss Farrar and so she’s heard about you.”

  “Look here,” began Bobby with an impatience slightly controlled by this information that he was talking to a friend of a customer of Olive’s—and Bobby had long since learnt how sacred is the aura surrounding that word ‘customer’, more especially when the customer it refers to is the customer of a small West End hat shop, “it’s jolly late and—”

  “Yes, I know,” the other pleaded in that rich, deep voice of his, “but don’t throw me out, there’s a good chap. It’s important and I’ve been waiting hours with nothing but a glass of beer they gave me here. Nice woman and nice beer but glass a bit greasy outside. I had to wipe it.” And Bobby perceived a glass polished till it shone again by aid of a large linen handkerchief lying near that its owner now put in his pocket. Certainly on that glass no trace of any finger-print would remain. Bobby reflected that not for the first time over-subtlety had defeated itself, and he wondered if this stranger had suspected the purpose of the slightly greasy exterior. He said:—

  “Do you mind telling me who you are and what you want? Sit down, won’t you?” he added, partly under the influence of that magic word ‘customer’, but still more under that of the other’s deep, resonant tones, that really it was hardly an exaggeration to compare to the tones of a distant organ.

  “My name’s Darmoor, Henry Darmoor,” the stranger explained. “My old man’s Lord Whitfield, you know, the diplomatic bloke. He wanted me to go in for it, too, but you couldn’t have an ambassador with a mug like mine. Couldn’t be done. He did see that at last, so he pushed me on the Stock Exchange, not that I ever go near the beastly place. But I’m supposed to be a bit of a dab at polo. Oh, and I’m engaged to Gwen Barton.”

  He brought the name out so shyly and yet with such deep pride that Bobby’s heart warmed to him. A kind of wondering delight was all about him as he spoke, as though even to himself the thing still seemed incredible. He said presently, his low voice now like a chant of gratitude and praise:—

  “Me with my mug and she as lovely as the dawn.”

  So she might be, Bobby thought, but she lacked the one essential all the same—she wasn’t Olive and never could be. Not that the name, Gwen Barton, meant anything to him. A pretty chorus girl, very likely, only there had been a depth in Lord Henry’s voice that had set in him sympathetic chords vibrating. Now, though, he did remember vaguely recent news items about the well known polo player, Lord Henry Darmoor, second son of Lord Whitfield, having found the expense of financing the Whitfield polo team too heavy and having decided to withdraw from the game.

  “Giving it up now though,” said Lord Henry. “Engaged, you know, and all that.”

  “You haven’t come here at this time to talk about that, have you?” Bobby asked.

  “Cripes, no. It’s about Billy Baird.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Pal of mine. We were in the sixth together. He went up to Balliol. They wouldn’t have me, but Billy and I stopped pals all the same. He is going in for politics now after a spell at banking. Standing at next election for some god-forsaken London suburb, and the other day went caravanning on his own.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” Bobby asked. “If there is a point, please get to it. If there isn’t—”

  “Get out,” interposed Darmoor, to show he knew what Bobby meant. “Don’t get shirty, old man,” he begged in those organ-like notes of his. “You know what it is when you’re engaged. You are, too, aren’t you?” he added hurriedly as Bobby looked more impatient than ever. “Gwen says she doesn’t half like it. You see, she knew poor old Byatt, you know, Viscount Byatt of Byatt, and she says it’s all happening again just the same way.”

  “Byatt?” Bobby repeated. There had come into the other’s voice as he pronounced the name a note that even against Bobby’s better judgment impressed him with a curious sense of dread and of foreboding. He began to search his memory. “There was something—a year or two ago,” he said. “Wasn’t there?”

  “Found dead in his car,” Lord Henry’s deep, expressive voice replied. “Right away in the middle of Dartmoor. No one knew what he was doing there. Not the usual exhaust pipe business. Car all right. Nothing to show cause of death. Just dead. That was all. Been dead a week or two before he was found, the doctors said. He left piles of money but he had been getting rid of a whole lot and nothing to show how or why.”

  “There was an inquest?” Bobby asked.

  “The last time he was seen,” Lord Henry went on, “was at a night club. Well known place. The ‘Cut and Come Again’. You chaps raid it sometimes, but you’ve never got anything on it.”

  “No,” agreed Bobby. “I know the place. What about the inquest?”

  “He was at the ‘Cut and Come Again’ with a Miss Hazel Hannay. They had supper and danced. He drove her home. He was never seen again till they found him way out on Dartmoor.”

  “The inquest?” Bobby asked once more.

  “Wash out,” answered Lord Henry briefly. “Just said there was nothing to show what had happened.”

  “Who is Miss Hannay?”

  “Then there was Andy White,” Lord Henry went on, unheeding this question, too, as seemed to be his habit, perhaps because he was so intent on what he wished to say that questions made small impression
on his mind. “Rich bloke. In the millionaire class or thereabouts. You know. White’s Fish Cakes, White’s Pocket Vitamins, all sorts of dodges like that. Andy’s old man started the show. Andy himself played a jolly good game—polo I mean, in goal. That’s how I knew him. They found him in a cottage miles from everywhere in Wales. Nothing to show what he was doing there. Nothing to show what killed him. Been dead a month, the doctors said. Or more. Nasty business. Rats and all that, you know. Door had been left open. No sign of violence. No trace of poison. No disease. He had been getting rid of pots of money, too, buying jewellery and that sort of thing. One extra swell necklace was worth a fortune, twelve or fifteen thousand.”

  “What did he do with it?” Bobby asked.

  “No one knows. No trace of it. An uncle or someone heard of it, though, asked him what he was up to, splashing his money about like that. He said it was a present for Lady May Grayson. Lady May sticks to it she never had a thing from him—friendly they were all right, she says, but nothing more, and anyhow she didn’t take presents like that from her friends. She’s rather a night club bird and often at the ‘Cut and Come Again’. She used to dance with Andy there sometimes. No one knows exactly when Andy went off to his Welsh cottage, so no one knows who saw him last.”

  “I remember the case,” Bobby said. “We were notified he was missing, but we didn’t handle it except in the usual routine manner. It only looked like a rich young Mayfair playboy going off on his own affairs. Afterwards the Welsh police dealt with it. I don’t remember this Lady What’s-her-name being mentioned.”

  “Lady May Grayson. No. They kept her name out of it. Her old man’s the Earl of Merefield. Old family, big pot in his way, owns castles and things all over the show, but hasn’t a penny to bless himself with. All mortgaged up to the hilt or else tied up in settlements or something. Lady May doesn’t do so badly herself though. Gets photographed smoking somebody’s cigarettes or washing herself with somebody’s soap and a whacking big cheque for it. Two or three of her photos were in the cottage. Nothing much in that. Lots of her photos about—she’ll always sit for one if she’s paid enough. The photo goes in the weeklies and the man who took it gets known. A woman had been seen there—at the cottage, I mean. No one had seen her close enough to say anything. No one lived very near. One story said she was tall, another that she was short and another that she wore a mask. There was something about her coming on a motor bike, too, but no one was very clear about that or anything else. There you are.”

  Now the name had been brought to his memory, Bobby recollected enough of Lady May, prominent as she was in society circles, to know that she was a tall woman. Divinely tall, a daughter of the gods, and so on, were epithets no self-respecting writer of a gossip column ever failed to use in speaking of her.

  “Who is the Miss—Hazel Hannay, was it?—you mentioned before?” he asked.

  “Daughter of General Sir Harold Hannay with a string of letters a mile long after his name. Her mother’s dead. Two or three brothers all abroad. Their place is Crossfields, just outside Midwych. He’s chairman or something of the Wychshire Watch Committee. She’s pally with Lady May. Gwen says they like to go about together, because of being an effective contrast. She’s tall and dark, and the other, Lady May I mean, she’s tall and fair. Colonel Glynne is a neighbour of the Hannays. I believe their grounds touch or something. Old Glynne has a daughter, too, Becky Glynne. Becky and Hazel Hannay play a good deal of tennis together, Gwen says.”

  Bobby sat up abruptly. He had been wondering where all this long rambling tale was getting to; he would have cut it short long ago but for a note of urgency, even of alarm, he seemed to be aware of in his visitor’s deep, rolling tones. But now abruptly he saw deep water ahead, and it flashed with absolute conviction into his mind that here was the explanation of why he had been offered what on the face of it had seemed so easy, so comfortable, so snug, so altogether desirable an appointment. Colonel Glynne was looking for no assistance in his everyday routine, for no aid in that football pools suppression campaign of his, for no suitable young man to be trained in his methods to carry on in the same way after his own death or retirement. Now it seemed to Bobby that the offer he had received was like a cry for help from one who felt the powers of darkness encompassing him around. Bobby was silent. Darmoor got up and went to the window where again he raised the blind, signalled with his hands, lowered the blind, returned to his place.

  “Poor old Gwen’s been waiting there for hours,” he said. “That was just to tell her that now we shan’t be long.”

  “I don’t think I caught the lady’s other name,” Bobby remarked, thinking to himself that she must be a meek, self-effacing little person to be willing to wait so long out there, so patiently.

  “Barton, Gwen Barton,” Darmoor answered, with again that note of shy adoration in his voice. “It was partly her idea, my coming here. Last new hat she bought, she heard all about it. I mean all about how Miss Farrar was giving up because you and she were getting spliced now you had got a job in Midwych and how the assistant—she talked Gwen into paying twice what she had meant to give, and Gwen hasn’t too much of the ready, and she never runs bills—how she was going to carry on the business, and she told Gwen all about it, and how you were seeing Colonel Glynne to-morrow to fix it all up, and then Miss Farrar would join you, only that didn’t mean the shop was going to shut down.”

  “But why did Miss Barton want you to tell me all this at this time of night?” Bobby asked. “You understand I shall have to report to Colonel Glynne, to Scotland Yard as well. They may want to see both you and Miss Barton.”

  “That’s O.K. with us,” his visitor answered. “There’s nothing more, only Billy Baird.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, we’re pals, you see, me and Billy,” Lord Henry explained; and if his rich, deep tones that seemed almost a language in themselves, did not now tremble with the deep adoration that before had vibrated in every syllable, yet none the less they showed a deep and genuine emotion, “we’ve been pals ever since we were kids at the same prep school. It was through Billy I met Gwen. Gwen likes him, too.”

  He paused. Bobby, looking at him, saw that he had become a little pale, saw that enormous mouth of his quiver at the corners, saw a small bead of perspiration trickle down the side of his nose and hang there, ridiculously suspended. Why, Bobby did not know, but the close air of the room seemed filled suddenly with dark and strange forebodings, and the shadows in the corners, as it were, to hide monstrous and incredible things. He said sharply, for he knew well there was more to come:—

  “Yes. Well?”

  The answer came almost in a whisper, yet every syllable full and clear.

  “First there was Byatt and then there was Andy White and now Gwen thinks that perhaps Billy is going the same way.”

  Published by Dean Street Press 2015

  Copyright © 1939 E.R. Punshon

  Introduction Copyright © 2015 Curtis Evans

  All Rights Reserved

  This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.

  First published in 1939 by Victor Gollancz

  Cover by DSP

  ISBN 978 1 910570 91 3

  www.deanstreetpress.co.uk