Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh, I’m not a local man,” answered Bobby. “I’m from London. And it wasn’t your caravan interested me. It was Mr Sims. I rather thought it might be McKie had found him for you.”

  “I don’t think I understand all this,” put in Day-Bell, and was certainly looking from one to the other in a very puzzled way.

  “It probably doesn’t matter in the least,” Bobby told him.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE IMPONDERABLES

  PLAINLY MR PYLE also did not understand. He was regarding Bobby with a somewhat bewildered annoyance. He felt baffled, and he was not used to being baffled. One of the secrets of his success in life was that everything to him always seemed crystal clear. So he always knew what was the best thing to do and did it without hesitation and knew that it was right, and if anyone else didn’t agree with him, then that person had to be got out of the way, no matter how. Then, again, to him a policeman had hitherto always meant a man in a helmet who directed traffic and who took every opportunity he dared to persecute motorists instead of arresting the cosh boys to be found, in Mr Pyle’s opinion, at every street corner.

  But somehow or another Bobby did not seem quite to fit into this category. For one thing, he appeared to speak with a certain air of authority and to be but little over-awed by Mr Pyle, as Mr Pyle expected, and generally found, all to be. Worse still, though no word of disbelief had been spoken, no sign of incredulity given, yet somehow Mr Pyle was not sure that his account of the churchyard incident had been accorded by Bobby the full and instant acceptance it had received from Mr Day-Bell. And had there been at times a graver note—a note, indeed, of warning—not so much in what Bobby had said, as discernible, as shadow following substance, behind the spoken word? Or was it substance following shadow? A disturbing thought to one who, like Mr Pyle, possessed his fair share of imagination, overlaid as it might be by pomposity and self-importance. So he sought relief by blowing his nose once more, and even more loudly than before. Not until these thunderous reverberations had died out and a startled maid had appeared in the doorway, only to be impatiently waved aside, did Bobby speak, and then it was more to Mr Day-Bell than to Mr Pyle.

  “I suppose,” he began, “we may take it from what Mr Pyle says that Mrs Asprey is a part of the concerted opposition Mr Pyle finds his ideas are being met with. She can have no legal standing as far as I can see, but no doubt weight would be given to any opinion she might wish to express. She can’t claim ownership of the actual letters, but she can probably claim copyright both in them and in the poems, unless there is some other provision in the will, if there was one. Copyright runs out in time, but in this case it’s a good long time, I think.”

  “Everyone knows all that, and it’s all provided for, once the letters and poems have been recovered,” Pyle interposed impatiently. “Questions of that sort are always subject to arrangement,” and now his tone indicated that such legal quibbles would be of small importance once the documents were in his possession—and possession is, after all, nine-tenths of the law.

  “Arrangements are not always so easy when emotions are concerned,” Bobby suggested. “The imponderables still count,” and Mr Pyle’s expression indicated that he had a poor opinion of imponderables as against the ponderables of a bank account of the size of his own. Bobby resumed: “What I am trying to get at is Mrs Asprey’s reason for leaving a presumably comfortable flat in Bristol to establish herself in a half-ruined house in a strange neighbourhood. It may be that she wants these papers recovered. She may think they will add to her husband’s fame, and of course there’s the money, too. The poems would certainly command a big sale if they were published with such a story behind them. Or it may be she wants to make sure they stay where they are. Or perhaps she wants both at once, but never knows which she wants most. On one side her husband’s fame and the money. On the other side the record of his friendship, even his devotion to, another woman. Only one thing seems plain, and that is that she feels pretty strongly about it, one way or another, or both ways, if she takes to threats of shooting people. She clearly doesn’t mean to have anyone interfering if she can help it.”

  “No one can help it,” Pyle announced, as with authority. “I am not easily turned aside, least of all when every consideration of ordinary common sense supports me. No one can deny that what I suggest is right and reasonable. But I can detect undercurrents. I have reason to suspect that the attempts being made to thwart me are simply so that my project can afterwards be carried out by others in their search for notoriety and private gain. I need not, I hope, repeat that however much money the biography I am writing may bring, not one farthing will go into my pocket. Every penny will be devoted to perpetuating a great man’s memory. It may be it’s that petty scribbler, Chrines, who is at the bottom of it all. A mere hack. I don’t know how he has the impudence to think himself capable of dealing with such a theme as the life of Stephen Asprey. You have met him very likely? He has chosen to settle himself somewhere about here, hasn’t he?”

  These last two questions were addressed directly to Mr Day-Bell, and that gentleman answered that he knew little of Mr Chrines and had not seen him for some time.

  “Not,” Mr Day-Bell added, “since I called to congratulate him on the success of his poems he brought out last year. I believe they had a considerable success and sold well.”

  “Is this another poet?” Bobby asked in dismay, for he knew well that poets are kittle cattle to deal with.

  “Poet indeed!” snorted Mr Pyle. “Why, the Saturday Supplement”—and even Bobby knew the name of that leading British literary paper—“called them a feeble caricature of Stephen Asprey’s worst work. And then he dares consider himself competent to write the Master’s life. I lose patience when I think of it. He knows nothing of Asprey’s inner life. He has not even tried to understand it, though, as I shall show, there lies the secret of all Asprey’s best work. The fellow will probably succeed only in making Asprey a laughing-stock—if his stuff ever gets published. Which I doubt.”

  “He told me,” Day-Bell said, “that he is a son of Asprey and Janet Merton. He told me in confidence, but he seems to have told everyone else, also in confidence, so I suppose it’s no secret.”

  “Poppycock,” Mr Pyle almost shouted. “A wholly preposterous story he has managed to get repeated by fools who know no better. I saw him once. I asked him to call at my office. I thought he might have something to say, some scrap of information or gossip. I was prepared to pay well. There was nothing at all, and I was soon sure—as I always had been, for that matter—that he made the claim purely for publicity purposes. Everyone connected with the Press knows what things people will do to get their names into print. Especially authors. Miss Christabel Merton gave me a most emphatic denial.”

  “You have called on her?” Bobby asked. “If you get her consent there wouldn’t be any more difficulty.”

  “She seemed reluctant to agree,” Mr Pyle admitted. “At first, anyhow. She listened to what I was saying, but unfortunately she was called away before I had time to press my arguments home, and then a red-headed oaf pushed his way into the room where I was waiting for her return. Naturally I refused to leave without seeing the young lady again. I wasn’t going to accept messages of that sort from a clodhopper like him. The fellow actually used threats of violence. I would see the young ruffian was adequately dealt with if he were worth the trouble. At the time, rather than distress a young lady by an unseemly scuffle in her home, I judged it best to withdraw.”

  “Much best,” approved Bobby, though inwardly wishing he had had a chance to witness such an unseemly scuffle between the portly and dignified Mr Pyle and the ‘red-headed oaf’ referred to. Suddenly he noticed that Mr Day-Bell was swelling, almost visibly, just like Mr Stiggins on a famous occasion, and that his face was growing redder and redder and ever redder still. In slow, precise, carefully restrained tones, Mr Day-Bell said:

  “Was the red-headed clodhopper of whom you speak, a very tall young man
with a slight limp in his left leg?”

  “You know him?” exclaimed Mr Pyle, pleased. “Some notorious local bully, no doubt?”

  “It seems probable,” said Mr Day-Bell, getting rather awe-fully to his feet—one could see him as a cardinal delivering sentence of excommunication—“that you are speaking of my son, Duncan. His farm adjoins that of Miss Christabel.” He paused. Bobby had the idea that this time it was Mr Pyle who was expected to wither into nothingness. Unfortunately, like the celebrated jackdaw of Rheims, Mr Pyle seemed none the worse. All he did was to spread out his hands in the sort of deprecatory gesture he was accustomed to use when sacking one of his editors who had failed to show a satisfactory increase in the circulation of the journal entrusted to his care. Still stately in his wrath Mr Day-Bell moved towards the door. Totally ignoring Mr Pyle, he stayed for a moment on his way to say to Bobby: “As we have now a satisfactory explanation of what Hagen saw we must remember that the Duke of Blegborough”—this with a sidelong glance at Mr Pyle—“may arrive at any moment. Would it be convenient for you to accompany me to Hillings? I must confess to being still somewhat uneasy as the Duke himself seems to be. Your presence would help to show that every possible precaution is being taken.”

  Bobby hesitated. He, too, was uneasy. He was still aware of the promptings of that kind of sixth sense he possessed—in fact the creation and the child of long and varied experience—which now was whispering incessantly to him that more was going on than appeared on the surface. But then there were those unjudged essays still waiting for him at West Mercian police headquarters. And in West Mercia he was only a guest, without authority or responsibility. Before he could decide how to reply, Mr Pyle, who had no intention of being ignored, and on whom the reference to the expected arrival of His Grace of Blegborough had not been lost, was saying, in his blandest voice:

  “Of course, I should not have spoken as I did if I had known who the young man was. Unfortunate, but I am sure you will admit I had considerable provocation. Perhaps I spoke too hastily in a not unnatural, though passing irritation. Now I think the best thing is for both of us to simply forget all about it.” He beamed and waited, expecting with confidence, for had he not gone as near to an apology as anyone could reasonably expect from a Mr Pyle of Morning Daily, a response that he did not receive. Mr Day-Bell’s marked resemblance to an angry turkey cock did not diminish. Though a little disappointed by this, but making due allowance for a country clergyman who probably did not understand that even cabinet ministers looked anxiously to see what Morning Daily had to say, or, if they didn’t, so much the worse for them, Mr. Pyle continued, as blandly as before: “I had the pleasure of meeting the Duke recently, and I was intending to take an early opportunity of consulting him and enlisting his support. This might be a suitable occasion, perhaps?”

  “No doubt you will ask for an appointment,” answered the still unappeased Mr Day-Bell.

  Hastily, for he was really beginning to fear that something in the nature of an ‘unseemly brawl’ might develop, Bobby interposed:

  “I should have to speak to Major Rowley first and see what he thinks,” he remarked. “It’s really his pigeon. If it is anything really serious that’s brought the Duke here, couldn’t you ring me up? Hillings isn’t far, is it? I could easily ask Major Rowley to let me have a car, if necessary.”

  “My car’s outside,” Day-Bell said, still totally ignoring Mr Pyle. “It wouldn’t take a minute to run you round to Major Rowley, and then we could both go on to Hillings. With the Major, if he would like to be present.”

  Therewith he swept out of the room, as he went giving, not too willingly, a curt nod and word of farewell to Mr Pyle, who, for his part, still amiable, waved a pudgy hand in response and even smiled. It was a smile of which Bobby took due note as he followed the retreating Mr Day-Bell. As they were getting his car from where it was parked by the club’s side entrance, Mr Day-Bell said:

  “Unfortunately, there’s no telephone service at Hillings, so I can’t ring you up, and I should really value your presence. I can’t help thinking there must be something wrong to bring a man like the Duke here in such a hurry. His telegram sounded—no, I can’t say panic-stricken. But still—well, we shall see. Most inconvenient, more than inconvenient, our having no telephone service at Hillings. No gas or electricity either. No piped water. We might be living in the Middle Ages. And every ounce of coal charged extra for a ten-mile haul. What does this Government care? Nothing. No public transport even, except for one ’bus in the early morning, one in the evening, and one about noon. At other times those who have no car, cycle; those who have no cycle, walk; those who can’t walk, stay at home, no matter what their need. It is a crying scandal.”

  Bobby agreed politely, and as they had now arrived opposite police headquarters he alighted. Fortunately Major Rowley was in his office, and raised no objection. As a matter of fact he was more relieved than otherwise to be able to avoid responsibility a little longer. When dukes appear on the scene, comparatively lesser fry like Chief Constables may find it as well to keep out of the way. Not always easy to satisfy both intruding dukes and Joint Committees. Already, for instance, there had been suggestions that a resident constable should be stationed at Hillings, and the Major did not see how, with a force so much below strength, that could possibly be managed. In an emergency there would be no way of getting in touch with him, since Hillings had no telephone service. And on his side Bobby promised he would be back as soon as possible to get on with those so sadly neglected essays.

  So it was not long before Mr Day-Bell and Bobby were on their way to Hillings; and when presently they were halted by traffic lights—not very necessary, perhaps, but Penton prided itself on keeping up-to-date—Mr Day-Bell said:

  “Do you know, I almost thought at one time that that unpleasant Pyle person meant to thrust his company upon us?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t be awfully surprised if that isn’t just exactly what he means to do,” Bobby remarked. “I saw him smiling to himself as if he had something up his sleeve.”

  Mr Day-Bell was so startled by this that he very nearly steered the car into the roadside hedge. In recovering he again very nearly swerved into a motor coach travelling in the opposite direction—towards Penton, that is. Bobby thought or imagined he heard certain comments floating back to them from the motor-coach driver, but of these his companion was evidently unconscious.

  “That fellow,” he remarked severely, “was far too much to this side. Trying to occupy the crown of the road. A common trick with these coaches. I can’t think Pyle would do a thing like that. He has no idea when the Duke is likely to arrive.”

  “Is there any other road to Hillings you can reach without going through Penton?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, I suppose so; I really hardly know,” Day-Bell answered. “I expect there are side roads you could use if you knew the country. Why?”

  “Mr Pyle,” explained Bobby, “could easily wait in Penton High Street or by those traffic lights, and sit in his own car till an important-looking car passed headed towards Hillings. It would be a fairly safe guess it was the Duke’s, and Pyle could tag along and make sure of arriving at the same time or even a few minutes before. A man of considerable resource. Remember how quick was his explanation of your sexton’s story.”

  “It was a relief to have that cleared up,” Day-Bell said. “It was worrying me, taken with everything else.”

  “It’s still worrying me,” Bobby told him. “It all came out just a little too pat. We have a useful cliché in the police. I adore clichés—they are always so apt, or they wouldn’t be clichés. This one is that we are not satisfied. That’s how I feel. I am not satisfied.”

  “You don’t mean he was lying?” Day-Bell asked in surprise.

  “There’s the lie circumstantial and the lie direct,” explained Bobby. “There is also the lie imaginative, which is when it is felt that so the thing ought to have been, and therefore so it was. A form the communis
ts have developed to the highest degree.”

  Mr Day-Bell, pondering this, drove on in gloomy silence. Then he said:

  “I can well believe Pyle is capable of anything at all.”

  “Oh, well, he is a newspaper man,” Bobby said tolerantly.

  CHAPTER V

  BOBBY LEAVES A MESSAGE

  AROUND THE town of Penton the land was rich and well cultivated. But soon that changed as the road began to climb slowly towards the Great Mercian Moor, on the fringes whereof hung the church and the scattered village of Hillings-under-Moor. Scanty pastures succeeded the former fertile fields, and then in their turn these were succeeded by dense stretches of bramble and even denser stretches of bracken. A sullen, hostile land, it seemed, as though resolved to bear nothing to aid or comfort the universal exploiter, Man. One might have had the idea that it waited for the moor to creep down from the plateau where it lurked, and so resume the sway that once it had exercised up to the walls of Penton itself. No longer were visible any of the comfortable, prosperous-looking farm-houses to be seen nearer the town. Now they were replaced at long intervals by scattered, untidy cottages, some in obvious need of repair.

  At one spot, when this change had become well marked, there stood upon the left of the road, going to Hillings, a building that seemed utterly derelict, with gaping, sagging roof that showed bare, charred rafters, with broken windows and smoke-stained, ruinous walls, with an entrance led up to by steps even more ruinous. From this entrance all semblance of a door had long since vanished. In front was what once no doubt had been a well-tended garden but was now no more than a tangled wilderness. To judge from its size, the place must once have been the home of some prosperous, well-to-do citizen of Penton. But now it seemed both uninhabited and uninhabitable and, coming to it, Bobby was giving it no more than a casual glance till Mr Day-Bell said:

  “That’s where Mrs Asprey has established herself. Two Mile End.”