“Who’s that? What do you want?”
“Mrs Asprey, isn’t it?” Bobby asked.
“Well, if it is, who may you be?” came the challenging response.
“My name is Owen,” Bobby said. “I’m a policeman. From London. Down here on special business. There seems to have been a good deal of talk just recently about Mr Stephen Asprey and his letters and poems said to have been buried with Janet Merton in Hillings churchyard. I was wondering if you knew of anything likely to have started people talking again?”
“Start,” she retorted. “They never stop, do they? So how can they start? I suppose it’s the Duke of Blegborough’s being here has brought you along? You had better come in. The rain’s starting, anyhow.”
She moved back into the house, and Bobby followed. It was a bare, comfortless room he entered, with little furniture beyond a chair or two, a deal table, a very rickety-looking sofa, shelves on which were a few household utensils, and a cupboard with a door swinging half open and affording a glimpse of crockery within. The room served apparently both as kitchen and living-room, for in one corner a kettle was boiling on an oil stove, and there was also an oil heating-stove. It was well lighted by a lamp standing on the table, and the only sign of feminine occupation was knitting thrown down on one of the chairs. Nor did it show any such signs of a meticulous care that Hagen’s cottage had displayed in well-scrubbed boards, a shining table, polished chairs, everything in its place.
Mrs Asprey was a tall, gaunt woman with a thin, angry face, the features prominent, the narrow mouth so tightly closed one felt it was kept like that to hold back words better left unuttered. She seemed to take but little thought for her personal appearance, for the woollen jacket and the skirt she wore were old and shabby and not too clean, and she displayed no ornament of any kind. It was said that once she had been an exceptionally pretty woman, but small trace of such beauty now remained. Only her eyes attracted and held attention, still vivid, still quick and questioning, and piercing when they came to rest on anything, as now on Bobby. There was somehow, it was hard to say why, an air of dignity about her as she stood upright and waiting, in the centre of that bare and austere room. Perhaps it came, Bobby thought, from much suffering silently endured, and yet this air of sombre dignity went not well with Hagen’s tale of her futile gesture above Janet Merton’s grave—futile, for what care the silent and unknowing dead for the gestures of the living? But that strange dignity was plain about her as now she lifted one hand and uttered the single word:
“Well?”
CHAPTER XI
FORGOTTEN POET
BOBBY DID not answer at once. He scarcely knew how to begin, and he had an instinctive feeling that on how he began would depend entirely whether this darkly attentive woman would respond or not. She was still waiting with something of that slow, implacable patience he himself could show upon occasion. Then when it came to him that this silence must last no longer, he said:
“You knew of the Duke of Blegborough’s visit here this afternoon?”
“Why should I not know,” she retorted, “what everyone in Penton knows?”
“You can probably guess what brought him,” Bobby suggested.
“The letters and manuscripts my husband put in Janet Merton’s coffin, I expect,” she answered. “There was some meddling twopenny-ha’penny journalist wants to get hold of them—to make a Sunday newspaper holiday. Does the Duke want to help him or to stop him?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “I don’t think he knows. Which do you want?” But to that she made no answer, her lips more tightly pressed together than before. When he saw no reply was coming, Bobby made no attempt to press her. He knew it would be useless. Instead he said: “Of course, I needn’t assure you there is no question of any official action. But there are some disturbing rumours in circulation—the Duke is certainly very disturbed indeed.”
“What sort of rumours?” she asked, eyeing him closely, but yet apparently with less hostility.
“Rumours that these papers were either never buried at all or else that somehow they have been recovered,” Bobby answered. “There seems to be some sort of idea that it’s all linked up with the disappearance of Mr Thorne two years ago—he was the clergyman here.”
“That’s all nonsense,” she declared contemptuously. “They couldn’t matter to him. They could to the Duke if Stephen’s letters are anything like what he told me.” She pushed forward a chair. “Sit down,” she said and seated herself, upright in her chair as she had been upright while standing. “That’s why he came to-day. Did you know?”
“I understand the letters may contain gossip about the former Duchess,” Bobby answered. “What is disturbing the Duke so much—very naturally—is some sort of vague suggestion that application may be made for an order of exhumation to be issued.”
“That will be the work of the journalist who came here—I forget his name, he told me; Pike or Pyle or something.”
“Mr Pyle,” Bobby interposed. “Of Morning Daily. If statements are made in these letters, it may be very awkward. It depends, of course.”
“Anyone who takes Stephen’s letters seriously doesn’t know much about him,” Mrs Asprey said. “It’s quite possible he said all sorts of things in them. It’s possible he really believed that the Duchess had been murdered because her husband was jealous of him. He could believe anything that flattered his vanity.”
“Did he tell you anything like that?”
“I expect so; I didn’t pay much attention if he did. I’m sure he would have tried to make love to her if he had been given a chance. It’s quite likely he did try, and that the Duke didn’t approve—or the Duchess either. I don’t know.”
“Accusations of murder, hints of murder, are serious things,” Bobby said. “I gather you didn’t take them seriously in this case?”
“I never took seriously anything he said,” she retorted, and Bobby noted that this was more or less in the nature of an evasion of his question. “I never believed a word he said. Except, of course, when he told me that he loved me. That’s a tale every woman is always ready to believe—till they know better, poor fools!” Her voice softened, and for a moment she seemed lost in old memories. She resumed: “I daresay I still believe it was true—at intervals. I went to see my lawyers the other day. They say the paper the letters are written on belongs to Janet Merton’s niece under her will, but the copyright in what’s written on the paper is mine, so I can stop publication of the letters themselves. But it would be difficult to prevent publicity being given to anything said in them. Allegations that the Duke poisoned his wife could come from anywhere. If challenged, then the letters could be cited as supporting evidence and an order made for their production. I told them what I thought of that sort of legal quibbling. I asked the Merton girl if she would promise to burn them if she ever got them. She said she must ask her lawyers, and they told her she mustn’t on any account promise anything till she knew what they really contained. What do you think of silly hair-splitting like that?”
“I suppose it’s how the law stands,” Bobby said, “and nothing you can do about it. It does seem all rather confused. The law often is.”
“Or else lawyers would starve, and a good thing to,” she commented. “Is there any chance this Mr Pyle will manage to get the grave opened? He seemed to think he could. He wanted my support. He tried to argue; talked about money, promised me some. I chased him out. Well, could he?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” Bobby said slowly. “I suppose it’s possible. The Press can do a lot when it gets going. His idea seems to be to get a Home Office order, and I’ve an idea he’s begun to work on the Duke already. There are two lines he could follow. He could say that the poems are of such great literary value the world cannot afford to lose them. Who would hesitate to open a grave to recover, say, a new play by Shakespeare? Or a new sonnet sequence telling us who the dark lady was? And then he could suggest that the letters contained an accusation of m
urder that ought to be investigated, if only to clear the ancient house of Blegborough from so intolerable a stain. I think it’s at any rate possible that he might bring it off one way or the other. My impression of the Duke from what I saw of him this afternoon is that he could be easily influenced.”
“What’s this Mr Pyle really want?” she asked. “I thought Stephen was as good as forgotten. His books don’t sell any more. You see them on the top shelf in second-hand bookseller’s shops. The last time I heard from the publishers they had sold under a dozen copies of his collected works.”
“Mr Pyle intends to write your husband’s life,” Bobby explained. “He seems to think he can make him famous again. He was once, and Mr Pyle argues he might be again.”
“Fallen idols generally stay fallen,” she commented. “A good thing, too, or there would be no vacant pedestals for new ones. Another biography? I remember an offensive young fool came to see me. A long time ago. I had almost forgotten. He claimed he was Stephen’s son. He seemed to think that gave him a claim on me. He said he meant to write a life of Stephen. He wanted my help. I think he wanted me to write the whole book, for that matter. I chased him out, too. The dead are best left dead.”
“That would be Mr Chrines, I take it?” Bobby said. “I’ve heard about him. Do you think it’s true? That he is a son of Mr Asprey’s, I mean.”
“He wouldn’t be the only one if he were,” she answered moodily. “How should I know? He said Janet Merton was his mother, and he told me he has written poems all the critics recognized as having the Asprey touch. Monkeys can always imitate, and so I told him.”
“I saw him in Hillings churchyard. I understand he brings flowers to put on Janet’s grave,” Bobby remarked. “You go there, too, sometimes, don’t you?”
“I expect Hagen told you that?” she countered. “He watches all the time. He might be afraid the grave would open suddenly and the dead arise. Well, what are you staring at?”
“You startled me, that’s all,” Bobby said. “I had the same idea myself, and Hagen said something of the same sort—something about the dead lying quiet. Well, why shouldn’t they?” he went on, without waiting for an answer. “There’s one thing more I would like to ask if I may. Do you think it’s absolutely certain these papers were really placed in Janet Merton’s coffin to be buried with her?”
She took a little time to answer, and it was apparent she was hesitating how to reply. She said presently:
“It’s strange you should ask that. At first I didn’t believe it. I knew how Stephen loved playing to the gallery, striking attitudes in public. It would have been like him to make a gesture and then go back on it.” Again she was silent. Then she said: “Yes, it would be like him, but still more like him to make the gesture and be quite sure posterity—he always talked of Posterity with a capital ‘P’—would never consent to lose what he told everyone was the best work he had ever done. The King Lear of his compos, he said. He certainly believed it was. I never knew him so confident. He always was in public, but I knew. The last thing he wrote was always his best, and he tried to make the public think so, too. But alone with me at night, then sometimes he would break down and cry.”
“Cry?” Bobby repeated.
“For fear his gift had left him,” she said.
“Had you read them?” Bobby asked. “These last poems, I mean?”
She shook her head.
“One or two, perhaps,” she said, “but he never liked to let his work be seen till it was ready for publication. ‘Only my best is good enough for the public,’ he used to say, but really it was a sign of how unsure he was inside him. No,” she said, “I think it is certain the buried casket did really contain both the last poems he wrote as well as the letters.” She sank again into silence. He did not attempt to interrupt her thoughts. He had an idea that they went a long way back, and perhaps as well a long way into the future, too. At last she said, a little as if musing aloud: “If the poems could be recovered they might make Stephen famous again. How he would have loved that! By themselves? But that could not be. Could it?” she asked, now addressing Bobby as if suddenly remembering his presence.
“You mean the poems recovered, but the letters left?” he asked. “Is that what you would wish?”
“Do you think,” she flashed with a sudden fierce intensity of passion one would hardly have thought that old and tired frame could contain: “do you think I want every gaping fool to read what he should have said to me, but said to her instead? She stole his body from me. Let it go. Others had done as much before. What did I care? I didn’t marry him for his body. I married him for his poetry. He married me for my money. He had it and he spent it. I knew he would. But I didn’t know when I went to the altar that I was committing bigamy. Two Stephen Aspreys. A poet who died young, for the gods loved him. And a man. A common man. A mean man. He lived longer.”
After that she would say no more, and finally Bobby left her sitting there alone with her memories and her griefs.
CHAPTER XII
MURDER
NOT LONG after Bobby had left Mrs Asprey’s strange dwelling-place the rain, threatening so long, began to fall. At first only heavy scattered drops. Bobby increased his speed. At times he ran. It became a race between him and the rain. The rain won, hands down. Or rather, sheets down.
It was indeed a very bedraggled Bobby Owen, who, drenched and sorry, at last reached his hotel. However, a hot bath and a good dinner, which he ate in his room, attired in dressing-gown and pyjamas while the hotel did its best for his soaked garments, served to restore his energies. A message to police headquarters brought him those so long neglected essays; and, by dint of sitting up till three next morning, he managed to sort them out in fair order of merit and to select those he thought worthy of awards. He was up again by seven, spent another hour or two in confirming by re-reading his previous night’s judgments, communicated his decisions to Major Rowley, and just managed to catch the 1.15 p.m. London express. Most of the way he dozed, awakening though every now and then with a troubled and uneasy conviction that he had left behind him in Penton problems to which the solution would have one day to be sought most urgently.
Fortunately he found, when he reached the Yard, nothing very pressing on his desk, and he was able to get home fairly early, persuade a somewhat doubtful wife that the condition of his coat and trousers did not indicate that he himself was equally the worse for wear, and agree that the sooner the said coat and trousers went off to the cleaners, the better—and whether the cost would go through on the expense sheet could only be discovered by the method of hopeful experiment.
Next day one of the first things he did was to put through to Morning Daily a call asking if Mr McKie was disengaged, and, if so, could he lunch with Bobby at the ‘Golden Grasshopper’, the well-known and not too expensive restaurant in Whitehall. The call was answered in person by a pleased but slightly apprehensive Mr McKie. Pleased because it would add to his prestige, both with Morning Daily and with the rest of the world, to lunch with a high Scotland Yard official; apprehensive, because he knew the Yard did not consider he was always so co-operative as could have been desired and had found occasion more than once to hint that there was such a thing as being an accessory after the fact. He would, he assured Bobby, accept the invitation with the greatest pleasure. That settled, he sat down to examine his conscience—or what with a newspaper man stands for that inconvenient and nearly obsolete appendage—and decide whether he had been in any way less co-operative than usual. There was, of course, the little affair of the Spanish Emeralds, but the Yard, not even Bobby Owen himself, could hardly have got hold of that yet, and anyhow, if by some miracle they had, there was nothing they could really make a fuss about. So it was in a fairly confident mood that he arrived in good time at the ‘Golden Grasshopper’, ordered a cocktail for himself with the hope that Bobby would treat him to another on arrival, and settled down to wait.
Mr McKie, known in Fleet Street as ‘Sandy Mac’, t
o the readers of Morning Daily more simply as ‘S. M.’ when he was writing about crime, and more grandly as ‘Alexander’ when the subject was music, was a round little man with large spectacles he did not need in the least, a mouth that gaped open on the least provocation, and a general air of such sweet innocence that confidence tricksters—except those who had met him before—made for him at first sight, confident that at last they had found their beau ideal. He wore his hair long, as befitted one who mixed much with musicians, and he was probably the best performer on the mouth-organ to be found in the whole country. A useful accomplishment, for who could imagine that the little man sitting quietly in an East End pub or a Soho café and showing himself such a virtuoso on the mouth-organ, was really hot on the trail of a crime exclusive for Morning Daily?
Bobby, a little late in arriving, duly apologized for the delay, provided the expected cocktails, and not till they were seated at table did he ask abruptly:
“What’s your Mr Pyle up to?”
“Why?” McKie countered. “All sorts of things probably, from changing the course of world history by just one article in Morning Daily, to sacking your humble servant. You never know. Restless sort of cove. But you don’t imagine he confides in his reporters, do you? Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. Tennyson. Wasn’t it?” he added doubtfully.
“I imagine,” Bobby retorted, “that his reporters know quite a lot without being confided in. Especially when they recommend him a man like Item Sims.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” McKie asked. “I wondered myself what he wanted a bloke like Item for. How did you know? Eddy Pyle hasn’t been confiding in you, has he?”
“Far from it,” answered Bobby. “And not likely to. I don’t think I made myself awfully popular with him. I saw instant dismissal in his eyes more than once. Fortunately it had to stay there, and he had to content himself with hints about how he carried the Home Secretary around in his coat pocket. Well, what about Item? Do you really think he is a suitable companion to send off with a respectable citizen on a caravan tour?”
Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 10
