Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “My God.”

  Evans pulled down some of the roping round the burnt-out caravan and got him safely within. To the two constables he said:

  “If any of that lot try to follow, take him in for obstruction.”

  “Yes, sir,” said one constable, and the other said to the Duke:

  “Your hat, sir.”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” said the Duke, gratefully accepting it—it had been old before, and now it looked much older, but he didn’t notice. Reflectively he added: “Really, they must be all quite mad.”

  “Well, journalists,” Bobby explained. “A purely formal distinction, no doubt. Very good of you, sir, to come along so promptly. I’m beginning to think we shall need all the help we can get.”

  “I’m afraid I can hardly hope to be of much assistance,” the Duke repeated, and Bobby, now that he was nearer, noticed that he looked pale and anxious. “Indeed, I am not quite clear what has really happened. Do I understand that this dreadful business is connected with an attempt to open Janet Merton’s grave? Has it been opened?” and as he said this the anxiety he showed became even more apparent.

  “No, no,” Bobby assured him, answering his last question. “There may be some connection somewhere. Or it may be a case of robbery and murder. Major Rowley has hardly begun his investigation yet. So far we know very little beyond the bare fact that Mr Pyle’s caravan has been burnt, he himself shot, and that the man he had with him—a sort of handy-man, apparently—has disappeared, but with what on the face of it seems a sound alibi for the time of the murder. Might I ask how you came to hear of it? It was only discovered early this morning.”

  “A Mr McKie informed me,” the Duke explained. “He rang me up from London. A colleague of yours, I understood. He mentioned your name; he said you had often worked together on such cases.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” growled Bobby. “Did he say anything else?”

  “He wanted me to meet him at the Grand Hotel in Penton,” replied the Duke. “I said I would. He promised to give me what he called the inside story I ought to know. I don’t know exactly what he meant, but he said he would explain when we met, and he rang off then. I was on my way, but I stopped at a garage to fill up, and the attendant there told me it would be shorter if I went through Hillings first and that was what most cars passing that way were doing. He seemed to take it for granted it was all about this dreadful affair. A most intelligent man.”

  “Yes, much quicker coming that way,” agreed Bobby, though speaking more by faith than by knowledge. He paused for just one moment to contemplate rather happily a mental picture of the enterprising Mr McKie waiting and waiting, alone at Penton, while everything was happening at Hillings. Evidently he had planned to get the Duke there all to himself, establish a special and confidential relationship, and secure an ‘exclusive’ for his paper. A very good plan, too, and would have been highly successful but for the unforeseen intervention of the garage attendant. But, then, that is always the worst of the unforeseen—it is so very unforeseeable. A profound reflection, and, having made it, Bobby went on: “It is important to establish Mr Pyle’s last movements. Could you tell us when you last saw him?”

  “Last night,” the Duke replied immediately, and with no trace of self-consciousness. “I drove over from Blegborough after dinner.”

  “Was there any special reason for that?”

  “Well, he had been pressing me to support certain plans he had in view. He urged me very strongly to do so when we had dinner together in Penton. He laid great stress on the influence he said he possessed through his papers. I told him I would think it over. I made up my mind after I got home to tell him at once I would not only not support him, but would do all I could to oppose his plans. He was inclined to be what I considered unreasonably angry.”

  “May I take it the plan you mentioned had to do with a project for opening the Janet Merton grave?”

  “The idea seems to me undesirable from every point of view,” the Duke declared with unusual energy. “Objectionable. Unnecessary.”

  “Were suggestions made that the Stephen Asprey letters might contain certain allegations reflecting on yourself?”

  “Oh, you knew that—I expect everyone does,” the Duke said. He was beginning to show signs of impatience and anger. Generally placid, acquiescent, almost apologetic in his manner, as if he felt that to-day dukes and earls both had to recognize how small was their right even to exist, he now burst out: “The fellow told me I didn’t want the letters got back because I knew they accused me of poisoning my wife out of jealousy of Asprey. We were talking in my car. Because he was afraid his chauffeur might get listening, he asked me to drive a little way away. I am afraid”—now his tone became really apologetic, even more so than usual—“when Pyle said that about my being jealous of Asprey I told him to get out. He said I must drive him back to the caravan first, so I threw him out. He went sprawling. That is the last I saw of him. Sprawling.” The Duke smiled with a certain complacence. “Sprawling,” he repeated, as if he could never savour the word too much. Then he stopped as if suddenly remembering he was speaking of a dead man. “I lost my temper, I suppose,” he admitted. “Unfortunate. Unforgivable, especially in view of what has happened. I don’t think I do very often,” and now he was returning to his more familiar apologetic tone.

  “Could you say precisely what time this would be?” Bobby asked.

  “Between nine and ten,” the Duke told him after reflection. “About the half-hour, I should say. I didn’t notice particularly. When I’m alone I generally have dinner about half-past seven. It’s not much more than an hour’s drive here from the castle.”

  “It’s very important to have all the times as exact as possible,” Bobby explained. “We must get everything as accurate as we can, so as to have a complete time-table of Mr Pyle’s movements last night. Would there be anyone at Blegborough Castle likely to have noticed the precise time you returned?”

  “Well, you see,” the Duke answered, “most of the castle has been taken over by the Wessex Agricultural Training College, so there’s never anyone there after hours. I’ve been able to keep a few rooms for my own use, and my old butler, Hopkins, and Mrs Hopkins, look after it and me when I’m there. The W.A.T.C. employ a night watchman. But Hopkins and his wife would be in bed when I got back, and then they are both rather deaf. I don’t expect they heard anything. The night watchman wouldn’t be likely to, either. He patrols the other side of the castle generally.”

  “Yes, I see,” Bobby said. “Thank you so much for being so helpful. We shall just have to do our best with what we know already. I’m sure if we need more details we can rely on you. You didn’t see anyone else on the moor near the caravan?”

  “No one at all,” the Duke assured him. “I’m only sorry I’ve not been of more help.”

  Both Bobby and the two West Mercian police officers expressed polite appreciation of his assistance. He was also very earnestly advised to avoid saying anything to any journalist—especially on the telephone.

  “As things are at present,” Bobby remarked, “anything said—anything at all—can be so easily misunderstood, and in the interests of all concerned the less your name is mentioned the better. If I may say so, sir, your name and title would throw everything out of proportion. It would set every tongue wagging in a most undesirable way.”

  “Yes, indeed,” the Duke said sadly. “I’ve enough experience of that. But there’s your friend, Mr McKie. I promised to meet him in Penton. He may be waiting there still.”

  “Very likely,” agreed Bobby, cheerfully and fully appreciative of that fact. “I’ll tell him how it is. Good chap, McKie, when he’s not too busy being a journalistic live-wire.”

  “If you’ll explain, I shall indeed be grateful,” the Duke said, though not quite certain what this last sentence meant. “I should be most sorry if he thought I had been guilty of any discourtesy,” and after one or two more questions—unimportant ones—had been asked an
d answered, he departed.

  For some moments the other three stood and watched in silence as the Rolls-Royce passed out of sight over the edge of the moor. Then Evans said:

  “It can’t really be him, can it? But when it’s jealousy, I daresay a duke is much the same as the rest of us—and then poets. Poets and women seem to take to each other natural like. If he did do in his wife and he knew Asprey knew and had said so in these letters—well, there’s your motive, and when you’ve got your motive I always say you’ve got your man.”

  “Only,” Bobby pointed out, “a perfectly innocent man, especially one in the Duke’s position, might equally well object to such a story getting about.”

  “Same motive from another angle,” Major Rowley said gloomily. “It would set tongues wagging like hell.”

  “So it would,” Bobby agreed. “Just like hell. We must try not to let that happen if we can help it—unless it becomes necessary,” he added, with almost equal gloom.

  “Looks to me as if it’s going to be,” Rowley said, half to himself, and then, more loudly: “I don’t like the way things are shaping, and that’s a fact, and then those ‘phone messages hinting at blackmail the Duke talked about. If that tale’s true, of course. No corroboration. But it does rather look to me as if there was someone in the background knew more than he ought to.” He looked at his watch and thought of his dinner, for he was a man with a healthy appetite. “Getting late,” he said.

  Recovering abruptly from the fresh trance into which he had shown signs of relapsing, Bobby said:

  “I expect you’ve noticed there’s a small discrepancy in what the Duke told us. It may mean nothing, but it’s there, and it’ll have to be remembered and cleared up if possible. I never like discrepancies, even if they are only small, and then it’s the second I’ve noticed in all this. Two of them is at least one too many.”

  The Major looked puzzled, but Evans nodded in full agreement.

  “Yes,” he said at once. “Yes. I noticed that. Puts it across he wouldn’t ever dare say boo to a goose and then lets out he doesn’t think twice over throwing you out of his car to find your own way back as best you can. Easy to get lost on the moor and just die of exhaustion, same as happened to Mr Thorne, most likely. That’s what John Hagen thinks and so do I.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  DEFENCES DOWN

  BUT THIS theory of the Duke’s deliberately deceptive character was not what Bobby had had in mind. However, before he could explain himself, there came up to them the sergeant who was supervising the careful examination, bit by bit, of what was left of the caravan and its contents. He was holding two pieces of twisted metal he offered for their inspection.

  “Looks to me,” he said, “like it’s been the blade of a spade and the head of a pick-axe. Not what you would expect to find in a gentleman’s touring caravan.”

  “Suggests,” Bobby remarked, “that Pyle didn’t mean to be held up for lack of tools if permission to open the grave came through—or even if it didn’t.”

  Too little daylight remained for much more to be done. A few fresh arrangements were made—including the stationing of a man to remain on watch all night. (‘Or there won’t be a thing left by morning,’ Evans had remarked in an aside, adding bitterly the one word ‘Souvenirs’.) Then Major Rowley observed, rather too carelessly, that they had better be getting back to Penton and, if possible, snatch a bite to eat before sitting down to deal with all the paper work awaiting them.

  “Shan’t get to bed till Lord knows when,” he said, with a sidelong glance at Evans, intended to warn him he would have to take his full share, and another at Bobby to see if he looked ready to come in as well.

  But Bobby surprised them both by saying suddenly:

  “I’ve never seen Miss Christabel Merton. Janet was supposed to be a beauty, wasn’t she? Does Miss Christabel take after her aunt in that way?”

  “Well, you could hardly call her a beauty,” Major Rowley said doubtfully, and Evans told himself primly that this was a wholly frivolous question. Police were not concerned with the looks of young women. “A fine handsome girl, well set up,” Rowley decided. “Takes her share in the farm work, I believe. Drive a tractor or pitch all day in the hay-field. That sort of thing.”

  “You wouldn’t expect her to wear a number four shoe the size of the one making that print Mr Evans found?” Bobby asked.

  “No,” Rowley said at once. “No, I should say that could hardly be hers.”

  “Hard to trace identity from a single footprint,” Evans put in. “How do you start? Mr Pyle doesn’t seem to have been in touch with anyone in Penton. Of course, we can inquire.”

  Bobby nodded, approving this suggestion, and then said: “If you could put me down at Two Mile End, I might have a try at getting Mrs Asprey to talk. My idea is it might be easier for one alone than if we all three went together. How do you feel?” he asked Rowley.

  The Major fully agreed. Privately he thought that Mrs Asprey would be a tough nut to crack, whether tackled by one or by three. But, he suggested, oughtn’t Bobby to have a bite first? Of course, it was part of police training to go without food or drink as and when required—at this, all three of them looked sad—but was it necessary this time? Why not come back to Penton with them, get a bite there—and then borrow a car and drive back to Two Mile End? But Bobby said he thought it would be better for him to call before it got dark.

  “The lady seems a trifle ready with her gun,” he remarked. “Just as well not to give her any excuse for target practice. If she’s heard of what’s happened she may be a bit jumpy.”

  So it was settled; and when Bobby alighted near that desolate ruin where Mrs Asprey had chosen to take up her abode for the time being, there was still an hour or two of daylight left. He had taken care she should have full warning of his approach by one or two hoots from the Major’s car before he got down, a shouted farewell when it started off again, and by a certain amount of unnecessary stumbling as he made his way across the wilderness that once had been a garden and the pride of Two Mile End. These precautions were so far successful that, as Bobby got nearer the side door Mrs Asprey used, it opened and she herself appeared on the threshold. He noticed that she was dressed more carefully than when he had seen her before, and he noticed also that she was holding one hand behind her back. He decided that if he had to go he would rival the unfortunate Mr Pyle in the speed of his departure. She was looking, he thought, as gaunt, as formidable as ever. Motionless and silent, she stood there watching his approach, still giving that impression of a tense and angry expectation he had noted in her before. But she seemed to relax a little as he came more into view.

  “You, is it?” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t be long. Well?”

  “You will have heard what’s happened?” Bobby asked.

  “Of course I have. Who hasn’t? Well, what have you found out? Do you know who did it?”

  “If I did I should not be here to ask you if you can help,” Bobby said, and she responded with an angry and contemptuous grunt.

  “Doesn’t interest me,” she told him. “You had better come in, I suppose.”

  She turned as she spoke and went back into the room behind, thus allowing Bobby to see, rather to his relief, that what she had been holding behind her back had been not a gun, but a poker. Bobby followed her. He said:

  “Are you not still interested in any possible opening of the Janet Merton grave?”

  “Well, that won’t happen now, will it?” she asked sharply, apparently a good deal taken aback by this remark. “Why should it? Nobody wanted it except this wretched man. Now there’s no one.”

  “All that may depend on how the investigation goes,” Bobby said, watching her closely.

  She sat down then and he followed her example. She seemed to be both troubled and surprised by his last remark. She did not speak for a few moments, and then she said, speaking apparently as much to herself as to him:

  “I thought it was all over.”


  “We are inclined to think there may be much that hasn’t yet come to light,” Bobby told her. “It seems possible the motive for the murder may go a long way back. The past still lives.”

  “Why do you say that?” she demanded, startled. “That’s the title of one of Stephen’s poems—one of his best.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby said. “I expect I was remembering. I heard it mentioned once, and the title must have stuck in my mind.”

  “I suppose all this means there’s someone you do suspect? Who is it? The Duke of Blegborough? He’s a poor fish. He’s not got the guts to shoot. It can’t be the Chrines boy. Not possible. Or Mr Day-Bell? There were hints about him and Mr Thorne. You know that? Well, well, well?” and each successive ‘Well’ she snapped out with an increasingly angry impatience.

  “I didn’t say there was anyone we had any reason to suspect at present,” Bobby reminded her. “All I said was that the course of the investigation might make opening the grave necessary.”

  “I don’t see why, I don’t see how that can be,” she muttered moodily. “You mean the Duke may have known he had to stop those letters being read because of what might be in them and that was why he was there that night?”

  “You, too, I think,” Bobby said, “might be almost equally anxious to prevent their recovery. You would not like their contents being made generally known?”

  “If anyone else tried again—” she began and then paused. “They ought to be burned,” she exclaimed with fierce intensity. “They are stolen letters. They should have been mine, they were mine; they only said again what he had said before to me. She’s no right to have them there with her where she lies so snug and safe, even if she’s dead and I’m alive, and I have memories and she has none. That’s why I’m here, so as to be sure nothing’s done without my knowing.” She sat back in her chair as if exhausted by the intensity of her feelings. In a slightly different voice, though one still vibrant with emotion, she went on: “Stephen’s last poems. They ought to be recovered. They ought to be published. Then the world would begin to remember him again. It’s his right to have them published. That’s what he really wanted. When he put them in her coffin it was only a gesture, only a gesture. You had to know him all through, as I did, to be sure what was gesture and what was real. I knew as no one else did or could—no one.”