Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Once more she was silent, and Bobby saw an unwilling hesitating tear and then another creeping slowly down her cheeks. He got up and went to the door and opened it and looked out. He stood like that for two or three minutes. Then he came back and said:

  “I thought I heard rain, but it’s quite clear. I didn’t want to get another drenching like the one I had that other time.”

  “Thank you,” she said and sat upright once more, to all appearance as grim, determined, formidable as ever.

  But he had seen her now with her defences down, and he knew better. He said:

  “There are more questions we may have to ask you. But they can wait if you prefer it. You may have to be asked to make a formal statement. Of course, you can refuse to answer. Or if you wish it, your solicitor can be present.”

  She was hardly listening to him, still struggling as she was to recover her earlier poise.

  “Questions?” she repeated. “Ask as many as you like. It doesn’t follow you’ll get any answer. What questions? What for?”

  “Murder has been done and questions must be asked,” Bobby told her. “Even perhaps questions that may not seem to have much to do with it. Have you a pistol?”

  “A pistol? No. Of course not. What should I want a pistol for? I can look after myself.”

  “I saw you brought a poker with you to the door,” Bobby said, smiling slightly. “Mr Pyle told me the last time I saw him that when he came to visit you it ended with your producing a gun and threatening to shoot him if he didn’t go. I think he did go—quickly.”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “He tried to argue, bribe, bully. I’m not sure which. I told him to go away, and he wouldn’t, so I opened a drawer and put my hand in and I told him if he wasn’t gone before I counted three I would fire. He went before I got as far as two. He was really frightened.”

  “If he had not gone,” Bobby asked, “what would you have done?”

  She smiled grimly and nodded towards the poker lying by the oil-stove that stood before the old fireplace. Bobby accepted this as an answer and asked next: “Have you ever possessed a pistol?”

  “Stephen had one I remember,” she answered. “He wrote to the police, and they gave him a paper about it to say he might keep it. I don’t know what became of it after he died. I don’t think I ever gave it a thought. It got lost or stolen, perhaps. Plenty of things were.”

  “I see,” Bobby said. “You spoke of the Duke of Blegborough visiting Pyle the night he was shot. How did you know?”

  “Well, I saw his car going that way,” she answered.

  “About what time?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It was late—beginning to grow dark. I didn’t take much notice.”

  “Did you follow him? Or were you already there when he arrived?”

  “Why should you think so? I couldn’t be, could I? when I saw his car pass. I can’t go as fast as a huge car like his. Why should I follow him?”

  He countered with another question.

  “Could it be that you felt you must be there, as you said just now, if anything was happening? Well, death happened, and a woman’s footprint has been found near by.”

  “I don’t think I believe you,” she said after a pause. “There’s been no rain for a day or two. The moor dries quickly, and it’s all rough grass nearly.”

  “All the same, a footprint’s been found,” Bobby said. “You could see it for yourself if you wished. Would you care to let me have one of your shoes to see if it fits?”

  “Well, suppose it did?” she retorted with much of her former angry impatience. “What would that prove? There must be thousands of people wearing shoes like mine. All shoes come from the same lasts. Mass production.”

  “It would help if you let us try. Will you think it over? We should appreciate your help.”

  But she still shook her head.

  “You’ll find out without my help—if you ever do,” she told him. “I happen to know, but I’m not going to say.”

  “Was it you?” he asked.

  She made no answer. Very upright she sat and watched him, and there was silence in the room till Bobby rose to his feet. Then she spoke abruptly, without moving, her expression unchanged, almost as if the words were forced from her by some power not her own.

  “Get one of Christabel Merton’s shoes and try that,” she said. “Ask her if it’s possible anyone saw her on the moor near the caravan last night.”

  “This print was made by a small size shoe,” Bobby said. “I’m told one much smaller than any Miss Merton could wear.”

  “One can always squeeze a bit,” she answered carelessly.

  CHAPTER XVII

  ARREST IMMINENT

  BOBBY COVERED the two miles back to Penton at a speed not much less than that he had displayed on a previous occasion, though this time he was spurred on not by fear of a threatening deluge, but only by a lively appetite.

  At the first call-box he came to he paused to ring up Mrs Wiggins, where he was lodging, to ask if some cold meat or some bread and cheese could be left out for his supper.

  “I don’t know when I shall be able to get in,” he explained, “and I don’t want to keep you up.”

  But a motherly voice at the other end of the line assured him that whatever the hour of his return, sausages—pork—and mashed potatoes would be waiting.

  “You can’t ever go wrong with a man,” the voice assured him, “if it’s sausage and mashed and no trouble at all to hot up.”

  So Bobby expressed his thanks and felt much cheered by the prospect of so fortunate a conclusion to such a long and tiring day. Next he rang up the Penton police headquarters and asked if it could be arranged for Mr Sandy McKie, of Morning Daily, Mr Pyle’s paper, to be there to meet him on his arrival, which would be soon.

  “There are one or two small points,” Bobby explained, “McKie might be able to help in; but for the good Lord’s sake don’t let any others of the Press Gang know. They are all as jealous of each other as a lot of girls after the same film star, and they would be dead sure we were giving him an exclusive. As cover, you might give him a hand-out to distribute to the rest of them, only take jolly good care it doesn’t say anything. Lots of words and no facts.”

  Superintendent Evans, who had answered the ’phone, said he quite understood, hung up, remarked in the hearing of two sergeants and a constable that he didn’t know what on earth the London chap thought he was up to, was conscious of a murmur of approval from the two sergeants and the constable, rebuked them severely for listening, and proceeded to draw up a suitable ‘hand-out’ as requested.

  When therefore Bobby appeared he found McKie waiting for him and looking all at once sulky, apprehensive, and expectant—the first, because of his wasted afternoon spent waiting for the Duke and suspecting Bobby had somehow intervened; apprehensive, because he felt his little attempt to get a kind of pre-view of what the Duke was likely to say might not have been approved of; expectant, because of a faint lingering hope that Bobby might just possibly be going to tell him something important. As the second of these contingencies was the one uppermost in his mind, and as he knew that attack is always the best defence, he, as soon as Bobby entered the room where he was waiting, began indignantly:

  “I suppose it was you worked it with the Duke. I do think you might have let me know. I spent all afternoon waiting for him to turn up so I could bring him along to you.”

  “I noticed that for once you weren’t on the spot,” Bobby answered amiably. “A pity. Not slipping up, I hope? But nothing to do with me. Jolly good idea, I know, nobbling the poor man and turning him inside out before anyone else, even the police, had a go. I’m not altogether sure, though, that it mightn’t have looked just a little wee bit like tampering with an essential witness. Academic point now. What happened was that he took a short cut to Hillings, instead of coming through Penton. He asked me to give you his sincere apologies. But I wouldn’t try anything of that sort again. We’re apt to be touchy whe
n it’s a case of murder. I’ve asked the Super here to give you a handout on how things stand at present—on condition, of course, that you pass it on to all the other chaps. No favouritism, and now I want to ask if you can tell me what literary bloke is likely to know Asprey’s work best?”

  “Well, old Tom Long, I should think,” McKie answered, slightly mollified by this appeal for assistance. “He’s professor of poetry at one of the red-brick universities.” (McKie himself was a Balliol man.) “The old boy is said to know by heart every poem published this century and most of the earlier stuff as well. He’s always stood up against the debunking of Asprey by all the smart young men who want to play Macaulay to his Robert Montgomery.”

  “Sounds just the man I want to get hold of,” declared Bobby. “He would know about Chrines’s work, too, would he?”

  “Oh, yes,” McKie agreed. “He wrote the notice in the Saturday Supplement denouncing Chrines as ‘Asprey and ditch water’. I went to see him when we were going into Chrines’s claim to be a son of Asprey and Janet Merton. He was very interested, and he told me there was one sonnet in Chrines’s book so different from the rest, it might easily have been the work of Asprey at his peak—in the early days, when he did show a touch of genius before it died out as he grew older. Bit of a tragedy, that, you know, even if he did help to kill it by complacence and swelled head.”

  “A tragedy,” Bobby agreed. “All the more a tragedy if complacence and swelled head were the cause.”

  “The old boy,” McKie went on, “seemed to think the sonnet was so good it could even be accepted as evidence that Chrines was in fact a son of Asprey’s. Heredity at work, perhaps, or it might be it really was an early effort of Asprey’s, and Chrines had got hold of it somehow—perhaps from his real mother, if she were one of Asprey’s loves. If he did, he might have thought he would pass it off for his own. But if his mother wasn’t Janet Merton, we weren’t interested. Couldn’t work it up then into the most glamorous story of all time, with the grand climax of the burial of the heart-broken poet’s finest work in the coffin of his dead love. How the great B.P. would have lapped it up.”

  “If it didn’t make them sick instead,” Bobby suggested, and, ignoring McKie’s interjection: ‘You couldn’t. Impossible,’ went on: “Anyhow, very many thanks for what you’ve told me. You’ve helped enormously.”

  “Have I?” McKie asked, surprised, and he added wistfully, “Well, if I have, oughtn’t you to tip me off how?”

  “Shouldn’t be necessary,” Bobby retorted. “Besides, I wouldn’t dare. I’ve far too much respect for the power of the Press. I’m not going to risk getting in the bad books of all the rest of you by giving them a chance to say I favoured one. Sorry and all that, but there it is.”

  “The labourer not worthy of his hire,” McKie said sadly. “It’s a hard world.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Bobby said, “and you can tell the others. I’m working on a theory founded on facts they all know perfectly well. You might even say an early arrest is possible. I don’t see why you shouldn’t work it out for yourselves, if you like to take the trouble. Of course, you wouldn’t dare use it because of libel if it turns out to be wrong. And I can’t say anything even to the chaps working with me for much the same reason. My suspect may be perfectly innocent, and it doesn’t do to throw suspicion on the innocent or prejudice the investigation by giving it a slant the wrong way.”

  “Just say a little more,” McKie pleaded.

  But Bobby shook his head, and McKie had to retire disconsolate; and all his colleagues, when he told them, decided that it was only swank, and what Bobby really meant was that neither he nor any others of those working on the case had discovered the faintest clue or had even the remotest hope of bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion. All the same, they were generally content to ring up their respective offices with the message: ‘Police confident of early arrest.’ Only one risked instead: ‘Police at dead end. Yard man baffled.’

  Meanwhile Bobby had been given the file, dealing with the still unexplained disappearance of Mr Thorne, which he had asked should be ready for him. A bulky collection. Immersed in it, making frequent notes, he remained for long, oblivious of the passing hours, even forgetful—incredibly—of that ‘sausage and mashed’ awaiting his attention and so easily ‘hotted up’. But when he had turned the last page and made his late note, his appetite re-asserted itself with sudden and even violent vigour. So he departed forthwith, though not before making sure that the file would still be there next morning, all ready for further study.

  “I want to sleep on it,” he explained to the station sergeant. “You’ll see it’s available first thing in the morning?”

  The station sergeant promised he would see to that. Bobby said good night and made for the door, turning suddenly, however, before he reached it.

  “Oh,” he said, “there’s that young fellow—Chrines, isn’t his name? He was the first to discover what had happened, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right,” the sergeant said. “A statement was took, but he didn’t seem to have much to say, except what a shock it was and his nerves all gone to pieces from it.”

  “No wonder,” Bobby said. “Enough to upset anyone. Has he been living long at Hillings? Do you know anything about him?”

  The station sergeant didn’t. Chrines had never come under the notice of the police in any way.

  “Literary gent.,” the sergeant said. “Writes poetry. Doesn’t do anything for a living, but pays his way O.K. Plays a good game of darts and gets tight so easy some of the Hillings chaps as could down beer all day and never show it say even him looking too hard at a glass will knock him over. Sort of a standing joke up there.”

  Bobby remarked that there were some like that and would the sergeant try to find out the exact date when Chrines first became a Hillings resident. The sergeant undertook to do so, though evidently wondering what on earth so apparently irrelevant a piece of information was wanted for, and what connection it could possibly have with recent happenings. Bobby thanked him and hurried off to his now passionately longed for supper. Not till he was half-way through it, and the first keen edge of his appetite blunted, did it occur to him to ask the benevolently watching Mrs Wiggins if she chanced to know exactly when Chrines made his first appearance in the district. As it happened, she did. When he first came to Penton he lodged for a time with a neighbour of hers while looking out for a more permanent residence. This he had found in the Hillings cottage he now occupied, but he had had to move into it before it was really ready for occupation. That was because of the unexpected early arrival of a new baby in the neighbour’s house. As the child, now a lusty and healthy infant, was exactly two years old, it followed that Mr Chrines had been a Hillings householder for just two years.

  “A very nice young gentleman,” declared Mrs Wiggins. “He writes poetry and such like for the papers and seems he has money of his own so he don’t need to work. You don’t think he had anything to do with it, do you? Wiggins always says that them as finds the corpse is often them as put it there. But I didn’t ought to ask, I know. Wiggins would give me a wigging if he knew.”

  Bobby rewarded this mild jest with a smile, remarked that it was early days to say if anyone had anything to do with anything, complimented Mrs Wiggins on her skill with sausages, and retired to bed, determined to get a good if short night’s rest.

  And short it was; for the story is still told in the West Mercian police force of how he was back again at headquarters and deeply immersed once more in the Thorne file, before five o’clock next morning.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE THORNE FILE

  ONCE MORE therefore, in the stillness of the early morning, Bobby read through from beginning to end, from end to beginning, the accumulation of reports, statements, rumours, what not, that together went to make up the formidable mass of material known as the Thorne file. Much of it seemed wholly irrelevant, most of it contradicted the rest of it, it came to
no conclusion, it pointed nowhere, and over every paragraph, every sentence almost, Bobby pored with concentrated attention. And the pile of notes at his side grew steadily higher.

  There had been, of course, as was only to be expected, an overwhelming spate of rumour. All had been carefully tested, for Major Rowley’s methods, if lacking in imagination, were at least thorough. If steady, sober, painstaking, plodding work could have revealed the truth, Major Rowley would certainly have brought it to light. One fault Bobby was inclined to find was that too much attention had been paid to what were clearly malicious rumours and too little to the motives inspiring them. Some, of course, were clearly mere invention, as for instance the one linking Mr Thorne’s name with that of a girl, a parishioner, who had vanished at the same time, but had simply gone off without telling her family to marry a man of whom they disapproved. There seemed to be more foundation for the reports that Mr Thorne had been losing money in rash speculations—he had, for instance, bought a farm near Penton without discovering that he had also bought very heavy financial obligations—but there seemed nothing to show that with care and economy over a few years he would not have been able to recover his position entirely. Hillings was probably much the richest living in the country for so small a parish, in which hardly more than a tenth of the two or three hundred inhabitants made even a pretence of attending church—or chapel either, for that matter.