Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “The way of the moor, Mr Owen,” Hagen said, coming nearer, “the way of the moor.” Then he said: “Looks to me as if it might be drifting southerly.” He went on: “A bad business all this. I’ve heard Mr Duncan’s revolver is missing. It couldn’t be what was used, could it?”

  “No special reason to think so,” Bobby answered. “It doesn’t take long for things to get around here, does it? I came straight from Canbar to the rectory, and I wasn’t there long.”

  “Oh, well, as far as that goes,” Hagen said smilingly, “not much happens in Hillings that everyone else doesn’t know about in two twos. If Mrs So-and-So’s little Tommy has his face washed more than once in a day, everyone knows within an hour. What they call the grapevine. I had been thinking what was used was most likely the one I saw Mr Pyle’s man busy with. Though it can’t have been him did it, seemingly—Sims was his name, wasn’t it?”

  “Item Sims, known to his pals as ‘Sticker’ Sims,” Bobby said. “It does seem a strong alibi, but there is the possibility of his having dodged back. That can’t be overlooked till he’s been found and questioned. I understand he struck you as being a trifle excited?”

  “Well, sir, not much more than you would expect from a man being sacked at that time of night. I didn’t pay much attention. It was more what he said sounded queer when you remembered it afterwards—about being left holding the bag and all that. In the ‘Green Man’ they all thought it was young Mr Chrines you were meaning. Disappointed they were to listen to them when you didn’t march him off.”

  “Don’t they like him?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say he was exactly popular, no more than I am, as far as that goes. Nobody ever is popular if he isn’t the same as everyone else, unless he manages to be just the same, only much bigger—like Mr Churchill.”

  “There’s nothing special they have against Chrines, is there?”

  “No, nothing at all, any more than against me. It’s only not being cut to pattern but not big enough to carry it off. None of them ever read anything except comic strips, and they don’t know what I’m up to, always at my books, they say, and to them, books are a kind of magic. And Mr Chrines—well, with him it’s rather like what it used to be in old times with the village idiot. You grin at him, you play tricks on him, the children throw stones at him, in a way you despise him, and at the same time you feel he carries with him a kind of tabu, an aura of the sacred, the numinous, and they had better be careful in case the unknown powers intervene. They know he writes poetry, and poetry means to them something rather silly but mysterious, too, and what’s mysterious is best kept clear of, for who knows what’s behind it all? It would be a relief if he wasn’t there any more. So it would be if I wasn’t, for that matter.”

  “Yes, I see,” Bobby said. “Thank you. I was puzzled about his position, and you’ve made it much clearer. You would be ready to go into the witness-box if necessary, and swear it was a revolver you saw Sticker Sims with? I once had a case, years ago, when what was reported to me as a pistol turned out to be a gas-lighter made to look like one.”

  “Oh, yes, I could swear to that,” Hagen answered at once. “No doubt at all. Army weapon I should say from its size. Not that I know much about firearms. I expect I’m about the only man in Hillings who has never fired so much as a shot-gun. I don’t see how it could have been Sims used it, but it might be someone else knew Mr Pyle had a revolver with him on account of a caravan being generally a long way from police and that that someone thought how handy it might come in. Easy to get rid of, too. Throw it away on the moor or anywhere on the road to Penton where there’s clumps of bracken so thick you would never get through them. Take a deal of searching, they would.”

  “It may have to be done,” Bobby told him. “We don’t spare either time or money or trouble when we are looking for a murderer.”

  “I can see that for myself,” Hagen said slowly. He was leaning on his spade. He paused and then again spoke, still slowly and thoughtfully, almost as if the words came with difficulty: “Yes, I can see that,” he repeated, “and I wouldn’t much care to be him as you are seeking. Sleep ill at night, I think, he must, or maybe not at all. As far as that goes, it might well come as a relief to him when it’s over, one way or the other. I wonder.”

  “How soon it’s over will depend a lot on finding the murder weapon,” Bobby remarked. “The moor seems the most likely spot to search first, I think. Major Rowley is putting a lot of faith in his small boys he has out there.”

  “The moor’s a big place,” Hagen said.

  “There’s one thing I wanted to ask you,” Bobby went on. “You are in a good position to know what people are saying—I mean, what they say to each other, not what they say to us of the police and they know may be taken down on paper. Many people don’t like that. It seems to frighten them somehow. If there is anyone in particular they talk about, it would be a help to know. It would help us to estimate the value of what they do tell us.”

  Hagen shook his head, and was silent for a little.

  “No,” he said finally. “Tongues are wagging. That’s all I can say. But I don’t hear all, not by a long way. You are wrong there, Mr Owen. None of them would ever say a word against Mr Day-Bell, or against Mr Duncan, as far as that goes, while I was there. But I am afraid that it’s all started up again the old rubbish about it’s being so handy for Mr Day-Bell that Mr Thorne disappeared just when Mr Day-Bell had bought Skeleton Farm—dirt cheap, he thought—and then found he had bought a mortgage as well that made it not cheap at all. Done down he was, as clergy often are when they start trying to be business-like which isn’t their job at all. A facer that was for him, and but for him getting put in charge here, and being sure of the reversion to the new Penton-cum-Hillings living as was being talked about, it might have been the final end. Bankruptcy, and that’s the finish for a clergyman.”

  “Was such a story really seriously believed,” Bobby asked, “or was it merely talk for the sake of talking?”

  “Hard to say,” Hagen replied reflectively. “Not believed, of course, by sensible people—educated people. Major Rowley took care to let it be known Mr Day-Bell was certainly at home in bed in Penton all that night. But there was some talk that Hillings wasn’t so far but a man could get up from his bed and get to Hillings and back again, and no one know, and what the police put out only meant they were hushing up what all the Days and all the Bells—and they’re the big folk hereabouts—didn’t want known, it being such a disgrace as they wouldn’t ever have got over. It’s not so much, Mr Owen,” Hagen went on earnestly, “that people are malicious exactly, as that they do like to think badly of others because in comparison they can then think well of themselves.”

  “I had almost forgotten you were a philosopher, Mr Hagen,” Bobby said smilingly.

  “No, sir, that’s not philosophy,” Hagen told him, “that’s psychology. Philosophy is not trying to understand people’s mental processes: it’s trying to get at what’s going on around us and what real knowledge our minds bring us.”

  “To get at the real truth?” asked Bobby. “Well, that’s a detective’s job, too, though not by metaphysics. Just by putting together ordinary, everyday facts. Is it a fact, for instance, that Mr Thorne always put a lamp in his window before he went out at night so as to be sure of finding his way back?”

  “It’s a point I brought out myself at the inquiry,” Hagen said. He had still been leaning on his spade as he talked, but now he struck it deep into the ground and moved away a little, turning his eyes towards the overhanging moor as if to obtain of it a clearer, better view to question it more closely on its secrets. “I didn’t think he ever forgot. It was the first thing I thought of when Mrs Upton—she was housekeeper at the rectory then—came running to tell me Mr Thorne hadn’t been home all night. I asked her at once if he had put his lamp in the window as usual. Well, he hadn’t. The lamp was cold and the curtains hadn’t been drawn. He must have forgotten, and forgotten the v
ery night he needed it most.”

  “Does Mr Day-Bell do the same thing?”

  “Oh, yes,” Hagen answered at once. “It was one of the first things I said when he came here, never to forget if he was called out at night or if he expected to be late getting home. Not that he ever goes for walks at night on the moor, as far as I know. I remember I said we didn’t want another disappearance like Mr Thorne’s.”

  “Then you still think Mr Thorne lost his way or met with an accident of some sort?”

  “Well, sir,” Hagen said, “what else is there for it?”

  “There was a long, careful search, wasn’t there?” Bobby asked in return. “Major Rowley doesn’t strike me as a man likely to give up while there was any hope of recovering the body. I should have thought it could have been found without too much difficulty.”

  “Ah, sir,” Hagen retorted, “you wouldn’t say that if you knew the moor. There’s bog up there where a man might soon sink in, and no trace left. There’s deep pits, where the sandy subsoil has sunk and if a man fell in and hurt himself and couldn’t move, and maybe the sandy sides caved in, there would be nothing to show. There’s patches of brushwood, too, and parts no man has visited since creation.” He turned his back to the moor and came again to his spade and took it up. “No, sir,” he said, “I shall always believe that Mr Thorne’s body lies not so far from where we stand. And I daresay it’s all the same to him whether it’s out there in bog or brushwood or sandy pit as if it were here in this churchyard, where he always said he wanted to lie at the end.” With a sudden change of tone, Hagen said: “The storm is passing over, after all. But perhaps it may come again.”

  “So it may,” Bobby agreed. “You never know. I had better be off while it’s still fine. Make good use of your opportunities while you can. Philosophy or common sense or both? Well, so far as I can see at the moment, we’ve come to a dead end unless we can find the murder weapon. But we shall go on trying in the hope of getting fresh information somehow. Or it may be the murderer’s nerve will crack if he feels the inquiry is being pressed hard and he gets to feel the strain intolerable.”

  “Coming forward to confess?” Hagen asked and almost smiled. “I can’t think that’s very likely to happen this time.”

  “Well, I don’t know that I think it very likely myself,” Bobby agreed. “But it does happen. Yes, it does happen. The burden becomes intolerable.”

  With that Bobby departed, and as he rode away on his motorcycle the last he saw of Hillings, as the dip in the road took it out of sight, was a glimpse of Hagen still standing by the Merton grave, still leaning on his spade, still deep in thought.

  CHAPTER XXV

  UNANSWERED QUESTION

  THE FIRST thing Bobby did on his return to Penton was to write out as careful and complete a record as he could contrive of the various interviews he had had during the day and of the conclusions and inferences that he thought could legitimately be drawn from them. A long and tedious task.

  That done, he had typed copies made and delivered to Major Rowley and Superintendent Evans for them to read and consider. With them, later on, he sat far into the night, deciding what steps should next be taken and what lines of inquiry it would be most profitable to follow up and to whom to allot them to be dealt with.

  The Superintendent was quite clear about it all. Item Sims was his man. Criminal record, done a bunk, known to have been in possession of weapon of type made use of. ‘That’s good enough for me,’ he said more than once, and Bobby made no attempt to controvert this, the plain, simple, common-sense view, since he knew well that nine times out of ten the simple, common-sense, down-to-earth view turns out to be the right one. But he did remind the other two, and with emphasis, that there were further, and more troubling, aspects of the case that should not be overlooked.

  “The disappearance of Mr Thorne has never been explained,” he pointed out. “Doesn’t it seem likely that comes in somewhere? Two such strange affairs in one small town? And no connection? Not one of them growing out of the other? I can’t think that probable.”

  Major Rowley, jealous for the reputation of Penton in all things, even in the providing of unsolved mysteries, inclined, too, on the whole to side with Evans—but not too openly—made a mild protest.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things that go on here in Penton. I don’t see myself why Thorne’s disappearance and the murder of Mr Pyle should have anything to do with each other. Anyhow, don’t you think one thing at a time is enough? Of course, there was all that mischievous nonsense you’ll have heard of, about it all happening so conveniently for Mr Day-Bell. I can assure you with the utmost confidence that we satisfied ourselves Mr Day-Bell was at home in bed all night when Mr Thorne vanished.”

  Bobby thought, but did not say, that ‘utmost confidence’ is not enough, unless there is solid proof as well, and of that, as far as he knew, there was none. Nor did he forget that, by his own admission, the older Day-Bell had been near the scene of the crime not very long before it was committed. Nor indeed—and this was not to be forgotten—that a threat to his son might have moved him more profoundly, to a greater and a fiercer anger than one aimed solely at himself. Since, then, it was less personal he might have held it, too, more justifiable, and therefore found it also less easy to resist. But these were speculations that only flitted uneasily through Bobby’s mind. Instead of giving them utterance, he turned to another aspect of this strange case and went on:

  “I don’t think either we ought to forget these papers buried with Janet Merton. Pyle seems to have stirred up some remarkably strong feeling by his talk of recovering them. Almost a mania with him, and in the end it brought him to his death.”

  “Well, that’s what we’ve got to deal with,” Evans put in. “I mean to say who killed him, not why.”

  “Oh, yes, quite so,” Bobby agreed. “But the ‘why’ might lead us to the ‘who’. There’s clear evidence the papers were really placed in Janet Merton’s coffin, and Hagen is very emphatic about it’s being impossible the grave could have been opened without his knowing. I think we can accept that?”

  The other two nodded assent.

  “If they were ever there, that’s where they are still,” Major Rowley said.

  “Vested interest,” Evans said, with something like a chuckle; “that’s what Hagen has in the Merton grave. Money to him, what with tourists and postcards and all. He keeps his eye on it.”

  “Hagen,” Bobby went on, “seems to suggest that Thorne met with some kind of fatal accident perhaps during a ramble on the moor when he couldn’t sleep. Something about it wouldn’t have happened if Thorne hadn’t for once failed to put a lighted lamp in his window to guide him home. Hagen appears convinced the body must still be there, probably not far off if only it could be found. But you told me a most thorough search was made and kept up for weeks?”

  “That’s right,” said Evans. “Every inch gone over with a fine-tooth comb, so to say. Besides us, half Penton was out on the moor every week-end till the weather got too bad.”

  “All the same, it’s possible Hagen is right about that, too,” Rowley said. “There’s bog on the moor and pot-holes and one thing and another. Yes, not far away, that’s likely enough. But exactly where—that’s different.”

  “The thing is,” put in Evans, who for some time had been thinking quite a lot about his bed, “what’s the best line to follow up?”

  “Oh, all of them,” declared Bobby at once. “One thing we have to go on is Mr Day-Bell’s statement that he saw Chrines on the night of the murder near the caravan, in the company of a woman. I can’t trace any woman likely to have been with Chrines. There’s Mrs Asprey, of course, and there’s that footprint might be hers. In fact, I don’t see who else can have made it. No proof, but that’s the snag all the time. I can’t get hold of a single bit of really relevant, satisfactory evidence for any of the possibilities the whole case is thick with. And that goes for my own pe
t idea as well.”

  “You’ve never said what that is exactly,” Rowley remarked, ill-temperedly for him, but then he, too, was growing increasingly ‘bed-conscious’.

  “I never like to put forward what are, after all, only nebulous ideas to the men I’m working with—not at least till I’m a lot clearer in my own mind than I am now,” Bobby explained. “No good risking putting them on a wrong track when they might hit on the right one if left alone. Facts are different. The more more of us know more facts, the better chance of getting somewhere. With facts it’s the interpretation that counts and their interplay between themselves—especially their interplay. It’s a fact, for example, that Sticker Sims has taken himself off.”

  “Easy to interpret that,” put in Evans, and, to himself, he thought, ‘All he’s just been saying—psychological stuff’.

  “What I suggest,” Bobby continued, “is for me to have another talk with Mrs Asprey. If it was actually a woman Day-Bell saw, she seems the only one for it, and if so, she may react. If she admits it, we can go on from there. If she denies it—well, we shall see. After that, the next thing will be to hear what Chrines has to say.”

  “Chrines?” asked Evans. “That’s the London chap who moons about all day and half the night with his poetry. Last man likely to have anything to do with any sort of violence. I reckon he would faint at the sight of blood. Long-haired, lily-handed, that’s him.”

  “You never know with poets, especially second-rate ones,” Bobby told him. “Frustrated blokes because they can’t get out what they feel in them. More than a touch of hysteria, too, in their make-up, same as women, and you know what hysterical women can work themselves up to.”

  “Yes, but,” Evans reminded him in turn, “you can out a poet with a straight to the chin. Brings ’em round all right when they wake up. You can’t with a woman,” he added—regretfully.