Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Did you ask her not to say she had seen you?”

  “Well, she couldn’t, could she? without letting out she was there, too.”

  “How long were you with her?”

  “Only a minute or two. You don’t think we sat down for a comfy chat, do you?”

  “We shall have to ask you to make a formal statement to Major Rowley,” Bobby said. “I should suggest it would be best for you to go to Penton and call on him there. There’s no need to attract more attention than necessary.”

  “I don’t see what for,” Chrines grumbled. “All right, if you think I ought to.”

  “There’s one other point I must bring up,” Bobby went on. “It may be important. You have in your possession what you described to me as ‘family papers’ and you said that Mr Pyle was pressing you to let him have them.”

  “He tried everything to get them from me. As if I would part with them. Not likely—not to him, anyhow.”

  “Are they still in your possession?”

  “Of course they are. What do you mean?”

  “Have you any objection to looking to make sure? We have information that papers of the same kind are being offered for sale.”

  Chrines sat staring, suddenly afraid—more than afraid—for to Bobby it seemed that all at once panic possessed him, panic that showed in his stricken face, in his wild, staring eyes. With a kind of muffled yell he jumped to his feet and scrambled, stumbled, staggered his way up the steep, narrow stairs that led from this room to the room above.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  WEAPON FOUND

  IN COMPLETE bewilderment, Bobby, like McKie, could only sit and stare, wondering why so sudden and so complete a loss of self-control. McKie said:

  “Well, that touched him on the raw, didn’t it?”

  Bobby said nothing. He was on his feet, listening to the noises going on in the room above. Now they ceased. He made a motion towards ascending the stairs to join Chrines above and then changed his mind. McKie said:

  “Well, why?”

  The silence overhead was broken by an outburst of shouting. The only word distinguishable seemed to be ‘Gone’. Then Chrines came tumbling down those steep bedroom stairs—literally tumbling, for at their foot he only just saved himself from going sprawling on his face.

  “They’ve gone,” he screamed, his voice high and shrill; “they aren’t there, they’ve gone! Oh, my God, what—what—was it you?” he cried; “was it?” He made a short, sudden rush towards Bobby and then stopped. “Was it?” he repeated, and then suddenly sat down and burst into tears. “What shall I do?” he sobbed. “I’ll kill myself.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, man, pull yourself together,” Bobby exclaimed impatiently. “What is it that’s gone? Papers? Letters? What?”

  “You get out, get out of my house,” Chrines shouted at him. “I’ll throw you out if you don’t,” he threatened weakly. “You’ve no right—have you got them?”

  “Where did you keep them?” Bobby asked. “I suppose you’re sure they’ve been taken? You’ve not simply mislaid them?”

  “They were in a box under the flooring under my bed,” Chrines answered. “No one could possibly have known, no one could possibly have found them there. Now they’ve gone. I’ll kill myself.”

  “Don’t be a bigger fool than you can help,” Bobby said unsympathetically. “Pull yourself together,” he repeated, “and tell us what’s really happened.”

  “Oh, you can talk, can’t you? It’s all you,” Chrines retorted. “Now it’s all over. I’ll kill myself,” he threatened again, and once more began to sob.

  “I suppose there may be getting some sense out of you presently,” Bobby said, as much to himself as to Chrines.

  He went up the stairs then to the bedroom above, wretched and squalid. The bed, on it a tumbled heap of not too clean blankets and sheets, had been pulled out of place. Where it had stood, the cheap, unswept linoleum covering the floor had been turned up, a portion of the boarding had been lifted, so revealing an empty space beneath. Near by, lying on its side, was a tin deed box, fitted with a cheap lock any expert thief could have opened in less than a minute with the aid of a hairpin. It was empty. Bobby picked it up carefully. There might, he supposed, be ‘dabs’ on it, though that he did not think likely. He looked round with some distaste. Traditional, a poet in a garret; but need the garret be so ill-cared for? Meticulous for rhyme, rhythm, scansion, why not for material surroundings as well? He shrugged his shoulders and supposed he would never understand the artistic temperament; but, then, he wasn’t an artist. He descended the stairs to the room below. McKie was alone now, busy scribbling in his note-book. He said:

  “Chrines made a sudden bolt for it. The last I saw he was pelting off towards the moor in top gear. Last thing he said was that he was going to kill himself. You don’t think he will, do you?”

  “Nothing less likely, I should say,” Bobby answered, but a little uneasily all the same.

  “These hysterical blokes, you never know,” McKie said. “What was in these family papers of his to upset him so?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Bobby said.

  “Oh, for the Lord’s sake, quit trying to be a blasted clam,” protested McKie. “It can’t be Pyle’s murder, can it? I mean, implicating him in some way. It must be Sims got them. Only then, why should the Duke be expected to buy what’s to do with Chrines? He can’t be the Duke’s by-blow, can he?”

  “You never know, do you?” Bobby said. “I shouldn’t put that into print, though, if I were you. Anyhow, ask the Duke first. Oh, and remember, nothing published till we’ve seen it. I’m having this deed-box tested for ‘dabs’. If it was Sims there won’t be any. Could you hang on a bit longer, in case Chrines comes back? I want to get to Penton to ask Rowley to send some of his best chaps out—his finger-print expert if he’s got one.”

  “It’ll be all right if I get the O.K. from Rowley, won’t it?” McKie asked innocently, knowing well he could get past Rowley what Bobby would never allow, and yet that Bobby could not very well seem to slight Rowley’s competence. “You needn’t worry,” he added, understanding instinctively that Bobby had realized what had been in his mind, “I can do an A. 1. exclusive innocent as new-born babes, and as hair-raising as new-born triplets to Papa.”

  Bobby said he hoped so, nodded farewell, and went out to his car. Every inhabitant of every cottage near was there, all alight with curiosity, all a-bubble with excitement, all telling each other all about it and none of them listening. When Bobby appeared they became at once as it were one huge incarnate stare, all their existence in their eyes as before it had been in their tongues. Bobby said briefly:

  “There’s been a burglary. Things of great value to Mr Chrines have been taken. He should be back shortly. I am sending out officers from Penton to make further inquiries.”

  “Was it him did it?” someone called.

  “Did what?” Bobby asked sharply. “Robbed himself, do you mean?”

  “It’s him as killed Mr Pyle you’re looking for, ain’t it?” the voice retorted. “What’s this bloke bunked off for?”

  “You had better all of you mind what you say,” Bobby warned them. “You can easily get yourselves into bad trouble if you aren’t careful. At the moment we’re looking for the burglar. I only hope he won’t turn out to be a local man.”

  This last suggestion he threw out, not because he in any way thought it likely, but since he could in no wise stop them from talking, in the hope that he might turn their talk into new channels, and so relieve Chrines from some of the pressure of neighbourly curiosity.

  But tongues were buzzing again almost before he drove off, and then he changed his mind. He had intended to drive straight back to Penton, but now he decided to visit Hagen first. He was still a little uneasy about Chrines’s intentions and there was no urgency over following up the theft of what Chrines had called his ‘family papers’. Who had taken them was, to Bobby’s mind, quite clear, though the obj
ect of the theft and the nature of the ‘family papers’ was much less so. Now it was in his mind that it might be useful to hear what Hagen thought of it all and to ask if he, who knew Chrines better than most, thought there was really any risk of Chrines’s carrying out his threat of suicide. Nor was Bobby altogether unaware that the longer McKie was kept waiting for the promised arrival of the West Mercian men, the longer he would be kept, as Bobby put it to himself, ‘out of mischief’.

  This time Hagen did not make an immediate appearance as hitherto had been his habit when he heard cars approaching. It was not, indeed, till Bobby had knocked a second time that Hagen came to the door.

  With only the barest word of greeting he ushered Bobby into the small front room, where he had evidently been busy writing. On the table by the window manuscript was lying, the ink still wet on the last page. He pushed a chair forward for Bobby and occupied himself gathering these various pages together, taking care apparently to be sure they were all in correct order. Bobby could see that on the page at the top of the little pile was written in large carefully formed letters: ‘Apologia’. With some care, Hagen put the MSS in a drawer of the table, carefully locking it.

  “It is not yet ready to be seen,” he said apologetically.

  “When it is,” Bobby asked “would it be for specialists or for just ordinary folk?”

  “Oh, I suppose in a way for both,” Hagen answered. “But I do rather anticipate that it will be widely read, and I expect long remembered. I’m a little afraid, though, that if I make it public—I expect I shall have to—it may overshadow my work in other directions.”

  “That would be a pity,” Bobby said. “A great pity,” he repeated, and he saw Hagen looking at him intently, as if wondering why he thought so. “I heard,” Bobby went on, “you were corresponding with a learned Jesuit on the Continent?”

  “We’ve exchanged a few letters,” Hagen admitted modestly. “He knows only a word or two of English and I know no Spanish at all, so we have to write to each other in Latin—the best of all languages for our purpose. English is the language of drama and of poetry, not of metaphysics.”

  “I never thought of it like that,” Bobby said.

  “Though it may be,” Hagen went on, “that what I am trying to work out has as much to do with poetry as with philosophy as a theory of knowledge. The relation of the eternal to the temporal, as Plato called it. The treatise I am working on, though perhaps I shall never complete it, is an attempt to co-ordinate all forms of knowledge by showing that knowledge goes beyond itself, as physics seems to be doing to-day.” He began to walk up and down the room as though the pressure on his mind was too great to allow him to be still. He resumed: “There’s the knowledge that we get in daily life, there’s the knowledge that grows as it were by feeding on itself in thinking, there’s the knowledge that is given us in the visions of the mystics, in drugs, as well. For I think these, too, lift the curtain that hides from us other forms of truth. Have you ever thought that the rats and pink elephants seen in delirium tremens may have an objective reality—not as material elephants or rats, but as existents translated into such forms as he who sees them can understand? Primitive peoples may have been nearer to the truth than we are in thinking that the madman stood in some special relation to the unknown powers.”

  “I’m afraid all that is beyond me,” Bobby said. “Even at Oxford I was always inclined to fade away when Plato and people like him came up. Couldn’t see what it was all about.”

  “Yes, I know many people feel like that,” Hagen said. “Only somehow I wanted to tell you what I was trying to do. I thought it important. I still do—more important than anything else in the world. I was trying to break into realms of thought where no one yet has ever trodden. Well, now I think I never shall, never be able to get my treatise finished. My kind Jesuit friend is warning me against speculations, that may lead me and others dangerously astray, he says, and imperil my own soul. Am I a kind of Faust? He seems to hint it. Perhaps my soul is in greater peril already than he ever dreams. Who was it said Philosophy might turn Procuress to the Lords of Hell?” Abruptly Hagen sat down. The strange fever of the mind that had seemed before to possess him passed and was over. He said: “I’m sorry. I wanted to impress you, I think. Show off. Swank. Not merely the learned sexton, and so wonderful he actually knows Latin. But you didn’t come just to listen to me. I’m sorry I got so carried away.”

  “In point of fact,” Bobby said, “I came about Chrines and his ‘family papers’, as he calls them, that Pyle was trying to get him to part with. They’ve been stolen, and when Chrines found out he went completely off his head—raved, wept. Finally he rushed out of the house shouting that he was going to kill himself. You know him better than most. Do you think there’s any real fear he may commit suicide?”

  “I certainly shouldn’t have thought so,” Hagen said after a long pause. “No. But I don’t know. Hard to tell. I think he might try, but I fancy he might make sure first that he wouldn’t succeed. Do you know where he went?”

  “He was heading for the moor, fast as he could go,” Bobby answered. “I hope there’s no chance of what happened to Mr Thorne happening to him.”

  Hagen did not reply at first. He put out his hand to the drawer in which he had placed the MSS he had been busy with when Bobby arrived. He pulled at it, and when it did not open he seemed to remember he had locked it, and he took his hand away.

  “There’s a map of the moor I have somewhere,” he said. “I must get it. The boy must be found. Not that there’s any fear of what happened to Mr Thorne happening to him. If the cycle of events does repeat itself, certainly not so exactly as that. I know the moor as well as anyone, and I’ll go and look for him this afternoon.”

  “That will be a great help,” Bobby said. “I’m going back to Penton now, and I’ll ask Major Rowley if he can spare any of his men to help in the search. I am wondering what these ‘family papers’ really contained. Chrines never talked about them, did he?”

  “Certainly not to me,” Hagen answered. “Nor to anyone else, as far as I know. I did gather he depended on them to prove his claim to be a son of Stephen Asprey and Janet Merton, but I don’t know, and I never asked. He used to hint sometimes that they would make the biography of Stephen Asprey he was writing as famous as Boswell’s Johnson. If he really thought that, and then he lost them—that might be what upset him so.”

  “It might be that,” Bobby agreed. “Yes, it might be something like that. Anyhow, I’m relieved to know you don’t think Chrines is of the suicide type. It was rather worrying me. A poor way out, don’t you think? Just running away from it all.”

  “Or running to meet it?” Hagen suggested. “When death is sure, when you know your order of discharge has been signed and dated, why not? If death is waited with resignation—good. If it is greeted so to say on the doorstep, with a free man’s proud welcome, surely that is better?” Abruptly Hagen changed the subject without waiting for any reply. “Did you know the revolver used has been found?” he asked.

  “No, indeed,” Bobby exclaimed. “That is important. Are you sure? If it is true, it should bring us a good deal nearer a solution.”

  “It was those kids Major Rowley promised a reward to,” Hagen explained. “Some of them left their bicycles here. For me to look after, I suppose. Two or three of them came running back an hour or two ago, and one of them was carrying a revolver. I told them to take it to the police. I told them to be careful with it, in case it went off. They were much too excited to listen, and I only hope they haven’t managed to kill themselves or anyone else. You think it ought to help?”

  “Now it only needs the decisive proof I think I know where to look for,” Bobby said slowly. “Of one thing I am sure: I shall never be nearer than I am now.”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  NEW INFORMATION

  THOUGH A little relieved by Hagen’s confirmation of his own belief that Chrines was in no way likely to carry out his threat to kill himsel
f, Bobby, driving back to Penton, was not entirely at ease. He was inclined to think that in the present mental condition of that young man there was no rash or foolish action of which he was not capable.

  He tried, as he often did, to think himself into the other fellow’s skin, but this time found it difficult—impossible, indeed. Too great a dissimilarity, he supposed, between their two temperaments. Far apart as the east is from the west, as a better poet than Chrines has put it, were he and Chrines apart in disposition.

  All the same, as he drove on an idea came into his mind, and when he reached Two Mile End he stopped his car and once more went round to that side door Mrs Asprey used. There, for proof that his guess had been good, a motor-cycle stood leaning against the wall of the house, and Bobby, who noticed and memorized car and motor-cycle numbers almost automatically, knew it at once for that of the machine he had seen Chrines using. He knocked, and, somewhat to his surprise, Mrs Asprey opened the door almost immediately. With more civility than she was always inclined to show, she invited him in, bustled to find him a chair, and instead of the broom and slop-pail with which on other occasions she had seemed inclined to welcome visitors, produced a box of cigarettes, and offered him a light.

  “Very kind of you,” Bobby said, warily accepting this show of unexpected hospitality and wondering what it meant. “I suppose you’ve heard of this latest development?”

  “What is that?” she asked cautiously.

  “Hasn’t Mr Chrines told you?” Bobby countered. The roar of a motor engine became audible. “There he goes, doesn’t he?” he added. “He might have waited a minute or two. He can hardly be in such a hurry as all that.”

  Mrs Asprey looked both disconcerted and angry; and not until the sound of the engine had died away and Bobby was still sitting there, instead of rushing off in pursuit, as she had at first expected, did she turn on him to say with undiminished anger: