“Did Sticker Sims do the beating up himself, or did he ask you to fix it for him?” Bobby asked, and not too amiably.
“Now, Mr Owen,” protested the other, hurt and disappointed, “you oughtn’t to say a thing like that, and me that out of Christian charity—”
“Cut the Christian charity line,” Bobby ordered. “You’ve got about as much of that in you as a bottle of poison has of good health, and remember, this is a murder investigation—beatings up when it’s men like Sticker Sims easily lead to murder, and if you get mixed up in that sort of thing we shall soon be finding out more about you than we know at present—and that’s plenty.”
“Mr Owen, sir,” exclaimed Black, really disturbed now, “murder’s a thing I don’t hold by, and never will. If it’s killing, I always tell the boys, keep away from here or count me in with the busies. Murder’s a thing you can’t ever hardly get absolution for, not unless you’ve owned up, and where would you be then?”
The reply being obvious, Bobby did not attempt to supply it. Instead he said:
“Well, you’ve been warned. Come along. Where is he?”
Obediently Black led the way upstairs into a room even more squalid and ill-cared for than the one at Hillings, and there, on a tumble-down bed, Bobby saw a battered, bandaged, bruised Chrines, dozing uneasily.
“I’ll send an ambulance for him immediately,” Bobby said. “You’ll probably hear more about this when we can get a statement from him.”
“The poor lad!” Mr Black said, sympathy fairly oozing from him. “I’m doubting if he’ll be able to say much. Or want to. When I asked him what had happened he just had the strength to whisper as it was a fight about a girl he had picked up, but for the good God’s sake not to say a word, or disgraced he would be and disinherited for ever more, clean ruined and cast out, he said, if his family ever heard.”
“Got it all worked out, haven’t you?” Bobby growled. “Are those his clothes over there? Don’t make a mistake and give them to a second-hand dealer instead of to the ambulance men. What was in his pockets?”
“Not a thing on him,” Black declared. “Plucked like a turkey at Christmas when ready for the oven. Who is going to pay me for all the trouble I’ve took, and the doctor as well, and the brandy I gave him liberal and—”
“Take it out of what Sims gave you to fix it for him,” Bobby suggested. “Leave you plenty, besides what you found in his pockets. They would be empty all right though—after you had been through them,” and Mr Black looked at him reproachfully.
“You’re a hard, unbelieving man, Mr Owen,” he sighed.
CHAPTER XXX
VITAL CLUE
BOBBY LEFT the Tom Black café, sadly sure that no responsibility for what had happened would ever be brought home to that careful and cautious ‘back-room’ operator, little consoled by the wishful thought that some day he was bound to slip up, but also a good deal relieved that Chrines had escaped with nothing worse than a bad beating up and the loss of all the contents of his pockets.
The arrangements for Chrines’s removal to a hospital, and for a more thorough examination of his injuries to be made there, were soon completed, and Bobby went on to call on Professor Long—‘old Tom Long’ to Mr McKie—said to have read all the verse ever published in the British Isles and to know most of it by heart, and said also to be the worst golfer in the whole wide world. Both statements were probably exaggerated, since it seems that in golf at least there is always beneath the deepest depth a deeper still.
Ushered into the study of the professor, previously warned of his visit, Bobby saw a spacious book-lined room with a large table by the window piled high with books and manuscripts; the manuscripts all neatly arranged in heaps, often labelled, the books with many slips of paper protruding from their pages, presumably for convenience of reference. Running across the room from one booklined wall to the other was a clear stretch of carpet that looked very much as if on it golf strokes were often practised—a presumption heightened by two clubs—a driver and a putter—lying thereon. At first Bobby thought the room unoccupied, but then there emerged from beneath the table by the window a little thin man with enormous spectacles perched on a nose so enormous that one was hardly aware that he had any other features at all. He was holding a golf-ball he had apparently been engaged in retrieving, gave it an affectionate polish with a large red hand, and held it up for Bobby to observe that a long stretch of strong elastic depended from it.
“My own invention,” he said proudly.
“Indeed,” said Bobby, polite, but puzzled.
“My own invention,” the professor repeated. “You attach a suitable piece of elastic to the ball, the other end of the elastic you fasten to the floor. You can then practise drive or putt with complete safety to other objects,” and his glance wandered rather apprehensively round the room, as if to assure himself that nothing this time had been broken. “Unfortunately the elastic does not invariably hold. Are you a golfer, Mr Owen?”
“Well, really, I don’t find I have much time for outdoor games,” Bobby admitted.
“A pity,” pronounced Mr Long. “Golf provides innumerable, ever-changing problems. Practice in solving them would surely aid you in solving others that no doubt present themselves to you from time to time.”
“They do,” murmured Bobby. “But of a different character, perhaps.”
“A problem of whatever character remains a problem,” pronounced the professor, and without giving Bobby time either to agree or dissent, went on: “I find it a great relief, when dealing with the sources of some difficult passage, to try a few practice strokes in the room here. It is what I was doing just now, only the elastic broke. But you haven’t come to talk about golf, have you?” and Bobby thought that as the professor said this there sounded in his voice a lingering hope that possibly that might turn out to be the real object of Bobby’s visit. “About the Pyle murder, isn’t it? I am immensely intrigued to hear from McKie that you think I might be able to help. I can’t imagine in what way. But McKie tells me you and he often work together in cases of exceptional difficulty.”
“It’s what he would say,” growled Bobby, not at all pleased by this description of their very occasional association.
“McKie,” observed Mr Long, “is a most interesting companion—though probably the worst golfer in existence. You should see the divots he leaves behind him and tries to pretend other people are responsible for.”
“He would,” commented Bobby, and then produced the copy of Chrines’s last book of verse with which he had taken the precaution to provide himself. “I am told I may be sure you’ve read this?”
“Certainly,” answered Mr Long. “I imagine no verse is published here that doesn’t come to me.” He waved a hand round the book-lined room. “The best are here,” he said. “The ‘also rans’ are in the attic upstairs. Chrines is there. I am having new shelves put in next week. But the Saturday Supplement was unduly severe on him in its review of that last book of his. Not mine, though I got the credit for it. Saturday Supplement reviews are not signed, you know [Bobby didn’t], and it’s not supposed to be the thing either to confirm or deny. ‘No comment’, as the politicians say. There are distinct gleams of talent here and there in all Chrines’s stuff, and there is one superb sonnet that ought to live—that will live. ‘Lament for Life’, it is called, and it begins: ‘The winter comes with days of wrath’. A fine introduction to the thundering lines that follow. Yes, such a magnificent thing would alone justify Chrines’s whole existence—if he had written it. Unfortunately he didn’t.”
“Didn’t write it?” Bobby asked, puzzled. “Isn’t it in this book of his?”
“Oh, yes, it’s there all right,” agreed Mr Long. “But he didn’t write it; he pinched it. Did you know he was an illegitimate son of Stephen Asprey’s?”
“I knew he made the claim,” Bobby answered, “and that Janet Merton was his mother.”
“He invented that bit,” the professor explained. �
��You know about Stephen Asprey having his last poems and letters buried with Janet Merton? A great pity. It ought to be put right. Chrines thought it would be a good idea—more romantic, better publicity value—if he claimed her for his mother. He tries hard to make himself believe it. In fact, he is the product of one of Asprey’s affairs—a Gladys Chrines it was, the wife of an innkeeper who doesn’t seem to have minded much so long as she stayed to help him run the inn. I understand his birth certificate shows Mr Chrines as his father.”
“Legally, he is so,” Bobby answered. “A child born to a married woman is assumed to be that of her husband unless there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary. May I ask how you come to know this particular sonnet is the work of Asprey himself, and not of Chrines?”
“Well, there’s the quality of the thing. Not conclusive, you say. It might be a sudden inspiration. You remember the man who produced one immortal line—‘a rose-red city, half as old as time’ and never wrote another word worth remembering? It might have been something like that. The Muses have their passing favourites they pick up and forget almost simultaneously. But this time I happen to know. Asprey showed it me himself when we met at some literary dinner or another. Critics had been saying for some time that his best work was behind him, and he asked me if I thought that showed any falling off. I didn’t, and I said so. Almost the last time I saw him. It was immediately after his first meeting with Janet Merton, and I always think it was in the glow and excitement of that meeting—she must have been a remarkable woman—that he regained his poetic vision. It didn’t last. I don’t think he ever wrote anything else worth anything, and I believe he knew it, and that’s why he wanted his later work buried, so that no one should ever know how it had fallen off. I don’t know anything about the letters, of course. His genius may suddenly have turned to them. It may be that in them it found its last, its true, expression. I would give a lot to have a chance to read them.”
“Have you ever mentioned this before?” Bobby asked.
“No. You mean I should have. I know. My duty. An impudent fraud. Literary treason. Unforgivable. I ought to have denounced it at once. Well, I didn’t, and I don’t mean to. The smoking flax I shall not quench. The young man has gleams of talent—very faint, very small. They may die out altogether as he gets older. Very possible. They may develop, and Lord knows there isn’t so much poetic talent in the country just now that we can afford to throw any away. Besides—” He paused and looked at Bobby with his head a little to one side. “Besides, I have no incontestable proof to offer, only my own memory. Anything that can by any possibility be disputed, and that you say in public, you must be prepared to prove up to the hilt. You can’t imagine,” he assured Bobby earnestly, “how difficult it is to produce absolutely fool-proof evidence no one can possibly pick a hole in.”
“I suppose it must be very difficult indeed,” Bobby admitted meekly. “How do you think the sonnet got into Chrines’s hands if it was only written after the first meeting with Janet Merton? After, that is, the connection with Mrs Chrines had been broken off?”
“Well, that is a puzzle,” admitted the professor. “That’s what I should at once be asked to explain if I said in public that it was Asprey’s work, and not Chrines’s. Land me in a libel action, perhaps. All the same I’m perfectly certain the sonnet in Chrines’s book is the one Asprey showed me. I wrote it down from memory as soon as I got home. But it’s in my own handwriting, of course, so that’s no good as proof. I had no idea any other copy was in existence. Asprey,” he went on, “would fall in love in the most casual way. He would be thrown into ecstasies of devotion by a glimpse of a gloved hand on a railway carriage door, and then at once be all agog to follow in the next train going the same way. Or else to sit down and write a poem about it—‘To an Unknown’s Glove’, perhaps. Work it off that way. No, I can’t imagine how young Chrines got hold of it. The ‘Lament for Life’, I mean. I suppose he must have found a copy lying about somewhere. If it’s true he was beginning to write Asprey’s biography and was trying to get hold of any papers of his, he may have come across a copy in that way. If that is what happened, he would know it had never been published and—well, ‘conveyed the wise it call’.”
“Shortened to ‘Won it’ to-day,” Bobby remarked.
“I prefer the older expression,” said the professor seriously. “‘Won it’ is a little vulgar, don’t you think? Of course, more concise, and this is an age of speed; and then it does avoid the rather crude ‘Picking and stealing’.”
“Yes, there’s that,” Bobby agreed. “Personally, I prefer ‘picking and stealing’. Professional prejudice, perhaps. Thank you very much for what you’ve told me. I mustn’t detain you any longer. It has been most interesting.”
“I am only sorry,” Mr Long said apologetically, “that I have not been able to give you more assistance.”
“Your assistance has been most valuable,” Bobby assured him. “You’ve given me a vital clue. Taken with what I knew or suspected before, I think it should enable me to make an arrest almost immediately.”
CHAPTER XXXI
INCREDIBLE
IT WAS much later in the day, after Bobby had got back from a prolonged visit to the Home Office—at the moment, in fact, when he was beginning to think of going home—that he received the unwelcome information that Mr McKie of the Morning Daily was below and wanting to see him.
“Oh, all right,” Bobby said resignedly. “Fetch him along. I wonder what he’s up to now?”
He soon knew, for as soon as McKie entered the room, he said:
“Did you know Item Sims has disappeared?”
“My dear, good man,” Bobby protested. “Did you know Queen Anne was dead?”
“Yes, but,” McKie said, “now it’s his pals, not you chaps, who don’t know what’s happened and want to find him.”
“Do they expect him to broadcast his movements,” Bobby asked, “when he knows how badly we want him? ‘Silence is best’ is his motto just now.”
“Did you know Chrines got himself badly beaten up last night?” McKie asked, disregarding this.
“Is that the latest news hot from the Press?” Bobby demanded. “I found him in Black Tom’s café early this morning, and now he’s in hospital. Sims, of course, but not in person. Most likely he was busy fixing an alibi. Explains why his pals have lost him for the time.”
“I could tell you the names of the two who did the job, as far as that goes,” McKie said. “The point is, Sims didn’t turn up to pay them as he had promised.”
“Oh, he will,” replied Bobby. “Nothing in that. Got prevented somehow—or drunk. They’ll get their money all right. Gangsters don’t bilk each other unless it’s very much worth while. They know what would happen next dark night if they tried it on.”
“It’s not only them,” persisted McKie. “It’s his wife as well: wife pro forma, of course, but they’ve stuck together for twenty or thirty years—very happily except when fighting, and it’s not always been Item who went to hospital afterwards. But they trust each other utterly, and I don’t believe anything would make either of them let the other down.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Bobby admitted. “Like lost dogs when the other’s away. Not the sort of thing you can put before a jury. But I expect it will count when all’s added up. What about it?”
“She’s really worried, afraid, I think,” McKie explained. “First she got drunk and said a lot, and now she’s cold sober and saying nothing. When drunk she seems to have been telling her friends that no one would get away with anything, even if dukes and princes and such like—justice she would have one way or another.”
“Last thing I should have expected her to want, either for herself or her pro-forma hubby,” Bobby interrupted. “Though of course no one ever squeals louder than the crook when he gets done down himself.”
“Oh, listen, can’t you?” McKie snapped. “I’ve got a hunch there really is something wrong. Mrs Item Sims doesn’t work hersel
f up the way she is doing at present for nothing. She’s an old hand. Another thing. Sims was last seen in Blegborough.”
“Are you sure? How do you know?” Bobby asked, beginning now to be more impressed.
“I told you I worked an assignment for one of our chaps to hang about there and keep his eyes open, in case anything broke. Can’t afford to neglect chances. But then some jackass in the office—that’s the trouble with Morning Daily: never know who is really responsible for anything—got him back. Luckily there’s a local bloke on tap—The Blegborough Express-Mail—and he reports a man answering Sims’s description was in Blegborough day before yesterday, had drinks in one or two pubs, asked the way to Blegborough Castle, appeared nervous, was last seen on his way there, and nothing known of him since. There it is. Wife worried about him and pals worried about their pay. Papers were stolen from Chrines—probably by Sims—and their loss put Chrines into such a sweat he panicked. Threats of blackmail made, and the Duke very upset, and may think the honour of his house and of his dead wife, and his own safety, all involved. Well, what does all that add up to?”
“To something quite incredible,” Bobby answered, “so we may take it that the addition is wrong.”
“Where?” asked McKie.
“Oh, well,” Bobby said.
“Nothing’s incredible,” pronounced McKie.
“No, it isn’t, is it?” Bobby agreed. “Not when it happens.”
Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 23
