Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Last trick to us,” Bobby said with satisfaction. “Good work by your chap. Good work by you in sending him off at once.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll tell him you said so if I may. Oh, and now Sanders wants to know if he can put in for a day’s extra leave in consideration of what he’s been through.”

  “Certainly he can,” Bobby answered. “Whether he will get it is another question. Nothing like trying though.”

  Ford did not think this sounded very encouraging, but more as if Bobby did not consider that Sanders had handled the situation with any marked competence. Well, he knew Bobby was always apt to take a severe view of failure—his own or that of others. No business of his, though, Ford decided, and went on.

  “In my view, Groan is a good deal more mixed up in this than he lets on. Knows more than he says. Could we call him a suspect?”

  “Well, hardly,” Bobby said, though such a thought had certainly not been altogether absent from his thoughts. “Not as much as others, anyhow. Nothing much to go on. Suspicions are only signposts. Don’t tell you how to get there.”

  “It’s this way, sir,” continued Ford. “If you agree I would like to make a few inquiries about Miss FitzGerald. I have an idea she turned up some time back when we had in Irish Joe on an assault charge. She lied herself black in the face and him into a discharge. And now she’s in with Groan and there’s the way he keeps popping in and out.”

  “Trying to wipe our eye by getting in first, or so he says,” Bobby answered. “And now there’s this reward business. Three thousand pounds is enough to set anyone off.”

  “Yes, sir, I see that,” Ford agreed. “Er—would it be all right with you if I went ahead?”

  “Certainly,” Bobby answered at once. “You can say so if you like.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ford said gratefully. “I don’t know if you’ve heard Irish Joe goes over big with the women. Ugly brute, and they can’t resist him. The more he knocks them about the more they come back and ask for more.”

  “It’s like that sometimes,” Bobby remarked. “Well, go ahead.”

  “It’s just an idea,” Ford repeated as he got up to go. “Most likely it’ll come to nothing.” At the door he turned and said: “It might cost a fiver or more and then turn out a dud in the end.”

  Bobby regarded him doubtfully. He was beginning to grow a little suspicious.

  “You haven’t told me yet what it is,” he said, now with a touch of severity.

  “Well, I did think perhaps I had better not,” Ford admitted.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know that I’m sure you would altogether approve,” came the rather hesitating reply.

  “Oh,” said Bobby, taken aback for once. “Oh well, don’t break the rules. Remember that. The unforgivable sin—unless you get away with it. I suppose I have myself, but only very small rules in a very small way and always with some kind of over-cover excuse. If it’s the fiver you’re thinking of—well, you know as well as I do what expense sheets are. Mine always seem to produce query marks by a kind of spontaneous growth,” and both men now looked as depressed as a housewife contemplating the latest rise in the cost of living.

  Then Ford departed and Bobby devoted a few moments to wondering what he had in mind.

  “One thing—he’s not afraid of responsibility,” Bobby told himself, “and that generally means promotion—or coming a cropper.”

  With this somewhat uneasy reflection, Bobby turned to the consideration of the reports that had so far come in from those engaged in the resumed talks with members of the S.B.G. staff he had thought it advisable should be started again. It seemed, he noticed, that many of them had been willing to talk more freely than before, some perhaps from anxiety lest they themselves should come under suspicion if they were thought too reticent; others genuinely concerned for the honour and reputation of the S.B.G.; some again merely eager to voice their own opinions; and no doubt all three motives in different degrees in most of them.

  Nevertheless little of interest emerged till it began to appear, at first by a casual mention, then by more definite statement, that in the labyrinth of passages and cellars running beneath the Gallery there was one cellar always locked, to it the Director himself alone possessing a key. But Sir Walter might well have a dozen different and substantial reasons for keeping one of the cellars locked up. All the same, a little curious; and then came one or two other vague hints that the Director spent a rather strange amount of time down in these cellars for no very apparent reason.

  Already Bobby had noticed that Sir Walter was not altogether liked or trusted by his staff. Well, heads of staffs are not always appreciated as they themselves feel they should be by their subordinates. Bobby devoted one brief moment here to a wan and wistful hope that he was—at least in some small measure. But it did really seem, though of course never explicitly stated, that Sir Walter had somehow managed occasionally to find cause to display that talent for intrigue, for turning to his own advantage the ideas and labours of others, of which Mr. Atts had complained so bitterly and on account of which he had apparently sworn a revenge he would now never achieve.

  There was a growing feeling of uneasiness in Bobby’s mind as he turned back to read again such reports, only a few, as he had put aside for further consideration. One of these was that on Hyams—brief and satisfactory. Hyams had nothing but good to say of all, of his fellows, his job, his superiors, from Sir Walter down to the head attendant. But one thing attracted Bobby’s attention. The address given was Mirable Road, Battersea, and that, as Bobby knew, was a street of small out-of-date houses, occupied generally by those who either couldn’t or wouldn’t keep a job for long.

  Yet Hyams had a fairly good, regular job, and Sir Walter had mentioned that he possessed a car of his own and had once won a big football pool prize so that he was comparatively well off. His car, too, had proved extremely useful to him as he had a long way to come to work from where he lived in a place where public transport was both difficult and complicated. And had there not been a story of an accident? A collision with another car somewhere near—Gravesend, was it?

  All a little peculiar, Bobby thought, and Bobby always cast a wary eye on the peculiar. After all, he had known the peculiar to turn out rather more than peculiar. He decided he would pay a visit as soon as he could to Mirable Road; for he had, he knew, on occasion noticed small things that had meant nothing to others, but to him, and to the success of an inquiry, a very great deal. However, at this point of his meditations Ford again appeared, this time with the information that Mr. Groan was there and asking if he could see Mr. Owen for a few minutes.

  “Claims it’s important,” Ford said, and added unwillingly, “I suppose he may have dug up something.”

  “Oh, bring him in by all means,” Bobby said resignedly, for he had been on the point of going home. “Rule No 1—always hear a man when he’s willing to talk—even when he has nothing to say.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ford, as he always did when Bobby said something he did not quite understand.

  Then he retired and returned soon with Mr. Groan who was looking as smug as the proverbial cat that has just swallowed the canary.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  MIRABLE ROAD

  BOBBY GREETED HIS visitor very amiably, offered the ritual cigarette, and settled down to listen. Thus encouraged, Groan began, still with the same air of modest triumph beneath a veneer of apology for venturing to offer help to the Yard. He said:

  “I rather think that perhaps I have run across one or two things you might like to hear. I don’t know, of course. Nothing like proof. But I do say it’s a clear pointer. If it is followed up, as I rather think you may consider well worth while, it’s quite on the cards it may give you what you want to clear it all up.”

  “Bravo,” said Bobby. “That’s what we want—clear it all up. Needs it pretty badly.”

  “Did you know,” Groan continued, “that in the basement of the S.B.G., where they stor
e pictures they haven’t room to show, one of the cellars is kept locked and that Sir Walter Welton is the only man who has a key to it, no one else? Or that he has taken recently to spending a good deal of time down there, and no one seems to know quite what he’s up to?”

  “Oh yes,” Bobby said. “Yes. One or two of these reports”—he paused to indicate the pile on his desk—“say something like that. Why?”

  “Well, queer, isn’t it?” Groan replied, both looking and feeling considerably deflated. “What I always say is when things is queer you can bet a pennorth of peanuts there’s something queerer still behind it.”

  “So you can,” agreed Bobby. “Only what? How did you get to hear?”

  “Chatting to one of the chaps at the South Bank Gallery,” Groan explained. “He let out they were all wondering why Sir Walter was being down there so often just now. Well, what for?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Bobby told him. “But I can imagine a dozen reasons. No way of finding out. No grounds even for asking questions. Minding my own business, he might say. No grounds for taking any action whatever.”

  “Red tape,” pronounced Groan contemptuously.

  “That’s right,” agreed Bobby cheerfully. “Have another cigarette? You’ve let yours go out. By the way, which of the Gallery staff told you all this and when and where?”

  “Early Hyams they call him,” Groan answered. “He’s generally in the room where the ‘Girl Peeling Apples’ used to hang before it was swiped. I got him talking. Let on I was a Press man—promised him his name in the papers and a write up. That always fetches ’em.”

  “So it does,” agreed Bobby, nodding assent, and now Groan produced another piece of information, but this time with less confidence, for fear he had again been forestalled.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on the Gallery,” he said. “Sir Walter came back in his car last night after closing hours. He let himself in with his key. He was there till past midnight. When he left he took a suitcase with him—heavy, too, by the way he carried it. What was in it?” He paused, waiting for a reply. It did not come. He went on. He said: “Secrecy. At night, late. Suspicious.”

  To this, Bobby nodded assent. He was inclined to agree. Difficult to think of any reasonable cause for such mysterious visits in the middle of the night. Disturbing, too, mildly annoying as well, that it was a private inquiry agent, and not one of the police, who had noticed it, and was now reporting the incident. Not that there had been any neglect of duty. Both the men on the beat and the Flying Squad men had been warned to keep a special watch on the Gallery, but this watch had not been continuous—beats had to be patrolled and Flying Squad men to be on the lookout for any call that might come at any moment—nor had allowance been made for nocturnal entries and exits by the Director himself. He, of course, knew every detail of the building and its approaches, and knew also equally well the duties and the routine of a watchman down to the exact hour and minute when he had to record his presence on the time clock.

  “Even if we keep closer watch and it happens again I don’t know what we can do,” Bobby confessed. “Nothing improper or illegal, or even so very unusual for that matter, in a man returning to his office to work late. There’s an exhibition of American Art coming on and that’ll mean a lot of work, all behind schedule very likely with all this worry. Sir Walter may simply be trying to catch up. We shall have to wait for developments.”

  “I,” said Mr. Groan superbly, “don’t wait for ’em, I make ’em.”

  “Well, don’t burn your fingers in the making,” Bobby snapped, finding it quite intolerable to be patronised by this scrubby little scamp of a private inquiry agent. But his sense of justice forced him to add: “What you’ve said may be a great help and we won’t forget it. It may be important, I don’t know, or it may not. We must try to spare men for an all-night watch, though it’ll be difficult.”

  “What about tailing him—Sir Walter, I mean,” suggested Groan next. “Plain as a pennorth of peanuts he’s got something in that suitcase he doesn’t want known about. Easy, him having his car, to go round by one of the bridges and tip it over into the river. What’s to prevent him?”

  “Nothing,” agreed Bobby, “Only we could fish it out again.”

  “Incriminating evidence,” Groan said slowly. “At first I thought it might be the picture they’ve lost. But he could have gone off with that any time. Wrapped it up in brown paper and put it under his arm. Mr. Owen, look at it this way. Find your motive and there’s your man. That’s sound sense. Who had a stronger motive than Sir Walter Welton? Tell me that. Mr. Atts was a sword of damnation, as they say, hung over his head by a thread. Mr. Atts, dead, meant Sir Walter safe. Plain as peanuts. That’s what I say. What I want to know is what’s been going on in that cellar that’s kept locked and for why? And what was in that suitcase as was taken away in the middle of the night?”

  “You mean you think Sir Walter may have done away with Atts and hidden his body in this cellar?” Bobby asked gloomily. “If he did, it must be still there. Doesn’t seem likely. Anyhow, he certainly hadn’t it in the suitcase you saw him take away.”

  “No, only bits of it,” Groan retorted; and after that grisly suggestion, feeling probably that any further remark would be an anti-climax, he went off, leaving Bobby in a very disturbed state of mind.

  Indisputable, of course, that none had a stronger motive for removing Mr. Atts than had Sir Walter. Except Philip Shirley and Mr. Bardolph. But then it is not always the strongest motive that issues in the most violent deed. A private quarrel over some comparative trifle. A moment of irritation, a hasty blow repented of as soon as struck, and the deed is done. There was the possibility, too, one Bobby had never lost sight of, that a professional criminal, hired to secure the lost picture from its place in the S.B.G., had kept it himself instead of handing it over to his employer, and that that employer had been effectively silenced if he had protested too loudly or too long. A dozen other possibilities, ideas, theories, were buzzing in Bobby’s brain, nor could he succeed in all this labyrinth of possibilities in finding the right path that would lead him to the truth. Nor indeed could he succeed, as he generally could, in leaving all these doubts and worries on the other side of the door when he closed it behind him and took the homeward road.

  But at home he did not stay long. All through dinner he kept very quiet, so quiet and abstracted indeed was his mood that Olive grew uneasy, scenting as she did that a crisis was approaching. When he left his coffee untasted, and began to move towards the telephone, she could not resist uttering a little wail of distress.

  “Can’t you ever leave that horrid thing alone?” she demanded.

  “My faithful Dr. Watson,” Bobby explained, giving the instrument an affectionate pat. Then he put back the receiver he had already picked up and went back to his chair.

  “I’ve got to go out,” he said. “It won’t be long but it may be important. I was going to ask for one of the women police to meet me in Battersea. How about you, instead? I might be recognized if I went alone, a plain-clothes man might be spotted, and I don’t want to give any alarm. It’s where one of the S.B.G. attendants lives—Mirable Road, No. 13—and I want to know if he is there this evening.”

  “What about the washing up?” Olive asked doubtfully.

  “Oh, we’ll do that when we get back,” Bobby promised. “We won’t be late. Not an all-night job.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Olive said, put the coffee on the kitchen stove to keep hot, retired to put on her outdoor things, and returned. “I’m ready if you are,” she announced.

  A bus took them to Battersea. They got down at a stop within a few minutes walk of Mirable road. There at the corner Bobby waited while Olive walked on till she came to No. 13. Very soon she was back to join Bobby and together they walked away, fairly sure that so short a visit would have passed unnoticed by even the most suspicious of the not too reputable residents in this unsavoury street. Olive said:

  “When I k
nocked a woman came to the door. She was small and fat and untidy and looked as if she drank more than was good for her. I asked if she was Mrs. Hyams and she just stared, and then I asked if Mr. Hyams was at home? She said: ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Then she banged the door in my face before I could say another word. But I noticed there was a telephone on a table in the passage; I shouldn’t think many houses in a street like that have a telephone.”

  “No,” Bobby answered. “Not unless it’s a bookmaker or one of his runners. I saw there was an overhead wire. Well?”

  “I thought I saw her look at it before she banged the door,” Olive said.

  “Nice bit of observation,” Bobby applauded. “Good girl. Commendation awarded to be published in the next Gazette.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Olive said. “Rather have a rise in pay, though.”

  “Don’t be so mercenary,” Bobby rebuked her. “A commendation is a great honour all good policemen covet.” He paused and then went on: “What it means—her looking at the phone—is that Hyams isn’t there but that she knows where he is, doesn’t expect him back, but has been told to ring up and let him know at once if there are any visitors. Now if Hyams isn’t there, he must be somewhere else.”

  “It seems,” Olive said, puckering her brow thoughtfully, “a perfectly sound deduction—at least I can see no flaw in it.”

  Bobby regarded her with cold suspicion. He said:

  “Time we we’re getting back to see about that washing up.”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  PAWN TICKETS

  ON HIS ARRIVAL at the Yard next morning, Bobby found two reports waiting for him: the first interesting and perhaps significant, the second significant and perhaps sensational.

  The first then, the one that was interesting and perhaps significant, was from the C.I.D. man, who, in accordance with the instructions Bobby had phoned the previous evening after he and Olive returned from their evening visit to Mirable Road—and seen to the washing-up—had been on duty there from a very early hour. His report was simple, in few words and adequate. No one had left No. 13 that morning, nor had any sign of wakening life appeared as yet when the C.I.D. man departed about half-past eight. The milk on the doorstep was still there, the morning newspaper, pushed in the letterbox, still hung half in, half out. And though Bobby did not know the exact hours of work at the S.B.G., he took it as certain that attendants would have to be there in good time for the opening hour of nine, even though he had gathered that the discipline maintained in the Gallery was inclined to be of the rather easy-going type.