Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh no, Mr. Owen,” Groan protested mildly. “I only took charge of them to keep them safe from Monkey Baron and, of course, I couldn’t keep them by me. Monkey might have got them if I had. Broken in some time and gone off with them. Couldn’t trust him. Besides, I wanted to keep in touch with Jasmine when he came back as I expected. Too bad about him. Clever he was. Had a gift. There’s an art dealer bought the door of his room where he lived, straight off the hinges. Gave a tenner for it and pays for a new door as well, all because of a kind of sign Mr. Jasmine painted on it to show which was his room.”

  “Tails, most likely,” Bobby said. “He doesn’t miss much. He’ll sell it for ten times as much.”

  “Will he, though?” exclaimed Groan, impressed. “I did hear he near threw a fit when he was told the landlord had seized all Jasmine’s stuff for arrears of rent and sold the lot to a second-hand dealer, including a lot of canvases the dealer cleaned all the paint off so he could sell ’em cheap—as good as new, he said. Now he wants to buy a picture of a neighbour’s kids Jasmine did for her. Offered same as he did for the door.”

  “Did she take it?” Bobby asked.

  “She wouldn’t part. Says she likes it and wants to keep it and it’s brought them luck, they having just won a cool hundred backing the favourite for the two-thirty. Romped home it did.”

  “Did it, though,” exclaimed Bobby, also impressed, so seldom do favourites do anything of the kind.

  “Lost it again by now or will soon,” Groan pronounced. “Sure as peanuts. You always do. Irish Joe’s cleared off to Dublin. Did you know?”

  “If he stops there, we shan’t bother,” Bobby said. “Not if Mrs. Taylor lives, and the hospital says she’s in no danger. By the way, why did you and he clear out in such a hurry? Trying to be first with the news, were you?”

  “Only gave me a fiver for what ought to have been the biggest scoop ever,” complained Groan. “A measly fiver. Said it was too late for the morning issue. Irish Joe was scared, thought you might pull him in. So off we went, he having a fine fast ‘Tiger’ waiting. An all-night job and only a fiver to show at the end of it.”

  “You were sailing pretty near the wind,” Bobby told him. “Lucky for you you haven’t got something much less agreeable than a fiver. All the time you knew a lot more than you told us. You knew very well Mr. Atts had found out the S.B.G. picture was a forgery and meant to say so at his lecture and to show it there if he could get hold of it. That was information you should have passed on to us.”

  “Now, Mr. Owen, sir,” protested Groan indignantly, “what would become of my professional reputation if it got about I went telling my clients’ business, same not being illegal, and me only suspecting, not knowing, and no evidence to show?” He rose to go, and then, as if suddenly remembering something that till then had entirely slipped his memory, he said: “Oh, that reward—three thousand, wasn’t it? I’m thinking of applying and I was wondering if you would give me a bit of a note—”

  “No,” said Bobby promptly. “It has nothing to do with me. Apply if you want to, by all means, but don’t bring me into it. Rewards do more harm than good, as they have this time.”

  “I didn’t much expect you would,” sighed Groan. “Nothing like trying, though.”

  Therewith he left, and presently Bobby left, too, arriving soon on the top floor of the house where Jasmine had had his studio. Workmen were busy there fitting a new door to replace the one bought by Mr. Tails and now on exhibition—to favoured clients only, American millionaires preferred—at 13 Mayfair Square. At Mrs. Montgomery’s door Bobby now knocked and was invited in to share the ‘nice cup of tea’ she had just prepared for herself. They talked a little and Bobby rose to look again at the picture of the two Montgomery children still hanging above the mantelpiece. He said:

  “I heard you’ve been offered ten pounds for it. Do you want to sell?”

  “I didn’t want to part,” Mrs. Montgomery said. “But my old man, he says to sell while the going’s good and a tenner is always a tenner, as is gospel truth. The gentleman left his address and very nice and affable like, too, and gave the children sixpence each for toffee apples, so I’m taking it round first thing to-morrow. I shall miss it,” she added wistfully. “I like looking at it.”

  “I’m not an art dealer,” Bobby said, “but I think I could get you a better offer. A bit more than a tenner and the picture remaining your own property. Hired out, so to say.”

  Mrs. Montgomery looked very puzzled.

  “I never heard tell of anything like that,” she protested. “Who wants to hire a picture of two kids they’ve never seen?”

  “The South Bank Gallery,” Bobby told her. “I’ve been talking to the Director over the phone. If you let him have it on loan for exhibition there with option to purchase by mutual consent, he will pay you so much a month while it’s there and, of course, you can go and see it as often as you like. Oh, and there’ll be a small royalty on any profit from sale of postcards. May be worth a bit.”

  She didn’t believe him at first but found it was all quite true and there in the South Bank Gallery Jasmine’s last painting still hangs and is likely to hang for all time—unless the hydrogen bomb intervenes.

  THREE SOVEREIGNS

  Originally published in the Evening Standard, 17 October, 1950

  The inspector was speaking to Bobby Owen, Commander, C.I.D., whom he had asked to accompany him. “That’s the house,” he said, and pointed to a row of small terrace houses. The door of one stood open. A few people were loitering near the gate and some children were playing close by. A woman was telling them to go away. The appearance of the two men caused a sudden flutter of interest. The children stared. “No motive,” said the inspector in the tone of a man with a personal grievance.

  “Sometimes there is no motive,” Bobby Owen said. “Or else it’s never known.”

  He did not know much about the case. He had only just returned from a month’s leave and instantly a much worried inspector had come to ask his help. They went into the house of the open door. On their right was the front sitting-room. There, too, the door stood open, and the room was full of people. None of them spoke, but they all watched. The inspector led the way up the stairs. Bobby followed. Their steps sounded loud and heavy in that silent house.

  There were three bedrooms. A girl came out of the front bedroom and looked at them and then went back. Bobby had had a glimpse through the room’s open door of a bed in which lay an old, old woman, very still. He thought she was asleep. The inspector opened the door of the back bedroom. An open coffin was there on trestles. A dead man lay in it. The room was sparely but comfortably furnished. A single bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand, a wicker armchair, another chair. The room looked clean and well cared for.

  There were two occupants of the room. At the head of the coffin stood an old man. He was tall and he held himself so erect that he seemed taller. His long white beard hung down over his chest. He had strong, clear-cut features and a great beak of a nose between two eyes of a cold, severe blue, bright and clear still as they had been in youth. Bobby thought him the very picture of what one could imagine an old Hebrew prophet to have been, though certainly a prophet of the “hew them in pieces before the Lord” type.

  He looked up as Bobby and the inspector entered. Then he seemed to dismiss them from his thoughts, and returned his steady gaze to the dead man’s face. Impossible to tell what was passing in his mind. He gave somehow an impression of being entirely withdrawn from his surroundings into some secret communing with the lifeless man in the coffin.

  The other occupant of the room, standing by the window, was a young handsome man, tall and athletic, physically as striking in his way as the old man was in his. But his face was dark and flushed, his eyes troubled, his mouth set in angry lines.

  No one spoke, Bobby let his slow glance wander round the room in that quietly intent gaze that he had trained himself to bestow on what he saw so that no detail should escape his a
ttention—or his memory. Not that there was anything here that he could imagine held much significance. He did notice three sovereigns on the mantelpiece. Gold coins are enough to attract attention anywhere. At the moment they were shining in a stray ray of sunshine that had just entered the room and now was gone again.

  The inspector broke the silence. In a brisk official voice, he said: “Quick work. Coroner’s certificate only just issued, funeral today.”

  “The verdict was murder against persons unknown, wasn’t it?” Bobby asked.

  “That’s right,” said the inspector.

  “The sooner the funeral’s over, the better,” the young man by the window said.

  The inspector said in that brisk official voice of his: “This is Mr. Owen, I told you I was going to bring him round.” To Bobby, he said, indicating the old man: “Mr. Jerome, Samuel Jerome. Householder. Deceased: George Martin, grocer’s assistant. Found dead, a hundred yards north of this house, stabbed through the heart. He’s been a lodger here nine years.”

  “Ten years,” the old man said. “Ten years he had lived with us. I lost both my sons in the first war and George was like a son to me to take their place.”

  He spoke in a clear resonant voice and then relapsed again into that remoteness in which he seemed able to wrap himself at will. A girl came into the room. It was the same girl Bobby had seen before. The resemblance to the old man was marked. The same strong clear-cut features, the same prominent nose, the same look of proud resolve.

  “Why do you keep on troubling us?” she said. “I’ve told you who did it.” She lifted a slow hand towards the young man by the window. She said simply: “Frank.”

  “No evidence,” the inspector said. “Not a shred. Good character. No motive.”

  Frank’s dark flushed face became very pale, but Bobby thought it was more with anger than with fear. There was a thin, pinched look at the corners of his mouth.

  He said in a carefully controlled voice: “You must be mad, Jenny. Why do you keep on saying that?”

  She made no reply, but her clear and steady eyes did not waver.

  Bobby said: “No one should say a thing like that without giving reasons. What are your reasons?”

  “It’s only that I know,” she answered. “That’s all. I know and so I’m telling you.”

  “It’s a lie,” Frank said. “God knows why she is telling it, I think she is mad.”

  But she did not look in the least mad; her voice, her eyes were steady, her whole manner calm, composed, assured.

  “They’re engaged,” the inspector said. “They are going to be married soon. All fixed up.”

  “Not now,” Frank said. To Jenny he said: “You had better give me back my ring.”

  “No,” Jenny said.

  “Do you want to marry a murderer?” he asked.

  “I’ve got to,” she answered. “It’s necessary.”

  “What’s that mean?” he asked again.

  “A wife can’t give evidence against her husband,” she said.

  At that he shrank away, like a man struck suddenly a deadly blow. Then he made a movement towards her. The inspector moved, too. He thought Frank was going to strike the girl. Perhaps she thought so, too, for she lifted her face slightly, letting her arms fall to her side. Bobby’s thought was different. He made a gesture to the inspector to stand away. But he held himself ready to intervene at any moment. Frank drew back. The girl’s head dropped and her hands tore at each other.

  “All right, all right,” Frank said and went back to stand by the window. “What makes you hate me so?” he asked.

  “Go back to your grandmother, Jenny,” the old man said suddenly. “The doctor said she was never to be left alone.”

  “One moment. Miss Jenny,” Bobby said. “Police experience shows that people ready to accuse others without reasons given are very likely to be guilty themselves.”

  She had turned towards the door in obedience to her grandfather. She turned back. She stared at Bobby as if trying to understand what he had said. Then she said: “It might be that. It might be that. I suppose a husband can’t give evidence against his wife?”

  Another stray ray of sunshine came into the room and the three gold coins on the mantelpiece threw back the ray. Jenny went to them and picked them up. With them in her hand she crossed to the coffin. Slowly she placed the three coins by the dead man’s side. The others watched her.

  She said: “They were his. He earned them. Let him have them still. They are worth more today—a penny more. Thirty-nine and ten today. I saw a notice in a jeweller’s window. Perhaps they’ll go on getting worth more and more for ever as they lie there by his side.”

  She went out of the room, then, and the inspector said when she had gone:

  “Hysterical! That’s what it is. Hysteria.”

  But Bobby knew that the girl was neither hysterical nor mad—and he wondered.

  The old man said: “A Penny more. That comes to—” He seemed to calculate, than announced a figure. It was £1,467 17s 2d. “You wouldn’t be a pauper then,” he went on quickly, “would you? No need to ask for public assistance then.”

  “She can’t believe it was me,” Frank said and he spoke very bitterly. “Or else she’s mad or else I am. I didn’t like him. Jenny didn’t. No one did—except those he used to treat in the pubs. ‘Generous George,’ they called him. And the two old people. He got round them all right. They coddled him like he was their own son. Nothing he could do wrong. What makes her say I killed him? Are you going to arrest me?”

  “For goodness sake, shut up,” Bobby said irritably. “Can’t you see I’m trying to work it out? Anyone but a born fool could see what she’s up to.”

  The inspector was offended. He had no idea what the girl was up to and he felt that Bobby, even though unintentionally, had called him a born fool.

  His voice full of studied irony, he said: “I think Mr. Owen means that what has just been said has shown him who is guilty.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, still apparently doing sums in his notebook and so absorbed by them that he never noticed the bitter sarcasm that had been intended. “Yes, it seems all fairly clear now. I must get some of the details into place, though. I understand that the dead man, George Martin, grocer’s assistant, lodged here, Mr. Jerome being the householder, had done so for several years, and was looked on as one of the family?”

  “He came to us as if he had been sent instead of our sons we lost in the war,” Mr. Jerome said, and he stooped a little and his eyes never left the face of the dead man in his coffin. “George was a son to Granny and to me,” he repeated.

  “Were he and Miss Jenny friendly?” Bobby asked.

  “I told you before Jenny didn’t like him,” Frank said, and Mr. Jerome let this statement pass uncontradicted.

  “Our information is to the same effect,” said the inspector.

  “She thought he toadied to the old people,” Frank said.

  When he heard this Mr. Jerome looked up for almost the first time.

  “He brought Granny flowers every week,” he said. “Expensive flowers. He said he got them cheap from a friend in the trade. Fruit, as well. He was very generous.” He paused and again it was on the face of the dead man that his eyes were fixed. It was as though he spoke to him and knew that the dead man heard. “You were always generous, George,” he said.

  “Our information is that he claimed to be lucky at the dogs,” said the inspector.

  “I’ve been trying,” Bobby said, “to rule out other possibilities. There was the possibility of a quarrel over Miss Jenny. That seems ruled out.”

  “Absolutely,” said the inspector. “That’s our information.”

  “There might have been some other cause of quarrel between the two men. Nothing to suggest it?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” said the inspector. “Our information—”

  “I didn’t like him,” interrupted Frank, “and he didn’t like me. That’s all.”

  �
��Miss Jenny accuses Mr. Frank,” Bobby continued. “I had to consider whether she herself might be the murderer and that was why she accused another person.”

  “Jenny couldn’t kill a fly if she tried,” Frank said. “That’s the way she is.”

  “Yet she seems to wish to see you hanged,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “Very interesting.”

  “Interesting!” cried Frank. “God in heaven! Interesting ... all right, all right. If that’s what she wants. . . .”

  Bobby turned to the old man.

  “Mr. Jerome,” he said, “am I right in thinking that the amount George Martin stole from you was seven hundred and thirty-seven pounds in gold, that it represented your life’s savings, that when you found out, you killed him?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Jerome.

  “I shall have to ask you to come with us to be formally charged,” Bobby said.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Jerome.

  The door opened and Jenny came hurrying in.

  “Granny’s worse,” she said. “I’ve sent for the doctor. Come at once or it’ll be too late.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Jerome. “Mr. Owen has found out.”

  “Granny’s dying,” Jenny said. “She has been ever since she knew.” To Bobby she said: “If Grandpa killed George, George killed Granny. I promised her I would save Grandpa if I could. I thought I could for a time by saying it was Frank, and I didn’t think Grandpa would live long, not after this.” To Frank, she said: “I don’t suppose you’ll ever forgive me. No one could.” She took off the engagement ring she was wearing and laid it down. “Come, Grandpa,” she said.