It Might Lead Anywhere

by E. R. Punshon

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby said gravely.

  CHAPTER V

  FULL CIRCLE

  The atmosphere had grown a little tense. Mr. Spencer looked embarrassed. He evidently felt he had been guilty of an indiscretion. How awkward if the deputy chief chose to imagine he had been hinting suspicion of the vicar of St. Barnabas, a man universally respected. He looked at Bobby almost pleadingly. But Bobby’s thoughts were turning in another direction. He said:

  “Why was Brown so interested in religion all at once? Was it Duke Dell? Has Dell himself taken any part in these disturbances at St. Barnabas?”

  “None at all as far as I know. Dell came here a few months ago. No one took much notice of him at first. He seems to confine himself to preaching what he calls The Vision.”

  Bobby asked what that was, and Mr. Spencer shook his head and said he didn’t know, but Mr. Childs called it rank antinomianism. From memories of his Oxford days when he had just managed to scrape through his finals and take his degree—pass, only—Bobby tried to remember what antinomianism was. Sympathizing with an ignorance he had shared until Mr. Childs’s visit, Mr. Spencer said:

  “It’s a sort of idea that it doesn’t matter what you do. You can do anything you jolly well like and it’s all right, provided you have sufficient faith.”

  “Faith in what?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, as far as Duke Dell is concerned, faith in what he calls The Vision. Mr. Childs says there was a German writer with much the same idea. ‘Beyond Good and Evil,’ he called it, and died in a lunatic asylum, and a wonder it wasn’t gaol, if you ask me. Mr. Childs thought it was much the same thing in religion that the Nazis preach in politics. Good, according to them, is what suits Germany. Torture, murder, anything. Evil is what doesn’t. Very handy sort of belief, too. Dell gets out of it by saying that when you’ve seen The Vision you only do the right thing. But you’re the sole judge. Duke Dell had the insolence”—Mr. Spencer grew red in the face at the memory—“the insolence to tell me he didn’t acknowledge my authority. Or that of anyone else, except the powers that sent him his precious Vision. I asked him if he thought himself above the law and he said: ‘Certainly. No law can bind those whom The Vision has made free.’ His very words. Dangerous, if you ask me.”

  “Has he ever said what he means by The Vision?” Bobby asked.

  “I asked him that and he talked a lot in a very wild excited way. I couldn’t make head or tail of it. I’ve asked Dr. Railes—he’s our medical officer—if he could be certified. Railes didn’t seem to think so. He said the man seemed perfectly sane otherwise. All the same—well, if Brown hadn’t been a sort of follower of his, Duke Dell would have been the first man I thought of. But there it is—no motive. No evidence either for that matter. Only now there’s this Chipping Up business you’ve told me about.”

  “It’s certainly a fact,” Bobby said thoughtfully, “that but for a young flying officer who was there Brown wouldn’t have survived in the afternoon only to be murdered at night. You have to ask yourself: ‘Did Duke Dell finish at night what he began in the afternoon?’ Yet all I heard suggested that it was a pure accident.”

  “You wouldn’t say there was enough to justify an arrest, would you?” Mr. Spencer asked wistfully.

  “No, nothing like,” Bobby answered at once. “They went off together apparently the best of friends. What about an alibi? Do you know anything about Duke Dell’s movements last night?”

  “It seems he was at his lodgings. He has a room with a Mrs. Soames on Running Water Farm. Soames is foreman there. It’s about two miles out on the main Midwych road. We haven’t seen Dell yet, he’s out preaching somewhere. Mrs. Soames says he got home early and spent the evening as usual—reading the Bible and saying his prayers. He was still at it when they went to bed. Soames has to be up and out early so they’re always in bed and asleep by nine o’clock. Probably they sleep hard, she says they never stir till the alarm goes. Plenty of time and opportunity for Dell to get here and back again if he wanted to. Nothing to show he did. Mrs. Soames says he seemed just the same this morning. He came down as usual at seven, but she thinks he is up much earlier, at his Bible reading and so on. After breakfast he goes out preaching and is often not back till late, after blackout. Apparently he only has two meals in the day—dry bread and hot water for breakfast, dry bread and cold water for supper. Nothing else. Occasionally he may eat a cold potato.”

  Mr. Spencer contemplated this diet with gloomy disfavour. “You know,” he said, “feeding like that, enough to explain anything.”

  “I shouldn’t like it myself,” agreed Bobby, and could not repress a slight shudder, especially at the cold potato item.

  “Though he seems to thrive on it,” Mr. Spencer admitted. “Covers miles during the day—on foot always. But there it is—no motive, except for what you heard him say. Suggests disagreement or backsliding, even if they did go off together in a friendly sort of way.”

  “It certainly did sound rather a strong variant of the ‘Better dead’ theme,” Bobby agreed. “‘Better dead and here’s a helping hand,’ so to say. Not enough to take to a jury though, not enough by a long way. My advice would be: Remember it, keep an eye on him, but nothing more at present.” He added thoughtfully: “Religion is a strong wine and goes to the head sometimes.”

  Mr. Spencer shook his own head.

  “You can never tell,” he said wisely. “There’s nothing people aren’t capable of, once they get religion on the brain. Very upsetting, religion.”

  “Most upsetting thing in the world,” Bobby agreed. “Dangerous. Like electricity. It may give a blaze of light or it may kill, destroy. Power, and be jolly careful how you handle it or how you leave it alone. How religion began, I suppose. Seeing there was Power around and what had you better do about it? But does religion really come into this business? I don’t see how; and as for Duke Dell, nothing you can lay hold of. A long way from preaching a Vision to committing a murder.”

  Mr. Spencer looked very much as if he did not think it as far as all that.

  “We must look for more evidence,” he agreed, “but I think we’ve a good idea where to look.”

  But now it was Bobby’s turn to shake a doubtful head.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he remarked, “the first and last necessity in our job is to beware of preconceived ideas. Get one idea fixed in your mind and you tend to overlook everything that doesn’t seem to fit it, and exaggerate everything that does. My advice would be: Forget Duke Dell for the present, though keeping him on the list. Tops for that matter. When you get to know more other names may crop up and what one always looks for—the motive.”

  Mr. Spencer’s expression suggested that he would be well content with one suspect and felt no need for more. However, he made polite noises of agreement with Bobby’s little lecture, and, partly to avoid another, suggested that now the deputy chief might like to visit the scene of the crime and afterwards perhaps the mortuary? A very thorough and careful examination had been carried out, explained Mr. Spencer with a deprecatory smile, and here were the full reports. Probably the deputy chief, from his greater experience, would be able to suggest points that had been overlooked. Bobby said he could imagine nothing less probable, but he would regard it as a privilege to see things for himself. Then he would be able to understand the written reports so much better. The case was interesting, unusual. Impossible, for instance, at their present level of knowledge, to imagine any motive for the murder of so harmless, commonplace, and insignificant a man as Alfred Brown. What strange and hidden cause could there be why so anonymous a life should have blossomed suddenly into the dreadful notoriety of murder?

  Their way took them past the ancient Mote House, dating from the twelfth century, into the High Street, where half a dozen chain store branches shouted their twentieth-century modernity. Turning by an ‘Olde Curiosity Shoppe,’ where a fragrant of a German bomb was offered for sale next to a Saxon sword dug from the bed of the Becker, t
hey reached Market Row. Opposite the cottage, inconspicuous and retired in the south-east corner, that Brown had occupied was a small group of sightseers, gazing with vacant interest at shuttered windows and closed doors and paying small attention to the efforts of the constable stationed there for that purpose, to make them ‘move on.’ As Bobby and his companion approached, however, one young man detached himself from the group and came towards them. Bobby said with surprise:

  “Oh, why it’s—no, it isn’t, though. I thought for a moment it was the young airman I told you about, the one who hauled Brown out of the water at Chipping Up.”

  The young man was passing them now. He nodded to Mr. Spencer and said a word of greeting. He did not seem to notice Bobby. Mr. Spencer responded, and, as soon as the young man had gone by, remarked:

  “That was Mr. Langley Long. Young chap discharged from the army, medically unfit. I believe he is looking for a suitable place to start a guest house.”

  “I quite thought at first it was Denis Kayes again,” Bobby said in a worried voice. “There’s a strong likeness. I don’t quite know where. He’s dark and young Kayes is fair. Features different, too. I think it must be the facial bone structure. Or their way of walking, carrying themselves. I wonder if they are relations.”

  “I should hardly think so,” Mr. Spencer said doubtfully. “I’ve never heard anything to suggest it. I’ve never heard that they seem to know each other at all.”

  “Do you know anything about Mr. Kayes? He said he was staying with a Mrs. Jebb. Aspect Cottage was the address.”

  “Oh yes,” Spencer answered. “I knew Mrs. Jebb had a lodger, but I don’t know anything about him. Nothing ever happens here—at least, not till now—so if anything does happen I generally hear about it, and I knew Mrs. Jebb was trying to get a lodger now Janet has come home. She didn’t want Janet to have to do it all. Mrs. Jebb wasn’t left too well off when her husband died but there was some cottage property in Midwych. It brought in enough for her to live on. But it was bombed in the big Midwych raid, so now there are no rents and no compensation either. Rebuilt after the war, but in the interval—nothing. Janet was on war work but got released on grounds of exceptional hardship. A nice girl, though too modern for some people.”

  “She stays at home now, does she? to help her mother?”

  “Oh no, she’s teaching at the St. Barnabas Church School. She has her degree so they were more than glad to get her. It was a sort of condition of her release, I think, that she took up teaching.”

  “Has Mr. Kayes any friends or relatives in the neighbourhood?” Bobby asked. “I was wondering why he came to a little place like this to spend his leave. Most men on leave make straight for London if they have no family claims—and sometimes if they have.”

  “I should guess,” said Mr. Spencer, slightly offended by the implied slur on Oldfordham amenities and attractions, “he came precisely because it is quiet and peaceful here. Mr. Kayes wants a rest most likely, a chance to forget the war for a time. In peace-time we had many visitors, quite a tourist trade, indeed. Beautiful country. Wych Forest not so far away. Fine old buildings, too—the Mote House, for example, and St. Barnabas.”

  “Oh yes, I know, very ancient, most interesting,” Bobby hastened to agree; without adding that the Mote House was of interest only by age, since in itself it was as dull and plain a four-square building as twelfth-century workmen ever put together, while St. Barnabas, after a disastrous fire, had been restored in the middle of the last century in the most self-conscious and pain-giving Neo-Gothic style of the period. He went on: “Mr. Kayes comes here to recuperate and Mr. Langley Long comes to look for a spot suitable for a guest house. Any difference between a guest house and a boarding house, do you know?”

  Mr. Spencer explained that a guest house was of superior status; and Bobby said ‘Oh, indeed,’ he hadn’t known that before. He supposed the hierarchy ran: lodging house, boarding house, guest house, private hotel, hotel de luxe, and, anyway, wasn’t it just a trifle interesting that the arrival of these two young men in the town had been followed by the only murder there for very many years?

  Mr. Spencer looked startled.

  “But surely” he protested, “there’s no reason to suspect any association … any connection … You don’t think … ?”

  Bobby produced the special sigh he reserved for this type of question.

  “At the start of any inquiry like this,” he explained patiently, “I don’t think. I only note facts—such as the arrival here of these two young men; the presence of one of them at Chipping Up; his remark, which very likely meant nothing much, that if Brown had been drowned something or another would have been washed out. Perhaps it’s too much of a trifle to call it a fact that the other young man was having such a good look at this cottage. Just as a matter of routine I would keep an eye on both of them, if I were you.”

  “Oh, I will, certainly,” agreed Mr. Spencer, looking quite shaken as there opened before him new and troubling vistas. More and more did he determine to grapple to him the deputy chief—or rather the deputy chief’s experience and resources—as with hooks of steel. “There is one thing,” he went on. “It can’t matter. Not worth mentioning. But it might explain why Mr. Long chose Oldfordham for his guest house hunt. I hear he has been seen once or twice—mere gossip, you understand, and you know what gossip is in a small country town.”

  “Almost as bad as in a big city, and always most valuable,” pronounced Bobby. “Give me gossip or Sherlock Holmes, and I take gossip every time. The detective’s first aid and ever present help in time of doubt. What is this time?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t amount to much,” Mr. Spencer answered, “only that he has been seen once or twice with Miss Foote.”

  “Who is she?” Bobby asked.

  “Mr. Goodman’s new secretary at Four Oaks. Gossip again—rather more than a new secretary, some people say. But first that kind of talk and then Mr. Langley Long being seen with her—well, it did make people wonder where he came in.”

  “So do I,” Bobby murmured; and this time he was really startled, for it seemed as if a kind of circle were being established.

  Mr. Goodman’s phone call; Chipping Up; Mr. Kayes’s presence there; his odd personal resemblance to Mr. Lanley Long; Long’s friendship with Miss Foote, and so back to Mr. Goodman again. Full circle.

  But if this circle enclosed the crime, what became of that sudden interest in religion the dead man seemed to have developed so shortly before his violent end?

  CHAPTER VI

  COTTAGE INTERIOR

  While this talk was going on, and in more desultory fashion and more subject to various interruptions than it has been thought necessary to show in this record, Bobby had been giving close and careful scrutiny to the small, commonplace kitchen where the death that Alfred Brown had so narrowly escaped in the afternoon had found him in the evening.

  Mr. Spencer showed the exact spot, marked by an outline in chalk, where the body had been lying, the head dreadfully shattered by a savage hail of blows that must have been delivered with maniacal violence. Yet the only sign of any struggle was that one of the kitchen chairs, now lying in a corner of the scullery, had a broken leg, the break evidently quite recent. But, if this broken chair was a sign and a result of a struggle between murderer and victim, why had it been put aside with such careful, odd precision? Still, murderers often do the strangest, most unaccountable things. Otherwise everything seemed to suggest, confirmation given by the very excellent and complete photographs taken immediately by one of the Oldfordham force, that the victim had been taken by surprise, stunned by a single, sudden blow, and that then the murderer, in a frenzy born of his own deed, had made sure.

  One discovery Bobby did make. His very careful examination of the damaged chair in the scullery showed two or three tiny threads of black cloth caught in the splinter of the broken leg. He showed them to the slightly disconcerted Spencer. Bobby agreed that they were not likely to be of much value or impor
tance. Certainly nothing to show they came from the clothing of the murderer. No bloodstain visible near or on them, or on the chair itself, for that matter. Still, anything might lead anywhere, as Bobby remarked, and was there in the cottage any material, clothing or curtain or anything, from which the threads might have come?

  Mr. Spencer said he thought not, but the deputy chief could satisfy himself on that point when they went upstairs. All the dead man’s scanty wardrobe, apart from what the body had actually been clothed in, was still upstairs. Bobby suggested that possibly it might be as well to send the threads to Wakefield for expert examination, and Spencer promised that that would be done. Not that he thought anything could be learned from such tiny threads, and Bobby didn’t think so either, even though to-day miracles are three a penny in scientific laboratories. Spencer, still slightly on the defensive, went on to explain that Dr. Railes was certain that the murderer’s clothing and person must both have been spattered with blood; and he detailed the precautions taken, such as instructions sent to all cleaners to be on the look out. Could the deputy chief suggest anything else that could have been done?

  Bobby said no, indeed. Nothing more, he thought, was possible at this stage. Of course, if bloodstained clothing could be found, everything would be easy. But such good fortune was not likely. Clothing is easily disposed of. Soaked in petrol, for example, and burned. Even though ashes may be left, and ashes can tell tales. But it could be buried in some out-of-the-way spot. Or dropped inside a hollow tree in the depths of one of the lonely Wychwood glades. Or, even more completely, lost down one of the shafts of the various deserted and flooded mines in the neighbourhood, where a sheer descent of a hundred feet ended in a black, unplumbed depth of water.