It Might Lead Anywhere

by E. R. Punshon

  “If that’s the way you look at it,” Mr. Spencer said, “if you think it’s such a good thing, what has happened, did you take care that it did happen?”

  The question seemed to puzzle Duke Dell, as if he did not fully grasp its meaning.

  “How do you mean? In what way?” he asked; and now his voice seemed more natural, more human, his tone less exalted. “How could I?”

  “Was it you killed him?” demanded Spencer bluntly.

  “Oh no,” Dell answered. “Why should I? Did I kill him to make him safe, is that what you mean? I never thought of that.”

  “You might have done it if you had thought of it?” Spencer insisted.

  “It would have needed much consideration,” Duke Dell said seriously. “If guidance had come—but I don’t think it likely. No. It is one thing to lead back the strayed, even to compel them; another thing altogether to use violence.”

  “You nearly killed him at Chipping Up, didn’t you?” Mr. Spencer pressed.

  “Not knowingly, not willingly,” Duke Dell answered. “If it had happened so, then guidance would have been clear. But it didn’t.” He paused, looking more troubled, more disturbed than he had ever seemed before. “I must go now,” he said. “You have troubled me. And I need rest and quiet. When the Vision nearly comes but not altogether, as just now, then you get the test, the trial, the exhaustion, but there is no revival of strength to follow. I must go,” he repeated.

  He moved towards the door, but there, his back to it, firm, courageous, determined, and badly scared, was Constable Allen. In a voice that shook a little but which all the same contrived to be resolute as well he said:

  ‘No, you don’t, not till Mr. Spencer says.”

  With unexpected meekness, Duke Dell turned.

  “I must have rest and quiet; quiet, that’s what I want. I will go upstairs to rest there if you like.”

  He went stumblingly and heavily up the stairs while the other three watched him with astonishment. Helplessly Mr. Spencer turned to Bobby.

  “What do you make of that?” he asked. “Religious mania? Can we get him certified?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bobby answered. “Not a chance. No doctor would call him irresponsible. All he says is quite coherent.”

  “Well, what is it?” Spencer asked. “Hypocrisy? Humbug?”

  “Neither,” Bobby said. “It’s much too dangerous, too formidable, to be either one or the other.”

  “You don’t think it’s real, genuine? I mean all the talk about this Vision of his? You can’t swallow that, can you? You don’t believe it’s real?”

  “There’s an old question,” Bobby said. “As old as man. What is real? Don’t they teach in India that all is illusion, Maya?”

  “No illusion about Brown being murdered,” retorted Spencer crossly; and in an undertone not meant to be heard but that Bobby’s sharp ears picked up, Constable Allen said disgustedly:

  “He’s gone balmy, too. Catching, that’s what it is.” Bobby would have liked to agree to this last remark, but he gave no sign of having heard. Instead he said: “Oh yes, no delusion about the murder, but there’s a difference between illusion and delusion. Duke Dell has certainly had some sort of mental experience. The question is: objective or subjective? I suppose in a sense both are equally real. Obviously, a dream is real in the sense that you have really had it. And it may really affect what you do, which may be real enough.”

  “Yes, but, hang it all,” retorted Spencer. “Where does all that get us?”

  “Isn’t the question rather where did all that get Duke Dell, if anywhere?” Bobby suggested. “Even if Dell’s Vision he talks about is mere imagination, mere imagination may have material results. Dell told us one or two things of interest though. What he says accounts in a very subtle and interesting way for Brown’s outbursts at St. Barnabas, as an effort to escape from some old fear or memory Dell’s preaching had started up again. Our next job is to get to know what it was and if it has anything to do with his murder. Then there’s this old friend he visited. Important to get to know who. May be the key to everything. And apparently he talked about some possession of his he valued but might have to give up. What was that? None of his possessions seem specially valuable.”

  “Except that wireless set,” Mr. Spencer said, looking at it longingly. “He seems to have got New York on it as easily as Home Service. Nothing else.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance,” Bobby suggested, “that there’s something hidden somewhere here that hasn’t been found yet? Something like the key of a deposit safe in Midwych? Or his bank book? Anything like that? There is nothing to show how he lived and he must have had something.”

  “Well, the whole place has been gone over pretty thoroughly,” Mr. Spencer said.

  “Yes, I know,” agreed Bobby, “one can see that—very skilful, very careful search. Obviously. But did your men think of testing the floors or—or the water butt or anything like that, or under the roof? No reason why they should. I’m sure I wouldn’t in their place. But that’s the sort of thing I’m thinking about now.”

  CHAPTER X

  TREASURE HUNT

  Mr. Spencer looked doubtful. In spite of all Bobby’s tactful praise of the efficiency of the search conducted by his men, he felt slightly resentful of the suggestion that something of great value might have been overlooked. Besides, in these days of safe deposits, banks, and so on, why should anyone hide valuables in a cottage ill-secured itself and of necessity left unoccupied during its solitary tenant’s frequent absences?

  He hesitated still and Constable Allen remarked that the crowd outside was getting larger every minute. Some of the bolder spirits were even trying to peep through the windows. The tale of the policeman upside down in the old beech tree had spread already through half the town; and even those who could not believe such a story, too wild even for these so generally topsy-turvy days, were thronging hither to see for themselves. And there was at least a helmet poised high upon a lofty branch as circumstantial evidence that for once at any rate rumour did not wholly lie. The appearance of a still living Allen from the cottage was something of an anti-climax, since his death, or at the very least a broken back, had been widely assumed. A reasonable supposition, for what else but death is likely to separate a policeman from his helmet?

  But the helmet retrieved and restored to its accustomed resting-place and thus Constable Allen once more, so to say, clothed with the majesty of the law, he reasserted himself to such good purpose, with such zeal and vigour in the exertion of the familiar ‘move on’ technique, that soon the situation outside the cottage became ‘fluid,’ as the war reports say. Only a small, decreasing and ever-changing body of spectators remained to stare and gape and gossip.

  Within, the search continued with energy and keen scrutiny, though with no very great hope even on Bobby’s part, and with none at all on Mr. Spencer’s.

  “You don’t expect,” he grumbled, “a murder case to turn into a treasure hunt.”

  “In my experience,” Bobby told him, “a murder case may lead anywhere. Of course, there are the simple cases of murder from passion when some wretched man comes to tell us he has done in his girl because he couldn’t stand it any longer, the way she was carrying on. But a deliberate and thought out, planned murder like this is in itself so unnatural and strange that there may be almost anything behind. Murder is a greater mystery in and by itself than any explanation for it; it’s so alien, so unfamiliar. I suppose that is why it is also in its way—well, fascinating.”

  “It’s unnatural and unfamiliar in Oldfordham anyhow,” grumbled Spencer, “and I wish to God it had stayed so. What about the bedroom? Shall we try that next? Duke Dell’s still there, isn’t he?”

  By now, as they had chatted, they had given the back room, crowded with all sorts of discarded rubbish, a thorough examination which had convinced them both that there was nothing there of any interest. They had tested the ceiling, the walls, the floor boards, equall
y without results. They went on to the bedroom, where Duke Dell lay motionless on the bed, his eyes wide open, his hands clasped before him, but as it seemed rapt away from all knowledge of his surroundings into some strange far off world of meditation. Only his wide, staring, unseeing eyes, an occasionally faint movement of his lips showed that he still lived, for indeed there was something not normal, unnatural, about the extreme rigidity of his body. Of their entrance he took no notice, even if he were aware of it. With some idea of testing this extreme abstraction from all things around, Spencer said loudly:

  “He tells us he thinks it is a good thing it happened. In my view that suggests he made it happen.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Bobby agreed.

  Duke Dell took no notice. He might not have heard. Perhaps he had not. Bobby turned his attention to the ceiling. Nothing to suggest that it had ever been touched since it had first been put up. At any rate the accumulated grime of years provided satisfactory proof that it had not been disturbed recently. Bobby tested the walls, equally without result. They were far too thin and flimsy for any hiding place to have been found practicable there. The partition wall between this room and the other was of the thinnest lath and plaster. He gave his attention next to the chimney, equally without result. In order presumably to stop what some call ventilation and others a draught, the iron flap at the bottom of the chimney had been drawn down and had long since rusted into position. Quite impossible to raise it now without the use of tools. He turned his attention to the floor, covered only partially by an old and threadbare carpet, though by the side of the bed lay a good Persian rug that was certainly worth twenty or thirty pounds and that made an odd contrast with most of the rest of the furnishing. Threadbare carpet and Persian rug Bobby rolled up; and on his hands and knees, heedless of trousers and of how few clothing coupons he still possessed, proceeded to examine each floorboard in turn. Presently he said:

  “Look at this.”

  He had found one board which showed signs of having been taken up and then replaced. There were a few tools in the kitchen below. Bobby went to fetch them, returning with hammer, screw-driver, and a very blunt chisel. With their aid he lifted the board. Beneath, there was a canvas bag, and then another and another in a long row. Bobby lifted the first one and opened it. The dim light from the curtained and grimy window showed a shining, glittering contents.

  “Gold,” Bobby said. “Sovereigns.” He took out a handful. He repeated: “Sovereigns. I don’t believe I’ve seen the things before. I may have when I was a child but I don’t remember.”

  Mr. Spencer was staring, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, dumb with amazement. All he could do was to gasp and to stare and he was not far from pinching himself to make sure he was not dreaming. Bobby lifted out the other bags one by one. He opened each in turn, weighed it in his hands, put it with the others till there stood together, side by side, twenty and one. When he had made sure that all had been removed from their hiding place, he counted the contents of the first he had opened. It held two hundred of the shining, yellow counters that in the past, before the German curse had blasted the world, before the evil Teutonic fury had devastated man, had seemed the very symbol of the permanence of things.

  “Two hundred,” Bobby said. “Judging by their weight, all the bags hold the same. That means four thousand two hundred in all and a sovereign is worth nearly double to-day. Say, £8,000 at the present price of gold. Brown seems to have been spending somewhere about £200 or so a year. That means this little lot would have lasted him forty years.”

  “But … I mean to say … well, why did he? What was the idea?” demanded Spencer. He sounded really indignant. “I mean … well, even in consols he could have got that much interest and kept his capital all the same.”

  “So he could,” agreed Bobby, but thoughtfully, not indignantly. “Yes, so he could, couldn’t he? But he didn’t. Why?”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Spencer, thinking with melancholy resignation of his own salary, comfortable on paper, exiguous after the tax collector had passed that way, “he did save income tax.”

  On the bed, Duke Dell roused himself from his far-off abstracted mood. He lifted himself on one elbow. He said:

  “That evil yellow stuff must be what troubled our brother’s mind so greatly. It may well be the young man I saw here one night knew of it and that is why he came.”

  “Who was it?” Bobby asked.

  “He told me he was in the air force. I don’t think he was in uniform. I am not sure. I do not think I noticed. It was getting dark at the time. I had come because I wished to talk with Brother Brown. There wasn’t any answer when I knocked, but I could hear someone in the kitchen. I tried the door. It wasn’t locked and I went in. There was a young man there. He said he was waiting for Brown, but he couldn’t stop any longer and he asked me to say he had been. He said his name was Kayes, I think. A name like that. When I told Brother Brown, he was troubled again, and I thought he knew who it was and why he had come. He said he was sure he had locked the door when he left, so how could anyone get in?”

  “Not much difficulty about that,” Bobby remarked, thinking of the flimsy window-fastenings, the cheap locks on both front and back doors.

  They asked a few more questions but Duke Dell had nothing more to tell.

  “When I saw all that gold,” he said, “I knew what Brother Brown feared he must give up now that he had seen the Vision, and why he wished to believe that it was untrue, unreal, and he could deny it.”

  “Why should he give up his money because of something he thought he had seen?” Bobby asked.

  “For those who have seen,” Duke Dell answered, “nothing else ever matters—not that yellow stuff or anything.”

  “Well, I suppose you would still want something to live on, wouldn’t you?” Bobby asked.

  Duke Dell waved this consideration aside. He apparently did not even think it worth an answer.

  “Anyhow, we know the motive now,” Mr. Spencer said. “That was my difficulty. Why should anyone want to murder a man like Brown? Quiet, inoffensive, harmless as possible, no woman in the case, why should anyone want to get rid of him? Now we know.”

  “If it was that, why murder at all? Why not robbery?” Bobby asked. “The house seems to have been left empty for one day, at least, every week. Easy enough to break in. Put the stuff near the door ready for removal. Bring up a car, throw the stuff in, and be off at full speed before even the next-door neighbours have a chance to do anything. All as simple as pie. Only—if the murderer killed for the sake of the gold, why did he leave it all behind?”

  “Most likely he didn’t know where it was hidden, couldn’t find it,” Spencer suggested.

  “Not much difficulty about that,” Bobby retorted. “Anyone who knew it was somewhere here, couldn’t help finding it. Twenty-one bags full of gold take some hiding. Not like a few bank notes or a safe deposit key. If you kill a man for the sake of a lot of gold sovereigns you know he has hidden, surely you look for them.”

  “Panic?” suggested Spencer. “When he saw what he had done, when he realized it, he lost his head and bolted.”

  “That is possible,” agreed Bobby, “but I don’t think it’s very likely. If it was known about the gold, and the murder motive was to get hold of it, then that means the murder was planned and deliberate, and that rather seems to exclude panic, doesn’t it? No signs to suggest panic, either.”

  As they talked they busied themselves securing the bags again and now they began to carry them downstairs, ready for removal to safe custody. Duke Dell for some time seemed to have lost all interest in these proceedings. Now he began to move towards the door, still completely ignoring the others. Spencer called him back, speaking sharply.

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?” he demanded.

  “I am going back home,” Dell answered. “Here there is no more for me to do.”

  “I haven’t made up my mind about you yet,” Spencer said severely. “You’ve bee
n guilty of assault. You are liable to prosecution—fine or prison.”

  “You can let me know about that,” Duke Dell said indifferently. “I can tell of the Vision in prison as well as out.”

  With that, he went away. Spencer grunted discontentedly. He wanted badly to see Duke Dell prosecuted and fined for his outrageous behaviour, but had an uncomfortable feeling that Dell would get off very lightly. Possible even that his feat of strength in throwing a full-sized policeman over his head might arouse an unreasonable admiration, and, in any case, would add little to the prestige of the Oldfordham police. Others might be tempted to try. As for a murder charge, and that possibility was very much in his mind, so far he felt there was too little to take action on. It was a point of view Bobby strongly supported.

  “We don’t know anything like enough to act on yet,” Bobby said. “It’s a safe guess that when Brown went to Midwych on his weekly visits, he took a few sovereigns. Anyone would be glad to buy them. Gold still has prestige all right. A lump of gold is still what Macaulay would have called a ‘semper eadem.’ But that floorboard upstairs hasn’t been lifted recently, so where did his weekly allowance come from? I don’t suppose he ever sold more than a few at a time. He evidently wanted to avoid attention and too big a sale might have started someone wondering and asking questions.”

  “You think there may be more bags hidden?”

  “One bag, I should say,” Bobby answered. “My guess is he took out one bag and used it a little at a time till it was empty. What about another look round down here? What’s a likely hiding place?”

  Mr. Spencer directed a rather helpless glance round the kitchen.

  “What about the oven?” he suggested. “You do hear of people keeping notes in an oven and getting them burnt up, but gold would be all right. Or there may be a tin box somewhere.”

  “There’s the water-butt,” Bobby remarked. “But that’s outside. There’s the cistern but that’s outside, too. We’ll have a look, though. Or the floor again. Or the hearth. But that doesn’t look as if it had ever been moved.”