It Might Lead Anywhere

by E. R. Punshon

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Bobby absently.

  “Plump in the very middle of the town,” repeated the sergeant, still more gloomily, still more proudly, for to him now it was much as though that was what had actually happened.

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Bobby once more, on his side still more absently. More briskly now he said: “There was one of your men on duty in Brown’s cottage last night; wasn’t there?” for that had been a suggestion made by him and agreed to by Mr. Spencer as advisable.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered. “Alf Adams. Still there he is.”

  Was it possible, then, Bobby asked himself, a signal had been arranged by which Adams could summon his chief if that seemed desirable for any reason? But then surely, if it was like that, Adams would have said so, and have reported either Mr. Spencer’s arrival in answer to the signal or else that he had never come at all. But Adams had said nothing.

  Bobby gave it up. For the moment he could see no solution. Of all men he had ever known, he told himself again, Mr. Spencer had seemed one of the least likely to go out adventuring in the rain save at the plain and direct call of obvious duty. Yet it seemed impossible to suppose that any such plain, direct, imperative call had reached him. Nevertheless, Bobby felt certain that just such an urgent summons had somehow been given.

  Only how, and through what channel?

  He gave it up again. But it did seem as if it might be worth while to question Adams, still on duty in the Brown cottage, since, apparently, in the general confusion and disarray, he had not been relieved. Bobby said to the sergeant:

  “I think I would like to have a chat with Adams. You might come along, too, will you?”

  “Certainly, sir, very good, sir,” answered the sergeant smartly, for that is the correct response the properly disciplined man always makes when a senior officer speaks.

  All the same, Bobby’s stock, if only he had known it, slumped to an even lower level. Just like the High-ups, the sergeant thought, always wanting to mess about, going over ground already well covered. Just as though, very first thing, Adams had not been asked if he knew anything; and as if Adams had not been emphatic that he had neither seen nor heard anything in the least suspicious or unusual all through the night.

  They started off accordingly, but when they reached the cottage their knock brought no answer. Evidently there was no Adams there, and the sergeant looked very taken aback at first and then quickly recovered.

  “I forgot for the moment, sir,” he explained. “He’ll have gone to get a bite of breakfast. A man’s got to eat and I told him he could have from nine to half past and not a minute more.”

  “Oh yes, yes,” Bobby said. Not for him to criticize another and an independent force. “A man must eat,” he agreed, and glanced at his wrist watch. It was nearly the half hour. He asked carelessly as if not much interested: “How did he manage for supper last night?”

  “From ten to eleven, a full hour Mr. Spencer said he could have when he asked, but to be sure and be back by eleven sharp,” the sergeant answered. “Very conscientious man, Adams. You may depend on it he was back at eleven to the dot.”

  This last was said with a slightly defensive air, for the sergeant was beginning to be dimly aware of something in Bobby’s tone or looks that was not wholly approving. For Bobby was thinking that between ten and eleven was almost certainly the time during which whatever had happened to Mr. Spencer, had, in fact, happened.

  “I’m sure Adams would be back on time,” he agreed heartily, even too heartily, so heartily indeed as to set the sergeant still more on the defensive. “I suppose,” he said, “you are too short-handed to arrange for a relief while Adams is away, at breakfast or supper either?”

  “Oh yes, sir, much too short,” declared the sergeant, thinking this the most sensible remark the deputy chief had yet made. He was proceeding to expatiate on how the war had come home to Oldfordham with the reduction in its police force from the normal twelve to a bare and scanty nine, when he checked himself to say, not without pride: “Here’s Adams now and St. Barnabas just going to strike the half hour.”

  Adams was, in fact, approaching at the usual regulation pace. Serene and dignified he drew near, a personification of the dignified, if at times a trifle slow, progress of British law. Bobby told Olive later that never, never had he come so near to bursting a blood vessel as when now he repressed his urge to yell to Adams to hurry, hurry, hurry. But he succeeded in so doing and if he went crimson in the effort that phenomenon passed unnoticed. Sooner or later, however, the weariest river winds to the sea, and presently —a long, long presently, about a minute and a half really—Adams was there and producing the key to the cottage.

  “Mr. Owen wants another look round,” explained the sergeant, with good-humoured tolerance for the vagaries of one of the so often unaccountable, so often slightly absurd ‘higher-ups.’

  But Bobby, his patience exhausted just like that of any dictator, snatched the key from the safe but deliberate hands of startled Constable Adams, made one leap to the door, tore it open, and, without giving the lower rooms a glance since it was there the conscientious Adams would have spent the night, raced upstairs to the bedroom.

  There, between door and bed, lay Spencer, badly injured about the head, unconscious, dead, Bobby thought at first, dying at the best.

  To the horrified and amazed sergeant who had followed him up the stairs, he said:

  “A doctor. Quick. Hurry.”

  The sergeant disappeared. He actually ran. A thing he had not done for years. Bobby felt the prostrate man’s heart. He thought he detected a faint fluttering movement. He knelt there, waiting. Nothing he could do. If he tried to fan gently to help the injured man’s breathing, or if he chafed those cold and stiffening hands, it was more for the sake of relieving his own feelings than with much hope of doing any good. He doubted, indeed, if a doctor could do much. All night long Spencer must have been lying there, while in the room below the conscientious Adams sat, comfortable and unknowing. Plain enough now what had happened. From his window Mr. Spencer must have seen a light in the cottage window. But he knew there should be no one there at that hour, since between ten and eleven Adams had permission to be at home, getting his supper. So Spencer had slipped out to see what was happening; and whoever had been there had taken him unawares and had left him for dead.

  For the first time Spencer stirred, very slightly, so slightly Bobby thought at first it was his own imagination. But now Spencer’s lips moved. He was trying to speak. Bobby bent nearer. He thought he could distinguish one word. It sounded like a name ‘Kayes.’ The faint murmuring ceased and once more Mr. Spencer sank into a coma perilously resembling death.

  CHAPTER XIV

  NO CLUE

  Soon arrived Dr. Railes, the Oldfordham police doctor, called even from his surgery by the hurrying sergeant’s urgent tidings. Under his superintendence, Spencer was removed to the local cottage hospital. An operation would be necessary and would have to be performed with all possible speed. Little as the doctor said, it was evident he thought Spencer’s condition very serious.

  “Not hopeless,” he told Bobby, and repeated: “By no means hopeless.”

  Great violence had been used, and by, once more, the traditional heavy, blunt instrument. Not the poker with which Brown had been attacked for that, of course, was in the safe care of the police, but something similar, of which, however, no trace was to be found. Bobby noticed one difference. Brown’s injuries had been inflicted by a multitude of blows, delivered as in a frenzy, the kind of frenzy that does sometimes overtake the killer, as if his own dreadful action induced in him a kind of madness, a total loss of self-control, as if only so could he succeed in making tolerable to himself what he himself had done. Spencer’s hurt, severe and possibly fatal though it was, had been inflicted by a single crushing blow, one delivered with great force.

  “About twelve hours ago, or a little less,” said the doctor; and nodded satisfaction when Bobby s
aid there was reason to place the attack at about half past ten the previous night.

  There was no other information the doctor could give; and to his added opinion, that the force with which the blow had been delivered showed that the assailant must have been a man of exceptional physical strength—‘six foot heavy-weight,’ said the doctor—Bobby was able to give but a doubtful assent. He knew that anyone, a woman, a man of slight physique, can at times display extraordinary strength. It was a strength, perhaps, not so much muscular as deriving from that reserve of nervous energy and power all can at times call upon; and that is most often released when the mental control goes, as in temporary madness, in hysteria, which is much the same, or even in some stages of drunkenness. Well, indeed, did Bobby remember how, at the beginning of his career in the police, in his uniform days, he and three or four other stalwart comrades had had all they could do to master a frail-looking elderly woman possessed by twin devils of drink and jealousy. More probable, no doubt, that Spencer’s assailant had been what Dr. Railes called ‘a six foot heavy-weight’; but Bobby did not mean to forget that that assailant might quite possibly be a man of ordinary, or less than ordinary, size and weight, or even a woman for that matter.

  Nor did Dr. Railes think that much importance could be attached to anything Spencer had said in any momentary gleam of passing consciousness. It might certainly refer to what had happened. It might as easily, or more easily, be some mere, disconnected, floating memory that had drifted to the surface of a consciousness no longer capable of coherent functioning.

  This time the doctor’s verdict coincided with Bobby’s own impression. He knew well that no jury, no court for that matter, would be in the least impressed by the report of a half-heard whisper of a so badly injured man. For that matter Bobby was not even certain that he had heard correctly. The word muttered by Spencer in that passing and momentary gleam of consciousness had sounded like the name Kayes. But then it might also have been in fact something about keys, or indeed, for that matter, something entirely different.

  Close examination of the cottage revealed no clue. Whoever Spencer found lurking there had come and gone, leaving no trace behind. The Wychshire force finger-print expert, for whom Bobby had sent immediately, had no more luck this time than before. But as he said with weary resignation, for he was a man inured to disappointment, a man for whom frustration was as a familiar friend: “If a five-year-old starts in to-day to raid mummy’s strawberry jam, he puts on gloves first.” True, the general layout was plain enough. Spencer had seen a light where no light should have been. He had hurried out to investigate. The intruder, disturbed by Spencer’s arrival, had waited, silent and hidden, till discovery became inevitable. Then he—‘six foot heavy-weight,’ or ordinary man or even woman for that matter—had delivered the fierce, sudden, unexpected attack which had left Spencer for dead. Not a deliberate, pre-determined murder by reason of some desperate, as yet unknown, unguessed motive, as in the case of the killing of Brown, but, though murder none the less, caused by sudden fear and need, the fear of arrest, the need for escape. The only hope, at least for the present, of learning the truth, seemed to lie in the chance of Spencer recovering sufficiently to be able to tell what had happened. And of that the doctor gave small hope, and none at all for some considerable time to come.

  The customary steps Bobby had already taken, such as inquiry to learn if anyone had been seen near the cottage or indeed any stranger in the vicinity. He would also try again to get a talk with Kayes. There was always the incident of the visiting card to be explained. But he would make no reference as yet to that half-heard whisper uttered by the half-conscious Spencer. Too doubtful, too uncertain to be brought into the open at present, but nevertheless to be remembered.

  To Aspect Cottage, therefore, Bobby took his way, and this time found Kayes there, smoking cigarettes over the morning paper but not, apparently, giving too much attention to what he was reading. He greeted Bobby pleasantly enough and without any undue signs of apprehension or uneasiness. He remembered Bobby very well, he said, from their previous meeting at Chipping Up, and added that Mrs. Jebb had told him of the previous call made together by Bobby and Mr. Spencer. He had wondered a good deal why they came; and he asked if anything had been heard of Mr. Spencer, of whose strange disappearance the whole neighbourhood was talking.

  Bobby answered briefly that Mr. Spencer had been found in the same cottage in which Brown had been murdered; found so badly injured that his life was in grave danger, and Kayes looked very startled and disturbed, repeated more than once, ‘in the same cottage,’ and seemed as if he wished to ask questions that he also seemed either unable or reluctant to express in words.

  Bobby waited patiently, hoping more would come.

  Once or twice Kayes began vague, hesitant, disconnected sentences that he failed to complete. Finally he burst out:

  “Does it mean Brown’s murderer came back and Spencer caught him and got knocked out?”

  “It might be like that,” Bobby agreed. “Can you suggest any reason why the murderer should come back?”

  Quite clearly Kayes did not much like this question. He had very plainly an air of wondering why it had been put to him in so direct a fashion. He had a distinctly wary look; in his voice was a note of caution, as, after a pause, he said:

  “No. I can’t. How could I? Don’t they say a murderer always returns to the scene of his crime?”

  “I haven’t noticed it myself,” Bobby remarked. “At any rate not so soon, I think. Do you think it could be because he thought something of value was still there? Hidden perhaps?”

  Again Kayes did not answer immediately. He took out another cigarette and his lighter, but made a poor job of getting the lighter to act. Bobby noticed that his hands were not too steady. Bobby still waited. He had often found that to sit silently and wait was a very useful method of getting the other fellow to talk. There is something in silence that the uneasy conscience can seldom endure for long. Presently Kayes said:

  “How should I know? Why do you ask me?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Bobby explained, “your card was found in Brown’s cottage.”

  “What?” exclaimed Kayes. “What? Nonsense. It couldn’t be. How could it? Why, I didn’t even know where Brown lived until all this happened.”

  Bobby was a little puzzled. Long experience had taught him to put some faith in his capacity to tell when a man was lying, when he was telling the truth. A multitude of small signs he had learned or thought he had learned, to recognize, trusting not so much to any one of them as to all together. It is a faculty claimed by many barristers of experience, by many magistrates and judges. Bobby’s impression now was very strongly that Kayes was telling the truth, and that this about his card came to him as a complete and baffling surprise. Kayes repeated, and now with anger and suspicion:

  “It couldn’t be. Is this one of your smart police bluffs?”

  “If you care to call at the police station,” Bobby answered quietly, “I daresay they will let you see it. Have you given your card to anyone here?”

  “I showed it at the post office,” Kayes answered. “I may have left it on the counter. I don’t remember. And at the stationer’s in the High Street, when I was asking about finding rooms. Oh, and I believe I gave one to Mr. Childs. And didn’t I give you one, once? That’s all as far as I remember. Oh, and I left one here when I took the rooms. What are you getting at in all this?”

  “At anything,” Bobby answered, his normally clear and pleasant voice taking on that stern and hard note it could show at times, “at anything whatever that can help to the arrest of the murderer of a man who seems to have been a quiet and inoffensive citizen. It is the duty of the police to protect every citizen. That’s not always possible. When we’ve not been able to, it’s all the more our duty to see it doesn’t escape punishment. I am taking it for granted that I can depend on any help you can give me.”

  “What help do you mean? How can I?” Kayes asked, b
ut all the same with a kind of sulky reservation in his voice. “I never saw Brown in my life before that time at Chipping Up. I told you before that until then I hadn’t an idea even where he lived. And I haven’t any idea either why anyone should want to kill him. So far as I’m concerned it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Thank you, that seems very clear and definite,” Bobby answered, though thinking to himself that this last sentence was a trifle odd. “If we knew the motive, it would be much easier. I think perhaps I ought to tell you that your name has been mentioned in connection with the attack on Mr. Spencer though not in a way we can take at all seriously—at present.”

  Once again Kayes looked very startled, though this time he seemed more indignant than alarmed.

  “What do you mean?” he demanded. “What on earth … who has?”

  “I’ve said we don’t take it seriously,” Bobby repeated. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you more.”

  “I’ve a right to know—” began Kayes stormily, but Bobby interrupted.

  “No,” he said. “We have to regard that sort of thing as confidential. At least, till we begin to think there might be something in it. At present, we don’t. If we do, of course that will be different. But anything happening like this starts all sorts of gossip. If we repeated all we get told, we should make any amount of mischief. So we never say anything, unless and until there’s good reason to do so.”

  Kayes didn’t look as though this explanation went very far towards satisfying him.

  “You’re taking it seriously enough to tell me,” he retorted. “I’m beginning to think I had better see my solicitors.”

  “Always very sensible,” agreed Bobby.

  “Even about something that isn’t being taken seriously?” asked Kayes sourly. “Anyhow, I can guess who it is. That girl at Goodman’s.”

  Now it was Bobby’s turn to feel startled. Was this another instance of the revolving circle that seemed to bring first one and then another into prominence?