It Might Lead Anywhere

by E. R. Punshon

  Langley Long, walking on towards the door, made no response, might not have heard. But when he reached the door and thought perhaps that in the shadows there he was well hidden, he turned to throw a farewell glance at Bobby. He had failed to notice, though, that from a small window without a beam of light crossed where he was standing and showed plainly his features twisted with hate and fear and rage till they were almost unrecognizable. There was indeed a look in his staring eyes that made Bobby think of a similar look he had received before that day—from Miss Theresa Foote.

  “Caught it from her perhaps,” Bobby said to himself. “Have to watch my step with those two.”

  He paid his bill then and as he was leaving the hotel noticed in the hat stand in the hall, near the entrance, several umbrellas and walking sticks. One of these caught his eye. It was of some heavy wood Bobby could not identify, it had a heavy silver head, and there was some unusual carving on it by way of decoration. He took it out to look at it. A suspicious voice behind said:

  “That’s Mr. Long’s.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby answered and of course now he did know. “I was looking at it. Quite unusual. Interesting.”

  The suspicious voice belonged to Mr. Mason, the proprietor of the hotel. He came forward and took it from Bobby’s hand. Evidently he had no intention of letting Bobby walk away with it.

  “Australian wood,” he said. “Made by the black fellows out there.”

  He put the stick back firmly in its place. Just as firmly Bobby took it out again. Mr. Mason looked very indignant. Bobby made sure that his first impression was correct. Beyond doubt, it had recently been well and carefully cleaned—scrubbed and polished indeed. Traces of burning and scraping, too. No precaution neglected. Bobby made no comment. Suspects who felt that too much attention was being given to them, were apt to vanish silently away, leaving no trace behind. It made things much more difficult. Much better to keep them on tap, if possible. Bobby put back the stick, said ‘goodbye’ to the still suspicious and indignant Mr. Mason, and went on to the police station, nobly resisting on the way the temptation to get another lunch. At the police station a fresh report had come in. It was of some interest. It was from the Air Force people and confirmed that Flight Lieutenant Denis Kayes, R.A.A.F., was due to report for duty at the end of the month. It was understood he had already arrived in the country, but no one had seen him yet. He had been appointed on strong recommendation received from Australia but personally he was unknown in London and so no personal description could be given.

  Bobby did not find this very helpful or illuminating. Most likely this Denis Kayes was the real Denis Kayes, but he would have liked to be sure. One had to check everything. Even if you were told that two and two made four, it was better to get the statement confirmed by a competent authority. He gave a few more instructions to Sergeant Hicks—a slightly sleepy Sergeant Hicks for that rabbit pie had been excellent—and then he got out his car and drove back to Midwych, to see to things there. Not but that his very competent subordinates were fully capable of dealing with anything likely to turn up. Then he drove home and asked pathetically if he could have something nice for dinner because he had not so much had a lunch as endured a nightmare. Olive told him sternly that there was a war on. She knew, because all the shopkeepers told her that every day if she ever dared ask for anything off the ration, but did he? Bobby said he had heard rumours and anyhow couldn’t she muck in his breakfast with dinner, because he thought he had better spend the night in Oldfordham where Mrs. Spencer had promised to give him a bed.

  Olive said she had never heard such a vulgar expression as muck in, disgusting when used in reference to food, and he had better muck out and let her get on with her work. Also, with considerable suspicion, in her voice, she asked why Oldfordham that night and what had he got in his head now? So Bobby said he didn’t know, he only wished he did. Things were going round and round in his head till he felt quite dizzy. Now and then he seemed to get a glimpse of a pattern beginning to form and then it would dissolve again, leaving not a trace behind. The worst of it was that he had not been able to find a single material clue—except, of course, the scraps of black thread on the broken kitchen chair. And that didn’t amount to much. Not much of an ‘Exhibit A.’ All the rest of it was psychological stuff and what was the good of psychological stuff for a show down before a British jury? Yet he felt somehow it was all there. If only he could see where it all belonged, and how to put together what he knew to make a reasonable and coherent whole, then at last the truth would emerge. Only he had no idea how to do that or even where to begin—whether with Mr. Child’s torn trouser-knee; or Langley Long’s cleaned and polished walking stick; or Duke Dell’s Vision and his belief that it would be better that Brown should die rather than that he should live, denying it; or Mr. Goodman’s legacy; or Theresa Foote’s murderous eyes; or Janet Jebbs’ reported interest in back doors; or the injured Spencer’s murmur of Denis Kayes’s name; or the dead man’s hidden store of gold; or indeed any other of the oddly disconnected events that yet all without exception seemed somehow or another continually to act and react upon each other.

  He was still in much the same worried and unhappy mood—‘frustrated’ is the fashionable word of the moment—when later on he sat in Mr. Spencer’s room, reading and re-reading the various memoranda and reports of one kind and another that had already accumulated to make a formidable and ever growing pile.

  Time and again he put down on paper what seemed to him the salient points of the case and time and again he tore the paper up and threw it in the waste paper basket. It was all very quiet. Everyone else in the house had gone to bed. He got up and went to the window to look out over the sleeping town. So Mr. Spencer must have stood and looked when he saw the light where none should have been that had sent him forth on the errand ending so unfortunately.

  A light in Brown’s cottage. That was what he had seen, Bobby felt certain, but whose light? And now Bobby saw it too—a light in a window of what should have been an empty cottage, since Sergeant Hicks had suggested and Bobby had agreed, that, especially as no one could be conveniently spared, it was no longer necessary to keep a constable constantly there on duty.

  Quickly and quietly Bobby slipped out into the hall, closed silently the front door behind him and went out into the night.

  CHAPTER XIX

  NOCTURNAL TALKS

  The night was clear and starlit. Oldfordham had not yet been able to do much in the way of street lighting, not even within the limits now officially allowed; but here and there the lighted windows permitted in the ‘dim out’ helped to give a degree of illumination. Bobby was able to make good progress as he hurried along; and when he reached Market Row he could make out, standing there in the open space before the cottages, a figure of a size and bulk not easily mistaken. Bobby said:

  “Mr. Dell, what are you doing here?”

  Dell must have heard Bobby coming, for the sound of footsteps had been loud in the stillness of that quiet night, but he had not moved. Even now he did not stir or so much as turn his head. Presently he said and almost with a groan:

  “I am troubled in my mind.”

  “Why?” Bobby asked.

  But Dell made no answer. He seemed to have sunk again into deep and uneasy meditation. Not till Bobby had repeated his question twice over did he seem to hear it and then he said:

  “Things come to me in my sleep or even when I am about my work. I think there is a meaning and a message, but I do not know what.”

  “What do you mean?” Bobby asked impatiently, for this was the sort of thing that his plain matter of fact mind, avid of facts only, did not much appreciate. “Do you mean dreams?”

  “I do not know. I never remember,” Dell answered. “When I wake I only know that I am troubled. All I know at other times is that there is something in my mind I cannot get at.”

  “But surely you must know what about?” Bobby persisted. “You must know what you’ve been dreaming a
bout, or what’s the connection if anything’s worrying you?”

  Duke Dell raised his great arm in an unconsciously dramatic gesture. It was his great gift as a preacher that his gestures were often dramatic but always spontaneous. Now his slow sweeping gesture rested on the cottage where Brown had died. He said:

  “About our brother who is dead.”

  “Well, then,” Bobby said. “Well?”

  “I think there is something he greatly wishes but I am not sure.”

  “Perhaps what he wants is that his murderer should be caught and punished,” Bobby suggested, somewhat tartly.

  “No, no,” Dell answered. “That’s not likely. I don’t feel that. Why should he? He’s not likely to think that matters now.”

  “Oh, isn’t he?” grunted Bobby. “Why not? It would interest me, I think. And you haven’t told me yet why all that should bring you here at this time of night.”

  “I told you,” Dell retorted. “I could not sleep because when I did I dreamed and then I woke and I could not remember anything except that it troubled me. So I dressed and came out here.”

  “Mrs. Soames would wonder what you were up to,” Bobby remarked.

  “I don’t think I disturbed her or Soames either,” Dell answered. “I made as little noise as I could and they sleep soundly.”

  At any rate, Bobby reflected, this question and answer demonstrated the worthlessness of the alibi suggested by Mrs. Soames’s testimony that on the night of the murder Duke Dell had slept at her house as usual. Bobby did not quite know what to say next. A profession of ignorance is difficult to counter. If a witness says he doesn’t know, it is generally impossible to prove that he does. On his thoughts broke the voice of Dell, speaking again. He said:

  “Has any human being the right to punish any other human being?”

  “You might as well ask,” retorted Bobby impatiently, “if you have a right to keep a watchdog or a farmer a sheep dog.”

  “Dogs and sheep are not human beings,” Dell answered and went on slowly: “There is a right of self-defence. We are bidden to sell what we have that we may buy a sword. There may be a duty to protest against wrong doing and punishment is a way of protest.”

  “Punishment has nothing to do with me, one way or another,” Bobby told him. “My duty is to get at the truth. That’s all. Then the law can carry on. The law’s responsibility, not mine. My job is to find out who killed Alfred Brown and why? Do you know?”

  “Oh yes,” Dell answered.

  The reply was so unexpected that it was a moment or two before Bobby, recovering slightly, said:

  “Well, who?”

  But Dell only shook his head.

  “I shall not tell you that,” he answered.

  “Why not?” demanded Bobby, a little bewildered now. “Do you mean you want to help Brown’s murderer to go unpunished?”

  “Nothing ever goes unpunished,” Dell replied. “The punishment lies in the act—in the thought.”

  “You were saying just now,” Bobby reminded him, “that there is both a right and a duty to punish.”

  “Not my right nor my duty,” Dell retorted. “Do your duty as you see it, but it is not mine.”

  “How do you know who is the murderer?” Bobby insisted.

  “I must not answer questions,” Dell answered. “I’ve never had any education. It is easy to get confused in question and answer, to say too much. If I answered your question I should soon be telling you what I saw and that I will not. I think that also is in what has come to me—the message or the warning that I can’t get clearly enough to be sure of.”

  Bobby stared at him, baffled and annoyed. He had never come across anything like this before. The man might simply be a colossal humbug or possibly an example of self-delusion on a gigantic scale. Yet somehow he impressed. Perhaps by the mere force of the enormity of his deception—conscious or unconscious. Bobby asked:

  “Is all this what you are told by your Vision you are so fond of talking about?”

  “The Vision is not like that,” Dell explained. “It shows you plainly where lies your home. But the way there is for you to find. If you seek it is shown, but for you alone. Others must first see the Vision themselves and then they too will be shown if they search.”

  A note of exaltation had crept into his voice. Huge as was his form it seemed to grow, to dilate, to grow till in that dim light it seemed to tower towards the sky. Bobby had to struggle against the impression that was being made on him. It was a feeling that he did not understand, that he resented because he felt that it was the intrusion of another personality upon his own, nor did he know whether it was good or bad. The feeling passed, but it left him better able to understand how enormous could be the influence Duke Dell might be able to exercise upon others. Bobby felt he could see him as the leader of some vast crusade. Then he told himself crossly that he had not come out here at this time of night to indulge in abstract metaphysical discussion. He said a little loudly:

  “If you do know who the murderer is, it’s your plain duty to tell.”

  But Dell only shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “How do you know?” Bobby persisted, and this time Dell did answer for he said simply:

  “I saw and heard.”

  “What?” Bobby asked, but Dell once again shook his head.

  “It’s no good asking me to say what I will not,” he said quietly.

  “Was it you yourself?” Bobby asked.

  “Me myself what?”

  “Was it you killed Brown?”

  “No. Why should you think that?”

  The voice was quiet and untroubled, not much surprised, not even much interested. Somehow it managed to convey an impression that the question was trivial, silly in fact, childish. Bobby said, and with a touch of self-defence in his voice:

  “Well, you know, I heard you say at Chipping Up it would have been better if Brown had drowned in the stream where he fell when you knocked him down. If he hadn’t been hauled out of the water in time he would have been dead. You would have been responsible.”

  “Should I?” Dell asked meditatively. “I remember that I wondered if my arm had been guided. But I did not know at the time what I had done. Truly, it would have been better had he died then, for he gained only a few hours of life and much, much would have been saved.”

  “If it would have been better then, did you help it to happen later?” Bobby asked.

  “No. It is always far better to go hence. It is always better for little children to go home and what else is death? But we must wait till we and it are ready. The uninvited guest may not be well received. You must not run a risk like that, either for yourself or for others. Receive your summons with joy but you must wait for it.”

  “Oh, well,” Bobby muttered. With an effort he added: “I’m not at all satisfied. I tell you that plainly. Do you want me to understand that there is nothing you will tell me except that your mind is troubled? I don’t see why that should make you come wandering round here late at night when there’s no one about. Have you heard people saying Brown had a store of hidden gold?”

  “I expect everyone has heard that now,” Dell answered. “At least I suppose so. He told me some time ago.”

  “Told you?” Bobby exclaimed. “Did you tell anyone else?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Oh no. It was his affair, his business if he wanted to keep it secret. I told no one.”

  Bobby reflected gloomily that even if Dell believed himself to be speaking the truth, it did not go for much. Dell might very easily have said something that now he had entirely forgotten and that yet might have put someone else on the scent. The whole scope of the investigation seemed suddenly to have widened. Bobby said:

  “It’s probably why he’s dead, that hidden gold of his. Were you looking to see if any of it was left when you were in there?”

  “In where?”

  “In the cottage,” Bobby said impatiently, jerking a hand towards it. “I saw y
our light. That’s what brought me out.”

  Dell shook his head.

  “That wasn’t me,” he said. “I’ve not been in. If you saw a light it wasn’t mine.” Then he said: “There’s someone coming out now.”

  Bobby turned sharply. The door of the cottage was opening. A man came out. Even in that dim half light, Bobby could recognize him. Bobby flashed a light from his torch to make sure. He said:

  “Mr. Kayes. What’s this mean?”

  “The Deputy Chief, isn’t it?” Kayes asked, coming towards them. “Always on the spot, aren’t you?” he said in a rather rueful tone. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “Why were you there at all?” Bobby demanded. “I should be justified in charging you—found on enclosed premises for a presumed unlawful purpose.”

  “Nothing unlawful in looking round an empty house, is there?” retorted Kayes.

  “How did you get in?” demanded Bobby, prudently leaving this question unanswered.

  “The door wasn’t locked. That’s why. I mean I only meant to have a look and then I tried the door and it wasn’t locked so I went in.”

  Dell interposed.

  “I’ll be getting back to bed,” he said. “I think I shall be able to sleep now.”

  Bobby swung round on him. He said with energy:

  “Mr. Dell. I want to give you a very serious warning. If you really know anything and keep it back, you become an accessory after the fact. That means you make yourself liable to a heavy term of imprisonment.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Dell answered tranquilly. “There is much work to be done in prisons if you are there as one of themselves. It may be I am to be guided there. Good-night and God be with you. I think that you mean well, though blind and ignorant and much deceived.”