It Might Lead Anywhere

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh, Bobby,” interrupted Olive, “not Mr. Childs—how could you?”

  “I had to go into it,” Bobby answered. “You can take nothing for granted in a murder case. He admitted a violent scene, you remember. But the main theme was always the sort of duel going on between Theresa and me. She was in it somehow, that was plain, but why? I considered blackmail. But a blackmail game is a silent, secret game. All the blackmailer does is to sit still and suck the victim’s life blood. Theresa was clearly aiming at something, had some plan in hand. Only what? And why? Goodman was certainly in a bad funk the first time we called—and not of us. There seemed no one else but Theresa for him to be scared of. That looked like blackmail but had she proof? Or had she just been dropping hints because she saw him coming back late at night? But hints aren’t enough for blackmail. It would only have been her word against his. In the same way, though, I was at once convinced he must be the murderer or how did he know about Sibelius? It wasn’t anything like enough for action. So I ruled out blackmail on Theresa’s part just as I ruled it out as explaining: the connection between Brown and Goodman. The connection between Brown and young Kayes was hard to understand, too, though that there was one was pretty plain. Kayes’s presence at the Chipping Up disturbance might have been pure accident, but why did he say that if Brown had been killed, something would be ‘washed out’? Of course, we know now he meant all hope of getting any information about his uncle’s estate. But when I asked him he said ‘nothing,’ and so I knew there was something. In addition, there was the sort of family likeness I noticed between him and Langley Long. That made me think at first they were working together, but I soon gave up that idea. Nothing to show it and plenty against.”

  “You mean,” Olive asked, “working together to get hold of all those sovereigns Brown had hidden?”

  “That was another thing it was hard to fit into any rational explanation,” Bobby answered. “It seemed certain the motive for the murder must be there, and yet no one seemed to have had any idea of its existence. No attempt to touch it and Goodman completely bowled over when he heard about it and that it had been left to him. Clear enough of course that something was going on, something pretty sinister, with one murder already committed and a distinct threat of more to come. I was certain both Kayes and Langley Long were concerned and if not as allies, then as rivals. Goodman’s story about embezzlement by Brown and the inquiries Kayes was making about his uncle’s estate gave a pointer, only it didn’t seem to explain Langley Long. If Kayes had been a little more open, he would have saved both himself and me a lot of trouble—and a narrow escape of being murdered. Apparently he had been solemnly warned by his Sydney solicitors about the risk of being let in for a libel action, if he got making accusations he couldn’t prove about the winding up of his uncle’s estate. He says he wasn’t sure enough to dare risk saying much. When the murder happened he was scared stiff. No doubt it doesn’t do a young officer just posted to headquarters much good if he promptly gets himself mixed up in a murder case.

  It seems now that that evening, after the Chipping Up row, he tried to get something out of Brown. But Brown wouldn’t talk, still in a funk probably, wouldn’t let him in, and Kayes lost his temper and told him he would have to talk or else he, Kayes, would knock his head off. What made it worse was that I told Kayes we found his card in the cottage. Kayes didn’t believe me. He knew he hadn’t left one there. He got the wind up badly, thought I was hot on his trail, and what I said about his card was a trap to catch him out. The discovery of the hidden sovereigns made it worse. He was afraid everyone would think he was the murderer and that was why.”

  “How did his card get there if he really didn’t leave it himself?” Olive asked.

  “Oh, that was Goodman. Kayes left his card at Four Oaks when he went to see Goodman, and Goodman took it along to show Brown and warn him Kayes was beginning to make inquiries and they must be careful. When Goodman found Brown so much under Duke Dell’s influence as to be likely to make a clean breast of it, Goodman had either to face the consequences, which would have been for him certain ruin and probable prison, or else to make confession impossible. Which he did. And there was Denis Kayes’s card left on the scene. I don’t think Goodman planned that. Probably accidental. But when Kayes knew Duke Dell was saying he knew who was the murderer because he had ‘seen and heard,’ he was more scared than ever. He took it as referring to his attempt to get Brown to talk and his threat to knock Brown’s head off. I didn’t know anything about that little affair and when I saw how troubled and upset he was by what Dell said, I wasn’t so sure of his innocence as I had been. Seemed too much like a bad conscience. What Dell really meant was that he had seen Mr. Childs outside the cottage about the time of the murder and that he had heard from Brown about the scuffle with Mr. Childs. Apparently Brown had given rather a lurid version. And possibly there was just a trifle of unconscious ‘odium theologicum’ in Duke Dell’s being quite so ready to suspect a clergyman—a wolf in sheep’s clothing is his general description of any of the clergy, I believe.”

  “Well, that was silly,” declared Olive with emphasis. “But you could have made out quite a strong case against poor Mr. Kayes, couldn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby agreed. “The only thing was that I was fairly certain he was innocent and Goodman was guilty. Another thing that bothered me a good deal though was my being so sure it was Kayes’s name I had heard Spencer muttering before he lost consciousness again the time I found him after he had been knocked out in Brown’s cottage. Then, too, one night I did find Kayes prowling about in a suspicious sort of way. Luckily I came across other evidence to show it was Langley Long who had attacked Spencer, and now Spencer—he is well on the way to recovery—says he thinks what he said must have been that it was the man who looked like Kayes, because the last thing he remembers is thinking that. Of course, it was clear then Langley Long was up to something, especially when he was careful to explain he had a good alibi. Why should he have thought of an alibi at all, unless he knew he was in it? I guessed then that Langley Long was probably the young man Duke Dell said he found once in Brown’s cottage when Brown wasn’t there. But whoever it was said he was an Air Force man and that brought me back to Denis Kayes again. Every fresh start I made always seemed at that time to bring me back to where I had been before.”

  “That’s what made you keep on saying that it might lead anywhere,” Olive remarked.

  “It’s what I felt,” Bobby agreed. “Only at the back of it all, the crux of the problem was always Theresa, smiling and flirting on the surface, and yet allowing glimpses of something very different behind all her girlishness. I soon felt sure she was working with Langley Long. But why? What was the idea? On the face of it, they were both complete outsiders. Was it the Brown gold? Originally they might have hoped to get hold of it somehow. But then how could they have known of it? Apart from the fact that apparently no one did know. And once the gold was in our hands, in the bank, no one could possibly get it without proof of rightful ownership. Obviously Denis Kayes might have such a claim—but no one else. Not while he was alive. That’s what made me so uneasy. If there was a plot to secure the gold, it had to aim first at Denis Kayes’s life. That was plain—and didn’t help me to sleep at night.”

  “Oh,” said Olive, who had never known Bobby stay awake much longer than the time necessary to get his head on the pillow. He had that possibly happiest of gifts—that of being able to clear his mind at will of every doubt and fear in order to give it the repose it needed before dealing with them afresh. “Go on,” she said. “I knew you were bothered but not like that.”

  “I had seen Langley Long’s identity card,” Bobby continued, “and it gave no hint of any kinship for him to found a claim on. Yet there was the personal likeness to suggest some sort of relationship. Unknowingly Denis gave the explanation when he said his father had quarrelled with his younger brother over some scandal about a woman. That did suggest that though he was nev
er married he might have left illegitimate issue. Langley Long possibly. Which might have given Langley Long—and Theresa if she were backing him—a notion that they had a sort of right to the money. Every criminal always likes to be able to justify himself, even if only to himself. The tribute of crime to honesty, I suppose, like that hypocrisy pays to virtue. Then, too, Denis told us he had written to this uncle—Stephen Kayes—suggesting there might have been crooked work over the administration of Alfred Kayes’s estate. But Stephen Kayes had died and the letter got to Langley Long, Stephen Kayes’s heir. Incidentally, it is probably from that letter that he and Theresa got Denis Kayes’s signature to copy, traced I expect. We know now from examining Goodman’s papers that Mr. Alfred Kayes had been busy on a big Stock Exchange gamble. He covered his operations by using Goodman’s name. The gamble came off in a big way. But Mr. Alfred Kayes died suddenly, very largely from the sheer excitement and strain of bringing it off. So then it was easy for Goodman, who had been what is called a ‘nominee,’ to turn himself into the actual beneficiary. He seems to have persuaded himself that as he had taken part in the gamble and helped in a way, he had a better right to the fruits than mere relatives on the other side of the world who had never known a thing of what was going on and would never miss what they had never known. Always the criminal’s eternal need to justify himself. It began like that with Goodman and it ended in murder. ‘Facilis decenus &c.’”

  “What’s that mean?” asked Olive.

  “‘Slipping’s easy,’” Bobby translated. “I’m only showing off my Latin because I don’t know any. But though I felt Theresa meant to get her claws on the money, I still didn’t see how. All I was sure of, was that she had a plan and that it was deadly. There was always something rather terrifying about her. As if, in her, her sex had turned full circle, and she, the woman, the giver of life, had become instead the bestower of death.”

  “Ugh,” said Olive, shivering. “Ugh. Don’t.”

  “Janet Jebb saved us,” Bobby went on, “by coming to tell us about the phone message Denis had. Plain enough what was meant as soon as Quarry Hill was mentioned. So I bunked off and luckily was in time.

  “I saw then that if Theresa believed she had brought it off, she would start showing her hand, and I should have both her and Langley Long. I knew where he had been as soon as I saw he had cleaned his shoes. One of Theresa’s careful precautions to make sure there was no dirt on them to tell of Quarry Hill. In the same way she gave Goodman some stuff to make him sleep so that he would be in his bedroom all afternoon, out of everyone’s way and no proof he hadn’t really been to Quarry Hill, leaving cigarette ends and book matches there. All very ingenious, taken with the forged will she had persuaded young Kayes to put in his pocket so it could be found on his dead body as proof that he and Langley Long had been working together and to establish their claim on Brown’s sovereigns—and anything else, quite a lot probably—Goodman might disgorge. Their calculation was that if Goodman could be proved guilty of Brown’s murder—Theresa expected her testimony would be enough for that—then it would be natural to assume he was also the murderer of young Kayes. Once a murderer, twice a murderer, was the idea. There was the obvious motive Goodman had to remove a troublesome and dangerous claimant. It might have come off. My idea as against hers was to use Denis Kayes’s supposed death to make her think she had brought it off, in the hope that that would start her talking. And if she talked, then Goodman would have to talk, too, and between them, the truth would come out. Between rival liars, the truth appears, you know. But I still don’t know even now if I could have proved my case if Denis Kayes’s supposed death hadn’t acted as a kind of catalyst to precipitate all these complicated and doubtful elements into a coherent whole.”

  “Will Mr. Denis ever get the money, do you think?” Olive asked, somewhat doubtfully.

  “I should think there’s a sporting chance,” Bobby answered doubtfully, too. “If Goodman is convicted, and that’s as certain as anything can be that depends on a jury, his property passes to the Crown. If Kayes can prove that Goodman obtained possession by fraud, the Crown may cough up. But it’ll take a lot to satisfy the officials and most likely most of it will go to the lawyers. I dare say Kayes stands a fair chance of getting what the lawyers leave—if any.”

  “Oh, what a shame,” Olive said.

  “Well,” Bobby pointed out, “lawyers have got to live like the rest of us.”

  “Why?” asked Olive, but Bobby dodged this searching question and said instead:

  “Kayes and Miss Jebb are fixing it up to get married.

  Rather on the quiet, but they want us to go. I don’t know why. I told them I had a job to do, was paid to do it, and so I did it. They began talking a lot of rot so I had to shoo them off. Had my work to get on with. All in arrears. Discipline goes to pot if you aren’t there to keep ’em to it. I don’t see how I can possibly find time for weddings.”

  “Bobby, you must,” declared Olive indignantly. “Of course, we must go.” She added in a reflective tone: “Weddings are rather nice, they do make you cry so, don’t they?”

  “Do they?” asked Bobby. “Why?” and this time it was his question that went unanswered.

  THE END

  About The Author

  E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.

  At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.

  He died in 1956.

  The Bobby Owen Mysteries

  1. Information Received

  2. Death among the Sunbathers

  3. Crossword Mystery

  4. Mystery Villa

  5. Death of a Beauty Queen

  6. Death Comes to Cambers

  7. The Bath Mysteries

  8. Mystery of Mr. Jessop

  9. The Dusky Hour

  10. Dictator’s Way

  11. Comes a Stranger

  12. Suspects – Nine

  13. Murder Abroad

  14. Four Strange Women

  15. Ten Star Clues

  16. The Dark Garden

  17. Diabolic Candelabra

  18. The Conqueror Inn

  19. Night’s Cloak

  20. Secrets Can’t be Kept

  21. There’s a Reason for Everything

  22. It Might Lead Anywhere

  23. Helen Passes By

  24. Music Tells All

  25. The House of Godwinsson

  26. So Many Doors

  27. Everybody Always Tells

  28. The Secret Search

  29. The Golden Dagger

  30. The Attending Truth

  31. Strange Ending

  32. Brought to Light

  33. Dark is the Clue

  34. Triple Quest

  35. Six Were Present

  E.R. Punshon

  Helen Passes By

  “I don’t like it, Olive. No good, plain evidence, not so much as the smell of a fingerprint. Nothing but psychology and an atmosphere of doubt, menace, and suspicion.”

  BOBBY OWEN’S latest case begins with him warily lending five shillings to an old reprobate. But this is driven from his mind when he hears of the murder of one Itter Bain, found shot in the woods. Bobby is called into the case, one already made controversial by the alleged shielding of an aristocratic suspect. The evidence certainly ought to make the aristocrat a figure of particular interest to the police. But Bobby needs to tread lightly to prevent a national scandal.

  Other suspects include the irresistibly beautiful Helen, Wing Commander Winstanley (a rival for Helen’s affections), and a s
uspiciously well-informed reporter on a local newspaper. All the while the killer is biding time before striking again – unless Bobby can unmask the fiend first.

  Helen Passes By was first published in 1947, the twenty-third of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series eventually including thirty-five novels. This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  “What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” DOROTHY L. SAYERS

  Helen Passes By

  CHAPTER I

  FAIRY TALE

  Slightly ruffled in his usually fairly equable temper, the Wychshire Deputy Chief Constable, Bobby Owen, was walking back to his office after a meeting of the Watch Committee that had not been so calm and smoothly working as usual. The question of deaths on the road had been discussed—the figures had risen unpleasantly of late—and Bobby was discovering that one of the drawbacks of holding a responsible position is that of being held responsible for things over which you have not the least power or control. Very plainly had it been intimated to him that the duty of the police was to reduce road deaths to an absolute minimum, though of course without in any way interfering with the natural and inalienable right of the motorist to drive as fast as he liked, built up areas included, if the police weren’t around. Bobby, goaded by criticism, had remarked that if he were given the power, he could reduce road deaths by seventy-five per cent, in a few weeks. Asked how, he had suggested prohibiting the use of the horn, since too many motorists drove on the horn and believed that by sounding it they automatically relieved themselves of all responsibility. A taximan, he had remarked, would sometimes drive all day without sounding his horn once.