“Everyone seems to have got the idea at the same moment,” Bobby continued. “Wright had a silly idea in his head that Miss May had the necklace. After his little effort at housebreaking failed, he went to a private inquiry agent, who seems to have kept an eye on Dickson as well. He found out Dickson was inquiring about furniture vans – Dickson tried to pump me once or twice – and reported to Wright, who guessed what that meant. He told Jacks, and they started off almost as soon as you and Dickson. That brought in Mr. Chenery and Miss May, and by that time Wynne and T.T. were on the same idea. So there were the whole lot of us, careering through the Cotswolds after the most illusive furniture van known to history, and it all the time parked in an orchard, with its crew tucking into raspberry jam and home-made scones. We were afraid at one time they were going to turn up casualties, too, but they’ve reported safe from the pub they walked to after the accident Wynne and T.T. engineered. I don’t suppose they’ve any idea yet that a £100,000 necklace was hidden in their van all the time they were using it. I take it, sir, you were not with Dickson when he shot Higson?”
“He left me in the car while he got down by a wood where we stopped,” explained the duke. “We could see smoke on the further side of the trees, and we had seen a car come out of a turning just ahead at a very high rate of speed. Dickson said he would go and see what was happening. He was away some time, and when he returned I told him I had heard shots and asked him what they meant. He seemed excited. He wouldn’t give a plain answer. When I pressed him, he grew insolent. I informed him I should request the local police to investigate. He replied with an expression of extreme vulgarity, and hit me violently over the head with some hard implement. On recovering my senses I found myself in the – er – circumstances of which you are already aware. I should wish you clearly to understand that I desire no reference to be made at any time or in any way to – er – those circumstances.”
“No, sir,” said Bobby; “that’s quite understood.”
“So many subversive and revolutionary interests in these days,” the duke reminded him, “are only too anxious for any opportunity to throw an appearance of ridicule or discredit in any form on the established institutions of the country.”
Bobby regarded with more awe even than before that special established institution of the country at the moment speaking to him.
“Very regrettable tendency of these days,” he murmured, shaking his head sadly. “The Daily Trumpet, for instance.”
The duke scowled.
“A paper that should not be permitted to appear,” he pronounced.
“Or the Weekly Red,” observed Bobby thoughtfully.
The duke shivered.
“Distinctly – Bolshevist,” he said, shuddering a little as he pronounced that word of dread and shame and horror.
“You may be sure I shall be careful, sir,” Bobby assured him earnestly. “And I’m sure Mr. Chenery will be, too, as one of the family.”
“Mr. Chenery – Denis?” asked the duke. “He doesn’t know... know...?”
There was a certain uneasiness in his tone as he spoke, but Bobby’s voice was bland as cream and honey.
“As one of the family,” he explained, “Mr. Chenery was naturally anxious to know if the head of it was safe. He was present, in fact, last night while my report was being made.”
“Inexcusable,” said the duke – and how he said it!
“I wouldn’t attempt to excuse it,” Bobby murmured truthfully. “He was exceedingly interested. I understand he is writing a film play.”
“A – a what?” said the duke, who had risen to his feet like destiny personified, but now sat down again as if his legs had suddenly given way, rather like a dictator coming suddenly upon an inscription carved deep in marble of a resolution he was just going to break.
“A film play,” repeated Bobby. “You know, sir, one of those things they show in cinemas.”
“You say,” almost gasped the duke, “Denis is?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bobby confidently, because, after all, what is true of practically everyone in the country was probably true of Denis as well – no reason to assume the morbid eccentricity abstention would indicate. “He seemed to think the unfortunate affair of last night would be most effective on the screen.”
The duke was quite speechless now. Bobby continued dreamily:
“I understood he had an idea the Hollywood people would think it funny – British duke in a sack. A vulgar lot,” he said, with a reproving frown.
“Funny?” repeated the duke, quite bewildered. “Did you say – funny?”
“Oh, they think anything funny over there, in the States,” said Bobby regretfully. “A most perverted sense of humour.”
“I shall see that it is stopped at once,” declared the duke, striving to recover his normal poise.
“Very necessary, sir,” agreed Bobby. “I believe” – after all, in a credulous age, one can believe anything; why not? – ”I believe the Weekly Red is already considering making certain offers – they might be afraid of the Crimson Banner getting hold of the story first.”
The duke had become very pale. His voice was small and weak as he protested:
“But Denis – Denis Chenery. He’s one of the family, in the line of succession.”
“Far off,” observed Bobby. “Thing of the future; thing of the present is that he’s hard up. Wants to get married. Keen on it for some reason. Don’t know why. It’s Miss Hilda May. She’s been talking to him about the film idea.”
There was an awful silence. The duke was wiping his forehead. Bobby was telling his conscience once again that everybody is writing a film play. Therefore Denis was writing one. And, if so, it was quite certain that he and Hilda were talking about it. His conscience was not satisfied but it was silenced, which is just as good.
“The garage hardly pays,” Bobby went on. “That’s why money might tempt him – easy money, lots of it. Films. Cinema. Articles in the Bolshevik Press. All that sort of thing.”
“It must not be allowed,” said the duke, just like that.
“No, sir,” said Bobby.
“I shall –” said the duke, and paused.
“Yes, sir, I should,” agreed Bobby.
“Only what?” asked the duke.
Bobby somewhat ostentatiously rubbed his nose, scratched his head, gave other signs of doubt.
“Denis owes a duty to his family,” declared the duke.
“He owes cash to his creditors,” said Bobby. “No doubt if he had an allowance from the estate... settled... as prospective heir... twelve or fifteen hundred a year...”
“Eh?” said the duke, utterly astonished at so novel a notion.
“Give you the whip hand of him, you see, sir,” explained Bobby. “Stop it any moment. If a film was put on –” The duke shuddered. “If an article appeared –” The duke shivered. “Make you perfectly safe –” The duke sighed.
After a long pause, he said:
“I will instruct my lawyers.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bobby.
“And I’m obliged to you for – er – warning me.”
“Not at all, sir,” said Bobby politely. “After all, Mr. Chenery saved my life last night at some risk to his own.”
“Did what?” asked the duke, evidently trying to bring this remark into some kind of relation with what had gone before.
“Saved my life,” repeated Bobby. “I’ll let him know what you say, shall I? You see, sir, if once the cinema people get a contract ”
“Quite so,” said the duke, forgetting suspicion in panic. “Tell him at once – tell him I wish to see him immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bobby, and retired.
“And that,” he thought to himself with satisfaction, “is as pretty a piece of blackmail as any C.I.D. man ever put through.”
THE END
About The Author
E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.
At the age of fourteen he started life i
n 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.
Also by E.R. Punshon
Information Received
Death Among The Sunbathers
Crossword Mystery
Mystery Villa
Death of A Beauty Queen
Death Comes to Cambers
The Bath Mysteries
The Dusky Hour
Dictator’s Way
The next title in the Bobby Owen Series
E.R. PUNSHON
The Dusky Hour
The hour of dusk was the climax in the strange case of the man found dead in the chalk pit. Who was the murdered man? And why did so many clues lead to that infamous London nightclub, the ‘Cut and Come Again’?
E.R. Punshon leads the redoubtable Sergeant Bobby Owen and his readers on a dizzy chase through a maze of suspicions to a surprise ending – though the clues are there for anyone astute enough to interpret them.
The Dusky Hour is the ninth of E.R. Punshon’s acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1937 and part of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels.
CHAPTER 1
SHARE-PUSHER?
The little man with the round red smiling face, the soft alluring voice, the ingenuous eyes, sipped with keen appreciation his glass of port, vintage, Dow, 1904; a sound drink.
“Yes,” he was saying meditatively, “I sold him those Woolworth shares for £20. He wasn’t keen; thought they were speculative; talked about preferring something sounder. But he took them all right. Now he’s drawing £20,000 a year from them. Not so bad, eh?” The speaker paused and gave a faint chuckle. “I won’t deny,” he said, “that if I had had the least idea how that deal was going to turn out, I mightn’t have broken my first rule, even though it’s to that I owe what success in business has come my way.”
“What rule is that?” asked his host, Mr. Moffatt, a big, heavy-looking man with a general air of liking to do himself well and at the same time of trying to keep himself in condition by plenty of open-air exercise.
The other sipped his port again. His name was Pegley – Edward George Pegley, generally known as “Peg” or “Ted,” for he was a genial soul and hated all formality. He spoke with a faint American accent. Born in a London suburb, he had spent a good many years in Denver, Colorado.
“My first rule,” he explained seriously, “and I’ve never broken it yet, is that if I know a good thing, I offer it to my clients first. My first duty, I consider, is their interest. In that respect I rank myself with a lawyer, a doctor. The client comes first. Professional duty. Only if my clients pass it do I consider it for myself. Even then –” He shrugged his shoulders. “Lack of capital, and then again – not my business. I’m not an investor. I’m an adviser of investors. If my clients got the idea that I was nosing round for good things for myself, my standing would be gone.” He paused, grinned, winked. “But I own up,” he said, “if I had dreamed that that £20 – good thing though I knew it to be – was going to turn into a steady £20,000 a year, I should have advised it all the same, but when my client turned it down at first, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone on pressing it quite so strongly. All the same, I do feel a bit pleased I can say my rule stands unbroken. I don’t, for instance, own a single share in Cats Cigarettes, though I’ve advised three or four clients to make investments in Cats that bring them in at least a hundred per cent – more, when they bought early. I remember one man – a bank manager – was so impressed by what I told him that he went home, mortgaged his house, furniture, insurance policy – raised fifteen hundred, I think it was – sank the whole lot in Cats Ordinary. I was a bit taken aback myself; more than I had bargained for. His wife was furious; thought he was mad; wept, hysterics, threatened to leave him, sent me a letter from her lawyer threatening I don’t quite know what. Then he died. Wife thought she was ruined. Talked about learning typing and shorthand.
“Now she draws a steady £3,000 a year from that investment, lives in a swell West End flat, learns contract bridge instead of shorthand and typing. I must say she sends me a case of whisky every Christmas and that’s more than some clients do, no matter how much they’ve profited. Of course, I’ve had my fee, so that’s all right.”
“It sounds like a fairy-tale,” said Mr. Moffatt, listening greedily, his eyes alight, his port forgotten – unprecedentedly.
There was a third man present, sitting opposite Mr. Pegley. He was tall, thin, active-looking, with a small head on broad shoulders and a large imposing Roman nose above the tiny moustache and the small pointed imperial that in these days of shaven chins helped to give him his distinctive and even distinguished appearance. His long, loose limbs ended in enormous hands and feet, and on one hand shone a valuable-looking diamond ring, a solitary stone set in platinum. He seemed between forty and fifty years of age, and at the back of his head was beginning to show a bald patch that he admitted smilingly worried him a little, so that, in an endeavour to cure it, he had taken to going about without a hat. He had a habit of silence that added weight to his words when he spoke; grey, keen eyes; an aloof, imperturbable, slightly disdainful manner; and, when he chose to produce it, a most charming, winning smile that seemed to show a store of geniality and friendliness behind his somewhat formal air. His name was Larson – Leopold Leonard Larson. He was in business in the City, and, though he had listened to Mr. Pegley’s monologue in his habitual silence, he had stirred once or twice uneasily in his chair. He was spending the week-end at Sevens, Mr. Moffatt’s place near the Berkshire boundary, and Mr. Pegley had not seemed best pleased to find him there when he himself arrived from London to dine and talk business. He was watching Mr. Larson now with eyes that had grown alert and wary as he went on chatting.
“More than I can understand,” he said, “especially after living so long in the States, the way people on this side leave their money as good as dead. An American would think himself crazy if he kept half his capital on deposit account or tied up in the good old two and a half consols that may have been all right in our fathers’ time, when land was land and brought in a decent return, and all a country gentleman needed was a trifle of ready cash coming in twice a year to meet any delay in the payment of the rents, or any extra estate expense – a new row of cottages, a new wing to the house, or what not. But to keep good money tied up like that to-day – why, it’s like a farmer keeping his seed corn in the barn instead of sowing it in the field. Safe in the barn, no doubt, but where’s next year’s harvest?”
“Ah,” breathed Mr. Moffatt, and he pushed his glass of wine away – a thing that he had never done in all his life before – and he forgot to pass the decanter to Mr. Larson, ruefully aware his own glass was empty, and had been for some time. “Ah,” said Mr. Moffatt again.
“I don’t know why they do it,” Mr. Pegley protested earnestly. “I don’t know even how they meet their liabilities in these days, with all the taxes they clap on land. Why, to-day, the five thousand acres in a ring fence our fathers used to dream of – more a liability than an asset.”
“Pretty heavy liability, too,” declared Mr. Moffatt, still neglectful of that excellent and sound port of the 1904 vintage, still forgetful of Larson’s empty glass, “and you’ve got to pay taxes on that liability, too – talk about four and six in the pound! Jolly lucky if you get off with double that.”
“I know, I know,” said Mr. Pegley, with a world of sympathy in his soft, caressing tones.
“I admit,” said Mr. Larson, but a little as if he deeply regretted having to agree with anything Mr. Pegley said, “I admit
the landed classes are at present most unfairly taxed. The trouble is, Moffatt,” he told their host, with one of his rare and charming smiles, “you country gentlemen don’t command votes enough. I was dining” – he paused, checked himself on the edge of what would evidently have been a breach of confidence –”I have personal knowledge,” he went on, “that the Chancellor has been told so himself in the plainest language. He admitted it; all he said was, he could do nothing. As the – the person I am speaking of said afterwards, ‘Politicians never can do anything.’”
Mr. Moffatt expressed a brief but lurid hope anent the future of all politicians.
Mr. Larson, twiddling his empty glass, for his host was still far too absorbed to remember the port, relapsed into his accustomed silence. Mr. Pegley went on talking. Mr. Moffatt continued to listen, to listen as uncertain heirs listen to the reading of a rich man’s will.
“I mustn’t give names,” said Mr. Pegley smilingly, “but I can assure you for one list of investments my clients show me that I can O.K., take my fee for examining, and never worry about again, I get half a dozen that are simply deplorable in their neglect of opportunity, and at least one or two where a very slight readjustment can treble the return. Even in a really good list there is often opportunity for a change that may mean a few hundreds extra with equal security – not to be sneezed at these days. I remember after the war – I had just come out of hospital and was trying to pick up the threads again – I was shown a list; £50,000 capital. A lump in the two and a half’s – good enough if two and a half suits you and you can meet your social position on it. Another lump in the five per cent war loan – good enough then, but, as I told my client, liable to a cut as soon as the Government was ready.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Moffatt again, thinking ruefully of his comfortable little £100 a year from war loan abruptly and bewilderingly turned into £70.
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