Comes a Stranger

by E. R. Punshon

  “Oh, yes,” said Bobby, who thought this might be interesting.

  But Sir William, though Bobby questioned him closely, knew nothing more about it. Nat Kayne had talked in a vague, excited way about having received such a letter, had seemed to think it might be important, but without explaining why, and had also said something about a coming personal interview with the writer. Neither Mr. Broast nor Sir William himself had paid much attention to him. Nat Kayne had tried vague bullying threats before in his attempts to force a sale. He had even got a firm of solicitors to write a stiff letter.

  “Ridiculous, of course,” said Sir William, “bluff, very weak bluff, too. Broast wrote back and told them not to make fools of themselves—said they might succeed in bluffing a poor widow or an ignorant working man, but he was neither, and they needn’t try their dirty tricks with him. Hot correspondence. He told them finally that if they tried to carry out the inspection they talked about—of course, they had no right to do any such thing—he would turn the garden hose on them. Oh, I can tell you, when Broast gets his blood up—well, things happen.”

  And Bobby found himself wondering if murder was one of the things that happened when the fiery tempered librarian got his blood up. And he wondered, too, if this sidelight on Mr. Broast’s character had been given intentionally. A quiet, shy, scholarly man to all appearance but in defence of his beloved library, what might he not be capable of? Bobby decided it was time to inquire into another point.

  “I think you paid Mr. Broast a visit last night?” he said.

  Again Sir William, whose manner had been growing more confident and assured, became alarmed. His nervousness returned, his eyes grew wary once again. He hesitated, and Bobby felt certain that his first impulse was to return a flat denial, but that then second thoughts told him denial would be useless.

  “Yes,” he said. “I walked over after dinner. I suppose that means I must have passed quite close to where the murder took place—not very pleasant.”

  “You walked—you didn’t go by car?”

  “No, I walked, I generally do when I’m going to the Lodge. It’s as quick going through the wood as having to drive all round by the road, even without the trouble of getting out the car. I’ve no chauffeur, you know. Can’t afford one.”

  “I was only wondering what made you change your mind?”

  “Why? I didn’t, I almost always walk, unless I’m going on somewhere else.”

  “I happened to be there when you rang up,” Bobby explained. “I was talking to Mr. Broast when your message was given him. I am sure the word ‘drive’ was used, not walk.”

  Sir William looked faintly puzzled and shook his head.

  “I am sure I said ‘walk’, not ‘drive’,” he repeated. “I rang up myself, and I am certain I said I would walk over. I had no intention of getting out the car.”

  “I see,” said Bobby. “There is a path through the wood, I believe?”

  “Two as a matter of fact. They both run into the sunk lane, one higher up than the other. It runs right on to Chapman’s place—Longmeadow Farm. The other curves round a lot, joins a footpath to the high road and then ends up in the sunk lane.”

  “Which one did you take last night?”

  “The lower one. There’s not much in it. One is as short as the other. Sometimes I take one, sometimes the other. Last night I took the lower one. Why? Does it matter?”

  “Impossible to say at present,” answered Bobby. “The murderer can’t have been far away. You saw nothing? heard nothing?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Sir William was quite clear about that. He insisted he had seen nothing, heard nothing. He hinted it would be a long time before he would care to come back alone through the wood at night. He hoped he was neither a coward nor superstitious. All the same, there would be no more taking those paths at night. As regards time he was not clear. He had not noticed. He believed he had started out about nine, but after rather than before. He did not walk fast. It would probably be about half-past nine when he emerged on the open space at the back of the Lodge where he had expected to meet Mr. Broast. On this occasion he had not seen the librarian, and after waiting a little he had decided they must have missed each other and he had returned home.

  “Broast and I often met like that for a chat before turning in,” Sir William explained. “That’s why I am so sure I said I would walk. If I had said drive he would either have waited in for me or met me along the high road. Broast invariably goes out for a stroll before bed, says it’s the only way he can be sure of sleeping. He has rather converted me to the same idea. I often do the same thing—take a stroll before bed, I mean. And if I have anything to talk over with Broast, any bibliographic point to consult him about or anything like that, I often meet him then, and we have our talk without any risk of being overheard. Once—it was before the time of the present secretary, Miss Perkins, you’ve seen her—we lost a superb example of the Aldine Hypnerotomachia through something the girl who was Broast’s typist at the time let out. And another time it was a copy of the rare Tom Jones in boards I lost because Miss Kayne got talking—the Tom Jones edition in boards is worth perhaps a couple of hundred, you know, while a copy in leather any bookseller would be glad to sell you for a fiver. So now if we hear of anything we want, we prefer to talk it over when there’s no chance of being overheard.”

  “You take an active interest in new acquisitions for the library?” Bobby remarked.

  “We help each other, we work together,” Sir William explained. “Collectors often do—make up the gaps on each other’s shelves.”

  “I see,” said Bobby. He wished he knew more about bibliography. It was all very interesting, but a little confusing, too, and hard to remember. Odd, for instance, that an edition bound in boards should be worth so much more than one bound in leather. He said:

  “Was there anything special you wished to discuss with Mr. Broast last night?”

  “No, nothing, only the little upset with Nat Kayne,” answered Sir William, not too willingly Bobby thought.

  “How long did you wait before giving Mr. Broast up?”

  “Oh, about half an hour, I suppose. I remember hearing it strike ten. Then I came home.”

  “Through the wood, I understand?”

  “It’s the only way unless you go right round by the road.”

  “You didn’t hear any shots?”

  “No, I heard nothing. I don’t suppose the sound would travel far in the wood, and I should be somewhere near the gate that leads into the Lodge grounds. I suppose I got in about half past ten or a quarter to eleven, and then I sat up reading before I went to bed. I came in by the side door. I didn’t disturb anyone, no reason to. They are generally all in bed early, we’re not late folk in the country.”

  Bobby calculated that, assuming this story to be true, Sir William had returned though the wood by the sunk lane and the path, during the interval between the discovery of the dying man by the gamekeeper, Len Hill, and Hill’s return with the help from Longmeadow Farm he had gone to summon. By turning off at the lower path, as he said he had done, Sir William would miss by a few yards the actual scene of the murder, and presumably he would be indoors, or at any rate well away, before the Longmeadow party arrived. Only—was he speaking the truth?

  Then, too, there was that odd discrepancy between his statement that he had not gone out this morning and the butler’s account of his early stroll by the wood and the pond. If he had really intended to go to the village, surely he would have had some breakfast first? and why had he, after going out and changing his mind, not come straight back home, but instead gone round by the pond, two or three hundred yards out of his way? Had he expected or hoped to meet someone there? If so, whom? It was difficult, Bobby told himself, to find a threat connecting these things.

  It would be necessary, too, to investigate this tale of a letter the dead man had received from an American visitor to London, and that had apparently so much excited him. Possibly
Virtue might know something. Inquiries could be made in London, too.

  When he had secured Sir William’s somewhat reluctantly given signature to the note he had taken of this conversation, Bobby departed. On his motor-bicycle he covered the distance to the village at a rate of speed stimulated by the thought of luncheon, for it was growing late now and he was decidedly hungry. Slackening his speed he came into the village street and there, before the little police station, he saw Miss Kayne’s not very modern car drawn up, with Olive sitting at the wheel. She opened the car door as she saw him approaching and he jumped down and went up to her. She said:

  “Oh, Bobby, I am glad you’ve come. There’s been a frightful scene between Miss Kayne and Mr. Broast, and she’s talking so wildly and seems so strange. She says the library’s been robbed, and it’s Miss Perkins, and I’m sure it isn’t, how could it be?”

  “Miss Perkins?” Bobby repeated, and at that moment Miss Kayne came heavily out of the police station and stood on the threshold, filling the doorway completely with her enormous bulk, as she lifted her long ebony cane and pointed it directly at Bobby.

  CHAPTER XIV

  MUCH DISCUSSION

  For a moment or two they all three remained like this, immobile, and Bobby heard Olive draw her breath sharply between her teeth. He knew she was experiencing a feeling of tension, of drama, and he shared it, and yet he did not know why, for what was there tense or dramatic in the sight of a fat old woman standing in a doorway, pointing with an ebony cane? He supposed, vaguely, it must come from some underlying excitement, some as it were subconscious knowledge of dark, strange currents lying just below the surface.

  Miss Kayne lowered her cane and came quickly towards the car. Bobby noticed that for all the heaviness of her swollen body, the clumsiness of those enormous slippers in which her feet were still encased, she yet moved with an unexpected speed. It surprised him a little, for he remembered that in the house she had seemed to find it difficult to rise from her chair without help, to ascend the stairs to her room without labour and effort. In her thin, far off voice that seemed as though it only escaped from her with such difficulty, she said:

  “Detective, what have you found out, detective?”

  “Very little so far,” Bobby acknowledged.

  “Detectives never do,” she told him. “No one ever finds out anything. Things find themselves out.”

  “I think that is true,” Bobby agreed.

  “Things find themselves out,” she repeated, “and there’s nothing that can stop them.” She climbed into the car. “Not even detectives,” she said, “not even if you bury them, not even if you forget them or try to but you can’t. Major Harley will do his best to stop them coming out, of course, in spite of what I’ve told him. Forget-me-not is the flower detectives ought to wear. Remember that, young man. I’m tired. Olive, take me home.”

  “You won’t mind if Olive comes back afterwards so we can have lunch here?” Bobby asked. “I’m staying on to see if I can be of any help, so I’m on duty, and I don’t know when I shall have another chance to see anything of her.”

  “You mean you want to ask her about me?” Miss Kayne said. “No harm in that, though there’s nothing she can tell you. You’ve heard about what was buried years ago? Olive’s told you? You know? Or do you? Don’t you? Shall you want to dig it up again?”

  “I might perhaps,” agreed Bobby calmly, “if I knew where to look.”

  “Find out, if you can,” she retorted. “It’s a detective’s job. Olive knows, but then she has promised not to tell.”

  “She told me so,” agreed Bobby.

  “Take me home, it’s tired me telling things to Major Harley,” the old woman said again to Olive. To Bobby, she added:—“Perhaps some day I’ll tell you myself, but I don’t think I will.”

  “There are thing perhaps you might tell me about the library,” Bobby remarked. “You know Mr. Virtue says he saw a dead man there last night.”

  “That was a lie,” she said, “that was the truth. Do you understand, Mr. Clever Detective?”

  “I think perhaps that I might make a guess,” he answered gravely. “Now you’ve told me so much, won’t you tell me some more? Will you tell me why you hate as you do anything so famous and so valuable as your library? Surely a collection of old books is harmless enough?”

  She sat forward in her place and stared at him in silence. Then she said:

  “I think the man is really clever. At any rate he knows what questions to ask, even if only a fool would think books were harmless. Why, they’re deadly, that’s why they are often censored and burnt.” She leaned further forward. She almost whispered. She said: “Yes, I hate the place, and some day perhaps I’ll burn it down. Olive, I’m tired, tired with talking to this young man of yours, tired with all I told Major Harley. Take me home. Then you can come back. She won’t be long, young man.”

  She made a gesture of farewell. Olive started the car. Bobby watched them go. He had an idea that what she had said was extremely important and enlightening, and yet also he felt that he did not understand it. While the conversation was fresh in his mind he wrote it down, as nearly word for word as he could remember, in his note-book, and he thought that perhaps if he tried long enough and hard enough he might discover the meaning he felt sure lay hidden in it. What in especial had she meant by saying in the same breath that Virtue had told the truth, had told a lie, and then asking him if he knew what that meant? A challenge, he felt, to discover her true meaning, and he shook his head doubtfully as he told himself the challenge was one it was going to be difficult to meet successfully.

  He reflected, too, that she had never said anything about Miss Perkins and the accusation of theft launched against her of which Olive had told him. Perhaps that had been mentioned to Major Harley and he was dealing with it. An improbable accusation, Bobby thought. If anything had been stolen from the library, how could Miss Kayne know it when she hardly ever entered the place? Mr. Broast would know if a single book were out of place, but apparently the accusation came from her and not from him. Then again, Miss Kayne hardly ever came in contact with Miss Perkins, so utterly distinct was the life of the library from that of the Lodge. Miss Perkins had lunch and tea there, it was true, but she had them alone, in the little anteroom where she did her typing.

  He put his notebook back in his pocket and entered the building just as Major Harley came hurrying out, carrying in one hand a packet of sandwiches and with a bottle of beer sticking out of his pocket. He said to Bobby:

  “Oh, it’s you. Did you see that Kayne woman? She’s mad. Insisted on seeing me. Then she never said a word. Sat there. Simply sat there and never opened her mouth.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed Bobby, astonished, “why, she said she had told you—”

  “Sat there,” interposed the Major resentfully, “and never opened her mouth. Sat there like a Chinese Buddha. Never spoke a word sat there like a fat old hippopotamus and never got a word out. I asked her what she had come for, and then she got up and waddled off. Mad, quite mad.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bobby mechanically, his mind busy seeking some reasonable explanation, since he did not for one moment believe that Miss Kayne was mad. He went on: “Miss Farrar told me there had been some sort of quarrel or scene between Miss Kayne and Mr. Broast, and that Miss Kayne afterwards talked about Miss Perkins, and said she was dishonest—accused her of stealing books from the library, as far as I could make out.”

  “Miss Perkins? that’s the typist woman, isn’t it? Well, if she thinks so why doesn’t she lay a complaint? Or does she mean she thinks Miss Perkins murdered Nat Kayne?”

  “She didn’t say so, sir,” Bobby answered cautiously.

  “It’s worth considering,” said the Major. “These sex-starved women…” He left the sentence unfinished except for shaking his head doubtfully. “Freud, you know,” he said abruptly.

  Bobby didn’t know, so he made no reply, and the Major shook his head again.

  “
Anyhow, first glimpse of a motive we’ve had,” he pronounced. “Very good looking young fellow, Nat Kayne. The girl is obsessed by him. She knows she has no chance. It grows on her. She can’t have him in life. She will in death. Sex starved. That’s it perhaps. Worth considering.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bobby, though what he meant was ‘No, sir’, for the suggestion did not seem to him much worth serious consideration.

  “Oh, well,” said the Major. “You saw Winders? Had he anything to say?”

  “He agrees he was not far away at the time of the murder,” Bobby answered. “He denies hearing any shots. He agrees there was constant difficulty with Nat Kayne, who was trying to force a sale of the library, but apparently with no chance of succeeding. Still, it was a constant source of quarrels between him and both Sir William and Mr. Broast. The most curious thing about that is that Miss Kayne seems to dislike the library intensely, and never enters it if she can help, and yet she supports the other two against Nat Kayne in refusing to consider selling. Inconsistent apparently. Another small inconsistency is that Sir William says he rang up to say he would walk over to meet Mr. Broast last night and the message as delivered was that he would drive over. That apparently is how he and Broast missed each other. Sir William also says that Mr. Nat Kayne seemed worried about a letter he had received from an American visiting London.”

  “Virtue,” snapped the Major. “Follow that up. Anything else?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. I think I’ve mentioned all the points in Sir William’s statement that seemed to me important. I have it here as he signed it. I expect it might be as well to ask him if he would care to amplify it later on.”

  “Very likely he will,” agreed the Major. “Wonderful how people’s memories improve at times. We’ll see about that later. Get your lunch now. I’ve got to go to Mayfield—other things to attend to. Have to get my lunch in the car on the way. I’ll read Winders’s statement, too. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Then we’ll go and see Broast and hear what he has to say.”