“There has been an attempted murder apparently,” Bobby answered, thinking, but not saying, that though hat and coat were natural enough, even for someone in a hurry, gloves were not so easy to explain. Odd, perhaps, that gloves have become so suspicious and so sinister an article of attire. Bobby went on: “As an officer of police, I have to try to establish—”
“Good God, man,” interrupted Lord Adour, nearly shouting. “You aren’t trying to make out I attacked Jane?”
“Of course not,” Bobby protested, “but the very first thing necessary in these cases is to try to establish the whereabouts—”
“I consider—” interrupted Lord Adour again and stopped.
“In my opinion—” he began. He paused, stuttering with anger. He said: “Oh, this is too absurd—” and started to walk away.
“Please, please,” protested Bobby pathetically. “If only your lordship would allow me to finish what I was saying. It is important—most important to make sure if possible where everybody was at the time. Suppose you say you were on such a road at such a time, and a suspect’s alibi depends on his being there at the same moment, then if you can say he was or he wasn’t, surely you see what a tremendous help that would be.”
“I’ve told you already I wasn’t out,” Lord Adour retorted, though in a slightly mollified voice, as if he found this explanation plausible, but only half believed it. “I was at home all evening.”
“In your study?” Bobby persisted.
“Really, this is too absurd,” Lord Adour repeated. “No, I wasn’t. Not all the time. I had my dinner, for instance. If you really want a full time-table of my movements to-night— ridiculous—you can come and see me to-morrow. Now you must excuse me. I must get back. I’m responsible in a way for Jane. I must see what’s being done. Good night.”
With that he marched away, and Bobby, looking after him, wondered if his reluctance to answer questions precisely was merely resentment at any fresh hint of suspicion, or whether it hid something he had good reason to keep concealed.
“It’s those gloves,” Bobby thought. “Why gloves?”
He turned to retrace his steps through the trees, and he had not gone more than a few steps before he saw a light flashing skyward, from the further side of the belt of trees where the pasture fields lay.
Thinking that this might mean perhaps that the missing constable might have returned to duty, Bobby hurried on, following the gravel path that led, as he had hoped it would, through the trees to a gate in the wire fence. If those others he had pursued so uselessly, so ineffectively, had known of it, then they would have had no difficulty in slipping from one side to the other, while he had been obliged to swing himself across by the aid of convenient, overhanging boughs. It crossed his mind that Lord Adour, for one, would certainly have known the exact position of the gate. So would Winstanley, for that matter.
Through the gate, beyond the trees, Bobby hurried to where the light from the torch was still being flashed with monotonous regularity into the skies. Halfway across the field Bobby found his missing assistant, bareheaded, seated on the ground, switching his torch on and off with a kind of puzzled and mechanical regularity.
“That’ll do. That’s enough,” Bobby said to him. “Where have you been?”
“I thought I was at home in bed,” the man answered, “but I’m not. I’m here.” This fact, undoubted as it was, seemed to puzzle him, and he looked round with a dazed expression as if to make quite sure. He stared up at Bobby. “You’re the London bloke,” he said accusingly. “The guv’nor don’t like it, not half he don’t.” He tried to get to his feet, but only succeeded by Bobby’s help. “Damn meddling bounder,” he muttered, “but the guv’nor didn’t know as sergeant heard him.” He seemed to pull himself together. “Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “I think something hit me and I’ve lost my helmet.”
“So you have,” agreed Bobby, and to supplement the moonlight, at the moment obscured somewhat by a drifting cloud, he flashed his torch. At a little distance lay the helmet, badly dented and broken. It had evidently received a blow of very considerable force. Near by lay another object that interested Bobby even more. It was a tweed cap. Bobby, giving the battered helmet back to its almost equally battered owner, examined the cap with considerable interest. Well worn, of common make and pattern, it would have offered small hope of any possible identification, but for one thing. It was size 7, and Bobby wondered how many in the neighbourhood wore caps of that size. But he thought Wayling did. Only it smelt very strongly of hair oil, and Bobby was sure Wayling used no such extraneous aids. He was probably of the opinion that ugliness unadorned fascinated more.
Bobby wrote home that evening:
“So you see from all this that an exciting time was had by all and a highly baffling time by me.
“Why did the attack on Jane Felgate, with every appearance about it of a determined and ruthless resolve to kill, end in the anti-climax of a bash on a gravel path? Did the assailant’s heart fail at the last moment and did he turn his blow aside, overwhelmed by the horror and enormity of his own purpose? You would not think so if you had glimpsed as I did for a moment that figure running beneath the trees, between the moonlight and the shadows—murder incarnate. Yet, if it wasn’t that, what was it? If the first blow had missed merely through haste, or because Miss Jane moved in the nick of time, easy enough to strike again.
“Obviously, as you will see at once, the failure to carry out what seemed so evident a purpose, may possibly indicate who it was killed Itter Bain.
“There is a sort of tagging, worrying notion trying to get itself free in my at present highly confused and doubtful mind which does seem to suggest as much. But I can’t see how. I feel it may be that way, but as yet I don’t know, and a feeling is no earthly good without proof.
“You may be sure that when I die, the words ‘No proof’ will be found engraved on my heart.
“Was Helen Adour there? If she was, was she there secretly or was her presence known to any of the others? Haile says he saw her and Winstanley together the night before. But this time it was Jane. Does Winstanley meet the two girls on alternate nights and do they suspect and watch each other to be sure? Is Jane telling the truth when she says she borrowed Helen’s swansdown cape for the occasion, or does the cape mean that Helen herself was there? I suppose girls do occasionally borrow each other’s things, or, for that matter, borrow them without their being lent.
“Winstanley was on the spot—that means, identity of time and place established, but I don’t think he had anything to do with the attack on Jane. Can’t be sure, of course. He didn’t use his gun, anyhow, for I took a look at the butt and it wasn’t damaged, or even scratched, as it must have been had it given that tremendous whack on the gravel path. Moreover, he was wearing fairly heavy shoes, and, if he had come back, Jane would have heard him and known who it was attacked her. There is the possibility perhaps that he ran back on tip toe on the grass edging the path, and that she didn’t hear him, but I don’t think it likely. Besides, she had a glimpse of whoever it was ‘jumped at her,’ as she puts it, and she would have recognized him.
“Then there’s Lord Adour. Identity established again, for he, too, was on the spot. And why gloves? That worries me, though it may mean nothing. If you hear a cry one evening after dark and go out to see what it was, you may stop to button up your coat and wrap a scarf round your neck and you may happen to pull your cap down over your eyes. But would you stop to put on gloves? Or would you, knowing all about dabs, as everyone does in these days, when, as good old Payne used to be fond of saying, no five-year-old goes to the pantry to steal mummy’s jam without first putting on gloves? Adorn does in a way resemble that figure of murder incarnate I had a glimpse of under the trees, but only a general resemblance. No proof there, either.
“Haile was on the spot the night before. Was he there again? I can’t make up my mind what to think about Haile. He warned me against Mauley Bain, the dead man’s brother, but th
at may have been to divert suspicion from himself. Is there any chance that the attack on Jane was stage thunder, meant to cover something else he is up to? If he can manage to produce evidence to suggest that the case against Lord Adour was not pressed because of social position and connection with ‘big business,’ then apparently the political consequences may be serious. There seems to be an idea that it would strengthen very considerably the people who want this present Government to go ahead full speed, all brakes off, to produce an ideal world made up of men and women who themselves are so very far from being ideal.
“Mauley Bain mustn’t be forgotten either. But he is said to be in London and, if he was, that’s a sound alibi. Only what is it worth in these days of cars and motor-bikes? I shall try to check up, but even if he can say what hotel he stayed at, there’s always the bare possibility of slipping in and out again unseen, unnoticed. Not likely, but a possibility to be remembered.
“Then again, who knocked out the man Seers posted to the job of watching Kindles? Not a very highly intelligent specimen of the local constabulary, and am I being merely spiteful in entertaining a faint, unworthy suspicion that Seers picked out the most dunderheaded man available? I suppose it’s only bad temper and disappointment and a general sense of failure, that allows so improper a thought to pop into my mind. It must pop out again.
“What does Wayling’s cap mean? I’m sure it is Wayling’s, for I’m sure there’s no one else here with a head that size. It certainly wasn’t Wayling I saw, though it may have been Wayling who shone the light of his torch on me. Anyhow, I’m also sure Wayling wouldn’t knock anyone on the head. He’s a disreputable, dishonest little scamp you couldn’t trust with either a sixpence or a woman, but I don’t believe he would ever hurt a fly. You can’t trust him with money because he always sees himself as a prospective millionaire about to hand you a wad of bank-notes in return for your sixpenny loan. You can’t trust him with women because—well, because he and women are both like that. All the same, I don’t suppose he has ever deliberately, of ‘malice aforethought,’ injured or meant to injure any living soul. Besides, he was probably on duty at the pub where he got himself a job, ‘Superintending the bars,’ as he said—in other words, and in the cold light of a less luxuriant imagination—washing up the beer glasses and sweeping the floors.
“As soon as I got back I rang up Seers to tell him what had happened. Unluckily, he was in bed and very sound asleep—also very, very grumpy at being rung up. Probably he made a few remarks like the one it seems he didn’t know the sergeant heard. You can’t wonder after his mine-spotting activities. He blew up another to-day, Gregson says, by potting at it with a rifle. It was far enough out at sea for that to be done safely. I’m glad I work in the retail line, not in the wholesale slaughter department—section, mines. I shouldn’t much care for the job of tacking a light on to a thing that any bump or mishandling may send up in a whirl of general destruction. All the same, poor old Seers was very grumpy indeed, and much too sleepy to get it all straight, though not too much so to prevent his getting very fierce indeed when he heard Adour mentioned. Seers is getting what I suppose nowadays is called a ‘complex’ about Adour—a sort of Adour persecution complex with Commander Seers as the noble, single-handed defender against my wicked machinations.
“I expect you’re saying, ‘Bad temper again.’ Very likely. The fact is, I’m worried. What happened to-night is disturbing. Disturbing, because significant, and all the more so because I’ve no answer to the question, significant of what?
“By the way, the Seagull launch has been removed from the harbour and taken upriver to the Bain works for the engine to be repaired. Is that merely routine or is it part of a pattern not yet clear? I am coming to think that probably I was mistaken in believing I knew the whereabouts of Lord Adour’s missing gun, supposed to be the murder weapon. Supposed, for there is again no proof another gun may have been used. Any number of shot-guns in the district. Winstanley has one, for example, and so has every other farmer; others as well. If my first idea that I know where it is turns out to be correct, of course there will be no chance of my being able to get hold of it. But if I’m wrong about that, and it’s somewhere else, there may be a chance still. One never knows.”
The letter continues with matters of purely private interest.
CHAPTER XVIII
NINE THOUSAND POUNDS
First light, then, to adopt the Army phrase, saw Bobby out and hard at work, examining with minute care the scene of the incidents of the preceding night. To help, there had been sent him by a sergeant, deeply thankful that seniority protected him from duty at such unearthly hours, two of the local constabulary, sleepy, sad, and disgruntled men, mournfully remembering the warm beds they had been forced to leave.
Nor had the search any great success. Bobby himself discovered, thrown among some bushes, a pick handle, badly splintered and broken at, one end. A comparison with the damaged surface of the gravel path showed it was the instrument used and induced one of the constables to remark that he was glad his head hadn’t been in the way of that descending pick handle.
Bobby, remarking that he felt the same way, packed the pick handle carefully, ready for dispatch for examination by experts. Not that he thought anything useful would result, but there was always the chance, and everything has to be tried once. The cap he had picked up would have to go, too, though first he meant to show it to Wayling to see if he acknowledged ownership and could give any explanation of its appearance where Bobby had found it.
The search completed without further result, Bobby dismissed his two assistants, as full of hate for him, both of them, as they were both empty of breakfast, and himself returned to Mrs. Gregson’s and his own breakfast. He made a hasty meal, for he had much to do, and went off to the “Good Haul,” where he found Wayling hard at work, polishing the “Good Haul” brass work, though, or so Bobby thought, with a slight relaxation of the zeal and appreciation with which he had at first tackled the job. He was bare-headed, and his rough and unbrushed hair showed no sign of the use of any kind of hair oil.
“This yours?” Bobby asked, after greeting him, and Wayling looked very surprised when he saw the cap Bobby was holding out.
“How did you get hold of it?” he inquired. “Someone pinched it last night.”
“Do you know who?”
“No. No idea. Why? There was a bit of a scuffle last night.
Fellow making a nuisance of himself in the bar. Six-footer and thought he could get away with it. Had a drop too much. They had to send for me, and, as he wouldn’t be sensible, I had to take him by the scruff of the neck and throw him out. Lost my cap in the process. I expect one of his pals pocketed it as a kind of revenge. Thanks for bringing it back.” He held out his hand and looked surprised again when he saw Bobby carefully putting the cap away in the small dispatch case he had brought it in. “What’s the big idea?” Wayling asked. “That’s my cap.”
“Yes, I know,” Bobby said. “Sorry and all that, but I’ve got to hang on to it for the present.”
“You’ve no right,” Wayling protested. “My property, isn’t it? I shall have to get another. That’ll mean five bob at least for a new one.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Bobby said happily, for he had seen suddenly a chance to get a little of his own back. “It wouldn’t do to put it on the expense sheet, but I’ll stand the five bob myself.”
“Very good of you,” said Wayling with appreciation.
“You can deduct it from that five pounds you owe me,” Bobby explained, “and we’ll call it four pounds fifteen now.”
Wayling looked at him with grave reproach.
“Do you think,” he asked, “that that is quite playing the game? Quite what one expects between people who call themselves gentlefolk?”
Before Bobby had time to answer a door opened and one of the “Good Haul” staff, a good-looking girl, put her head out. She did not notice Bobby, who was standing to one side. She said softly:
“Mr. Wayling, there’s a nice bit of bacon I saved for you from the boss’s ration he thinks he finished yesterday. Don’t be long. It’s nearly ready.”
“Thanks, Bessie,” Wayling said. “I’ll be in in a jiffy.” The head disappeared. Wayling said with appreciation: “Nice girl, that.”
“Well, don’t get her into trouble,” Bobby said, and Wayling looked deeply hurt and offended.
“I consider that remark most offensive, most uncalled-for,” he declared coldly. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be getting on with my work.”
He turned his back and began again to polish, now with renewed zest. Bobby, though reluctantly, produced two half-crowns. It was probably worth that to keep on good terms with Wayling, and, after all, what’s the good of being senior if you can’t stretch expense sheets just a trifle now and then?
“Well, of course, if you feel you really ought to have the cash,” he said, and handed over the two coins to an always easily placated Wayling. “By the way,” Bobby added, this financial transaction safely concluded, “you know Harry Haile, don’t you? He’s a Seashire Herald reporter now. Was he in here last night?”
“Yes. So he was,” Wayling answered after a moment’s hesitation. “I noticed him keeping out of the way while the little affair I told you about was going on. I think he was afraid he might be next to go out on his ear, but he was being quiet enough, so I took no notice. Do you think he pinched my cap?”
“Oh, no. I was just wondering,” Bobby answered, said goodbye, and was moving away when Wayling called him back, anxious to give good value for that very handy five shillings he had so unexpectedly received.
“There was one of the office staff at Bain’s in last night,” he said. “He got a bit tight. Celebrating, he said.”
“Celebrating what?” Bobby asked.
Helen Passes By: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 14
