Secrets Can't be Kept: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Miss Bates got up. She still seemed very disturbed. She went through a door behind where she sat. She came back and said:

  “She’s in the kitchen. It’s this way.”

  Bobby followed through the door. The kitchen was a large, clean, light, airy room with a business-like, efficient air about it. Along one wall was a range of cupboards with glass doors. To the left was a big sink and still more cupboards and shelves. Opposite were a baker’s oven and a household stove. Before the big window at the farther end of the room was the Work-table, with at one end an electric mixer. In the middle of the room was a trolley, serving both as an additional table and for fetch and carry to and from the store-room, larder, packing-room. Everything had a bright and polished appearance, and Bobby noticed the long array of kettles of different sizes, all neatly arranged, side by side, on one of the shelves.

  Mrs Bloom was standing near the trolley, facing the door by which Bobby and Miss Bates entered. Miss Bates at once retired, closing the door behind her. Bobby felt she was still frightened at what she had said. Mrs Bloom was a small woman with snow-white hair combed back tightly from the forehead. She looked fragile and had been pretty when young, Bobby thought, for worn, emaciated even, as was her appearance now, the pattern of her facial bones beneath the tightly drawn, dead-white skin showed fineness and harmony. So, too, did her long, slender hands she held folded before her. These alone reminded Bobby of her son. Otherwise he saw small resemblance; except in some measure in her eyes—large and quiet and deep, of the same greenish tint as his, but with a look in them as of tragic griefs long past but still remembered.

  What it was about her that gave this strange, vivid impression of tragedy and suffering beyond the common, Bobby was not sure; and yet he experienced a sensation he in no way understood, as though he had come blunderingly into a place where he had no right to be.

  An artist of genius has made of the painting of a chair—a common kitchen chair and nothing more—a symbol of the eternal loneliness and solitude of all mankind; and so, too, this quiet, still woman with the tragic eyes, the deep lines about the mouth, the folded hands, waiting there in her kitchen for him to speak, seemed now in the same way the complete symbol of the tragedy of man.

  So absorbed was he in these thoughts, or rather in the kind of wonder that possessed him, that he did not speak. It was she who broke the silence first, and her words were commonplace and simple.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” she said.

  Bobby put from him the thought that he ought to apologize and withdraw, that he had no right to trouble those depths, aloof and hidden, in which he felt that long ago her life had drowned. He reminded himself he was on duty. He said:

  “I called to ask about Mr Ned Bloom.”

  “He is not here,” she answered.

  “He came to see me in Midwych,” Bobby continued. “He seemed to think he had some information he could give us. I should like to ask him more about it.”

  “He is not here,” she repeated. “I do not know where he is.”

  “Have you seen him since his visit to me?”

  “No.”

  “Is it unusual for him to be absent from home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know he intended to come to see me?”

  “No. But I had a ’phone message that he had gone to see the county police and that I had better stop him if I wanted to see him alive again. I rang up to ask, and they told me he had been there and had gone again.”

  “Who was the ’phone message from?”

  “I do not know. I asked, but whoever it was would not say. I did not recognize the voice. I thought perhaps it was a joke. It did not sound like one. Perhaps it was. I do not know.”

  “Didn’t the message alarm you?”

  “It worried me. That is why I ’phoned.”

  He asked her the exact time when she rang up. She had not noticed. He told her two other messages had been received as well as her own, each, too, purporting to come from herself, from Ned’s mother. She listened gravely, but made no comment. Bobby felt baffled. He had an impression that her silence hid something significant, but significant of what, he did not know. He wondered if she knew more than she chose to say, and yet he did not much think so. She had an air of being indifferent, almost callous, and yet he knew it was not indifference, but endurance, endurance born of suffering. He blurted out angrily:

  “He is your son, but you are not being very helpful.” She made no answer, only those strange, deep eyes flickered for a moment and he felt that what he had said had been brutal. “I am sorry,” he said. “Didn’t you think of reporting his absence to us?”

  “I thought of it,” she answered slowly; “but what could you do?”

  “Well,” he said, feeling again oddly baffled, “we could make inquiries, institute a search.”

  “Please do so,” she said.

  “You don’t sound very hopeful,” he exclaimed, irritated again; and though she did not answer in words, again he saw that the calm depths of her eyes were troubled, so that he had the idea that she and hope had long since parted company.

  His eye was caught by the long array of kettles standing side by side on the shelf they filled from end to end.

  “You’ve a lot of kettles there,” he said. “One and twenty.”

  “Are there?” she asked, without showing any surprise at the abrupt, disconnected remark. “I didn’t know. I’ve never counted. We try to have freshly boiled water for each customer. As soon as one kettle boils, we take it off and put on another.”

  “Mrs Bloom,” Bobby said, “the word ‘murder’ has been used. Have you any reason to think it possible anything like that has happened to your son?”

  She seemed to ponder this, and it was a moment or two before she answered. Finally she said:—

  “What is a reason? I am afraid, but I do not know of anything you could call a reason. Except that ’phone call, and that may have been nothing. Ned had been dropping hints about things he knew; but is that a reason for murder? I suppose it might be, or some might think so. He liked to find out things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “About people. Anything. Ned was lame. He had a club foot.”

  “I know,” Bobby said. “He was sensitive about it, wasn’t he? It struck me he made a point of pushing it out for you to see.”

  “He was very sensitive about it,” she agreed. “I think he blamed me, thought it was my fault. Perhaps it was. It kept him out of things. He couldn’t play games like other boys. He thought they looked down on him. They weren’t always kind. Other boys, I mean. How could they be—so young? But if he knew things about them—if he knew who had a crib hidden in his desk, who had been up to this or that piece of mischief—then they didn’t dare tease or laugh at him. Because he might tell. I think he never did, but they knew he might.”

  Bobby remembered that Miss Bates had said Mrs Bloom knew nothing of her son’s habit of worming out other people’s secrets. Evidently that was a mistake on the part of Miss Bates. Clearly Mrs Bloom knew. Bobby could not help feeling that there was much she knew and much she did not tell.

  “When he came to see me,” Bobby said, “he seemed to think he had got hold of something serious. If he was right and it was serious and the person concerned knew he knew—well, that might be serious, too.”

  She did not answer in words, but it was plain that she understood.

  “You can’t tell me anything more?” he asked.

  She made the faintest possible negative gesture. He looked at her frowningly, more than ever puzzled, baffled. He became aware of an odd impression that between her and the living world was a barrier beyond his power to pierce. He turned away and stared at that long row of kettles again. Now he saw that he had counted wrong before—that there were, in fact, twenty-two. He said to her over his shoulder:

  “One would think you did not care what happened to him.”

  There was a slight stiffening of the
thin, worn, upright body before she answered. Then she said in a voice so low he could hardly catch the words:

  “If my son is alive, he will return. If he is dead, can you give him back to me?”

  CHAPTER VI

  TROUBLED MOTHER

  A QUESTION, this, to which there was no reply, and Bobby offered none. After a time, he said:

  “If your son has been murdered—and I think you think that is possible, though you will not tell me why—don’t you want his murderer found and punished?”

  Hitherto Mrs Bloom had remained impassive, motionless, only a tightening of her hands folded before her, only the changing expression in her deep, strange eyes, giving any sign of what she felt. Now she moved away from the trolley and went to the window and stood there. Without looking round, as much as if she were speaking to herself as to him, she said:

  “Could any punishment be worse than to go on living with such a memory?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” retorted Bobby, “but I do know my duty.”

  “Oh, yes,” she agreed, turning and giving him a sudden, unexpected smile, so full of sympathy and kindness and understanding—even approval, as he thought—that for the moment he was quite bewildered. That smile, too, had taken twenty years or more off her apparent age, so that instead of the worn and elderly sixty she had looked before, she seemed for the instant to be only a well-preserved forty. The change went as quickly as it came and she continued: “It’s your work, isn’t it? to try to make the world safe for us all. Well, of course, you can’t, but you are right to try. Perhaps you can for Ned, too, because there’s no real reason to suppose anything so dreadful has happened.”

  “I hope it hasn’t,” Bobby said. “Very likely it hasn’t. But it is quite plain that you think it possible. I want to know, and I am speaking as a police officer, what grounds you have for your suspicions?”

  He had spoken designedly in his most formal and official manner. It often impressed people. Sometimes he even said: ‘In the name of the King’. Such expressions had their effect, often went far to make people more willing to help. But on Mrs Bloom no such effect was produced. In her impassive way, she merely said:

  “If I knew anything, I think I would tell you. But I don’t. I mean I know nothing to explain why Ned has not come home. It has never happened before, and I don’t understand it. I am not going to say anything when I don’t know. It is so easy to suspect people who are quite innocent. Is there anything more dreadful than to throw suspicion on some one who is innocent?”

  “Isn’t it better for innocence to be proved?” Bobby asked.

  “It is better for it not to be questioned,” she answered. “It always sticks—suspicion, I mean. Have you never thought what it would be like for an innocent person to be put on trial, to suffer all that long agony, even if acquitted in the end?”

  Before Bobby could answer the tall girl he knew as Kitty came briskly in and then stopped and looked surprised when she saw Bobby. To Mrs Bloom she said:

  “One tea.”

  Mrs Bloom took down one of the two-and-twenty kettles, one of the smallest, and put it on the gas.

  “I thought we had finished for the day,” she said. “Don’t wait. Mrs Skinner will be wondering what’s keeping you. Liza and I can manage.” Kitty hesitated and looked at Bobby as if doubtful whether he could be trusted, or perhaps it was merely human curiosity to know why he still lingered.

  “Mother won’t mind,” she said finally. “She knows there are always late customers.”

  She took a tray from a pile near and began to arrange it, keeping a distrustful eye on Bobby as she did so. To Mrs Bloom Bobby said:

  “I understand a light was reported in one of your outbuildings late last night.”

  “The policeman came about it,” Mrs Bloom agreed. “He went to look. I went with him. There was no one there.”

  “It was used by your son, wasn’t it?” Bobby asked. “I should like to look over it myself, if you don’t mind.”

  Kitty had her tea ready now. Mrs Bloom said to her:

  “Will you show the inspector where it is? I’ll take the tea out. Nothing to eat?”

  “No, she said only tea,” Kitty answered. To Bobby she said: “It’s this way.”

  Bobby followed her. He thought he had been handed over to her guidance because Mrs Bloom wished to avoid further questioning. Mrs Bloom puzzled him greatly. In a lesser degree, so did this young woman by whose side he was walking and who in manner, in bearing, in every way, seemed so different from the ordinary tea-garden waitress. But then there was a war on, and war, like poverty, makes strange fellowships. The tea garden was deserted now except for the one late customer. He recognized her as the younger of the two women he had seen in Mr Roman Wright’s garden, the artist’s niece, as he supposed.

  “Isn’t that Miss Wright, from Prospect Cottage?” he asked his companion.

  “Yes, I think so. Why?” Kitty asked in her turn.

  Bobby did not attempt to reply to the ‘Why?’—to which, indeed, there was no answer. Nothing surprising in a resident of the village coming here for tea. Getting an occasional meal out was a frequently adopted expedient for saving rations—especially for saving tea, as so many people found the official two ounces sadly insufficient. Mrs Bloom was coming across to her, carrying a tray with its small tea-pot and solitary cup and saucer. Miss Wright was watching her, and paid no attention to Bobby and Kitty as they walked by.

  “Your name is Skinner, isn’t it?” Bobby asked Kitty.

  She gave him a slightly hostile glance, rather as if she were inclined to ask what business that was of his. However, she contented herself with a slight affirmative nod, and Bobby went on:

  “When people are reported missing, we have to make inquiries. Nothing in it generally. Often people, especially young people, have their own reasons for leaving home. Rather a cruel trick, but young people don’t think of that. Sometimes it’s more serious. Sometimes there’s been an accident. Loss of memory, perhaps. I’ve never known a case myself. But I suppose they happen. Sometimes it’s more serious, and this time there do seem to be some disturbing features. Mrs Bloom evidently feels uneasy.” He added: “I don’t like her uneasiness.”

  “I know she’s worrying,” agreed Kitty. “I don’t see why. He’s a queer secretive boy. I know he had some idea of going to London. I expect that’s what’s happened.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. I didn’t pay any attention. It was only something he said casually. I was busy. There isn’t time to talk when customers are waiting.”

  “I suppose not,” agreed Bobby. “I heard you speaking about Mr Ned Bloom to one of your customers.”

  “I didn’t know who you were till Miss Bates told me,” she said resentfully. “I think you might have said. I thought you were just a customer.”

  “So I was then,” Bobby said smilingly. “A customer who remembered the excellent teas he has had here before. I couldn’t help hearing what you said. An army captain. He had his arm in a sling.”

  “You mean Captain Dunstan,” she said, going rather red.

  “You seemed to think there had been a quarrel between him and Ned Bloom. Can you tell me about it?”

  “I think you ought to ask him, oughtn’t you?” she retorted.

  “Perhaps so,” he agreed. “Can you give me his address?”

  She looked as if she would like to refuse, but finally said he was staying with a Mrs Veale at Miles Bottom Farm not far away.

  “I think Mrs Veale was his Nannie,” she explained.

  “Oh, yes—that’s interesting,” Bobby said.

  “Why?” she snapped, but he did not attempt to explain.

  Instead he remarked:

  “You know, Miss Skinner, I find you rather an unusual young lady to be working as a waitress in a country tea-garden like this.”

  She stood still, drawing herself up to her full height—which really was not so very much below his own six feet thou
gh it looked much more. Icily, though icily is but a poor word, she said:

  “Is that any business of yours?”

  “I don’t know,” Bobby answered mildly. “In a case like this I never know what is my business and what isn’t.”

  CHAPTER VII

  ‘THE DEN’

  BY NOW THEY had reached a small outbuilding, tucked away at the farthest end of the gardens and hidden by a trellis of climbing roses from that part where teas were served. Originally intended for a potting-shed or something of the sort, it had been smartened up, painted, provided with a small stove, with curtains for the windows, simple furniture, and so on. On the door was stencilled ‘The Den’. Bobby stopped Kitty from going too near and began a close and careful examination of it and its surroundings. Somewhat impatiently Kitty said after a time:

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I wish I knew,” Bobby answered.

  With now not only an impatient but a scornful air as well, Kitty said next:

  “Don’t you think you ought to have a big magnifying-glass?”

  “Well, big magnifying-glasses have their uses,” Bobby admitted. “Indispensable sometimes. But we haven’t got that far yet. Can’t put a whole hut under a magnifying-glass. Looks like a professional job, though.”

  “Why?” demanded Kitty.

  “Because there’s nothing to show. Amateurs always leave traces. Professionals don’t.”

  He pushed the door back and stood on the threshold, looking. The interior had been fitted up, not uncomfortably, as a small sitting-room or study, with a writing-table, chairs, shelves for books, and so on. There was a lamp hanging from the roof and a small stove for heating purposes. But there was something else that Bobby noticed as his intent glance travelled from one object to another. Everything had a disarranged air. The chairs had been pushed aside. The writing-table was a trifle out of place, several of the books were upside down, even the two or three rugs on the floor were crumpled as if they had been lifted and put back in a hurry. When he went farther into the room this impression became even stronger. Some one had been busy there, picking things up and looking at them and then putting them back again, hurriedly and not in quite the places they had occupied before. One could see from the marks on the floor how the writing-table had been moved several inches, and the ragged appearance of the book-shelves told the same story.