“Look,” Dunstan said, “you can’t believe anything serious has happened to young Bloom? Why should it? You can’t really think it has?”
“I always try,” Bobby explained, “never to think till I know something to think about. At present all I know is that since he came to see me Ned Bloom seems to have vanished.”
“I take it,” Dunstan said after a long pause, “you are wondering if I was so mad with Bloom I did him in after he got back from Midwych?”
“Well, naturally,” Bobby admitted, “there is the possibility that the quarrel started again—and with unfortunate results.”
“Jolly for me,” Dunstan observed unhappily.
“Nothing at present,” Bobby told him, “to suggest that that is what happened. If it didn’t, and if you’ve told me all you know, you’ve nothing to worry about.”
Dunstan shrugged his shoulders. He did not look much consoled. Bobby said he must take himself off, but he might have to bother Captain Dunstan again, though he hoped not. Captain Dunstan said he hoped not too. Then he asked if Bobby hadn’t heard anything else that might help? If he himself heard anything and rang up, would he be able to get in touch with Bobby at his office this week-end? Bobby said “No, he didn’t think so”, to the first question, and “Yes, certainly”, to the second, and Captain Dunstan remarked rather viciously that he had seen so much red tape and officialdom in the Army that he was a trifle pleased to find it in civil life as well.
“If soldiers are citizens still, I suppose police remain civilians,” he added as a parting shot.
Bobby wondered vaguely what this cryptic remark meant, supposed that perhaps the captain was merely trying to be rude; and, since he felt there was no more he could do in Threepence for the time, went back to the police station to give Sergeant Young a few final instructions.
“Oh, by the way,” he said as he was going, “have you heard any gossip in the neighbourhood to the effect that the Army officer at Miles Bottom Farm—Captain Dunstan his name is—had inflicted his own wound on himself in order to avoid being sent abroad?”
Sergeant Young looked very surprised.
“Good lord, no, sir,” he said. “People will say almost anything, so long as it’s spiteful, but that’s a bit too silly, even for the worst of them. Can’t very well machine-gun yourself. Anyhow, there’s no such talk going on that we’ve heard of, and we hear most all.”
CHAPTER XV
POSSIBLE PATTERN
OLIVE WAS HARDLY disappointed, merely resigned, when she learned that Sunday, too, was to be a duty day. Long ago she had discovered that while in peace time any day may at short notice become a duty day, in times of war ‘duty day’ is merely a euphemism for every day and all day.
“Though what you expect to happen at this Theodores place,” she complained, her tone showing but small respect or liking for the place referred to, “and why you can’t let some one else go instead, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“It’s not so much what I expect,” Bobby explained, “because I don’t think I expect anything. What I do hope is that there may be a chance of finding out what Ned Bloom expected.”
“Why suppose he really expected anything?” Olive demanded. “It all seems so vague and silly. I don’t see that there’s any need to take it so awfully seriously. I mean sending letters to people about ‘all is known. Fly.’ It’s all so like a rather hysterical boy trying to make up for his lameness by making himself important. What the psychologists call ‘compensatory reaction’.”
“Yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “But suppose one of those ‘All is known’ letters happened to be sent to some one who had jolly good reason to ‘fly’ if ‘all was known’? He might try to make sure the ‘all’ wasn’t known to any one else. I’m sure Ned thought he was on something important—something of a criminal nature, or why come to me? He knew something about police work, too. He knew enough to know that whatever it was would be a County police job. Most people think all police are one, and that one Scotland Yard. I expect I shall get into trouble for letting him go so easily.”
“But he said he would only tell you if you took him into the force, and you couldn’t, could you? Not a boy with a club foot.”
“That won’t go for anything,” Bobby told her. “Only results count, and you are supposed to know by instinct how things will turn out. I daresay the real swells do. The rest, like me, have to wait and see. Even now I don’t know. It may all turn out a mare’s nest. Ned Bloom may just be spending a pleasant week-end somewhere.”
“At Theodores—pronounced Tedders?” suggested Olive teasingly, but to her surprise Bobby took the suggestion seriously.
“I had thought of that,” he agreed. “Not actually at the place itself, but hanging around, trying to nose out some tit-bit or another, trying to find material for another of his ‘All is known’ letters. That’s why I want to be on the spot myself. I think it possible he does try to get to know things other people don’t want known. If I didn’t take him seriously enough, possibly some one else took him very seriously indeed. You remember—there were three ’phone calls that afternoon, asking about him?”
“One was from his mother, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. One. But all three claimed to be from her—from his mother, that is—and you can’t very well have three mothers. So two were fakes, and why? Again, that shed at the back of the tea-gardens he called his ‘Den’ had been gone through pretty thoroughly. So some one wanted badly to find something there, and was that something the photograph snap hidden in the letter-rack—à la Edgar Allen Poe? It seems to show what looks like a pile of jewellery, and there have been some big jewel robberies lately. The Stokes jewel-case some one walked off with at Euston, wasn’t it? All the Stokesian jewellery in it. Quite a lot, too, the reward for stoking up the fires of health. The great Abbey pearl necklace, too, from the Park Lane flat in London. Others as well. Well, suppose Ned had managed to find out where all that loot is hidden? None of it come on the market yet, as far as we know. Suppose that snap of his shows it?”
“Good gracious me!” said Olive.
“Rather a breath-taking idea,” Bobby agreed. “All that stuff hidden somewhere round here, waiting disposal, and Ned Bloom knew it. If he did know it, he knew too much for good health.”
“Yes, but—” began Olive, and then paused, looking worried.
“Another thing,” Bobby went on. “There is actually a Sir Gervase Arlington, an Admiral in the British Navy—retired, but an Admiral all the same. Once an Admiral, always an Admiral, I suppose. And it is a fact that no one seems to know where he is. His pension is being paid to his solicitors. They say they have instructions how to deal with the money, but have had no communication with their client since before the war. What did Ned Bloom know that made him cut out that newspaper paragraph and mark it ‘Follow this up’? Did he follow it up, and, if he did, where did he get to?”
“Why should he have got anywhere?” asked Olive. “You can’t suppose—suspect—?”
“Why not?” asked Bobby.
“Oh, well,” said Olive, looking resigned.
“I suspect everything and every one,” said Bobby. “Take every one I’ve talked to. Mr Roman Wright, for instance.”
“But he’s an artist.”
“That’s not a reason,” said Bobby.
“Yes, but there’s no connection,” protested Olive.
“I know there isn’t—very suspicious fact, that,” Bobby declared. “Besides, don’t you remember what I told you?”
“About the way he talked?” asked Olive. “Nothing in it,” she pronounced firmly. “Just showing off. People do. He wants to be thought a great artist, so he has to pretend he makes a lot of money. Proves you’re a great artist if you earn big money.”
“More likely to prove you aren’t,” observed Bobby. “But I didn’t mean only that. Remember what I told you about Prospect Cottage, where he lives?”
“Oh, well, yes, I see what you mean,” admitted Olive,
but still doubtfully. “Same thing. He wants to be thought an artist, even if he isn’t.”
“If he isn’t, what is he?” asked Bobby, and went on: “Other things, too. And his niece, Miss Jane Roman Wright. Why does she go to Mrs Bloom’s tea-garden and order tea and never touch it?”
“Can’t she be worried about Ned?” Olive asked. “Perhaps they’re friendly or she’s sorry for him or something. Only she doesn’t want her uncle to know or any one. So she goes there for tea, though she doesn’t want any, just to see if he has got back yet.”
“It might be that,” agreed Bobby thoughtfully. “You mean she’s in love with Ned? I suppose it’s possible—goodness knows, women are like that. Fall in love with anything.”
“Yes, don’t they?” agreed Olive, dangerously meek, “even with policemen, little knowing they’ll never see anything of him any more except his coat tails vanishing round the corner.”
“I,” Bobby pointed out with dignity, “I wear a lounge suit.”
“Don’t quibble,” said Olive severely.
“Then there’s Mr McRell Pink,” Bobby continued.
Olive smiled. Her smile became broader, it ended in her low, rich laugh.
“Such a funny little man,” she said.
“Isn’t he?” agreed Bobby. “Only why did Ned send him registered letters? It may be true he destroyed them without opening them. Takes a certain amount of strength of mind to tear up a registered letter unopened, though. Would you?”
“Goodness, no,” said Olive in a hurry. “But a man might. Men,” said Olive thoughtfully, “will do practically anything—if it’s silly,” she added as an after-thought.
“You remember he appears only three nights a week—Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays?”
“Gives him scarcity value,” suggested Olive. “Makes people queue up, the way they will for almost anything if they think they can’t get it.”
“Well, there’s that,” conceded Bobby. “But why does he refuse to see prominent agents or the B.B.C. people?”
“I suppose he’s satisfied where he is with what he gets,” Olive suggested again. “Unusual, of course, but it’s possible. There’s Miss Skinner. She stops on working as a waitress where she is, when she could get better-paid work somewhere else, because she has an old father and mother to look after. Perhaps Mr McRell Pink has an invalid wife he won’t leave.” Olive paused, looked quite sentimental, and then added, less sentimentally: “I’ve even heard of men who put their wives before their work, though I don’t much believe it.”
Bobby winced. He went cm hurriedly:
“There’s her father—Mr Skinner.”
“Invalids tied to an invalid chair,” pronounced Olive dogmatically, “are out of it.”
“How do we know he’s so much of an invalid as all that?” demanded Bobby. “No doctor, apparently. I don’t like that identity-card business. Is it genuine?”
“It has to be, hasn’t it?” Olive asked. “You can check up, can’t you? Why should there be anything wrong with it?”
“I told you,” said Bobby reproachfully.
“You didn’t,” said Olive firmly.
“You’ll see I did if you think it over,” Bobby told her. “Let’s go back to Miss Skinner.”
“A girl like her,” said Olive, looking disdainful. “There’s no need to be ridiculous.”
“The man who is afraid to be ridiculous,” said Bobby sententiously, “will never be anything else. Besides, you’ve often told me that now-a-days women can do anything, just like men.”
“So they can,” said Olive loyally, “except when it’s too silly, like seeing whether you can hit some one else harder than they can hit you. Boxing,” she explained, in case Bobby failed to get it.
“Well, then, crime is included,” Bobby said. “So she’s in. Then Captain Dunstan.”
“Bobby,” Olive cried indignantly, “why, you said yourself you think he’s in love with Miss Skinner.”
“Again, not a reason,” Bobby said. “The Army would be the perfect camouflage for a wrong ’un, wouldn’t it? And wrong ’uns make good soldiers sometimes. The hero in war may be the burglar or worse in peace. Bit of a family resemblance between war and crime. Drop him and go on. To the Rev. Martin Pyne.”
“Now it’s the vicar of the parish,” sighed Olive resignedly. “Really, Bobby.”
“Why did he clear out when he saw me coming?”
“How do you know he did?”
“Well, anyhow, he wasn’t there after I knocked,” Bobby pointed out. “Isn’t there something else strikes you as a bit queer?”
Olive shook her head. Bobby told her to think hard. She pointed out she wouldn’t have to if he told her. He said not likely. It would do her good to work it out for herself, and then she exclaimed suddenly when all at once she saw what he meant.
“But, Bobby,” she protested, “I don’t see that that need mean much.”
“Very likely not, but it’s there all the same,” he answered, “to remember. Well, leave it at that and go on. Mrs Bloom.”
“Oh, Bobby,” cried Olive, really outraged this time. “His own mother!”
“I know,” Bobby said, “but all the same there is something about her I don’t understand. I can’t describe it. She is like some one who died long ago, only she still goes on living.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Olive protested, puzzled.
“I don’t either. No one has a word to say against her, but if you mention her they all talk of something else as soon as they can. The authorities wanted to close down her place. Superfluous. Well run and all that, but superfluous. Wouldn’t it be better if she would agree to take a job they were sure they could find her—running a British restaurant or a factory canteen—that sort of thing? Better money and less worry, they said. She didn’t take much notice. They started to hint they might cut off her supplies. I don’t know if they had the right. Do anything under the Defence Regulations, I suppose. No doubt they could have made things awkward for her, if they had tried. She went to see them. They told Payne about it. She didn’t say much. Just sat there. Apparently they went all cold and shivery. Finally they were so glad to get rid of her, they told her it was all right, she could carry on. Payne says the man who saw her sent out for a tot of brandy as soon as she had gone.”
“What a lot of silly nonsense!” said Olive contemptuously. “I’ll go and see the poor woman. I can get the Threepence ’bus at the ‘Yeoman Inn’ crossing, can’t I? Besides, what’s all that got to do with her son being away?”
Bobby hesitated, and when he answered it was with some reluctance.
“There’s talk going on,” he said at last. “About what they call mercy killings. Mr Roman Wright mentioned it, for one. Ned himself seems to have talked about it. When he had had a little too much at the ‘Green Dragon’. You know the old saying: ‘In Vino veritas’. In beer, ‘veritas’, too.”
“Nonsense,” said Olive again, even more contemptuously, more firmly. “Not a mother, his own mother.”
Bobby said nothing. Olive found his silence disconcerting. She said:
“I’ll never, never, never believe it.”
But she had become a little pale.
Bobby said with an air of cheerfulness:
“I expect very likely it’ll all end in smoke. If it doesn’t, nice lot of suspects I’ll have on my hands. His mother. The vicar of the parish. A most superior waitress in a local tea-garden. Her invalid father. A highly successful music-hall comedian. An artist with a steady market in water-colours of Wych Forest. The artist’s niece with a fancy for ordering teas she never touches. An Army captain on leave with a wounded arm.”
“A scratch lot,” pronounced Olive. But she still looked pale and uneasy. “A scratch lot,” she repeated.
“Yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “If it’s one of them, it’s a case of take a pin and spot the loser.” Then he said thoughtfully: “All the same, if you put all that together, one thing with another, I do almost think I
see—”
“What—?”
“A possible pattern of things that were.”
CHAPTER XVI
DISCUSSION
THEODORES was situated in the extreme south of the county of Wychshire, in the rich farmland that was so great a contrast to the lonely forest district and the bare high moors that lay west and north of Midwych city.
From Sergeant Payne, who knew a good deal about the history of the county, Bobby learned that Theodores was a comparatively modern building, dating only from towards the end of the eighteenth century. The former home of the Labois family had been abandoned at that time and this new mansion erected on a new and more convenient—and drier—site some two or three miles away. Probably too much money had been spent on its erection. Probably, too, its upkeep had proved too heavy a burden. At any rate, since then the fortunes of the Labois family had steadily declined. The final blow had been the upheaval consequent on the first German war, and the house and grounds had had to be sold when the last owner and seventeenth Baron Stern of Eddington was killed at Loos. The title then became extinct, and the heirs to the estate, a junior and collateral branch of the family, had found their inheritance only sufficient to pay off debts and mortgages. After that there had vanished from the district all trace of a family whose name had been prominent in local talk and tale for nearly a thousand years.
The present owner was Lord Vennery, an extremely rich and important person, chairman and director of probably he himself could not have said offhand how many companies, and reputed an expert in that odd profession or occupation, sport, nightmare or game, usually known as high finance. His political views were said to be advanced, his many gifts to charities and public objects had made him popular it was generally believed that the Government took no important step without consulting him, as a private in the local Home Guard he derived much innocent pleasure from telling how he served under his own butler as platoon sergeant.
“And a damn good one, too,” he used to say. “Much better than I should ever be. You ought to see us jump to it when he yells ‘shun’. I remember when I was green—greener than I am now, I mean—I dropped my rifle on parade. He nearly wept. He just looked at me and said, ‘Private Lord Vennery, that’s as bad as if a butler dropped the entrée when he was handing it round’. I tell you that cut deep.”
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