“By the way, sergeant,” he added, “do you know anything about Mr Roman Wright’s niece, Jane, I think she’s called—the one who lives with him and his wife? She is always hanging about Mrs Bloom’s place as if she were worrying about Ned Bloom? Did you ever hear there was anything between them?”
The sergeant shook his head. He had never heard even a hint of such a thing. Young Ned Bloom had been different in that from most young lads. He kept away from girls. If they were nice to him he thought it was out of pity, and he took offence; and if they weren’t nice to him, then the offence was deeper still. So far as he knew, Miss Wright and Ned Bloom had never even spoken to each other, unless it were to say “good morning”. Not that he knew much about Miss Wright. She had been living with her uncle and aunt about eighteen months; looked after the house for them, did the shopping that, especially in a small village—and Threepence was not much more—had become in war-time very nearly a full-time job. The Wrights seemed quiet, inoffensive people. Occasionally Mr Roman Wright, on one of his periodical trips to London, took her with him to see her parents, who were, it was vaguely understood, in poor circumstances, and glad to have her provided for. Certainly she was young enough to do war work, the sergeant agreed, but presumably she had been excused for some reason. Bad health, she said, though she looked strong enough, or else on the grounds that she was taking care of two old people.
“Mr Roman Wright looks strong enough and not so old as all that,” Bobby remarked. “Quite capable of looking after himself and his wife, too. They have a daily woman, haven’t they?”
“Three mornings a week, and not much help,” said the sergeant, “seeing as it’s Mrs Harris, deaf as a post and half blind, but very like the best they can get. Mrs Wright isn’t up to much. Sort of worn-out, faded like. ‘Non est’, as the Frenchies say,” and Sergeant Young could not forbear a glance at Bobby to see how this bit of culture had gone down. Satisfied, for Bobby looked so startled it was plain he had been impressed, Young added: “Mrs Harris did tell me once as everything was going to rack and ruin there after Mr Roman Wright’s other niece left to join the A.T.S., and before Miss Jane came.”
“When was that?” Bobby asked.
Sergeant Young scratched his head and tried to remember. About two years ago, he thought. He went off to consult his wife, and came back with confirmation. Almost exactly two years ago. Mrs Young was sure of that because it was at the same time that Miss Carrie Veale’s disappearance had provided a nine days’ sensation.
“Went off without a word to her mother or any one,” Mrs Young said, “and no rhyme or reason to it. At first everyone thought she had joined the A.T.S., too, and then there was scandalous talk that she had run away to join Captain Dunstan—lieutenant he was then. Not a word of truth in it. Captain Dunstan was with his battalion the whole time, training in Scotland. Not that that had prevented tongues from wagging, though. But then the captain came back to spend a leave with Mrs Veale. That had put an end to the talk. Mrs Veale would hardly have had him lodging with her if he had run away with her daughter.”
Bobby said that certainly seemed conclusive, and, not much interested in Miss Carrie Veale’s fate, asked a few more questions about Mr Roman Wright’s other niece. Quite different from this one, Sergeant Young informed him. Rather a noisy, on-coming young woman, in fact. Visited the ‘Green Dragon’ at times, and didn’t at all keep herself to herself, as did the Roman Wrights. No one had been much surprised when she disappeared in a hurry into the A.T.S. No doubt the discipline had been good for her. Mr Roman Wright had only heard from her once or twice, and both he and his wife were a little hurt by her neglect. In Sergeant Young’s considered opinion—and he spoke as the father of two—what most girls wanted today was discipline and lots of it.
“Only,” he added moodily, “in our house, it’s me that gets it.”
Bobby sympathised, said he had found their talk most interesting and suggestive, and would the sergeant get the Boy Scouts on the job as soon as possible? Then, as he was going, he paused to ask if Young’s inquiries had resulted in finding anything to show that old Mr Skinner did in fact possess firearms and therefore the means to implement his threat to put a bullet into the missing Ned Bloom.
“Well, sir,” answered the sergeant, “there’s some do say as he’s been seen firing blanks to scare off the birds from his cherry tree. But I asked him, and he said he had neither gun nor blanks either. Even if it’s true, he might have borrowed the gun, like. I couldn’t find any one who had seen it themselves—just talk, seemingly. And then there’s often shots fired and no one takes much notice—rabbits, rooks, pigeons, and suchlike vermin.”
Bobby thought that was interesting, too, and then, as it was now getting late, he went on to the Pleezeu Tea Rooms for lunch; though those served there well deserved their saving description of ‘light’—repasts, in fact, more calculated to satisfy a young woman intent on slimming than twelve stone, six feet of hungry masculinity.
Kitty came to attend to him when he took his seat, and came, he fancied, with a certain air of wariness and anticipation in her manner. He made his choice, repressing a greedy desire to order three lunches instead of one, and then said:
“May I ask you a question or two?”
“I suppose you will whatever I say,” she answered.
“Well, yes,” he admitted. “You see, I am still worried about what has become of Ned Bloom.”
“He has not written or anything,” she said slowly.
“What does Mrs Bloom think?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I haven’t asked her. Why don’t you?”
He wondered if it was only fancy that made him think she said this as if she did not much suppose either he or any one else would dare any such thing.
“Do you know Miss Jane Wright?” he asked. “A niece of Mr Roman Wright’s?”
“She comes here sometimes,” Kitty answered, and she had grown a little pale. “Why?”
“Do you know if there was anything between her and Ned Bloom? Any sort of flirtation, I mean?”
Kitty looked less startled now, almost amused.
“No,” she said, “I’m sure there wasn’t. Ned never had much to do with girls.”
“You tell me Miss Wright comes here for tea sometimes. Does ‘sometimes’ mean fairly regularly?”
Kitty did not speak, but she nodded. Presently she said:
“Why shouldn’t she?”
Without answering this, Bobby said:
“One more question, and more personal. You were out near Mr Roman Wright’s house early this morning?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Early this morning Mr Roman Wright’s motor-cycle, which had been stolen the afternoon before, was brought back?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“You will notice a certain coincidence?” he said, slightly irritated by this repeated “Yes”.
“Yes,” she said once more, and his irritation did not diminish.
“Do you wish to say anything?” he asked sharply.
“What about?”
“You don’t care to explain why you were taking a walk so early in that particular spot?”
“Is it necessary to explain why one takes a walk in any one spot?” she asked. “If you mean: did I take the motor-cycle away or return it or know anything about it—I didn’t and I don’t. I knew Mr Wright had a motor-cycle, because he used to go off on it into the forest, making his sketches. But I thought he had had to give it up now there’s no petrol.”
With that she went away to attend to another customer, and Bobby wondered if in this talk he had gained one more bit of information to fit into the jigsaw puzzle of which he felt the pattern was slowly becoming evident—unless, of course, the true pattern was some other quite different from that of which he thought he saw the outline.
CHAPTER XXIV
MUSIC-HALL AGAIN
BOBBY, EATING HIS lunch—his semi-demi lunch, he called it to himself—and
meditating how best to frame the questions he wished to put to Mrs Bloom, was interrupted by word from Sergeant Young to say he was urgently wanted on the ’phone.
The message proved in fact to be of some importance, not so much, perhaps, in itself as because of its origin.
At any rate, Bobby felt obliged to return at once to Midwych. His talk with Mrs Bloom had therefore to be postponed, nor on the whole was he much inclined to regret the delay. There would be time to see if any of the lines of inquiry he had put in motion seemed likely to be successful. Then, after his return, there came another ’phone call, this time from Olive, asking urgently if he could possibly find time to accompany her that evening on another visit to the New Grand Music Hall.
“Fell for it, did you?” asked Bobby, considerably surprised. “If you want an evening out, hasn’t your pal Priestley something on somewhere? Generally has, hasn’t he?”
“Mr Priestley,” returned Olive severely, “is an Eminent Author, and would be a knight at the least by now, not a pal, if only he knew enough to keep in with the right people, and I did fall for that funny little man we saw there, and what’s more I’ve got two tickets for the second house, and if you don’t come I shall ask Some One Else—never you mind who.”
“Oh, all right,” Bobby said. “I’ll try to make it, only—second house? What about the black-out and getting home?”
“In war, as war is,” retorted Olive and rang off; and accordingly in due course Bobby found himself once more in the New Grand, and not best pleased to be there, either.
“I don’t see—” he began grumblingly; and Olive told him to be quiet, he would see soon enough. So he said “O. K.” and dropped off into a quiet and pleasant doze till aroused by Olive’s elbow, diligently applied.
“Wake up and listen,” she said. “I didn’t bring you here just to turn a perfectly good fauteuil into a sit-up bed.”
Bobby rubbed his eyes and tried to remember where he was and why. He discovered that Mr McRell Pink was on the stage. He was already well on with his first sketch—one of his most popular, ‘The Man in the Kitchen’—and after it had ended and after one or two smaller items, including a funny story or two, he announced that he was now going to give ‘A Slice of Life: The Detective Investigates the Missing Spring Cabbage’.
Bobby smiled and prepared to listen. At first he thought it was clever, amusing—rather too much of a burlesque, no doubt, but he heard with tolerance the shouts of laughter from a rocking audience. He found himself chuckling once or twice, then he laughed heartily, then grew grave, puzzled.
“What’s the fellow think he’s doing, anyhow?” he asked Olive in a whisper.
“I’ve no idea,” whispered Olive back again.
“He might anyhow try to make it something like,” Bobby grumbled.
“So he might, mightn’t he?” agreed Olive.
After a pause, Bobby whispered again:
“I say, you don’t think he’s having the infernal cheek—”
“Certainly not,” said Olive hastily. “Hush.”
“—to be trying to make a skit on—”
“Oh, no,” said Olive, “of course not.”
“—Me.”
“Hush,” said Olive. “Why? What makes you think that?”
“It isn’t a bit like, anyhow,” declared Bobby heatedly.
“Well, then,” said Olive soothingly.
Mr McRell Pink came to the front of the stage, and the laughter evoked by a last wisecrack—one that sounded as funny from him on the stage as it seemed feeble in memory—died away into a silence of anticipation.
“And there, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in his high-pitched, far-carrying voice, “there we leave the lost spring cabbage, last seen on the way to Miles Bottom Farm in the company of a tall and attractive young lady.”
The audience laughed and cheered because Mr McRell Pink had them in that mood—the mood all great comics can evoke—in which they were prepared to laugh at anything or nothing. Bobby jumped to his feet with a muttered exclamation and made himself extremely unpopular by the way in which he pushed and hurried and scrambled his way from his seat into the gangway. Mr McRell Pink skipped off the stage. By the time Bobby managed to get behind the scenes it was only to be told by a worried and bewildered staff that Mr McRell Pink had not gone to his dressing-room, but had walked straight out of the theatre in his make-up, just as he was. There the black-out had swallowed him up, and no one knew which way he had gone or what had become of him. Nor had he left a single article of personal belongings behind him—nothing but a note an/angry and dismayed manager was engaged in tearing furiously into the smallest fragments possible.
“Just says he’s given his farewell performance for the time being, and perhaps for ever,” the manager told Bobby, lifting despairing arms into the air. “Is that the sort of thing you expect between gentlemen? Walked out on me at a moment’s notice—without a moment’s notice.”
“Can he do that? Haven’t you a contract?” asked Bobby.
“No, I told you,” answered the manager. “Fresh engagement every evening, so to say. Terms—cash before appearing and no guarantee. I could sack him any time I wanted to, he said, and he could quit as and when, and so he has,” wailed the manager, and looked as if he were inclined to lay his head on Bobby’s shoulder and there sob out his sorrows.
“Unusual sort of arrangement,” Bobby suggested. “What’s behind it?”
“Unusual?” snorted the manager. “Positively uniquely unparalleled—I mean to say, nothing like it that I ever heard of. But there it was. Talk you might. Take it or leave it, was all you got. So you took it.” He sighed. “Like the strawberry-and-cream season—too good to last. Anyhow, he was worth ten times what I paid, and he got people into the way of coming regularly. That’s to the good, anyhow, and while the entertainment boom lasts like now, possibly they’ll go on coming. Thank God, people will pay anything for anything at present, and I believe I could put up some one to read Bradshaw aloud and still have the ‘standing room only’ boards out.” So he spoke, seeking consolation, and then he paused and looked at Bobby. A new idea had come to him. “Is it you?” he asked. “Is it you he’s dodging?”
“I don’t know,” said Bobby and in an injured voice: “Was he trying to take me off in that new thing of his to-night?”
“Oh, no,” declared the manager hurriedly. “I told him myself. No personalities, I said. Besides, there was no resemblance.”
“I know there wasn’t,” agreed Bobby heartily.
“Not a scrap,” said the manager, equally heartily, for who wants to get on the wrong side of the police when any opposition they offer to the renewal of a licence receives such absurd attention?
“Not a scrap,” echoed Bobby.
“No, indeed,” said the manager.
“Which explains, I suppose, why my wife laughed so much,” said Bobby, and went off to rejoin Olive, whom he found waiting for him in the foyer, no longer amused, looking very grave.
“Bobby,” she said, “what did he mean?”
“He’s done a bunk so I shouldn’t get a chance to ask,” Bobby said. “Let’s go.”
On the way home Olive told him what had happened. The two tickets had arrived by post. There had been nothing to show who had sent them. She had rung up the box office to inquire, and had been told that the purchase had been effected some days earlier. There was, of course, nothing to show by whom. Tickets were often purchased well in advance when Mr McRell Pink was billed. He had made Mondays and Fridays as popular as any other night. Olive had further inquired about the programme, and then had learned that Mr McRell Pink was introducing a new item—‘The Detective and the Lost Spring Cabbage’.
“I thought just possibly,” confessed Olive demurely, “it might turn out to be a skit on you, and I thought it might be rather fun. I never dreamed—Bobby, he meant you to be there, and he meant you to hear what he said.”
“Looks like it,” agreed Bobby, “and now he’s vanis
hed into the blue. And was he trying to help, or was he merely trying to be funny, or did he want to put us off on a wrong trail, and if it’s that—why? I tell you, my girl, I don’t like it a bit.”
CHAPTER XXV
CHILD SIGHT
THOUGH THERE WAS much needing his attention, Bobby was so far impressed by the music-hall incident that he put all else aside in order to return to Threepence the next afternoon. He had also put in train all the accustomed routine of search by which it might be possible to trace Mr McRell Pink. But there he knew he might receive less help than usual. Some of his confrères and colleagues in the police forces of the country would be sure to suspect what they would call “a publicity stunt”, and put it down as no more than the attempt of a music-hall performer to get his name before the public.
“Some of these artist blokes will do anything to make themselves known,” complained one Chief Constable’s office over the ’phone. “Remember how many actresses have had their pearl necklaces stolen? Blown on a bit now-a-days, but used to be common form. When there’s been fuss enough, ten to one your man will turn up smiling and say he never meant a thing—just being funny.”
Bobby said he didn’t think it was like that. Anyhow, there were other things about which he wanted to talk to Mr McRell Pink. The Chief Constable’s office grunted and rang off. Bobby reflected that very likely that was the general belief, and it didn’t look as if he were going to get very enthusiastic co-operation. For the one thing that annoys the Law more than any other, is the faintest hint of a suspicion that it is being made use of for advertising purposes. Then he fortified himself with a meal more substantial than the dream-like repast of the previous day and took the ’bus for Threepence.
Secrets Can't be Kept: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 14
