Everybody Always Tells: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Scientific blokes are always experimenting with guinea pigs,” Simons reminded him; and, before Bobby could once more express agreement, Mrs Jacks returned with a message that Mrs Findlay was still at lunch but would not be long.

  Bobby, not too pleased, said he hoped that ‘not too long’ would prove to be very short indeed and would she please say so to Mrs Findlay. Then he asked Mrs Jacks if she knew anything about Mr Findlay’s guinea pigs.

  “He got them a week or two ago,” she explained. “He wanted them for his work.”

  She added in reply to other questions that she cleaned out the cages and gave the animals food and water every day. She had done so that morning as usual, and she looked both surprised and puzzled when Bobby remarked that one cage was now empty. Each cage had had its usual two occupants that morning, and she had no idea why one was now empty. Probably Mr Findlay had got rid of its former occupants for some reason. She hoped they hadn’t managed to get loose, and weren’t now wandering about the house somewhere. She seemed to have a vision of a house overrun with guinea pigs, and added that what with one thing and another she didn’t know where she was.

  With that she retired, promising to deliver to Mrs Findlay Bobby’s message that he hoped ‘not long’ would be ‘very soon’—a message Bobby suspected would be delivered, if at all, in very modified form. As soon as she had gone Simons said very discontentedly:

  “I call that pretty cool. Husband just been murdered, and she doesn’t want to be disturbed at lunch. You’ve seen her, haven’t you? What did you make of her?”

  Bobby said thoughtfully that she had given him the idea of one who had, so to say, lost herself in the difficulties of life and had not yet decided how to meet them. A restless, questioning personality, one wanting to explore everything, including herself, but not certain how to do it.

  “A difficult job, anyhow,” Bobby commented.

  He added that quite possibly all that might be a mere façade. He was inclined to suspect that behind it all lay a tendency to hysteria. What hysteria was, he said, he didn’t know, but he agreed rather gloomily with Simons’s remark that hysteria was apt to show itself in a tendency to sudden outbreaks of violence.

  “Suspect No. 1,” declared Simons with emphasis. “Any trouble between her and Findlay?”

  “Lord Newdagonby made rather a point of their being very fond of each other. Said they got along excellently, only with the sort of easy tolerance that doesn’t much mind a little laxity on either side. Fashionable idea to-day. People like to call it being unpossessive.”

  “What’s a little laxity mean?” Simons asked, and when Bobby did not answer, he added: “I’ve heard all that before. But there’s a breaking point.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby said gravely.

  He was thinking of Mrs Findlay’s declaration that she was going to give eighteen months to sin as she had given the same time to religion. Was that merely idle talk, a pose to impress, or had it meant something? It was to be remembered that she had spent eighteen months in a sisterhood, taking her share in work and routine as if by them fully satisfied. But she had walked out at the end of her self-appointed period of trial after telling a horrified mother superior that she found nothing satisfying in religion and now was going to seek for satisfaction in what she called ‘sin’. And what had ‘sin’ meant to her? Was it all mere bluff and silly chatter? Or something else? She had, Bobby remembered, drawn a distinction between sin and crime, the latter being merely ‘vulgar’ according to her. But Bobby knew that the boundary between the two could easily be crossed, indeed probably had to be crossed sooner or later.

  Conversation languished. Bobby was deep in thought. Simons was devoting himself to the pile of documents removed from the dead man’s desk. More immediately important, both men were also occupied with a supply of sandwiches sent in by Simons’s forethought from a neighbouring snack bar. Abruptly Simons said:

  “Husbands and wives—you’ve got to face it. They do each other in at times. You can’t stand each other, but you can’t separate. Tied up in a way and can’t get loose. Except this way.”

  “A philosophy of marriage,” Bobby remarked.

  “I didn’t mean anything like that,” protested Simons, slightly alarmed.

  “We must keep our minds open,” Bobby said. “Many possibilities.”

  He applied himself to the sandwiches again, and presently Mrs Findlay appeared. She showed little outward sign of emotion, though Bobby noticed that her make-up had been recently renewed and seemed to have been applied with a certain nervous haste. He did not think her lipstick was often splashed on like that. Those small, deep-set, restless eyes of hers showed no trace of tears. They were partly hidden by half-closed eyelids as before, and all her movements were slow and controlled as if she felt she had to be careful lest they should slip beyond restraint.

  Simons began with a few words of sympathy. She waved them aside impatiently and haughtily.

  “Never mind that,” she said. “My husband has been murdered. Your duty is to find the murderer. You want to know if I can help you. I don’t think I can. I don’t know of any one likely to want to kill Ivor, or of any reason why they should.”

  Simons explained that this was to be only a brief preliminary talk. Later they would ask her to make a full statement. At present their object was to know if she could tell them anything of immediate importance. Did she know of any caller Mr Findlay was expecting, and when had she herself seen him last?

  “Well, we had breakfast together,” she answered, “and then he went upstairs to work as usual. He never saw any one here. Father only let him fit up a room for his work if he promised not to see clients in it. Father said he wasn’t going to have half-cracked inventors swarming all over the place, and Ivor didn’t want either. He had a perfect craze for privacy and secrecy—of course, a patent agent’s work is secret, confidential, but Ivor was rather silly about it. He nearly bit my head off last week when I asked him what he wanted guinea pigs for. And privacy! He would shout the roof off at the least interruption.”

  “Two guinea pigs seem to have disappeared,” Bobby remarked.

  “Have they?” Mrs Findlay asked. “I suppose he had done with them. I think you may be quite sure no one was here this morning. I’ve asked Mrs Jacks. She says she’s sure no one’s been.”

  “Mr Findlay didn’t say anything to you about expecting any visitor, did he?”

  “Oh, no. I think you may be perfectly sure he had no visitor to-day—except his murderer.”

  “That rather suggests it must have been some one in the house,” Simons remarked.

  Mrs Findlay’s small, restless eyes grew steady for once as they fixed themselves on Simons in a long, unblinking stare. For a moment or two she was silent. She said:

  “Naturally.” Then she was silent again. The two men were watching her, but she had removed her gaze from Simons and seemed lost in sombre meditation, her eyes veiled as it were in thought. They waited. She went on: “But I don’t believe it. Your business to find out. But it wasn’t me or father or Kitty or Mrs Jacks for that matter. Why should we? Well. Well?”

  “Can you tell us what you did after breakfast?”

  “I was busy about the flat. There’s plenty to do. I’ve only a daily woman. She comes about nine, except when she doesn’t come at all. We gave both rooms a thorough turn out. There’s only two—bedroom, sitting-room, and the bath and kitchen. I left her to finish, and went out about half-past ten I suppose. I got back about twelve, I think, and I hadn’t murdered Ivor in the interval. Mr Owen was with my father when I got in. He was very worried about those ’phone messages saying I was going to be murdered. Now it seems Ivor was meant, not me at all.”

  “You can’t throw any light on these messages?”

  “No. I never took them very seriously. Father did, but I didn’t. I thought some one was trying to be funny.”

  “Can you say exactly where you went and what you did when you were out between half-past
ten and twelve?”

  “No. I was shopping. I wanted some silk thread, and I couldn’t find what I wanted. I went into two or three shops to ask. I don’t suppose they’ll remember. They are probably asked half a dozen times every day. Then I came home, and on the way I met Mr Acton, and he came with me. He was very pleased about a letter Ivor had sent him, and he wanted to ask him about it—it had to do with a new razor blade Mr Acton means to put on the market. That’s all. If it’s an alibi you’re fishing for, I can’t give it. I could have come back, I suppose, let myself in, slipped upstairs, murdered Ivor, and gone out again. Only I didn’t. And if I had I shouldn’t have taken the opportunity to do any typing.”

  “You’ve heard about that?” Bobby asked quickly.

  “Mrs Jacks told me,” she answered.

  “I understand,” Simons went on, “that you haven’t been in Mr Findlay’s room this morning?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?” she answered, staring at him. “Yes,” she repeated, that long gaze of hers never changing or faltering, “I’ve told you so once already.”

  “Because,” Simons said steadily, and yet with a certain unease as if he had to fight against the almost hypnotic power of that slow stare, “because there’s finger-prints on Mr Findlay’s desk. Mrs Jacks says she dusted and polished the desk this morning, so the prints must presumably have been made this morning. They may be the murderer’s.”

  Mrs Findlay was smiling now, that haughty, remote smile of hers, as of one infinitely amused at the proceedings of some small creatures she was watching from afar.

  “I don’t think,” she said, “I should pay too much importance to that. Mrs Jacks is an excellent cook, and my father wouldn’t part with her on any account. But she hasn’t much idea of housework. She would think she had done all that was needed if she gave Ivor’s desk a whisk with a featherbrush and put a dab of polish on one corner. If she did even that much. She could easily say and think she had thoroughly polished a floor—or a desk—when she had done no more than give it a dab here and there—if as much.”

  “Possibly you wouldn’t object,” suggested Simons, “to letting us take your prints? It would be a help—avoid any chance of confusion.”

  “I should object very much,” Mrs Findlay replied at once. “I’ve told you already it can’t be mine unless I made it yesterday evening. I was up there then.”

  “I am sorry you feel like that,” Simons said gravely. “I hope you will change your mind.”

  “You will get as many finger-prints of mine as you like in our flat,” observed Mrs Findlay, and now there was a kind of secret irony in her manner, even a secret amusement. “At least unless we destroyed them all cleaning this morning. I think you’ve taken possession of the flat, haven’t you? Mrs Jacks tells me there’s a policeman outside. I don’t know what right you have to do that.”

  “The right of police officers investigating a brutal murder,” Bobby interposed sternly. “Mrs Findlay, don’t you think it would be wise to be a little more co-operative? Surely you wish the murderer of your husband to be found?”

  “Will that give him back to me?” she asked; and for a moment Bobby almost thought a touch of emotion disturbed the haughty calm she had hitherto shown.

  But he was not sure; and if any such sign had in fact been momentarily visible it vanished again immediately. Simons said:

  “It’s of no consequence. I just thought it might help if we could be sure whose they were.”

  “A little unfortunate,” she observed, “that we happened to give the flat such a thorough doing out this morning.”

  “Of course, you couldn’t foresee what would happen,” Bobby remarked, watching her closely.

  “No, indeed,” she answered, and she gave no sign of realizing that his remark might carry any underlying implication.

  “We think it is probably a woman’s,” Simons said.

  “I’m not the only woman in the house,” she answered. “There’s Mrs Jacks. She was there this morning. There’s the charwoman—and Kitty Grange as well. She might have ventured in when she knew Ivor had a letter about her fur coat.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  “IT’S ONE SHE WANTS TO SELL”

  WHEN SHE HAD said this Mrs Findlay got up to go, as if she considered the interview closed. Bobby had other ideas.

  “One moment, please,” he said. “Why do you use the expression ‘ventured’?”

  “You know, don’t you?” she retorted. “Didn’t father tell you Kitty had had a row with Ivor? What’s the sense of asking when you know?”

  “For one thing, to be sure what you know,” Bobby told her sharply. “For confirmation, for another. For a third, I am sorry you have not given an impression of being very willing to help.”

  “I can’t help your impressions,” she said, using again that coldly haughty tone of hers, and again she turned towards the door.

  But Bobby still made no corresponding gesture.

  “I have to ask you this, Mrs Findlay,” he said. “Did you resent the attentions Mr Findlay seems to have been fond of paying to other women?”

  Her eyes grew uncertain and wandering again. It was as though she were asking herself the same question and was not sure of the answer. A moment or two passed, and then she replied with the simple monosyllable:

  “No.”

  “Thank you,” Bobby said. “You spoke of a fur coat in connection with Miss Grange?”

  “It’s one she wants to sell,” Mrs Findlay explained. “What about it? It’s part of a small legacy from an aunt of hers who died a few months ago. She meant to keep it at first, and then she thought she had better sell it and she’s been asking all of us if we knew any one who might want it. Ivor had a letter this morning from a friend of his he had mentioned it to, and he asked me to tell her.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. Of course. Why not?”

  “What did she say?”

  “Oh, got on her high horse at first, and said she didn’t want to have anything more to do with Ivor after the way he had behaved. And then she asked if I knew how much the offer was. I didn’t. I didn’t ask, and Ivor didn’t say, only that if she wanted to know about it she was to ask him, and to be quick, because it was some one going abroad soon and couldn’t wait.” She paused, as if in thought, and then said slowly: “A kind of blackmail. To bring her to heel. A kind of blackmail,” she repeated; and again let the word drop slowly from her lips, as if for her it had a kind of hidden significance.

  Once more she turned towards the door, and this time Bobby rose to open it for her. He did not think it wise to question her further just then. Simons looked disappointed. He had thought she ought to be pressed much harder, but that was something Bobby never did—not at least until he was fairly sure he had all the information he was likely to get voluntarily. As he closed the door behind her, Simons said with disapproval.

  “That’s a queer bird if ever there was one. Takes the murder of her husband just the same as if he had come home a bit tiddley.”

  “I don’t pretend to understand her,” Bobby said. “Difficult anyhow when I’m pretty sure she doesn’t understand herself. Searching, and doesn’t know what she’s looking for or wants to find.”

  “Notice the way she said ‘blackmail’?” Simons asked. “In a way, sort of rolled it in her mouth, like it was a bit of sugar candy. At least, that’s how it struck me.”

  “So it did me,” Bobby agreed. “It may have been meant for a hint. I don’t much think so myself. I don’t think she’s a lady who deals in hints. Giving orders is more her line. Have to remember it and look out for any signs. But Findlay was a betting man apparently, and betting’s a good cover for any eccentricities in a banking account.”

  “That may be why he was a betting man, if he was playing the blackmail game. Nothing so far to show it though,” Simons remarked, and Bobby nodded an assent.

  “She’s a clever woman,” he remarked. “She countered that finger-print business very neatly.”
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  “You think it’s hers?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly. Which means that she was in her husband’s room this morning, but doesn’t want to admit it. She put it across that Mrs Jacks was careless about her tidying and could very well have never given Findlay s desk any thorough dusting. And then she let us know it was no good trying to get her prints in the flat upstairs, because it had a thorough doing out this morning.”

  “I’ll get her dabs all the same,” Simons declared.

  “Not much use, I wouldn’t bother,” Bobby told him. “All right to have them if you get a chance, of course. Supporting evidence if identity of time and place can be established, but no more. You would never get any jury to worry about a wife’s dabs on a husband’s desk. We’ve got to know a lot more about their attitude to each other. Affection or something stronger?”

  “I don’t think,” interposed Simons.

  “One can’t be sure,” Bobby said. “Dislike or something stronger?”

  “That’s more like,” Simons interposed this time.

  “Don’t be too sure,” Bobby repeated. “Or else mere indifference? But she’s a woman of strong feelings. I think. I think,” he repeated and then corrected himself: “No, I don’t think anything,” he declared. “Too soon.”

  There was a tap at the door and a constable appeared, escorting a small, fair, rather scared-looking girl, probably not much more than some twenty years of age.

  “Miss Kitty Grange?” Bobby said, rising to move forward for her a chair she accepted with a slightly relieved air, a little indeed as if she had been rather inclined to expect handcuffs instead.

  “It’s so dreadful,” she said with a little gasp as she seated herself. “I can hardly believe it’s true. Can you?”

  “Unfortunately we have to,” Bobby said; and left the routine opening questions to Simons while he listened and watched and tried to decide what part, if any, Kitty might have played in the tragedy. Not a pretty girl, he thought, except in so far as all young girls are pretty. Her features were too irregular, her mouth too large, her light-brown hair a trifle dull with little sparkle showing. Her best feature was her complexion of cream and roses that, he thought, owed ‘all to God’. He noticed, too, a certain natural instinctive grace even in the few movements she made in accepting the chair he offered, and again in her poise as she sat bending forward, her hands held in front of her and nervously clasping and unclasping each other. She was answering Simons’s questions clearly and simply but very plainly with effort and a sense of strain. When Bobby offered her a cigarette, thinking it might help to soothe the very natural agitation she was showing, she shook her head and said, “Oh, no, thank you,” in a slightly shocked tone, as if she thought it would seem heartless to smoke cigarettes in the shadow of such dreadful happenings.