Everybody Always Tells: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Describing her movements that morning, she explained that she had started out early, about ten, and had gone to the London Library to get some books Lord Newdagonby wanted. Two, and the two specially required as it happened, were not available at the moment, but the librarian had promised to try to have them for her by afternoon, if she would return then. If necessary, since Lord Newdagonby was a generous supporter of the library, he would buy a copy of the one specially asked for, though he might have to send for it to Paris, and that would mean delay.

  “It’s a French book, not the English translation,” she explained. “About existentialism.”

  “What’s that?” Simons asked. “Exist—” he began and gave it up.

  “The latest philosophic fad,” Bobby explained. “There’s a book about it they’re advertising a lot—‘Existence is Originally Absence’.”

  “That’s the one,” Kitty said. “Only uncle wants the French edition. ‘L’existence de l’homme est originalement absence’. Luckily I got all the books Sibby—Mrs Findlay—wanted. There isn’t any run on books about Byron.”

  “Byron?” repeated Simons. “Oh, yes, I know—‘Roll on, thou dark and deep-blue ocean, roll.’ ” He looked quite pleased with himself, evidently thinking he had kept up his end very well. “Very fine,” he commented. “There’s a film, isn’t there? ‘The Bad Lord Byron.’ Did you bring Mrs Findlay’s books back here, Miss Grange?”

  “I thought I would leave them till I went to the library this afternoon,” Kitty answered.

  “‘The Bad Lord Byron’?” Bobby remarked. “A much more popular title than ‘The Good Lord’. Some one or another being bad seems so much more attractive to some people than being good,” and then he saw that Kitty was looking at him with a kind of terror showing in her grey and startled eyes. “You’ve noticed that?” he asked her, and when she did not answer, he said: “I’ll have to try to see that film some day.”

  Simons managed to keep back with some difficulty a strong protest trembling on his lips. Only respect for Bobby’s senior rank as a ‘commander’ prevented him from saying something very severe about not wasting time on film chat. He turned the questioning to the relationship existing between Findlay and his wife. Kitty began to hesitate, showed some embarrassment, but insisted that there had never been any quarrelling or any sign or suggestion of ill feeling. When Simons tried to press her, she began to get angry. Her clear grey eyes began to sparkle, and her soft cheeks first flushed and then paled again. Bobby observed these symptoms with interest. Was it not Balzac who had remarked somewhere that between an irritated angel and an angry tiger, he would prefer to meet the latter? Certainly this young woman had a considerable temper of her own, once it was roused.

  “I don’t think you ought to ask things like that,” she was saying now, “and I’m not going to answer them. I don’t like tittle tattle, and I don’t repeat it.”

  “It’s hardly that, Miss Grange,” Bobby interposed. “It’s an attempt to get the background clear. If we don’t, we can get all sorts of wrong impressions instead. For example, we are told you felt you had reason to complain about Mr Findlay and that Mrs Findlay knew. Would that have caused any kind of quarrel between them, do you think?”

  “I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Kitty responded. “Sibby never seemed to mind anything of that sort. Ivor was like that with nearly every one, and Sibby only laughed. Only I never thought he would dare with me,” and again the grey eyes began to flash their danger signal.

  “I think you boxed his ears, didn’t you,” Bobby asked smilingly, “and told him you would never speak to him again?”

  “I told him just what I thought,” Kitty admitted. “I told him I would never have anything more to do with him, and I won’t.”

  “Mrs Findlay didn’t take it very seriously though,” Bobby commented. “They’ve not been married very long, have they? Are they still in love with each other?”

  This was the question over which, when put to her in another form, Kitty had hesitated before. Now she hesitated again and then said:

  “I think it was chiefly on Sibby’s side. He told me once she had practically blackmailed him into it, but I don’t know what he meant. I expect it was only talk. You couldn’t always believe him. Sibby says she thinks you believe she did it. That’s only silly. Because it really was her doing—their marriage, I mean. She had made up her mind she wanted him. She told me so. And she had him, so why should she kill him?”

  CHAPTER IX

  “AM I UNDER SUSPICION?”

  AT KITTY’S REFERENCE to ‘blackmailing’, Simons had looked up quickly and then had glanced at Bobby. But Bobby showed no sign of having noticed the word. He began to ask about the fur coat Mrs Findlay had mentioned, and Kitty said, yes, she had one she thought she would like to sell, and she had been making inquiries among her friends to see if she could hear of any likely purchaser.

  “It was a good offer Mr Findlay got for you, wasn’t it?” Bobby asked.

  Kitty thought it was. She had been told she ought to ask £80. But this offer was for a hundred and one guineas. No, she didn’t know the name of the person making the offer.

  “Didn’t you ask Mr Findlay?”

  “No, I didn’t want. Mrs Findlay didn’t know. She said I had better run up and ask Mr Findlay, but I wasn’t going to. I told him I wasn’t ever going to speak to him again if I could help it, and I didn’t mean to. And I wasn’t going to his room either.”

  Bobby asked a few more questions on other subjects, and then said he hardly thought they need trouble her any more just then. Later she would have to be asked to make a full and formal statement. But at present they were only trying to get it all straight in their own minds so as to have a better idea of how things stood. He got up to open the door for her, and on the threshold she paused and said a little nervously:

  “Is it true what they’re saying about its being a kitchen knife?”

  “That was what was used,” Bobby answered gravely. “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s what they are all saying,” she answered. “I don’t see that it matters. There are lots of them about. You want them if you’re doing any cooking. I’ve been using one for opening uncle’s letters.”

  “Quite a rise in the world,” Bobby remarked. “From kitchen to study. The upward lift?”

  “It just happened to be there,” she answered.

  She went away then, and Bobby sent the constable in attendance to find Lord Newdagonby and ask for the favour of a few moments’ talk. The constable departed on his errand, and Bobby went back to his seat by Simons, who had now a very puzzled and worried air.

  “What’s all that mean?” he asked. “I mean, about blackmailing Findlay into marriage. Or was it the other way round, and was it him blackmailed her? Rich woman, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby agreed. “Lord Newdagonby seems to be in the millionaire class or thereabouts, and he is evidently very fond of her—his only child.”

  “Money don’t come into it, then,” Simons said.

  “Money has a way of turning up everywhere,” Bobby replied thoughtfully. “Though I don’t yet see where it comes in this time. Besides, a blackmailer generally goes for money, not for marriage. You can always demand another good fat cheque, but not another wife. Still, it’s a possibility.”

  “Must be some reason for all this talk of blackmail,” Simons grumbled. “And what did that girl mean by talking about kitchen knives and telling us she had been using one to open letters? Sort of a hint that his lordship might have nipped upstairs and done it?”

  “Well, as far as that goes,” Bobby suggested, “it implicates her as much as it does him.”

  “Passing the buck,” Simons said. “In a way she’s a deep ’un. That’s my idea.”

  “Girls always are,” Bobby said. “A boy’s thoughts may be long, long thoughts, but a girl’s are deep, so deep she often doesn’t know herself what they are. Something more to remember. And that fur coat. Does that come i
n? She’s got no money apparently, looking for a job. Also apparently she’s half-engaged to a man who runs a restaurant—the Isle du Lac, very expensive. Is he hard up, and does she want the money to help him? Only an idea. But this chap had a bad row with Ivor Findlay over the way he had behaved to her. Restaurants and kitchen knives. I wonder if she’s afraid we may suspect a connection?”

  “Well, there could be, in a way,” Simons reflected. “Could be,” he repeated.

  “We shan’t have to forget him,” Bobby said thoughtfully.

  “There’re those ’phone calls,” Simons went on. “You didn’t press her about them?”

  “Keep them in the background for the time,” Bobby advised. “Something may be said to give us a line. They’re an odd feature,” and then the door opened to admit the thin, elongated form of Lord Newdagonby.

  Bobby rose to greet him and to push forward a chair. He murmured something about understanding they wanted to see him, folded himself up as it were to take the chair Bobby offered, and apologized for having so little to tell them.

  “As you can imagine,” he said, “I feel terribly shaken—terribly. I can still hardly believe it’s real, I half-expect to wake up in bed and find it is all some dreadful nightmare. One reads of these things in the papers, one doesn’t expect them to happen in one’s own house.”

  “They always happen in somebody’s own house,” Bobby said.

  “Quite so. That is what it is so hard to realize. Like being knocked down and killed by a car. One knows it happens, but one doesn’t expect it. One thing I must ask. My daughter seems to think you suspect her. I should be pleased to receive your assurance that such a preposterous idea had never even occurred to you.”

  “We always have to explain,” Bobby answered, “that it is routine to suspect every one till we have established their innocence. Any person for whom identity of time and place can be shown is possibly guilty. We try to eliminate them one by one till at last only one possibility remains.”

  “Even when there is no suggestion or possibility of any motive?”

  “Strictly speaking,” Bobby explained, “it is not necessary to establish motive. Our business is with facts, not motives. Motive is, of course, very often the essential pointer, but not always. Not that we forget the old saying: ‘Who benefits?’ ”

  “May I suggest that what you call identity of time and place applies as much to me as to my daughter?” Lord Newdagonby said with great severity. “More so indeed. Mrs Findlay was out at the time of the murder. I was in all morning.”

  “We have not overlooked that fact,” Bobby answered calmly.

  Lord Newdagonby gave a little gasp and then sat upright, straightening that long, thin body of his till even as he sat he seemed as tall as any ordinary man.

  “Do I understand,” he demanded, his two small eyes very bright and angry on each side of that enormous nose of his, “do I understand that I . . . I . . . am I under suspicion?”

  “In a provisional sense only,” Bobby assured him. “May I take it you are willing to answer a few questions we should like to ask you—provisional questions only, of course. All we are trying to do at present is to get the situation as clear in our minds as may be possible.”

  Slowly Lord Newdagonby relaxed his upright position, shutting himself up as it were on himself. Bobby watched the process with interest. He was inclined to think that if only his lordship had been born in another sphere of life, he might have earned quite a good weekly wage as the ‘boneless wonder’ or the ‘living skeleton’ in any travelling circus. Irreverent thoughts no doubt about a member of the British peerage, even though peers are no longer what once they were.

  “I confess,” Lord Newdagonby said slowly, when at last this folding-up process was complete, “I had never expected to figure as a suspect in a case of murder. And the fact that I could have no conceivable motive is wholly immaterial, I understand?”

  “Facts come first,” Bobby repeated. “Obviously, if we knew of a motive, any strong, compelling motive, it would be important. Very important. But we don’t. Need I remind you that identity of place and time applies to several other people? And it’s quite possible apparently that some one else could have slipped into the house unseen and got away again without any one knowing.”

  “Very good,” Lord Newdagonby said with a meekness his angry little eyes and flushed cheeks in no way confirmed. “I am suspected of murder. In that case I am presumably a liar as well. So why ask questions to which, by hypothesis, you can only expect untrue replies?”

  “I am sorry your lordship takes it like this,” Bobby said formally. “We had hoped for more willing co-operation. We recognize that our suspicions are unfounded in all cases but one, and where they are unfounded we hope to receive the utmost help. Even if only for obvious self-interest. It would help us, for example, if you would tell us everything you can about Mr Findlay, how long you have known him, if you know of any enemies he may have had, if you approved his marriage with your daughter. Anything at all, in fact.”

  “Well, Ivor Findlay was the son of one of my tenants—very old tenants,” Lord Newdagonby answered after a pause. “Findlays have held the same farm as far back as our records show. There is a story one of their ancestors and one of mine were taken prisoner together at the battle of Shrewsbury and executed on the same scaffold—my ancestor beheaded and theirs hanged. Not much difference all said and done, I suppose. But such a long connection is of interest, and when old Mr Findlay died, leaving a young widow and a child, I helped with the boy’s education. He turned out a clever lad, won scholarships, I helped, he went to Oxford and did very well. He came to the house occasionally and met Sibby. I didn’t notice that they showed much interest in each other at first, and I admit it was a considerable surprise when Sibby told me they were engaged. I don’t say her choice would have been mine. I did to a certain extent remonstrate with her. But she had made up her mind. Nothing I could do, even if I had wanted to. Ivor was in a position to support her, and then I had no real reason to object. I made suitable provision for them.”

  “Thank you,” Bobby said. “There seems to have been some gossip that it was chiefly your daughter’s doing. In fact, there seems to have been a story that he complained he had been bullied or blackmailed into the marriage.”

  “I think you may safely disregard that,” declared Lord Newdagonby. “Merely malicious gossip.”

  “I see. There was no previous entanglement on Mr Findlay’s side with any other woman?”

  “Certainly none that I know of. Are you thinking that some such woman may be the murderer?”

  “A possibility we have to consider,” Bobby replied once more. “We are so much in the dark, we have to grope everywhere for a clue. You mentioned a Count Ariosto, a friend of Mrs Findlay’s. Can you tell us anything about him.”

  “Not very much,” Lord Newdagonby answered, this time looking a little amused. “A harmless little Italian, I should say. He lives here and visits Italy in the summer. Very good manners, a gentleman and an aristocrat, but not much money I think. I have only seen him once or twice, but that is my impression. It is true there has been some silly talk going on as I told you. But that’s all.”

  “You don’t think there’s any possibility that he may have hoped to marry your daughter himself, and that he may have felt he had been cut out by Mr Findlay with a quarrel as a result?”

  “It seems to me rather a far-fetched idea,” Lord Newdagonby answered. “There may be something in it, I suppose. I don’t know.”

  “Do you know his address?”

  “The Bliss Hotel, Mayfair Square, I think. But he is often away I understand. Much in demand at week-end parties. Excellent bridge player. All the social tricks in fact. Sibby told me once he was the answer to the week-end hostess’s prayer.”

  “Doesn’t sound much like a murderer, I admit,” Bobby said. “Oh, by the way, we are trying to trace the weapon used. A kitchen knife you remember. I’m told there was one in your st
udy. Is it there now, do you know?”

  “I really haven’t the least idea,” replied Lord Newdagonby. “There was one, I know. I used it for a time for opening letters. So did Miss Grange. Did she mention it?”

  “She told us there was one there she had been using,” Bobby answered. “Perhaps some one took it back to the kitchen. Do you know how it got to your room?”

  “I think I brought it up myself without thinking once when I had been in the kitchen helping to peel the potatoes. Mrs Jacks was away, and Sibby was doing the cooking. She likes to do a little cooking occasionally. I wanted to help, but she packed me off as being more bother than I was worth.” Lord Newdagonby smiled tolerantly. “She bullies her old father shamefully,” he complained, and plainly enjoyed the fact. “Is this knife,” he went on, “the one I’m supposed to have used? I must say you distribute your suspicions very impartially. Now I come to think of it, I believe the last time I saw the knife you’ve talked about, Mr Acton was using it to sharpen a pencil. I remember now his remarking that he had lost his penknife. And he’s been rather dancing attendance on Sibby just recently.”

  “Yes, I noticed that,” Bobby said, and added slowly: “Was that in any way a cause of ill-feeling?”