Everybody Always Tells: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “So it is,” agreed Bobby.

  “It’s all there, plain as a pikestaff,” Simons went on. “She married Ivor F., thinking she was giving him a lift up, and then she finds he’s still running after other women. More than she can stand, so she puts a knife into him, grabbing the one her dad has lying about, same as jealous women are always liable to do. There’s that dab on Mr Findlay’s desk and Mrs Jacks’s evidence to show it must have been made that morning when Mrs F. says she wasn’t there. Enough to hang her twice over.”

  “So it is,” said Bobby and added: “There’s Mrs Jacks, though.”

  “I should say there was,” exclaimed Simons. “Put her in the dock, and those peepholes we found in the party wall would settle it with any jury out of hand. At least that’s my view. All the opportunity you want for her to get hold of a kitchen knife, and what you’ve dug up about her daughter—well, there’s a motive you can understand.”

  “So there is,” agreed Bobby.

  “Of course, there’s Miss Grange,” Simons went on. “I’ve had my eye on her from the start. In my view, almost watertight re her. She admits there was a flaming row between her and him. Claims it was only him being rude made her slap his face, but dig down a bit and you might find there was more to it than that. Lord Newdagonby says the envelope-opener kitchen knife got lost, and how about her finding it? And her saying she hadn’t seen Mr F. that morning, and anyway wasn’t ever going to speak to him again, and yet knowing the exact figure offered for her fur coat. Enough to get a jury thinking they needn’t even leave the box.”

  “So it is,” said Bobby once yet again.

  “Only in my view,” Simons continued, “that bit of paper in the handle of the murder weapon coming straight from one of Mr Lake’s menus and knowing what we know about him and Ivor F. rowing over the girl—well, we know what happens likely as not when two fellows are after the same girl. Only a little thing, that bit of paper, but isn’t it the sort of little thing that’s hung murderers before to-day?”

  “So it is,” agreed Bobby, still the perfect chorus.

  “Bring him in and grill him a bit, and in my view,” said Simons, “there would be a good chance of getting a confession.”

  “Confession’s not worth much these days,” Bobby pointed out. “At one time you had to have a confession, because without it you wouldn’t dare take the risk of hanging an innocent man, and obviously no innocent man would confess. So with a confession in your pocket you could go ahead with a clear conscience—even if it was a red-hot-poker technique got the confession there. Nowadays, the idea is that no one would ever be such a fool as to confess unless bullied into it by the police, and they wouldn’t try unless they hadn’t any proof. But if there wasn’t any proof, then the accused must be innocent. Clear reasoning and shows you how things change, only stay much the same.”

  “So it is,” agreed Simons, unconsciously plagiarizing Bobby. “Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “there’s that Mrs Tinsley.” He paused and went on: “In a way, we’ve got something there. Last person with the victim, and nothing would ever have been known but for good work by the chap on the beat. Wanted to marry the dead man herself and got turned down at the last moment. The classic jealous-woman drama. ‘If I can’t have you, she shan’t.’ Seen it often enough. What I say is, grill her a bit, and ten to one she’ll come out with the whole story. They often do. Because of not thinking of it as murder, but only him getting what he deserved, and every one must see that, mustn’t they? Good sound case.”

  “Like all the others,” said Bobby, varying his response this time. “There’s one thing we’ve rather forgotten though. You remember Mrs Jacks’s evidence about hearing typing going on for some time after, according to the doctor, Findlay had been attacked.”

  “No corroboration,” Simons pointed out. “Invention to give cover for self or some one else. Or imagination.”

  “You haven’t mentioned Mr Acton?”

  “Keeping him for the last,” explained Simons. “Because in a way it may turn out there’s no sex in it at all. Money instead. One of ’em or both of ’em—Acton and Findlay—trying to do the other down over this everlasting razor blade of theirs. Money makes the mare go, and money makes murders, too.”

  “So it does,” agreed Bobby. “There were those guinea pigs,” he reminded Simons.

  “Guinea pigs?” repeated Simons, puzzled for the moment. Then he remembered and tried to hide a respectful smile. “Yes, sir, of course. The guinea pigs. Mustn’t forget them. No. Only I don’t quite see where they come in.”

  “Two alive and two dead,” Bobby said.

  “Yes, sir. That’s right. Only, speaking for myself, guinea pigs, two dead, especially when not able to produce same, isn’t what I would want to try to impress a jury with. Of course,” he admitted generously, “there might be something to them if we knew what it was.”

  “That is rather the difficulty,” Bobby admitted. “I’ve had two more of the poor little beasts sent to Professor Haynes.”

  “Professor?” repeated Simons, trying to remember the name. “Scientific swell,” Bobby explained. “Wessex University. Acton wanted two independent reports, and he was getting one from Ivor Findlay and one from Professor Haynes. Haynes had sent Acton his. Quite enthusiastic, apparently. So now I’ve asked him for a report on the guinea pigs.”

  “The same guinea pigs?” Simons asked. “I mean the two that were left alive in Findlay’s room?”

  “Yes, it seemed fairer,” Bobby answered.

  Simons looked very puzzled; but as Bobby said no more than that Simons should see the report when it arrived, he left the subject of the guinea pigs in abeyance for the time. But all the same he was conscious of an uncomfortable feeling that there was more in it than he knew, and he also knew that Bobby would expect him to think that one out for himself if he could. Nothing would be said unless and until there emerged some definite fact. Bobby never kept a fact back and never pressed his theories on others. It bothered him, and by way of precaution Simons said now:

  “I’ve a notion that in a way Acton may turn out to be our best bet after all. He was on the spot, he could easily have got hold of that kitchen-knife envelope-opener Lord Newdagonby had knocking about, and then there’s that poker he grabbed to take along with him up to Findlay’s room. I’ve always had that poker at the back of my mind. Just one of those things you feel ought to fit in somewhere.”

  “So it is,” agreed Bobby as always.

  “Only it don’t,” said Simons. “And no known motive. Might be Acton suspected Findlay was going to patent that thing of theirs on his own. If you remember, there was something said about Acton not taking out a patent, so perhaps Findlay was going to do it for him and leave Acton in the soup.”

  “It’s an idea, a possibility,” Bobby agreed. “No evidence though. And then Findlay was like a lot of other people and worked on two entirely different moralities—one for everyday affairs and a pretty shaky one, too. But also one for the scientific side, and quite uncompromising there. You might as well suspect a bishop of bigamy as Findlay of not living up to his professional standards.”

  But Simons looked very doubtful.

  “Wouldn’t you say,” he ventured, “crooked in one thing, crooked in all?”

  “Our job would be simpler if people were like that,” Bobby told him. “But they aren’t. Rotten bad except in one spot, and there sound as a bell. Or honest as the day except for cheating the income tax or trying to dodge paying a railway fare. We’re all a rum lot, a jolly rum lot.”

  “I’m not going to forget Mr Acton,” declared Simons, and Bobby said he wouldn’t either, and Simons said what about Count Ariosto. “I’ve been wondering,” he said, “if we oughtn’t to pull him in and put him through it. He was pally with Mrs Findlay, though I shouldn’t have thought they were each other’s sort, not in a way.”

  “More would I,” said Bobby. “No accounting for tastes though.”

  “There was a bit of go
ssip about them being so much together,” Simons continued. “Always together at cocktail parties and liked to be partners at bridge and so lucky when they were, people were beginning to talk. Doesn’t seem to tie up with the murder, but there it is. There were hints at one time about blackmailing going on, if you remember.”

  “It didn’t seem very clear who or why,” Bobby remarked. “Didn’t seem to tie up with the murder any more than the bridge business.”

  “No, I know, but if Ariosto was trying to put the screws on Mrs Findlay, it might be a line to follow up.”

  “That’s our trouble,” Bobby replied. “Too many lines by far, and all of them diverging as hard as they know how. But I’ve asked Ariosto to come in for a chat this afternoon, so we’ll see what he has to say for himself.”

  “Think he’s really a Count?” Simons asked. “They don’t seem to know anything about him at the Italian Consulate.”

  “They wouldn’t,” Bobby answered. “British by birth apparently. Claims descent from a famous Italian poet, and if he likes to call himself a Count, there’s no way of stopping him that I know of—or any reason to.”

  Nor was it long in fact before Ariosto appeared. He was very smartly dressed—dressed in fact, if not to kill, yet to impress—and also he was clearly very nervous. Before he had even taken the seat offered, he was protesting that he knew absolutely nothing, nothing at all beyond what he had already stated.

  “I wasn’t anywhere near at the time,” he said. “I was in the park. I told you so, and it’s gospel truth.”

  “Have a cigarette?” asked Bobby, pushing a box over. “You see, in a case like this, every little detail may be important, even when there’s no direct connection. I think you know of a club run for hotel staff—high-grade staff that is. You are a member, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not,” Ariosto snapped. “Nothing to do with me. I’m not a waiter.”

  “Sure?” asked Bobby.

  “What do you mean?” Ariosto cried, jumping to his feet. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Now, now, sit down,” Bobby said. “Suffer a bit from flat feet, don’t you?” Ariosto sat down abruptly and muttered something. Bobby said: “Well, never mind. I don’t think you had very friendly feelings towards Mrs Findlay, had you?”

  “What about it? That doesn’t prove I murdered her husband, docs it? If it had been her killed now, you might talk. But it wasn’t her, it was him.”

  “Adds to the general mix-up,” Bobby said. “But I wish you would tell me the whole story instead of my having to drag it all out of you bit by bit. I have proof you were at that club I spoke of—”

  “I never said I wasn’t, I said I wasn’t a member,” Ariosto interrupted. “But what’s it matter, what’s it got to do with it? I was taken in by a member—head waiter at a smart hotel in Scotland. Swell place. He knew I had an interest in the Bliss, where I’m stopping—always do when I’m in town, and he thought I might get him a job at the Bliss. He’s a bit down on his luck at the moment.”

  “Must be,” Bobby agreed, “if a head waiter at a swell hotel in Scotland wants a job at the Bliss. Never mind that. What I want to know is why you made those threats by ’phone about Mrs Findlay’s life being threatened?”

  “What I felt like,” Ariosto answered gloomily; and then in a surprised, very startled, and rather frightened tone: “I didn’t. I never did. How did you find out?”

  “Well, I’ve asked all the others concerned,” Bobby explained, “and they all said it wasn’t them, so you were the only one left. Besides, it was plain you didn’t like Mrs Findlay and fairly plain that for some reason you were frightened of her, so were you trying to frighten her in her turn? Why have you started doing it again?”

  “I haven’t,” Ariosto protested vehemently, and this time Bobby was inclined to believe him. “If she leaves me alone, I’ll leave her alone. If there’s been any more of it, it’s not me.”

  “Where did you meet her first?”

  “Never you mind,” Ariosto retorted with a kind of feeble, fluttering defiance. “You’ve no right.”

  “Only the right of a murder committed and not yet solved,” Bobby answered. “What I’m trying to get at is the background of the case, and until we get that clear, we’re working in the dark. What I’m suggesting is that you have a job at a fashionable hotel in Scotland, and that your earnings there are enough to keep you the rest of the year. You’re busy at your job in Scotland when you tell your friends you’re visiting your relatives in Italy.”

  “You must think I make a lot,” Ariosto grumbled. “I don’t do so bad,” he admitted grudgingly. “I’ve made some pretty good investments, too.”

  “Congratulations,” said Bobby, “I wish I had. Takes me all my time to pay my income tax. It was there Mrs Findlay saw you?”

  Ariosto nodded gloomily.

  “Most of ’em never notice a waiter any more than they do the chairs or the carpet. But she did. Spotted me at once when at a cocktail party. Let on to be amused. Said she would help me—the she devil. Said she wanted a partner at bridge and how about it? Said she would teach me to be as good as she was herself, and we would make a good thing of it. So we did. How was I to tell?”

  “Tell what?”

  “It wasn’t a partner she wanted, it was a pal to help her cheat.”

  “So that was it,” Bobby said with wonder in his voice. “But why? She didn’t need the money.”

  “No, but she needed a pal to take the rap if we were spotted. See? that’s where I came in, me the mug. She got people playing for big stakes often, more than they could pay when it was girls or young men or young married women.”

  “But what was her idea, was it blackmail? or what?”

  “I think it was sheer devilry, sheer wickedness,” Ariosto answered slowly. “I don’t know. I think so. I think if ever there was a fiend straight out of hell, it’s her. What she liked was to feel she was starting people off, telling lies to their husbands or fathers, getting so they had to do something to get the money. It amused her to watch them going down, down into lies and forging and stealing. Just for the fun.” Ariosto paused. He had become very pale, and he was trembling. “You may as well know the truth,” he said. “When I ’phoned the way I did, I was working myself up to do it—to put a knife in her, I mean, same as you would in a snake you saw was going to bite.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  “YES, IT WAS. WASN’T IT?”

  THE FIRST THING Bobby did next morning was to ring up Dagonby House to inquire if anything had been heard of Mrs Findlay. It was Kitty Grange who answered. She said there was no news and that Lord Newdagonby was very upset and worried.

  “He keeps saying it’s all you,” Kitty added. “He says he is going to the Home Office to complain, and that if anything happens to her you will be responsible. What did you do? He won’t tell me.”

  “Made her seem ridiculous to herself,” Bobby explained. “There she was dramatizing herself as a sort of Queen of Hell, and I made her look a fool in her own eyes—with a plain hint or two that she might soon look the same to every one else.”

  “Oh,” said Kitty, and her voice sounded very shocked indeed. “Oh, I do think that was Cruel of you.”

  “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” agreed Bobby complacently, as he hung up.

  He turned to the letters, reports, minutes, piled on his desk, some of them needing immediate attention. They occupied him for the rest of the day. The next day was a Saturday, and Bobby was able to knock off early. On the Sunday he tried to put all thoughts of his work out of his mind, though he was able to spare a sympathetic thought for Detective Inspector Simons and the other C.I.D. men, all, Sunday or no Sunday, busily following up the different—and divergent—lines of the investigation. Then on Monday he again rang up Dagonby House, and again learned, this time from Mrs Jacks, that there was still no word from or of Mrs Findlay.

  “His Lordship’s in a rare taking,” Mrs Jacks said. “He’s still saying he’ll go and
see the Home Secretary about it and about you, but he hasn’t yet, and I don’t think he will, not yet anyhow. I think he’s afraid of what might come out.”

  Bobby asked Mrs Jacks to tell Lord Newdagonby that there was no objection to his consulting the Home Secretary or any one else, but he didn’t think it would be much use. Lord Newdagonby could be assured that every possible line of action was being considered, and he could also be assured that he was not the only one growing extremely uneasy.

  Shortly afterwards Inspector Simons appeared, with nothing much to report. He suggested that another conference should be held, and Bobby, who for his part had no great love for conferences, which he was inclined to look on as devices for distributing responsibility and lessening the chances of swift action, said the suggestion would go forward in the usual way. But, he said, this was one of those cases consisting for the present almost entirely of dead ends, and a conference over dead ends was not likely to be very useful. Afterwards, however, he had a message from the Assistant Commissioner, suggesting a chat, and to that dignitary Bobby admitted that he was feeling very uncomfortable.

  “I gave her vanity, and that’s most of her make-up, an awful shock,” he said. “It may have disturbed her mentally. She’s not normal.”

  “You mean she’s insane?”

  “Oh, no, not more than any one else,” answered Bobby. “In fact, I think she’s too much the opposite. Too sane, I mean—too sane for a largely insane world. She seems to have decided that the only thing that really matters is what’s right and what’s wrong. Good and evil. Her idea has been to try them both out and see for herself. At least, that’s what Miss Grange keeps telling me. So she tried good first and found it a bore. But I think she confused good with alms to the poor and attending church services, and it didn’t click. So then she decided to have a go at the other thing, and then I came along and made her look silly to herself. And now I don’t feel too comfortable about what the result may have been.”