Everybody Always Tells: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “You mean you’ve done that?” Acton asked. “All except Mrs Tinsley? So you argue she must be guilty? Is that it?”

  “Oh, no,” Bobby said mildly. “You remember—those guinea pigs! You see they don’t fit. What could a woman like Mrs Tinsley have to do with guinea pigs? Didn’t jell. And I really couldn’t imagine Mrs Tinsley walking off with two dead guinea pigs in her handbag.”

  “Well, then—who?”

  “You, of course,” Bobby answered. “Hadn’t you guessed? I thought you must have.”

  Acton threw back his head and laughed and laughed, laughed till the surrounding darkness seemed full of his loud merriment. Bobby sat waiting patiently till it should end. Acton said, his voice still shaking with his mirth.

  “Oh, come, now then. My best pal! And can you imagine me walking away with my pockets stuffed with dead guinea pigs?”

  “Yes,” said Bobby

  “Oh, well, now then,” Acton said.

  He was silent then, as silent as the vast darkness of the night in which they sat. Down below in the village a few lights showed here and there, and on the road other lights shone where cars were passing up and down. Acton rose to his feet and went across to the well-head. He stood there for a moment or two, and Bobby threw the light of his torch after him so that it made a bright pool by Acton’s feet. He did not seem to notice. Bobby noticed that his right hand was again in his coat pocket. He began slowly to return, making a slight circuit so that it seemed that whereas before he had been sitting on Bobby’s right, now he would be taking up his position on Bobby’s left. It was a manœuvre Bobby managed unostentatiously to defeat by a slight shift of his own position.

  “Look,” Acton said, “I don’t know what all this is leading up to. If you’ve just been amusing yourself trying to work me into a state of jitters, well, you’ve pretty well succeeded. I could have sworn just now there was some sort of movement over there by the well. I thought I heard—well, never mind. But I could have sworn there was something moving. And a light. A sort of light that came and went and then came again. Go and look for yourself.”

  “Curious,” Bobby observed. “Very curious. But I think all the same I’ll wait for the men and tackle I’ve sent for. If Mrs Findlay has really been down there since she was last heard of—three days, that is—another three quarters of an hour won’t make much difference.”

  “I think at any rate,” Acton went on, his voice still perfectly calm and even, “I have a right to ask you to explain yourself more clearly. You’ve hinted you believe Mrs Findlay has been thrown down the well here, and you seem to suspect Mrs Tinsley, and in some odd way you seem to hint you see some connection between guinea pigs—of all things imaginable—myself, and Ivor Findlay’s death. I really quite fail to understand why you suppose I could have any interest in disposing of a man with whom I had intimate and very satisfactory business relations. Very friendly as well. I don’t know if you think I have had anything to do with Mrs Tinsley or Mrs Findlay’s disappearance—if she has disappeared, that is. Do you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby answered. “Difficult to work it out, of course. Quite interesting, though.”

  “Rather callous to talk like that,” Acton said rebukingly.

  “A callous affair, murder,” Bobby remarked. “There’s one small point I’ve noticed. Quite small. Insignificant. Not a thing you could mention in court. When the jury comes back at the close of a murder trial to give their verdict, you can always tell at once what the verdict is. If all the members of the jury look at the prisoner, it’s ‘Not guilty’. If they are all careful to look away from him, then it’s ‘Guilty’. In the same way, all the others I’ve questioned about this affair have always spoken of Ivor Findlay’s death as murder. None of them showed any hesitation in using the word. They’ve called it what it was—murder. You have invariably called it killing or some similar word. Never murder. A word too ugly, a word so ugly you can’t admit even to yourself it could apply to what you did. Curious, the power of words, a power almost like magic at times.”

  “Oh, that’s fantastic,” Acton interrupted. “As fantastic as your non-existent guinea pigs. As fantastic as all the rest of the vague sort of atmosphere of suspicion you seem to be trying to build up, and about which I think you are likely to hear more. Have you even one single concrete fact—established fact—you can mention?”

  “The poker,” Bobby said.

  “Poker,” shouted Acton. “First guinea pigs and then a poker. You must be crazy—or trying to be funny.”

  “Neither,” Bobby answered. “I mean the poker you snatched up that day at Dagonby House when Mrs Findlay came to tell us she couldn’t open the door of her husband s work-room and she thought he must be ill because she could hear groans. I asked myself why a poker was needed.”

  “To force the door with, of course,” Acton answered promptly. “Really, what do you suppose? Sibby said it was locked.”

  “Pokers aren’t so very useful for forcing doors,” Bobby pointed out. “There are quicker ways. I wondered if it had struck you that supposing Ivor Findlay were alive, as you had thought him dead, and supposing he had strength enough to name his attacker, then a poker might be useful for effecting an escape. A tap on the head might have put out of action a certain officer of police unexpectedly and inconveniently present.”

  “You do give your imagination full play, don’t you?” Acton commented, still to all appearance quite unconcerned.

  “The whole secret of detective work,” Bobby explained, “is to work yourself into the suspect’s skin. Then you may be able to understand both his reasons and his actions. He always has reasons, however bad in logic, in morals. But still reasons.”

  “And is this web of fancy what you are trying to make out is substantial ground for suspicion?”

  “Oh, no, only the background,” answered Bobby. “Background is awfully important. And then I remembered that you wouldn’t run upstairs to fetch Findlay for luncheon because you said you didn’t even know which was the room he used on the attic floor. A labyrinth you said, and you had never been there. Yet when we all went hurrying to see what had happened, you led the way, you got there first.”

  “Oh, come now,” protested Acton, still unflurried. “I didn’t mean that absolutely and literally. Just a way of talking. Of course, in an emergency of that sort—well, one does remember somehow. I suppose I felt somehow that if poor old Ivor needed help, then I had to remember, and so I did remember. Well, is that the end of this wild exercise in fantasy you can hardly expect me to take seriously? Or any one.”

  “One thing more,” answered Bobby. “Mrs Jacks says she heard typing going on for half an hour after the time when the attack was probably made. That typing must have been done by the murderer, and that means he must have been a man of extraordinary nerve and self-control—of such self-control as you have shown to-night when first I let you think that I suspected Mrs Tinsley and then allowed you to see that it was in fact yourself.”

  CHAPTER XXX

  “. . . THE INEVITABLE MISTAKE”

  BOBBY DISCOVERED THAT now he was alone. Suddenly and silently Acton had slipped away into the darkness. As silently Bobby shifted his own position till he sat with his back against a wall of the derelict, half-ruined cottage. He did not feel at all sure what form Acton’s reactions might take. Possibly he had determined on flight. But that Bobby did not think likely. Acton was both resolute and intelligent. He would realize that the case Bobby had so far outlined was one of strong suspicion only, a multitude of small indications, and that flight would simply intensify such suspicions to nearly, if not quite, the point of certitude. Probably Acton had not gone far, was still quite near, brooding in the night what he should do next.

  Bobby felt very tired all at once. He had risked his life before this more than once in physical struggle and danger and yet been less conscious of fatigue than he was now after this conflict of words and wit in which he had hoped in one way or another to force his adversar
y into some false move or self-betrayal. He was not sure now that in this he was going to succeed. Down below in the village more lights were showing, not scattered lights but lights clustering together. Bobby supposed that there was assembling the help—men and tackle—he had asked for. Acton’s voice sounded abruptly:

  “Where are you?” it asked. “You haven’t gone off, have you?”

  “I’m still here,” Bobby answered. “I was beginning to think you had gone off yourself. I didn’t hear anything, but you weren’t there.”

  “I started to go back to the house,” Acton said slowly. “I was going to ring up my lawyer. You know, it’s pretty serious, what you’ve said.”

  “Less serious than what’s been done,” Bobby answered. “One dead man and a woman, and where is she?”

  “I changed my mind,” Acton went on, unheeding this interruption. “I thought I had better get things a bit clearer. You’ve said you suspect me of killing Ivor Findlay. Your chief reason seems to be that I didn’t use the word murder in speaking of what happened.”

  “Oh, no,” Bobby protested. “Not my chief reason. A straw—a straw to show the way the wind blows.”

  “If you want to know,” Acton went on, “I didn’t call it murder because I’m not at all sure it could be called murder. I suggest that some woman may have gone to see him, some woman he had done the dirty to, and that there was a quarrel, a scrimmage, and that the knife was used in self-defence—accidentally.”

  “Doesn’t the knife suggest premeditation rather than accident?” Bobby asked. “What was a kitchen knife doing in what was a kind of scientific laboratory?”

  “Kitty Grange used it downstairs to open Lord Newdagonby’s letters,” Acton pointed out. “She may have used it, too, for the same purpose with Findlay’s letters. I’m not thinking of her though. I’m thinking of Mrs Tinsley.”

  “We’ve talked of her already,” Bobby said. “Just now, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, and then you explained you couldn’t bring in your favourite guinea pigs with her, as you seem to think you can with me. Well, why? I’m still not at all clear—fantasy or bluff? Which? My lawyer will want to know.”

  “It was one of the things I noticed first of all,” Bobby told him once again. “It did look as if there had been a scientific experiment that had turned out badly—for the guinea pigs at any rate. It looked, too, as if there had been an attempt to conceal what had happened by removing their bodies. By whom? Why? Findlay could have had no reason to hide the result of his own experiment. He had no need even to mention he had made it. So had some client found the result unwelcome, found it necessary to hide it? You seemed to be the important client of the moment. Was that it? Had a trial of your everlasting razor blade turned out badly? Was it that a cut or scratch from it had killed the guinea pigs? You know you made there the inevitable mistake. Two dead guinea pigs in their cage might mean nothing. But two dead guinea pigs no longer there because their bodies had been carefully removed suggested there might be a strong reason why they had to be taken away.”

  “Go on,” Acton muttered. “Go on, why don’t you?”

  “Then there was the typing Mrs Jacks told us she heard. Why should a murderer stay typing on the spot for half an hour after committing his crime? Obviously because he had to type something for which he had to use Findlay’s own machine. A typewriter used can always be identified you know. Well, then, didn’t that mean a document was to be forged? A favourable report instead of the condemnatory one the result of the guinea-pig experiment might have made necessary? That’s how I reasoned, though I tried out a good many other theories as well.”

  “You mean,” Acton said, “you made a series of guesses for none of which you can produce any factual base.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Bobby protested. “A certain amount of confirmation from Mrs Jacks for instance.”

  “Putting suspicion on some one else to save herself,” Acton commented. “Perhaps it was her. She may have had reasons, I remember Sibby saying something like that once. Why not Mrs Jacks if it comes to that?”

  “A good line of defence,” Bobby agreed. “Always is. To say, why not a third person? Makes a jury doubt, and that’s everything. A defending counsel’s best card. There are reports from Professor Haynes, too.”

  “Enthusiastic,” Acton broke in. “I have them. Enthusiastic.”

  “So they were,” agreed Bobby. “So he told me. But when I put it to him there was a line Findlay might have followed up he might not have thought of—he undertook to make fresh experiments. With guinea pigs. I haven’t got his full report yet, and I don’t pretend to understand fully. Certainly not the technical terms he uses. What it seems to come to is a suggestion that nuclear energy has been used in your process, and that in the event of a cut or a scratch such as can always happen when a man is shaving, some tiny, literally infinitesimal influence might enter the blood stream and tend to dry it up. With fatal results to those two guinea pigs and possibly to humans as well. Haynes talked about something he called ‘isotopes’, whatever they are.”

  “It was a mere fantasy of Findlay’s,” Acton said angrily. “Even if there was such a danger which I don’t accept for a moment—guinea pigs aren’t humans—it could easily have been eliminated. I told Findlay so. I showed him how. He practically admitted as much. But he tried to argue that there had to be practical proof by experiment. He wouldn’t even promise to hold back his report. It was all so unnecessary. If any hint, even, had got about, it would have been impossible to raise the capital I wanted. And it was there waiting—waiting, ready. Only a few papers to sign, and a start could have been made. Ample time for me to eliminate the fantastic danger Findlay chose to imagine. Ample time. Naturally, I never called it murder. You were right there. Because it was nothing of the sort. No one in his senses could call it murder. It was a necessity. Can’t you see what my invention meant? It meant doubling, trebling, quadrupling production. And that might mean saving civilization. Was one pedantic fool to stand in the way of that? Think what it would mean in every factory in the world. My razor blade was only a beginning. One or two more technical difficulties to get over, and then running expenses everywhere would be halved and efficiency doubled. I didn’t intend to let all that be scrapped because of the shortsightedness of an obstinate and prejudiced observer with no vision of the larger issues. Of course I took steps to remove him. I had to. Wouldn’t you in my place?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Bobby answered. “Not my business. You will be able to explain all that in Court.”

  “Oh, no,” Acton retorted. “I don’t mind talking to you. It was a relief somehow. Quite a relief. And then it looked as if you had it all sewn up. But not to any one else, and if you try to repeat what I’ve told you—a dirty trick, but I wouldn’t put it past you, though you know perfectly well I was speaking in confidence. But if you do, I shall simply deny it all. You’ve no real evidence, nothing solid to go on. Merely the flimsiest web imaginable of guesswork and theory. No witnesses.”

  “Is that why Mrs Findlay has disappeared?” Bobby asked. “Because she was a witness? Because she knew?”

  “Knew what, what do you mean?”

  “My guess,” Bobby said slowly, “is that she saw you going away after doing what you did up there that morning in Ivor Findlay’s room. Her finger-prints on his desk Mrs Jacks had dusted. Shows she had been there, and I’ve been a good deal worried about her reason for denying it. I expect after being there and going away presently she remembered something she wanted to say and started to return, and caught a glimpse of you hurrying off. Perhaps something in your manner and attitude, in your hurry, made her suspicious. I don’t suppose she imagined for a moment what had really happened. But instead of going to ask her husband, she probably thought it would be cleverer and more amusing to get it out of you—with no idea of what that ‘it’ was. I think when she did know, then she saw herself in her favourite character of Queen of Hell. She was tryi
ng as hard to be wicked as any one ever tried to be good. She wanted to be all things and know all things, to be like the gods knowing both good and evil, and therefore like them above good and evil. So she would marry her husband’s murderer and make him desert his wife and children she knew he was fond of. The murderer, like the head of a Nazi extermination camp, can yet remain a good family man. Very odd. But it is so. I expect Mrs Findlay thought she was taking another step to complete triumph over good and bad alike, and if it has now led her instead to the bottom of an old well with a few stones thrown down afterwards to make sure, well, she has only herself to thank.”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  “I RANG HIM UP”

  BOTH MEN HAD been wholly, desperately intent on their apparently drifting, even aimless, talk that yet, as both well knew, held in it, in almost every word exchanged, even in the intonation of each syllable, a possible indication of where lay the dreadful truth one of them was so desperately striving to conceal, the other to disclose. In consequence neither so far had been aware of approaching footsteps.

  But now the sound of a slow, deliberate tread forced itself upon their attention, and presently the light of a torch came wavering in advance to herald the arrival of the newcomer.

  “Your men and their tackle here at last,” Acton said, speaking a little loudly, as if he were very willing to be overheard. “Well, if you are right and Mrs Findlay’s body is at the bottom of that old well, then I’m prepared to swear, as I said before, that she had asked me to meet her here, and that when I arrived at the time she said, there was no sign of her. But Mrs Tinsley was here. Mrs Tinsley struck me as being in a state of excitement, almost hysteria, I couldn’t for the life of me understand at the time. Of course, you know, every one knows for that matter, that she hated Mrs Findlay for having taken Ivor Findlay from her and that she had got it firmly into her head that Mrs Findlay killed her husband. If you want any evidence, I’m prepared to say all that on oath.”