Everybody Always Tells: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Bobby did not answer. Acton was putting up an extremely plausible story. It might well carry enough conviction to make a jury hesitate, possibly even to make a prosecution inadvisable unless more evidence could be obtained. Once again Bobby had to reflect that it is not the knowing, but the proving, that is always the difficulty. True, his story ignored the guinea pigs, but the argument would be that they were ignored because they were irrelevant.

  The approaching footsteps were still nearer now. Bobby switched on his own torch. Acton did the same. In the circle of light they made appeared the village sergeant.

  “Won’t be long now, sir,” he said briskly. “I came on ahead to tell you we’ve got all we want. Evening, Mr Acton. Bad business all this. I’ve never known the like, not since I was stationed here.”

  “Shocking,” agreed Acton. “Shocking. I can’t help thinking there must be a mistake somewhere. It all seems so incredible.”

  “Yes, sir, it does, doesn’t it?” agreed the sergeant. To Bobby he said: “There’s a gent come. Tall thin gent, very tall, very thin. I didn’t rightly catch his name, but he says he’s Mrs Findlay’s father and he’s looking for her.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, disturbed by this news. “Yes. What did you tell him?”

  “I said to leave his name and address, and he would be let know as soon as there was reliable information.”

  “What did he say to that?” asked Bobby, not without interest.

  “I had to tell him I didn’t want none of that sort of talk,” answered the sergeant, not without dignity. “Language such as he was using, I said, could not be tolerated, and I said if same continued I should have to consider taking him in on a charge of disorderly conduct.”

  “Did you, though?” said Bobby, and this time with a touch of awe. “What did he say?”

  “It sort of pulled him up short,” the sergeant replied, and this time even with complacence. “Especially as he kind of choked just then and couldn’t get a word out seemingly, not to make sense. I left it there, not wanting trouble more than same has to be, and he saw the tackle we had got, and he got quiet like and asked what that was for. One of my men, though he didn’t ought, it not being for him to give information to the public, said as it was for getting a deader out of an old dry well where a lady had tumbled in or been pushed. But I told him nothing was known for certain, and I said to wait in my office.”

  “Did he?” Bobby asked.

  “I didn’t see no more of him,” answered the sergeant. “I saw him go off another way. I thought maybe he might have come on here.”

  “We haven’t seen him,” Bobby said.

  “Seems like a Mrs Tinman or some such a name, had rung him to say Mrs Findlay was meeting a friend hereabouts,” continued the sergeant. “He said he was going to ask his friend about it, so I said, who was it, and he didn’t want to tell. I put it to him I spoke official like, and then he said the name was Nemo. But there isn’t no one of that name in these parts, and so I told him.”

  “I don’t very much like the sound of all that,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “Do you, Mr Acton?”

  But once again Acton had slipped away silently into the darkness, and this time he did not return. Nor did he answer, though Bobby called him more than once.

  “What’s he gone off like that for?” the sergeant asked, puzzled. “Not what you would expect, not from Mr Acton.”

  Bobby offered no suggestion. He said instead, speaking quickly:

  “You know what’s to be done. I want the old well cleared out. It’s possible some one has been thrown down it and then the parapet stones to make sure—and for concealment. We’ve got to find out. It may be a false alarm. Be careful how you get to work. Understand? Mr Acton may have gone home. I’m going to see if I can find him, but I shall get back here as soon as I can.”

  “It might be,” the sergeant suggested, “as the tall, thin gentleman is a friend of his, and he wants to join him.”

  Bobby did not answer, though he was fairly sure that the ‘tall, thin gent’ was the very last person whom at the moment Acton had any wish to meet. He moved away a little from the well-head near which he had been standing as he wondered what dark secret it might or might not contain. For a moment or two he stood still, looking out into the black night that covered the steep and rough hill-side with its impenetrable cloak of darkness. He could see nothing. He listened, but heard nothing. And yet he knew that in that silence, that stillness, that darkness, were loose two of the most dangerous of all animals, two men obsessed by fear and hate. Down below he could see where lights showed in cottage windows. More lights, moving lights, showed in one spot. There, no doubt, the help he needed, and awaited, was completing its preparations.

  He knew roughly the direction in which lay Abels End Cottage, the home of the Actons, and he had a moment of pity for the wife and children who knew so little what fruit of the past had now come to ripeness. It would be quicker, he decided, not to try to follow downwards the path he stood on. It passed the house at a distance of two or three hundred yards, and only joined much lower down the other and smoother path, almost a road since wheeled traffic could use it, that led directly to Abels End Cottage. Time would be saved, and his impression was that time might be important, if he struck across the hill-side—it was on the whole not much rougher going there than on the path itself—and so straight on, or as straight as the darkness permitted, to the house.

  For whether, as Bobby suspected, Acton had now been driven to contemplate flight, either from the fear of imminent arrest or from fear of the threat that seemed implied in Lord Newdagonby’s arrival, seeking his daughter, or whether he had merely yielded to an instinctive feeling that in his own house he would be safer, it was there he was, Bobby thought, most likely to be found.

  With such speed as the rough nature of the ground permitted, Bobby picked his way across the hill-side. He hoped a light would soon appear in an Abels End Cottage window to serve as a guide, but that did not happen. Nor did he use his torch much, partly because he did not wish to give warning of his position, partly because it had been used so much he was afraid the battery might soon give out. His sense of direction was sufficiently good, however, to keep him right, and when he was so near he could distinguish the house, a deeper, darker shadow, looming up against the black sky, he became aware of a sound near by, as of some one cautiously moving. He switched on his torch and threw the light from it in that direction. To his surprise it was the figure of a woman that the ray showed. She stood still, but with her back to him, and he had the idea that she was only hesitating in which direction to run. He called out:

  “Who is it? Is it Mrs Findlay?”

  “Oh, it’s you,” she exclaimed as if relieved. “I was afraid at first it was him.”

  “Who?” Bobby asked, and, drawing nearer, saw it was Mrs Tinsley he was speaking to. “Who?” he repeated.

  “Lord Newdagonby,” she answered.

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Yes. Just now. He has been in the house. He got in at the back somehow. He is looking for Mr Acton.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. How should I know? I think perhaps he is going to kill him—at least he may unless Sibby’s safe. She isn’t.”

  “Have you seen Acton?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure. It was some one ran by. When he saw me move he cried out and ran off. I think he knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “Knows what Lord Newdagonby means. Perhaps he’ll be first though. I think perhaps they are looking for each other. If you want to stop them, you had better find them.”

  “Yes, I had, hadn’t I?” Bobby agreed, looking out again into that vast curtain of black night that veiled in utter darkness all the bleak and bare and steep hill-side. He asked sharply: “How do you come to be mixed up in all this?”

  “I didn’t mean,” she said in a low voice. “I never thought it would be like this. I never thought Lord Newdagonby—” She left the sen
tence unfinished. Then she said: “He never seemed human.”

  “He is the father of an only daughter,” Bobby said. “It may be all that is left in him of human feeling, and it may be all the stronger for that. The one weak spot in his armour of indifference. Well, why are you here? What have you been doing?”

  “I rang him up,” she admitted.

  “What did you tell him? Something you saw at the ruined cottage where that well is? Why did you tell me Mrs Findlay was well—very well?”

  “It was only what I thought might have happened—I didn’t know.”

  “Had you been watching her, following her?”

  “No, of course not. Only I knew Sibby Findlay had gone away in a hurry after you had been to see them, and I wondered if she was coming here to see Charley Acton.”

  “How did you know Mrs Findlay had left like that?”

  “Mrs Jacks told me. She rang up. I asked her to promise to let me know if anything happened. She always thought it was Lord Newdagonby killed Ivor. I didn’t. I knew it must be Sibby, only I wanted to be sure, and now I’m not.”

  “Why did Mrs Jacks suspect Lord Newdagonby?”

  “Because he so hated Sibby’s marrying him and then the way Ivor always showed it wasn’t her he cared about, it was always me, and he hated that still more—I mean to say, that any one should be put before his Sibby. You see he always thought he was God Almighty and could do just what he liked. Because if there isn’t any God, why shouldn’t he be God? I heard him say that.”

  “Been reading Dostoievsky,” Bobby commented. “Goes to the head sometimes. Never mind. What was it you actually saw at the ruined cottage?”

  “I didn’t see anything at all,” she answered sullenly.

  “How did you come to be there? I think you had better for your own sake tell me all about it.”

  “I told you I didn’t see anything,” she repeated. “I don’t see what you want to bully me for. When Mrs Jacks rang me to say Sibby had gone off in a hurry, I thought very likely she would be wanting to tell Charley Acton. I left my car at a farm where I stayed once for a night, and I went up to the old cottage to watch if I could see her come. I did see her, but she didn’t go to his house as I thought she would. She came straight on where I was. I slipped away before she saw me, only I waited behind some bushes, and then I saw Charley Acton come. She must have been waiting for him. But I couldn’t see what happened, because they went behind the cottage where the well is. I saw Mr Acton go away, but I didn’t see her go, and I couldn’t make it out, why she was staying so long. So I went to look and she wasn’t there, and there was no sign of her. But I saw a lot of the parapet wall had been pushed over, and I was frightened and I went away. Only I didn’t know what to do, and then you came and I didn’t dare tell you. I thought you might think it was me. I rang up Lord Newdagonby instead. I didn’t mean him to know who it was, but he guessed because of my voice, he said he knew it. He said I as good as killed her. Because I had made it too late to help her if the fall hadn’t killed her. Only it must have with all those big stones on top. He asked me where Mr Acton lived, and I told him, and he said he was going to find him and kill him if he had done anything to Sibby, and then he would come back and kill me, too. Because of not telling him sooner. I think he has lost his head altogether, gone quite mad, so he doesn’t know what he is doing, because of Sibby and not knowing.”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  “WHERE IS SIBBY? WHERE?”

  MEANWHILE, WHILE THOSE two talked together in their hurried, anxious whispers, Lord Newdagonby and Acton were dealing with their own affairs, for in the dark, on the rough and steep hill-side, they had met unwittingly and faced each other, and Lord Newdagonby, now neither peer nor millionaire, nor philosopher, but only a father, had cried out very loudly, his voice high pitched and angry.

  “Where is Sibby? Where?”

  And Acton answered warily:

  “I don’t know. Sibby? I don’t know. Why ask me?”

  Then Lord Newdagonby:

  “She came to talk to you.”

  “To talk to me? Nonsense. What for? Why should she?”

  “She came here, she’s been seen. She had a return ticket. I’ve found that out. The return half hasn’t been used.”

  Acton shook his head.

  “I know nothing about all that,” he insisted. “Why should she? I mean, want to talk to me?”

  “I think she must have wanted to ask you why you killed Ivor.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Acton retorted. “Or else she is. Go home and get a good sleep. She’ll be there very likely before you. Good night.”

  But the other had him by the arm and would not let him go.

  “You know, if you’ve killed her to keep her quiet, I’ll kill you myself,” he said, a little as if he were saying: “See you at lunch to-morrow.”

  It was at this moment, while Acton tried to free himself from the fierce grip upon his arm, that they were interrupted by the flash of Bobby’s torch as he first caught sight of Mrs Tinsley, and for the moment dreamed that he had found Sibby Findlay safe and well. Acton said:

  “There’s that meddling Scotland Yard ass. He’s still messing about. Go along and tell him and hear him laugh. It’s the Tinsley woman he’s after—last to see Ivor, last to see Sibby, last to see them both. It’s her he wants to talk to.”

  “So do I,” came the answer, almost whispered, sounding ten times more menacing thus. “But you first. Tell me what you have done with Sibby. Tell me before I strangle the truth out of you.”

  “I tell you I know nothing about her,” Acton repeated, shouting his reply to the other’s whisper. “Let me go, you old fool.”

  By a sudden violent effort he freed himself from the grip on his arm, and at once, before he could take advantage of his freedom, found himself entangled in long, thin arms, like the tentacles of an octopus, so complete and so closely did they seem to envelop him.

  He made a fierce effort to free himself, wasting breath and energy the while on a series of angry expletives and epithets. They struggled, swaying to and fro, then tripped and fell. Bobby heard the sound of the scuffle as they rolled on the ground, tearing blindly at each other. He came running, throwing the fading light of his torch before him. Dimly he could see the outline of the two struggling forms twined together on the ground. Impossible at first to distinguish one from the other. But Acton was comparatively young, his bodily vigour not yet sapped by the years. Lord Newdagonby was much the older man; and if his strength was doubled, trebled, by the sort of passionate, excited energy that Mrs Tinsley had called ‘losing his head’, so was Acton’s doubled, trebled, quadrupled for that matter, by the stimulus of a dreadful fear. For he knew that the slow step of justice followed him, and that across his path lay the shadow of the rope. By an enormous effort, an effort far beyond his normal powers, he got to his feet, though Lord Newdagonby still clung to him, still hung upon his neck. With such another effort he wrenched himself somehow free from that old man’s entangling grip and flung him away, as a man might throw aside some troubling cape or cloak.

  Then he set himself to run with all the speed he could command; and miraculously, bruised and hurt as he was, Lord Newdagonby, too, was on his feet at once and following, following, pursuing, like some fantastic, upright spider with his long straggling legs and flaying arms, a grotesque and yet somehow formidable figure. Behind came Bobby, running like the others, wondering what was happening, having some advantage from the light his fading torch still gave to warn him how and where to place his feet. The advantage was small, however, for those two he followed ran like men possessed, unchecked, uninhibited, careless of the stones, the tangled grass, the rough, uneven ground so liable to trip a runner.

  Such light recklessness and disdain of risk served Acton well, however. It was as if his scorn of every kind of obstacle did in fact, in some queer way, tame them, make them harmless, as if his speed gave them no time to spring their traps and snares. Less lucky was Lord N
ewdagonby, still pursuing, for though his long strides and the desperate urge that drove him brought him so near that he could stretch out his arm to snatch at Acton s coat, yet at that very moment he put his foot in some hollow or caught it in some tussock of grass, and so went headlong, turning indeed almost a complete somersault, and Acton spared the time to pause and aim at the prostrate man a vicious kick.

  Lord Newdagonby cried out with the pain. Acton laughed with pleasure and relief, and set himself to run again, for he knew how great was still his need. Bobby, close behind, knelt by the groaning man on the ground.

  “Hurt?” he asked, though he could see immediately that one doubled-up leg was certainly broken. “I’ll get help.”

  “Get him first—it’s Acton, he’s done something to Sibby. He won’t say, make him tell,” Lord Newdagonby groaned. “It’s my leg. Get Acton. I think perhaps he’s murdered Sibby.”

  Bobby was of the same opinion, but he did not say so, Lord Newdagonby’s need for immediate relief and help was indeed obvious, while of Acton’s chance of ultimate escape Bobby had a poor opinion. Moreover, any such attempt at escape would provide just the background needed to drive home to a jury the force of Bobby’s careful and detailed reasoning.

  By this time that cluster of lights Bobby had seen gathering below had left the village and was half-way up the hill-side. Leaving his torch burning, so that the glimmer of light it still gave should serve as a guide to the exact position of the injured man, Bobby hurried to intercept the new arrivals. There would certainly be a doctor with them, and so skilled help would be at once available.

  “An accident,” Bobby explained; and saw that the needed help was dispatched. In his shirt sleeves, for he had used his coat to provide another covering and a little extra warmth for the injured Lord Newdagonby, and so give some further protection against the danger of the pneumonia so apt to follow such an injury to elderly people, Bobby went on up the hill with the rest of the party to the ruined cottage and the old well, whose secret—or no secret—was now to be made plain.