The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

“MICKY BURKE?” KRAM repeated. He looked mildly interested, very mildly interested. For once at least Bobby’s favourite technique, that of the abrupt and unexpected question, had failed to produce results. Perhaps because there were no results to produce. Maggie Kram’s behaviour, her sudden rush away to find Burke, required explanation, but the explanation of a girl’s behaviour is not always known to her father. “Micky Burke?” Kram repeated. “He is one of our drivers—one of our best and the worst as well. What’s he been doing now?”

  “How do you mean?” Bobby countered. “Your best driver and your worst as well?”

  Kram got up, produced a box of cigarettes, pushed them over to Bobby.

  “Have one,” he said. “Help yourself. No shortage of cigarettes here. Too bad if you’ve a contract for delivery from factory to wholesalers and can’t get hold of a few for yourself. One of our best clients—the Blue Pencil Cigarette company. Cash and carry, that’s our slogan. Ha, ha.” As he talked he moved across the room to the window. “Thought as much,” he said, looking out. “There’s Maggie talking to Burke. Thinks it was him.”

  “She thinks he committed the murder?” Bobby asked, beginning to feel slightly bewildered.

  “That’s right. That’s what’s upset her so.” Kram turned and smiled blandly at Bobby. “She’s been telling me since I don’t know when Burke would be killing someone. When you started talking about murder and she saw those headlines, she just jumped to the conclusion it had happened at last. Made sure he had run someone down and never reported it. And K. and K.M.T.C. going to be mixed up in a first class scandal.”

  He turned back from the window and gazed blandly and innocently at Bobby who gazed back doubtfully, even unbelievingly.

  “You mean,” he asked, “Miss Kram thought a man shot through the heart, deliberately mutilated, buried in secret, had been run down accidentally by one of your lorries?”

  “That’s right,” Kram repeated. “She wouldn’t notice the details. Just saw someone had been killed near the Conqueror Inn, knew Micky had hit on the idea of coming back along that road—he said it saved time—and took it into her head it was him done it. Then she panicked and rushed away like you saw to ask him about it. A bundle of nerves, that’s what she is, almost hysterical at times.” He turned to the window again. “There he is,” he said. “Micky, I mean.” He pointed to the small wizened elderly man whom Bobby had noticed before and to whom Maggie Kram was now talking eagerly. He threw up the window. “Hi, Micky,” he shouted, “I want you, if Miss Maggie’s quite finished wanting to know who you ran down the other night.”

  It had all been quite natural. Nothing, Bobby felt, he could openly object to. All the same there was Micky warned of what Miss Kram was supposed to have been saying to him. Bobby felt suspicion growing. Burke said something to the girl. She vanished behind the lorry. Burke began to walk slowly towards the house. Inside the room Kram went back to his desk.

  “You would never think,” he said, “that dried up little devil was the speed merchant he is, would you? Get there or bust. That’s his slogan, and by gad, he lives up to it. I get a complaint about him every week pretty nearly. But nothing I can do. He always has his answer pat. Gets away with it every time. Fellow comes in boiling, fair boiling. Hair, turned white in a single night because Micky took a twelve ton lorry between a string of lorries loaded with oxygen tubes and the edge of the canal embankment without an inch to spare—I mean an inch, it was measured, apparently. What does Micky say? Swears there was yards to spare. Says the oxygen tube merchants had pulled over on the wrong side and left plenty of room. I don’t believe him, but what can you do? No harm done. If you ask me, that’s why Larry’s gone home. Couldn’t stand the pace.”

  “Who is Larry?” Bobby asked.

  “Nephew of Micky’s. Larry Connor. Came over from Ireland to enlist. Wanted to join the R.A.F. They wouldn’t have him. Eyesight not up to their standard, they said. Larry sulked. Said his sight was as good as anyone’s and they turned him down because he was Irish.”

  “They wouldn’t do that,” Bobby said.

  “Well, that’s what he said. Very sore about it, too. There was something in the paper about Southern Irish being refused for the Home Guard.”

  “That’s been put right,” Bobby said.

  “Has it?” Kram said. “I don’t know that I blame them for being careful. I don’t know I should be so keen on employing an Irishman myself, only it’s getting difficult to find staff, and a Paddy’s better than no one. That’s our slogan, ha, ha. Anyhow, Larry sulked, so I offered him a job. I said: When Uncle Micky kills himself, you can take over. Ha, ha. My joke. Well, I told Micky to try Larry out, show him the ropes. That sort of thing. They did a few trips together and now Larry’s gone back to Ireland. Went off this weekend. And if you ask me, it was because Micky had put the fear of death in him, the way he throws that lorry about. Does tricks with it to beat those you used to see in the motor cycle races in the Isle of Man before the war.”

  There was a knock at the door and Micky entered. An elderly man, in the early fifties probably, small in build and with a dried up look, but strong and active still. He had thin, close shut lips, tightly pressed together, and cold still eyes that looked out mistrustfully on all the world and at the moment more especially mistrustfully at Bobby.

  “Miss Kram’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick, hasn’t she?” he asked at once. “It said in the paper the chap they found near the Conqueror Inn was shot. Not a motor accident. Only if it’s about that bloke in the Buick, ask him to show you as much as a scratch on his car. There was yards between him and me and the road as clear and clean as the soul of a saint. If he as near as the skin on an egg went over the wall of the bridge, it was his own great fault for swerving the way he did.”

  Kram chuckled softly.

  “I’ve just been telling the inspector you think you can handle an outsize lorry like it was a motor cycle. The stories I hear! Why, there was a sergeant came over special from Ingle-side Camp. Said he had heard about Micky and he was the sort of driver they wanted in the Tank Corps. Nothing doing, eh, Micky?”

  “I did my bit in the last war,” Micky answered, indicating the faded medal ribbon he was wearing. “The young men can carry on now. I’m well over age and Irish as well, though Midwych born. They’ve nothing on me.”

  Kram chuckled again.

  “I had to go out and pull ’em apart,” he said. “The sergeant got peeved and wanted to know if Micky had heard the famous story about the Irishman who saw a fight going on in the street and asked if it was a public fight or could he be neutral?”

  “I would have shown him neutral,” growled Micky.

  “He was twice your fighting weight,” Kram grinned. To Bobby he said: “Micky grabbed a spanner. The Sergeant took it from him.”

  “All along of you interfering,” Micky growled again. “That’s what gave the blighter his chance.”

  “There’s no open war on the British army in my yard,” Kram declared, grinning again. “The sergeant went off with the spanner, too. Government property now, I suppose. Used for tightening up tanks or something, most likely. And the cost of a new one is going down on Micky’s next wage sheet. I provide spanners for use on lorries, not for braining sergeants.”

  “I’ll pay for no spanner,” Micky declared angrily. “Charge it to the sergeant. He’s got it.”

  “Don’t know him,” retorted Kram. “A driver’s responsible for his tools.”

  “You can take my notice,” Micky snapped. “I’ll quit.”

  “Tell Miss Maggie,” Kram answered indifferently. “Anyhow, I shall sleep better if I know you aren’t out on the road, doing your stunts. I’m always expecting the insurance people to refuse renewing your policy.”

  “And what for should they?” demanded Micky belligerently, “and me with my record as spotless as the conscience of a babe born that same hour?”

  He turned towards the door as if he thought the interview ended, but Bob
by stopped him.

  “One moment,” he said. “You’ve heard about the murder near the Conqueror Inn?”

  “It’s in all the papers,” Micky answered. “What about it?”

  “You’ve been passing that way recently, haven’t you?”

  “That’s right,” Micky admitted cautiously. “Why not?”

  “Every night regularly for more than a week,” Mr. Kram cut in. “Coming back from up north—empty more often than not. Got done down up there and it’s not so often you can say that of K. and K. Cut the rate because I thought I was sure of a return load and then got left.”

  “I only want to know,” Bobby explained to Micky, “if you have ever seen or noticed anything at all out of the way? The murder took place apparently quite close to the inn. At any rate the body was found only a mile or two away, south. At a spot called Spigot’s Slope. Know it?”

  Micky shook his head.

  “Not by name,” he said. “I might if you showed it me, though generally it’s dark when I go by.”

  He went on to say that he had never seen or heard anything unusual, nothing that could throw any light on what had happened. It wasn’t often now that he stopped at the Conqueror Inn, though at one time he had done so fairly regularly. For a glass of beer, and a bite to eat perhaps.

  “Or nothing to eat and a glass of something stronger than beer,” Kram interposed jeeringly.

  Micky favoured him with another angry scowl.

  “You’ve got my notice,” he snapped. “No one’s ever seen me the worse for drink,” he added defensively.

  “Agreed,” admitted Kram with an airy wave of the hand, “you can take it, as they say, when it’s whisky.” To Bobby he explained: “Micky is the widow’s cruse the other way round. The widow’s cruse was never empty and Micky is never full.”

  He chuckled at his little joke. Micky scowled afresh and seemed inclined to hand in his notice once more. Then he said that anyhow it was no good stopping off at the Conqueror. They had never had any whisky and now they hadn’t even beer; and Kram, who seemed inclined—even oddly inclined—to revenge himself for the notice received by trying to exasperate the Irishman as much as possible, interposed to declare that if Micky didn’t stop off at the Conqueror, it was the only exception among all the public houses on his route.

  “Because,” Kram explained, “the more time he loses at a pub., the more excuse he has for speeding on the road to make up.”

  Micky received this fresh pleasantry with a fresh scowl. In answer to a question from Bobby, who had listened to this backchat between master and man with a good deal of interest, Micky agreed that he had been the first to think of using the road by the Conqueror Inn, though now others were following his example. He mentioned the names of various drivers, including that of the Loo Leader Bobby had already met.

  “If there’s been a murder round about there,” Micky added, “most like it’s Loo.”

  “Why do you say that?” Bobby asked sharply.

  “Loo’s a swine,” explained Micky and seemed to think that was enough.

  “Micky and Loo don’t hit it off,” Kram explained. “Micky thought he had made a find all to himself, using that road by the Conqueror, but Loo spotted what he was up to and now he uses it too, and told the others as well. Loo’s a bit of a speed merchant himself.”

  “Cut in ahead of me only last week,” Micky said, looking virtuous.

  “A thing Micky Burke would never do, oh, no,” jeered Kram, and Burke scowled once more and suggested that unless Mr. Kram wanted to pay him off on the spot, now his notice had been given in, he had better get started.

  Bobby had no more questions to ask and so Burke was allowed to depart on his trip.

  CHAPTER XI

  PISTOL SHOT

  BOBBY HAD, HOWEVER, one or two more questions to ask of the head of K. and K.M.T.C.—to the disappointment of that gentleman, who had optimistically hoped that the departure of Micky Burke would be followed by the departure of Bobby.

  Not so, however, for now Bobby was saying:

  “I believe, Mr. Kram, you have visited the Conqueror Inn yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kram agreed at once. “An idea of mine. Big outbuildings there. Did you notice? Huge old places. I thought of renting them. To use for storage.”

  “Storage?” Bobby repeated. “I thought your business was transport?”

  “Transport includes storage sometimes,” Kram explained smilingly. “We may be asked to accept a quantity of goods for delivery later. Or if the chance came our way I might buy in bulk and hold till a wholesaler or factory was ready to take over. Or I might store as agent. It may mean a lot if when a firm is offering stuff, they can say it’s being held by K. and K. who can guarantee prompt delivery. Our slogan: Prompt delivery. We live up to it. Or try. Came to nothing, though. I mean, the idea of using the Conqueror Inn outbuildings.”

  “Rather out of the way place for storage, isn’t it?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Kram answered. “Convenient in some ways. Central position. Running from the ports, drivers could dump stuff for the south and east there and go on north. Running to the ports, drivers could dump northern stuff there, for the other lorries to pick up and complete. A good scheme. On paper. But we dropped it. Too much risk of delay and flow of supply not sufficiently steady. That’s our problem in road transport—full loads. Running half empty means whole profits running away. Central entrepot for exchange of loads is the answer. My pet idea. Too difficult in war time, perhaps. I’ll take it up again some day. But not at the Conqueror Inn. I didn’t much like that landlord fellow.”

  “Why not?” Bobby asked.

  Mr. Kram shrugged his shoulders.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing definite. Gave me the idea there was something—well, something a bit queer about the whole set up. Only an impression. Holding things back, if you see what I mean. Quite wrong, very likely. Secret sort of place, secret sort of man—I forget his name, the landlord, I mean.”

  “Christopherson,” Bobby said.

  “That’s it—Christopherson. That’s how I felt about him. A girl there, too. His daughter, I think she is. Looked as if she lived where you could never come and she jolly well didn’t mean you to, either. Know the man you deal with, that’s my slogan.”

  Bobby reflected that of all Mr. Kram’s numerous slogans this was probably the most difficult to live up to. Yet he himself had had something of the same impression; that at the Conqueror Inn they lived a remote and distant life whereto they had no wish to admit others.

  He asked one or two more questions and then said he would like a few words more with Miss Kram, if her father didn’t mind. Mr. Kram showed some hesitation. Was it really necessary, he asked. Maggie was very highly strung. For a long time she had been persuaded that Micky Burke’s reckless driving would result in some catastrophe involving K. and K.M.T.C. in a bad scandal. First her conviction that this had happened when she saw the headlines in the papers and then her reaction when she discovered it hadn’t—not yet—had probably been a bit too much for her.

  Bobby listened politely, remarked that of course he couldn’t insist at the moment, though he felt a further interview would be necessary sooner or later. Still, it would be more convenient now, might be indeed a real help. Surely, he suggested, the young lady, now she knew her fears unfounded, would be soon all right again.

  “Very capable and efficient young lady, I should guess,” Bobby remarked. “I noticed the way she handled your drivers and loaders in the forecourt.”

  “Oh, the best man I have, I always say,” Kram declared, though somehow this eulogy of his daughter did not seem to give him as much pleasure as might have been expected.

  So messengers were sent in search of Maggie and presently returned to report that apparently she was not on the premises. Nor could anyone tell what had become of her. Bobby said he would just have to call again sometime, and when she returned would they ask
her to say when she would like him to come and let him know her answer. Then he took his leave and on his way to his office wondered if a guess he was inclined to make about the reason for her disappearance, was likely to be accurate.

  Much of what he had learned at the K. and K. establishment seemed to him of considerable interest and significance, though what precisely that significance might be was much less clear. Just as well, he decided, that as yet the newspapers had not got hold of the story of the small wooden box packed with one pound bank-notes. Presumably someone was feeling the loss of that money pretty badly and that someone would be all the more likely to take steps towards recovering it, if he—or she—did not know it was in the hands of the police.

  Yet if it belonged to the murderer, possibly he would prefer to run no such risk of discovery as would be involved in any attempt to secure possession. Skin for skin and much more, yea, even £2,000 in untraceable one pound notes, will a man give to protect himself from danger of the gallows.

  Or again the money might have belonged to the dead man and dead men make no claims.

  Bobby roused himself from thoughts that were running, he felt, too far ahead. No use his trying to evolve a solution from his inner consciousness as the legendary professor is said to have tried to evolve an idea of the elephant. Sitting at his desk he made out a list of the points he thought interesting, and possibly significant, learnt by him that morning. Five of such details at least, he told himself, that it would be as well to keep in mind. Next he set in motion routine inquiries to check as far as possible the different statements of fact that had been made. Burke’s statement, for instance, that he had been born in Midwych and that he had a nephew named Larry Connor. Then, too, it would be as well to make sure that Larry had really tried to enlist in the R.A.F., and been turned down for bad eyesight. Again there was the story of the Ingle-side Camp sergeant and the spanner, though an anonymous sergeant would not be easy to trace.

  All very small and unimportant details as far as could be seen at present, but more than once, in Bobby’s experience, had some small discrepancy, some small and trivial departure from the facts, provided, if not proof of guilt, yet the needed clue to show where that proof was to be found.