The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “How did you come?” he asked.

  “On my motor bike,” she answered. “Did you think I walked or flew?”

  “You wouldn’t like to tell me what really happened?” he asked, without hope.

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” she answered heavily. “It’s what I came here to find out and I haven’t.”

  “Is that why Rachel Christopherson tried to kill you?” he asked.

  She looked at him and once again set his nerves on edge by that thin giggle of hers.

  “The big man’s cunning too,” she jeered. “Pretty feeble effort to find out whether anyone really did fire a pistol at anyone else; and if it was her at me or me at her. Try again, big man.”

  She would say no more and he watched her start off. Left alone, he looked longingly at the inn. Empty now, he supposed. He had seen Christopherson on the moor. Rachel had gone to find him. Her mother must be out, too, or surely all this talk and commotion would have made her show herself. Of course, he had no right to go searching people’s houses. But was such an opportunity to be neglected? It wouldn’t be breaking and entering anyhow, because the kitchen door hung open. But didn’t that suggest there was nothing in the house to hide, or would it have been left unguarded like that? The open kitchen door was both an invitation to search and a warning that search would be useless; nor did he know which to accept—the invitation or the warning.

  CHAPTER XIII

  WHY EGGS?

  PROBABLY IT WAS fortunate that Bobby was saved the necessity of making a decision, for now he heard approaching footsteps. It was Mrs. Christopherson, returning from the village on the main road, where she had been, she said, to visit a sick friend. Bobby told her of Rachel’s sudden departure that had left the house empty and unguarded. Mrs. Christopherson made no comment. Bobby asked one or two questions, but she only shook her head and said something vague about having spent the whole day with her friend. He had the impression that she had been warned to be careful in what she said. She went into the house and shut the door without taking any further notice of him.

  So there he was left standing alone in the inn yard and nothing for him to do but to drive back again to Midwych and his office.

  There he found various reports awaiting him. It was true that Micky Burke had been born in Midwych, had served in the army, had a nephew, Larry Connor, born in Ireland at a village near Cork but brought up by Micky, in Midwych, after the death of Larry’s parents had left Micky his nearest relative. Micky had looked after and cared for the child like a father. They had always led the quiet, respectable lives of ordinary working people, though Micky never stayed long in one job and in recent years Larry had spent much of his time in Ireland. But he still remained on very friendly terms with his uncle, still came over two or three times a year on visits of varying length. During these visits he took odd jobs when he could get them and it was true that he tried to join the R.A.F., but was rejected on account of defective eyesight.

  Nothing in all that of any apparent interest, Bobby decided, and then Sergeant Payne came in to make his report.

  “Any luck?” Bobby asked him and Payne hesitated.

  “I don’t know for sure, sir,” he said, “but I think perhaps I’m on something.”

  “Oh, yes, what?” Bobby asked, interested.

  “Eggs,” said Payne.

  “Oh,” said Bobby, and wondered curiously why this odd motive of eggs seemed so constantly to recur. Why eggs? he asked himself and aloud he said: “What eggs, Payne? Do you mean you’ve found Miss Emma Jones?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Payne answered, and Bobby said:

  “Well, I’m not sure I haven’t.”

  For it had been running strongly in his mind that the mysterious Miss Emma Jones might very well be identical with Miss Maggie Kram, though at present that idea must remain as a mere guess since there were no means of verifying it. Payne was too much absorbed in his own theories and experiences to pay any attention to Bobby’s remark, which indeed had been in the nature of an aside. Payne had been busy getting out a fat notebook and finding his place in it. Now he said:

  “In the first place, sir, I made inquiries at Ingleside camp. I couldn’t get track of any one in the camp who had heard of Micky Burke or of any sergeant who wanted to get him enlisted. Most of them seemed to think it was a leg pull. Said the tank corps wasn’t so hard up as all that for class drivers and anyhow sergeants had plenty to do without going round hunting up recruits.”

  “I suppose,” Bobby remarked, “if a sergeant had been mixed up in a bit of a row and heard police were making inquiries, he mightn’t be too anxious to come forward.”

  “No, sir, there’s always that,” agreed Payne, “especially if he had pinched a spanner as well.”

  “Not much confirmation of Micky’s story,” Bobby remarked, “but that doesn’t prove it isn’t true. All the rest of it is O.K.?”

  “Apparently so,” agreed Payne, who was as cautious in accepting statements made to him as a good policeman soon learns to be. “About Captain Peter Wintle. He is second in command of his company. He seems well liked but has the reputation of being reserved and of keeping very much to himself. More respected as a good soldier than liked as a good mixer, if you see what I mean. Got his commission from a Territorial regiment on the outbreak of the war. No one seems to know anything about his family and most officers know all about each other’s backgrounds. The batmen know it, too, generally.”

  “I can believe that of the batmen, anyhow,” remarked Bobby.

  “He would have no difficulty in leaving the camp at night,” Payne went on. “He is strict about guard duty, a fad of his, the men say. The story is that during the Dunkirk retreat his company was badly cut up by a surprise attack. He says a better look-out might have averted it. So he has a trick of prowling round at odd intervals to see that sentries and guards are all on their toes. Sometimes he’ll do that two consecutive nights, sometimes he’ll let a week pass or more. If anyone saw him out at night it would be taken for granted that’s what he was doing—inspecting the guard. If he were missed from his quarters, the same thing. But nothing to stop him slipping off anywhere he wanted so long as he was back in reasonable time.”

  “Being second in command has its advantages,” commented Bobby. “Nobody to check him except the company C.O., and most likely he thinks it’s fine to have a Second who keeps the men up to the mark. And if Wintle had a car parked handy or a bike hidden, he could be over half England and back before daybreak, without the Ingleside people either knowing or caring. What about the Saturday night when the Conqueror Inn was broken into and the Monday night of the murder?”

  Payne was referring to his notebook again.

  “He had leave over Saturday till Sunday six o’clock, when he returned to camp,” Payne announced.

  “Have to ask him some day where he was,” Bobby remarked, “but not yet. He would only tell us to go to hell.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Payne. “It was noticed that he had a black eye when he returned and he explained it by the same story—that he had run into a door in the black-out. On Monday he didn’t dine in mess. He was busy preparing a report on some tactical exercise or another and told his batman to bring him some sandwiches to his room and see he wasn’t disturbed. Nothing to show whether he actually spent the evening writing his report or not.”

  “And nothing in the shape of an established, comfortable alibi to save us bothering about him any more,” Bobby said sadly.

  “No, sir. Returning to Miss Emma Jones, no one known of that name at Wayside Cottages or anywhere else in the neighbourhood.”

  “No egg hunters known? You said something about eggs, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve got a very clear impression,” Payne answered, “that there is something queer going on about eggs on the moor, but I couldn’t put my finger on anything definite. But everyone I asked had heard some sort of vague story or another and someone else had been before me, asking questions.”


  “Who?” asked Bobby as Payne paused, evidently for dramatic effect.

  “That Loo Leader chap,” said Payne, and was entirely satisfied when Bobby emitted a loud whistle.

  “So Loo Leader comes into it again, does he?” Bobby said. “Have to keep an eye on him and ask him a few more questions presently.” Then he paused and rubbed thoughtfully the end of his nose. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why eggs? All the big egg producers are known. None of them could let their output go down without it being noticed. No one bothers about the cottages with ten or twenty birds. Anyhow, the hen population out there on the moor doesn’t amount to anything much. You might hunt half the day and not get enough eggs to make a man-size omelette.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s rather what I thought,” agreed Payne, “so then I began to wonder if when eggs were talked about, perhaps something else was meant.”

  Bobby sat upright.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Well, sir,” Payne said, a little hesitatingly now, for he was afraid of being accused of possessing too lively an imagination, “you know the French call them pills—‘pilloner’ a place, they say. The R.A.F. call them eggs—laying eggs, they say. Or used to. Bombs is what I thought of.”

  Bobby rubbed the end of his nose harder than ever. The idea did not in fact much appeal to him. But he supposed that might be because he had not thought of it himself. Payne was evidently extremely taken by it, as taken as we always are by our own ideas. Nor for that matter is any idea too fantastic for these fantastic days in which we live. Payne went on: “They could be dropped by parachute. They could be landed by boat from a submarine. They could be smuggled in from Ireland for that matter. For use against vulnerable spots in case of invasion—or even for sabotage.”

  “Have to keep it in mind,” Bobby said slowly. “It might be. Only where does Captain Wintle come in?”

  “He may have heard something and be doing a bit of watching himself,” Payne suggested and Bobby supposed it was possible.

  “Only even if it’s so,” he remarked, “it doesn’t throw much light on who is guilty of the murder or why it was committed or on the poor devil’s identity. But I think we must watch Loo Leader. And the Conqueror Inn, too.”

  “The sort of place where anything might happen,” Payne said. “All alone up there, not a soul near. First-class place for hiding things. You could store anything you like there and no one know.”

  Bobby remembered that Mr. Merton Kram had spoken of hiring those vast outbuildings for storage purposes.

  “We’ll have to keep an eye on K. and K.M.T.C., too,” he remarked thoughtfully. “We may pick up some useful facts. At present we’ve got precious few—only a medley, all unconnected and mostly irrelevant I expect. Anyhow, interest is getting focused in four different directions. The K. and K. lot. Loo Leader and his interest in eggs. The Conqueror Inn, and its great empty outbuildings. Ingleside Camp and Captain Wintle. And if you can tell me, Sergeant Payne, how to set a watch on a captain in the army busy training for a date with Hitler, I’ll be glad to hear it.”

  Sergeant Payne had no suggestion to make on that score. But a man was told off to keep an eye on the K. and K.M.T.C. headquarters and to try as far as possible to get on friendly terms with the drivers. Another man was selected for watching Loo Leader and his pugilistic mate, and yet a third man to be sent to find out what he could about the Conqueror Inn. And Bobby was still in his office, though on the point of leaving for home whence he had just received a plaintive ’phone call from his wife, Olive, to ask whether she was likely to see him before or after midnight, or not till next week, when another ’phone call came.

  “Briggs speaking, sir,” said the small and distant voice, giving the name of the constable assigned to the K. and K.M.T.C. watch. “I thought I would have a look round on my way home, sir. It’s a young lady, sir. She’s sitting out at the back of the K. and K. premises, between a lorry and the fence, a-sobbing and a-sobbing, sir, like to break her heart.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  A WOMAN’S TEARS

  BOBBY STOOD SO long, holding the receiver to his ear but not speaking, for of this piece of information he did not know in the least what to make, that presently a small discreet cough sounded over the line, a kind of timid and respectful: ‘Are you there?’ So Bobby said something to indicate he was listening and the distant voice said:

  “Instructions were to report anything out of the way, sir.”

  Out of the way certainly, Bobby thought as he listened, and certainly within the terms of the instructions issued—this story of a girl weeping alone in the night, in her father’s yard between a lorry and the fence.

  Yet after all, was it so out of the way, since this is a world in which many women often have good cause to weep.

  “That’s all right, Briggs,” Bobby said to the ’phone mouthpiece, replying more to the evident hesitation in the man’s voice than to his actual words. “I’ll come along. Look out for me.”

  Fortunately, as he had been on the point of leaving for home, his car was at the door and ready. He knew the address, knew his way, and within a very few minutes drew up where Briggs was waiting for him in the dark, but showing his position by an occasional flash of his torch on the ground.

  “It sounded sort of rummy, sir,” he explained. “Sort of heart-broken it sounded.”

  “Wait here,” Bobby said. “May as well see if anything’s wrong or help’s needed or anything.”

  He went down an alley that ran behind the house. On one side was a high wooden fence, the boundary of what once had been a garden, a garden now derelict, for, as the works and factories encroached and wealth and smoke and fumes increased, so defeated nature withdrew, unable to grapple with an atmosphere so different from any nature had ever contemplated.

  By this fence, noting that it was in bad repair, Bobby made his way, picking his path with care in the darkness and the shadows. About twenty yards along, the constable said. Bobby counted twenty-five paces and listened. He could hear plainly the sound of sobbing, not loud now as Briggs had described it, but soft and low and intent with the last extremity of misery and despair.

  Strange to stand thus in the dark night and listen to these sounds that told of a human soul in agony. For Bobby felt, as Briggs had done before, that this was no ordinary grief here pouring itself out. There was a note in it that told of other feelings as well—a kind of despairing rage, he thought, as of one caught in a trap of circumstance from which there was no escape.

  Purposely he stumbled, making a disturbance that in the quiet night would certainly be heard. The sound of sobbing ceased. A voice called:

  “Who’s that? Who’s there?”

  Bobby thought he recognized the voice, strangled and changed and hoarse as it was with tears unshed and shed. He risked a guess and called back:

  “Oh, is that you, Miss Kram? This is Inspector Owen. Is anything wrong? The constable on the beat reported suspicious sounds.”

  “That’s a lie. He didn’t. You’re spying, peeping, watching. What for? What for?” came Maggie’s voice in return, shrill and hysterical.

  “Oh, I assure you, really,” Bobby protested. “I say, I can’t talk over a fence. May I come through to your side? There are some slats loose.”

  Without waiting for either consent or refusal, neither of which was given for Maggie did not answer, and widening the gap he had found at hand by pulling out another slat, Bobby squeezed through. He switched on his torch. The night was dark, but he knew the direction whence the voice had come. When he had gone a few steps he was able to make out a dim form standing upright. He flashed the torch again and made sure it was really Maggie Kram. She said in the same hoarse half-strangled tones, as though her tears had nearly drowned her voice:

  “What do you want? Why are you watching, peeping, listening?”

  “If we are, why should that make you afraid?” he countered.

  When she made no answer he went on:

  “My constable re
ported hearing sounds he did not understand. So I came along. I could hear you. You were crying, in great distress I thought.”

  He paused but she was still silent. He continued:

  “I wondered why you had come out there from the house, to sit alone in the dark.”

  “You’ve no right ...” she muttered.

  “No right to wonder?” he asked gently. “But there’s a lot that has set me wondering. I am wondering for instance whether you did not wish your father to hear you, or whether there was some other reason—a quarrel or a misunderstanding of some sort perhaps?”

  “It’s nothing to do with you,” she told him, but without spirit, as though her recent passion of emotion had left her oddly weak.

  “I’m wondering another thing,” he went on. “A man has died alone at night out there on the moor. A woman is heard crying to herself alone here in the city. That makes me wonder, too; wonder if the one thing is because of the other.”

  Again she did not answer and he felt rather than saw how she shrank away. He had the impression that she would have slipped off, had she not been blocked by the fence behind, by a tool house or some such shed on her left, by himself in front. He said again:

  “Is it because of that dead man . . . ? If it is, won’t you tell me?”

  “I can’t, I won’t, leave me alone,” she answered, and he could hear how her breath came in quick sudden gasps. “You don’t understand, you don’t, you can’t.”

  “I think you know who is that dead man someone tried so hard to be sure should never be recognized,” Bobby went on. “If you do, why won’t you tell me? Was it someone you knew?” He paused a little. He said: “If it was someone you were fond of, remember he was brutally murdered.” Bobby’s voice that had been gentle grew suddenly stern. “Brutally murdered out there on the moor. His face battered—”

  “Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t,” she cried, shuddering violently.

  “Why won’t you tell?” Bobby repeated. “I think it was someone you cared for. I ask you for a dead man’s sake—”