The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Monday night?” repeated Mr. Kram. “No. Why?” He looked startled. “Good God,” he exclaimed, “why do you want to know? You can’t imagine that I—I—”

  He left the sentence unfinished, staring at Bobby, his mouth open, in evident dismay. Bobby said:

  “I’m not imagining anything. Why should I? Just a routine question. We have to check up on everybody, you know.”

  “Oh, well, yes, of course,” Mr. Kram muttered, though still not looking too comfortable. “All the same, you know. A bit disturbing. Monday night? I was at home all evening. As a matter of fact, I generally am. Have to be up early in my line. Busy days, and I’m generally glad enough by evening for a pipe and a book and a chance to listen to the wireless.”

  “What is your private address?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, it’s the same as the business. I had the upper part of the house fixed up for Maggie and me. Quite comfortable. And I’m always on the spot.”

  “Good idea,” Bobby approved. “Very convenient, I’m sure. Did Miss Kram spend Monday evening at home, too?”

  “Oh, yes. You can ask her if you like. Want confirmation, I suppose? Is that it?”

  “Well, in a way,” Bobby agreed. “Any other confirmation? Any friend happen to drop in? Any ’phone calls? Anything like that?”

  Mr. Kram shook his head and looked depressed.

  “No,” he said. “No. Maggie and I just spent a quiet evening together as we often do and glad of it. We are both pretty well tired out by the end of the day. You don’t expect to be asked to produce proof you’ve done what you do nine evenings out of ten.”

  “No, of course not,” agreed Bobby. “What about servants?”

  “That’s no good,” Kram answered, shaking his head again. “We have a daily woman, that’s all—the wife of one of our loaders. She leaves supper ready. Sometimes Maggie cooks a little something extra. Then she clears the things away and Mrs. Hornby washes up when she comes. That’s all.”

  “Oh, well,” Bobby said cheerfully. “Quite natural, of course. Sometimes it’s more suspicious to have an alibi than not to have one. Most people would say much the same as you’ve done. Another point. I was looking through the Firearms Register. You have a licence for a point three two revolver, I think?”

  “Yes. For protection. When I was making some long trips with rather valuable loads. But it was a point forty-five that was used on Monday, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Bobby. “That’s so. But I have reason to believe a shot was fired while Miss Kram was at the Conqueror Inn yesterday. She denied it. So did Miss Christopherson. Frankly, I wasn’t satisfied. Could you let me see your revolver?”

  “Certainly. I’ll go and get it at once,” declared Mr. Kram, and went off home; but Bobby was not much surprised when presently Kram rang up to say it had been mislaid, but every effort would be made to find it, and as soon as it was found it would be sent round.

  “Means,” Bobby told himself when he hung up after receiving this message, “that it is the pistol that was used at the Conqueror Inn and Miss Rachel has got it, but Kram hopes to get it back for my benefit.”

  In the meantime Micky had put in an appearance. He looked pale and worn, Bobby thought, as if he had not slept well of late, and he seemed nervous, too, and ill at ease. But he confirmed in every detail everything that Kram had said, and he admitted that his nephew had been much upset by Maggie’s open display of her feelings.

  “He did know about it, then?” Bobby said.

  “He couldn’t help,” Micky asserted. “How could he, and she making it as plain as a lighted-up window in the blackout?”

  “He didn’t return her feelings at all?”

  “He did not. It was scared of her he was. Scared.”

  “What about Miss Rachel Christopherson of the Conqueror Inn?”

  Micky bestowed an angry scowl on Bobby.

  “I suppose it was the boss put you on that?” he growled. “He had no call to.”

  “Do you think it’s a fact?”

  “If I do, it’s not along of anything Larry ever said, and me telling him that to wed a heretic or worse was a sure road to trouble nor a thing any of our kin had ever done. But I had seen the way he looked at her, and her pretending not to notice; that’s the best card a girl can play and well they know it. Then what was he out for at night and not sleeping in his own bed but maybe in a bed where it was mortal sin to be? But he denied it to my face, and it’s as wise as Solomon you have to be to know where the truth ends and lies begin.”

  “So you have,” agreed Bobby with some feeling.

  He asked one or two more questions, trying to find out what Micky knew or thought of Mr. Kram’s attitude towards his daughter’s infatuation. He tried to discover, too, what was Micky’s own feeling about it all and more especially his opinion of his employer.

  There emerged a curious contradiction. Everything that Micky said was in Mr. Kram’s favour. A considerate, a generous employer. Everything, too, he said confirmed in every detail the story Kram told. Yet Bobby seemed to feel a most curious undercurrent of strong emotion that, unless he was letting his imagination deceive him, was something resembling a passionate, deeply felt enmity.

  But why should Micky, who spoke so well of his employer, who backed him up in every detail, entertain for him the deep, fierce anger that Bobby believed he saw smouldering, and sometimes aflame, in the depths of the Irishman’s small, bleak eyes?

  Bobby said:

  “Mr. Burke, I want you to listen to this very carefully. Your nephew, Larry Connor, is the only man we know of with whom we can’t get in touch. He is the only man we can hear of who has, so to say, vanished from his usual surroundings. So, you see, we have to ask ourselves—is it possible it is Larry Connor whose body we found out there on the moor?”

  “And how could it be possible,” Micky answered steadily, “when I was with him till near midnight on Monday and now the boss tells me there’s a letter come he wrote from London to Miss Maggie?”

  “Yes, that seems conclusive, doesn’t it?” Bobby agreed. “Larry was like a son to you, they tell me.”

  “He was that and more than a son is to some fathers,” Micky answered simply. “Not much more than a babe only beginning to take notice when I had him first after my sister died, God rest her soul. He was all I had and a good lad as ever lived.”

  “You said ‘was.’ Why do you say ‘was’?” Bobby asked.

  “For that now he’s grown, he’s left me,” Micky answered. “Comes once or twice a year maybe to see the old uncle and then off again. Not like it—was,” he said with a faint emphasis on the last word.

  “You understand our difficulty,” Bobby said. “We can’t identify the body. Someone smashed in the dead man’s face—deliberately. Pretty beastly. Devilish.”

  “Devilish it was,” Micky said; and now there was no doubt of the strong emotion in his voice, the deep, bitter hatred in his eyes. “Let be the man who did it to roast a thousand year in hell. And soon.”

  He flung out the last word with an emotion, an emphasis that startled Bobby. He seemed to feel how questioningly Bobby was looking at him. More quietly but still with feeling, he said:

  “Who but a beast that was worse than the beasts in the field would be doing a thing like that to the image of God that is man?”

  The remark puzzled Bobby. It seemed to show an aspect of Micky’s character that hitherto he had not suspected. There was no more he had to ask, but it was with an uneasy feeling that he saw the Irishman depart, for he had seemed to feel in Micky’s last words a threat implicit that might be a hint of still worse things to come.

  Yet if he believed the dead man to be his nephew, why should he so strongly deny it? Why should he seek to protect the murderer of the boy he had brought up from a baby, for whom it was quite certain he felt a strong affection?

  Incredible, Bobby felt, that he should do what, if the dead man were really Larry, he was certainly doing.

  Ye
t if the murdered man were a stranger, why should he show so much emotion at the thought of the mutilation the dead features had undergone?

  A contradiction there, and one that Bobby saw no way at present to resolve.

  He was still brooding over these two strange interviews, neither of which did he feel he had succeeded in understanding, when word was brought to him that Captain Peter Wintle was there and would like to see the inspector in charge of the moor murder, as the papers had begun to call it.

  “Well, that’s all to the good,” Bobby commented to Sergeant Payne, who had brought him the information, “it’s when witnesses begin to make voluntary statements that you begin to get at the truth.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  CAPTAIN WINTLE’S INDIGNATION

  PLAIN ENOUGH THAT Captain Peter Wintle was in truculent mood, and indeed he took no notice either of Bobby’s greeting when he entered the room or of the offer of a chair pushed forward. Abruptly he said:

  “I want to know what you are up to?”

  “Meaning?” asked Bobby gently.

  “Oh, you know,” snapped Wintle. “My C.O. asked me about it. I hadn’t heard. He had. I said I would come straight along and ask you what it meant. Then I shall consult a solicitor. Do you think I have any intention of putting up with police snooping round, asking my men questions about me? Jolly for discipline.”

  Bobby in his mind put a big black mark against the name of Sergeant Payne. Payne had been carefully and emphatically warned to be most discreet in his inquiries, to use his utmost endeavour not to start any gossip. And here was the result.

  “The whole camp’s buzzing,” said Wintle bitterly.

  Bobby, in his mind, increased the bigness and the blackness of the mark against Payne. Never again could he trust Payne with any investigation that went beyond the most elementary routine work. He contemplated moodily sending Payne back to the uniform branch—minus his stripes.

  “It’ll have to go before the brigadier,” said Wintle. “If I could have found him I would have tackled this Leader fellow at once myself, but he had cleared out.”

  “Eh?” said Bobby sitting up sharply. “What’s that?”

  “I said I would have tackled this Loo Leader man of yours then and there if I could have found him,” Wintle repeated. “Just as well I didn’t perhaps or I might have been tempted to give him a good thrashing.”

  “Rather fond of giving people good thrashings, aren’t you?” Bobby murmured, and as Wintle flushed and glared, Bobby went on: “Let’s get this straight. I do wish you would sit down, though. You know, extraordinary how difficult it is to get people to tell a straight story. Even captains in the army apparently. Now, will you explain exactly what all this is—about someone called Leader, is it?”

  “Isn’t he the man you’ve sent to ‘make inquiries’ as you call it? About me? I want to know why. Then I’m going to see a solicitor.”

  “Well, that’s often very wise,” Bobby agreed, “but it’s even more wise to be sure of your facts first. I gather from what you say that a man named Leader has been asking questions about you. And that he said he came from us?”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “I can assure you,” Bobby answered with perfect truth, “that we have sent no one of that name to make any inquiries about you or anyone else—there’s no one of that name in the force for one thing. Can you describe him?”

  Wintle shook his head. He looked puzzled. And relieved. Very relieved. When Bobby again suggested that he should sit down, he complied. He said:

  “No, I didn’t see him myself. I knew nothing about it at the time.”

  “If it’s the man I think ...” Bobby said and left the sentence unfinished.

  He was feeling a little excited, a little puzzled, too. More than interesting, he thought, this sudden return of Loo Leader into the orbit of the case. Also he hurriedly rubbed out in his mind that big, black mark he had placed against the name of Sergeant Payne.

  “Captain Wintle,” he said, “if a man named Leader has been making any inquiries about you—or about anyone else—he has been doing it on his own account and for his own reasons. He has no authority from us, no connection with us whatever.”

  “Not one of your men at all?” Wintle asked, still looking both astonished and relieved and yet doubtful as well.

  “Most certainly not,” answered Bobby, “and if he is the man I think, I’ll have a talk with him as soon as possible. Have you definite evidence he claimed to be a policeman?”

  “I don’t know,” Wintle answered. “I don’t know much about it. All I know is the C.O. sent for me and said that was what he had heard and what was it all about? Naturally he was upset. You can’t expect a C.O. to take no notice if he hears police are asking questions about one of his officers. I’ll have the skin off the chap if I can catch him,” added Wintle grimly. “It’s a bit of a relief to hear he is not a policeman. I was half afraid you suspected I might have something to do with this murder.”

  “Oh, we do,” said Bobby.

  Wintle, who had been getting to his feet to depart on the assumption that the interview was over, sat down again abruptly.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked, calmly enough but with a catch in his breath, too.

  “What I said,” Bobby answered. “We suspect you are in some way or another mixed up in the murder of the unknown man found buried near the Conqueror Inn, and it looks to me as if this Mr. Leader you tell me about thought so, too. He may know something. In fact, it is fairly certain he either does or thinks he does. Or why is he asking these questions? So the first thing now for us to do is to get hold of him and ask him what he knows—or thinks he knows.”

  Wintle was looking more and more uncomfortable. Even the bravest man, guilty or innocent, can hardly face with composure the knowledge that he is under suspicion of the crime of murder, even though as yet that suspicion is but faint and distant.

  “Don’t you think you had better tell me yourself?” Bobby asked gently. “Much wiser always to tell the police anything there is to tell. I mean, if you’re innocent. Of course, if you’re guilty—”

  “Guilty?” repeated Wintle in a voice that began on a high note and ended on a low one, and whereas at first he had been very red now he had become very pale. “Come to that, has it?” he said with a harsh, unnatural laugh.

  “I said ‘if,’” Bobby reminded him. “Clearly this man suspects something. Or why is he asking questions? I don’t know what his motive is. It may be a pure thirst for justice. Not very likely perhaps. But possible. A pure thirst for justice generally brings people to us. Only sometimes they are a bit shy or nervous and want to be sure. Afraid of being laughed at. Or it may be blackmail. Can’t tell. Or it may be something quite different, I am only suggesting that if there is anything you can think of that Leader may know of, then it would be wise for you—and might be useful to us—if you told us. You will notice I assume that you are innocent.”

  “Not you,” said Wintle harshly. “What you mean is, you assume I’m guilty and hadn’t I better out with a confession? Sorry to disappoint you. Naturally I shall consult a solicitor at once.”

  “Your wisest course, no doubt,” agreed Bobby. “We shall be pleased to see any solicitor you ask to represent you any time he wishes. We shall point out to him the coincidence in time of the injury to your eye with the injuries found on the dead man’s body. We shall have to admit that we don’t find your story of the door-post in the black-out very convincing. I notice, too, that you are rather prone to think in terms of giving people thrashings. It is what you thought of at once in connection with this Leader person. Then there is the fact that the murder took place near the Conqueror Inn and that you have been a visitor there several times lately—in fact, the only guest they seem to have had for some time. You explain you stayed there out of sympathy for the family of a man to whom you owed your life at Dunkirk and who lost his own life there. Was that the only reason?”

  “Isn’t it enough
?”

  “Well, that’s what I asked, isn’t it? Can you tell me where you were on the Monday night—the night of the murder?”

  Captain Wintle was looking paler than ever. He said:

  “I was at the camp. I think that Monday night I had a look round to make sure the sentries were on their toes. On active service a careless sentry may mean disaster—defeat. I try to make sure they understand that. So I do a prowl round at night sometimes. I daresay some of them would remember my going the rounds that night.”

  “You see, what I have to remember is this,” Bobby said. “I have to ask myself even if your sentries saw you, if there was also time, in between whiles so to say, to use a car or a cycle you might have had waiting in order to pay a visit to—the Conqueror Inn.”

  Captain Wintle said:

  “I see you’ll have me hanged yet.”

  “Well, of course, if you’re guilty,” murmured Bobby deprecatingly. “Not that hanging anyone is any business or interest of ours. Our job is to say to the law of England, ‘We think such and such a man committed such and such an action, and this is why we think so.’ Then it is for the law of England to say if it thinks so too, and, if it does, what ought to be done. A policeman may call himself a soldier of the truth.”

  “Why am I supposed to have committed this murder?” Wintle asked.

  “Now, please,” Bobby protested, “we haven’t got anywhere near supposing that as yet. Not by a long way. We have only got as far as asking questions and noting the replies we get—or don’t get. Also noticing such facts as we are sure of—curious facts, some of them. For example, the fact that two nights before the murder someone broke into the Conqueror Inn by removing a pane of glass from the window of the bar.”

  He paused. Wintle made no comment. But his bright quick eyes were steady upon Bobby’s face, and Bobby said:

  “Sorry. A slip. I should have said the kitchen window—not the window of the bar.”

  “A trap, I suppose,” Wintle commented, “to see if I knew?”

  “And did you?” Bobby asked. “Anyhow, you knew there might be a trap, I think. Even that is not without interest. Also there does seem to emerge a possible theory of what happened, a possible explanation of both black eye and thrashing. Suppose—I’ll do a little supposing now if I may. But only supposing, you understand. Suppose a Mr. X. happened to run into a man—an unknown man—trying to break into the Conqueror Inn. Or even leaving it. Well, that might have led to questions by Mr. X, resentment by the other fellow, and finally to a thrashing for him and a black eye for Mr. X.”