The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “I thought that was your car outside,” he said. “Why have you come to trouble us again?”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  GUESSES

  TO BOBBY’S SURPRISE, before he could speak, Rachel answered the question. She said:

  “There must be trouble for all when a man has been killed.”

  Bobby noticed that she did not use the word ‘murdered.’ Mr. Christopherson came across the room to the fireplace and stood there. He said, almost as if speaking to himself:

  “Death’s so common now with men dying all round the world by the hundred and the thousand.”

  “Is that what your philosophy teaches?” Bobby asked, watching the big man curiously, “that death’s so common it has no significance?”

  “The insignificance of death, perhaps,” Christopherson answered musingly, “but still more the significance of life. That matters. Well, why have you come again?”

  “I was telling Miss Christopherson,” Bobby explained. “There is a young man named Connor, Larry Connor. He used to help with one of the K. and K. lorries, one that stopped here sometimes. I expect you remember him. We are trying to get in touch with him. So far we have failed. We think it possible he may be the dead man. We don’t know. It is only a possibility. We have to consider it. We have received information that he was greatly attracted by Miss Christopherson. I thought it best to come and ask her about it.”

  “A silly tale,” Christopherson answered. “I remember the young man you mean. I doubt if he and Rachel ever spoke to each other. They did once. I remember that. He tried to be familiar with Rachel, asked questions she thought rather impudent. Next time when she was serving and he came in, she called me and asked me to attend to him. I don’t think he came again. Silly gossip some fool invented for the sake of talking. Larry Connor may have talked loosely, young men do sometimes, boast about every girl they see. I don’t know why you paid it any attention.”

  “The suggestion is,” Bobby said, “that that is why an attempt was made to break in here the Saturday night before the murder. Please understand the suggestion is not ours. I don’t want any mistake about that. But it has been made to us. A newspaper man told us there was talk going on on those lines. Possibly he invented the talk himself to try to fish for information from us. I told him we had nothing to say and he had better remember the libel and slander laws and he said newspaper men were brought up on them from birth. The point is, you realize that if it were true, it would provide a motive at once—the father protecting his daughter. A classical motive.”

  “It seems the most utter nonsense to me,” Christopherson said harshly, and yet, or so Bobby thought, with relief in his voice and manner. “If I caught any young man making a nuisance of himself to Rachel, I might give him a good thrashing—”

  “Father,” Rachel interrupted warningly.

  “Well, I might, but I shouldn’t shoot him,” Christopherson retorted and then added: “Oh, you mean the dead man had had a thrashing and the police may think what I said means it was me. Well, if they do, they must. But it wasn’t and I don’t know who it was.”

  “Well, at present,” Bobby said, “I am more inclined to think it was Captain Wintle.”

  “Captain Wintle?” Christopherson repeated. “That’s nonsense too. He’s not been here for two or three weeks. Has he?”

  This last question was addressed to Rachel. She shook her head in reply, but Bobby noticed that her cheeks grew suddenly red.

  Christopherson looked back at Bobby. He said:

  “You can’t mean you are beginning to suspect him. What on earth do you think he has to do with it?”

  “Well, you see, he has stayed here several times,” Bobby pointed out. “Your only visitor. One wonders why. Perhaps there is an attraction here. No one who has seen Miss Christopherson could be surprised.” He stopped to make a little bow to her whose cheeks now were flaming. “So there’s an obvious possibility. Suppose he happened to come across the dead man—Larry Connor or another—trying to break in here. That would account for the injuries both the dead man—whoever he was—and Captain Wintle received, the same night. I mean, if a fight of some sort developed. And if the same thing happened again, on the following Monday, there might have been more serious consequences.”

  Christopherson was smiling now and Bobby had once more the impression that what he said was giving the father, as it had done before the daughter, considerable relief. He wondered if they had feared his suspicions might take another road, and that was why they had both in turn given him this feeling of a relaxed tension. There was even a touch of good-natured contempt in Christopherson’s voice as he said:

  “That all seems rather wild guessing—rather silly, too, if you don’t mind my saying so. Far fetched. You can sit and guess and guess for ever and be wrong for ever.”

  “When we know so little and when those who know so much tell us nothing, what else can we do but guess?” Bobby retorted.

  “I am afraid you mean that for us,” Christopherson said, smiling again. “I can only repeat that we know no more than you do who was killed or why. If you won’t believe us, we can’t help it. It’s the truth all the same. Isn’t it, Rachel?”

  “Yes, father,” she said.

  She left her seat by the window to come and stand, at his side before the great old fashioned fireplace. Tall man and tall daughter they stood there side by side, and together they gave out an aura, so to say, of implacable unswerving force. Whatsoever they made up their minds to, they would carry through, Bobby felt. Nothing mean, petty or malicious, he thought, would they ever be guilty of. But he was by no means so sure that when their wills or their consciences approved, they would draw back before any convention or consideration of law, of custom, of ordinary every day respectability. Nor did he feel sure that there was anything, even to the shedding of blood, from which they would shrink if, for any reason at all, they felt justified. In them he seemed to see alive again the old grim Puritan spirit. He realized abruptly that he had been sitting there silent for some minutes and that they were waiting for him to speak.

  “Captain Wintle told me,” he said, “that his life was saved at Dunkirk by your son. He told me, too, that afterwards your son himself was killed there.”

  Immediately Bobby was aware of a sudden change in the attitude of both father and daughter. Gone now was that air of invincibility which before had lain about them like a living thing. He saw Rachel start, heard her catch her breath. Even more revealing was the abrupt stiffening of her father’s attitude, as though holding himself erect against a swift and sudden blow. It was like a summoning of all his forces to receive and to repel attack.

  Rather to his surprise, Bobby found that he, too, was standing up. He said:

  “I have my duty to do. I am sorry.” He repeated. “I am sorry. I must do my duty.”

  “I know,” Christopherson answered quietly, and with an infinite gentleness he laid his hand on Rachel’s shoulder. It was a gesture that said as plainly as words: “Be strong.” To Bobby he said, still very quietly: “Go on.”

  “Is it true that your son was killed?”

  Christopherson, instead of answering, turned and went out of the room. Rachel turned, too, and stood with her back to Bobby, looking down at the embers smouldering in the great fireplace so that he could not see her face. Christopherson came back. He handed Bobby some papers. One was the usual War Office official announcement that Private Derek Christopherson was missing, believed killed. Another was a letter from the officer commanding the company in which the young man had served. It spoke of him in terms of high praise. It referred, too, to the pleasure his violin playing had given all ranks, and how it had helped to pass the tedious hours of what had come to be known at the time as the ‘phoney’ war. In restrained language it gave the story of a fellow soldier who had seen a bomb from a German aeroplane burst where young Christopherson and two or three others had been standing, and then, when the smoke and dust cleared away, nothing—nothing
but that horror of shattered, scattered human bodies which modern war has made a commonplace. There were two other letters to the same effect from comrades, one of them another musician who had helped young Christopherson in giving concerts.

  Bobby read the papers through and handed them back.

  “Your son was evidently a very clever musician,” he said. “I have been told so before. I think he played with the Midwych Philharmonic Orchestra, didn’t he? Perhaps he inherited his talent from you, Mr. Christopherson?”

  “I am no musician,” Christopherson said heavily. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Miss Christopherson,” Bobby continued, “is a violinist, too, perhaps?”

  She did not turn or give any sign of answering and her father said:

  “I don’t know why you should ask. I don’t know why we should answer. But I suppose you could find out. You could ask the neighbours. Perhaps you have already. I think you are thorough in your methods. I think very likely you know already that Rachel does not play.”

  “Derek was the only musician among us,” Rachel said then, still without looking round. “Every one about here knows that.”

  “If he inherited his talent from anyone, he got it from my father, his grandfather,” Christopherson said. “There is a story that my grandfather used to play the fiddle. I don’t know if it’s true. Very likely it is. Why should it interest you?”

  “I suppose I am guessing again,” Bobby said. “I have an uncomfortable feeling that even if you don’t know what you say you don’t know, yet all the same there is a good deal you could tell me if you would. Well, I’ve given you every opportunity, but I think you have made up your mind you won’t. So what can I do but guess?”

  “A guess is still only a guess,” Christopherson said.

  “Even a guess needs some facts to build on,” Bobby said. “When I was here, before, that time when I thought I heard a shot fired, though both Miss Kram and Miss Rachel denied it, I noticed in the big barn a music stand and a violin as if someone had been practising.”

  Very quickly Rachel said:

  “I have been trying to learn, to teach myself. That’s all.”

  “I don’t think I much believe you,” Bobby said. “I’m sorry, but there it is.”

  She was silent. Mr. Christopherson was looking down darkly at Bobby. He gave the impression of one standing at bay. Bobby knew well how they were suffering. But he had to do what he had to do. He went on:

  “I have to get to the bottom of all this. You are not giving me much help. It would save us all a great deal if you would tell me the truth. I mean the whole truth. You see, in the end, the truth has got to come out.”

  “It would be kinder,” Rachel said, “if you would tell us what you have in your mind.”

  “Very well I will,” Bobby answered, “it’s only that I thought it might be easier if you would speak of your own accord. There are little things I’ve noticed and even small things have a meaning. Odd things, too. Odd, for example, that an innkeeper should show so little desire for custom. Odd, again, that Mr. Christopherson should choose to sleep alone in one of the attics. Odd again that Miss Rachel should practise playing the violin in one of the barns instead of in the house. Odd that as I got near the house I thought I saw someone at the attic window. Possibly not odd at all that Miss Rachel would not give me permission to go over the house. Nor had I a search warrant.”

  “You can go over the house as much as you like,” Rachel interrupted, “now my father is here.”

  “At another guess,” Bobby retorted, “Mrs. Christopherson has been busy since I got here.”

  “That’s enough of guessing games,” Christopherson interrupted harshly. “In plain words, please.”

  “A plain question then,” Bobby said. “Was your son in fact killed at Dunkirk or did he get back? If he did—did he, instead of reporting to his battalion, come here back to you, and have you kept him hidden here, a deserter, liable to arrest and punishment?”

  Christopherson flung back his head. Loudly and clearly he answered.

  “No,” he said. “All guesses. Guesses. Guesses are worth nothing.”

  “Then who,” Bobby asked sharply, “is it in the big barn there across the yard? Two or three times I’ve seen someone looking out—a man, I think.”

  “There’s no one, no one, no one,” Rachel shrilled, but Bobby answered:

  “Look, look there.”

  He pointed from the window. A figure had shown for a moment at the door of the great barn and had then withdrawn again. Bobby ran out of the kitchen out of the building across the yard. He heard Christopherson start to follow him and then stand still. He heard Rachel cry out, though what she called he did not know. He tore open the barn door and found himself face to face with Loo Leader.

  CHAPTER XIX

  MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE

  IT WAS LOO LEADER who spoke first, Bobby’s surprise—and in a sense his disappointment—holding him silent for the moment.

  “Afternoon, Inspector,” Leader said cheerfully, his small eyes bright and alert on either side of his enormous nose. “You having a look round, too, same as me?”

  “What are you doing here?” Bobby asked.

  “Just like I said, Inspector,” Leader answered, “just having a look round.” He produced a cigarette and lighted it with elaborate care, an old trick for securing time to think what to say next. For all his off-hand manner, Bobby felt Leader was as taken aback by their sudden encounter as he had to confess he had been himself. “Things going on,” said Leader vaguely, “and so I thought as I would have a look round, too. Can’t leave it all to the busies, you know.”

  Bobby looked at him doubtfully, more than a little puzzled. Christopherson and Rachel had come across from the inn to join them. Neither of them spoke. Christopherson’s features were impassive but Rachel still looked anxious. To Christopherson, Bobby said:

  “Did you know this man was here?”

  “No,” Christopherson answered. To Rachel, he said: “Did you?” Rachel shook her head. To Leader, Christopherson said: “What are you doing here?”

  “Just having a look round, same as I told the inspector,” Leader repeated.

  “What for?” demanded Christopherson.

  Leader’s small bright eyes by the side of that great nose of his were still alert and bright, but about his loose, wide mouth a suspicion of a grin was beginning to appear. To Bobby it seemed that both Rachel and her father were waiting his reply with a certain apprehension, and he also thought that when his reply came it merely puzzled them.

  “An idea of mine,” Leader was saying. “I’m in road transport. So I thought it might be a paying notion to fix up a depot somewhere—storage, you see. Save cross hauls. Cross hauls play hell with road transport. Send up costs, eat up profits. See? So I said to myself as the Conqueror Inn was the very place. Lots of big empty old buildings. See? Near cross roads, too. So I came along to have a look and then I saw the inspector’s car and I thought it would be more tactful like to wait till he had gone before starting in to talk business with Mr. Christopherson.”

  His grin widened. He waited for comments. His air of cheeky defiance was very much that of the man who has just said ‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it.’ Bobby wondered how much of it to believe and decided very little. Rachel turned and began to walk back towards the inn, and to Bobby it seemed that her step had become less firm, that that graceful upright bearing so characteristic of her had now begun to sag a little. He wondered if Leader’s scarcely concealed confidence and impudence had begun to convey some message to her. He glanced at Christopherson and remembered how once he had thought of him as of an ageless man in an ageless land. Was it only fancy, he asked himself, that made him think that traces of the burden of the years had now become apparent? Christopherson was saying:

  “Do you mean you come from Mr. Kram?”

  “Not me, I’m on my own, I am,” Leader retorted. “All my own idea. Has Kram had it, too? Well, now, ain�
��t that the queerest thing going—both of us with the same notion.”

  “It doesn’t seem a very sensible notion to me,” Christopherson said. “Mr. Kram dropped it almost at once, I think. I have heard nothing more. And if you have anything to say to me, why didn’t you come to the house? I don’t like strangers in my barns. These outbuildings are not part of the licensed premises. You are trespassing here.”

  “Doing no harm,” retorted Leader. “Just looking round. No harm in that. Business reasons.”

  Bobby interposed. He had no wish to see accepted the hint Christopherson had dropped, or for Christopherson and Leader to get together privately before he himself had found opportunity to question Leader further. That there was something behind Leader’s unexpected appearance here, he felt very sure. Difficult, though, to say what. He said aloud:

  “I think I should like a chat with Mr. Leader myself. How did you get here?” he asked Leader. “That your bicycle?” He had noticed one just inside the barn, leaning against the wall. “Can I give you a lift back to Midwych in my car? We can stow your bicycle at the back.”

  Rather to Bobby’s surprise Leader accepted this suggestion at once, accepted it even with a certain alacrity. In a very few minutes they were on their way, and as Leader settled himself comfortably in his seat next to Bobby, he said:

  “Don’t much like that Christopherson chap. There’s a look about him makes you think he would put you out of the way same as he would a rat, if he thought he had to.”

  “Yes,” agreed Bobby thoughtfully. “I think perhaps he might—that is, as soon as he felt sure you were a rat.”

  Leader looked as if he didn’t much like this remark. Bobby had laid a certain emphasis on the “you.” Leader had the air of turning it over in his mind and finding it less and less agreeable the more he thought about it. Bobby went on: