“Mrs. Connor, will you not tell me what you are afraid of and why?”
“Of another murder,” she answered in a voice that he could hardly hear, “and that it will not be me.”
CHAPTER XXII
CONSIDERATIONS AND CONJECTURES
BOBBY WAS IN gloomy mood when he arrived at the office next morning. Forebodings were dark in his mind with the memory of that candle on Micky Burke’s mantelpiece, burning inexorably away before Mr. Kram’s photograph, symbol perhaps of a life doomed also soon to be extinguished.
Responsibility is heavy when there is question not only of a murder to be avenged but also of a murder to be averted.
Leader, too—what fear was it that made a man of his character and record well pleased with the close supervision of an officer of police?
Nor was Bobby’s uneasiness diminished when he heard that Mr. Kram had made application for permission to obtain a new revolver on the ground that the one previously in his possession had been stolen. Impossible, declared Mr. Kram in his letter, that it should have been lost or mislaid, and it must therefore have been stolen.
“Well, Kram’s not going to get his permission, not if I can help it,” declared Bobby crossly to Sergeant Payne who had come in for instructions. “Can’t give permission to buy a revolver to suspected murderers, for it’s pretty clear, Payne, you were right in thinking Maggie Kram believes it was her father. And what’s more, she is afraid Micky Burke knows it.”
“Means,” said Payne, “she thinks her father killed her husband?”
Bobby nodded.
After a pause, both men heavy with their own thoughts, Payne added:
“Bit tragic.”
Bobby nodded again. He was remembering Maggie’s coy giggles the first time he had seen her. He suspected now that she had been told at the time that Larry had gone away and that her giggles and her readiness to flirt had been her way of showing her resentment at such a secret departure so like a desertion. Then, hearing of the unidentified dead man found near the Conqueror Inn she had begun to grow uneasy. Later on her suspicions had turned towards her father.
But were those suspicions well founded? Bobby asked himself.
Was it going to be his duty, he wondered distastefully, to try to use a daughter’s testimony against her father?
He supposed that if she volunteered such testimony it would have to be used. But he would not try to force it from her. He would rather throw up his job—only, of course, in war time, he would not even be allowed to resign. Already he had sent in his resignation two or three times, in the hope of being able to join the army, only to be told with some asperity that his duty was to stop where he was.
As if suddenly deciding that his former comment had been inadequate and that it ought to be emphasized, Payne added:
“Hard luck on the girl.”
“Can’t be sure that it is like that,” Bobby said, rousing himself from his own thoughts. “Can’t even be sure that that’s what’s in her mind. Can’t be sure of anything till we are sure who the dead man is.”
“No one else missing, no one but Larry Connor,” Payne said.
“No one that we know of,” Bobby corrected him, “and being missing isn’t proof of death. I’ve sent a wire to Cork,” he added, “to ask for inquiries to be made in the village where Larry comes from.”
“Well, of course,” agreed Payne, “if Larry turns up there all alive and kicking, then it has to be someone else got himself killed that night.”
It was in no expectation of any such result that Bobby had dispatched his telegram. His reason had been entirely different, but he did not explain further. He felt it was too much of an imaginative effort for it to be exposed to Payne’s criticism unless the event justified it. Olive had not wanted telling, though. She had seen the idea at once.
“If it wasn’t Larry Connor—well, who was it?” Payne went on as Bobby remained silent.
“There’s another man we’ve heard of but never seen,” Bobby said. “Perhaps because he doesn’t exist. But I think quite likely he does—or did till that Monday night.”
“Young Christopherson?” Payne asked. “You think perhaps he wasn’t killed at Dunkirk but deserted instead when he got back and they’ve been hiding him at the Conqueror Inn?”
“I put that to them,” Bobby said. “It seemed to account for things that puzzled me—like not wanting too much custom and the music stand and the violin put out all ready though neither Christopherson nor Miss Rachel play. I made sure that’s what it was when I saw someone dodging about the outbuildings. Only it wasn’t, it was Leader instead. Threw me off my stride altogether. What was Leader up to?” he added abruptly, for that was a question to which at present he saw no reasonable answer.
Payne did not try to answer it. Instead he said:
“Christopherson’s the type would go a long way to protect a son of his if he thought it right.”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby and went on thoughtfully: “I suppose you could almost excuse any man who had been at Dunkirk not being too keen on facing it again.”
“Most of them were keen enough,” Payne said. “All most of them wanted was another go to get a bit of their own back.”
“Yes, that’s true,” admitted Bobby. “All the more credit to them. When you’ve been in hell and got out, it can’t be much fun going back.”
“Of course,” admitted Payne in his turn, “this chap seems to have had it as bad as he could if it’s true he was actually blown up by one of those dive bombers.”
Incidentally Payne himself had been blown twenty feet into the air by a bomb during one of the raids on Midwych. But that had always seemed to him merely a piece of somewhat disagreeable routine duty. As Bobby, deep in thought again, made no comment, Payne asked:
“I take it, sir, you’ve thought of getting a search warrant?”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby answered, “but would they give me one? It’s all conjecture, you know. Deduction from given premises. That’s all, and the deduction may be quite wrong. Magistrates are pretty sticky about giving search warrants. I call it deduction. A magistrate might call it guessing and say guesses weren’t good enough. Besides, Christopherson has the official notice of his son’s death. Another thing. Would a search succeed? It’s an old warren of a place with outbuildings like a young town, and I shouldn’t wonder if it isn’t provided with a few secret hiding places—priest’s holes and so on. No. I think the search warrant must be a last resort.”
“Another thing, sir,” Payne said. “If it was young Derek Christopherson who was killed—well, why?”
“There’s another possibility,” Bobby said. “One that would link up the two of them—Larry Connor and Derek Christopherson, I mean. Suppose Larry had got to know about Derek and was threatening to give information. You said just now Christopherson was of the stuff to kill to protect his own?”
“So he is,” Payne declared once more.
“I think so, too. And Rachel—what about her?”
“Her too,” asserted Payne, “her as much as her father—or more. There’s nothing either of them wouldn’t do if they thought it right. And it wouldn’t bother either of them what other people thought.”
“Their own judges,” Bobby said. “Their own judges once they made up their minds. Only—did they?”
“No real evidence,” Payne said. “There’s the snag.”
“There’s still another possibility to consider,” Bobby went on. “Captain Wintle was very emphatic about there being no firearms at the Conqueror Inn. Said he had asked. Why did he ask?”
“Now that,” said Payne, “that takes some thinking out.”
“Is it a fair argument,” asked Bobby, who had been trying hard to accomplish that same ‘thinking out,’ “to say that Wintle would not have asked such a question, unless he had been afraid of firearms being used?”
“Yes, I see that,” agreed Payne.
“By whom and why?” Bobby continued. “No apparent reason why he should
suspect either Christopherson or his daughter of wanting to shoot anyone. But suppose a deserter were hiding in the inn?”
“Resisting arrest,” Payne interposed, looking quite excited, for, as the authorities wouldn’t let him join the army, what luck if there was going to be a chance of a scrap on his own doorstep, so to speak.
“That was my first idea,” Bobby said, “but only a man off his head would try a trick like that. So then it struck me: Suppose this imaginary deserter of ours is off his head in actual fact? Suppose his Dunkirk experience threw him off his balance? It has happened. Shell shock. That sort of thing. It might be another reason why father and sister are hiding him. Not so much to save him from the army as to save him from an asylum. They might think his best chance of getting over it, getting normal again, was with them. Suppose, too, he had fits of violence. Thought he was back again, fighting at Dunkirk, thought he had still to hold the Germans off.” Bobby paused, hesitated, and then added in a very apologetic tone: “I suppose you think it’s a devil of a lot of conjecture all built up from Wintle’s saying that about firearms.”
“Well, yes, sir,” agreed Payne, “but it does seem to hang together and all very carefully reasoned out. We do know from the dabs on the cut-out window pane that the dead man, whoever he really is, was up to something there at the Conqueror Inn. It seems quite feasible that if young Derek Christopherson was that way, crazy like, he might have thought it was the Germans after him again. A service revolver was used and he could easily have had one he picked up over there, at Dunkirk.”
“There’s still another possibility,” Bobby said. “It might have begun like that but ended differently. Even if something of the sort did happen, it doesn’t follow it was Larry Connor who got killed.”
“No,” agreed Payne. “No, I see that. It might be the other fellow, it might be Larry who killed Derek if it did come to a scrap. Only then, if the Christophersons knew Derek was dead, because of having made an attack on Larry, why were they the first to call us in and yet now won’t say a word?”
“Possibly,” Bobby answered, “Christopherson put the call through before he knew what had happened. Or he may have realized that the loss of two thousand pounds was bound to cause inquiry and he wanted to divert suspicion.”
Payne was beginning to look worried.
“My head’s fair buzzing,” he complained. “If there’s only one line to follow up, you know where you are. But that makes two quite new ones, and how many is that altogether?”
“Four, isn’t it?” Bobby remarked. “First, Merton Kram killed Larry as a result of a quarrel following Larry’s secret marriage to Kram’s daughter. Plausible, and accounts for that candle burning on Micky Burke’s mantelpiece and means Maggie’s suspicions are correct. Seems inconsistent though with the murder occurring near the Conqueror Inn and doesn’t explain the breaking and entering. Or the careful Christopherson secrecy. Second, Derek Christopherson, suffering from shell shock, killed Larry, thinking himself back at Dunkirk, and Larry a German attacking him. Plausible in itself, but doesn’t explain Micky’s belief and Maggie’s. Nor does it seem to account for the mutilation of the features so carefully carried out. Thirdly, Larry knew about Derek and was threatening to give information. Blackmail possibly. So the father and the sister made sure he didn’t. Plausible in itself, but only if you leave out a good many other little details. Nothing we know about Larry to suggest he was a blackmailer. Fourthly, Captain Wintle caught Larry hanging about the inn, gave him a thrashing the first time and the second time ended in a killing. Quite possible, but again a lot of other small points have to be left out.”
“I don’t see that that matters, sir,” Payne declared, “because they may be all irrelevant. But with four contradictory theories, only one can be the right one. Well, which?”
“Perhaps none of them,” said Bobby, looking as discouraged as he felt. “What we want is a theory that covers the whole ground. That two thousand pounds must have something to do with it, but I can’t bring it into any theory I’ve thought of yet. If it’s a true picture, everything ought to fit. Then there’s Leader keeps dodging in and out of the picture. You haven’t forgotten what I told you about him?”
“No, sir,” answered Payne. “I suppose he ought to be theory number five. There’s one thing. If it is Derek who was killed and buried out there by the road, that does explain why his face was smashed in. Nearly everyone in the district would have been able to recognize him only for that, and the Christophersons would have had something to explain. Son a deserter instead of a hero.”
“It’s a motive,” agreed Bobby. “Speaking of Leader, I could bear to know a bit more about him and why, even before the murder, he was out on the moor, asking about eggs. Job for you, Payne. I want you to go along to that pull-up place Leader called the Ritz. It’s somewhere on the main road north of here and it has the name up, Leader said. Try if you can pick up any gossip there, any crumb of information. Both Loo Leader and Micky Burke seem to have used the place, and, so far as I can see, it’s the only point of contact between them.”
“Very good, sir,” said Payne.
“You’ll have to get something to eat,” Bobby went on, “as an excuse for being there, so you might order tinned eggs.”
“Tinned eggs?” repeated Payne, looking puzzled. “What’s that, sir?”
“Don’t know,” Bobby answered. “I asked my wife and she said she had never heard of them. Dried eggs, of course, but not tinned eggs. Leader said he got them there. I wondered a bit what he meant. You see,” Bobby explained apologetically, “this thing’s got me so tangled up, I’ve even wondered if ‘tinned eggs’ might be some sort of password or signal or something. I know it sounds silly, but so did Hitler sound silly till we found we had to take him a lot more seriously than we wanted to.”
“Very good, sir,” Payne answered. “I’ll ask for ’em and see what I get,” but it was plain from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t greatly impressed.
“Oh, I know it sounds fantastic,” Bobby admitted, still more apologetically, “but you never know these days and anyhow it’ll do no harm to ask.” Changing the subject he went on: “What I more specially want to know is how it happens Leader had the same idea as Kram about using the Conqueror Inn barns as a kind of central depot.”
“Doesn’t seem to fit, does it, sir?” observed Payne.
“It doesn’t,” Bobby agreed with gloomy emphasis. “Nothing—jells,” he declared, using a word he had picked up from a housewifely spouse very much occupied with the local Woman’s Institute.
Payne, having received a few more instructions, was preparing to depart, when the ’phone bell rang. Bobby answered it. A distant voice said:
“If you want the revolver that did the killing at the Conqueror Inn, dig in the north-west corner of the two-acre oat-field, under the thorn bush.”
CHAPTER XXIII
BURIED REVOLVER
HURRIEDLY BOBBY POURED into the ’phone mouthpiece a dulcet request to be told who was speaking and an invitation to a personal meeting, anywhere, at any time. No answer came. Only too certainly had the unknown spoken, hung up, departed. An equally hurried though less dulcet request to Exchange to trace the call brought a tart reminder that the dial system was in use in Midwych. So Bobby hung up and told Payne what the message had been.
“A man’s voice,” Bobby added, “but probably disguised. Bit of a squeak that didn’t sound quite natural. Anyhow, I didn’t recognize it. It might be a woman for that matter. Quite likely,” he added with the deep-seated pessimism that comes from long experience of such things, “only a hoax. Someone trying to be funny.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” agreed Payne, “the world’s so full of such a number of fools.”
“Practical joking,” pronounced Bobby, “is the lowest form the meanest intelligence can take in its feeblest moments.”
“Yes, sir, so it is,” agreed Payne admiringly, thinking this sentence worthy of his favourite newspaper’s favou
rite leader writer. “But I suppose we’ve got to sit up and take notice?”
Bobby nodded agreement.
“And if,” he said, scowling fiercely, “I spot some fool sitting about there and grinning, I’ll”—he paused and added, less fiercely—“I won’t be able to do a thing.”
“No, sir, so you won’t,” agreed Payne, and then the ’phone bell rang again.
Bobby, still scowling, answered, and as he listened a beaming smile replaced that dreadful scowl.
“Oh, good,” he said, “good work, Briggs. Very good indeed. I shan’t forget it. Carry on and thank you.” He hung up and to the attentive Payne he said: “That was Briggs, the chap we told off to keep an eye on Mr. Merton Kram and the K. and K.M.T.C. He saw Kram come out and go to a ’phone box down the street. Briggs says he thought it a bit funny as, of course, Kram has a ’phone in his office and so why did he want to use a street box? So Briggs rang up to report.”
“Means it was Kram ’phoned just now,” said Payne, looking excited. “Hadn’t we better have him round here right away and ask him how he knows?”
Bobby thought for a moment and then shook his head.
“He would only deny it and we’ve no proof,” he said. “He could easily say he had been ringing up someone on confidential business he didn’t want any of his staff to know about and we couldn’t prove he was lying. I couldn’t swear to his voice. No evidence,” said Bobby; and remarked gloomily that when his expected fate overtook him and he died of a broken heart, on the shattered fragments would be found engraved the words:
“No evidence.”
Payne made sympathetic noises. Bobby, cheering up a little, remarked that if the information did come from Kram, and if it proved correct, it was interesting, very interesting indeed.
“But for the present we’ll keep it up our sleeve that we know it was Kram,” he added. “We’ll tax him with it sometime and see how he takes it.”
The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 16
