“Now, I wonder,” Bobby mused, “if that means Kram has taken an opportunity, or made an opportunity, to get Micky out of the way while he pays his place a visit. It might be as well to go along and see what friend Kram is up to. We can have our little chat there just as well as here and if he is prepared to make a statement, I can bring him back with me.”
So Payne was left in charge; and in view of recent fervent official injunctions to save petrol, and not without a certain smug consciousness that an entry in the accounts—‘To ’bus fare, in lieu of taking car for journey, 2d.’—would look very impressive, Bobby decided to use the municipal ’bus service that passed the corner of the street in which Burke lived. He arrived just in time to see the door open and Kram appear on the threshold on the point of departure. Bobby gave him a cheerful greeting and Kram, looking somewhat disconcerted, mumbled some sort of reply.
“I was coming on to see you,” he said. “Burke’s not here.” He paused, looked doubtful, and then, with an air of having made up his mind, drew back into the kitchen, on which the door from the street opened directly. “Come inside a moment, will you?” he said.
Bobby followed him accordingly into the kitchen. It was clean and tidy as when Bobby had seen it before; and on the mantelpiece burned as before a candle, a freshly-lighted candle, before the photograph of Mr. Kram and yet another before that of Larry Connor. It was to his own photograph and the candle burning before it, flickering now in the draught from the open door, to which Kram was pointing with an outstretched hand.
“See that?” he said. “What do you make of that?”
Bobby had turned to close the street door and did not answer.
“Do you know what that means?” Kram asked again and answered his own question. “It means there is something he has sworn to do and until he’s done it he keeps a candle burning there to remind him.”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby said. “Yes. Well, what is he going to do and why has he got to take oaths and burn candles about it?”
This time it was Kram’s turn to make no reply. He looked pale and nervous, and Bobby had the idea that he regretted what he had just said and yet that it had relieved him, too.
“Why don’t you get hold of Burke?” he asked presently. “Why don’t you ask him a few questions? He could tell you a lot that would surprise you.”
“Oh, I daresay,” Bobby admitted. “I’m always being surprised. Ever since this case opened it’s been one surprise on top of another. For instance, I was surprised to see you here when I was expecting you at our H.Q.”
“So was I surprised to see you here,” Kram retorted, “when I thought that’s where you were waiting for me.”
“Surprise general,” Bobby agreed. “I wonder if there’ll be a third surprise if Micky guesses why you got him off earlier than usual and if he turns up here instead to see what’s going on?”
Kram looked startled and even more disturbed than before. The suggestion was plainly one he did not welcome.
“Priority load,” he said. “Burke’s got to deliver it. Well, I’ll get off. Lots of work waiting.”
“Oh, don’t go yet,” Bobby objected. “You haven’t told me yet what you wanted here.”
Kram looked at him gloomily and then even more gloomily at the candle and photograph on the mantelpiece.
“It was that,” he said. “I didn’t believe it. I wanted to see for myself. That’s all.”
“Well, now you’ve seen,” Bobby said, “what’s it mean?”
“You ask Burke,” Kram said. “I’ll be going,” he repeated. “Work waiting. Sorry.”
“Just a minute,” Bobby objected again. “Burke’s not here and you are, so we might as well have that little talk I ’phoned you about.”
“Later on,” Kram said, “later on, if you don’t mind.” He tried to brush past Bobby as he spoke. Bobby stopped him with a lifted hand. Kram said angrily: “You’ve no right to interfere with me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Bobby answered with his most amiable smile. “I think I might charge you perhaps. Found on enclosed premises for a presumed unlawful purpose. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense,” Kram protested and began to laugh, but all the same looked none too comfortable. “Why,” he protested, “Micky works for me, one of my men.”
“Hardly a reason, is it?” Bobby asked. “And I wonder if that is all he is or if he is something else as well.” He paused for an answer that did not come except in the shape of another sullen and disturbed look. Bobby nodded towards the mantelpiece with its photographs and burning candles. “I’m wondering a good deal about that, too,” he said. “Interesting. Suggestive even. Unspoken evidence, you might call it.” Abruptly he asked: “Do you know a man named Hall, Alf Hall, once a professional boxer?”
“He worked for me once,” Kram answered. “I got rid of him. Quarrelsome. The other men didn’t like him. He tried to bully them. I laid him off. He wanted to come back but I wouldn’t have him. Why?”
“A revolver has been found near the Conqueror Inn,” Bobby said, “near where the recent murder took place. There is reason to identify it with a revolver Hall says you showed him in a public house some time ago and tried to sell him.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense,” Kram declared. “Hall trying to get himself out of a jam and telling the first lie that came into his head. So far as I know I’ve never been in any pub with Hall. I may have been, but not to my knowledge. Sometimes I have to go round pubs looking for men I want, if there’s an extra rush on and I want more drivers or loaders. But not often and if I do I don’t take revolvers with me or try to sell them either.”
“Why should Hall tell a story like that; he must have known you would deny it at once?”
“To put you off, of course. Wants to make a fool of you and thought he would get one in at me because of my laying him off and not wanting to take him on again.”
“I think perhaps there may be another reason,” Bobby said. “Have you ever thought, Mr. Kram, that you may be in some danger yourself?”
Kram’s expression made it clear that such a thought was very much in his mind.
“I had nothing to do with the killing,” he said sullenly, “if that’s what you are trying to get at?”
“It’s one thing,” Bobby agreed. “Conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice, a lawyer might call it. Judges hate the word ‘conspiracy,’ too. Puts their backs up at once. Red rag to a bull, conspiracy to a judge, same sort of thing. Or accessory after the fact. But that wasn’t what I was thinking of. I feel sure now, you see, that the man killed that Monday night was Larry Connor. Micky’s nephew and your daughter’s husband.”
Kram was mopping his forehead now. His voice was unsteady as he muttered:
“I knew nothing about that, nothing at all. I hadn’t anything to do with anything that happened that night.”
“Do you know I think you had?” Bobby said. “Or why has Micky Burke sworn something to himself? And why does he keep a candle burning before your photograph so he won’t forget it for even one moment?”
Kram looked more disturbed, more uncomfortable, than ever, but did not attempt to speak. Only he got out a clean handkerchief to replace the one that now was too damp for use.
“An odd, primitive thing to do,” Bobby continued. “But then I think Micky Burke is an odd, primitive character. Cunning mind. Violent emotions. Primitive ideas. Well, I told you I believe the dead man is Micky’s nephew, Larry. I am waiting for a reply from Ireland. It ought to have been here before this. I suppose the Irish don’t hurry themselves for a mere inquiry from England. When it comes, any minute now, if it is what I expect, I shall have the proof I want of his identity.”
“How can you get proof in Ireland of an unidentifiable body found in England?” Kram asked, and when Bobby only smiled and made it plain he had no intention of explaining, Kram said angrily: “You are only trying to bluff. It’s what you are doing all the time. You can’t get proof here and you know it, beca
use no one can swear to the identity of a body no one can recognize. So you pretend you can get it in Ireland. Bluff. Nonsense. That’s all.”
“As to that, we shall see,” Bobby said quietly. “Of course, I mean proof of fact. Proof by inference is there on the mantelpiece, I think—the burning candle that proves Burke has made himself a promise about you he does not mean to forget. Why? It seems fairly plain—the inference, I mean. I don’t think he thinks you fired the shot that killed Larry. I think if he thought so he would have killed you already. I think he is like that. But something else happened to Larry. His face was mutilated. Smashed till there wasn’t a feature left by which even his closest friend or relative could recognize him. Who did that? Why? Not Micky himself, not to the boy he loved as his own son. Was it the man who told a long story to account for Micky’s spanner having vanished? Did he invent that story in a hurry because the spanner was the instrument used and had to be got rid of—pushed down a rabbit hole perhaps or thrown into the canal—because it was feared there might be traces on it of what it had been used for? You know, that spanner story always interested me. You went out of your way to tell it to me. A mistake. If you hadn’t given me such a convincing explanation of why it was missing, I don’t suppose I should ever even have known that it was missing.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Kram muttered. “Is all that rigmarole what you call proof of fact?”
“No,” Bobby answered. “Oh dear, no. Merely deduction from observed facts—a dead man’s disfigured face, a missing spanner unnecessarily accounted for, a candle burning before a photograph. Further deduction. Guess perhaps, but deduction sounds better. The promise Micky has made to himself is that he will do to your face what you did to dead Larry’s.”
Kram sat down abruptly, perhaps because his legs would no longer support him.
“He wouldn’t ever dare,” he muttered, without making any attempt to contradict Bobby’s deductions—or guesses. “Never. I’ve made sure of that. He thought everything of Larry, Larry was all he cared for. But there’s one thing he thinks still more of, one thing he cares for still more.”
“What’s that?” Bobby asked.
Kram looked at him but did not answer. Evidently he did not mean to say, and Bobby, since he thought he knew, did not repeat his question.
“I’ve taken precautions,” Kram said. “Now he won’t dare.”
“We found a map,” Bobby said. “Is it yours?”
Kram shook his head and did not seem interested. Plainly the question had not for him enough significance to rouse him from his other doubts and fears.
“What map? What of?” he asked.
Bobby did not explain, satisfied from Kram’s manner that he knew nothing about any map. Instead Bobby went on:
“You told me once you had thought of renting the outbuildings at the Conqueror Inn for use for storage. Do you know how it is Loo Leader had the same idea?”
This time Kram looked interested but puzzled as well.
“No. Why? Had he?” he asked. “That’s funny. No, I’ve no idea. Is there anything else you want to ask me or can I go now?”
Bobby considered for a moment. But again there weighed upon him the command—given by competent authority or not—laid upon him by the Regional Commissioner’s representative to take no avoidable action until the map affair had been cleared up. He did not intend to respect that order of doubtful authority if he saw clear cause to disregard it; but also he had learnt enough prudence to know that only when such clear cause could be shown, would such disregarding action be wise.
“I think I should be justified in charging you as an accessory after the fact,” he told Kram. “I feel pretty sure you know who killed Larry Connor and why it was you thought it necessary to do what was done to prevent identification. And I am very much inclined to believe that you are in considerable danger from Micky Burke. It strikes me that between arrest on one side and Micky Burke on the other, you are in a nasty spot and your only way out is to tell the truth. Then we might be able to help you.”
“I’ve got my girl to think of,” Kram said. “She’s there, she comes first. She’s had a hard time. I must do what I can. I’ve had to make too many fresh starts already. I’m getting old for that. I don’t want to make another. I don’t believe you can prove anything. I don’t believe Micky Burke will dare do anything. I’ve trumped his best card all right. That’s all right.”
“Sure?” Bobby said. “Well, you can go now. But think it over. Before it’s too late. Because next time I may be ready to lay a charge and once that happens, well, things happen, too.”
“I’ll think it over,” Kram promised and went away, and after he had gone Bobby thought the opportunity a good one to make a quick examination of the rest of the house.
In the two rooms downstairs he found nothing to interest him, but in one of the two bedrooms upstairs he found on the small truckle bed there, pinned to the pillow, a note in Kram’s writing. It ran:
“If you miss your letters, you will know they are in safe keeping and will stay so unless any accident to me makes my representative think it would be a good idea to hand them over to—you can guess who. M.K.”
CHAPTER XXX
MANY QUESTIONS
CAREFULLY BOBBY REMOVED this scrap of paper and put it in his own pocket.
“Who ever would have thought,” he said aloud, “that Kram was such a fool?”
A closer search of the room revealed that one of the floorboards had recently been taken up and then replaced. Beneath was a small box, now empty. Bobby made sure it was empty, did his best to be equally sure there was no other hiding place, repeated to himself the reflection he had just made aloud concerning Kram’s unexpected folly, and then returned to headquarters where he found waiting for him that message, at last arrived from Larry Connor’s birthplace in Ireland, which he had been so long expecting. He sent for Payne and showed it him, saying:
“I think we may take it that gives us the proof we wanted.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Payne. “Establishes identity all right. Good thing, sir, you noticed Burke had that picture of the Sacred Heart in his kitchen.”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby, “of course, seeing that made it plain at once how to make sure whether the dead man was Larry or Derek.”
He added that effort must be concentrated on finding the missing Derek, who, it could now be taken for certain, must be wandering about the country in a confused mental state. A relief to the Christophersons, he said, to know that the identity of the dead man was finally established. Then he went on to show Payne the scrap of paper he had found pinned to the pillow of Micky’s bed.
“A silly trick,” Bobby said. “Asking for trouble. Asking for it the very worst way. Luckily Micky won’t find out anything till he gets home; and as Kram has packed him off on a long trip with an urgent load, we have a bit of time on hand and I don’t want to take action in a hurry. I must get in touch with the Regional Commissioner’s lot and see what they think.”
Arrangements were, however, made to intensify the watch being kept on the K. and K.M.T.C. office and yard. Then there were other matters to be attended to; and it was much later in the day when Bobby was informed to his surprise that Micky Burke had arrived and was asking for an interview.
“Now I wonder what that means?” Bobby said, checking himself only just in time from rubbing the tip of his nose harder than ever it had been rubbed before. “Looks as if things had come to a head. And how is it he has turned up so soon? Urgent load to deliver, I thought. Well, send him in, will you?”
Micky Burke appeared accordingly, and Bobby gave him a friendly smile, waved him to a chair, and offered him a cigarette, an offer which was not so much declined as ignored. The little wizened man looked older by far than when Bobby had seen him last. Red-rimmed eyes, dark hollows beneath them, suggested wakeful nights; and a nervous twitching of the lips, restless movements of the hands and feet, showed the strain the man was enduring and th
at now was beginning to appear through the fierce restraint so long put upon it. Perhaps the eyes revealed most—those cold, still eyes of the fanatic that were still no longer but restless, in them now a gleam of wild, uncertain light.
Near to cracking, Bobby thought, attentive and wary, telling himself it was an equal chance whether when the breakdown came it would come as breakdown or as explosion.
“Well, Mr. Burke,” he said, “what can we do for you?”
“You were at my house this morning and there’s no good denying what I know,” Burke said; and his voice was low and uncertain, as if he controlled it with difficulty. “What right had you in another man’s house? Isn’t it the truth any longer that an Englishman’s house is his castle?”
“Are you an Englishman, Mr. Burke?” Bobby asked, and Burke answered with violence:
“What’s that to do with it? Am’t I living in England? Haven’t I my rights like anyone else? What’s your English law for?”
“Not for those to break who wish,” retorted Bobby. “You know, Mr. Burke, it really is like your countrymen for you to claim the protection of the very laws you are defying.”
Micky waved this aside as entirely immaterial.
“It’s the like of the English police,” he said, “to come sneaking and prowling and prying when a man’s away from his home. What right had you to break into a man’s house? Where was your search warrant? Unless you had one, you were doing a thing clean outside the law.”
“Oh, no,” Bobby answered. “Because, you see, I was asked in.”
“Now there’s a lie would make a tip-top, long-accustomed liar blush,” declared Micky indignantly. “For how could that be when the house was locked and empty?”
Bobby made no answer, for he was beginning to regret what he had just said. Micky might draw from that remark conclusions it was probably undesirable he should come to.
“Give me back the letters you stole,” Micky went on, “and we’ll say no more. Or I’ll go straight from here to a lawyer.”
The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 21
