The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “What letters do you mean?” Bobby asked.

  “Well you know,” Micky retorted, “and a fine scandal it’ll make when it’s blazoned out in all the world’s press the things the English police do do.”

  He paused and looked anxiously at Bobby, apparently hoping that this alarming prospect would produce some effect. When it drew not so much as a word of comment, Micky tried another way.

  “Nothing in them at all,” he said, plainly trying to make his harsh, uncertain, anxious voice as smooth and persuasive as he could; “and how should there be, when there was no sense in them any way but only a deal of idle scribble and no intelligence to them anywhere? Give them back to me, Mr. Owen, sir, and if it’s wanting me to leave the country you are—why, so I will.”

  “My dear man,” Bobby assured him, “we are so far from wanting you to leave the country just at present that I am not sure I shall want you even to leave this building.”

  “There’s no way you can stop me,” Micky retorted sullenly. “There’s nothing at all I have done you can bring up against me.”

  “Well, there are these letters, I suppose,” Bobby observed, without thinking it necessary to explain that he had not even so much as seen them, much less ever had them in his possession.

  “As harmless,” Micky said, “as the day’s newspaper when it’s a year old, as innocent as his mother’s milk on the lips of a babe new born, as clear of all wrong as the conscience of his holiness the pope of Rome.”

  “Well, now then, there’s a testimonial,” Bobby agreed.

  “Let be that I see them,” Micky said, “and I’ll prove it to you, for I’ll read you the meaning of them and so you can tell for your own self.”

  “Oh, we’ll do our best ourselves,” Bobby answered non-committedly; and noticed that Micky was looking at him with a new expression.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the thumping lie I took it for what you said before,” Micky observed thoughtfully, “for if you’ve got them, why wouldn’t you take an offer like that to have them read with no trouble? And why didn’t they burn unless who took them knew beforehand?”

  “Which means, I suppose,” Bobby retorted, “you had tried to fix up one of those incendiary pencils the I.R.A. used to be so fond of, so that anyone who didn’t know what precautions to take, would set a blaze going? Well, you know, we have heard of dodges of that sort.”

  Micky sat silent and scowling. Bobby said:

  “There’s a map, too. I think it once belonged to you. The map I mean you lost the night your nephew was murdered.”

  “I’ve lost no map,” Micky said, staring at Bobby. “Any more than it’s Larry was murdered that night. Isn’t there the letter from him you’ve seen your own self? And haven’t I a postcard from him only yesterday morning to say he was moving on to another job and how he would be writing again when settled? So how could it be Larry that was killed?”

  “If it wasn’t Larry that was killed,” Bobby retorted, “if you are telling the truth about the letters and the postcards that you have had from him, why are you having masses said in the parish church where he was born for the repose of his soul?”

  Micky gasped, looked very disconcerted.

  “How do you know?” he asked. “How did you find out?” With a sort of desperate hope in his voice, he added: “It’s only a guess you are making and a bad one too, for there’s no truth or accuracy to it, none at all.”

  Bobby smiled and gave Micky details that showed his knowledge was complete.

  “Easy to be sure,” he remarked, “as soon as I knew you were a practising Roman Catholic—and there was a picture in your kitchen proved as much—that you would have masses said for Larry if it was in fact Larry who was dead, dead in a moment, with no time or opportunity for the last rites. If it was someone else, someone you had no connection with, there would be no masses said, least of all for a Larry from whom you were getting letters and postcards. But if Larry had died like that, then it was the first thing you would be likely to think of. So I got inquiries made where he was born and then I knew.”

  “God rest his soul,” Micky said and crossed himself; “the soul of a poor lad that was cut off in his duty, all unsuspecting and unready, and him never been to confession since he left Ireland for fear of what the priests here would give him for penance. Back to Ireland they might have sent him or refused him absolution, same as was done to one of the best of our lads.”

  “Have you been to confession lately?” Bobby asked.

  Micky shook his head.

  “It’s not safe to let out so much as a whisper to any priest that’s here,” he said. “It’s all corrupted they are with living in this country and never understand it’s all for Ireland, and no absolution will you get except under promise to desert the cause.”

  He stopped and stared again at Bobby.

  “So that’s how you worked it out about Larry,” he said. “It’s cunning you are to be sure. Sure, it’s an evil thing to be so cunning as all that.”

  “Not so evil perhaps to bring the truth to light,” Bobby said.

  “Give me back those letters that you stole from me that’ll tell you nothing nor make any sense,” Micky said. “You had no right to take them.”

  “Hadn’t I?” murmured Bobby, wishing very much it was he who had taken them and at the same time relieved to notice that Mickey had apparently forgotten now the doubts which he had seemed before to be beginning to entertain. The last thing Bobby wished was that Micky should guess who it was had in fact removed the papers. He asked: “How do you know I have been at your house?”

  “There’s little use your denying it,” Micky retorted, “when it was seen you were and me told the same within the hour. Nor any trouble to know who it was by the account I heard and the likeness of you I could tell at once.”

  “You were on the road with an urgent load you were under orders to deliver at once,” Bobby observed. He paused to reflect. “You must have been told on the ’phone. But you couldn’t have been rung up because no one would know exactly where you were or how far you had got. It must have been you rung up first. That means you must have arranged with one of your neighbours to be on hand at some specified time at some place where there is a ’phone—a shop or a public house most likely. And that means you had arranged with one of your neighbours to watch your house and let you know anything that happened. You know, all that has its interest.”

  Micky crossed himself.

  “It must be the devil himself,” he said, “that gives you the help to work things out like that.”

  “Oh, come, Mr. Burke,” Bobby protested, “be fair, don’t give all the credit to the devil. Let me have some. I’ve worked out more than that. I’ve worked out why that map of yours was marked all over.”

  “Take more than working out,” Micky retorted, “to bring it in the map was mine or that pin pricks on it were mine or had any meaning to them that I knew anything about.”

  “How do you know there were pin pricks on the map if it wasn’t yours and you didn’t make them?” Bobby retorted and Micky stared and frowned but made no other reply.

  Bobby went on:

  “I’ve worked out, too, that it was from you Mr. Kram got the money he needed to set him up in business again at a time when he was in very low water indeed. And I’ve worked it out that that business was in the black market, or why did you describe a case of sardines as eggs unless you didn’t want anyone to know it was sardines you had in your load? In the black market you can sell a case of sardines for ten times the proper price. That’s not a bad profit. Making money.”

  “There’s no money comes my way,” Micky told him. “Prove I’ve ever had one penny piece over and above my honest wage.”

  “No, I don’t think it was money with you,” Bobby agreed. “I’ve worked that out, too. Money made on the quiet is never spent on the quiet. It’s always thrown about. But you never spent more than Mr. Kram might have paid any of his drivers. Well, if it wasn’t money, what w
as it? A question. Another question. Was Kram pushed into black market activities so there might be a hold on him strong enough to make him keep his eyes shut? Was it the same idea that made you think of using the Conqueror Inn outbuildings as a depot, because you got somehow a hint there was a secret there you could use if you knew it to blackmail the Christophersons into keeping their eyes shut as well? Is that why Larry broke into the inn one Saturday night to find out the nature of that secret and who it was was hidden there and why? Did he see Derek, or speak to him perhaps, and is that what helped to excite Derek again and put him in a condition that helped to bring about the happenings of the following Monday? And was all of it a part of your plan for driving up and down the country unsuspected, delivering loads to factories and marking down on your map the exact position of them all? And was that map meant to go across the seas one day?”

  “Now there’s a deal of questions,” Micky said calmly, “and not one of them you can prove an answer to and not one of them you’ll get answer to from me.”

  “Here’s another question,” Bobby said. “Will you answer this one? Larry Connor met his death that night. Do you want his death to go unpunished or do you want his murderer brought to justice? Who killed him?”

  “I don’t know,” Micky answered slowly. “I know no more than you. How should I know, and all happening on a sudden with no more warning than the stroke of doom, and the night that black there was no seeing anything but its own great darkness and the flash of the firing of the pistols.”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  PROMISE OF FRIENDSHIP

  ONCE AGAIN BOBBY found himself faced by that ignorance of event which had so often and so long hampered the course of this investigation.

  “There’s times,” Micky was saying, “when I was sure as death maybe it was Christopherson himself to keep safe and unknown from all who it was he had hidden there, and then there was more times by far I was more sure still it was the girl.”

  “Rachel Christopherson, you mean?” Bobby asked.

  Micky nodded.

  “Then there was other times when it was Merton Kram I named in my mind; and times I could see how it might be Maggie Kram out of the black jealousy of her heart in the thought it was the Rachel girl drew Larry to the Conqueror Inn when there was only his duty took him there to find out their secret so that we could use it for getting the hidden employment of their great barns. But it wasn’t Maggie, for I made certain and sure she rested at home that night; and it wasn’t her dad, for his pistol wasn’t of that high calibre and there were those that saw him far enough away at the time the shooting was done; and it wasn’t Loo Leader, for Mr. Kram made sure of that, having seen him far distant like himself at the time; and I don’t think it was the inn landlord, for there’s no such look in his eyes as comes to a man when he has killed a man; and so it’s there that only Rachel’s left, and she with her quiet eyes that wouldn’t change or alter whether it was the bars of heaven she faced or the fires of hell.”

  He paused and wiped his forehead which had grown damp as he talked. He said:

  “Tell me, Mr. Inspector Owen, is that well worked out?”

  “You know no more than that?” Bobby asked. He said: “Nothing is well worked out unless there are the facts behind it.”

  “It’s the truth of it to my way of thinking,” Micky said again; “and if it had been a man the long, wakeful nights I’ve lain and thought had brought so to my mind, there’s a thing I would have done myself and asked no help from English law. But a woman there’s no right or power in man born of woman to touch, and so let your English law take her and do the hanging that’s her due.”

  “English law,” Bobby observed dryly, “wants more than belief, even if it’s a belief that’s come from long, wakeful nights.”

  “If it wasn’t her, who was it?” Micky retorted. “There’s a question you’ve no answer to.”

  “A question to which I am still trying to find an answer, though,” Bobby remarked. “Talking of hanging, does it ever strike you you are in some small danger of that yourself? Because, you know, in time of war, that map’s a hanging matter.”

  “And for why?”

  “Communicating to the enemy information likely to be of assistance to him.”

  “Where’s your proof,” Micky demanded, “that that map’s mine or that ever I set eye on it?”

  “You knew it was marked with pin pricks before I said a word about them,” Bobby reminded him.

  “Prove it was me spoke of them first,” Micky retorted. “It was talk in a pub I heard of a tall man seen sticking pins into a map that put that into my mind. Prove even then that the pin pricks were more than a lorry driver’s guide to find the way for quick delivery. Prove that anything was ever done to take that intelligence to any one outside the country. Prove all that or try to in the way and manner your English law and justice says you must, Mr. Inspector Bobby Owen.”

  “I notice,” Bobby could not help observing, “you seem to put great faith in English law and justice and the high degree of proof it requires rather than run any risk of doing wrong to any man, even to the secret enemy in our midst. I wonder, Mr. Burke, if the sort of courts the I.R.A. set up at one time had the same ideas and never took any action, except when the proof was absolute by rule and precedent.”

  “Praise be, they had better knowledge of their duty,” Micky answered. “They took the risk the other way and let none go there was a breath against, for fear of doing wrong to Ireland that comes first. If you in England have another way of thinking, then there’s your duty and an evil thing on your part if you went against it.”

  “A bit squiffy, your logic, isn’t it?” Bobby asked.

  “Logic,” repeated Micky with immense contempt. “What’s logic? It’s the heart and feel of a thing a man must go by. I’ll tell you another thing, Mr. Owen. You’ve got it all wrong if you think there’s any Irish is an enemy to your country. We’re neighbours and neighbours should be friends. That’s all we want and none want it more than the I.R.A.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Bobby said, slightly surprised, “but haven’t you rather an odd way of showing it?”

  “What’s there odd about it?” demanded Micky, surprised in his turn. “If your neighbour had up and grabbed a field of your farm, then before you can be friends the way you want, you’ve got to get him out. It’s our best wish to see England win and for why not? Isn’t England our best customer and always must be? We know what it is to do trade with the Germans—your best they take and send you concertinas and aspirins. But first is first; and what we need first is England’s difficulty so big and hard she’ll lie quiet when we march into Ulster.”

  “Oh, is that the idea?” Bobby said. “Suppose Ulster throws you out again?”

  “They’ll not even try,” Micky answered confidently, “or none but a small little handful that’ll maybe turn vicious till they’ve seen the plain good sense of the thing. Once your English soldiers aren’t there any longer but fighting for their country same as they should be if there was any decency in things, then there’s a great force in the six counties will rise up for the right. Maybe,” admitted Micky reluctantly, “there may be a trifle of shooting when some are foolish enough to stand up against what there’s no help for, but no more than that and less may be than in Dublin where the black-hearted traitors there that call themselves a Government must be put down.”

  “Good gracious,” Bobby exclaimed, fairly startled this time, “you don’t mean to start shooting your own government, do you?”

  “No more than is proved necessary,” Micky explained earnestly, “and not that if we can help it. But all must be done to make Ireland one again; and then we’ll be able to give you our help in the war and you’ll see for yourselves what it means to have Ireland on your side as a friend and ally, every man with you, the whole country as one man, all of the same mind.”

  Bobby fairly gasped, utterly overwhelmed by this picture of an Ireland with all its inhabitants of one
mind.

  “Well, well,” he said, feeling slightly dazed. “You mean, all of you come to be of the same opinion as your own?”

  “That’s the way of it and maybe soon,” Micky agreed. “It’ll be a grand day,” he added simply, and went on: “So there it is, Mr. Inspector Owen, and all my whole mind open as the day and clear as the bright dawn that even if any help was first intended to the Germans, and that’s a thing you’ll never prove and can’t, it was only as a way to open the road for bringing bigger help to you for the winning of the war by Ireland’s help. So isn’t there a duty laid on you to let me have back those letters that you took from me beyond your right?”

  “Well, anyhow,” Bobby admitted, “you’ve given me an entirely original view of things. Let’s come back to something more immediate. Will you tell me exactly what happened that Monday night?”

  “There’s little I know,” Micky answered, apparently quite convinced that friendly and confidential relations had now been established. “There was a man we were going to meet who had let on he had great stores of stuff to sell, such as hotel and night clubs and their like are opening their mouths to buy that wide you might think they would never get them closed again. Two thousand pounds Mr. Kram did give me all in cash and one pound notes none could trace the way he always paid for safety’s sake. But when we got to the meeting place there was no more than a note to say police was about and so the deal was off. So back we came with Larry dangling the box full of pound notes on his knees for safety’s sake. Mr. Kram, being nervous like, for he had a word there was mischief afoot, drove out to meet us by the road he knew we were like to come back on. It was when we were past the Conqueror Inn and come to where no one lived, we had to stop by reason of a lorry drawn up across the road. I got down to see what the trouble was, thinking no harm, unsuspecting as the first snowdrop of the spring; and then were we held up at the pistol point as lawless as you please. A common thief it was who somehow knew about the load we had been to fetch and thought to take it from us against all common honesty, planning as like as not to sell it to those expecting it from us, and there was a treacherous thieving trick to make the worst blush, for what they put their scoundrel trust in was the thought we wouldn’t dare make complaint or lay any information with police or lawyers.”