The House of Godwinsson: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “No,” the colonel answered. “Why should I? I noticed it. No more.”

  “You remembered it,” Bobby observed. “It was there because we had information that the original of the photograph had been seen in the company of a gentleman of military appearance near a car park from which recently cars had been vanishing rather too often.”

  “Perhaps you will explain yourself more fully,” Colonel Godwinsson remarked, very much as though he were asking a specially bad defaulter in the orderly room what he had to say for himself.

  “We were hoping,” Bobby said, “that some member of one or other of the Service clubs might recognize it and be able to give us some help. A very long shot, of course.”

  “No doubt fully justifiable in the circumstances,” agreed the colonel, less coldly this time. “It had no success?”

  “None,” Bobby admitted. “Can you tell us anything about Miss Leigh? She is hardly in a condition at present to be questioned very closely, but she doesn’t seem to have any idea of who attacked her or why.”

  “I am afraid I can’t tell you very much there, either,” answered the colonel. “I know nothing of the young lady except for meeting her once or twice at Lady Geraldine’s flat. I believe they were old school-fellows and that Miss Leigh served till recently in one of the women’s corps. Lady Geraldine asked her to stay with her for a time till she got settled. I gathered that it hadn’t worked out very satisfactorily, and that Miss Leigh was leaving almost at once.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Bobby said. “She didn’t tell me that. No wonder, perhaps, after what she has been through. It’s a rather troubling fact that Miss Leigh seems to answer to the description of a young lady seen recently in an East End district of London.”

  “Again I fail to follow you,” Colonel Godwinsson said in his most aloof, most regal manner. “Will you be so good as to explain yourself? At present I am inclined to find some of your remarks obscure—unsatisfactorily obscure.” He said this very quietly, but also very much as if any expression of dissatisfaction he made must necessarily carry great weight—the weight of a ton of bricks was how Bobby expressed it to himself. “Do you usually try to follow up descriptions of young ladies you may chance to see in an East End district of London?”

  “When they seem as if they were strangers there,” Bobby answered in a voice as quiet as the colonel’s own, “and when the body of a murdered man is found near by.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  SEARCH BEGUN

  Bobby, the moment he had said this, was aware of a sudden increase of tension. Hard to say exactly why, for Colonel Godwinsson’s expression did not change, only his one eye seemed to fix itself on Bobby with an added force and intensity, his voice to take on a deeper note as he said:

  “Murder? A murdered man?” He put out his hand and took up again the Joey Parsons photograph, and now his gaze upon it was of such concentrated power it was as though he commanded that inanimate bit of cardboard to speak and answer. “This man?” he asked, and then, and there was almost a challenge in his voice, he said: “Are you sure that he was murdered?”

  “He was found shot,” Bobby answered, slightly puzzled by the question.

  “Was it murder?” the colonel asked once more, as though he had not heard Bobby’s reply. He laid the photo down, and for a moment there was silence. When he spoke next his voice had regained all its former aloof, almost unearthly pride. “As for murder,” he said, “I do not think that either I myself or Miss Leigh is likely to commit murder.”

  “Murder,” Bobby commented, “except in those cases when it is merely an outburst of brute or beast, of anger or of passion, is so abnormal that what is ‘likely’ has to be largely forgotten. I think I mentioned we had information that a tall gentleman of military appearance had been seen near where the murder occurred. I don’t think I said our report also stated that he appeared to have lost one eye. I must put this question to you. Was that man you?”

  “I remember now,” Colonel Godwinsson answered, “noticing a paragraph in the papers about an unknown man having been found dead in the East End in a street—a curious name. I forget it for the moment. Let me see.”

  “Angel Alley,” Bobby said.

  “Ah, yes, yes. Of course. I have seldom visited the district you mention. I am not quite sure where Angel Alley is or Canon Square, where you say some one more or less resembling myself was seen.” He paused with his aloof and haughty smile, a smile that seemed as if it made all further comment unnecessary. But then he went on: “I have certainly never to my knowledge been near either place.”

  “Thank you, that is quite explicit,” Bobby said. “If it was Miss Leigh who was seen near there, can you suggest any reason for her presence?”

  “Have you any substantial cause for supposing it was her?”

  “She practically admitted it,” Bobby explained, “though in a somewhat emotional moment when I think she felt we had saved her from a very unpleasant situation. But she tacked on a flat denial. I take that to mean that she was there, but she doesn’t mean to say why. I have a high idea of Miss Leigh’s courage and will-power. I can think of only two explanations. Either she knows or suspects who is guilty or else she is guilty herself.”

  The colonel smiled again, a grim and wintry smile.

  “I can’t take that last suggestion seriously,” he said. “Miss Leigh is no more likely to commit a murder than I am. The idea is unthinkable. I might say—foolish.”

  “I said just now,” Bobby reminded him, “that in this sort of case we have to forget the ‘likely’. Murder is never likely.”

  “You have spoken of murder several times,” Colonel Godwinsson went on. “It startled me. For more reasons than one. It is—well, disturbing that nothing has been heard of Lady Geraldine. It is disturbing, too, that you showed, though you have not thought fit to say so, this photograph to Miss Leigh, and that both she and the housekeeper at the flat seemed to think it was like a Mr Brown, a clergyman who used to get Lady Geraldine to subscribe to charities he was interested in. You seem to suggest that the same man is mixed up in this Kilburn affair you mentioned. It all seems most disturbing. I thought at first Gurth—my son, I think you met him at Lady Geraldine’s flat—was worrying himself more than there was any need to. I only agreed to call to see you because he asked me to. It seems now as if he might have more reason for being disturbed than I realized.”

  He was silent then, and Bobby also was silent, so that this silence lay heavily between them and it was as though the shadow of death crept into the room. At last Bobby said:

  “Is it in your mind that Lady Geraldine may have been murdered, too?”

  “No,” the colonel answered, and immediately corrected him-self. “Well, yes. It is fantastic, incredible, utterly impossible. All the same, one can’t help—you keep talking of murder,” he said rebukingly. “It is disturbing to have such a word pushed atone. You say Miss Leigh was seen. I will speak to her myself as soon as possible. Can she have had some idea of following Geraldine, of getting to know where she was or what had happened? That’s the only suggestion I can make.”

  “Is it possible that it was Lady Geraldine who shot this man and that that is why she has disappeared?”

  “Good God, no!” exclaimed the colonel with vehemence. “What an idea!!”

  “Can you suggest any reason why a young woman in Lady Geraldine’s position should vanish so completely?” Bobby asked.

  “Loss of memory?” Colonel Godwinsson suggested, though somewhat hesitatingly.

  “I suppose it does happen,” Bobby remarked. “I think only very rarely, though, and then only in a limited way and for a short time. When people come to us and tell us they have lost their memories, we have our doubts. Sometimes it is just a little too convenient. I am not inclined to take that idea very seriously at present. And if there had been an accident or sudden illness we should almost certainly have heard by now. There is always the possibility of some love affair. Was there anything of that kind betw
een Lady Geraldine and your son?”

  “I believe he would have liked there to be,” the colonel ad-mitted. “She has a most magnetic personality—strangely so. But she gave Gurth no encouragement, I am glad to say. In any case, that would be no reason for disappearing.”

  “I suppose not,” agreed Bobby, even while there fluttered into his mind a vague thought or suspicion, though one that he felt could hardly be taken very seriously—not yet, at least. He went on: “Or was there anything of the sort between Mr Gurth and Miss Leigh? He struck me as a young man liable to turn the head of any girl.”

  “Well,” admitted the colonel with a smile slightly more human than usual, “I suppose that has happened. Our family is supposed to have a reputation for good looks—especially among the boys. I am old enough now to claim that I had my share as a youngster. Gurth has more than his. He has even been pestered to go to Hollywood. But there I did put my foot down, and fortunately I still have some authority in my family.”

  That Bobby felt he could well believe. Colonel Godwinsson seemed, indeed, to be surrounded by a kind of aura of authority and command. It was as though he assumed so completely that there could be no opposition to his will that others had to feel the same. Indeed, Bobby himself was aware of the sort of compelling power that appeared to emanate from the man’s personality.

  “Do you think Lady Geraldine was attracted to any one else?” he asked.

  “Gurth told me he was certain there was some one,” replied the colonel. “He had no idea who. Lady Geraldine has many friends, but none intimate, as far as I know.”

  “You see, Colonel Godwinsson,” Bobby said, “there are apt to be complications when two young ladies like Lady Geraldine and Miss Leigh and such a very handsome young man as your son are concerned. You have another son, haven’t you? Has he the same good looks?”

  “Well, hardly,” the colonel answered, with again that more human smile which showed the father behind the mask of almost intolerable pride. “Leofric himself always says that the family ration of good looks was exhausted before he arrived on the scene. Harold, my eldest boy, he is dead—” Colonel Godwinsson paused, and for the moment—for the moment only—he was no longer the proud, self-possessed, self-contained patrician, but a father remembering the loss of his first born. Very plain was it that that was a loss as vivid still as if it had happened only that week. He conquered his passing show of emotion and went on: “Both he and Gurth were unusual, in Gurth’s case even embarrassingly so. But you have seen Gurth. Harold you shall judge for yourself.”

  He fumbled in his pocket and produced a small photograph of some half-dozen or so young men, grouped together before what seemed a very fine old Elizabethan manor-house. So quickly in these days do styles and fashions change that already the photograph had a quaint, old-fashioned air, reminding Bobby of some he had seen in an old family album he still possessed. There were straw hats—’boaters’—for instance, and several of the young men were displaying in their lapels small union jacks or buttons showing photographs of popular generals—a fashion hardly seen since the last days of the Victorian era. Several moustaches too—thick, luxuriant moustaches. It was not difficult to pick out the young Godwinsson. His tall and more than handsome personality dominated the whole group, and his attitude told plainly enough that he was quite aware of the fact. A chieftain surrounded by his followers. Bobby examined the photograph with care and interest and then handed it back to the colonel.

  “Remarkable,” he said. “Most remarkable—and interesting.”

  “Leofric,” the colonel said, carefully putting the photograph away again, “is more ordinary, though a fine, upstanding lad. More of an athlete, indeed, than either of his brothers.”

  “I suppose he was friendly with Lady Geraldine, too?”

  “Leofric. Well, hardly that—acquaintances. I believe he visited the flat occasionally.”

  “A tall young man, better dressed than most of the people about there, and so much a stranger he had to ask his way, was looking for Angel Alley about the time of the murder,” Bobby remarked. “He could hardly have been Mr Gurth. Good looks like his would be remembered and spoken of. Could it have been your other son—Leofric I think you said?”

  “That appears to me a most extravagant idea—incredible.”

  “Unfortunately, the incredible is also sometimes factual,” retorted Bobby. “It did just strike me there might be a connection with Miss Leigh’s visit. I remember thinking that the young man was a stranger there and tall, and Miss Leigh a stranger there and small. And of course it is often said that tall men are attracted by small women. The other way round as well.”

  “Most far-fetched,” the colonel said severely. “If you conduct your inquiries on such lines I don’t wonder at a certain lack of success much commented on in the Press lately.”

  “The Press is always severe,” admitted Bobby sadly. “A kind of general attitude of ‘Hold out your hand’. No doubt it does us good, and hurts them more than it does us. In the meantime, I think there is sufficient reason to make inquiries about Lady Geraldine, and that will be put in hand at once.” He went on to express conventional thanks for Colonel Godwinsson’s visit, thanks which were accepted with aloof and distant dignity. After the colonel’s departure, Bobby made full notes of their conversation and then went to show them to a colleague.

  “A remarkable old boy,” Bobby observed of the colonel, “though a little apt to get himself confused with God Almighty. I am wondering a lot what it was he was really after.”

  “You think there was something besides anxiety over this missing young woman?”

  “I am sure there was,” Bobby said, and he looked very worried indeed. “All the time I felt there was something a bit artificial, not quite in keeping, in his attitude. If he had merely been worried about this ex-ward of his, I should have expected him simply to say so and would we get on with the job at once. Instead he talked all round the shop. My feeling is that there was something he was anxious for us to know but that he didn’t want to say outright. If we go over what he said very carefully, it may be possible to spot what it is.”

  “Suppose it is something intended to mislead?” the colleague asked.

  “That would be splendid,” Bobby declared with enthusiasm. “Then we should know at once where we weren’t.” The other did not share this point of view, and said so emphatically. While they were still talking there came a message from the nurse looking after Mrs. Porter. It was to the effect that, in the doctor’s opinion, Mrs Porter was now in a fit condition, after a good night’s rest, to face the ordeal of establishing the identity of dead Joey Parsons as her husband, Joseph Porter.

  “Good,” said Bobby. “I’ll go at once.”

  “Need you go yourself?” disapprovingly asked the colleague, who thought Bobby had plenty of work on his desk without going off on an errand any competent sergeant could discharge just as well.

  “I think so,” Bobby answered. “This is one of those cases when there are no material clues and it all hangs on a good knowledge of the background. Make up your mind what people are and their probable behaviour according to character and circumstance, and then you know what questions to ask. Which means you know the answers, too.”

  “Psychological stuff,” grumbled the other. “Give me the good old-fashioned magnifying-glass and the grain of dust found on the scene of the crime that tells you all about everything at once.”

  Bobby laughed, pointed out that such grains of dust weren’t always there, but people inevitably had to be, and so departed.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE SHOP OFF EMMETT STREET

  Bobby had felt it his duty—a difficult and grievous duty—to prepare Mrs Porter for the inevitable recognition that he was sure awaited her. The identity of the dead Joey Parsons, ‘spiv’, ‘lay-about’ or worse, with the respectable, home-loving Mr Porter of Kilburn seemed to him to be certain, and it needed but Mrs Porter’s first low cry of dismay and horror to confirm that im
pression.

  It was perhaps a measure of the shock given her by so sudden an intrusion of lawless violence into her calm and seemly life that what appeared to be most on her mind was a kind of puzzled and even slightly resentful bewilderment at her husband’s presence in the East End of London. Realization of her personal loss had as yet hardly begun, though once or twice she remarked in a detached way: “He was always good to me and the children.” Then she would begin again to wonder what business had taken him to this crowded, poverty-stricken district of the town.

  “He always told me everything,” she said more than once as they were driving back to Kilburn. She looked out of the car window at the teeming, squalid streets through which they were passing, as different from the quiet respectability of Kilburn as was Kilburn from Mayfair. She said: “He always said where he had been and how he had got on, and it was always the horses and stables and things in country parts. There’s none here.”

  “You never knew Mr Porter to have any business or any friends in this part?” Bobby asked as he slowed down to permit a traffic block in front of them to dissolve.

  “Oh, no, never,” she answered. “There was the time we nearly got summonsed because of a policeman saying we had been stopped too long, only Joey came back, and he always had away with him, and he made the policeman laugh so he never did.”

  “When was this?” Bobby asked.

  “When we were coming back from Southend last year. It wasn’t our car, of course, though Mr Porter always made good money and free with it to all, but his boss let us have it sometimes for special times like going to Southend for our wedding day because it was there we met, and I never knew him look the way he did when he saw the lady, and him so good-tempered always. It gave me a turn, fair frightening it was.”

  “Who was the lady?” Bobby asked, making his voice as casual as he could.

  “It was along of her husband owing him five pounds and never paying, though well able, with their shop doing so well, and smart she did look, like you see them in Bond Street. Putting it all on her back, as some do, and sorry I am for their husbands. Joey said most like it was that way and why he hadn’t never been paid and he wasn’t going to stand for it any longer. I wouldn’t have liked him to look that way when he was talking to me.”