Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Well, two murders on his doorstep nearly. A bit upsetting,” Bell said tolerantly. “Do you think he is really in love with her?”

  “I am sure there is a very strong emotional connection of some sort or another,” Bobby said. “The difficulty is to relate it to the murders—if there is any relation. Possibly there isn’t. It might be one of them knows the other is guilty—or thinks it. My own feeling is that my wife was right when she said she thought on Miss Bellamy’s side it was a kind of pity, a kind of remorseless pity, the pity an airman may feel for the town on which it is his duty to drop bombs. And on his side a sort of fascination like that you experience when you look down from a great height and feel as if you’ve got to jump. But where what you can call love comes into it, goodness knows. Or what the two murders have to do with it, either.”

  “I don’t know about all that,” Bell said doubtfully. “It’s this education, I suppose. There’s times I’m glad I never had any. Confuses you. You see double, like having had a drop too much.”

  “Well, you know,” Bobby agreed, “there’s a lot in that.”

  “It beats me,” Bell went on complainingly. “This music of hers, I mean. I wonder what it was. It wasn’t anything I’ve ever heard before, and I listen in to the B.B.C. every chance I get. Soothes you somehow.”

  “So it does, doesn’t it?” Bobby agreed again. “I don’t much expect you ever have heard it before or anyone else for that matter. I think she improvises when she plays like that.”

  “You mean she makes it up out of her head as she goes along?” Bell asked in a slightly awed tone. Then he rallied a little: “Of course,” he said, “that might be why at the end it sounded all sort of bits and pieces, muddled like, same as I am.”

  “To me,” Bobby said, “it sounded more like a sort of general protest—as if she were crying out against fate and God and all mankind and herself as well and what she had to do. There are moments when I feel like that myself when I have to bring to justice some wretched man or woman only half to blame for what they’ve done.” He paused and then in a surprised voice, he said: “I didn’t know before I ever felt like that.”

  “If it sounded different like to you and me,” Bell said, “how did it sound to Fielding?”

  But Bobby had no answer to make to that question. They had been walking on as they talked and now were back in the village, near Miss Cann’s shop. When Bell knocked at the side door Miss Cann appeared but showed small pleasure on seeing who it was. “You again,” she grumbled. “What is it this time?”

  “Your nephew in?” Bell asked. “If he is, we would like a few minutes’ chat with him, if he doesn’t mind. We’ve received some fresh information we should like to check up with him.”

  “He is having his supper,” Miss Cann said. “I suppose you’ve got to see him if you want to.”

  She went back into the kitchen. Cann was sitting at the table before a simple meal of bread and cold sausage. This time no agreeable, appetizing smell was there to cause to water the mouths of visitors.

  “No rabbit stew this evening, Mr. Cann,” Bobby remarked cheerfully.

  “What about it?” demanded Cann, anything but cheerfully. “What are you getting at?”

  “Only remembering,” Bobby explained, “how nice it smelt the other night we were here.”

  “No law against rabbit stew, is there?” Cann asked defiantly.

  “Of course not,” declared Bobby. “Why, we’ve had it once or twice lately. My wife says it’s a lot easier to get rabbits in the country. Pays a whole lot better to sell on the spot at full controlled price than sending them to town for sale at dealer’s wholesale price. Not to mention the rabbits that pop out of the fields straight into the kitchen and very nice, too.”

  “Not here,” declared Miss Cann firmly, “and me that’s always kept respectable and no one can say different.”

  “Think you’re being funny, don’t you?” snarled Cann. “Cops being funny, that’s a good one, that is.”

  “No, there’s nothing funny about murder,” Bobby said with a sudden and startling change of voice.

  “Well, then,” said Cann, and nervously helped himself to all that remained of the cold sausages.

  “There’s no more where they came from,” Miss Cann warned him.

  “Mr. Cann,” Bobby said in the same hard tones, “we have received information that you were seen in the company of one of the murdered men shortly before he was killed.”

  “That’s a lie,” shouted Cann. He thumped on the table for emphasis, but he was very pale. “Who told you? No one ever did. It’s a lie.”

  “Is it?” Bobby said. “That remains to be seen. I am afraid we can’t merely take your word for it. Because we know you have lied to us before, and so perhaps you have again.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  SOUND ALIBI?

  Cann was on his feet now. He gesticulated, began to shout, his eyes were on the door as though he contemplated flight. Bobby told him roughly to sit down and keep quiet.

  “That sort of thing is doing you no good,” he said. “If you have anything to say, any explanation to offer, we are here to listen to it.”

  “Don’t say a word, Alf,” Miss Cann interposed. “He ain’t treating you fair. He hasn’t given you any warning, same as he did ought. It’s not legal.”

  “We only warn people,” Bobby explained, “when we have decided to make a charge. That is for Mr. Bell to decide, but at present I don’t expect he has it in mind. It all depends on our information, and what we want to know now is why Mr. Cann lied when we saw him last?”

  “I never did,” Cann said sulkily. “You’ve no right to go saying as I did.”

  “They’re scandalizing us, so they are,” protested Miss Cann. “They did ought to be ashamed. First it’s rabbits and then it’s lies and us as always kept ourselves respectable.”

  “Let us hope,” Bobby said, “it will stop with rabbits and lies, and the way to stop it is to tell the truth this time. When we were here before, Mr. Cann, you stated that you had seen and spoken to one of the dead men, Fred Biggs, at ten o’clock on the night of his murder and that you then came straight home but stayed up talking till midnight when you went to bed.”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “Just this,” Bobby answered. “That it’s not true. At ten o’clock that night Biggs was with some other men outside the Much Middles Arms. They were talking about a darts match. I know because I happened to be passing and I both saw him and heard what he was saying. I advise you, Mr. Cann, to tell us the truth. Much better than having it dragged out of you under cross-examination by King’s Counsel at the inquest.”

  This suggestion of possible cross-examination by a K.C. at the inquest made its impression—and not least upon Bell. For to Bell a K.C. meant the payment of a fee about which a Joint Standing Committee examining police accounts would ask indignant and startled questions. To Miss Cann and her nephew it meant a formidable figure in a wig, a pointing finger, a voice of doom, all kinds indeed of known and unknown terrors.

  “You had better tell it ’em all,” Miss Cann said tremulously. “We shouldn’t never be able to hold up our heads again and you been cross-examined in police court.”

  But Cann wasn’t beaten yet.

  “Maybe it was later,” he said. “I thought it was ten but it might have been later. I don’t know as I noticed so particular as all that.”

  “You said you did,” Bobby reminded him. “You said you heard the church clock strike.”

  “It might have been eleven,” Cann suggested, fighting to the last. “I might easy have been mistook.”

  “That won’t do either,” Bobby told him. “You said you came straight back here. That would make it about a quarter past when you got in. Then you said you stopped up talking till midnight. If you noticed the time when you thought it was striking ten, and the time at twelve when you went to bed, you must have noticed, too, that you had missed an hour. You can’t have thought you and M
iss Cann had been talking nearly two hours when in fact it was only somewhere about forty minutes.”

  Cann did not answer at once. He was still standing by the table, still casting furtive glances at the door, still looking sullen and afraid. Miss Cann was sitting by the fire. She muttered something to herself about being respectable and to ask vicar or the neighbours. Bobby, getting no answer, resumed. He said:

  “Another thing. The two of you were at some trouble to tell us that it was twelve or a little after when you went to bed. You both stressed that. Why? The perfect alibi, of course, if we can accept it. The medical evidence gives twelve as about the time when Biggs was killed and if you were in bed at twelve—but were you?—then you couldn’t have been shooting Biggs by the air raid shelter at the same time. Is that what you were thinking?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” interposed Miss Cann. “How could it when we didn’t know anything about it’s being twelve when it happened. It could have been any time for all we knew.”

  “That’s right,” Cann said, looking relieved. “We didn’t know, how could we? No idea we hadn’t.”

  “Shall I tell you what I think?” Bobby asked. “It will most likely be the lines you’ll be cross-examined on.” He paused to let this sink in, for he had noticed that the expression ‘cross-examined’ produced its effect—as words often do by reason of the strange magic that is in them. “Cross-examined,” he repeated, “on what I’m going to suggest really happened. Probably it was eleven you heard striking and very possibly you did see Biggs about that time. I don’t expect you spoke. I don’t think you much wanted to be seen, either by him or by anyone else. I put it to you that you were about your own business and that that business was—rabbits. A spot of poaching. Rabbits have their value in these days and even if you don’t want to sell them, they make a nice addition to the rations—a nice change for dinner. Shall I go on to tell you why you were both so keen on trying to tell us you were in bed by twelve or thereabouts?”

  “I suppose Sammy Potter’s been talking,” Cann said. “I had to cut and run for it, only I didn’t think he could spot it was me. I don’t see how he could, too dark. He nearly got me though, only lucky for me he came a cropper. Caught his foot or something. I heard him go flop into Singles brook.” Cann allowed himself a faint smile at the memory. “Mind you,” he added, “it wasn’t rabbits, nothing to do with rabbits or such like. I was just having a stroll round, breath of fresh air before bed, and I missed my way in the dark. Only you know yourself what a bullying, suspicious lot gamekeeper blokes are. As soon as they see you, sure it’s rabbits and all that you’re after, and you as innocent as the babe unborn.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” Bobby snapped irritably.

  “It’s gospel truth,” began Cann, and then paused as he saw how Bobby glared. “Well, you can’t prove anything,” he said sulkily. “Sammy Potter would swear to anything but he can’t deny it was pitch dark under them trees.”

  “Alf wouldn’t ever murder anyone,” Miss Cann interposed anxiously, and still more anxiously, more pleadingly, she said: “You don’t think he did it, do you?”

  “I only think at present,” Bobby told her in a sudden burst of temper, “that he’s about the biggest kind of fool I’ve come across for a long time.”

  “Oh, well, if that’s all,” said Miss Cann contentedly, “I could have told you that much long ago.”

  “All very well for you to talk,” grumbled Cann. “Nobody wasn’t after you on a hanging job.”

  “You’ve only yourself to thank for it if you came under suspicion,” Bobby pointed out. “If you had told the truth at first you would have saved a lot of trouble. Now I want to know something else and try not to tell any lies this time. Why did you give up your job with Mr. Fielding and why have you come back now?”

  “That was Biggs,” Cann explained. He was still sulky but all the same he was showing manifest relief at the turn things were taking. “Biggs offered me twenty quid and said where I could get another job. He had applied for it himself and he had an answer but he said they wouldn’t care who it was so long as they got someone. He told me his girl lived about here and he wanted to be near. I didn’t mind making a change to oblige, and twenty quid—well, it’s twenty quid.”

  “Did he say who the girl was?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask. I’m not nosey.”

  “Aren’t you? I am,” Bobby said. “Why did you return?”

  “She told me,” Cann said and jerked a thumb at his aunt. “It’s handy to have a man around, even if it’s only Alf,”

  Miss Cann explained. “He wrote he wasn’t finding his new job all it could be. Real tip-top swells they were, and that hard up they hadn’t hardly a penny to bless themselves with. I knew there was likely to be a dust up soon what with Mr. Fielding courting Miss Bellamy and Biggs hanging round her place late at night—and if you ask me, it’s him done it—Mr. Fielding, I mean. He found out they were carrying on together and so he shot him, same as you read in the papers.”

  “Mr. Fielding she means,” Cann explained. “But what I say is why should he? All he had to do was to give Biggs the sack. Let alone it’s not likely she was Biggs’s girl. Twice his age she is or thereabouts, and Mr. Fielding was buzzing round her long before Biggs came. What’s more, even if he was courting her, it wasn’t that way. Not the sort to lose his head, Mr. Fielding isn’t, not over any woman. It’s Mr. Fielding first, last, and all the time with him. If he wanted a woman it would be polite and peaceable like, reasonable if you see what I mean.”

  “Quite the psychologist, aren’t you?” Bobby remarked, slightly amused. “But I’m not sure you’re right. When it’s a man and a woman together, you can never be sure of anything.”

  “Except that they’re likely to make fools of themselves,” interposed Miss Cann.

  “Except that, of course,” agreed Bobby.

  “If it had been him done in,” commented Cann, “Mr. Fielding, I mean, I would have said it was likely her all right, seeing what I know, but then it wasn’t him, so there you are.”

  “What do you know?” Bobby asked.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  PURSUING MUSIC

  Cann had seemed inclined to be more communicative now he knew that he was not under immediate suspicion. But at this question he hesitated, evidently reluctant to reply. He glanced at his aunt, and she, having made up her mind that frankness was the best policy, said briskly:

  “Frightened! That’s what Alf said. Frightened. As soon almost as she took that cottage of hers Alf said as his guv’nor seemed scared like she had something on him. Frightened fit to die, Alf said.” As if the last word sounded ominous now, she added defensively: “That’s what he said and I said not to talk so silly, but he stuck to it.”

  “What made you think that?” Bobby asked Cann.

  “What he said,” Cann answered. “The way he looked, too. In my job you get to know your guv’nor pretty well. You have to. They have their fads and fancies you’ve got to play up to, unless you want the sack and no reference. And the guv’nor was frightened all right. Not at first. It sort of came on slow like. First he didn’t take much notice. It was just ‘Good morning, Miss Bellamy. Nice day,’ and that was all. But I noticed she looked at him a bit hard like, and then I noticed he was beginning to keep out of her way. When we were starting out he would tell me to drive fast down the lane. Sometimes he would take the wheel himself though he’s not so keen on driving, and a good thing, too. I never saw a worse. But when he did he would go past her cottage like hell, with her at the piano as often as not, and her music following us down the road, like it was pursuing us. It’s gospel truth I’ve seen him fair sweating as he heard her at it, playing away for all she was worth. I said to him one day that it was funny stuff and I’d never heard the like, not on the wireless or anywhere and he said if ever he was found with a bullet through his head, I would know. Only it isn’t him or her either that’s been found that way, so it don’t come in.”

 
; “Did he say anything else? Did you say anything?” Bobby asked.

  “I was a bit shook up but I didn’t know how to take it, and the guv. passed it off as a joke like. Only joking he said. But that wasn’t the way it sounded to me. Next thing he was making up to her, only in a funny scared sort of way—like petting a dog you aren’t sure isn’t going to bite. Seemed somehow as if he couldn’t keep away. I’ve known her at her playing at night and him sneaking out as if he had to, and then sort of hiding in the hedge near, as if he didn’t dare go on. Sometimes when they were together you could see her watching him as if she were sorry for him, only all the same it couldn’t be helped. Because what must be, must be.”

  “Fancy talk,” commented Miss Cann disapprovingly. “No sense to it. What I say is she meant to marry him and he didn’t want and was scared like, only he couldn’t make up his mind. Men are a poor weak lot,” she explained, “and if you make up your mind to it, you can always get the one you want—and bitter sorry for it afterwards most like.”

  “You wouldn’t call it fancy talk if you had seen them like I have,” Cann retorted, “or the way it took him when she started playing. She can make that piano of hers talk like a Christian.”

  “Talk perhaps—but hardly like a Christian,” Bobby remarked. “What you’ve told us has been very interesting though it’s hard to see what it all adds up to.”

  “You won’t want to have Alf cross-examined now, will you?” Miss Cann asked anxiously.

  “That’s for Mr. Bell to say,” Bobby answered, turning to Bell, who had been listening to all this with close attention. “Shall you call Mr. Cann at the inquests, do you think?”

  “Not as far as I can tell at present,” Bell answered. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t think the coroner would agree. He would be liable to say Mr. Cann’s evidence wasn’t relevant.” Cann looked extremely relieved at this, but much less so when Bell added: “Now tell us what you and Myerson were doing in Steep Lane the night of the murders.”

  “I don’t know anything about Myerson,” Cann protested. “I bumped up against a bloke at the foot of Steep Lane but I hadn’t an earthly who he was. He said good night and I answered civil like and went on. But I didn’t like it when he followed. I got the idea it might be one of Potter’s snoopers. You can never trust a gamekeeper, and it would be just like one of their tricks to get in a stranger to do their dirty work. I hung back a bit to let him join me and I started talking, trying to pump him, see? But it wasn’t any good. Kept his mouth shut except for yes or no, or such like. So I said I must hurry or else my girl I was going to meet would give me fits for keeping her waiting, and I pushed on, and when I got near Middles, Biggs was hanging over the gate. It was striking the hour, same as I said, only eleven, not ten. I saw him plain. He was lighting a cigarette and the match showed him up. I wasn’t keen on being seen, in case of questions being asked, so I dodged into the field opposite behind the hedge to get by, and I don’t reckon he saw me. And it’s gospel I haven’t a notion, then or now, whether it was this Myerson chap I saw or some other bloke, or what Biggs was doing. I wasn’t thinking of anything but not being seen myself. There’s not a thing more I can say, so it’s no good asking.”