Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE END IS NOT YET

  Rhoda came slowly down the stairs and into the room. She did not seem much surprised to see Bobby. She said:

  “I thought it was you. I heard you talking.”

  She spoke in a very low voice, not much above a whisper.

  She showed, far more than did Miss Bellamy, plain traces of the long night’s vigil Miss Bellamy had described. Her face was deathly white, her features drawn and tight, beneath her red-rimmed eyes dark circles showed, her dress was so crumpled and untidy Bobby could well believe that she had slept in it, her whole expression was one of extreme weariness and lassitude, as if all vitality in her had drained quite away. Bobby pulled forward a chair and she sat down without speaking again. Miss Bellamy came back into the room and said:

  “I’ll make some coffee and a little toast.”

  “Please don’t. I don’t want anything,” Rhoda said.

  Without answering this, Miss Bellamy went back into the kitchen, and Bobby said:

  “You look tired, Miss Rogers, but I am afraid I shall have to ask you a few questions.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?” she asked, her voice even more of a whisper than before.

  “Why should you think that?” he asked in return.

  “I thought you might,” she said, and then: “It doesn’t matter.” Then she said: “How did you know I was here?”

  “Your brother told me,” Bobby answered. “I have been talking to him. It is because of things he said that I am obliged to ask you a few more questions.”

  “What’s the good?” she asked wearily. “I have done nothing but ask myself questions ever since it happened and there are no answers.”

  “The weapon used in the murder of the man Myerson,” Bobby went on, “has been clearly identified as your property. Further, our information is that it was in your brother’s possession when he went out one night, but that during a scuffle Biggs took it from him.”

  “I know,” Rhoda said. “My head’s funny but I remember that. He told me. Did he tell you?”

  “Is it true, do you think?”

  “I suppose so. Yes. Why not?”

  “Our information is that Biggs refused to return it to your brother but promised to give it to you instead. Did he do that?”

  “I told him to keep it. I said I didn’t want it. I said lo throw it away or something.”

  “What did he say?”

  “At first he said he would give it back to George. I said not to and he said perhaps I was right and he had better not. He said it might put ideas into George’s head.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “You knew they quarrelled. About me. George was trying to interfere. He got a good thrashing. I told him it served him right. It was no business of his. It was then I told him about our having lived together in Egypt. He made a dreadful scene. We often rowed but never before like that. I suppose he was really shocked. I said I hoped he would get another thrashing if he dared say another word. He said if Fred tried that on again, he would know how to protect himself. He said another time he would be ready. I think that was why I didn’t want the pistol given back to George. It was really mine, so Fred didn’t need.”

  “What did he do with it finally?”

  “At first he said he would keep it and then he said he would give it to Miss Bellamy to keep for me. And he said perhaps she might need it herself. That’s what I came to ask her about.” Miss Bellamy was still busy in the kitchen. She had paid no attention to what they were saying. Bobby got up and went to the door of the kitchen. He said to her:

  “Miss Bellamy. It seems Biggs intended to hand the pistol to you to keep for Miss Rogers. Did he do so?”

  “The coffee’s ready now,” Miss Bellamy said. She was pouring some out. She put a cup on a tray together with dry toast. She took it to Rhoda and to Bobby she said: “The pistol? He wanted to but I told him I wouldn’t have it. Drink your coffee,” she added to Rhoda. “It’ll do you good.”

  Rhoda obeyed, and the hot, strong, sweet drink brought a little colour back to her pallid cheeks. Miss Bellamy went back into the kitchen to fill Rhoda’s cup again. Rhoda said she had had enough and Miss Bellamy told her to eat the toast. Bobby said to her:

  “If Miss Bellamy did in fact have the pistol, do you think she may have used it?”

  “I don’t know. I daresay,” Rhoda answered. “I wondered.”

  “Or if Biggs after all did return it to your brother, then it may have been your brother used it?”

  “I thought that too,” Rhoda said.

  “Or again if it was given back to you, if you in fact took it when he offered it—”

  “Then it might have been me,” she agreed. “Because once I killed two men and so I might another. If you dream of two, why not of three?”

  “You mustn’t dream,” Miss Bellamy said loudly. “You must stop it.”

  “The coffee was very nice,” Rhoda said, “even if you did kill poor Fred. We shall never be married now. Perhaps he didn’t really want. Sometimes I thought so. It’s made me sleepy again—the coffee, I mean.”

  “Why did he think Miss Bellamy might need a pistol?” Bobby asked.

  “He didn’t say,” Rhoda answered. “I asked him but he didn’t say, only that it might be better if she had it by her. I don’t know any more,” and when Bobby did not speak at once she closed her eyes and fell asleep where she sat.

  Miss Bellamy had gone back into the kitchen where she was busy again. Bobby went to the kitchen door and said:

  “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?” she asked. “What Rhoda said? No. What was it?”

  “She said Biggs told her he meant to give you the pistol because you might need it. Why did he say that?”

  “I very often don’t know why I say things myself,” she answered. “How can I tell why other people say them?”

  “Can you tell me anything at all about the pistol?”

  “He said he had taken it from George Rogers. I asked him if it was true they had been fighting. He said it wasn’t—he said you couldn’t have a fight with anyone like George. He said George hadn’t the stuff in him to stand up to a schoolboy, but he took his pistol from him in case he managed to hurt himself—or someone else. That was all.”

  “When was this?”

  “The day before it all happened.”

  “Did he want to give it you because he thought you might need it to protect yourself?”

  “You asked me that before,” she remarked. “It’s no good keeping on like that. Asking and asking.”

  “Refusing to answer a question,” Bobby told her, “is often much the same as answering it—and sometimes more likely to be true. This time I think it means you know he did believe you might need to protect yourself. I am asking you another question. Did he in fact give you the pistol he took from George Rogers?”

  “I am not answering that either,” she retorted, and this time with impatience. “Well, what does it mean this time—that I won’t answer?”

  “If he gave it you, did you use it?”

  “You have to find out first whether he did give it me,” she reminded him. “If he did, if he gave it me because he thought I might need it, would I be likely to use it to kill him, if that is what you are thinking? Are you trying to make out that he gave me a pistol to protect myself with against him himself?”

  “More likely from someone else,” Bobby said. “There is another point I must put to you. Two men have been killed. Myerson was one. We are not sure yet why Myerson was here but it seems certain he had something to do with the smash and grab raid. Another man who was mixed up in it, and who was either Biggs or closely resembled him, vanished near this cottage. Then Myerson turns up and, later on, Biggs is killed. Myerson is killed soon afterwards, and with the weapon Biggs may have given to a person he thought might need it. It seems a possible theory that Biggs and Myerson were both concerned in the smash and grab raid, that there was
a quarrel, as gangsters do quarrel over sharing their plunder, that in the quarrel Biggs was shot by Myerson, and that then Myerson was killed by a friend of Biggs who had been perhaps watching, unknown to Myerson. Have you anything to say to that?”

  “No,” she answered, “except that it is very ingenious but it isn’t true.” There came a knock at the door. She went to answer it and came back with two plump chickens ready for cooking. “Aren’t they nice?” she said. “Now I can get on. It’s very good of them to let me have them. They didn’t want to.”

  “What time are you having dinner to-night?” Bobby asked. “About half-past seven or eight, I expect,” she answered, surprised at the question. “If you don’t want to ask anything more; should you mind very much going away? I have to be very busy. When it’s poussins au Henri Quatre, everything has to be exactly right and everything ready on the dot, just when you want it.”

  “Miss Bellamy,” Bobby said, his patience giving way for once, “two men have been killed and all you can do is to talk about this wretched what-d’you-call-it stuff.”

  “Poussins au Henri Quatre,” Miss Bellamy interposed tranquilly.

  “Yet one of those dead men thought you might need a pistol to protect yourself with?”

  “It was silly of him if he did think that,” she answered. “So are you if you are thinking it, too. It is not I who need protection but another.”

  “Who?”

  “If you know as much as you pretend,” she told him, turning from her work to face him; for the first time, too, showing a flash of anger, “then you should know that already.”

  “I think perhaps I do,” he answered, watching her steadily.

  “Then,” she said, now speaking slowly, “then you must know, too, that there is nothing for you to do.”

  “I think there is,” he told her. “Please understand that and that it will be done.” She shook her head, denying it. A moment’s pause. He was looking at the piano. He said: “Is it from your music that the another you spoke of needs protection?”

  “If it is, do you think you can stop me playing?” she asked. She left her work in the kitchen and came and stood by his side. Abruptly she laughed but it was no pleasant laugh. “How did you get such a stupid idea into your head?” she asked.

  Bobby did not answer that. He was looking at Rhoda, lying back in her chair, her eyes closed, her breathing deep and regular.

  “She is sleeping soundly,” he said.

  “Let her be till she wakes,” Miss Bellamy said. “She is worn out and the end is not yet.”

  “No,” agreed Bobby, “not yet. But I do not think it will be long.”

  Miss Bellamy returned to her busy occupations. She might have been any woman in any kitchen, busy with preparations for a meal meant to be more elaborate than usual. But it was not so that Bobby saw her; and when he had watched her for a little he went away, grave and troubled.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  FURTHER DOUBTS

  Fortunately by this time Superintendent Bell had arrived to continue direction of the various supplementary lines of investigation that were being followed up, and with him Bobby now had a brief consultation.

  “What it adds up to,” Bell said finally when Bobby had finished his account of these recent developments, “is that you’ve managed to confirm that the murder weapon was last in possession of one of the three of them—the Rogers’, brother and sister, and the Bellamy woman. Only each of them pushes it off on one of the others. Rogers says Biggs was going to give it to his sister. The sister says she wouldn’t have it and Biggs told her he would give it to Miss Bellamy who might need it. Miss Bellamy denies having it and says anyhow someone else needed it more, but she won’t say who.” He ran his fingers despairingly through his hair and said in tones of utter gloom: “And how in thunder are we to know which of ’em is lying and which is telling the truth, if any?”

  “Possibly all three,” suggested Bobby.

  “Telling the truth? When they all contradict each other?”

  “Well, Biggs may after all have kept it himself. If he did, and if he still had it when he was killed, then his murderer may have taken it and used it in the second murder, Myerson’s.”

  “Which means,” grumbled Bell, “that your fine new theory that Myerson shot Biggs and then was shot himself by a pal of Biggs’s—possibly the Bellamy woman—goes down the drain?”

  “Well, I should say goes into cold storage,” Bobby said.

  “Together,” he added, “with most of the rest of the probabilities and possibilities we’ve been working on.”

  “You do like making it difficult,” sighed Bell. “Always got a new line for us to follow up your sleeve, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t want anyone following anything up my sleeve,” protested Bobby indignantly. “Makes you think of earwigs and spiders and all that sort of thing.”

  “What about motive?” asked Bell, unheeding this protest. “You must have a motive. I can see it with the others. Rogers didn’t like the idea of Biggs messing about with his sister, tried to interfere and got a good thrashing for his pains.”

  “Matter for murder, there,” agreed Bobby.

  “Especially,” agreed Bell, “when it’s a bloke like Rogers who can think up the noblest motives for doing anything that happens to suit him.”

  “Rationalization is the word,” Bobby explained.

  “Then there’s the sister,” Bell went on. “Of course, any woman is always liable to do in any man she is really in love with. Killing and loving are close at times.”

  “I think,” Bobby said, “you’ve got to the heart of it there.”

  “Some bit of poetry about it, isn’t there?” Bell asked. “Something about how we all kill what we love.”

  “An over statement,” Bobby said, “but something in it all the same and in this case worth remembering.”

  “Miss Bellamy,” Bell said, “was she in love with Biggs?”

  “I’ve seen nothing to suggest it,” Bobby answered, “and I don’t believe it. Some connection, some sort of common understanding between them. That’s plain. But I don’t believe there was any question on either side of their being in love.”

  “If you rule that out,” Bell commented, “then it’s being accomplices. That means they were in the smash and grab raid together—her doing the planning or scouting as they often get a woman to do. And that might mean Myerson butting in and threatening to turn informer or demanding to go shares and why she needed a pistol for her own protection. I think,” said Bell thoughtfully, “we could put that to the public prosecutor outfit. Only,” he added with resignation, “they would turn it down same as they always do unless we can give them at least a dozen eye-witnesses, all certified of good character.”

  “Well, you have to admit,” Bobby pointed out, “that there are at present rather a lot of loose ends. That would be seen at once. Jam for defending counsel to be able to lead a jury up half a dozen different garden paths all at once. Confusion means acquittal, and that’s bad when it means a killer let loose on the world all because we haven’t done our job properly.”

  “All very well,” complained Bell, “but when you have about two dozen different paths to follow all at once—well, where are you?”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad as all that,” Bobby declared, trying to cheer him up. “Two dozen is piling it on, and there are one or two leads that to my mind give a fairly clear line.”

  “Well, of course, if that handkerchief stunt of yours—” began Bell, but Bobby interrupted him and very crossly indeed.

  “It’s not a stunt,” he protested. “It’s a—a tour de force.”

  “Is it?” said Bell, suitably impressed. “I didn’t know. Mind you, I’m all for looking on the bright side of things. That’s my line and always has been. It pays. But all the same, even if that handkerchief idea of yours does come off, you’ll never get it past a jury. Not a hope. Just rosy fingered optimism to think you will, like telling us about all the good thi
ngs the atom bomb is going to give us some day. No,” he said, and shook his head with great decision. He asked: “Do you think there is anything in this idea Miss Bellamy is trying to sell us—that Mr. Fielding is going to propose?”

  “I don’t doubt it for my part,” Bobby said, though not without hesitation. “I am sure she thinks so and I expect she’s right.”

  “Poussins au Henri Quatre, whatever that is,” Bell repeated thoughtfully. “Feed the brute and he pops the question. That the idea?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Bobby said.

  “I suppose there is,” agreed Bell. “I suppose there’s things behind it’s hard to understand. When you join you think police work’s just a straightforward job of running in drunks and keeping the traffic straight, and then you run up against this sort of thing. They aren’t just in love with each other like anyone else, are they?”

  “Certainly not like anyone else,” Bobby answered. “So far as I can see it,” he went on slowly, “I think a very curious and rather terrible relation has grown up between them—a mutual attraction, a mutual repulsion, each as strong as the other. I don’t know. It may be my fancy, but I have sometimes thought that they are bound to each other as man and woman have seldom been. I doubt if there is any emotion they have not felt for each other in measure and degree. But in what measure and degree I don’t know, though I am sure there is passion somewhere—and passion in a form not everyone is capable of enduring. All depends on that and it may be it all adds up differently every hour almost.”

  “There you go,” complained Bell. “How can any plain everyday cop like me be expected to deal with a thing that s never the same two minutes together? Where does this poussins and the rest of the stuff come in?”

  “That’s just one side to it.”

  “And the music—the piano playing business?”

  “That’s another side.”

  “I’ve heard her,” Bell said. “Gives you the willies, listening. Digs deep,” he said. “Seems to make you see yourself as you never knew you were. What did she mean when she said there might be something else Fielding had in mind, not proposing but something else?” Bobby sat silent, making no attempt to answer. But Bell seemed to understand. He said uneasily: “If it’s like that, what are we to do?”