Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Then,” Bobby continued, “came the murder of the unlucky Myerson, paying the penalty for butting in on what didn’t concern him.”

  “Best not to interfere,” said Miss Bellamy. “Best to let things take their own course. They will anyhow. That’s bad enough. But keep away.”

  “Even to keep away means helping to shape how things happen,” Bobby said. “While we live, we can’t help being in life. Biggs disappeared at the same time as the murder. That naturally pointed to him as the murderer.”

  “I thought so,” Fielding admitted. “I’ve been sorry about that ever since. Shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” and he shook a warning head.

  “I never thought it,” Miss Bellamy said. “I knew better.”

  “I rather expected you would,” Bobby agreed. “The disappearance of Biggs and the natural suspicions caused, made it necessary to search his rooms. We found he had a banking account with a fair sum of money to his credit and we also found a list of investments. Quite a good list and carefully detailed. Odd, we thought, that a man with a good capital should take the trouble to wangle himself a job as chauffeur—even pay a bonus to get it. Another thing. His name didn’t appear in the list of shareholders in any of the companies he had down. That could only mean, that is, if his investments weren’t an exercise in imagination, which didn’t seem likely, that Biggs wasn’t his real name. That could mean the actual share certificates were in safe keeping somewhere—with a friend or lawyer perhaps, but also perhaps with a safe deposit concern. It seemed worth trying and a photograph was taken round. It has been recognized now as the photograph of a man who gave the name of Smith when he hired a safe with the Northern Security Company in the city. We haven’t got permission yet to open the safe but we hope to soon. That may give us his real name and may help us to find out more about him—and his past. But I’m running ahead. When I first saw Mr. Fielding’s shelter I noticed it was being pulled down. I remembered, too, that Mr. Fielding complained that the man from the village doing the job hadn’t been for some days. But I could see that much more demolition had been done since I was there first. I noticed the west wall was almost level. I wondered why? Why get on with it instead of waiting for the workman who had been given the job? Obvious, though, what a handy and convenient grave was there, ready made, so to say, for any murderer’s convenience. All you had to do was to dig the grave—no need for it to be deep—in the rubble already half filling what had been the shelter. Then you fill it in and on top of that throw down more of the shelter walls. There is the job done and nothing to cause any suspicion. Even if a dog started sniffing and scratching, as might inconveniently happen, the explanation was simple—Myerson’s death had taken place there.”

  “Seems,” observed Mr. Fielding thoughtfully, “as if whoever thought that one out—and very smart, too, whoever it was—hadn’t reckoned with you, Mr. Owen.”

  “Merely,” Bobby explained, “a quite reasonable hope that appearances would be taken at their face value. By the way, Mr. Fielding, I remember your saying that night that your hand was hurting. I think you said it had kept you awake. Rather a bad blister. Wasn’t that it?”

  Mr. Fielding looked at him blankly.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no. What I said was that that lazy old scamp who had been doing the job had made a blistered hand an excuse to stop away.”

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  ATTRACTION-REPULSION

  There was a slight pause after Mr. Fielding said this. He took another violent puff at his cigar and put it down. Miss Bellamy said:

  “I remember.”

  But what or how she remembered she did not make clear nor did Bobby ask. Instead he said:

  “That reminds me. That was when I borrowed Mr. Fielding’s handkerchief, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t think I ever had it back, had I?” Mr. Fielding asked. He took out his shining cigar case and selected another cigar. He said: “No, I never had it back.” He began to busy himself lighting his fresh cigar. He said casually: “Got it still? The handkerchief, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got it with me now.”

  “Oh, it didn’t matter, you shouldn’t have troubled,” Mr. Fielding said amiably. “Damn,” he added as he let his cigar slip from his fingers and had to stoop to pick it up. “I beg your pardon,” he said to Miss Bellamy as he retrieved it.

  But she did not seem to have heard. She was staring at Bobby in the same fixed, intent manner that was now hers. She said:

  “Handkerchief? What’s that mean?”

  “When we found,” Bobby went on without answering this, “that Biggs was himself a victim—the first victim indeed that night—we did think at first that we might be up against a gangster feud. The very fact that gangsters can’t appeal to the law for protection or redress does sometimes make them take to violence instead.”

  “That’s what I thought from the very start,” Fielding said. “It all points that way.” He added, inhaling gently the fragrance of his newly lighted cigar: “These Havanas are worth while. Cost real money but value all right.”

  “Ten bob each, you said,” Bobby remarked. “I wish I could afford that price and then leave them only a quarter smoked.”

  “What’s that? What do you mean?” Fielding asked, and then seemed to realize that he had lighted a second cigar, leaving another hardly touched. He gave Bobby a quick look, but his voice was still steady and unconcerned, as he said: “That comes from being so interested in what you’re telling us, Mr. Owen.”

  “Cigars and handkerchiefs,” Miss Bellamy said. “He’s rambling still, but he’s getting nearer. That means mischief.”

  “I’m not so much getting nearer,” Bobby said, “as getting near the end. But as against the gangster feud theory our inquiries also showed there was a lot going on in the neighbourhood that needed explaining. A very important clue, I might almost say a decisive clue, was given us by young Rogers, though he didn’t know it. I had already noticed that Biggs seemed to know who I was as soon as he saw me. Nothing much in that. He could easily have been in court—even on the jury—when some case I was connected with came up. But I was more interested when Rogers said he had seen Biggs talking to a man he recognized as someone he had seen in gaol when Rogers himself was serving a term as a conscientious objector. Of course, you see at once that was a tremendous help.”

  “Why?” asked Fielding. “You knew Biggs had been in the smash and grab raid that started all this horrible business.”

  “Suspected, not knew,” Bobby said, “and the raid was no beginning. We are watching a denouement, not a debut—the fifth act, not the opening scene. The question now was how a man, with a certain amount of money, a steady job, a satisfactory army discharge, no criminal record—we knew that because we had his dabs for comparison and they weren’t in the files—how he had got in touch with an habitual criminal whom it hadn’t been hard to identify from Rogers’s description as a very old customer of ours. Of course, by the way, we looked him up immediately. We soon got proof that he had nothing to do with the murders, and that he and the rest of his pals were very much puzzled and worried by Myerson’s murder. It had upset the whole lot of them considerably; and while of course none of them would make any admissions, it was clear they would have been willing to help us find the murderer if they could. They were all sure, too, there could have been no reason for any quarrel between Biggs and Myerson over a division of loot. That part of it had all been settled before. So there was an end of the gangster feud theory and one more possibility at least out of the way.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you,” Fielding said. “Those fellows are up to all sorts of tricks.”

  “Very few in point of fact,” Bobby told him. “A hidebound, routine-ridden mind, the gangster’s. The problem we had before us then was how Biggs had got in touch with a professional criminal. Not too easy. Professional criminals don’t care about casual acquaintances. Too risky. Might be a cop in
disguise, they think. Unlikely, though it might happen, I suppose. Well, I went over every possibility I could think of and it occurred to me that there is one place where rogues and honest people may meet on more or less equal terms. As friends, even pals. Visiting day. We know because occasionally the fact that, say, Mrs. X has visited Mr. X serving a term for, shall we say? making mistakes in a balance sheet, or has been there to meet him on his discharge, has been used by others present on much the same sort of errand, for trying a little blackmail. We started inquiries. Inconclusive. You see, we had no names to work on. But a list was made out and we noticed it included the name of an elderly man of the name of Frank Bardsell. What drew our attention at first was the initials, F.B. They are the same as those of Fred Biggs and it’s an odd fact that when people change their names they often keep the same initials. Some primitive racial fear of loss of identity perhaps. Anyhow, the initials being the same made us pay special attention to Mr. Bardsell. He had had a high reputation till somehow he had got mixed up in the issue of a fraudulent balance sheet. He got seven years. It was thought rather a lenient sentence. An hour or two before his discharge on ticket of leave, he committed suicide. Apparently he felt he could not face the outside world. Of course, all this happened years ago, before the war. But it was rather clearly remembered at the prison, because it had been their job to tell Mr. Bardsell’s daughter what had happened. She had come to meet her father and was actually in the prison at the time. A special favour, of course. Some sort of introduction to the prison governor perhaps, or someone like that. What made it worse was that when the daughter went back and told what had happened, the mother had a heart attack and died the next day. A tragic and unhappy story.” Bobby turned to Miss Bellamy. “Was that daughter you?” he asked.

  She did not reply in words but in her eyes the answer was clear.

  “Where’s all this leading if it all happened years ago?” Mr. Fielding asked. He looked with surprise at his cigar which he had allowed to go out. He laid it down very carefully by the side of the other one. “No good lighting a cigar again once it’s gone out,” he observed. “Flavour all gone. Because,” he explained, “of being so interested. Only how’s all that helping you to find out who did the killing? Isn’t that your job, not rooting round in what’s dead and past and done with?”

  “What is dead and past and done with, but it never is,” Bobby answered, “gives us the background, the atmosphere, the history so to speak. That’s what you have to understand before you can understand what’s happening now. There was Miss Bellamy’s playing. I felt the whole story was there. Her music told all. At least, it did if you could understand. But to understand you had to know the history behind. And that began to make plain the rather terrible attraction-repulsion that seemed to exist between you.”

  “It didn’t take me long,” Fielding said, “to know who she was. It wasn’t my fault things happened as they did. If Bardsell hadn’t been too pig-headed to do as I said, we should both have been in the clear. But when he began to worry about doing what he called the right thing, I saw it was time for me to look after myself. I had to. He said he hadn’t understood where it was leading. That was his affair. One has to take risks and if he thought my figures too optimistic, or ill founded, or anything like that, he ought to have said so. But he just accepted them. The truth is, he didn’t want to check them. I could see that and I could see it was time for me to cover up. When I went into the witness box I was complimented on my clear, straightforward evidence. I think the old boy on the bench knew. But nothing he could do, except pass as light a sentence as he dared. It was a great relief to me. The figures were all in Bardsell’s writing, he had signed the books, I was only a sort of backroom boy. And I couldn’t stop Mrs. Bardsell’s giving up everything to the creditors. A drop in the bucket anyway. I would have helped her all I could if she had let me. Why, she even tore up the cheque I sent her. I wanted there to be as little ill feeling as possible. When Miss Bellamy took the cottage I soon recognized her. And I guessed there were still sore feelings, even after all that time. But I made up my mind to do all I could to help her and to try to smooth things over. Never pays to bear a grudge. Write off losses and bad debts. That’s a sound business maxim. It pays. I tried to see what I could do.” He paused; and then in a slightly different tone, one more genuine, Bobby thought, less full of an anxious self-justification, he said, and slowly:

  “If only we could have met before, with nothing between us, just as—as friends.”

  “When mother died,” Miss Bellamy said, “my brother and I were holding her hands and we looked at each other and Frank said: ‘That’s both of them—father and mother, too.’ So I kissed mother and I said to her: ‘Tell father when you meet him that we remember.’ Only then there was the war and Frank had to join up. That was when he changed his name. The last thing Frank said was not to lose sight of Mr. Fielding. He said I was to go and live near and find out all I could. So I came here. We both had a little money. Uncle left it us when he died. Soon after I came, Mr. Fielding began to call. It was his cottage, he was the landlord. I didn’t know he suspected anything. I wanted to be friendly so as to have more to tell Frank. Then I began to notice that he was growing attentive and all at once I found I was beginning to look forward to his coming. I think in a way it was because of what he had done, because I hated him so much for that, that I was attracted to him. I think it was because of what he knew he had done to us that he was attracted to me. Hate drew us and hate made us one with each other. There was that which lay between us that made us afraid, afraid with great fear, that drew us together because of our hate and our fear, that pushed us apart because we so feared both our hate and our love. We were like those we read of in the French Revolution who were tied together, man and woman, and thrown into the river to drown or to swim.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CONCLUSION

  There was a long silence when Miss Bellamy, Miss Bardsell, finished speaking, and the coffee grew cold in their cups where it waited. Fielding took out another of his cigars but this time he did not even attempt to light it. He put it down carefully by the side of the other two. He said, speaking in a low voice, one barely audible, and directly to Miss Bardsell:

  “If we made up our minds to it, you and I, we could forget all this. Why not?” But neither of the other two answered him and his own voice was flat and without hope, as of one who pleaded for mercy but knew it could not be. He said: “It was Myerson did it. Myerson killed him. Myerson.”

  “That would still leave us asking who shot Myerson and why,” Bobby said. “No reason why Myerson should want to murder anyone and he didn’t go about armed. It’s plain how he came in. He was a hanger on of the Burden gang, a kind of odd job man. No good in a crisis. Apt to lose his head, so he was never let in on the actual job. Or wanted to be. But useful as a go-between and could be trusted because he would never dare be anything else. He could see of course some plan was being carried out and he wondered what. He knew Fred Biggs, Frank Bardsell, that is, was in touch with the Burden gang. He helped in the details. He was told to help in laying a false trail. He knew valuable help was being given the gang and that all Frank Bardsell asked in return was for a show to be made of faked stuff in the village, and for one genuine ring to be dropped in a certain spot. He could see there must be something behind all that and he wanted to know what.”

  “Trying to frame me, that was what,” Fielding said, and now in a very injured tone.

  “Poetic justice,” Bobby said. “You framed the elder Frank Bardsell, and the younger one meant to frame you. He may have thought that even if he couldn’t manage to get you into the dock he could at any rate bring you so much under suspicion as to ruin you socially and perhaps even in business.”

  “Vindictive,” Fielding complained. “What’s the sense? No one’s ever the better for that sort of thing. I told him. It’s all over and done with, I said, and he laughed and said it wasn’t done with, not by a long way, and wouldn
’t be till I was done with, too.”

  “Was that when you shot him?” Bobby asked.

  “That was Myerson,” Fielding repeated.

  But Bobby ignored this and continued:

  “Probably Myerson thought there might be pickings to be had if he could find out what it was all about. That’s why he hung around in a way that puzzled and worried us a lot. But certainly with no idea of murdering anyone and no reason why he should want to. What happened must have been something like this. He had made up his mind to do a bit of snooping. What the Burden gang used him for generally. Possibly he had spotted the air raid shelter as a kind of handy headquarters. He may have heard about tramps using it for sleeping in. Or he may have heard a shot and come to see what was happening. He may have merely been watching, or following someone he had seen moving. What everything does go to show is that he was there in time to see the dead body and the half-dug grave. Then there was nothing else to do. Was there?” he asked Fielding abruptly.

  “I got him to help,” Fielding said, and it was as though he saw again, and once more again lived through, that tragic and dreadful night. “I promised to pay him well if he kept quiet. He said he would, he swore he would. But I could see there was no trusting him. He would have sucked me dry and then betrayed me at the end. Besides, I couldn’t help seeing what a help it would be. Everything would go to show Biggs had killed him. Well, that was true, morally. It had all happened through Biggs. He was to blame and only fair he should take the blame.” Fielding paused and looked angrily at Bobby. “Only for you snooping and meddling,” he said, “that’s how it would have been.” Then he turned and looked at Miss Bardsell, listening intently, in deep silence. He said: “That way you would never have known and there wouldn’t have been anything to come between us any more.”

  “Nothing,” Miss Bardsell said. She said very slowly: “I think perhaps it might have been like that if I had never known.”