The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Mr Blythe looked very surprised, even uneasy.

  “I had no idea of that,” he said. “That’s curious. Disturbing, too. What did he come to you for?”

  “He wanted advice. I had to tell him that for that he must consult another solicitor.”

  Mr Blythe was looking more and more surprised.

  “Can’t understand it,” he said. “What advice? Why go to you? It’s not a police matter, not from his point of view. It may be from ours. I can’t imagine what Dwight was after.”

  It was Bobby’s turn to look surprised.

  “Dwight?” he repeated in a puzzled tone.

  “Weren’t you speaking of him?” Mr Blythe asked. “Dwight is the young man I wanted to talk to you about. An articled pupil here. Did you mean someone else? Not Dwight?”

  “No,” said Bobby. “I’ve never heard of him. My caller wasn’t Mr Dwight.”

  “I suppose I mustn’t ask who it was?”

  “I had rather you didn’t.”

  “But I can guess, can’t I? Osman Ford, I expect.” He gave his light, pleasant laugh. “You’ve got what they call a ‘poker face’. Not an eyelid quivered. But I think I’m right.”

  Bobby did not answer and Mr Blythe rose from his chair and began to walk up and down the room. Now and again he paused to look at one or other of the Hopewell House photographs, almost as though he derived strength, encouragement, inspiration, from them. He began to talk slowly as he paced up and down and again it was almost as though he spoke as much to the photographs as to Bobby. He said:

  “Osman Ford. Another complication. I didn’t take Osman Ford seriously. He and his suspicions. It all seemed so silly. That’s what he’ll be told if he does try to consult another firm. Anderson may have taken a strict view. I don’t say he didn’t. I don’t say I should have looked at it in quite the same light. But he is fully justified under the terms of the deed, and lawyers have to go by the letter. There would be all sorts of complications if we tried to put our own gloss on the wording of deeds. But Osman Ford was furious. A stubborn, stupid, formidable man.”

  “I got the impression that he was stubborn and formidable,” Bobby agreed, leaving out the middle adjective however.

  “Complications,” Mr Blythe repeated, throwing the word over his shoulder as though he were discharging a shot. He was still standing facing the Hopewell House photographs, almost like a devotee before some shrine wherefrom he drew courage and inspiration. “Cross currents. I hadn’t any idea of this Osman Ford business; I mean, not that he was taking it like that. I suppose it’s the war. Everything’s the war to-day.” He was looking in succession at his beloved photographs, apparently finding in them an exception to the universal war that was absorbing all human activity. He went on: “It’s the war that makes Osman Ford want to get hold of his wife’s money. He wanted it before but the war gives him a good excuse—national need to develop the land to the utmost and capital needed to do it with. Ourselves, too. The firm. Our practice knocked flat. You can’t wonder. People have something else to do today than think of litigation. Ordinary business at a standstill. People evacuating. Or serving with the forces. No time to think of anything but the war. And if there’s a scandal on top of it all, the firm will be pretty well finished as a firm.”

  Bobby made no comment. For some time he had been wondering where all this was leading. But for the feeling he had that the Rose Briar Cottage pistol shots, the dark anger of Osman Ford, conveyed a threat for which it would be well to be prepared, he would have tried to cut the interview short and get that lunch wherefor the time was now growing woefully short.

  “I don’t want you to think,” Mr Blythe continued, “that I haven’t every sympathy for Anderson. A man can be tried too highly. His wife ran off with a younger man five or six years ago. He was hard hit. He hasn’t made any attempt to divorce her. I think for a time he hoped she might return. Then when he gave that up, he thought he had finished with women. Besides, divorce scandals don’t help solicitors. She would have thrown all the mud she could. He thought it better not to give her the chance. So did I. I daresay I took too selfish a line. Thinking of the firm. I admit I was very relieved when he decided to let her go her own way. Gave her a generous allowance, too. Generous even then. Far too much for his resources now and now Rose Briar Cottage as well.”

  “Rose Briar Cottage?” Bobby repeated.

  “Oh, I know you’ve been there,” Mr Blythe told him smilingly. “That’s why I made up my mind to have a talk with you. I didn’t want you to get wrong ideas. And I did want your advice.”

  “How did you know I had been there?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, you’re too well known for people not to notice it when you make calls. It was all over the village at once. I gather they were disappointed you didn’t march off the Jordan woman in handcuffs. One of our staff heard about your visit, and what one hears they all hear, and what they all hear—well, I hear it, too, before long. I suppose it was about young Dwight and his pistol practice that you went there?”

  “Is he here today?” Bobby asked, evading this question by asking another, though remembering, too, both Constable Smith’s tale of a fair-haired, long-legged young man and his own glimpse of the nervous and again fair-haired, long-legged young man in the outer office.

  “Articled pupil,” Mr Blythe repeated. “You must have seen him when you came in. Sits at the third table on your left as you enter. Tall boy. Very bad sight, eye trouble of some sort, so the army won’t have him, though he swears he’ll wriggle in somewhere, some time. I didn’t worry much, till I heard about this pistol business. Apparently he was trying to bluff Mrs Jordan into telling names. Perhaps he knew already. Anyhow, the pistol business upset me considerably. I didn’t know what to do and then I thought I would see what you thought about it. Sometimes that sort of thing is only working off steam, but sometimes it’s serious.”

  Bobby nodded agreement. That was one of the ever recurring difficulties of police work. People were always talking, and nine times out of ten—nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand—it all ended in talk. Only sometimes it didn’t, and if the police had been informed of that talk and had failed to take action, then all the blame was theirs. A little odd, though, that while Constable Smith’s report stated clearly that the shots were fired at, or at any rate, after, the departing Dwight, Mr Blythe seemed to think they had been fired by him. But perhaps that had been Mrs Jordan’s story and Mrs Jordan had not struck Bobby as a person likely to be very careful about strict accuracy. She might easily have felt nervous about admitting the firing and have decided to shift the responsibility elsewhere. Or again, it might have been some other person who had fired, whose name she wished to conceal. He said presently:

  “Do you mean that Miss Anne Earle is Mr Anderson’s mistress and that he provides Rose Briar Cottage for her, with Mrs Jordan to keep up an air of respectability?”

  Mr Blythe looked a little taken aback. He made a deprecating gesture with his hand, uttering at the same time a kind of expostulating murmur.

  “Of course, if you like to put it like that,” he admitted. “The police way. The statement for the prosecution. Sometimes I think the greater the truth, the greater the lie. If I were defending, I should say that when a man’s wife deliberately deserts him and refuses to return, then it’s a divorce morally if not legally. To him, she is dead, and you can’t blame him if he marries again—because in Anderson’s case it is marriage even if marriage outside law and church. Law and church allow marriage if your wife’s dead, and deliberate desertion is a kind of moral death. I do want you to understand, Inspector, Anderson is not in any way a loose liver. This has nothing to do with the ordinary case of the wealthy employer—not that Anderson is wealthy—seducing a young innocent trusting employee. That’s how young Dwight sees it. All wrong. In Anderson’s view—and in mine—he and Miss Earle are as much man and wife as if they had been properly married.”

  He paused and looked at Bobby, evi
dently expecting a reply, evidently hoping for acquiescence. Bobby said:

  “These are very difficult questions. I’m glad I haven’t to decide them.”

  “Ah, you are cautious,” smiled Mr Blythe. “Learn that in the police, I suppose. I wish more people were like that. Most of them are only too anxious to decide—condemn rather. If it comes out—well, it won’t do the firm any good. It might come to dissolving partnership. Oh, I’m not Don Quixote,” he added with another smile as Bobby gave him a quick look. “I want to swim with Anderson if I can, not to sink with him. I’ve got to think of Hopewell House as well.” As always when he spoke of Hopewell House, his expression softened and changed wonderfully, he looked as a lover looks when he speaks of his adored. “You see, that’s really why I wanted to talk to you. If young Dwight does anything silly, the whole business is bound to come out in the most unfavourable conditions.”

  “Why should he?” Bobby asked, though indeed he guessed. “What is his interest in it?”

  “Complications,” sighed Mr Blythe. “I believe he fell in love with her as they say, at first sight. I saw him when she first came to the office, the first day.” He indulged in a short, deprecating laugh. “Do you know, I actually thought the lad was unwell? He went pale, he gasped. Actually gasped. I heard him. It made me look round. You would have thought someone had hit him. I suppose it was like that. As for his work since then—well, hopeless. She seems to have a sort of—fascination, that’s the only word I can think of. She came to us with first-class testimonials. Nothing to complain of in her work. I don’t know how to express it. She seems to walk apart, but not in light and beauty. Like a tragedy queen rather, a tragedy queen going about her work in a solicitor’s office. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But there it is and sometimes I feel that if I believed in the evil eye—well, I should think she had it. Nonsense, of course. All the same, I heartily wish she had never come to us. Young Dwight and Anderson as well, and I don’t know which is the worst. Mind, I’ve nothing against the girl. She’s perfectly well behaved. I quite believe she hasn’t an idea of the effect she produces. I tried to talk to Anderson once. I don’t pretend to be at all broadminded or modern or have any sympathy with some of these new ideas, but Anderson was so plainly, so utterly sincere, in such deadly earnest, that I had to let it go. He said he had never known what love was till he met Miss Earle and now he had met her and now he understood, nothing else mattered. I don’t pretend to understand his state of mind, but there is it. He offered to dissolve partnership then and there but that’s the last thing I want if it can be avoided. Of course, if the scandal does break, you know what everyone will say. Elderly solicitor seduces girl typist. That’ll be the story everywhere, though really it’s not a bit like that. More like Romeo and Juliet, or like Antony and Cleopatra rather, and the world well lost. It wouldn’t be so worrying if it wasn’t for young Dwight having been hit the same way. There’s the money side of it, too. It’s all costing Anderson a pretty penny, and then there’s the allowance to his wife as well, on top of an income knocked all endways by the war.”

  “Do the staff know about this affair with Miss Earle?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think they have any idea. Except young Dwight, of course. And I’m not sure how much he really knows and how much he only suspects.”

  “You are sure Dwight isn’t merely trying to pry, but is genuinely in love with Miss Earle?”

  “I think that’s quite certain. A grand passion as they call it.” A faint note of contempt, of dislike indeed was now in Mr Blythe’s voice as he used this last expression. “Neither grand nor a passion if you ask me, just an obsession, but then I don’t pretend to understand that sort of thing.”

  He paused and Bobby found himself thinking that this elderly solicitor, like his senior partner, was also the victim of a grand passion, though for no woman, for his beloved Hopewell House that Bobby felt meant as much to him as Anne Earle could mean to Mr Anderson.

  “Quite changed,” Mr. Blythe said suddenly. “Young Dwight I mean. I don’t believe he ever thinks of his examinations now. But I didn’t think it was serious till I heard about this pistol business. It will be bad enough if anything gets out about Anderson’s affair, but if it’s to be complicated with shootings as well—”

  He shrugged his shoulders with a look of something like despair on his thin, ascetic features. Bobby said:

  “How many people do you think know about Miss Earle and Mr Anderson?”

  “Heaven knows. I don’t. Anderson assures me he takes every precaution not to be seen when he visits the cottage, and at week-ends he apparently picks her up on the road and they go where they aren’t likely to meet anyone they know—little, out-of-the-way places. But it isn’t easy to keep that sort of thing quiet for long.”

  “What was it you heard exactly about the shooting?”

  “That pistol shots had been heard at Rose Briar Cottage and young Dwight seen running away.”

  “Whom did you hear that from?”

  “My gardener in the first place. It was all over the village. Shooting at Long Barsley and three people killed. That was the first story. I shan’t forget what I felt when I heard that. I seemed to see Dwight, Miss Earle, Anderson, all dead in a heap together. The worst half-hour I have ever known till I got to Long Barsley myself and found there had been shooting all right, but no one knew what it was about and no one was hurt. Burglary seemed the general idea. I recognized young Dwight from the description. Well, what’s to be done? After all, there’s been shooting.”

  “Suppose Dwight simply denies knowing anything about it? There’s no proof.”

  “I know. It was Dwight. There’s no doubt of that. It’s worrying. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? It’s the intensity of their feelings, all three of them, that frightens me.”

  “Does Mr Anderson know about this shooting business?”

  “He won’t take it seriously. I do. I believe the boy is half crazy with jealousy. Doesn’t call it jealousy, I expect. Calls it avenging a young girl’s honour. Or punishing elderly betrayer. Sees himself as a hero putting wrongs right. You can understand his point of view. He might give way to a youngster like himself, but not to a rich old man, which I expect is what he calls Anderson, though Anderson isn’t so very old and is very far from rich. I see his point of view quite well. I’ve tried to show you Anderson’s. Miss Earle’s, I suppose, is that her life is her own and she can do what she likes with it. My point of view is frankly that I’m scared—scared of what Dwight may do, scared of the scandal breaking, scared all round. Well, there’s the problem. What do you think ought to be done?”

  CHAPTER VI

  MISSING

  A DIFFICULT QUESTION, BOBBY thought. Reflectively he rubbed the tip of his nose. On the whole he did not see that there was anything to be done, either by himself or by anyone else. A boy up an apple tree can be dealt with, even though he has touched no apple. But not a boy who from the road outside is merely casting speculative eyes on the fruit. Certainly police duty is as much the prevention as the detection and punishment of crime. But the first duty is the more difficult. No doubt a man could be detailed to keep watch on Rose Briar Cottage, but—a very big but—with all the multifarious duties developing on the police in war time, where was that spare man to be found? A warning could be administered to young Dwight, but that, too, was of doubtful wisdom and more doubtful utility. The previous attempt to warn Osman Ford had not been a great success.

  Very much did Bobby wish he knew why Mr Anderson had called on him that morning. He found himself wondering a good deal what sort of man this Mr Anderson was, who seemed the storm centre round which so much revolved. A talk with him might help a decision. Bobby said as much to Mr Blythe, who nodded in agreement. But again he urged the advisability of Bobby’s having a word with Dwight.

  “What I do feel so strongly,” he said, “is that it might help the boy to realize the position better, make him think a bit.”

  Bobb
y felt that most likely he would simply be told to mind his own business. But it might be useful. Once again, if there really were serious developments, he would certainly be asked what action he had taken in view of the various warnings received, and it was always so much better if some sort of reply was ready. Besides, a talk with Dwight would help in forming an estimate of the young man’s character. He hesitated, and Mr Blythe saw that he was hesitating, and appeared to assume that according to the old saying, hesitation gave consent.

  “Anderson won’t be back just yet,” he said. “You could use his room. I’ll send Dwight to you there. You had better see him alone.”

  Leading the way out of his own room in which they had been talking he opened the door of the room adjacent, that marked, ‘Mr Anderson’. He began to say to Bobby:

  “Sit down a minute and—”

  Then he stopped and stared, startled apparently and even alarmed. Bobby looked, too, wondering what had given Blythe that intent and startled air. Opposite to them as they entered, at a table occupying the centre of the room, stood a short, stocky, youngish man, whose flat nose, narrow eyes, sallow complexion, gave him a curiously Mongolian look. On the table before him was a small, open ledger, over which he was poring with an absorbed attention. He looked up as the door opened. His expression did not change. Bobby had the idea that his expression very seldom did change. But physically he seemed to draw himself together, though whether for attack or for defence Bobby could not be sure. His hand dropped on the ledger before him and grasped it firmly, almost like a weapon, Bobby thought, and that slow gesture of his did in some subtle way convey a curious suggestion of coming threat. Threat. Menace. Warning. That was always the prevailing note; a murky and a doubtful menace that seemed to start up on every side, though against whom there was as yet no clear indication.