“Are you sure it was Mr Castles?” Bobby asked.
“Well, I didn’t see anyone,” interposed Osman. “I don’t see why I didn’t if he was there.”
“I suppose you couldn’t hold your tongue for two minutes, even if your life depended on it, could you?” asked Mrs Ford wearily, in the manner of one whose patience was at last utterly exhausted. “I tell you I saw him if you didn’t and it was him right enough.”
“Well, I won’t bother you any longer,” Bobby said. “Thank you very much for what you’ve told me. I may have to ask you both to make a statement in writing, but I hardly think that’s necessary yet. We don’t know enough.”
With that he took himself off. He was not much inclined to believe Mrs Ford’s tale. He did not believe she had secretly followed her husband when he went out to smoke the pipe Bobby suspected he was not allowed in the house. He did not believe, therefore, that she had seen Castles. But he could not be sure. And she might have seen Castles in the neighbourhood some other time or possibly she had heard that someone else had seen him.
“A puzzling woman,” he told himself, unconscious of the tautology, “but I doubt if she’s quite the virago she makes herself out. Bullies her man a bit just by way of discipline but would probably lie, steal or murder for him without a moment’s hesitation.”
He paused abruptly. A memory of one of the words he had used stirred uneasily in his mind. ‘Murder’ he had said. Murder had been done in fact. He tried to put the idea out of his mind. Not very successfully. Not too willingly he decided it would have to be taken into consideration. Knowing her husband’s need of her money there was the possibility that she might have been willing to go even to the extremity of murder in order to bring him help. Perhaps his need of that money had been desperate and she had known it.
“A clever woman, a resolute woman,” he reflected, and then he reflected, too, that equally possibly her story might have been quite true, that she might have been watching her husband and so might have seen Castles on the canal road—waiting.
He wondered, too, if she knew about the circumstances that might perhaps be thought to give Castles cause of deep resentment against Anderson who had been chief partner in the firm that still practised under the name of Castles. If she knew, that might explain why she had chosen his name to give Bobby. Bobby supposed it was altogether likely that she did know. Many people in the Midwych neighbourhood must be acquainted with the circumstances.
It was still so early that Bobby was able to reach Midwych and his office about his usual time. Almost the first thing he did was to ring the office of Messrs Castles and ask if Mr Castles had arrived. If not, could he be asked to come round to the county police headquarters as soon as convenient? There were various points on which, said Bobby over the ’phone, he might be able to help.
It was not long before Castles made his appearance, obviously nervous. Greeting exchanged, Bobby asked one or two unimportant questions and then said:
“What I really wished to ask you about, Mr Castles, is that it seems probable, though we can’t be absolutely sure, that Mr Anderson was murdered on the canal road near Ends Bridge. Also we have information that you were seen near there that Tuesday night. Is that true?”
“It’s a dirty lie,” Castles declared instantly and angrily. “Who told you that?”
“Well, of course, I can’t tell you that just now, can I?” Bobby said. “If it turns out to be correct and we act on it, naturally you’ll have to know. At present we have no idea whether it’s of any importance. You know, if we told everybody all the things people tell us about each other—well, there would be quite a lot of fat in a good many different fires. All you’ve got to do is to let us know where you really were, Tuesday night. Playing bridge with friends or at home having your supper or whatever it is. Then that’ll show we’ve been misinformed and that’ll be all right.”
“I wasn’t anywhere near Ends Bridge anyhow,” Castles said gloomily. “I don’t suppose I could even have told you where the beastly place was before this happened.”
“I see,” said Bobby. “Where exactly were you, then?”
“I went for a walk.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Often do that?”
“No.”
“Any special reason for taking a walk that evening?”
“I felt like it.”
“Which way did you go?”
“I just wandered around. I didn’t notice much.”
“Meet anyone you knew? Call anywhere?”
“No. I wanted to be alone. That’s why. I mean, that’s why I went for a walk. To be alone and have a think. Business problems,” he added, but so plainly as an afterthought that Bobby almost smiled.
“A bit of bad luck,” he said dryly, “that you should choose to go for a solitary walk on the very night Mr Anderson was murdered. Are you sure you are being quite frank with me?”
“I’ve no proof to give,” Castles admitted. “It happens to be true but I can’t prove it. I hardly know myself where I went exactly. I just wandered around. I wanted to think things out.”
“Was it only business?” Bobby asked.
Castles did not answer. He sat there, his eyes on the ground, silent and frowning. After waiting a little, Bobby said:
“Would you say your feelings towards Mr Anderson were always friendly?”
Castles leaned forward now, staring straight at Bobby.
“I knew you would ask that,” he said. Then he said: “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how you felt towards Mr Anderson?”
“No,” said Castles. After a pause he repeated: “No, I don’t.”
“But surely—” began Bobby, puzzled.
“Sometimes I think I hated him,” Castles said. “There he was every day where my grandfather sat and my father. Even his chair was the one grandfather used. He used to call it his lucky chair, because the first day he bought it and sat in it, he brought off his first big case. And Anderson sat there every day. That was when I hated him, because it was where I ought to have been sitting. I couldn’t help remembering how dad used to leave everything in the practice to him, how easy it would have been for Anderson to trip dad up, to give him the final push downhill. Mother always said that was what happened.” He lifted tortured eyes to Bobby. “Sometimes I thought it was driving me mad. The doubt. Not knowing. Not being sure. Because, you see, there was nothing certain. It was only suspicion, doubt and suspicion. But what was certain, what I knew for fact was that I should have gone to the workhouse when mother died and been thrown out at twelve or thirteen to be an errand boy or something like that, only for Anderson. It was Anderson paid for everything, paid for my education, gave me my articles, promised me a partnership. All that was clear and known and certain. All the other was doubt and wonder and suspicion—and the memory of what my mother said when she was dying, the last words she ever spoke.”
“What were they?” Bobby asked gently.
“She told me to—remember,” Castles said, and the word hung strangely in the quiet and still air.
CHAPTER XII
CASTLES’ STORY
IT WAS CASTLES who broke the silence first.
He said, a tiny pause between each word:
“I suppose you think that’s as good as a confession.”
Bobby said:
“No.”
They remained looking at each other silently for some moments. Then Bobby said:
“It gives you a motive. Other people have motives too.”
Castles got up and went to the window. He stood there, staring down at the busy street without, but seeing nothing save the dead face of his mother, of Anderson. He said without turning round:
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I had a motive.” Then he turned quickly and angrily and stood facing Bobby. “You won’t believe me,” he said. “You won’t understand. No one could. I don’t myself. I don’t know whether it was hate I felt or—or l
iking, gratitude, friendship. Something stronger than that even. Sometimes I lay awake at night and wondered.”
“He had promised you a partnership, hadn’t he?”
Castles nodded.
“You haven’t got it, have you?”
“No.” He went to his chair and sat down. “That was me,” he said. “I mean, I could have had it. I made excuses. More experience. Less responsibility. That sort of thing. Anderson couldn’t make it out. I wanted to be sure. I didn’t want to take anything more from him till—”
“Till—?” Bobby hinted when he paused.
“Till I was sure,” Castles said in a low voice.
They were both silent again. Castles seemed almost to have forgotten his surroundings. He sat there, Bobby thought, almost like a man in a trance. It seemed as if the doubt tearing at his mind made him insensitive to everything else, as a man stretched upon the rack would know only his own agony. Bobby, deeply puzzled, was asking himself if these tormenting doubts were not likely to have had issue in action; in action that would give relief by making decision certain—certain and irrevocable. He said presently:
“You can’t tell me more precisely where you went for your walk that Tuesday evening?”
Castles shook his head.
“You won’t believe me, you won’t understand,” he said again. “No one could. But sometimes when I’ve been going over it in my mind, what Anderson did for me when I was a child, what perhaps he did to my father, how it killed my mother, I sometimes haven’t known what I was doing or remembered it when I had done it. I’ve found myself in different places and not known how I got there. I’ve seen a client and advised him—good sound advice, too—and afterwards I haven’t had an idea who it was or what I had said. It was as if my mind were split in two—one half wondering about Anderson, one half on our clients’ affairs.” He looked up and his anguished and questioning eyes stared at Bobby, stared beyond him as though there were far distant things he saw more plainly. With an obvious effort, in thick, half strangled tones, he muttered: “It used to go round and round in my head, round and round. I thought sometimes it was driving me mad.”
He paused. He appeared to expect some comment. Bobby remained silent, waiting. In tones now so low and hoarse Bobby could hardly distinguish the words, he muttered:
“Perhaps it has.”
Bobby shivered a little. Strange and dreadful was it to hear a man thus question his own sanity. Not without some cause, Bobby thought, for evidently Castles had brooded on the dreadful problem tormenting him to a degree incompatible with perfect mental health. But then Bobby reflected, too, that a police officer must accept nothing without evidence and confirmation. He remembered that it was not unknown for a pretence of insanity to be assumed as a kind of protective armour.
“It’s a pity you can’t say exactly where you went for your walk,” Bobby repeated. “It would help both of us if you could. You say that it wasn’t so very often that you went for long solitary walks?”
“No. Only when I wanted to think—or to stop thinking.”
“Which was it this time?”
“Both, I expect.”
“Any special reason why you should want to think—or not to think—that Tuesday evening? You see, on the face of it, it does look as if there might be some connection. With Anderson’s murder, I mean.”
For the first time in the interview Castles smiled faintly, and oddly enough that faint smile made Bobby feel more uncomfortable than anything else that had passed during their talk.
“I am quite lawyer enough to appreciate that,” Castles said. “I’ve felt that from the first, as soon as I knew.”
“Was there any such special reason?” Bobby persisted.
“Yes.”
“Are you willing to tell me what it was?”
“No.”
“That will make things much more difficult, if you won’t answer,” Bobby pointed out gravely.
Castles, by his silence, seemed to accept this.
Bobby still persisted.
“Was it anything new you had heard or found out about Anderson?”
“He is dead now,” Castles said.
“I don’t think I see what you mean,” Bobby remarked.
Castles made no effort to explain.
“It stands like this,” Bobby went on, watching the other closely. “Sometimes you felt very friendly to Anderson—friendly and grateful for what he had done. Sometimes you felt doubtful and suspicious. You wondered what was really the truth about your father’s ruin. You wondered if Anderson had had a hand in it. You remembered your mother’s last words. There was perpetual doubt and worry in your mind. A divided mind. That’s always dangerous. Then in some way, just recently, you came to know some new fact. Whatever it was, it increased your trouble.”
“I don’t admit that,” Castles interrupted sharply. “I didn’t say that.”
“No. But it is the explanation I shall accept unless and until I get some other. You went for a long walk to think over this new fact. It is almost certain that during that time, during your walk, Mr Anderson was murdered.”
For the second time during this strange interview, in which Castles had shown himself both so frank and so reticent, at one moment laying bare his inmost soul, at another refusing all explanation, Castles smiled; and again his smile had an oddly disturbing effect on Bobby, though why he did not know. Castles said:
“Pretty damning put like that. You would make a good prosecuting counsel. Well, are you going to charge me?”
Bobby shook his head.
“I am sure,” he said, “that as a lawyer you know well enough there is no more than ground for further inquiry. Besides, if I had meant to charge you, I should have had to warn you, shouldn’t I? You’ve been extremely frank with me, Mr Castles, and for that I thank you. You have also refused to answer the most important of my questions—about the new fact you came to know and that you seem to have felt affected your attitude towards Anderson. Are you sure it is wise to keep that to yourself?”
“I’m sure it isn’t. But I’m going to. Also I have not admitted that there is any such new fact.” Then once more he smiled, but this time a boyish, mischievous smile, as he added: “If you were half as clever as people say, you would know without being told.”
“If I were half as clever as people say,” retorted Bobby tartly, “I expect I should be at least twice as clever as I am. One more question: Does Mr Blythe know this new fact you’ve discovered?”
“Well, that’s a clever question, anyhow. I wonder if it means you do know without being told? Anyhow, I’ll answer it. He hasn’t the remotest idea.”
“Did you ever tell anyone else what you’ve told me? I mean about how you felt towards Anderson, sometimes friendly and sometimes—well, not so friendly?”
“Never. Not likely. I suppose you think I’ve been blabbing to you and I suppose I have, and so I dare say you think it’s a habit of mine. It isn’t. I can hold my tongue. Only it’s been a bit of a shock. About Anderson being murdered. That’s why it all came out. It—it’s freed me.” He drew a long breath. “I haven’t got to think about it any more. I needn’t—remember.” He said this with an intensity that showed how deeply the last words spoken by his mother on her death bed had graven themselves on his memory. “It’s all different now,” he said with evident relief.
“No one had any idea of how you felt towards Anderson?”
“I think perhaps Blythe guessed,” Castles admitted, “I don’t know. I never said anything. Once or twice he told me I worried too much. Perhaps he only meant about business. Once or twice he rather stressed how decent Anderson had been in helping me. Then, too, once or twice he said something about people brooding too much and dwelling on the past. And about its being better to put the best interpretation possible on things instead of suspecting the worst. It was always quite general, just general talk. But sometimes it made me think he had an idea of how I felt. He told me once he always knew when one of his Hope
well House boys had something on his mind. Perhaps it was like that with me.”
“Perhaps it was,” agreed Bobby thoughtfully, and Castles said:
“You’ve asked me a good many questions. I would like to ask you one. Is it true Anderson was shot in the back?”
“Yes. Why?”
“It rules out suicide,” Castles answered. “Another thing is that I’ve never touched a revolver in my life—or seen one. Except the one young Dwight brought to the office once. I remember I asked him if he had a licence and he said he had. I never thought of it again till now.”
“Was that long ago?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, yes, a year or two back. I don’t know exactly. Soon after he was articled, I think.” Castles paused and looked uncomfortable. “I suppose you aren’t going to suspect Dwight on the strength of his having had a revolver months ago?”
“Not much in itself,” Bobby agreed, but he was thinking of what had happened at Rose Briar Cottage and of what Mrs Jordan had told him.
Castles plainly found something disturbing in Bobby’s voice.
“Articled clerks don’t go murdering their principal, even if they generally feel like it,” he said, half uneasily, half jokingly. “Dwight had nothing against Anderson. No earthly reason why he should do such a thing.”
“Is that quite certain?” Bobby asked.
“Of course. What do you mean?”
“In some offices,” Bobby reminded him, “there are dislikes, strong dislikes, jealousies. Hatreds even.”
“Not in ours,” said Castles seriously. “I mean, not like that.” He emphasized the last two words with a vague gesture. “Blythe and young Green don’t get on, I know. But that’s no reason why Dwight should murder Anderson, is it?”
“No,” agreed Bobby. “Only sometimes there are love affairs in offices. Where there’s love, there may be hate as well. Have you ever heard anything about Miss Anne Earle? In connection with either of your partners?”
Castles seemed genuinely surprised.
“Good lord, no,” he said. “Anderson’s married, you know, though his wife’s left him. He has his reputation to think of. Wouldn’t do for a well-known solicitor to get mixed up in a scandal. That’s why he never got a divorce. You can’t imagine a man in his position carrying on an intrigue with one of his own staff.”
The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 13
