“You see. Look there.”
Osman had put his hand into his coat pocket and from it he drew a revolver at which he was looking with the same dazed expression he had worn before.
“I didn’t know it was there,” he said bewilderedly.
Mrs Ford took it from him.
“It’s not yours,” she said. “Someone’s pushed it on you.”
“Inspector,” Mr Blythe said, “I think you should take possession of it. Because I should not be surprised if it doesn’t turn out to be the weapon used to kill poor Anderson.”
“No, I shouldn’t either,” Bobby said, and moved forward and took the pistol carefully from Mrs Ford, holding it in a clean handkerchief as he did so. “There may be finger-prints,” he explained.
“There’ll be mine,” Mrs Ford said.
“There may be others, too,” Bobby answered.
“I think we may be sure of that,” said Mr Blythe.
Intent, listening, absorbed, as they all were, they all at once and simultaneously heard a strange, unexpected sound from close behind. When they turned and looked it was to see quite clearly a white hand lifted from the grave and feeling and groping on the earth by its edge.
In the flickering, changing, strong, uncertain light of the burning fire, they saw Anne, pale, living, earth-stained, rise up from the pit into which she had been laid. In horror, in wonder, in fear and in fascination, not able to speak or move, they saw her draw herself to the level ground, stand upright, come a step towards them and then another. She had one hand laid to her breast. She lifted the other. She said clearly and loudly:
“That’s the man who killed Mr Anderson and to-night he killed me because he thought I knew.”
CHAPTER XXI
ARREST
EVEN YET NOT one of those present had either moved or spoken. Stricken into immobility by the strangeness, the horror, the wonder of the scene, they stared bewildered and awe-stricken at the motionless, upright figure of the girl who thus had risen as it seemed from the dead to denounce her slayer. Only the circle of light in which they stood changed and altered, only the shadows came and went as the flame from the burning brushwood waxed and waned, only the crackling and spluttering of the fire broke that enormous silence. In their midst the girl who thus had risen alive from the living grave into which she had been thrown, from which one last effort of her fierce and passionate energy had enabled her to rise, still pointed an accusing hand, and yet at whom she pointed it not one of them could be sure.
Then, slowly, while they yet watched, she seemed to falter; that energy as from another world by which she had been upheld before, began to leave her; her pointing and accusing hand turned and was laid now upon her breast, where was growing steadily a faint stain of blood; she would have fallen had not with a swift, sudden rush Mrs Jordan run forward and gathered her in her arms.
It was as though the woman’s action released them from the spell that had held them all so still and silent. There was among them a general stir and movement, a sharp indrawing of breath till then held suspended, a muttering of low whispered, awe-struck exclamations. In a loud, clear voice Mr Blythe called:
“Inspector. Arrest that man. Osman Ford. You heard. You saw.”
“We all did,” Bobby answered; and clear in his mind was the memory of how Anne had said to him that even from her grave she would rise to be certain that the murderer did not escape.
Mrs Ford cried:
“It was you she pointed at. It was you, George Blythe.”
“A great shock for you, Mrs Ford,” Blythe said, making his voice very gentle. “You can’t believe it. Naturally. None of us can. Only, as Inspector Owen says, ‘We all heard. We all saw.’”
“The first thing is get Miss Earle attended to,” Bobby said.
He moved forward to where Mrs Jordan crouched with the girl held close in her arms. She looked up at him and said:
“Anne is dead. I think perhaps she was already dead when she spoke. Leave me alone with her, my Anne, my daughter, my child.”
“Was she your daughter?” Bobby asked.
“Mine and Osman Ford’s,” Mrs Jordan answered. “I never dared tell her. I left her on a doorstep when she was a baby, and so I never dared tell her who I was because she never forgave it. She was hard, hard, but it was that made her so hard.”
“A second murder,” Mr Blythe’s clear, loud voice broke in, authoritative and stern. “Inspector.”
“A second murder. Yes,” Bobby said and stood up.
“You’ll find the same pistol has been used,” Blythe went on. “First for Anderson. Now for Miss Earle. You saw yourself Ford take it from his pocket.”
“I never saw it before,” Osman said, but in a curiously aloof, almost disinterested voice. “I don’t know how it got there.” He moved nearer to Mrs Jordan. Looking down at her, he said: “You never told me. Why didn’t you?”
“I meant to,” she said slowly. “That’s why I came back. To get money from you for holding my tongue. But that was before I knew what it was to have a daughter. I don’t think I ever thought of her twice after I put her down there on that doorstep and left her. Now she’s left me. That’s fair does. God always plays fair in the end, don’t he? You see,” she went on, still speaking directly to Osman, “if I had told you, you would have told her, and then she would have known, and I couldn’t risk that, knowing how she felt.”
Mrs Ford was standing now by her husband’s side.
“You were a great fool,” she said dispassionately. “Hadn’t you the sense to see what was making her hard as you call it, was just that she was alone, poor kid? She hated the mother who left her. That’s why she took up with Anderson, because he had been deserted too. She hated the mother who left her. She would have loved the mother who came back.”
“I suppose I’ve always done wrong,” Mrs Jordan said, and bowed herself lower yet over the still body in her arms.
“Did you know?” Osman said slowly to his wife.
“I guessed,” she answered. “It wasn’t difficult. The first time I saw Anne I saw a look of you in the eyes. Then I saw her again and just the same slow fire in her there always is in you. I think I ought to have told you, but I didn’t know what to do, and I knew, too, because I watched the cottage, that she had got herself mixed up with Anderson. Perhaps I shouldn’t have guessed so soon if I hadn’t recognized Mrs Jordan and known her again for the Edie Earle you carried on with before Youngman cut you out with her as he tried to cut you out with me. But I shouldn’t have known her again so quick, only for you going to her cottage and my watching to find out why.”
“You knew about that, too?” Osman asked her bewilderedly.
“Of course I did, you great goop,” she told him. “Think I’ve no eyes in my head? I guessed it was money she wanted from you. I could see well enough there was nothing else she was like to ask for—or get. I expect you run straight, Osman Ford, because you haven’t the wits to run crooked.” With a gesture that took all sting from the words, she put up her hand to reach, not without difficulty, the big man’s shoulder. “Or even maybe the wish,” she said. “Of course, I always knew you had been tangled up with Edie, and when Youngman was found drowned and Edie ran away—”
“It was an accident,” Mrs Jordan said. ‘We were larking by the canal and he went a bit too far, so I gave him a push and he fell in the canal and I ran away. I never thought he would get more than a ducking. I never thought about his getting drowned. I thought he would just climb out. I suppose it was through his having had drink. When I heard he had been found drowned and the police asking questions, I got frightened and I left my baby on a doorstep because I didn’t know then what it meant to have a daughter, and I went to London and then I got to Australia and then I came back thinking to get money out of Osman because if he didn’t I would tell about Anne, but then I didn’t dare, because I couldn’t without Anne knowing I was the mother she had cursed in church before the altar when she was a kid. But all that’s o
ver now, for this is the end.”
“Not the end, poor woman, I’m afraid,” Blythe said in a low voice to Bobby. “I don’t see how to keep her name out of it. Do you?”
There came a sudden interruption. A very loud, very angry voice bellowed:
“Put out that light. What’s going on here? An air-raid warning on and you start a bonfire. I’ll trouble you for your names and addresses, please.”
There came into the light from the burning brushwood a constable in uniform, that Constable Smith who had made the first report on Rose Briar Cottage. He saw Bobby, recognized him and stopped dead, very much surprised. Mr Blythe said in that clear, authoritative voice of his:
“There has been murder done, constable. That man.” He pointed to Osman Ford. “We are all witnesses of how he was denounced and the Inspector even has the murder weapon with his finger prints on it.”
Bobby was still holding the revolver Osman Ford had taken from his pocket, saying as he did so that he did not know how it had got there. Mr Blythe pointed to it. Bobby said:
“There is a little blood on it, too.”
“Well, it’s not mine,” Mr Blythe said quickly, instinctively putting up a hand to touch his cheek where the scratch across it had bled freely.
“Osman’s not hurt, Osman’s not bleeding anywhere,” Mrs Ford interposed.
“Isn’t he?” Mr Blythe said. “I think you are, though.” He made a gesture towards her hand, where in fact the freshly-made scratch, inflicted recently as she scrambled through the hawthorn hedge around the garden, was bleeding slightly.
She looked at the small wound with a surprised air, as if aware of it for the first time, and Bobby said to Constable Smith:
“Never mind that now. I expect a test will show what group it belongs to and that may help.”
“Mine’s the rarest of all,” Mrs Ford said. “Class 3 or something. A doctor told me once. That’ll prove it isn’t mine.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Blythe said, loudly and impatiently.
To the staring and still bewildered Constable Smith, Bobby said:
“Arrest Mr George Blythe. Take him to Long Barsley. I am charging him with the murder of Nathaniel Anderson, and the murder, to-night, of Anne Earle.”
“Preposterous, preposterous,” Mr Blythe almost shouted, but Constable Smith’s hand was on his left shoulder and on his right stood Bobby. “You can’t do this,” Blythe said in a sort of hoarse whisper. “Think of what it’ll mean to Hopewell House and all the lads there.”
“Coming quietly, are you?” Constable Smith said.
CHAPTER XXII
CONCLUSION
BOBBY’S FIRST ANXIETY now was to make a full report to his chief, but only after a no doubt very proper display of professional hesitation did the doctor in attendance on Colonel Glynne agree that this might be done.
“An extraordinary story,” the colonel commented when Bobby had finished. “You took rather a risk though in arresting Blythe on the spot. I think in your place I should have felt it more prudent to wait. Of course, it’s all right now the accountants have found proof that it was Blythe who first embezzled the Osman Ford money for his beloved Hopewell House and then, when he knew Castles had discovered there was something wrong with the Ford account and was probably going to tax Anderson with it, embezzled Anderson’s estate to make up the deficiency, after first killing Anderson to make sure there were no protests from that quarter. Odd that with so many motives for murder on the surface, the true murder motive should lie so deep. Though I don’t suppose Blythe ever contemplated murder when he first began monkeying with the Ford trust fund.”
“I daresay not,” Bobby agreed. “I daresay Blythe was like the office boy who takes a shilling from the petty cash, meaning to put it back next day, only next day he hasn’t got it, so he takes another shilling to hide the first deficiency and so gets deeper and deeper every day. But for Castles’ discovery and Blythe’s conviction that Castles meant to tax Anderson with it, when Blythe’s own guilt was bound to come out, I don’t suppose the murder would ever have been committed. An odd point is that it is quite possible Castles would never have said anything. One half of him felt deeply grateful to Anderson, even fond of Anderson, who had shown him a good deal of kindness. I quite believe him when he says that he had more than half made up his mind to hold his tongue and be content with the knowledge that he could ruin Anderson if he wished to. It put them on equal terms so to say. A complicated, confused state of mind, but I think I can understand it. If he struck, his blow was at the man to whom he owed everything and but for whom he would never have had the opportunity. But Blythe was not to know there was so good a chance that Castles would say nothing. All Blythe saw was that the truth was on the point of coming out and that he had to stop it. If he didn’t there would be disaster both for himself and for Hopewell House—or at least he thought so because he had so thoroughly identified himself with the place. I honestly believe he had got himself into thinking that anything he did for the benefit of Hopewell House was justified. Since his arrest he has said in so many words that it was better to use the Mrs Osman Ford capital for Hopewell House than to leave it lying idle in investments. The annual interest payable to Mrs Ford he felt able to provide when it was wanted, and he was confident the capital would never have to be produced as he knew Anderson was fully determined not to let it be realized. Of course, the whole situation changed when it became clear that Castles suspected something was wrong. I fancy Blythe still felt justified. Anything was, if only it helped Hopewell House. A disinterested murderer, in fact.”
“That is what helped to make it so difficult,” the colonel remarked. “A disinterested motive is hard to discover. But you’ve felt sure he was your man for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Well, sir, I would rather say it was only very strong suspicion. I only felt certain when he tried to rush me into arresting Osman Ford. I thought it quite clear he had a motive for showing such anxiety. Then he made such a point of Osman’s finger prints being on the pistol when everybody had seen Osman take it out of his pocket. Besides, those bulging pockets in that loose sort of Norfolk jacket Osman Ford always wore were simply a gift to anyone wanting to plant anything on him—especially in that darkness and confusion and with the man himself in the sort of dazed muddled bewilderment he had fallen into. Then, too, I noticed there was blood on the pistol grip and that suggested Blythe had been handling it. His face was bleeding quite freely where he had managed to give it a bad scratch, bumping against something in the dark. He tried to turn that off by pointing out that Mrs Ford had cut her hand and saying she had had hold of the pistol. But I could see the blood on it wasn’t so fresh as all that.”
“It would only have been your word against his,” the colonel remarked. “A jury might have hesitated. An element of doubt.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “I expect it’s just as well that the experts can prove that Mrs Ford’s blood and Blythe’s belong to different groups. Luckily hers belongs to group three, which is the rare one. His belongs to group two, which is much commoner. And as the blood on the pistol is group two, and no one else present had any scratch or wound, it seems pretty conclusive.”
“Juries baulk at scientific evidence,” observed the colonel, who was inclined to do so himself. “They don’t like it. Too unfamiliar. Have you got your whole train of thought in order?”
“I think so, sir,” Bobby said. “What first started me wondering was that incident when Blythe and I found Castles examining Anderson’s private ledger. You remember I mentioned that to you the last time I saw you, when we had finished considering all the various possibilities.”
“I remember,” Colonel Glynne answered. “You mean that Blythe knew at once it was the Osman Ford account Castles was looking at, though the ledger was upside down to him and though he went out of his way to tell you he had never seen the book open before.”
“Yes, sir,” Bobby agreed. “I don’t suppose I should have thought
so much of it, if Osman Ford hadn’t told me about his suspicions. The ledger incident didn’t quite fit, and when there’s even the smallest suggestion of crooked work it is as well to notice and remember every trifle. The truth may be incredible and often is, but it always hangs together and that is just what crooked work never does. Then I began to notice other things. I knew Blythe had shown uneasiness when Osman Ford questioned him about the money. That looked as if Blythe knew there was a good reason for uneasiness. The amount of the Ford fund—£5,000—was the exact amount presented to Hopewell House through Blythe by what Blythe called to me his very useful friend, ‘Mr Anon’. There was a sort of odd—I hardly know what to call it—secret significance perhaps—in his voice when he said that. I wondered if ‘Mr Anon’ had been very useful some other way some other time. Then the first time I saw him he gave me the idea he would have liked to hear more about Miss Earle’s visit and he seemed to be rather unnecessarily communicative. Nervous people often are and I wondered if he were nervous; and if so, why. And I didn’t like the more than touch of fanaticism he seemed to show when he said, speaking of his work for Hopewell House: ‘That Counts’. I thought it sounded very much as if for him nothing else counted; and in the end nothing else did count, neither theft nor murder nor the effort to send an innocent man to the gallows for his own crime. Or for that matter burying a victim alive, though possibly he did not realize Miss Earle was still living when he threw her body in the pit he had dug.”
“A strange state of mind,” Colonel Glynne commented. “He must really have managed to persuade himself that everything was permitted to him if it helped his Hopewell House. The Disinterested Murderer, as you called him.”
“I think, too,” Bobby went on, “that he was genuinely shocked by the connection between Anderson and Miss Earle. Yet he tried to persuade me that he took a very lenient view of it. That was another small inconsistency to remember, and every inconsistency may turn out important, however small and trivial it seems. What was certain was that if Osman Ford’s suspicions were correct and the trust fund had been tampered with, then the person responsible must be one of the three—Anderson, Blythe, or Castles. When Anderson was murdered, it was only logical to assume some connection between that and the trust fund fraud. But that there had been such a fraud wasn’t at all certain, and for a time it seemed as if no embezzlement could have actually taken place, since Blythe was promising full and immediate payment. But then it appeared that Anderson’s estate was mysteriously small. It ought, Blythe admitted, I expect it was too obvious from the office accounts to be denied, to have been about £10,000. And £10,000 is twice £5,000. We knew one £5,000 had gone to Miss Earle. It seemed logical to suppose that the missing £5,000 Blythe had been able as executor to use to replace the missing trust fund, to satisfy Osman Ford. He hadn’t much to fear from any inquiry by the wife absent in America. I couldn’t help noticing £5,000 was the sum Blythe had guaranteed for the Hopewell House building extensions.”
The Dark Garden: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 23
