Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Why should any one want to poison her?” Olive asked.

  “Well, there’s the suggestion she made herself—that she knows something. Or if she’s the mysterious missing heir there’ve been so many hints about, and if some one knows it, then it might be an attempt to put her out of the way. That brings in Olga Severn again. She means to marry Martin, but wants him as part heir to the Weston estate, so tries to wipe out Thomasine to make sure Martin gets his share. Pure guesswork. Thomasine is a bit of the dark horse in the case. Only the private secretary, apparently, but was she more? Self-contained, enigmatic. Formidable in the sort of dark restraint she shows. There’s this against her—she has lied twice over in two instances. At least, unless her suggestion is valid and it was Olga Severn I heard that night, deliberately imitating her. Anyhow, the other lie is patent.”

  “Yes, I know,” agreed Olive thoughtfully. “One lie, perhaps.” With a slight gesture Olive dismissed one lie as merely an example of human frailty. “But twice, I don’t like twice. Besides, what possible motive—unless she really is the possible, improbable lawful heir.”

  “No birth certificate to check up on,” Bobby said. “Born abroad. There are points against her, serious points. Familiarity with Weston’s affairs, the house and the domestic arrangements generally. And I don’t like the coincidence of her buying a Japanese dagger so short a time ago. Of course, she has her explanation—pat, almost too pat, like the repaid half-crown that clinches their alibi. She is in the picture all right, and though it’s not evidence, I don’t much like either that odd little incident I told you about the first time I saw Franks.”

  “I should put that out of my mind if I were you,” said Olive firmly. “Far too flimsy.”

  “It worries me,” Bobby repeated. “How on earth can you account for her having fallen for a nonentity like Ronald Franks?”

  “The attraction of opposites,” Olive suggested. “Mother instinct, too. Every woman is a mother. Girl babies grab at dolls before they can walk or talk. A husband is only a bigger and more troublesome child she has to look after, worse luck.” Here Bobby interposed a murmured “Don’t mind me”, and Olive didn’t, but went on: “Thomasine is an unusual type. She feels—and is—different. She feels—and is—superior in many ways to most young men. But all they see in her is a pretty girl, different from other pretty girls only in being prettier than most—a striking girl, as you told Franks. But when she meets him she fascinates him, she finds she can dominate him, she feels she can express herself through him as a mother expresses herself through her child, he becomes her child. And men may think women are a poor, weak, soft lot, but steel is butter to a woman when it comes to protecting her child.”

  “Psychology,” said Bobby, with a certain doubt in his voice.

  “Theft is only theft,” Olive replied, “but there’s always psychology where there’s murder.”

  “Um umm,” said Bobby. “If it comes to psychology, what about Bessie Bell? Quite a little history there of readiness to resort to violence. There’s something she wants to keep quiet, too, or why did she go in such a funk to see Weston when he sent for her, and why her secret excursions on her days off? We’ll have to try to follow her, but it won’t be easy. She is very much on her guard. And you can’t shut your eyes to the possibility that, having a secret to keep, she struck to guard it still.”

  “Do you believe Olga Severn,” Olive asked abruptly, “when she says Mr Weston wanted to marry her?”

  “If it’s true, it may explain why she and her aunt have quarrelled,” Bobby said. “We’ve traced the chocolates to her, but we can’t prove some one else didn’t get hold of them, poison them and send them to Thomasine. The snag there is that neither Olga nor her aunt will let us take their finger-prints and the careful English law won’t let us insist. And if we got them by too barefaced trickery, and that came out at the trial, ten to one the jury would say it wasn’t fair and acquit on the spot. There are times when British ideas about fair play do tie up a poor, hardworking policeman. Anyhow, both of them were very much on their guard, and I should guess Miss Olga has cool, dry fingertips and doesn’t make dabs easily; except on nice dusty surfaces, for instance. But the trouble is that those we found in the summer-house don’t agree with those on her vanity case, which, however, do agree with those in the knee-hole of the writing-desk. So far, though, no way of pinning them on either of the Severn women—or on any one else for that matter. Anyhow, as they both say Weston had proposed marriage, one of them must be lying.”

  “Why?” asked Olive.

  “Oh, well,” said Bobby doubtfully.

  “Two strings to his bow,” said Olive, “and meant neither, perhaps, except—well, except as an opening gambit. He was that sort, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, well,” said Bobby again. “Well, we may have hit on the reason aunt and niece quarrelled, and perhaps also why Miss Florence Severn let her ring slip off her finger the first time I saw her.”

  “Wasn’t that just because it was too big and didn’t fit?” Olive asked.

  “I think perhaps it was because it did fit in another sense,” Bobby answered gravely.

  Olive looked thoughtful, and then said, yes, there was that, when you came to think of it. Then she added that in her opinion, they had better now go to bed, as they had talked quite long enough without getting much further forward. But Bobby said he would sit up a little longer and try to rack his brains a little harder still. It was indeed getting on in the small hours when at last he went upstairs, where he found the light still on and Olive wide awake. She said:—

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Any result?” asked Bobby.

  “A headache,” said Olive sadly.

  Bobby sat down on the edge of the bed and looked equally sad.

  “I’ve been trying,” he remarked, “to pick out the significant factors.”

  “What are they?” asked Olive. “I don’t see how you can tell in such a confusion of things that may mean a lot or may mean nothing at all.”

  Bobby began to enumerate those he had tried to select, holding up successive fingers as he mentioned each one in turn.

  “First, Weston got both Martin Wynne and Bessie Bell to his house on the night of the murder, which seems to suggest there’s a link between them.

  “Second. He got me there, too—like his confounded cheek—and that suggests he thought the link, whatever it was, was a police matter. Thirdly. He had the—the—”

  “Damn cheek,” suggested Olive. “I know that’s what you want to say, so you may as well get it out.”

  “Thank you,” said Bobby, deeply appreciative of such wifely tact. “He had the—as you say—to hint he knew how to make himself unpleasant to policemen who didn’t do what he wanted. Suggestion is he wanted to scare Wynne and Bessie by using my presence as a kind of hint of making a criminal charge, but at the same time didn’t want to press it, and wanted to be sure I wouldn’t either. So the thing is to find out what he knew or thought he knew. All probable and improbable records are being searched, but so far without any luck, and it’s not likely they themselves will tell.”

  “Well, why should they?” asked Olive, very reasonably, and Bobby went on, unheeding:—

  “Fourth. Mr Edwardes was there also the same night, but much later. That, suggests Weston meant either to tell him what he knew about Wynne, or more probably he hoped to be able to say he had nobbled Wynne, who held the, so to say, balance of power, and so had hamstrung Edwardes’s plans for the new deal at the Weston West Mills.”

  “And how much further forward,” asked Olive, “does all that take you?”

  “Not an inch,” admitted Bobby, “so far. But I think there’s just a faint suggestion of a background appearing.

  “Fifthly. We found an envelope marked ‘Family Papers—Re Aggie’, but containing only bank-notes. Query: Who was Aggie?”

  “Aren’t you being,” Olive asked, “a good deal better at asking questions than at answering th
em?”

  “Find the right questions,” retorted Bobby sententiously, “and you get the right answers.

  “Sixthly. We found a confession of theft and embezzlement signed by John Wilkie.

  “Seventhly. Weston had sent for him, too. That suggests Wilkie also was to be made use of. And here you get the general conclusion that Weston had in hand some complicated plan to upset the new deal Edwardes proposed. But there’s no certainty that this plan was the direct cause of what happened. It may be that some one else knew about it and saw a chance to twist it to another purpose.”

  “Complicated cross purposes,” commented Olive.

  “Oh, it’s complicated all right,” declared Bobby. “A bundle of clues all pointing different ways. But did Wilkie know why he had been sent for? Was he afraid Weston was going to use that confession? Or even that fresh embezzlements had come to light? It’s quite plain he lied when he said he reached Midwych by the train due in at four that morning. He was certainly on the spot much earlier. And what for?”

  “How do you know?” demanded Olive.

  “Oh, come,” protested Bobby. “You can be quicker in the uptake than that. Stands out a mile. Gives him a motive if he thought he was going to be prosecuted. But there’s still another person we know was on the scene that night. Olga Severn. She spoke to me, you remember, mistaking me for Wynne. Which looks as if she knew what was going on and was waiting for Wynne so she could hear the result. I take it she and Wynne are in love. If it was Olga who was in the summer-house with him till all hours that night, the presumption is they had something important to talk about. Not a very long shot to suppose it was connected with whatever it may be Weston thought he had found out about Wynne and Bessie.”

  “Can they be married?” Olive asked.

  “No telling. The records have been looked up without result. Anyhow, if they are, why should that give Weston a hold on them? Why should that make Weston think he could threaten police action?”

  “Don’t forget either, you don’t really know it was Olga Severn in the summer-house,” Olive warned him.

  “What we do know, anyhow, is that the dabs in the summer-house do not agree with those on her vanity case, but the vanity case dabs agree with the ones on the panelling of the knee-hole of Weston’s writing-table. There I think—I think—I think—” said Bobby very slowly, “I think we come to the crux of the whole business.”

  “I don’t see why,” protested Olive, really puzzled this time.

  “Because,” explained Bobby, “Miss Florence Severn is now having that ring of hers altered to fit, so it won’t come off her finger so easily any more. We know that because she’s being watched.”

  “Oh, well, yes,” said Olive, considering this. “Yes, I see. Only—well, I still don’t see how you are going to get over the Rowe and Franks joint alibi.”

  “A snag,” Bobby agreed. “A big snag. That brings up another important point. She seems to be passionately in love with Franks, but is he with her?”

  “No,” said Olive. “Fascinated,” she suggested.

  “That’s how I see it,” Bobby said. “Rabbit and boa constrictor.”

  “Poor Thomasine,” said Olive.

  “You mean, poor Ronald Franks, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Olive. “I mean what I said—poor Thomasine.”

  “Oh, well,” said Bobby doubtfully.

  “She has great love for him,” Olive said, “and he has little or none for her. That is not only tragedy. It is a cause of tragedy. I think perhaps she knows deep down inside her how little he really cares, and, Bobby, I begin to think that it’s there is the root of it all.”

  Bobby looked at her uncomfortably.

  “I believe I had the same idea, only I didn’t want to,” he said. “All the same, he is altogether under her influence, whether it’s love or merely fascination. She can make him do anything she wants.”

  “What is there she could want to make him do?” Olive asked uneasily, for she thought she knew.

  Bobby, profoundly disturbed, was beginning to walk up and down the room.

  “What it all adds up to,” he said, “is where are the half-dozen poisoned chocolates missing from the box some one unknown sent Thomasine Rowe?”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  BOBBY PERTURBED

  IT WAS, indeed, the thought of those missing chocolates and of the purpose for which they might be destined that was chiefly troubling Bobby all through the routine of ordinary work demanding his attention during the earlier part of the following day.

  True, the careful analysis he, with Olive’s help, had made of the known facts—relevant and irrelevant—enabled him to feel he saw at last a reasonable pattern of events beginning to emerge. But small was the gain, small the advantage, when there lay so heavy on his mind the threat of yet more tragedy to come.

  “What we think we know,” he said to Payne, whose mood was almost as gloomy as his own, “is no more evidence than what the soldier said.”

  “What isn’t evidence,” Payne pointed out, “is often much better evidence than what is.”

  Bobby nodded assent to a platitude of police experience, and later on was informed that Mr Edwardes had called and was asking for an interview.

  “Good,” said Bobby; who always felt it was promising when possible suspects came forward of their own accord to make statements which might be true, when they were useful, or might be false, when very likely they would be more useful still.

  So he had Mr Edwardes shown in at once, and Mr Edwardes told him smilingly that now everything was settled at the Weston West Mills for the establishment of the new “common good” order.

  “I’ve set up a trust,” he explained. “I call it ‘common good’ rather than ‘common wealth’, because good is more than wealth and a better thing to aim at. So now I shan’t care so much if you do want to arrest me. I take it I am still under suspicion?”

  “Why not?” Bobby asked, thinking the time had come to apply a little pressure; “when we know you were with Weston late on the night of the murder and you have tried to keep it secret.”

  “Oh, you know about that,” Mr Edwardes said, looking very surprised. “How do you know?” Bobby did not answer. Mr Edwardes went on: “I thought if you knew, you would think it proof. I did mean to tell you finally. You won’t believe that now, but it’s true. I made up my mind I would get my trust going first. After that, I shan’t care so much, one way or another. By the way, I didn’t kill Weston. I suppose you think I should say so anyhow. He was perfectly all right when I left. But I think he was expecting some one. While we were talking we had a drink in the dining-room, and all the time he was listening and watching, watching the door of the study opposite and listening. It was plain he was expecting something or some one. I knew enough of his reputation to guess it was a woman. No business of mine. He began to be anxious to get rid of me, too, though he had asked me to come.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He hinted that unless Martin and I withdrew our plans for the Weston West Mills, he would ruin Martin.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that was his affair and Martin’s, not mine. I think he hadn’t expected that.” Abruptly Mr Edwardes paused and added: “Don’t think I’m trying to push suspicion off myself on to Martin. I’m not.”

  “If you had your drink in the dining-room,” Bobby asked, “how is it the tray and glasses were in the study?”

  “I don’t know; I can’t explain that,” Mr Edwardes answered. “Throws doubt on my story, I suppose. I can’t help that.”

  Bobby made no comment, though he could see a possible explanation. The assassin might easily have opened the study door to listen if any of the inmates of the house had been disturbed or were stirring. On seeing a tray and recently used glasses through the open door of the dining-room, the idea might easily have been conceived of carrying them into the study, so as to point suspicion in another direction. In a way, all this seemed to support r
ather than to throw doubt on Edwardes’s story. Mr Edwardes went on:—

  “I didn’t come here to talk about that. John Wilkie called to see me this morning.”

  “Yes?” said Bobby encouragingly.

  “Primarily to borrow another ten pounds,” Mr Edwardes continued. “Apparently he has been cultivating Franks. He seems to think Franks is the murderer. Improbable in my opinion. Wilkie has been standing him drinks. That’s what’s become of the first ten pounds I lent him, he says.”

  “Doing detective work on his own account?” Bobby asked.

  “Yes. He says he knows you are trying to get him. A mistake on your part, if you are. Dishonest and a rogue, no doubt, but I can’t think he would commit murder.” Edwardes paused to frown angrily, and then went on: “He says you’ve warned him not to leave Midwych. But he says you didn’t tell him how he was to live. Actually he has been living on my ten pounds. He says he won’t be safe till you’ve found the real culprit. So he has been having a try on his own account.”

  “Stupid of him,” Bobby said uneasily. “It’s dangerous to go hunting a killer—very dangerous without experience or help. He’s got to stop it.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Edwardes said, and looked uneasy too. “Perhaps that’s what it means. He told me some vague story I couldn’t make head or tail of about how soon there would be more trouble, and something about poison.”

  When he heard this last word Bobby sat upright and looked startled. Mr Edwardes saw, and said quickly:—

  “Oh, you understand?”

  “I don’t. I wish I did,” Bobby answered. “I must get hold of Wilkie and find out what he does mean.”

  “He promised to come with me to see you,” Mr Edwardes said. “He was to meet me at the ’bus terminus. He wasn’t there. I waited a little and then rang up home. I thought he might have gone there by mistake. He hadn’t, but there was a ’phone message from him to say he had found out something important and was following I would know who. Franks, I suppose.”