There's a Reason for Everything: A Bobby Owen Mystery Read online

  E.R. Punshon

  There’s a Reason for Everything

  With a slow gesture of one lifted hand, Bobby pointed. There, in a space between the prostrate stag and posturing goddess, was a human leg, a twisted, motionless leg in a strained, unnatural position.

  Bobby Owen, now Deputy Chief Constable of Wychshire, finds himself taking part in a ghost hunt at legendary haunted mansion Nonpareil. What he discovers is the very real corpse of a paranormal investigator. It seems that among the phantoms there are fakes – but will that end up including a priceless painting by Vermeer?

  There’s a Reason for Everything was first published in 1945, the twenty-first of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series eventually including thirty-five novels. This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

  “What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” DOROTHY L. SAYERS

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Contents

  Introduction by Curtis Evans

  Chapter I ASSORTED

  Chapter II LEGENDS

  Chapter III HEIRLOOMS

  Chapter IV ESCAPE

  Chapter V SCULPTURE

  Chapter VI MARMADUKE

  Chapter VII SEARCH

  Chapter VIII FOOTSTEPS

  Chapter IX INTRUDER

  Chapter X BETTY

  Chapter XI HONOURABLES

  Chapter XII MOTIVE

  Chapter XIII QUESTIONS

  Chapter XIV ACCUSATION

  Chapter XV SUSPECT

  Chapter XVI PURSUIT

  Chapter XVII CAPTIVES

  Chapter XVIII RESCUE

  Chapter XIX SPADES

  Chapter XX PORTRAIT

  Chapter XXI TAXI

  Chapter XXII OBSTRUCTION

  Chapter XXIII CONSULTATION

  Chapter XXIV TEA

  Chapter XXV LADYLIKE

  Chapter XXVI EXPECTED

  Chapter XXVII EX-CONVICT

  Chapter XXVIII DISAPPOINTMENT

  Chapter XXIX CONFESSION

  Chapter XXX RE-ASSURANCE

  Chapter XXXI SHOES

  Chapter XXXII IMPRISONED

  Chapter XXXIII CUPBOARD

  Chapter XXXIV GIRL–BOY

  Chapter XXXV NARRATIVE

  Chapter XXXVI DEDUCTION

  Chapter XXXVII CONCLUSION

  About the Author

  The Bobby Owen Mysteries

  It Might Lead Anywhere – Title Page

  It Might Lead Anywhere – Chapter One

  Copyright

  Introduction

  “What’s all this excitement about the Vermeer, even if it exists?” Bobby demanded. “It won’t belong to either of you even if it does turn up. …”

  “… My good man, think of the publicity, think of the advertisement. You would be famous ever after. The Man Who Found the Lost Vermeer. Why, the BBC would most likely let you give a special broadcast about it all to yourself—and what else is fame but a special BBC broadcast? Apart from the chance of getting in a first offer or else of getting the sole sale rights as agent. Or rights of reproduction—a goldmine. And you ask me why so much excitement?”

  Near the end of the Second World War, in May 1945, Dutch artist Han Van Meegeren (1889-1947) was arrested in the Netherlands, on the grave charge of having collaborated with the Nazis. Van Meegeren stood accused of having sold, during the period when the Netherlands was under armed occupation, a painting by the great seventeenth-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer to no less notorious a personage than German Field-Marshal Hermann Goering. Van Meegeren’s defense was a novel one indeed: he claimed that the painting, The Woman Taken in Adultery, was not an authentic Vermeer, but rather a forgery, painted by his own hand. It emerged that Van Meegeren in fact had quite lucratively forged not only this painting, but more than a dozen additional purported Vermeers as well, bamboozling the collectors and experts of his day and accomplishing one of the greatest deceptions in the history of the world of art. (For detailed accounts of the man and his misdeeds see Jonathan Lopez’s The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han Van Meegeren and Edward Dolnick’s The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century, both of which were originally published in 2008.)

  Was the Van Meegeren art scandal a source of inspiration for There’s a Reason for Everything, E.R. Punshon’s twenty-first Bobby Owen detective novel, which was first published in England in September 1945 and concerns the fervid pursuit by several scheming parties of a purported lost Vermeer? In previous books in the Bobby Owen series Punshon had evinced considerable interest in art (Murder Abroad, Diabolic Candelabra, Secrets Can’t Be Kept) and additionally he had drawn significantly on contemporary criminal news in a couple of other Bobby Owen mysteries of fairly recent vintage (Murder Abroad, once again, as well as the highly-regarded Comes a Stranger; see my pieces in the recent Dean Street Press reissues of these volumes). Bobby himself, Punshon had noted in several books in the series, had a talent for, and interest in, art; and on different occasions both he and his wife Olive expressed great admiration for English artist William Hogarth’s exquisite study in flesh tones, The Shrimp Girl (c. 1740s). Moreover, as a crime writer Punshon doubtlessly would have found utterly fascinating the brazen forgery career of Han Van Meegeren, recently dubbed, in a nod to noted American noir novelist Patricia Highsmith, “a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush.”

  In There’s a Reason for Everything, Punshon entertainingly draws not only, seemingly, on recent art news, but on the classic British haunted house story. When the novel opens, Bobby Owen has recently been officially promoted to Deputy Chief Constable of Wychshire--his loyal assistant, Sergeant (now Inspector) Payne, has taken Bobby’s previous position as head of the Wychshire CID--and Bobby is at the moment “feeling both a trifle unemployed and a trifle grand … in his big new office on the first floor [second floor to Americans--CE] of the Wychshire county police headquarters.” However, Bobby loses any reason to feel bored, when, while participating in a ghost hunt at Nonpareil, the abandoned and ostensibly phantom-infested country mansion of the de Tallebois family, finds not some ancient apparition but the all too corporeal body of a very recently slain man. Haunted houses figured in Golden Age detective fiction with some frequency—Punshon’s Detection Club colleagues John Dickson Carr and Gladys Mitchell had, for example, recently memorably employed them in their respective novels The Man Who Could Not Shudder (1940) and When Last I Died (1942)—but this was the first occasion in the Bobby Owen series where Punshon had drawn on the tradition.

  In this case it transpires, however, that the dead man--paranormal investigator Dr. Clem Jones, of Wessex and Mercia University—may not have been chasing “so much a ghost as a Vermeer that might run to six figures if you landed the right American millionaire.” (Here Punshon likely is referring to the late American banker and art collector Andrew Mellon, who in the 1920s purchased not only a genuine Vermeer, The Girl with the Red Hat, but what were later confirmed to be a pair of Van Meegeren forgeries of Vermeer, The Laughing Girl and The Lace Maker.) Bobby has his hands full with this case, having to deal not only with bogies and bloody murder but the mysterious machinations of rival art experts—a rum lot indeed!

  With There’s a Reason for Everything E.R. Punshon fashioned a pleasingly intricate and wryly amusing account of murder and art, which in its sophisticated tone is reminiscent of detective novels by Scottish writer and academician Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart), an author Punshon greatly admired. Much t
o Punshon’s pleasure, Innes would be accepted into the Detection Club in 1949, the same year he took a teaching position at Christ Church, Oxford. Three years later Innes would publish what still is one of the most highly regarded British art mysteries, A Private View. As for There’s a Reason for Everything, it rightfully received high praise in the San Francisco Chronicle from the discerning American critic Anthony Boucher, who in his notice took time to congratulate Bobby Owen on his recent promotion: “No fictional policeman deserves professional advancement more than solid, intelligent Bobby Owen. It’s gratifying to learn he’s now deputy chief constable of Wychshire and equally gratifying to know that his promotion doesn’t keep him from investigating such absorbing problems as this. …” With more of an eye for the book buyer’s bottom line, Will Cuppy in his piece in the New York Herald Tribune Book Review wrote: “A splendid riddle, partly plush and partly modern jigsaw, in Mr. Punshon’s top vein. Your money’s worth of real British detection and trimmings to match.”

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER I

  ASSORTED

  Newly appointed Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Owen, feeling both a trifle unemployed and a trifle grand, sat in his big new office on the first floor of the Wychshire county police headquarters, while below, on the ground floor, in Bobby’s old office, reigned Inspector Payne, new head of the Wychshire C.I.D., and so dealing with all that routine work which, as Deputy Chief Constable, Bobby had now relinquished to Payne’s care. It was a loss he was inclined occasionally to regret because of the close relationship into which it had brought him both with events and with his men. Now Payne only let him know those more important events he thought worthy of troubling the remote dignity of a Deputy Chief.

  Even promotion, Bobby reflected with some surprise, has its thorns, and though, as Chief Constable’s private secretary, the position he had previously doubled with that of head of the Wychshire C.I.D., he had long acted in practice as deputy, now his position was official, and due etiquette had to be observed. And Payne, jealous of his own new dignity, was taking care that it was so observed, and that no superior got away with any poaching on his preserves.

  One letter this morning he had, however, allowed to be passed on for Bobby’s information and direction. Because it was so unimportant, Bobby suspected, though certainly a little out of the way. It was from a Dr. Clem Jones, of Wessex and Mercia University, and was to the effect that he and two or three friends and colleagues had received permission from Mr. Ivor de Tallebois to investigate the rumours of renewed hauntings at Nonpareil, the ancient seat of the Tallebois family, though it is true that there seemed some doubt as to the exact connection of the present de Tallebois, whose great-grandfather had done well—even exceedingly well—supplying, or, as the unkind said, not supplying, food and clothing to the British armies during the Crimean war, with the original owners of Nonpareil. However, this was a detail of small interest, and in no way diminished the size and importance of that ancient and historic building, where it was often said more murders, torturings, crimes, had been committed than in any other in England, excepting the Tower of London itself.

  No wonder, then, that it was provided with a choice assortment of ghosts, all well authenticated by numerous accounts of eye-witnesses. The particular stories Dr. Jones and his friends wished to investigate were first the tale of the cavalier, Sir Thomas de Tallebois, who, in the reign of Charles the First, had taken refuge from pursuing Roundheads in the great cellars of the building, and had there been inadvertently locked in, to die of starvation, he, his wife and children together. Their groans and lamentations were said still to be heard once every year on the returning anniversary of the tragedy. The other tale was that of the twin brothers who, rivals in love, had fought a duel to the death in one of the upper rooms. With some apparent lack of justice, however, it was not their ghosts that had been doomed to haunt the scene of the duel, but that of their presumably innocent mother, who was often to be seen wringing her hands in despair as she fled along the corridors leading to this room. After each of these visits, it was believed, a fresh bloodstain always appeared on the floor of the room, gradually fading away and then reappearing after each renewed visit.

  Dr. Jones had apparently thought it well to inform the police of his impending visit in case of their attention being attracted by rumours of unusual proceedings at Nonpareil, closed for the duration, and, indeed, considering its enormous size and total lack of all modern amenities, never likely to be occupied again. Midwych Corporation, for example, had already refused, with some haste, an offer of it as a free gift. Bobby supposed that it was, in fact, possible that undesirable rumours might become current if strangers were observed in the vicinity of so lonely a building so long deserted. In time of war the fewer rumours to gain currency, the better. He marked the letter ‘Ack. C’, which meant that it was to be acknowledged under formula C—the most polite and flowery of the three in use—and decided it was time for lunch.

  So he descended to the ground floor, and looked in at his own old room, though well knowing that Inspector Payne would soon make him aware that while Deputy Chief Constables might have time to spare, C.I.D. inspectors had none. However, to-day Payne seemed in a more chatty mood, admitted he, too, had been thinking of lunch and there was an odd report sent in by the sergeant-in-charge at Lonesome, a small, half village, half suburb dormitory, just outside the Midwych city limits. It seemed the new man there, Constable Reed, known to his superiors as Broken Reed, since his first name was Brodie and he, an old pensioner recalled to war-time duty, was much troubled by rheumatism, a fact whereof he seldom failed to remind the world in general and the Deputy Chief Constable in particular.

  Payne, indeed, so far unbent as to allow Bobby to have a look at the report, if only to admire the dexterity with which a reference to the pangs of rheumatism had been brought in. Leaving the recurrent rheumatic theme apart, it was to the effect that while Constable Reed and Major Hardman, of The Tulips, were ‘passing the time of day’—so said the report, though it seemed the time was ten at night—they had both heard what sounded like a shot coming from the direction of Wychwood forest, on the outskirts of which, between the forest and Lonesome village proper, stood Major Hardman’s pleasant detached villa, known as The Tulips.

  Shots are not rare in country districts. But the hour was late, and Constable Reed had felt it his duty to investigate. As he found nothing in any way suspicious, and neither saw nor heard anything further, he would probably not have troubled to report the incident had not Major Hardman shown a certain uneasiness about a young nephew of his who had recently appeared in the neighbourhood on his discharge from the army as medically unfit.

  The young man was, it seemed, not much approved of either by his uncle or by his sister, Miss Frances Hardman, who kept house for the Major. This unpopularity with his relatives seemed to have some justification, for already he had created a disturbance at the nearby Horse and Groom, wherefrom it had been necessary to eject him with some vigour. Why Major Hardman associated his young nephew with the shot heard did not appear, except for a vague reference by Reed in the course of his report to ‘threatening language’, though by whom or against whom was not very clear.

  “Nothing to take action on,” Payne had decided, and Bobby agreed.

  “Who is Major Hardman?” he asked idly.

  “Retired business man from London,” Payne explained. “Came up here to be out of the way of the bombing—not so much out of the way either, but that was the idea. Lives in a fair-sized house, The Tulips, between Lonesome village and the forest. Wears an Old Etonian tie, and is over fifty, so is exempt from national service. Bad health, too. Does fire-watching, though. Reed reports he is a quiet, pleasant-spoken gentleman, keeps very much to himself. The niece keeps house for him. She has registered, of course, but has not been directed to any employment, as she has to look after an elderly uncle in poor health, and, anyhow, does a lot for the W.V.S. The young man thrown out of the Horse and Groom is he
r twin, and it seems they are as like as two peas. Only for the young lady having a permanent wave and the boy a smudge of a moustache, Reed says you would never be able to tell one from t’other.”

  “Couldn’t you, though?” asked Bobby thoughtfully.

  “Oh, it’s the way with twins sometimes,” Payne explained, a little proud of his knowledge. “Depends on which they are. I mean, if they were always meant to be two, then they are just ordinary brother and sister, and no more like each other than any other brother and sister. If they were meant to be one and then somehow split up to make two, then they are always dead spits of each other.”

  “I see,” said Bobby, still more thoughtfully, trying to remember what he had once read about twins. “Yes, I have an idea I read about all that somewhere. Well, anyhow, nothing to bother about, unless the young man starts trouble.”

  Therewith Bobby departed to get his lunch at the Midwych Union, a club to which most of the Midwych celebrities belonged, and whereto his recent promotion to Deputy Chief Constable had secured his election. Returning after one of those meals of deadly monotony over which heart-broken chefs weep daily wartime tears, Bobby, entering headquarters, met Payne bustling out. Payne stopped to speak.

  “Reed has just ’phoned in,” he said. “I asked his sergeant to find out what was the threatening language used at the Horse and Groom. It seems the young man’s uncle—Major Hardman—gave him a five-pound note, and told him he wouldn’t get another farthing till he found himself a decent job, preferably as far away from Midwych as possible. At the Horse and Groom they say the language he used about the Major fair blistered the paint—and that’s a bit of a tribute from the Horse and Groom, where they know quite a lot of language. Reed was sufficiently impressed to have a look along the footpath that’s a short cut starting from near the ’bus stop on the main road and then through Wychwood forest to Lonesome. It saves a lot. Comes out by the new bungalows there.”