Secrets Can't be Kept: A Bobby Owen Mystery Read online

  E.R. Punshon

  SECRETS CAN’T BE KEPT

  Deep in bucolic Wychshire something dreadful is stirring …

  THE DISAPPEARANCE of a club-footed and inquisitive youth leads to a tangle involving two instances of stolen jewels, a water-colour which may be the most remarkable picture ever painted … and eventually to the discovery of a body in a forest with ‘a smell of rotting, a smell of things decaying’. The scene abounds with the intense, the afflicted, and the darkly humorous in classic Punshon style. But the murderer himself is on a collision cause with fate – aided of course by Inspector Bobby Owen.

  Secrets Can’t be Kept was first published in 1944, the twentieth 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. A Visit

  Chapter II. Three ’Phone Calls

  Chapter III. Missing

  Chapter IV. Teas

  Chapter V. Murder?

  Chapter VI. Troubled Mother

  Chapter VII. ‘The Den’

  Chapter VIII. Snapshot Special

  Chapter IX. Dead Ends

  Chapter X. Music-Hall

  Chapter XI. Literary Remuneration

  Chapter XII. Identity Cards

  Chapter XIII. Fruitful Visit

  Chapter XIV. S.I.W.

  Chapter XV. Possible Pattern

  Chapter XVI. Discussion

  Chapter XVII. Historical Retrospect

  Chapter XVIII. Hide and Seek

  Chapter XIX. Demure Secretary

  Chapter XX. Jitters

  Chapter XXI. A Water-Colour

  Chapter XXII. Ex Dean

  Chapter XXIII. Boy Scouts

  Chapter XXIV. Music-Hall Again

  Chapter XXV. Child Sight

  Chapter XXVI. Petrol Dump

  Chapter XXVII. Advertisement

  Chapter XXVIII. New Suggestions

  Chapter XXIX. Oak Seedling

  Chapter XXX. Vanished Water-Colour

  Chapter XXXI. Sapphires

  Chapter XXXII. Explanations Begin

  Chapter XXXIII. Sir Gervase Arlington

  Chapter XXXIV. Maiden Aunt

  Chapter XXXV. Whole Story

  Chapter XXXVI. Two Stories

  Chapter XXXVII. Fear of Safety

  Chapter XXXVIII. Jewels and Death

  About the Author

  The Bobby Owen Mysteries

  There’s a Reason for Everything – Title Page

  There’s a Reason for Everything – Chapter I

  Copyright

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  In his weekly book review column in the San Francisco Chronicle, the influential American mystery critic Anthony Boucher brought in the year 1946 with a ringing notice of the twentieth E.R. Punshon Bobby Owen detective novel, the memorably titled Secrets Can’t Be Kept (1944). “Nineteen forty-six starts off well with this specimen of the leisurely detailed school at its soundest, with an ending which, if somewhat chancy, may yet chill your blood,” pronounced Boucher, who had become rather a Punshon fan since the publisher Macmillan had begun issuing the author’s mysteries in the United States a couple of years earlier. Boucher’s term “leisurely detailed school” was a catchall for Golden Age detective novelists, mostly British, who specialized in the devising of extremely intricate puzzle plots. Typically included as well in this group of detective novelists were Punshon’s Detection Club colleagues Freeman Wills Crofts, J.J. Connington and Cecil John Charles Street (who wrote mysteries mostly under the pseudonyms John Rhode and Miles Burton). All three of these men were, like E.R. Punshon, supremely accomplished puzzle purveyors, yet where Punshon exceeded them, in my view, was in his treatment of character and atmosphere. In Punshon’s hands the detective story, while retaining the complex puzzle plotting which readers of Golden Age detective fiction expected, successfully moved in a more serious direction, toward what we today call the crime novel, attaining greater psychological depth and everyday realism.

  It is of literary realism that I suspect New York Times Book Review critic Isaac Anderson was thinking when he praised Secrets Can’t Be Kept as “a fine example of sound detective work without sensationalism.” Punshon’s people are not improbable caricatures but believable men and women, and they are, to borrow from Raymond Chandler, people who commit murder “for reasons, not just to provide a corpse. …” To be sure, Punshon was not a hard-boiled writer in the manner of Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but often in his detective fiction he, like Chandler and Hammett, compellingly portrayed the dark and violent passions that all too often have lethal consequences not only in crime fiction but in real life. It is in this respect, in my view, that Secrets Can’t Be Kept constitutes one of Punshon’s most noteworthy mystery tales. If its ending does chill the blood, it does so not simply because it is horrifying, but because it is credible.

  The detective novel opens with Inspector Bobby Owen receiving a rather singular visitor in his office in Midwych, the market town of Wychshire: clubfooted Ned Bloom, a splenetic young man from the picturesque town of Threepence, located “in a valley between Wychwood Forest proper and the high-lying moorlands west and north,” atmospheric locales with which readers of the earlier Punshon novels Diabolic Candelabra and The Conqueror Inn should already be familiar. In Threepence Bloom’s taciturn mother owns and manages the Pleezeu Tea Gardens, an establishment which before the war was much patronized by hikers and cyclists in need of refreshment and currently manages still to do a good business, even though customers find that there is something vaguely off-putting about Mrs Bloom.

  Young Ned Bloom claims that he has valuable information for the Wychshire police, but only at a price: not money, but a job as a police detective. Bobby immediately demurs, explaining, in a tacit reference to Bloom’s clubfoot, that “[p]oliceman have to be fit,” which prompts an infuriated Bloom to make his exit while vowing to Bobby, “I’ll get my start in private practice instead. … More scope. No hidebound rules and regulations.” Bobby is inclined to dismiss the odd Ned Bloom affair, but that same day at the Midwych police station three telephone calls are received from individuals anxiously inquiring whether Ned Bloom has been there. When Bobby, now somewhat intrigued, gets around to checking on Bloom’s whereabouts, he learns that his disgruntled visitor is nowhere to be found. Now Bobby is tasked with determining whether Ned Bloom’s penchant for nosing out other people’s secrets has proven fatal for the desperately inquisitive young man.

  Bobby catalogues his unlikely list of likely suspects in the Ned Bloom disappearance when discussing the case, as is his wont, with his closest confidant, his wife Olive: “[Ned’s] mother. The vicar of the parish. A most superior waitress in a local tea garden. Her invalid father. A highly successful music-hall comedian. An artist with a steady market in water-colours of Wych Forest. The artist’s niece with a fancy for ordering teas she never touches. An Army captain on leave with a wounded arm.” Olive pronounces the group a “scratch lot.” Could one of these seemingly innocuous individuals really have been willing to kill to keep a secret?

  It was a stroke of brilliance on Punshon’s part to make the cozily named Pleezeu Tea Gardens every bit as eerily haunted a pl
ace as his earlier depicted Conqueror Inn, or even the great Wychwood Forest itself. “It sounds silly, doesn’t it,” ruminates Olive about the paradox presented by the Pleezeu Tea Gardens. “Just a lot of people having tea out of doors, just a pleasant Sunday afternoon, every one trying to forget the war for half an hour, and why should that give you the jitters?” Down these mean tea gardens a man must go, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, in search of secrets that can’t be kept--some of which belong more to the world of noir than to the cozy.

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER I

  A VISIT

  GENTLEMAN TO SEE you, sir,” announced Constable Watts, putting his head into the sanctum where sat Inspector Bobby Owen, chief of the still embryo Wych County C.I.D., that the war had prevented from coming to full birth—and alas for Bobby’s beautifully complete plans, all carefully pigeon-holed till the war should be over and for goodness knows how long afterwards as well, most likely.

  Bobby looked up from the piles of orders and counter orders, instructions and counter instructions, directions and counter directions that multitudinous authority showered upon him day by day. His head was still a little dizzy from his efforts to reconcile so many and so varying demands. He was almost grateful for an interruption that was at least straightforward and simple. He said:

  “Who is it? What’s he want?”

  “Name of Bloom—Mr Ned Bloom,” answered Watts. “Comes from Threepence. Says he has important information to give, but won’t say what. Sergeant said to report.”

  Bobby hesitated, aware of a table piled high with papers, all of which would have to be disposed of that afternoon so that the way might be clear for the sure and certain renewal of the flood next morning. But a policeman is at the beck and call of every citizen, and it is never safe to dismiss any complaint as trivial, any information as insignificant. The complaint may be anything but trivial in some one’s eyes, the information may turn out to be of life-and-death significance.

  “Oh, well, fetch him in,” he said at last. “May as well hear what he has to say.”

  Watts retired and returned to introduce the visitor. This was a youngster of about twenty with a pale, handsome, discontented face, a small, angry mouth, eyes of a curious greenish tint but bright and soft as a girl’s, and eager, sensitive hands, long and narrow—temperamental hands, Bobby thought, and hands with which their owner seemed to express his meaning almost as plainly as with his tongue. A spoilt, wilful, not unattractive personality, Bobby told himself, and then he noticed that the new-comer was lame, suffering from the unfortunate disability known as a club foot. It was perhaps this unhappy deformity that accounted for the slightly provocative impression he managed to convey, as though the grudge he had against fate for so ill-using him he extended towards all mankind.

  “Sit down, Mr Bloom—isn’t it?” Bobby said. “I understand you have some information to give us.”

  Bloom did not answer at once. He was watching Bobby closely, and those soft and lustrous eyes of his had grown hard, shrewd, calculating. Bobby was reminded somehow of the ‘gold-digger’ type of young woman, forgetting her charm and glamour as she calculated how much and what she is likely to get out of her newest acquaintance.

  “Not to give, to sell,” Bloom said abruptly.

  Bobby raised surprised eyebrows. Police certainly do pay on occasion for information brought to them. But this young man did not look like those who sometimes come to the police, offering to sell a pal for the price of a drink. Bobby was puzzled, but his voice had a sharper edge as he asked:

  “What do you mean? What do you want?”

  “Oh, not money,” Bloom explained. “A job.”

  “A job,” Bobby repeated, still more puzzled. “What do you mean? This isn’t an employment agency.”

  “Aren’t there any vacancies in the police force?” demanded Bloom.

  “We want men badly,” Bobby agreed. “There’s a fairly high physical standard though, you know. Policemen have to be fit.”

  “You mean—that,” Bloom said aggressively, pushing forward his deformed foot, at which Bobby had been careful not to look. “Why can’t you say so? I’m not a fool. I don’t mean I want to pound a beat and yell ‘Move on’. I’ve heard of you. You’re a detective. That needs brains, doesn’t it? Brains. Not brawn. You aren’t sitting there, looking superior, because of brawn. You’re supposed to be clever, aren’t you?”

  “Only supposed,” said Bobby sadly. “A detective needs brawn, too, you know. I’ve had to fight for my life before to-day.”

  “Then you fell down on your job,” his visitor informed him. “Not a detective’s business—to fight. Your job is to find out things, and leave the rough-and-tumble stuff to others.”

  “Dear me,” said Bobby, beginning to be a little amused by his self-assured young visitor. “You know all about it, don’t you? But don’t you think that often enough it’s only by the rough stuff that you can find out things?”

  “Nonsense,” pronounced Mr Bloom. “Not if you know your job.”

  “Oh, well,” said Bobby, slightly less amused now. “If you mean you want to join the police force, either this or any other, I’m afraid it’s not possible.”

  “The detective branch,” interposed Bloom. “The special branch.”

  “We only take men from the ranks,” Bobby explained. “Every one has to go through the uniformed ranks. Necessary. Where you learn your job. And for that the physical standard has to be high. Sorry, but there it is.”

  “In that case,” said Bloom, “I’ll take my information somewhere else, and when the case breaks, the sickest man in all England will be Inspector Bobby Owen, who muffed the biggest chance that ever came his way and he hadn’t sense enough to see it.”

  Bobby looked up sharply. He had not been very favourably impressed so far, but there was something about the boy—a mixture of sulkiness, determination, assurance—that made its mark.

  “You live at Threepence, don’t you?” he asked. “What’s your address there?”

  “The Pleezeu Tea Rooms.”

  “Oh, yes, I know;” Bobby said.

  He had in fact occasionally patronised the Pleezeu Tea Rooms when routine duty or visits of inspection had taken him in the direction of Threepence, a favourite holiday resort for Midwych trippers and hikers. It lay in a valley between Wychwood Forest proper and the high-lying moorlands west and north, and was in process of being transformed from a picturesque, isolated, self-contained little community into a dormitory for prosperous Midwych citizens and a place for them to retire to when their active business life was over. Though no railway served it, a line of motor-’buses had before the war brought it into close touch with the city, and even in days of petrol shortage an attenuated service was still maintained. Bobby retained an agreeable memory of the excellence of the tea, the home-made jam, the scones, and cakes provided at the Pleezeu Gardens, and of how pleasant and well arranged had been the garden where the outdoor teas were served. How Threepence itself had come by its odd name no one seemed to know, though local antiquarians loved to propound and wrangle over rival theories. That put forward by a jealous and rival community, attracting fewer visitors, that the name was the result of a general conviction that the whole place, inhabitants and all, was worth exactly threepence, neither more nor less, had won general acceptance only in the place of its origin.

  Bloom was on his feet by now. He said:

  “Well, if you don’t care to have the information I’ve got, it’s your own affair. I’ll go to a private man instead. O.K. by me. Private work gives you much greater freedom, once you get a start. I thought I would give you first chance, but if you only want the prize-fighter type—” He pushed forward his deformed foot and looked challengingly at Bobby. “I knew—that—barred me,” he said. “I thought I could show you—but if you don’t want to be shown, not my fault. It just means I’ll get my start in private practice instead. Better from my point of view. More scope. No hidebound rules and regulations.�
�

  He flung this out with mingled triumph and defiance, gave Bobby a nod which plainly meant ‘what do you think of that?’ and was moving towards the door when Bobby called him back.

  “One moment, Mr Bloom,” he said, though still not sure whether to take this odd youngster seriously or not. “Please remember that if you know, or think you know, anything affecting public security or welfare, and you keep silent about it, then you may find yourself an accessory before the fact and may become liable to severe penalty.”

  The young man laughed scornfully.

  “When my story breaks,” he said, “I think—I rather think—that’ll be all right. I don’t know whether you will think so, though.” He turned towards the door and then turned back. “By the way,” he said, “ever go to see McRell Pink at the New Grand?”

  Therewith he gave Bobby a nod charged full—overflowing, in fact—with mystery, warning, and significance, and so departed, while Bobby, puzzled, amused, and just the merest trifle worried as well, returned to all those piled-up forms, inquiries and reports heaped so high upon his desk.

  CHAPTER II

  THREE ’PHONE CALLS

  BUSY AS BOBBY was with all this clerical work, there remained in his mind from his talk with Ned Bloom a small point of irritation, nagging continually. He found himself writing in answer to question 3A64 the response appropriate to inquiry XX4, and he was annoyed. Not that he supposed it would make the slightest difference or that any one would ever know, but it offended his passion for the tidy—a passion which Olive, his wife, had more than once informed him was a flaw in his otherwise imperfect character.

  He began even to regret having let young Bloom go.

  “I wonder,” he said aloud, “if the kid really does know something.”

  The door opened again, and once more Constable Watts appeared on some fresh errand. To him Bobby said:

  “Watts, have you ever seen McRell Pink at the New Grand?”