It Might Lead Anywhere Read online

  E.R. Punshon

  It Might Lead Anywhere

  “Give me gossip or Sherlock Holmes, and I take gossip every time. The detective’s first aid and ever present help in time of doubt.”

  WHY SHOULD anyone want to murder a man like Alfred Brown? Yet slain he was, in his own home and with a poker. The murder seems to be connected to a bout of religious fervour gripping the village of Oldfordham – in particular a battle royal between the Reverend Alexander Childs, and his nemesis Duke Dell, boxer turned revivalist preacher. But Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Owen has numerous other local suspects, and local gossips, to contend with in a puzzler of a case that indeed might lead anywhere.

  It Might Lead Anywhere was first published in 1946, the twenty-second 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

  Epigraph

  Introduction by Curtis Evans

  Chapter I RIOT AT CHIPPING UP

  Chapter II THE PREACHER

  Chapter III HIS MASTER’S VOICE

  Chapter IV EXERCISE IN DIPLOMACY

  Chapter V FULL CIRCLE

  Chapter VI COTTAGE INTERIOR

  Chapter VII VISITING CARDS

  Chapter VIII MATERNAL INDIGNATION

  Chapter IX ILLUSION AND REALITY

  Chapter X TREASURE HUNT

  Chapter XI SURPRISE LEGACY

  Chapter XII CONSULTATION

  Chapter XIII SEARCH AND FIND

  Chapter XIV NO CLUE

  Chapter XV TORN TROUSER

  Chapter XVI UNDIGNIFIED AFFAIR

  Chapter XVII MIRROR IMAGE

  Chapter XVIII LUNCHEON AT MASON’S

  Chapter XIX NOCTURNAL TALKS

  Chapter XX FOUR OAKS DINING-ROOM

  Chapter XXI PLAIN FACTS

  Chapter XXII FOUR OAKS ASSEMBLY

  Chapter XXIII UNINVITED GUEST

  Chapter XXIV BOWL OF SOUP

  Chapter XXV DIFFICULT TALK

  Chapter XXVI BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

  Chapter XXVII RUNNING EFFORT

  Chapter XXVIII RESCUE

  Chapter XXIX DUKE DELL TALKS

  Chapter XXX MR. GOODMAN TALKS

  Chapter XXXI THERESA TALKS

  Chapter XXXII AN ARREST

  Chapter XXXIII CONCLUSION

  About the Author

  The Bobby Owen Mysteries

  Helen Passes By – Title Page

  Helen Passes By – Chapter One

  Copyright

  “There is more death in women than we think”

  —JOHN MASEFIELD

  (The Widow in the Bye Street)

  Introduction

  Set in the waning days of both the Second World War and the period of Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Owen’s distinguished service in the police force of Wychshire, It Might Lead Anywhere (1946) is a mystery which comes straight from E.R. Punshon’s top drawer, richly meriting the “Best British Brand” judgment afforded it in the Saturday Review; yet it also was the penultimate Punshon Bobby Owen detective novel to appear in the United States during the author’s lifetime, the last, So Many Doors (1949), taking its American bow in 1950, after the appearance of three Punshon mysteries—Helen Passes By (1947), Music Tells All (1948) and The House of Godwinsson (1948)--that went unpublished in the US. During the remainder of Punshon’s life--he passed away in 1956, at the age of 84--the author would never again see a publisher release one of his books in the United States.

  How this dichotomous state of affairs, by which I mean Punshon’s detective novels appearing annually on one side of the pond but not at all on the other, came about in the 1950s is a matter for speculation, with no definitive answer. Writing for the magazine CADS in 1995, the late Anglo-Canadian scholar and Punshon mystery fan William A.S. Sarjeant contended that “Punshon’s plots and writing style appeal more directly to British audiences.” Sarjeant noted that during the 1940s his own Yorkshire shopkeeper father “was among many readers waiting eagerly for the appearance of each new Punshon novel.” Yet it was also during the 1940s that Punshon made his greatest and most sustained impact in the American mystery market, with the publication by Macmillan of five of the author’s detective novels between 1944 and 1947, beginning with The Conqueror Inn and concluding with It Might Lead Anywhere. Prominent US print mystery critics, such as Anthony Boucher, Will Cuppy, Isaac Anderson and William C. Weber, highly praised Punshon’s work. (Boucher still recalled Punshon favorably in the mid-1950s, five and six years after the author had last been published in the US.) My copy of It Might Lead Anywhere, which was cast off from an American lending library, contains stamps revealing that the book was checked out twenty-one times between 28 January 1947 and 19 January 1948, which suggests that Punshon’s name attracted interest among US mystery fans.

  Yet it is true that after the Second World War the classic British mystery that writers like E.R. Punshon so ably represented faced increasing competition in the US from new styles and forms in crime fiction, such as hard-boiled, noir and so-called “domestic suspense,” or psychological mystery. In particular hard-boiled private eye tales began taking an increasingly large share of the American mystery market in the 1940s, especially in popular new paperback editions illustrated with titillating cover art depicting gun-waving men and bust-heaving women. Coincidentally, the same year that Punshon’s It Might Lead Anywhere was published also saw the startling appearance of Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury, a kinetic tale of visceral violence and sex with a tough-as-nails, no-holds-barred shamus whose personal value system and, shall we say, extremely aggressive investigative technique seemingly could not have been more far removed from the gentle and gentlemanly Bobby Owen’s. By 1953, the year a film version was made of I, the Jury, the novel had sold an astonishing 3.5 million copies. To be sure, the imperishable British Crime Queen Agatha Christie was well on her way at this time to becoming a household name in the United States (not to mention most of the rest of the world), but, as US publishers measured the totality of the dollar signs and shifted marketing priorities, many other distinguished Golden Age British mystery writers began vanishing from American libraries and bookstores, to be revived, after decades of neglect, only in recent years, much to the gratification of a growing audience of readers who have wholeheartedly reembraced classic mystery fiction.

  With its teasingly clued puzzle, appealing rural setting and engaging cast of characters, It Might Lead Anywhere exemplifies the qualities which perennially draw fans of Golden Age British mystery. In the novel Bobby Owen is called on to investigate a perplexing problem in the “typical small country village” of Chipping Up (“Chipping” likely is derived from the Old English “ceapen,” meaning market): the poker slaying of a nondescript individual named Alfred “Alf” Brown. As one of Bobby’s police colleagues puts it, “Why should anyone want to murder a man like Brown? Quiet, inoffensive, harmless as possible, no woman in the case, why should anyone want to get rid of him?” Bobby makes a discovery at Alf Brown’s cottage which casts a much different complexion on the matter, however. From this point it appears that the trail might indeed lead anywhere, even to, for example, the prim Reverend Alexander Childs, Anglo-Catholic vicar of St. Barnabas Church in the small neighboring town of Oldfordham; or to Duke Dell, former prizefighter turned religious exhorter; or to Denis Kayes, late of the royal Australian Air Force; or even to retired solicitor Maurice Goodman’s pretty young secretary-housekeeper, Theresa Foote, who looks as “meek and demure a
s the heroine of a mid-Victorian novel come to life.” In a way reminiscent of his uncouth fellow sleuth from across the pond, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Deputy Chief Constable Owen has marked suspicions about the oh-so modestly feminine Miss Foote, for he shares “the opinion of the London magistrate that ‘housekeeper’ was a word that covered many sinners.” Readers likely will have their own particular suspicions too. Who can beat Bobby to the solution of a most complex and clever crime? Be advised to leave no stone unturned on this twisting trail, for Punshon’s title is an exceedingly apt one.

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER I

  RIOT AT CHIPPING UP

  Deputy Chief Constable, Acting Chief Constable, Wychshire County Police, Robert Owen, too dignified now to be referred to as Bobby, except when he wasn’t there or by a wife little impressed by high-sounding titles bestowed on one who to her still seemed most of the time a rather troublesome charge and responsibility, was on a tour of inspection, combining therewith some more or less official calls on various local dignitaries with whom he had matters to discuss or more simply with whom he wished to keep in touch for one reason or another. For a large part of a chief constable’s duty lies not so much in maintaining law and order as in seeing that the wheels on which law and order run are kept suitably oiled.

  The day was fine and he was enjoying his drive. He was alone, for man-power was still too scanty to allow the luxury of a chauffeur—incidentally he always preferred to drive himself—nor was he hurrying overmuch. Nothing of any great urgency needed attention. At the moment he had drawn up by the roadside, near a phone box. He wanted to ring up his headquarters in Midwych and also he had to decide on whom to call next. He consulted his notebook. There was Lord Martindale, recently appointed Lord Lieutenant of the county. But his lordship was a talkative old gentleman and Bobby knew that if he called there he would be lucky to escape having to stay to dinner. And that would not meet with the approval of Olive, busy with the dinner at home, for even a Mrs. Deputy Chief Constable is lucky if she can get hold of daily help and can hardly hope for a cook, now that these have grown as scarce and proud as duchesses. Then there was Mr. Maurice Goodman, retired Midwych solicitor, now a considerable landowner, keen on preserving game, though he hardly knew one end of a gun from another and was unlikely to see anything amusing in the famous remark of the lady novelist about the moors of Scotland resounding to the crack of rifles on the morning of every twelfth of August. But he had been complaining lately that the local police failed to keep a sufficiently sharp lookout for poachers. Bobby was uncomfortably aware that this complaint might not be entirely without foundation. After all, even a village policeman has to live with his neighbours; and though the habitual poacher is generally a lazy ne’er-do-well and a public nuisance, still an occasional rabbit or even pheasant is not unwelcome in a cottage kitchen. Besides, what are gamekeepers for, and why should police do their work for them? Every man to his own job; though of course Bobby would never believe that any policeman, certainly none of his own men, would ever be so lost to all sense of duty as to allow even the most wilful hare, rabbit or game bird to force its way into that policeman’s very own kitchen. For such was the lamentable suspicion Mr. Goodman had hinted at in his last communication. It would have to be dealt with very firmly, very firmly indeed, with demands for concrete evidence, with counter hints about an action for defamation of character, with, in general, a shocked and grave surprise. But perhaps that had better wait for the present.

  Then there was Mr. Young, a member of the watch committee and inclined to be fussy over small items of expenditure. It might be as well to consult him privately about the proposed new cottage for Constable Wiggins, stationed at Chipping Up, the nearest village to Four Oaks, the residence of Mr. Maurice Goodman. The cottage had been damaged by a stray bomb dropped at random by a German airman whose machine had been injured by ack-ack fire and who had thought it well to lighten his load as he strove to reach the warm hospitality and friendly welcome he knew awaited him in Eire. The damage to the cottage was serious and rebuilding was necessary. Would it be possible, Bobby wondered, to get a bathroom included or would Mr. Young be inclined to consider that came under the head of ‘pampering the lower classes’? Better perhaps to talk about the new cottage in general terms and hope the bathroom would slip through unnoticed.

  Bobby decided it would have to be Mr. Young for the first visit and, this settled, he alighted to put through his call to headquarters. His message was of no great importance, which was just as well, for he never got it delivered. As soon as it was realized at the other end of the wire who was talking he was asked to hold on, and then an agitated voice he recognized as belonging to the station sergeant informed him that a message had just been received by phone from Mr. Goodman, Four Oaks, near Chipping Up, to the effect that there was a riot in the village and that help was urgently required.

  “A riot?” Bobby repeated, very much surprised; for though his police experience was wide and varied, a riot in a country village was something new. Besides, Chipping Up was a normal, quiet little place, rent through with internal feuds, of course, since human beings are never really happy unless they are quarrelling violently with one another, but with no cause for rioting that he knew of. Even the workers from the new factories in the neighbourhood seldom troubled the calm life of Chipping Up. The neighbouring small borough of Oldfordham saw more of them, and though Chipping Up had had its share of evacuees, most of them had now gone home again. “A riot?” Bobby repeated bewilderedly, as these thoughts flashed through his mind. “What riot?”

  “Well, sir,” the thin distant voice answered, though a little doubtfully, “Mr. Goodman, he did seem to think it was to do with religion like. I said as to-day wasn’t Sunday but Mr. Goodman said as it was religion all the same.”

  “I’ll go along and see what’s up,” Bobby said, uneasy now, for a riot about religion, even though not on a Sunday, might be serious, since the more serious the cause, the more serious the effect.

  He left the road-box and drove off, turning soon by a signpost that showed the way to Chipping Up. But why religion? he asked himself, puzzled. People fought with passion in these days about systems of government, about material conditions, not about religious questions. He remembered now though that Mr. Childs, vicar of Oldfordham, the small neighbouring town, was an enthusiastic high churchman whose ritualistic practices had caused some criticism and given rise to one or two unseemly scenes in his church. But Oldfordham was some ten miles or so from Chipping Up and could it be supposed that Chipping Up was concerning itself with ritual in Oldfordham?

  The road he had turned into would take him by Four Oaks, Mr. Goodman’s residence, so it occurred to him it might be as well to stop there and ask for further information. He wondered, too, if it would have been wise to instruct the station sergeant to send a car with reinforcements in case of need. He decided he was glad he had not done so. An odd sort of riot, he told himself, that could not be checked by the simple presence and authority of a deputy chief constable, acting chief constable—especially when that same deputy, acting chief, was named and known as Bobby Owen.

  Four Oaks came in sight. At the entrance to the drive leading to the house a man was standing, Mr. Goodman himself. He was a middle-aged man, of slight build but with a large, square red face in which a small squat nose and small, light-grey eyes seemed hopelessly lost. He had an unusually big mouth though, and a voice to match, for Bobby could hear it booming out already in what seemed a shout of welcome.

  “Glad to see you,” he thundered as Bobby drew up. “They rang me up to say you were on your way. Quick work.”

  In spite of its volume, it was a musical voice and of good pitch, and Bobby remembered having heard that Mr. Goodman was a liberal subscriber to the Midwych Philharmonic. Nearby, a little in the rear, was standing a young and attractive-looking girl, though rather of the china-doll type, with fluffy hair, a pink and white complexion, wide, innocent, china-blue eyes, he
r make-up not too obtrusive. She had a general air of fluttering apprehensively in the background; and now, as Mr. Goodman’s voice ceased to reverberate around, Bobby heard her murmur:

  “Oh, isn’t it dreadful?”

  “What’s the trouble?” Bobby asked.

  “Hot-gospeller fellow,” Goodman roared back. “I was on the phone to Chipping Up post office and the woman there said they were fighting on the village green. Excited she seemed. There’s a chap called Brown mixed up in it. I said I would ring the police. Better hurry. There may be a killing. Had I better come with you?”

  “Oh, no,” breathed the fluffy-haired girl. “Oh, don’t.” Evidently the word ‘killing’ had frightened her. Bobby, it had surprised slightly. He did not see why fighting on a village green should lead to ‘killing’. A black eye or two or a bloody nose more likely.

  “Might need help,” said Mr. Goodman, but not too enthusiastically.

  Bobby had no great desire for the help of a civilian who did not look as if good living and not much wartime austerity had left him in the best physical condition. But if by any chance there was truth in this suggestion of a possible ‘killing’, then the sooner he got to Chipping Up, the better. Not that the story was likely to be true. But it might be. Anyhow, as well to lose no time. Without answering directly Mr. Goodman’s suggestion, he said:

  “I had better get along. Thanks for phoning. Very sensible and helpful. Much obliged. Which is the nearest way? Straight on?”

  “Turn sharp to the left,” Mr. Goodman told him. “By Mrs. Cox’s cottage, that thatched one, I mean, you see there. It cuts a corner off the Chipping Up road.”

  “Thanks,” Bobby said, and trod on the accelerator as hard as he could, so vanishing in a great cloud of dust and in some small anxiety of mind.