The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery Read online

  “What . . . what’s that for? Why . . . I mean . . .”

  He subsided into silence. His hands were shaking, and his companion still seemed poised on the edge of precipitate flight. Bobby made no attempt to answer. He waited. Cy seemed to recover himself, and he put on a slight swagger as he said:

  “Gave me a bit of a start for the moment. I mean what you said. Reminded me of an old pal of mine. He used to say that. He’s dead now.”

  Bobby was looking at him thoughtfully, remembering that odd incident when Olive had insisted that she, too, had heard the same curious phrase used, though certainly there had been no one there to speak it. Cy stared back at him defiantly, as if challenging him to make of it what he could. Bobby said:

  “You mean you think you’ve heard it said when no one was present to say it? What was it in the first place? A trick of speech? A sort of watchword—or password, perhaps? It might be overheard, I suppose, caught up, remembered, repeated. Only how could that be if there was no one there?”

  “For God’s sake,” muttered Cy’s companion from behind, and his face was ghastly.

  Cy was licking dry lips. He, too, was clearly badly shaken, and not least by the questions Bobby had just asked. Cy turned abruptly on his companion.

  “Shut it!” he said to him in a fierce whisper. To Bobby he said: “I don’t fall for that nursery stuff—not me. If things can’t happen, they don’t happen. See? And that’s all there’s to it. Imagination,” he said loudly. “Like a bloke with the D.T.’s. We’ll be going.”

  “Won’t you introduce me to your friend first?” Bobby asked. “I don’t think we’ve ever met, have we? Had a bit of an accident, I see. Argument with a tram-car or something like that? I’ve not often seen two lovelier black eyes.”

  “Injuries received,” Cy explained, while the victim himself scowled, but said nothing, “doing his duty as a man and citizen helping the police, and not so much as a word of thanks. You tell them at Sidmouth if they expect help they did ought to acknowledge it when given. Me and my pal were going home last night when we saw a bloke acting suspicious, so we spoke to him warning like, and afore you could say Jack Robinson he up and outed Bill with a quick left, right. Bill, that’s my friend here—Mr Bright’s his name: Bill Bright, Esquire. Bill, meet Mr Owen, a Yard bloke. Awful popular.” And into those last two words Cy packed all the venom, hatred, malice, lust for revenge he had cherished, dwelt upon, fanned to increase by day and by night, ever since his proud immunity from a police record had been broken and his underworld prestige destroyed, by the prison sentence—too short, too lenient—he had received through Bobby’s instrumentality.

  “Glad to meet you, Mr Bright,” Bobby said. “I’m sure you won’t misunderstand me if I say I hope we shall have no occasion to meet again. I’m sorry for the way you’ve got knocked about—helping us. Too bad. I expect you are thinking you had a jolly sight rather it had been Cy.”

  Bill shuffled his feet, looked sulkier than ever, and made no reply. Cy gave Bobby another vicious look and said:

  “Me and Bill pals. See? Now it’s one, now it’s the other.”

  “But generally the other,” Bobby suggested. “I wonder if it’s true there is a strong likeness between Bill and me. Can’t tell very well the way it is at present.” He turned swiftly on Cy. “You used my name that day you called to see Mr Smith in Southam—and it wasn’t about antique furniture. Look up dates before you talk nonsense about mahogany furniture dating from the time of Henry the Eighth. Why did you tell that particular lie—about Bright being me?”

  “Just our bit of fun,” Cy explained. “The old gent wanted to be sure the stuff was genuine true, which it was, and I said if he didn’t trust me he could ask my friend, Mr Bobby Owen of Scotland Yard. That was Bill, I meant, only him being so like you, as you’ll see when he’s more like himself than he is just now, he often gets called Bobby Owen. So I said the same to the old gent by way of a joke. Flattered like, Bill is, you being so well known.”

  “Flattered he may have been, but flattened now, as far as his face is concerned,” Bobby observed. “A warning to mind his step, was it?”

  The silent Mr Bright scowled more deeply than ever. Cy said they must be getting along, as they had to find lodgings. Their Sidmouth landlady had given them notice simply because they had come home a little late and in the company of police. So they had decided to push on to Seemouth to finish their holiday there.

  “I’m not blaming the old girl for giving us the ‘go’ sign,” Cy went on. “No one wants bogies about, and she may have thought us the same—you being took as according to the company kept. Suppose there’ll be an inquest on the old gent?”

  “It’s usual in such cases,” Bobby answered.

  “Matter of form like?” suggested Cy.

  “You can attend if you like,” Bobby told him. “Inquests are public. Then you’ll know as much as any one else.”

  Cy gave him another of those vicious scowls of his. Bobby nodded a farewell and went back to where Mr Perkins had been watching this colloquy from the bungalow veranda. Cy and Bill Bright walked away. Bobby said to Mr Perkins:

  “Those two are mixed up in it somehow. Nothing yet to show how or in what way. I think they must have known Mr Smith’s murder had been planned for last night, or else why the alibi they arranged? Now they want to know what we think or if we are going to let it slip through as a natural death.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “No. Obviously, every one will know at once if we ask for the inquest to be adjourned. That’ll make it plain we aren’t satisfied.”

  “Moon may bring a K.C. down,” Perkins said gloomily. He was not looking forward to the kind of questions K.C.s sometimes put to inoffensive, long-suffering policemen—even when chief constables. “Then the cat will be among the pigeons all right. You don’t bring K.C.s along for natural deaths—or even accidentals. I wasn’t expecting you would tell Mr Moon quite so much. Generally speaking, the less said the better.”

  “Oh, yes, certainly,” Bobby agreed. “Quite right. But if I hadn’t told Mr Moon what I did, he would have been asking questions at the inquest, and a lot would have come out I think had better not be made public just yet. There’s a good deal at stake.”

  “Two hundred thousand pounds, Mr Moon said,” Perkins remarked. “A lot of money. There’s plenty wouldn’t stick at much to get their hands on it.”

  “One death already,” Bobby said, “and I don’t think it is going to stop there. I don’t know. But it’s begun, and it’ll be apt to go on. Unless we can act in time—one chance in ten thousand.”

  “You mean the girl who gets the money? Is she next?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of her,” Bobby answered once again. “I imagine she’s safe—for the present. But I’m sure there’s a plan to get hold of the Smith fortune and I’m sure it’s not for her sole benefit—or chief benefit, for that matter. It may be worked by marrying her to this Bill Bright.”

  “What him? With a mug like his?”

  “Oh, he’s not so bad—quite good-looking, really. Must be,” Bobby explained modestly, “because they say he’s rather like me. If his nose wasn’t swollen and his mouth a bit tidier and his eyes more as nature intended, he could pass. But I doubt if that’s the idea. They wouldn’t be likely to trust Mr Bill quite that far. He’s been warned, though. The alibi could have been fixed up just as well without knocking him about. I should guess he’s been showing signs of rebellion. Possibly draws the line at murder. You can’t tell. It may be anything. What is curious is the odd kind of parallelism that seems to be running through all this. Cy and our friend Bill with his damaged face; and in the background the girl Gladys and the older woman, Mrs Elizabeth Smith. If that’s her real name, as it almost certainly isn’t. Possibly Gladys’s mother. My daughter’s my daughter all her life, you know. And then there’s Tiny Garden with his satellite, Sam Deedes—Sunday, they call him—also with a badly battered face in the interests of disciplin
e. Also in the background the girl, Betty Smith—if that’s her real name, as it probably isn’t—and the older woman, Mrs Day. Possibly the mother again. My daughter as before. They have the same shape nose, for what that’s worth. What we’ve got to work out if we can is the interplay between the two groups, what they’re each planning, who actually committed the murder. It may have been Gladys and the other woman after Cy had done the preliminary work. Or it may have been the second, Tiny Garden’s group, hurrying the pace because of knowing Cy was preparing to gate-crash on the Smith money when the time’s ripe.”

  “If it’s like that,” Perkins said thoughtfully, “then they are sure to fall out, and that’ll be our chance.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” Bobby agreed. “But Cy has brains, and for the sake of half of that two hundred thousand—it’s a big prize—he and Tiny Garden may manage to work in together. But there’s something much more important, much more pressing. We’ve got to find out what has become of the other girl I spoke of just now. A second Betty Smith who came over from Canada recently in the ‘Queen of the Seas’ and hasn’t been heard of since. Vanished without trace. So is she alive or is she dead? And how we’re ever going to know I’ve no idea.”

  CHAPTER XV

  “NO ANSWER”

  IT WAS not a point on which the very much worried Mr Perkins had any advice to offer, so Bobby asked him how long it would take to get to Bournemouth.

  “A lady there I think I ought to see,” he explained. “The lady the missing girl was going to stay with. It’s just on the cards she may be able to tell us something useful. A forlorn sort of hope, I’m afraid. Generally, if a person goes missing there’s something to work from. But here we’ve a strange girl in a strange country where she knew no one and no one knew her, except this lady she was going to and the son. All we know is that she got to Euston and was met by a young man, drove away with him, and has never been heard of since.”

  “If no one knew about her except this Bournemouth lady and her son,” remarked Mr. Perkins; “and the last heard of her is driving away with a young man, and the son is a young man—well, it doesn’t sound too good to me.”

  “Nor to me,” agreed Bobby.

  “Are they after the Smith two hundred thousand as well?” Perkins asked. “Bit of a mix-up.”

  “Needs sorting out,” Bobby replied. “One thing, we’ve got a starting point, now there’s a dead man to show. I can’t be told any more there’s no proof anything’s wrong. A man dead as poor Mr Smith died is sufficient cause, as they say.”

  “It was this young man gave information about the girl being missing, wasn’t it?” Perkins asked. “But they do sometimes. Come and talk. Got it so much on their minds they can’t keep away.”

  “I know,” Bobby said. “It may be like that. About getting to Bournemouth?”

  “You could do it in about an hour and a half fast driving,” Perkins told him. “It’s a good straight road. Take you all day by rail, and anyhow it’s too late now to make connections.”

  “Could you spare me a car and a driver?” Bobby asked. “If you can, I’ll get on the ’phone to Bournemouth and tell them I’m butting in, and ask them to get me a room somewhere.”

  Mr Perkins said he thought they could manage the car and a driver, short of men as they were. Privately he was wishing that the starting point Bobby talked about had been anywhere but in the select and fashionable resort of Seemouth, where, apart from the language occasionally heard on the famous links, so little ever occurred to trouble the soft, warm, yet bracing breezes for which the resort was so widely renowned. Some consolation, though, that now they were going to see the last of Bobby—at any rate for the time. Goodness only knew what else the fellow would be rooting up if he hung around much longer, and to the constable driver he chose to take Bobby to Bournemouth, Mr Perkins said confidentially:

  “Mind you see every drop of petrol you use is charged to the Yard. No reason why we should pay for their car jaunts.”

  So Bobby was soon on the way to Bournemouth, and when he got there found a comfortable room had been booked for him in one of the hotels, and was also informed that Mrs Wyllie lived at some considerable distance from the centre of the town, in an outlying district.

  By this time it was late, and Bobby was hungry, so he decided to get his dinner, and call on Mrs Wyllie in the morning. It would be less disturbing for her, and she would perhaps be more willing to talk than if visited so near bed-time—very possibly after her bed-time, for that matter. He rang up the Yard, therefore, to report, and at the same time put through a call to Olive, was asked in melancholy tones by the Yard if he didn’t think they had enough on their hands as it was, without his going on seaside trips to dig up mysterious murders, was informed in even more melancholy tones by Olive that she was contemplating writing her reminiscences under the title ‘Wife of a Perambulating Husband’, made appropriate soothing replies in both cases, and went up to his room fully determined to spend the whole night in wakeful meditation, thinking and thinking and thinking till by sheer force of thought he had wrested some meaning from the chaos of events with which he was confronted.

  However, he went to sleep instead, and next morning felt terribly ashamed of himself for such weak yielding to nature. But that’s the way it was, and in fact not only had he slept soundly, but also he now enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, and even made quite a leisurely stroll of his progress to the outlying district where stood the small house occupied by Mrs Wyllie. It was a comfortable-looking semi-detached dwelling in a neighbourhood, Bobby guessed, where most of the inhabitants were pensioners or retired business men living on their savings. An equalitarian society, in fact, where extremes of wealth and poverty were alike unknown, and where life passed quietly, the full force of its fever far behind.

  Bobby walked up the garden path. A milk-bottle stood on the door-step, and a morning paper was sticking half-way through the letter-box. Looked as if the inmates were not up yet, he thought idly, and time they were. So he had no hesitation in knocking and ringing, and as the electric bell happened to be in order, he could hear it sounding shrilly through the house. There was no answer. He tried again, knocking more loudly this time, and keeping his finger longer on the bell. Still no answer, and for the first time a faint unease began to invade his mind, and rather more than a faint regret that he had not paid his visit the night before, no matter how late the hour. Once more he tried, knocking still more loudly, ringing longer still. A woman who had come out next door to sweep the front looked at him curiously. He called to her to ask if she knew if Mrs Wyllie were away, as he could get no answer.

  “They were both there yesterday,” she answered. “They may have gone out.”

  “They?” Bobby repeated. “Is Mr Wyllie here—her son, I mean?”

  “Oh, no, he’s in business in London. I don’t think she was expecting him. It’s Miss Poore. She lives with Mrs Wyllie—her housekeeper.”

  “I’ll have to try again later on,” Bobby said. “They may be back soon.”

  He went away then, but this time not strolling. There was a call-box near. From it he rang up the Bournemouth police.

  “I can’t get any reply at Mrs Wyllie’s,” he explained. “No one there, apparently. Will you ring up and see if you can get through? I’m going back to the house. I want to know if I can hear the ’phone going.”

  He returned accordingly. The ’phone was ringing vigorously, but there seemed no response. He went back to the call-box and reported that the ’phone was in order but no notice had been taken of its summons.

  “No one there,” he repeated. “No answer. I don’t like it. Could you send a plain-clothes man to watch the place, do you think? I’m coming round to see you. I want to put a call through to London to ask them to get in touch with the son and get his consent to our breaking in.”

  All this took time. It was nearly noon before Ted Wyllie rang up to say he was catching the next train, due in shortly before three and would go at once to
the house.

  “Have to wait, I suppose,” Bobby said. “If it’s all right and they’ve just been out somewhere, I expect there’ll be a nice little row and more letters of complaint demanding apologies. There’s been one already.”

  “You think there’s a tie-up with the Seemouth murder?” the Bournemouth man asked. “We’ve no report of the men you wanted us to keep a look-out for.”

  “They may have been careful to keep under cover,” Bobby said. “Easy in a town this size.”

  So Bobby got his lunch, relaxed on the front for a time, then took a ’bus to the district where Mrs Wyllie lived, and found waiting for him the Bournemouth inspector he had arranged to meet. Punctually a taxi arrived. Ted Wyllie alighted. Bobby and his companion were standing close by. Ted glanced at them, but did not speak, nor did they. Bobby noticed that the young man was looking pale and tired, with red-rimmed eyes, as though recently he had had little sleep. It was so marked that even the inspector, who had never seen him before, noticed it, and said to Bobby:

  “Looks bad—something on his mind. Nervous.”

  Bobby nodded agreement. Ted had paid and dismissed the taxi-man, and was now walking up the garden path. Bobby and the inspector followed. Ted took no notice. He produced a key and opened the door and entered. They still followed, and he still took no notice. He shouted:

  “Mother! Mother! Are you there?”

  There was no reply. He opened the door of the nearest room, the front sitting-room. He stood for a moment, and then drew back. The room was in complete disorder. Evidently it had been thoroughly ransacked. Without a word Ted turned and ran first to the other rooms on the ground floor and then upstairs. He was down again almost at once. He said to Bobby, speaking for the first time:

  “She’s not here. Miss Poore, too. What’s happened?”

  Bobby and his companion had been looking at the other rooms in Ted’s wake, though not quite with his swift and fearful speed. All the rooms showed the same signs of having been thoroughly searched, except the kitchen, which was neat and tidy and had been in no way disturbed. Bobby noticed on the kitchen table two empty hot-water bottles. He saw the inspector looking at them. They went upstairs. The bedrooms were in the same state of confusion as the downstairs rooms. Drawers emptied and their contents thrown about. A hasty, impatient and yet efficient search, Bobby thought.