Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery Read online

  CHAPTER XVIII

  PERFECT SECRETARY

  BOBBY, WHO had come to the door of the house with Olga to see her out, stood for a moment or two, watching as she walked away down the long drive. He noted that her shoulders drooped, that she walked slowly, that her air of brisk vitality had gone. He told himself that his questions had troubled her, and he wondered if presently she would think it wise to tell him why. A voice by his side said with a mingling of question and reproach:—

  “You’ve let her go then, sir? Not good enough for a pinch?”

  It was the finger-print man who was speaking, and he looked disappointed. Bobby said:—

  “She knows a lot, but she won’t speak.”

  “If you ask me,” said the finger-print man, “she knows it all. Or why was she hiding in the knee-hole under the writing-table?”

  “The set up is not complete,” Bobby answered. “In fact, it’s full of holes. You don’t think a crossword puzzle finished when you’ve done one corner. Don’t forget the dabs you found on the second glass. Mr Edwardes’s.”

  “Oh, well,” the finger-print man said doubtfully, “if you ask me, a man might easily drop in for a drink and then be scared to admit it when he heard there had been a murder; but why should a girl go hide under a writing-table? That’s what I say. She slipped out, her knife slipped in, and there you are.”

  “It may have been like that,” Bobby conceded.

  The hour was late. Much had been done, much remained to be done. The rattle of the typewriter in a room nearby showed that Miss Rowe was still busy on the tasks the lawyer had left her. He was going, Bobby understood, to apply for letters of administration, as it seemed certain there was no will, and the only relative at hand, Martin Wynne, was more than willing for Mr Anderson to assume all responsibility.

  Bobby went in to ask Miss Rowe if Mr Anderson had said anything about the probable value of the estate or how much Martin’s own share was likely to amount to. Miss Rowe did not know exactly, but was certain that both the estate and Martin’s share of it would be substantial.

  “Mr Anderson thinks it will be divided among six of them,” she said, “unless, of course, there is a will and it turns up in time, or unless he hears of some one with a better claim.”

  “Why? Who could that be?” Bobby asked.

  She seemed to consider. Her fingers hovered over her machine. Then she said:—

  “Mr Weston said something once that made me think perhaps he had been married before. It was when he was very upset when Mrs Weston left him before the war. It was something he said about a man being a fool to get married, and he ought to have known better, because once bit was twice shy. I wasn’t paying much attention, and I’m not sure of the exact words. It wasn’t anything to do with me how many times he had been married. But I did hear afterwards that he had gone to Scotland with some one and it was what they call an irregular marriage, and so it had never been acknowledged.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Bobby said. “It might be as well to have a search made just in case.”

  “Would that be any good if it was one of those irregular marriages?” Thomasine asked, looking interested.

  “Makes it more difficult,” Bobby admitted. “There’s no necessary registration, of course. But a woman generally likes to have something to show. They can go before a sheriff or get themselves convicted in a police court—an irregular marriage is a civil offence and there’s a small fine. Something like that. Or else the man might repudiate it. There must be some sort of proof of acknowledgement on both sides.”

  “Suppose she had letters mentioning their marriage and speaking of Mr Weston as her husband?”

  “If they were written by him and accepted as genuine, that might do,” Bobby said. “Or they might give confirmatory detail—time, place and so on. What matters is proof of consent on both sides.”

  “Suppose a woman wrote to a man calling him her husband and signing ‘your loving wife’ or something like that, would that be enough?” “I hardly know,” Bobby answered. “Legal question. I should think it might do, provided there was proof the letters were answered without protest. Or even if the man kept them by him. But if Mr Weston were married before, then he committed bigamy when he married a second time, and I don’t think that’s likely.”

  “No,” Thomasine agreed; “but the first wife, the Scots wife, might have died—in childbirth, perhaps.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” admitted Bobby thoughtfully. “Have you said anything to Mr Anderson?”

  “He didn’t seem to pay it much attention,” she answered. “He said it didn’t amount to anything more than a lot of talk and gossip, and he would wait for a claimant to turn up, and if he did he would want very satisfactory evidence,” and as she said this there was a slight accent of contempt in her voice, as if she felt that evidence was but a small thing and that the truth should be enough by itself.

  “Lawyers are taught to be cautious,” Bobby said. “By the way, I’m told that Mr Weston and Miss Florence Severn were contemplating marriage. Do you know if that is true?”

  “She may have been,” Thomasine answered briefly. “He wasn’t.”

  “I take it,” Bobby went on, “Mr Anderson has taken charge of the ten fifty-pound notes we found in the safe?”

  “He hasn’t mentioned them to me,” Thomasine answered; and her hands, hovering over the machine, seemed to hint that there had been enough of this aimless questioning and that they would like to be free to resume their work.

  “You can’t make any suggestion what the money was for? Or why it was in an envelope marked ‘Family papers’?”

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve no idea. He told me to make a note of the numbers, and I did and I gave it him. I don’t know what he did with it. I daresay it was in his pocket or one of the drawers.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bobby said. “No.”

  “I saw him put the notes in an envelope,” she continued. “He gave it me to put in the safe. I didn’t notice what was on the envelope. I didn’t look. That is all I know.”

  “Did Mr Weston often make payment by notes?”

  “Not that I know of. Generally he paid by cheque, like most people. I remember I wondered a little about the notes. I don’t think I had ever seen a fifty-pound note before. I didn’t say anything. Mr Weston didn’t encourage questions. It was nothing to do with me.”

  “The perfect secretary,” Bobby said with a smile and went away; and the rattle of the typewriter pursued him into the outer hall.

  Mr Anderson had instructed the domestic staff to continue their usual routine. Thomasine, too, was now staying at the house. Bobby arranged for a constable to remain on duty to see that nothing was interfered with. Then he drove off to the county police headquarters in Midwych, where Sergeant Payne was waiting for him.

  Payne had found out a good deal about Miss Bessie Bell, but nothing to her discredit and nothing to explain the summons by Mr Weston she had apparently received. Her reputation was without stain. She might, indeed, be described as almost on kissing terms with every customer; but she preserved strict discipline in the saloon bar over which she presided both for customers and for her assistants. One of her girls, indeed, had been known to hand in her notice in a temper, declaring that one might as well work in a nunnery, but that perhaps could be thought exaggeration—especially by nuns. It was, however, a fact that on at least one occasion Bessie had intervened with tact and effect to prevent another of her girls from making a bigger fool of herself than seemed necessary. By a coincidence this girl was now maid at Mayfield, Bobby had seen her when he called there. As for the landlord of the Wych and Wych Arms, he described Bessie as being worth her weight in gold. As she was a buxom lass and weighed a good hundred and fifty pounds, this was a serious compliment. There was one blot on her escutcheon, however, and one that interested Bobby because it seemed out of character. She was said to be mean and never to spend a penny if she coul
d help it, to go, indeed, to extremes to save any odd sixpence. Nor was this due to any family claims. Her parents were dead and she had no relatives requiring help. It was supposed she was “scraping and saving” to buy a business for herself.

  “Anything to suggest Martin Wynne has been in touch with her?” Bobby asked.

  “No,” replied Payne. “He’s not known at the Wych and Wych, and he’s been at work all day. Can’t check ’phone calls, of course. Or letters for that matter.”

  “We had better arrange to keep an eye on her,” Bobby observed thoughtfully. “And I want to know what time Mr Wynne got home last night. Try to find out, but don’t start gossip if you can help it. Anything about Mr Franks, Miss Rowe’s young man?”

  “He’s here,” Payne answered. “I got him to wait in case you wanted to question him. It seems O.K. that he and Miss Rowe were at the cinema last night. He has the ticket stubs. The serial numbers show they were bought round about the time the big picture comes on; and a friend, name of Reynolds, works at the same place, confirms seeing them leave about eleven—near the murder time. Of course Reynolds may be lying. But he is quite clear about it. Says Franks paid him half a crown he owed him. Says no one is likely to forget it when Franks pays up all on his own.”

  “Side-light on character?” suggested Bobby smilingly.

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Payne and continued: “Miss Rowe’s landlady backs her up to some degree. Says she heard Miss Rowe come in at half-past eleven, and she knows the time because she heard the grandfather clock on the landing strike. Not much to go on. Clocks can be tampered with. Miss Rowe seems to be a bit more used to tools than are some women. But there it is for what it’s worth.”

  “Yes, I see,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “I think I should like a word or two with Franks if he’s here. Curiosity, I’m afraid. I don’t see at present where he comes into the picture at all. But I do rather wonder what sort of a glamorous youngster has made such an impression on a girl like Thomasine Rowe. If any girl could pick and choose, she could. Drop her handkerchief where she likes, so to say.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Payne with a covert smile. “I’ll bring him in.”

  Payne went off on his errand. The ’phone bell rang. Bobby answered. The message was from the city police to say that, as asked, they had made inquiries at the various shops in the city, pawnbrokers and others, likely to stock Japanese knives, and that one shop had reported the recent sale of such a knife to a customer giving the name of Thomasine Rowe.

  CHAPTER XIX

  ENIGMA

  BOBBY HAD no time to digest this piece of information, for the door opened and there appeared Payne, in company with a scrubby, undersized youth, so utterly undistinguished he seemed the very quintessence of the senior office-boy, from whom had been abstracted every feature that could possibly differentiate him from any other. Weak eyes peered from behind his spectacles, from his lips hung a bedraggled cigarette, his hair was plastered thick with brilliantine, he gave a general impression of regarding a bath as an ordeal to be avoided as long as possible, and it was plainly some time since he had remembered to provide himself with a clean handkerchief.

  Bobby fairly gasped. Payne so far forgot himself and discipline as to bestow a wink on his superior officer. The newcomer looked both frightened and sulky. Bobby found himself reflecting that if this young man did not suffer from what Plautus called the mail’s misfortune of being too handsome, at any rate his looks were those Thomasine’s dark and angry beauty had found irresistible. Yet there was something about the boy’s little red pouting mouth, under his only good feature, a well-shaped, prominent nose with thin, clean-cut nostrils, that made Bobby fancy that somewhere or sometime he had seen him before. Possibly he had passed him in the street and had noticed him because of his very “unnoticeability”, if a word can be coined for the occasion. Recollecting himself, Bobby babbled, a little wildly, for indeed his surprise was great:—

  “Oh, yes, Mr Franks, isn’t it? Mr Ronald Franks? Yes. So good of you to come along. It is Mr Franks, isn’t it?” he added, wondering faintly if there wasn’t perhaps, after all, some mistake somewhere.

  “That’s right,” mumbled the young gentleman in question.

  “Oh, yes. Do take a seat,” Bobby said. “Oh, yes, Mr Franks. Yes. Let me see, you and Miss Thomasine Rowe are engaged, aren’t you?”

  For Bobby still clung to the belief that there must be two Ronald Franks, and that this must be the other one.

  “That’s right,” said Mr Franks again, and once more Bobby blinked bewilderedly, this time at the marked lack of enthusiasm noticeable in the young man’s tone.

  “Now, let me see,” Bobby went on. “Take another cigarette, won’t you?” Mr Franks seemed half reluctant to dispense with the damp, chewed fragment dangling from his lips, but finally helped himself to one from the proffered box. “Yes. You and Miss Rowe went to the Superb cinema last night, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right,” said Mr Franks once again; and Bobby wondered if perhaps these were the only two words of the language with which the young man was acquainted.

  “I expect you’ve heard of what’s happened?” Bobby went on.

  Mr Franks nodded; and, a little to Bobby’s relief, did not this time say “That’s right”, but instead:—

  “Nothing to do with me.”

  “No, no,” Bobby agreed. “No. It’s only that we have to ask everybody we can get hold of if there’s anything they think they can tell us. I’ve had the pleasure of a long chat with Miss Rowe, and if you’ll allow me I should like to congratulate you on your engagement. We think you’re a very lucky young man indeed.”

  “That’s right,” said Franks, falling back on his accustomed formula, and speaking so gloomily that Bobby half expected to see him burst into tears.

  “A most striking young lady,” Bobby said quickly, hoping to stave off any such crisis, but with the unexpected result of making Franks start violently and stare at Bobby with a swift return of that look of fear he had shown when he first came in, but that had vanished before Bobby’s amiable and pleasant manner.

  “Whatjer mean?” he mumbled, and gave a glance towards the door, as if he meditated flight.

  “Well, Miss Rowe made a great impression on us all,” Bobby said, feeling a good deal puzzled by Franks’s manner. “The sergeant and I are old married men, or else I think we should both feel envious. Eh, Payne?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Payne, playing up gallantly, but crossing his fingers as he spoke, for to his mind Miss Thomasine Rowe was best admired at a distance—a good long distance. Personally he would as soon have married a thunderstorm.

  “Ho! Would you?” said Franks bitterly.

  “I’ll wager,” continued Bobby with a smile, “all your pals think you have carried off the prize of the year.”

  Franks gave a faint and watery smile in return, and looked at Bobby rather as a dog looks when called upon to perform a trick it knows beyond its powers. He did not speak, and Bobby had to drop the subject. He could not very well ask, as he so much desired to do, what on earth Mr Franks thought a girl like Thomasine Rowe saw in him. Instead he asked a few unimportant routine questions, and in the midst of them Franks blurted out:—

  “I’m trying to get dereserved.”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Bobby. “Not easy for any one in the engineering line. Want to join up?”

  “That’s right,” said Franks. “Training takes a year, and it looks like now as if it would be over before then.” He added sharply: “Mind, that’s confidential, that is. Don’t you go telling her.”

  “Oh, I quite understand,” Bobby answered, thinking, however, that all he understood was to whom the pronoun referred. “Police can keep secrets, you know.”

  He did not detain the young man much longer, and when Franks had departed, Payne said solemnly:—

  “Beats Bannagher, that does, and Bannagher beats the band.”

  “That’s right,” said Bobby mechanically.

&
nbsp; “What does the girl see in that little bit of salvage?” demanded Payne, not so much of Bobby as of the whole wide, mysterious universe.

  “What does any girl see in any of us?” countered Bobby; to which Payne returned a mumbled comment to the effect that he hoped he at least did not so strongly resemble a stray bit of chewed rag.

  An odd little interview, Bobby thought, and he supposed he was letting run away with him that imagination for which old Dan Edwardes had rebuked him, if he told himself that in one remark and reply there might well lurk a strange significance. Too slender and too fanciful an idea to build upon, though, and when he got home and told his wife, Olive, about young Franks, he did not mention it, but talked instead of how queer it was that so striking a girl as Miss Rowe should have fixed her affections on so commonplace a young man. But all Olive said was that men and women loved not as they chose, but as they must.

  “What struck me,” Bobby went on, “is that Franks is just about plumb scared. Any mention of the girl’s name made him thoroughly uncomfortable. ”

  Thereon Olive explained that Bobby was confusing two entirely different things. If young Franks were merely afraid, that was all right, because fear was one of the noblest of human attributes. But if he were just uncomfortable, that was bad, because being uncomfortable was merely an animal quality. So Bobby said she might know what she was talking about, but he didn’t, and he didn’t know either how what he had learnt from Franks fitted in. Yet he felt that it did somewhere, and might even fit in as key piece, and anyhow he was so tired and sleepy he couldn’t even think.

  All the same, tired though he was, Bobby’s sleep that night was troubled by many dreams, through which there followed one another as in an unending solemn saraband, the figures of the strangely contrasted women who in some way or another seemed concerned in the enacted tragedy.

  Bessie Bell was there in his dreams, the barmaid, tall and blonde and afraid; and why was she afraid? For even in his sleep he knew that to her challenge and defiance were more natural than fear. Why, again, had she obeyed the dead man’s summons to his home; and was there some strong reason why the easy and careless generosity of her natural character had taken on so careful an economy of “scraping and saving”?