The Conqueror Inn: A Bobby Owen Mystery Read online

  After some hesitation Mr. Kram, who answered the ’phone himself, said he thought that Maggie would prefer to come to Bobby’s office and promised that she would do so without delay.

  “There’s been enough talk already,” Kram said sourly over the ’phone, “without police showing up here any more.”

  Bobby said he was sorry and he always tried to carry out an investigation as inconspicuously as possible, but all the same, people who might have information to give had to be questioned. Nor was he much surprised to find, when Maggie arrived, that she was accompanied by her father, who seemed to take it for granted that he was to be present at the interview. So Bobby had to explain that that could not be permitted; Miss Kram was of age and fully responsible. She was of course, entitled to the presence of a solicitor if she so wished.

  Kram protested angrily that that was absurd—she could have a lawyer’s help, but not that of her father? Preposterous, he declared, and tried to argue the point, till Maggie cut the discussion short by declaring she was quite willing to talk to Bobby alone. Why not?

  She seemed inclined, however, to make fresh protest when she found that Sergeant Payne would also be present, but on that point Bobby was firm. No police officer but takes care always to have a colleague present when he has to question a woman.

  Safety first, in fact.

  In the end, Maggie withdrew her objection when she understood that Payne was not going to take a verbatim shorthand report, an idea to which she seemed strongly to object.

  “I have asked you to call,” Bobby explained, all this settled, “because, from information we are now in possession of, we have learned of your recent marriage.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Maggie retorted, looking straight at him. “I’m not married.”

  For answer, Bobby, who had anticipated this denial, handed her the copy of her marriage certificate he had procured.

  “How did you find out?” she asked angrily, apparently unaware, or forgetting, that marriages are matters of public record. She tore the document in half and threw the pieces on the floor. “What’s it to do with you?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” Bobby answered, “unless, as we are beginning to believe, the dead man we are trying to identify is Larry Connor and your husband.”

  She made no answer for a moment, but her eyes were fire in a face like death.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said harshly with a kind of desperate energy. “It isn’t true. It isn’t, I tell you.”

  “You would wish to be sure, wouldn’t you?” Bobby asked. “Is there any way in which you could identify the body? Any scar or birthmark? Anything at all by which we could make—certain?”

  She shook her head.

  Bobby said:

  “The body has not been buried yet. That will have to be done soon. Do you wish to see it? I must ask you that. You know from the papers that the features are unrecognizable, but if you wish—”

  She shook her head again.

  “I think I must go,” she said. “I think I must go.”

  She got to her feet and stood for a moment so unsteadily that Bobby thought she was about to collapse. He jumped up and put out his hand for her support. With an effort that was almost visible she rallied all her forces, turned, and went away, walking slowly, with stiff, careful steps. Nor did Bobby try to stop her, for he felt she had reached the very limit of her endurance. If there was anything she knew and was willing to tell him, she would return, he thought. From where he had been quietly sitting at a side table, Payne said:

  “By God, she has guts.”

  “Yes,” said Bobby. “So she has.”

  Payne said again:

  “She knows and she won’t tell, though it’s tearing her in pieces.”

  “Why won’t she?” Bobby asked.

  “Because she thinks it was her father did it,” Payne said.

  “I suppose so,” Bobby agreed.

  CHAPTER XXI

  MICKY BURKE AT HOME

  IT SEEMED CLEAR that the next step indicated was a further talk with Micky Burke. Better perhaps, Bobby thought, for him to call at Burke’s address rather than ask the Irishman to come to headquarters. For one thing, useful knowledge of a man’s character and disposition can often be obtained by observation of him in his own home. Micky lived alone as Bobby knew, for that had been inquired into as a matter of routine, in a small house of the ‘two up and two down’ variety in one of the working-class districts of Midwych. The housework Micky did himself; and it was apparently admitted in the neighbourhood that he did it as well and kept the house as clean and tidy as any woman could have done. He was too silent and reserved, kept himself ‘too much to himself’ as the neighbours put it, to be much liked, but his general reputation was that of a respectable, hard-working man; and if he didn’t wish to be friendly, and if he wasn’t the sort of neighbour you could go to to borrow an odd pot or pan, or half-a-crown on the eve of pay day, still he interfered with nobody. If he could get along without you, just as well could you get along without him. The city police in the district knew nothing against him. A minor but rather curious point was that though certainly no teetotaller—indeed a steady drinker—he never ‘used,’ as runs the common expression, any of the public houses in the neighbourhood. What drink he required was delivered from an off-licence establishment.

  Fanciful perhaps, Bobby told himself, to see anything strange or suggestive in the contrast between this somewhat drab, self-contained, hard-working and monotonous existence, and the reputation his employer had given him, and that Bobby had since verified, for a kind of fierce recklessness in his handling of the giant lorries he drove on the roads. Possible, Bobby supposed, that he found a way of release from the inhibitions that seemed to govern his everyday life, in the risks he took and the skill he showed in crashing those great vehicles at such speed round corners, past other traffic, through every peril and danger of the high road.

  An unblemished road record, though.

  An interesting character, Bobby thought, and wondered again, remembering those still, cold eyes of his, whether the restraint he so clearly exercised upon himself in his everyday life—or why this avoidance, for example, of public houses?—did not come from a knowledge of a hidden strength of passion and of purpose that had of necessity always to be kept under watch and ward lest it should break from restraint.

  The district of the city in which Micky lived was some distance away and not one Bobby knew well. So he stopped at the nearest of the city police stations, asked for directions and for permission to leave his car there, and completed the journey on foot.

  A well-kept little house he found, with clean, well-laundered curtains at the windows—Bobby wondered whether Micky’s housewifely skill extended to starching and ironing or whether the curtains went to a laundry—and a knocker and doorstep plate that shone like the buttons on a guardsman’s tunic in peace time. The house stood at a corner where there crossed each other two long drab streets of working-class houses, built in days when two rooms down and two rooms above were thought ample accommodation for any working-class family. At the back of each house a microscopic yard took the place of a garden, and, as a concession no doubt to the amenities, there was a bare open space behind to serve as a sort of communal drying ground for the weekly wash.

  The back door opened on this, the front door on one street, the kitchen window directly on the long cross street; and Bobby supposed that only the suspicious mind of a policeman would notice that thus was provided three separate and distinct means of access and departure in three separate directions.

  Bobby knew that Micky had finished his day’s work and would probably be at home. When he knocked Micky came at once to the door. He did not speak, but a flicker in his pale eyes, gone in an instant, showed recognition and perhaps even unease. Bobby said:

  “Oh, good evening, Mr. Burke. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes?”

  Still without speaking, Micky drew aside. Bobby accepted t
he silent invitation and entered the kitchen on which the street door opened directly. It was a clean, well-kept, bare-looking room, with no concession to comfort—a hard, chill room of one who neither knew ease nor sought it. The only armchair was of the high-backed wooden variety. There was no covering on the floor, but the boards were scrubbed clean; well scrubbed every week at least, Bobby guessed. The walls, distempered in a plain self colour, were bare, except for a calendar cut from a religious newspaper, and for a representation of the Sacred Heart. On the mantelpiece, as bare otherwise as the rest of the room, stood an alarm clock and two large photographs—one of a young and good-looking man, the other of Burke’s employer, Merton Kram. Before each of these a candle burned. A kettle was beginning to boil on a small fire in the grate and on the table was Micky’s supper. It consisted of fried fish, fried potatoes, greens, and looked appetizing. Taking no notice of his visitor Micky went back to his meal and Bobby asked pleasantly:

  “May I sit down?”

  “You needed no asking to come,” Micky said. “Why wait for it to sit?”

  He continued his meal. Bobby sat down and watched in silence. Micky was finishing his fish. Rising, he cleared away the remnants of this first course and then produced a baked pudding that had been keeping warm by the fire. Not the work of any amateur, Bobby reflected, as his thoughts turned, somewhat sadly, for it was long since he had eaten, to the dinner probably slowly spoiling at home and to Olive darkly brooding over its ruin.

  “Mr. Burke,” Bobby said, “I am very anxious to get in touch with your nephew, Mr. Larry Connor. Can you help me?”

  Micky shook his head, helped himself to a liberal share of his baked pudding, and began to eat.

  “Have you heard from him since he left here?”

  Micky shook his head again and then deviated into language.

  “Never any hand at writing, wasn’t Larry,” he said briefly.

  “Miss Kram had a letter from him, I believe.”

  “It’s what she told me,” Micky answered. “Why not?”

  “Mr. Burke,” Bobby said, “did you know that your nephew and Miss Kram were married?”

  Micky laid down his fork and spoon and looked long and hard at Bobby. For the first time he seemed really moved and Bobby noticed how a slow, dark flush spread over his features.

  “No, nor were they,” he said at last. “What’s put that into your head?”

  “I have seen their marriage certificate,” Bobby said.

  “There’s a lie,” Micky said slowly. “A police lie. An English policeman’s lie. You have not.”

  Bobby did not answer. Micky got to his feet. He had forgotten now his supper to which before he had so stolidly and so ostentatiously devoted his attention.

  “There’s a black lie,” he said again, but this time with less conviction. “A lie, a trap.”

  Bobby gave him briefly the place and date. Micky said:

  “At a registry office? That’s no marriage.”

  “As legal and as binding as any other,” Bobby answered. “Do you see any objection—?”

  “And her an English heretic,” Micky said, “and him vowed and sworn—”

  He checked himself abruptly, and Bobby said:

  “Yes? Vowed and sworn—?”

  Micky sat down and spoke more quietly.

  “It was too much to say, vowed and sworn. It’s an Irish girl I was thinking of, a true Irish girl and no heretic either.”

  He began to eat again, stuffing his mouth so full that Bobby felt sure he was seeking time for thought. Presently he said:

  “Well, if it’s wed they are and legal and all, what’s that to do with the police? Is it English law now that a lad can’t wed without asking the leave of the police?”

  “No,” Bobby answered, “but it is the law that a lad can’t die with a bullet in his heart without it having to do with the police. Come, Mr. Burke, you must realize that until I can get in touch with your nephew I shall have to go on thinking that it may be his body we found buried that morning near the Conqueror Inn.”

  “Then you must wait,” Micky countered, “till Larry turns up again and that’ll be in his time and not in yours.”

  “Why should he choose to leave a wife he married so recently?” Bobby countered in his turn.

  “That’s for him to say and not for me,” Micky retorted. “It’s a thing that’s clean out of my understanding—his marrying Miss Kram, I mean, if it’s the truth it is and no lie. It’ll be that she talked the lad into it, the way a woman can talk any man into any folly, and now he has come to himself, he sees there’s nothing for him but to run for it. I reckon that’ll be the way of things.”

  “Strange,” Bobby said, “that should happen at the very time we find the dead body of a man of about Larry’s age, of about his size and height and weight—we’ve made sure of all that. The same coloured hair, too. Had Larry any mark upon his body, a scar or birthmark or anything, by which he could be identified?”

  “No,” answered Micky, “none, for he was perfect from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.”

  “So was the dead man,” Bobby said quietly, and Micky made no comment. Then Bobby said: “He lived with you, I think. May I see his bedroom?”

  “You may,” Micky answered, “seeing there’s no way I can stop you and you being police. But if it’s fingerprints you have in your mind, I gave the room a thorough cleaning from top to bottom after he had gone; and if it’s clothing or papers, there’s none; for what he had, he took, and he travelled light at that. It’s the room at the back that was his, so go you and look for yourself.”

  Bobby did not avail himself of the invitation. He was very sure it would not have been given unless every precaution had been taken first. Micky was busying himself clearing the table. Bobby said:

  “The body is not buried yet, though that must be done soon. Will you see it in case you are able to recognize it?”

  “I will not,” Micky answered, “for it can be no one I know, and Larry it can’t be, when I was with him long after the poor man you found was dead and his soul with the blessed saints.”

  Micky crossed himself and went on with what he was doing. Bobby watched him in silence for a time and then said:

  “You would have objected to the marriage if you had known of it. Would Mr. Kram have objected too, do. you think?”

  “Ask him that,” Micky retorted, “and tell him if you will, that it’s too good for her was Larry.”

  “I see you have a photograph of Mr. Kram there,” Bobby remarked, glancing at the mantelpiece.

  Micky turned, stared at it, and then turned back to Bobby again; and again Bobby thought he could see a flicker of some unknown emotion in those still, cold eyes of his.

  “What about it?” Micky said. “He gave it me the other day. You ask him.”

  “I see there’s a candle burning before it,” Bobby observed.

  Micky turned on him in a cold fury.

  “There’s too much you see,” he said, almost hissing the words through tight lips. “There’s too many questions you ask. Maybe it’s better you should be going now.”

  The threat in his voice was evident but Bobby took no notice, though he could see how the little, dried-up man was quivering with the intensity of some obscure, deep-rooted passion. Difficult to tell why his emotion should be so great, or why it should seem to have been brought to a head by this reference to his employer. Unless it was that he shared the belief that Sergeant Payne had attributed to Maggie. Partly to put this idea to the test, Bobby continued:

  “You see, what’s in my mind is this. If Mr. Kram objected strongly to any marriage between his daughter and Larry, could that have led to a quarrel ending in Larry’s getting shot? Perhaps in self-defence. I have to consider every possibility, you know.”

  “There’s no sense,” Micky said slowly, “in pestering me with questions when I’ve no knowledge I can answer from. Get on with your hangman’s job, get Mr. Kram hanged if you can, and lea
ve me be. For now there’s the washing-up to be done and then I’ll be for bed. For I’ve work to do if you haven’t.”

  “My work,” Bobby answered, “is to try to bring to justice a murderer—of your nephew, I think. You don’t seem inclined to help.”

  “I’ll take no help or want it from English police,” Micky snarled.

  He lifted the kettle from the fire, and, going into the back kitchen, set to work washing up his supper dishes.

  No good, Bobby decided, trying to extract information or help from a man making it so plain he intends to supply neither. He gave a final glance round, a final look at the photograph of Micky’s employer on the mantelpiece. A significance in its presence there, he thought, and yet what that significance might be, he found it difficult to guess. He called a farewell to Micky, drowned perhaps in the clatter of the plates and cups Micky was busy with, for he got no answer, and let himself out. Before he had gone more than a step or two a woman came up to him. He recognized Maggie Kram and halted, surprised. She said to him:

  “Micky hasn’t told you anything, has he?”

  “Mrs. Connor,” Bobby answered, “telling the police nothing sometimes comes to much the same as telling them a lot.”

  “Has it this time?” she asked in a low voice.

  “It has made me feel more sure than ever that the murdered man is your husband and I think you know it,” Bobby answered. Then he said: “Why did you follow me?”

  “I didn’t,” she answered, “but it was easy to guess where you would be going next, so I came too, and waited till I saw you. Are you going to tell my father?”

  “That you married Larry Connor?” Bobby said. “I expect it will be necessary.”

  “I have told him now,” she said. “I knew you would. Did you notice if Micky had a photograph of my father there?”

  “There is one on his mantelpiece,” Bobby said. “There is a lighted candle before it. What does that mean?”

  She answered him only by a long, strange look and then turned and walked away quickly. He hurried after her; he had almost to run to reach her side, she went so quickly. He said to her, for he believed that he had interpreted aright what lay behind, that last long look of hers: