There's a Reason for Everything: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 3

The meeting, as is the way of such meetings, did, in fact, last much longer than was in any way necessary—or, for that matter, desirable. So it was getting late before Bobby was able to pick up Mr. Parkinson whom he found waiting for him, not at the Union Club, but outside the hall where the meeting had been held. Parkinson, it seemed, had remembered some small piece of business or another he had wished to attend to, and, having done so, instead of returning to the Union Club, he had come on here to wait. Olive had already departed for home in the company of her own special contingent of Civil Defence workers, and with enough reorganization work on hand to keep her and them all busy for some considerable time to come. With him Bobby had brought Inspector Payne; and Parkinson, when introduced, murmured:

  “The Deputy Chief Constable and a police inspector. Jones will feel like murder.”

  He was still chuckling happily at the thought as they started off. Bobby was driving, since, in the general shortage of man power, no constable could be conveniently spared to act as chauffeur. In the darkness, for night had fallen now, Bobby managed to take a wrong turning; so that it was eleven before they reached the entrance to Nonpareil, where huge stone griffins crowned gate posts even more gigantic. Then, to gain admittance, for the gates were locked, they had to rouse the caretaker from his bed in the lodge he occupied. It was a task that took some minutes, for it seemed that he slept soundly.

  When he appeared he showed himself a short, thick-set, bulletheaded, scowling individual, with a cast in one eye and black, broken teeth that lent him no attractive appearance, even apart from his scowl. But then many people would be apt to show a scowling countenance on being summoned from a warm bed and a first sound sleep to attend to strangers on an errand that seemed most unnecessary.

  “The gentleman’s gone,” he protested. “Gone long ago. I’m letting no strangers in this time o’ night. So what’s the odds?”

  He tried to bang to his door, but failed, for Bobby’s foot was there first. Excusable, perhaps, this show of temper, Bobby thought, and was about to declare his identity and produce his official card, when abruptly the man’s manner changed. Where, before, it had been hostile, truculent indeed, it became subdued, conciliatory. He was even muttering words of excuse as he produced the key giving admittance to Nonpareil. The change of tone was so sudden and so marked that Mr. Parkinson spoke of it as they walked on towards the building—their car they left outside, since the approach by the drive was short and to admit the car would have meant opening the great iron gates, a lengthy and troublesome business.

  “Our caretaker friend was beginning to think he might get reported for insolence,” Parkinson was saying. “I suppose it struck him he might lose his job if he wasn’t careful.”

  “It might be that,” agreed Bobby. “I don’t know. He certainly changed his tone in a great hurry.”

  “Nowadays,” grumbled Payne, whose temper was not good, for he put little faith in all this talk of perambulating statues and bloodstains appearing where no bloodstain could be, and would much rather have been on his way to supper and bed than where he was in actual fact, “nowadays, it isn’t the worker who is afraid of losing a job, it’s the job that’s scared stiff of losing the man.”

  “Do you know his name?” Bobby asked Parkinson.

  “The caretaker’s?” Parkinson said. “Bailey, I think. I think that’s how the letter was addressed. And I think I heard his wife call him Alf.”

  “Bailey?” repeated Bobby. “Alf Bailey? Can’t remember anyone of that name. Mean anything to you, Payne?”

  “Not a thing,” answered Payne. “I’ll inquire, shall I?”

  “Might as well ask our people here if they know anything,” Bobby agreed. “You can never know too much in our job, Mr. Parkinson.”

  “I suppose not,” agreed Mr. Parkinson. “A most unpleasant man. A thoroughly criminal type of countenance in my opinion. But perhaps I am prejudiced. He was anything but civil when Jones and I were here before. In fact, Jones threatened to complain to his employer.”

  By this time they had entered the enormous shadow thrown by the great mass of the building now close before them. There was only a thin crescent of a moon, but the night was clear, with strongly-shining stars, so that till now progress had not been too difficult. But here, in the shadow of the building, the darkness was intense; and on the paved path they were following, their footsteps sounded heavily. Guided by Parkinson, they made their way round to the east wing where was the small side door to which Bailey had given them the key. All other entrances had been carefully secured by bolt and bar and lock and every window in the place—the number ran well into three figures—had been boarded up. Closing behind them the small door whereby they entered they found themselves in a narrow passage. It led them to the inner hall, into which they emerged through what once had been the serving door, and to the well of the great double stairway, one of the features of the building with its marble steps and its fine gilt iron railings, that rose in a majestic sweep to the gallery above.

  There in the old days, when Nonpareil had been the centre of county society, when an invitation to its balls or banquets had been a proof of social standing and importance, when at times even Royalty itself had been entertained, had stood host and hostess to receive their guests ascending that great stairway in a double stream of rank and fashion, a blaze of light from many hundreds of candles shining upon every jewel and ornament and glittering order, upon the colourful dresses of the women, on the often even more colourful uniforms of the men. Now all was dark and silent and alone; and what made Bobby act as he did he never knew, what faint warning reached him, what almost unheard sound told him to beware, what obscure instinct made him know death was near. Abruptly he pushed Payne aside, caught Parkinson, instinctively resisting, by the arm and pulled him back, as, almost simultaneously, something huge, black, heavy, crashed down with such a reverberating roar in the stillness of the quiet house as though itself had crashed about their ears.

  Bobby had overbalanced himself. At least he supposed so, at any rate he was flat on the floor of the hall. He scrambled to his feet, flashing his torch, which he still held. Payne, overthrown by Bobby’s unexpected push, was on his knees, looking very bewildered. Parkinson was prone and motionless. Round about them lay the shattered fragments of a stone bust—of a Roman emperor apparently. Had Bobby’s action been less prompt, had the thing fallen a foot or two more to one side, one or more of them must inevitably have been killed. The air was full of dust, the tessellated flooring of the hall was badly broken where it had taken the full impact of the falling bust. Still on his knees, Payne said:

  “What was it? What happened?”

  “Murder try on, apparently,” Bobby answered grimly. “Look after Parkinson. He’s hurt.”

  While he was still speaking, Bobby was racing up the stairs, and as he was doing so was telling himself he was wasting his efforts. Whoever was responsible, whether it had been a deliberate attempt at murder or merely meant as a diversion to cover escape, had certainly already got away. Easy enough to run down the other side of the double stairs—or that side up which Bobby was now racing, for that matter—while they themselves were all three still prostrate on the hall floor, still bewildered and put out of action by the suddenness of the attack.

  When he reached the gallery on which abutted the two wings of the stairway he stood and listened. The house seemed very still and silent, more so by reason of the contrast with the recent crash, whereof the last reverberating echo had now died away. Bobby could almost have fancied that like a living thing holding its breath it waited expectant and eager to know the result of what it itself had done. There were sounds though from below where he had left Parkinson, with Payne to look after him. Bobby threw the light of his torch down on them where they stood. To Bobby’s relief, Parkinson was on his feet again, and so he was alive and not too seriously hurt.

  “Payne?” Bobby called. “Payne? Mr. Parkinson? Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I think s
o,” Mr. Parkinson answered. “What happened?”

  “Will you be all right by yourself?” Bobby asked. “Payne, is Mr. Parkinson fit to be left?”

  “Yes, sir, I think so,” Payne answered. “Bruised a bit, but no bones broken, I think.”

  “Then leave him and come up here,” Bobby said.

  “I’m not being left,” said Mr. Parkinson with dignity. “I’m not lost luggage,” and he followed Payne up the stairs with sufficient speed to show he was not seriously hurt. When they reached the gallery he said to Bobby: “What happened? Who was it?”

  “Someone trying to explain we weren’t wanted here,” Bobby answered.

  “Surely Jones wouldn’t…” began Parkinson, still a trifle dazed. “I knew he would be annoyed, but surely…”

  “Rather a drastic way of showing annoyance,” Bobby suggested. “I hardly think it’s Dr. Jones. But let’s have a look at you first, and then we’ll have a look round.”

  Mr. Parkinson’s shoulder was badly bruised by the glancing blow it had received, and in his fall he had hurt his left side. Bobby had a small pocket first-aid case with him, but Parkinson wanted to refuse treatment, declaring stoutly that he was perfectly all right, and all he wanted to know was what Jones had been up to.

  “Can he have moved the bust for examination or some reason and let it overbalance?” he asked.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Bobby answered, as he persisted in administering a little elementary treatment to the bruised shoulder. “Didn’t the caretaker say Dr. Jones had left some time ago?”

  “I forgot that,” admitted Parkinson. Then he said: “There’s been no other living creature in here, none.”

  “Well, someone was here,” Bobby said, helping Parkinson readjust his coat and shirt. “Ghosts don’t throw busts about.”

  “Poltergeists do,” Parkinson told him. “Is there a poltergeist history here?”

  Bobby did not answer this, as he did not feel competent to discuss the manners and the habitat of the poltergeist. Nor, for that matter, did he think the moment appropriate.

  “That thing weighed fifty pounds or more,” put in Payne. “Hefty sort of ghost needed to throw that about.”

  “Can you show us the room where you saw the bloodstain?” Bobby asked.

  “I think so,” Parkinson answered. To Payne he said rebukingly: “You can’t measure super-normal phenomena by avoirdupois weight.” Payne grunted. To Bobby, Parkinson continued: “It’s this corridor to the right through here, the third or fourth door, I think. Anyhow, I can easily identify it. We took precautions. Necessary in psychical research.” He led them through a vast reception-room, then into a broad corridor, from which several doors opened on each side. Before two successive doors he paused, examining each in turn by the light of his torch. “This is it,” he announced the second time. “You see? We placed threads in position across the crack of the door. Undisturbed, you notice,” he pointed out with modest pride. “A most effective precaution.” Then he showed a small paper wad fixed between the doorpost and the door, so that it would fall if the door were opened. Still gently proud, he said: “We take every care, one has to in these matters of super-normal phenomena. Absolutely impossible for any one to have been here during our absence.”

  He opened the door as he spoke. Within was a large, empty room, the windows boarded up, the darkness complete.

  “It’s in the middle of the floor between the fireplace and the westerly window,” Mr. Parkinson said, throwing the beam from the torch he held on the spot mentioned. The rays from Bobby’s torch, from Payne’s, followed, questing, searching. Payne said sharply:

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “It’s vanished,” Parkinson said bewilderedly. “It’s gone.”

  CHAPTER V

  SCULPTURE

  The light from the three torches all directed on the floor between the fireplace and the windows did show, however, a roughly oval chalk outline, but an outline that outlined nothing save bare boards, as bare and clear of mark or stain as any other portion of the floor. Looking very disturbed, Mr. Parkinson said:

  “It was there. Now it’s vanished clean away. Impossible. Normally, that is.”

  “The impossible doesn’t happen, normally or abnormally,” remarked Bobby.

  “There’s something going on round here,” said Payne slowly, “that I don’t much like the look of.”

  Bobby was walking up and down the length of the room, sending the ray of his torch into every nook and corner, seeing and finding nothing save bare walls, bare floor.

  “It was there,” Parkinson insisted again. “A stain of freshly-spilt blood, and now no sign of it. I saw it, touched it, it was fresh, it was damp, it was here. Now it isn’t,” and furtively, for he had been brought up in the Roman church, though he had long since left it, he crossed himself.

  “Can’t have been…” began Payne, but Parkinson interrupted him angrily.

  “I tell you I saw it,” he said. “I can swear to that. I saw it myself. I don’t understand, but there it is.”

  “You mean, there it isn’t,” suggested Bobby. “Are you sure this is the same room?”

  “The cotton we put in position was still there, wasn’t it?” retorted Mr. Parkinson. “You saw it yourself, I showed you.” He stooped to look more closely at the chalk on the floor, markings that because they no longer showed or indicated anything seemed somehow to have acquired a greater significance, gaining strangely by loss. Parkinson said: “I watched Jones make it. There, where you can see a slight irregularity, is where Jones stopped for a moment to start again.” He turned towards the fireplace. “I smoked two cigarettes while we were in the room, and threw the stubs in the fireplace. There they are.” He showed two cigarette stubs he had picked up. “Greek,” he said, “made in Athens. Not very common. I get them from a friend. He imported them specially before the war. He still has some. No one can possibly have been in here since we left. Everything just as it was. It’s…it’s beyond me,” and once again he crossed himself, and this time quite openly.

  “All very odd and very interesting,” Bobby commented. He was still walking up and down the room, examining ceiling, walls, flooring. He even looked up the chimney. He found nothing interesting or in any way suspicious. He noticed, peering through chinks in the boarding covering the window that there was a wide view from it over the surrounding country. Possibly, he thought, that was why it had been chosen. He said: “There’ll have to be a thorough search of the whole place. Payne, do you think you could spare two or three of your chaps for the job to-morrow?”

  Payne looked dismayed. He answered, when he had recovered a little from the shock:

  “Well, sir, if you think it’s necessary…” and his tone plainly implied that he did not. “You know how short-handed we are. Perhaps some of the uniform men…?”

  Bobby smiled grimly. He knew how fierce a battle would have to be waged if any men were to be extracted from any of his superintendents. He foresaw plainly how everything that went wrong for weeks to come would always be blandly explained by the fact that these men had been withdrawn, necessary men, essential men, so that there had simply been no one to do whatever had not been done. Already every senior officer was wailing that making bricks without straw was child’s play compared to carrying out duties without men to perform them. Besides, Bobby was acutely conscious that his own position was a little delicate. He was a comparatively new arrival in the Wychshire police force. He had come to it direct from Scotland Yard, an institution at which all his superintendents sniffed ostentatiously. He had been promoted over their heads, though none of them, all elderly men of the old school, all approaching or beyond the normal age of retirement, had been anxious to accept new responsibilities, or face the social activities that a Chief Constable has to be prepared to undertake. All the same, they were all much his senior in service, inclined to patronize him as a precocious though no doubt promising youngster, and could, if they chose, make things extremely diff
icult for their young chief. To obtain men from them would be like dragging a succulent bone from a hungry tiger.

  “I would rather you tried to find them from your own lot, Payne, if you possibly can,” he said pleadingly.

  “Yes, sir, if you say so,” said Payne formally, “only I don’t quite see how. Now Jenks…” and he was proceeding to dilate at some length on the ease with which Jenks, the superintendent of the C division, could spare men, when Bobby interrupted.

  “Oh, well, all right,” he said. “We’ll think about that later. Just now the thing is to have a further look round and see if we can find out why the stain Mr. Parkinson saw has vanished so completely.” (Here Mr. Parkinson crossed himself once more.) “Not a sign of it left.”

  Bobby bent down to examine even more closely the space enclosed by the chalk line. “There’s been no scrubbing or scraping, or anything like that, not been touched in any way, I’m sure of that.” He stood up and said to Parkinson: “I would like a look at the gallery where the sculpture is. Can you find it? I suppose the bust that nearly did for us came from there.”

  “It’s straight down the corridor,” Parkinson answered, and, as they were all three leaving the room, he said: “Aren’t you going to make the door fast?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Bobby said. “No good if it’s a ghost.” Here Payne made sounds indicative of annoyance and disbelief. “I suppose a locked door wouldn’t keep a ghost out,” Bobby continued. “And if it isn’t, I don’t see what anyone can do except rub out the chalk.”

  “Oh, well, now then,” said Parkinson doubtfully, as they walked on along the corridor towards the picture gallery. On the way, he said: “According to the legend, the sooner and the more completely any such stain of blood disappears, the sooner and more certain is the death of any of the de Tallebois family who see it.”

  “Well, there wasn’t one there, was there?” asked Payne.

  “Dr. Jones is some kind of cousin, he told me,” Parkinson said.