Everybody Always Tells: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 3

  “It does seem silly and meaningless,” Bobby agreed. “But is it? Or is there behind it something very far from silly?”

  CHAPTER II

  “DISCUSSING MY MURDER?”

  LATER ON THAT day there were two telephone messages. One was from Miss Rice to Bobby, telling him that a cheque had been received from Lord Newdagonby in payment for an artificial pearl necklace purchased that day. The matter was therefore closed so far as her firm was concerned. The second was from Bobby to his lordship, asking if he, Bobby, might call next day.

  “Must you?” Olive asked doubtfully when Bobby told her he meant to do this. “What for? Miss Rice says it’s all finished.”

  “I don’t like people who push necklaces into other people’s handbags,” Bobby remarked. “Prejudice on my part perhaps, but there it is. And I want rather badly to know what’s up. At present I’m in possession of a necklace priced at thirteen guineas according to the price ticket.”

  “One guinea before the war,” Olive interposed, indignation in her voice.

  “Apparently,” Bobby went on, “it’s the one Lord Newdagonby bought, and certainly the one he wished on you. Anyhow I’ve got to return it to him.”

  “What you mean,” Olive told him, the touch of indignation in her voice giving place to reproach, “is that you’re never happy till you’re trying to get to the bottom of some silly thing or another. Oh, why,” she appealed to the Fates, “why haven’t I a nice quiet husband in a nice quiet office just writing nice quiet letters all day long about yours to hand and same duly noted?”

  “Well, they do other things as well in offices,” Bobby protested mildly, “or so I’m told.”

  Olive, resigned, said no more, and Bobby went to the ’phone. He got a reply that Lord Newdagonby would be delighted to see him next morning at any time he liked before lunch. Lord Newdagonby expected, he said, to be in all morning.

  So at a gloomy old town house, a white elephant of a house, an unwanted whale of a house, most of it on a kind of care-and- maintenance basis for lack of the dozen or so servants it needed, Bobby duly presented himself next day soon after eleven. He was admitted by a charwoman, pail and mop complete, and one almost saw the sad, lamenting ghosts of former stately butlers hovering aghast in the background. Then came a small, thin, elderly woman, appearing so silently and unexpectedly at his side that Bobby was not quite sure whence she had produced herself. He thought most likely from the entrance to a corridor that, though it was broad daylight, seemed shrouded in perpetual shade. A cast in one eye, not pronounced enough to be called a squint, made it a little difficult to be sure at what she was looking. He got the impression, however, that she was aware of his identity, aware, too, of his errand, and the cause of it, and that this knowledge filled her with a secret excitement. Nor did he much like the thin, tight-lipped mouth, drawn down at the corners, where now and then appeared a slight quivering movement. A somewhat disturbing personality, Bobby thought. She asked him to wait for a moment or two while she informed Lord Newdagonby of his presence and with that glided, rather than walked, away down that gloomy and hidden corridor from which he thought she had emerged. She returned presently to say that Lord Newdagonby was not in his room, and she didn’t know what had become of him. He was, however, certainly somewhere in the house, if the gentleman wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes.

  Then she vanished again in that peculiar silent way of hers, but before very long was back to say that Lord Newdagonby had merely been in the library, where she had failed to notice him at first, hidden as he had been behind one of the great protruding bookshelves, but that he was now back in his study. Would the gentleman please come this way?

  Bobby followed her accordingly down that dark and airless and seemingly endless corridor into a huge, cavern-like apartment, once the last of a whole series of reception rooms, and now used by Lord Newdagonby as his study. The walls were lined with low bookshelves, filled with books that had the air, not always noticeable with books on shelves, of being in frequent use. Above these shelves were a number of paintings of the most modern school, one or two probably even just a trifle too advanced even for that most modern of institutions, the Tate Gallery. The furniture was mostly early Victorian, mahogany of a massive type, built for permanence in days when permanence seemed—well, permanent. Bobby noticed also the great fireplace in white marble, big enough to consume in a week a year’s supply of fuel as we know supplies to-day, and supported by two finely carved figures, nearly life size, half-fish and half-human.

  A large electric radiator had been installed to provide warmth for a room that seemed to Bobby as he entered to be deathly cold. But this radiator was now out of action, as a power unit cut was in progress. Near it, as near as he could get, as if hoping that some warmth still lingered in its neighbourhood, a man was sitting, holding on his knee a pad on which he had been writing. As Bobby entered he laid this aside and rose from his chair, giving in doing so an impression of being nearer seven feet in height than his actual six. It almost seemed indeed as if there would be no end to it as he slowly unwound himself from his former huddled position to stand at last upright at the full stretch of his abnormally thin body, a body so thin, so immaterial almost, one had the idea that it might very well vanish soon, like the fabled genii of the east, into a column of smoke. Crowning this strange body was an enormous head (size eight in hats) almost entirely bald, with two very bright bead-like eyes on each side of an enormous nose so like a beak that Bobby was irresistibly reminded of a vulture watching and waiting for its prey. Beneath this fantastic nose was a small, red mouth above a chin that tapered away nearly to a point. But it was in a low, pleasant voice, almost a caressing voice, that Bobby was greeted by this odd personality in whom he had no difficulty in recognizing Lord Newdagonby. Bobby offered his apologies for disturbing his lordship, and his lordship apologized in return for the cold room, but hoped the electricity supply would soon come into action again.

  The polite preliminaries over, Lord Newdagonby went on to express his pleasure at meeting Bobby, of whom he had often heard, both through the press and from a relative in the Home Office. But he had not fully understood the message received. Certainly he had purchased a string of pearl beads (“a ridiculous price, I thought of keeping it to show at our next board meeting and of asking how long the public was going to stand for that sort of thing”). But instead he had given it to the young lady he had bought it for, and very likely it was at that moment around her very charming neck.

  “That detail is, of course, strictly confidential,” explained Lord Newdagonby, and twisted his features into a sort of grimace that instantly changed his resemblance to a watchful vulture into that of a grinning gnome. “Can’t afford,” he explained, “to let my daughter know. Henpecking by a wife is nothing to henpecking by a daughter. You can’t divorce a daughter. And if Kitty got to know, I don’t suppose she would ever speak to me again. She has ideals—so delightful of her. But somehow it makes me mistrust her. Ideals are so unpredictable.”

  Bobby produced the necklace found so mysteriously in Olive’s handbag.

  “It has been identified by the price ticket,” Bobby explained, “as one of the three or four shown to you. You bought one, I understand. The others are safe back in the show-case. This was later picked up in the shop.”

  Lord Newdagonby took the necklace from Bobby and examined it closely.

  “Very like the one I bought,” he agreed, “Probably the same factory or wherever these things come from. But certainly not the same thing. As I told you, that is in the possession of a most charming young lady. Identified, you say? It must surely be very difficult to tell these things apart?”

  “The assistant seemed sure enough,” Bobby answered. “There’s always the price ticket, I suppose.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” Lord Newdagonby murmured, “if these shop-lifter people don’t keep a supply of price tickets in their pockets. If they are challenged in shop ‘A’, then they produce the thin
g with the price ticket of shop ‘B’ on it. Clear proof of innocence.”

  “Well, I’ve certainly never heard of that piece of technique,” observed Bobby, rising to his feet in preparation for departure. “Very ingenious idea, but not, I think, very practical. Still, what you tell me closes the matter as far as we are concerned. Of course, there may be developments later. One never knows. The necklace will have to go to Lost Property, I suppose. And all I can do is to offer you my apologies once again for having troubled you so unnecessarily.”

  “Not at all, not at all,” protested Lord Newdagonby, as once more he began that long, seemingly interminable process of unfolding himself to his full height. “A privilege to meet you, Mr Owen.”

  “Too good of you to say so,” declared Bobby; and for a moment his own clear and steady gaze met full that of those little bright bead-like eyes on each side of that enormous nose, so that once again he was reminded of a great watchful bird of prey, and in his mind was the certainty that this was not the end but the beginning.

  Oddly enough, too, he had a feeling that Lord Newdagonby had suddenly lost his former self-possession and calm certainty that he controlled the situation. It was exactly as if all at once, for some reason Bobby could not even guess at, he had felt his grip abruptly slacken. With a certain hurried suggestion of a wish to change the subject, he now waved a hand towards those rather astonishing pictures on the room walls.

  “I saw you looking at my little collection, Mr Owen,” he said. “The new French school mostly, but a few striking examples of some of our own more advanced workers. I wonder what you think of them?”

  “Oh, well, I’m a traditionalist, I suppose,” Bobby explained. “I follow Mr Churchill’s example and thoroughly enjoy playing about with paints and brushes when I’ve time. Teaches you to look, too. Look. Stare. Not just give a stray glance. But always traditional.”

  “Oh, yes, traditional,” Lord Newdagonby repeated, much as if for some obscure reason this word reassured him, relieved as it were the momentary doubt or unease or whatever it was that for a moment had appeared to trouble his supreme self-confidence. He emitted a sudden harsh sound that Bobby was to come to know as the Newdagonby version of a chuckle. He went on:“Very suitable, too. A police force should be traditional—like the Chantry Bequest and all that. Admirable work in its time, no doubt.” In saying this, his tone was exactly like that a scientist of to-day might use in commenting on a prehistoric stone axe. With a motion this time of his hand towards the fireplace, he added: “What do you think of those two supporters? They are traditional if you like. Body and head of a fish. Arms and legs of a man.”

  “Well, I did rather wonder,” Bobby admitted, “if there was any connection with the old man-fish god of the Philistines, wasn’t it? Dagon, I think, and I thought your name might mean the new farm or bye dedicated to Dagon.”

  Again Lord Newdagonby looked slightly taken aback, as if he had never supposed that a policeman was at all likely to have heard of any of the gods of the ancient east or to know what the termination ‘by’ might mean.

  “There is an old family legend like that,” he remarked. “We are supposed to descend from a Roman legionary, possibly of Arab origin, and a worshipper of Dagon. Thank God.”

  Bobby, a little puzzled at first by this pious exclamation, saw then that it was due to the fact that the power cut was over and the electric radiator once more in action. At the same moment the door opened and a deep, harsh, husky voice said:

  “Discussing my murder, are you?”

  CHAPTER III

  “BEELZEBUB”

  STARTLED BY THIS remark, which seemed to chime so well with his uneasy feeling that in all this there was much more than appeared on the surface, Bobby turned quickly to see a woman standing in the doorway. Behind her was a little, round man, half-hidden by her and giving a curious impression of peeping shyly round the flowing, fur-trimmed cape she wore. She was a tall, palely handsome woman with a high, pale forehead; and small, restless, uneasy eyes that somehow gave an odd impression of seeking a road it was both impossible and imperative to find. Yet the lower part of the face, with its rather too large mouth set in firm, hard lines above a chin, square and protuberant, seemed to contradict this first impression Bobby had received as of one who had lost her way and was seeking almost desperately to find it again. Then, too, there was about her a kind of aggressive air, a suggestion of a hungry ruthlessness, as if to match that likeness to a seeking bird of prey Bobby had found in Lord Newdagonby. For though no single feature in this new-comer bore any resemblance to any one of Lord Newdagonby’s, yet the total effect was of a general family likeness suggesting close relationship. Bobby guessed at once that she must be the daughter of whom he had heard, as having spent eighteen months or so in an Anglican sisterhood and then leaving it on the ground that she had found there was ‘nothing to religion’.

  “Murder is an ugly word,” Bobby said to her.

  “Murder is an ugly thing,” she retorted, and her small, restless eyes grew suddenly intent upon him. “Isn’t it, Charley?”

  From behind her flowing cape, as in speaking she came farther into the room, now emerged the little, smiling man Bobby had only seen before in partial eclipse. He was comparatively young, that is somewhere about forty, and he beamed approvingly upon the world in general, and those present in particular, through a pair of those large, gold-rimmed spectacles, once associated with elderly benevolence but now grown rare, now that gold has been dethroned as the universal touchstone of value and thereby become three times as valuable as before.

  He said rebukingly, in answer to his companion’s question:

  “Now, now, Sibby, murder’s not a thing to talk about like that.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she retorted.

  But this was spoken without heat, even without much interest, almost indifferently indeed.

  “My daughter, Mrs Findlay,” Lord Newdagonby said to Bobby. “Oh, a friend of hers—Mr Acton.”

  “The Mr Acton,” explained Mrs Findlay. “Charley Acton—every one ought to know his name. Every one will some day if only for what he’s done already that they haven’t heard about yet.”

  She had been walking slowly across the floor of that enormous room while she was speaking till she was quite close to Bobby, at whom she looked with a kind of detached curiosity, as one might look at something in a glass case in a museum, something one knew to be of interest but had no idea why nor greatly cared. Behind her trotted ‘the’ Charley Acton. ‘Trotted’, however, must be understood in a purely impressionist sense, for in fact he progressed in a completely normal manner, but none the less managed to convey a reminder of a pet dog trotting after its mistress—on a leash. To Bobby, when she was quite close to him, she said in her cool, uninterested tone:

  “Policeman, aren’t you?”

  Bobby was only just in time to grab hold of his temper before he lost it. Few things annoyed him more than when perfect strangers pretended to recognize his profession at first sight. Besides, he was always sure it was a pretence and that those making the claim had been ‘tipped off’ in advance. Now he made a slight bow which he hoped was reserved, dignified, and aloof. She rewarded him with one of her faint, almost illusory, yet rather charming smiles. He said:

  “Because of that fact, I was interested in what I heard you say about having been murdered recently. If I may say so, you seem to have survived the experience very successfully.”

  She had been turning away but now looked back at him, frowning slightly, and this time those small, worried eyes of hers showed a quick, new interest or perhaps surprise.

  “Prospective, purely prospective,” she said. “But not to be so for long, I understand.” To her father, she said: “What have you been telling him, Loo?”

  “The modern young woman,” commented Lord Newdagonby, shaking disapprovingly that enormous head of his which had the air of being perched so insecurely on so thin a body, on such narrow shoulders. He was regarding his daugh
ter with obvious pride and affection. Strange indeed to see how the rather bizarre, slightly inhuman impression he had conveyed at first, changed now into warm, natural human love. Not that Mrs Findlay seemed to notice. Perhaps she had grown so used to it that she had really become unaware of, or indifferent to, this strong affection her father had for her. Not to her but to Bobby, Lord Newdagonby went on: “My first name is Louis, and so my daughter calls me ‘Loo’ after some ridiculous, old, forgotten card game. Probably she thinks I’m ridiculous, old, and forgotten.”

  “Oh, I do,” Mrs Findlay remarked carelessly.

  “Now, now, Sibby,” said ‘the’ Charley Acton.

  “Shut up,” said Mrs Findlay—or ‘Sibby’.

  “In the golden days of good Queen Vicky,” said Lord Newdagonby, “I should have been cut off with a shilling if I had dared talk to my father like that—or sent to my room on bread and water for a week.”

  “These aren’t the golden days of good Queen Anyone,” retorted Mrs Findlay. “They are the very drab, leaden, totalitarianly dull days of good King George—fifth or sixth, I never can remember which.”

  “Do you really find these days dull?” Bobby asked. “Does a woman find childbirth dull? Critical, painful, dangerous. Yes. But dull?”

  Mrs Findlay stared at him for quite a long time before she spoke. Bobby felt that Charley Acton wanted very much to say “Now, now, Sibby,” but knew that if he did she would hardly hear, though certainly she would tell him to shut up. So he turned his attention to one of the more repellent of the pictures on the walls. Mrs Findlay said:

  “How the devil do you manage it?”

  “Manage what?” Bobby asked.

  “To look so ordinary, so damnably commonplace, when you’re nothing of the sort.”