Helen Passes By: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 4

  But so far nothing to suggest that politics came into the murder in any way, however much politics might be threatening to affect the conduct of the investigation. But they wouldn’t, Bobby told himself with determination, not so long as he had anything to do with it.

  He went on towards the harbour, created almost in a night, up-to-date and efficient with all modern appliances, so tremendous is the power of modern methods, once allowed full, unfettered opportunity. It was growing dark now, and through the increasing gloom, for shortage of coal had reduced the town’s lighting to something not very much better than the wartime black out, Bobby saw a man coming towards him with long, slow strides that yet somehow, though they seemed so unhurried, so deliberate, brought him nearer with unexpected speed. He was at Bobby’s side almost as soon as Bobby was aware of his approach, and for a moment their eyes met, the stranger’s stare so intent and searching it was almost like a blow. Then he went on his way, with the same apparent deliberation that masked the same swift ease of movement and almost at once was hidden in the falling night. Bobby was left with a memory of two unwinking, staring eyes that seemed both indifferent and uneasy, and to be so because they saw so much so quickly; with a memory, too, of that slow prowl which seemed so like the quiet pacing to and fro of a leopard in captivity.

  “I wonder who that was,” Bobby murmured, and found, oddly enough, without knowing why, a conviction in his mind that the other had been well aware who he was himself.

  On a sudden impulse, Bobby turned to follow. But he had already disappeared. There was not even the sound of a footstep to tell which way he had gone; it might have been merely a vision or a phantom that had passed that way. At a little distance, though, when he walked on, he saw a policeman talking to a girl. The girl went away as he came up. In the policeman he recognized his host, Sergeant Gregson. Gregson seemed to be afraid that this important unknown from London might think he had been gossiping on duty or even flirting. He explained:

  “Young lady from London, sir. Miss Lambert. She’s staying at the nursing home up there on the cliff. She lost her fur the other night and we got it back for her. She was saying how obliged she was.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, little interested in any Miss Lambert from any nursing home and her lost fur. “Did you see anyone go by just now?”

  “No, sir, no one,” answered Gregson, shaking his head. “Only Mr. Mauley Bain. Wool-gathering he looked, same as usual, since his brother’s death. Very thick they were and he’s never been the same since.”

  CHAPTER V

  TACT

  Next morning, in the small car which had been provided for his use, Bobby went off to pay his visit to Commander Seers. His reception was most correct and as genial as the North Pole.

  “I was informed by the Home Office that I was to expect you,” said the Commander. “I have asked if I may be also informed of the reason for so unusual a proceeding. I have had no reply; merely an acknowledgement.”

  “I do most thoroughly understand, Commander,” Bobby answered earnestly. “That is why I felt I must hurry over at once to report”; and this word “report,” carefully chosen by Bobby, began immediately to fulfil its purpose of oil on stormy waters.

  Next Bobby proceeded to hint that all the blame was due to the meddling of politicians, concerning whom he uttered a few words of most severe criticism. This was a second dose of oil on a troubled sea, for the Commander detested politicians whom he classed as “scum” and “scoundrels,” though from the category he quite unconsciously excluded all on his own side. These he regarded not as self-seeking politicians, but as self-sacrificing patriots. But he still talked of resignation as the only course open to him and at the demand for a public inquiry, his friends, in spite of his own protests, were saying they would certainly demand when Parliament reassembled; even if they had to move the adjournment of the House to consider the matter. The Commander mentioned several of these friends, all in the V.I.P. category or near it, but Bobby felt pretty sure that he had no intention whatever of resigning if he could possibly help it. He was plainly far too conscious of the difference between a retired Commander on half-pay and a retired Commander who was also the Chief Constable of the county. The impression Bobby gathered was of a capable administrator, a strict disciplinarian, a man whose whole conception of police work was of upholding established law and order and who was very much at a loss when called upon to deal with anything outside ordinary routine. Especially when serious crime was involved, since that was something of which he had no experience. Bobby had also already gathered that the Commander was very well liked by his men, who, as they said, knew where they were with him, were always sure of his full support, and could, moreover, when necessary, bamboozle him to their heart’s content. Few chief constables, or deputy chief constables for that matter, reflected Bobby, had such valid claims to the respect and affection of their men.

  Seers was apparently well aware of the rumours that there was evidence of Lord Adour’s guilt and that it was being suppressed. It was a story, declared Seers, to be treated with the contempt it deserved.

  “The plain fact,” he said, “is that there does not exist even a shred of evidence to suggest so much as a shadow of suspicion. And absolutely no motive, no conceivable motive. The two had very little to do with each other. Lord Adour is a man of the highest character and position. A sahib,” and Bobby realized that this last word represented the highest tribute Commander Seers could pay to any man. “Mr. Itter Bain,” the Commander went on, “was an extremely clever engineering chap,” and this again was said much as would have been said “a highly efficient buffer” or “a most capable chauffeur.” He went on: “They were neighbours, of course, and met occasionally—local affairs and so on. But that was all.”

  The Commander went on to make it clear that in his view the murder had beyond doubt been committed either by a passing tramp, or, though this was less likely, by a disgruntled workman.

  “There is a certain amount of communism in the neighbourhood, I am sorry to say,” said the commander sternly. “If I had my way, it would be dealt with. Unfortunately, there has been encouragement. Prescott Bain is Chairman of the Party.”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Bobby. “I saw Mauley Bain last night though not to speak to. A formidable personality, I should say. Brooding apparently. What is Prescott Bain like? He is a cousin of Mauley and the murdered man, isn’t he?”

  “A little bounder,” pronounced the Commander. “I had lunch with him once. One has to do these things. Duty. You could hear him eating soup all over the room.”

  “Dear, dear,” said Bobby, and tried to look suitably distressed. “Did this communist business cause any ill feeling between him and the others?”

  “Not that I know of,” admitted the Commander, though reluctantly and as if he found the fact hard to believe. “They never seemed much interested. Of course, there’s their uncle in the background. An agitator of the worst type. But very likely they want to avoid quarrelling with him. There has been some difference of opinion, I understand, but not over politics. Apparently the concern is in difficulties through the cancelling of war contracts. The other two say Prescott has badly over-spent and over-borrowed from the bank. Prescott says that if so, the reason is that Itter Bain drew such large sums to spend on his new ideas and experiments. Very heated at times they grew, I’m told, blaming each other. I should have felt the strongest suspicion but for the one thing I don’t think it is possible to get over.”

  “What is that?” Bobby asked, not without some faint idea at the back of his mind that he might find a way where the Commander saw none.

  “The two of them,” explained Seers, “Mauley and Prescott I mean, were both in conference with two of the London and Coastal Bank people the whole of the afternoon of the murder. I’ve seen the two bank wallahs myself. They are quite clear about it. It’s an alibi there’s no getting over.”

  “Seems so,” agreed Bobby, though with an inward resolve to test it for
himself.

  “I repeat that, in my considered view,” declared Seers once more and in a tone which suggested that those who differed were guilty of a degree of insubordination not far removed from mutiny, “it is perfectly plain what happened. Lord Adour saw a bird that interested him. He stands his gun against a tree, leaves it there, and hurries back to the house for his camera. I’ve handled that gun myself. A lovely bit of work. Many men would be willing to give a hundred, cash down, for it—and ask no questions. Very wrong, of course, but one can understand,” and indeed the good Commander looked very much as if such a temptation he himself would have found difficult to resist.

  “There are public paths through the spinney. There comes along a tramp, or, possibly though less probably, one of the new workmen all this war work has brought here, and very doubtful characters among them, too, I can assure you. We’ve had some trouble. Very unlike our own people, very decent and respectable, all of them. Well, this tramp, or whoever it is, is coming along one of these public paths and he sees the gun. Plainly visible and plainly forgotten. He recognizes its value, naturally, and is making off with it when Itter Bain, who happens to be there, tries to stop him—and gets shot. In the scuffle perhaps. In a way a kind of accident, not intentional. That is the line I am working on,” and quite plainly his voice challenged Bobby to find or suggest one one-half as good. “There is,” Seers went on, “the possibility that the murderer was a man with a grievance from the Bain works. Start stuffing working men’s heads with all this communist rubbish and very soon they want it put in action, and, if you don’t, then you’re a tyrant yourself and you’ve got to be liquidated for the sake of the cause. I’m working on that, too.” Bobby had to admit that both of these were theories it would have been wrong to neglect. But so far, nothing whatever to support them. He said:

  “Is it known what Itter Bain was doing in the spinney at that time of the afternoon—especially if there was an important conference going on at the works?”

  “My information,” explained the Commander, “is that Itter left the money side entirely to the others. He expected to be supplied with all he needed for his work. Apparently he was sure that his new patents, or whatever it was he was busy with, would soon put everything all right financially and meanwhile he didn’t want to be bothered.”

  “Rather a lordly attitude,” Bobby commented. “It could explain why he wasn’t at the conference with the bank people, but hardly why he went for a walk instead. One would have expected him to be busy in his workshop. Or why his walk took him to this spinney where he was murdered—Coldstone Spinney, it’s called, isn’t it?”

  “Well, he seems to have had a habit of going for a walk to think things out when he was in any sort of difficulty,” the Commander explained. “Not uncommon. I do it myself. Clears the brain, I find. The fresh air sweeps the cobwebs away.”

  “I suppose there’s that,” agreed Bobby. “Was this spinney a favourite walk of his? Is there any reason why he should have gone there rather than anywhere else?”

  The Commander was very plainly beginning to grow restive under this persistent questioning. He hesitated a little before replying and then said, though reluctantly:

  “Well, I suppose it’s possible—we have had cases of youngsters hanging about in a most objectionable way. Trying to get a glimpse of Miss Adour or even in the hope of finding an excuse for speaking to her. Trespassing sometimes even. There has been some sort of suggestion that Itter Bain too—But it’s very unlikely. In any case, quite immaterial why he happened to go that way for his walk. It’s quiet.”

  “You don’t think, then,” Bobby said, “that much importance need be attached to these stories about Itter Bain having been annoying Miss Adour.”

  “No, no. Nothing in all that,” declared the Commander. He paused and seemed to become lost in distant thoughts. His small, sharp eyes took on a far-away look, a little smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, his ruddy, strongly marked features seemed almost to melt together in a kind of suffused glow. He took on an almost ludicrous resemblance to a dog pleading for another lump of sugar, but knowing well it is much more likely to be ordered out of the room. The faintest sigh became audible before he went on: “Of course, Miss Adour does sometimes have a little trouble with the sort of unlicked cub who can’t keep his head when he meets a pretty girl.” The Commander was looking very severe now. One felt that in imagination he was handcuffing that unlicked cub and packing him off to gaol till he knew better. He continued: “Miss Adour is quite capable of looking after herself. A thoroughly nice girl. Very different from the girls of to-day; simple, unspoiled, doesn’t even know her own good looks. More like the girls of my mother’s time than the trousered, smoking, drinking hoydens you meet to-day.”

  Bobby didn’t ask how the Commander knew what girls were like in his mother’s time. He said instead he wished it had been possible to fix the hour of death more closely. The Commander repeated that the doctors refused to commit themselves. The body had not been found till the next day, and unfortunately there had been during the night heavy rain with a sudden fall in temperature and then strong sunshine in the morning. None of the doctors could be persuaded to go beyond what Bobby had already noted in the medical reports—that death must have occurred between two and five in the afternoon. Various people had heard various shots. But none had paid much attention, since the sound of shooting is not rare in country districts at any time. Or it might have been the military, since there were still soldiers in the vicinity. No one could be very definite about the time and there was nothing to identify any of these shots with the one fired by the murderer. The Commander mentioned that he himself, during a long motor drive he had made on the afternoon of the murder, had heard shots at intervals, but could not remember exactly when or where. And heavy rain, coupled with much excited coming and going after the discovery of the body, had destroyed any chance of finding significant footsteps or indeed any other clue of any value. A bleak prospect it offered, Bobby thought, this cold trail already so much confused.

  Admittedly both Lord Adour and Helen had been in Coldstone Spinney that afternoon. So had other people. All had been impartially questioned. Some must have passed close to the body without perceiving it. Two of the paths crossing the spinney were not much frequented by the public in general. Of these one was between Kindles, Lord Adour’s residence, and the main Drinks and Toad-in-Hole road, and one, crossing the first path, led to River Farm, owned and worked by Wing Commander Martin Winstanley, recently discharged with wounds that still left him limping. His discharge had also been in part a result of the effort to increase food production, as since the death of Martin’s father a year or two previously, the farm had suffered from the lack of a master’s eye. As an old and rude and still true proverb says: “Best of dung is the master’s eye.” Apparently, indeed, Winstanley had been warned that unless he returned to give personal supervision and see that production was increased, he might find someone else installed in his place.

  All this the Commander explained, adding that after a most promising start, the Wing Commander had seemed to lose drive and interest. The Area Agricultural Committee was said to be taking a serious view. Recently the death of two valuable pedigree Holstein cows who could, it was believed, have been saved had more care been shown, had threatened to bring on a crisis.

  “A serious loss, those two cows,” the Commander commented. “Milk seems to be priority number one just now. The Agricultural Committee is very peeved about it. They used pressure to get Winstanley back on the farm and they feel he’s letting them down.”

  Bobby asked what Winstanley was like. The Commander answered gravely that Winstanley was a very decent sort, very decent sort indeed. But not quite out of the top drawer. Definitely, not out of the top drawer. In the Commander’s opinion, it had been a piece of unwarrantable impudence for Winstanley even to think of himself in connection with Miss Adour.

  “Oh, he is a victim, too?” Bobby asked.

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bsp; Seers had the air of regarding this as a rather too frivolous way of putting it. Not that Miss Adour had taken it at all seriously. As was her wont, she had merely smiled and passed undisturbed upon her way. Lord Adour had, however, felt obliged to drop a gentle hint to Winstanley that any thought of marriage was hopelessly impossible. Not that this meant that Winstanley had been annoying Miss Helen in any way. It had merely been necessary to suppress him gently and show him how fantastic were any hopes he might have permitted himself to entertain. In this connection, the Commander repeated with even more emphasis than before that Lord Adour took great care of his daughter, and would certainly not hesitate to give a good dressing down, or even a sound thrashing on occasion, to anyone who attempted to annoy her. But he wouldn’t have shot such a person. Inconceivable. Inconceivable, for that matter, that anyone would dare to annoy Miss Helen. Anyone at all, drunk or sober. Bobby asked why it was so inconceivable, and was answered by a blank stare, a shrug of the shoulders, and a fresh assurance that no one would ever try. With that Bobby had to be content.

  Seers had by this time talked himself into a fairly good humour and had been, moreover, much placated, and his injured feelings soothed, by the respectful interest with which Bobby had listened to him and by the obvious importance Bobby seemed to show to everything said. So now, as it was getting near lunchtime, Bobby received an invitation to stay to that meal. He accepted with just the right air of being both grateful and flattered, and Seers began to think that, though this Yard fellow was a nuisance, after all it wasn’t his fault. He had to go where the Home Office sent him. Anyhow, Seers reflected smugly, he hadn’t asked for help, and he would take good care not one penny went from the local police rate to pay Mr. Bobby Owen’s expenses. The Home Office had sent him and the Home Office could pay.