Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Read online

  “We had no cognizance of that occurrence,” Mr Pyne said. “When the estate agent communicated to us the intelligence that he now had a commodious flat he could place at our disposal he made no mention of that somewhat unpleasant fact. Ever since our return from the remote district in the North to which the Ministry was evacuated during the war we had been searching for accommodation. We were only too glad to hear of anything at all. It was only after we moved in that we learned of the events you refer to. But as I remarked to Mrs Pyne: ‘Better a flat cum murder than no flat at all’.”

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Bobby. “You think that one of those in the attack on you was a woman?”

  “That is the case,” Mr Pyne agreed in his turn. “It is in fact not open to reasonable doubt.”

  “Can you add any details about her—age, appearance, tone of voice, blonde or brunette, anything at all?” Bobby asked. “The fact is we are getting interested in one woman we’ve heard of. If we could identify her, it would be a great help. Give us what we want—a line to follow. Her voice, for instance, could you tell it again?”

  “I fear,” Mr Pyne replied, “my answer must be in the negative. What happened was of so hurried and precipitate a nature that my recollections are not so clear and orderly as I could wish. When I proceeded to open the door, subsequent to hearing a knock, my first impression was that the man standing there was a member of one of the coloured races. He was, in fact, wearing a mask. Before I was fully aware I received a violent and unexpected blow on what I believe is known in certain circles as the solar nexus.”

  “Plexus,” murmured Bobby.

  “I note the correction,” Mr Pyne said gravely, and took out a small pocket diary, in which he apparently did note it. “The next thing I knew,” he continued, “was that I was supine on the floor and that a young lady of considerable weight was sitting on me. I judged she was young from her form. Of her weight I had ample cause to form a fairly accurate estimate. I could not see her face, as her back was to me, and besides she was heavily veiled. I heard her say: ‘Hurry up, or the little devil will be passing out for keeps.’ The expression ‘little devil’ undoubtedly referred to myself.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” Bobby said; and wondered if he had been entirely mistaken in thinking that Mr Pyne’s last words had been accompanied by what had looked exceedingly like a self-satisfied smirk.

  “As you know,” Mr Pyne continued, “I was then fastened up and rolled into a corner, where my wife and daughter found me on their return home. A most unpleasant and even humiliating experience, but one that I have to admit has proved to possess certain compensatory features.”

  “Indeed,” Bobby exclaimed, very surprised. “In what way?”

  “One, who like yourself,” Mr Pyne explained, putting the tips of his fingers together, “lives the exciting and always varied existence of a member of the detective force—”

  “What? What did you say?” interrupted Bobby, as there flashed before his mind so many memories of interminable hours spent waiting and watching for something that never happened, or taking endless statements from people with nothing to say and incapable of saying it, of writing reports that no one ever read, of searching for clues that didn’t exist, of laboriously following up others that slowly but surely faded away, “Eleven months, three weeks, six days in every year of boring routine, that’s police work,” he told himself indignantly, and all unheeding, Mr Pyne continued, his finger-tips still pressed together, his even, cultivated voice flowing smoothly on:

  “—you must find it difficult to appreciate how welcome is any break in the extreme regularity of routine so necessary to the smooth working of so important a Ministry as that to which I have the honour to be attached. I found myself in fact an object of interest and even perhaps of some envy to my colleagues, none of whom had ever experienced anything of the kind. I was even brought temporarily into a more intimate relation with the Minister himself. He sent for me, ostensibly to discuss a memorandum I had submitted a month or two earlier and that I had reason to know had been marked ‘For further consideration’. Following the customary procedure, it had then been relegated to one of the pigeon-holes from which memoranda emerge but rarely. However, it was now upon his desk again, though it was chiefly my recent experience on which our conversation turned. Whether I made good use of the opportunity offered to urge the adoption of the proposals I had put forward I am not sure. I understand, though, that my memorandum has now been returned to its original pigeon-hole, and I have received what may be called a certain limited promotion in that I now occupy a larger room provided with a carpet of greater extent and of demonstrably superior quality.”

  CHAPTER V

  THE BANNER TRAVEL AGENCY

  “NO LUCK—except for one doubtful and probably irrelevant detail,” Bobby said in answer to Olive’s inquiring look when he arrived home, fortunately not far distant from Mayfair Crescent. “There was just a chance I might get a lead, more especially about the woman who was mixed up in the last break-in at the murder flat—the one I mean when the new tenant was knocked out and tied up. He’s a man named Pyne, Peter Pyne, a Civil Servant. He hadn’t anything useful to say.” Bobby sat down in a rather dispirited way and began to exchange his outdoor shoes for bedroom slippers. He remained dangling one discarded shoe in his hands, brooding intently over the bedroom slippers. Abruptly he said: “Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Olive, startled.

  “Mr Peter Pyne,” Bobby explained, resuming the operation his lapse into what had come to be known as ‘the Owen trance’ had momentarily suspended. “Dr Jekyll, the prim, precise, routine-bound little bureaucrat. Mr Hyde, the reckless adventurer, quite in his element when mixed up with gangsters, mysterious ladies, answering knocks at the door with a pistol in his pocket, fully prepared to shoot it out if necessary in the best Wild West style. I gather it’s all brought him a bit of prestige in his Ministry, even earned him the notice of the Minister himself.”

  “Oh,” said Olive, suitably impressed, for though Ministers come and go like the passing dream, none the less are they, while there, very much there indeed. And Olive, well knowing all this, said, “Oh,” again.

  “He’s even got a bigger and better carpet,” Bobby told her, he also suitably impressed.

  “What for?” Olive asked, for this to her was a new aspect of favour from on high.

  “It’s an outward and visible sign of an inward official grace,” Bobby told her.

  “Don’t be irreverent,” Olive rebuked him severely.

  “I don’t,” Bobby continued, letting this admonition pass him by, “altogether like it. So far I appear to have collected an odd little man who seems to have gone sour and calls himself an enemy of society. Another odd little man who seems to have let a new taste of adventure rather go to his head. And two young women who may be the same young woman or may never have heard of each other. In the whole business there are just two very faint connecting links.”

  “You mean cookery?” Olive asked. “Every one’s interested in cooking, more or less. What’s the other link?”

  “Serve you right not to tell you,” Bobby said severely, “if you haven’t seen it for yourself. Haven’t you? Dear, dear.” He shook his head, dropped his dangling shoe on the floor with a thud, began to pull on the bedroom slippers, and said. “Don’t you remember the only thing reported missing from these breakings-in was a bundle of travel-agency circulars?”

  “What about it?” Olive asked. “Plenty of people go abroad, and plenty of people like to think about going, even if they can’t afford.”

  “Yes, but it also means Mr Hugh Newton might have had his name on some travel agency’s list. That was tried out. Nothing doing. But Newton seems to have been a bit of a gourmet. I’m thinking of sending one of my chaps to see if any of these advertised tours makes a point of extra good feeding. Some of the Air Lines do. And the Wine and Food Society do something of the sort, I think. A kind of gastronomic tour is w
hat I mean. If we draw lucky, which is the merest off-chance, we might get identification. And once we have some idea of the dead man’s background, we may be able to guess at the motive behind the murder.”

  “I thought you always said motive didn’t matter,” Olive interjected.

  “It doesn’t as proof of fact,” Bobby agreed. “But it almost always points in the right direction.” He stood up and yawned. “Time for bed,” he said. “I don’t suppose I shall get a wink of sleep,” he added sadly, “worrying about those two girls, one of ’em, Doreen Caine, wanting to set it all going again because she thought it had come to a full stop, which it hadn’t.” Bobby paused to emphasize this, for his professional pride had been a little hurt by the suggestion that any case ever did come to a full stop before it had been satisfactorily cleared up. “The other girl, unidentified so far,” he went on, “taking part in the last breaking-in at the Mayfair Crescent flat, and are the two of them one and the same, or are they working together, or what? That feathers business still has to my mind a distinctly feminine touch.”

  “Ugh,” said Olive, and, to prevent him from talking any more, hustled him off to bed as fast as she could.

  Next morning the first thing Bobby did, after glancing through his letters, none of pressing importance, was to send for Detective Constable Ford and dispatch him on a tour of the travel agencies.

  “What I want,” he explained, “is to hear of any agency that makes a point of paying special attention to good food and drink. Quality, remember, not quantity. Sort of gastronomic tour with some slogan like: ‘See France and enjoy French cookery.’ Something like that. Understand?”

  Ford said he did, got the telephone directory, made a list of all the travel agencies, great and small, and started on his round. It was the next day before Bobby heard from him again, and then he laid on Bobby’s desk a slip, bearing the address:

  Banner Travel Agency,

  17a, Up Castle Road,

  Seemouth.

  “Seemouth?” Bobby repeated. “Oh, yes, of course. Jolly little place. Famous golf links. Half-way between Sidmouth and Bournemouth, and doesn’t think much of either place. Had a case break there once. Go ahead, Ford.”

  “I heard of it from one of the big agencies,” Ford continued. “They told me the Banner people had had some bright ideas but not very practical and were said to be in difficulties. ‘Please Yourself’ yachting cruises were their speciality. Advertised as ‘Go where you like in your own yacht at your own choice’. The idea was that you booked for two or three weeks certain, as the case might be, and where you went was decided by a majority vote, subject, of course, to cost, time, and distance—and weather. It was a fair-sized motor yacht, the ‘As You Like It’, crew of four. What caught my eye, seeing what you told me to look out for, was a paragraph in their circular about using the yacht as an hotel, with special attention paid to provision of best wine and recherché cuisine. It was signed ‘Kenneth Banner, Member Gourmet Club’. I rang them up to inquire, but all they know about him is that he paid his subscription and turned up sometimes at their dinners, but not very often. They have one every month, very posh affair, with one swell West End chef to plan the menu and another as guest to talk about it and criticize. Lively evenings sometimes, I was told. And if they can turn out a steak-and-kidney pudding any better than my wife can—” and there Ford paused, completing his sentence by a seraphic smile as certain savoury memories surged into his mind.

  “Challenge them to a test,” Bobby suggested, and not to be outdone in connubial loyalty, added: “And I’ll back my wife’s omelettes, plain or fancy, against any they can produce—but never mind. Let’s see. To-morrow’s Sunday. I think a trip to Seemouth on Monday seems indicated. The Banner Agency is still in being, I suppose?”

  “Yes, sir. I put a call through to make sure. They’re still in business, but said the yachting cruises had been suspended for the time, but would start again soon.”

  “Well, see your sergeant,” Bobby said, “and ask if he can spare you on Monday. If he can, we had better make an early start. Be here by eight o’clock. We’ll use my little Bayard—and Government petrol.”

  “Yes, sir, very good, sir, thank you, sir,” said Ford, beaming at the idea of this seaside trip, almost convinced he could have chosen a worse job than the police, and wondering if Mr Owen would want to drive all the way, or was there any chance he would be allowed an occasional turn at the wheel.

  This hope, of which Bobby was not wholly unconscious, was amply gratified, for during that Monday-morning drive Bobby seemed content to sit and watch the country-side flowing by while his mind was busy with many thoughts and speculations. Ford, taking full advantage of this, took also full advantage of every opportunity to push the speed up to the sixty or seventy m.p.h. the little Bayard could do, as Ford put it, ‘on its head’. So they arrived in good time, parked the Bayard, and found their way to the small and unpretentious office of the Banner Travel Agency.

  In the outer office the only occupant was a tall, dark, sullen-looking girl, busy at a typewriter. As they entered she glanced up at them from deep-set, smouldering eyes, more as if viewing them as potential enemies rather than potential clients. She did not speak, but looked at them and waited, her fingers hovering over her machine, her large and somewhat heavy features, her whole attitude indeed, seeming to express an odd latent hostility. At the farther end of the room Bobby noticed a door, marked ‘Manager’. He said:

  “Oh, good day. Could we see your manager, please?”

  “He is very busy,” the girl said, this time making her answer sound like a rebuke to a somewhat impertinent suggestion. “I can give you any information you require.”

  “Thank you,” Bobby said. “If you don’t mind, I think we should like to see your manager personally.”

  The girl stared at him in silence. She seemed rather to hope or expect that the steady and unblinking gaze from those sombre, deep-set eyes of hers might make him withdraw his request. As all the effect it had on him was to draw from him the most amiable smile he could produce, she got slowly to her feet, rather with the air of a tragedy queen about to offer a choice of dagger or poisoned bowl. With an odd kind of heavy yet languid grace she went across, knocked at the managerial door, and entered.

  “A rum ’un,” Ford muttered in Bobby’s ear. “I’ve seen a panther at the Zoo move like that.”

  The door opened again, and the girl came out and stood silently aside for them to enter. From within boomed a voice:

  “Come in, gentlemen, come in.”

  The room Bobby and Ford entered in response to this invitation was a bare little office, its sole occupant a thick-set, stout, not to say fat, middle-aged man, with a great flat moon-like face now beaming welcome and good fellowship from behind a large desk. But on it Bobby could see no sign of the press of business of which the typist had spoken. The walls were decorated with a number of posters, showing places of interest at home and abroad. A notice proclaiming ‘We are agents for all shipping lines’, was conspicuous on the wall behind the desk, and there were the usual office accessories—telephone, safe, filing-cabinet, so on, including one rather dilapidated arm-chair and two smaller chairs. A pipe lay on the desk as if it had just been put down, and the general air was one neither of prosperity nor of pressure of affairs. And Bobby noticed that the eyes in that flat, moon-like countenance were small and sharp and cold. He received a sudden impression that the fat, genial, smiling outer aspect of this man concealed a formidable personality.

  CHAPTER VI

  MISSING PARTNER

  NOTHING, HOWEVER, could have been more forthcoming, more welcoming than the greeting now boomed forth in a voice that seemed calculated to shake the very walls of that somewhat ancient building.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” the man behind the desk was saying or thundering rather. “Do sit down. Anything we can do for you—anything at all—consider it done, gentlemen, consider it done. I do think I can claim the Banner Travel Agency h
as a reputation for willing, prompt, efficient service. That’s our slogan. Service. Service. We put it first, before immediate profit, though I do admit it pays in the long run, pays solid dividends in solid cash. Service—the foundation of every big, successful business in the world. Look at the Quakers. How they’ve got their reputation. Not honesty. No. Most business men are honest. Have to be, or they go out of business in double quick time. You agree?”

  Bobby, who had been wondering when he was going to get a chance to put in a word edgeways, didn’t. But, ignoring this question, what he said was:

  “Am I speaking to Mr Kenneth Banner?”

  “Oh, dear, no,” came in quick answer. “I’m Oswald Dow, generally known as Ossy to my friends, and sometimes I think that’s all Seemouth. Almost embarrassing at times. Do help yourselves,” and he pushed across his desk a box of cigarettes he had suddenly produced. Then his tone changed, as if some quick, unwelcome thought had struck him. “I say,” he asked anxiously, “is it about him? Nothing wrong, I hope?”

  “Why? Were you expecting there might be?” Bobby asked in his turn.

  Dow—or Ossy—sat back in his chair, picked up his pipe thoughtfully, put it down again and said:

  “Well, you know, gentlemen, if you don’t mind my saying so, you both have a bit of an official air, authority somehow. I didn’t notice it at first, but it’s there all right.” He was regarding them with thoughtful attention, from top to toe, and Bobby had a bitter feeling that he was about to say something about their boots. Ford took tens or thereabouts, even if his own were a comparatively moderate what the shoeshops called an ‘outer eight’. But Ossy went on, fiddling still with his pipe and still somewhat hesitatingly: “Well, the fact is, I’ve been more than a bit worried about Ken. Can’t understand it at all. He’s just taken himself off without a word of explanation. Left the Agency in the air. Com-pletely in the air. Not a bit like him, not a bit. He rang me up one morning—put through a call from London. Said I wasn’t to worry, everything was all right, but he would be away some time. Unexpected circumstances. That was all he said, and that’s the last I’ve heard. Not like him to leave a pal in the lurch. There’s the money angle to it, too.”