Helen Passes By: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 6

  “No doubt,” Bobby agreed. “What do you mean? Is it Miss Helen Adour?”

  “It isn’t to be wondered at,” the foreman went on. “I’m not saying myself, and me a grandfather, as when she passes by it isn’t as it is when the moon and the stars come out on a night that’s been all darkness and cloud.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Bobby asked.

  “So as you may understand, if so be you want to,” came the slow reply. “The Wing Commander, he has the feel of the land in his bones, same as with only a few. Leave him be, till the fever that young woman has put in him has gone again, and there’ll be no more need for the likes of you.” The speaker turned away and then turned back again. He said: “There was some of the lads as talked of putting you in the horse pond. I told ’em it was a bit of all right itself but they wasn’t to go for to do it, along of breeding more trouble, and them as tried would get the sack.”

  “They would get a bit more as well,” Bobby said grimly. “I don’t advise them to try that game.”

  “Says you,” retorted the other with an unexpected lapse into film language, imperfectly understood, and walked briskly away.

  A good deal puzzled, slightly amused, wondering why his attention had been drawn so abruptly to the cows, Bobby walked on. He was becoming quite eager to meet a young woman whom he was beginning to think of as ever more remarkable. She could apparently, simply by passing by, charm poetry from an elderly agricultural worker; turn a young farmer’s head; make a tough old Chief Constable go “goo-goo”, as Mr. Collier had said; and, most remarkable feat of all, produce a show of sincerity of feeling in Alexander Wayling. Soon the farmhouse came into view, a long, low white building with what farmhouses often lack, a well-kept, carefully tended lawn and flower garden in front. It was, as Bobby learnt later, the creation of the Wing Commander’s mother, and had been kept up, both by her husband and by her son, in her memory. When he knocked the door was opened by an elderly woman, apparently a housekeeper, whose probably in general, pleasant, rosy features were now wearing what Bobby felt was an unfamiliar scowl. Bobby found himself forced to the conclusion that at River Farm he was not popular, and he did not feel it was a good sign. When the visit of a police officer is so plainly unwelcome, there is often a good reason. The woman told him, looking the while sternly over his head as if she found the sight of him too unpleasant to bear, that the Wing Commander would join him immediately, and therewith showed him into a room Bobby guessed must be the farm office.

  There was about it a business-like and efficient air. A typewriter, a card-index cabinet, files, a safe, all the usual appurtenances of an up-to-date office were in evidence. There was a small private telephone exchange, connecting up apparently with the various farm buildings. A bookcase contained a number of agricultural works and there were neatly arranged piles of farming journals. With these last was a smaller card index, which Bobby guessed referred to specially interesting or important articles. Nothing much of a personal nature. Severely business-like. Not, Bobby reflected, typical of a young man liable to be swept out of his depth by the passing of any young woman, however attractive. The door opened. A young man came in, and stood silent, looking at Bobby with no more welcoming an air than had been shown by his foreman or his housekeeper. A handsome lad, Bobby thought, but with a strained, uneasy look in eyes that had so plainly been once fearless and steady, but now flickered restlessly hither and thither, on constant guard against the unexpected. There was an occasional twitching at the corners of his mouth, too, that Bobby did not much like. The young man came further into the room. He was limping badly. He said abruptly and not too pleasantly:

  “I’ve been expecting you. Have a cigarette?”

  He offered his case and when Bobby thanked him but declined, lighted one himself, his hands not too steady. Bobby was watching him closely. Why was it, he wondered, that all these people were expecting him? Was it because they knew something they felt was certain to be a subject for inquiry? Winstanley said as abruptly as before:

  “The cows are in the spinney field.”

  “Cows?” repeated Bobby. But now he was beginning to understand. “Cows? But—”

  “Yes, cows,” snapped Winstanley, interrupting. “C for Charley, O for oxen, W—”

  Bobby interrupted in his turn.

  “You said you were expecting me?” he said. “Why?”

  “Because of your ’phone call, of course,” Winstanley retorted. “What else?” Then there began to dawn on him what Bobby had already guessed. He said: “You are the Area Committee bloke, aren’t you? About the Holsteins? As if a loss like that wasn’t bad enough itself without being worried into the bargain. They seem to think I did it on purpose.”

  “I’ve come about something more serious than cows,” Bobby explained. “I’ve been sent by the Home Office to make further inquiries about the recent murder of Itter Bain. There seem to be complications beyond this area that will have to be followed up in other districts. I have to try to co-ordinate them. In this neighbourhood, of course, the investigation remains in the very capable hands of Commander Seers.”

  “Capable my foot,” retorted the Wing Commander. “Seers is an old duffer. All he thinks about is ‘Eyes right, spit and polish.’ Have a cigarette?” Bobby again begged to be excused, and Winstanley, who had put down the cigarette he had just lighted and then apparently forgotten it, started another. “I’ve had one of your lot here already,” he said. “What’s the idea of somebody else coming? I’ve told all I know. It isn’t much.”

  “What do you mean, another of my lot?” Bobby demanded sharply. “Do you mean another police officer has been to see you? Did he give you his name, show any authority?”

  “Why? Was he a fake?” asked Winstanley. “A biggish chap, about your size. I think he said his name was Haile, something like that.”

  “Did he claim to be a police officer?” Bobby asked, and looked grim, for to make such an unauthorized claim is a serious offence.

  “I don’t know if he actually said so,” Winstanley replied, a little doubtfully. “I’m not sure. I took it he was one. He said he was looking into Itter Bain’s murder. That’s a police job, isn’t it? He talked a lot.”

  Bobby decided that probably Haile had managed to convey the impression that he was acting in some sort of official capacity without in so many words claiming to be an officer of police. He had been careful, most likely, to avoid any risk of prosecution. All the same, Mr. Haile would get a stiff warning next time Bobby met him. A swift worker, Bobby thought, and was not too pleased. Haile might prove an embarrassing factor. The Wing Commander was speaking again. He said:

  “I knew the chap’s face. I had seen him before knocking about here. I thought he must be one of your plain-clothes cops.” Then he said resentfully: “I don’t see why you blokes come worrying me.”

  “Haile has nothing to do with us,” Bobby said. “I’ll speak to him about it if I come across him.” He paused. Haile had said nothing about having ever visited this district or knowing any of its inhabitants. Why not? He would have to be questioned on that point, too. Bobby continued: “I have called because there is information that you and the dead man quarrelled and had a fight.”

  “Heard about that, have you?” Winstanley grumbled. “What about it?”

  “What was the quarrel about?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Winstanley answered vaguely. “One thing led to another. That’s all.”

  “Hardly all, is it?” Bobby asked. “Couldn’t you remember a little more clearly?”

  “It wasn’t anything really,” Winstanley insisted. “Itter had had a drink or two, I think. I expect I was in a bad temper. About those blasted cows and the Area Committee worrying. I think we got on to Channel tides. Itter Bain had gone in for yachting lately. He bought Lord Adour’s motor launch. A lovely little boat. It must have cost him something. You get interested in tides when you are flying to France. Makes a difference if you go in the drink. Ha
ve a cigarette? Oh, I asked you that before. Sorry.”

  He had been starting to help himself to yet a third, but now realized that he already had one between his lips and looked confused. Bobby was fairly certain Winstanley was not being entirely frank. The quarrel had been about something very different from tides—an impersonal subject.

  “It was in Toad-in-Hole, wasn’t it?” Bobby asked. “Had you gone there to meet Bain?”

  “Good lord, no. Why should I?” Winstanley said, surprised. “Quite accidental. He was coming out of the ‘Good Haul,’ I think it was, as I was passing.”

  “You’ll excuse my being personal,” Bobby said. “I’m told both Itter Bain and his brother are first-class amateur boxers. Wasn’t it a little rash to take him on when it’s quite plain that your leg is still troubling you?”

  “Oh, well, I dare say it was,” Winstanley admitted, grinning a trifle ruefully. “I suppose I thought that if I was half a cripple he was more than half drunk and that evened things up. It didn’t.” He grinned again, even more ruefully. “I didn’t last too long,” he said.

  “Not surprising,” Bobby commented. “Being half crippled can’t be much of a help to your foot work. I suppose you wouldn’t care to tell me the truth, would you?”

  “What the hell do you mean?” demanded Winstanley very angrily indeed.

  “Just that,” Bobby answered. “Wasn’t your quarrel about Miss Helen Adour?”

  “No, it wasn’t. How do you know? It wasn’t, anyway. You’ve no right to say that. Leave her name out of it, can’t you?”

  “No, not if her name’s in it already,” Bobby answered.

  “Well, it isn’t,” Winstanley snapped. “How did you know?”

  “My dear Wing Commander,” Bobby protested, “is it difficult to guess that when two young men start fighting, the reason is more likely to be a pretty girl than Channel tides?”

  “I suppose that’s damn clever,” Winstanley muttered. Then he said: “She isn’t a pretty girl, I wish she was.”

  Bobby did not ask for an explanation of this cryptic remark. Instead he said:

  “Miss Adour was here on the afternoon of the murder, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes. She wanted some more eggs. For cooking. She’s a dab at cooking. She likes new laid eggs for it. Cooking and sewing, she’s a double ace at ’em both.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, interested, for these were the first definite traits he had learned concerning her, who hitherto had appeared merely as a disturbing influence, passing by. “Did she get her eggs?” he asked.

  “Well, I had to tell her I couldn’t give her any more. She had had a good many already and I was short. I had been short before. I expect the Area Committee blokes have got that marked up against me, too.”

  “What did Miss Adour say to that?”

  “Nothing. She never does. She went to the packing shed and took what she wanted. Rather more, if anything.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. What do you expect? I couldn’t knock her down and take them back by force, could I? I told her she mustn’t. She didn’t take any notice. She never does. She just went home again.”

  “I see,” Bobby said. “Did you go with her?”

  “I walked through the spinney with her,” the Wing Commander admitted. “You do get some rough characters hanging about sometimes. Men brought down to work at the new docks and wharves. Or at the Bain works. There’ve been complaints. I understood those were the lines you police blokes were working on. I thought I had better walk with her part of the way.”

  “Carrying her eggs for her?”

  The Wing Commander first scowled and then grinned.

  “So would you,” he said.

  Bobby grinned, too, but all the same was very conscious that this meant that Winstanley had been in the spinney about the time of the murder. Suppose the two young men had resumed their quarrel, re-kindled and inflamed by the opportunity and privilege Winstanley had enjoyed of acting as escort. What more likely? Suppose Winstanley had seen Lord Adour’s gun left leaning against one of the trees and had used it to revenge himself for the thrashing he had apparently received on an earlier occasion. Or to save himself from the humiliation of another thrashing, if Itter had threatened it—an Itter stung to fresh jealousy by the sight of his rival again in Miss Adour’s company?

  Bobby asked a few more questions. He learned nothing fresh. He tried to get the exact time of this passage through the spinney but without success. No one ever knows the exact time of any event whatever, and if they do there is always someone else to contradict them flatly. Winstanley had seen no one, either going or coming. Bobby got the impression that nothing much under the size of an elephant would have impinged upon a consciousness entirely absorbed with Miss Adour’s mere presence and proximity; equally entirely absorbed, when returning, in that entrancing memory. Certainly, declared Winstanley, he had no recollection of hearing any shot. Probably he wouldn’t have noticed it if he had heard. One often hears shots in the country.

  Bobby gave it up then and departed in a somewhat troubled mood. He made his way back through the spinney to where he had left his car and then decided that his next call had better be at the Bain works, where perhaps he might, he thought, be able to learn something from Mauley Bain of the rivalry between his brother and the Wing Commander.

  CHAPTER VIII

  BAIN PRODUCTS, LTD.

  The small town of Drinks was distant from its port of Toad-in-Hole about eight miles by the high road. The distance was less by the river or by the path along the river bank. During the war, following the establishment and growth of Bain Products, Ltd., the population of Drinks had more than doubled, with the usual pressure on accommodation. Now the number of inhabitants was beginning to shrink again, but it was still a busy, prosperous little place, though contemplating with some unease the grim prospect before it now that peace had broken out so suddenly.

  Bobby had no need to ask his way to the Bain factory. The buildings were conspicuous on the outskirts of the town. Alighting from his car at the factory entrance, he asked for Mr. Mauley Bain. He was directed to the offices, standing apart from the main workshops and bearing a large sign, “Administration.” Making his way thither, Bobby had to pass under a window, through which came to him the sound of voices raised loud in dispute. No words could be distinguished, but the tone was unmistakable. The voices ceased on the sound of a door banged with violence; and Bobby, who had walked on a little, saw through another window how, in a large outer office where clerks were at work, pens and typewriters paused, heads were raised, smiles were exchanged, looks were directed towards a door marked “Private,” as though through it the neighbouring storm might presently burst. A row between the bosses, Bobby decided; and the staff in part amused, in part afraid, lest any of the storm should come their way. Bobby had the feeling, too, that sounds of such angry disputes were no great novelty. The outer door marked “Administration” was flung back and there emerged a flushed, angry-looking, youngish man, of middle height, whose plump, evidently well-nourished body made a contrast to a lean and hungry-looking face with a small red mouth and above it a hooked and disproportionately large nose. Certainly not Mauley Bain, and yet with somehow, somewhere, about him an odd resemblance to the prowling, predatory figure Bobby remembered going so menacingly by in the dusk of the oncoming evening. Something in the way the rather small head was set upon the shoulders perhaps, or possibly in the way in which the big nose seemed to thrust itself so aggressively forward. Bobby took a chance, and, when the other gave him a frowning, questioning glance, as much as to ask him who the Dickens he was, and what the mischief was he doing there, he said:

  “Mr. Prescott Bain, isn’t it?”

  The other nodded and tried to look more amiable, though without much success. Bobby had the impression that he was holding himself in check in case the visitor should prove to have come on some possibly profitable business errand. If not, probably wrath would relieve itsel
f in a vigorous and emphatic outpouring. As formidable in his way, this Prescott Bain, but not in the way of violence, probably, as that slow-pacing angry figure Bobby remembered so well. Prescott said:

  “Yes. Well? Do you want to see me?”

  “I am from the Home Office,” Bobby explained. “This is my letter of authority. I have been sent to try to co-ordinate the inquiry here into the death of Mr. Itter Bain with other inquiries elsewhere, with which it may turn out to be connected.”

  “What other inquiries? In what way?” Prescott asked doubtfully, “I don’t understand that.”

  “I am afraid I can’t go into details,” Bobby answered. “At present they must remain confidential. Indeed, it may turn out that there’s no such connection at all. Hereabouts, of course, very good progress is being made under the very efficient, capable direction of Commander Seers.”

  “Oh, is it? That’s news,” snapped Prescott, apparently rather glad of the chance to let off a little steam. “If you ask me, Seers is an incompetent stuck-up old ass who hasn’t an idea what to do and wouldn’t want to do it if he had.”

  “Oh, why not?” Bobby asked.

  “Better ask him,” Prescott retorted. Then he said angrily: “Sahibs stick together.” After another pause, he said: “Everyone knows who killed Itter.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, and I’m not saying—libel, slander, or something.”

  “No,” said Bobby. “Privileged. Anything said to a police officer in the course of a criminal investigation is privileged. And to hold back anything that is known is a very serious offence. I’m sure you don’t wish that. I’m sure I can rely on you for every help you can give us. The least thing you know or suspect … ?”