Everybody Always Tells: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 6

  “Ordinary kitchen knife,” he said. “No dabs. Been wiped most likely. One thing I noticed. There’s a pad of paper been pushed in to keep the handle firm. But it does look as if the handle had been loosened on purpose, not just from being used. In a way that might happen easily enough, only there’s no scratch or anything like that on the blade. I don’t suppose it means anything.”

  “No,” agreed Bobby, taking the knife and examining it closely. “Probably not. Better remember it, though, and just as well you noticed it. Have you the paper pad?”

  “Not much good,” Simons answered, producing it. “Looks like it had been part of a restaurant menu.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, interested. “Take care of it. There’s a Mr Noel Lake, who seems to have been on bad terms with Findlay and who keeps a restaurant.”

  Simons whistled softly.

  “Restaurant, eh?” he said. “And kitchen knife and all? In a way, that smells. Smells,” he repeated. “Know what the bad terms was about?”

  “Woman,” Bobby answered briefly. “But we mustn’t jump to conclusions,” he added. “Better begin asking questions, hadn’t you? I should think you could leave your men to get on by themselves now.”

  Simons surveyed his busy staff with that doubtful air some seniors are apt to assume towards their juniors. However, he agreed that just possibly they might be trusted now to finish their work without making too many bloomers. Bobby suggested, too, that it might be as well to begin by having a look round the rest of this attic floor, and again Simons agreed.

  “You never know your luck,” he remarked. “In a way, that’s my motto.”

  CHAPTER VI

  “IN A WAY, THAT’S FUNNY”

  ON EACH SIDE of this room the dead man had occupied was another, much smaller. The doors of both these rooms were locked, and Simons sent one of his assistants to find Mrs Jacks and get the keys.

  While waiting for them, he and Bobby began a quick examination of all the rest of this attic floor. Mr Acton’s estimate of a hundred rooms to each floor was something of an exaggeration, but both Bobby and Simons were soon inclined to regard it rather as an understatement than otherwise, so unending did appear to be this twisted, twining labyrinth of passages and corners and alcoves. Some of the rooms were still furnished, left as they had been when at the beginning of the second world war domestic staff had grown smaller and smaller and finally vanished—as it turned out, for ever. But that had not been realized at the time, and each room in turn as it had been vacated, as footmen turned into guardsmen and kitchen maids into munition workers, had been kept ready for the days when the footmen and the maids would come again into general circulation.

  Now in all these rooms dust and cobwebs reigned, and nowhere was any trace of recent use. Others of the rooms were quite empty, and had clearly been so for years. Others again had been used merely for storage, and contained great piles of old furniture, of boxes, of odds and ends, of all sorts and kinds, all again thick with dust and evidently untouched and unvisited for many a long day.

  “Enough stuff to set up half a dozen second-hand dealers,” commented Simons, as he and Bobby made their swift survey of this tangle of rooms, cupboards, corridors, and so on.

  Though they hurried as much as they could, it was some considerable time before they got back to their starting point, satisfied there was nothing on the attic floor to throw any light on what had happened. Waiting for them was the constable sent to find Mrs Jacks and obtain from her the keys of the two locked rooms, the only rooms indeed so locked on the whole floor. He reported now that Mrs Jacks had promised to look for the keys, but was not sure where they were. Simons sent him off again to see if she had succeeded in her search. He was soon back, bringing her with him. Apologetically she explained that she had been unable to ‘put her hand’ on them. Poor Mr Findlay—here she showed symptoms of tears—had had them. He wanted the rooms kept locked so as to be sure they remained empty and available for his own use, if necessary. Mrs Jacks could not, she said, remember clearly, but she thought he must have kept the two keys in his own possession. They would be most likely somewhere in his room, poor gentleman.

  “Room been gone over thoroughly,” Simons said. “No sign of any keys.”

  “Well, then, I don’t know,” Mrs Jacks said. “Perhaps they’re somewhere in their flat downstairs. But there can’t be anything in those rooms. I swept them out myself when Mr Findlay’s room was being got ready, and there’s nothing in them, nothing at all.”

  “Oh, well, never mind,” Bobby said. “If they’ve been kept locked, no one can very well have been in them.”

  “Oh, no, no one could,” Mrs Jacks agreed, apparently a little startled by the suggestion. “I wouldn’t like to think it,” she added with a frightened glance at the two closed doors, as if wondering who or what might be lurking behind them.

  “Oh, we didn’t think the murderer might be hiding there,” Bobby assured her smilingly.

  Mrs Jacks seemed inclined to continue the conversation. After all it is not every day that one gets a murder in one’s own home to chat about. Not surprising she wanted to talk and even to ask questions. Bobby, however, got rid of her quickly and with decision, and when she had gone suggested to Simons that it might be as well to have a look and make sure the rooms were as empty as they were said to be. He did not think, he said, that the locks would give much trouble. Simons seemed a little puzzled.

  “You don’t really think,” he said hesitatingly, “there may be something there?”

  “Not a chance in a thousand,” Bobby answered. “But it’s always a good rule to see for yourself. What’s really in my mind at the moment is whether it would be at all possible for any stranger to get into this great barracks of a place without being noticed and hide. You see, if that’s possible, it widens the field enormously. Otherwise the murderer must apparently be one of these people. A hundred to one that’s the case, but we’ve got to consider everything, and I should say you might camp out up here for long enough without being spotted.”

  Simons didn’t look as if he much appreciated this suggestion of a possible widening of the field of inquiry to such an almost unlimited extent. Bobby was already at work on one of the locked doors, and as the lock here, too, was of simple construction he soon had it open. Within they saw only bare walls, bare floor, uncurtained windows, cobwebs everywhere draped like curtains, everything thick with dust. Simons was much relieved.

  “No one been in here for donkey’s years,” he declared.

  Bobby agreed. He closed the door, shot the bolt of the lock again, and turned his attention to the door of the second locked room. “Oiled recently,” he remarked as he started work. Soon he had it open. There again, blank walls, bare floor, thickly draped cobwebs, dust that seemed immemorial.

  “Same as the other,” Simons said. “Nothing but dirt and cobwebs.”

  “Nothing else,” agreed Bobby, “but plenty of it. Didn’t Mrs Jacks say she had both rooms swept out when Findlay established himself up here a year or so ago?”

  “In a way,” Simons said doubtfully, “in a way, it does rather look as if there was more than a year’s growth of cobweb and dust, especially cobwebs in the ceiling corners. Perhaps they didn’t sweep up there though.”

  “Perhaps not,” Bobby agreed again. “But more than a year’s dust on the floor, I think. Have another look at the floor.”

  Simons did so, stared, then gave his low whistle he kept for special emergencies or surprises.

  “Does look like there’s been some one walking quite often straight across to the wall opposite. Sort of path in the dust it looks like.”

  “So it does,” said Bobby, still in agreement.

  In fact, across the floor, through the dust that lay on it so thickly, showed a faint trail or path leading from the door where Bobby and Simons stood to the wall, the party wall separating this room from that in which Ivor Findlay had worked and died.

  “What beats me,” said Simons as the
y stood there, looking and thinking, “is what’s the idea? Straight over to a blank wall and back again. In a way, that’s funny.”

  Bobby went across to the wall opposite, to the spot where this trail in the dust seemed to end. From the doorway Simons watched intently, puzzled, but obedient to a slight gesture Bobby had made, asking him to stay where he was for the moment. He saw Bobby stoop and put an eye close to the wall, then straighten himself and move cautiously and sideways along the wall, examining it carefully all the way. Presently he stooped again, and again pressed one eye to the wall. Then he returned to Simons, waiting in the doorway.

  “Your turn now,” he said. “You have a look.”

  Simons, who by now had guessed what to look for, obeyed and then came back.

  “Two peepholes in the wall,” he said. “Some one been keeping watch. Two peepers, one hole for each. What for?”

  “Not necessarily two peepers,” Bobby said. “Between them, the two holes give a sight of the whole room. With only one hole the view would have been partial. A thorough job.”

  “Well, who? Well, why?” Simons asked. “Even if Findlay’s work was confidential, no one could get much idea of it by peeping through a spy hole.”

  “No,” said Bobby. “That’s quite clear.”

  “Could it have been Mrs Findlay?” Simons suggested next. “Keeping an eye on hubby? Had he a pretty secretary?”

  “There’s Miss Kitty Grange,” Bobby answered. “She seems to have been working for him till recently, when she slapped his face and retired.”

  “Oh, well, in a way,” Simons said, feeling his theory proved up to the hilt, “that’s what I was thinking. Pretty girl?”

  “I haven’t seen her yet,” Bobby answered. “She is one of the family apparently—some sort of cousin, I think. She is engaged to the Noel Lake I told you of. His row with Findlay was about her.”

  Once more Simons emitted his characteristic low whistle.

  “Getting somewhere,” he declared. “Mrs Findlay guessed what was up, and thought she would make sure. Eh?”

  “Mrs Findlay is a tall woman,” Bobby said. “About five feet eight or nine. Those spy holes suggest some one not much over five feet.”

  “Mrs Jacks,” Simons suggested at once. “She’s about that. She might be in Mrs Findlay’s pay?”

  “A possibility,” Bobby agreed. “Though I don’t much think that sort of spying is in Mrs Findlay’s line. Worth thinking about, though. But if it’s Mrs Jacks, no wonder she was so anxious to tell us the rooms must be empty and she couldn’t find the key she most likely had in her pocket. Do you think it might be as well to look up Mrs Jacks’s background?”

  “I’ll put it in hand at once,” Simons promised.

  They left the room then, Bobby carefully fastening the door again so that there might be as little as possible to show the room had been visited. Simons said he thought he had better see how his boys were getting on. The routine work was nearly finished. The finger-print expert had found various ‘dabs’ and some evidence that here and there objects had been recently wiped, since on them was none of the dust to be found elsewhere. He had discovered one very clearly marked set on Findlay’s desk, opposite where he sat. A woman’s prints, the ‘dabs’ man said, and Simons was very interested. So was Bobby.

  “Have to be identified,” declared Simons emphatically.

  “Not so easy,” said the dabs man with some resentment. “We aren’t allowed to take ‘dabs’ from people without their consent. Why not? Why should any one object unless they’ve their reasons? These dabs prove a woman’s been in here this morning, don’t they? Well, then, why can’t we ask all of ’em in the house to let us take their prints, and see they do?”

  “That’s right,” agreed Simons, and Bobby suggested they had better ask Mrs Jacks if the room, and more especially the desk, had been dusted that morning.

  He and Simons descended therefore to the ground floor and found Mrs Jacks busy serving Lord Newdagonby with his almost-forgotten ‘sole bonne femme’.

  “The poor gentleman’s got to eat, murder or no murder,” she explained.

  In answer to their questions she was emphatic that Mr Findlay’s room had been dusted and cleaned as thoroughly as possible that morning. Mr Findlay, poor gentleman, had been that particular about his things being moved or so much as touched. Consequently, the task of keeping the room clean and tidy had not been easy, and Mrs Jacks had generally seen to it herself, rather than allow the daily woman to go in. As it happened she was emphatic in remembering clearly that Mr Findlay’s desk had been unusually clear of papers that morning, so she had been able to give it a good rub over.

  “There’s some reason to think he had a visitor during the morning, some time before the murder,” Bobby remarked. “Some time before eleven, that is. We think Mr Findlay must have been killed about that time.”

  “Oh, no,” Mrs Jacks answered at once. “It must have been after that. I heard his typewriter going about a quarter or twenty past or thereabouts.”

  CHAPTER VII

  “GUINEA PIGS?”

  TO THIS STATEMENT, Mrs Jacks adhered resolutely. At first she had though t it was Mrs Findlay, who sometimes used her husband’s typewriter. But now she wasn’t so sure, because Mrs Findlay wasn’t so very proficient in the use of the machine and this had been a rapid typing.

  “Like the way Miss Grange does, only not so fast as her,” said Mrs Jacks.

  Also she was certain she was not mistaken about the time. She had been watching it carefully. A rumour had reached her that grape-fruit would be on sale at a neighbouring shop at half-past eleven. The shop was about five minutes’ walk away. She was intending therefore to leave the house between twenty and twenty-five minutes past the hour so as to make sure of being at the head of the queue. In this she had succeeded, she had secured her grape-fruit and had returned home. No, she had no idea how long the typing had continued. All she knew was that typing was going on at, or a minute or two later, than eleven twenty.

  Simons asked next if she thought it possible for a stranger to get into the house without being noticed. Mrs Jacks replied firmly that, now he had said that, she would never sleep easy in her bed again, not in this house, and she would give notice immediately. Pressed to give a more relevant answer she agreed that the lock of the back door was out of order, and that it was seldom bolted during the day. She supposed it would be possible to open it and just walk in, and it was a wonder that not only the poor gentleman, but all of them, had not wakened up one morning all murdered in their beds. It set her all of a twitter just to think of it. Oh, yes, of course, the door was always bolted at night. She saw to that herself, as soon as it was dark in fact. She supposed also, when Simons made the suggestion, that a ring at the front door would have drawn her to answer it, so leaving the coast clear in the basement to which the back door gave access. And once inside, in this great barracks of a place, it would be easy enough to avoid observation. But the garden door, opening on the stairs leading to the flat or suite occupied by the Findlays, had a Yale lock, and so was quite secure.

  This talk with Mrs Jacks had taken place at the foot of the great central stairway. As she seemed to have no more to tell, she was asked to show them the room that had, on request, been set aside for the temporary use of the police so long as they remained in the house. It was small and bare, and chill with the chilliness that comes of long disuse. Already it was occupied by a constable who was also a skilled shorthand writer, and who at the moment was busy trying to sort and arrange a pile of material, documents of one kind and another and so on, that had seemed to require closer examination. Mrs Jacks hoped the room would do, a faint suggestion in her manner, that anyhow it would have to ‘do’, and in any case too good for them. So Bobby said politely that it would ‘do’ very well indeed, and did Mrs Jacks think they could have a few minutes’ talk with Mrs Findlay? Mrs Jacks said she would tell Mrs Findlay and retired, and when she had gone Simons said:

  “What d
o you make of that story about the typing, Mr Owen? Can we accept it, or is she lying?”

  “Why should she?”

  “Well, if she did it herself . . .” Simons suggested. “You know I don’t like those peepholes. They smell.”

  “They do,” agreed Bobby. “But what of? No proof that it was Findlay who was typing. It may have been the murderer.” “Well, in a way,” Simons admitted, though a little taken aback by a suggestion that had not occurred to him. “But is that likely? Could any one sit down calmly to do a bit of typing with the man he had just put a knife into dying a few feet away? No jury’s going to take that without a lot of evidence.”

  “No jury will ever take anything without a lot of evidence, and quite right, too,” Bobby answered. “But no murderer is likely and nothing he does is likely. Our worst headache.”

  “Findlay’s watch stopped a little before eleven,” Simons pointed out. “We mustn’t forget that.”

  “Oh, no, very important,” Bobby agreed. “A scientist like Findlay would be likely to keep his watch right, I should think. You might ask about that perhaps.”

  “So I will,” Simons said. “You remember that the doctor put a little before eleven as the time of the attack?”

  “What’s bothering me most at the moment,” Bobby went on, “is those guinea pigs, and do they mean anything?”

  “Guinea pigs?” Simons repeated. “Why guinea pigs?”

  “Two in one cage,” Bobby said. “Both quite lively. Another cage empty, but provided with fresh food and water.”