Night's Cloak: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 9

  “Hadn’t you an inventory of some sort? Possibly for fire insurance.” Mr Edwardes shook his head.

  “Not in detail,” he said. “So far as I know, there’s nothing of any great value. Father was never a collector. He lived in Japan for thirty years, and things accumulated. That’s all. I know there were swords and daggers. A suit of Japanese armour, too. Moth-eaten now.”

  “Is there any way in which you could identify your Japanese property? If I showed you the knife used in the murder, could you tell if it was yours?”

  Again Mr Edwardes shook his head.

  “I never took much interest in the things,” he said. “Since they were packed away in the attics, I have never looked at them.”

  “I suppose you could tell if they had been disturbed?” Another shake of the head answered this. “Were the boxes or attics secured in any way? The boxes locked or nailed up or anything like that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Mr Edwardes answered this time. “I should think it unlikely. I never bothered. I just told the servants to clear the stuff out of the way upstairs.”

  “Apparently, then,” Bobby said, “any one in the house could have helped themselves? Servants? Visitors? Any one?”

  “Any one,” agreed Mr Edwardes. “Including, of course, myself.”

  “Including, too,” Bobby suggested, “Mr Martin Wynne?”

  For once Mr Edwardes ceased to blink benevolently.

  “Well, I don’t know. Well, yes, I daresay,” he answered. “Martin has been to see me several times recently. Once or twice he stayed to dinner. I suppose he could have slipped up to the attics some time and helped himself. I don’t think it likely. Probably one or other of the servants would have seen or heard him.”

  “They might not have thought it their place to question the doings of their master’s guest,” Bobby remarked. “You agree it is possible?”

  “Everything’s possible,” retorted Mr Edwardes. “I thought I might as well mention these Japanese belongings of mine. You would probably have found out in any case. I didn’t know you were going to turn it against young Martin Wynne.”

  “Have I turned it?” Bobby asked. “I didn’t know I had turned anything. I have to consider everything. By the way, who told you a Japanese knife had been used?”

  “It was Martin,” explained Mr Edwardes. “I met him on the way here. He was coming away from Mayfield. I suppose he had been to call there. I stopped, and we talked for a few minutes.”

  “Mayfield?” Bobby repeated. “Where the Misses Severn live? I understand there was some talk of a likely marriage between the elder Miss Severn and Mr Weston. Is that true, do you know?”

  This time Mr Edwardes shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “How should I? No business of mine, and I don’t go about collecting gossip. Bill Weston was an extremely wealthy widower and very likely there were various ladies in the neighbourhood ready to console him. I’ve told you before, we were not intimate. We had practically nothing to do with each other outside our business relations—and very little in business. To be quite honest, I wasn’t much more than his rubber stamp. Until recently.”

  “Recently that changed?”

  “It changed,” Mr Edwardes agreed. “I had changed. A complete deadlock resulted.”

  “Now solved by his death?”

  “Now solved by his death,” Mr Edwardes repeated steadily. “By his murder you should have said, I think. I regard it as providential. Can a murder be providential? The deadlock was complete. Neither of us intended to give way.” He paused for a moment and blinked at Bobby, no longer benevolently, now with such a hard resolve as seemed to reveal strange unsuspected depths, as though beneath the easy-going dilettante, indifferent to the outer world, absorbed in ancient questions of grammar, dabbling amusedly in the deeper mysteries of tastes and flavours, proud of the trivial recognition of waiters and maîtres-d’hôtel, there had always existed, there had now come to the surface, a steely and relentless will, one that would draw back before no obstacle, hesitate at nothing, know perhaps no scruple in reaching its determined end. While Bobby still wondered at this revelation of a new personality come suddenly into the light, wondered, too, at the unknown depths which may lie hidden in each one of us, Mr Edwardes went on: “I do not know what the issue would have been. I think it might have been disastrous for every one. Now it has been most happily solved. By this—murder.”

  He paused. As it were by magic that new self of his vanished, disappeared, was as if it had never existed. Once more there sat there, no strong-willed aggressor fiercely set on his own way in defiance of all obstacles, but the mildly blinking, elderly gentleman so much resembling the easy-going country vicar chatting amiably to an influential parishioner. Bobby said presently:—

  “I wish you would explain exactly what caused this change, this difference of opinion? It was concerned with the control of the Weston West Company, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Quite correct. Bill Weston and I had equal voting power. Martin held the balance.”

  “High stakes,” Bobby mused. “I mean, the control of a company like the Weston West. Is it true you wished to give the mill-workers a share in the control?”

  “No,” said Mr Edwardes.

  “But—” began Bobby.

  “I wished them to have complete control,” Mr Edwardes explained.

  “That was going to extremes, wasn’t it?”

  “So Bill Weston thought,” agreed Mr Edwardes grimly. “So he was prepared to go to any extremes to stop it. Literally. I was prepared to go to any extremes to put it through. Literally. He didn’t take me seriously at first. Thought I was a little cracked. Inclined to pooh-pooh the whole thing. Then he found that Martin had more than half decided to back me up. That made him take it more seriously. He tried to get Martin to sell. He offered a big price. I couldn’t match him there. At the moment I am very short of cash. My father got rid of all his Japanese interests when he left the country, but he left a good deal of his capital in Singapore and in Malaya. That will be all right again when the Japanese have been thrown out, but in the interval, things are difficult.”

  “Mr Wynne refused to sell, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. It was a big temptation. You see, it would have given him the money for some private experiments of his own, in the stratosphere. He is very excited about them. I don’t know why, but he is. I think he would have accepted only for some experience he seems to have had up there.”

  “He told me about that,” Bobby said. “It seems to have made a great impression on him.”

  “Quite easy to explain,” Mr Edwardes said. “The sub-conscious mind. A magic formulae. Deep internal conflict between his wanting so desperately the money Bill Weston offered and his memory of his aunt’s request not to sell. So up there, normal control weakened by lack of oxygen, his sub-conscious mind hit on the device of strengthening his resolution by giving him a message from his dead aunt, making it more realistic by forging her writing, with which he would be familiar. The sub-conscious mind seems to be capable of queer doings. I think that is a convincing explanation. Is it?” he concluded abruptly.

  “Fortunately that’s outside my province,” Bobby said. “All I have to note is that for some reason, or none, Mr Wynne refused his uncle’s offer and that Mr Weston was greatly angered by that refusal. You say it made the deadlock complete. I don’t quite understand why. You and Mr Wynne had between you a majority of the voting power given by your holding of ordinary shares. Why a deadlock, then?”

  “It wasn’t so simple as all that,” Mr Edwardes answered. “Weston was chairman for life by the articles of association, and the articles could only be changed by a three-fifths majority. Martin and I held only an exact half, and were only sure of a majority because it was impossible Bill Weston would be able to get all the other shareholders, without exception, every one of them, on his side, and get proxies from them all, again without exception. But it was equally out of the
question for us to muster the three-fifths majority necessary. So he was secure in his position as chairman, and he could have used it, and would have used it, to wreck our plans. We might have forced through our idea of having the workers themselves elect a majority of the board. He told me he would at once sack any such directors. I said we would reinstate them by direct resolution. You can see the issue was clear-cut, battle joined.”

  “An awkward situation,” Bobby agreed. “Now it has been resolved.”

  “By murder,” Mr Edwardes said starkly; and took off those thick, gold-rimmed spectacles of his with their thick round lenses. Mildly he blinked at Bobby, whom now he could see only indistinctly. “Murder,” he repeated as the door opened and Hargreaves appeared on the threshold.

  He must have heard that word, so darkly ominous, but he gave no sign. Impressive, dignified, aloof, he stood there, and in that tense atmosphere both Mr Edwardes and Bobby turned on him startled, expectant, apprehensive looks. He said slowly as they held their breath to listen:—

  “Luncheon is served.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  THREE SONS

  IT WAS an announcement evidently welcome to Mr Edwardes, who rose briskly from his chair. Bobby, too, remembered vividly that his breakfast had been hurried. But he felt it would be wise to finish now this interview with Mr Edwardes, aware as he was of, and troubled as he was by, the impression the other gave him of a faint, sardonic irony that seemed to lie only half concealed in the mild blinking of eyes half hidden by those round, thick lenses. Suspicious was Bobby, too, that so much apparent candour might well hide many things not yet evident.

  “That’s very good of you, Hargreaves,” he said quickly. “We shall both be glad of something to eat the moment we have finished our talk.”

  Mr Edwardes, who had already moved towards the door, turned back to his chair and sat down quietly.

  “I forgot I was a man under authority,” he said. “I might say under suspicion.”

  At this Hargreaves, already in the act of withdrawing, gave him a startled look. Bobby frowned. He thought the remark frivolous. Mr Edwardes saw both start and frown, and indeed Bobby was beginning to think those mild, blinking eyes saw most things. Mr Edwardes bestowed on Bobby one of his faintly mocking smiles, and to Hargreaves he said:—

  “Don’t look so surprised. I expect you are, too. Even more so. I imagine every butler’s favourite dream is murdering his master.”

  “I trust, sir, I know my place too well,” Hargreaves answered, cold and dignified rebuke in every tone of his voice. He said to Bobby: “Very good, sir. Fortunately it is a cold collation. Sandwiches and—er—beer or tea as preferred have been provided for your assistants. I have Mr Anderson’s authority. I believe Mr Anderson is already in the dining-room.”

  “Give Mr Anderson my compliments,” said Bobby, recognizing the name of Mr Weston’s solicitor, “and say we hope to join him soon. Say in any case I hope to see him before he leaves.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Hargreaves, and withdrew, and Bobby said to Mr Edwardes with some vexation:—

  “He will go off and tell every one you have been arrested. What’s the idea of starting talk like that?”

  “I hope it will remain talk,” Mr Edwardes retorted. “Will it?”

  “Not one moment after there’s sufficient evidence to justify arrest,” Bobby snapped. “You know perfectly well there’s none at present. You have given me a good deal of information, though. I wonder if you can give me some more. Do you know anything about Mr Weston’s relations with women?”

  “Only that they were scandalous.”

  “Do you know a Miss Bessie Bell?”

  “No. I have already told you we were not intimate. I couldn’t help hearing some of the talk that went on. There was a lad in one of the cottages about here who was said to be a bastard of his. Others, I believe. He never took any notice of any of them. There were stories that sometimes he took a girl to Scotland and she thought they were married because he registered at the hotel as Mr and Mrs, and then afterwards she found they weren’t. That kind of marriage by repute for visitors to Scotland, has been done away with long ago. A period of residence is necessary now.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby said thoughtfully.

  “The woman you spoke of just now—what was her name? Bell, was it? Was she one of his mistresses?”

  “I have no reason to think so,” Bobby answered. “She was here last night. I should like to know why.”

  “If Bill Weston has a woman here at night,” Mr Edwardes retorted, “there’s only one probable reason.”

  “Probabilities are often so deceptive,” Bobby remarked. “Mr Weston got me here, too. I don’t know why. Was there any connection? Mr Martin Wynne was here, as well. Three of us. For different reasons or for one reason? And had the different reasons, or the one reason, any bearing on what happened later?”

  “I am afraid I can’t help you there,” Mr Edwardes said, “but I can assure you of one thing—Sill Weston never did anything without a reason, and that reason had always to do with some secret purpose of his own.” He took off his glasses and polished them, looking absently at Bobby, whom now he saw as in a mist. “Is that all?” he asked. “Luncheon is waiting, you know, and you may be sure that even in present conditions, it will not be unworthy. I can picture the admirable Hargreaves appearing on the Day of Judgment to announce ‘Dinner is served’.”

  “Well, there is one thing more,” Bobby admitted. “I don’t want to press you for an answer. But I do wonder why you seem to have gone out of your way to—well, almost to draw suspicion on yourself.”

  “Have I?” Mr Edwardes asked. “I didn’t know. You were sure to find out. That’s all. Everything I’ve said. Isn’t it less suspicious to tell all at once than to let it be discovered piecemeal? I’m fairly certain you will find all details of that old undergraduate affair I told you about in Weston’s papers. Otherwise most likely I should never have mentioned it. Isn’t it wiser to tell what is sure to be discovered?”

  “I suppose it is,” agreed Bobby, but doubtfully, for he did not find this explanation too convincing. “I think I was wondering a little if you were trying to shelter some one else?”

  “Good gracious, no,” the other retorted, with again that gleam of sardonic amusement. “You credit me with too much chivalry, inspector, and I fear I find you too imaginative. Surely a policeman should keep both feet firm upon the earth?”

  “Imagination is useful sometimes,” Bobby said. “It may lead you to the wrong guess, but it may lead you to the right one, too.”

  “I suppose sympathy is useful as well,” Mr Edwardes said. “I think sympathy is the trump card in your technique, isn’t it? I wonder how much is genuine, how much is technique to make a suspect weep on your shoulder and weep out as well what you want to know. I think your sympathy is dangerous. But I’ll tell you something. I didn’t kill Bill Weston. I’m not sure I don’t think killing him a case of ‘killing no murder’. And if I felt sure that you would hang me, why then, I would confess to it here and now.”

  Bobby looked up, startled. Once again there had come on Mr Edwardes yet another strange and sudden change. But now it was a change from the comfortable and disillusioned, slightly cynical dilettante to the sad and aged man for whom no longer had life savour or meaning. Difficult to say, nor could Bobby ever tell, what made this change in manner or appearance, and yet at once it was as though sat there the very type and image of all the suffering of this tragic world of to-day, where evil things and grief walk hand in hand in all the places of the earth and where are many to whom indeed nothing has been left but their eyes to weep with.

  “Only, you see,” Mr Edwardes went on abruptly, “I know that I should never hang. Not a man who has lost three sons in the war. Broadmoor, perhaps, or prison for life. I dislike the idea. So I don’t confess. Especially as I don’t happen to have done it.” He put on his glasses again and became his usual plump, cool, detached, ironic self once m
ore. He observed thoughtfully: “I can’t imagine why I never thought of it. I suppose murder is too far outside the range of one’s ordinary ideas.”

  “I heard you had lost three sons,” Bobby said, a little awkwardly, for he felt he had been given a glimpse into depths no other should have seen.

  “Thank you,” Mr Edwardes said, responding to Bobby’s tone, not to his words. “I suppose it is what changed my ideas and brought me into conflict with poor Weston—one of us bound to give way, and each of us determined it must be the other. Well, that’s settled now.” He seemed to fall again into his brooding mood. “Weston couldn’t understand. I mean, why it made me see things differently. Well, it did. Tony, he was my youngest boy. Why is a youngest boy so often one’s favourite? The other two knew, but they didn’t mind, because he was their favourite, too. He joined under the Militia Act—you remember? Just before the war began. Most of the other lads with him were from the East End of London. He used to tell me how ready they always were to help him out. You see, they knew all the things he had never heard of. All the same, he said they never gave themselves airs—treated him just like one of themselves. He made one special friend. It was a surprise to Tony to find this lad had hardly ever had enough to eat till he joined the army. His mother was dead, his father unemployed, so the children generally went hungry. When Tony came home on leave he told me he hadn’t known kids in England could go hungry. I said I hadn’t known either. Tony seemed to think I should have. He asked me to promise to do something about it. He and his friend were killed together in France, and the machine-gun bullets that killed them didn’t notice that one had been to a public school and the other not much to any school because instead he had spent his time hunting through the garbage tins of cook-shops for scraps to eat. Their officer told me they were buried in the same grave. Wally, he was the eldest, had a commission. Most of the men in his platoon were from the Rhondda. Some of them had never done any work in all their lives—unemployed from leaving school. But they were quite ready to die for the country that had never let them work. So they did, all of them, and Wally with them, cut off in Libya covering a retreat. Wally’s last letter said, didn’t I think something ought to be done about it? Vivian, my second boy, was in the R.A.F. Shot down over Bremen. He used to tell me how the ground men nursed his machine. Like a young mother with her first born, he said. He said it was the ground crews won the Battle of Britain. He told me about the factories after Dunkirk, when men and women worked at their machines till they dropped and slept where they lay, and then rose up to work again. He said, oughtn’t they to have a say in running the show who saved the country? Wouldn’t I see to it? That was in his last letter. But I didn’t know what to do or how. Then I came across a book some one had written. Very persuasive.”