So Many Doors, page 17
Of course, too, this watch upon, and examination of, derelict tin-mines that he had in view, ought by all rule and precedent to be carried out by the local police. That certainly would be done, if an official request were made. But they could hardly be expected to perform that duty among all their many others, with the eagerness, the sense of urgency, the intense conviction now grown up in Bobby’s mind, that whatever it was had happened at Bexley House was but a prelude to worse things to come. To them it would just appear as a vague routine inquiry not likely to lead anywhere and to be got over as soon as possible, so that more pressing and immediate matters could be dealt with.
Such misgivings as to how far or for how long he would be permitted to follow a trail doubtful even to himself and, as it seemed, invisible to others, were increased when next morning on the breakfast table he found waiting for him a letter from Centre, quite friendly in tone, no doubt, but hinting sufficiently plainly that the sooner a Senior Commander, even though still unattached, returned to his desk, the warmer would be his welcome.
“Which,” said Bobby to himself, “about puts the lid on it.”
There was something else, though. This was a brief official report to say that the names and addresses given by the three girl hikers—the three Marys, as Bobby called them—had been checked as requested, and had in each case been found to be false. In one case there was no such number in the street named. In another there was no such street. In the third case, though street and number were found, nothing was known of any Mary Tyler, or of any other Mary.
Bobby was interested. He was also aware that Centre would be less so. Centre would remind him that many people dislike extremely being mixed up with the police. They do not think it quite respectable. And of course the three Marys might have been indulging in some innocent little escapade to which they had no desire to draw the attention of their friends and relatives. Their parents might not approve of girls going hiking on their own, and might have believed them to be spending their holiday in some quiet, respectable boarding-house at Eastbourne or Bournemouth, not wandering alone about Devon or Cornwall. Or again, they might, like Maggie Kerr, be absent from work for given reasons not compatible with Cornish hiking.
All the same, Bobby spent a little time writing a memorandum explaining why he thought it desirable that these three girls should be traced and identified, and suggesting that an appeal might be made by radio for them to come forward. He wrote, too, another memorandum giving a brief account of his talks with Jerry George and with Grace Williams, and offering two or three different and conflicting theories for what had been called the Cornish exodus. He thought it probable that Centre would be a good deal more interested in the possible recovery of a stolen lorry load of cigarettes, with it perhaps evidence to convict the gang concerned, than so far it had seemed to be in the exact whereabouts of an eloping couple.
But scarcely had he got these safely in the post when he was called to the ’phone. His friend, the superintendent, was at the other end of the line, and sounded for once quite excited. For there was news. On the edge of the cliffs, at Gurnards Head, had been found a motor rug, some tools, a cushion, and a Michelin guide. Further investigation had shown plain indications that here a vehicle of some kind had been driven straight over the cliff edge at full speed. Also it had been found that both on rug and cushion were stains that looked like blood. These would be submitted for expert examination. Arrangements were being made to recover, if possible, what might be left of any car that here had taken the dreadful plunge these signs seemed to indicate.
Would Mr Owen, the superintendent asked, like to come along and see for himself what was going on?
Bobby, a little excited, too, said he would indeed. It really did look, he said, as though things were beginning to move at last. The superintendent remarked that it seemed a good easy way of disposing of an inconvenient corpse. The murderer’s perennial difficulty. Corpses have an awkward way of turning up again, no matter how carefully hidden, even after the lapse of many months—or years. Fifteen years, for instance, between the murder and the discovery of the skeleton that had brought Eugene Aram to the gallows.
“No telling if it will ever be found,” said the superintendent. “It may very well get washed right out to sea. Or, for that matter, into some cave or crevice of the rocks. Impossible to search them all. And if it can’t be found—well, where are we?”
Bobby said he didn’t know, and the superintendent said:
“Besides, whose body?”
Bobby did not attempt to answer. He was putting the same question to himself. The superintendent said:
“If it’s that poor girl . . . hardly bears thinking of, does it?”
Bobby said it was a bad business altogether, and difficult to know what could be done until it was clearly established who it was was missing. Indeed, there was still no proof that any one was missing in any but a purely temporary sense. A case so difficult it was even yet not certain there was any case at all. He supposed the locating of the actual spot where the car lay beneath the sea, and then its recovery, would take some time. The superintendent agreed, and said it would depend on the weather. If the weather broke—as well it might, since that was its normal habit and procedure—then recovery might prove impossible. Wave and cliff and rock between the three of them were well capable, along that coast, of pounding any work of man into unrecognizable fragments.
That ended their talk. Bobby hung up the receiver, and as he left the ’phone box he thought he saw some one hurriedly scuttling away. It was only an impression. He had seen nothing clearly. There had just been a feeling of movement in the air, of a changing shadow on the wall, of a faint echo of a sound of swift, departing footsteps. He did not attach much importance to it. He was well aware he had become an object of interest in the hotel, and in any case he was sure nothing he had said could have been overheard. Nor would it, he thought, have mattered very much if there had been eavesdropping. The papers would soon be proclaiming at the top of their extremely clamant voices ‘Tragic Discovery on Cornish Cliff’.
Plainly some considerable time would have to elapse before arrangements could be made for the locating and recovery of the wrecked car, even if the weather remained good. No use therefore in hurrying to the scene, so Bobby decided he might as well carry out his plan for visiting as many of the derelict tin-mines in the neighbourhood as he could in the time available. Especially that known as the ‘Round Table’ Mine—the one David Pope had mentioned as that in which his father had lost money, and which apparently he had visited in the company of the vanished Isobel Winlock.
He started, accordingly, and found his visits interesting and a little melancholy, such clear proof there was of human effort now for ever lost and abandoned. The mines seemed in various stages of neglect. One or two looked as if no living creature had been near them for years. The buildings were merely heaps of ruins, the machinery no more than rusty debris. For those were days in which the nation had been too rich and busy to bother its collective head about waste or scrap. In one case the entrance to the workings had been boarded over, but in the course of years the boarding had rotted and given way in part, so that a gaping hole showed deep below a sullen, dark surface of water. Bobby stood looking at it. The sea might give up its dead, he thought, but never that dark, subterranean pool, fed by perennial, hidden springs. He turned away with a faint shudder. He spent some time examining with close attention the approaches to this sinister and gaping hole, but could find no sign or trace of any recent visits.
One or two other mines had clearly been worked more recently when, under the stress of war conditions, the cost of securing tin had not been allowed to weigh against the desperate need for it, the still more desperate need for saving shipping space.
In these mines the buildings were in good repair, but the machinery, more modern, and therefore more in demand, had in general been removed. Here, too, the entrance to the workings had been closed with greater care—possibly from a genuine wish to guard against accidents, and possibly from a lively fear of actions for damages.
This was specially the case at the Round Table Mine. This he did not reach till late in the day—so late that he was beginning to think of turning back and postponing his visit to another day. It was a lonely district, too, and his memory of the sandwiches he had had for lunch, as of the tea he had managed to get at a wayside cottage, had grown both faint and thin. However, he decided to continue. The entrance to the mine premises was secured by a padlocked gate. But padlocks are less secure than they seem, and can generally be dealt with. This one offered little trouble, and Bobby soon had it opened. He sounded his horn once or twice, on the chance of there being a watchman in charge. There was no response—as, indeed, he had not supposed there would be—so he wheeled his motor cycle through the open gate and on up to the mine buildings. There he leaned it against a convenient support and proceeded on his tour of investigation. It seemed at first likely to yield small result. The buildings he looked at were still securely fastened, doors locked and windows boarded up. The sealed opening to the workings had certainly not been disturbed, and he saw no such open, direct access to unplumbed depths below as he had noticed elsewhere.
It was raining now, and low clouds suggested a stormy night. Bobby supposed that the work on the cliffs near Gurnards Head would probably be stopped before it had even begun. He noticed several heaps of refuse near, piles of mingled earth, ashes, and other debris that would presumably be cleared away at intervals when the mine was being worked, but whose removal since the stoppage no one had bothered about. Almost the last building he went to look at was one near the engine-house—probably a toolshed or something of the sort. The window was boarded up as usual, but the work had this time either been done carelessly or else the boards had been forced apart, for a gap showed several inches wide. Not enough for any one to enter by, but enough to supply a modicum within of air and light. Bobby examined the door, secured as always by a padlock. Not difficult to see that the staple had recently been withdrawn and then re-inserted.
So some one else had been here who knew how to deal with padlocks. For few think to make the staple secure by spread-eagling its ends, and yet if that is not done it is easy to force out the staple on which, of course, the padlock depends. Bobby repeated the process, easier now that it had been effected previously. Within there was clear evidence that some one had passed the night here. Plain to see where a rough bed had been made up. There was a tin that still held some dirty water, and on a spread-out paper were a few crumbs and an egg-shell to show it had served as a table-cloth during a meal.
Nothing could Bobby find, though, long and carefully as he looked, to show the identity of this recent visitor. But, then, the light was bad and his time short. Detailed examination by experts, including a finger-print expert—or ‘dabs’ man—might be able to find something. Difficult, indeed impossible, for any living creature not to leave behind distinctive traces of even the briefest, most transitory sojourn. That would have to wait for morning, however, and Bobby went to find his motor-cycle where he had left it leaning against the wall of the first shed he had come to. He found it with the tyres slashed to ribbons and the petrol tank opened and drained of its contents.
“With which they might have been content,” he thought ruefully, “without ruining perfectly good tyres. A work of supererogation.”
He was still contemplating the now useless machine when he heard the sharp report of a pistol and the whang of a bullet as it embedded itself, though at some distance away, in the wall of the building by which he was standing.
CHAPTER XXII
“THERE’S TIMES HE KNOWS”
Bobby had many little prejudices of his own, and one of the most marked was an extreme dislike to acting as a target for pistol practice. He removed himself, therefore, with very considerable speed from where he stood to the farther side of the shed.
The rain was growing heavier, the darkness greater, and of these conditions he took advantage to slip away, he hoped unseen, to the shelter of other buildings. Thence he got behind one of the piles of ash and other debris he had noticed before. There he crouched, listening intently, trying to peer through the gloom to see if he could distinguish any sign of his assailant. Visibility, however, as the air people say, was now only some ten or fifteen yards. Cautiously he began to edge his way in the direction whence that shot had seemed to come.
Still nothing, and now there was no more shelter, neither for him nor for any lurking assassin. Only a wire fence that ran between the mine property and the bare moor beyond, where it sloped up to the summit of a hill into which the mine workings penetrated deeply. Beyond, as he knew, on the other side of the hill, about half-way down it, was a by-road that a few miles farther on joined the main highway.
He went forward more boldly now, the rain and the darkness giving him, he felt, good protection. When he reached the wire fence he found it broken down in several places, so that here access to the mine was easy and the formidably padlocked gate at the principal entrance of little value. Had he known, he might have saved himself the trouble of removing and replacing that first padlock. He stood for a moment hesitating what to do next, and then he saw a light show at a distance on the brow of the hill. It moved away, disappearing behind the hill, and he thought this meant that whoever had fired the pistol shot had had a bicycle, had wheeled it up the rough hillside, and now had lighted its lamp, mounted it, and was riding away to safety—not to mention, Bobby reflected ruefully, food, shelter, and a bed, triple desiderata which seemed to be becoming somewhat doubtful prospects for himself.
So far as he could remember, on the road he had traversed so swiftly and so easily on his motor-cycle, and that now in retrospect seemed to stretch away for such endless miles, he had passed neither farm nor cottage. No doubt, lonely and remote as was the district, there would be some human habitation not too far away. But how to find it in this darkness, in this increasing rain?
Nothing for it, he supposed, but to tramp the whole distance to the main highway. No pleasing prospect, but no alternative. He went back to his useless motor-cycle, got the waterproof cape he, having some knowledge of Cornish weather, had been careful to provide himself with, and started off, musing the while very bitterly on the malign fate that had made him a policeman.
“Some,” he told himself, “are born unlucky, some have bad luck thrust upon them, and some achieve it by joining the police. Oh, well.”
On and on he walked, at the best speed the darkness, the rain, and a rising wind permitted. Then fortune relented, and allowed him a glimpse of a lighted window at a little distance from the road. It vanished almost at once. Some one had apparently pushed aside a curtain or blind for a moment to look out into the night and then let it fall again. Bobby found a narrow lane that led in the direction where that welcome light had shown, and followed it. Before very long the loud barking of a dog announced that he was nearing a house of some sort, and then a beam of light shot out into the darkness as a door opened and a man’s voice called:
“Any one there?”
Bobby responded and went forward, explaining his plight, and was invited inside, nor did he think that he had ever seen a more comforting sight than this cottage interior, at any rate by contrast with the wind and the rain and the night without. The inmates were a young man—the one who had opened the door to him—a young woman, presumably his wife; a baby sleeping in a cot, and an old, old man dozing by a small fire of brushwood in the kitchen grate. Bobby apologized for the mess he was making as the wet poured from his dripping clothes, and the young woman threw some more brushwood on the fire and told him to come nearer and dry himself.
“It was grand-dad told us,” she said. “He said as there was some one out there as was lost, and I must draw the curtain to look out. So I did, though we don’t most often take notice of what he says and him so old. But there’s times he knows, though all knows how.”
“Well, I’m glad he knew this time,” Bobby said, surveying the ancient man with gratitude. “Saved me a long tramp.”
“None too safe neither in this weather,” the young man added. “There’s the old road where it forks leads into Deep-side Pond that’s all weeds and mud, and no seeing the danger sign at night, when it’s dark and raining, too.”
The young woman offered him refreshment, and he was glad to accept a cup of hot tea, though he refrained from any further inroad on rations not too liberal for hard-working farm labourers. He asked a few questions, and received no comforting information. There was a village not too far away, but not easy to get to in this weather. A farm or two as well, including the one where his host worked. To this the young man undertook to make his way, Bobby promising ample reward. There was a telephone there, and certainly they would be willing to ring up the police and convey Mr Owen’s request that a car should be sent for him.
“Which they won’t much like—not this night same as it is, with raining and blowing all out,” observed the young man doubtfully, as if he felt by no means sure how this imperious request would be received.
Bobby remarked that indeed he knew very well they wouldn’t like it. He pointed out that the police only existed to be at the beck and call of every one who managed to get into a mess from which he couldn’t get out without their help. He made this observation with some feeling, and it was so unexpected and novel a point of view to his auditors that conversation died abruptly.
The young man completed his preparations and departed. Bobby, who had noticed during his talk with the two young people that once at least the old man by the fire had looked up with a sudden light in his ancient eyes, tried to speak to him. But the curtain of the years had enveloped him again. He took no notice, and the young woman said:
