So Many Doors, page 18
“There’s times he notices and times he don’t. No good saying nothing to him when he don’t.”
“It was he told you I was out there?” Bobby asked.
“Aye,” the woman answered. “Most times I take no notice, but to-night I did.”
“Good thing for me you did,” Bobby said. “Or I should still be tramping along that road and perhaps walking straight into the pond you spoke of.”
“And if you had, odds you would never have got out again,” she told him.
Bobby asked one or two questions about the Round Table Mine. It had, it seemed, a bad reputation. A wicked mine. More accidents there than in any other mine in all the length and breadth of Cornwall. Three men had died there the very last day before the mine last closed down, and the body of one of them had never been found, in spite of prolonged search. The mine claiming its own! Again, the very day the mine had been reopened under the stress of war three others had been killed in a boiler explosion. That was the threat and menace of the mine in reply to the return of men to rob it of its treasure. And there was the story of one man who had gone back to fetch some tool or something he had forgotten and had never since been heard of.
“But there was some as said as that was only him getting off quiet like so as he wouldn’t be called up for the Army,” added the young woman.
From the fireside, his voice small and thin but clear, as though heard from an immense distance, the old man said:
“There’s the unburied dead there still, waiting to be found.”
“Now, dad,” the young woman protested, and to Bobby she said: “We don’t heed him much, he’s that old no one knows for sure.”
To the old man, Bobby said:
“Why do you say that? Tell me more.”
But once again the curtain of the years had fallen, and the ancient did not seem even to hear, as he sank back to follow where his spirit roamed, in memory of the past or in knowledge of the future, in realms where perhaps, or so it seemed just then to Bobby, those two—the future and the past—might be as one in eternity.
“There’s times he’s took like that,” explained the young woman apologetically. “It’s on his mind seemingly about him as was killed and his body never found. Goodness knows what set him off, but ever since a day or two he’s spoke of it, off and on. Remembering like.”
“I suppose so,” Bobby agreed. “What was it he said exactly? Can you tell me?”
“Only same all the time about him as wasn’t ever found,” the young woman answered; and repeated, even more apologetically than before: “He’s that old—a hundred some says—and if you ask he says it’s too long anyhow and time he went. So I tell him who’ll keep baby quiet when I’m at the washing or such like if he isn’t there? He’s wonderful with baby, seems like as if they knew, both of them.”
The old man looked up at the word ‘baby’, as though it recalled to him a self now but tenuously connected with a physical body. And yet Bobby was not sure but that all that passed, all that was said and done around him, was not in some obscure way noted and registered, there to be called upon at need. Now he said suddenly, and said it with a sort of half-concealed chuckle:
“Start and end and same for every job.”
“Whose body is it that lies unburied at the Round Table Mine?” Bobby asked.
“It’s there for them as looks to find,” the old man answered in the same clear, high, and distant voice. “A bad thing,” he said, “and bad’ll come of it.”
“Fair worrying of him,” the young woman interposed. “Now dad, it’s nothing you can’t help, so let it be.”
“Where would you begin to look?” Bobby asked.
But now the old man sank again into that state of coma, or rather of a deep and hidden abstraction, from which for the moment he had seemed to awaken. Bobby sat down at his side and took the old, chill, wrinkled hands in his, young and strong, holding them gently.
“Will you tell me more?” he asked.
“There ain’t a thing he can know,” the young woman said, a faint suspicion in her tone, as though, while she did not know what Bobby meant, she yet disliked it and distrusted it, as all of us dislike and distrust the unfamiliar.
“I suppose not,” Bobby agreed, and from the old man he had no response.
It was, he was inclined to think, the presence, the interruptions, well meant and kindly in intention as they were, that kept coming from his grand-daughter, which had broken the continuity of whatever thought or dream or knowledge had been working in that old, almost departed mind. No use, Bobby felt, hoping or trying or expecting that he would say more. The young woman, apologetically, defensively, suspiciously, all three of these fully apparent in her tone and manner, repeated that he was very old, and when people got that way they couldn’t help it, could they? Bobby said that indeed they couldn’t, and nearly, but not quite, asked, why should they? The young woman added that he was wonderful little trouble and never ate more than half his rations, if as much. Or his tobacco either. They would miss him a lot when he went.
She put some more brushwood on the fire. Bobby devoted himself afresh to his interrupted task of getting himself as dry as possible. The young woman returned to the sewing she had been busy with. The old man dozed. Outside, the sound of wind and rain increased. Bobby supposed there would be small hope for the time of any progress being made in the task of recovering the crashed motor-car.
Presently the young man returned. Bobby’s message had gone through, and a car was being sent immediately. Bobby sighed again as once more he thought ruefully of how that item would show up in his expense sheet. Not to mention that other little item about new tyres for a motor-cycle. The young woman said:
“Grand-dad’s been rambling on again about the mine and him as was killed there and never found.”
“Up at farm,” her husband said, “they’re telling there was a light there one night. Two saw it. They think it must have been a tramp, now there’s a few on the road again with the war being over. Or it might be a hiker lost his way same as you, sir.”
“I daresay it might be that,” Bobby agreed.
“There was that lady you saw,” remarked the young woman, looking up from her sewing.
“It was well on in the day when I saw her,” her husband answered. “If she had put up there for the night, she would have been off early like. Stands to reason. Nothing to keep her or no one hanging about.”
“What did she look like?” Bobby asked.
His efforts to get a description did not meet with much success. There had only been a casual, passing glance as she rode by on a bicycle, and no special notice had been taken. Nor had she answered the greeting given her in friendly country fashion.
“Uncivil like,” the young man said, and added a detail: “Long, swinging earrings she had, swinging as if they might swing off. Swinging,” he repeated, as if this had impressed itself upon his memory.
“Swinging,” Bobby repeated, thinking at once of Vea Burden.
“Swinging,” the old man said, returning suddenly and unexpectedly to common intercourse. “That’s how it was once. My dad’s told me how he had seen them himself—swinging in the wind up there on the hill. Murderers they were.”
“Now, grand-dad,” the young woman said, “that’s long ago.”
“Same as yesterday,” the old man said.
“It’s the hill beyond the mine,” the young woman explained to Bobby. “Where there was a gallows once, folk say. But it’s long ago.”
The conversation died. It was not long before hooting outside told of the arrival of the car Bobby was expecting.
CHAPTER XXIII
“THEY FOUND THE BODY IMMEDIATELY”
Bobby still had much to do even after he was back in his little Redruth hotel. Arrangements had to be made over the ’phone for a thorough search to be carried out next morning of the Round Table Mine. This involved disturbing a sleepy superintendent at the very moment when he was hopefully donning his pyjamas. Bobby was a bit vague about the reasons he said he had for believing that just possibly a dead body might be hidden there. He did not think the superintendent would be impressed if he knew those reasons were founded on the murmured wanderings of an old, old man. So he didn’t go into details; and the superintendent grumbled, but agreed that the search requested should be made. All the same, Bobby became aware that his popularity with the Cornish police was a rapidly diminishing quantity, so he thought he might as well complete the job by adding that possibly he might have to ask that all the old deserted tin-mines in Cornwall might also be thoroughly searched. To which the superintendent replied with bitter irony that probably Bobby would next be asking him to bail out Dozmary Pool with a leaking limpet shell. But this left quite unmoved Bobby, who had never heard of that local saying, and knew not that into the depths of Dozmary Pool the sword Excalibur had disappeared in the long, long ago. So all he said was ‘Well, why not?’ and hung up, and the superintendent was very cross indeed.
Then London had to be communicated with, and after that Bobby, the more immediate claims of duty satisfied, allowed himself a hot bath, made a supper of some bread and cheese he bribed the hotel porter to secure for him, sneezed once or twice, hoped gloomily that did not mean a cold was on the way, began to write a report of the day’s happenings, went to sleep over it once or twice, finally towards the small hours got it completed and settled down in bed for what remained of the night.
It was late next morning when he awoke with happily no longer any perceptible sneezing tendencies. For a time he lay in bed, listening to wind and rain still busy without. It did not sound as if much could be done for a day or two towards the recovery of the crashed motor-car. None the less, things were certainly beginning to move at last, at long last. From out the baffling fog of doubt and speculation through which till now he had had to grope his way, facts were beginning to appear. Difficult to co-ordinate at present what were none the less assured facts. A wrecked car. Vea Burden seen again; and what was she after? A nocturnal sojourner at a derelict mine; and why? A pistol-shot; murderous? or warning? or something else? A light seen at that same mine on an earlier occasion, a light like a fire. Three girl hikers who gave false names and addresses, and why? Could he add to this list the vague and wandering talk of an old, old man?
Lying there warm in bed, thinking how nice it was to be there instead of being one of the unlucky juniors no doubt at that very moment busy in this abominable weather at the Round Table Mine, thinking also how lucky it was that a due regard for etiquette and the deference due to the local people allowed him to stay in bed, instead of having himself to be on the spot to look after things, as would have been the case in his own domain. He wondered lazily if the superintendent were there, and if so if he were getting very wet.
Turning from these pleasant speculations, he tried to assess in turn the value of each new item of fact and information.
The wrecked car he felt he could assume was that which Bella Winlock had hired from the London garage.
But what had it taken with it when it made that last dreadful plunge four hundred feet or more over the edge of the cliff into the depths of the sea? Anything? Nothing? At any rate, it had not taken with it a rug, a bloodstained cushion, some tools, and so on. Why? Bobby thought he might guess an answer to that question; but, then, what is the good of a guess?
The nocturnal visitor to the mine?
Vea Burden or another?
Not much use bothering to answer that, since probably expert examination would soon provide an answer. Fingerprints, perhaps. Or footmarks, if at least this wind and rain had not obliterated them. Almost certainly evidence to show whether it had been man or woman. If the first, signs of shaving. If the second, traces of powder or lipstick, perhaps, or a long hair or two. Something like that.
The pistol shot?
Over that Bobby wrinkled a puzzled brow.
Had it been a deliberate attempt at murder? Or a warning to keep out? Or even a hint that the mine premises were worth examination? Or the mere panic of a fugitive who feared pursuit? On the whole, he was inclined to think this last supposition the most likely.
Vea Burden, too, seen cycling away from the mine on a previous occasion. And actually seen in person, her presence not merely deduced or guessed at, as before. But on what errand was she bound that brought her thus from time to time into the ambit of events, seen for a moment only, and then vanishing again? Impossible, he felt, to guess the motives, to foresee the actions of this woman, who, it seemed, felt fiercely free to go her own way, choose her own path, under the protection of that death she knew so hard upon her heels, no matter how she flung at it her defiance. Bobby made a fresh note to impress upon all concerned the urgent necessity of making every possible effort to find her.
A light seen at the mine—a light like a fire. A tramp cooking his supper? Or something else? An effort must be made to make sure of the exact date. ‘A few days ago’ was the expression used, he remembered. Did that mean after or before the Bexley House happening? Or the same night, perhaps? One must try to be sure.
The girl hikers, the three Marys as he called them to himself; and why had they, apparently so innocently engaged, thought it necessary to give false names and addresses? They must be found and questioned, but not such an easy task to accomplish. Among the fifty or so odd million of us, easy for two or three to pass unperceived. Possibly, though, the always powerful help of the radio and the Press might be effective. Some one, reading or hearing, might easily say: “Girl hiking in Cornwall, first name Mary. Why, that girl in our office went hiking somewhere in her holiday. Can it be her? She’s a Mary, too.”
Finally, could any importance be attached to the wandering talk of that ancient man in the cottage near the Round Table Mine? Could he have seen or heard or somehow become aware of some activity that somehow had become associated in his mind with a tragedy of long ago?
So there, Bobby felt, were the elements of a solution at last beginning faintly to appear, if only he could put them together to form a coherent pattern.
He decided it was time to get up. Many possible theories, and now a start had been made; at any moment some new fact or another might well emerge to show in which one lay the truth.
“Oh, fact, how lovely thou art, and how much to be admired above all things,” he murmured as he shaved, and added thoughtfully: “And how devilishly misleading, as often as not.”
With that he went down to breakfast, and had scarcely finished when a car drove up and there appeared his friend the superintendent, clucking disapproval when he saw Bobby still dallying over a cup of tea and a fragment of toast and marmalade.
“I,” he said, “I’ve been up and at work since a quarter past five.”
“Me,” said Bobby, finishing his tea, “since a quarter to.”
“What you been doing?” asked the superintendent, rather more than doubtfully.
“Thinking,” said Bobby.
“Huh,” said the superintendent, who didn’t think much of that. “In bed and asleep, if you ask me.”
“My unconscious hard at it,” explained Bobby. “Simply racing along.”
“Huh,” said the superintendent, who thought still less of that. “Hurry up. I’m going to take you to a pub.”
“Good,” said Bobby.
“Oh, not for a drink,” said the superintendent.
“Not likely,” said Bobby.
“Well, come along,” said the superintendent.
“Man or woman?” asked Bobby.
“On it, are you?” said the superintendent, displeased. “Man. Or was once. They found the body immediately. The thing is, can you identify it? Not so easy. There’s been a try at burning it. Petrol.”
“A fire was seen,” Bobby told him. “That could be it. Got to try to find out exactly when. I’ve an idea it will coincide with the Bexley House affair.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” agreed the superintendent. “We’ve the photo you people circulated. You’ve seen him, haven’t you? I mean Monk. If it is Monk, that is.”
“Who else?” asked Bobby sombrely. He went on: “I only saw him that once. At his trial. And that’s a goodish bit ago. But now there’s something definite to go on, it shouldn’t be hard to make sure.”
The superintendent agreed. London, he thought, ought to be able to dig up details. He had a slight air of suggesting that this would give London something to do, instead of leaving all the hard work to over-burdened Cornwall. He explained, too, the various steps that had already been taken. To try to find Vea Burden first of all. Unfortunate that the chief detail by which she could be recognized—those conspicuous and unusual earrings of hers—could not be mentioned publicly, since if they were she would, of course, at once remove them. The bullet fired at Bobby had been found in the wall in which it had embedded itself. It had been extracted, and would be sent to an expert for a report to be made. Finger-prints had also been found, and, with other evidence, showed that the nocturnal sojourner had been a man. Car-tracks, too, but these had been so affected by the heavy rain that not much could be made of them. A plain-clothes man had gone to the farm whence the light at the mine had been seen, to make further inquiries there. He was also to call at the neighbouring cottage in the hope of being able to get a little more from the old man who had talked to Bobby.
All this and more the superintendent explained as they drove along, and when he had finished he waited, slightly on the defensive, to hear if the Scotland Yard man had any criticism or comment to make. None came. It was all good routine, efficiently carried out. The police, Bobby reflected, whether London or provincial, seldom or never fell down on routine, and routine is the solid foundation of all good work. Imagination, intuition, that which is founded on reason, but goes beyond reason, was perhaps occasionally lacking. And not only in police work.
Presently they reached the small and lonely public house-cum tea garden-cum small holding, where an outbuilding had been turned into a temporary mortuary. It had served that purpose more than once before when fatal accidents had occurred at the Round Table Mine of unlucky reputation.
