So Many Doors, page 20
Bobby said admiringly:
“A most handsome tribute to our work. I’m sure we all appreciate it.”
The superintendent said nothing, for the very good reason that he was speechless.
“It’s why he pinched the lady’s bike,” said the constable. “There was his car parked where he had left it, engine running and all, and he knew he had to get to it in a hurry. As he did, and pitched the bike into the ditch and drove his car straight back at us, making up his fairy story at the same time.”
“Oh, come, come,” said Jerry reproachfully. “But there,” he added, tolerant now, “I suppose you have to put up some sort of story as an excuse.”
“Finger-prints?” asked the superintendent, recovering slightly.
“Mine,” said Mr George. “All over. Had to pick the bike up to show your chaps where it was. Or I do believe it would be there still.”
“Backed twenty yards he did,” said the constable, “shouting at us all the time, and then jumped out and grabbed the bike so as to explain his dabs.”
“What are dabs?” asked Jerry George, all puzzled innocence.
“Quite a good story you’ve managed to put up,” Bobby told him. “Jolly clever. By the way, can you tell us what this man you say you saw was like?”
“Oh, didn’t I say?” asked Jerry. “Sorry. Stupid of me, but I really was a bit upset. It was a young chap of the name of Pope, David Pope, I think. I’ve seen him at Bexley House.”
CHAPTER XXV
“STIR THE BROTH”
Neither Bobby nor the superintendent quite knew what to make of this; or, for that matter, whether to believe a word of it. But at least, if not true, it was well invented. Bobby had an idea that Jerry was slyly pleased with himself and what he had just said. He was the first to break the silence. He said:
“Well, if that’s all I suppose I can get on, can I? And I warn you, if I catch cold, standing out in the rain like this, I’ll expect you to pay the doctor’s bill.”
“Awfully sorry,” Bobby apologized. “We are so wet ourselves we never thought of that.”
“Soaked through and through already he was,” interposed one of the constables. “Soaked as he wouldn’t if he had been in his car driving all the time, as he let on he was. Dry as a bone he would have been, and he wasn’t, not him. Dripping.”
“That was because of having to hop out in the wet to show you where the bike was in the ditch,” explained Jerry smoothly.
“An answer for everything, Mr George, haven’t you?” observed Bobby, with real admiration.
“Along,” said Jerry, turning his eyes up, “—along of always speaking the truth, as I was taught at my mother’s knee. ‘Speak the truth, my child, and shame the devil,’ was what she always said. And I’ve never forgotten.”
He looked round, as if seeking approbation. He observed instead only signs of gloom and great annoyance. This pleased him enormously. He could not resist giving an almost imperceptible wink, a faint flutter of an eyelid rather, in the direction of Bobby, who alone he felt really appreciated him. The superintendent exchanged a whisper or two with Bobby. Then he said:
“We’ve found a dead man’s body here.”
Jerry stared. He was clearly not quite sure whether this was meant seriously.
“A dead man’s body?” he repeated. “Having me on, aren’t you?”
“We want you to see if you can identify it,” the superintendent continued, ignoring this.
“A dead man,” Jerry repeated once again. He looked scared now and doubtful. He uttered a resounding—and irrelevant—blasphemy. He said: “A deader? You mean it? Honest? It’s not one of your tricks?”
“We don’t play tricks,” said the superintendent with dignity.
“If you don’t mind coming with us,” suggested Bobby, “you can see for yourself.”
“Who is it?” Jerry asked, still very pale and disturbed.
“That’s where we want your help,” Bobby told him. “We think it may possibly be some one you know.”
“Not young Pope?” Jerry asked, almost in a whisper.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we waited to see what you thought, without our naming any one first?” Bobby suggested.
“I never did care for seeing stiffs,” Jerry muttered, and certainly his looks confirmed his words. “Is . . . is it all knocked about?”
The superintendent came back. He had been to give directions for his car to be brought round. He had also, as Bobby had suggested, sent one of his men off with instructions to have a look-out kept for Pope, or any other stray pedestrian or stranger in the neighbourhood. This was on the off-chance that Jerry had been speaking something even remotely resembling the truth. Not that this appeared to either of them a very likely contingency; but, then, one never knows. Jerry now expressed a preference for driving his own car rather than accompanying them in theirs, and to this there was no objection.
They started off accordingly, and the superintendent observed as they drove away:
“You heard at first he thought it might be Pope’s body was found. Shows him up for the liar he is, saying it was Pope he saw on the bike.”
“He would say,” Bobby pointed out, “that he thought it was Pope he saw, and then thought he might have been mistaken. He could get away with it like that.”
“He could get away with anything,” grumbled the superintendent; and Bobby was almost inclined to agree, even though long experience had taught him that in the end that axiom always failed—once, and once was generally enough. “‘Never forgot what he learned at his mother’s knee,’” quoted the superintendent bitterly.
“He is plainly both upset and frightened,” Bobby went on. “The thing is, how deep in is he? He is fully capable of murder, but only, I think, as the back-room boy; pulling the strings, but never showing in person. You noticed he didn’t ask what we were doing at the mine, though he was certainly in the spinney, like the Maggie Kerr girl, trying to find out. You can get a good view from the farther end where the ground rises. I take that to mean he took it for granted we were after the missing lorry load of cigarettes he seems to think Monk double-crossed him over. What he wanted was to see if we had found it.”
“Wheels within wheels,” said the superintendent, with some show of temper. “And then some.”
“And then some,” repeated Bobby. “Still, things are moving.”
“Where?” asked the superintendent; and Bobby did not answer a question that only reflected his own uneasiness. “Give me,” said the superintendent, with passionate intensity, “a nice, clean, uncomplicated murder, not one all mixed up with loving and kissing and black-market cigarettes, and girls pinching each other’s boys, and missing lorries, and women not caring because they know they’re going to die anyhow, and a heap of suspects popping in and out one after the other like—like peas in a pod,” concluded the superintendent, because he couldn’t think of any other simile.
Bobby sympathized. They reached the little lonely public-house where lay the dead man in the silence of all-equalizing death. The innkeeper left his work in his garden, where he had been busy, and came across to them, bringing with him the key of the temporary mortuary.
“A lady’s been,” he said. “Said she had heard and there was a friend of hers hadn’t been home. I told her it wasn’t no sight for a woman, but she didn’t take notice.”
“Did you let her go in?” the superintendent asked.
“There wasn’t no harm in that, was there?” the innkeeper asked in return. “There was something about her,” he added.
“Did she say anything?” Bobby asked.
“No, not a word, and I didn’t ask. She stood and looked, and that was all, and then she went away. Queer she looked. Like death, like it was death itself come to make sure of death.”
“Can you describe her?” Bobby asked.
“More like a corpse than a living woman,” the innkeeper said again. “And when she coughed, then it was like that would kill her all over again.”
“Vea Burden,” interposed Jerry, who had been listening to all this. “Was she wearing long earrings?”
“That’s right,” the other answered. “To and fro they went, so you had to watch. I wasn’t sorry when she went. I asked who I was to say had been, but she didn’t take notice. Only stared at you and went away.”
“Vea Burden?” repeated Jerry uneasily. “What’s she want?”
No one attempted to answer him. They entered the shed, and the superintendent turned down the sheet with which those sad remains had been covered. Jerry gave one glance and turned away. From the door of the shed, his back to them, he said:
“It’s him all right—Mark Monk. Not much to go on, but it’s him. His wrist watch. He tried to sell it me once. Got his initials inside. M. M. Looks like there had been a try to burn it up.”
“Petrol,” said the superintendent. “To destroy identity. You never can.”
He and Bobby followed Jerry outside, relieved, both of them, to get away from the heavy odour of death that filled the little shed. Bobby said:
“I think we may take it for certain Vea Burden knew. So I think we may take it, too, that she’s got half of what she wanted.”
“To know what had happened to Monk?” said the superintendent.
“Yes,” said Bobby.
“Think she’ll clear off home again now?” asked Jerry hopefully.
“No,” said Bobby.
“You mean,” said the superintendent, “the other half she wants is to know who did it?”
“Well, what for? What’s the good?” muttered Jerry. “Can’t bring him back to life, can she? and her with one foot in the grave herself.”
“That’s always in her mind,” Bobby told them. “Not much time.”
“Ought to make her settle down quiet and peaceful,” declared Jerry.
“It’s what we’ve got to know, too,” observed the superintendent, but not hopefully. “This Vea Burden you all keep talking about and I’ve never seen, will have to be told to keep out.”
“Yes, of course,” agreed Jerry eagerly.
“The difficulty,” Bobby explained, “is that we can’t act without given cause. Evidence. But she may. Act, I mean. And I don’t know what we can do about it.”
“It’s your job, up to you,” declared Jerry, indignant now. “Your duty. What’s police for?”
“Oh, yes, up to us all right,” Bobby agreed. “But nothing we can do. There’s no charge we can make. Unless, of course,” he added, “some one provides us with evidence that she was mixed up in something illegal. Like the theft of that lorry-load of cigarettes. If we had proof of that, we could get her put out of the way of doing mischief for a few months, and by that time she might see things differently, have second thoughts.”
Jerry was looking about as scared and dismayed as any man well could, his fat white face all a-quiver with fear and doubt and hesitation.
“Suppose,” he quavered presently, “you got a letter to-night—it mightn’t be signed.”
“Anonymous letters are no good to us,” Bobby said. He yawned. “Unless, of course,” he added, “it gives concrete evidence. By the way, Mr George, you and Monk had some sort of disagreement that same night at Bexley House, hadn’t you? I wonder if Vea Burden knows? Oh, well, I daresay we shall know all about it if she does bring it off.”
“Bring what off?” demanded Jerry angrily; but did not wait for, or expect, or even desire, an answer. “Nice way to talk,” he complained. “Police all over. Don’t care two curls of a pig’s tail what happens to any one if only they can make a splash about it for themselves.”
Bobby suppressed another yawn.
“Well, Mr George,” he said sweetly, “if a rogue gets his throat cut, what can we do but come together and thank Heaven we are quit of him?”
Under his breath Jerry said something. Just as well it was inaudible. Then he went off to his car. They watched him drive away. The superintendent said:
“You’ve put the wind up him all right.”
“Help to push things along,” Bobby said. “Nothing like greasing the wheels. When things do move, you have a chance. You haven’t any chance at all if everything stops just as it was. Stir the broth. That’s what I always tell our chaps.”
“Does that mean you think he is our man?”
“Might be,” Bobby answered cautiously. “We’ve got to consider it as a possibility. But we’ll have to be a lot more clear about how all these people stand to each other.”
“Suppose,” said the superintendent, “he does get bumped off by this Vea Burden girl, which is what I suppose you have in mind . . . ?”
“At any rate,” retorted Bobby grimly, “Jerry has it in his, and he knows her pretty well—better than I do.”
“Gives us,” complained the superintendent, “no chance to get on with our proper work, all these murders and things.”
“I shouldn’t much care,” Bobby went on, pursuing his own line of thought, “to be in the shoes of any one—any one at all, man or woman—Vea Burden chooses to believe did—that.” He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door of the shed behind them. He gave a faint smile. He said: “Jerry’s up against it, and knows it. He’ll get no sympathy from me—as big a scoundrel as any I know. He is quite well aware Vea may think he is the man, even if he isn’t.”
“He can’t very well help knowing that, the way you rubbed it in,” observed the superintendent. “And I shouldn’t wonder if he isn’t more than half afraid you may tell her as much and set her on him with the idea of making it easy for us to pull her in afterwards. What he meant about making a splash.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Bobby admitted. “Anyhow, if he does think so, it’ll all help. Get it moving. That’s what I want. I was beginning to be afraid we were up against a dead end.”
“Does all that,” asked the superintendent, “come under the Home Office regulations?”
“I’ll look ’em up and see,” Bobby promised. “But regulations are only the hurdles you’ve got to clear if you mean to get there first. Jerry’s got to weigh it all up, and it’ll be quite interesting to see what he does, and probably useful as well. Vea may very well get after him, or he’s scared she may, which comes to the same thing. Yet he can’t do much about it or ask our help without losing all chance of getting his cigarettes back—and that might mean a loss of four thousand pounds—enough to sink him, he said. His money or his life, in fact, and he’s got to choose which to risk.”
CHAPTER XXVI
“WHAT’S SHE DONE?”
All this had taken so much time that Bobby, at least, was glad to return to his hotel to relax into a bath with dinner to follow and the prospect of an early bed. So probably were most of the others concerned in the investigation, though officers of the police, when engaged on an important case, know nothing of five-day weeks or double pay for overtime.
The rain stopped during the night and the wind fell. But when Bobby inquired he was told that the sea would be still far too rough for any attempt to be made as yet to recover the crashed motor-car.
“Even if there’s anything of it left,” the pessimistic comment was added.
There was, too, a message from London. It was to the effect that one of the ‘three Marys’ had been traced. She was a Miss Martin—that was her real name—and she was employed as a receptionist at a Bodmin hotel. ‘Very handy and convenient, too,’ said the message, hinting subtly that Bobby was just being too lucky—as always. So Bobby rang up the superintendent and suggested they should go to Bodmin together and see if Miss Martin had anything of interest to say. The superintendent pleaded pressure of work.
“Got my hands full,” said the superintendent. “This Round Table business. Not a man or a minute to spare. There were seven reporters on my doorstep this morning, and I’ve got to see the Guv. as well and tell him all about it. He’s only just got back from abroad, you know. If you must have murders in London,” he added plaintively, “I do wish you would keep them there. They don’t go with Cornish air.”
The ‘Guv.’ was, of course, the Chief Constable, who would naturally wish to be informed in full detail of all these sensational events occurring during his absence. The superintendent added that he didn’t suppose Miss Martin would have anything much to say. How could she? For his part, he didn’t know why Bobby had been making such a fuss about finding her and the other two Marys. Did he, asked the superintendent, with a touch of irony, expect Miss Martin to turn out to be the missing Bella Winlock? Bobby said very seriously that one never knew. In his experience anything was always liable to turn out to be something else. So the superintendent said anyhow it was a nice morning after the storm, and no doubt Bobby would enjoy the drive to Bodmin. ‘Into Bodmin and out of the world’, the superintendent quoted the old Cornish saying, and then hung up, and Bobby went to get the small car he was now provided with.
It was, in fact, a very pleasant morning, and Bobby would no doubt have found it a pleasant drive had not his mind been so much preoccupied with so many and such varying thoughts, and had he not also managed to miss his way, so that it was lunch-time before he reached the ancient ‘city of the monks,’ and the hotel where Miss Martin’s presence had been reported.
However, he had no objection to giving lunch what the officials call ‘first priority’, especially as the glance he had of a big, handsome, rather showy girl at the receptionist’s desk assured him that she was certainly not Bella.
Not, then, till after lunch did he explain his identity and ask for the privilege of a quiet chat with Miss Martin. Not, he explained, as he was always careful to do in such cases, anything that concerned her personally, but it was possible she might be able to give some useful information.
