Death Among the Sunbathers (21 page)

‘There wasn't anything...' Bryan asked quickly, ‘anything he could use?'

‘I don't think so: how can you tell, those fellows will twist anything... twisters... What did he leave that card for?'

Bryan said,

‘Going a bit too far... I'll have to do something.'

He said this very gently almost to himself, but the other two heard him and grew silent at once. It was as if those few muttered words had daunted them and satisfied them as well. Dodd sat down quietly on the nearest chair. Miss James went back to her couch by the open window.

‘There's Bobs-the-Boy, of course,' she remarked, ‘but we should have to explain a lot to make him trust us.'

‘I don't want that,' said Dodd. ‘Tell nothing. It's never safe.'

‘We aren't safe now,' Bryan remarked in his gentle menacing voice, ‘not with Owen... Owen... I think this Owen's getting on my nerves as well,' he said.

From the window Miss James, who had resumed her almost mechanical watching of the garden below, said softly but very intensely,

‘There's a man down there... I saw him... behind a tree and then he slipped away.'

‘A man? What's he up to?' Bryan asked sharply.

‘Watching,' Miss James answered in the same low yet intent voice, ‘watching... waiting... watching...' After a momentary pause, she added, ‘Owen, that's who it is.'

‘Owen,' repeated Dodd. ‘Oh, oh,' he stammered, exactly as if he had received some sudden hurt.

Bryan was peeping over Miss James's shoulder, but now in the garden there was nothing visible, only darkness and long, growing shadows. He drew back and took from his pocket first a small pamphlet on the uses and benefits of fruit juice, and then a small cardboard carton marked, ‘Raisins, shelled nuts, dried banana – one cake enough for one meal'. This he opened and took from it neither raisins nor nuts nor dried bananas, but instead a small, deadly-looking automatic pistol.

With it in his hand, without speaking a word, he slipped from the room.

There was, in addition to the main stairway, a second, narrow and winding, originally intended for the use of the domestic staff of the house. It started from a passage at one end of which was the kitchen, at the other a small door leading into the garden. Down these stairs now Mr Bryan went at a light run, a small, grotesque, deadly figure, his shorts flapping about his legs like drum-sticks, his shirt open to show his narrow and sunburnt chest, the automatic pistol clasped in a hand as firm as it was bony.

A light was burning in the passage at the foot of the stairs. He switched it off before he opened the door. In a flash he was through it, running with extraordinary speed and silence across a space of open lawn till the shadows of the trees and shrubs beyond swallowed him up.

A weasel, questing to kill, could not have moved more silently or more swiftly. There was something strangely daunting between his odd appearance and attire that seemed to suggest the harmless crank concerned only with his own fads and fancies, and his purposeful and deadly movements.

He noticed that the window of Miss James's room was now closed and the curtains drawn. With a grin of contempt he thought that up there they wished to remain in ignorance of what was happening.

‘Nerves,' he muttered, ‘nerves...' He had a silent gesture of contempt to himself there in the shadow of the trees. ‘Nerves...' he said again.

He went on sliding from one shadow to another, from one tree to the next. His eyes, his ears, every sense was alert, tuned to an almost unnatural keenness. It was as if he heard the grass growing, the worms burrowing, the beetles and the ants scurrying to and fro on their various occasions, as if he heard and distinguished every sound that filled the night with a faint continuous murmur. Far off, and then much nearer, he heard the clocks strike ten. He circled round a bush whence no sound came, where the shadows seemed to him deeper than elsewhere. His finger twitched upon the trigger of the deadly little weapon that he held, that carried seven deaths in its metal chambers. His tongue was sticking out and a few drops of saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth. A voice from the centre of the bush said,

‘You're a bit too late, Guv'nor; Owen's done a bunk.' Bryan swung round quickly. His finger was on the trigger of his weapon but he did not fire. Rather clumsily, the figure of a man extricated itself from the bush. Almost as much by recognition of the voice as of the figure, for the darkness here was intense, Bryan understood that this was Bobs-the-Boy. He still kept his pistol levelled as he said,

‘What are you doing here? I thought it was a burglar.'

‘Not you, you didn't, Guv'nor,' retorted Bobs-the-Boy. ‘What you thought was that it was that Scotland Yard swine, Bobby Owen. And you was right, too, or would have been, if you had been just two minutes quicker. But now he's off and Lord knows where.'

‘What's that you've got in your hand?' Bryan asked. Bobs-the-Boy held out his arm and let fall something heavy.

‘A brick,' he said simply. ‘I was going to bash his nob in for him, so you couldn't have told it from a pot of paper-hanger's paste... and so I will sometime yet,' he added with what seemed a burst of uncontrollable ferocity, ‘for I'm fed up with him following me the way he is; and if I've got to swing, why, it might as well be for him, too.'

‘What do you mean, “too”?' Bryan asked. He put his pistol back in his pocket and began to walk away towards the more open parts of the garden where the darkness was less intense. ‘What have you done to swing for, as you call it?' he repeated as Bobs-the-Boy followed him.

‘Nothing... that's my business, that is,' Bobs-the-Boy answered sulkily.

‘You may as well tell me; perhaps I could help you,' Mr Bryan observed, and added carelessly, ‘I don't know that I like this policeman person – Owen is his name? – I don't think I like him any more than you do.'

‘No reason why you should,' retorted Bobs-the-Boy, shambling along a yard behind his companion. ‘I don't know if it was you and your pals did in that bit of skirt all the papers are talking about... and I don't care... nothing to do with me. But I do know the “busies” think you did it, and Owen thinks so, too, for I heard him talking to one of the big pots from the Yard, and that's what it came to.'

‘That, of course, is quite a mistake, a regrettable, even a ridiculous mistake,' Bryan told him. They were in the middle of the lawn now, and Bryan stopped and turned to face the other. ‘What were they saying – this Owen man and the person from Scotland Yard?'

Bobs-the-Boy shook his head.

‘I only caught a word here and there,' he answered, ‘but what it came to was plain enough, and that was that she was done in here and that you and some of your pals done it. But they couldn't think why.'

‘I should suppose they couldn't,' declared Bryan with a dry little sound Bobs-the-Boy did not at first realize was a laugh. ‘Of course, it's obvious there could be no reason, quite obvious, isn't it?'

‘There's a many couldn't give reasons for what they done,' Bobs-the-Boy retorted with an unexpected touch of philosophy, ‘but that there's what they think all right.'

‘What do you think?'

‘Nothing,' Bobs-the-Boy answered promptly. ‘Why should I? What's it do with me?'

‘What do they think about you?' Bryan asked next.

‘It ain't so much what they think as what they know,' Bobs-the-Boy answered in a slow and hesitating voice; ‘only I'm not sure what they do know, and it wasn't no fault of mine, for I never meant to do it. But she made me mad the way she talked and talked, and I never did a thing but what any other bloke she had aggravated so wouldn't have done just the same as me.'

‘What was that?'

‘It was only a sort of a clip on the ear,' Bobs-the-Boy answered sullenly. ‘But down she went flop with her head against the grate and looked so queer like, I shoved off. Then afterwards I heard as how she passed out for keeps, and like as not, if them busies can, they will bring it in murder, same as it never was, nor manslaughter neither, seeing I never meant a thing except to teach her to hold her tongue. But she always was an awkward one, and after that I never reported any more according to my ticket. And if that there Owen... Owen–'

He repeated the name again, spitting as he did so in token of abhorrence, and Bryan continued to regard him very thoughtfully. After a moment or two Bryan asked,

‘Are you sure it was Owen you saw?'

‘Do you think I don't know him?' Bobs-the-Boy retorted contemptuously. ‘Why, I know his mug as well as I know my own. Snooping round he was; and if he hadn't bunked off just when he did, I would have laid him out, I would, so he wouldn't ever have troubled no one any more.'

‘And left us, I suppose,' remarked Bryan dryly, ‘to explain what had happened?'

‘We all has to look after our own troubles,' explained Bobs-the-Boy, quite calmly.

‘Oh, we have, have we?' snarled Bryan. ‘I suppose you thought it would be pretty smart to let the police think we were responsible when he was found in our grounds, and you knew they had these crazy suspicions of theirs already... I've a good mind to give you some trouble of your own to think about,' he said, and lifted his pistol threateningly.

But Bobs-the-Boy did not seem much alarmed. Perhaps he knew the threat was not one very likely to be carried out.

‘Well, I didn't mean no harm,' he explained, ‘but you ain't nothing to me. I don't owe you nothing. If it was pals now, that's different. I never let down a pal, never, and never will, but you and me ain't pals, so why shouldn't I look after myself first? Nothing to do with me what the “busies” thought. Your trouble ain't mine. And wasn't I doing you a good turn getting rid of a busy that's as keen on getting you as me – or keener?'

‘Of course, that's all nonsense,' Bryan said.

‘Oh, yes,' Bobs-the-Boy agreed, but in a tone that Bryan judged it wiser to take no notice of.

‘What were you doing here yourself?' he asked instead. ‘Your work was finished long ago. What were you hanging about for?'

‘That was Owen, too,' Bobs-the-Boy explained, ‘just as I was going I saw him there, hanging about outside, waiting for me, I reckoned. So I dodged back again and waited, and when I tried again at the back way, through the car park, there he was again, watching just the same as before, waiting, always waiting. I tell you, Guv'nor, the way them fellows wait till they get you at the end... so I waited, too, and I made up my mind to go on waiting till I got him alone... behind... when he wasn't looking... but he always was. All the time he was there, watching and waiting just the same, and so was I, till it was dark. Then he came snooping in, only I was watching still, and somehow then I fell to it, it wasn't me he was after, or else that it was you just as much as me. There was bricks lying loose I had noticed near where I was working at that coal, shifting it. So I went and got one and I made a little noise like, so as he would hear it and come along to see what it was, and then just as he got near and I was ready to lay him out, someone said something up in that room where you was all talking and leaned right out of the window and pointed. He knew then he had been spotted and off he bunked, quick as he knew how, and, if he hadn't, then he would be here still, only with his nob bashed in, same as a rotten egg.'

‘Good thing, too,' Bryan commented; ‘we don't want dead policemen found lying about here.'

‘I would have rung you up to let you know so you would have had a chance to put him away,' Bobs-the-Boy explained amiably. ‘You could easily have put him in a sack and dumped him in the pond down there... in the overflow channel would have been better. No fear of his being ever found there.'

It was a suggestion on which Bryan made no comment. After a time he said,

‘Come into the house with me. We had better have a talk. I think this Owen is getting a nuisance, but then an establishment like this can't afford scandal.'

‘No more can't I,' grinned Bobs-the-Boy. ‘See here, Guv'nor, why don't you take me to work with your lot? That there Owen, he means to get us both. It wasn't murder what I did, it wasn't anything, rightly speaking, but if he can he'll bring it home to me and then I'll swing, sure as running horses. And he means to bring the other business, about that bit of skirt in the burning motor-car, home to you, for that much I did hear enough to be sure of. Not enough evidence yet, he said, and he didn't want to say what he had already, not till he was sure, but soon he thought he would be, he said, and then he would put it all before the other bloke what he was talking to and be ready to swear, he said, it would be good enough for any jury. Only till then he didn't want to say nothing, not a thing.'

‘I almost think you are right,' Mr Bryan commented, ‘in saying this detective must be dealt with. His idea's all nonsense, of course, but he might easily make a scandal that would ruin the establishment. One of my colleagues was complaining just now of the way he had been behaving here, actually breaking into locked premises, and so on. I really think something must be done about it; it's almost a pity you were interrupted, even though your method was rather crude. Are you sure Owen went away, or may he still be hanging about here?'

‘He went all right,' Bobs-the-Boy answered. ‘Faded away like the pictures off the screen when the film's run out. But he might come back, you can't tell that, though just now I'll swear there isn't no one here but only me and you. And I don't reckon he would be likely to come back, seeing he went along of having been spotted, only you can't be sure.'

‘I suppose not,' agreed Bryan. ‘Come upstairs with me and we'll see if we can come to any arrangement likely to suit us both.'