Dictator's Way (13 page)

“If theft was the motive for the murder,” Bobby asked, “what about the three notes left at The Manor back door? what was that for?”

“Whoever it was, was in a hurry to get away and dropped them without noticing,” answered the other. “That's all.”

“If he was in such a hurry as all that,” Bobby mused, “why did he stop to burn some papers in a dustbin? and what were they?”

“Oh, you want to know too much,” retorted his colleague. “Immaterial, anyhow.”

With that he went off, and Bobby handed in his report in which he touched only lightly on the Judson episode. He felt that too much emphasis laid on it at present might easily earn him an official rap on the knuckles. But he decided thoughtfully that it might be worth while to keep an eye on Mr. Judson and perhaps in the future draw further attention to the incident when sufficient time had elapsed for it to have been accepted, forgotten, and therefore in a way condoned.

It was late by now and Bobby was permitted to sign off duty and go home. He wondered what progress was being made with the other lines of investigation that were being followed up and he was worried by a feeling that this missing money somehow did not quite fit in.

Nevertheless, it was a fact, and the thing about a fact is that of necessity it does fit – somewhere.

After supper, with an hour or two to spare and no inclination for bed, he went to a near-by cinema and there, following the fortunes of the flickering shadows on the screen, tried to forget the puzzle and the worries of the day. Wonderful how the cinema could empty your mind of all thought, all conscious activity. You just sat there, only semi-conscious, lulled, your mind as blank as a new-born babe's. A kind of mental bath. Afterwards, you started again, fresh and invigorated by the rest from all thought, all emotion. To-night, though, odd and annoying how a thin, white face with distant, enigmatic eyes kept coming between you and the screen.

Bobby set himself grimly and resolutely to regard Olive Farrar as a possible murderess.

“She could do it,” he thought as he remembered those intent and passionate eyes. “She could do anything,” he repeated, half aloud, and was astonished, looking at the screen, to find another picture had begun. “Oh, well,” he said moodily.

He found himself wondering in what relationship she stood towards the bronzed young yachtsman, Peter Albert.

Of course, a fellow like Peter Albert had simply everything to attract a girl. Money – or why the yacht? – position, good looks, a friendship dating from childhood, an attractive manner.

Bobby felt depressed.

He wondered why he had ever been born.

He wondered, too, why Peter Albert had chattered quite so freely. Just good spirits, perhaps a kind of bubbling over, an effervescence, a joy in life natural to one with nothing else to think about but how to plan out jolly cruises. Very likely, Bobby supposed, he and Olive were engaged. That seemed probable. Why not? So probable indeed as to be almost certain. Well, he wished them luck.

Also he wished very much that Olive had not been so near the scene of the murder at the time of its commission, and he wished also that Peter Albert had not been quite so chatty. Nervous people, people with something to conceal, often took refuge in a flow of inconsequential chatter, a kind of screen of words, but then, too, it was natural for a man just engaged – Bobby felt quite certain now that Peter Albert and Olive were engaged – to be cheerful and chatty. As for himself, Bobby wondered afresh why he had ever been born.

So unnecessary, he felt.

He got up abruptly and left the cinema, thus earning the undying hate of several young ladies whose view he entirely spoilt of the perhaps most ecstatic kiss the films have ever given to the world.

He went straight back to his rooms and in the passage met his landlady. She knew where he had been and she said to him eagerly:

“Oh, Mr. Owen, isn't she wonderful?”

Bobby considered the point.

“Much too thin, too pale,” he decided. “Wants feeding up, too. Wants some colour in her cheeks. Might be a ghost with a mission. Personally I don't care for ghosts.”

“Well,” said the landlady, bewildered and a little hurt, “I must say that's not most people's idea of Greta Garbo.”

“Greta Garbo?” repeated Bobby, bewildered in his turn, “Oh, yes, of course, I forgot it was her. Good night.”

The landlady shook her head as she watched him ascend the stairs. She did hope he hadn't been drinking? Imagine forgetting Greta Garbo! The landlady was really hurt. To her Greta Garbo symbolized woman's eternal triumph, the proof that in the end the victory was hers. For what are votes for women and equal pay for equal work and the rest of it compared with the triumphs that are truly feminine? The landlady herself might not be able by a word or a glance to reduce men to abject slavery, but it was as thrilling to watch Greta doing it as it is to the schoolboy to watch the dauntless hero with fist and gun triumphing over a host of gangster enemies. Dreams of power, both.

In his room Bobby slowly undressed, resolutely turning his mind from Olive and her fiancé – not much doubt of that – to other aspects of the case.

Troya, for instance, and that extremely thin, not to say tenuous tale of his? What was the truth that lay behind it?

Mr. Judson too. Why his visit to Troya, why his panic flight at the mention of the tyre marks his own car might have made?

Clarence as well. What was Clarence Duke doing in The Manor grounds? Was it only chivalry had made him interfere? What was the real cause of the panic into which Bobby's appearance had thrown him? What had become of him? And did the disappearance of the missing ninety- seven pound notes explain both it and him? Well, if Clarence could be traced and was found in any unusual condition of affluence, he would have a good deal to explain. But then if he had been guilty of murder and theft, would he have remained one minute longer than necessary in the neighbourhood, girls in distress or none?

Certainly it seemed likely that Clarence was the ‘bully' employed on the nights of Mr. Judson's parties to keep intruders away, and in any case he ought to be able to give a good deal of useful information.

There was Waveny, too? why had Waveny been interested in The Manor parties and why so insistent on postponing their proposed visit? and what had become of him?

With such thoughts buzzing in his head, Bobby prepared for bed. Then, when he was ready, by a strong effort of his will, he dismissed them all, made his mind a blank, put his head upon the pillow and at once was sound asleep – according to plan.

Dreaming was a rare experience with him but to-night he dreamed that he was waiting outside a church. He did not know what for, only he wished very much he was elsewhere, especially as it was snowing hard, only was it snow that was falling so thickly or was it just confetti? Someone inside the church was trying to open the door now, only not the door, a window, his window. He did not move, he gave no sign he had wakened, he lay still and made his breathing as soft and regular and deep as he could, only very slowly, very cautiously, his right hand stole out and grasped the hanging control by which he could switch on the light above the bed.

The window was wide open now. Someone was climbing in, very slowly and cautiously. He was in the room. A person of experience, evidently, for Bobby noticed that every movement was timed to coincide with his own exhaled breaths. The intruder was nearer now, but not quite near enough, and, wishing to please and to encourage, Bobby contributed quite a good snore.

“Guv'nor,” said a hoarse voice, “guv'nor, Mr. Owen, sir, are you awake?”

Slightly vexed, Bobby sat up in bed and switched on the light.

“Clarence,” he said, “Clarence, what in thunder do you think you are playing at?”

“Wanted to tell you something, guv'nor,” Clarence explained apologetically.

“Why on earth,” demanded Bobby, “in the middle of the night?”

“'Cause,” said Clarence, “there's them as I don't want to know I've been talking.”

“Why not?”

“Along,” explained Clarence, “of not wanting to be a found deader in the Thames.”

“Oh, rot,” said Bobby.

“That there Macklin bloke, was that rot?”

“You know something about that?” Bobby asked, preparing to get out of bed.

“You stop where you are, guv'nor,” Clarence warned him, retreating towards the window. “You put a foot on the floor and I'm off – I've got my car what I pinched just round the corner and I can be miles away before you've had time to blow your whistle.”

“Don't be a fool,” said Bobby, but staying in bed all the same, for he felt Clarence meant it.

“Want me to talk or not?” demanded Clarence.

“Do you know who killed Macklin?”

“No, and it wasn't me, neither,” Clarence retorted. “Why do you think anyone should suppose it was?”

“You blokes after me, ain't you? Making inquiries you call it. I know,” said Clarence bitterly. “Pinch a bloke and ask him and ask him till he don't know where he is and then you've got him where you want him. I'm not having any, not me. And all about a bit of skirt as I never even heard of.”

“No one is going to worry you about that,” Bobby told him. “We know you had nothing to do with it.”

“No more I hadn't,” declared Clarence, “but I ain't taking no risks. How do I know them as tried to do the dirty on me with their ruddy an-on-mous letters won't have another go? So I thinks as I'll go along and talk it over with Mr. Owen, what I knows is a gent after you and me had that bit of a turn-up together.”

“It wasn't such a bad little do,” admitted Bobby reminiscently.

“It's your feet what does it,” declared Clarence as a connoisseur, “all the tip-toppers fight with their feet – here and there and gone again. You've a punch, too. I wouldn't say but that if you took the profession up serious like and worked hard, you mightn't get well up among the second raters.”

“Awfully good of you to say so,” Bobby said, though with a touch of reserve in his voice. “Did you break in here in the middle of the night to tell me that?”

“No,” answered Clarence seriously, “it's about that there nonmous letter saying I done in a lady what I hadn't never seen. I've been – thinking.”

Bobby looked at him incredulously, but said nothing.

“Having thought it all out,” continued Clarence, not without pride, ‘‘which it took some doing and made me go all funny in the head like copping a near K.O., I arrives at the conclusion as it was to do with me having been asked to corpse a cove, all a part of the same game.”

“Do you mean,” Bobby asked, not quite sure whether to take this seriously or not, “you've been asked to murder somebody?”

“That's right.”

“Who?”

“We didn't get that far,” Clarence explained, “me not liking the job and saying so. No, thank you, I says, polite like, not for me, and I aimed to land him one to make him remember same, but he outs with a gun so we parted, cursing mutual. So then what I says is he wrote that nonmous letter to put me in wrong with you blokes and get me fixed so as I'd do anything wanted.”

“Who was it?” Bobby asked sharply.

“It was dark, at night, out Epping way. I never saw his face and he was wearing something over it as well. He drove up in a car and talked standing on the footboard.”

“What sort of car was it?”

“Du Guesclin Twenty same as Mr. Judson drives. Mr. Macklin used it, too, sometimes.”

“Ah, yes,” said Bobby slowly. “Was it Macklin, do you think?”

“I couldn't tell, guv'nor,” Clarence answered earnestly, “I wisht I could. But it was dark and he was wearing a long loose coat. I couldn't even tell whether he was a big 'un or just a light weight. He wasn't no bantam, anyways. Stood all humped up on the footboard, if you know what I mean, and when I took a swipe at him out with his gun, he did. I never did hold with guns,” Clarence said meditatively. “What was we given fists for if it wasn't to bash each other with?”

“It's a queer story,” Bobby said. “You have no idea who it was?”

“There's times I think it was Macklin,” Clarence observed, “wanting me to do in his guv'nor, but now he's been and gone and got done in hisself.”

“Not conclusive one way or the other,” Bobby said.

“And times I thought it was Mr. Judson wanting to get Macklin done in,” Clarence continued, “and now he has.”

“Judson murdered Macklin? Why?”

“Macklin had the screws on him, if you arst me,” explained Clarence. “That's why.”

Bobby, sitting up in bed, his hands clasped round his knees, considered this. If it were true, it provided motive, and motive is always of the first importance.

“What makes you say so?” he asked. “Look here, Clarence, you start at the beginning, will you? and I'll take a note of what you say. Just chuck me over that pad from the table. There's a pencil there, too, somewhere. Or I'll get 'em myself.”

He made a movement to throw off the bedclothes but from his place of vantage near the open window Clarence motioned to him to remain where he was.

“Guv'nor,” he said simply, “you move and I hops it.”

“Don't be an ass,” snapped Bobby, but none the less staying where he was, for he had no wish to see this odd, nocturnal interview degenerate into a tip and run match.

“Nor no more,” continued Clarence, “I'm not going to make no statements, not me, having had some already, what was read out in court, and not never again, not if I knows it.”

Rather a hail of negatives, Bobby thought, but though two may make an affirmative, all these certainly added up to a refusal. Nor from that position would Clarence budge, one hand always on the sill ready to vault out and down the drain pipe whereby he had obtained access.