Murder Abroad (29 page)

Alain shrugged his shoulders without making any attempt to answer. Evidently he thought the candle of small importance. Bobby gave an account of his tour of the house, admitted he had noticed little of interest, except the fact that there were two rope ladders in the attics. Alain was already aware of that fact. Monsieur Shields was evidently of a nervous type. Bobby asked if a gold pencil-case had been seen in any of the drawers examined. Alain said he believed there was one in the studio upstairs and Bobby asked if he could see it. He thought possibly it might be the one he had noticed Williams using and that that gentleman had accused him of ‘pinching'.

“He talked about Volny at the same time so it is possible Volny did take it and brought it here to show Shields,” Bobby suggested.

“Well, why should he?” Alain asked. “But we will go and look. Even if it is the same one, what will that show except that Volny was here once? And the question, Monsieur Owen, is not where Volny and Shields were once, but where they are now, either or both.”

Bobby made no answer, for he did not wish as yet to explain what was in his mind. Alain led the way upstairs, and began to look for the pencil-case. Bobby had already been in the room with his attendant inspector but now he looked about him even more carefully. A half-finished painting stood on the easel, palette and brushes had not been cleaned, as though they had been put down only for the moment but then something had occurred to prevent their being picked up again. On the spot where Bobby had upset table and glasses, some fragments of glass had already been noticed, proof both that Bobby's story was true and that the floor had not been swept since. Again, as Bobby glanced round he was conscious of an impression he had felt before that here some slight change or alteration had been effected, though what he could not tell. Once more he looked carefully about him, and Alain, who had found the pencil-case, called to him to come and look at it. Bobby had not seen it closely enough before to be able to make a positive identification, but he could say that the resemblance was exact. Alain remarked that a mere opinion of a resemblance was not much use, and Bobby who had, while examining the pencil-case, given up thinking about the studio, gave a sudden exclamation as now there flashed into his mind an understanding of the cause of his impression that something here was different.

“There is something you notice?” Alain said quickly.

“Rather, it is something that I do not notice,” Bobby answered, “but I can't think what. Only I feel that there is something missing that was here before.”

“Try to remember,” Alain urged. “In an affair so difficult as this, so puzzling, with so little to go upon, with so many complications and so few facts, even the smallest observation may have its significance.”

“Yes, I know,” agreed Bobby. “It is all very difficult,” he added vaguely and then said: “Is it permissible to ask when Monsieur Shields left?”

“It is permissible to ask,” replied Alain, “but it is not possible to answer. He has not been seen for several days but no one is quite certain when was the last time. There has not been much occasion for tradesmen to call, and if they came and got no answer they thought no more of it. Monsieur Shields was often out. The woman who cooked and cleaned for him has not been coming recently. She has not always found it easy to get her money, and when Shields paid her last she seems to have made up her mind to give him no more chance of getting into her debt. Ducane has been working in the garden but he has noticed nothing and he made no inquiry. Shields's movements were no concern of his. It almost seems as if you yourself, monsieur, were the last in the company of the missing man.”

It was said very smoothly, but all the same Bobby did not fail to appreciate the suspicion latent in Alain's voice.

“ It jolly well looks as if I'm going to be for it,” he thought uncomfortably, and then abruptly there came into his mind a knowledge of what was the trifling change that had been made in the room since he had been here with Shields.

“What is it? You remember something?” Alain asked, noticing the sudden alteration in Bobby's expression.

“There was a small framed landscape on the wall there,” Bobby explained. “Look, you can see where it hung. Now it has gone.”

He did not himself understand the excitement that thrilled in his voice as he spoke. For a moment it was as though everything had somehow been made clear in one swift flash of revelation, and then once again the curtain fell and he knew no longer what it was that he had almost but not quite understood. Yet that the disappearance of this picture had its own significance he remained convinced, and there was still excitement in his voice as he said:

“It has been removed. Some one has taken it away. Why?”

“Do you mean that it was valuable? Was it Shields's own work?”

“Yes. It was signed. I noticed that. It couldn't have been of much value. If it had been valuable, one could understand why it has gone. It was called ‘The Duel'. There were two men with pistols facing each other. Primarily it was a landscape. Shields was fond of putting figures into his landscapes. He thought it added what he called ‘human interest'.”

“Was it any place you recognized?”

“No, nowhere I had ever seen. Somewhere in this neighbourhood, I should say. It looked like that. The drawing was very bad. The two duellists had their pistols pointing yards away from each other. They would have hit a tree in the middle background or thereabouts.” He was silent then, still dimly struggling in the recesses of his mind to understand why all this was of such supreme importance.

“For my part,” said Alain severely, “I do not see how a missing picture concerns us. You say that it was of little value?”

“I doubt if any one would have given ten francs for it,” Bobby answered. “Why did Shields have that special picture framed? There are plenty of other canvasses, as good or better, generally better, lying about unframed.”

“An artist has his whims,” Alain answered. “I do not see that it concerns us why Shields preferred to frame one of his works rather than another. Probably it appealed to him for some reason.”

Bobby made no comment. He did not know himself why there was still struggling for expression in his mind a feeling that the disappearance of the picture had some deep and hidden significance. He did not yet see for that matter how it could have any such significance. He tried to put the idea out of his mind. He said:

“Has Shields's bicycle been found?”

“The garden and outhouses are being searched,” Alain answered. “There is nothing here apparently. Not even,” he added smilingly, “a small, framed landscape called ‘The Duel', so we will see if anything of interest has been discovered outside—such as, for example,” he added with another smile, “more half-burned candles, or even a pair of rope ladders.”

He made no objection to Bobby accompanying him. A rapid but very thorough search of the garden and out-buildings had been made without much result so far. One of the searchers reported the discovery of a pile of artificial manure that had apparently been dumped in a heap in an out-of-the-way corner of the garden, between a tree and the garden wall. Some excitement resulted for a time from this discovery; but the stuff when cleared away showed ground beneath plainly undisturbed, and one of the police inspectors remarked that Ducane had expressed dislike and mistrust of all artificial manures, protesting that never would he use them since they did nothing but burn up the ground.

“He was given some and instead of using it he threw it away, most likely,” remarked the inspector. “For my part, I confess I am also a little of the same opinion concerning these products of the factories. At any rate, that he should have thrown it away rather than use it, is of no importance.”

It was in fact difficult to suppose that anything had been concealed, by burial or otherwise, in a garden where Ducane was constantly working and where any disturbance of the ground he would have been sure instantly to notice. Bobby was asked in which shed he had taken shelter and he duly pointed it out. The bicycle was still there, still hidden by the sacks of artificial manure behind which it had been thrust. One of the inspectors got it out and Alain and Clauzel gave it a minute examination.

“Identification will be difficult,” pronounced the juge destruction. “It is like many others. Volny himself might be able to swear to it but hardly his family. It had better be placed in the shop of some dealer with the rest of his stock and then the Volny family can be requested to see if they can tell which it is. If they can, it will be important, but also it will be surprising.”

Bobby thought it a test both severe and fair. He ventured to ask if Shields's other bicycle had been found and was told it was in the place where, according to Ducane, it was generally kept. He took an opportunity to point, too, to what was left of the bale of binder twine, and to remark that it had almost all been used.

“I am wondering,” he explained, “to what use it can have been put. There must have been miles of it employed for some purpose or another.”

“You ask a good many questions but you do not provide the answers,” Alain remarked, a trifle impatiently.

“Questions are so much easier than answers,” Bobby observed. “For example—those sacks of artificial manure.

“I notice that they seemed to interest you,” Alain said. “Or is it something else? You do not,” he added, again mildly sarcastic, “remark that here also there is a half-burnt candle or that a small framed landscape of the value of ten francs, has disappeared?”

“No,” Bobby answered slowly, “but it is in my mind that when I came in here out of the sun that Sunday afternoon, it was on those sacks that I sat down to rest and smoke a cigarette.”

“And that it concerns our inquiry?” Alain asked. “It concerns us where it was you sat that afternoon to smoke your cigarette?”

“It is only this,” Bobby said, speaking now more confidently for the idea that had been struggling for some time in the recesses of his mind was slowly beginning to shape itself into a theory. “I chose them for a seat because they seemed less dusty than most of the rest of the stuff lying about.”

“Well?”

“It suggests to me that perhaps they were less dusty because recently they had been moved.”

“Evidently it is a reason,” agreed Alain, still mildly impatient. “One even remembers that one of them must have been opened, since a part of its contents has been found thrown away in a pile in the garden.”

“Surely it is unusual to open a sack for the sake of throwing part of its contents away?” Bobby said. “In these cases I do not like the unusual.”

“You have something in your mind?” Alain asked. “There is something you notice?”

“Once more, there is something I do not notice,” Bobby replied. “I do not notice that any of the sacks shows any signs of having lost any part of its contents. To me, they all appear well filled.”

“That is true,” Alain agreed, now staring at the sacks as intently as Bobby himself had been doing. “Yes, that is certainly true.”

“I ask myself,” Bobby said softly, “if when the contents of one of the sacks was removed, something else was placed within.”

Alain looked quickly at Bobby, then again at the sacks piled there so competently, so naturally, so innocently. He went to the door. He called an order, and two of the Sûreté inspectors came hurrying up. Alain gave them brief directions. They began to lift down the sacks and to open them one by one. Those they came to first were evidently as they were when they left the factory. One had as evidently been opened and then refastened. It was dragged out into the middle of the floor and there reopened. Within was the dead, doubled body of Henri Volny, the artificial manure packed closely round it to give the sack containing it the same well-filled undisturbed appearance possessed by the others.

There began now just such a scene of busy, purposeful activity as Bobby had so often shared in. Photographs were taken, measurements were made, fingerprints looked for, consultations held, messengers came and went, doctors appeared, presently there arrived a stretcher and the sad relic of humanity just discovered was removed with all that careful respect always shown in France to Death, man's last hope and refuge.

All the time this was going on, Bobby stood quietly watching, taking a kind of professional interest in the scene and admiring the calm and unhurried efficiency with which everything was accomplished. He had a feeling, too, that neither Alain nor Clauzel, even in the midst of all their busy preoccupations, had forgotten him, and that occasionally their brief consultations had himself for their object. Uncomfortably aware was he, too, that the glances occasionally sent in his direction were still not entirely devoid of doubt or even of suspicion.

Presently preparations were begun for clearing the shed and for putting in position the official seals. Bobby went outside accordingly. He saw Père Trouché at a little distance, the very image of eager and alert attention, giving himself entirely to the recording and the interpretation of every passing sound or other impression he received. Bobby began to understand how it was that the old man, though blind—if blind indeed he were—was yet able to know and to understand so much of what went on around him. Most men have eyes and see little, ears and hear less, nor to most of them does touch mean anything at all. This old man had no eyes perhaps, but to every difficult impression that reached him through the other senses he gave his full attention to wrest from it all its meaning and significance. But to the easy knowledge others gained with little effort, since it was there before their eyes as they were wont to say, they often gave little consideration and less thought. Bobby went to join him and the old man said as he approached: