The Dusky Hour (11 page)

The last word was murmured like both a benediction and a prayer; and it was as in the light of another world that she drifted away from them. The girl she had called Henrietta said to Bobby in a voice full of a tender and affectionate pride:

“Molly's always sketching and painting. Nobody will buy her work, though. They say it's like nothing they ever saw. That's because they haven't her eyes, so how can they? Come inside.”

Bobby followed her into what was evidently the kitchen. Something was cooking in the oven, to judge by the extremely pleasant smell pervading the room. The kitchen was plainly also the general sitting-room, and on one wall hung a series of water-colours, chiefly sketches of flowers, sometimes just of a bird on a bough in blossom. Bobby, looking at them hurriedly – he had a certain talent for drawing himself, though a comparatively poor feeling for colour – thought at first they were quite commonplace, just ordinary little drawings with a vague, indeterminate colouring. He paid them no more attention, having, indeed, other things to think of, and it was only when he was in bed that night, and on the verge of dropping off to sleep, that he seemed suddenly to remember in those slight water-colour sketches a quality as though upon them, too, had shone the light that never was on land or sea.

At the moment he was very much more interested in some photographs standing on the broad window-ledge. They seemed to him to be exceedingly good and striking work. Two, in separate frames, represented the two girls he had already seen. In another frame, intended for three photographs, but now with only the central space occupied, the two side spaces holding only pen-and-ink sketches of fruit blossom, was a photograph of a much older woman – probably, Bobby thought, from the resemblance she bore them both, the mother of the two girls, even though that resemblance included neither the direct vigour of the one, the elfin loveliness of the other. Looking at them, two thoughts occurred to Bobby: firstly, that young Noll Moffatt had been spoken of as an enthusiastic and highly skilled amateur photographer, and, secondly, that the Molly girl was really extremely pretty, and that, when two lads start fighting, a pretty lass is as likely an explanation as any.

Keeping these two ideas at the back of his mind, he began to ask a few vague questions. He learned that the occupants of the farm were Miss Henrietta Towers, to whom he was talking; Miss Molly, whom he had just seen; and their mother, who was out at the moment. Henrietta, it was plain, was the working partner. The mother, whom, Bobby noticed, Henrietta referred to once as Mrs. Oulton, looked after the house, and prepared teas for such visitors as the better weather chanced to bring. Molly, Bobby gathered, helped when she remembered, but was generally absorbed in her painting. Occasionally she made a sale, but very seldom, her earnings not very much more than paying for the materials she used. “Of course, she helps, too; she's very useful in the farm work,” declared Henrietta. “Only sometimes she forgets.” She gave a little sudden laugh, a bubbling laugh that came unexpectedly from her grave, impressive presence, as though some solemn flowing river began all at once to sparkle like a running brook. “Molly,” she explained, “was helping pack eggs the other day, and what she did was to make a symphony of the brown, the speckled, and the white. It was awfully nice as a colour-scheme, but we weren't ready when the egg-gatherer got here and he wasn't a bit pleased at being kept waiting.”

Occasionally, too, they hired a little outside assistance. But the bulk of the work was done by Henrietta; and she intimated quite plainly that there was lots of it – too much, anyhow, for her to spend time on idle converse with Bobby.

“I'm awfully sorry,” he apologised. “I'm trying to make a complete picture in my mind of the district and everyone living in it. We think the dead man knew someone round here. It seems as if he must have had some object in coming here.”

Henrietta made no comment. She did not seem interested.

“You know Mr. Moffatt, of Sevens,” Bobby went on. “They may be customers of yours?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Why?”

“Did young Mr. Moffatt take those photographs on the window-ledge?” Bobby asked. “I am told he is a first-class photographer.”

“Yes, he did,” she answered, and then asked again: “Why?”

“I think,” Bobby continued, “Mr. Hayes at Way Side is a customer of yours, too?”

“Well?”

“He employs a chauffeur, doesn't he? Young fellow named Thoms?”

For the first time he had the feeling that a question had embarrassed and troubled her. Her gaze was as direct as ever, but now her clear, far-seeing eyes seemed to show a troubled look.

“You are asking a great many questions,” she said suddenly. “You seem to know the answer to them all.”

“I am investigating a murder,” he reminded her.

“Well,” she said, with an air of admitting his answer.

“Last night,” he went on, “I happened to come across young Moffatt and Thoms fighting each other.”

“Fighting?” she repeated, this time with a very startled air.

“By Battling Copse,” he added.

She made no comment, but sat staring straight in front of her.

“Breach of the peace,” Bobby went on. “I'm a police officer. So I had to interfere. I asked what the trouble was. They wouldn't say. Can you guess?”

Again she did not answer, but her expression remained moody and troubled.

“This may be a case of – murder,” he reminded her.

“It can't have anything to do with the murder,” she told him with an emphasis that made him wonder whether she did not in fact either guess or fear that some such connection might exist.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked.

“Of course I am; it can't, how could it?” she replied, again very emphatically and again a little as if it were as much to herself as to him that she gave the assurance.

He left the point, feeling it would be useless to press her just then. He said:

“I want to be as frank with you as possible. There is your sister, Miss Molly. Anyone can see she is an exceedingly pretty and attractive young lady.”

He paused, and she gave him a look strongly reminiscent of a tigress suspecting interference with her cubs.

It was very clear that anyone who touched Molly, or Molly's interests, or Molly's happiness, would have an exceedingly determined and formidable guardian to reckon with.

“Sorry,” said Bobby. “You see what I mean? If two boys quarrel about a girl they both want to please – well, it's nothing much to do with the police, though we have to stop it if we actually see them trying to punch each other's heads. But if they were fighting for any other reason...”

He left the sentence unfinished. For the first time she was no longer looking directly at him. She got up and went to stand by the window, looking out of it. She said over her shoulder:

“Who was winning?”

This question was so unexpected that Bobby could only gape. She did not follow it up. After another pause, she said, still throwing the words at him over her shoulder: “Boys fight about anything. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the poor man who has been killed.”

“We are groping in the dark,” Bobby said. “We must, if people won't tell us what they know.”

“There's nothing I can tell you,” she said moodily, and came back to her seat. “I don't think I want to answer any more questions.”

“Miss Towers,” Bobby said earnestly, “refusing to answer is itself an answer. I don't want to press you, of course. I have no right to. I am merely asking for help. A man has been murdered.”

“There are things worse than murder,” she muttered. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Well, there are, aren't there?” she retorted gloomily.

“No,” he answered then. “There may be worse criminals than murderers; there is no worse crime.”

She did not seem to be listening to this. She said:

“They were saying here his name was Bennett. Is that true?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I knew a Bennett once,” she said. “Or, rather, father did. In business. It can't be the same, though.”

“Why not?”

“Well, why should it be? It's a common enough name. Besides, that Bennett was a tall, big man. Six feet. They say this man was small, with small hands and feet.”

“Yes, that's true,” Bobby agreed. “You have heard a good many details.”

“We have heard nothing else all day,” she answered. “Has young Mr. Moffatt been here to-day?”

“No.”

“Or Thoms?”

“Why do you ask about him? I don't think he has ever been here. Why do you ask?”

“Well, Mr. Hayes is a customer of yours, and so I thought perhaps his chauffeur...”

“He has never been here, never,” she repeated, with what he felt again was unnecessary emphasis. 

“But Mr. Hayes buys a good deal of stuff from you, I understand? Eggs, chickens, and so on?”

“Yes, he does. But he always comes himself for what he wants. He is the best customer I have. He buys a lot, and I always charge him double.”

“Oh,” said Bobby, faintly surprised. “How's that?”

“He's trying to seduce me,” she explained.

Bobby did not quite know what to make of this somewhat embarrassing declaration, made, as it had been, in the most matter-of-fact way conceivable. He was not even sure at first that it had been made quite seriously. He wondered vaguely what the somewhat conventional-looking elderly woman – to judge from her photograph – who was Henrietta's mother, would have thought of the remark. Glancing again at her photograph where it stood on the window-ledge in that frame intended to hold three pictures but in which her own was now solitary, he was more struck this time by the quality of the sketches flanking it. For a moment he thought he saw in them a curiously vivid and exceptional quality, and then he looked again and thought they were quite simple and ordinary little things, such as almost anyone could produce, with a certain fancifulness in their manner that made them unlike anything he ever remembered seeing in nature. He jerked his mind back from them to what Henrietta had just told him and said:

“You don't mean –”

He paused, uncertain how to complete his sentence, and she answered:

“I just thought you ought to know, perhaps. There's a lot of gossip going on. I expect you are sure to hear. Mrs. O'Brien was very upset. Only she would think it was Molly. She couldn't believe it was only me. Molly always makes him uncomfortable. She often does – his sort, I mean. If it had been Molly –” She paused, and again that look of the tigress defending her young burned for a moment in her eyes. Bobby had the impression that she would have sent the whole world crashing to its doom rather than see her sister threatened by the smallest danger. “I can look after myself,” she said abruptly. “It amuses me to charge him threepence for a one-ha'penny egg.”

“I see,” murmured Bobby, thinking that she looked fully capable of putting the withered-up little Mr. Hayes across her knee and administering the required chastisement. But then he remembered a certain veiled menace he had thought he detected in Hayes's half-closed and peeping eyes, and he was not sure of what might happen after. A little worried by thoughts he felt could have no connection with the inquiry it was his duty to pursue, he put them out of his mind and said: “You know Mrs. O'Brien has left Way Side?”

“I heard there had been a row,” she answered. “Everyone was talking about it till this other thing happened.”

“It's not often,” he remarked, “that there are two such exciting pieces of news in a quiet place like this, I suppose?”

“You mean there may be some connection,” she said in her frank, direct way, looking full at him. “I don't see why you should think so.”

“I don't either,” he agreed. “Coincidence, that's all, I suppose, like your having known a Mr. Bennett and that being also the dead man's name.”

“Well, they can't be the same,” she repeated. “There are lots of Bennetts.”

He asked one or two more questions, trying to find out something more about the Mr. Bennett she had known. But she said again he had been a purely business acquaintance of her father's, and that neither she nor her mother had ever seen him. In speaking of her mother she again referred to her as Mrs. Oulton, and, seeing that he noticed this, she said:

“Mother has been twice married. My own father died before I was born. When I was ten, mother married Mr. Oulton. I always called him father; he was like my own father. No one could ever have told there was any difference between any of us.”

Bobby noticed, too, the expression, “any of us.” He said:

“Were there other children?”

She did not answer for a moment or two. He had the idea that this question had been singularly unwelcome; it was even something like a momentary fear that seemed to flash for an instant across the placid depths of those direct and open eyes of hers. Then, as if reflecting that there was no point in attempting to withhold from him information he could easily obtain elsewhere, she said:

“Yes. A boy. Two years older than Molly.”

“Does he live with you?”

“No.”

“Can you give me his address?”

“I could,” she answered, “but I don't see why I should, and I don't think he would want me to.”

“May I ask why?”

“Not everyone enjoys being cross-examined by the police about things they know nothing of,” she answered deliberately.

“Very well,” Bobby said. He never, if he could possibly help it, pressed a reluctant witness. Pressure was apt to produce lies for one thing, and lies were a nuisance, misleading and also embarrassing to the liar, who often then had to tell more lies to bolster up the first, till finally he himself grew confused between lie and truth. And an interval for quiet thought and reflection was often much more effective in producing a readiness to give the required information. It was his general experience that one thing told willingly was worth half a dozen resulting from what are called “third degree” methods.