The Dusky Hour (13 page)

“I couldn't help feeling, sir,” Bobby said, “that Miss Towers had some reason for saying what she did”; and, when the colonel grunted impatiently and looked more impatient still, Bobby thought it as well to change the subject by asking: “No one identified the body, I understand?”

The colonel continued to look worried.

“I'm not satisfied,” he declared. “I'm not at all satisfied.” He referred to some papers at his side. “Mr. Moffatt,” he said, “was very emphatic; he had never seen him before or anyone like him. I've known Moffatt a long time,” the colonel added. “I think he can be trusted. For that matter, I don't think he would make a good liar.”

“No, sir,” agreed Bobby, who knew, however, only too well that the really good liar is precisely the man who gives the impression that he is nothing of the sort.

“Mr. Larson,” continued the chief constable, “– he is still staying on at Sevens for the time; quiet, reserved sort, he seems – appears willing to help, though. He hesitated; wasn't perfectly sure; thought the face familiar but he couldn't place it. Probably some chance resemblance, he said. But he said if we could let him have a photo he would show it to some of his business associates. Very good of him.”

“Make our work a good deal easier if everyone was as willing to help,” observed Bobby with some feeling.

The colonel agreed.

“Then there's Mr. Pegley,” he went on. “Seemed nervous, uneasy, I thought. Asked for some brandy afterwards. Bit of an ordeal, no doubt, for some people. Quite clear it was a perfect stranger, but they could hardly get him to look. Seemed to think if he looked too long he might be the same way himself.”

“Is he staying on at Sevens, too?” Bobby asked.

“No. He drove down from town,” answered the colonel, continuing to stare at the papers before him as though he found them extremely distasteful. “Oh,” he said, a little like one clutching at a respite, “yes. Hayes was there, too. Said the same thing – perfect stranger. Quite interested, though. Asked a lot of questions. A cool customer; all in the day's work, so to say. Might be used to viewing dead men every day.”

“Yes,” agreed Bobby slowly. “I should think Hayes was a man not easily taken off his guard. Did Reeves, the butler at Sevens, come, too?”

“No. Why? Why should he? He wouldn't be likely to recognise the body if Mr. Moffatt didn't.”

Bobby said nothing. It was not for him to direct the investigation. His duty was merely to collect and to submit facts. But he did not quite like the way in which Mr. Moffatt seemed to be accepted as above suspicion – not, of course, that there were any grounds for suspicion beyond the vague and probably inaccurate suggestion that he went frequently to the States and kept that fact private to himself. All the same, Bobby felt that in every investigation an open mind was essential, and the chief constable's seemed closed as regarded Mr. Moffatt. Less closed, though, than Bobby had supposed, for abruptly the colonel said:

“I'll phone Moffatt to send Reeves along – waste of time.” Then he looked angrily at Bobby and added: “I've asked your people at the Yard to make some inquiries at the shipping offices; may as well check up on this story of Moffatt's going to America every autumn.”

“Just as well,” agreed Bobby warmly, “to get that story out of the way. Help to check up on Hayes, too.”

“Yes, I thought that,” the colonel agreed, continuing to poke uneasily at his papers.

To help him – for Bobby guessed what this unease meant – he said:

“I suppose the two young people couldn't help?”

“Both denied knowing anything, and stuck to it,” the colonel answered, looking as if he would like to resign on the spot and go away to Bournemouth, there to sit on the front all day and play bridge all night. Bobby waited, sure there was more to come. “Miss Moffatt fainted,” said the colonel slowly.

“While viewing the body?”

“No,” the other answered, “that would have been – well, natural enough.” He had an air of approving of a woman fainting in such circumstances. Very right and proper, he seemed to be saying to himself. He went on: “It was after. I pressed her a little. I had an idea somehow. She seemed nervous. I tried to persuade her that if she had any doubt, hesitation whatever – then she fainted. If she did –”

“If?” repeated Bobby, puzzled for the moment.

“I wasn't quite sure,” admitted the colonel reluctantly. “The modern girl doesn't faint. Ena is very modern. It did just cross my mind that possibly she wished to avoid further questioning.”

Bobby's mind flew quickly back to the lipstick case found on the scene of the tragedy. A faint and slender clue, he thought. Not one that could be built upon, yet not one to be forgotten either. He waited. The chief constable continued:

“Young Moffatt was very emphatic. Very emphatic indeed. Positive he had never seen anyone with the least resemblance. I noticed he hardly looked, though. He didn't seem to want to, I thought. I remembered you had said something about him and a London night-club – the Cut and Come Again. I mentioned it. He was a good deal startled. Very startled. Finally he admitted that perhaps he had seen there someone like the dead man. Stuck to it he wasn't sure, and, anyhow, quite certain it was no one he knew. He tried to bluster at times. I had to take rather a sharp tone. He left me strongly under the impression that he had recognised the body and didn't want to say so.” The colonel sighed heavily. “My experience,” he said, “is that girls are much better liars than boys.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby, in full agreement with this great truth. “Anyhow, if anyone says he doesn't recognise someone else, you can never prove he did; question of memory. And then a dead body has a different look. You can't be sure it wasn't a genuine mistake.”

His mind flickered back to that fragment of Kodak wrapper found in Battling Copse. A faint and slender clue, he thought, and one it would never be safe to build on. Yet again not one to be forgotten.

“Plenty to do,” said the colonel abruptly and a little as if “doing” would be a welcome relief from thinking. “Have to get the inquest adjourned, for one thing. The fellow must have had some reason for being here, some reason for watching Sevens. Oh, well, there's this Miss Towers's story, too. What do you make of it?”

“Not much, sir,” admitted Bobby. “She gave Hayes an alibi, but, then, in doing so she provided herself with one.”

“Eh? What?” exclaimed the chief constable. “I never thought of her. You mean –?”

“Oh, no, sir,” protested Bobby, hastening to disclaim any meaning. “She seemed very frank and straightforward – almost embarrassingly so. Of course, frank and straightforward is often a good card to play to throw you off the scent. She's quick, too; she wasn't long in seeing we were interested in Hayes.”

“But what possible, conceivable motive –?”

“Well, sir, of course,” Bobby answered, “I must say I was a little – well, it's not quite usual for a young lady to announce that someone is trying to seduce her. And it's quite plain there was an underlying motive for Hayes's quarrel with Mrs. O'Brien – the hat business and the face-slapping had something else behind it – ‘not the sort to go so easy,' was the way one of the maids put it. Miss Henrietta said herself Mrs. O'Brien was jealous of her sister, Miss Molly. It did just strike me as possible that Miss Henrietta – I am sure she would do anything for her sister – knew it was Molly by whom Hayes was attracted, and wanted to keep her out of it.” He added slowly: “I think I should not care to be any man Miss Henrietta suspected of trying to harm Miss Molly.”

“Getting rather away from realities, aren't we?” the colonel suggested.

“I dare say I am,” agreed Bobby. “It's a puzzling case, though, and I feel Miss Henrietta does come in somewhere. There's that row between young Moffatt and Mr. Hayes's chauffeur. Miss Molly does water-colours, Moffatt is keen on photography, and he has done what I thought looked very fine photos of both the Towers girls. It is just possible Moffatt knew Hayes was worrying them – that the chauffeur had been carrying messages or something like that – and that was what the trouble was about. Moffatt started questioning the chauffeur and a row developed. I know that's all just guessing.”

“What sort of man is this chauffeur? Do you know his name?”

“Thoms. Edward Thoms. He seemed quite young, big, clumsy, talks as if he had some education; sulky, angry sort of air; keeps very much to himself, the maids said; not much liked by them apparently. Of course, I only saw him during the row with Moffatt and afterwards when he had a black eye that didn't improve his appearance.”

“Better be questioned, perhaps. Better ask Hayes about him, too,” the colonel remarked. “I'll ring Hayes up and ask him to send the fellow along – I can say it's just occurred to me there's a chance he may have seen the dead man hanging about.”

“It struck me,” Bobby continued, “as just a little curious that, while Miss Henrietta was very frank about most things, she wouldn't give me her brother's address. She said he had nothing to do with the case and he wouldn't like being questioned by us. It's true enough that people hate the idea; they all seem to think a harmless question or two means an arrest next minute.”

“One of our biggest handicaps,” agreed the colonel.

“So I didn't think much of that,” Bobby continued, “but she was rather emphatic, too, about refusing to give me a photograph of her stepfather. I don't see why she should object. It's long enough ago.”

“Well, I – well, anyhow,” the colonel said, “there can't be any connection between a death – suicide or murder either – years ago and this business.”

“It doesn't seem probable,” agreed Bobby, “only why did she tell me all that long story? That's what's worrying me. Another thing I noticed. Most likely it doesn't mean anything. There were a lot of Miss Molly's water-colours in the kitchen – and some photos. There was one frame meant to hold three photos. In the centre was one of the girls' mother – Mrs. Oulton – and on each side it was flanked by a small drawing of Miss Molly's.”

“What about it?” asked the colonel, puzzled.

“It did just occur to me,” said Bobby, “that possibly that frame had held photos of Mrs. Oulton's late husband and of her son.”

“You mean they had been removed to prevent anyone seeing them?” asked the colonel. “But why? What for?”

“I haven't the least idea,” Bobby answered.

“You don't mean,” demanded the colonel, staring at him, “you think this dead man can be the missing brother – or the father come back to life if the suicide tale was a fake?”

“I don't think so, sir,” Bobby answered. “For the brother, the age doesn't agree. But the suicide story might be a fake. The identification of the family might have been accepted too easily. It's an idea.”

“Better,” said the colonel, with sudden determination, “go up to London. We can look after this end. Ask your people to try to find out if there is any possibility of the suicide yarn having been faked. Good God, if it was a fake, there must have been a dead man all the same. And you had better go round to this club you mentioned – the Cut and Come Again. There is just the chance they might be able to tell you something there.”

“Very good, sir,” Bobby answered, and thought to himself that, with the Cut and Come Again, what they might tell and what they would tell were as different as anything well could be.

Bobby accordingly returned to London, though, as there had been one or two other matters connected with the case needing his attention, it was late in the evening before he reached town.

He put off further action till the next morning, therefore, since, though night was when the activities of the Cut and Come Again blossomed to their full, also at night the merest glimpse of a “busy” – a C.I.D. man – would be enough to reduce the club to a silence deep as death, with the boldest holding their breath for the rest of the evening.

In the daytime, however, all would be calm, peaceful, law-abiding as a suburban tea-party, and there might possibly be a chance of getting a few questions answered. Not too early, of course, for till noon the club premises were inhabited by charwomen alone.

So, as there was an hour or two to spare before it would be any good visiting the Cut and Come Again, Bobby took a bus to Fleet Street and there presented himself at the office of Mr. Fisher, the agent Henrietta had mentioned as having dealt with some of her half-sister's drawings. He discovered it in one of those odd, narrow alleys winding between Fleet Street and New Oxford Street that serve to show us what most London streets were like in past centuries.

Up a dark and twisted staircase Bobby made his way to a smart modern office whereof the chief features seemed chromium and lipstick – the chromium appertaining to the furniture, the lipstick to three maidens busy with typewriter and phone.

Bobby produced his card – his private card, not his official – and explained that he was interested in the work of Miss Molly Oulton, for whom he understood Mr. Fisher acted as agent.

The first maiden had never heard of Miss Molly Oulton; the second said: “Oh, yes! Wishy-washy stuff. No pep, No punch, No push”; the third said: “Well, we clicked once. Twenty pounds. You never know what stuff will go and what won't.”

Bobby asked if he could see Mr. Fisher. The first maiden disappeared into an adjoining room and returned and said Mr. Fisher was disengaged. So Bobby was ushered into an inner office, with even more chromium but with the lipstick
motif
replaced by a general impression of whisky and cigars.

Mr. Fisher himself was a young man with black hair as straight and shiny as brilliantine could make it, and a general air of having devoted considerable time and thought to the choice of his tie and his socks and to his personal appearance in general, though, unfortunately, he had forgotten his finger-nails. However, he greeted Bobby warmly, called him “old chap” on the spot, instantly produced the whisky and soda he appeared to consider the necessary accompaniments to conversation, and said: