The Attending Truth

A Bobby Owen Mystery

E.R. Punshon

• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781911579045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Letteratura poliziesca e gialli

“It’s murder all right; no one could bash his own head in the way this chap’s was.”

The stranger’s body was discovered by businesswoman Mrs Holcombe, the unofficial queen of Pending Dale. As if there wasn’t enough gossip rife in the village, now the Queen may be under suspicion of murder.

Talk is cheap, but reputations are valuable – but were they worth buying silence at the cost of a man’s life? When Bobby Owen of the Yard arrives in Pending Dale to investigate, amid a panoply of local characters and red herrings he discovers a compelling and unpredictable motive. A reason why the unassuming and anonymous commercial traveller had to die …

The Attending Truth is the thirtieth novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1952. This new edition features a bonus Bobby Owen short story, and an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.”--Dorothy L. Sayers

CHAPTER I

“CAESAR’S WIFE”

MR LOUIS LAWSON, chief constable of Westshire West, had a slightly embarrassed air as he entered the room of Commander Bobby Owen at Scotland Yard. It was the first time they had met in person, though of course each knew the other well enough by name and reputation. True, Bobby had taken the precaution to refresh his memory regarding such facts as Mr Lawson’s long service, his steady if unspectacular rise to be chief of the force he had joined as a young man, his stubborn and so far successful resistance to the recent attempt to amalgamate Westshire West with Westshire (East and Central).

Now in the late fifties, Mr Lawson was still a well-set-up, strikingly handsome man. Bobby had gathered that these good looks of his—had he not been born too soon, his obvious and inescapable fate would have been Hollywood—had played their part in his rise to the position he now occupied. But so had his quality of a dogged, determined perseverance that never forgot and never let go. And that is a quality which brings success as often as do others more immediately spectacular. It has also the advantage of being within the reach of all.

He and Bobby shook hands and said how glad they were to meet each other. Bobby produced the inevitable cigarette, the equally inevitable remark on the weather, added a reference to a recent complimentary comment by one of the Home Office inspectors on the smartness and efficiency of the Westshire West police. Then, as Mr Lawson still seemed hesitant over explaining the object of his visit, he began to search among the papers on his desk.

“I’ve your letter here somewhere,” he said. “Suspected murder, isn’t it? At a place called Pending Dale—quite a small village?”

“It was till Holcombe Manufactures changed all that—Longlast shirts, you know.” Bobby didn’t know, but said nothing, though in point of fact he had on a Longlast shirt at the moment. Mr Lawson went on: “And it’s murder all right; no one could bash his own head in the way this chap’s was. Nasty sight.” He added resentfully: “The first murder we’ve had in all my forty years of service.” He paused once more, shook his head, sighed, and said sadly: “It’s all extremely awkward.”

“Yes?” said Bobby, reflecting, but not saying, that all murder cases are extremely awkward—especially for the person most intimately concerned: the murderee.

“There are complications,” said Mr Lawson.

“Yes?” said Bobby again, again reflecting that complications are not uncommon in murder cases.

“Rumours,” said Mr Lawson darkly, and still more darkly and with an interval between each word, he added, first “Dynamite” and then “Caesar’s wife.”

“Yes?” said Bobby for the third time, inwardly wondering what was the bearing of these isolated and apparently disconnected observations. By way of encouragement, he continued: “Of course, we are always prepared to help whenever we can. Here to co-operate, you know.” He referred to Mr Lawson’s letter again. He said: “The victim was a Mr John Winterspoon, a commercial traveller—groceries—so far as is known, a complete stranger in the district, which is outside the territory he worked for his firm. Two calls known to have been made by him. One at the ‘Black Bull’, where he had a double whisky and was thought to have had already as much as was good for him, and one on the village grocer, a Mr William Jones of the Pending Dale Good Grocery Stores. There he made a few business inquiries, as if he expected to take over the representation of his firm in the district. The firm say, however, that no such change had ever been suggested or thought of. You said something about rumours?”

“There’s talk going on about Mrs Holcombe,” explained Mr. Lawson. “She found the body. Some one had to, hadn’t they?”

“Is Mrs Holcombe connected with the Longlast Shirt people?”

“She is Longlast Shirts,” said Mr Lawson simply. “Chairman, managing director, everything. She’s a widow. Her husband founded the business. He made it over to her when his health broke down a year or two before he died. Of course, death duties had to be paid, all the same, if the idea was to dodge them. Mrs Holcombe says it wasn’t. The doctors had told him plainly he couldn’t expect to live the five years that has to elapse before settlements can escape them. She says it was his wish that she should have complete responsibility while he was still there to advise and help. The business has grown enormously under her control. Expanding all the time. She owns most of the land round about, too. Very generous lady. She gave the village the Holcombe Institute; she’s chairman. There’s a communal laundry as well. Another gift of hers. She’s chairman of the Rural District Council. It’s owing to her that Pending Dale has electricity. She owns most of the shares in the Pending Dale Electric Supply Company she founded. Wired all the houses at her own expense, and supplies current at less than they pay in Bristol or Bath.”

“Dear me,” said Bobby, quite overwhelmed by this list of activities and benevolences, and with already stirring in his mind a faint suspicion that possibly the Pending Dale inhabitants might feel rather as if they lay beneath a Holcombe eiderdown on a Holcombe feather bed, and in that situation found it just a little difficult to breathe.

“People are not so appreciative as you would expect,” pronounced Mr Lawson, with stern disapproval. “So—well, ungrateful.”

“They often are,” agreed Bobby. He shook his head. “Too bad,” he said. “But doesn’t suggest a background for suspecting the lady of murder, if that’s what it is,” and he added mentally: ‘Different if the lady herself had been murdered; one could understand that better.’

“Most unlikely person in the world,” declared Mr Lawson.

“Tut, tut,” said Bobby. “That does look bad.”

“Naturally,” Mr Lawson continued, ignoring a comment he considered somewhat frivolous, “in the course of my duties I have often been in contact with Mrs Holcombe. I have always found her most pleasant, most agreeable, always ready to help, always ready to make what often turn out to be most useful suggestions.”

“I see,” said Bobby when the other paused, though Bobby wasn’t quite sure what it was he did see, unless a vague possibility that just possibly the association between this still extremely handsome man and the highly eligible widow had given rise to village gossip that might not be wholly without foundation.

“Caesar’s wife,” repeated Mr Lawson unexpectedly, and when Bobby looked as surprised and puzzled as he felt, Mr Lawson explained: “Means you haven’t only to be O.K., it means you have to look it.”

“Oh, yes, very true,” agreed Bobby. “Only—well, what’s the application?”

“Mrs Holcombe has two children—a daughter, Miss Livia, a most talented and artistic young lady, by her first marriage, and young Mr Harry Holcombe, who will be standing for Parliament at the next election. Er—” Mr Lawson was looking embarrassed again. “It happens that my boy, Norman—Norry—is reading for the Bar, but he has strong artistic tastes. A water-colour painting of his was hung at the Academy one year. I think he would like to take it up professionally, but of course he has to think about earning his living. Can’t do that in art.”

“No, indeed,” agreed Bobby, nodding acceptance of this axiom.

“But it has brought him and Miss Livia together. Common tastes. Naturally.”

“Naturally,” agreed Bobby once more, beginning to see light. “Does Mrs Holcombe—?”

He left the sentence unfinished, but Mr Lawson knew what was meant.

“One can understand a certain hesitation,” he said. “I don’t say it’s very marked, but there it is. Of course, Mrs Holcombe is a wealthy woman, and you know yourself what pay in the police is like.”

“I do indeed,” said Bobby, now all yearning sympathy. “Rather. I should say I did. And the Bar—all right when you get going, if you ever do. I’m told the best plan is to marry the daughter of a busy solicitor,” and to himself he thought: ‘All this means they are saying in the village that any case there is against Mrs Holcombe won’t be pressed because Lawson hopes his boy may get the girl and wants to make sure Mrs Holcombe gives her consent. Nasty. Bit of an awkward situation.’ He said aloud: “Dynamite all right.”

“Oh, that’s Colonel Yeo-Young,” said Mr Lawson, looking surprised.

“Something else?” asked Bobby, beginning to understand now why Mr Lawson had described the case as ‘complicated’. “Who is he? Where does he come in?”

“The Yeo-Youngs used to be the big people about there,” Mr Lawson explained. “Very old family, owned all the land for miles round. Years ago, that is. There was a peerage once, not now. There’s still a tradition. Everyone quite glad to see one of the old family back, even if there’s still no money. He is on the county council and a member of the Standing Committee. He just about is the local Tory party, and very keen on winning the seat back from Labour at the next election. There’s talk about him and Mrs Holcombe being likely to make a match of it. Nothing in it, probably, but people will talk. Can’t stop ’em.”

“No, indeed,” Bobby said. “Useful too, sometimes.”

Mr Lawson evidently didn’t agree with this remark, and seemed inclined to object, but instead went on:

“She has the money, and he has the old family name. If young Harry Holcombe does get in at the next election, they’ll all stand in big with the Tories, and some say if the colonel and Mrs Holcombe did make a match of it, then they might get the peerage back. Might make all the difference. Very susceptible to titles, the ladies.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Bobby. “All the men always tell you they only accepted a title to please their wives.”

“Any hint of a scandal,” Mr Lawson continued, “and any chance of that—done in. Just dynamite. If you see what I mean.”

“Dynamite all right,” agreed Bobby again. “Caesar’s wife as well. Plenty of reason for a nasty line in gossip getting started. Family, social, political. Jolly awkward. You’ll have to watch your step, or next thing we know there’ll be questions in Parliament, and no one wants that.”

“No, indeed,” declared Mr Lawson fervently, and he had even become a little pale.

“Political parties being what they are,” Bobby went on, “I don’t expect the local Labour people would be awfully sorry if rumours got about involving the other side’s prospective candidate as well as their chief local leader, if the colonel’s that.”

“Oh, he is,” Lawson declared. “And if it turned out that way, they would light bonfires—in a manner of speaking.”

“One head of local police, one member of Joint Standing Committee,” Bobby commented without satisfaction, “and tongues wagging about a possible suspect they both have private connections with.”

“There’s the Communists, too,” Mr Lawson went on. “A nasty lot. Mischief-makers, that’s them. Simply jump at any chance of undermining respect for law and order. They hate us police for keeping an eye on them, and if they can find any excuse for spreading malicious gossip—well, that’s what they’re out for.”

“Need you bother about them?” Bobby asked. “Noisy. That’s all.”

“Noise,” Mr Lawson pointed out severely, “is—well, noise.” With a flash of sudden insight, he translated this into “Publicity. Publicity,” he repeated impressively, and waited to see if Bobby had anything to say to that. Bobby hadn’t. He knew he had been silenced by that modern word of power. A little pleased with himself, Mr Lawson continued: “Then there’s the Standing Committee Chairman. Hand in glove with them, he is, if he isn’t one himself, and would give a lot to get me out. It was him was behind trying to hand us over to the Westshire East and Central lot, lock, stock, and barrel, us that’s been an independent force since there was police in Westshire, and a record second to none.”

“No, indeed,” confirmed Bobby sympathetically.

“I did manage to put a stopper on that,” explained Mr Lawson, with much satisfaction, “and now he’s all out to get rid of me if he can, so he could push it through. Pals with the Home Secretary, he is, too. Birds of a feather, if you ask me. I’ve no politics myself,” he added hastily. “Wouldn’t do, in my position, but I must say I don’t know how any one can stick that lot.”

“The beginning and the end of political thought,” Bobby approved. “We could send you two of our best men,” but already he knew what was coming and already he was casting an apprehensive eye on his paper-laden desk.

But Mr Lawson was prepared, for this had been talked over beforehand, and he knew just what to say.

“That would be fine,” he began, but without enthusiasm, and then he continued: “Only, if you see what I mean—chief inspector and sergeant—well, they wouldn’t carry weight, not with the public, same as a really top-ranking officer would, would they?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Bobby said. “A Yard Chief Inspector.”

“You know and I know,” Mr Lawson interrupted. “But the public don’t. Now, some one like yourself, Mr Owen, a Commander. No one could believe there was any hushing-up going on or the case not being handled properly. No one could talk then, could they?”

“Could you give me a few more details?” Bobby asked.

Mr Lawson proceeded to do so. The spot where Mrs Holcombe, the great lady of the district, had found the dead body was quite near her residence, Castle Manor, in a copse through which ran a path providing a short cut from a ’bus stop on the high road. The time had been somewhere about ten in the evening. It had not been noted exactly. The copse path was one not much used, very seldom indeed in the evening, and at all times chiefly by the inmates of, or those having business with, Castle Manor. No weapon had been found, though the copse had been most carefully searched, nor any other clue. One small detail, Mr Lawson almost apologized for mentioning, was that a tree at the entrance to the copse, some distance from the scene of the murder, showed signs of having been recently climbed. Boy probably, Mr Lawson said, and Bobby nodded agreement and thought this satisfactory proof the copse had in fact been well and truly searched. The motive was not robbery, for the dead man’s watch and his money had not been touched. Unfortunately the village constable, called to the spot at once and unused to murders, had rather lost his head. He had allowed the body to be taken away immediately, and so much indiscriminate and excited running to and fro had taken place that any chance of discovering useful footprints or anything of the sort had been utterly destroyed. All that was certain was that a brutal murder had been committed and that the victim was a stranger in the neighbourhood for whose presence there no reason was at present known.

This said, Mr Lawson suggested that it might be better if, having now given Bobby the bare bones of the case, he didn’t put forward any theories of his own. He had them, of course, but he reminded Bobby of a lecture Bobby had delivered two or three years previously, in which great stress had been laid on the desirability of every investigator approaching his cases with a perfectly free and open mind, untrammelled by preconceived ideas or suggestions, seeking only his own interpretation of the known facts.

“Be sure your lectures will find you out,” Bobby murmured sadly. “Well, I’ll see what the Commissioner says.”

With that, Mr Lawson departed, leaving with Bobby, however, the full dossier of the case and on the whole well satisfied. He felt his battle was already half won, and when Bobby went to talk to the Commissioner, he found that that gentleman already knew all about it.

“The Home Secretary has been on the ’phone himself,” he informed Bobby. “Doesn’t want any opening given for talk. Up ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page/About the Book
• Contents
• Introduction by Curtis Evans
• Chapter I “Caesar’s Wife”
• Chapter II “He said he was a Stranger”
• Chapter III “Them Cellars”
• Chapter IV “A Dead Man Asks It”
• Chapter V “Her Royal Highness”
• Chapter VI “Peeping Tom?”
• Chapter VII “Can Murder be Hushed Up?”
• Chapter VIII “She is a Sculptor?”
• Chapter IX “To See Myself In”
• Chapter X “No Answer to Death”
• Chapter XI “The Attending Truth”
• Chapter XII “Why an end like this?”
• Chapter XIII “Cuts a Wide Swathe”
• Chapter XIV “Short List”
• Chapter XV “Were you Watching?”
• Chapter XVI “Little Drunken Girl”
• Chapter XVII “As Like as Two Peas”
• Chapter XVIII “None Can Take It”
• Chapter XIX “Because I Didn’t”
• Chapter XX “Dangerous Doctrine”
• Chapter XXI “What About My Girl?”
• Chapter XXII “Who Was It?”
• Chapter XXIII “Sort O’ Broke Me Up”
• Chapter XXIV “The Right Questions”
• Chapter XXV “A Most Respectable Man”
• Chapter XXVI “Not Her Way”
• Chapter XXVII “One of Several”
• Chapter XXVIII “For the Moment Nothing”
• Chapter XXIX “A Miasma of Suspicion”
• Chapter XXX “In a Dream, Like”
• Chapter XXXI “The Short Answer”
• Chapter XXXII “That’s All, I Think”
• Chapter XXXIII “What’s The Big Idea, Guv?”
• Chapter XXXIV “Near Breaking Point”
• Chapter XXXV “I Pursue The Truth”
• Chapter XXXVI “No One Answered”
• Chapter XXXVII “I’m A Bastard, Then?”
• Chapter XXXVIII “He Killed Her”
• Chapter XXXIX “I am Hoping, Hoping”
• Chapter XL Conclusion
• A Study in the Obvious (short story)
• About the Author
• The Bobby Owen Mysteries
• Strange Ending – Title Page
• Strange Ending – Chapter I
• Copyright