Death Comes to Cambers (29 page)

There Bobby was greeted warmly and with liberal offers of liquid refreshment, and of a cigar of incredible length, aroma, and cost. To his host's sad disappointment he declined these with many thanks and the explanation that he was on duty, and that duty forbade. It was ‘the inside dope', as he called it, that Mr. Tyler had been hoping to hear, and Bobby satisfied him by giving him in strict confidence a few pieces of information he knew would shortly appear in the papers. Then discreetly he began to endeavour to discover if Mr. Tyler knew anything of interest, and Mr. Tyler explained that he was an old friend, both of Sir Albert and of Lady Cambers.

‘She bossed him pretty badly,' Tyler remarked. ‘But then she did that to everyone – only, always wanting to help. Always the philanthropist. Never let up on the job for an hour.'

‘You knew them before their marriage?' Bobby asked.

‘Him, not her. Of course, he never had a chance once she made up her mind he needed her. Timid, nervous sort of bird, he was, didn't mind being told not to do things, but just hated being pushed. And her nature was to push – hard.'

‘Seems the general idea most people have of them,' Bobby observed. ‘There's an Eddy Dene, Lady Cambers was interested in. Do you know anything of him?'

‘Oh, yes. Lady Cambers mentioned him once or twice – spoke very highly of him. Sure you won't try a cigar? Made specially for me in our own factory in Cuba. No? Well, you Britishers are whales for duty, I will say that.'

‘Had Lady Cambers any reason for speaking about him to you?'

‘Yes. I'm interested in the old Maya culture. If I don't miss my guess – and my guessing hasn't been so bad, Wall Street way – there was a culture there calculated to knock spots off any you knew in Europe, whether Greek or Roman or Egyptian or any other. Yes, sir, that's my notion. I'm planning to investigate on the spot. Mrs. Tyler's coming – she's more interested 'most than me – and Professor Hawkins, from our new State University, and I've been looking out for suitable help. Last week – Wednesday it was; Wednesday afternoon – Lady Cambers rang up to say she had just what was wanted – this Eddy Dene and the girl he's to marry. Lady Cambers argued a young married couple like them would be more content and restful, and less likely to quit in the middle of the show, leaving us high and dry.'

‘I don't quite see why,' observed Bobby.

‘I don't know that I do,' admitted Mr. Tyler, ‘but she put it very strong, and said if I hired them she would come in on the expense side. As a business proposition, it appealed. But I don't deny I rather got the idea she had some reason of her own for having those young people out of the way quick as she knew how. Mrs. Tyler thought so, too. But nothing to do with us.'

‘Have you any idea why?'

‘Tired of helping him maybe,' answered Mr. Tyler. ‘Not that that was like her; in the ordinary way it was the others got tired first, not her. Anyway, it didn't worry me. Mrs. Tyler said maybe it was the girl had been the cause of the upset between Sir Albert and her. You never know. I didn't mind one little bit what it was so long as they seemed suitable. The girl had been Lady Cambers's own maid, and was willing and useful, she said. Quiet and well – behaved. And she said Dene would be much more useful than any ordinary valet. He hadn't done any of that kind of work but he could soon pick up all that was necessary out there in the jungle; he was naturally handy at fixing things, she said, and he knew a bit about archaeology, having made a sort of hobby of it in his spare time from his pa's grocery-store. According to her, he would have been useful as a kind of secretary at times when he wasn't valeting me.'

‘Dene was to come with you on this expedition as a valet-secretary?' Bobby asked. ‘And his wife as maid to Mrs. Tyler?'

‘That was the notion. Lady Cambers had it all planned out – doing good to them by finding them a job, and good to me and Mrs. Tyler by finding us thoroughly good honest capable British servants. I tell you, she was a whale for doing good.'

‘Was it settled? Had you seen Dene?'

‘No, but I guess it was settled all right. Lady Cambers knew how to put the “p” in “push”, when she wanted a thing. It went or you bust – that was her motto. She had the money to back it, too. You see, this expedition is going to cost me money – real money, and I had no objection whatsoever to counting in her cheque. It did worry me some why she was so keen, so quick and sudden on us hiring those two young people, but they seemed suitable, and likely she thought it was for their good. And when,' he added thoughtfully, ‘Lady Cambers made up her mind a thing was for your good, then she saw you got it.'

‘Everyone I've talked to about her, says that,' Bobby remarked. ‘A formidable lady,' he added musingly. ‘Oh, by the way, Mr. Tyler, there was something about a pearl she had you wanted to buy – “Cleopatra's pearl”, it was called.'

Mr. Tyler looked slightly disconcerted.

‘Oh, you've heard about that,' he said. ‘I suppose they told you down there at Cambers House?'

‘We understood you wished to buy it – that you offered more than its market value...?'

‘Double,' interposed Mr. Tyler, with feeling. ‘Double, and the cheque written out and in my hand, and she wouldn't even look at it.'

‘You were anxious to have it if you offered so much more than it was actually worth?' Bobby remarked.

‘Mrs. Tyler set her heart on it,' the other answered. ‘Cleopatra wore them as ear-rings, and Mrs. Tyler wants to do the same. I've one of the pair, you know, that's why I wanted the other. I don't deny I was real peeved she was so mulish about it. I saw in the papers it was stolen along with the rest of what she had. I told her myself it was a fool trick to keep it there in that room the way she did.'

‘It was a little rash,' agreed Bobby, and though he made his voice as flat and non-committal as he could, Mr. Tyler began suddenly to go first a little red and then a little white.

‘See here,' he said fiercely, ‘you've got nothing on me. I can prove an alibi, for one thing. I can tell you just where I was in France the night it happened.'

‘Yes, we know that,' Bobby answered, a little rashly, for Mr. Tyler's face went simultaneously, though in different patches, both more red and more white.

‘Trailing me, are you?' he demanded. ‘I'll... I'll... I'll...'

‘Mr. Tyler, really,' Bobby protested. ‘It's our business to trail, as you call it, to get in touch with, as we say, everyone in any way connected with this business. We knew you were interested in the Cleopatra pearl; we knew it had disappeared with the rest of the jewellery. It was possible you might have some information to give us. The thief may, for instance, offer it to you for sale. In that case we should, of course, expect you to communicate at once with us.'

‘Oh, yeah,' said Mr. Tyler thoughtfully, dropping into pure American. ‘I've had no such offer,' he added briskly. ‘I don't mind telling you, though, I was specially willing to oblige Lady Cambers about this Dene boy and his young woman, so as to have her in a favourable mood next time I mentioned the Cleopatra pearl. Mrs. Tyler has just naturally set her heart on it, and when she has set her heart on a thing, then I don't hear the last of it till she's got it. See?'

Bobby said with sympathy that he did, and asked if Mr. Tyler had ever met Eddy Dene.

‘Once,' answered Mr. Tyler. ‘He was there, at Cambers House, once when I was there. Oh, and I saw him in his pa's store, too, when I went in to get some ink for my fountain-pen. I remember him because he seemed to be looking at you through the small end of the biggest telescope ever made. But Lady Cambers said that was only his way, and really he was always willing and eager to oblige. See here, young fellow, don't let any of your Scotland Yard smarties get it into their heads I know anything about that pearl, or I tell you straight – I'll go right away quick to the American Ambassador.'

‘I am sure, sir,' Bobby answered formally, ‘you will find you have nothing to complain of in the way the investigation is conducted.'

Mr. Tyler grunted fiercely, and looked fiercer still, and Bobby thanked him for all he had told him, and regretted that most likely he would have to be asked to repeat his statement later on, and might even be called as a witness at the adjourned inquest, and so took his leave.

To himself he thought, not without a certain grave exultation: ‘At last it really looks as if the pattern were beginning to take form and shape.'

But next morning, when Bobby presented himself at the headquarters of the county police, it was to find that Colonel Lawson had already, early as it was, departed for London. He had been informed over the phone of the statement made by Jones, and, greatly excited by the news, had departed in his car at the earliest possible moment for Town, so as to interview Jones in person, and to hear further details on the spot.

‘I expect he'll bring this Jones bird back with him,' Superintendent Moulland told Bobby. ‘He said, before he went, he thought we ought to have charge of him. Anyhow, the case seems over if Jones was an eyewitness of what happened, and I can't say I'm sorry, either. Give me a schedule to work to – times, names, hours of duty – and I'll handle it as well as the next man. Give me straightforward instructions to clear the streets when there's a row on, and I do it. But all this guessing in the dark who was where, when, and why, and if they weren't, then where were they, and because of that then it follows that this isn't so but something else is – well, I tell you straight, young fellow, it has me beat, and, what's more, it isn't my idea of police work, either. Guess, guess, guess all the time, and if you're right you're right, and if you aren't you're wrong, and all of it the same game as buying a ticket in a sweepstakes and hoping you've got the right number.'

‘Well,' Bobby protested, ‘I don't think it's quite like that, because, after all, there's no guessing about it, only the facts. Get your facts, and if you've got them right so they fit without contradicting each other, then you've got the truth, too.' Very slowly he added: ‘I've got so many facts now, I feel almost sure I've got the truth as well.'

‘Not so difficult,' observed Moulland, smiling a little, ‘when you've had the luck to be told who did it by someone who saw. Simple then to know who it was. But look here.' He fumbled in a drawer of his desk and produced a packet containing Eddy Dene's fountain-pen Bobby had discovered on the scene of the murder, and a long report on it from the new police laboratory. He put it down on his desk in front of him and poked at it disdainfully with his finger, and the longer he looked and poked, the broader grew his smile. ‘There isn't a thing about it,' he said finally, ‘they haven't found out up there. It's a wonder they didn't add a history of rubber, and a report on the character and record of the factory-manager. And what's it all amount to? Just nothing at all. Look at it yourself. The weight and length of the barrel and the cap, together and apart, put down to a decimal. The make of ink used – the “Perennial” they're pushing so much just now I dare say they would give a fiver to be able to say so in their advertisements. There was one of their chaps in here trying to sell it us so hard I had to get a sergeant in to throw him out before he would go. The amount of the ink in the barrel is noted – full up it was – and the very clever, useful deduction drawn that it hadn't been used much since filled. Very valuable to know that,' said Moulland, with heavy sarcasm. ‘And they've found out the nib isn't eighteen-carat gold, as advertised, not by a long chalk, and there are no fingerprints, and the nib is unusually broad. Fat lot of good knowing all that. If you ask me,' said Moulland, putting pen, report, and packet back in his drawer, ‘a sheer waste of time and of the taxpayer's money.'

‘I was always interested in that pen,' Bobby observed thoughtfully; ‘and more than ever now you know so much about it, it seems like an old friend. How did it get where I found it?' he asked abruptly.

‘All the scientific laboratory reports in the world won't help you to know that,' retorted Moulland. ‘Most likely one of the crowd dropped it. I've got some work to do,' he added meaningly. ‘Real work, too, not guessing-competitions.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby, getting to his feet in obedience to this hint. ‘Are there any instructions for me?'

‘Only to wait here till the chief returns.'

‘I suppose I can mooch round a bit till he comes,' Bobby asked. ‘I'll keep in touch of course.' 

‘You can do what you like,' Moulland informed him, ‘so long as you're on hand when wanted.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Bobby and withdrew, and first took himself to Cambers and the Cambers Arms, where he bought a soft drink, and then wandered round behind the building, where he found the landlord proudly surveying a placid-looking cow.

Bobby was not altogether sure what part of the cow the milk comes from, but the proud looks of the landlord warned him this could be no ordinary animal, and so he proceeded to praise it in terms of cautious vagueness that could have applied equally well to a motor-bus. And the landlord, a simple soul, responded bravely.

‘She's all you say, and more, sir,' he assured Bobby. ‘You wouldn't think, either, that last Sunday night I was sitting up with her expecting her to die on my hands. The whole blessed night I spent in the stable there, watching her, and look at her now.'

‘That was the night of the murder, wasn't it?' Bobby remarked.

‘That's right. Bad affair that is, too; never known the like before in these parts – though it's been good for business I would rather have been without. Crowds of people there've been, prying and staring, and wanting to know just where it happened and who did we think did it. I suppose you haven't found out anything yet for certain?'