Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery by E.R. Punshon

Author:E.R. Punshon [Punshon, E.R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2016-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVIII

NOCTURNAL TRYST

The night was clear and very quiet, its stillness only disturbed by those faint undertones of sound which tell at such times how the small creatures of field and wood, those who need the protection of the kindly night, are out and about their business.

Hurry as he might, by the time Bobby had changed his slippers for outdoor shoes, opened the locked and bolted front door, hurried down the garden path to the open lane, there was no sign or trace of the figure, he thought a woman’s, he had seen pass by so silently, so swiftly, as though upon some errand in which delay would be disastrous.

He followed in the same direction. At the entrance to Middles he stopped. The drive gate was shut. Nothing to show that anyone had entered there, nor had he heard any sound of the heavy five-barred gate being opened or closed. To avoid making any such sound himself, he vaulted over it, and walked a little way up the drive. The house was in darkness. Nothing to show that any stirred within and no dog barked. He went back and down the lane once more. There was a pasture field between Fern Cottage and the trees that here formed the boundary of the Middles domain. Across the field ran a path joining farther on another path where that entered the spinney or small wood in which Bobby, on the day of the escape of the motor cyclist, had lost sight of him.

As Bobby knew, this first path, following rising ground and skirting the Middles gardens, gave a clear view of the rear of the house. He wondered if the woman he had seen had gone this way. He followed the path some distance, about half way to the small wood farther on, and assured himself that there was no more sign of life or movement at the back than there had been in the front. But what then had become of that strange figure he had seen flitting so swiftly, so silently by, and what the errand?

His first idea that a nocturnal visit was being paid to Mr. Fielding seemed mistaken, unless indeed most careful precautions were being taken. And that did not seem likely. But if the woman’s destination had not been Middles, what had it been? There was no other house that way for a mile or two. A secret midnight tryst, perhaps?

Bobby retraced his steps till he came to the fence that, beneath the trees, divided the pasture field from the Middles domain. As he had half expected, he found a gap that showed signs of occasional use. Possibly it was used by Mr. Fielding if he wished to visit Miss Bellamy unobserved, or by others of his household wishing to reach the spinney and the path that connected Steep Lane with that other lane where the escaping motor cyclist had abandoned his machine—since claimed, by the way, by the aggrieved owner from whom it had been seized when he left it a moment unattended.

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