Night's Cloak by E R Punshon

Author:E R Punshon [Punshon, E R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2016-07-21T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XX

BETTER DEAD

ON HIS way to county police headquarters that morning Bobby called at the shop where his city colleagues had discovered that a Japanese knife had recently been purchased by a customer giving the name of Thomasine Rowe. Nor was it difficult for Bobby to assure himself that the Thomasine Rowe of the purchase was identical with the Thomasine Rowe who had been the dead man’s secretary. She was not one to be easily forgotten, nor one whom it was difficult to identify by description.

“Very striking young lady indeed,” the shop assistant said, and Bobby agreed.

“I have heard her called that before,” he remarked. “I think it’s true.”

The shopman did not quite understand.

“You wait till you see her,” he said. “Then you’ll agree.” He leaned across the counter. “Is it about the murder?” he asked in a low, confidential voice. “The paper says Mr Weston was stabbed and that Miss Rowe was his secretary. If he got monkeying about with a girl of spirit like her—well, I wouldn’t blame her, would you?”

“If police jumped to conclusions the way some of you people do,” Bobby remarked severely, “I don’t know what would happen. Probably I should arrest you on the spot as a likely accomplice.”

“Here, I say,” protested the shopman, feeling this was going much too far.

“Jumping to conclusions,” said Bobby. “Don’t you do it. And remember there are such things as actions for libel. Wouldn’t like to pay a few hundred pounds damages, would you?”

“Here, I say,” protested the shopman again, feeling this was going very much further than going too far.

“Besides,” added Bobby, more mildly, hoping that for a time at least he had scotched that love of gossip so deeply implanted in fallen human nature, “you sold the thing as a paper-knife. Paper-knife. Japanese. One,” he read aloud from the ledger entry shown him.

“That’s right,” agreed the shopman; and so Bobby said “Definitely?” in a questioning voice, and the shopman said: “Definitely right,” which Bobby decided was probably the strongest affirmative (polite) the other knew.

“All the same,” added the shopman, “it was steel, and good steel. I will say that for the Japs. Steel’s a thing they know about. Not much of a job to sharpen it up.”

“I suppose you didn’t do that?” Bobby asked; and the shopman looked alarmed again and said “Definitely, no,” and Bobby went away, feeling he had at least done his best to keep the man from talking.

All the same he was not much surprised when that afternoon the Midwych Evening Intelligence announced that an important clue had been discovered, the county police having been informed of the provenance of the murder weapon by the active and intelligent city police—the reporter of the Intelligence thought it important to keep in with the city rather than with the county police and moreover had a grudge against Bobby, whom he considered much too secretive. And this statement was all the more impressive and all the more to the prestige of the city police as so few of the readers of the Intelligence knew what “provenance” meant.

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