Death Among the Sunbathers by E.R. Punshon

Sybil said quickly,
    â€˜That’s mother, I must see what she wants.’
    She left the room quickly and Mitchell asked Keene again – he had put the same question to him before – ‘You are sure you can’t think of anything to throw light on this affair? If we could get a hint of any motive...’
    â€˜I wish I could,’ declared Keene emphatically, ‘it’s an awful business... I can hardly realize it yet... it’ll pretty nearly kill old Mrs Frankland... Sybil, too, awful for her... I can’t imagine why anyone... most people liked Jo, one of the jolly sort, got on with people... of course she hated me, but that was only because she thought I wasn’t good enough for Sybil and didn’t believe in the Kenya idea... thought it wasn’t possible. It was though, and so she would have found out before long.’
    â€˜Do you mean you were openly on bad terms?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Had there been any serious quarrel between you?’
    â€˜Oh, no, we were always civil enough when we met... of course, we weren’t pals exactly, because I knew she wanted Sybil to break it off, but I didn’t care because I knew Sybil wouldn’t... besides I knew it was only because of the money and she thought I wouldn’t have enough to make a start in Kenya and so it was cracked to go there. As a matter of fact I have a purchaser at a good price in view, and if it comes off we shall be all right.’
    â€˜That’s good,’ said Mitchell heartily, just as Sybil came back into the room, looking flushed and excited.
    â€˜Mother thought she heard someone in the garden,’ she said. ‘I told her it would be only one of those awful newspaper people, but I went to look and it was that dreadful man, Maurice,’ she added to Keene, using his first name, ‘you know, Bobs-the-Boy, I saw him just as plainly as ever. What can he be here for?’
    â€˜I’ll go and look,’ Keene exclaimed.
    Mitchell and Ferris went with him, but there was no one in the garden. No one, in fact, was visible at all, for even the journalists had retired by now to hand in their reports, except Mitchell’s own car with Jacks dozing at the wheel and the plain-clothes man strolling up and down. Jacks’s testimony was not very valuable perhaps, for he admitted having been half asleep, but the plain-clothes man protested he had been keeping a sharp look-out; he certainly seemed alert enough, and he was positive no human being could have gone by without being seen. And it was quite certain there was no one now in the garden.
    â€˜If anyone was there,’ said Mitchell emphatically, ‘he was only playing the fool, and if you see Bobs-the-Boy you can tell him so.’
    â€˜That’s what I think, too,’ declared Ferris. ‘Playing the fool.’
    The plain-clothes man saluted.
    â€˜If Bobs-the-Boy is seen, message shall be delivered, sir,’ he promised, ‘but I am ready to swear no human being could have gone into the garden or come out again without my seeing him.’
    Sybil, however, insisted that she had seen the man clearly in the light of the street lamp at the corner; and as they were all four returning to the house, leaving Jacks to continue his dozing at the wheel and the plain-clothes man his watch, Keene said to Mitchell,
    â€˜Do you know anyone who calls himself that? I thought your man out there... and you, too...’
    â€˜Well,’ Mitchell explained, ‘we didn’t see anyone, did we? so it’s hard to be sure, but there’s a ticket-of-leave man, name of Ford, Robert Ford. He was sent away for ten years for burglary last time he was up, but some months ago he was let out on licence. He brags a lot, and he has a trick of saying if there’s any job to be done, “Bob’s the Boy for that”. So he often gets called by that name. It sounds as if it might be the same man.’
    They were back in