Bones in the Barrow (12 page)

“Well, shall I?” the latter persisted.

“What'll he do?”

“He might turn it down. But he wouldn't mind my asking. Chaps can ask him anything—in reason. He'll give you a straight answer. But it had better be something sensible. One of the other lads, when he was new in our place, thought he'd get a rise out of Dr. Wintringham and asked him how many white hairs there were in a piebald guinea-pig's tail. Dr. Wintringham said he didn't know, but would like this chap to find out for himself. He got a cageful of experimental guinea-pigs sent down to his bench with a note to say when he had completed his count, Dr. Wintringham would like to see the figures, and would he make them out as a graph of white hairs per gram body-weight to age of specimen. That had Dennis, all right. He's a brain, the boss is.”

“You'd better not tell him, then. He might say I'd got to make a graph of windows in the houses on the railway line, per broken panes to age of slum.”

“That would be a good idea. Anyway, I'll tell him. There's no harm in it that I can see.”

David Wintringham saw no harm in it, either, but he also saw very little good. His first reactions were similar to those of Chief-Inspector Johnson, and since the matter was put to him by a red-faced, rather incoherent lab boy from his own department, with none of Terry Byrnes's absolute conviction, he was also a little suspicious. But, since he was David Wintringham, his unconquerable curiosity had not, even in middle age, begun to diminish, and he had, moreover, nothing in the detection line on hand at the moment.

“It sounds extremely vague,” he said mildly, but without allowing any discouraging note in his voice. “Do you mean to say that Scotland Yard took it up, and then dropped it?”

“Terry says so. He hasn't liked to go since the last time they told him to wait. They were to notify him when they had anything. But they never did.”

“Which does not necessarily mean they haven't got anything, but only that they have no need of your friend's assistance at this point.”

“Yes, sir. I see, sir.”

Cyril Collings began to edge towards the door. He had managed to catch the boss at the end of his day, and had missed his own train in consequence. It looked as if he might miss the next one. As his fingers reached for the handle of the door, David said casually, “Will you be seeing this friend of yours tonight?”

Cyril straightened up smartly.

“I could, sir. He lives about four miles from our place at Toxley Green. I could bike over.”

“Then ask him to come along tomorrow evening about this time. He works at an insurance office, didn't you say?”

Cyril supposed he had said this, since the boss knew it, but he could not remember doing so. The familiar awe of Dr. Wintringham's brain rendered him speechless, but he managed to nod his agreement.

“Right. See you both tomorrow, then,” said David pleasantly, and the boy slipped out of the room almost before he had finished speaking.

David's secretary found him still smiling gently to himself, when she took some papers into his room a few minutes later. But she was used to it, and did not wonder why. In her opinion Dr. Wintringham took an unpardonably frivolous view of both his research and his detection. SCIENCE and REAL LIFE were both sacred in her eyes.

“I have a new case,” said David to Jill that evening.

“Interesting?”

Jill's thoughts were at St. Edmund's, David decided. As well they might be, since she knew he had come straight home from there.

“A mystery case. Or rather, the pale, faint ghost of one.”

“What are you talking about, darling?”

“Some new detection—perhaps.”

“Oh, dear!”

Jill, in the past, had been afraid of personal danger for her husband in these pursuits, sometimes with justification. But no real harm ever seemed to come to David, and now she only felt a mild annoyance at the thought of household upsets, late or missed meals, and comings and goings at all hours of the day and night.

“Why ghost?” she asked in a resigned voice.

David gave her a brief outline of Terry's story as it had been relayed to him by Cyril Collings. She was frankly incredulous.

“It must have been a rather sordid, violent sort of quarrel,” she insisted. “Perhaps someone did bonk a woman on the head. She can't have been killed. There must have been other people in the house.”

“Why?”

“Well, even if there weren't, the body would be found.”

“Would it? Bodies have been hidden before now. In trunks, under floors, in hen-runs, in garages and sheds, in cellars, in cupboards. They have been put in acid, dropped in rivers, chopped up, boiled up—”

“Stop!” said Jill. “You needn't go through all the loathsome cases of the century.”

“I'm only explaining why murder is not ruled out by the delay of—what is it—five months? in discovering a body.”

“But by this time someone who knew her must be asking what's happened to her.”

“Exactly. I think I'll ring up Steve and see if he knows anything about it.”

Superintendent Mitchell was at his own home. He listened to David in an ominous silence. The latter repeated his final question.

“Do you know anything about the case, Steve, or don't you? And stop breathing like a grampus. I can hardly hear myself speak.”

In the explosion that followed David plucked the receiver from his ear, holding it some six inches away. Jill moved quietly nearer. The infuriated voice at the other end boomed on.

“Of all the infernal luck to have this wretched boy playing straight into your hands. Nosy young beggar. I'd like to—”

“Tut,” said David, drawing the receiver nearer to exclude Jill. “My wife is listening to your bell-like tones, Steve, and probably the exchange as well. Can I come round and see you?”

“What, now?”

“Yes. It's barely nine o'clock and I want to know a little more before I see this boy myself. Or would you like me to start an investigation from scratch on the information Terry will give me? Would you prefer that?”

“Like hell I would.”

“Be with you in twenty minutes.”

“Thirty. I shall send out a general warning to pick you up for speeding. Fine, five pounds, or three months.”

“I'll take the three months. Might get my textbook revised on time. My publisher is always grumbling.”

In exactly twenty minutes David arrived at the superintendent's house in Edgware. Having taken an unusual route from his own house in Hampstead he had not been observed by any police officer on the way until he reached Edgware itself, when he was driving along the main road at less than thirty miles an hour.

Mitchell brought out glasses and two bottles of beer. Mrs. Mitchell, after five minutes' conversation with the distinguished visitor, removed herself and her mending to another room.

“Now,” said the superintendent, sourly, “what do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“If we knew everything ourselves,” said Mitchell, “there wouldn't be a case. There'd have been a conviction.”

David sat up.

“Then I take it there was a murder and this boy was the only witness.”

Mitchell shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I'll put it briefly. This is what we've got. One. A witnessed scene of violence, possibly a killing. Two. Fragments of human bones, found on a roof a few miles away on the other side of the railway from the described scene. Also human blood on the upper back windowsill of a house in the row where the bones were found. Fingerprints of the landlady and her daily and several others, all over the room and window. The place has been cleaned out and relet several times since the blood must have got there. Nothing identified from our records, but may be useful later on. Bones identified as human, female. Three. A mysterious type, using two names, both probably false, who brings a hired refrigerator to this house where we found the blood, and to that very room. The refrig has been traced, but not the man. No prints or clues of any value on the refrig.”

Mitchell explained Chief-Inspector Johnson's theory of the part played by cats in the discovery of the bones. David listened with a closed face and eyes in which nothing showed except an alert interest.

“Four,” continued Mitchell. “A woman reports a missing friend, which leads us to a man whose wife no longer lives at home.”

“You're very cautious.”

“Bob Johnson is very cautious. For a long time this chap denied his wife had left him. Now he swears she is living with someone called Peter.”

“Just that? No surname?”

“No surname. He declares he does not know, and has never met, his wife's lover.”

“That's quite possible.”

“But fairly unlikely.”

“It depends.”

“He declares he has never wanted to know.”

“That is also fairly unlikely.”

“I thought so.”

“Anyway, husband of missing lady no help. Does the lad, what's his name, Terry Byrnes, identify her photograph?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Dead end,” said David.

“Not quite. In fact,” said Mitchell, “we seem to have got quite a step further in the last few weeks. Fact number five is particularly interesting.”

He went on to describe the Duckington discovery.

“The man, Hilton, was working at the spot, and the vicar's party subsequently dug up recent human bones there. An expert on this kind of relic, called Wilson, sent them on to us on the vicar's advice, after he'd proved they were recent, not prehistoric. We've had them compared by a pathologist with the small bones from the roof in Waterbury Street. He says he can't be absolutely positive, because all the bones are the worse for wear, but he thinks they may belong to the same individual.”

“Blimey!” said David. “Now you have got something.”

“Johnson went down to Duckington, of course,” continued Mitchell. “He saw the vicar and the landlady of the pub where Hilton stayed, and the girl Daisy, and her boy friend, Joe, at the Royal Arms. And he got one more significant piece of news. There was a second bloke interested in ancient burials that week end. Asking the way to the barrows. Called at the Royal Arms for a drink and stayed chatting till Joe told him what he wanted to know.”

“Did Joe tell him where to dig?”

“More than that. He hold him to go to the vicar for permission. Explaining, as well, what Daisy had told him, that that was what this Mr. Hilton did.”

“Do we know if this man was anything to do with Hilton?”

“No.”

“Did he go to the vicar?”

“No.”

“Then what did he do?”

“He was seen riding a motor-bike up the footpath on to the downs. Duckington was rather scandalized. Two young people nearly had their feet run over. They said he had a haversack on his shoulder, and as the bike bounced, it rattled.”

“Oh, come,” said David. “After the event!”

“No one in Duckington knows about Wilson's findings.”

“But they have all heard Daisy's theories, which are much more exciting.”

“True.”

“And from what you say she will be doubly convinced she was right when she does hear the truth about the bones. Have you traced this other man?”

“No. He was wearing full motor-cycling kit when he called at the Royal Arms, including a leather balaclava, and goggles on his forehead. He was clean-shaved, and of average height. That's all the barman, Joe, can say of him. No one else seems to have noticed him.”

David thought for a few minutes.

“Don't you find it odd,” he said at last, “that
the other man
, as we must call him, never seems to materialize, whereas Mr. Alastair Hilton is always readily available?”

“I know,” said Mitchell. “Johnson feels the same. The other man, as you call him, may not exist. Or rather he may be Hilton, too.”

“What about the bones Daisy saw in Hilton's possession? Have you got those?”

“Naturally we asked Hilton about them, and he had no objection to our examining them. He had already arranged to take them up to the British Museum.”

“They were genuine, then?”

“Quite genuine. They tallied with his pieces of the jug Daisy broke, the rest of which the vicar's party found. The whole of the pottery is now at the Museum, being stuck together, I believe.”

“Well,” said David, “I suppose you've no objection to my having a look round. A little chat with Inspector Johnson, and perhaps a peek at the bones. I don't much like the idea of this cat's-meat man. Incidentally, I wonder what he did with the head? These tidy-minded murderers usually take it off to dispose of separately. Must know it's specially liable to be identified in these days of universal recorded dentistry. I should also like to see the inside of the house where the deed was done.”

“If we knew those two answers we'd be well on the way to a solution,” said Mitchell, sourly.

“No. You'd still have to find Peter.”

“Who may not exist.”

“I wonder. Perhaps I could get more out of Hilton than you people have done. No objection to my trying, I suppose. By the way, have you given him any reason to suspect that you think Mrs. Hilton is dead?”

“No. He won't talk to us, so we haven't talked to him.”

“Mutual sulks. Not very paying, Steve. I'll see what I can do. What about those bones?”

Next day, after finishing his own work at St. Edmund's, and postponing his interview with Terry Byrnes for a couple of days, David went to Scotland Yard, where he found Chief-Inspector Johnson with Superintendent Mitchell, and on a table, laid out on a sheet of white paper, several human bones of varying size.

“Want to see our pathologist's report first?” asked Johnson, after they had been introduced. “Or the archaeologist's letter?”

“No, thanks. After, if I may.”