Bones in the Barrow (13 page)

The inspector nodded, with approval in his eyes. David lifted, examined, fiddled, put together, took apart.

“Not being Spilsbury of great and glorious memory, I can't tell you the colour of her eyes, or the shape of her mouth,” he said. “But by a miracle you found a couple of bones of the left wrist on the roof in Lambeth, and the vicar dug up part of the corresponding forearm bones in Duckington. Blessed be the morbidly curious, for they shall occasionally uncover crime.”

“Don't be profane,” said Mitchell severely.

“These belonged to a woman of early middle age,” said David. “Rather short than tall, but with long fingers. Her hands would probably be conspicuous, as they would appear longer than average, and since she was suffering from early rheumatoid arthritis, the joints would be noticeably enlarged.”

Chief-Inspector Johnson nodded.

“The report makes all those points,” he said.

“Has it anything I haven't said?”

“No. Except that it lists the bones exactly, with detailed descriptions.”

David was again looking at the relics.

“I wonder what happened to the ring,” he said.

“The ring?”

“The wedding ring. Perhaps it was removed by the murderer. Only he would have to cut it off. It wouldn't have gone over swollen joints, and I should think all the joints were swollen pretty equally. Or perhaps someone's pretty puss spat it out, or is harbouring it in an accommodating caecum. Or has passed it on a neighbouring roof or an adjacent backyard.”

“People down that way who came across it wouldn't be likely to report it. Might try the pawnshops, if we knew it had a distinguishing mark.”

“Or the vet, or the Blue Cross, if it's been that way lately,” said David. He turned from the bones.

“I consider myself more or less briefed by Terry Byrnes,” he said. “When I see Hilton, if he will agree to meet me, I shall put it to him that Terry may have seen his wife. I shall begin to describe the circumstances, and see what reaction I get. Any objection?”

After some hesitation both Mitchell and Johnson agreed to his proposal, and David left the Yard, determined to find Alastair Hilton at the earliest possible opportunity.

The sun was still above the horizon when David came out on to the Embankment. In a clear sky the seagulls wheeled and dived where an elderly woman threw bread to them from the parapet of the river. The tide was high, and the water, against the stone confining walls, rose and fell in violent waves churned up by the tugs moving their strings of barges on the turn of the flood.

David, fitting the key into his car door, saw all this, and saw too the streams of neat clerical workers making their way back to suburbia across Hungerford Bridge, or on buses, or by Underground. No time like the present, he thought, as he turned the car.

He drove off to the west, keeping to the Embankment road as far as Battersea Bridge, and crossing the river at Putney. In less than half an hour he had found the Willows, Grange Road, Boxwood, and was pleased to see a car standing in the little garage beside the house.

But his easy deduction was soon proved false, for the housekeeper who opened the door explained that Mr. Hilton was not home yet, and never took the car to London in the ordinary way.

“He usually gets the five forty-eight,” she said. “Gets in six twenty-two. Then he walks up: matter of fifteen minutes. Unless he isn't feeling up to it and takes a taxi. But he generally walks.”

“I see,” said David. “Then he will be here at any minute now?”

“That's right.” The housekeeper looked him up and down. “Was he expecting you—sir?” she added, with some reluctance.

“No. But I have come from London and I particularly want to speak to him. My name is Wintringham. Dr. Wintringham.”

With a slight feeling of guilt David watched the sacred tide having its effect. Privilege of profession, he saw, would give him what he wanted. Wonderful how the public reverenced the scientist. Or was it the witch doctor?

“I expect you'd better come in and wait, Doctor. He won't be long now.”

She showed him into the pleasant sitting-room, with its view of the garden, its flowers and its photographs. He found her lingering, anxious to continue the conversation.

“I hope you won't mind my asking, Doctor. But is it about Mrs. Hilton? We've been getting that worried.”

“You and Mr. Hilton, do you mean?”

“
Him
!” Her scorn was absolute. “Not him! All he ever cared about was his old fossils and such-like. No. It's me and my sister, and some of Mrs. Hilton's friends here that we work for. I only come to live in since she went, and not if he's away. I wouldn't be alone in the house. He had some extra help for me at the start, but I found her messing about in Mrs. Hilton's drawers, so she went. But it's a long time now. And I've not had a word of Mrs. Hilton since that last time I saw her.”

“When was that?”

The housekeeper looked disturbed.

“I don't know why I'm talking to you, a perfect stranger, like this, when I've never said a word to him, himself. But she told me it was as much as the place was worth to tell him I'd seen her.”

“When was that?” repeated David, gently.

“November last. Right at the beginning of the month.”

“November!” David stared at her. “Go on, Mrs.— Mrs.—?”

“Mason, sir. It was a Saturday, see, and I go twelve sharp as a rule, though he doesn't come in till about two. But this particular Saturday I stayed on to wash out a few things for him, socks and the like, and as I was here I thought I might as well have a bite before I went on home. So I was just going to put on my coat at half-past one when I heard someone moving about upstairs and I nearly dropped, because I thought it was cosh-boys, and me alone in the house. But I went into the hall, meaning to see if they'd left the door open and I could get out quietly, and there she was at the head of the stairs, looking down at me. Well, I was so glad to see it was only her I said, ‘Thank God!' out loud. And she came down quickly and said in a sort of a whisper: ‘I've not come back, Mrs. Mason, not yet. Don't tell Mr. Hilton I've been. Whatever you do, promise you won't tell him, or anyone else. Promise!' So of course I had to say I promised. And then she said: ‘But I am coming back. As soon as I can. It won't be long. Only I want it to be a surprise for Mr. Hilton.' She must have seen my face because she went on, ‘I had to fetch something of mine I forgot to take before.' ”

“Had she anything in her hand you recognized?”

“No. I expect it was some of her jewellery, and that. She had a good few things. I see them in one of her drawers after she'd gone in July.”

“But you saw nothing in November?”

“Not till after she'd gone. Then they weren't where they had been. Not that I'm in the habit of looking in her drawers. But after the way that other girl behaved I liked to keep an eye on things.”

“I understand.”

“I was took right aback by her being there. It seemed so unnatural. I said, ‘Surely you haven't come all the way from Scotland to get one or two things of yours? Couldn't Mr. Hilton or me have packed them up and sent them?' And she went very red, and said she couldn't explain but she had to come. And her friend was better, anyhow, and she would soon be home for good.”

“That was in November,” David repeated thoughtfully.

“About the first week. And now we're nearly May, and not a word about her coming. Sometimes I think I ought to tell Mr. Hilton and sometimes I think he'd be so angry. I didn't tell him before, I daren't do it. And then there was that man called to see him. Second time he'd been, I understand. I'm not nosy, I assure you, but I wasn't born yesterday. That man was from the police; I'd take my oath. So I did hope you'd got news of her, and come on her behalf or something. I hope you'll excuse me, sir, I'm sure. Mrs. Hilton was always very good to me.”

“I'm very grateful,” said David. “If I may, I will pass on your news to Mr. Hilton myself. When he understands what I have to tell him, I'm quite sure he won't be angry with you.”

“There's his key in the door, now,” said Mrs. Mason, in a flutter. “I'll go and tell him you want to speak to him.”

Alastair Hilton opened his eyes at last, and a little colour came back into his grey-white face.

“You fainted,” said David, holding a glass to his lips. “Swallow this.”

Hilton obeyed, coughed, and slowly raised himself on his elbow. He was lying on the floor of his sitting room, covered with a rug. He coughed again, and as memory came flooding back, he struggled to sit up, and then rested, his face against his drawn-up knees, his arms round them.

“I should have been more careful,” said David, self-reproach in his voice.

“You weren't to know,” the other replied. “My heart has been rather dicky for several years now. I was invalided out of the Army in the war, much to my annoyance.”

“Were you married then?”

“No.” Hilton raised his head to look at David, then dropped it again with a weary gesture. “No, not till afterwards. Perhaps I was too old, and too ill. Perhaps it wasn't fair on her all along.”

David turned away. He had sprung his news and got an outsize reaction, and he wasn't at all proud of it. On the contrary, he was ashamed of himself. He had been grossly brutal and not very clever. Still, the mischief was done, and at any rate Hilton was now inclined to talk.

Helping the sick man up and settling him again to rest on the settee, propped now against cushions, David found himself definitely ranged with Hilton against an unknown evil.

“I'm glad you've cleared the air,” said Hilton, looking up at his visitor and attempting a smile, “even if it was rather a drastic way of doing it. At least I know why the police have been here, and what they suspect me of.”

“I don't think they have anything as definite as suspicions,” said David.

“Have you?”

“No.” He added, with some emphasis, “None, now.”

Hilton lay back, considering.

“I should have thought my faint would strike you as highly suspicious.”

“No. Because you timed it wrong. You listened to all the factual horrors quite unmoved. It was only when I described the scene in the house by the railway, and described the woman as Terry saw her, that you were overcome. I conclude that until that moment you thought none of it had anything to do with you.”

Hilton nodded.

“I could see her in every word you used. I must talk to this boy. I must show him a good photograph. I don't mind telling you that snapshot I gave the chief-inspector was not even of my wife. You see, I thought his inquiries might be from the other side; I mean, this man my wife was mixed up with might himself have a wife trying to raise hell for them both. I wanted to avoid any publicity. The chief-inspector would have realized the snapshot was no good if he'd taken the trouble to compare it, with, say, the picture over there.”

He pointed to the large photograph on the table near one of the windows.

“Is this a recent one?” asked David.

“A year ago.”

“A sad, disturbing face,” David went on, allowing his thoughts full expression. “The eyes of a little girl suddenly interrupted in a day-dream. The mouth of a disappointed, not very generous woman.”

“You're wrong,” said Hilton, in a low voice. “Too generous. She'd do anything any knave liked to blarney her into.”

David came back to the settee and sat down near it.

“The essential first thing,” he said, “is to find this man Peter. We must hope Terry will now be able to identify your wife. But we must trace the man. Have you honestly no idea who he is?”

“Absolutely honestly,” said Hilton, and David believed that he spoke the truth.

“Very well. Now, though
you
don't know
him
from Adam, it is obvious that
he
knows something, a good deal, in fact, about
you
. So it seems to me there are three classes of person, any one of which he might belong to. First, some friend or acquaintance of both you and your wife, either here, or anywhere you have lived, or through your business. Second, a person on purely business terms with you, but whom you would both know, though you yourself would think of him more by his walk in life than as an individual.”

“You mean the milkman or the sweep?”

“Something like that. The tout, the gardener, the cashier at the bank, the hairdresser at his shop. You will have to think, not only among your friends, but also among the host of those who serve and provision you.”

“And the third type?” asked Hilton.

“This would be the most difficult; perhaps hopeless. Someone totally unknown to you whom Mrs. Hilton met in London. I understand she went up once or twice a week to shop or see a play or a film?”

“She did. But her main reason for doing so, at least during the last two years, was quite a serious one. She was trying to find a cure for her rheumatoid arthritis.”

“I see.” David drew a long breath. “Then can you tell me where she went? I mean was there any particular shop or institution or individual she went to consult? I have heard about her falling out with your G.P. down here. Or rather your falling out with him on her account.”

“Yes. She was right off real doctors. A specialist recommended by our local man ordered gold injections, which upset her badly. Then cortisone came along, and she was mad to have it, until she heard about the snags. But all the time she was collecting advertisements in the papers and trying everything she could lay her hands on.”

“Vaguely? Like that? Just
anything
?”

“There was one place, I believe, somewhere near the British Museum, she favoured particularly. One of these herbal health shops. Quite harmless, I'm sure. She found it one day while I was in the Museum looking at some Roman glass. She never wanted anything out of the past. Only the present, and a sort of glorified technicolour future she kept trying to find. When I came out she was walking up and down the courtyard with a parcel under her arm, excited and—beautiful.”