Bones in the Barrow (8 page)

“Not as housekeeper.”

“Mrs. Hilton ran the place single-handed?”

“No. We had this woman who now does my housekeeping, for two hours in the morning.”

“Have you had anyone to help the housekeeper?”

“Not now.”

“But you did have someone?”

“Yes. I got rid of her.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I considered her untrustworthy.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“No.”

Either the woman knew too much, or guessed too much, thought Johnson.

“Was it wise to dismiss her? From the point of view of gossip, I mean. In the circumstances.”

“In what circumstances.”

Johnson drew himself up.

“We can only act on information received. Mrs. Lapthorn is convinced that your wife, whom she was meeting regularly up to the end of last November, was living in London with a man called Peter. She does not know his other name. Until you show me that this story is nonsense I have to assume that it may be correct. Give me the address in Scotland and I will check it and inform Mrs. Lapthorn of her error. It is as much in your own interest as your wife's. Won't you do that?”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

Alastair Hilton turned his head away until the inspector could see only the hard line of his cheek.

“Because I don't know her address. She never went to Scotland. She left a message, a short note to me, saying she was going to this old school friend of hers. To cover her tracks for a few days, I suppose. Then she wrote to say it was not true. She had left me for good—with a man called Peter.”

“Peter. Peter what?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't—”

“It is probably too late to convince you, Inspector. But that is the truth. I do not know this fellow. I doubt if I have ever seen him. Now do you understand my position?”

There was a long silence. Chief-Inspector Johnson felt a strong sense of outrage. It was bad enough to have the chap lying and evading questions and keeping his shifty eyes turned always towards the garden. But to suggest—

“Do you mean to say you don't know who the man is?”

“I mean more than that. I don't even know if he truly exists.”

“Are you suggesting your wife is not normal?”

A little smile appeared on Mr. Hilton's thin lips.

“Now I wonder what exactly you mean by that, Inspector? No, don't try to tell me. I can guess. You simply mean, Is my wife going off her head, up the pole, or round the bend, as they say now-a-days? I don't go so far as that. But Felicity is incurably romantic: she always was. She still has quite childish illusions about people, particularly men. She is easily flattered. If anyone showed her a reasonable amount of admiration she would conclude that it meant the arrival of a grand passion.”

“Which of your friends or acquaintances do you suspect of showing her this admiration?”

“None.”

The inspector pursed up his mouth again.

“Come now, sir. You admit she has gone off with another man. It wouldn't be natural in any husband not to find out who the blighter is.”

“Then I'm afraid I have behaved very unnaturally.”

“Haven't you moved a finger, sir?”

“Oh, yes. Several. I wrote her a letter. She asked me to. And I addressed it, as Janet Lapthorn addressed hers, to Charing Cross Post Office. Perhaps I ought to explain that in her letter to me, saying she had gone away with—this Peter—she asked me to let her divorce me. My letter was in answer to that.”

“What did you say, if you don't mind my asking?”

“I don't mind at all. I said nothing would persuade me, either to supply her with evidence for a divorce, or to divorce her. I advised her to come home, and reminded her that I was a very patient man. I also reminded her that she had been obliged to come home before, and suggested she might as well not put it off for so long this time.”

Chief-Inspector Johnson whistled softly.

“So it's not the first time.”

“Not by any manner of means. It is the third.”

“I see. On the other two occasions was the man unknown to you?”

“No. The first was very short and badly bungled. A long week end, and I happened to run into the chap's wife in the market town where we lived at the time. She and her husband had a house in the country outside it. She was supposed to be in Devon with him and my wife. We sent telegrams—brief and to the point—and they came home the same day. I moved to London at the end of the month. The other affair was four years ago in Ealing, where we had a flat. She was away three months. She came back when I discovered that the chap had a wife in America. He was a business friend, an Englishman who travelled the U.S.A. He settled over there afterwards. As far as I know.”

“You have considered, I suppose, whether either of these men could have turned up again?”

“Neither of them was called Peter.”

“That need not matter. Your wife would want to conceal his identity.”

Alastair Hilton did not make any answer to that. Johnson, a dogged man, ploughed on.

“Then you assure me, do you, that you have no exact knowledge of your wife's present whereabouts?”

“None whatever.”

“And you don't know where she has been at all since she left home in July?”

“August. August 10th.”

“Thank you. I am glad you decided to tell me that.”

Mr. Hilton made an angry movement with his right hand; it went strangely with his calm pale face, but he said nothing.

“You don't know at all where she has been since August 10th?”

“Not precisely. Somewhere in London, of course.”

“Because you know that Mrs. Lapthorn was meeting her there? Fair enough. But since last November Mrs. Lapthorn has neither seen her nor heard from her. In other words she has disappeared.”

“Because she doesn't choose to have any more to do with Janet Lapthorn?”

“I hope that is the reason.”

“What other reason could there be?”

Johnson did not answer this directly.

“Tell me, Mr. Hilton. How often did your wife write to you after she left you?”

“Twice. The letter she left here for me, and which I answered as I have told you, and the other letter, telling me the truth and asking for a divorce.”

“You have heard nothing of her since?”

“I did not say that. You asked me if she had written. She did not. But a solicitor, acting on her behalf, wrote to ask me if I would reconsider my attitude and allow her suit to be undefended, or alternatively take divorce proceedings against her? I answered through my solicitor that I would not do either.”

“How often did this occur?”

“Three times.”

“When was the last time?”

Mr. Hilton turned to look at the inspector. He seemed to be genuinely concerned at last.

“It was some time in November,” he said, with surprise beginning to spread over his face. “Yes, about the beginning of the second week.”

“Ah.”

The two men continued to stare at each other, and Johnson saw a shadow, that might have been fear, pass quickly over the other's face, leaving it as composed as before. The inspector took a step forward.

“Have you now, or have you ever had, since November, any doubt about your wife's personal safety? Any fear that something might have happened to her? An illness? Even a street accident?”

“No.”

“Not even when Mrs. Lapthorn started writing to you to say she could not get in touch with her friend?”

“Not even then.”

“I find that rather strange, sir.”

“Do you? I don't, and I will tell you why. Since my wife left me I have made her an allowance, sufficient to keep her in moderate comfort at a small hotel or in rooms. At her own request the money was paid direct by my bank into hers. She has for a long time had a separate account at a central London branch of my bank. As I say, the money has been paid in, and the account is still open.

Withdrawals have been made at regular intervals. Naturally I have known about that from time to time.”

“You mean she is still drawing on her account, provided by you?”

“Exactly. So you see, Inspector, I can't get up much enthusiasm for Janet Lapthorn's melodramatic suspicions.”

“Who told you she had suspicions? I did not.”

“She did, herself.”

“I see.”

“I wonder if you do, Inspector. I wonder if you ever see anything at all clearly. I wonder very much what point there is in coming here to discuss my private affairs, and my wife's behaviour. It would be much better, surely, to give your energies to the detection of crime.”

The inspector was not to be drawn.

“Well, I think that's all, sir,” he said stolidly. “For the present, at any rate.”

Looking back at the gate he saw that Mr. Hilton was watching his departure from the front door. He gave him a friendly salute and received a friendly smile in return. But he took the next train back to London with a feeling of deep frustration. The whole thing was too simple, too glib. And where was Mrs. Hilton, anyway? As the train passed Wimbledon he began to stare out the window. Bombed spaces, new blocks of flats, mean remnants of slum, grimy curtains, smeared panes. Behind one of these Terry Byrnes had seen murder done. Or had he imagined it? No, Terry knew what he had seen. An otherwise unreported murder. And a reported disappearance. Both in late November, four months ago. Not enough to connect them. But it wouldn't be a bad thing to find Mrs. Hilton. Not at all a bad thing.

Boxwood station is no different from a dozen others on the suburban lines of the Southern Region. A low red-brick central block, on each platform, with entrance hall, waiting-room, stationmaster's office, and parcels room. A sloping roof protecting passengers in front of these buildings. Gardens at the two ends, nicely tended. A single handcart, a few bags of mail, a crate of carrier pigeons to be released at leisure by the station porter, a great many bicycles on a row of bicycle stands. And the station bookstall. This lay on the up side to the right of the main entrance and exit; it was similar in design to other bookstalls, with glass-fronted shelves at the end, carrying a few good editions, and a profusion of magazines and crime paperbacks on the wide sloping counter. Below the counter the usual poster advertisements of papers sold there:
Picture Post, Evening Standard, The Times, Economist, Reynolds's News
—a mere selection of the abundance above on the counter. Behind the glass shelves a little office desk, partly concealed, to which the newsagent retreated when business was slack.

On Monday morning Alastair Hilton turned from the bookstall at Boxwood station to find Basil Sims just behind him. The latter reached past him to take a
Telegraph
from the outstretched hand of the newsagent, who smiled at his regular customer. Then he turned to join his friend. They stood, leaning against the bookstall, waiting for their train to come in.

“Still paying for the same rag twice over?” said Hilton, affably.

“Still preserving peace in the home by leaving Margaret her copy, and giving myself something to read in the train. And anyway I don't go in for fancy things like that,” he added, pointing to the learned periodical under Hilton's arm.

“Archaeology is not fancy,” the latter protested. “Just extremely interesting. You fish. I dig.”

“Done any lately?” asked his friend.

“No. But I hope to soon. Perhaps the week end after next.”

“Same old place?”

“Roughly—yes. I still have permission. One has to be careful, you know.”

“By the way,” Basil Sims continued. “Margaret was asking after you only this morning at breakfast. Several people are, you know. We never seem to see you these days. It's about time Felicity got that friend of hers into a nursing home and came back to look after you. And rout you out a bit. You'll be turning into a recluse before you know where you are. Locked doors—milk curdling on the doorstep. Bearded face at an upper window.”

The train, gliding swiftly into the station, put an end to this nonsense. But as they climbed into the same carriage and sat down opposite each other, Basil leaned forward, tapping Alastair on the knee and saying in a theatrically deep voice, “You haven't by any chance made away with her, have you?”

Mr. Hilton stared at him, then let his face relax into a gentle smile.

“That,” he said, “would not be at all an easy thing to do.”

The banging of doors and blowing of whistles drowned Basil Sims's reply.

The White Hart, at Duckington, near the edge of the South Downs, was one of those rarities in England, a small country pub that took up to half a dozen resident guests at any one time. Not only put them up, but was commended for doing so, as the R.A.C. and A.A. signs above its doors testified. And yet the house did nothing to advertise itself. It was not even conspicuous from the main road, since it stood about a hundred yards back from it at the end of a cul-de-sac, with barely enough room for the sort of parking space needed in modern times. Perhaps the quiet and the retirement were its chief attractions. The dust and noise of Duckington's main square, picturesque though it was, tended to keep visitors from the Royal Arms Hotel there. Besides, the hotel was a mid-Victorian horror, having affinities with St. Pancras and other northern stations, such as Darlington. The White Hart had no architectural pretensions whatever. Just a pleasant Regency facade, suggesting that it had been built to attract the new fashion travelling towards Brighton, when that fishing village came into royal favour. In any case, it had kept its popularity with the discriminating.

April had begun with grey skies and many inches of rain. The paths in the prim garden of the White Hart were washed smooth and slippery by the rain, chalk showing at their edges, for the soil was a very few inches deep where the long fingers of the Downs reached inland into the weald, as at Duckington.