Bones in the Barrow (11 page)

So now Colonel Wetherall was ready to help his old friend.

“It'll have to go to the C.I.D.,” he said. “Question is, where?”

“Hilton lives in Boxwood,” said the vicar thoughtfully. “Surrey, isn't it, or Middlesex?”

“Surrey,” said the colonel. “But I don't see what the hell—”

“He was digging in this spot where we found the bones,” the vicar went on. “He is reported to have found bones himself and taken them away with him. I think in any case, his finds ought to be investigated.”

“So do I.”

“Not that I accuse him of anything,” Mr. Symonds hastened to add. “Daisy was hysterical about it when she told her young man, Joe. These girls can think of nothing but the horrors they see at the cinema or in the daily gossip papers.”

“I wouldn't be too sure,” said the colonel. “You're charitable by profession, Francis. I'm just the opposite.”

They beamed at each other foolishly.

“Tell you what I'll do,” said Wetherall. “I'll send these bones to Scotland Yard, explaining we haven't the facilities to deal with 'em properly, which is true enough, though it would make Copeland damned angry. That suit you?”

“Very well,” said Mr. Symonds.

He decided not to talk about the bones to anyone in Duckington and to put off the next meeting of the Archaeological Society until he had heard the results of the chief constable's action.

But this was not to happen for some time. The name of Hilton sent the bones immediately to Chief-Inspector Johnson, and from him they travelled to a Home Office pathologist, together with some smaller specimens found on the roofs of Waterbury Street, Lambeth. It was a long shot, but it worked. The report that came back presently sent Johnson hurrying to see Superintendent Mitchell.

“In his opinion the bones all come from the same woman. The wrist bones the workman, Gossage, found, fit the bones of the forearm found by Mr. Symonds in the barrow.”

“And Mrs. Hilton is still missing?”

“Yes. She never went to Scotland. And there was a significant incident over her money. I found withdrawals had been made by a messenger bringing in a note, ostensibly in her handwriting, and with her signature, to pay cash to bearer, together with apparently genuine cheques made out to herself. I arranged to have the messenger called in to the manager with a view to finding where he came from. But when the cashier went back to the counter after seeing if the office was ready, the man had gone. He has not been back since, and no further withdrawals have been made.”

“Intimate knowledge of the lady's writing and chequebook and ability to trace or copy her signature. Would fit the husband or an unknown called Peter.”

“Just so. Incidentally, the Hiltons' doctor in Boxwood sent a very guarded answer to our inquiries. It only confirms her disappearance. Apparently, though she did not go down to him after she left home, he used to send her prescriptions through the post. No, nothing dangerous, not even barbiturates. Just some patent pills he favoured for rheumatism. Well, these letters of his have now come back to him through the dead-letter post.”

“Where had they been sent?”

“Not to Charing Cross in this case. An accommodation address in Horseferry Road. She called once a month for letters up to the middle of November. They waited till February, then began sending them back ‘Address unknown.' The doctor has not told Hilton about this. Besides professional secrecy, he seems to have quarrelled with him, and Hilton changed to another man's list.”

“What did they quarrel about?”

“Mrs. Hilton's treatment. She liked to try quack nostrums she saw advertised in newspapers and so on. Hilton thought it a waste of money. The doctor said he couldn't control her rheumatism much by the proper cures, so he thought she was justified in trying anything she found helpful.”

“An open-minded view, but irritating to the husband.”

“Especially as Mrs. Hilton did not give him this address, but only the Charing Cross Post Office.”

“Has the shop identified her from photographs?”

“Not yet. I have not seen Hilton since the first time I called at the Willows, and it seemed a bit premature on that occasion to ask for photographs.”

“Didn't we have some snapshots from Mrs. Lapthorn?”

“Quite useless. They were really snapshots of the Lapthorn woman herself. Mrs. Hilton hardly appeared in them.”

“We'd better have Felicity's portrait. And get hold of those bones of Hilton's and his pieces of pottery, before he destroys them.”

“I don't think he will. He seems to be playing a very cautious game.”

“So did Crippen at the start. But they all get the wind up sooner or later.”

Chief-Inspector Johnson, however, was right. Mr. Hilton had not only kept the bones and the crocks, but had written to the British Museum to ask for an expert opinion on the latter. A representative had called and had been duly impressed. The find was genuine and most interesting. A pity it was so badly broken and that so much was missing.

Johnson asked to see all the finds, including the bones. But when Hilton laid them out before him in the sitting-room at the Willows, he scarcely glanced at them.

“Are these all the finds you made?” he asked.

“These are what I dug up at Duckington just over two weeks ago.”

Which may be so, the inspector thought, but is not so, necessarily.

“Have you any objection to my taking them away for examination?”

“None.”

Really, the man's indifference and calm, slightly ironical voice, were very wearing, Johnson decided.

“I should also like to see and take away with me, if you have no objection, any recent photograph of Mrs. Hilton that you may have.”

Mr. Hilton's eyes, now, were anything but indifferent.

“I can let you have one snapshot taken at Bognor nearly two years ago.”

“That would be better than nothing.”

There was silence as the inspector made up his parcel.

“Is it permitted to ask what is the meaning of all this?” said Hilton at last, pointing at the package under Johnson's arm.

“You can ask, but I am not at liberty to give you any answer.”

“When shall I get my specimens back?”

“That I cannot tell either.”

Hilton shrugged and crossed to the door. But Johnson waited a moment longer.

“I have been here nearly an hour, Mr. Hilton,” he said. “And though you have asked me why I am taking these things away, you have not asked me if I have traced the whereabouts of your wife.”

“If you had been successful you would have told me so at once.”

“It would be the natural thing to expect.”

Johnson tried again.

“Have you traced her yourself?”

“I have made no effort to do so.”

“Why not?”

“That is my business, Inspector, not yours.” Perhaps seeing an unfavourable reaction in the inspector's set face, he added, “I do not see any cause for alarm, myself.”

Chief-Inspector Johnson gripped his parcel more tightly. He hoped to give this dead-pan plenty of cause for alarm, and without too much delay, either.

But he was disappointed. Mr. Hilton's pieces, once more placed before an expert, were passed with a true bill for bones and pottery alike. Late Bronze Age, later than specimens previously found at Duckington. The bones probably from an adolescent male; a suggestion of rickets in early childhood.

“We give them back to the twister, I suppose?” said Johnson disgustedly.

“Yes, but don't be too downhearted. Even if Hilton got genuine bones from the barrow, he could easily have put some of his wife's in before he filled it up with earth. In fact, that would be much more likely than that he should take down more than he could dispose of, and then bring them back again. That chambermaid, Daisy, wanted to get her own back on Hilton, and send nice cold shivers down her own spine and her boy friend's. But it didn't make any particular sense, did it?”

“No. I'll have to go down to Duckington, though. Colonel Wetherall had better warn them. At any rate Hilton doesn't know what the vicar found.”

But Hilton did. Because the Duckington Archaeological Society sent its fragments of the jug, as a present, to the British Museum, just about the time that Hilton, receiving his fragments back from Scotland Yard, offered them to the British Museum as a donation. In the ensuing archaeological excitement letters were exchanged between the vicar and Mr. Hilton. The latter quoted the report on his bones, and asked for Mr. Symonds's views on the Society's finds. Mr. Symonds, foolishly reassured, and repenting his former misgivings, explained the shock he had had.

“You may consider yourself fortunate,” he wrote, “that you did not come across these mysterious recent remains. Perhaps I ought not to let this cat out of the bag, but as we have shared the honours in putting together an ancient jug of great historical and artistic value, I feel I can safely share this other knowledge which has nothing to do with you. Especially as Scotland Yard has the matter in hand.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Hilton, aloud, putting down the letter.

And then he got up from the breakfast table and walked across the room to where a large photograph of Felicity Hilton stared at him from big mournful eyes above an artificial smile.

“Safely,” he whispered, and suddenly his mouth crumpled, and he clasped the photograph to him, tears bursting from his closed eyes.

Though Terry Byrnes made up his mind to talk things over with his scientific friend Cyril Collings, he did not manage to do so at once. For one thing, Christmas was drawing near, and Terry had other things to think of. There were parties and dances to arrange; a gala night at the Square Dance Club he belonged to; also presents to buy for his family and the girl friend. None of this was, or could be, on a large scale, but it occupied his thoughts quite enough to stop him worrying about a mystery that grew more dim and less important with every day that passed. And when, Christmas over, the New Year took the stage in a cloak of thick snow, his physical discomfort from chilblains and chapped ears forced his attention upon his own grim path in life: the early rising, the daily journey, the monotonous grind at the office. He did not criticize its value, or question its inevitability; he merely grumbled. To himself, when surrounded by his elders; to his friends when they complained of their own misery.

But he had not altogether forgotten his dreadful experience. Again and again, as he travelled to Waterloo, he gazed out the window at the houses beside the line, trying to recognize the one that held the undisclosed secret of that foggy morning in November. He was never able to do so. He had seen so little of the building; his attention had been fixed from the start upon the brief, terrible scene at the window. And there were too many small houses overlooking the line. He knew only that he had been standing at a window of the train on the left-hand side facing the way they were going. So it must have been one of the houses on the north side of the railway.

It was not until April, when, the winter past, and some hours of daylight still left at the end of his working day, he began to meet his friends again, particularly those who lived further off than the cluster of small houses and gardens up the hill from Toxley Green station. Among these was Cyril Collings. Going for a bicycle ride with Cyril one evening, and the talk turning to a series of violent crimes committed that week, Terry at last described his long-preserved secret.

“Do you mean to say they never found the body?” said Cyril, in so much astonishment that he almost rode down his friend.

“Look out! You darned nearly had me off. No, they didn't, nor the house either. I'm not sure they didn't think I was trying to pull a hoax of some sort.”

“You can't blame them.”

“One chap was all right. Chief-Inspector Johnson.”

He brought out the name with an effortless ease he had practised while brushing his hair before the mirror. No expression on his face, his lips hardly moving. It had the desired result; Cyril was deeply impressed.

“A chief-inspector. That shows they took you seriously.”

“He did. The others didn't. It stuck out a mile. They said they'd let me know the result. There never was a result. I sometimes wonder if I did really see anything.”

“Have you ever thought you saw anything else that turned out not to be there?”

“No. Do you think it was that? Hallucinations or something?”

He looked so disturbed, so wild and lost, that Cyril first gave a loud and vulgar laugh, and then, putting a large hand on his friend's shoulder, rode on close beside him, to their mutual danger from passing cars.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If Scotland Yard has given it up, what about trying to get my old man interested?”

“Do you mean your father?”

Cyril laughed so heartily this time that he nearly fell off himself.

“Of course not. I mean the head of our department. And that's not McAndrew, the senior lab assistant, though he does try to push us all around when the boss isn't there. No. I mean Dr. Wintringham. Dr. David Wintringham, director of clinical research at St. Edmund's Hospital. There are four assistants in his team, three of them doctors. But he doesn't only work at these special lines of research; cases, and what's behind them. At the hospital, I mean. He's a private detective as well. You must have heard me mention him before. He's a brain. Genuine article.”

Considering that Cyril Collings hardly ever spent an hour in his friend's company without describing Dr. Wintringham's exploits in one or other of his pursuits, Terry now smiled bitterly.

“I suppose you think I was building up to that?” he said.

“Weren't you?”

“I don't really know.”

It must have been a sneaking thought of the great Wintringham at the back of his mind, Terry honestly admitted, that had led him at last to unburden himself to Cyril.