Bones in the Barrow (3 page)

It was a hard winter. In November there were fogs, thicker, darker, and more persistent than for many years. In January, snow, lasting well into February, and bringing in its wake a harvest of jobs for the builders and plumbers, by way of cracked pipes, broken skylight windows, and blocked gutters.

Among other sufferers were the tenants of certain properties not far from the Southern Region of British Railways, as the lines run out from Waterloo Station. When these people complained too loudly and urgently to be ignored, of dripping ceilings and fallen plaster, the landlord with great reluctance sent along a firm of builders to investigate the trouble. They sorted it out and made it good again. Whereupon other people, living opposite the scene of activity, and following their neighbours' example, set a familiar repair work in train. The same firm undertook it. With the first job barely completed, they moved their ladders across the road, erected them again, and started upon an exactly similar set of steep gulleys, sloping tiles, and narrow chimney pots.

The snow had lain a good four inches thick on the roofs of all this part of London. But whereas the slopes the builders had first dealt with lay facing south, these faced north. In the first case the wintry sun, not altogether devoid of warmth, had hastened the thaw before its time. Consequently, after two whole days of clear sky and bright sun, the snow had melted fast, and being loosened all in a piece, had, on the next day, slid down from the chimneys and, gathering momentum, burst the narrow parapet, and fallen to the street below, carrying tiles and parapet with it. But on the opposite side of the street, the roof in shadow, facing north, had kept its snow a full week longer, melting quietly, sinking away into the gutters, washing the grimy tiles rather than destroying them.

The builders found very much less to do, but they made the most of it by going carefully over the whole surface, and brushing out the crevices and gulleys, and the rickety gutters. On the second day, when the three men were sitting round their brazier, drinking tea at the lunch break, one of them fumbled in the pocket of his working coat.

“Take a look at these,” he said. “I can't make 'em out.”

His companion peered into his large palm.

“Bones,” said one of them.

“That's what I thought. But what of?”

“Rabbit, from the size.”

This suggestion was ridiculed.

“Ever see a rabbit with legs that size? What's the square ones, then?”

“Backbone.”

“Go on. Rabbit's spine's got spikes out of it. Don't I know? Stopped one in a bad tooth, once. Crumbs! It didn't 'alf give me gip.”

“Could be mutton bones,” said the third man, holding out his hand for the relics. “Knuckle bones and that, I mean.”

He considered them, with his head on one side, shaking it gently as he gave up this theory. “Not the long ones, I mean. More like chicken legs.”

“Who'd ' ave chicken bones to throw away in these parts?” said the first man. “That was why I said rabbit in the first place.”

“Rabbit, my foot. Who's ever seen rabbit bones the thickness of a finger?”

He broke off short, looking down at the small straight bones, four of them, of unequal sizes, slim in the middle, and puffy at the ends.

“Finger,” echoed his neighbour, who had not yet spoken. This was a building apprentice, supposed to be learning his trade; in actual fact, he spent most of his time looking after the brazier in the door of the working tent, and boiling kettles of water for tea.

The man who held the bones poured them rather quickly into this boy's hand. He slapped his palms together, as if he felt some contamination.

“Anyone object if I keep these?” the youth went on. He was met by a few grunts and one derisory laugh.

“Going in for natural history?” asked the man who had discovered them. “Making a collection?”

“No. But a pal of mine does.”

“O.K. son. They're all yours. I'll look out for more when I go up again.”

He had spoken in jest, but at the end of the afternoon he called the apprentice over and gave him a further handful of relics.

“Whoever lives in the attics up there has a mania for rabbit or chicken, or whatever it is,” he said. “I've a good mind to tell the owner. Chucking all that rubbish up on the roof. Might block the drains, after a storm.”

“The snow left them there,” said the apprentice, and added, “I don't think it's rabbit or chicken, but Len will know.”

“You ask him,” said the builder's man. “I bet he'll surprise you.”

The boy said nothing. Len might surprise him, but he knew what he thought. It was not for nothing that he had helped Len with his anatomy. He took his handful of bones along to Len's digs that night.

“If they aren't human, I'm as good as ploughed already,” said Len, laying the bones in a row on his tablecloth. “Four phalanges, all from different fingers, two of them not complete. One scaphoid, and the lower ends of an ulna and radius, still joined by ligament. Where did you say you'd found them?”

“I didn't. Gossage, one of the bricklayers, did. I guessed as soon as I saw them, from knowing your pictures and that.”

“How'd they get there?”

“I wouldn't know,” said Bob, slowly. “And I wouldn't care to ask.”

The two youths stared at each other. Then Len drew the relics towards him.

“Mind if I keep them?”

“What for?”

“I want to know if I'm right, I'll ask the expert.”

“Do you mean the professor?”

Bob was impressed whenever he listened to his friend's description of the University and its inmates.

“No. He'd want to know too much. I'll ask Ridgeway.”

“Who's he?”

“Junior demonstrator. Good bloke. Likes us to ask questions, but doesn't drown you in the answers.”

The next morning, however, Len found himself quite out of his depth in face of the combined questions of the junior demonstrator, the senior demonstrator, and finally the professor himself. They were all agreed that the bones had undoubtedly belonged to a human hand and arm, and that the strange circumstances of their discovery needed further explaining. Len was asked to produce the friend who had brought the odd collection to him. Bob was next persuaded to give his own account.

“Then we must certainly inform the police,” the professor decided, in conference with his colleagues. “These boys are quite serious. I thought at first they were trying to put something over, but I am quite sure now they are speaking the plain truth. Human bones don't find their way by themselves on to the roof of a small house in a poor area. Someone put them there.”

“A someone who presumably had a good many more bones in his possession,” suggested the senior demonstrator.

“Possibly.”

“Couldn't they belong to a medical student's outfit, or to someone who makes up skeletons for medical schools and students?” asked the other demonstrator.

“Possibly.” The professor repeated his usual qualified agreement. “Very possibly. Though they don't look quite like prepared bones. That might, of course, be due to weathering from exposure.”

“They turned up after the snow. They certainly underwent weathering.”

“The police must find the answers to these questions,” said the professor. “It is their job, not ours.”

Scotland Yard followed the same mental track as the professor and his colleagues. They too decided that the bones were human and needed explaining; that the boys were serious and spoke the truth; and that Gossage had really found the relics on the roof of Number Twelve, Waterbury Street, Lambeth.

Under cover of an inspection of the roofs of the whole block, undertaken by the Borough engineer, with detectives in train, it was established that no other bones were hidden there. It remained to be discovered how the original ones got to the place where Gossage found them.

Number Twelve, Waterbury Street, was occupied by a porter who worked at Waterloo Station, his wife, and three children. They had lived in the house for six years; they did not take lodgers. As far as they knew they were not aware of any medical students having lodgings in that street. The next-door neighbour but one, a Mrs. West, a widow, let rooms.

Mrs. West lived at Number Eight, in the ground-floor front, which she used as a bed-sitting room in order to be able to take the maximum number of lodgers, one in each room. They were all businessmen and girls, she said. They were out at work, too. Yes, she had had one or two changes lately. Miss Niven had refused to get rid of her Sealyham, though it had the mange and might infect her, Mrs. West's, cat Fluff. So Miss Niven and the Sealyham had to get out together. Then there was old Mrs. Parker, who had died, and Mr. Parker had gone away to live with a married son who could get on with his father but had always refused to take in both his parents, because his mother was spiteful to her grandchildren.

“Did this old woman die in the house?”

“Good gracious, no! Up at Thomas's. What is all this, anyway?”

The question was asked again by the young detective sergeant who accompanied Inspector Cole. They had listened patiently to Mrs. West's complaints, and to her surprise that a medical student from Thomas's should be somehow mixed up with the law. Doctors, she always thought, were above that kind of thing.

“What
is
all this, anyway?” asked the sergeant.

“A very cold trail to begin with,” answered Inspector Cole. “A chap called Gossage, a builder's man, found a few small human bones on the roof of Number Twelve.”

“D'you mean a child's bones?”

“No. They say they're some of the bones of the hand and arm, probably a woman's. Possibly anatomical specimens of some sort. Hence the thin excuse, asking for a medical student. Just conceivably we are on to a crime. Since you can't walk into a house and ask if anyone has been chopped up there, and scattered about the roof, I am still using the medical student as an opening gambit. If a real live one should turn up, I can ask him if he possesses a skeleton, anatomy-school type.”

“Why should he put some of it on the roof?”

“Can't think. Students' rag, perhaps.”

“You don't really think these bones are anatomy ones, do you, sir?”

“Can you think of any other rational explanation? Do you suggest these few bones were carelessly thrown out of the upper storey, when the whole of the rest of a body had been mysteriously and secretly disposed of without anyone in the street coming to know of it?”

“I don't see how anyone could throw bones
up
on to the roof from the top storey of these houses. The gulleys run the wrong way.”

“Quite right. They couldn't. Would you suggest they were dropped from an aeroplane? Should we search for the other remains in Kent, or Timbuctoo?”

The sergeant was silent. It was plain to him that Inspector Cole had no ideas, and very little enthusiasm, for his present assignment.

Numbers Six and Four added nothing to the inquiry. The sergeant suggested trying on the other side of Number Twelve. As they went back along the street Inspector Cole stopped and said, “We missed Number Ten.”

“Sir?”

“We left out Number Ten. The porter's wife in Twelve said next door but one. We didn't try Ten.”

An elderly woman, very neatly dressed, opened the door to them.

“Are you police officers?” she said at once. “I thought you must be. Please come in.”

Feeling somewhat subdued, for he had hardly spoken a word, Inspector Cole, with his companion following, went into the small front parlour, which smelled strongly of floor polish, cabbage water, and cats.

“I have been watching you going up the street,” she said. “I was wondering why you didn't go there direct.”

“Go where?”

“To Mrs. Hunt's. Haven't you come about the assault?”

“Actually, no,” said Inspector Cole, carefully. “What assault was this?”

“She went for him,” said the old lady, with shining eyes. “They were going to turn off her electricity on account of her not paying the bill, and she was yelling it wasn't fair, it wasn't her account at all, it was the lodger's that had left and landed her with it. I always knew pride would come before a fall,” she finished complacently.

“Do you have electricity in these houses?” asked the inspector. It was an old-fashioned street of mean mid-Victorian dwellings. Such places usually had gas, or even oil lamps.

“They put it in one end, after we were rebuilt after the bombing,” the old lady answered proudly.

“Why did you think we wanted to see you?” asked the inspector. “You were not in this quarrel, surely?”

“Of course not. But when I saw her run down the steps after the man from the Electricity Board had cut off her supply, and when I heard the smack as she hit him in the face, I went out to restrain her from doing herself any more harm. I might as well have tried to stop a hurricane. She was standing there screaming that it wasn't fair, she'd never ordered the refrigerator anyway, and he'd only left her the money to pay for his having it put in, not the current it had used. Only she added some very bad words all through what she said, which I won't repeat, though I expect they wouldn't surprise you.”

“Was this a lodger at Number … which number is Mrs. Hunt's?”

“Sixteen.”

Her eyes rested on them both suspiciously.

“Haven't you come for Mrs. Hunt?”

“Tell me about the lodger,” said the inspector, persuasively. “Why did he have a refrigerator?”

“For his trade.”

“His trade?”

“Mr. Rust was a cat's-meat man. You've never heard of him, have you? You've been taking me in! You aren't police officers, after all. What have I been saying? Don't kill me! I haven't any money! I swear it! God help me, who are you?
Who are you
?”