Mystery Villa (12 page)

He stopped abruptly. He was not a man easily moved, for his long experience had known many tragedies, but now his voice was shaken, and he put up a hand as in a defensive gesture, as if to keep off thoughts that were past endurance. Ferris said, from behind:

‘It don't bear thinking of. Enough to give you dreams all night.'

‘No wonder, anyhow,' remarked the doctor, ‘that she lived all alone. No wonder she didn't dare let anyone else in. I wonder if the others in the house, her family or friends or whatever they were, knew what had happened, and if that's why they all cleared out and left her to it?'

‘It might have been that – they may have suspected something,' Mitchell remarked. ‘But how has she managed to live? She must have got money somehow.'

‘We found this on the floor, sir,' Bobby said, showing the pearl – or bead – he had placed on the mantelpiece. ‘I don't know if it's worth anything, but it looks as if it might be. And we found this box with the lid broken,' he added, producing it. ‘If that is a real pearl, she may have had jewels she's been selling, and that's all that's left now. Perhaps that might be why she felt she had to make a change – because she had nothing left to sell.'

Mitchell was examining the pearl closely. He knew something of precious stones, and was soon able to decide that it was not only genuine, but a very fine specimen, probably worth well over three figures.

‘If she's been selling much of this sort of thing,' he remarked, ‘we ought to be able to trace it.' He picked up the jewel-case, if that is what it was, that Bobby had produced. ‘Broken open quite recently,' he remarked. ‘What was that for?'

‘Just possibly,' Bobby suggested, ‘if someone's been to fetch her away, they wanted to see if any of her jewellery was left, and if they were in a hurry or impatient, or perhaps the old lady was a bit excited and couldn't find her key, then the lid was smashed to save time.'

‘Possible,' agreed Mitchell, ‘Only, she certainly wasn't quite at the end of her resources with a pearl like this to sell.'

‘Then there's this, too,' Bobby went on, producing the white satin shoe they had noticed lying on the floor.

Mitchell examined it carefully.

‘Looks like part of the wedding outfit,' he observed. ‘The heel's a bit down, too. Looks as if it had been worn quite a lot – the satin is nearly through at the toe as well.'

‘I remember reading once,' Inspector Ferris put in, ‘about a case something like this, and the poor old girl who had been jilted on her wedding day used to dress up in her bridal togs every time the anniversary came round.'

‘It may have been like that here,' Mitchell agreed. ‘Notice any more of a bridal costume anywhere about?'

‘No, sir, but of course we weren't looking for anything like that.'

‘It's a point to see about,' observed Mitchell thoughtfully. ‘Make a note of it; it might turn out important. If that shoe is part of a bride's outfit, the rest of it ought to be here, too; and if it isn't–'

He broke off, evidently considering some idea that had occurred to him, and Bobby, making the note as ordered, wondered what Mitchell had in his mind. For his own part he did not see at the moment what an old bridal dress had to do with it, or how its absence or presence could affect the present puzzle of what had become of Miss Barton. She could, he supposed, hardly have been wearing it when she disappeared.

‘What's your theory, Owen?' Mitchell asked abruptly.

‘Well, sir,' Bobby answered slowly, ‘I thought it might be that Miss Barton's friends or relatives had begun to wonder about her, and the young lady we saw had come to see if she was still alive – or perhaps to find out what had happened to the house. I suppose it must belong to someone, and be worth money still.'

‘But I thought,' Mitchell pointed out, ‘she told you she wasn't any relation?'

‘ There is that,' Bobby admitted. ‘But there might be some sort of connection, perhaps. Anyhow, from what Mrs Rice says, she was expected; so, either she had been here before – but Mrs Rice says she seemed to be a stranger to the place, and, also, she is quite sure she hadn't seen her before, and Mrs Rice is a lady who doesn't miss much of what goes on – or else there had been letters. The young lady was very nervous, and seemed very upset, when we saw her, but I suppose that might be natural enough in a house like this. Enough to upset anyone, especially if they had seen–' He paused and looked down at that withered thing upon the floor round which they were all clustered. ‘It is possible,' he went on, ‘she managed to persuade Miss Barton to leave here, and that she found some place for her where the old lady could be looked after. Or it's possible Miss Barton thought she had better find a fresh hiding-place herself – if it's the fact Con Conway had seen inside the trunk and that's what frightened him. Perhaps that is why the girl we saw came here; perhaps Miss Barton sent for her to take her away somewhere where she thought she would be safer now her secret was known to someone else. Or, of course, she may have gone away by herself to some new hiding-place.'

‘Would she go like that and leave the trunk behind, and what she knew was in it?' Mitchell asked doubtfully. ‘After so many years...? What about the man in plus-fours Mrs Rice says she saw? Or her story about a young man with a pistol? I suppose she's not just telling fairy-tales, is she?'

‘Oh, I don't think so, sir,' Bobby answered. ‘The plus-fours man very likely has nothing to do with it – just a stranger curious why a house was standing derelict like this, or, it might be, a house agent on the look-out for new property to get on his books. And if Miss Barton has gone to some friend or relative, the young man with the pistol may be someone come to fetch something for her, or even just to look round. Possibly, if she had some more jewels left, he came for them. He may have had to break open the box to get them if he had no key, and, if the jewels were valuable, that might be why he brought a pistol.'

‘I don't see why he couldn't put the jewel-case in his pocket, if that's what he was after,' observed Mitchell, ‘instead of breaking it open and dropping pearls worth three figures. And, even if he had a pistol with him, I don't see why he should be flashing it about in a perfectly empty house, or why he should be looking at it in the way Mrs Rice describes. Not much use speculating, though, till we know more about the facts. I don't know that there's much in the clothes she usually wore being left behind here. If someone came and fetched her, they would be very likely to provide her with some sort of new outfit; and if she were bolting, in a scare, to a fresh hiding-place on her own, because she thought it was known what was in the Saratoga trunk, it would be natural for her to try to dress differently.'

There's one thing certain,' observed the doctor suddenly. ‘It's been murder all right enough; no man could very well himself put a bullet right down through the top of his own head.'

‘Not much doubt of that,' agreed Mitchell. ‘She'll have to be found; though whatever she did so long ago, and whatever made her do it, she's paid for long since by the life she's led. But murder is still murder, no matter how many years past; and we've our duty to do, and we'll have to try our best to find her. Anyhow, no one will want to hang her now, but, all the same, I almost hope we don't succeed.'

All the customary routine had now to be gone though: innumerable photographs to be taken, sketches to be made, the finger-print expert let loose, the coroner informed, and so on; and in the midst of it all there arrived, first, a fast motor-car containing the crime expert of the
Daily Announcer
, and then, hard upon his wheels, more fast motorcars containing all the other crime experts of all the other national papers.. Already, in some mysterious fashion – probably by black magic – all Fleet Street knew that something sensational had happened in the Brush Hill district, where hitherto the most exciting event ever known had been the scene in which a leading local Fascist (
aetat
18) had exchanged rude repartee with a prominent Communist (
aetat
17½) of the neighbourhood, both of them probably destined to be good sound solid Tory voters before many more years had passed.

But these journalistic gentlemen knew well enough that Superintendent Mitchell did not depart hurriedly in a fast car for remote suburbs without good reason, and were not to be satisfied with mere words. So Mitchell decided that, after they had promised on their journalistic faith – an undertaking more sacred to their hard-boiled, hard-bitten souls than an oath under seven seals – not to release the story till leave was granted, they were to be given full details, and even allowed to take as many photographs as they liked.

‘You see, boys,' Mitchell explained to them himself, with the amiability he always showed to journalists – though they little guessed, or cared, what he sometimes said about them, when they weren't there – ‘you see, boys, we want, if we can, to get on the track of the old lady who was living here before the friends she's gone to, or who have taken her away, if that's the truth of it, have any idea we are looking for her. As soon as this gets known, most likely it'll be ten times harder to find her. Also, there's just the chance that, if we lie low, someone may come back here.'

‘How long do you want it held up?' the
Daily Announcer
man asked anxiously.

‘Not practicable more than a day or two,' Mitchell answered, thinking to himself that, if only the black magic of the newspaper men had been a little less efficient, he might have held it up much longer.

‘Right-oh,' said the
Daily Announcer
man. ‘The best story,' he declared enthusiastically, ‘since – since–' He paused, searching his memory for the last comparable announcement with which the Press had been privileged to shake the nation to its depths. ‘Since Larwood said he wouldn't play in our garden any more,' he declared at last, and all his colleagues agreed that it was so.

So then they departed to their note-taking, their photographing, their interviewing, though the petition put forward by one of them – that the poor shrivelled body should be replaced in the Saratoga trunk so that a snap could be taken of it,
in situ
– Mitchell declined to accede to, thereby showing, it was generally felt, a deplorable lack of right feeling of what was due to the great British public; his plea in excuse – that even so poor a relic of humanity as this should be treated with respect — being regarded as weak sentimentalism, and a proof of the softness of the age. However, they were all pleased and excited at the prospect of having such a story to present to their editors, and at being allowed to photograph everything they wanted to, till, in the room where that sad wedding feast had stood in solitude and neglect so many years, the flashlights flared like summer lightning by the sea on a hot August evening, while the cameras clicked ceaselessly, and the poor spiders were driven almost to distraction. Also, the gentleman who had first made the suggestion about the Saratoga trunk accepted Mitchell's decisions very meekly, and, indeed, supported it warmly, only revealing, when all his colleagues had departed, that the splendid idea had occurred to him of himself crawling into the now empty trunk and getting his assistant to photograph him in the exact position in which the body was when found. Thus his proud editor was able to feature the now famous photograph on the front page, marked, with justifiable pride, ‘Exclusive to Us', and thus was a ‘scoop' effected of which Fleet Street still talks with admiration and awe.

All this being settled, and Inspector Ferris being fully competent to attend to the further detail of the usual routine, Mitchell departed, taking with him the pearl – or bead – Bobby had found, and beckoning to Bobby himself to accompany him.

‘First thing,' Mitchell explained, ‘is to make sure whether this pearl thing is the genuine article or not.'

After that he lapsed into silence, for he was a man who at times could sit without uttering a word, and at others would pour out an unbroken torrent of speech. The only remark he made during the rest of the drive was when he said once, more to himself than to Bobby:

‘You know, that satin shoe may mean a lot.'

‘Yes sir,' agreed Bobby dutifully, though wondering how or why.

Outside a well-known jeweller's establishment the car stopped, and Mitchell alighted and entered the shop. He came out again in a few minutes.

‘Valued at two hundred, or a little more,' he told Bobby. ‘That is, buying price – selling price probably three times as much, but I didn't ask about that. As one of a well-matched necklace, its value would go up fifty per cent, or possibly more. If the old lady has been living by selling little things like that, it shouldn't be difficult to trace the transactions. Have to go into that. Anything you can think of you would like to follow up yourself, Owen?'

‘Well, sir,' Bobby said slowly, ‘I think one of the first things to do is to try to get in touch with Con Conway, and bribe him or coax him or third-degree him till he tells us what did really scare him that night I met him. I expect when he knows we know about the Saratoga trunk he'll be willing enough to talk, and it's a fair chance he may have something interesting to tell us, if he noticed any special details, as quite likely he did.'

‘Elusive sort of bird, Con Conway,' Mitchell remarked. ‘How do you propose to set to work to find him?'

‘I might begin by making enquiries of people who may have been in touch with him recently,' explained Bobby, looking abstractedly out of the window. ‘Anyone known, for example, to have been in possession of any article – an umbrella, for instance – Conway may have had in his hands recently, through having pinched it, and so on.'