Mystery Villa (18 page)

‘Can you say what day this was?' Bobby asked.

Aske kept no diary and had made no note, but he was able to fix the date within a day or two, and Bobby said: ‘I can't be quite certain without checking it to make sure, but I think it was that afternoon she sold a diamond brooch to a Bond Street firm of jewellers for £475, and, if so, when you saw her on Westminster Bridge she must have been coming away from leaving pound notes on the benches all up and down the Embankment. She seems to have made a practice of selling her jewellery from time to time, keeping just as much of what she got as she thought she needed for a year or two and getting rid of the rest. She used to push pound notes through letter-boxes in poor streets or throw them to “down and outs” waiting to get into a Salvation Army shelter or anything like that – I suppose, perhaps, it was a kind of expiation, too. The papers used to talk about “The Mad Millionaire” and splash the story in headlines whenever it happened, but they never traced her or found out who she was. I suppose anyone who saw her hanging about the Embankment just thought she was one of the ordinary derelicts there.'

‘Well, she certainly didn't look like anyone able to hand out pound notes galore,' Aske agreed. ‘It fairly took my breath away when she pulled out that fat wad she showed me. It was a darkish sort of night, and when we got to Tudor Lodge I could make out it was a pretty dismal, desolate-looking sort of place, but I didn't see what it was actually like. I don't know that I should have wanted to leave her there alone if I had. I went round with her to the side door and I said something about did she live there all alone, and she said no, she had a friend she lived with, but he slept so sound nothing would ever waken him. I said if she would let me I would jolly soon rouse him out, because of course I had no idea what she was getting at. She said something about forty-three years that made me more sure than ever she was oft' her chump, and then she' went on talking about having seen someone at the window who had come for her, so she knew it wouldn't be long now before she joined him, after he had been waiting for her all those years. I can tell you I was beginning to sweat a bit. I didn't feel one tiny bit happy, standing there in the dark, in the shadows of that old house, listening to all her weird talk. I said I must be going, and I said she ought to get someone to look after her, and then she said in quite a different way, as if she had suddenly come back into the real world, would I wait while she wrote a note to someone she knew and would I post it for her. I thought that was just what was wanted, and if she did that, then I could get her off my chest. I shouldn't have to feel responsible for her any more. So I waited all right, and she gave me the letter and began talking rot about how kind I had been. Of course, I hadn't done anything really except give her a lift, and you jolly well don't have to have a car long before you find out that's chiefly what it's for – giving other people lifts. But there was something about a pearl necklace she had been going to sell but now she would like to give it to me instead. Of course, I didn't take it very seriously, and I told her it was awfully kind of her but I must really be going, because they would be waiting up for me at home – they know better, in point of fact, but I had to say something to get away. So then she took the key out of the door and gave it me, and said if when I came again I couldn't get any answer, then I was to open the door and let myself in. I didn't want to argue with her any longer and I did want to get away, and so I took it – I thought it would be easy enough to send it back through the post. But I remember I did ask her how she was going to manage without it, and she said she had another; the door had two keys.'

‘You are sure she said two?' Bobby asked quickly.

‘Quite sure,' Aske answered. ‘She said now we had one each, one for her and one for me. Then I cleared off, and when I looked at the letter she had given me I saw she had forgotten all about the stamp. So I put one on myself, and I noticed it was addressed to “Dorothy Yelton.”'

‘It's my name,' interposed Dorothy, who had been listening intently, ‘but I think it was really grandmother she meant.'

‘The address,' Aske continued, ‘was at a little place I knew quite well. It's not far from where we are, and I've often driven through it – you have to if you are going west – so next time I was out for a bit of a spin I called at a pub near there and had a drink, and they told me some people called Yelton had been living there, but had moved, though only a short time before, so any letters sent them would probably reach them all right. They told me what the London address was, and, as I didn't feel any too easy about the whole thing, I thought I would call and make sure they really had got the letter I posted. That's how I came to know Miss Yelton and her father.'

‘I see,' Bobby said. ‘Did you send the key back?'

‘No. When I called here I had a talk with Miss Yelton about the old woman. Miss Yelton said she wasn't any relation, and I could see she was very upset and troubled and worried, and that she didn't know at all what to do.'

‘Oh, I didn't,' exclaimed Dorothy fervently. ‘I couldn't think what was best – I felt it wasn't right to let her go on living like that, and yet if I told anybody, then it would all come out. I was most awfully grateful when Mr Aske said he would go and see her again.'

‘I went as soon as I could,' Aske continued. ‘I had to wait a day or two, because I had a chance to go up to Yorkshire to see a man I'm trying to interest in an invention of mine I want to bring out, if only I can get the capital to develop it. But as soon as I could I went back to the house. I couldn't get any answer when I knocked, so I let myself in with the key she had given me. There didn't seem to be anyone there, and I didn't get any answer when I shouted. But I noticed a pistol lying on a chair in the hall. Well, I didn't much like the look of that, when I remembered that wad of banknotes I had seen or her talk about the pearl necklace she said she had. So I picked the pistol up and went into one of the rooms, and opened the window so as to have a good look at it – all the house was dark and in shadow, you know. But it was all right about the pistol; it was all choked with dust and rusty; hadn't been handled for years. I suppose that is when your Mrs Rice saw me.'

‘Probably,' agreed Bobby.

‘ I didn't go upstairs or in any of the other rooms,' Aske continued. ‘I knocked at one or two doors and shouted again, but nobody answered, and I thought the old lady must either be out or else she had gone away. I put the key she had given me down on the table in the hall and let myself out by the front door and went off. I told Miss Yelton, and we were still wondering what we ought to do when the papers came out with the full story. And then we knew still less what to do, and finally we made up our minds to keep quiet. I don't know what you may think your duty is, but I don't see that it is any duty of ours to help you find her. I jolly well hope you don't, for that matter. What good will it do, anyhow, supposing you do?'

Bobby made no attempt to answer that question. He was deep in thought. As before, he felt fairly well convinced that Aske was speaking the truth, for he had told his story with an accent of sincerity it was difficult to believe was only assumed, and he had told it, too, with a wealth of detail that clearly suggested memory more than invention. But again, as before, Bobby was less convinced that the full truth had been told. The tale was complete perhaps as far as it went, but he could not shut his eyes to the possibility that it went further still. He said:

‘When you left Tudor Lodge, did you fasten the back door?'

‘It was on a latch; it caught when you shut it,' Aske explained. ‘I left by the front door, though.'

‘Have you told me all you know?' Bobby asked abruptly. They both assured him that they had.

‘I don't see we could have helped you even if we had told you all about it, as you make out we should have done,' Aske insisted again. ‘I'm not pretending we're keen on your finding the poor old soul – why should we be? Why should anyone, for that matter? But I do say there's nothing we know about her, either of us, or where she is, or anything we could do to help you spot her, even if we wanted to. Of course, the moment I saw you messing round the house I knew you had got on to us somehow, and so I came straight along to warn Miss Yelton. I thought if you were on me you were most likely on her, too.'

‘Of course,' said Bobby.

‘Jolly glad you dropped on me first,' Aske observed.

‘Gave me a chance, anyhow, to warn her to be ready for you.'

‘So it did, didn't it?' agreed Bobby, resisting the temptation to explain that it was Aske himself who had shown the way to the Yelton flat. ‘I suppose you have no objection to my looking through the flat to make sure Miss Barton isn't here?' he added to Dorothy. ‘Someone must be giving her shelter, and, considering the life she's been living and her mental state, it's a little difficult to understand where she can be.'

‘I suppose you'll be wanting to send a search-party to our place next, to see we haven't got her tucked away in the coal-cellar or somewhere,' grumbled Aske.

Bobby indicated placidly that that was quite likely. Every possibility had to be considered. Meanwhile, if Miss Yelton had no objection – they would be sure to ask him when he returned to the Yard if he had been through the flat, and he would like to be able to say he had. Miss Yelton had no objection – looked rather amused, indeed – and duly conducted Bobby round the flat, where, as a matter of fact, there hardly seemed room for a mouse to hide, much less a woman. So then he apologised for the trouble he had given them, feared they would be troubled again, as most likely superior authority would consider further interviews required, and so took his leave, returning to headquarters in a somewhat thoughtful mood and very much wondering if he had heard all there was to tell.

On his return to headquarters Bobby was lucky enough to find Mitchell as comparatively disengaged as superintendents of the C.I.D. are ever likely to be. Bobby's account of his success in tracing and identifying two of the mysterious strangers seen at Tudor Lodge, and of the stories they had told him, was listened to with a good deal of interest, and, when he had finished, Mitchell commented slowly:

‘Well, it's something to know what two of them were doing there, and their stories sound as if they were telling the truth, but do you think they have told it all?'

‘Well, sir, I've been rather wondering that myself,' Bobby admitted. ‘Anyhow, I'm quite sure of one thing – whether they know, either of them, anything more about Miss Barton or not – they haven't got her there, not in the flat. I went all over it.'

‘No, I don't suppose she would be there,' Mitchell remarked. ‘They may know something about her, though they don't want to tell.'

‘That's the trouble in this case,' Bobby observed, somewhat ruefully. ‘No one wants us to find her, and no one's going to help.'

‘Do you want to yourself?' Mitchell flashed at him, and Bobby answered, rather stiffly:

‘I know my duty, sir.'

‘But is the heart in it?' Mitchell asked; and then, without waiting for an answer: ‘I'll tell you whose heart is in it – mine is.' He spoke with an abrupt, somewhat startling energy. His face had taken on the grim expression that Bobby knew well – the look of the man-hunter, hard upon the trail, who will never slacken or weary till his task is done, his end achieved.

Bobby sat silent and bewildered. He could not imagine what made Mitchell speak with so fiery and intense an energy. He knew well the Mitchell who would spare neither himself nor others to vindicate outraged law – to see that by road and by path all might go ‘in safety upon their lawful business, the weak as well as the strong. But he could not for the life of him imagine why Mitchell should feel like that in the matter of this search for an old and lonely woman that, as Bobby knew perfectly well, no one else at the Yard was following up with any real energy. Indeed, failure to bring it to success Bobby himself was quite prepared to regard with complete resignation, even though he intended, as he had said, to do his duty. But why Mitchell should have spoken with such energy was beyond Bobby's comprehension, especially as till now that energy and resolution he generally showed had been less marked than usual. As though he were answering Bobby's thoughts – and, indeed, it may be that he was, for he had an uncanny power of reading what was in the minds of others – Mitchell said:

‘You think it won't matter much if we can't find out what's become of a harmless old woman? Well, are you so sure she's harmless?'

‘Sir?' said Bobby astonished.

‘Only God knows what was in her mind when she left Tudor Lodge,' Mitchell went on, ‘but one thing's certain – she wasn't in a normal state. Suppose she thinks she is escaping from enemies; suppose she has it in her half-crazed mind that she's got to defend herself, and possibly her pearl necklace, from pursuers, enemies; suppose she still has a supply of that arsenic she used on James Yelton fifty years ago; suppose she starts making use of it again.'

‘Good God, sir!' exclaimed Bobby. ‘You don't think–'

‘I think it's a distinct possibility,' Mitchell answered gravely. ‘I've been talking to–' He mentioned the name of an eminent medical man, the chief Home Office consultant in such matters. ‘He thinks there's more than a danger. Once a poisoner, always a poisoner; and when in a mind already half-crazed there are nearly certainly ideas of persecution, escaping pursuit, self-defence, and so on, the danger is ten times greater.'

‘But we don't know that she has any arsenic in her possession,' Bobby said.

‘It is certain a very big dose was given James Yelton; it is what helped to preserve the body – that and the conditions under which it was kept,' Mitchell answered. ‘If she used it so freely, it is at least possible she had access to a large quantity. The stuff was easier to get in those days than it is now. There is the chance that she still has some in her possession, and, if she has, she might easily make use of it to protect herself against the pursuit she very likely thinks has chased her from her refuge in Tudor Lodge. I shall be a good deal easier in my mind when we know what's become of her. Apart from other possibilities,' he added abruptly.