Mystery Villa (19 page)

Bobby was silent. It was a new idea to him, this of the half-crazed old woman all the world felt so sorry for, as a potential danger to the community. Yet he saw the risk was a real one.

Her secret she had guarded so long was disclosed to. the world, but she might well feel she still had her life to defend, and even her pearl necklace, last of her possessions, as well. He sat silent, contemplating an aspect of the affair quite new to his thoughts, and Mitchell went on:

‘If they've told you the truth, these two we've got tabbed know nothing about where she is now. There's still the man in plus-fours Mrs Rice talks about – I suppose neither of these two know anything of him?'

‘Well, sir,' Bobby said slowly, ‘it's not much to go on, but I noticed in Miss Yelton's flat a photograph of a man in plus-fours. I understood he was her father. I thought perhaps it might be as well if some excuse was made to ask him a few questions.'

Mitchell nodded thoughtfully.

‘In a case like this, can't neglect even the off chance,' he remarked. ‘Miss Yelton would naturally tell her father about her visit to Tudor Lodge, and it would be quite natural for him to go there to see for himself. The firm is reported hard up, isn't it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Quite so,' observed Mitchell. ‘Well, we've information now that they paid off certain liabilities the other day and reduced their overdraft at the bank very considerably – apparently they have made payments to the extent of about seven or eight thousand pounds. It seems that's about what the pearl necklace Con Conway described might bring in if it had to be disposed of in a hurry. Of course, that may be another coincidence.'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby doubtfully.

‘Another reason for trying to find Miss Barton as soon as possible,' Mitchell said. ‘If it's her necklace which has provided the money Mr Yelton seems suddenly to have got hold of, what has become of her? There's no record of anyone else having been seen near the house, is there?'

‘No, sir. Of course, that's not certain, but Mrs Rice strikes me as a lady who doesn't let much escape her, and she is quite clear she has seen no one else, except, of course, Wild and myself, and the people like the postman and bill distributors, and so on, and the man who used to deliver her groceries twice a week.'

‘Vanished too,' observed Mitchell, ‘and no trace of him so far. Spent all his life in the shop there – made his living by it – and now he closes it down and disappears. Only it seems as if he had been preparing for something of the sort, by the way he kept talking about how well he was doing with his new garden line, and how he might be selling out soon at a good price. That doesn't hang together with the idea of a sudden flight with Miss Barton. Besides, if she's gone with him, that means three of them, and three in a group should be easy to trace. Anyhow, I think the next step indicated is to find Mr Humphreys and make sure about him.'

‘We've been trying to, haven't we, sir?' Bobby asked meekly.

‘We have,' admitted Mitchell. ‘Complete wash-out so far – that's why we must go on trying. Any ideas on how to set to work – outside the usual routine, I mean?'

Bobby admitted that he hadn't.

‘What about making some enquiries among commercial travellers?' asked Mitchell. ‘I suppose a good many of them must have seen him and known him – I got Mrs Mitchell to ask at the shop where she goes, but I gather they told her commercial travellers are to customers in the ratio of ten thousand to one, and that the shop keeps one assistant whose sole duty is to say “No” to them. Try to get in touch with any travellers who had Humphreys' shop on their round, and see if you can find out anything that way. Another thing. Humphreys has worked all his life, long hours, and plenty of them, and no outside interests that we can hear of. Unless he has got started in a new shop – and new shops, and shops with changes of management, have been fairly well combed now – he'll be at a bit of a loose end, and he is described as a talkative sort. So it's a fair chance he may be doing the daily buying of what he and his wife want, and might easily get chatting with the shopkeeper and explain he had been in business, too – get gossiping, you know, as two of a trade will. You might have a try at following that idea up.'

‘Yes, sir,' Bobby said again, though with some hesitation, for the chance of meeting with success on such lines seemed to him small enough.

‘A strange case, altogether,' Mitchell continued, talking half to himself now. ‘It's caught the public imagination – they're all on her side, too. Can't wonder, I suppose, considering the way the papers have been letting themselves go. I give you my word, Owen, I saw a fat old boy in the tube, yesterday, wiping his eyes over that last article in the
Daily Announcer
. Fairly sniffling he was. If we find her living with Humphreys and Mrs Humphreys in some quite country village, and try to arrest her – upon my word, I believe there'll be a riot, and meetings in Hyde Park, and Lord knows what.'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby.

‘There's quite a lot of pressure coming along to make us give up looking for her,' Mitchell said slowly. ‘It means public feeling's pretty strong when you get both the
Morning Intelligence
and the
Daily Announcer
barking up the same tree. The worst of it is, if we don't find her we shall get laughed at as incompetent muddlers, and if we do find her we shall be howled at for heartless bullies. So you'll remember to be careful what you do.'

‘Yes, sir,' Bobby said again.

‘Though perhaps there won't be any need,' Mitchell added. ‘There's always that chance as well – that when we find her there won't be any need for care.' He began to look among the papers on his desk. ‘There's a long letter from Allen & Wildman's manager this morning,' he said. ‘They found a note somewhere in one of their books to the effect that Miss Barton was connected with “Barton's of Hatton Garden”, and it seems there are still one or two old boys in Hatton Garden who remember “Barton's” well enough. It was a firm in a biggish way at one time, and one man even remembers the last partner, and can say he was a widower with one daughter. He went out of business rather abruptly – apparently about 1890. He closed down in Hatton Garden, and nothing more was seen or heard of him by any of his old associates. It is at least a fair guess that he knew or suspected what had happened, couldn't denounce his own daughter, couldn't stand the knowledge, possibly was afraid of being implicated himself and went abroad to America or Australia, taking his money with him, but leaving his stock of jewellery to the daughter for her support. He may have died years ago; he is spoken of as elderly then. Anyhow, he can hardly be living still. That is why no enquiry was ever made by Allen & Wildman as to where Miss Barton got the jewellery from she was selling. Originally they knew her father had held a good stock for trade purposes, and afterwards it was supposed no questions were necessary as she was an old and well-known customer. One of the Hatton Garden dealers was even able to produce an old boy who had been his father's clerk, and who remembered Mr Barton's last big transaction before he went out of business having been the purchaser of a fine pearl necklace, valued at five figures. At this distance of time he couldn't give any details, but he was quite sure of the main fact and said he had often wondered what had become of that necklace, as you didn't often see one like it. And he agreed the pearl found at Tudor Lodge might well have been part of it – they all agree it has certainly been part of a necklace. And I would give a good deal to know where that necklace is now.'

‘Would not Miss Barton naturally have taken it with her?' Bobby asked.

‘If she has, all the more necessary we should find her as soon as possible,' Mitchell said. ‘This is no sort of world for half-crazed old ladies to be wandering about in with pearl necklaces in their possession valued at five figures. I would like to know, too, what clothes she was wearing. The things she was always seen in are those she left behind. Had she a new outfit? If she had, what was it? Where did she get it? Who bought it for her? Ferris has been working along those lines, but he's drawn a blank every time. Then there's the old wedding dress it seems clear she was in the habit of putting on at times. What's become of that? Did she take it with her? She can't possibly have been wearing it, surely, or someone would have noticed her. Besides, there's the one shoe that was left behind.'

‘That looks a little as if the wedding dress had been packed up in a hurry,' Bobby remarked.

‘It might suggest something else,' mused Mitchell, and Bobby told himself that remark, and the tone in which it was made, meant there was some idea working in Mitchell's mind that would probably come to fruition soon.

Quickly Bobby decided to go over the whole case again, in his mind, from the very start, to see if he could not discover what it was Mitchell was apparently beginning to find significant.

‘Well, carry on,' Mitchell said, turning to his papers, with a nod of dismissal. ‘Call on Mr Yelton first and have a talk with him, and see if that suggests anything, and then work the commercial-traveller idea – and if you can guess why Humphreys has been telling lies about making a good profit on selling garden-stuff, don't forget to let me know.'

‘No, sir,' said Bobby, puzzled, and withdrew.

Why, he wondered, should Mitchell be beginning to attach importance to the fairly obvious lies Humphreys had told about those mythical profits of his from his newly-developed trade in garden-stuff? Very likely he boasted just for the sake of boasting, or to impress customers or creditors with the increasing prosperity of his business, or it might be some prospective purchaser of the shop.

‘I suppose Mitchell can't possibly have got it into his head,' Bobby thought smilingly, ‘that Humphreys started dealing in garden-stuff so as to have a spade handy in order to bury the old lady in the Tudor Lodge garden after he murdered her? Only, unless he has some such notion, what's he worrying about Humphreys' garden trade for?'

Yet this idea, though he dismissed it at first as absurd, since he scarcely thought it possible to cast the mild, timid, conventional little suburban grocer that was Humphreys for the part of the first murderer, kept recurring again and again to Bobby's mind. It was at any rate certain that Mitchell saw something significant in Humphreys' chattering tarradiddles about the big profits earned by his new line in garden requisites, and Mitchell's somewhat slow-moving but generally sure mind was one of which the ideas were seldom expressed till they had been tested and found good. Bobby made up his mind that as soon as he could snatch a spare moment he would visit Brush Hill again and have another look at the garden of Tudor Lodge – though, indeed, if Mitchell's suspicions were moving in that direction, it was hard to understand why he had not at once directed that a search should be made.

But that would have to wait. Bobby's first duty was to pay a visit to Mr Yelton. The offices of Yelton & Markham were situated close to the Tower, and certainly they did not, Bobby thought, give a very great impression of prosperity, or suggest that any share of the some thousands Mitchell had somehow got to know had recently been disbursed by the firm had been expended on renovations. Not that this general air Bobby thought he perceived of a losing fight waged against adverse circumstance was due merely to the fact that the premises seemed in the last stage of decrepitude, as if they had known neither paint nor repair for decades, and that the interior of the office was dark and shabby and poorly furnished. Bobby was well enough aware that in the City of London there are firms whose activities are worldwide, whose bankers treat them with anxious deference, but whose headquarters suggest those of an insolvent rag-and-bone merchant.

What was significant was that about Yelton & Markham's office there seemed to hang a general air of somnolence. There was no coming and going, no bustle of activity, no ringing of telephone bells; the staff seemed to have little to do and not to think that the doing of it mattered greatly. Even the junior clerk who came forward when Bobby entered had a slight air of surprise at seeing him, as though visitors were rare.

Nor did he seem a very intelligent junior clerk. He appeared quite unable to believe that it was Mr Yelton Bobby wanted to see, and made various efforts to usher him instead into Mr Markham's room, explaining that, though Mr Markham had been away ill, he was now back again at work. It rather looked, Bobby thought, as if so few people ever wanted to interview Mr Yelton that the junior clerk could not believe it was not really Mr Markham who was wanted. Bobby was also inclined to guess that during the absence, owing to this recent illness, of Mr Markham, Mr Yelton had not handled what business there was with any conspicuous success – even though, apparently, there had been a windfall, according to Mitchell's information, of several thousands of pounds. Finally it emerged that, anyhow, Mr Yelton was not in at the moment.

‘Then I'll wait for him,' said Bobby with decision, and the junior clerk gave it up with a general air of being accustomed to treat difficult problems like that, returning thereupon contentedly to his desk in the corner and his former occupation of playing noughts and crosses with himself.

Luckily it was not long before Mr Yelton arrived. He seemed a physically brisk, vigorous man of middle age and middle height, but with the somewhat dull and vacant eyes of a man not much used to thinking. He would probably have been happiest, Bobby guessed, in some routine outdoor occupation – he would have made a first-rate sergeant-major, for instance, or even general in time of peace; and, after all, it is in time of peace that most generals function – but hardly the type likely to do well in the intense competition of modern business; and, indeed, his chief triumphs had been won upon the links, for once he had even done well in the Open, and always he cherished the secret belief that had circumstances been propitious he might have achieved a great position in the game. Characteristically, he expected circumstances to be propitious, and, if they were not, considered that a fully sufficient reason for failure.