Mystery Villa (27 page)

He mentioned this idea to Mitchell on his return to the Yard, but Mitchell shook his head.

‘I think we may take it as fairly certain that neither Mr Yelton nor Miss Yelton mentioned the necklace to anyone else,' he said. ‘If Markham knew about it, he must have known from some other source, and I don't at present see what that could be. But you can put in a bit of work on Askes' gloves, though it doesn't sound a very promising line.

Bobby called therefore at the Stores, and, when he had explained his errand, was allowed to examine Aske's account. There, plainly entered, almost immediately after the date Aske had given as that of his first encounter with Miss Barton, was an item recording the purchase of a pair of yellow leather gardening gloves. A little excited, Bobby reported the fact to Mitchell by phone. Mitchell answered: ‘Interesting. The laboratory report specially mentions that the scrapings are very coarse in texture and probably came from gardening gloves.'

For a time the centre of the investigation moved to the Continent; though, in Glasgow, Con Conway, placidly showing the Glaswegians how to buy and sell at a profit apples and bananas and such other of the kindly fruits of the earth as he could pick up cheap, was kept under the patient surveillance of a puzzled police; though the search for the missing Humphreys was still pursued in their very dreams by zealous detectives all over the country; though even Mr Yelton, apparently all intent upon justifying a handicap threatened by a new and meddlesome committee, was by no means exempt from observation; though an unfounded rumour that young Mr Aske had been seen in Hatton Garden, emerging from the office of a famous specialist in pearls, caused considerable perturbation at Scotland Yard; though, in fact, every other line of enquiry was still diligently pursued. But it was on the Continent that the most strenuous efforts were made, only to collapse into complete failure as it became evident that the seller of the pearls had covered up his tracks so effectively that there was little hope of ever discovering his identity, or even of obtaining a description of him.

Everything had been done through intermediaries. But a good price had always been obtained. There had been no hurried thrusting of the pearls on any available purchaser. They had been offered to firms of good standing, a fair though not excessive price had been asked, the need for secrecy had been satisfactorily explained on the ground that the pearls were the property of a lady of social standing who was obliged, by financial stress, to dispose of the gift of an old friend, but wished to keep the transaction hidden both from the friend in question, and from her husband.

The story had been plausible enough to win an acceptance not sharpened to unnecessary criticism by any strong objection to the comfortable, if not excessive, profit the transaction promised. Moreover, verisimilitude had been added to it by the name, given in great confidence, of the lady in question, together with a note signed by her on note-paper headed by her address. It was a convincing detail that removed all misgivings, though Mitchell's discreet enquiry showed that letter and note-paper were barefaced forgery, and the use of the lady's name entirely unauthorised. She had sold no pearls; she had, in fact, no pearls to sell – she only wished she had, she said pathetically, in answer to the afore-mentioned discreet enquiries, as she swept a few more unpaid bills from her Buhl writing-table into the waste-paper basket.

‘No doubt Miss Barton's pearls; that much is clear enough,' pronounced Mitchell, ‘but I don't see any chance of proving it. Probably no one alive has ever had more than a glimpse of the necklace Miss Yelton and Con Conway got, and, now the pearls composing it have been scattered, identification is more hopeless than ever. And I don't see much chance, either, of identifying the Englishman who sold them. If it's Humphreys, he has more brains than we've credited him with. Of course he may have had the whole thing worked out and prepared beforehand. If it's Conway, I should have expected him to go to work in a different way – but, then, perhaps he did. All this may mean the necklace was got rid of in England to some receiver, and it's the receiver who disposed of it abroad. That would mean, even if we trace the pearls to him, we shan't be any further forward when we've no means of establishing identity. Upon my soul, it's almost a wonder they didn't send the thing for sale to Christie's.'

‘I think it must have been sold in London, in the first place,' Bobby agreed. ‘None of our suspects seem to have been abroad recently – except, of course, that Yelton and Markham have been carrying out these exchange speculations they talk about. I suppose that means they must have been in touch with the Continent somehow.'

‘So I thought it just as well to get Bournemouth to check up Markham's having been in a nursing-home there at the times mentioned,' Mitchell remarked. ‘That seems O.K. The report says he was admitted and left on the dates given, that he had a letter from his firm practically every morning, and always sent off a reply the same day, in time to reach London by the last post – which, of course, would be first delivery next morning for the office. Besides, there's nothing to show Markham was ever near Tudor Lodge, or had ever heard of Miss Barton or her possible possession of jewellery. The only thing about him is he has suddenly got hold of some money. But he has used it for the firm, apparently obtained it on the firm's account, and the explanation of exchange speculation is plausible. In any case he is duly entered in the Bournemouth nursing-home as arriving two weeks before your encounter with Con Conway, and as having had a slight operation on the same day, I think, as your meeting with Con.'

‘I gathered from what they told me at the office,' Bobby said, ‘that he really ran the business from Bournemouth all the time he was there. I don't think Yelton's much more than a figure-head, and I think he knows it, so he finds compensation in his golf.'

‘I wonder if it's possible he finds compensation in other ways, like picking up pearl necklaces that are doing no good to anyone,' Mitchell mused. ‘It's a possible motive. He knows he is considered no good at the office, where Markham has taken over almost the whole direction of the business, and vanity might urge him to re-establish himself by suddenly providing fresh capital. A bit far-fetched, perhaps, but then the whole affair's far-fetched, Lord knows, and that pearl necklace in the possession of a feeble old half-crazed woman living all alone was simply asking to be stolen. To some people it wouldn't seem like theft, merely saving it from being wasted and putting it to good uses.'

‘Well, sir, for my part,' declared Bobby, ‘I'm beginning to think it's no one we know anything about.'

‘You mean we have been barking up a whole series of wrong trees?' Mitchell asked. ‘Possible. But we can't very well start investigations without something to go on – no use pursuing a ghost. I've even had the postmen on the Brush Hill round questioned. None of them seems to have known anything, or to have had any idea that Miss Barton was anything but an eccentric old woman living alone in extreme poverty, or ever to have noticed anyone near the house. In fact, apparently, no one ever did, except occasional bill distributors, and, of course, Humphreys and his errand-boys and assistant who delivered the old lady's standing order twice a week or so. Humphreys we can't trace, he's vanished very successfully for the time, though we may get word of him at any moment, and Mrs Humphreys is being closely watched. The last two or three errand-boys he employed have been questioned, but it's fairly clear they don't know anything. There's still the last assistant he had – the man the note in the books says was sacked for pilfering from the till. He is about the only person even remotely connected with the case we haven't questioned. Difficult to trace, too, when all we have to go on is a vague personal description, the knowledge that his name is Jones, and as likely as not that's an assumed name, and finally he hasn't come forward in answer to our appeals, and isn't very likely to, when he knows there may be a charge of theft advanced against him. I think you saw him once when he was coming away from the house after leaving an order there?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby.

‘You would know him again?'

‘Oh, yes, sir, at once,' Bobby answered with confidence. ‘Even if he had shaved his moustache – I think I remember you said he had one?'

‘Yes, sir,' answered Bobby, still more confidently. ‘If I think I may have to recognise anyone again, I generally try to make a sketch of them with a moustache, and then another without a moustache. You get used to the kind of difference a moustache makes, and, of course, a false moustache is about the commonest dodge there is.'

‘Then that knocks on the head a sort of idea that was running in my mind,' Mitchell remarked. ‘You've never found out why you thought you had seen someone once with some kind of family resemblance to Mr Yelton?'

‘No, sir,' answered Bobby, a little ruefully. ‘I'm beginning to think, now, that perhaps I had seen Mr Yelton himself some time before, and noticed him and then forgotten him again. There's one point, sir,' he added, ‘that I've been thinking about recently, and that may have been overlooked. When I met Jones, if that's his name, he had a pair of yellow gardening gloves in his basket he told me had been ordered by another customer he was taking them to.'

‘We had better have another look at Humphreys' books,' observed Mitchell, ‘and see if we can trace that customer. Is it possible Jones is someone who had heard of Miss Barton in connection with the “Mad Millionaire” story and took the job with Humphreys in order to get a chance to have a look at Tudor Lodge without rousing any suspicion?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby doubtfully. ‘Only, if Jones was really a crook after a big thing like this pearl necklace, would he be likely to let himself be caught at the till? Would he have condescended to such a petty theft for one thing?'

‘You mean,' asked Mitchell, a little amused, ‘you could trust a big-job man not to put his fingers for coppers in a till just as you could trust a bishop not to – professional honour in both cases?'

‘Well, yes, sir, that's what I meant,' agreed Bobby. ‘Besides, if it was like that, Humphreys' behaviour still wants explaining – why he's shut down his shop and disappeared, I mean, and where the money came from that he certainly got somewhere. You know, sir,' he added abruptly, ‘I can't imagine a little man like Humphreys, after years of suburban respectability as a small shopkeeper, suddenly mixing himself up with theft and murder. It's... it's not–'

‘Not psychological,' suggested Mitchell. ‘But psychology's not an exact science yet; and then, anyhow, what they call a complex will always explain anything, especially if you add a repression. Do you know, I think it might be a good idea if you were to see Aske again and get him to try to remember if Miss Barton ever said anything, when she was talking to him, about Humphreys or his assistant. If it's true, as Aske says, that she offered to give him the necklace, it's just on the cards something had happened to make her uneasy about keeping the thing and she wanted to get rid of it. You can just put that to him and see if it seems to suggest anything. In a case like this, one must follow up every line, however faint. You did make a report about the gardening gloves he bought at the Stores, didn't you?'

‘Yes, sir,' Bobby answered. ‘They are there, at the house, and in use, but there wouldn't be any possibility of identifying scratches now. I don't know if chemical analysis could prove identity with the scrapings found under Miss Barton's nails.'

‘It could, and it has,' Mitchell answered quietly. ‘A pair of identical gloves, taken from the same manufacturer's stock, has been tested. But there's always the difficulty that thousands of pairs of the same make have been sold both to the Stores and elsewhere, and there's no way of pinning down those scrapings to any one pair. It's a link, but only in a chain not complete yet by a long way. But you can visit Aske–'

The house phone on Mitchell's desk rang. He answered it, and then looked across at Bobby.

‘Got Humphreys at last,' he said. ‘Nailed him landing at the docks. They are bringing him along in a taxi.'

I n the interval before Humphreys' arrival, Mitchell turned placidly to other work, whereof a C.I.D. superintendent has always a plethora on hand. But Bobby, with fewer responsibilities pressing on his mind, prowled restlessly from one corridor to another, from one room to the next, until more or less politely requested to remove himself with speed elsewhere, since other people had work to do, if he hadn't. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the whole Yard was grateful when presently he was summoned back to Mitchell's room.

‘Humphreys will be here in a minute or two,' Mitchell told him. ‘He's been cruising, apparently. I've been in touch with the ship he was on; got the captain on the phone. He's been quite in the fashion.'

‘Not a bad stunt for anyone who wants to keep out of the way,' Bobby commented.

‘No,' agreed Mitchell, ‘not now it's so popular. Wonder the big shipping companies didn't tumble to the idea before, though; they ought to have taken a hint from the old
Skylark
on Brighton beach years ago. Seems it's a small coasting steamer he joined at Bristol the same day he disappeared, after you had interviewed him. Now cruising's all the rage, every coasting steamer is on the look-out for anyone wanting a cheap trip, and, if it isn't a passenger boat, then they just sign you on as purser or captain's clerk or something of that sore. Luckily one of our men spotted him as soon as they put in at the docks this morning.'

‘You know, sir,' Bobby observed thoughtfully, ‘I'm not so jolly sure now Humphreys isn't a good deal deeper than we've been giving him credit for.'