Bones in the Barrow (23 page)

“She had no new things after she left Boxwood,” said Janet Lapthorn. “In fact, she seemed to have fewer and fewer of her old ones as time went on. I used to ask her about it, and blame her for not taking enough trouble with her appearance. She said she couldn't afford it.”

Janet shot a spiteful glance at Mr. Hilton.

“She was getting ten pounds a week from me,” he answered the look. Mrs. Lapthorn lowered her eyes.

“She ought to have managed on that with enough for everything. She never told me what you gave her.”

“Generous for the needs of one,” said David. “Barely enough for two. You should have given less, Hilton. There would have been less temptation.”

“How was I to know?” he said in a low voice. “You think she was keeping the swine as well? On my money?”

“That suggests itself, I think. We have discovered no motive up to now. It is significant that she was killed about the time she decided to leave him.”

“This business of the clothes,” said Jill to Mrs. Lapthorn. “Shall we make a list of everything you remember? The police have been combing the pawnbrokers and secondhand clothes shops in Battersea and Lambeth and Golders Green, but they haven't found anything. Mr. Hilton is so vague, even about her jewellery.”

“She had a good deal of that,” said Janet readily. “Nothing very valuable, you know. She had a good string of cultured pearls, worth about twenty pounds, and one or two brooches in old-fashioned settings she took to wearing as costume jewellery when it got fashionable. The rest was showy, but decidedly cheap.”

“We'd better write them down,” said Jill. “Shall we go into the house? It will be easier, and Mr. Hilton won't have to hear you describing it all.”

Mrs. Mason brought out a table under the tree at half-past four and followed it with the tea-tray. Jill and Janet Lapthorn, their task completed as far as the latter's memory would go, rejoined the men. After they had all finished their leisurely meal, the Wintringhams got up to go, suggesting that Mrs. Lapthorn might like to join them.

“But I've got a return ticket on the railway,” she said, as if she meant to use it at all costs.

“So have we.”

“Oh, I thought you must have come down by car.”

“Not today,” said David, giving Jill a warning glance. “We rather like the train to this place. By car it means heavy traffic practically the whole way.”

Mrs. Lapthorn was prepared to be gracious. She was not particularly taken with the pair: they seemed to her to have a set of personal jokes that were meaningless to her, though Alastair understood them all right. Dr. Wintringham, too, wasn't a proper doctor. He only did research work at one of the big London hospitals. Perhaps that was why he spoke to her in a cold, expressionless voice, without any of the little compliments and insinuations Jack's friends used. But she had no objection to travelling with them. Any company on a railway journey was better than none. It always bothered her to be in a train alone. You heard of such awful things happening to women passengers. And then to be alone in an accident: What could be worse than that?

They got into one of the new carriages on the southern suburban lines; a coach with a corridor down the centre and bays of seats on either side, with small luggage racks above. Mrs. Lapthorn and the Wintringhams sat down; the former next to Jill on one side, David, alone, opposite the two women. The seat at David's side was empty. Just before the train started a girl came quickly along the platform looking into the carriages. When the whistle blew she pulled open the door at the end of the coach and got in. The train started. The girl swayed up the centre of the coach, and failing to see an empty seat on the other side of it, she took the vacant place next to David.

Mrs. Lapthorn and Jill were watching the platform as the train drew out. In fact the former continued to stare out the window at the fields and hedges. The girl beside David took some knitting out of the bag she carried and then got up to put the bag on the rack. After that she settled herself and began to knit.

It was at this moment that Janet Lapthorn, perhaps drawn by the noise the newcomer made, looked round, and an instant later grasped Jill by the arm. The girl's head was bent, counting stitches, but soon she looked up. Janet Lapthorn was again staring out the window. David and Jill exchanged glances.

Nothing further happened until the train reached Surbiton, but here a large number of people got out and a few got in. In the noise and confusion Janet said in Jill's ear, “That girl is wearing
Felicity's brooch
!”

Jill instantly dismissed the idea as absurd. Such a coincidence was too wild. The afternoon's work had addled Mrs. Lapthorn's brain. She forced a polite smile, murmuring, “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Come to the end of the coach. I'll tell you.”

Signalling to David to stay where he was, Jill got up and, followed by Mrs. Lapthorn, made her way to the end of the coach, where she stood near the window, looking out.

“It is one of the brooches I was telling you about,” said Mrs. Lapthorn. “Genuine small pearls in an old-fashioned gold setting. It doesn't look so very different to the imitation dress stuff they sell so much of, but I know that pattern. You won't find exactly that in the shops. I'm ready to swear it's Felicity's. What's more, I know that girl's face. She works in Boxwood at the hairdresser I used to go to. Felicity went there, too. She hasn't recognized me, but she would if I spoke to her.”

“Do you think Mrs. Hilton gave the girl the brooch?”

“I suppose it's possible. Oughtn't we to find out?”

“Yes, we certainly ought. If she really is the girl you remember it wouldn't be such a coincidence meeting her. Particularly if she travels from Boxwood on this train every day of the week.”

“Very likely she does. She wasn't a Boxwood girl, I know.”

“We must tell David,” said Jill. “I feel all confused. I'll get him over here.”

David, seemingly deep in his own thoughts, had been watching the excited conversation between the two women, and it did not need much effort on Jill's part to bring him to their side.

“We'll get out of this carriage at Wimbledon,” he said. “If she stays on, we'll get back into the next one. We'll have to be pretty snappy at Waterloo not to miss her.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Mrs. Lapthorn. “I'm afraid I shall have to leave you at Waterloo. I must go straight to Liverpool Street on the Underground.”

“Oh, no!” said Jill. “You can't do that! You must come with us. We shall want you to identify the brooch.”

“I wouldn't dream of accosting anyone,” said Mrs. Lapthorn firmly.

“We'll do the accosting. You'll only have to say what you think about the brooch.”

“I certainly shan't. If the police get hold of it and I am asked to give my opinion at Scotland Yard, in private, I might consider it. Not otherwise. I wouldn't have spoken if I'd known how you would take it.”

“But you are
sure, quite
sure, it is Mrs. Hilton's?”

“It is a most unusual pattern. I have never seen it on any other brooch. I always thought it very original when Felicity wore it.”

“Then why not back us up straight away?”

“No, thank you. Besides, I have my husband's dinner to get. And I shall be nearly an hour late as it is.”

So at Waterloo Mrs. Lapthorn disappeared at once into the Underground for Bank station, using the stairs from the middle of the platform, while David and Jill, dodging through the crowds, followed their quarry to the barrier. Here in the throng David managed to jolt the girl's arm as she held out her season ticket. It slipped from her hand and he dived quickly after it, nearly losing his balance as the people behind him pressed forward.

He restored the ticket in its holder to the girl, with an earnest apology that brought a reluctant smile to her lips.

“The name is Shirley Gardiner,” said David in Jill's ear, as they hurried along in pursuit.

Miss Gardiner floated down the first escalator six heads away from them, and she passed the next barrier by means of her season ticket, while they were frantically searching for coins at the automatic machine.

“Tottenham Court Road,” said David. “Or so her season says. Pray God she's going there.”

She was still in sight as they got on to the second escalator, and in the press of the crowds moving against her at its foot they caught her up again. They travelled to Tottenham Court Road in the seats next to hers.

From there the chase was severe, but short. Three times they lost sight of her before she turned down a side street and proceeded along it to a large building, which they knew to be a girls' hostel. This she entered, leaving them standing on the pavement outside.

“Now does she live there, or has she only come to visit a friend?” said David. “She lives somewhere in the neighbourhood, or she wouldn't have a season to Tottenham Court Road. You stay here, and if she comes out again hold her by any means you can think of until I come back. I must get Johnson. I'm out of my depth.”

“I shall be accosted,” said Jill. “By strange men. Foreigners.”

“I should be warned off by the police if I waited exactly at the entrance to this highly respectable establishment. I won't be long. Then we can wait together.”

But Chief-Inspector Johnson did not approve of their plan, and presently the Wintringhams were both seated in his office at Scotland Yard.

“No good confronting that girl tonight,” said the inspector. “She wouldn't say a thing at the time, and then she'd warn whoever gave her or sold her the brooch. We don't want her; we want to find out where she got it. The Lapthorn woman recognized it: she'll have to go down to Boxwood with me tomorrow. Did you say she knew where the girl works?”

“One of the hairdressers, she said.”

“Perhaps she knows the name. I'll ask her.”

The inspector got through to the Lapthorns' house: Jack Lapthorn answered the call. His wife had not arrived yet, he said. When he was told who was speaking to him his voice cracked on a high note of astonishment before returning to its normal tone.

“Is it about Felicity—Mrs. Hilton? Janet was full of some wild tale this morning—”

“It has to do with her experiences today. Ask her to ring me as soon as she comes in.”

“We'll have to do it the long way,” said the inspector. “The shops will all be closed now, of course. Directories might help. In any case, we don't want to upset that girl until we have her where she can't do any harm.”

“You don't mean lock her up, do you?” said David. “Habeas corpus—”

“No, I don't,” said Johnson, with contempt. “I mean at her work. Mrs. Lapthorn will have to come to Boxwood with me tomorrow, but I wouldn't trust her to set the ball rolling. Mrs. Wintringham had better be the one to have her hair washed by Shirley.”

“What if she isn't wearing the brooch tomorrow?” said Jill. “Or got it at Woolworth's?”

“You know she didn't,” said David. “We saw it quite close in the Tube and it looked genuine enough. But it seems a very long shot, all the same.”

“Not much longer than some we've made already,” said Johnson.

The next morning, however, all Johnson's careful plans to avoid alarming Shirley Gardiner were completely upset by the morning papers.

For Duckington had broken out the day before in a big way, and London had copied Duckington. And now reporters were invading the White Hart and the Royal Arms, the vicarage, and the Willows at Boxwood.

Inspector Johnson blamed himself, but too late. He had reckoned without Daisy's volatile imagination and too abundant spite. From being against Hilton, she had, on the night of her ordeal in his room at the White Hart, turned all her energies into an attack on the police. With Joe's help she had found a representative of the local press and poured out her story of the persecution of a sick man, and the terrible position he had been placed in by the mistakes of Scotland Yard.

More worldly-wise than Daisy, and also more cautious, the local paper had interviewed Mrs. Norbury. There they found a more coherent story, but the persecution theme was upheld. The victim had not been arrested, had indeed gone back to his own home. As for the true facts of that Saturday night's work on the downs, the vicar and the chief constable knew all about it.

Mr. Symonds proved to be a model of discretion, but Colonel Wetherall, smarting from various injuries, real and imagined, at the hands of those he considered his inferiors, issued, without consulting Scotland Yard, a carefully worded story of a particularly sensational crime, in so far at least as it concerned Duckington. The human bones found at the prehistoric site had been identified, the papers said, as part of the remains of a Mrs. Felicity Hilton, of the Willows, Grange Road, Boxwood. Investigations were continuing.

“At full blast, and from all sides,” said Johnson to David, who had been hurriedly summoned at eight o' clock in the morning to Scotland Yard. “I'll have to go down at once. No good trying to hide everything now. The best we can do is to seem to be closing in on Hilton. That might reassure the man we really want. If that girl, Gardiner, is completely innocent, we have a chance. If not, from the moment we contact her, the real criminal will be off again”.

“But I don't think he has been running away at all,” said David. “Except last Saturday night. I don't mind betting he is behaving as normally as possible this week. It is the only thing he could do. We know that he lives, or else works, in Boxwood. Miss Gardiner should be able to tell you which, and how she met him, and his real name, provided she knows him by it.”

“I'm going down at once,” said Johnson. “I shall simply have to pull the girl in and make her talk, and take her round to Hilton, if she doesn't object, to get the brooch identified. Mrs. Lapthorn is waiting to go down with me.”