Mystery Villa (20 page)

A curious thing, however, that Bobby noticed at once, and that worried and bothered him greatly, was that he found in Mr Yelton an odd, teasing, troubling resemblance to someone he had once seen. Yelton himself, he was sure, was a complete stranger, but yet there was a kind of family resemblance, as it were, to someone he had seen on some previous occasion. Whether it lay in some resemblance of feature, or in some trick of manner, Bobby could not determine; and he was at any rate sure that it did not He in any family likeness he and his daughter bore to each other, for there seemed no feature in which there was any resemblance between the child and the father. Bobby made a mental note to find out if Mr Yelton had any male relatives, and, if so, to get a look at them all in turn.

Another thing Bobby noticed – and that confirmed his previous impression that the business was in none too prosperous a state – was that while he was talking to Mr Yelton they were not once interrupted. No letters were brought in for signature; no phone bell rang; no one came knocking at the door for instructions.

A placid life, Bobby thought, business men seemed to lead, and he wished he had nothing to do but doze in an office all day instead of chasing wild geese up and down the country.

Mr Yelton seemed disposed, however, to be both frank and communicative in his drawling, somewhat irritatingly superior way, though of course a certain loftiness of manner is only natural, and even to be expected and approved, in a ‘plus' man living in a world composed chiefly of rabbits. He admitted at once that he had paid a visit to Tudor Lodge, but denied emphatically that he had either entered or attempted to enter the house, or that he had had sight of, or speech with, its unhappy inmate. His daughter had told him about her nerve-racking experience, and a natural curiosity had taken him to have a look at the house on his way back from a golfing afternoon. He agreed, too, that from the first he had felt it was most likely the dead body concealed in the Saratoga trunk was that of his uncle, his father's brother, who had disappeared so mysteriously.

‘A bad lot, I'm afraid,' Mr Yelton said frankly. ‘It wasn't only the two women he had promised to marry – he had played himself into the rough with others as well. One particularly bad case was with the daughter of one of the staff – most distressing case altogether. My father did his best to make up. There was money trouble as well – one of those men who can never drive straight, you know. I expect the family and everyone else was extremely relieved when he scratched. Of course, no one had any idea what had really happened. They just took it he felt bunkered for keeps and decided to vanish. Most likely what they were all most afraid of was that he would turn up again. They were always expecting him to, but he never did, and now of course we know why.'

In answer to further questions, Mr Yelton agreed that he knew very well that, strictly speaking, he ought to have reported his daughter's discovery to the authorities. He quite recognised that, but he hadn't in the least felt like doing so. What was the good of raking up old scandals? Besides, the publicity would have been most distasteful to his daughter, who had already had one bad shock and was in no condition to face all the fuss and excitement which would have resulted. It was not as though there was any vindictive feeling against Miss Barton. The poor old creature had suffered enough for what she had done, and her victim had met no more than his deserts. Anyhow, Mr Yelton had not seen then, did not see now, what harm there could be in adding another week or so of delay to the forty-five years that had gone by, and Bobby was again aware of a general impression that Mr Yelton solved in the same way most of the problems life presented to him – that is, by doing nothing. A weak, well-meaning man, Bobby summed him up, and no more of the stuff of which deliberate, cold-blooded murderers are made than was Humphreys himself. Though, of course, one can never tell, Bobby reminded himself; psychology is no exact science, and the human soul has strange and dark and sometimes dreadful qualities that slumber in it till emergency awakes them.

Mr Yelton went on talking. No good purpose would have been served by saying anything about his daughter's experience, he insisted. Then the paper came out with the news that the discovery had been made independently of any action of his or of his daughter's, and that had been rather a relief. For his part, he did not see why the whole thing could not be dropped. What was the good of harrying a feeble old woman on the edge of the grave, or of raking up old family scandals?

One thing he made quite clear, speaking with an air of sincerity that impressed. Neither he nor his daughter had the very least idea what had become of Miss Barton – though he admitted also that, even if they had known, they would probably not have been in any hurry to communicate their knowledge to the authorities.

‘Let it drop, let it alone,' he kept repeating. ‘Pick up and concede the hole,' he urged.

Another point he was emphatic upon was that they had not breathed a word to anyone about the affair or their connection with it. They had discussed it between themselves, of course – and naturally with young Aske; but, then, Aske had known all about it from the beginning. It was he to whom had been entrusted the letter that had in the first place taken Dorothy to Tudor Lodge.

‘The old scandal is still remembered in the office, and outside, too, I expect,' Yelton said, somewhat moodily. ‘Not likely I was going to start all that beastly gossip all over again.'

He agreed, too, that Dorothy had told him about the pearl necklace Miss Barton showed her. But he had not paid that story much attention, though it was true there was a vague family legend to the effect that James Yelton had probably been willing to marry Miss Barton only in order to lay his hands on her jewellery. Her dowry was to have been, apparently, a good share of the jewellery in which her father was said to have his capital invested, and possibly this pearl necklace might be a relic of that legendary store. Certainly Dorothy had insisted that it looked tremendously valuable. But then, she knew nothing about jewellery, declared Mr Yelton with all a father's dogmatism, and as likely as not the thing was only imitation. Imitations were often good enough to deceive experts, much more young girls like Dorothy. (Mr Yelton suffered from the usual male-parent delusion that young girls don't know much, whereas in point of fact they generally know practically everything.) Of course, one couldn't tell. Anyhow, he knew nothing about it. Presumably, valuable or not, it was still in Miss Barton's possession. If she had kept it safely for half a century or so, she was probably capable of keeping it safely a little longer. But Bobby could rest assured that in any case no living soul had heard about the pearl necklace, either from himself or from his daughter. It had never ever been mentioned between themselves except on that one occasion. They had not spoken of it since, and certainly not to any third person.

‘No good starting all that old story all over again,' Mr Yelton grumbled.

Bobby thought he seemed somewhat sensitive about a tale fifty years old, but was inclined to accept his denial. Guilty, he would not have talked, and innocent, this disinclination to risk reviving old gossip would equally have kept him silent.

Rather neatly, Bobby now got in a reference to any relatives Mr Yelton might possess. But Mr Yelton explained that he had none. He and Dorothy were alone in the world. He grew, indeed, quite pathetic about their loneliness. It was apparently a favourite theme, for Mr Yelton was a man always profuse in pity for himself, and Bobby let him dilate upon it for some minutes, while there still persisted, as there had done in his mind all through this long and inconclusive interview, that worrying, teasing feeling he had of a vague, shadowy resemblance that Mr Yelton showed to someone Bobby had once seen. Of course, it might be merely a coincidence, due to some chance resemblance, and, indeed, it is a fact that people, complete strangers to each other, sometimes display a most strange mutual resemblance.

Mr Yelton seemed quite prepared to go on talking for another hour or two, but Bobby thought it about time to bring the conversation to a close, and so took his departure, emerging from Mr Yelton's private room into the outer office just as a tall man in top hat and morning coat was leaving it.

‘Our Mr Markham,' explained the dumpy little whitehaired senior clerk to Bobby. ‘He has been waiting in the hope of having a talk with you, but he has an appointment with some big American people this morning and he couldn't stay any longer.'

‘Anything special he wanted to say?' Bobby asked.

‘Oh no, but we're all interested, naturally,' declared the senior clerk. ‘Mr Yelton's looking very worried – newspaper men calling and all that. Naturally we told them nothing,' he added primly; and from one or two other things he said Bobby felt certain that the scandal, old as it was, to which Mr Yelton had referred, was still a living memory with some at any rate of his staff.

Bobby lingered to chat a little, but soon convinced himself that the senior clerk had nothing to tell and also that he was far too prudent and discreet to tell that nothing. But one thing was clear: he had great respect for the senior partner as an employer, as a golfer, for his educational qualifications – ‘Eton and Cambridge,' said the senior clerk in an awestruck voice, ‘and took very high honours, very high indeed,' a statement which surprised Bobby a little till he reflected that a certain knack in passing examinations is not necessarily indicative of high intelligence, and that even what intelligence is indicated may presently rust away from disuse. Presumably it was on account of this sort of social aura that seemed to surround Mr Yelton that all his colleagues of the office, from junior partner to office-boy, appeared to have adopted a somewhat haughty ‘looking down the nose' kind of attitude towards the rest of the world, an attitude Bobby thought little likely to help the firm in these days of intense competition.

But for his employer as a business man the senior clerk seemed to have no respect whatever. What he said, indeed, confirmed Bobby's previous impression that the business was almost entirely conducted by Mr Markham. Even during Mr Markham's recent illness, when he had been recuperating in the Bournemouth nursing-home whither he had gone for some slight operation to be performed, he had still directed all the activities of the firm. Every night a full report had been sent to him at Bournemouth for delivery next morning, and by return had come back full and explicit directions, delivered at the office the following morning.

‘Never missed once,' said the little clerk proudly, ‘not even the day of the operation.'

As, however, he seemed to have nothing of very great interest or importance to say, Bobby took himself off to carry out his next task – that of searching for some commercial traveller who had known Humphreys and might possibly have either knowledge of his present whereabouts or be able to give some hint of where to look for him. And in this effort he met, for once in this extraordinarily difficult and tantalising case, with a piece of remarkable good luck.

Everyone has heard, and most people have partaken, of the ‘Ninety-Nine Delights – British, Pre-Digested', that almost every hoarding crashes on the attention of the passer-by, roaring to him that they range from genuine best tinned turtle to finest superior best Brussels sprouts, and that they may be obtained from any grocer for a mere sixpence (home, sweet home size), shilling (lordly mansion size), or half-crown (Lord Mayor's banquet size). It was the well-known picture of a family, from great-grandfather to new-born babe, all hysterical with joy over a dinner-table furnished solely from the contents of these different tins that caught Bobby's eye as he left the office of Yelton & Markham, and that reminded him he had once seen an enormous pyramid of such tins in the window of Humphreys' shop at the corner of Battenberg Prospect in Brush Hill, filling it with so many bright and varied hues as no tropic sunset could have rivalled, dazzling indeed the spectator by their outward glory just as their contents made the digestive process a mere anachronism or as they replaced culinary skill by skill in the use of the tin-opener. So now, inspired by this contribution to what has been libellously called the People's Gallery of Art, Bobby took himself off to the chief office of the Ninety-Nine Delights – British, Pre-Digested – Corporation where it rears its splendid head twelve stories high in Mayfair Gardens, overlooking St James's Palace, which it reduces to the insignificance proper to a mere royal palace by the side of a palace of commerce.

And what a contrast this hustling hive of industry presented to the somnolent offices of Yelton & Markham that Bobby had just left! Here the phone bell never ceased from ringing nor the telegraph-boys from arriving. Here the most junior clerk was obviously the ‘go-get' chrysalis of a millionaire, and here every typist banged her machine as if she knew the whole balance of trade hung upon the nimbleness of her fingers. Indeed, Bobby was soon thinking himself lucky to have been able to escape giving that order for the instant delivery of a thousand cases, assorted, which he felt the super-efficiency of the place must almost automatically extract from all who crossed its threshold.

However, when he had managed at last to make his business known, he was instantly shot up to the tenth floor in an express lift that didn't stop till it reached the twelfth. He was then swiftly hurried down again two floors, bustled thence through a labyrinth of corridors, only to be abruptly deserted before a maze of doors, all painted with different names and all intimidatingly marked ‘Private'. However, at last he managed to reach the presence of a Mr Smithers, who proved to be in charge for ‘Ninety-Nine Delights – British, Pre-Digested' of the Brush Hill district.

‘Humphreys, Battenberg Prospect, Brush Hill?' repeated Mr Smithers. ‘Knew him all right – got a good order out of the little rat and then he went back on it. Did a window display for him, too. Funny thing, one of our chaps was telling me he saw him the other day – said he had sold out at a good figure and retired on it. There are,' said Mr Smithers gratefully, ‘lots of suckers in the world, but Humphreys must have found the champion sucker of them all. Dead-alive hole he was in – no traffic, bus route changed, several multiple branches quite close. Why, I would as soon have bought a dud ticket in the Irish sweepstakes three days after the race was over as that place of his.'