Bones in the Barrow (22 page)

“Yes,” said Hilton, surprisingly. “Yes. I had one at the end of the war, to save petrol, when it was rationed. But I sold it a couple of years ago.”

“Who to?”

“To my garage. Billings Garage, in Boxwood. I think one of their mechanics bought it. But they would know. I turned it in as part payment for a new car, the one I drive now.”

“That can be checked, as you say. Perhaps you borrowed the bike back from the mechanic now and then?”

“No, I have never done so.”

“You had it here in Duckington tonight.”

“How could I? When could I have brought it here? I came in my car. I can account for my whole time here.”

“You took twice the normal time to get down here.” He swung round on Mrs. Norbury. “You didn't know that, did you?”

“Yes, I did,” she answered with spirit. “He told me what time he left London, and I remarked at the time to Norah that it was slow going. But he didn't try to hide it.”

“I took a long time, because I was not feeling too good, and stopped several times for a rest on the way,” said Hilton.

“You drove that bike up the down tonight,” said Johnson.

“I did not.”

“Then why was it found not two hundred yards from the beginning of the track up the hill, with the licence and number plates gone, and the engine number scratched over? Tell me that, Mr. Hilton? Or rather, tell it to Scotland Yard, where we're going now.”

“It is not my bike, and I know nothing about it,” repeated Hilton. “I will go with you, if I must, but what these others have said is the truth.”

“Hadn't you better check up on the bike before you make up your mind?” said David. “There must be more than one B. S.A. ‘47 about. It seems to me the bird we want has left Duckington. Hitch-hiking, probably. He wouldn't risk staying here. He's gone, after a very ill advised final effort to pin suspicion on Hilton.”

“Final?” asked Hilton.

“Your hat, your magazine, the bundle—”

He stopped abruptly. The bundle containing something Hilton would have to identify: or could he spare him that? The sight might kill him.

Inspector Johnson was not so considerate. He told Hilton in plain words what had been left near the barrow, and in the latter's stricken face and extreme pallor saw only a further confirmation of his own theory. He warned Hilton that he would be expected to view all the relics at Scotland Yard in the near future. David felt called upon to protest.

“I shall dispute the necessity for that,” he said. “As Mr. Hilton's medical adviser I am prepared to give him a certificate saying it would be dangerous for him to do so. In fact,” he went on, feeling for Hilton's pulse and looking at his drawn face, “you have given him about as much as he can stand tonight. If you insist on taking him to London now, you'd better call an ambulance. You're not likely to get him there in any other way.”

Inspector Johnson, who was a humane man at heart, began to look for a way out of his dilemma that would not lower his prestige too rudely in the eyes of the local force, nor give Hilton, if he were really guilty, a chance of escape. While the little group stood silent and uncertain, a bell downstairs rang loudly.

“I'm wanted,” said Mrs. Norbury. “Don't let them bully him, Doctor.”

She swept towards the door, which one of the policemen held open for her. Mr. Hilton struggled to his feet.

“I'd better go with you, Inspector,” he said. “I'd rather leave here. I've brought enough trouble on this house already, if not scandal. The news will be all over the village before morning.”

His eyes were on Daisy as he spoke.

“Not from me,” she said, almost crying with remorse. “I wouldn't say a word. I don't want to leave the place; I don't, really. Mrs. Norbury'll never keep me now.”

“That's silly,” said Jill, patting her shoulder. “Don't you see, Mrs. Norbury is very grateful to you for proving to Inspector Johnson that she spoke the truth. As for scandal,” she went on, turning to Hilton, “no one in their senses could make a scandal of your telling Mrs. Norbury about your troubles; she is a very—”

She was interrupted by a voice on the stairs, unmistakably Colonel Wetherall's.

“Here he comes,” said David. “Now we are getting somewhere, I think.”

There was a slight scuffle at the door, then the colonel's order: “Yes, go in, Mrs. Norbury. Ladies first, even in emergencies. Now you, Joe. I'll bring up the rear, to prevent stragglers, eh?”

Mrs. Norbury crossed the room quickly to Hilton's side; evidently she wanted to dissociate herself from the colonel's action. Joe shuffled to one side of the door and stood with his back against the wall of the room. He was joined there by Daisy, who slipped her hand into his.

“Go ahead, Joe,” said the colonel. “Tell Chief-Inspector Johnson what you told me.”

In a low and hesitant voice Joe described the arrival of the motor cyclist at the Royal Arms that evening. He told also of the man's visit and the reports of the various villagers who had seen him on the downs on that earlier occasion.

“You say you sent a message to the vicarage this evening?” said Johnson.

“Mrs. Symonds agrees with that,” said the colonel. “And she noticed the time it came through.”

“Why didn't you contact the police?” asked the inspector.

“I didn't know it was a police job.”

This seemed fair enough, in the circumstances.

“You say you recognized this man tonight, after an interval of some months. Are you certain of that?”

“Sure as I'm standing here.”

“You would know him again?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Take a look round this room,” said Johnson. “Is there anyone here you recognize?”

“I knows Mrs. Norbury,” began Joe, shyly. “And of course, Daisy here. And Colonel Wetherall, and Frank Parker and Mr. Small.”

“You can miss out the police and the local inhabitants.”

“Well, this lady and gentleman are staying at the Arms tonight. I recognizes them,” said Joe, indicating David and Jill. “And that only leaves you, sir, and Mr. Hilton over there.”

“You know Mr. Hilton, do you?” said Johnson, not at all pleased.

“Of course I knows Mr. Hilton. He's been down here a good few times, and then we all knows as he's interested in these here old remains, like Vicar, and then there was the talk a while back—”

“Never mind that. When did you last see Mr. Hilton?”

“I don't recollect the date. When he come here in the spring to dig.”

“You did not see him today?”

“No, sir.”

“You did not serve him with a drink at the Royal Arms, when he went there tonight on a motorcycle?”

“Mr. Hilton? On a motorcycle! You don't mean the chap I was talking of just now? That's not Mr. Hilton. For why should I ring up Vicar if it'd only been Mr. Hilton? You're mixing them up, sir, if you'll pardon my saying so. Mr. Hilton is quite a different gentleman.”

“Thank you, Joe,” said Alastair Hilton.

Janet Lapthorn had quite given up hope of the police ever tracing her missing friend, and though she often spoke to her husband of their amazing slackness, and lost no opportunity in public of running them down, she had really become rather tired of the whole business. She was inclined to accept the explanation Jack had given her in the beginning. Felicity had gone off with her Peter, and intended to sever all ties with her former life.

It came as a shock therefore when, in the middle of June, she received another letter from Alastair Hilton himself. It came as an added shock that he said he had news of Felicity, but could not bring himself to write it down. He asked her to go to Boxwood as soon as possible. He needed her help.

“Whatever does that mean?” asked Janet, handing the letter to her husband.

“How should I know? But you'd better go, hadn't you?”

“Had I? Would it be safe?”

“Why not?”

“After what I've been thinking about him.”

“Your thoughts are unlikely to have reached him. And nobody but yourself could have taken them seriously.”

“You always make fun of anything I say, don't you? Anyone would think you considered your wife a congenital idiot.”

“Not as bad as that,” Jack Lapthorn murmured. “Only a little bit wanting.”

“You wait,” she threatened him, half seriously. “The worm will turn one of these days.”

“Which day are you going to Boxwood?” he asked. He was growing tired of badinage that missed the undercurrent of real affection to sustain it.

“No time like the present. I'll go today, if he's going to be there.”

She rang up the Willows, and was answered by Mrs. Mason. Yes, Mr. Hilton would be pleased to see her any time she liked to come. He was not going up to business at all that week. No, he was not ill. He had been away for a few days the week before, and now he was taking the rest of the present week off.

“I thought he was supposed to be a businessman,” said Janet, going back to her husband with the news.

“He is his own master,” said Jack. “And he has a very reliable managing clerk. Unlike me, worst luck! I must be off, or I shall be late.”

Janet Lapthorn spent the morning doing her usual work in the house, buying stores, and arranging an evening meal that would be easy to cook when she came back from Boxwood. She left it all set out ready on the kitchen table, and took a late morning train into London. As she had to cross the town from Liverpool Street to Waterloo, and preferred to do it above ground, she decided to take a bus to the Strand and find some lunch there before continuing her journey. The housekeeper had not passed on any invitation to a meal.

Mrs. Lapthorn reached the Willows at a little after half-past two. She was shown into the sitting-room, through the windows of which she saw Alastair Hilton with two strangers all sitting in deck chairs under a tree on the lawn. From inside the room she watched Mrs. Mason walk across the grass to the group, and walk back.

“Very formal, all of a sudden,” she said to herself, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

Mrs. Mason came back to her.

“Will you join them in the garden?” she said. “I'll show you the way.”

“I know the way,” said Janet, tartly. “When Felicity—Mrs. Hilton—was here, and we lived in Boxwood, there was hardly a day passed without my seeing her. But you wouldn't remember. You only came here after we left, if I remember rightly.”

Mrs. Mason, paying no attention to this petulance, which followed her down the passage to the garden door, stood aside as she reached it and, after Mrs. Lapthorn had passed through, closed it behind her.

The men rose from their chairs as Janet drew near, but Hilton did not advance to meet her. He was much thinner than she remembered him, and very much paler, unless that was the effect of the shade under the tree.

“I am glad you have come, Janet,” Hilton said, taking her outstretched hand. “I was afraid you might still be angry with me for keeping you in ignorance of Felicity's whereabouts. But you see, at the time, I knew so little, and I thought I was being loyal to her.”

Mrs. Lapthorn listened to this, feeling the strangers' eyes were upon her. She fidgeted uncomfortably, and did not attempt to answer him.

“You must introduce me to your friends,” she said, with an embarrassed laugh.

Hilton did so, and then she was provided with a chair, and they all sat down. Hilton lost no time in telling her that an investigation had proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Felicity had been murdered, and her body disposed of in a particularly horrible manner.

Janet took it more calmly than her audience had feared she would. But she had for a long time accustomed herself to the idea of Felicity's death, and in any case her agitation had been caused more by the existence of an unsolved problem than by any real concern for Mrs. Hilton. Whatever her protestations, she was not a woman capable of any deep feeling, as her unfortunate husband was only too aware. So now, though she lay back and shut her eyes and clasped her hands tightly together in her lap, and presently provided a few tears for her handkerchief to dab away, her colour did not change, and her breathing remained slow and even.

Hilton, on the other hand, was exhausted by the recital of the tragedy. Only a week had passed since his worst fears were realized, and now that he knew everything, except the identity of the murderer, and the circumstances of the man's life with Felicity, he understood how narrow must have been the margin for his dead wife between the safety of her home and a sordid death. If she had made up her mind a fortnight, even a week, earlier she would be here now, discontented perhaps, as she had so often been, but living, beautiful—

“You should have let me give Mrs. Lapthorn the facts,” said David, in a low voice. “Shall I get your pills?”

“No. They're in my pocket. But I'm all right, really.”

“As you have just been hearing,” said David to Janet Lapthorn, “Mrs. Hilton took two suitcases away with her. They were old ones that have been in the family for a good many years, and neither of them had her initials on. One had no initials at all, and the other those of Hilton's aunt. The police have worked on a description of the cases, but have not found them so far. They do not seem to be at any guest house or hotel in either the Golders Green or Battersea areas. There may be several reasons for that. The police may not have asked at the right house, or the landlady may have sold the cases, or their contents, or both, or she may be holding them as security for rent owing, in case Mrs. Hilton or her supposed husband turns up again. I advertised in the hope of finding something of this sort, but so far without results.”

“We think you could help us,” said Jill, “in the matter of the clothes. I mean, you probably know in more detail than Mr. Hilton, what clothes she had with her. Besides, you saw any new ones she bought after she left Boxwood.”