Mystery Villa (24 page)

But as they were leaving the shop Mitchell turned to him suddenly.

‘Have you thought how you would dispose of the body if you had murdered an old woman in an empty house you knew might soon be searched by the police?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby promptly. ‘I should have a car ready. I should carry the body down and put it out of sight under the seat – I am assuming the body would be that of a tiny shrivelled-up old woman I could carry and handle quite easily. Then I should drive the car to some deserted spot in the country I had fixed on before – in a thickly grown plantation, perhaps, or at the bottom of an old gravel-pit if I could find one. I should leave the body there and trust to luck it wouldn't be found till time and weather had made it unrecognisable.'

‘Quite good in theory,' Mitchell admitted, ‘only in practice you wouldn't, because you would be afraid of being seen by someone; for I think that to a murderer all the world is made of watching eyes. You would feel it was trusting luck a bit too far, and luck's a tricky horse to ride when your neck depends upon it. Remember that chap Rouse, who staged a very ingenious murder in the heart of the country in the small hours of the morning when he could reasonably assume no one was likely to be about – and then was seen by two young fellows who were walking home after a dance?'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby; ‘only you've got to get the body away somehow. You can't leave it in the house where you know the police are likely to make a search as soon as the neighbours report no one's been seen about recently – or could you if you hid it well?' he added suddenly, pausing in the act of following Mitchell into the waiting car.

‘Well, could you and, if so, where would you hide it?' Mitchell asked. ‘Jump in,' he added, as Bobby still hung hesitating on the footboard.

‘If there is really anybody there,' Bobby said slowly as he obeyed and Mitchell started off. ‘It can't be buried in the garden, for that's so overgrown it's certain no one's been in it for years. There are the cellars, of course–'

‘Cellars have been examined; Ferris took that in hand,' Mitchell said. ‘It's quite certain they haven't been disturbed any more than the garden. We can rule out cellars and garden. They're the usual places chosen, and the worst of that is, once they've been drawn blank there's apt to be a tendency to be less careful about the rest of the house.'

‘The water tank?' Bobby suggested.

‘Ferris ran the water off and looked there,' Mitchell said. ‘Nothing except spiders and a dead mouse or two. He went over all the rest of the house, too, even the attics, though the dust made it plain no one had been up in them for long enough.'

‘Then I don't quite see...' said Bobby, and relapsed into silence.

They were back near Tudor Lodge now. Mitchell stopped the car, and he and Bobby completed the journey on foot so as to attract as little attention as possible. Indeed, they escaped even the all-seeing eye of Mrs Rice, who, recently released from her remunerative exile in the country, was now visiting Oxford Street, getting rid there of most of her
Sunday Photo
's cheque. To obtain admittance, Mitchell and Bobby went round to the side door, and Mitchell, before putting in the lock the key with which he had provided himself, remarked to Bobby:

‘We've had the lock examined by an expert and he found distinct traces of wax. That looks as though someone had been taking an impression to make a new key, so as to be able to gain entry. None of the shops round here have any record of such an order, so it can hardly have been Miss Barton getting a new key made because she had lost the old. So who was it?'

He did not wait for an answer, but opened the door, and they both went in and along the passage into the dim and shadowy hall.

‘Nowhere down here that hasn't been closely examined,'

Mitchell said. ‘Carpets undisturbed, walls untouched, every cupboard or box or receptacle looked into. As for the attics, no one's been up in them for years.'

He led the way up the stairs, and on the landing paused a moment, then went into the large front room where furniture and floor alike had been so chopped about and torn up in the endeavour to obtain fuel. Bobby was beginning to understand now what was in Mitchell's mind, and he went across at once to the great yawning gap in the flooring where several boards had been torn away, and afterwards, as chips around showed, chopped for firewood. He turned and looked at Mitchell, who nodded silently. Bobby knelt down by the gap and thrust his hand under the flooring. He drew it back at once.

‘There's something there,' he almost whispered.

‘Your hand is covered with lime – with garden lime,' Mitchell said.

‘So it is,' Bobby said, looking at it.

‘Tear up another board,' directed Mitchell.

Bobby obeyed, Mitchell helping. A cloud of white lime arose and set them coughing, and there became visible an end of material that Bobby reached down to and touched.

‘It is satin,' he said; ‘all rotten and yellow now, but it's satin. Wedding-dresses are made of satin,' he said.

He groped beneath the board again, and something else came away in his hand. He withdrew it, looking at it doubtfully. Mitchell said:

‘That was a wreath once, I think – a wreath of orange blossom. Pull up another board.'

They did so, and pulled up with it a long strip of lace, faded and yellow.

‘The wedding veil,' Mitchell said slowly. ‘God, she must have had on her old wedding finery; she must have had it on still when they pushed her under here.'

Bobby reached into the space now revealed between flooring and the ceiling of the room below, and as gently and reverently as he could drew forth the poor, frail, worn-out body that had been so callously thrust there out of the way. It was so small, so slight, so shrunken, it might, as it lay there in faded wedding garb, have well been that of a little child.

Mitchell bent over the body and looked at it long and earnestly.

‘What a life! What a death!' he muttered. ‘Whatever she did all those years back – do you know, I've an idea she would have liked to think she had on that wedding rig-out of hers when it ended, even though the end was what it was.'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby, ‘but I think many of us will be keener in finding out who did this than we were on tracking her when we thought that was our job. Looks as if she had been strangled,' he added.

Mitchell nodded.

‘Those marks on the throat show that,' he agreed.

‘Well, that's murder all right,' declared Bobby.

‘Murder long ago and now murder to-day,' Mitchell mused. ‘Things work themselves out at the end, I think.'

‘I was thinking,' Bobby said, half to himself, ‘all the time we were combing England for her, she was lying here – lying here, too, while we walked over her head when we searched the house. She must have been here when we found that other in the Saratoga trunk. I suppose that explains why everything was so carefully swept up between the two rooms. The murderer was taking care none of the lime should be left lying about to give a hint of what had happened. That explains the shoe, too. It must have fallen from her foot when the body was carried in here. It explains the pearl we found, too. The necklace string must have broken somehow.'

‘Probably when whoever it was took her by the throat,' Mitchell said. ‘Quite possibly murder wasn't intended at first. It wouldn't take much to kill a frail old woman, once you had her by the throat, and the first intention may quite well have been merely to grab the necklace. I daresay that looked fairly safe. She couldn't have offered any resistance, and her story might quite easily have been put down as a mere crazy delusion on the part of a cracked old woman.

No one would have thought it very likely she went about the house wearing a pearl necklace worth ten or twelve thousand. I wonder if those bruises on the throat will reveal any finger-marks?'

‘There's one point worth remembering,' Bobby remarked. ‘Everyone I saw in the house was wearing gloves. Was that merely an accident? Of course, Con Conway wasn't, but then I suppose he might have come back again.'

‘The lime must have come from Humphreys',' continued Mitchell. ‘He'll have to explain that. But suppose he says it was in the shop when he left it? Nothing to show the contrary. It was in the stock-book apparently but not entered as sold. He'll have to be questioned, though. Did he know about the necklace? He may have. Is that where the money comes from he seems to have got hold of somehow recently? But would he have been able to get rid of the necklace so quickly? Would he have had any idea how to set to work to get anything for it? Con Conway could have managed that part all right; no criminal in all the country with more experience in that way. He would know where to go in London; he wouldn't even have to go abroad. If it looks bad against Humphreys, where the lime came from, it looks worse against Con. Even this new stunt of his about running straight may simply mean that he's lying low till he thinks things look safe. There's still the snag that neither Con nor Humphreys seem the murderer type, but perhaps that doesn't amount to much and there's always the chance that murder wasn't intended. It would have taken so little to kill the poor old soul, and Con certainly, and Humphreys very likely, knew about the necklace, and since it happened both of them have tried to disappear. It can't very well be both are guilty, but it may easily be one. Or there's Mr Yelton. We know he knew about the necklace; he has been seen near the house; his firm has not been doing well; he was hard pressed for money, and just recently his firm has suddenly paid off a big overdraft. If it wasn't for Con and little Humphreys I should almost think that good enough to proceed to arrest on. Then there's the Yelton girl herself. It's possible she thought those pearls wasted in the possession of a halflunatic old woman; that she tried to get hold of them by coaxing or wheedling, and that when that didn't work she tried to snatch. If the old woman resisted and there was a bit of a scuffle, and in her excitement the girl pulled too hard – there's always the point that with a feeble, worn-out, half-starved old woman anything might so easily kill her. If that's what happened, that would explain her extreme agitation when you saw her at the door. Then afterwards, when she read about the discovery of the body in the trunk she may have known nothing of before, she would see that was a good explanation to offer if she were traced and questioned. Blessed if I don't think there's quite a good case against her, too. And then there's the Aske young man. He knew all about the necklace, and he's the last person to have been seen at Tudor Lodge. Also he's an inventor, and an inventor needing money to develop his ideas is hardly responsible – lots of them would murder half the population of the country for means to carry on. He says she offered him the necklace, and we know he was in possession of a key; but is it true she gave him one, or did he get one made from the wax impression that somebody certainly took from the lock, and did he only secure the old key in place of this new one made after he had been in the house? What do you think, Owen?'

‘Well, sir, the way you put it,' Bobby answered slowly, ‘I think we could get a conviction against any one of them if it wasn't for the others. I'm inclined to think myself, sir, it must be someone else altogether, someone who has covered up his tracks so well we haven't got sight of them as yet.'

‘It may be,' agreed Mitchell, ‘it's that way; but so far as we know no one has been seen near the house except those five, barring postmen and hawkers and so on, and they could hardly know anything about the necklace. Of course, there's that in Humphreys' favour – nothing to prove he knew about the pearls, though he may have done.'

‘There are two points that are rather specially bothering me, sir.' Bobby remarked, ‘One is I can't help feeling there's some kind of family likeness between Mr Yelton and someone I've seen some time. But he doesn't seem to have any relations at all, and certainly there's no resemblance between him and Miss Yelton. And there's the old question why Humphreys made such a point of boasting about sales of things for the garden. We know now that was all lies, as his own books show a loss. But if he had any idea what the lime was wanted for, wouldn't he have kept quiet instead of talking so much about what he was selling for gardens?'

‘Sometimes the more you talk about a thing, the more you talk suspicion away from it,' Mitchell observed. ‘Look at the way that hole in the flooring the poor old lady made herself, and that none of us ever thought of looking into, was staring us in the face all the time.'

‘Yes, sir, I know,' Bobby admitted; ‘but no one was actually looking for a dead body. We had no actual grounds for believing she had been murdered and her body hidden here. It was only a general search on general lines, not specially for a dead body.'

‘All the more reason it should have been found,' declared Mitchell. ‘Anyone can find what he's looking for; the point is to find what you don't know's there. Though it was only lime being missing, and my remembering the sweeping that had gone on just in this spot, that made me think of it. There's always a reason for everything, Owen, if only you can spot it.'

‘I suppose there is,' agreed Bobby a little ruefully, and repeated, ‘if only you can spot it.'

‘Plain now the reason in this case was so that no lime should be left lying about,' Mitchell went on, ‘just as it's plain, too, she's been murdered for the sake of the pearl necklace, though unless we can get more information I still don't see how we are going to identify the thing. Even if we found it in the pocket of one of the suspects, I daresay Treasury counsel would still want proof of identity. You had better cut along, Owen, and report while I wait here. I'll have another look round while you're away. Oh, and first thing, before you do anything else, ring up Major Griggs and ask him to hold Humphreys for us or the little blighter will be vanishing again.'