Mystery Villa (25 page)

But when Bobby carried out these instructions, back came the prompt reply that it was too late. Humphreys had already disappeared. His wife was still at the cottage, where they had taken a room, but she protested entire ignorance. There was evidence that Humphreys had slipped out by the back door, and that he had mounted a bus travelling to the nearest town. But there all trace if him had been lost for the present.

‘Conscious guilt or simple panic,' Bobby mused, as he hung up the receiver. ‘Anyhow, I don't suppose it'll very be difficult to find him again.'

But this proved altogether too optimistic, and the days passed by without news of Humphreys. He had slipped into the busy, crowded world as a drop of water into the sea, and it seemed to be going to prove as difficult to find and identify him as one drop in the ocean from another.

In other directions the usual routine was being carried out. The news of the fresh discovery in Tudor Lodge roused, again, the public interest to fever, indeed almost to cup-final pitch. There was some difference of opinion as to whether the police deserved great credit for having made the discovery, or severe censure for not having made it before. The little group of people known to have been in touch with Tudor Lodge were all interviewed again, officially and nonofficially, and nothing more of any importance or interest was obtained from any of them. Mrs. Rice's hopes of a further profitable if secluded holiday, diversified by visits from charming young newspaper men, were nullified by the conviction of sub-editors that she had been ‘sucked dry' – as they put it in their brutal way – and the story was already beginning to subside again from front to inner page when Mitchell sent for Bobby.

‘There are two fresh points established now, that may prove important,' he said. ‘The first is that a number of valuable pearls have been put on the market recently. No one seems to be quite sure where they've come from, but together they would make up just such a necklace as Miss Barton is reported to have possessed. Such evidence as we've been able to collect suggests that the first sales were made in Holland and Belgium, and by an Englishman, at about the time Mr Yelton paid off his firm's overdraft that the bank was pressing him about. But we can't get any reliable description of the Englishman, and it seems certain Mr Yelton has not been out of the country recently. We did get so far as to ask him where the money came from he paid the bank. He was very indignant, but finally said it was the result of successful speculation in Reichmarks, though he protested he neither would nor could give details, as some of his associates abroad might have offended against their own country's regulations. That may be true or not, but it's a plausible story in itself, and a plausible excuse for refusing us further information.'

‘I suppose, sir,' Bobby asked thoughtfully, ‘that means we may take it as established that Miss Barton's necklace was really of great value, and that it's a fact it was stolen and then got rid of on the Continent?'

‘The first sale may have been in London, for all we know at present,' Mitchell pointed out. ‘I don't see much hope of our ever being able to identify the pearls, or recover them. The other point is more likely to be useful. The examination of Miss Barton's body makes it clear death was caused by strangulation. All her organs were quite sound and healthy – spare living makes sound bodies, apparently. So probably she wasn't quite as feeble as her shrunken, shrivelled appearance made her seem. There are bruises on the body that make it likely she put up some sort of resistance, and the marks on the throat suggest that her murderer wore gloves. The important thing about that is that under the fingernails are tiny scrapings of leather. The laboratory report says they are coarse in texture, have been treated with a yellow dye, and probably come from a new, almost unworn, pair of gloves.'

Bobby was listening intently. Tiny scrapings from the murderer's gloves! Was it possible such microscopic fragments would prove a link in the chain of evidence to bring him to justice? Too much to hope for, it seemed to Bobby, for how were those faint scrapings to be linked up with any special gloves, or those gloves with the wearer? But Mitchell was going on speaking.

‘The suggestion is, of course,' he was saying, ‘that there was some sort of struggle, and that Miss Barton clutched at her murderer's hands when he had her by the throat, and so scratched these fragments of leather off the gloves he was wearing in order to avoid leaving any finger-prints. You know, of course, we've never found a single finger-print in the whole of Tudor Lodge to help us?'

‘No, sir,' Bobby answered, his mind still full of the strange, the terrible significance of those scrapings of leather, and of a great wonder at the thought that the very precaution the murderer had taken to avoid discovery might prove his undoing.

‘Aske is described by Mrs Rice as wearing tan-coloured gloves that time she saw him in Tudor Lodge,' Mitchell said.

‘Yes, sir, I remember that,' Bobby answered quietly.

‘That may mean everything or nothing,' Mitchell continued, in a brisker voice. ‘Unluckily too much time has been lost for us to be very hopeful. Even if the gloves are still in existence – and a prudent murderer probably destroyed them long ago – any marks and scratches made on them will have worn off by now. Then, too, there are tens of thousands of pairs of tan-leather gloves in existence.'

‘It may give us a line to follow,' Bobby said musingly. ‘What I want you to do,' Mitchell continued, ‘is first to visit Mr Yelton. Talk to him quite frankly about the gloves. See if he has anything to say and if he appears interested, and report your impression to me. Then call on Aske. Don't talk to him quite so frankly, but try to get him to tell you if he has any similar gloves, and if he has bought any recently.'

‘Very good, sir,' Bobby said. ‘There's no news of Humphreys yet?'

Mitchell shook his head.

‘Anything to suggest?' he asked.

‘I was just thinking,' Bobby suggested diffidently, ‘that he is such a nervous, scared little man, it might be possible to try to bluff him into coming forward himself, if we got the
Morning Intelligence
and the
Daily Announcer
and one or two of the other big papers to put in a statement that Humphreys, wanted in connection with the Tudor Lodge mystery, has been practically traced.'

‘Practically,' murmured Mitchell, ‘is a useful word.'

‘Yes, sir, that's what I thought,' agreed Bobby. ‘And then the paragraph might go on that an arrest is momentarily expected – anything may be expected – and that the extremely grave suspicions directed towards him are largely caused by his failure to report to the police; though there is still the possibility that Mr Humphreys is unaware of the wish of the police to interview him, so that if he did come forward, even now, much of the suspicion attaching to his name would be at once done away with.'

Mitchell smiled grimly.

‘“...said the spider to the fly,”' he quoted. ‘Well, carry on. Call in Fleet Street, in your way to Yelton, and see if they'll do that for us. Tell each of them that, if it does result in Humphreys coming forward, they'll each of them be able to say it was all through them. Report as soon as possible.'

‘Very good, sir,' said Bobby, and withdrew.

He had no difficulty in arranging for the publication of the proposed paragraph, and then went on to the offices of Messrs. Yelton & Markham, where, when he was shown into Mr Yelton's private room, he received a shock, for indeed, he would hardly have thought it possible anyone could have altered so much in so short a time. For Mr Yelton's former appearance of physical vigour and well-being had entirely changed. He seemed to have turned, in the brief space since Bobby had seen him last, into an old man. He looked shrunken and bowed; his cheeks had fallen in; his hands trembled; his formerly dull and placid but clear enough eyes had grown heavy and bloodshot – there were lines beneath them that suggested sleepless nights; and that he watched Bobby's entry with an apprehension that was almost panic was fully evident. So surprised was Bobby at the other's changed appearance that he stood quite still, staring at him, and Mr Yelton burst out angrily:

‘What are you gaping at? With all this worry it's a wonder I haven't been driven into my grave, with newspaper men chasing me about, and people pointing at me in the street, and one thing and another, till I can't even play a round in peace – enough to send you out of your mind,' he cried, and, indeed, he spoke a little wildly, as though the nervous strain he was under was almost too much for him.

‘I am afraid anyone whose name is associated with a sensational murder, or double murder, in fact, always has a lot to put up with,' Bobby said, gently enough, but watching keenly.

‘I don't know why my name was ever mentioned,' Yelton complained, though a little more quickly. ‘I've never had anything to do with it. I know nothing about it from beginning to end.'

‘It could hardly have been avoided, could it?' Bobby pointed out. ‘I take it you're the only known relative of the man whose body we found at Tudor Lodge?'

Mr Yelton, who had risen to his feet when Bobby entered, sat down again. He seemed to be about to say something, but changed his mind. Bobby asked quickly:

‘There are no other relatives, are there?'

‘Well, you've checked that already at Somerset House, haven't you?' Yelton grumbled.

He seemed to be controlling himself better now, and he lighted a cigarette with a hand that was fairly steady. Bobby made no reply to his remark, though he knew that, in point of fact, careful enquiries had been made, without success, to see if any relations could be traced. Apparently Mr Yelton had told the exact truth in that respect; and, watching him now, Bobby wondered if it was only the worry naturally resulting from his connection with so sensational a case that had caused so strange and so dramatic a change in his appearance. But a good many people of the Yelton type find such notoriety quite agreeable, and there had been no trace of nervousness or strain observable during Bobby's previous visit, though already, even then, there had been police interviews, newspaper men calling, the summons to give evidence at the inquest, and a good many other signs of the public interest the case has aroused. Bobby had reason to believe, too, that a cheque had been offered, and accepted, for an
Announcer
interview, in which Mr Yelton had chatted about the case in general, and his unfortunate uncle in particular, without showing himself unduly distressed by the attendant notoriety. Why, then, this abrupt change in his demeanour?

Could it be the result of conscious guilt? Bobby wondered. But, then, if he were guilty, he must have been conscious of his guilt during all the time when he had seemed comparatively untroubled. And, if it came from fear of further discoveries, why had that fear, which must have been present before, have become operative only now? Or was there some other cause for this apparently recent nervous breakdown?

At any rate there was the chance that, as sometimes happens to people in a highly excitable, nervous condition, Mr Yelton might now be inclined to be communicative. An urge to talk is often felt, in such a condition, as a means of relieving it. But in this hope Bobby was disappointed. His tentative efforts to win Mr Yelton's confidence were quite unavailing, his exhortations to frankness remained unheeded. Mr Yelton would say no more than he had said already – declared that he knew, in fact, no more – insisted, with a certain vehement sincerity, that he had never even set foot in Tudor Lodge, or in all his life spoken to, or even seen, Miss Barton.

Bobby found himself more than half believing this was the truth, and yet could not help feeling that something more than the notoriety inseparable from any connection with so sensational a case was weighing on his mind to cause so great a change, so sudden a collapse, in a man of a type by no means sensitive or highly strung.

Somewhat abruptly he began to question Yelton about gloves. The other appeared merely puzzled, or perhaps even a trifle relieved, at the change of subject; it was fairly obvious, at any rate, that the subject had no significance for him. He possessed, he declared, no tan or yellow gloves, nor any leather gloves that he could think of. He had gloves in reindeer, in suede, in ordinary kid, but not in leather, he thought. He seldom wore the things, he explained, except in very cold weather, and then there was a pair of fur-lined that he put on. Impossible, he explained, to hold your club to advantage if you were wearing gloves.

In fact he grew more like his former self as he answered Bobby's questions about gloves. He even managed to produce a kind of chuckle that had grown a rarity with him of late as he remarked that the only person he could think of, at the moment, whom he had ever noticed wearing yellow gloves was Mr Jennings, their head clerk, the round little elderly man of the uncertain aspirates, and the adopted hoity-toity manner, whom Bobby had noticed before.

But Bobby did not think that suggested itself as a very promising line of enquiry, and he left the offices of the firm with a strong conviction in his mind that either Mr Yelton was, in fact, guilty, or else that he possessed some information – or that some suspicion possessed him – wherefrom he went in secret terror.

Bobby set himself to think out what that could be.

Could there be some hidden connection between him and Humphreys? But of that no trace whatever had come to light.

Or could it be that he had reason to suspect his own daughter – that it was Dorothy who was guilty? A difficult, even a repugnant thought, and yet one that would fully account for her father's nervous collapse.

Suppose she had seen in the pearl necklace a means of rescuing her father from ruin? Suppose she had taken that dreadful course in a last effort to save him? Suppose that were the source of the payment he had recently been able to make to clear his overdraft at the bank? Possibly he had taken the money without knowing its origin, and only after using it might he have begun to suspect where it came from.