Bones in the Barrow Read online

  But he was not answered, and presently a clatter of heels on the stairs told him that not only was Janet really going to desert him, but she had put on her best patent-leather court shoes to do it in. And that meant the feather hat and the black town suit. It was an outsize worry that was eating her this time, he reflected sadly. Deserted at four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. He did not know where Janet had gone, but he guessed London. It would take her a good hour to get there. He imagined she had gone up to find Felicity. If found, they might natter till midnight. He resigned himself to a dull evening, getting his own food, doing his own washing-up. But after two minutes of false resignation he rang up a friend and arranged to meet him at a local hotel in a couple of hours’ time.

  Meanwhile Janet Lapthorn travelled to London in a state of seething impatience. She had very little idea how she should act, but something must be done. The trouble was that Felicity had been so very secretive. When they met it was always at a theatre or a restaurant, and Janet had never known exactly where her friend was living, though she understood that there had been several moves. Landladies were always curious, Felicity had told her, and often suspicious. Though she and Peter were careful never to discuss their problems at their lodgings, unpleasantness usually broke out sooner or later. That was why Felicity insisted upon Janet addressing her letters to the Charing Cross Post Office. The system had worked quite well. Until Felicity had stopped writing.

  Janet thought hard about these letters she had written. Could anything she had said have given offence to her friend? She had offered advice from time to time, certainly. But it had been genuine advice, given tactfully, she was sure. Felicity had often asked for her advice when they both lived at Boxwood. In fact she had been a perfectly reasonable being until she met this Peter fellow.

  Janet sighed. It was no good going over and over the same ground; it was getting her nowhere at all. And it made her head ache and her heart pound uncomfortably. But she still had no idea what she would do when she got to Liverpool Street Station, nor how she would set about tracing her friend.

  In the end she did the only thing open to her, apart from taking the next train back to Romford. She boarded a bus for the Strand, and made her way to Charing Cross Post Office.

  First she asked if there were any letters for Mrs. Hilton. The girl went away and came back to inquire for the initial, if any.

  “F,” said Janet, without thinking, and then added, “or more likely A.”

  The girl stared at her, but went away again and came back with three letters. They were the last three that Janet had written, one at the end of January, and the other two in February.

  “Is that all?” she asked, confusedly. She was trying to remember how many more unanswered letters she had written; she was sure there had been more than three.

  “F or A Hilton? That’s all. Only those three for A. None for F,” said the girl.

  “It’s the same. I mean—the same person—Christian name, or husband’s initials,” Janet tried to explain.

  The girl was entirely indifferent. She looked away across the Post Office, stretching her hand towards Janet without looking at her. “Have you got your identity card?”

  “No. We don’t have to have them now.”

  “Ration book?”

  “No.” Janet wanted her letters back. “It’s not in this bag,” she added truthfully. “I didn’t think it was necessary.”

  This also was true: she had not thought at all.

  The girl pushed the letters under the grille. That business of showing an identity card was always pretty silly, she thought. Anyone could fake the right name if it was worth it. Or reel off a number she couldn’t check.

  “Thank you,” said Janet, calmly, she hoped, and thrust the letters into her bag.

  When she reached the door of the Post Office she stopped. She wanted to ask if the girl remembered anyone else asking for letters addressed to F. or A. Hilton. But that would mean confessing her deception and losing her prize. She had another and an urgent use for the letters. She walked away in the direction of Whitehall.

  “You say these three letters are not the only ones to go unanswered?”

  said the detective-sergeant who had been detailed to hear Mrs. Lapthorn’s complaint.

  “No. By no means. I have had no replies for at least four months.”

  “How often did you write?”

  “About every two weeks. Sometimes oftener, if we were arranging to meet.”

  “You have not met since she stopped writing?”

  “Naturally not.”

  “There are telephones,” said the detective-sergeant briskly. He thought he knew the scandal-mongering, rumour-spreading type to which his visitor belonged.

  “Of course. But she never seems to live where there is one. Now, I mean. Since she left her husband.”

  “Did you ask at the Post Office what had happened to the other letters?”

  “No. I was too confused and upset.”

  “They were not returned to you?”

  “No. If they had been I should have come here long ago.”

  “They would be returned after a suitable interval. It may not be long enough yet, but we could check it, of course. Looks as if she had collected them all, except the last three.”

  “Unless someone else collected them for her. I got away with these three easily enough.”

  “So I see. Now tell me, Mrs. Lapthorn, what exactly worries you so much? The fact that Mrs. Hilton appears to have given you up, or the fact that her husband is not prepared to confide in you? Or something else?”

  Janet Lapthorn flushed. The officer’s tone was unmistakable. He thought she was an undesirable busybody; if nothing worse.

  “Felicity Hilton was a very great friend of mine,” she said with dignity.

  “Was?”

  It had seemed natural to use the past tense, but she shivered as the police officer drew her attention to it.

  “Oh, can’t you see how worried I am?” she cried in desperation. “Wouldn’t you be worried if a friend you saw and corresponded with regularly, at very short intervals, suddenly seemed to melt into thin air? Only it wasn’t so thin about the time she disappeared.” Seeing the puzzled expression on the sergeant’s face, she added, “Fog, you know. Last November.”

  It was the combination of the two words that struck fire in the sergeant’s brain. Fog. November. The list of missing persons. November. Fog.

  “Excuse me,” he said, rising. “I should like to get hold of someone who will be extremely interested in what you say.”

  Half an hour later Mrs. Lapthorn had repeated her rather scanty information to Chief-Inspector Johnson, stressing her anxiety and mounting fears. He was calm and noncommittal.

  “It appears from what you tell me that this lady, Mrs. Hilton, had left her husband for another man. She may, of course, wish to conceal her whereabouts for a variety of reasons.”

  “Not from me,” said Janet Lapthorn fiercely. “She knew she could trust me with anything. Besides, what if I did tell Alastair, that’s her husband? He must know. He’s giving her an allowance.”

  “Do you happen to know where she banks?”

  “In Boxwood it was the Westminster. But I don’t know if she went to another branch or a different bank after she left.”

  Something might be done through the bank, thought the inspector.

  “Are we sure that her husband really knows where she is? We only really know that he has not given you her address.”

  “Of course he knows. And he has no reason to keep it from me.”

  “People do not always act reasonably.”

  Janet glared at him. She was getting precisely nowhere; she was tired; she was hungry. Self-pity and anger overcame discretion.

  “You sit there, trying to get out of making the right inquiries, when I tell you Felicity Hilton has been done away with, and most likely her husband is responsible! And you won’t even listen!”

  She burst into
tears, not bothering even to get out her handkerchief.

  Chief-Inspector Johnson was used to tears. He knew all the varieties, and was seldom moved by any. He waited patiently until his visitor recovered herself, and then changed the subject.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Lapthorn, what sort of man was this—er—Peter? By the way, what is his surname?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then you never met him formally? I mean, no introduction or anything of that sort?”

  “I never hear people’s names when they are introduced.”

  “Quite. A good many people don’t listen. So you only know him as Peter.”

  “I only know of him as Peter.”

  “Do you mean you have never met the man?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I have never seen him.”

  “And you don’t know anything about him except that his first name is Peter, and your greatest friend left her husband and home to live with this man?”

  Inspector Johnson’s tone was not sarcastic, but Janet Lapthorn chose to think it so. She stood up.

  “Very well,” she said. “If you can only sneer and doubt my word, that’s the end of it. I must say I never expected to be treated like this at Scotland Yard.”

  Chief-Inspector Johnson also rose to his feet.

  “I should like you to write once more to this Mr. Hilton,” he said. “Ask him for your friend’s present address. Say you are seriously worried about her. Say you feel inclined to get outside assistance in tracing her, unless he can help you. He should either give you the address, when you can go and visit her, or tell you to mind your own business. If he does that, come to me again, or better still send me his letter, and also any photographs you may have of Mrs. Hilton. Snapshots will do: they often help more than photographers’ touched-up efforts. Will you do that?”

  Mrs. Lapthorn nodded. She could not bring herself to answer pleasantly so soon after the man’s rudeness. But she felt a little mollified.

  She was too exhausted to walk back to the Strand. She hailed a taxi, and without thinking told the driver to go to Liverpool Street. She was halfway back to Romford before she remembered how hungry she was. This nearly brought on the tears again, but she held them off for Jack’s sake.

  When she got home and found the house in darkness, no fire, and no little supper being prepared on a tray, she broke down in earnest. But hunger triumphed over chagrin. With no audience, martyrdom was unprofitable. So she cooked herself a tasty meal of bacon and egg and mushroom, and enjoyed it in her bedroom beside the fire. Then she had a hot bath and went to bed to read her latest thriller from the Public Library, until sleep overtook her. She did not even hear Jack Lapthorn’s rather uncertain arrival home, just after midnight.

  During the week that followed, Janet Lapthorn occupied herself with carrying out the orders she had received at Scotland Yard. She emptied the drawers and desks in her home to find snapshots of every kind, and managed to gather together about six prints in which not only were Felicity’s features reasonably clear, but her own were sufficiently undistorted. These she laid aside to take up with her when Alastair condescended to answer her third letter. It was ten days before he did so.

  “Now will you do something about it?” she said fiercely, as Chief-Inspector Johnson turned the snapshots over and over.

  “What would you like us to do?”

  “Arrest this man!”

  “Mr. Hilton? What for?”

  “For doing away with his wife, of course.”

  “Why do you think he has done her any harm? His letter to you merely says that she has not yet returned home.”

  “She never will!” cried Janet, her eyes beginning to fill. “I know she never will. She would never have stopped writing to me, or meeting me. She and I were very great friends. She told me everything—always.”

  “Except where she was living, and the full name of the man she was living with.”

  Janet Lapthorn glared at him. There was no answer to this unfeeling logic.

  “Then you won’t help,” she said harshly, lifting her chin at the inspector, with hatred in her eyes. “You are prepared to let helpless women be murdered and take no steps whatever!”

  “Once more, how do you know that Mrs. Hilton has been murdered?”

  “That,” said Janet with dignity, “is what I should be asking you.”

  Johnson was speechless. He fell back on formal evasion.

  “If you will leave these photos and the letter with us,” he said, “we will see what we can do. And let you know,” he added hastily.

  “Very well.”

  Janet decided that the interview was over. She pulled on her gloves and got to her feet. But on her way to the door Johnson struck one blow for himself.

  “This old school friend of Mrs. Hilton’s, the one she is supposed to be with in Scotland. According to her husband, I mean. Did you happen to write to her to check? You’d know who she is, of course. Did you find out if Mrs. Hilton really ever went to her when she was ill?”

  “I did not, for the very simple reason that Felicity was not in Scotland but in London, and I was seeing her frequently.”

  “Up to the time she stopped writing, yes. But why shouldn’t she have gone to Scotland since then? Did you check that?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Or don’t you know the school friend’s address?”

  “I don’t. But I also think she doesn’t exist.”

  “Because Mr. Hilton mentions her?”

  “No. Because Felicity didn’t. She never did. I don’t believe she exists.”

  Janet saw the inspector’s jaw tighten. But his voice was politely, frigid as he answered.

  “You only confirm my opinion that Mrs. Hilton did not confide in you quite as freely and fully as you imagine.”

  Mrs. Lapthorn pulled open the office door before Johnson could reach it, and marched away without taking any sort of leave of him.

  “There is the date,” said Superintendent Mitchell. “And that’s the only possible excuse. We can’t really say on this Mrs. Lapthorn’s evidence that the other woman is missing.”

  “I know that. But we still have those bones unaccounted for in any way. And a man who hired a refrig in one name and a room in another.”

  “Oh, you’ve traced the refrig, have you?”

  “Yes, by the address, as I said I would. He used the name of Philip Goode and told them to ask for Mrs. Rust in Waterbury Street.”

  “Knowing the dim-witted daily there would conclude they meant Mr. Rust, since he’d warned her the refrig was coming. No trace of Philip Goode, alias Harold Rust, I suppose?”

  “None. Both names probably false.”

  “Mrs. Lapthorn swears this Felicity called the boy friend Peter.”

  “You can have one crack at the husband. Just to satisfy your mind. Tell him we are prepared to get in touch with Scotland to verify his statements. Perhaps he’ll cough up then. It would certainly help to know who this man Peter really is.”

  II

  It would help a lot, Chief-Inspector Johnson decided, fastening the low gate of Willows behind him. “Peter” had become quite an obsession with him. For beyond Mrs. Janet Lapthorn’s statement, which was merely a description of her friend’s letters and conversation about the man, and therefore very second-hand, there was no real evidence that he existed at all. Felicity Hilton had not been very confiding, and that was putting it mildly. The whole thing hinged upon Felicity’s whereabouts. If she really had disappeared, if she really had a lover called Peter, then it was worth going on with inquiries. Otherwise—

  The front garden of Willows was very quiet under the declining March sun. It had been a perfect spring day, and Johnson regretted having to work instead of attending to his own greenhouse and vegetable plot. Especially as he had been on duty the Saturday before and kept late by the officious Mrs. Lapthorn. The front garden at Willows seemed remote from crime of any sort. He pressed the bell, noting that it worked properly and made an
adequate noise inside the house. Then he turned his back on the front door to enjoy the pale flowers of a prunus tree shining against dark red leaves in a frame of blue sky; the transparent, clear, light blue of spring and autumn that makes the heart lift. Warm enough to get the seeds in, thought the inspector, regretfully. A voice behind him said, “Did you ring?”

  Johnson wheeled round, ashamed to have allowed his thoughts to drift so far away. It only went to show what he thought of this case, he decided.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, briskly. “Are you Mr. Alastair Hilton?”

  “I am.”

  “Can I have a word with you, sir? Chief-Inspector Johnson, Scotland Yard.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, no fear, no particular curiosity either.

  “Why, yes. Will you come in? My housekeeper is out shopping.”

  Mr. Hilton led the way into a pleasant sitting-room with windows on two sides of it, looking on to a small lawn surrounded by flower beds, as trim and well cared for as the front garden which the inspector had already admired.

  Johnson remained standing, in spite of Mr. Hilton’s offer of a chair, and so the latter also stood, leaning beside one of the open windows, and looking out of it more often than he looked at his visitor.

  “I won’t beat about the bush,” said the inspector, trying to control a strong urge to do that very thing. “We had a Mrs. Lapthorn in to see us a week ago, with a complaint about your wife.”

  Mr. Hilton turned mild eyes towards the inspector.

  “Janet Lapthorn is one of nature’s troublemakers,” he said. “She worries, and someone has to share the worry. Her husband, Jack, long ago gave up the partnership, so outside allies have to be found. I expect she has told you that my wife is missing, not to be found.”

  Inspector Johnson, inwardly admiring this prompt counterattack, looked severe.

  “Mrs. Lapthorn complained that she had not been able to communicate with Mrs. Hilton, and that the lady had not answered her letters. At least, not since the middle of November. You probably know from Mrs. Lapthorn that she was addressing her letters to Mrs. Hilton to Charing Cross Post Office.”