Bones in the Barrow Read online

  Mollie confided first in Mrs. Symonds, who, while pleasantly shocked by the implications, and inclined to make light of them, was sufficiently interested to tell her husband at lunch.

  “I must hear about this, Mollie,” the vicar said, after the meal. “Come to my study when you have done the washing-up. And bring that specimen with you,” he added.

  Later, sitting at his broad desk, with the untidy piles of books and papers pushed on one side, Mr. Symonds turned the two small fragments over and over.

  “These are very suggestive,” he said. “The glaze and the hint of a pattern. Did Daisy get a good view of the crock before she broke it?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Would you like to see her about it?”

  “Yes, I think I should. The story came to you from your brother, who got it from Daisy. Twice retelling usually alters a tale quite considerably.”

  The twinkle in the vicar’s eye took all offence out of this remark. Mollie smiled happily.

  “You’re right, sir. And Daisy wouldn’t be one to make light of a thing. She’s a great hand at working herself up, if you know what I mean. Ten to one she only thought of the bones in the bag after she’d seen the ones out on the table.”

  “I agree.”

  “All the same, Mr. Hilton doesn’t usually go back to London so early. And Daisy says Mrs. Norbury was quite worried by his manner when he paid his bill, and he hardly spoke to Norah, which was most unlike him. Just left half a crown on his table in the dining room and not a word of thanks or goodbye or anything. Daisy heard Mrs. Norbury say to Norah she thought he was in for a nervous breakdown.”

  “That again may be Daisy’s weakness for exaggeration,” said Mr. Symonds.

  He got up from the desk to knock his pipe out in the fireplace. “On second thoughts, I’ll just wait a bit,” he said quietly. “Leave these with me, Mollie. I’ll do what I think best.”

  With this vague reassurance Mollie, and later her brother Joe, and Daisy herself, had to be content.

  “It’s rather odd,” said Mr. Symonds that evening to his wife, “that Hilton did not come in to see me.”

  “Did you know he would be down this week end?” she answered.

  “Not precisely. He wrote to ask permission to have another go at the site, which I gave him without calling a committee meeting, as we have closed our excavations there. This was several weeks ago. He said he would come down last week end or the one before, but he did not write again to say which.”

  “You’d think he would be all cock-a-hoop when he found a skeleton and some pottery in a place you had given up.”

  “Exactly. That’s what I find so strange.”

  There was a pause, during which the vicar stared at the fire, and his wife went on with her knitting. Finally she broke the silence.

  “Why did you leave that last barrow without opening it properly?”

  “It was opened at one end. There were definite signs of its having been broken into, probably in the Middle Ages, we thought, from a few much later remains of tools we found there. Looking for gold, as usual. We left it and decided there was nothing of sufficient interest left on the site. It was about the time young Chambers discovered the Saxon farmhouse in the woods over at Flitton Marsh. The society had tumbled on something really thrilling, and Duckington Barrows have been out of fashion ever since.”

  “But Mr. Hilton would not know that.”

  “He would not.”

  The second pause was longer than the first. This time the vicar ended it, speaking more to himself than to his wife.

  “I shall send these bits of pottery to Jackson for an opinion. If they are genuine I will bring the report up at our next meeting. In the meantime I think we might go for a walk on the downs tomorrow and see how much damage Hilton has wrought on our site. Because we might have to go over it again.”

  “Not tomorrow,” said Mrs. Symonds briskly. “I’ve got Miss Wills giving a special demonstration of glovemaking at the Institute. It was hard enough to get her at all, and tomorrow is her only free date for months. Everyone has been warned to turn up. So I can’t possibly miss it just to go for a walk with you, can I?”

  She looked at him lovingly, and the vicar reached for her hand across the gap between their two armchairs.

  “I suppose not. Then I will put off my walk until later in the week. I should like to have you with me.”

  “I should like to come. But I won’t have you digging by yourself and straining another muscle. Let’s wait till Saturday and get Robin to come along and some of the others.”

  Thanks to the vicar’s enthusiasm and Mrs. Symonds’s voluble persistence the whole of Duckington heard of the project, and a considerable number of amateur archaeologists mustered at the week end outside the vicarage and tramped up the down to the formerly abandoned site. They were followed by a small crowd of interested onlookers, and by a reporter from the local Press who had listened to Joe’s description at the Royal Arms of this sequel to his girl friend’s misadventure with a piece of pottery.

  The dig was handsomely rewarding. Mr. Hilton’s neatly replaced turfs were once more taken off, and his excavation continued down the length of the barrow. Former diggings, including the original desecration, had destroyed the lay-out of the grave. But there were finds, in the shape of an ulna and radius from a left arm, and a breast bone with rib cartilages attached. Besides these human relics Mr. Symonds himself sifted out two more fragments of pottery.

  If Hilton had found these, the vicar thought, perhaps his jug would have been complete, and his loss in consequence the greater. But a few days later the vicar read a letter from Jackson, the expert to whom he had forwarded the later finds as well as Daisy’s fragments. And he then decided that if Hilton had indeed found them, he would not have left any of the valuable material standing about on a small hotel bedroom table, under a window. For the jug was genuine and rather rare. A pity, Jackson wrote, that it had been broken in getting it out. This was an implied criticism of the local society that made Mr. Symonds smile ruefully. There was a similar specimen in the British Museum, the expert said, but he knew of none other found in this particular type of burial. He suggested that the bones found at the same time as the later fragments be sent to a friend of his called Wilson, who would be particularly interested to see them. He pointed out that the jug was of a period several thousand years later than finds dug out of the neighbouring barrows; this suggested a later use of the same site. It was strange that they had not been discovered before, as they must have been nearer the surface all the time.

  Mr. Symonds, on receiving this letter, again used his own initiative as secretary of the local club. Without risking an argument in committee, that might thwart his purpose, he packed up the bones and sent them off.

  Meanwhile the local Press, which was short of news for the next issue, gave a spirited account of the proceedings of the local Archaeological Society. This was copied briefly in some of the London dailies. And a man who read the newspapers daily, and had already once before been fatally misled by them, was duped again. He began to work out a move, designed for his completer protection, which was destined to lead him one step further along the road to disaster.

  The second expert report arrived in a matter of days. There was a covering letter from Jackson.

  When Mrs. Symonds saw the handwriting she asked at once for news of Bob Jackson, hoping, since he had given none in his first letter, that this one would prove more interesting. But the vicar, rather pale, waved a distracted hand.

  “But Francis, read it out to me!” she said airily. “Heather never writes, but I’m sure there’s a message from her this time. If only about the Siamese. They were having no luck with the kittens if you remember. Skip the vase—no, it was the bones this time. I’m sure the other man’s report is very long-winded and dull.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Mr. Symonds grimly, folding up the letter.

  “As you rightly assume, Bob encloses this man Wilson’s report.
They are leaving it to me to take action.”

  “Take action,” said Mrs. Symonds helplessly. “What about?”

  “The bones we dug up,” her husband told her, “were not prehistoric at all. Oh, I know they were dry and brown and all the rest of it. But there are tests for the age of bones, as you know. These are recent. Quite recent.”

  “You mean—Middle Ages or something—when the barrow was opened before?”

  “I mean that they belong to modern times—to someone who has died within the last year.”

  “Good gracious!” said Mrs. Symonds. And then she sat speechless, while her face became as pale and alarmed as that of her husband.

  Mr. Symonds, anxious to avoid gossip, did not report his curious news to the local police at Duckington, but went with it to the Chief Constable, a Colonel Wetherall, whom he had known in the First World War, when he, as a young chaplain, had sat in a shell-hole in No Man’s Land, holding on to a tall youth’s brachial artery to stop hemorrhage from a severe wound in the forearm; and at the same time enlarging his profane vocabulary from the stream issuing from the young man’s greyish lips. His action saved the life and the forearm of his companion, whose career after an interval continued uninterrupted. For some time they saw nothing of each other, but much later the colonel was appointed a chief constable, and Mr. Symonds, working on behalf of a particularly useless but attractive young offender in his parish, met him again, and recognized his former friend more by his language than by his now altered appearance. They visited from time to time; they called each other by their Christian names, a thing they had never done when young; their wives were tolerant of each other.

  So now Colonel Wetherall was ready to help his old friend.

  “It’ll have to go to the C.I.D.,” he said. “Question is, where?”

  “Hilton lives in Boxwood,” said the vicar thoughtfully. “Surrey, isn’t it, or Middlesex?”

  “Surrey,” said the colonel. “But I don’t see what the hell—”

  “He was digging in this spot where we found the bones,” the vicar went on. “He is reported to have found bones himself and taken them away with him. I think in any case, his finds ought to be investigated.”

  “So do I.”

  “Not that I accuse him of anything,” Mr. Symonds hastened to add. “Daisy was hysterical about it when she told her young man, Joe. These girls can think of nothing but the horrors they see at the cinema or in the daily gossip papers.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure,” said the colonel. “You’re charitable by profession, Francis. I’m just the opposite.”

  They beamed at each other foolishly.

  “Tell you what I’ll do,” said Wetherall. “I’ll send these bones to Scotland Yard, explaining we haven’t the facilities to deal with ’em properly, which is true enough, though it would make Copeland damned angry. That suit you?”

  “Very well,” said Mr. Symonds.

  He decided not to talk about the bones to anyone in Duckington and to put off the next meeting of the Archaeological Society until he had heard the results of the chief constable’s action.

  But this was not to happen for some time. The name of Hilton sent the bones immediately to Chief-Inspector Johnson, and from him they travelled to a Home Office pathologist, together with some smaller specimens found on the roofs of Waterbury Street, Lambeth. It was a long shot, but it worked. The report that came back presently sent Johnson hurrying to see Superintendent Mitchell.

  “In his opinion the bones all come from the same woman. The wrist bones the workman, Gossage, found, fit the bones of the forearm found by Mr. Symonds in the barrow.”

  “And Mrs. Hilton is still missing?”

  “Yes. She never went to Scotland. And there was a significant incident over her money. I found withdrawals had been made by a messenger bringing in a note, ostensibly in her handwriting, and with her signature, to pay cash to bearer, together with apparently genuine cheques made out to herself. I arranged to have the messenger called in to the manager with a view to finding where he came from. But when the cashier went back to the counter after seeing if the office was ready, the man had gone. He has not been back since, and no further withdrawals have been made.”

  “Intimate knowledge of the lady’s writing and chequebook and ability to trace or copy her signature. Would fit the husband or an unknown called Peter.”

  “Just so. Incidentally, the Hiltons’ doctor in Boxwood sent a very guarded answer to our inquiries. It only confirms her disappearance. Apparently, though she did not go down to him after she left home, he used to send her prescriptions through the post. No, nothing dangerous, not even barbiturates. Just some patent pills he favoured for rheumatism. Well, these letters of his have now come back to him through the dead-letter post.”

  “Where had they been sent?”

  “Not to Charing Cross in this case. An accommodation address in Horseferry Road. She called once a month for letters up to the middle of November. They waited till February, then began sending them back ‘Address unknown.’ The doctor has not told Hilton about this. Besides professional secrecy, he seems to have quarrelled with him, and Hilton changed to another man’s list.”

  “What did they quarrel about?”

  “Mrs. Hilton’s treatment. She liked to try quack nostrums she saw advertised in newspapers and so on. Hilton thought it a waste of money. The doctor said he couldn’t control her rheumatism much by the proper cures, so he thought she was justified in trying anything she found helpful.”

  “An open-minded view, but irritating to the husband.”

  “Especially as Mrs. Hilton did not give him this address, but only the Charing Cross Post Office.”

  “Has the shop identified her from photographs?”

  “Not yet. I have not seen Hilton since the first time I called at the Willows, and it seemed a bit premature on that occasion to ask for photographs.”

  “Didn’t we have some snapshots from Mrs. Lapthorn?”

  “Quite useless. They were really snapshots of the Lapthorn woman herself. Mrs. Hilton hardly appeared in them.”

  “We’d better have Felicity’s portrait. And get hold of those bones of Hilton’s and his pieces of pottery, before he destroys them.”

  “I don’t think he will. He seems to be playing a very cautious game.”

  “So did Crippen at the start. But they all get the wind up sooner or later.”

  Chief-Inspector Johnson, however, was right. Mr. Hilton had not only kept the bones and the crocks, but had written to the British Museum to ask for an expert opinion on the latter. A representative had called and had been duly impressed. The find was genuine and most interesting. A pity it was so badly broken and that so much was missing.

  Johnson asked to see all the finds, including the bones. But when Hilton laid them out before him in the sitting-room at the Willows, he scarcely glanced at them.

  “Are these all the finds you made?” he asked.

  “These are what I dug up at Duckington just over two weeks ago.”

  Which may be so, the inspector thought, but is not so, necessarily.

  “Have you any objection to my taking them away for examination?”

  “None.”

  Really, the man’s indifference and calm, slightly ironical voice, were very wearing, Johnson decided.

  “I should also like to see and take away with me, if you have no objection, any recent photograph of Mrs. Hilton that you may have.”

  Mr. Hilton’s eyes, now, were anything but indifferent.

  “I can let you have one snapshot taken at Bognor nearly two years ago.”

  “That would be better than nothing.”

  There was silence as the inspector made up his parcel.

  “Is it permitted to ask what is the meaning of all this?” said Hilton at last, pointing at the package under Johnson’s arm.

  “You can ask, but I am not at liberty to give you any answer.”

  “When shall I get my specimens bac
k?”

  “That I cannot tell either.”

  Hilton shrugged and crossed to the door. But Johnson waited a moment longer.

  “I have been here nearly an hour, Mr. Hilton,” he said. “And though you have asked me why I am taking these things away, you have not asked me if I have traced the whereabouts of your wife.”

  “If you had been successful you would have told me so at once.”

  “It would be the natural thing to expect.”

  Johnson tried again.

  “Have you traced her yourself?”

  “I have made no effort to do so.”

  “Why not?”

  “That is my business, Inspector, not yours.” Perhaps seeing an unfavourable reaction in the inspector’s set face, he added, “I do not see any cause for alarm, myself.”

  Chief-Inspector Johnson gripped his parcel more tightly. He hoped to give this dead-pan plenty of cause for alarm, and without too much delay, either.

  But he was disappointed. Mr. Hilton’s pieces, once more placed before an expert, were passed with a true bill for bones and pottery alike. Late Bronze Age, later than specimens previously found at Duckington. The bones probably from an adolescent male; a suggestion of rickets in early childhood.

  “We give them back to the twister, I suppose?” said Johnson disgustedly.

  “Yes, but don’t be too downhearted. Even if Hilton got genuine bones from the barrow, he could easily have put some of his wife’s in before he filled it up with earth. In fact, that would be much more likely than that he should take down more than he could dispose of, and then bring them back again. That chambermaid, Daisy, wanted to get her own back on Hilton, and send nice cold shivers down her own spine and her boy friend’s. But it didn’t make any particular sense, did it?”