Bones in the Barrow (7 page)

“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.”

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.”

“I did know that.”

“And she found out last week that none had been collected since last January.”

“She wrote to me a day or two ago to give me that news.”

“Did you answer her letter?”

“I did. Probably you have seen my answer.”

“Why do you say that?”

Mr. Hilton withdrew his eyes reluctantly from the garden.

“Surely you would not be here now unless Mrs. Lapthorn had managed to convey some of her anxiety neurosis into your minds at Scotland Yard.”

“I am here to discover to what extent her anxiety has a proper cause.”

Mr. Hilton stood away from the window. He walked across the room to find a box of cigarettes, offered one to Johnson, who refused it, and lit one for himself.

“You must ask the questions, you know,” he said quietly.

Chief-Inspector Johnson's jaw tightened. He had a slippery customer to deal with, he decided. If Mr. Pokerface Hilton chose to be mysterious, he could take what was coming to him.

“You have a wife, Mr. Hilton, called Felicity Clare?”

“That is so.”

“When did your wife leave home to live elsewhere?”

There was a long pause: a deepening silence.

“Mrs. Hilton is not, at present, at home,” repeated the inspector, making it a statement rather than a question.

“She is not.”

“How long has she been away?”

“She is looking after a very old school friend in Scotland.”

“That is what you wrote to Mrs. Lapthorn, at a time when the latter was sending letters to your wife addressed to Charing Cross Post Office.”

“Which you say did not reach her. Perhaps because by then she had gone to Scotland.”

“You agree, then, that Mrs. Hilton was away from home for a considerable time before going to Scotland?”

“I do not know exactly when she went to Scotland. I know only that she intended to do so.”

“Did she write to you to tell you this?”

“She did.”

“Have you kept the letter?”

“I may have done so. Is it important?”

Inspector Johnson stared at the indifferent face before him. The man was overdoing it, but this was helpful; he would break all the more readily when the right climax was reached.

“I think it may be very important. I know roughly what Mrs. Lapthorn put in her letter to you. I more or less dictated that letter. In her view Mrs. Hilton left home for one reason only. To join a man she had been associating with for some time already.”

Alastair Hilton was still standing. He had gone back to his old position near the open window. His face had grown paler, but it was still perfectly composed. And he did not answer Johnson's implied question. He appeared not to have heard it.

The inspector waited, and then, finding the continued silence oppressive, said: “The reason for my being here must be obvious to you. Mrs. Lapthorn came to us with certain suspicions in her mind. They may very well be groundless. I hope they are. But in your own interest as well as hers, the question she has raised must be answered. You told her your wife was nursing an old friend in Scotland. But you gave no address, either the first time you wrote this to Mrs. Lapthorn, or when she explicitly asked for it in her second and third letters to you. Quite possibly Mrs. Hilton did not want Mrs. Lapthorn to know her whereabouts. The friendship claimed by Mrs. Lapthorn may be misrepresented by her. That is something you can settle quite easily. If you will give me your wife's present address in Scotland, I will see that she is informed of Mrs. Lapthorn's concern. If you will give me the date when Mrs. Hilton left home, I can check that with Mrs. Lapthorn also.”

“I suppose you are taking this up because you are afraid Janet will go to the Press if you don't.”

“Certainly not.”

“Then why, really, are you so interested?”

“I am not prepared to say. Certainly not before you answer my questions.”

“So Janet Lapthorn thinks Felicity has disappeared, does she?”

“I am sure you know from her letter exactly what she thinks.”

The conversation seemed to have gone full circle without profit to either of them. Again the inspector cursed the meagreness of his material.

“Of course, we can find out easily enough
when
your wife left home,” he said. “A few inquiries among the neighbours or trades-people, starting, of course, with your housekeeper. By the way, did you employ her before your wife went away?”