The Case of the Somerville Secret

by Robert Newman

  “Goodbye, Harriet.”

  She got into the carriage. The white-mustached gentleman got in after her, slammed the door, and the carriage moved off. Wyatt watched it go, a strange expression on his face. Then he looked down at Sara and Andrew.

  “All right, youngsters,” he said quietly. “Let’s go.”

  2

  The First Disappearance

  That Sunday, Wyatt came to the house on Rysdale Road for tea at the express invitation of Andrew’s mother. It was not, Verna explained in her note, a quid pro quo—how could you compare even the highest of high teas to an afternoon at Lord’s? But she didn’t see why she should be denied the pleasure of his company merely because she had been busy when he had extended his invitation to Sara and Andrew.

  Wyatt had accepted immediately. “I accept with Alacrity,” he wrote, “which happens to be my cousin’s name. However he has a bad cold, and I am not sure he can come.” And Andrew knew the reason Verna had invited him—and the reason Wyatt had accepted so quickly—was that Sunday was the day when he felt most cut-off from his family and friends and therefore most lonesome.

  His reception at the house could not have been warmer, for Andrew’s mother was almost as fond of him as the two young people, but in addition he was greatly admired by everyone else there: Sara’s mother, Fred the coachman, and even that pillar of propriety, Matson, the butler.

  It was Matson who sounded the afternoon’s first discordant note. Since it was a warm, sunny day, they were having tea in the garden. The talk had come round to the baseball game they had seen several days before and, leaving the table briefly, Wyatt was demonstrating the complicated contortions of the Chicago pitcher during his windup, when Matson came out of the house.

  “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said. “General Wyatt is here.”

  Frowning, Verna looked from him to Wyatt, who had become very still, then back to Matson again.

  “General Wyatt?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Does he want me or Inspector Wyatt?”

  “I believe he’d like to speak to the inspector. The first thing he asked me was whether he was here.”

  “Ask him to come out here.”

  Bowing, Matson went back into the house. Again Verna glanced at Wyatt, who had dropped the croquet ball he was holding. Though his face was expressionless, it was clear that he was surprised—which was no surprise to Sara and Andrew, for they had long been aware of the strained relations between him and his father. As a matter of fact, they had been present at another encounter between the two some time before when Wyatt was still a constable. He had, at that time, explained the reasons for his father’s attitude; the general was outraged because Wyatt had become an ordinary policeman instead of going into the army as his two older brothers had done. And apparently the fact that he was no longer a constable but an inspector in the C.I.D. made no difference to the general.

  When Matson returned, it was clear that the general was under considerable strain. Though as carefully dressed as he had been at Lord’s, his face had lost a good deal of its color and his eyes much of their challenge.

  “I apologize for this intrusion, Miss Tillett,” he said, bowing to Verna. “I’m not sure if you remember me …”

  “Of course I do,” said Verna. “We met at the Marchioness of Medford’s about a year ago. Miss Wiggins here and my son Andrew were with me at the time.”

  “I remember them,” said the general. “And I believe I saw them again the other day with my son Peter at Lord’s.”

  “You did. Can I offer you some tea?”

  “You’re very kind, but no thank you. The fact is that I would like to talk to Peter about a matter of some urgency.”

  “By all means,” said Verna. “Inspector, why don’t you take the general to the sitting room? Matson will see that you’re not disturbed.”

  “Thank you,” said Wyatt. “This way, sir.”

  He led the general into the house, held the door of the sitting room open for him, followed him in and shut the door after them.

  “First of all, how did you know where I was?” he asked.

  “I stopped by at your rooms. Your landlady told me you were here.”

  Wyatt nodded. “I always leave word where I can be reached in case the Yard wants me. You said you wanted to see me about something urgent?”

  “If it weren’t urgent, you know very well I wouldn’t have approached you—especially on a Sunday. It’s your sister-in-law, Harriet. She’s disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was this?”

  “I’m not sure whether she left late last night or early this morning. She’s been staying with me since Francis went to India. She went to the opera last night with a friend, said good night to me when she got home and went into her room. When she didn’t appear at breakfast this morning, I thought she must be tired or not feeling well. By noon I became a little concerned, knocked at her door. When there was no answer, I went in and found this.”

  He gave Wyatt an envelope. Wyatt opened it, took out the note inside and read it.

  Dear General, (it said)

  The fact that I call you that and not Father should tell you something about the way I feel. If it does not, perhaps the fact that I am going away will. Don’t try to find me, for you won’t be able to; I doubt if all of Scotland Yard could. As to what you should tell Francis or anyone else who might be interested, say merely that I became tired of sitting like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief.

  Harriet

  Wyatt read it through a second time, then asked, “What did she mean about the way she felt? How did she feel?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “She never discussed it with you, told you that she was unhappy and why?”

  “No.”

  “How did she feel about going to India?”

  The general’s face became even more bleak. “I don’t know. I always believed that she loved Francis, that they had a good marriage and that she was anxious to go out and join him, but … You think that’s why she disappeared, because she didn’t want to go?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d like to see her room, see if there’s anything there that tells me anything.”

  “My carriage is outside.”

  Matson opened the front door for them. Wyatt asked him to tell Miss Tillett that he was leaving and convey his regrets to her, then he joined the general in the double victoria. They sat there, side by side, in silence as the carriage went down the driveway and over toward Regent’s Park. But though they said nothing, Wyatt thought about many things, most of them dealing with the past rather than the present; of the times when his father had seemed like the most wonderful man in the world to him and the times when he had seemed like a stubborn, bigoted monster. And from the expression on the general’s face, it’s probable that his thoughts paralleled those of his son.

  Wyatt knew that the general had rented two floors of a small house near Robert Street on the east side of Regent’s Park, but he had done so after their breach, and Wyatt had never been there. He looked at the house with some interest now as they drew up in front of it. The steps that led up to the door were scrubbed and the brass bellpull gleamed like a sergeant-major’s buttons. The general opened the door with a latch key, led the way down a hall past a sitting room and opened another door.

  “This is her room,” he said.

  Wyatt went in and looked around. The room, large and high-ceilinged, overlooked a small garden and was light and pleasant. There was a bed and chest of drawers against one wall. Facing it was a fireplace with an ornate marble mantel. There was a desk between the two windows that looked out onto the garden, and nearby was a large, open steamer trunk.

  “Where did you find the note?” asked Wyatt.

  “Here,” said the general, indicating the mantel. “It was leaning against the clock.”

  Wyatt nodded, walked over to the desk. Besides a pen, ink and seve
ral sheets of the same paper on which the note had been written, there was a book with a bookmark in it. He picked it up. It was a well-worn copy of William Blake’s poems and the bookmark was inserted between two pages in the Songs of Innocence.

  “Did she like Blake?” he asked.

  “You mean the poet? I’ve no idea. I know she read a good deal, but I don’t know what.”

  Wyatt now went over to the trunk. “Do you know what clothes she took with her.”

  “No. I believe she took only one bag with her, a not very large portmanteau.”

  “She probably took that because she could carry it herself.” He was still studying the trunk. “She seems to have left all her tropical, Indian things here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” He turned to face the general. “How long have she and Francis been married?”

  “A little over three years.”

  “As I recall, they met at a house party in Gloucestershire.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was her maiden name?”

  “Darrell. Harriet Darrell.”

  “What family does she have?”

  “None anymore. When she met Francis, she was an orphan, living with an aunt in Bath. The aunt died about a year ago.”

  “She and Francis were married here in London, weren’t they?”

  “Yes. At St. George’s.”

  “Where did she stay before the wedding? At a hotel?”

  “No. I believe she stayed at some club or other.” The general had been exhibiting more and more impatience with Wyatt’s questions. “Does any of this have anything to do with her disappearance?”

  “I’m not sure. The fact is, sir, that we’re faced with a bit of a problem here.”

  “What sort of problem?”

  “Well, from the note she left and the look of the room, it’s clear that she’s gone away of her own accord. That means there’s no legal reason for the police to come in on the case. After all, one should be able to go where one wants.”

  “Even though it means the end of a marriage and perhaps the end of a career? Because you know what it will do to Francis if she’s not on that boat when it arrives in India, don’t you?

  “I think so.”

  “And you still say you’re not going to do anything about it?”

  Wyatt looked at him thoughtfully, at the new signs of age that had appeared on the general’s face, and knew what it had cost the man to come to him of all people for help.

  “I never said I wasn’t going to do anything about it, Father. I was merely explaining the official, police position to you. Let me look into it, and I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I’ve something to tell you.”

  3

  The Second Disappearance

  When Matson came back and told them that Wyatt had left with the general, it was the direct and natural Sara who put what they were all thinking into words.

  “None of our beeswax of course, but I wonder what that was all about.”

  “It must have been something pretty important,” said Andrew.

  “Important? I wouldn’t have thought there was anything in the world that would have made him come here looking for Wyatt after the way he acted at Lord’s!”

  “What happened at Lord’s?” asked Verna.

  Sara and Andrew exchanged glances and then told her.

  “I see,” said Verna. “Of course I knew that there were problems there and why.”

  “Do you think Wyatt will tell us what it was about?” asked Sara.

  “I doubt it,” said Verna. “And, I don’t think I’d ask him. It’s probably a family or a personal matter.”

  Sara sighed. “All right. I won’t ask.”

  It was two days before any of them saw Wyatt again, and when they did, they then had something much more important on their minds than the general’s unexpected visit. These were the circumstances:

  It was late afternoon, and Verna and Andrew were in the sitting room, reading. Verna, reading a play script that had been sent her, finished it and dropped it on the table next to her.

  “No good?” asked Andrew.

  “Oh, it’s a perfectly good play—well-written and well put together—but the part they want me to play is exactly like Rowena in The Squire’s Daughter.”

  “That’s probably why Harrison sent it to you.”

  “It is. But I’ve told him a dozen times I won’t play an ingenue again. I’m not only too old for it, the idea of doing the same thing again makes me ill.”

  “I can understand that, but I don’t think you’re too old to play ingenues—not at all.”

  “You’re as bad as Harrison. What are you reading?”

  “One of Layard’s books.”

  “Layard?”

  “Austin Henry Layard, the antiquarian. Or archeologist as they’re starting to call them.”

  “Weren’t you reading one of his books the last time you were down?”

  “Yes. That was rather general. This is about his discoveries in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon.”

  “Sounds interesting. And also like something your friend Lord Somerville might be involved in. Didn’t he have a dig somewhere near there?”

  “Yes. It was he who suggested that I read Layard. He said he was not just one of the first, he was one of the best Assyriologists. But …”

  There was a light tap on the door, and Annie, the parlormaid, came in, trim in her white cap and apron, wanting to know if they would like their tea now. Verna, who hadn’t realized it was five o’clock, asked if Sara was home from dancing school yet and, learning she wasn’t, said they’d wait until she did get home—which should be soon since she was a bit late already.

  As Annie left, Andrew stood up and stretched.

  “I’ve been indoors most of the afternoon. I think I’ll walk over there.”

  “To the school?”

  “Yes. Though I’m sure I’ll run into Sara long before I get there.”

  “Right, darling. Go ahead. I want to write Harrison a note about the play.”

  Fred, the coachman, was in the stable yard polishing the side lights of the landau when Andrew came out of the house. He whistled shrilly, jerking his head at the carriage, which was his way of asking if he was wanted. Andrew shook his head, walked down the driveway and right on Rysdale Road toward Wellington Road.

  London is, of course, many small villages that have grown together but have still managed, in most cases, to preserve their own identity. And at this particular hour St. John’s Wood was most like itself: quiet, respectable and suburban. Since it was late in the day, the sun cast long shadows, gilding the spire of the Church of St. John and the roof of the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth. Two cabbies sat on a bench in front of The Red Dragon, pints in their hands, while their horses munched their evening oats. A dark green City Atlas bus rattled by down Wellington Road on its way to London Bridge, and as Andrew crossed the street behind it, the Marchioness of Medford’s carriage turned into Rysdale Road and the coachman, a friend of Fred’s, touched his cockaded hat with his whip in greeting.

  Entering the narrower, shaded streets west of Wellington Road, Andrew found himself thinking about the conversation he had just had with his mother. What he had not told her was what Wyatt had said about his new interest in archeology. He had smiled when he had first heard about it and, when pressed, he asked Andrew if it had not occurred to him that it was another form of detective work.

  “They hunt for potsherds and artifacts,” he said, “and use their intelligence, their reasoning powers, to make sense out of them, understand a civilization, just as a detective puts clues and evidence together to understand a crime.”

  When Andrew had looked a little startled, Wyatt had laughed and said he was joking. And, while he may have been, Andrew had realized that there was a good deal of truth in what he said. That one of the reasons he had been so attracted to archeology was that it did bear such a resemblance to the work the m
an he liked and admired so much was doing.

  He was still musing about careers, wondering whether he’d rather be a famous archeologist or a famous detective when he reached the dancing school, which was in a stucco villa set back behind a somewhat neglected garden.

  It had taken him a little over ten minutes to walk to the school, and he was a little surprised that he had not run into Sara on the way for, though he knew she occasionally stayed there until four-thirty, he did not recall her ever having been this late before.

  He tugged at the bellpull, heard it jangle inside, and a few moments later the door was opened by a maid whose cap was not quite straight and who didn’t seem to be much older than he was.

  “Yes, sir?” she said. It was fairly obvious from the smear of jam at the corner of her mouth that he had taken her away from her tea. She seemed surprised when he asked for Sara.

  “Why, she’s not here, sir.”

  “She’s not?”

  “Who is it, Katie?” called a voice from somewhere inside the cavernous reaches of the house.

  “A young gentleman asking for Miss Sara Wiggins.”

  Footsteps approached, the door opened wider, and Miss Fizdale, a thin woman in her late forties, appeared behind the maid.

  “You’re Andrew Tillett, are you not?”

  “Yes, Miss Fizdale.”

  “I remember you from the spring dance recital. That must have been the last time you were home on holiday.” Then, as he nodded, “But Sara’s not here. She left some time ago.”

  “Oh. Well, I must have missed her walking over here.”

  “Yes, you must have. But even then …” She turned. “Do you know what time Sara left, Miss Caroline?”

  Miss Caroline, shorter and plumper than Miss Fizdale, appeared beside her. Andrew didn’t know her last name. All he knew about her was that she wore pince-nez and a high-necked dark dress like Miss Fizdale and that she played the piano for the school. She was clutching a napkin, so apparently the two ladies had been at tea also.

  “She left at the usual time—four o’clock. You mean she’s not home yet?”