Bones in the Barrow

by Josephine Bell

  “Not today,” said David, giving Jill a warning glance. “We rather like the train to this place. By car it means heavy traffic practically the whole way.”

  Mrs. Lapthorn was prepared to be gracious. She was not particularly taken with the pair: they seemed to her to have a set of personal jokes that were meaningless to her, though Alastair understood them all right. Dr. Wintringham, too, wasn’t a proper doctor. He only did research work at one of the big London hospitals. Perhaps that was why he spoke to her in a cold, expressionless voice, without any of the little compliments and insinuations Jack’s friends used. But she had no objection to travelling with them. Any company on a railway journey was better than none. It always bothered her to be in a train alone. You heard of such awful things happening to women passengers. And then to be alone in an accident: What could be worse than that?

  They got into one of the new carriages on the southern suburban lines; a coach with a corridor down the centre and bays of seats on either side, with small luggage racks above. Mrs. Lapthorn and the Wintringhams sat down; the former next to Jill on one side, David, alone, opposite the two women. The seat at David’s side was empty. Just before the train started a girl came quickly along the platform looking into the carriages. When the whistle blew she pulled open the door at the end of the coach and got in. The train started. The girl swayed up the centre of the coach, and failing to see an empty seat on the other side of it, she took the vacant place next to David.

  Mrs. Lapthorn and Jill were watching the platform as the train drew out. In fact the former continued to stare out the window at the fields and hedges. The girl beside David took some knitting out of the bag she carried and then got up to put the bag on the rack. After that she settled herself and began to knit.

  It was at this moment that Janet Lapthorn, perhaps drawn by the noise the newcomer made, looked round, and an instant later grasped Jill by the arm. The girl’s head was bent, counting stitches, but soon she looked up. Janet Lapthorn was again staring out the window. David and Jill exchanged glances.

  Nothing further happened until the train reached Surbiton, but here a large number of people got out and a few got in. In the noise and confusion Janet said in Jill’s ear, “That girl is wearing Felicity’s brooch!”

  Jill instantly dismissed the idea as absurd. Such a coincidence was too wild. The afternoon’s work had addled Mrs. Lapthorn’s brain. She forced a polite smile, murmuring, “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Come to the end of the coach. I’ll tell you.”

  Signalling to David to stay where he was, Jill got up and, followed by Mrs. Lapthorn, made her way to the end of the coach, where she stood near the window, looking out.

  “It is one of the brooches I was telling you about,” said Mrs. Lapthorn. “Genuine small pearls in an old-fashioned gold setting. It doesn’t look so very different to the imitation dress stuff they sell so much of, but I know that pattern. You won’t find exactly that in the shops. I’m ready to swear it’s Felicity’s. What’s more, I know that girl’s face. She works in Boxwood at the hairdresser I used to go to. Felicity went there, too. She hasn’t recognized me, but she would if I spoke to her.”

  “Do you think Mrs. Hilton gave the girl the brooch?”

  “I suppose it’s possible. Oughtn’t we to find out?”

  “Yes, we certainly ought. If she really is the girl you remember it wouldn’t be such a coincidence meeting her. Particularly if she travels from Boxwood on this train every day of the week.”

  “Very likely she does. She wasn’t a Boxwood girl, I know.”

  “We must tell David,” said Jill. “I feel all confused. I’ll get him over here.”

  David, seemingly deep in his own thoughts, had been watching the excited conversation between the two women, and it did not need much effort on Jill’s part to bring him to their side.

  “We’ll get out of this carriage at Wimbledon,” he said. “If she stays on, we’ll get back into the next one. We’ll have to be pretty snappy at Waterloo not to miss her.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Mrs. Lapthorn. “I’m afraid I shall have to leave you at Waterloo. I must go straight to Liverpool Street on the Underground.”

  “Oh, no!” said Jill. “You can’t do that! You must come with us. We shall want you to identify the brooch.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of accosting anyone,” said Mrs. Lapthorn firmly.

  “We’ll do the accosting. You’ll only have to say what you think about the brooch.”

  “I certainly shan’t. If the police get hold of it and I am asked to give my opinion at Scotland Yard, in private, I might consider it. Not otherwise. I wouldn’t have spoken if I’d known how you would take it.”

  “But you are sure, quite sure, it is Mrs. Hilton’s?”

  “It is a most unusual pattern. I have never seen it on any other brooch. I always thought it very original when Felicity wore it.”

  “Then why not back us up straight away?”

  “No, thank you. Besides, I have my husband’s dinner to get. And I shall be nearly an hour late as it is.”

  So at Waterloo Mrs. Lapthorn disappeared at once into the Underground for Bank station, using the stairs from the middle of the platform, while David and Jill, dodging through the crowds, followed their quarry to the barrier. Here in the throng David managed to jolt the girl’s arm as she held out her season ticket. It slipped from her hand and he dived quickly after it, nearly losing his balance as the people behind him pressed forward.

  He restored the ticket in its holder to the girl, with an earnest apology that brought a reluctant smile to her lips.

  “The name is Shirley Gardiner,” said David in Jill’s ear, as they hurried along in pursuit.

  Miss Gardiner floated down the first escalator six heads away from them, and she passed the next barrier by means of her season ticket, while they were frantically searching for coins at the automatic machine.

  “Tottenham Court Road,” said David. “Or so her season says. Pray God she’s going there.”

  She was still in sight as they got on to the second escalator, and in the press of the crowds moving against her at its foot they caught her up again. They travelled to Tottenham Court Road in the seats next to hers.

  From there the chase was severe, but short. Three times they lost sight of her before she turned down a side street and proceeded along it to a large building, which they knew to be a girls’ hostel. This she entered, leaving them standing on the pavement outside.

  “Now does she live there, or has she only come to visit a friend?” said David. “She lives somewhere in the neighbourhood, or she wouldn’t have a season to Tottenham Court Road. You stay here, and if she comes out again hold her by any means you can think of until I come back. I must get Johnson. I’m out of my depth.”

  “I shall be accosted,” said Jill. “By strange men. Foreigners.”

  “I should be warned off by the police if I waited exactly at the entrance to this highly respectable establishment. I won’t be long. Then we can wait together.”

  But Chief-Inspector Johnson did not approve of their plan, and presently the Wintringhams were both seated in his office at Scotland Yard.

  “No good confronting that girl tonight,” said the inspector. “She wouldn’t say a thing at the time, and then she’d warn whoever gave her or sold her the brooch. We don’t want her; we want to find out where she got it. The Lapthorn woman recognized it: she’ll have to go down to Boxwood with me tomorrow. Did you say she knew where the girl works?”

  “One of the hairdressers, she said.”

  “Perhaps she knows the name. I’ll ask her.”

  The inspector got through to the Lapthorns’ house: Jack Lapthorn answered the call. His wife had not arrived yet, he said. When he was told who was speaking to him his voice cracked on a high note of astonishment before returning to its normal tone.

  “Is it about Felicity—Mrs. Hilton? Janet was full of some wild tale this morning—”<
br />
  “It has to do with her experiences today. Ask her to ring me as soon as she comes in.”

  “We’ll have to do it the long way,” said the inspector. “The shops will all be closed now, of course. Directories might help. In any case, we don’t want to upset that girl until we have her where she can’t do any harm.”

  “You don’t mean lock her up, do you?” said David. “Habeas corpus—”

  “No, I don’t,” said Johnson, with contempt. “I mean at her work. Mrs. Lapthorn will have to come to Boxwood with me tomorrow, but I wouldn’t trust her to set the ball rolling. Mrs. Wintringham had better be the one to have her hair washed by Shirley.”

  “What if she isn’t wearing the brooch tomorrow?” said Jill. “Or got it at Woolworth’s?”

  “You know she didn’t,” said David. “We saw it quite close in the Tube and it looked genuine enough. But it seems a very long shot, all the same.”

  “Not much longer than some we’ve made already,” said Johnson.

  V

  The next morning, however, all Johnson’s careful plans to avoid alarming Shirley Gardiner were completely upset by the morning papers.

  For Duckington had broken out the day before in a big way, and London had copied Duckington. And now reporters were invading the White Hart and the Royal Arms, the vicarage, and the Willows at Boxwood.

  Inspector Johnson blamed himself, but too late. He had reckoned without Daisy’s volatile imagination and too abundant spite. From being against Hilton, she had, on the night of her ordeal in his room at the White Hart, turned all her energies into an attack on the police. With Joe’s help she had found a representative of the local press and poured out her story of the persecution of a sick man, and the terrible position he had been placed in by the mistakes of Scotland Yard.

  More worldly-wise than Daisy, and also more cautious, the local paper had interviewed Mrs. Norbury. There they found a more coherent story, but the persecution theme was upheld. The victim had not been arrested, had indeed gone back to his own home. As for the true facts of that Saturday night’s work on the downs, the vicar and the chief constable knew all about it.

  Mr. Symonds proved to be a model of discretion, but Colonel Wetherall, smarting from various injuries, real and imagined, at the hands of those he considered his inferiors, issued, without consulting Scotland Yard, a carefully worded story of a particularly sensational crime, in so far at least as it concerned Duckington. The human bones found at the prehistoric site had been identified, the papers said, as part of the remains of a Mrs. Felicity Hilton, of the Willows, Grange Road, Boxwood. Investigations were continuing.

  “At full blast, and from all sides,” said Johnson to David, who had been hurriedly summoned at eight o’ clock in the morning to Scotland Yard. “I’ll have to go down at once. No good trying to hide everything now. The best we can do is to seem to be closing in on Hilton. That might reassure the man we really want. If that girl, Gardiner, is completely innocent, we have a chance. If not, from the moment we contact her, the real criminal will be off again”.

  “But I don’t think he has been running away at all,” said David. “Except last Saturday night. I don’t mind betting he is behaving as normally as possible this week. It is the only thing he could do. We know that he lives, or else works, in Boxwood. Miss Gardiner should be able to tell you which, and how she met him, and his real name, provided she knows him by it.”

  “I’m going down at once,” said Johnson. “I shall simply have to pull the girl in and make her talk, and take her round to Hilton, if she doesn’t object, to get the brooch identified. Mrs. Lapthorn is waiting to go down with me.”

  “In the meantime,” said David. “I must get on to St. Edmund’s. Jill was much relieved you didn’t want her in Boxwood. She was dreading it. Not because of what she had to do so much as at the thought of having her hair washed by a strange shop. Let me know at the Medical School when you have got the dope from Shirley G.”

  “I will,” said Johnson. Just as David was leaving he added: “That motor-bike wasn’t Hilton’s. His is still in Boxwood at that garage he goes to.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said David. “It might have taken us off on a tiresome false trail.”

  “Why don’t you name me?” Johnson grinned at him. “I’m converted, you know, Doctor. Hilton is in the clear as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Poor devil. I don’t suppose he cares much either way.”

  Johnson drove down to Boxwood in a police car, sitting beside the driver, with Janet Lapthorn alone on the back seat. David went to St. Edmund’s Hospital, where he spent the morning at his usual work in his department and in the wards. As far as possible he put the Hilton case from his mind. But below the surface its main problems nagged at his intelligence. The scattered threads had drawn together, but they seemed more like the hard core of disorder in Jill’s knitting bag than a neatly made-up skein of reasoning. And there were gaps, large gaps, even in the story of events.

  At eleven he went with some of his colleagues to have coffee in the refectory of the Medical School. While he sat, hardly taking in what they said, a messenger came to tell him he was wanted on the outside line. David left his coffee, and hurried away.

  The call was from Johnson and he had news. He had found the girl, Shirley Gardiner, at the hairdresser’s shop to which Mrs. Lapthorn had directed the police car. He had spoken to her employer at once, explaining that his inquiries were necessary, but only involved the girl indirectly. Shirley was asked to see him in the room behind the shop.

  “She tried to hold out at first, but not for long,” Johnson reported. “I told her enough to make her see sense. The brooch was given her as a present a couple of months ago by her boy friend. She called him Eric Ford.”

  “Isn’t that his name?”

  “Could be. Or could not. She always goes home to London, to the hostel, I mean, by the 5.45 train you caught yesterday. You were right about that. She met Eric Ford on the train. She says she knows he works in Boxwood, but she doesn’t know where. A white-collar job, anyway. She tried to ask him once or twice but he didn’t tell her. On the other hand he always goes up on that train, or nearly always. She was surprised he wasn’t on it yesterday.”

  “Almost as if he knew I was going to be on it,” said David.

  “So likely.”

  “If he’s the man I think he is, it would be quite likely.”

  “And that Shirley would sit down next to you?”

  “That was luck, but not so extraordinary. There were very few passengers waiting besides ourselves, and we and this girl all got into the central coach, the new open kind with nice new upholstery. As it was moderately full already we sat in an empty bay, all together.”

  “Well, never mind that. The point is, the man lives in London, meets her in London, after working hours, and she knows him as Eric Ford.”

  “And you can’t find an Eric Ford employed in Boxwood.”

  “Precisely.”

  “This lets out Basil Sims, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, if he was ever really in the running.”

  “Not seriously. What about the brooch?”

  “It is Mrs. Hilton’s, all right. The girl was wearing it again. Says she always wears it because it is so pretty. Mrs. Lapthorn is prepared to swear to it, so is Hilton himself and Mrs. Mason. She says it is one of the pieces Mrs. Hilton took away in November.”

  “Ah!”

  “Yes. It looks as if she thought she might want to cash in on it, but never got round to that. Unless we’re wrong, and Eric Ford happened to buy it, secondhand.”

  “There’s always an innocent explanation for every darned thing that happens in this case,” said David, irritably. “Uphill, uphill, all the way.”

  “Yes, to the very end,” said Johnson, with bitter emphasis.

  “Never mind. We know the boy friend lives in London and goes to Boxwood every day. That’s a gain. I can do a little piece of research on the strength of tha
t. And Shirley, what have you done with her?”

  “Daren’t let her go back to the shop in case she can’t keep her mouth shut. She’s kicking her heels at the Willows, waiting for the 5.45 this afternoon.”

  “Going to use her as a decoy?”

  “That’s the idea. She understands the seriousness of what’s happened, and she’s read the papers, and Hilton has talked to her about Felicity.”

  “Humane treatment, for once.”

  “More often than you think.”

  “I wasn’t serious. Good luck to you. If my own show goes reasonably well, you can expect to see me at Boxwood Station, also waiting for the 5.45. With Terry Byrnes, most likely. And, Johnson, when you’re looking for Eric Ford, don’t neglect the public services. Jill said the newsagent at the station had the right build.”

  “So has the postman who does Grange Road,” said Johnson, and rang off.

  David went back to his room at the Medical School. He had no teaching work on hand, and his ward round was over. If he was to help Johnson in the final round he must move fast.

  He lit a cigarette and went over to the window. He worked on the third floor up, and from where he stood he looked across a vista of roofs, repetitive and soothing.

  A time-table, he thought. Rust’s, Goode’s, Ford’s time-table, from the date on which he took the lodging at Mrs. Hunt’s house in Waterbury Street. Work it backwards. Rust came home at seven at night. He went out at seven in the morning. Now, he works in Boxwood, and goes up from there on the 5.45, which gets in to Waterloo at 6.15. He had three-quarters of an hour in which to reach Mrs. Hunt’s, pushing the barrow. Except on one or two occasions a week, when he is said to have brought in big supplies of cat’s meat for the refrig; this is according to Mrs. Hunt. There wouldn’t be time for him to go to the house in Battersea and push the barrow back from there to Waterbury Street in three-quarters of an hour. Nor to push it to Battersea and get back from there to Waterloo in time to get down to Boxwood about eight, as he must have done. Those trains don’t stop at Queen’s Road, Battersea, so he couldn’t work it that way.