by Sarban
‘There was only one inference: Shirley had intended to come to Dulwich that Friday, but she must have had something to do before coming on to Miss Willis’s. If the business she had to do was in Town, for instance, the natural thing would be to send her luggage on in advance and then go off, empty-handed, by bus to pay her call or whatever it was.
‘The police were already enquiring into that. Mrs Guyatt’s story was that a postcard had been sent to the carriers—Ellen had written it, because she wanted to help—asking them to call for the luggage, and Shirley had left the money to pay the van-man with Mrs Guyatt in case he called while Shirley was out on the Thursday evening. That is what had happened.
‘After I had answered all the sergeant’s questions and given him the name of everyone I could think of who was acquainted with Shirley, there seemed to be nothing more I could personally do, except to send a telegram to my Aunt and to put an advertisement in the personal column of two newspapers the next day.
‘Both my aunts came over from Jersey by the next boat, and Aunt Eva had no sooner arrived than she collapsed and we had to get her into a nursing home. For a week I scarcely knew whether I was on my head or on my heels. I was phoning the police or going to the station or having policemen call at the house half the day, it seemed to me, and the other half I was running between the house and the nursing home. There must have been scores of reports of my sister’s whereabouts in that week, and every one of them false.
‘Finally things settled down to a kind of flat hopelessness. The police seemed not to hear anything more. I thought they were shelving the case. It seems impossible until it happens in your own experience: that someone should walk out of a house in London in a perfectly ordinary way one summer morning and never be heard of again. But I dare say it has happened and will happen very often.
‘My Aunt Emily returned to Jersey, and, on the day she left Inspector Waite came to see me.
‘I shall always remember Inspector Waite gratefully. He was exactly the person I had longed to have to advise me before it happened; before I went off to Argyllshire.
‘It was he who let me see what an immense amount of work the police had done already in the enquiry, and he convinced me that if it was humanly possible to find Shirley, she would be found. Very patiently and sympathetically he went over everything again with me. He went through my notes to Shirley and the last one she had written to me; he checked with me a long list of people he had interviewed—everybody whom I’d ever heard Shirley mention and a good many whom I myself had never heard of.
‘He told me frankly that the police were working on the assumption that she had gone off with some man. That was their experience in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases of disappearance of young women, and, well—it didn’t need much acquaintance with the News of the World to suggest how she might eventually be found.
‘But there was nothing, nothing in all the evidence they could collect to give them a clue to any man in the case. Of course there wasn’t one. I knew that for absolute certainty.
‘He sat back and said gently, “Well now, Miss, I’m inclined to believe you. Just tell me what you think has happened to her. It doesn’t matter if you can’t swear to it, but you do think that Mrs Guyatt’s lying, don’t you?”
‘I did. It ended by my telling Inspector Waite the story as I’ve told it you.
‘He shook his head slowly when I had finished.
‘ “Your sister was a silly girl, I’ve no doubt, to get mixed up with such goings-on. Those people are queer ’uns. I’m sure of that. But that’s a long way from being wrong ’uns as the Law looks at it. You see for yourself, I expect, that your theory’s sound up to a point, but it doesn’t provide a motive. What interest would Mrs Guyatt have in making away with your sister? It’d be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, wouldn’t it, if you’ll pardon me putting it like that.”
‘ “But how do we know what else went on in that house,” I said. “It’s true that that woman would be glad enough of every penny she could make out of Shirley and would want to keep her living there as long as she could. But what if Shirley had done something? What if she had discovered something about them. That’s not impossible is it?”
‘He looked at me for a long time, not sceptically, but perhaps weighing what I was suggesting against his own experiences.
‘At last I heaved out from the bottom of my mind, where I had been trying to keep it down, the abominable thing that had gradually been suggesting itself to me ever since I looked through the window into Ellen’s room.
‘ “That bird they made her hold in her hand,” I said. “It was dead. Only just dead. Limp. On the altar. It looked like a kind of sacrifice. They did want Shirley for something more than to amuse Ellen or for her few shillings a week. I saw Ellen’s face when she was watching Shirley dance that afternoon.”
‘Still Inspector Waite did not look sceptical, only very serious.
‘ “You don’t want me to mince my words,”’ he said, quietly. “You’ve faced the very worst possibilities in your own mind. But there’s one other thing both against what you’re suggesting and against its being suicide. I agree with you that the only evidence for your sister having left that house in a normal frame of mind, or having left it at all, is what Mrs Guyatt says. We don’t necessarily believe her. We just have no corroboration one way or the other. You’d think somebody might just have happened to be in Old Mill Lane that morning and seen her go out, if she did. But the fact that nobody has come forward to say he saw her doesn’t prove that she didn’t leave the house. No more does the fact that Mrs Guyatt and Ellen made all the arrangements for sending on the luggage prove that they did that after they’d disposed somehow of your sister. Nothing is proved, one way or the other. Just one big fact remains to tip the balance of probability against what you think. You see what I mean?”
‘I saw it. It was inescapable.
‘ “Just so,” Inspector Waite said. “Murder or suicide, there’s got to be a body somewhere.”
‘He got up to go. “You didn’t know, perhaps,” he said, “that Mrs Guyatt has booked passages for herself and Ellen to South America for the week after next? They’re going back to Georgetown. There’s an estate-agent’s board up at Number Fourteen.”
‘ “Then you do think there’s something . . . ?” I said.
‘He shook his head. “No. It’s natural enough. It seems she was never happy in England. Her income’s barely enough to keep them here, but the house should fetch quite a bit, and living’s cheaper in British Guyana. All the same, we could no doubt persuade her to put it off if something were to turn up. But I doubt if it will. However, I’m going to have another talk with her, and Ellen, and we’ll take another careful look over the house, grounds and all.”
‘It was about three weeks later when Inspector Waite came to see me again. Aunt Eva was out of the nursing-home then and staying with me at Miss Willis’s.
‘He came to confess complete failure. The Guyatts had gone.
‘ “We’d have stopped them if there’d been the ghost of a case, but there wasn’t,’ he said. ‘Not a thing. A couple of my men went over the house with an order to view and they viewed every inch before it was packed up. I saw that room of Ellen’s myself.”
‘He lifted his shoulders and pulled a face.
‘ “Queer collection of stuff for a young girl to treasure. But the heads were genuine head-hunters’ trophies, and there’s stuffed lizards and a mummified monkey or two. A regular museum she had there; and I don’t think my daughter would much fancy having some of those things dangling over her bed. But they obviously meant a lot to Ellen. I feared what you did. I’ve looked up your Mr Wallace and I’ve also had a chat with an old retired missionary from South America that the Yard put me on to. He told me about some of the unpleasant practices of these Harburians. But he thinks the last professing Harburian died about twenty years ago. And, again, you see, there’s no evidence that Mrs Guyatt practised anything th
at would be against the law in this country.”
‘My Aunt Eva had no great opinion of evidence.
‘ “Then why has she run away?” she demanded.
‘ “I wouldn’t call it running away,” said the Inspector. “Come to that, she gave the police every assistance. No, I imagine it was the child that decided it. She was heart-broken because your sister had left them. She didn’t want to stay in England any longer after that. And Mrs Guyatt was always keen to go back. It was just the hope that the child might be cured that kept her.”
‘ “I doubt it,” I said. “But supposing it was. Ellen was getting better. I saw the improvement myself. It was remarkable in so short a time. Why should they break it off in the middle?”
‘He looked at me in a curious fashion. “I wondered if you’d ask that,” he said. “It’s funny you didn’t bring that up before. Have you any idea who was treating Ellen?”
‘ “None,” I said. “I don’t think I ever asked.”
‘ “No? Well, we did. Ellen wasn’t going to a specialist at all. Harburians don’t believe in doctors. It was your sister who was treating her.”
‘ “Nonsense!” said my Aunt Eva. “What did she know about medicine?”
‘ “Nothing, I imagine,” said Inspector Waite. “But I suspect she had a notion she could cure Ellen psychologically, through getting her to attempt to walk and dance. Absurd, no doubt, but there are plenty of people who believe broken legs and cancer can be healed by right thinking, and Harburians being what they appear to be, it’s pretty certain that Mrs Guyatt encouraged the notion. And, come to that, the child may not have been so bad as she appeared to you to be. Where there’s some kind of partial paralysis the degree to which a person can make some use of the limb sometimes varies with their mental state. Ellen was passionately fond of your sister. I dare say your sister did help her to overcome her reluctance to make what use she could of her leg.”
‘I had grudgingly to concede that it might have been so. “Well, then,” I said, “in the end we just don’t know what’s happened to Shirley. Have the police given it up now?”
‘ “We never give up any of our puzzles until we know the truth,” he said.
‘I went down the stairs from our sitting-room with him. For the sake of something to say, when there seemed nothing more I could say, I remarked that my prejudice against the Guyatts seemed to have given him a lot of trouble following a false trail.
‘ “Everything’s got to be tried,” he answered. “What you thought was relevant. You were right enough in your observations, I think, except about the girl. There you did make some odd mistakes. You gave me an entirely wrong impression of her. I don’t mind admitting that I was rather touched by her. I saw her the last time I was there before they left. She was in bed, not well, and very unhappy. It’s a cruel thing for a pretty girl not to have the full use of her legs—and in every other respect such a fine, well-made girl, too. I’d expected something different from your description. . . .”
***
Constance Pottinger broke off her story. She looked very pale and tired, and the fear that I had fleetingly observed when Number Fourteen was first mentioned had come back into her eyes. She made no attempt to hide it now, but stared fixedly at me.
She was silent so long that I had to conclude her story was finished, or that she dared not tell me the rest.
‘But surely,’ I said, ‘you haven’t—you can’t have gone on all these years suspecting something—something like that simply on the grounds of your impression of the girl not tallying with his. Surely it could have been checked? He might have been wrong, or you yourself might have been wrong. One’s powers of observation do have the most curious lapses at times, you know. Didn’t you follow it up?’
She shook her head. ‘How could I convince the Inspector of such a fantastic thing when his own explanation of what made me think it was so much more reasonable. You don’t believe it yourself, on what I’ve told you, do you?’
Directly challenged, I made a non-committal gesture, which of course, could only mean ‘No’ to her.
‘Check it?’ she said. ‘How? Who was there who had seen Ellen before it—happened? Who, except myself, and Shirley?’
‘But,’ I objected feebly, ‘I mean passports . . . the police over there . . . ?’
‘Oh, the Inspector said he would pursue that line of thought, of course. But naturally he was just humouring me. I believe the British Guyanan police didn’t take it very seriously. I expect they filed the correspondence under “Enquiries from the Cracked”. The police get lots of them, I believe.’
She had pulled herself together and made a great effort to speak casually, as if the story had been only a story. She looked up at the clock and exclaimed, ‘Good heavens! Look how late it is. Charles is fast asleep, and you must be dying to go to bed. Charles, by the way, has never heard all the story. He thinks I suspect they buried her at Number Fourteen. No,’ she added firmly, as I was beginning to ask another question. ‘I can’t talk about it any more. Charles, my dear, it’s time to wake up and go to bed.’
***
Nor would Constance revert to the story the next day. We were out most of the day and a party of the Pottinger’s neighbours dined with them in the evening.
It was not until the Monday morning that Number Fourteen was mentioned again, and then it was for the very same reason that it had cropped up on the Saturday. Charles received a telephone call from London just after breakfast. I heard him speaking in the hall.
‘Yes. Yes, of course I’ll come up as soon as possible. Matter of fact I was coming up before noon to bring a friend up to Kings Cross. I’d better not bring . . . I mean, my wife wasn’t thinking of coming with me. Eh? What? I don’t really understand. We ought to be there about eleven. Yes. Goodbye.’
He saw me as he put down the receiver, and coming over to me, led me away into the garden. He was agitated and puzzled.
‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘That was Cyril Manton. He says they have found something in Number Fourteen. I can’t believe it. You heard Con’s story on Saturday night. She’s convinced those people made away with her sister and buried her there. I always said it was nonsense. My God! If it was true. . . ! But I can’t make it out. Cyril was so mysterious, and he didn’t seem to be taking it seriously. Look here, don’t say anything to Con. I must see Cyril first and find out what it is. Let’s set off earlier and you come with me.’
Charles got out the car and we set off a good hour earlier than we had intended. We did not go straight to Old Mill Lane when we arrived in Clapham but called at the police station where we picked up Doctor Manton and a sergeant.
The doctor was a robust, elderly man with not too grave a professional air. To Charles’s question he replied only, ‘Wait till you see it. Not what you expected exactly.’
Old Mill Lane was rather different from what I had pictured. Fifteen years had elapsed since Shirley Dalman’s disappearance, and most of the old property in the road had apparently been demolished in that time and been replaced by little red-brick houses and shops. Only one or two big old places still stood in weedy gardens with agents’ boards above their gates.
Charles drew up behind a lorry which was being loaded at the edge of a tract of shattered shrubbery. Beyond the patch of mangled garden stood a gaunt ruin with its roof off and all its window-frames ripped out. Another lorry was backing up what had once been a drive.
We all got out and walked across. The sergeant led us into the ruin and across the rubble where presumably the hall floor had formerly been. It was hard to recognise the house that Constance had described in those bleak walls now open to the sky and air.
Still, the room the sergeant took us into was undoubtedly Ellen’s room. There was the fireplace on the left hand, the long blank wall in front of us as we entered, and on the right hand two gaping window-holes which looked out on a thick tangle of shrubs not yet cleared away.
There was a constable in the room
. He, and the foreman of the demolition gang who came in after us, began to remove a small improvised tent of laths and tarpaulin that had been set up more or less in the middle. All the floorboards had already been taken out.
‘I put a man on to keep an eye on it till you came along, sir,’ said the sergeant.
They pulled away the tarpaulin and we gathered round the space exposed. Two or three of the workmen came and peered in, too.
‘There it is,’ said the foreman. ‘Nobody’s touched it. That’s just as it was layin’ when Bill took the boards up.’
‘More or less, anyway,’ said one of the workmen. ‘I give it a bit of a pull, like, before I rightly saw what it was.’
‘I’m dashed if I see that now,’ said the doctor. He bent over the thing. ‘Hm. Well, yes, perhaps I do.’
The thing was lying close beside one of the supports on which a floor-joist had rested. It could have been tucked away there perhaps if a couple of loose floorboards had been lifted when the house was occupied.
The first thing I identified was an apparatus of rusty iron and mildewed leather straps; a rather old-fashioned and clumsy brace for a crippled leg. But inside that was something else, something that looked at first sight like a human skeleton—no, not a skeleton so much as the thin tracing of a human body in some flimsy, faded material, a body too small for an adult’s and yet too spidery and attenuated for a baby’s. The skin that remained was a shrivelled, half-translucent membrane, more like the sloughed skin of a snake, or thinner than that, even. It reminded me of the weightless, colourless, shed integument of some insect that has completed a stage of its metamorphosis. Under the skin, and clearly to be seen where it was split and torn, lay what may have been slender, frail bones, though they looked more like calcined twigs than solid bones. Lolling at the extremity of that figure, so fragile and insubstantial that I half expected it to crumble to dust in the air that blew through the place, was a little skull, a thing of yellowish tissue-paper, it seemed, with a few locks of dark hair adhering to it. The thing looked quite unreal; it might have been a fanciful and idle sketch or impression of a human body drawn with cobwebs and powdery white ashes; yet I found myself trying to recognise something in it and stooping to see whether one of those crumbling white twigs that looked as if they might be leg-bones was indeed more slender and more crooked than the other.