Mystery Villa (29 page)

‘If you must know,' he confessed finally, ‘that's why I didn't tell nobody where I was going. I didn't want a lot of argufying and such-like. So I thought it best to keep out of the way, and so I should have done only for your meddling and interfering.'

‘I put it to you,' Mitchell said abruptly, ‘that all this story told you by the man Jones was merely part of a scheme for getting familiar with Tudor Lodge and with Miss Barton's habits.'

But Humphreys only looked as stubborn as ever.

‘How should I know?' he demanded. ‘What he said was reasonable, and there wasn't any cause for me to look behind. What he was after was getting a good fat commission selling a sound business what only wants working up to be a little gold-mine with capital behind – and capital there would have been all right – thousands – all won in the Irish sweep. I never won anything,' he repeated resentfully, and evidently felt that the flagrant injustice of others winning prizes that never came to him rendered both right and proper any manoeuvre likely to remedy that injustice by transferring at any rate part of the prize-money from the winner's pocket to his own. ‘Nothing wrong about selling a business for what it'll fetch, is there? Nothing wrong about getting or paying a commission on a sale, is there?'

‘Did Jones never say anything about Miss Barton, or ask any questions that you thought peculiar at the time?' Mitchell enquired next.

Humphreys fenced with this question a little. Finally he admitted that Jones' interest in Miss Barton, and some questions he had asked about her mode of living, had for a moment made him faintly suspicious. But only for a little, and only while Bobby was questioning him on the occasion of their first meeting, almost as if with reference to the enquiries Jones had been making. But he insisted that it was natural enough for anyone, first hearing of Miss Barton s eccentric way of life, to show curiosity concerning it, and he insisted, too, that after his first show of curiosity Jones had never displayed the faintest interest in Tudor Lodge or its eccentric inmate. In fact, declared Humphreys, that passing uneasiness and suspicion had so entirely left his mind that he had simply never thought of it again, and never would have but for this cross-examination he was now being subjected to, and that, for his part, he considered pure waste of time.

‘Take it from me,' he declared, ‘nothing to do with Jones – all Jones was after was his commission. Quite right, too. Saw a chance to do a deal, and you,' said Mr Humphreys reproachfully, ‘you worry me and him about murders we hadn't nothing to do with – speaking for certain for me and next door to it for him.'

From this position it proved impossible to move him, and it really seemed he had no information to give about the mysterious Jones, either as to identity or as to how he could be traced. As completely as though he had disintegrated into thin air did Jones seem to have vanished, and finally Humphreys had to be allowed to depart, with a stern warning not to try to disappear again.

. Do you think his story is true, sir?' Bobby ventured to ask Mitchell after the departure of the little grocer.

‘As far as it goes, yes,' Mitchell answered. ‘It explains why he vanished in the way he did, for, of course, he knew perfectly well there was likely to be trouble over the sale, if it was ever actually made. A business like his is a swindle at anything like fifteen hundred or two thousand or whatever the figure was supposed to be. If his story's true, he must have known perfectly well he was taking part in a swindle, only the temptation was too much for him – I expect he had never even dreamed of such a sum. A thousand pounds is a thousand temptations, and it's as much as most of us can do to resist one. All the same, it looks as if he may have given us the true explanation, and that Jones was out, not to murder Miss Barton and steal her pearls, but merely to swindle his prize-winning cousin. We've got to trace Jones, but it's going to be difficult. Even if Humphreys' story is true, it's quite likely he's bolted with his share of the swag – or with all of it, for that matter. The two hundred to Humphreys may have been just to keep him quiet for the time, and if Jones has gone into hiding he has had plenty of time to cover his tracks. We must do our best to check up on Humphreys' story, and meantime you had better visit Aske and see if you can get anything fresh out of him, though our chief job for the moment must be tracing the elusive Jones.'

On this errand, therefore, Bobby departed, though indeed it seemed to him that the hope of tracing any individual of whom so little was known as was known of ‘Jones', was slender enough. On his way to visit Aske it was this problem which chiefly occupied his mind, but he saw no way of approaching it with much hope of success.

It was fairly late by now, and Aske had returned from his work at the factory where he was engaged. He did not seem specially pleased to see Bobby again, and, indeed, said something to the effect that Scotland Yard's version of the celebrated ‘third degree' seemed the very effective one of a perpetual, non-stop interview.

‘I've already told you fellows everything I know at least ten times over,' he protested wearily.

So Bobby said how sorry he was, and dropped a tactful hint that on the occasion of their last encounter – or, rather, immediately after it – Miss Yelton had seemed much less unforgiving and stern and implacable when Mr Aske had departed than she had done while he was still there. So then the young man brightened up considerably, only at once to grow gloomy again.

‘I wrote,' he said in melancholy tones. ‘The letter came back – unopened.'

‘Served you right,' pronounced Bobby.

‘Why?' demanded Aske, bristling.

‘For writing instead of going yourself,' explained Bobby.

‘Oh,' said Aske, thinking it over.

Confidential relations thus established, Bobby broached the subject that had brought him. But Aske knew nothing about Humphreys or his assistant, and did not think Miss Barton during their conversation had made the least reference to either of them. But it was evident that his thoughts were elsewhere.

‘Of course, I know I made a fool of myself and lost my temper,' he confessed confidentially, ‘and I suppose it isn't quite the thing to slug a fellow in a lady's drawing-room, but, all the same, the blackguard deserved it, and a lot more as well.'

‘Meaning Mr Markham?'

‘Yes, the bastard!' Aske said, and then paused and half smiled. ‘I was only being vulgar and abusive,' he said, ‘but it is the fact that that's what he is – a bastard.'

‘Oh, is he?' said Bobby, not much interested. ‘Not his fault, I suppose.'

‘No,' agreed Aske, ‘but I asked some fellows I know in the City about him. It seems he's the illegitimate son of one of the Yeltons who was mixed up in some rather specially dirty business with the sister or daughter of one of the staff. Got money out of her, too, and there would have been a prosecution and a first-class scandal, only the Yelton family managed to hush it up by promising to provide for the kid's education and to give him a job in the office later, with a view to his becoming a partner.'

‘Do you mean,' stammered Bobby, ‘you mean... that's true... you're sure...?'

‘True all right,' Aske answered, a little surprised at the other's apparent excitement. ‘Why? Markham is really Mr Yelton's first cousin – there's a strong family resemblance if you see them together.'

‘My God, I never thought of that,' Bobby cried, and fairly ran for it – out of the room, out of the house, down the road to the station as fast as he could tear, leaving Aske in a state of some doubt as to whether drink, lunacy, or mere eccentricity accounted for Bobby's behaviour.

In spite of all his haste, Bobby found when he got back to headquarters that Mitchell had departed homewards. Few enterprises are more perilous than for a junior to pursue with business or official problems a senior to the privacy of his home and leisure; and Mitchell, wrenched from that happy trinity of pipe, book, and wireless that preserves us all from the risk of too intense a concentration on any one of the three, was by no means inclined, at first, to accord Bobby a boisterous welcome.

But he grew thoughtful and placated as he listened to the story told him.

‘What about the Bournemouth nursing-home alibi, though?' he asked. ‘There seems evidence that Markham was actually there. Weren't you told at the office that he was still settling business questions for them from Bournemouth? Didn't they write to him nearly every day, and get a reply back from him by return of post – wasn't that what they said? And, if he was in a nursing-home at Bournemouth, he couldn't very well be masquerading as Humphrey's assistant.'

‘I've been thinking about that, sir,' Bobby answered. ‘I don't think it would be difficult to manage if he got someone to impersonate him at the nursing-home. Any office letters his substitute there received, he would send on at once to Markham at Brush Hill, writing the address in pencil. Markham would get the letter at Brush Hill by the last post; he could easily steam it open, write his own reply, re-seal the envelope, erase the pencil address and write the firm s address, and then make a journey to the office to drop it in the letter-box. It would be there next morning with the other letters, with the correct Bournemouth postmark, and no one would be likely to notice the envelope had been tampered with. Why should they?'

‘It could have been managed like that,' Mitchell agreed, ‘and, if Markham is really a son of James Yelton, he might easily have known about Miss Barton's jewellery. Quite likely he had been taught that only the hope of getting hold of it prevented his father from marrying his mother. He may even have believed that Miss Barton used her jewellery to get hold of his father, so that the whole thing may have seemed to him a kind of justifiable revenge. I don't suppose he suspected the truth about the murder, though, or probably he would have given information; but it's quite likely he had been brought up to regard her as the reason why he was illegitimate, and her jewellery as the cause of his mother having been let down. And then, when he found the firm in low water and being pressed by the bank to clear their overdraft, then he began to remember Miss Barton's jewellery and plan to get hold of it. That's your theory?'

‘ Yes, sir,' answered Bobby. ‘I think there was something else, though, that was pushing him on as well. I think there's no doubt he wanted very badly to marry Miss Yelton. Only, she wasn't attracted, and his idea was that if he saved the firm and her father from ruin, then he would have established a sort of claim on her.'

‘She didn't see it that way?'

Bobby smiled – a superior, world-weary smile, a rather pitying smile.

‘Aske had got in first,' he explained. ‘They're in love with each other, all right.' He smiled again, tolerantly, amusedly, the smile of one who for himself was far above such amiable weakness, and Mitchell, noticing it, felt for the moment a little uneasy, remembering, as he did, that those who think they stand fast should take the most heed. But Bobby went on: ‘You can see that from the silly way they look at each other, though I imagine Miss Yelton would most likely have turned Markham down in any case. I don't suppose she would ever have married Markham – not to save all creation, let alone her father's firm. That sort of thing is a bit out of date – Victorian. We don't go in for those self-sacrificing stunts to-day.'

‘Probably Markham didn't see it as self-sacrifice,' observed Mitchell.

‘No,' agreed Bobby, though a little doubtfully. ‘Besides, it's pretty clear she and Aske will be fixing it up before long. She's been giving him blue blazes the way she would never dare unless she knew she had him nailed for good, and he's taken it lying down and asking for more – as he never would unless he was nailed for good.'

‘Know all about it, don't you?' grunted Mitchell. ‘You wait a bit, my lad, your turn'll come all right enough.' He added thoughtfully: ‘Can we be sure of identification? Counsel will make a lot of your having seen him twice and not recognised him either time.'

‘Well, sir, the first time I saw him I only had a glimpse of his back as he was leaving his office,' Bobby pointed out, ‘and the second time his face was pretty badly knocked about. He had a swollen eye as big as your fist, and his face covered with blood from his nose, and his handkerchief up to it all the time to stop the bleeding. But the moment Aske told me he was a blood relative of Mr Yelton's, and of the family resemblance between them, I knew at once why Mr Yelton had always reminded me of someone I had seen before. It's not so much any one feature – the shape of the nose is quite different, though it's big enough with both of them, and their eyes are of a different colour too. And there's a big difference in height as well. Markham is over six foot, and Mr Yelton is hardly average height. But they both have the same way of walking and of holding themselves, and the same expression – and an odd way of looking down at you. Mr Yelton manages to do that, somehow, to people who are much taller than himself. It's difficult to describe, but it's quite catching – even the little fat head clerk manages something of the same sort.'

Mitchell thought for a moment.

‘Better see about establishing identity,' he said. ‘Someone from the nursing-home on the negative side, and someone who could swear to him as Jones, Humphreys' assistant. I don't think we had better trust Humphreys – he hasn't the guts to be a murderer, but he's a lying little twister, and he would let us down like a shot if he wanted to. Probably he would want to, too; most likely his only idea now is to wriggle out of all connection with it, for fear of being hauled in as an accomplice.'

‘I don't think there's any real question of that, is there, sir?' Bobby asked.