Mystery Villa Page 2

  ‘Is that yarn really true?’ Bobby asked, for he had heard before of how some unknown, mysterious individual no one had ever seen would, at long, irregular intervals, deposit on the Embankment benches sealed envelopes, containing each a one-pound or ten-shilling note, and marked on the outside of the envelope: ‘For the finder.’

  A similar story told how a shower of such notes had once descended on the heads of a queue of unemployed and homeless waiting for admission to a casual ward, thrown to them by some person no one had seen. Another variety was a tale of how, once or twice, in East-end streets the residents had wakened in the morning to find that during the night pound or ten-shilling notes had been thrust through the letter-boxes – unexpected but welcome manna from heaven. Bobby had been a little sceptical of the truth of these stories, but Conway assured him they were accurate enough, though he himself, such was the weight of the malignant forces for ever pressing him down, had never had the luck to be the recipient of this mysterious bounty.

  ‘Some say it’s a millionaire what’s being sorry for all he’s done in the past,’ Conway explained. ‘And some think it’s a parson of some kind, doing good according to his lights, what no man can’t ’elp, but what I say is, if it was that way, he would be along quick enough to rake in the souls what he’d been laying down the bait for. But some says it’s a sportsman what’s brought off something good, wanting to share his luck so as he shan’t lose it.’

  ‘It’s a queer yarn,’ Bobby observed. ‘What do you think yourself?’

  ‘It’s a looney what’ – began Conway, and then stopped so abruptly that Bobby had the idea he had intended to say more and then had changed his mind – ‘a looney what his keepers don’t look after proper,’ Conway completed his sentence, differently, as Bobby felt more certain still, from the manner first intended. ‘Guv’nor,’ he added, ‘what about the price of a doss, guv’nor, so as in your own bed to-night you won’t have to think of no poor bloke keeping them stones warm under Waterloo Bridge?’

  Bobby sighed, and produced a couple of shillings, but, before handing them over, felt himself called upon – it must be remembered he was still quite young – to improve the occasion by a short but earnest homily on the advantages of hard work and honesty, and the extreme ruggedness of the path chosen by the transgressor. Conway listened with an air of meek yet absorbed attention that Bobby found distinctly pleasing, so that he really did not mind very much the loss of his two shillings as he handed them over.

  ‘That’ll do you bed and breakfast,’ he said. ‘Though I believe you men think we are at the Yard only for you to touch between one job and the next.’

  ‘Well, guv’nor,’ observed Conway thoughtfully, as he accepted the two shillings, ‘if it wasn’t for the likes of us, where would the likes of you be? Unemployed, that’s what,’ declared Conway darkly, as he melted away into the night, and not until he had vanished did Bobby discover that his smart, brand-new, gold-mounted, silk umbrella he had been so proud of had vanished, too.

  At the same moment the long-threatening rain began to fall – heavily.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tudor Lodge

  Though it did not keep Bobby awake, nor trouble his slumbers with vexing dreams – for he was still of an age that knows little of sleeplessness or vexing dreams – nevertheless the memory of that strange flight of Con Conway’s through the silent and unheeding streets remained teasingly in his mind.

  Something, it was certain, must have happened to drive the little man in such headlong panic, something so strange and terrifying it had actually come to him as a relief to find himself collared by a C.I.D. man. After he woke, before he got up, while he was dressing, Bobby worried himself with endless conjectures; while he was shaving he cut himself, because he was thinking about it instead of about what he was doing; so absorbed, indeed, was he that he actually forgot all about his second rasher of bacon, and allowed it to be taken away untasted – much to the alarm of his good landlady who, startled by so unprecedented an occurrence, was inclined to fear that he must be either ill or in love.

  Later, Bobby made an excuse to ring up Brush Hill and inquire if any report of any unusual happening in the district had come in, explaining, as he did so, that he had seen Con Conway there the night before, and wondered if he had been up to mischief. The facetious reply came back that all was quiet on the Brush Hill front, but when, partly by chance, partly through a little manoeuvring on his own part, Bobby found himself, next afternoon, in the same district again, he took the opportunity of having a look round the scene of his odd encounter with Conway – perhaps not without a lingering hope that, with luck, he might run across Conway himself again, and so get that opportunity for which his soul yearned of a quiet little heart-to-heart chat with him about brand-new, gold-mounted, silk umbrellas.

  He found Windsor Crescent easily enough, and strolled down it, and then by Osborne Terrace into Balmoral Grove. The houses all seemed much the same; large, roomy, comfortable but neglected-looking dwellings, generally detached or semi-detached, with good gardens, and nearly all with those basements that prove so conclusively by their very existence the truth of the theological doctrine of original sin and the natural perversity of man. The whole district appeared to have everywhere much the same shabby, neglected air, the same appearance of a prosperity that had passed and a poverty that had replaced it. A small proportion of the houses were vacant, many of the others showed those contrasting curtains at the different windows of the different floors that suggest occupation by different families of different tastes, and, indeed, there were a good many bills displayed proclaiming that there were to let flats described according to the fancy of agent or landlord as ‘self-contained’, ‘convenient’, ‘eligible’, ‘desirable’, ‘mansion’, or ‘family’. Gardens and fences, too, had all the same neglected air, for this was, in fact, a neighbourhood that, fifty or sixty years ago, had been a favourite with well-to-do City men, but that since then the flow of the high tide towards the flat in Town, and the ebb of the low tide towards the villa on the Surrey Downs, had left desolate. For the tubes had passed it by, the trams knew it not, the motor-buses ignored it, and this lack of convenience of access to the City and the West-end had resulted generally in tenants to whom the consequently lower rent was of importance. Agents and landlords had found themselves finally driven to recommend it as ‘quiet’ – desperate device indeed to suggest ‘quiet’, as an inducement, to a generation that adores in equal measure jazz, the motor-cycle, and the loud-speaker, and that has invented the pneumatic drill.

  It was with a distinctly puzzled air that Bobby perambulated this little decaying backwater of London life.

  ‘Now what on earth can Con Conway have been after round here?’ he asked himself, as he hesitated whether to turn down Teck Gardens into Battenberg Prospect or to retrace his steps up Windsor Crescent, which, by the way, was no more a Crescent than Battenberg Prospect was a prospect or Balmoral Grove a grove – though probably their builder was a loyalist. ‘But I’ll bet,’ Bobby added to himself, ‘there must be something that brought Conway here – something he was after, just as something certainly happened that scared him like the devil.’

  For Con Conway – no one knew for certain whether the ‘Con’ represented his first name or was merely a pleasant allusion to the numerous occasions on which he had been a convict in one or other of His Majesty’s gaols – was a man of some standing in his profession, and, as a self-respecting practitioner, was not likely to have been attracted save by the prospect of a job really worthy of his attention, such a job, and such loot, as in fact none of these ‘converted’ residences seemed very likely to offer. Several of the empty houses would no doubt yield a visitor a certain amount of plunder in the shape of brass taps and lead piping and so on, but such vulgarities were not likely to tempt a man like Conway, who dealt only in jewels or cash. Indeed, so highly specialised a business is that of crime, so water-tight are its different compartments, that Conway would most likely have had no more idea than the average honest citizen how best to dispose of such stuff as brass taps and their like, though for a diamond ring or a gold brooch he would have known at once the best available market.

  Turning back, Bobby retracted his steps along Windsor Crescent, and, about half-way, paused to look again at a house that he had noticed before. With the careful, quick attention he had taught himself to give, overlooking no detail, for he knew well that strange realities may lurk behind the most ordinary appearances, he let his gaze travel over this residence that showed no notice that it was to let or to be sold, but that yet had about it an even more strongly marked air of desolation and neglect than had any of those displaying house-agents’ bills.

  On the gate, secured by a rusty chain and padlock that seemed to have been in position for years, was just visible, in faded paint, the name, Tudor Lodge; and as Bobby had recently read two novels about Henry VIII, and two violently contradictory lives of the same monarch, as he had also quite recently seen one film that specialised in depicting the table manners of the same historic personage, one play about him, and another about his daughter, Elizabeth, he found himself wondering vaguely if the Tudor cult was older than he had supposed. Beyond the gate was a gravel path, overgrown with weeds and grass, and the front garden had evidently not been touched for a very long time. The windows on the ground floor of the house were closely shuttered, and from the front door most of the paint had long peeled off. At most of the upper windows the blinds were drawn, and all seemed thick with the dust and dirt of years. But a gap by the side of the padlocked gate admitting to the drive showed signs of use, and the path leading to the back of the house seemed less grass-grown than the drive.

  ‘Perhaps there’s a caretaker,’ he thought idly, and he notic
ed that a small window at the side of the house, on the first floor, was open, and that a gutter-pipe passed close by so that, to a man like Conway, access and entry would be perfectly easy. ‘Only there wouldn’t be likely to be anything there Conway would think worth taking,’ Bobby told himself, as he walked away.

  His watch informed him he had half an hour to spare, so he went on to the Brush Hill police-station, where he looked in, ostensibly to make a purchase at the canteen, but really for a chance of getting a talk with someone. In the billiard-room he was lucky enough to find one of the sergeants attached to that division, a man named Wild, with whom Bobby had chanced to be associated in some small case shortly before, and who now was watching a game of pool then in progress.

  Sergeant Wild, a portly, dignified person, not far from retiring age, greeted Bobby with a nicely calculated mixture of the condescending patronage a veteran may justifiably show the young recruit, and of the deferential amiability due to a rising C.I.D. man whose name was already becoming known. But he did not seem very interested when he found that it was still Con Conway of whom Bobby wished to talk.

  ‘Most likely he was only doing a prowl round, on the lookout for any likely prospect,’ declared Wild. ‘Nothing’s been reported, that I know of, and I’ve asked some of the boys, but none of them seem to have seen him, or anyone answering to the description. Besides, there’s not much in his line round about this part; it’s the big stuff he goes after, as a rule.’

  ‘Something had scared him; scared him pretty bad, too,’ Bobby insisted. ‘I can’t help wondering what.’

  ‘Perhaps he saw one of our chaps, and thought he had better clear while the going was good,’ suggested Wild, with a chuckle.

  ‘Maybe he’s one of the football gang,’ remarked one of the pool players, who had been listening while waiting for his turn, and who wanted to join in what seemed like a little gentle chaff of one of those smart Yard chaps.

  ‘Football? How’s that?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Richards only means,’ explained Wild, a little coldly – for he remembered that he and Bobby were both sergeants; and, while it is one thing for a sergeant of many years’ experience to smile away the fancies of a sergeant of junior standing, mere constables should be more discreet – ‘that there’s been complaints from the residents in Windsor Crescent, and round that neighbourhood, of boys playing football in the streets. We’re badly off for open spaces in this part, and Windsor Crescent is a good, wide, open street without much traffic – only, the trouble is, soon as our backs are turned, there they are at it again. Richards – he was on the beat last week – says it’s nothing to make a song about, but he’s a football fan himself, and I wouldn’t put it past him to join in if he thought no one was looking. I shall have to go round myself, and see what it’s really like – don’t want to detail a plain-clothes man unless we have to.’

  ‘Know anything of a deserted, neglected-looking house in Windsor Crescent – Tudor Lodge it’s called, I think?’ Bobby asked.

  Wild nodded, and his plumb good-humoured features took on a serious expression.

  ‘We shall have to break in there one of these days, most likely,’ he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Broken Window

  A little startled by this remark, Bobby looked up sharply.

  ‘In what way? How do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Old party lives there all alone,’ Wild explained. ‘Some of these days one of the neighbours will come along and say she hasn’t been seen for a week or two, and then we’ll break in, and we’ll find her dead in the kitchen or somewhere, and the verdict will be, “Natural death, accelerated by neglect and exposure.” I’ve known similar cases before, and that’s the way they always end.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be any need to break in just now,’ Bobby observed. ‘I noticed one of the windows on the first floor was open, and there’s a gutter-pipe runs quite close. Anyone could get in with a ladder easy enough. Conway could swarm up the gutter-pipe and be inside in less than no time.’

  He spoke with a certain troubled uneasiness, for there was still a vivid picture in his mind of Conway fleeing through the streets as though driven on by some dreadful memory, and there still teased him, with the fascination an unsolved problem always possessed for him, the question of what it was had caused such extreme, strange terror. But Wild guessed what was in Bobby’s thoughts, and his grave expression gave way to a slightly superior smile.

  ‘Nothing there worth picking up,’ he pronounced. ‘Rates haven’t been paid for donkey’s years. Gas cut off ever since I came to this division. Water turned off by the board, and turned on again by the sanitary people, quite as a regular thing. Besides, as it happens, Turner was on that beat last night, and he’s always taken a bit of interest in her, and been sorry for the old party, along of having a mother-in-law himself what’s half balmy, too. And, when he came off duty this morning, he told me he had seen the old lady of Windsor Crescent and said good night to her, and she said ‘Good night, officer,’ and scuttled off fast as she could. He didn’t say what time it was, but it must have been after he went on duty at 2 a.m., and that was later than you saw Conway, I take it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Bobby. ‘It was before midnight when I saw him.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Wild pointed out, ‘can’t have been anything to do with her that was upsetting him, or she would have said something about it to Turner – she’s not too balmy for that.’

  ‘I was thinking, just for the moment,’ Bobby confessed, ‘that Con Conway might have been up to mischief there – but, then, anyhow he’s not the violent type; for one thing he wouldn’t have the pluck to face an angry mouse even. How does the old lady live, do you know? She must get food and coal, and so on, somehow, mustn’t she?’

  ‘I think I’ve heard she leaves an order for a small general shop round the corner by Battenberg Prospect – Humphreys, I think the name is. But I don’t think they ever see her. She leaves the money with the order, and they leave the stuff at the back door, and she takes it in after they’ve gone.’

  ‘Poor old soul. It sounds rather an awful existence,’ Bobby remarked, with pity in his voice, though, indeed, he knew the case was by no means rare, and that here and there in London, as in almost all big towns indeed, are strange old people, living strange, aloof, solitary lives, hermits amidst crowds, lone islands in the midst of the vast flowing tides of modern city populations. ‘Has she no friends or relations?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t look like it,’ Wild answered. ‘No one who calls ever gets an answer. You can spend all day knocking, and no notice taken. She’s never seen out, except sometimes after dark, and then, if anyone speaks to her, she runs like she did from Turner. They tried to get in touch with her from the church once, but it wasn’t any good – nothing to be done, if you ask me.’

  Bobby did not answer. He was musing vaguely, a little confusedly, on life that might be so rich and splendid rolling on like a great river carrying with it limitless cargoes of joy and wisdom, but, instead, so often runs to waste, like the stream losing itself in the desert sands that choke it up. Was it the fault, he wondered, of life, or of the life bearer? But Bobby was too young and too healthy minded to burden his mind for long with such useless and morbid speculations, and he got to his feet.

  ‘I must be pushing on,’ he remarked.

  ‘Half a tick, and I’ll come with you,’ Wild said. ‘I’m going your way. I’ve to see if there’s anything in this football complaint, and turn in a report. In writing,’ he added moodily, for, though he could talk as well and as long as anyone, when he sat down before a sheet of blank paper his mind was apt to go as blank as the paper.

  Bobby waited accordingly till Wild was ready, and then walked with him towards Windsor Crescent where, when they turned into it, about half-way down from Battenberg Prospect, they found a busy, animated, and extremely noisy game of football in full swing, the players taking no more notice of the protests of one or two indignant residents than cup players at Wembley would of the yapping of a small dog in a neighbouring street.