Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Was the gipsy mentioned?”

  “No, and I thought that that fact might be significant. I myself could not possibly introduce the subject of the gipsy, of course. I have never been to the Blue Finn in your company, or indeed at any time until this evening, and I could not risk arousing the landlord’s suspicions.”

  “Well, you’ve got the main point, I imagine. I wonder when the four of them teamed up? I wish we knew whether there was any connexion between John’s death and this business of altering Tennessee’s colour and calling him Iceland Blue. No, I mean that the opposite way round. He must have begun life as a blue roan and the gipsy changes him to chestnut when it’s necessary. By the way, was Turnbull at the school?”

  “No, and as the headmaster had received no message which would account for his absence, it seemed to me reasonable to send a constable to his lodgings to make some inquiries.”

  “Any result?”

  “I remained at the school until a message came through from the police station. It appears, from the landlady’s evidence, that Mr. Turnbull arrived home after midnight, but left the house at his usual time this morning and that she concluded he had gone to school.”

  “Looks pretty fishy, wouldn’t you say? That means he went to ground in that place by the lasher, but something has cropped up since.”

  “I confess I do not like it. Mr. Turnbull may have been very foolish, but the teaching profession is not, at present, overcrowded.”

  With this elliptical remark, she closed the subject, and talked about cantaloup melons until bedtime.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE MYSTERY OF MR. TURNBULL

  I conceive they may assume, steal or contrive a body.

  SIR THOMAS BROWNE

  Mr. Bond called Mr. Gadd into conference.

  “What do you know about Turnbull?” he demanded.

  “Hasn’t he sent word?” asked Mr. Gadd.

  “No, he has not. What is more, Dame Beatrice, who is inclined to haunt the school since that wretched fellow laid himself down among our flowers, was here again, and seems to look upon Turnbull’s absence as suspicious. He left his lodgings at the usual hour this morning. I have telephoned the police and am expecting them at any time, but I thought that there might be some information we could give them. Do you know anything of his private affairs?”

  “Not much, sir. He’s not in the staffroom a great deal, and he usually goes home to lunch. I doubt whether any of us would know much about him. His is rather a job apart.”

  “Quite, quite. I appreciate that, of course. But has he no crony on the staff?”

  “I believe Spencer has been out with him once or twice in that boat he built last year.”

  “Spencer?” The headmaster frowned. He had no favourites on the staff and was far too correct, professionally, to have any open dislikes, but sometimes he found himself wondering whether the school would not be the better without Mr. Spencer, whom he suspected of exercising a subversive influence on some of the younger men. However, Spencer had given in his notice.

  “I don’t think they are close friends,” said Mr. Gadd, recalling Mr. Bond’s thoughts to the matter in hand, “but I know something was said last summer about sailing the boat round to Lymington.”

  Mr. Bond buzzed for Miss Cowley and sent her for Mr. Spencer. That gentleman was expressing a pithy opinion upon the character and attainments of one Matthews in Form 3A and was annoyed at being interrupted before he had had time to do himself justice. He flung the chalk at Matthews, tossed the duster to a boy in the front row, said “Clean the board and write up the homework,” and hitched his gown with a movement of irritation before he banged himself out of the room. A cheerful bellowing and the crash of overturned chairs followed his exit. He presented himself with a bad grace before the headmaster.

  “You sent for me, Headmaster?”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” His suspicions of Mr. Spencer always made Mr. Bond nervous in his presence. “It’s about Turnbull. He hasn’t turned up this morning and has sent no reason for absence. I wondered whether you had any idea…?”

  “No, Headmaster.” By the tone of this reply Mr. Spencer contrived to suggest that Mr. Bond was wasting time for which the public was paying.

  “I had better be frank with you. The fact is that Turnbull seems to have vanished on his way to school. The police have been informed, of course, but I should be glad of a private notification before they arrive. You follow?”

  “Well…” said Mr. Spencer.

  “Sit down,” said the headmaster.

  “I’d better go,” said Mr. Gadd.

  “No, no, Gadd, unless Spencer wishes it.”

  “No, that’s all right. It’s nothing much. He’s been worried lately about a missing mallet,”

  “It’s not been reported to me!”

  “No, Headmaster?”

  “Does he think one of the boys had it?”

  “No.”

  “Come along, man. Out with it!”

  “It turned up again—with blood on it.”

  “What!”

  “Simkin could tell you more about that, I believe.”

  “I think sir,” ventured Mr. Gadd, “this is something that ought to be said to the police.”

  “In my school,” said Mr. Bond magnificently, “the headmaster is the ultimate and not the penultimate authority.” He buzzed for Miss Cowley and sent her for Mr. Simkin. The science master was in the middle of a tricky experiment involving phosphorus and sent the secretary back with a firm refusal to abandon it. As even Mr. Bond had no authority, penultimate or otherwise, to leave a laboratory full of lively boys with a dangerous substance in their midst, he had perforce to accept Mr. Simkin’s ruling, to the unconcealed pleasure of Spencer and the concealed satisfaction of Gadd, who was still vulnerable enough to have resented the headmaster’s last remark to him.

  The superintendent chose this moment to come to the school.

  “No, sir, we have no news of the missing gentleman,” he said in answer to Mr. Bond’s first question. “There is the landlady’s evidence that he left at the usual time this morning; that he was dressed as usual for school; that he’d been a bit terse at breakfast because his overalls had not come back from the laundry—which certainly sounds as if he fully intended to come here as usual—and that’s all we know. We shall pursue our inquiries, of course, but when a gentleman does not use the public transport and does not garage a car, but just simply walks to his work, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, because one doesn’t know where to start the questioning. But if I might get a few facts, sir, from you or your gentlemen, it might be something to go on. Was he in any sort of trouble, do you know?”

  “You are being disingenuous, Superintendent,” said Mr. Bond. “Dame Beatrice Bradley reported to you, and, from what she told me, I deduce that you do at least know of two of Mr. Turnbull’s associates.”

  “Well, yes, you’re right there, sir, and I’ve interviewed both the gentlemen. There’s nothing they can tell me. According to them, it was just a boozer acquaintanceship. They claim to know nothing of Mr. Turnbull’s private life and there is no reason why we should connect them with his disappearance.”

  “They were at school with him,” said Mr. Bond tartly. “Well, it’s your business, I suppose. I have just heard a remarkable story which I was about to probe when you arrived. Mr. Gadd, kindly go to the laboratory and ask Mr. Simkin to come along at the very earliest moment that it is safe to do so. Mr. Simkin,” he added for the benefit of the superintendent, “is supervising an experiment with phosphorus, and it would not be to the general interest to demand his presence at the moment.”

  As it happened, Mr. Simkin, who was a mild-mannered person when he was not actually demonstrating, came back with Gadd and apologised humbly for keeping the headmaster waiting.

  “Take a seat, Mr. Simkin,” said Mr. Bond handsomely, “and give ear to the superintendent. Really attend to him, I mean.” For if Mr. Simkin had a fault, it was,
as Mr. Bond knew, to go into a daydream at staff meetings and other important functions—a habit which had caused him often to lose the thread even of the headmaster’s own carefully-thought-out perorations.

  “Very well, Mr. Bond,” said Mr. Simkin meekly.

  “Perhaps, sir,” ventured the superintendent, “you yourself would first be good enough to inform me of the story you referred to when I came in.”

  “Yes. That is why we have Mr. Simkin with us. Now, Simkin, what is all this about a mallet?”

  “Oh, that! Yes, the boy must have taken a very nasty knock, I should say.”

  “What boy?”

  “The boy the other boy hit on the head with the mallet.”

  “I have no doubt,” said Mr. Bond, “that your remarks bear a perfectly clear interpretation to yourself, but I think, for our benefit, you had better translate them. Do, my dear fellow, begin at the beginning.”

  “Certainly, Headmaster. Perhaps I should tabulate. First, there was the question of the mallet. Turnbull brought it to me and said it looked like blood. Would I test for blood? I tested, and, of course, it was blood. Human blood. We pulled Miss Cowley into play—”

  “You what?”

  “We asked Miss Cowley, as she is responsible for the First Aid…”

  “Oh, yes, I see.”

  “And she offered the opinion—”

  “Proffered.”

  “Thank you, Headmaster. She proffered the opinion that some boy or boys must have struck some other boy or boys upon the head with the mallet.”

  “Why upon the head?” asked the superintendent.

  “Hairs, and so forth,” Mr. Simkin explained. “We then tested for fingerprints.”

  “Fingerprints, sir?” exclaimed the superintendent.

  “Well, it’s rather easy, isn’t it?” said Mr. Simkin. “I mean, you blow a bit of powder about and take people’s prints, and so forth, and the answer is…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Well, no prints but Turnbull’s upon the mallet, if you see what I mean.”

  “From this you deduce, sir…?”

  “That some boy, or boys, knew enough to wear gloves,” said Mr. Simkin. “After all, one can’t quite see Turnbull hitting boys with mallets.” The headmaster stared at him in dire disapproval.

  “I don’t understand you,” he said. The superintendent intervened.

  “If you please, sir,” he said. “This is very interesting to me.”

  But Mr. Simkin could not go on.

  “That’s all,” he said.

  “It has a bearing upon Mr. Turnbull’s disappearance, perhaps?” the superintendent suggested.

  “Has Turnbull disappeared? How very extraordinary,” said Mr. Simkin. The superintendent would have liked an elucidation of this remark, but Mr. Simkin had vanished into a limbo of his own, and with a sigh the superintendent got up.

  “It seems needless to trouble you further, sir,” he said. “Later on I had better see Mr. Simkin alone.”

  At this, all the headmaster arose in Mr. Bond.

  “Simkin, this is monstrous!” he proclaimed. “My dear fellow, please remember that you are a citizen of no mean city. Tell the superintendent at once of the conclusions you must have come to.”

  “But I have come to no conclusions!” cried Simkin. “The facts are as I have stated. There were hairs on the mallet and there was a good deal of human blood on it, but beyond these things there was nothing.”

  “But why did you not report to me? Surely you regarded the matter as serious?”

  Mr. Simkin looked obstinate.

  “I regarded the whole thing as an exercise in practical science,” he said stiffly. “Apart from the scientific aspect, I thought nothing of it at all.”

  Accustomed as he was to the mental-gymnastics of his staff and to the aberrations of Mr. Simkin in particular, even the headmaster looked astonished.

  “How did you know they were Mr. Turnbull’s prints on the handle of the mallet?” the superintendent inquired.

  “Oh, I checked against prints he had left on his other tools, of course,” replied Simkin, himself looking mildly surprised.

  “May I ask whether Mr. Turnbull himself knew of these activities?” asked Mr. Bond angrily.

  “I did not mention the matter of the fingerprints to him, Headmaster.”

  “How did you come to get hold of the mallet in the first place?”

  “He brought it to me. He said he had found it in his toolhouse. It had been missing for about a week.”

  “Just a moment, sir,” put in the superintendent. “This matter may be very important indeed. I think I must ask Mr. Simkin to come to my headquarters and make a statement which I shall ask him to sign.”

  “Oh, yes, a pleasure,” said Mr. Simkin.

  “But, really, Simkin,” said Mr. Bond, “this is all completely extraordinary! Do you really mean to tell me that you found this blood-encrusted object, which had obviously been purloined and then put back, and did not think of reporting to me?”

  “We found no boys with broken heads,” said Mr. Simkin sullenly, “so I saw no need to make a matter of it.”

  “Well, really!” said Mr. Bond helplessly. “And you, Spencer? How do you come into this?”

  “Quite simply, Headmaster. Turnbull brought me the mallet and said—I think I recollect his actual words—that he had ‘found the blessed thing and look what a mess somebody had made of it.’ I remarked that it looked like blood and (for a joke, really), advised him to take it to Simkin for analysis.”

  “A joke?” Mr. Bond looked astounded. “I understand, without sympathizing with it on this particular occasion, Simkin’s severely scientific attitude, but—a joke! Really, Spencer! The superintendent must think schoolmasters have a curious sense of humour!”

  “But I never thought of it as blood,” protested Mr. Spencer. “If I had, I should have reported to you at once!”

  “I hope so, I’m sure!” snapped Mr. Bond. He buzzed for Miss Cowley, who came in looking scared.

  “Miss Cowley, what about that blood-stained mallet?” demanded Mr. Bond. “I thought that you, at least, had your wits about you and possessed a sense of responsibility!”

  “Mallet? What mal—? Oh, yes!” said Miss Cowley. “The one Mr. Turnbull lost and then it turned up again, all red paint and horsehair.”

  “All what?”

  “Wasn’t it?” asked Miss Cowley, looking from the headmaster to the superintendent. “Oo-er!”

  “Quite!” said Mr. Bond. “Who told you it was red paint and—er—horsehair?”

  “Mr. Turnbull did.”

  “But I distinctly told Turnbull it was human blood!” protested Mr. Simkin. Miss Cowley gave a slight scream and followed this with a hysterical giggle.

  “Mr. Simkin is a one!” she said. “He’s always pulling people’s legs.”

  The headmaster, who felt he had had about enough, dismissed her, and turned to the superintendent.

  “My sphere of usefulness in the matter appears to be at an end,” he said. “When would you wish Mr. Simkin to report at the police station?”

  “Oh, when his duties for the day are over. That will suit us very nicely, sir, thank you.”

  So Mr. Spencer and Mr. Simkin were returned to their classes and the superintendent, rising to go, looked hard at the man before him, and said:

  “Sir, I rely on your discretion entirely.”

  “Surely, surely,” said Mr. Bond, a little testily.

  “I should wish you to know, sir, why we regard this story of the mallet, coupled with Mr. Turnbull’s disappearance, as being of the first importance.”

  “Indeed, Superintendent?”

  “Indeed, sir. You read in the papers a while back, of a certain Mr. John Mapsted being kicked on the head by his horse, perhaps? He was found dead in the stables by his groom, the man whose body was afterwards discovered at the school here.”

  “Yes? A most extraordinary business, Superintendent. Has there ever arisen
an explanation of it?”

  “No, sir. Not to say an explanation, but some pieces of that particular puzzle are beginning to fit together.”

  “And about the mallet? You don’t mean…?”

  “There’s a distinct possibility, sir. Neither ourselves nor the other interested parties—I refer to the relatives and friends, and to Dame Beatrice Bradley, who, as you may know, saw the body—were ever really satisfied with the explanation of Mr. Mapsted’s death. We ourselves, the police, are so dissatisfied that if, upon further investigation, this mallet business doesn’t get itself cleared up, we may ask for an exhumation.”

  “Good heavens, Superintendent!”

  “I must have that mallet, sir, and at once. I dare say, as Mr. Simkin examined it, he could point it out to me in Mr. Turnbull’s workshop.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I will take you to the workshop at once, and Miss Cowley can get Simkin to join us there.”

  Mr. Simkin recognised the mallet readily. As the superintendent had summed him up as completely disinterested and reliable where questions of fact were concerned, he accepted his word for the mallet and took it away with him. On his way out he stopped at the little window of the secretary’s office and tapped on the glass. Miss Cowley, whose nerves appeared to have suffered a shock, looked up from her typewriter and screamed. Then she giggled, and opened the window.

  “Miss Cowley,” said the superintendent, “can you account at all for Mr. Turnbull’s absence from school today? I know the school secretary often knows things about the school staff which don’t, for various reasons, always come to the ears of the headmaster.”

  “Oh, you’re quite right about that,” said Miss Cowley. “But I don’t think I can help. I don’t know a lot about Mr. Turnbull. He isn’t like the regular classroom staff, you see.”

  “I appreciate that, Miss Cowley. So you can’t tell me anything useful about him?”

  “Sorry, but I don’t think so.”

  “All right. Thank you, my dear.” He was turning away when suddenly he turned back again. “About this mallet,” he said. “I suppose you can’t possibly remember which day you saw it?”