Cold, Lone and Still (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  He looked at me with eyes which were both sceptical and concerned.

  “I suppose you didn’t roll down a mountain and hit your head while you were in Scotland, did you?” he asked.

  “No, of course not. At least—well, no.”

  “Then what’s all this about?”

  So I told him everything. After all, we had been at school and college together and there had always been a strong bond between us, and I hoped I could at least trust him not to laugh at me.

  “All I can say,” he said, when he had told the girl in the outer office to fob off all callers, whether personal or by telephone, until he gave the all clear, “is that you only thought the fellow was dead. He must have come back to consciousness a bit later on, rejoined his party, and gone on to Fort William, while you were lazing the time away at the Kingshouse hotel.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible. I know there was a corpse. Hera thinks I ought to see a psychiatrist. She’s hedging about our marriage, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, obviously the poor girl doesn’t fancy yoking herself with a fellow for whom the wagon may come trundling round at any minute.”

  “It’s not funny, Sandy. I shone my torch on the chap as well as touching him, you see. Either I’m potty or something very strange has happened.”

  “Well, look, to ease your mind, why don’t you fall in with Hera’s idea? She’s been phoning me. Why don’t you consult a psychiatrist? They’re not all cranks, you know.”

  “She only mentioned it once. I don’t think she was all that serious. Surely she couldn’t have been. I had no idea, though, that she had been talking to you. What else did she say?”

  “Look, if she’s got any doubts in her mind, the best thing is to set them at rest as soon as you can.”

  “I don’t know any psychiatrists.”

  “That is where I have the advantage of you. I know the best one in the country. She isn’t a quack; she won’t feed you a lot of hot air all ballooned up in the jargon some of these people use, and she’s fully qualified in medicine as well as in psychiatry.”

  “She?”

  “Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. You’ll like her. I’ll ring up and make the appointment, if you like. She only takes cases which interest her, and I think she’ll fall for yours. Besides, we’ve got her granddaughter on our list.”

  “We have?”

  “Sally Lestrange, the occasional novelist and a ghostwriter for the non-literary bods who have a life story to tell. Dame Beatrice will sort you out.”

  “Why should you think so? You’re as bad as Hera. You both think I’m bats just because I identified a dead body wrongly.”

  “I don’t think that’s the whole story, Comrie, old chap. Hera doesn’t think so, either. Tell me, are you suffering from some sort of frustration?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’ve slept with Hera more than once. She told me so. She says she thinks she was too hard on you when she wouldn’t let you book a double room at the hotels in Scotland. She said it was expecting too much of a hot-blooded he-man—”

  “The last thing I am, and the last thing she thinks about me. Good Lord, I can exercise self-restraint when I’ve got to! It was all part of her plan. It was the whole object of the holiday. What do you think I am?—the lineal descendant of thousands of ever-copulating rabbits?”

  “I’m only telling you what Hera said about the strain she put upon you during that holiday. As you suspected, she has already told me the whole story. It’s not as though she saw that dead body—”

  “Only because I took care she didn’t. One doesn’t introduce sensitive girls to itinerant corpses.”

  “She also says she can’t remember any castle.”

  “There wasn’t any bloody castle! She’s the one who needs a psychiatrist, not I. Anyway, it was a fort. I suppose she doesn’t remember the mist and our losing our way in it.”

  “Oh, yes, she admits to the mist. She said that, because of it, and because you tried to take a short cut, you both wandered off your route, but she says you had hit your head pretty badly and that most of your story is sheer fantasy. She’s very worried about you.”

  “Perhaps she’d like to break the engagement,” I said. “I felt there was a hint of it in the air.”

  “I think she might consider that course very seriously. What about you?”

  I thought of a freckled child I had held in my arms, and did not answer.

  I knew Dame Beatrice’s name, of course, in the way one knows the name of most celebrities, but I had never thought that one day I should be asking for a consultation. An assured voice answered the telephone.

  “Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley?” I asked hopefully, for the voice inspired confidence.

  “Who is speaking?” I gave my name and asked whether Dame Beatrice would see me. I was asked my business.

  “I’d like to become a patient,” I said.

  “She takes very few cases nowadays. What’s the trouble? You can tell me. I’m her secretary.”

  “I’ve recently come back from walking some of the West Highland Way, and I’ve had a very disturbing experience.”

  “All right. Hold the line.” I waited, but not for long. When she contacted me again, she said, “What kind of experience?”

  “I stumbled over the dead body of a man I thought I knew. This was somewhere on Rannoch Moor, but he turned up hale and hearty at Fort William.”

  “Sounds promising. Well, I’ve been told to use my own discretion, so I think you had better come along. Thursday, as near eleven in the morning as you can manage, would be the most suitable time and day.”

  I say I knew Dame Beatrice’s name, but I was not prepared for her appearance and still less was I prepared for her beautiful voice. She would have become, I thought, a singer of great repute had she chosen the concert hall instead of medicine and psychiatry. In appearance she was small and thin, dressed like a macaw, and had brilliant black eyes. She would never have “made it” in opera. I cannot think of any role she could fill.

  “Now,” she said, when the tall secretary had left us, “there is plenty of time before lunch. Do you care to walk round the garden and look at the stables, or shall we ‘get down to the nitty-gritty,’ as I believe you modern young people express it?”

  “I’m feeling a bit embarrassed and very nervous,” I said.

  “Very useful and, of course, quite natural. Sit down again.”

  “Not a couch?” I asked, feeling rather like a man jesting with the dentist or on the morning of his execution.

  “We shall see. State your case.”

  I do not know whether it was the eyes, the pursed-up little mouth, or the beautiful voice which convinced me from the very outset of the interview that my mind was going to be set at rest, but so it proved. She told me to take my time and that is what I did. When she heard all that I could tell her, she said, “A pity you and your fiancée do not read the Scottish newspapers. Have no fear for your reason, my dear Mr. Melrose. You did find a corpse. The only thing is that you did not manage to identify it correctly.”

  “There was a dead man in those ruins?”

  “Of course there was a dead man.” I thought she looked at me in an appraising way. “Ring the bell twice.”

  I did this and it was answered by the secretary. I suppose she had been briefed beforehand, for she was carrying some newspapers which, without being instructed to do so, she handed to me as I resumed my seat opposite Dame Beatrice. It occurred to me that Sandy had been on the telephone before I arrived.

  “Another heart is set at rest, I opine,” said the secretary.

  “Mr. Melrose is fortunate that you read your country’s press, Laura,” said Dame Beatrice. “Again take your time, Mr. Melrose. You will find those journalistic outpourings both heartening and of interest.”

  I read avidly. The body had been identified as that of an ex-convict called McConachie, and the conclusion seemed to be that he had been tracked down,
after an attempted strangulation, and stabbed to death by one of his acquaintances whom he had double-crossed when it came to the division of the spoils. The police had received a tip-off (not from Hera, I hoped), had visited the area, and had found the body. Identification was no problem. The man’s photograph and fingerprints were on record and the police were in no doubt as to his identity and that of the murderer.

  My relief, intense though it was, was accompanied by a sense of anti-climax. Was it for this sordid and uninspiring solution that I had sacrificed sleep and my peace of mind, had almost quarrelled with Hera and wrecked any pleasure I might have had in recollecting my holiday? Thoughts of the holiday, however, emboldened me, over lunch, to put a question to Dame Beatrice.

  “I told you what was the object of the exercise,” I said. “Why Hera and I took the holiday?”

  “To test whether you and your fiancée were sufficiently compatible in temperament to risk taking one another in marriage, I think you said.”

  “Yes. Well, if I may ask such a question, what do you think, now that you’ve heard the whole story?”

  “Ask Laura. She can usually read my mind.”

  “Some chicken, some neck!” said Laura obscurely, but I knew what she meant. I, too, found Dame Beatrice formidable. “All right, then.” Laura said. “If it were up to me, I’m bound to say I think you’re batting on a sticky wicket. Your young woman wears the trousers at present. That’s all right during the period of wooing, but I’m not sure it would work in married life. You would find yourself the toad under the harrow.”

  “I’ve no particular wish to be top dog,” I said, feeling nettled by her summing-up.

  “No, but marriage should be an equal partnership. Why wouldn’t you let her see the body?”

  “Oh, dash it all! One doesn’t deliberately give a girl a shock of that kind!”

  “The shock might have been less for her than it was for you,” said Dame Beatrice. “Tell me—had you anything personal against this man whose corpse you thought it was?”

  “He irritated me, just as he irritated everyone else. There was another chap whom I was also anxious to keep my eye on, this fellow named Todd. I mentioned him when I was telling you about the holiday.”

  “Yes, but you never thought it was Todd’s body you found?”

  “No. I was certain I’d found Carbridge, but, of course, I didn’t exactly linger beside the corpse. All I wanted was to get Hera away from the place as soon as ever I could. I just grabbed her and dragged her out, although it was raining buckets when we got on to the moor.”

  “Yes, what about this place? Do you retain a vivid picture of it? These ruins, do you recall them clearly?”

  “Well, no, I wouldn’t call it a vivid picture. I had hit my head rather hard, if you see what I mean. The ruins seemed as full of mist as the moor outside. My recollection of them is hazy.”

  “But you remember coming to a wall, ducking under an archway, and climbing into the ruins through an embrasure?”

  “Well, it seems a bit nebulous now, but, yes, I’m sure I remember all that. Well, no, perhaps I dreamt that part of it. I’m sure Hera believes I dreamt the whole thing, including finding the body.”

  “Not surprising,” said Laura, “when the same body turned up hale and hearty at Fort William. Enough to cause any right-minded girl to have doubts. Still, you’ll be able to reassure her now. Keep the papers and show them to her. They ought to convince her that at least there was a corpse and that you found it.”

  “I wish I could convince her that there was a building, too. She seems to doubt the whole story. The only bit she really agrees with is that we lost our way in the mist.”

  “Yes,” said Dame Beatrice. “What about the dark passage?”

  “I’m sure about that,” I replied.

  The two women looked at one another. Then Dame Beatrice said, “There is something you are keeping to yourself. Had you not better tell me what it is?”

  “No, there’s nothing,” I said. I could feel her brilliant eyes probing my brain. “Unless you mean the row I had with Todd at Crianlarich, but it was only a verbal exchange. Fisticuffs did not come into it.”

  “It was not Mr. Todd’s body you mistook, you see. Interesting, but are you sure about that?” I said I was perfectly certain, so she said, “Well, Mr. Melrose, I do not think you need psychiatry, but we shall see how matters develop. We must wait upon events.”

  “I hope there won’t be any, so far as this business is concerned,” I said. “Thank you very much for the papers.”

  “Sit down again,” said Dame Beatrice, for I had risen to go. “Tell me more about this set-to you had with Mr. Todd.”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” I said. “As a matter of fact, he apologised.”

  “For what?”

  “For trying to persuade Hera to opt out of the youth hostel and go to the hotel for the night, so I tackled him and sorted him out. ‘Honestly, I had no idea she was engaged to you,’ he said. ‘When I met you two at the airport hotel, I just thought it was a holiday pick-up and that you’d got together because you found you were both going to walk The Way. After all, she doesn’t wear a keep-off-the-grass ring, does she?’ I told him the engagement hadn’t been announced, but that there was a ring in her possession. He apologised again and said he hoped no hard feelings. It was a genuine misunderstanding, he said. Well, that was the end of it because, of course, we didn’t run into him again until we got to Fort William.”

  I showed Sandy the newspapers and I got to our office next day.

  “So the visit was a good idea,” he said.

  “Yes and no.”

  “How do you mean? You said you fell over a corpse and there was a corpse.”

  “Yes,” I said, “one corpse, no stone walls, apparently. The police found the corpse on the moor, the papers say. They don’t mention a building.”

  “Plenty of rocks about. You mistook some outcrop or other for a stone wall. Easy mistake to make in a thick mist after you’d bashed your head. Possibly, though, the police want to keep the actual location secret. Have you shown Hera the newspapers?”

  “Not yet. I’m seeing her tonight.”

  “Well,” said Sandy, giving me a very straight glance, “take the strong, manly course and rub her disbelieving little nose in the reports. She’s been more than a bit uppish about you and that corpse, you know.”

  “You mean she said more to you than she has to me?”

  “More than likely. She’s had me on the phone a couple of times and rather spread herself. Seems to think you’re the kind of sensitive plant that dreams dreams and sees visions. These newspapers ought to provide her with a healthier outlook.”

  “But what about the archway and the window where we climbed in? Apparently they don’t exist. All the papers say is that the police found the body on Rannoch Moor. I’ve told you that already.”

  “And I’ve reminded you of that knock on the head. That and the mist confused you, that’s all.”

  “I swear there was a dark passage.”

  “Forget it. It’s all over and done with now.”

  But I could not forget it, for it brought back memories of an experience I had had in my childhood and had pushed to the back of my mind because it frightened me. I was eight years old at the time and I told my father that burglars had killed our dog and broken in. It happened two days later. Now, after twenty years, it all came back to me, and a very uncomfortable memory it was!

  I began to regret that I had kept back from Dame Beatrice a full account of what had happened at Crianlarich. However, it seemed rather late in the day to worry about that, particularly as the body had not been that of Carbridge. I could not face the prospect of going back to the Stone House and confessing that I had not told the whole truth about my murderous attack on Carbridge. In the end, I consulted Sandy.

  “It can’t make any difference, can it?” I said.

  “I shouldn’t think so. She probably guessed you were hiding somethin
g, anyway. She said you didn’t need psychiatry, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, but that was because I hadn’t been ‘seeing things.’ There was a corpse and the chap had been murdered.”

  “But you thought it was Carbridge. That sounds to me like the promptings of a guilty conscience.”

  “I only had an electric torch and that passage was as black as Erebus.”

  “All the same, it was a strange mistake for you to make. It seems you must have some kind of fixation regarding the chap.”

  “I find him excessively irritating, that’s all.”

  “So irritating that you wish he were dead?”

  “No, of course not. Once I’d got over the first shock when he walked into the hostel at Fort William, I was enormously pleased and relieved to know that he was safe and well, particularly as it was obvious he bore me no malice whatever.”

  “These ‘bear no malice’ blokes are a funny bunch. I suppose most of them profess and call themselves Christians, but, you know, Comrie, nobody really forgives a person who has made him look a nithing.”

  “A what?”

  “A nithing. It’s an Anglo-Saxon word, I think, meaning a thing of no account, a No Thing, a coward, somebody who can be disregarded, a fellow who cuts no ice. Nobody ever sees himself thus. Men resent anything and everything which questions their virility, their attraction for the opposite sex, their physical courage, and their sense of humour, particularly the last-named. You’ve made an enemy and I wouldn’t despise him if I were you. He’ll get back at you some day.”

  “You make my flesh creep,” I said. He laughed, but I knew he spoke seriously. Besides, there was something in what he said. I had expressed my opinion of Carbridge in Crianlarich and yet he had the insolence to come back at me again at Fort William with his “fair one” greeting to Hera. It had been a challenge and I had not known how to meet it. Carbridge had called my bluff and got away with it. The strange thing was that I no longer cared. I wondered whether this meant that I had cooled off towards Hera, or whether the relief of knowing that the silly fellow was alive was so great that, like some tremendous tide, it had washed all my animosity away.