Cold, Lone and Still (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “What did you make of Mr. Carbridge?” she asked Perth. “What was your first impression of him? Did you find reason to alter it in any way as the tour progressed?”

  “I’ll answer ye categorically. I thought the man was a fule when first I met him and I still think the man was a fule.”

  “Interesting. Why did you think that, I wonder?”

  “Ye have an English saying that onlookers see most of the game. I kept yon man Carbridge in my sights from the beginning.”

  “Why?”

  “There are types I dinna trust. Hot gospellers, practical jokers, do-gooders, and ‘friends of a’ the world’ such as Carbridge. Leddy, I’m telling ye, that man was more sociable than a plague o’ gnats.”

  “Then why do you think he was killed? Gregariousness is not usually an incitement to murder.”

  “Gin it willna weary the company or, maybe, gie great offence to Mr. Melrose here, I could furnish ye wi’ chapter and vairse.”

  “Don’t mind me,” I said. “I suppose Hera comes into it somewhere, but I know you to be a gentleman, so anything you say will not come amiss so far as I am concerned. As a matter of fact, she has broken our engagement.”

  “Och, the pity of it! Weel, mistress, I’ll gie ye a potted vairsion o’ the tour as I saw it, and ye may draw your ain conclusions.”

  He proceeded to furnish us with details. In a sense, little that he said was new to me so far as the occasions on which Hera and I had been with the rest of the party were concerned, but, of course, for most of the time we had been on our own. He began by describing the meeting at the Glasgow youth hostel. Looking at me, he said that in his opinion Hera and Todd were old acquaintances, and apologetically he asked whether this piece of information came as a complete surprise to me.

  “It certainly does,” I said. “So far as I am aware, their previous meetings were the most casual and accidental encounters. They met in the corridor of the train to Glasgow and again in the cocktail bar at the airport hotel. I’m certain they had never met before.”

  “Ah, weel,” he said, “ye’re entitled to your opinion. So ye believe Todd was leeing when he told Carbridge he had slept wi’ her the night at the airport hotel?”

  “Certainly I do! Besides, a man who would claim that, and, I suppose, boast about it, to a fellow like Carbridge is a skunk. There’s not a word of truth in it, and I don’t see Todd as that kind of a louse, anyway.”

  “Oo, aye? Then wat about Rowardennan?”

  I tried to think back. Rowardennan, on Loch Lomond, was where Hera and I had taken the trip across the water to Inverbeg. I remembered that Todd, with others of the youth hostellers not of our party, had crossed with us. He had given us a wave and a word, but, once ashore at Inverbeg, we had seen no more of him. Hera and I, I remembered, had missed the return boat and had spent the night at the hotel, crossing back again in the morning. We had, as we had arranged, occupied separate rooms at the hotel. There had been no sign of Todd on the return trip and he was certainly with the others when they set off next morning.

  I said, “Well, and what about Rowardennan? Todd didn’t spend the night at the hotel in Inverbeg. I would have known.”

  “Ye think ye would have known, but let me tell ye, laddie, wherever he spent the night, it was not in the Rowardennan youth hostel. I would hae kenned that, better than ye would hae kenned that he had your lassie tae bed.”

  “Tell us more about the tour,” said Laura tactfully.

  “I’ll dae juist that,” said Perth, looking at her with gratitude.

  I said, “I’ll take your word for it that he didn’t spend the night in the hostel with the rest of you. You would have known about that, because of the dormitory system, but you will not persuade me that he spent it at the hotel at Inverbeg. We would have spotted him either there or when he got off the boat coming back to Rowardennan the next morning.”

  “Gang your ain gait,” said Perth. “I willna press the point.”

  I nodded, but my memory told me that at Crianlarich Todd had suggested openly to Hera that he should escort her to the hotel after the rumpus I had had with Carbridge. I began to wonder, as the poison of suspicion lodged itself in my mind, whether he would have made such a suggestion had he not had some grounds for believing that she might fall in with it.

  Dame Beatrice assisted in dissolving the tension somewhat by asking whether anything had happened between Rowardennan and Crianlarich, while Hera and I were on our own and not with the rest of the party.

  I did not remember telling anybody in particular that just before Hera and I reached the hostel at Crianlarich we had come upon Perth and the students busy with their hammers and chisels and all the rest of their geological gear, but I suppose I must have done, or she would not have followed up her question by remarking that it was on that part of The Way that there appeared to have been some slight evidence of dissension.

  According to Perth, the trouble, if that is not too strong and misleading a word, began on the stretch between Rowardennan and Inversnaid. There was a rather pointless argument between Tansy and Carbridge about the name of a spectacular mountain—Carbridge claiming that it was called the Cobbler, Tansy maintaining that it was Ben Arthur.

  “But both are right,” Laura interposed at this point. “Ben Arthur is the Cobbler. There are three peaks and these, seen against the skyline, are supposed to represent a cobbler, his wife, and his daughter, or some such rubbish. As a matter of fact, the Cobbler is only the anglicised way of pronouncing the Gaelic An Gobaileach, the ‘g’ being spoken like a ‘k’ or a hard ‘c.’ The Gaelic name has nothing to do with shoe-mending. It simply means ‘forked peak.’ The ‘Arthur’ I imagine is the name given it for territorial reasons by a clan or sept. The MacArthurs, in a sense, are Campbells, but they claim seniority. When Ewan Campbell resigned his lands in the fourteenth century, King Robert the Second granted them to Arthur Campbell, the son, wherefore the peak was named Arthur, I suppose as a claim to it.”

  We all listened to this with the uneasy respect which is accorded to a knowledgeable purveyor of useless information. Laura sensed immediately that the audience was becoming restive. She waved a shapely hand in apology and said, “Sorry. I get carried away. Anyhow, what a stupid thing for those two to argue about.”

  “Yes, it hardly seems a matter of life and death,” said Dame Beatrice, bringing us back to the real seriousness of the matter in hand. “What happened after that?”

  It appeared that Rhoda had taken up the subject in support of her friend and then had said that the pace set by Todd and Carbridge was turning what ought to be a pleasant ramble into a marathon race. Jane Minch had joined in to complain that her feet were hurting her, but her brother had pointed out that going more slowly was not the best remedy. Better, he said, to push on and get a longer rest at the end of the day.

  “What of the students?” asked Dame Beatrice. “I understand from Mr. Melrose that they, too, preferred to linger a little on The Way.” (That, of course, although again I did not remember telling anybody about it, had begun at Inchcailloch, the Loch Lomond island which Hera and I had not visited. It was to do with the geological survey.) However, it did not seem that there had been any more serious disputes among the party. The men, in fact, had taken it in turns to carry Jane’s rucksack as well as their own, the exception being Trickett, who said that, with the extra equipment the geologists carried, he was physically incapable of knight-errantry.

  “Did you yourself lend a hand to beauty in distress?” said Dame Beatrice to Perth.

  “Oo aye, I did my share, but the going, in some places, was verra severe on a lassie wi’ sair feet, even if she wasna hampered wi’ her gear.”

  “Would you say that any one person in the party took a particular dislike to Carbridge?” asked Dame Beatrice. Perth shook his head and answered that the nearest to that would be the two clerks, Tansy and Rhoda. For one thing, he said, Tansy in particular had an eye on Todd and found Carbridge, with his extreme mateyness
and his determination to keep his flock together and permit no straying for purposes of dalliance, extremely frustrating and irritating.

  “Although I’m bound to tell ye,” said Perth, “that the man Todd showed nae disposition to respond to her female wiles. Gin his een strayed ony place when Miss Camden wisna wi’ us, it would hae been that he lookit at the student Patsy Carlow.”

  I said nothing, but I could have remarked that, if Todd’s thoughts were on Hera, he would hardly have looked twice at Tansy, anyway. Although, as I had thought when first I met her and Rhoda, Tansy was probably kind-hearted, she could scarcely be called glamorous. The forthcoming and much younger Patsy might be a different proposition.

  “The twa clerks left the party at Crianlarich,” Perth went on. “They didna spend the night at the hostel, but went on to Fort William and there we met them again. Myself and the students spent three days in the hills and slept at the Crianlarich youth hostel, while the ither four—Todd, Carbridge, and the Minches, went on. We were a wee thing hindered by mist, but guid work was done to the satisfaction o’ the students and we also took transport, as did the women Parks and Green, to get ourselves to Fort William.”

  “Did you do anything there apart from climbing the mountain?” asked Laura.

  “Oo, aye. There are shops in the toon, ye’ll ken, and lassies always go wild when there are shops. Souvenirs were purchased and displayed, for, as we were all intending to take the train when we had put in three nights at the youth hostel at Fort William, there was little need to fash about a little extra weight in the packs and the students could leave everything at the hostel while we climbed the mountain.”

  “What kind of things did they buy?” asked Laura.

  “Och, what you would expect. Rhoda had a tweed for a skirt, Patsy bought Todd a wee present of a knife, and Tansy, also fu’ of improper thoughts about Todd, I’m thinking, purchased, at an awfu’ lang price—but, of course, she earned money in her job—she bought him a knife, too. It was a genuine antique. Patsy’s knife was an imitation of a sgian dubh.”

  “A sgian dubh, eh?” said Laura.

  “Ye’ll be thinking on the murder,” said Perth, “but gin ye think yon man Todd would stab a fellow creature in the back, as I am telled was done tae Carbridge, ye hae Todd summed up wrangly, Mistress Gavin.”

  “The stabbing, as I understand it, was only a coup de grâce in case the strangling hadn’t done the job completely,” I reminded the company.

  “Oo, aye, verra like,” agreed Perth. “I hae to tell ye, mistress,” he added, addressing Laura again, “as I hae been speired at tae mention purchases, that Jane Minch made purchase of some beautiful notepaper wi’ headings o’ the Loch Ness monster and various flowers and birds and knights on horseback—verra fine indeed.”

  “From the Malin Workshop in Claggan Road,” I said. “Hera bought some, too. Beautiful drawings. Hedderwick, I remember, is the artist’s name. Did anybody else purchase anything in the nature of a weapon?”

  “The maist o’ them made a purchase,” said Perth, “but nae-body else bought a knife. There was the fake sgian dubh and the knife bought by the woman Tansy Parks. She had it frae a shop which sold antiques. I was wi’ her when she bought it and I wrestled vairbally wi’ the proprietor on her behalf tae hae the price reduced. ‘Ye’ll ne’er get your money for that bauble,’ I was telling him. ‘A’ the visitors are requiring are souvenirs. Not by ony length is that knife a souvenir o’ a trip to Fort William. It’s no even o’ Scottish manufacture.’”

  “So what sort of dagger was it?” asked Laura.

  “I am not convairsant wi’ the history o’ dirks, but, according tae the man, it was Spanish-made in about 1878, and to my mind there was naething so verra special aboot it. It was not what I would ca’ an object o’ distinction, but the lassie fancied it. It was broadish and the blade would ha’ been, in my reckoning, aboot seven inches in length and the knife overall aboot fifteen inches, but there wasna a sheath wi’ it. He had anither, a verra superior specimen, wi’ a tortoiseshell and mother o’ pearl handle, but the price was quite inordinate, so she took the first ane.”

  “What made her choose such an object?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “She said she wanted to mak’ a gift of it, but she didna then say to whom. As I telled ye, my thought upon it was that she intended to gift it to Todd.”

  “What you tell us is of the greatest interest,” said Dame Beatrice. “Do the police know about all this?”

  “I dinna ken.”

  We learned later what had happened to Patsy’s knife. Chagrined to find her gift redundant when she discovered the destination of Tansy’s purchase, she had raffled it when the students got back and it had been won by Freddie Brown.

  15

  Talking Things Over

  The warden had the address of the women students’ hall of residence and Dame Beatrice obtained it from him before she left. He would be glad, he said, to have the mystery of Carbridge’s death cleared up before the new term began, if that were possible. He added that the police were making heavy weather of their investigations and that it was very hard on those students who had done such good work in Scotland during their summer vacation that they should be under harassment when they were all completely innocent.

  Privately, I think, Dame Beatrice was keeping an open mind about their guilt or innocence, but she could hardly tell this to anybody in the warden’s position. I walked round to Hera’s flat when the goodnights had been said and found her, as I had expected, awaiting me and alone. Whether Todd had been quite as good as his word I did not know, but, at any rate, he was not in her flat when I arrived.

  “Well,” she said, “how did things go? Did Dame Beatrice extort a confession of guilt from anybody?”

  “As you would expect, some useful information emerged. Perth was particularly enlightening.”

  “That man has eyes and ears everywhere. I suppose both were necessary in the job he had to do on the tour. It can’t have been easy with that little horror Patsy Carlow in the party.”

  “He made two interesting disclosures which may or may not have some bearing on Carbridge’s death and he also let a few other cats out of bags which, so far as I can see, have nothing to do with murder, but which highlight what I may call the love interest.”

  “Oh, Lord!”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Well, out with it, if you’ve come here to make a scene.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Oh, that’s all right, then. What happened? What was said?”

  “It’s getting late. Let’s leave it until tomorrow. It may turn out to be a long story.”

  So we arranged that I should take her out to dinner the next evening and then that we should return to her flat for our talk. When the appointed time arrived, she came straight to the point which concerned the two of us most closely.

  “I suppose Perth told you about Todd and me,” she said.

  It staggered me that she should refer to Todd so openly and in so calm a manner. I was nonplussed by her frankness and said feebly, “Well, yes, sort of, yes, he did.”

  “The snooping old cub-leader! What did he tell you?”

  “That Todd slept at the Inverbeg hotel on the same night as we did.”

  “Yes, he did. He pushed on ahead of the others and, although you didn’t see him, he crossed on the ferry when we did, but if Perth told you I slept with him, it’s not true.”

  “No?”

  “No. I didn’t mean for this to come out just yet, Comrie, but I would have told you all about it later, when things were settled.”

  “What about Glasgow?”

  “Perth couldn’t have told you about Glasgow. He knew nothing about what happened at the airport hotel. Oh, dear! I wish he hadn’t taken the bull by the horns, the wretched man! Anyway, he did, so I must make the best of it. You had the impression, when I met Todd on the train and again at the airport hotel, that he was a stranger to me. I tried to give yo
u a hint that this was not the case, but you were too thick to catch on.”

  “Oh, was I? But I have a trusting nature, you see.”

  “Don’t you remember that crack of mine about people with two left feet?”

  “Vividly. I have seldom felt more embarrassed.”

  “You surely didn’t think I would say a thing like that to somebody I had only just met?”

  “It seemed out of character, I admit, but I thought you were annoyed by his attempting to pick you up.”

  “You always have been a myopic old soul where I am concerned. Don’t you remember my calling him Sweeney Todd later? That would have been another frightful liberty if we hadn’t known one another very well. Anyway, thanks to that idiotic Carbridge and your own fixations, Glasgow and Inverbeg were the only chances Barney and I had to get together and talk over our plans for a divorce.”

  “What!”

  “Yes. I married him when I was—well, a whole lot younger than I am now. It didn’t work out very well, and we separated, but nothing legal was involved. It wasn’t even a judicial separation. We agreed to go our separate ways and then, when the legal period of irreparable breakdown of the marriage was over, to arrange for a divorce.”

  “What didn’t you like about him?”

  “He was a male chauvinist pig,” she said lightly.

  “Expound, as Dame Beatrice would say.” (Strange to say, the shock her disclosure had given me was already dying away.)

  “You know,” said Hera, “you’re taking this very calmly. I thought you would rant and roar.”

  “That is only done by true British sailors and even then, according to the song, they need to be on the high seas.” To be truthful, my calmness in the face of her confession surprised nobody more than myself. I touched the pocket in which I still had her engagement ring. The little circlet seemed to have turned into some sort of talisman. I found comfort in the realisation that it was in my possession and not on her finger.