Groaning Spinney

by Gladys Mitchell

  There was nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that the vicar should pay a call on the morning following the inquest on Bill Fullalove. He had come to the manor on his usual visit to have a comfortable chat. At least, so Jonathan supposed, but after some preliminary gossip the vicar came to the object of his call.

  ‘It’s like this, Bradley,’ he said. ‘I’ve received an anonymous letter.’

  ‘Good Lord! Not you?’ said Jonathan. ‘What on earth have you been up to, padre?’

  The vicar shook his head.

  ‘It’s really nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘It accuses one of my parishioners. As you will see when I show it you, it does not give the woman’s name, but you will see of what it accuses her, and you will see that it names the child—only the child is a grown man now—young Emming, our choirmaster.’

  ‘How do you know it’s one of your parishioners, then, padre?’ Jonathan enquired, as he took the letter which the vicar handed him, and added, ‘I had one, too, by the way. I think we ought to hunt out this anonymous scribe and hand her over to the police.’

  ‘You say “her”, as though you knew who it was.’

  ‘Not as though I knew who it was, no. But I thought that the majority of anonymous letter-writers were women.’

  ‘So they may be,’ the vicar agreed. ‘You think, then, that this letter consists of lies?’

  ‘No,’ said Jonathan thoughtfully. ‘There’s probably something in it. I say “something”. I doubt whether that letter contains a grain of real truth, any more than mine did, but whoever wrote it probably has something to go on.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jonathan patiently (for he was particularly anxious to discover the identity of the anonymous letter-writer), ‘it’s like this.’ He took his own letter out of a drawer and handed it to the vicar. ‘I had that the other day. It’s ridiculously untrue in the suggestion it makes, but the fact behind it is that Tiny Fullalove did make a pass at my wife, and she didn’t tell me. I know why she didn’t. I’m a short-tempered bloke and I should probably have gone straight to Fullalove and twisted his head off. It wouldn’t have been necessary, of course, because Deb can look after herself, as she very rightly pointed out. But where she is concerned I have certain definite reactions which I shouldn’t trouble to control. Well, that’s that. It seems to me that this report’—he flicked at the vicar’s letter—‘can’t be fact, but there may be something about Emming’s birth which he wouldn’t care to have broadcast. Scurrilous comments are not facts, but once they become public property, which is what this anonymous pest is anxious for, they can be very damaging, and, of course, if you know what I mean, Emming is rather the village mystery man, isn’t he? Anyway, there’s nothing like a grain of truth for causing the water in the pot to boil over, so I expect the writer really has something to go on.’

  ‘I see,’ said the vicar, thoughtfully. ‘But please do read it. I should like to have your advice.’

  Jonathan read the letter.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘I wish you would let me show this to my aunt, who is staying with us. She’s a psychiatrist, and she would advise us, I’m sure. By the way, what did you think of the inquest? Were you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the vicar. There was a pause. ‘Yes, I was there.’

  ‘Death by misadventure,’ said Jonathan, beginning to fill a pipe. ‘Could mean anything, when you come to think of it.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said the vicar, taking out his own pipe and accepting the pouch which Jonathan pushed towards him. ‘Mrs. Blott keeps only one brand of tobacco, fortunately. No, I don’t like it, Bradley. I don’t mean the tobacco. I don’t like what’s happening here. There’s something going on.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘The inquest, these letters, that injury to Tiny Fullalove. I don’t know … In my work, Bradley, one gradually grows to believe in good and evil. Really to believe in them, I mean. The devil is about these parts.’ He lit his pipe and the two men smoked in silence for some minutes. Jonathan waited. ‘I wish you would let your aunt see this letter,’ the vicar continued at last. Jonathan went to find Mrs. Bradley and brought her back with him.

  ‘This is leading to trouble,’ she said, as soon as she had seen the vicar’s letter. ‘The next thing we’ll be told is that Mr. Bill Fullalove was murdered. What’s more, the letter-writer will accuse the cousin, Tiny Fullalove, of being the murderer.’

  ‘There you are, Bradley! That’s what I meant,’ said the vicar. ‘Your aunt has the courage to put into words what I felt I could not say. If you and she, between you, would think the matter over——? Meanwhile, I shall pursue my own enquiries. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! And even a sensible fellow—a good fellow—like Will North, making the most fantastic observations. Of course I took it upon myself to question his statement, but what worries me very much is that he should have made it.’

  ‘Will North?’ said Jonathan. ‘Like man, like dog, perhaps?’

  In reply to the vicar’s enquiring look, he told the story of the terrier Worry and the ghost gate.

  ‘What did Will say?’ asked Mrs. Bradley, who had formed a good opinion of the gamekeeper.

  ‘He said that he went up through Groaning Spinney with Tom Mayhew on the afternoon of poor Bill Fullalove’s death, and that when they climbed a bank in which, apparently, there is a family of badgers, he noticed that on a wooden platform intended for a naturalist friend of the Fullalove cousins there was a greater depth of snow than there ought to have been. When Bill Fullalove’s body had been carried up to the bungalow, Will returned by the same route, and noticed that the pile of snow on the platform was appreciably greater, although there had been no more than another light snowfall.’

  ‘Odd,’ said Jonathan. ‘As a matter of fact, padre, I noticed the platform myself. There certainly was a deal of snow on it when I went up through the spinney. In fact, I remember thinking that the platform might collapse with the weight of it.’

  ‘Indeed? But who would have gone up there in such weather merely to pile up snow?’

  ‘What did Will think?’

  ‘He didn’t say. When I asked him why he had reported the business, he said he did not know. It had just struck him as being unusual.’

  ‘But he made no investigation?’

  ‘I did not ask him.’

  ‘You know,’ said Jonathan to his aunt, when the vicar had gone, ‘the first person to be suspected of writing anonymous letters ought to be our undoubtedly innocent and frighteningly honest incumbent.’

  Mrs. Bradley cackled.

  ‘Nothing could be more unlikely,’ she said, ‘than that anybody would believe such a tale. The vicar knows—or should know—all the scandal of the parish. He would not need to invent any!’

  ‘But this idea of yours that the anonymous letter-writer will suggest that Tiny Fullalove murdered Bill is fascinating,’ said Jonathan. ‘It’s just the sort of thing to be meat and drink to one of these cowardly sadists, a man dying suddenly, for no apparent reason, like that. Still, it can be so easily disproved that it wouldn’t make more than a nine-days’ wonder, I imagine. The village is fairly stolid.’

  ‘I suppose it ought to be disproved?’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Oh, I’ve nothing to go on,’ she added, laughing at her nephew’s startled expression, ‘but I should like to talk to Mr. Emming, all the same. It would be very instructive to know how much truth there is in this second letter, and whether he has any idea of which woman is meant.’

  ‘You don’t really think there was anything fishy about Bill’s death, do you?’ demanded Jonathan, continuing the line of thought which interested him most.

  ‘On the face of it, yes, I do, and there are points which require explanation, apart from the typewritten note, which, except for the death itself, is the most mysterious feature of the affair.’

  ‘Tiny explained quite a bit in the statement that was read at the inquest. He says he slip
ped while he was walking and crashed on to his knee on a boulder hidden by snow. He managed to drag himself back to the bungalow, but knows nothing of the note that was sent to Anstey. He is positive that he wrote nothing; he is equally positive that he does not possess a typewriter; and he can’t explain how anybody knew he was injured.’

  ‘One feels reasonably certain that he must know more than he says.’

  ‘But what on earth would induce a man to go to all the trouble of typing the two notes if he was as badly injured as we know that he is? That knee of his is no joke.’

  ‘I absolutely agree. Yet self-inflicted injuries have been known before this. I wonder what made Will North mention the pile of snow on that platform? And I wonder whether the choirmaster, Emming, has received an anonymous letter? He certainly seems to be affected. He is named as an illegitimate child. That ought to give us a clue to the letter-writer, you know. After all, Emming came from London. There is only one person in the village who might know the secrets of his youth.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Mrs. Dalby-Whittier! But they may not have come from the same part of London, surely! It’s quite a big city!’

  ‘True,’ said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully. ‘But if they did not know each other in London, why should the vicar have received the anonymous letter about one of his parishioners? You see, the letter did not concern itself so much with Emming’s illegitimacy as with his mother’s character and misfortunes.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Jonathan. ‘And I’ll ask Will North about the snow.’

  ‘I think I had better do that.’

  ‘All right, then. And you want to talk to young Emming?’

  ‘Above all things, and the sooner the better.’

  Will was preparing his dinner. He had opened a tin of stewed steak and a tin of baked beans, and had tossed the lot into the broth made from the carcase of a fowl. He had peeled a small cauldron-full of potatoes, and this was supported on iron rods on half the kitchen fire whilst the stew was to occupy the other half when the potatoes were three-quarters done.

  Will welcomed the visitor and got out another large plate. Mrs. Bradley accepted an old and comfortable armchair beside the fire, and gazed round the neat but very full room with interest. Nets, snares, the plumage of a jay for making fishermen’s flies, a large kitchen table, a heavy curtain on rings to keep draughts out when the wind was in the east, a sink and draining board, several more chairs and a small table, a broad, high settee-bed used as a dump for guns, the gamekeeper’s bag, and some books and papers, formed some of the furniture of a fair-sized stone-flagged room.

  A window looked out over green and steeply undulating meadows to the rise of a hill, and between the window and the fireplace wall was the armchair occupied by Mrs. Bradley. Beyond the armchair a heap of firewood, (logs and kindling), had been neatly stacked underneath two shelves which held cooking utensils.

  In the opposite wall was the opening into Will’s larder, and next to that was his gun-cupboard in which five more guns reposed. A step led down to his sitting-room, used by him in the winter as a bedroom and furnished with family furniture, a bedstead and some photographs.

  ‘What can you do for me, Will?’ asked Mrs. Bradley, when she had taken her fill of the ship-shape arrangements of the living room. ‘You can tell me, if you please, about the heap of snow on the badger-watching platform in Groaning Spinney.’

  The tall gamekeeper studied her and took his time about replying. When he did speak, he said slowly:

  ‘There was more snow on that platform than there ought to have been, ma’am. That’s all I know about it.’

  ‘Did you try to find out why it was there?’

  ‘No. But of course I know now.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I know now. That snow was covering up something that wasn’t intended to be seen.’

  ‘What something, Will?’

  ‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t say, ma’am. Least said the better, that’s my meaning.’

  ‘And you didn’t make any investigation at all?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I knew some of the boys from Mr. Emming’s choir had been up there, and I thought at first it was some of their games. If I’d guessed then what it was, I’d have had it all down at once, but there it is.’

  ‘Did you see any footprints in the spinney?’

  ‘I saw the same long marks as Mr. Bradley told on—nothing more.’

  ‘Did you think they were footprints?’

  ‘Ah, that I did, ma’am, but they appeared to be double ones, if you understand my meaning.’

  ‘Two people treading in the same tracks, Will?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘Well, you should know. You’ve had a good many years’ practice in studying tracks of one kind and another. You want to stir those baked beans, or you’ll have them stick.’

  ‘Our vicar was here awhile, ma’am. Very worried he is, about these letters that keep coming. He think he knows who writes them.’

  ‘You’re a Norfolk man, Will!’

  ‘Yes. Born and bred there as a boy; but haven’t lived there for years. Thought I’d lost the talk, but I suppose one never lose that.’

  ‘I hope not. What did the vicar have to say?’

  ‘That say he can’t understand Mr. Tiny clouting the choirboys. That never happen before. Mr. Tiny got a bad name from Ed Brown but nobody ever know him to hurt dogs, cats or children.’

  ‘That might be important, Will. Did he say anything else?’

  ‘Nothing much. Our vicar think Mr. Tiny have something on his mind. He think Mr. Tiny knows who writes the letters and don’t care to give her away.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘That’s what our vicar think, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you, Will. The letters have been a nuisance. It will be a good thing when the writer has been discovered. It’s of no use to ask you, I suppose …?’

  ‘I might guess wrong, and then that wouldn’t do.’

  ‘Do guess, Will. The person must be found. There’s a great deal of mischief going on.’

  ‘I know that. Well, from what I’ve heard, round and about, I’d be inclined to lay my finger on Mrs. Dalby Whittier. If not she, then I’d say that the choirmaster, Mr. Emming, know more than he say.’

  ‘That coincides with my own ideas, but I suppose there isn’t any proof of it?’

  ‘No proof at all, so far as I’m aware, ma’am, but that young chap have no means of livelihood and yet pay his rent and eat and dress pretty fairly. But this is all village gossip, you know, and perhaps I shouldn’t have taken notice of it. Leave gossipping to the old maws, I say. But sometimes, over a glass of beer, you know, ma’am——’

  ‘I understand perfectly. Yes, Mr. Emming somehow doesn’t quite fit in with village life, but blackmail is an ugly word, Will, and I don’t think we’d better use it.’

  ‘Folks will talk, especially in a small place like this, but I wasn’t thinking of going so far as that.’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t, and I ought not to have done. Our task is difficult, though. Suspicion by the cartload, and not a spoonful of proof. And, talking of cartloads, what sort of fellow is Ed. Brown?’

  ‘Oh, pretty fair,’ said Will; and did not enlarge upon this. He served his stew in great dollops on to the two large plates, and he and his black-eyed visitor ate in companionable silence.

  6. Saturday’s Child

  *

  ‘Shepherds in humble fearfulness

  Walk safely, though their light be less.’

  Sidney Godolphin

  * * *

  MRS. BRADLEY DID NOT need to wait long before she had her talk with young Robert Emming, for he came to the manor house on the Tuesday following New Year’s Day to see Jonathan. He was a quietly angry young man, and when Jonathan had heard his story he suggested that Mrs. Bradley should be invited to hear it, too.

  The thaw had set in suddenly one afternoon at the end of Christmas week, and the snow had all disappeared by New Yea
r’s Night. Everywhere was either incredibly green or incredibly muddy, and the little mill stream was twice its usual size.

  Emming had found the going slushy, to say the least, and was embarrassed at having to present himself to an elderly, leering, black-eyed lady at a time when he was bemired over the ankles, but he soon forgot the condition of his boots and trouser turn-ups in telling her his tale, for her attitude was friendly and sympathetic, and her questions were pertinent. The anonymous letter-writer, it appeared, had been at it again, and Emming had received two vituperative notes. The first had been delivered at his lodgings. He lived in two rooms at the carpenter’s house and was looked after by the carpenter’s wife, and the letter, which had come by post from Cheltenham, had been delivered by Sidney Blott on Christmas Eve. The second letter had been addressed to the village school, (apparently in error), and Sidney Blott had been far too intelligent to deliver it there; so he had handed it in to the carpenter’s wife with the remark that he supposed Mr. Emming would like to have it before Old Mother Acres (the school cleaner) went and trod on it or lit the fire with it or something.

  The carpenter’s wife had propped it up against the tea-caddy on the kitchen mantelpiece, but Vera, her eldest, had got the tea that day, and had left the envelope lying flat on the high shelf when she reached the caddy down, with the result that when she returned the caddy to the mantelpiece she stood it on the letter without noticing, and her mother had forgotten all about the letter until the next day, when she was dusting and it fell into the hearth.

  Emming, having read it, and then compared it with the first one, had decided to come to Jonathan, (who was a Justice of the Peace in addition to being now the local Squire), with both epistles. They were, as the vicar’s had been, in typescript, and the first one, in content, was worded in much the same terms as was the one received by the vicar. It commented on Emming’s birth, contained some coarse remarks, and then added something which had not been in the vicar’s letter.