The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop mb-2

by Gladys Mitchell

  Aubrey was an intelligent boy. As he pondered he would have whistled but for fear of disturbing his mother. He was not actuated altogether by feelings of filial affection in not wishing to disturb his mother. Some men and women, he knew, were at their best in a crisis. Others were not. He sensed that Mrs Bryce Harringay must inevitably remain in the second of these categories. A crisis, he also sensed, had been reached. The police had been nosing about the house all the afternoon. They had asked questions. They had turned out all Rupert Sethleigh’s letters and papers. They had driven the cook to hysterics and the butler to blasphemy. Aubrey himself would have enjoyed their visit but for two distressing and extraordinarily harassing thoughts. One was the thought of the spade he had hidden in his bed. It had been propped up against his wardrobe door and covered decently with his evening clothes until three o’clock that afternoon. He had planned to carry it down to dinner and rag Jim about it. But at three o’clock the police had arrived. They began asking for news of Rupert. There was bruited abroad the theory that Rupert had disappeared. It was rumoured that Jim Redsey had lied; that Rupert had never intended nor spoken of going to America. It was even darkly hinted that Jim Redsey could say a great deal about Rupert’s whereabouts if he chose, but – with a significant pause – that he did not choose.

  And there was an almost unrecognizable corpse down in Bossbury – fattish – aged about forty –

  And Jim had dug a hole – rather like a grave – in the Manor Woods on the previous night. That was the second harassing thought.

  And there was no doubt that Jim had got wind up – shocking wind up – especially when he saw the police coming up the drive!

  Aubrey stood up. When in doubt, the old and experienced call canny. Youth is impetuous. Youth is inclined to be rash. Aubrey’s rule, when he was seriously afraid of anything, was to make a wild dash at it. He had learnt to dive that way. He seized the spade and crept downstairs with it. He entered the drawing-room, whence came a narrow shaft of light beneath the door, and ‘stood easy’ with the edge of the spade on the carpet.

  ‘Oh, Jim, old bird,’ he said in an airy tone.

  Jim Redsey, who was standing on the drawing-room hearthrug gazing earnestly at his reflection in an oval mirror which hung over the mantelpiece, turned with a start. His eye fell immediately upon the spade which Aubrey was holding.

  ‘What the devil is that?’ he cried. His eyes were almost starting out of his head with terror, and, as he pointed to the cumbersome implement, his hand shook so badly that he lowered it in haste.

  ‘I hate to ask you, old lad,’ said Aubrey pleasantly, ‘but, as man to man, and without prejudice on either side – where is that blighter Rupert?’

  II

  ‘Those flannel bags,’ said Cleaver Wright, laughing as well as he could with a badly swollen lip, ‘are. my flannel bags. Go and find your own moth-eaten and corruptible garments, and leave a gentleman’s clothes alone.’

  George William Savile smiled. His perfect teeth were his great pride. He smoothed down his already sleek and shining hair and held the garments in question up to the light.

  ‘Lulu,’ he said, ‘I appeal to you. Are not those my trousers?’

  ‘Gawd only knows,’ responded the lady, indolently raising herself from the bed on one perfect arm and eyeing the whole tableau, men and trousers alike, with great distaste. ‘And ’E won’t tell,’ she added, with the proverbial fatalism of the true Cockney. She slid down again and closed eyes that would have conquered Galahad. ‘And now get out, you –, – swine,’ she said. ‘Both of you!’

  III

  Felicity Broome was in a quandary.

  ‘I suppose I ought to tell father,’ she thought, ‘but really he’s such a priceless old ass, he’d only go and tell the wrong people and get somebody into trouble.’

  She looked at the clock. It was eleven p.m. ‘And it’s at least ten minutes slow,’ she reflected. ‘I wonder whether Aubrey is in bed? He’s young, but he’s awfully sensible. I’ll talk it over with him, and see what he can suggest.’

  She reconnoitred. All was well. She climbed out of her bedroom window, slid down the porch, and was soon at the gate.

  After her experiences of the previous night, she felt nervous at the idea of traversing the Manor Woods. However, the way round by the lodge was so very much longer, and the thought of finding the gate closed when she eventually arrived there so disheartened her that she decided to summon all the resolution she possessed and dare the woodland path. She entered the little wicket gate, found the main path through the woods, and ran.

  The drawing-room, like the library, looked out on to the lawn. Felicity saw a light shining through the curtains as she emerged from the darkness of the trees, and made directly for it. As she approached, she heard a heavy crash. Her heart leapt. Her pulses raced. Her head swam, and her knees knocked together. At the same instant the light went out, and Aubrey’s boyish accents, raised in something between fear and horror, cried:

  ‘Cheese it, you stiff! You’ll do me in, you fool!’

  The mother, that sleeping lioness which inhabits all of us, however weak and timorous we be, awoke to frenzied life in Felicity’s breast. She dashed towards the French windows and banged frantically on the glass. Jim Redsey’s voice exclaimed:

  ‘Hullo! Who’s that?’

  Felicity banged again, and somebody inside the room switched on the light. A voice behind the curtains said:

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me!’ said Felicity, with an ungrammatical terseness born of nervousness. ‘Let me come in! Quick, quick!’

  A fumbling at the catch, and Aubrey opened the French windows. Except for himself, the room was deserted.

  ‘Where’s Jimsey?’ asked Felicity, surprised. Aubrey carefully closed the French windows before giving her any answer.

  ‘Gone to bed,’ he replied laconically.

  ‘Who were you shouting at just now?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly! Who was being unkind to you?’

  ‘No one, dear child. I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. Nobody is ever unkind to me.’

  Felicity stamped impatiently.

  ‘Naughty,’ said Aubrey, unperturbed. He bent and picked up the spade, which was lying across the splintered top of a small occasional table.

  ‘I suppose you’ve heard the glad tidings that are round the village?’ he asked.

  ‘You mean the murder? Aubrey, that’s what I’ve come to see you about. You know our dust-heap?’

  ‘Survivals of mediaeval England,’ said Aubrey, grinning. ‘In other words, past pluperfect of the verb stinkay – to give forth an obtrusive odour with malice aforethought. I know it, yes.’

  ‘I agree it’s time something was done about it,’ said Felicity with a grimace of disgust. ‘Well, this time it’s excelled itself.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I always have to go and inspect it, because Mary Kate Maloney will throw food away if I relax my vigilance, and, between friends, we can’t afford to be wasteful. Besides, it’s wicked. Well, on the dust-heap I found a suitcase. It has Rupert Sethleigh’s initials on it. In fact, I’m practically certain that it’s the same suitcase he lent Father when we went away for a holiday last month.’

  ‘And that’s Mary Kate’s neighbourly way of returning it,’ grinned Aubrey.

  ‘I don’t know about that. I thought Father had returned it – properly. What terrifies me is –’ she paused, and a slight frown settled between her eyes – ‘the inside of the case is horribly stained with blood.’

  With no thought of waking his mother, with no thought for anything except Felicity’s news, Aubrey whistled.

  ‘My – hat!’ he said, aghast. Added to his own surmises, theories, and fears, these seemed dreadful tidings.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ agreed Felicity, subscribing to the thought and not to the inadequate expression which clothed it. ‘You see – it’s so awkward, with poor old Jimsey digging th
at ghastly grave and everything!’

  ‘Eh?’ said Aubrey, startled.

  ‘I was in the woods last night – out for a walk,’ Felicity explained. ‘I saw him chasing you.’

  ‘Oh, I see. We’re in this together then? Good! You know the Roberts have been here all the afternoon, don’t you?’

  Felicity’s eyes widened.

  ‘I can’t believe it of Jimsey,’ she said. ‘Not the – not the horrid part, anyway. Aubrey’ – she laid a hand on the boy’s arm – ‘what was happening in here when I came along?’

  Aubrey grinned. ‘Oh, I made the poor old thing a bit hairy, you know. I can see now the way I asked him about Rupert practically amounted to an accusation of murder. A bit thick, that. I mean, a man may think a man has dotted a man one over the nut in a fit of peevishness, or absent-mindedly, but a man has no earthly right to indicate to a man, even in the most measured and tactful terms, that a man suspects such to be the case.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ said Felicity, without ironic intention. ‘And he was angry with you?’

  ‘He had a shot at slamming that spade down on top of my head,’ said Aubrey, grinning. He pointed to the splintered table-top. ‘I was always a nut at the obstacle-race when I was a small kid at Cliveton House,’ he observed carelessly.

  Felicity shuddered. Maternally she stroked his black head to make sure it was still safe.

  IV

  At twelve-twelve before dawn on Wednesday, June 25th, Mrs Bryce Harringay awoke. She raised herself slightly in bed and listened. Yes, there was certainly a noise. Yes, they were still at it. What a mercy she had locked her bedroom door! Thanking Heaven – for the woman was pious in her way – that the house was not her house, and therefore the burglars were no concern of hers unless they actually forced their way into her bedroom and demanded her jewel-case, she turned over on to the other side and lay down again. It occurred to her that about an hour earlier there had been that awful crash. Probably the burglars murdering James Redsey! A nuisance, that! Still, her subconscious mind was busily adding, James could be spared. It occurred to her that the bedroom window was wide open! An easy method of access to her room if the burglars could climb forty feet of blank wall! The feat, she told herself, was not an impossible one. These cat burglars could climb anywhere. A fly had nothing on them when it came to scaling precipitous heights, she had heard. And there had been that ghastly murder in the neighbouring town of Bossbury! . . .

  Mrs Bryce Harringay poked a plump and graceful foot out of bed. In less than five seconds she was closing the window. It is not easy to close a window without making any sound at all, but, fear lending her dexterity, Mrs Bryce Harringay managed it.

  Then, with a curiosity which not even fear could allay, she peered out. There was no moon, but the luminous softness of a midsummer night, heavy with scents and secrets, and never becoming wholly dark between sunset and the dawn, allowed her to discern two, or perhaps more, shadowy figures as they walked across the lawn. One of them seemed to be carrying an electric torch. She could see the moving disc of light it cast on the grass.

  ‘Making their escape with ill-gotten booty,’ thought Mrs Bryce Harringay, who carried a romantic heart beneath the layers of superfluous tissue which covered it, and who had been in her youth a keen student of the then infantile Silent Drama. With great, though entirely subconscious satisfaction to know that the booty was not her property, she watched the burglars until they disappeared into the shadows beyond the farther flower-beds.

  She was about to return to bed when a thought struck her. What of Aubrey? Was he safe? She decided hastily that of course he was perfectly safe. Burglars had no interest in boys. She went to bed and slept soundly.

  V

  The burglars, halting at the edge of the woods, held a short conclave.

  ‘You will stay by the wicket gate and keep watch, then,’ said Felicity, ‘while I go and get it.’ She spoke in a whisper, less from fear of being overheard than because the spell of summer midnight was upon her. It was faëry time.

  ‘Right you are,’ said Aubrey, in the same voiceless tone. ‘Bung it over the gate when you’ve collected it, and I’ll bury it.’

  Felicity squeezed his hand, and they were soon among the whispering trees. Tripping over briar stems and trailing blackberry plants, almost crashing into tree-trunks which suddenly loomed before them, losing the path and miraculously finding it again, at last they reached the wicket gate and the London-Bossbury road. Once on its level surface Felicity began to run. She ran like the wild deer, or the goddess Artemis who hunts them with her bow. Into the sandy lane she sped and over the lych-gate she scrambled. Across the silent churchyard, with its ghostly tombs, she ran, and vaulted over the wall.

  Behind the Vicarage woodshed was a pump, and behind the pump a pig-sty, empty now, for the vicar was no swineherd. His was not the nature which can find pleasure in scratching a pig on the back with a ferrule of a walking-stick and pondering on the wonders of evolution. The pig-sty, then, was untenanted.

  Felicity hoisted herself over the rotting wooden fence which surrounded it, and groped her way to the inner sty. She stooped low and entered the small roofed enclosure. Once inside, she produced the electric torch Aubrey had insisted upon lending her, and switched it on.

  A suitcase was standing in the far corner. With a shiver of disgust, Felicity gripped its handle and carried it to the entrance. Here she switched off the torch, felt her way to the outer fence, dropped the suitcase over, climbed after it, and carried it back to the wicket gate where Aubrey was awaiting her coming.

  ‘Got it? Good egg!’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see to it now. Good night. Don’t make a row getting back.’

  ‘I think I’d better help you,’ said Felicity quietly.

  ‘No.’ Aubrey sounded determined. ‘Cut off, there’s a good kid. One of us is far less likely to be nabbed than two if anyone should come nosing about. I’ve only got to bung it over and cover it up, you see, and there’s only the one spade, so we couldn’t both do the job even if you did come.’

  Felicity took his black head between her hands and kissed him suddenly and surprisingly on the mouth.

  ‘Have your own way,’ she said, half laughing. ‘And good luck. But it’s such a horrid place to be alone in, Aubrey. Are you sure you won’t be afraid?’

  ‘Oh, I shall be all right. I’ve got the torch, you see.’

  So saying, he picked up the spade which was resting against the trunk of a tree, and, with the torch in his pocket and the suitcase in his other hand, he stepped away from her. The woodland closed around him, and Felicity was left alone. In the branches of the nearest tree a star hung like some wondrous gleaming fruit. It winked as she watched it. Straining her ears for any sound from Aubrey, she waited several minutes. The night drew near and touched her. She could sense its quiet breathing. But no uproar broke the stillness, neither sounds of pursuing footsteps, cries for succour, shrieks of fear, nor any other sounds. Trusting that all was well, Felicity went home.

  VI

  It was a horrid place. There could be no other opinion. Sinister, ghostly, grey, the Druids’ Stone bulked menacingly large, and the ring of whispering pines, like courtiers round a cruel, evil king, stood tall and straight and still. Aubrey breathed deeply to restore his ebbing courage, dumped down the suitcase in the hole Jim Redsey had made the night before, and resolutely picked up the spade.

  Suddenly an idea occurred to him. Of what use, after all, to bury the case where the police must certainly discover it? Hauling the case up to the surface, he dumped it on one side and began to fill the hole with great spadefuls of the loose light soil. Suddenly another idea occurred to him. His brown face twisted into a wicked grin that made him brother to a faun.

  ‘Might as well give the inspector something to think about if he does come nosing round here,’ he said to himself. He thrust spade and case into the bushes, groped his way out of the murky woods, and returned to the house.

  There was
a case of stuffed trout in the hall. Aubrey, creeping in by way of the drawing-room, whose French windows had been left unfastened when he and Felicity had ventured forth in quest of the case, switched on the light, took off his jacket, folded it into a thick pad, and placed it against the glass. Then he raised his fist and dealt the folded coat a smashing blow.

  Above stairs his cousin Redsey slept heavily, the prey of terrible dreams. Aubrey’s mother, that stately, uncourageous matron, also slept. Her Roman profile, dignified even in slumber, and both her shell-like ears, were buried beneath the clothes. The tinkle of broken glass as it fell to the floor of the hall passed entirely unnoticed.

  Aubrey seized the largest trout with both hands. To his excited imagination it appeared to present an expression of shocked surprise at being thus rudely disturbed. Switching off the light, he thrust the fish under his arm and ran back to the woods. Here he pushed the trout into what remained of the hole, drew out the spade, and quickly shovelled back the rest of the earth and stamped it flat.

  Then, with the circumspect aid of the torch, he felt for the case, intending to find some other hiding-place for it. To his consternation and dismay, it was not to be found.

  Aubrey searched frantically. Throwing caution to the winds, he used the torch recklessly, careless of who might see the gleaming light. All was of no avail. The incriminating bloodstained suitcase had vanished.

  VII

  ‘I knew I heard burglars,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay triumphantly to a nervously ill-tempered Jim Redsey and a heavy-eyed worried-looking Aubrey next morning.

  ‘Burglars?’ said Jim, with a short laugh. ‘What rot!’

  ‘I object, James, both to your speech and the abrupt, I may say discourteous, tone in which you see fit to deliver it,’ pronounced his aunt coldly. ‘I repeat, there were burglars in this house last night. They have stolen a valuable trout from the case in the hall.’

  ‘Valuable?’ snarled Redsey. ‘What tosh! A beastly lot of mid-Victorian atrocities, those trout! As a matter of fact, one of them isn’t a trout at all. It’s a roach.’