“Quite right. I also told you that she probably poured the stuff down the sink.”
“She didn’t do that. Bismuth was found by the analyst——”
“I know that. Good God, are you going to tell me now the woman was poisoned?” snapped out old Brown.
“No, sir. She was drowned, after being rendered unconscious, or at any rate incapacitated, by a blow on the base of her skull. But since she had the medicine you prescribed, I can’t understand why we haven’t found the bottles or any remains of the medicine. You may consider that fact so trivial as to be irrelevant. I do not. It’s just an odd fact which ought to be explained.”
“Well, I suppose you know your job,” sighed the old man. “Admittedly I can’t see what you’re getting at, but I’ll do my best to help. I ordered her physic a fortnight ago. The mixtures should have lasted a week. I repeated the order, without consulting Sister Monica about it, a week ago. The chemist will tell you that.”
“Yes, sir. I have verified that. So it’s to be assumed that there were several doses left of the second batch—a three days’ supply. But there’s no trace of the bottles, and Mrs. Higson, who always washes out the bottles before they are sent back to the chemist, knows nothing about them.”
“All right, all right,” growled Dr. Brown. “You’re very thorough. I grant you that. You want all your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted. Very commendable. How long have you been on the job here? Tell me that.”
“Since midday yesterday, sir.”
“A day and a half, eh? And you reckon you’ve got things taped, including the aberrations and eccentricities of a woman like Sister Monica. I tell you, that woman was about as complex as an anthill. She’d got her own peculiar pretensions. One of them was that good health is a matter of faith. She preached it to all and sundry. ‘Keeping well is will power,’ she’d say. And to prescribe medicine for her was tantamount to insulting her. When I ordered her physic I didn’t believe she’d take it, but you say she did take it. Very well, I’ll accept your word for it, but I’ll tell you this. She’d have seen to it that no one saw her take it, and that no one in that house knew she was taking it.”
“I follow that quite clearly,” put in Macdonald. “It’s in character with what Hannah said about her.”
“It is, is it? Well, you can take it from me that those bottles of physic you’re so worried about are in the house somewhere. Not in the medicine cupboard. Dear me, no. Hannah Barrow may be an illiterate, but she knows the size and shape and colour and name of every bottle and box and tin in that cupboard. She’s had twenty years to learn them in. Sister Monica wouldn’t have put her own bottles of physic anywhere that Hannah could see ’em.” He broke off and pointed a finger at Macdonald. “You’re going to tell me you’ve searched the entire house, you and that young fellow you brought with you——”
“No, sir. I’m not going to tell you anything of the kind. I haven’t had time to search the house. I’ve been too busy getting acquainted with the people who revolve around the case, what we call the contacts.”
“Well, you’re honest. I’ll say that for you,” said the old man. “I’m not belittling what you’ve done, Chief Inspector. You’ve routed out more than I’d have believed possible in the time you’ve been here, and pretty fools you’ve made some of us look, I admit it. But if, for your own reasons, you want to find those bottles of physic, you go and look for them. They’re there somewhere, where she hid them. She loved hiding things. She’d put things away in the linen cupboards, in the clothes cupboards, in the sewing room, in the store cupboard, in any one of those elaborate hoards of impedimenta she delighted in. You’ll have a job, I promise you, but you’ll find the stuff if you go on looking long enough. If you’re going to do it this evening, I wish you joy of it. They didn’t wire the place properly when they put electricity in: took the Warden’s advice and economised by not putting lights in the linen room and cupboards and so forth: penny wise, pound foolish—the very places you wanted artificial light, because there aren’t any windows.”
“I’ll leave it till morning, when the sun’s at its brightest,” said Macdonald. “In any case, I don’t want to go there again this evening and make any more disturbance. In my judgment, Mrs. Higson can look after Hannah all right.”
“In your judgment,” echoed the old man wearily. “I suppose we’ve got to trust your judgment. You’ve had precious little reason to trust ours. If you put the facts you’ve discovered down in black and white—damn it, there’s a lot of black and not much white. I went up and saw Lady Ridding after you’d been on at her, and I gather there wasn’t much left to admire in Sister Monica’s character by the time you’d done with it. Yet that woman worked faithfully and well for best part of a lifetime. And Hannah—a gaol bird, eh? I tell you, Hannah’s worth her weight in gold. And what’s the result of it all? Because Sister Monica took to the brandy bottle and fell into the river when she was tipsy, you suspect Hannah of God knows what, and I suspect Higson of planning to murder Hannah. I tell you, it’s enough to drive us all mad.”
“I don’t think there’s the remotest likelihood of Mrs. Higson planning to murder Hannah,” said Macdonald quietly.
“Why not? You’re guessing your way along, aren’t you? I’m sorry, Chief Inspector. I’m an old fool, but I’m so upset over the whole miserable business, I’m past talking sense. I’ll get off to bed and leave you to your job. But don’t get it into your head that Hannah Barrow’s the malefactor. I know you’ve little reason to respect our judgments. I admit you’ve uncovered enough human weaknesses in this place to make you pretty scornful of our mental processes. We couldn’t see a thing sticking right out under our noses—the fact that the Warden of Gramarye had taken to the brandy bottle. That’s the operative factor in this case. Not the old unhappy far-off things’ you’ve been so successful in digging up. The fact that the woman had taken to alcohol and I didn’t spot it is what upsets me. You say that even Hannah spotted it—and I didn’t. No fool like an old fool.” He gave a contemptuous snort. “I don’t wonder you sent for Ferens when Hannah collapsed. You were quite right. But you couldn’t have done anything which was more calculated to give me a knock. Didn’t trust me to deal with a case of hysteria.”
“I did what I thought best to do in the circumstances,” rejoined Macdonald quietly. “And now, sir, I’ve got a report to think over. I’ll bid you good evening.”
3
Macdonald walked back to the Mill House when he left Dr. Brown: the latter’s house was a quarter of a mile beyond the village on the level ground of the river valley, whose lush green was glowing in the last rays of the westering sun. Turning in at the footpath between the Mill House and Moore’s Farm, Macdonald crossed the wooden bridge and walked up the steep path towards the Manor House. He was nearly at the top when he saw an elderly lady walking towards him, and he stood on the outer side of the path to let her pass. She stopped deliberately, saying: “Good evening. Am I right in thinking you to be Chief Inspector Macdonald?”
“Yes, madam.”
“My name is Braithwaite. I should be so glad if you could spare me a few minutes. I have been away from home for some days, and I was deeply shocked by the news of Sister Monica’s death.”
Macdonald liked the look of the resolute, sensible face and the sound of her deep pleasant voice. He glanced round, and she said at once: “This is a most inconvenient spot for a conversation. I will walk back to the top with you, if I may. There is a seat by the Manor wall where we could talk in comfort.”
“By all means,” said Macdonald.
She turned resolutely up the hill again, walking sturdily, and said nothing more until they reached the top and she turned to the right and led the way to a garden seat, placed to command the glorious view of hill and vale and distant moor. She was panting a little as she sat down.
“That has always been a steep hill, Chief Inspector. I find it gets steeper. One day I shall find it is too steep.” She turned and looked fu
ll at him as he seated himself beside her, and went on: “I ought not to waste your time, but I have been to sec Lady Ridding. She was so very incoherent that I am quite bewildered, and I should be so grateful if you could tell me the real facts. You sec, for years and years Sister Monica has been held up as a monument of all the virtues. Now she is dead, she has become a synonym for all the vices.”
“Would you like to tell me your own estimate of the Warden’s character, madam?”
“Well—it’s a bit hard. I scruple to speak harshly of the dead. But I disliked her, very much indeed. She was one of those women who cover a selfish and assertive mind with a cloak of humility, and there was something abnormal about her, almost pathological. Also, she was a malicious gossip, an eavesdropper and a raker-up of other people’s secrets. I have known all that for a long time. But—do you really think she was murdered?”
“That is my opinion,” replied Macdonald. “I have no absolute proof.”
She sat silent for a while and then said: “When I left Lady Ridding, I came and sat here by myself and tried to think things out. I’ve never been a clever woman, but I’ve a certain amount of common sense, and I have known this village and the people in it for a very long time. It’s nearly two years since I tried to get the committee to pension off Sister Monica. It wasn’t only that I knew she was too old and too set in her ways to be left in charge of very young children, though all that was true. I felt she had changed: that her character had deteriorated in some way I couldn’t quite define. Previously, I had disliked her: but more recently I found something almost frightening about her.”
She broke off, and Macdonald said: “You arc telling me the same thing that the village people have told me. The Warden had changed. It’s obvious, too, that she was no longer trusted. Can you tell me when this change in attitude occurred?”
“In attitude—you mean when the village ceased to trust her? I expect you have guessed: it was after Nancy Bilton’s death. But Sister Monica herself had changed before that.”
“Will you answer this question, Miss Braithwaite, even though it’s a hard one: Do you believe that the Warden caused Nancy Bilton’s death?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I do. I have no facts to give you, none whatever. It was just an unhappy feeling.”
“And did the village people share your belief?”
“I can’t answer that. I never asked or discussed it with anybody at all at the time. But I believe the mistrust which developed was due to the fact that the village people were never sure she hadn’t done it. Only they would never have admitted it. And indeed, there was no evidence, either way.”
She sighed, and then went on: “You will be wondering why I am wasting your time. I asked you to stop and talk to me because I had an idea as to what might have happened. Lady Ridding said that Sister Monica had been drinking. I can believe that. She may well have wanted to forget—quite a number of things. And she knew that the village had turned against her. Her power had gone. Granted the woman’s character, her craze for domination, I can well believe that if she got drunk she would have been capable of boasting of what she had done. I’m probably putting this very badly, but do you follow what I mean?”
“Yes. You think she boasted to someone that she had killed Nancy Bilton, and that someone took the law into their own hands and meted out their own idea of justice?”
“Yes. It’s the only reason I can think of which would have made anybody in this place commit a murder—that they felt it was the only way of arriving at justice.”
“I’m very much interested in what you have said, Miss Braithwaite. A similar line of thought had occurred to me. But I think there are some additional complexities which I am not at liberty to tell you.”
Miss Braithwaite stared out across the parkland: the sun had gone now, but the clarity of light remained; every tree, every branch and flower, was still and clean-cut in the lucent afterglow, not a breath stirring in the evening air. Then she said: “If such a confession—or boast—had been made to you, and you knew that you had no hope at all of bringing the woman to justice—you see, there was no evidence—might not you have meted out rough justice yourself?”
“I hope not,” said Macdonald soberly.
4
She had left it at that, and Macdonald had let her go, and watched her sturdy figure in its sensible silk dress as she went down the path, keeping in carefully to the side away from the drop. When she had disappeared, Macdonald took out the pages of Reeves’s report and read them while the larks sung high in the faint blue vault of heaven, and the thrushes and blackbirds pealed out long phrases of liquid song. Reeves had his own manner of writing a report for Macdonald’s eye. It was a sort of colloquial shorthand and might have been obscure to one unaccustomed to Reeves’s phraseology. To Macdonald it was entirely lucid.
Reeves had set out to discover “who had been helpful”; who, in short, had broken into the shed and left Sister Monica’s old black bag under the sacks. Starting from his assumption that this was a variation to replace the “her was dizzy” theory, Reeves began his investigation by studying the footwear of his suspects, the latter being those who knew about the experiment which Ferens and Sanderson had conducted last night. By dint of playing experiments of his own connected with gauging the velocity of the stream, Reeves had attracted some of his suspects to the damp ground by the river and had got impressions of their boots while they gave him advice and information. Three of these impressions were easily recognisable. Farmer Moore wore heavy nailed boots with horseshoeshaped irons on the heels. Wilson, the electrician, had patterned rubbers on his heels. Venner had nailed boots, with two nails missing from the right heel. Taking measurements and diagrams, Reeves had set out for a “preliminary reconnaissance” along the most probable route from the mill to Greave’s hut. This route lay beside the river for the first mile, along a footpath which did not dry out before the heat of August. Thereafter, when the path turned into the woods, it crossed two “splashes”—subsidiary streams which joined the river. By the river itself, and in the mud by the splashes, Reeves found traces of Venner’s boots going in the direction of the hut, but there was a variation. In these “outgoing” prints only one nail was missing from the right heel. It was when Reeves spotted some “incoming” prints that he got hopeful: when Venner had returned home he had lost the second nail.
During the greater part of the time that Macdonald had been talking to Mrs. Yeo and Hannah, Reeves had been crawling about in the rough ground near the hut in the woods. He had remembered that part of the ground they had scrambled over was rocky—the rock cropped out on the rise where the hut was built—and rocks may loosen nails in a worn heel.
Reeves finished his report in laconic style. “I found the nail. I’ve known men hanged on less.”
CHAPTER XVII
Macdonald sat on the seat where Miss Braithwaite had left him until the colour had drained out of sky and air. Nobody came up the path from the mill, no one descended it from the village. On that June evening it was as lovely a walk as any human being could wish, but the path was shunned now by all who had habitually used it. Sitting very still, listening intently, Macdonald heard all sounds from the village die away; the children had all been called home by their parents. Tired and thirsty haymakers had left the meadows before moonrise, certain of another fine day on the morrow, tractors had ceased their clamour, and not a car ground up or down the steep village street. Everyone was safely withindoors, gossiping without a doubt, but preferring to gossip with their own families.
As the bats cut erratic tangents across the pale sky and white owls floated silently on the warm scented air, it occurred to Macdonald that Monica Emily Torrington had cast a shadow on the village: that her power was still felt, undercutting all the confidence and serenity which should be the normal complement of neighbourliness. “Peel was right,” thought Macdonald. “Everybody here is involved in this thing one way or another. They started by refusing to admit what they knew to be true
, and it’s gone on and on, getting more fantastic with every effort of concealment. It’s time it was stopped.”
When the enveloping twilight had deepened so much that a man could be seen only at fairly close quarters, Macdonald got up and began to stroll silently round the containing wall of Manor, Dower House, church, and Gramarye itself. Each was hedged around with impassable clipped hedges of yew or holly or thorn, in which gates were set, but they were all contained within the ancient stone wall, close up against the hedges in some places, in others the wall and hedges parting company. Gramarye was entirely in darkness, but the Manor and Dower House showed lights in the graceful mullions and oriels of the ground floor. The Manor House windows were curtained, but those of the Dower House were open, their lights shining gaily out across lawn and flower borders and hedge. John Sanderson’s house showed lights in the lower windows, but the village street was dark now, candles all put out.
Just before eleven o’clock, Macdonald went through the park gates into the garden of Gramarye, keeping in the shadow of the ilex trees until he came to the garden door—a small side door which opened into a passage between Sister Monica’s office and the parlour. He turned the handle of the door and found it yielded silently to his touch as a well-oiled door handle should, and the door opened with neither creak nor groan. Closing the door behind him, Macdonald stood still in the darkness, as he had stood so often in other buildings. Houses, barns, shops, flats, warehouses, all dark, as this passage was dark, but having in the darkness their own character because each had its own peculiar smell. Gramarye smelt of floor polish and carbolic and soap: something of the unwelcoming smell of an institution, but behind the overlay of modern cleanliness, the smell of the ancient house declared itself, of old mortar, of stone walls built without damp courses, of woodwork decaying under coats of paint, of panelling and floor boards which gave out their ancient breath as the coldness of the stone house triumphed over the warmth of the midsummer evening. It flashed through Macdonald’s mind that he would remember the village of Milham in the Moor through the fragrance of midsummer, new-mown hay, roses and clove pinks and honeysuckle, the “unforgettable, unforgotten river smell”—and lime trees in flower: all these wafted on the warm air in sensuous delight. But he would remember Gramarye for its chill stone smell, coupled to the soap and polish and disinfectant which were so virtuous in intention and so comfortless in achievement.
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