Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  At supper the boar’s head was the centre piece at table. Hugh saluted it and murmured something about a “little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig.”

  “’Tis handsome, that’s what I say,” observed Mrs. Ditch.

  “Carve some of it for yourself,” said Mrs. Bradley. “How many of you are there?”

  “Five, counting Lender, mam,” replied Mrs. Ditch.

  “Oh, by the way, have you got a bed for Linda?” Carey enquired.

  “Thanken you, Mr. Carey, she can have a nice shakedown with us. We’ve got two mattresses on our bed, and a couple of feather beds on top of they, so Lender can have a mattress, and do very well.”

  She carried away the slices of boar’s head, and a bottle of port which Carey took out of the sideboard.

  Denis was sent to bed at midnight, and Mrs. Bradley, who never cared much for late hours, decided to go to bed at half-past twelve. Carey and Hugh soon followed her example.

  Except for Carey, they slept late on Boxing Day morning, and it was ten o’clock before Mrs. Bradley and Denis, the latest risers, had finished a leisurely breakfast. Mrs. Bradley propped up a book of verse and drank two cups of coffee, and Denis sat, elbows on table, devouring a detective story. At eleven Mrs. Ditch came in and cleared away.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Bradley, “what shall we do?”

  “I’m going on reading,” said Denis. He lifted up his book to allow Mrs. Ditch to take the cloth off, and then sank back with a sigh, on to the trail of the murderer. Carey came in just then.

  “Hallo, you lazy things,” he said, coming forward to the fire. “Even old Hugh has beaten you both this morning! He’s gone over to Roman Ending to borrow Tombley’s gramophone. I brought a lot of records back from Oxford the other week.”

  “Haven’t you a wireless set?” asked Denis.

  “Oh, yes. It’s a portable. It’s usually in the kitchen being taken to bits and rebuilt, with the latest improvements, by the Ditch boys. I thought the gram would be a change. We can stick on the Sword Dance records—‘Kirkby Malzeard’ and ‘Flamborough’—I love those tunes—I could hear them all day long. He’s taken the bike and sidecar. He can load the gram on to that. I expect old Simith’s giving him a drink or something. Tombley ain’t there. He’s gone over to Iffley this morning to visit Mrs. Fossder and Fay.”

  “Oh, yes. Mrs. Fossder would rather have him for son-in-law than Pratt,” remarked Mrs. Bradley.

  By lunch time Denis had finished his book. They had the gramophone on during most of the afternoon. Tombley and Simith came over, but both went back before dusk to help Priest get in the pigs. The sky was grey and heavy. It looked like snow.

  “Tell ee what, Mr. Carey,” said Mrs. Ditch, when the uncle and nephew had gone. “I wish, when the weather gets better, ee’d plead with that there Priest to come and dance this year.”

  “Priest! I didn’t know he was a dancer,” said Carey.

  “He ent,” Ditch assured him solemnly. “But ef Mester Tombley have made up his mind not to dance, us must get another, Mester Carey.”

  Carey rubbed his jaw.

  “I’ll see to it,” he said. “It’s a long time yet until Easter. We can safely leave it until then.”

  “Easter us starts re’earsen, Mester Carey. Ee ent forgotten that?”

  “No, that’s right. Oh, I’ll get him. We’ll have him here, and teach him. Don’t worry, Ditch. We’ll get together a side!”

  By ten o’clock Hugh said he was sleepy, and bade them all goodnight. At eleven, Denis, struggling with drowsiness, went to bed. Mrs. Bradley went upstairs with him, and Carey followed almost immediately after them.

  Before she began to undress, Mrs. Bradley walked to the window and gazed out into the darkness. There was no moon, and the stars were hidden by cloud. As she stood there, the first flakes of the snow, which had threatened all day, began to fall fairly thickly. She stood there, in the unlighted west-windowed chamber, and watched the fall of the snow. In less than a quarter of an hour the ground was glimmering white. The snow had settled.

  She came away from the window, undressed very slowly, splashed some icy water over her face and hands, and then got into bed. The hot-water bottle was comforting. The bed was thoroughly warm. The room was warm, although the fire had gone down and only showed a dull red wink of life when she peeped at it with one eye.

  Suddenly a pig began to squeal, and other pigs followed suit. The noises soon died down. Mrs. Bradley turned on her side and slept. In the next bedroom, however, Carey was wakeful and alert. He too, had heard the pigs. He got out of bed and went to his window, which looked out on to the pig-rearing houses, but it was too dark to see anything. He put on his dressing-gown and went downstairs. Here he exchanged his dressing-gown for an overcoat, his slippers for shoes, took a good thick stick from the stand and sallied out towards the pig-house. The snow fell thick on his hair and soaked into his shoulders. The toes of his shoes were covered and his sleeves were soon thick with snow. He shook it off as he walked, but it came again, with soft, unhurrying persistence, wetting his face and dropping with hideous precision down the front of his collar.

  He went first to Hereward’s sty, because it was nearest. The boar was not stirring, although Carey stood for a moment listening beside the run. Hereward’s was the only separate sty on the pig-farm, for Tom was kept in the larger of the pig-houses, next door to the farrowing pen. Carey went to this pig-house next, and, when he got inside, took a lantern from its nail and lighted it. He then walked down the centre passage between the two rows of sties and made a thorough inspection. The young pigs in the pig-rearing pens seemed to have quietened down, but two of the sows were restive. Tom, too, was awake, and ambled up to the feeding trough in a fairly hopeful manner, and yawned and blinked at his owner and scratched the floor with his natty little front feet.

  “Nothing doing,” said Carey. The farrowing pen, an enclosure twice the size of the usual sty, was empty, but next door was a weaning pen which had several attractive pinkish occupants. Carey looked reproachfully at them.

  “Now, which of you squealed?” said he. “And what for, anyway, fat-heads?” The little pigs, wide awake, began tumbling over each other at the sound of his voice. Their pen came next to the outside wall of the pig-house, except for a narrow passage-way. Another weaning pen was opposite, but this was empty, and next door again was Sabrina, the savage old sow. She seemed more disturbed than Buttercup, her next-door neighbour, and grunted at Carey, and rubbed her great side along the edge of the sty, and snorted at him complainingly.

  “What is it, then?” said Carey. “Didn’t you like the noise? But why did they squeal, Sabrina? It’s a shame! You’re all upset!” He reached over and smacked her sympathetically. He went to the smaller pig-house, built on similar lines to the other, but twenty feet shorter. This building was further away from the farmhouse, and in it the pigs seemed undisturbed except by the sound of Carey’s footsteps, which woke the weaners, nervous, hungry little pigs, as he went past their sties.

  Carey walked into the snowfall again and flashed the lantern about, but nothing was to be seen except the snow, now lying sufficiently thickly on the ground to have covered his own tracks from the house to the sty of the boar, and to begin to obliterate his fresh tracks as soon as he made them. He bent his head and hastened back to the house, and then discovered that he had shut the front door and had no latch-key with him. He knocked, and Ditch, who had stopped to pull on his trousers, came down and let him in.

  “All right, Ditch,” said Carey. “It’s only me. One of the pigs must have had a bad dream or something.”

  “Ah. A dog came prowlen, I should thenk. Soon start off they pegs, a dog well. Wonder who he belonged to? Nobody nearer than Welliam Smart have a dog.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be anything wrong,” said Carey, stamping to shake off the snow. “Beast of a night out there.”

  “Ah. Soon start up they pegs, a dog well,” Ditch repeated. “Never woke that gal of ourn, though, not our
Lender. Her never stirred a finger. Mother woke up, and me. But not our Lender. Sleep like a milestone, that gal do. Always ded. No thought for nothen but herself.”

  “That’s true, too and all, our dad,” said Mrs. Ditch, looking over the banisters, candle in hand. “Nothen at all but a bolster in the bed, laid lengthways down the meddle. Ef we had ’lectrec light enstead of these ’ere old candles, we’d a-seen when we come up to bed!”

  “But where can she be?” asked Carey.

  “Ee needn’t ask that,” said Ditch, in bitter tones. “Her’s over at Roman Enden, betch that her be.”

  “Hush ee, our dad,” said Mrs. Ditch peremptorily.

  “Would you like me to go over?” Carey enquired.

  “Nay, us’ll just let her be. Her can make her a bed where she well. ’Tis her ’aves to lie on it later,” said Ditch, with heavy philosophy.

  “Can’t understand it,” said Carey to Mrs. Bradley, whom the various sounds had wakened again. She had come out on to the landing, a bizzare coat embroidered with dragons covering her thin upright person. “I thought Linda Ditch had hopped it from Roman Ending because she couldn’t stand the attentions of old Simith. I shall have to go over in the morning. Curse these good-looking wenches! They’re always in trouble of some sort. I don’t in the least want to have a dust-up with Simith, but he can’t seduce Mrs. Ditch’s only daughter. Pity Linda’s not more like the boys. They’re all as mild as milk. Think of nothing but the wireless and Morris dancing. I believe one’s got a motor bike. But you know what I mean. I shouldn’t think they’ve ever given their parents the slightest bit of worry in the world. Young Walt lives here, and is almost too good to be true, except as a pigman. Don’t know the first thing about pigs. Wish I could tempt that bloke Priest from his allegiance. But I think he’s hanging on to get the chance of murdering Simith. Hates him like poison, I know. Oh, well, come and have a spot of whisky, because I’m cold.”

  He led the way into the parlour, and lighted the lamp. The door of the priest’s hole was open. A slight draught blew from it into the empty room.

  “Oh, lor,” said Carey. “What’s this?”

  They went and explored the hole. It was innocently square and bare. Carey shut the panelling again and put his back against it.

  “Odd, don’t you think?” asked Mrs. Bradley. Carey shook his head.

  “One of Scab’s jokes. Nipped down and did it while I was out there at the piggeries, I expect.”

  Chapter Five

  CROSS OVER AT OLD FARM

  “Scab,” said Carey, collaring him before breakfast, “why did you leave the priest-hole open last night?”

  “But I didn’t!” said Denis, surprised into what he afterwards regarded as a depressingly juvenile squeak.

  “Honest?” said Hugh, who was lounging on the window seat, looking out at the snow and longing for rashers and eggs, and sniffing the smell of the coffee which Mrs. Ditch had brought in.

  “Of course I didn’t, Hugh! I wouldn’t give away my secret to Mrs. Ditch, or whoever it is that comes in here first in the morning!”

  “Queer, then,” said Carey. “I know it was shut when I went to bed at half-past ten or so.”

  “We can’t be sure of that. It’s possible it was ajar, you know,” said Hugh. “Still, I went up before you, and I didn’t notice anything.”

  “Well, it ain’t ajar now,” said Carey. “I shut it up pretty tight when we went to bed for the second time last night, and shoved a chair against it.”

  He took the heavy chair away, then suddenly pulled it open. “Good Lord!” he said. “What’s this!”

  Linda Ditch, in a fainting condition, tumbled into the room. The two young men and Denis gathered round her.

  “Get back a bit, you two. Give her room,” said Hugh, kneeling down. At almost the same time Linda Ditch sat up.

  “Don’t tell our mam,” she said.

  “But how did you get in there?” asked Hugh. “Here, just drink this!” He signed to Carey to bring her some coffee. Linda waved it away, and struggled to her feet, white-faced. She was dressed in what appeared to be her party frock, a tawdry affair of cheap blue lace which reached to the ground and was cut fairly low in the front. Over it she had on her outdoor coat. On her feet were silver shoes slightly wearing over at the heels, and her head, untidy now, had been not too becomingly waved. In all, she looked a slightly bedraggled object, but it did not look as though she had been out in the snow.

  “Let me be. I don’t want to tell ee nothen. I was let down,” she said.

  “Shut up, Linda,” said Carey, with a very slight nod towards Denis.

  “Oh, that! I don’t mean that! Can’t ee tell? That happened weeks ago. I mean I was just left flat. So I come back and slept en that there hole.”

  “Be sensible, Linda,” said Carey. “There’s no sense in making a mystery. Where have you been, and how did you get in there?”

  Hugh stepped over, closed the aperture, and stood with his back against the panelling.

  “I’d better clear out,” said Denis helpfully, and in his most grown-up tones. He went out into the snow, now sparkling in sunshine.

  “You let me go,” said Linda. “I’m goen into service at Littlemore. At the Asylum,” she added, as though in defiance of something.

  “You won’t like it there,” said Carey. “Aren’t you really going to tell us about all this?”

  “Not I. So you leave me be. Got my own business to mind, so do you mind yours!”

  “But it is his business, you silly girl!” said Mrs. Bradley, appearing like the Devil to Doctor Faustus. “It’s his house, and he has a perfect right to ask you questions if he finds you in a part of it where you certainly ought not to be. Go upstairs and change that frock and those shoes, and then send your mother to me.”

  At this Linda fell on her knees.

  “You won’t tell our mam! You won’t tell our mam!” she sobbed.

  “Not a word,” said Mrs. Bradley, “except that you got shut in by mistake. Were you wearing that frock last night in this house for the family Boxing Day party?”

  “Ah, that I were! And our Walt tore it, too!”

  “Then that’s all right. Now, be a sensible girl. I won’t defend you unless you tell me the truth. And make no mistake! I know the truth when I hear it! Several strange things appear to have happened last night!”

  She leered at Linda, who shrank back, and then, still spirited, gave a little giggle.

  “That’s better,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “And will she tell you?” asked Carey, when Linda had gone.

  “Oh, yes, a part of the truth!” said Mrs. Bradley. “She’s quite a bad lot, that girl.” She shook her head at Linda Ditch’s short-comings. “Of course, she’s been to see someone over at Roman Ending.”

  “You think, then, that that was the row that frightened the pigs last night? Linda hopping it over to Roman Ending?”

  “I don’t know, child, but I doubt it. When did the snow begin to fall?”

  “Before I went out to the pigs. It was coming down fast just then.”

  “Then Linda went earlier than that, and came back earlier, too, unless she went under cover, or changed her dress and her shoes.”

  “By way of the priest’s hole, you mean? By Jove—” He went to the panelling and opened the door again. At that moment Mrs. Ditch came in with the eggs and bacon, and stared with some curiosity at the opening in the wall. Mrs. Bradley waved a skinny claw.

  “Linda got shut in there. We’ve just let her out,” she said. “She’s gone upstairs to change. She still had her party frock on. I shouldn’t worry her at present. She’s had rather a shock, I expect.”

  “But we made sure as she went up to bed at just afore ten.”

  “She couldn’t have done. But it means there’s another entrance to this hole,” said Carey suddenly.

  “If she went to Roman Ending the ordinary way, she’d have had to be out in the snow. She couldn’t do that wi
thout marking those silver shoes. Take my advice. Let it go. Mention it in joke, as you would have done if Young Walt had been shut in there instead of Linda. But don’t plague the girl, Mrs. Ditch,” said Carey, in whose chivalrous opinion Linda was never quite fairly treated by her mother.

  The circumstantial evidence of the shoes convinced Mrs. Ditch. She took the first opportunity of examining them for herself, and, finding that it was obvious that they had not been worn out of doors, she gave in to the extent of remarking sardonically,

  “Get herself locked up one way or another, chance what, our Lender well.” She left it at that for the time.

  “By the way,” said Carey, when Mrs. Ditch had gone, “I heard from Tombley, who heard it in some way from Fay, that Fossder’s will was all right.”

  “What do you mean, child?”

  “Well, there was some idea at one time that he was going to leave a funny will or something, cutting out Jenny and perhaps Mrs. Foss­der, or something. But he seems to have changed his mind and left ’em all in.”

  “Oh, really? So much more satisfactory.” She nodded, as though in congratulation of all the legatees, and took her seat at the table opposite a dish of fried bacon and the apparently inevitable hog-puddings. After breakfast she covered herself with a good deal of unnecessary glory by knocking six bottles off the kitchen garden wall with six successive snowballs, and, having paid this amount of tribute to the seasonable downfall, she felt that she had earned the right to return to the parlour and drink the Bovril which Linda Ditch brought in on a small silver tray.

  “I say,” said Denis, following her into the room, “have you ever tried shying at coconuts, Aunt Bradley? I should think you’d be rather good.”

  “I have been warned off the coconut shies at no fewer than three fairs in the Home Counties alone,” replied his great-aunt, with becoming modesty. Denis whistled.

  “You do look rather like a witch, in some respects,” he commented.

  “That’s rude of ee, Mr. Denis,” said Linda Ditch. “Do ee drink up that there Bovril, no more nonsense!”