Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Denis was so much incensed that he did not reply, and, having drunk the Bovril, he took a couple of biscuits and went off to find Hugh and Carey, who were helping Ditch and Young Walt to sweep the various paths.

  “Now, mam,” said Linda, briskly.

  “Now, Linda,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Well, mam, no denyen I went out to meet my bo.”

  “Your what?” said Mrs. Bradley. “Oh, yes, of course. Go on.”

  “Him be-en that there Priest, over to Roman Ending.”

  “Come now. Don’t be so silly!” said Mrs. Bradley. “A man with a face like that! What on earth would the children be like?”

  Linda stared, then laughed.

  “You do be a one,” she said. “Well, here, then. I went to see Tombley—Jerry I calls him—because we had to get talken about this here.”

  She sketched a sufficient gesture.

  “Ah, yes. The illegitimate child,” said Mrs. Bradley offensively. Linda eyed her coldly.

  “Not all that bad, it ent! He’ll marry me, see ef he don’t!” she replied with spirit.

  “He can’t, if he’s hanged,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly. “Where was he on Christmas Eve?”

  The girl, although sullen, looked frightened.

  “I don’t know what you be talken about,” she said.

  “Oh, Linda!” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “I don’t, I tell ee! Can’t you believe what I says?”

  “Not very much of it. Why did you leave Roman Ending in such a hurry?”

  “Because Jem Priest, he heared a row and went off.”

  Mrs. Bradley began to hum a tune. Linda scowled, and then her sullenness vanished. Once again she laughed.

  “He’s a Constant Billy, all right! He makes me laugh. Always jealous! Always hangen about when a gal don’t want him no longer!” She, too, began to hum. “Ah! And I wish them there fishes might never fly over no mountains,” she added, in mysterious parenthesis.

  “What’s that!” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “What’s what?” said Linda, entirely innocently this time.

  “Fishes and mountains, child. I don’t think I place the reference.”

  “Oh? Tes that there song they Morris dancers sengs. Our Dad, he knows et. Young Walt, too and all.” Her voice was more tuneful than her mother’s; her sense of rhythm less strong.

  “O my Billy, my constant Billy,

  When shall I see my Billy again?

  When the fishes fly over the mountains,

  Then you will see your Billy again!”

  “Thank you, child. That’s very interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley, and packed into the back of her mind (subsequently to be transferred to her notebook) the variation on the words she had heard Linda’s mother sing not so long before. “Go on with your night adventures. My nephews will be coming in soon.”

  “Well, Jerry Tombley and me, we arranged to meet in that there old barn beyond the garden wall. Cellars of this here house goes underground, and comes up in that there old barn, as everybody round here knows. Was an older house than this built a bet to the north, and that’s the reason for why.

  “Well, Walt and me, playen as childern, found that there lettle room there, behind the wood wall.” She pointed to the panelling to make her meaning clearer. “And we found it went down to the cellar, so I thought I’d purtend like to slep up to bed a bet early, and then put the bolster en the bed, and go down this way to the cellar, case our dad come down for some beer. Come right into the corner of the cellar, that passage leaden from that little room behind.

  “Well, they kept playen tiddly-winks, and haven the wireless on, and then the gramophone, and wanten me to keep dancen, tell I felt quite fet to go to bed, even without pertenden, so after supper—half-past ten that were—I sleps upstairs like I said, and down I comes, not through here, but another way we found. Shan’t tell ee where. Ee can find et, like ee found this un.

  “But what does I find when I gets down into the cellar, but our dad and our Walt, between em, have shefted all the coal and coke and that, tell the passage be quite blocked up. I tell ee I didn’t know what to do for roaren. I sat there en my big coat, on one of the hogs’ ’eads, and I’ll back I roared like some poor lettle child. I daren’t sheft the coal and coke away, even ef I hadn’t had my best dress on, for fear our dad should be hearen, so when I’d ’ad enough of roaren, I thought I better go back to bed, and forget Jerry Tombley was waiten on me en the woodshed.”

  “But that isn’t all. You couldn’t have gone back to bed,” said Mrs. Bradley, “because we found you in here. Why couldn’t you return the way you went?”

  “Comes of goen and putten emprovements en all these ’ere old ’ouses,” was all that Linda vouchsafed by way of reply; and Mrs. Bradley perceived that the girl had said all that she intended saying at that time.

  When Linda had gone back to her mother in the kitchen, Mrs. Bradley went in search of Denis.

  “Go down into the cellar, dear child,” she said, “and tell me, when you come back, exactly where the coal and coke are placed.”

  “Oh, I know that,” said Denis. “I went down there with Ditch two days before you came, and it’s all piled up in a corner, blocking up a rather decent little passage which goes along to the old barn over there.”

  Mrs. Bradley was somewhat mystified. Linda had spoken as though she thought the heap had been shifted only a very short time before she had gone to meet Tombley. Surely she would have gone down into the cellar to see that the way was clear, thought Mrs. Bradley. Perhaps she had trusted to luck. People of her temperament always did trust to luck, only to find, on nearly every occasion, that luck had betrayed their trust. She sighed.

  “Linda been lying? She always does, Young Walt says,” Denis observed.

  “I don’t know, I’m sure,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “Denis, what would it mean, to put improvements in an old house?”

  “Is that a riddle?”

  “If you like.”

  “Do you know the answer?”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Bradley cautiously, “I think I might recognise it if I heard it.”

  “Well, I suppose it means sticking in some bathrooms. You know—”

  But his great-aunt did not wait to hear more.

  “Come with me quickly,” she said. “You wanted to find another entrance to the priest-hole, Denis, didn’t you? Well, I expect you have found one, dear child.”

  They went up the stone stairs together and entered the larger of the bathrooms. There was no fixed bath. A large zinc bungalow bath stood almost touching the wall behind the door, and below the window stood the repellent type of washing stand which has a tip-up basin capable of decanting its load of soapy water into a movable earthenware receptacle at the bottom. The rest of the furniture comprised a rush-bottomed chair, a bath mat, a towel rail, and a small enamel bathroom cabinet bought to fit an angle of the wall.

  “Now, where?” said Mrs. Bradley. They searched, most diligently, every square inch of the room. Denis went flat on his stomach, an electric torch in his hand, to peer at all the floorboards and in the corners. He got up at last and sighed.

  “Let’s try the other one,” he said. The second bathroom, Mrs. Bradley thought, was the likelier of the two, as the Ditch family had the use of it when they felt they wanted a bath. It had been screened off from one of the bedrooms with a wooden partition which did not reach quite to the ceiling, and what remained of the bedroom was now devoted to lumber.

  “We might search that, as well, if the bathroom yields no results,” Mrs. Bradley observed, as they passed the door of it. The bathroom, however, certainly yielded results. Its floor was covered with green and white linoleum, and Denis, observing a slight depression in it near the wall, began to take it up. Underneath was a hinged trapdoor—the hinges fairly new, but beginning to rust with the damp from water and steam. He pulled up the trapdoor—a very easy matter—and found himself peering down a long black shaft which seemed to have no bottom.


  “Made in the thickness of an old wall. Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley. They both shone their torches down it, but black, straight, and bottomless—so far as they could determine—it remained.

  “Put the lid on, child, a moment,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Look out of the window and tell me exactly where we are.”

  The bathroom window was not much more than a lancet. It was apparent that this side of the house was older than the rest of the building. Denis, on tip-toe, peered out.

  “I’m looking north, I think. The church is to my left, but on a slant. This seems to be the north-west corner of the house.”

  “It would be,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Then that shaft is in the angle of the wall, and goes right down to the ground, and under the ground, I expect. It isn’t any use to us, Denis. Let’s go and look next door.”

  But the lumber room yielded nothing, so they went back again to the parlour to warm themselves by the fire.

  “If there’d been a way out—but how did Linda get in?” thought Mrs. Bradley. She went to the panelling and opened it. The priest’s hole—if that was what it was—was as bare and as clear as ever. She went inside.

  “Shut the panelling after me, Denis. I want to see whether I can possibly get out,” she said. “Open it in ten minutes.”

  “What an opportunity, Scab,” said Carey, entering as Denis closed the panel, and took out his watch—a Christmas present from his father. “When Aunt Adela and you have finished your game of hide-and-seek, I want to speak to her.”

  While he was waiting for the ten minutes to pass, Denis told Carey about the long deep shaft in the wall.

  “Oh, yes. We found that last summer. It’s a fourteenth century garde-robe, I believe. Don’t tumble down it. I don’t suppose we’d ever get you out unless we pulled the house down, and I couldn’t undertake to do that. I hope the air in that hole is all right. Linda was certainly fainting when she fell out this morning.”

  “Linda? Oh, that’s what it’s all about!”

  “Yes, that’s what it’s all about. Keep your eye on that watch, old man. I’m nervous about the ventilation in there.”

  Promptly at the termination of ten minutes, Denis opened the panelling and Mrs. Bradley stepped out.

  “The air remains fresh all right, then,” Carey said.

  “I don’t think I’ve been in there long enough to say, but I can’t find another outlet,” Mrs. Bradley replied.

  “Oh? Well, come and look at Hereward for a minute. I don’t think the poor chap feels too good this morning. I didn’t much like the way he couldn’t be bothered to come out and have a grunt at me when I made my rounds last night. We’ve never had disease on the farm. I hope he’s not going to begin it. If he don’t take his food I shall go and dig out the vet. I can’t lose a valuable boar.”

  “If he were a human being,” said Mrs. Bradley, when she and Carey had stood by the solitary sty for about ten minutes and had steadfastly regarded the languid and snuffling occupant, “I should say he had caught a cold. Is that a possibility with pigs?”

  “Oh, yes, decidedly. They also get erysipelas, lung worms, large round-worm, and swine fever. I suppose there’s no way to prevent ’em catching cold, either. Same like us. It’s silly. Although how on earth you managed it, you fathead,” he added, addressing the boar, “is more than I can imagine. Look at that flooring,” he said to Mrs. Bradley. “The most modern type there is. And the loony has only got to remain doggo under cover if it rains or snows or anything. I don’t see how he can catch cold, although, of course, these pedigree animals will do anything. What have you been up to, I wonder?” he asked the boar. “One comfort. The sows are all right. I’ve a jolly good mind to bring this chap into the house for a day or two. I’d like to park him in the empty crib in the larger pig-house, but if I did, the sows would be made to go to him. They despise old Tom, I think, but this one drives them crazy.”

  These sidelights on the contrasting degrees of sex appeal in boars interested Mrs. Bradley, but not more so than the sudden appearance of Simith’s pigman, Priest, who came hastening along the path to speak to Carey.

  “Mester Tombley sent me over. I went up-along to feed they pigs this mornen, and it seem Mr. Semeth never ben home all night, and Mester Tombley’s rung up and he thenks they’ve took him to the Infirmary, and ef they ’ave, he’s afeared they’ll send him to Lettlemore, and he wants to know what he’s to do.”

  “Has he rung up the Infirmary itself, do you mean?” asked Carey.

  “Ah. But they can’t make out, it seems, ef et’s Mester Semeth or not. They ’ave tooken en one or two oldesh men, over Chrestmas, they says, and he says, ef et esn’t arsken too much of ee, like, would ee go over and gev an eye to our pegs, while he’s see-en all about et? I’m getten married, myself, or I wouldn’t be troublen ee, see?”

  “Getting married?” said Carey. “Congratulations! Er—”

  “Lender Detch,” said Priest, grinning with acute embarrassment. “’Bout time, too an’ all, poor foolish gal,” he added.

  “Now what about this poor fellow?” said Mrs. Bradley, looking at Hereward.

  She chirruped sympathetically at the boar, who regarded her pitifully out of his little red eyes.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll have him indoors. He’s quite sanitary, and all that. Not in the parlour, you know. He can stay in the outhouse. Mrs. Ditch won’t mind. She’s used to pigs. I’ll light the copper fire and put a guard up, and lay some old sacks on part of the floor, so that he’ll have some comfort. Are you afraid of him?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Bradley, resolutely.

  “All right. You open the gate, then, and I will conjure him forth.”

  But the boar backed away, and would not have Carey come anywhere near him to touch him.

  “Well, I’m dashed. You’re mighty particular this morning,” said Carey, eyeing him with surprise. “But please yourself. If you’d rather stay here, I can make you a bit more comfortable, I suppose.”

  The boar, at the sound of his voice, became more tractable, and, in the end, permitted himself to be taken up to the house. The snow was melting rapidly in the sun, and the boar squelched along through the slush, and stuck in his toes and squealed when they came to a virgin patch of unmelted snow.

  “He’s got a complex, Aunt Adela,” said Carey, grinning. “Do you mind treading over that patch, to make it look a bit brown? I believe it’s the whiteness he hates. I say, I wonder what’s happening to poor old Simith? Going off his onion, do you think?”

  “I could not say, without seeing him. He didn’t give that impression,” said Mrs. Bradley cautiously. “When are you going over to look at his pigs for him?”

  “Oh, not until later. Priest will have fed them once this morning. They’ll do all right for a bit.”

  “Well, will you come cruising round with me in my car, child, after lunch, for about an hour?”

  “Yes. Come to that, Ditch and Young Walt can go over to Roman Ending.”

  “They won’t poison the pigs, child, will they?”

  “Because of Linda, you mean? Oh, Linda’s a bad lot, really, and they know it well enough. Anyway, pigs are sacred in this county. They wouldn’t do pigs any harm. I’d love to come. What is it? Not a ghost-hunt, by any chance, I suppose?”

  “That’s just what it is. Bless you, my child, for your superior intelligence.”

  “Superior to whose?”

  “Hugh’s.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” said Mrs. Bradley, with the nearest approach to peevishness her nephew had ever noticed in her. “If you had gone over to Iffley on Christmas Eve, you’d have known a good deal about Mr. Fossder’s death. Hugh appears to know nothing. If the girl weren’t prepared to swear him a solemn alibi, I should think he might have been the ghost himself!”

  She cackled, loudly and harshly, and Hereward gave a sudden snort of fear. Carey headed him off from bolting, and wheedled him into the outhouse, whose interior he seemed to suspect.<
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  “Hugh?” said Carey, kneeling down before the copper fire. “Hugh? But why on earth should he, anyway?”

  “Well, that I don’t know,” Mrs. Bradley answered absently, watching Hereward’s close inspection of his new quarters. “But I suppose there isn’t any reason why he shouldn’t have been, really, is there?”

  “What are you getting at?” asked Carey.

  “Hugh’s sympathetic blindness, deafness, and general idiocy,” said Mrs. Bradley, regaining all her good-humour.

  “But was he blind, deaf, and silly? Excuse me a moment. I think this fire’s all right, and the copper’s three-quarters full, but I must just go and get some straw, and those sacks and things. Do you mind being left alone with him? If you do, come with me, and carry a sack or so, will you?”

  After a glance at Hereward, who was now standing still, with his forefeet planted firmly and his snout almost on the ground, Mrs. Bradley decided that she would accompany Carey.

  “It’s strange that Mr. Fossder decided to keep the appointment in spite of the message that Tombley sent,” she went on, as they crossed the farmyard again.

  “I suppose he heard what Hugh said, and understood it? He may not have done, you know.”

  “I asked Jenny whether he was deaf. He wasn’t deaf. Now, why did he still go to Sandford if Tombley wasn’t going to meet him and go along too?”

  “Reasons of his own that were nothing to do with Tombley, and one of the reasons turned nasty and chased him and killed him,” Carey suggested. “Why not leave the thing alone? If the doctor signed the certificate without question, why worry, love? It ain’t really our affair, is it?”

  “I wish I thought it weren’t.” To Carey’s amusement, for once his aunt seemed irresolute. “But I can’t get over the feeling that Fossder was murdered, and, if he was, it’s everybody’s business, child, or so the law would tell us. I suppose Hugh did give him Tombley’s message? You see, if he didn’t—”

  “Forgot it, you mean, and doesn’t like to say so, seeing the old chap met his death by trying to keep the appointment? Yes, there’s a lot in that. He’s inclined to be weak, is Hugh, when it comes to facing up to things, although I says it as shouldn’t.”