Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “You know,” said Mrs. Bradley, eyeing him sternly, “I think you’re a fool about Jenny.”

  Carey opened his mouth, and gazed at her in amazement.

  “Oh, yes!” said Mrs. Bradley, wagging her head. “Talk about Hugh being weak!”

  “Dash it,” protested her nephew, wiping the elf-lock artistically out of his eye, “there’s a certain delicacy attached to the process of trying to ingratiate yourself with a girl who’s already engaged to another! Tell me, would you care to see my Academy picture? It’s Sabrina, in all her elegant pink nakedness, lying belly-upwards in her sty. I’m calling it ‘Portrait of a Lady of Fashion, MsoNormal1936.’ They won’t hang it, but it’s damned good, all the same.”

  Chapter Six

  HALF-HEY ON THE RIVER THAMES

  “Hereward took his food all right,” said Carey, “so I shan’t need to dig up the vet. At any rate, not today. What time with the car, my angel?” he enquired of his aunt affectionately.

  “Young Walt took a message to George. He’s to have the car ready at two.”

  “Then I’d better be yodelling the next course in. Fried slices of Christmas pudding? I thought so. Here, Scab, have some honey on that. You’ll need it.”

  He poured himself out some more beer.

  “I suppose you couldn’t have George drive me over to Oxford Station in the morning? My leave is up tomorrow. It would save Carey turning out. The bike and sidecar, you know,” said Hugh apologetically.

  “Yes, of course George can take you in. I’ll tell him. What is the time of your train?”

  “Well, seven-fifteen, I’m afraid. It’s frightfully early. Otherwise I ought to go tonight.”

  “On no account,” said Carey. “Tonight will not be the binge that we had proposed, because of poor old Fossder, but we’re running over for Jenny this afternoon. In fact, we shall bring her to tea.”

  By a quarter to three Carey and Mrs. Bradley were in Iffley, and had left the car near the church. They walked to the toll-gate, and paid their money to walk across by the bridge and then by the lock.

  “Pity it’s the wrong time of year. We might have had a swim,” said Carey, gazing at the water as it flowed through over the lasher. “What’s the programme, love? We’ve only got about an hour and a half of daylight, I should say.”

  “I’d like to walk to Sandford, along the towing path,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Blazing the trail?”

  “The trail is already blazed, child. But after the snow on Boxing Night, I doubt whether any tracks are to be seen.”

  She looked across the lock to the flat fields which came almost to the lip of the bank. The towing path was very narrow here; it was no more than a muddy footpath beside the river. They crossed the lock, and turned left along the bank for Sandford. Pollard willows marked a narrow meandering water-course that trickled across the meadows from the low round Berkshire hills. Two of the trees grew close, with misshapen trunks almost touching.

  “Marvellous fellow, Rackham,” said Carey suddenly. He pointed to the trees. Mrs. Bradley nodded, but her sharp black eyes were fixed on the muddy ground. After about ten minutes she sighed and shook her head.

  “No use, child, I’m afraid. Too many hoof marks altogether along here.”

  “Oh, you’re on to Hugh’s suggestion that the ghost chap rode a horse?”

  “I think there might be something in it somewhere,” said Mrs. Bradley slowly. “The police might be able to make something out of these hoof marks, but I’m perfectly certain I can’t,” she continued, still staring at the ground. “It’s possible, too, that the prints of the horse we are after may have been affected by the snow. Anyway, child, I don’t see how the ghost could have ridden a horse.”

  “Well, I thought myself it was rather a far-fetched idea. After all, if the chap intended to murder Fossder, he’d have been much less conspicuous without a horse than with one! Can’t think what gave Hugh the idea.”

  “Against that, one has to put the equally important argument that he would be likely to terrify Fossder far more completely if he were on a horse than if he had been on foot,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “That’s a good point,” said Carey. “How do you think the ghost came? Over the lock, as we did?”

  “Yes, I should think so, child. The way to the lock is left open, and no more tolls are collected after eleven at night, I have discovered.”

  “I have an idea that if the chap was on horseback, he might not somehow have risked Iffley village, and leading the gee across the lock. Don’t you think it more likely that he came here along the towing path from Folly Bridge, near Christchurch? Come and see what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Mrs. Bradley. “A most feasible idea.”

  “Came along in his riding clothes, you know, and got into the night gown, or whatever it was he wore, when he got past Iffley lock. That’s what I should have done.”

  They had continued walking towards Sandford, but now retraced their steps, passed Iffley lock again, and, walking northwards and a point by west, passed the ferry, and, a little farther up, crossed the first of the Long Bridges, and passed the free bathing places provided by the Council for the townspeople. The river was full and looked dirty. It was a troubled dark grey, and a little wind whipped its surface and blew tiny eddies in under the bank. It made a wide bend near the boat house, and ran brownish over pebbles where in summer a shoal of small fish always lurked, looking, at first glance, part of the ripples and the stones, part of the flecked reflection of the sky.

  Carey picked up a flat stone from the bank—the only place along there where the bank sloped gently to the water—and skimmed it across to the opposite side, where, to his great delight, it skipped suddenly out of the water and struck a willow tree in the half-flooded water-meadows opposite.

  They passed the confluence of the Cherwell and the Isis, and looked at the rows of dark poplars, as beautiful in winter as in spring, which lined the banks of the Cherwell at its mouth; they passed the line of College houseboats which were moored by the opposite bank of the Isis, and came at last to the bridge. Here, to Mrs. Bradley’s delight, Carey’s theory that a horseman had come on to the towing path at Folly Bridge received accidental confirmation. Finding a little shop, and desirous of proving his theory, Carey went in and bought some shag and half a pound of toffee. While he was being served he remarked,

  “I suppose your back windows must look out on to the river?”

  “Ah. They do.” The shopkeeper was friendly and talkative. “Get quite a bit of fun, we do, in the summer, like, with the gentlemen and the boating and all.”

  “But not much doing in the winter, I suppose?”

  “Not much. Well, not so much. Though I’d dearly love to know what the fellow was doing with his horse on Christmas Eve.”

  “Oh? Swimming it in the river?”

  “Oh, no! No, not swimmen it in the river. No, he wasn’t do-en that. He was riden it all right, but well after twelve o’clock at night. Ah, must a-been nearer one, now I come to remember, or, maybe, after one. Funniest thing, I shouldn’t ’ave knowed nothen of it, but our Em, she had the toothache, and her mother, she had to get up to ’er in the night. Otherwise I don’t suppose I’d have ’eard it.”

  “Well, that’s that,” said Carey, when they got outside again. “What do you say? Sounds like the ghost of Napier, don’t you think?”

  “I think it most improbable,” Mrs. Bradley observed. “But what we have, so far, is this: the ghost knew that Mr. Fossder was going to Sandford. It knew that he would cross the river at Iffley and would follow the towing path, going towards Sandford lock. It knew how long it would take him, and it also knew that he would not trouble to be at the meeting-place by midnight, the time when the ghost is expected to appear. It also knew that he would be alone.”

  “Of course, the main objection to the idea that this mysterious horseman was the ghost is the fact that Fossder was running away from Sandford and
not towards it when he fell down dead,” said Carey.

  “I know, child. The murderer could have turned the body round, though.”

  “Wouldn’t the police soon spot that that had been done?”

  “They would, perhaps, if there had been any case for them, but they were not called in, you see. And then there was that fall of snow. Goodness knows what difference it would have made, but I should think it must have made some!”

  They walked back to Iffley to get the car, and were soon in Stanton St. John.

  “I’ll just walk over to Simith’s to have a look at his pigs and give them their dry-feed,” said Carey.

  “Let us go in the car. It is quicker. And if Tombley is there, I can have a word with him,” said Mrs. Bradley, signalling George to drive on.

  But Tombley was not at the farm when they arrived, so, assisted by George, Carey made the round of the pigs and then came back to his aunt. It was just as they were getting into the car to drive away that Geraint Tombley returned to Roman Ending.

  “I’m feeling worried,” he said. “I can’t trace my uncle anywhere. I’ve been to the Infirmary; I’ve even been to Littlemore; but there’s nothing doing at all. It was queer enough, his going off on his own on Christmas Eve; but this is past a joke. I haven’t seen him now for—”

  “When did you last see Mr. Fossder?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. Tombley shrugged.

  “Oh, weeks ago, must have been. But, all the same, it’s terrible, that uncalled-for death, poor old fellow. But what’s the good of worrying about it? Everyone knew about poor old Fossder’s heart. I only wish now I’d been able to keep that appointment. I wonder,” he added, “what Mrs. Fossder is going to do with the money? Oh, yes!” he went on, in answer to an exclamation from Carey. “She’s still holding on to that two hundred pounds. I expect she’s forgotten it wasn’t really won!”

  “Half of it belongs to Mrs. Fossder, if her husband has left her his property, as I have no doubt he has,” said Carey, coldly. “And the other half surely belongs to the man who made the wager, since you yourself did not go.”

  “Now I should have said that the wager was won by the man who laid it,” said Mrs. Bradley, judicially. “Fossder may have died before he could keep the tryst. In my opinion, therefore, the whole of the money ought to be returned, as it is now improbable that we shall be able to prove whether Fossder reached Sandford at all that night.”

  “It’s a pity we don’t know who laid the bet,” said Tombley. “Whoever it was won’t confess, now Fossder has died. Joke or not at the time, it’s ended pretty seriously.”

  “Mr. Hugh Kingston, Old Farm, Oxfordshire, could tell us something about the bet,” said Mrs. Bradley, with the grin of a demon with a pitchfork.

  “Very awkward indeed for him,” said Tombley gravely, “for somebody certainly took advantage of the bet to lay for old Fossder and kill him. I feel myself to blame. I made no secret of the bet, you know. Anybody could have found out all about it. I bet Hugh could kill himself now, for having had the idea at all.”

  “I do rather think that if Hugh made the bet he might have said so. I said he didn’t face up to things,” said Carey, as the car drove off and Mrs. Bradley looked round and waved to Tombley through the glass of the small back window. Mrs. Bradley cackled.

  “Home, madam?” said George, as they turned into the narrow road that led back to Stanton St. John.

  “No, George. Back to Iffley. Mrs. Fossder’s house.”

  “Iffley again?” said Carey. “What’s the idea now?”

  “Jenny. We promised Hugh we’d bring her over for tea, and I’d forgotten about it.”

  Mrs. Fossder and Jenny had begun their tea when Mrs. Bradley and Carey arrived.

  “I’d love to come,” said Jenny, looking pleased.

  “Hugh is going back, I suppose,” said Mrs. Fossder. She got up and went to a large vase on the mantelpiece. “These notes. I really don’t know what to do with them. The money for that dreadful bet, you know.”

  “Keep one hundred, and I will give you a receipt for the other hundred,” said Mrs. Bradley, producing her pen.

  “Oh, no!” said Mrs. Fossder, horrified. “I couldn’t do that! It would seem like making money by my husband’s death! Really, it’s quite impossible.” She crammed the notes into Carey’s hands. “You two will know what to do with them. You’ll see that they are returned! I’ll be glad to be relieved of them.”

  Mrs. Bradley wrote a receipt for two hundred pounds. Carey counted the notes, and then folded them up and put them into his pockets.

  “Mrs. Fossder,” said Mrs. Bradley, “what grudge had Geraint Tombley against your husband?”

  “None, that I know of. I tell you again, it was Simith who murdered my husband. They never got on, from boyhood.”

  “Simith is missing. Cannot be traced,” said Carey.

  “Yes, a guilty conscience,” Mrs. Fossder remarked. She looked at Mrs. Bradley. Mrs. Bradley shook her head.

  “I’d believe you,” she said, “if Simith were Tombley’s age, or even twenty years older. But Simith must be seventy.”

  “He’s sixty-eight—just ten years older than my husband,” said Mrs. Fossder.

  “The wrong age for inventing a murder that might possibly look like a practical joke,” said Mrs. Bradley firmly.

  “Something of the Roman matron about your aunt,” said Carey, strolling down to the gate with Jenny. “Where are Fay and Pratt?”

  “Out for a stroll. Maurice takes over the reins from tomorrow.”

  “What sort of a fellow is Pratt?” Carey asked. “Just seems a fool to me.” He visualised the tall, thin, sad-looking intellectual.

  “Well, yes, he is silly,” Jenny confessed with a smile, “although not in the business, you know. But I’m sure he’s not weak and not wicked.”

  “Hm! By the way, where’s my aunt?”

  “Having a last word with mine. It’s all right. Here they come. And I can hear Fay and Maurice on the road, so I can leave the house with a clear conscience. What did you mean—Roman matron?”

  “The stiff upper lip. You know. Grief in the heart but not on the handkerchief.”

  “Well, she wasn’t really terribly fond of uncle. Nothing serious, you know. Just incompatible. They used to have lots of rows, chiefly about Fay’s marriage. Thank goodness nobody bothers about mine.”

  “I say! I’m sure Hugh doesn’t know they quarrelled! I say—forgive me if it’s an awkward question, but—how’s the money left? Do you happen to know?”

  “Oh, yes, of course I do. It’s equally divided. Auntie, Fay, and I get one-third each. Maurice inherits the practice.”

  “What a motive for Hugh, Pratt, and Tombley!”

  “Yes, but even if you proved to the letter it was Geraint Tombley, you’d never get aunt to believe you. Personally, I don’t really think it was.”

  “But what does Fay think?”

  “She doesn’t. It’s a hard thing to say of one’s girlhood companion, but Fay’s a perfect fool! She dithered between Tombley and Maurice for ages and ages, and couldn’t make up her mind. I think she was so thrilled at having two suitors at once that she liked to keep them dangling. She’s always been rather a little mouse, you see, and the situation rather went to her head.”

  “I wonder whether you’re rather a little cat?” said Carey, laughing at her. “But I’ll put the point to Aunt Adela. You never know what may come in useful, do you? And Tombley?” he continued. “How did he take the bird from Fay, when she finally decided to have Pratt?”

  Jenny shrugged.

  “Oh, to the manner born.”

  “Like a perfect gent, do you mean?”

  “Absolutely, according to Fay. It was in the garden. He raised his hat, said he never had any luck, kissed her hand, and departed, on foot, at six miles an hour. Aunt watched him from the window. She said that he looked noble. Fay cried for days, I know. Really, she is a fool!”

  Jenny giggled at the recollection.

&n
bsp; “It must have been Tombley,” said Carey to Mrs. Bradley, after dinner. Hugh and Jenny were sitting side by side upon the settee, looking at a book and talking in undertones to one another on subjects unconnected with what they were supposed to be reading. Carey glanced across at them, and decided that they were more likely to be absorbed in their own conversation than in his. He told Mrs. Bradley what he had learned from Jenny.

  “It seems as though, with Fossder out of the way, there might be some chance of getting Fay to change her mind, and have Tombley instead of Pratt. Mrs. Fossder was definitely in favour, and, according to J., young Fay was never certain which of ’em she wanted, and wept when, in the end, she decided to give the bird to poor old Tombley. It seems to me a cert that Tombley did it.”

  “Interesting, child. I, too, learned a little more. According to Mrs. Fossder, the two men who marry the girls are to inherit Mr. Fossder’s money. Mrs. Fossder gets one-third, and the rest is to be divided equally between the girls’ husbands.”

  “Nothing at all to the girls, as such, so to speak?”

  “Nothing. Mr. Fossder seems to have thought his nieces feather-headed creatures incapable of managing money for themselves.”

  “Rather a cheek. But he always was an old cuckoo in some respects. I’d have married forgers or bank-robbers, if I’d been the girls, merely out of protest.”

  “And quite right, too, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But, you see, whereas your tidings might help to exonerate Maurice Pratt and Hugh, mine bring them both back into the full strong light of suspicion. Neither could gain a thing until Mr. Fossder’s death. Then each could claim a third of all his property. How are Hugh’s financial affairs? Do you happen to know?” She grinned and stretched her fingers.

  Carey shook his head.

  “He’s poor, but solvent. That’s all I know,” he said. “Librarians are like schoolmasters. They have to be respectable, or else they get the sack.”

  “We’ll see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Hugh!” she called. Hugh looked up.