Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Well, child, we progress,” said Mrs. Bradley. Carey stood in the doorway of the parlour and smiled at her.

  “First,” she said, “although Geraint Tombley doesn’t know it, he is going over to Denmark for six weeks. He is going to see Danish pigs.”

  “Lucky devil,” said Carey. “Who’s arranging it? You?”

  “In collaboration with friends,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You don’t think he’ll refuse the invitation?”

  “Good heavens, no! He means to run Roman Ending on a different system now that Simith’s dead. The old boy left him everything, of course.”

  “So for about a fortnight we do nothing in particular. If we could get rid of Priest for a few hours, once Tombley is out of the way, I’d like to make a thorough exploration of Roman Ending. I know the police have searched the house and found nothing, but I don’t feel perfectly satisfied. The trouble with this case is that it looks like Tombley, it feels like Tombley, Tombley had the means and the motive, and yet it isn’t Tombley. But I’m having the most terrible difficulty in holding off the inspector.”

  “You don’t think Tombley did it?”

  “I can’t think Tombley did it. It’s all too foolish and too theatrical for Tombley. He isn’t like this murder. He isn’t this kind of a fool.”

  “Yet the evidence, what there is of it, seems to point to him. I still think he has much the strongest motive.”

  “I’m not too sure about that. But he wouldn’t have risen from Fay’s side, gone out and killed his uncle, taken the body to Shotover, come back and climbed in again beside Fay. It’s unbelievable. Besides, I know the deaths of Fossder and Simith are connected.”

  “How? Those bits of heraldry, you mean?”

  “The local legends, too. It’s rather too much of a coincidence, surely, for one man to be killed by the Sandford ghost, and another by the Shotover boar, if there’s no connection at all between the deaths. And then the arrow on the wall of Temple Farm, and the arrow in the nave of Horsepath Church—”

  “I understand you. You think Maurice Pratt did the murders, don’t you, Aunt Adela?”

  “I don’t feel I know Maurice Pratt. I shall have to make his acquaintance. But there’s nothing at present to connect him with the deaths except much the same motive as Tombley’s—the desire to win a position which will enable him to marry and maintain that poor little wretched Fay.”

  “M-yes,” said Carey. “But the motive is thinner in Pratt’s case than in Tombley’s, surely, isn’t it? Seems to me that having Fossder’s consent to the engagement was a big step in the right direction. Can’t see why he should hound his future wife’s uncle to death, said uncle being entirely on his side. It was Tombley, I still say, who wanted Fossder dead. Gives him a chance to establish himself with the aunt. Then he kills his own uncle, Simith, to get the property, then he—”

  “Kills Maurice Pratt to get Fay, and then he lives happy ever after, if the hangman doesn’t lay him by the heels,” said Mrs. Bradley with a hoot of laughter, poking her nephew in the ribs. Carey got away from the yellow forefinger.

  “I don’t care what you say, love. It all hangs together very well,” he argued determinedly. Mrs. Bradley nodded.

  “I know it does, child. And I know it is what my nice inspector thinks. But at present, thank goodness, he can’t prove it. He’s a very conscientious man, and he has searched Roman Ending and Shotover Plain and Hill, and every yard between them, I imagine, and hasn’t found a single material clue, except the blood of the pig. And as nobody at Roman Ending has chosen to report that the herd is one pig short—”

  “My boar ought to be a clue. I say, Aunt Adela, suppose you had not examined Simith’s body and found those bruises and drawn attention to them and to the broken nose, do you think a verdict of ‘death by misadventure’ might have been brought in?”

  “With a rider from the jury advising pig farmers to keep their boars under better control?” said Mrs. Bradley ironically. “No, child. That’s what I mean when I say that the murderer cannot have been Tombley.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, we will assume, for the purpose of my argument, that Simith was killed at Roman Ending.”

  “I thought that had been established.”

  “No, child, only surmised. If once it were established, my inspector would certainly apply for a warrant for Geraint Tombley’s arrest.”

  “But Fay, you said, would swear to him. I thought that was your reason for getting Fay to declare she had spent the night with Tombley—to give him an alibi.”

  “That alibi would fare very badly in court. It would probably be regarded as perjury on the girl’s part. It would be assumed that she was providing it to save her lover. I wanted a theory of my own confirmed, and Fay confirmed it, but I shouldn’t dream of advising Tombley to take that alibi into court, my dear, even if he decided to do so—a point which seems very doubtful.”

  “Oh,” said Carey, blankly. “But Mrs. Ditch could support it, couldn’t she?”

  “She could support the Christmas Eve alibi, perhaps. But neither she, nor, as a matter of fact, Fay, can give him an alibi for Boxing Night after your pigs began to complain so bitterly. You remember?”

  “Oh, yes, I remember. The snow. And so beastly cold. So Tombley left Fay, and came down to see to the pigs?”

  “It seems so. As a pigkeeper, child, how does that strike you? Was it reasonable, would you say?”

  “Oh, quite. Absolutely natural. Like teachers with kids, you know. I taught in a boys’ prep school for a couple of years, and I couldn’t, for ages afterwards, see a kid doing something he ought not to without feeling that unholy zeal for interference which one acquires as part of the system. Same now about pigs. If I heard pigs in trouble, I should hasten pigwards without a second thought. The whole thing is unhealthy and morbid, and strictly on the lines of the so-called maternal instinct—but there it is.”

  “You relieve my mind. Let us assume, then, that Tombley obeyed a deep-seated pigkeeping urge, and went to the pigs’ assistance. What do you think happened next?”

  “He heard Ditch and me, and remembered they weren’t his pigs, and went back to bed like a sensible fellow,” said Carey.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, waving a yellow forefinger and speaking with unholy relish, “but that’s just what he didn’t do, child. At least, it doesn’t appear that that’s what he did.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. Mrs. Ditch says she didn’t hear him return, so that does away with her as a witness, doesn’t it? And, more curious still, Fay says she fell asleep before Tombley returned to the bed, and the next thing she knew was that he woke her at five o’clock next morning.”

  “And was he dressed or undressed?”

  “Dear me,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I didn’t ask her that.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because I didn’t think it important.”

  “But if he’d only just returned—from Shotover, say—he’d be dressed.”

  “And if he were the murderer of his uncle, he would probably have had the forethought to undress and so give the girl the impression that he had been back a much longer time than was really the case. Don’t you think so?”

  “I suppose so, yes,” said Carey. “So he hasn’t got an alibi for the most important hours of Boxing Night?”

  “Not a smell of one,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But I attach some importance to the fact that he has one for Christmas Eve.”

  “Not that Fossder’s death can ever be classed as murder now, Aunt Adela.”

  “No. But—”

  “I know. What you said before. The deaths are connected. I see. Well, how do we go from here?”

  “Well, the fact that Tombley came here on Boxing Night to sleep with Fay helps him to this extent: that Simith was left alone during some of the hours of darkness; that, therefore, people other than Tombley could have got at him to kill him, and that, according to Priest, quarrelling was going on in the kitchen
at Roman Ending and became so noisy that he thought he would make himself scarce and leave Linda Ditch to slip off home.”

  “Linda? Oh, the priest’s hole! It has got an outlet at Roman Ending, then?”

  “Difficult to say. She certainly got back here dry shod, but, as I said before, I expect she went barefoot. Besides, I don’t really suppose she lay in a woodshed with Priest in her best party frock, you know. It’s a nuisance she’s such a liar. That passage from your cellar doesn’t go any further than the barn. It certainly doesn’t go to Roman Ending. She tried to persuade me it did.”

  “She’s a daisy!” And Carey laughed. “Some people know how to keep Christmas, at all events,” he said. “I suppose I ought to sack Mrs. Ditch for loaning out my premises to Tombley and young Fay! Where did they sleep, by the way?”

  “Next door to me,” said Mrs. Bradley, chuckling. “But, bless you, I didn’t hear them, and, if I had, I should never have thought it was Fay. I should have plumped for Tombley and Linda Ditch. Oh, and by the way, child, it’s a good thing for you that you got up and went to see your pigs.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Pressed hard by me about the voices that he heard quarrelling in the kitchen at Roman Ending, Priest indicated that one was Simith’s, and the other, he thought, was yours!”

  “Hm!” said Carey. He looked at her expectantly. “Ever heard Maurice Pratt talk? Yes, of course you have! Well, don’t you agree with me, a born and bred Oxfordshire bloke like Priest might easily mix us up? We don’t really talk the same language, but—that give you anything to go on?”

  “I had thought of it for myself,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Of course, it means little or nothing. There must be hundreds of semi-educated people who speak in much the same way.” She poked him in the ribs. “But I’m glad you’re safely accounted for,” she added.

  “But I’ve no call to murder old Simith,” said Carey.

  “One never knows,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly. “Motives for murder are extraordinary things. What kind of a place is Cowley, child? Could we go and walk about there at some time, do you think?”

  “Half a minute,” said Carey. “Cowley? Oh, yes, any time you like. Tombley spent most of his young life there, I believe.”

  “That is important, you know,” said Mrs. Bradley, “because it seems fairly certain that he was not connected with the Bampton quarrels of Fossder and Simith. But what were you going to say to me, my dear?”

  “Reconstruction of the crime, love. Go ahead. Simith was killed at Roman Ending. Somebody snatched his chair away as he went to sit down, fell on him and half throttled him, perhaps banged his head on the floor to knock him out, lugged the body to old Nero’s sty, bunged it in, watched the boar savage Simith, and then—”

  “And then kept the boar off with a hosepipe (which, incidentally, cleaned the blood off the boar and out of the sty), fished Simith’s body out when the boar had backed into his sleeping shed, carried the body over here, stole Hereward, took Hereward and the body to Shotover, planted the body, loosed the boar to make tracks where they would be seen, brought the boar back, and went home to bed.”

  Carey looked at her reproachfully.

  “Golly,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Is that the inspector’s version, or your own?”

  “Both, child,” said Mrs. Bradley innocently. “I invented it, the inspector tested it, and we both swear that we swear by it. If you know of a better reconstruction, tell it me.”

  “But the fellow must have been mad!”

  “Why so?”

  “Just think of the risk!”

  “Very slight.”

  “Well, it still sounds to me like Tombley.”

  “I don’t think so. In any case, Tombley would not have brought Hereward back to Old Farm. He’d have left him roaming the wastes and the woods of Shotover. He’d have let him stray over Horsepath Common and into the village and on to the railway line—anything to get the boar noticed. He’d even have plastered him with blood—and human blood at that—”

  “Local colour?” said Carey. “But you’re wrong, you know, about Tombley. The same psychological factor that caused him to leave Fay and risk his alibi—if it was one—and creep down to see to my pigs when he heard them crying, would have made him bring the boar back to its home and its warmth and its food. You can’t have it both ways, love!”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Furthermore,” said Carey earnestly, his eyes alight with amusement, “you can’t prove that the pigs began crying before he came down to see to them. Mrs. Ditch may be a prize liar. He may have been the person who took out Hereward and disturbed the other animals. In any case, love, you know enough about boars to be certain that if anybody handled Nero and, later, Hereward, that person is much more likely to have been Tombley than Pratt. Ask yourself! Tombley the pig farmer: Pratt the solicitor. Which one handled two boars in one night without being hurt by either?”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley again.

  “Well?” said Carey triumphantly.

  “You stagger me, child.” She grinned. “I wonder where Tombley is now?”

  “Let’s both stroll over to Roman Ending and see.”

  “No, child. I’m going to wait until Tombley has gone to Denmark. Then, when the coast is clear, I’ll go over to Roman Ending and turn it inside out. There must be evidence some­where.”

  “Why won’t you believe that Tombley did it?”

  “It isn’t that I won’t believe it. At present I can’t believe it.”

  “God bless the girl,” said Carey. He gave her a swift kiss on her yellow cheek. “Never mind. Let’s have some grub.”

  He yodelled cheerfully, and Mrs. Ditch came hastening.

  “You see,” said Mrs. Bradley, when the meal was on the table and Mrs. Ditch had gone, “the flaw in your reasoning about Tombley is this: if he heard the pigs crying because they had been disturbed, he was not the person who had disturbed them. From that we may infer, I submit, that he was not the murderer. But, if he was the murderer, he disturbed the pigs and that is why they cried, and therefore your point with regard to his kind-hearted feelings towards pigs becomes void.”

  Carey, who had a drink halfway to his lips, replaced it on the table and shook his head at her.

  “You know, you’ll come to a very bad end,” he said, “and, what is more, your specious arguments don’t outweigh my other, consid­erably more important, point that Tombley would have been able to handle the boars and Pratt almost certainly would not.”

  “ ‘Almost certainly’ is good,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But suppose I could prove that Priest had handled the boars? Would you then believe in Tombley’s innocence?”

  Carey looked at her sideways. “You will see that I have nothing up my sleeve,” he said, with a wink and a chuckle.

  Chapter Twelve

  DIB AND STRIKE AT ROMAN ENDING

  “You must entice Priest from Roman Ending, child,” said Mrs. Bradley, just over a fortnight later, “whilst I have a look round by myself. Can you get him away for a couple of hours, do you think?”

  “I’ll try,” said Carey. He wondered. “I can. I’ll tell him I’m going over to Garsington. I know there’s a man there that he wants to see. I’ll offer to take him over in the sidecar.”

  “Won’t he be suspicious at being got out of the way?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. In any case, I’m doubtful whether you’ll find any evidence worth having after all this time at Roman Ending.”

  “I can but try,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning. “I’ll give you twenty minutes’ start. That ought to be sufficient. Which way shall you go to Garsington from there?”

  “Oh, I shall come round by the road and go through Wheatly. If you take the path through the wood we shouldn’t run any risk of meeting you on the way.”

  Mrs. Bradley stood at the farmhouse door and watched him drive down the lane. Then she went inside the house, sat down, and looked at h
er watch, her notebook, and, later, again at her watch. Then she put on her hat and coat, took a stout ash stick from an umbrella stand near the front door, and set out through the wood and across the fields towards Roman Ending.

  The afternoon was cloudy and rather cold. A nagging little wind was blowing north-eastwards, and the sky gave promise of snow. It was quiet and a little warmer in the wood, for the trees kept off the wind. The path wound serpentwise round the boles of trees, and a robin hopped in Mrs. Bradley’s path, so tame that she could almost come up to it before it flew along. Beyond the wood the fields were desolate. A hawk hovered, fairly high, over a long and gradually sloping landscape. A quarter of a mile away loomed Stanton Great Wood, dark blue with its wintry sea of branches, stark with its great bare limbs.

  Mrs. Bradley screwed up her keen black eyes and looked to where the house at Roman Ending shouldered off a couple of barns and a little farmyard hayrick, and presented a blank early ninteenth-century respectability to the eyes of a curious world; for even to the quiet village of Stanton St. John there had come sensation seekers anxious to see the home of a murdered man. When Mrs. Bradley arrived, however, the house and its environs were deserted, except for the pigs. She glanced about her, and then explored the immediate surroundings of the house. One of the barns was in use as a storehouse for the various kinds of pig foods from which extra diet was mixed. The woodshed bore out Priest’s assertion that he and Linda had slept in it. There was a rough couch of sacking on the floor, with bolster, pillows, and blankets. Beside the bed was a table, old and precariously balanced on three legs instead of four. A candle in a saucer, a workman’s billy, a labourer’s leather belt, and a couple of dubiously-clean large handkerchiefs were upon the table. In the floor, in a corner of the shed, was a slab with an iron ring. Mrs. Bradley examined it. The slab had been lifted not very long before; so much was obvious. She herself tried to lift it, but her slight weight was not sufficient to raise it even an inch. She stamped about over the floor, and banged her stick down, to locate the hollow sounds which should indicate some sort of cellar. The cellar was not as large as the shed, it seemed. To the north and northwest it did not ring hollow at all.