The fourth line stated:
“Served September MsoNormal13, 1930, by Westacre King David MsoNormal96. Vol. MsoNormal47.”
Mrs. Bradley took the book, and, seating herself on the sofa, patted the place beside her. Carey crossed the room, and seated himself.
“Aha!” said Mrs. Bradley. The entries had been altered as under:
“Lot MsoNormal60—Gilt edged, not until January 193?. Spouse—Bampton foot up by MsoNormal166.”
The second line was altered to:
“Dam—no matter go West Surprise Heston would do.”
The third read:
“D.v. bMGP surprised 31st 1836 by Bold Baron Round Table.”
The fourth line was nearly all crossed out, and consisted of the first word, “Served.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Carey, who had read it through six times.
“I’m afraid it must,” said Mrs. Bradley placidly, “if somebody was so anxious to get hold of it.”
“What makes you think of Tombley this time? Fay?”
“Yes, child, and the description in line three.”
“Can’t see any description in line three.”
“Or it might be a signature, of course,” said Mrs. Bradley, pursing her beaky little mouth and stubbing her finger towards the end of the line. Carey shook his head.
“I think I ought to get hold of Fay again,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly. “Meanwhile, I badly want to know who closed the hole in the floor, and where the underground passage really goes, if it does branch off at all. I also want to talk to Priest’s landlady. But all must wait until tomorrow.” She sighed with pleasure at the prospect.
“You don’t think the passage really comes out here, into the priest’s hole Denis found?”
“We’ll see. But next time you will stay on guard, and I shall take George as henchman. And, by the way, I think we should hide this book. Can you suggest a good place?”
“There’s my safe. You could put it in there.”
“The chance that Fay and Jenny are able to force a safe is sufficiently remote to encourage me to accept your offer, child. Take the book and put it away for me, then.”
Third Figure
PARSON’S PLEASURE
The Side-step is, perhaps, the most graceful, as it is indubitably the most troublesome of all the steps of the Morris dance. The difficulty lies in adapting the step to the character of the dance, or of the music.
Cecil J. Sharp and Herbert C. Macilwaine,
THE MORRIS BOOK
Chapter Thirteen
STICK-TAPPING AT OLD FARM
“Buried Simith’s bed, ee thenk, or burnt et,” said the inspector, eyeing Mrs. Bradley with interest. “Right you are, mam. I’ll be putten a couple of fellers on the job right away, I reckon. Happen et won’t help us; happen et well. Can’t tell, as the sayen is. Obliged to ee, all the same. Ought to ’ave sen et myself.”
“And now for this wretched passage,” said Carey, when the inspector had gone. “Where are you going to start—this end or at Roman Ending?”
“Roman Ending!” said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully. “I wonder where the name comes from? Was there a villa hereabouts, do you know?”
“I don’t. I only know that a bit of the Roman road runs identically with the highway on the fork from Headington Quarry which comes this way on the west side of the village about two miles from here. It runs south from Headington Quarry in a footpath, skirting Shotover Hill and Brasenose Wood and meeting the road that joins Horsepath and Temple Cowley just south of Bullingdon Green.”
“Ah yes,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Well, child, I don’t want to disappoint you, but, before we explore the possibilities that Old Farm and Roman Ending are connected by a passage—a matter of secondary importance in the case, I rather suspect—I want to see the widow with whom Priest used to lodge.”
“He still lodges there, madam,” said George, outside the door. He had been sent for to show Mrs. Bradley the way to the cottage. “Mrs. Priest lodges there too, and shares his bed and board, when she gets time off from her situation, I believe.”
“Very nicely and modestly expressed, George,” said Mrs. Bradley, with an eldritch shriek of mirth which started up a collection of sparrows outside who were busily picking up grain which Ditch had dropped when he carried the pig food out. “Lead on. What’s the name of the widow? Is she respectable?”
“Her name is Mrs. Templeton, and she’s perfectly respectable, madam, although somewhat hard of hearing,” George replied.
“I’ll go the round of the pig sheds whilst you’re gone. I want to see how my Tamworths are settling in,” called Carey, after her. Mrs. Bradley waved a skinny claw. She went through the gate politely held open by George, and walked up the cart track to the road. Side by side she and George climbed the slope, walked past fields and the rushing brook, then past cottages and the post office, until they reached the church.
“To the left here, madam. Mrs. Templeton lives along this arm of the village. Here we are, madam. Yes, this one, thatched with straw.”
Mrs. Templeton was at home, and seemed suspicious.
“I hope ee ent brought them there police, you-young-I-say,” she observed, staring hard at George. George indicated his employer.
“Madam and I are here in a private capacity, Mrs. Templeton,” he said, disarmingly.
“Oh, ah,” said the woman. She looked older than her age because she wore a grey woollen shawl. Her voice was drawling and peevish and rather high pitched. It gave the effect of a whine. Whether she was really hard of hearing it was not easy to say. She seemed to hear Mrs. Bradley. “Come in, mam, ef ee must. The vicar was here this marnen.”
“Really?” said Mrs. Bradley. George remained outside. “You can go home, George. I can find my own way back,” she added. George saluted and went. “And did you enjoy the murder?” Mrs. Bradley proceeded, as Mrs. Templeton, apparently most unwillingly, dusted a chair for her.
“Et’s desgraceful,” said Mrs. Templeton, straightening an antimacassar on the back of a red plush armchair, and a photograph frame on the what-not. “I don’t know what the country’s comen to! What’s that there League of Nations doen? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Quite,” said Mrs. Bradley. “So you thought it very odd?”
“Well, ain ’t it odd? A respectable man as has lived on his farm for years, and Oxfordshire born, though not in these parts, tes true, to be found on Shotover Common like the poor young feller in the story?”
“But I thought the poor young fellow remained alive? I thought he pushed a volume of Aristotle’s philosophy down the boar’s throat, and so escaped safely back to Queen’s College,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Let them as likes believe et,” said Mrs. Templeton, darkly. “’Ave ee ever been chased by a boar? I’ll back ee ’aven’t, or ee wouldn’t be talken so gleb.”
“Well, no,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but I must say I thought it strange that your lodger, Priest, did not sleep here on Boxing Night.”
“Strange? Ongrateful, I calls et. And now to wed with that there Lender Detch, who, everyone know, esn’t any then better then er shud be, no matter who er mother were, ner how respectable neethier. Nice goen’s on, I should thenk! I says to Jem Priest the very first theng next mornen, I says, ‘that ee should be layen with gals, sted of comen ’ome nice to your supper,’ I says to him straight, ‘that esn’t ’uman.’ Supper first, and gals come later. That’s the way o’ the world! But there! He only laughs! What can you do with ’em, I ask ee? All as bad as one another. Crook their lettle fenger and up come all they gals. Thenk they’d know better, wouldn’t ee? But there! Mother’s teachen, parson’s preachen—tes all one to them! En at one ear ’ole and out at t’other, and whestlen up they boys the way we’d a’ thought ourselves trollopsen ’ussies ef ever we’d dared to do likewise! But them! They’re bold as brass, and that there Lender the boldest!”
“So he was out all night, but went back to his lod
gings for an early breakfast,” said Carey, when Mrs. Bradley, returning for lunch, had told him of the conversation. Mrs. Bradley nodded.
“But nothing else could I gather. That’s all the woman knows, I’m perfectly certain. So after lunch we’ll try the passage, child, and then I want to see Maurice Pratt, if you can think of a way in which that can be managed.”
“Easy enough. Go over to Iffley for a talk with Fay and Jenny. Tell them you saw them yesterday at Roman Ending, confront them with the book on pigkeeping, and extort a full confession.”
“Hm!” said Mrs. Bradley. “We’ll try the passage first.” They went into the priest’s hole and subjected it to another careful search, but the little chamber seemed as bare and innocent as before.
“Bother you!” said Carey, looking all round the tiny room. “Come along, Aunt Adela. Don’t let us waste more time. What ho! for Iffley. We’ll give those girls a shock.”
“I don’t think I want to,” said Mrs. Bradley, betraying, for once, a hint of indecision in her tone. “I don’t think it would do much good, dear child. There’s Maurice Pratt to consider. . . .” They paused and considered him. Then Carey said, “Going back to Priest—”
“I have, child. Ever so many times. But the same objection, in an even stronger form, applies to him as to Tombley.”
“The folklore part of the business?”
“Exactly. Now, Maurice Pratt is interested in folklore. Jenny told Hugh that, long enough ago. I wish I could devise some way of finding out to what extent he’s interested, and what particular aspect of the subject takes his fancy.”
“Probably a dilettante, you know. I vote we go into the kitchen and have another go at Mrs. Ditch.”
Maurice Pratt himself was in the kitchen, a thin young man with long, untidy hair, the colour of half ripe corn if the corn were dirty, elegant hands, very large, and proving clearly what might otherwise have remained theoretical only, that their owner was actually male. His face was pallid and soulful, his eyes were large and blue. He was executing, unnecessarily badly, Carey thought, some Morris steps, under the slightly sardonic eye of the second youngest Ditch.
“Ee gotter bring each foot forward, not peck ’em up,” Our Bob repeated firmly. “And ee doesn’t dance up on them toes, but on to the broad o’ the shoe. And sweng that there leg from the joint. Keep the knee straight, not so steff as all that there; and now ee must ’old up your ’ead.”
“Heavens!” said the pupil, in a high, rather throaty voice. “And one wanted to go to classes at Cecil Sharp House when one took one’s summer vacation!”
“Ee’ll be able to go to classes, ah, and show ’em all ’ow to do et, too and all,” said Mrs. Ditch encouragingly, as she stood with arms akimbo and watched his emasculate prancings. “Can’t expect to peck all up in a menute, ee can’t, sir, can ee? Do ee gev Mr. Pratt a bet of a rest, Our Bob, and show him sommat fresh, for to comfort him with ’emself, now, there’s a good boy.”
At this moment she observed that Mrs. Bradley and Carey had entered the kitchen. She introduced the pupil.
“’Open as ee ’aven’t no objection, I’m sure, Mr. Carey, but tes for the Whetsun dancen, by special request. Ee knows Mr. Pratt from Effley way. Our Bob be learnen him ’ow to dance Trunkles, seemenly, but he don’t make much of a show, not so far, like.”
Pratt bowed, and Mrs. Bradley beamed.
“One desires to learn the Morris, Mrs. Bradley, the more particularly since one is advised by one’s medical man to reorientate the lumber region with skipping, jogging, leaping, and the like. And finding oneself in the very cradle of the dance—”
“Headington?” said Mrs. Bradley brightly.
“One was impressed—but naturally impressed”—crooned Mr. Pratt, dropping his voice to a low caressing note, and gazing at Mrs. Bradley soulfully—“by the uniquely aesthetic nature of one’s opportunities.”
“I believe you’d do,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly, as though she had sized him up. “Put on a coat, dear child, and then cool off a little, and then come along with me. Tell me, are you a claustrophobe, do you know?”
Pratt, making mild bleating noises, put on a black velvet jacket, and arranged a cerise silk handkerchief round his neck.
“One has reason to believe oneself perfectly normal,” he chanted. He looked doubtfully at his black suède shoes, then added abruptly and nervously, “One isn’t going out to see pigs!”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Bradley, bustling him along the passage. “As one is not a claustrophobe, one is going to explore a priest’s hole behind some panelling.” She grinned ironically.
“Is one indeed. Most jolly!” said Pratt, politely, but with faint enthusiasm. Mrs. Bradley hustled him into the parlour and left him standing just inside the doorway whilst she lighted all the candles in the room. Then she opened the door in the woodwork and beckoned him forward.
“One leaves the door open, of course?” said Pratt, advancing as though he were hypnotised. Mrs. Bradley gave him a candle and a box of matches.
“Well, no,” she said, urging him onward. “Seventeenth century. Really exceedingly interesting.” Raising a yellow hand, she pushed him in and shut the door with some firmness. She listened. The wood was thick. Although Pratt, on the other side of the panelling, was beating with both his fists and wailing shrilly, not a sound could be heard in the parlour.
“Nothing like putting in a rabbit to find the way out of a rabbit hole,” said Carey cheerfully, coming up close behind her. “Now, what do you want us to do?”
“I want George and Ditch and a couple of the young Ditches to go over to Roman Ending. Two of them, legally or illegally, are to get Priest out of the way, and then explore the passage at that end. I’ve told George where it is, and all about it. You and I, child, will watch the rabbit hole, as you call it, and see where the rabbit comes out!”
“But what about that poor fish in there if the priest’s hole hasn’t an outlet?”
“In a quarter of an hour,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly, “we will open the door and let him out. That is, unless he’s found another opening.”
They waited in silence. At the end of fifteen minutes Carey stood by, and Mrs. Bradley pressed the knob of the panelling. No one was in the priest’s hole. Maurice Pratt had gone.
“So far, so good,” said Mrs. Bradley cheerfully.
The parlour door opened and Maurice Pratt walked in.
“May one intrude?” he asked, advancing towards the candlelight.
“Good heavens, Pratt!” exclaimed Carey. “You haven’t walked from Roman Ending, have you?”
“Roman Ending?” said Pratt. “An enticing name. One feels one has heard it before. A village, one supposes. One knew that the Roman Road called Akeman Street passed this side of Marsh Baldon on its way to Wallingford, but one has not heard of the hamlet of Roman End.”
“Ending,” said Carey. “It’s not a village; it’s a farm. Simith’s place. You must have heard of it.”
“Simith? Oh, yes. Very sad. Really most odd, one felt. First Mr. Fossder, one’s late partner, and then Mr. Simith, at one time his greatest friend. One almost felt a connection somewhere. Impossible, one supposes, but the feeling persisted, believe one or not, for a week.”
“And now has gone?” said Mrs. Bradley, eyeing him with foxy, female, sycophantic admiration. Carey picked up a book and removed himself to his favourite chair to read. Mrs. Bradley patted the settee, and Pratt sat down beside her. “What did you think of the story of Napier’s ghost?” she asked him in a whisper. Pratt looked pained.
“One regarded it as a not-too-brilliant camouflage of what really happened,” he said.
“And what was that?” asked Mrs. Bradley sweedy.
“One reconstructs as follows: one’s sister-in-law-to-be has a wild ebullient nature. What more feasible than that she should play a jest on her uncle and guardian? The result she has not foreseen. The overtaxed heart fails; one’s uncle falls dead. One is, from the girl’s point of vie
w, naturally and deeply agitated. What is one to do? Ah, fortunately one is accompanied by one’s lover, Hugh, Carey’s own capable young friend.” He inclined his head in homage towards Carey. “One’s lover knows the story of the Sandford ghost. Voilà! Nobody else was there. The story passes the critics. Nothing can save one’s uncle. One did not intend his death. One can trust one’s lover not to talk in his cups.”
He paused dramatically. Mrs. Bradley clapped her hands. The rings on her yellow fingers flashed in the light of the fire.
“Or, of course, it might have been one’s young acquaintance Hugh who killed Mr. Fossder,” she said. Pratt brushed aside the idea.
“Improbable. The whole story, to the trained mind, is an obvious fabrication invented to stay the remorse of a terrified, hysterical girl. One has met such girls. One has lived in the house with this one. Modern life is lived too fast to suit such persons. Would it interest you to know”—he put his lips to Mrs. Bradley’s ear—“that already she is repenting of her engagement? The little room, by the way,” he added, in his ordinary tones, “had an outlet in another part of the house. In one of the privies, as a matter of actual fact. Very ingenious. One leapt up to open the window, and as one struck the wall a panel crept open and in one went. A short passage led to steps. At the top one found a trap door. One pushed it up without meeting much resistance. Such as was offered came from a small rectangular mat which effectively concealed all trace of the trap door from the top.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Bradley. “Exceedingly diverting! Are you interested in the architecture of old houses, Mr. Pratt?”
“One vaguely likes them. One cannot pretend to knowledge. One recognises salient features, of course. Actually, one confesses to a preference for ecclesiastical architecture. The domestic is not sufficiently impersonal.”
“Well, since I’ve been living in Oxfordshire,” said Mrs. Bradley, nodding, “I’ve visited more churches than in all the rest of my life.” (This was by no means true.) “Horsepath Church, for example, I liked very much. And this one here at Stanton St. John is delightful. Transition. Early English to Decorated. Reign of Edward the First. The chancel is particularly fine. The chancel arch is transitional Norman. The poppy head pews, carved in the likeness of curious human heads, are most distinctive. Don’t tell me you haven’t been in! Then, of course, there is Bampton. Do you know Bampton at all?”
Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley) Page 21
