Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Mrs. Bradley looked at him and sighed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ALL IN AND CALL AT STANTON ST. JOHN

  Whit-Monday morning was brilliant. Ditch was up at half-past four, and Mrs. Ditch was taking early morning tea to Mrs. Bradley less than half an hour later.

  “Be ee comen to see they lads of ourn a-dancen round the maypole afore em do begin the Morris prarper?” she enquired, as Mrs. Bradley, drawing a magenta wrapper round her thin old shoulders, took the tea and commenced to sip it delicately. Mrs. Bradley raised her bright black eyes. She looked more like a witch than ever, Mrs. Ditch decided, and, superstition triumphant for once in her usually practical mind, she crossed her fingers, averted her gaze and looked towards the window. A rose, stirred gently by an early morning breeze, knocked gently against the open casement, and a bird on the sill flew suddenly and noisily away towards the heavy, summer trees.

  “I shall get up immediately,” Mrs. Bradley said.

  “Very good, mam. Ef ee ’earkens en a menute, ee’ll be ’earen the Morris tune. That be to call the dancers, and when ee ’ears et, ee might as well be getten up, like, see?”

  “Perfectly,” said Mrs. Bradley. She finished her tea and Mrs. Ditch took the cup and went away. Sure enough, in a little while, the sound of a thin tune liltingly played on a violin came in at the open window. She got out of bed, a thin little yellow faced woman, upright, and curiously vivacious even in her quietest movements, and walked across the room to look out on to the farmyard. Near the gate stood Denis in flannels and school blazer, his violin under his chin, his bow in his thin brown hand, a silk scarf about his neck with the ends dangling down in front, and—shades of the public school to which he was going in the autumn!—a wreath of artificial roses placed sideways on his thick, fair hair. Mrs. Bradley put her head out and screamed at him like a macaw.

  “Come down!” bellowed Denis. “It’s glorious out here this morning! Carey says I’m the Queen of the May!” He gave the ridiculous wreath a further shove to the side.

  “You look Bacchanalian, child! I want a wreath!” cried his great-aunt, withdrawing her head. Very soon she was dressed and downstairs. Carey met her as she got to the front door of the house.

  “Scab is playing the Morris tune to get the dancers together. Hugh’s idea,” he said. “Hugh and Tombley are mowing the grass in front of Roman Ending. That’s where the dancers finish up. They’ll dance in the village first, then we shall have the sit-down lunch in our yard—we’re borrowing tables from every house in the village, I should think!—then they’re going to dance here, and again outside the church, and last of all we’re going to Roman Ending, where Tombley’s giving a tea. It’s going to be marvellous weather! Come and have breakfast. Scab will be in in a minute. He’s got to play that tune once more outside the vicarage, that’s all. We won’t wait breakfast for Hugh, as he isn’t a dancer. I’ve got to get into my whites when I’ve fed the pigs, and then we’re all set until lunch time.”

  “Delightful!” said Mrs. Bradley. “And here is our friend the inspector!”

  “Ask him to breakfast, then.” Carey lifted his head and yodelled for Mrs. Ditch. She appeared with a large blue pinafore completely covering the front of her very best bodice and skirt. Her face shone, polished as an apple, and her hair was drawn so tighdy back from her temples, that it seemed as though the combs that held it in place must surely burst from their moorings and drift her grey hairs to the breeze.

  “Delightful,” said Mrs. Bradley. She herself was wearing a costume of pale purple cloth. In lieu of the wreath she had craved, she wore on her head a small toque completely covered with yellow velvet pansies. Her shooting stick stood in the corner, and in the capacious pocket of her skirt was a life preserver of handy weight and size.

  “Aha!” she said. “Inspector!”

  The inspector put his head in, over a window box of yellow calceolaria.

  “Present, mam, and Charlie is en the lane.”

  “Fetch him along,” said Carey. “Come and have breakfast, both of you.”

  Hugh returned to find them at the last-cup-of-coffee stage. Mrs. Ditch brought him ham and eggs and blackpudding. Denis, who had returned to the house soon after the commencement of the meal, had gone again, his wreath still stuck on his head. Carey looked at the clock.

  “Time I fed those pigs and got changed,” he said, getting up and leaving the table. Mrs. Bradley got up and followed him.

  “I suppose you haven’t seen Priest this morning?” she said.

  “Well, no, I haven’t. But he’s due over here in half an hour or so. We begin outside the ‘George,’ go on to the ‘Star’ and then the ‘White Horse,’ then we dance in the road by the gate of the church before we come back here. We have to have rests in between, and it’s Priest’s job, as Fool, you know, to keep the crowds back to give us room to dance, and then when we have danced, to collect the money. He’s not a bit a good man for the job, I’m afraid. The Fool is supposed to make jokes and keep the crowd jolly, so that they’ll part with their cash, but you know what a taciturn devil he is—never has a word to say unless it’s in answer to a question.”

  “Does he paint his face?”

  “Yes, I think so. Perhaps he’ll black it this year. Hugh wanted a hobby-horse, but we’ve never had one, and Ditch didn’t want innovations. Not that the hobby-horse is really an innovation. It’s as old as the hills—well, as old as the Morris, anyway, I should think. What are you going to do? Coming with me to feed the pigs?”

  “Yes, I’ll come with you while you’re still fond of me,” Mrs. Bradley said, grinning. Her grin was not mirthful. It was a grimace of distaste and anxiety. Carey looked at her.

  “What’s up, love? Sickening for something?”

  “No, child, I don’t think so.”

  “Cheer up, then! All’s well and the weather fine!”

  “All isn’t well, and I think it’s going to thunder before midnight.”

  “One confesses,” said Pratt to Mrs. Bradley, who, with Jenny, Fay, and Hugh, was walking from Old Farm to the rendezvous of the dancers for the commencement of the display, “to a feeling of nervousness to which one can only compare one’s emotions on the occasion of one’s first cricket match.”

  “Oh, do you play cricket?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. Jenny broke in on the question before Pratt could frame a reply.

  “Play cricket? I should think he does! He’s a jolly good deep field, and is one of the reserves for the county.”

  “The county,” said Pratt, with modesty, “is weak this season, one fears.”

  Mrs. Bradley regarded his weedy form with new respect. “Have you got your Morris stick, Maurice?” Fay asked suddenly. “One believes that the leader, Ditch, is responsible for the properties.”

  “It’s a big responsibility for Ditch,” Mrs. Bradley observed. “I do hope he’s going to feel that the day is worth it.”

  “It’s a bigger responsibility for me,” said Carey, as he dropped behind for a moment to tie up a trailing boot lace. “I’ve got to feed the village.” The others began to linger, but Mrs. Bradley made a sign to Jenny, and she walked on ahead, with her half-sister and Hugh in tow.

  “Very nicely done, child. Now I must say it quickly. Look out for yourself. Don’t worry, but, if in doubt, hit out with your Morris stick as if you were hitting a six. Be no respecter of persons. Don’t stop to think, ‘It can’t be.’ Hit your hardest!”

  “But whom am I to look out for?”

  “If I told you that, you would give the game away.”

  “One hopes that one is discreet, as Pratt would say.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. But, child, be guided by me. The police must catch this man! I can’t have another murder. I couldn’t prevent the first two, but I can and will prevent this. I’m warning you because your nerves will stand it.”

  “I’m a long sight less certain of that than you appear to be.”

  “You had better pull yourself together
, then, and take heart of grace, dear child. And just look after Jenny when the Morris dancing is finished. That girl is in love with you, Carey. Now forget all this, and dance your very best. Nothing will happen until after lunch, I promise!”

  They caught up the others, who were loitering.

  “Maurice Pratt has been telling us that he no longer knows his right hand from his left,” said Jenny, giggling.

  “Rotten to get the needle,” said Hugh sympathetically. “Never mind, Pratt. It’ll be over long before tomorrow.”

  “One realises that. One finds peculiarly little comfort in the thought. However, one is grateful for all kind words and good wishes.” He looked at Jenny. Jenny kindly took his hand in hers and gave it a heartening squeeze.

  “Cheer up, duckie,” she said. “Look, here we are.”

  A sizable crowd of villagers had gathered, and augmenting them were dozens of people who had come in cars and on bicycles, in pony carts, wagons, and tradesmen’s vehicles, to see the dancing and join in all the fun. Prominent in the throng, and keeping them back with sweeps of a calf’s tail tied on to the end of a stick, was the pigman Priest. The bladder which dangled at the opposite end of the stick he disdained to use, but whacked out with grim pleasure with the tail to clear a space for the dancers. He was unrecognisable, even apart from the tradition that the Morris men are unrecognisable by the rest of the villagers, for he had blacked his face except for two vermilion streaks on his cheek-bones, and was wearing a low crowned hat from which numbers of coloured streamers covered not only his shoulders but most of his face as well.

  “Looks pretty grim,” said Hugh, with a laugh, as they came to the outskirts of the crowd and began to manoeuvre for a good position from which to see the dancing. Seeing them, Priest suddenly raised a shout, and clove his way through to Mrs. Bradley, whom he ushered into the centre of the circle he had cleared.

  “Come on, my gal,” he said to her, in ringing tones and with a kind of savage good humour. “Look, neighbours! ’Ere er be! Old Mrs. Moll, the wetch!”

  Mrs. Bradley smiled her saurian smile, snatched his ribboned hat, and substituted for it her toque of yellow pansies. The low crowned beaver with its myriad streamers she perched on her own black hair, and then, picking up her skirts, she danced a wild pas seul to the music of Bean-Setting which Denis, nearly doubled up with laughter, was playing on his violin at twice the usual pace. This by-play was well received by the crowd, and the Morris men took their places to begin the dance as soon as Mrs. Bradley had taken back her own hat and Priest had dashed into the public house to rearrange his on his head in front of a mirror.

  Mrs. Bradley slipped out of the ring again, and rejoined Hugh, Fay, and Jenny, and, with them, moved on behind the dancers to the next public house outside which the dancing was to be continued. Pratt was dancing well. She saw Ditch pat his shoulder as the Morris men moved off along the road, Priest still keeping order with his wand of ceremonies.

  Lunch was a happy affair. Priest counted out the money and handed it over to Ditch, who took it into Old Farm kitchen where Mrs. Ditch deposited it before going out with the food. Linda had come home to help, having got the day off from service, and seven or eight girls from the village also served at the tables. It was open house to the villagers, and nearly two hundred people sat down in the open air, having brought their own chairs or stools to sit on, and their own mugs and plates for the food and drink. A barrel of beer was on tap, and another of cider. Jokes were cracked, songs sung, Tombley’s gramophone was playing part of the time, and Carey’s health was drunk.

  “And now, friends,” said Carey, “we’re going to dance again as soon as we’ve had time to get our dinner down.”

  So they danced again, and Mrs. Bradley, pleading a fatigue which in fact she did not feel, went into the house and up to her room. She threw herself on to the bed and bounced up and down until the springs protested loudly, a sound that could be heard in the courtyard below. Then she rose without a sound, and tip-toed along the landing and, entering the privy in which the passage from the priest’s hole came out, she drew aside the floor covering, raised the hatch, and descended the steps. Gaining the priest’s hole, she observed that the door in the panelling had been left ajar in accordance with her instructions, and, scarcely drawing breath, she pushed it open and entered the sunny parlour. Keeping below the lower level of the window, she seated herself on a very low stool which she herself had placed there in the early morning, and waited patiently.

  Outside the window Denis struck up the tune of Constant Billy, and in a minute the dancers were off, the sound of bells coming clearly and loudly into the room where she sat. She strained her ears, listening for another sound, and very soon she heard it. It was the sound of footsteps ascending the stone stairs. She waited until she was certain that the person ascending had reached the landing above, then, life preserver in hand, she sallied forth, a small, indomitable woman, watchful eyed, and armed with a grimness which her friends would not have recognised. She crept to her bedroom door, and turned the key which she had left on the outside. Then she went downstairs again and back into the parlour.

  “Now I wonder whether I’ve treed the right person, or caged some unfortunate innocent,” she said to Mrs. Ditch, when the latter came in to ask about getting the tea.

  “That was Mr. Hugh went upstairs, mam,” said Mrs. Ditch, having learned that all the people from Old Farm proposed to go over to Roman Ending for tea.

  “Mr. Hugh? Oh dear, oh dear! I wonder whether you’d mind going up and letting him out, Mrs. Ditch?” said Mrs. Bradley with a chuckle. “Tell him I left my handbag up there, and thought I’d better return and lock the door. Don’t tell him I thought I was locking a would-be murderer in!”

  “Ee don’t mean ee thought someone was after ee, like, to murder ee, mam?” said Mrs. Ditch in mild surprise. Mrs. Bradley cackled, and went outside to see some more of the dancing. Priest seemed quite to have shed his boisterous mood of the morning, and was sitting on an upturned bucket, his head in his hands, a prey to morbid thoughts. His low crowned hat was on the ground beside him.

  “Cheer up, Priest! It won’t be very long now,” she murmured as she passed him. Priest looked up with the ghost of a grin on his ugly visage.

  “’Taint that so much. But thes ’ere ’at weighs about ten ton I’ll back.”

  “Never mind. Put it on,” said Mrs. Bradley briefly. Priest took up the hat, and then, avoiding her eye, he slunk away, trailing his calf’s tail and bladder dejectedly in the dust, until he reached a group of boys who were clustered round the entrance to the little tent which housed the barrel of ale. He flicked them away and went in. Carey had pitched this tent in the paddock adjoining the farmyard, and Priest was followed, not only by the shouts of the boys he had driven away, but also by the envious eyes of the dancers, who, having finished their dance, were resting before commencing upon the next one.

  Mrs. Bradley looked up at her bedroom window, but there was no sign of an imprisoned and gesticulating Hugh, so she concluded that Mrs. Ditch had obeyed instructions and released him. She put a stool on top of a trestle table, and mounted aloft, like the umpire at a tennis match, to watch the Morris men in the dance called Laudnum Bunches.

  As the dance proceeded, out came the Morris Fool from the beer tent. It seemed as though a drink had done him good, for he began to dance and flick at the dancers playfully with the bladder which was tied on to one end of his stick. He seemed to be making a special butt of Pratt. Again and again the bladder flicked round Pratt’s head, confusing him, and once or twice causing mistakes in the dance. Pratt grew annoyed, and the villagers who were watching began to laugh, rather enjoying the clowning. The dance concluded, the Fool leapt away, to be out of the way of reprisals.

  “Ee’d needn’t overdo et, Priest,” called Ditch. “Us all knows ee’ve ben en that there tent, you know!”

  This sally provoked a roar from the good humoured crowd, and the Fool waved a mocking hand in reply, an
d, to the obvious irritation of the dancers, went into the tent again. Mrs. Bradley scrambled down from her perch, and, amid roars of laughter, darted after him and pulled him out by the tail of his shirt, which had somehow come out of his trousers, and, to the almost hysterical joy of the onlookers, was flapping briskly as he ran back towards the Morris side which was forming up for Blue-Eyed Stranger.

  Blue-Eyed Stranger was a handkerchief dance, and Mrs. Bradley had asked, as a special favour to her, that Carey and Tombley might be allowed to take the top place in it. The Fool again began his antics, although twice Ditch shouted angrily at him. In one of the figures the dancers had to cross over, and as this happened the Fool struck out at Carey. Carey dodged aside and tripped him up. Down he sprawled, amid laughter, and quick as lightning Mrs. Bradley was in the dance as well, her life preserver in her hand. Amid shouts of dismay, and to the general consternation, she struck at the writhing figure on the ground until it lay there motionless.

  “Into the beer tent, some of you!” she called. There was a general rush. The foremost entered. The others waited round the entrance. Suddenly there was a shout. Two men came out, carrying between them a third who hung, a dead weight, in their hands. His face was black, streaked with red. Otherwise he was fair skinned and naked. Somebody took off a jacket and put it over him.

  “Bring him here to the dancers,” called Mrs. Bradley. “We’ll finish this as it began.” They brought him over and laid him beside the other prostrate Fool.

  “Gather round, dancers,” said Mrs. Bradley authoritatively. “Magic killed, and magic can cure. Make wide lines, and dance Bean-Setting, Morris men, please.” While they danced, she knelt beside the men, and appeared to be bathing their faces. Denis, round-eyed with amazement, struck up the tune. The men, obedient to their Mystery, commenced the dance, and dibbing and riking, tapped out the rhythm, and watched, amazed, as the naked man apparently rose from the dead with the pigment all removed from his face—Mrs. Bradley’s handkerchief was covered with butter!—and, wrapping the jacket modestly about him, picked up the calf’s tail and bladder and gave the stick into Mrs. Bradley’s hand. The fully clad Fool took longer to recover, but when he did sit up, Denis raised a shout.