“In my childhood,” said Mrs. Bradley, “we had a tea-caddy with the Battle of Trafalgar on it, and the date. It had also a picture of Nelson and Lady Hamilton on the side, which I hardly thought quite suitable.”
“Really?” said the housekeeper. “I have never seen one like that.”
Mrs. Bradley, who had not seen one like it, either, and had just invented it for conversational purposes, proceeded to describe the imaginary box in more detail.
“Moreover,” she proceeded, “it was said by one of my aunts, but with how much truth I do not know, that such boxes contained a secret panel behind which were three hairs from Nelson’s wig.”
“Genuine?” enquired Mrs. Bertram, who obviously did not believe a word of the story. She cascaded a heaped spoonful of sugar into the moustache cup.
“No sugar for me,” said Mrs. Bradley. “My doctor has forbidden it.”
“You poor thing. Diabetes, I suppose?” observed the housekeeper; and in the pleasant channel of illnesses past, present, and to come, the conversation continued until the girl came in with the cocoa.
“Now then,” Mrs. Bertram continued. She poured out the cocoa from its jug. “All milk, Ethel?”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Bertram. Just brought to the boil, like you said.”
She winked impudently at Mrs. Bradley, and the housekeeper handed biscuits. When it seemed cool enough for the purpose, Mrs. Bradley delicately sipped the cocoa, was taken with an explosive, mannerless, untimely fit of coughing, and contrived, with some skill, to get rid of the mouthful into a very large handkerchief. In returning the handkerchief to her pocket she caught her cup with her elbow, and in a second the muddy liquid was streaming off the table on to the floor.
“Never mind!” said the housekeeper kindly, to silence her protesting apologies. “Have my cup. I haven’t touched it. Ethel can soon make some more.”
Mrs. Bradley, still, it appeared, on the verge of asphyxiation, shook her head in a helpless way, and, holding a hand to her chest, began to make for the open air.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” said the housekeeper, fluttering about her. “Oh, dear, I am so sorry. Went down the wrong way, did it? Isn’t that just too bad!”
“Mother and me, us give thee up,” said Tom, “so long thee been coming back from church.”
“You may well have given me up,” said Mrs. Bradley. She was anxious to meet Gillian’s Mr. Geoffrey. On the other hand, it was a great temptation to remain for a bit at the ‘Rising Sun,’ if only to find out why there was this conspiracy to keep her interested in Mr. Lancaster and his house. She began to have some kind of glimmering idea of the method behind the madness, but further investigation was imperative. There had certainly been strychnine in the cocoa, although not, she thought, very much.
Again, the very fact that this was so, made her all the more inclined to seek, first, the explanation of the trap, which seemed to have been baited for her.
She sent a telegram to Gillian:
Keep Geoffrey handy with you Wednesday Bradley.
Tom said:
“What, going to clean thy teeth, like, afore thee have thy supper?”
To what extent Mrs. Bertram suspected that Mrs. Bradley had detected the strychnine in the cocoa was not at all clear next morning, when Mrs. Bradley called to apologise for spoiling the cloth, the chat, and the housekeeper’s Sunday evening.
She went to the back door to knock, and Ethel opened it.
“Mrs. Bertram?” she said. “Come in. She’ll be down in a minute. We’ve had the usual upset with the master. He’s making believe he’s poisoned once again. Mrs. Bertram sent Perkins for the doctor, but it’s only a bit more of his old buck.”
“Take me to him at once,” said Mrs. Bradley. The girl, astonished, was about to refuse, it seemed, when she caught Mrs. Bradley’s eye. Black, bright, implacable, and commanding, it compelled an obedience, which the girl was plainly loath to give, for she began to finger her apron and tried to avoid the glance.
“Which way?” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Mrs. Bertram’s with him. You couldn’t see him now,” implored the girl, obviously thoroughly alarmed. Mrs. Bradley paid no attention, and the girl, dubious about, and resistant of, these unorthodox and questionable proceedings, sulkily showed her through to the front staircase and even went so far as to tap at the door to the left of the staircase window when they reached the first broad landing.
The housekeeper opened the door. She affected surprise and received Mrs. Bradley pleasantly.
“So you got home all right, then?” she said.
“I’ve come to apologise for making myself such a nuisance,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“You’re just in time to see the master in one of what I call his real fal-de-lals,” said the housekeeper, in so light a whisper that only a person with first-rate hearing could have caught it. Mrs. Bradley, who was filled with the blackest suspicion of the house and everybody in it, affected not to hear the whispered words. Thereupon, as she inclined her ear, the housekeeper, instead of repeating what she had said, drew her inside the room, and she had her first glimpse of the patient. The housekeeper encouragingly pushed her a step or two nearer the bed.
“He’s been making himself into the shape of a half-hoop until ten minutes or so ago,” the housekeeper whispered. “But we gave him his usual permanganate—very weak, of course—that he says is his cure, and he’s been all on at me for chloral. But, as I tell him”—her voice grew gradually louder—“that’s the doctor’s job.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. She moved round by the foot of the bed and went to the further side of it, so that she faced the housekeeper and the maid. The patient was lying flat on his back. His arms were spread wide, and his mouth was slightly open. He snored a little as he breathed. Mrs. Bradley bent over and delicately pulled back his eyelids.
“That’s what the doctor always does,” said the housekeeper softly. “Of course, the poor old gentleman ought to be in a home, although I say it. There isn’t any doubt about that.”
“Hysterical subject, you think?” said Mrs. Bradley. She watched the old man intently for another full minute, and then walked to the door of the room. The housekeeper followed her out.
“I’m glad you’ve seen him,” she said. “The way he goes on, you’d really think someone was trying to poison him off if you didn’t know him. The doctor will be here soon. We always send for him, although it’s only just a lot of nonsense. One thing I will say. He’s always very nice to poor old Mr. Lancaster, even when the old gentleman calls him names, which he does more often than not.”
The doctor’s car was in the drive, and the young doctor was getting out of it with his bag whilst Mrs. Bradley took her leave after referring again to the incident of the spilt cocoa. She did not go far, however, for when she was clear of the house and away from scrutiny—the house was blind on the east side, owing, she supposed, to a former tax on windows—she worked her way round to the little wood and so to the gamekeeper’s hut.
The wood was a newish plantation, and the gamekeeper seemed unnecessary. However, he had his thatched hut, and he had hung out a few moleskins (to give verisimilitude, Mrs. Bradley supposed, to a bald and improbable tale) and he himself was lounging, gun on arm, like a gamekeeper on a stage, or in a novel of the ’nineties.
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Bradley. The gamekeeper touched a deerstalker cap, which Sherlock Holmes might have envied, and informed her that she was trespassing. Mrs. Bradley apologised, and explained that she was trying to find a short cut back to the station. She explained that she had come from the house. The gamekeeper briefly directed her, and called up his dog, a lurcher by the name of Husker.
“Go with her, Husker,” said the man. The dog politely and firmly escorted Mrs. Bradley from the wood and on to the road.
“Good-bye, Husker,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Will you know me again when you see me?”
The dog gave a light, suspicious growl when she began to speak. She noticed how
thin he was; much too thin for a gamekeeper’s dog, or even for a watchdog, she thought.
“The way to a gentleman’s heart is through his stomach,” Mrs. Bradley pronounced, looking thoughtfully at the animal. Husker slightly twitched his tail, then thought better of the gesture, and, having grumbled at her once more, sloped away through the plantation.
Mrs. Bradley was not yet bound for home. She looked at her watch, walked a quarter of a mile down the road, and then signalled the doctor’s car as it came along. She had had a good look at it in the drive. The young doctor pulled up.
“How is Mr. Lancaster?” demanded Mrs. Bradley, putting her head in the right-hand window. The doctor, completely taken aback at being confronted, at such very close quarters, by an old woman who looked like a witch and behaved like a lunatic, asked her who she was.
“Thine evil spirit, Brutus,” she replied. “And you take care, young man, that the patient doesn’t die on you one of these days.”
“I expect he will,” said the doctor, irritably. “And now, if you really wouldn’t mind—”
“Of strychnine poisoning, I mean,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And now will you give me a lift as far as the station? I want to talk to you.”
The doctor opened the left-side door and round she went and got in. He drove for about two miles without saying a word. Then suddenly he observed:
“Have you anything to go on, in what you say?”
“How long have you been in practice here?” retorted Mrs. Bradley.
“Seven months, I think it is. Why?”
“I wondered. How often do these attacks come on? Of old Mr. Lancaster’s, I mean.”
“Look here, I can’t discuss my patient’s affairs.”
“Oh, yes, you can.” She produced her card. “Didn’t you come to my Short Course on the Psychopathology of Manipulative Surgery?”
The young man laughed, and the car lurched dangerously ditchwards.
“I’m quite certain I should have done, if you’d ever given such a course. But, look here, Doctor, what are you doing down here at old Lancaster’s place? He’s nothing but a harmless old loony, who gets these ideas occasionally that his relations are dosing him with strychnine to do him in and get hold of his money, you know. Why, even the police know all about him. They took him seriously the first three or four times, I understand, but they certainly fight shy of him now.
“The funny thing is that the silly old devil knows all the symptoms, and makes himself sick with the handle of his toothbrush, and bends himself into all the strychnine shapes, and positively yells with pain. It’s one of the most interesting cases of hysteria I’ve ever encountered. All I have to do is give him a nice drink of water, which I swear is permanganate of potash, and he’s perfectly happy, and thanks me with tears in his eyes for his marvellous recovery. Trouble is, he’s started sending me extra cheques, which, of course, I have to send back. He don’t like that. And neither do I, very much,” he concluded ruefully. “The last was for a hundred pounds. I could have done with it nicely.”
“What a gift he might be to a parcel of really unscrupulous people,” said Mrs. Bradley, almost in a whisper. “When did you first see him?”
“A month after I came here. Why?”
“Nothing, child. Drop me at the ‘Inn of the Rising Sun.’ And mark my words.”
“Which ones?”
“You’ll know which ones soon enough, if you’re not very careful,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning.
“No, I say, you don’t really think?—”
“I think the poor old man is…”
“Pennies from heaven, so long as I can be called on to give a death certificate which doesn’t say strychnine poisoning,” said the doctor. “Yes, I see.” He grinned. “And at that I should Giaconda-smile,” he added, unpardonably.
• CHAPTER 3 •
“ ‘In behint yon auld fail dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.’ ”
“Thee’s wanted on telephone, like,” said young Tom, after lunch that same day. It was Mrs. Bradley’s secretary.
“A Mr. Joshua Devizes has called,” said the telephone in refined accents. “I did not say where you were, but promised to let him know whether you could see him, and, if so, when.”
“Tell him I’ll see him tomorrow at four,” said Mrs. Bradley. She returned to her barn-like bedroom to find young Tom in possession.
“What is it, child?” she enquired. Tom grinned.
“Will thee tell I something if I ask thee?”
“Yes, Tom, if I can.”
“Well, who be fellow watches in at thy window, like, of nights? Because tidden one of our chaps as I knows on.”
“I don’t know, Tom, who it is. I haven’t seen anybody. At what time, do you mean, does he come?”
“Oh, middling in the night, like.”
Unable to interpret this reply, Mrs. Bradley decided to return to it later. She then enquired:
“And what sort of person is he, would you say?”
“Oh, middling, like,” said Tom.
Mrs. Bradley kept careful watch from seven o’clock until twelve that night, and was prepared to swear that nobody, middling or otherwise, had been near her window between those hours. At twelve she went to bed.
She broke the news next morning that she would be catching the 10.39 to London. She even, to the distress of all concerned (herself included, for she had liked the inn) paid her bill, in case she should not be able to return.
“Oh, us have so enjoyed thee,” Tom’s mother almost tearfully protested. “Such a change, thee is, and give us so much to laugh over in the evenings.”
Uncertain as to the significance of this ingenuous and apparently well-meant remark, Mrs. Bradley grinned in an amicable manner, and packed her suitcase hastily but well. She caught the train with just three minutes to spare, but this was sufficient for the porter, who said, as he hurried forward to take her bag:
“What, off again already? Soon got tired of we, thee have.”
Mrs. Bradley pleaded an urgent call from relatives in London, and promised to return if that were possible.
She had every intention of returning, but she thought that it might be as well, when she had disposed of Mr. Joshua’s business, to go north and interview Gillian’s Mr. Geoffrey. She felt that to miss Mr. Joshua would be tragedy beyond belief. After all, the whole magnificent fabrication, according to Mr. Geoffrey, had been his.
“He says,” said her secretary, as soon as Mrs. Bradley arrived, “that his uncle is being murdered!”
“He may be right,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking off the veil in which she usually travelled. “Except that I don’t believe for a moment that the man he means is his uncle. Tell Henri I’d like some sherry, and then an omelette, and then he can send up what he likes. What did you have for lunch?”
“Curried chicken, Mrs. Bradley.”
“Don’t tell me you went out to lunch, dear child?”
“Well, when Henri heard you were coming in to lunch, he couldn’t be bothered with me, so I went to the Corner House.”
“Which you really enjoyed much better than you do Henri’s lunches. Don’t tell me. I know. What it is to be twenty-two,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And what did you have to drink, child?”
“A Horse’s Neck,” said the child, with an air of defiance.
“And I bet you had ice-cream,” said her employer. She sighed and grinned, and produced an envelope. “And now you can take that charming young man of yours to a matinée,” she said. “And don’t get back until dinnertime.”
“He can’t—I don’t know that he can…” began the secretary, who had not known that Mrs. Bradley knew of the young man.
“What! Not from the Board of Trade?” said Mrs. Bradley, horrified. “Go to the telephone, child, and act like a dying grandmother.”
“Oh, he doesn’t need that,” said th
e girl, with a cheerful smile. She considered her employer eccentric, but no one but Mrs. Bradley herself was aware of this.
“He could get leave, but he’s rather conscientious.”
Mrs. Bradley moaned faintly, and then cackled. “Anyway,” said the girl, obtaining the last word, “you needn’t bother about Henri and omelettes and things. He knows exactly what he’s giving you for lunch. He’s been in a trance ever since your telegram came.”
Having, in her own view, cleared the decks for action (for any notes which the interview with Mr. Joshua might require could be made more exactly in her own peculiar shorthand than by the efficient but unimaginative child whom she had just sent out for the afternoon), Mrs. Bradley thoroughly enjoyed her lunch.
When it was finished she sent for her cook, congratulated him upon the meal, and then observed:
“Henri, I have heard many times from Célestine of your prowess with weapons, have I not?”
“As madame pleases,” he replied, with extreme wariness.
“I am expecting a visitor at four this afternoon. I want you to stand by with a heavy rolling-pin or something, and, if I order you to attack this man, you are to do so without hesitation.”
“He dies,” said Henri obligingly.
“Well, no, perhaps that would be going a little too far. Stop just short of that.”
“In my youth,” said Henri, “I am crossed in love by a girl who has the largest dot in our village. She runs away, isn’t it, with an English lance-corporal, and her father does not give her a sou. It goes all to her younger sister, who will not look at me, and her father is so much afraid of other English lance corporals that he marries her off quick to Jean Delabrue, and am prevented by the tears of my mother, that only, from joining the Legion in North Africa.”
Hangman's Curfew (Mrs. Bradley) Page 5
