Furious Old Women

by Bruce, Leo

  “It’s empty now,” said Carolus. “If she took the lot in one go it could have killed her.”

  “She couldn’t have done that, could she? There was nothing wrong when I left yesterday afternoon. In fact she was quite excited about getting a statue on the altar of the side chapel. It seems now Miss Griggs is Gone the vicar agreed. Still, you never know.”

  “You’re quite sure about the gin?”

  “Certain. I saw it only yesterday.”

  “You said she drank lime juice with it?”

  Mrs Rumble stooped.

  “Yes and that’s Gone Down, too. She must have had a good old time after I’d gone yesterday.”

  “What about the glass?”

  “If she threw the bottle away she washed the glass up. You may be sure of that. Many’s the time I’ve come in in the morning and found just the one glass in the sink. She thought she fooled me with that but I knew better. I’ll go and see if there’s one now.”

  “Don’t touch it,” warned Carolus.

  Mrs Rumble returned to say yes of course there was. She had known there would be.

  Carolus made a quick tour of the house. He found the front door bolted, all the windows with their catches across and nothing forced anywhere. It would seem that if anyone entered last night it was with a key of the back door.

  Then once again he looked round the room in which the dead woman lay. On the table, beside the settee across which she sprawled, were several lurid-looking tracts. The title of the top one intrigued him:

  Satan Raises his Glass.

  It was issued by the All-World League of Absolute Abstainers. Another, scarcely less ostentatious, was called:

  There’s an Inn-Sign on the Road to Hell

  But beneath these two were tracts dealing with Missions to Hindus, Jews and Mohammedans and aids to the study of the Old Testament. They were all fresh-looking and had surely come from the ample stock kept by Flora Griggs.

  Carolus looked carefully for anything else which might reveal events or visitors last night. Miss Vaillant’s glasses were beside the tracts so no doubt she had examined them with some mirth. The room had been carefully dusted, a tribute to Mrs Rumble, and only the experts would know whether there were fingerprints of anyone but the dead woman and her housekeeper.

  “Was Miss Flora Griggs here yesterday? “Carolus asked Mrs Rumble.

  “Yes. She was here when I left. But I’ll tell you about that another time. There isn’t a minute now because I must phone the police.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “Just after four. I went off to do my shopping.”

  “Did you meet anyone in the village?”

  “I’ll tell you all that later when I’ve had time to think. I did see Naomi Chester, I remember, and Commander Fyfe was there too.”

  A bell began to chime in the church tower across the road.

  “That’s Early Service,” said Mrs Rumble, forgetting the less evangelical terms which Miss Vaillant had taught her. “You better pop across there and no one will know any different. I’ll ring the police as though I’d just come. You can go out the back way and mind no one sees you.”

  When Carolus came out of the church half an hour later there was great activity in front of the Old Vicarage. Slatt was making a show of directing traffic and moving on anyone who hesitated near the house. Several police cars were drawn up and there seemed to be much coming and going through the front door, which Mrs Rumble, doubtless, had opened.

  Carolus stood beside his car for a moment and was surprised to see Champer hurrying across.

  “I believe you knew about this,” he said aggressively.

  “What?” asked Carolus with far too much innocence.

  “I tell you again, if I catch you interfering in any way I’ll charge you. There are going to be no amateur detective tricks when I’m investigating.”

  “Something happened?” asked Carolus.

  Champer made a sound between a spit and a cough and stumped away.

  The news had preceded Carolus to the Black Horse but did not seem to impair the appetites of the Larkins. Carolus found himself breaking all precedents by eating bacon and eggs.

  “Do you think she was done for?” asked George. “Or did for herself? Or died natural?”

  “I know no more than you till the inquest and we hear medical evidence.”

  “They say she looked like Dracula,” said Bill Larkin.

  Carolus remained silent.

  There was a call just then from Mrs Bobbin asking Carolus to go up to the house. He wondered for a moment how she knew he was staying the night at the Black Horse, then remembered Rumble.

  The old lady stood with her usual uprightness and looked Carolus in the eyes.

  “This has dreadfully upset my sister Flora, Mr Deene. I feel inclined to send for a doctor. She is quite beside herself.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You see, she called to see Grazia Vaillant yesterday afternoon.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It is common knowledge,” said Carolus evasively.

  “She returned in a state of great indignation. My sisters, as I think I have told you, were strict teetotallers. It appears that Grazia Vaillant not only pressed poor Flora to drink but said that during those two last visits to her which Millicent made, Millicent had drunk with her. Flora came back to me speechless with indignation.”

  “Is that quite the right word?”

  “No. But very, very angry. And now Grazia Vaillant is dead.”

  So I have heard.”

  “Mr Deene, do you think my sister was the last person to see her alive?”

  “I think it very likely.”

  “Then … but it is monstrous. If Grazia Vaillant did not die naturally, or commit suicide, some suspicion might attach to Flora?”

  “I don’t know the workings of the police mind. I think in any case we should wait to hear the cause of death when it has been established. The woman may have had a heart attack.”

  “It’s so extraordinary after the other. You are not very reassuring, Mr Deene.”

  “No. I’m afraid I can’t be in this matter. It has a very ugly look.”

  “You say it is generally known that my sister called at the Old Vicarage?”

  “I understand she left some religious tracts there.”

  “Did she? Oh! “For a moment Mrs Bobbin seemed crestfallen, then she said: “But she might have given them to Grazia Vaillant at any time.”

  “I think, Mrs Bobbin, if you will permit me to say so, you are suggesting something rather dangerous. Your sister certainly called there, there are probably witnesses. It would be most unwise to attempt to conceal it, in my view.”

  “You may be right. But I hope these wretched policemen don’t come here to bother her, at least till she has got over the shock.”

  “I shouldn’t count on that,” said Carolus as he took his leave.

  Moreover he was right. He met Champer at the gate.

  “Well, Inspector, we meet again,” he said brightly. But the policeman pushed by.

  At about mid-day Carolus sat on a comfortable gravestone in the village churchyard waiting for the general dispersal of the congregation. In front of him he could see the plain oval-topped affair already erected ‘To the Memory of Albert Chilling’. Carolus remembered that, but for the keen observation of Rumble, Millicent Griggs’s body might still be deep there in the earth and the Gladhurst Case have been no more than that of another old lady disappearing from her usual orbit.

  In the church he could hear the choir celebrating the Greatest Mystery of the Universe in a rollicking tune:

  Three in One and One in Three

  Rulers of the Earth and Sea

  sang the choir cheerily because the service was nearly over and soon they would be free, the men to seek the Black Horse, the boys for an hour’s smoke before Sunday dinner.

  Carolus was interested to see how the congre
gation would take the new tragedy in the village. But when they began to emerge it was difficult to know what its impact had been. Was there an extra solemnity? Or did he imagine that among those groups with bowed heads and solemn gait the death of Grazia Vaillant was the sole topic? Did they think there was some mystery about it? Or were they persuading themselves it was from natural causes?

  The choir came out of the vestry door in a talkative stream. Certainly these youngsters were not much troubled by the death of another old lady.

  Then came Mr Slipper in hot argument with a tall grizzled man whom Carolus knew to be Waygooze the Organist and Choirmaster. On Slipper’s face was a look of petulant, rather childish annoyance.

  “It does not seem much of a concession to ask,” he said. “It is only Tuesday nights that I want Stanley. You can have him on Fridays.”

  “You’ve already got four nights a week for your activities, Mr Slipper,” said Waygooze solemnly. “I’m not going to have the boys interfered with on Tuesdays. They come to choir practice then.”

  “I don’t want them. I’ve explained to you it’s just one boy, Stanley Rogers, to help me get the Institute in order. Unless you’d like him and Cyril Lipscombe to do it turn and turn about? They could do half an hour with you then come down to the Institute.”

  “And what do you think would happen to the new Magnify Cat if I once started letting them go down whenever they liked? No, Mr Slipper. I’m sorry. Stanley comes to choir practice on Tuesdays and Fridays. You’ll have to find someone else for your little job.”

  The vicar caught them up.

  “Now what are you two good people discussing? Ah, yes. Choir practice. The Institute. But I think that today, on this day of great personal loss to us all and perhaps even more troubles for our little community, we should forget our personal differences. I’ve no doubt some way out can be found. Let us forget it for the present.”

  When Carolus reached the Black Horse he found that festive occasion known through the week as ‘Sunday dinner-time ‘was in full swing. Sunday suits were stiff and shiny, vegetables dug that morning were on the handlebars of bicycles outside the pub, ale was freely poured and darts were thrown. The conversation today turned on the second sudden death in Gladhurst and most of those present had something to say about it.

  Flo led the discussion.

  “You can’t call old Griggs’s anything but murder,” she said. “But I can’t see what you make a mystery of this for. The poor old cow had a drop too much, passed out and there you are. Well, we’ve all got to Go some day so I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It reminds me of a fellow I used to go on the back of his motor-bike with, and whenever we went round the corner on the wrong side he’d say, ‘No one’s going to live for ever, you know’ and laugh till he could hardly steer. He used to take me out to an old straw stack and I’d come away covered with chaff, but I didn’t mind.”

  “I don’t believe it was an accident,” said Mr Lovibond. “I believe one man did for both of them. Just because he did it different ways—that’s nothing. It’s only now and again you get them doing them all the same way like Jack the Ripper or Brides-in-the-Bath Smith. Two murders in six weeks in one little place! It would be a bit too much of a coincidence if it wasn’t one man doing it. Both old ladies with money, too. Both church-mad. What else can it be?”

  “Never in this world,” said Mugger from his corner. “Old Griggs was murdered right enough. Couldn’t be anything else when they put her in the grave and that. But this one’s done for herself. You can make your minds up to that. Well, what else could she do? She was Past It, wasn’t she? You can’t blame her with a face like that.”

  “How can you talk like that, Fred Mugger?” said Mrs Chester. “Wicked I call it, with the poor lady not hardly cold yet. And I don’t see where you all get your murders from. Bloodthirsty lot you seem to me. You can’t even be sure old Griggs was murdered, really. Something might easily have fell on her. Look at that gargoyle that came down out of the church tower last year. It might have been something like that got her on the head. As for the other one, there’s no reason at all to think it was murder.”

  “I don’t see that, Mrs Chester,” said Laddie Grey. “If Miss Griggs was killed accidentally how did she come to be buried in Chilling’s grave where Rumble found her?”

  “She was murdered all right,” pronounced Rumble. “And very nearly so that no one was any the wiser. If I hadn’t happened to notice how that grave wasn’t so deep as I’d left it she’d be there now. She was murdered, but what I want to know is why? It wasn’t just to take her bit of jewellery and money, that’s certain. Then who had an interest in murdering her? And this one, too. We don’t know what happens to Miss Vaillant’s money. If we knew that we might know something.”

  “Oh talk sense, Rumble,” said his wife. “What’s the good of talking about Miss Vaillant being murdered when no one’s been in there only poor Miss Flora Griggs and me? I’ve told you and I’ve told the police, the whole place was barred and bolted except the back door and I’d got the only key of that except hers. You’re not going to tell me Flora Griggs did away with Miss Vaillant.”

  “I’ve always said those sleeping-pills are dangerous things,” said George Larkin, unexpectedly joining the discussion. “You take a couple more than what the doctor tells you and you’ve had it. That’s what she must have done because they say there was a whole empty packet in her bag.”

  For only the second time in his visits to the Black Horse, Carolus now heard the landlord’s son speak.

  “I think she was tight,” said Bill Larkin.

  “Whatever makes you say that?” asked Flo.

  “She looked lately as though she’d been getting tight. You can always tell.”

  “You mean like me when I was going out with that fellow from Burley. Shall I ever forget it?” asked Flo. “Gin and pep, gin and pep, till I thought my breath would catch fire. But I didn’t mind.”

  16

  PENDING the report of the inquest on Grazia Vaillant, Carolus had no reason to go over to Gladhurst. The Spring Term was now well advanced and Carolus became absorbed in the exacting work of preparing boys for the Higher Certificate. He deliberately put aside his un-academic problems.

  The news of the second death at Gladhurst had been prominently published in newspapers and it seemed that Mr Gorringer, the headmaster, was attempting, without actually addressing Carolus on the subject, to indicate reproach. There were curious head-shakings and clumsy shrugs while Mr Gorringer’s “Ah, Deene …” when they met lacked all its customary gusto. Carolus supposed that the headmaster meant to suggest his displeasure with his Senior History Master who, having neglected the incidentals if not the essentials of school life in order to devote himself to investigation, had not been able to prevent the second death.

  When Carolus either ignored these strange histrionics or appeared to put them down to some physical disorder and enquired after Mr Gorringer’s health, the headmaster could keep silence no longer.

  Ah, Deene, Deene,” he said, lugubriously. “I was deeply distressed to read of a second death at Gladhurst. Surely that might have been prevented? One could almost allow oneself the fell notion that death follows your investigations. I should be loath indeed to think such a thing.”

  “We don’t even know what caused her death.”

  “Oh, quite. One must not be premature in supposing the worst. But I could have wished that in a case you were investigating the death roll could have been limited to one.”

  The headmaster passed on, his gown billowing, and Carolus made his way to his classroom.

  Next day he received the Burley Watchman with a full account of the inquest on Grazia Vaillant. The Coroner, it appeared, had known his job and left nothing un-probed which could assist in revealing the full truth. Grazia had died of an overdose of the barbiturate which was used in Minerval tablets. An empty tube of these was found in her bag, bearing her finger-prints and hers only.

  The
pathologist who had conducted the post-mortem had also discovered a quantity of alcohol, probably swallowed in the form of gin and lime juice within a short time before death. The assumption was—though the Coroner stressed that it was no more than an assumption—that Miss Vaillant had drunk a quantity of gin and lime sufficient to upset her judgment and had then swallowed the Minerval tablets.

  Dr Pinton, the village doctor, gave evidence and said that he had been prescribing Minerval for Miss Vaillant for two years. She was a perfectly reliable patient who knew that she should never take more than one, or at the most two, tablets at a time. Asked if these tablets were particularly dangerous in conjunction with alcohol, the doctor said that this was so if either of the two was taken in excess. He had mentioned to Miss Vaillant that Minerval should not be taken after or with alcohol in any quantity, as he did whenever he prescribed Minerval, but he had done so more as a formality than anything else. He had never had any reason to suppose that Miss Vaillant drank more than a very occasional glass of wine with a meal. He was most surprised to hear the pathologist’s report.

  He described Grazia Vaillant as a woman whose feelings could sometimes be violent but who was usually well-disposed, perhaps rather gushingly so, in conversation. She was in no way abnormal, an enthusiast in religious matters but not a fanatic. He would not describe her as unbalanced. A little eccentric, perhaps, and exceptionally anxious to get her own way but not psychopathically so. He had prescribed Minerval for her because she lived so much on her nerves and energy that a tranquillizer at night was beneficial.

  Asked how many tablets of Minerval he thought would be fatal he said that with the alcohol she had drunk he thought six would be sufficient, though death would not necessarily be immediate but would be preceded by first a period akin to inebriation, then coma, then death.

  Mrs Rumble, eyeing the Coroner and everyone else with the greatest hostility, had given details of Miss Vaillant’s private life. Asked if she had reason to think Miss Vaillant drank spirits when alone she said: “I don’t know about spirits. She liked a drop of gin.” However, she gave no details of the quantity purchased or where it was bought, only saying that she had seen gin in one of the cupboards and that though the empty bottles were always thrown away and the glass washed up, it didn’t deceive her.