Furious Old Women

by Bruce, Leo

  “Have you explained this to either of the parties?

  “I have had no occasion to do so.”

  “So that if they decide to take the matter into their own hands and simply start living together….”

  “Dear me! You alarm me, Deene. In my parish? I trust nothing of the sort would occur to them. It would set a most unfortunate example in a small community such as this. Really, I scarcely think you can be serious. Co-habit? Oh, no. I cannot suppose … The parents would surely dissuade them.”

  “Thank you, Mr Waddell. I just wanted to know the position.”

  His next call was at a pleasant-looking house at the lower end of the village. Here he asked for Dr Pinton.

  “Was it private?” asked a smart young woman in nurse’s uniform.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you wait in here a minute? Dr Pinton’s just finishing his National Health. He’s had rather a rush this morning. Colds and sore throats.”

  The doctor was an active little man with pale ranidaean features and smooth thinning hair.

  “Morning,” he said, “What’s the trouble?”

  His big mouth worked like a trap.

  “I’m sorry to take your time, Doctor. I’m that most irritating of all things—a private detective. Mrs Bobbin has asked me to try to find out about her sister’s death.”

  “Oh, I see,” croaked the doctor. Really he did look as though he had just come out of a pool. “Don’t see how I can help. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “It was about these tranquillizing pills you prescribed for Grazia Vaillant.”

  “Best thing possible. Safe. Not habit-forming. Always prescribe them for neurotic old women. Nothing wrong with any of them except their nerves. Can’t stand the pace of modern life. Brought up to different standards. Find themselves harassed to death. Money worries. No servants. World upside down. What can you do? Give ’em tranquillizers.”

  “But isn’t it rather dangerous, as in the case of Grazia Vaillant?”

  “How was I to know she was on the booze? Of course it’s dangerous if you take too many when you’re tight. But normally, no. Have to understand these old middle-class women, Deene. They’re damned annoyed with things as they are. They suddenly realize that the world has no use for them. Wants to see the back of them, in fact. They bumped them off in Russia and I’m not sure it wasn’t more humane. We’re just letting the species die out. Some of them can see that and are furious about it but there’s no remedy. The least I can do is smooth their last years.”

  Carolus nodded.

  “Old women! You never stop to think of them, do you? I don’t mean only those from middle-class families but working class as well. Thirty, forty years ago the better-off ones had companions and went down to death selfishly, perhaps, but decently and without humiliations. The poor ones, even old widows of farm-workers, kept their own cottages to the last, when a cottage cost half-a-crown a week. Yes, and tottered round their little bits of garden and had visits from their grandchildren and perhaps their great-grandchildren, and made jam and homemade wine if they lived in the country and crept round to the pub with a jug sometimes if they lived in town. Now what happens? Herded into homes to sleep in dormitories and obey the rules like children. Or, if they’ve got enough money to keep them out of that, have the pestered, anxious, artificial existences that these old women here had. Do you blame old Mrs Bobbin, who has character, for being angry? Do you blame her sister for getting a sort of religious mania? Do you blame Grazia Vaillant for taking to the bottle, as apparently the old girl did, lately? Above all, do you blame me for prescribing anything I can that gives them a few hours’ worry-free sleep?”

  “No,” said Carolus. “I don’t. But I would like to know for whom you prescribed it?”

  “Only those who could afford it, unfortunately. The National Health Scheme won’t run to Minerval. Millicent and Flora Griggs. Mrs Bobbin didn’t need it. Grazia Vaillant. Agatha Waddell, sometimes. And of course Fyfe’s wife.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “Hypochondriac. Leads him the hell of a life.”

  “But he doesn’t need Minerval himself?”

  “Oh, yes. Fyfe takes tranquillizers. What do you expect? We’re living in the atomic age, Mr Deene.”

  Carolus made no comment.

  “Do you keep any check on these tubes of Minerval?”

  “Only in the sense that I make a new prescription for each one and never give more than one in ten days.”

  “Never?”

  “Well, as Gilbert says, well ‘hardly ever’. There was an occasion, about a week before Millicent Griggs died, when she had lost her supply. Silly old thing had dropped it, or something. I gave her a second lot. But that was extremely rare.”

  “Tell me, as a matter of interest, do your confreres generally follow your practice in this?”

  “Never discuss it. I should imagine so. This is much like any other village in Great Britain, Deene. You schoolmasters are still living in the pre-war age.”

  “Perhaps. Thank you for all you’ve told me.”

  But none of it, thought Carolus, did much to explain the one, the basic, the central fact of murder.

  The telephone rang and Dr Pinton excused himself as he answered it, then rose to his feet.

  “An accident,” he said, “up at the church.”

  Carolus followed him from the house and got into his car, then decided to keep behind the Doctor on his way and see what had summoned him.

  At the lych-gate was Rumble, for once without his grin. Dr Pinton pulled up short, jumped out and faced him.

  “Where?”

  “This way, Doctor.”

  Carolus followed them. The West door of the church stood open but in the early spring afternoon the interior looked gloomy. There seemed to be no one else present and Rumble made for a little door at the West end under the tower. This opened with a creak and revealed a spiral stone staircase.

  Rumble switched on a light and started ascending, Pinton behind him and Carolus a slow last. It seemed a long ascent—spiral staircases always exaggerate the distance—but at last Carolus reached the place in which the bell cords were looped against the walls. The other two had already ascended farther and, pausing only a minute to notice the eight great swollen ropes, Carolus followed.

  The staircase this time brought him to the bells themselves and he saw the two men leaning over someone on the ground. Beside them was Mrs Rumble, gaunt and serious.

  Carolus could see that it was the figure of a woman on the ground and after a moment came near enough to recognize Flora Griggs. She was apparently unconscious.

  Pinton saw Carolus.

  “Will you please go and phone for an ambulance? 2244. Give my name and say it’s urgent.”

  Carolus just had time to see a staircase, scarcely more than a ladder, ascending beside where the woman lay. This, he calculated, would lead to the open top of the tower.

  “You can phone from the Old Vicarage,” said Mrs Rumble, who had continued to ‘keep the place decent’ as she said. “I left the back door open.”

  Carolus hurried down and did as he had been asked. He entered through the silent kitchen of what had been Grazia Vaillant’s home and found the telephone in the hall. He gave his message.

  He did not climb again to the belfry but waited to direct the ambulance men when they arrived. In a surprisingly short space of time the ambulance drew up and Carolus explained to two cool and efficient individuals in uniform that there had been an accident in the tower and that it was apparently a stretcher case.

  Meanwhile the vicar had arrived, also Mrs Bobbin. He told them what he could and they all stood waiting for the stretcher to be brought down.

  Just then Mr Slipper accompanied by two large Scouts came running up.

  “I hear there’s been an accident,” he said. “I’ve brought Stanley and Cyril because they’ve both passed their First Aid tests.”

  The vicar raised his hand.

&
nbsp; “Not now, Slipper. This is not the time.”

  “But …”

  “No. No. Some less grave occasion, thank you. Send the boys home, there’s a good fellow.”

  At that moment the two ambulance men appeared, bearing Flora Griggs on the stretcher. In a moment she was put in the ambulance and this disappeared swiftly in the direction of Burley.

  “She’ll be all right,” said Dr Pinton. “But how on earth did it happen?”

  Everyone seemed to turn towards Rumble and the vicar said, “I think perhaps we might discuss this in the vestry. This biting wind….”

  So Mrs Bobbin, the vicar, Rumble and his wife, Dr Pinton and Carolus went into the church. The vicar unlocked the vestry door and soon the little group was seated.

  Rumble began at once.

  “I don’t know what made me follow her,” he said. “She had a funny look, I thought.”

  “Funny?” queried the vicar.

  “She looked as though she didn’t hardly know what she was doing. I was in the garden at the time and I saw her come out of the front door, not seeming to know which way to take. So I got my jacket on, let her get a bit of a start and followed her.”

  “You should have called me,” said Mrs Bobbin.

  “I didn’t know you were in. Anyway, off she went in the direction of the church. It gave me a turn to remember that it’s not a few weeks since the other Miss Griggs must have come this way at about the same time and we all know what happened….”

  “Never mind that now,” said the vicar sternly.

  “Well, she came on, but not as though she was decided what she was doing as you might say. She seemed to stop here and look there till really I wondered whatever it meant. Then when she got to the gate of the church I didn’t know what to think till she turned off suddenly to the left towards where her sister’s buried in the new part and I understood what she was up to, or thought I did. She just wanted to visit her sister’s grave.”

  “Get on, man, get on,” said the vicar.

  But this was Rumble’s story and never in his life had he had such an attentive audience. He was not going to be hurried.

  “She stood there for a minute, not interfering with anything, then she turned round before I knew where I was and marched off to the church door. I had to hop behind the old yew tree quick or she’d have seen me. But the funny thing was, I knew she was up to something when she went into the church. Don’t ask me how I knew. Something told me.”

  Rumble paused dramatically and the vicar drummed on the vestry table. Then Rumble resumed.

  “By the time I’d got to the church it was empty. Not a soul in sight. That really did make me feel queer. I looked everywhere for her. There wasn’t a sign of her. I looked in the pews and behind the organ. I couldn’t think for a minute wherever she could have gone. Then it dawned on me. She’d gone up in the tower. But it shows how artful they are, doesn’t it? She’d closed the door behind her. So I started up those stone steps as quick as I could.”

  “Could you hear anything?” asked Carolus.

  “Not at first I couldn’t. I got up as far as where the bell-ringers are and stopped for breath but there was still no sign of her. I went across to the door of the staircase that leads up to the bells and then I did think I heard something up ahead of me. So I shouted out ‘Miss Griggs! ‘ at the top of my voice. Whatever it was I heard seemed to stop. It was as quiet as a mouse up there and I hurried on to get to where the bells are and just as I was going round that blasted staircase I heard like a scream and a thud up above me. By the time I got to the belfry there she was on the floor just as you saw her.”

  “So what did you do?” asked the vicar.

  “Do? It was a job to know what to do. She was breathing all right so I knew she was alive. I did the best I could. Put her as comfortable as possible and ran down all the way and across to the Old Vicarage to find my wife. Women are best for that job. She knew in a minute what was best to be done. ‘Phone Dr Pinton’, she said, ‘and tell him what’s happened. I’ll go and look after her’. Then she grabs hold of a couple of cushions and takes a jug of water and she’s gone. So I phoned Dr Pinton.”

  “You mean to say, then,” said the vicar importantly, with a side-glance at Carolus, “that if someone was concealed in the tower and made an attempt on her life, he had an opportunity of getting clean away?”

  “Oh, come,” said Dr Pinton. “As far as I could see all Miss Griggs was suffering from was a little shock and a twisted ankle. Surely we needn’t start imagining yet more murderers, need we, vicar?”

  “I am the last to see things in a morbid light. But it did occur to me. What do you think, Mr Deene?”

  Carolus said he agreed with the doctor.

  “On the face of it it looks like an accident. The question of course remains of why Miss Griggs should wish to climb to the top of the tower at all.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the vicar. “That indeed is a question. But doubtless all will be made clear in time.”

  Mrs Bobbin spoke sharply.

  “I shall inform the police,” she said and walked out of the vestry.

  18

  THE home which Carolus had purchased at Newminster when first he had taken up his post at the Queen’s School was a small, charming Queen Anne house set amid other buildings but with a few yards between its walls and theirs. Behind it was a small walled garden, just now showing the earliest Spring bulbs.

  Carolus loved his comfortable retreat, the first place he had found after the tragic death of his young wife. He knew that in their way the Sticks loved it, too, and for all their threats would not leave it or him. He decided, as he sat at lunch on a Saturday early in March and looked out on the signs of the soil’s awakening, that he would make only one more journey to Gladhurst, then leave the village and the case to develop as it pleased.

  He knew how the two women had died and it was now, as it had been from the first, a case somewhat repugnant to him. He did not want to be the means of hanging anyone over this, he wanted to disappear wholly from the scene and to forget it. But first, for his own satisfaction, he must clear up one or two small points at Gladhurst.

  He hoped his lunch was finished and that Mrs Stick had gone to fetch the coffee but knowing her conviction that it was good for him to ‘fill up with something sweet’ he feared that his escape from the table would not be so easy.

  “I’ve got a nice cream broolay for you,” said Mrs Stick proudly. “I’ll bring your coffee when I’ve seen you’ve had a good helping.”

  “I’ve decided to give up the Gladhurst case, Mrs Stick,” said Carolus, as he helped himself gingerly to the crême brulée before him.

  “That’s good. You were only wasting your time and mixing with every Tom, Dick and Harry.”

  “I have to go over there once more, this afternoon, then I shan’t go again.”

  “I don’t know what you want to go at all for. I hear there’s another one been pushed off the church tower now.”

  “You hear the most extraordinary stories. Miss Flora Griggs fell a few steps down the belfry ladder and twisted her ankle. She is already far better.”

  “Well, anyway, I suppose you know all about it, so why do you want to go over there again?”

  “Not quite all.”

  “It’s better than them coming here. You’ll be back for your dinner, won’t you? I’ve got a lovely bit of lamb for you—well, pray salay you could call it really.”

  “Keep it till tomorrow, Mrs Stick, I may be late tonight.”

  “Then you’ll want sandwiches, I suppose? There’s a little of the pattay left for them. You get back as soon as you can, Sir. I was only saying to Stick, we shall have you down again if you go on working like this.”

  Carolus, too, was glad that it was his last visit and that for the first time he was going to back out of a case before the results of his investigations were known. From the first, nausea and interest had gone together in his mind.

  He was lucky enough
, as he drove into Gladhurst at about half-past three that afternoon, to meet one of the people he most wanted to see.

  “Naomi!” he called.

  She turned, looked a little put out perhaps at the familiar form of his address, then smiled in a friendly way.

  “After me again?” she said. “I thought you weren’t going to ask me any more questions.”

  “As a matter of fact I’m chucking the whole thing up. You won’t see me here again. But come and have a cup of tea with me at Henson’s. I’ve got something to tell you. And two things, both quite small, to ask you.”

  “All right,” said Naomi.

  Henson’s the bakers, as Dundas Griggs had told Carolus, ‘did teas’ but it seemed to startle them somewhat when Carolus walked in with Naomi. They were shown to a room upstairs in which an oil-stove was quickly lit and gave out a strong smell and a weak heat. Carolus supposed that it was only the floor which was covered with linoleum—somehow there was an impression of it being everywhere. But at least they were alone.

  “Yes. I’ve decided to get out of it and leave the police to their own devices. And my strong belief is that those devices won’t cause trouble to anyone.”

  “That’s good,” said Naomi, pouring out.

  “I know the truth, pretty well,” said Carolus, watching her steadily.

  “I thought you did. Almost from the first.”

  “At the first it was only a guess. Now I think I’ve got it worked out.”

  “Oh, well,” said Naomi dully.

  “There’s one thing I want to know and I think you can trust me. Did you actually do anything to her?”

  There was no nonsense about Naomi. She did not pretend she wondered, as well she might have done, about which of the three women Carolus spoke. She looked back at him and her eyes were candid and perhaps a little scornful.

  “I never touched her!” she said, then added quietly, almost mournfully, “it was only the bucket of water.”

  “Thank you. The other thing I want to know is—what did Millicent complain about?”