“Including Mrs. Platt?”
“Including Mrs. Commy-Platt. It seems that they thought they might as well get a write-up in the local paper on account of it as not. Of course, I got a promise that when the write-up came out it should all be done very genteel, and refer to this house as an hotel, and the saloon bar as the lounge, and me as the genial host. Mind you, when they suggested writing up my girl Polly as the refined and deft-handed young dance hostess, well I drawed the line there. Of course, the house is nothing more than a pub—though glorified, I don’t say, of its kind—but I’ve never held a licence for music or dancing, and that I can swear to, owing to having to pay two bouncers instead of one. People always get a bit more above themselves with music and dancing than just with simple drinking, if you’ll notice.”
Mrs. Bradley said she had noticed that the arts, finally, were exciting, and that alcohol was often soporific in its effects, and made a learned reference to the rites of Orpheus-worship, followed by a popular one to King David. Then she requested that Councillor Woods would give her the names of the rest of the party entertained by Councillor Smith.
“Mrs. Platt and Councillor Mrs. Perk,” she said encouragingly, “and…?”
“Mrs. Councillor Clember, Mrs. Councillor Petty, and Mrs. Councillor Zacharias,” said the landlord obligingly.
Mrs. Bradley wrote them down.
“And the drinks served?” she enquired.
“Stout, pale ale, port, stout, brown ale, and stout.”
“Beginning with Councillor Smith himself?”
“Yes. He had stout, like he invited them to.”
“Continuing with either Mrs. Councillor Clember or Mrs. Councillor Petty.”
“The pale ale? Quite right. It was the second-named lady ’ad that.”
“Then—let me see—the port would be Mrs. Platt. I can’t imagine her drinking stout, and probably not even beer.”
“You seemed to have formed quite an opinion of Mrs. Commy-Platt, ma’am, don’t you?”
“That leaves Councillor Mrs. Perk, who certainly drank stout, Mrs. Councillor Petty, who had the brown ale, and Mrs. Councillor Zacharias, who, being a Jewess, naturally stuck to her bargain and had stout, whether she wanted it or not.”
“Well!” said Councillor Woods, deflated by this pyrotechnic display. “Do you know the ladies, ma’am?”
“Only Mrs. Platt. I deduced that the strong-minded Councillor Mrs. Perk would keep to the letter of the agreement from a sense of noblesse oblige. I also infer that she is better educated than the other ladies.”
“Because she’s a Councillor? That wouldn’t count in this town. We had a Chairman once couldn’t hardly sign his own cheques, and a very able business man he was, and one of the very richest men in the countryside. A builders’ contractor, he was, and a very nice feller, to boot. But how did you make her out?”
“You said that her husband begged her…Somehow one deduces social position from that, although I don’t know why one should. It merely might reflect the character of the husband.”
“Well, you beat the band!” said Councillor Woods admiringly. “We had a chap once, came to the fair—Phrenny the Wizard Pie—collargist they called him on the bills…”
Mrs. Bradley acknowledged the compliment with a hideous cackle of glee.
“You realise, don’t you,” she said, “and I am now speaking without reference to the fact that it would not have been a simple matter for the murderer, under all those eyes, to have put poison into a glass, that the bitter flavour of stout would have been of material assistance in disguising the taste of the drug?”
“Blimey!” said Councillor Woods, whose mother had been a London woman.
“Which leads us to the awkward and, let us hope, unnecessary conclusion that the poison may have been intended not for Councillor Smith at all, but for Councillor Mrs. Perk or Mrs. Councillor Zacharias,” said Mrs. Bradley, preparing to take her leave.
• 2 •
“Your point about the rest of the party is well taken, Mother,” said Ferdinand. “Anybody who had the same drink as Smith could have been the intended victim. And, in any case, the trouble will be to prove that the stout was his last drink, supposing that the poison got to the person it was meant for. How long did the party last? It couldn’t have been a very lengthy business, if, as you indicate, the women had only one drink each. At what time did they arrive? And when did they leave? And did Smith leave when they did, or did he stay on, and have other drinks, either by himself or with other people? He may have been poisoned after the party; not at it.”
“I thought I would call upon Mrs. Platt again, and perhaps on Councillor Mrs. Perk, and put to them those questions.”
“But, supposing for the sake or argument, that one of these ladies should be the guilty person? Mrs. Platt, according to your description of your first visit to her, is capable of anything.”
“Yes, there is that,” said Mrs. Bradley. Her son looked at her almost as suspiciously as Councillor Woods had done. “I think perhaps I will call upon all the ladies,” she added, after a pause.
• 3 •
Beyond a reiteration and a very slight elaboration of the facts as presented by Councillor Woods and the inspector, Mrs. Bradley obtained nothing, either from Mrs. Councillor Petty or Mrs. Councillor Clember; nor had she expected to fare any more richly than this. She decided to beard Mrs. Commy-Platt on the same afternoon, and at half-past three George (on borrowed petrol) drove her to Mrs. Platt’s house. It was his idea that Mrs. Bradley should add this amount of formality to the visit.
“I think we should cut more ice with that lady if you drove, madam, rather than took a public conveyance or walked.”
“I think we should check this bourgeois determination to cut ice, George,” his employer retorted. “It is undignified and unbecoming.”
At the Town Hall traffic lights they met Pat, and Mrs. Bradley explained George’s view and asked an opinion of it.
“What do you want from her this time?” Pat enquired, when she had agreed with George on the matter of the car.
“I suspect that I want to irritate her,” said Mrs. Bradley. “In any case, there is no reason to suppose that I shall not have that effect on her, so it is as well if I assume it to be my desire. I am probably lapsing into my second childhood,” she added. Pat giggled, and the car rolled on.
Mrs. Commy-Platt was resting after her lunch, which had been at two o’clock, since she would not be dining, she informed Mrs. Bradley, until nine.
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Bradley, “do you eat meat twice a day in wartime?”
“Four times a day, if you count the breakfast bacon,” Mrs. Platt replied. “Tell me,” she added, leaning forward, “do you think my life could be threatened?”
“It not only could be; it is,” Mrs. Bradley replied. Mrs. Platt, who was wearing long earrings and a rest-gown, leaned forward so that the earrings swung like pendula and the rest-gown disclosed a scrawny throat set about with pearls, and demanded anxiously:
“What makes you tell me that?”
“My passion for truth,” Mrs. Bradley answered. “This, however, would have been overruled by my natural kindness of heart but for the fact, simple, and, I am bound to add, significant, that you yourself asked me the question.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” said the most influential inhabitant of the town. She seemed at a loss—an almost unique experience for her, Mrs. Bradley decided.
“Tell me, Mrs. Commy-Platt,” she said winningly, “what causes you to suppose that your life is threatened.”
“Well, twice I have been under the impression that my footsteps have been dogged.”
She paused, to allow this horrid thought to become the property of Mrs. Bradley’s mind as well as of her own, and Mrs. Bradley began to nod, slowly and rhythmically. Then she said, after she had permitted Mrs. Platt her moment of drama:
“Once when you had drunk a glass of port at the inn called the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’ in compan
y with Councillor Smith?”
“Oh, no, not then. That was a long time ago. The unfortunate man has passed away…has…why, he’s been murdered since then, Mrs. Lestrange Bradley.”
“Yes. I wanted to ask you about that, Mrs. Commy-Platt. Can you tell me at what time that party began?”
“I am sorry I ever consented to take part in the ridiculous orgy,” said Mrs. Platt, with annoyance.
“I thought it was a patriotic gesture on your part.”
“Oh, well, yes, so it was…Go away, Isabella!” Mrs. Platt screeched suddenly, as her companion put a pale meek face round the edge of the door. “Can’t you see I’m resting? I beg your pardon, Mrs. Bradley. You were saying…?”
“You were agreeing that your attendance at Councillor Smith’s party was in the nature of a patriotic gesture.”
“Ah, yes. But, you know, Mrs. Lestrange Bradley, I meant what I said the first time. I never would have gone! I never should have gone!”
“Councillor Smith was amusing himself, you think, at the expense of the Ladies’ War Effort Committee?”
“Undoubtedly. Although, of course, he did give us a handsome subscription.”
“Mrs. Commy-Platt: you are, if I may say so, a woman of the world. Is it your opinion that anything occurred at that party which could possibly have contributed (let us say) to Councillor Smith’s tragic end?”
Mrs. Commy-Platt looked at Mrs. Bradley with almost an intelligent expression. That is to say, her self-satisfied mouth went thin and thoughtful, and her eyes narrowed warily.
“What makes you ask me that?” she enquired.
“At some time during that evening somebody administered poison to Councillor Smith. At what time did the party begin?”
“You asked me before. We were invited, I remember, for eight o’clock. I arrived at a quarter to nine.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I could hardly be expected to go without my dinner.”
Mrs. Bradley acquiesced in this entirely reasonable statement, and Mrs. Platt, who had appeared to think that the point was arguable, subsided, and then continued:
“By the time I had arrived the others were all assembled. Councillor Smith’s behaviour was such as might have been expected of a man, as distinct from a gentleman, in the company of the opposite sex.”
“That is to say…?”
“He made some unnecessarily gallant observations of—I am thankful to say—a general character, complimented those who took stout—to my mind a disgusting beverage suitable only for navvies—was pleased to inform me that I needed it, and left a ridiculously large tip for the waitress.”
“The barmaid? At what time did he leave the tip?”
“At ten minutes past nine.”
“How many drinks did he have?”
“I cannot say, except that, during the twenty-five minutes I spent in his company, he had only one glass of stout. It was ordered whilst I was there, and was put into the same glass as the one he had emptied before I arrived.”
“You are sure of that, Mrs. Platt?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Lestrange Bradley. I watched the girl closely, having been accustomed all my life to maids and their lazy ways. Not a drop of water went anywhere near that glass, and when I pointed this out to the late Councillor Smith, all that he could reply, and that with a vulgar wink and a most inappropriate gesture, was that it ‘hadn’t better, neether.’”
Both ladies dwelt sadly for a moment upon this answer, and then Mrs. Bradley suggested that perhaps Councillor Smith had escorted Mrs. Platt to her home, as she lived farthest out of town and had no car.
“He?” said Mrs. Platt, answering the suggestion completely with this brief snorting sound. Mrs. Bradley drew out a small leather-covered notebook, poised a pencil above the virgin page, and looked expectantly at the author of the reply. “I called a taxi—or, rather, an inebriated but not altogether discourteous fellow whose exit from the public bar happened to coincide with mine from the lounge, called one for me. I rewarded the man, but not sufficiently (on principle) to tempt him to retrace his steps into the bar, and then I came straight home.”
She rang a bell. Her companion appeared.
“At what hour did I get in after the special social meeting of the Knitting Committee with the late Councillor Smith?” she demanded of the scared-looking Isabella.
“I should have to look up the night book, my lady.”
“Look it up, then. It’s in the bureau over there. Although I don’t know why on earth you can’t remember.”
“At ten-thirty, or thereabouts, my lady, I believe it was,” squeaked the companion. “Or so I remember Nellie telling me. You’ll remember, myself, I wasn’t in.”
The book apparently refused to confirm Nellie’s memory, for Isabella glanced uncertainly at her mistress, and said faintly:
“It only says nine-thirty, yet Nellie remarked as how it was during the wireless service.”
“As though one’s maids listen to anything but the cinema organ and the variety shows!” said Mrs. Platt, with contempt. “Put the book away, Isabella.”
• 4 •
“A good thing she had the book,” said Pat, when encountering her once more on her way to the office of the Record to ask for the address of Councillor Mrs. Perk, Mrs. Bradley told her of the discrepancy of one hour between the companion’s recollection of the time at which Mrs. Platt had arrived home, and the time as recorded in the night-book. “Otherwise you might have wondered what she was doing during that hour, mightn’t you?”
“I can’t think what the object of the night-book can be,” Mrs. Bradley observed. “Is one kept in all respectable provincial households? It seems, in this case, as you say, to be kept so that Mrs. Platt can alibi herself against having propped up poor Councillor Smith in a doorway after she had put poison in his second glass of stout.”
“Why not in his first?”
“Well, it appears—if Mrs. Platt is to be believed (and the night-book somehow has contrived to make this doubtful), that she did not get to the party until he had drunk at least one glass of stout.”
“Oh, I see. Stout would cover the flavour of almost anything, I should imagine. I think it’s loathsome stuff.”
“The untutored reaction of an underdeveloped sense of taste,” said Mrs. Bradley equably. She obtained the address she wanted, for Pat knew it and wrote it down on a leaf of her notebook, waved, and drove off.
“Are we still cutting ice, George?” she enquired, as the car pulled up outside a large double-fronted house about three-quarters of a mile from the Town Hall.
“Not knowing this particular lady, I am unable to say, madam,” George replied, opening the garden gate for her. “Would this be our last call, madam? Our consumption was heavy on the hill we just ascended.”
“No. There is one more, George, but it’s downhill this time, so we can cut out the engine and just glide.”
George, who would sooner have died than allow it to be thought that he was ever guilty of so unorthodox a proceeding as cutting out his engine on a downward slope, said nothing. Mrs. Bradley cackled, and, walking between standard rose trees, reached a beautifully polished front door.
A neat maid, who spoke well, let her in and took her name. In a minute the mistress of the house came into the entrance hall and welcomed her.
“Not the Mrs. Bradley? I say, this is an honour. Do come in. Let Doris take your things. I suppose you’ve come about the murders?”
With this auspicious beginning they went into a cheerful, tasteful room with books and a small, bright fire, and talked, and had tea, still talking, and sent out to tell George to go home, and talked again.
“Good gracious!” said Mrs. Bradley at last. “I shall never get round to Mrs. Councillor Zacharias!”
“Oh, yes, you will. She’s a darling. You’ll like her. And he’s a dear little man. And now tell me what I’ve added to your store of information about these beastly affairs.”
“To be quite frank,” rep
lied Mrs. Bradley, “you have not added anything. But neither have you deducted anything, I’ll add. I am glad, though, that you were there at the beginning of the proceedings.”
“You mean that my version of the party coincides with that of Mrs. Commy-Platt?”
“Well, that is not exactly what I meant. I meant that nothing you have told me has upset the facts which I have gathered, so far, about the deaths.”
“Haven’t I even given you a new angle? I should so love to give someone a new angle. It seems so easy in politics, but perhaps it is more difficult in real life.”
Mrs. Bradley took leave of Councillor Mrs. Perk with real regret, and promised to call again soon. George was at the wheel of the car by the time she left the house. He had had his tea, he said.
• 5 •
Mrs. Bradley had already met Councillor Zacharias. She had bought the silver cup from him, and was greeted kindly. He told her that he always served in the shop himself when he was not mending watches. His eldest son mended clocks, his second son kept the books, his daughter served in the shop; so did his third son; and his wife did all the buying. She was in the room behind the shop. Certainly Mrs. Bradley could go in.
“I utheda buya the part-tha of thpare bithycleth,” Mrs. Zacharias confided to Mrs. Bradley, “thinth I am fourteen yearth olda. But I married into the vatchmakink, and now I buya for my old man becauth he’th thofta.”
She was short, like her husband, but, unlike him (for the Councillor was very thin and reminded Mrs. Bradley of nothing so much as a peering little old mole) she was as broad as she was high and had five chins. Her eyes were creased in fat, but were as brilliant as Mrs. Bradley’s own.
Brazen Tongue (Mrs. Bradley) Page 15
