“You’ve a marvellous memory,” he said.
“No. A marvellous notebook,” she replied. “I’ve studied this case for months, my dear David. It’s been tremendously interesting watching you trying to put a rope round your neck.”
“How did you come to guess that the old man was her husband?” he demanded.
“It was necessary, if the whole thing made sense, that it should be so. I can envisage no other relationship between them which will account for the fact that, although you firmly believe she killed that old man, you are perfectly willing to shield her, and, if necessary, go to the gallows in her place. You feel—for authors are connoisseurs in ethics—that, by being her lover, you are responsible, to some extent, for her crime. But would you call her a poisoner?”
“A poisoner? What has poison to do with the business? The old chap was knocked on the head. That’s what she meant when she said he fell over the stool.”
“You don’t see her as a kind of Madeleine Smith?” She spoke quizzically, but her black eyes were curiously intent as she asked the question.
“No, I don’t! And, in any case, the verdict in Madeleine Smith’s case was non-proven.”
“All the same, you have always thought Leda killed that old man. You’ve admitted that several times to me, although never in front of witnesses.”
“What else is there to think?”
“That she didn’t,” said Mrs. Bradley mildly. “And, if she didn’t, there is no need for you to feel partly responsible, is there? Plug Williams helped to move the body, of course,” she added, after sufficient pause. “In fact, Plug suggested the Baptist Chapel roof. He’s a Welshman, and that means a pillar of the Baptists, I suppose. When we question the ex-furnace-man who’s joined the Navy, we shall find that Plug had a key.”
“How on earth did you know about the body being put on the roof, and how did you tumble to Plug?”
“Bennie Lazarus, one of his boxing pupils, told a garbled sort of story that on the night of the raid after which the body was found, Plug’s shop and gymnasium were in ruins. They were not. He was trying to cover Plug’s real activities that night. But how did you get Plug to help you?”
“Blackmail. I know a lot about Plug.”
Mrs. Bradley grinned, and shook her head.
“Why are you so ashamed of the fact that almost everybody you know will do anything for you?” she said. “And now what about Hankin and Brent?”
“I don’t know them. They are the fellows that Pirberry expected me to swear to.”
“You do know them, David. I happen to know that it was not you, but the dead man who was put into the empty cistern which Hankin and Brent carried down to the river and put on board your boat.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he said, “and as for Plug’s activities on that particular night, they had nothing to do with anything criminal.”
“I know that too. I also know that on your boat the old man was brought to Westminster steps. It was among Bartlemas’ barrels that the body came into Soho on a brewer’s dray. I imagine, to be lodged among the Otamys, old boy, old boy. Who taught the parrot his stuff, if it wasn’t you?”
Harben stared at her, fascinated.
“Just exactly what are you getting at?” he asked.
“I suggest that you wanted to kill that old man because you were in love with his wife, but I also know you never would have done it. You have admitted that you thought the deed had been done by the wife, Leda, and I suggest that you, with the assistance of Hankin and Brent, took the body down to the river, shipped it on board the tub, brought it to Soho, and then, with Plug’s assistance, lodged it on the roof of the Rest Centre (then the roof of the Baptist Chapel). Later, you thought it ought to be moved, in case it should come down into the Rest Centre during one of the raids. You took a certain amount of risk to get it into the basement and under one of the arches, and there it might have remained, perhaps for years. Plug Williams, knowing the building, and being in possession of keys, assisted you, although how, I don’t know.”
“Well, it was fairly simple, and, if you asked the right questions at the Rest Centre, no doubt you would find it checked. Plug was helping move their stores from the Section House where they were at first. It was quite simple to bring the old man in his box off the roof at a time when everyone was busy, and to carry it into the basement with a couple of boxes of medical supplies on top. It wasn’t so frightfully heavy. We dumped it down in a corner, and watched our chance. Needless to say, Plug had no idea what it was. He thought it the proceeds of a robbery, I think. He used his keys to open the door to the area when nobody else was about, and through we went. And that’s about all, I think. It was just a bit of bad luck that blast should have dislodged the beastly thing, and brought it into view.”
“As simple as all that,” said Mrs. Bradley. Harben shrugged.
“And if you’re wondering why the whole business didn’t, and doesn’t, make me sick,” he added, “it’s because you don’t know what that marriage was like for Leda. And, by the way, what was that you were saying just now about poison?”
“The old man was poisoned, not knocked on the head,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Well, since you are determined to be hanged, go, then, and make your farewells.” She cackled harshly. Harben looked at her in wonder. His colour had gone, and that, with his candid brow, clear eyes, and boyishly tousled hair, gave his face an appearance of youthful beauty and heart-rending innocent immaturity.
“Be off with you,” said Mrs. Bradley, giving him a push. “And make up your mind to confess that it was Don Juan who attacked both you and his brother, the Spanish captain.”
His colour began to come back.
“She didn’t do it, then,” he said. “She couldn’t have poisoned him. That wouldn’t be her way. She couldn’t have done that, could she?”
“You know her better than I do,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You’d better go and see her again.”
He spent the afternoon overhauling the tub, and put off gently in the evening to drop down to the house by the river.
The most curious sense possessed him when darkness fell. It seemed to him that the past was there again, and that, did he but know how to live, the heaven of the future was assured. He thought of Sister Mary Dominic; of his books, and of how much better they might have been. He thought of Leda’s fingers gently tap-tapping on the tub; and was startled to hear them, at just after midnight, tap-tapping again against the port-hole.
He went out to the well of his boat. It was moonlight again. Except for the change in the time of year and the snap of autumn coldness in the air, it might have been a repetition of that former night, fifteen months earlier. The ancient river maintained its steady flow; still, on the further bank, on and beyond the island, were the willows, in fuller, darker leaf, but whispering, still with the night wind rustling their leaves. On the near side, still stood the almshouses, sheltering the six old men. There were also the steep-hulled hoppers, black and void in the moonlight; the tiny ripple of the river where the tide stirred under the wash of the greenish light; the yachts laid by; the stretches of ooze and slimy stones; the gayer pebbles, the half-buried chains green-weeded and rusted from countless unhurrying tides; and now the fingers, tapping, urgent and quiet; a woman’s fingers, saying with gentle pleading:
“Let me in! I am here! Let me in!”
He could fancy his own reply—the reply of his heart—as he went out into the well and leaned over the side. His thoughts, because of his training and natural bent, ran often upon quotation:
Who knocks?—I who was beautiful
Beyond all dreams to restore;
I from the root of the dark thorn am hither,
And knock on the door.
But, although he climbed over the side and walked half-round the tub, there was nobody there. A chill crept into his bones. He could feel the hair rising on his neck. What if it were true? What if the poem were not of the fabric of moonshine?
The moonlight fell in a shower of greenish-gold like Leda’s hair; it washed on the waters like her body; it gleamed in narrow crannies on the green, bright stones like the flecks in her narrow green eyes; it embraced the land in spite of itself, as her arms could embrace a lover; but it was a traitor, as she was; it changed and faded, failed to keep tryst, as she did. Even as he was turning to clamber into the well, a shadow came over the moon and blotted it out.
On an inexplicable impulse, he turned back, and scrambled for the shore. By the time he had reached the house the moon had emerged again. He raced up the nine steps and thundered upon the door. There was a pause. Then a voice from within, which made his heart leap, asked:
“Who comes?”
“David,” he answered. “Let me in.”
She let him in quickly and shut the door behind him. She took him into a room and thrust him into a chair.
“Has she found out? Are you running away?” she asked.
“Then you knew all the time he was poisoned?”
“Yes, of course I knew. Juan told me almost at once.”
“Told you? Then—”
“Then you didn’t do it, David? And you thought all the time—” She put her long hands on his head. She pushed back his hair with her thumbs, and kissed his eyelids, his throat, and his mouth; and, lastly, she pressed her thumbs upon his eyelids as men press coins on the sightless eyes of the dead.
“It was Juan,” she said. “I should have known.”
“How do you mean—it was Juan?
“He gave me the pennon before he went away. He told me to see that you got it. He always hated you, David, because I loved you. Brothers are like that, sometimes. I had nowhere to put that note, but I had the pennon. I put it on the boat—it was not your boat and it had no flag at the stern—and then I pinned on the note. Why did he send you the pennon? When we know that, we know all.”
“We’d better have a look at it,” said Harben. “It’s still in the locker on the tub.”
“It will keep until morning,” she said; and took his hand to lead him up the stairs.
About the Author
Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.
Sunset Over Soho (Mrs. Bradley) Page 20
