The Echoing Strangers (Mrs Bradley)

by Mitchell, Gladys

  Sir Adrian and their captain tossed up, and, after one man had been discovered crying because the field had no daisies, the match began with Sir Adrian carting their fast bowler for six into the adjoining paddock. The umpire came up and warned him not to do it again. To Tom’s astonishment Sir Adrian took this advice and blocked and spooned for the rest of the over.

  When Tom’s turn came to bat the score stood at twenty-three for three. Sir Adrian was still in, but the vicar had been caught at mid-off by the daisy-chain expert, and Derek, who was obviously very nervous, had lost his wicket to a long hop which an eleven-year-old would have walloped.

  ‘We’re doing fine,’ said Sir Adrian, walking a little way to meet Tom. ‘I’m sorry I forgot myself with that opening ball. Just remember that you’ll be out as soon as the score reaches sixty. I always declare at sixty, otherwise these fellows get disheartened.’

  ‘Oh, it’s understood that they win, then?’ Tom understood, at this, Sir Adrian’s meekness when the umpire had admonished him for scoring a six.

  ‘Of course, of course! Mustn’t let them down, poor chaps.’

  Tom, asking the silk-stocking umpire for middle and leg, decided, not for the first time, that he would never even begin to understand the workings of Sir Adrian’s mind, although he could sometimes perceive what these were.

  The visitors, all ecstatic smiles except for one who said he had not had his hit yet and who had to be taken back on to the field to be bowled at by John and fielded for by the vicar, Tom and Derek, at last were seen off amid cheers. Sir Adrian, with a sigh of relief, announced that next day no cricket would be played, and that Tom might do as he pleased provided that he did not tire himself, injure himself, drink too much, eat too much, or go to bed with a girl.

  ‘I don’t know any girls who would be obliging enough for that, sir,’ Tom said pleasantly. The match had amused him, but the tidings of a cricketless day were decidedly welcome. He felt at peace with everybody, even with his not very lovable employer.

  ‘What shall we do?’ he asked Derek.

  ‘Steady, now, Derry,’ said his grandfather. ‘Nothing too strenuous, mind! I want you in the pink for Thursday.’

  ‘I would like to swing in the hammock in the paddock and eat raspberries,’ said Derek. ‘And perhaps you could read to me while I eat,’ he added, turning to Tom. ‘I’m sure you read beautifully, sir.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Tom, whose conscience was beginning to smite him because of their mutual neglect of Derek’s studies. ‘But I’m not going to read you a blood or any of that sort of tripe. It’ll have to be something to do with your work … at any rate for part of the time.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Let’s have some Herodotus. I adore that old man, don’t you? Or would you think history too light a subject if we are supposed to be working?’

  Tom suspected the youth of irony, but Derek’s beautiful, girlish face was innocent and enquiring, so he laughed and replied that Herodotus would do perfectly well if that was what Derek would like, although he did not particularly endorse his own ability to read him aloud.

  ‘I shall tell you at once if I don’t understand you,’ said Derek. Tom aimed a playful smack at him—and then caught the red gleam of an almost maniac fury in Sir Adrian’s fishy little eye.

  ‘Good heavens! I know another madman besides those who came for the match,’ thought Tom.

  As it happened, Herodotus came to nothing. The next day was wet. Tom woke at six, got out of bed and went to the window. The sky was an uncompromising, flat, steely grey, and the rain was pouring down.

  He stood there in his pyjamas and stared gloomily out. He had a batsman’s horror of rain in summer. He did not hear Walters come in, and turned with a start at the sound of the manservant’s smooth voice.

  ‘A bowler’s wicket to-morrow, sir. John is delighted. He has been dancing on the lawn since five o’clock. The sound of the rain woke him and he has been morrising it in the nude as though demented. An enthusiastic lad, sir, for a sticky wicket.’

  ‘Let’s hope he catches cold,’ said Tom morosely. Walters gave him a sympathetic glance and put down the tray on a bedside table. Tom got back into bed and helped himself to a cup of tea. At seven Derek came in.

  ‘Grand is delighted to see the rain,’ he said, seating himself on the counterpane and taking a piece of bread and butter. ‘I am delighted that he is delighted, but my personal disappointment is profound. I had hoped to make a century to-morrow.’

  ‘Spoken like a man,’ said Tom. ‘What shall we do to-day?’

  ‘The pub, I think, sir, don’t you?’

  ‘You can’t be served. You’re too young. Besides, your grandfather would fire me at once, and quite rightly, if I took you to any such place.’

  ‘Oh, no, he wouldn’t. Besides, I need not have anything to drink. We could play darts and mess about with those slot machines Cornish installed last winter. What did you think of Cornish as an umpire?’

  ‘Oh, all right. There’s nothing special about him, is there?’

  ‘He’s what I call a rather sinister man.’

  ‘Rot. He’s quite a good chap. Rough, ready and so forth.’

  ‘Oh, yes, outwardly.’

  ‘Go on with you! You talk like a girl!’

  ‘I was meant to be a girl. My parents prayed for a girl. Literally, I mean. It wasn’t very good luck on me to be born a boy. Besides, I miss my twin. Twins do, you know.’

  ‘Your twin?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I had a twin brother. I remember him quite well. We were seven years old when he was taken away from me.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was too young to know. All I remember is his name. He was called Francis. I’ve mentioned him to Grand, several times, but I only get fobbed off. Yet Grand must know all about it.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll tell you when you’re twenty-one,’ said Tom, speaking in a facetious tone because he found himself oddly sympathetic towards the impossible youth. Derek sighed, ran a hand through his shining hair, turned away from the window, and then asked childishly:

  ‘Well, pub or no pub? I suppose it’s no?’

  ‘It’s no.’

  ‘All right, then. You think of something to do.’

  ‘We could still read Herodotus.’

  ‘In the rain?’

  Tom laughed. A line from an old story by Lord Dunsany came into his mind and he quoted it aloud.

  ‘I want a little god to worship when it is wet.’

  Derek gave a high, falsetto shriek of laughter.

  ‘Oh, so do I! So do I!’ he cried. ‘I’ll tell you what! Let’s make one! Oh, do let’s make one, shall we?’

  It seemed to Tom, no devotee of the Ten Commandments, as good a way as any of passing the time.

  ‘What shall we make him of?’ he asked.

  ‘First of clay, then, if we like him, of wood. If he is especially good we might send him to an exhibition of sculpture. In Switzerland the men were always whittling things out of wood and I was quite good at it, too. We had an instructor who made more money that way out of the summer visitors than out of his salary. The only thing was that he used to sell our stuff as well as his own, which I always thought not quite fair, as he never even bought us chocolate out of the money.’

  So, when breakfast was over and a beaming Sir Adrian had held a sort of board meeting with the eleven and with Cornish the Mede umpire (who did not Open until eleven), Tom and Derek settled down with some billets of wood from the woodshed and a mess of artist’s modelling clay to fashion their little god.

  The rain continued during the whole of Wednesday. Decency (the ethic of English cricket) impelled Sir Adrian to have the wicket covered with tarpaulins from mid-day onwards, but up to that time the weather was allowed to do its worst. Thursday, however, dawned fair, for the rain ceased at four in the morning, and by seven a jubilant Sir Adrian had the tarpaulins taken away to give the pitch (such was his explanation) a chance to dry, but actually to ma
ke quite certain that the pitch would be implacably sticky for the batsmen.

  ‘We win the toss and put them in first,’ he said.

  ‘But we may not win the toss, sir,’ objected Tom.

  ‘I am using my new lucky florin,’ said Sir Adrian. ‘And as Witt, their captain, will undoubtedly want to use his, the one he had last year, we are certain of winning the toss.’

  Apart from a feeling that there was going to be dirty work at the crossroads, Tom could make nothing of this prophecy and did not pursue the subject. He was privileged, however, to see what obtained when the toss for innings was made.

  Witt, the opposing captain, a large, blond, red-faced person whom Tom immediately and irrevocably wrote off mentally as a bounder, produced a silver coin from his blazer pocket and spun it tentatively.

  ‘No,’ said Sir Adrian. ‘It’s my turn to do the tossing. You tossed and I called last year.’

  ‘Oh, as you like,’ said Witt, handing over the coin. Sir Adrian looked at it.

  ‘A lucky one, eh?’ he said. He laughed pleasantly and showed it (before Witt could prevent him) to Tom. ‘Don’t you wish we’d got something like this, Donagh? Quite an heirloom, isn’t it?’

  Witt seized it, scowled, thrust it back into his pocket, snatched at the coin Sir Adrian held out to him and spun it as high in the air as he could.

  ‘Heads!’ cried Sir Adrian. Heads it was. Sir Adrian grabbed back the coin, thrust it into his pocket, and said, in a growl, ‘We’ll field, and you can’t grumble. I did let you toss, after all.’

  ‘You were right, then, sir,’ said Tom, with grudging admiration of his employer’s unsporting forethought. ‘I suppose your coin was two-headed as well?’

  ‘What do you think, my boy?’ responded Sir Adrian genially. ‘That … needn’t think he can pull off that rotten dodge of his two years running!’

  The game was therefrom carried on in a spirit of animosity and cussedness to which Tom was entirely a stranger. The Bruke umpire no-balled the bowlers whenever he was in a position to do so, but, on the whole, quite fairly, and the Mede umpire, landlord Cornish, rightly interpreting certain signals from Sir Adrian, gave some l.b.w. decisions which made Tom gasp. There was argument and counter-argument, too, between the two umpires and between the umpires and the players.

  In spite of landlord Cornish’s best endeavours, at lunch the score was eighty-three. During lunch the rain began again.

  Sir Adrian had provided a noble meal to which both teams, dining at separate tables in the interests of peace and their digestive juices, were only too willing to do justice. Sir Adrian kept a watchful eye on the weather, and as soon as he could he rose from the table and gathered his men around him out of earshot of the men of Bruke.

  ‘Now, you fellows,’ he said, ‘we shall have to do better. There are more wickets to fall, but we don’t want ’em falling just yet. The pitch is nicely treacherous by now. They can’t score on it, but we couldn’t, either, so my orders to you are that you are to keep their last men in as long as you can, provided they don’t score runs. We want the pitch thoroughly wet before we put ourselves in. Now, you fielders, you are not to take any catches until I tell you. Stop the runs, but nothing more. No fancy throwing-in to bust the wicket, or any nonsense of that kind. And you, Parrish, just see whether you can’t contrive a respectable slide of mud at the paddock end. You know where their fast bowler likes to take his run, and it needn’t interfere with yours if you’re reasonably intelligent about it. You, Derry, my boy, are not to come out in the wet. It might bring on your chest. Go and lie on your bed for a bit. It won’t do you any harm at all to have a rest.

  ‘Now, you battin’ fellows, once we get going I shall look to you to knock off the runs. Eighty-three ain’t much of a score. If only we can keep ’em in until the wicket is really wet, it ought to be child’s play to wipe them off the earth on Saturday. This pitch is dead when it gets properly soaked. Their slow and medium-pace fellows won’t be able to get up to tricks, and with any luck their fast bowler may break his neck. All right, Walters. Tell the vicar he can come back now. It’s no good telling him anything about the strategy of the game,’ he added in an aside to Tom. ‘He just don’t understand the finer points. But you will do as you’re told. None of that clever business with left-handed catches we had from you the other day, young fellow. I’m captain, and what I say goes.’

  Ten minutes later the game … or, rather, battle—was resumed. Witt, the opposing captain, had gone in at second wicket down and was still in. He had given no chances, and by dint of displaying the remarkable agility of a prima ballerina he had, so far, made it impossible even for Cornish to agree to some painfully vociferous appeals for l.b.w. from the wicket-keeper. He also had his eye on the weather, and less than ten minutes after the resumption of the game he skied up a soft ball which caught in the neck of Henry’s shirt.

  ‘Out!’ said the Bruke umpire uncompromisingly; and Witt, who was a strategist, too, had walked away from the wicket before the indignant Henry had had time to disengage the treacherous ball and hastily drop it on the grass.

  ‘Not out!’ bellowed Sir Adrian, ably seconded by umpire Cornish. But it was too late. The incoming batsman was sprinting towards the wicket. Sir Adrian spent a good three minutes in re-arranging his field, and Cornish used another minute and a half in stamping on two imaginary bumps … an extraneous duty for which there was no warrant. The game had to be resumed, however, and there was no doubt of the remaining batsmen’s intentions. They did their very best to be caught, bowled, or run out. To counter this the bowlers bowled well off the wicket, but not sufficiently wide to add to the score, and if the batsmen offered up catches, no matter how cleverly or discreetly, the fielders moved aside or put their hands in their pockets. And still the rain poured down. Tom began to envy Derek Caux.

  Suddenly, at the end of three-quarters of an hour of these farcical proceedings, Sir Adrian semaphored to his bowlers. The wicket was wet enough. Parrish, at the risk of his neck … a risk negligible to Sir Adrian since Parrish was no sort of batsman … braced himself up, sent down unplayable balls, and the Bruke innings was over.

  ‘But why on earth didn’t their captain declare when he found out what our lot were playing at?’ Tom demanded of Walters as they walked towards the pavilion.

  ‘It’s been agreed not to declare in this match, sir,’ Walters replied. ‘Bruke once scored four hundred and ten for six, and Sir Adrian, well, sir, he nearly went out of his mind. Us didn’t get a chance, in that match, to bat until late on the Saturday, and as we don’t, against Bruke, recognize a draw but only the number of runs we each scores in the two days’ play, it had to be reckoned Bruke’s match. We never heard the last of that for a long time. Oh, the gov’nor, he didn’t half create. I thought at first he was going to give us all the sack, but I suppose he thought better o’ that. Anyway, looks like he’ll have his revenge to-day. Seems a pity us can’t play proper. I don’t belong to Mede or Bruke meself, so it wouldn’t trouble me who wins. But we got our jobs to think of, don’t you see, and Sir Adrian won’t be beat … not if he knows it, he won’t.’

  During the interval, during which the teams changed over, the umpires remained on the field. Ostensibly their object was to inspect the pitch, but there was no doubt that in reality they were keeping close watch on one another to prevent any jiggery-pokery with the wicket.

  It was while Sir Adrian (who, with Tom, would go in first) was seated at the front of the pavilion blissfully putting on his pads, that a black-avised man from the Bruke eleven came striding up to him.

  ‘I be sendin’ for constable,’ said he, his face contorted with fury. ‘Mr. Witt be layin’ there dead. One of your b——s ’ave killed en.’ He then hit Sir Adrian in the eye.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Wetwode

  *

  ‘Where all have been candid, communicative, and courteous, it may be a difficult and invidious task to distinguish the different degrees of obligation.’
/>   James Ingram, D.D.: Memorials of Oxford

  *

  AT WETWODE, IN Norfolk, Mrs. Bradley, irrespective of what was planned by the police, was still occupied in making her own investigation. It was possible, from what was shown at the inquest, that neither Francis nor his guardian (if Miss Higgs merited that title) had been concerned in the murder of the naturalist Campbell whose body had been fastened to the bottom of the dinghy, as they had been away from Wetwode at the time when the death had taken place. That they had actually spent the week at Great Yarmouth on the dates which Miss Higgs had specified, there was not a shadow of doubt.

  On the other hand, there was the patent, inescapable fact that from Great Yarmouth to Wetwode the bus service was frequent and the buses usually crowded. It would have been quite possible for Miss Higgs or Francis (or both, if they had happened to be in collusion) to chance their luck in escaping notice if they had decided to return to Wetwode and murder their neighbour.

  Besides, it need not have been a bus, Mrs. Bradley reflected. A hired car, self-driven, would have been even more to the purpose, especially if Miss Higgs had hired it … an unnoticeable, mouse-like woman … and had picked Francis up en route. A hired taxi was scarcely a likely means of conveyance. The driver might not remember the middle-aged spinster, but he could scarcely fail to recollect the beautiful, handicapped youth.

  Her more definite enquiries had resulted in some interesting but not necessarily helpful discoveries. There were altogether seven riverside bungalows. The first one, reading from the village and upstream, was that which was occupied by Francis and Miss Higgs. The next one, rented by Mrs. Bradley, was ordinarily the property of the naturalist Campbell, who went north during the summer, and was accustomed not to return to Wetwode for at least three months. Bungalow three was taken, apparently regularly, by two wet-fly fishermen named Tavis and Grandall. They were accustomed to come down every Friday during the coarse-fishing season and to return to London by car each Monday morning. Thus, unless the murder had been committed during a week-end, they could not be held to be material witnesses, and, unless they were the murderers, could be wiped off.