The Echoing Strangers (Mrs Bradley)

by Mitchell, Gladys

  Sir Adrian looked haggard.

  ‘I’d rather go to the gallows myself than have that boy accused!’

  ‘Very possibly. But, you see, you can’t. There are more than twenty witnesses (apart from spectators, too) who can testify to your innocence of that particular deed.’

  ‘I shall say he did it under my influence.’

  ‘Even if he did …’ She did not add that this particular theory had already occurred to her.

  ‘Well, even if he did?’ said Sir Adrian. Mrs. Bradley smiled—a mirthless contortion which gave her the fleeting appearance of a crocodile on half-rations.

  ‘No jury would ever believe you. They would know that you were screening the boy. Moreover, when they decided such to be the case, your true evidence, which might have helped the accused, would then tend to be disregarded. In court the truth, although often dangerous, is less so, on the whole, than lying. It is also far less tax on the memory.’

  ‘You had better tell me what is in your mind, I think. Let’s suppose, since you’ve chosen to raise the point, that it was Frankie, and not Derry, playing cricket … although how on earth they could ever have changed places has me baffled. Why, for six years, from nine to fifteen, Derry was at school. At a tutorial place, you know, where the boy was under constant supervision.’

  ‘I presume he came home for the holidays?’

  ‘Oh, you think they got up to their games during holidays, do you? Even when Derry went to Switzerland?’

  ‘Both, I should say, were bored with their safe and settled existence at times. The early exchanges of identity which you seem to know must have taken place, were probably merely a way of giving rein to a sense of adventure. Then, of course …’ She explained her theory that the boys had been blackmailed by Campbell. ‘And what I want you to tell me,’ she added at the end, (and she spoke gently, for Sir Adrian was looking extremely like a gaffed fish), ‘is where Witt comes into all this. That he blackmailed the publican Cornish there seems no doubt, and some evidence which we have been able to gather from Mrs. Cornish suggests that Witt and Campbell could have known one another before Witt went to live at Mede and Campbell in Wetwode. Can you add to that evidence at all?’

  ‘No,’ said Sir Adrian, ‘I can’t. And no one was blackmailing me. I should very soon have handed him over to the police. No disgraceful secret is worth keeping at the price of being bled and losing sleep. “Out, damnéd spot!” is what I’d say, if anybody tried on me those devilish tricks.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Mrs. Bradley very thoughtfully, taking a small revolver from her skirt pocket and twiddling it absentmindedly, ‘you went to considerable trouble to remove from your vicinity a certain small boy aged seven.’

  ‘What the devil do you mean, madam!’ There was no doubt about his reaction to her statement. His little eyes were rimmed with bright blood, his lips were drawn back. His voice was thick with the furious anger of fear. ‘What do you mean, I say!’

  ‘Francis witnessed that accident to the car, the accident in which his father and mother were killed. I’ve often wondered how and why that accident occurred.’

  She thought for a moment (indeed, it was true) that Sir Adrian was going to launch himself at her, but a glance at her little revolver, now levelled in a business-like way, was sufficient to delay the impulse. He abandoned it, and threw himself into a chair.

  ‘Talking through your hat,’ he mumbled. Mrs. Bradley, who was wearing a sort of fez made of orange velvet decorated with two bloody-looking cherries which dangled over her right ear, glanced appreciatively at this monstrosity in the mirror over the fireplace and smirked complacently. ‘Accidents will happen,’ Sir Adrian added sullenly.

  ‘This one was intended to happen to Francis, too, wasn’t it? But when you discovered that the poor child had been rendered deaf and dumb as the result of shock (although any competent psychologist would have told you that with proper treatment he could be restored to normal fairly easily), you thought that perhaps it came to much the same thing, so long as you sent him away. Otherwise his condition might have reminded you of your frightful crime, and even you had sufficient conscience not to want that.’

  ‘And what is supposed to have been my motive for this abominable action?’ Sir Adrian sneeringly enquired. ‘I presume I’m supposed to have had one.’ He had regained his self-confidence, she noted.

  ‘Yes, of course. You did it to gain the one thing you wanted … possession of little Derek.’

  ‘But if the twins are so much alike that I’m now supposed not to be able to tell one of them from the other, why should I have this complete personal preference for Derry?’

  ‘But I don’t think you had,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘I think you wanted one of the boys but not both. I don’t believe it mattered to you at all which boy it was. And that is why you cannot (and could not, all the time that they were changing places) distinguish one twin from the other.’

  Sir Adrian sat back, relaxed.

  ‘And you really think,‘ he said, ‘that you could get away with all this in a court of law?’

  ‘Certainly not. But I am warning you that one of the twins will kill you unless you re-make your will. Do you read the Sherlock Holmes stories?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know why you do, but, if you do, you will surely remember the story called The Copper Beeches. You do remember it, don’t you?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘It contained one point which I, personally, have found useful. Sherlock Holmes argued backwards.’

  ‘Sounds quite unlike him. Or, no, perhaps that’s wrong.’

  ‘It may or may not be wrong. But in that story, he deduced you may remember, the characteristics of the father from those he had observed in the son.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’ He looked uneasy again.

  ‘Oh, yes, you do. One of the twins attempted to drown Miss Higgs. (I say nothing about the deaths of Witt and Campbell). Your son was had up for manslaughter. You preceded your son and the twins. Is it too far-fetched of me to deduce that you might be capable of murder?’

  ‘I’ll murder you,’ said Sir Adrian ferociously, ‘if you dare to insinuate that I had anything to do with the deaths of my son and his wife. What makes you even suggest such a terrible thing?’

  ‘A belated but sincere desire to speak the truth,’ said Mrs. Bradley, putting away her little revolver. ‘But since the truth, being the truth, is almost always incapable of proof … vide all respectable religions … let us confine ourselves to the uncritical care of our moutons and revert to the matter in hand.’

  ‘I’ve lost the thread,’ said Sir Adrian uncertainly. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘No, it was you. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t really play cricket?’ He seemed relieved by the sudden change of subject.

  ‘Even at the expense of being hit over the heart by a body-line bowler, yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well, it’s your cricket ground, not mine, isn’t it?’

  ‘You mean you’d play cricket at Mede? No. Look here, what’s your game?’

  ‘This time, obviously, cricket.’

  ‘You want to come to Mede to find out what happened at the time of Witt’s death, do you?’

  ‘That, and other things. I still can’t see why your grandson left the ground during what turned out to be the crucial time. That is, the time of the murder.’

  ‘Bad luck. Bad luck. There is such a thing, you know.’

  ‘As who should not. But bad luck, like lightning, strikes only in one direction.’

  ‘Downwards?’

  ‘It is your word, not mine,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

  ‘So there it is,’ said Mrs. Bradley to Gavin. ‘I’ve given him fair warning. I know he’s told lies. He knew more about the boys than he admits.’

  ‘I don’t much like this cricket business, you know. Do you think he’d let me play?’ />
  ‘I want you to play, child, and I want you to snoop. Who knows …’ she leered hideously, ‘what an unbiassed cricketer might be able to find out?’

  ‘But I’m not unbiassed.’

  ‘That is the point I was endeavouring to aim at. And, being completely biassed, you are the more likely, as any respectable historian will tell you, to arrive at some approximation of the truth. So long as you know you’re biassed, neither you nor the truth will suffer. “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief” is one of the more extraordinary texts. On the surface it is meaningless. Beneath the surface, (I often think about the depths of the sea), it has rather more meaning than most of us can even begin to estimate.’

  ‘You ought to have been a lay preacher,’ said Gavin reproachfully. ‘What on earth are you handing me now?’

  ‘Arrest Derek Caux and find out, child.’

  ‘But which of them is Derek Caux?’

  ‘I know what you mean. And yet there is one simple way of finding out.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, certainly yeah. And, if you don’t perceive what it is, I don’t see why I should enlighten you.’

  ‘Well, dash it, you’re a psychologist. You’ve got ways and means of your own. All phoney, I suspect, but so long as you satisfy yourself you will probably satisfy me. And if you can satisfy me, you’ll probably satisfy a jury. Come on, now. Out with it.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with psychology in the sense that you mean,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘It all depends on Wetwode.’

  ‘Wetwode?’

  ‘Rouge, rouge, rouge!’ shouted his hearer, on a sudden scream which took his breath away.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said feebly.

  ‘Not the cherry brandy, child!’ continued Mrs. Bradley inexcusably. ‘Throw them both into the river. But this time the witch won’t swim.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Gavin, his handsome face clearing at last. ‘Good heavens, I should have thought of it myself!’

  ‘Why, child? Nobody else has.’ But she leered upon him devotedly, as a dim-witted mother might leer upon a loved but idiot child.

  ‘So Francis will swim,’ said Gavin, looking happy. ‘Any flannelled fool can make some sort of show with bat and ball, but if you can’t swim, you can’t, and that goes for Derek. Lord, how ridiculously simple!’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Echo of a Crime

  *

  ‘I have tracked it clue by clue, carefully and laboriously, with varying success for eight long years, and at last I am in the position to say that I believe I have my thumb upon the keynote.’

  Guy Boothby: Doctor Nikola

  *

  ‘YES, THAT’S IT,’ said Gavin. ‘I wonder why we never thought of it before?’

  ‘But I did,’ Mrs. Bradley responded. ‘What we need now are the reports of the inquest upon the Caux parents.’

  ‘It must all have been according to Cocker, you know. So far as I’m aware, nothing came up which led to the slightest breath of suspicion. It must have passed as being an accident pure and simple. In fact, I looked up the records before, if you remember, and that’s what it purely and simply was.’

  ‘According to Sir Adrian’s reactions, I should say that it was neither pure nor simple. There is no doubt that Sir Adrian is badly shaken.’

  ‘And you really think those boys may have planned to take his life?’

  ‘One, I think, has planned it.’

  ‘Yes, but which? Why, oh, why are identical twins?’

  ‘Let us go back a bit. Now, then: the accident … we’ll still call it that for the moment … happened ten years ago, when the boys were seven. Two years later, owing to an impulse on the part of Miss Higgs, or, more probably, Derek (who was clever and bored), they met again whilst Sir Adrian was arranging for Derek’s education. From that time onwards the boys kept in touch with one another, even although at first they could meet only once a year when Sir Adrian went north for the grouse-shooting.’

  ‘So far, so good. But where does it get us? And, you know, I’m a bit worried still about this cunning and cleverness they seem to have shown, and especially this business of keeping up the fiction that Francis was still deaf and dumb.’

  ‘I don’t think there is very much difficulty. One of them … we’ll say it is Derek, just for the sake of the argument … has a really first-class brain. We know that not only from our own observations, but from an entirely unbiassed person, Mr. Tom Donagh, who tutored him at the beginning of the summer vacation … we’ll say that Derek made the plans.’

  ‘Granted, so far. Go on.’

  ‘Well, child, is it straining credulity too far to believe that at first the two boys merely played a game over the deaf and dumb business? You see, there are advantages in being both beautiful and afflicted. I have no doubt whatever that in various material ways dear to the hearts of small boys, the path of Miss Higgs’ charge was considerably smoothed. Who, for instance, would dream of punishing him, no matter what he did? Who would not dream of handing out more sweetmeats and a richer slice of cake to one on whom Nature appeared to have so little mercy? Who, having contrived to discover anything which seemed to give the little boy pleasure, would not frame and invent occasions for indulging him?’

  ‘All right! All right! You win. But you see what all this leads to?’

  ‘I can see one thing. Collusion. It was probably easy enough for Francis to cast off the leading strings at this end … he had only to wait until Miss Higgs went shopping, for example; and she must frequently have gone shopping even as far as Norwich …’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s a reasonable assumption, and we know that Francis can handle a boat. He probably miked as he pleased. But what about the other half of the sketch? How did Derek, even with his grandfather absent, contrive to sneak away out of Mede?’

  ‘The point has arisen before. I think that whilst you again read the report of that inquest on the Caux parents, I will attach myself once more to the delightful Mr. Tom Donagh, and set him to work as a sleuth.’

  ‘He can pump the servants, you mean. But will he agree to do that? I don’t think I would in his place.’

  ‘He won’t need to agree, child, for that will not be what we require. All I want Mr. Donagh to do is to arrange this other cricket match and challenge Sir Adrian to bring a team against Donagh’s eleven.’

  ‘Donagh may not be able to get an eleven together.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense! Don’t be so defeatist! Surely, among my male relatives, who are legion, and the talented young policemen that you know, we can find sufficient players to put up a respectable game?’

  ‘And where is it going to be played? You can’t ask Sir Adrian to bat on the village green.’

  ‘It will be played at Mede, on Sir Adrian’s own perfect pitch. That, I somehow fancy, is already arranged.’

  ‘Oh, I see!’

  ‘And about time, too,’ said Mrs. Bradley severely. ‘It is the only way I can think of which is bound to succeed in getting Sir Adrian back to his own home, which at present he shows a marked disinclination to visit.’

  ‘And then …?’

  ‘And then I shall enact the part of Mr. Witt’s murderer.’

  ‘Getting Donagh to open the house to you as we think one of the Caux boys did on the former occasion? I don’t see what you’ll gain from it, you know.’

  ‘Time will show what I shall gain, child.’

  ‘There’s another thing, too, though. You know, I’m still worried about your safety. If you’re right, at least two out of the three Caux people are murderers, and the other is probably an accessory. You’ve shown your hand quite clearly now, and are probably in serious danger. I think I’ll stick on a couple of my chaps to trail you and them, and generally keep an eye on things. I don’t want you pushed into the river or bashed on the head with a half-brick. Bad for my reputation.’

  ‘Very well. I will let Sir Adrian know what you intend,’ said Mrs. Bradley agreeably; for she knew that to argue w
ith chivalrous males whose protective instinct has clouded their better judgment is worse than useless. Gavin grinned cheerfully at her.

  ‘All right. You go ahead, then,’ he said indulgently, ‘and I’ll get on with sorting the dirty linen of past crime.’

  So efficiently did he carry out this task that at the end of a couple of days he returned with a sheaf of typed documents. Mrs. Bradley, who now had a fellow guest at the hotel in the person of her faithful and unobtrusive bodyguard, a young policeman named Willoughby, welcomed Gavin and invited him up to her hotel sitting-room, a very pleasant place which, although it was well back from it, overlooked the river.

  ‘Any luck?’ she enquired. Gavin took out the fruits of his—or rather, of two of his bright young men’s—researches.

  ‘I put Carr and Walker on to the job,’ he said, ‘and they went through all the old newspaper files and got out everything they could find. It’s all very picturesque and interesting … life history of the Caux family, portraits of Sir Adrian and Derek, old photographs of Caux, his wife and the twin boys when the kids were three—that sort of thing—and a very full report of the inquest. I’ve read and re-read, but there doesn’t seem a thing that’s any good to us.’

  ‘Were Mr. and Mrs. Caux killed instantly?’

  ‘No, but neither recovered consciousness after the accident. Mrs. Caux died the same night, and Caux on the following morning.’

  ‘Which hospital did they go to?’

  ‘The Cotman and Cole, near Lymington.’

  ‘And the boy Francis?’

  ‘There wasn’t a bed in the children’s ward, so they took him to a small cottage hospital between Mede and Brockenhurst which serves several villages and seems to be staffed partly by the local W.V.S. There’s a Sister-in-Charge and a couple of nurses, and the W.V.S. do cleaning, and trot about doing a sort of ambulance service for the out-lying districts.’

  ‘Interesting. Before we get Sir Adrian to go back to Mede for this cricket match I think I’ll go and stay in Brockenhurst for a bit. I like the New Forest. Or I could even go home. That might be better. How do I get to this cottage hospital from Wandles Parva? What is it called?’