The Echoing Strangers (Mrs Bradley)

by Mitchell, Gladys

  ‘The Dedman Trust Cottage Hospital, Addersdale, Hampshire. Addersdale is marked on the Ordnance map.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen it, I think. In fact, I’ve driven through it, I believe.’

  ‘I’ll pass the word to Willoughby that you’re going home. You had better keep him, I think.’

  ‘With George and Henri to look after me?’

  ‘Well, I’d feel a whole lot easier in my mind. Sir Adrian may be a bit stupid, but apparently those nancy boys are not, and I don’t trust one of the three of them.’

  ‘Do as you please, then, child. I cannot have you losing sleep on my account.’

  ‘Any idea of what you’re going to do when you get to this cottage hospital place?’

  ‘Yes, but I am not certain yet of the method which I shall employ.’

  ‘Well, don’t get into any trouble.’ He grinned affectionately at her. ‘It’s about time Laura got back from New York. What do you pay her for, if she spends all her time gadding about on transatlantic liners and going to see the Niagara Falls? A secretary should be with her employer. Besides, she’s a good hand in a rough-house,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘I wouldn’t mind knowing that you had her at your back if there’s likely to be any trouble.’

  ‘For an engaged man you don’t seem to over-value the life and limb of your fiancee,’ Mrs. Bradley remarked. ‘But I shall be glad to see her again, although not for the reason you mention. I will let you know how I get on in Addersdale.’

  ‘Yes, do. I see Malachi Thetford is back. Met him as I came along here.’

  ‘Yes. I sent him a telegram to tell him it was safe to return. After the shocks we have been able to give Sir Adrian, Malachi’s danger is past. Sir Adrian will most certainly conclude that Malachi has told us everything he knows about Campbell’s body being found beneath that boat.’

  ‘Actually, Malachi hasn’t helped us much.’

  ‘No. I wonder what Sir Adrian thought the young man had discovered?’

  ‘Whatever it was, all possible evidence of it will be destroyed by now.’

  Mrs. Bradley lost no time. By nine o’clock that night she was having dinner at her country home, the Stone House, Wandles Parva, and her delighted French chef and his wife, the parlourmaid, were in exuberant attendance upon her.

  ‘And how did you get on with Malachi Thetford?’ Mrs. Bradley had asked soon after her arrival whilst Celestine was unpacking her luggage.

  ‘That one? He is a good boy, madame. He teaches Henri a new dish.’

  ‘Really? What was that?’

  ‘Norfolk domplings, madame. And to eat them before the meat. Most good, and of an economy unsurpassed. Most filling to the stomach if the meat is small, as, alas! in England it is! Madame should live in France for a little. It is deplorable how starved are the English.’

  Mrs. Bradley declined to discuss this morbid subject which seemed to her to savour more of the outbreaks of Pravda than of commonsense philosophy.

  ‘Henri should read the diaries of the Reverend Mr. Woodforde,’ she observed.

  ‘Doubtless,’ said Celestine, with marked lack of interest. ‘It would improve his soul, madame supposes. Me, I believe him not to possess such an appendage.’

  ‘You believe a soul to be redundant?’

  ‘As madame pleases.’ She tossed her head, to Mrs. Bradley’s delight, not understanding the last word of her employer’s remark and determined not to ask for a translation.

  ‘But we weren’t talking of souls,’ Mrs. Bradley pointed out, ‘but of dumplings. In his diaries, Parson Woodforde describes in detail many meals, some of which I feel Henri would take pleasure in preparing. For instance: lst Course, a Dish of Soals boiled and fryed, Couple of boiled Chicken and Tongue, Beans and Bacon, Stewed Beef and an Haunch of Venison rosted at the lower end. 2nd Course, a Couple of rost Ducks and Green Peas, a Leveret rosted, Maccaroni, Patties, Blamange, red-Cur rant Pye … What do you think of all that?’

  ‘One would need the stomach of an elephant,’ said Celestine, sniffing. She finished the unpacking and then went off to tell her spouse to serve dinner at once, as madame was obviously suffering from lack of food because all her conversation ran on viands.

  Next day Mrs. Bradley drove to Addersdale. It was off the main Southampton-Christchurch road, a tiny hamlet, but the hospital was served by crossroads which linked it with a dozen villages.

  It was an early Georgian house which had not been altered except for the absence of an inside wall here and there to make what had been two rooms into a ward.

  Mrs. Bradley presented her professional card, and the Sister-in-Charge came at once to greet her.

  ‘Good afternoon, Matron,’ said Mrs. Bradley briskly. ‘I am, as usual, working with the Home Office over a small matter and I have reason to think that you might be able to help me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Doctor?’

  ‘I wonder whether you can tell me who was in charge here ten or eleven years ago?’

  ‘I myself would have been. I’ve been here nearly twenty years.’

  ‘That’s better luck than I’d hoped for. Do you remember an accident case … shock and bruises, I expect? It was a small boy of seven named Francis Caux. He’d been in a car smash after which his father and mother died in the Cotman and Cole Hospital, near Lymington.’

  ‘I remember him very well, Doctor. Yes, there was a sad case, if ever I had one. Poor little chap! Such a lovely little boy! He went deaf and dumb, you know. I’ve often thought about him, and wondered how he got on. I did ask his grandfather to let us know, when he came to take him away, but I never heard any more about it.’

  ‘We have reason to believe that he will make a full recovery,’ said Mrs. Bradley cautiously, ‘and I’m trying to obtain details of his medical history.’ (What these had to do with the Home Office she would, if challenged, have found rather difficult to explain, but Sister, dazzled by the professional card which was embellished by one or two of Mrs. Bradley’s formidable degrees, was not in challenging mood.)

  ‘Well, I can’t tell you very much, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘although one thing may interest you. It was on account of the shock he’d had, poor little boy. I shall always remember it, though. His big eyes, and his piteously white little face, and his tousled hair. He sat up in bed and stretched out his arms to me and said, ‘Grandy did it! Grandy did it! I saw him!’

  ‘Now that is interesting,’ said Mrs. Bradley very slowly indeed. ‘You see what it means, Matron?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. Delayed shock. He wasn’t deaf and dumb until at least a week after he came in.’

  ‘This is very important indeed, and the theory of delayed shock, although obviously the right one …’ She hesitated. The Sister’s evidence was so important that she was determined not to give her any lead. There was a pause. The two women, one big, blonde-grey and, by now, half-nervous, the other small, yellow and as penetrative as a gimlet, gazed at one another. Then Sister sighed and relaxed.

  ‘I’ve often puzzled over whether I ought to have said anything at the time, but Doctor Smith … he’s dead now … seemed satisfied that it was all due to the accident … but it was after his grandfather visited him that this deafness and dumbness seemed to date with Francis.’

  Mrs. Bradley relaxed, too.

  ‘Thank you very much, Matron. We are investigating a precisely similar case, you see, and a comparison is both helpful and interesting.’

  ‘Well, I won’t ask any questions, Doctor,’ said Sister, with a shrewd glance. ‘Perhaps I ought to have said something at the time, but Doctor Smith seemed satisfied, and it wasn’t for me to query him.’

  ‘Of course not. And, even if you had spoken (to the police, of course, you mean), it couldn’t have done any good. The little boy was undoubtedly suffering from shock … for one reason or another.’

  She accepted the Sister’s eager offer to show her over the hospital, and departed, after tea and biscuits in the office, in an aura of general goodwill. There was one other helpful point.<
br />
  ‘You didn’t speak of this to anybody else at the time, Matron?’

  Sister looked distressed.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I did. You see, I thought you meant had I mentioned it to the police. But …’

  ‘No, no. It will help enormously. Confirmatory evidence, you see. I won’t deceive you. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I have. We are investigating murder. I know I can rely on your discretion.’

  ‘Say no more, Doctor. I shan’t say another word to a soul.’

  ‘And the person or persons you spoke to, at the time?’

  ‘Lady Hordle, up at the Hall. She was our Chairman of Governors.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘No one at all, Doctor. Lady Hordle advised me very strongly to hold my tongue. She had no doubt Doctor Smith was right and she said that in any case no good could possibly come of talking about the grandfather’s visit. “You’ll only lose Doctor’s confidence,” she said, “without doing any good at all.” But I felt bad about it for a long time. There wasn’t any sign of anything more than superficial shock, and that came out at the time we first took him in. He was sweating and shivering and crying, and felt cold … well, you don’t need me to tell you the symptoms, Doctor. But he was already beginning to get over it when his grandfather came. He’d asked me, (on the fourth day, that would have been), why his father and mother hadn’t been to see him, and I broke it all to him as gently as I could. He looked solemn and a bit thoughtful, and then he said, sitting up in bed, as I told you, and stretching out his little arms to me, “Grandy did it! I saw him!” And then, after his grandfather’s visit …’

  ‘His grandfather, I take it, came more than once to see him?’

  ‘Twice. The second time he took him away. And that was dreadful, too. The child clung to me … oh, how those hard little arms did cling around my neck! But Doctor Smith let him go. He said it might take years to get over the shock, and he did advise the grandfather to take him to a psychiatrist, but I don’t know if ever he did. I called at Mede House once on my afternoon off, but the butler told me none of the family was at home. I asked him about little Francis, but he said he was being taken care of elsewhere … somewhere in Norfolk, he thought … and he didn’t know anything about him.’

  Mrs. Bradley went straight from the hospital to the Hall. Lady Hordle made no bones about confirming the Sister’s story.

  ‘But I advised her, very strongly, to hold her tongue,’ she said. ‘After all, if there was any truth in what the child had said … if the car had been tampered with, for example, and such cases are, unfortunately, not unknown … it would all have come out at the inquest. The police are very particular.’

  Mrs. Bradley agreed. She did not add that in a head-on collision any tampering with the steering-gear, for instance, might well be so thoroughly disguised among the resultant wreckage that even the police, for all their care, might not have been able to find out about it, particularly if there was no reason for suspecting foul play.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Echo from Mede

  *

  ‘Him as strikes first is my fancy.’

  R. L. Stevenson: Treasure Island

  *

  GAVIN WAS MORE than satisfied; he was jubilant.

  ‘Of course, we can’t use it officially,’ he said, ‘but we can get on to Francis, all right.’

  ‘He’ll become deaf and dumb again if you do. Of course, there’s no shadow of doubt now but that he said something about the car smash to his grandfather which caused Sir Adrian to threaten him.’

  ‘Yes. There’s no proof, which has been our difficulty all along in this case, but we ought to be able to make some sort of lever out of it. Exactly what do you hope to gain from this cricket match?’

  ‘Either direct evidence, or complete capitulation on the part of the murderer of Witt.’

  ‘And which of the twins really did it?’

  ‘That is precisely what I want to find out.’

  ‘You still don’t know, then?’

  ‘I still don’t know. Even on psychological grounds I don’t know, although by now I think I can guess.’

  The next move was made by Sir Adrian three days later.

  ‘Look here,’ he said to Mrs. Bradley, meeting her in the dining-room of the hotel and seating himself without ceremony or permission at her table, ‘that young fellow Donagh. Wants me to meet an eleven of his on my private ground at Mede. I suppose you put him up to it. Well, I can tell you this: you tried to call my bluff the other day. I’m calling yours now. You won’t, in a month of Sundays, find out anything more about Witt’s death than all of us know already. I wasn’t concerned, and neither was Derry, and I’ll see your hand on that. And as for that other business, I’ve a good mind to have you up for defamation of character, and I would if we’d had any witnesses.’

  ‘War to the knife, in fact,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘or to my little revolver.’ She patted her pocket (in which the little revolver no longer lay) with gratitude and affection. Sir Adrian scowled and got up.

  ‘You heard what I said,’ he remarked.

  ‘Have you made up your mind yet which grandson is which?’ Mrs. Bradley sweetly demanded. Sir Adrian made a hoarse noise in his throat and could be heard, a moment later, in the bar parlour, calling loudly for rum and orange. Mrs. Bradley followed him in, asked for some brandy and then asked casually:

  ‘As you have been good enough to consult me about the match with Mr. Donagh’s eleven, may I take it that I am invited? You remember that I promised to play, so may I come?’

  ‘No, you may not. If you attempt to set foot inside my grounds I’ll have you thrown out. And I mean that.’

  Mrs. Bradley had not expected to be persona grata at the match, and, in any case, it coincided with her plans that she should not be invited to attend it. It was hardly fair to expect Tom Donagh to double-cross his erstwhile employer, so the position of copper’s nark, as the young gentleman in question termed it upon becoming acquainted with his duties, was entrusted to Mrs. Bradley’s nephew Carey Lestrange, who had been introduced to Donagh and the rest of his side by his Christian name only, and who was so utterly unlike Mrs. Bradley in appearance that it was not anticipated that anybody, friend or foe, would suspect that any relationship between them existed. The rest of the eleven consisted of Mrs. Bradley’s nephew Jonathan Bradley, masquerading under his wife’s maiden name, two schoolmasters and two Sixth-form boys known to the captain, three young policemen supplied from London by Gavin, and the local doctor who was not required by Sir Adrian to perform for Mede as his lawyer was present and would act as one of the umpires. Tom Donagh had previously agreed that Sir Adrian should also appoint the second umpire, and this man turned out to be Grandall, whom Sir Adrian had brought over from Wetwode. Tavis came with his friend to watch the match.

  The teams were to foregather at ten on the morning of the match, a feat made possible by the fact that Donagh’s eleven had come to Mede on the previous evening. Lestrange, Bradley and the policemen put up at Mrs. Cornish’s inn, Donagh and his schoolmaster friends had been invited to stay at Mede House, and the schoolboys were accommodated at Mrs. Bradley’s Stone House and were run over to Mede by car in time for the match. As Sir Adrian had concerned himself with none of the visitors except Donagh, (who had been compelled to cadge invitations for his friends, who had otherwise intimated that they would not come and play for him), these arrangements were of no concern to the captain of the home side.

  At a quarter past ten a piece of paper fluttered through the letterbox at Mede, pushed from the inside to the outside of the house, and was snatched up by Gavin.

  ‘Both twins playing for Mede. Thought you’d like to know. We are batting first. Carey.’

  ‘Intelligent chap, your nephew,’ said Gavin, going back to sit beside Mrs. Bradley in her car which was parked outside the Mede demesne. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘I think we join the spectators.’

  ‘But wil
l they let us in?’

  ‘Yes, if we present ourselves after the game has begun. Sir Adrian has promised to throw me out, but I don’t suppose he’ll notice me.’

  There seemed no difficulty about gaining admission to the ground. The public gate was at right-angles to the pavilion, and the man in charge made no trouble about allowing them in. He even found a bench for them to sit on.

  ‘So far, so good,’ said Gavin, regarding with a critical eye the bowling of Parrish from the eastern end of the ground. ‘I say, that bloke’s good.’ He was more than good. With great satisfaction Mrs. Bradley saw her favourite nephew’s wicket go for three runs.

  ‘The batsman also has an eye,’ she tolerantly observed. Jonathan Bradley, with good grace, walked back to the pavilion. ‘Blood is thicker than water, and true citizenship even greater than cricket,’ she concluded. She forbore to applaud the returning batsman for fear of making her presence known to Sir Adrian. The next man in was one of Tom Donagh’s schoolmasters. He began merrily … so merrily, in fact, that Mrs. Bradley, distrusting so much virtuosity, left the ground immediately after his first over, and went round to the front of the house.

  Here, as she had planned, Jonathan Bradley had left the front door open.

  She entered the dim house noiselessly, and went straight to the stained glass window which had given Tom Donagh his first glimpse of Sir Adrian’s wonderful cricket ground. The window was partly pushed up at the bottom. She raised it a little further and peered out. Then she brought a chair from the hall, climbed on to the inside sill, wriggled like a greased Indian through the aperture she had created, and dropped like a lark to the ground.

  The pavilion was ahead of her and a little to her left. Its back door was open. She walked in and presented herself to the man on duty in the tea-room. He did not seem at all surprised to see her.

  ‘Sandwich and coffee, madam?’ he enquired.