Winking at the Brim (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  By previous arrangement with her employer, Laura, having been introduced in the afternoon to the Calshotts, suggested that she would like to see more of the loch.

  “We could walk as far as the tent,” said Phyllis Calshott at once. “You’ll come, too, Sally, won’t you?”

  “I’m afraid dear Sally has had rather a shock,” said Lady Calshott, when the three younger people had left the caravan. “It was she, you know, who found poor Angela.”

  “Yes, she sent for me,” said Dame Beatrice. “The news must have come as a great shock to you, too.”

  “I can’t understand it,” said Sir Humphrey. “I would have thought that Angela was the very last person to take her own life, no matter what distress of mind she was in.”

  “Oh, she was always very tense and embittered underneath, you know,” said his wife. “The thing which surprises me is that the vicar should have written such a cruel, heartless letter. I suppose he could not find the courage to tell Angela face to face that she was redundant.”

  “Well, my dear, she did set her cap at him in the most uncompromising fashion, if you remember.”

  “I think, before we go any farther, there is something you ought to know,” said Dame Beatrice. “Sally told me about the letter and I took it upon myself to go and see the vicar. He has no knowledge of such a letter and most definitely denies having written it.”

  Sir Humphrey looked astounded. Lady Calshott said,

  “Then there was no need for Angela…But who would have thought of playing such a cruel trick? I think, Humphrey, that you had better have a word with Jeremy Tamworth.”

  “Jeremy Tamworth? Oh, now, really, my dear! I shall institute enquiries, of course, but they must be made discreetly. I can’t go about handing out accusations against particular people at this stage. We do not even know that it was the letter which actuated poor Angela. Besides, we must wait to hear what the police and the procurator-fiscal have to say.”

  “I thought the interview you had yesterday with the inspector indicated clearly what they will have to say.”

  “Oh, did you speak to the inspector of police yesterday?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “For the second time,” replied Sir Humphrey, “and the police surgeon was also good enough to have a talk with me. My wife is quite right. There is no doubt about a verdict of suicide. Angela’s age, you know, was against her from the point of view of the police surgeon—women between the ages of forty and fifty, you understand—and I had to confess that she was always a strung-up, bitter kind of creature, although I did tell him that I had never thought of possible suicide. Anyway, I am glad, for Sally’s sake, that you have come to take her home, Dame Beatrice. I’m sure she will be relieved to get away from here.”

  “So shall we all,” said Lady Calshott. “I am only very sorry that we ever came. All that trouble and expense, and now this to happen, and nothing to show for it, either.”

  “Have the police decided by what means the death was effected?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, yes, and we have permission to bury the body. Angela died from strychnine poisoning. The remains of the coffee still contained enough of the drug to poison a dozen people, I am told.”

  “And the metal cup which would have formed the top of the flask? Sally told me that it was lying near the body.”

  “The police assume that poor Angela drank directly from the flask itself. The cup had not been used. That does not sound like Angela, but the experts would not have been wrong.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “On the flask, the inspector told me, but not on the cup.”

  “That seems very strange. She would have had to unscrew the cap which forms the cup on a thermos flask, even if she did not drink from it, would she not?”

  “To bear out the theory of suicide, she had wounded herself in the throat and had also attempted drowning.”

  “Is Miss Barton to be buried up here?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Lady Calshott, before her husband could answer. “Mrs. McLauchlin, at the hotel, is helping me over the arrangements. There is no point in transporting the body all the way down to Hampshire. After all, if people are foolish and wicked enough to put an end to their own lives, they cannot expect amenities.”

  “So this is where you saw the monster,” said Laura.

  “Just about here,” said Sally. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but Angela’s death seems to have made a difference. I mean, Sir Humphrey mustn’t go off without a clue.”

  “You mustn’t say anything to Daddy,” said Phyllis. “You see, Sally darling, you’ve had an awful shock, finding Angela like that, and…”

  “You think I’m only imagining I saw something in the loch?—that I’m making this up?” said Sally, amused. “I assure you that there is something and that I did see it. The only reason I haven’t mentioned it before seems to have been a very good reason, doesn’t it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I felt I wouldn’t be believed, and now I see how right I was.”

  “I believe you,” said Laura. “You say it winked at you. You wouldn’t have made that up. You wouldn’t have thought of it.”

  Sally laughed.

  “What an odd way of convincing yourself,” she said, “but it certainly did seem to wink at me. It was as though we shared some huge, secret joke.”

  “The joke was that it showed itself to you, but not to any of the rest of us, I suppose,” said Phyllis. “Look, Sally, if you tell Daddy, he’ll want to stay up here and go on watching. Mummy and I are longing to get home. Apart from all this dreadful business of Angela, it’s becoming most terribly boring, all these wretched meals and having to go to bed at ten and get up at dawn and man the beastly tent with nothing to see but hills and mountains and a lot of peat-stained water.”

  “But doesn’t the fact that Sally has seen the monster make any difference?” asked Laura.

  “No, because, well, actually, I don’t believe it. Sally has lots of imagination. She must have, or she couldn’t write books.”

  “Oh, yes, my novel,” said Sally. “Sir Humphrey says he’s going to publish it, Laura. I must remember to tell Grandmamma. With all this other business I’d forgotten all about my book.”

  “Tell us the plot,” said Phyllis.

  “I don’t suppose it has one,” said Laura. “Modern novels don’t, on the whole. That’s why I like detective stories, old-fashioned although people think them nowadays. At least they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Has your novel those items, Sally?”

  “When it comes out I’ll give you a copy and you can find out for yourself,” said Sally. “How far do you want to walk?”

  “Oh, you turn back when you’ve had enough of it. I enjoy walking on my own. How about Miss Calshott?”

  “Oh, do, please, call me Phyllis. I’m beginning to think about tea. Are you beginning to think about tea, Sally?”

  “Not yet. Why don’t you go and help get it ready? Laura and I would still like to go as far as the tent before we turn back. I want to show her our camera with the telephoto lens.”

  “Don’t you really want your tea?” asked Laura, when Phyllis had left them.

  “Not as much as I wanted to get shot of Phyllis for a bit. What do you make of the Calshotts, Laura, now that you’ve met them? Do you think they know Angela Barton didn’t poison herself?”

  “I wouldn’t care to venture an opinion. Personally, if I were in their shoes, I’d be glad to settle for a verdict of suicide and have done with it, I suppose.”

  “I don’t believe you would, Laura. All the same, I don’t think they were very fond of her, so they’re not likely to want revenge on the person who poisoned her in the way you’d want to avenge someone you dearly loved. I mean, had it been Phyllis, for example, they’d have moved heaven and earth to find out the truth, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” said Laura. “The trouble is, you know, Sally, that you can’t trust a murderer not to do it again. That’s the reason
why the truth ought to be known. Supposing that it was murder, who’s your pick for the killer?”

  “I couldn’t possibly answer that question, Laura. Nobody, I fancy, liked Angela, but there’s all the difference in the world between not liking a person and taking that person’s life away. Angela snooped and pried and said bitter, unpleasant things about people, but none of it, surely, could have been motive enough for somebody to have murdered her.”

  “We don’t know that. If, in her snooping and prying, she had got hold of somebody’s guilty secret, that could have been motive enough, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, but, Laura, our sort of people don’t have guilty secrets.”

  “Bless your innocent heart!” said Laura. “Hullo, there’s your tent. Where’s this camera?”

  “Up there on the bluff.”

  They inspected the expensive private eye and then Laura asked, in a casual tone, “How far from here is the cottage where you found her?”

  “Hard to say. It’s somewhere on the other side of the mountain. You can see it from the opposite side of the loch, but not from here.”

  “You remember that letter you found? Was it wet or dry?”

  “Perfectly dry. The ink hadn’t run at all. To my mind, that’s proof it was put there by the murderer, because Angela’s clothes were soaking wet, as though she’d fallen into the loch.”

  “It never hurts to have a re-run of the evidence. Had she been sick?”

  “I never thought of that, or of the letter being dry, but, no, she hadn’t been sick, not in the cottage, anyway.”

  “Perhaps not all poisons make you sick. I wonder where she was actually given the stuff, and how long it takes to act?”

  “I’ve thought all along, Laura, that the body was dumped in the cottage. I’ve never thought Angela died there.”

  “Big, heavy woman?”

  “Oh, no, hungry-looking and thin and about five-three tall, that’s all. Anybody could have carried her.”

  “Either sex?”

  Sally stared at her.

  “Either sex?” she repeated. “Well, yes, I suppose so. One reasonably strong or determined woman could have managed it, I should think, at any rate for a short distance.”

  “And two could have managed it easily?”

  “Oh, well, yes. But what two? You’re not thinking of Lady Calshott and Phyllis, I hope?”

  Laura wagged her head solemnly.

  “The prime suspects are always the nearest and dearest relatives,” she replied. “Did Cousin Angela have anything much to leave?”

  “Oh, Laura, what a beastly idea!”

  “Beastly it may be, but it’s money that’s at the bottom of most murders. It has sex, revenge, and ritual killing beaten all ends up. Show me who gains and I’ll tell you who done it. That’s the slogan the police go by, anyway.”

  “Well, I don’t know who would gain by Angela’s death, or how much she had to leave. The fact that she took service with the vicar doesn’t mean very much, because the general idea is that she did so only to get a foot in at the vicarage with a view to subsequent matrimony. The rumours are that she was pretty comfortably off. It was marriage she wanted.”

  “Then whoever forged that letter must have known about that. Did Dame B. ask you whether it was written on the vicar’s headed notepaper?”

  “Yes, it was, so that points to one of our own party, doesn’t it? But I don’t remember a telephone number, though.”

  “Well, who could it be? It must be one of your party. A tramp wouldn’t have poisoned her. He’d have strangled her or knocked her on the head. We mentioned Lady Calshott and Phyllis a moment ago, but I don’t think we were at all serious.”

  “I wouldn’t put much past Lady Calshott,” said Sally thoughtfully, “but I think we must wash out Phyllis.”

  “Sir Humphrey, then?”

  “Oh, no, not Sir Humphrey!”

  “Because he’s going to publish your book? Oh, no, sorry! That’s a dirty crack. Why not Sir Humphrey?”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s just a feeling I have that, whatever the temptation, Sir Humphrey would stop short of murder.”

  “Oh, well, if them’s your sentiments I must respect them. But, apart from the Calshotts, who else could possibly gain from Miss Barton’s death?”

  “According to Phyllis, it could be the Benson sisters, Godiva and Winfrith. They, too, had designs on the vicarage as a desirable residence until Angela appeared on the scene.”

  “Hm! Strike you as murderous types?”

  “That’s the trouble,” said Sally, as they turned to walk back to the caravan, “nobody in our outfit strikes me as a murderous type with the possible exception of the major. But with him, you see, there doesn’t seem the faintest suggestion of a motive. I’ll tell you one thing, though. It can’t possibly have anything to do with the murder, but you know I landed up here at Tannasgan a day or two before the others? Well, as a matter of fact, one of the others beat me to it. Jeremy Tamworth was in the village for a week before Sir Humphrey and the rest of the party arrived, and Angela more than hinted that Marjorie Parris was with him nearly all the time, while her husband was at a vet’s conference.”

  (2)

  “So that’s how it stands, according to Sally,” said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were back at the inn. “Lady Calshott, possibly, if there was anything to gain, but definitely neither Phyllis nor Sir Humphrey.”

  “There was quite a reasonable amount to be gained by Lady Calshott. She was frank with me. It seems that Miss Barton was far from being short of money, and that, as the only child of the chief surviving relative, Lady Calshott’s daughter Phyllis is the principal beneficiary under the will, unless that will has been altered recently. Miss Barton herself told Lady Calshott as much.”

  “It may well have been altered, though,” said Laura, “if Angela intended to marry the vicar.”

  “On the other hand, a bold and greedy person might have decided that Angela must die before that could be done. Not everybody, perhaps, is aware that marriage automatically invalidates a will made previously.”

  “You’re thinking of the unworldly twin sisters, I suppose. By the way, just in case this does turn out to be murder—and we’re pretty sure it will—how does Sally stand? I mean, she did find the body and all that. I wonder whether—supposing the police accept that Miss Barton committed suicide—I mean, mightn’t it be better if we left it at that, and didn’t begin interfering?”

  “I’m ashamed of you,” said Dame Beatrice, favouring her secretary with a ferocious leer. “You know as well as I do why we must find out the truth.”

  “Yes, of course. That’s what I told Sally. You can’t be sure somebody won’t do it again.”

  “Exactly. What impression did Sally give you of the two Miss Bensons?”

  “Just of two people who had designs on the vicarage, as did Angela Barton. I’d rather like to meet them, but tomorrow I have other fish to fry.”

  “If you mean that you intend to visit that cottage, I think you would be wasting your time. There can be nothing to be learned there now.”

  “I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t mind taking a look round up there, anyway. Call it morbid curiosity, if you like.”

  “I will not call it that. I perceive that you have an idea which may lead to a plan of action.”

  “You read me like a book,” said Laura.

  “I always did,” said Dame Beatrice. “Yours is a frank and open nature; your personality is well-balanced and attractive; you have no apparent vices and your temperament is cheerful, agreeable, and without complications or foibles.”

  “You make me sound like a well-trained retriever,” said Laura, “or a nice, useful show-jumper.”

  “A thoroughbred, anyway,” said Dame Beatrice, “whatever the genus.”

  “I am a direct descendant of Sir Robert de Mengues whose lands became a barony in 1487. Since then the clan name has been spelt Menzies, the g in Sir Robert’s surname being chan
ged, for some reason, into a z, and the clan called Mingies.”

  “Except, I believe, in Australia,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Same reason, as P. G. Wodehouse points out, as that you can’t call yourself Augustus Mannering-Phipps in New York,” said Laura. “The Aussies are a crude lot, on the whole, and won’t stand for anyone putting on dog. To call yourself Mingies when spelling it Menzies would be asking for trouble out there. They’re ignorant and intolerant, I suppose.”

  “And yet many of the people who have mapped Australia by exploration and daring—Mitchell, MacKay, MacPherson, Forbes, Murray, Eyre, Young, Gairdner, MacDonald, MacDonnell, Simpson, Gibb, Bruce, to name but a few—must all have been of Scottish extraction,” Dame Beatrice pointed out.

  “There’s even a town called Laura,” said her secretary modestly, refusing to be ruffled by the gibe.

  On the following morning Sally took Dame Beatrice in the motorised caravan to visit the parties on the south shore of the loch while Laura, having learned the route from Sally, took Dame Beatrice’s car along the hill roads to the cottage.

  She did not go inside. She tramped through the bracken which was growing almost up to the open doorway, pushed her way past the crumbling walls and the lopsided, fallen-away thatch, and then stumbled upon what Sally had told her she would find. This was the semblance of a path, overgrown, it was true, but there was no doubt either of its existence or of the fact that it had recently been in use.

  As Laura ploughed her way downwards, the path described a couple of hairpin bends and at the second of these the hunting-lodge came in sight. The bracken gave way to heather, the slope became more gradual, and below Laura lay Loch na Tannasg glittering in the sun and seemingly flat and calm.

  Laura approached the hunting-lodge and banged on the door. There was no answer. She attempted to open it, but found that it was locked, so she toured around the house, stopping to peer in at the ground-floor windows. At the back of the house she had better luck. The kitchen door was latched but not locked. Laura, like the heroine of a ballad or a fairytale, lifted the latch and walked in.