The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay aggrievedly. ‘And meanwhile poor Rupert is not being traced – no effort is being made to trace him – and James will slip through your fingers and go off to South America or somewhere before you know where you are!’

  ‘That, madam, is certainly something to guard against,’ said the inspector, taking out his note-book. ‘And, talking of America, there is just one more point. Why didn’t anybody in the house worry about Mr Sethleigh’s disappearance until Mr Redsey gave out that he had gone to America? See what I’m after, madam, don’t you? None of you saw Mr Sethleigh after he walked into those woods over yonder with his cousin at about eight o’clock on Sunday night, but, so far as I can make out, nobody seems to have asked anything about him until nearly tea-time on Monday. A bit queer, that, to my way of thinking.’

  ‘Well, no, inspector,’ replied Mrs Bryce Harringay, opening her large protruding eyes very widely, ‘it was not in the least queer. Of course, when James was brought home on the Sunday night in such a horrible, hopeless, repulsive state of intoxication that I was obliged to have him carried up to bed and then to lock the door on him, I concluded that Rupert had returned to the house much earlier. I am a Slave to my Nerves, and I had retired to rest very early that evening. In fact, it was from my bedroom window that I perceived the two boys strolling towards the woods; it was not improbable, therefore, that Rupert should have returned to the house without my knowledge. As for our not being concerned about him the next day – well, the explanation is very simple. Rupert suffered from some kind of heart trouble – his doctor could tell you more about it – and often rested in his room all the morning. Sometimes he would appear at lunch, sometimes not. Therefore no one passed any comment that I can remember when we saw nothing of him on Monday, unless James’s ridiculous behaviour in driving us out of the Manor Woods was a comment! As for Rupert’s going to America, the very idea was the height of absurdity. Rupert hated the sea too much ever to go to America.’

  ‘Didn’t the servants inform you, madam, that their master was not in his room and could not be found? After all, they could not even supply him with his meals. Didn’t they ask about that?’

  ‘The servants,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay majestically, ‘know better than to worry me with Trivialities!’

  CHAPTER X

  He Puts Two and Two Together

  I

  ‘IT all boils down to this,’ said Inspector Grindy to Superintendent Bidwell. ‘If the skull was an old affair which had lain buried for years and years, why did somebody think it worth while to steal it from Wright and stick some of his modelling clay on to that coconut to pretend it hadn’t been pinched?’

  ‘Well, we know Wright of old,’ grinned the superintendent.

  ‘As a matter of fact, we don’t, sir,’ observed the inspector. ‘He’s lived in that house about three years, that’s all.’

  ‘Long enough to make a name for himself as a practical joker, anyway,’ argued the superintendent. ‘Personally, I think he’s pulling our legs about the skull. I propose we shelve the question of the skull for a bit, and go through the serious part of the business. What about young Redsey? To be frank, inspector, I’m assuming that the Bossbury body is that of Rupert Sethleigh. After all, we must get some sort of a starting-point, and that’s a very workable one.’

  ‘Redsey?’ The inspector drew out his note-book, licked a spatulate finger, and rapidly turned the pages. ‘Looks rather bad, if you’re going to take for granted that the body at Bossbury is Rupert Sethleigh. First of all, there’s the question of motive. Well, it seems as though Redsey had a motive all right. Two motives, in fact. He would have been cut out of Sethleigh’s will had Sethleigh lived, and, secondly, he hated his cousin pretty poisonously because Sethleigh wouldn’t unbelt sufficiently to allow Redsey to buy a share in a ranch, so Redsey goes out there soon as a hand instead of a boss. Galling, that.’

  ‘I see. He doesn’t seem to me a fellow who would kill out of revenge. But the will is a different matter. Who did you get the information from?’

  ‘The family solicitor. A chap named Grayling.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good enough. I know Grayling all right.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, next comes opportunity. So far as I can find out, Redsey was the last person to be in company with Sethleigh before the disappearance. Not only that, but he tried to establish an alibi, I should take it, by going into the “Queen’s Head” in Wandles Parva – landlord, William Albert Bondy – at about nine o’clock that night and getting dead drunk. Had to be took home by two labourers, Stanley Joseph Cummings and Henry Richards, both of Wandles Parva, who testify to the same, and were given sixpence apiece by Mrs Bryce Harringay for the job, which they thought could have been a shilling without exactly breaking the lady’s heart. Now I figure it out like this. The two chaps, Sethleigh and Redsey, went into the woods talking, arguing, and, in the end, quarrelling. Then Sethleigh gets annoyed and hands Redsey the information about the will. Redsey gets properly shirty at that and kills his cousin. Then he hides the body in the bushes, and all next day he spends his time playing policeman and stopping people from going into the woods.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘I had it from Mrs Bryce Harringay first, and Mr Grayling confirmed it. Well, that’s the case against Redsey, sir. Motive, opportunity, alibi, suspicious behaviour afterwards – it looks pretty bad.’

  ‘Yes, I grant that. But there’s one thing – it puzzles me a good deal – how did he get the body from the woods into Bossbury market, and chop it up without somebody spotting him? I’ve had a lot of enquiries made in Bossbury while you’ve been working at the Wandles end of the affair, and I can’t find anybody who saw him arrive or leave.’

  ‘It must have been done on the Monday night after dark, sir. Redsey can give a good account of his movements all day Monday, and the account is substantiated by his aunt, the lawyer, young Harringay, and the servants. I’ve gone into all that.’

  ‘But after dark, Grindy my lad, the market is shut and they drop steel doors over the entrances. I’ve been looking round it, and there’s not a hole where a cat could squeeze in when that market is shut, let alone a chap carrying a dead body. No, that carving of the corpse was done in the daytime, and, if Redsey has got a complete alibi for Monday, you can give up your theories, because he couldn’t have done that nice little job in the butcher’s shop.’

  ‘Well, what about very early Tuesday morning, sir? The market opens at six, I suppose?’

  ‘No, not until eight. And Binks the butcher was in his shop at half-past nine.’

  ‘An hour and a half. H’m! I see your point. Too risky. Binks might have turned up earlier, and caught him at the job.’

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I fancy I may have stumbled on the method used by the – well, let’s call him the murderer for a minute – to get into the shop without forcing the door. You remember we remarked it was curious that there were no signs of a forced entrance?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, it seems that Binks usually reached the market shop at eight-thirty and opened it for business at nine. The odd half-hour was employed by him and his assistant in getting ready the stock for the day – bringing up carcasses from below, jointing up the stuff, sticking prices on it, and all that. Well, on that particular Tuesday morning the assistant, who had a key and generally turned up a bit earlier than Binks himself, came along and said he’d forgotten his key. It was the first time he had ever done such a thing, but Binks was rather annoyed, because, as it happened, he’d left his own key in his overall pocket, and his overall was locked up inside the shop. So he sent the lad home. Well, the chap was gone about twenty minutes, and then came back and said he couldn’t find the key anywhere, so Binks sent him to his other shop, over which he lives, for a third key, which the lad brought. They then opened the shop and found the bits of the body, as we know.’

  ‘So either the assistant lost the key and the
murderer found it –’ began the inspector.

  ‘Unlikely,’ demurred the superintendent.

  ‘Or else the key was stolen from him –’

  ‘More likely.’

  ‘Or perhaps he was bribed by the murderer to hand it over.’

  ‘That’s quite possible, too. I’ve interviewed the fellow – as sawny a specimen as you’d wish to meet – and he swears he did lose it, but he can’t say when or how. He had it on the previous Saturday, because he unlocked the shop with it. He thinks he may have left it sticking in the door, which has a patent lock. He has done that once or twice, and remembered it or seen it there later in the day. Personally, I got the impression he knows all about that key. I reckon he was bribed for it. Now, assuming that is what happened, you see, it means that the crime was not committed in a moment of sudden anger, but was premeditated.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the inspector, ‘that’s a point, sir, in Redsey’s favour, judging from what I can gather of his character. He might easily fly into a rage and hit somebody over the head, but a premeditated crime, all worked out and arranged beforehand – no, I can’t see Redsey doing things that way. Hot-headed, sir, that’s my opinion; but real vicious, no.’

  The superintendent nodded.

  ‘But what I do think ought to be undertaken next,’ he said, ‘is a thorough search of those woods. After all, we don’t know that the dismembered body is Sethleigh. He may still be lying hidden in some bushes, for all we can tell.’

  ‘An idea, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘I shall need some help to do a job like that thoroughly.’

  ‘You’d better take a couple of men and have a go at it this afternoon,’ remarked Bidwell.

  ‘Very good, sir. And then there’s the question of the Bossbury corpse’s clothing. I suppose nothing’s turned up?’

  ‘Not a sign nor a stitch of it. I’ve still got men on the job, of course. Something’s bound to turn up in connection with the clothes sooner or later. It is just a question of time.’

  ‘Then there are those fingerprints on the cleaver and knife at the butcher’s shop. Luckily, Binks the butcher hadn’t handled any of his tools that morning by the time we arrived on the scene.’

  ‘No. We took his prints, but of course they don’t correspond with any that are on the implements. Luckily again for us, there was no confusion about the prints, because he always washes up his things, including the top of the chopping-block, before he leaves the shop each night.’

  ‘Of course the prints don’t correspond with any that we know?’ enquired the inspector gloomily. ‘That’s the worst of murder. It isn’t a profession, like burglary, where you can dig out the prints of all the old lags and check them up against the new stuff.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said the superintendent, whose self-appointed mission seemed to be the soothing of restless subordinates, ‘we’ve got the prints, and I dare say we shall find a use for them in time. They may be those of that sawny lout of a lad that serves in Binks’s shop. I’ll have another go at him to-morrow.’

  II

  Jim Redsey sat moodily on the steps of the Club House at Culminster and chopped viciously at the turf with his putter. He was alone. Courteously, but quite definitely, three people he knew had cold-shouldered him. Even the pro. had looked at him with a kind of dubious curiosity and had kept out of his way.

  A small shrivelled woman stood at the gate and watched him.

  ‘Surely I’ve seen that large young man before?’ she said.

  Felicity Broome nodded.

  ‘That’s Jimsey,’ she said. ‘Rupert Sethleigh’s cousin, you know.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Mrs Bradley. Then, after a pause, she added, ‘I am going over to speak to him, child. You stay here.’

  Felicity, who had discovered to her secret amusement that people always did as Mrs Bradley told them, remained at the gate.

  ‘Young man,’ said Mrs Bradley.

  Jim started.

  ‘That’s better. Put down that dangerous-looking thing and tell me why you are not playing golf to-day.’

  Jim, who, of course, knew Mrs Bradley by sight, as did everyone in Wandles Parva, grinned and stood up.

  ‘Sit down again,’ commanded Mrs Bradley, ‘and I will sit beside you. Now answer the question.’

  Jim, who was prepared to like Mrs Bradley very much simply because his Aunt Constance hated and feared her, sat down again.

  ‘All the cheery souls here have indicated pretty clearly that they prefer my room to my company,’ he said. ‘I believe there are rumours current that I murdered my cousin Sethleigh a short time ago.’

  ‘And did you?’ enquired Mrs Bradley, in her devastatingly direct fashion.

  ‘Well,’ said Jim slowly, ‘at one time I thought I had, but I’m glad to say that I was wrong.’

  ‘This,’ remarked Mrs Bradley, settling herself as for a pleasant chat, ‘sounds remarkably interesting. May I hear more about it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jim, ‘I’ve made up my mind to spill the yarn to the inspector and get it off my chest, so –’

  ‘So I have come just in time for the dress rehearsal,’ said Mrs Bradley, with hideous laughter.

  Jim took up the putter again and began digging at the turf with it while he talked.

  ‘We had an argument on the Sunday night, Rupert and I,’ he said, ‘It was rather a stale argument. I wanted him to lend me some money, and he refused. Well, we started in the billiard-room, and were interrupted by the entrance of my aunt, Mrs Harringay, so we cleared out. We walked into the woods, still arguing. Rupert remained cool, like the silky devil he was, but I got a bit heated, and, to cut it short, I knocked him down.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ murmured Mrs Bradley, nodding.

  ‘I was very unlucky,’ pursued Jim. ‘The silly ass, instead of falling on the soft ground, as you or I would have done, had to go and smash his silly head against the trunk of a tree.’

  ‘Ah – ah!’ said Mrs Bradley, interested.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jim, in honest wrath, ‘it was exactly the sort of dashed annoying thing a silly fat-headed idiot like Sethleigh would do! No thought of other people’s convenience! Never did have! Well, of course he lay so still and looked so white that I thought I’d killed him. I didn’t know what to do! There he was, eyes shut, mouth wide open, looking like God-knows-what, and I was in the devil of a funk! I thought of rushing up to the house for some water. Then I decided I’d better not leave him, perhaps. Then I remembered he was supposed to have a weak heart. I knelt down and tried to feel it beating. Couldn’t feel a thing! So with that I grabbed him by the armpits and lugged him into the middle of a thickish hazel copse and removed myself from the scene of operations as quickly as I could. Well, I pelted along to the “Queen’s Head” and went in. Then I got beastly tight. Then two chaps carted me home. Then my aunt got scared to think of having a drunken man in the house, so she locked me in for the night. And that’s all, except that I spent all next day in mooning about the house and keeping people out of the woods. Rupert had not returned, you see. I took jolly good care to find that out – strictly on the Q. T., of course. I was in a funk! That ass of a solicitor turned up and wanted to interview Sethleigh and everything! My hat! That was a day! Well, that night I went to bury Sethleigh’s body in the middle of the woods. He wasn’t there! So I know I didn’t kill him. See what I mean?’

  ‘And that’s the story you intend telling to the inspector?’ mused Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Yes,’ said Redsey. He flung down the putter and stood up.

  ‘Time to go home for lunch,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me to let the inspector go on guessing. I hate keeping secrets. Hullo! Is that Felicity Broome at the gate? You’ll let me give you both a lift back to Wandles, won’t you?’

  ‘And when are you going to tell your little tale to Mr Grindy?’ asked Mrs Bradley, as the Bentley spread her wings and glided along the Culminster road towards the village.

  ‘This afternoon, if I can get hold of him. I don’t think it will
be difficult. He lives in our house from about nine-thirty until six these days.’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ asked Felicity.

  Jim told her.

  CHAPTER XI

  Further Discoveries

  I

  ANXIOUS to search the Manor Woods now that he had heard Jim Redsey’s story, the inspector, accompanied by Police-Sergeant Walls and Police-Constable Pearce, invited Aubrey Harringay to take them by the most direct path into the centre of the woodland. Pearce, who had come on his bicycle, left it propped against the trunk of a tree, on the outskirts of the wood, and in single file, silent, majestic, and heavy of tread, the police followed Aubrey along the leafy path which led directly to the circle of pines. In the middle of the circle stood the Stone of Sacrifice.

  The inspector went up and scanned it closely.

  ‘Come here, Walls,’ he said abruptly. Aubrey went up also, and the three heads bent over some dark stains on the greyish, glinting stone.

  ‘Blood,’ said the inspector. ‘Bit of luck for us, I shouldn’t wonder. Seen these marks before?’ he added, turning to Aubrey.

  ‘No,’ said Aubrey, excited. ‘Is it really blood?’

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ said the inspector. ‘It looks like it, anyhow. Now, if Redsey spoke the truth – that’s rather funny, because he distinctly said –’ He broke off, cogitating. ‘Pearce,’ he said at last, ‘search about and see whether you can find any bushes that look as though they’ve been broken or disturbed in any way, or –’

  ‘I say, inspector,’ broke in Aubrey. ‘I’ve got something I ought to tell you! Please tell me first, though; did Jim Redsey – Oh, half a second!’

  Before either of the police officers could say a word, he had gone racing off along the narrow woodland path and was lost to sight among the trees. At the edge of the woods, leaning against one of the tree-trunks, was Constable Pearce’s bicycle. Aubrey propelled it hastily over the short grass on to the path and, leaping into the saddle, pedalled swiftly across the park and on to the gravel drive. Arrived at the lodge, he shot through the great gates into the road, turned sharp to the right, and in a few minutes arrived at the Vicarage.