‘Dear me!’ he exclaimed in tones of consternation. ‘How terribly careless of me! I almost killed you! My dear Mrs Bradley, I scarcely dare hope that you will accept my apologies! This is what comes of practising for amateur theatricals!’
He opened his waterproof with the hand which was not holding the bow, and displayed a suit of Lincoln green.
‘How very charming!’ exclaimed Mrs Bradley. ‘Do let me hold your long-bow whilst you remove this outer husk.’
She seized the bow, and Savile, smiling in his suave, deferential, deprecating way, delicately removed the sad-coloured garment and stood displayed in all the beauty of Robin Hood tunic and hose. The reason for the feathered cap was now made apparent. A bulge they had noticed beneath the waterpoof transformed itself into a handsome hunting-horn, and, round his waist, Savile was wearing a leather belt on which a deer-skin wallet was gallantly and nattily slung.
It was an attractive costume, and Savile’s perfect figure set it off to great advantage.
‘Jolly fine,’ said Aubrey politely, with a boy’s instinctive aversion to fancy dress. Savile glanced down at slender legs shapely as an actor’s, struck an attitude, and smirked unpleasantly.
‘And what part do you play?’ Mrs Bradley enquired with great interest. ‘And have you to shoot an arrow at somebody?’
‘I think I will collect the one in the tree,’ remarked Savile, without attempting to answer either question. ‘A pity to lose it, don’t you think?’
‘Let me get it whilst you resume your waterproof,’ said Mrs Bradley, and before Savile could protest she had stepped nimbly up to the great tree and was wrenching at the arrow with both hands.
‘I am quite pleased to think that you did miss me, young man,’ she observed, as, after the fourth successive pull, she jerked it out.
‘I was actually in the public woods on the other side of the Bossbury road,’ said Savile, taking the arrow from her and placing it carefully in his quiver. ‘But when I observed that the arrow had flown over here into the Manor Woods, I hurried across at once to make certain no damage had been done.’
‘Liar,’ said Aubrey under his breath. ‘That arrow never flew from the other side of the Bossbury road,’ he thought to himself.
‘Are you also acting a play?’ Savile went on.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley unblushingly. ‘A very modern play,’ she added circumstantially. ‘I am sorry the full cast is not here. Aubrey and I were carrying out our respective roles of villain’ – she pointed dramatically to the thin, brown-faced boy – ‘and innocent victim.’ She simpered idiotically and then leered with horrible effect. Savile stepped back a pace.
‘Oh, you must go? Good-bye, then,’ said Mrs Bradley, extending her repulsive-looking claw and giving Savile’s olive-hued hand a grasp which made all the bones grate together.
She waited until he had disappeared, and then hooted joyously.
‘It’s nothing to laugh at, you know,’ said Aubrey, the stern young male. ‘He nearly killed you.’
‘Ah, well! Boys will be boys,’ said Mrs Bradley philosophically. ‘And I don’t think I’ll bother about Margery Barnes, after all. I’ll walk over and see the doctor myself.’
CHAPTER XVIII
The Man in the Woods
I
‘CONSANGUINITY is a queer thing,’ remarked Mrs Bradley.
Dr Barnes filled up a medicine bottle with water, corked it carefully, dried it, labelled and directed it, laid it aside for his boy to deliver, screwed the top on his fountain-pen, and then turned round. Against his white dispenser’s overall his florid face looked even larger and more ruddy than usual. He grunted. He disliked and mistrusted Mrs Bradley to a singularly flattering extent (at least, she thought his attitude flattering, for she had a habit of taking anybody’s dislike of her person and character as a compliment of the highest order!), and made no attempt to conceal his aversion from the object of it. After all, the woman was never ill! Boasted of the fact!
Mrs Bradley, who had watched his professional manoeuvres with detached interest, smiled unpleasantly.
‘Don’t you think so?’ she went on conversationally.
The doctor washed and dried his hands, removed his overall, and hung it carefully upon its appointed hook.
‘Never thought about it,’ he replied briefly. He stretched out his large, shapely hands and turned them over. He was proud of them. ‘Of whom are you thinking? Somebody in particular, of course?’ he said, with perfunctory politeness but complete lack of interest.
‘Yes. My son, Ferdinand Lestrange. And – your son.’
The doctor shrugged his great shoulders.
‘Oh, is he your son? I didn’t know that. Brilliant man,’ he remarked casually. Mrs Bradley’s sharp black eyes, quick and bright and callous as those of a bird, watched him beadily, steadily, as he took his morning coat from a hanger and put it on.
‘Yes, Ferdinand is my son,’ she repeated. ‘A clever boy! Takes after his mother.’
She smirked self-consciously, and the doctor scowled. He hated to see any woman making a fool of herself, but when it came to old women! Of course, the unlovely creature was famous in her way, he remembered! He supposed it had gone to her head!
‘Defended you in a murder trial, didn’t he?’ he remarked, pleasantly conscious that he was saying, socially and humanely speaking, quite the wrong thing.
‘And got me off,’ said Mrs Bradley succinctly. ‘Excuse me! A slight crease across the shoulders. A well-fitting coat, but a little formal, surely, for the time of year?’
‘We have to suffer in order to maintain the dignity of the profession,’ said the doctor, a slightly sardonic smile lifting his dark neat moustache. ‘If it is Margery you came to see,’ he continued abruptly, ‘she went to shop in the village. After that she was going to take on the vicar at tennis! Wish I’d gone into the Church. Lazy lot, these parsons.’
‘But the vicar is not good at tennis,’ Mrs Bradley observed as she followed the doctor out into the garden, ‘whereas Margery is quite a star performer, according to Aubrey Harringay. I should think she would require a more expert opponent.’
‘She’s gone there to practise her service,’ the doctor said carelessly. ‘The vicar is the only person who doesn’t care when people knock the heads off his flowers and things, you see. I won’t have a court marked out on this lawn here. Spoils the grass.’
Mrs Bradley walked to the front gate, leaving the doctor to proceed towards the garage.
‘Hats off to the National Health Insurance!’ she said to herself, looking back at the wide-open doors of the shed where the doctor’s gleaming chariot was housed. ‘If the Medical Council don’t make all their members vote Liberal – well, they’re an ungrateful lot! That’s all I can say.’
She began walking briskly in the direction of the Vicarage, but half-way there she changed her mind and went up to the Cottage on the Hill instead.
II
Lulu was at home. Almost as much to the point, Savile and Wright were not.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lulu, leading the way into the drawing-room, which was immediately underneath the room Wright and Savile used as a studio. ‘Did you want ’em particular?’
‘I called on behalf of the Restoration Fund,’ lied Mrs Bradley glibly.
‘Oh, that. Yes, it wants doing up bad, don’t it? Lovely I think them old churches is, but law! the draught. I give up going. I couldn’t stick it. Not as I ever was one for religion much.’ She giggled and slid a glance sideways at Mrs Bradley from under her eyelashes. She was a lovely creature – one of those women sometimes to be seen in East End Thames-side localities; women with something of the Orient in their ancestry, something of its mystery and allure beneath the crudeness of Cockney speech and the hearty freshness of English laughter.
Mrs Bradley nodded.
‘But you thought sufficiently kindly of the vicar and his daughter to do the church laundry-work and wash the vicar’s own clothes,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh, that!’
Lulu tossed back a permanently-waved lock of lustrous hair and laughed, displaying fine teeth.
‘Brought up to the wash-tub, I was. No ’ardship to put a few bits of things through a drop of water. And that gal of theirs – Shin Finer or somethink I should say by the look of the washing she ’angs out. I couldn’t stand seeing them bits of boys and the parson in them dirty-lookin’ yaller chimmies of theirn Sunday after Sunday. “Disgraceful, I calls it,” I said to Clef. That was before the draughts got too much of a good thing, and I used to go to ’ear Clef sing. Lovely ’e sings. ’Aven’t you never ’eard ’im? Bit of all right, I tell you. So I washes ’em now. It ain’t nothink, but I may get a good mark for it one of these days when my number goes up. Never know, do you?’
‘No, you never do,’ agreed Mrs Bradley gravely. ‘But all the same, child, how did you come to scorch the things so badly about a month ago?’
‘’Ow did I?’ said Lulu, flushing with anger. ‘I never did! It was that pop-eyed swine I goes with done that! “I’ll ’elp you for once, my gal,” ’e says and wi’ that ’e snatches the iron and dabs it on a couple of ’ankerchiefs of ’is own I’d just put there ready for ironin’. I swore at ’im, but it wasn’t no good, and grabbed at the iron, but there! ’E’d ’ave dabbed it on me face for two pins, the vicious ’ound, so I snatched up the parson’s things and ran off, all except the collars and the curtings. I couldn’t grab them up with all the chimmies.’
‘Surplices?’ enquired Mrs Bradley.
‘That’s right. I done them when ’e was gorn – next day it was. One collar what ’e done and all the curtings was good as spoilt, the collar ’specially. Nothink but a bit of black charcoal, it wasn’t, and I ’ad to chuck it away. There was a tie of his own ditto, and a pair of sort of little short drawers and a vest of ’is what ’e give me to wash that week. Like ’is sauce! Still, I done ’em! And then ’e went and scorched ’em so they ’ad to be throwed away, and who’d washed ’em that week, blowed if I know, for I never! Nor the curtings neither. Been ’aving a gime, some of ’em.’
‘What shape was the collar?’ asked Mrs Bradley keenly.
‘Oh, one of them sorft collars like they wears on tennis shirts. I suppose even parsons leaves orf their dog-collars sometimes.’
‘I don’t know. Are you sure it was not one of Mr Wright’s collars? – Or one belonging to Mr Savile?’
Lulu turned and stared at her. Surprise, suspicion, apprehension, chased each other across her face like clouds of storm across a lowering summer sky.
‘Look ’ere,’ she said thickly, ‘what’s all this? I said it was the parson’s collar, didn’t I?’
Mrs Bradley rose, walked to the fireplace, and stood with her back against the mantelpiece.
‘Won’t you answer the question?’ she asked, very gently.
‘I will.’ The blustering alarm of the frightened London urchin changed Lulu’s whole attitude and expression. ‘It wasn’t Clef’s collar, and it wasn’t George’s. See?’
‘So clearly,’ said Mrs Bradley, in the same gentle, almost melancholy voice she had used before, ‘that I think you had better tell me a little more.’
Lulu’s lips drew back in a sneer. Her eyes gleamed hard. Her bosom rose and fell – a certain sign of agitation. Her harsh breathing was disquietingly audible in the small room.
‘You better get out of this,’ she said between clenched teeth. ‘Go on. You’re only little, and I’m damn’ big. And if you come ’ere nosin’ about, I’ll do for you, see? See?’
She walked up to Mrs Bradley until her red mouth was on a level with Mrs Bradley’s shrewd, humorous black eyes. She was in a dangerous mood, and was obviously careless of consequences.
‘Onions,’ said Mrs Bradley, distinctly and with repugnance. ‘If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it one hundred times to you girls – do not come into my presence when you have been eating ONIONS. A repulsive, disgusting, sickening, malodorous, anti-social vegetable!’
Decidedly taken aback, Lulu retreated a step.
‘I – I –’ she began haltingly.
Mrs Bradley swiftly followed up the advantage.
‘Yes, you have,’ she said, grinning. ‘How do you expect your husband to kiss you when –’
‘’Im!’ The monosyllable was expressive. ‘’Im kiss me! Huh! I’d like to see ’im! Be a change, that would.’
She laughed, a short, hard, incredibly bitter sound, and swung herself up on to the table, where she sat kicking her legs and sulking – an out-generalled, pouting, rebellious child.
‘Well,’ went on Mrs Bradley smoothly, ‘never mind that. What I want –’
‘Oh, I don’t mind it!’ said Lulu, flinging back her hair and sniffing indomitably. ‘There’s others can do ’is share of kissing and their own too. And they don’t live far away, neither!’
She laughed recklessly. Mrs Bradley straightened her unbecoming hat before the mirror above the mantelpiece. Then she turned, looked at Lulu, and shook her head sadly.
‘My poor child,’ she said, with real sincerity.
‘Don’t you dare pity the likes of me!’ cried Lulu passionately. ‘You nasty dried-up old crow, you! You leave me alone, do you ’ear? There’s one man dead for me already, and –’
Mrs Bradley ruthlessly cut short this epic of a second Helen.
‘And another will be hanged for you if you don’t keep silent,’ she said emphatically.
Footsteps at the front of the house heralded the approach of Savile. His head was bare, his shirt grimy, and his shoes were covered in dust. He entered the room like a tornado.
‘So I’ve caught you out at last!’ he shouted. ‘You dirty little –’ Then he caught sight of Mrs Bradley.
‘Oh, I – er – oh, it’s you?’ he said helplessly. ‘I thought – I mean –’
Mrs Bradley smiled.
III
By the time the old woman reached the Vicarage it was eight o’clock, and Felicity had just arrived home. Margery Barnes was still there, and Felicity was entertaining her and the vicar with a description of the afternoon’s proceedings. She stopped when Mrs Bradley was announced, but, being pressed by Margery to continue what appeared to be an entertaining narrative, she installed Mrs Bradley in the most comfortable chair and concluded a lively account of the old ladies and their outing to Culminster.
‘And what do you think?’ she cried, turning to Mrs Bradley. ‘I –’
Mrs Bradley suddenly began to cough. She coughed and coughed; she gasped, wheezed, croaked, gurgled, panted, and clutched her breast. Paroxysm after paroxysm seized her, and held her in dreadful thraldom. She was speechless for several minutes, for after the spasm of coughing had passed she seemed breathless and exhausted.
‘Do have some water,’ cried Felicity, returning from the kitchen with a tumbler.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ the old lady wheezed, as Felicity held the glass to her lips. ‘Old age and the night air! Time to go home to bed! So sorry to be a disturbance!’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Felicity readily.
‘I must go, too,’ said Margery, getting up. ‘Father will think I’m lost.’
‘Shall I join the party?’ asked the vicar. ‘It is a perfect evening for a stroll.’
The four of them left the house together, and in the narrow lane which led to the Bossbury road they separated into couples, the vicar and Margery in advance, Mrs Bradley and Felicity behind.
‘I am sorry to have engaged your sympathy under false pretences,’ observed Mrs Bradley, gazing up at the tall elms.
‘What do you mean? You certainly had a terrible fit of coughing, you poor dear,’ said Felicity.
‘Yes. A useful gift. I have employed it more than once,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a sigh at the recollection of her own duplicity. ‘The great advantage of it is the awful noise it makes. You were within an ace of giving away a little piece of information which had better be reserved for my private ear, I think. Wh
at were you going to tell them about the skull?’
‘Oh – it has gone from behind the Roman shield,’ replied Felicity. ‘It was stupid of me to begin blurting it out like that, but I thought Father –’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Mrs Bradley hastily agreed. ‘Still, perhaps the fewer the better when it comes to sharing news about a murder. So the skull has gone? I thought it would. The question is – where?’
Felicity laughed.
‘You’d better look up all our answers to that question,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember that game we played at your house? And you haven’t told us yet who won!’ she added.
‘No, I haven’t, have I?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Wait a minute.’ She bent down and fidgeted with her shoe. The two in front stopped, looked round, and then strolled back.
‘Go on slowly with your father, I want to talk to Margery,’ Mrs Bradley said in a low tone. This small manoeuvre was accomplished, and Margery and Felicity changed partners.
‘Now, young woman,’ said Mrs Bradley sternly, ‘I want a plain answer to a plain question, and no ridiculous quibbling in the name of honesty or honour. Who was the man who met you in the Manor Woods that night?’
‘Which night?’ The girl’s voice was defiant. Mrs Bradley sighed.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You met Cleaver Wright, didn’t you?’
Margery stalked on without a word.
Mrs Bradley clutched her arm, and caused her to moderate her pace.
‘Don’t be foolish, child,’ she said, cackling gently. ‘It doesn’t make a scrap of difference to me whether you answer the question or not. You see – I know.’
Margery looked straight ahead at the figures of the vicar and his daughter. They were turning on to the main Bossbury road, and in less than a second she lost sight of them. She was alone in the world – or so it seemed – with this terrible little old woman. She stopped short and faced her.
The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop Page 18
