The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Cleaver Wright, perhaps.’

  ‘Still on this false tack of thinking the murderer was – well, you know! – somebody it wasn’t?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Then,’ said Aubrey, disappointed, ‘he was the one who put it in the Culminster Collection?’

  ‘Of course, child. I’ve known that all along. His peculiar sense of humour again, you see.’

  ‘The – I mean – you can’t prove anything from the skull being moved back to the butcher’s shop.’

  ‘Well’ – Mrs Bradley smiled at him thoughtfully – ‘it just depends who moved it back, doesn’t it? Wright would be bound to share his little joke. No fun keeping it all to himself. See?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I thought you gave the names of all the people you suspected to the police, and told them –’

  ‘I did tell them quite a number of strange things, child. There is a surprise in store for Cleaver Wright, I think. Of course, he stole the key of the Museum from the vicar. A man like that is a menace to the whole parish! The vicar, I mean. Anybody could steal anything from him!’

  ‘You know,’ said Aubrey, wrinkling his brow, ‘I feel in an awful muddle about all this. Do you know who the murderer is? And can you be certain that Cleaver Wright could get into the butcher’s shop?’

  ‘I am not quite prepared to answer those questions,’ said Mrs Bradley, smiling with quiet enjoyment. ‘Ask me again to-morrow. And now, dear me! Whoever is this? Mary Kate Maloney, as I live! She seems perturbed.’

  Mary Kate flew up the garden path in an ecstasy of importance, terror, and blazing excitement. She had not even troubled to remove her apron.

  ‘Glory be to God, Mrs Bradley, ma’am!’ she declared, fervent but out of breath. ‘Do you be running over to the house with all your legs this day! Sure, and there’s poor Mr Savile from the Cottage on the Hill does be hanging by his braces from the wood-shed door entirely.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s entirely,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly, as she stood up and smoothed her skirt. ‘I am bored to death by mere limbs and joints. What’s come over him that he should do a silly thing like that?’

  ‘Sure, they do be saying it must be unrequited love, the poor young fellow, ma’am.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Mrs Bradley briskly. ‘Undigested dinner is more likely in his case!’

  CHAPTER XXII

  The Inspector Makes an Arrest

  INSPECTOR GRINDY saluted Mrs Bryce Harringay with punctilious ceremony, and halted.

  ‘Well, madam, you’ve seen the last of me,’ he observed with great geniality, ‘and I’m sorry you were ever troubled. Still, all’s well that ends well, as the saying is. Could I see Mr Redsey for a minute?’

  ‘I will cause him to be summoned,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay majestically.

  Jim met the inspector in the library.

  ‘Well, what is it now?’ he said ungraciously.

  The inspector grinned.

  ‘Only to tell you you’re free to get off to America as soon as you like, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve nothing on you at all now. We’ve made our arrest.’

  ‘The devil you have!’ said Jim, staring. ‘That poor dago Savile, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, sir, no. As a matter of fact, after I’d heard that comic fairy-tale Mrs Bradley was handing out to you all in her garden, I got quite one or two new ideas on the subject of that murder. Of course, I knew it wasn’t the vicar. Hasn’t got it in him. Besides, one or two of Mrs Bradley’s ideas were entirely up the loop, and I knew it, and she knew it too, I reckon, and was just trying it on!’

  ‘But how the deuce did you hear her ideas at all?’ asked Jim, handing his cigarette-case to the police officer. Inspector Grindy laid his uniform cap on the table and stretched out a massive mahogany hand.

  ‘Thank you. I will. Just to show there’s no ill-feeling,’ he said.

  They lit up. Then Jim said:

  ‘Where did you say you were?’

  ‘Oh, behind that clump of laurels. At Mrs Bradley’s invitation,’ replied the inspector jovially. ‘And I certainly got a knock-out over that silver tobacco-case. You see, sir, she pulled my leg about that case quite a long time ago. Told me the murderer had collected some of Sethleigh’s blood in it and poured it over the Stone of Sacrifice. Though, mind you, there was nothing like enough blood on that Stone for a murder! Of course I knew that was only her funny idea of a joke, so I took no notice; but, upon my soul, I was startled to see the vicar hike that case out of his pocket. Sifting it out, though, it seems as though he must have –’

  ‘Acquired it?’ suggested Jim, grinning.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Yes, and a long time before the murder. Mrs Bryce Harringay remembers hearing Mr Sethleigh enquiring after it, and the servants all remember being questioned about it upwards of six or perhaps eight weeks ago, so I expect the vicar pouched it in that at sent-minded manner of his, and that’s that. Then the clothes. We investigated the idea that Wright handled the body, and that bit is quite true. How the devil she tumbled to that, I don’t know. I hadn’t seen the significance of that scrap-up in the “Queen’s Head” all along, but that old woman got a strangle-hold on it right away. I’ll hand her that. Well, Wright broke down under our interrogation and confessed he’d seen a headless corpse. Mark that, sir! The skull again, you see! Then we made him produce the trousers which he’d been wearing on and off ever since the murder. They were Sethleigh’s, which was really a bit of a knock-out, because I’d put that bit of the old girl’s yarn down as sheer piffle. Funny thing is, he’s sticking to it that he didn’t take ’em off the corpse at all! He’ll go a long way if he isn’t hanged. Time and again he must have had ’em on and stood and talked to me. It’s a proper knock-out, that is! They’re Sethleigh’s flannels right enough. Tailor’s mark on ’em and everything. Well, of course, the rest of the clothing wasn’t dropped in the river at all, and Mrs Bradley never really thought it was. It seems as though it really must have been shoved into that suitcase with the head, and that’s where those bloodstains must have come from. Well, the suitcase affair altogether was a bit tricky. I’m not dead sure I’ve got it right now, and we certainly haven’t found the shirt and things. But it seems as though it was lent by Sethleigh to the vicar. Then the maid at the Vicarage packed some laundry in it and sent it to that daisy that hangs out with Savile and Wright in the Cottage on the Hill. From there the murderer pinched it. Had ample opportunity, it seems, because he was very sweet on Mrs Lulu, and used to visit her as often as he could crowd it in. Wonderful how many patients a country practitioner can – acquire was your word, sir, I think?’ – he guffawed heartily – ‘and what a devil of a time it takes him to get round to see ’em all!’

  ‘Country practitioner?’ said Jim, puzzled. ‘What on earth are you getting at?’

  ‘Why, Dr Barnes, sir, of course. He’s the chap we’ve arrested. I just told you we’d made an arrest. Don’t you remember little Miss Barnes saying her father was at the major’s that Sunday evening? And Mrs Bradley’s peculiar answer struck me all of a heap. She said they could prove whether that was so later on – or some words of that sort. Evasive, I said to myself. There’s something behind that, I said. Well, it turns out on investigation that he was never at the major’s at all! What do you make of that, sir? And then – another thing,’ he added, before Jim could reply; ‘the dismembering of the corpse! Child’s play, sir, to a surgeon! And wouldn’t disgust him and upset him like it would ordinary folks. Just science to him, cutting up a body. Just science. And Mrs Bradley confided to me herself what a tidy beggar the murderer must be! Now, sir, I ask you! What could be tidier than cutting up a body as neat as that, and hanging up the bits out of the way?’

  Jim looked as he felt – sick.

  ‘Then, again,’ pursued the inspector, ‘look at the motives! Two motives, in fact, and both different. Mixed motives, as we call it. His daughter and the blackmail business.’

  Jim, rather tired of Rupert’s wide reputation as a
Don Juan of the baser sort, merely nodded.

  ‘Well, three, if you count Mrs Lulu,’ said the inspector, working it all out. ‘Both sweet on her, you see, Sethleigh and him were. Jealousy, and all that. Wonderful what a bit of passion will do to a man’s character, you know. Anyway, he could have done the deed in the time; he wasn’t at the major’s; and we trapped him into saying he’d been in the Manor Woods before he knew what we were after. So how’s that? As for the deed itself – well, Mrs Bradley talked of the vicar’s penknife, but a doctor would be neater. Tidy again, sir, you see! She certainly put me on the track there again! His scalpel. And it could be put away with his other instruments and nobody any the wiser! Then the head. Takes a doctor to dissect a head nicely and leave just the bare skull like we found. The police surgeon says the head was split half-way down, and boiled to leave the bone, but you know what these surgeons are, sir – must have their nasty little jokes! Anyway, that’s a small point. Well, then, sir, the Stone of Sacrifice. If you say “doctor” where Mrs Bradley said “vicar”, you’ll be about right. I should say that to the doctor that big slab suggested an operating-table! Something in that, sir, don’t you think? And perhaps he could have done something about the quantity of blood. There wasn’t enough for a stab in the neck, you see. That’s the only flaw in our theory.’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘I see,’ he said, still trying to readjust his thoughts sufficiently to take hold of the idea that the large, robust, ruddy, rather offensively loud-voiced and didactic Dr Barnes was a murderer.

  ‘And then the slug business.’

  ‘How much?’ said Jim, puzzled.

  ‘Miss Barnes’s own words, sir. The man that came crawling out of the bushes like a great black slug. She confessed that the form seemed somehow familiar, you remember? Well, sir, what could be more familiar than the sight of her own father? That’s who she saw, and the doctor can’t deny it!’

  ‘And why should he deny it?’ asked a rich voice at the open French doors. ‘Of course it was Dr Barnes, and of course Margery did not recognize him, although his figure seemed familiar. It is a great pity she did not, for otherwise quite a number of muddles could have been cleared up by this time.’

  And Mrs Bradley stepped into the library and seated herself in its most comfortable chair. Jim turned to her in perplexity.

  ‘I’m damned if I can make this business out at all, Mrs Bradley,’ he confessed frankly. ‘Of course, we all knew that you were drawing the long-bow about the vicar yesterday, but really, to push the murder off on to the doctor seems almost as bad to me. I mean, all the people here have known the chap for years, and I’m sure he must have lived down any scandal there ever was connected with his son.’

  ‘Cleaver Wright is that son,’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Oh, really? I’ve heard rumours of it, of course. Still, there’s a sight of difference between going off the end about some woman or other and doing a blooming great murder, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly. ‘Curious of me, perhaps, but on the whole I prefer the murderer. The population of this country is so excessive that, looked at from the purely common-sense point of view, a person who decreases it is considerably more public-spirited than one who adds to it, and he should be dealt with accordingly.’

  ‘But the doctor?’ said Jim, having digested these theses in silence. ‘It’s a knock-out to me.’

  ‘Well, what can you expect will happen to a man who has never played bears with the children?’ demanded Mrs Bradley abruptly.

  ‘Never what?’ asked the inspector, grinning.

  ‘But, of course, to arrest him for murder is ridiculous,’ went on Mrs Bradley calmly. ‘He was in the Manor Woods – yes. He has no alibi? Are you sure of that? Go and ask Lulu Hirst. His daughter saw him – yes. And he was crawling on hands and knees, and if he had ever played bears with her when she was a child she would have recognized him, and could have said so, and that part of the business could have been cleared up. Anyway, inspector, take the advice of a sincere well-wisher and let the poor man go. Besides, what about fingerprints in the butcher’s shop?’

  ‘Oh, we don’t think the actual work was done in the butcher’s shop. We suspect he dismembered the body in his own surgery in the garden. More expeditious, madam, you see. Then he wrapped up the bits in Miss Felicity Broome’s muslin curtains, like they wrap up meat when they deliver it to the butchers’ shops, and that’s how the curtains got scorched.’

  ‘Expound, O sage,’ said Mrs Bradley, settling down with huge enjoyment to listen.

  ‘Well, madam, you yourself put us on to that. Don’t you remember how you found out about that suitcase getting to Mrs Lulu Hirst?’

  Mrs Bradley nodded her small black head.

  ‘And don’t you remember telling me her words?’

  ‘Whose words, inspector?’

  ‘Mrs Lulu’s. She didn’t name Savile or Wright as the man that scorched that ironing. All she said was “that swine I goes with”. Well, that’s the doctor, madam. Plain as a pikestaff. She washed the curtains for him and he went and scorched ’em!’

  ‘Inspector,’ said Mrs Bradley, with emotion, ‘you will convince me in a minute that you are right and I am wrong. This is too wonderful for words!’

  The inspector grinned.

  ‘Just a little bit of deduction,’ he said spaciously. ‘Just part of our job, you know.’

  ‘Then you imply that Lulu Hirst is aware that Dr Barnes committed this murder?’

  ‘That’s right, Mrs Bradley. And that’s why it’s no good me going to her, as you suggest, to give the doctor an alibi, because I know she will, like a shot. Knows he did it, you see.’

  Mrs Bradley sighed and turned to Jim Redsey.

  ‘This is very difficult, young man,’ she observed.

  Jim put out his large hands helplessly.

  ‘You see, madam, there’s her own words to be thought about. She said to you, you remember, “There’s one man dead for me already, and another soon will be!” Or some expression like that. Meaning, I take it, that Sethleigh was murdered, and the doctor would be hanged for doing it.’

  ‘H’m! Doesn’t sound as though she would be prepared to fix him up with much of an alibi,’ said Mrs Bradley tersely. ‘You can’t have it both ways, inspector, you know!’

  ‘Oh, yes, you can, Mrs Bradley, with ladies of the type of Mrs Lulu,’ contradicted the inspector gravely. ‘Love their loves and hate ’em, that’s the way they go on. You’d be surprised!’

  Mrs Bradley broke into an amused cackle.

  ‘Upon my word, inspector!’ she said. ‘I can’t think what has happened to you. This is so sudden!’

  ‘Well,’ remarked the inspector, winking solemnly at Jim, ‘I got your little book out of the Bossbury Library a couple of days back. There’s some frisky reading in that there book, Mrs Bradley, and I reckon it has kind of inspired me. Keep it away from the wife, though, I had to. Wouldn’t hardly do to let her know I read stuff like that! If it was fiction it would be seized by the police, and so I tell you!’ He guffawed loudly.

  ‘Frisky reading!’ said Mrs Bradley, clutching her black hair. ‘Seized by the police! James, get me some water! This man unnerves me!’

  Jim grinned.

  ‘And as you value your professional reputation, inspector,’ she added, ‘fly, fly to the prison-house and set free that unfortunate, choleric, ridiculous man! Tidy, indeed! Is it tidy to have illegitimate children all over the place, so that blackmailers may arise from the earth and counfound you? Is it tidy to have affairs with the Lulu Hirsts of this world, so that all the village knows about them? Is it tidy to be compelled to forbid your own daughter, of whom you are very fond, to have aught to do with young men for fear that her innocent mind may be contaminated with stories of your own depravity? No, no, no! And the motive, inspector! The motive! Why, the poor man had no motive! Everybody in the village knew his secret. It wasn’t a secret at all!’

  She smote the p
olished table vehemently, and continued:

  ‘No, I tell you, no! And the man who cut up that body is tidy! How many times must I say it? He is a maniac for tidiness! Oh, you are right enough about the curtains! They were used for the purpose you stated! And the corpse was not dismembered in the butcher’s shop! Neither was it dismembered in the doctor’s surgery, though! And what about the burial of that suitcase containing the fish? What about that ridiculous notice on the fish? Those were the clues you should have studied! Those were the two facts absolutely germane to your case! Man, rid your mind of this poison about the doctor’s guilt! He is a fool, but he is not a madman!’

  She stopped short. The inspector and Jim gaped at her in stark amazement.

  ‘Beware of the fact that will not fit,’ proclaimed Mrs Bradley, more calmly. ‘Go home and pray, inspector. But set the doctor free first!’

  She walked quickly out of the room through the French doors, leaving the two men staring after her.

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said the inspector solemnly.

  Jim nodded. It seemed an adequate comment.

  Suddenly Mrs Bradley poked her head tortoise-wise in at the French doors, and addressed herself again to the inspector.

  ‘I couldn’t bear the thought that our charming James should be suspected of murder,’ she said. ‘An unpalatable idea! Therefore I determined to look at the facts for myself. It very soon dawned upon me that we were dealing, not with a man possessing a perverted sense of humour, but with a man of such deadly seriousness of mind that the mere word “eccentricity” could not account for his peculiar traits. The man to whom dead flesh was meat, and must be disposed of as such; the man who split open the skull and boiled it because that’s what he’s seen done with the heads of deceased animals; the man who, dog-like, buried the skull (after all, there were other ways of getting rid of it, you see!); the man who found himself compelled to write “A Present from Grimsby” on a stuffed fish; a man whose queer mentality would never let him rest until he had seen an offering, a sacrifice – a human sacrifice – laid upon the Stone (by the way, he went back home and brought a small saw and a carving-knife as well as the suitcase back with him to the Stone, and performed that unpleasant job on the Sunday night when everybody had gone to bed. Very neat, considering the enormous handicap of having nothing but the front lamp of a car to light up the grisly work); and –’