The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘I say!’ said Jim, open-eyed. ‘What a ghastly scene! But how do you know all this?’

  ‘I don’t. I deduce it. There were certainly some splinters of bone on the top of the Stone when I examined it through my reading-glass that day.’

  ‘But the police didn’t spot them!’

  ‘No, child. They were not looking for them. I was. That makes all the difference,’ said Mrs Bradley, looking more like some deadly reptile than ever, as she directed a serpent’s grin at the inspector.

  ‘But who on earth could be such a maniac?’ asked Jim. The inspector stood by, mute but amused.

  Aubrey Harringay, coming up behind Mrs Bradley, gently pushed her into the room, and entered after her.

  ‘The person who puts on a clerical collar when he is going to inter a little dead bird,’ replied the terrible little old lady to Jim’s question. ‘The person who assumes a suit of Lincoln green and its appurtenances when he is practising archery (I cannot make up my mind whether the shot in the wood was directed at me or not, by the way).’

  ‘If not,’ said Aubrey, eager to display knowledge, ‘why did he tell a lie about where he was standing when he shot it?’

  ‘Did he tell a lie?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Yes, of course. Said he was in the woods on the other side of the road. Couldn’t have been.’

  ‘Why not, child?’

  ‘Flight of the arrow. He’d have had to shoot over the tree-tops, wouldn’t he? But the arrow was less than six feet from the ground, and travelling in a straight flight. Hadn’t been fired from more than twenty yards off, I should say.’

  ‘By heavens, Holmes,’ said Mrs Bradley, hooting merrily and poking him in the ribs, ‘this is wonderful!’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Aubrey, getting out of her reach. ‘It’s the result of patient observation. The mater belonged to an archery club a few years ago, when I was about eleven, and I used to put in a lot of time acting as sort of caddie to her. I don’t know what they call it in archery, but when I read that bit in the Bible about Jonathan shooting the arrows and telling his boy the arrow was beyond him, I jolly well know what that poor kid felt like. It reminds me of my own youth.’ He grinned.

  ‘Oh, well. That’s that,’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘And what about getting the parts of the body into Binks’s shop? When was that done?’ demanded Jim.

  ‘That’s where you got yourself into a muddle, my dear inspector! Somebody hung about Binks’s shop for weeks and wondered how the thing was to be managed; and at last, seeing no other way, he bribed Binks’s boy for the key. The boy did not recognize him – the man’s a vegetarian, you see! – and anyway, the boy hasn’t the brains to describe him for us – and there you are! He had only to load the dismembered parts into his car, each bit wrapped up in a fold of Felicity’s muslin curtains, and deliver them at Binks’s shop whenever the fancy took him, which was on the Monday afternoon, and that was that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the other people in the market be surprised at a delivery of meat being made in a lock-up shop on a Monday? And what about the finger-prints on the butcher’s knife and cleaver?’

  ‘Those of Binks’s boy,’ grunted the inspector. ‘I tell you we made up our minds long ago the business was not done at the shop. And we knew the lad was bribed to give up the key.’

  ‘But how will they bring home the crime to the murderer?’ asked Jim, glancing at the inspector.

  ‘They probably won’t. You don’t suppose the inspector is taking any notice of my fantastic theories, do you?’

  She chuckled with sardonic amusement.

  ‘But hang it all, I mean! What price the doctor?’ cried Aubrey. ‘Oh, and why did Savile try to commit suicide?’

  ‘The wronged husband. He considered it was the correct way of proving that his faith in human nature was gone for ever.’

  ‘Wronged husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Lulu.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that blighter Rupert,’ interpolated Aubrey.

  ‘A dead man, child,’ said Mrs Bradley solemnly.

  ‘What about it?’ demanded Aubrey sternly. ‘Dead or not, he was a blighter! Why be soft?’

  ‘Quite, quite!’ Mrs Bradley nodded sympathetically. ‘But not Rupert. Dr Barnes.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Yes. It was certainly Dr Barnes who scorched the ironing that day. The inspector was right there.’ She nodded brightly and encouragingly at him, and continued. ‘By the way, talking of Lulu – you realize the interesting implication now of Savile’s having married her to please one school of opinion and his having demanded that they should continue to use her maiden name to satisfy the ridiculous conventions of another?’

  ‘Oh, the New Art mob? The mater had a spasm to join them, but thought better of it, thank goodness,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Their anti-marriage point of view decided her, I imagine?’ grinned the unregenerate James.

  ‘No. Their tendency to sponge on anybody with a bit of money. The mater’s an arch-sponger herself, you see, and it was a case of two of a trade, I suppose.’

  ‘But what about the murderer?’ asked the inspector, grinning broadly.

  ‘Inspector,’ said Mrs Bradley solemnly, ‘will anything short of a miracle convince you that the doctor is innocent and that Mr Savile dismembered the body of Rupert Sethleigh?’

  ‘Savile?’

  ‘Savile.’

  The inspector scratched his head. At that moment the telephone-bell rang.

  ‘It’s for you, inspector,’ said Jim, who had stepped to the instrument.

  ‘Oh, Lord, Mrs Bradley! I must hand it to you this time, after all!’ said the inspector, at the end of a minute’s hectic performance at the mouthpiece. ‘Savile’s done it on us!’

  ‘Not dead?’ said two voices.

  Mrs Bradley assumed an expression of patient resignation.

  ‘Tiresome for you, inspector,’ she said. ‘Never mind. I suppose it settles the matter once and for all. Besides, when you come to sift all the evidence, I think the doctor will probably prove an alibi.’

  ‘Not for Sunday night he won’t!’

  ‘No, inspector. I was thinking of Monday.’ She smiled sweetly.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Savile escaped from bed in the Cottage Hospital, hustled aside two nurses, and jumped from a top-floor window. I must get along there, I suppose, and find out exactly what the poor loony darnfool did do! Mucking up my case like that!’

  Much incensed, he took his leave.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Mrs Bradley’s Notebook

  (SEE CHAPTER VI.)

  Question: Why should Dr Barnes so deliberately run down Lulu Hirst? Does he want to create the impression that he dislikes her, in order to cloak the fact that he likes her in a way which might harm his professional reputation if it became known?

  Question: Why have those three curious persons, Cleaver Wright (whose acquaintance I must be sure to make), George Savile, and Lulu Hirst, come to live in an out-of-the-way spot like Wandles Parva?

  Possible Answers:

  (a) Flight from London creditors.

  (b) Trouble with the police.

  (c) Desire for change of air and scenery.

  (d) Ditto, peace and quietness.

  (e) Wright and Savile want to paint the local beauty spots.

  N.B.: Savile the monomaniac – still, so are we all, I suppose. His fetish seems to be exactitude and laborious attention to correctness of detail. Interesting. Expound this to F.B., I think.

  Question: Why was not Ferdinand a daughter?

  N.B.: The false teeth found on the Vicarage dust-heap by the boy A. H. The vicar does not possess false teeth. Neither does F. Nor the maid. Curious.

  Question: Why is A. so much excited at finding them? Interesting.

  (SEE CHAPTER VII.)

  Quite a joke. The bishop has been presented with a skull. Reginald Crowdesley is the kind of bis
hop to whom things happen.

  N.B.: There is more in Cleaver Wright than meets the eye.

  (SEE CHAPTER X.)

  N.B.: Public opinion is strongly against the youth J. R., who is suspected of having murdered his cousin R. S. J. R. – A likeable person. Cannot imagine anyone less likely to commit murder. Might be fierce when roused, though.

  (SEE CHAPTER XI.)

  Redsey dug a hole that night. Interesting.

  N.B.: F. B. buried alive down here. A charming and beautiful child.

  Question: Why do wicked old women like me have more money than they can possibly spend on themselves?

  Answer: Wait and see.

  N.B.: Am determined to keep my fingers out of the local pie – i.e., this absurd murder-case. But, really, the child looks so tired and worried – I suppose she is in love with that ridiculous youth J. R.

  J. R.’s Confession: Knocked cousin down about 8.5 p.m. on Sunday, June 22nd. Arrived ‘Queen’s Head’ – say 8.25 p.m. Helped home at closing time. Arrived home – say 10.35 p.m. Locked in bedroom by Mrs B. H.’s orders. Went to Manor Woods late Monday night to locate body and inter it. Disturbed by the lad A. H. Chased lad out of woods, but no evidence to show when J. R. himself arrived indoors that night. . . . Oho! Indeed? Interesting, but, from F.’s point of view, unprofitable. Had better keep clear of this.

  N.B.: Mrs B. H. the mother. New light on her character. Passionately desirous of seeing her son set up for life. The family fortune would be attraction enough for anything, perhaps!

  N.B.: Everybody seems to know all about poor Dr Barnes’s little failings.

  (SEE CHAPTER XIII.)

  Question: What about that skull? Stolen from Cleaver Wright’s studio and now in the Culminster Collection, well hidden behind a Roman shield. Who put it there? Can it possibly be Sethleigh’s skull?

  N.B.: Must frighten the person who put it there into moving it to a place where I can get hold of it and try the dental plate, which seems to be Sethleigh’s – at least, I am certain that the lad A. H. believes so.

  N.B.: That dental plate could have fallen out of the suitcase. What about that suitcase? The police are not inclined to treat it as significant. They regard the message on that fish as a joke. I don’t.

  N.B.: The girl M. B. reminds me of somebody. Who? – Cleaver Wright! He may be the doctor’s son, then. Brother and sister mutually attracted – kinship is a queer thing – and go off to woods together? Seems far-fetched. But M. went to the woods with somebody that night. The murderer? Hardly, I suppose.

  N.B.: Strength of Savile.

  That chart!

  C. W. went to the ‘Queen’s Head’ that night and fought and was beaten. Aha! Mr Wright. Not very clever of you, that!

  (SEE CHAPTER XV.)

  N.B.: Trousers, pair of, flannel, grey, intact.

  Savile’s kink for correctness again. Must dress for the part. Curious.

  Dr Barnes has never played bears with children.

  ‘A great black slug.’ Indeed? Interesting. The vicar walked into the River Cullen on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd. Is he really as much afflicted as all that? Oh, those grey flannel trousers!! I dreamt they were round my neck, strangling me, last night.

  F. B. has seen the skull in Culminster Museum. Now what?

  (SEE CHAPTER XVI.)

  N.B.: That suitcase.

  Lulu Hirst, washerwoman.

  The scorched curtains. Muslin. H’m! I wonder!

  Scorched. Indeed?

  My hat! The suitcase went to the Cottage on the Hill then! J. R. – I see light!

  N.B.: Rabbits’ blood? Quite so.

  (SEE CHAPTER XVII.)

  N.B.: F. must go into Culminster again to find out whether the skull is still there.

  N.B.: The murdered man’s clothes consisted of:

  Flannel trousers,

  Silk scarf,

  White tennis-shirt (with detachable collar?),

  Cellular vest and trunk drawers.

  Tie? . . .

  Quite so.

  N.B.: The blood on the Stone. Not enough. N.B.: The Stone – a sacrificial altar.

  Blood. Sacrifice. The head, then –

  Aha!

  N.B.: It was M. B. and C. W.

  N.B.: Savile again. Robin Hood this time.

  It is getting too easy.

  (SEE CHAPTER XVIII.)

  N.B.: The doctor did not react to ‘consanguinity’ suggestion. Have concluded he is not the murderer.

  N.B.: L. H. is terrified. I wonder what she knows?

  Questions:

  The doctor and Lulu lovers? If so:

  Savile jealous?

  Wright jealous?

  Sethleigh and Lulu lovers? If so:

  Motive for Wright –

  Savile –

  Dr Barnes –

  to have murdered Sethleigh?

  I wonder.

  N.B.: The skull has gone. If Savile moved it, it is in the butcher’s shop, in the drawer beneath the chopping-block where they keep the bones and the bits.

  N.B.: Oh, yes! M. B. did meet C. W., and he saw the corpse, I think. That means (see plan) somebody had moved R. S. from the bushes where J. R. had hidden him, and possibly had begun dismembering the body.

  Question: Who?

  N.B.: That ‘black slug’ again:

  Savile?

  The doctor?

  Not the vicar, I suppose?

  (SEE CHAPTER XIX.)

  So Savile moved the skull.

  Queer that J. R. should have suggested the butcher’s shop.

  These notes want rearranging. Let us try a time-table.

  TIME-TABLE OF THE MURDER OF RUPERT SETHLEIGH ON SUNDAY, JUNE 22ND.

  7.45 p.m. (N.B. – All these times are approximate.): Savile in hiding in the Manor Woods to trap Sethleigh with Lulu Hirst. Did not know that it was the doctor she was going to meet. Armed with weapon – probably axe or billhook.

  Near Stone of Sacrifice.

  7.55 p.m.: Redsey and Sethleigh go into the Manor Woods, quarrelling.

  8.5 p.m.: Redsey knocks Sethleigh down. Fall kills him. Drags body into bushes. Seen by Savile.

  Redsey departs for ‘Queen’s Head’ public house.

  8.15 p.m.: Savile drags body from bushes.

  Lifts on to Stone of Sacrifice.

  Decapitates with axe or billhook. Cannot decide whether Sethleigh dead or only stunned.

  Disturbed by:

  8.30 p.m.: (Supposition only.) Dr Barnes’s and Lulu Hirst’s entry into woods. Has just time to lower headless trunk of Sethleigh to the ground on house side of the Stone, and disappear into bushes with head. Dr Barnes and Lulu do not approach the Stone, however, and Savile does not actually see them.

  8.45 p.m.: Savile still in hiding with the head. Cleaver Wright and Margery Barnes sit down on side of Stone facing the Bossbury road (see plan), i.e., opposite side to the corpse.

  9.0 p.m.: Margery, alarmed by buffoonery of Cleaver, runs away in circle.

  9.1 p.m.: Dr Barnes, disturbed by the sounds of his daughter’s flight, crawls out to reconnoitre, and is observed by Margery – ‘great black slug’. Disappears hastily. Margery runs home, and arrives long before her father.

  9.2 p.m.: Cleaver Wright, having risen to his feet and strolled a few steps round the Stone, comes upon the headless trunk of Sethleigh. Flight to ‘Queen’s Head’ to establish alibi for himself.

  9.3 p.m.: Savile decides had better cover his tracks a bit, now Wright has seen the corpse. Worms way out of woods, leaving skull and billhook hidden, and returns to Cottage on the Hill, which, of course, is empty. Gets ready large knife, sharpens saw, places both in suitcase, together with muslin curtains. Takes carlamp. Hides all these things where can easily get at them later. Sits down and awaits return of Lulu Hirst and Cleaver Wright.

  9.5 p.m.: Doctor and Lulu, afraid of discovery as so many people seem to be about in the woods, seek Bossbury road, and separate. Savile probably ill-treats Lulu when she arrives home, and sees that she goe
s up to bed early to be out of the way.

  9.45 p.m.: Return of Wright in bloodstained and exhausted condition from the fight in the ‘Queen’s Head’. Goes up to bed. Coast clear for Savile.

  10.30 p.m.: Return of Dr Barnes as though he had really spent the evening at the major’s.

  11.30 p.m.: Savile to woods. Finishes dismembering the corpse. Wraps up the pieces and hides them, ready to take into Bossbury next day. Returns to Cottage with head and clothing of the corpse. Boils the first to remove flesh. Washes the tie (?) and shirt which are slightly bloodstained. Adds the grey flannels to his own wardrobe. (Supposition only.) Places trunk drawers, vest, tie, and shirt in laundry-basket. Lulu washes other people’s clothes besides Savile’s and Wright’s, so her suspicions not aroused. Summer weather. Damp things will soon dry.

  N.B.: Cannot see how the police will ever get on to Savile. The idiots have arrested the doctor! Poor, foolish, choleric man! I must rescue him, I suppose.

  Later: What a comfort! Savile has committed suicide! I can now give him away to the police without a single qualm!

  Later: I really must put the wind up James Redsey. Then, if he treats that delicious child with anything but the most exquisite kindness and consideration after they are married, he had better look out for himself!

  CHAPTER XXIV

  The Murderer

  I

  ‘So it was not Dr Barnes, after all?’ said Aubrey. ‘Fancy his being in the woods all the time, though, that Sunday night!’

  ‘These woods appear to have a curious attraction for all kinds of Undesirable Persons,’ observed Mrs Bryce Harringay, coming into the room from the hall.

  ‘Yes, indeed. Hampstead Heath on an August Bank Holiday is not to be compared with the Manor Woods on the night of June 22nd,’ returned Mrs Bradley. ‘By the way, I must apologize for invading your house just now.’

  Jim Redsey, without glancing in the direction of his aunt, went out.