‘And which are the two you are taking care of for Colonel Digot?’ enquired Mrs Bradley, with dreadful clearness.
The Scrounger swallowed twice and looked past her. Then he caught her eye.
‘Come, come, Joseph,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a grin which made him shudder. ‘You don’t want to be arrested for murder, do you?’
The wretched Joseph wilted, and swore softly to steady his nerves.
‘You were out for an unlawful purpose on the night Jacob Hobson was murdered,’ said Mrs Bradley relentlessly. That this fact was known to all the people in England who took the trouble to peruse the daily papers escaped Joseph for a flabbergasted instant, and he grew red with anguish.
‘I—I never said I wasn’t, did I?’ gulped the ornament of many defaulters’ parades.
‘Luckily for you, you did not,’ said Mrs Bradley crisply. ‘You admit that on the night of April eighteenth you did feloniously purloin or steal some portable property belonging or appertaining to Colonel Digot, J.P.—viz., to wit, one rabbit—don’t you? Which one was it? Show me.’
Joseph showed her.
‘Very well,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Again, on the night of Monday, April twenty-eighth, the night when Mr Timon Anthony was murdered, you went again to Colonel Digot’s kitchen garden and stole a second rabbit. Joseph, I put it to you. You are a hard-working, trustworthy, intelligent man—’
The Scrounger, who was none of these things, and had never been called them before except in company with several hundred other persons, and then only at political meetings, straightened his shoulders and flung out his chest.
‘And you are aware,’ continued Mrs Bradley, noting these manifestations with secret amusement, ‘that on the face of it your conduct must look, to say the very least, unpleasantly suspicious. One thing, and one thing only, will divert this suspicion. Joseph, why did you need to steal two rabbits? Tell me that. Are you a collector of rabbits? Do you yearn after them? Have you a secret craving for them, or what?’
The Scrounger cleared his throat and his eyes wandered glassily towards the nearest treetop. Mrs Bradley, who knew a liar when she saw one, added swiftly:
‘And don’t say that. It isn’t true.’
Richard Cowes had grown weary of the lecture on rabbits, and had wandered through the gate of the kitchen garden and back to the sports ground, so that the two of them were alone.
‘’Ere—’ began Joseph belligerently; but then thought better of it.
‘Somebody niked a Belgian ’are and a Flemish Giant off me, and I dursen’t let the old lady know, so I ’as to replace ’em, see? And that’s the truth, it is.’
‘I believe you, Joseph,’ said Mrs Bradley magnificently. ‘More. The day you furnish me with information—correct information, please, Joseph! —as to the identity of the person or persons who stole your rabbits from you, I will give you a pound note. Further, if you can discover, not invent, Joseph! —you understand the difference, don’t you?—the reason why they were stolen, and the use, if any, to which they were afterwards put, I’ll make it thirty shillings. And now go and take Mrs Puddequet out for a nice walk.’
Chapter Thirteen
May Fair
‘WHEN IN THE country, take part in as many country pursuits and diversions as possible,’ said Margaret Digot on Wednesday, 30th April. She glanced mischiev-ously at Mrs Bradley. ‘We always go to the fair at Hilly Longer on May Day,’ she added, ‘and that’s tomorrow. Would you care to come with us? Of course, it’s not what it used to be, but we rather enjoy it.’
‘Let us go,’ replied Mrs Bradley promptly. ‘I will throw wooden balls at coconuts. Do you like coconuts?’
‘I always think I do until I begin eating a bit of one,’ said Margaret. ‘Do you mind if Priscilla Yeomond comes with us? They’re sick of their murders and policemen and things, and she says she would like a change of scene.’
Mrs Bradley assented with enthusiasm, and also fell in with the further suggestion that she should accompany her hostess’s daughter as far as Longer in order to fetch Priscilla.
‘Of course,’ said Margaret when they were upon the road, ‘I dare say the other girl, the cousin, will come too, and several of the boys. You don’t mind going about in gangs, I hope?’
Mrs Bradley expressed immense pleasure at the idea of going about in gangs, and added that she hoped it would be a fine day. As a matter of fact, she hoped for rain, for, as she explained later to the silent Rex, who accompanied them, there was nothing like a little heavy rain on a little light summer clothing to bring out the worst aspects of human nature.
‘And one of them, or two of them, or, possibly, three of them committed murder a short time ago, child,’ she added, with a chuckle of ghoulish glee, ‘and I must know who and why.’
‘I’m afraid,’ replied Rex sombrely, ‘that a fair on the first of May is not the most promising place for your purpose.’
‘That’s where you show yourself to be in error, child,’ said Mrs Bradley, with immense complaisance. ‘The great thing is to get them all to come with us. Do you think it can be managed?’
‘All?’ said Margaret, who had been calling her dog from a field, and who now rejoined them on the road.
‘Certainly, my dear,’ said Mrs Bradley. She dived into the capacious pocket of her tweed skirt and drew from the depths a small notebook, from which she proceeded to read the names of old Mrs Puddequet’s nephews, nieces, and trainer.
‘I should like to have had the enterprising rabbit-tamer with us also,’ she added, closing the little book and returning it to the limbo whence it had emerged, ‘but, the social customs of the country being what they are instead of what Clive Brown-Jenkins would like them to be, I suppose we must do the best we can with the material which is supplied to us.’
‘How do you know Clive Brown-Jenkins is a Socialist?’ demanded Margaret.
‘Is he one?’ enquired Mrs Bradley, with a hideous grimace at Rex.
The remainder of the walk was occupied by a discussion on Bernard Shaw, carried on exclusively by the brother and sister. One of them walked on one side of the road and the other on the opposite side, for they were of an age when arguments appear to gain in significance by being shouted across an intervening space. Mrs Bradley occupied the centre of the way, and whiled away the time by reciting under her breath short lyrics from the better-known modern poets as she walked along.
‘At any rate, you can’t get away from Heartbreak House,’ bellowed Margaret as they arrived at the gates of Longer.
‘“In thee, in me,”’ concluded Mrs Bradley, with serious pleasure, as Rex opened the gates for her to pass through.
The first person they encountered upon entering the grounds was Great-aunt Puddequet herself. The bathchair, propelled by Miss Caddick, who looked taller, whiter, and more angular than ever, halted abruptly, and Great-aunt Puddequet stuck the ferrule of her umbrella firmly into the gravel path, and squealed raucously at Margaret.
‘Why have you brought people to lunch? You know I have nothing but the lamb! The girl’s a fool!’
‘We haven’t come to lunch, dear Mrs Puddequet,’ replied Margaret, in the soothing tones of chivalrous youth confronted by querulous and more-or-less ridiculous age.
‘This is Mrs Lestrange Bradley, the writer and psychoanalyst. I think you have met her, haven’t you?’
‘Yesterday,’ said Great-aunt Puddequet. She extended a parchment-coloured finger, heavily ringed, and pointed it at Mrs Bradley.
‘I have heard of your work,’ she said. ‘More: I have read your books. Utter rubbish. How do you do?’
Mrs Bradley acknowledged this informal comment on her work with an appreciative leer which gave her never extraordinarily attractive countenance the expression of a satyr.
‘I hesitate to commit myself to sentimentality,’ she observed, in her rich, deep, beautiful voice, ‘but my heart goes out to you, Mrs Puddequet. How you must have enjoyed the murders!’
Great-aunt Puddequet neighe
d shrilly like an excited horse. Then she placed a jewelled forefinger on her lips and gave a harelike glance backwards to remind her protagonist of the presence of the meek and humble Caddick behind the bathchair.
‘Margaret, my dear,’ she squealed, ‘push the bathchair, child. Companion, be off. Will you never learn to rouge? Caesar said,’ she added, as the unfortunate companion relinquished the responsibility of providing motive power for the bathchair, and hurried in the direction of the house—‘or one should say Shakespeare, I suppose, except that I don’t know whether Shakespeare made Caesar say it or Caesar Shakespeare. You see my point, I hope? So much more profound, to my mind, the argument about authors and their characters. I hate the ancient, vulgar, hopelessly overdone Shakespeare-Bacon controversy.’
‘“Let me have men about me that are fat,”’ interpolated Mrs Bradley, nodding her head vigorously. She removed her ridiculous hat, which made vigorous nodding a matter of some difficulty, and laid it at Great-aunt Puddequet’s feet. The old lady kicked it tentatively and then ignored it completely.
‘How did you know that I was about to quote those words?’ she enquired interestedly.
‘It was perfectly obvious from the context,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Why don’t you make one of them practise throwing the javelin?’ she enquired, with seeming irrelevance.
‘It was Timon’s fault,’ said old Mrs Puddequet, her yellow eyes flickering angrily. ‘Annoying of him to annoy me. Still, I prefer that Kost killed him rather than that he should have killed Kost,’ she added. ‘Such a good trainer, and, of course, does no harm to the parrots at all.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ said Mrs Bradley, sympathetically interpreting this train of thought. ‘That’s what I think about golf. It’s not a game for young children or clergymen, but at least the parrots take no harm from it. It’s a comforting reflection, that.’
She gave vent to a little scream of hideous laughter, and swung round upon Margaret.
‘I’ll push the bathchair,’ she said. ‘Go and gather the tribes together, child. I want everybody to come to the fair. It will do them a world of good.’
By dint of clever strategy, Margaret prevailed upon all but Francis Yeomond, Miss Caddick, and Kost to join the party.
‘I can see by your face,’ began old Mrs Puddequet in her farewell speech to Mrs Bradley on the steps of the terrace, ‘that I am not going to enjoy my murders very much longer. In any case, I shall probably leave my money to one of the girls. The world will be a woman’s world in another twenty years or so. So very annoying of Anthony to allow himself to be killed by Kost,’ she went on. ‘Such short-sighted policy, though, to kill the goose who might have laid the golden eggs.’ She seemed decidedly put out.
Mrs Bradley leaned over the stone balustrade and gazed benignly down upon the still-unfinished goldfish pond below.
‘And bits of brain, I suppose,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Very interesting.’
‘No brains at all,’ said old Mrs Puddequet, mistaking her meaning. ‘A bullet-headed, low-browed, bruising type of person; always in an unpleasantly belligerent state of intoxication or else in a mood of greasy servility which did not, upon any occasion which has passed into history, extend as far as kindliness to his wife. Poor unfortunate woman! I don’t wonder she took her chance when she saw it.’
Mrs Bradley eyed the speaker with furtive interest. Then, looking fixedly at one of the ornamental stone balls on the stone baluster near at hand, she said:
‘You think so?’
‘We used to have two ornamental stone carvings at the head of the steps,’ said old Mrs Puddequet, taking absolutely no notice whatever of the question, ‘but Amaris persuaded me to have them removed.’
‘I said they gave me a pain in the neck,’ called out Amaris, who was standing at the gate of the sunk garden with Priscilla, Celia, and Hilary. ‘They were truly atrocious. If you want to see for yourself, they are in the garage behind the old bathchair.’
‘Behind what?’ said Mrs Bradley, startled.
‘I suppose I may discontinue using a bathchair and order another if I choose?’ said old Mrs Puddequet tartly. ‘As a matter of fact, the old one has no rubber tyres.’
Mrs Bradley nodded, and, for no obvious reason, picked up a small bulb-bowl which was standing on the floor of the terrace between two stone balusters and balanced it carefully on the top of the stone coping. Having placed it to her satisfaction, she was about to step back when her heel touched the wheel of the bathchair. Her fingers slipped on the smooth surface of the bowl, and it fell with a crash of breaking earthenware on to the crazy paving of the sunk garden below.
‘There, now,’ said Mrs Bradley regretfully. ‘That comes of meddling with things which don’t concern one.’
She apologized profusely, and, in an atmosphere rendered somewhat difficult by Great-aunt Puddequet’s repeated observations on the clumsiness displayed by people who might be expected to exercise a little reasonable care, the party left the scene of the disaster and set out for the fair.
Hilly Longer, a small historic village with a Norman church designed possibly by one of the builders of Christchurch Priory, could be reached by a field-path which later struck across an arm of the New Forest, and, the day being fair and the party in excellent spirits at the thought of any change whatsoever in the daily routine of sports practices and police interrogation, it was unanimously decided to walk.
By the time they reached the outskirts of the village Mrs Bradley had acquired from various members of the party much valuable incidental information about the mysterious happenings of the past weeks. She learned, among other things, the true history of the gathering of the family at Longer; she heard of the two occasions on which a bloodstained javelin had been discovered on the sports field; she heard of the midnight fears of Priscilla Yeomond and of the midnight explorations of Clive Brown-Jenkins. She learned also of the first discovery of Hobson’s body at the bottom of the mere; and, more than all this, she was able to form a very shrewd estimate of what everybody thought of everybody else, and the reasons for thinking so. As an item of immediate but passing interest she heard that Timon Anthony, having proposed marriage in turn to Amaris Cowes and Priscilla Yeomond, had even tried his luck with the youthful but intelligent Celia Brown-Jenkins. By each of them he had been repulsed.
‘Margaret Digot, too, I suppose,’ she said, eyeing the unconscious girl with what was intended to be a whimsical smile, but which approached more nearly to the kind of grin with which an alligator on the banks of the Nile might view the coming of a chubby but careless baby.
‘Oh, Margaret turned him down ages ago,’ said Priscilla. ‘She wrote and told me about it before we came down here. He used to visit there a great deal, but after that he didn’t go any more.’
‘Which of these people have ever been to your house, child?’ asked Mrs Bradley, skilfully losing the rest of the party among the crowds that thronged the fair. She held Margaret’s arm and drew her out of the press and into a fortune-teller’s booth. The fortune-teller, a young, coarsely good-looking girl of twenty-two or so, welcomed them gladly, but Mrs Bradley, having presented her with five shillings, waved her away until Margaret had answered the question.
‘Take your time,’ said Mrs Bradley kindly. ‘I want you to be very, very sure of what you say. Madame’ —she grinned evilly upon the black-browed Medea at the table—‘Madame will not mind waiting five minutes, I’m sure.’
‘At the pretty lady’s pleasure,’ said the sibyl, with an oily smirk.
Mrs Bradley eyed her with the gaze of a benevolently minded shark, and the woman took a step backward and averted her bold brown eyes.
Margaret sat down on one of the two small chairs with which the booth was furnished and rested her elbow on the table. As she thought of a name she repeated it aloud, and Mrs Bradley copied it under a cryptic heading, into her small and ever-ready notebook.
‘The man who invented the looseleaf system,’ she said, recording the name of Timo
n Anthony in her minute and almost undecipherable handwriting, ‘probably sprang from parents who were criminals of genius.’
‘All the Yeomonds,’ went on Margaret, frowning a little. ‘Oh, no! Not Francis. I’m sorry.’
Mrs Bradley wrote busily for a few seconds.
‘Both the Brown-Jenkins,’ said Margaret, ‘and Richard Cowes.’
‘Not Amaris?’ Mrs Bradley fixed her sloe-black eyes on the fortune-teller, who was inclined to become restless, for she had nothing whatever to do, and not all her native intuition could make head or tail of the conversation.
‘No, not Amaris,’ replied Margaret.
‘Then, of course, there is Joseph Herring the rabbit fancier,’ said Mrs Bradley thoughtfully, adding his name at the end of her list.
‘Is there anything—I suppose there is something at the back of all this?’ said Margaret, laughing.
‘We will see,’ said Mrs Bradley. She extended a yellow, clawlike hand to the woman behind the table.
‘Fourteen children, and beware of a tall young fellow with golden hair,’ she observed, with a ghoulish cackle, before the unfortunate creature could say a single word. She withdrew her hand and seized that of the fortune-teller in a grip of steel.
‘Today someone will give you a pound note,’ she announced, studying the grimy palm closely, ‘and no change will be required.’ She let it go, and, opening her purse, drew out the sum she had named, and pressed it into the woman’s hand.
‘Wherever have you two been?’ demanded Priscilla a quarter of an hour later.
‘Having our fortunes told,’ replied Mrs Bradley, who had spent a profitable five minutes in watching Amaris Cowes and the young man trying their luck at the coconuts. Amaris, who, taking full advantage of the halfway line allowed by the chivalrous proprietor to all ladies participating in the sport, had smashed four nuts to pieces with her first four balls and had then been refused a second threepennyworth of fun by a justly incensed fieldsman in a red-and-black-striped scarf which he wore in lieu, apparently, of either shirt or collar, turned at the sound of Mrs Bradley’s voice and smiled tolerantly.
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