The Longer Bodies

by Gladys Mitchell

  Celia followed her brother. Here the inspector was faced with the same kind of delay. Her story of the dance in London must be checked. He obtained the names of the friends she had met and their addresses, and smiled in avuncular manner upon the youthful gadabout as she took her departure in the same optimistic manner as she had effected her entrance.

  ‘And that leaves Miss Yeomond,’ said Bloxham thoughtfully. ‘Bring her in, sergeant. I expect she’s sick of hanging about.’

  Priscilla had a sorry tale to tell.

  Yes, she had heard all the noises. Yes, she had been terribly scared. No, she was afraid she had not got up to investigate. Yes, she was horribly nervous at night. Yes, extraordinarily so, she would agree. It was frightfully cowardly, but there you were. No, she had done nothing except put the bedclothes over her ears and hope for the best. Oh, no! She knew it couldn’t be Celia making all that noise. Yes, she had thought of the murderer. Yes, she would have shrieked had the javelin been flung into her bedroom. Yes, she had heard the cry of ‘Fire!’ No, she had stayed in bed. No, it was not carelessness for her own safety. She was terribly afraid; it was just sheer funk. She seemed paralysed by fear, and had not felt equal to getting out of bed.

  ‘But you know, Miss Yeomond,’ said Bloxham very gravely, ‘this looks rather bad.’

  He turned to Mrs Bradley with a slip of paper in his hand.

  ‘I’ll let you go for the moment, Miss Yeomond,’ he said, ‘but don’t go away from the library. I may want you again in a minute.’

  Priscilla, her face very pale and her heart thumping until she felt sick, groped her way back into the library. Amaris, who was still seated in the front row of chairs, looked up in amazement.

  ‘My dear child!’ she said. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Priscilla’s lips were dry. Her hands trembled. ‘I—I think they’re trying to—to fix the murders on me! I can’t think what the inspector is going on! I—I—well, I just mean I didn’t do it! I know I didn’t! I—I couldn’t forget a thing like that! I mean you don’t forget things—horrible things—oh, I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!’

  And she sank into an armchair and hid her face.

  Amaris pursed up her full red mouth into a soundless whistle.

  On the other side of the folding doors the inspector was showing Mrs Bradley a plan of the sunk garden.

  ‘You see,’ he said, pointing to the unfinished goldfish pond, ‘we’re certain that the corpse of Hobson lay here until it was removed to the mere and disposed of there in accordance with your very clever suggestion. Now this is the window of the bedroom that seems to be the root of the trouble. From that window a heavy article dropped on Hobson’s head would have killed him, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It would,’ agreed Mrs Bradley, not very enthusiastically. ‘So it would, though, if it were dropped from the terrace, provided it were heavy enough.’

  ‘Yes, but look here.’ The inspector’s voice was eager. ‘Even supposing Priscilla Yeomond is perfectly innocent—she may be, of course, although her doings on the two nights in question seem rather mysterious!—a plot was made with the object of getting her out of that particular bedroom—’

  ‘I do not agree,’ said Mrs Bradley emphatically. ‘Besides, she did not go out from that bedroom until one o’clock in the morning, and I thought you had made up your mind that the medical evidence at the inquest on Hobson warranted the supposition that the murder was committed round about ten o’clock at night. Not to mention all the other evidence in favour of such a contention,’ she added, with her saurian grin.

  Bloxham scowled.

  ‘At any rate, there’s something suspicious about that room,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to find out what it is!’

  ‘Hoots and havers!’ observed Mrs Bradley, in what she fondly believed to be the accents of Mrs Macbrae’s native land. ‘And don’t forget there are two bathchairs,’ she added in English, ‘and that both may have been out on the night of Hobson’s death.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Bloxham vacantly. He stared at her like a man who has just been awakened from sleep.

  ‘Both may have been out on the night of Hobson’s death,’ repeated Mrs Bradley firmly. ‘One may have been used by Anthony as a scare, and the other may have transported the corpse to the mere.’

  The inspector continued to gaze at Mrs Bradley, and at last opened his mouth to speak. Before he could say anything, however, the face of the sergeant appeared at the opening.

  ‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said he, ‘but this ’ere Herring ’as something more to say to you. Shall I show ’im in?’

  ‘Do,’ said Mrs Bradley, with extreme cordiality. ‘Come along, Joseph.’

  The wretched Scrounger, thus adjured, walked in, and stood eyeing the inspector with a mixture of fear and bravado which lent anything but a pleasing expression to his simian countenance.

  ‘Well?’ said Bloxham roughly. ‘Spill it, and slippy’s the word.’

  ‘If me memory don’t deceive me,’ began Joseph fawningly, ‘which I dessay it do,’ he continued hastily, falling back a step in face of the inspector’s glare, ‘when I comes ’ome with that there rabbit as I—as I ’arf-inched from the Colonel I seen a dark figure a one o’ the ’uts.’

  ‘Ho!’ snorted Bloxham. ‘You did, did you? And what time of night was this?’

  ‘Well, inspector, you see, I thought as ’ow you’d work that out for me. Blowed if I can figure it out for meself. I gets back into me doss—me bedroom, when me alarm-clock says five past one. Well, me clock’s about free minutes fast. Well, I’d cleaned meself in the scullery—that took me ten minutes I dessay—p’r’aps more—’

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Bloxham, ‘rather more.’

  ‘Eh?’ Joseph looked seriously perturbed at this interpolation. ‘I dunno what you’re gettin’ at,’ he whined. ‘May I drop dead if I do.’

  ‘Who made the dirty mark with Miss Caddick’s shoe on the clean window ledge in order to annoy the cook?’ said Bloxham coldly. ‘But go on with your precious yarn. I might as well hear all the lies you can make up. I suppose you’re going to tell me again that Miss Cowes set fire to Mr Hilary Yeomond’s hut. Well, get on with it!’

  ‘“I lift up my finger and I say tweet, tweet,”’ quoted Mrs Bradley sardonically, under her breath.

  ‘It’s the truth, this is,’ said the Scrounger, legit-imately aggrieved. ‘Well, I see this ’ere figure by the ’ut what Mr Francis Yeomond and Mr Brown-Jenkins occupies. That’s where I seen it. No, it weren’t neither. I’ve got meself all ’ocused. It were by the ’ut where Mr ’Ilary sleeps.’

  The inspector caught Mrs Bradley’s eye. Something in its unwinking gaze made him gulp down the burning words which had risen to his lips, and, instead of letting flow the vituperative address he had planned, he merely observed in a strangled voice:

  ‘Well? Go on, can’t you?’

  ‘’Course,’ continued Joseph, gratified at having got the stuff over at last to this exceedingly unreceptive audience, ‘I thinks to meself I’m mistook and it’s a shadder, when blimey! if the shadder don’t cough! I watches it slope orf to the ole duckpond, and then I breaks for ’ome. Not ’arf ’op it I never! But I sees as ’ow it were Miss Cowes, what allows next morning as ’ow it were ’er.’

  ‘Very interesting, Joseph,’ said Mrs Bradley, with warm approval. ‘I suppose you haven’t invented it all?’

  ‘Mam?’ said Joseph, drawing himself up, and preparing to register an expression of injured innocence.

  ‘Here, cut the cackle,’ interrupted the inspector rudely. ‘Listen. This is what you’ve just said.’

  He read aloud a concise, police-English version of what Joseph had told him.

  ‘That all right? Very well. I suppose you can sign your name to it? Just here. Thank you. That’s all.’

  Joseph paused at the folding doors. ‘I gives it as me own ’umble opinion as the inspector knows the murderer be now. Course, I may be wrong.’

  H
e made an effective exit.

  ‘Of course, we know there was an accomplice for the murder of Hobson, so why not for the murder of Anthony?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘By the way, child, I suppose you tested the Roman gladius for fingerprints?’

  ‘And found none,’ replied the inspector. ‘Still, it was undoubtedly the weapon. I wish I could find the thing that killed Hobson.’

  Mrs Bradley grinned. ‘Try the two stone balls on the balustrade at the head of the steps leading down to the sunk garden,’ she said.

  The inspector looked at her as though he suspected a hoax. Mrs Bradley’s face, however, was as passive as that of a Tibetan monk, so he contented himself by making a grunt of protest, and then resumed the subject under discussion.

  ‘They used the key they had in their possession to get into the sunk garden and out again when they covered the corpse of Anthony with the gravel,’ Mrs Bradley continued. ‘That seems feasible, I should say.’

  ‘Why didn’t they try to take the corpse away, as they did the body of Hobson? I see that you take it for granted both murders were committed by the same person,’ said Bloxham.

  ‘Of course I do, child. Look at the motives.’

  ‘But that’s just what I’m unable to do,’ said the inspector resignedly. ‘I can’t find any motive, so far as any person in this house is concerned—no, not for either crime.’

  ‘In both cases an objectionable person is done to death,’ Mrs Bradley pointed out.

  Bloxham shook his head, and drew a face on the blotting-paper. ‘It’s not good enough, Mrs Bradley,’ he objected. ‘Nobody could call that a motive.’

  ‘Child,’ said Mrs Bradley sorrowfully, ‘when you’ve lived as long as I have, you will realize that motives are very queer things. No murder has what the police would term an adequate motive. Think it out for yourself. It is only in fiction that the motive is worthy of the crime.’

  ‘And now we’d better tackle Amaris Cowes about this hut business,’ said Bloxham.

  Amaris Cowes entered, smiling pleasantly.

  ‘Set fire to the hut?’ she said. ‘Well, yes, I did. A silly trick, I own. But I was tired of Anthony’s fooling, and thought I would go one better. Nuisance that Herring recognized me. I was preparing the thing, you know, when he saw me. I got out of the house through the kitchen regions and returned the same way. I knew Richard had got Hilary Yeomond up at the house and out of harm’s way, because I had arranged with him to do so. Richard was early on the scene of the fire, because, of course, he knew it was going to happen.’

  ‘What about the iron bars?’ asked Bloxham.

  ‘Oh, Richard stuck those in as soon as he arrived, because we meant to make it look like an attempt at murder. Foolish trick, of course. I see that now.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Noughts and Crosses

  THE INSPECTOR FOUND no difficulty in checking the movements of Clive and Celia Brown-Jenkins on the night of the murder of Timon Anthony, for it was proved beyond doubt that Clive had visited Southampton and Celia London. The stationmaster at Market Longer remembered Celia’s arrival on the late, or rather the very early, train, and it seemed well within the bounds of probability that she had been unable to procure a conveyance from the station to the house.

  To check Clive’s movements after he had left the garage where his bicycle had been put up proved to be impossible. By careful checking of times, however, the inspector satisfied himself that either the story of the puncture was true or else it had been so carefully thought out that to detect flaws in it would be a matter of great difficulty. He inclined strongly to the belief that it was entirely true.

  His next important task was to attempt to ascertain exactly what had happened to Anthony after he had left Kost. The most careful questioning, however, failed to produce the required information, and the inspector was forced to the conclusion that, the murderer excepted, no one had seen Anthony alive after about five minutes past nine on the fatal evening. One thing, and one only, cheered him. He had found the weapon which had killed Jacob Hobson.

  Acting on what he privately considered to be the very flippant suggestion made by Mrs Bradley, he went to old Mrs Puddequet and informed her that he proposed to smash both the stone balls which decorated the balustrade at the top of the stone steps. Old Mrs Puddequet squealed in vigorous protest for some minutes, but later she was understood to give her consent, providing that the stone-breaking was done in her presence.

  In the ball from the right-hand side of the steps they found one of the twelve-pound shots used in putting the weight.

  Amaris Cowes was highly tickled, and informed the inspector that he must arrest her brother without delay.

  ‘And why, Miss Cowes?’ enquired Bloxham, in his stolid way, for he was worried. The discovery of what his intelligence convinced him was the agent of Hobson’s death seemed useless except as a newspaper headline.

  ‘Well,’ said Amaris, with her wide, slow smile, ‘Richard puts the weight, doesn’t he? It’s his event, after all.’

  The inspector grinned, and informed Mrs Bradley later that he could not tell how she had known what one of the stone balls was concealing, but that he supposed she was clairvoyant.

  Mrs Bradley, whose exposure of a famous medium had been the talk of London less than a year previously, merely grinned and suggested that the ball was not as solid as it had appeared to be.

  ‘No. Baked clay,’ replied Bloxham, ‘and painted white. Amaris Cowes thinks the murderer must have substituted it for the one which her great-aunt had had placed there. I suppose that’s the truth.’

  ‘Pirandello,’ said old Mrs Puddequet’s harsh, cracked, parrot voice just behind them.

  ‘Oh, quite,’ said Mrs Bradley, who, to Mrs Puddequet’s intense and lasting fury, had interpreted correctly ‘Pippa Passes’ the very first time she heard it used as a te deum laudamus, and had cackled with joy for several minutes afterwards.

  ‘So tactless,’ squealed old Mrs Puddequet to a sympathetic Amaris Cowes, ‘when I only said it because she said she couldn’t stay to dinner!’

  ‘At any rate,’ the inspector went on—for he had discovered that the only way to manage old Mrs Puddequet with any degree of success was to ignore her altogether and get on with the business in hand—‘it has all boiled down to a case of subtraction now.’

  ‘Oh, why?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘We know who they are, don’t we?’

  ‘Who who are?’ enquired Bloxham cautiously. He was never able to determine whether Mrs Bradley was pulling his leg or whether she was entirely serious in what she said.

  ‘The murderer and his accomplice, of course,’ said the shrivelled little old woman unconcernedly.

  Bloxham snorted unhappily.

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t interrupt my train of thought with these light-hearted and entirely frivolous remarks,’ he said plaintively. ‘I was about to say that if I get down to my notebook and draw up a list of all the people who could have killed Hobson and all the people who could have killed Anthony, and then weed out all who could have killed both of them, and have another good go at those, we ought to get somewhere, I should think.’

  Mrs Bradley looked at him pityingly.

  ‘But it’s all so frightfully obvious,’ she said. ‘Do use your intelligence, child.’

  ‘I am,’ said Bloxham obstinately. ‘And the Chief Constable tells me he’s sending for help from Scotland Yard tomorrow.’

  His face hardened. Mrs Bradley sighed.

  ‘How long will your notebook business take you?’ she asked.

  ‘An hour, perhaps.’

  ‘At the end of that time you will know who committed these crimes, child?’

  ‘No. I shall know who didn’t commit ’em,’ said Bloxham, his brow darkening. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘I’ll tell you the rest,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘when you feel inclined to hear it.’

  Bloxham laughed harshly and left her.

  Two hours later he was showing the superintendent the
finished pages in his notebook. They ran:

  (a) Persons who could have killed

  Hobson Anthony

  Mrs Hobson ____

  Anthony ____

  Kost Kost

  Caddick Caddick (very doubtful)

  Herring Herring

  Brown-Jenkins ____

  ____ Malpas Yeomond

  ____ Francis Yeomond

  Cowes ____

  ____ Amaris Cowes (very doubtful)

  Priscilla Yeomond (very doubtful indeed) Priscilla Yeomond

  Celia Brown-Jenkins (very doubtful indeed) ____

  (b) Persons who could not have killed either Hobson or Anthony

  Mrs Puddequet

  Hilary Yeomond

  (c) Persons who could have killed Hobson but not Anthony

  Mrs Hobson

  Anthony

  Brown-Jenkins

  Cowes

  Celia Brown-Jenkins

  (d) Persons who could have killed Anthony but not Hobson

  Malpas Yeomond

  Francis Yeomond

  Amaris Cowes

  (e) Persons who could have killed Hobson AND Anthony

  Kost

  Miss Caddick

  Herring

  Priscilla Yeomond (?)

  ‘And, of course, sir,’ remarked Bloxham, as the superintendent looked up from the neatly arranged sheets, ‘the obvious conclusion, seeing that there must have been two murderers, or, at any rate, a murderer and an accomplice, is Kost and Caddick. Thick as thieves, those two. Sleep together and everything.’

  ‘Eh?’ said the superintendent, interested.

  ‘Well,’ said the inspector, ‘they don’t say so exactly, but it’s to be inferred. She admits that on the night Hobson was murdered she had Kost in the house. She says they heard Hobson’s voice from the sunk garden before they went upstairs. She says she parked Kost in the spare bed in old Mrs Puddequet’s dressing room; still, I can’t see her taking a risk like that, seeing that he’d have to pass through the old lady’s room, where she was already in bed, to get to the dressing room, and out through it again in the morning. What do you say?’