‘Odd,’ said Jones, ‘how suddenly the thing came on.’
‘What thing?—Look here, I’ll send my couple of maids over to your place if you’d care to leave me your key. Nervous about the boy, now, aren’t you?’
‘As any old woman,’ admitted Jones.
‘The girls won’t mind,’ the doctor said. ‘It’s still broad daylight. If they go over now, you need not hurry away from the vicar if he wants to talk to you. Will Mrs Bradley be coming, do you know?’
‘I hope so. Haven’t heard yet. Thanks for the loan of the girls.’ The girls, summoned and instructed, smiled and announced themselves pleased to go and mind the little boy. Jones rewarded them, and prepared to take his departure.
‘You haven’t told me what thing,’ said the doctor, holding him by the sleeve. Jones had a sudden extraordinary conviction that he could have held him equally well by the power of his eyes.
‘Oh, you know. These nervous symptoms. And is it true he broke the rose-window of the church and is cutting himself with the glass?’
‘Good Lord! I hadn’t heard that! No wonder his head and eye were bandaged. I don’t like the sound of that! Poor old fellow! That’s bad, if it’s true.’ But the doctor sounded ghoulishly delighted.
‘Yes, very bad,’ said Jones. ‘Morbid symbolism! Nasty! Mrs Passion told me all about it.’
‘How do these people get to know things? It can’t have been broadcast over the village, you know, or one of the maids would have told me.’
They found the vicar in bed. His head was indeed heavily bandaged. He hid his head under the bedclothes when the two men came in, and refused to let the doctor take the bandages off, or, in fact, to come within two yards of him. The Japanese butler, impassive as an idol, stood in the doorway. The doctor did not stay for more than ten minutes. He said nothing to the butler until they were at the front door.
The vicar peeped out at Jones. His eyes were bright, as though he were fevered.
‘He won’t get much out of Nao,’ he said, and laughed; then winced, and put a hand to his bandaged head. ‘I don’t like Mortmain. He makes me out to be worse than I am, you know.’
‘Why on earth did you not let Mortmain see your head?’ asked Jones, a trifle impatiently. The vicar grimaced; then laughed again, and winced.
‘I feel such a fool about it. You know what happened?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I thought the village would certainly know.’
‘Mrs Passion told me one of her funny yarns.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Oh, something about the rose-window getting smashed, and your cutting yourself on the glass.’
‘Carefully censored version of what she really did say, isn’t it, Jones? Why don’t you tell me the truth?’ His voice was still petulant and was inclined to be hysterical. Jones could not recognise in him the Hallam he had known at first.
‘Well, you know what the villagers are. Tell me what really happened,’ he said, speaking calmly and pleasantly.
‘Oh, some of the boys stoned the window, you know, and one of the stones caught me on the side of the head when I went out to stop them. That’s all.’
Jones’ training in psychology caused him to suspect that the vicar was lying. It was not easy to say this, so he changed the subject.
‘What does old Mrs Fluke mean when she says you have a plague of frogs?’
‘She’s thinking of those you saw me bury in the garden, I suppose.’
‘Oh, perhaps she is,’ said Jones, utterly unconvinced. ‘No more frogs in the well, then?’
‘No. None at all. Not one. Don’t forget what I said about coming up here for water, if you’re getting short. And I know you must be. Everybody is. Everybody is!’ He grimaced with unholy glee, and hid his face again beneath the bedclothes.
‘Thanks. I’ll remember,’ said Jones. He told of how Mrs Passion had pressed Passion and Mrs Fluke into Richard’s service to procure for him the water for a bath. They both laughed over that. The vicar seemed particularly amused. He screamed with hoarse laughter. Jones had to quieten him. ‘I’m convinced that Richard is her son,’ said Jones, ‘and I’m certain she murdered Middleton.’
‘But why should she murder Middleton?’ the vicar demanded, as though the subject had never been mentioned before.
‘To secure the inheritance for the boy, of course.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said the vicar flatly.
‘Why not? I’m convinced,’ said Jones, ‘the woman’s capable of anything.’
‘Not murder.’
‘Why not? I believe she murdered the other Middleton to get her son accepted as the heir.’
‘You’ve said all this before,’ said Hallam petulantly, and I don’t and can’t believe it. The village isn’t as wicked as all that. It can’t be as wicked as all that. It’s my village, and they’re my people, and I won’t have it said that there’s wickedness.’
Jones was puzzled. It was from the vicar that he had heard the most passionate, the most definite, and infinitely the most pessimistic declarations of the wickedness of the village.
‘If only it won’t rain yet,’ the vicar added. ‘The continuance of the drought will solve all my problems. Rain would just make all my troubles begin again. Oh, if only it will not rain!’
It was about nine-thirty when Jones left him. Secure in the knowledge that Richard was not alone in the cottage, he walked out into the kitchen to talk with Nao. The Japanese was eating his supper—sardines, bread and butter and a handful of freshly gathered raspberries. The candle-light which illumined his head and hand and plate—for the kitchen was always gloomy, and needed to be lighted earlier than the rest of the house—made him look like a sleek-headed gnome. He rose politely when Jones entered, and stood waiting for him to speak.
‘Look here,’ said Jones abruptly, ‘you must tell me what’s the matter with your master.’
‘The murder up at Neot House is the matter,’ said the Japanese.
‘But he was ill—his nerves were bad—before Mr Middleton’s death. Now don’t hedge. Your duty towards Mr Hallam compels you to tell me the truth. I want to help Mr Hallam, who is very ill.’
The Japanese smiled.
‘My duty to Mr Hallam is to keep his secrets, I think. I think Mr Hallam is not ill.’
‘Well, you think wrongly and foolishly. Don’t you understand that Mr Hallam is not himself at all?’
‘I understand. Let us not talk of that. I have something to put in your charge. Please to come.’
He picked up the candle and led the way to the back door. Shading the candle with his hand, although the night was still, he crossed the yard to the scullery where the pump was housed, and stood the candle on a shelf. Then he went to the great old copper and raised the lid.
‘Perhaps the candle,’ he said. Jones picked up the candlestick and brought it to the open copper hole. He peered inside. The candle-light showed him a winking gleam of blue at the bottom of the big cauldron. Nao put in his slim yellow hand and brought out one by one some pieces of glass, colours that burned and glowed, rich blue and comely crimson, clear green and glowing gold.
‘Not the rose-window?’ said Jones.
‘The quatrefoil, yes, Mr Jones. He climbed all alone and took out the beautiful glass. Every little bit he took out with a diamond, Mr Jones, and put it into a basket slung on his arm, and brought it all down and laid it in the bottom of the copper, and charged me on my soul to give it you if anything should happen.’
He placed the glass carefully in a basket, and smiled at the mystified Jones.
‘But how do you know that’s what happened?’
‘I watched him,’ said the Japanese serenely. ‘And I hoped he would not fall. This vicar then climbed the church tower, but that was late at night.’
‘Did he use a ladder?’
‘No, no. He climbed. This vicar climbed very high.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, Mr Jones. Very dangerous.
And saying to himself how very few churches have a rose-window with the thirteenth-century glass still there, intact. Oh, yes.’
Jones took the basket to the doorway, and the Japanese closed the copper, and took up the candle. Before they went back to the kitchen Jones asked:
‘Did Mr Hallam know that you saw him, Nao?’
‘He knew.’
‘Oh, did he?’ said Jones. ‘Did he say anything?’
‘When he had laid glass carefully in copper he washed his hands under the pump, I drawing up the water, and he said: “What time is it, Nao?” I answered that it was more than half-past eight. Then he said: “It has taken me more than an hour.”’
‘Now what about this plague of frogs?’
The Japanese showed the first sign of emotion that Jones had witnessed in him.
‘That bestial old wicked woman!’ he said. ‘It was while the vicar was climbing the church tower. She emptied a great sackful of those beastly frogs into the well, yes, certainly she did! I saw her.’
‘Great heavens! At what time was that?’
‘That was at five minutes past eleven. I told her some wicked words.’
‘How long was she here?’
‘By the time she had heard me and replied to me, it must have been twenty past. That was in the churchyard, too. That is a dreadfully wrong place to argue with witless old hag-women about sacks full of frogs. Then I made her gather them all up again and be off with her.’
‘So at what time did she actually go away?’
‘Not until just before the vicar came down from the top of the tower.’
‘Very odd,’ muttered Jones. ‘And what was she doing here this evening?’ he inquired aloud. The Japanese shook his head.
‘She had better let me catch her here this evening or other evenings,’ he said mildly, but with a curious intonation that sent a shudder down Jones’ back. He was an imaginative man, and centuries of cruelty had gone to make that curious little hit in Nao’s voice. He was thinking so deeply that he missed his turning on his homeward way, went on past the Long Thin Man, and, by the time he came to himself, was only about five minutes’ walk from the Middleton house. He found himself wondering whether Middleton’s body had been moved, and a sudden onset of curiosity caused him to continue his walk, push open the garden gate and walk up the drive to the building.
He was prepared to find the whole house barricaded and impossible to enter. He was prepared to find other sightseers, as morbidly curious as himself, staring in at the ground floor windows of the house. He was even prepared to find policemen on duty, with orders to admit no one. What he was not prepared for was the painful, shrewd and sudden blow which knocked him out just as he was negotiating an angle of the house on his preliminary tour of reconnaissance.
There was a sharp pain which seemed to flash like a shining sword before his eyes; then a sensation of blackness and of falling.
The next thing he knew was that he was in bed in his own cottage, the victim of a most devitalising headache, with the doctor in half-reproachful, half-humorous attendance on him, and Mrs Bradley, grinning like an alligator and dressed like a macaw, sitting in his best armchair.
Chapter Twelve
‘When Socrates heard me rail against Meroe thus, he held up his finger to me, and, half abashed, said, “Peace, peace, I pray you, and” (looking about lest any person should hear) “I pray you” (quoth he) “take heed what you say against so venerable a woman as she is, lest by your intemperate tongue you catch some harm.”
‘Then (as if in wonder), “what” (quoth I), “is she so excellent a person as you name her to be! I pray you tell me.”’
The Golden Ass of LUCIUS APULEIUS in the translation of William Adlington, edited by F. J. Harvey Darton.
‘THE VILLAGE IS lousy with superstition of every kind this side actual idolatry,’ said Jones. Mrs Bradley forbore (out of deference to what she guessed of Jones’ headache) to cackle at this sweeping statement, but the expression on her face as she received the information would have graced the countenance of any of the gargoyles on Notre-Dame. ‘They have decided already that you are Meroe in person, I have no doubt.’
‘I believe the vicar thinks so, anyhow, dear child.’
‘Oh, Hallam, yes. What did you make of him?’
‘He has homicidal tendencies,’ said Mrs Bradley. Her low voice, rich and full, took from the words their startling implication, but Jones, propping himself on his elbow and flushing with excitement, said:
‘You don’t mean he killed Middleton?’
‘How should I know who killed Middleton?’ asked Mrs Bradley, grinning. ‘The verdict at the inquest was murder by persons unknown. Tell me about the Tebbutts, child.’
‘I don’t know anything about them. You tell me about Hallam. What’s the matter with him? Overwork?’
Mrs Bradley pursed her lips until they formed a little beak, and shook her head.
‘Oh, confessional secrets?’ said Jones. ‘I may not betray any confidence poured into my unwilling but nevertheless receptive ears by my unfortunate and only partially-responsible patient. Is that it?’
‘Possibly,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Go to sleep, child. I am going to take Richard for a walk.’
Richard was silent until they reached the Long Thin Man. Then he asked politely:
‘Are we going up to my house just now, Mrs Bradley?’
‘Why, yes,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘At least, I’m going there, but I don’t want you to come.’
‘Oh, mayn’t I, please?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t. I want you to go and play in Mrs Corbett’s garden, Richard, and, while you’re there, you might acquire some specimens of soil. I want to analyse them in connection with the crime.’
‘How jolly good,’ said Richard, quite reconciled by this means to the alteration in his plans. ‘And do you want match-sticks or finger-prints?’
Mrs Bradley gave him a couple of glossy correspondence cards.
‘All the finger-prints you can possibly manage to collect on these, and initial them, please,’ she said briskly. ‘Match-sticks, no. Cigarette ends, no.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘Size of footprints, yes.’ She produced a folding ruler. At the sight of it Richard’s expressionless face did not alter, but his black eyes shone. ‘Notebook for recording data obtained,’ concluded Mrs Bradley, giving it to him, ‘and——’
‘I’ve got a pencil of my own,’ interpolated the child. ‘I say, you know, isn’t this absolutely topping!’
Mrs Bradley laid a yellow forefinger against her pursed-up lips. Her sharp eyes glanced about her. The boy, laughing with excitement, nodded. From the next bend in the road, Mrs Bradley, looking back over her shoulder, had the felicity of seeing his sturdy little body in its suit of light grey flannel squeezed closely up into an angle of the dark-red house. She had left him in safety and with the maximum of employment for at least two hours, she knew.
The Tebbutts were still nominally in charge of the house. The wife looked ill and anxious, and the sixteen-year-old son unkempt, wild-haired and rebellious. Mrs Bradley said:
‘Good morning. I’m not a sight-seer. May I sit down somewhere? I’m very hot.’
The woman produced a chair and placed it in the shade of a laburnum.
‘Will you have a drink, madam?’ she inquired.
‘No, I’ll have a talk with you,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Not about Mr Middleton, madam, please.’
‘Don’t you want to know who killed him?’
‘No one will ever know that,’ said the sixteen-year-old son.
‘Oh, Tom, you mustn’t say that,’ his mother protested.
‘Well, what will they find out bullying you and me?’
‘They’re doing their best, son. The police can’t mince their words, and father will have his character to commend him.’
She was a pale, composed, neatly-dressed woman, heavily built, and fleshy with the onset of middle age. Mrs Bradley studied the woman with her sh
arp black eyes, and then said suddenly:
‘Go away, Tom, please. I want to talk to your mother.’
The boy shrugged at that, glanced at his mother, received a nod, and went.
‘And keep right out of the way,’ Mrs Bradley called after him. Then she settled herself more comfortably in her chair and looked out over the garden.
‘I expect you are very busy, Mrs Tebbutt,’ she said. ‘I won’t keep you longer than I can help.’
Mrs Tebbutt shook her head. She was not looking at Mrs Bradley but at a beautiful bush of syringa laden with blossom along its swaying stems.
‘I haven’t got the heart to be busy, and that’s a fact, madam,’ she said. ‘We’re in trouble, sad trouble, over Mr Middleton’s death. And really, although I shouldn’t like father and Tom to hear me, because of hurting their feelings, the fact is, madam, it’s a relief for me to be able to speak with another woman, if you’ll excuse me referring to you like that. These policemen, and the inspector, I don’t really believe they think in their hearts poor father had a hand in it, but, after all, what can they think, on the evidence? Made poor father quite ill, the shock and that. That’s his room, facing west.’
‘And what is the evidence?’ asked Mrs Bradley gently, her black eyes fixed not on Mr Tebbutt’s window, but on a huge bush of fuchsia which was hung with a thousand dark red and purple buds. Mrs Tebbutt shook her head despondently.
‘There isn’t any, madam. That’s the trouble. I can’t believe that father and I could have been asleep when it was done, and the inspector, I should say he doesn’t believe it either. You couldn’t expect him to. And as for Tom—why, he was downstairs all the time. It doesn’t seem possible that none of us should have heard so much as a sound.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Mrs Bradley absently. ‘Tell me about Mr Middleton.’
‘Well, he was the elder brother. Both of them went to the war. We were in service, dad and I, with the parents of the second Mr Middleton’s wife—Palliner, the name is. Perhaps you know it, madam? Well, our Mr Middleton, as we always call him among ourselves, he came home safe, not even so much as wounded, but eight or nine months before the end of the war—in the February, I think it would have been—we heard that the elder brother, Mr Carswell Middleton, this one that’s just been murdered, was missing, believed to be killed.
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