The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  She went back for a towel, stepped carefully into the dinghy and, with the towel round her shoulders for warmth, rowed to the shore by the woods. Here she thought she had an explanation of the mysterious sounds of the night, for, drawn up in a kind of little creek, which ran muddily into the wood and formed the estuary of a tiny woodland stream, was a sailing-dinghy. Its mast was down, however, and its sail presumably in the sail locker. Short oars lay in the bottom of the boat, and, to her great surprise, both the blades of the oars and the rowlocks of the dinghy were muffled with pieces of dark blue velvet. Moreover, the name of the dinghy had been painted out, a touch in itself intriguing.

  A desire to elucidate this mystery almost overcame commonsense, but Laura realised that a bathing costume was not the garment in which to explore woods in the early morning. Shivering with cold, she rowed round to the opposite side of the Broad, where the cruiser’s hull would screen her from view (although why she wished to be hidden from the unknown adventurer she could not have told). Here, with thin mud squelching between her toes, she waded into the water, swam vigorously until she was warm, lay on her back and floated, then took a long, lazy swim until she was tired.

  The marshes were to her left when at last she climbed out upon the bank, which here was a strip of grass near the water’s edge. She dried her arms and legs, wiped moisture from her hair (which no swimming cap ever kept dry), dried her face, soaked off the drips from her costume, and then rowed back to the cruiser. She came a little out of her course, however, to look again for the dinghy. It was still there.

  Kitty was frying bacon. The pleasant smell came in to the saloon from the galley as Laura dressed. Alice, at the table in the saloon, was cutting bread and setting out plates and cups.

  “What’s it like in?” she asked.

  “Cold,” said Laura, “but not bad. I say, did you hear somebody rowing past us at about eleven last night?”

  “No. I expect I was asleep.”

  “Well, it’s rather weird.” She explained, pulling on, as she did so, slacks and a sweater over her vest and knickers.

  “Muffled oars?” repeated Alice, her thoughts going back to adventure stories she had read in her youth. “Smugglers, do you think?”

  “Hardly. Nothing here to smuggle. At least, I shouldn’t think so, although I suppose you can smuggle almost anywhere, come to that.”

  “What about poachers?”

  “Much more likely. But poachers would be gone again by now, I should have thought. Besides, would they muffle their oars in velvet?”

  It was agreed that it was an interesting point, and that they must put it to Kitty. That heroine appearing pan in hand at the moment, she was regaled with the story whilst she pushed rashers off on to plates. She approved of the narration to the extent of proposing that all three should take the dinghy ashore after breakfast and follow the poachers through the woods.

  “Ass!” said Laura. “If the woods are preserved we shall get into just as much trouble as the poachers—or nearly as much.”

  “But you said just now you were going to follow the trail yourself, only you’d got your bathing things on and no shoes, and it was so cold,” Kitty pointed out.

  “Yes, I know. But I wasn’t thinking of poachers then. That idea came later.”

  “And from me,” said Alice, who, although mild and self-effacing, did not intend to be left completely out of the picture.

  “You know what I think, Dog?” said Alice.

  “No. What?”

  “I think it’s just somebody on holiday having a rag. Take it or leave it, but it’s much the most likely idea.”

  “I don’t know,” said Alice. “Which side is the staithe from here?”

  “That way,” said Laura, jerking her head towards the port window of the saloon. “We’ve swung a bit. You’re thinking of that notice. So am I. But, so far as I could see, the woods where that dinghy is lying are open to anybody. There was no notice boards or anything. Not even a fence.”

  “Then, after breakfast, I still vote we go and see the muffled oars,” said Kitty. “It will be something to do. It gets a bit same-like on this boat.”

  “Well, we could land and have a look round,” agreed Laura, “but I’m not going to get jugged for upsetting somebody’s private shooting. Another thing: before we do anything else this morning I’m going to test the depth where we are for diving.”

  She took a homemade lead line out of the drawer beneath her berth, and went on deck to test the depth of the water.

  “All right, if you dive fairly shallow,” she said to Alice. “The water’s deep enough, but there’s a good bit of weed just here. I’m not going in again until just before lunch. Do you want to go in earlier? By the way, that dinghy isn’t there now.”

  “That’s good. I didn’t want to seem snoopy. All right, let’s wash up and go ashore.”

  So at just after eight o’clock, when the mist was clearing and the sun had begun to shine brightly, the three stepped ashore from the cruiser. Laura had been able to bring it to a mooring by the wood, not far from where she had seen the dinghy with muffled oars. True enough, there seemed to be no notice boards warning trespassers, and the three girls began to walk in single file along the edge of the little stream.

  There was no path, but the margin of the stream in itself seemed to offer a track. Laura, in the lead, kept her eyes on the ground for footprints, but there were none. Kitty, in the rear, kept glancing behind her for keepers, but there were none of those, either. Alice, in the middle, told both of them not to be silly. To Laura she said that a person who had taken the trouble to muffle his oars and rowlocks so that he could not be heard would be hardly likely to leave a trail which could easily be followed; to Kitty she pointed out that there would not be keepers if there were no notice boards.

  To all this logic her friends made no pertinent reply. The little stream wound on until it reached open country. The first indication that it had brought them round to the marshes was given, although involuntarily, by Laura, who suddenly put her foot into a thick morass and withdrew it with a hasty exclamation and an unpleasant squelching sound.

  “Mosquitoes!” cried Kitty, turning and taking to flight. The others also turned in their tracks, but followed more leisurely.

  “What do we do now?” Alice enquired, when they came to the edge of the wood.

  “Search for tracks,” replied the leader of the party. “We’ve nothing to do until you two can bathe, and that can’t be for at least another half-hour, considering the breakfast you ate. We might as well loaf about here as loaf on board, particularly as old K. seems bored with the cruiser already. And, by the way, weren’t you a Girl Guide, or something, in your youth?”

  “Yes, I was. I still am, come to that.”

  “Well, can’t you cast about and find a few footprints or something?”

  “Yes, I daresay I could, but is there any point? After all, it’s no business of ours what people do.”

  “True for you. All right, then. Let’s get back on board and go for a cruise instead. After all, you can bathe somewhere else. Come on, K.,” she called to the third member of the party, who was gazing at the leafy trees and seemed to be lost in meditation. “All aboard. We’re off.”

  “Oh, why, Dog?” queried Kitty, turning round. “Why don’t we go for a nice little walk through the woods? You’ve got a pocket compass, haven’t you? We can steer by that, and avoid those beastly marshes. I want to stretch my legs.”

  “You can do that in the water when you swim.”

  “I thought we were going to swim here. It’s quiet and nice and private. My swimming’s not so hot that I want to show it off in front of a lot of people. Let’s have a walk and then a swim, and then move off and find somewhere nice for lunch.”

  “Well, in that case, we may as well see what the bloke was up to last night with his muffled oars.”

  There were several paths through the woods. The first led straight to the stream, and so they retraced thei
r steps. The second petered out among thick undergrowth. The third led straight to a deep ditch choked with dead leaves into which they sank nearly to their knees.

  Laura came out from the leaf-mould, retired some twenty yards and essayed a running jump, but the ground on the opposite side of the ditch was boggy and in she went, ruining her slacks, and experiencing some difficulty in getting back to the others, who were considerably amused by her plight and at her appearance.

  “You’ll have to come back and change, and spread out those trousers to dry. When the mud is hard we’ll be able to brush it off,” said Kitty consolingly. So, escorting Laura, who was rather disconsolate and very damp and uncomfortable, they filed back through the trees and regained the cruiser.

  It was when she was dry, clean, and changed that Laura suddenly said,

  “Well, there must be a way through those woods, or where did that blighter get to? I’m going to get to know if I choke in mud. Go on, young Alice. Do your stuff. Nose about and pick up his footprints or something. Come on, K. Let’s sit on the cabin-top while our Alice looks around a bit and strikes the trail.”

  Leaving Alice to pore over the damp verge for footprints, the other two sat on the cabin-roof with their feet on the narrow deck, and watched the sleuth at work. They were there for about six minutes before she waved her hand.

  “Come on,” said Kitty. They had moored the cruiser at a spot where the bank came almost level with the deck, so that it was easy to step ashore. Alice was at the spot where Laura had seen the dinghy, and when they came up with her she pointed to some almost indecipherable marks on the edge of the mud.

  “Here’s where he put his feet going away from the boat,” she said. “You can see where an otter crossed his tracks. That must have been after dark. Now, taking a compass bearing”—she took off her wrist watch and twisted the hands round, facing the hour hand towards the sun—“he made off almost due east. Come on. Follow me and look out for further tracks.”

  “Golly!” said Laura, who did not believe a word of this exposition but who was impressed by what she termed a “lavish display of eyewash by our Alice.” “We strike the trail.”

  Whether by Alice’s luck or judgement—to the last they were not sure which it was—they did strike the trail, finding guidemarks now on a patch of scraped moss near the foot of a tree, now what Laura called “a genuine Man Friday” on a patch of mud, and in time—twelve minutes, to be exact (which Kitty had been, for she had glanced at her watch the moment they had begun walking into the woods behind Alice)—they came upon a clearing. In the clearing was a very small bungalow.

  “Vulgar intrigue,” said Kitty, voicing the first thought in the minds of all three of them. “So now we know.”

  “I thought it would be something unedifying,” said Laura ungratefully to Alice.

  It was Alice who suggested that, if that were all, it was surely carrying secrecy to excess to have muffled the oars.

  “You couldn’t possibly hear anybody rowing across the Broad at this distance,” she pointed out.

  “Didn’t want us to hear him,” said Kitty, without much logic, as Laura immediately indicated.

  “Doesn’t matter to us what time of night he chooses to do his visiting,” she observed. “It isn’t any business of ours, and nobody else was about.”

  “We’re saying ‘him’ and ‘his,’ you know,” said Alice. “There’s been nothing yet to prove it wasn’t a woman.”

  “Women don’t muffle their oars and row across at night.”

  “I don’t see that you can say that. Besides, the velvet suggests a woman. So does the sleeriness, somehow.”

  “Blackleg!” said Laura, striking an indignant, feminist note.

  “I’m not a blackleg! I respect my own sex as much as you do, but some women are frightfully hole-and-corner, much more so than most men!”

  “I don’t believe it. What about men who come home late at night and take their boots off at the bottom of the stairs, and keep their dressing gown hidden under the coats in the hall, and pretend they only went downstairs to let the cat out, or because they heard burglars, or something?”

  Alice, intimidated by this formidable monologue, changed the subject and suggested that as they had put themselves to so much trouble to find out nothing, they could at least knock at the door and ask for a drink of water.

  “I’m terribly thirsty,” she said. As the others were also thirsty, this excellent and practical scheme was at once adopted, Laura doing the knocking, the others close at her shoulder. There was no reply, however, so, after the third attempt, they gave up, and walked round to the side of the bungalow. Here a small fence divided, as Laura put it, “the desert from the sown.” It continued round the back of the building, about twelve feet from the walls, but stopped as abruptly as it had begun, bounding the bungalow on two sides only, the others being both left open to the wood. The fence, however, was so dilapidated that it could be assumed it had once completely enclosed the bungalow, but that the two sides, having fallen into ruin, had been removed, probably for firewood, and the owner had not troubled to replace them.

  “Let’s try the back door,” said Laura. She rapped on it with her knuckles, but, to her surprise, it suddenly burst open, and she almost fell into the kitchen.

  “Faulty latch,” said she, critically. “Anyhow, it’s obviously an empty house, so it doesn’t much matter.”

  She was about to put one foot inside to get hold of the handle and pull the door to, when she saw the body on the floor. She turned, white-faced, to the others. “It’s—there’s somebody in there,” she said. Kitty, coming to her shoulder, peered over into the kitchen.

  The body was that of an untidy-looking woman of early middle age. Her sunken cheeks were heavily raddled with rouge, and her mouth was a sickening splash of lipstick.

  “Unsavoury sort of blighter, whoever she is,” said Laura, going in first, but closely followed by Kitty who immediately knelt beside the woman. “Get up, K. You can’t do anything for her. She’s dead, I’m afraid.”

  The woman lay on her back in a stiff, unnatural position, and it was quite evident that Laura was right. However, Alice had brought a handbag. It contained a small mirror. Laura took the mirror, held it above the slightly-open mouth, and then put her hand to the inner side of the woman’s left breast to feel her heart. The others watched her. She got up, shrugging her shoulders, but with every scrap of colour drained from her face.

  “How to get hold of anyone?” she said. Kitty, who knew her very well, put a hand on her shoulder and said “Buck up, Dog,” in comforting tones. Laura was going to reply, when Alice spoke up.

  “Back to the boat,” said Alice, making a move. “If she’s dead, the police ought to know. We must get to a telephone somewhere.”

  They pulled the door to behind them, and then hurried back through the trees.

  The cruiser was no longer moored where they had left it. It was well out in the middle of the Broad, the dinghy still trailing behind it.

  “Here, I don’t like this!” said Laura, who had recovered her colour. “Somebody’s started her up. She couldn’t have drifted. Can’t think why we didn’t hear the engine.”

  “I think I did,” confessed Kitty, “but I didn’t bother to mention it. I heard an engine going almost as soon as we came in sight of the bungalow, but I just thought it was somebody else on the Broad. I mean, you wouldn’t think of anybody moving anybody else’s boat.”

  “Somebody must have been hidden on board the first time we came back—you know—from the marshes,” said Alice. “Well, what do we do? I don’t like it. What do you have to say about it, Dog?”

  “Got a penknife in that handbag of yours?” demanded Laura, who spoke as though this were a reasonable answer to the question.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Any other lethal weapons?”

  “No, of course not. What do you mean?”

  “All right. Nothing. Let’s cast about and find a few heavy stones.
You’re a dead shot with a cricket ball. Think you could lay anybody out with a half-brick, if the need arose?”

  “Oh, but.…”

  “Don’t care about people who muffle their oars and leave dead women about, duck. And there’s no doubt we’ve been watched, I should rather think.”

  “But she may have died.…”

  “After he, she, or it, left? Well, I don’t fancy she did, and I have my reasons. Besides, what price Mrs. Crocodile Bradley and that murder at College? I may have murder on the brain as a consequence, but it’s better to be careful than croaked. Got plenty of stones, K.?” she demanded, as the third member of the party stooped about “to gather in the sheaves” as Laura put it.

  “They aren’t very easy to find. I’ve got about eight or nine. Nine,” she added, making a neat little mound.

  “Mount guard over ’em, young Alice, retaining one in the palm of the hand,” commanded Laura. “Don’t you do any throwing, K. You couldn’t hit the Woolworth Building. Feed ’em to Alice if there’s trouble. I’m going to swim out to the poor old stranded wreck and bring her alongside. Give me the penknife, in case the bloke’s still on board.”

  Alice handed it over, hypnotized as usual, by the spectacle of Laura in action, for, whilst she spoke, Laura took off shoes, socks, slacks, and jersey, and, lightly but sufficiently clad in her vest and knickers, put the penknife, open, between her teeth and waded into the water at a point the bank sloped down into oozy mud.

  “‘The woman who braved all,’” she remarked as articulately as she could. She waded in up to her waist; then she sank gently forward on the water and began to swim towards the cruiser. Alice watched the woods and Kitty the swimmer. A cry of satisfaction from Kitty then informed Alice that Laura had gained the cruiser, and had waved a hand to indicate all was well.

  • CHAPTER 5 •

  “For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.”