The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Yes, and then I had what I thought was an idea, and I sort of wailed, ‘Why don’t you swim for it, buddy?’”

  “And the bloke seemed to have a sort of fit, and then he pulled himself together and yelled, ‘Where are you? Mousehold? Why the devil don’t you get me out of here? You know I can’t swim!’ Well, we weren’t saying any more, and after a bit he must have slipped into the woods, and we swam back across the water, and kept watch, when we’d found our clothes and shoved them on again…”

  “My shirt stuck to me like glue. It’s beastly trying to shove clothes on in the dark and in a hurry, when you’re dripping wet…”

  “And then we went back to the boats, and I’ll swear—in fact, we both can—that nobody crossed from the island until it was dawn. We thought we’d better clear off as soon as the sky got light, so we shoved off and got the boats back to the staithe and down to the river, and—and the rest was exactly like we told the inspector.”

  Mrs. Bradley checked this ingenuous narrative by all the tests for truthfulness and accuracy, which she knew, but it stood all trials and withstood all temptations.

  “I can’t see why you didn’t tell the inspector. What you did was most creditable,” she said, favouring the boys with her unnerving grin. “Do you mind if I tell him?”

  “He’ll be pretty sore we didn’t tell him ourselves,” suggested Ian.

  “No, I don’t think so. Now what about that yell you heard? A man’s voice or a woman’s?”

  The boys looked at one another and shook their heads. The inspector later asked the same question, but the boys were uncertain, and refused to commit themselves.

  “We’ve been over the rowing boat, ma’am, for fingerprints. Nothing, beyond those of the boys,” said the inspector. “We took theirs, of course, for reference. Whoever is running this racket isn’t giving much away. If it is your Mr. Bleriot, he isn’t giving us another chance to check up on those playing cards he handled during those tests you gave him at your house.”

  “No. He knew the dodge, of course. But I had to employ it. It seemed absolutely necessary to get his fingerprints, thinking as I did about him.”

  “Quite so, ma’am. Strange how you rumbled he was a wrong ’un.”

  “Not strange at all, Inspector. And, of course, he may not have been a wrong ’un, but merely up to some game. And when you talk of running a racket, what am I to understand you to mean?”

  “Mean, ma’am? I don’t know that I meant anything except the murders.”

  “Well, racket, in the accepted sense of the business use of the word, is what it must all amount to.”

  “But I thought—I was reckoning on a homicidal maniac, ma’am.”

  “But, surely, Inspector, a homicidal maniac is not likely to have accomplices? He is that strange creature, an individualist, concentrating, with great ferocity, some intelligence, and single-mindedly, upon the murders which alone appear to give satisfaction to his ego and comfort to his soul.”

  “Would you say a homicidal maniac has a soul, ma’am?”

  “Have you a soul, Inspector?”

  “It is open to doubt, I suppose, ma’am.”

  “Then you are entitled to the benefit of that doubt. But, referring back for a moment, and speaking of the probability that these murders are not the work of a homicidal maniac but are part of a pre-arranged plan, have you not noticed that they have made a triangle cutting off the Ant and the Thurne? That seems to me of some importance, although, of course, it may be fortuitous.”

  “My word! You’ve got something there, ma’am!”

  “Just suppose, for the sake of argument, that it was in the interests of the murderers to keep a channel free of holidaymakers, at any rate at night. Then the places in which the bodies have been found would carry real significance, and might give us something to work on.”

  “Sure would,” agreed the inspector warmly.

  “It is possible that access to the sea may also be essential to their enterprise. There will be another murder, Inspector. I feel it in my bones.”

  (The point that, if the anonymous threats were carried out, the fourth body might be her own, she forbore to mention.)

  The inspector scratched his head, looked worried, and answered:

  “It’s perfectly true about people clearing away at night from the places where the bodies have been found, ma’am. People want to see the spot where the body was found, but that’s by day. They don’t want their cruisers out in those places at night. One more body, as you say, would just about finish matters off, in the way of clearing a channel. But what’s the idea of it, ma’am? What sense does it make? This isn’t a smuggling district. They couldn’t bring enough in to warrant the risk they’re running. These murders are hanging matters. It isn’t just a matter of cheating the revenue, although that’s bad enough, as we know. Besides…”

  “Besides, the waterway will not remain clear for long. You are right, Inspector, and that is why I may be utterly wrong. In any case, we ought to be prepared to act quickly.”

  “I can police the Ant and the Thurne, ma’am, but not without the criminals spotting what I’m doing. And how to get our hooks on them if once they suspect we’ve got the right end of the stick, I confess I don’t altogether see.”

  “Neither do I, at present,” Mrs. Bradley agreed. “By the way, was a worsted viper found on the third body?”

  “It was, ma’am. A dirty murder, if ever there was one. You saw the body, ma’am. What did you make of it yourself? Beyond the fact, I mean, that she had been drowned.”

  “I’ll tell you what I make of the yell the boys heard when they thought the murder was being committed.”

  “Quite so, ma’am. The medical evidence showed that she must have been drowned some hours before they got her to the island. It couldn’t have been her that yelled out.”

  “No. The yell was deliberately given to attract the boys’ attention to the spot. I’ve no doubt the police in London will find that this third woman again has come from their area.”

  “She seemed the type, ma’am, as far as one can tell. But.…” He shook his head, as one contemplating irritating but insoluble mysteries. “Are you still bent on keeping the vipers out of the Press, ma’am?”

  “Emphatically,” Mrs. Bradley answered. “I only hope those houseboat people won’t talk.”

  “They seem decent people, ma’am, and I warned them proper that if anything came out, it would only be them we could thank. They saw the point all right, and only the gentlemen saw the body, anyway.”

  “And Mr. Whitstable sketched it,” said Mrs. Bradley. “By the way, is the New Cut navigable?”

  “Yes, I think so, ma’am. At least, you used to be able to get nearly as far as Waxham, almost on the coast.”

  “And what about the Hundred Stream? I see a lane comes down to that from the coast road without touching the village of Horsey.”

  “Well, whether or not the Hundred Stream itself is navigable, you could still avoid the village, ma’am, by keeping to that same lane you mean and rounding the bend at Bramble Hill. See here, ma’am.” He pointed with a pencil to the map. “The lane runs along the course of the Hundred Stream and meets the road again to drop into West Somerton. There’s a staithe there gets you into Martham Broad, although the Broad’s choked up with weed. But no doubt these gentlemen would have a channel if they really wanted one. What do you suspect, ma’am? Can’t you give us something to work on?”

  “The question still in my mind,” said Mrs. Bradley, “is what part does Amos Bleriot play in the affair? I still cannot decide, so far, whether he is an innocent or a guilty party. The presence of the vipers—a serpent is Satan’s sign—together with the drawing which Bleriot made in my consulting room and the sketch picked up in that questionable club with which the first two women, Sitter and Duke, appear to have had some connection, strongly indicate a Satanist society, as I think I suggested before.

  “Now, Bleriot may know these people. He may be one o
f their number, or, of course, he may have given up their silly practices and is now willing to do them some harm. We must not lose sight of the fact that he may be playing our game.

  “It is true that in my consulting rooms he gave indication of homicidal tendencies but, all the same, it may well be that he wants to put us on the track of these people without their knowledge, and, knowing that my interpretation of his mind would compel me to warn the authorities against him, he chose this disappearing trick in order to cause the police to track him down, knowing that his tracks would inevitably cross those of the gang, of which, no doubt, he still pretends to be a member. Of course, this is all surmise, and, really, if you had seen him in my consulting room giving his very bad but, all the same, unmistakable impression of a monkey at the Zoo, you would have been as suspicious of him as I was. It was altogether too much of a caricature to carry conviction, I’m afraid, and I think there must have been method in such madness. After all, why should he want to pull my leg?”

  She stretched out a desiccated limb and studied it thoughtfully.

  “You mean,” said the superintendent, when Mr. Os had gone, “that this Amos Bleriot want to tip us the wink about something, ma’am? Then why not come out in the open, and tell us what he know?”

  “He may not dare to do that. And I’ll tell you another thing, Superintendent, which I have not mentioned, so far, to Mr. Os for fear of spoiling his pleasure in the murders. This third body, like the first, would have seemed to me like a suicide except for the fact that it was carried to the boys’ little island in that extraordinary way, and the viper planted on it.”

  “You think that about the first body, ma’am, I remember, and I have a talk with Doctor Callahan about it. That agree, so far, but, as you say yourself, dumping the body on the island, and the little snake, and that, do seem to point to murder. That wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of having a joke, ma’am, would it?”

  “I don’t know, Superintendent. I have volumes of case-notes upon behaviour, which you would scarcely credit, even in your profession and with your knowledge of human nature. People whose minds have become diseased are apt to do very odd things, and it’s no use denying the fact. But Inspector Os has his theories, and it’s not my business to interfere with them, particularly as mine are fantastic. Have you ever heard of ‘hex-murders,’ Superintendent?”

  “That would be an American idea, ma’am, I take it?”

  “Yes. American black magic. It is perfectly easy, if you go the right way about it, to commit murder by persuading a person to commit suicide, you know. There are cases.…”

  She proceeded to recount one or two of them. The superintendent, undeniably interested, listened; but, at the end, shook his head.

  “That couldn’t happen in Norfolk, ma’am. We’re all bred and born wholly more sensible than that.”

  “Except Inspector Os,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning.

  “That Os, that do some good work last year, on some pretty big burglaries we have. That catch the Chief Constable’s eye. Very smart, that is,” said the superintendent loyally.

  “By the way,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I neglected to ask Mr. Os whether Amos Bleriot’s fingerprints were found on that deck-chair we had from the people on Calpurnia. I imagine that they were not. In any case, I think, perhaps, that we should return the chair. As I was responsible for having it brought here, perhaps—?”

  “Very good, ma’am. He was saying it ought to go back. No, there weren’t any prints that we wanted, so he say.”

  • CHAPTER 13 •

  “What fun!” said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice.

  —From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

  It was August Bank Holiday. Mrs. Bradley had come and gone, leaving the glad tidings that the three girls were free from police surveillance and need no longer report their movements to the inspector. Already the lower reaches of the Thurne, on which lay the Dithyramb, were crowded with pleasure craft, and the air was full of the whirring, not of beetles’ wings, but of gramophone records. Ginger-beer corks were beginning to pop and orange peel floated in little patches of iridescent oil on the placid and apparently uncaring water.

  “Lor!” said Kitty. “Are we going to spend all day here?”

  There was no reply from her confederates. Laura, looking bored, was reclining on the cabin top in a two-piece bathing suit, which, whilst aesthetically passable, for she had a splendid body and a good skin, was “apt to render the embonpoint,” as Kitty euphemistically expressed it.

  “I do wish you’d put some slacks or shorts on or something,” said Alice. “You’re attracting attention.”

  “Not in this noodist colony, I ain’t, duck,” retorted Laura; but she spoke dispiritedly.

  “Personally,” went on Alice, leaning over the side and methodically fishing up orange peel in a small net, “I’m so thankful that Mrs. Bradley has persuaded the inspector that we’re not criminals, that I don’t care what we do. It will be nice to laze about and explore, and see some old churches and things, and go where we like without the police having to know.”

  “Mrs. Croc. is an old duck,” said Laura, “getting the inspector off our necks. What are you going to do with that beastly peel?” she added, aware, for the first time, of Alice’s salvage operations.

  “Put it all in a paper bag and bury it when we go ashore,” replied the scavenger, proceeding to put the first phase of this exemplary behaviour into practice.

  “Go ashore?” said Laura thoughtfully. “And not such a bad idea, at that. If we’ve got to endure a Bank Holiday, let us endure it nobly. Who votes for a day at Yarmouth?”

  “Too much fag to get there,” objected Kitty.

  “You’d have to dress,” said Alice.

  “Not until we get within sight of the town, I shouldn’t.”

  “Anyhow, you’ll have to put something more on if you’re going to sit in that cockpit. You know how breezy it is. You’ll only go and catch cold.”

  “Meaning you don’t want to go,” said Laura, retaining her sprawling attitude and poking in a box of chocolates. “All right. I’ll get dressed and go by myself. The main road from Acle runs straight into Yarmouth. It’s only about eight or nine miles. I can do it in a couple of hours, unless I can hitch-hike a lift.”

  “Everybody’s car will be bung-full on a Bank Holiday,” said Kitty. “I haven’t forgotten how we tried to hitch-hike home the last time, when we lost our return tickets, and you said we’d be sure to get a lift.”

  “That wasn’t my fault, duck. The tickets were in your keeping. I didn’t ask you to haul ’em out with your handkerchief and cast ’em to the winds, did I?”

  “But it was your fault I had to get my handkerchief out at all, just then, right on the front. It was you that would put all that pepper on those horrible whelks.”

  “Only way to eat ’em, duck. Ever had whelks, young Alice?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” said Kitty. “Are you really going to Yarmouth?”

  “Yep,” said Laura, getting up. “Here and now.” The others looked at one another as she disappeared into the cabin.

  “If we went all the way by water,” said Alice, “it would take a good time, wouldn’t it?”

  “And we’d have to leave pretty early to make sure of our moorings before dark,” contributed Kitty. “Yes, we’d better go with her. There’s no knowing what she’ll get up to if we let her go off on her own.”

  “Especially as she’s a bit fed up at having Mrs. Bradley warn us to keep out of the murders. For my part, I’m only too thankful to be told to get out of the way, but Laura is frightfully disappointed.”

  “Come on, then. Let’s tell her before she gets changed, or else she’ll be annoyed about that.”

  They bellowed the news to Laura through the cabin window, but stipulated that the journey was to be made by water, as they were not going to walk eight or nine miles out and the same distance back in the evening. If they were going to run the c
ruiser down to Acle they might as well run her all the way, they added.

  “Slackers,” said Laura, appearing with her magnificent posterior draped, this time, in a pair of linen shorts. “All right, then. But I shan’t waste time on the way.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Kitty, eyeing the crowded river. The Thurne, past Thurne Mouth, took them on to the Bure, and on that river their progress, although not rapid, was reasonably continuous. At just after one o’clock Laura moored the cruiser along the East Side quay, and the party went ashore for the day.

  Fish, chips, and beer formed the staple food at lunch, and by four in the afternoon Laura announced that she had “had enough of the seaside,” and would have another swim and her tea, and then make a move towards the cruiser. The others agreed, and the first part of this programme was carried out. However, all the teashops were crowded, so, after three-quarters of an hour passed fruitlessly in the quest of an establishment which offered “even a moderate chance of a table,” as Kitty put it, they decided to cruise back to Acle and try to get tea there.

  “If not tea,” said Laura, “we might be able to get beer and a snack at one of the riverside inns.”

  This suggestion was not received well by Kitty, who protested that she was “simply dying for a nice cup of tea,” but the protest, although sympathetically received by Alice, made no impression on Laura, who led the way sternly back to the cruiser and, with some difficulty, for the quay-side was crowded with moored craft, put off northwards for the bend of the river at Marsh Farm.

  “Farm?” said Kitty, pricking up her ears at the word. “No good trying one right on the river. I expect they’ve been badgered all day. But what about mooring somewhere or other, and taking a walk inland a bit, Dog? I’d willingly walk a mile for a nice cup of tea.”

  “You and you tea!” said Laura.

  “I think you’ll be wasting your strength,” observed Alice; “but just as you like. We’ve got plenty of time. Have a look at the map, and see what’s what.”