“Will you take the curse from the house?”
“You know that I will. Come now, the time passes. Speak, or later you will be unable to speak or think.”
The woman swallowed, lay down, hunched up her knees, and began to moan.
“Come,” said Mrs. Bradley, implacably.
“You won’t tell them I told you?”
“I shall tell them nothing.” She did not add that she did not know whom to tell.
“Well,” said Martha Huzy, unwillingly, “you could go to the Three Hogs Tavern in Norwich. I say I’ll send them someone, and that might as well be you. They won’t know any different I wholly suppose.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You didn’t kill Elias Bennett, I presume?”
“I did not, and don’t know who did. Harmless, that was, like a child, the poor old man.”
“You were going to kill him, though, weren’t you? But never mind that now. By the time the spell is ready to work, I shall know whether you have deceived me.”
“You want to wait for Mousehold,” said Martha Huzy. Mrs. Bradley thanked her again, with a smile that made her shrink back. As she made her way to the waterside she saw the man on whom she had flashed her torch the night before.
A plain-clothes policeman was tagging along behind him.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Bradley aloud. She turned about and returned to Martha Huzy, muttering as she did so.
“If I can catch him once upon the hip,
“I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.”
It was a statement extraordinarily out of keeping with her usual philosophy of life.
Martha’s mother once again opened the door.
“What you want bothering again for?” she demanded. Mrs. Bradley smiled.
“Who taught Martha to make dolls?” she asked.
“Better you ask her that yourself,” replied the crone, retreating into the dingy passage and yelling up the stairs to her daughter.
Mrs. Bradley went upstairs and walked into Martha’s room. Her victim was still in bed, but had raised herself to a sitting position at the sound of the voices below. She turned a haggard, haunted gaze upon her visitor.
“What you want this time?” she enquired with some resentment. “Isn’t that old spell you do enough?”
Mrs. Bradley walked to the window, stood with her back to the uncleaned panes, and said, “Where did you learn to make dolls?”
“I don’t learn. That’s easy. Always been clever with my fingers,” said Martha Huzy, but with no lessening of her anxious expression.
“Come, now,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I don’t want to put the word into your mouth, but if you don’t tell me I shall tell him that I’m bound for the Three Hogs Tavern, and then where will you be?”
The terrified woman shrank back.
“You can’t make me tell you,” she said. “You can’t make me tell you. I don’t learn from nobody how to make them. I know from a little tiny girl.”
“From how little tiny a girl, I wonder?” said Mrs. Bradley. She went swiftly over to the wardrobe and drew out the battered doll, which had been baptised according to the unholy rites of witchcraft with the name of Elias Bennett. “Who made this thing? Tell me.”
“I make it myself,” said Martha obstinately. “I can’t help what you believe. I make it myself.”
“Aha!” said Mrs. Bradley. She put the doll back on the shelf. “Have you a dog?” she enquired.
“Aye,” said the woman, surprised at the sudden change of subject. But it was not, after all a change of subject, for Mrs. Bradley continued, “And what do you give your poor dog?”
The woman in the bed gave a moan, and stretched out her head as though she felt some almost intolerable pain at the back of her neck.
“All right,” said Mrs. Bradley. “This is all I wanted to know.”
• CHAPTER 17 •
“I think I should understand that better,” Alice said, very politely, “if I had it written down; but I can’t quite follow it as you say it.”
“That’s nothing to what I could say if I chose,” the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone.
—From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
In spite of Jonathan’s protests and Deborah’s pleading, Mrs. Bradley went alone into Norwich, and had some difficulty in locating the Three Hogs Tavern. It was a high, narrow-fronted house with a small bow-window and two entrances from the street. One entrance was to the private, the other to the public bar. Inside the private bar a direction indicated a short passage through a low archway to what was called the Ladies’ Saloon.
It was not cattle-market day, so that, except for three men drinking beer and talking about hay, there was nobody in the place except the barman.
Having no instructions, Mrs. Bradley went into the public bar and called for half a pint of draught ale. She stood at the counter drinking it slowly, and before she had finished more than a third of it a man came in with a ferret in his pocket. He called for a pint of draught ale and, taking the ferret out, began to play with it along the counter, gradually allowing it to approach Mrs. Bradley’s glass.
“Hey, Mousehold, mind Ticky!” said the barman.
“I don’t object in the least to Ticky,” said Mrs. Bradley, allowing the ferret to sniff her fingers. “It isn’t as though he’s a snake.”
The barman went off past a partition to serve in the private bar, and when he had gone, the owner of the ferret put it in his pocket, jerked his head towards the door, and said to Mrs. Bradley, “Come on.”
She followed him into the street, and he led the way to the cathedral. They passed through an arched gateway into the cathedral-close, and here the man walked even more slowly than he had done along the street and across Tombland.
“You’re from Huzy, I suppose?” said he.
“From Martha Huzy. The police have Huzy, as you ought to know,” Mrs. Bradley replied.
“Could you deposit a viper if we asked you?”
“Yes, if I knew where, and at what time to do it.”
“I don’t know anything, mind,” the man went on, “except they told me to tell you to put it on what you find in the woods at the east end of Horsey Mere.”
“The east end?” said Mrs. Bradley. “Right.”
They passed into the great cathedral and out, by way of the south aisle, into the cloisters.
“But what is it all about?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Search me,” the man replied, with apparent frankness. “I reckon they’re crazy, but I get five bob a time for passing on the messages they want, and that’s all it matters to me.”
“You’re not a native of these parts?”
“Who? Me? Not much I’m not. What do you take me for?”
“A London man.” She felt it would be impolitic to continue asking him questions, and paused for a moment at the south-west angle of the cloisters to obtain a view of the cathedral tower and spire. “What about the viper?” she added, after a moment. The man put his hand in his pocket and drew out one of the evil little toys. Mrs. Bradley put it carefully away, and the ferret, which had been putting out its head from the man’s pocket and had shown interest in its surroundings, selected this particular moment to run down the man’s trouser-leg and begin to explore the cloisters.
The man went after it. He picked it up, put it in his pocket and, continuing his progress, was gone without another word to Mrs. Bradley.
She went back into the nave of the cathedral, but it was scarcely possible to hurry sufficiently in such a place as to seem to be chasing after him, so she stayed to examine the massive pillars and to take the Processional Path round the back of the altar.
This brought her into the most easterly part of the cathedral, and this fact, in conjunction with two otherwise unrelated points seemed to make a sound-track in her brain.
“East end; east end; east end,” she thought. The next body was to be at the east end of Horsey Mere. The dead prostitutes had co
me from the East End. She was in the east end of Norwich Cathedral. “Nonsense,” she said to herself. “There’s nothing in it. Just a rather ridiculous association of ideas.”
She went into the close again and out into Tombland. From there she went to the hotel at which, nominally, she was staying, and telephoned Inspector Os.
“Yes, we picked him up all right, ma’am. One of the chaps at the Three Hogs was a constable. He trailed you, and we got him as he came out into Tombland from the cathedral-close. I’m going to charge him with being the chap on the island with those two lads that time. Our fellow says the other man addressed him as Mousehold. I suppose you can confirm that? Of course, he may not be the same fellow, but it’s funny. He swears he knows nothing about the whole business, and just undertook to deliver messages, that’s all. Would you like to come along in about an hour, ma’am? We’re giving him that time to cool off.”
Mrs. Bradley interviewed George, her chauffeur. He was to get in touch with Jonathan and request him to take the boat back to Stalham and wait for her there. George was to have the car ready immediately after lunch.
When she got to the police station, Mousehold had not been brought into the inspector’s office, but, besides the inspector himself and a constable, there was present Mrs. Bradley’s alert young friend, Detective Inspector Pirberry from Scotland Yard.
“Nothing at all at our end,” he said when he had greeted Mrs. Bradley. “We’ve traced the three women to Westminster. There seems no doubt that each in turn was taken on board a small, seagoing boat—probably a converted yawl or ketch—at the bottom of the steps leading down to the water, and was brought to Yarmouth and through it, and then murdered. It’s not a kidnapping case. The women appear to have joined these men of their own free will. It’s odd, though. These sort of women do get themselves murdered, of course. Cases come up fairly frequently. But the embellishments are most unusual. I hear that you think the bodies have been used as decoy ducks, to get certain waterways clear, mam? It’s an interesting theory, but, as I see it, it springs a leak over the fact that, even if the holiday-makers are apt to clear away at night from the places where the bodies have been found, the police are equally apt to haunt such localities pretty closely.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Bradley agreed, “but only for a comparatively short time. And then, the police can’t be everywhere. Holiday-makers can—by sheer weight of numbers.”
“At any rate,” said Os, “Mrs. Bradley’s theory is the only one that makes sense out of the facts, so far. But until we know what’s going on, and why it’s necessary for these people to have holiday-makers cleared off the rivers, we can’t get very much further.”
“Well, let’s have this fellow in and see what he’s got to say now,” suggested Pirberry. But Mousehold remained firm that he had told everything he could, and looked extremely alarmed when the inspector informed him that he would be charged with the murder of the woman Rilitz, whose body had been found on the island near Marsham Broad through the agency of the two boys.
Even this news did not loosen his tongue. He denied that he was the Mousehold referred to, declared that in his case the nickname came from the fact that he kept a ferret, and declared that he could produce an alibi for the night in question. He was escorted back to the cells, still protesting his innocence.
“If his alibi is all right, I don’t know whether we can hold him,” Inspector Os observed. “What’s in a name, after all? Mousehold is a common enough word, as I’ve said to Mrs. Bradley before. It might be the nickname of a hundred men in the county, for all I know.”
“What about Huzy?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.
“Remanded for a week. That’s all right, because some of the stuff he had on him had certainly been pilfered. But he also swears he knows nothing about the murder of the old man. Says his sister had five bob for every viper she made, and he had the job of delivering them at the farm, and got five bob for his trouble. The worst of it is, I’ve a hunch, myself, that both these fellows are speaking the truth when they say they don’t know any more. If it is the truth, we’re sunk.”
“Doesn’t Huzy know where that quick-change gentleman went when he left the farm?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.
“No. Says he always went to the farm to deliver the vipers, and had delivered half a dozen before those girls caught him.”
“And yet,” said Mrs. Bradley, “Martha Huzy knows something more than that, or why did the viper, in my hands, act as a password into the Huzy’s house?”
“I could arrest Martha and charge her and her brother with being accessories after the fact,” said the inspector. “It’s unlikely that the old man was left for more than twenty-four hours in the middle of an open field without being spotted by somebody. The inference is that the body was moved after the murder, and replaced later.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Pirberry. “It’s quite possible that nobody went that way. Where did the footpath lead to?”
“One way, on to the road to Stalham; the other way, back on to Happisburgh Common. I can’t see it being deserted for twenty-four hours at this time of year, with all these people on holiday. It’s been the presence of all these holiday-makers, all the time, which has made the job so hard. We’ve tried to check up on boats, but at this time of year there are hundreds of craft in commission, and so many of them are made to pattern, and standardised, and so on, that when you’ve got a description of one you’ve got a description of a dozen or more, all the same length, tonnage, and sleeping capacity, and you don’t know where you are. I’ve got lists upon lists from the owners, and I’ve got lists of hirers, but, so far, it’s like trying to pick out one special leaf on a tree. I’ve checked and counterchecked, but the boat may not be listed for hire, even then, and it may not belong to a private yacht club, either. There doesn’t seem anywhere to begin.”
“I know,” said Pirberry, sympathetically. “It’s the very devil. And our end doesn’t help much. I’ve got descriptions of the fellows who may have decoyed these women, but the descriptions might apply to a million men. There’s nothing in them to give a lead. The same with the boat. The Port of London Authority have done all they can, but they can’t check up on every little motorboat that drops down-river and works out past Southend and up this coast.”
“It’s what Mrs. Bradley says,” said the Norwich inspector. “There’s something behind all this, and until we know what it is we shan’t get a line on anything. The only thing to do is to police the rivers as far as we possibly can, and stop up the possible bolt-holes on the coast, and wait for something to break. But just think what that means! There are dozens of miles of coast, and any number of little harbours, especially to the north and down in Essex. A small boat could nip in and out again, and us not a ha’porth the wiser.”
“You’ve got some idea of smuggling, I suppose?” said Pirberry. “Dope? Stolen diamonds? Must be something out of the ordinary to lead to four murders.”
“The idea seems the only feasible one at present, but there’s very little to go on. In fact, if Mrs. Bradley hadn’t made this suggestion of them trying to clear a bit of water, I don’t know that I’d have thought of it, even then. As it is, it may still turn out to be a killer, and that means a homicidal maniac, and you know what a dance those people can lead the police.”
“Yes, you can’t hit on one of the ordinary motives, and the murderer may seem as sane as anyone else, best part of the time.”
“Had you considered the possibility,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that something may be smuggled out of the country, instead of being smuggled in?”
“Could be,” Pirberry answered. “Stolen property again, in that case. But we’ve no record of any particularly sensational robbery up to the present, and the fact that they’ve committed these murders would indicate that the other deed, whatever it is, is done. People won’t stay off rivers and Broads for ever. That’s assuming your idea is correct, and the point of the murders has been to clear the waterways.”
“If
it isn’t already done, it will have to be done pretty soon. I am in agreement with you so far,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“But why use the rivers, when the road would be so much quicker?” observed the inspector.
“For one of two reasons,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Either because they want to be in a position to run the boat straight out to sea without having to risk being seen with their car at one of the small harbours, or, as I’m more inclined to think, because the stolen property is more easily carried by boat than in a car.”
“But—I mean, they’re not using a barge, or something of that sort, are they?” asked Pirberry, grinning. “I didn’t know—”
“A wherry,” said the inspector, looking at Mrs. Bradley. “A wherry is what we use on these waters, Mr. Pirberry, when there’s a load to be shifted. But I can’t imagine anything—”
“Oh, I can,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I can imagine plenty of things.”
“I should like to see a wherry-load of diamonds,” said Os, with a grin.
“It won’t be diamonds, and it won’t be dope,” said Mrs. Bradley, eyeing them solemnly. “What’s the size of a wherry, Inspector?”
“Well, the ones used by holiday-makers, ma’am, can take ten passengers or anything from twenty to sixty tons of cargo. Sometimes the trading wherries are towed by tugs. They are about fifty-six feet long, with a beam of eleven feet, and have a very shallow draught, so that they can go anywhere on these rivers.”
“Well, Inspector, I suggest you pay special attention to your list of wherries, wherry-owners, recent hirers or purchasers, and keep them all, the boats and the men, under constant but unobtrusive observation. And then, we shall see.”
“Got an idea, Mrs. Bradley?” enquired Detective Inspector Pirberry, respectfully.
“A wild one,” Mrs. Bradley admitted, “and it depends, of course, upon the theory that the stolen property must be taken by water.”
“That means the weight,” said Pirberry. “Yes, I can see what you’re after there. But, unless they’re going to lift out a whole safe rather than try to crack it—and even that could be carried on a lorry—oh, but then, your point about transferring it to a boat at the coast. Still, why should they try to take it out of the country? I can’t see the idea in that.”
The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley) Page 16
