[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead

by Gladys Mitchell

  The programme was carried out to the satisfaction of all concerned, and Marie-Jeanne, who was a nice child, was profuse in thanks and delight. On the Wednesday morning Dame Beatrice greeted Laura with the latest news as soon as George had taken the French girl off to school.

  ‘We may or may not have saved Marie-Jeanne,’ she said, when Laura, who had been riding, came down to a late breakfast after a bath and a change of clothes, ‘but the death is announced of the senior French mistress. The murder follows the pattern of the others, and the notice on the body, affixed this time by means of an old-fashioned hatpin, reads: Cathari 1207.’

  ‘And this is the woman who took Karen Schumann’s place at the school,’ said Laura. ‘Oh, Lord!’

  (3)

  The name of the senior French mistress was Mrs Castle. Soon after the death of Karen Schumann the two young teachers who had lodged at the same house decided to change their digs. For no reason which they could explain except to one another, they disliked the thought of remaining in rooms which still seemed connected with a girl who had been murdered.

  Mrs Castle was recently widowed and had been glad to obtain Karen’s vacant post, and it was at her suggestion, because she needed help in paying off the mortgage on a new house, that the two young women should live in with her, share and share alike with regard to food, with the other household necessities and the charwoman’s pay, and that they should pay a reasonable rent for their rooms. They were glad to agree, and moved in three weeks before Whitsun, for the headmaster had not been able to find a replacement for Karen Schumann until the beginning of the summer term.

  The arrangement worked well. The two girls were each able to have a bed-sitter, there was a common dining-room and Mrs Castle had her own quarters. These consisted of a lounge on the ground floor and the smallest of the three bedrooms. Hers was a modern house, well-appointed and intelligently equipped, and the younger women were more than satisfied with their change of domicile. Christian names, Chris and Terry, (the girls), Thea, (Mrs Castle), were exchanged and used, and all went swimmingly.

  In the evenings, after an early supper which the three took turns at cooking, a good deal of school shop was discussed and there was marking and preparation to be done. Chris was the junior history teacher, Terry took R.K. and some of the lower-school French. Thus there was a tie-up with both Mrs Castle and James. The young teachers sometimes went out with their friends from the Art School staff at week-ends, and on Sundays Mrs Castle usually went over to see her parents who lived in Romsey.

  These and subsequent facts about the life lived by the three women were elicited later by the police. Meanwhile the days passed and the Whitsun holiday approached. The two girls were to spend Whit Monday with Terry’s brother and his wife, who kept a small launch down at Hamworthy. They were to go across to Brownsea Island in it and then perhaps follow the Wareham Channel up to the quay at the town and have tea there before returning to moorings. Mrs Castle was to spend the whole of the week-end, from the Saturday morning until the Tuesday afternoon, with her parents.

  As it happened, neither of these plans worked out. Mrs Castle learned that her parents were going for the week-end to her late husband’s people who lived in the Midlands. They wanted her to go with them, but she saw little point (she told the others) in spending the short week-end break in a manufacturing town, so she telephoned her mother more or less to that effect, and promised to visit her parents the week-end after their return.

  Upon this, Terry felt impelled to invite her to join the boating party, saying that there was plenty of room in the launch for another person, and that she was certain her brother would not mind. This might or might not have been true, but it was never put to the test since, over the school telephone during the school dinner hour, came a message from the brother’s wife to say that the launch was out of commission, and that the couple had changed their plans accordingly, and had arranged to spend the Whitsun week-end in Paris.

  ‘I do think they might have let me know sooner,’ grumbled Terry to the other two that evening. ‘Now everything’s gone phut. What shall we do instead?’

  ‘I suppose I’d better join my parents after all,’ said Mrs Castle. ‘I haven’t any excuse not to, have I? Oh, dear! I really don’t want to trail up to Stafford for the week-end, and my in-laws will be there. I suppose they mean well, but they’ll do nothing but talk about Stephen and the old days, and that’s an awful bore.’

  ‘Well, need you go?’ asked Terry. ‘You don’t have to tell them the boat-trip is off. Let’s all think of something quickly. Come on, Chris! Ideas?’

  ‘London?’

  ‘That would do for Monday, I suppose, although we’re going on Saturday, don’t forget.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t call that going to London!’

  ‘What do you think, Thea?’ asked Terry.

  ‘A Bank Holiday in Town?’ Mrs Castle sounded doubtful.

  ‘Not London, then. Think again, Chris,’ said Terry.

  ‘Well, we could still go to Brownsea. There are public launches from Poole quay.’

  ‘Squashed in among the proletariat?’ demanded Terry. ‘What a revolting idea!’

  ‘You’re very difficult to please. What about a picnic in the New Forest, then?’

  This was acceptable to the others, a route was agreed on and picnic viands purchased and put into the refrigerator on Friday evening ready for Monday’s outing.

  ‘What made them put off their picnic until the Monday? What happened in London on Saturday afternoon, and what did they do on Sunday?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when she received these details from Detective-Inspector Maisry.

  ‘Ah, that’s the interesting part of the story,’ he replied. ‘On Whit Saturday and Whit Monday, as you may know, the British Games are held at the White City stadium. Well, the physical education staff at the school had arranged to take a motor-coach party of boys and girls to London on the Saturday to visit the White City and see the athletics. Well, the idea of a jaunt to London seems to have made a strong appeal to the youngsters, so, instead of a single coach-load which had been envisaged when the plan was first put forward, more than a hundred boys and girls put their names on the list, and three coaches were required if all who wanted to do so could go.

  ‘Well, you probably know about these school outings. If up to twenty children go, at least one teacher must accompany them; up to forty, two teachers, and so on. For a hundred children, five of the staff were required, which, to all intents and purposes, meant six. The physical education at this particular school is in the hands of one man, a Mr Shorthorne, and one woman, a Miss Huntley, with another girl, Miss Borman, who takes something called Modern Dance. She was perfectly willing to help with the coachloads, but three more volunteers were called for, and the response came from the two young women who were housed with Mrs Castle, and a certain Mr Towsdale, a friend of the P.E. master.’

  ‘But Mrs Castle did not go?’

  ‘No, she did not go. According to the other two, she decided to spend the day in Bournemouth.’

  ‘And she did so?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. All we do know is that when the other two returned to the house at about nine o’clock on Whit Saturday night she was not there, and they don’t know at what time she came in. She had a key, of course, so they got themselves a bit of supper and turned in early. They concluded that she had gone to the evening performance at the Winter Garden or somewhere.’

  ‘But Mrs Castle did come back to the house that night?’

  ‘Yes, she was there at breakfast, but gave no indication of how she had spent the day and the evening. After breakfast she said she was going to church and, from there, out to lunch. She supplied no details, but they took it for granted that she had met friends in Bournemouth the day before, and had been invited to lunch on Sunday. They never saw her alive again.’

  ‘What happened on Whit Monday, then, if she had not come back to the house?’

  ‘The other two went for their outing.’


  ‘Without trying to find out what had happened to Mrs Castle? Surely they were concerned for her?’

  ‘They say they concluded that she had been asked to stay the night with the friend or friends who had invited her out to lunch, and if you know the sort of easy-going life these unattached professional women lead, it’s a perfectly likely story. You see, the majority of them think in terms of boyfriends and subsequent marriage, and there’s a sort of gentlemen’s agreement – ladies’ agreement, I suppose one ought to call it – that they don’t muscle in on one another, ask any awkward questions or do anything else to queer one another’s pitch. Prostitutes have the same unwritten law, of course – not that I’m making any comparisons, naturally.’

  Laura laughed. Dame Beatrice said:

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, when she didn’t show up at the house on Whit Monday night either, apparently they did feel it was a bit odd, but they did nothing about it until eight o’clock on Tuesday evening, when they rang up the headmaster at his home, but by that time the body had been discovered by a couple of Boy Scouts playing one of those spooring games, or whatever they call them, over by Badbury Rings.’

  ‘Poor kids!’ said Laura. ‘How beastly for them!’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Gavin. Not at all the sort of discovery I’d like my boy to make.’

  ‘Where exactly was this?’ Dame Beatrice asked.

  ‘You know that avenue of trees which leads past the Rings and was planted, I believe, by one of the owners of Kingston Lacey, that big house owned by the same Bankes family as own Corfe Castle? Well, between the trees on the left-hand side of the road as you go towards Wimborne Minster, and the big open space where people park their cars, and picnic and play games and so forth, there’s a sort of broad pathway with bushes that partly screen it from the road. That’s where they found her.’

  ‘And the cause of death?’

  ‘Just like the other three, and, another similarity, the body had been dumped, we think. She didn’t die on the spot where these lads found her. The doctor thinks she was killed sometime on Whit Sunday, probably in the afternoon.’

  ‘And any car tracks?’

  ‘Indistinguishable. Any number of cars had passed that way during the Whitsun week-end, of course. The inference is that the body was hidden away and then dumped late on Sunday evening. Whitsun being another school holiday, Phillips has had a go at James again, and we’re checking on the movements of the two young women, of course. As I say, I can understand their conduct up to Whit Monday afternoon, but I can’t understand why they didn’t report Mrs Castle’s absence until latish on the Tuesday evening.’

  ‘Just an instinct not to interfere, as I think you indicated,’ said Laura.

  ‘Yes, so they told their headmaster. But when she hadn’t shown up on Tuesday at eight, and knowing that she’d got several things to get ready before she went to school on the following morning, they decided that something was wrong.’

  ‘And before that time you knew what it was.’

  ‘Yes. These kids found her at just after three on Whit Monday afternoon, but, until the headmaster came forward, we hadn’t any means of identifying her.’

  ‘I wonder somebody had not stumbled upon the body earlier in the day. Badbury Rings and their environs are well-frequented,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘We’ve no information. If anybody had found the body earlier, they made no move to let us know.’

  ‘People do hate getting mixed up in anything fishy,’ said Laura, ‘and on a Bank Holiday, too, when their only object is to enjoy themselves.’

  ‘Not what you’d call good citizenship, Mrs Gavin.’

  ‘No, but my sympathies are with them,’ retorted Laura. ‘It’s not as though there was anything they could do for the woman herself.’

  ‘Well, of course, as I say, we don’t know that anybody else had stumbled upon the body. It was pretty well screened by the bushes.’

  ‘Was Mrs Castle a big, heavy woman?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Oh, no, slim and small-boned. Probably weighed less than eight stone. The bushes weren’t even broken away.’

  ‘What had Edward James to say for himself? Did he consider that he was being victimised?’

  ‘Oh, Phillips and I interviewed the whole staff, including the headmaster, but, of course, we were chiefly interested in James and the two young women. We also talked to Mrs Castle’s neighbours, but there was very little they could tell us.’

  What this amounted to was, at that preliminary stage of the enquiry, of negligible help to the police. She was a quiet, pleasant neighbour, went off for week-ends quite often and had once asked whether they would mind if she kept a dog.

  ‘Taking it as it comes,’ said Phillips, ‘we still don’t know where Mrs Castle went on Saturday, or whether she was alone, or with friends, or with whoever murdered her. Maisry thinks the chances are that she went to Bournemouth, as she had stated that such was her intention. There’s nothing shady about her past. We’ve checked pretty carefully, but shall continue with that, of course. However, it seems likely that this is one of the series involving foreigners, and is as motiveless as the other deaths.’

  ‘Mrs Castle wasn’t a foreigner,’ said Laura.

  ‘She taught a foreign language, Mrs Gavin, and was caught up with the Resistance. Well, we know she went back to her house on Saturday night, because she was at breakfast with the two young women on Sunday morning. It was a latish breakfast, and after it she set out for church. At least, she told them she was going to church, but we don’t know which church and the other two don’t know which denomination she favoured. We’ve tried them all, but she doesn’t seem to have been a church member and nothing has come of our efforts to trace where she went.’

  ‘Or whether she went to church at all,’ said Laura. ‘Churches are not so well attended nowadays. You’d think she’d have been spotted if she had gone.’

  ‘Ah, but perhaps you’re forgetting that it was Whit Sunday, Mrs Gavin. At the big church festivals – Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and, of course, the Harvest Thanksgiving – all churches are much fuller than usual.’

  ‘Christmas, Easter and Harvest Festivals, yes, but I shouldn’t have thought Whitsun so much.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the flowers, Mrs Gavin. They are a great attraction, I assure you.’

  ‘So all trace of Mrs Castle vanished after she left the house on Whit Sunday,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I wonder at what time she went out? Presumably, if she went to church, she attended the eleven o’clock morning service.’

  ‘She left her house at half-past ten.’

  ‘On foot or by car?’

  ‘On foot, but, of course, she may have caught a bus. We’re still checking on that. There’s a bus stop within five minutes’ walk of the house, and if she caught the ten-forty she could have been in Romsey, we’ll say, for service in the Abbey, at eleven-ten. There is no earlier bus on Sundays except one at eight-fifteen. If she walked, there are five churches in her own town she could have reached before eleven o’clock, and we’ve called on two vicars, a Catholic priest, a Congregational and a Baptist minister. The Methodist chapel and the Salvation Army headquarters are both so near her house that she would hardly have needed to leave at half-past ten to get to them by eleven, but we are making enquiries, just the same.’

  ‘Still, it’s the fact that she didn’t go back to the house for lunch, which is the important point, I suppose,’ said Laura. ‘She must have lunched somewhere.’

  ‘Unless she was killed during the morning, Mrs Gavin, although the doctor thinks the afternoon more likely, but the fact that the body was not reported until Monday afternoon, when the Boy Scouts discovered it, hasn’t helped the doctors to fix the precise hour of the death. Then, we don’t know where the poor woman’s body was hidden before it was dumped, and, as you know, the temperature of the atmosphere can make a considerable difference in determining the time of death, because it affects the onset and disappearance of ri
gor mortis.’

  ‘What have the two young women to say for themselves? – not that there is any reason to suspect them, of course,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘They have very little to say. They are upset and horrified, but they knew very little about Mrs Castle. She was merely a colleague and the owner of the house. The three had their breakfast and their other cooked meals together as a general rule, but this was a matter of mutual convenience rather than of individual choice, and accounts for most of the time they spent in one another’s company, since, apart from these mealtimes, the young women went each her own way, and Mrs Castle went hers.’

  ‘How did they say they spent Sunday and Monday? We know that they went to London with a school party on Saturday, and, in any case, Saturday is not in question, as Mrs Castle is known to have been alive on Sunday morning. At least – is there any confirmation of the young women’s assertion that she was alive on Sunday morning?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A Mrs Reynolds, who lives next door, saw her leave and, without being prompted, puts the time as round about half-past ten. As for the young women themselves, they say that, after Mrs Castle left, they did those bits of washing which do not get sent to the laundry – small, personal garments, stockings and so forth – then prepared and cooked lunch and after lunch went for a stroll in the local park. They came back to tea, played some gramophone records, switched on the television, had a snack for supper and went to bed early, as they had changed their minds about their outing, and intended to have a long day in London on the morrow instead of picnicking as they had planned.’

  ‘And they went to London?’

  ‘They went towards it. The roads were very crowded and by lunch-time they had reached Guildford, where, after having to wait for some time, they secured a table for lunch. They did not finish this meal until a quarter past two, and, because of this, they gave up any idea of going on. Instead, they visited Guildford Cathedral, which was thronged with sightseers. They then drove to Dorking, where they had tea at about four o’clock, and then came back to the house, which they reached at half-past eight. Some of this is confirmed. They signed the visitors’ book in the Cathedral and are remembered at the Dorking hotel.’