[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Oh, it was all in his books. People back in the Dark Ages who challenged the Church with ideas that weren’t in the book of rules.’

  ‘And you deliberately studied these ideas with the intention of annoying your father?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and it always worked. I enjoyed baiting the old man.’

  ‘What was your mother’s attitude?’

  ‘I don’t think she had one. She never attempted to argue or interfere. It was Karen who did that. My mother just used to sit and knit and listen. She never took any part. I think she thought father ought to have kept on his job as a schoolmaster – he taught when he first came over here – but he threw it up just to do reading and studying. He said he was going to write a book, and he did send a couple of chapters to a publisher, I believe, but they came back, so I don’t think he tried any more. He said that posterity would do him justice. Anyway, I got sick of it at home and went to sea, and having, as I told you, a pretty good brain, I’ve got on. I shall have my own ship by the time I’m thirty.’

  ‘Not if you half-kill the crew, you won’t,’ said Maisry, gently and with a slight smile. ‘Well, now, let’s get back to Miss Machrado.’

  ‘Oh, Christ! I didn’t kill her, and I don’t know who did.’

  ‘You say you have a good brain, and I do not dispute it,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Have you also a good memory?’

  ‘You need a good memory in my job. Do you know what a second officer’s duties are? But then, why should you?’

  ‘Why, indeed, since they do not affect me or my question. If your memory is a good one, I wonder whether you can remember any of the subjects about which you used to tease your father?’

  ‘One or two. Three, in fact, because he clouted me on the ear once, when I’d already got earache, although, mind you, I don’t think he knew that.’

  ‘Yes? What were these three?’

  ‘One was about a chap named Priscillian. He claimed that the local bishops were too fond of luxury and converted some of them to his ideas. He was also in favour of some birds called Gnostics, who, as far as I can make out, derived somehow or other from the Jews. Anyhow, I was chiefly interested in Priscillian because he was condemned for sorcery, a subject in which I’ve always been interested.’

  ‘His dates?’

  ‘Dates? Oh, I’ve never bothered with dates. Pretty early on, I believe, but I couldn’t really say.’

  ‘And the other two?’

  ‘Oh, a fellow called Arnold. They hanged him and burnt the body and chucked it into the River Tiber. The other one – the one when I had earache – was Pelagius. He interested me because his followers became violent and did all sorts of things that weren’t exactly what you’d call Christian.’

  ‘Your tastes, then, even as a young boy, ran in the direction of necromancy, cruelty and violence.’

  ‘Oh, well, hang it all, you know what boys of fourteen and fifteen are like!’

  ‘I think I interrupted Detective-Inspector Maisry, who was asking you to return to the subject of Maria Machrado.’

  ‘I’ve told him all I know about her.’

  ‘Tell us again,’ said Maisry, ‘and I’d prefer the story straight, if you don’t mind.’ So far as essentials went, it was the story he had told before. He had met Maria Machrado in Bilbao, she had subsequently come to Southampton on his ship, they had been intimate, he had introduced her to his mother as a paying guest at week-ends and during college vacations. His object, he admitted, was so that the intimacy might continue.

  ‘Now tell us about this last quarrel,’ said Maisry.

  ‘You’re trying to trap me.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘we are almost convinced by your story, so far. You have gone a long way towards proving to us that you are innocent of murder.’

  He looked at her with suspicion in his gaze, Maisry with slight surprise in his.

  ‘Well, all right, then,’ said Otto, ‘if that’s the way you want it, but it was only the usual sort of row that springs up between the likes of her and the likes of me, you know.’

  ‘Right,’ said Maisry. ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth will help you, so any embroidery or airy persiflage is out.’

  ‘I can take a hint. I don’t know about you, but I really believe the Dame is willing to see me in the clear. Here goes, then. I met Maria at my mother’s a couple of week-ends – I expect mother told you. Then I stayed with her at her digs – I expect you remember hearing about that, too. I spent all I could afford, but she wanted more, and when I told her she couldn’t have it she got sore with me and threatened to tell my mother that she was going to have my baby. Of course, I laughed, who wouldn’t? As though my mother would give a damn, I said, whose baby she was going to have. At that she fished out a knife and went for me like a mad thing. Well, you don’t get to be second officer on our kind of ship without knowing how to handle blokes with knives, so I side-stepped and then smacked my hand hard down on her knife-wrist and, of course, she had to let go the knife. It fell on the floor and I kicked it under a chair and smacked her face.

  ‘She was yelling blue murder by this time, and I didn’t want her landlady phoning up the police and giving me in charge for assault, so I slung my hook p.d.q. That didn’t do for Maria. She followed me out and all down the street, shouting curses and insults in Spanish and bringing quite a few of the citizens to their front doors. At last I got her into an alley and took hold of her and told her what I’d do to her if she didn’t shut up.

  ‘She turned quiet at that, and began to cry. She said she was sure her landlady wouldn’t have her back, so what was she to do, and where could she go? I said, “Well, you threatened to go to my mother. Why don’t you just do that? You can say what you like about me. She’ll believe you, whatever it is, and I believe she’ll take you in until you can find fresh digs for next term.” Then I gave her a five-pound note I couldn’t really spare, and put her on the train for Lymington. I knew she could thumb a lift from there if she switched on the old charm.’

  ‘But a lift would not take her to an out-of-the-way spot like your mother’s cottage,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘It was the best I could do, and I didn’t think she deserved even that much.’

  ‘Did you ever hear from her or see her again?’

  ‘No. The next thing was the dicks pulling me in for murdering her. I reckon she got fresh with some lorry-driver or car-owner, and he had what he wanted and then did for her and ditched her. She wasn’t found so far away from one of the roads to Dorchester, you know. Quite a lot of stuff goes to the south-west that way.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Maisry, ‘you’ve no alibi for the time of her death – nothing that would convince a jury.’

  ‘Then why did you let me go, after you arrested me? You knew you had nothing on me, and you’ve got nothing on me this time, either.’

  ‘We are not arresting you this time,’ said Maisry.

  ‘Back to square one,’ he added to Dame Beatrice when Otto had gone. ‘What did you make of our likely lad this time?’

  ‘Nothing that I had not made of him before. I think we ought to have another talk with Edward James.’

  ‘If Maria Machrado did go back to Mrs Schumann’s cottage, the inference, considering what we suspect about that lady, is pretty clear. The trouble will be to prove that she did go back there. Personally, I should doubt it. She must have known what kind of reception she would get after the deception she’d practised, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘I pin my hopes on Mr James. He may have been at the cottage when she turned up, if she did turn up.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a thought. Right. We’ll sort him out.’

  (5)

  This time James was not required to go to the police station.

  ‘We know where we stand,’ said Maisry. ‘There are only two bits of information we want from him. Even with those we shan’t have enough to secure a conviction, but
now we’re certain as to means and motive, it’s only a question of patience plus spadework before we know opportunity. Once we can show all three we’ll be justified in making an arrest and, after that, it’s up to the prosecution. I couldn’t, at first, see why you questioned Schumann about his father, and I’m not sure I grasp the point now.’

  ‘A father’s relationship with his children is always important, I think, particularly with his sons. I did not know, when I began, exactly how Otto would react, but it was immediately apparent that his answers, from our point of view, were important. The relationship does not seem to have been a happy one. I imagine that the father was bigoted, narrow-minded and selfish, and that his attitude towards the boy was humourless and unkind. Otto expressed his resentment and intolerance of this attitude by annoying his father in a way which, to a religious although bigoted man, must have been particularly galling.’

  ‘In other words, he delighted in taking the micky out of papa in the most irritating way he could think up. Apart from indicating that he’d inherited a streak of cruelty, I didn’t see where this got us, though, and I was very much surprised (although I tried not to show it) when you told him that he was practically in the clear. After all, if there was one thing which his evidence showed, it was that, as a boy, he was perfectly familiar with these heresies which seem to be part of the plot and, as a man, he certainly remembered a good deal about them.’

  ‘Yes, that is my point. I mean, that is why I practically exonerated him. I think a guilty man would have left out Priscillian and given us Arius, of whom he most certainly would have heard, since Arianism was easily one of the longest-lasting, and, except for Protestantism, which is, to all intents and purposes, now widely acceptable and respected, by far the most important of the heresies.’

  ‘I see your drift. Arius connects with his sister, whom we know with absolute certainty he could not have murdered …’

  ‘Whereas Priscillian connects with the Spanish girl, whom he most certainly could.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a point, but to you it seems a stronger one than it does to me. I wouldn’t put it past him to bluff matters out. He’s a slippery young customer.’

  ‘No, he is a boaster and a liar. I doubt whether he has the strength of character to bluff his way out of anything.’

  ‘You think he was telling us the truth this time, though, do you?’

  ‘I think we know enough from other sources to be reasonably sure that he was. The most important piece of information which he gave us we cannot check at present – indeed, I doubt whether we shall ever be able to check it sufficiently to be able to make court evidence out of it, but it is psychologically so satisfying that I propose to accept it without question.’

  ‘You have me fogged. I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Really? Did you not obtain a mental picture of the family? The father studying and making notes for this book he is going to write, but which never comes to anything? The daughter possibly helping him by looking up his references? The impudent aggravating son looking up material with which to harass, embarrass and interrupt his father? And the mother, that smooth-skinned, fresh-faced, silent German housewife and dog-breeder, resentful of her necessity to be the breadwinner and of her husband’s selfish determination to devote himself to work which does not bring in a penny, sitting there knitting, listening, not interfering, merely drinking in all that is said, all that is quoted, and storing it away in that solid, methodical German memory of hers?’

  ‘But it was her daughter who was killed, not her husband.’

  ‘It was her daughter who was killed, yes, but I wonder – this is mere idle speculation, and perhaps you would do well to take no notice of it – but I wonder what we should find if Pastor Schumann’s body were exhumed?’

  ‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Maisry. ‘You don’t surely mean to suggest …?’

  ‘No, no, it was a passing thought, and she would have had no motive unless …’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless Edward James was known to the family before Pastor Schumann died. We have been given to understand that Schumann was a schoolmaster and then gave up this work in order to write a book. What could be more likely than that he and James met as fellow-teachers? Even if they were not at the same school, there are inter-staff meetings for various purposes, teachers’ unions and the like, at which they could have got to know one another. After all, they had this common interest in theology, the one for his book, the other for his degree.’

  ‘Well!’ said Maisry. ‘You have given me something to think about! You mean she wanted James so much that she was prepared to murder first her husband and then her daughter in order to get him?’

  ‘I have little doubt of it, so now for Mr James.’

  James was interviewed at the Stone House, which, previously, he had declined to visit. His attitude was abject and defeatist. The maid shewed him into the library where Maisry and Dame Beatrice were waiting to receive him, and his first words were:

  ‘Well, I’ve accepted your invitation rather than be called to the police station again, and, if you are charging me, I can only assert my complete innocence.’

  ‘I am not charging you, Mr James,’ said Maisry, ‘neither have I the smallest intention of doing so unless some entirely fresh evidence turns up which appears to point towards you, but I assure you that I consider this is utterly unlikely. You are here – and thank you for coming – because we think there are just one or two small points which you may be able to clear up for us.’

  ‘Yes, I see, but I can’t think what they are. I am absolutely certain I’ve told you every single thing I know.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He is Dead and Gone Lady

  ‘Tommy’s gone! What shall I do?

  Away down Hilo!

  ‘Oh, Tommy’s gone, and I’ll go too –

  Tom’s gone to Hilo.’

  * * *

  (1)

  ‘First,’ said Maisry, ‘we would like you to tell us the full story of your acquaintance with the Schumann family. Did you know them, or any of them, before Miss Schumann joined the staff at your school?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The father, Heinrich Schumann, who was a Lutheran pastor in his own country, fled from Germany with his wife soon after Hitler came into power. I had not long left college and was in my first teaching post at an independent school in Bournemouth, and Schumann, seeing no prospect of continuing his own profession, took a post at my school as French and German master.’

  ‘The same subjects as his daughter taught.’

  ‘Yes, they were both excellent linguists and Schumann took to me because I could speak German and, of course, had as my main interest, even at that time, those theological studies which were his own delight. He was ten or twelve years older than myself, but that made his society the more enjoyable, as I have never been altogether at ease with my contemporaries.

  ‘After a time he took to inviting me to his home for weekends. He and his wife had a flat in Poole at that time, and, as I have always lived in lodgings since I left college, it made a very pleasant change for me, as you may well imagine.’

  ‘Mrs Schumann was not breeding dogs at that time, then?’

  ‘Oh, no. She often talked of it-she had done a little in that line in Germany – but, of course, living in a flat in a large and busy town, there was no scope for it.’

  ‘How did the couple get on? There were no children at that time, I take it.’

  ‘No, the twins, Karen and Otto, came much later. I am no judge of how couples get on, unless they quarrel, in which case’ – he gave his hearers a wry smile – ‘I suppose one would have to say that they don’t get on. I never heard a word exchanged between them which would indicate anything but a reasonably satisfactory relationship, but, all the same, I received an impression that they were not fully compatible.’

  ‘In other words,’ suggested Dame Beatrice, ‘Mrs Schumann found her life and her husband extremely dul
l.’

  ‘Well, one felt rather sorry for her, in a way. The flat was a small one, just three rooms, including the kitchen, and the only other thing was a tiny bathroom, so I don’t think she had enough to keep her occupied.’

  ‘So you never stayed the week-end?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed I did. They were very kind about that. They used to make me up a camp bed in the living-room and I used to go to lunch with them on Saturdays, sleep there on Saturday night and leave again on Sunday evening after church. We attended church together on Sunday mornings, too, Schumann and I. Mrs Schumann – Karla, as I was soon asked to call her – cooked the dinner and came to church with us in the evening.’

  ‘Surely not a Lutheran church?’

  ‘No, a Presbyterian one. I would have preferred Church of England myself, but it seemed unmannerly to suggest that, so I accompanied them to their chosen place of worship.’

  ‘And how did you spend the rest of the week-end?’

  ‘On Saturday afternoons, if it was fine, we walked. Like many Germans, the Schumanns were great walkers. We would take the train to Brockenhurst and spend the day in the New Forest, or go to Lymington and cross over to the Isle of Wight, and then walk our legs off, while Heinrich and I talked theology.’

  ‘And Mrs Schumann?’

  ‘Oh, I imagine she listened. At any rate, I do not remember that she ever joined in the discussions. At five o’clock or thereabouts, when we found a suitable spot, we would have a picnic tea. Both of them carried rucksacks and at first I felt it incumbent upon me to attempt to relieve Karla of hers, but she always refused and Heinrich supported her, saying that I was their guest and must carry nothing. I will not pretend that I was sorry. I have a weak back and a tendency to sciatica, neither of which was helpful in carrying a heavy pack. In fact, the walks themselves were almost more than I could manage.’

  ‘Were the Schumanns naturalised at this time?’ asked Maisry.

  ‘Not for a couple of years, but the news from Germany was such that they were convinced war was inevitable and, knowing this, I suggested that, as they had fled the country and had no intention of ever going back, naturalisation might save them a good deal of trouble later on. They took my advice, and Heinrich was drafted into the Pioneer Corps when war broke out.’