[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead

by Gladys Mitchell

  Laura looked perplexed.

  ‘Gipsy encampment?’ she said. ‘How do you make that out? She’s the complete German housewife – clean, neat, tidy, house-proud. She’d never cast in her lot with the gipsies, surely? And, anyway, would they have her?’

  ‘She may have shown them goodwill at some time, or, perhaps more likely, her husband did.’

  ‘Allowed them to camp on some land belonging to the cottage, you mean? Well, that’s possible, I suppose, but we’ve no knowledge that it was so, so where does your idea come from? Is it a shot in the dark?’

  ‘Not altogether. The dog I killed was a lurcher, a type of animal, my reading informs me, which is widely used by poachers, and gipsies, in country districts, are inveterate poachers.’

  ‘Where on earth did you read about lurchers, and relate them to poachers and gipsies?’

  ‘My dear Laura! “A Pharaoh with his wagons coming jolt and creak and strain.”’

  ‘Oh, Roundabouts and Swings!’ “And keep that lurcher on the road, the gamekeepers are out!” Of course! Simple, when you come to think of it, but I must admit I didn’t. Well, now, are the police still holding on to Edward James? It’s a bit much, if all he did was to tell Mrs Schumann that he had been interviewed again by the police. You can’t call that being an accessory after the fact!’

  ‘So the magistrates thought. The Bench declined to commit him. They dismissed the case.’

  ‘Good. By the way, I take it that we are going over to the cottage again to leave food for the dogs? I mean, if they’ve been turned loose, they’ll come back to where they’re accustomed to being fed.’

  ‘Yes. I left the doors of the sheds wide open so that they could get to their bedding if they wished to do so, and you, I noticed, left them the food we had brought. A pity I had to shoot the other dog, but I felt that there was no alternative.’

  ‘Yes, I was sorry about that, too – very sorry. Afer all, he was only doing his job as he saw it, I suppose.’

  ‘A magnanimous observation on your part.’

  ‘I suppose it was Mrs Schumann who shut him up there and let the other dogs loose?’

  ‘Nobody else would have left such a booby-trap for us. I hope the police have buried the poor thing. And now I do not wish to pry, but did I gather from something Hamish said—?’

  ‘Yes, you did. I think it’s so, but I have to see a doctor to get my diagnosis confirmed. I wasn’t going to tell anybody until I was certain, but something I said seems to have caused Hamish to do an inspired bit of guessing. I wonder how soon the police will get hold of Mrs Schumann now that we can be pretty certain she’s somewhere in the neighbourhood? You know, dreadful creature though she is, I hate to think of her being hunted down.’

  Something in her voice made Fergus lift his noble head from its resting-place on Dame Beatrice’s left instep. He rose, walked sedately across to Lindy Lou’s basket, picked up the tiny creature – she was about the size of a small cat – and carried her by the scruff of her neck over to Laura. He deposited her in Laura’s lap and, with great dignity, resumed his former position.

  Lindy Lou climbed rapidly up Laura, gave her a swift lick on the cheek, walked round the back of her neck, descended by way of her right arm and, settling down on her lap with a sigh of pleasure, turned round twice and went to sleep.

  ‘Dogs!’ said Dame Beatrice suddenly. Laura, her hand almost covering Lindy Lou’s small body, looked across at her employer and grinned.

  ‘In the plural,’ she said, indicating Fergus and Lindy Lou. ‘One Irish wolfhound, one Yorkshire terrier. Saint Patrick converted the Irish, and Saint Hilda had a nunnery-cum-monastery at Whitby. Neither of these saints, however, was a heretic, so what, exactly, are you getting at?’

  ‘I was not thinking in terms of Irish wolfhounds and Yorkshire terriers. Clumber spaniels, I think, might be very much nearer the mark. I must go and see Miss O’Reilly and Miss Tompkins. I wonder where they are living now?’

  ‘Oh, the two girls who shared digs first with Karen Schumann and then with Mrs Castle? What on earth have they to do with clumber spaniels?’

  ‘Time will show. Ring up Superintendent Phillips. If they have moved from Mrs Castle’s house, he will have their present address. Better still, ask him whether he can spare the time to come and see me.’

  (5)

  ‘It’s another link in the chain, ma’am,’ said Phillips. ‘Acting on your suggestion, we asked the two young ladies whether Mrs Castle had received any letters on Whit Saturday. She had. Miss O’Reilly collected the post, as she usually did, and sorted it out. She thinks there were two letters for Mrs Castle, and she knows there was one. She noticed it particularly, and remembers it, because it had been re-addressed from the school and was marked, Please forward. I then asked them whether Mrs Castle had ever mentioned to them that she thought of buying a dog, and Miss Tompkins said she certainly had, and added that she herself had said, “If an Irish wolfhound or a clumber spaniel would do, I know the very place. A girl we used to dig with, her mother breeds dogs, and Karen was always handing out sales talk in the staffroom and telling us that the dogs were pedigree animals, but that there would be a special price to members of the staff.”’

  ‘If the letter was addressed to Mrs Castle at the school, why did it need to be forwarded?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

  ‘I asked Miss Tompkins and Miss O’Reilly that. They said that the afternoon post reached the school at round about four o’clock, but that on the eve of a holiday the school breaks up at half-past three and everyone hurries away.’

  ‘Then the fact that the sender of the letter asked for it to be forwarded may have significance.’

  ‘Exactly, ma’am. It certainly must have come from somebody who knew the ways of the school.’

  ‘I suppose Mrs Castle made no mention to the other two of what was in the letter?’

  ‘No, it seems she didn’t.’

  ‘Well, when you find Mrs Schumann, Superintendent, ask her whether Mrs Castle wanted to buy an Irish wolfhound or a clumber spaniel.’

  ‘That ought to shake her,’ said Laura, when Phillips had gone. ‘If she’s guilty, that is.’

  ‘Somebody was guilty of shutting up that savage dog, knowing that it would fly at the first intruder, and that the intruder would be either you or Hamish, or, possibly, myself,’ said Dame Beatrice drily.

  ‘You mean that Mrs Schumann has been keeping watch on us, and knew we fed the dogs?’

  ‘It seems likely. Of course, we cannot be sure.’

  ‘When they find her, I wonder which charge they’ll prefer?’

  ‘They will charge her with the murder of her husband, and Edward James will be called as a witness for the prosecution.’

  ‘I don’t envy him. He’s had a pretty rough deal all along, unless he’s as guilty as she is, and that is something which now, even at this stage, I can’t believe, and you never have believed it, have you? Incidentally, why should she want to set that dog on us? Just a bit of bloody-mindedness, do you suppose?’

  ‘It is difficult to think of any rational explanation, certainly, but, as we have good cause to suspect, Mrs Schumann is not a particularly rational woman.’

  (6)

  On the following morning Laura telephoned her husband. Maisry and Phillips had wasted no time, but by the time they reached the encampment the gipsies had gone, leaving the usual unlovely tokens of their sojourn. They were soon followed up, but Mrs Schumann was not with them and they refused to admit that she had ever sought their help.

  Gavin came down to the Stone House, having decided to persuade his wife and Dame Beatrice to leave it and to stay in Kensington until Mrs Schumann had been apprehended.

  ‘I’m taking Hamish back with me, anyway,’ he said, ‘and if you’re going to have a baby, you’re coming, too. Dame B. must please herself what she does, of course, but if my advice is asked I suggest that she joins us. I don’t like the sound of this savage dog episode. The woman must realise that she’s in fo
r bad trouble and is out for her revenge and is reckless as to how she brings it about. These murders were obviously the work of a totally unbalanced person, and, in my opinion, her brain has now gone completely over the border and she is no longer responsible for her actions.’

  ‘Take Laura and Hamish to London, by all means,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but my place is here. If we do – and we shall – track down this wretched creature, I shall be needed.’

  ‘To certify her?’ asked Laura. Dame Beatrice did not reply. ‘Anyway, if you stay, I stay. I’m not going to leave you here alone.’

  ‘I shall not be alone. There are four other people, two of them men, in the house, and, if you feel anxious about me, I will ask Superintendent Phillips to make this house his headquarters while the search for Mrs Schumann goes on.’

  ‘Will you really? Is that a promise?’

  ‘If it will make you happier, yes, it is.’

  ‘That’s that, then,’ said Gavin, greatly relieved, for he had occasionally experienced his wife’s obstinate moods where Dame Beatrice was concerned. ‘We’ll push off tomorrow morning, if Laura can get the packing done today.’

  At ten that evening he took Laura to bed, leaving Dame Beatrice to her notes and to the fourth chapter of a book she was preparing for publication. When Gavin was in London, Laura occupied a room next to that of her employer, but when Gavin stayed at the Stone House, he and his wife had a much larger room in another wing. Thus they were too far from the scene of her operations to hear Dame Beatrice leave her room at just before midnight and slip out of the house by a side door.

  Forewarned, George had driven the car some distance down the road while the family and Dame Beatrice were at dinner, so that the sound of his driving it off so late at night conveyed nothing to Laura, half-asleep in her husband’s arms, nor to Gavin, holding her close, nor to Hamish, fast asleep in the room next-door to theirs.

  ‘Pull up well away from the cottage, George,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I am pretty sure she is there.’

  ‘Then I will do myself the honour to accompany you, madam. Is she likely to be armed?’

  ‘I think not. Accompany me, if you feel you must, but remain silent and invisible unless or until it is obvious that I need assistance. Indeed, it may be as well to have a witness to any conversation I may have with Mrs Schumann.’

  ‘Have you your little gun, madam?’

  ‘Yes, but I shall not use it against a woman.’

  ‘Wouldn’t hurt to let her know you’ve got it, madam.’

  ‘If it proves necessary, I will take your advice.’ They drove for the rest of the way in silence until Dame Beatrice said, ‘About here, I should think, George’. George pulled up the car and handed her out. Then he followed her through a wicket gate and across the paddock where the dogs were let out for exercise. As they entered the long, untidy garden the dogs from their sheds near the cottage door set up a loud barking. ‘So the animals are re-housed,’ she remarked. ‘Their noise should wake Mrs Schumann if she is asleep.’

  This proved to be the case. As the two approached the back door of the cottage a bedroom window was opened and Mrs Schumann’s voice was heard admonishing the dogs. Dame Beatrice said, loudly and clearly,

  ‘Come down and open the door.’

  ‘You!’ cried Mrs Schumann. ‘Go away! I wish nobody!’

  ‘Did Mrs Castle come here to buy a wolfhound?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

  ‘Go away! I set the dogs on you!’

  ‘You set one dog on us, and it is dead.’

  ‘You threaten me?’

  ‘Or did Mrs Castle prefer a clumber spaniel?’

  ‘You know it all, then?’ said Mrs Schumann in an altered voice. ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘I am not accompanied by the police.’

  ‘Ach, your police! Fools, all of them! Five of these silly girls I kill, and your police do nothing! I spit at your police!’

  ‘I know you killed five women. What made you kill your husband?’

  A stream of curses, in German, was the only answer to this question. Dame Beatrice waited for the screaming profanity to come to an end. Then she said,

  ‘I have come to take you back home with me. In the morning you will be arrested and charged.’

  Mrs Schumann laughed, an unpleasant sound.

  ‘Nein, nein!’ she shouted. ‘That for you and your police! You think I shall come down? You think I shall walk into prison? Yes, then! I come down! I loose my dogs at you! They see you, they smell you, they kill you! You cannot see them to shoot them! Even if you shoot one, the others tear you in pieces before you shoot them all!’

  ‘Come down, and let us see,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘She means it, madam,’ murmured George. ‘We wouldn’t stand much chance if she sicked all five of them on to us.’

  The window was shut and a light went up in the room. George clutched the spanner he had brought from the car, and waited grimly beside his employer. The barking of the dogs had ceased at the sound of their owner’s voice. Dame Beatrice walked over to the door of the shed which housed the two wolfhounds and spoke to them gently and softly in her beautiful voice. Then, before George realised what she was doing, she unlatched the shed.

  ‘Meat!’ she said. ‘Come along.’ It was the keyword which she and Laura had always used when they fed the dogs during the weeks that Mrs Schumann had been away from home. They followed her to the car, George and his spanner following close behind. He opened the door of the car and Dame Beatrice took a torch from her pocket and shone it on the meat she had taken from the back seat. She tossed it, wrapped in newspaper, on the ground. ‘That will keep them happy for a bit,’ she said. ‘Come, George.’

  They retraced their steps, carefully shutting the wicket gate behind them, and returned to the cottage. As they reached it, the back door was opened and Mrs Schumann stood there, framed against the light. In her hand she held a dog-whip. Dame Beatrice touched George’s arm and they slipped behind a rhododendron bush. Apparently Mrs Schumann heard the slight sound.

  ‘So – run!’ she shouted. ‘My dogs will soon catch you!’

  (7)

  ‘So she came along without trouble?’ said Maisry. ‘I can hardly believe it. She’s been like a mad thing since you brought her here.’

  ‘I think that, by this time, she probably is a mad thing,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Be a Broadmoor H.M.P. case, I suppose?’

  ‘She was sane enough when she killed her husband and, in the legal sense, she is sane enough now to stand trial for murder.’

  ‘How did you manage to get her here?’

  ‘I think she was completely staggered when she opened the wolfhounds’ pen and found that the dogs were gone. We took the opportunity of seizing her while her astonishment left her transfixed. She had no chance to resist. I held her left wrist and George her right and I think he twisted it to make her drop the dog-whip. I expect I could have managed her by myself, but it made matters easier and our progress back to the car decidedly more decorous, with him to help me.’

  ‘What about the wolfhounds?’

  ‘I called to them and they came, having finished the meat, so George kicked the wicket gate to behind them, and, although Mrs Schumann addressed them, they did not jump it. I must go over and see to them and the spaniels when you have done with me here. By the way, she made, in a boastful spirit, a full confession of her crimes while we were bringing her here in the car, but I doubt whether she will be equally obliging now that she is in the hands of the police. By her crimes, I mean the murders of the five women. Of her husband’s death she said nothing.’

  ‘Well, that’s what she’ll be charged with, because that’s the one where our evidence is strongest. We shall put the doctor in the box and he will admit that the death was unexpected. Then, of course, we can trace the poison to her and James will testify to her proposals to him. She’ll be asked, too, to explain her flight from her cottage and why she spent those weeks in a gipsy camp. What made y
ou so sure she’d gone back to her home, by the way?’

  ‘I thought she would need a roof over her head when the gipsies moved on and refused to take her with them.’

  ‘You think they turned her out? She certainly wasn’t in their camp when we went there. I think they must have had their suspicions of her, you know, when she bought that lurcher, and didn’t want to get themselves tangled up with us. I still can’t see why she took the risk of going back to her cottage, though. I should have thought she’d have attempted to get over to her relatives in Germany.’

  ‘She may have decided that, after her attempt to set that dog on Laura, we should be too wary to go to the cottage again to feed the dogs.’

  ‘She abandoned them quite callously when she went to live with the gipsies.’

  ‘Ah, but she may have believed that, when it was discovered that she had left her home, the police would see that the dogs were cared for.’

  ‘Well, so we should have done, had not you and Mrs Gavin offered to feed them. Did you – I mean, was there some feeling in your mind that she would come back to see how they were getting on?’

  ‘I did not think she would leave the district without making certain that they would not starve. I think it must have broken her heart to drown those puppies.’

  ‘Well, that’s something to her credit. We shall bring her in front of the magistrates, and she will reserve her defence, I suppose. I wonder what it will be? Our case against her is reasonably strong, I feel, but it’s going to be very difficult to prove that she actually administered the poison to her husband. I wish, really, that we could have got her on one of the stranglings. I thought we stood a chance with the Swansea case, but it went blue on us over those fingerprints.’

  (8)

  The defence was that Heinrich Schumann, depressed by the pain and inconvenience he had suffered from his illness, had decided to make an end of himself and had committed suicide. The defending counsel pressed the doctor hard, and he was compelled to admit that, until he had been informed of the result of the autopsy after the body had been disinterred, he had been fully convinced that the patient’s death had been due to natural causes. Cross-examined as to the attitude of Mrs Schumann to her husband’s illness, he stated that it had always seemed to him sympathetic and kind.