Printer's Error (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I’ve just got this feeling about the book. You see, it’s not a very nice book, really. You’ll see, tonight.”

  “I’m to take the proofs away with me, then, go through them, decide, from the internal evidence (if any) which persons seem to have reasonable cause for grievance—and then, what?”

  “You don’t take the threats seriously, do you?” she said.

  “You won’t let me,” he replied, and once more lifted his candid, disquieting eyes to her face. She laughed, and suddenly gave in.

  “I am keeping something back,” she said. “Another letter. Not one of—” she indicated his neat arrangement of manuscripts on the cushion—“the series. I can’t show it to you, though, unless Fortinbras agrees, and he isn’t at home. He’s lecturing in Southampton, and I don’t expect him until ten or eleven tonight. You’ll be back in London by then, won’t you?”

  “I need not be. I am at your disposal. I need only send a telegram to my father.”

  “Would you really stay?” Her eagerness seemed out of all proportion to the point at issue until he recollected that, in spite of her apparent calmness, she was a frightened woman who knew something more about what, at first sight, appeared to be a common form of persecution, than, so far, she had told him.

  He smiled.

  “My father would want me to do anything I could,” he replied. Both were silent for a minute after that. It was a statement with implications, for his father had been in love with her, and for a long time—two years or more, he had heard—she had hesitated between the steady, kindly Bassin and the brilliant, headstrong, more obviously attractive Carn.

  “I’m sure he would,” she said, putting her hand for a moment upon the young man’s sleeve. “Go and send your telegram, then, unless you’d rather have one of the servants go. I’ll tell them to get a room ready.”

  “I’d rather go,” said Bassin. “I shall have to get a toothbrush and things.”

  He rose, and, placing the cash-box carefully at the end of the settee (although leaving it still upon the floor), he put the key in his pocket and went to the door. He glanced round to say something else to Mrs. Carn but her back was towards him and she was looking out of the window, so he opened the door, closed it quietly behind him, and soon was walking past the windows. She was still standing where he had left her, and she waved to him as he went by.

  Young Bassin with his long stride soon reached the village again. He sent off his telegram, bought a toothbrush and shaving things, and then, trusting that he would be able to borrow pyjamas from his host, he returned to the House by the Brook.

  This time the sounds of confusion met his ears the moment he crossed the little bridge, and he saw that the large window from which Mrs. Carn had waved to him had been shattered. Through the great ragged gap in the glass the unnerving noise of hysterical servants made him quicken into a run.

  He rang the front-door bell, but, beyond a scream of fright, this attracted no attention, so he ran round to the smashed window and looked in.

  A tall vase of flowers was lying broken on the floor, and near it was the senseless body of Mrs. Carn. Servants crowded the doorway, except for one, more courageous because more kindly than the rest, who was kneeling beside her mistress and raising her head. It was obvious that the accident, however it had been caused, could not have occurred more than a few minutes before Bassin had crossed the little bridge.

  Carefully avoiding the jagged edges of the glass, he stepped into the room where his hostess lay amid the fragments of the broken vase and the strewn flowers. The water had soaked into her summer dress and into the carpet, and her own blood still seeped heavily and, it seemed, reluctantly, from a gash on the side of her head.

  The servants could give no account of what had happened. One and all agreed upon the obvious, which was that Mrs. Carn had been attacked, and the writer of the anonymous letters was cited as her most probable assailant. Bassin, when he had ascertained that someone had already gone for the doctor, glancing round the room, deduced the same thing, for another reason besides that which they were able to give: the cash-box, which he remembered leaving at the end of the settee, was gone, and Mrs. Carn herself had had no reason, in the short time he had been absent, for moving it from its position. There was also no sign of the letters, which he had spread out.

  The doctor who had been summoned was out, so Bassin sent the gardener to the doctor’s house again with orders to wait there until the doctor arrived home, and then to bring him immediately upon a plea of extreme urgency. He would have gone himself, but with the master of the house still absent, he felt that he ought to remain in charge, if only for the sake of the servants, towards whom he felt some responsibility, for they were nearly all young, and most of them were very badly frightened. He wanted to be certain, too, that nothing was touched before the arrival of the police, for whom he had also sent.

  He was certain in his own mind (although he tried to reassure the maids) that Mrs. Carn’s injury was a fatal one. In this opinion he was confirmed by the doctor, who arrived about two minutes before the police turned up, having driven up to his own door just as the gardener got there for the second time.

  The blow, it was thought, had been delivered with the cash-box itself, and Mrs. Carn, who died without recovering consciousness, probably had not known who had struck her.

  •2•

  There were no surprises at the inquest, except for the inexplicable absence of the husband of the deceased woman. The police, after formal evidence had been taken, asked to have the enquiry adjourned. The anticipated verdict of Murder against Person or Persons Unknown was reached by the coroner’s jury, and young Bassin, who had remained in the village, but not at Carn’s house, found himself at liberty to return to London, at any rate temporarily. His father, however, sent him back, with instructions to place himself at the service of Mr. Carn should the latter choose to avail himself of his assistance.

  Since the early morning of the day of the inquest, however, Mr. Carn had disappeared. He had arrived home at ten minutes past ten on the night of his wife’s death, and had received the news from a sympathetic but inquisitive police officer, who required him to account for his movements all day from the time he had left his home just before lunch. The servants also had been very closely questioned.

  Out of this gentle but persistent enquiry, the most interesting fact (not made public at the inquest) that arose was that lunch was on the point of being served when Mr. Carn had elected to go out.

  There was no evidence that he had had a sudden quarrel with his wife, nor that he had received a telegram or any other communication which might have caused him to leave the house in a hurry, but the parlour-maid and the cook both corroborated the story told by the gardener, which was that at five minutes to one—the church clock had struck one, and it was always five minutes fast, the police established—his employer, hurrying, and without his hat, had crossed the little bridge and had walked rapidly in the direction of the village.

  Where he had been, and for what purpose, nobody knew, unless the police had been told. If they possessed this information, they did not give it away, even to the reporters, who were soon upon the trail.

  Mr. Carn, however, had since disappeared. He had told the police that he had been due to lecture in Southampton, but that he had failed to keep this appointment; he was not in court to be called as a witness at the inquest, and the closest enquiry afterwards failed to establish his whereabouts. He had disappeared neatly and cleanly, leaving no trace behind, and again had gone off without a hat, for not only could all his hats be accounted for, but even the new one, in which he had arrived home on the night of his wife’s death, was hanging on the hat-stand in the hall.

  Young Bassin telephoned these details to his father and received further instructions to remain upon the spot. He was glad to obey, for he had liked Mrs. Carn, and he was young enough to want to help in tracking down the person responsible for her death. He also felt considerable curiosit
y as to the contents of the cash-box. In it, he was certain, was the clue to the attack, and to the disappearance of Carn.

  A seventeenth-century inn, its parlour unspoiled, and the bedroom over it reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a former landlord, appealed to him as a reasonable place in which to stay, and he put up there, while the police clues to the murderer of Mrs. Carn gradually petered out, and those to the whereabouts of Mr. Carn remained undiscovered, and probably, said the local inspector, were non-existent. There was a warrant out for Mr. Carn’s arrest, and his brother came to live in his house.

  Young Mr. Bassin gave the second Mr. Carn his temporary address in the village, and after four days of fruitless speculation (indulged in whilst he climbed the hills and explored the footpaths of the neighbourhood) had to confess that he was baffled. He did not share the opinion of the inspector in charge of the case, who was anxious to apprehend Mr. Carn for the wilful murder of his wife, but took up his own line of enquiry, which was based on the now speculative contents of the cash-box.

  •3•

  Clues such as footprints and fingerprints he wisely left to the police. Mr. Carn’s movements on the day of his wife’s death he also left unchecked. That, again was a task more fitted to the police system than to his own. He did, however, go to the printing works where The Open-Bellied Mountain was being set up, and ask to see the manager.

  The foreign partner received him, and took him all over the works. They were large, but the plant and methods were modern, and Kurt Senss, a tall, stiff, sensitive, nervous man, talked rapidly but interestingly, and obviously was in love with his work.

  Mr. Bassin had stated his business at the outset. He wanted galleys of Carn’s book. These were promised immediately, and, when the tour of the works was completed, Senss produced a set of galleys and waved aside—a generous sweep of the arm—the young man’s thanks.

  “We knew Mr. Carn quite well,” he said. “His wife, too, I have met. It is all a revenge act. When you read, perhaps you will see.”

  Triumphantly Bassin carried home the proofs—long, unmanageable sheets of printed matter at the stage before they were actually made up into pages and bound in book form. He had the haunted bedroom—his own choice, for the inn was by no means full—and spread them out on his knees after he got into bed.

  The bed itself was modern, and comfortable enough. He plumped a pillow against the headboard and rested his back against it, turned slightly towards the light, which shone not immediately on to the bed but on to a small table beside it, and then, pencil in hand, he commenced to go through the proofs.

  If his deductions were so far right, and if Senss were right, within the proofs of Carn’s book lay the explanation of Carn’s disappearance, the anonymous letters, and Mrs. Carn’s death.

  • CHAPTER 2 •

  The Travelling Sign-Painter

  “‘Nevertheless,’ said Sir Gawain, ‘let us at once encounter them, and see what they can do.’”

  •1•

  A week before Mrs. Carn’s death and her husband’s so-far unaccountable disappearance, Mrs. Bradley went by car into Oxfordshire to visit her nephew Carey. She found him, as usual, preoccupied with his pigs. The Scandinavian pig-breeders had been experimenting with a new type of movable pig-pen, and Carey, always interested in any improvement which might result in the increased well-being of his pigs, had sent for a test specimen, and, pipe in mouth, was admiring it in company with his pigman.

  “Hullo, darling,” he observed, when he saw the small but gaily-clad figure of his aunt, attended closely by her chauffeur George, carrying her coat. Mrs. Bradley cackled in reply to this greeting, and Carey resumed his preoccupied attitude. George stood at ease behind his employer, and the pigman, an exceptionally ugly fellow, stared stolidly at the mud on his own boots. He was not, apparently, interested in his employer, his employer’s relatives, their chauffeurs, or even in the new movable pig-pen which confronted him in all its Scandinavian cleanliness and squareness.

  “Um,” said Carey at last, “put Beulah in it, Priest.”

  “Detch don’t thenk Beauly,” observed the pigman morosely.

  “Tell Ditch to go to the devil, but not in front of Mrs. Ditch.”

  The pigman did not reply, but slouched towards the house, hitching his rounded shoulders.

  “So you’ve taken on Priest?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “He’s the only chap in these parts who can manage my prize Tamworth boar. A real beauty, Aunt Adela! Come and look.”

  He was about to lead her away when a girl appeared at the gate of the field and stood there crying his name. Carey turned and waved, and then grinned apologetically at his aunt.

  “I shall get it in the neck, darling, if I begin carting you all over the place before I take you up to the house. So shall we go along?”

  “He ought to have a change,” said his young wife when they were having tea. “Pigs, pigs, pigs! Nothing but pigs all his life! And I’ve got the most gorgeous invitation for us both to go and stay in Cornwall for a month or two. It would be just the thing for Timothy, and this great brute won’t come.”

  The baby, aged six months, chuckled at the sound of his own name.

  “There you are,” said Jenny, accusingly, to her husband, “he wants to go to Cornwall if you don’t.”

  “Well, angel, take him. I shall be all right here. Mrs. Ditch looked after me before I was married, and she can look after me again.”

  “Yes, but I can’t let you go on, year after year, without a holiday, can I, Aunt Adela? It isn’t reasonable.”

  “The thing is,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that he wants a different kind of holiday from the one you suggest.”

  “Well, he can have it, but I won’t go off and leave him here by himself.”

  “Slosh and balderdash.”

  “It isn’t. Would you go for a holiday on your own?”

  “Yes. There’s a holiday I’ve always wanted to have—tramping around painting inn-signs.”

  “A very good idea,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly. “And if it will ease your mind, child, I’ll remain here for a bit, and keep an eye on the pigs.”

  “I say! You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “With the greatest of pleasure. I, too, need a holiday. I will study the psychology of pigs instead of that of German-Jewish refugees.”

  “Comparisons are odious,” observed Carey, leaning over and putting his fist on to his son’s chest. The baby crowed and wriggled. Mrs. Bradley grinned.

  “A fortnight, then?” said Carey, turning his head. “How’s that, Jenny? And then, if you like, I’ll come for a week to Cornwall?”

  “No, you needn’t. I know you don’t want to. You can come back here at the end of the fortnight and cuddle your beastly pigs.”

  •2•

  Mr. Bassin got up at half-past ten, having perused the galleys carefully for the third time, looked at the glass downstairs in the parlour now entitled the lounge, tapped it, decided that the day would be wet, and went upstairs again for his mackintosh, which he had slung over his towel-rail, he remembered.

  The chambermaid had removed it from this unorthodox place, and had hung it up for him. By the time he reached the lounge again he found that it was occupied by a stranger. A man of about his own age or a little more was standing on the white hearth of the huge old fireplace, and was gazing up the chimney. As Bassin came down the last dog’s-leg bend of the staircase, the stranger turned round and emerged, but did not look in Bassin’s direction.

  “Pint of beer, please,” he said, pulling out a pipe.

  “Sorry I can’t serve you,” said Bassin, “but there’s a bell just to your right.”

  The other man looked up, his finger poised above the bowl. He laughed. He was thin and of about middle height, had dark-blue eyes, dark hair, and an unshaven but attractively lean face.

  “Oh—hullo!” he said. “I take it that you are not the proprietor, then?”

  “Staying here, that’s all.”


  “Ah! Good place to stay?”

  “Quite. Very good, in fact.”

  “Ah! Beer for you, too?”

  “All right, thanks, I think I will. Although I’ve only just got up, as a matter of fact.”

  “Stout chap. I am not a believer in early rising, either.”

  “Oh, I’m generally up before this. I’ve been working in bed, that’s all.”

  “Working?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  The maid came at this moment, so they broke off to order the beer. When they had received it, and the girl had disappeared again, Bassin said, a little awkwardly:

  “I’d like to tell you about it. You don’t come from these parts, do you?”

  “No. Stanton St. John in Oxfordshire.”

  “Know anybody around here?”

  “Yes, my old housemaster. Retired.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. I don’t think the thing is a secret. Anyway, it’s been in the papers for a week.”

  “Not the local murder?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Meaning to say you done it?”

  “My father is Mr. Carn’s solicitor. I was the bloke who, in the newspaper parlance, had had my first introduction (my second, actually) to the fatal room that very afternoon.”

  “So you’re What’s-his-name?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were to have been given the missing cash-box and the anonymous letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “But before you returned from wiring to your father that you wouldn’t be home that night, somebody jumped through the window and—”

  “Yes. You seem to have a pretty good idea of the thing.”

  “I’ve an aunt in the business. Ever heard of Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley?”

  “Of course. Everybody has. You don’t mean you’ve got her in the family?”

  “Rather. Right in its bosom, too. We’re all very fond of Aunt Adela. My name’s Lestrange. I’m on her first husband’s side. Ferdinand Lestrange is my cousin.”