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by Gladys Mitchell

  Titles by Gladys Mitchell

  Speedy Death (1929)

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop (1929)

  The Longer Bodies (1930)

  The Saltmarsh Murders (1932)

  Death at the Opera (1934)

  The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935)

  Dead Men’s Morris (1936)

  Come Away, Death (1937)

  St. Peter’s Finger (1938)

  Printer’s Error (1939)

  Brazen Tongue (1940)

  Hangman’s Curfew (1941)

  When Last I Died (1941)

  Laurels Are Poison (1942)

  Sunset Over Soho (1943)

  The Worsted Viper (1943)

  My Father Sleeps (1944)

  The Rising of the Moon (1945)

  Here Comes a Chopper (1946)

  Death and the Maiden (1947)

  The Dancing Druids (1948)

  Tom Brown’s Body (1949)

  Groaning Spinney (1950)

  The Devil’s Elbow (1951)

  The Echoing Strangers (1952)

  Merlin’s Furlong (1953)

  Faintley Speaking (1954)

  On Your Marks (1954)

  Watson’s Choice (1955)

  Twelve Horses and the Hangman’s Noose (1956)

  The Twenty-Third Man (1957)

  Spotted Hemlock (1958)

  The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959)

  Say It with Flowers (1960)

  The Nodding Canaries (1961)

  My Bones Will Keep (1962)

  Adders on the Heath (1963)

  Death of a Delft Blue (1964)

  Pageant of Murder (1965)

  The Croaking Raven (1966)

  Skeleton Island (1967)

  Three Quick and Five Dead (1968)

  Dance to Your Daddy (1969)

  Gory Dew (1970)

  Lament for Leto (1971)

  A Hearse on May-Day (1972)

  The Murder of Busy Lizzie (1973)

  A Javelin for Jonah (1974)

  Winking at the Brim (1974)

  Convent on Styx (1975)

  Late, Late in the Evening (1976)

  Noonday and Night (1977)

  Fault in the Structure (1977)

  Wraiths and Changelings (1978)

  Mingled with Venom (1978)

  Nest of Vipers (1979)

  The Mudflats of the Dead (1979)

  Uncoffin’d Clay (1980)

  The Whispering Knights (1980)

  The Death-Cap Dancers (1981)

  Lovers, Make Moan (1981)

  Here Lies Gloria Mundy (1982)

  Death of a Burrowing Mole (1982)

  The Greenstone Griffins (1983)

  Cold, Lone and Still (1983)

  No Winding-Sheet (1984)

  The Crozier Pharaohs (1984)

  Gladys Mitchell writing as Malcolm Torrie

  Heavy as Lead (1966)

  Late and Cold (1967)

  Your Secret Friend (1968)

  Shades of Darkness (1970)

  Bismarck Herrings (1971)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © The Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1939

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer Seattle 2013

  www.apub.com

  First published Great Britain in 1939 by Michael Joseph

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  E-ISBN: 9781477868805

  A Note about this E-Book

  The text of this book has been preserved from the original British edition and includes British vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation, some of which may differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, with only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1 The House by the Brook

  CHAPTER 2 The Travelling Sign-Painter

  CHAPTER 3 The Packing Department

  CHAPTER 4 Private Investigation

  CHAPTER 5 The Corpse on the Coke-Heap

  CHAPTER 6 The Case of William Prynne

  CHAPTER 7 The House on the Ridge

  CHAPTER 8 The Nudist Sanctuary

  CHAPTER 9 The Written Word Remains

  CHAPTER 10 Psychological Evidence

  CHAPTER 11 External Evidence

  CHAPTER 12 Conclusions of an Expert

  CHAPTER 13 The Moving Finger

  CHAPTER 14 The Margin of Error

  About the Author

  • CHAPTER 1 •

  The House by the Brook

  “But at that Dolorous and awful Stroke the castle racked and rove throughout, and all the walls fell crashed and breaking to the earth…”

  •1•

  Behind the market cross there was a horse-trough, and almost at the southern end of the horse-trough was the only public telephone box in the village except for the two in the post office. Beside the box there was a long path leading, beside a swift-flowing brook, to the church.

  Children and lovers haunted the path by the brook, each to some extent impeding the other in the prosecution of what appeared to both to be necessary and desirable ends. An occasional nursemaid sat on a seat and read paper-backed literature or did a little spasmodic knitting, and Mr. Justus Bassin walked alertly down the middle of the path except at such times as he was compelled to step aside to avoid bumping into a pram or kicking over a jam-jar full of water, sticklebacks, and minnows.

  Mr. Bassin was a solicitor, but did not look like one. His father was also a solicitor, and he had taken Justus into the business some year and a half previously, and was as proud of his athletic prowess as of his brains. The alert energy and long swift strides of the young man took him rapidly past the village school, which had been erected in 1892 on the opposite side of the brook; past a long paddock with a solitary lamb, attached by rope to a large kennel; past a stretch of waste, lush land which lay at the bottom of somebody’s garden but was usually water-logged and boggy; past two white gates which gave on to white bridges, privately owned, and again led to gardens of large houses; past a small orchard on the opposite side to the brook, and so to his destination.

  This was a fine old house of mellowed brick reminiscent of peaches on sunny walls, and basking cats, and yellow wall-flowers, and one came upon it suddenly, like a gap in a grove of green.

  The front of the house faced the brook, which here was clean over stones and was walled in on the house side so that it could not encroach upon the close-cut lawn or the sweep of a semi-circular gravel path. This path was wide enough for a car, and, except for a narrow flower-bed, bordered the wall of the house.

  The garage could be approached only on foot, however, from the path Mr. Bassin was on, for the bridge was not wide enough for a car, neither was the footpath by which he had come. He paused upon sighting the house; then he opened the gate and crossed the three-plank bridge.

  He had been to the house once before—to a tennis party—but he had been a boy of sixteen then, and had but the vaguest recollection of his host and hostess. He did retain, however, a very vivid memory of their hospitality, which had been, in a schoolboy’s opinion, some of the very finest and most open-handed that he had ever experienced.

  It was with feelings o
f pleasure and ease of mind that he walked up to the wide front door, therefore, and it was with a considerable degree of confidence that he twisted the screw-like brass projection, which operated the door-bell.

  He heard the bell ring. There ensued that slight and scarcely appreciable interval in which a pretty maid-servant glances at her reflection and settles her cap, and then the door was opened and he was admitted.

  He was, of course, expected, but he was scarcely prepared for the pretty maid to say, in the heartfelt tones which might properly he thought have been employed in addressing, perhaps, the family doctor, but hardly the youthful and inexperienced son of the family solicitor:

  “Oh, sir, we are so pleased to see you! Excuse me; I’ll run and tell them.”

  Moreover, run she literally did, for he saw her, his hat and his neat umbrella clutched in her hand. She was back in an instant, too.

  “This way, sir, please.” He could hear her slight catch of the breath on the last word, as though, instead of the usual courtesy, she was actually pleading with him not to turn tail and desert them.

  In spite of his so-far treacherous memory, he recognised his client’s wife as soon as he entered the large and gracious room. She was a woman of late middle age, almost as tall as he was, and with the kind of mature loveliness which young men like in women who are about the same age as their mothers; a gracious and beautiful woman who had been no stranger to sorrow and perhaps to hardship, and who had not been warped by either.

  “I’m so glad to see you, Justus,” she said simply. She gave him her hand, and then, still holding his, she led him over to one of the deep armchairs. “Sit down, while I tell you some more about our troubles.”

  She rang the bell, and ordered tea. It was then about half-past three.

  “We’ve been threatened, all of us, as I told you; the servants as well,” she said.

  “Villagers?”

  “I don’t think so. Neither does Fortinbras. I’m sorry to be so abrupt about it, but it’s worrying. I’ll get the letters and show you.”

  “Why don’t you go to the police?”

  “I did go, although Fortinbras said it was nonsense, and didn’t want to bother. They’ve promised to keep an eye on us, but I don’t feel safe. It’s too vague. The whole thing is vague. That’s why I don’t much like it. The threats are definite. You’ll see.”

  She went into the adjoining room through folding doors, and he heard her open a drawer.

  “Now,” she said, returning, “here we are.”

  He took the letters from her hand, and, before he opened them, asked:

  “How long have you been receiving these?”

  “For a fortnight. You’ll see by the postmarks, which are all quite clear.”

  He began to look at the envelopes.

  “I see that you’ve collected up the communications sent to the servants as well.”

  “Yes. One idea we have is that the person responsible for the letters doesn’t really intend to do us any physical harm; he only wants to annoy us by frightening our servants away—a horribly inconvenient thing nowadays, especially in a place like this, where girls prefer the Falshanger factories, anyway, to domestic service here in the village.”

  “Have you any clue to the identity of this person, by the way?” asked Mr. Bassin, lifting his clear eyes for a moment from their careful scrutiny of the envelopes. She smiled and shook her head.

  “You know what Fortinbras is like,” she said. “I think he’s one of the most opinionated, self-centred men I know. He’s a darling, but he’s very trying. He has a great many enemies—more, probably, than he knows.”

  “But no literary critic, however harsh, makes the kind of enemies who would threaten his life?” said Mr. Bassin, who had perused, by this time, two or three of the letters.

  “Oh, doesn’t he?” said the literary critic’s wife with a short laugh. “There are men, and women, too, in London, who would poison his cocktails tomorrow, if they knew how to do it without being found out.”

  “These letters, though,” went on the young solicitor, reading one or two more, “appear to be on the subject of one particular piece of work to which violent exception is taken. What is this Open-Bellied Mountain which is referred to so bitterly in the letters of June third and June fourth?”

  “Oh, it’s a book which Fortinbras is having printed privately. It must be the title which has upset somebody, I should imagine, because no one except ourselves and the printers know anything about it.”

  “The book is not in circulation yet, then?”

  “No. It’s at the printers’ now. Geoffrey Saxant and his refugee partner, Kurt Senss, are doing it. They are charging pretty steeply for it, too, because they don’t really want to be bothered with private orders for a hundred copies on handmade paper. It isn’t in their line, and they say it won’t pay them, even at the price they are charging. They’ve only accepted the job to oblige Fortinbras, although he doesn’t believe it.”

  “Then, if it’s not even published, and if the impression is limited to a hundred copies—”

  “I know. We’ve racked our brains, and made lists and lists of the most improbable people as well as all those that we know have a grouse, but—” She shrugged her shoulders. “Besides,” she added, “it isn’t only the ‘Mountain’ book. You’ll see.”

  At this moment tea was brought in.

  “Oh, Ethel,” said her mistress, “you might bring me the locked cash-box, which is on the dressing chest in Mr. Carn’s room.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  The box, when it came, proved to be about two feet long, a foot wide, and nine or ten inches high.

  “Corrected galleys of the book,” Mrs. Carn explained. “I want you to take charge of this, if you will. The other corrected copy is already in the hands of the printers. Fortinbras is very anxious you should have charge of it.”

  Surprised by the commission, young Mr. Bassin agreed to take over the cash-box, and it was placed near his chair on the floor. His hostess then took the key of the box out of a large vase on the mantelpiece and handed it to him.

  “You may like to have a look at the proofs,” she suggested, “when you get to London. They are an exact copy of the book as it is to be published.”

  “Have the police seen these letters?”

  “Yes, they’ve seen all of them, and Fortinbras has let them keep copies. He wanted to keep the originals himself. We have received none since Wednesday. The last one, as you see, is addressed to Fortinbras, and gives him a week in which to cancel the order for the printing.”

  “And there is a clause about the destiny of the proofs, I see. The anonymous writer wants to destroy them himself.”

  “Yes. Or—herself. Fortinbras is disliked by a great many people of both sexes. I refer to the literary world, of course.”

  “Quite,” said Bassin, nodding.

  “Ah, but I want to emphasise that,” she added. “My husband is a good man in many ways, Justus. His social work, for instance. It isn’t generally known, but he takes a deep and genuinely humanitarian interest in social experiments. It’s only his own kind who hate him.”

  “Yes.” Bassin raised his eyes again when he had folded the last letter and had put it back in the envelope. He drank some tea and ate a piece of bread and butter slowly and thoughtfully, as though he were solemnly weighing all that he had read and she had said. Actually he was doing nothing of the sort. He was merely racking his brain to discover, if he could, why Mrs. Carn had sent for him at all, and why, if the answer to that question was that she wished him to take official charge of the corrected proofs in the cash-box, she had not brought them to London herself, for she had been in Town two days previously. If she merely wanted them taken care of, as simple a plan, he thought, would have been to lodge them at the bank.

  “I expect you wonder why I’ve brought you down here,” she remarked, taking his cup to give him some more tea. “I’ll tell you: I would have brought the proofs and the letter
s to you on Thursday, when I came up to Town to do some shopping, but that Fortinbras absolutely forbade it. He’s more perturbed about the letters, I believe, than he wants to show. He’s afraid I might be attacked if it were known that I was carrying them.”

  “The thing is,” said young Mr. Bassin—making a statement which his wiser, more wily, more experienced father certainly would not have made—“that you’re keeping information from me, Mrs. Carn. There’s more behind this than just these threatening letters. Why don’t you tell me all you can?”

  She handed him a plate of cakes, watched him select one, waited until it was on his plate, and then said calmly:

  “Yes, there is more. It isn’t that I intend to keep anything from you, but it’s difficult to explain. I’m afraid it will sound fantastic.”

  “I think the threats themselves are fantastic, Mrs. Carn.”

  “Do you? I see what you mean. It’s what I said—they’re vague.”

  “No. I find them explicit. Take this very first letter for instance. It says:

  “‘Do you know what happened to William Prynne?”’

  “Yes.”

  “Now take one of those received by the servants. It doesn’t really matter which. All of them are much the same. This one reads:

  “‘Would you like to see your master’s ears?’”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, putting those two letters together—or any other two or more that you like to pick out—”

  He removed all the letters—there were thirteen of them—from their envelopes, flattened a cushion, placed it beside him on the high end of the settee, and spread the letters out on it—“what do we get? Threats, certainly. What we may call veiled threats. They all refer to one particular case, the case of William Prynne, the Puritan pamphleteer of the reign of Charles I, who lost his ears, was branded, fined, imprisoned, and put to death for his persistence in writing and publishing tracts. That’s so, isn’t it?”

  “So Fortinbras says. That’s why we’re pretty sure that it’s this book which is the root of the trouble.”

  “I don’t see why you should make that deduction. I can’t see that these letters point to the book any more than to any other of Mr. Carn’s writings to which someone may have taken exception. Isn’t it more likely that something already published and in print has roused this sort of feeling than something that is still at the printers? Unless, as I say, you haven’t told me everything.”