“You spoke, love?” said her nephew, taking out his handkerchief and ostentatiously mopping his brow, to the great delight of a couple of girls who were giggling their way round the art gallery.
“I was about to suggest that I would prefer that you were not forcibly ejected from this place until we have visited the adjoining room,” remarked Mrs. Bradley gently.
“I, forcibly ejected? You’re thinking of pubs. Pubs are respectable. It doesn’t matter what you do here.”
“Nevertheless,” said his aunt, bestowing on the gigglers such a demoniac grin that they were alarmed, and made for the archway into the next room, “I feel that you will be much more usefully employed in preserving a calm and judicial demeanour in the face of these extraordinary monstrosities than if you pursue your present hypersensitive course of behaviour. You are to make it your duty to catch my eye whenever you see Mr. Carn. You saw him at the Sanctuary, and ought to know him again.”
“Just as you say, love.” He composed his handsome features, and held her hand tightly. Mrs. Bradley replied with a sudden steel pressure of her claw-like fingers, which made him gasp, and then led him to the next picture. This was called “Rail Guage” and, looking earnestly at it, Carey was eerily aware that behind the turnip lantern, which was the central note of the composition, something alive—a guinea pig, rabbit, or monkey—was restlessly scuffling. Occasionally an eye or a nibbling mouth could be seen through one of the crudely-cut holes in the turnip, which, in any case, happened to be a giant swede.
“Oh, dear! It needs the R.S.P.C.A.” said Jenny, standing in some distress of mind before the exhibit. Carey, however, had had his attention distracted. He touched his aunt’s arm.
“Surely that’s the inspector from Falshanger?” he said very quietly in her ear.
“Yes, child. Somewhere else in the galleries are Jonathan Mabb, at least three constables, a Scotland Yard detective, and our dear Justus.” She refused to say any more, and the little party of three wandered from revolting to merely puzzling exhibits, and from the obscene to the ludicrous, until, in Mrs. Bradley’s opinion, they had made a thorough survey of the room.
They then passed through an archway into the adjoining room. Here there were four large and many smaller works. Carey again slid his hand into that of his aunt. She gave it gentle pressure this time, and said very quietly:
“Where?”
“The south wall looks the most likely,” said Carey, who had a painter’s appreciation of the cardinal points of the compass.
“Yes, I thought so,” his aunt remarked, standing before a kind of grotto in which a catheter and a volume of Carlyle’s French Revolution gave quite a striking point to the title of the composition. This, painted above and below the amber bulb in a beautifully-constructed “Stop and Go” traffic lights model, which was worked by means of a small electric motor, was “Erewhon Re-visited.”
The exhibit on the south wall was larger. On a stretch of what looked like deep sand—it was raised to a depth of some four feet from the floor, and was probably feathers of down sprinkled with a layer of sand, lay three human heads, a large bunch of bananas, and several alarm clocks. The background piece was a painting of sheep, apparently grazing up the pillars of the Acropolis. All three heads on the sand were closely shaved, and the skulls gleamed white except where purple spots had been painted on them. The eyes of all three were closed, and the corpse-like effect had been further enhanced by the fact that not only were the heads shaved, but the eyebrows had also disappeared. Horror had then been achieved by the painting, also in purple, of a thick square on each face. This seemed to cut up the faces so that recognition of them would have been extremely difficult. The nostrils were touched in, rather horribly, with red. The lips were apart and were thickly coated with purple, and the eyelids were blackened with grease.
Leaving Carey to admire this striking exhibit, which was entitled “Keats with a Fawn,” Mrs. Bradley and Jenny moved on to the next, and gradually worked round to the opening, where they paused for a second before they continued their inspection. Carey, turning, caught his aunt’s eye, and nodded.
The police, answering Mrs. Bradley’s brief but prearranged signal, now came through the archway.
“Mr. Carn is on the right of the picture,” said Mrs. Bradley, pointing to the heads. “His are the ears filled with sand.”
About the Author
Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.
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