The Crozier Pharaohs (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Dame Beatrice saw an obstinate, rather stupid woman, but one who, underneath a belligerent exterior, was as frightened as a bewildered child. She said briskly, “That’s settled, then. A cup of coffee, since Bryony will not wish to drink and drive, and you should have Susan back, my dear Bryony, in good time in the morning, although later than usual because of the length of the journey and, of course, my chauffeur’s beauty sleep.”

  8

  Kennel-Maid

  “The police have an awful way of making you feel you’ve got a guilty conscience,” said Susan, when Bryony had gone.

  “It’s the basis of all the brainwashing techniques,” said Laura. “Once an interrogator can get the guilt complex going, the rest is easy.”

  “Everybody has a guilty conscience, if they have a conscience at all,” said Dame Beatrice. “I am inclined to think that consciences of the kind we mean do not exist in some of the present generation. To what aspect of your own conscience did the police appeal?”

  It appeared that the cat and mouse dialogue which had taken place between Susan and Detective-Inspector Harrow with Detective-Sergeant Callum taking notes had hinged first of all on the time factor.

  “What time did you get up here to Crozier Lodge that particular morning, miss, when you saw the body in the river?”

  “The usual time, somewhere between six and half-past. I don’t know exactly, but, yes, much as usual. The others will tell you if you ask them.”

  “You were seen to leave your cottage at just before five, miss. Does it really take you more than an hour to get from there to Abbots Crozier?”

  “Of course not. I did leave the cottage just about five. I went for a bathe in the pool. I often do at this time of year. I came up to Crozier Lodge after I was dried and dressed.”

  “Would you mind telling us what you were wearing when you went for your swim, miss?”

  “My cottage is quite near the pool, so I had a rainproof over my bikini and rope-soled shoes on my feet.”

  “No hat, miss?”

  “Why on earth should I need a hat? My hair is short, so I don’t even wear a swimming cap. I just wash the salt water out when I get home. Anyway, I don’t possess a hat.”

  “You were seen to leave your cottage, but you did not return to it until the evening after you had spent the usual day here at Crozier Lodge.”

  “Because I wasn’t seen to go back after my swim does not mean that I didn’t go back, does it?”

  “There was a man fishing off the jetty early in the morning, miss. He swears there was nobody in the pool before seven.”

  “He wouldn’t be looking towards the pool if he was on the end of the jetty.”

  “There was another chap, a holidaymaker, out with a local boatman. They didn’t see anybody in the pool, either.”

  “Why should they? The sea wall round the pool is quite high and their boat would have been a long way offshore.”

  “When you got to Crozier Lodge, miss, did you meet a man in the garden before you went up to the house?”

  “Certainly not. I should soon have asked him his business if I had. Nobody ever comes up to the house. Isis and Nephthys are often loose in the garden and people round here are afraid of the hounds.”

  “Would you have any objection to accompanying us to your cottage, miss, and letting us have a look round?”

  “Oh, Lord! It’s in a bit of a mess. I’m not a very tidy person and I hate housework.”

  “We’re not critics of housekeeping, miss. We have no authority to search your premises, but it might look a bit like obstruction if you refuse to give us the facilities we ask for.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No, miss. I’ll come clean with you. We are by no means satisfied with the verdict which was given at the inquest and nor are a lot of people. Matters have been brought to our notice which need some explaining. We shall get at the truth in the end, but meanwhile a bit of co-operation from anybody who is in a position to help us will be welcome.”

  “But I’m not in a position to help you. I don’t know a thing except that I was unlucky enough to be the person who found that man’s body in the river and, because of that, I’ve been hounded and harassed ever since. It’s most unfair.”

  “From what we have been told, you did alter one of your usual habits, miss. Instead of going straight up to this house, you went to a shed in the garden to look at one of the dogs. Why did you do that?”

  “I thought I heard Sekhmet whining. I thought there might be something wrong with her.”

  “And you found she wasn’t there at all, so you could hardly have heard her whining.”

  “When I found she wasn’t there I went up to the house to tell Bryony and Morpeth—to tell the two Miss Rants—and then I went straight off to search for the dog. That’s when I found that drowned man. And I did go swimming earlier, whether anybody saw me or not.”

  “So, of course, we went to my cottage,” said Susan to Dame Beatrice. “There was no reason for me to refuse. When we got there, the first thing the detective said was that he had noticed I didn’t keep my back door locked when I was out. I had taken them in by the back way because I always go in and out by the back door. My front door faces the sea, so the back door’s that much nearer the cliff path. Nobody locks up in Abbots Bay until bedtime. There is nothing in my cottage worth stealing, anyway.”

  “Did they find any hats?” asked Laura.

  “As a matter of fact, they did. The detective-inspector stayed with me downstairs while his sergeant did the searching. There was a hat on the shelf in my wardrobe and, what I suppose they thought was worse, a piece of cloth which could be part of the waistband of a pair of trousers, although it could have been from a skirt. I insisted that the hat was not mine and I put it on to prove my point. Talk about a pimple on a doughnut! It could have been a doll’s hat when I perched it on my head. You will notice that I have a big, wide cranium. Well, the hat just perched on top of it, as I said. There is a mirror in my sitting-room, so, when I had put it on at their request, I took a peep. Honestly, you never saw anything so ridiculous.”

  The police, Susan went on to say, were forced to believe that the hat need not be her property. She suggested that it had been planted on her and pointed out that they had seen for themselves that anybody could enter the cottage while she was out of it during the daylight hours and she added that, if the hat had been left in the cottage, the piece of trousering could have been left at the same time.

  “They had to admit that this could be true,” she said, “but they stuck to their point that, although I had been seen to leave the cottage earlier than I had admitted when they talked to me on the day I found the body, I could give them no proof that I had gone for a swim and then had tramped up to Crozier Lodge at my usual time.”

  “And did the piece of cloth provide any evidence?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “No. It was the same colour and, from what I could remember, the same material as the trousers Sekhmet was guarding when I found her and the dead man, but there was no maker’s mark or anything else on it. There seemed no reason why anybody should have chopped it out of the waistband, still less why I should have pushed it into a drawer where the sergeant said he found it.”

  “I believe you know a man by the name of Adams who lives on the moor. Has this Adams any reason to wish harm to you?”

  “Not so far as I know. I don’t personally pay him for the rabbits he gives the Rants or provide him with any food, but I have always called Bryony or Morpeth when he comes to Crozier Lodge, so he never goes away with empty pockets or an empty belly. I can’t do more than that. It isn’t my business to pay him or feed him.”

  There was a long pause before Dame Beatrice said very gently, “You did not really go for a swim that morning.”

  Susan looked at her sharply and then at Laura. An expression of mulish obstinacy came over her large, unattractive countenance. Her small, green eyes became wary and her heavy jaw was firmly set. When s
he spoke, she said sullenly, “If you’re not going to believe me, we may as well leave it at that.”

  “I am always prepared to listen to the truth,” said Dame Beatrice. “It is clear that you were seen to leave the cottage at a very early hour that morning. It is equally clear that unbiased persons, who had every opportunity to do so, did not see you in the pool, and nobody saw you return to the cottage until the evening.”

  “How do you know the fisherman and the man in the boat were unbiased? Everybody makes enemies. There are people around who don’t like me much.”

  “Why don’t you come clean with us?” demanded Laura. “Seems to me you’re in a bit of a spot. We don’t dislike you. Open up and stop gumming the works.”

  “That’s what that damned policeman said. Well, it amounted to that. He said he would tell me something they had found out from Adams. He said Adams had told them he had gone early to Crozier Lodge with some rabbits for the hounds, but, as nobody was up and about, he had left them in the postbox because the back door was locked, so he couldn’t get into the kitchen. Well, that was true enough. Bryony found the rabbits when she went down to take in the milk. What may or may not be true is the rest of Adams’s story.”

  “You mean that Adams told the police that he had seen two people talking together in the grounds of Crozier Lodge that morning? We had that story from my chauffeur, who met Adams in the Crozier Arms,” said Dame Beatrice. “I sent him to make an enquiry about hats, but he came back with a tale of five rabbits. Oh, well, there is an established connection between hats and rabbits, as every amateur conjurer knows.”

  “A rabbit might eat the hat the detective-sergeant found in my cottage,” said Susan, perking up as though she felt an easing of the tension. “It was made of straw.”

  “Whereas, according to the description of it which Adams gave to George, the hat worn in the garden of Crozier Lodge was likely to have been of felt or tweed. Can you think of anybody who might have been calling so early in the morning?”

  “No, I can’t. Nobody ever calls. They’re afraid of the Pharaohs.”

  “A strange man who gave me his name as Robin Goodfellow also claims to be a Pharaoh. He introduced himself at first as Ozymandias, king of kings, as in Shelley’s poem.”

  “Oh, yes, the Rants have mentioned him once or twice. They thought he was a nutcase. Whether he was or not, he was a stranger in the place or he would never have dared to walk up to the door. As for Adams, well, so far as his story goes, I think he could have made the whole thing up. He’s quite capable of inventing a tissue of lies. He’s lied himself out of trouble often enough when he’s been charged with poaching.”

  “I see no reason, though, why he should lie in the circumstances we are discussing. He saw what may have been two strangers in the Rants’ grounds and he had a legitimate reason for being in the grounds himself that morning. The rabbits the Rant sisters found in their postbox are proof of it.”

  “Oh, as to rabbits, if he can’t supply them—and we don’t always get them, even when he’s got any, because he can get a better price for prime young plump ones from the butcher in Axehead—we can always purchase them elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?”

  “Yes, elsewhere. The hounds are partial to rabbit.”

  “Will you tell me how you came to team up with the Rant sisters?”

  “By accident, in a way.”

  “We also came to know them by accident, or, rather, because of an accident in which their car was involved.”

  “Mine wasn’t that kind of accident; it was because of a row in a shop between the shopkeeper and Morpeth. Had Bryony been there, I would not have been needed, but Morpeth is not very tough and the shopkeeper turned bad-tempered with her. Can’t remember what it was all about, but I think she had brought back a chicken which was getting a bit too ripe. The tradesmen won’t go to Crozier Lodge, otherwise Bryony would soon send the goods to the rightabout if they weren’t up to sample; so poor old Morpeth gets the job of taking anything back to the shop if it isn’t what’s wanted because mostly she is the one who has been fobbed off with it in the first place.”

  “So you came to her rescue in this instance?”

  “Yes. Then we got into conversation and the upshot was that I went back with her to Crozier Lodge and offered to help with the hounds and they accepted.”

  “Up to that time, your time was your own, I take it. I wonder how you occupied yourself before you joined forces with the two sisters? Were you alone in the world?”

  Susan told her story. She and her elder brother had been orphaned at a very early age—or else they had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Whichever it was, they had been taken into care by the county authority and, later, Susan had been separated from her brother, fostered, and then adopted by the late vicar of Axehead, Abbots Bay, and Abbots Crozier. When his wife died she had looked after the ageing man, and on his retirement in favour of a younger incumbent had moved with him into a local cottage, which he had since left to her by will. She had continued to live in the cottage after his death.

  What money he left also came to her and, although it was not much, it brought her a tiny income which she had eked out by doing casual work, sometimes fruit picking or other harvesting jobs, sometimes as a domestic help, sometimes working in the hotels in Abbots Bay and Abbots Crozier.

  “So you knew all about the Rant sisters before you joined them,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “I knew their father got himself a bad name because a couple of his patients died. There was a lot of trouble about one of them in particular. You hear so much gossip when you go from one job to another, as I was doing. There were rumours that Dr. Rant had had to leave his practice in the Midlands for much the same kind of reason and, of course, that story blossomed and it was suspected that the Midlands patient had been conned into leaving him her money. You never know where scandalmongering will stop when once tongues start wagging.”

  It was clear that the conversation had come to an end so far as Susan was concerned. Dinner was served and Susan, who had eaten her meal almost in silence, retired early to bed. On the following morning, she was sent off in the car, driven by George.

  “Well,” said Laura, when she had waved Susan goodbye from the front steps of the Stone House, “where do we go from here? If she didn’t go swimming that morning, where did she go?”

  “I think we had better take it as a working hypothesis that she may have gone to Crozier Lodge, that there she may have met this man who had spent the night in the room above the garage, and that then she may have taken Sekhmet to Watersmeet and left her there—”

  “And on the excuse of going to look for the dog, she could have met the man again and killed him?”

  “I do not know. If she did, it will be necessary for the police to find out what previous connection they had had with one another. Until the man is identified, that will be impossible, I think.”

  “The non-fit hat and the useless piece of trouser-band could have been planted by Susan herself for the police to find, I suppose,” said Laura. “She could prove the hat was quite the wrong size and the bit of material gave nothing away. If it was proved that she did plant them with intention to deceive, that would about cook her goose.”

  “I think I would like a word with the poacher myself. Now that George has paved the way with largesse, the man should not be unwilling to talk to me.”

  Dame Beatrice refused to have Laura accompany her to the shack and timed her arrival for four in the afternoon—an hour, she decided, when all sensible poachers and other night-birds would be at home catching up on their sleep.

  Adams came to the door with the lurcher at his heels and no very friendly expression on his face. He said in surly tones that he did not want any magazines or tracts and was C. of E. Dame Beatrice cackled and said that her own prejudice concerning religious literature coincided with his and, indicating the briefcase she was carrying, added that all she had come for was an exchange of opinio
ns concerning the Rant sisters and any information about them which he was willing to supply.

  “For a consideration, of course,” she added. “I hope that you possess two chairs which you are prepared to place out here on the moor. One likes to be outdoors in this extremely pleasant weather.”

  “Ah, the shack do stink,” he agreed. “’Tis the bitch and the rabbits, and I’ve had a hare hanging up. What sort of consideration would you have in mind, mum?”

  “I would prefer to do that kind of thinking when I have put my questions to you. I ought to warn you that I have made contact with a journalist who interviewed you at the Crozier Arms recently, so I shall be able to check your statements to some extent. I want facts, not fairytales.”

  “Not over-civil, be you?”

  “Bring out the chairs and let us get down to business. Neither of us, I imagine, has time to waste.”

  “I wonder a little old lady like you has the nerve to come out to a place like this on your own and tell a man you reckons he’s a liar, given half the chance, specially when you got money on you.”

  “Oh, as to that,” said Dame Beatrice, slipping a hand into a pocket and producing a small revolver, “I usually travel with what the American gangsters used to refer to as the old equaliser. An apt name for a gun, don’t you think?”

  At this he grinned, saluted with mock ceremonial, went indoors, and a few moments later they were seated out on the moors with bees busy in the early heather of the south-west and the flies rising in the bracken. The lurcher remained indoors, shut away from the conference.

  Whether it was because she had already heard the story from George or for some other reason, Adams repeated to Dame Beatrice what he had told the so-called reporter and, incidentally, what he had told the police, although he did not mention this. When she had heard the account, she began to question him. The poacher answered readily enough, although he told her that most of his knowledge had been gained by hearsay and not by personal experience. “Me not having no sort of use for a doctor,” he explained. “When I got anything wrong I cures it meself, same like me father before me. Never knoo me mother. I don’t reckon her and me dad was ever married—”