The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

CHAPTER XV

The Culminster Collection Acquires a New Specimen

I

TWELVE little girls and three little boys lined themselves up at the crossroads and waited for Felicity Broome.

‘Now don’t forget to look behind the Roman shield,’ was Mrs Bradley’s parting injunction, ‘and not a single word to anybody about what you see. Good-bye, my dear. I should like to come with you, but there are several little jobs I must attend to this morning. Give the dear children my kind regards, and see that they all have something they like for tea. That’s the main part of an outing to children – that and the ride in the bus.’

She waved to the party until the bus turned a corner, and on the way back to her house she encountered the inspector. Grindy looked warm and felt worried. He was making no appreciable headway with the case, and he was resolute in refusing to arrest James Redsey without some proof either that he had dismembered the body or else that he had found an accomplice to carry out that part of the crime. Failing to prove either of these things, and irritably conscious that the chief constable of the county had already been twice to talk matters over with the superintendent at Bossbury, his deputy, the inspector was a moody and disgruntled man. Scotland Yard had been mentioned, and Grindy had all the provincial police officer’s dislike of handing his cases over to the Yard for solution. The public, however, was becoming restless. Local magnates were writing letters to the County Times and the Bossbury Herald. The superintendent had given up clicking his tongue sympathetically every time Grindy reported his complete lack of progress, and was beginning to avoid his comrade’s eye and mutter remarks concerning ‘lack of initiative in making an arrest’, and ‘doing something to shut the mouths of fatheads who didn’t realize what the police were up against’, and – even less encouraging to a conscientious police officer who had won his present position through efficiency, keenness, hard work, and scrupulously just dealing – ‘no good being a thin-skinned sissy when it came to a clear case of murder. Make an arrest and stick to your guns!’

Grindy, however, was staunch to his own opinion. In his heart of hearts he felt that the case against James Redsey had broken down. A man of few words, he contented himself with grunts of disagreement with the superintendent’s opinions, and occasionally by the terse statement that he was damned if he would arrest a man on assumptions that could be blown to bits before they ever reached the ears of a grand jury. Assumptions were not facts. It was facts he was after.

The superintendent lost his temper, and said some hard things. It was when Grindy was walking from Bossbury into Wandles Parva to relieve his feelings by some brisk physical exercise, and, incidentally, to find out whether the gardener Willows had a good and sufficient alibi for the evening and night in question, that he encountered Mrs Bradley.

‘Ah, inspector,’ she said. ‘If you will come to my house – you know it, don’t you? – the Stone House, just along the road there – I will give you a list of persons, one of whom is the murderer of Rupert Sethleigh – that is, supposing always that Rupert Sethleigh is dead. The last is a theory not yet proved satisfactorily, I believe.’

The inspector treated her to a wintry smile.

‘If you’re pulling my leg, madam,’ he said, ‘my advice is for you to leave off. I don’t feel much like joking about this murder, and that’s a fact.’

‘Why don’t you arrest James Redsey? Everybody thinks he killed his cousin, you know.’

‘Then everybody is a fool, even if it includes yourself, madam,’ retorted the inspector rudely.

Mrs Bradley put out her hand and grasped the inspector’s massive paw.

‘A Daniel come to judgment!’ she observed, with a little squeal of laughter which made the stolid officer stare at her in perplexity.

‘Have you really got hold of anything, madam?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. But I have hopes! Such hopes!’ She cackled happily.

The inspector saluted and strode on. He then shook his head sadly. Poor old girl! She looked like being a case for a mental home before long. Harmless, though, he supposed. He came to the wicket gate leading into the mazes of the Manor Woods, and took the main path which led to the clearing. He thought he might as well have one more look at that damned Stone! . . . And there was that skull. Funny it should have disappeared. Wright must have moved it himself for a joke. . . .

Mrs Bradley had barely turned into the lane which led to her own front gate when she heard footsteps behind her. It was Aubrey Harringay, taking his mother’s darlings, the stout Marie and the snuffling Antoinette, out for a short walk.

‘I refuse,’ said Mrs Bradley with great decision, ‘to be pestered with those abortions. Take them away, little boy.’

Aubrey grinned, and promptly hitched the end of the lead to Mrs Bradley’s front gate. ‘They’ll be all right there for a minute,’ he said. ‘Loathsome little brutes! Old Jim hoofed Antoinette this morning. He’s in the mater’s black books in consequence. I wish she’d buy a decent dog – or let me have one. I had the offer of a four-months’ Great Dane puppy for eight and six last year, and she jolly well turned the deal down. Said it would probably eat these two hog-puddings by mistake.’ He cast a jaundiced look at the apples of his mother’s eyes as they sprawled obscenely in the dust and lolled their tongues out.

‘Hog-puddings,’ said Mrs Bradley thoughtfully, ‘reminds me of something. Did Rupert Sethleigh have his flannels made by a tailor or did he buy them ready-made?’

‘His whites would be tailored, of course, but I dare-say he bought a couple of pairs of grey ones from an outfitter’s.’

‘You don’t know for certain, do you? Would your mother know?’

‘I could find out. I’ll go and dig into his wardrobe. Will that do?’

‘I don’t know. I can tell you that when you bring me the result of your findings.’

‘It’s a queer thing,’ said Aubrey thoughtfully, ‘about grey flannel bags. A chap can almost always wear another chap’s greys. I suppose they are built a bit slackly or something. I’ve worn old Rupert’s, which are too big in the seat; I’ve worn old Jim’s, which are too big everywhere; I’ve bagged chaps’ at school when I couldn’t find my own; and chaps have bagged mine and worn ’em. And yet, somehow, they seem to look much about the same when you’ve got ’em on.’

‘A point,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘which I had imagined might possibly be raised by someone other than myself, a point which I had hoped might be raised and a point which I intend to bring to the immediate notice of Inspector Grindy, who is a peculiarly worthy man and deserves a little preferential treatment.’

‘A good chap,’ said Aubrey earnestly. ‘Hundreds of chaps in his place would have arrested old Jim ages ago, but old Grindy hangs on. A dashed noble fellow, if you ask me.’

‘To-morrow,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘I want you to take me up to the top of the old Observation Tower. I want to have a look round. Take the Armenian atrocities away now. I’m going to pay a call on the Saviles, and another on Dr Barnes. No, you can’t come, but I shall enjoy your company to-morrow, dear child. Oh, and I want to see the vicar. Go round that way home, there’s a sweet fellow, and ask him to spare me five minutes in three-quarters of an hour’s time. Thank you so much.’

Savile was in the back garden again when Mrs Bradley arrived. To her amazement, he was standing at the head of a small hole with an open book in his hand, an expression of unctuous piety upon his sallow face and a clerical collar round his neck.

Wright put his head out of the kitchen door just as Mrs Bradley approached. He gazed at his friend in amazement.

‘What the devil are you doing now?’ he cried.

Savile gazed at him benignly.

‘I am interring Lulu’s canary,’ he said solemnly. ‘It has passed away.’

‘You’re a blasphemous idiot!’ said Wright, half angry at the mockery, half tickled by the absurdity of the scene. ‘What’s that book?’

Savile glanced at the volume in his hand.

‘It is called Hints to Bird-Lovers,’ he replied.

Mrs Bradley pursed up her lips until she looked like a bird herself. Then she turned on her heel and retraced her steps. Wright waved his hand in a semi-derisive farewell. Savile, absorbed in his task, had not known of her approach, and did not hear the latch of the garden gate announcing her departure.

Mrs Bradley clicked her tongue.

Dr Barnes was dressing the wound of a farm labourer who had cut himself on a scythe, and Mrs Bradley was obliged to wait in the outer room until he had finished.

‘Well, what is it this time?’ asked the doctor, in his full-bodied, loud-voiced, robustly cheerful way.

‘Nothing much,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Can you give me something for a slight attack of indigestion?’

‘You haven’t got indigestion!’

‘No, I haven’t, I am thankful to say. But my new girl has – or else it’s homesickness. I do hope and trust,’ she continued piously, ‘that it is indigestion, for she really is rather a treasure. But perhaps it is homesickness, because she read me bits out of one of the family letters yesterday. Her sister has a new baby and she hasn’t seen it, and the grandfather already plays bears on the floor to amuse it, and the baby really seems pleased. Isn’t that charming?’ And she grinned hideously at him.

The doctor shot some bismuth tablets into a piece of paper, sealed up the ends, and scribbled on the outside with his fountain-pen.

‘Well, I can safely say I shall never play bears on the floor to delight my grandchildren,’ he said, handing her the small neat package. ‘Tell her to take them as the directions suggest, and to drink some hot water every morning. I never amused Margery in any such ponderously inane fashion – I don’t believe in pampering children by allowing them to see me make a fool of myself.’

‘Personally, I think that’s a pity,’ said Mrs Bradley brightly. ‘But still, no two people ever did agree on how to bring up children, and I don’t suppose they ever will. Thank you so much. Good-bye.’

She slipped the white packet into her capacious skirt pocket, and tramped briskly along to the Vicarage.

Mary Kate Maloney was preparing lunch.

‘To-day being Saturday,’ observed Mrs Bradley, ‘you would like to go into Bossbury with my new girl, who is rather homesick, and show her the sights of the town.’

‘Is it me to be going into Bossbury of a Saturday, Mrs Bradley, ma’am?’ cried the scandalized Mary Kate. ‘Sure, I won’t be allowed to do that same while the vicar has his health, which is more than I thought he would have when he come home to us that Sunday night all sopping wet and nearly drowned, through walking into the river near Culminster Bridge and himself deep in his thoughts and not heeding where he was walking at all.’

‘What?’ said Mrs Bradley, so sharply that Mary Kate started and almost cut her hand with the potato-knife. ‘When was this?’

‘’Tis the queer thing that I’m able to remember it,’ said Mary Kate, who was that mine of information, a keen gossip, ‘but it was the same Sunday night as that murder, so I wouldn’t forget the day in a hurry. Yes, right up to his neck he walked, and himself the sight for Mother Ruickeen herself to be gaping at, so he was! I declare to God entirely,’ pronounced Mary Kate, in an ecstasy of horrified recollection, ‘never have I seen such a sight as himself since they pulled poor Johnny Doran out of the river at Ballymocar, the same being smothered with the green water-weeds and his hair black with the wetness of it, poor boy.’

‘Very sad,’ agreed Mrs Bradley. ‘And you’d like to go to Bossbury with my girl Jane, wouldn’t you? All right. You shall. Go and tell the vicar I’m here, and I will see to the rest. . . .’

The vicar pushed back his chair and smiled at her.

‘So you’ve robbed me of my housekeeper for the day,’ he said, ‘and now you want Mary Kate also! Woe is me!’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley decisively. ‘What are you going to do when Felicity marries?’

‘Marries?’ The vicar looked blank. ‘But Felicity won’t marry for years! She’s only a child.’

‘She’s twenty. Nearly twenty-one. And she’s in love with James Redsey.’

The vicar blinked.

‘I like Felicity,’ Mrs Bradley went on. ‘And before I leave this neighbourhood, which I expect to do very shortly, I want to make certain that the young man will not be charged with this murder.’

The vicar blinked again.

‘And that you get married,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly. ‘It’s time all this pathological nonsense was ended. Here you are – a youngish, perfectly healthy man, just going to seed. Look about you, and see whether you can’t find a nice wife! Isn’t there anyone you fancy? Someone who is a bit of a bully would suit you best, I think. She would improve your memory for you.’

The vicar chuckled.

‘Do you really think it would be a good thing?’ he asked, half seriously.

‘Excellent. What about Mrs Bryce Harringay?’

The vicar shuddered. Mrs Bradley laughed.

‘Did you really walk into the Cullen on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd?’ she asked, changing the subject.

The vicar grinned shamefacedly.

‘And do you ever wear flannel trousers – grey ones?’ Mrs Bradley continued unexpectedly.

The vicar rang the bell.

‘Mary Kate, do I ever wear grey flannel trousers?’ he asked.

Mary Kate glared at him, suspecting a jest.

‘And I to be wearing myself to the bone trying to get the stains out of them where you went shopping for the meat and dripped the blood all down yourself!’ she retorted angrily. ‘Sure, some man, they say, is born to be the heart’s bane of every woman, and it’s yourself is the heart’s bane of me – God help you for a poor, forgetful, moithering, foolish thing!’

‘Blood?’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘Out of the best English beef,’ said the vicar, gently nodding his head. ‘I remember now.’

‘And when was this?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

Mary Kate, appealed to, was unable to say. Her attention had not been drawn to the ruined trousers until the vicar wanted to put them on again to go for a tramp with his Boys’ Club – ‘and that was only last Thursday, as ever was, ma’am. How long they had been like it I couldn’t say, for I’ll not be calling to mind when last he put them on.’

‘I want those trousers,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly. ‘Where are they? And do try to remember when it was that you brought the meat home. It may be important.’

Mary Kate produced the trousers. Between the original stains themselves and her original methods of cleaning the stains off, the garment seemed in a sad state. Mrs Bradley inspected the maker’s label, and then turned to the Reverend Stephen.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘Have you remembered?’

The vicar frowned thoughtfully, and then shook his head.

‘It must have been before I went for my holiday,’ he said, ‘because I took those trousers out of the case Sethleigh lent me. And yet Felicity wouldn’t have packed them if they had been in that condition, would she? I feel sure she would not. Of course’ – he brightened – ‘it may not have been the meat at all. There seems rather a lot of blood for a pound or so of topside of beef, doesn’t there? We always have topside, because Felicity likes it lean.’

Mrs Bradley felt irritated, but did not betray the fact. Instead she said:

‘I suppose I may take them with me? I will let you have them back.’

‘Is one permitted to enquire the reason of this curious whim?’ asked the vicar, smiling.

‘Yes,’ replied Mrs Bradley. She gazed at him much as a scientist might gaze at a museum specimen of interesting appearance but doubtful authenticity. ‘I fancy these stains are not the mark of the beast,’ she said at last. ‘They appear to be more like the brand of Cain. I shall be surprised, my dear friend, if these turn out to be your trousers. I rather fancy that they once belonged to Rupert Sethleigh. And as I propose to hand them straight over to Inspector Grindy, you had better try to remember a little more about them.’

The vicar stared helplessly after her as she walked out of the house with the trousers slung gracefully over her arm.

II

At eight o’clock in the evening, Felicity returned. She helped the last child off the bus, delivered each of the fifteen to a waiting parent, returned the courtesies of the whole band – parents and children too – and walked straight in at Mrs Bradley’s front door, which was standing wide open.

‘Well?’ said Mrs Bradley, appearing abruptly from the kitchen, where she had been superintending the dishing up of dinner.

Felicity seized her arm.

‘I’ve seen it!’ she said.

‘Seen what, my dear?’

‘Behind the model of a Roman shield. How did you know? Had you seen it, or did you guess? Oh, but you must have seen it! But how did it get there? Nobody has a key to those cases except Father and the curator – oh, and the bishop, of course! Mrs Bradley’ – she shook the old woman’s arm – ‘do explain! What is it?’

Mrs Bradley led her into the dining-room and pushed her into a chair.

‘To the best of my knowledge and belief,’ she said, ‘it is Rupert Sethleigh’s skull.’

‘But how did it get there?’ Felicity pulled off her hat and pushed a hand through her hair.

‘That is something which I would give a good deal to know for certain,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I suppose it would be too much to ask you to take another party of children to-morrow and look to see if it’s still there? I would go myself, but I am particularly anxious not to appear in this little comedy. My part shall be that of stage-manager. Oh, and tell your father the inspector refuses to be parted from those trousers! I am awfully sorry. I feared something of the kind might be the case. However’ – she chuckled ghoulishly and bared her tigerish teeth – ‘they are not the nether garments of the late lamented Sethleigh. I can’t think why I ever thought they would be, but of that some more anon. Never mind! The skull is his if the trousers are not! Half a loaf is better than no bread. Go up and wash, child, and stay here to dinner.’

The last thing Felicity saw as she turned to go up the stairs was Mrs Bradley’s grin. She began to understand how Alice in Wonderland must have felt upon first beholding the Cheshire Cat.