The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

CHAPTER XIX

The Skull

I

‘I DO wish,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay petulantly, ‘I do wish, James, that you would get rid of that policeman! Heaven knows what he thinks he is looking for! And he worries my poor darlings almost to death!’

She fondled the obese Marie and smiled tenderly upon the corpulent Antoinette. Jim glowered. The expression had become habitual upon his beforetime ingenuous features.

‘He wanted to know the address of Rupert’s dentist,’ he growled.

‘It is in Rupert’s memorandum-book. Did you give it to him?’

‘Yes. Can’t think why Rupert went to that fellow in Bossbury High Street. Always have my teeth seen to in Town.’

‘The Bossbury man is cheaper. And he is a very good dentist. There is far too much nonsense talked about dentists,’ observed Mrs Bryce Harringay austerely. ‘If a man is qualified, he is qualified. If he is not qualified, no reasonable person would dream of attending him. There is not the slightest necessity for harping upon these somewhat depressing subjects.’

‘I am not harping on them,’ her nephew responded morosely. ‘It’s you.’

‘Really, James, you are most trying lately – most! Do please refrain from direct contradiction of my remarks! Direct contradiction,’ continued Mrs Bryce Harringay, warming to her subject, ‘is, of all breaches of manners, the most embarrassing with which to deal, and I consider it most unkind of you, James – most! – to nonplus me in this way. I cannot argue with you without sacrificing my personal dignity. This,’ she proclaimed vigorously (inadvertently upsetting the personal equilibrium of Antoinette, who had chosen an ill-advised perch on her mistress’s ample but precipitous lap), ‘I refuse to do! I am dumb. I suffer your discourtesy in silence. In wounded silence, James; nevertheless, in silence.’

James groaned and turned to go out of the room. He was prevented from taking his leave by the appearance of the butler.

‘Mrs Lestrange Bradley is here, sir, and would be glad of a word with you in private.’

‘I am just going,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay frigidly. She rose and swept out of the room. A moment later Mrs Bradley came in.

She looked more like a bird of prey than ever, thought Jim. He waited for her to speak.

‘I thought the inspector was here,’ she said. Jim glowered darkly.

‘He has gone into Bossbury to see Rupert Sethleigh’s dentist,’ he said.

‘At my suggestion. How long has he been gone?’

Jim glanced at the clock.

‘Two hours – just over,’ he replied. ‘Looks like his car coming up the drive now.’

‘Good.’ Mrs Bradley seated herself in an armchair, and drew out a small loose-leaf note-book.

‘Such a clever idea,’ she observed, waving the tiny pad expressively. ‘A page is used. It will be needed again. Good. It can be preserved. But – it is dangerous to keep it? The wrong eyes may see it? The wrong interpretation may be placed upon it? Good. It shall be destroyed.’

The inspector tapped on the French windows, coughed, and walked in.

‘Well, Mrs Bradley,’ he said, ‘you’ve won the first round, madam. The teeth are certainly Mr Sethleigh’s. The dentist swears to them. Now what, madam?’

‘I should say – produce the skull, inspector, and find out whether the teeth ever fitted its jaws.’

‘The skull!’ The inspector laughed harshly. ‘We’ve looked everywhere for that blessed head, but it’s gone.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs Bradley grinned. ‘You policemen! You drag the ponds and search the hedges and beat down the nettles and walk in the ditches, and risk your necks climbing trees – and all to find a thing which a little thought and a little common sense would have produced for you in five minutes!’

‘You mean you’ve found it?’ The inspector was almost excited. ‘Where?’

‘No, I haven’t found it,’ Mrs Bradley coolly replied. ‘But I know where it was, and I think I know where it is now.’

‘Where, madam? Come on, please! We’ve lost too much time already about that skull! I knew there was something fishy the minute I heard it had been stolen from young Wright’s studio.’

‘Well,’ Mrs Bradley languidly drawled, ‘it was in the Culminster Museum behind the model of a Roman shield. I saw it there, and sent Felicity Broome to look at it. She saw it too!’

‘When was this?’

‘During the last fortnight, inspector.’

‘But – dammit all,’ roared Inspector Grindy. ‘During the last fortnight! Why ever didn’t you let us know?’

‘Sit down, inspector,’ said the little old woman quietly, ‘and I’ll tell you. If I had shown you the skull, what would you have done?’

‘Had it outside that museum damn quick!’ replied the inspector forcefully.

‘Exactly. And what good do you think that would have done, pray?’

‘I could have proved, with the help of this dental plate of Sethleigh’s, whether the skull was his!’

‘Yes. And that is all.’

‘Well, what else?’ The inspector’s tone was blustering.

‘This.’ Mrs Bradley leaned forward and tapped him upon the chest with a yellow talon.

‘By waiting for somebody – not the police – to move the skull out of the Culminster Museum, I have been able to do much more than prove the identity of the Bossbury corpse. As a matter of fact, you can’t prove that the Bossbury corpse belongs to the skull merely by using this dental plate which the child Harringay discovered upon the Vicarage dust-heap.’

‘I shall assume it belongs to it,’ grunted the inspector, ‘and I shan’t expect to be contradicted.’

‘Yes, well said. Well said,’ murmured Mrs Bradley. ‘When in doubt, the tactics of a bull at a gate do occasionally answer rather well. Now, as I said, the skull has been removed from the Culminster Collection –’

‘Eh?’ The inspector leapt from his seat as though he had been stung. ‘Removed?’

‘I said so,’ replied Mrs Bradley in a pained tone. ‘And I don’t know where it is.’

‘The devil you don’t!’ The inspector had had a trying fortnight. ‘Then what in hell –’

‘Look here, you!’

Jim Redsey had got up from the small table on which he had seated himself and advanced in menacing fashion upon the police officer. ‘I’ve put up with a lot from you in what you have the damned impudence to call the execution of your beastly duty, but I’m hanged if I’ll stand any more of it! I don’t like Mrs Bradley, but if you can’t speak to her civilly, out you go! I’ve been spoiling for a chance to push your face into the flower-beds for a damned long time now, so you’d better look out for your manly beauty! That’s all!’

He sat down again.

‘Mild but fairly well-sustained applause then rippled over the vast hall,’ said Mrs Bradley sweetly, waving the incensed inspector back into his chair, ‘and a cordial vote of thanks was returned to the speaker for his inspiring address. Never mind, Mr Grindy. You have my utmost sympathy. Believe me, I understand your point of view. But listen.’

She put her head on one side and grinned hideously up at him.

‘Suppose I can give you a list of eight persons, one of whom most probably moved the skull and so may know something about the death of Sethleigh – always supposing that the skull proves to be his skull and not the skull of somebody else! – wouldn’t that narrow the enquiry down beautifully for you?’

The inspector looked dubious.

‘I reckon it would be more to the point, madam, if you told me where they’ve put it,’ he said lugubriously. ‘But I expect that’s more than you can do! I’m afraid you’ve hampered me proper not letting on about the skull being in Culminster.’

‘If you are anxious for the skull, I dare say we can make up our minds where it is to be found,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly. ‘Where is the very best place to hide a thing, James Redsey?’

Redsey grinned.

‘Where it has been looked for already,’ he responded.

Mrs Bradley beamed royally upon him.

‘Clever boy,’ she said. ‘Now then, inspector.’

But Grindy merely looked resentful.

‘You’re wasting my time, madam,’ he growled.

Mrs Bradley sighed.

‘Such a pity to be peevish, old dear,’ said Jim, beginning to enjoy himself at sight of the inspector’s angry discomfiture. ‘Try the old butcher’s shop again.’

‘Really, James!’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay at the French doors, ‘considering that we all supposed the unfortunate remains in the butcher’s shop to be those of your late cousin, I should imagine that you might find it possible to refer to the dreadful place a little less flippantly.’

‘He’s right, anyway,’ said Mrs Bradley briefly. ‘So come. Will the car carry three, inspector?’

‘Look here,’ said the inspector, gloomily barring the way, ‘is this a joke, or what?’

‘Man and brother,’ said Mrs Bradley, raising her skinny claw as though in benediction, ‘it is not a joke. You have a key to the butcher’s shop? And you do not desire my company? Very well.’

‘Oh, come if you want to,’ said the inspector ungraciously. ‘I’ve got to pick up the superintendent, though, at Bossbury police station.’

Mrs Bradley was seated in the back of the car before he had finished speaking, and with a very bad grace the inspector climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

The little shop was still locked and shuttered. The inspector produced a key and opened the door. He lit the gas.

‘Nothing doing,’ he grunted in the tone of a man who had never expected to find anything doing.

‘Wait a moment. Where do butchers throw all the odd bits and bones?’ asked Mrs Bradley, peering ghoulishly over the threshold of the little shop.

‘In the drawer under the chopping-block or the counter,’ grinned the superintendent, whom they had picked up at the police station. He jerked at a brass handle.

‘Here we – By gum! It is, too! What about this, Grindy?’

The inspector leapt to his side as he drew out a skull.

II

‘But how did you know?’ asked Aubrey, later.

‘By taking thought, child, and by musing on the vagaries of human nature. Consider. This affair was so neat. Now murder is not usually a neat crime. Theft can be neat. So can forgery. Seduction and even arson can be classed among the finer arts. But murder – no. Your murderer is a person of greed or passion. He is in the grip of the primitive. And the primitive is invariably untidy. I considered that a man who would disjoint a body so efficiently, and clear up the mess after himself, and dispose of the human joints upon meat-hooks in that passionate tidy way, was no ordinary person. That was why I immediately dismissed James Redsey from my mind. I don’t say that James could not commit a murder. Most of us could. Most of us would, too, but for some natural fear of the consequences, or some unnatural inhibition which frustrates our desires. But James did not dismember the corpse, and James is not tidy – no, not even when he digs a hole in which to bury a body! And he is extraordinarily true to type. There isn’t an original streak in the whole of the young man’s mentality. I have ceased to consider him as a carver of bodies and a person who runs about the countryside conveying skulls from place to place. Never mind! We have quite a number of extraordinarily constituted persons living among us. I made a list of them. First there is the Reverend Stephen Broome.’

‘The vicar?’ Aubrey’s voice was shrill.

‘Yes, my dear. A man who takes the clock to bed with him, and thrusts other people’s vases and cut glass preserve jars into his pockets, and is as appallingly absent-minded and forgetful as that poor dear man, is a very pretty study for a psycho-analyst.’

‘Oh – that,’ said Aubrey, disappointed. ‘I thought you meant old Broome had done the murder.’

‘Then,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ignoring the remark, ‘there is your own mother. Mrs Bryce Harringay is a remarkable woman, and – a point which everybody seems to have overlooked – she had a very good motive for getting both Sethleigh and Redsey out of the way.’

Aubrey giggled.

‘Hang it all!’ he said. ‘I mean to say – the mater! She couldn’t cut short the life of a blackbeetle!’

Mrs Bradley smiled sympathetically, but shook her head.

‘Your mother is very fond of you,’ she said. ‘And fond mothers will do the most curious things in an attempt to achieve material welfare for their children. If Sethleigh and Redsey were out of the way, you, young man, would be the heir to the whole of the family property.’

‘Yes – if Sethleigh and Redsey were out of the way,’ said Aubrey.

‘Well’ – Mrs Bradley rapped out the word like a shot – ‘who first turned the attention of the police to Sethleigh’s disappearance? Who informed them that she had seen the two cousins disappearing into the woods at seven fifty-five that Sunday evening? Nobody else saw them go there together! Nobody else swears positively to the time! If Sethleigh were murdered and Redsey hanged, they would both be out of the way!’ She concluded this extraordinary exposition with hooting laughter.

Aubrey straightened himself. He had been lying back in Mrs Bradley’s most comfortable deck-chair, arms behind head, feet up, listening with tremendous amusement to Mrs Bradley’s theories. This last one, however, was a direct challenge. He sat up, put his feet to the ground, one on either side of the footrest, and leaned forward.

‘Yes, but the mater – she isn’t that sort of person. I mean – well, she just wouldn’t! And as for cutting up the body –’

‘Exactly.’ Mrs Bradley nodded. ‘So much so that I almost think we might leave her out of a list of possible suspects. Character, habits of mind, social customs – these things are of boundless importance in a case of this kind. And your mother would not have moved the skull from Culminster to Bossbury.’

‘Why wouldn’t she?’ asked Aubrey curiously. ‘Of course, I know she didn’t because she wasn’t the murderer, but what makes you say –’

‘Then there are the two young men and the one young woman who live in the Cottage on the Hill,’ Mrs Bradley went on serenely. ‘Wright – an artist. That is, in the popular conception, a man without morals, personal decency, or legal obligations. A pariah, an outcast, an unscrupulous dodger of debts. A promiscuous sitter on other people’s unmade beds, a habitant of yet other people’s made ones. A sipper of absinthe and imbiber of cocoa. A creature long-haired, filthy, depraved, and mentally unbalanced. A cocaine fiend, a dram drinker, an apostle of obscenity, lust, and freedom.’

‘Thanks,’ said Aubrey gratefully. ‘I’ve got all that down in shorthand. Stafford Major called me a bug-hunting stinker last term!’

‘Wright,’ went on Mrs Bradley, relinquishing her platform voice for something a little less forceful, ‘is just the sort of person who would think it funny to hang human joints on hooks. He is certainly capable of murder. He could have stolen the skull from his own studio most convincingly, and he could have substituted the coconut for it. He is capable of thinking out that clever touch of inserting a tiny living plant in the skull’s jaws to make it appear that it had been buried in the cliff far longer than was actually the case, and he would have had the forethought to plant the big clump of thrift over it to conceal the spot. He is stupid enough to have picked out the largest and most attractive clump of thrift he could find, too.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Aubrey, who had finished transcribing Mrs Bradley’s remarks about artists into long-hand and now felt that he possessed sufficient verbal ammunition to account for three or four Staffords Major at the beginning of the next school term.

‘He picked out a clump of flowering plant which immediately attracted the attention of those young people who came to camp on the shore,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Shortsighted, that. He should have picked out a less noticeable clump of thrift.’

‘Yes. Yes, it was shortsighted, wasn’t it? Still, jolly difficult to see how old Wright could have done the actual murder,’ said Aubrey, weighing it up. ‘He had a pretty sound alibi, you see.’

‘How do you know that?’ Mrs Bradley’s voice was sharper than usual.

‘Church until a quarter to eight.’

‘Granted and proved.’ Mrs Bradley nodded.

‘Met Margery Barnes at a quarter to nine.’

‘Who told you that, child? I thought nobody knew that he was the man she met in the woods! She told me, of course, but –’

‘Well, she told me too. Only yesterday, though. Said she’d told you, and so she supposed it didn’t matter about telling other people. Made me swear to keep mum when the doctor was about, though.’

‘The doctor?’

‘Yes. Margery’s pater. I say, I suppose he wasn’t Jack the Ripper?’

‘Jack the – ?’

‘The jolly old murderer, you know.’

‘I was coming to him. Doctors have been known to commit these crimes. There was Dr Crippen.’

‘Oh, yes. Old Cora asked for it, though, didn’t she?’

‘I dare say Rupert Sethleigh asked for it, too,’ said Mrs Bradley tartly. ‘That is the worst of a crime like murder. One’s sympathies are so often with the murderer. One can see so many reasons why the murdered person was – well, murdered. The chief fault I have to find with most murderers is that they lack a sense of humour.’

‘But you just said that Cleaver Wright –’

‘I know, child. I know. And it almost, but not quite, persuades me to leave him out of the list of suspects. He has a sense of humour – morbid, perhaps, but real. I almost think I must acquit him.’

‘But what has a sense of humour to do with it?’ Aubrey asked, lying back in his chair again.

‘Everything, child. Lack of humour means lack of balance. Lack of balance implies mental instability. Mental instability is, logically, madness. All murders are committed by lunatics. I am referring to premeditated murders, of course.’

‘Really? Do you mean all murderers are mad?’

‘Except me. And my outrageous sanity is in itself a kind of mental defect, I sometimes think.’

She chuckled. Aubrey grinned lazily.

‘But you haven’t told me yet about moving the skull,’ he said.

‘You remember playing a little game at my house?’

‘Oh, yes. We all played it, didn’t we? Go on.’

‘That’s all,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Think it out, child.’

‘We all wrote down where we thought the skull was hidden,’ said Aubrey slowly. ‘And – I’ve got it! Think so, anyway! Somebody who played that game thought you were getting a bit too hot on the subject of the skull, so they moved it. Idiots! Much better have left it alone.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Bradley, frowning thoughtfully. ‘It wasn’t the murderer who played this game of Hunt the Thimble with the skull, you see.’

‘Oh, you know who – you know – I mean, how do you know that? Do you know who the murderer is?’

‘I know that the man who moved that skull from Culminster to Bossbury was a man in a panic,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘and that the murderer is not in a panic. He feels perfectly secure. And upon my word,’ she concluded vigorously, ‘if I didn’t feel certain that the police will sooner or later make out a case against some innocent person, I would leave him in peace. Rupert Sethleigh –’ She stopped. After all, this charming, serious boy was related to the murdered man.

Aubrey nodded.

‘Asked for it,’ he continued. ‘Yes, he did, didn’t he? “Rupert Sethleigh – Bounder” ought to be on his tombstone.’

‘Still, I fancy that when we come to the end of these complicated affairs we may discover that it was a case of diamond cut diamond,’ amended Mrs Bradley, completely serious for once.