Tom Brown's Body

18. Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Just Plain Nastiness

*

We are treated too by them with Contempt, as if our Profession were not reputable.

IBID. (Act 2, Scene 10)

'PLEASE, sir,' said Scrupe, 'could I speak to you for a minute?'

'Of course, boy,' said Mr Wyck; for Scrupe had been announced and admitted by the butler to the Headmaster's private lodging. 'You had better come into the library.'

He emerged, towing Scrupe, at the end of a quarter of an hour, turned the boy over to Mrs Bradley for a repetition of his story, rang up Gavin, who was quartered at the village inn, and sent his butler to summon Ingpen.

'Now, Mr Scrupe,' said Mrs Bradley, favouring the boy with a leer.

'"And welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws,"' muttered Scrupe defensively.

'Quite so,' the saurian replied. 'So now, Mr Scrupe, to your evidence.'

'It isn't my evidence; that's the trouble,' said Scrupe, without a trace of his usual bravado. 'It's something young Ingpen told me behind the stage. He said he'd seen a murder. Well, he hadn't, of course, because Mrs Poundbury isn't dead, but I've been thinking things over, and I wondered whether perhaps I ought to mention what he said.'

'Quite right, boy,' said Mr Wyck, who had returned from issuing his summons to the Detective-Inspector. 'Ingpen will be here in a moment. I trust that he will have recovered from his fright and will be able to tell us something helpful. There can be no doubt that there is a highly dangerous lunatic abroad. Mr Conway may have given offence to a personal enemy, but who in his senses would wish to attack Mrs Poundbury?'

Mrs Bradley could think of more than one person, but she said nothing. Ingpen arrived in a fluster which was not relieved when Mr Wyck, who was determined to extort any information which the child might possess, stood him in front of the large writing-table in the library, seated himself in his swivel chair, opened a large note-book, and said:

'Now, then.'

'Please, sir,' bleated Ingpen, 'I didn't mean to do it.'

'Do what, little boy?'

'Please, sir, call Miss Loveday Nancy.'

'Ah,' said Mr Wyck; and there followed a dreadful silence. 'Ah, we must never speak disrespectfully of women, little boy, never, never, never. Do we understand that now?'

'Oh, please, sir, yes, sir!' gulped Ingpen, while two tears of fright rolled down his babyish face.

'Then we will say no more,' said Mr Wyck. 'You may sit down.' The child sat down beside Mrs Bradley, who reminded him of a grandmother who spoilt him whenever he went to stay with her. 'Tell me,' continued Mr Wyck casually, 'what happened to frighten you so much at the School Concert.'

'It was – it was the tall idol,' said Ingpen, glancing at Scrupe for support.

'No, the other thing,' pursued Mr Wyck. 'The other thing that frightened you. Something else you saw.'

'I saw the idol knock Mrs Poundbury down the steps, sir, please, sir.'

'Are you quite sure of what you saw?'

'Sir, yes, sir.'

'I thought you had been allowed to stand in the wings to watch the play? Wasn't that what you told us last time?'

'Yes, sir. Please, sir, I had to be by the steps.'

'Why?'

'I hadn't got a handkerchief, sir, and I thought that if I took a short cut down the steps and out past the furnace-room I could get across to the House and back, sir, before I was wanted.'

'But you knew quite well that those steps and the furnace-room are out of bounds!'

'Yes, sir, please, sir. I thought it was better not to be late for when I was wanted, sir.'

'You are a naughty little boy,' said Mr Wyck. 'Tell me exactly what you did and what you saw.'

'I saw the idol. I wasn't scared much because I knew there was going to be an idol in the second play, and I thought it would look – very nasty. Then I saw Mrs Poundbury in front of me, and I thought I mustn't hurry because she would send me back to the wings, and I had to have a handkerchief. So I just kept behind her –'

'Remained behind her.'

'Yes, sir. I just remained behind her and then € saw the idol and I thought it was Salisbury up on stilts, and then I knew it couldn't be, because it hit Mrs Poundbury on the head, and she fell down the steps and the idol went after her and I rushed back to the wings, and saw Salisbury and then I saw Mr Poundbury and I told him where Mrs Poundbury was, and then it was all a muddle, and I told Fran – Scrupe there had been a murder.'

'I suppose,' said Mr Wyck slowly, 'that you've no idea who this tall idol could be?'

The child looked troubled and then his mouth set. He shook his head.

'Very well,' said Mr Wyck. 'And, remember, we do not take a lady's name lightly!'

'Oh, no, sir!' said Ingpen, on a gasp of thankfulness at being dismissed. Mr Wyck, still seated at his writing-table, tapped thoughtfully on it with his pencil, and suddenly called him back. 'Have you a good memory?' he demanded.

'Yes, sir. I think so, sir.'

'Tell me what was going on on the stage when you decided to go and get a handkerchief.'

'It was where they start drinking, sir, after they've knifed the three priests. I waited until I'd seen what I thought would be the most thrilling part, and then I – please, sir, I had to have a handkerchief by then –'

'I understand, and will overlook your naughtiness this time. Now you may go. Scrupe,' he added, as soon as the child had disappeared, 'what can you add to this story?'

'Nothing, sir, really, sir. He told me about it after he got back to the dressing-room.'

'Go and ring up Issacher and Salisbury and ask them to come here. Give them no hints. I can hear what you say from the hall,' said Mr Wyck. At this moment Gavin arrived, and was given a report of Ingpen's story. 'And I have a fancy that the little lad has an idea, if no more, of the identity of Mrs Poundbury's assailant,' Mr Wyck observed.

The stories told by Issacher and Salisbury did not vary from their previous evidence.

'I don't understand it,' said Gavin, when the two boys and Scrupe had gone. 'The idea seems to have been to attack Mrs Poundbury. Why return to the wings to frighten the boys?'

'To create a certain amount of uproar and confusion,' said Mrs Bradley. 'For some reason, this was necessary to his purpose. I think perhaps it was to enable him to establish some sort of alibi, although exactly how it helped him we don't yet know. It may have been sufficient for his purpose just to get the curtain rung down a few minutes before the appointed time.'

*

Before the School was cleared of boys and masters the discovery was made of the second idol's head, and that in what one would call the most accidental manner. The discovery was made by Mr Loveday. He had gone, accompanied by his knife-and-boot-boy, to make certain that the latter had effectively damped down the hypocaust furnace before School broke up, and there was the idol's head, or so he told Mr Wyck, leering at him from the top of a heap of coke.

'It serves me right,' said Mr Loveday, whose mind frequently took an unforeseen track, 'for using a modern fuel. The Romans knew nothing of coke.'

He had taken the head in his own hands and so presented it to Mr Wyck. Mrs Bradley was not on view. She spent most of the day and took all her meals in the little upstairs study which Mrs Wyck allotted to her. She would have liked to be present when Mr Loveday brought along the idol's head, but she was dependent upon what Mr Wyck could tell her of the interview. According to Mr Wyck the meeting had produced a conversation which he reconstructed (verbatim, he thought) for Mrs Bradley's benefit.

'Ah, good afternoon, Headmaster.'

'Good afternoon, Loveday. Good heavens! You haven't found it?'

'Well,' said Mr Loveday, pleased at the Headmaster's tone. 'It does begin to look a little like it. We shall need to display it to the boys who saw it, I imagine.'

'But where did you find it?'

'Of all places,' Mr Loveday replied gaily, 'in my furnace-hole – the Roman Bath, you know.'

'Really! But the – but that had already been searched.'

'Anyhow, there it was, and I have my knife-and-boot-boy for witness.'

'Oh, really!' said Mr Wyck, laughing. 'I see no need of a witness for your statement, my dear fellow. Of course, had it not been for the dastardly attack on Mrs Poundbury, an assault which appears to have been committed by this person who wore the mask, the affair could be dealt with differently. As it is, I must at once get in touch with the police, and hand your fact over to them.'

This he did, and Gavin came immediately. His first response was to ask for Issacher and little Ingpen again. Both were reassured and were informed that they were helping the police. Then the conditions under which they had seen the horror were reproduced. The School Hall was reduced to darkness, the stage lighting went on, and the idol's head, on top of the bamboo safety hook borrowed from the School bath, was placed in the wings where Issacher said he had seen it. Then Ingpen was shown the head. Both boys declared, independently, that it was the one they had seen at the School Concert.

Mrs Bradley carried out her plan of affecting to leave Spey a few days before the end of term, and she went so far as to go to London after she had made her farewells. She came back immediately, however, and smuggled herself into the Headmaster's House under cover of a particularly black December night.

Mr Wyck, she thought, seemed distrait, and Mrs Wyck's almost over-warm welcome was a sign of overwrought nerves. It soon came out that a governor's meeting had been fixed for the first day of the Christmas vacation, and that some searching questions would be asked to which Mr Wyck would be unable to make any reply which would be even remotely satisfactory either to himself or to the governing body.

'I shall attend that meeting,' said Mrs Bradley, 'and you had better refer the questioners to me. What line do you expect the governors to take?'

Mr Wyck looked astounded, but Mrs Wyck said quickly:

'General school discipline, of course. It's a sitter for Christopher's opponents. Some of the governors, Beatrice, as you already know, are very jealous and reactionary. They don't like Christopher's reforms and they think he is much too gentle and moderate. They would be glad to give him a setting down about the discipline. They couldn't do much about Gerald Conway's death, as it is not possible to prove that it even occurred on School premises, but this business of Carola Poundbury will be so much meat and drink to the brutes! They'll be bound to point out that all the evidence we've been able to accumulate points to an attack on her by one of the boys. And, also, of course,' she added, with the naïve candour which Mrs Bradley found so helpful, 'if any of the other nonsense comes out, we're sunk, and Christopher will resign.'

'But Christopher can scarcely be held responsible for the fact that Mr Conway was the cat among the pigeons,' Mrs Bradley observed, correctly interpreting 'the nonsense' and regarding the gloomy Mr Wyck with compassion, 'particularly since he was not pleased at Mr Conway's appointment.'

'Pleased!' snorted Mr Wyck. 'I was against it from the first, and I told the governors so. An 18B man has no place, in my opinion, in a school of any type, but particularly he has no place in a school where boys are resident and are largely divorced from outside interests and preoccupations. Nevertheless, as Grace says, if the scandal he seems to have caused should really come out, I should have no option but to resign. I thought it was coming out at the last meeting. It would all sound much worse now.'

'By the way,' said Mrs Bradley, without contesting this, 'there is a small, a very small, feature of the case which preys on my mind to a rather uncomfortable extent. Did you ever hear of the lampoon which was launched, some little time ago, at Mr Kay?'

'Oh, you mean Louis the Spiv,' said Mrs Wyck. 'Yes, we did hear it. Carola Poundbury told it me. Why?'

'Well,' said Mrs Bradley, 'Issacher claims authorship.'

'He would!' exclaimed Mrs Wyck. 'I detest that boy! He's a rat!'

'Your views interest me. Am I to understand, then, that the author is neither anonymous nor Issacher?'

'The doggerel in question,' said Mr Wyck, with a faint smile, 'was composed and disseminated by Micklethwaite, of the Fourth Classical.'

'All his own work, do you suppose?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'You mean the sophisticated wit would indicate a mature mentality?' asked Mr Wyck, laughing outright. 'The boy, as a matter of fact,' he added at once, 'is not without gifts. Some of his more sober and reputable efforts have appeared in the School magazine.' He went out of the room and returned with a portfolio. 'I've kept a copy of each number,' he continued. He sorted through the magazines and soon came upon the one he wanted. 'This is his best effort, up to date. I think it, really, rather good.'

'A sonnet?' Mrs Bradley exclaimed. 'He flies high!' She read the poem slowly through. 'If one of us should die and that one me – addressed to his mother, I see.'

'She is a widow,' said Mr Wyck, 'and he is the only child. His father was killed at El Alamein.'

'Hm!' said Mrs Bradley. 'She breaks our beauty-bond who grieves; More than a prince's pall have I, Who lie beneath the lovely leaves' She handed back the magazine and repeated softly: 'Louis the Spiv, Had not the right to live; Like every other skunk, He stunk. Rather a morbid preoccupation with death, wouldn't you say?'

'Good heavens, no!' cried Mr Wyck violently. 'That's the worst of you psychiatrists. Even a joke indicates morbid preoccupations to you!'

'It often does indicate morbid preoccupations,' said Mrs Bradley mildly, 'particularly if it is a practical joke.'

'I do not regard what is called a practical joke as a joke,' said Mr Wyck. 'It is often cruelty very thinly disguised, and it is always stupid. Take this last example we have had –'

'Yes, I wanted to,' said Mrs Bradley, meekly.

'Detective-Inspector Gavin is hoping to be able to take a statement from Mrs Poundbury to-morrow,' said Mrs Wyck. 'I am hoping that she will be able to tell exactly what happened and when.'

'I will prophesy,' said Mrs Bradley, 'that she will only be able to tell us when it happened. She will not, in my opinion, have the slightest idea of the identity of her assailant, or, if she has, she will not confide it to us.'

This melancholy prophecy proved true. Mrs Bradley remained in strict seclusion all next day, and at four in the afternoon Gavin came over to the School House to report that, according to Mrs Poundbury, she had been struck on the head from behind just as she was going down to the property cupboard for the pail which was required in the last play and which had been forgotten. She had gone herself because all her stage-hands were at that time in the auditorium, and her husband, who acted as stage manager, was not available, either, because he had been making up the lad Cooke a little more heavily than Mrs Poundbury had already made him up.

'So that's that. And she didn't see the second idol,' said Gavin. 'In other words, we've lost a couple of days waiting for a statement which doesn't get us any further forward.'

'It gets us further forward if by any chance Mr Poundbury was not engaged in making up Cooke,' said Mr Wyck. 'I suggest that we see Cooke at once.'

'How many of the Housemasters live in their Houses during the vacations?' asked Mrs Bradley, most obviously changing the subject.

'None of them. My wife and I will be here for part of the time, but nobody else except the servants.'

'Doesn't look as though it will help to see this boy Cooke,' said Gavin, thoughtfully. 'The chances are, he's like Issacher, and won't give Poundbury away.'

'I agree that it is highly immoral to allow boys to perjure themselves,' said Mr Wyck. But on the last morning of term Mr Poundbury asked for an interview.

'Oh, dear!' said Mr Wyck resignedly. 'I suppose Poundbury has forgotten to send to the bank for his boys' journey money.'

'That has happened before,' said Mrs Wyck, when Mr Poundbury's messenger had returned to Mr Poundbury with the tidings that the Headmaster would see him at once. 'Since then, Christopher has always kept a sum in small notes and silver ready at the end of term.'

But Mr Poundbury had nothing to say about journey money. He came in great agitation to confess to serious crime. He was closeted with Mr Wyck for about twenty minutes, and then Mrs Bradley saw him ambling, with curiously uneven, uncertain, and uncoordinated steps across the Headmaster's lawn; he was staggering from side to side with a lolling kind of movement, as though his legs had no connexion with his body except for the irresponsible liaison afforded by his trousers.

She turned to Mrs Wyck and was about to speak when Mr Wyck came into the room. His expression was that of a person who has received incredible and dreadful tidings.

'Poundbury,' he announced, 'is responsible. I never really believed it, but there it is.'

'What?' his wife enquired. 'Has there been an accident?'

'There has been no accident,' Mr Wyck replied. 'All that I can think is that the man must be off his head.'

'Why, what has he done or left undone?' Mrs Wyck asked at once.

'He confesses that it was he who struck down his wife at the top of those steps,' said Mr Wyck. 'And, of course, that makes it clear to me that he, and he alone, is responsible for poor Conway's death.'

'Did he also confess to having taken the note?' asked Mrs Bradley. Mr Wyck shook his head.

'He did not mention a note. All he said was that the sight of her made him sick, and that, before he realized what he was doing, he had hit her on the head. He adds that immediately he had done it he ran back to the dressing-room to finish making-up Cooke.'

'Did he say what he hit her with?' was Gavin's first question.

'I did not think to ask. He was greatly agitated, naturally, and said that he had confessed so that nobody else should be blamed. He also said that his wife had forgiven him.'

'I'd better see him myself,' said Gavin. He came away from the interview convinced that the confession was bogus. 'I don't know what he thinks he's up to,' he remarked, 'but his whole story is a fabrication from beginning to end. He wants me to believe that he knows nothing about the second idol beyond what he was told at the time, that he hit his wife over the head with a tack hammer he had been using to repair a bit of the scenery, and that he quite forgot he'd done it until about two days ago. Does any of that make sense?'

'The first and last statements,' said Mrs Bradley, 'but not the middle one. He may not have known about the idol unless he was the idol, and, as he would have been under great emotional stress, he may have suffered since from temporary amnesia. It is the tack hammer which makes nonsense. According to the School doctor, and according to my own examination of the injury, Mrs Poundbury was struck by something with a much broader end than a tack hammer; something more like an Indian club or a fairly heavy bottle.'

'We haven't found anything yet,' said Gavin. 'I suppose whoever used the weapon managed to get rid of it at once. I hope we find it soon, though, for the sake of the fingerprints, if any. I had better see this boy Cooke.'

Cooke declared that Mr Poundbury had not left him in the middle of making him up. Moreover, on breaking-up morning, Mr Loveday came excitedly to the Headmaster, bearing an Indian club.

'Discovered in my furnace-hole,' he announced proudly. 'As the last object found there was the idol's head, I presume that this must be the weapon which struck down Mrs Poundbury.'

Gavin, ruefully surveying the exhibit, swore quietly to himself. Then, suddenly, his sombre gaze brightened. Mr Loveday had certainly imposed his fingerprints on any others which the club might bear, but there might still be a chance of showing that it was not only the weapon which had struck down Mrs Poundbury, but that with which Conway had been stunned.

*

Before this theory could be proved, Mrs Bradley went to visit Mrs Harries.

'Item,' said she, 'one toad. Item: one stolen cockerel.'

The blind witch, fastening brilliant eyes on her, nodded.

'He wanted paddock,' she mumbled.

'Who did?'

'Paddock lighted on your bed.'

'He did. Why?'

'Then he stole the cockerel. He said it would make bigger magic than mine. But I put the three curses on him, and paddock came home again. There he is, just behind you.'

Mrs Bradley turned round. There was a toad malignantly squatting in the middle of the bare stone floor. Mrs Bradley stooped and picked him up. He was real, she was glad to discover. He sat on her cold yellow hand, his throat pulsating and his heavy-lidded eyes as wise as Solomon's. Mrs Bradley touched the top of his head. Then she carried him into the garden and placed him very gently on a flower-bed.

When she returned to the kitchen a black cockerel was dangling head downwards from the door-handle. It had not been there when she went out, and she had not heard the old woman move.

She stroked the cockerel's feathers. They seemed soaking wet. She took away her hand. It was dry. Old Mother Harries chuckled grimly. Mrs Bradley took down the bird and laid it upon the kitchen table. She examined it very carefully. The cockerel had a bruised head and had been strangled. She looked up.

'How did you know?' she demanded. Mother Harries walked to the table, picked up the bird without fumbling, carried it over to the door and hung it up again.

'These things are told me,' she said. 'I know not how they come. He is dead. He had the potion of me. The other one had the wax and the sheep's heart and the black-headed pins. What are men to me? I am too old for love. Yet love is blind. Leave me. You know who he is. He will not escape you. There is love and there is love and there is love. His is love in the middle degree.'

'Yes, I know,' Mrs Bradley answered. She decided to try an experiment of her own. She took down the cockerel once more and laid it in the middle of the floor where the toad had been. 'Oh, look!' she suddenly cried. To her relief, the witch started back with a shriek of fear.

'By Lilith, daughter of Samael, be gone from me! Be gone! Go, screech owl! Go, contour in the form of an ass! Go, Lamia! Go, Queen of Devils! Go, go!'

Mrs Bradley grinned evilly.

'Evil word has banished evil sight. The cock has his head again, the paddock is to the garden gone, the dead man lies down speechless,' she pronounced with becoming solemnity. The old woman sank trembling into a chair.

'Who are you?' she demanded. 'Who is it that can make me see what none should see? Who told you that I told him what to do?'