Tom Brown's Body

22. Hare and Hounds

*

If I am hang'd, it shall be for ridding the World of an errant Rascal.

IBID. (Act 2, Scene 10)

'I SUPPOSE the Lovedays are simple sort of people really,' continued Gavin, 'and if they thought they had a suicide on their hands, it was natural to try to get rid of him. It was very annoying of Mr Wyck to allow Mr Semple to go to Ireland, though.'

'Yes, once he really gets away it may be very hard work to find him,' said Mrs Bradley.

Gavin gloomily agreed.

'Although I doubt whether we could prove he was the one who dumped the body for them,' he added. 'Of course, Loveday did "find" the mask and the Indian club for us, so I suppose he's got cold feet all right. Something may break pretty soon.'

'I think it will,' said Mrs Bradley cheerfully, 'particularly as Miss Loveday has just informed me that she intends to join her boys in a paper-chase this afternoon.'

'Good Lord! Miss Loveday actually joins in?'

'Do you really join in?' Mrs Bradley enquired, as Miss Loveday came into the room.

'For the first mile and a half,' Miss Loveday replied. 'After that, I turn round and trot home again. My brother does not join us. He leaves the whole thing to Cartaris. I believe that Issacher makes a book on the result. It is deplorable that boys bet, but it is impossible to prevent their doing so. Mr Wyck does not like it, but there it is.'

'I suppose Mr Semple is a good man at cross-country running when he is in England,' said Gavin.

Miss Loveday looked at him closely:

'I know not why you should ask me that,' she said. 'It is well known that John Semple is a very fine cross-country runner. He is a footballer beside. And now, farewell. Atalanta – or should I say Diana? – must garb herself for the chase. Will you all come to Loveday's to dinner? The pig has arrived and looks inviting. I have good apples stored. There will be crackling. My brother shall provide us with sherry, and there will be brandy later. What say you? Shall we toast the gallows together, Mr Policeman?'

'Look,' said Gavin, suddenly. 'What was Mr Pearson doing on the night of the murder?'

'How should I be expected to know?' enquired Miss Love-day. 'Wear football stockings. We negotiate brambles and gorse,' she added, turning suddenly towards Mrs Bradley.

'But I wasn't proposing to accompany you, and neither does Mr Gavin care greatly for winter exercise,' said Mrs Bradley firmly.

*

An enthusiastic bevy of boys from other Houses hooted rudely at Mr Loveday's boys and loudly cheered his sister as the cross-country runners set out at just after half-past one. Miss Loveday was wearing a pair of football boots, a hat tied under her chin, and had kilted her skirts to the knee. Mrs Bradley and Gavin watched the procession from a window.

'And now,' said Mrs Bradley, 'I suggest, my dear David, that you borrow a bicycle and go at once to Mr Pearson's house at the other end of the village. Pedal fast; you must get there before Miss Loveday does.'

'What for?' asked the mystified Gavin.

'I think you will know when you see her,' Mrs Bradley replied. 'Micklethwaite, I fancy, is the one material witness for whom we have waited so long.'

'I wish we'd tackled him earlier, then,' said Gavin.

'The psychological moment did not arrive earlier, child.'

The runners had crossed the road and were stringing out through the woods which lay between the School and the river. Gavin, on a bicycle borrowed from Mr Wyck's butler, waited until Miss Loveday, in the wake of her boys, had disappeared among the trees, and then he turned into the roadway and pedalled for all he was worth in the direction of the village.

He arrived at the Pearsons' house in time to catch Marion at the front door as she was about to walk to the village.

'I won't keep you,' he assured her. 'The fact is, one of the masters has gone to Ireland to visit his father, who is very ill. We want to get in touch with him, and wondered whether by any possibility you may happen to know the address, as we want some information we think he can give us.'

'I don't know any addresses in Ireland except the address of a small hotel in Galway where I spent a holiday once with my father,' Marion responded. 'Is it John Semple who has gone?'

'Yes, it is.'

'We were once engaged. I didn't know his family lived in Ireland. I thought they were London people. They used to live in Hampstead, I think. I never met them. We weren't engaged long enough for that.'

'You wouldn't know their address, then?'

'No, I'm sorry. And now I must go, or the shop will be sold out of biscuits.'

Gavin went with her to the gate and pretended to cycle back towards the School. He had great faith in Mrs Bradley, but there was still no sign of Miss Loveday or any of the boys, and he thought Mrs Bradley must have been mistaken in supposing that Miss Loveday intended to visit the Pearsons.

However, he thought he would hang about for a bit and see what happened. The first thing that happened after Marion Pearson had left him was that a stream of boys crossed the road from a field adjacent to the Pearsons' house and plunged in among the sodden yellowish bracken on the opposite side of the way.

After these came stragglers. In the rear of the party came Miss Loveday, going, all things considered, remarkably strongly, Gavin thought. At the Pearsons' house, however, she glanced round. Gavin by this time had hidden himself and his bicycle in a clump of laurel bushes just inside the Pearsons' boundary fence. She let down her skirt, untied her hat-strings, and sauntered towards the Pearsons' beautiful garden pool and rockery.

She glanced at her watch and then up at the top-floor windows. She seemed impatient, and, for so masterful a personality, somewhat irresolute. In a few moments, however, she lifted her chin as though she were listening, and hastened towards the garden gate. Gavin, to his surprise, saw what he took to be the hares. Two big boys came into his line of vision, each carrying a bag of what Gavin took at first to be the' scent for the paper-chase.

To his astonishment they strolled up to Miss Loveday and, dropping the bags from their shoulders, they opened them and each took out a large chunk of granite. Under Miss Loveday's direction they placed them on Mr Pearson's rockery.

Miss Loveday turned and saw Gavin, who was strolling towards her.

'We meet again, Miss Loveday,' he said, as he raised his hat. 'Have you given up the run so soon?'

'By no means,' Miss Loveday answered. 'All right, gentlemen. You may leave us. I stopped to find out whether Henry Pearson was going to join us. He usually likes to do so. He is as fond of a pipe-opener as I am.'

'Well, it is my sad duty to request you to accompany me to the local police station,' said Gavin. Miss Loveday nodded.

'Both right and proper of you,' she said briskly. 'You will find little to prove against me.'

'And, of course, that's true,' said Gavin. 'She's only got to stick to her story that she merely got her boys to put a couple of stones, out of neighbourly kindness, on Pearson's rockery for us to be stymied so far as she and her brother are concerned. No jury is going to convict an eccentric old girl like that of being an accessory after the fact of murder.'

'I am glad to hear it,' said Mrs Bradley sincerely. 'Misguided she may have been, but criminal – never!'

'Still, we've got Pearson all right,' said Gavin with great satisfaction. 'Moreover, he's confessed to knocking Mrs Poundbury on the head. He wrote a note to her, but deliberately put Mr instead of Mrs, warning her that her assignation with Conway was no secret. There was no such assignation, of course, for the night of the murder, but Poundbury naturaily saw red and went chasing after the fellow. Mrs Poundbury thought for a long time that he was guilty of the murder. Bennett Kay, of course, was down at old Mother Harries's, learning more of her charms and spells, so that he was under suspicion too, and old Loveday's bicycle was actually borrowed by Poundbury to get to the town where, according to the note, his wife's meeting with Conway was to be. Kay heard the bicycle go by before he set out for Mrs Harries's cottage.

'When Pearson heard from little Ingpen – his nephew, you remember – that the note had been found, he guessed which note it was and was afraid it might incriminate him in some way. He was determined to get it back if he could, although he expresses great contrition that he had to hurt Mrs Poundbury. What he refuses to tell us is exactly what his motive was in killing Conway.'

'Oh, I can tell you that, I think,' said Mrs Bradley. 'The champagne party in the Common Room seems to have startled and upset Mr Conway. I think there is not much doubt that matters had gone so far at Mrs Harries's cottage between Marion Pearson and her lover that Mr Pearson, far from continuing his opposition to the match, was only too anxious that it should take place. When Conway told him after the champagne party that he was not going to marry Marion, the father's self-restraint failed, and he put into practice the detailed plans for Conway's murder which he had had in his head for some time. Miss Loveday's well-intentioned efforts in getting her boys to return to him the incriminating evidence of the stones which had weighted the body failed in its object, but that was hardly her fault.'

'How did you get on to that?'

'I thought it jumped to the eye. What more convenient way could Miss Loveday find to disguise the two pieces from the rockery? I think it was a brilliant idea. Had she or her brother been guilty, she would have returned them before.'

'I think you have a criminal mind,' said Gavin. 'You had better use it to help me tidy up the loose ends of this beastly case. It's a funny thing, you know, but a bloke like your son, Sir Ferdinand, would have been able to get Pearson off if the fellow had left the body in the pond and sworn that he'd only knocked Conway out and the drowning was accidental. It was trying to incriminate the Lovedays that did for him. I suppose he didn't allow for Mr Loveday's panic and indignation at finding a body in his precious Roman Bath. Pearson, of course, had cut himself a key to the Bath. It was an easy thing for a woodwork and metalwork craftsman to do. He says he ran the body by car up that lane at the other side of the Bath beyond the boundary fence. Queer coincidence that the Lovedays should have visited the Bath a second time that night.'