Groaning Spinney Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Gladys Mitchell

  Vintage Murder Mysteries

  Title Page

  1. Mrs. Bradley takes a Christmas Vacation

  2. The Shape of Things to Come

  3. The Expected Begins to Happen

  4. The Ghost faces East

  5. Parson’s Farewell

  6. Saturday’s Child

  7. No Names, No Packdrill

  8. Reappearance of a Housekeeper

  9. Bridge of Sighs

  10. Peculiar Persons

  11. What’s in a Name?

  12. Enter Two Gravediggers

  13. The Dragon’s Teeth are Sown

  14. The Beginning of the End

  15. The Gun

  16. The History of Worry

  17. Point-to-Point

  18. The Hunt is Up

  19. Goblin Market

  20. A View to a Death

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Christmas in the Cotswolds brings with it the apparition of a country parson, a series of poison pen letters, and a woman’s body frozen in the snow. The eminent psychologist and superior sleuth Mrs Bradley has a theory about who’s behind all three and sets about a plan to ensnare the unseasonal villain.

  About the Author

  Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or ‘The Great Gladys’ as Philip Larkin called her – was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and attributed her interest in witchcraft to the influence of her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.

  Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the heroine of a further sixty six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club, alongside Agatha Christie, G.K Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers. In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.

  ALSO BY GLADYS MITCHELL

  Speedy Death

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop

  The Longer Bodies

  The Saltmarsh Murders

  Death and the Opera

  The Devil at Saxon Wall

  Dead Men’s Morris

  Come Away, Death

  St Peter’s Finger

  Printer’s Error

  Hangman’s Curfew

  When Last I Died

  Laurels Are Poison

  The Worsted Viper

  Sunset Over Soho

  My Father Sleeps

  The Rising of the Moon

  Here Comes a Chopper

  Death and the Maiden

  Tom Brown’s Body

  Groaning Spinney

  The Devil’s Elbow

  The Echoing Strangers

  Merlin’s Furlong

  Watson’s Choice

  Faintley Speaking

  Twelve Horses and the Hangman’s Noose

  The Twenty-Third Man

  Spotted Hemlock

  The Man Who Grew Tomatoes

  Say It With Flowers

  The Nodding Canaries

  My Bones Will Keep

  Adders on the Heath

  Death of the Delft Blue

  Pageant of a Murder

  The Croaking Raven

  Skeleton Island

  Three Quick and Five Dead

  Dance to Your Daddy

  Gory Dew

  Lament for Leto

  A Hearse on May-Day

  The Murder of Busy Lizzie

  Winking at the Brim

  A Javelin for Jonah

  Convent on Styx

  Late, Late in the Evening

  Noonday and Night

  Fault in the Structure

  Wraiths and Changelings

  Mingled With Venom

  The Mudflats of the Dead

  Nest of Vipers

  Uncoffin’d Clay

  The Whispering Knights

  Lovers, Make Moan

  The Death-Cap Dancers

  The Death of a Burrowing Mole

  Here Lies Gloria Mundy

  Cold, Lone and Still

  The Greenstone Griffins

  The Crozier Pharaohs

  No Winding-Sheet

  VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES

  With the sign of a human skull upon its back and a melancholy shriek emitted when disturbed, the Death’s Head Hawkmoth has for centuries been a bringer of doom and an omen of death - which is why we chose it as the emblem for our Vintage Murder Mysteries.

  Some say that its appearance in King George III’s bedchamber pushed him into madness. Others believe that should its wings extinguish a candle by night, those nearby will be cursed with blindness. Indeed its very name, Acherontia atropos, delves into the most sinister realms of Greek mythology: Acheron, the River of Pain in the underworld, and Atropos, the Fate charged with severing the thread of life.

  The perfect companion, then, for our Vintage Murder Mysteries sleuths, for whom sinister occurrences are never far away and murder is always just around the corner …

  MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES

  EDMUND CRISPIN

  Buried for Pleasure

  The Case of the Gilded Fly

  Holy Disorders

  Love Lies Bleeding

  The Moving Toyshop

  Swan Song

  A. A. MILNE

  The Red House Mystery

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  Speedy Death

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop

  The Longer Bodies

  The Saltmarsh Murders

  Death and the Opera

  The Devil at Saxon Wall

  Dead Men’s Morris

  Come Away, Death

  St Peter’s Finger

  Brazen Tongue

  Hangman’s Curfew

  When Last I Died

  Laurels Are Poison

  Here Comes a Chopper

  Death and the Maiden

  Tom Brown’s Body

  Groaning Spinney

  The Devil’s Elbow

  The Echoing Strangers

  Watson’s Choice

  The Twenty-Third Man

  Spotted Hemlock

  My Bones Will Keep

  Three Quick and Five Dead

  Dance to Your Daddy

  A Hearse on May-Day

  Late, Late in the Evening

  Fault in the Structure

  Nest of Vipers

  MARGERY ALLINGHAM

  Mystery Mile

  Police at the Funeral

  Sweet Danger

  Flowers for the Judge

  The Case of the Late Pig

  The Fashion in Shrouds

  Traitor’s Purse

  Coroner’s Pidgin

  More Work for the Undertaker

  The Tiger in the Smoke

  The Beckoning Lady

  Hide My Eyes

  The China Governess

  The Mind Readers

  Cargo of Eagles

  E. F. BENSON

  The Blotting Book

  The Luck of the Vails

  NICHOLAS BLAKE

  A Question of Proof

  Thou Shell of Death

  There’s Trouble Brewing

  The Beast Must Die

  The Smiler With the Knife

  Malice in Wonderland

  The Case of the Abominable Snowman

  Minute for Murder

  Head of a Traveller

  The Dreadful Hollow


  The Whisper in the Gloom

  End of Chapter

  The Widow’s Cruise

  The Worm of Death

  The Sad Variety

  The Morning After Death

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  Groaning Spinney

  1. Mrs. Bradley takes a Christmas Vacation

  *

  ‘Go, stop the swift-winged moments in their flight

  To their yet unknown coast, go hinder night

  From its approach on day.’

  William Habington

  * * *

  MRS. BEATRICE ADELA LESTRANGE Bradley tapped with the corner of a stiff envelope on the edge of her writing desk. It was very seldom that she found difficulty in coming to a decision, but on this occasion she was conscious of doubt and hesitation.

  She put the envelope down, took up a foolscap envelope instead, re-opened it, and re-read the letter it contained—an invitation to a conference of educational psychiatrists in Stockholm. The letter was warmly expressed, Mrs. Bradley had spent an autumn and early winter in special and most fascinating research, and she badly wanted to attend the conference, whose views, generally speaking, would not accord with her own, but whose members would be interested in, if argumentative on, what she would have to say.

  On the other hand, there was the invitation from the Cotswolds. Mrs. Bradley’s three marriages had provided her with a vast and varied tribe of spirited and gifted in-laws, some of whom she liked. The stiff envelope contained a letter from her favourite nephew who had obliged her by marrying the young woman of her choice. Mrs. Bradley had greatly desired to find place in the family circle for the lovely Deborah Cloud, and her nephew Jonathan had been the vehicle for this inclusion. That he had chosen Deborah for his own and not for his aunt’s reasons delighted that powerful but scrupulous mediator almost more than the actual fulfilment of her wishes.

  ‘Now we’ve somewhere to live, won’t you please come and spend Christmas? We are combining a Christmas party with a general house-warming, and are particularly anxious to have you,’ Jonathan had written. ‘Good company, Deb looking her best, and, what’s more, I’ve achieved a bottle of Scotch, and if you stay until New Year’s Day I swear you shall have a haggis.

  ‘P.S. We don’t care how many of your pet cases are going to collect delirium tremens at the festive season, or how many conferences you want to attend in January. Blood is thicker than water, and you always said you would visit us as soon as we were settled. You also promised to stay a good long time. So what about it? If coming, don’t bother to reply.’

  Mrs. Bradley rarely acted on impulse and was averse to solving her difficulties by indulging in superstitious practices, but on this occasion her mind was so divided that she suddenly picked up two long spills from a jar near the fireplace and tossed them into the air. One landed on the rug and the other fluttered on to the writing desk. The tiny kitten on the hearth immediately pounced, and began to play with the spill on the rug.

  ‘If you’ve got the longer one I’ll go to Sweden, if the shorter, I’ll go to the Cotswolds,’ pronounced Mrs. Bradley, solemnly. She picked up the kitten and took away the spill. She measured it against the one which had landed on the writing desk. The spill which the kitten had captured was the shorter by almost an inch. Mrs. Bradley took up a telegraph form, scribbled rapidly on it, and rang the bell. She handed the form to her secretary with instructions to send the telegram at once. Then she seated herself, picked up the kitten and the two spills, looked thoughtful for a moment, and then, putting down the tiny animal, she looked closely at the two spills, which were home-made from strips of newspaper. Then she untwisted the ends.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ she said aloud. ‘Now what have I done?’

  The end of the shorter spill had been doubled over. As she straightened it out she discovered that the actual length came to several inches more than the length of that which she had decided at first was the longer spill.

  ‘It ought to have been Sweden, after all!’ she thought, with some amusement, crumpling the spills and throwing them into the basket.

  ‘Well, the telegram’s gone,’ said her secretary, when Mrs. Bradley told her what had happened. ‘And I’m very glad. You need a holiday. You can go to Sweden next year!’

  Jonathan Bradley and his wife Deborah had been lucky. A great estate in the Cotswolds had been offered for sale in two lots. Two-thirds of the property and the huge modern house had been sold to the Ministry of Education, but the remaining third of the land and the original manor house had been purchased by Mrs. Bradley’s nephew. It lay in typical Cotswold country, hilly yet gloriously open. It was partly wooded, had a dashing stream, and offered some shooting and the chance of going out with the local Hunt.

  Jonathan and his wife had bought their share of the estate in January, had moved in in April, and had purposely refrained from inviting guests until they felt that they were settled and at home.

  The month was now December, and Mrs. Bradley arrived two days before Christmas Eve. She travelled by train, for her chauffeur had been given Christmas leave, and she had deliberately made no mention to her nephew of the time of her train, for his house was miles from Cheltenham, (her terminus), and she disliked to cause inconvenience.

  Jonathan Bradley, however, was at the station to meet her.

  ‘Deb wanted to come,’ he observed, ‘but I didn’t know whether I’d picked the right train. You didn’t say, and I thought it was a bit too cold for her to hang about draughty stations. I wish I’d brought her now.’

  He took Mrs. Bradley out to his car, and saw her luggage put on. A few minutes later the car was slipping like a homing cat across the Oxford-Gloucester turning, past a fifteenth-century barn, past a country bus-shelter, and so along the Cirencester Road.

  Great slopes brooded dreamily upon their lost summer treasure of wheat, clover and barley; little by-roads sloped quietly up or down to Coberley, Elkstone, Brimpsfield and Compton Abdale. After half an hour’s driving, some deep woods, a lodge with its drive, a full stream at the bottom of steep banks, a straggle of black pine trees, a desolate farm, a narrower road, a sandy turning, and the entrance to a long and uphill lane, brought the car on to Jonathan’s land.

  The car crept onward up the steep, uneven lane. Mrs. Bradley, seated beside her tall and black-haired nephew, looked out of the window with interest. To her left ran another small wood. On the right the treeless ground curved almost voluptuously downward to another noisy little stream.

  ‘That turns the mill,’ said Jonathan, jerking his head towards the sound. ‘We’ve got a mill, a smithy, the pub and the post-office. Quite a model village, all told.’

  As the rise mounted and the wood was left behind, the wet green slopes of the country filled the landscape. At the top of the rise was a grey and snow-filled sky, and, as the car climbed and the hills changed their contours, Mrs. Bradley saw two small houses, one on either side of the way.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ asked Jonathan, touching his horn as the car approached the houses, and then changing gear as the slope became more gentle and a drive took the place of the lane.

  ‘Desolate, enchanted, apt and supernormal,’ replied his relative, gazing raptly at the charged and lowering sky.

  ‘Apt for what?’

  ‘For treason, magic, stratagems and snow. Who lives at the lodges now?’

  ‘Will North, the gamekeeper, lives in the left-hand one. He’s a grand chap. I’ve been out with him several times already and always had good sport. The other one belongs to the Woottons, Abel and Harry. They garden for us and for the College. Deb likes gardening, fortunately, so for us they don’t do very much. They chop stuff down and burn it, and they tackle most of the digging. They work at the College mostly, but I was asked to let them stay on here at their cottage. They’re most steady, respectable chaps. Abel is a widower with one kid, a boy of twelve. Harry is a bachelor. They’ve a sister who keeps the lodge at the College gates, and they go up there for their dinner more times
than not. The sister’s a dragon, but she has a keen sense of duty, sees that her brothers toe the line and don’t spend their money at the pub, and she mends the kid’s clothes and makes him go to Church and get to school early and that sort of thing, you know. I really hardly see what they’d do without her.’

  ‘Who looks after Will North?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  ‘Oh, Will? He’s self-sufficient. Cooks and cleans, and is all kinds of a handyman. He gets food from our cook when he wants it, but he’s remarkably independent, and a wonder with a gun or with snares. The last owner used to rear pheasants, but I don’t know what happens now. Will finds me one or two to pop at, but the woods are no longer preserved. You can’t get the food for the birds.’

  ‘I think I shall like Will North.’

  ‘I’m sure you will. He’s a bachelor, sensible bloke!—and cares for nothing much except his dog and his ferrets. He’s got what he calls his Dogs’ Cemetery behind those bushes you saw by the drive. Properly-dug, deep graves, headboards, last messages and all. If he takes a fancy to you you’ll be shown it, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  The drive curved in almost a semi-circle, and Mrs. Bradley had her first sight of the house which her nephew had purchased.

  It was of stone, and had the high gables and beautiful greyness of all early Cotswold manors. It had been built in 1560, but was simply designed and had the bareness and austerity of even earlier days.

  Its tiles were of stone, too, and had weathered to a mellowness which was absent from the stark walls and the Tudor drip-stones above the windows. A broad archway led to the stables, and there was a large dovecot, almost the size of a cottage, at the side of the house. There was a row of plain stone shields cut just above the square-headed Tudor doorway, and beneath them was the lovely Deborah Bradley, waiting to welcome home the travellers.

  ‘This is grand!’ said Deborah, greeting Mrs. Bradley. ‘I betted Jon you wouldn’t come! I said you’d be off on a toot to some conference or other. Do tell me what worked the charm!’

  Mrs. Bradley told the tale of the kitten and the two spills.