The Longer Bodies Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Gladys Mitchell

  Title Page

  Chapter One: Vagaries of a Rich Relation

  Chapter Two: The Gathering of the Clan

  Chapter Three: Rabbit and Javelin

  Chapter Four: Friday Night and Saturday Morning

  Chapter Five: Abrupt Termination of an Inglorious Career

  Chapter Six: Great-aunt Puddequet is Happy

  Chapter Seven: But Inspector Bloxham is Not

  Chapter Eight: Irritating Attitude of a Lady Old Enough to Know Better

  Chapter Nine: Kost and Caddick, or the Babes in the Wood

  Chapter Ten: Night Birds

  Chapter Eleven: What Happened to Anthony?

  Chapter Twelve: Mrs Bradley visits the Scene of Crime

  Chapter Thirteen: May Fair

  Chapter Fourteen: The Little Mermaid

  Chapter Fifteen: Mrs Bradley Listens In

  Chapter Sixteen: And the Cowes Jumped Over the Moon

  Chapter Seventeen: Noughts and Crosses

  Chapter Eighteen: Questionable Behaviour of a Champion Cyclist

  Chapter Nineteen: Autobiography of a Murderer

  Chapter Twenty: The Story of the Second Roman Gladiator

  Chapter Twenty-One: Mrs Bradley Takes the Bun

  More Vintage Murder Mysteries

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Great Aunt Puddequet was reputed to be enormously wealthy. It was also a tradition in the family that she was extraordinarily mean. So when the malicious old bird summons her grand-nephews to perform in a games tournament in order to secure their inheritances, they gloomily oblige. Before long, the country house games are interrupted by murder.

  The police are baffled, but fortunately Mrs Bradley, an unusual psychoanalyst with a flair for sleuthing, has begun to take an keen interest in the Puddequet Olympics.

  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 Saltmarsh Murders

  Death at the Opera

  The Devil at Saxon Wall

  Dead Men’s Morris

  Come Away, Death

  St Peter’s Finger

  Printer’s Error

  Brazen Tongue

  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 a Delft Blue

  Pageant of 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

  The Longer Bodies

  Gladys Mitchell

  Chapter One

  Vagaries of a Rich Relation

  I

  GREAT-AUNT PUDDEQUET was reputed to be enormously wealthy. It was also a tradition in the family that she was extraordinarily mean.

  ‘The only thing she seems inclined to give away without stint,’ said her nephew Godfrey on his wedding day, ‘is unasked-for advice.’

  He eyed her wedding present, the plated silver teapot and cream jug to match, with unaffected disgust. The unstinted advice she had seen fit to bestow upon him on this important occasion had been a solemn recommendation to marry Money instead of his chosen bride, the meek and gentle Elizabeth Tully, daughter of a country clergyman and a nursery governess in her own right, and Godfrey had replied briefly and suitably to the suggestion. For three years aunt and nephew neither met nor corresponded.

  ‘And now,’ Godfrey remarked to the unassuming Elizabeth three days after the birth of their first child, ‘it’s up to us to buck things up all round. The old girl shan’t have the satisfaction of seeing my son grow up a poor man. She says she’s sending him a christening mug.’

  There is nothing more conducive to success than a definite aim. By the time his fourth child, also a boy, was of an age to attend a preparatory school, Godfrey Yeomond was a prosperous man.

  It took Matilda Puddequet exactly thirty-two years to forget the cause of her quarrel with her nephew. At the end of that time she summoned her paid companion, an angular, romantically minded, unmarried woman who had spent twelve years of self-abnegation in the old lady’s service, and observed, without preamble of any kind:

  ‘Companion Caddick, I am growing old.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Puddequet?’ replied Miss Caddick hopefully. She had read in the paper only the day before of a housekeeper-companion to an aged gentlewoman who had been left a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds on the demise of her employer, and Miss Caddick, who was of a mathematical turn of mind, had put down, in the form of a proportion sum at the back of her diary, her own hopes and expectations, thus:

  ‘Housekeeper-companion receives £15,000 out of net personalty of £161,512 after ten years’ continuous service. Companion-secretary receives £x out of net personalty of £y after twelve years’ (minus three days for Cousin Aggie’s funeral) continuous service, taking gross fortune of employer to be £500,000.

  ‘N.B.—Or it might be a little more.’

  She had worked out the answer by using various approximate amounts in the place of £y, and had then found the average of the results. The sum of twenty-five thousand pounds, which evolved f
rom these complicated proceedings, frightened her, so she scribbled all over it to hide it from view.

  ‘Just in case . . .’ she murmured to herself, thinking of eyes other than her own which might read the astounding answer to the sum.

  Like a murderer who has hidden the corpse in the wardrobe, however, she knew that it was there. Twenty-five thousand pounds! Twenty-five thousand!

  Old Mrs Puddequet regarded her companion-secretary with suspicion. She was a very old lady, parrot-beaked, shrill-voiced, and imperious.

  ‘What do you mean by agreeing with me in that tone?’ she squealed. ‘Why did I quarrel with Godfrey?’

  Immediately and intelligently perceiving that if any possible beneficiary was in her employer’s mind it was one of the several relatives whose names were so seldom mentioned in the house, Miss Caddick relinquished her dreams of the twenty-five thousand pounds, screwed up her pale eyes, wrinkled her pointed nose, and adopted an expression of agonized mental stress. She had learned by experience that it did not pay to remember things which her employer had forgotten; therefore, after a period of facial contortion lasting perhaps fifteen seconds, she shook her severely neat head, pursed her thin lips, frowned again in stern concentration of thought, and finally shook her head again.

  ‘I am really very much afraid, Mrs Puddequet—’ she began.

  ‘You’re a fool, Companion Caddick,’ squealed old Mrs Puddequet viciously. ‘Order the bathchair, and send for the cook.’

  The cook was Scottish, unafraid of her employer, strong, capable, and a woman of one remark which she produced, apparently from the pit of her stomach, on all domestic occasions. It was short, and to the point, and consisted of the words, ‘I’ll see masel’ drooned first.’ She came into old Mrs Puddequet’s room on receipt of the summons from Miss Caddick, gazed dourly on her employer, and listened in scornful silence whilst Great-aunt Puddequet outlined the meals for the day. Then she spoke.

  ‘Is it the hash ye’ll hae for lunch? I’ll see masel’ drooned first!’

  ‘And why cannot we have the hash for lunch?’ screamed old Mrs Puddequet, who, by a daily encounter with this redoubtable foe, had kept herself alive and healthy for the past ten years.

  ‘And why will ye no be hae’ing the hash? Forbye, ye puir body, there’ll no be mair than a quatter o’ a poond o’ the beef remaining since Mr Timon was feeding his beasties wi’ it the morn.’

  ‘Oh,’ squealed Great-aunt Puddequet, ‘he was, was he? Well, cook, suggest something yourself, and don’t be a fool!’

  ‘Ou, ay!’ retorted Mrs Macbrae. ‘Is it me to be daeing your wark for ye? I’ll see masel’ drooned first! Cook the guid meat I will, but fash aboot thinkin’ it oot I winna! Ye ken me. I’m no’ the leddy o’ the hoose!’

  ‘Promptly at one you will send a well-cooked, well-served lunch to table, and no more nonsense!’ squealed Great-aunt Puddequet, ‘and I don’t care whether you see yourself drowned or not!’

  The cook went away, and old Mrs Puddequet turned again to Miss Caddick. The passage-at-arms had restored her good humor. She lowered her cracked old voice and spoke kindly.

  ‘You will find Godfrey Yeomond’s address at the back of my bureau,’ she said. ‘Write to him, Companion, and say that I am going to visit him on Thursday. I want to have a look at his children.’

  Godfrey Yeomond guffawed when he read the letter.

  ‘She wants to see the children before she dies,’ pronounced his wife. ‘Poor thing. I expect she’s very lonely and unhappy right out there in the country. Write back quickly, dear, and tell her how very welcome she is.’

  ‘I’d better tip the boys the wink to be civil to her,’ said Godfrey, pursuing a different train of thought. ‘Her money’s got to be left somewhere, and she was never one to be fond of cats.’

  He paused.

  ‘I don’t see why she shouldn’t take a fancy to the boys or Priscilla,’ he went on. ‘They’re nice kids though I say it. But, of course, there are the Brown-Jenkins lot and the Cowes, besides that Anthony family she married into. I’ll drop the boys a hint to mind where they put their feet while she’s here. They’ll have their work cut out to be civil, though, if she’s the same vinegar-tongued old hag she used to be.’

  Although Godfrey Yeomond’s affairs were in a flourishing condition, he suffered occasional twinges of conscience at the thought that, because of some bitter remarks made thirty years before, his children’s chances of inheriting Great-aunt Puddequet’s thousands were extremely slender. He spent considerable thought, therefore, on the remarks he proposed making to his family on the subject of their aged relative’s visit, and decided on the Sentimental Appeal as being best suited to their youth and mentality.

  At dinner on the Wednesday evening preceding Great-aunt Puddequet’s arrival in their midst, he brought off a neat speech.

  ‘The First P.M. was in form tonight,’ said Francis Yeomond later to his brother Malpas.

  ‘Yes, deuced good,’ replied Malpas, critically examining his cigar. ‘I suppose he gets these at wholesale prices?’ he added, lighting it cautiously.

  ‘I wonder how long she’ll stay?’ said Priscilla Yeomond. ‘Shall we have to push the bathchair?’

  ‘The P.M. says she can get about without it,’ said Hilary, the youngest boy.

  ‘I shall arrange to get my leave cancelled if it proves too fierce,’ said Malpas. ‘Old lady’s a bit of a pussy.’

  ‘I’m taking ten boys to Switzerland on the eighteenth, thank God,’ said Francis, the second son.

  ‘I shall write to old Shoesmith to ask me over to his place if I can’t stick it here,’ said Hilary.

  ‘You’re a beastly selfish lot,’ said Priscilla hotly. ‘Poor old lady!’

  ‘Poor old you, you mean,’ said Hilary, with brotherly candour, ‘to be left holding the baby while we push off. Cheer up, duckie, and Frank will send you some picture postcards, won’t you, brother?’

  ‘Understand,’ said Priscilla, eyeing them steadily, ‘that, if you do slink off, I let her know why. And you know it’s her cash the P.M.’s after. So there!’

  ‘But, my dear kid—’ said three scandalized male voices in chorus.

  Great-aunt Puddequet, however, proved a good deal less trying than they had expected. For one thing, as the sensitive nineteen-year-old Hilary expressed it, she looked all right when you took her out. She certainly had a pretty awful voice, they agreed, but fortunately considered London air bad for her throat. Parentally forewarned, the Yeomonds walked delicately. They endured even classical concerts without audible protest; they accompanied their great-aunt to the two or three London theatres which were showing pieces suitable to her age and experience, and on the second Saturday of her stay they escorted her to the White City ground to witness an international athletics match between Sweden and England. She had seen it advertised on the station platforms, had asked about it, and had demanded that she should be taken to see it.

  ‘Companion Caddick won’t want to go,’ she added.

  The newly released Caddick, therefore, on the appointed day, with beating heart and secret ecstasy, stole away from the high, plain-fronted Georgian house to the nearest fare-stage for the buses. Armed with her spectacles and a packet of bulls’-eyes, she set off for the unknown. She was out to bag her first talkie. Her pale eyes glittered with a new light. She grasped the bulls’-eyes firmly.

  ‘But why can’t they?’ demanded old Mrs Puddequet.

  Her grandnephew Hilary surveyed the White City ground resignedly from a front seat in the centre stand. Having lost all the field events to the United States athletes in June, the English hopes were as consistently losing them to the Swedish athletes in August. Amsterdam had told the same tale; South Africa had testified to its truth. England might point to her hurdlers, her sprinters, and her long-distance men with equanimity and even pride, but at the jumps, the vault, the shot, the discus, the javelin— where, oh, where was she?

  ‘Down among the dead men.’ The military band
on the left supplied a ready if somewhat tactless answer.

  Hilary Yeomond sighed.

  ‘It’s the public schools,’ he said briefly.

  ‘But I thought, Grandnephew, that the public schools—’ His great-aunt’s tones were piercing. She had heard much in praise of the public schools.

  ‘Oh, rot!’ Francis Yeomond—watching, through field-glasses, the super-human efforts of a yellow-thatched child of twenty or so to break the record for the ground over the pole vault—spoke peevishly.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the schools. Can’t train kids to do the pole vault and put the weight.’

  As junior languages master at one of the schools in question, and the chosen first string of his college (beaten) in the hundred yards at the University sports, he spoke as one having authority.

  ‘Of course you can train them.’ Malpas Yeomond leaned back and clapped his hands perfunctorily as the yellow-haired Swede, amid vociferous applause, cleared the bar and fell gracefully to earth on the farther side of it.

  ‘It’s the style does it,’ he continued to the old lady. ‘Style and constant practice. You needn’t let boys try for great height at first over the pole vault, and you needn’t let them use a twelve-pound shot for the put until they’ve sufficient bodily development —but you can get correct style, and you can make them practise regularly.’

  ‘Piffle,’ said Francis concisely.

  Malpas shrugged his shoulders, consulted his programme, and made feverish hieroglyphics with a gold pencil as the megaphone boomed out the order of running in the last race.

  ‘We shall take this all right,’ he announced confidently. ‘Better represented than the Swedes. Their Amsterdam winner isn’t here, and that chap who always turns out in horn-rimmed glasses—what’s the fellow’s name?—I saw him in Paris last year—’

  ‘By Jove! There’s a fellow with a trowel digging down to Australia!’ said a boy; and from farther off a rough, good-humoured voice shouted loudly:

  ‘Hi! Give it up, boy! The Test’s over!’

  A burst of hearty laughter greeted the sally. The young Swede finished digging the holes for his starting position, and then looked up and waved his trowel happily at the broadly grinning crowd. It is doubtful whether he had caught the words or understood their application, but there was no mistaking the genuine good-fellowship of the waves of laughter.