Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  Titles by Gladys Mitchell

  Speedy Death (1929)

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop (1929)

  The Longer Bodies (1930)

  The Saltmarsh Murders (1932)

  Death at the Opera (1934)

  The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935)

  Dead Men’s Morris (1936)

  Come Away, Death (1937)

  St. Peter’s Finger (1938)

  Printer’s Error (1939)

  Brazen Tongue (1940)

  Hangman’s Curfew (1941)

  When Last I Died (1941)

  Laurels Are Poison (1942)

  Sunset over Soho (1943)

  The Worsed Viper (1943)

  My Father Sleeps (1944)

  The Rising of the Moon (1945)

  Here Comes a Chopper (1946)

  Death and the Maiden (1947)

  The Dancing Druids (1948)

  Tom Brown’s Body (1949)

  Groaning Spinney (1950)

  The Devil’s Elbow (1951)

  The Echoing Strangers (1952)

  Merlin’s Furlong (1953)

  Faintley Speaking (1954)

  On Your Marks (1954)

  Watson’s Choice (1955)

  Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose (1956)

  The Twenty-Third Man (1957)

  Spotted Hemlock (1958)

  The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959)

  Say It with Flowers (1960)

  The Nodding Canaries (1961)

  My Bones Will Keep (1962)

  Adders on the Heath (1963)

  Death of a Delft Blue (1964)

  Pageant of Murder (1965)

  The Croaking Raven (1966)

  Skeleton Island (1967)

  Three Quick and Five Dead (1968)

  Dance to Your Daddy (1969)

  Gory Dew (1970)

  Lament for Leto (1971)

  A Hearse on May-Day (1972)

  The Murder of Busy Lizzie (1973)

  A Javelin for Jonah (1974)

  Winking at the Brim (1974)

  Convent on Styx (1975)

  Late, Late in the Evening (1976)

  Noonday and Night (1977)

  Fault in the Structure (1977)

  Wraiths and Changelings (1978)

  Mingled with Venom (1978)

  Nest of Vipers (1979)

  The Mudflats of the Dead (1979)

  Uncoffin’d Clay (1980)

  The Whispering Knights (1980)

  The Death-Cap Dancers (1981)

  Lovers Make Moan (1981)

  Here Lies Gloria Mundy (1982)

  Death of a Burrowing Mole (1982)

  The Greenstone Griffins (1983)

  Cold, Lone, and Still (1983)

  No Winding Sheet (1984)

  The Crozier Pharaohs (1984)

  Gladys Mitchell writing as Malcolm Torrie

  Heavy as Lead (1966)

  Late and Cold (1967)

  Your Secret Friend (1968)

  Shades of Darkness (1970)

  Bismarck Herrings (1971)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © The Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1936

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle, 2014

  www.apub.com

  First published in Great Britain in 1936 by Michael Joseph

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  E-ISBN-13: 9781477868775

  A Note about This E-Book

  The text of this book has been preserved from the original British edition and includes British vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation, some of which may differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, with only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.

  Contents

  First Figure FOSSDER’S FOLLY

  Chapter One ONCE TO YOURSELF AT STANTON ST. JOHN

  Chapter Two FOOT UP AT OLD FARM

  Chapter Three CORNERS—THE CHALLENGE—AT SANDFORD

  Chapter Four CORNERS—THE FIGHT—AT IFFLEY

  Chapter Five CROSS OVER AT OLD FARM

  Chapter Six HALF-HEY ON THE RIVER THAMES

  Second Figure SHOTOVER SIMITH

  Chapter Seven DIB AND STRIKE ON SHOTOVER HILL

  Chapter Eight HALF-ROUNDS ON A PIG-FARM

  Chapter Nine BACK TO BACK IN KENSINGTON

  Chapter Ten CORNERS TO PLACES AT STANTON ST. JOHN

  Chapter Eleven CORNERS—GOOD FELLOWSHIP—FROM IFFLEY TO WATERPERRY

  Chapter Twelve DIB AND STRIKE AT ROMAN ENDING

  Third Figure PARSON’S PLEASURE

  Chapter Thirteen STICK-TAPPING AT OLD FARM

  Chapter Fourteen CORNERS WITH CAPERS AT STANTON ST. JOHN

  Chapter Fifteen CORNERS—RECONCILIATION—AT GARSINGTON

  Chapter Sixteen WHOLE HEY AT ROMAN ENDING

  Chapter Seventeen ALL IN AND CALL AT STANTON ST. JOHN

  About the Author

  First Figure

  FOSSDER’S FOLLY

  He is going to call on his lawyer.

  Va a ver su abogado.

  I advise you not to say anything about it.

  Le aconsejo a Vd. que no diga nada de ello.

  HUGO’S “SPANISH CONVERSATION SIMPLIFIED”

  Chapter One

  ONCE TO YOURSELF AT STANTON ST. JOHN

  “Gently, my man, gently,” said Sir Selby Villiers.

  “Ease your end a bit, George,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Arf a mo, mate,” said the vanman.

  “Another couple of inches, buddy,” said George. The boar’s head, carefully packed, came to rest on the luggage grid of Mrs. Bradley’s car and was strapped into place. George and the vanman tested the straps and Sir Selby handed Mrs. Bradley in.

  “A Happy Christmas,” he said.

  “A Happy Christmas,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “A Happy Christmas, George,” said Sir Selby, giving him ten shillings.

  “Thank you very much, sir. The same to you,” said George, saluting before he took his place at the wheel.

  “That’s it, then, mam,” said the vanman.

  “A Happy Christmas,” said Mrs. Bradley, tipping him; and in an aura of general goodwill she drove off in the direction of the Great West Road.

  The car, not new, but of impeccable behaviour, slid through Hammersmith and Chiswick, took a right incline on to the Great West Road at Gunnersbury, and was soon leaving it again for the Bath Road at Hounslow. George went slowly though Colnbrook and Maidenhead, crawled through Henley, then struck a modest and respectable twenty-eight miles an hour for the greater part of the remainder of the journey. By Headington Quarry he found a secondary road and a right-hand branch to the northern end of the village of Stanton St. John. The time was half past three. It was daylight still, but hinting of dusk to come.

  George stopped the car at the first public house, went up to the door, and hammered for the innkeeper. Evoking no response, for it was during closing hours, he found the way round to the back to discover the innkeeper, his wife, and son plucking and trussing fowls.

  “Good day,” said George. “Where’s Mr. Lestrange’s farm, if you’ll
oblige?”

  “You’re welcome,” said the innkeeper. He put his reeking hands into a bucket of rainwater, and dried them on the apron he was wearing.

  “Pretty cold job?” said George, as they walked out on to the road. The innkeeper laughed.

  “Ah. Not so bad this Christmas as some I could tell ee of. We got no runnen water endoors round this part, you see. Now, Mr. Lestrange? That ud be the party as keeps pigs and paints them pictures. The Old Farm, that’s what ee wants to ask for. You’ll need to turn the car. Bear left when you comes to the church, and then get down at the post office and ask ’em to guide ee from there. I’ll back I’ll only mizzle ee if I tries to direct ee from ’ere.” He smiled at Mrs. Bradley. “Good day to ee, mam. Nice weather we be haven, but onseasonable.”

  George turned the car and took the narrow opening by the long grey churchyard wall. The car crept down the road and bore to the left past a very small farmyard and then beside cottages. The post office was a small brick house, lettered unmistakably above its plain sash window, and appearing uncouth and ugly in that land of benign grey stone.

  The post mistress came out on to the road to direct them.

  “Straight on past where the brook babbles—hear et all night, ee well, tell ee gets used to et, mam, I say—and then ee’ll be see-en that there old cart-road on the right. Egypt Lane we calls ’er—I dunno for why. Turn up there, and you be right beside the ’ouse.”

  They proceeded fairly slowly down the long and gradual gradient for about two miles and a half, and came at length upon a narrow track, grass-grown and wheel-rutted, which diverged to an angle of about forty degrees from the road. It appeared to run past a house (which they could see behind elm trees), and into a tiny wood.

  George stopped the car and got down.

  “I’m very sorry, madam, but I’m of opinion that I overlooked the turning coming along. I think we’ve come too far.”

  “Too bad,” said Mrs. Bradley sympathetically. She lowered the window further and put out her head. George moved aside politely. “It doesn’t seem to tally with the description we were given, certainly,” she said, “and—George, there’s a fight going on! Let’s go and join in!”

  “I really wouldn’t advise it, madam,” said George, alarmed. “You remember in Spain that time—”

  “Nonsense!” said Mrs. Bradley. She opened the door for herself, since the chauffeur seemed indisposed to assist her, and set out at a brisk, short-striding run across the fields. George tossed his cap inside the car, and, sadly incommoded by his leggings, trotted, like a faithful hound, a respectful couple of paces in the rear.

  It was getting dark, but Mrs. Bradley’s old, long-sighted eyes had not misled her. Outside a pigsty, in the field adjoining the house, an old man and a young one were fighting furiously. The old man had a walking-stick, a heavy ugly blackthorn. The younger man had a pig-bucket in his hand. He was using it as a shield against the blackthorn, and at the same time he remonstrated with the old man loudly and angrily. It was obvious which was the aggressor, and Mrs. Bradley, standing ten yards off, could not sufficiently admire the scientific defence which the pig-bucket was putting up against the heavy stick. Blow after blow clanged harshly on the bucket as the young man side-stepped, with considerable adroitness, every murderous advance. Suddenly the old man perceived Mrs. Bradley and George, and swung round viciously towards them.

  “You be trapesing yere!” he announced, as he lowered the blackthorn. “What do ee warnt on my land?”

  “Peace, peace,” said Mrs. Bradley sonorously.

  “Then you be crazy,” said the old man, raising the stick again. “Be off, before I catch ee one or two!”

  George stepped in front of his employer, but Mrs. Bradley pushed him out of the way.

  “I also want my nephew, Carey Lestrange,” she added, gazing with the impersonal interest of a replete and basking alligator at the fermenting little old man. His knuckles were white with the grip he had of the stick.

  “Carey Lestrange?” said the young man, coming forward, and now standing unconcernedly within easy reach of the blackthorn.

  He put down the pail, and jerked his thumb westwards. “He lives at Old Farm, not here. This place is called Roman Ending.”

  He was a strongly-built, uncouth, and brutal-looking youth, and in his appearance there was something which seemed familiar to Mrs. Bradley.

  “But I’ve certainly never seen him before,” she thought, as she looked him over. “George—” she said.

  “The Holbein portrait of his grace King Henry the Eighth, madam,” George responded politely.

  “Good heavens, George!” said Mrs. Bradley, impressed. Enlightened, she resumed her scrutiny. Certainly in the heavy jowl and little pig-eyes before her there was more than a suggestion of the portrait.

  The old man was like a crab-apple. He took a step forward, returned Mrs. Bradley’s gaze with a stare of hatred, and said,

  “You’ve come past the turning. Didn’t ee ’ave enough sense to ask the way?”

  “Sure,” said George, planting his gaitered legs apart and eyeing the old man coldly.

  “Be ee a fool, then?” demanded the crab-apple, shaking the blackthorn at him.

  “Yes,” said George, “but I can keep my language civil, which is more than you can do. And,” he added, “if this here chap wants any help in rolling you into a ditch, he can count on me for a start. How’s that, you old gooseflesh, you!”

  “Now, now,” said Mrs. Bradley, with a cackle. “Don’t be belligerent, George. It doesn’t become those leggings. Direct us, please,” she said to the younger man.

  “Back on to the road again, go down hill a bit until you come to a forked road just this side of where the brook turns off—”

  “Ah, yes, the babbling brook,” said Mrs. Bradley reminiscently, thinking of the woman in the post office.

  “Then up the hill,” the young man added, “and from this side you’ll see the house. It stands out grey on the other side of that little wood over there. I shouldn’t think you could miss it. Lestrange is a friend of ours. Get him to bring you over. Glad to see you again.”

  To Mrs. Bradley’s surprise the old man seconded this invitation, although in curmudgeonly fashion.

  “Ah, come again. Do ee good, perhaps, to see pigs reared up proper. Him with his new-fangled notions! Scandinavian nonsense! Give me some honest British bacon, that’s what I be always saying to him. But come again! Oh, ah! Ee may as well.” He turned to the younger man. “This ’ere’s my nevvy. Not much to look at, and the gals don’t like him neether, but he’ll have my money when I’m gone, and the right to do as he likes with what’ll be all his own. Good day to ee. Ah, and a Merry Christmas, I suppose I did ought to wish ee, and so I do, and good reddance, too and all!” he added suddenly, with a squeal of rage at the end.

  “Thank you. The same to you,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I shall look forward to our better acquaintance, Mr.—”

  “Simith. This is Tombley. George William Tombley.” He shot a sour smile at his nephew.

  “Geraint Wilfred Tombley,” said the young man, in a very surly tone. “Christened so in Cowley church twenty-six years ago this coming February.”

  Mrs. Bradley and George walked slowly back to the car.

  “It’s cold, George,” said Mrs. Bradley. George looked up at the sky.

  “Preparing for snow, I should fancy, madam,” said he, “and coming on very dark.” He assisted her over a stile. “And the countryside pleasant, but old, madam, if you kind of know what I mean.”

  “Perfectly, George,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly. “Thor and Odin, and the sleeping Charlemagne.”

  “Well, no, madam; older than that; gentler, if I may express it so, and rather more subtle, madam, it seems to me; but, of course, I’m London born, and shall never get used to the country. And yet it’s a pleasant landscape. Very pleasant indeed. But the hills, madam, like the leviathans of Creation. Rounded and, somehow, squamous, madam, I feel.”

/>   “Squamous, omnipotent, and kind,” said Mrs. Bradley absently. “You want a drink, George. You deserve one. You shall have one when we arrive.”

  “Thank you, madam,” said George.

  Carey Lestrange, Mrs. Bradley’s first husband’s nephew, was a grey-eyed young man in flannel trousers so thick as to give the impression at first sight that he was wearing bearskin leggings. He also sported a bright blue pullover and a very old tweed jacket with sagging pockets and a disreputable air of having been slept in. He had long, well-shaped, nicotine-stained fingers, and the becoming affectation of an elf-lock, which had been trained, Mrs. Bradley suspected, to fall artistically into his eye. At any rate, his habit of removing it with a picturesque motion of the hand came, she felt certain, under the general heading of Learned Behaviour; no impatience was betrayed, rather a sense of the value of significant gesture, as the young man with his paint-stained, grubby hand negligently shifted the elf-lock an inch to the side each time it fell out of place.

  “Dear Carey,” said Mrs. Bradley, squeezing his arm. She had the extreme felicity to be fond of all her relatives. Some of them, it is true, amused, and others irritated her, but she liked to be stimulated, and had the enviable faculties of impersonal observation and objec­tive thought, so that she was seldom inconvenienced by having to dislike people or over-excited by feeling angry with them. For Carey she felt both personal regard and respect. He had nearly all the qualities which had endeared her first husband to her, and was, like his uncle, very hardworking, and, in spite of his lackadaisical appearance and habits, an excellent man of business. He not only ran an experimental piggery but painted posters, and, occasionally, pictures. He might, in fact, have made a name for himself as a portrait painter, but that he was fastidious on the subject of sitters. He would rarely paint women, for example. He said he did not like women’s faces. He had painted Mrs. Bradley, however, and at his own request, not hers. The repulsive-looking result gave them both considerable pleasure.

  He gave his aunt an armchair near the fire in the parlour, and, seating himself on the settle, drew her attention to his furniture. There was a sixteenth-century Bible chest, a Jacobean sideboard and a Charles II chair.

  “I stand in front of each of them in turn whenever I have visitors,” he said. “I feel like a mother guarding her daughters from Vandals. Do you know, Aunt Adela, women come here who would sit on that chair if I let them.”