Brazen Tongue (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  Titles by Gladys Mitchell

  Speedy Death (1929)

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop (1930)

  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 Worsted 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)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © The Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1940

  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 2013

  www.apub.com

  First published Great Britain in 1940 by Michael Joseph

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

  E-ISBN: 9781477868812

  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

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  About the Author

  • CHAPTER 1 •

  Group of Little Bacchanals (in Porcelain, by L. F. Roubiliac).

  Title of a piece signed and dated.

  The vast galvanised iron cistern which had been deposited at some time during the second week of September in a side street opposite the Postmen’s Office had fascinated Lionel Frank Percy, aged ten, from the moment he had first set eyes on it, and for several successive days he and his friends had given each other a leg up so that each in turn could obtain a bird’s-eye view of the empty interior.

  The boys regarded it as their special plaything, beat a tattoo upon its resounding sides, and even, on one ecstatically interesting morning, stole Lionel’s host’s step-ladder—the boys had been sent from a London school to Willington—transported it deviously, by way of a back alley, to the side of the tank, climbed up, and took turns in walking across the three iron girders (further sources of conjecture and argument) which spanned the gigantic receptacle from side to side.

  About a fortnight after the cistern had been deposited, the boys, visiting it one morning, were astonished to find that it had been filled with water and that the top had been covered with planks.

  “If we took them bits of wood off, we could swim in there,” observed Lionel, who, at the moment of speaking, was leaning on his stomach over the boards, peering downwards at the heavy, oily water.

  “Shove one, and see if it moves,” suggested his friends. Lionel obliged by giving one of the planks to his right a hearty push.

  “It moves all right,” he announced. The others had seen this, clearly enough, from below.

  “All we wants,” said a budding engineer, “is a good big stick or something.”

  “Brooms,” said a bright-eyed child of eight and a half. So they returned to their respective foster-homes, and, by methods known to their type, age, and sex, contrived to obtain possession of two brooms, a long-handled mop, and a hoe.

  It was the smallest child who first noticed the tall, thin young man standing on the opposite side of the road, and, having glanced at him, he nudged his neighbour earnestly.

  “Cops,” he observed. The magic word took instantaneous and miraculous effect. In no time the street was deserted except for the tall young man, the cistern, and a stray cat which had ambled up at the instant that the lads had disappeared. The young man took off his steel helmet, approached the cistern, and peered over into its depths. Apparently satisfied that the receptacle and its murky contents had sustained no damage, he walked away again. It did not occur to him, it seemed, to replace the planks which the boys had disarranged, and the letters on his helmet were U.D.C.

  Under the arch of the railway bridge, some half-mile from the scene of the exploit, Lionel Fra
ncis Percy demanded of the others, who, like himself, were squatting on their heels against the wall:

  “How long he bin there, do you think?”

  “Hours. He bin watching us all the time,” replied the child who had first noticed the young man.

  “Good thing it wasn’t Mr. Allen. He knows my new dad,” observed another of the boys.

  “He’d have to give our name and address at the police station if he knowed them,” said the boy with the hoe, “but I reckon he was only a Special.”

  “I left my new mum’s broom there. She won’t half pay me,” said the fourth member of the band. “Think I better go back?”

  “Go back down Green Dragon, Billy,” suggested Lionel. “He won’t expect you that way. You can sneak over Burton’s back wall. Old Ma Burton goes out to work, so nobody won’t cop you.”

  Billy weighed up the risks of his foster-mother’s and the special constable’s wraths, respectively, and decided that, while it was more than possible that the special constable might no longer be on guard over the cistern, it was most improbable that his mother would fail to notice that her broom had disappeared. At the moment she was out shopping, but there seemed little doubt of her ultimate return.

  He took the advice of his leader, returned by devious ways to the cistern, and, to his immense relief, saw that the young man had departed, but that the broom was where he himself had dropped it. He picked it up, and took the precaution of returning it to the scullery before he rejoined the others. These, with patient kindness, had waited half an hour for him. The planks, he reported, were still in a state of disarray.

  “Think we ought to put ’em back?” Lionel enquired, a little doubtfully.

  “That old Special ’ud only think we was mucking about,” said Billy. This was the general view, but it was not acceptable to Lionel.

  “He won’t come back yet. He’s on a beat. We could have a swim,” he said. “Two go in at a time, and the other two watch out. There’s only two streets he could come by, even if he did come back, and I bet he won’t. Come on. Who says a swim?”

  “Too cold,” said the third child, a green-eyed furtive-looking boy. His baptismal name was Arthur, but to his associates he was usually known, by reason of the physical defect of an exceptionally bad squint, as Bosso. The eight-and-a-half-year-old said nothing, as his opinion had not been asked for, and, in any case, he could not swim.

  Billy sided with Bosso. At this, Lionel, who saw himself losing his authority, appealed to the youngest child. The child, who had the makings of a politician, replied cautiously that he was willing to hold anybody’s clothes.

  At this, Lionel hinted that he was prepared to swim alone. Billy dared him. Bosso said nothing, but he sniffed in a marked manner, and directed at Lionel such a ferocious squint out of an already ‘naturally swivelled optic’ (as his elder brother had termed it, apologetically, to his young lady) that his sensitive friend, after asking him what he thought he was bossing at, reaffirmed his determination to swim in the cistern or perish.

  The youngest member again offered to hold his clothes. Billy and Bosso each “kept” a street. The hero took off his jacket slowly, two pullovers (whose holes, fortunately, did not coincide) rather more slowly, his boots, socks, and shorts very rapidly, and his shirt like a flash. Then, having unwound a choking scarf, he requested the clothes-horse to give him a bunk up.

  The sturdy eight-year-old complied to the best of his ability. Lionel’s honour and prestige were at stake. He stood poised on one of the iron girders and looked uncertainly at the water which was less than nine inches below his grimy little heels. The day was calm, but the mid-September air was undeniably chilly.

  “Go on in. We’re all looking at you,” said the clothes-laden watcher encouragingly.

  “Yes, and what price that blue-nosed cop?” said Lionel, realising, too late, the dangers and complications of the course to which he had committed himself.

  “Him? You said yourself he wouldn’t come back,” said Billy.

  “Why, he never even chased us,” said Bosso.

  “No, he never, did he?” said Lionel, taking heart from this. “Watch out, you silly fools,” he added, from his perch, to his obviously interested friends, both of whom had abandoned their posts and were drawing near to see the fun. Billy and Bosso, however, had no intention whatever of missing the entertainment, and made no attempt to obey him. The conclusion to the affair justified their instinctive desire for excitement, and, in fact, proved rich beyond their dreams.

  With a further demand for sentries which was entirely disregarded by his followers, Lionel, bracing himself, prepared to drop into the depths. The water had been provided by the Urban District Council for the use of its fire-fighting units in the event of air-raids, and had become, through exposure, blackened and very dirty. It was impossible now to see the bottom of the cistern.

  Lionel went down like a plummet, but in an instant his head bobbed up again. He scrabbled at one of the overhead bars of iron and clutched it tightly. Then, heaving up his legs, he clung there like a monkey on a stick.

  “Get me out! Get me out! I trod on a deader!” he shrieked.

  • CHAPTER 2 •

  The Mystery of Mr. E. Drood: an adaptation by Orpheus C. Kerr.

  Printed on the wrapper of the English edition.

  Willington, in the early days of the war, was as patriotically “blacked-out” as any town in England. On the evening preceding the day on which the body had been found by Lionel in the A.R.P. tank at the western end of the town, a young couple had gone to the cinema in the Broadway, the town’s metropolis. When the programme was over, they found the change, from the comparatively brightly lighted staircase and vestibule of the cinema to the black-out of the rainy streets, dismaying and disconcerting.

  “Goodness knows whether it’s any good waiting for a bus,” said Sidney.

  “And me with my wave,” said Mabel.

  “All right. Let’s shove in under here, then. Better than standing in the wet.”

  “Glad I got you with me. Can’t say I see myself standing under dark doorways in the black-out all on my lonesome. Never know who you might be rubbing shoulders with.” She had scarcely finished the sentence when she gave a slight exclamation and clutched Sidney’s arm.

  “What’s up now?” he enquired.

  “Somebody in here already. (Beg your pardon, I’m sure.) Sidney, where’s your torch?”

  “Battery run out, and they say they can’t replace it, not at present.”

  “Like to be awkward, some of those people in shops.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Transport, that’s what it is.”

  “How often do these buses run at nights?”

  “Irregular service. You take pot-luck after seven.”

  “Makes you wonder if the pictures are worth it or not.” She drew a little nearer to him in the darkness. He put his arm around her, regardless of their wet coats, but the reason for her restlessness—nervous fears, not love—did not communicate itself to him.

  “Don’t make me wonder. What about it, Mabel? What do you say?” he demanded, a lover’s eagerness in his rough, young voice, as he held her a little more tightly.

  “Not if they make you join up. I don’t want to be no war widow.”

  “That’s right. Cheer a bloke up.” He laughed, and added, to the now shadowy figure beside them in the doorway (for their eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness), “Excuse me, mate, but how long you been waiting for the bus?”

  The stranger did not reply, and Mabel, in a low tone, but audibly, chided her swain for tactlessness.

  “It isn’t everyone that’s waiting to get on something. Mind your own business, Sidney.”

  The young man, slightly embarrassed, stepped out into the rain to see whether there was any sign of the bus. His sweetheart, regardless of her hair, which had been waved with heated tongs by her special girl at her special shop less than four hours previously, and had to last for the next three wee
ks, immediately stepped out and joined him.

  “Sidney,” she said urgently, “Let’s walk. I’m getting the creeps along of him.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Coming on faster than it was.” He fastened his turned-up collar. “We can’t help it if people don’t want to be matey. Come on back. There’s sure to be a bus in a minute.”

  “Well, you stand next to him, then.”

  “Hasn’t been behaving funny, has he? Because if he has…”

  “Never moved an inch. It isn’t that. If he acted fresh, or even nasty, I think I’d feel more comfortable. You don’t think perhaps he’s been tooken ill?”

  “I’ll ask him. Shouldn’t know what to do, though, if he has.”

  “Get him inside the pictures. They’ll look after him. Got to have trained first aid because of air-raids.”

  “All right, then. Come on back. No good us getting drenched.”

  So they returned to their cover from the rain, and Sidney, enquiring after the health of the stranger, received no reply, and Mabel hunched first one hip and then the other in an effort to relieve fatigue. Sidney and the stranger stood motionless, until Sidney began to explore his pockets for matches and a cigarette.

  At this Mabel said suddenly, “Come on, Sidney. I’m going to walk.”

  “What, now we’ve waited so long?” He dropped his voice and added, “I think he’s pretty screwed, but you don’t want to worry.”

  “I’d sooner go. Come on. We won’t get very wet if we step it out.”

  “Oh, but the bus is sure to be along in a minute. It’s a goodish way, you know.”

  “Got your best suit on, or something?” He laughed again, and put his arm round her shoulders. To his surprise (but not to his discomfiture, for he was a philosophical young man whose reaction to the vagaries of the sex was that you had to take women as you found them) this time she shrugged herself away. He dropped his arm to his side, and, in doing so, somehow contrived to strike (but not at all heavily), the stiff and silent stranger. Without the slightest sound, except that occasioned by the fall, the man tumbled flat on his face across the dirty pavement.

  Sidney’s exclamation of surprise was drowned in a shriek from Mabel.

  “Here, hold hard, Mabel,” said Sidney. “Looks as if you was right, and the poor bloke’s ill.” He thrust back into his pocket the cigarette case he had taken out, and stooped down to grope for and find the stranger’s prostrate, inert and oddly rigid body.