Speedy Death Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Gladys Mitchell

  Title Page

  1. The Guest Who Had No Dinner

  2. Accident? Suicide? Murder?

  3. The Missing Clue

  4. Interval

  5. The Inquisitors

  6. The Key to the Mystery

  7. Investigation

  8. The Murderer?

  9. Signs and Portents

  10. A Troubled Night

  11. Another Mystery

  12. Interrogation

  13. Revelations

  14. Mrs Bradley Explains

  15. A Confession

  16. Night Alarms

  17. The Inquest

  18. An Arrest

  19. The Sleuth

  20. The Case for the Crown

  21. The Defence

  22. Points of View

  Extract from The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop

  Copyright

  About the Book

  THE FIRST MRS BRADLEY MYSTERY

  Alastair Bing’s guests gather around his dining table at Chaynings, a charming country manor. But one seat, belonging to the legendary explorer Everard Mountjoy, remains empty. When the other guests search the house, a body is discovered in a bath, drowned. The body is that of a woman, but could the corpse in fact be Mountjoy? A peculiar and sinister sequence of events has only just begun...

  This is Gladys Mitchell’s first book and it marks the entrance of the inimitable Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, psychoanalyst and unorthodox amateur sleuth, into the world of detective fiction. But instead of leading the police to the murderer, she begins as their chief suspect.

  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

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop

  The Longer Bodies

  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

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  Speedy Death

  Chapter One

  The Guest Who Had No Dinner

  THE TWO YOUNG men had been waiting exactly two hours and three minutes.

  ‘If she isn’t on the six-fifteen,’ remarked the younger, larger, more utterly-bored-annoyed-and-anxious young man, ‘I am damned well going back without her. That’s the worst of girls, especially when you’re going to marry them! Always think they can turn up late. There’s going to be a row over this!’

  ‘Be of good cheer, comrade,’ said the other, ‘for, behold, the six-fifteen approaches, and she is bound to be on it.’

  She was on it.

  ‘And I’m last, I suppose!’ she cried, radiant with blushes and laughter, and beautiful beyond all telling (particularly in the eyes of the two young men, who were both in love with her) from the top of her chic new hat to the buckles of her twinkling shoes.

  There was more artless satisfaction than resignation, apology, or fearfulness in her voice, but the two young men had been waiting exactly two hours and four minutes, and they hurried her along to the waiting car.

  ‘Get in, Dorothy, for goodness’ sake!’ urged the big young man aggressively. ‘Here, porter! In here! Buck up, man! Here you are!’

  Having tipped and dismissed the baggage-bearer, he turned again to the girl.

  ‘Couldn’t finish our round in time to meet the four-thirty! And here it is, nearly half-past six! Dinner at seven-thirty, of all ungodly hours! House full of idiotic people, and the old man in a devil of a temper if he’s kept waiting for his beastly food, and the road covered with loose flints, so I expect we’re bound to pick up a puncture because, like a fool, I’ve forgotten the spare wheel, and you’re a little devil to keep us waiting like this, and the animals went in two by two, and here endeth the first lesson.’

  Dorothy laughed as she entered the car, and the speaker, with a vicious scowl, took his seat at the wheel, while the other young man, slight, short, and with black hair and very red cheeks, squeezed in beside her and slammed the door.

  ‘Right away, Captain,’ he remarked cheerfully.

  ‘It’s very nice to see you again, Bertie,’ observed Dorothy, as the car took the road. ‘What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Bertie Philipson knitted his brows. ‘I’ve been out and about, you know.’

  She surveyed him quizzically.

  ‘Still the little lounge lizard? Why don’t you get something to do?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean, not much point, is there? Of course, if you—if things had been different—you know what I mean——’

  Dorothy’s slim fingers found his wrist and pressed it gently.

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry, Bertie. I can’t help it. You see, I do like you ever so much, but with Garde—it’s different. There’s some
thing about him——’

  ‘Yes, there is. His size and his beastly temper,’ grinned Bertie, contemplating the wide shoulders which blocked his view of the road. ‘You’ll have to be a good kid when you’re married.’

  Dorothy gurgled.

  ‘I know. You can’t think how exciting it is to be scared stiff of your future husband. But he’s an awful dud, isn’t he? Twenty-six and still taking his examinations!’

  ‘Oh, well, it’s a stiff proposition,’ said Bertie. ‘There’s one comfort, he won’t need to depend upon his patients for his living. Old Bing hates the doctor idea, doesn’t he? But it won’t make any difference to Garde’s share of the family fortunes.’

  ‘It’s a nice name—Garde,’ said Dorothy.

  The young man in front turned his head for the fraction of a second.

  ‘What are you saying about me, woman?’ he demanded.

  ‘Darling, nothing. Do be careful. I’m sure the driver ought not to take notice of what people behind are saying. We nearly sent a chicken to heaven then.’

  She turned again to her companion and smiled mischievously.

  ‘And now tell me all about everybody who is invited this year,’ she commanded him. ‘Are they as awful as usual? And am I to be the only lovelorn female, as I was last time, or are some more girls coming?’

  Bertie decided to fall in with her mood.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said, and ruminated a moment. ‘I think everybody but yourself had arrived when we came away. Incidentally—I hesitate to mention it—but when you say you’ll come by the four-thirty, why do you turn up on the six-fifteen? Our brother in the front row has been trying to get through to Paddington to find out whether you’d been rendered dead in the buffet through eating one of their ham sandwiches, or something. What happened?’

  ‘Oh, I thought I was on the four-thirty and it was a bit late,’ said Dorothy, quite seriously, as she settled herself a little more comfortably against the upholstery. ‘I suppose Garde is frightfully cross with me, then? I always notice that when people have been scared they are frightfully cross afterwards. And we shall be late for dinner, and dinner will be spoilt, and Mr Bing will swear, and the cook will give notice, and they will never be able to get another one, and Eleanor will be sweetly charming to me, and I shall be so unhappy that I expect I shall fall into a decline and die. As it is, I think I am going to burst into tears.’

  ‘Do take a deep breath,’ pleaded Bertie, grinning.

  ‘Yes, I will, while you describe all the people. Fire away. Is there anyone I know?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Let me see. Do you know a fellow called Mountjoy?’

  ‘The explorer? No, but of course I’ve heard of him. A large, hairy, loud-voiced, primitive sort of creature, with a red tie and black beard.’

  ‘Oh, rot!’ laughed Bertie. ‘He is a little, slim, cleanshaven, shy sort of fellow, with hardly a word to say.’

  ‘Oh, I’d pictured him so differently. And isn’t he even a sheik?’

  ‘Sheik be hanged! The chap seems terrified out of his life if anybody comes up and speaks to him. Just growls out any old answer, and gets away as soon as ever he can. He may get on well with lions and elephants, but I’m hanged if he’s any catch as a fellow-guest. He doesn’t golf or motor or walk or ride or swim or tennis or anything. And the only person who seems to be able to get two words out of him is—whom do you think?’

  ‘Not Eleanor?’ asked Dorothy, chuckling maliciously.

  ‘Eleanor it is,’ said Bertie, solemnly nodding his head. ‘Who but our good sister Eleanor!’

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ said Dorothy severely. ‘I have never seen anything so—so wildly improbable as Eleanor’s behaviour with young, youngish, and middle-aged men. She might as well go straight into a nunnery and have done with it, I think.’

  ‘Well, she seems to think rather well of this mighty hunter, anyhow. You’ll see when we arrive. Then there is Mrs Bradley. Know her? Little, old, shrivelled, clever, sarcastic sort of dame. Would have been smelt out as a witch in a less tolerant age. I believe she is one. Good little old sport, though. You’ll like her, I expect. Then there’s a chap named Carstairs, very decent. Scientific sort of bloke, I believe—beetles or something. And that’s the lot.’

  ‘And here we are,’ added Dorothy, as Garde shaved paint off the gate-post at the lodge. ‘What a rotten driver my young man is!’

  The occasion was Alastair Bing’s birthday. The place, Chayning Court, was a pleasant Queen Anne house which had been bought by Alastair, its present owner, upon his succeeding to a respectable fortune made by his maternal uncle.

  Alastair Bing called himself an archaeologist, thought of himself as a scholar and a gentleman, and was, as a matter of fact, a hot-tempered, muddle-headed, self-opinionated, domineering man, quite likeable if you did not see too much of him, extraordinarily insufferable if you did. He had been a widower for seventeen years, during which time his daughter Eleanor had acted as his housekeeper and secretary. Garde, his son, junior to Eleanor by some years, favoured his mother’s side of the family, and was tall, strong, virile, and moody. He had elected to take up the study of medicine—this to his father’s disgust. Alastair had imagined his son a Cambridge don. It was significant that no one of their acquaintance had doubted which would win the day—the spitfire, vindictive, explosive older man or the gloomy, moody, saturnine younger one. Garde always got his own way, usually by holding stolidly to the course he had set himself, and declining to be drawn into argument. His proposal of marriage to the beautiful and popular Dorothy Clark had been characteristic.

  ‘Look here, Dorothy, what’s a decent month for a wedding?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. June?’

  ‘Right you are. Next June it is! When can you come and choose an engagement ring?’

  ‘But Garde——’

  But Garde had gone.

  Dinner, on this rather formal occasion, was in the grand manner, but conversation was dull.

  The host concluded a not very scholarly exposition of the results of the Egyptian delvings which had lately been concluded.

  His son’s voice, apparently finishing a more or less disparaging remark about the food, boomed across a great and embarrassing silence.

  Eleanor Bing—plump, placid, drab, self-possessed, and much too freezingly well bred to achieve popularity, her unshingled hair rolled into a mid-Victorian modest bun, her evening dress uninspired but expensive, her small, neat feet well and attractively shod—spoke quietly and very clearly in reply.

  Her brother glowered at her in his boorish way, and went on with his dinner.

  Between his sister and Dorothy Clark sat a quiet-faced, grey-haired, whimsically smiling man with a pleasant voice and engagingly diffident manner. This was Carstairs the naturalist, a friend of Alastair Bing’s early manhood. His easy, quiet conversation, his well-modulated tones, and his flashes of mild humour brought him instant attention from the rest of the table whenever he made a remark.

  On the further side of Dorothy Clark there was an empty chair.

  The most out-of-place member of the house-party was the woman seated on Alastair Bing’s right. Her name was Bradley —Mrs Lestrange Bradley. Nobody quite knew who knew her or why she had been invited. There was a rumour that she had worked Garde out of a foolish scrape on boat-race night, but why the boy should have ‘dug her up again,’ as Alastair disgustedly expressed it, and brought her down to Chaynings, no one could make out. Perhaps, Dorothy unkindly suggested, it was an inherited taste for fossils!

  Mrs Bradley was dry without being shrivelled, and birdlike without being pretty. She reminded Alastair Bing, who was afraid of her, of the reconstruction of a pterodactyl he had once seen in a German museum. There was the same inhuman malignity in her expression as in that of the defunct bird, and, like it, she had a cynical smirk about her mouth even when her face was in repose. She possessed nasty, dry, claw-like hands, and her arms, yellow and curiously repulsive, suggested the plucked w
ings of a fowl.

  ‘Mountjoy is very late for dinner,’ said Carstairs. ‘It’s a quarter past eight. I wonder what is keeping him? Got an idea for his new book, and has forgotten about food, I expect,’ he added, chuckling.

  Alastair Bing, his fierce moustaches bristling, his blue eyes gleaming with intense hatred, and his stiff, tufted little white imperial wagging with passionate denunciation, launched a savage attack upon his absent guest. That same afternoon, it appeared, Everard Mountjoy had offered, as his considered and expert opinion, the statement that the mound on Belldon Down was not an ancient British earthwork, but merely the remains of a bunker on what had been the local golf course seven or eight years ago, before its removal nearer the sea.

  ‘The ridiculous fellow!’ cried Alastair Bing, trembling with fury. ‘The utter clown!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said the butler at his elbow.

  Alastair stopped short.

  ‘Well?’ he snapped, glaring at the meek manservant as though he were the offending scientist. ‘What is it?’

  ‘If you please, sir,’ the butler said, ‘Parsons informs me that Mr Mountjoy went to take his bath upwards of an hour ago, and has not re-appeared.’

  Alastair glowered at him.

  ‘Re-appeared? What do you mean? Re-appeared?’ he inquired sourly. ‘The fellow isn’t a disembodied spirit, is he! Don’t be idiotic.’

  ‘He went to take his bath, sir,’ the butler repeated, unmoved, ‘upwards of an hour ago.’

  ‘Well, it’s nothing to do with me,’ yelled his employer irascibly. ‘Go and tell Parsons to knock at the door and inquire whether Mr Mountjoy requires any assistance.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said the man.

  ‘I hope he has not been taken ill,’ remarked Eleanor solicitously. ‘You don’t think, Father, that you had better go and see if all is well, do you?’

  ‘No, I do not,’ returned Alastair Bing shortly. ‘I certainly do not. A man who has the audacity—the effrontery—the sheer, downright buffoonery to tell me to my face that I don’t know an ancient British earthwork when I see one——’

  ‘But, sir,’ began Bertie Philipson mildly. ‘I mean,’ he continued innocently—but nobody ever knew what he meant, for at that moment the butler again approached his master.