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  Tom Brown's Body

  ( Mrs Bradley - 22 )

  Gladys Mitchell

  Mrs Bradley is visiting the picturesque village of Spey in search of a local witch when Gerald Conway, a junior master at Spey College, is found murdered. Despised by both pupils and peers, there is no shortage of suspects but can the redoubtable Mrs Bradley use tact, wit and just a touch of black magic to make the boys and their masters divulge the truth?

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Author's Note

  Preamble

  Chapter 1. French Leave

  Chapter 2. Witches' Brew

  Chapter 3. 'Mr Perrin and Mr Traill'

  Chapter 4. Noblesse Oblige

  Chapter 5. 'O Weep for Adonaïs'

  Chapter 6. Policemen's Feet on Ida

  Chapter 7. Dead Men Speak Dutch

  Chapter 8. Nancy's Fancies

  Chapter 9. An Assembly of the Elders

  Chapter 10. Hecate at School House

  Chapter 11. The Ladies, God Bless Them

  Chapter 12. The Case is Clearer

  Chapter 13. The Prince of Darkness

  Chapter 14. Enter Priapus Minor

  Chapter 15. And Puppy-Dogs' Tails

  Chapter 16. 'A Night at an Inn'

  Chapter 17. 'A Peep Behind the Scenes'

  Chapter 18. Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Just Plain Nastiness

  Chapter 19. Nymph Errant

  Chapter 20. A Scrum for a Line-Out

  Chapter 21. The Hunt is Up

  Chapter 22. Hare and Hounds

  Chapter 23. Aroint Thee, Witch

  TOM BROWN'S BODY

  Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or 'The Great Gladys' as Philip Larkin described 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 along with G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie 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 Award in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Spey is not intended to represent any public school ever founded by king, bishop, guild, worshipful company or private citizen.

  Preamble

  *

  What a dickens is the Woman always a whimpring about Murder for?

  John Gay – THE BEGGAR'S OPERA (Act 1, Scene 4)

  THE village of Spey is delightfully situated. It has woods and a river to the north, and to the south and west the undulations of its open fields meet the gorse and heather of the moors. It has a blacksmith, livery stables, a haunted Priory, and a witch.

  The manor house of Spey was built in 1730, and in 1829 it became a public school. Nowadays the Headmaster, his wife, and, when they are at home, his two daughters, live in one wing of the manor, and the School House boys, some of the masters, the Headmaster's servants, and his butler's budgerigars, occupy the rest of the building.

  Around the eighteenth-century mansion, like satellites around a noble planet, courtiers around a king, or his family of sheaves bowing down to Joseph the Dreamer, are other and lesser Houses which, with the mansion itself, make up the School.

  There are twelve of these lesser Houses, and they are so discreetly situated – having been added one at a time as the School increased its numbers – that they do not impair the prospect of the original mansion. Unfortunately, together with Spey itself, they come to the number of thirteen, and, by superstitious boys and masters, that lesser breed, the parents, and that influential hierarchy, the Old Boys, to this mystic number has been attributed the dire misfortune which fell upon the School soon after the conclusion of the war.

  The School, in short, has added to its other traditions the dubious one of a murdered junior master.

  1. French Leave

  *

  We run great Risques – great Risques indeed.

  IBID (Act 3, Scent 6)

  ON Wednesday afternoon in the middle of a delightful and mild October, Merrys and Skene were about to make a plan to be A.W.O.L. It was their reaction to the unjust and unreliable behaviour of their seniors. In other words, Merrys had had a row with his form-master, and Skene had been put down to play in the House Third instead of the House Second, where he considered that he belonged.

  'And if that ass Cartaris thinks he can sack me in favour of that ass Timms, he can jolly well get his head looked at with X-rays, because it just means we shall lose to those asses in Mayhews,' said Skene. 'Just because I happened to fumble the ball once – and only once, mind you! – and that ass Scallamore picked up and just happened, by the most fearful bit of luck – and I'm not sure he wasn't offside at that! – to drop a goal, Cartaris needn't think I funked. He practically said I did, and I practically called him a liar, and, anyhow, I'd been kicked over the heart – that ass Felles did that; I hacked his shins for him in the next scrum; and, anyway –'

  'Yes,' said Merrys, who had been waiting with some impatience for this tirade to end, and now deemed it best to interrupt it, 'and if Conway thinks he can shove me in D for not being able to translate a lot of rot which nobody would have got up to if that ass Micklethwaite hadn't been put on first and rattled off all the bits everyone knew without even stopping to breathe –'

  'Oh, Micklethwaite!' said Skene. 'He'll get a Balliol. Everybody thinks so.'

  'More likely to get a brick in his ribs,' said the vengeful sufferer from Micklethwaite's virtuosity. 'Anyway, I'm about fed up with this place, and I'm going to do something about it. I've jolly well made up my mind.'

  'There's not much you can do,' said Skene, 'without getting gated or lammed.'

  'I'd just like to show them!' said Merrys, who was seriously annoyed with Mr Conway. 'Fancy shoving me in D when I was down for my turn of the Roman Bath!'

  'Hard cheese, of course,' admitted his friend, realizing that the core of the grievance had been reached. 'Let's go and have a look at it,' he added, 'and bung a brick at Micklethwaite. He's always there! Nancy gets him extra turns, I think.'

  'Nancy's a – !' stated Merrys. 'Come on, then, if you want to fag over there. But we mustn't be late for tea!'

  They strolled off towards the far end of Deep Field, to where the ground dropped to what had once been a little stream.

  Here there was a high board fence reinforced at every fifth yard by a post made of concrete. Behind the fence the scene changed. A great rectangular hollow had been delved from an outflanking spur of the moor, and within the hollow was the Roman Bath referred to in bitter tones by Merrys.

  All of it was under cover. Inside the Bath were frescoes copied faithfully by a famous modern cartoonist from Roman models; was a beautiful piece of tessellated pavement, modern, but so skilfully copied from the one discovered on a Roman site not very far from the school that even experts looked at it twice before they realized that it was not the original; was a Latin inscription inviting the rich, the virtuous, and the learned to bathe in the health-giving waters blessed by Priapus (a strange god to introduce into a world of boys, some thought), and dedicated to the gentler Glaucus.

  Beyond the Roman Bath was the School boundary, and, beyond that again, a moorland road which led ultimately to the village of Spey and on to the town.

  The Roman Bath w
as the apple of Mr Loveday's eye, and in his House Merrys and Skene had been nurtured for the past two years. Unlike most such loves, this one happened to appeal as strongly to the public as to its originator. Good boys – that is to say, boys who had not been detected in wrong-doing – were always put on a rota by Mr Loveday at the beginning of the Christmas Half, and, whilst the river was too cold for comfort, these good or – it cannot be overemphasized – undetected boys had a turn in the warmed Roman Bath, and regarded this as a privilege not to be despised, particularly as it was restricted to the members of Loveday's House.

  The building had been constructed under the fanatically zealous eye of Mr Loveday, partly by professionals and partly by means of forced labour recruited amongst his boys. The plans and blue-prints he had made for himself one winter after he had visited Pompeii and Herculaneum.

  He had employed workmen to instal the heating system, but even this, his chief pride, was on the Roman model, and the completed building included a caldarium, a tepidarium, and all such other adjuncts as archaeology and the Latin authors suggested. Mr Loveday had had the most enormous fun over his Bath, and had spent some years on the plans and in saving money to carry them out. The Roman Bath had become one of the show-pieces of the School, and rivalled the Chapel and the Headmaster's garden in interest and importance.

  The names of naughty boys, unwashed boys, late boys, and lazy boys were sternly removed from the rota by the august hand of Mr Loveday himself, and were only reinserted after a period of penitence and atonement.

  Due for their turn, therefore – and not more than five of them were ever allowed to use the Roman Bath at one time, and that time was from four o'clock until five on first Thursdays – boys were apt to slink about doing evil with much more circumspection than usual, or even, to the irritation of boys in other Houses but in the same form, to eschew evil together for a season. Merrys, therefore, whose piety had become lately a matter of fury to his co-mates and brothers in exile, was naturally more than incensed at the mean trick played by fate and his form-master Mr Conway in doing him out of his turn. Fate was in baulk, but upon Mr Conway he desired vengeance.

  'Of course, you can rag in form, and take it out of Conway that way,' said Skene, when they had satisfied themselves that the place was locked and that the virtuous, favoured, and erudite Micklethwaite was nowhere to be seen. 'But what can I do? I can't rag Cartaris. I'd only get my bottom tanned, and there isn't much future in that.'

  'There isn't much point in ragging Conway, either,' said Merrys. 'He'd only shove me in D again. No, we've got to do something to sort of give ourselves uplift. You know – rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things, and at the same time, get our revenge. That's what we've got to do. The thing is – how?'

  Skene, a pale-skinned, hazel-eyed, reddish-haired, chunky boy – one of the more easily-recognizable Scottish types – looked at his friend with anxiety.

  'You're nuts,' he said.

  'No, I'm not. I read about it in the hols,' explained Merrys. 'You sublimate things. For instance, if you get tanned, you think of being an early Christian martyr, and decide to live a good life – well, you might do that in any case, but, well, you know the sort of thing; or – well, it's not easy to explain, but – oh, well, we've got to do something. We've got to get on top again, and atone to ourselves for this bally sucks about the Bath, and you, I suppose, about getting shoved into House Third instead of House Second – although, if you ask my opinion –'

  'Well, I don't!' said Skene, giving his friend a vicious and indignant kick.

  'All right! All right!' said Merrys, rubbing his ankle. 'What I was saying was to buck ourselves up, and look the whole world in the face, for we owe not any man because we've got our own back on Fate and what-not, if you can get that idea into your fat head.'

  'Yes, I see that, all right. But what can we do?'

  'It's got to be something that hasn't been done before,' said Merrys solemnly. 'Otherwise it isn't much good.'

  'Don't be a silly owl. Everything worth doing has been done before.'

  'Not quite everything,' said Merrys, mysteriously, glancing round the rapidly-emptying field, as boys began going in to tea.

  'What do you mean?' demanded his practical friend.

  'Swear you'll come in with me if I tell you?'

  'Well, all right, then. But I don't believe – anyway, spit it out pronto, or we'll be late in, and all the potted meat will be gone.'

  'Look here, then. We'll go to the Dogs.'

  'Go to – Oh, but we'd never be able to sneak out of footer to do that! It's always House Practice on Wednesdays.'

  'I'm not talking about the afternoon Dogs, chump. I'm talking about the evening Dogs. They don't start until eight, and it's dark by the time Prep's over. We could easily –'

  'What about Call-Over and supper?'

  'We can manage those. We'd better not miss supper. After that, well, Albert-Edward's got a bike, and it's got a step. We could take turns at riding the bike and standing on the step. We could get to the place by nine, see two or three dog-races, nip back again on the bike, and so home by about eleven.'

  'And suppose we get nabbed? We'd be sacked at once.'

  'You can't be sacked unless you're out after midnight. I know that for a cast-iron fact. Besides, we shan't be nabbed. How can we be? Who's to nab us?'

  'Things might go wrong. Besides, the bike! Think of the frightful row there'd be if Albert-Edward knew we'd pinched his bike! He may be an ass, but he is a Housemaster.'

  'Oh, rot! He never even looks at the bike. He only had the thing for the war when he was in the Home Guard. It's just shoved inside that little place by Jack the Ripper's toolshed. I expect Albert-Edward's forgotten he's got it by now. Beaks are always absent-minded about property.'

  'The tyres'll be flat.'

  'Oh, well, it's sure to have a pump on it. Tell you what! Let's get Jack the Ripper to pump it up, and tell him to see that the lamps are O.K. He'll do it for a bob, and once he's taken the bob he'll have to keep his mouth shut for his own sake. What do you say?'

  'We'll have to go out past Spivvy's cottage, remember.'

  'What odds? Ten to one, he'll be up in the masters' Common Room when we go, and asleep by the time we get back. Now you said you'd come –'

  'On condition that you get the bike, then.'

  'All right, then, although I think –'

  'And that the lamps and the tyres are all right. I'm not going to break my neck.'

  'All right, then, but they will be all right. And who cares, anyway, about your bally neck?'

  'And,' said Skene, with sudden cunning, 'that if we win anything on the Dogs, we split it fifty-fifty. You're always much luckier than I am.'

  ' Win anything on the – Gosh! I'd never thought of that!' said Merrys, startled. 'I say, though, that would make a stink if it came out! Do you think – ?'

  'It's my last condition,' said Skene, who now saw a ray of hope that the expedition, of which he was thoroughly nervous, might, after all, be abandoned. 'Unless you bet, and we split your winnings, I'm out. I don't mind subbing up half your stake if you lose,' he added handsomely.

  'You're a blasted Shylock,' said Merrys. 'All right, then, fifty-fifty.'

  Hope died in Skene's loyal but cautious breast.

  'All right, then,' he agreed despondently. 'I'm on, I suppose. Let's do it soon and get it over.'

  *

  Merrys was not the only person who was disgruntled that he had missed a visit to the Roman Bath. Mr Loveday (Albert-Edward to the members of his House) was a mild and scholarly gentleman of advanced views, particularly on what is called, erroneously, discipline, but as a rule he reserved these views for the eyes of editors of educational journals. On this occasion, however, he felt that he had been cold-shouldered to the point of insult, for Mr Conway had not seen fit to inform him that he was keeping back one of his candidates for immersion, although there was evidence that the boy had pointed this out.

&n
bsp; 'It's time we thought of some better way of managing boys than by beating them and putting them in Detention,' he observed bitterly in the Common Room, after his roll-call for the Roman Bath had failed to elicit a response from Merrys. 'I don't complain, of course. Those are the recognized ways of keeping order, especially by people whose brains and personalities are deficient in the vital qualities which go to make a schoolmaster. Nevertheless' – he glared at the back of Mr Conway's neck – 'I am suffering from –'

  'Another overdose of Neill magnesia?' said Mr Conway, turning his head only slightly. He was young enough to despise Mr Loveday wholeheartedly. He thought it was quite time that the Headmaster dispossessed some of these senile Housemasters – got them to take Orders and push off into rural England – so that their legitimate successors (himself primarily) could afford to marry and settle down. 'Go and work it off somewhere else, Loveday, old dear. I can't help it if your whelps aren't given a chance to do their Prep, and so fall down on their classwork.'

  'I don't believe in all this Prep,' said Mr Loveday, his fingers angrily clutching the bowl of the pipe that was in his jacket pocket. 'With competent teaching it is quite unnecessary. As for keeping boys in when they should be taking exercise' – he broke off to glare across the room again at the thick-set, aggressive, black-haired Mr Conway, who, unfortunately, again had his back to him and was earnestly discussing the respective merits of pre-war light ales with a master of his own age and tastes – 'then, I say, it is time to consider whether the principle of granting and withholding privileges is not very much to be preferred.'

  'It's what they try at Borstal Institutions, isn't it?' said Mr Conway, suddenly swinging round. 'Why don't you get a job at one of them?'

  Mr Loveday, who was a genuine reformer and therefore did not make quite such a mess with his theories as a less sincere man might have done, said that, in his view, the system, Borstal-based or not, was the right one. He then referred (mistakenly) to the success of his Roman-Bath privileges and their abuse by incapable form-masters, and received in reply a long and spirited denunciation of his boys from Mr Conway, who referred to their sins of omission and commission, their furtiveness, their impudence, their laziness, their slackness in form and on the games-field, their unwashedness (Roman Bath or no Roman Bath), and their general and unrelieved wrong-headedness.