The Rising of the Moon (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 Worsted Viper (1943)

  My Father Sleeps (1944)

  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)

  ‘For God’s sake, Mrs. Pocock, what do you with this Rubbish?’

  FRANCIS BLANDY

  ‘…find out moonshine, find out moonshine!’

  SHAKESPEARE

  ‘But would anyone murder a man without any other occasion than only for the delight he takes in murdering? It is not credible.’

  SAINT AUGUSTINE

  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 1945

  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 1945 by Michael Joseph

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

  ISBN-13: 9781477818886

  ISBN-10: 147781888X

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One The Antique Shop

  Chapter Two The Rising of the Moon

  Chapter Three The Circus

  Chapter Four The Death of a Tight-Rope Walker

  Chapter Five The Death of a Barmaid

  Chapter Six The Temporary Disappearance of a Husband

  Chapter Seven The Death at the Farm

  Chapter Eight The Knife

  Chapter Nine The Dark of the Moon

  Chapter Ten The Old Woman

  Chapter Eleven The Death of a Nursemaid

  Chapter Twelve The Gleaning

  Chapter Thirteen The Break

  Chapter Fourteen The Antique Shop

  Chapter Fifteen The Circus

  Chapter Sixteen The Death of a Nursemaid

  Chapter Seventeen The Temporary Disappearance of a Husband

  Chapter Eighteen The Gleaning

  Chapter Nineteen The Rising of the Moon

  Chapter Twenty The Old Woman

  About the Author

  Introduction

  The Rising of the Moon was Gladys Mitchell’s own favourite among her detective novels. It’s set by the Thames at Brentford (where the author lived and worked as a teacher for many years) at some unspecified time in the past; the area is certainly more rural than it had become by 1945, when the book was originally published. Manor Road, which runs towards Boston Manor, is described as being “almost a country lane,” and thorn hedges, fields and cart tracks abound. Most of all, though, you get the feeling of an unadulterated small town, with alleys, towpaths, canal bridges, smithies, raucous public houses, and so forth—all guaranteed to exert an appeal on the receptive reader. It’s a remarkably evocative recreation, and one particularly well suited to accommodate the Ripper-type killings which are at the centre of the plot.

  The narrator, Simon Innes, is based on the author’s recollections of herself at thirteen; she grew up in a family which made no practical distinction between boys and girls, and the change of gender is effected with ease. This, however, is as far as the novel goes in the direction of autobiography. Gladys Mitchell invents a younger brother, Keith, for her hero, and places both boys in a family consisting of their older brother Jack, sister-in-law June, nephew Tom, and lodger Christina. She establishes with great adroitness and economy the attitude held by each member of this household to all the others, not eschewing domestic friction but not dwelling on it either. The mood of the novel is very wry and humorous, and we have, in the central characters, a couple of the most engaging and spirited boys to appear outside the confines of children’s literature.

  What’s most remarkable about the book, indeed, is the way the author handles her narrative from the point of view of a thirteen-year-old boy, putting due emphasis on the usual enthusiasms of adolescence (often with hilarious effect), but getting some touches of singularity into this portrayal too. The ferocious loyalty between the younger Innes brothers, and Simon’s unabashed infatuation with the pretty lodger, are beautifully done. So too is the insertion of many colourful motifs: an intriguing junk shop and its odd proprietress, “Amazonian as Meg Merrilees” and never seen without her hat (and what is
she keeping under it?); a frightful old rag-and-bone man, among whose effects is a piece of blood-stained corset; circus performers, dairymaids, ne’er-do-wells and all. There’s a place in all this, too, for Mrs. Bradley, Gladys Mitchell’s incomparable investigator. High-powered and piquant as ever, in The Rising of the Moon, Mrs. Bradley isn’t for long flummoxed by the riddle of the Ripper. The story, though, is Simon’s, and the detective, for once, remains on the periphery of the action. It’s the boys, not dauntless “Mrs Croc”, who blithely go into danger when the occasion requires it, breaking out at night by means of the scullery roof, a drainpipe and a well-placed water butt. Such actions, of course, are after the hearts of all enterprising children.

  Among the most effective aspects of The Rising of the Moon is the slightly Gothic, Hansel-and-Gretel quality it takes on from time to time; playful homage, in the form of near-ritual exchanges and tests of courage and ingenuity, is offered to the Brothers Grimm and other tellers of picturesque tales. Add to this a distinctive comic-sinister feeling, a fresh and lucid prose style, and extraordinary accuracy of observation, and you end up with one of the most unusual and rewarding novels in the genre. Gladys Mitchell was never prone to repeat her effects, and this book, her eighteenth, is quite unlike anything else she wrote.

  Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, London 1984

  Chapter One

  The Antique Shop

  We were dressed as we wished to be dressed. Keith wore his bathing costume, a pair of linen shorts, and his Wellington boots. I had my riding breeches on, and a pair of grey cycling stockings. I wore a short jacket with military, button-over pockets, a pair of leather gauntlets that flared to my elbows, and I carried a lanyard on my belt and a knife in a sheath on my hip.

  It was the beginning of the Easter holiday. Keith was too cold to be comfortable in his garb, and I was too warm in mine, but he had a jacket over his arm, and socks on, inside the Wellingtons, and, as for me, at the age of thirteen I would have sweated myself to the bone rather than discard the smallest item of a costume which so well expressed my feeling for romance and my conviction that I was, in the highest sense, a man of destiny.

  We were, as usual at that time of year, by the river. In summer, unless we were at the seaside, we went to my aunt’s house in the country and took our bicycles; but we were not encouraged to cycle whilst the days were still comparatively short, as there had been difficulties about our arriving home long after lighting-up time. So, at Easter, our excursions were usually made on foot.

  Sometimes we explored the south bank of the river, but often we remained on our own north side and lurked at the bottom of Ferry Lane or paddled at the end of the slipway between the gasworks and the police station. Sometimes, when the tide was out, we could get across from the slipway to Osier Island, which lay out in the stream about fifteen yards from the bank. On this particular day Keith wanted to cross to the island, but I was not in favour of this, as I was not dressed for wading. Even if I took off my stockings there seemed no way to avoid getting mud on my riding breeches, and to this I was averse, although I would have plastered my Sunday suit without a thought.

  The high street ran parallel with the river, and a dozen alleys led from the road to the docks and the riverside. Some of them bent to meet others, but for the most part, once past the small, old houses, the stables, the mills, the repair shops, the smithies, or whatever there was tucked away behind the stream of traffic which congested the narrowest bottle-neck out of London, the intrepid explorer found himself on the river front past which sailed the barges drawn by tugs on their way between London and the docks of our little artery of a town.

  Further to the west the high street crossed the canal, and here more alleys and a complication of riverside houses which made a town inside our town, and whose inhabitants seemed to have nothing to do with the rest of the population, offered a wide and exciting field for the explorer where the high street, the river, and the canal cut off a long narrow triangle of land which once had been virgin swamp and now was called Old England.

  It had been said in our hearing at home that strangers, even the townspeople, were not welcome in this quarter, and that those who left the high street at night to traverse this lost settlement did so at the risk of their lives. There was a legend that one, Moses Arundell, had been stoned to death on the Leys, which was the part of Old England nearest to the high street, but, although we went down there but seldom, the place was always quiet enough, and the inhabitants seemed self-contained, but neither dour nor belligerent.

  The fact that remained significant, however, was that Old England, its alleys, its towing path, its locks, its little houses with their high door-sills to keep out the flood tides, its rough dogs, its village of disused barges and ancient decrepit hoppers, was a place apart from all the rest of our town, a place like a foreign country, having its own fascination and danger, its own code of laws and behaviour, even its own strange patois of oaths, exclamations, and prayers.

  Keith soon gave in about the island. He was far less selfish than I, although, when he was set on a purpose, far more obstinate. On this occasion he did not care much whether or not we visited the island. There were other things to do, and he was willing to do them.

  So, having climbed the steep little hill and reached the high street, we walked down Ferry Lane, at the end of which Julius Cæsar was said to have landed troops on his first encounters with the Britons. We attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade the ferryman to give us a free trip across the river and back. Then we walked along the high street to a little junk shop in which there were sometimes displayed such weapons as daggers, swords, and old horse-pistols. It was a favourite playground of ours, for the woman who kept it (and disliked and distrusted children as a rule) had no objection to our going into the shop and handling everything which happened to take our fancy.

  She was a very queer old lady, tall and Amazonian as Meg Merriles, and one of her peculiarities was always to wear a hat. We never saw her without this rusty and antique headgear, and she had an air of great dignity and distinction.

  There was a rumour that she had once been the proprietress of a small travelling circus, but her own conversation, which included anecdotes of her past, gave no colour whatever to this tale.

  She addressed us with old-fashioned courtesy, myself always as Mr. Innes, or Mr. Simon Innes, or Mr. Simon, and my brother as Mr. Keith, and in these nominatives there was never the faintest flavour of irony or patronage. She confided to me once that she could not bear girls, but that young men were always assured of her favour and goodwill.

  “Girls, Mr. Innes,” she pronounced, “are hussies and will-o’-the-wisps. Trust them less than the serpent that bites the dust, or the adder sunning itself on the open heath. Their appearance is deceptive; their beauty a snare. ‘Earthlier happy is the rose distilled.’ Aye, Mr. Innes, without doubt; but what of the distiller? Tell me that.”

  I could not answer her. Distillers, to me, meant gentlemen whose names appeared upon wine and spirit merchants’ vans. As there were not fewer than forty public houses in our town, there were plenty of such vans to be seen. I changed the subject to her own stock-in-trade, which always fascinated us, but she returned to her theme time and again. Girls were wicked and worthless; Eve was the temptress who betrayed mankind. Their looks, their clothes, their voices—everything, in fact, which made girls, to my mind, the fascinating if slightly terrifying creatures that they are—came under her ban, and us she liked because, she said, we loved those things which were of good report. I think she referred to her antiques.

  Keith’s speciality was guns and pieces of armour; my choice was swords. I longed to own one, but feared to ask the price, lest our friend, who was such an oddity, should ask something less than the true value, and something which she guessed was within our reach. However, there was nothing to prevent my disengaging all her swords from their sheaths and lovingly and reverently weighting them in
my hand. I must have spent hours in admiring the chasing on the hilts and what I believed to be the runes along the blades. My chief pleasure, however, was in running my thumb along the edges and in dreaming of how I would polish the blades if the swords belonged to me. I thought of the duels in which I should engage had I been born to the sword in one of the duelling periods. There was nothing I did not know at that time, although I have forgotten it since, of the etiquette of fighting to the death.

  When we reached the shop, which was on our way home, our friend, Mrs. Cockerton, was standing in her doorway. One story she had told us was that she had been the wife of a writer, but he had left no money when he died, and she had never learned to do anything by which she could earn her living, so she had sold some of the contents of what must have been a beautiful home, and had taken the rest and set up a shop in south-east London as a dealer in antiques. Some of her things were rare and genuine, but she knew, I imagine, too little about the business ever to make it a success. She had sunk, as time went on, to this little shop in this old, low-ceilinged house in our little, dirty, old town, and always said that she would have to be content to end her days with us. How soon that end would come we did not know. She seemed to us incredibly, fantastically old. Actually I think she must have been sixty to sixty-five. She made five shillings a week by subletting the back of her premises, including the shed and the yard, to a rag and bone man. He paid the rent regularly, which was surprising, and was friendly with the police, whom he went out of his way to truckle to and oblige.

  We had a special interest in the matter of Mrs. Cockerton’s death, for one day, when it was raining, she had told us that she would leave each of us a present in her will.

  We did not believe that she meant it. She had her own form of humour, as we knew. But it was interesting to speculate upon the probable nature of the presents, and to try to work out how long it would be before (if we were to get them) they would be ours. In fact, we looked forward to the day of her death with a lively anticipation, which was intellectual rather than ghoulish in its origins, and yet we dreaded the day, for, as Keith pointed out on more than one occasion—for, with us, repetition, as with savages, was held to strengthen a case—we could hardly expect that the next tenant of the shop would allow us the same free run of it, and the shop itself might be sold to a trader in more mundane, fleshly merchandise.