Fault in the Structure (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)

  Churchyard Salad (1969)

  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 1977

  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 Great Britain in 1977 by Michael Joseph.

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

  E-ISBN: 9781477869222

  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.

  Fiercely intolerant of what is false,

  Fiercely zealous for what is true.

  TO JULIAN MCDONAUGH,

  From whose poetic drama, A Pageant of English Dominicans, the above quotation, the title of this book, and all its chapter headings are borrowed with gratitude, admiration, and love.

  Contents

  PART ONE Flaws in the Façade

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  PART TWO Seepage in the Cellar

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  PART THREE Cracks in the Plaster

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  PART FOUR Demolition

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  Flaws in the Façade

  CHAPTER 1

  Hardened in error by pride of intellect

  Osbert Swineborn proposed to Dora Ellen at the New Year’s Eve dance which his mother, who knew Dora Ellen to be the only child and heiress of a wealthy expatriate American, had given for that purpose.

  “Well,” said the young lady, “well, all right, O.K. then, but a condition goes with it and, until that condition has been fulfilled, I want no part in your future life and happiness.”

  Osbert had no inkling of what was coming. However, grateful for his mother’s efforts on his behalf and mindful, as ever (for he was a dutiful son) of her wishes, he promised that he would do anything—positively anything—which would result in his winning Dora Ellen’s hand in marriage.

  It was not that he loved the young woman. The ability to love was not one of his endowments. It was simply that he agreed with his mother, who had often, although without rancour, expressed the opinion that he was unlikely ever to make what she called “a decent living” for himself and that therefore his aim should be to marry a wife whose dowry would result in his leading that life of ease and leisure for which both his mother and he were convinced he was best fitted.

  “So what do you want me to do?” he asked his fiancée. “Just say the word and if I can, I’ll do it.”

  “That’s binding on you, then. Look, honey, it’s this way. I am not going through the rest of my life calling myself Dora Ellen Swineborn. I’m kind of allergic to hogs.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Osbert. “Is that really the case?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s really the case, so what’s wrong with planting that cute little letter e some place else and changing that little letter o into a little letter u?”

  “Such as how?” asked Osbert, who was no dabbler in poetry, although he had heard of Shakespeare and had enjoyed Miss Joyce Grenfell’s rendering of an imaginary American mother attempting to introduce an imaginary American child to the glorious works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

  “Such as spelling it Swinburne, of course,” said Dora Ellen impatiently. So, by deed poll, accustomed from his earliest years to female domination, Osbert slightly but significantly changed his surname and Dora Ellen became Mrs. Osbert Swinburne.

  When, in
due course, her son was born, the mother insisted that he be named Alfriston (after his place of birth) and Calliope, after the Muse of epic poetry. With a name like A. C. Swinburne, she contended, a poet of some kind he was surely destined to become.

  “Alfriston Calliope?” said Osbert doubtfully. “A bit tough on the poor little so-and-so, isn’t it? Besides, I thought Calliope was a kind of steam-engine.”

  “Honey, don’t show your ignorance,” said his wife.

  “Anyway the kid will only be called Alf if you stick to this Alfriston label, and I’ve always thought Alf was, well, you know, rather a common sort of name; the sort of name they give barrow boys and plumbers’ mates, and the chaps who wear cloth caps and belong to Unions.”

  “Alf?” said his wife distastefully. “There was Alfred the Great and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I never heard either of them referred to as Alf.”

  “He might even be called Al, like Al Capone,” said the father rebelliously.

  “Whatever he’s called, he will be able to sign himself A. C. Swinburne,” retorted Dora. “I would have liked to name him Algernon Charles, but I guess it would hardly do to plagiarise that far. Anyway, so far as what he’s to be called is concerned, we must insist on Alfrist, nothing shorter.”

  “Alfrist?” said Osbert. “Oh, yes, Alfrist would be all right, I suppose. Rather classy in a way. Alfrist C. Swinburne? Yes, your father might like that! It sounds quite American, I mean to say, doesn’t it? It may reconcile the old buster to our marriage, what?”

  “We never would have married if I hadn’t seen the possibilities of this A. C. Swinburne set-up,” said Dora Ellen, at last uncovering what had always been a mystery to her spouse, for Osbert knew that, in spite of his mother’s favourable opinion of him, he was anything but an eligible parti. “Pop acted kind of tough when I broke the news,” Dora Ellen went on, “and if I hadn’t of gotten this Swinburne idea I guess I would have listened to his arguments.”

  “But who was Swinburne?” asked Osbert. He had wished to ask before, but had lacked the courage. His wife looked at him with pity and contempt.

  “All I can say, honey,” she remarked, “is that I guess I’m aiming to see that Alfrist gets a better education than you appear to have gotten for yourself.”

  “I was too delicate to be sent to school,” said Osbert. “I was educated at home.”

  “I wonder what that explains?” said Dora Ellen, handing the baby to the nurse. “The first thing you do, honey, you put his name down for a dozen or two of these Eton and Harrow schools. That way we’ll be sure he gets in somewhere good when he’s old enough. A boy with the name of A. C. Swinburne has got to be going places.”

  What would have happened to A. C. Swinburne had his mother lived became a matter for speculation, for she died when the child was thirteen and in his first term at his public school. After her death, Osbert discovered, to his dismay, that she had but a life interest in her fortune and that her father, who had returned to America, had married for the second time and now had a son of his own. He had diverted his fortune to this child of his old age, leaving Alfrist with a small annuity payable when he attained his majority. Nothing whatever was willed to Osbert, who, for the first time in his life, was faced with the hideous prospect of having to earn a living for himself and his son.

  The boy was taken away from his expensive public school and sent to a State school where he did well enough so far as work was concerned, but where he was never popular and soon became known as “teachers’ creep.”

  That was by no means the worst of it. At his public school a waggish master had referred to him as Algernon Charles, to the mystification of the form. They were more familiar with Latin than with English verse. Questioned on the matter by his peers, Alfrist, who had no intention of disclosing the truly dreadful names bestowed on him by his American mother, had replied that he supposed the master had been trying to show what a funny swine he could be. As the master in question was known and despised for his untimely and unkind wit, this definition of his humour was accepted.

  Unfortunately for Alfrist, his new comrades at the State school discovered, from the classroom anthology of English poetry which was supplied by a paternal government, exactly what the public-school master had had in mind, although they knew nothing of the incident. Someone found that the book of poems included Swinburne’s Itylus, so the lad was set upon in the playground one dinner-time and, to joyous yells of “Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,” a cake of soap from the washroom was forced chokingly into his mouth.

  From that time on, Alfrist set himself two objectives: to change his name as soon as he could (but not, for he was an intelligent although hardly a likeable lad, until after he had made sure of the annuity he was to be given by his American grandfather) and to fit himself to take vengeance upon society. He reached neither of these goals while he was still at school, but kept them in the forefront if his mind against the time when he should attain his majority.

  Having reached his sixteenth birthday and his O levels, he received, to his surprise and chagrin, the now very unwelcome news that his father proposed to take him away from school and put him to the task of beginning to make his own way in the world and pay for his keep.

  “But I can’t,” he said blankly. “Not yet. I’ve got my A levels to do.”

  “I don’t earn enough to go on keeping both of us,” said his father. This was at the end of the Easter term and for another three months Osbert allowed the subject to drop. He had no wish to try conclusions with his son too soon. The long summer holiday at the end of the following term would be a better time to elaborate his point of view, he thought.

  He himself had tried one kind of unskilled employment after another, disliking each a little more than the last. He particularly objected to his present job although it brought in a little more money than any of the others he had tried. The work necessitated the wearing of overalls and sometimes breaking the nails of his so far fastidiously-kept hands. It also brought back unwelcome memories of his autocratic wife who, as time went on, had become more and more authoritative and exacting and (what in his opinion was worse) more and more inclined to hang on tightly to the purse-strings.

  One of the economies on which she had insisted was that small adjustments, tunings, and running repairs to the family car should be made cheaply at home instead of expensively at a garage. Osbert had attempted to rebel against this, but his bid for independence was soon quashed. In the course of the years, therefore, he had become a reasonably competent mechanic and when the time came for a show-down between himself and his son, he was in the employment of a garage proprietor who specialised in tarting up and reconditioning used cars and selling them at a reasonable profit.

  One of the perquisites of this particular employment was that there were opportunities for the mechanic to go joy-riding in the repaired cars. When he did so he imagined himself to be the owner and the car a brand-new and expensive model. During the school holidays, he occasionally took Alfrist with him on these jaunts, but there was little fellow-feeling between them. Alfrist despised his father and when it became clear at the beginning of the summer vacation that, instead of joining the privileged Sixth Form to sit his A levels, he really was to be put out to work, he renewed his protests.

  “I want to go to University,” he said. “You’ve only got to keep me another two years, father. I’ll get a student grant after that. Why can’t I stay on?”

  “Money. Do you realise what your clothes cost, let alone your food?”

  “Mr. Churt says I’m a cert for my A levels. I got nine Os, father.”

  “Yes, I know you did and they ought to stand you in good stead. You could get a very decent job in a bank, I shouldn’t wonder. You wouldn’t want your poor old dad to go on keeping you for another five or six years, would you? Even with a grant you’d cost me a lot of money.”

  “I’m your son and I reckon it’s your job to see me through. Look, dad, I’m not a cretin. I get jolly good ma
rks all the time at school. I’m worth being given my chance.”

  “If your mother had lived, everything would have been different, you see,” said Osbert, with the resentment he always felt when he thought about his wife.

  “Well, she didn’t live, so now it’s up to you,” said the youth, realising, however, that he was fighting a losing battle.

  “I can’t manage it, son. My health isn’t good. Never has been. It’s time you took on some responsibility. What would you do if I pegged out as, with my heart condition and the sort of work I do, I easily might?”

  This argument carried no weight with his unsentimental son, who treated it with the contempt he felt it deserved by saying: “Oh, if anything happened to you, I should go and live with my grandfather in America, I suppose.”

  The school term ended in mid-July and, as had been the case for several years, Alfrist found himself at a loose end with six or seven weeks of summer holiday to get through as best he might. He had no friends with whom to spend his time. He was still only tolerated at school, not liked. There were no holiday outings for him, either, except an occasional drive with his father when Osbert was trying out one of the reconditioned cars.

  He might have found himself temporary employment, as many of the other lads did, but he felt that this would be playing into his father’s hands. He also decided that the kind of job he could get was far beneath his notice, for, with his mother’s obstinacy and pertinacity, he had inherited her wealthy-woman’s snobbishness. In the hotels in a neighbouring seaside town there were vacancies for temporary waiters, kitchen hands, and porters, but Alfrist did not think for a moment of applying for any of them.

  The consequence was that he was restless and bored. He spent a certain amount of his time in the reading and reference rooms of the local public library, but also, less admirably, he became adept at shoplifting, first because he wanted sweets or fruit which he had no money to buy; then just for the thrill of seeing what he could get away with and still escape detection. Later, because he found that in the Saturday street-market it was possible to dispose of stolen goods without being asked too many questions about how he had come into possession of them, he became more daring, but knew he was living dangerously.