Here Lies Gloria Mundy (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)

  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 1982

  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 1982 by Michael Joseph

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

  E-ISBN: 9781477869314

  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.

  To QUENTIN

  who, like St. Joan, has accepted the burdens which are too heavy for the rest of us

  Contents

  1 A Case in the Papers

  2 Chance Encounter

  3 Beeches Lawn

  4 Unbidden Guest

  5 Chapter of Accidents

  6 Arson

  7 Ichabod

  8 Hounds in Cry

  9 Chaucer’s Prioress

  10 Colloquies

  11 A Conference with the Accused

  12 Recapitulation with Surprise Ending

  13 The Revenant

  14 Unexpected Developments

  15 Little Progress

  16 Attempt at a Volte-Face

  17 A Letter from Dame Beatrice

  18 Exit Gloria

  19 A Kind of Pilgrimage

  About the Author

  1

  A Case in the Papers

  At school I always insisted that my first name was Colin. This is an acceptable name among boys. My baptismal name of Corin is not, although why this should be I don’t know. Can one consonant make such a difference?

  The trouble is that I have a twin sister whom my father was determined should be christened Corinna. My mother wanted her called Oenone, so, to settle the matter, they agreed upon Corin and Corinna, much to my youthful discomfiture. Talk about “Hello, twins!”

  When I got to university, however, I realised that it was no bad thing to have a name which, so far as I know, has nothing but literary connections, so I reverted to Corin and have become, in a modest way, part of the contemporary scribal scene. That is to say, I earn my living as a writer under the name of Corin Stratford. Stratford is not my patronymic, but nowadays most people use it, as I have made it clear that it is in my professional interests that my name should be publicised as much as possible.

  I was determined not to tie myself down to a nine-to-five job, but neither was I prepared to do a Mr. Micawber and wait for something to turn up. My father was willing to continue my small allowance—as much as he could possibly afford—for a couple of years after I left college, but after that I had to fend for myself. “Fair enough,” I thought. I had faith in myself and decided to make my name the appendage to a modicum of fame even if I starved while this was happening.

  “Does the road wind uphill all the way?” asked Christina Rossetti. Well, it certainly did for me, but, after a hard slog, the way up has eased to a gentle gradient and at the beginning of this year I found myself, if not affluent, at least able to afford a small flat in Baker Street instead of being in digs, and to take a holiday when and where I chose.

  I had been in the flat for only a fortnight when I read about the murder of a young woman who had been living in one room in the neighbourhood of Earls Court.

  I had done some freelance work for Dawn Chorus, the paper which carried the fullest coverage of the murder, so I telephoned and was told (as I had expected) that the story was being covered by the paper’s own reporters. However, I was also told when and where the inquest was to be held, and I decided to attend it, since it seemed to me, judging by the account given in the papers, that, after a lapse of time and some artful manipulation of the facts, a lucrative bit of fiction might evolve. It was a long-term proposition, but I am a patient man and so much inured to delays, frustrations, and disappointments that I have become something of a philosopher and content to b
ide my time.

  The coroner’s court was full, for any chance of obtaining free entertainment is not to be missed. I managed to get a seat next to one of the Dawn Chorus reporters just before the coroner got to work. Compared with the luridly written-up account of the murder in the newspaper, however, the proceedings were colourless and dull. Evidence of identity and the medical evidence were dealt with and the police then asked for an adjournment.

  Assisted far more by the account in Dawn Chorus than by the court proceedings, I roughed out a story as soon as I got back to my flat after a pub lunch in the Earls Court Road, and then I put my notes aside to ferment and then mature.

  The story was commonplace enough. The murdered woman had spent some time in America, according to the sleazy old party who gave evidence of identity, and had been lodging in London for a matter of six years. During that time she had had visitors of both sexes, some of whom claimed to be relatives, although the landlady did not believe this.

  The landlady had no rules against visitors. (This I got from the newspaper. It was not mentioned at the inquest.) They were, according to her, all of them respectable people, quiet, well-behaved, never stopping more than a couple of hours, and certainly never staying the night. The reporter who recorded this had managed, with cunning skill, to query most of it without actually appearing to cast doubt on the landlady’s assertions. I am sure he was worth his pay. I knew his work, and admired it, although I could not have emulated it. Suffice to say that, however close to the wind his paper sailed, so far it had never been involved in an action for libel, although there were rumours of sums having exchanged hands out of court.

  When I learned that the murdered girl had had a baby with her when she arrived and that the child had been taken into care only after the death of the mother, I discounted the Dawn Chorus innuendoes. Ladies of doubtful virtue do not discourage their clients by having to get up in the night to soothe or feed an infant, nor do they want a six-year-old sharing the bedroom. Also, as the reporter, to his credit, did not fail to point out, the child had never been neglected or ill-treated.

  One item which the newspaper had got hold of was that the girl was on her way to find out more about a situation as chambermaid in a hotel near Brighton when she met death. How she had come to hear of the post remained a mystery. The landlady thought she had heard of it through a friend, not by reading an advertisement, but there was no proof of this, or of who the friend might be.

  From that journey she never came back. When she did not return, the landlady took it for granted that she had been given the job and had begun work, but after a day or two, during which the girl had not come for the child, the landlady began to wonder, especially as one or two people came to enquire after the girl and she could tell them nothing. Then a young reporter somehow got hold of the landlady’s story and asked for the address of the hotel, but all that she could supply was its name. He went to the police. He knew the London to Brighton roads very well, he told them, but had never seen a hotel, pub, or roadhouse with the name the landlady had given him.

  A few days later the body was found washed up near Hastings. It had not drowned; there were no signs of sexual assault; death had resulted from stab wounds, one of which had penetrated the heart.

  The police began their usual painstaking work and the papers soon dropped the case. Shorn of any salacious details, it made dull reading after its first impact. I myself was somewhat disappointed in it as it stood, but I set aside my notes again, with the reflection gained from Rabindranath Tagore that “Truth in her dress finds facts too tight. In fiction she moves with ease.”

  I never wrote the story because, merely through a chance meeting with a friend I had not seen for years, I was caught up in a far better one. All the same, I did go to see the landlady.

  “You’ll have to pay me for my time and trouble,” she said. “I’m sick of giving you lot something for nothing. Show me a couple of quid and I’ll show you her room, what I have not yet let, and I’ll answer your questions up to a quarter of an hour, my time being money.”

  “I’ll skip the bedroom,” I said. “That ought to be worth at least another five minutes of your time.” I gave her one pound and showed her the other, to be handed to her when our conversation was finished.

  “You might as well be one of them mean-fisted coppers,” she grumbled; but she answered my questions and received her money well within the agreed time.

  “You say she was after a job in a hotel. Did she have a job before that?”

  “Bits of charring. I reckon, though, as she got bits of money from America, where she come from.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “She got letters regular with postal orders in ’em.”

  “How do you know that they came from America?”

  “I don’t know it. She always got to the front door before I did, to pick up the post.”

  “If you know the letters contained postal orders, I still wonder what makes you think they came from the United States. Dollar bills or something in the nature of a cheque would be more likely.”

  “That ’ud mean a bank. She never went to no bank, only to the post office.”

  “You followed her, then?”

  “No. I wanted to buy a stamp for me own letter to my boy what’s serving the Queen in Germany, didn’t I?”

  “Did she ever stay out at nights?”

  “She’d have been out of here PDQ if she had. This is a respectable house I’d have you to know.”

  So that was that, and my notes remained unused.

  2

  Chance Encounter

  When I ran into Hardie Keir McMaster after a lapse of seven years it was at one of the more unlikely places, for it was outside the south door of a church. There had not been a wedding or a funeral; neither was it a Sunday, so I could only conclude that he was there for the same purpose as I was. This was to take a look at the church itself, a most surprising thing for him to do. At college he had been one of our “hearties” with, so far as anybody knew, no interest in either art or architecture.

  As well as being a freelance journalist, I am a novelist and biographer. With regard to the first, I look hopefully for commissioned articles and can supply these on any subject covered by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but for the other two I please myself. At the time I had just published my third novel. My biography of Horace Walpole was still selling, and the royalties had just come to hand, so I was taking a little holiday, “resting” as actors call it, and that morning I had driven in my car to Herefordshire to look at Kilpeck church.

  Kilpeck church is unique. I had heard of it from friends and had seen photographs of its south door. I was prepared for the south door, but not to see McMaster standing in front of it. I was more than surprised, but I could not mistake that massive six feet three, those mighty shoulders, the firmly planted feet, and, still less, that Viking thatch of yellow hair. I went up and thumped him on the back.

  It was an ill-judged act. He swung round and nearly knocked me flying. However, he collected me, planted me in front of him, held me at arms’ length, and said, “Well, I’m damned. Just the very man!”

  “How are you, Hara-kiri?” I asked. He had been given the title at college. He had played prop forward for us and some wit had christened him with a joke on his first names of Hardie Keir because it was alleged to be tantamount to committing suicide if you tackled him on the field. Off it, a sucking dove might have envied him and even striven to emulate him, for he was normally the gentlest and most amiable of creatures.

  “Corin Stratford, by heaven!” he shouted. “What on earth are you doing here, you old son of a mermaid?”

  “Taking a photograph of the south door of this church, when you move your great carcase out of the way,” I said. Unmistakeably of its period, the south doorway of Kilpeck church nevertheless bears some striking and unusual features. Like many late Norman doorways, it is extensively decorated, and among the decorations are two warriors w
earing trousers, Phrygian caps, and tunics of chain mail. I had read that the whole doorway is a representation of this sinful world of lust and strife, but it also holds a promise of better things to come, for in the concentric double tympanum arch is the Tree of Life, and on the jamb a writhing serpent is shown, head downwards in defeat.

  There is a suggestion of the Saxon origin of the church in the style of some of the carvings, but even more obvious is the Celtic influence. Moreover, on the west wall of the church I had seen gargoyles in stone which could only have derived from the carved wooden prows of Viking ships, so the church is an epitome of local history.

  “Let’s walk round,” I said. “There’s a corbel-table underneath the eaves. There are birds and beasts and human heads. There is even a sheila-ma-gig.”

  “You mean a thingummy-jig,” said McMaster.

  “No, I don’t. I mean a sheila-ma-gig. She’s a rather rude lady who appears on some Irish churches. My guess is that she represents something fairly unspeakable from the Book of Revelations. Anyway, compare her with the crude Australian term ‘sheila,’ meaning a woman and used, I always think, in a derogatory sense. After I’ve identified her, if I can, I’m going inside the church. There’s a notable chancel arch. After one has looked at these warriors and the serpent, and has seen the lion and the dragon fighting each other as depicted on this doorway, the chancel arch promises the peace of heaven, so that the church preaches a sermon in stone.”

  “See you later, then,” he said. “I’m going to look at the gravestones. I collect curious epitaphs.”

  I laughed. “I know one or two,” I said.

  “Mary Ann has gone to rest,

  Safe at last on Abram’s breast,

  Which may be fine for Mary Ann,

  But sure is tough on Abraham.”

  He laughed, too.

  “That’s apocryphal,” he said, “and, anyway, I know it.”

  “All right, then. What about this one?

  “Here lies that old liar Ned,

  But he can’t lie because he’s dead,

  For now he lies on heaven’s shore,

  Where he don’t need to lie no more.”

  “Where did you get that?”