[Mrs Bradley 45] - A Hearse on May Day
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Gladys Mitchell
Vintage Murder Mysteries
Title Page
Chapter One: No Haste to the Wedding
Chapter Two: Rumours of Mayering
Chapter Three: Chance Encounter
Chapter Four: The Signs of the Zodiac
Chapter Five: Mayering Eve
Chapter Six: Mayering Morn
Chapter Seven: The Green Man
Chapter Eight: Douston Hall
Chapter Nine: Unusual Honeymoon
Chapter Ten: The Charnel House
Chapter Eleven: Witch’s Sabbath
Chapter Twelve: Unconsecrated Ground
Chapter Thirteen: A Little Nearer the Truth
Chapter Fourteen: Jack-in-the-Green
Chapter Fifteen: Substitution
Chapter Sixteen: Friendless Bodies
Chapter Seventeen: Recapitulation
Chapter Eighteen: Fresh Evidence
Chapter Nineteen: The Lady Mother
Copyright
About the Book
Fenella unwittingly stumbles upon a pagan ritual in the sleepy village of Seven Wells. When the village’s pub landlord disappears, Fenella calls on the expert advice of her great aunt – who happens to be the psychoanalyst and master sleuth Mrs Bradley – to help her unravel the developing mysteries. Why was the squire of the village stabbed in the back? And what is the secret of the five skeletons in the crypt?
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
Speedy Death
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop
The Longer Bodies
The Saltmarsh Murders
Death and the Opera
The Devil at Saxon Wall
Dead Men’s Morris
Come Away, Death
St Peter’s Finger
Printer’s Error
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 the Delft Blue
Pageant of a 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
VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES
With the sign of a human skull upon its back and a melancholy shriek emitted when disturbed, the Death’s Head Hawkmoth has for centuries been a bringer of doom and an omen of death – which is why we chose it as the emblem for our Vintage Murder Mysteries.
Some say that its appearance in King George III’s bedchamber pushed him into madness. Others believe that should its wings extinguish a candle by night, those nearby will be cursed with blindness. Indeed its very name, Acherontia atropos, delves into the most sinister realms of Greek mythology: Acheron, the River of Pain in the underworld, and Atropos, the Fate charged with severing the thread of life.
The perfect companion, then, for our Vintage Murder Mysteries sleuths, for whom sinister occurrences are never far away and murder is always just around the corner …
MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES
EDMUND CRISPIN
Buried for Pleasure
The Case of the Gilded Fly
Holy Disorders
Love Lies Bleeding
The Moving Toyshop
Swan Song
A. A. MILNE
The Red House Mystery
GLADYS MITCHELL
Speedy Death
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop
The Longer Bodies
The Saltmarsh Murders
Death and the Opera
The Devil at Saxon Wall
Dead Men’s Morris Come Away, Death
St Peter’s Finger
Brazen Tongue
Hangman’s Curfew
When Last I Died
Laurels Are Poison
Here Comes a Chopper
Death and the Maiden
Tom Brown’s Body
Groaning Spinney
The Devil’s Elbow
The Echoing Strangers
Watson’s Choice
The Twenty-Third Man
Spotted Hemlock
My Bones Will Keep
Three Quick and Five Dead
Dance to Your Daddy
A Hearse on May-Day
Late, Late in the Evening
Fault in the Structure
Nest of Vipers
MARGERY ALLINGHAM
Mystery Mile
Police at the Funeral
Sweet Danger
Flowers for the Judge
The Case of the Late Pig
The Fashion in Shrouds
Traitor’s Purse
Coroner’s Pidgin
More Work for the Undertaker
The Tiger in the Smoke
The Beckoning Lady
Hide My Eyes
The China Governess
The Mind Readers
Cargo of Eagles
E. F. BENSON
The Blotting Book
The Luck of the Vails
NICHOLAS BLAKE
A Question of Proof
Thou Shell of Death
There’s Trouble Brewing
The Beast Must Die
The Smiler With the Knife
Malice in Wonderland
The Case of the Abominable Snowman
Minute for Murder
Head of a Traveller
The Dreadful Hollow
The Whisper in the Gloom
End of Chapter
The Widow’s Cruise
The Worm of Death
The Sad Variety
The Morning After Death
CHAPTER ONE
No Haste to the Wedding
‘ “Ride softly up,” said the best young man;
“I think our bride come slowly on.”
“Ride up, ride up,” said the second man;
“I think our bride look pale and wan.” ’
Anon. – The Cruel Brother
* * *
When she was questioned about it afterwards, Fenella Lestrange was forced to admit that there was no very good reason why she should have chosen to break her journey at the village of Seven Wells. It was off her route, she had never heard of it before and she had no reason to suppose that she would be able to get a meal there. All she could say was that she had been guided partly by a whim and partly because she had a superstitious partiality for what, until that particular thirtieth day of April, she had always regarded as a lucky number: that is, the number seven.
She left her great-aunt’s Stone House on the edge of the New Forest at ten o’clock on that beautiful Spring morning at the end of April with the firm intention of breaking her journey only in order to have lunch at Cridley. It was about the halfway stage between Wandles Parva, where she had been spending a short holiday, and Douston, where in a week’s time she was to be married from the house of some cousins. She expected to arrive at her destination in time for tea
or, in any case, in plenty of time to dress for dinner. Her parents were dead, and her pied-à-terre was a London flat which she shared with three other young women, so this accounted for the fact that she could not be married from her own home.
She had never made the journey from the New Forest to Douston Hall by car, and she was looking forward to it. The route she had chosen took her first to Cadnam and from there to Romsey. Here she parked the car and went to look at the abbey. She had always loved its austere beauty and she spent more time in renewing her memories of its transitional Norman architecture, its carved stone crucifixes in the south choir aisle and outside the abbess’s door, its beautiful window-mouldings and the remains of the Saxon church below the present flooring, than she had allowed for. In consequence, she was three-quarters of an hour behind schedule when at last she turned out of Romsey and made for the market town of Waymark.
After Waymark she had to swing eastwards to take a secondary road across what the map had indicated was open country. It was not the most direct way to Cridley, which she still hoped to reach in time for lunch, but it enabled her to avoid a couple of towns which had been developed as overspill areas not far from some new factories near a motorway.
Twelve miles out of Waymark, however, she was held up in an infuriating traffic jam in the narrow main street of Evebury, where it happened to be market day and where, to complicate matters still further, a procession of workmen, anticipating May-Day, were holding a protest rally with much shouting of slogans and display of crudely-lettered banners.
It was after she had managed to get clear of Evebury and was still thirty miles from Cridley and the lunch she had planned to have at the Crown hotel there, that what she afterwards diagnosed as a fit of madness overtook her. The road she was on seemed to stretch into infinity and there was not even a farm in sight. The time was half-past one and she was desperately hungry. Then she saw a signpost. It had only a single arm. This pointed to the left and read: Seven Wells 7. Fenella thought of a village pub and a ploughman’s lunch at the bar. The turning she took was narrow and winding, and the miles seemed long ones. The undulating pastureland was occasionally broken by belts of dark trees on the low-crowned hills, and once she passed a manor house whose drive ran almost parallel with the road until it suddenly veered off at right-angles and was lost in woods, although there was a glimpse of the house beyond them.
The road which Fenella was following mounted and dipped more steeply until, at the top of a ridge, it skirted a beech-wood and then, at an unfenced stretch of the hilly chalk, it turned for the last time and wound steeply downwards to a village.
It was a fairly considerable place, but was so quiet that, instead of being a Wednesday, it might have been a Sunday afternoon at the hour of siesta. The whole of the main street showed no sign of life or activity except for a stray cat which ran across in front of the car and a curtain which one of the cottagers drew aside and hastily closed again.
The main street was a long one, and the houses and cottages seemed to have been built at various periods from the fifteenth to the late nineteenth century. There were no new bungalows or raw, brash, new houses, and the setting of the village was pleasant enough, although the general impression was that of a place which had ceased to exist in the Diamond Jubilee year of Queen Victoria. Some of the cottages were thatched, others tiled, and Fenella, driving slowly on the look-out for the village inn, also noticed a row of plain, neat, Georgian dwellings, each with its fanlight over the door and its long, rectangular windows from whose frames the paint was peeling. These houses were indistinguishable from one another except for their curtains. The front doors, with their characteristic Georgian panels, were not even numbered, and the blank façade had something uncanny about it, as though the occupants had gone to sleep before the turn of the century and nothing had caused them to wake up again.
To her great relief, almost at the end of the village street Fenella came upon the inn. Before she reached it she could see, half-hidden behind some cottages, a fourteenth century church. The inn was near it, but was on the opposite side of the street, about two hundred yards further on. With its overhanging storeys and diamond-paned windows, the inn appeared to date from the early sixteenth century. It was half-timbered and picturesque and its sign-board bore the unusual name MORE TO COME.
‘How much or how many more, I wonder?’ thought Fenella. ‘It sounds quite promising, anyway. It’s got a car-park at the side and it advertises snacks at the bar.’
She drove into the small, unfenced yard, shut off her engine and looked at her watch. It showed seven minutes to two. The seven miles had not been as long as she had thought they were.
There was a door from the car-park into the building. Fenella opened it and found herself in the saloon bar, which was occupied by two or three men in pullovers and sports jackets. She went to the counter, behind which was a good-looking, fresh-complexioned fellow of about forty, and addressed herself to him with a hopeful smile.
‘What can I have to eat?’ she asked.
‘Well, being as it’s today and not any other day, anything you fancy, except a cut from the joint and two veg., love,’ he replied. ‘Sandwich, sausage roll, meat pie, Scotch egg, cold leg of chicken and salad – you name it and, if we’ve got it, you shall have it.’
Fenella revised her first impression of the village and settled for chicken salad and a glass of sherry.
At twenty-five minutes past two, rested and refreshed, she left the now untenanted bar by the door she had used when she entered the inn, and five minutes later she returned to it. She twisted the handle, but the door, not unexpectedly, was now locked. She hammered on it and it was opened by a bold-eyed woman who looked as though she might have gipsy blood. She stared insolently at Fenella.
‘What now? We’re closed till six,’ she said.
‘Yes, I know. I’ve just had lunch here. I can’t get my car to start,’ said the girl. ‘Could you find somebody to help me?’
‘No business of ourn,’ said the woman, preparing to close the door.
‘Well, is there a garage anywhere near?’
‘Only if you care to go into Croyton.’
‘Nowhere in the village?’
‘No.’
‘In that case, may I use your telephone?’
‘Not on the phone.’
‘Well, is there somebody who could drive me to Croyton? You said there’s a garage there, didn’t you?’
‘Half a mo, then, but I don’t think there’s much chance. It’s the Mayerin’, you see,’ said the gipsy, more amiably. She closed the door in Fenella’s face. Several minutes passed and Fenella had begun to wonder whether the woman ever intended to come back when the door was opened again, this time by the handsome, jovial landlord.
‘In trouble are we?’ he asked. ‘That’s too bad, love. Anything I can do?’
‘I can’t get my car to start. I can’t think why. It was perfectly all right on the way down,’ said the girl.
‘Like me to have a look at her?’
‘Oh, yes, please, if you would.’ They went across to the car and the landlord tinkered about for a bit, then straightened himself and shook his head.
‘Afraid it’s a garage job,’ he said, ‘and there’s nowhere nearer nor Croyton.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose there’s somebody in the village with a taxi who could take me there and bring back a mechanic?’
‘I doubt it. No taxis hereabouts, and all the men be out at work, you see. Not as there’s all that many of ’em with cars, even if they were at home. Tell you what! I’ll run you in myself when I’ve had a bit of dinner. Say an hour. That suit you?’
‘Well, it’s very kind of you,’ said Fenella, ‘but I don’t want to wait as long as that if I can possibly help it. I’ve got to be in Douston by six. Perhaps I’d better try telephoning. I suppose there’s a phone-box in the village?’
‘Outside the post-office. It’s the general stores. But I don’t think you’ll get much satisfaction that way today. Far better do like I say, and hang on a bit until I’ve finished my dinner.’
‘Well, I will then, if there’s no quicker way, but I think I’ll try the telephone first. Anyway, thank you very much.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He closed the door before she could ask him where to find the post-office, but outside the inn she encountered a long-haired, untidy, whistling youth and put the question to him.
‘Can you tell me which way to go to get to the post-office, please?’
The youth suspended his whistling and stared at her.