The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop mb-2 Read online

  The sergeant, who had been conning the ground near the bushes in question, straightened himself.

  ‘Certainly seems feasible, sir,’ he remarked to the inspector. ‘Come and see for yourself. Twigs broken near the ground, soil and leaves scraped as though something has been dragged along – these ridges and grooves might as well be heel-marks as anything else – and the whole place looks disturbed and trampled.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed the inspector. ‘Well, sir?’

  ‘Yes, well, he was looking for old Rupert and old Rupert wasn’t there!’

  ‘Now, sir!’ the inspector’s voice rang out sharply.

  ‘Well, I didn’t go and look, of course,’ said Aubrey, ‘but it was pretty obvious. Old Jim looked properly flummoxed. Then he had another go.’

  ‘If there’s anybody – no, of course there isn’t –’ began the inspector.

  ‘Anybody to corroborate my yarn?’ said Aubrey, guessing the inspector’s thought. ‘Well, as it happens, there is somebody else who – who knows that Jim was in the woods on Monday night.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Miss Broome. You know, the vicar’s daughter.’

  ‘The vicar’s daughter?’ repeated the inspector.

  ‘Yes. She comes here whenever she wants to, of course. Gets in through the wicket gate that opens on to the road. Well, she wanted some fresh air or something, and came for a stroll, and saw me pinch old Jim’s spade, and old Jim thought I was a poacher or something, and hounded me out. He fell down and tore chunks out of his Oxfords on the brambles, you know,’ added Aubrey, circumstantially, ‘and I got clear away while he was picking the thorns out of his eyebrows!’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  At this moment Constable Pearce approached.

  ‘Oh, I say, Pearce, you know,’ said the boy, ‘awfully sorry I pinched your bike. I don’t think I damaged it.’

  ‘You’re kindly welcome, sir,’ said the constable handsomely.

  ‘Pearce,’ said the inspector, ‘you can get back to the station now, and tell the superintendent I’d like a word with him this evening. And I’d be obliged, sir,’ he went on, turning again to Aubrey, ‘if one of the gardeners would lend me a spade.’

  ‘I’ll go and see about it,’ said Aubrey with alacrity. He grinned wickedly as he walked away, thinking of the trout he had buried.

  ‘For of course they’ve spotted where the ground has been dug up,’ he said to himself, ‘and are going to have a look-see.’

  The inspector seated himself on a fallen log, invited the sergeant to sit beside him, and took out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘There’s the hole Redsey dug that night,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘I suppose you can believe the boy?’ suggested the sergeant laconically.

  ‘Don’t know. Ought to be able to, at that age! And there’s the young lady’s evidence, you see, although we’ve still got to collect that.’

  ‘She’s probably been got at,’ said the sergeant dourly.

  ‘Oh, you can always frighten girls into telling the truth,’ said the inspector easily.

  The sergeant, father of three daughters, laughed with sardonic amusement.

  ‘Frighten them?’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Besides, she’s the vicar’s daughter,’ the inspector hastily interpolated.

  ‘Caesar’s wife, in fact,’ said a rich voice just behind them. Both men looked round in time to see Mrs Lestrange Bradley disappearing at a bend in the woodland path.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked the inspector, startled.

  ‘Old party that’s taken that place on the Bossbury road just the other side of Wandles,’ said the sergeant. ‘Queer old girl, by all accounts. Writes books about lunatics, or something.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like a writer of comic stuff,’ said the inspector, frowning.

  ‘No, not comic stuff, sir. The real thing. Finds out why they’ve gone dotty and tries to put ’em right again. Does it, too, sometimes, or so I’ve heard.’

  ‘She’d better not come nosing round where she’s not wanted, anyway,’ said the inspector. ‘Looks suspicious.’

  Before they had finished the second cigarette, Aubrey returned with a spade, and the sergeant set to work. The loose soil was soon thrown up, and a hole much the size and shape of that dug by Jim Redsey was made in the soft ground.

  ‘Nothing here,’ grunted the inspector. ‘And, anyway, we know where the corpse is, although Mr Bidwell’s got some idea there may be another body somewhere.’

  ‘Half a minute, sir.’ The sergeant thrust in the spade once more. ‘She’s struck on something.’

  He dug away manfully. To Aubrey’s amazement a darkish rectangular object was soon disclosed to view. The inspector and the sergeant finished off the job with their hands, and pulled up a suitcase.

  Aubrey’s eyes nearly started out of his head. He felt sick, and his heart thumped against his ribs. On the lid, plainly discernible, were Rupert Sethleigh’s initials. It was the suitcase which someone had removed while he had gone for the fish that night.

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said the inspector. ‘What’s this?’

  He opened the lid. Inside the case was Aubrey’s stuffed trout. It still looked affronted and resentful, and well it might, for stuck on to its back by the agency of a large pin was a legend written on a sheet of note-paper in pencil, and formed entirely of block capitals. Tersely it ran:

  ‘A present from Grimsby.’

  II

  Mrs Bradley was half-way across the lawn by the time the inspector had discovered the suitcase. She had spent about an hour and a half with pencil and paper after Jim Redsey had driven away from the gates of the Stone House, and Felicity, who had entirely forgotten her first unsatisfactory impression of the clever little old woman, sat on the step and affected to read. From time to time, however, her eyes strayed to the outrageously clad figure seated at the table, and what she saw did not encourage her to ask questions. At last Mrs Bradley raised her head and spoke.

  ‘I don’t see that they will have much choice in the matter, unless some fresh evidence turns up,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ asked Felicity, laying down the book and turning round.

  ‘The police, my dear. I have worked it all out, and, you see, Mr Redsey could have killed his cousin, hidden the body, and managed the alibi for Sunday night. Then, after you and Aubrey returned to your beds on Monday night, he could have dismembered the body in the woods and then taken the limbs and so on into Bossbury on Tuesday morning. He couldn’t have dismembered the body on Tuesday morning, because there was not enough time for that, but he could have taken the remains in a car, unlocked the shop with the key which Binks’s assistant lost, disposed the flesh of the corpse on the hooks in that charming way, and left the shop locked up again. No one would have noticed him particularly.

  ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Because I have a shrewd idea, child, that the man who performed that gruesome task would have had the sense to dress himself up to look like a person delivering meat, if he –’ She stopped short. ‘Good heavens!’ she said suddenly, and paused. ‘Nobody in the market can remember having seen or heard anything untoward going on, you see,’ she continued in a few moments. ‘There was only the usual quantity of sawdust on the floor, too,’ she added irrelevantly.

  ‘Where do you get all this information?’ asked Felicity, divided between amusement and disgust. ‘And you don’t really think the dead man was Rupert Sethleigh, and that – and that Jimsey did all that to the body, do you?’

  ‘One question at a time, child. I obtain my information from two sources. My girl Phoebe, who, unhappily for me, is leaving in a day or two to get married, is own daughter to the sergeant at Bossbury police station. She tells me all that he tells the family. But do not divulge that fact to anyone. I should hate to get the man into trouble, and, besides, I do so love to know all there is to be known. My second source of information is the newspaper. It is quite informative to note the di
screpancies between the two sources,’ she added, chuckling.

  ‘But what about –?’

  ‘The youthful James Redsey? I don’t know whether he killed his cousin, but I don’t believe he carved him up,’ said Mrs Bradley, with unqualified decision. ‘And I think we had better put our heads together to see if we can’t prove it. Things appear dark for the young man. We may look forward confidently, I think, to his arrest within the next few days.’

  ‘It’s that wretched will,’ groaned Felicity. ‘And Jimsey swears he didn’t even know Rupert was going to alter it.’

  ‘I believe him. From what I can understand of Mr Sethleigh’s character, I should say that he would prefer to let a thing like that fall in the form of a bombshell, rather than tell the person concerned of his intentions. He would love to gloat over the thought of his cousin’s surprise and fury. A nasty person, Mr Rupert Sethleigh.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Felicity, so briefly that Mrs Bradley stared at her keenly and interrogatively for several seconds. The girl flushed and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘He was odious. I never went up to the Manor House alone, unless Mrs Harringay and Aubrey were there,’ she said.

  ‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And now,’ she added, with a complete change of tone, ‘I want to see young Mr Harringay. A charming boy! Is your father coming to lunch? Oh, there he is at the gate! Go and let him in, child, and this afternoon I will go over to the Manor House. I have one or two questions to ask the youth, and I want to see his mother also.’

  Thus it came about that Mrs Bradley took the path through the Manor Woods that afternoon and saw the police there.

  Upon arriving at the house, she asked for Mrs Bryce Harringay.

  ‘I see that the police are busy here again,’ said Mrs Bradley at the conclusion of ten minutes’ desultory chitchat. Mrs Bryce Harringay stiffened.

  ‘Indeed?’ she said icily.

  ‘I suppose they will arrest Mr Redsey as soon as they can prove the body in Bossbury was the body of Mr Sethleigh,’ Mrs Bradley went on calmly, in an easy, conversational tone. ‘You are prepared for that to happen, of course?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay, throwing dignity to the winds and discovering herself to the other woman in her true guise of an exceedingly worried mother and aunt, ‘I suppose it is inevitable. I wonder whom we had better get for the defence?’

  ‘If it comes to that,’ interpolated Mrs Bradley quickly, ‘you might do a great deal worse than try for Ferdinand Lestrange. I’ll recommend you to his notice if you like,’ she added handsomely. ‘However, we shall hope that it will not be necessary. Your nephew is not arrested yet, you know. We must not lose heart.’

  Her sympathetic words were discounted by the malicious chuckle with which she concluded them. Mrs Bryce Harringay blinked rapidly, and produced a minute handkerchief.

  ‘You are so clever,’ she moaned. ‘Can’t you think of anything that will save him? I don’t like James, of course. He was a rude, untruthful boy, and he has grown up an uncontrolled and vicious man, but it would be so awkward for Aubrey later on if it became known that his cousin had been hanged for murder. I want Aubrey to go into Parliament, you see, and you know yourself how very Blameless a man’s antecedents must be if he is to succeed in political circles! Think of election meetings, for example. The horrible questions the hecklers would ask him! Most embarrassing for the poor boy – most!’

  And she burst into tears.

  Mrs Bradley dived into the pocket of her violently striped washing-silk frock and drew out a small note-book and pencil. Then she pulled off her mushroom hat (of a fashion long discarded) and dropped it on the floor.

  ‘Now then,’ she said peremptorily tapping Mrs Bryce Harringay’s wrist with her pencil to attract the lady’s attention. ‘Sit up and attend to me. Who else hated Rupert Sethleigh besides’ – she thought for a moment – ‘James Redsey, Felicity Broome, Lulu Hirst, Margery Barnes, and darling Aubrey? I include the girls because I understand girls were not attracted by your older nephew.’

  Mrs Bryce Harringay lowered the inadequate handkerchief and stared at her out of swimming, fishlike eyes.

  ‘Rupert knew that Dr Barnes had an illegitimate son,’ she said with a gulp. ‘That’s why I always have a Bossbury doctor when we are staying here. Most unpleasant, I think, to be attended by a man who has had Irregular Relationships – most!’

  Mrs Bradley nodded solemnly.

  ‘Most,’ she echoed in a sepulchral voice. ‘And the doctor knew that – er – that Rupert knew?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It saved Rupert paying insurance money for the servants, you see. Dr Barnes used to treat them free of charge because Rupert knew and did not tell.’

  ‘Is Dr Barnes a surgeon?’ asked Mrs Bradley keenly.

  ‘He helped to amputate the major’s brother’s leg after a hunting accident, and he took out Margaret Somertoll’s appendix,’ replied Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘At least,’ she added darkly, ‘everybody said it was her appendix, but I drew my own conclusions. You see –’ She lowered her unctuous voice to the note of the practised scandal-monger.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Mrs Bradley at the end of a lengthy, complicated, and remarkably dull tale. ‘Most suspicious. I am so glad that you took up a Strong Moral Attitude about it.’ And she suddenly screamed with laughter.

  ‘I fancy Rupert found out something about that too,’ Mrs Bryce Harringay concluded rather hastily, for Mrs Bradley’s quite unnecessary mirth unnerved her.

  ‘Yes? Well, all that you tell me is in James Redsey’s favour,’ observed Mrs Bradley, shutting off her laughter with the abrupt efficiency of a person turning off a tap. ‘The more enemies we can prove Rupert Sethleigh to have had,’ she continued, ‘the more chance there is of showing that James Redsey’s motive for accomplishing his cousin’s death was less strong, perhaps, than the motive of some other person or persons.’

  ‘But the doctor did not kill Rupert!’ exclaimed Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘I’m sure I didn’t intend that construction to be placed upon my remarks. I don’t think extremely well of the man, it is true, but I should hesitate to accuse him of an Awful Deed!’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Mrs Bradley. ‘But don’t you see that our best line at present, if we wish to save James Redsey from arrest, is to discredit the present findings of the police and so turn their attention to fresh channels of enquiry?’

  ‘Yes, I see that, of course,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘And the doctor, being a surgeon –’ She shuddered with exaggerated horror. ‘Dreadful man! How glad I am that I refused to call him in when Aubrey contracted the chicken-pox two summers ago! Really, men are such monsters one scarcely knows why one married!’

  CHAPTER XII

  The Inspector Has His Doubts

  I

  THE next thing to do, the inspector decided, was to discover the owner of the suitcase. This proved simple. Redsey, confronted by his cousin’s initials, agreed that the case was Rupert Sethleigh’s, but most emphatically denied all knowledge of how it came to be buried in the woods. Neither could he explain the bloodstained condition of its interior.

  ‘The last I remember about that suitcase,’ he declared, ‘is getting Rupert to lend it to the vicar when he went for his holiday in May – that is – last month. It seems a long time ago, somehow.’

  The inspector went straight away to the Vicarage, where the Reverend Stephen, looking very foolish, agreed that the suitcase had probably been lent to him, but that he had forgotten all about it. He usually did forget all about things, he was sorry to say. Oh, here was his daughter. She would know more about it.

  Felicity, appealed to, remembered perfectly well that her father had borrowed the suitcase, but thought he had returned it. However, he was so very absent-minded that it was more than possible he had forgotten all about it.

  Then she told the inspector where she herself had found it, and of how she and Aubrey Harringay had decided to bury it in the Manor Woods.

  ‘I
wonder why you should think of doing that, miss,’ said the inspector, without finding it necessary to add that the police had found it.

  Felicity shook her head.

  ‘It just occurred to us,’ she said, with delightful vagueness.

  The inspector went in search-of Aubrey Harringay.

  ‘Now, young man,’ he said sternly. ‘What made you decide to bury that suitcase?’

  ‘But I didn’t bury it, inspector.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I didn’t bury it. I was going to, but while I had gone for the fish, you know, some blighter pinched the case and hopped off with it.’

  ‘The fish? Was that the fish we found inside the case?’

  ‘Yes, it was. But I didn’t put it there, I swear I didn’t. I just buried the fish in the hole – for a lark, you know – and that’s all. I had nothing to do with putting it in the case or – or – writing those words.’

  ‘H’m!’ said the inspector non-committally, and went to the superintendent.

  ‘I haven’t tested Redsey’s alibi for Sunday night,’ he said. ‘But this is what I’ve got against him so far:

  ‘First: Had quarrelled with Sethleigh more than once. Plenty of witnesses to that.

  ‘Second: Admits knocked Sethleigh down. Sethleigh’s head struck trunk of tree. Redsey thought he had killed him, and confessed as much to me.

  ‘Third: Redsey stood to gain the house, estate, and most of the money belonging to Sethleigh if the latter died before altering his will.

  ‘Fourth: The bloodstained suitcase belonged to Sethleigh and has his initials on it. There is some evidence offered by Redsey to the effect that Sethleigh lent it this summer to the Reverend Stephen Broome. This statement is corroborated by the vicar and the vicar’s daughter. Redsey swears case was never returned. Vicar uncertain on this point. Daughter thinks case was returned. Vicar absent-minded and forgetful. Daughter very much the reverse.’

  ‘Of course,’ the superintendent demurred, ‘the suitcase isn’t important. There is nothing at all to connect it with the murder as far as we know at present. I think we might leave the suitcase out of it for a bit.’