The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  Alice had a belt to her cotton frock. It was of double material, and strong. With it they bound their victim’s wrists. Kitty was wearing stockings, and these, tied together, made an efficient “hobble,” so that, set on his feet and threatened by the Amazons, the man was able to stumble towards the cruiser “under his own power,” as Laura expressed it. He tried the trick of falling down and affecting to be unable to get up, but Laura prodded him so sharply in the ribs with a toe of an efficient shoe that he found he could “make it, after all,” as Kitty said. It was necessary to free his ankles completely, to enable him to board the cruiser, but Laura stood by with her cosh and told Kitty and Alice to get the baggage on board and bring an electric torch.

  The girls took it in turns to guard the captive all night, and Kitty, with a written message, went ashore next morning at Acle to telephone Mrs. Bradley, for it had been decided to “pass the buck,” as Laura put it.

  She returned disconsolate and somewhat alarmed.

  “She doesn’t seem terribly pleased with us, Dog,” she observed. Laura was not surprised.

  “Assault and battery, duck. We weren’t attacked,” she observed philosophically. “And people who really do their duty by the State are often persecuted, martyred, and what-not. It’s a kind of natural law.”

  “But I don’t want to be persecuted and martyred, Dog! And I did say you’d hit him too hard.”

  “That don’t matter. Hitting him at all is the point at issue.” She grinned at the prisoner, who scowled. Seen by daylight, he was a brown-faced gipsy with monkey-like eyes and thin, small hands.

  “Well, anyway,” said Kitty. “I’m glad the police know.” She looked kindly and dispassionately upon their prisoner, whom Alice was feeding with pieces of bread, butter, and marmalade proffered upon a teaspoon, as his hands were still fastened. “I was positive I was going to be murdered last night on those beastly marshes.”

  The prisoner voiced a blasphemous negation of this, which Alice cut short with a thrust of bread and marmalade, but Laura brightened.

  “Come aloft,” she said. Kitty began to protest, for she dreaded those inspirations with which Laura was frequently visited. “Now, then, are you prepared to maintain that in front of witnesses?” demanded Laura, dragging her on to the deck.

  “Maintain what, Dog?”

  “That you thought we were going to be murdered?”

  “I said me, not us.”

  “Well, qualify it. ‘Us’ is absolutely necessary.”

  “Just as you say then. But aren’t you and Alice witnesses?”

  “No. Interested persons,” said Laura, breaking up a piece of chocolate with which to regale the captive.

  • CHAPTER 14 •

  “Serpent!” screamed the pigeon.

  —From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

  Mrs. Bradley, accompanied by the inspector, descended upon the Dithyramb at Acle just before eleven in the morning.

  “Dear, dear!” she said, looking at the prisoner and then at Laura. “Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear!”

  “We did it for the best,” said Alice, immediately upon the defensive, as became the virtuous detected in sin. Mrs. Bradley clicked her tongue. The inspector, assisted by the sergeant and a constable, removed the prisoner to a waiting car, and took charge of the viper, which was handed over, at his behest, by Kitty, after Mrs. Bradley had asked permission to examine it.

  “And now,” said Mrs. Bradley, “please explain yourselves.”

  “Can’t say any more than we did in front of the inspector just now,” said Kitty. “I was frightened to death,” she added, loyally, catching Laura’s threatening eye. “I was certain we were all going to be murdered on those marshes.”

  “That is the only excuse I could make to the inspector on your behalf,” said Mrs. Bradley, with a chuckle. “Fortunately he is prepared to accept it. But, my dear children…!”

  “Do you mean we shan’t be proceeded against?” asked Alice, relaxing.

  “The inspector’s jolly bucked with that serpent, I should say,” observed Kitty, when Mrs. Bradley had gone. “And he must want that man, or they wouldn’t have taken him off in the Black Maria.”

  “I thought Mrs. Bradley wanted us to keep out of the case,” said Alice. “And, anyway, I don’t much like the inspector. Doesn’t she want us to keep out?”

  “Too much to expect,” said Laura. “The fever is in our blood. The yeast is working. The little leaven has leavened the whole lump. The West’s awake. We’re out to seek an age of gold, beyond the Spanish Main.”

  “An ounce of lead is more like it,” said Kitty, with unexpected felicity. “And, personally, Dog, I’m through. I wouldn’t take part again in anything like last night for ages and ages of gold, or oceans and oceans of Spanish Main.”

  “Sez you! What do you say, young Alice?” demanded Laura.

  “Well, if Mrs. Bradley really doesn’t want us interfering…,” persisted Alice. “And that’s practically what it amounted to, I thought.”

  “All right,” said Laura. “I hunt alone. You, young Alice, can handle the cruiser as well as I can, now. You two can go off and finish the week, but I, tongue out and uttering loud panting noises indicative of hound-like zeal, shall remorselessly hit the trail. The police and Mrs. Borgia shall be assisted in spite of themselves.”

  Kitty grinned. “Valuable as your assistance would undoubtedly be, my dear Laura,” she said, with a recognizable attempt at Mrs. Bradley’s manner, “and greatly as I should enjoy your company, I cannot burden myself with the responsibility of your safety. I am not thinking of you personally, but of your parents. This is not a game we are playing, and you have played the goat long enough,” she concluded, in her normal voice.

  “Hear, hear!” said Alice. “She’s quite right, Dog.”

  “I like that!” said Laura. “Who pinched the serpent in the first place? Look here, if I can get the money from home, will you both go on with it, and stay on the Broads another week?”

  “That’s a safe promise. You will never get either money or permission from home,” said Kitty decidedly. “Besides, you heard what Mrs. Croc. said, as well as we did. She doesn’t want us messing round. She thinks we may have queered the pitch as it is.”

  “Never knew the old serpent so sticky,” grumbled Laura, compelled to acquiesce in this opinion. She began to compose telegrams upon the back of an envelope.

  “How do you think this sounds?”

  “You might just as well save your money. You know quite well your people won’t let you hunt murderers,” interjected Alice, before Laura could recite her compositions.

  “Don’t babble. Listen! Offer to assist Mrs. Bradley detection any objection Laura.”

  “You won’t get away with that. Of course they’ll object. Who wouldn’t? You may be a pest in the home circle, but I don’t suppose they want you murdered.”

  “All right. What about this one? Opportunity gain experience police work and procedure advise Laura.”

  “Don’t be so silly! Why do you want to know about police work and procedure?”

  “You’re not very encouraging, I must say. How about this? May I stay up here another week important Laura.”

  “Well, that’s honest, anyway,” said Alice.

  “But they’re sure not to let you,” said Kitty, giving once again her considered view.

  “Oh, they don’t care all that much what I do,” protested Laura; but she seemed disinclined to put her telegrams to the test, and in the end crumpled up the envelope and tossed it in the river. “Let’s go to that farm again and ask if they’ll give us tea,” was her next suggestion.

  “The police will be over there,” said Alice. “I think we’d better lie low, after hitting that man on the head and keeping him prisoner all night. It’s a free country, whatever you may say, and you can’t be allowed to do that sort of thing. We’re lucky to have scarped out of it, I consider. Why don’t we do what Mrs. Bradley says, and just get o
n with our holiday? Here it is Tuesday, and we’ve only got until Saturday midday. Personally, I’d like to see the Broads while I’m about it.”

  “Yes, come on, Dog,” said Kitty in her motherly, coaxing way. “You know you wanted to take us on to the River Yare and on to Reedham and Lodden. Let’s start that today. We can have lunch out of the tinned stuff, and I’ll go into the town and get some more beer while you and Alice have a swim.”

  “All right,” said Laura, throwing off her moodiness and returning to her usual state of energetic cheerfulness. “Come on, young Alice. Off with the lendings. Better make it a crate, K., then the boy can cycle down with it.”

  “O.K., Dog,” said Kitty, with sunny alacrity. The other two watched her out of sight along the pleasant riverside bank, and then started up the cruiser in quest of a suitable bathing-place.

  There were noticeably fewer craft upon the river, and a spot at once secluded, free from weed and deep enough for swimming was not very difficult to find. They swam and played about in the water for twenty minutes, dried themselves in the cabin, were dressed, and had brought the cruiser back to her previous moorings within the space of an hour from Kitty’s departure.

  But at lunch, Laura returned to the subject nearest her heart.

  “Alice can handle the cruiser as well as I can. Let’s go to the place where you two went ashore yesterday evening, and I will visit those farms before the police get round to them. The people haven’t set eyes on me yet. They only saw you two. I shall ask them for a drink of water, or directions for finding my way, and spy out the lie of the land.”

  “You can’t go alone,” said Kitty, “and if one of us came with you we’d be recognised.”

  “That’s what I’m pointing out, ass.” She argued her point until, with many misgivings, Kitty and Alice agreed to keep the cruiser in motion up and down the river between Stokesby Old Windmill and Maltby Marsh Farm and pick up Laura as time and place should indicate.

  “After that,” said Laura, “if nothing comes of it, I’ll go to Reedham and Ludham and Lowestoft and Beccles and Bungay, if you like.”

  The farmhouse at which Kitty and Alice had received hospitality proved to be well tenanted. Besides the girl of about sixteen who opened the door there were two women—the farmer’s wife and her sister—and no fewer than seven young children, whose ages ranged from ten to ten months. Five were the farmer’s own, the other two were his wife’s sister’s children. All this was explained in friendly conversation over enormous glasses of cider, for, said the farmer’s wife, living as they did on the marshes, it was a real treat to have somebody to talk to.

  Laura introduced the subject of the peddler.

  “Ah, him. That live over by Stalham way. Come round these parts now and again, that do, with his little bits. Bring gossip.”

  “What does he sell? I saw him yesterday, and didn’t like the look of him much.”

  “That do be harmless. That bring a few ribbons and lace and ’lastic, some combs and toothpaste—just what all of ’em have. That wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well known, that is, about the place.”

  “Oh, that’s all right then,” said Laura. “I nearly stopped him to ask if he had any children’s toys. I’ve got a little niece who collects toy animals—frogs and those wooden snakes that waggle, and monkeys and things.”

  “That don’t deal in toys, not so far as I know. Little gimcracks, mostly—brooches, sometimes, and beads.”

  Laura stayed an hour and a half, but got no more. She wondered when the police would visit the marshes. They were bound to come to the farmhouses to question the occupants, unless they had got out of the prisoner what they wanted to know. Of course, he might have an explanation that would satisfy them about the worsted snake, but they would push him hard, she imagined, as a similar symbol had been found on all three corpses.

  She walked on towards the house. Seen by daylight, it looked innocent enough, except that its remote situation, and the absence of any road to it except the narrow causeway along which she was walking, gave it romantic interest of a kind.

  “Same tactics again, I take it,” she said to herself, as she crossed the tiny bridge under which the girls had sheltered and from which they had stalked their prey. “Up to the door and ask whether I’m right for the main road. I know I am, but what’s the odds.”

  She carried out this programme, and the door was opened by an old woman who seemed to be deaf and almost blind. The shouting match, carried on with growing discomfort and embarrassment by Laura, was interrupted by the appearance of a middle-aged man in grey flannel trousers, carpet slippers and a velvet coat, who produced from the angle which the passage made with the front door a megaphone. Placing the narrow end to his lips and the mouth against the side of the old woman’s head, he said:

  “All right, Mrs. Braintree.”

  At this the crone nodded and went along the passage to a door which, when opened, emitted a strong smell of fried onions.

  “And now, what can I do for you? Will you come in?” said the householder. “Do you like fried onions? And what’s your opinion of hot silverside of beef? Do you prefer herrings or tomatoes? And what is today’s news?”

  He had Laura by the sleeve, and was drawing her affectionately into the house. Laura, not altogether easy in her mind at this extraordinary reception, was nevertheless strangely inspired and enlightened. She felt sure that she had stumbled upon Mrs. Bradley’s lunatic, the gifted and abnormal Amos Bleriot.

  Unable to decide what to do next, she sat in fevered impatience whilst, in a pleasant room lined with books and furnished with every evidence of the taste of an educated man of artistic inclination, Amos Bleriot (if it were he) discussed motor-racing, cricket, mountaineering, and small-boat sailing. There was no repetition of the inane questions with which Laura’s arrival had been greeted. The talk was mildly interesting, but her brain was concerned only with the problem of departure, for which her host offered no opportunity whatever.

  At the end of an hour and forty minutes she contrived to say that she thought she should be going. The host was minded otherwise. She must certainly stay to lunch. There was plenty. He had a houseful of food. He always had food for visitors.

  “People get lost on these marshes ever day in the holiday season. I always entertain them. In winter it is different. In winter I do my work. But during the summer I am at everyone’s disposal—everyone’s.” He beamed at her in a manner, which she suddenly found sinister.

  “I’d almost forgotten,” she said. “I’m meeting my mother at three and she mustn’t stand about with her sciatica.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the host, rising. “Terrible of me not to think. She certainly mustn’t stand about with her sciatica.” He excused himself pleasantly for keeping her talking so long and Laura rose to go, but found herself looking at a small but businesslike revolver, which Mr. Bleriot was presenting with grim efficiency.

  “Sit down,” said Mr. Bleriot. Laura obeyed, since as she believed her host to have committed three murders already, there seemed no reason why he should stick at a fourth.

  Mr. Bleriot, holding his position, took out of his jacket pocket with his left hand a police whistle. On this he blew three shrill blasts. The deaf old woman appeared.

  “This young lady,” said Mr. Bleriot, “is wanted by the police. You will keep her covered whilst I go and get the police.”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure,” said the crone. Mr. Bleriot nodded, as though satisfied with this reply. Laura tensed herself to spring as the revolver changed hands, but the exchange was made so neatly that there was no chance of interference without the risk of serious injury. She sank back again, and it was without surprise that, ten minutes later, she had the felicitation of seeing her host, suitcase in hand and dressed in a tweed suit, walking rapidly away in the direction of the main road.

  “One thing,” thought Laura, philosophically, “it is only a question of time before the police arrive, and they ought to catch him easily, since he’s
on foot.”

  “Police?” said the crone, as though she read Laura’s thought. “No police come here. Be gone for good that old person of mine be. Said that would, one fine day. Madder than Tuesday, that be.”

  “I’m not talking about him,” said Laura. “His snake-charmer was caught on the marshes last night when he left here. The police are holding him for questioning, and as soon as that’s through they’ll be here, the inspector from Norwich and his men. A bit silly you’ll look, holding me up like this with that gun, now, won’t you?”

  During this speech, which the woman leaned over to hear, Laura had wriggled forward in her chair. As she finished speaking she gave a sudden kick upward and lofted the revolver out of the old crone’s hand. It went off, and she was on it as it fell.

  “I don’t think I ought to stay,” she said. “He isn’t working alone. He can’t be. If you don’t object, I’m going to oil out while the going is good. The police can do any searching. Besides, I ought to get after him. He can’t travel fast with that suitcase. But you’ll have to go along as well. I can’t have you staying behind and destroying all the evidence as soon as I’ve gone, you know.” She prodded the old woman gently with the revolver, and indicated that she was to march.

  “I’m a-going to my sister’s over the marshes,” bellowed the crone. “All mad together, that seem!” She got up. Laura let her go, not knowing how to hold her if she were not afraid of the revolver, and watched her follow the causeway until she was only a speck in the distance.

  “Well, that’s that. There’s a catch in it somewhere,” said Laura aloud, when, the old woman having vanished across the marshes, she had to decide upon her own immediate course of action. “I might as well have a look round while I’m here, I suppose.”

  A thorough inspection of the house, including the drawers of a desk in the room, which had been used by the occupant as a study, failed to reveal anything which seemed of the slightest importance. There were some poems in manuscript, some daubs in water-colour of what seemed to be surrealist subjects, and a collection of books on Broadland. There were no worsted serpents, no other lethal weapons. Even the kitchen knives were worn and blunt. The house merely gave a fairly complete picture of a gentleman of leisure (with an active but well-sublimated subconscious mind, perhaps) employing himself in his own way and with innocent devices upon holiday. There was not even any dark-blue velvet to be found. With a lively recollection of the muffled oars and rowlocks she had seen, Laura looked especially for the velvet.