[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening Page 13

  'It was because of us that the body was discovered,' said Kenneth, repeating a phrase which the police inspector had used in our hearing when he was questioning Aunt Kirstie.

  'Oi don't berlieve et.'

  'It's true. We knew something was buried in that cottage, so we got Peachy to dig it up for us.'

  'Then you be a body-snatcher, you young Oi say.'

  'What's a body-snatcher?'

  'Oi don't roightly know, but moi dad talk about 'em. Be 'anged for body-snatchen, ee can. They won't arf streng ee up 'oigh because you be only a lettle un and got no weight to ee, so they'll gev ee a long drop.'

  'We didn't "snatch" anything. We simply found Mr Ward,' said Kenneth quickly.

  'How do ee know as et was hem?'

  'We saw a bit of that suit he always wore, and Margaret found one of his boots in the bushes. Look, Our Sarah, we want to find the murderer, because Mr Ward must have been murdered to have been buried like that. What we want to know is whether you and the gang will come in with us.'

  'To look for a murderer? That's a p'lice job, that es.'

  'Oh, please come in with us.'

  'For whoi?'

  'Well, to catch the murderer, like I said.'

  'More loike the murderer 'ud ketch us, Oi reckon. Oi don't want no part of et.'

  Kenneth gave up.

  'It's no use arguing with her,' he said, as we made for the plank bridge and grandfather's iron gate. 'She won't budge. It's up to us, I reckon.'

  Aunt Kirstie heard us come into the scullery. She told us not to make a noise because the police were interviewing Uncle Arthur upstairs in the parlour.

  'And look you here,' she went on, 'I don't want you roaming about no more. You ain't to go on The Marsh or anywhere near that old cottage.'

  'Police orders?' asked Kenneth.

  'And mine and your grandfather's and your Uncle Arthur's. 'Tain't safe. I wishes as I could pack you both off home, but I can't do that till your father sends.'

  We talked it over in the bedroom.

  'What on earth shall we find to do?' I asked dolefully. 'Without the cottage-not that I really want to go there any more-and without The Marsh and the sheepwash, I don't see it's worth while being here any longer.'

  'Of course it is,' said Kenneth. 'We're not forbidden the village streets and that's where we shall score. We've got to get at people and question them. Somebody must know something or have seen something. All we've got to do is find out what it is.'

  'We can't just go knocking on doors.'

  'I suppose not. Well, you think of something.'

  As it happened, it was the Sunday school superintendent, and not myself, who thought of something, although he had no idea that he had solved the first part of our problem for us. More or less incarcerated as we felt ourselves to be, even Sunday school seemed tolerable now that we had been deprived of our meetings on The Marsh with Our Sarah and her gang, so that when, on Sunday morning, Aunt Lally suggested it before she sent us over to get our breakfast from Aunt Kirstie, she found us in an unusually compliant mood.

  We allowed ourselves without protest to be arrayed like the lilies of the field and set off in good time for the tin-roofed building. We settled ourselves in decorous silence, listened without comment to the young and ignorant teacher's exposition of the Sermon on the Mount and, when classes were over, paid attention to the superintendent's remarks before we had the closing hymn and his snuffling, unctuous, extempore closing prayer. His little homily included the story of the Children's Crusade which took place in the Middle Ages. Then he urged us all to become Crusaders. (He did not mention that the unfortunate children never reached the Holy Land, but ended up in the slave markets of North Africa, and we did not know this at the time.) He drew a picture of their missionary zeal, their courage, their devotion to what he called The Cause and he finished up by saying that at the end of the meeting there would be collecting boxes for distribution to all those who would be willing to collect for Foreign Missions.

  I looked across the room at the boys' side of the hall and caught Kenneth's eye. I made our tiny signal which meant Shall we? He nodded vigorously so, at the end of the session, we joined a small party of volunteers at the table where the star-cards were marked (an asterisk if you had attended and were punctual, a zero if you had attended but were late, the latter to count only half a mark towards the tally which meant a ticket for the Sunday school treat) and received our collector's card and a tin with a slit in the top.

  The secretary who marked the cards would not give us a card and a tin each. He said that we did not come regularly.

  'No, but we come when we can,' said Kenneth, 'and I'm sure we can get you some money.' So the man handed me the collector's card and, with a jocular remark that the gentleman always carried the luggage, gave the tin to Kenneth.

  'Did you think what I thought?' he asked, when we got outside.

  'Of course. It makes a whale of a reason for nosey-parkering round the village and asking questions,' I said. 'We shall have to be careful, because people do hate giving money except for hospitals and-'

  'And the life boat,' he suggested.

  'Yes. But I don't think people will be very interested in foreign missions. Our teacher in London told us that she gave up worrying about foreign missions when she found that they sent out the missionaries and the trade gin in the same ship.'

  'What's trade gin?'

  'I don't know, but that's what she said, so we'd better be careful not to argue and only start asking those people who won't turn nasty.'

  'There are some we'll have to talk to, whether they turn nasty or not. We shouldn't argue with grown-ups, anyway. You only get your ears boxed if you do.'

  Instead of going straight back to Aunt Kirstie for our Sunday dinner, we decided to call first on Aunt Lally.

  'She goes to the Mission Hall regularly on Sunday evenings, or else to the Baptist Church in the town,' said Kenneth, 'so I think she is certain to give us something and it helps a lot if you can show people your card with somebody's name already on it and there's something to rattle in the tin. I know that from Cubs. A Boy Scout gave me the tip. "Shove a dud coin and a couple of buttons in before you start," he said, "and get one of your mates to sign the book." He said it always works, and it seems to, because I tried it, although I did put in a ha'penny of my own with the buttons and signed the card myself-well, it was a little notebook, actually-so as not really to cheat.'

  So began our private Crusade in quest of Mr Ward's murderer. We only hoped we would not be called back to London before we had found him.

  Chapter 14

  The Hill Village Irregulars

  Aunt Lally subbed up handsomely with three lovely great pennies. She wanted to save her threepenny bit (silver in those days) for Church collection, she said. Anyway, the pennies suited us because they set up such a suggestive response when we rattled them in the tin. Aunt Lally improved the occasion by telling us that we would get our reward in heaven hereafter by working for the Lord, and warned us on no account to go into the village public house with our collecting box.

  That belongs to the Salvation Army,' she somewhat ambiguously explained. When we went next door for our Sunday dinner with Aunt Kirstie the police were there again. Uncle Arthur was in the kitchen. He sent us straight up to the parlour and there the inspector took us all through our story again about how we had persuaded Poachy to dig up Mr Ward's body. The police sergeant sat at the table and checked off our replies against, I suppose, the previous statements we had made.

  There was nothing new we could tell them. We repeated our stories of Mr Ward's digging operations in various places and our theory that the hermit might have hidden money or other treasure under the floor of the cottage; we told of Mr Ward's mad behaviour in the sheepwash and of the grave he had dug. They questioned us closely about this. What had made us think of a grave? Had we ever seen an open grave? What made us ask Poachy to help us? Why had we forced apart the bars in the iron fence which
bounded the back garden? Who else ever went into the cottage?

  We answered truthfully, although the questioning made me nervous. The inspector realised this because, as he got up to go, he said,

  'It's all right, youngsters. We don't suspect you of doing anything wrong and we shan't be troubling you again.' To Aunt Kirstie he said, 'We'll see ourselves out, Mrs Landgrave. If anything else concerning Mr Ward should occur to you which you think may help us, I shall be glad to know.'

  When he and the sergeant had gone, Kenneth said,

  'We ought to have asked them if they'd like to give us something for our missionary box.'

  They'd have thought it cheek,' I said, 'and it doesn't do to cheek the police. You get sent to Borstal.'

  After dinner we decided that Sunday afternoon was a bad time to go round the village asking for charity, because money given away on Sunday was for church collection, and anyway, all the grown-ups would be taking their Sunday afternoon siesta and would not be pleased at having to get up and answer the door, so, to repay Aunt Lally for her kind contribution to our missionary box, we went to her while she was doing the washing-up and asked for something Sundayish to read. That sent her happily up to her afternoon rest. We read for a bit, then we sneaked out into the garden to plan the morrow's campaign and draw up a list of people we wanted to question, but by the time Aunt Lally came downstairs again to wake grandfather and give him his tea we were back indoors with our Sunday pamphlets. She was very pleased with us.

  When Monday morning came I think that, but for Kenneth, I would have abandoned our project. What had seemed such an amazingly good idea in Sunday school looked far less attractive at breakfast time on the following day. I said to my brother,

  'Do you really think we'll do any good?'

  'Of course we shall. Think, if we can beat the police at their own game!'

  'But even if we do find out something important we shall have to tell it to them.'

  'Not to them; not directly, anyway.'

  'What shall we do with it, then? It won't be any good just keeping it to ourselves.'

  'Of course not. We tell Mrs Bradley up at the manor. She'll know whether it's important enough to pass on. In fact, I vote we tell her everything we find out, whether it's important or not. I'll tell you something else, too. We might get hold of something to do with that other murder. You know, the girl who was at Lionel's sister's party.'

  'Do you really think so?' I asked doubtfully.

  'Well, we've put Mrs Grant on our list and we know Doctor Tassall visits her-she's his patient because of her ague she's always complaining about-and Doctor Tassall writes letters-I expect they're love-letters or some rot like that, you know...'

  'Yes, to Amabel Kempson-Conyers. Do you wish we had a double-barrelled name?'

  'Anybody can have one if they are stuck-up enough, I believe. We could call ourselves Innes-Clifton if we liked.'

  I tried it over a time or two and then rejected it.

  'I'd feel silly,' I said. 'But about Mrs Grant? She can't know anything worth much about Mrs Kempson and those people up at the big house.'

  'We shan't know that unless we ask her. Then there's Old Mother Honour. Her shop is almost opposite the hermit's cottage. She must know something about who goes into it.'

  'Well, so do we. Our Sarah and her lot, then us, then Mr Ward and now Poachy.'

  'And the man who put Mr Ward in that hole and buried him. Suppose she knows who that was, eh? And suppose she told us, and we told Mrs Bradley, and she told the police! We might even get our names in the papers!'

  'I wouldn't want that, unless they'd caught the murderer first and locked him up.'

  'Well, they'd have done that, of course, on our information.'

  So I committed myself to the enterprise and we began with Mrs Grant. We found her sitting on her doorstep as usual rocking herself to and fro and moaning about her ague.

  'I hab de ague bery bad, bery bad,' she told us.

  'I'm sorry to hear it,' said Kenneth in a grown-up way, keeping the collecting-box behind his back, for we did not want to frighten her off before we had got any information out of her which she might possess. Besides, it was rumoured in the village that she was a Catholic, although, so far as was known, she never went to church. Anyway, I doubted whether she would give anything towards the Sunday school's Foreign Missions because, after all, she herself was a foreigner and might think it a cheek of the English to send out missionaries. She might even have feasted off a missionary in her earlier life, I thought. 'Still,' my brother went on, 'I suppose even the ague is better than being murdered.'

  'Murdered? Mudder ob God, who is murdered?'

  'Surely you know,' I said, taken aback, all the same, by what I believed to be a blasphemous exclamation. 'You heard about the girl at the sheepwash, and now Mr Ward.'

  'Nobody don' tell me notting. No friends I got in dis place.'

  'No, they're not a very friendly lot,' said Kenneth. 'We can tell you about the murders if you like.'

  'You come in. I gib you glass ob good wine.'

  'No, thank you all the same. We're Band of Hope,' I said, afraid that Kenneth was going to accept the invitation. 'Have you seen the doctor lately?'

  'Doctor no damn good. I tell him not to come no more. I got no more letters to gib him.'

  'Letters?' We pricked up our ears.

  'Long time young lady send embelopes to me. Inside is letter in smaller embelope address to Doctor Tassall. It is an arrangement. He treat me free for my ague, I gib him his letters. Dey come first from France, den London, but no more. Young lady she don' write no more letters and I don' have money to pay doctor, so I tell him not to come no more, and he don' do notting for de ague, anyway. Now I go indoors, sit by fire. Goodbye.'

  'Well, that wasn't much good,' said Kenneth, as we walked on down the village street. 'Not that I expected much from her.'

  'I think we ought to make a note about the letters,' I said. 'Letters are always important. Look at the letter Laurie wrote to Meg, pretending it came from his tutor. There was an awful row about that. And look at the letter that man in the pub wrote to Jellicoe that could have got Mike Jackson expelled when he biked over at night to pay the five pounds.'

  'Tell Mrs Bradley about the letters, do you mean?' Kenneth was obviously impressed by my arguments, for, although he had not read Little Women, he, like me, had wallowed in the Captain magazine which was in bound volumes in our local public library at home, and especially did we love the school stories by P. G. Wodehouse.

  'Well, I bet it's something nobody but Mrs Grant knows about,' I said. 'What only one person knows must be a secret of some sort and secrets, like letters, are always important.'

  We walked on and then stopped outside the Widow Winter's house. She was on our list, but neither of us wanted to knock on her door.

  'We could leave her till last,' said Kenneth, 'and then perhaps we shan't need her at all.' We went on to Mother Honour's, but all she said when she saw our box was,

  'I'm here to take money, not give it. Out you get!'

  So out we went. We stood outside the little post-office and looked at the tumble-down cottage across the road.

  'She must know something,' said Kenneth. 'After all, her shop door is bang opposite. If only I hadn't put my ha'penny in this silly tin I could have bought some sweets and then perhaps she'd talk to us.'

  'Not for only a halfpenny; I said. 'We'd better try Miss Summers next, I suppose. She lives nearly opposite Mrs Grant, so we might hear something more about the letters.'

  'They can't be all that important.'

  'They must be, or else they wouldn't need to be kept so secret.'

  'They wouldn't be about the murders, anyway. They might be love-letters. Something silly, anyway, I'll bet. I thought Amabel was an awfully silly girl, didn't you? Besides, you and I used to have a secret post, don't you remember?'

  'Yes, but it was only a shoe-box with a slit in the lid. Well, do we try Miss Summers or don't we?
'

  So we tried Miss Summers, but it was not any good. As soon as she spotted the collecting-box she said,

  'You're the third lot that's come bothering me. Don't you know it's against the law to beg?'

  'It isn't for ourselves,' said Kenneth.

  'Don't you tell me that! You children are all the same. You know what to do with a hatpin, I'll be bound!'

  'Well,' said Kenneth, when we got outside, 'if we didn't then, we do now, and it is in a good cause. Even Aunt Lally would agree to that.'

  'You're not going to winkle out her three pennies, are you?' I asked, torn between excitement and terror. 'Wouldn't it be stealing?' (Stealing, to our minds, was a much greater sin than murder. The truth is, I suppose, that stealing came within our comprehension; murder, although we had had evidence of it, still did not.)

  'Well, David took the shewbread when there wasn't anything else for his men to eat.'

  'He didn't steal it, though. The priest gave it to him.'

  'Well, Aunt Lally gave the pennies to us. She didn't say anything about missionaries when she put the money into the tin. We'll have to make it up later on, of course. If it wasn't in a really good cause I wouldn't do it. Let's get back to Aunt Kirstie's and get hold of a hatpin.'

  All our fiddling and fidgeting, however, failed to produce a single coin. I was immensely relieved and I believe Kenneth was, too.

  'Oh, well,' he said at last, when we returned the hatpin surreptitiously to the crown of Aunt Kirstie's best hat, 'I suppose it's really God's money and He's holding on to it. We'd better have one more go at people and it's no use funking it. We've got to try the Widow Winter.'

  Greatly to our surprise we found the Widow Winter on the defensive when she answered our knock on her front door.

  'Ef your grandad sent you,' she said, 'you tell hem et ent no good. Oi ent got et and that's a fact. Oi do know as how Oi'm a lettle bet be'oind-'and, but he'll get et when Oi gets moi next Lord George.'

  We had no idea what she was talking about, but Kenneth dropped the collecting-box behind a bush in her tiny front garden and I said,