Groaning Spinney Page 14

  13. The Dragon’s Teeth are Sown

  *

  ‘On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand dare seize the fire?’

  William Blake

  * * *

  THE EMPTY PACKET of aspirin tablets which Mrs. Bradley had found in the badgers’ sett had certainly not been there when the snow was on the ground. It was dry, and in good condition. Whether it had been left there without malice, or whether (as she strongly suspected) to drop a broad hint of the manner in which Bill Fullalove had met his death, she could not decide. She had done the only possible thing under the circumstances: she had destroyed it. It was not evidence, and therefore it must not, she felt definitely, complicate a business which was already not very simple.

  The insurance plot, she was almost sure, had been made by the cousins jointly. One policy between them, obtained on the strength of Bill’s health, was a neat form of economy and the fraud was quite likely to have gone undetected. She wondered whether the cousins wrote an identical hand. At any rate, they had probably practised a signature.

  One other point arose from all this. The fact that a claimant had turned up in the person of a wife no longer held the importance that Mrs. Bradley had at first assigned to it. She was now prepared to believe that the woman, although doubtless legally married to one of the cousins, was no more than a business associate, or, baldly, a partner in crime. Her share in the plot was to turn up at the crucial moment to claim the money. It was a business deal all round, Mrs. Bradley thought. Having received her share, she would disappear again into the limbo from which she had come, unless she decided to try blackmail on whichever cousin lived to claim the money.

  However, if all this were true, there could be no doubt that Tiny might have been tempted to give his cousin an overdose of aspirin before he went out into the snow. Once Bill had fallen asleep, nothing could save him in such weather.

  If Tiny, therefore, were the murderer, it could not be he who had dropped the aspirin packet. The people who had access to Groaning Spinney were many, if one counted the servants and all others who worked on the estate, but it should not be difficult to find out which of the many had been through the little wood during, say, the past week.

  She decided to talk to Will North again and to the Wootton brothers, and also to take counsel with the carter. Among them, these four men should be able to supply the information she wanted.

  Aspirin, of course, suggested the presence of a woman. She thought she would also go up to the College and question the students. They had free access to the whole of the estate, and if one of them had dropped the packet there would be no need of further enquiries.

  Miss Hughes, although not immediately visible, was soon run to earth by the College secretary, who found her supervising a group of history students.

  ‘Good to see you,’ she said to Mrs. Bradley, as soon as they met. ‘The students are always asking when you are coming to talk to them again, and when you’ve another job that you want them to do.’

  ‘I’ll come when you like,’ Mrs. Bradley promised, ‘provided it can be fairly soon. I really ought to go back and look at my clinic next month.’

  ‘Well, these students go down in May. We only have them for thirteen months, as you know. What about one day next week?’

  The arrangements were made there and then, but before Mrs. Bradley was able to come to her real business Miss Hughes began to talk about the inquest on Mrs. Dalby Whittier.

  ‘I am interested that the jury brought in an open verdict,’ she said. ‘You know, it never seemed natural to me that that poor woman should have wandered so far from the track and died in the snow, and when I looked at the students’ maps and plans of the hillsides it seemed more unreasonable still. And, by the way, talking of hand-written anonymous letters—well, I didn’t intend to mention the fact because I put the thing straight on the fire and took no further notice—but I had one myself last term.’

  ‘Last term? Before Christmas?’ said Mrs. Bradley, producing from a capacious skirt-pocket the inevitable notebook.

  ‘Yes. Last November. About the middle of the month. It accused me of knowing the students to have immoral relations with the brothers Wootton who do the gardening here and look after the boilers. It added that I did nothing to prevent this.’

  ‘Indeed?’ exclaimed Mrs. Bradley. ‘That is more than interesting!’

  ‘If you knew the complete detestation and fear in which the younger Wootton, Harry, the unmarried one, holds all women, not even excepting his own sister,’ said Miss Hughes, with a deep chuckle, ‘you would also find it more than amusing. But no! Anonymous dirt is never that! I’m sorry now that I didn’t keep the letter, but it was a real piece of nastiness and I didn’t like the idea of leaving it about. My secretary is utterly discreet, of course, but naturally she has access to all my drawers and pigeonholes. I must confess I never faced the fact that there might be other letters. I thought it came from one of the villagers who disliked having the College take over the biggest house in the place … a sort of perverted local patriotism, you know.’

  ‘I see.’ Mrs. Bradley nodded. ‘Still, it establishes my theory that at least one other person must have received one of these hand-written letters besides yourself and my nephew, and that that person may have killed Mrs. Dalby Whittier and dumped her body where we found it.’

  ‘The easiest place to have killed her … and the safest … would have been at the bungalow, where she lived,’ said Miss Hughes, ‘but that would involve one of the Fullalove cousins, would it not?’

  Mrs. Bradley hesitated, and then decided against telling Miss Hughes the story of the curry and the disappearance of the dogs and cats. Miss Hughes glanced at her face and asked no questions.

  ‘Of course, we know Mrs. Whittier left the bungalow before Christmas: that is to say, before the snow fell,’ she said, ‘but I repeat that if she was killed at the bungalow it would be fantastic to suppose that someone other than one of the Fullaloves killed her, unless …’

  ‘Unless what?’ asked Mrs. Bradley, who was anxious to have her own theories tested in every possible way.

  ‘Unless some friend of one of the cousins had access … that is to say, a key … to the bungalow. And that opens up matter for speculation.’

  ‘And adds up to the answer I first thought of,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘But I came upon a different errand. I wonder whether you would be willing to help me?’

  ‘I think the students are all litter-conscious,’ said Miss Hughes, when she had heard about the empty aspirin packet, ‘but one never knows. People are so very remiss over these things. Question them, by all means. Will you know whether they are being quite truthful?’

  ‘What are psychological tests for?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. Miss Hughes, who had often wondered, smiled amiably and went off to arrange for the following day a period during which every student should take Mrs. Bradley’s test.

  The result was gratifying. It was clear, from the papers sent in, that none of the students had been in Groaning Spinney since they had made the survey of the neighbourhood for Mrs. Bradley.

  ‘And now, what are you going to talk to us about?’ enquired Miss Hughes, when Mrs. Bradley had been to the College again to announce the result of the test. A subject was soon agreed upon, and then Mrs. Bradley walked through the lovely grounds to the village street, and, when she reached it, stopped at the house where young Emming, the choirmaster, lodged. He was at home and was mending a puncture in the back tyre of his bicycle.

  Mrs. Bradley came to the point at once.

  ‘I am beginning to discover,’ she said, ‘that other people besides my nephew received hand-written letters of abuse. These were in addition to the typewritten ones of which we have all heard.’

  Young Emming straightened his back, glanced rather wistfully at his upturned bicycle, and asked her to come inside the cottage, for they were in the front garden. Mrs. Bradley complied.

  ‘Now, then,’ he said, ‘am I t
o understand that there are two anonymous letter-writers in this one small village?’

  ‘There were two,’ said Mrs. Bradley gently. ‘There seems very little doubt that one of them was the late Mrs. Dalby Whittier, the Fullaloves’ housekeeper.’

  She watched the young man closely as she made this statement. Emming went crimson and his eyes blazed. He stood threateningly over the small, black-eyed woman.

  ‘You can take that back!’ he cried furiously. ‘She would never have done such a thing!’

  ‘Don’t loom,’ said Mrs. Bradley composedly. ‘Even if you did strike me it wouldn’t help matters. It would not even give you satisfaction. I did not invent this information, you know. It can be proved. I’m afraid you must accept that as a fact.’

  The young man sat down. He looked tired. The colour ebbed from his face and neck, and he shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

  ‘Please go on,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. She … she had a lot to put up with, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ said Mrs. Bradley gently. ‘Now I don’t know whether you have ever examined the theory that her death may not have been an accident? The verdict of the inquest, you know …’

  ‘I … you mean … you think she may have …?’

  ‘Not even that,’ said Mrs. Bradley, speaking very quietly. ‘I think she may have let somebody know that she had stumbled on an ugly bit of truth. So you see why I want to find out about those anonymous letters. We know she wrote the one which went to my nephew. That has been proved. It also seems likely that she wrote one to Miss Hughes at the College. If she wrote two, she most likely wrote others of which we have never known because they exposed dark secrets, criminal ones, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ He walked to the window. Mrs. Bradley half-turned in her chair and regarded his thin shoulders and narrow back appraisingly. He swung round. ‘I can’t help you,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t, even if I could. She would never have told me anything about such a thing. I’m her son, as, of course, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do know. A mother would hardly confide to her son that she was the author of anonymous filth.’

  She walked to the door. The young man swung round and sped her departing presence with an oath. Mrs. Bradley turned on him.

  ‘I should be careful how I used that word,’ she said mildly. ‘It has appeared in two of the typewritten letters. You don’t possess a typewriter, I suppose?’

  Emming followed her to the door and watched until she was lost to sight at a bend in the road.

  She passed under the bridge which carried the drive from Jonathan’s house to the College, and then struck up through the lane to Will North’s place. But it was not Will she had come to see. Her business was with the brothers Wootton, who lived in the opposite house.

  The brothers were both at home. She came to the point at once, realizing that with Gloucestershire countrymen nothing would be gained either by beating about the bush or attempting to approach the subject tactfully.

  ‘Mr. Wootton and Mr. Harry Wootton?’ she said.

  ‘Ah, right first time, missus,’ said Abel, the elder brother. ‘What can us do for ’ee?’

  ‘You can tell me the truth,’ said Mrs. Bradley, with a fiendish grin. ‘How did you come to get yourselves mentioned in an anonymous letter to Miss Hughes?’

  ‘Anonymous? That means somebody didn’t put their name to it, eh?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘That means no good were said of us, eh?’

  ‘No good at all. Far from it. It accused Miss Hughes of allowing you to consort immorally with her students.’

  The brothers looked at one another. Abel, the widower, opened a large, brown-toothed mouth in hearty Rabelaisian laughter. Harry, the woman-hater, muttered a dark, Welsh oath and spat into the open grate.

  ‘Well, I never did!’ crowed Abel. ‘If that there ent a good un as ever I yeard! Come on, speak up, Arry! None of that there talk you picked up off old Tommy Evans! Speak English, man, and speak up!’

  ‘Well,’ said Harry, slowly, eyeing Mrs. Bradley with suspicion and some resentment, ‘being as it appears to have come out, here’er be, then!’ He paused, and looked at his brother.

  ‘Get on, lad,’ said Abel, encouragingly. ‘Get the load off’n thy conscience!’ He roared again. Harry appeared to make up his mind.

  ‘I don’t want to get nobody in trouble,’ he said, in his soft, thick burr, ‘but young immen be a bit too lively nowadays. I was smoothing over the potato patch way back be’ind the College when one of the young immen her comes up to me and her says, “Us be keeping Hallowse’en,” her says, “and it’d be a bit o’ fun,” her says, “if you and Abel was to come along to it. We’ll have turmut lanterns and put sheets on us, and have bobbing for apples and … well, you know the sort of thing,” her says. “Do come. The more the merrier!”

  ‘Well, it weren’t much in my line, but I talked it over with Abel here, and we decided it wouldn’t do no ’arm, specially as Emma was going to join in and wanted us for company, like, so us went. Well, what should one of them there uzzies do but stick me in one of the rooms downstairs all by myself and plant me in front of a looking-glass. It were purty dark, and there was a deal o’ giggling outside, and then one on ’em comes in and starts reciting some jargon or other, and then, dang it, her slips between me and the glass and ’afore I knows what her’s up to, her gives I a smacking great kiss. I never saw her face, ’cos her back was to the glass and it were too dark, see? And a bloomin’ girt vool I must a-looked! Made me so mad, it did, I give her a cuff on the—well—and a purty good squawk her let out.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Wootton. I am glad to have cleared the matter up. Girls, as you say, will do anything nowadays!’

  Keeping a carefully grave countenance, she then put her next question, but neither brother could help her.

  ‘Groanin’ Spinney?’ said Abel. He shook his head. ‘Us have both been up over at the College since last Wednesday fortnight. Haven’t been this way except to sleep till to-day. Will North could tell ee, mam, better than anybody else.’

  Mrs. Bradley knew this. She also proposed to speak to Ed Brown, the carter. She tackled Will North first. His information was exactly as she expected, except for one interesting addition.

  The only people who had been in the woods during the past week were Deborah and Sally, looking for catkins, Tiny Fullalove (rather rough walking for him, Mrs. Bradley thought, but still, he had accompanied Jonathan up there on the day the packet had been found), Obury at his badgers’ sett, Mansell with a telescope and binoculars, and, the cuckoo in the nest, young Robert Emming.

  ‘What was he doing?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. Will did not know. He was muttering to himself and writing in a little book, and jumped a yard and a half when spoken to.

  The carter, Ed Brown, could add nothing to this catalogue, but he also had seen Emming in the wood.

  ‘Writing po’try to his best girl, I reckon,’ said he, with his sly, shy grin. Neither man had seen any of the named persons drop anything, but Will could substantiate Mrs. Bradley’s view that the empty packet had not been in the wood very long before she found it.

  Mrs. Bradley was not very anxious to tackle young Emming again so soon after her previous visit. Nevertheless, one of the people in the wood had dropped the package, and Deborah and Sally, who had been into the wood for catkins, both denied all knowledge of it. Mrs. Bradley believed them. She gave the matter careful consideration, and then asked first Obury and then Mansell about it. She told them her suspicion that it had been ‘planted,’ and received in return a direct answer from each man. Neither used aspirin in any form whatsoever, and neither had seen the packet when he had been in the wood.

  ‘And I’ve been around that badgers’ sett enough,’ added Obury.

  She went to Tiny Fullalove. He said that he had seen the packet but had taken no notice of it. He was potting at the grey squirrels, he said. He and Will North had the de
vil of a job to keep down the little pests.

  Mrs. Bradley had heard about the grey squirrels from Will North, but she thought that Tiny’s balance would not be sufficiently controlled yet to make shooting a very satisfying pastime.

  She did not say this to Tiny, since she did not wish to appear to doubt him, but she decided that, after all, it would be as well to interview Emming in case he heard of her questioning the others.

  He received her suspiciously, but agreed that he had been in the spinney.

  ‘I’m writing a little book on fungi,’ he said in a surly tone which showed unwillingness to give her any information. He denied having seen the packet, but added, in a disagreeable tone, that it was not his business to act as a blasted park-keeper. Mrs. Bradley, interested to note how seriously her previous visit had upset him, returned to the manor house.

  Here Jonathan had news.

  ‘The police have got a move on at last!’ he said. ‘Bill Fullalove is going to be exhumed.’

  Mrs. Bradley rang up the Chief Constable.

  ‘Have the insurance doctor present? Yes, if you like. This is all a lot of ballyhoo, you know. There is no reason whatever to suspect that Fullalove was poisoned!’

  ‘There are some grounds for suspecting that a fraud has been worked on the insurance company, though,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘I want the insurance doctor to be allowed to help carry out the autopsy, and I want to be there myself at the exhumation.’

  ‘No place for a woman!’

  ‘It is a place for a knowledgeable citizen,’ said Mrs. Bradley, serenely. ‘If I never see anything worse than the slightly decomposed body of a healthy man, I shall account myself fortunate.’

  The exhumation was carried out three nights later under the usual conditions of darkness and secrecy. The morbid ritual had been begun during the daylight hours, when about half the necessary quantity of earth had been removed. The rest of the soil and the coffin itself came up at between ten o’clock and midnight.

  By the light of hurricane lamps the damp coffin was transported to the vicar’s tool-shed, emptied that day for the purpose. A couple of trestles supported a stout board—actually the sexton’s fowl-house door, the birds being lodged for the night in a derelict hen-house at the bottom of the doctor’s garden. This hen-house had been coopered up for the occasion by Abel Wootton, and the hens transported in a cart lent by Farmer Daventry. The cart had been driven by Ed Brown, and was covered with some old tennis nets provided by the doctor’s wife and daughter.