Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “I’m not going to let you be hanged,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I suppose it’s Fay who has a weak heart,” she added, “and that’s why you had weak hearts on the brain on Christmas Eve.”

  Chapter Nine

  BACK TO BACK IN KENSINGTON

  “I want you to have a go at this,” said Mrs. Bradley. Mr. Derwentwater looked at the fish-paste jar full of soil.

  “Analyse it, do you mean?” he asked. Mrs. Bradley cackled and poked him in the ribs.

  “Why not, dear child?” she enquired.

  “And what do you suppose I shall find? Is this lunacy, murder or what?”

  “Murder this time, child.”

  “Oh? The Shotover Case? I heard you’d been pulled in on that. Old chap savaged by a boar. Very interesting.” He looked at the fish-paste jar again. “And this, I presume, represents ‘Spot where the Body was Found.’ Am I right?”

  “As always,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And my address, if you have to send on to me the result of your personal and, needless to say, private investigations, is Little House, Horsepath, Oxfordshire.”

  “The private asylum?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aha!”

  “Why so, child?”

  “You think the murderer was a lunatic? Curious. So do I.”

  Mrs. Bradley looked startled.

  “What makes you think that?” she asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He began to take off his overall. “Coming out for some lunch? I generally go out about now.”

  “No. I have an appointment. Answer the question, child.”

  “Well, it struck me that there might have been easier ways of killing the old fellow, if one felt one had to, than setting a savage animal on to him, that’s all.”

  “You disappoint me, child. I thought you were going to bestow on me one of your constructive ideas.”

  “I don’t construct. I’m an analyst—like you. I merely take to bits what other people have constructed.”

  “Listen to me, then—or must you have your lunch?”

  “No, no. Please! I’ve nothing special to do this afternoon. Our old friend arsenic turned up again in the Kerder case, by the way.”

  “I thought it would. Well, now, these are the facts: two mur­ders, not one, have been committed in Oxfordshire within the last two weeks. The first was on Christmas Eve, or rather, very early on Christmas morning, and there was not an inquest, because the doctor gave a certificate without any fuss, testifying that the man had died of heart failure.”

  “Doctor a villain, do you think?” His grey eyes searched her face. Mrs. Bradley shook her head and pursed her thin lips into a little beak.

  “There is not the slightest reason to suppose so. The man, who had been his patient for a number of years, dropped dead on the towing path alongside the river between Iffley and Sandford. He had been running.”

  “That isn’t the whole of the story.”

  “No, it isn’t, child. The fact is, the man was running away from what he thought was a ghost.”

  “I don’t believe that. I should say that he knew the ghost was an enemy.”

  “That is possible, too.”

  “But what was the chap doing on the towing path at that hour? Tramp or something?”

  “No. A respectable solicitor whose home was in Iffley, and who had gone out to keep an appointment.”

  “Then he went to meet the man who had murdered him, I suppose? I can’t see any other explanation.”

  “Marvellous!” said Mrs. Bradley. “But not, I believe, quite true. I don’t think, somehow, that he ever set eyes on the man he went out to meet.”

  “Chap didn’t turn up, do you mean? But, if it was murder, how did the doctor come to write the certificate?”

  “Because the victim was not attacked, I tell you. He ran away and fell dead.”

  “But—”

  “And even that I have had to deduce. Well, goodbye, child, I must go.”

  “Blood,” said the analyst, two days later. He had met Mrs. Bradley, by appointment, at the Detection Club, of which she had been made an honorary member, and they sat in armchairs in the larger of the rooms which overlooked the street.

  “Blood?” repeated Mrs. Bradley.

  “Not human blood.”

  “Good. I thought it wouldn’t be. No, I will be entirely frank with you. I knew it wouldn’t be.”

  “Quite. The soil is saturated with the blood of some animal.”

  “Pigs’ blood, possibly?”

  “Very probably. That is to say, there is nothing to prove that it isn’t pigs’ blood, and, if there happened to be strong circumstantial evidence in favour of its being pigs’ blood—”

  “I see. Thank you, child.”

  “Help you at all?”

  “It confirms a theory of mine, and that is always pleasant. I like to be right.” She cackled and stood up. “I want to see Sir Selby Villiers before I go back to Oxfordshire. Have you written a detailed report of your analysis?”

  “Rather. I’ve got it with me. How does Sir Selby come into it? It isn’t a Scotland Yard job, surely, is it? Or can’t the local people tackle it?”

  “Oh, yes, they can manage, child. The inspector in charge of the case came to a series of popular lectures I gave at the Oxford City YMCA a year or two ago, and we get on famously together. I teach him the art of knife throwing and explain Lombroso’s theories, and tell him why most of them are discountenanced today, and he tells me how to prune trees and all about garden pests and how to combat them. He has also taught me the standard retail cuts of a Wiltshire side of bacon.”

  They descended the dark and ancient staircase past the haunts of industry, pleasure, and mystery which made up the remainder of the house and, turning into Shaftesbury Avenue, were soon at the entrance to Piccadilly Tube station, where they parted. Left alone, Mrs. Bradley telephoned Sir Selby at his private address and was invited to come to dinner.

  Sir Selby was delighted with her further account of the murders, and gave it as his opinion that either Tombley or Pratt was the murderer.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, with evident satisfaction, “so you think it might have been Pratt?”

  “Decidedly I do. On the question of motive alone, he has as much to gain as Tombley.”

  “But Tombley has confessed to being the ghost on Christmas Eve,” said Mrs. Bradley, looking like a benevolent alligator and then suddenly screeching like a slightly demented macaw.

  “Confessed, did he?”

  “To being the perpetrator of a practical joke, that is all.”

  “Oh, of course. One can understand that he wouldn’t go further than that. Did he know that Fossder had a weak heart, I wonder?”

  “He doesn’t say so. But I have reason to think that he did know. He mentioned, on Christmas Eve, his uncle’s weak heart, but I have evidence that Mr. Simith’s heart was perfectly sound.”

  “Yes, I see the inference.”

  “After confessing to the ghost business, he put his own finger in the fire, and then attempted to put one of mine in,” went on Mrs. Bradley, with a reminiscent chuckle. “I went back two days ago and had him taken to a private mental hospital for observation.”

  “By his own consent?”

  “Oh, yes. I told him it would save him from immediate arrest.” She grinned. Sir Selby looked at her reproachfully.

  “Not right of you,” he said sadly.

  “It was true,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I squared—is that the word?—my inspector purposely.”

  “Now what about that business of the bet?”

  “I know, child. It’s very odd. I can’t help thinking that something else besides the bet took Fossder along the towing path that night.”

  “Don’t you think he went to meet Tombley, then?”

  “I think that Fossder had other fish to fry, and, possibly, so had Pratt. He came to Old Farm, you know, to find out why Hugh was delayed.”

  “What kind of a fellow is Pra
tt? Of course, I am very much impressed by the fact that he, as I said before, had everything to gain, and nothing whatever to lose, by Fossder’s death.”

  “I have not formed any very definite opinion. It is a pleasure I have in store. As you point out, at Fossder’s death Pratt, as Fossder’s partner, would inherit the practice. I understand that he is fully qualified, in fact that, during the past two years, he handled most of the business.”

  “Quite so. You know, I think you could put your inspector on to Pratt, if only to find out, if possible, whether Fossder had any object in going out that night apart from the attempt to win the wager. Another point: you say that he was running along the towing path between Iffley and Sandford, when he fell and died. How did he get on to the towing path?”

  “He crossed at Iffley Lock. Since someone broke through and was drowned, the tollkeepers leave the way open after eleven at night.”

  “It all looks fishy,” Sir Selby said decidedly. “And what’s fishy is always instructive, in our profession. I should get the inspector to stampede Pratt into telling all he knows. But now for the Simith affair. I should certainly say that the evidence points to Tombley there.”

  “In a way it does. But there are some interesting doubts. To begin with, it seems assured, from the medical evidence, and from what I saw for myself when we found the body, that the savaging of Simith by the boar was not necessarily the most direct cause of his death. He had fallen heavily backwards—the result, I surmise, of having had his chair snatched away as he went to sit down—and, also, his nose was broken. I think he was dragged out in an unconscious or semiconscious condition, heaved up by the murderer and pitched over into the sty. The boar, possibly, had been teased to work him up to the requisite state of savagery. He thereupon tackled Simith, who must have been lying full length, and ripped him up with his tusks.”

  “Nasty,” said Sir Selby, “but I haven’t seen the hitch. It looks all Lombard Street to a china orange like Tombley’s work to me. The fall, we’ll say, took place in a stone-floored farmhouse kitchen, and the boar was his own boar. You said they were pig farmers, didn’t you?”

  “But somebody took the body out again, and then, you see, it was conveyed to Shotover.”

  “Well, Tombley’s idea would be to get it as far from Roman Ending as he could.”

  “I know,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I don’t know how much experience you have of boars,” she added pensively, “but I can assure you that it is one thing to shoot something over into a savage boar’s sty, and quite another to go in after it and drag it out again.”

  “I see your point. But a good dousing with water from a power­ful hosepipe will keep most animals at bay. Men, too, for the matter of that. Depend upon it, that’s how it was done. But it means there was an accomplice.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If we could only find the hosepipe. Or the accomplice,” she added.

  “Has the inspector looked for such a thing?”

  “As a hose? Oh, yes. It was one of the first things he himself suggested he should look for. The only difficulty is that he has not found it, and he’s a very thorough searcher, I can tell you. The police really do know how to look for things.”

  “Buried.”

  “I don’t think so. I expect it’s eaten. That is, if it ever existed.”

  “Eaten?”

  “Chopped up and mixed with the pig food,” Mrs. Bradley explained. “From what I’ve seen of pigs during the last two weeks, I don’t believe they’d notice, if the hosepipe was chopped up small.”

  “It’s a very ingenious theory,” Sir Selby admitted, knitting his brows and turning round the signet ring on his finger. “It isn’t always easy to do away with a material clue like that, but still—as you say. Eaten by the pigs! Yes, most ingenious.”

  “An effective method, as you say, of doing away with it,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And now for the pigman, Priest.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard of him, have I?”

  “He was Simith’s pigman, and, according to Tombley, who may not be telling the truth, is the only person capable of handling the boar Nero.”

  “Simith’s boar? The one who savaged the body?”

  “Yes. But, you see, it may not have been Nero who savaged the body. Simith may not have been killed at Roman Ending.”

  “I see that. Please go on.”

  “Priest had a grudge against Simith, who seems to have seduced a certain Linda Ditch, now Linda Priest, who used to be a servant at Roman Ending.”

  “Oho! So the pigman married the victimised Linda, did he? That looks bad. I assume you are going to tell me that the marriage took place after the murder.”

  “Very shortly after; and we are keeping a careful check on Priest’s movements. To him, the disgraceful seduction of his sweetheart may have been a sufficient motive for the murder, don’t you think?”

  “I certainly do. But this is really interesting! What kind of a girl is Linda?”

  “A hussy,” said Mrs. Bradley with great firmness. “I make all allowance for girls being girls, as you know, but when everything has been said in her favour, the fact remains that Linda is a bad lot. But I like her, you know,” she added, with a chuckle. Sir Selby nodded and laughed.

  “All the same, there does remain the fact that a wife cannot be compelled to give evidence against her husband, doesn’t there?” he said, becoming serious again.

  “That’s the whole point,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Then,” she went on, “there is the other fact, of which the inspector has made nothing up to the present, that Linda left the house on the night of Simith’s murder, and fell into the parlour out of the priest’s hole early on the following morning.”

  “Pray go on,” said Sir Selby, as she paused.

  “But I can’t,” said Mrs. Bradley comically. “That is the fact, and that is all I know.”

  “But not all that you surmise?”

  “Well, no. My first impression was that she went out so that she could give either Tombley or Priest an alibi for the murder.”

  “By saying that she slept with one of them?”

  “Yes. But Tombley told me later on that Linda would not swear him an alibi, although she was his bedfellow.”

  “Well, if she’s now married Priest, it is reasonable to suppose that he is right!”

  “You don’t know Linda Ditch. My own impression is that she did not sleep with Tombley.”

  “Oh?”

  “But that somebody else did, and that Tombley is prepared to risk being hanged rather than compromise this other woman, whoever she may be.”

  “That means that he’s in love with her.”

  “Precisely.” Mrs. Bradley beamed on him. “It’s that that makes the thing so very difficult. You see, I don’t really think they slept at Roman Ending.”

  “But who is the girl? She ought to be easy to find.”

  “I have found her. She is Fossder’s niece.”

  “I thought— No matter.”

  “You thought that Fossder’s niece was engaged to Carey’s friend Hugh.”

  “Well, yes. But, I suppose—”

  “Mr. Fossder had two nieces,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Or rather, one niece and one niece-by-courtesy, to put it tactfully. Jenny is engaged to Hugh; Fay is engaged to Maurice Pratt; but Tombley was in love with Fay. Fossder, however, preferred Pratt’s suit to Tombley’s, and Fay appears to have been guided by her uncle in the matter.”

  “You think, then, that she is in love with Tombley?”

  “I don’t know, child. But I do know that if Tombley wants her name kept out of this affair of the murder, he is going a very foolish way to work in giving out that he spent the night with Linda.”

  “I don’t altogether see that.”

  “My dear Selby, have you ever tried spending a night with a woman when it seemed necessary to keep the whole affair a dead secret?”

  “Heaven forbid!” said Sir Selby, his mind recoiling almost visibly from the suggestion.
/>   “Well, if you had,” said Mrs. Bradley, unperturbed, “you would very soon realise that merely to talk of walls having ears is absurd. They have eyes, ears, tongues, and logical minds. They know exactly what happened, and when, and why, and how. In the end, you might just as well have advertised your intentions in the Morning Post.”

  “Oh! Private detective stuff!”

  “Not private detective anything! Merely speculative theories advanced by your friends and casual acquaintances. That is in London. When it comes to a small and fairly remote village—”

  “I see what you mean. You mean it ought to be easy enough to find out whether he spent the night with Fay or with Linda. Well, I should put your inspector on to it. It’s quite a good point, and might lead you almost anywhere.”

  “Including up the garden,” said Mrs. Bradley sadly. “You know, Selby, Fossder was a greedy, grasping, and rather foolish old man, and Simith was a nasty, bad tempered old man. Why should we bother who killed them?”

  “Morbid curiosity on your part; a sense of civic duty on mine,” said Sir Selby, grinning. “Come and play Bridge for a bit. It’ll do you good.”

  “What would really do me good,” said Mrs. Bradley, “is to know whether the deaths of Fossder and Simith are separate and unrelated, or whether they are two pieces of the same pattern. If the latter is the truth, then the pattern will have to be completed, and I find the thought of that a little trying, you know.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” asked Sir Selby.

  “Well, if they are part of a pattern, it seems to me that the pattern, to be completed, requires the death of still another person. Doesn’t it strike you that way?”

  “Well, it hadn’t. I see your point. Prevention is better than cure. And you haven’t got Tombley in your private mousetrap to save him from being arrested, but to save him from murdering, or from being murdered by, Pratt.”

  “Marvellous!” said Mrs. Bradley, poking him in the ribs. “You see further to the side than anyone else I know,” she added with a cackle. Sir Selby, straightening his tie, hoped that this was a compliment.

  “Of course, there’s still that pigman, Priest,” he added.