Here Lies Gloria Mundy (Mrs. Bradley) Page 18

  This, of course, I cannot prove, but the payments could not have been very large if they could be covered by a weekly postal order. However, either Miss Mundy grew tired of being so consistently bled, or else, the agreed sum having been reached (and over a period of years, remember), the woman persisted in her demands and did not release the camera and the film. At any rate, there is no doubt in my own mind that Miss Mundy enticed the woman into a meeting with her and then killed her.

  The Earls Court landlady’s story that she was lured by the promise of a post in a hotel sounds to me very unlikely. Far more likely, I think, is that Miss Mundy, when she sent her last remittance, one which she fully intended should be final, suggested a meeting and a full settlement so that the woman could return to America. The landlady told me that she had often expressed a wish to do so.

  That in meeting her victim she might be placing herself in great danger appears never to have occurred to the woman. I suppose she thought that, after years of unquestioning payments, Miss Mundy was as a lamb for the slaughter. The slaughterer, however, was the lamb.

  The Metropolitan Police have not yet closed the file on the case, and by piecing together bits of evidence gathered on both sides of the Atlantic they were already on Miss Mundy’s trail before the murder at Mr. Wotton’s old house took place, and I am sure she knew that she was in danger. However, she must have thought she was safe as soon as the body found in the old house was identified by you and by Mr. Wotton as her own. Then came the shock of realising that Mr. McMaster had recognised her as the black-haired, white-faced assistant at Trends when she had thought that her disguise was impenetrable to those who had known her in the past when she had that striking head of red and black hair.

  Certain that Mr. McMaster would make known his discovery to the police—which, from a mistaken sense of chivalry he appears not to have done—she lost no time in getting away from Trends, but the police are busy searching for her. As you point out in your letter, Mr. McMaster’s evidence would not have been necessary to prove that she is still alive. The detailed autopsy proved that the dead woman at Beeches Lawn could not have been Miss Mundy.

  When I had gained what I could from Mr. Wotton, from the police, and from the landlady, I wanted to establish a connection between Miss Mundy and this body found in the old house. It is you, my dear Corin Stratford, not I, who connected the two murders, although the police, with their relentless perseverance and patience, would have reached the conclusion you came to. From the American end they have established that Miss Mundy and the murdered girl were cousins.

  Much is now in Mr. Coberley’s favour. For one thing, although both murders were stabbings, his dagger could not have been used for the murder of the American woman. Another pointer is that neither woman was murdered in her own home, but was decoyed and then killed. These, however, are nothing more than straws blowing in the wind. It was the autopsy which gave the police a clear lead in the chase after Miss Mundy.

  Once it was shown that you and Mr. Wotton had been misled in your identification of the body, added to the number of witnesses who were able to swear that Miss Mundy had been at Beeches Lawn shortly before the discovery of the body which had been furnished with that red and black wig—what a mistake that was on Miss Mundy’s part, as matters turned out, although one can appreciate the difficulty she was in, of course! She had to make the features of the corpse unrecognisable, while, at the same time, finding some means of making sure that the body would be accepted as her own.

  Imogen was with me when I received the letter. I handed it to her when I had read it so far, and asked for her views and comments. When she handed the pages back, she said, “I wonder whether the American girl was told that the whole business of the baby and the photograph was intended as a joke?”

  “Likely enough she was talked into it that way, but she soon seems to have realised its possibilities so far as she herself was concerned. She must have been relying on Gloria to give her a home and get her a job and then found out, when she had kept her part of the bargain and taken the photograph, that Gloria was going to ditch her. The rest, it seems to me, follows on naturally.”

  “Yes. Without the photograph, Gloria was in no position to put pressure on Anthony Wotton, although it seems she did try to call his bluff once or twice. When, in the end, she went to Beeches Lawn, it looks as though she managed to get a short private talk with him, doesn’t it?”

  “And that, I think, is where my naughty old Madame Eglantine comes in. I have no doubt she was intrigued by the visitor, speculated upon the purpose of the unheralded visit, listened behind the door, and collected an earful of what may be termed ‘baby-talk.’ She doesn’t like Anthony, so she told the tale to me and possibly to others.”

  “She really is a dreadful old thing. Why do you like her?”

  “She’s amusing and stimulating, if only you can keep her off the Malleus; but, to go back to Dame B.’s letter, it’s now clear why Gloria wanted money from Anthony to get herself out of the country before the net closed in on her. The police were hot enough on her trail—must have been, you know—to cause her to fake her own death.”

  “And in case Anthony refused to sub up, all that had been worked out before she ever went to Beeches Lawn. I wonder how she managed to find a victim who, apparently, would never be missed.”

  “Perhaps the rest of Dame Beatrice’s letter will supply the answer to that. All the same, London must be full of people who wouldn’t be missed—lonely spinsters, friendless widows, people who have been in gaol and are living under assumed names, immigrants who haven’t yet put down any roots. It would be easy enough to find somebody about whom there would be no hue and cry.”

  “Your picture, although touching, is not convincing,” said Imogen. She handed Dame Beatrice’s letter back to me and I read the rest of it, but, before I did so, I said, “I wonder what happened to that roll of film with Anthony, Gloria, and the baby on it?”

  “I expect the girl turned it over to Gloria when she received the promise of full payment.”

  “She probably received the payment but Gloria took it back after she had killed her.” We read on:

  My next visit was to Trends. I went armed with my full credentials and applied not to the department you and Mr. McMaster visited, but to the office, where I asked to see the manager.

  A suave individual took me into his own small sanctum and sent his secretary to bring us coffee. When she had gone for this, he asked me whether his firm was in any trouble, as he knew of no circumstances which could lead to a visit from a representative of the Home Office. I reassured him and added that I was interested in one matter only. I was anxious to know whether any elderly woman on his staff had retired during the past few weeks.

  He mentioned the summary dismissal of Miss Mundy, to whom he referred under another name, but not her shop-floor title of Violetta, and admitted he had already been questioned by the police as to her whereabouts but he added that she was anything but elderly. I mentioned that the age I had in mind was round about sixty. He could not help me, but when the secretary came back with the coffee he sent her out again with instructions to ask Personnel to spare him a few moments.

  A grey-haired, pleasant, but business-like woman appeared and to her I put my question. She replied that one of the cleaners who had reached what she termed “senior citizen status” had retired within the past few weeks and that Personnel had enquired about her future prospects and had asked whether she would be able to manage on the state pension.

  The answer was satisfactory, she thought. One of the girls in the gowns department had promised to get her work as a cleaner in a block of flats where a trustworthy charwoman was required, as most of the tenants were out at work all day, so that the cleaner would be given keys and would be alone in the various apartments. The personnel officer could not supply the address of the flats, but she gave me the cleaner’s own address, which, of course, she had on her books.

  I have given this address
to the police, but first I visited the place myself. It turned out to be a council flat in a large block. The cleaner had occupied a bed-sitting room in the home of a middle-aged, respectable couple who lived in Wapping. She had told them that she had found part-time employment which necessitated her giving up her room in their flat, but had left no address “as she never got any letters, anyway,” and they “could do with the extra room,” so I could not follow up my enquiries. No doubt the police will do better and I shall be very much surprised if this cleaner does not turn out to be the victim found in Mr. Wotton’s old house. Gloria would have found out all about the poor, friendless thing.

  “Well, that seems to tie that up very neatly,” said Imogen. “When am I going to meet your Dame Beatrice?”

  “Soon, I hope. I’m not sure which of my old ladies I love more, her or Madame Eglantine.”

  18

  Exit Gloria

  It seemed to me that there was nothing more that I could do. My foolish impulse to attempt to whitewash a double murderess had vanished long before I received Dame Beatrice’s letter and there appeared only two minor points to be cleared up, neither of them my business. The ownership of the burnt-out car had not been established and nobody so far had suggested how the elderly cleaner’s charred and disfigured body had been conveyed to the old house.

  I put these points to Dame Beatrice in another letter and she in her reply invited me to bring Imogen to stay for a weekend at the Stone House. Imogen, who was staying with her sister and finding the children charming but distracting, responded warmly to the invitation, so on a cold autumn Friday afternoon we drove to the New Forest.

  I had met the children when I picked Imogen up at her sister’s house and, as we were leaving the Downs behind us and I was taking the road to Chichester and then to Romsey to avoid Southampton, she mentioned that she would have to move, in order to get enough peace in which to write her book; I suggested that her next move should be into my pad.

  “Then, as soon as the winter is over, we’ll go house-hunting in London and in the summer we’ll move into the Cotswold cottage,” I said.

  “Marriage lines or no marriage lines?”

  “We might as well regularise the union, I suppose,” I said, as I kissed her cheek.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That remark might have been more happily phrased, but it indicates honourable intentions. Make it before Christmas and then I shan’t need to join in the family festivities.”

  “I’ve never made love to you properly,” I said thoughtfully. “When do I repair the omission?”

  “Well, it would be most improper to do it under Dame Beatrice’s roof,” she answered with mocking primness.

  “She would only cackle and wish us well. Do a few lines on a bit of paper matter so much?”

  “Yes, if they mean that you have to maintain me in sickness and in health, whether you like it or not.”

  “Oh, Lord! Not a church wedding?”

  “With you complete in sponge-bag trousers and a buttonhole. Besides, just in case you thought differently, I am entitled to be married in white.”

  “I’ve never thought about it. I have to confess that I myself am a spotted and inconstant man.”

  “Just as well that one of us has had some experience.”

  “This is the most unromantic conversation I ever took part in!”

  “It is nothing to the boring dialogues we shall have when we are married.”

  “Then there’s no time like the present.” I pulled into a lay-by which fortunately was empty.

  Breathless at the end of the next ten minutes, she said, “Perhaps it won’t be so boring after all. Where did you learn your technique?”

  “Not from Gloria Mundy,” I said.

  “Stop at Romsey Abbey. There’s a stone carving outside the south door,” she said. It was a crucifix. Unbidden to my mind came the Celtic warrior at Kilpeck. I banished his image and gently took Imogen’s hand. The figure on the crucifix was not quite life-size, but, unlike most such portrayals, the eyes were open and the head was raised. It was a representation of Christus Dominans and may have been brought back from the Middle East by crusaders, or so I had read. It seemed very likely, for the figure was too anatomically correct to be of Saxon origin, as some claimed, and it was a figure of victory, not of death.

  “This place was built for a convent of nuns,” I said, as we walked back to the car.

  “And the carving was outside the abbess’s door,” remarked Imogen. Nothing more was said until we reached Lyndhurst and even then all I said was, “Not far now.”

  It was growing dusk. The road between Lyndhurst and Brockenhurst is one of the most beautiful major routes through the New Forest and in the dim evening light the majestic trees gave cathedral solemnity to the scene. I drove slowly and we did not talk.

  Once over the little river, the Stone House soon came into view. Dame Beatrice and Laura Gavin received us kindly, George, the chauffeur and general handyman, carried our suitcases upstairs, and Laura and Imogen followed so that Laura could show Imogen our rooms. I was left downstairs with Dame Beatrice.

  “We are going to be married sooner than I thought,” I said.

  “The sooner the better,” she responded, “once minds are made up. Has Imogen parents living?”

  “No. I expect she will be married from her sister’s house. As for me, I expect old Hara-kiri will arrange to put me up the night before. He doesn’t live all that far from where she will be.”

  The next two days were crisp and cold. Imogen and I walked in the forest, chaperoned by Laura’s two mighty Dobermanns, and returned to eat Lucullan meals prepared by Henri, the French cook, and served by Celestine, his wife, who regarded Imogen and me with a dewy, sentimental eye and on one occasion said, “Ah, the poor children! What suffering comes after les noces!”

  When we had left the Stone House I went to visit Aunt Eglantine to tell her of my approaching nuptials.

  “I suppose you’ll expect a wedding present,” she said.

  “The best one would be your good wishes, dear Madame Eglantine.”

  “Don’t talk such abysmal nonsense!” she said. “Promised you millions, didn’t I?”

  “An embarrassment of riches and one with which I could not cope. Make me another of your prophesies.”

  “I am no prophetess. I speak only of the things I know.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as that I buttered the schoolmaster’s steps and I sent the letter to him pointing the finger at the witch.”

  “You? But you might have killed Mrs. Coberley?”

  “She is a murderess, isn’t she?”

  “You have no right to say that. She was acquitted.”

  “Be that as it may, men always are fools when they meet beauty face to face. Look at Helen of Troy.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “There you are, you see. And you about to be married to this blue-stocking of yours!”

  “She isn’t a blue-stocking.”

  “When am I going to meet her?”

  “I don’t know that you are. I don’t trust you with anything I hold precious. Did you really butter those steps?”

  “What do you think? I wanted to find out whether she was another witch. If she had not tumbled down the steps I should have known her for one. She had saved herself from life imprisonment, so I thought she could save herself from a nasty little fall.”

  “I shall never forgive you.”

  “Then I shan’t tell you how the black witch took the body to the old house.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I worked it out. She came in a car, didn’t she? She burnt the car. She borrowed another one.”

  “How could she do that?”

  “Anthony Wotton has only one double and one single garage. The other cars were left outside. People are careless. They don’t always lock their cars. They think that at the houses of friends they are safe.”

  “You may be right about tha
t. Over that weekend there would have been—let’s see. Ah, yes. Anthony’s car and Celia’s mini in the double garage, and mine, as I was the first guest, in the car-port. That means that Roland Thornbury’s car, William Underedge’s, Dame Beatrice’s, and, for the night he was there, Hardie McMaster’s, were left in the open.”

  “Not Roland Thornbury’s. It was bogged down,” Aunt Eglantine reminded me. “And the white witch had gone.”

  “But, supposing that you are right and that’s the way she got the body from the burnt-out car to the old house, how did she hide it from the Saturday night until the morning the gardener found it?”

  “I worked that out, too,” said Aunt Eglantine with great satisfaction. “I’ve had nothing to do here but quarrel with the nurses and think my own thoughts. She killed that woman on the way down here and put the body in the boot before she set fire to the car. All she had to do was to go to a hotel in the town—you will never know which one because she will have given a false name and it’s not a thing which matters—”

  “It matters if it proves that she was actually in Hilcombury on that Saturday night. She didn’t show up at Beeches Lawn until the Sunday.”

  “Very well.” Aunt Eglantine closed her eyes. “That’s all,” she said. “She couldn’t move the body to the old house until the car had cooled down.”

  “Even so, when did she get a chance to move the body without anybody knowing?”

  “It gets dark early at this time of year. All Anthony Wotton’s people would have been indoors and his gardeners would have gone home. It would have been easy enough for her. An ordinary person might have run into trouble, but not a wicked black witch like her.”

  “Your thinking seems to have been deep, logical, and constructive, clever old Eglantine. You have an answer to everything.”

  “Oh, people think I’m crazy,” she said, opening her eyes, “but I can out-think most of them when I put my mind to it. Anyhow, I’ve told the police all that I’ve told you and they believe me, even if you don’t. They’ll catch up with her, you mark my words.”