The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop Read online

  ‘Motive?’ The sinister word struck oddly and uncomfortably on the ear. ‘What do you mean – motive?’

  Before the lawyer could answer, noises off, in the parlance of the stage, announced the entrance of Jim’s only living female relative. It was significant that this was the first time in his whole life that Jim felt glad to see her. She appeared in the hall doorway of the library and petulantly demanded her tea.

  Mrs Bryce Harringay was what used to be known as a magnificent woman. She was tall, large, and spirited. By virtue of her relationship to the absent Rupert Sethleigh she was accustomed to claim his hospitality, invade his house, order his servants to wait on her, his cars to transport her, and his meals to suit her convenience. This occurred summer after summer with almost unfailing regularity. Rupert loathed her whole-heartedly. So did Jim. It was the one bond between two exceedingly diverse natures. The one opinion the cousins held in common was that any social gathering, however enjoyable otherwise, was irretrievably ruined by their aunt’s presence. Conversely, they held that any function, however tedious or harassing, was at least tolerable provided that their aunt could not be there. Her conduct on public occasions, they agreed, was only one degree less trying than that of a female lunatic suffering under the delusion that she was a cross between Lorelei Lee and the Queen of Sheba. Jim, given the choice between being afflicted by the plague or with the burden of conversing with his Aunt Constance, would undoubtedly have chosen the plague with all its attendant horrors.

  Mrs Bryce Harringay usually was accompanied on her visits to the Manor House by her son Aubrey, a likeable, intelligent boy, and by her pomeranians, Marie and Antoinette, who might have been likeable, intelligent animals but for the inordinate amount of pampering they received from their mistress, and the storms of abuse they incurred from other people. Yappy, snappy little brutes were Marie and Antoinette, with a propensity for sly thieving. Jim Redsey was never quite certain whether his loathing for his Aunt Constance exceeded his loathing for her pets, or whether he detested the little animals rather more than he detested their mistress. In moments when time hung heavily upon his large, powerful hands, he was wont to ponder the problem. He was a slow thinker.

  On this particular occasion it happened that his aunt was unaccompanied by her favourites. Having demanded her tea, she lowered her thirteen stone of stately flesh into a comfortable chair, disposed her draperies, which were diaphanous but full, in a graceful and modest manner, folded her hands in her lap, sat bolt upright, fixed Jim Redsey with an accusing glare, and observed with venom:

  ‘James! What is this I hear?’

  ‘I – er – may I present Mr Grayling – Mr Theodore Grayling,’ babbled Jim, avoiding her basilisk eye.

  ‘Long ago I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr Grayling,’ replied his aunt coldly. She flashed upon the family lawyer a gleaming smile. Her dentist was an artist in his way. ‘You might have imagined that fact for yourself,’ she continued, shutting off the smile promptly as she turned to her nephew.

  ‘Yes, Aunt Constance,’ agreed Jim jumpily.

  ‘That is,’ his aunt went on, ‘if you possessed the brain of a bat. Which, of course,’ she concluded roundly, ‘you do not, and never will, possess! Now listen to me. I have made the most appalling discovery!’

  Jim gave forth something between a moan and an incipient bellow of fear. The lawyer and Mrs Bryce Harringay stared at him with misgiving, and then glanced at one another.

  ‘Oh, well, you know – oh, well –’ began Jim thickly. ‘All for the best, I mean. What I mean to say – all these things sent to try us, and all that. I suppose –’

  ‘I agree,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay frigidly, ‘that it will certainly try me most sorely, James, most! And your Manifest Sympathy is most touching, especially as the lady in question is entirely unknown to you.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Jim feebly, taking out his coloured silk handkerchief and wiping his face. ‘Er – oppressive this afternoon, isn’t it? What? Lady in question?’

  He sank down, perspiring with relief.

  ‘Certainly. Mrs Lestrange Bradley has taken the Stone House.’

  CHAPTER II

  Farcical Proceedings during an Afternoon in June

  ‘THE mater,’ observed Aubrey Harringay, picking up the fourth ball and dropping it into the string bag, ‘is a sort of walking Who’s Who. She gets to know all about everybody.’

  ‘Is that the lot?’ asked Felicity Broome, poking about with her racket among the laurels.

  ‘Four. X for Xenophon, P for Pandora, K for Sybil Thorndike, and this last little chap with the black smudge on his shirt, he’s Q for Quince.’

  ‘K for what?’ asked Felicity, abandoning her tactics among the shrubbery and commencing to lower the tennis-net.

  ‘Sybil Thorndike. Didn’t you see her at Hammersmith as Katharina the Shrew?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. And you’re not to tell me about it. I’m too envious.’ Felicity smiled sweetly. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Doesn’t your pater care about the theatre? Moral scruples and what not?’

  ‘Father hasn’t any morals. He’s a clergyman,’ said Felicity, with perfect gravity. ‘We can’t afford the theatre, that’s all. What were you saying about your mother?’

  ‘The mater? Oh, yes. I was about to remark that she is now putting that reverend bird over there through her version of the Catechism. You know: What is your name? – de Vere or Snooks? Who gave you this name, your ancestors who came over with William One –’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Billy the Lad. Also ran, Harold Godwinson. Don’t you know any English history?’

  ‘Idiot! Go on.’

  ‘Yes. Well, if you say your people didn’t come over with Bill, she wants to know whether you collected your meaty handle with the assistance of letters patent for making bully beef in the Great War, daddy, or what? Especially what. I say, I wonder whether there are cucumber sandwiches for tea? Of course, if you answer to the name of Snooks, you’re damned.’

  Felicity sat down in the middle of the court and shaded her eyes with a slim sun-kissed arm.

  ‘But he isn’t a reverend gentleman,’ she said, narrowly observing Theodore Grayling, who was being personally conducted from garden bed to other garden beds by the majestic Mrs Bryce Harringay. Her loud, juicy voice came clearly across the grass, although the words she said were indistinguishable.

  ‘How twiggee he isn’t a padre?’ asked Aubrey, sitting beside Felicity and clasping his white-flannelled knees.

  ‘Hasn’t a dog-collar. Use your eyes, little boy. I’m going in now to get washed before tea. Coming?’

  ‘Let’s go in through the library. The windows are open. I expect old Jim is in there. I say, he’s got the hump to-day or something. Have you noticed?’

  ‘I don’t think he is very well,’ returned Felicity, as the boy hauled her to her feet. ‘He looks so dreadfully white and tired. And he is rather a jolly man usually, isn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t know him frightfully well, you know. His mater and old Rupert’s mater never hit it off or something, and my pater, who was the brother, got himself cut off with the proverbial bob for hectic proceedings with the lasses during his youth – the mater jolly well reformed him, though, after they married – and he couldn’t stick either of his sisters, so I’ve hardly ever met Jim until this holiday.”

  ‘You like him, though, don’t you?’ asked Felicity, as they strolled towards the house.

  ‘Oh, he’s all right.’ Aubrey tucked her racket under his arm with his own, and she passed before him up the steps and in at the open French windows.

  Jim Redsey, still weak from the shock of his aunt’s remark, sat up as the two entered.

  ‘Hullo, Jimsey,’ said Felicity. ‘I say, are you all right? You look dreadfully white.’

  ‘Touch of the sun, I expect,’ returned Jim, with a sickly grin. ‘Both want your tea, I expect. Ring for it, Stick, will you? Your mater jolly well hand
ed me a kick in the ribs just now, so you owe me something for that. I thought something serious was up, but it seems she has only heard about a woman named Lestrange Something-or-other who has taken the Stone House on the far side of the village. Your mater seems to loathe the dame pretty freely.’

  The brown-faced boy grinned.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what she said to give you a nasty knock,’ he said, ‘but you do look as though something’s got you in the gizzard, old lad.’

  ‘You don’t feel sick, Jimsey, do you?’ asked Felicity, pursuing the subject with motherly interest. ‘You are a horrible greenish-white colour, you know. You look simply beastly, poor old thing.’

  ‘As though you’re going bad, you know,’ contributed Aubrey sympathetically but not very happily. ‘Sure you’re fit?’

  ‘Quite sure, thanks,’ replied Jim shortly. ‘What about tea?’

  ‘On the lawn?’ suggested Felicity. ‘It’s lovely out there. Come along and wash, Aubrey darling.’

  ‘You can’t say that as Yvonne Arnaud said it in Tons of Money,’ said Aubrey, grinning, and pressing the bell as he passed by it in following Felicity out of the room.

  Having ordered that tea should be served on the lawn, Jim Redsey hoisted his feet over the arm of his chair and closed his eyes. As, however, his thoughts behind closed lids seemed even more wearying, worrying and confused than when his eyes were open, he stared absently at the glass doors of the bookcase opposite. The figures of his aunt and the lawyer were reflected in these glass doors. They were deep in conversation, or, rather, in a dissertation on roses, emphatically delivered by Mrs Bryce Harringay in a peculiarly penetrating voice, as they crossed the lawn in front of the library windows.

  Jim’s eyes narrowed. Was this the chance he had been waiting for all that long day? With the two youngsters up aloft, and the two older birds preoccupied with each other and even making off in the right direction, could he sneak out without being seen?

  He crept to the French windows, concealed his large form behind the curtains and peered out. His aunt and the lawyer were walking away from the house towards a rockery covered with Swiss mountain plants with which Rupert Sethleigh’s late gardener had been making some experiments. Mrs Bryce Harringay was still talking, this time on the subject of the rockery.

  ‘Yes, very interesting, of course. No, I have never been in Switzerland. The Riviera, of course, but not Switzerland, no. Yes, Rupert has been looking after these himself since Willows was dismissed.

  ‘No, he doesn’t really care about gardening, but the Vicar of Crowless-cum-Boone is coming on Thursday – I think Rupert said Thursday – to look at these plants, and so Rupert felt bound to attend to them himself now Willows is gone. Oh, a nasty sullen fellow. Had no idea of his place. Of course, it was a pity Rupert struck him. I never think it wise to give these people a real grievance, do you? Oh, yes, the Vicar of Crowless is quite an authority upon Alpine plants – quite. He lectures, you know. And spends his life, they say, in Kew Gardens. Oh, his wife runs the parish. A most capable woman, most.’

  ‘Well,’ said Theodore Grayling, seizing upon this opening before Mrs Bryce Harringay could change the subject, and wisely deciding that if he was to obtain a hearing at all he had better be as dramatic as possible, ‘I do hope the Vicar of Crowless will not be disappointed when he arrives and finds that your nephew has gone to America. Not that there is any reason against going to America,’ he added, noting with satisfaction that Mrs Bryce Harringay was turning purple with amazement and emotion. ‘I have always longed to visit our great sister-country; I have an admiration for America which –’

  In defiance of all the canons of good taste and correct behaviour, Mrs Bryce Harringay seized the lawyer’s arm and shook it violently.

  ‘What are you saying?’ she asked. ‘Rupert is not going to America! My younger nephew, James Redsey, a rather unsatisfactory boy, is trying to get a post out in Mexico, but Rupert would never dream of leaving England. He says he will never even cross to France again, because sea-travelling upsets him so much!’

  ‘But I have just received definite information from Mr Redsey that his cousin sailed for America this morning!’ cried the lawyer. ‘It is not a case of his dreaming of going! He is gone!’

  Perceiving that his aunt and the lawyer had their backs to him and were absorbed in conversation, Jim Redsey stepped quickly out on to the gravel path and walked swiftly round the side of the house to a small gardening-shed which stood about fifty feet from the garage and stables. He unlocked the little shed, disappeared inside it, and shortly afterwards emerged carrying a heavy spade. Drawing from his pocket a large, dark, richly coloured silk handkerchief, he wound this about the shining edge of the tool, secured it with a natty piece of green twine, and carried the spade along to the stables. Here, after a hasty glance round him to make certain that he was not being watched, he kicked open one of the wooden doors and thrust the spade under a heap of straw in the far corner. Then, automatically dusting the palms of his hands one against the other, he stepped out into the sunlight again and walked briskly back to the house.

  Felicity and Aubrey had not gone immediately upstairs after leaving Redsey in the library, but had loitered a moment in the fine hall. An idea struck Aubrey.

  ‘Tea won’t be ready for a little while,’ he said, ‘and you wanted to see the view from the top of the old Observation Tower. It’s great. You can see the sea and everything. Come on.’

  The Observation Tower was the only portion of the original building left standing. It rose high above the roof of the house, and at the top of it was an outside platform surrounded by a stout iron railing. Up the tower Aubrey and Felicity climbed, and were standing on the platform admiring the fine view, when Aubrey drew Felicity’s attention to the stealthy movements of his cousin Redsey. They watched him with interest and amusement. Suddenly his movements became more interesting still.

  ‘I shall go immediately to the Vicarage,’ Mrs Bryce Harringay was announcing as Jim Redsey reached the little gardening-shed, ‘and find out what the vicar knows about this mad freak. The whole thing is most astonishing, annoying, and ridiculous! And what is more, I don’t believe a word of it! Rupert gone to America indeed! Either my nephew James was wilfully deceiving you – a not inconceivable idea, I may say! – or else he has been misled. James was always an idiot! But the vicar will know, I should think, one way or the other, because he witnessed Rupert’s last will, and so, I suppose, is in his confidence, which is more than can be said’, she concluded bitterly, ‘of his nearest relations.’

  The lawyer coughed sympathetically, and Mrs Bryce Harringay led him at a rapid pace, which was unsuited to the heat of the afternoon, across the lawn, into the park, and over to a path which meandered into the beautiful, thickly wooded outskirts of the demesne. On the farther side of these woods was a small wicket gate which opened on to the main Bossbury-London road. All this formed a short cut from the Manor House to the Vicarage.

  To Jim Redsey’s surprise, therefore, there was no one on the lawn when he returned from his visit to the gardening-shed and the stables, except for a man-servant who was setting the tea on a small table outside the summer-house. Jim turned to him for information.

  ‘Mrs Bryce Harringay, sir? I think I caught sight of her and the gentleman walking towards the woods, sir. They’ve disappeared now.’

  ‘Towards the woods!’ cried Redsey. ‘Good God!’

  He bounded across the springy turf of the lawn, took a fourteen-foot flower-bed in his stride and leapt a clump of low-growing bushes like a steeplechaser. Into the longer coarse grass of the park he plunged like a swimmer dashing into the waves, and so galloped into the woods.

  He yelled as he ran – the loud, terrifying and terrified yell of the panic-stricken man.

  ‘I say! Aunt Constance! I say! Grayling! Grayling! I say! Stop! Stop a minute! Half a minute! Dash it! I say! I say! Hi!’

  A turn of the narrow woodland path, and he sighted them. Attracted by h
is wild cries, the magnificent orange-clad figure of his aunt and the neat black form of the lawyer halted and looked back. A tall, loose-limbed, untidy, overheated young man in a suit of plus fours and a pair of golfing shoes, his tie flying loose and a dank lock of fair hair straying into his eye, came flying up to them. He halted, panting heavily, and leaned against a tree.

  ‘Really, James!’ his aunt protested frigidly. ‘You are a most offensive-looking object, most! You are perspiring, boy!’

  ‘Sorry! Yes, I know,’ gasped Jim. ‘Beastly hot weather. Damned well out of training! Had to run the hell of a way after you! Came to tell you – came to tell you –’ he rolled his eyes wildly and racked his brains. What had he come to tell them? Must think of something. Something feasible. Must think of something quickly. ‘Came to tell you –’ A wave of relief flooded over him. ‘Tea-time!’ he shouted triumphantly. ‘Came to tell you it’s tea-time! Tea-time, you know. Hate you to miss your tea. So beastly, you know – so – er – so beastly disappointing, you know, to miss your tea. I mean to say – tea. What is life without a nice cup of hot tea? Cold tea, you see, such beastly stuff. I mean to say, cold tea – well, you feel as though you’ve put your shirt on the hundred to eight winner and the bookie’s caught the fast boat to Ostend. No? Yes?’

  He pushed the lock of hair out of his eye and smiled feebly.

  ‘You are puerile, James,’ observed his aunt, commencing to swell ominously. ‘I suppose fresh tea can be made for us! Pray return to your other guests! Mr Grayling and I are going to the Vicarage to discover the Truth about Rupert.’

  ‘The truth about Rupert?’ Jim Redsey stared helplessly at her. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! The vicar doesn’t know the truth about Rupert! The truth about Rupert – ha! ha! ha!’ And he went off into shouts of hysterical laughter, until the woods resounded with the terrible, crazy sound.

  His aunt regarded him with horrified and the lawyer with pitying amazement.

  ‘You are ridiculous, James!’ announced Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘Pray control yourself. A most foolish exhibition, most!’