Dead Men's Morris (Mrs. Bradley) Page 4

  “Very well, Mrs. Ditch. He shan’t go,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Why, thankee, mam,” said Mrs. Ditch, surprised. She appeared to be going to say more, but changed her mind, and went out.

  “You know,” said Carey, when Mrs. Ditch had gone, “it strikes me that the retainer is just a bit high-hat. Why did you give in to her like that, Aunt Adela? Bad policy, I should have thought. There can’t be anything really. Besides, if Scab has made up his mind, he’s a difficult kid to argue with, you know.”

  “The woman is fond of Denis, and she is very much afraid,” said Mrs. Bradley, eyeing the beef with favour and helping herself to potato. “And Denis will do as he’s told, you’ll find, without a silly fuss. Disobedience is not a characteristic of children of his type.”

  Hugh laughed, and Denis came in.

  “I say,” he said, sitting down, “I’ve just met Mrs. Ditch, and she says I’m not to go to Sandford tomorrow night to have a look for the ghost. I jolly well told her I should! Somebody seems to have sloshed some bright red paint in the form of a fancy-shaped cross on Mr. Fossder’s gate, and it seems to have made her windy. At least, that’s what she said. Tombley, the chap at Roman Ending, told her, I expect. I know Mrs. Ditch is afraid of the ghost. She said so. But that’s no reason why I should be!” He glanced at Mrs. Bradley, scenting opposition, and prepared to fight for his rights.

  “It’s a very good reason why we all should be,” said Mrs. Bradley, calmly. She looked at Denis, and Denis looked back at her. Her bright black eyes were as sharp and unwinking as a bird’s.

  “Well, who is going to Sandford?” asked Denis, dropping his gaze.

  “No one. But Hugh is going to Iffley,” said Carey, “and you and I are jolly well staying at home.”

  Denis raised his eyebrows, but said no more, except to remark, as he looked at the joint from which Hugh was carving his portion,

  “Beef? Good. Bloody? Cheers!”

  When lunch was over, Carey and Mrs. Bradley set off along the cart-track, and, by way of footpaths, very muddy in places, came up the slope of a field already half-ploughed and looked down on Simith’s farm.

  “He does mixed farming as well as the pigs,” said Carey. “If you use the open-air system you’ve got to grow your own feed. There are his wheeled shelters. A very handy idea. Of course, the pigs have to be fenced away from the arable on this kind of farm, unless you actually want a crop cleaned up.”

  He led the way down the ridge towards Simith’s house.

  “You get the pigs to manure your land, you see—that’s one of Simith’s big points—he’s always harping on it—but to do that properly, that is, to obtain your uniform distribution of manure, you must move the huts and feeding troughs every day. I prefer my own methods, much, but this is interesting, and, of course, is a better life for your breeding stock. In fact, I find, in practice, that for sows it’s a necessity.”

  “The pigs feed themselves, I take it?” said Mrs. Bradley. “That is, I imagine, the main argument in favour of this system?”

  “Oh, yes. This winter, for instance, Simith’s getting his pigs to clean out a field of potatoes. Of course, pigs out of doors, getting all this exercise and foraging for themselves, eat a good deal more than they do the way I rear them. This seems to me an expensive and troublesome way of rearing the stock that’s going to make pork and bacon. My pigs, for instance, are kept warm in the fattening houses; his have to keep themselves warm, and they do it, of course, by consuming extra food. But Simith’s a clever old fellow, and his interests lie pretty wide—his business interests, I mean—although they are all connected with pork and bacon. But here we are. Step clear of the mud if you can!”

  They entered a yard gate, and picked their way through muck to the front of the house. A servant of about twenty opened the door. She was a good-looking girl, with wide-open, impudent eyes, a deep bosom, and a short, very clean frock and apron. She smiled at Carey.

  “Hullo, Linda,” said Carey. “This is our Mrs. Ditch’s only daughter, Aunt Adela. Mr. Simith in, Linda? If he’s busy, we’ll go away and call some other time.”

  “He’s in, sir, and Mr. Tombley, too. Did you want to see ’em? They be only arguen, as usual.”

  “Well, I said I’d come over and see that new fencing he’s ordered.”

  “Ah, he haven’t ordered it yet. He was awaiten your good word on it afore he ordered, he says. He’ll be glad to see ee. So well Mr. Tombley. Come this way. I don’t know as I be sorry to see ee, neether,” she added, cryptically, as she led the way to the big, dark, stone-flagged kitchen.

  The uncle and nephew were seated on either side of the hearth. For a rich man, Mr. Simith appeared to have particularly simple tastes. He was dressed, as before, in corduroys and gaiters, the latter thickly encrusted with dried mud. The only sign of affluence about him was a gold hunter which he was comparing with the kitchen clock at the moment that Carey and Mrs. Bradley were shown in. The kitchen was a big, bare, ugly room, ornamented by a dresser full of crockery, and furnished with a large kitchen table, some Windsor chairs, and an old armchair stuffed with horsehair. The latter indicated its presence in no uncertain fashion by appearing at the front of the seat of the chair through a hole in the black leather covering.

  The old man rose and put the gold hunter into his pocket. His greeting, to Mrs. Bradley’s great surprise, was very hearty and cheerful, but the young man scowled at them both, and muttered a greeting which might have been an oath. If he was pleased to see them, his manner did not suggest it. Carey introduced his aunt with grave formality.

  “Come to see the pigs? Why, for sure ee shall see the pigs. Tombley too,” said old Simith, his cheerfulness changing abruptly to a scowl as he looked at his nephew’s lowering countenance. “What’ll ee look at first?”

  “Boars,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Ah. We can show ee two, a good un and a bad un, can’t us, nevvy?”

  “Nero’s all right,” said Tombley. “A boar’s all the better for being a bit bad-tempered.”

  “Is er, indeed?” said Simith. He gave a glance of contempt at the slouching young man on the opposite side of the fireplace. “Well, you ought to know, I suppose.”

  “Who are you calling bad-tempered?” his nephew growled. “Come on, Mrs. Bradley,” he added. “I’ll take you along.”

  The two of them walked on in front. Carey and Simith followed, but, stopping to look at the new fencing, a short length of which had been sent for Simith’s inspection and had the specification still attached, they were soon left well behind.

  “The boar, then, doesn’t run loose?” said Mrs. Bradley, wading through and over pigs, as she and her younger host traversed the yard and cut across the corner of a mucky, trampled field.

  “Oh, no. We sty the boars. Otherwise, you see, we couldn’t regulate the breeding of the pigs.” He led the way to a fairly large, stone-floored sty. “There’s Nero, a very fine fellow, getting old, but not yet past doing his bit. There’s only one man in the world dare enter that sty, and that’s my pigman, Priest.”

  “Oh, yes, the musician,” said Mrs. Bradley absently. She was gazing entranced at the boar. “He looks very savage to me,” she said, as the boar crashed against the fence of the sty with a screaming bellow of temper. “And I thought one extracted their tusks.”

  “Oh, no. When there’s no one about, and we’ve fenced all the pigs and the sows, Priest lets this chap out for a run, and he roots about and snorts and carries on like a young bull-elephant. He couldn’t do that without tusks.”

  “And do you let the other boar out as well?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “Oh, Bill Sykes! Yes, but not at the same time as Nero. They’d fight to the death, I should think. What else would you like to see?”

  “Bill Sykes,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “It’ll be a messy walk. He’s over by the orchard. But come along. I suppose you don’t clean your own shoes.”

  He looked down at his gaiters and laughed, but
the laugh was not pleasant.

  “He doesn’t like it here,” thought Mrs. Bradley. Aloud she said,

  “I wish you’d explain your system. It seems quite different from Carey’s.”

  “Well, yes, it is different, of course. The rough idea is that the pigs lead an out-door life and grub up their food for themselves. Naturally we add to the diet where necessary. It’s a messy, wasteful system, I always feel, but uncle’s keen on it, and at present it happens to be to my advantage to stay on here and help him. But I’m not much good with these pigs. You’ve got to be keen, you know, tremendously keen, to make a success of pigs. I like them all right, but I’d rather adopt Carey’s system. I wish I could go to Denmark and Sweden, and see how they do their stuff there. Uncle and I don’t get on at all, unfortunately. Quarrelling stimulates him, but it bores me stiff. I want a little money, and a wife, and some peace and quiet.”

  “To be sure,” said Mrs. Bradley. They had reached the orchard wall, and another sty. “So this is Bill Sykes,” she added. “Not as savage as Nero.”

  “Not nearly.” Bill Sykes was young, and seemed interested, rather than offended, to hear them approach.

  “I’m afraid of boars, as a matter of fact,” confessed Tombley. “I wouldn’t go into that sty for a hundred pounds.”

  “But if he’s not savage—”

  “I know. But a boar will always want to be king of his castle. They hate to have people come into their sties and start cleaning ’em out, for instance. As for feeding, we shove it in here or fork it over the fence. When we clean, we have to entice the boar into the hut, and let down the door. Then we undo the door, and make a bolt for the fence. It’s quite exciting, but it makes me sweat. Hullo, here’s Priest. That means I’d better be off. Got some potatoes for the boars in the copper. I must hop off and see how they’re doing.”

  Mrs. Bradley went with him, and as they passed the pigman, who grunted a greeting in much the same voice as his charges might have employed in similar circumstances, she looked at him shrewdly.

  “I suppose he’s the ugliest man in the county,” said Tombley, smiling. “A more murderous-looking visage I’ve never beheld.”

  “Oh, I have,” said Mrs. Bradley. “My profession brings me within sight of a good many murderous visages, one way and another, I’m pleased to say.”

  “Pleased?” said Tombley, looking at her in surprise.

  “I always think murder is interesting,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “It’s the applied mathematics of morbid psychology, isn’t it?”

  “Well, so are suicide and rape and incest, and all the other perversions, don’t you think?” said Tombley, amused.

  “I do,” said Mrs. Bradley. She regarded him encouragingly out of her sharp black eyes, but Tombley appeared to consider the subject sufficiently dealt with, for all he said was,

  “Aren’t you the Mrs. Bradley, the psychoanalyst?”

  “I am a psychoanalyst, or used to be, when Sigmund Freud was popular. They call me an alienist now.”

  “And can you minister to minds diseased?”

  “I think so, child. It depends on the willingness of the mind to be ministered unto, you know.”

  “I’m not talking of myself, but of my uncle. He’s begun having curious lapses.”

  “Lapses?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Yes. Takes a pig out on a lead as though it were a dog, and calls it Fido. All that kind of thing.”

  “Bless you, that isn’t a lapse, child. That’s an idiosyncracy,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning.

  “Yes, well, perhaps that isn’t the best example of what he does. Last night, for instance, he declared he had seen a ghost with its head tucked underneath its arm. Oh, I’ve heard the comic song,” he added hastily, catching Mrs. Bradley’s ironic eye. “Neither was the old man tight, I declare. He came in all of a sweat, and said he’d seen it.”

  “Did he say where, dear child?”

  “Yes, coming out of our little wood over there. It lies between Carey’s house and ours. I reckon, if he really saw anything, it was one of the Ditch boys in his Morris whites.”

  “Our Mrs. Ditch has put them all away,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Yes, I see,” said Tombley. “What do you make of the letter Mr. Fossder got, inviting him and me to go to Sandford to see the ghost of Napier?”

  “You as well?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Yes. I get half the two hundred pounds if I go.”

  Denis next day again raised the question of seeing the ghost at Sandford.

  “Hugh is going to Iffley tonight,” said Carey impatiently. “There won’t be any question of ghosts at Sandford. A lot of rubbish, anyway.”

  “And aren’t you going with him?” Denis enquired.

  “I? No. I told you I wasn’t. There wouldn’t be room in the car.”

  “And I’m leaving Iffley not later than eleven-fifteen,” said Hugh. “So the ghost couldn’t possibly function before I get home. Cheer up, Scab, you aren’t really missing any fun.”

  “And you and Carey and I will be alone in this house,” said Denis to Mrs. Bradley, “because Ditch is going to Oxford, and Mrs. Ditch—”

  “And the sinister Mrs. Ditch is staying at home,” said Mrs. Bradley, with relish.

  That night, at just after ten, Mrs. Ditch stopped Hugh on his way to the cottage where George, the chauffeur, was lodging.

  “I know Mr. Carey would only laugh, Mr. Hugh. But do ee get away before midnight, won’t ee, now? Don’t ee be chancy about et.”

  “Look here, Mrs. Ditch! What is all this!” said Hugh. “I thought you had more sense than to think about such tomfoolery, or believe such a pack of rot as that Sandford ghost! And I don’t go through Sandford, anyway, tonight.” His tone was sharp with annoyance.

  Mrs. Ditch looked wretched.

  “I’m sure I beg pardon of ee ef I be talken too much. I mean et well, be ee certain.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m certain,” said Hugh. “But we’re sure to be leaving Iffley well before midnight, Mrs. Ditch, and Sandford doesn’t come into it, as I say.”

  “But the ghost got to get to Sandford, haven’t he?” Mrs. Ditch said slowly. “And I wish ee needn’t go, to be sure I do! I’d a sight sooner ’ave ee stop yur. I don’t like the talk there is about that anonerous letter. Ef Tombley’s mexed up en that, et bodes no good. And I be afraid, with all this talk about money for see-en a ghost.”

  “Look here, Mrs. Ditch, I do wish you’d say what you mean. What is it? You’re not afraid of a ghost. There’s something else,” said Hugh. “What about the letter? It’s only a bet for a joke.”

  “Assepten that there pigman of Mester Semeth’s declared he’d seen et walken the woods last night.”

  She opened the door—they were standing near the back entrance—and went inside. At the same moment Carey came out of the front door, and, hearing Hugh’s footsteps going across the yard, called out to him. Hugh halted, and Carey came up.

  “I’ll walk with you as far as the cottage,” he said. They set off, side by side, came out at the gate, and on to the cart-track, and walked along it to the road.

  “I wish,” said Carey, as they walked briskly uphill in the darkness, “we needn’t have Pratt and Fay. Blisters, both of them. Why not just bring Jenny back with you? Pratt and Fay have got each other, anyway. They won’t want us. They’re engaged.”

  “Under protest from Fay,” said Hugh. “Naturally, Fay and Jenny are as thick as thieves, and tell each other everything the way girls do, you know, and I’m given to understand that the engagement was engineered by Fossder. The choice of sons-in-law lay between Pratt and Tombley, and Fossder can’t stick Tombley, for some reason.”

  “Still, Tombley will be quite well off one day, when Uncle Simith kicks in. The pig-farm ain’t the only iron in the fire. Simith’s got big pork interests in Norfolk and Leicestershire, and he’s more or less of a sausage king besides. You see his stuff everywhere now. Fay might do worse for herself, financially speaking. But I do
n’t know how she’d like young Tombley for a husband. Bit of a brute, I should think, when he gets a bit older.”

  “Well, you can’t blame people for fighting shy of Simith. Unsavoury old devil,” said Hugh, as they left the lane and were walking past the church.

  “Tombley’s mother was Simith’s sister, and I believe old Tombley was in Parliament or something,” Carey continued carelessly. “Landowner of sorts. Cambridge man, I heard. Got into Parliament on agriculture. Dead now, of course; so’s the mother; Simith adopted the boy. I took Aunt Adela over there this afternoon while you went into Oxford for the grub. I think she enjoyed it quite well. Of course, it’s not the time of the year to see an open-air place at its best.”

  They reached the cottage, and Hugh knocked for George, the chauffeur.

  “Very good, sir. Just coming,” said George.

  “Bored down here?” asked Carey. George grinned. He had a little boy on his shoulder. Another child was clutching his trousers to help it to stand on its feet.

  “No, sir. It’s interesting to study conditions at first hand.”

  “What conditions?” asked Hugh.

  “The conditions obtaining in a small village community, sir,” said George. “The evidences that ghosts are still firmly believed in, and that the water problem really is as acute as is indicated in the London press.”

  “Ghosts?” said Carey. “Don’t tell me they’ve been serving you that old stuff as well!”

  “I have been solemnly warned, sir, not to show my face in Sandford after half-past eleven tonight. I’ve also been told that a ghost has been seen on the farm called Roman Ending.”

  “Who warned you?” asked Carey sharply.

  “Your Mrs. Ditch, sir, twice, and each time most emphatically.”

  “Look here,” said Carey, after Hugh had laughed and assured George that they would be home by midnight or earlier, “I’m going to bounce the truth out of Mrs. Ditch. She’s scared of something, and that something is not the ghost of George Napier. That name does persist,” he added.

  “What name?”

  “George.”