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

“Well, it only means a farmer.”

  “Gosh!” said Carey, punching him gently in the ribs. “What a thing it is to have had a classical education and to live one’s life in a library!”

  Mrs. Ditch, approached upon his return, was not to be bounced into anything. She persisted that it was the ghost and the foolish bet that she feared. He gave it up, and joined Mrs. Bradley in the parlour.

  “Going to leave right away,” said Hugh, putting his head in, “and I hope you’ll see me back safely.”

  “Why, that’s all right,” said Carey. “It takes place within the year, you know, if you see the ghost, not tonight.”

  There came a knock at the door. They admitted George. “Very sorry, sir,” said George, to Hugh, “but we’re in for a bit of trouble, I’m afraid. Could you wait half an hour, do you think? I’ll hope to have her ready for you by then.”

  “Why, what’s the matter?” said Hugh.

  “Someone been interfering, sir, I imagine. But I’ll soon have her right, sir. Ditch or Walt will come and give you the word in half an hour, or as soon as we get her fixed.”

  “Yes, but, man, what’s the trouble?” said Hugh.

  “Leak en the tank. Ben done a-purpose,” said Ditch, who had followed George in. “Garage job really, but George here thinks we should manage. Ef she don’t blow up,” he added, after a pause.

  “Blow up or not, I’m going to Iffley tonight. None of them yokels are going to play games with my car,” said George, annoyed, “and stop me getting where I like.”

  Mrs. Bradley nodded solemn approval.

  “But it’s not a bit like the people round here,” said Carey.

  “Some lout’s trick, sir,” grunted George. “I’ll learn him if I lay my hands on him.”

  “I can’t understand it,” said Carey. He walked into the kitchen where Mrs. Ditch was rubbing bread on a grater and making a big pile of crumbs. Hams and onions were hanging up, and a line of Ditch underclothing was airing on a string across the vast, dim room.

  “Look here, Mrs. Ditch,” said Carey, very sternly, “what is going on round here! Somebody’s put Mrs. Bradley’s car out of action. And there’s you with all this nonsense about ghosts! What’s the idea? Come on!”

  “I dunno no more than you, Mr. Carey,” Mrs. Ditch replied. “I only know what I’ve told ee, and that I had from my darter, that at last ’as come home out of et, and time enough, too, I say, and from Our Bob, that see et with his eyes. And all that money. Onnatural.”

  Carey gave it up, and went back to the parlour.

  “Hullo! Not gone?” said Denis, coming down in his pyjamas, and taking some biscuits from the sideboard.

  “The car’s been held up for a once-over by the conscientious George,” said Carey lightly, before Hugh could make any reply. He glanced at Hugh, who nodded, and filled a pipe. But Denis was not so easily deceived. He waved the piece of biscuit and capered joyously. His eyes were alight, and shone with excitement and pleasure.

  “Then there is dirty work at the cross roads! I knew there would be! I told you there would be!” he said. “Oh, dash it, I say, do take me to Iffley tonight!”

  “Oh, get back to bed!” said Carey. “I thought you’d got a book.”

  “Read it. Couldn’t wait,” said Denis sadly. He took a few more biscuits. Mrs. Bradley gave him a slab of nut-milk chocolate.

  “He’ll ruin his teeth,” said Hugh. “I bet he won’t sweat to clean ’em when he’s got through all that muck.”

  Mrs. Bradley gave Denis an apple.

  “That will do just as much good as brushing them,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  CORNERS—THE CHALLENGE—AT SANDFORD

  Twice Hugh went out to the cart-shed to see how the breakdown gang were getting on with the repairs, and the second time their report was optimistic.

  “I’ll be able to go, after all,” he said, returning to find Carey in a hopeless position at the chess board, and Mrs. Bradley grinning like a fiend above the pieces.

  “Good,” she said. Carey grunted, and, abandoning the game, fished out a pipe and tobacco.

  “Lucky if you don’t get Jenny turned out of house and home and bidden never to darken the Fossder door again,” he said, reaching up for the matches.

  “You mean Mrs. Fossder won’t let her come? Oh, dash it, too bad,” said Hugh. “Still, the old lady likes me, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Carey. “And doesn’t Tombley still have her warm good wishes? She can’t stick Pratt, at any price, I believe.”

  “And old Fossder can’t stick Tombley. But I don’t believe it’s Fossder’s fault exactly. You see, Simith once clumped him over the head with an empty bottle. Simith was jugged for that, and has had it in for Fossder ever since. He also thinks that Fossder mucked a law-suit for him over a bridge or something.”

  “Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley, who was lazily partial to gossip. She was about to request her nephews to continue their instructive remarks when the jangling bell at the hall door startled all the house. It startled Mrs. Ditch in the kitchen, and her immediate reaction was to sit back on one of the Windsor chairs, clutch the table with a hand dark-stained from the giblets she was in the act of removing from a capon, and observe:

  “Our Walt, ee aren’t to let ’em in, tes not en reason.”

  To this, Our Walt, Mrs. Ditch’s youngest son, replied pacifically,

  “Now then, our mam, ’ow do ee know oo be there? Wait, won’t ee, tell I tells ee.”

  Then he went and opened the door.

  “Oo be there?” he asked, peering out suspiciously.

  The noise of the bell had also startled Carey.

  “Good Lord, who’s that?” he demanded, swinging his feet to the floor from the end of the settee. Hugh walked across to the door.

  “Who’s that, Walt?” he called.

  Upstairs in his bedroom Denis sat up and listened. Then he slid out of bed, and put on his dressing gown and slippers. Reconnoitring with the skill born of years of experience in descending to the dining room at home to pilfer biscuits, he descended the stairs half-way, and, having located Hugh because of the light of the parlour lamp which silhouetted him against the open doorway, he squatted in an angle of the stairs and awaited possible developments.

  Even Mrs. Bradley experienced a sudden tightening of the nerves at the sound of that jangling discordance so late on Christmas Eve.

  “Who’s there?” said Hugh again. Walt came along the hall.

  “Tes a gentleman named Pratt, warnts to be knowen whether ee’re goen to Effley or not,” he said.

  “Pratt? Ask him in,” said Carey. A tall, thin, slightly stooping young man emerged into the lamplight.

  “One rather thought that one was misinformed,” he said. “One understands from one’s fiancée, as it were, that we were to expect one of you at half-past ten this evening.”

  “One understood correctly,” said Carey coldly. “Unfortunately the car has conked. I expect Hugh will have to postpone his visit until the morning.”

  “One regrets the mishap,” said Pratt. He blinked at Mrs. Bradley. Carey introduced them.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Bradley, with the loving smile of a boa-constrictor which succeeds in engulfing its prey with the minimum of hazard, “and so this is Mr. Pratt! How do you do, dear child?”

  “One finds oneself well,” said Pratt. He looked vaguely about him. “One had been under the impression—”

  “Yes, that’s all right,” said Carey, “and we’re really awfully sorry, but something really has gone wrong with the car. They’re on the job now, as a matter of fact. And I mean it when I say I don’t know whether Hugh will be able to make it or not. You can stay and see, if you like, and go back with him if he goes.”

  “One had intended to return forthwith. One had come on a bicycle belonging to Jenny,” said Pratt, edging apologetically towards the door.

  “Righto. See you later,” said Hugh off-handedly. “I can’t say I admir
e Fay’s taste,” he added, when Pratt had gone. They all settled down again and the room was quiet once more, when there came a sudden cry, and a heavy body crashed against the door.

  “Good Lord!” said Hugh. “What’s that?” He sat up stiffly, staring towards the door. Carey went and opened it.

  “All right,” said a sulky voice which Mrs. Bradley recognised. “I came in by the back entrance. Sorry to trouble you at this time of night. Slipped in the passage. Wouldn’t wait for Mrs. Ditch to bring a light.”

  “Oh, come in, Tombley,” said Carey, not too cordially. “What’s the matter, man? Nothing happened, I hope?”

  “Nothing, probably,” said Tombley. “All here at home, I suppose?”

  “We are,” said Hugh. “Why, is anything serious the matter?”

  “No, I suppose not. Certainly not, if you’ve got my uncle here, but if you haven’t, I’m half afraid—his heart’s a bit funny, you know, and he’s had a drinking fit—”

  “I’m sorry to say Mr. Simith’s not here,” said Carey. “What’s the trouble exactly, do you think?”

  “Well, I don’t know. There may be none,” said Tombley. He had entered the room by this time, and stood within the rays of the parlour lamp.

  “Well, my dear Claudius!” said Mrs. Bradley, loudly. She was standing in the shadow, and at the sound of her deep, mellifluous voice, the young man took a step forward in its direction.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said. Mrs. Bradley appeared with startling suddenness inside the circle of light, her knitting still in her hand. The young man started. He could have been certain that she had been farther off. He did not expect her to leap so suddenly near.

  “I classify people,” she said, with a wave of her claw. In the glow of the lamp her skin, on both face and hands, was a dirty, incredible yellow. Her black eyes gleamed like those of a witch or a wolf, and she leered as she smiled and spoke. “Haven’t you read Aldous Huxley’s remarkable Mr. Scogan on the vastly intriguing subject of the Cæsars? Types. Types. We are all of us types, dear child. There is no such thing as an individual, you know. Did you think there was, and that you were he? Never mind.”

  Carey began to laugh.

  “Don’t mind my aunt,” he said. “She’s an alienist with a lot of foreign degrees. None of us can help it. We don’t attempt to cope with it, that is all!”

  “Sit down,” said Hugh, “and tell us what’s the matter.”

  “Well, it sounds a trifle silly,” Tombley said. “It’s this way. My uncle went off to Oxford, leaving our place at nine o’clock this morning. I expected him home by teatime, and he hasn’t got there yet. I can’t think what has happened, unless he’s met some friends. The trouble is, his heart is none too good. That’s why I always worry a bit if he doesn’t get back at about his usual time. And just this time, in any case, it happens—”

  “Yes. A very proper spirit,” said Mrs. Bradley, popping out of the blackness again after the nerve-trying manner of the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock. “It does you credit, young man!” She popped back, leaving a startled silence behind her. Then Tombley completed his sentence.

  “The thing is, I had a date with my lawyer, Fossder, at Iffley, and shan’t be able to keep it, I’m afraid. I wondered, if any of you were going over—I’d rather understood that you might be going that way—whether you’d leave a message to say I can’t be there. That silly bet, you know.”

  “My car is out of action,” said Mrs. Bradley, before the young men could speak. This was so palpable a lead for them to follow that neither could ignore it. Hugh took the visitor to the door. Carey walked over to the parlour door and shut it. He grinned at Mrs. Bradley, whose saurian smile was again illumined by the lamplight, and sat down again with his book.

  “You don’t like Sir Geraint of the Swine-Farm,” he observed.

  Mrs. Bradley did not reply to that. “I wonder how George and the Ditches are getting on with the car?” she said, as she gazed at Carey, who was laughing.

  By eleven o’clock the car was ready for use, and George drove off with Hugh beside him and some extra rugs in the back. The car swung carefully out of the farmyard on to the track, and negotiated the opening to the road. There was nobody about. Lights were out in the cottages, the shouting of the brook was lost in the sound of the engine, and very soon they had climbed past the church, rushed past the inn and eaten the mile or two that brought them to the Headington-Oxford Road.

  They soon reached the outskirts of Oxford, swung across the end of Cowley Road at the Plain and ran in top gear towards Iffley.

  A little beyond the church Hugh indicated to George that they had almost reached their destination, and the car crawled into the next narrow, sandy opening and stopped by a thick hedge of laurels. Hugh got out.

  “Wait here for a bit, George, will you? I expect they’ve given us up. I may have to rouse the household.”

  “Very good, sir,” said George.

  “I may be at least half an hour, so have a smoke or anything you like. Got cigarettes and matches?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you.”

  “All right, then. Get me out that parcel for Mrs. Fossder.” Armed with the parcel he walked past laurels, then between lawns and rang the front-door bell. A small, grey-whiskered man admit­ted him. It was the lawyer, Fossder. His jacket was over his arm, and he carried his shoes in his hand.

  “Confound it, we had given you up!” he said. “Come in and have a drink. They’ve gone to bed! Weren’t you to come at a quarter to ten, young fellow! But it’s midnight! It’s midnight!”

  “Very nearly, sir, I’m afraid,” said Hugh in his meekest tones. “You really must forgive me. We had a spot of bother with the car, but it’s all right now. Only, it rather delayed us.”

  “I should think so! I should think so! Well, come along! Come along! Although I don’t for one moment, not for one moment, anticipate that my wife will allow the girls to go!”

  “Oh, come, sir! It’s all arranged!” protested Hugh. He followed his host to the dining room.

  “Very great nuisance! Very great nuisance!” said Mr. Fossder, angrily. “I think you had better go home! Yes, really, really! I’m busy. Extremely busy. I really must be about my business. I’m sorry for you, my boy!”

  Hugh looked grieved, and said “when” to the whisky too soon.

  “But, look here, sir—” he said. He stood there, glass in one hand, brown-paper parcel in the other, irresolute, angry, and dis­appointed, whilst Mr. Fossder put on his jacket and shoes. Then he went outside for an overcoat which he took from a peg in the hall and came back carrying a grey felt hat in his hand.

  “Now drink up that milk and water, and get along home,” said Mr. Fossder. Before Hugh realised what had happened, he and his host were both outside the front door, and the door was shut. “Got to keep that appointment, you know.”

  “Well, I’m damned!” said Hugh. He gazed after the stiff little figure, and heard the click of the gate. The footsteps on the sandy road went forward, firm and regular, although not particularly fast. Hugh listened until he could hear no more of them. Irresolute, he turned to look back at the house. In two of the first-floor windows lights were burning. He walked down the road to meet George.

  “George,” he said, “did a gentleman go by?”

  “Yes, sir, but not particularly fast. He looked at his watch by the beam of our headlights, sir.”

  Hugh looked back at the house. The lights were still burning. He turned to the chauffeur, and said,

  “Well, I must get back again, George. I may be longer than I thought. Stand by to get away quick. I’m going to abduct one of the ladies.”

  “Very good, sir,” said George. “I’ll keep the engine running.”

  “I’m just going to follow the old gentleman up,” Hugh added, “to make sure that the coast is clear. I’ll let him get a good start in any case. If, after I come back again, you hear him coming this way, you might give one toot on the horn. By Jove! Now I remember, I’ve got a m
essage to give him from Mr. Tombley! Good thing I remembered it! I’ll have to try and catch him.”

  “Very good, sir. I shall be fully alert,” said George. He let Hugh go by, and then he turned the car. When Hugh returned, and was coming towards the car, George suddenly tooted on the horn. Hugh stopped, with a startled exclamation. “Now then! Now then!” he said, sharply. Then he pushed the gate open for the second time, and walked up the gravelled drive between the two shadowy lawns. The house was larger than its modest approach suggested. There were still no lights downstairs, but a third window on the first floor was now illumined. The window opened, and a girl’s voice said, in a startled overtone not far short of panic,

  “Who’s that?”

  Hugh, elated by the sound of the voice, which was that of Jenny, explained himself hoarsely and softly.

  “We expected you at a quarter to ten,’said the girl. She leaned further out of the window. “And now it’s a quarter past twelve! Wherever have you been, you lunatic?”

  “Mess-up with the car,” said Hugh. “Push a few clothes on, wench, and let’s be getting!”

  “What!” said the girl, with a squeak. “But I’ve been in bed for hours! I can’t come back with you now! Besides, what will aunt and uncle say? I can’t possibly come with you now!”

  “Why ever not? Be reasonable. Where’s Fay?”

  “Asleep, I expect, you idiot. Go away! We shall have to come over tomorrow.”

  “But listen here!” said Hugh.

  “Well, what do you want? Be quick. I’m getting cold!”

  “Come down, and I’ll tell you,” said Hugh, whose buccaneering conduct would have amazed and delighted Carey.

  “Oh, sure!” said Jenny. She laughed, then suddenly relented. “Hold on, then! I’m coming!”

  At this moment another of the lighted windows was opened, and the voice of an older woman said sharply and clearly,

  “Really, young man! And what do you think you’re doing at this hour of night? You should have come before!”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fossder,” said Hugh. “But we had a spot of bother with the car. I’m really frightfully sorry, but I came as soon as I could.”