The Longer Bodies (18 page)

The next thing Miss Caddick saw was that the sergeant seized Moggridge by the collar and almost flung him through the aperture on to the sports field, closed the wooden door and fastened it. Then he reached for the spade which the gardeners had left on the ground close by.

MRS LESTRANGE BRADLEY
grinned evilly upon her luckless chauffeur and settled herself more comfortably in a corner of the car.

‘Carry on, George,' she observed.

George touched his cap.

‘I beg your pardon, madam, but I can't get any farther tonight, I'm afraid. The clutch rod's broken. It's a garage job, and where I shall find a garage about here is more than I can say. I'm very sorry, madam. That's the worst of these hired cars. According to the map we are less than three miles from our destination. I was wondering, madam, supposing I was to escort you, whether you thought you could manage to walk to Colonel Digot's place.'

‘George,' said Mrs Bradley, widening her mirthless grin, ‘I really think it is within the bounds of possibility that I could.'

George, who had once been to Benares, and whose dreams were sometimes haunted by the crocodiles which lend historic charm to the Ganges River, shuddered slightly, and held open the door while his employer alighted.

‘And what do they call this neighbourhood, George?' she enquired, as they set off side by side into the darkness of an English country lane.

‘We are in the vicinity of Little Longer, madam,' he replied, steering her clear of a puddle. ‘Where the murders have been committed,' he added pleasantly.

‘Plural, George?' enquired Mrs Bradley. ‘Murders?'

‘Yes, so the evening paper I purchased in Southampton indicated, madam. Of course, murder has not yet been proved, but it seems that the body of the young man Anthony has been recovered from burial beneath a heap of gravel, and the police are taking decided steps to trace the origin of a pool of blood in the sunk garden. No trace of a weapon had been found at the time of going to press, but it is suspected that a fairly heavy pointed instrument, covered with rust but retaining something of its original keenness, was used for the purpose of killing the unfortunate man, and the impression of the police seems to be that a verdict of murder and not suicide or accident will be brought in at the inquest.'

‘Really,' said Mrs Bradley thoughtfully. She cackled harshly, and added abruptly:

‘Where were you educated, George?'

‘At Gallery Street Central School, madam.'

‘Yes. George, I think you are an advance on Henry Straker.'

‘I hope so, madam. Straker was mishandled, I consider, by Mr Shaw. Boys from Sherbrooke Road School do not drop their aitches, madam. We used to play them at football, and I know.'

‘You read widely, George?' Mrs Bradley circumnavigated another puddle by instinct, for it was too dark between the high hedges to see anything, and fell into step with him again.

‘Fairly widely, madam. History and biography chiefly, although I am fond of books of travel. And, of course, I have read with interest, pleasure, and profit, madam, such of your own work as has found its way into the public libraries.'

‘You terrify me, George,' said Mrs Bradley sincerely.

For some time they walked on in silence. At length George remarked:

‘To the best of my knowledge, madam, we are now passing the grounds of the ill-fated mansion of Longer, owned and occupied by Mrs Jasper Puddequet.'

‘I shall stop and peer through the bars of the gate, George,' said Mrs Bradley, in a terrifying stage whisper. She quickened her pace.

‘Do you think there is any chance of the murderer spying us and leaping on our necks in a frenzy?' she muttered, skipping adroitly over another large pool in the centre of the road.

‘I imagine not, madam,' replied the chauffeur, glancing over his left shoulder. ‘I believe that these bloodthirsty persons betray little or no interest in the movements of anyone but their particular protagonists in the drama which their morbid and inordinate vanity causes them to stage. I fancy that you will be quite safe in peering through the bars to your heart's content.'

‘I'm afraid it will be too dark to see very much,' said Mrs Bradley regretfully. ‘Never mind!' she added brightly. ‘I shall be able to tell all my friends that I've been to the place. That's the great thing, isn't it?'

‘So the majority of tourists seem to believe, madam,' replied George. ‘But here is the gate, I think, and Colonel Digot's house cannot be more than another mile and a quarter.'

Through the gates of Longer nothing could be seen save a light in the window of the nearest hut, and Mrs Bradley, having feasted her eyes on this for about a minute, turned her back on the ill-fated mansion, and, rejoining George on the road, said no more until they arrived at their destination.

Dinner table talk, in spite of the determined efforts of Mrs Digot to introduce other topics, ran almost exclusively on the tragedies which had taken place in the neighbourhood, and Mrs Bradley was drawn into a discussion of the relative merits of two interesting and highly original theories put forward by Colonel Digot and his daughter respectively.

At the conclusion of a lively argument in which Miss Digot sought to prove that old Mrs Puddequet herself was the murderer, and the Colonel that the whole affair was the work of Russian Socialists, Mrs Bradley asked for further details of the death of Timon Anthony, but just as Margaret Digot was about to paraphrase the news which George the chauffeur had given to his employer, a latecomer to dinner was announced, and Priscilla Yeomond came in.

‘I am awfully sorry, Mrs Digot,' she said, ‘but that beastly inspector has been at Longer until nearly half-past seven. We've all been questioned and cross-questioned until we hardly knew what we were saying and oh, dear, I could sit down and cry!'

‘I feel sorry for Bloxham,' remarked Colonel Digot later. ‘A sound young fellow.'

‘Yes, he's nice,' agreed Priscilla. Dinner had cheered her. She lay back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. ‘But it was such a shock for him to find someone else had been killed, because he had just made up his mind how the Hobson business was done, and now all his ideas are knocked on the head.'

‘Why?' asked Mrs Bradley.

Priscilla sat upright, and her eyes met the keen black ones of the birdlike old lady on the opposite side of the fireplace.

‘Well,' she replied, ‘Hobson was hit on the head, but Anthony was stabbed. They wouldn't let us see the body, but we heard about it, of course. It's been a terrible shock to us all.'

‘Oh, yes,' said Mrs Bradley, nodding her head slowly. ‘So George told me. Stabbed with a heavy, keen, but rusty implement. And buried in the sunk garden under a heap of gravel. Somebody living in the house, of course.'

‘Do you really think so!' Priscilla gazed at her in dismay. ‘That's what the inspector says. And he won't let any of us go home or even up to London until he finds out all about everything. Of course, we all think he's wrong, and that some enemy of Timon's did it. Poor boy. He wasn't very clever or good-humoured, and I don't think anybody really liked him very much, but it's dreadful to think—' She broke off.

Mrs Bradley watched her narrowly. At last she said:

‘What did you say your handicap was?'

‘Twenty-three,' said Priscilla, surprised. ‘I didn't know I'd mentioned it.'

‘Perhaps not,' said Mrs Bradley, gazing into the fire of crackling logs. Suddenly she added, ‘Who else plays golf?'

Priscilla considered.

‘My three brothers and Timon Anthony did, of course. Neither of the Brown-Jenkins. I'm not sure about the Cowes. None of us have played since we've been down here. The boys have been working at their training; and I'm not really very keen, and Margaret doesn't play. Oh, now I come to think of it, I believe Timon Anthony told us that our odd man, Herring, was rather good. He used to be a caddie in his youth, and learned a lot about the game.'

‘Herring?' said Colonel Digot. ‘That's the poaching rascal Tom, Bert, and I chased out of the park last night!'

Margaret nodded.

‘I believe he came rabbit-stealing again,' she said. ‘Just before that Hobson business I missed Tiny, and your Emily told our Katie that Herring had lost one of the Longer rabbits and would have to replace it before Mrs Puddequet found out. And when I went down this morning to feed mine, Tink had gone, and I'm certain Herring came to steal it and ran into Tom on his way back.'

‘Tom, like a fool, loosed off his gun instead of collaring the man,' broke in the Colonel, ‘and that brought up Bert, and the noise of the shot woke me, and I joined in the chase, but, of course, the fellow had had his warning and took a flying start of Tom, who's got a war souvenir in the shape of a gammy leg; and so, although we chased the fellow right into Mrs Puddequet's grounds and almost up to the mere, we lost him in the end.'

‘You are sure it was Herring, I suppose?' asked Priscilla.

‘Well, Tom swears to him. I'm sending him over with a note to Mrs Puddequet as soon as this tiresome murder business is over, to find out whether Margaret's rabbits are in Herring's possession. Thieving rogue!'

Young Rex Digot, an unusually silent youth of twenty, now made his contribution to the conversation.

‘Might be rather convenient for the fellow to be able to prove an alibi at a certain time last night,' he suggested diffidently.

Colonel Digot slapped his knee.

‘There's a good deal in that,' he said. ‘Ring the bell, will you?'

The maid who answered it was requested to send for Tom. Tom, a steady-eyed, grizzled fellow of forty, was certain that the man they had chased was Joseph Herring.

‘Yes, but it was dark,' objected the Colonel.

‘I'd take my oath it was Herring, sir,' insisted the man. ‘I know his voice, and I know his run. You see, sir, when I jumped at him with the gun he shouted quite loud, and then made off as smart as he could move. I know it was Herring, sir.'

‘Interesting,' said Mrs Bradley, when the man had gone. ‘I wonder how he lost his own two rabbits? Priscilla, I think I must have a short conversation with this man. Do you think it could be managed?'

Priscilla giggled.

‘You could come and collect statistics of working men and their dependents,' she said. ‘Herring has heaps of grievances. He'll love to tell you all about them.'

At half-past ten Priscilla indicated that it was time for her to return to her great-aunt's house. The Colonel drove her over in the car, and Margaret sat on the back seat with her for the sake of company. Mrs Digot left the drawing room for a few moments, and Mrs Bradley and Rex were left alone there.

Mrs Bradley said quietly and urgently, ‘Child, I'm almost expiring with curiosity. What
is
this business that's going on at Longer?'

Rex shook his head hopelessly.

‘I'm going to find out,' said Mrs Bradley, with a happy but remarkably unmusical cackle. ‘If I want an assistant I shall depend upon you.'

The young man eyed the door helplessly for a moment. Then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

‘Then, let's start now,' said Mrs Bradley with zest. ‘The first thing is for me to see all these cousins and things before they find out who I am. I'll collect for charity, I think. A worthy object, suitably—Or, no. Better to be an insurance agent, perhaps. I'll insure them against fire and flood and—what else? Mosquito bites, I should think.'

Rex roused himself.

‘Not Priscilla,' he said slowly. ‘She had nothing to do with it.'

Mrs Bradley eyed him sharply.

‘It must be understood, young man,' she observed, in the mellifluous voice which gave the lie to her whole appearance, ‘that if I enquire into these strange matters I do so with an open mind. It is not my custom to handicap my mental powers with a mass of prejudices and preconceived ideas.' She grinned fiendishly, and then added, ‘Either I start from scratch or not at all,' and ended this unexpected sentence with a little screech of laughter.

The next morning was the beginning of a perfect spring day. Immediately after breakfast, Mrs Bradley assumed her hat, a large, shapeless affair made of coarse, deep-yellow straw and trimmed most unsuitably with a single large blush-pink rose, put on a tweed coat of semi-sporting cut, and a pair of doe-skin gloves which hid from view her yellow, clawlike fingers. A walk of about a mile and a quarter along a country road bordered by hawthorn hedges, on which the inflorescences were already in bud, brought her for the second time in her life to the handsome wrought-iron gates of Great-aunt Puddequet's house. Here she halted and surveyed the field of battle.

That wooden fence, she presumed, shut off the sports ground from the rest of the estate. The head of Malpas Yeomond, which suddenly shot into view as he cleared his usual five feet ten over the high jump, confirmed this opinion. She listened, and could hear voices. The death of their so-called cousin appeared to have had a very chastening effect on the spirits of the athletes, she reflected. They were probably feeling decidedly frightened.

She pushed open the gates, walked in, and closed the gates behind her. Small, thin, unattractive, and intrepid, she made her way to the nearest hut and tapped on the door.

Richard Cowes was reading. He recognized Mrs Bradley immediately, and greeted her with protestations of delight.

‘This is indeed an honour! Amaris will be charmed. We have heard you lecture. Of course, we have read your books. Truly delightful encounter. Truly too delightful!' babbled Richard. ‘Come and be introduced to my aunt.'

This unlooked-for encounter at once assisted and upset Mrs Bradley's plans. It was impossible now for her to get to know something of the inhabitants of the house before they discovered who she was, but it was truly delightful, as Richard would have expressed it, to be made free of the house and grounds through this immediate recognition by one who was obviously a disciple. Talking amicably, they crossed the corner of the sports field, entered the sunk garden, where two stolid policemen stood on duty, ascended the stone steps, and were admitted to the house.