The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (27 page)

‘Aubrey will remember, I dare say,' replied Mrs Bradley comfortably. She selected a piece of cake with careful discrimination. ‘He was with me at the time, as I said. We were in the Manor Woods, and I was attempting to reconstruct the crime from the data which we had at our disposal at that time. I imagine that I was speaking in a loud voice. Suddenly an arrow – a cloth-yard, goose-feathered, Battle of Agincourt affair with a great iron barb and a most professionally Robin Hood flight, came whizzing past my ear and stuck in the trunk of a tree on the farther side of the clearing. The police theory seems to agree with Aubrey's idea that the arrow was shot with the deliberate intention of putting an end to my quiet and harmless existence. All the same. Savile came forward immediately and apologized quite nicely for his carelessness.'

The vicar laughed.

‘Depends what meaning you attach to the word “carelessness”,' said Jim Redsey. ‘He probably meant he was sorry he'd made such a boss-eyed shot.'

Mrs Bradley shook her head, and Felicity Broome broke in.

‘I should think he would have run away if he really attempted your life,' she said. ‘I mean, he wouldn't have wanted to advertise his presence exactly, would he?'

‘Intent to deceive,' said Aubrey, eating raspberries and cream with aplomb. He scooped up a delicious spoonful.

‘Greedy pig,' said Margery Barnes indulgently. ‘Pass the cream.'

‘No, honestly,' continued Aubrey, passing it, ‘I expect he thought somebody might have seen the shot, and wanted to lull their suspicions – and Mrs Bradley's, too.'

‘Well, I certainly accepted his apology in the spirit which appeared to inspire it,' said Mrs Bradley.

‘I wonder someone doesn't confess to the murder and have done with it,' said Margery. ‘I mean, if I had committed a murder I should be in such a funk that I should throw in my hand and get the hanging over, I think.' And she shivered at the thought.

‘Oh, I don't know why one should confess,' protested the vicar, passing his cup for more tea. Mrs Bradley took the cup from his hand, and he began to drum on the table with his long fingers. ‘After all, there is no need for a fellow to queer his own pitch, is there? It's up to the police to prove he did it.'

‘You know,' said Felicity, when the servants had cleared away the remains of the meal, and all were lounging comfortably in garden chairs, ‘I can't quite see anybody doing all that.'

‘All what?' Margery Barnes looked across at her.

‘Well, all the horrid part. I mean, well,
take
Mr Savile, for instance. He always seemed to me such a feeble specimen, somehow.'

‘Psychologically it would be possible for such a man to commit such a murder,' pronounced Mrs Bradley, ‘and I told the inspector so! Not that it seemed to carry much weight, I must say. He could have done it; so could Cleaver Wright, I think. Dr Barnes would be capable of dismembering the body, owing, of course, to his training as a surgeon rather than, let us say, to his natural gifts!'

‘The police don't worry about psychology,' said Jim, grinning lazily, ‘and yet they seem to catch a good many murderers.'

‘And hang 'em, too,' said the vicar, puffing contentedly at his pipe as he applied a match to the bowl.

Mrs Bradley sat up, and looked from one to the other of them.

‘Is that a challenge?' she asked. Out from between her two rows of small, even teeth came a little red tongue. She passed it very slowly over her top lip. Her smile did not alter very much while she did it, and yet Jim Redsey wriggled uneasily in the long, well-cushioned, comfortable chair, and averted his eyes. The vicar was busily applying another match to his pipe, so that he saw neither the smile nor the tiny movement of the tongue, both so suggestive of a cruel beast of prey in lazy contemplation of a meal he is in no hungry haste to devour. . . .

Mrs Bradley lay back again.

‘The police are usually guided by what is known as circumstantial evidence,' she said. ‘After all, there can seldom be any eye-witness of a crime like murder, and therefore direct evidence of guilt is difficult to obtain. Circumstantial evidence is the next best thing. That is about all which can be said for it. Sometimes it leads the police aright, and sometimes it leads them entirely wrong. Take this murder of Rupert Sethleigh. Let us work it out this way:

‘At seven fifty-five on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd, Rupert Sethleigh and his cousin, James Redsey, went into the Manor Woods to continue an argument which had degenerated into a bitter quarrel.

‘They had not been in the woods very long – put it that they walked to the Stone of Sacrifice, probably by devious ways, and that it took them ten minutes – when, in that rather sinister place, the quarrel became so bitter that Redsey turned upon Sethleigh and knocked him down. As he fell, Sethleigh struck his head, probably pretty hard. At any rate, his cousin firmly believed that he had killed him. He was panic-stricken at what he thought he had done, and, instead of going for assistance or doing any of the sensible, level-headed, humane things which ought to have suggested themselves to his mind under the circumstances, he took fright, hid what he supposed was the dead body of Sethleigh in a hazel copse, and made for the “Queen's Head”, where he intended to perform for himself the double service of proving as plausible an alibi as the circumstances would permit, and of drinking himself into incoherence, helplessness, and forgetfulness.'

Jim writhed. Felicity gazed at him reproachfully, and Margery giggled nervously.

‘Well, it was not a very plausible alibi, because, unluckily for Redsey, it was known to Mrs Bryce Harringay that he had accompanied his cousin into the Manor Woods, and no one could be found who would swear to having seen Sethleigh alive after the woodland had swallowed them both up.

‘Now it seems practically certain from the police point of view that Sethleigh was not dead when Redsey fled from the woods to the public house. They think he was stunned. The evidence offered in support of this contention is that Redsey would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to dismember the body. He could prove satisfactorily where he was all that Sunday night, and that he was in and about the Manor House all day Monday, and it seems certain that he could not have transported the body into Bossbury, introduced it into Binks's shop, and dismembered it between the hours of eight a.m., when the market opened, and nine-thirty a.m., when Binks and his assistant entered the shop on Tuesday morning. For these reasons the police assumed that he was not the murderer, unless he had an accomplice who performed the more gruesome part of the task for him. As no such accomplice could be traced, the police assumed, as I say, that Redsey's blow had stunned his cousin, and had not caused his death.

‘That disposes of Redsey's part in the matter. That he spent part of the Monday night in digging a grave in the woods for the reception of the body, and searched, without success, in the bushes near the clearing for the corpse which had disappeared, is further evidence in support of the theory that he had nothing to do with dismembering the body.

‘Now I come to a peculiar circumstance which has been allowed to waste its full significance upon the desert air until this moment. An axiom among historians and great detectives is to beware of the bit of evidence which refuses to fit. These little awkward facts are keys to mysteries. Now, in this case, we have such an awkward fact in a remark made by Margery Barnes to –'

Margery sat up with a jerk, consternation written all over her ingenuous countenance.

‘Me?' she exclaimed. ‘Oh, but I'm sure –'

‘To Felicity Broome, in my presence,' continued Mrs Bradley, proceeding serenely with her argument. ‘The remark was to the effect that at about nine o'clock or just after, on that fateful Sunday evening, being in the Manor Woods for a purpose which had nothing to do with us or with the murder of Sethleigh, she saw a man come crawling out of some bushes behind the circle of pines which mark the clearing. Now, rather naturally, I think, considering the circumstances, afterwards she assumed that this crawling man must have been Rupert Sethleigh, and that, through having seen him alive after nine o'clock, she was in a position to prove positively that James Redsey could not have killed him at about five minutes past eight.

‘Now, I refused to have anything to do with that part of Margery's tale for two reasons. First, she did not actually recognize the man as Sethleigh; she merely assumed, after she had heard that James Redsey might be accused of the murder, that a man crawling out of the bushes in the Manor Woods on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd, must necessarily have been the man James Redsey knocked down and whose body he hid. The second point is a good deal more important because, after all, although the idea that this man must have been Sethleigh was mere auto-suggestion on Margery's part, yet the notion was far from improbable. It might very well have been Sethleigh whom she saw, except for one strikingly important fact.

‘The human eye, in moments of terror, acts like the snapshot attachment of a camera. There is no long exposure, as, to speak fancifully, we get when we calmly admire a fine view. No! The mind clicks a shutter – down and up! I am terrified! I cry out! I run! And one distinct impression of the thing which terrified me remains upon my mind. Margery retained such an impression. When you were telling us the tale, your words, Margery, my dear, were these: “And a man came slowly crawling out of the bushes
like a great black slugh!

‘Now, at nine o'clock on a midsummer night it is very far from dark. It might have been dark in those woods under the trees and among the bushes at that time, but Margery saw this man in the large circular clearing where the Stone of Sacrifice stands. It would have been as light there as in any other open space – light enough to play tennis, for example. Well, I took particular care to find out what Rupert Sethleigh was wearing that night. So did the police. But my reason was not theirs. Never mind. I will come back to that, perhaps, in a moment. The point is this: instead of the dinner-suit one might suppose that Rupert Sethleigh would be wearing, he had on that evening a white tennis shirt and light-grey flannel trousers.'

‘Aha!' said Aubrey Harringay. ‘If Margery had really seen old Rupert, you mean she couldn't have thought he looked black?'

‘Exactly,' said Mrs Bradley, beaming upon him fondly and causing him to feel exactly three and a half years old.

There was a long pause.

‘Then
who was it
I saw?' asked Margery at last, in a queer, frightened tone. She glanced hastily behind her, and then sat up and checked off the names on her fingers.

‘It wasn't Rupert Sethleigh. You've proved that. It wasn't Jim Redsey, because we know he was in the “Queen's Head” at that time. It wasn't Cleaver Wright, because he was there too, I suppose, or on his way, at any rate; and, anyway, I feel sure the man was bigger than Mr Wright –'

‘A good point, but it doesn't do to feel too sure about a thing like that. You didn't allow yourself much time to look, remember. Personally, I think you would have had no difficulty in recognising Mr Wright, had it been he.'

Margery blushed.

‘It might have been Mr Savile, mightn't it?' she suggested.

‘It might.' Mrs Bradley put her head on one side and half closed her eyes. ‘And it might have been your father –'

‘Father? Oh, but –'

‘Do you know where your father was at nine o'clock that night?'

‘I understand he was at the major's.'

‘Very well. That's a thing that can be proved. Go on. We'll assume for the moment that he
was
at the major's.'

‘I can't think of anybody else! Oh, yes!' She glanced mischievously at the Reverend Stephen Broome. His pipe was well alight now. He was sprawling back in a deck-chair with his black shining alpaca jacket wide open, showing his black clerical vest and the little gold crucifix he wore. His long, black-trousered legs were stretched out in front of him, and his large, strong, long-fingered hands were clasped behind his head.

Mrs Bradley chuckled.

‘Well,' she said, ‘his clothes are certainly black enough, and he asked for it just now! He shall have it, too! We will assume that it was the Vicar of Wandles Parva whom you saw crawling out of the bushes, and we will try our circumstantial evidence on him. Mr Broome!' She prodded him in the stomach with her mauve and white parasol. ‘Wake up!'

‘Eh?' said the vicar, who had been far away, as usual. ‘I beg your pardon?' He raised himself and blinked at her with his heavily lidded blue-grey eyes.

‘Where were you on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd?' asked Mrs Bradley keenly.

‘At church, I expect.'

‘Yes. And after church?'

‘Went for a walk, I expect. I generally do, while Felicity gets the supper.'

‘Where did you go?'

‘Haven't the least idea. Round and about, you know.' He lay back in his chair again, and puffed away at his pipe.

‘We'll assume he went for his walk in the Manor Woods,' said Mrs Bradley to Margery, disregarding the vicar's shake of the head. ‘Now, then.'

‘
You
must go on,' said Margery. ‘I can't get any farther.'

‘Very well. At five minutes past eight we see Rupert Sethleigh stretched senseless on the ground. James Redsey catches hold of him under the arms and drags him into the bushes. James disappears in the direction of the Bossbury road,
en route
for the public house. In a few minutes Rupert regains consciousness. The church service of Evening Prayer is concluded at a quarter to eight. The vicar leaves the building at eight o'clock perhaps –'