Merlin's Furlong (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “The legal mind at work,” said Lewis, who, pad on knee, was indulging a cherished hobby of making rapid caricatures of everybody in the room.

  “I shall be interested to hear a logical argument stated by a psychiatrist,” said Godfrey, his polite tones glossing over the venom of the words.

  “My argument,” Mrs. Bradley blandly observed, “is helped only partly by psychiatry. It will be best, I think, if I tell you all what I consider to be the unarguable facts and then what I deduce from them now that I have them in order. And yet”—she paused and gazed sternly at Waite, who had picked up the diptych and was gloating over its highly immoral interior—“I hesitate to appear tedious. Perhaps it would be preferable to all of you if I announced and analysed those facts which, throughout the enquiry, have seemed at various times either inexplicable or capable of bearing two or more interpretations.”

  “Such as the extraordinary action of the late Mr. Aumbry in suddenly making a new will and appointing Mr. Richmond Aumbry instead of Mr. Godfrey Aumbry to be his heir?” suggested the Chief Constable.

  “That was the second of those mystifying facts. The first was that Mr. Godfrey Aumbry was knocked on the head and his papers removed. I think there was a distinct connection between those two events, and I am going to suggest that one person among those present made that connection and made it correctly. That person, of course, was Mr. Godfrey Aumbry himself.”

  Godfrey nodded, and dipped a pristine quill in the ink.

  “I didn’t understand at first,” he said, “but I understood all right when Uncle made Richmond his heir.”

  “Quite so. The third apparently inexplicable fact is that Mr. Waite sent an obscurely worded advertisement to the newspapers under a ridiculous pseudonym, answered it himself as though he believed the late Professor Havers had inspired it, and took with him two innocent accomplices.”

  “Here, I say, though!” protested Piper.

  “Shut up, Peter dear,” said Waite. “Of course you were innocent, and, personally, I wouldn’t even call you and David accomplices.” He looked challengingly at Mrs. Bradley. She accepted the correction.

  “Dupes, then,” she said, grinning at the deeply offended Piper. Piper, who had brought his kitten to the meeting, cuddled it in injured silence. “The point is that, of the three, only Mr. Waite knew what was in the wind.”

  “But if this is all true,” said Harrison, opening his eyes and then sighing and closing them again preparatory to continuing his twilight life of slumber, “why did old Havers fall for it?”

  “He was fencing all the time, David,” said Piper. “I can see that now. He must have realised that I’d once been to one of his damn silly parties. He was engaged in such nauseous stuff that he had to be careful, and anybody who’d ever had anything to do with him must have been a marked man thenceforward. In other words, I was the monkey.”

  “And, of course, he did want to get rid of that doll I’d sent him,” said Waite. “He knew what it meant all right. It wasn’t that he wanted this back.” He closed the diptych and laid it on the carpet at his feet. “It belonged to Cat, you see. That’s why he’d given it away. He was a superstitious old unprintable, you know. He really believed in most of that messy tripe he practised. Anyway, if I’d known where it was I’d have sneaked it back long ago, but I’d burgled Havers’ lodgings twice and Merlin’s Castle three times (without any luck) before the three of us went there, so I guessed we shouldn’t find it.”

  “What!” exclaimed Harrison. “Do you mean to say you knew that neighbourhood all the time, and yet you led us that dance all over the place those two days?”

  “Yes.” Waite waved a thick, competent hand. “Mrs. Bradley will tell you, I’m sure. I’d rather she did, although how she found out I don’t know.”

  “My conclusions there depended upon the fact that you could not have committed the first murder, that of Mr. Aumbry, and yet you went to his house. I studied the architecture of Merlin’s Furlong very closely, and it seemed to me that, even though you had had no hand in Mr. Aumbry’s death, you assumed that it had taken place. Merlin’s Castle, with its absurd porch and broken window, was as easy to escape from as to break into, but Merlin’s Furlong, with its twin towers and narrow staircases, its collegiate rooms and quadrangle, and its lane unsuitable for motors, was a different matter entirely. The owner, when you arrived, was either absent or dead, and since it seemed unlikely that you knew of the one (there was nothing at all except your knowledge of Professor Havers to connect you with the Aumbry family, and at no time did your companions, Mr. Piper and Mr. Harrison, indicate in their evidence either to me or to the police, that the professor had said that Mr. Aumbry’s house would be empty) I assumed, as a working hypothesis, that you knew, or, at any rate, believed, that Mr. Aumbry was dead.”

  “Yes, I guessed old Havers had killed him and thought we should be accused because we should have been in the house at near enough the right time.”

  “Exactly. To circumvent Professor Havers, therefore, you dallied one night at your aunt’s house and then, as Mr. Harrison complains, led your companions in ‘a dark, uneven way’ all over Moundshire, ending by forcing them to spend the second night at Merlin’s Fort, Mr. Harrison in the car and the other two of you on the heather. I was suspicious about all this because, by what we learned from the evidence of Mr. Piper and Mr. Harrison, Mr. Piper was the best driver of the three, and yet, at all times, when the car lost its way, it appeared that you were driving it and that you refused advice about your route from the others.”

  “Quite right.”

  “So Professor Havers killed Mr. Aumbry,” said Piper. “What was the reason if it wasn’t to get back the diptych?”

  “Revenge, you said,” remarked Richmond Aumbry. “But what interests me, naturally, is why you didn’t think I murdered Uncle Aumbry. I’m the person who had everything to gain by his death.”

  “I think you came to the conclusion that the altered will was no sudden whim, no cruel impulse, on the part of your uncle. You came to a realisation that your uncle intended the new will to stand. It made sense of an otherwise senseless incident…”

  “Old Godfrey being bonked over the conk and his papers pinched. I know,” put in Frederick. “There was only one explanation of that. I can see it clearly. Uncle Aumbry himself must have clocked him.”

  “Yes. For some time Mr. Aumbry had been suspicious of the relationship between his nephew Godfrey and Professor Havers. But, apart from that melodramatic attack on Godfrey, he could not think of any way of getting evidence that they were plotting against him.”

  “Plotting? In what way?” demanded Godfrey, his quill spluttering angrily on the parchment. “You have to substantiate these statements. I am a lawyer, you know.”

  “Exactly. But that has nothing to do with the fact that you persuaded your uncle that there was a lucrative living to be earned by blackmail.”

  “Blackmail!”

  “You discovered that Professor Havers and his circle had been concerned in the various sins and malpractices which led to the death of young Mr. Catfield, and it is of no use for you to deny the connection with Professor Havers, for you have been identified as the supposed manservant who was leaving Merlin’s Castle when these three misguided young men first came to it.”

  “We all recognise him now, too,” said Piper.

  “They fabricated that story of the manservant to clear themselves,” said Godfrey coldly. He stabbed his second quill violently upon his blotting paper and split the nib past remedy.

  “No, the story was substantiated partly by the medical evidence which showed that death had taken place some time before these young men arrived, and partly through the untiring efforts of Inspector Ekkers and his men to trace that manservant. You chose a poor disguise, Mr. Aumbry. You see, a respectable manservant in morning clothes and a bowler, whatever his manner and his mode of speech (both of which you seem to have managed admirably) does not really look so very different from a re
spectable solicitor.”

  “I see,” said Godfrey, sourly. “So I’m supposed to have murdered Havers and walked straight out into the arms of those three young idiots, am I?”

  “One thing which made me extremely suspicious of Mr. Waite when I discovered that he had led the party such a dance over Moundshire,” continued Mrs. Bradley, “was this business of sleeping in the heather. There was nothing, so far as I could see, to prevent Mr. Waite, who (we are now aware) knew the countryside intimately, from leaving Mr. Piper asleep and creeping away to the footpath which leads four miles over the hill to Merlin’s Castle. He had plenty of time to walk the distance there and back, and kill Professor Havers, and again be in the heather by the time Mr. Piper woke up. But that wasn’t what happened, was it? Would you like me to go on?”

  Godfrey Aumbry, who had taken more notes, suddenly dropped his quill on the floor and bent to pick it up. It was the third he had used. Mrs. Bradley signaled violently to Piper, who was sitting nearest to Godfrey, and Piper, for years accustomed to interpreting the essential S.O.S. codes of his less intelligent friends, picked up the unused quill and began to tease the kitten with the feathered end of it.

  “Thank you!” said Godfrey, making a furious snatch; but Piper eluded him easily and passed the quill to the Chief Constable. The latter weighed it in his hand, looked hard at Godfrey, and then said quietly:

  “Do you mind if I take the feathered top off this pen, Mr. Aumbry?”

  “So he dished himself by carrying a lethal dose about with him,” said Harrison. “But you never suspected anyone else, I suppose, and that’s why you tumbled to the pens and watched him so carefully all the time.”

  “Dear me! You see a great deal through those closed eyelids, Mr. Harrison!”

  “One thing I did see,” said Harrison, “that I don’t propose to tell anybody.”

  “I will tell you what you saw. You saw Mr. Waite returning to the heather in the early morning. But he hadn’t come from Merlin’s Castle, you know. He’d come from visiting the top of Merlin’s Fort. He had already made up his mind to give Mr. Catfield what he considered an honourable burial up there. He had also decided upon his helpers, whom he knew he could threaten into obeying him. But of this I shall say nothing to anybody but you. Mr. Catfield had never been buried in consecrated ground and therefore the crime of body-snatching need not come into the affair. Whatever Mr. Waite’s faults, he loved his friend, and wished, in his perverted way, to do him honour. Possibly you remember his gesture of defiance to old Mr. Catfield in tossing a dead cat on to the rifled grave? It was probably old Mr. Catfield’s evidence at the inquest which prevented the jury from adding the merciful rider of ‘while the balance of his mind was disturbed’ to their verdict of suicide.

  “Possibly also you remember that Mr. Waite would not meet old Mr. Catfield that day? He had two reasons for that. The second one was that he knew the old gentleman would recognise him and perhaps put two and two together in the matter of the removal of the body.”

  “But how did you manage to tie Polly up with all this?”

  “I was certain of it when I recognised him as the driver of one of the coaches which had brought the fire-dancers to the top of Merlin’s Fort. I had earlier formed the theory that Mr. Waite had two ulterior motives in spending that Thursday night with you and Mr. Piper at the Fort, and the discovery of the displaced and replaced turf, when you, George and I visited the Fort later on, seemed to fit this theory.”

  “Golly! Are you clairvoyant?” muttered Harrison.

  “Oh, no. I have no supernatural gifts, but it is my business to find out what goes on in people’s minds, and I found Mr. Waite an interesting study.”

  “And old Polly really blackmailed all those followers of Havers into going up there and dancing round the grave?”

  “He had them in the hollow of his hand. He knew all about them, you see. The dancing was, to him, I think, a combination of ritual for his dead friend and his idea of a rag. I deduce that he was influenced by these conflicting thoughts as he himself did not join the dancers nor suffer blistered feet as they did.”

  “Well, it’s been all of a queer do,” said Harrison. “How did you know it was Godfrey Aumbry who had killed Havers?”

  “I could not be absolutely certain until the episode of the poison-filled feather, child.”

  “Good Lord! You’ve got a neck!”

  “Like Mr. Churchill’s chicken, yes. But you haven’t, and so I should advise you to steer clear of Mr. Waite from now onwards. He is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, and it’s no thanks to him that you and Mr. Piper are not in prison. And there’s another thing you must remember. Mr. Waite knew perfectly well that he’d taken you to Merlin’s Castle instead of to Merlin’s Furlong that first time.”

  “Yes, I know he did. But why did he do it? He said it was to look for the diptych.”

  “He wanted to find out whether Professor Havers was in the house…and, of course, he went into the coach-house and found the body while you were exploring upstairs.”

  “Oh…I see. Well, how does Godfrey Aumbry come into it?”

  “Godfrey felt certain…remember he knew them both very well indeed…that Professor Havers had killed Mr. Aumbry to get rid of a blackmailer, and Godfrey was beside himself with fury. Although he knew that his uncle had found out his connection with the professor, he thought that, with time on his side, he might be able to get back into favour. He killed Havers out of revenge, and when he ran into the three of you (when you thought he was the manservant) he had come out of the Castle after clearing up any traces he might have left behind him. Murderers will do it. They never will leave well alone.”

  “And it was Frederick Aumbry who came to Merlin’s Furlong that night while Peter had gone for the police?”

  “Exactly. He proposed to break in and steal, but Frederick has an excellent sense of sauve qui peut and did not wait upon his going once he realised that the house was occupied.”

  “What’s going to happen to Polly now?”

  “Nothing. He will one day hoist himself with his own petard. There is not much doubt about that. I do not think Mr. Waite is of the type that lives and learns.”

  “He’s never settled down since the war. He was an ace pilot, you know.”

  “I can believe it readily. Mr. Piper said the same thing.”

  “And it’s all due to you that all three of us aren’t in jug—if nothing worse!”

  “Yes, and none of you deserves my good offices,” said Mrs. Bradley with an asperity she seldom showed to the young. “And next time you can all go and be hanged!”

  Harrison fell on his knees and paid her homage.

  “Cynthia’s shining orb was made

  Heaven to clear when day did close;

  Bless us, then, with wished sight,

  Goddess excellently bright.”

  “Never again,” said Mrs. Bradley firmly.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and History, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.

 

 

 
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