Gory Dew (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “How long was your play to be?” asked Laura.

  “Yes, that’s another thing,” Toby replied. “They wanted it to run for an hour and fifteen minutes. Well, you couldn’t possibly compress the story of William Heathcote into that bit of time. It needs three acts, one including the brawl and the sentence of transportation—and that means two separate scenes—another act depicting his life in Virginia, and a third act to show his return home, his marriage, and his poetry. You couldn’t possibly cram all that into seventy-five minutes. Three hours would be more like it.”

  “Is Gorinsky’s wife to be Nell Gwynn?” asked Laura. “You did say he had a wife, didn’t you?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Confusion of Cars

  “Thus, gentlemen, have I endeavoured to lay before you some observations upon this transaction, and I hope you will think them not unworthy of your consideration.”

  Serjeant Hayward, at the trial of Mary Blandy 1752

  “A wife?” asked Toby. “Well, he has what Dave refers to as a bit of skirt, but she seems to have occupied a separate room, and, anyway, I don’t remember mentioning her.”

  “Laura sometimes has second sight,” said Dame Beatrice, with an eldritch cackle.

  “As a matter of fact, he and the trainer went to meet her off the train at Morchester station the day before they all left Heathcote Fitzprior, but I saw nothing of her. It was extremely odd, the way they all pushed off. They’d taken the rooms for another fortnight, and I’m sure Dave would have told me, if he’d known they were moving out so soon. Whatever it was that decided them must have happened that same day, but, unless it was connected with the lady, I don’t see what it could have been. According to the landlord, they hadn’t had a letter, a telegram, or a phone call, and they had arranged for the woman to stay at the pub,” said Toby.

  “It sounds to me as though their plans were cut and dried, and the arrangement with the landlord to stay another fortnight was a blind,” said Laura.

  “Yes, but why? And, in that case, why bring Gorinsky’s girl to the pub?”

  “As I see it,” said Dame Beatrice, “and failing, in the light of our present knowledge, any other explanation, it does seem as though your own presence, and your championship of the young boxer, may have been the deciding factor.”

  “But I wasn’t doing the Kid any harm! I only intended to help a bit over his training. There’s no doubt he’s an agoraphobe.”

  “From what you have told me, I still doubt whether that is quite the correct diagnosis.”

  “How do you mean? You suggested that, I remember.”

  “It seemed to me, from your description of his reactions, that it is not precisely open spaces that he dreads. His fear is of woods. I have been studying the one-inch map of the district, and, taken in conjunction with your account of the route you took on your first training run with him, he showed no fear or reluctance until you came in sight of what is marked on my map as Sandy Copse. Is that correct?”

  “Well, yes, it is. I thought that having me with him on the road and the open heath would give him confidence. I was surprised when he suddenly jibbed at the sight of the trees.”

  “Just so. And on another run you drove to Morchester, I assume, and then on to Horsa Castle. Were there any repercussions, so to speak?”

  “No, none that I noticed. He had asked, as a matter of fact, whether we could run where there were no trees, so I thought Horsa Castle would be just the job.”

  “And so it proved; yet, if the boy is a true agoraphobe, I can imagine few places more calculated to drive such an unfortunate subject hysterical with terror. It is vast, it is lonely and, even to persons with a well-balanced nervous system, I have known it to be uncomfortably oppressive.”

  “Nearly always seems to be in shadow, even on a sunny day,” put in Laura. “I’d never go there alone, and I’m not fanciful—well, not about wide open spaces.”

  “Maybe, if he was brought up in London’s East End, he’d have a thing about woods,” suggested Toby. “Could that be it?” He himself thought the suggestion ridiculous, and it seemed that Laura agreed.

  “I thought all East Enders at least knew Epping Forest,” she said, “and, anyway, kids nowadays have motor-bikes and get around, don’t they? They roar down to Brighton, and so forth, and make themselves pests when they get there, and all that sort of thing. Dave wouldn’t have stayed bottled up in Whitechapel, or wherever it was.”

  “Well, all this doesn’t help me,” said Toby, “so I shall go to Yorkshire and find out what I can. There must be something fishy going on, or why should Gorinsky have told Dave that there was going to be this fight at the Ironbridge Baths, when he must have known that those baths are kept open all the winter for swimmers? It seems to me there’s something worth investigating, and I’m jolly well going to find out what it is.”

  When Toby left the Stone House it was with that feeling of importance and self-satisfaction which comes to unpractical persons faced with something definite and concrete to get on with. He was a man of action, he decided. It was an ennobling thought.

  He returned to the railway station at Heathcote Fitzprior full of zeal, self-confidence, and resolution and began to prepare for his journey. Then, his luggage and his golf-clubs in the boot of his car, his contribution to his aunt’s journal in the post, and a copy of The Life of William Heathcote in his brief-case on the back seat, he set out for Shaftesbury, Salisbury, and Oxford. He proposed to branch off just before he reached Northampton and take the Ml to where it fused with the Al. He came off Al north of Boroughbridge and put up for the night at Ripon after a long day’s driving, intending to reach his friend’s house at a reasonable hour on the following morning.

  The friend, whose name was Aysbury, welcomed him and applauded his foresight in bringing his golf-clubs, but was dubious concerning his prospects of succeeding in his main enterprise.

  “I doubt whether you’d find a travelling fair on the roads much before Easter,” he said, “and then it would be in the mining districts, most likely. What’s the name of it, anyway?”

  Toby was compelled to admit that he did not know.

  “It’s only a one-horse sort of outfit, apparently,” he said, “but one of the side-shows is a boxing-booth.”

  “Why do you want to catch up with it? Looking for a job?”

  Toby told him the story and found it met with a mixture of pity and ribaldry. He was advised to forget the whole thing and settle down to a fortnight’s golf. But for the mists of cloud-cuckoo which had caused him to contribute his column to his aunt’s journal so that he could indulge his hobby of writing biography instead of taking a job, he might well have accepted his friend’s advice, but, having settled on a quixotic course of action, he was not prepared to abandon it until he had proved to himself that it was useless. Obviously it would be a waste of time and petrol to attempt to scour a county the size of Yorkshire in quest of an obscure and (so far) nameless travelling fair, so, on the following morning, having promised that he would play golf in the afternoon, he took himself off for a solitary spin in order to think out a possible plan. His intention was to drive out into the countryside, park the car and then cogitate while he walked.

  He stopped just east of Aysgarth to look at the falls, and turned north at Leyburn and west to Reeth. At the inn at Muker he went in for a drink, left the car and walked the Buttertubs Pass so named because of the extraordinary holes, deep and terrifying, which penetrated far down into the limestone. It occurred to him that he need not have taken the car, since the Pass connected Hawes with Muker, but his main object had been to secure his privacy, since, had he mentioned the Pass, he was pretty sure that Aysbury would have offered to accompany him instead of playing his morning round of golf, for, although he had made Toby’s visit an excuse for taking a fortnight of the annual leave due to him from his firm, and proposed to spend most of it in improving his game, he did not intend to neglect his duties as host.

  Toby h
ad reached Hardraw Force before an idea came to him. He had made up his mind to take the moorland road to Askrigg, keeping north of the Ure, and then to cross Askrigg Common past Oxnop Beck Head and High Oxnop and so return to the car by the road through Swaledale along which he had already driven that morning. However, fired with success at having found a course of action in the matter of tracing Dave, he stopped when he reached the magnificent Force as it crashed into a boiling pool below, turned, after he had stood awhile in awe of the ninety-five-foot fall of the water, and went back by the way he had come. An advertisement in the newspapers was the solution to his problem, he had decided.

  The cottage, as he had expected, was empty except for the woman who “did” for Aysbury daily, so he went into the only downstair room the cottage boasted (apart from the kitchen regions) and sat down to compose his advertisement. He did not know which newspapers the Gorinsky camp followed, but decided that none of them was likely to be The Times. The evening papers were the most probable, he thought. When he had worded the advertisement to his liking, he enclosed it with a covering letter to his friend Pim Carmichael in Fleet Street to ask him to get it inserted in the London evening dailies and in any magazine devoted to the interests of professional boxing, and to send him the bill, the advertisement to run for a week. He posted it, played golf better than usual that afternoon, went to bed pleased with himself, and was content to wait with some degree of patience for the result of his venture.

  In obedience to the natural law (Parkinson fashion) which decrees that when an indecisive person takes decisive action, something utterly unforeseen will result, five days later Toby and his friend were at breakfast when a caller was announced.

  “Police—wi’ warrant,” said Mrs. Thirsk. “Wheer ’as tha bin sin’ ah saw thee? Happen thee’s under arrest!” There was nothing dour about Mrs. Thirsk. She enjoyed a joke. “What ’ast tha bin a-doin’ of, eh?”

  “Oh, show them in,” said Aysbury, “and hurry up!”

  His domestic help favoured him with a pitying smile and went out, slamming the door behind her.

  “What’s all this, then?” asked Toby.

  “The Thirsk’s idea of a joke, I hope and trust,” said Aysbury. At this Mrs. Thirsk flung open the door and, after announcing. “Inspector Battersby and Sergeant Ossett,” closed it by kicking it to, and then stood with arms akimbo behind the visitors, both of whom were in plain clothes.

  “All right, Mrs. Thirsk, that will do,” said Aysbury, rising from the table. “Good morning, Inspector . . . Sergeant . . . What can I do for you? Mrs. Thirsk mentioned a warrant. She didn’t mean it, of course?”

  “No, sir. Just my official card.” The inspector produced it. “Would one of you gentlemen be Mr. Sparowe?”

  “Yes,” said Toby. “Did I park my car in the wrong place?”

  “My business, sir, is in connection with a newspaper advertisement under your name and giving this address. Mention is made of a man named Gorinsky and another man named Gracechurchstreet. You seem to wish to get in touch with them.”

  “Well, yes, I do.”

  “Perhaps you would tell me why you wish to contact them, sir.”

  Toby embarked upon the story which it seemed to him he must already have recounted fifty times. The inspector allowed him to finish before he put any questions to him, but during the narration disquietingly made notes in a small black book. At the end he said,

  “I don’t quite see why you inserted your advertisement, sir. It appears, from your own account, that you had only casually met these men and this young boxer you mention. What is your special interest in them? Why do you wish to contact them again?”

  Toby, remembering the wording of Gorinsky’s insolent note, felt himself flushing.

  “I thought the boy was being exploited,” he said. The inspector looked at him.

  “Did he complain to you?” he asked.

  “Well, no. In fact, he seemed pretty pleased with life. He was well fed, of course—much better fed than ever before, I shouldn’t wonder—but—well—”

  “Well, what, sir?”

  “Look here,” said Toby, “perhaps, before we go any further, you wouldn’t mind telling me what this is all about!”

  “Not just at the moment, sir. It may be in your own interests that I should not. Now, if I’ve got your story correctly, you last saw Gorinsky, Scouse . . .”

  “Who’s Scouse?”

  “First name Christopher.”

  “Oh, Chris the trainer, yes.”

  “Biddle, first name Henry . . .”

  “Harry the sparring partner, yes.”

  “Clement Gracechurchstreet, alias Clement Smith, and John O’Mara Maverick, alias Ignatius Clancy . . .”

  “Enough aliases to fill the police files, what!”

  “No, sir,” said the inspector, rebuking the flippant tone. “The aliases appear to have been assumed for business reasons only. There was nothing criminal involved, so far as we know. Now, sir, please think this over carefully. You first saw Mr. Gorinsky and his associates—when?”

  “I suppose it would have been that day when I went to the pub and saw them in the bar—not Maverick and Gracechurchstreet, but the other four.”

  “The date, sir?”

  “Oh, Lord! What’s today?”

  “Monday, March thirteen, sir.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best to work it backwards, if it’s really important. The day after I arrived here . . .”

  “Does not concern us, sir.”

  “Oh, well, anyway, all I did was to go for a short drive and take a walk along the Buttertubs Pass. I arrived here five days ago at somewhere around half past ten in the morning, having spent the night at Ripon.”

  “Which hotel, sir?”

  “The Dean and Chapter. It’s all right. I signed the book.”

  “Of course, sir. So you spent the night of March six in Ripon. Get there in time for dinner, sir?”

  “Just about.”

  “And after dinner, sir?”

  “Well, I’d been driving best part of the day. It’s a fair stretch from my home in Dorset to Ripon, you know—round about three hundred miles, the way I came—and I was pretty tired, so at just before ten I turned in. I had breakfast at nine the next morning and then came on here.”

  “I see, sir. Now, the day before you left home. What happened then?”

  “Nothing much. I finished my regular article for my aunt’s magazine, went over to the pub as usual, drove into Morchester for lunch—I’d cleared up most of the food I had in the house in preparation for coming on holiday, you see—went home to pack my things, crossed over to the pub in the evening to ask Smetton—that’s the landlord—to keep half an eye on my place while I was away, came back after I’d had a couple of drinks, and went to bed, intending to make an early start next day.”

  “And did you make an early start, sir?”

  “Well, you know how it is. One thinks one will, but, as a matter of fact, I suppose it was turned eleven before I finally got away.”

  “I see, sir. That takes us back to March five, the day you did your packing.”

  “Yes, well, the day before that, I had lunch with Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley at her home in the New Forest.”

  “Exact address, sir?”

  “Oh, surely you know Dame Beatrice! Important public figure. My aunt kow-tows to her even before Dame Beatrice comes in sight.”

  “If you would supply me with her address, sir.”

  “The Stone House, Wandles Parva, Hampshire.”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “Well, of course it’s correct! Don’t you believe I went there? Look here, what is all this?”

  “All in good time, sir. You lunched with Dame Beatrice on March four. Would you remember which day of the week that was?”

  “And supposing I can’t?”

  “It wouldn’t make a great deal of difference, I daresay, sir, but, for your information, it was a Thursday.”

  “A
ll this checking the credibility of the witness is a bit galling, you know, Inspector. Exactly what am I suspected of having done?” Toby felt himself beginning to panic.

  “Nobody is suspected of anything, sir, so far as I know at present, but a crime may have been committed, and we are engaged upon a series of enquiries which should lead us to a conclusion as to whether or not such has been the case. Well, as I said, March four was a Thursday . . .”

  “Ah, now, that’s funny! It was a Thursday, and that brings it all back, because it was on a Thursday that Gracechurchstreet and Maverick first called on me, and it was on the following Thursday week that I first met Dame Beatrice at lunch.”

  “I thought that was at her home, and on March four, sir.”

  “That was the second time. The first time was at my aunt’s flat in London. I had no idea it was Dame Beatrice I was going to meet. My aunt had said that one of the contributors to her magazine was coming, and it turned out to be Dame B. I got her interested in the Gorinsky party’s disappearance, and it was when I went to lunch with her at her own house later on that I learned that the party were probably up here in Yorkshire. Her son’s a Q.C. and has defended lots of shady characters and got them off, so he has plenty of friends in the underworld who’ll give him information without prejudice, so to speak, and I’d long formed the opinion that Gorinsky’s mob were shady characters.”

  “So you would claim to be a friend of Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, would you, sir?”

  “Well, I’ve only met her twice, of course, but she seemed very cordial.”

  “Just so. Well, now, sir, perhaps we can get to what I really want to know. Can you work out, from what you have already recollected, on which day you last saw the party in whom we are interested?—namely, Mr. Gorinsky.”

  “Yes, I can. A week back from March four would be—let’s see now—”

  “February twenty-five, sir, as this is not a leap year.”

  “And two weeks back from twenty-five is eleven, so Gracechurchstreet and Maverick called on me on Thursday, Feb. eleven and on the very next day, Friday, Feb. twelve, I saw Gorinsky and the other three—the trainer, the sparring-partner, and the boy—in the bar at the Swan Revived.”