Gory Dew (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I think that might have been likely, sir.”

  “Why has he decided to change his story?” wrote Laura to Dame Beatrice. “He told Toby . . .”

  “Force majeure. He still believes he did see the woman,” Dame Beatrice scribbled back, “but he knows he’s being bullied.”

  “Well,” said the magistrate, “as the witness seems to have retracted what must, in the first place, have been a rather wild statement, I think we may regard the lady as a myth. In other words, the lady vanishes.” He smiled, well-pleased with his neat quip. “Have you any further witnesses, Inspector?”

  “Not for the prosecution, Your Worship.”

  “Then I call David Holley,” said Lestrange.

  “Let’s hope he’s doing the right thing!” scribbled Laura.

  Dave was conducted to the witness box and sworn.

  “I only want to say as I plead innocent,” he said. “I did kay-owe Mr. Gorinsky, and I’m not denyin’ I may ’ave put the boot in, but I never ’it ’im wiv no bottles and I was locked in me room when vey tookened ’im away.”

  “We have no evidence that anybody took him away. The weight of the evidence is that, although, in the opinion of his friends, he was in no fit state to do so, he drove towards London in Mr. Maverick’s car,” said the magistrate. “Do you care to continue, Mr. Lestrange?”

  “I am greatly obliged to Your Worship. Now, Mr. Holley, please answer my questions as concisely as you can. You say that you did not strike Mr. Gorinsky with anything except your fist and a boxing boot?”

  “Vat’s right. I only . . .”

  “Quite. Were you wearing boxing-gloves as well as boxing boots at the time?”

  “No. I ’ad finished sparrin’ wiv ’Arry, so . . .”

  “Quite so. You made a considerable amount of noise, I believe, before you actually attacked Mr. Gorinsky?”

  “I was proper mad at Gorinsky, see, on account ’e called Tobe a . . .”

  “Yes, he called Mr. Sparowe by an opprobrious name. But you did give him plenty of time to defend himself, did you not?”

  “Told ’im wot I fought of ’im, yus.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Ven I ’it ’im and ’e takes the count and ven ’Arry and Chris, vey ’ustles me up the stairs and locks me in me room.”

  “And that is all you knew until the time came for you to leave the inn?”

  “I talks to ’Arry froo the door, and ’e says, ‘You been and gorn and done it, mate,’ ’e says.”

  “And what did you understand by that?”

  “Why, vat Mr. Gorinsky would gimme the push.”

  “Turn you out of his training camp?”

  “Yur, vat’s right.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Vey come for me and ’Arry, and we got into Mr. Gorinsky’s car and druv to Lunnon.”

  “And you never saw Mr. Gorinsky again?”

  “Vat’s right. So I never.”

  “You then went from London to Yorkshire. What happened there?”

  “Mr. Gracechurchstreet and Mr. Maverick and Chris, vey walked aht on me and ’Arry.”

  “How was that?”

  “I dunno. Told us to come back in two days’ time to the ’otel where vey was stayin’ and when we went vey’d scarpered.”

  “How long did it take you to get from London to Leeds?”

  “Free days.”

  “How was that, then?”

  “Us wented wiv the fair to Doncaster, stoppin’ orf at Stamford.”

  “It seems early in the year for a fair to be on the road. Did it play, so to speak, at Stamford?”

  “No. We stops the night, vat’s all.”

  “And at Doncaster?”

  “We leaves the fair at Doncaster and goes on to Leeds.”

  “Where you and Mr. Biddle were given a room and told to join the others at the hotel in a couple of days?”

  “Vat’s right. But when we got vere vey’d scarpered, like I said.”

  “You are quite sure that Mr. Gorinsky wasn’t with them?”

  “’E didn’t never meet us in Lunnon, and I never see ’im arter I plastered ’im at the pub.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Holley.”

  Mapp rose to cross-examine.

  “You say that Mr. Gorinsky did not accompany the party to Leeds?”

  “Vat’s right. ’E never.”

  “Then how do you account for the fact that his signature is in the hotel register there?”

  Dave stared stolidly at him and then replied,

  “’E never wented to Leeds. ’E was croaked be ven.”

  “Oh, he was, was he? How do you know that?”

  “Read it in the pipers.”

  “I agree that, according to the medical evidence, Mr. Gorinsky was dead by the time you got to Leeds, but we haven’t accounted for the fact that he seems to have signed the hotel register at the same time as Mr. Smith and Mr. Clancy did. I suggest that, knowing Mr. Gorinsky was dead, you wrote his name in the register because you thought it would confuse the issue and cover up your crime.”

  “I submit, Your Worship,” protested young Lestrange, “that that is a fantastic suggestion.”

  “The point is readily settled,” said the magistrate. “Have you a transcript of the signature in the hotel register, Inspector? Thank you. Now, Mr. Holley, perhaps you would be good enough to write your name on this piece of paper. Just dash it off as you would your usual signature.”

  Dave complied, although his interpretation of dashing it off hardly gave any meaning to those words. In a painstaking, schoolboy hand he wrote D. J. Holley and the paper was handed up to the magistrate, who scrutinised it.

  “Now,” said the latter, “write R. Gorinsky.” Dave did so, and spelt the name correctly.

  “There is no similarity, so far as I can see, between these two samples of handwriting and the Inspector’s transcript from the hotel register,” said the chairman.

  “Thank you, Your Worship. Call Tobias Sparowe,” said Lestrange.

  “Now, Toby, do your stuff,” muttered Laura.

  “Mr. Sparowe, I am told that you once received a note purporting to come from Mr. Gorinsky. Did you keep it?”

  “As it happens, I did.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I had an idea it might be libellous, and I wondered whether I might not decide to take action.”

  “May His Worship see the note?”

  Toby handed it over. The magistrate read it and remarked that it seemed to bear the same interpretation, although couched in less offensive terms, as the expression used by Gorinsky which had led to Dave’s knocking him down.

  “Moreover, the signature seems to tally with that in the hotel register,” he remarked. “Most mysterious, Mr. Lestrange, as it seems impossible that Gorinsky could have been in Leeds on the date in question.”

  “If I may be allowed to continue with the witness, Your Worship, I think an explanation may be forthcoming. Mr. Sparowe, are you certain in your own mind that your note came from Gorinsky?”

  “No, I am not,” said Toby. “In the light of what I now know, I think the sentiments were those of Gorinsky, but I believe the note was written by Gracechurchstreet alias Smith.”

  “Alias is perhaps an unfortunate word in this context, Mr. Sparowe,” said the magistrate mildly. “It smacks of the criminal courts.”

  “I beg Your Worship’s pardon, and will amend it to née Smith, if that will meet the case.”

  “Admirably, Mr. Sparowe. Pray continue, Mr. Lestrange.”

  “I am obliged to Your Worship. Now, when you say ‘in the light of what I now know,’ Mr. Sparowe, are you referring to the date of Gorinsky’s death?”

  “Not altogether. It seems to me that whereas Gorinsky saw Holley first and foremost as a prospective professional boxer, Gracechurchstreet was concerned to preserve the boy’s good looks in order to use him in a film. It was in his interests that Holley should not undertake a professional bo
ut until after the film was made. On his own showing, Gracechurchstreet is an impresario and his sole commitments are to the theatre, films, and television. I suggest that the signature on my note and the signature in the hotel register (which, I may say, I have seen and recognized), were both written by Gracechurchstreet in Gorinsky’s name.”

  “But Gracechurchstreet’s own name appears in the hotel register,” put in Mapp.

  “Written by Scouse,” said Toby flatly.

  “Your Worship,” said the inspector, “I suggest that, rather than involve the court in this sort of wild speculation, which, at present, can lead nowhere, I should ask Your Worship to remand Holley in custody for another week, during which the police will renew their enquiries, so that these matters can be settled.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Stymied

  “We were cruising the upper reaches on our way to Oxford when some boys began throwing stones on to the boat from a bridge. I was a young schoolmaster in those days, and spoke with the voice of authority.

  ‘Stop it!’ I shouted. One of the boys grinned down at me.

  ‘Who d’you think you are?—Old Father Thames?’ he retorted. Of course he knew I couldn’t get at him, and so did I.”

  R. J. Mitchell, J.P. Oral Reminiscences

  “Well, what are we going to do next?” asked Laura, after dinner in the Stone House that evening. “One thing about it, that last crack from the Bench about a witness summons showed what the chairman thought of Gracechurchstreet and company. Anyway, I’m sure that boy is innocent, so we’ll have to get busy and prove it. I don’t believe even the inspector really thinks he’s guilty. It’s just that he seems the only person with any shadow of a motive.”

  “Oh, no, he doesn’t, you know,” said Toby. “There’s Gracechurchstreet, who doesn’t want Dave to do any boxing until he’s made that film for television. If he and Gorinsky fell out over that, anything may have happened.”

  “To kill a man for such a reason as that seems going rather to extremes,” said Sebastian Lestrange. “I believe firmly in my client’s innocence in so far as I can’t think he intended to do Gorinsky any lasting harm when he hit him, but I must admit that to crowm a man with a bottle is within anybody’s scope, and the pub offered every advantage in that respect. One has to accept that the means and the opportunity were obvious, no matter what the motive may have been.”

  “But there would have been witnesses, just the same as there were when Dave knocked the man down and kicked him,” argued Laura. “Why didn’t any of them say they’d seen Dave do it? Why did it have to be dragged out of the doctor that the job could have been done by somebody swinging a bottle?”

  “The difficulty is to see how it all came about, this bottle business, I mean,” said Toby. “It’s not as though the row took place in the bar, and there wouldn’t have been bottles lying about in that room upstairs which they used as a gym.”

  “Beer bottles possibly, but certainly not a bottle of Dubonnet,” agreed Laura. “Well, where do we go from here?”

  “I shall go to the Swan Revived,” said Dame Beatrice, “and acquaint myself with the field of battle.”

  “Do I go with you?”

  “No. I should prefer that you went to Leeds and called at the hotel where the party of three men stayed the night. Toby may like to go with you, if he can spare the time. What you will find out I cannot determine, but some pointer might emerge.”

  “Oh, we’ll manage something. What about you, Sebastian?”

  “I shall see my client again and try to prise something helpful out of him. He is a singularly obtuse fellow,” said the young lawyer, “but he must surely know more about the whole business than he’s admitted so far.”

  “I’ll go with Laura to Leeds,” said Toby, “certainly.”

  “Let’s first see where we stand,” said Sebastian. “What do you think, Grandmother?”

  “I shall be able to tell you, perhaps, when I have visited the place which, at present, we must call ‘the scene of the crime.’ What are the rest of you thinking?”

  “Well,” said Laura, “the inspector’s a bit foxed, but he still thinks Dave did it and that he’ll get a committal after the next hearing, so it’s up to you to prove which of that lovely lot did it—and why. And what about the girl? She did come to the pub that night, and Smetton knows it, and has been manoeuvred out of sticking to his story. You don’t think one of them did for her as well, do you?”

  “I retain an almost open mind. Anyhow, I believe young Mr. Holley will be safer in custody while we pursue our enquiries. The Bench have taken a weight off my mind.” Laura looked at her, but Dame Beatrice said no more on that particular subject, so Laura went on:

  “After all, the girl seems to have been Gorinsky’s friend, and it might be as well, from somebody’s point of view, that she wasn’t left alive to tell any tales.”

  “It is possible, I suppose,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “I thought Sebastian took a fearful risk putting a half-wit like young Dave into the box.”

  “Yes, it isn’t often done in a magistrate’s court. I was a little surprised, too, to see a reporter present. These cases are often held in camera, as being fairer to the defendant.”

  “I suppose the police will have to look into the matter of that signature in the hotel register at Leeds?”

  “Oh, yes. It cannot be ignored. It was intentionally misleading.”

  “I suppose the murderer had banked on the body not being found until very much later, when they were all in America or somewhere.”

  “They will plead that Gorinsky, for some reason to them unknown, had asked them to sign in for him, and that nobody was more surprised and shocked than they when they read in the papers that he was dead.”

  “What do you think was the real motive for the murder?”

  “Well, they were after bigger game than a boxing promotion and an educational film, I fancy.”

  “And Gorinsky got in the way?”

  “Well, it seems that someone didn’t like him. But the person who knows most about the circumstances is Toby here,” said Dame Beatrice.

  Edited and pieced together, the story, as it appeared to Toby, was as follows: on the morning of the day on which the party left the Swan Revived for London, Dave, whose own account of the matter was substantially in agreement with that of the other witnesses, had knocked Gorinsky down because Gorinsky had referred to Toby in the opprobrious terms employed by vulgar persons with no reference to their technical meaning, but which had left Dave in no doubt as to what Gorinsky really intended to insinuate.

  Dave had then proceeded to kick Gorinsky on the head, and this was not disputed, even by the youth himself. However, as Dave had been wearing boxing boots at the time, it was not likely that the kick had caused serious damage. Moreover, the boy had been dragged away immediately, rushed up to the attic floor, and locked in his room. At this point Gorinsky was almost certainly alive, although he had been knocked out.

  The next set of stories told by the witnesses also tallied. Harry had been told to stand guard over the door behind which Dave was incarcerated, and to talk him into a quieter frame of mind. The boy had been a prisoner for over an hour and a half, during which time Gorinsky’s murder could have been effected and his body disposed of in the stone quarry. The only dangerous witnesses of such proceedings, the two innocents, Dave and the stupid, good-natured Harry, had both been got out of the way and could have known nothing of the matter. The only question was whether the murder had been committed at the inn or elsewhere. The fact that the body had been thrown into the quarry did nothing to clear up this point.

  The witnesses’ accounts (agreed upon, no doubt, beforehand) were that Gorinsky had been helped to his feet as soon as he came round and given brandy and a seat in the first-floor ball-room-cum-gymnasium where the quarrel had taken place; that he had seemed “very groggy,” but that he had announced his determination to go to London immediately in accordance with a pre
-arranged plan; that the others had attempted to dissuade him, as they did not think he was in a fit state to drive; that nothing would cause him to change his mind, and that, in the end, they had had to let him go and were to meet him in London later in the day, when his business with the proprietor of the travelling fair had been concluded.

  Here Sebastian Lestrange added his quota. He had learned that, after this, the stories became a little confused, but were not entirely incompatible with one another. According to Dave, whose story was unchanged from the one he had told Toby, although, this time, it received some apparently insignificant additions, he was bundled into Gorinsky’s big car between Harry and Chris and no stop was made except to pick up some petrol until they pulled up for lunch in Aldershot. After lunch they had gone by way of Farnborough and Bagshot to Staines and from Staines on to London. He knew nothing of London west of the Elephant and Castle, but he thought the place where he and Harry were given a room was somewhere in Shepherds Bush.

  Here they were told they would spend the night. The room was above a café where they were told to eat and where no bill I would be presented. They had a meal and spent the rest of the evening in a pub. Where the others spent the night Dave had no idea. They had said they were going to meet Gorinsky. Chris came for Harry and Dave on the following morning at ten and drove them to Yelton, where the travelling fair was parked, and from there they all went on to Doncaster. There had been no sign of Gorinsky, now said to be in hospital. Gracechurchstreet was the man in charge of the party.

  Questioned by Sebastian, Dave had confessed that he was at first not unduly worried when Gorinsky failed to show up. His chief feeling was for himself. The promised bout in Hoxton at the Ironbridge Baths had not so much as been mentioned, so no explanation had been forthcoming as to the reason for its having been abandoned. He supposed that having to go into hospital had changed Gorinsky’s plans and (said Dave, belligerent but scared and embarrassed) accounted for his non-appearance. It was later that he began to be apprehensive.

  There had been no exhibition boxing at the fair when it set up just outside Doncaster, but this, Chris had explained to Dave, was because they were waiting for a van which was to collect the gear from the Swan Revived, for they had brought nothing away with them but suitcases.