Cold, Lone and Still (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  It was not Bull, but I, who made a telephone call. It was to Hera. I asked whether Todd was with her. She replied that he was not and that she was not expecting him.

  “To settle a bet,” I said, “did you marry Todd or a man called Grantoro?”

  “You had better come round,” she said. When I got there, I thought she looked ill. I asked whether she was all right. She said that she had been seeing her lawyer. “A divorce has been arranged and will shortly take place,” she said with a little smile.

  “You’re ditching Todd? I’m glad to hear it,” I said, but I did not tell her why.

  “I’m ditching Todd,” she said.

  “Did you ever know him as Grantoro?”

  “Yes, just at first, but I said I wasn’t going to sign myself Hera Grantoro. It sounds like one of those frightful names third-rate actresses take, thinking it will look good to theatrical agents and on the programme, if ever it gets that far.”

  “You appear to have a peculiar phobia about names. I can remember when you didn’t want to be known as Mrs. Comrie Melrose.”

  “Am I being given another chance to think that one over? Nothing doing, I’m afraid,” she said. “What about you?”

  “No,” I said. “I think I’m settling for the babies who will look like plover’s eggs.”

  “Why have you come round here?”

  “That doesn’t matter now that you’ve settled for a divorce from Todd.”

  She looked at me shrewdly and said, “You came with the intention of telling me that, if I took on Todd again, I could look forward to a longer separation than the one he and I have had already. Well, as you say, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “I suppose,” said Elsa, “it was Dame Beatrice who found out about the murder. How did she manage to pin it on Todd, not on Bull?”

  “There were only three people concerned who knew how that dead convict had been murdered on Rannoch Moor. He was partially strangled and then, while I suppose he was too groggy to put up any resistance, the murderer stabbed him in the back. I read all the Scottish papers, thanks to Dame Beatrice and Laura Gavin. Carbridge was killed in just such a double-dose way. I had told Hera about it and I suppose at some time she told Todd. Somebody said that the hall of residence business was a copy-cat murder. Well, I knew that Hera and I were out of it because we were in one another’s company for the whole of that Saturday afternoon.”

  “I don’t see how Dame Beatrice worked it all out,” said Sandy.

  “Jane Minch gave her the real clue, I fancy, when she described how Carbridge used to rile people. To Todd he would shout ‘Toro! Toro!’ I was present once when he did this. He even put two fingers to his forehead to represent horns and cavorted about, making bull-like rushes at everybody. I don’t know why Todd didn’t murder him on the tour.”

  “They were alone together too much. He wouldn’t have risked it,” said Elsa. “He would have been the only suspect.”

  “Yes. The party was the ideal place for the murder. Todd knew there would be several people there who had good reason to want Carbridge dead. Anyway, Dame Beatrice made a connection between Toro and Bull which doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody else, not even to the students who knew Bull as the caretaker at their hall of residence.”

  “I suppose the one person of all others who had to be kept from the knowledge of what Bull’s horrible profession had been was Hera,” said Elsa.

  “I imagine so. I think she must have given Todd reason, while we were on the tour, to believe that she was willing to go back to him, and she is so fastidious that for the oafish Carbridge to let her know that Bull had been the judicial garrotter in a Spanish province would have put paid to Todd’s chances. He dared not trust Carbridge’s strange sense of humour. He has confessed everything now.”

  “What about the knife? The newspaper report was that it had been found.”

  “Yes, Bull had buried it. He found the body while Coral and Freddie were out to tea. The knife was still in it. I suppose Todd was too greatly agitated by what he had done to stop and pull the knife out. Bull recognised the knife because Todd had shown it to him in a pub where they used to meet occasionally when Bull was off duty.”

  “Obviously the murder was premeditated, however much horror Todd felt when he had carried it out,” said Elsa.

  “Yes. He made an arrangement to meet Carbridge on the afternoon of the students’ party with a promise that they would work up a practical joke—just the sort of thing to appeal to Carbridge, I imagine. They both knew about the basement entrance, of course, and I expect Todd suggested they meet there so they could slip in without being seen. Anyway, Hera was right. It was Sweeney Todd after all.”

  “What about you and Hera?” asked Elsa.

  “All washed up, I’m afraid. The West Highland Way did its job,” I said. “Todd’s lawyers are going to plead extreme provocation and I hope they get away with it. There were times when, if I’d had the guts, I would have strangled Carbridge myself, and I don’t believe I was the only one who felt like doing it.”

  I went to see Hera before Todd’s trial came on. She was calm and courageous. I did not know what to say to her, but she helped me out.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I should never really have taken up with him again. I knew I didn’t want to and that was long before I knew what he had done to that wretched Carbridge. What an oaf and what a fool that man was! If anybody ever deserved to be murdered, it’s that kind of insensitive buffoon.”

  “Have you—well, have you made any plans for the future?” I asked awkwardly.

  “No, but I shall be all right. I shan’t bother to divorce Barney because I know now that I shall never marry again, so there’s no point in freeing myself. I shall stick to my maiden name of Camden, of course. After all, it’s the name I’ve always used in my work.”

  I looked at her. She held out both hands to me and I took her in my arms and kissed her for the last time. For us, as Philip Larkin, in a different context, has said, “this frail travelling coincidence” was over.

  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.