Groaning Spinney

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Certain to have been; and her ration book, too, if she really intended to go to London. Why?’

  ‘Well, her signature would be on her identity card, and her ration book would be more useful still, because she’d have written her address as well on that.’

  ‘I still don’t see …’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘If we could see her book and card we could decide—or an expert could decide for us—whether she wrote that first anonymous letter. All the others were typed, but——’

  ‘I’ll turn up that letter the minute we get back,’ said Jonathan. ‘What a good thing I didn’t give it up to the police.’

  ‘I’m not so sure!’ said Mrs. Bradley drily.

  The place where Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s body had been found was in a direct line with the bungalow, according to the students’ careful maps and plottings. Mrs. Bradley led the way back. The walk was uphill and hard going, and in snow would have been almost impossibly bad, but—as Jonathan remarked—it had to be borne in mind that the reverse direction would have given anyone who was walking the benefit of the downhill slopes.

  ‘I wonder how much she weighed?’ said Mrs. Bradley, as though to herself. ‘She looked quite a small woman, but most people would look small against all these shining slopes of snow.’

  ‘She couldn’t have weighed much above eight stone,’ said Jonathan. ‘She was one of the small, spare, energetic kind. You said before that she could have been carried to where you found her.’

  ‘It would have been easily possible,’ said Deborah. ‘I wish we knew, though, irrespective of whether she walked or was carried, whether she was coming from the bungalow to the village or from the village to the bungalow. You see——’ She broke off as they came in sight of the bungalow, although it was still some distance away. The map Mrs. Bradley was following traced a route across the middle of a field. They had taken this route, and now, keeping the bungalow squarely in front of them, they were soon at its garden gate. ‘You see, it’s the one thing I cannot deduce, and it might make all the difference in the world, don’t you think, between Robert Emming and Tiny (or, possibly Bill) as Mrs. Whittier’s murderer.’

  ‘It could have been both the Fullaloves,’ said Sally. ‘I don’t understand about Emming, though. After all, she was his mother.’

  ‘I think I’ll go back,’ said Deborah, who had turned very pale. ‘Would you mind very much?’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Sally, at once. ‘I don’t want to meet Tiny Fullalove. Those two can easily cope.’

  A woman from the village was looking after Tiny Fullalove. She opened the door to the visitors and showed them into the lounge. Tiny was able to get about on two rubber-shod sticks. He seemed pleased to see the visitors, invited them to be seated, and asked Jonathan to forage for drinks.

  ‘I’ll get one for you, if you like,’ said Jonathan, ‘but I won’t have one at this time of day, thanks.’

  Tiny flushed.

  ‘You needn’t keep up this business of being sore with me,’ he growled, in an undertone, as he and Jonathan stood together by the cocktail cabinet.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Jonathan lightly. ‘As a matter of fact, we came on business. At least, I did. Can you tell me anything about the fencing at the foot of Deepdene Spur? I thought it was agreed with Daventry that it was his job to renew it. You know the place I mean. Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s body was found not far from the middle of it.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Tiny responded. ‘As a matter of fact, Bradley, and strictly between ourselves, I’m not too well satisfied about Mrs. Whittier’s death. I’ve a moderate hunch that it was suicide.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mrs. Bradley, turning with great interest to the speaker. ‘And what gives you that idea, Mr. Fullalove?’

  ‘Well,’ said Tiny, ‘it’s only an idea, of course, but I do know that she was being pestered by that anonymous letter-writer, because she showed me one of the letters and asked my advice. She seemed terribly worried, and when I heard that her body had been found right away from any possible road to the bus-stop, don’t you know, I couldn’t help being puzzled. I mean, why should she wander off like that? It wasn’t really dark when she set out, and she knew the way as well as I do myself.’

  ‘What communication was received from the friends she was supposed to visit in London? Do you know?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. But Tiny was not to be drawn into contradictions.

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea. Nothing’s come here. Naturally, tied up in that nursing home as I was, I’ve had very little opportunity for knowing anything much about it,’ he replied. ‘Her death was a shock, of course, especially coming right on top of poor old Bill——’

  ‘But not the same kind of death,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

  ‘No. But the weather—I mean, it wasn’t such a coincidence, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, I thought it was, rather,’ said Jonathan. Tiny turned his small, intelligent, green eyes on him.

  ‘Well, I know what you mean, of course,’ he said. ‘You mean it wasn’t snowing when the poor old girl set out. She must have decided to come back for something after Christmas, I suppose, and just couldn’t make it in the snow. That’s if she ever went to London.’ He turned his head away, and there was silence until Jonathan said, not very kindly:

  ‘Well, we just thought we’d look you up as we were out for a stroll. How long will it be before you can manage without—those?’ He pointed to the rubber-shod sticks.

  ‘Well, not just yet, of course. Still, I’m hoping. I’ve got to have exercises soon—to make sure the articulation is going to be all right, you know.’

  ‘May I look at your knee?’ asked Mrs. Bradley.

  ‘Sure. Help yourself. The surgeon’s made a wonderful job of it—better than at first he thought he could.’

  He lowered himself carefully into an armchair and pulled up his trouser leg.

  ‘May I touch it?’

  ‘Sure. I shall probably yell, but you mustn’t mind that. It’s very sensitive still.’

  ‘It must be,’ said Mrs. Bradley drily; but her exploratory fingers were gentle beyond belief. ‘Yes, that seems to be going on well,’ she continued. ‘Tricky things, knees. Limber, prayerful, romantic…. There is no end to the part they can play in human destiny.’ Tiny looked at her oddly. ‘Who has been looking after your dogs and cats whilst you’ve been in the nursing home?’ she went on. Tiny did not hesitate.

  ‘Oh, luckily I sent them to homes over Christmas,’ he replied. ‘Knew we were going to be out a good deal, don’t you know. I expect you noticed they weren’t here the night I busted my leg. I’ll have to send for them soon. I’m getting damned lonely without them.’

  ‘And now,’ said Mrs. Bradley, when she and Jonathan had caught up the two women, who were loitering among the trees of Groaning Spinney, ‘for Mrs. Dalby Whittier and her handwriting. Jonathan, take your anonymous letter to the police as soon as you’ve had lunch, and get them to compare it with the writing on her identity card.’

  ‘Do you think they’ve still got her identity card?’

  ‘Yes, child, I know they have. Whatever the verdict of the coroner’s jury may have been, the police are not lacking in intelligence, and, as we know, they are no more satisfied about Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s death than we are. Meanwhile, let us see what we can tabulate.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jonathan. ‘Where do we begin?’

  ‘We begin with the unexpected call which Mr. Bill Fullalove made here on the night of Christmas Eve. It was unexpected, I take it?’

  ‘Oh, entirely, and his excuse for coming was a bit dim, actually. It was to check the invitations for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Now, I had made those invitations perfectly clear, I’m sure. There was no need for Bill to come. He had some other object. I was pretty sure of that at the time. However, whatever it was, it wasn’t actually stated. I half-wondered whether he came to look up Obury and Mansell, those pals of his who were here.’

  ‘It did
n’t, of course, occur to you that the cousins might have quarrelled, and that he might have come out to give Tiny a chance to cool off or go to bed before he got home?’ suggested Sally.

  ‘No, it didn’t. There was nothing in Bill’s manner to suggest it, and when they both turned up on Christmas Day and again on Boxing Day, there was nothing wrong between them. Bill was no good at hiding his feelings, and Tiny is a complete and utter oaf. If they’d had a row, he’d have continued it, even in someone else’s house.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Next came the business of the ghost. Mr. Obury and Mr. Mansell said that they saw something leaning over that gate at the top of Groaning Spinney. The point is, what did they see?—that is, if they saw anything, and weren’t making it all up.’

  ‘You tell us,’ said Jonathan. Mrs. Bradley looked at him expectantly.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Your turn.’

  ‘Well, I still think they saw Bill.’

  ‘Then why should he have lied about it?’ asked Deborah. ‘There was no reason why he should have denied being the figure with the white face, is there?’

  ‘Every reason, if he was there for some bad purpose. Look here, let’s suppose that Bill lied. He was at the top of Groaning Spinney, and we may ask ourselves what his reason could have been. If he did lie, he might have been Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s murderer. But, of course, he may have told the truth, and, in that case, who was the ghost?—because I quite refuse to believe that there was a real one!’

  ‘And that’s not the only question,’ said Deborah. ‘There’s still the main point about Mrs. Dalby Whittier to be solved. If she left the bungalow on Christmas Eve, as she is supposed to have done, where was she between about four o’clock on Christmas Eve and the time when she was first hidden away in the snow?’

  ‘Where she was, or where her dead body was.… Yes, that could be the hell of a gap,’ said Jonathan. ‘I don’t see how we can possibly fill it up. The police can’t, and they’ve far more chance than we have.’

  ‘At any rate, we can begin to try,’ said his aunt, ‘and the first move now, as I see it, is to find out (through the official channels, of course) whether she wrote that first anonymous letter. If she wrote one, she may have written more, and therein may lie the motive for her death, particularly as her murderer can hardly have complained to the police.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Jonathan. ‘Now you’re talking! And, rather than that the anonymous letters should cease suddenly, the murderer typed a few more. He didn’t dare write them because of the altered handwriting! I say! That opens a considerable field for research! We shouldn’t need to worry all that much about the Fullaloves. The murderer could have been anybody! There isn’t a clue!’

  Official channels were far from slow, but, all the same, before the comparison of the first anonymous letter with Mrs. Whittier’s ration book had been made, Mrs. Bradley’s enquiry had taken a livelier turn.

  ‘Mrs. Dalby Whittier?’ said Anstey. ‘I don’t know for sure, I’m sure, ma’am, what time she left the bungalow for to go away on Christmas Eve, except she was there at the mid-day. Anyways, I didn’t know she was going right up to London. She never mentioned it to me or the missus. Cut her stick, so I always understood, and come to live out here a-purpose. The missus always reckoned her husband had left her, but I don’t know, I’m sure. Least said, soonest mended, about them there sort o’ matters.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘And now about this message which came from Mr. Tiny Fullalove on the twenty-ninth of December. At what time was it slipped under your front door?’

  ‘Oh, that would a-been a matter of—let me see, now. It were the old woman as found it. Oo—see here, now, lass!’ He turned his head and called out through the halfopen kitchen door. ‘What time did you pick up that there note, like, from Mr. Tiny?’

  ‘Oo, that would a-been about three o’clock, I reckon. Who wants to know?’

  ‘Friend o’ the Squire’s.’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘His aunt,’ said Mrs. Bradley, neatly inserting this reply. ‘It is rather important. There is a question of Mr. Bill’s will.’

  ‘Oo?’

  ‘Yes. So if we could establish whether Mr. Tiny was injured before or after Mr. Bill’s death, it might make a difference to the disposition of the property.’

  ‘I see. Well, I knows the note weren’t here at half-past two,’ said Mrs. Anstey, appearing in the doorway, ‘but I reckon it were here by three.’

  ‘Talking of Mr. Bill’s money, whatever it might be,’ said Anstey suddenly to his wife, ‘didn’t Mrs. Whittier once tell Mrs. Blott, down at the Post Office when she was drawing out of her Bank book, as she might have expectations there?’

  ‘By the way,’ said Mrs. Bradley, hoping that her nephew would betray neither surprise nor unseemly curiosity at these interesting tidings, ‘do you mind telling me, Mr. Anstey, how you knew that Mrs. Dalby Whittier was at the bungalow at mid-day on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘Sure I’ll tell ee, mam. You remember, mother?’

  ‘Yes, that nasty curry. Her sent little Bob Wootton over with it in a basin, but none of us can abide the stuff, so, without saying nawthen to young Bob, I just gives it to father and tells en to give it to Lassie and Cripes.’

  ‘The dogs?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Did they eat it?’

  ‘Ah. Been brought up to it, you see, Mr. Tiny living like that in India. He never had his curries hot, like some folks makes ’em, so the dogs, they was quite accustomed, as you might say, and the little cats, too.’

  ‘Why did Mrs. Dalby Whittier give the curry away?’

  ‘Her said, according to young Bob, as Mr. Bill ’ad refused it. Said it give ’im the—well, the——’

  ‘Us calls it the backyard trot,’ put in Anstey, helping her out. ‘You understand, mam? And he didn’t want that over Christmas. Young Bob, ’e said she were proper put out about it, and said she’d made it very special, and Mr. Tiny ’adn’t even tried it though she’d made it just the way ’e liked. Said e’ ’ad to go over to Fairford, so she eat what she could of it ’erself and saved ’is ’ot, and sent us over what Mr. Bill wouldn’t eat.’

  ‘At what time, then, did he leave for Fairdyke?’

  ‘W’y, at about a quarter to twelve, I reckon, but when Mrs. Whittier left, well, to be exact to an hour or so, I couldn’t say, I be sure. I never see ’er go.’

  ‘You did think that Mrs. Whittier might have claimed to be the wife?’ said Jonathan, as he and his aunt walked homewards down the hill. ‘If so——’

  ‘It all keeps coming back to Tiny, doesn’t it?’ said Deborah, later. ‘And yet I can’t think of him as a murderer. He doesn’t seem the type.’

  ‘There isn’t a type,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘There is no common denominator. Neil Cream and Hawley Harvey Crippen are as far apart mentally as Charlotte Corday and Constance Kent; a murderer such as George Joseph Smith is not really akin to one like Patrick Mahon. A savage and a sadist such as Jack the Ripper is not really much like Seaman Thompson. The extraordinary tavern keeper George Chapman bears no traceable resemblance to the equally unusual chicken farmer, Norman Thorne, except that both had what is oddly known as a Christian upbringing. We could multiply instances——’

  ‘I’d rather hear the stories,’ said Jonathan. ‘At least, I’d like to hear the ones I don’t already know. And what about the murderer of Steinie Morrison?’

  ‘He bears no resemblance to the murderer of Mrs. Buck Ruxton, except that neither was an Englishman. But now to our own problems, for, although Mr. Fullalove’s knee was not so badly injured as he would like us to suppose, it was quite bad enough to have prevented him from propping his cousin’s body up against that gate where Jonathan saw it, and I cannot believe that he would have had time to watch Jonathan go to the bungalow, move the body, damage his knee, and so on. He had an accomplice.’

  ‘Do we know that?’ enquired Sally.

  ‘Yes, we do, and the sno
w must have been falling at the time they carried Mrs. Whittier,’ said Jonathan. ‘He would have needed that to cover his tracks—the accomplice, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that, of course. Besides, if it was snowing and you wore protective colouring, you might easily not be seen, either,’ suggested Sally.

  ‘Oh, as to that, the chances are that nobody would be about, anyway. These hills are lonely in bad weather,’ said Deborah.

  ‘The curry did the trick, of course,’ said Jonathan, ‘and that would account for the disappearance of the dogs. You couldn’t have poisoned dogs and a poisoned woman. The inference would be obvious.’

  ‘Well, he murders Mrs. Whittier because she knows something about him which she may mention in an anonymous letter. Why does he murder Bill?—a row, or to get Bill’s property, or to leave a clear field to propose again to Miss Fielding?’ Sally enquired.

  ‘The answer might come if a claimant now came forward for that five thousand pounds’ insurance. That is, if the money was the motive,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

  ‘Who are Bill Fullalove’s executors, by the way?’ demanded Sally.

  ‘Baird and Daventry,’ said Jonathan. ‘Bill once asked me, but I dodged the job. I’m jolly glad now that I did. I say, it would put the cat among the pigeons if some woman came forward and proved she had a claim to the money! That is, if Tiny is guilty, and the money was the motive.’

  ‘I still don’t think Tiny is a murderer,’ said Deborah, ‘whatever Aunt Adela may say about there being no particular type. But it’s queer that the anonymous letters should have stopped after Tiny went into the nursing home. I do admit that rather goes against him. But it’s probably only coincidence. As for the curry, you can’t prove whether it was poisoned.’

  The report from the handwriting expert to whom Jonathan’s letter and Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s ration book had been sent, stated, without doubt or condition, that the address on the ration book and on Jonathan’s anonymous letter had been written by the same hand.

  ‘The thing to find out now is whether Mrs. Dalby Whittier wrote out her own address on her ration book,’ said Jonathan. His wife and Sally looked at him in great admiration.