Groaning Spinney

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘What do you yourself think?’

  ‘I think his drink was doped and that then he was set upon in Groaning Spinney by Emming and Tiny, a sack put over his head to muffle sounds, and himself secured to four trees. The trees show signs, but Bill Fullalove’s thick winter gloves and clothing protected his skin from marks which would otherwise have been made by the dog-chains and leads. He was an easy victim, I would say, because he was taken entirely by surprise and would have been drowsy. The body, except for the head, was then covered in snow, and when he was almost dead he was hoisted up over a gate so that the body could receive the attitude desired. Then he was carried to the ghost-gate and his body inclined over that. Emming then made himself scarce, and the too-clever Tiny faked an injury.’

  ‘How utterly horrible and wicked!’

  ‘You may well say so.’

  ‘Why do you think Bill came to visit your nephew on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘I think he suspected something when the cats and dogs disappeared. I think he had decided, perhaps, that Tiny’s story about the cats and dogs was rather thin. However, he did not communicate anything to Jonathan, and while he was out the murderers, I imagine—but this is the purest guesswork—staged a rehearsal of his own death. That would account for the “ghost” on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Why didn’t he confide in your nephew, do you suppose?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the fact that Mansell and Obury were expected back and might interrupt the confidences decided him—or perhaps he expected them to be present, and was nonplussed.’

  ‘I can’t see that it made any ultimate difference whether he told Mr. Bradley or not.’

  ‘No, I agree. My nephew would hardly have deduced Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s death.’

  ‘And what are you going to do now?’

  ‘I am going to wait. The typewriter, as I say, will be traced to Robert Emming and then he will be exposed, but, unfortunately, not for murder.’

  ‘What will happen to this Mrs. Robert Emming at the cottage?’

  ‘Nothing, until Tiny Fullalove is released from hospital. After that, I would not go bail for her chances, or for Emming’s, either, if she remains where she is. The trouble is that, until she is the victim of at least one murderous attempt, it is going to be very difficult to make out a cast-iron case against Tiny Fullalove except upon Emming’s evidence, and that will be highly suspect. Tiny is a very clever man. Almost nothing of all this can be traced directly to him at present. Even Ed Brown’s evidence can only incriminate Emming, it seems to me.’

  ‘What about you yourself? Are not you in danger from these men?’

  ‘I think not, now. They will realize that by this time all I know or guess I shall have told. I don’t think that either of them would now take the risk of trying to get me out of the way, and I am glad to say that Will North is now similarly circumstanced. He has told all he knows. But I am worried about Ed Brown. He knows far too much for his own health. I have attempted to persuade him to take refuge at my London clinic for a time, but he won’t consider that at all. He says that he is well able to take care of himself, but Emming must be getting desperate, and is entirely without scruple, and Ed has not yet told all he knows. At least, that is still my belief. I wish I could get out of him what he is hiding.’

  ‘Yes. But did Emming kill his mother? That is a thing I find incredible.’

  ‘Well, although the poison was administered at the bungalow, Emming must be an accessory both before and after the fact, and would be found guilty, I have no doubt, equally with Tiny Fullalove, by any responsible jury. I wish we could find those dogs!’

  ‘So we wait and see. I don’t much like the sound of that, you know. Are you really going to do nothing more?’

  ‘My nephew tells me that I am going out hunting,’ Mrs. Bradley replied.

  ‘I believe the local hunt can show quite good sport. The pack is small—and the whole thing not a bit like the Cotswold proper, I believe—but if you don’t object to chasing wild creatures I think you may enjoy yourself quite heartily.’

  ‘I have no very strong feeling either for or against the fox,’ Mrs. Bradley explained. ‘But I dislike to hunt otters and deer.’

  ‘Deer I can well understand, but why otters?’ Miss Hughes enquired. ‘They are surely as destructive of fish as foxes are of poultry.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I don’t care for fish,’ said Mrs. Bradley. Her hearers refused to accept this unreasonable answer, and a long and animated discussion on hunting, shooting and fishing went on until Mrs. Bradley had to go home.

  Sally had come to meet her with the car.

  ‘It isn’t far, I know,’ she said, ‘for you to walk, but it’s getting dark, and Jon and Deb are anxious. Besides, I’m going back home to-morrow morning, so I might as well see as much of you as I can. Jon says he brought you here, and he would have come for you, too, but he’s had to go over to Greenstreet. Dinner will be a bit late. He’ll be back about half-past seven.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Mrs. Bradley to Miss Hughes, ‘although I really don’t know why it should, of a very minor but still fascinating mystery in connection with this case. After the typed anonymous letters began to come in, my nephew feloniously purloined from the Fullaloves’ bungalow this engaging piece of typescript.’

  She produced the typed quotation which the executors had found in the natural history book.

  ‘Why,’ said Miss Bagthorpe, ‘isn’t that what Robert Emming typed out on Miss Bathwell’s little machine when he came one day for our advice on an oratorio that he proposed to write for the church choir to sing?’

  ‘Oh, of course, there is a typewriter in the College,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

  ‘I told the police so, and invited them to make tests. Actually there are two typewriters here. My secretary, Miss Bathwell, has one and I have one of my own. The police, although they seemed not very eager to remain in College for long—they found a plethora of students embarrassing—tested both machines and assured themselves that neither had been used for the anonymous letters. And that reminds me. On the same occasion as he did the typing, Mr. Emming borrowed a book from the College library which I believe he has not yet returned.’

  ‘What book?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  ‘Nature’s Traffic Lights’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I know, but the book is called that. It describes and illustrates various poisonous berries and fungi. It is really a book for young children, but the students, especially those from urban areas, find it very useful in identifying such plants as the deadly nightshade, for example.

  ‘Belladonna!’ exclaimed Miss Bagthorpe dramatically. ‘Wasn’t that the poison …?’

  ‘Which killed Mrs. Dalby Whittier? Yes, it was. And you lent the book to Emming, and it was found at the Fullaloves’ bungalow. I don’t know that we can use it in evidence, but it certainly offers some interesting corroborative detail. It certainly does not seem a book which one grown man would ordinarily lend another. A great light dawns on me, by the way. Emming is a Londoner. Tiny Fullalove has spent much of his life in India. Ed Brown is known to be knowledgeable about wild birds and may equally be so about wild plants. What if Ed’s guilty recollection is of being asked to identify the berries of the deadly nightshade? The question could have been asked casually and among such a host of others … and the name of the poison itself, belladonna, is probably entirely unknown to Ed, so I may be wrong. On the other hand, it is amazing what country people do know.’

  ‘I believe you have got something there,’ said Sally to her aunt on the homeward drive. ‘You had better jog Ed Brown’s memory.’

  ‘It will have to be done circumspectly, then,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘I cannot, at this stage, put a leading question. I must give the matter some thought.’

  Sally went off next day, and Mrs. Bradley, having pushed a note under Will North’s door, went by car to Pinxworth and then walked. George put the car up at the public house, and, unk
nown to his employer until she stopped to admire the view (and, turning, saw him), trudged stolidly behind her with one of Will North’s sporting guns sloped professionally over his forearm. Unknown to his employer, he had kept this gun in the car since the visit to Oxford.

  Mrs. Bradley’s walk, although apparently aimless, was, in reality, guided by careful planning. She was extremely worried about Ed Brown. All her attempts to get him into a zone of safety had failed. Ed was already chafing so bitterly against his captivity that she had more than a suspicion that he escaped when Will North went out, and roamed the woods between Will’s lodge and the manor house. It could only be a matter of time, therefore, before the fact that he was alive and well was all over the village.

  Having seen her chauffeur trudging faithfully in her wake, she stopped for him to catch up with her.

  ‘I am making for Rolling,’ she said, ‘and I shall be quite safe, George. However, if you would care for a walk of fifteen miles …’

  George glanced down at his leggings.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be safe, madam?’

  ‘Yes, George. My enemies are in London, conferring together. The police are faithfully trailing them. I am on my way to a rendezvous with Ed Brown. We are proceeding by devious and divers roads so that no one in the village will suspect what is in the wind.’

  ‘You have persuaded Brown to seek his own safety, madam?’

  ‘I don’t know. I doubt it. But he has something to tell me which I must hear from his own tongue and before witnesses. The fact is, George, I have discovered that Ed Brown’s life is not safe until it is generally known that he identified for Robert Emming and Tiny Fullalove the plant called deadly nightshade. We cannot meet openly, so I am relying upon Ed’s woodcraft to bring him across country. We shall have part of our talk in the Chief Constable’s stable yard.’

  ‘Yes, you would scarcely entice Brown into a house, madam.’

  ‘So I thought. We shall meet at the Greening crossroads and stroll gently stablewards. During our stroll I shall obtain from Ed the information I seek.’

  ‘Police witnesses will be required, madam, I take it?’

  ‘Yes. Ed Brown will not see them, but they will be there.’

  ‘I thought the bungalow had already been searched for belladonna, madam.’

  ‘It has, but it has not been searched for a preparation concocted by a gifted amateur from the fruit of the deadly nightshade.’

  ‘How do you think the poison was administered, madam?’

  ‘I did think of several possible ways: in mince pies, in rum, in blackcurrant jam, in coffee essence, in giblet soup. No doubt one could think of more——’

  ‘I wonder they didn’t use bamboo splinters or powdered glass, madam, Mr. Tiny Fullalove having lived in India.’

  ‘Tiny, I think, would not have been a party to that, because, had the method been discovered, he, and he alone, would have been the suspected person. Nevertheless, his Indian experiences did come into it. The poison was administered in curry. Now, George, I shall want the car to meet me at the top of the Hangman at half-past ten to-night. I do not propose to walk home.’

  19. Goblin Market

  *

  ‘O that I could my bed of earth but view

  And smile, and look as cheerfully as you!’

  Henry King

  * * *

  THE AIR ON the upland road was fresh to the point of being chilly. Parted from George, who had vainly pressed the gun on her for her protection, Mrs. Bradley stepped out briskly and covered the rising ground at a most surprising pace.

  She had made careful study of the map and she made no mistake about the route. The sky was blue and the slight clouds were high; here a stream ran, and there a bird flew suddenly out of a coppice. The woods on the steeps looked like bluish smoke, or climbed like a company of Green Howards.

  Here and there in the valleys a chimney smoked or a small train puffed white steam against brown escarpments. Here was a terraced town with steps leading up from street to street, and here was a huddled village, the houses clustering together as though the snow were still falling and they were taking shelter from the drift.

  It was grand country, although the going was not at all easy; and it was a grand day, although Mrs. Bradley decided that the clearness of the weather promised rain. She rested on an old mounting block at the end of the first five miles, and beneath a long-perished gibbet at the end of the first ten. There was no longer any sign of the hangman’s power, but as she sat there she could fancy a ghostly creaking which took her mind back to her first walk through Groaning Spinney.

  The sound, however, was nothing more than the creaking of a nearby gate which was set in a stone wall almost overgrown by bracken the colour of umber. Mrs. Bradley spat, in a reserved and lady-like manner, upon a flat stone which lay beside the gate, and walked alongside the wall because the path she was supposed to be following had been overgrown in the previous summer. A pocket compass gave her sufficient direction, and the slope, as the map had shown, was now downhill.

  She came up with Ed Brown at the crossroads after five hours’ steady walking and her two ten-minute rests.

  ‘You must be tired, mam, I reckon,’ said Ed, with his wary woodland smile. Mrs. Bradley shook her head.

  ‘I brought you out as far as this,’ she said, ‘so that you could show me where the white lilies blow on the banks of Arcady.’

  ‘What, this time of year?’ said Ed. ‘I could show ee, come May or maybe June, where ee can get some wild lilies of the valley, like.’

  ‘I didn’t know they grew wild.’

  ‘Well, no more p’raps they do, in a manner of speaking, but we get ’em in the Squire’s Wood, back ’ome. Myself, I reckon, they excaped like, from somebody’s garden, like all nature will if ’er can, but they be thick as the winter berries along Squire’s Ride for them as knows where to look. But Arcady … no, I never heard tell of that place in these ’ere parts, as I knows on.’

  ‘“Yet there, where never muse or god did haunt,

  Still may some nameless power of Nature stray,

  Pleased with the reedy stream’s continual chant

  And purple pomp of these broad fields in May,”’

  said Mrs. Bradley with great approval of this theory. Ed looked at her oddly.

  ‘You didn’t ought to call up sperrits from the vasty deep,’ he protested.

  ‘But I don’t,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Only the deadly nightshade from its flowering bed. Titania herself was a little like the deadly nightshade, don’t you think, Ed?’

  ‘You was talking of lilies,’ said Ed, uncertainly.

  ‘Lilies or daffodillies,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘It is all the same thing.’

  ‘That, by a power, it is not, mam. Why, as I was telling Mr. Tiny Fullalove … would a-ben last summer, that would a-ben … the deadly nightshade, that’s one of the plants as children should learn for to know. But lilies, well, some of them be poison, too, I have eerd tell … and the deadly nightshade—well, we ’ad a young thing, not more nor six year old … I never ’eard the right name, mam, till then. Her died of it, her did.’

  ‘So that’s where they got the information,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘I’ve got the report from the London hospital here. Tiny Fullalove will leave to-morrow morning. Now, if only we could find the carcases of those dogs that Mrs. Anstey fed with the curry, he could be charged formally with the murder of Mrs. Dalby Whittier and this woman up at the cottage would have to go to court to be a witness. We’ve got enough for that, now that you’ve seen her marriage lines and noticed the date. But how to get at Emming, except over the anonymous letters, I don’t yet see, unless Tiny Fullalove squeals. And we haven’t got our full evidence yet about the typewriter. Scotland Yard are on the trail of it, but they may have to make hundreds of calls before they find the shop where he bought it. Trouble is, it’s an American make, and a pre-war model. But the letters were typed on it. There isn’t any doubt about that, and it wasn’
t bought around here.’

  ‘I suppose you are looking for the belladonna at the bungalow again?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s hopeless, I fancy.’

  ‘Try the bumby-hole,’ suggested Mrs. Bradley.

  ‘The …?’

  ‘Well, I imagine that, in these enlightened times, the bungalow possesses a dustbin, but …’

  ‘Yes. We’ve raked over the local sewage works long ago, but no luck. And if you mean the heap of refuse behind Tiny Fullalove’s woodshed, and the woodshed roof, and all the guttering round the bungalow, and the bottom of the well, and the bottom of the rainwater butt, and inside the cistern and …’

  Mrs. Bradley cackled, and said that she was sorry she had spoken.

  ‘I should think so, too,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Have another try.’

  ‘Has every pot and bottle been sent for analysis?’

  ‘Every single one. They got rid of the belladonna at once. There isn’t a trace of it left.’

  ‘Hardly surprising. I should scarcely think you’d have any luck with that, but one never knows; and although we can now prove that Ed Brown had identified the deadly nightshade for them, we cannot prove from that that their knowledge was guilty knowledge. I think we must employ the technique of the shoot.’

  ‘Eh? What shoot?’

  ‘The use of beaters to start up the game.’

  The Chief Constable looked uneasy.

  ‘I’m not at all sure that I understand you,’ he said. ‘We have to go carefully, you know. Once Scotland Yard trace the typewriter (which they are absolutely bound to do in the end) we can charge Emming with uttering the typed letters, but there’s nothing strong enough yet for a murder charge, as I say, unless Tiny Fullalove squeals, and somehow I don’t believe he’s the squealing kind.’

  ‘I was thinking of Mrs. Emming.’

  ‘We’ve tried her, you know. She isn’t easy.’

  ‘She would be a good deal easier if she knew that her own life was in danger.