The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop mb-2

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Very well. That’s a thing that can be proved. Go on. We’ll assume for the moment that he was at the major’s.’

  ‘I can’t think of anybody else! Oh, yes!’ She glanced mischievously at the Reverend Stephen Broome. His pipe was well alight now. He was sprawling back in a deck-chair with his black shining alpaca jacket wide open, showing his black clerical vest and the little gold crucifix he wore. His long, black-trousered legs were stretched out in front of him, and his large, strong, long-fingered hands were clasped behind his head.

  Mrs Bradley chuckled.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘his clothes are certainly black enough, and he asked for it just now! He shall have it, too! We will assume that it was the Vicar of Wandles Parva whom you saw crawling out of the bushes, and we will try our circumstantial evidence on him. Mr Broome!’ She prodded him in the stomach with her mauve and white parasol. ‘Wake up!’

  ‘Eh?’ said the vicar, who had been far away, as usual. ‘I beg your pardon?’ He raised himself and blinked at her with his heavily lidded blue-grey eyes.

  ‘Where were you on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd?’ asked Mrs Bradley keenly.

  ‘At church, I expect.’

  ‘Yes. And after church?’

  ‘Went for a walk, I expect. I generally do, while Felicity gets the supper.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Haven’t the least idea. Round and about, you know.’ He lay back in his chair again, and puffed away at his pipe.

  ‘We’ll assume he went for his walk in the Manor Woods,’ said Mrs Bradley to Margery, disregarding the vicar’s shake of the head. ‘Now, then.’

  ‘You must go on,’ said Margery. ‘I can’t get any farther.’

  ‘Very well. At five minutes past eight we see Rupert Sethleigh stretched senseless on the ground. James Redsey catches hold of him under the arms and drags him into the bushes. James disappears in the direction of the Bossbury road, en route for the public house. In a few minutes Rupert regains consciousness. The church service of Evening Prayer is concluded at a quarter to eight. The vicar leaves the building at eight o’clock perhaps –’

  ‘Five to,’ came in lazy tones from behind the pipe.

  ‘Very well, Mr Broome. It makes it all the worse for you. Gives you five more minutes for the murder. At five minutes to eight he goes off for his walk. He enters the Manor Woods by the wicket gate. He walks along the path which leads to the clearing. He is just in time to see the cousins quarrel, and he witnesses the blow which stretched Sethleigh senscless on the ground. He marks the spot where Redsey hides the body. Influenced unconsciously by Redsey’s action in dragging his cousin in among the bushes, he concludes that Sethleigh is dead. He hates Sethleigh. When Redsey has fled from the woods, the vicar parts the bushes and has a look at the man he loathes.’

  ‘The man he loathes?’ said two voices.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Mrs Bradley, surprised. ‘Everybody who met him seems to have detested Rupert Sethleigh. Why should the vicar be any exception?’

  ‘His cloth,’ suggested Mrs Bryce Harringay in honeyed tones, directing a languishing glance at the sprawling figure of the Reverend Stephen Broome. ‘The feelings of an ordained priest –’

  ‘Oh, rubbish!’ said Mrs Bradley brusquely. ‘An ordained priest feels like any other father of a charming daughter, I suppose? Why shouldn’t he?’

  Felicity turned her nose up.

  The vicar went on smoking – less placidly. A slight frown gathered between his contemplative eyes.

  Margery Barnes held up a shapely bare arm and eyed its contours with artless satisfaction.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley, under her breath. ‘No,’ she added immediately.

  ‘Go on,’ said the vicar. ‘Don’t mind me. I shall go to sleep as soon as I’ve finished this pipe.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘do you carry your tobacco in a pouch?’

  ‘Used to,’ replied the Reverend Stephen Broome.

  ‘What do you use now?’

  The vicar looked embarrassed.

  ‘Well – er – as a matter of fact, you see –’ he began confusedly.

  The company sat up and began to look interested. Felicity scowled, and glared at Jim Redsey, who was grinning broadly.

  The half-amused tone in Mrs Bradley’s voice had gone when next she spoke. Her words seemed almost unwilling to issue forth.

  ‘When the vicar found Sethleigh he had an unpleasant shock,’ she said.

  The vicar’s unhappy expression changed to one of thoughtful serenity at the resumption of the tale. He lay comfortably back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  ‘He found that Sethleigh was not dead,’ contributed Aubrey.

  ‘Thereupon, although he was disappointed and furious to think that this man had escaped,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ‘he helped him out of the bushes, and Sethleigh lay down on the Stone of Sacrifice to recover. The sight of his prostrate form incensed the vicar to the point of madness. He drew out his penknife –’

  ‘Never carry one,’ came in muffled tones from behind the pipe.

  ‘And stabbed Sethleigh in the throat.’

  Margery Barnes glanced fearfully behind her. Felicity said crossly:

  ‘What nonsense!’

  ‘Then he heard voices,’ pursued Mrs Bradley, unperturbed by this frank comment, ‘the voices of Margery Barnes and Cleaver Wright. Hastily he lowered the body of Sethleigh to the ground on the side of the Stone which faces the Manor House. Then, stooping low so that the Stone would cover him, he entered the woods on the house side, and gradually worked his way among the trees and bushes until he had partially compassed a circular course, and was hidden in the bushes – where, Margery?’

  Margery sat up, blushing hotly. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, met Mrs Bradley’s basilisk gaze, and was prompted to reply:

  ‘Do you mean where did I see that man come crawling out? Oh – er – well, it was about opposite the right-hand side of the Stone if you had your back to the Bossbury road.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a courteous inclination of the head. ‘Well,’ she continued abruptly, ‘when Margery fled from Cleaver Wright, that young man, finding no pleasure, but rather a somewhat ludicrous dismay, in finding himself left seated upon the pine-needles, got up and strolled across the clearing. His experience of women taught him that the chances were in favour of Margery’s return when she recovered from the fright he had given her –’

  ‘I wouldn’t have gone back there for anything,’ declared Margery vehemently.

  ‘So he walked round the Stone to examine it. The thing has its fascination. On the farther side of it he came upon Sethleigh’s body. He knelt to examine it. In doing so he got a good deal of blood on to the knees of his trousers. Now mark the sequel to that. The corpse had bled from the neck. There was no blood probably on Sethleigh’s trousers. They were grey flannels supported merely by –’ She glanced enquiringly at Mrs Bryce Harringay.

  ‘A coloured silk scarf, I believe,’ supplied that lady. ‘But I really must say, Mrs Bradley –’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘A coloured silk scarf. Cleaver Wright is quick-witted. He realized that Sethleigh had been murdered. He felt the blood of Sethleigh wet against his shins. At any second Margery Barnes might return.’

  ‘Ugh! Don’t!’ screamed Margery, covering her face.

  ‘So Wright hastily dragged off the trousers of the corpse, pulled off his own flannels –’ She glanced enquiringly at Margery. Aubrey tapped the girl on the arm to attract her attention. Margery lowered her hands and nodded.

  ‘Yes, he was wearing grey flannel trousers that evening,’ she admitted.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Bradley, satisfied. ‘I knew it. He then left his own trousers lying on the ground and darted into the woods, where he assumed the nether garments of the murdered man. Then he emerged from the bushes, went with all speed to the “Queen’s Head”, and, fearful lest any undetected bloods
tains might be visible upon his clothing, he promptly picked a quarrel with the biggest young fellow there, and got himself so badly knocked about that no one would suppose any blood on his person to be other than his own blood from his poor nose’ – she glanced with affected commiseration at Margery – ‘or his poor lip.’ She smiled with quiet enjoyment.

  ‘Brains,’ said Aubrey Harringay admiringly. ‘Bright man!’

  ‘I agree,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly.

  Felicity Broome sat noticeably still and mute. The vicar knocked out his pipe against the wooden arm of Mrs Bryce Harringay’s deck-chair, lay back, and composed himself for slumber.

  ‘Well,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ‘the vicar was much intrigued by Wright’s performance with the trousers, for he was too far away to realize the implication or the significance of it. He did realize very clearly, however, that Wright had seen the dead body. That was exceedingly awkward. It meant that if possible the body had to be disposed of. He crawled towards it. It was then that Margery saw him. He realized that she had seen him, did not know whether she had recognized him, but trusted she had not. He then took a big risk. He lifted Sethleigh’s body in his arms – he is a very strong man, remember – and carried him the shortest way he could – except that he kept along the edge of the public woods instead of on the Bossbury road itself – to the wicket gate, up to the lych-gate of the church, through the churchyard, and over the wall into his own garden. He took exactly the same route, in fact, as that taken by his daughter Felicity’ – she grinned horribly at her – ‘when she transported the bloodstained suitcase from the pigsty to the Manor Woods. That suitcase, I may suggest to you, was stained with blood from the murdered man’s collar, tie, and white tennis shirt, and it was because Felicity knew that, and knew that her father was the guilty person, that she was so anxious to be rid of that incriminating clue.’

  Felicity sat up.

  ‘How dare you say such a thing?’ she demanded passionately. ‘It was nothing of the sort!’

  Mrs Bradley waved her hand pacifically.

  ‘You will remember that I am reconstructing on circumstantial and not upon psychological evidence,’ she remarked coolly. ‘Well, the vicar carried Sethleigh’s body over to the empty pig-sty and laid it down in the inner shed. It then occurred to him that he was still in possession of the knife with which he had killed a man, and the clothes of the corpse, and also that there was a considerable quantity of blood on the cuff of his own coat. So he sallied forth again, swiftly and by devious ways, until he got nearly to Culminster. There, trading on the fact of his known absent-mindedness, he deliberately walked into the River Cullen, dropped the incriminating knife, dropped the murdered man’s clothes, which he had weighted with stones –’

  ‘How?’ asked Jim Redsey.

  ‘A handful of flints placed in the middle of the shirt, the collar and tie thrown on top of the stones, the shirt gathered up like a bag and tied round with string,’ said the vicar, joyously entering into the game.

  Mrs Bradley looked at him in surprise. He grinned at her genially. Margery giggled. Felicity glowered. Jim Redsey picked a daisy and dropped it accurately into Aubrey Harringay’s open mouth, as the boy, lying almost full length, opened his lips to speak.

  ‘Then he returned to Wandles Parva,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ‘went into the house, and informed his daughter and the servant that he had absent-mindedly walked into the river. All unsuspecting’ – she glanced at Felicity, who sat straight-lipped and pale in her chair – ‘the two of them dried his clothes, prepared a hot bath for him, and believed implicitly the tale he told them.’

  She turned to Felicity.

  ‘Dear child,’ she said, ‘would you rather I stopped?’

  ‘Good gracious, no,’ replied Felicity angrily. ‘I know it’s only a joke on your part. Of course, it sounds rather horrid to me,’ she added, chin in air.

  ‘Of course it does,’ said Mrs Bradley decidedly. ‘I won’t go on. It isn’t really funny.’

  ‘But I want to hear the rest,’ the vicar remarked. ‘You had better go away, Felicity. Don’t spoil other people’s pleasure!’ And he chuckled lazily.

  ‘I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,’ said Felicity furiously, and almost in tears. She rose hastily and ran into the house.

  ‘Go on, Mrs Bradley,’ said Aubrey. ‘Corpse in pig-sty. Vicar in bath. Rupert missing. What next?’

  ‘The next is where the rest of the circumstantial evidence comes in,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a sidelong glance at the vicar.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Aubrey Harringay. ‘Haven’t we heard it all? Oh, no. The butcher’s shop business.’

  ‘That doesn’t interest me very much,’ confessed Mrs Bradley. ‘You see, the young man who acts as Binks’s assistant belongs to the Boys’ Club in Bossbury which the vicar holds on third Mondays. Note the significance of these facts. First the day. What day in the week could be so convenient for the transportation of the corpse into Bossbury? Especially as Cleaver Wright often lent the vicar his car for the journey. He could have propped up Sethleigh’s body in the car and driven him into the market with the utmost ease. He could have stolen the key of the lock-up shop from Binks’s boy’s pocket when the lads were changing for their running practice. He is strong enough to perform the somewhat arduous task of dismembering the corpse –’

  ‘Good heavens!’ said the vicar blankly.

  ‘Lastly,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘at this very instant he is in possession of a tobacco-case, beautifully wrought in silver, which was once the property of the murdered man!’

  She turned implacably upon the astounded cleric.

  ‘I knew this passion of yours for secreting receptacles of all kinds about your person would get you into some ridiculous scrape one day,’ she said sternly. ‘Turn out your pockets!’

  Mrs Bryce Harringay helped him. It did not take them long. Very sheepishly the vicar pulled out a small circular box with a hinged lid. It was about three inches in diameter, beautifully chased and engraved, and the engraving consisted of three letters intertwined in a maze of ornamental scroll-work, but perfectly distinguisable.

  They were the initials of Rupert Sethleigh.

  CHAPTER XXI

  Savile

  I

  ‘WELL,’ said the inspector, ‘here’s this list of names. She thinks one of them moved that head. We’d better check up on them in case she’s right. You never know, with these funny old parties. And, to tell the truth, I’m at such a dead end with the thing myself that I’d be thankful for any trail to follow up, so that it would lead us somewhere near the truth.’

  He produced a sheet which at one time had formed part of Mrs Bradley’s loose-leaf pad, and handed it to the superintendent. It contained the names of all the persons who had been asked to play Mrs Bradley’s little table-game, in which they had written down possible hiding-places for the skull.

  ‘Wright’s name isn’t here,’ grunted the superintendent.

  ‘No. I noticed that.’

  ‘His pal’s name is down, and so is the lady’s.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And young Harringay – but not his mother. The old dame’s put her own name down, I see, and the vicar and his daughter. Oh, the doctor’s daughter is down, and the major’s two youngsters, and that gardener chap, Willows. But we can cross him off. We know all about him that Sunday night, and he’s a poor fish, anyway. And we can cross off those two youngsters and Miss Broome. Oh, Redsey’s name is here at the bottom. That makes ten names, not eight. Of course, Wright might have heard about the game from one of the others; and the doctor and the major could have heard from their daughters, so it doesn’t rule any of them out. And look here, Grindy! What about Savile?’

  ‘We’ve got nothing on Savile. Besides, he’s as meek as a sheep.’

  ‘The deuce he is! And he’s got muscles like a prizefighter under those polite duds of his! Besides, he could have pinched the skull from Wright, and he could have buried it on those cliff
s! He could have gone over there on the Thursday afternoon while everybody at the Vicarage was playing tennis –’

  ‘But he was playing tennis, too.’

  ‘Yes, part of the time. Then he went into the house to look at one of the vicar’s books, but I wonder whether that was an excuse for slipping away and burying the skull without anybody knowing he had left the house? You see, from the Vicarage it is the easiest thing in the world to drop over into the churchyard and take a short cut on to the Bossbury road.’

  ‘Yes, but he couldn’t walk to Rams Cove and back in an afternoon, Mr Bidwell.’

  ‘Who said he could? He’d have a car waiting. He’s got one, you see. We must find out about that. If he didn’t go in a car – oh, or on a push-bike; that’s another idea! – or on his motor-bike – I believe it belongs to Wright, as a matter of fact, but Savile borrows it, I know –’

  ‘Or he could have buried the suitcase with that fish inside it,’ grinned the inspector. ‘Just a nice little game for a quiet summer afternoon!’

  ‘You still think the boy Harringay did that, and then lied about it?’ said Superintendent Bidwell.

  ‘Well, don’t you, sir?’ asked Grindy, laughing.

  ‘I don’t know. Either he or Wright. That’s the sort of silly-idiot joke Wright would think really funny. And don’t forget – talking of Wright – that he can’t account for that hour and a half between the time he left church and the time he went to the pub.’

  ‘I heard some rumour that he met a girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The doctor’s daughter.’

  ‘Oh. Doesn’t want to give her away to papa, I suppose. Of course, he could have hidden the skull himself, and put that coconut in its place. But the motive is the whole blinking point. There was nothing between him and Sethleigh any time that we know of, was there? You see, that’s where I think we ought to freeze hard on to young Redsey, now that we’ve proved Sethleigh is dead. After all, he’s the chap with the really strong motive.’

  ‘What about the doctor?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘And Mrs Bryce Harringay?’