The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  Hoping for the best, she began to write, disguising her handwriting by a backward slant.

  “Dear Stella”—

  With an oath the man snatched up the paper and threw it on the floor in a crumpled ball.

  “None of them monkey tricks,” he snarled. “We know your proper writing. And sign it with this.”

  Ann’s hope died as the man produced the letter which she had written to Coles about Miss West’s health, and also Stella’s rough drawing of a star. She was defeated by the evidence—a specimen of her handwriting—for which Doris the school-room maid had searched in vain—and the secret signature.

  “I—can’t,” she said, feebly pushing away the paper.

  Again the pistol was pressed to her head.

  “Don’t waste no time,” growled the fair man.

  “Don’t waste no time,” echoed Miss West. “Ann, write.”

  There was a spark in the old woman’s eyes and the flash of Wireless. Impelled to take up the pen, Ann wrote quickly in a firm hand, and signed her note with a faithful copy of the star.

  The men hung over her, watching every stroke, and comparing the writing with Coles’s letter.

  “Don’t put no dots,” snarled the fair man, who plainly suspected a cypher when Ann inserted a period.

  He read the note again when it was finished, and then passed it to his companion, who pointed to a word suspiciously. The old woman and the girl looked at each other in an agony of suspense as they waited for the blow to fall.

  Then the fair man turned sharply to Miss West.

  “Spell ‘genwin,’ ” he commanded.

  As she reeled off the correct spelling, he glanced doubtfully at his companion, who nodded.

  “O.K.,” he said.

  Miss West’s grim face did not relax, and Ann guessed the reason. She was nerving herself for the second ordeal of Coles’s inspection.

  Fortunately, however, the men did not want their female confederate’s opinion. The job was done and they wanted to rush it forward to its next stage. The fair man sealed the note and whistled on his fingers.

  Instantly the weedy youth who had followed Ann to the cottage appeared from behind a clump of laurels in the drive, wheeling a bicycle. He snatched the letter from Coles and scorched away round the bend of the road.

  Ann slumped back in her chair, feeling unstrung in every fibre. Nothing remained but to wait—wait—and pray Stella would not come.

  The time seemed to pass very slowly inside the room. The men smoked in silence until the carpet was littered with cigarette stubs and the air veined with smoke. Miss West watched the clock as though she would galvanize the crawling minute-hand.

  “Don’t come,” agonized Ann. “Stella, don’t come.”

  But absent treatment proved a failure, for Coles, who was hiding behind a curtain, gave a sudden hoot of triumph.

  “The car’s come.”

  “Push the girl to the front,” commanded the fair man.

  He helped to lift Ann’s chair to the window, so that she saw the Williams’ Lanchester waiting in front of the cottage. Stella stood on the drive, and the chauffeur, Hereford, was in the act of shutting the door. He sprang back to his seat, backed, saluted, and drove swiftly away.

  Ann watched the car disappear with despairing eyes. She could not scream, because fingers were gripping her windpipe, nearly choking her. But Stella could distinguish the pale-blue blur of her frock behind the diamond-paned window, and she waved her hand as she ran eagerly up the garden path.

  Had Ann been normal, she might have guessed the truth from Stella’s reaction to the scene when she burst into the room. Instead of appearing surprised, she dashed to Ann and threw her arms around her.

  “They didn’t fool me,” she whispered.

  Then she began to fight like a boxing-kangaroo in order to create the necessary distraction, while the police-car came round the bend of the drive.

  * * *

  —

  The prelude to a successful raid was the millionaire’s call for prompt action when his daughter brought him Ann’s note.

  “It’s her writing and our private star,” she told him. “But—read it.” He glanced at the few lines and laughed.

  “An impudent forgery,” he said.

  “No, it’s an S.O.S. It looks like a second try for me.”

  After she had told her father about the first unsuccessful attempt to kidnap her, he realized the importance of nipping the gang’s activities in the bud.

  This seems the place to print the note which was the alleged composition of an Oxford M.A.

  “Dear Stella, Miss West will be pleased if you will come to tea this afternoon. Don’t waste no time, and don’t run no risks. Let Hereford drive you in the car. To prove this is genuine, I’m signing it with our star, same as you done, one day in the school-room.

  Yours, Ann Shelley, M.A.”

  DETECTIVE: DAME BEATRICE BRADLEY

  THE CASE OF THE HUNDRED CATS

  Gladys Mitchell

  AS ONE OF THE FIRST MEMBERS of London’s prestigious Detection Club in the 1930s, and with nearly eighty books to her credit, Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell (1901–1983) should be as familiar as her contemporaries, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, with whom she was once ranked as “one of the Big Three women mystery writers” of the Golden Age, but that hasn’t been the case for many years.

  One of the biggest problems for the lack of popularity may be that Mitchell’s series character, Dame Beatrice Bradley, who appeared in sixty-six novels and several short stories, is so reptilian in tone and appearance that people are surprised that she doesn’t have a forked tongue. Mitchell often denigrates conventions of the genre, notably when she parodies Christie’s novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) with The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop (1929). Additionally, many of Bradley’s cases are heavily laden with Freudian psychology, and it is suggested in the books that she is descended from a long line of witches, so it is no surprise that the supernatural often plays a role in her adventures—not a particularly welcome element for many readers of detective stories.

  Mitchell worked as a teacher for more than twenty-five years, first out of economic necessity, then during World War II because of England’s shortage of teachers. She had tremendous enthusiasm for the teachings of Freud, so made Dame Beatrice a psychiatrist with her own practice as well as a psychiatric consultant to the Home Office. Enviably, Bradley remains the same age in the last novel about her, The Crozier Pharaohs (1984), as she was in the first, Speedy Death (1929).

  “The Case of the Hundred Cats” was originally published in Fifty Famous Detectives of Fiction, edited anonymously (London, Odhams Press, 1938); it was first collected in Sleuth’s Alchemy: Cases of Mrs. Bradley and Others, edited by Nicholas Fuller (Norfolk, Virginia, Crippen & Landru, 2005).

  The Case of the Hundred Cats

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  FROM THE VERY FIRST I myself suspected the aunt. We had been asked to see a patient who suffered from periodic loss of memory, but Mrs. Bradley—who was carrying out a delicate Home Office job at the time—was not prepared to undertake the case, so I thought I would ring up John.

  “Is that the house where they keep all those cats?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, John.”

  “Well, it is. That woman takes drugs.”

  “You won’t accept the case, then?”

  “No, I won’t. They called me in last month, and I told them then what I thought. Mrs. What’s it is trying to get the other one’s money. She’ll get her certified if she possibly can.”

  I wrote to Mrs. Dudley, the woman who had sent me the letter, and told her to bring the patient to see me.

  The two of them came next day, a woman of fifty or so, in very sombre clothes, with a heavy face purple with powder and too much ey
e shadow on, and a frail, anæmic-looking younger woman who seemed too timid even to give her name.

  Ethel let them in to the consulting room, and I sat behind the largest of the three desks, fountain pen in hand, and horn-rimmed goggles on nose, and tried not to look like the prettiest secretary in London.

  “Mrs. and Miss Dudley?” I asked, making rapid hieroglyphics on a pad.

  “Mrs. and Miss Dudley. Yes, that’s right,” the elder lady said.

  “Then, may I see Miss Dudley alone?”

  “No, no!” said the girl, in a whining voice. “I had really rather you didn’t!”

  “You see, I’m afraid you’re not quite clear——” said the aunt.

  I looked from one to the other.

  “It is customary for the patients themselves to describe to me their symptoms. In this way I can tell whether the case is of sufficient importance for Mrs. Bradley to handle,” I said with exceptional rudeness. I disliked Mrs. Dudley at sight, and as for the niece, I never saw anyone who made me feel more irritable. “Then do I understand—oh, then you are not Mrs. Bradley?” the elder lady said.

  “I’m the secretary. It is my duty to keep Mrs. Bradley’s engagement book up to date. If I think there is no case of sufficient importance for her I send the patients elsewhere—to Sir John MacGovern, for example. But, of course, I can’t tell anything about the case until I have questioned the patient alone,” I added, turning to the younger woman again.

  I saw them look at each other—just a flash, but unmistakable when you’re looking out for such a response. The elder woman cleared her throat a little. People often dislike me—I am too pretty and too efficient, I suppose. The first antagonises women, the second men. It is unfortunate for me, in a way.

  The elder woman rose.

  “Very well. I suppose you mean you want to question us separately. Where shall I wait?”

  I rang for Ethel to show her into the lounge. It was eleven o’clock. Ethel, I knew, would settle her down in the lounge and bring her sweet biscuits and coffee, and perhaps a Turkish cigarette, thus producing, as exactly as possible, the psychological effects of the lounge of one of the big London stores, where women of this type seem to spend their time. Besides, these would keep her occupied whilst I questioned the patient, and, even if she wondered all the time what was being asked and answered, experience had informed us that her wondering would be of a comparatively charitable kind.

  As soon as she had gone I settled down to it.

  “Do you want to come to Mrs. Bradley for some treatment?” I enquired. The patient looked at me with her large, weak, silly, blue eyes, and nodded.

  “Is that the truth? Or did your aunt bring you here against your will?” I said. It was a pretty direct suggestion, but she ignored it.

  “I wanted to come. I am very ill. I think I am going to die,” the poor foolish creature observed, in the same thin, wailing voice as she had used when her aunt was in the room.

  “You take drugs, don’t you?” I said, remembering what John had told me over the telephone.

  “Sometimes. When the cats get very bad.”

  “The cats?”

  “I do love them. They are dears. But they scratch me sometimes. Look!” She glanced fearfully round at the door, then showed me her neck and shoulder, pulling the blouse away with such nervous fingers that one of the buttons flew off.

  “I must sew that on before auntie sees it,” she said.

  We both went down on our knees in search of it, and when it was found she stuffed it into the pocket of her suit, beneath a handkerchief.

  “I’m scratched all over,” she said.

  “But all these scratches are dangerous! How many cats have you got?”

  “A hundred, and I love them all,” she said. The bending about had brought colour into her cheeks, and she looked a good deal prettier.

  “A hundred?” I said. “And when you lose your memory, do you forget the cats?”

  “No, never. I always remember the cats. At least, the cats are the last things I think about when I lose my memory, and the first things I think about when it comes back to me.”

  “Do you wander away from your home?”

  “Oh, yes. They find me usually at the Zoo.”

  “At the Zoo? What makes you go there?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. I’m always looking at birds when I go to the Zoo. I believe I think I’m a cat.”

  She was gaining much more confidence. She was leaning forward a little, absorbed in what she was saying. “You see,” she added, “I really live two lives.”

  “Most people live more than two lives. They live six or seven,” I assured her.

  At Adelheim, where I was trained, they always insisted that we must adopt a brisk and businesslike cheerfulness with the patients.

  But this patient, who had begun to creep out of her shell, instantly drew back again, and, for a bit, would not answer my questions at all, except with a nervous laugh.

  “What do you want Mrs. Bradley to do? Do you know?” I demanded.

  “I only want her to write a certificate, and send a copy of it to my banker, to say I am perfectly sane,” the poor girl replied, with a sudden return to composure which took my breath away.

  “But who on earth thinks you are anything else?” I said, as though in great surprise. As a matter of fact, most of these underdeveloped, hysterical subjects do think that some one believes them to be insane.

  She shrugged. Then she got up abruptly.

  “You’ll ask her to see me, won’t you? Before I lose my memory again? Mrs. Bradley, I mean. You’ll get her to see me, won’t you? When auntie isn’t there. Like this. Like this.”

  “I’ll ask her,” I answered. (Whether she’ll come is another matter, I thought.) “Yes, I’ll certainly ask her. Do you know—have you any idea—what brings on these lapses of memory? Does your aunt—do you quarrel at all?”

  “Quarrel? One doesn’t—quarrel with grown-up people.”

  I was annoyed.

  “How old are you then, Miss Dudley?”

  “Miss Dudley! How funny that sounds? They always call me Lily. That’s what you’ll put on the certificate for me, won’t you? Lily Dudley is sane.”

  She went out, looking at me over her shoulder with those great, pale, silly, blue eyes.

  I telephoned Mrs. Bradley, and she told me to call at her Kensington house and have tea. She was fairly late getting in, so we made it dinner, instead, and I wore my new pansy-black. Mrs. Bradley eyed it approvingly.

  “And what supreme idiocy have you committed this time, child?” said she.

  I told her about the case. She grinned, looking just like an alligator.

  “I must attend another sitting of this Lunacy Laws Commission thing tomorrow, but on Thursday I could see these Dudleys,” she said. “Make the appointment for three in the afternoon, at their private house. I like to know the environment of these loss of memory cases. And I want to see the letter. You have it, haven’t you, child?”

  I took it out of my handbag, and passed it across the table.

  “Aha!” said Mrs. Bradley. In her sea-green dinner gown and with her yellow skin, she looked like a smiling snake. I watched her, fascinated, as she took the letter in her skinny claw and with horrible cackles read it.

  “Treasure it, child,” she said. “You had better come with me on Thursday. Now go and ring up our friend, Inspector Toogarde, and tell him to keep a watch on the house. If he can find any manner or means of excuse, he’s to see that the young woman is arrested. The sooner that’s done, the better.”

  “The young woman? Oh—to keep her safe from the aunt!” We had never before employed protective arrest in a case, but I had heard of it.

  “To keep her safe from the aunt,” said Mrs. Bradley. She cackled wildly. She took me to the theatre afte
r dinner and we picked up John in the vestibule.

  “What’s this about these cats?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “Cats?” said John. “Oh, did Nancy tell you? Cats. Oh, yes.” He stampeded us into our stalls and then studied the programme. Mrs. Bradley gave him a dig in the ribs.

  “And you’d better write to Mrs. Dudley, and tell her my fee is payable in advance,” she said to me.

  “Very well, if you wish it,” I said.

  “I’m listening,” John remarked, caressing his lower ribs.

  “Tell me about the cats, child. The curtain goes up, or should do, in ten minutes’ time.”

  “Well, just that they keep cats, you know. The whole place swarms with cats. And the stink! Phew! Awful! And yet, a funny thing.” He paused; a habit he has.

  “Go on!” we said together.

  “Mixed with this awful catty stench, which pervades the whole of the house, there was a faint odour of sanctity, so to speak, which seemed just vaguely familiar,” said John, caressing his chin.

  “Proceed,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I could have placed it but for the all-pervasive stench of those beastly cats. I connect it with that American show we visited last year. You know the place I mean.”

  Mrs. Bradley’s eyes were snapping.

  “Go on, child, do,” she said.

  “I can’t. Don’t know any more. I knew the woman was taking drugs. I said so. Gave her to understand I’d put the police on her track.”

  “And what stuff do you think it was? Cocaine?” I demanded, abruptly. We had never had a dope-fiend on our books.

  John laughed.

  “It wasn’t cocaine.”

  “What do you know about poisons, John?” asked Mrs. Bradley, suddenly.

  “Nothing, beyond what all alienists learn in a routine way for rapid diagnosis or morbid symptoms, of course.”

  “Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley absently. “I wish I could cut that conference tomorrow. But I can’t. I’m down to speak. Let me beg of you, child,” she said to me, “on no account to go round to that house alone.”