Hangman's Curfew (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Through Bonnington Woods the narrow, cascading Clyde enters a ravine. Standing on a flat and mossy rock and watching, first, the sun falling on the branches of a thin larch inclined towards the water, and then the reflections of whitish stones, rock walls, bright branches, and the glistening sun itself in the deep, and, after the falls, calm greenness of the river, Mrs. Bradley looked long and silently and with a critical and appreciative eye, upon her chosen hiding-place for the treasure.

  Giving the two men time to finish their cigarettes, she went back to the car and suggested that they should drive home.

  She decided to check her notes, observations, and measurements again, and then to go over the clues from the ballads once more, but she had no reason now to believe that there was anything wrong with her deductions.

  Lunch left her sleepier than she could have wished, but, having taken David Ker’s temperature and left him drowsy (although the improvement in his colour and pulse were considerable) she went out into the garden with a folding stool, which Elspat, who had taken a great fancy to her, had discovered under the stairs, carrying books, notes, and map.

  As a fresh beginning she decided to include among her “pointers” those ballads whose titles began with Y. She did this because she thought it likely that in modern times a person making an acrostic might have chosen to employ the usual English spelling of Mary, instead of the Marie of the poem. This gave her, in addition to the other ballads, which Gillian had selected, Young Hunting, Young Bekie, Young Beichan, Young Andrew, Young John, Young Waters, and Young Benjie.

  These claimants upon her consideration gave her the following hint upon the nature of the treasure and the location of its hiding-place:

  “In the deepest pot of Clyde Water

  It’s there they flang him in—

  And put a turf on his breast-bone

  To hold Young Hunting down.”

  Young Hunting, from which, already, a haunting stanza had remained in her mind and conditioned her reading of some of the other clues, still seemed to give her the most promising material; nevertheless, there were four lines in an otherwise non-suggestive ballad, which made her frown and ponder. Somewhere they reached back into her memory, and only just failed to connect with some piece of knowledge there. Mrs. Bradley’s mind was well-trained, and she knew that at some unsuspected moment the necessary connection would be made. Unfortunately she had no time to spare for her mental reactions to take their normal course. She therefore went into the house, found Elspat in the kitchen reading a weekly journal of an unexpectedly frivolous kind, and confronted her with the verse, which she had copied out in the hope that this exercise would assist her memory.

  “Now, Mrs. Fenwick,” she said, “why does that verse give me the impression that it’s rather like something else I’ve read or seen or been told?”

  The housekeeper found the spectacles she usually put on when she read the Bible, and studied Mrs. Bradley’s small handwriting. Mrs. Bradley had written legibly, for once, and, intoning the lines in the pious snuffling voice, which she kept for her devotional reading, Elspat gravely murmured:

  “His footmen they did rin before

  His horsemen rade behind;

  Ane mantel of the burning gowd

  Did keip him frae the wind.”

  “Well?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Did ye ever hear tell o’ King James the Sixth of Scotland, that became your ain King James the First of England?” asked the housekeeper, taking off her spectacles.

  “’Tis said with what amount of truth of course I canna tell ye—that—Ah, now! Bide a wee! I have the book!”

  She went upstairs and returned with a copy of Mr. H. V. Morton’s In Search of Scotland. Seating herself, and wiping her fingers carefully on her apron, she took up her spectacles again, looked at them, and then firmly put them aside. “’Tis a rare pity he didna see mair while he was aboot it,” she observed, referring to the author, “but the man meant well, nae doubt aboot it. Oh, aye, he meant verra well. He’s lain the nicht in Jedburgh, and that’s whaur I was born.”

  The book certainly seemed a favourite with her, Mrs. Bradley decided, observing its worn appearance and the ease and speed with which the housekeeper found the page. “Will ye take leeve note of this, now,” she commanded. Her large, blunt forefinger found the line, and she began to read aloud:

  “ ‘Is there a story that an infant’s body was discovered in these walls some years ago wrapped in cloth of gold?’

  “ ‘Aye, that is so! The body was put back and is in the walls now.’

  “…‘after a fire in Queen Mary’s apartments a small oak coffin was discovered behind the wainscoting in a recess measuring about two feet six inches by one foot. This coffin contained the bones of an infant wrapped in a richly-embroidered silk covering. Two initials were marked on this shroud and one of them was clearly the letter J. Was this the body of Mary’s infant and the rightful heir to the throne? If so, who was James VI?”’

  She looked up triumphantly, and repeated the question.

  “Aye,” she said, nodding her head with great satisfaction, as though, if she had cared to do so, she could have supplied an answer. “Wha was James the Sixth? And wha’s in the wa’ at Edinburgh Castle?”

  “I had always taken for granted that he was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots until I read that there were grounds for believing that that baby died at birth,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Ah, well, it makes no difference, I’m afraid, to my search. But it’s interesting, all the same. Thank you, Mrs. Fenwick.”

  “Hae ye seen the War Memorial?” Elspat demanded before Mrs. Bradley left the kitchen. Mrs. Bradley was able to say that she had, and the subject lasted them for the next twenty minutes or so. Then Mrs. Bradley said, in a careless tone:

  “Are you any good with a gun, Mrs. Fenwick, may I ask?”

  “Oh, aye, ye’re expecting thae lither lads tae murder Mr. Ker, are ye not? I wadna believe anybody would dae it. What you want is the puir auld body at the Peel Tower to the north-east of us, I’m thinking.”

  Mrs. Bradley felt a sudden shock.

  “What did you say?” she enquired. Elspat looked closely at her.

  “I didna tell yee before, for I wanted ye should make sure Mr. Ker had got over the poison,” she announced. “But I thocht, a’ the time, it was auld Mr. Ker ye were speiring for. Come, and show ye.”

  She led Mrs. Bradley upstairs to look out of a top-floor window. Beyond them for miles stretched the moor, now dropped to a patch of grazing ground for cattle, now humped, now hilly, but mostly patched with heather, blue in the distance, brown, purple, wine-coloured, honey-coloured—an amazing and beautiful countryside.

  “See now,” said Elspat, pointing. “There, beyond tur burn, bigged on the wee knowe.”

  Then Mrs. Bradley saw it. Its brown-grey stone and lichened walls accorded so perfectly with the colouring of the moor itself that at first her eye had missed it altogether. It was perhaps a mile away, but certainly not more, and as she traced its gloomy walls and the darker slits of its windows, she was reminded of the Border tower, which Gillian had visited in company with Mr. Geoffrey, although this castle was larger, and seemed in good repair.

  “It is naething but an auld toom keep, ye ken,” said Elspat, “but the auld man is the last of his line, and he lives there all alone. Mr. David, wha’s his nephew, gied him the place tae live in. There’s naebody gaes near syne Maggie died, that used tae cook and clean.”

  “And the unicorn! Is there a unicorn on the tower?” asked Mrs. Bradley, feeling slightly lightheaded.

  “Oh, the same, the same. Ker is his name, just the same—although how many of them’s entitled tae flaunt the badge I dinna ken,” said the housekeeper darkly.

  “So he is uncle to Mr. Ker here,” Mrs. Bradley exclaimed. “What would his name be, now?”

  “Old Joshua, son of Joshua. Young Joshua is his grandson. They’ve had little tae dae wi’ each other, these twa branches, syne Mr. David’s great
-grandfather married on the woman that Jamie Ker had in’s ee.”

  “Why on earth didn’t you mention him, David?” Mrs. Bradley wrathfully demanded, when she had repeated the conversation to her host next day.

  “Because I’d forgotten all about him,” old Mr. Ker replied with considerable triumph. “Besides, I never connect him with young Joshua, that’s lived in London all these years since he was seventeen.”

  The tower beyond the burn was actually at about four hundred feet above sea level, but only about a tenth of that distance above the level of the surrounding moor. In appearance it resembled, Mrs. Bradley thought, Neidpath Castle, rather than Branxholm, for it had the same kind of situation on a sloped steep bank above the clear waters of the burn, and a similar rocky, inviting little path leading up to and beyond it. The burn, however, was narrow, a trickle of moorland water, whereas past Neidpath ran the boulder-strewn, swirling Tweed not more than a mile from Peebles.

  In place of the woods opposite Neidpath, and Branxholm’s deep grassy bank and delicate birches and its shield of ancient, blue woods, this tower had, without the high, stark, cliff-broken grandeur of Smailholm, something of that tower’s romantic remoteness; its barren wildness, its treeless, unprotected, defiant guardianship of moor and burn and sky.

  The first prospect of the keep showed a low doorway filled with a nail-studded door, a small rectangular window twenty feet up, and above that a double window with a stone baluster separating the two halves. Above this again, and almost at the top of the tower was another and a smaller opening. Its most remarkable feature, however, was what appeared to be a round-headed water-gate, although, as it was well above the waters of the burn, it may have been the entrance to a cellar.

  “This is as far as you’ll take the car,” said David. George, who had come independently to this conclusion, pulled up, and came round to open the door. Mrs. Bradley got out. David Ker remained where he was, and Mrs. Bradley walked alone up the steep, rocky path to the keep.

  Her first summons, a determined knocking upon a large iron ring fixed in stone, went unanswered, so she took out the police whistle she usually carried, and blew upon it three shrill blasts. For about five minutes after this she waited, and was about to knock again when the door of the keep came open. It yawned before her like a cavern, but, as she took a step forward with the object of addressing herself to whoever had let it fall back, she saw that nobody was there.

  The passage behind the door was in total darkness; not the thick, rich, black, mysterious darkness of a curtained sanctuary, but the brownish void of an unwindowed room. She switched on the pocket torch she always carried with her.

  The passage was not tenanted; neither had ghostly agency opened the door. It was clear that it had been pulled to and that someone had forgotten or neglected or been unable to fasten it.

  On the inside there were massive iron bolts, and, for additional security, there was a great iron bar, which could be dropped into slots across the doorway.

  Mrs. Bradley returned to the car. George had been following her towards the gloomy-looking keep, of which, with Cockney shrewdness and an odd streak of Cockney inconsequence, he heartily disapproved. He stumbled on the steep, uneven path and fell forward on to his hands. The wind, which was now blowing strongly over the moor, took off his chauffeur’s cap and spun it freakishly sideways on to a patch of heather.

  Mrs. Bradley, assured that George was not hurt, came up to the car to David.

  “I think it’s a case of home, sweet home,” she said. “I can’t get an answer and the occupant has gone out, leaving the door unlatched.”

  “Can’t get an answer be damned! Old Joshua never goes out,” responded her erstwhile suitor. “And it’s a pity if I can’t get my guests admitted on to my own property, anyway. The keep belongs to me.”

  George had returned to the car, and was standing beside it, awaiting orders. Suddenly there was the mild and muffled explosion of a motor cycle engine some distance away on the moor. Mrs. Bradley, followed by George, leapt up the steep path to command the view, but, although they could see the cyclist, they could not recognise, at that distance, either the man or the machine.

  “Shall I pursue him, madam?” George enquired. “It will not be good for the car, but I think I could overtake him, if you wished.”

  “No, no, George. Let him go. I know who he is well enough, and no doubt you do, too. We have other business here. With Mr. Ker as our protector, we are going to storm the castle.”

  She led the way in to what had been at one time the guardroom, but which appeared to have been used by the tenant as a combined kitchen and scullery. It was lighted by two almost burnt-out candles. Two or three greasy plates, and two glasses still smelling of whiskey, were scattered untidily on a side table and near them was an enamel bowl with a dark ring of grease half-way up the side.

  In a tin dish on the floor, half under the table, were some bones and some vegetable peelings, and a jug of milk, three-quarters empty, and with a yellow, hard crust of soured cream to show where high-water mark had been, stood on the table beside a cocoa-stained cup.

  There was an archway, uncurtained and without a door, which led from this deplorable anteroom to the living room of the castle. Here there was a little natural lighting, for the floor of the room above had disappeared. The joists could still be seen. The lowest window, which Mrs. Bradley had seen as the car approached the tower was able to light, although dimly, this lower room.

  The most important pieces of furniture here were a table and a large, dark heavy sideboard, but the most striking feature of the room were its occupants; both of them horribly dead. They had been seated at the table and their game of chess was still on the chessboard before them. Except that one of the white pawns had rolled over, and a red knight lay messily in a coagulated pool of a darker red than itself, the game did not seem to have been disturbed. Mrs. Bradley, gazing with sharp black eyes at the board, could deduce the course of the play. A knotty point had been reached. It was easy to imagine the rapt concentration of the players. These, however, lay, the one with his split skull down upon the table, the other back in his chair, his head cleft almost to the chin. The dark stone walls and the darker wood of the table discretely minimised the horrors, among which Mrs. Bradley detected blood, spattered brains, and splintered bone.

  There was a choked gurgle from David Ker. Mrs. Bradley, turning, signed to George, who was white and whose throat was working, to take the sick man outside. She herself switched on her torch again, and with its added light made a swift examination of the scene.

  The weapons with which the double murder had been so expeditiously committed had been left for her, or anybody else, to see. They were battle-axes, one with a thirty-inch handle and a blade the size of an executioner’s axe, the other, a shorter, lighter weapon such as a man might have swung single-handed from a seat on horseback in battle.

  Plainer evidence of planned and deliberate murder there could hardly be, thought Mrs. Bradley, noting the weapons and the positions of the two bodies. From behind the bent back of the very elderly man whom she supposed to be old Joshua Ker, the long-handled axe had come down with devilish inevitability and force across the narrow table and on to the young man’s head. It was he who had fallen forward. The old man was the one lying back in his chair, having looked up, amazed, to see who had smitten the first blow.

  Mrs. Bradley approached the younger man with her torch. His face was hidden and she did not propose to touch him until the police arrived. She surmised, however, that she was looking upon the last of Mr. Geoffrey.

  She made no further investigation. The facts were facts for the police. David was seated, white-faced and breathing heavily, in the car. George had squatted down upon the step and (old soldier though he was) was wiping his face. Mrs. Bradley grimaced at both of them, wiped David’s brow, patted him behind the ears with eau-de-Cologne from the first-aid outfit, which she always carried in the car, and told George to smoke a cigarette.
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br />   “Don’t plaster me with that scent,” objected David. “A drop of whiskey is what I’d give ten years for. Poor old Uncle Joshua! What fiend from hell’s been here and done such a thing? Geoffrey, too. Could he have killed old Joshua, and then himself, in a fit of madness, would you think?”

  “They’ve both been murdered,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “A man can shoot or stab another, and then turn his weapon on himself, but I don’t believe it’s possible to split one’s own skull with a battle-axe. I have no whiskey, David, but here’s the brandy, my dear. Give George a tot when you’ve finished. He looks white about the gills. I don’t suppose it will upset his driving,” she added.

  As soon as they reached David’s house Mrs. Bradley rang up the police. It was then about a quarter to five, and tea was on the table. David Ker gave the table one glance, and then retched, much to the distress of his housekeeper. She and Mrs. Bradley got him to bed, the tea was “wetted” for the second time, and just as they had finished a call came through from Lanark. It was turned eight o’clock by the time the police arrived. They announced that they would go immediately to the scene of the murders, and kindly promised not to disturb the household again that night, but indicated that they would be over very early in the morning.

  “Nonsense,” said David, when this news was communicated to him. “I know Braid. He’s a very nice fellow. Tell him that of course we shall put him and his people up for the night.”

  “He has only one man with him,” Mrs. Bradley replied.

  “Good sakes! Then tell Elspat to get the beds ready at once. And warn him to look for fingerprints on those two battle-axes.”

  “I don’t think he will need to be warned about that,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And now, David,” she added, when the two policemen had gone off on their grim and messy errand, “you and I must have a word about your family connections. There appear to be wheels within wheels, a process which invariably excites me.”