In the meantime David Ker, the two girls, and Elspat had arrived at the tower. It was a strongly-built castle, even for a Border keep, and the removal of the bodies had, as Gillian pointed out, made the place seem more homely.
“But you didn’t see the bodies,” said David, who had taken a great fancy, as had Elspat, to Gillian and her sister.
“I can imagine them,” Gillian unanswerably replied.
It had been easy enough, following Mrs. Bradley’s directions, to get in, and, once inside, they set about barricading the stronghold in all the ways that its builders had intended.
“Now,” said Elspat, who was quietly and supremely enjoying herself, “let them come ben that can.”
She made a fire in a small room, which had probably been the solar or parlour of the keep (or possibly, said Elspat, sentimentally, the lady’s bower) and, from provisions they had all helped to carry over the rough moorland road, she soon prepared a meal.
“Grand!” said Lesley. Her sister echoed this praise. David smoked his pipe. A breeze, which had got up strongly since their arrival at the sanctuary, whistled pleasingly in the chimney. Elspat employed herself in cleaning out the room, which had been used by old Joshua. They were unexpectedly tidy, but this, Elspat announced, was due to the police. The girls did not believe this, but, such was Elspat’s personality, did not dare to say so.
By nightfall David was restless, and although he was commanded by his housekeeper not to fash himself, and, later, not to be an old wife, he insisted upon going to the front door by which Mrs. Bradley had entered to find the dead men, and staring out across the moor in the direction of his house.
When it grew dark and still he could see no glimmer of light from the windows, he took comfort from the belief that Mrs. Bradley was not there, but had gone off on some wild-goose chase in search of the title-deeds, as she had said that she should. He went back into the castle, and he and Elspat, between them, made the rounds of the place to be certain that every hole by which even a mouse could enter the tower was blocked, the doors bolted, and the occupants safely blanketed away behind the three-foot thickness of the walls.
The hours passed. The girls grew sleepy, and reluctantly allowed themselves to be persuaded to go to another room and lie down. They made some attempts to go to sleep, but gave it up soon, sat up, and quietly talked together.
At midnight David himself lay back in his chair, and went heavily to sleep, but the grim woman Elspat, wrapping a rug about her gaunt, thin shoulders, made up the fire, put out the candles, and sat up, straight as a statue, her blood stirred strangely and joyously by the call to arms of an unexpected feud.
Mrs. Bradley listened. She had made her plans in expectation of just such a visit as the one, which was now being paid, but she had imagined that it would come a little later, probably after it was dark.
At nine o’clock it was very far from being dark. In fact, had she looked out of the window she could, she knew, have seen and counted the visitors. Their number did not affect her plans; neither, at that moment, did the hour at which they had chosen to call on her.
Mr. Joshua’s own plans had been put into action a little sooner than he had intended, owing to the departure from the house of two of the able-bodied men. He had rejoiced to see George and James Alexander go, but the fact that he did not in the least know when to expect them back did something to mitigate his pleasure.
Mrs. Bradley continued to listen. She could hear conversation on the doorstep, but could not distinguish words. Then the voices ceased, and a second knocking thundered on the door. At this she rose, laid aside her book, glanced in a mirror at her hair, patted it (on the same principle, presumably, as that adopted by the Spartans, who combed theirs before a battle) and went to answer the door.
“Ah,” she said, in a deep, rich tone of welcome. “Come in, my dear Mr. Devizes. I have been following your case, as you asked me to do. It is so kind of you to call. We must have a chat about it.”
These tactics appeared to surprise Mr. Joshua.
“I really came to see my uncle,” he said.
“Another uncle? But do come in,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And your friend.”
There were only two of them, then. She wondered how soon the others would make their entry, and then how soon after that the fun was due to begin. She led the way into the room from which she had come. Mr. Joshua introduced his friend.
It was not, Mrs. Bradley was interested to see, the black-avised, white-washed Mr. Frere. This short and swarthy young man was not any one of the gang that she had seen before. It looked as though reinforcements beyond what had been anticipated would shortly be brought up to the attack.
She wondered how Mr. Joshua proposed to kill his uncle in the presence of so many witnesses. But she reflected that the most surprising and interesting feature of the case was the way in which Mr. Joshua had been able to commit three murders already without leaving any clue on which he could be arrested. The all-important evidence of motive, whilst David Ker was still living, was not obtainable. The stabbing of Graham Ker in Newcastle was still mysterious, although no longer officially suicide. There was no clue at all to the identity of the tower murderer. In fact, given Mr. Joshua’s boldness and the bit of luck without which all human enterprise is probably doomed to failure, there seemed no reason, Mrs. Bradley thought, why one-half of the world should not murder the other half and get away with it.
Mr. Joshua’s nervousness, which had been so much a feature at their first interview, was still apparent. Neither did the friend appear at ease.
Mrs. Bradley made conversation, and produced in old-lady fashion, Madeira (which she even went so far as to refer to as canary wine) and sponge fingers. Nothing was said about David Ker, and for nearly an hour she amused herself by side-stepping the subject every time Mr. Joshua attempted to introduce it.
At last, when the clock was striking ten, she decided that the game had lasted long enough, so she glanced at her watch, and then said casually:
“I am afraid you will be disappointed at not seeing Mr. Ker this evening, but he is from home, and unlikely, now, to return. He will be staying with his friends, no doubt, now that it has become so late. He said he did not think that he should return after dark.”
The two men glanced at one another, and Mr. Joshua got up.
“In that case,” he said courteously, his small teeth showing in a little, foxy smile, “we mustn’t detain you, Mrs. Bradley.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Bradley, in a tone of disappointment. “Don’t go yet. Don’t you want to know what progress I am making?”
“You can’t be making any progress,” said Mr. Joshua, deliberately. He looked her in the eye for the first time. “You know what’s what, I reckon.”
“I guess that’s so,” said the friend. From his waistband, which, Mrs. Bradley noted with fascinated interest, was a cummerbund of vivid red and yellow (a stealing of Jove’s thunder of which he was unaware), he had taken a small revolver. He tapped the muzzle of it on to the palm of his hand with the movement a man might use to remove a loose dottle of tobacco from a pipe.
“Come on. Come clean. Where is he?” said Mr. Joshua.
“Where is Mr. Ker?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. “Well, now, I’m willing to tell you on one condition. But, my dear Mr. Devizes,” she added, with deep horror, “You are unprovided! Look at your friend!”
Mr. Joshua, against what would have been his better judgment had he been given time to think, did look at his friend—only for the fraction of a second, it is true—and at that instant Mrs. Bradley flicked out her little gun. The first bullet went through the friend’s wrist, and he dropped his revolver involuntarily upon the floor, where it chose to fall near enough to Mrs. Bradley’s foot to be kicked neatly backwards underneath her chair. The second bullet parted Mr. Joshua’s sandy hair in a new and unbecoming furrow, which was soon red with blood from the scraped skin.
“My condition—” began Mrs. Bradley; but her condition was not even he
ard, much less considered by the two gentlemen. They both dived out of the room.
Mrs. Bradley encouraged their flight with another couple of bullets, one of which broke a vase on a bracket, the pieces descending film-fashion, on to Mr. Joshua’s head, and the other of which entered in behind the left ear of a stag, where Mrs. Bradley hoped it would remain unnoticed by David Ker, who was particularly proud of the trophy.
The front door slammed. The footsteps continued to run. Mrs. Bradley remained in cover. Bullets, presumably from a gun carried by Mr. Joshua rattled against the house, and one, at least, broke a window.
Mrs. Bradley continued to listen. Then she bolted the door, and locked the door of the room with the broken window. She could hear no sound of a motor cycle or a car. That meant that the two men had no immediate intention of leaving the neighbourhood. She went back to the room, which the three of them had so lately and dramatically vacated, and, seating herself out of range of the windows, she took out her notebook.
She then looked at the clock again. By the time she had finished it was nearly ten minutes to eleven. Even by the most liberal computations, young Tom should have been met long before this at Lanark, and she had been expecting, at any moment during the time that she had spent in making up her notes, to hear the sound of the car.
Eleven o’clock came, and then half-past eleven. Something, clearly, had gone wrong. She supposed that young Tom had lost the train, or had failed to get his connection at Carlisle. Of the two courses, which would have been open to her if she had had the assistance of George and James Alexander Musgrave, only one was now possible to follow, especially since she could not even telephone. She must vacate the house and contrive to make her way to the tower without being discovered by the enemy.
She thought the position out carefully. It was necessary to let George know that nobody was at the house, so, watching the clock creep to midnight, she decided, at a minute to twelve, to risk capture, walk along the moorland road in the opposite direction from the tower, and flag the car with her torch. If she mistook the sound of its approach, and pulled up a car filled with Mr. Joshua’s thugs and myrmidons, so much the worse for her, she thought, with some amusement of a grim but genuine kind.
Gillian was seriously perturbed. She would not have denied, if anyone had asked her such a question, that she felt very considerable affection for her odd and witch-like aunt-by-adoption, and the fact remained that their friendship was strong and that there was a pronounced feeling of mutual sympathy between them. Gillian felt acutely responsible, on the present occasion, for Mrs. Bradley’s personal safety, for, as she had admitted to Lesley, she had been the means of Mrs. Bradley’s entry into the affair of Mr. Joshua.
When, therefore, the night darkened, and still Mrs. Bradley did not join them at the tower, the girl became anxious. She did not know what to expect in the way of an attack on the tower by Mr. Joshua; but, if things or people were going, in Lesley’s expression, to get tough, she wanted to be certain that Mrs. Bradley was safe; at any rate, not alone in her danger.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Lesley. “We’re in no danger. Nobody wants to kill us. Suppose we trek back to the house, and get her to come back here with us?”
“Not much good, I’m afraid,” answered Gillian. “Ten to one she wouldn’t come; and, ten to one, from what she said to Mr. Ker, she isn’t there. She’s gone off treasure hunting on her own. We’d never trace her in the darkness.”
“Well, if she’s left the house, she’s probably safe enough,” her sister argued. “Now I’ve got another idea. I think we ought to get some notion of the geography of this place. I’ve only the very foggiest idea of how it’s built, and which part leads to where.”
“We can’t begin exploring at this time of night,” expostulated Gillian. “How can we? We should only wake everybody up.”
“Oh, well, let’s go to sleep, then. That’s what we’re here for, I suppose.”
“But what about Aunt Adela?”
“I don’t know; but if we can’t get at her, I don’t see what you’re worrying about.”
“I’m not worrying about anything. I just thought—keep absolutely still!”
Lesley was well-disciplined and had strong nerves, but she needed all her training and all her phlegm and will-power to do exactly as she was told.
“I just thought,” Gillian continued, speaking as naturally as a wildly-beating heart and a feeling of faintness would allow her to do, “that perhaps it would be a good plan if we went to the kitchen, or whatever they call it in this place, and foraged for food. Fall sideways, it doesn’t matter which way.”
Lesley flung herself flat on the ground to her left, and rolled right over. There was a slight thud and then the click of a closing aperture.
“Keep your locks well oiled, don’t you,” said Gillian. Before her, in his stockinged feet, stood Mr. Joshua. Above his head the picture, which had concealed an aperture had settled once more into place. It displayed, to the untutored eyes of those who did not know what lay behind it, an insincere and vacuous-looking portrait of the late Prince Consort.
Mr. Joshua made no reply to Gillian’s ironical question, but stood there looking at Lesley, who had now picked herself up and was standing beside the picture. He allowed them to inspect the gun he carried.
“So what?” said Lesley, managing to catch his eye.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Joshua. “Now I’ll tell you what it is. Mrs. Bradley knows where to find what I’m after, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, she does,” said Lesley.
“Has she spilt it?”
“Has she what?”
“Has she told you where it is?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, where is it, then?”
“Somewhere along the banks of the River Clyde. That’s all she knows. She’s gone tonight to find out the rest,” said Lesley solemnly.
“Oh, Lesley! Don’t tell him that!” cried Gillian. Mr. Joshua looked from one to the other of them. Then he seated himself upon the floor.
“Take a seat, won’t you?” he said. “We shall be here some time, and I shouldn’t really like you to feel tired. Would you mind telling me how many people are in your party, and where they are all to be found at this hour of the night—or rather, morning?”
He moved the gun ever so slightly, but the movement was significant enough. Lesley stirred as she sat. Mr. Joshua smiled. Gillian said:
“Well, we’re expecting the others to join us at any moment, but, so far, they are only ourselves, old Elspat the housekeeper, and Mr. Ker.”
“Very nice; very nice,” said Mr. Joshua. He glanced down at the gun, waggled it a little, and then added: “Very, very nice.”
“You might tell me one thing, before we go any further,” said Gillian, striving to maintain an unforced note. “Was it you who sat next to me in the music-hall in Newcastle, the night you killed your cousin Graham and shot at Mrs. Bradley across his body?”
“It was,” said Mr. Joshua, with a smirk.
“Thanks. I’ve won my bet, then, Lesley,” said Gillian, turning to her sister. “You remember I said so, that time you tried to smother me with the rug and kick my wrist?”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” Lesley replied. “Nothing doing.” She looked up confidingly at Mr. Joshua, hoping that he had not followed her sister’s hint and her own repudiation of it. “Wouldn’t you have thought it a pretty safe bet?” she enquired.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr. Joshua, squatting down on his haunches, but not attempting to lay aside the gun. “After all, it might not have been me.”
“You were seen in Newcastle, you know, with poor Geoffrey,” Gillian went on.
“Why do you say ‘poor’ Geoffrey?” Mr. Joshua enquired.
“I say poor Geoffrey because he’s dead,” answered Gillian, unable to restrain a slight shiver at the recollection that it was in that very house that Geoffrey’s body had been found, and that she was looking upon his murderer.
Gillian stared at him in astonishment. His shocked amazement seemed entirely genuine. She realised then, for the first time, to what extent the sandy little man was a villain.
“He was found dead here,” she said unwillingly.
“Poor Geoffrey,” said Mr. Joshua. There was a slight pause. Gillian, terrified of having to sit in silence, made an effort to resurrect the conversation, and wished that Mrs. Bradley were at hand.
At the end of three-quarters of an hour, Mrs. Bradley began to wonder whether she had done wisely in deciding to leave David’s house.
The night was dark and not particularly warm, and she reflected that if something had happened to delay seriously young Tom’s arrival at Lanark station, she might easily wait about all night for the car, and, even then, in the end, be disappointed.
She wondered, also, whether she was at fault in her diagnosis of Mr. Joshua’s movements. He would, she thought, reconnoitre at the tower, and he would probably make some attempt to find out how many people were likely to be in occupation of the keep. But she still could not make up her mind how the murder would be committed.
She had just decide to make her way to the keep to join the others when she was aware of a lantern, which bobbed and danced above the heather about thirty yards, as nearly as she could judge the distance, in front and to the left of where she was standing.
She walked towards it, secure in the protection of the black night and the quietness of her footfalls on the heather, and then, as it moved onwards in front of her in the direction in which she herself had elected to travel, she followed it, shortening the distance between herself and the light to about half, she thought, of what it had been at first.
The bearer of the lantern moved rapidly, but seemed to have no clear idea of the way. Over humps and tussocks Mrs. Bradley followed him, and was saved from stepping into a little burn by the fact that he did so first. He must have dropped the lantern, for the light, which had been dashed suddenly from her view, did not appear again, and she could hear the man floundering and cursing. She recognised the voice of Mr. Joshua. He seemed to be alone.
Hangman's Curfew (Mrs. Bradley) Page 22