Hangman's Curfew (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  She was not troubled, as to what would be the ultimate fate of Mr. Joshua, for it was logical to suppose that the mystery of the empty coffin must soon involve Mr. Frere, who, according to evidence, which could be produced from young Tom, should have been lying in it.

  The solving of this little problem of the corpse, which was not, would be bound to lead to the discovery of the corpse (or corpses, if the late Mr. Lancaster had had a servant or servants), which was. It was this corpse, which would arise, as it were, from its grave, to confront Mr. Frere, its impersonator, and it was at this point, thought Mrs. Bradley (truly, as it turned out shortly afterwards) that Mr. Frere would break down. His breaking down would at once involve Mr. Joshua, and that would be, for Mr. Joshua, the beginning of the end. From corpse to corpse, as it were, the police would pipe, advancing, and step by step, inevitably, Mr. Joshua would be compelled to follow, dancing.

  Mrs. Bradley grinned mirthlessly as she rustled the stiff pages of the title-deeds. Mr. Joshua’s ultimate fate would not cause her, she thought, to shed a tear.

  The grandfather clock in the guardroom where Elspat sat, knitting now, ticked on, with aged insistence upon the passing of time. At four o’clock Elspat got up, put away her knitting, went to the great door shaped like the archway leading into an Early English church, and listened carefully. Then she lay down on the cold stone flags, laid an ear to the ground, and listened again.

  She got up and ascended the stone staircase to the solar.

  “I hear them coming,” she said. “They’re dragging something. Likely they’ll burn us out.”

  Mrs. Bradley had already considered this possibility, but had rejected it because such a proceeding was likely to fire the heather, and a heath fire, even in that remote district, would soon attract attention. She mentioned this to Elspat, but the housekeeper shook her head.

  “They’ll not set fire to the house before dawn,” she said. “A fire doesna show up in daylight the same as it would in the dark. I’m thinking they could burn us out in a twa-three hours, and help wouldna be likely to come to us much before that.”

  Mrs. Bradley considered this lugubrious opinion and felt bound to admit that, although they were pessimistic, the housekeeper’s words were probably none the less true.

  “What do you advise, then, Elspat?” she enquired.

  “I would say a sortie. Dinna ye see, they’ll no expect anything of the kind. A pity your mon George and James Alexander Musgrave are no here to help us. Then we wad ding them fine.”

  Mrs. Bradley was not certain that the bold plan advanced by the housekeeper would succeed. All the same, she and Gillian were armed.

  “We maun surprise them, ye ken,” said Elspat. “It wouldna do to wait too long, for they think to frighten us into rinnin’ awa’. But gin we cam’ oot at them and themselves no thinkin’ aboot it, it was be a grand battle, ye ken.”

  Mrs. Bradley grinned, and went off to work out a plan. The first thing to do, she felt, was to reconnoitre. This reconnaissance would be best carried out by Elspat or herself. With the modern instinct against exposing other people to danger, she went to the second door of the keep, unbarred it, and slipped out, leaving the door ajar and Gillian, with her gun, on guard at the entrance.

  The night was preparing to give place to day. There was already a greying in the east. She crouched by the wall of the keep and listened. Then, keeping low, she made a complete circuit of the castle. At the water-gate she hid, and listened long, for she thought she heard stealthy movement.

  As she came round the angle of the wall towards the pointed arch of the main entrance to the keep, she discovered that movement certainly was going on, for a sheaf of brushwood seemed suddenly to make a rush at her, and it was only by a hasty withdrawal that she literally saved her face, which must otherwise have been lacerated by the twigs.

  She withdrew rapidly to the open door, slipped in, with a whispered word to Gillian, who had received orders not to fire unless the entrance was rushed, and pushed the door to, but did not close it for fear of giving the alarm.

  She then took over the guardianship of the door, and sent the girl on the rounds with a message.

  In a short time, Lesley, David, and Elspat were with them, and had received the simple instructions, which would lead to the evacuation of the keep.

  One by one the besieged slipped out and crept round the outer wall away from the side at which Mr. Joshua’s men were piling up the brushwood.

  There was only one danger. The brushwood was being dragged in through the wide gap on the burn side, where there was no longer a wall round what had been the courtyard of the castle. On every other side the wall enclosed the castle ground. This meant that the evacuating party would need to climb the wall on the opposite side of the courtyard, and the now rapidly lightening east made anyone climbing a wall a mark for a shot.

  Mrs. Bradley sent the two girls over first, then she and Elspat helped David up, and he, lying flat, pulled up Elspat. Mrs. Bradley heaved herself up, and all three dropped to the heather, whose springy stems broke their fall.

  The plan was to regain David’s house, and then trust to luck that George, James Musgrave, and young Tom would return in time to be of some assistance.

  This trust was soon repaid. By the time they reached the house the east was primrose instead of pale grey, and, bumping over the moorland track, which turned off the road from Biggar, came the car. Lesley and Gillian ran forward. Lesley tripped and came down, but was soon up again, and the young girls cantered, stumbling towards the now stationary headlamps.

  “Miss?” said George, addressing them collectively.

  “Oh, George, wait a minute. Aunt Adela’s just coming,” panted Gillian. “Is James Musgrave there?”

  “Yes, miss, at the back. And the boy madam was after. A nice dance he’s led himself and us,” said George, in vengeful accents.

  James Musgrave and young Tom got out. Mrs. Bradley and Elspat came up, the one with brisk, the other with lengthy strides. David, slower and stiffer, followed at his own pace.

  “Now, George,” said Mrs. Bradley, “bring a spanner. A nice large one would be best. James Musgrave, can you fight?”

  James Musgrave grunted. There was a humorous undertone in the sound.

  “And what about you, Tom?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  “Aye. I’m a right fighter, like,” Tom answered modestly. “I’d be best hammering stones on their yeads.”

  “You show an intelligent grasp of the situation,” said Mrs. Bradley. “It does you credit, Tom. I say nothing of the hour at which you chose to arrive, nor my anxiety concerning your welfare. We can discuss those things later, at our leisure. All the same, though, I am not at all sure you ought to be allowed to fight. You happen to be a material witness. You’ll be needed to swear to Mr. Frere.”

  “Havers,” said David. “Let the lad have his fun.”

  So it was settled that all should take part in the battle. It was still uncertain how many people were with Mr. Joshua in his attack on the tower, and of the proposed victims only two, in the popular conception, were capable of bearing arms. On the other hand, Mrs. Bradley was, in the popular phrase, a host in herself, David and young Tom were what the Scots are apt to call bonny fighters, and as for the two girls, they had the modern Amazonian streak, and were capable of proving themselves, if not as muscularly strong, as determined, brave, and resistant as the men.

  Mrs. Bradley, however, considered them doubtfully, when counting heads for the counter-attack on the besiegers still urged by the militant Elspat. She was old-fashioned enough to feel she owed a duty to their mother.

  “I think you two had better go back to the house and get some food ready. It will be needed,” she said in persuasive tones.

  “Elspat’s job,” said Lesley, engaged, out of range of the headlights, in delicate female preparations for battle. These condensed themselves into taking off her stays, and rolling down her stockings to the ankles.

  “And suppose
we got kidnapped or something stuck there in the house alone?” demanded Gillian, with unreasonable but forceful pessimism. “We’re coming with you, while we’re safe. George, got a spanner with a knob on it? If you have, you can take my gun?”

  “Spanners don’t take knobs, miss. They are more apt to end in a kind of what’s-it,” said George.

  “Gimme,” said Lesley, putting out her hand for one of the neat, heavy implements. “Gillian, keep your gun. George doesn’t want it. He likes a hand-to-hand.”

  As there was no time to be lost, if the counter-attack were not to fail, Mrs. Bradley thereupon gave the whole enterprise her blessing in a cackle of hideous mirth, and, under her direction, the oddly-assorted but resolute band set out.

  As they approached the castle, absolute silence was enjoined. This proved to be scarcely necessary, however, as, apart from the crackling of the piles of brushwood to which Mr. Joshua and his party had already set fire, he and they were shouting at the tops of their voices to the supposed inmates of the tower to come out and to surrender.

  This scene was enjoyed for a moment or two by the advancing band, before they charged in to the attack.

  The surprise assault succeeded beyond all hopes except those of the valiant Elspat. By the time the incendiaries had realised that the tables were turned, both George and James Alexander Musgrave, shedding their civilised prejudices like bathers shedding garments on the banks of a limpid stream, had waded into the thick of the fray and were laying about them with so much hearty goodwill that Mrs. Bradley, leaping after them, stumbled over the unconscious form of one of their victims and came down full length among the heather. Mr. Joshua’s bullet, which should have taken her in the body, ploughed a furrow, as she fell forward, in the ancient felt hat she was wearing, but did no other damage. At the same instant, Elspat, a torch of flaring pinewood (picked up out of the very heap, which was nearest to firing the building) gripped in her left hand and a heavy little axe in her right, caught Mr. Joshua on the end of a vicious swing with the back of the axe, and knocked him senseless into one of his crackling bonfires.

  She dropped her torch on the blazing heap, let go the axe, and, plunging both arms in, as she might have plunged them into the suds of a washtub, plucked him forth and, literally flinging him to the earth, stamped out the flames from his clothes.

  Gillian and Lesley had picked out Mr. Frere. He, however, bolted like a runaway horse as soon as he heard the sounds of battle. The fleet-footed girls pursued him, and brought him down. In supremely business-like fashion Lesley then sat on his head, whilst Gillian tied his ankles and wrists with his own handkerchief and one of her stockings, and rolled him further off from the rapidly encroaching flames.

  The morning was now full day. The rest of Mr. Joshua’s people, pursued, yelping, by George and James Musgrave, both of whom were obviously in their element, made off, and, since they would not repay pursuit, were permitted to go.

  Water from the burn, scooped up in buckets—the door of the keep from which the party had escaped was still open—was used to put out the fires. Fortunately the flames were still consuming the brushwood piles, and had scarcely reached the heather.

  “Dirty swine,” said George, as, smoke-blackened, tired, and somewhat disgruntled at having been baulked of his prey so soon, he returned, with James Musgrave, to the house.

  “It was a bonny wee fight, yon,” said James Musgrave, with moderate enthusiasm, wiping the end of his spanner with a handful of heather he had gathered. “Will I be coming back wi’ ye in the car?”

  “You better. Those blokes may have to be lifted in, and the ladies and the old gentleman have had enough, I should reckon.”

  “Well, Elspat,” said Mrs. Bradley, as the tall and militant housekeeper stalked beside her.

  “Aye,” the Borderer replied, with a slight, tight smile. Mrs. Bradley cackled, but her first task, when they were all assembled at the house, complete with prisoners of war, was to examine everybody’s hurts and dress them. Casualties were few. Elspat’s burnt hands and Mr. Joshua’s scorch-marks were the most serious, but were derided by both the victims. Mr. Joshua, in fact, literally spat with annoyance when Mrs. Bradley deftly attended to his burns, and Elspat pettishly exclaimed that it was all a lot of nonsense.

  “In fact,” said Gillian to Lesley, “if she hoots and havers any more, I shall go into screeching hysterics, especially if I hear Aunt Adela repeating the words and trying to get the intonation right.”

  “Ah, but Aunt Adela thinks she’s got Scots blood herself,” said Lesley, in extenuation of Mrs. Bradley’s behaviour, which, north of the Border, sometimes embarrassed her friends.

  Mr. Joshua was hanged on the twelfth of December, after a trial, which lasted three days. As Mrs. Bradley had expected, Mr. Frere, whose name turned out to be Hill (and who had served seven years for blackmail before he met Mr. Joshua), supplied the police with details of his partner’s exploits for which evidence was otherwise lacking, and received a sentence commensurate with this courtesy.

  Besides digging up the bodies of the poor, mad Mr. Lancaster and of the woman who was identified as his housekeeper, the police also discovered, under the ground on which the gamekeeper’s hut had been built, the body of the real Mr. Frere, a dark gentleman whose negroid experience had included (according to evidence gathered in his empty house) an extensive and messy acquaintance with the Voodoo cult.

  The housekeeper upon whom Mrs. Bradley had forced her entry; the pseudo-Mr. Lancaster’s groom, gamekeeper, and garrulous housemaid, had all been in the employment of Mr. Frere, and were thankful (they said) to obtain Christian work after his disappearance, which they had (they said) attributed to Satan his master. (This opinion Mrs. Bradley found was also current in the village.)

  There was little doubt of their complicity in the plot, and the housekeeper and gamekeeper were known to the police, but proof did not materialise and they were merely called as witnesses for the prosecution.

  The mysterious niece Phyllis (or Madeleine) turned out to be Mr. Joshua’s wife. She was not, of course, called upon to give evidence against her husband, and it was not clear what part, if any, she had played in his schemes.

  David Ker did not take advantage of the fact that there was a seam of coal beneath the land he had inherited, and as, in his will, he has left the whole of his property to Mrs. Bradley, it is likely that his few acres of Scottish moorland will retain their larger usefulness, and that tomorrow, and for many years to come, it will still be possible to say:

  “Lady Isobel sits in her bower sewing,

  Aye as the gowans grow gay—

  She heard an elf-knight his horn blowing,

  The first morning in May.”

  About the Author

  Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.