Mrs. Bradley made for Councillor Grant.
“I want to see you,” she said, “as soon as these people have gone.”
“Then you’ll need to come to Georgie’s,” pronounced Councillor Grant, as one who, while accepting the inevitable, does not propose to bow to it. “And if your business is private, you’ll no need to pay heed to Brither Bannerman, for he’ll be with us, and we’re no a temperance organisation,” he added, with the same darkling humour as Councillor Commy had displayed.
“I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Bradley simply. “How do you do, Brother Bannerman?”
Brother Bannerman shook her solemnly—lugubriously almost—by the hand, and the three of them followed the retiring congregation down the stairs. The pimply boy put out the lights immediately he had collected the leaflets from the floor and the seats of the chairs, and the meeting was indubitably over.
“Your organisation is political, then, I take it?” said Mrs. Bradley, as they stepped into the dark street from the even darker passage.
“Na, na, it’s no poleetical,” Councillor Grant replied, setting a good pace in the direction of the station. “How did you hit on us so easily?”
“I took time and thought,” Mrs. Bradley replied, sandwiching herself between the two evangelists, who, hands in pockets and both apparently accustomed to the dark street they were treading, slumped along with the crude tirelessness of elephants, one on either side of her. She added, two minutes later:
“I also asked one or two people where you held your meetings.”
Mrs. Bradley enjoyed the walk, although not another word was spoken until they were all seated at a table in the saloon bar of the “Rat and Cow-catcher” near the railway-station. It was a shabby, ill-favoured looking hostelry. Beer dripped drearily from the next table on to the floor. The barmaid, behind the uninspiring bar, polished glasses to the rhythm of a monotonous crooning, pausing whiles to wet her forefinger and remove some unusually pertinacious stain from the rim of a wineglass or tumbler. The proprietor lounged between the saloon bar and the private bar, which were separated from one another by a wooden partition on the customers’ side, and smoked a cigarette. An erstwhile but discreditable-looking customer of the public bar, making stealthy entrance, snooped cautiously about for cigarette-ends. Councillor Grant beckoned him furtively, gave him two cigarettes from his own case, whispered, “Dinna forget James Grant,” and dismissed him, finger to lip.
Mrs. Bradley, aware that the municipal elections were due to take place in November (and being vague as to the possible effect on them of the war) regarded these dubious proceedings tolerantly, and, when Councillor Grant began to get to his feet to go to the bar and give his order, she forestalled him nimbly, observing that she had joined the party uninvited and was going to pay for the drinks.
“It’s all right. I had no intention of paying for a drink for you,” said Councillor Grant, with that directness, candour, and simplicity which (she supposed), together with the free meals at the Mission Hall, endeared him to the voters in his ward, “but if you’ve made up your mind, well, mine’s a double whisky. Speak up, Brither Bannerman. What’s yours?”
“I didn’t really oughter, James, and that’s a fact,” said Brother Bannerman, coming to life with a jerk, and speaking with Cockney hoarseness. “But if it’s all the same, I’ll have a rum. Rum,” he added to Mrs. Bradley, his dull eye lighting up, “is the drink in this ’ouse.”
“Indeed? Then I think I’ll have some,” she responded, with great cordiality. The barmaid, who seemed accustomed to taking orders for a mixed party from the female element of it, sniffed (but of necessity, not discouragingly), breathed heavily upon the tumbler into which she proposed to pour Councillor Grant’s double whisky, and then took down two tots for the rum.
“Leave it,” said Brother Bannerman hoarsely. “I’ll come over and help carry it, and I know how much soda for James. Save you carrying the siphon.”
Mrs. Bradley had not thought of carrying the siphon, but she now perceived the necessity of someone’s doing so, for the barmaid had lost all interest in the proceedings, except to say “Two and two” and to slap down the fourpence change like somebody flinging down the gauntlet.
Whether the rum was good or bad, Mrs. Bradley neither knew nor cared. Brother Bannerman sniffed at his cautiously, observed, with dark satisfaction, that it was the right stuff, and swallowed the lot at a gulp.
Mrs. Bradley attacked hers with a little more circumspection, but tactfully pronounced it very good. As she had not drunk neat rum before (so far as she could remember), she was hardly an authority, but she eagerly concurred with Brother Bannerman’s suggestion that they should have another.
Upon this, Mrs. Bradley discovered that the rum was sixpence a glass, for Brother Bannerman made this clear by taking out a handful of small change and debating aloud with Councillor Grant whether he had better change half a crown (which he was clearly loth to do) or give the exact money, in which case he would not have a shilling for the gas when he got home.
“And now,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I want to know all about Councillor Smith: why he was murdered, who murdered him, and exactly how it was done.”
“Oh, aye,” said Councillor Grant, apparently not in the least surprised by the demand. “I’m not saying, mind you, that anybody can answer all that; forbye we’ve taken time from our muneecipal duties, you ken, to speir at Councillor Woods. But there’s little satisfaction in that. Yon Woods tells what he thinks he will. Nae mair and nae less.”
“Would it be of any use for me to have a wee crack with Councillor Woods?” asked Mrs. Bradley, confident that she was addressing Councillor Grant in his own tongue. Councillor Grant stared owlishly at her over his whisky, finished his drink with some suddenness, and bellowed for more.
The barmaid, apparently discouraged by the numbers or the condition of the glasses given into her charge by the proprietor, had abandoned them and was doing her hair. She finished the curl she was engaged on, and sagged to the side of the Councillor.
“Another double, do you want?” she enquired. “You’ll have to have it quick. We close in a coupla minutes.”
“Get it,” said Councillor Grant. Mrs. Bradley, catching the eye of Brother Bannerman, which looked plaintive and expostulatory, hastily added a couple of rums to the order.
“One double your own splash two Old Jamaica, one and eight,” gabbled the barmaid.
“It was two and twopence last time,” said Mrs. Bradley, conspiratorially.
“The last drink ordered is always on the house here,” said Councillor Grant, morosely. “Holds his licence on those terms, you see,” added Brother Bannerman, gazing commiseratingly at his friend.
“You don’t mean that the landlord here is the man I’ve to speir at about the murder?” Mrs. Bradley exclaimed.
“What else?” enquired Councillor Grant, looking coldly at the amount of whisky in the glass the barmaid had placed upon the counter. “I’ll just be getting my drink.”
He bore down magisterially upon his glass, and measured the quantity carefully with two thick fingers before he added the soda.
“Who was the person who left the meeting during the collection?” Mrs. Bradley suddenly enquired. Councillor Grant looked up, his piggish eyes suspicious, alarmed, and hostile.
“I dinna ken,” he said briefly and untruthfully. “And it’s useless to speir at Brother Bannerman,” he added. “For he doesna ken one air raid warden frae anither.”
“Oh, does he not?” said Mrs. Bradley. She beamed at Brother Bannerman who, awkwardly but with courteous intent, raised his glass and observed:
“Well, here’s the sex.”
Mrs. Bradley, its representative, bowed.
“Selina,” she said when she got home, “who is the air raid warden for the Broadway district of Willington?”
Lady Selina, who was playing patience, glanced at the clock, then at her game, and then went across to her bureau. She took out a large exercise-boo
k, opened it, and clicked her tongue.
“I might have remembered,” she said. “Of course, it’s that idiotic woman—Parks—Isabel Parks. No use at all, but she volunteered, and they took her. I protested (in private, of course. One can hardly call a woman an incompetent idiot to her face), but it was of no use.”
“I suppose Mrs. Platt had some hand in the appointment of the wardens,” Mrs. Bradley observed.
“She certainly had no hand in mine,” said Lady Selina sharply.
“No, no. The Willington wardens.”
“Oh, I expect so, yes. The way that woman is allowed to run the Council is a scandal. I’ve often said so. But what can one do? She has money, and those people worship it. If they ever get a Mayor she will probably finance him.”
“I heard that she would be Mayor herself, if Willington became a borough.”
“Charter Mayor? Yes, very likely. Just what she’d expect, impossible creature.”
From this Mrs. Bradley gathered that at some point (never, incidentally, shown to Mrs. Bradley) the paths of Mrs. Platt and of Lady Selina had crossed, to the disadvantage, in some way, of the latter.
• CHAPTER 15 •
The Five Sages of China.
Title of a Finger-tip Painting by Kao Ch’i-P’ei.
• 1 •
“I suppose I’ve made an enemy,” said Mrs. Bradley, relating the march of events to her son next day. “It appears that, by ordering rum for myself and for poor Brother Bannerman, I compelled Councillor Grant to pay for his last double whisky, whereas, had I held my unfortunate tongue, the creature would have had his drink without payment.”
“Only half of it,” said Ferdinand. “He couldn’t have a double on the house. The terms of the licence used to be peculiar, and are the pride of the district. It appears that, long ago—how long, I don’t know—a certain magistrate used always to be the very last man out of the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher.’ Well, the place got a bad name, and there was local representation to the bench that the licence should not be renewed; so the landlord—actually, I believe, an ancestor of the present Woods—suggested to his customer, that magistrate, that he could always get a free drink if he could persuade his brother justices to have the licence renewed.
“Well, it was renewed and, so that it couldn’t come out that the landlord had bribed a magistrate, the form of the agreement was to be that the last drink served each day was to be a free one. Most people don’t know that this has still remained the custom, although, of course, the licence doesn’t depend upon it nowadays, and those who do know keep the knowledge dark.”
“Ah,” said his mother. “Interesting. You don’t suppose…?” She did not finish her sentence. There was no need to do so. Ferdinand’s mind was as quick as hers. He smiled, and his dark brows took an upwards slant of Mephistophelian character.
“I am sure that Smith would have known of the custom,” he said. “By the way, Sally has resigned from the A.R.P. telephone service, I see, and is going on the land instead. Much better; very much better.”
“I think Selina prefers it,” said Mrs. Bradley. “She does not like to think of her working all night.”
“Sally prefers it, too,” said Ferdinand, who appeared to be in his young cousin’s confidence. “She can’t get over that particular night, you know.”
“No. It was horrible for her.”
“Have you got anywhere with it, Mother, do you think?”
“No proof, child; not the slightest bit of proof.”
“How’s our friend Burt?”
“He wants to leave the hospital. He thinks I should let him come out.”
“You can’t do that. He’ll be set on again. Obviously he knows too much.”
“But he doesn’t, you know. He knows just enough to be thoroughly tantalising both to himself and to me. The poor boy spends hours of his time, the nurse says, in trying to work out how his having dragged that unfortunate woman out of the river can have given the guilty person the impression that he knows something about the body found in the cistern. I am sure that Burt does, as a matter of fact, know more than he has told me. For one thing, he knows he robbed the body, and hopes I don’t know that. Subconsciously, of course, he may know something to the murderer’s disadvantage, over and above what he knows consciously.”
“By the way, Mother, I suppose it has occurred to you that your own lively interest in these affairs, coupled with your reputation as a sleuth, is enough to place you in a position of some danger? I mean, if the rather unintelligent Burt has already been marked down by the killer, merely for conferring with you, what about yourself?”
Mrs. Bradley cackled.
“That is why I sat among the hymn books during Councillor Grant’s meeting of the Sons of God Macedonian,” she explained.
“You did what?”
“I thought the air raid warden was over-zealous,” his mother continued. “There was very little light showing from the windows. My view is that the murderer heard that I was going to the mission hall—I may say that, hoping for developments, I did allow this to be known—and decided that it might be possible to put me out of action for a time. Realising that someone might think like this, I dived into the small room where they keep the hymn books, and waited until I heard somebody slip out. This happened whilst the offertory was being taken.”
“Somebody dodging the collection, probably, and not the murderer at all.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said his mother thoughtfully. “The person I mean did not get away without putting something into the plate, I am quite sure. People who are quite well known in the town don’t care to leave whilst the offertory is still being taken. I think we shall learn, when all is known, that the delinquent contributed to the (no doubt) good cause for which the money was collected, and then went out in the last verse of the offertory hymn, respectable to the end.”
“Oh, I see,” said her son. “So you know who the murderer is. I thought perhaps you did. Well, do look after yourself. There won’t always by hymn books handy.”
Mrs. Bradley cackled.
Her next appointment was with the landlord of the “Rat and Cow-catcher.” Probably, in another age, the inn had been the “Rating Dowager,” she imagined, and she was reminded of the elopements and post-chaises of more leisured and livelier times. Possibly the inn had changed horses for an infuriated mother or aunt in pursuit of the runaway couple, instead of the traditional angry father.
Out of business hours Councillor Woods proved to be a small, alert man with a foxy face which Mrs. Bradley did not, however, dislike, and a habit of clearing his throat after every statement as though he expected somebody to challenge it.
He was a widower; the barmaid was his daughter. Mrs. Bradley deduced that the throat-clearing was a nervous affectation dating from the days of his married life, and now unconsciously performed.
“The murdered Councillor?” he said, repeating Mrs. Bradley’s words whilst he revolved in his mind the scheme of declaring roundly that he knew nothing whatever about either the man or the murder.
“Yes. I am told that he had his last drink in this house,” said Mrs. Bradley unblushingly.
Councillor Woods looked at her with a combination of distress and distrust, and replied with the guarded manner of one who has known what it means to be cross-examined in court.
“And if I admitted that, p’raps I’d put myself in the wrong about the murder. He didn’t have his last drink in here. He couldn’t have had his last drink in here. And why? Because I know, as well as you do, as his last drink done for him, and no drink that’s going to do for anybody is served in this house.”
“I’m certain of that,” said Mrs. Bradley, conclusively. “But, tell me, Mr. Woods, wasn’t he with friends here that night?”
“Oh, there was a party of ’em, so to speak,” said Councillor Woods unwillingly. “Oh, yes, a party of ’em there was. I’m not denying it. Only, you see, they happened all to be ladies. Now what do you make of that?”
“Poison is notoriously a woman’s weapon, Mr. Woods.”
“Ah, but you see,” said the landlord, sinking his voice impressively, “it couldn’t of been anything to do with these ladies, because they’d got what they wanted at a little business meeting they had beforehand.”
“Oh, it was to celebrate a business meeting, was it?” said Mrs. Bradley, who had already heard all that Stallard could tell her but who hoped to get more out of Woods.
“King of Lady Godiva,” said Councillor Woods confidentially. “Same principle, if you cotton on to my meaning.”
Mrs. Bradley, with lively interest, said that she did not, so, after giving her a sharp, appraising glance, he proceeded to make his point clear.
“Like this as it were: the Ladies’ Knitting for the Services Committee at the Town Hall. Did you know we was applying to be a Borough? No? Oh, well, we are. There’s been agitation for years. Ever since Peasbury—as used to be called Peaston—got their Mayor and Corporation, us here in Willington didn’t see why we should take second place to them—see? And Mrs. Commy-Platt—you’ll have heard tell of Mrs. Commy-Platt?”
“I’ve met her.”
“Yes, well, she wanted to be, like, the Charter Mayor, see? And I think they’d give in to her, although I shouldn’t hardly go as far as that myself. I hold as a woman’s place is the home…”
“So does Herr Hitler,” said Mrs. Bradley, nodding.
Councillor Woods gave her another sharp look, but could not pierce her blandness, and its deceptive appearance of innocence. He changed the subject.
“Councillor Smith, him being a man of some humour—very dry, he could be—says he’ll willingly subscribe to the Knitting Fund if the Ladies’ Committee will drink a glass of stout with him here at the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher.’ Course, he never thought they’d do it, and they had to bargain with him to excuse the teetotal members, which accounted for eleven out of the sixteen ladies on the Committee. Well, Councillor Smith, he excused ’em, on account the other five turned up at the time appointed, which they did, the last whip-up, I reckon, coming from Councillor Mrs. Perk, who’s a Councillor in her own right, her husband never having stood. He see fit to beseech her not to go, but she being always one that believes in asserting herself, both inside the Council Chamber and out of it, although, mind you, a very nice lady if you stomach them, makes up her mind as she’ll go, if only to keep her husband in his place, and she persuades the other ladies to come too.”
Brazen Tongue (Mrs. Bradley) Page 14