Brazen Tongue (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The weather was raw that morning, although no rain had fallen, and there was nothing to be seen of the red-haired woman on the lawn. Mrs. Bradley walked briskly up the still unweeded drive, but this time there was no sign of the Pickwickian Doctor Lecky. The great door, paint badly needed, was firmly closed. She dragged at an enormous, old-fashioned bell-knob, and heard the clanging dying away in the backstair regions somewhere, and had to pull it again before it was answered, and a servant opened the door.

  The servant went with the house, Mrs. Bradley thought. She was heavy and looked unkempt, and yet there was something about her which suggested better days, a more spacious, loveable life, and greater independence than she was enjoying at the time.

  “Not at home, madam,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Take my card.”

  She handed it in a yellow talon. The woman automatically wiped her fingers on her apron before she took it. She then shut the door, and Mrs. Bradley was left to gaze at the creeper on the wall, or, if she preferred it (and she did) at the cedar trees on the lawn.

  In a minute or two the door was opened again, this time by Doctor Lecky.

  “Ah, Doctor Lestrange Bradley,” he said. “I am sorry that my sense of self-preservation overcame me in quite such a primitive manner when first you called to see me. I am obliged to be careful. I have to make certain that the police…”

  “Never mind that now,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I want to talk to you.”

  “About night-gowns again, dear lady?”

  “About night-gowns again, if you like. They are washed on the premises, of course?”

  In a large, dark-panelled room which was heated by a small radiator, and decorated with two rather poor reproductions of pictures by Paolo Veronese, Mrs. Bradley continued the conversation by enquiring after the red-haired patient.

  “Well, you ought to know more about her than I do, you know,” said Lecky, with a puzzled stare. “You took her away.”

  “Ah, yes, of course I did. No, I don’t mean the red-haired patient. I know why I thought of her, though. I really meant Miss Platt. But you’re shy of that subject, aren’t you? Very well. I withdraw my enquiries about her. Now for the night-gown.”

  The effect of these remarks on Doctor Lecky was startling. He half rose from his chair, sat back again, made a constrained gurgling noise, and suddenly uttered the single syllable:

  “Christ!”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Bradley, pleasantly. “May I use your telephone?”

  She went to it and dialled the police.

  “Inspector, come here at once and arrest Doctor Lecky,” she said. She glanced at the doctor, who, with suffused face, was tugging wildly at his stiff but slightly grimy collar, and was emitting constricted groans of, Mrs. Bradley thought, a sepulchral character.

  “Don’t do anything foolish! Don’t!” he croaked. He fell back, still tugging and choking. Mrs. Bradley put back the receiver and felt his pulse. Then she thoughtfully picked up a very large paper-knife from the table, and poised it defensively so that when he came to himself it should be the first object upon which his possibly hopeful eyes would fall.

  This interesting and impressive tableau was broken up by the arrival of the police.

  “What do you charge him with?” the inspector rather dubiously enquired.

  “Anything for which he can’t get bail,” said Mrs. Bradley gently. The unfortunate man gave a strangled yelp of dismay at this medieval reply.

  “You can’t do that,” he said.

  “No, we can’t do that,” said the inspector.

  “Charge him with kidnapping, then,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning. “You’ve got a warrant, haven’t you?”

  The inspector caught the flutter of her left eyelid, the one farther from Lecky, and cheerfully accepted the cue.

  “Oh, warrant, yes,” he said. “I suppose I’d better read it to him.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Lecky, his cheeks fallen in and pale. “I’ve been arrested before. I know the procedure.”

  “That’s awkward,” said the inspector under his breath. He glanced at Mrs. Bradley for guidance.

  “Before you go with the inspector, Doctor,” she said, “please answer the question I put to you before the police arrived. When did you first miss Miss Platt?”

  “I reserve my defence,” said Doctor Lecky.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” said the inspector. “Then you’d better get along with the sergeant.”

  “Very well,” said Doctor Lecky. “But I don’t see how you tumbled to it,” he added to Mrs. Bradley.

  “It was the night-gown, to begin with,” she replied. “And then, of course, Mrs. Platt’s relatives gave away all the rest, and there was the added confirmation of the curious behaviour of the patient with red hair. But why didn’t you go along and identify the body? You must have guessed who it was.”

  “I knew who it was,” replied the doctor, “but Mrs. Commy-Platt suggested that it would be as well not to interfere. She pointed out that neither she nor I was to blame for what had happened…”

  “The murder, do you mean?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  “Yes. The first I heard I communicated with her. She’d heard, too, of course.”

  “How, exactly, did you hear, Doctor? Sergeant, may he sit down? I particularly want these questions answered.”

  The inspector had been scribbling busily. He looked up, caught Mrs. Bradley’s eye, and went on scribbling. The sergeant stood away from his prisoner, who took a seat at his own desk in an office chair, which he swivelled round immediately to face his interlocutor.

  “We heard by reading about it in the local and then in the daily paper. That was the same afternoon those boys found her in the tank.”

  “Oh, I see. I thought you meant us to understand that you received some private communication.”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. No anonymous letters, thank God.”

  “Yes, I suppose you would feel like that about anonymous letters,” said Mrs. Bradley, nodding. “I imagine you have received some dozens of those, in your time.”

  “You should say hundreds,” Lecky answered. “I moved out here to get away from the persecution. People are devils. They hunt you. It isn’t the law; it’s your fellow human beings that act like bloodhounds. Bloodhounds? Man-eating tigers, more like.”

  “So you and Mrs. Platt were in collusion?”

  “Well, when Mrs. Platt tipped me the wink that if it was her late husband’s sister, perhaps it would be as well for neither of us to have anything to do with the matter, of course I was all for believing that she was speaking for the best.

  “At the first, when we made our arrangements, we didn’t understand it might be murder. When that came out we were in Queer Street, because I ought to have reported to the police that Miss Platt had disappeared; and then, of course, I ought to have gone down to the mortuary and identified the body. So ought Mrs. Platt, I suppose, if it comes to that, but she swore she’d swear I hadn’t notified her, and, you see, with my previous unfortunate experience…”

  “The death of your wife, you mean?” said the inspector.

  “Yes. It wasn’t very nice for me to be mixed up in anything else.”

  “You’re mixed up in it now, all right,” the inspector almost indulgently remarked.

  “That he is,” said Mrs. Bradley ghoulishly. “One more question, Doctor, and then you can go with the sergeant: what is your theory about the murder of Miss Platt?”

  “I…I haven’t a theory. I know how she got out of here, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It isn’t. But tell me what you can.”

  “Miss Platt was what we psychologists”—he caught Mrs. Bradley’s basilisk eye and gulped—“in short, she had lucid intervals. In one of these fits of sanity she simply walked out of the house.”

  “In her night-gown, do you suppose?” enquired the inspector.

  “No, of course not. No sane person would walk about in her night
-gown, and, if a lunatic did, she’d soon be stopped. The whole point is that this woman was sane, either at the time, or just before, she was murdered.”

  “Did she know the neighbourhood?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “I shouldn’t think so. She had never been outside the grounds before. It was a condition of our keeping her in our charge that a careful watch was to be kept on her when she came to herself. It was known to Mrs. Platt that this would happen.”

  “Mrs. Platt appears to be the villain of the piece,” commented Mrs. Bradley. “Tell me, Doctor Lecky, when did it dawn on you that Miss Platt was not really a suitable or necessary adjunct (let us say) to a mental home?”

  “I…she…oh, she was barmy all right,” said Doctor Lecky with confidence. “I never doubted that.”

  “Perhaps you are not a good judge. When did you miss her?”

  “We missed her at our evening meal. It is part of our system to dine publicly—such of us as can—and Miss Platt was one of our more frequent diners in public. She had been particularly lucid for some days, and it was with some surprise that I noticed she was not among us on that particular evening.”

  “I see. What enquiry did you institute?”

  “None.”

  “None?”

  “It was optional on the part of the patients whether they accepted my invitation to dinner or not. Miss Platt had fits of extreme shyness, and I supposed that she was suffering in this way.”

  “You made no enquiry, then, until the next morning?”

  “Not even then. I saw, later on, in the local paper (which comes out, of course, once a week) that some woman had been found drowned in the A.R.P. cistern, but there was nothing to connect her in any way with Miss Platt, and, anyway, I didn’t think the paper could have got on to her so soon. It was not until Miss Platt’s nurse reported that the bed had not been slept in, that I had any inkling at all that Miss Platt was not in the house. Anyway, I did what I could. I sent to Mrs. Platt and then Mrs. Platt sent her companion, a lady named…”

  “Isabella.”

  “Yes, Isabella, with a note to keep my mouth shut. Then I realised that we were definitely in Queer Street.”

  “And still are,” said the inspector. “If you’ve finished all the fairy tales, get along. All right, Sergeant.”

  “I don’t think that we should be harsh with our interesting friend,” said Mrs. Bradley when the doctor and his escort had gone. “He is more plotted against than plotting.”

  “Glad you think so,” said the inspector. “I can’t make head or tail of the thing myself. Mrs. Platt seems a pretty smooth worker. I must get on her track.”

  “Yes, frighten her,” said Mrs. Bradley. “She’s been blackmailing poor dear Lecky, and, after all, what a subject for blackmail he is! One wonders, in fact, whether he deserves to be otherwise. People who kill their wives and are acquitted seem to be the natural prey of the blackmailer, and I doubt whether we are justified in interfering.”

  “But, after all,” argued the inspector, “she couldn’t really have anything against him.”

  “His own guilty conscience,” Mrs. Bradley suggested. “At any rate, the main lines of the story seem obvious. Miss Platt ran away from this house, was murdered, and was not identified. Mrs. Platt and Doctor Lecky suspected that the murdered woman was Miss Platt, but neither chose to come forward. Meanwhile, there was just one other interesting feature, didn’t you think?”

  “No,” replied the inspector candidly, “I saw no other interesting feature. Spill it.”

  “Clothes,” Mrs. Bradley answered. “Come along. The sooner we get to the bottom of this part of the business the better. What about the rest of the patients in this house?”

  “Lord knows! How many are there?”

  “I don’t know.” She rang a bell. “How many patients are on the books?” she asked the servant.

  “I’ll find out, madam.” There was an interval of five minutes. The inspector studied the view of lawn and cedars; Mrs. Bradley scribbled busily.

  “There are three private patients, madam.”

  “I’ll come and see them.”

  She signed to the inspector to remain where he was, and followed the servant out. The girl stopped when they got into the passage.

  “Beg pardon, madam,” she said, “but we’re all quite willing to tell all we know, so be we don’t get into trouble ourselves, madam.”

  “That’s all right,” said Mrs. Bradley. “There won’t be any trouble. It is not because of the gambling that the doctor has been arrested. You can tell the rest of the staff that they need not worry, although they may be required to give evidence.”

  “Thank you, madam. This way, madam. This is Miss Pearce’s room. She’s perfectly harmless, madam.”

  Miss Pearce was seated at a table, gazing into a crystal.

  “I am clairvoyant,” she announced.

  “She always says that, madam,” murmured the maid. “Best to take no notice.”

  “But I’m interested,” said Mrs. Bradley. She seated herself opposite the lunatic and smiled. The lunatic smiled back.

  “Please tell me my future,” said Mrs. Bradley, stretching out a thin claw to take one of the frail wrists in her steel grasp and feel the pulse.

  “Look in the crystal,” said Miss Pearce. Her eyes, large, luminous, and possessive, rested on Mrs. Bradley’s. Mrs. Bradley dropped her eyes and gazed in the crystal sphere. “You are becoming sleepy,” said the lunatic, taking up the crystal. “You are drowsy. You cannot see me any longer. You cannot see what I am doing.” She giggled quietly.

  Mrs. Bradley ducked swiftly, and the missile flew past her and shattered a picture.

  “Um. Very interesting,” she said, when, having soothed the excited patient by restoring the crystal (fortunately unharmed) to her, and listening intelligently to, and helping to compile, a long list of her own future misfortunes, she joined the maid, who had prudently remained in the passage.

  “She’s wicked, that’s what she is! But I must say I’ve never known her do such a thing before,” the girl said, with a rush of combined nervous anger and apology, when Mrs. Bradley came out. “I never ought to have let you go in there, madam, but she’s never been violent before.”

  “Where the next?” asked Mrs. Bradley, cutting her short.

  “In here. Mr. William. He makes clocks. He won’t do you no harm.”

  Mr. William, a bald-headed, childish-looking man of forty or so, was seated at a table on which were heaped the internal workings of not fewer than seventy clocks. Realising that he was completely occupied, Mrs. Bradley shut the door again.

  “And the third ought to be my red-haired woman, but isn’t, now I’ve removed her to my clinic,” she said to herself. She looked in, gave the grey-haired inmate some sweets, and sat on the bed to talk to her, for this elderly patient was one who refused (the girl said) to get up. She told Mrs. Bradley a long, rather rambling story—the usual conglomeration of a hypochondriac’s mind. Mrs. Bradley listened patiently.

  “I want these three patients transferred,” she said to the inspector. “I suppose I shall have to obtain the consent of the people who are paying their fees here. They are quite an interesting set. I should like to have them in my Buckinghamshire clinic. I’ve sent all my London patients there, and these could join them.”

  “Have you done these any good? You haven’t been long about it,” grinned the inspector. Mrs. Bradley modestly delivered herself of the opinion that the sphere-hurler was probably feeling better than she had felt for some time.

  “I encouraged her to rid herself of an inhibition,” she added, “but, of course, I can’t do much until I learn the case histories. Our friend Lecky’s policy of laissez-faire has done no particular harm, and, to give the man his due, he has fed them well and kept them clean. They are not particularly troublesome, I imagine.” She sighed. The inspector raised his eyebrows. “I must confess that the events of the past half-hour have made me homesick for my clinic,” she said.


  “You can’t go back to your clinic yet,” said Stallard, taking her arm. “You’re going to help me find my murderer first.”

  “Murderers…well, no, on second thoughts, I believe you are right,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning.

  “It’s certainly a neater case in the singular,” Stallard observed. “So, may I continue to say ‘murderer’?”

  “You may,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “And may I congratulate you on your broad-mindedness?”

  The inspector looked at her suspiciously.

  • CHAPTER 18 •

  A Jade Spear-head with Two Birds: of the Dynasties recently excavated at Am-Yang, shewing mud adhering to it.

  Advert.

  • 1 •

  “So the night-gown,” said the inspector thoughtfully, “was a plant. And I’ve got a real reason now for holding on to Comrade Lecky.”

  “And what is that, child?” Mrs, Bradley enquired. They were in the inspector’s quarters, having tea, and she was pouring out.

  “Why, obstructing the police, of course. You see, we went to him when we got the hunch that the woman in the A.R.P. cistern might have been a lunatic…”

  “Going by the night-gown, child?”

  “Going by the all-important night-gown…and he denied having missed a patient, and had plummed the staff up she’d been sent for and gone home. I don’t know how he squared them, but I suppose it was none of their business. That’s the British domestic all over. Their pickings came from the gamblers, not the lunatics, so I don’t suppose they questioned anything much that Lecky told them in his capacity as a doctor.”

  “You do realise the true significance of the night-gown, don’t you?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. Or don’t I? You know best.” He grinned at her as he accepted his cup of tea. “Go on, Aunt Adela. Speak your little piece.”

  “You know,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I am disappointed to learn that our relationship is to be, as it were, Platonic. I was given to understand differently at the outset of our acquaintance.”

  “Eh?”

  “And now, you produce a fiancee.”

  “Are you, by any chance, proposing to me, dear Aunt?”