“No. Although…I don’t know,” said Mrs. Bradley, her head slightly on one side the better to study his countenance. “No,” she added, in stronger, firmer tones (at which he threw back his head and shouted with laughter), “I am not proposing to you, but I understood (on what should have been reliable authority) that my niece Sally fancied that she was in love with you.”
“Sally? Don’t be indelicate. She’s only sixteen or something, isn’t she? Besides, she knows I’m engaged. Everybody knows.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, nodding like a mandarin. “Do they indeed? Interesting, illuminating, informative and instructive.” She stopped nodding, and drank some tea. The inspector studied her closely.
“And now, come across with it,” he said. “You’d never have mentioned Sally in such a connection if you hadn’t got something up your sleeve.”
“But my sleeve is a conjurer’s sleeve,” Mrs. Bradley pointed out. “And what is up my sleeve must remain the conjurer’s secret for a time. But we digress, child.” She took some thin bread and butter—it was before the rationing of food—and ate it meditatively.
“Go on about the night-gown,” said the inspector.
“We understand that Miss Platt had lucid intervals. Listening between the lines, as it were, of Doctor Lecky’s enthralling conversation, we are forced to the conclusion, it seems to me, that Miss Platt’s life had become one long complete lucid interval…”
“In fact,” interrupted the inspector with a certain degree of animation, “that she was as sane as we are, and that Lecky, curse his fat face and piggy little eyes, was aware of the fact, and didn’t like it. My hat, won’t I bounce Mrs. Commy-Platt when I find out where she’s gone! Sorry, dear heart. Carry on.”
“Miss Platt contrived to escape, probably—in fact, I think, inevitably—with a certain amount of assistance from the murderer’s unwitting (at first) accomplice.”
“From the…gosh! I say! That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”
“Quite clever, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley modestly.
“Go on.”
“This accomplice supplied the clothes of which Miss Platt was in need. She escaped, I expect, in her night-gown. Once Lecky knew she was sane, he had to circumvent her attempts at escaping from the Home because he was afraid of Mrs. Commy-Platt, and felt that he would be blamed if Miss Platt went to Mrs. Platt’s house to claim her rights.”
“Oh, I see! Like your red-haired woman, she was only given a night-gown to put on over her underclothing. Simple but profound. Go on.”
“The accomplice procured outdoor clothing for the victim, but retained possession of the night-gown and put it back on the corpse. We can’t prove that at present, because we can’t prove that the body in the tank was the same body as that which our friend Edward Burt dragged out of the river. Still, we can assume that they were the same.”
“Ah, yes. Burt. How is he now, by the way?”
“It would be a lot safer if I could persuade you to arrest him, too, and keep him away from people as you’re going to keep Doctor Lecky. Lecky’s is a valuable life, and I hope we shall be able to preserve it.”
“Don’t tell me I’ve arrested that lovely specimen just to save him from the murderer!”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that, child, no. But we shall need him—I presume that we are speaking of Doctor Lecky—at the trial. He is worth preserving.”
“A fine witness he’ll make, with his record, I should imagine!”
“But he hasn’t got a record, child. That’s only our nasty minds. He was discharged without a stain on his character. You seem to forget that the unfortunate fellow was acquitted. It is because he had the misfortune to be wrongly accused that certain wicked people in this town had the temerity to make him a tool with which to force their vile ends.
“The man should be pitied, not censured. Any intelligent jury will be able to understand that!”
The inspector gave a rude little hoot of laughter and quoted poetry under his breath. Then he added:
“Go on. You grow strangely interesting, dear Aunt. There’s only one thing more I want to know.”
“There’s a good boy,” said Mrs. Bradley. “More tea? And some more bread and butter?”
“Thanks. Well, look, the murderer. I understand all about that poor soul from the Home, but why kill Councillor Smith and that poor kid Fletcher? I still can’t see the connection.”
“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Did you ever hear of burning the grass to stop a prairie fire?”
• 2 •
The fishmonger weighed a pound of herrings.
“‘Wholesome, filling and cheap,’” said Mrs. Bradley, halting in the doorway of the shop.
“I don’t know about filling or cheap,” said the woman who was buying them. “And even wholesome—well, I don’t know, neither, not if you go swallowing the bones.”
“True,” replied Mrs. Bradley, conceding the point with her usual charm. “I think perhaps I’ll have haddock. Smoked, please, Mr. Dewey, and a nice thick one. Yes, that will do.”
“A piece of haddick’s always nice,” said the other customer approvingly, “but they get fair sick of it at home. At least, my Len do, and his father never would touch it. Said it reminded him of cheese, which he can’t bear neither, though I can’t see why, can you?”
As Mrs. Bradley was uncertain, from the context, whether she was being asked to pass an opinion upon a possible resemblance between haddock and cheese, or upon the customer’s husband’s aversion to one, the other, or both of these foods, she contented herself with observing, genially, that for the life of her she could not. This closed the amicable conversation, and the other customer left.
Mr. Dewey wrapped the haddock in brown paper as well as white paper and newspaper—for the war was yet young—and remarked that El and Con were late to work that morning.
“Expect they had a yellow,” he observed. Through Mrs. Bradley’s mind thoughts of a motoring summons, alcoholic refreshment, ladies of the town, and an attack of nerves passed in quick succession, and she was about to enquire which, if any, of these aids to an interesting and varied life had been experienced by his sons that they should be late for work, when Mr. Dewey saved her from the betrayal of her ignorance by continuing:
“Of course, we never hear about the yellow, like, without we’ve somebody in the A.R.P. They don’t sound the sirens for yellow, only for red.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, seeing the light. “So they received a yellow last night, or so you think?”
“Well, we’re in the thick, as you may say, my boys are, till they’re called up, you know. I’m a warden myself. Might not think it, but I am. Have a bit of fun we do, sometimes, when we have a practice, you know.”
Mrs. Bradley, with vivid memories of Lady Selina’s maledictions upon the last local A.R.P. manoeuvres, during which (unwisely, as her daughter Sally zealously but unnecessarily pointed out) she had permitted herself to be assisted on to a stretcher and inserted into an ambulance, replied that she did know.
“And I suppose you don’t see as much of your bed as you used to do?” she added.
From this it was a short step, and one easily achieved by Mr. Dewey, to another conversation about the now intensely interesting night-gown in which the body of Miss Platt had been clothed when she was found in the A.R.P. cistern.
“Repeat my arguments? Certainly,” he exclaimed, and, with great gusto, interrupted two or three times by the entrance of other customers, he repeated the tale of Mrs. Commy-Platt and the laundry.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but there’s one thing I’d like to know. When Mrs. Platt gave away clothes to poorer people, didn’t they pick out the laundry mark?”
“Ah, there you have me. Couldn’t say. I suppose they’d mostly do the washing at ’ome. But ’ave you ’ad a look at the night-gown, then?”
“Yes, at police headquarters.”
“Oh, you ’ave. What, the one
as come over the wall.”
“Yes.”
“And was the laundry mark picked out?”
“I can’t say. The only mark that the eye could detect was the laundry mark assigned to Mrs. Murdon.”
The unregenerate fishmonger began to gurgle with retrospective joy.
“I dunno what my old woman would say if I had to go into court and take my davy I recognised it wasn’t Mrs. Murdon’s,” he observed. “But I don’t think some’ow it’s going to come to that. Anyway, Min Murdon swore it wasn’t hers, and the police believed her, there being no connection.”
“It’s very interesting indeed,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But the most interesting thing of all is that you should have recognised the night-gown as having come from Doctor Lecky’s home. The dead woman had been an inmate there, we think.”
“You don’t say that! You see! Them teeth-marks proved it, as prove it I knowed they would!”
“Moreover, we have reason to believe that the dead woman was related by marriage to Mrs. Commy-Platt.”
“Crikey!”
“Yes. Things look rather bad for Mrs. Platt. Are you friendly with the people who run the laundry?”
“Ah. Me and him plays bowls.”
“So that if I wanted to be introduced to the proprietor as an acquaintance of yours…?”
“Nothing easier. When?”
“To-morrow evening, say?”
“You couldn’t join us at the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’? That’s where we haves our mid-week pint.”
“With pleasure. At about eight o’clock?”
“Suit me. Can’t do much to-morrow, see, as I shan’t be frying.”
• 3 •
Mrs. Bradley, from her bedroom at Lady Selina’s house, rang up the editor of the Record.
“It’s about the murders,” she said. “Doctor Lecky has been arrested, as you know, and it is of vital importance to the case that you should send a reporter to get an account of to-night’s meeting of the Council on the question of Councillor Clark’s scheme for levying rates on pew-rents.”
“I can’t get a reporter in to that.”
“You must.”
“But my boys would be thrown out. Even Eves couldn’t do it. Don’t you know that the Council don’t allow their meetings to be reported?”
“Look here, try Miss Mort, then. She’s an efficient youngster. Can’t she get herself in?”
“I’ll see. Here, talk to her yourself.”
“No, no. It isn’t necessary. Tell her it is essential that she should be there, and that I want her to report, unedited, by half-past ten to-night.”
“What’s the big idea? Can’t you tell us that? How could the Council meeting affect the case?”
“It won’t. But I have very good reason to suppose that the person who killed poor Councillor Smith will be there, and I want Pat to keep her eyes open, and report—privately, of course—anything odd or suspicious. Don’t tell her what I’ve just said, though. I don’t want the girl to feel nervous.”
“All right. Hold on a minute…She says depend on her. She’ll gate-crash the Council Chamber somehow, if she has to go disguised as Mrs. Platt.”
Mrs. Bradley, well satisfied, rang off, and went to have tea off her haddock. Lady Selina, returning hungry after an exhaustive inspection of the local Knitting for the Navy Association, ate a share of the haddock with gusto.
“You know, Adela,” she said, between mouthfuls, “I still don’t see why you insisted that Sally should be sent away like that. I assure you that she has not the very slightest thought about this young policeman. And I shouldn’t allow it if she had.”
“Her life was threatened,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly. “Yours might have been, if the murderer had thought of you sooner, but I think you’re now comparatively safe.”
Lady Selina looked incredulous.
“I suppose you are speaking responsibly, Adela,” she said, “but it all sounds ridiculous to me.”
With the air of one who is determined not to encourage nonsense, she took a second piece of fish and dropped an extra lump of butter on it before she added pepper.
“Very well, Selina,” said Mrs. Bradley meekly. “By the way, I shall not be in to dinner. I am drinking a pint of beer with two gentlemen at the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’ at eight o’clock this evening.”
At seven (the Council meeting began at half-past) she rang up the Record office again and asked to speak to Pat.
“Keep a special watch on anybody who comes in late,” she said. “How long do you think you’ll need to stay?”
“Until the end, if there’s going to be any excitement.”
In getting to the “Rat and Cow-catcher” Mrs. Bradley took extraordinary precautions. She caught a bus in the opposite direction to that in which her destination lay, and got off at the railway station. From here she went in by train—a roundabout, lengthy route, but one which brought her almost to the door of the inn, so that she had only a step or two to walk.
She slipped inside, and found her cavaliers already seated at a small table in the saloon bar.
“We generally goes in the Public Bar for ours,” confided Mr. Dewey, who was less appealing to the eye in his (Mrs. Bradley deduced) best clothes than in his shirt-sleeves and fishmonger’s apron, “but thought you’d prefer it in here.”
“Very kind and thoughtful of you,” Mrs. Bradley returned.
“Meet Mr. Macanallan,” continued Mr. Dewey, this time hoarsely and with a certain amount of diffidence. Clearly, he recognised some definite class distinction, and in the other’s favour, between himself and the proprietor of the laundry.
Mr. Macanallan nodded. He was a melancholy-looking man, cadaverous and dignified. He ordered gin with his beer, and poured it in a ruminating sort of way, working his mouth slightly, like a sad cow chewing a cud which it had reason to believe is not altogether of the best.
“At your service,” he observed distastefully. Mrs. Bradley thought it as well, however, to leave the question of the night-gown to the second glass of beer. That this policy was justified appeared certain when Mr. Macanallan looking up from his beaker and eyeing her over the rim severely, but no longer distastefully, observed with considerable gloom:
“Is it the night-dress you’re after?”
“It is,” said Mrs. Bradley. Mr. Macanallan shook his head, and licked a fleck of beery foam from the left side of his mouth with a tongue which flickered in and out like that of a chameleon.
“I couldn’t tell the right and wrong of it at all,” he said dejectedly.
“There’s only one thing I want to know,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Did Mrs. Platt ever alter her laundry mark?”
“You’ve said it,” replied Mr. Macanallan, with a melancholy leer at Mr. Dewey. “I’ll trouble you, Dewey, for a sixpence. Thank you kindly. You’ll mind that we betted on that.”
Mr. Dewey crowed with amusement.
“He said you’d ask that! He said an intelligent lady…”
“Woman,” corrected Mr. Macanallan austerely.
“Ah, woman—would be bound to ask that question. And you ’ave! Well, I never, never did! It would never have come to me, that wouldn’t!”
“Go on, please, Mr. Macanallan,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Ay, well, she did that. And to save your breath, I might tell you that the number Mrs. Murdon has now was the number Mrs. Commy-Platt had two years syne, and rejected, because it was number fifty, and her laundry, so she said—and it was the truth, for all I argued the point, but against my conscience—was always being mixed up with that of another customer who had the number thirty—or vice-versa—I do not remember. So, to save the argument and keep the customer, we picked out Mrs. Commy-Platt’s laundry marks, and gave her a new number which would not get confused, we hoped, with other folk’s. And now, that’s all I can tell you.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t; not quite,” returned Mrs. Bradley. “What laundry mark was on all Mrs. Platt’s things when she first sent things to your
laundry when she moved here?”
“Why, the number she complained about, of course. And as I did not happen to have that number on my books, I let her keep it, to save trouble, although no trouble at all did it save in the end, as you have seen, for we had to alter it for her.”
“And all the things sent from Mrs. Platt’s house would have the same number, even if they were not her personal belongings, I suppose?”
“Every one the same; even the pocket handkerchiefs of her companion; all were marked for the house, do you see, and not for the individual.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Macanallan. And now, what about some more beer?”
• 4 •
“And now,” said Mrs. Bradley, “for Comrade Burt.”
“He’s been asking for you,” said the nurse. “We’ve had a job to keep him in bed, I can tell you, for, between you and me, he’s as well as ever, and he hates the idea of staying here any longer.”
Burt was savagely bored. He wanted to get up, he said; he did not care who was after him. He added that he could take care of himself and did not want any old woman bleating round his heels.
“I want to know all about the diving-board,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“I don’t,” replied Burt, heaving himself sulkily upright. “All I want to know is who laid me out in that passage. That’s all I want to know.”
“All in good time, child,” Mrs. Bradley responded. “Oh, and if you want to leave the hospital, you can.”
“When?”
“This afternoon, if you like, as soon as I have gone. You see, whoever it was that attacked you will know, I expect, that I’ve come here this afternoon, and will deduce that everything you know will become mine during this session of ours.”
“You mean that’ll let me out, you knowing everything I know?”
“Yes, I think so, child.”
“Then I’m blowed if I tell you a thing.”
“Now, now,” said Mrs. Bradley, eyeing him sternly, “this is no time for chivalry, so speak rapidly, intelligibly, and to the point.”
“Well, I’m the only chap in the Club goes in off that top board, see, in competitions, excepting Talby, but he don’t do it in competitions mostly. So I reckon if anything was done to that board, it must have been meant for me or him. I’m the likeliest one as would cop out, see, by diving from off of there, but it might have been meant for Talby. Only, being as how I was the one that pulled her out of the river, I reckon it was meant all right for me.”
Brazen Tongue (Mrs. Bradley) Page 19