Brazen Tongue (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I…I thought it would be a good idea. I mean, I thought at the time it was good. I’ve realised since that it was rather stupid and mean. I ought to have come right out with what I knew.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing you didn’t know,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You didn’t know that Mrs. Platt had changed her laundry mark.”

  “No. I had a fit, and wondered whether perhaps I ought to confess, when Ronald began to chivvy that poor Mrs. What’s-it up the hill.” Her colour, which, ebbing, had left the fair skin pale gold, came back, and her eyes grew brighter. “You don’t think I did it, then, really?”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Bradley cautiously, “there are one or two things against you, notably the fact that you did not trouble to remind the inspector of the fact that you were present at that meeting of the Ladies’ Committee at the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher.’”

  “But I wasn’t there!” said Pat.

  It was Mrs. Bradley’s turn to look astounded.

  “It was that ass Eves,” said Pat, with some bitterness. “I’d been covering Councillor Commy’s Back to the Land meeting at the Assembly Rooms. I’d rather have done the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher,’ much, and when Councillor Smith died after it I was doubly annoyed that I hadn’t been there.”

  “And can you prove that you were at Councillor Commy’s meeting?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. Pat looked doubtful.

  “Somebody may have noticed me,” she said. “I sat at the end of the front row, with six empty chairs between me and Councillor Petty. I don’t know whether he saw me.”

  “Who was in the row behind?”

  “Nobody. Don’t you know those sort of meetings? The Councillors and their wives sit in the front row—all those that aren’t on the platform—and then the Press is given the seat at the very end of the front row, then the audience occupies about five solid rows at the very back of the hall. It’s in vain for the people on the platform to beseech the audience to come up nearer the front. They simply won’t budge.”

  “Interesting. Well, my advice to you is to go forth, here and now, and produce some two or three respectable witnesses who are prepared to swear that you were at that meeting and stayed until…how long did it last?”

  “I couldn’t possibly tell you,” said Pat lugubriously. “I only stayed long enough to get Councillor Commy down in shorthand. After that I came back here to my digs and got out my column.”

  “Was your landlady in when you arrived?”

  “No. Pictures. And I was in bed when she did come in, because I knew I’d got to be at the Report Centre at ten, and I was trying to get an hour’s snooze before I went, as it meant an all-night duty, so I didn’t even answer when she called to me up the stairs.”

  “Did you see her before you went?”

  “Yes. At ten minutes to ten. She gave me a packet of sandwiches to take with me.”

  “And Councillor Smith wanted the last drink on the house that night. And you were at the Report Centre when Lillie Fletcher was killed. What about the afternoon? Where were you at just before sunset?”

  Pat looked anxious again.

  “That’s the devil of it,” she said. “I had a puncture in the back tyre of my push-bike and was putting it to rights just outside Winborough at sunset. I was scared stiff in case I couldn’t get back before the black-out, because I hadn’t any lights.”

  “And nobody saw you, of course?”

  “I don’t think so. One or two cars went by, but nobody on foot, and nobody else with a bike.”

  “What about the people from Bewley’s works?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Pat, don’t lie. It won’t do the least bit of good,” said Mrs. Bradley kindly. “You weren’t outside Winborough at sunset. You were on the towing path, and you saw Burt drag the body of Miss Platt from the canal.”

  She thought at first that the girl was going to faint, but she recovered herself and said at once:

  “All right, then. I admit it.”

  “That’s better,” said Mrs. Bradley cheerfully. “What were you doing on the towing path?”

  “Nothing. Only walking along. Then I saw what I thought must be an accident, and I saw Eddie Burt dive in.”

  “Did you see anybody else?”

  “No. I saw Eddie go in, and I watched, and…and made a few shorthand notes, because it might be something for the paper, and then I saw Eddie rob the body.”

  “What did he take?”

  “A purse, I think. There wasn’t a handbag, unless the woman had dropped it in the water.”

  “I want to understand this part of the story clearly. What was Burt doing before he dived into the river?”

  “I can’t tell you, really, or I would. I was too far round the loop of the river. I heard a splash, and hurried forward, and then Eddie went in…”

  “Where from?”

  “The island, I should think.”

  “Did you see Joe Canopy’s barge go by on the canal?”

  “I can’t remember. I didn’t notice much except Eddie rescuing the woman.”

  “How did he get the woman out?”

  “He swam to the lowest part of the bank, where the little boys stand on a kind of mud-spit to fish for tiddlers, and sort of pushed her in front of him. It wasn’t any of the life-saving methods I’ve been taught.”

  “Did he try artificial respiration for the resuscitation of the apparently drowned?”

  “No. He just felt in all the pockets, found something—the purse, I think—and pocketed it, and then he saw the woman’s hat, and went back for it, but afterwards he threw it in again. Then he went off, and I went up and had a look at the woman, but I felt quite certain she was dead.”

  “But you didn’t go for a doctor or the police?”

  “No. I…I knew there was nothing to be done for her and…I recognised her, you see.”

  “As…?”

  “Well, as one of Doctor Lecky’s patients. And then I recognised her clothes.”

  “Oh, you did?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t think much of that at first, because, after all, Mrs. Platt used to give her clothes away to all sorts of people. But then it seemed to me odd that anybody from Doctor Lecky’s Home—which is pretty expensive, you know; quite as expensive as the ordinary fashionable nursing home—should be in need of charity from Mrs. Platt, and then, of course, it dawned on me that there must be another explanation.”

  She paused. Mrs. Bradley watched her.

  “So you hid the body?” she prompted.

  “Yes. I dragged it under some bushes, to give me a chance of thinking out how best I could use the knowledge I had, and make a real newspaper sensation. I argued…” she glanced at Mrs. Bradley, but the black eyes were entirely noncommittal—“that as the woman was dead (I did have a try at pumping her arms and so forth, but I knew that she was absolutely dead, so I didn’t keep it up for very long) it couldn’t matter to her what I did with her body, and it might make all the difference in the world to my career. So I went to Doctor Lecky’s house, leaving the body hidden (naturally I didn’t dream of murder!) and told him that Mrs. Platt wanted one of Miss Platt’s night-gowns.

  “He tried to bluff me at first, but I wasn’t having any. I told him that I knew Miss Platt had left the Home, and that Mrs. Platt knew all about it. I risked these shots in the dark, and they came off pretty well. I was allowed to take two night-gowns, and I…well, I put one on the body, and took the other, and the clothes home with me.”

  “How?”

  “Just over my arm. It was dark by the time I’d finished, you see, and I knew my way about Willington blindfold. Nobody would notice, I knew, and I’ve got my own latch-key, and could smuggle them past my landlady all right.

  “The only thing that worried me was how to use the body to the best advantage for a write-up, and how, having disposed of it, to make sure it should be found all right—next day, if possible—and yet not look too obviously planted.

  “As well as all this, of course, I
had to be on duty at the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’ to report that silly meeting at eight o’clock, and get to the Report Centre for my night duty at the telephones. I did not want to arouse any suspicion, you see, by not being in my usual haunts.”

  “It’s almost a pity you weren’t the murderer,” said Mrs. Bradley admiringly. “I believe you would have…”

  “Got away with it? Yes, but you haven’t heard all. When I left the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’…”

  “So you did report the meeting at the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’?”

  “Yes. I was lying just now when I said I reported the other meeting instead. I was scared. I suppose I am still, but you’ve got to remember that I really didn’t dream that the woman had been shoved in the river by a murderer; I just thought of myself as pulling some A. J. Alan sort of stuff with, this time, a convenient instead of an inconvenient corpse.”

  “Yes. I understand that. But, when you left the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’ and got back to your bushes by the side of the river, almost opposite the island, you found that the body was gone.”

  “How on earth can you possibly know that?”

  “Because, although you dressed the body in the night-gown, you didn’t put the body in the A.R.P. tank. You’re not strong enough. Besides, I don’t suppose you’d have thought of such a thing.”

  “I wish I had,” said Pat enviously. “it was an absolutely wonderful idea. It made the write-up, when those kids discovered the corpse, the easiest stuff in the world, and there was my sensation ready-made.”

  “You made good use of it,” said Mrs. Bradley dryly. Pat flushed.

  “Suppose I did!” she said. “I’ve never had a break all my life. I’ve always collected the loser’s end. I ought to have gone to college. I’ve got the brains, and I’ve got the will to get on. I could have done well, but I’ve never had chances; I’ve always had to make them. I’ve never been very successful, either, until now. I saw this chance, and I took it. What are you going to do? I suppose you’ll queer my pitch somehow.”

  “Why should I?” said Mrs. Bradley. “The woman was dead, as you say. Why should you have any sentimental regard for the body of someone you didn’t even know?”

  “Well, of course, I did know her,” said Pat unwillingly. “I’d been up to Doctor Lecky once or twice to see if he would give me anything for the paper. He never did, but I talked to Miss Platt each time, and that’s how I found out who she was. I was lucky over that. She was having a lucid interval, and she spilt the whole story about Mrs. Platt, and the late Mr. Platt and the money.

  “I’d wondered for months how to use it. I didn’t like Mrs. Platt—I don’t believe anybody did—and I knew that a local scandal about her would be meat and drink to the paper, and send up the circulation to double, if only I could get my editor to print it. But that was the rub. I knew he’d be afraid. You’d be amazed at the amount of influence a rich, ill-natured, bossy old woman can have in a place like this.

  “Then came this big chance. I knew he would have to print details of Mrs. Platt’s sister’s death, but I couldn’t at first see how to involve Mrs. Platt. I didn’t want to be the one to declare that the dead woman was Mrs. Platt’s late husband’s sister, so I thought of the night-gown-over-the-wall stunt. Still, that misfired, of course.”

  “Not altogether. It added just a little to my first conception of Mrs. Platt as the murderer,” Mrs. Bradley pointed out, “and made it a little difficult at first to account for the changed laundry mark. And now,” she continued more briskly, “let’s get on to the death of Councillor Smith. I shan’t bother to ask you at what time you left the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher,’ because I can get Councillor Woods or his barmaid to tell me that. But I confess I should like to know whether you saw the poison put into his glass?”

  “No,” said the girl positively.

  “Ah. Now about Lillie Fletcher.”

  “I don’t know anything about her except what Sally and I have already told you. The only thing is, as I said before, I’m glad I didn’t read that silly note, or you might have suspected me of killing her.”

  “Ah, yes, Pat, why did Sally at first suspect you?”

  “But…she didn’t! Sally was miserable because she had just found out that Ronald Stallard was engaged.”

  “So your part in the affair is as follows: You saw Burt rescue the body of Miss Platt. You saw him rob the body and run away. You thought there was something in the affair for your paper. You knew that the dead woman was Miss Platt, and you noticed that she was wearing Mrs. Platt’s cast-off clothes which an inmate of Doctor Lecky’s home should not have needed. This helped to establish the relationship between them, but for which Miss Platt would be well enough off to have respectable clothes of her own. You decided to lay bare the scandal concerning Mrs. Platt. This came to nothing, however, because nobody seemed smart enough to connect the night-gown found on the body with the night-gown you tore with your teeth and threw over the fishmonger’s fence. Too late you discovered that Mrs. Platt had changed her laundry mark, and that this fact had blinded the police to the identity of the drowned woman.”

  “That’s quite correct,” said Pat.

  “Now you think that Burt transported the body to the A.R.P. cistern, possibly because he was acting in collusion with Mrs. Platt, or possibly because he was afraid someone had seen him rescue the body and might accuse him of murder.”

  “Well, all I can say is that I saw the rescue. Besides, why should he murder her? There was only one person who could possibly benefit by her death, and that was Mrs. Platt. And then, who else, besides Mrs. Platt, could have got her to go for a walk down there by the canal? She wouldn’t have gone with Eddie Burt.”

  “Perfectly true. But if Burt had nothing to fear, why should he move the body? Still more, why should he go to keep watch over the tank next day?”

  “Did he do that?”

  “According to the boy Lionel Percy, he did.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know that.”

  “And now tell me why you went for a walk by the canal at that extraordinary hour of the day, Pat.”

  “I…Oh, hang it! I suppose you know, so I might as well confess to it. I was snooping. I had trailed Miss Platt…”

  “But why? You couldn’t have known the exact day and hour when Miss Platt was going to remove herself from Doctor Lecky’s charge.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Pat. She looked puzzled and frightened. “Of course I knew. I was the person who planned the escape. Surely you guessed I did! I’d arranged to meet her there. We were going to walk that way, along the towing path, to Winborough to see a lawyer. She had promised, if I helped her, not to mention my name to Mrs. Platt. But, when I got there…”

  “You had given her the cast-off clothes, then?”

  “Yes. But when I got there, she was dead.”

  • 3 •

  “But I thought we agreed it was Pat,” said the inspector. Mrs. Bradley chuckled.

  “Do you remember your own reconstruction of the night of the crimes?” she asked. “It would have been impossible for anyone but Hercules to have carried out the succession of operations you were forced to attribute to one young girl.”

  “She’s big and hefty, though. And she’s got heaps of determination and pluck.”

  “She’s tall; neither big nor hefty. And, as you yourself showed clearly enough, the murderer of Councillor Smith, Miss Platt, and poor Lillie Fletcher could not have managed without an accomplice—either a willing or an unwilling one, I might say.”

  “And you realised that at the beginning?”

  “Yes, I did. I also knew that Eddie Burt had staged his own accident on the diving boards and faked his own abdominal injury in the Baths laundry. All this was to throw me off the scent. Our Mr. Burt ‘lacks his nerve,’ as he himself will be the first to tell you. He saw Joe Canopy’s barge go by that evening, and his fear was that Joe had seen the rescue, would report it when he tied up in Willington for the night, and accuse Burt of robbery
and murder. It is not in our Mr. Burt’s nature, you see, to keep his hands off anybody’s purse, whatever the risk to himself. Then, when he discovered that somebody else had also seen the ‘rescue,’ and had moved the body, he was even more alarmed.”

  “A pretty piece of work he is!” said the inspector. “And, of course, I can see that Mrs. Platt had the motive for wanting Miss Platt out of the way, and collaring all the money…”

  “Especially after Doctor Lecky had warned her that Miss Platt had regained full possession of her faculties, and was actuated by a lively regard for her rights in her brother’s property.”

  “Yes, all that for granted, but why Smith, and, most of all, why Lillie Fletcher?”

  “Yes. Why Lillie Fletcher? It’s of no use to blame Mrs. Platt, except indirectly, there.”

  “No? But we agreed, I thought, that all three murders were connected?”

  “So they were, but not quite in the way that you meant, as I’ve said before.”

  “But all our evidence against Pat seemed so complete. I mean, take those night-gowns. Obviously, since the wind was in the wrong direction for anything to have blown from the laundry into Dewey’s garden, somebody threw that night-gown over. I thought you had decided Pat had done so.”

  “True enough, child; so she had. She even admits as much, and, of course, she told me that she had stayed the night once at Mrs. Platt’s house. Therefore she could have known her laundry mark, because it would have been put on sheets, pillow-cases, towels, tablecloths, duchesse sets—I suppose Mrs. Platt uses those?—and table napkins. But she stayed there, again by her own admission, more than two years ago, before Mrs. Platt’s laundry mark was changed.”

  “Yes. I wondered why you were so persistent with old Dewey about those night-gowns. But, look here, how did you tumble to Eddie Burt as the person who put the body in the tank?”

  “He was on the spot just before the boys found the body. That might have been coincidence, but was interesting. Then, although he admitted that he pulled the dead body out of the water, he gave no convincing account of his movements otherwise, either before of after the rescue. All the same, he felt that we were becoming suspicious. He knew that the diving board was dangerous the first time he dived from it (as Pat and I both knew. I was watching her during that gala), and yet he dived from it again. He had to, to stage the apparent attempt on his own life. There was nothing wrong with him when I attended him in the Baths laundry after the gala…”