Sunset Over Soho (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “He is safe, then,” said Leda. El Piojo, perceiving, as he thought, a Christian resignation in these words, sympathetically pressed Harben’s hand.

  Questioned closely, there was little which he could add to what he had said. It appeared that the Spaniards had walked along the riverside path, and, being sailors, had stopped for a bit to watch the tugs and the barges.

  A man on a hopper had called out to them, but they could not understand what he said. It appeared, from his gesticulations, that he was inviting them to come on board his craft. They were not so silly, El Piojo reported, as to accept the invitation, for it meant crossing a stretch of thick, black mud. Whilst negotiations were proceeding, another man came up and offered to ferry them across the river to the towing path.

  He had a small boat and the captain could understand English sufficiently to make out what he was saying. An agreement was soon arrived at, and the Spaniards embarked all except El Piojo, who decided that there was not room for everyone. He had been upheld in this opinion by the mate, who had given him a shove in the chest and made him cough, and the last El Piojo had seen of his companions was that a large tug, coming up-river towards the old bridge, had slackened, hooted at the ferryboat, and suddenly rammed it. The occupants, including the ferryman, had all been flung into the water. They were picked up, taken on board the tug, and then he saw them being beaten up on her deck by men with clubbed rifles, he thought. The captain, however, had jumped for it from the bridge.

  “But it’s fantastic!” said Harben. “You couldn’t have seen all that in broad daylight, and on the Thames!”

  “We must pick up my brother,” said Leda. She went down the first set of riverside steps she came to, signalled a boatman, and ordered him to row them out to a smart and efficient-looking motor-boat lying at moorings off the eyot.

  “That’s Mr. Welling’s cruiser,” said the boatman.

  “Yes, yes,” said Harben. “Cornflower. I know him. It’s quite all right. Get a move on.”

  The boatman, feeling himself out-generalled, outnumbered, and not averse to a tip, made no further objections, and rowed them out to the Cornflower. Fortunately there was petrol in the tank. Harben, trusting that Mrs. Bradley would be able to square matters for him with her friends the police, started up the engine, and almost immediately they had left the island behind them, and were heading for the central span of the bridge.

  Past the boatbuilder’s yard they went, past the boathouse on the south bank of the river, past the hideous river frontage of the local gasworks, past the willows on the towing-path side, and then El Piojo, crouched on the cabin-top forward, gave a shout and pointed.

  “Es aquí el bote! Veo el remolcador, señor!”

  “I think he can see the tug,” said Leda. The cruiser was coming down opposite the old ferry landing-stage, and a little way past it was a wharf and, beyond this again, a small dock, both of them on the north bank.

  The tug had not entered the dock, but was lying hove-to in the entrance. Behind it were three empty barges.

  “Doesn’t look much wrong,” said Harben, knitting his brows. “I begin, for the first time, to doubt the good faith of El Piojo.”

  Before he could speak to the half-breed, however, a head bobbed up beside the cruiser. The captain’s handsome, swarthy face grinned up at them.

  “A perro flaco todo son pulgas!” he announced, as they dragged him on board.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Meeting

  Pirberry heard the news of the tug unmoved. He had the name, the Polly, and had no doubt that she would soon be traced and apprehended. He was interested, but only mildly so, in the news that Don Juan was on board her.

  “The point is, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Bradley, “finger-prints or no finger-prints, I still see Mr. Harben as the murderer of that old man, and the young lady as an accessory either before or after, or before and after, the fact. What do you say to that?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. “You may, or may not, be right. Time will show, and, I fancy, it will show very soon.”

  “Well, I’d like another word with Mr. Harben, ma’am, and I’d like it at once,” said Pirberry.

  Mrs. Bradley asked permission to be present at the interview.

  “You see, sir,” said Pirberry to Harben, “I can’t quite see how I can accept your story.”

  “I’ve told no story,” said Harben, with a reproachful glance at Mrs. Bradley.

  “Well, sir, suppose you come across with an account of your experiences to the time you first met those Spaniards.”

  Harben shrugged.

  “You seem to have heard it all,” he said. “Still, here goes: I took a dislike to an old man in that house in Chiswick you already know about. I broke his neck for him. Then I thought I’d better beat it. That was after I got to know Mrs. Bradley, and realized she was wise to what I’d done.

  “Meanwhile, the old man’s sons were after me. I went to meet his wife, and some chaps went for me—not anyone I knew incidentally. They’d clubbed me and laid me out before I knew what was what. I remember nothing after that until I came to in an open boat.”

  “Nothing? Think, sir. Can’t you recollect anything?”

  He leaned forward, gazing earnestly into the young man’s face as though willing him to throw back his mind and find something which would prove to be a clue.

  Harben shook his head regretfully.

  “I’ve thought about it until my head swims,” he said. “There isn’t a thing. I can only think that those fellows had some connection with the girl I was visiting, but, beyond that, I can’t tell you anything at all.”

  “Can you describe the two men?”

  “Not very well, I’m afraid. Beyond the fact that they were wearing seamen’s caps and that the first one badly needed a shave …”

  “Could you identify them?”

  “I doubt it. I could try. But how are you going to dig them out, when I can’t give you anything to go on?”

  “We may have dug them out already, sir. That’ll be for you to say. They are certainly the fellows that carried you off in the cistern, and it’s more than likely they knocked you on the head first.”

  “Cistern?” said Harben, startled. “And what about the Spaniards? You don’t connect them with the cistern?”

  “We’ve nothing to go on there, sir.”

  Mrs. Bradley took up the running.

  “Suppose Mr. Harben does not identify the two men he’s going to be shown? What then, Mr. Pirberry?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “And suppose he does identify them?”

  “We pull them in, frighten them, and charge them with attempted murder and abduction.”

  “I am most anxious to see how you react to Mr. Hankin and Mr. Brent,” said Mrs. Bradley to Harben.

  But Harben did not react at all to Mr. Hankin and Mr. Brent, although they themselves were ready enough to acknowledge that he was the gentleman they had carried down to the river in the cistern.

  “Dumped him on board a little tug that was due to unload by Tower Bridge,” said Hankin, with an appearance of frankness and naïveté which Mrs. Bradley appreciated.

  “Croak that guy?” said Brent, in righteous indignation, when he had decided that his comrade had made a good impression. “Sure we never tried to croak him! Me, I don’t go croaking anyone, without I am in bad in a saloon. As for this poor guy here, I never seen him except looking good and dead in that square can we toted down to the river. Gosh darn it! What do you cops take us for? We ain’t no croakers.”

  “Of course not,” said Pirberry. “All right. Mr. Harben says he isn’t charging you with anything—this time. But you boys take my tip and get yourselves a nice berth on an oil-tanker. It’ll be safer for you, in the end. Gosh darn it!” he added, in peevish involuntary quotation of Mr. Brent when the two seamen had gone. “I suppose you are sure of your facts, sir? You really couldn’t recognize these men?”

  “I know positively that
those are not the men I saw in that house,” said Harben flatly.

  “Then I don’t know what to do next,” said Pirberry, “except, of course, we shall want your co-operation over the young lady, sir. Could you tell us her name, by the way?”

  “No,” said Harben. “I’m sorry, but I never heard it—except her Christian name.”

  “I see, sir. Well, now, about this young lady, sir, if you don’t mind me taking you over your story again. She came to you out of the blue, as it were, one night about twelve months ago. Right?”

  “Nearer fifteen months now. It was at the beginning of June. Anyway, Whit Monday night.”

  “You admit, of course, sir, that she was by then no stranger to you? In fact, you were in love with her? In fact, she was the wife you mentioned just now? In fact, you do know her name?”

  “Yes, all right, I admit it.”

  “Now, you returned to the lady’s house with her in the early morning, to see, as you supposed, the dead body of her husband. Right?” said Pirberry.

  “Quite correct.”

  “You having already been there once and moved the body. May I ask, sir, what was your feeling when the body proved not to be there on the bed to which you had moved it?”

  “Well, I was almost dumbfounded. I mean, I had just concluded it would be exactly as I had left it, and when it wasn’t I—well, I couldn’t believe the evidence of my eyes.”

  “Did you suspect that the lady herself had removed it?”

  “No, I didn’t. Mrs. Bradley asked me something of the sort, but I don’t think it had occurred to me for an instant.”

  “Can you explain why not, sir?”

  “Well, to begin with, you—one doesn’t think of young girls removing dead bodies. Secondly, I should say he was much too heavy and awkward for her to lift. Thirdly, I don’t honestly see when she could have done it.”

  “Yes she was up before you were, sir (if I had the story correctly from Mrs. Bradley), on the morning following the death.”

  “Yet, that’s true. She was. But she only went swimming, you know.”

  “We have only your supposition, sir, to go on. Do you know at what time she went swimming?”

  “Well, no, I don’t. But I think I should have wakened up if she’d come in again before she went swimming, and after she’d moved the body, don’t you know.”

  “Can you explain that, please?”

  “Well, yes. She swam naked. She couldn’t have gone naked up to the house. She must have come back to the boat and taken off her clothes if she’d gone up to the house and moved the body first. I know she didn’t move it later on. We were in the water together.”

  “You can swear to that, sir? She couldn’t have gone back to your boat, got dressed, and then slipped up to the house whilst you were still having your swim?”

  “Utterly impossible, Inspector. I know she couldn’t have gone then. And afterwards, of course, we had breakfast, and went together to the house.”

  “Yes sir? And now, sir, another point, please. Did she know any of the neighbours, so far as you could gather?”

  “As far as I could gather—but, mind, I’m not committing myself to this!—I should say that she did not—at that time. She uses the next-door air-raid shelter now.”

  “Very well, sir. And now, sir, you remember that, while the two of you were in the house that time when you found the body had been moved, the lady made some excuse to get away, and actually stole your motor-boat?”

  “Well, not stole it. Borrowed it. One couldn’t go further than that, because she returned it, you see.”

  “What reason do you suppose she had for wanting to make her escape from the neighbourhood so suddenly?”

  “Well, I thought at the time that she was scared, and bunked away from a whole lot of unpleasantness—the inquest and all that—following the old man’s death. And I suppose she bunked away from me. She must have guessed that I had killed him.”

  “But, at the time, sir, the young lady said she had killed him. You remember?”

  “Yes, of course I remember. But she explained that. She said the old chap had fallen over a stool left out in the bedroom by her carelessness. I suppose it was later, next morning, she tumbled to the truth.”

  “Is that exactly what she said, sir? About his having tumbled over the stool?”

  “I don’t remember exactly what she said, but that is what I gathered.”

  “Very well, sir. But, after she had confessed to you that she’d killed him, and after you’d agreed together not to report the death until the morning, the body is moved from the room and cannot be found. How do you account for it, sir?”

  “Damn it, I don’t have to account for it! It happened; that’s all I know.”

  “Very well, sir. We come now to the message left on the pennon of your boat and purporting to come from the lady.”

  “Purporting?”

  “Well, sir,” said Pirberry with patience, “I submit that we’ve no evidence the lady wrote that note. She may have done; most probably she did.”

  “She certainly did. Why, the whole of our subsequent conversations …”

  “Ah, yes, sir. What were your subsequent conversations? It might be helpful to know. And another thing, sir. That pennon the lady pinned the note to. Where is it now?”

  “Still in my flag-locker, I suppose. You can see it any time if you want to. As for our conversations, well,” Harben looked at him hopelessly, “you see, that’s just the trouble. So far as I remember, Leda was going to tell me about the old man, and explain things a bit, but just then those fellows came in, and that’s all I know.”

  “You think they’d been listening?” asked Pirberry.

  “Dashed if I know. It was certainly rather odd that they should have burst in just then.”

  “It has never occurred to you, sir, that you might have been decoyed to the house?”

  “No. I think Leda was against them, whoever they were, and, in any case, it was quite my own idea to go to the house.”

  “Very good, sir, thank you. Now, sir, if I’ve got it correctly, your story amounts to this: you hit the old gentleman over the head because you were in love with his wife. Somebody took away his body. Later you were assaulted and kidnapped. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. You’ve left out the previous assault made by two men from a rowing boat.”

  “And you don’t know who these gentlemen could have been, sir?”

  “No—not the faintest idea.”

  “Do you think Mr. Harben will swear to the dressing-gown, ma’am?” asked Pirberry later.

  “If you press him hard enough, yes.”

  “You mean, I ought to find the young lady, charge her with using the poison, and then watch how he reacts?”

  “That would be one way to do it. Another would be to leave him entirely to me.”

  “If you say so, ma’am. I don’t want to arrest the young lady without just cause. That sort of thing’s unprofessional.”

  Mrs. Bradley cackled, and promised to do what she could. To this end, she returned to the Rest Centre to interview the Supervising Officer.

  “You’re an artist,” she said. She produced her notebook. “I expect you could reproduce this sketch of mine in paint. Is that asking too much? I know how busy you are.”

  “Why, this …” said he.

  “Yes, it is the pattern on the dressing-gown,” she answered. The Rest Centre officers had seen the exhibit shortly after she herself had been shown it.

  “Yes, I could do that very easily. You’d want the colours fresh not faded as they are at present, I suppose?”

  “I want it to look new.”

  “I’ll do it as soon as I’ve done these food returns,” said he. He was as good as his word. By the time Mrs. Bradley had had some tea with the Welfare Officer and had looked at the twin babies who had been born in the Rest Centre hospital during one of the raids, he had sketched in his pattern and painted it.

  Mrs. Bradley took it gratefully,
called at Harben’s new lodgings, and learnt that he had returned straightway to The Island. She found him with the nuns and the boys, making a model yacht. He seemed glad to see her, and, leaving his companions, went with her to the library.

  “So you still think Leda killed that old man,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Don’t you? But I shouldn’t tell Pirberry so, of course, and I wish you hadn’t.”

  “Allowing that she did, how did the body get to Maidenhead Close?”

  She showed him the painting which the Supervising Officer had made. He looked at it intently, with a little worried frown.

  “Yes, that’s the pattern of the dressing-gown,” he admitted.

  “And now, what really happened?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “More or less what I told you.”

  “How long had you known her before that night on which he died?”

  “Oh, all the previous summer. Why, didn’t that part ring true?”

  “Which part?”

  “You know—her first coming up to the tub and tapping on the port-hole. I meant you to think that I’d never met her before.”

  “I did think that at first. But I soon saw that you knew far too much about her for that to have been your first meeting.”

  “Tell me,” he said. “Where did I slip up? It’s interesting knowing these things.”

  Mrs. Bradley checked off the points on her yellow fingers.

  “It was before the war. Yet you put the light out before you opened the cabin door of the tub. Why? Obviously because you knew, or, at any rate, guessed who was there, and did not want that person silhouetted against the light.”

  “I might have thought it was somebody else—not Leda.”

  “In that case you would have mentioned it. Then, your first question: Not “Who is it?” But, “Is anything the matter?” Her answer: Not, “I’ve killed my husband” (or father, or anybody else you like), but “I’ve killed him.” The inference is that you would understand, without further explanation, whom she meant. It is true that you covered this up with your next question, but I’m afraid the game was already given away.”