The Echoing Strangers (Mrs Bradley)

by Mitchell, Gladys

  ‘You mentioned in the advertisement that he was backward.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass, man. If he weren’t backward he wouldn’t need a holiday tutor. But you don’t want to hear about that. He’ll be down in a minute. You want to know what I’m going to pay you. Well, what do you say to free board and lodging for a week, a tenner, and, if we beat Bruke, another twenty pounds?’

  ‘Am I up for interview, Sir Adrian, or have I got the job?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got it, of course. I thought you understood that.’

  ‘Then I’ll take the ten pounds for tutoring your grandson, but I don’t care, otherwise, whether we win or lose, provided it’s a fairly decent game.’

  ‘Done,’ said Sir Adrian immediately. ‘Although the twenty pounds wouldn’t prejudice your amateur status, you know. It would only be an honorarium.’

  Before Donagh could argue this point the door opened and in came the most beautiful youth he had ever seen. He was tall and graceful, had a noble profile, golden hair, a short Greek mouth and large brown eyes. He smiled at Sir Adrian and came straight up to Tom.

  ‘How do you do, Mr. Donagh? How decent of you to come, sir. Did you have a good journey?’ His voice was as exquisite and, somehow, as unreal as his appearance.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom puzzled, for if this were a backward pupil then he himself was a moron. ‘You are not my baby bear, are you?’

  ‘And you my bear leader? Oh, yes, of course. I say, sir, the bowlers must have been glad to see the back of you when you got that one hundred and twenty-one at Lords last season!’

  Tom, who had found himself wondering what effect a swift kick would have upon the Dresden china lad, politely smiled, for open admiration is disarming.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, deprecatingly. ‘I rather think I had an awful lot of luck. I was missed at second slip when I’d made two.’

  ‘That was an impossible catch, sir. You didn’t really give away a chance there. You might have taken that ball, but I don’t know of anyone else who could have held it. You agree, Grand? You know, we said at the time …’

  ‘Now don’t go puffing him up, Derry,’ said Sir Adrian. ‘His cricket isn’t at all bad, but there’s no need to hero-worship him. Let’s just hope he makes one hundred and twenty-one for us on Thursday, and gives no chances of any kind, and leave it at that.’ The words were harsh enough, but the look which accompanied them was so dotingly affectionate that it transfigured Sir Adrian’s fleshy face and bulbous little eyes to such an extent that Tom could suddenly see a family resemblance between the Narcissus of a youth and his beefish grandfather. It was fleeting, however. The gong sounded. Sir Adrian, rubbing the side of his jowl, observed that he was famished, seized a glass of sherry from a tray brought in by bell number one, waved to Tom to help himself, gulped down the drink, seized another, gulped that, blew out his cheeks, smacked his lips, and led the way to table.

  The dinner was a good one, but there was nothing else to drink, not even coffee at the end. Sir Adrian ate heartily; so did Tom; but Derek took only a small amount of soup and a morsel of sole and refused the roast. Tom saw his grandfather look anxiously at him once or twice, but no comment was made. Nuts, preserved ginger and marrons appeared on the table together with grapes and peaches, and at this stage Derek ate avidly and his grandfather looked a little happier.

  ‘What’s the St. X. in your name stand for?’ he suddenly demanded of Tom.

  ‘St. Xavier.’

  ‘R.C. name.’

  ‘Yes, I’m an Irishman.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. They’re not much good at cricket as a rule.’

  ‘It is not a game that appeals to them very much, Grand,’ said Derek, looking up from peeling a peach and smiling very confidingly at Tom. ‘It doesn’t accord very well with their national temperament.’

  ‘Too crude and impatient,’ said Sir Adrian, ‘to do anything really well except fox-hunting and fighting. What do you say, Donagh?’

  ‘I’ve not lived in Ireland since I was six,’ replied Tom, who found himself, to his own rueful annoyance, becoming extremely angry.

  ‘Well, you’re entitled to an opinion, surely?’

  ‘It’s this, then: I don’t think Irishmen are a particularly patient race, and this particular Irishman isn’t patient at all except with animals and very small prep-school boys. As for cricket——’

  ‘I wish I’d gone to a public school,’ said Derek, displaying social tact in changing the conversation. ‘It’s always been a bone of contention between Grand and me. I was educated privately. It makes me feel out of things.’

  ‘You weren’t tough enough for an English public school,’ said his grandfather, looking at him fondly. ‘You shall go to Oxford, though, when you are a couple of years older. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Very much, Grand. Thank you. You are very good to me.’ He wiped his lips and fingers on his table napkin, laid it on the table, went round to his grandfather, and, to Tom’s horror, kissed him on the forehead and ruffled his stiff dark hair with a hand as slender as a girl’s.

  Tom was glad, when dinner was over, to be told abruptly by Sir Adrian that he could come into the library if he chose, but that he was free to do exactly as he liked provided that he got enough sleep to keep himself fit for Monday’s game.

  Tom said he would write some letters and stretch his legs by going out to post them.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Sir Adrian. ‘Turn right at the gates. Post office is the other end of the village. About a mile and a half from here. Exercise will do you a world of good. I like a man who doesn’t need a car to take him half a mile.’

  ‘I wish I could go with you, Mr. Donagh,’ said Derek, ‘but I want to get on with my Chinese.’

  ‘Chinese?’

  ‘Yes. I am teaching myself Chinese. I prefer it, I think, to Russian, although, of course, that is fascinating, too.’

  Tom, rather staggered by this further evidence of backwardness in his pupil, went up to his room, wrote a letter to his mother and went out, with it and a pipe, towards the village. His objective was not so much the post office as the pub.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dead Man’s Keel

  *

  ‘… and deeds beyond remedy been wrought.’

  Iliad—Homer (Lang, Leaf and Myers)

  *

  MRS. BRADLEY, UNAWARE THAT her path would so soon cross that of Tom Donagh, was very slowly gaining a little ground at Wetwode. Having taken up her tenancy of the riverside bungalow, she had begun by sending for a grand-nephew, Godfrey Lestrange, a mechanically-minded boy of eighteen, telling his parents over the telephone of the task she proposed to set him if he were permitted to join her.

  Godfrey turned up next day on his elder brother’s motorcycle and when he had had a meal he brought the machine on to the riverside lawn and proceeded to take it to pieces. (Mrs. Bradley had guaranteed to its owner a new contraption if disaster overtook this one.)

  Francis Caux, mooning about the next-door lawn, strolled over to see what was happening. Two hours later Godfrey came in for some food, two tall glasses and a jugful of shandy-gaff. He went outside again, and by five o’clock was able to report progress.

  ‘He doesn’t know the first thing about bikes, but he’s frightfully keen. He watches everything I do, and when I want a bit of the bike or a tool I point and then say its name. We’re not doing too badly, on the whole.’

  Mrs. Bradley, who had kept surreptitious watch on the proceedings, had come to the conclusion that her grand-nephew was managing to communicate with Francis with a considerable degree of success. She did not say this, but she commended her relative for his patience and good-nature and adjured him to continue the work on the morrow.

  ‘Oh, I’d like to. It’s quite interesting,’ he said. ‘Of course, one can’t tell what sort of bloke he would have been if he’d been all right, but——’

  By the time the motor-cycle was re-assembled he and Francis were strolling in and
out of both bungalows and obtaining food from both larders.

  The immediate problem, however, was no nearer to being solved. In spite of Godfrey’s example and persuasions, Francis would neither swim in the river nor take out the dinghy, so one wet morning Mrs. Bradley unwrapped a large and chunky parcel which George had brought in the car from Norwich, another large flat one and a small, more intimate-looking affair.

  Both boys were in her bungalow seated at a small table playing chess. That is to say, Godfrey was teaching Francis by moving both sets of pieces himself, beginning from the king’s gambit, and then moving Francis’ piece back each time so that he could play the move himself.

  Mrs. Bradley, taking no notice of the boys, leisurely unwrapped her parcels on the large dining table and disclosed a wooden board, a chunk of plasticene and some modelling tools. Francis had his back to her, but Godfrey could see what she was doing. The game of chess continued for some time, and then Godfrey, who had been primed, looked up and asked:

  ‘What are you doing, Aunt Adela?’

  Mrs. Bradley, smirking horribly, displayed a coal-scuttle, a small fish of indeterminate species, an oar and a rabbit, all fashioned in the childish medium of plasticene. Francis put out his hand to the fish, looked at Mrs. Bradley, received an encouraging nod, squeezed it up in his hand and then swiftly fashioned a pike, using the modelling tools with obvious artistry and skill.

  He stayed to lunch, over which Mrs. Bradley presided. Miss Higgs, delighted to be relieved of her charge, was spending the day with relatives in the village. When lunch was over Mrs. Bradley remarked that Miss Higgs had disclosed that Francis, as a little boy, had been fond of modelling. Godfrey, recognizing his cue, put the board back on the table, seized a piece of plasticene and began to fashion a primitive shape vaguely reminiscent of a horse. Francis watched closely, and Mrs. Bradley watched Francis.

  Godfrey put down his embryonic figure, looked at Francis, and laughed. Francis picked up the model and with long fingers transformed it into the perfect representation of a man, but with the arms curving outwards and slightly upwards as though he was clasping a barrel. Godfrey laughed and began to fashion one.

  Mrs. Bradley left them to it. The rain was over and the unmatched odour of an unspoiled rural river filled the green of the woodland air. She untied a canoe which was hitched to the edge of her staithe and paddled gently downstream with the current. She was gone for about two hours. When she got back the boys were still at the table. Francis was making a plasticene model of a dinghy. It was almost complete. As Mrs. Bradley watched, he finished the second oar and gently laid it along the thwarts. The little man he had previously modelled was still on the table. He picked it up, looked uncertainly from her to Godfrey, and then did a very strange thing.

  He stuck a raised centre-board on to the model of the dinghy, and then stuck the plasticene man underneath the bottom of the boat. He put the horrid conclusion on the table, so that the plasticene man was hidden, and then looked at Mrs. Bradley, his eyes blinking and his mouth beginning to quiver. He scrambled the model together into a shapeless mass, made a sound between a snort and a sob, and galloped out of the room.

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Godfrey. ‘What on earth’s up with him?’

  ‘He’s told us what has been troubling him,’ Mrs. Bradley replied.

  ‘You don’t mean he’s seen … that?’ Godfrey pointed to the scrambled-up mess.

  ‘At any rate he’s seen something which gave the impression of that. I want you to do something more to help me. Please behave naturally and, if you don’t mind, take him for dinner this evening into Norwich and put in a couple of hours at a cinema. He won’t embarrass you there. The dinner you may find a little difficult.’

  ‘Oh, no, I shan’t. It only needs one to do the ordering. I’ll go and help him shove out some clothes. By the way, we played chess again for a bit when you’d gone. We haven’t been using the plasticene all the time. Have a look at the board. And I thought I was teaching him to play!’

  Mrs. Bradley had already noticed the chess board. She went over to it, however, and inspected it closely.

  ‘Quite a tricky proposition,’ she remarked.

  ‘I should just about think so. I retired, as you can see, my position being absolutely hopeless.’

  ‘Not absolutely,’ said Mrs. Bradley pensively. She stretched out a yellow claw. ‘There is the answer.’ She moved her grand-nephew’s pieces. ‘And if that doesn’t warn him he’s very foolish indeed.’

  ‘Warn him? What do you want to warn him about?’

  Mrs. Bradley cackled, and did not reply. Godfrey looked at her thoughtfully and then went off to dress. Both boys presented themselves for her inspection about half an hour later, Francis as golden as a girl and Godfrey with the saturnine good looks of all the Bradley men. Both were wearing dinner jackets and both had the newly-scrubbed appearance which allies itself with black jackets and newly-ironed shirts. Mrs. Bradley took an affectionate farewell of both. Godfrey sized her up, kissed her, held her at arm’s length for a moment and then said with apparent inconsequence:

  ‘And a smile on the face of the tiger.’

  ‘How did you get Francis dressed?’ Mrs. Bradley asked.

  ‘Just by pantomime. He cottoned on as soon as he saw my dress trousers, and looked quite bucked. I then gave a masterly imitation of a man eating a large, rich dinner, and his grin widened. Handsome and dashing, ain’t he? All we need now is a couple of beautiful girls.’

  ‘Francis doesn’t behave very nicely with beautiful girls.’

  ‘Oh? That’s very tactless of him. Right. I will bear it in mind. Beautiful girls are out. Keeping ’em at bay is the trouble.’ He laughed happily, took Francis by the coat-sleeve and led him away. They borrowed Mrs. Bradley’s car for their expedition, so that she had to choose between using the motor-cycle or going on foot to the village. She proposed to pay a visit to Mabel Parkinson, for old school-fellows have at least one virtue: they can provide one with a background and with references—in short, with the warm cloak of respectability. She knew that Mabel was back in Wetwode, for George had reported her return, having gained this information in the post-office.

  She strolled by back lanes to the village, crossed the bridge and came to Mabel’s neat villa. After the exchange of false compliments and ancient memories was completed, Mabel Parkinson suggested that they might dine together at the hotel.

  ‘Later, perhaps. Don’t you want to come and see my corpse?’ asked Mrs. Bradley briskly.

  She thought it was unlikely that Mabel would take this invitation seriously, and she was right. Mabel was, however, interested in the riverside bungalows.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to visit one of those,’ she said. ‘Are they really as tiny as they look?’

  Mrs. Bradley replied that they were even tinier, and added that she had had to bed George down in the village but that the bungalow most fortunately was on the telephone so that she could call him when she wanted him.

  ‘He is enjoying the fishing,’ she said. They reached the bungalow at seven in the evening. The river was very quiet, for most of the yachts and cruisers had found their night moorings. There was no wind. The woods behind the bungalow were still, the tree-roots deep in the ooze and the branches sleeping.

  George put the car away and then joined the two elderly women at the boathouse. He had with him a village youth of about twenty.

  ‘All set, George?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  ‘If you please, madam. Malachi here will dive. He knows what to expect.’

  ‘Good.’

  The boathouse ran alongside the bungalow but was separated from it by a strip of lawn about twelve feet wide. The next-door bungalow had its boathouse similarly placed and it was to this one, not to her own, that Mrs. Bradley directed Malachi’s attention. Her own boathouse held nothing except for the canoe, but the neighbouring one held a broad sailing-dinghy.

  ‘There it is, Malachi,’ said George. ‘Not scared, are you, lad?’r />
  ‘No,’ replied the youth. ‘I reckon I’ve fetched up two drownded uns already, so I’m used to it, and there in’t any weed in these staithes. Father keep ’em cut clean.’

  He stripped off jacket, shirt and trousers to display a fine young body clad neatly and attractively in a pair of diminutive bathing trunks coloured, very choicely, chocolate brown. He walked to the moorings-edge of the staithe, studied the dark water, wriggled strong, long toes on the woodwork, inflated his lungs and went in with the sinuous self-confidence of an eel.

  To the watchers he seemed to stay under for a very long time. When he surfaced he pushed back his hair, spat water and then looked up and nodded.

  ‘He be there all right, I reckon. I could feel him. What do you want I should do now?’

  ‘Nothing more, Malachi, at present. Come out and get dressed. I’ll ring up the police, and you’d better stay here as a witness,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

  She went into the bungalow. Malachi picked up his towel and, with an apologetic look at Miss Parkinson, began to rub his hair, arms and shoulders. Miss Parkinson took the hint and followed Mrs. Bradley indoors. A few minutes later male voices from the kitchen and the clink of glasses proclaimed that the diver was dry and dressed and was now receiving some compensation for his experiences.

  The police arrived in the form and person of Constable Tutt from the village, who, as soon as he had taken statements from everybody, rang up Norwich and gave a laconic, correct account of what he had been told.

  Miss Higgs arrived home at ten to find her bungalow in the possession of the police, who had made a thorough investigation by the time she got back. As it was unreasonable to suppose that a woman of her age and stature had been able to fasten a dead body to the bottom of the dinghy, they questioned her gently and elicited one important fact. Her bungalow had been empty for a week at the beginning of June, when, out of what she had managed to save from her salary for looking after Francis, she had taken the youth to Great Yarmouth.

  ‘It will require the doctor to tell us whether that’s when the murder took place,’ said the inspector, ‘but it’s a pointer, anyway, madam.’